talked about and he murmured spectrum in the universe to do about the committee of safety which was the revolutionary body to commit the state. all this video by broadband. the architecture which is we have reports that he did his hand like this as though he were writing the declaration again. so the jury and his mind would return to the beginning to the things that had driven him and one-to-one, the system will made him whole for which he always fail because of the congestion of transmitting video would have given his life at any one-to-one. you can't do that. point. i love the old story about the very big heavy benjamin harrison and little elbert at the signing .. of the declaration in those days in july and august of 1776. when they get caught it will all be over for me and i will hang faster. you will dingell for days. they fought tower of london was a real possibility. jefferson's attack sometimes and a lot of the time for fleeing monticello when the british are

coming to it another way of looking at is that he wise least it becoming a prisoner of war and so the british to the mint when the propaganda of the victory in the author of the declaration of independence and the governor of virginia, and carting him off in handcuffs. if anybody could have charmed their captor it would have been jefferson. he might have ended up in the cabinet over there but it was he was an awfully provisional and contingent moment. he was able to get the votes and cut the deal in part because of graduated from the monthly his lifelong political the when she could buy entrees and appetizers and restaurants so education. he began as a young man in she spent money here but i will try to fix that. williamsburg and listened to patrick henry hu said he spoke i am enormously grateful. as homer wrote partly because he i am a southerner from tennessee couldn't do it and it's always a good sign of a politician and a leader when they recognize qualities in others that they do and think that understanding not possess which is always that

jefferson in his regional context as well as national kind of humility, however a lot context and political context is of that term is in talking about an important. he was a master of politics the species called politicians whether it was an ideologically is a virtue. driven or geographically driven he learned how to master the and i think there is something ways and means of politics. resident about a ferociously divided atmosphere, big issues at stake, and a president who's when the purchase became open and the possibility as you will tall, cool, cerebral pretty good at politics but doesn't like to remember basically napoleon is add met having to govern in a going to sell this to us and of fractious atmosphere there's the greatest deals ever. something that seems familiar about that. so, i want to do too quick in 1803 he begins to think we stories about jefferson to give have to amend the constitution to do it because he was a strict you two sides of him very constructionist. quickly. he had followed alexander matthew davis, an office seeker hamilton of the broad from new york goes to monticello presidential powers, then about the third week of august 1803, was the fourth of july the third week of august he gets a letter to fit in the city even now, from france saying they are travels to lobby for the job, he having second thoughts and so jefferson's is i think we do was a burr loyalist. have the power, no problem

jefferson, not so much a loyalist as we know. i should quickly add one of these i say to my hamiltonian there. when he was taking the critical friends is at least my guy steps to preparing us and didn't get shot in jersey. providing aid to britain in the [laughter] run-up to the great contest of for liberty in the middle of the among the founders to have sent 20th century explicitly pointed e-mails is alexander hamilton to the louisiana purchase as a what thomas jefferson and one to model for the executives in a time of crisis the duty of the get on the record and then move on if he's sitting there magistrate is the line of law pleading his case and jefferson but it is not the highest duty is looking sort of blow seng in with the survival and the that vaguely charming we had. he's not like fdr that you can success of the country is your highest obligation. leave. anyone that left his company thought he agreed with them. one person's presidency is another person's hero. it's to get for the moment and not such a great way to get one person's tierney is another through the day as it turns out person's early and reform. to he is my contact with davis and goes, grabs the fly it it is a to the excess of power used in a way that we approve begins pulling apart. and in some generations there's the to be in excess of power

davis begins to realize that man used in ways the we would fight to the death against. of for quite as well as he hoped. a second story. that's the way history has unfolded in history is on the there you have the man that can right side of that. snap a fly, pulled apart and ferociously focused when he needs to be to read often making you thinking he is not focused. he traveled through. it was a couple of days' ride a second term, early second term president might be able to take from monticello to washington. from jefferson. he stopped at an inn and falls one goes to louisiana which is into a conversation with a jefferson understood the clock wasn't like a normal clock. fellow guest and they have a it moved faster and asked the lovely, wide ranging discussion the next morning the other guest mr. jefferson is up and out and president's clock ticks even in the first term, everybody else the other guest had never called his name and he said to the inn in the system, the congressmen, keeper who was that and he said senators, their clocks are who did you think it was? ticking towards election. they have to face the voters for a while and you knew so much again particularly in the second about medicine i thought he was term presidents don't have to. a doctor. then we talked about theology so as presidents began to look and he seemed as though he might be a priest though a shaky one. longer, everyone else in the i thought he could have been system begins to look more narrow and the wider the gap certainly a farmer because of gets, the harder it is to get

