work. you've seen a thousand times. but you don't know that you know. he's award-winning, the fact that he jumps on to my product, that i wrote this and sent to him from you write a cartoon every single day, can you do 24 me? the fact that he said yes, that would be appealing that he did that. >> thank you for spending a few minutes with us. ...

with a little daunting. you do the historian thing speak generally. i guess i think if they are looking at american politics, from the beginning straight through we can even go half of the several work, they areal talking the boat paradoxes and conflicts and improv. tend to focust i on is the early part of the ark. his improvisational nature of that that really fascinates me more than anything else. the nation was founded and a world of monarchy. the united states is a republic.

what that means was a super clear at the moment. people knew that they were trying to do something that wasn't that. beyond that, there's a lot of open ground. there is a lot of improv in those early decades the boat what the nation is, how it functions, the tone of the government, how this nation is going to stand tough amongst the nation of the world and other kinds of nations. what does it mean to be a republic and a world of monarchy. how is this nation going to get any degree of respect and equally if not more significant as far as the inside of that nation is concerned, what kind of nation is it going to be. that is true in every level. there's a broad ideological level which is true. there is also a ground-level, how democratically nation will be.io who is going to own the land and house atlanta going to be literally t wrested from other

people.li what kind of rights will some people have and other people not have it all. a lot of the questions that were happening with now are questions the boat equity and equality and rights and race, those go back to the beginning of the republic and beyond. as a historian, living in the moment that we are living in now and speaking in that broad kind of arcing way, we deal with these big questions and these big legacies of undecided things. we are still dealing with them and they go all of the way back. >> where we inherently democratic to begin. >> no. [laughter] we want a monarchy. elite white male american, a strong sense of their white. they felt that they were creating a more democratic

regime that would have been around before. they were thinking very much the boat live. there is a reason there is a big bill of rights attached to the constitution. they were very right minded. by no means the country was founded that everyone will have rights, there will be equality, there were different, i don't like to call them parties but there were certainly two kinds of parts of you. hamilton and the republicans, jefferson could oversimplify because of the two camps. they had a different view on each side of how democratic the dacian should be. the federalist wanted to be less of a and the republican somewhat more. even so, pretty limited viewde f democratics. when i teach the boat this. , and tell my students there are all kinds of ways to think the boat this. democracy is a big one. if you see that word in the family. , does not mean same thing is now. you have to rethink and how you

are calculating and now kind of political. >> how many points of views were there back then. and a sense they were divided democrats and republicans b and independents. was that the case back then. >> i would say it was more complex than that. they were thinking in the way that we think the boat party. we think a party, is an institution. as a structure in an organization that you affiliate yourself with one.ee back to the mindset of the family, they were assuming that a national party and the idea that the nation, they could get something that overarching that that many people would buy intol amongst all of these diverse states, that would've not have have occurred to them. beyond that, it assumed the republic meant lack of

viewpoints standing tough against each other. and in the national center those viewpoints would bang tough against each other and ultimately some copy of decision or compromise or something would be worked out. as a point. the national center to have all of that banging tough of opinions.. initially, they weren't assuming that there should be two or three viewpoints. evenen under umbrellas of political thought, the vast differences if you are a federalist in massachusetts is or carolina, very different. the categories in the setting. in the improbability station in. we teach the boat political culture improv. in other words, one of the

wonderfully things the boat studying the riding the boat the founding is all kinds of things in riding. you don't expect them to put that in riding. john adams,in riding to a friend and staying how should an american politician dress. i do want to look like those sort of french european aristocrats. the clothing is from my days in europe. too much ice for americans. should i strip some of that away. washington, how many horses would be appropriate american. it sounds really trivial and goofy and quiet so much fun to teach but on the other hand, they are seriously thinking the boat the fact that those kinds of little seemingly stylistic decisions are really going to shape the tone and character of the government and the nation

and that everything sets tough residence. that kind of improv can have a big impact. so one and it's almost comical because it seems trivial but on the other hand is just simply really interesting.. >> we had several 100 white male elites forming this country. was the buy-in from the three or 4 million people who lived here at the time. >> so on the one hand, there is a small group of people who have power.ho it is important to remember that whatever is going on inside. elite have power power in their very worried the boat maintaining power a lot is happening around them and as part of the challenge or the what i want to call it, was a difficult but the tension of that. is the american peopleha figurig out how to voice what they want and how they demand witht a want

how does the system work forum and if it doesn't work forum, what can they do to make it work forum better. this isn't just a handful of elite guys who are running everything, they have the power but the american people understood and a broad kind of a sense that they had rights in some way and different kinds of people at a different understanding of what rights. but there was a broader sense ot whatever the express that meant was that was going onex that rights were being worked out and determine and they could potentially extend it more wisely than what had become before nerve. >> was a what was a wig and what he believed. >> i am going to answer the question moving ahead in time to the wig. this gets back to your question the boat parties. particularly now people like to go back in time and dress of the presence republican, goes all

the way back to jefferson. there are no straight lines in historyes and there certainly no straight lines when it comes to political parties. parties balance back and forth the names change all of the time so for a while you had the democratic party, which was his own thing on the one hand and you had what was no more than the anti- jacksonians. it wasn't really a party it was likeke people who really aren't that. [laughter] that becomes the whig party and you end tough in the mid- 19th century with essentially for a while two main parties, one is jackson the democratic supposedly popular supposedly the common man or on one side and on the other side, you have the whigs which are more centralized sort of big national government and represent and a way sorted two

threads that we can see the really represent a very different.of view. >> if you were government of the united states at that time, who had more political power of whatever you wanted it to be. >> if you all the way back to the founding men that's a good question and there were people like the federalists who assumed that the powers with the state and not with the nationall government which was immune and who knew what it encompassed reallync above and beyond the vy skeletal constitution. our constitution is really brief. answer to that cap question would be the governor of massachusetts probably but although on paper you might say

the president has a lot of paper. for people there is loyalties and extensivef belongingness and their understanding of power is pretty much going to be grounded in their state. at least the first half of the 19th century if you were to pick tough a newspaper, from that period, congress would be getting a lot more attention than the present. again, we assume now that the president is all-powerful and the president is at the center of the news, and that's not an early american way of really thinking the boat it. >> in reading your books,nd the president doesn't play a large role that the president plays today. >> right. his hartley deliberate and partly reflects my interest. but it is true that throughout this period, clearly the

americans understood that the president was significant and the early founding. they are trying to figure out what that means, congress is the people's people understand that is really where the nation is being worked out at the ground level kind of way. people felt that they had a direct connection with a member of congress.em when members of congress stood tough and vote, particularly we do get into the 1840s and the 1850s, they assumed they were speaking to their constituents and the press was creating thee kind t of conversation back and forth. congress matter tremendously. i think in ways that nowadays were more focused on congress for different reasons. i think the 20th century, we kind of focus on the present. there was this not necessarily the case then. >> would we recognize congress today as it was backgammon and the early republic.ed >> in the early republic, no i

don't think we would recognize it. i suppose in some ways, might be what we assume congress would look like. compared with what i just wrote the boat in my cook somewhat tamer. it is a group of men white men and a room, above and beyond that, there are bathing and making decisionsma and passing legislation and those of the things you are staying congress should do. over time the united states becomes a lot more violent. congress is a representative body and it becomes a lot more violent. in that case, i think it begins to look in some ways we would not necessarily expect. >> from your cook "the field of blood" apt metaphor for congress in the decades before the civil war. yes there were soaring union

shaking decisions being made that underneath the speechifying and politicking was a spit spattered rug. the antebellum and congress had its admiral moments but it wasn't an assembly of demigods it was a human institution, with very human failings. >> that was an important.for me to make very early in my cook because my assumption of what boats people think the boat particularly congress in this time. the time of play in webster and we sort of reach man is a congress was a bunch of people in black suits starving lefty. i have a lefty spot i have a lofty spot. very important for memp but at e top is that they move this is a really human institution number one. number two it's an unruly institution. it's a different world than you assume.. the cook really is the boat this

human institution. and how it functioned and how that shaped not just the nation's politics but americans understanding of the nation. >> what is in the fair of honor affair of honor that's another thing i talk the t boat. people think the boat this not becomes an all-encompassing term very a double. people assume that there's all there was to men on a field facing each other and shooting at each other. an affair of honor, was bigger than that. the point of an affair of honor or even a dual is very counter intuitive.d the thought is if you have to go on a field and shoot each other, someone must be trying to kill someone.om the point of an affair of honor or dual is to prove that you are willing to die for your honor.

an affair of honor means it's a long sort of ritualized series of exchanges and negotiations and very often and can take place two men can redeem the names and their education in their honor and you don't even have to make it out to julie brown. senator of honor includes all of that ritualized negotiation. once you get past that andli thy are in the julie brown that becomes a dual, but even at ncat., death isn't the point. the point is the performance of it. the point really if you think the boat it is a terrifying thing to stand it duly ground to find someone with a gun and stand there and allow someone to shoot you. that's the point of it is to the kind of man and thus leader, who's willing to die for your name and reputation. make no sense to us now but it clearly makes so much sense to them then.

