WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
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Rev 250 is a collaboration
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among about 70 groups in
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Massachusetts planning
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commemorations of the
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beginnings of American independence.
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And our guest today is Carol Birkin,
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who is the Presidential
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Professor of History
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Emerita at Baruch College
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and at the Graduate Center at CUNY,
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the City University of New York,
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author of a number of extraordinary books.
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Your first book was actually
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about a Massachusetts
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loyalist named Jonathan Sewell.
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Yes.
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And a biography of Elizabeth
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Patterson Bonaparte,
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someone of wondrous beauty,
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as well as two of the
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really essential books on
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teaching colonial America
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and the Revolution,
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First Generations and
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Revolutionary Mothers.
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And your new book is The Sovereign People,
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about the 1790s.
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But what we're going to talk
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about today is your
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book on the Constitution,
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A Brilliant Solution,
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Creating the American Constitution.
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So thanks so much for joining us.
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Happy to be here.
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And actually, before we got on,
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we were just talking about
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there's an effort underway
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here to memorialize Mercy Otis Warren.
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And there is a statue of her
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in Barnstable on Cape Cod.
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And there's a group here
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planning to memorialize her.
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And you had someone else
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that you thought should be
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a good candidate for our
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historical reconsideration,
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and that's Judith Sargent Murray.
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Yes, yes.
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Not to replace Mercier de Soir,
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and I think there should be
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statues of scores of women
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from Massachusetts and
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around the country.
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In New York City, in the park,
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Central Park,
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they think one statue with
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three women is sufficient
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forever and ever and ever.
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I hope you won't feel that
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way in Massachusetts.
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Judith Sargent Murray is the
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author of a series of
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essays called the Gleaner Essays,
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in which she lays down
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practically everything that
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in the 19th century will become political
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fodder for the women.
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She says women are not less
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intelligent than men.
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They are simply undereducated.
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She's just an interesting woman.
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She has a wonderful exchange with a friend,
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and she's talking about the
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biblical story of Adam and Eve.
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which was interpreted in
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Massachusetts in the 18th
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century as proof that women
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were dangerous if left
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under the control of men.
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And she writes, she says,
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I don't understand.
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I'm paraphrasing.
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I don't understand why they
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say that women are morally
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less strong than men.
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After all,
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it took all the wiles of Satan
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as a serpent
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to get Eve to eat from the
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Tree of Knowledge,
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but all Eve had to do was say, here, Adam,
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have a bite, and he did.
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I mean,
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she's got a light touch about
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various subjects, which I admire.
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So I nominate her for the nomination.
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Thank you.
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Well, thank you, and a wonderful writer,
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and we're always looking
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for new things to discover.
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Which gets us to a brilliant solution.
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It seems like everything
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that could have been
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written about the
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Constitutional Convention had been,
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but your book really brings this to life.
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Now,
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what made you turn to the
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Constitutional Convention?
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Well,
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I've been teaching this era for years.
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And when you do that for decades,
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you begin to build up a
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sort of your understanding
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and interpretation.
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And the thing that troubled
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me always was either God
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wrote the Constitution, you know,
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you could see his hand in
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the Constitution,
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as in the Ten Commandments,
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or a kind of somber look at these heroic,
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perfect men.
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When I go down to the Constitution Center,
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I always say they look like
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statues waiting for pigeons
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to settle on their shoulders.
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And I thought, I mean, this was exciting.
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incredible anxious,
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nervous time when they did
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not know whether they could
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save the country.
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And that was really what I wanted.
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I wanted to make them human
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instead of superheroes.
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I wanted to capture that tension.
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They thought the country was
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about to disappear.
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And they were meeting to try to save it.
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And the last thing that
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really motivated me was
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The idea that they knew as
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they wrote the Constitution
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that the country would rise
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to be the most powerful
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country in the world and
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everything would be fine, not at all.
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Benjamin Franklin says,
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if this Constitution lasts 10 years,
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we'll have done our duty.
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So it's a little poke, I guess,
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at originalists who think
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that these men saw into the future.
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The only vision...
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the convention was Hamilton.
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Hamilton indeed was thinking
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about the future.
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So those things, when someone said,
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would you like to write a book?
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I said, yes.
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You do a very good job with
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the characters in this.
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I wanted to make them, they were,
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they had lots of quirks and
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eccentricities.
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They were sinners, not saints.
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They were more than anything else.
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They were men who did not
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suffer from hubris.
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which is common today.
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They didn't think that they
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were all geniuses.
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They weren't sure they could
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pull this thing off.
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They knew that they had all
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the foibles that human beings could have,
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and they accepted that.
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And that's what I wanted.
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I wanted everybody to know
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that Luther Martin was an
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alcoholic and that there
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were obese men at the
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convention and that Oliver
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Ellsworth was a snuff addict.
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He was surrounded constantly by this
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cloud of dust from the smoke,
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from the stuff that
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reminded me of Pigpen and
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Charlie Brown's comics.
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I mean, they were, they were,
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James Madison was a hypochondriac.
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Almost repeatedly, he would write,
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I've come down with some strange disease.
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I don't know if I'll live.
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And he lived.
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Gunning Bedford.
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For a long time.
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So I think that
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I think seeing them as human
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beings is helpful for us to
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understand what an amazing thing they did,
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was.
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Professor, while we, oh, there he is.
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He's back.
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He's back.
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I'm back.
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I apologize.
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You do a great job with.
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I can't hear the question.
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So Bob is wondering about
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Gouverneur Morris.
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He is my favorite character
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at the convention.
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And people do not know about him.
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I mean,
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I want statues of Gouverneur Morris
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everywhere.
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He was
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one of the,
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he in fact wrote the Constitution.
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That is, at the end of,
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he was a marvelous writer, great stylist.
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And at the end of,
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when they had finished
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voting on everything they
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thought they had to vote on,
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they basically turned it over to him.
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And they said, do something with this.
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And it's Gouverneur Morris
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who gives us Article 1, Article 2,
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Article 3.
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That is,
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he makes order because they did
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not vote in that order.
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He makes order out of chaos.
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And he writes the preamble.
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He said they would have put
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what legislative bodies
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across colonial America would have put.
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we the people of New Hampshire,
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Connecticut.
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And he said, no,
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we've got to impress upon
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people that this is better
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than what we already have,
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better than the Articles of Confederation,
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good for the people.
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There are opponents to this whole thing.
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rampant across the country.
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So he says,
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we have to tell them what this
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constitution will do.
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And he's the one who writes the preamble.
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And at the convention, he, James Wilson,
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and Gouverneur Morris were
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the three dominating voices
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at the convention.
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Plus the fact that he's just
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such an interesting guy.
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He was very, very wealthy.
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He was unmarried.
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He loved women.
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And in fact,
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the women he loved the best
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were married women.
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And New England delegates or
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Massachusetts delegates
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were horrified by him
00:10:48.113 --> 00:10:51.096
because he made no bones about it.
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And a story spread that was
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completely erroneous that he,
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Gouverneur Morris had a peg leg.
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He had lost his leg when he
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was 13 years old in a carriage accident.
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I tell my students he must
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have had the most amazing
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pickup line in the world
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because he was homely as sin.
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He had big lips and from the
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side he looked a little bit like the fish,
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the grouper.
00:11:18.706 --> 00:11:21.106
He must have had quite a
00:11:21.187 --> 00:11:23.768
golden tongue because women loved him.
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And the rumor was spread
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that he had lost his leg
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jumping out of the boudoir
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window of his best friend's
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wife when the friend
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returned home unexpectedly.
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And the thing I really love
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about Gouverneur Morris is he said,
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that's a great story.
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Sure, why not?
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He was a bon vivant.
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He was a sophisticated man
00:11:52.433 --> 00:11:53.934
among men who were not so
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sophisticated and brilliant
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and really one of the great
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writers of America in the 18th century.