everything he knew and he said i things done. so moving fast, doing things as thought you knew mr. jefferson. quickly as you reasonably can is he was a master of so many an important thing to do. the other is to depart from different worlds and he was indefinitely curious at the time dogma. jefferson fundamentally believe in the success come in the when human curiosity and the survival of america. he what, short of that he would ability to lead us to our own cut any deal. destiny to fulfil in many ways he would do what he had to do. our greatest potentials to and he was very explicit and discover, to explore was new in spoke in modern terms about it. he says that what is practical the world and this was the enlightened era. must control what is pure they had been a day before yesterday. for the first time ever, theory, and it is the habits of the governed the often determined what is practical. priestley and princely authority was in the dhaka, and jefferson the habits of the governed that was there to reap the harvest of depend what is practical. the shift, the fundamental shift this is not an eerie pantry me and was able to take the woman francophile which is what intellectual life and breakthroughs of the alexander hamilton and jon adams enlightenment in europe and wanted to think he was treated scotland and apply them in many ways to american politics. this as a hard-nosed politician self-government was only going who did what he had to do to to work in jefferson's mind if make sure the call for which he the people who were governing

had nearly all his life would survive and thrive. themselves knew themselves, cared about each other because why would you sacrifice with the other thing that is important for the president is someone for whom you had no you not only have to reach out your own across the aisle but common interest, and you could you have to actually enjoy yet. find that your individual rights and your individual being had come from nature or god and it's politics is a hell of a therefore couldn't be taking business to go into if you don't like people. away from the hand of a king or there is another book to be the hands of a mob in the this written by someone about why is the moment that he embodies. introverts tend to be such drawn its hierarchical moment to be so to politics. alive in that very hour, a i offer richard nixon. hugely important so here you have jefferson who could kill a mr. gregarious as an example to fly when he needs to and who could think of the most fundamental way when he needs i think our incumbent president to. one hell of a combination. -- i said the slight possibility he might be having more fun when he is watching george w. bush what i wanted to do in sports package for himself in revisiting jefferson obviously was try to restore him to his the room than talking to the members of congress. just a guess. context as a politician partly but he's got to move beyond that because i think politics gets too bad of a wrap these days.

it may deserve a city bad rap but i don't want to be overly optimistic. we don't have any other way to govern ourselves and until we you do tend to give someone the benefit of the doubt if you sat find something and we haven't found anything until the last down come if you had a meal gathering of the caveman on the savannah who were trying to together it just gets a little figure out how not to throw harder to be totally cross. rocks at each other, politics is all we have to work out our almost every night when congress common interests and to try to was in session, thomas jefferson move forward together. had lawmakers. he did not have republicans and so even if jefferson, someone who wanted to be remembered, federalists saw we could all sit around like some symbols and remember on the tombstone the issue a plenary report. that wasn't what he was doing. declaration of independence, the author of the statute for religious liberty in virginia and the founder of the university of virginia, he wanted us to remember him for he was the chief magistrate and his ideas. it's one of the great actors of it worked. misdirection in american history. it is the kaiser of epitaphs. beginning in about 1803 he comes he sent us off to a place where to washington thinking that

thomas jefferson is like prosperity would focus on the mrs. smith fought was evil, this quality, liberty and terrible thing, bad for america. enlightenment. hard to argue about those things. those are pretty good things. jefferson has been over for she didn't mention that for 40 years from the time he was 25 dinner again. until he was about 65, from by the end of the second term the are exchanging recipes. 17609089 he was constantly in [laughter] public office or thinking about they are talking about how they getting back into public office. will plant pecans on their farms and their children's children will play beneath the trees that they have planted. one of my many character falls is i like politicians. six years he would have voted to impeach the guy and was a case i think i'm working on it. where the politics called the [laughter] my name is jon and i have a science of human relationships paid off. and i think it is hugely important. problem. [laughter] dinner doesn't always end well. but i admire the men and women in the arena to try to make you can talk to jesus about things better and they are not that. in and for the motives but i don't know about dewaal i'm not [laughter] sure that my motives are that never mind. you're either, so if we try to never mind about that.

