they were absolutely perfect except they were always wrong. like he was always much more in debt than he ever realized. he believed -- he liked to control the world at his desk. he's like an academic. here is my desk. i'm an academic. i try to do the same thing occasionally. if i can get all controlled here right around my computer, then that's reality, right? no, it's not. >> now you've mentioned jefferson and numbers so let me stick up for jefferson a little bit. >> oh, good. good. that's not common for you. >> not common for me, but here's where i felt the impulse reading the relevant chapter of your book. this is where you discuss jefferson and madison and their role in the politics of the 1790s and the first two-party system, which is the republicans who were now the democrats and the federal lists who died

without issue. and you -- >> i don't know about that. >> we're still here. >> the wigs and then -- >> but there isn't an actual continuity. >> that's right. >> there's a break and a gap. one of the things that motivates them is their alarm at the financial program of alexander hamilton. >> they're terrified. >> they're terrified. you say, and i think rightly, that there's a healthy dose of paranoia in this terror, but i think you scant or you don't sufficiently credit the newness of such financing. >> this is coming from a hamiltonian. >> it really comes from dick silla who spoke here before and he opened my eyes to this.

there was a revolution in the understanding of debt and how it might be financed. it was in the late 17th century in holland and england, they were the first two countries countries to get with this. france danled with it, with john law, and it blew up and they said never again. backed off. so by the 1790s there are two countries in the world still, holland and england, who were doing this and have experience of it. nobody else has it. so i'm saying, yes, jefferson and madison were paranoid. gentlemen, they had limited experience being planters, not being merchants and so on. >> they took great pride in not understanding economics. >> they were not alone. they were not alone. it wasn't only southern planters who shared these fears and these suspicions. we've all read the diary of

william mcclay. that's a book we have to read. the senate kept no records. he's a pennsylvania. he is as paranoid as they are. >> he's crazy. an eccentric. i hear what you're saying. c.i.a.? i think that alexander hamilton had the highest s.a.t.s of anybody at the founders. he's a really brilliant guy. that scared the wits out of jefferson and madison. jefferson writes madison, take him on. no one else can take him on singularly. cut him to pieces. he is a host unto himself. so the brilliance of hamilton's financial program, both the funding of the debt and the assumption of the state debts and the creation of the national bank is a stroke of genius. what needs to be remembered is

that up until then the united states is regarded by the financial capitals of the world, especially amsterdam's bank, as a banana republic. we can't pay our debts. we are -- you know, we're totally -- >> we're a failing interest. >> yeah. we're like -- >> forget the principle. >> yeah. yeah. hamilton is single hand deadly creating a new credit system and a new stability. from a purely economic point of view there can be no argument that hamilton's reforms were absolutely correct and brilliant. they were perceived by jefferson and madison as a fundamental threat to the interest of the agrarian south. they were perceived as all of a sudden we've -- there's a

virginia writ large view of the nation that's supposed to happen. that's a phrase from henry adams, by the way. and they think, as adams says, in virginia all geese are swans. and like they think they're going to dominate. all of a sudden right away this new england, new york merchant class is emerging to displace them. what's going on? what is a conspiracy theory anyway? a conspiracy theory is a simplicity, semi-spiritual lis stick explanation for events that you otherwise don't understand. okay? what's happening to virginians? they're all going bankruptcy. both madison and jefferson and bankrupt, monroe does too. the only one that doesn't is washington among the majors. slavery is not working. if you look at george

washington's plantation towards the end of his life he's got 319 slaves. at any given time less than 100 of them are working. >> also tobacco isn't working. >> tobacco has destroyed the soil. he's already switched from tobacco, has washington by this time. the tobacco economy is a one-way ticket to bankruptcy. so they all -- all they know is somehow i've got all these debts. the principle -- one of the great principles -- the two great principles in the modern world. einstein's principle of relativity and the principle of compound interest. >> well, so but -- >> and they don't understand either one of those two things. the net result -- what i'm trying to argue here is that madison and jefferson and the republican party as originates in virginia essentially sees itself as losing out, and it is losing out. they invent this argument about

the federal lists, that the federalists are a takeover. washington is say monarchist. what a joke. this is the one guy in america that has had the opportunity to be a monarch and has said no to t. john adams intends to crown john quincy as its heir, apparent. bringing a boat load of prostitutes over from england if elected. all this unbelievable stuff. they regard any strong projection of federal power as monarchy. the republican position of madison and jefferson is all domestic policy is the function of the states. no domestic policy can be made by the federal government. the federal government is a foreign government. >> right. >> they can make foreign policy but that's it. why else do they want to argue that? >> slavery.

