played in the addition in the trial of lincoln conspirators. in particular the decision -- the dision operate of the federal government to execute a woman. could you tell us how that came about? >> yes, sir. i will tell you. and i'm aware of the controversy. and i'm aware there are a number of different sides to it. that in my view, she was guilty. i believe she was the person who kept the nest that hatched the egg. however, the controversy arises over this. having been sentenced to death by that same tribunal, five of the judges recommended clemency prison. i was unaware of that commutation recommendation. i was freshly into my office. i was allowing myself to be

guided by the cabinet and the other officers that had been present. and when judge advocate brought me the papers including the death warrants, i signed them. some two years later, it is interesting. this is when the you cimpeachme news was e mernling. the newspapers began printing the awareness that a recommendation of clemency had been made and i ignored it. and i sent to the war department requesting to see those documents. when i did see them, it appeared to me that the clemency recommendation had been torn out and reattached. and i thought only two men could have done such a thing. one of them, judge advocate general who had been responsible for the trial. but the other was his edwin stanton. perhaps i will leave it thisxta documents from the war

department, i sent a short note to secretary stanton which read high character constrain me to inform you that your resignation as secretary of war will be accepted. may i tell you what he said in response? dear sir, public considerations of a high character constrain me to inform you that i will not resign the office until congress comes back into session. knowing at the time he believed he was already protected by the tenure of office law. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. you're welcome. all right. >> for more information about the andrew johnson national historic site, visit their website at nps.gov/anjo. and to learn more about tours with historian and author richard norton smith, go to

presidents and patriots.com. you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span 3. brown university history professor gordon wood is the author of several books on america's founding fathers. coming up he talks about his latest book "the idea of america: reflections on the birth of the united states." professor wood is interviewed by "national review" brich ard brookheiser. the new york historical society hosted this hour-long event. >> well, thank you, everybody, for coming out on this grim night. but you had a great incentive which is to hear gordon wood. i'm going to begin by paying you, gordon, a roundabout compliment. it's a little late, but it's a nice one. i had dinner with newt gingrich in 1994.

and he had -- he had just become speaker-elect. the republicans had just captured the house in the '94 election for the first time in four years. and at the dinner, he talked -- turned to what i was doing. i knew what he was doing. and i said i was writing a book on george washington. and without hesitation, he said, you have to read "the radicalism of the american revolution" by gordon wood. so we all have our opinions on newt, and sometimes he's with the public, and sometimes he's not. but there he was entirely with the public. this is -- this is a provocative, interesting, delightful book. so i want to get right to it. and i want to start with my favorite sentence. my favorite sentence in this book, which is the lead sentence of the third article. and i'm going to ask gordon, i

want you to comment, explain what this means. you asked, were the american revolutionaries mentally disturbed? >> well, actually, there was an article -- that was published, i think, about 1981 or so. this was a collection of essays that i've written over the last 45, 50 years. and that was the opening to an article published around 1981. prior to that, a distinguished historian, i won't name him because he's quite distinguished. he works at the library of congress. had written an article, saying, arguing that because they believed in conspiracies, conspiracies everywhere, that they accounted for the actions of the british government in terms of a conspiracy on the part of the ministers, that they were probably suffering from some kind of mental aberration because by most scholars, by the

20th century believed that people who believe in conspiracies are apt to be delusional. and that's how he started that article. he later repudiated it in another article. but that was the opening because it gave me an opportunity to deal with this problem of why did conspiratorial interpretations of history, of events, flourish in the 18th century. and my argument is that it had to do with the enlightenment. people wanted to hold people morally responsible for what happened. and there is something to the idea of conspiracy because if there's nobody planning what's happening, how do you make moral judgments? that is a very serious problem that they faced. by the 19th century, we entered a hegalian world where a lot of people create events, none of which anybody intended. that's a modern insight, probably the most important insight of modern social science.

but it does create a kind of moral chaos because, well, we see it today with our banking crisis and our financial crisis. we want to hold somebody responsible for that. but what if nobody is responsible? then it's kind of scary. that's the problem that conspiratorial thinking helps resolve. >> but there's also -- there's also an issue of tone which you address in some of your other essays. and anybody who reads the controversial literature of, you know, the 1790s right up through the war of 1812, you're just struck by -- you use the word "frenzy." there's just a tone that seems so over the top. it's more than even what we have today. and why do you think -- and these are intelligent men, a lot of them. >> right. >> extremely so. >> right. >> and yet there's no difference between the smart ones and the dumb ones in terms of this tone. they all use it. why was that? >> this is not -- the 1790s or

the revolutionary era in general is not politics as usual. it's not our politics. the stakes were very high. the contest between the jeffersonians and hamiltonians or the federalists were over the nature of the united states government. what kind of government were we to have? was it to be a european-type state with a standing army, modern bureaucracy with a financial structure that was capable -- and a war-making machine that could take on the european states? i think that's what hamilton had in mind. and jefferson and madison had a very different vision of what the united states should be. so that the stakes were as high as they could be. and people were frightened. i believe that jefferson and madison feared that monarchy was going to be imposed on the united states. that we were going to become a monarchical regime. and they said that. many historians dismissed that out of hand.