look back and expected the people we think about and talk about to be totally perfect or that's not here. [laughter] last thing quickly. we are not going to think about the more we are just going to the politics of hope every demonize them or denounce them successful american president has convinced us that the then we are going to foreclose the possibility of learning from president is really an the past. i don't know about you all but i investment and a sacrifice in a learned a lot more from sinner's moment isn't simply to the than from saints and thomas jefferson was certainly a austere, but to make tomorrow better than today. sinner. and his ability to master the whatever they can, they will conjecture sensitive americans. best part of his political he said i like the dreams of the future better than the history being, his ability to charm, to of the past which is very painful for me because i like of make people fall in love with and without knowing why, which is one definition of charm. course. but he was able to project a he was in the drawing room of vision of a reality that we margaret smith's wonderful early couldn't see that he wanted us chronicler of washington and she to reach and i think that is absolutely essential. missed his name as he came in as i said we always learn more and she had come from a federal from the centers and from saints list family that fought jefferson was the devil. his role in the perpetuation and so she's sitting there and finds protection of slavery is the herself falling in love with this charming man whose eyes

great standing conviction. were described as brown, blue it's not an indictment, it is a and gray. conviction before the bar of people couldn't even decide what history. i think that he sort of knew color his eyes were he was that frankly treat he tried as a mysterious men. he was charming and gracious and very young man four or five times he lost decisively and in funny and totally beguiling and his husband who is the editor of public and the two things the national intelligence politicians don't like doing is losing decisively in public. newspaper company and says mr. jefferson nine sorry i'm about 1785 he gave up very on late. and her head explodes because this is supposed to be the characteristic pity he couldn't imagine in the end of doing away embodiment of everything that is wrong in american life, and she with the system that had made his life possible to read the just found him to be the most first memory was being handed up gracious man she had ever met. on a pillow to the sleeve on a horse as his family went on a he could disarm you that way. journey on of the last things there is something poetic and the fact that william jefferson that happened in his life is he's lying in his bed at clinton is william jefferson monticello, he's uncomfortable and traced to signal to his clinton. [laughter] family how to make him by the way, president clinton is comfortable. no one understood except an still campaigning somewhere. [laughter] enslaved butler who knew exactly what he needed and shifted the i don't know how anyone is going to tell him who voted. pillow and made him comfortable. from the beginning to the end, maybe he is already starting on the next one. slavery need thomas jefferson possible. and in the end, she failed to

but i want to talk a little bit have the imagination or the -- jefferson the politician, jefferson the renaissance man, capacity to reform and abolish jefferson the symbol, and correct the institution that is done in direct violation to secessionists wanted a piece of the words that he had written. him in the run-up to the civil war, franklin roosevelt wanted if we expect people in the past him for the new deal and world to be perfect, as i said, we are war ii, he's like winston churchill in the bible he can be not going to learn from them. arthur schlesinger eustis a used in any way that you need partly because he was so vessels righteousness in retrospect is easy to see what articulate and so proliferate. 20,000 or more letters. brilliantly written, wonderfully eloquent. so what can we make of it? this is the man, the human being the hell were they doing in our we have, and that's what i always want to get to answering own time. president kennedy's question of clinton said this, coming to a what was he like, and in the theater near you this isn't service of trying to figure this daniel day-lewis, he said this out, i asked for and was granted of jefferson. permission to sleep in all honor to jefferson to the man who in the concrete pressure jefferson's bedroom one night on a pallet on the floor i hasten in the struggle for national independence had the cool