>> why are we taught in the beginning of us history the boat the burke hamilton duel of 1804. >> why are we taught the boat it. sometimes history is the boat good stories that some things tough so you get the burrell hamilton duel you get that caning of charles. dramatic stories that people sort of encapsulate a lot of things. if people teach that, they teach it is this one and only instance. these two men and somehow is typical of that time that was so fierce and hamilton and berg were so many dramatic characters. more than anything else i think it was character work. it's not been taught until recently as learning the boat

the guts of politics at that time and how that works. >> what happened on the day of 1804 invited to happen. >> berger and hamilton had been opponents for a long time. hamilton was largely a default fuel and behind that burger has thought of him as something of a demigod. he was somebody who came from royalty and hamilton thought was an opportunist and hamilton said really early on in the relationship back in 1792, pretty much a direct quote. p i consider it my religious duty to oppose his career. that's some serious ops of his party did bound and determined to squash birds career and that on for quite some time. in the election of 1800, when it ends tough being a tie between

two candidates from the same party bird and jefferson and hamilton stepped forward to do everything they can do to squash birds chances. it does not make her happy. actually came near a fine duel at that. four years later bert is running for governor of new york and hamilton steps in order to do everything he could do to stop that from happening. as luck would have it, someone stepped forward after that and reported a letter. berger at this.needs to prove that he is a manth and a leader who is working for not losing contest after contest. he acts on that. it happens to be hamilton's words. so you end tough with burke being handed something that in his mind is fuel worthy any commences an affair of honor with hamilton. they exchange and ritualized letters and neither one it does

not go swimmingly they usually say those kind of letters we do initiate an affair of honor say the same thing. i've heard you said some things the boat me is that true or false. and i need a immediate response as a man of gentlemen and honor. you had to think very hard the boat how you responded. hamilton responded not ideal. he writes 18 words or one word, a very lengthy response. supposedly he calls something more despicable the boat burke. these are thehe things that berg picks tough on. hamilton writes this grammar list. what does despicable mean. between gentlemen, what does despicable mean.

then at the end of that letter, to show that hee is not afraid, hamilton then says by the way, i always stand behind my words. not an exception to that house so i will stand and i am willing to fight for any words that i utter. that's a nuts a strategically smart thing for him to do. it's offensive in two ways. burke gets it and defend it. he responds by staying you are not behaving i can gentlemen. now they are both offended and so you can kinda see how things spiraled to the point that a trip to the dueling ground was going to be inevitable.e. dueling was not legal. it was state-by-state. a challenge might be against the law but the juul itself might be against the law, thehe punishmet

was different to measure to see if you could be publicly humiliated in some way in rhode island there was a fine. so if you are in massachusetts you prefer to go over to rhode island and you got caught, you paid a is a lot less daunting. it was largely the lawmakers making the dueling. people making the law were the people breaking the law which tells you a lot the boat the elite in this period and the kind of power they had. >> dewey talk too much the boat the acting duels in the set tough to this rather thans or is a microcosm of what is going on in the country the time. >> people tend to focus on that story. there was a lot of dueling. the practice of dueling's looked worth looking out because it does tell you a lot the boat elite politics being a politician, a political culture

of the time, that can tell you a lot the boat the kind of emotional guts of some of the politics of the. time. it's just dramatic and the vice president of the united states killed the former secretary off the treasury it is a completely dramatic story so if they are going to focus on one dual, it makes sense that that's the one. for too long it stood in for a lot of other things that are worth studying as well. hamilton is very effective in helpingg to smash various aspecs of birds career. burr had reason to be irked. his country for your virtual thing a friend. i don't think ion wanted to kill hamilton. i don't think that was his purpose. boats duels don't want to dueling ground wanting to kill, and nothing berg did sometime

before the duel, he was asking the boat a dr.. person something along the lines of we don't need dodgers let's just get it over with i think he assumed it would be difficult dual i shouldn't you both just prove your minimum honor and you just leave. but tragically, he has become the sort of villain in american history for killing hamilton.n. i really don't think that was his aim for his goal. his purpose in going to the dueling ground. what was his live like after that. >> not easy. at that.although dueling is common enough, all of his enemies and he a lot of them, essentially getting tough. he is vulnerable. people trident didn't kill people in duels because you become vulnerable for having murdered someone. all of his enemies joins to

gather and try's question. he and his friends, his newspaper editors, the boatmenas who run them across to the dueling grounds, flee new york. he is tough in south carolina where he hides out for a little while. that was a good place to be. he ultimately is vice president. he goes back to washington and finishes his vice presidency. it was a bad. he finishes that and he clearly is not going to be sticking around for jefferson second term. he is a kind of going out west and it's unclear what he is doing out west. he appears to be marching around with young men a and guns, i thk he thought something was goinghi to happen in the vicinity of mexico and he was there with men, somehow or another he could see a new frontier where he can have a different kind of power.

he gets tried for treason and because of what looked like activities that was, he is acquitted but now is pretty mu much, what frontier is lift for burr. he is a basically being in europe. he hangs out with william godwin and mary ann is a very interesting exile bizarre kind of live in your hanging out with intellectuals.th and then his old age, he comes back to new york. he is kind of a tourist attraction. you he went back to practicing law. people would like to pair in the windows at his law office so they can say they saw mr. burr. he kind of tenancy it snubbed in the street. i still think it's kind of a sad ending so he does not have an easy time of it. actually there are lots of accountsit of members of congres who see him when he comes back

to finish the vice presidency and what they say the boat him is we can see the feet teague and the anxiety of dealing with what he is dealing with you could see it the boat him. i don't think he has an easy end-of-life. for his older years, those are difficult years for him.lt is one of only two politicians in this period that i've seen ever to describe politics is using the word fun. he actually said fun. fun and honor and profit is what he said. that's pretty blunt and direct. [laughter] he acknowledged it. he gets that since that he is enjoying the game, he is just more honest the boat the fact that he is enjoying it. i think in some ways in his later years they were notre so fun. >> was the other one. >> charles from south carolina.

he also considered politics on. there might be others who agree but i don't think i've come across more than those two times. >> professor freeman, you said you are a hamiltonian. >> i guess that means that i am someone who finds him fascinating so hamiltonian in the sense that i really have spent a lot of time and energy really trying to understand him and why he did a what he did in wind. in that sense i would say i am a hamiltonian scholar because i really think many scholars find a question or ad person or problem that is sort of grabs them. there are many that have brought me but t he is someone who brout me and a very early. i am a hello ten scholar.

>> feet a besides a 10-dollar bl and a musical, what is his legacy. bangmac one of the things that he was known for at the time and has have had in long-term a mixed legacy, he was someone at a very early.extremely believed that the national government need to be strengthened. that was at a point where itgtsn really wasn't strong. to marine revolution, very early on he is one of the lead just in boats servant supporters of the need to create a stronger national government. helped push through to the national convent. pushing to centralize and empower rising, we can now look back in long-term, and say some strengthening is good and some not so good. at the time, certainly matters a lot.

the you someone there pushing that direction and so as far as art of his legacy, helping to create a national superstructure that we now kind of take for granted. he played a major role in doing that. >> want to play a little bit of audio and let you listen to this and tell us what we are listening to. ♪ if they don't have a friend that your second, number three, meet face-to-face. ms. freeman what are we listening to. >> so that is from the hamilton musical. as a solid talks the boat the rules of dueling. it's largely taken from the chapter my first cook "affairs of honor" which talks the boat

the burr hamilton duel in the rules of dueling. >> did you have a part in that musical ? >> as i discovered after i saw the play, he found the cook and made use of it. was sort of comical and bizarre to me is i mostly discovered that the first time i went to see the play on broadway. i was in the audience sitting with friend who's a colleague and a friend of mine, where sam played together, the song came on differs i said to him, kind of leaned over and said that's the dueling song. and then started going and i said that's really a dueling song even better. it sounds markedly free money. it's largely based on another

cook of hamilton. he didn't interview me and talk to me the boat dueling. i thought that must be freeman's turnout rate. it can't really be me. there is a lyric in the song that refers to a document that i found at the new york historical society. it's the boat the dr. turning his back so he can have some deniability. the line appeared. that's my document. i move that document that's my document.'s so then when i got to talk to them later on, i asked. and he said yes of course it is. and i thought wow i get to hear my document song. that was mind blowing experience. >> how accurate is the musical. >> is a puny piece of musical theory.