>> ellis says, slavery. that once you acknowledge that the federal government has power to make domestic policy, which includes internal improvement like roads, infrastructure, all of that stuff, state trade, once you admit that principle, then slavery goes on to the agenda. >> but -- >> and they want to stop that at all costs. >> but george washington and john marshall are virginiaens. >> they're federalists though. >> okay, but why? why do they differ from their neighbors? >> originally the answer is because they experienced the revolution together as a failure of state southern at this. they experienced the revolution as a place where the states refused to provide money and men and the numbers allowed. they experienced valley forge together as a near death experience. both of them were there. i think marshall was a young guy. he was like the leading high jumper or something like that.

he's a great man. >> silver heels. >> silver heels was his name. >> that's right. that's right. but both of them believed that the constitutional settlement of 787, '78 fundamentally revised the principles of '76. the principles of '76 as jefferson saw them was liberation, no government. if you read -- read the declaration of independence. what good thing does it have to say about government? nothing. everything the government does is bad. that was a wonderful idea to use against the brits. >> right. >> but once you're trying to run your own country -- what intention is the revolution to create a nation state? there are a lot of people who believe we come together as a

series of states to oppose the british and now that we've defeated them we'll go our separate ways. patrick henry believes that. to some extent jefferson believes that. although as hamilton said when he's on the eve of will he be elected or not and hamilton is swallowing the bitter pill and saying, better this guy than aaron burke. he'll probably want to dmoom a good estate. >> eventually as president with the louisiana purchase jefferson takes the most powerful executive action in american history. more powerful than trueman's decision to drop the bomb. he violates all his political principles in that context. but what am i trying to say? i'm rambling perhaps here, but i think that -- >> well so it was starting with the war but then continuing from that there were those in the south and in virginia who did

not draw these agrarian -- >> they become isolated. both washington and marshall are regarded as trojan horses within virginia. >> right. >> and the fact that marshall is chief justice from 1800 to 1835, that's one of the most amazing things to me. think about this, richard. there are three republican presidents, jefferson, madison, and monroe, all serving eight-year terms. that means for 24 years all appointments to the supreme court are being made by people who believe in states rights, okay? they go into the marshall court and something happens to them. i think it's the medira that marshall serves at dinner. they all get converted. it's the reason jefferson says, if you ever have a conversation with marshall, you cannot respond.

you must keep quiet. whatever you say, he will take it and he will twist t. he has the term twistifications. remember that? >> he says if jefferson asks you, is the sunshining, you must say, i don't know. >> i don't know. >> because if you said yes or no, he'd like get march bury out of madison out of that. >> that's right. when marshall dyed they did an autopsy. he had a liver three times the size of the largest liver ever seen. so i think it was medira myself. it partly was marshall's own personality and his -- he was -- the fact is marshall probably was one of the greatest of the founders. he's a little late, but we can't know it in the way that we can with adams and jefferson because so much of the correspondence has been destroyed. but he took care of his wife poly.

it was an inville lid for most of the life of his kids. one other thing that happens is the legal scholars get ahold of him. it becomes this intricate series of discussions about mccullough versus maryland. the human story, this guy, think about marshall, he was the equivalent of a special forces leader in the american revolution. had he like three companies shot out from under him. he's a hero. a complete hero. then becomes the greatest chief justice in america. the greatest chief justice in american history. >> maybe not quite by accident but kind of a spur of the moment -- >> probably the greatest thing that adams ever d. after the revolution itself. his greatest moment is '75-'76. in his presidency that's the greatest thing he did. >> what is the line he says to him? because he's a secretary of state at that point. >> right. marshall is a secretary of state for a year under adams. that's right. >> i forget.

>> marshall's in the office on some other business and adams is saying, well, i've got to pick a chief justice. think i'll pick you. >> you know, the horrible thing that calls to mind is george bush deciding dick cheney might be his vice presidential candidate. i don't think that's a proper analogy. >> let's take a few questions. now do we have -- what's the setup? i guess we have a mic. so there's a question there. >> it was just when i was going to say we should do that too. perfect timing. >> how did so many of the founders, particularly the virginia ar ris stock kra si live so lavishly buying great books, great wine, people, building mansions with no income, assets or property, losing money every year, and never getting a claim from a creditor calling a debt?