to add and i wanted to hear how forecast and capacity, so the the clock sounded. great blurb of all time to jefferson always said he woke introduce into a revolutionary when he could start to make out document an abstract truth the hands of the clock and the applicable to all men and all sun hadn't caught me in bed in more than 40 years and i wanted times that today and in all to see if that is one of the things as dean acheson said no coming days it should be a one comes out second best in stumbling block to the very their own memoir whether that signs of reappearing tyranny and was actually true, a brilliant oppression. jefferson put something in point for secretary acheson by motion. his words put something in the way. motion and his deeds protected the country in the experiment. lincoln saved him, tiahrt, fdr as the sun rises over the southwestern mountains of virginia, the first place light managed to internationalize it. the story of america is always hits is his bed. on folding and is always he designed the house so that provisional. but by and large we have been she would be able to to absorb lucky with these human beings who managed to transcend the the light, began the day, and for the journey as soon as it flaw may be just for 15 minutes was physically and humanly and sometimes, but those are an naturally possible. important 15 minutes. i will leave you with this. later that day i wandered down to the cemetery with the famous

jefferson was driven by this mr. action epitaph and realized idea. quite by accident the last place the life of the lighted the life on the mountain where the sun of the country were inexplicably shines is his grave. linked into the purpose of humanity was to discover, to so it is so like jefferson to innovate, to learn everything we soak up every last hour every could because there were so many mysteries to unlock. moment of energy and a flight. he put the artifacts from the so what do we make of this man lewis and clark expedition in who was so eager to increase the the room in the white house and day to enjoy it and to endure as invited people to come in. he also put to grisly cubs on long as he did? - we have to see him for what he the white house lawn and that didn't work out quite as well. was. he was a working politician. the was cut against the whole here is what george washington wrote to jefferson and hamilton bipartisan thing depending on who they mauled. and they're relatively rough but the discovery, innovation, early days in the cabin at in the 79 peace wendi as jefferson spirit better than today. put we were put in the cabinet this wasn't just happy talk like cops at each other's letter after letter and storm after stride in crisis jefferson throats. here's washington. returned to the fema again and however unfortunate while we are encompassed on all sides with again and again and often the was the only thing you had to avowed enemies and insidious hold on to was hope because the

trends that internal dissensions should be hearing and tearing fact of the matter as jon adams said was stubborn things and our titles. harrowing and tearing our titles they were always moving in directions of this is what he said later in life. it's a very vivid phrase jon i have observed the march of civilization advancing from the adams in the same era said seacoast passing over like a cloud of light increasing our jefferson's mind is poisoned with passion, prejudice and knowledge and improving our condition and where this faction. progress will stop, no one can hamilton said of jefferson this say and so we move on. is how well it worked, hamilton thanks very much. said of jefferson anyone who [applause] cares about the liberty of the country and the welfare of the nation with great despair among jefferson's ascendance to the presidency, and jefferson with a thanks for the delightful talk fairly formidable and outreach and i assure the book will be to his friend said i will not just as good. this will seem like an odd question that at the end you suffer the slanders of a man for were talking about progress and the moment at which history can stoop to notice him is a tissue jefferson's curiosity. he was a francophile. of machinations against the one of the things set in motion liberty of the country which is was the french revolution. not only received and given him what did he think of that?

bread, but needs honor on his >> well, as ever it depends on when you ask him. head. hamilton responded by saying he the french revolution he was was a fanatic public and atheist and religion and an anonymous caught up in many ways in the letter writer from the camp once wrote jefferson i think you drama of the early years ought to get a kicking you've lafayette and others met at his redheaded son of a bitch. house and there is some debate about the role in the [laughter] declaration and the rights of so, i know karl rove wants to think that he invented all of man but one thing that's this but we have been fighting important to remember is when he these battles for a long time. came back in '79 with sally hemingses and his daughters and so, jefferson himself saw that we were all going to be divided. reached norfolk there was word she said men have divided he was the secretary of state in the papers and she finally got themselves over the opinions of whether the interest of the many washington's letter when he was were of the nobles should govern at having to on the way to the affairs of men. monticello, and he had gotten into a small tug-of-war with washington on whether he would become secretary of state, and she was looking back to greece and rome and the founding to as ever, james madison, who was kind of shivers and's and figure out to figure out how acknowledged spouse, she would read the letters that he wrote much of the divided opinion as and say ehh to read to call him