they do a lot of work to make people aware of people at it. the people weren't aware of. things as historian are wonderful things to do. it reminds peopleorin the boat a contingency of the moment. i think people look at the mounting and they see it as a series of le carson. constitution and of course other things and bubble bath. there are no courses and that's part of what defines it. the playwriting minds people that contingency and it also taught people who hadn't thought of it before that these are real people. that's an important thing to. that's real people working their way through a process. now that said, there are many things that are historically inaccurate the boat what they presented in the play and there are many things are not discussed in the play.

like the institution of slavery is not discussed. to me, going to see a piece of musical theoryy my response was moreto wow, for a piece of musil theory there sure is a lot of history in there. more than i would've expected to see it's got a lot that is wrong and it to me that is made this a profoundly wonderful teaching moment because i think that so many people and particularly young people have become interested in that time and as a teacher, you can grab hold of that and can be that to the kids and i are interested in that. let me teach you the boat what really happened. let me teach you the boat the reality.y. they are being shown the play. it's created a great teaching opportunity. >> and a tweet that you sent out a couple of days ago, you do tweet a lot. [laughter] interesting in my

hamilton and jefferson seminar today, i ask how many had seen hamilton knew the music to judge hamilton mania. it feels like a setting. and i read applications for the course and a majority mentioned the musical and maybe having but it did have an impact. >> that's exactly what happenedp all my co- tweeters out there look what they can do.o. they can read your tweets on tv. i had my first meeting of my seminar and i do tend to ask what brought people to the class. in this case i actually specifically said i think it's having, were not crazy the boat it anymore. the class is limited in size so students have to ask our place. and they have to preregister. a lot of people said well almost sheepishly, i'd really like to

allp in the musical. and it led me to have a lot of questions. they want no more. that is a wonderful thing. it's a great not advertising but call the age of hamilton. except for the first two weeks the pay rates,d biographies, after the first two weeks its papers in riding. it's no other history books that's brought in. we look at what the two thought the boat what america was in the revolution and party politics but it's all primary. it's very exclusively doesn't take sides. it doesn't say that one is right and what is wrong. we have the raw evidence to the students and we grapple with it. let's find me in teaching it is this different every time a teacher because it depends entirely on what the students find and focus ons in those

letters.ch so i've been teaching it for 20's 222 years now. it's different every single time now. twenty-two years. i have clearly read the letters many times. but you can always find different things. it's really a fun course to teach. >> on that same day in response to a former student you tweeted out that the boat david nicholas john adams cook, yes macaws john adams biography was the same thing is that more people into my seminars than anything else. >> for years. i give you full permission to say whatever they want, where you and the course and if the answer isn't because of republicanism isn't profoundly meaningful to me. i don't want to yell answer.

there was always an old house down the street that was down the street. my dad loves the stuff and now i'm peers the boat it or read a cook or i just never studied it and now i'm interested in it now. give my students full permission to say whatever they want. i'm curious now. i was kindm of the thing. hbo's mini series. sometimes they say that. that of course became musical. but this time i asked because t wasn't necessarily something that initially in conversation was coming tough. some of that on twitter maybe at this.because younger people are really interested in the musical but the older students don'ted want to be staying love the musical but they don't want to show it in public. the younger people are more focused on it.

but the fact of the matter is that the boat 30on people are trying to get into the course and a lot of those statements the boat interest in one way or another mentioned musical. that's an excellent recent and as a teacher, excellent, love it, hate it, ask questions the boat it.t. >> once a month we invited author to talk the boat his or her body work, it's fun, this month it is yell professor joanne freeman. she is the author of "affairs of honor" which came out in two thoughts and and one, a alexandr hamilton writings, she has edited that in "the essential hamilton" i say is what she has edited and "the field of blood" is her boats recent cook came out last year. violence in congress and the road to civil war. she'll be with us for another hour and a off, your chance to take time to take those question

give her a question, here are the numbers. were going to put them on the screen. participate in our conversation this afternoon. 748 --dash 80400. 2027488201. if you live in the mountain and specific time zones, were going to scroll through our different social medialy sites. facebook twitter etc. apple tv is the essential part of that. >> how did you get interested in this. ? >> it was partly the bison tin tinto. this time. the founding. everywhere, bicentennial. every day the reporter dispatch

had a bicentennial moment and i was cutting out all of the newspaper articles and i was just a blurb. the musical of 1776 around that time. grabbed me as well that all of that came together as to meet that time. it was real, it was real people it didn't seem like a boring bunch of you move, statutes and people on the ground trying to figure things out which grabbed me. i was 13 or 14 years old. i started reading biographies. i actually started at eight and it sort of just went. i remember reading early arkenstone and those who lovee i think even which is not a biography per se but is historical. i started reading.

i started with a at some.i got to hamilton and i stopped because he was strange in comparison with the other people that i was reading the boat. other people i'd written the boat him. he had this weird beginning of his live, relatively poor eligibility a dice dramatically. as a 14 -year-old, those were intriguing to me. as a young person he wanted to accomplish great things.ng i probably identified him as being a young person who wanted to get on with my live in an exciting way. i wish i could reconstruct why my 14 -year-old brain why i read that biography.ph i went to the library and i asked the librarian what this writer had read that gave him the right to say what he said in the cook.

she pointed me to the 27 volumes of the hamilton papers. i pull down the volume and look to them and granted, correspondence. they are not the easiest thing to read. but to me that was like the real stuff. how is the history. that was someone putting on paper what they were thinking. to me that was the boats exciting thing ever. i don't want someone else to think what they think. i just hundred the stuff. so i just started reading the hamilton papers. i started with volume one and read my way through and then i went back and started again. i did that for years. it never occurred to me t to bea professor. i didn't move there was a profession, historian. i had no w outcome in mind. i just like to do it. decades later that i suddenly realized that i have an

interesting database in my head. i really got to move hamilton and a way that was not the goal. >> so we do put together writings, how did you compile that and what did you compile. [speaking in native tongue] this interesting story. so when isaac grad student at uva, and i was a teaching assistant for with my graduate advisor, gives in the course and jefferson hamilton course and is normally the age of jefferson. there is a library of america wonderful volume of jefferson's writings and there was no hamilton. this is only going to be believable because of what i just said. and we can, pull together a leader like kinko's and we thought of, copied all of the letters would put them together.

it was like a little glossary of names and so we had a long list of libraries. it took me two or three days. we used it in the course. it was this huge massive thing that fell apart because it was so big. it worked wonderfully. it was made to go along with jefferson volume. years later, it occurred to me that i had already edited what could've been a library of america addition of hamilton's writings. that's when i went to the library of americans that you move what, nt i think i created a volume like that i'd like to do with you guys. it's a wonderful nonprivate organization just the boat putting american writings letters and present keeping in print forever.r. it is near and dear to my heart because i love the stuff. they created that volume. they saw this thing that i pull

together as a grad student as a collection. it's not the greatest sense but it creates the greatest hits of hamilton.wo it also includes a lot of personal letters that i selected sometimes because they showed something the boat hamilton as a person and sometimes because they expose something the boat his politics or something very negative the boat him are person or politician. it's really meant to be kind of a spectrum of writings that show you the boat his thinking and who he isia as a person. i include memos in there.u things that he never intended anybody to necessarily to see. sometimes is the boats revealing kind of stuff so everyone i like to teach with, he wrote tough a few days maybe within a week of the constitutional event convention. he sits down and he basically had a beeps of paper says no i thanks quite happen next.

he says okay, the constitutions going to be ratified, probably washington shows chosen president that would be good people trust washington. they will trust the people he appoints to office that will be good so maybe people will trust the government and all that goes well. however, maybe he won't be made president somehow maybe that won't happen. maybebe other countries will swp and finally take over states. maybe the states will turn against each other. you drop this image of chaos. downfalls government collapsing foreign nation sweeping in, fascinating to read but the kicker of this is this is the guy who's been pushing for this constitutional convention a stronger government forever. he has it. it's been created in the end of this memo he says, having just

created this apocalyptic account and everything is falling apart, hehe says what could happen. now that is fascinating. he had great hope.e. but he is perfectly weight perfectly willing to assume and actually kind of assuming the experiments probably not going to work. probably like a punch in. americans will be willing in his mind to invest enough hours in this government for it to work well and is probably all going to collapse. this fascinating to be in this race teach. it gets you passed all of the courses. i don't think it will work. it's just not what you expect of that moment. certainly not what you would expect from somebody like hamilton. >> before we get into calls, setting hamilton for your where your hit parents history buffs. >> now they were not.

