>> starting now our summer series that features programs from our archives with well-known authors. next come historian joanne freeman talks about her life in writing. she appeared on our monthly call-in program "in depth" in september 2019. >> host: joanne freeman you will hate this opening question. trace the ark of our nation's history from 1783-1861, the palooka history of our nation. >> guest: wow. i won't use the word hate. that's a little daunting. trace the ark. i'm going to do a historian thing and speak generally. i guess i would take a look at american politics from the beginning straight to come we can even go past the civil war, you're talking about paradoxes and conflict and improv.

they period i can to focus on whittemore the early part of that art and it's the improvisational nature of that the really fascinates me more than anything else but it's because the nation was founded in a world of monarchy, and the united states was a republic. what that means wasn't so clear at that moment, and people knew there their target something that wasn't that. we're not going to degrade a monarchy of the president is not going to be a king, but beyond that there was g a lot of open ground. there's a i lot of improv in the early decades about what the nation is, how it functions, the tone ofun the government, how ts nation is going to stand amongst the nation's of the world of the kinds of nations. what does it mean to be a republic in the world of monarchies? how was this patient going to any degree of respect, and equally if not more significant as far as the inside of that nation is concerned, what

condition is a going to be? that is true, the question is on every level you can imagine it to be true. there's a broad ideological level which at that is true. but there's a ground-level, how democratic and nation will this be? who is going to own the land and how that land be literally wrested from other people? what kind of rights was some people have and what kind of rights one of the people i have met all? a lot of the questions we are grappling with now, questions about equity and equality and rights and race, , those go back to the beginning of the republic andub beyond. .. we deal with these pig questions and these pig legacies of undecided things. we are still dealing with them.

they go all the way back. >> host: will we inherently democratic to begin? >> guest: no. we were at the monarchy. americans had a strong sense of elite, white, male american, very strong sense of their rights and felt they were creating a more democratic regime than what has been around before. they were thinking of a much better life. in that sense they were very right minded but by no means was the country founded with thinking everyone wouldn't have rights, there would be equally, there were different don't want to call them parties but two different points of view, jefferson is oversimplified but those were the camps and they had a different view by how democratic the nation could be.

republicans somewhat more but even so limited view was democratic. when i teach about the period there are all kinds of ways to think about the meaning of it democracy is a big one. if you see the word in the founding period it does not mean the same thing. you have to rethink what you are talking about when looking at the founding and seeing things. >> host: how many points of view were a? democrats, republicans and independents, was that the case back then? >> guest: it was more complex than that. they were not thinking the way we think aboutarties we think of party as an institution, structure, organization, you affiliate yourself with one. back to the mindset of the

founding, they were assuming a national party, the idea of the nation, ey could get something that overarching that that many people would buy into in all these diverse states, that would not have occurred to them but beyond that they wo't think a natiol par was a good thing they assume a republic, banging against each other. some kind of decision or compromise, that was the point to have a national center. they were not assuming there would be 2 or 3 viewpoints. and umbrellas of political thought. if you were a federalist of

self carolina. there is a lot on the spectrum. category and founding periods. >> what did not succeed and what did. >> political culture improv. one of the wonderful things about studying and writing about the founding, that you don't expect them to put in writing, john adams writing to a friend and saying house and an american politician, and the british or fresh european, too much laced to be american.

how many total horses were appropriately america how many seem monarchy call which seems trivial and so much fun. they are seriously thinking about the fact those little stylistic decisions are going to shape the tone of the nation. when everything sets a precedent, that can have a big impact. on the one hand it is almost comical because it seems trivial and it isn't trivial. >> host: we had several hundred white male elites forming this country with the buy-in with 3 or 4 million people who lived here. >> guest: a small group of people have power. on the other hand revolution was a popular revolution not conducted by 30 guys in a room.

it is important to remember whatever was going on although the elite have power and were worried about maintaining power there was a lot happening around them and part of the challenge -- i don't want to say difficulty but the tension of that period is the american people figuring out how to demand what they want, how does the system work for them and if it doesn't how to make it work for them better. it isn't just a handful of elite guys running everything. they have the power. the american people understood in a broad sense that they have rights and different people had an understanding of what rights but there was a broader sense whatever the experiment was going on in this new nation that rights were still being worked out and determined and potentially extended more widely than what had come before.

>> host: what was a wig and what did he believe? >> guest: i will move ahead in time. people like to go back in time between the party of the present and the parties of the past and say republican republican republican goes back to jefferson. there are no straight lines in history when it comes to political parties. parties bounce back and forth, names change all the time, you have the democratic party which was its own thing on the one hand, no more than anything

else, the anti-jacksonians, people who are not that -- we don't like what they represent, that becomes the wig party and you end up in the mid-nineteenth century essentially for a while with two main parties, when is jackson, democratic, supposedly popular, the common man, the common white man and on the other, more centralized, big national government, two threads you can see a different point of view. >> if you were president of the united states, who held more political power? >> at that time or whenever you wanted to be? >> guest: if you go back to the founding, that's a good question. people like hamilton and the federalists assumed the bulk of

the power and not the national government, knew what was encompassed above and beyond the skeletal constitution. the constitution is brief for what it does. who thought the answer to that question would be the governor of massachusetts probably although on paper the president has a lot of power and their loyalties and sense of belonging and understanding will be grounded in their state. overtime it shifts but in the nineteenth century if you were to pick up a newspaper from that period congress would get more attention. we assume the president is all-powerful and at the center of the news and that is not an early american way of thinking about it.

>> host: in reading your book, don't know if this is purposeful or if i missed it, the president doesn't play the large role the president plays today. >> guest: that is partly deliberate and partly reflects my interest but it is true that throughout this period, americans understood the president was significant in the early founding period, trying to figure out what that means, hundreds of people understand that congress is really where the nation is worked out and people felt they had a great connection with their member of congress. members of congress stood up, particularly in the 1840s and 50s, assumed they were speaking to her constituents and the

press, creating that conversation back and forth. congressman and tremendously in ways that nowadays are more focused in different reasons but the twentieth century we can focus on the president and that was not necessarily the case. >> host: would we recognize congress today as it was back then in the early republic? >> guest: in the early republic i don't think we would recognize in the early republic with the nineteenth century. the early republic might be what we assume congress should look like. with what i have just written about in my book, it is a group of men, white men above and beyond that, they are debating and making decisions, passing legislation, the things we

assume congress should do, over time the united states becomes more violent and congress is a representative body and congress becomes more violent. in that case it looks in some ways we would not necessarily expect. >> host: from your book the field of blood an apt metaphor for congress in the decades before the civil war, there was soaring oratory on occasion, there was union shaking decisions being made but underneath the speech and pontificating and politicking was a spit spattered rug, had its admirable moment, and assembly of demagogues, a human institution, human failing. >> guest: that was an important point. my assumption of what most people think about particularly

congress in this period of webster and this sort -- congress was a bunch of people in black suits, it was important for me right off the cuff this is a human institution and an unruly institution, a different world than you are assume and the book is about this human institution and how that shaped not just the nation's politics but america's understanding. >> host: what is fairmont? >> guest: that is another fundamental thing in affairs of honor. i talk about. all-encompassing term. they are shooting at each other. an affair of honor is bigger

than that and the point of an affair of honor or dual is counterintuitive. the assumption is two men on a field facing each other and shooting someone must be trying to kill someone. one of my early points is now, the point of an affair of honor or a dual is to prove you are willing to die for your honor. an affair of honor means it is a long, ritualized series of letter exchanges and negotiations, it can often take place, two men can redeem their names and reputations and you don't have to make is to a dueling ground was an affair of honor includes that ritualized negotiation and once you get past that point it becomes a dual but even at that point that isn't the point. the point is the performance of it. when you think about it it is a terrifying thing to face

