had been newly entrusted with powers by the recently ratified constitution. and with these powers, he negotiated this peace treaty with the delegation of chiefs that represented some of the creek indians. this treaty would be contested later on, but it was viewed as legitimate by the president and his administration. now, the creek indians were the most powerful indian tribes of the southeast with a group of over 10,000 warriors. for decades the creek indians had managed to successfully play the various european powers off against one another and to resist defeat. and the creek held the balance of power in the region up until the revolutionary war. president washington understood that the united states having just fought a war of independence was in no shape to take them on. president washington and members of his administration then, the treaty with the creek, this treaty of 1790 represented a major achievement. it freed the united states up

from continued conflict in the southeast so that the nations army could instead focus its energies on subduing the indian tribes of the ohio river, north of the ohio river in an effort to expand the nations borders further west. now, this treaty that was negotiated in 1790, the treaty of new york, it was celebrated by many, many americans, most americans thought this was a very good idea. but there were some who didn't. and many of those who did not agree with it were georgiaens. particularly those men who lived in this area in the appalachians. now, you remember we talked about the proclamation of 1763 which had drawn the line down the appalachian mountains and mandated that settlers could not move to the western side of the appalachians. well, some of the folks who were most in favor of creating a new nation so they could push west of the appalachians were indeed these same farmers from georgia.

now, in exchange for peace, president washington had given up claims to land that were included in georgia's charter. so, when we signed the treaty in 1790, what he did was give away this land that georgiaens believed that was actually their's. even though they didn't control any of it, they felt it was their's. many white georgiaens felt betrayed by the president's actions. some called into question his right to do it in the first place. in the 1780s prior to the ratification of constitution, georgia state government completed several treaties with the creek and cherokee indians in the 1780s in which they made all sorts of land sessions. many of these treaties were done under fraudulent terms around fraudulent conditions. what happened with the

ratification of the congress is that the federal government took over the power to negotiate with indians. so those treaties that had been made between georgia and the creek and georgia and the cherokee were nullified. they meant nothing. so the georgiaens found that this federal government now, not only was it siding with the indians in their mind, it was also nullifying land sessions that they had received, which, of course, made them angry. they were incensed that the president validated these agreements and restricted their settlement to the earlier boundaries east of the oconee river. now, this is a picture of what georgia looked like in 1790. all this land that we usually think of as being georgia was actually in the hands of the native americans. and what we see is that there was a line. and this line that you see represented the border. what the rebels wanted to do was cross over the border. it's actually a river, the oconee river. they wanted to cross over the river and take possession of

land that was -- that general washington or president washington excuse me had ensured would remain in the hands of the creek indians as a result of the treaty of 1790. now, the georgiaens had intended to use this land that was presently labelled as indian land. they wanted to provide war bounties that had served during the state militia during the war. without access to this land they were unable to fulfill its obligations and soldiers were forced to wait. their state, as i said, had been one of the first to ratify the constitution. they supported it specifically because they thought it would benefit themselves. now, instead of benefitting themselves they found that their participation with the constitution was coming back to haunt them. instead of protecting them against the indians it was enabling the federal governments to prechbtd them from coming on

to indian lands. they were quite alarmed at what had taken place. of all the georgiaens it was the residents of the back country who were most upset at the treaty of new york and the federal government's actions. they lashed out at the decision and even began to question whether they wanted to remain citizens of a nation that they felt had abandoned them in their time of need. thousands of settlers chose to ignore the terms of treaty and poured across the boundary, across the oconee river to the creek indians land. this prompted creek warriors to attack. and the result was frequent bloodshed and violence as the two groups launched raid after raid after counterraid. as growing numbers of settlers suffered at the hands of creek warriors, the settlers looked to the federal government for protection but none was forthcoming. in fact, the secretary of war at the time, a man named henry knox, what he believed, he

viewed the settlers, in fact, the white settlers as the biggest impediment to peace. they didn't view the indians as being the problem. the settlers who kept treszing, pushing the boundary. they were the ones to worry about. as a result, the settlers in georgia grew disillusioned with president washington and the federal authorities. now, in georgia, the leader of this movement, the resistance, the leader of this resistance was a man named elijah clark. he was a revolutionary veteran, a hero during the american war of independence. and after he had returned home, but he had continued to engage in the defense of his beloved georgia. he became a militia leader. a brigadier general in the militia and he called for troops and expected some support from the federal government. but he, like others, grew disillusioned with what was taking place. and eventually in early 1793 he