my grandfather was but i don't think i knew that. he was a civil war buff. i move we had the civil war books that he used to read. but i didn't really move anybody who was really interested in history so i was on my own. i kinda thought it was a weird thing to do and i never talk to anybody the boat it. books under my bed becauseus i was kind of embarrassed. sometimes my dad would make fun of me for reading his books. other people had comic books under the bed and i had five of the hamilton papers. so no i would often be in weird freedom land. it was decades later that i kind of discovered what i had been doing. >> where were you raised what did you folks do.y >> i was born in queens new york but i was born in westchester county new york.

my mom initially was a kindergarten teacher and went on to do some work in interior design. my dad was a market researcher and first work for chris myers and foods and went on to do market research and movie industry. really early person applying market research techniques to film. i grew tough like sitting and watching talk the boat movies or sorting questionnaires. he give us a dollar and would short-circuit questionnaires. it's interesting. i grew tough watching research sorting through this sort of creative process to come tough with something to find a way to appeal to the public in some way. he might knit might not have been history minded but he was research minded and maybe some of that rubbed off somehow.

>> david in rochester new york. i david. >> thank you i want to say to professor freeman and i love the "affairs of honor" and i just briefly want to say, you are the greatest teacher. i've seen you on c-span many times and what i love the boat your stories is you get the love in the interest going. i wish all teachers high school, college had the same enthusiasm and thrill together students as you do.en so at this y very nice you to sy spirit. >> i first heard the boat the i "affairs of honor" when i saw professor freeman probably the boat violent show. just the idea of it. i have some friends and on the

conservative side. i belong to a history group. there's this cook the boatt the early congress and all of these congress politicians. trying to kill each other. they all thought this was the boats wonderful idea. [laughter] >> that's not what i really initially had in mind. a [laughter] >> you got into hamilton said better than anybody else in the country today. is a founding father he was ambitious, a and the first four presidents of this country, where founding fathers. hamilton goes into the constitutional convention and he knows that the role is because he is foreign-born, he can't be president. what did power really mean to him. >> two-part answer. first of all, there was an

exemption clause,e, you actually were able to be president. he actually wasn't exempt he could've been but the second half of my answer is i don't think he ever really knew he ws not very popular. there are various points he was put forward and he was very blunt and stepping forward and sayi i will be problematic. ultimately negotiates the jay treaty, hamilton steps forward and says don't do that. it's like back i'm not popular. that will create problems for you. i don't think he assumed the president as ever. i think he understood that in this matter of fact i will go beyond that and say he kind of like the idea that he was unpopular because i think in his mind, it meant he was being very virtuous and promoting ideas not

because it was the popular appeal because he thought that they work the right things to promote.om odd as it seems someone who understood power and was interesting powering this to edge government. i think he did not assume that he had the power for himself and didn't want it. >> thank you for taking my call. click on it. i'm a retired librarian. i am so pleased to hear your kudos to the library. two quick questions. he referred to the fact that earlier republican party and so forth are not the way segments they are today. today in public constantly refr to them as the party themselves as the party of lincoln. is that accurate. number two i i went to a presentation the boat a year a ago, professor benefit in

oklahoma is riding the cook pursuing the thesis that hamilton was jewish. any credibility to this. thank you very much. spak the first question i very forgotten. the problem with drawing the kind straight line is if you lookst and there are wonderful historians who have done this sort of tracker. if you look at what the parties represent and whether policies are, they changed dramatically over time. you can track the use of award like republicans but you can't consent the consistent lycée that the parties were in 1860 when a party stands for now. so obviously politicians of all kinds, on all sides have all kinds of reasons to want to draw those kind of straight lines to pass. i think of any time you kind of

cringe when that happens because the first thing you think of all of the ways that's not true. rhetorically speaking, and has usefulness. but historically speaking that usually doesn't really reflect a reality.a as far as the cook coming out and i'm not sure when, on him being jewish, i've heard the boat it. i've spoken with him thehe boat it. i can't judge the credibility. the scholar has been working on it has been a lot of research. i'm really intrigued to see it. i don't thinkkn you can rule anything out. until you see the evidence and got sense of what leads to the conclusion. i'm certainly not going to say it's not possible. there aren't a lot of records from him so you really do have to do some research like this

person dead and a few others have done as well. relate to really find out things the boat his youth. because of things there are lots of blanknk spaces regarding hamilton's youth. people often like to project different things, people for a while said he was the illegitimate son of george and all kinds of sort stories and all sorts of creative things. some of them might be true but the fact of the matter is you really need to get to the stuff. the evidence. i'm actually really looking for to see the boat because i want to see what the stuff that shows the argument. it would befi fascinating if it were true. >> island of nevis. it was his mother. >> 's mother was named rachel lisette,e, her parents were supposedly french. eva's, the ultimate vacation.

i'm going to plant myself for a month there. sue and i can find in the documents. in the morning hours i woulds research in the archives and then in the afternoon i would lie on the beach and that was kind of wonderful. his mother was there and his father with the fourth son of a scotsman of somewhat noble age birth. the first set inherits everything in the fourth son didn't inherit much story, that went out undue the world that he would make it and get rich quickly caribbean which one of the things people tried to do there. supposedly his parents didn't marry. and he was born illegitimately. his father at a certain.they moved to st. croix, his father leaves the family at some.it doesn't come back. his mother was a general store of some kind. they're not well off. she dies when he is pretty young.

it is not well off does not have much money does not have any connections. he's on this island and then gets off the island and then ultimately ends tough in america and b's into the american revolution because he is so clearly gifted and a great writer and people put together a charitable fund. for an education. >> how would you ensure why describe his relationship with george washington. >> conflicted. . .

in his diary he refers to washington as "the first man". kind of awestruck. he certainly is kind of what hamilton means in the memo where he says washington becomes present we might be okay. people really do respect and admire and in some way love washington as different kind of a figure. he was one of very few americans at that point that had a worldwide reputation because of the war fighting and winning the revolution. next crucial that hamiltons ends up being a contact with him and ultimately being trusted by him and being given power by him. that in a sense that makes hamiltons career, it added to the fact that hamilton is someone who is a strong thinker, aggressive and never doubts what he thinks or has to say it's always shoving himself

into situations. putting his thoughts in front of people. the washington relationship is key. without it it's interesting to imagine ever know where he would have gone without it with it he really puts himself in the sphere that allows him to have an influence certainly that he wanted to have but it's a conflict of because he's not really good with authority figures and he kind of chased a little bit during revolutions washington makes it clear that hamilton is kind of a favorite hamilton doesn't want to be anybody's favorite he wants to be promoted or appreciated for his merits. he kind of doesn't like the fact that people see him as a favorite. during the war he and washington have a spat and it's at a point where they are both clearly fatigued. he had been up working with

washington, he was washington aide. he spent a lot of time at the desk writing things either gtlistening to washington tell him what to write or writing things and correcting them after washington look at them. they were clearly at the late point in the war, tired and hamilton is working with washington leaves his side nsru down a staircase to deliver a letter gets stopped by the marquita lafayette at the foot of this doorway. lafayette apparently had a way of grabbing a hold of your lapel and talking with you in a very engaged manner. he does that with hamilton for a few minutes, hamilton looks up at the top of the stairways washington glaring down and he says something along the lines p of, colonel hamilton, you've kept me waiting these 10 minutes, you treat me with disrespect sir. hamilton who at this point is very tired of being an aide would much rather be on the battlefield says, i'm not aware of that sir but if you believe that then we part. and storms off and basically surrenders his position. washington send someone out to apologize to his aid and hamilton refuses to take that apology waits until he can be

avreplaced and leaves. and then write this wonderful two letters, one letter to his father-in-law in which he says something like i need to tell you what happened. i need to explain to you why it happened and please understand that don't think it's badly of me as you might and then he writes another letter which her letter to his friend a fellow aide and says something, this is pretty close to being direct quote, the great man and i have come to an open rupture he says this is basically not the first time he's behave this way but it's going to be the last time i'm going to take it and he clearly sees himself as put upon and storms off it tells you a lot about that relationship and hamilton is almost a resentment he needed him so much in that way and the fact that he is impulsive doesn't necessarily contain himself in ways that would have been useful a lot of the time. so washington is very patient with hamilton and comes back again and again and allows him back into his circle. >> next call for joanne freeman