someone with a gun, stand there and allow someone to shoot at you. that is the point to prove you are this kind of man who is willing to die for your name and education. makes no sense to us now but made so much sense to them, hundreds of people ended up. >> host: why are we taught at the beginning of us history about the burr hamilton duel of 1804? >> guest: partly because sometimes history is about ways in which some people teach history, being good stories so you get the burr hamilton duel, jefferson versus hamilton, the caning of charles sumner, dramatic stories people used to encapsulate lots of things. if people teach that they teach it as the one and only

instance, a kind of great m nettie of these two men and somehow typical of that period and hamilton and burr are dramatic characters. it does a lot of character work more than anyone else but not until recently has it been taught as a way of getting deeper into understanding about politics in that period and how they worked. >> host: what happened on that day in 1804 and why did it happen? >> guest: >> host: >> guest: burr and hamilton had been opponents for a long time. hamilton was behind much of the opposition. he thought of him as a demagogue because he was someone who came from new england royalty. he was someone hamilton saw as an opportunist, early on in

their relationship in 1792, pretty much a direct quote, i consider it my religious duty to oppose his career. that is in serious opposition you have going but he is determined to quash burr's career for quite some time. in the election of 1800 when it is a tie between the two candidates of the same party and hamilton steps forward and says that is what it takes to quash burr's chances that does not make a happy, it got smooth over. four years earlier burr is running for governor of new york, to stop that from happening and as luck would have it someone stepped forward after that, in a dinner party,

burr needs to prove he's a man, a leader worth being followed losing contest after contest. he acts on that and happens to be hamilton so you end up with burr being handed something that is duel worthy so he commences an affair of honor with hamilton. they exchange individualized letters. doesn't go swimmingly so burr sends a ritualized letter, when you initiate affairs of honor, i heard you said this about me, is it true or false, or deny it, deserves immediate response. if you get those letters you are in trouble, to think about how you responded. hamilton's response was not ideal, but 18 words for one

word, very lengthy response, something more despicable about burr, what do you mean despicable, what a despicable mean, what is the meaning of despicable? is that a word? i don't know. that is insulting all by itself if you're an angry person who was just called despicable. to show that, hamilton says by the way, i stand behind all of my words and there is no exception to that now. i'm willing to fight for any words i utter. it is not a strategically smart thing, and basically the response, not behaving like a gentleman, not a gentlemanly thing to do, and you see how

things spiral to the point of a trip to the dueling ground is the outcome. >> host: was a dueling legal? >> guest: now. it was a state-by-state thing. every state has its own anti-dueling regulation, a challenge might be against the law, the duel itself might be against the law, punishment was different in massachusetts, publicly humiliating in some way, massachusetts, it is a lot less daunting. it was largely the lawmakers, the people making the law or breaking the law was such a wash about the elite and the power they had. >> host: do we spent too much time talking about the actual duels and the set up to this rather -- original microcosm of what is going on?

>> guest: in the land of hamilton, front and center there was a lot of dueling, the practice of dueling is worth looking at because it tells you about week politics, being a politician, the political culture that can tell you a lot about the emotional guts of some of the politics of the period. the burr hamilton bill shouldn't stand for all dueling and the vice presidency of the united states, the secretary of the treasury, is a pretty dramatic story. if you are focusing on one dual it makes sense. for too long it stood in for what is worth studying abroad. >> host: we should note aaron burr did not get elected governor of new york. hamilton is effective at helping to smash various aspects.

burr had a reason to be irked which is a controversial thing, i don't think burr wanted to kill hamilton. most, andrew jackson, wanting to kill. i don't think burr did. sometime before the duel he's asked about a doctor. we don't need doctors, let's get it over with. you shoot at each other, you shake hands and leave. tragically he has become this villain of american history for killing hamilton and i don't think that was his aim. but i don't think that was the purpose in going to the dueling ground. >> host: what was his lifelike after that?

>> guest: dueling is enough, all of burr's anomie is gaining up after his killing of hamilton, one reason people didn't try to kill people in duels, it is a widespread practice, you become vulnerable for having murdered someone, all his enemies in various politics tried to squash him. he, his friends, newspaper editors, the boatman who wrote them across the dueling ground, he ends in south carolina, he killed hamilton, good place to be but ultimately he is vice president, and he wasn't the bad vice president, sticking around for jefferson's second

term and he ends up going out west. it is in clear where he is going out west and marching around with young men with guns. he thought something was going to happen in mexico, somehow or other, literal new frontier, different kind of power. we are not sure, he gets tried for treason because what looks like treason elected but he is out west. what frontier has this left for burr? local politics, national politics, basically and the exiling himself where he hangs out with william godwin and mary wall stone craft, an interesting life in europe hanging out with intellectuals and in his old age he comes back to new york kind of a

tourist attraction. goes back to practicing law, an older man by this point. they can say they saw aaron burr, he gets snubbed in the streets. i am hamiltonian and still think it is a sad ending. he does not -- lots of accounts of members of congress see him when he comes to finish the vice presidency and what they say is you can see the fatigue and anxiety of what he is dealing with and you could see it about him. he doesn't have any the end of life, those are difficult years for him. he is one of two politicians i have seen describe politics using the word fun. he says he is in gauged in politics, almost a direct quote, fun and honor and profit

which is pretty direct but his knowledge, i don't think he's the only one that sounded fun but he acknowledges that and you get that sense from him that he is enjoying the game. he's more honest about the fact that he's enjoying it. in many later years -- >> host: who was the other one? >> guest: charles pinckney from south carolina is the other one who considered politics fun. there might be others floating around out there but i've read a lot of 18th-century political correspondence and not more than those two times. >> host: you said you are a hamiltonian. what does that mean? >> guest: it doesn't necessarily mean i agree with hamilton. i am someone who finds him, for a long time fascinating. hamiltonian in the sense that i've spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand him and why he did what he did and what he did and in that sense

i'm hamiltonian scholar because i do think a question or personal problem grabs them and many grabbed me but he grabbed me at an early point. i am hamilton period scholar. >> besides the $10 bill in relatively well-known musical, what is his legacy? >> guest: one of the things he was known for that had in the long-term a mixed legacy. he was someone at an early point who fervently believed the national government needed to be strengthened at a point where it wasn't, so during the revolution very early on he is one of the loudest and most fervent supporters of the need for a national government,

pushed through the constitutional convention. the first term of washington's presidency pushing to empower things, we can say some strengthening is good and some is not so good but at the time, they are pushing in that direction. they create the national superstructure we kind of take for granted, he made a major role in doing that. >> guest: want to play a little audio and let you listen to this and tell us what you are listening to. ♪ the challenge ♪ demand satisfaction ♪ no need for further action ♪ the lieutenant reckoning to be reckoned ♪ to meet face-to-face ♪ >> host: what are we listening

to. >> guest: hard not to do this, straining myself with all my power. that is the hamilton musical, a song that talks about the duel of the dueling and it is largely taken from the chapter of my book affairs of honor, the rules of the dueling. >> host: do you have a part in hamilton musical? >> guest: they used my work when he was writing it and after i saw the play, made use of that. what was comical and bizarre to me is i mostly discovered that the first time i went to see the play on broadway, dealing with a friend, a colleague and a friend of mine and that song came on and i said to him,