that can't be true. because it didn't happen, therefore they dismiss it, but i think you have to take seriously what people said in the past. and there's enough evidence that both jefferson and madison were frightened, that the federalists were trying to foist a monarchy on the country. >> and the federalists had their own fears. >> definitely. the french were going to invade and that there was a fifth column within the country of jeffersonian radicals. who were going to support the invasion. now, napoleon was invading other countries and turning them into puppet regimes, republican puppet regimes. holland and the netherlands became the bavarian public. and he wassing to the same in italy. and it wasn't inconceivable after the french had invaded earlier. so this was a legitimate fear on the part of the federalists that the united states would be invaded by the french, by french

radicals, napoleon, napoleon's army, and that they would turn that into a puppet regime with the aid of these jeffersonian fifth colonists. that was a legitimate fear. it collapsed with napoleon's battle at the nile where jefferson destroyed the navy. up to that point, that's what led the federalists to take the steps that they did. the alien sedition act, things that seemed excessive to us and to some at the time. even alexander hamilton thought the act went too far. but you have to understand the fear that these people had. i think the goal of historian is not to take sides and say the federalists were right or the republicans were right, but rather to explain why people thought as they did and acted as they did. and in this case, there were legitimate fears on both sides. >> there's also at that time which must have added to the disquiet if not to the fear,

there's social changes going on as people figure out what this new political system means and what its ramifications are. and you had -- i love it when you or any historian highlights a story that is unfamiliar. and it may involve a familiar person, but it just throws a light on something. and one of my favorites in this book involves john rotledge who was a considerable figure in south carolina and at the constitutional convention. and then someone i had certainly heard of, and i guess that's the point of the story, a man named william thompson. but this throws a light on that shift. >> right. >> could you tell that story? >> 1784, i think it was, if i remember correctly, william thompson's a tavern keeper in charleston, south carolina. and john rutledge, as perhaps

you all know, was about as high in the south carolinian aristocracy as you could. >> and there was nothing higher than that. >> nothing higher than john rutledge. and he sends his slave -- i think it was the fourth of july to see the fireworks, to go to thompson's tavern and go up on the roof of thompson's tavern to see the fireworks. well, thompson turns the slave away. a female slave. he says no, you can't go up there. well, rutledge is outraged. and he goes then -- he's a major figure of course in the state legislature. he goes to the state legislature. and he urges a bill to banish thompson from the state for this insult. well, thompson takes to the press. and he writes, what can only be a typical american claim of equality against this kind of arrogance.

i think it expressed a kind of middling resentment that this coming-out -- and for all places to take place in charleston shows that even there where the structure of the society was much more hierarchical than it was in boston, a typical american resentment against the snobbery, this arrogance that was expressed by rutledge, outrageous by our standards that he should go to the state legislature and banish the man. but that's the -- i think a sign of an emerging egalitarianism that comes to sweep the country, the north in particular. it existed everywhere, but in the north, it really runs wild and transforms the society even before the jacksonnian era. i think one of the things that i've learned from all of this research i've done is the realization that by the first decade of the 19th century, you already have a kind of egalitarianism that is simply

unanticipated by the founders, by the leaders. i mean, the idea that simon snyder, who has no education whatsoever, should become governor of pennsylvania. he's running for the office. and he's really running. i mean, he's got a modern kind of organization. and he's running. he's not standing for election. he has no social credentials whatsoever. no education. and he's called a clodhopper including thomas mckeed. he rides that slogan to victory. well, that's 1808. that's early. that's before the jacksonian era. and i think we've not realized how much the society was changing. particularly in the north well before the jacksonian era. >> but there was one of the