gave up his commission in the georgia militia. he said he didn't want to be part of it. instead, what he did was join the french government. he became part of the french army. he resigned for a commission in the french army. now, there was a french official traveling through the back country of south carolina and georgia trying to drum up support among these alienated back country settlers who were so angry at washington and the federal government. they tried to drum up support to get them to go travel back down from fla florida -- from georgia but they wanted to do was travel back down from georgia. they were going to travel from georgia to -- let's go back one more. -- they were going to travel along the line of georgia and they were going to go to florida where they were going to launch an expedition to take over

florida with the support of the french. this is like a pie in the sky kind of raid. but this was enough for general elijah clark, who was this leader, this hero within the revolutionary -- with the revolutionary war. he was a hero in the aftermath as they fought against the indians, but here he was willing to leave his state and leave his country to take a chance on invading france in the summer of 1794, the spring of 1794 he along with french support was going to invade, excuse me, florida and take over spanish florida. well, when he and all the men he had mansiaged to mobilize, they worked their way through to get to florida. but when they got there, they realized that the french were no longer participating. changes had taken place and the french were no longer going to support this enterprise. so he had hundreds of men with him there waiting to engage in this attack and they didn't know they were mad as hell and so what they decided to do was just travel back, travel back to where they came from. way further up in the northern counties.

but they stayed on the indian side of the river. they stayed on the western side of the oconee. not coming into the american side. when they got up far enough across from where many of them lived in places like green county and washington county, what they did was just set up shop and they began to build fortifications. they decided that they were going to create something new. they had had enough of the united states and they decided at this point to build a new republic. the trans-oconee republic. they built up fortifications. they started luring other men across the border. and hundreds came to join them. he had a lot of support from the back country. lot of back country residents were quite pleased with what he was doing, even if they did not join him. but ultimately his venture failed. now, as he set to work, clark was the leader and he began building, as i said, this trans-oconee republic. in addition to the fortifications, they also began work on a constitution so this little fledgling entity had a

constitution, it created a committee of safety and it started planning elections. now, we laugh at this. we think what a crazy affair. what are you thinking, you little tiny fledgling colony, what are you going to do? but we have to remember at this time, america was this radical experiment and it was unclear that america was going to survive, that the united states was going to make it. this was another fledgling experiment. for people like elijah clark or mcfarland, what they thought was this is legitimate. i have had enough problems with the government i helped to create. i'm therefore going to leave and take myself elsewhere where i can create something new and tap into those same revolutionary impulses that led to the revolution but seemed to have been dill luted by the conservative backlash that followed after the revolution. now, in 1794 in the may of 1794 is when it began and lasted until september of 1794. over the course of this period

of time, what we see is that president washington found out about what was taking place and immediately tried to deal with it. he sent orders to the governor in georgia. but the governor didn't act right away. he wasn't sure he had the power to actually do it because there was so much support for these back country rebels. instead he waited and waited and eventually he had to act because washington pushed him so hard. eventually he sent troops into the back country. these are militia men from the state and the soldiers managed to convince the men who had joined the trans-oconee republic to give up and come back across the oconee river and go home. none of the men were ever charged or convicted of any sort of crime. these are men who created -- they committed a treesen, but everything was smoothed over. they came back over and they pretended it didn't happen. the militia men destroyed all the fortifications, they burnt it all up and they just proceeded as though nothing had

ever happened. now, these two rebellions the whiskey rebellion and the trans-oconee republic, they were both part of a wave of opposition to the federalist party and its rule that took root in the mid 1790s. both represented efforts by americans to secure their own visions of an american revolution. which they believed had been undermined by the federal government. in addition to conflicts over the limits of federal authority, americans also sharply divided over diplomacy. now, one key division to emerge over this period of time was over the french revolution. the french revolution broke out in 1789 and americans for the most part were thrilled. it proved, it vindicated their notion they created something superior a new political system. and they could point to france where it seemed to take root and spread. so they felt very good about themselves. most americans, there was a consensus on it. but in the early 1790s what happened in france is that the

revolution became far more violent and became more politically radical. now, what accompanied this was the executions of thousands of aristocrats and other opponents of the french revolution. this included king louis the xvi and his wife. they killed thousands of aristocrats and opponents of the revolution but they also killed significant numbers of just folks who were opposed to it and the king and queen. we see reactions in the united states splinter. for some folks, especially the federalists, these men who were part of the administration, washington's administration, men like alexander hamilton, they were horrified by what they saw. absolutely horrified by what they saw in france. it proved that revolution, republics needed to be minded. you couldn't just let people take hold of the political system. they had to be monitored. the republic, the federalists