leans over, this is excellent and started going, even better and it kept going on and i thought that sounds remarkably - i thought that is where it is now. writing a biography. the song that refers to a document at the new york historical society that have deniability and when that line appeared, i turned to my friend and said that is my document. when i talk later on, the song

based on that, i get to have, it was a mind blowing experience. >> host: is their license in the musical? >> guest: of course. do a lot of work to make people aware of people and appear go, it does things, wonderful things to do. it reminds people the contingency of that moment. people look at the founding as a series of courses, we won the revolution and have a constitution, that is part of what defines that period, reminds people of that contingency and people who

haven't thought of it before. it goes through a process, with great decisions about great things. many things are historically in accurate presented in the play. like the institution of slavery, is not really discussed. seeing a piece of musical -- a piece of musical theater. there's a lot that is wrong with it, made this a profoundly wonderful teaching moment because so many people particularly young people are interested in the time period, hamilton as a teacher, you can say you are interested in that but let me teach you what

really happened, the reality of everything that happens around this or happened in ways that are not shown in a place so in a sense by being wrong in some ways it created a teaching opportunity. >> host: the fact that a tweet you sent out a couple days ago, you do tweet a lot. interesting, and to do the music, to judge hamilton mania, they read applications from the course and the majority mention the musical maybe heaven but it had an impact. >> host: >> guest: that is what happened. look what they can do, they can read your tweets on tv but it is true. my first meeting of my seminar and i tend to ask what brought people to the class.

in this case i explicitly judge hamilton mania and said i think it is ebbing. not crazy about it anymore. students have to have a place and those who preregistered, curious what brings you to the court and a lot of people said almost sheepishly, a lot of questions, that is a wonderful thing, it is a great flow, not really advertising. the age of hamilton except the first two weeks when you read biographies. there are no history books, and what america was, party

politics and it is all primary and doesn't take sides and doesn't say one is right and one is wrong but as rock evidence and grappled with it. it is different every time i teach it because it depends on what the students find and focus on in those letters so i have been teaching it, 20 second or 20 third year, different every single time. it is really fun and i learn things. i clearly read those letters many times but you can always learn things depending on the question you bring when you look at them. a really fun course. >> host: in response to a former student who tweeted out about david mccullough's john adams book, mccullough's john adams biography was the same thing that since more people

into my seminars than anything else. >> guest: for years. i give students full permission to say whatever they want. i said at this time as well. why are you in the course? the answer isn't because republicanism is meaningful to me. i don't want the yale answer. there was something i was curious about, i am curious about it or i saw a movie or a book or i never studied america. i give full permission to say whatever they want and for a while it was there was this john adams biography david mccullough wrote and i read it and i am curious now and that was the thing. then the hbo miniseries students would say i am curious about and wants to learn more about the time period, then the musical for a time. this time i asked because it

wasn't necessarily something worth bringing up. someone's head on twitter at this point because only young people are interested in the musical but the older students don't want to be saying musical, they are backing away in public because younger people are more focused on it. i don't know. the fact of the matter is 30 people are trying to get into the course, statements about interest in one way or another, one person said explicitly i didn't like the musical and i am here because i want to learn about the time period which is great, and excellent reason. as a teacher, love it, hate it, have questions about it. >> host: once a month on booktv we invite another to talk about his or her body of work. this month is yale professor, historian and author joanne freeman. she is the author of affairs of

honor, alexander hamilton writings, the essential hamilton is what she has edited and the field of blood is her most recent book, the road to civil war. she will be with us for another hour and a half, your chance to take time, give her a question. we will put those numbers on your screen if you want to dial in or participate in the conversation 200 to the area code, 748-8200, those in the eastern central time zones 202-748-8201. in the mountain and pacific time zone, we can also take your comments via social media, scroll through different social media addresses, facebook, twitter, etc. email, just remember@booktv is the central part of that if you want to get a comment to us. how did you get interested in this period?

>> guest: the bicentennial. it was everywhere. if you're old enough to remember the bicentennial this time period, the founding period was everywhere, bicentennial tv commercials, there was a -- every day in the dispatch from yorktown heights had a bicentennial moment and i was cutting out all the newspaper articles. i was absorbed. in 1776 in that time period it grabbed me. all that came together to make that time period to me, in some ways the hamilton musical was real, these were real people, didn't seem like a boring bunch of statues debating great ideas, people on the ground trying to figure things out

that grabbed me, 13, 14 years old. i started reading biographies and i sort of just went because i remember reading really but early biography of john adams. those who love which is not a biography per se but anyway i started with a, got to hamilton at an early point and stopped because he was strange in comparison to other people i had been reading about. now people have written about him. he had this weird beginning of his life born relatively poor and of secure, illegitimate, dies dramatically in a dual is a 14-year-old. as a young person he wanted to accomplish great things, a young person going on in his fighting life so i read a

biography, won't name which one it was because i didn't like it and didn't believe it and i wish i could reconstruct what in my 14-year-old membrane read a biography, that doesn't sound convincing to me but somehow i did. i went to the library and asked the librarian what this writer had read that gave him the rights he said in the book and she pointed me to the 27 volumes, i pulled down a volume and looked at them, it is not always the easiest thing to me but to me that was the real stuff, someone telling me about history. how was the history? that was someone putting on paper what they were thinking. to me that was the most exciting thing ever. i don't want someone else to tell me what they think. i just want to read the book. i started reading the hamilton papers starting with -- read my

way through, i did that for years and years and i didn't know -- never occurred to me to be a professor. i didn't know there was a profession call historian and a have no outcome in mind, just the things i like to do so it was decades later i realized i have an interesting database. i had gotten to know hamilton. >> guest: >> host: when you put together writings how did you compile that? >> guest: interesting story. it was when i was a grad student. and it was normally the age of jefferson, in honor of my being

there, all library, so this is only in a weekend, and a reader or wherever the place, we photocopied all the letters and put them to gather. 2 or 3 days, this, this orifice and we used it in the court, a massive thing that fell apart but worked wonderfully, made to go with jefferson's volume. years later it occurred to me that i had already edited, the library of america, created a volume i would like to do with

you guys and i should say the library of america, full disclosure is a wonderful nonprofit organization just about putting american writings and letters in print and keeping it in print forever, near and dear to my heart. they created this volume based on what i pulled together as a grad student, it includes what you call greatest hits of hamilton, manufacturers on public credit but also includes a lot of personal letters that i selected because they show something about hamilton as a person or exposed something about politics or show something negative, it is

something that shows you, they intended everybody necessarily to see, that is the most revealing stuff. he wrote up a few days, the constitutional convention, sits down and on a piece of paper says what do i think will happen next? let me think about this. constitution is going to be ratified, washington will be chosen president, that will be good, trust the people he appoints to office and that will be good, all of that bodes well. maybe he won't be made president somehow. may be that won't happen. other countries will sleep in and try to take over, maybe the state will turn against each other and be separate little

federations. he draws this image of chaos, downfall, the government collapsing, foreign nations sleeping in, fascinating to read and this is the guy pushing for this constitutional convention and stronger government forever. havoc has been created and having just created this apocalyptic account of everything falling apart, that is not what is going to happen. that is fascinating. he had great hope but is willing to assume and that that point kind of assuming the experiment won't work, they will not be willing, and is going to collapse.

the guy at the federal convention leads and is i don't know if this will work, just not what you expect, certainly not what you would expect. >> host: joanne freeman, before we get into calls, you are at the library at 14 studying hamilton. were your parents history buffs? >> guest: now, they were not. my grandfather was but i don't think i knew that. anyone interested in this, my own little planet doing my own little thing and i thought it was a weird thing to do. never talked to anybody about it. the books under my bed, i was kind of embarrassed because my dad would make fun of me for reading these books. other people had comic books under their bed.

so i was just talking about doing that. it was decades later that i discovered what i had been doing. >> host: where we raised and what did you focus on? >> guest: raised in queens, mostly in yorktown heights, new york. my mom was a kindergarten teacher, working on interior design, the market researcher first worked for bristol-myers and went on to do market research in the movie industry, an early person applying market research so i grew up by watching focus groups, talk about movies or sorting questionnaires and support questionnaires. it is interesting.

i loved watching research sorting through the creative process to come up with something to appeal to the public in some way. in some way or another he might not have been history minded. he was research minded and that rubbed off. >> host: let's hear from our callers beginning with david in rochester, new york, you on with historian joanne freeman. >> caller: i want to say to joanne freeman i loved affairs of honor. i want to jump in and say you would be the greatest teacher. i've seen you on c-span many times and what i love is you get the excitement and the love and the interest going and i wish all teachers, high school, college, had the same enthusiasm and thrill to their students as you do.