>> jefferson's the epitome of that, though madison and monroe in somewhat lesser ways, they're not as os sten tear shus. i think the core answer of your question is virginians thought of wealth in terms of land, not money. if they owned a lot of land they thought they were wealthy. they never understood capitalism. when i said earlier they took great pride in not understanding hamiltonian economics, i mean that. they thought anybody that understood that was lake a shylock, an accountant, a mere accountant. jefferson carries it to an extreme though. the wine bill during the time he's president is greater than his salary. when jefferson would move to a new place in paris, philadelphia, he wouldn't just

rent a place, he would renovate it. it was like he would buy it and reno -- it was like these extraordinary -- he never thought about it. so when debt hits him later, very late in his life, he's like -- and i mean really late. he's like 70 years old. he's lake, oh, my god. i didn't know this. and it's like, duh! but it's genuine. it's genuine. he's not being -- he really didn't get it. to some extent, see what i think is that virginia would have been better off if it had eped slavery in the 18th century, better off economically. i told you that only a small portion of the slave population is actually working. the slave economy doesn't work once the tobacco economy's gone. they would have within better

off going towards the direction of pennsylvania. >> parts of the state, i gather, did that, did -- >> washington tried to leave it. >> went to west virginia. >> washington tried to lead that. you need a qualified psychiatrist to answer your question. >> and then maybe sanguine creditors are also part of the answer. a question. yes, right here. >> there's a guy over there. >> aaron burr certainly had advise presidency, perhaps almost president, was in the mix of all of them but we don't hear anything. does he seem to not have affected anything despite his position and his -- >> he killed my guy. >> yeah. he had a great influence. >> other than that. >> like there's this great letter that burr -- he has a

daughter called theodocia. she's one of the best educated women in the united states. burr's attitude towards women is fascinating in several respects, but he really treats his daughter in educational terms as if she were a man. but he writes her a letter the night before he goes to the duel and he says, here are the names of my miss stresses. tell them i will miss them if i die. you know, it's like -- >> i own -- >> i think of burr, if washington transcends the times and the generation that sort of becomes the republican king and sort of leaf have i tats, burr burrows beneath it all and pops up wherever he thinks the best

chance will be. i mean, we really don't know what burr's intentions were in the west, but it's pretty clear he wants to make himself some kind of emperor out there. burr is the epitome of the unvirtuous leader. burr is the guy who would be most comfortable in contemporary american politics. he is the only guy that could survive the current campaign system. >> well, and the insight i had to burr, which i thought was like a flair going off, it was a book that came out about 1910. 1900, 1910, the author spoke to an old man who had known burr when he was very young and when burr was very old. burr dyes in 1836 i think. >> something like that. late, yeah. >> so it works out. and the author said, everybody

said aaron burr was charming. what did that mean? you met him. what was his charm? the man said it was the way he listened. he listened to you as if what you were saying was more important to him than it was to you. snu when now when i read that i said, that's it. that explains conspiracy. no one has ever been able to figure out what his agenda was. i thought, he didn't have one. he was vam ping. he was going around everybody he knew, bunch of mall contents, a lot of them. they'd talk and talk. he'd listen. >> he agrees with me. >> he's going to make it happen. >> the british, they will pay you this money. they say, thank you. the spanish will pay you this money. >>'s kind of like vamping, maybe this will work, maybe that will work. who knows what he's thinking. i don't think he knew what he was thinking either, but he

listen listened. another question. back there. >> there's a whole bunch of burr people who love burr. there's burr societies and stuff like that. >> they came here for the hamilton show. >> there's a new book by a woman at the university of tulsa on burr. he's not forgotten. probably one of the best historical novels in american history is written by gorvadol on burr. >> i wonder if you could elaborate a little on how jefferson went from his principles to his actions as president. >> hower son went from his principles to his actions as president. in a flicker of an eye. it's like -- now he knew what he was doing and he was worried about it. he knew that he was violating his principles and he had severe reservations about it and he talked to both madison, his

secretary of state, and galitan, his secretary of treasury. both of whom were really smart guys. he said, i don't really think i can do this. this is the louisiana purchase. i think that this violates all our principles. it not only violates the constitutional principle, mainly an exercise of federal power and executive power that is beyond anything i would have ever considered, but it's also going to increase the debt. jefferson's whole agenda as president was to reduce the debt. this horrible thing that hamilton had built up. and they'd say to him, look, you can have your principles, but if you decide on insist something that there be a constitutional amendment passed to justify this, napoleon's going to change his mind and we won't get the louisiana territory. so you have to choose between your principles and the interest