comes from mark ãin fayetteville arkansas. please go ahead. >> hello and thank you. i have a comment and a question. my understanding is that james somerset, an american slave working for his american master in england sued for his freedom in 1772 and one his case freeing himself and about 15,000 other slaves in england the case was widely reported and followed the american colonies and there was widespread concern among the slave masters that they might soon lose their so-called property their slaves on which their wealth was based. very good book on this subject is "slave nation from 2005 "

from alfred room blows and ãb two proposers thatãbtwo profess rutgers. i believe the ãbwas one of the real causes of the american revolution, mostly it's not acknowledged as such but my question then is what are your thoughts on this and thank you so very much? >> thank you ma'am. >> thank you. what you are touching on there is a point that is true throughout this period and beyond and that is several points, with number one is that in england there were some anti-slavery actãbactivity and in the early united states. that had an impact certainly on

what was going on in the colonies in the united states. but also obviously the institution of slavery was a long-standing third rail that particularly if you were a southerner it affected your political decisions it affected your understanding of what kind of power you had and how you needed or wanted to maintain it. certainly you could say that the institution of slavery in and of itself even before the constitution but throughout colonial and early america plays a major role in pretty much shaping everything. it was something if you put it, people who own property of that kind of put that front-end foremost in what they considered they needed to be protecting and institutions of government are about among other things, property rights. that's part of the mix of things constantly front and center in american history throughout its existence. it's always been that way in the way people tell the story

and some of what we are seeing in recent years recent decades and particularly recent years people really being aggressive about restoring that vital central part of the story to how we understand who we are as a nation. >> next call for you comes from tom in chicago. go ahead tom. >> hi professor freeman. thank you very very much. several years ago when the movie "lincoln " came out. like a lot of people i became fascinated with fat thaddeus stevens, tommy lee jones played him early in the movie and he seemed like a very interesting character and probably an admirable one as well. what i'm wondering is, the violence on the floor of congress that you read about in your latest book, given how easily provoked so many of these other congressmen were, especially the ones of the other party, given how provocative stevens was in a kind of brutally rhetorical way

was dead and he will buddy every poet, was a challenge to a dual? did anyone ever cane him, any of that. was he on the receiving end of any of the violence? >> ththat's really interesting question. >> thaddeus stevens ãba real character was a really fighting raw kind of what he's really fun to study. i'm not aware of someone every explicitly ãbut it was wonderful about stevens, this is not can it be issurprising giving everything he drew just said he was really effective at speaking up and smacking at any southerner who made any gesture in that direction. for example, right in the later years of the civil war when southerners are trying to find their way back into the union,

louisiana thaddeus stevens among others, when southerners threatened violence, stands up and says something like, you know, not a lot of you were here necessarily back in the 1850s. i was. i remember what it was like back then. it was a lot of violence. remember these guys? i remember these guys. do we really want to let them back in? what you think he was the person who would step forward and say that. it's interesting that people didn't necessarily want him. there's one moment in which someone threatens him and i think afterwards he referred to it as a momentary breeze. he said there was a momentary breeze and everyone laughed because it wasn't a momentary breeze it was someone kind of threatening him. he isn't at the receiving end but he is someone who is never afraid to speak his mind in the midst of it. there's a moment when there is i discussion where there is voting on what i believe ultimately becomes the fugitive slave act.

a lot of congressmen go hide in the congressional library so they don't have to vote on the issue. when the voting is done stevens says out loud in the congressional record you can send someone to the library now and tell everybody to come back and say we are done with that vote now. so he's that guy the guy who steps forward and says that but as far as i know he is and physically attack. >> both go to may 22 i believe, 1856, a name that's relatively lost to history and it uwasn't until i reread field of blood preston brooks. >> preston brooks, the caning of charles sumner. it took me a long time to write the field of blood ultimately 17 years. as old as my students. the one thing i will say about that chunk of time is that when i said to people in writing the book about physical violence in the u.s. congress most people

even if they didn't know names would say something along the lines of, there was that guy like yes, charles sumner people have a sense that there was at least one violent incidents in congress, sumner is the massachusetts abolitionists senator came to the ground sitting at his desk in the senate ã >> the congressman. >> congressman in the house comes across to the senate sumner had stood up and made a very aggressive antislavery speech and in it he had insulted, according to brooks, south carolina and a kinsman of brooks. so brooks comes into the senate and basically says to sumner, who was seated at his desk planking speeches he had given to send out, you have insulted my part of the union, my state, my kinsman and basically threatens to punish him for it and with his canes violently canes him. the desks in the senate were bolted to the ground. sumner in a sense is entrapped

the desk. ultimately in his anxiety to get away from the caning, he wrenches the desk from the ground but brooks continues caning him until his cane breaks. what's interesting there are a number of interesting things about the caning's, one of them is that although there was a lot of violence at congress which i read about in the book, deliberate attacks like that are supposed to take place in the street. violence erupts all the time especially in the house but if you're going to stage an attack in that way, it's supposed to happen in the street and brooks for two days tries to catch sumner outside on the capitol grounds because that's the proper way to seek the congressman. you can see why because of what happens when he confronts him in the senate chamber. a southerner confronting a northerner and abolitionist in the senate chamber and beating

him to the ground that becomes the self beating the north into submission and a deeply symbolic kind of way that has national repercussions in a way that there would have been repercussions if it happened outside but the symbolism of that, the power of that happening in the senate takes it off the chart. >> there was somebody else a coworker of brooks protecting, making sure people didn't come to sumner's help, correct? >> correct. another so carolinian was there keeping anyone who tried to interfere away. the fact of the matter is, people were yelling "don't kill him!", here's the interesting thing about some of the congressional violence, it's kind of counterintuitive. there was a lot of violence. throughout this period the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s. fighting was kind of a given if it seemed fair. by that i mean there were rules

of fighting. if you are going to insult someone you would only supposed to insult someone if he was present so he could defend himself. if you're going to attack someone you were only supposed to attack if you were attacking an unarmed man you yourself was supposed to be unarmed. ãwas really considered to be important. an example of that, there is an account from the late 1850s from a letter from congressman writing i think to his wife and looks up and sees the menacing looking stranger standing in front of one of his colleagues with his fist clenched and he's writing in the letter like that doesn't look good. i think there's going to be a fight. but he kind of looks at the stranger and his colleague and his colleague is a bigger man. whatever happens it will be ks fine. when he thinks he spots a weapon he thinks the stranger is holding a weapon he stands up and immediately positions himself behind the stranger in case he pulls the weapon so he lets the fight happen but if

it's fair, he lets it happen, if the stranger had reached for a weapon he would have stopped it. some of what's happening in the case of brooks and sumner is certainly that seems like an unfair fight in many ways. y in the investigation of that that happens afterwards is a huge, not surprisingly congressional report about it. brooks asked, did you at least warn sumner that you are going to do this? that would've made it fair. when brooks clearly did manot warn sumner, he is reprimanded for not wanting him. congress says what you did was bad but also you should have warned him. which tells me something about the culture of congress at that moment. somehow that would've made it better and redeemed it somehow. >> was preston brooks reelected? >> preston brooks was celebrated in the house, he was sent so laboratory canes he reelected and by northerners

providentially get some kind of a throat infection and tsuffocates and dies. very suddenly. what's interesting about the fighters i read about in my book and most of the aggressive fighters at least for most of the period i write about our southerners. people in the period when you look at incoming congress they tended to try to break the ranks down in these aware words, fighting men and noncombatants. who are the fighting men in the incoming congress and who are noncombatants? fighting men tended to get reelected because they were doing one henry wise of virginia who's a fighting man for sure at one point he is reprimanded shame on you for what you do. like you've caused 12 fights already in the session you should be sent home and he says, do it. they are going to reelect me and put me right back here because i am here to do this they like me to do this. i'm fighting for their rights. and he is right. to some degree for a period of time people who fight in that way, southerners who were

willing to fighting that way and i would say that they be 10% of a given house would have been considered fighting men. they are put there because the assumption is they will use e that edge to fight to protect their interests including the institution of slavery. >> next call for joann friedman is robert in atlanta. >> professor freeman you are delightful, thank you. my question was about the conflicted relationship between hamilton and washington. and you pretty much answered everything so if i may i will ask something else. what do you think were the prospects of hamilton, had the dual not occurred and had he been just cast adrift in new york as an attorney?