>> host: what was it about affairs of honor that caught you? >> caller: i first heard about it when i saw joanne freeman probably on brian lamb's show, just the idea but some friends on the conservative side, history group, there is this book about, that talks about the early congress and how politicians are trying to kill each other. they all thought this was the most wonderful idea. >> guest: that is not what i initially had in mind. >> caller: my question, you got into hamilton's head better than anybody else in the country today. hamilton is a founding father, he was ambitious, the first

four presidents of this country were founding fathers. hamilton brokered the constitutional conventions and he knows that the rule is because he is foreign-born and can't be president, do you think he would've liked to be president and what did power really mean to him? thank you very much. >> guest: thank you for the very nice things you said. a 2-part answer. first of all there is an exemption clause in the constitution that if you were an american citizen at the time the constitution was ratified you would have been able to be president. he wasn't exempt, he could have been elected president but the second half of my answer is i don't think he ever assumed that. i think he knew very well he was not very popular. various points put forward, he was blunt in stepping forward saying i will be problematic. for a while washington consider sending him to england, john j is sent, hamilton steps forward

and says don't do that. i am not popular, that would create problems for you. i don't think he assumed he would be president ever. i think he understood that and i will go beyond that and say kind of liked the idea he was unpopular because in his mind it meant he was being very virtuous, promoting ideas not because they would get popular appeal but because they were the right thing to promote. odd as it seems for someone who understood power and was interested in power i don't think he wanted that. >> host: rochelle is calling in from the bronx. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i was a retired librarian, pleased to hear your kudos to the library and i have two quick questions.

you referred to the fact that the earlier republican party and so forth were not what they are today and today's republicans constantly refer to them as the party of lincoln. is this accurate? number 2 i went to a presentation at the new york historical society a year ago. a professor, i don't remember his name, out in oklahoma, the book, pursuing the thesis that hamilton was jewish and -- any credibility to this? thank you very much. >> guest: the first question i have already forgotten, the republican party -- the problem withdrawing that straight line is if you look, there are wonderful twentieth century political historian to have done this, if you look at what the parties were present, what they stand for and what their policies are they changed

dramatically over time so that you can track the use of a word like republican but you can't consistently say what a party stood for in 1850 or 1861 apply now. obviously politicians of all kinds on all sides have all kind of reasons to want to draw those straight lines as a political historian of anytime period i cringe when that happens because the first and you think of is the ways that is not true. rhetorically speaking that has usefulness but historically speaking that usually doesn't reflect a reality. as far as the book that will be coming out not sure when, oxford university press on hamilton being jewish, i heard about it, i have spoken with some about it. i can't judge the credibility of it or not. i know scholars working on it have done a lot of research.

i'm intrigued to see it. i don't think you can rule anything out until you've seen the evidence and gotten a sense of why they reached the conclusion. i won't say it is not possible. the interesting thing, hamilton is an interesting founder for this reason. there aren't a lot of records from his youth. you have to do some research to really find things out about his youth. because of that there are a lot of blank spaces regarding hamilton's youth and people like to project different things. for a while people talked about him being the illegitimate son of george washington, all kinds of stories and creative things people have applied to hamilton, some of them might be true but you need to get to the evidence. i am looking forward to seeing that book. i want to see the stuff that builds the argument. it will be fascinating. >> host: what do we know about his life on the island of nevis

and why was he born there? >> guest: his mother, rachel, her parents were french huguenots, i have done research at some point, this is the ultimate vacation, i know, i go plant myself on nevis for a month and find what i can in the way of documents. it was the perfect vacation. in the morning hours i was researching the archives and in the afternoon i was on the beach. his mother was there, his father was the fourth son of a somewhat noble birth, the first son inherits everything, the second didn't inherit much but he went out and thought he would get rich quick in the caribbean which is one thing people tried to do.

supposedly his parents didn't marry but he was born illegitimately to rachel and james hamilton, his father, at a certain point they moved to the island of detroit. 's father leaves the family, doesn't come back, his mother -- they are not particularly well-off, she dies at a relatively young age, pretty much not well-off, doesn't have much money or connections and on this island, gets off the island and ends up in north america and into the american revolution, he's gifted, is a great writer and people put together a charitable fund, send him to north america to get an education and that is how he ends up ultimately in new york. >> host: how would you describe his relationship with george washington? >> guest: i would say in the short way would be conflicted. that is a crucial relationship for him.

in a very important way, no one knows during the revolution george washington will end up being president and how important he is but by linking with him at the early point he puts himself in a close relationship with the nation's first man as people call him at the time. >> host: he was an icon in that sense. >> guest: by the time he becomes president there is a wonderful diary by senator william mcclay and he doesn't refer to washington as the first man, he just kind of - what hamilton means in that memo where washington becomes president we might be okay, people did respect and admire and in some ways love washington as a different kind of a figure. one of very few americans that

had a worldwide reputation. because of fighting and winning the revolution. it is crucial that hamilton ends up being in contact with him and trusted by him and given power by him. that in a sense makes hamilton's career added to the fact that hamilton is someone, a strong thinker, aggressive, never doubts what he thinks or has to say, inserting himself into situations so the washington relationship is key. without it, interesting to imagine i don't know where he would have gone without it, with it he put himself in a sphere that allows him to have what he wanted to have. but it is conflicted because he's not good with authority figures and during the revolution washington makes it clear that hamilton is -- doesn't want to be anybody's favor, he wants to be promoted or appreciated more and doesn't

like the fact that people see him as a favorite during the war. he and washington have a spat. and they are really fatigued, and either listening to washington tell them what to write or writing things and correcting them after washington looks at them. either listening to washington tell him what to write or writing and correcting them. so there were clearly at this late point in the war. tired. and hamilton leaves his side and runs down a staircase to deliver a letter. gets stopped at the foot of the stairway. lafayette had a way of grabbing a hold of your lapel and talking with you in a very he said something along the lines of colonel hamilton, you have kept waiting these ten minutes. you treatment with disrespect. hamilton who is tired of being an aid would much rather be on the battlefield says i'm not aware of that but if you believe that then we part, storms often

basically surrenders his position. washington since someone out to apologize to his aid and hamilton refuses to take that apology, waits until he can be replaced and lee's and then writes this wonderful tool two letters, one toe his father-in-law and what you said something like i need to tell you what happened but i need to explain why it happened and please understand that it doesn't, don't think it badly of vegemite. he writes another letter much chortled her to spread a fellow eight and the celtic again, pretty close to being a direct quote, the great man and i have come to an open rupture. he says this is based without the first time he has behaved this way but it would be the last time i'm good to take it. he clearly sees himself as put upon and you storms off. i you a lot about that relationship and hamilton's kind of almost i think resentment that he needed him so much in that way and the fact his