natural, how much is on natural and how do you manage and try to do what you can with what we his axelrod is to state. madison did a lot there. have in his answer was in theory he would want to go back to by the time he got to new york monticello. france and the revolution had you know those wonderful quotations. already become this hugely we all know them. important issue domestically in if i could only be with my books american politics. and my farm and my family and at but everybody in the early days peace and rest of monticello. was for it, even jon marshall said everyone believed that our well, you know the road was open, she could have gone in new revolutions were linked, and he york, philadelphia, richmond, pressed for the pro disposition paris, london, holland. and the washington he was everywhere the action administration as he could get. was. he was irresistibly drawn to it as it grew more violent and more because it has a young man he violent he wishes he had grown entered into what he called the more exquisitely skeptical, but board election between he tended to idealize what had submission and the sword. the american revolution shaped happened. i think because he was there and him and grabbed him in the way then he wasn't if that makes that few historical defense i sense. i think that he had -- i don't think have grabbed any generation or any man. i think that he thought of the mean to sound odd about this but i think that he had observed the revolution actually almost as an

possibilities in a sensuous and organic thing almost as a child than as an adopted or created by tactile way key smelled of the smell of liberty. this group of men who would then he left and was somehow easier to idealize it even after preserve it and make it and the violence had started the and nurture and feed it and get it all along the way and make sure if he hadn't been there at all. its adolescence had survived its adolescence and could grow up so i think the smell of the and could continue to thrive. chestnuts and the guillotine for i think the connection to the fighting with each other. revolution and promise of i don't know what a guillotine really smells like or means but liberty for jefferson is that intimate and that human. i just say that. to the end of his days he and adams corresponded about a but he should have been harder revolution goes quite on the extremism of the french proprietary not in a bad way that in a quite paternal because revolution then he paused. but even in those letters he they cared about the definition wrote all should expire every 20 of america and the survival and success of america. years it was always in context they did that what drove and something that was more practical and hard-headed ultimately than it seems when we jefferson this case is the fear that would be swallowed up as a read the one line or to. free of the revolution virtually in the world had been by the

forces of reaction. i argue in the book that it's impossible life and to understand early american history without seeing the period between the end of the french and indian war and 7063 the renaissance man reminds me and the end of the war in 1815 strangely enough of the 1988 presidential campaign between as a 50 year war with britain sometimes hot and sometimes cold dukakis of bush 41. but always there. >> i get that all the time. in precise analogy but it would be writing about washington, adams, jefferson, hamilton i was a professor of mathematics without reference to this at the university of massachusetts in amherst and i struggle. i think would be like riding but truman, eisenhower, kennedy, remember bush who graduated from johnson, nixon, ford, carter, ronald reagan and not mentioning yale boasted how she got an f in the soviet union. the foreign policy was that chemistry in the dukakis coming significant and his domestic back weekly said he only got a d ramifications were that significant. jefferson was terrified the in physics. british were coming back. and then at the same time i was the good thing about this argument is that they did. reading from jefferson's library of america and there she is an so you win the argument. 79 writing a letter that she was the war of 1812 happened and so we had to have a ratifying

conflict which jefferson always awarded an al-marri doctor of mali but he was living in france suspected and i think. so he writes to joseph willard i think in some ways the thinking him for the agreed to inevitable result is the unlikely victory we won in the leave could agree and here's first place, this on the coastal what amazes me as a republika that managed to defeat mathematician. he's commenting now in addition the empire. to just thinking for the degree he gives an overview of science jefferson wanted us to see him as a -- to see himself as a technology and mathematics in defender and parent of the europe. here is what he says. a very remarkable work. revolution in the sense that the great articulator of the principles of republican liberty he's a lot to be the to in he was that, but he was also mathematician equal to his an awfully good vote getter and science. the object of his work is to deal cutter and - that's okay reduce the principles and the mechanics to the single one. because as jefferson himself said its best to give and take then he goes on to apologize for in a system like ours and not being able to read it. without mutual concessions, the this would require a calculus. republic itself would crack and crumble and be vulnerable to the i was a math major and i had two

kind of reaction, the kind of years of physics. returning monarchies, we didn't we don't deviate couldn't get to mechanics until the senior years say that word a lot in of 200 years later still not up chattanooga, not enough any way to the mechanics there is thomas that would put the whole jefferson discoursing and american experiment at risk. understood and here's an when he was on his deathbed he incredible example of the renaissance copies. finally she ends the letter. here is the impact of his views on educating young men and women in the country. spinach he believed that enlightenment and education were essential to democracy because democracy and a republican is some were only as good as the people who were in the republic or in the democracy and that he believed in says the ability, and if we knew each other and if we didn't like each of derby at least had to be neighbors and