undertows you point out that's happening at the same time that the clodhoppers and the thompsons are winning, you made the point that as poor white men got to vote, free black men were losing the vote. >> that's one of the great ironies of democracy. as you began giving in new york and in pennsylvania, as the jeffersonian republicans, the beginnings -- you have to understand, these are the beginnings of the democratic party, they soon became jeffersonian -- democratic republicans. and then pretty soon they become just the democrats. even by the first decade of the 19th century they're referring to them as the dems. in states like new york, pennsylvania as the suffragists extended to propertyless white males, there is pressure to take it away from freed black men who

tended -- i mean, it isn't just racism, it's the politics of the thing. these blacks had tended to vote federalist. and then later in the jacksonian era to vote wig. >> why did they vote federalist? >> well, because the federalists were the leaders in the abolitionist movement. alexander hamilton was a firm believer in ending slavery. the democratic republicans were a little slower. mainly because the base of the party came from the south. but -- so what's ironic -- truly ironic is that irish immigrants who were not yet citizens were being given the vote in pennsylvania while at the same time blacks -- freed blacks who had been in the country for generations were having their suffrage taken away. so that was democracy, so to speak, the dark side of democracy in that period. >> mm-hmm. now, you know, this isn't all

just history. a lot of this is news. i mean, we are seeing in the newspapers and on television right now it's in cairo. >> right. >> but also, it's very bloody in syria. we have this whole arab spring. now it's autumn. it's been going on for months. you know, despites toppling or tottering. it seems as if there could be a chance for more democracy. is there anything our example could say to those people on the streets by either way of instruction or warning? >> yeah, i think the arab spring, we're all excited about it. we're all excited about democracy. that word's thrown around very loosely. the americans, in particular, and i think james madison, perceived a problem by the 1780s that they hadn't anticipated. in the debate between john adams

and his opponent, daniel leonard, in 1775 in massachusetts, they had anonymous names, evangelists and massachusetts. daniel leonard, a loyalist, raises the question of the possibility of the congress becoming tyrannical. and he warns adams of putting too much stock in it because it can act in an oppressive way. and adams says that's just crazy. the people cannot tyrannyize themselves. ten years later by 1785, lots of the founders were no longer so confident of this fact that a democratic despotism is a contradiction in terms. and one of the major issues that james madison, as rick knows better than i, is --

>> no, i don't. >> -- is his effort to deal with this problem, as he put it, and he knows that there's a problem with the articles of confederation. but that is not his primary focus. his primary focus is on what's happening in the states. and he writes a very important essay called vices of the political system of the united states. a working paper that lies behind his plans for the convention in philadelphia. and what he points out is that these state legislatures are running wild. and he focuses on the mulitplicity, the mutability, and the injustice of state laws. there are more state laws passed since the american revolution in 1776. he says than in the entire colonial period. it was an extraordinary

proliferation of statutes. first of all, you had annual elections of these legislatures which was new outside of new england. you had, in some cases, 60% turnover of these annual elections. so every new set of politicians comes in, they want their own laws. so you have this mulitplicity, mutability, which means the laws are all crazy. nobody knows what the law is. the judges are going crazy because the laws are being changed so rapidly, and then they're unjust. and what madison meant by that was they were hurting creditors. inflation, the printing of paper money. and he wants to solve this problem. but how do you do it? how do you limit a majority without doing violence to the basic principle of democracy? or republicanism, as he used it? and that is a major problem. and that, i think, is what we're facing or the people in the arab spring are facing. when you think about it, those coptic christians which were minority in egypt, benefit from the authoritarian government of mubarak. you remove that authority, and minorities are in trouble.

how do you protect them? and still maintain majority rule? that is a major issue that i don't think the arabs have faced up to and we'll have to see how it plays out. but that's what madison had to deal with. and he was trying to work out what he called a republican remedy for republican ills. now, there is a solution that some others of his colleagues thought, let's go back to monarchy. let's go back to authoritarian government. that is a solution. madison did not want to go down that path. and that -- i think that's what makes the 1780s so crucial, i think the most important decade in our history. because out of it comes the constitution and a whole new appreciation of the, if you will, the dark side of democracy, that it can be dangerous if majorities are allowed to run free. >> now, how serious -- you know, you read about talk of monarchy, constitutional convention, morris saying we'd better take a

king now while we can get one, while he would accept our offer. but it's a secondhand story. i think it's like james monroe tells someone, and he heard it from someone else. so how real was the temptation, do you think? >> i think it was a serious threat. i think lots of people talked about it. lots of people thought that monarchy was in the cards. the natural -- the notion of the natural flow of a development of a government was from simple to more complex. and at some point, they all assumed that america would sooner or later have to have a monarchy. we didn't go that way. but that was counter to the notion of how the states developed. to give you one anecdote which i think helps explain the culture at the time, when washington was elected president, he is going