impulsive doesn't necessarily contain itself in ways that would have been useful a lot of time and so, in washington is very patient with hamilton and comes back again and again and allows it back into his circle. >> host: next call comes from margaret in fayetteville, arkansas. please go ahead. >> caller: 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 forst his freem in 1772 and one his case freeing himself and about 15,000 other slaves in england. the case was widely reported and followed in the american colony and there was widespread concern

among the slave masters that they might soon lose their so-called property, their slaves, which their wealth was based. a very good book on this subject is a slave nation from 2005 by alfred and ruth, two professors at rutgers. so i believe that the james somerset case in england in 1772 was one of the real causes of the american revolution, mostly it's not acknowledged as such. but my question is then, what are your thoughts on this? and thank you so very much. >> host: thank you. >> guest: certainly what you're touching upon their is a point that is true throughout this treatment and beyond, and

that is, several points. numberpo one, that in england there were some at the slave activity going on at-ish stronger pitch initially than what was going on at the time the colonies and the early united states. that had an impact on what was going on in the colonies in the united states. but also the institution of slavery was aut long-standing kd of third rail, particularly if you were a sub under. it affected your political decisions. it affected your understanding of what kind of power you had and how you needed or wanted to make candidate certainly you can say the institution of slavery in and of itself even before the constitution but throughout colonial and early america plays a major, major role in pre-much shipping everything. it was something as you put it people who owned property of that kind put that front and foremost and what the considered then you'dat be protecting.

institutions of government are about among other things property rights. certainly that's part of the mix of things that is, silly front and center in american history throughout its existence. hasn't always been that way in the way people tell that story and some of what we're seeing in recent years, recent decades in recent years as people think aggressive to how we understand who we are as a nation. >> host: next call for you comes from tom in chicago. go ahead. >> caller: thank you very, veryll much. several years ago when the movie lincoln came out, like a lot of people i became fascinated with thaddeus stevens, tommy lee jones played and so brilliantly in the movie and he seemed like a very interesting character. probably an admirable one as well. what i'm wondering is, the

violence on the floor of congress that you write about in your latest book, given how easily provoked so many of these other congressmen were, come especially the ones in the other party, and given how provocative stevens was in aen kind of brutally rhetorical way, did anyone ever pull a knife on him? was he chowders to a dual? was on the receiving end of any of this violence? >> guest: that's an interesting question. that he is real character. was a really fighting, driver - - dry wit. i am not aware of anyone cleaning him but what was interesting, this is not surprising given everything you just said. he was really effective at

speaking up and smacking at any southerner who made any gesture in that direction. for example, the actor, right in the later years of the civil war when southerners are tried to find their way back into the union. louisiana. that is stevens says something like not a lot of you were here in the 1850s, i was, do you remember these guys? i don't remember these guys there do we want to let them back in? i don't know it was the first to step up and say that. i think there's one moment where someone threatens and and afterward, he referred to it as a momentary breeze and everyone

laughed. but he someone who's never afraid to speak his mind in the midst of it. there's a moment when there's discussion where there's voting on what ultimately becomes the future slave act. a lot of congressmen go hide in the library, the congressional library so they don't have to vote on the issues. and when it's done, stevens says out loud in the congressional record, you can send someone to the library and tell everybody to come back. it's safe. he's that guy. as far as i know, isn't physically attacked. >> let's go to may 22, i believe it was. 1856. a name that's relatively lost to history and it wasn't until i reread field of blood, preston brooks.

>> it took me a long time to write "the field of blood". ultimately, 17 years. but one thing i will say about that chunk of time is when i'm writing about physical violence in the congress. most people would say something along the lines of, there was that guy. but people have a sense there was at least one violent incident in congress. charles sumner is the massachusetts abolitionist senator. who was - - by preston brooks, a congressman in the house. comes across to the senate. sumner had stood up and made a very aggressive antislavery speech and and it he had invoked south carolina and a kinsman of brooks. so brooks comes into the senate and basically says to sumner seating at his desk.

you've insulted my state of the union, my kinsman and threatened to punish him for it. and violently caned him. sumner innocence is trapped seated at that that spirit and his anxiety to get away, launches the desk from the ground but but he continues until the cane breaks. there are a number of interesting things about the caning. deliberate attacks like that are supposed to take place in the streets. violence erupts over time, particularly in the house. if you want to stage an attack in that way, supposed to have been in the street. brooks for two days tries to catch sumner on the capitol

grounds. but because that's the proper way to beat a congressman. why? you can see why it is when he confronts him in the senate chamber. a southerner confronting a northerner, and abolitionist, in the chamber and beating him to the ground. that becomes the south beating the north into submission in a deeply symbolic kind of way that has national repercussions. in a way there would have been repercussions of it happened outside but the symbolism of that. the power of that happens in the senate, takes it off the charts.>> there was someone else, a cohort of brooks protecting, or making sure people didn't come to sumner's help collects correct. another south carolina in was there keeping anyone who wanted 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. 1830s-1850s. fighting was kind of a given if it seems fair. by that, i mean there were rules of fighting. if you're going to insult someone. only insult someone if he was present so he could offend himself. you are only supposed to attack if you are attacking an unarmed man. you yourself are supposed to be unarmed. fairness was considered important. there's a - - from the late 1850s. where a congressman is writing to his wife and he sees a menacing looking stranger standing in front of his colleague with a clenched fist.

his writing, this doesn't look good. i think it's going to be a fight. but he looks at the stranger and his colleague and his colleague is a bigger man. he says, it'll be fine. but when he thinks he spots a weapon, he thinks the stranger is holding a weapon, he immediately positioned himself behind that stranger, in case people the weapon. he lets the fight happen. but if it's fair, if that stranger reached for a weapon. it would have stopped it. some of what's happening in the case of brooks and summoner, certainly that seemed like an unfair fight in some ways. in the investigation, brooks is asked, did you at least warn sumner that you would do this. that would have made it fair. brooks clearly did not. he's reprimanded for not warning him. by congress. what you did was bad, but also, you should have warned him.

which tells you about the culture of congress that somehow it would've made it better or be deemed it somehow. >> was preston brooks reelected? >> preston brooks was celebrated in the south. he was sent celebratory canes. he get some kind of a throat infection and suffocates and dies, very suddenly. what i write about in my book, much of the aggressive fighters are southerners. people in the period when you look at incoming congress. they tried to break it up into fighting men and noncombatants. fighting men tended to get reelected because they were doing the ãhenry wise of virginia was a fighting man for sure. at one point he is reprimanded. shame on you.

you've caused 12 fights already. you should be sent home. and he says, do it. you know what, they're going to reelect me and put me back because i'm here to do this. i am fighting for their lives. and he's right. to some degree for a period of time, people who fight in that way, southerners willing to fight in that way. maybe 10 percent of a given house would have been considered fighting men. they are put there because the assumption is they will use that edge to fight to protect their interests. including the institution of slavery. >> next call his mother from atlanta. >> professor freeman, you are delightful, thank you. my question was about the conflicted relationship between hamilton and washington. you pretty much answered everything. so if i may, i will ask something else.