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And when it was all over,
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when the convention was over,
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he was the only one who did
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not immediately try to run for office.
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Everybody else was going to
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run for office.
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He said, I've had enough of politics.
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I'm paraphrasing for him.
00:12:22.229 --> 00:12:23.729
I've had enough of politics.
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I'm going to France.
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I hear the women are pretty there.
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It's just not really...
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He had a good view of himself.
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He did not take himself too seriously.
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And I would like people to
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acknowledge the contribution he made.
00:12:48.399 --> 00:12:51.640
Most people across America, I'm sure,
00:12:51.660 --> 00:12:52.721
have never heard of him.
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You know,
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it's interesting you should say
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that because one of the
00:12:56.191 --> 00:12:58.272
things I've often thought about is,
00:12:58.351 --> 00:12:58.591
you know,
00:12:58.751 --> 00:12:59.852
originally there were going to
00:12:59.893 --> 00:13:02.495
be 70 delegates at the
00:13:02.654 --> 00:13:04.056
Constitutional Convention.
00:13:04.255 --> 00:13:05.697
And most notably,
00:13:06.398 --> 00:13:07.518
some of the leading lights
00:13:07.599 --> 00:13:08.938
of the independence movement,
00:13:09.159 --> 00:13:10.880
Adams and Jefferson in particular,
00:13:10.941 --> 00:13:11.341
weren't there.
00:13:11.360 --> 00:13:12.221
And I've often wondered...
00:13:12.802 --> 00:13:13.001
you know,
00:13:13.101 --> 00:13:15.783
whether scholars think that there
00:13:15.903 --> 00:13:18.163
was a real impact to that.
00:13:18.183 --> 00:13:19.264
But it sounds like with
00:13:19.364 --> 00:13:20.923
Morris and some of the others,
00:13:21.465 --> 00:13:22.605
you don't feel their
00:13:22.684 --> 00:13:24.404
absence was missed all that much.
00:13:24.644 --> 00:13:24.884
No,
00:13:25.046 --> 00:13:26.865
and the other interesting thing is some
00:13:26.905 --> 00:13:27.905
of the leaders of the
00:13:27.966 --> 00:13:30.986
Revolution purposely refused to attend.
00:13:31.067 --> 00:13:33.967
Samuel Adams would not go near it.
00:13:34.327 --> 00:13:35.408
Patrick Henry,
00:13:35.788 --> 00:13:37.649
who led the opposition to
00:13:37.708 --> 00:13:38.808
ratification of the
00:13:38.869 --> 00:13:40.450
Constitution in Virginia,
00:13:41.794 --> 00:13:44.998
These men believed, and I would argue,
00:13:45.498 --> 00:13:48.139
though I don't have statistics at hand,
00:13:48.841 --> 00:13:49.821
I would argue that the
00:13:50.442 --> 00:13:53.864
majority of Americans, American males,
00:13:54.144 --> 00:13:54.924
white males,
00:13:55.985 --> 00:13:57.246
thought that the revolution
00:13:57.307 --> 00:13:59.808
had been fought for the
00:13:59.869 --> 00:14:02.390
control of their state
00:14:02.551 --> 00:14:04.192
governments over their life,
00:14:04.852 --> 00:14:07.115
what we would call today states' rights.
00:14:07.587 --> 00:14:09.188
When they said no taxation
00:14:09.229 --> 00:14:10.629
without representation,
00:14:10.668 --> 00:14:12.929
they meant governments of
00:14:13.149 --> 00:14:14.910
men who lived where they lived,
00:14:15.370 --> 00:14:17.371
earned their living the way they did,
00:14:18.032 --> 00:14:20.873
men they knew the character of,
00:14:21.332 --> 00:14:23.014
and men they could watch
00:14:23.214 --> 00:14:24.815
carefully to make sure they
00:14:24.875 --> 00:14:27.134
didn't do anything tyrannical.
00:14:27.735 --> 00:14:30.116
So they opposed this
00:14:30.397 --> 00:14:32.758
national government that
00:14:32.977 --> 00:14:34.697
Patrick Henry was no dummy.
00:14:34.778 --> 00:14:36.318
He knew was going to
00:14:37.576 --> 00:14:39.857
take power away from the states.
00:14:39.998 --> 00:14:41.678
And so what's remarkable,
00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:43.000
and Mercy Otis Warren
00:14:43.039 --> 00:14:45.501
opposed the Constitution.
00:14:45.522 --> 00:14:47.003
She went door to door
00:14:48.342 --> 00:14:49.724
canvassing against it.
00:14:50.264 --> 00:14:53.385
So it's not that they were reactionary,
00:14:53.485 --> 00:14:54.486
crazy people.
00:14:55.047 --> 00:14:57.729
It's that they had just
00:14:57.828 --> 00:14:59.529
fought against a distant
00:14:59.950 --> 00:15:01.230
centralized government.
00:15:02.475 --> 00:15:03.936
And what they wanted was
00:15:03.996 --> 00:15:06.619
basically when they would
00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:10.423
imagine home rule, they meant their local,
00:15:10.523 --> 00:15:11.783
their state governments.
00:15:12.264 --> 00:15:13.566
And they did not want to
00:15:13.686 --> 00:15:17.370
establish a uber government
00:15:17.730 --> 00:15:18.691
over the whole thing.
00:15:19.062 --> 00:15:19.942
And I have to confess,
00:15:20.001 --> 00:15:21.423
I come from a long line of
00:15:21.562 --> 00:15:23.783
anti-federalist ancestors,
00:15:23.903 --> 00:15:26.684
so I certainly understand the argument.
00:15:27.205 --> 00:15:29.985
But as part of that, of course,
00:15:30.645 --> 00:15:32.947
is the power of the executive.
00:15:33.768 --> 00:15:35.768
And I'm wondering what your
00:15:35.807 --> 00:15:37.969
thoughts are in regards to
00:15:38.288 --> 00:15:41.210
the establishment of a
00:15:41.629 --> 00:15:44.091
primary executive role
00:15:45.032 --> 00:15:46.912
leading a federalist government.
00:15:46.932 --> 00:15:47.952
They did not.
00:15:48.904 --> 00:15:49.985
They did not think the
00:15:50.025 --> 00:15:51.827
presidency was that important.
00:15:52.568 --> 00:15:54.051
They thought it was a problem.
00:15:54.071 --> 00:15:58.155
For them, Congress, the legislature,
00:15:58.255 --> 00:15:59.496
the elected body.
00:15:59.878 --> 00:16:01.078
Remember, that's Article 1.
00:16:02.365 --> 00:16:04.586
That was the heart and soul
00:16:04.626 --> 00:16:05.506
of this government.
00:16:06.028 --> 00:16:08.208
And they fought like demons
00:16:08.509 --> 00:16:11.029
over how representation would take place,
00:16:11.330 --> 00:16:12.870
who had power and who didn't.
00:16:13.431 --> 00:16:14.931
The president was supposed
00:16:14.951 --> 00:16:17.111
to just administer the laws
00:16:17.793 --> 00:16:22.254
that Congress made.
00:16:22.554 --> 00:16:23.894
He was just supposed to see
00:16:23.955 --> 00:16:29.577
that they were turned into practice.
00:16:31.202 --> 00:16:33.043
The only reason they talked
00:16:33.063 --> 00:16:36.125
about the president twice
00:16:36.625 --> 00:16:37.726
at the very beginning when
00:16:37.767 --> 00:16:38.847
they couldn't decide how to
00:16:38.868 --> 00:16:40.568
get him elected, so they said, OK,
00:16:40.589 --> 00:16:41.928
let's go to something else,
00:16:43.210 --> 00:16:44.051
was that they couldn't
00:16:44.130 --> 00:16:46.412
figure out exactly that,
00:16:46.591 --> 00:16:47.932
how to elect the president.