would he just have lived out his life that way? or would he have tried to get back onto the national stage? >> that's a really good question. we have a little bit of evidence about what he was thinking. first off, by the time the dual happens by 1804 hamilton's political career is not doing really well. even without the dual he wrote a number of pamphlets he thought were very logical but which did not do him any . favors. first he defends himself against charges of misusing treasury funds by and ãbthat it into his reputation a lot of favors. then he writes the pamphlet attacking his own party presidential candidate john election of 1800. that really didn't do him favors for the people his supporters at that point were backing away from him as what they call indiscreet politician that he does not have discretion he does not have control over himself or that

he's a danger of liability. he already his career he was suffering, his party as a whole are now fading away the nation direction and the federalists would have preferred. on that level too he had much less power. in one way or another i don't think he was going to gain political power again. the question is then if the dual hadn't happened, what would he have done? he left behind one or two little clues about that. i think he might have become kind of a political commentator. he clearly was pondering another collection of essays along the lines of the federalists, which he was initiator of the federalist essays that he wrote with james madison, john jay, in the later years he was thinking about doing that again, apparently he had approached one friend and colleague and had sort of said will you be willing to write for something like that? i think he would have been commenting on american government. i think he saw himself as someone who would stand back.

of course he would weigh in and be critical but he might become a commentator of that kind of ilk. that said, in the final statement he wrote before the dual in which he explains why he feels compelled to fight the dual, the last paragraph of that is fascinating. he said something along the lines and this is addressed to posterity if he dies of the dual. if some of you may be wondering why i ended up fighting the dual i don't support doing, i should have just not agreed to fight this but here's the thing at some point in our future there will be in the case of crises in our public affairs which seem likely to happen he wants to be able to step forward during the crisis and the youthful and to be youthful i think he felt he needed to protect and redeem his reputation so that he could be a public figure if needed again, i think he thought, this

is along the lines of the memo i mentioned a little while back about things ultimately maybe not working at everything collapsing, i think he is pretty consistently thought that the american ãmight not last. and if it didn't, i think he saw himself as someone who would literally and figuratively ride into that right into the problem and in some way or another save the day. you never come out and says, i think there will be warfare is but i think if you'd asked if he would've said, might there be conflict of a warlike nature between americans at the crisis to come? >> he might've said yes. in that case i think he wanted to be someone who would be prepared to fight and in some ways i think he meant that literally, fight as a soldier. part of why he fought the dual i was to protect and redeem his reputation for that period when that might come. >> joanne freeman, i read the federalist papers ã >> here's the thing, people tend to use the federalist

essays as an objective commentary on the constitution. the fact of the matter is, this is an exaggeration but it's what i tell my students to encourage them to think this way, it's kind of a commercial advertisement from the constitution. the purpose of the federalist essays was, here's why you should like them. basically the idea behind it was hamilton and madison nj thinking about all the ways in which americans were going to distrust, what they might not like about it what might be bad about it and they stepped forward and said you were kind of scared of this, let's explain why this isn't such a bad thing and not only that if we don't do this, this might happen and that's worse. it really isn't intended to be objective. it certainly is intended to look that way as though it's an objective statement that was the constitution is but it's a document with a purpose. it's a series of documents with the purpose.

a series of new ãnewspaper essays willing to defend and promote the new constitution so people will trust it and ideally the states will ratify into existence. >> next call comes from jane in porton ma california? >> port hi niemi. thank you professor freeman for being there. i'm in the midst of a dilemma, i'm almost finished with biography of john marshall called without precedent by joel richard call and in the book he goes into great detail on how terrible devious jefferson was. an almost close to treason. i'm having great difficulty trying to come to peace with this because he did write the beautiful declaration of independence and other papers. but his behavior, his lack of integrity and all the terrible

things he did is just overwhelming me. how do you deal with this? >> that's a good ouquestion. there is a tendency, particularly when looking at this time period, to take sides. and particularly when you look at jefferson and nowadays giving that hamilton is getting all this promotion when you look over the long haul typically when hamilton's reputation is doing well, jefferson's isn't, there's a seesaw or reputation. i would say when you read a book that appears to be very one-sided in that way, the best thing to do is to go out and read another book that comes at you from another point of view. in this case clearly this book has a very strong opinion about marshall and jefferson and marshall did did not see eye to eye and jefferson really detested marshall they had really different political views i would encourage you to

go out and read a biography of jefferson that takes a different point of view one of the things i do with my students in my class is because it's very hard i think students generally come into a class and maybe in ways they haven't even understood and have taken a side one of the best things you can do is to really read some of the things these people have written. personally obviously am a p person who loves to read that kind of primary evidence but if you read a jefferson biography that's favorable and jefferson and presents you with the evidence to support that. but you can then evaluate what you think. you can pick books against each other. i almost this is gonna be a broad statement i almost wouldn't trust a book any book that comes is that one-sided without reading another book with a different point of view so that you yourself as a reader can evaluate and decide what you think. personally when i deal at jefferson i don't see good guy

hamilton bad guy jefferson or bad guy jefferson ãbi don't think it's ever that clear. i think the important thing about their existence and others marshals and others in the spirit is that no one was absolutely right and most people were not absolutely wrong and the fact of the matter is, it's the banging up of different ideas against each other that ends up needing to something that is functional. i think that's a more meaningful way to think about the period of aspects of jefferson that i'm not particularly fond of their aspects of hamilton i'm not particularly fond of either. what's interesting is the blend of ideas what happened because of that lot of ideas and what doesn't happen. and the ways in which overtime other politicians public figures in the populace find ways to build on and improve on what's come before. >> joanne freeman we will go back to your twitter feed and first of all, why do you use 1755 as your ã >> my twitter handle.

we don't absolutely know when hamilton was born. it's either for a long time it's been either 1755 or 1757. there is a piece of paper that suggests hamilton was born in 1755. hamilton himself appeared to himself say 1757. i went with 1755 because it's a document and i don't i'm not strongly invested in 55 or 57 but that's where that comes from. >> so you are a 1755 5. >> i had somebody who was a 1757 who was like you are 1755! and don't have that much investment. >> this is a tweet from 2018, "i'm going to throw an idea out into the twitter sphere and see what happens. what if there was a giant

history rally, the teaching of sorts with teachers historians of all kinds getting together to discuss what we can learn from american history to help us in the present, what was the reaction you got to that box that was really interesting. i was very honest in saying them doing this into the twitter sphere. it was idea i thought would be useful and have power and help people think about history and american history and its complexity and not take a glossy look at the past. in be helpful in the n present and look at the ways we wrestle with things in the past. i threw that out there not knowing what would happen. owi got really big response. sometimes from teachers, sometimes from historians, i got a lot of email on it. a lot of organizations and public figures various sorts contacted me about it. all of them say yes! let's do this. this is actually something i'm number of with a colleagues about the best way to move forward this is actually something i'm eager to

pursue and do ideally in the late spring early summer of next year. i think it would be a wonderful thing to have a day when we can talk about and wrestle with and argue about american history and all its complexity not celebrate things not tell a glossy mythologized view of things but really talk about the ways in which we struggled in the past and how we pushed through the struggles. at this point it's bag i would just begun cover stations but i was encouraged by the widespread response. i threw it out into the twitter sphere if suspecting nothing and now i thought wouldn't be in the wonderful thing not just washington nationals center but some way or another to create a day when people on a local

level just get together to talk about history and some kind of a targeted way. come back to me in a couple months i will have a better idea. i'm not a historian, you engage with scholars, i write scholarly history but as a historian i also really fervently want to communicate with the public think that historian scholars should be among the people who are aggressively dealing with offering history to the public. some of us do some of us don't, i think there should be more of us doing it. this sort of feels to be in that vein that what a great thing to take part in and help create a public conversation about the complexity of american history. >> so we can get you on record to say that c-span cameras could be at this event? >> i would love for c-span cameras to be there. [laughter] >> melle mel itmaryland in leavenworth kansas, hi. >> how are you.

i wanted to ask about, i did it come in at the very beginning of the top so perhaps i missed this but it always seemed to me that hamilton's greatest contribution was his economic ideas. that he was for banks that he was for the assumption of the state's debt. when so many of the other founding fathers distrusted banks, jefferson thought we should all be farmers and it just seemed to me that paying our debts from the very beginning made such a huge difference in this country and in our layered success. would you talk about that? >> marilyn, what you do in leavenworth kansas?>> i'm retired. >> from? ar>> i worked in a business insurance. thank you ma'am.