what do you think were the prospects of hamilton. had he been i guess tasked a - - in new york as an attorney. would he 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 evidence about what he was thinking. first off, by the time the duel happened, hamilton's political career is not doing really well. even without the duel, he wrote a number of pamphlets he thought were logical. first, he defends himself against charges of using treasury funds and an adulterous affair. that didn't do his reputation

favors. then he writes of pamphlets attacking his own party's presidential candidate, john adams in the election of 1800. that really didn't do him favors. supporters were backing away with what they call an indiscreet politician. he does not have discretion or control over himself. and he's a danger, liability. his career is suffering. as a whole. the nation is moving in a more democratic direction. on that level too, he has much less power. in one way or another, i don't think he was going to gain political power again. the question is if the duel had happened, what would he have done. he left behind one-to clues about that. i think you might have become a political commentator. he was pondering another collection of essays along the lines of the federalist.

he was the initiator of the federalist essays he broke with james madison, john j. in the later years, he was thinking about doing that again. he approached one friend and colleague and said, would you be willing to write for something like that. i think he would have been commenting on american government. he saw himself as someone that would stand back. with that said, he explained why he feels compelled. the last paragraph of that is fascinating. he says something along the lines of, - - it's addressed to posterity if he dies. some of you may be wondering why i ended up fighting this duel. i don't support the willing. i should have just not agreed to fight this. here's the thing, at some point in our future, in the case of

crises in our public affairs which seem likely to happen. he wants to be able to step forward in those crises and be useful. he needed to redeem his reputation so that he could be a public figure if needed again. this is along the lines of the memo i mentioned of things maybe not working and collapsing. i think he consistently thought that the american experiment might not last. and if it didn't, he saw himself as someone who would literately and figuratively ride into that problem and in some way or another save the day. he never comes out and says i think there will be warfare. . [indiscernible] i think you wanted to be someone i would be prepared to fight and in some ways i think you meant that

literally, as a soldier. five he thought that duel was to protect and retain his reputation for that. that may come. >> i read the federalist like a dissenting court.is that the right way to do it? collects people tend to use as an objective commentary on the constitution. the fact of the matter is, it's an exaggeration but it's what i tell my students to think this way. it's kind of a commercial advertisement of the constitution. here's why you should like them. basically, the idea behind it was, hamilton and madison and jay thinking about all the ways in which americans were going to distrust this. what might be bad about it. they stepped forward and said, let's explain why this isn't

such a bad thing. 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 is certainly intended to look that way. but, it's a document with a purpose. a series of documents with a purpose. a series of newspaper essays written to defend and promote this new constitution so that people will trust it and ideally the states will ratify it into existence. >> next call from jane in california. >> - - yes sir. >> please go ahead. >> thank you professor for being there. i am in the midst of a dilemma. i am almost finished with the biography of. [indiscernible]. in the book, he goes into great

detail on how terrible, devious, jefferson was. almost calls to treason. i am having great difficulty trying to calm to peace with this because he did write the beautiful declaration of independence and other papers. but his behavior, lack of integrity and all the terrible things he did is overwhelming me. how do you deal with this? >> that's a good question. there is a tendency, particularly when looking at this. to take sides. nowadays, given that jefferson is getting this promotion. when you look over a long haul, typically when his reputation is doing well, jefferson's isn't. 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 from another point of view. in this case, this book has a strong opinion about marshall and jefferson billy detested marshall. i would encourage you to read a biography of jefferson which takes a different point of view. one of the things i do with students in my class. i think students generally come in maybe in ways they haven't understood. one of the best things you can do is to really read some of the things these people have written. personally, i love that primary evidence. but if you read a jefferson biography that's favorable and presenting with evidence, you can then begin to evaluate what you think. you can pick books against each other.

>> i almost wouldn't trust any book that 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, i don't see good guy or bad guy. i don't think it's ever that clear. i think the important thing about their existence and others is that no one is absolutely right. the fact of the matter is, is the banging of different ideas against each other that ends up leading to something functional. i think that's a more meaningful way to think about about the period. what's interesting is the blend of ideas.

politicians and populace find ways to improve on what's, before. >> - - we will go back to your twitter feed. why do you use 1755? >> my twitter handle. okay, so, we don't know what hamilton was born. either 1755 or 1757. there's a piece of paper that suggests hamilton was born in 1755. hamilton appears to have said himself, 1757. i went with 1755 because it's a document. i'm not strongly invested in 55 or 57, but that's where that comes from. i once had a great 1757-er with

great disdain say, you are for 1755. >> i'm going to throw an idea into the twitter sphere and see what happens. what if there was a giant history valley 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? >> i was very honest in saying i'm throwing this into the twitter sphere. it was an idea i thought would be useful to have people think about american history. and not take a glossy look at the past. by looking at the ways in which we wrestled with things in the past. i threw that out there not knowing what would happen. i got a big response.

i got a lot of email on it. a lot of organizations and public figures of various sorts contacted me about it. all of them saying, yes. let's do this. this is something i've spoken with a number of colleagues. this is something i'm eager to pursue and do ideally in the spring or late summer of next year. i think it would be a wonderful thing to have a day where we can talk about, wrestle with, argue about american history, in all its complexity. not celebrate things. not a mythologized view of things but really it talk about the ways and how we struggled in the past and how we - -. i was so encouraged by the

response. that i threw it out into the twitter sphere, expecting nothing and now i think, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to have a day, in some way or another to create a day in which people on a local level get together to talk about history and some kind of a targeted way. come back in the next couple months and i will have a better idea. i'm a historian. i engage with scholars. i write scholarly history. but i also believe fervently want to communicate with the public but i think scholars and historians are among the people that should be offering this to the public. some of us do, some of us don't. this sort of feels in that vein. what a great thing to take part

in and help create a public conversations about the complexity of american history. >> so we can get you on record that c-span cameras can be at this event. >> i would love for c-span to be at the event. >> marilyn from kansas. >> hi, how are you? i wanted to ask. i didn't come in at the beginning of this talk so perhaps i missed this. but it seems to me that hamilton's greatest contribution was his economic ideas. that he was for banks, for the assumption of the state that's. when so many of the other founding fathers distrusted banks, jefferson thought we should all be farmers. it seemed to me that paying our debts from the very beginning

made such a huge difference in this country. and in our success. would you talk about that? >> marilyn, what do you do in kansas? >> i am retired. >> from? >> i worked in business insurance. >> thank you ma'am. which are level of interest in history? >> i've always loved history. 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. >> thank you ma'am. >> that's a good question. let me grab a slug of water here. i think you're absolutely right. that hamilton's financial plans, i spoke earlier about hamilton being a powerful nationalist.

a vital part of his legacy in a fundamental thing he did was to step in as the first secretary of treasury when there really wasn't a national structure for finance in any way. and to really create that kind of a structure. he was in some ways the perfect person for that job. this is what i write about him as a person. i talk about the fact that he was - - in his personal life and as a politician. he was the perfect person to say i will confront this problem. revolutionary war debt . you are right, he is a three-part plan where he wants the national government to assume state debt.

those are crucial. particularly for the precise reason you say. and he said, our debt is the price of liberty.we need to step forward to prove our credit as a nation. he remains in the broadest way possible. to prove we are a nation with credit. that we have reputation. that we are trustworthy and we have financial credit. we need to tend to our debt. he says, i think in his first report about public credit, it's an entire thing. that's a direct quote. by that he means, it's not just financial. it's who we are as a nation. you're absolutely right. as far as a concrete thing he did in his public life. stepping forward and creating that three-part plan and pushing it for and standing behind it at a point where there were many people. i would say that jefferson were more complex and wanting people to just be farmers. but you are absolutely right that there was an ideal war on

one side and a more urban and i suppose you can say, finance oriented ideal on the other side.hamilton is stepping forward and doing that kind of work on the ground level. it's tempting to look at people and think about them as a sort of, ideologists. thinking on a broad level. one of the interesting things is how good he is with the nuts and bolts work. for example, he takes office. he doesn't know much at all on a national level about the nation's finances. he creates a sort of questionnaire that he sends out to masters across the country. asking them to check boxes. tell me about trade. only about customs. so he can collect that information and get a national view of finance in some ways is wonderful in a variety of ways and his plan is a part of what he does.