00:16:48.493 --> 00:16:49.673
They were sure George
00:16:49.754 --> 00:16:51.794
Washington would be the first president.
00:16:56.106 --> 00:16:58.048
There was no national newspaper.
00:16:58.408 --> 00:17:00.168
There was no national media.
00:17:00.609 --> 00:17:02.370
If you lived in North Carolina,
00:17:02.409 --> 00:17:03.770
you had no idea what was
00:17:03.831 --> 00:17:05.330
happening in Massachusetts.
00:17:05.431 --> 00:17:06.991
If you lived in South Carolina,
00:17:07.011 --> 00:17:07.811
you didn't know what was
00:17:07.872 --> 00:17:09.313
happening in North Carolina.
00:17:09.752 --> 00:17:11.114
People didn't get a daily
00:17:11.173 --> 00:17:13.414
newspaper delivered to their doorstep.
00:17:13.555 --> 00:17:15.996
Many states didn't have newspapers.
00:17:16.476 --> 00:17:18.217
A lot of people didn't read.
00:17:20.769 --> 00:17:22.289
If you nominated someone
00:17:22.329 --> 00:17:23.931
besides George Washington,
00:17:24.411 --> 00:17:25.412
people would say, who?
00:17:25.432 --> 00:17:28.053
And what they knew was going
00:17:28.113 --> 00:17:31.615
to happen is that every
00:17:31.835 --> 00:17:35.517
state would nominate its own local hero.
00:17:36.038 --> 00:17:38.159
And so there would be 13 or
00:17:38.159 --> 00:17:39.318
14 or 17 or 19.
00:17:39.318 --> 00:17:42.201
And then how are you going to pick?
00:17:43.281 --> 00:17:45.502
James Wilson came up with this idea.
00:17:46.374 --> 00:17:46.933
crazy,
00:17:47.054 --> 00:17:50.395
complicated idea of the electoral college,
00:17:50.955 --> 00:17:52.135
which when I was a child,
00:17:52.215 --> 00:17:54.096
I thought was the electrical college.
00:17:55.057 --> 00:17:58.719
And he meant it as a kind of
00:17:58.739 --> 00:18:03.319
a stop gap because we can't
00:18:03.359 --> 00:18:04.401
think of anything else.
00:18:05.500 --> 00:18:08.442
And when he first proposed it, people said,
00:18:08.563 --> 00:18:09.403
oh, are you nuts?
00:18:09.544 --> 00:18:11.865
That's really not going to work.
00:18:12.266 --> 00:18:14.346
And then at the very end of the convention,
00:18:14.386 --> 00:18:15.268
they realized, oops,
00:18:15.347 --> 00:18:17.148
we haven't come up with a
00:18:17.189 --> 00:18:18.549
way to elect the president.
00:18:18.609 --> 00:18:21.752
And they adopted James Wilson's plan.
00:18:22.898 --> 00:18:25.442
And the reason that it was a
00:18:26.782 --> 00:18:28.444
structural problem more
00:18:28.484 --> 00:18:30.926
than anything else was that they said, OK,
00:18:30.946 --> 00:18:32.648
Washington will be the president.
00:18:32.930 --> 00:18:34.030
Who knows how long this
00:18:34.090 --> 00:18:35.432
government's going to last?
00:18:36.032 --> 00:18:39.036
And maybe someone will get
00:18:39.096 --> 00:18:42.159
to be known across the country,
00:18:42.239 --> 00:18:43.840
and the problem will be solved.
00:18:46.371 --> 00:18:47.692
It's interesting that, of course,
00:18:47.731 --> 00:18:50.173
here we are 200 plus years
00:18:50.413 --> 00:18:51.354
on and the Electoral
00:18:51.394 --> 00:18:53.174
College still looms large
00:18:53.255 --> 00:18:55.215
in our political system.
00:18:55.516 --> 00:18:55.736
Well,
00:18:55.796 --> 00:18:58.718
some of it is this absurd reverence
00:18:58.897 --> 00:19:00.858
for everything the framers did,
00:19:00.939 --> 00:19:02.140
and this is one of mine.
00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:06.061
They did not expect people
00:19:06.622 --> 00:19:10.023
to view the convention's
00:19:10.104 --> 00:19:11.644
decisions as the Bible.
00:19:12.494 --> 00:19:13.316
They said,
00:19:13.576 --> 00:19:14.536
we don't know what's going to
00:19:14.576 --> 00:19:15.656
happen in the future.
00:19:16.017 --> 00:19:17.278
We have no idea.
00:19:17.678 --> 00:19:19.819
And that's why they put in
00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:21.540
an amendment process.
00:19:22.161 --> 00:19:22.741
They said,
00:19:23.221 --> 00:19:24.083
I don't know what two
00:19:24.143 --> 00:19:25.604
generations down the line
00:19:25.743 --> 00:19:27.444
this country will need so
00:19:27.484 --> 00:19:29.506
they can change the Constitution.
00:19:30.125 --> 00:19:30.707
They were confused.
00:19:31.701 --> 00:19:34.261
they would be stunned at the
00:19:34.362 --> 00:19:36.521
originalist argument today.
00:19:37.342 --> 00:19:38.981
They didn't have that kind of hubris.
00:19:39.021 --> 00:19:40.022
They didn't have that kind
00:19:40.063 --> 00:19:42.182
of confidence in what they had done.
00:19:42.643 --> 00:19:44.304
They wanted the structure to
00:19:44.403 --> 00:19:45.163
stay the same.
00:19:45.183 --> 00:19:46.243
They thought that was pretty
00:19:46.304 --> 00:19:47.124
good because it was
00:19:47.263 --> 00:19:49.325
borrowed from England and
00:19:49.384 --> 00:19:50.704
from the state governments
00:19:50.785 --> 00:19:52.305
and from the colonial governments.
00:19:52.384 --> 00:19:54.986
It's absolutely nothing new.
00:19:55.605 --> 00:19:57.645
I love when my students say to me,
00:19:58.526 --> 00:19:59.507
checks and balances,
00:19:59.547 --> 00:20:01.326
the constitution invented that.
00:20:03.683 --> 00:20:05.805
rotation in office, the Constitution,
00:20:06.565 --> 00:20:08.266
independent judiciary.
00:20:08.286 --> 00:20:08.326
No!
00:20:08.846 --> 00:20:11.145
England had an independent judiciary.
00:20:11.487 --> 00:20:13.707
England had a bicameral government.
00:20:14.146 --> 00:20:17.827
England had checks on the king.
00:20:19.128 --> 00:20:20.648
The state governments all
00:20:20.709 --> 00:20:23.130
had governors and upper
00:20:23.170 --> 00:20:25.690
houses and lower houses and judiciaries.
00:20:25.871 --> 00:20:27.431
Even the colonial governments did.
00:20:28.071 --> 00:20:30.913
The only original thing in
00:20:30.952 --> 00:20:34.174
the Constitution is federalism.
00:20:35.895 --> 00:20:36.675
Federalism.
00:20:37.217 --> 00:20:39.057
And when Alexander Hamilton
00:20:39.116 --> 00:20:40.798
heard that they were going
00:20:40.817 --> 00:20:42.739
to have some powers were
00:20:42.818 --> 00:20:44.920
exclusively the federal governments,
00:20:45.540 --> 00:20:47.922
some powers were the state governments,
00:20:48.241 --> 00:20:50.103
and some powers they changed.
00:20:51.020 --> 00:20:51.762
Hamilton said,
00:20:51.823 --> 00:20:53.867
I like to think of him saying, oy vey.
00:20:54.548 --> 00:20:57.336
He got up and he said, this is never,
00:20:57.615 --> 00:20:58.858
never going to work.
00:20:59.180 --> 00:20:59.520
Never.