carry enough about what happened to the ever-present we would make a mutual concessions the would make a public work. so in that sense the was a key republican virtue. we believe firmly in education that if we were going to have a system where the will of enlighten the majority was to prevail, which was his hope, you had to have an enlightened majority coming and his first inaugural which is i think jefferson's first inaugural and lincoln's second coming and kennedy i think are probably the three most significant i would argue and he says that the majority must be allowed to prevail as long as the rights of the minority are protected. it is one of those -- it is a complicated thought that it is essentials to the american sense of argument and working together. by founding the university of virginia he was trying to create a regional institution or

natural institution that in the region to stop sending virginia both to harvard and the northeastern schools and to transylvania and kentucky. i'm a graduate of the university of the south in tennessee which is a combination of revisited and deliverance we think of it as the county. thank you. i am married to a graduate from virginia so i say that a lot. [laughter] >> thank you for coming. jefferson question and obama question. during jefferson's the fourth time a lot of new territory came into the united states and the question of whether it would be slave or free what are the political factions there were kind of tugging at jefferson and what political considerations ultimately led to the decision of whether the new territory would be coming and the question

on charlie rose you talked about these dinners the president has for journalists and historians. what do you talk about? what does he say to you and what you say to him? >> i've never been invited, so i don't know. [laughter] you are right. we looked a lot alike. [laughter] as i like to save my guys died along time ago. [laughter] jody has been riding on this in the times and i think it's what i've heard about the dinner is like all presidents, you get behind the desk which is an unparalleled experience as president kennedy said to the great historian donald comes in the and there is some of the rankings and kennedy didn't like it and he said no one and he

pointed at his desk he said no one has the right to judge anyone even poor james buchanan. [laughter] who hasn't sat at the desk and seen what he's seen and dealt with what he has dealt with and i think there is a lot to that pivotal in the louisiana purchase, the louisiana purchase led to the first sustained secession of thinking and movement in american history which is new england because new england saw the future and they didn't like it. it's a little bit light i have three children and my son and then we had a second daughter and then we were having a third and found out it was going to be a girl and my son said to me we are going to be outnumbered and i don't like our chances. [laughter] and he was right.

timothy pickering didn't like his chances and jefferson had the last time he tried to do anything significant about slavery was in '84, '85 when he wrote an ordinance for the organization of the existing territories slavery would be prohibited and lost by a single vote in the confederation congress and one of those wonderful phrases, he said, i think was a delegate from new jersey who didn't make, i think that was set. he said for lack of a single voice they hung in the balance and heaven was silent in that moment. so he knew this was wrong. that is part of the contradiction we have to deal with. we the new the system he lived in an perpetuated was so evil so

louisiana opened the stage for what became the great battle of the legend of the civil war. the politics were let's rock along. the politics of almost every era are let's rock along so that's what it did but unquestionably the louisiana purchase was a critical step in the security and the size of the country that ultimately on the road to the civil war. >> i guess it took a lot of discipline to cut this book to less than 2,000 pages. they have added things that may be covered by other authors. for instance, the irony of adams and jefferson dolley on the same day and thinking jefferson and his jefferson to lewis and clark to look for the amount of salt a mile high and that's good times rolling on the plains.

what is the anecdotes that you most would have liked to put in the book? >> that is a great question. there is a director's cut. [laughter] a cut 70,000 words out of andrew jackson, and i don't know where they are now. [laughter] so this one was was tough. let me answer this way. i think it's a good sign. i choose to see it this way when you're finished with things there are things you wished you had discussed which was a little bit more of what i can think of the second coming and i wish in retrospect now that i had looked at how the fault of edmund burke in the jefferson intersected and clashed at the various points because in many ways jefferson was a perky -- burkian we don't

have it in our power to do it over again. we are always reforming in the building and part of the jefferson was totally pragmatic in that way. he said the nation should never take on more than the nation is ready to bear. so in that sense he was quite pragmatic and then he had his moments where he would write to joseph priestley this whole chapter in the history of man is new the hole expands is new and to have these exuberant hours my sense is the truth is in a way that he saw the world was that he was driven by the sense of optimism but would take a pragmatic steps to preserve the possibilities that that optimism created and they would have disagreed so radically. they did disagree so radically on the french revolution that i wished that i had gone into that.