>> nina is responding via twitter to your history idea. your history teach and or get together. >> if held, it must include native american histories and crafters. >> absolutely. absolutely. after this i said yes, let's talk about history. then it comes to be about how broadly. but you are absolutely right. nothing given the long arc of american history is about fighting for rights and having rights be taken away. in one way or another, you have to deal with all sides of the equation. deal with people whose 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. again, i literally have had two conversations about this so i haven't progressed beyond it's

something i want to do and now i have to figure out how to do it.i am with you. >> before the flood out of time, we've got to talk about benjamin brown french. >> yes. wherever you are, i thank you. when i was writing one of my recent books, "the field of blood". it started about physical violence in congress. i 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 do i investigate the violence and how do i figure out what it means? early in the process, i found this minor congressional clerk. benjamin brown french. many have used them before when

writing about lincoln. he is at being important in the lincoln white house. he left behind in 11 volume diary. he had a newspaper column. an extensive correspondence. he's a poet. he's amazing. what's wonderful about what he left behind is he's in the circle of congress from 1833-1870 when he died. what he allows me to do, he kind of acts as a guide.you look through his eyes and confronting the violence in congress. and you see it through his eyes. what's wonderful about him is he, he's from this small town in new hampshire. he's a minor clerk. he arrives in washington and his eyes are this big. wow, i'm in the nation's capital! but when he comes to congress, everyone likes him. he's collegial. people of all parties like him. he's trying very hard to is what was called a dough faced democrat. he starts out as that guy, doing anything it takes to

appease southerners to promote his party and protect the union. by the time of the civil war in 1860, he talked about this in his diary thank heavens. he goes out to buy a gun that he will carry on his person at all times in case he needs to shoot southerners that seem threatening. my thoughts in writing the book was, if i can explain how the person who enters washington wanting to appease southerners and the a guy who buys a gun and is ready to shoot them. i call it the emotional logic of the union. how emotionally did that make sense to him and many others? that's an interesting thread to add to the way we understand the coming of the civil war. benjamin french allowed me to do that. it took me forever to write the book so i lived with benjamin brown french for at least a decade, if not more than that. what's fascinating about him is that is kind of a forrest gump

of the. i write about. when i was making the footnotes, lots of footnotes that say over and over, no really, he was there. if something significant happened, somehow benjamin french was watching it happen. someone tries to assassinate andrew jackson. french is right there and sees it happen. john quincy has a stroke, not long after, there's french holding his hand. the gettysburg address, abraham lincoln gives the address that was up on the platform standing beside him? benjamin brown french. the assassination. who's at the bedside by lincoln the side and standing beside his corpse at the white house after he dies? benjamin brown french. he's there for everything. is this incredible eyewitness was very generous in the way he puts his thoughts and feelings down on paper. he really ends up i think showing to some degree what it

felt like to be in that kind of an extreme, polarized climate. and how americans learn to turn on each other to the degree that they did. >> where did you find his papers?>> there's a published, very abridged version of his papers that came out from the library of congress many years ago. people write about lincoln tend to know about him because he adored lincoln. they have these great anecdotes. for example, one of my favorite ones being, someone gave him a pair of socks to give to lincoln that had a confederate flag under each foot. i sort of love that anecdote. or a better anecdote, he's in a room with lincoln in the white house and lincoln says out loud to a room full of people. anyone in here know how to spell the word missile? and french writes in his diary,

what kind of a man is that? what kind of a president is willing to admit he doesn't know how to spell that. as a room full of people with no shame. he just loved lincoln. the 11 volumes of his diary and all these other writings, was poetry. when i was finishing the book and i got all the way to the epilogue and i'm trying to figure out - - 17 years in. i can't figure out how to end it. what do i do? french, give me something. and i'm shuffling through papers and i'm agonizing but what do i discover? the year before he died, he wrote a poem about what congressman to him. it was like she smiled down and said here. have a problem. he says - - a poem. his is i'm sitting in the office, my home for all these years. he was a remarkable - - remarkably generous in the way

he gave me evidence. and the book wouldn't have been possible without him. >> next call is joseph from new york. from mamaroneck, new york. sorry, i'm a midwesterner. >> thank you very much professor friedman for correcting him on the correct pronunciation of mamaroneck. thank you very much. i want to commend you on your earlier comments but also being an immersed, open-minded historian. 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 divide . i'm really interested in your comments. 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. >> thank you. i wonder what i'm going to say in response to that question too. you know, i wish - - i think people often look to historians to, with a solution to the present.and boy, is that something i can't do. what i can say is the times in which our government has functioned best have been moments people listen to each other in some way or another that the idea that our government is grounded on debate and compromise. and sometimes debate is nasty. we've had extreme polarization many times before in history. sometimes extreme polarization. but there needs to be a willingness to debate, however feels that debate can be. right now, we are in such a polarized moment that people are - - to such an extreme degree. it's not helping us at all.

easy to say that in a 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. part of what we are talking about is, it's a cycle. congress influences the public and public influences congress. i have no brilliant solution on how to promote that atmosphere. but othering and you are un-american is not a useful way to find our way out of the moment we are in. how we get beyond that, i'm unfortunately not the one to offer that answer. >> email from stephen. i was wondering if she found leaders. i wonder if her students believe the political violence ended at the civil war. the reason he has is because in his research he found a 1908 fight between a tennessee

senator and a constituent. a political opponent, a block from the state capital. >> it doesn't end with the civil war, so that's a good point. it doesn't happen on the floor of congress the way it did before. you can do that - - see that when the louisiana is trying to get back into the union. two violent incidents happened within the capital not long after louisiana tries to start this process. you have northerners who steps forward and says, we want to let them back in? do you remember what that was like. the power dynamic has shifted. as you're suggesting with your question, that doesn't mean the violence stops.so you can say southerners are no longer

effective in the deploying - - in the congress. it's an important point to make and i'm glad you asked the question. the violence doesn't stop. it just ships or prefigures itself. it's tempered in some ways. ships grounded in other ways. american politics has been violent 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 that violence? that's another question i wish i could offer the brilliant solution that i don't have. it's not as though violence suddenly ended at any given point. >> glen from new jersey. >> thank you to c-span for another wonderful program and thank you professor friedman for your wonderful research and

work. i did see you actually back in 2004. you gave a presentation at the 200th anniversary in new jersey. so i really enjoyed that. my question for you is this. which her field of blood text. and you considered david broderick, david terry doolin california. - - was a senator from california and terry was the supreme court justice and they fought a duel outside san francisco. broderick was killed. given the context of it being california. slavery splits within the democratic party. in california, particularly. was that something you thought about in your book? you mentioned there were dozens of other examples. i wonder if you thought about that specific one. >> are you an amateur historian or is this part of your profession?>> sort of

indirectly. i'm a professor at john jay of - - [indiscernible]. and also, i'm very involved locally in passaic county with history. your viewers should know the new visitor center will be named after hamilton and patterson. it will be open in a couple years. i'm very interested as an amateur. >> glenn, thanks for that. i did not expect that answer. >> certainly, the tool you are describing. the famous one in a dramatic one. what i end up having to do for the book, precisely because as you are suggesting. once you start broadening beyond washington. the field for violence, even between people in congress becomes exponentially enormous.