00:21:00.215 --> 00:21:00.576
He said,
00:21:01.016 --> 00:21:03.477
you have to have ultimate sovereignty.
00:21:03.537 --> 00:21:05.336
You have to have somebody,
00:21:06.357 --> 00:21:08.938
some body of government who has,
00:21:09.038 --> 00:21:10.939
and they all said, and of course,
00:21:10.979 --> 00:21:11.439
Hamilton,
00:21:11.479 --> 00:21:13.239
who was so not in touch with the
00:21:13.278 --> 00:21:14.740
popular mood,
00:21:14.779 --> 00:21:17.119
he had no understanding of what,
00:21:17.220 --> 00:21:18.099
and didn't care.
00:21:18.119 --> 00:21:20.621
He thought, I know what we ought to do.
00:21:20.760 --> 00:21:22.201
Shut up and let me do it.
00:21:24.501 --> 00:21:24.902
He said,
00:21:25.142 --> 00:21:26.903
the only solution is to just
00:21:26.982 --> 00:21:28.202
abolish the states.
00:21:30.500 --> 00:21:31.501
It's interesting because one
00:21:31.521 --> 00:21:33.163
of Washington's, you know,
00:21:33.202 --> 00:21:33.943
it's one of the things that
00:21:33.963 --> 00:21:35.164
I've come to really revere
00:21:35.204 --> 00:21:36.386
about Washington is his
00:21:36.446 --> 00:21:38.388
foresightedness in certain
00:21:40.125 --> 00:21:40.866
And in particular,
00:21:40.906 --> 00:21:42.268
one of the first general
00:21:42.407 --> 00:21:43.367
orders he issues when he
00:21:43.407 --> 00:21:44.888
comes up to Cambridge to
00:21:44.949 --> 00:21:46.829
take command is to
00:21:47.130 --> 00:21:49.730
encourage the officers and
00:21:49.790 --> 00:21:53.853
men to set state pride
00:21:53.952 --> 00:21:56.054
aside and to embrace the
00:21:56.153 --> 00:21:58.174
idea of being a united
00:21:59.195 --> 00:22:00.876
group of men fighting for
00:22:01.037 --> 00:22:01.836
rights and liberties.
00:22:02.877 --> 00:22:03.657
Absolutely.
00:22:03.718 --> 00:22:07.240
You know, when he became president,
00:22:08.652 --> 00:22:10.814
He understood his role.
00:22:11.733 --> 00:22:13.736
He understood that his job
00:22:14.375 --> 00:22:16.337
was to be the unifier.
00:22:16.978 --> 00:22:18.859
He understood that his job
00:22:19.539 --> 00:22:21.761
was to transform people who
00:22:21.842 --> 00:22:24.284
thought of themselves as Marylanders,
00:22:24.884 --> 00:22:27.946
Virginians, Connecticut men,
00:22:28.267 --> 00:22:29.327
as Americans.
00:22:32.163 --> 00:22:34.204
for a sovereign people,
00:22:34.965 --> 00:22:38.728
that is the task of his administration,
00:22:39.307 --> 00:22:40.348
is to do this.
00:22:40.969 --> 00:22:44.611
And that he did it earlier reflects,
00:22:44.691 --> 00:22:45.211
by the way,
00:22:45.270 --> 00:22:46.711
the fact that most of the men
00:22:46.791 --> 00:22:48.032
at the convention who were
00:22:48.113 --> 00:22:49.354
true nationalists,
00:22:49.473 --> 00:22:50.933
wanted to create a nation,
00:22:51.575 --> 00:22:54.155
had served in the Continental Army,
00:22:54.676 --> 00:22:55.817
and they had gone with
00:22:55.876 --> 00:22:57.458
Washington the length and
00:22:57.597 --> 00:22:58.939
breadth of the country.
00:22:59.622 --> 00:23:01.805
And they knew that people
00:23:01.904 --> 00:23:05.549
were alike in those various states.
00:23:06.109 --> 00:23:07.771
Unlike many people.
00:23:08.113 --> 00:23:10.816
Patrick Henry left Virginia once.
00:23:10.855 --> 00:23:11.576
He didn't like it.
00:23:11.596 --> 00:23:12.178
He came home.
00:23:12.198 --> 00:23:13.920
Right.
00:23:15.891 --> 00:23:17.811
Yeah, so you talk about, you know,
00:23:17.832 --> 00:23:19.071
so the president is there
00:23:19.092 --> 00:23:20.232
to unify everybody.
00:23:20.692 --> 00:23:22.534
The House of Representatives, of course,
00:23:22.594 --> 00:23:23.294
is the direct
00:23:23.413 --> 00:23:24.755
representatives of the people.
00:23:25.055 --> 00:23:26.115
And then you have the Senate.
00:23:26.615 --> 00:23:29.037
And there's some expression
00:23:29.076 --> 00:23:31.597
of concern about the chief
00:23:31.657 --> 00:23:32.919
executive officer sort of
00:23:34.837 --> 00:23:36.499
conspiring with the Senate
00:23:38.059 --> 00:23:39.359
in ways that may be
00:23:39.420 --> 00:23:40.961
detrimental to the rights
00:23:41.020 --> 00:23:42.061
and liberties of the people.
00:23:42.102 --> 00:23:43.142
So I didn't know if you
00:23:43.162 --> 00:23:44.363
wanted to comment on that a bit.
00:23:44.403 --> 00:23:44.682
Yes.
00:23:44.923 --> 00:23:45.723
First of all,
00:23:47.065 --> 00:23:49.766
the biggest defeat to the Nationalists,
00:23:50.386 --> 00:23:52.028
they wanted the Senate as
00:23:52.147 --> 00:23:53.407
well as the House to be
00:23:53.468 --> 00:23:54.868
based on population.
00:23:54.888 --> 00:23:57.671
They did not want the states
00:23:58.509 --> 00:24:00.530
who we have to all remember
00:24:00.711 --> 00:24:02.351
were the most powerful
00:24:02.990 --> 00:24:04.332
governments at the time.
00:24:04.811 --> 00:24:06.252
They didn't want the states
00:24:06.373 --> 00:24:09.594
to have a house in the government.
00:24:10.874 --> 00:24:14.835
They wanted representation by population.
00:24:15.214 --> 00:24:16.796
And when they lost that,
00:24:17.368 --> 00:24:19.109
when the small states said,
00:24:19.210 --> 00:24:21.491
you do that and we're out of here,
00:24:22.212 --> 00:24:24.273
we want someplace where the
00:24:24.413 --> 00:24:25.674
states are equal.
00:24:26.435 --> 00:24:27.676
When that happened,
00:24:27.896 --> 00:24:30.358
the Senate went to the states.
00:24:31.400 --> 00:24:33.060
There were no political parties.
00:24:33.780 --> 00:24:35.502
So this was the house that
00:24:35.563 --> 00:24:37.344
belonged to the state governments.
00:24:38.125 --> 00:24:42.268
And the worry was that it would become
00:24:43.240 --> 00:24:44.761
It was going to be made up
00:24:44.821 --> 00:24:46.743
of the richest men in America,
00:24:46.804 --> 00:24:47.604
they assumed,
00:24:47.724 --> 00:24:50.105
and the most powerful men in America.
00:24:50.906 --> 00:25:00.493
They were afraid of.
00:25:00.614 --> 00:25:02.796
I'm sorry to say they simply did not.
00:25:03.355 --> 00:25:04.196
They feared it.
00:25:04.636 --> 00:25:06.759
So they feared tyranny of the one.
00:25:07.914 --> 00:25:09.557
like a King George or a Caesar,
00:25:10.156 --> 00:25:12.599
tyranny of the many, the few,
00:25:13.161 --> 00:25:14.902
an oligarchy, the Senate.