it is perhaps one definition of dorkdom that one would wish one had spent more time on edmund burke. [laughter] so i'm not really sure if i appreciate your making me out myself quite so vividly. [laughter] but thank you. [laughter] utah to the jefferson's fox and his role in perpetuating slavery and i wonder how he would evaluate his thinking and his action regarding american indians. >> he was complicity in the tragedies of american life. the removal of native americans. andrew jackson gets the lion's share of the blame but one of my arguments about jackson was and

is jackson may have been on the extreme edge of the mainstream but he was in the mainstream on this issue. congress had a great battle over the indian removal in 18:30 a.m. he was one of the most ferocious legislative battles of the first 60 years of the republic but then they never revisited. they fought it out, the jackson administration won and that was that so jefferson set up a predicate and was a president for what ultimately happened. you know the only person who comes out well enough story is someone who is very little known, the first secretary of the war that created a very good humane plan. president washington went to the

senate and it didn't go well. as washington left the kind of committee meeting, he said i will be damned if i ever go there again and i think i'm right saying the next president who went and met in that way was gerald ford. so that must have been one hell of a conversation about the indian removal. very simply put, white people had more power and they wanted the land and they were going to take it. i grew up on a missionary ridge a battlefield that was 400 yards from the headquarters which is how sherman got to georgia and about two and a half miles that way was jon ross's house, and that's american history right there in many ways. and there is no excusing it. there is some explaining it, but i think it is pretty much a

story agreed and power and southerners and westerners became resentful of the new englanders and the northeast as the morrill part of this became more pronounced in the 1830's with jeremiah and others but the argument in the south and west is that is easy enough for them, they have already driven their indians this way to be as it was a brutal clash but one in which very little -- not much good can be said except for henry knox. >> we have time for two more questions. >> i have one more. >> you mentioned briefly jefferson's the five exchanges of hamilton which were defined as and correctly they were difficult. and nonetheless, hamilton played a major role in the development of the american economy.

and i wonder if you could give some thought. what importance does he attached to it and what contribution he might have made. >> it's a wonderful question. basically because jefferson was so eloquent on the virtue of the agrarianism and the wonders of farming and the importance of that, he has been i think unfairly caricatured as he was the agrarian and alexander hamilton was who understood that they were going to be a commercial and manufacturing economy as a for the truth somewhere in between, jefferson naturally towards the end of his life at monticello the only thing making money was a nail factory, so he was a

manufacturer. he said all the world is becoming commercial. he supported the bigot canal project particularly before he was an office in early on that they wrote a broad and vicious report on the general improvement in these very human moments he said once that people seem to think i am only a farmer and only care about farming without realizing that i might care about how we dispose for what we grow. we believe very much and what have adapted to changing circumstances as history unfolded. thank you. it jefferson were president now

and being the lover of the land and being such a will lee individual and such a visionary how do you think they would handle the global warming situation and politicians these days? >> thank you all for coming. [laughter] >> i wish that gentleman laos have anything else to ask about hamilton? help us out here. here are two thoughts. one is you can never answer a question like that. i don't know what jefferson would have done about the fiscal cliff, so one thing we can the answer is the principles, with stories about his own political career might have some bearing and years and the first reading hansard. i think intellectually and scientifically he would have been without or she would love and inconvenient truth because

the science, the kind of renaissance man and energy that he brings to that issue and analyzing both of the civilization all and scientific and climatological and economic only as happy as he could be analyzing all about and i can see lots of charts on the wall. that someone coming to get beat. [laughter] on the other hand so there's that there's already a question in washington about conservation of the trees on capitol hill. basically capitol hill was awarded on one side and the creek was running at the bottom. basically farmers, timber were coming and cutting down trees on public land. they were upset like this very

big deal and margaret smith had dinner one night what should we do? we need to save these trees they said yes, yes we should but we cannot be regulating everything that happens. so where would he have ended up there? what he has been adam smith or private enterprise and you have to let the market decide or would he have forced a public reaction to what we clearly saw as a scientific and real climatological problem. i have to think that the science went out because i can see them trying to make their own powerpoint so his would be better. thank you very much. [applause]