of posterity. that was never a difficult choice for jefferson. but notice, notice, jefferson never puts the louisiana purchase on his tomstone. he doesn't put the presidency on his tomstone in which the purchase is the major thing because he knows that there are problems there. he knows that he set a precedent there that is going to come back to haunt him, and it does in the missouri crisis because basically -- why do we go to war in 1861? we don't go to war over the issue of slavery in the south, we go to war over the issue of slavery in the territories, okay? so that has sown the seed of that conflict. he knows that. that's the reason why he calls it the fire bell in the night, although really people misunderstand that phrase too. when jefferson talks about the fire bell in the night, he's not talking about slavery, he's

talking about the discussion of slavery. >> right. agitation. >> the very fact that we're talking about this and thinking in a struggling way about it. he wants everybody to shut up, leave it alone, in a code of silence kind of thing. what is the word that they use, no -- in the army about gays. >> don't ask don't tell. >> don't ask don't tell. yeah. >> right. next question. >> there's a guy in the back back there. >> okay. >> a guy that's standing up for all of this has to be rewarded somehow. >> yeah. >> dr. ellis, always enjoyed your books. >> thank you. >> in the federalist papers madison j. and hamilton collaborated. where did the schism occur between madison and hamilton in that they were original collaborate ors and then they became estranged. >> it's breath takingly quick. they are collaborators in 1788

and in fact hamilton presumes that madison is going to be supportive of his financial plan because madison in the convention, the constitutional convention is one of the most ardent ultra federal lists. he wants a federal veto for allstate legislation. that's a huge thing. he doesn't get it. he wants to end the sovereignty of the states altogether in the convention. and the compromise that results isn't to his liking. in some sense he's even more a federalist at that stage than hamilton, though it's tough to make that case. what happened -- two things happened at the same time. you can't separate them to figure out what's the most effective causal occasion. one is jefferson comes back from paris, and jefferson enters the government as secretary of

state. madison becomes madison's accolade and worships the ground that he walks on. he sees himself as the sub-alter of jefferson. no longer is the sovereign voice of himself. the second thing that happens is the passions of what we referred, richard and i were talking about, to hamilton's financial plan. all of a sudden he regards this new federal government as something that is not compatible with virginia's interests, either economically or in terms of slavery. like, oh, my god, you know? and he's serving in the house of representatives so that his constituency is telling him that they oppose all these things. but it's breath takingly quick. i mean, they are all of these people. there's a young woman out here that's trying to get a monument

devoted to madison. haley, there you are. >> here or in washington? >> in washington. in washington. it's certainly justified. but the people that love madison the most don't understand him. madison changes positions three or four times in his life, and politically madison is the guy that's in -- if god were in the details, madison would be there to greet him upon arrival. madison is a nose counter. now -- and now if you want to really make the most brilliant case for madison, it's possible, he understands the argument at thattive of the context the constitution has created. once the seesaw starts to go too far one way, he'll jump on the other side. he's committed to a form of balance. that's the best case you can make for him. the worst case is, man, this guy

is like, you know, i'm on your -- i'm your lawyer. i will defend you. now i'm the lawyer of the other guy and i will defend him. it's like a lawyer and a client. he sees his constituency as of 1787 as america and 1790 as virginia. >> he's the one guy on the first string of the founders who has not had a big book, and i think that's because of the inherent difficulty of did go such a thing. >> i read his stuff for six months last year because asgreen and i were talking about doing something on madison. he's tough to read. he's tough to read. his sentences -- the syntax of his sentences are serpentine. they double back on each other in a way that is very politically effective because it's like, what is he saying,

you know? on the other hand, it's like, what is he saying? like, you know, he's very much in favor of federal sovereignty in 1786, '87, '88. he's very much oppose today it throughout the '90s and writes in the virginia revolution the strongest statement there. when you get to the nully if i case crisis in 1830-'32 he jumps the other way. >> no, no, no, we didn't -- >> that's not what we intended. that's not what we intended. >> so are you going to go do this book? >> no. i'm going led hadley take care of madison. i'm going write another book called "first family, abigail and john." one minute. one more question we're told. is there one? >> yes, there's one. yes. one