00:25:15.143 --> 00:25:16.824
They were desperately afraid
00:25:16.884 --> 00:25:19.227
the Senate would in fact
00:25:19.846 --> 00:25:22.029
pick a president and the
00:25:22.150 --> 00:25:24.092
two bodies would come together.
00:25:24.730 --> 00:25:26.010
And the third thing that was
00:25:26.090 --> 00:25:27.371
a threat to the Republic
00:25:27.411 --> 00:25:29.432
was democracy or what they
00:25:29.471 --> 00:25:30.711
called mob rule.
00:25:32.173 --> 00:25:34.814
So the fear of the Senate
00:25:34.933 --> 00:25:37.214
was very real for many people.
00:25:38.494 --> 00:25:39.935
Even at the convention,
00:25:40.175 --> 00:25:42.777
they were decimated.
00:25:42.936 --> 00:25:43.557
Madison,
00:25:43.596 --> 00:25:45.657
who was a big nationalist at the time,
00:25:46.157 --> 00:25:48.659
was heartbroken that they
00:25:48.699 --> 00:25:50.000
had to give in about the
00:25:50.019 --> 00:25:51.380
Senate and let it be the
00:25:51.420 --> 00:25:52.641
House of the States.
00:25:54.458 --> 00:25:54.718
Yeah,
00:25:54.938 --> 00:25:57.099
and he was also very concerned about
00:25:58.980 --> 00:26:02.743
getting a congressional veto established,
00:26:02.804 --> 00:26:05.286
which he didn't quite receive either.
00:26:05.746 --> 00:26:06.467
Yeah, right.
00:26:08.327 --> 00:26:10.209
He was very disappointed
00:26:10.308 --> 00:26:12.050
that things had not gone
00:26:12.070 --> 00:26:15.133
uber nationalist.
00:26:16.134 --> 00:26:19.076
He, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson,
00:26:20.997 --> 00:26:22.077
Alexander Hamilton,
00:26:22.898 --> 00:26:25.720
The men who were the tip of
00:26:25.740 --> 00:26:27.681
the spear of nationalism,
00:26:29.321 --> 00:26:31.722
many had not been born in America.
00:26:33.104 --> 00:26:35.065
They had served as military
00:26:35.204 --> 00:26:37.165
officers in the Continental Army.
00:26:37.425 --> 00:26:39.767
They had been educated abroad.
00:26:40.186 --> 00:26:40.787
In other words,
00:26:40.906 --> 00:26:44.568
they had a perspective on
00:26:45.169 --> 00:26:48.191
America that localists or
00:26:48.290 --> 00:26:50.672
provincialists did not have.
00:26:51.469 --> 00:26:54.211
And so Madison really wanted
00:26:54.550 --> 00:26:58.833
to cash in on this nationalist vision.
00:26:59.512 --> 00:27:01.253
And he only got so far.
00:27:01.594 --> 00:27:01.994
I mean,
00:27:02.875 --> 00:27:05.016
there were people there from
00:27:05.876 --> 00:27:07.998
especially the small states who said,
00:27:08.938 --> 00:27:10.778
if we do it by population,
00:27:11.098 --> 00:27:12.380
we're going to be smothered.
00:27:12.958 --> 00:27:14.598
Because the other big thing
00:27:14.660 --> 00:27:16.740
to remember is the states
00:27:16.861 --> 00:27:19.002
weren't all buddies with one another.
00:27:19.703 --> 00:27:22.625
They were competitors with one another.
00:27:22.645 --> 00:27:24.248
I mean,
00:27:24.448 --> 00:27:26.269
you only have to know that Maryland
00:27:26.308 --> 00:27:28.211
and Virginia had gunboats
00:27:28.471 --> 00:27:32.134
on the Potomac River and did each other.
00:27:40.201 --> 00:27:42.644
And Connecticut and New Jersey,
00:27:43.284 --> 00:27:44.184
it was rumored,
00:27:44.526 --> 00:27:46.287
were planning a joint
00:27:46.428 --> 00:27:48.210
attack on New York City.
00:27:48.230 --> 00:27:52.954
I mean, let us all get along was not yet.
00:27:54.215 --> 00:27:54.476
Well,
00:27:54.576 --> 00:27:56.018
and Rhode Island wouldn't even come
00:27:56.038 --> 00:27:56.558
to the table.
00:27:56.818 --> 00:27:57.700
Right, exactly.
00:27:57.859 --> 00:27:58.980
Rhode Island said we're not
00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:01.403
coming to that convention at all.
00:28:02.746 --> 00:28:05.366
Do you see that as the real
00:28:05.406 --> 00:28:07.768
divide in this constitutional convention,
00:28:08.147 --> 00:28:09.208
those sort of people who
00:28:09.268 --> 00:28:11.028
had a more worldly
00:28:11.088 --> 00:28:12.930
experience versus those who
00:28:13.549 --> 00:28:14.430
are a little bit, I mean,
00:28:14.450 --> 00:28:15.590
I know you say you can't
00:28:15.691 --> 00:28:17.651
define them as liberal and conservative,
00:28:17.711 --> 00:28:19.731
but is the real difference
00:28:21.972 --> 00:28:24.693
experience versus provincialism?
00:28:25.773 --> 00:28:27.214
Yes, I would say that.
00:28:27.595 --> 00:28:30.278
I would say that if you do
00:28:30.377 --> 00:28:32.019
the biographies at the back
00:28:32.078 --> 00:28:33.220
of A Brilliant Solution,
00:28:33.279 --> 00:28:34.901
I have biographies.
00:28:37.083 --> 00:28:39.765
People who have studied law
00:28:39.805 --> 00:28:41.605
in the inns of court in
00:28:41.685 --> 00:28:44.167
London have a different,
00:28:44.288 --> 00:28:47.590
or who were born in Ireland, have a,
00:28:49.531 --> 00:28:50.153
it's like when,
00:28:51.201 --> 00:28:52.903
uh astronauts say when you
00:28:52.982 --> 00:28:55.104
see the earth from up in
00:28:55.144 --> 00:28:56.885
the sky you see that we are
00:28:57.086 --> 00:29:00.249
one world that's the kind
00:29:00.288 --> 00:29:01.769
of analogy to what these
00:29:01.849 --> 00:29:03.932
men saw they said we can
00:29:04.192 --> 00:29:07.154
all be americans and that
00:29:07.214 --> 00:29:09.477
will be good for us but
00:29:09.517 --> 00:29:11.959
there were really people
00:29:11.999 --> 00:29:14.441
like patrick henry and others who said no
00:29:16.311 --> 00:29:18.373
I want to know by first name
00:29:18.532 --> 00:29:20.972
every person who decides to tax me.
00:29:21.733 --> 00:29:23.534
And you can't say that they
00:29:23.594 --> 00:29:26.394
were reactionary or conservative.
00:29:26.795 --> 00:29:27.855
You can just say that they
00:29:27.914 --> 00:29:29.115
had a different vision
00:29:29.195 --> 00:29:35.157
about what was best for the
00:29:35.218 --> 00:29:36.317
people in their state.
00:29:37.403 --> 00:29:37.663
You know,
00:29:37.682 --> 00:29:39.683
there's been an accusation that
00:29:39.743 --> 00:29:41.224
people in Massachusetts,
00:29:41.365 --> 00:29:42.986
everybody wanted to be a lawyer.
00:29:43.046 --> 00:29:45.728
And, you know, Adams famously says,
00:29:46.147 --> 00:29:46.327
you know,
00:29:46.347 --> 00:29:48.650
if you want to understand the
00:29:48.690 --> 00:29:49.830
founding of the country and
00:29:50.090 --> 00:29:52.471
the whole process of revolution,
00:29:52.912 --> 00:29:54.653
you really need to read the
00:29:54.712 --> 00:29:56.134
town meeting records and
00:29:56.173 --> 00:29:57.755
the correspondence to the
00:29:57.815 --> 00:29:59.375
committees of correspondence.