i end up limiting myself to incidents that took place in washington. in the r on the streets when congress was in session. what i was interested in was how the violence was shaping what congress was doing what americans thought about congress and the state of the nation. i had to stop myself from getting beyond that. there are any number of incidents and that's a major one that i could have gone pursuing. i would probably be on your 57 on working on this book. in the end, what i was really interested in was the mix of people in congress and washington, from different parts of the union dealt with violence and ways. have different understandings of justice and how it worked in different viewpoints and desires. what happens when you put those people together and forced them to deal with contentious issues. that was one of the initial questions that put me into this 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 acclimate when there is that violence. >> john from right here in washington d.c.. go ahead. >> i'm a big fan of american nations by colin woodward. he relays an unflattering episode in the story of alexander hamilton. i will be quick about it. during the revolutionary war, soldiers from appalachia in western pennsylvania. there was no money to pay them. the continental congress gave them ious. for years, they were able to use that to pay their taxes to the state of pennsylvania. and then this guy comes along, robert morris. and water describes him as a

protcgc. alexander hamilton as a protcgc of robert morris. morris pioneers that people can no longer pay state taxes with these ious. because of that, these people are forced to sell this script for 2-15 percent on face value. friends of robert morris, he says, wind up owning about 50 percent of the outstanding script. and then shortly after that, alexander hamilton and robert morris, with this idea that the u.s. government will pay all of this script in full. with six percent interest in hard currency, gold or silver. and they will tax the very people, these veterans who were forced to pay, forced to sell their script in order to get

currency. washington goes and puts down the rebellion. but in fact, it's an unsavory - - >> we are going to leave it there and hear from professor freeman. >> that's an excellent point and it becomes a controversy in the early part of hamilton's time as secretary of treasury. he was at lisa's that there should be some way of discriminating between speculators who did just what you said. brought up these ious. hoping that down the road they would be paid in full. but buying them up for minimal amounts of money. that there should be a way of discriminating between the - - and the veterans that are really owed the money by the government and hamilton doesn't step forward and say, no. there's no way to track how each eye - - iou has gone.

they essentially become a form of currency that are worth whatever their immediate value is but that's how he wants to use them. his argument is if they're going to be practical as a form of currency, then their stated value needs to be what they're worth. that's inherently unfair to the people given those ious to begin with. so that's a total invalid thing to say. you can see hamilton's logic for it. you can see the ways that logic is unfair to many people. and at the time, and not just in later years by historians. at the time, people said that it was one of the early - - people said, what are you doing? that's exceedingly unfair and biased. and it's going to benefit these speculators, these money men, that you seem to be eager to please and impress. because you want them to buy into the government.this is unseemly in many ways.

but he had his logic. we can debate whether we agree or not. but certainly that would have been his counterargument. >> 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 hamilto . >> that's a long time ago. [laughter] >> i hope i didn't have too much coffee. >> here's the funny thing. clay jenkinson, i think he's gone on to do other things. i don't know what to call it, a jefferson reenactor. here's the quirky thing about that.

i was already interested in hamilton. he was building a model of monticello. and i made a snide remark about jefferson. he looked at me - - [laughter]. he had no idea i was interested in hamilton and i had no idea he was interested in jefferson. i lost touch and then we cross paths and then we crossed paths later when he was doing his jefferson work. we crossed paths again and it was the national endowment for the amenities that decided we would have this debate. i can't remember what state it was in but we did. we had a debate in which i represented hamilton. clay represented jefferson. it was filmed and a remember he made a snide comment about hamilton. he said something like it's taken me a lifetime to to know

jefferson but i could to hamilton in a weekend. he got booed. member he was very upset at the audience. i was kind of shocked but but i guess it meant sign-up or other i put in my two cents enough so they stood up for him at that one little moment. i had no idea what your memory of that event was but it was wonderful, fun and what an honor to do that with a former teacher of buying and the weirdness of having as in-depth where he ended up. he was teaching english at the time. i was an english major in college with nothing to do with history at all. it was a wonderful debate. somewhere i have that on videotape, like a vhs videotape which means i can't play it at all but it was a wonderful event. >> host:t: maybe you can reenact it on your podcast. >> guest: or maybe not. >> host: what is your podcast? >> guest: my podcast is back story. it's an american history podcast, there are four of us is going to cohost it and what we

do is basically do a deep dive back into history of something having to do with the current moment we lookur at the deeper path of p it. the reason it was a show about reparations over slavery. there was a show about blackface. for this week with labor day we did issue about the history of labor in america but we have done all kinds of shows, cultural shows about collecting, the long history of collecting things in america. what's wonderful is this very conversational. the four of us are all people with a strong sense of humor so it's fun to listen to. >> host: who are they? >> guest: brian, and heirs, nathan connolly and myself. it's the self-promotional but it's a fun listen but it's a historic lesson as well been once again it is called back story. i want to close with "affairs of honor" which you write a note on

method. this book approaches politics in an unusual way. it does not examine political events or personalities in isolation or reduce them to the love of historical anecdote. nor does a tackle so brought up the mess to lose sight of the participantssp perspective. amy at a midpoint between broad cultural history in detailed analysis of the political narrative, uses the vantage point of ane ethnic historian. which is what? >> guest: i wrote that because when writing about the founders, you will think about them as great in. my point is what he could just think about an elite population of men in a particular environment and look at what they do? i iif no historian i met looking at behavior of a a particular population in a particular place. what happens when you look at the founders in y that way? how can you understand them differently? i put that they're part of considerable people think about

the founders as great men but as individuals in a particular climate doing smart and on smart things and hack we make sense of them. >> host: joanne freeman has been our guest for the past two hours. thank you for your time tracking thank you so much for having me. >> when you read the things were said about thomas jefferson, that he was an infidel and he was a pagan, sounds reminiscent, doesn't it. things were said about abraham lincoln, the things were said about fdr that he wanted to be a dictator, so it does kind of come with the territory but i think in trump's case at least in the modern political era post-world war ii, i have never seen anything like it. >> sunday, september 6 at noon eastern on "in depth" our life to our conversation with author and faith in freedom coalition founder ralph reed whose books include awakening, , act of faih and his most recent, for god and

country. join the conversation with your phone calls, facebook, , it's context in tweets. watch booktv's in-depth sunday september sixth at noon eastern on c-span2. >> booktv on c-span2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend.

watch tv this weekend on c-span2. >> well, at this time we had planned on bringing you live coverage of the house administration committee as they hold a hearing on safety voting during the coronavirus pandemic. the committee appears to be running a bit behind so we will get you there live as soon as this hearing begins. .. said is at stake in november. [video clip] president trump: everything we have achieved is now in danger. this is the most important election in this is the most important election in the history of our country. [cheering and applauding]

[applause]or thank you. at no time before have voters faced a clear choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies or two agendas. this election will decide whether we can save the american dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our terrorist cherished destiny. [applause] will decide whether we can probably create millions of high-paying jobs or whether we crush our industries and send millions of these jobs overseas as has foolishly been done for decades.

your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding americans or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens. this election will decide whether we will defend -- >> administration will come to order. i want to acknowledge the members who are with us today and welcome my colleagues here in california and good afternoon for those of you out east. i want to remind our members and participants of the few things that will help us navigate this virtual hearing. we are holding this hearing in compliance with regulations for remote committee meetings, house resolution 165. the committee will keep microphones muted, limit backnd