to write up his inaugural address. and so he asks -- i think it's david humphries, assistant, dru up an address for me. and he works it out. and he has in that address an apology. he said, look. my fellow american citizens, you don't have to fear me. i have no heirs. there can be no monarchy developing from my presidency. and he goes on with this vein of warning against -- this is not going to happen as long as i'm president. well, madison, he asked madison to look at the draft. and madison says, take that out. you can't do that. you can't write that. but the fact that he thought that, the notion of monarchy was so much in the air, it was so much predicted by so many people that washington felt he had to make this kind of statement. i think that suggests that we ought to take seriously the threat of monarchy.

now, there were too many people like madison who were confirmed republicans for this to develop. but the notion that john adams made as president of the senate that we have to have a distinguished title for george washington. they debated that for a month. and then finally issued -- the senate did -- i think it said his highness and protector of their liberties. and madison, in the house, says that's crazy. we'll just throw that out and we'll call him mr. president. but the fact that people thought seriously of these kinds of royal titles, and washington himself conducted himself as president, he wanted to bring dignity to the office. and so he had levys, weekly levys, which were modelled on those held by george iii, by the english monarchs. and of course, in some sense, we do have an elected monarch as president, which is that's what jefferson thought we had. like the polish king.

he's elected for a few years. they thought washington would serve for life. and when he died, then the vice president would take over and he would serve for life and so on. that's how people thought the office would proceed. now, it turned out differently because washington was desperate to get out of -- get back to mt. vernon. and that was wonderful for our system, that he could surrender power. >> he was the first president to hate his second term. followed by all the others. >> right. exactly. >> and of course of the first five presidents, the only one to have a son, one of his sons became the sixth president. >> that's right. think about that. they all had daughters or no children, as madison, and yet the one who did have a son was john adams, and that son became president. i think lots of people thought that we could go in that direction. and, of course, many people accused andrew jackson of being a king, king andrew, and that's why the wigs took the title they did.

the presidency, as you know, is a very powerful office. and article 2 is so vague that the office can be stretched to extraordinary lengths, if one wants to do it. and wartime conditions were exactly what madison and jefferson feared. because those are the conditions under which executive authority expands. and that's why they feared war so deeply. >> of course, then there's that wonderful letter of hamilton's when the deadlock in 1800 is before the house, and there's some federalists who are thinking, let's put burr in the presidency. and hamilton was saying no, no, don't do that. but one of his arguments is that based on his judgment of jefferson, i think the phrase is he'll want to come into a good estate. i think that's psychologically

shrewd, despite his rhetoric, he'll enjoy those powers once he gets them. >> jefferson had -- burr had no principles whatsoever. jefferson, he said, has a modicum of principles. >> good enough. we have a had a revival for 15 years or so. you make the pont in one of your essays that our relationship to the founders is similar in some ways to the founders' relationship to the romans. to the classical world, primarily the romans. and what does that mean? what is our relationship? what was theirs to their predecessor? >> well, i first would say, that may be an exaggeration. i think they looked back to the roman hero, cicero. john adams was fascinated by cicero. they had models of leadership, of examples of disinterested virtuous behavior. they held up the roman model.

but, of course, rome died. and so they're frightened, they don't want to go that way. so that was always a problem. how do you prevent your state from regenerating? the common assumption was that states were like human beings. they were born. they grew up. they matured. and they died. and so how do you hold off that natural process as much as possible? that assessment. but i think our relationship to these founders is much closer. i didn't mention this in the book, but i came across more recently a quotation from lincoln in a speech of 1859 where he talks about we americans and our connection to these founders. and i was thinking, of course, there's been a lot of criticism of the tea party because they seem to have become one with the founders. and the academics have mocked this kind of connection with the founders as if we can connect up with people 200 years in the

past. but lincoln felt there was a connection. a real connection. he says, we are one with them. he says, they are flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. we have an electric core that connects us to them. and when you think about it, i think there's some truth to that, that we get our bearings from these founders. not that in some sense they're a model of political behavior, but they were divisive. they were as confused as we are about their own times. but i think what they didn't do was hold up an ideal -- all of our ideals come out of that revolution that they created. equality, liberty, constitutionalism. the institutions by which we govern ourselves. they created. however confusedly they did that, we look back to them for some sense of who we are. we reaffirm ourselves. because we're not a nation in the ordinary sense of the term. there's no american ethnicity. now especially. we don't have that kind of