00:29:59.435 --> 00:30:00.876
And if you do that,
00:30:01.277 --> 00:30:02.038
one of the things I've
00:30:02.077 --> 00:30:03.219
discovered certainly is
00:30:03.278 --> 00:30:05.240
just how deeply deeply
00:30:06.641 --> 00:30:09.182
knowledgeable the people of
00:30:09.202 --> 00:30:11.005
the average Massachusetts
00:30:11.045 --> 00:30:13.067
resident was about their
00:30:13.166 --> 00:30:14.347
rights and liberties as
00:30:14.448 --> 00:30:15.348
expressed in all the
00:30:15.368 --> 00:30:16.789
British constitutional documents.
00:30:16.990 --> 00:30:21.673
Much more so than in most of the states.
00:30:21.855 --> 00:30:23.915
I mean, kudos to Massachusetts.
00:30:24.557 --> 00:30:25.738
It was not true.
00:30:26.378 --> 00:30:28.039
New York City, in New York,
00:30:28.460 --> 00:30:31.022
had two well-developed political parties.
00:30:31.796 --> 00:30:32.916
who swung votes,
00:30:33.557 --> 00:30:35.377
the Delanceys and the Livingstons.
00:30:35.759 --> 00:30:36.778
So they were in the
00:30:36.838 --> 00:30:40.281
forefront of the mess we have today.
00:30:40.981 --> 00:30:42.202
But Massachusetts,
00:30:42.262 --> 00:30:44.044
because of town meetings,
00:30:45.765 --> 00:30:48.886
people understood politics
00:30:48.906 --> 00:30:50.188
on the most basic level,
00:30:50.528 --> 00:30:51.729
something you are not going
00:30:51.749 --> 00:30:54.730
to see in Virginia or in
00:30:55.530 --> 00:30:58.053
North Carolina or in South Carolina.
00:30:59.898 --> 00:31:01.500
It is really a tribute to
00:31:01.580 --> 00:31:03.763
New England that they had
00:31:04.545 --> 00:31:06.106
that kind of structure.
00:31:07.469 --> 00:31:08.711
They were still fighting in
00:31:08.770 --> 00:31:10.212
Georgia and South Carolina
00:31:10.292 --> 00:31:12.375
about organizing counties
00:31:12.655 --> 00:31:14.519
in the west of their state.
00:31:15.391 --> 00:31:16.951
The people from the coast said, no,
00:31:16.991 --> 00:31:18.133
we don't need to do that.
00:31:18.492 --> 00:31:20.815
You can just pay your taxes and that's it.
00:31:21.214 --> 00:31:22.756
And the same in Pennsylvania.
00:31:22.776 --> 00:31:22.976
I mean,
00:31:23.016 --> 00:31:25.897
there were uprisings about how come
00:31:25.958 --> 00:31:27.239
we don't have any power.
00:31:27.778 --> 00:31:29.720
Whereas in Massachusetts, you really,
00:31:29.779 --> 00:31:31.060
even though Boston and
00:31:31.101 --> 00:31:31.921
Cambridge might have
00:31:31.981 --> 00:31:33.521
dominated economically,
00:31:34.042 --> 00:31:35.063
really had people who
00:31:35.123 --> 00:31:36.163
understood their rights.
00:31:36.644 --> 00:31:37.904
I think you're absolutely
00:31:37.984 --> 00:31:39.006
correct about that.
00:31:39.611 --> 00:31:40.692
Yeah, and so, I mean,
00:31:40.731 --> 00:31:42.353
I don't want to get too far
00:31:42.493 --> 00:31:44.295
along without talking about
00:31:44.535 --> 00:31:47.778
Elbridge Gerry, who, of course,
00:31:47.917 --> 00:31:49.579
looms large in Massachusetts,
00:31:49.619 --> 00:31:51.520
as well as the Constitutional Convention,
00:31:51.740 --> 00:31:52.942
and, you know,
00:31:52.981 --> 00:31:55.304
sort of counterpainting him
00:31:55.384 --> 00:31:56.726
against Charles Pinckney.
00:31:56.746 --> 00:31:57.946
And I think those are two
00:31:58.007 --> 00:31:59.307
interesting characters who
00:32:00.048 --> 00:32:03.611
really drive the debate on
00:32:04.031 --> 00:32:05.192
adopting the Constitution.
00:32:05.413 --> 00:32:07.414
Well, Elbridge Gerry...
00:32:08.323 --> 00:32:10.003
I like to say is the Ted
00:32:10.105 --> 00:32:11.885
Cruz of the 18th century.
00:32:12.807 --> 00:32:15.348
Nobody in politics liked him
00:32:15.528 --> 00:32:16.609
except John Adams.
00:32:16.809 --> 00:32:19.251
John Adams and he were very good friends.
00:32:19.332 --> 00:32:20.272
Birds of a feather.
00:32:20.712 --> 00:32:20.992
Yes.
00:32:22.294 --> 00:32:22.775
You're right.
00:32:24.153 --> 00:32:26.455
Gary was like a dog with a
00:32:26.537 --> 00:32:28.499
bone when he had a view.
00:32:28.940 --> 00:32:30.762
When I wrote about the Bill of Rights,
00:32:31.282 --> 00:32:32.705
you should read what
00:32:32.786 --> 00:32:34.167
members of Congress are
00:32:34.208 --> 00:32:36.029
saying about Elbridge, Gary.
00:32:36.250 --> 00:32:37.633
I mean, they came close to saying,
00:32:37.692 --> 00:32:39.555
if only we could throw them in the river,
00:32:39.635 --> 00:32:40.036
if only...
00:32:40.797 --> 00:32:43.920
When he had something he wanted done,
00:32:44.980 --> 00:32:46.521
nothing could stop him from
00:32:46.622 --> 00:32:48.383
standing up every 10
00:32:48.383 --> 00:32:50.684
minutes and repeating what he wanted.
00:32:50.704 --> 00:32:52.666
And people would say, no,
00:32:52.866 --> 00:32:54.387
we voted not to do that.
00:32:54.488 --> 00:32:55.509
No, I want you.
00:32:55.929 --> 00:32:57.411
He just was the most
00:32:57.510 --> 00:32:59.491
persistent and aggravating.
00:32:59.832 --> 00:33:01.394
My favorite quote was from
00:33:01.513 --> 00:33:03.214
one of the Federalists who said,
00:33:03.875 --> 00:33:05.396
we could have done this
00:33:05.936 --> 00:33:08.419
much faster if Elbridge
00:33:08.538 --> 00:33:10.260
Carey were not wearing
00:33:10.780 --> 00:33:11.541
not here.
00:33:13.042 --> 00:33:14.304
And I, you know,
00:33:14.344 --> 00:33:16.185
if you look at the XYZ affair,
00:33:16.665 --> 00:33:19.907
this goes beyond the rep, he destroyed.
00:33:20.348 --> 00:33:23.050
And the fact that he promised Adams,
00:33:23.691 --> 00:33:24.951
when people heard that he,
00:33:25.212 --> 00:33:26.513
Adams had appointed him to
00:33:26.554 --> 00:33:28.154
be one of the three commissioners,
00:33:28.194 --> 00:33:29.516
they went to Adams and said,
00:33:29.655 --> 00:33:30.696
are you crazy?
00:33:31.017 --> 00:33:32.999
The man doesn't get along with anyone.
00:33:33.019 --> 00:33:33.078
And
00:33:33.479 --> 00:33:35.160
And Adams replies, no,
00:33:35.220 --> 00:33:36.760
I had a long talk with him,
00:33:37.280 --> 00:33:39.662
and he promised to be a team player.
00:33:39.961 --> 00:33:42.522
Well, that lasted about 20 seconds.
00:33:43.202 --> 00:33:46.164
And he destroyed the whole
00:33:46.605 --> 00:33:50.326
possibility of a new treaty with France.