and what is your level of interest in history? >> i've always liked history. i've always been interested in history. i think the way things are now when you go back and read history it's comforting for one thing. >> to see the long haul. >> thank you ma'am. >> that's a good question. let me grab a slug of water. i think you are absolutely right that hamilton's financial plan i spoke earlier about hamilton being a powerful nationalist, being an important part of his legacy and you are absolutely right that a vital part of his legacy and really a fundamental thing he did was to stop in as the first secretary of treasury when there really wasn't a national structure for financing anyway. and to really create that kind of a structure. he was in some ways the perfect person for that job. he was a guy who thought in

terms of plants. this was when i read about him as a person i often talk about the fact he was plan minded in his personal life, planned minded as a politician. he was a perfect person to step in and say we have this problem revolutionary war debt individual states with their own systems of dealing or not dealing with debt now i'm going to take on this national position and try to put things in power and you are right he has a three-part plan where he wants the national government tourists assume the debt he wants to create a national ãb those are crucial and particularly for the precise reason that you say and he says, our debt paying with debt is the price of liberty. we need to step forward to prove our credit as a nation and he means credit in the broadest way possible. that to prove we are a nation with credit that we have

reputation we are trustworthy and we have to financial credit, we need to tend to our debts. he says and i think it's his first freport on public credit credit is an entire thing, it's a direct quote. that he means it's not just financial, it's who we are as a nation.you are absolutely right that as far as a concrete thing he did in his s public life, stepping forward and creating that three-part plan and pushing through and standing behind it and appoint where there were many people i would say jefferson and the jeffersonians were more complex and people wanting to just be farmers but still you are absolutely right there's kind of an agrarian idea more on one side and a more urban and i suppose you could say more ynez oriented ideal and the other side that hamilton is stepping forward doing that kind of g wo on a ground level. it's tempting to look at people like hamilton and jefferson antic about them as sort of ideologists or people thinking

on a broad level one of the interesting things about hamilton is how he good he is with the ground-level nuts and bolts work. he takes office he does it know much at all on a national level about the nation's finances and does things like he creates a questionnaire that he sends out to customs masters around the country asking them to checkboxes. tell me about trade, , tony abo customs, tell me about so he can collect that information and get a national view of finance. he is wonderful in a variety of ways and his plan is a crucial part of what he does. >> nina is responding via twitter to your history idea your history teach in or get together. history begins before the colonists arrived next year's history symposium, is held must include native american histories and crafters. >> absolutely.

this is of course this is a challenge. as soon as i say yes let's talk about history then the question becomes, how broadly and how chronologically, but you are absolutely right and i think particularly given the long arc of american history is about fighting for rights and having rights taken away and one way or another you have to deal with all sides of that equation you have to deal with people who rights are being violated and how these people are fighting for their rights that has to be at the center of the story among other things. i've literally had two conversations so far about this so i have progressed beyond it's something i want to do you know what to figure out how to do it but i'm with you. >> before we run out of time. we got to talk about benjamin brown french. the main lost to history. >> wherever you are regimen brown french i think you. when i was writing my most

recent book the field of blood the story about physical violence in congress ended up finding roughly 70 physically violent incidents in the house and senate each one could be a chapter. part of my challenge in writing the book was how do i tell the story and how to investigate the violence and how do i figure out what it means. early on in the process i found ithis minor ãbenjamin brown french, many people have used them before when writing about lincoln because he ends up being important in the lincoln white house. he left behind an 11 volume diary, he had a newspaper column he had extensive correspondence, he is a poet, he is amazing. what is wonderful about what he isleft behind is that he's in t circle of congress from 1833 until 1870 when he dies and what he allows me to do, he acts as a guide in my book he kind of look through his eyes

as you are confronting the violence of congress and you see it through his eyes and what's wonderful about him as whhe writes, is from the small town in new hampshire he's made minor clerk he arrives in washington with his eyes or is this big. i'm in the nation's capital. he's writing all this down when he comes to congress he's kind of this hail fellow well met. everybody likes him his collegial people of all parties like him he's trying very hard he's what would've been called the double-faced democrat meeting he's a northern democrat trying to appease the south southerners on slavery. he starts out as that guy wanting to do anything it takes to silence the slavery issue and appease southerners to promote his party and protect the union. by the time of the civil war in 1860 he talks about this in his diary thank heavens. he goes out to buy a gun that he's going to carry on his person at all times in case he

needs to shoot some southerners who seem threatening. my thought in writing the book was if i could explain how the person who enters washington in 1833 wanting to appease southerners and that being in 1860 who buys a gun ready to shoot them in the book i call it the emotional logic of this union. how emotionally did that make sense to him and many others? that's really an interesting thread to add to the way we understand the coming of the civil war. benjamin brown french allowed me to do that. it took me forever to write the book so i kinda lived with regimen brown french for probably a good at least a decade if not more. what's fascinating about him is, he is kind of the forrest gump of the period i read about meeting that when i was making akthe footnotes of the book there's lots of footnotes that basically say over and over again, he was really there. if something significant happens, benjamin brown french is right there watching it happen.someone tries to assassinate andrew jackson,

french is right there he sees it happen. john quincy adams has a stroke when he goes back to the house after his presidency. not long after there's french holding his hand. the gettysburg address abraham lincoln gets the gettysburg address was up on the platform standing beside him benjamin brown french the assassination who's at the bedside? first by lincoln side and then standing beside his corpse at the white house after he dies benjamin brown french. he is there for everything. he is this incredible eyewitness who is very generous in the way he puts his thoughts and feelings down on paper so he really ends up showing to some degree but it felt like to be in that kind of an extreme polarized climate and how americans like to turn on each other to the degree that they did. >> when he defied his papers? >> there is a published very abridged edition of his papers that came out from a library of

congress many years ago. people write about lincoln tend to know about him because he adored lincoln. ollike adored him. all these great anecdotes for example one my favorite being someone gave him a pair of box to give to lincoln that had a e confederate flag under each foot. which he gives to lincoln and lincoln finds very funny and i sort of love the anecdote. or an even better anecdote he's in a room with lincoln in the white house and lincoln says out loud, a room for all people he says anyone in here know how to spell the word missile? french writes in his diary what kind of a man is that? what kind of president is willing to admit he doesn't know how to spell that and ask a room full of people with no shame. lincoln.loves what people hadn't done as much work with was the 11 volumes of his diary and all his other writings his newspaper columns, correspondence is poetry he wrote. when i was finishing the book

and i got all the way to the epilogue and trying to figure out 17 years in. i know like the last 10 pages i can't figure out how to end it. what do i do? come on french. give me something. shuffling through papers and sitting there agonizing and would i discover? the year before he died he wrote a poem about what congress meant to him. it was like he smiled down from clerk heaven and said here have a poem in which i wrote about, he says i'm sitting in my office i can see the capital from my office the capital, my home for all these years. so he was a remarkable generous in the way that he gave me evidence and the book wouldn't have been possible without conflicts next call for joanne freeman is joseph in merrick new york. >> that's in westchester county. >> thank you very much

professor freeman for correcting him on the correct spelling and correct pronunciation of merrimack. thank you very much. i want to commend you on your earlier comments but also being an immersed open minded historian hand my question is this, what words of wisdom would you give to today's congress what not to do and things to do to strengthen this nation of ours right now which is divided. i'm really interested in your comments and i love the idea that you want to create a whole new cultural thinking. i really appreciate that. and i will wait for your comments. >> i wonder what i'm going to say in response to my question too. i think people often look at

historians, to come up with the solutions to the present. that's not something i can do but what i can say is, the times in which a government has function best been moments where people listen to each other in some way or another. that the idea our government is grounded on n debate and compromise. sometimes debate is nasty. people scream at each other and we've had extreme polarizations, many times before in u.s. history sometimes extreme polarization. but there needs to be willingness to debate, however fierce the debate can be. that's certainly something that right now we are in such a polarized moment where people are uttering each other to an extreme degree it's not helping us. it's easy for me to say that sitting here in a very pleasant studio talking to you i don't have the solution for how to change that because obviously congress is reflective of a larger popular will so part of what we are talking about is congress being representative, it's a cycle of public influence of congress, congress

influences congress back in the middle of that. i have no brilliant solution on how to promote that kind of atmosphere. how we get beyond that i am unfortunately not to be the person to be able to offer you the answer. >> email from steve and i was wondering whether she has found readers of also her students and if her students believe that the political violence she described ended at the civil war the reason he asks is because in his research he found 1908 dual or bite between the tennessee senator and a constituent, a political caopponent a block from the sta capital. >> it doesn't end with the civil war.that's a good point. it doesn't happen on the floor of congress in the way that it did before. and you can see that when some louisiana members louisiana ends try to get back in the

congress. they show up and they are too violent incidents happen within the capital not long after louisiana begins to process of trying to get back into the union what's fascinating about that unlike before the war you have northerners actually ãash thaddeus stevens i think is one of them who stepped forward and says we want to let them back in?? remember what this was like. the power dynamic has shifted so what once had power before with congress no longer does. as you are suggesting with your question, that doesn't mean that the violet stops. in a sense you could say southerners may be no longer as defective and deploying certainly violence continues along politicians in a variety of different ways so it's an important point to make i'm glad you asked the question m that allowed me to make it the violence doesn't stop it just shifts and re-figures it self is tempered in some ways it shifts grounded other ways.