argued needed to be in charge. the best men needed to be in charge of the republic. they saw this as democracy run amok. but on the other hand, you had a whole different group of people, many not federalists, many were opponents of the federalists but were also in favor of the french revolution. they didn't focus on the violence, they didn't focus on the negative aspects, they saw the political possibilities. people had previously had no control were having a much greater say in the political process and that's what they focussed in on. they thought about their own american revolution and extent to which it had been compromised in their mind. we think about the men who had played such a role in calling for a radical overhaul of the political process and system and yet it seemed like in many ways it had returned to the status quo before the war. so, they looked at the war in a very different -- the revolution

in a very different way. many of these folks were farmers, small farmers. so a very different group. and these folks tended to hang out and would meet in democratic republican societies. and these are groups that emerged over the course of the french revolution largely as a result of the controversy. what we see is that these groups would continue to grow. now, initially americans had believed there was no place for politics, no place for parties in american politics. they didn't believe in factions. they believed it would corrupt the system. the constitution framers believed it would corrupt the system. they didn't plan for it. but by the 1790s what had emerged were ideological differences over what the revolution meant and the future of the revolution. and these ideal logical divisions deepened into the creation of the party system, the first party system, which emerges at this time. on the one hand, you had the

federalists who were backed by george washington, but then you had the emergence of the another group, the republican party, not the republican party of today but the republican party that was backed in large part by thomas jefferson, who called for a very different vision of what society should be like. one that took into consideration the work of the small men, whether it was yeoman agriculturalist or artisans. but what you see emerges in the 1790s are distinct differences over what the revolution should look like. this political unrest, which began before the revolution continued during the revolution and would continue to manifest itself in the 1790s and after world. what is essential to remember, however, is that this unrest, these divisions were a part of the process from the get-go. all right, folks. good luck on your exams. and i will see you next monday.

more now from our lectures in history series with university of california profession sor, alan taylor. he talks about the amount of alcohol consumed by americans and how the tem presence movement came about in the 1830s when alcohol consumption was at its highest level in the nation's history. this is 50 minutes. okay. now, we've been talking in this class about the american republic, which is a radical experiment for its time. there were very few republics in the world. and so this is a risky venture because it expects a lot of people. in a monarchy, the duty of the people is essentially to obey. but in a republic, the citizens must participate. they need to vote.

they should follow issues. they should be involved in campaigns. and so a republic asks much more of people. and this is the foundational generation for this american republic. and yet this is also the peak period for alcoholic consumption in america. so there is this paradox in that this is a period where the political thinking, the political ie deology said that we need an eelectorate with virtue. an elek rat where the people are committed to the well being, to the common good of the country. and should be willing to set aside their self interest to advance that common good. that's the concept of virtue. and yet this is a period when people are also drinking as never before. and you can see the statistics here that historians have come

up with. that in 1790 the per capita alcohol consumption in the united states in the equivalent of gallons of 90 proof alcohol -- now, what does 90 proof mean? everybody knows the answer to that. don't they? i ask you about alexander hamilton's fiscal policy and there are crickets in here. but i ask what 90 proof is and half the class knows the answer to that, 45% alcohol. so, per capita, that's also a term, what does per capita mean? yeah. >> per person. >> okay. so in the u.s. population, if we say per capita, that includes women and children including newborn infants. so we're taking the whole quantity of alcohol apparently consumed in 1790 and dividing it

by the total population and we get 3.5 gallons per person. now, i think we can conclude that men were drinking most of this, were drinking more than the infants. and were probably drinking much more than the women were. so, we can assume that men's consumption was probably on the order of 16 gallons per year of the equivalent of the 90 proof alcohol. now, that is higher than it was previously during the colonial era, and yet it will go up. you see, by 1830, it's up to 4 gallons per capita in u.s. so, this is a period of peak consumption of alcohol in american history. now, you're wondering how you measure up. well, the last statistics that i have is for the year 2007 and it shows that alcohol consumption

in this country is half of what it used to be. and yet there's plenty of evidence that alcohol can be for much of the american population still a problem. okay. so, we've talked about the extent of drinking. we need to talk about what it was that early americans were drinking. so here are the options. you have to think about what were gentlemen drinking and what were common people drinking. of these options up here, what did gentlemen of the early republic prefer? gentlemen like john marshall? >> madiro, which is that strong, imported wine. it's pretty expensive, has a punch but not nearly as powerful as what common people preferred.