00:33:51.027 --> 00:33:51.186
Now,
00:33:51.287 --> 00:33:56.068
I know that he became lieutenant
00:33:56.148 --> 00:33:58.089
governor in Massachusetts.
00:33:58.509 --> 00:33:59.029
But, you know,
00:33:59.069 --> 00:34:00.851
when he came home from France,
00:34:01.030 --> 00:34:02.652
Massachusetts people threw
00:34:02.711 --> 00:34:04.692
stones at his carriage.
00:34:05.073 --> 00:34:07.593
They were not really very happy with him.
00:34:08.134 --> 00:34:10.054
So I guess he was rehabilitated.
00:34:10.153 --> 00:34:11.034
But honestly,
00:34:12.255 --> 00:34:15.657
he was absolutely the most
00:34:15.757 --> 00:34:17.396
obnoxious person I have
00:34:17.556 --> 00:34:19.458
ever gotten to write about.
00:34:19.557 --> 00:34:20.458
So I loved him.
00:34:20.538 --> 00:34:22.739
I mean, I love to write about characters.
00:34:22.759 --> 00:34:23.418
He was one.
00:34:25.085 --> 00:34:25.525
And of course,
00:34:25.565 --> 00:34:26.746
he's one of the names that
00:34:26.786 --> 00:34:28.266
comes down to us through history,
00:34:28.367 --> 00:34:28.726
you know,
00:34:29.168 --> 00:34:30.708
in talking about voting
00:34:30.748 --> 00:34:32.449
districts and things like that, you know,
00:34:32.528 --> 00:34:34.108
the whole idea of gerrymandering.
00:34:34.690 --> 00:34:35.369
What about Pinckney?
00:34:36.929 --> 00:34:40.731
Charles Pinckney was not the
00:34:40.791 --> 00:34:43.413
brightest bulb at the convention.
00:34:43.813 --> 00:34:46.653
You know, often people seem to think
00:34:47.358 --> 00:34:49.539
who I give talks to, or students,
00:34:49.860 --> 00:34:52.280
that everybody there was a genius.
00:34:52.721 --> 00:34:54.262
Oh, they were just such.
00:34:55.083 --> 00:34:57.063
There were maybe five men at
00:34:57.103 --> 00:35:00.226
the whole convention, Franklin, Wilson,
00:35:02.447 --> 00:35:05.849
Madison, Hamilton, and Gouverneur Mars.
00:35:06.327 --> 00:35:07.168
who were brilliant.
00:35:07.889 --> 00:35:09.929
Everybody else was rich,
00:35:10.449 --> 00:35:11.791
and that made a difference.
00:35:12.371 --> 00:35:13.652
They were educated.
00:35:14.411 --> 00:35:17.193
They had vast political experience.
00:35:17.253 --> 00:35:18.394
When you consider that
00:35:18.514 --> 00:35:20.496
Edmund Randolph was the
00:35:20.635 --> 00:35:22.717
governor of Virginia, the biggest,
00:35:23.757 --> 00:35:29.105
richest state in America, at 25,
00:35:29.105 --> 00:35:31.188
When they sat down at the dinner table,
00:35:31.708 --> 00:35:32.730
they were sitting with
00:35:32.809 --> 00:35:34.211
fathers and brothers and
00:35:34.293 --> 00:35:38.077
cousins who had been in political office.
00:35:38.577 --> 00:35:40.101
So they knew politics.
00:35:40.221 --> 00:35:41.623
They knew the rules of
00:35:42.103 --> 00:35:43.545
parliamentary procedure.
00:35:43.965 --> 00:35:45.889
They had political experience.
00:35:46.429 --> 00:35:48.469
They were well-educated,
00:35:48.789 --> 00:35:51.271
and so they were smarter, quote, quote,
00:35:51.570 --> 00:35:53.452
than the average person who
00:35:54.251 --> 00:35:56.172
did not have all those privileges.
00:35:57.074 --> 00:35:59.173
Charles Pinckney's a good example of that.
00:35:59.193 --> 00:36:01.474
He came from a distinguished family.
00:36:02.576 --> 00:36:03.856
He was a gentleman.
00:36:06.476 --> 00:36:07.217
He was no...
00:36:10.623 --> 00:36:11.023
In fact,
00:36:11.342 --> 00:36:14.784
he was just an average guy who had
00:36:15.606 --> 00:36:18.246
a very distinctive sense of
00:36:18.306 --> 00:36:19.307
his own honor.
00:36:19.327 --> 00:36:21.528
And when he went to France
00:36:21.588 --> 00:36:23.650
as the ambassador and they
00:36:23.710 --> 00:36:25.351
refused to acknowledge him
00:36:26.251 --> 00:36:28.833
and he came home with a
00:36:28.952 --> 00:36:30.434
chip on his shoulder that
00:36:30.474 --> 00:36:33.815
was huge and he went back
00:36:33.896 --> 00:36:35.016
with Elbridge Gerry and
00:36:35.036 --> 00:36:36.356
John Marshall and they
00:36:36.416 --> 00:36:37.777
couldn't achieve anything.
00:36:38.347 --> 00:36:40.329
I think what drove Charles
00:36:40.568 --> 00:36:42.190
Pinckney really for the
00:36:42.231 --> 00:36:44.711
rest of his life was anger
00:36:45.192 --> 00:36:47.813
at how he had been mistreated.
00:36:49.775 --> 00:36:51.556
And, you know,
00:36:51.657 --> 00:36:53.418
he went back to South
00:36:53.458 --> 00:36:57.119
Carolina and he was
00:36:57.219 --> 00:36:59.222
respected as a wealthy man.
00:36:59.362 --> 00:37:01.202
And I don't think he did much else.
00:37:01.802 --> 00:37:03.925
Gary, at least, you know,
00:37:04.264 --> 00:37:06.186
continued to be politically active.
00:37:07.264 --> 00:37:08.068
aggravating,
00:37:08.168 --> 00:37:13.507
but Pinkney just woe is me to himself.
00:37:14.853 --> 00:37:17.273
Well, in Massachusetts,
00:37:18.054 --> 00:37:19.054
being disgruntled at the
00:37:19.114 --> 00:37:22.956
French is part of our social makeup.
00:37:23.297 --> 00:37:25.297
So I can sympathize a little
00:37:25.318 --> 00:37:26.057
bit with Pinckney.
00:37:27.259 --> 00:37:29.338
I don't want to leave before asking,
00:37:29.418 --> 00:37:29.619
I mean,
00:37:29.679 --> 00:37:32.740
you have really set such a high
00:37:32.820 --> 00:37:34.521
bar for historical scholarship,
00:37:35.202 --> 00:37:37.222
particularly in the roles of women,
00:37:37.302 --> 00:37:40.284
which is still unbelievably
00:37:40.384 --> 00:37:42.385
still underrepresented in
00:37:42.485 --> 00:37:43.726
our national discourse.
00:37:45.469 --> 00:37:46.449
And I didn't know if you
00:37:46.748 --> 00:37:47.789
would care to share some
00:37:47.849 --> 00:37:49.929
thoughts or suggestions to
00:37:49.989 --> 00:37:51.429
people who are setting out
00:37:51.670 --> 00:37:54.030
on this path about ways to
00:37:54.170 --> 00:37:56.010
uplift some of these
00:37:56.190 --> 00:37:57.472
underrepresented stories.
00:37:57.512 --> 00:37:58.692
I mean, you're such a great writer.