american politics has been violet in a variety of different ways for a very long time. the broader question is what we do or what have we done to contain the violence that's another question i wish i could offer you the brilliant solution that i do not have. but it's an important point to make it's not as though violence suddenly ended at any given point. >> glenn waldwick new jersey, hi glenn. >> thank you to c-span for another wonderful program. and thank you professor freeman for all your wonderful research and work. thi did see you actually back i 2004 you give a presentation at the 200th anniversary of the dual. >> in weehawken. >> i really enjoyed that. my question for you is this, with your field of blood text, had you considered david brodrick, david terry dual out

in california particularly brodrick was a u.s. senator for california and terry was supreme court justice come from california and they fought a duel outside san francisco brodrick was killed and given the context of it being california slavery splits within the democratic party in california particularly was that something you thought about including in your book. i realize as you mentioned earlier that there were literally dozens of other examples you probably alluded to that specific one and what your thoughts were. >> before we get an answer are you an amateur historian or is this part of your profession? >> sort of indirectly on the professor at john jake's college in brooks city teaching ãand brodrick was actually a new york city volunteer fire officer who moved to california and gained a lot of his political power do that. and i'm also very involved locally in bergen passaic county with a history.

the new visitor center will be named after alexander hamilton and big opening in a couple years. i'm very interested as an amateur historian. >> thank you for that. i did not expect an answer. [laughter] >> and hamilton house. the incident you are describing the dual you are describing is a famous one and a dramatic one. what i ended up having to do for the book, precisely because what you're suggesting, once you start broadening beyond washington the field for violence even between people and congress becomes exponentially enormous. i ended up limiting myself to incidents that took place in washington either in the capital or on the streets of washington when congress was in session. because when i was really interested in was how the violence was shaping congress was doing and what americans thought about congress and the state of the nation. i had to sort of stop myself

from getting beyond that. they are any number of incidents and that's a major one that i could've gone pursuing. i probably beyond year 57 working on this book i had let myself keep going in that way. in the end what i was really interested in was the mix of people in congress and washington from different parts of the union who dealt with violence in different ways had different understandings of justice and how it worked and different political viewpoints and desires and interests. what happens when you put all those people together in the house or senate and forced them to deal with contentious and issues. that was one of the initial questions that put me into the project, what happens when you have those populations in this very public venue with a national audience with nation making or breaking possibilities in their decisions what happens in that kind of climate and there is that kind of violence? >> john's right here in washington dc, go ahead.

>> i am a big fan of american nations by call and watered and he actually relates kind of on slathering episode in the story of alexander hamilton. during the revolutionary war soldiers who were from appalachian western pennsylvania there was no money to pay them the continental congress gave them ious, give them scripts for years they were able to use that to pay taxes to the state of pennsylvania and this guy comes along, robert morris and water describes him as a protcgc of alexander hamilton as a protcgc of robert moses. robert morris engineers that people can no longer pay their state taxes state taxes with the congressional script, the ious. these people are forced to sell this script for two, five, 15

percent on the state value. friends of robert morris and of what owning 15 percent of the script and then shortly after athat alexander hamilton and robert morris come up with this idea that the u.s. government is going to pay all of the script in full with six percent interest paid in hard currency gold or silver and they are going to tax the very people these veterans who were forced to pay and forced to sell their script in order to have the currency. there was a whiskey rebellion they rebelled and washington go down and puts the rebellion but in fact it's an unsavory and ã >> john, we are going to leave it there and hear from professor freeman. and that becomes a controversy

in the early part of hamilton time as secretary of treasury because he very explicitly says there are people who come forward, james madison is one. there some way distributing between speculators who did just what you said brought up these ious assuming, hoping that down the road they be paid in full but buying them up for very minimal amounts of money. that there should be a way of discriminating against the speculators and the veterans who i really owe the money by the government and hamilton does indeed stop over and say no. first of all it's not practical, this is not practical because there's no way to track how each iou has gone. he can't follow its path. but hamilton's argument is the ious essentially become a form of currency that are worth whatever their immediate value is.that's how he wants to use them. his argument is if they are going to be practical as a form of currency their actual stated value used to be what they are

worth. it's inherently unfair to the people given the ious to begin with.that's a totally valid thing to say.you can see hamilton's logic for it. you can also see the many ways in which that logic is unfair to many people and at the time and not just in later years by the historians it was one of the early not the only thing people stepped forward and said what are you doing that's exceedingly unfair and biased and going to benefit the speculators, these money men who you seem to be so eager to please and impress because you want them to buy into the new government, this is on seemingly in many kinds of ways it's a logic to that. he had his logic, we can debate about whether we agree with it or not but certainly that would have been his counter argument. >> tom in denver, you are on the air.>> thank you for taking my call. doctor freeman, i once saw you debate clay jenkinson, he played thomas jefferson and you

defended alexander hamilton. >> that was a long time ago. >> i hope i didn't have too much coffee. >> here's the funny thing about that, clay jenkinson, i think he's gone on to do other things but for a time i don't know what to call it. >> reenactor? >> jefferson reenactor, very well known for doing that. i think he has a jefferson hour of radio show, he did a lot of public programs being jefferson but here's the quirky thing about that, clay jenkinson was my senior thesis advisor in college and he was becoming interested in jefferson my senior year in college and i was already interested in hamilton. i remember going into his office and my senior year and he was building a model a monticello and i made some snide remark about jefferson and he looked at me and he had

no idea i was interested in hamilton i certainly didn't know he was interested in jefferson and i was kind of kidding him. we kind of crossed paths at that little moment in which he was beginning his jefferson career and i was already well into my hamilton career and that i lost touch with him for a very long time. then we cross paths later when he was doing his jefferson work we cross paths again and i think it was the national endowment for the humanities that decided we would have this date. i can't remember what state it was in. but we did, we had a debate in which i represented hamilton, clay represented jefferson, i was his public debate remember miit was filmed. i remember he made a snide comment about hamilton, he said something like it's taking me a lifetime to get to know jefferson but i could do hamilton in weekend. he got booed and i remember he was very upset at the audience. i was kind of shocked. i guess it meant that somehow or another at least i put my

two cents and for hamilton that they stood up for him at that one moment. i have no idea what your memory of that event was but it was wonderful fun and what an honor to be able to do that with the former teacher of mine and the weirdness of having us end up where we end up.he was teaching english at the time. an english major in college. nothing to do with history at all. debate.a wonderful somewhere or another i think i have that on videotape like a vhs videotape. which means i can't play it at all. it was a wonderful event. >> maybe you can reenact it on your podcast. >> or maybe not. [laughter] >> what is your podcast. >> my podcast is back story it's american history podcast there is for bus historians who cohosted and what we do is basically do a deep dive back in the history of something having to do with the current moment but we look at the deeper path of it. recently there was a show about reparations over slavery. there was a show about

blackface. we recently for this week with labor day we did a show about the history of labor in america. we done all kinds of shows. cultural shows about collecting the long history of collecting things in america. what's wonderful about it is it's very conversational the four of us are all people with a strong sense of humor it's fun to listen to. >> where the four? >> is brian bello, ed ayres, nathan conley and myself. obviously is a self-promotional, it's a fun listen but historical listen as well. >> is called back >> back story. we want to close with affairs of honor in which you orwrite a note on the method. how this book approaches politics in an unusual way. it does not examine political events or personalities in aisolation or reduce them to t level of historical anecdotes. nor does it tackle so broad a

theme as to lose sight of the participant's perspective. aiming at a midpoint between broad cultural history and detailed analysis of the political narrative it uses the vantage point of an f no historian. which is what? >> i wrote that park me because when you're writing about the founders people think about them as great men. my point is what if you just think about an elite population of men in a particular environment and look at what they do? by ethno historian i meant ãb ... thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me smack

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