00:37:58.711 --> 00:37:59.871
You know,
00:37:59.931 --> 00:38:02.452
Bob and I often remark on the
00:38:02.512 --> 00:38:04.952
lack of popular media that
00:38:05.032 --> 00:38:07.793
is well-written and representative of,
00:38:08.414 --> 00:38:09.414
as you so
00:38:10.503 --> 00:38:11.824
you know terrifically put
00:38:11.864 --> 00:38:13.025
you know these are all
00:38:13.106 --> 00:38:14.326
characters you know these
00:38:14.365 --> 00:38:16.668
are all people with foibles
00:38:16.788 --> 00:38:19.188
and flaws and you know but
00:38:19.208 --> 00:38:20.590
they're wonderfully rich
00:38:21.391 --> 00:38:22.771
vibrant people and and I
00:38:22.791 --> 00:38:25.193
would love to see ways to
00:38:25.253 --> 00:38:26.914
break that into sort of the
00:38:27.914 --> 00:38:28.954
the public sphere a little
00:38:28.974 --> 00:38:31.157
bit more well in both black
00:38:31.336 --> 00:38:32.717
and in women's history
00:38:33.237 --> 00:38:35.298
books shelves now grown
00:38:35.438 --> 00:38:38.320
with scholarly works we have
00:38:40.402 --> 00:38:42.063
remarkable historians.
00:38:42.182 --> 00:38:43.063
What we need,
00:38:44.543 --> 00:38:45.864
I feel like Gouverneur Mars now,
00:38:45.965 --> 00:38:48.626
what we need is to sell it to the people.
00:38:51.307 --> 00:38:54.710
Some historians who can write well, oh God,
00:38:54.750 --> 00:38:56.630
I'm going to get angry letters,
00:38:57.371 --> 00:38:58.632
but I've said this before,
00:38:58.711 --> 00:39:00.112
some historians who write
00:39:00.193 --> 00:39:02.173
really well are afraid to
00:39:02.273 --> 00:39:04.594
write to the general public
00:39:04.635 --> 00:39:05.556
because then they won't
00:39:05.615 --> 00:39:08.317
sound as smart as their colleagues.
00:39:10.074 --> 00:39:11.914
I think that's a terrible mistake.
00:39:12.255 --> 00:39:16.317
I think writing trade books to the public,
00:39:18.597 --> 00:39:20.577
that should be your mission.
00:39:21.438 --> 00:39:22.699
When I hear historians say
00:39:22.759 --> 00:39:24.159
nobody listens to us,
00:39:24.260 --> 00:39:25.099
I say that's because you
00:39:25.139 --> 00:39:26.501
don't talk to anybody.
00:39:27.380 --> 00:39:28.780
You talk to the five other
00:39:28.860 --> 00:39:29.981
people in your field.
00:39:30.873 --> 00:39:34.601
Get out there and do what
00:39:35.001 --> 00:39:37.846
Eric Foner and what Sean Lentz and what,
00:39:38.648 --> 00:39:38.947
you know,
00:39:39.349 --> 00:39:41.753
I and get out and Mary Beth Norton,
00:39:41.773 --> 00:39:43.356
get out there and write books.
00:39:44.577 --> 00:39:46.436
persuasively to the people.
00:39:46.556 --> 00:39:47.858
And then I think everything
00:39:47.898 --> 00:39:49.938
that's on those bookshelves
00:39:50.677 --> 00:39:55.818
that we know will take on a
00:39:55.898 --> 00:39:57.639
life of its own,
00:39:57.860 --> 00:39:59.480
and it will permeate into
00:39:59.500 --> 00:40:00.920
the popular consciousness.
00:40:01.400 --> 00:40:03.541
But not as long as you think
00:40:04.681 --> 00:40:06.641
loading a book down with footnotes,
00:40:06.661 --> 00:40:08.262
because that'll make you look smart.
00:40:12.760 --> 00:40:13.840
As somebody who spent 30
00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:14.960
years in public history,
00:40:15.501 --> 00:40:16.561
seeing that look in
00:40:16.621 --> 00:40:19.842
people's eyes when they
00:40:21.601 --> 00:40:23.001
learn something or light
00:40:23.081 --> 00:40:24.503
dawns upon them in a way
00:40:24.583 --> 00:40:28.023
that is new and you see the
00:40:28.083 --> 00:40:32.563
enthusiasm well up in them for a topic,
00:40:32.603 --> 00:40:33.824
I think it's really powerful.
00:40:34.005 --> 00:40:35.585
And in teachers, too.
00:40:36.780 --> 00:40:37.802
I went all around the
00:40:37.842 --> 00:40:38.963
country for teaching
00:40:39.242 --> 00:40:40.503
American history grants.
00:40:41.164 --> 00:40:42.324
And when I would tell them
00:40:42.364 --> 00:40:43.664
what Gouverneur Morris was
00:40:43.746 --> 00:40:45.947
like or what James Madison was like,
00:40:46.887 --> 00:40:47.768
they would say, oh,
00:40:47.807 --> 00:40:51.010
my students would love to
00:40:51.050 --> 00:40:53.972
know they were like their Uncle George.
00:40:55.592 --> 00:40:57.934
And yet they did these amazing things.
00:40:58.653 --> 00:40:59.414
And I said, well, you...
00:41:00.242 --> 00:41:02.403
you need to teach the amazing things,
00:41:03.123 --> 00:41:04.826
but you need to also teach
00:41:04.905 --> 00:41:06.927
that they were regular human beings.
00:41:08.027 --> 00:41:09.628
And I think that that is
00:41:10.030 --> 00:41:13.472
what the next step for gay
00:41:13.532 --> 00:41:14.974
and lesbian history and
00:41:15.173 --> 00:41:16.375
women's history and
00:41:18.335 --> 00:41:19.637
African-American history
00:41:19.757 --> 00:41:23.400
and Indian history is to be
00:41:23.460 --> 00:41:25.862
the voice to the people of America.
00:41:27.559 --> 00:41:28.320
Couldn't agree more.
00:41:28.420 --> 00:41:31.101
Professor Birkin, on behalf of Bob Allison,
00:41:31.121 --> 00:41:33.081
let me apologize for his technical glitch,
00:41:33.802 --> 00:41:34.902
but thank you very much for
00:41:34.943 --> 00:41:37.403
being such a gracious guest
00:41:37.884 --> 00:41:40.784
on the Revolution 250 podcast.
00:41:40.824 --> 00:41:43.646
When we started this during COVID,
00:41:44.126 --> 00:41:46.626
some 210 episodes ago,
00:41:47.387 --> 00:41:48.168
we thought it was just
00:41:48.208 --> 00:41:51.068
going to be a local interest for people,
00:41:51.128 --> 00:41:51.929
but we actually have
00:41:51.989 --> 00:41:53.070
listeners all over the world
00:41:53.869 --> 00:41:54.271
Uh, we're,
00:41:54.331 --> 00:41:56.391
we're heard in over 90 countries
00:41:56.431 --> 00:41:57.371
at this point and in
00:41:57.452 --> 00:41:58.713
thousands of locations.
00:41:58.793 --> 00:41:59.534
And, uh,
00:41:59.574 --> 00:42:01.554
we like to thank a couple of people, uh,
00:42:01.735 --> 00:42:02.815
every episode.
00:42:02.876 --> 00:42:03.755
So, uh,
00:42:03.815 --> 00:42:05.657
for our friends in Newton and Walpole,
00:42:05.677 --> 00:42:07.438
Massachusetts, thanks for listening in,
00:42:07.599 --> 00:42:09.719
uh, Omaha, Nebraska, Houston, Texas,
00:42:11.240 --> 00:42:14.623
Maine, and Oklahoma.
00:42:14.643 --> 00:42:16.905
Uh, thank you all very much.
00:42:16.965 --> 00:42:18.184
Thank you, professor Birkin.
00:42:18.445 --> 00:42:18.965
And, uh,
00:42:19.626 --> 00:42:22.128
We will see everybody again next week,
00:42:22.309 --> 00:42:23.309
and we're now going to be
00:42:23.389 --> 00:42:25.791
piped out on the road to Boston.