of the options there, what did common people prefer? you're thinking beer because you're thinking in your own time. what do you think of those choices would be the most popular for common men in america of 1830? >> whiskey. >> whiskey, far and away. remember we talked about the whiskey rebellion, how people were upset about the federal government putting a tax on whiskey because that really hit home. that was a preferred item of consumption. now, that's a good question, why did they drink so much whiskey and very little beer? well, lot of it has to do with technology. go ahead [ inaudible question ] >> it has a warming effect, more so than beer. that's important because lots of people working out doors. [ inaudible question ] >> it doesn't spoil as easily. now, there is no refrigeration

in the early republic. you can't go to your refrigerator and get a nice, cold beer. you're going to drink a beer, it has to be freshly made and you have to drink it prettily quickly before it goes bad. now, people are moving around a lot, so they like something that's portable, something they can put in a flask and stick in their pocket. and whiskey is perfect for that. and it will keep for a very long time. so people drank a lot of whiskey and very little beer. and wine they mostly drank these very strong wines like madeira but wine drinking was a femme none of gentlemen rather than of common people. so, foreigners comments on the very great extent of drinking in thedidididów early republic. one english visitor said that americans were, quote, certainly not as sober as the french or germans but perhaps about on the

level with the irish. and americans recognize their own heavy drinking. john adams found it, quote, mortifying that we americans should exceed all over people in the world in this degrading, beastly vice of intemperance, end quote. intemperance meant drunkenness in the language of the time. george washington thought that alcohol was, quote, the reign of half the workmen in this country, end quote. but it's not just workmen. it's also gentlemen. for example, in 1790, the governor of new york gave a public dinner attended by fellow gentlemen. there was 120 gentlemen attending and they consumed 135 bottles of madeira.

36 bottles of port. 60 bottles of beer. these would be bottles the same size as a wine bottle. so the rung total for those of you keeping score, 135 bottles of madeira, 36 of port, 60 bottles of rum and this was at one public dinner. partly the drinking is so heavy at these political banquets because they're offering toasts to almost everything. there would be a toast to the united states. a toast to the constitution. a toast to the heroes of the revolution. a toast to the president. a toast to the vice president. a toast to the american fair, by which they meant the women who were not attending the banquet. there would also be a toast often for every single state in the union. now, that's quite a challenge when you're just at 13 states, but they keep adding stating to

the union. indeed, i think this is one of their prime incentives for adding states to the union. let's let in kentucky. that will be another toast at the next banquet. and people are drinking everywhere and on all occasions. they drank at home and they drank at work. they drank at taverns. they drank at play. they drank for pleasure. and they drank to numb pain. they drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn. it was standard for many men to begin the day with what was called an eye opener, which was a shot of whiskey. and then to continue through the rest of the day. a traveler declared, quote, americans can do nothing without a drink. if you make acquaintance, you drink. if you close a bargain, you drink. they kwaurl in their drink and they make it up with a drink.

they drink because it is hot. they drink because it is cold. if successful in elections, they drink and rejoice. if not, they drink and swear. end quote. so, now we've got a pattern. so we've got something that we need to explain. we have to address the why question. why is it that americans are drinking so much in this period of american history? what explanations would you want to put on the table for this? yes. >> maybe the water quality wasn't so good. >> water quality, poor water quality and that's certainly true. there was almost nothing in the way of public purified water. which we take for granted today. how did you get your water in the early republic? you went to the well and got it. even in the cities.

and in the cities you can imagine just how filthy the well water would get or if you're drawing water out of a river or out of a stream because they also double as se we ares. so drinking the water was not a popular option. what else would you put for an explanation? yes. >> is it because the cost of alcohol during that time is not very expensive? >> to say the least it's very cheap. it's the cheapest in all the world. now, why do you suppose alcohol would be so cheap in the united states? yes. >> production methods or importing is a lot cheaper. >> okay. you think they're mostly importing their alcohol or consuming domestically produced alcohol? mostly. madeira is imported but what about whiskey. what is whiskey made from? grain. and what do americans grow a ton of, grain. they're the number one grain producing country in the world.

it's an agricultural country. they have a lot of surplus grain. and often the grain growers are at a distance from market. say they're in western pennsylvania and they have got to get their produce over the mountains to market in philadelphia. you want something that's more portable and higher value per volume. and so distilling your corn crop into whiskey makes it much more marketable in the east. so, there is more whiskey being produced in the united states than in any other country in the world. when you've got a big supply, it means the price is going to be low. another factor is that governments didn't tax whiskey. you remember what happened when the federal government tried to tax whiskey. it didn't go well. now, if any of you want to rush out and buy a bottle of whiskey right after this lecture, you're

going to find it's pretty expensive. and you're going to find that most of the cost of that whiskey comes in the form of federal and state taxes. so, in the 20th century, governments got in the habit of levying taxes on whiskey and got away with it. but that wasn't the case in the early 19th century. so you had a very common product with virtually no taxation on it and that meant it was cheap and it was cheaper to get drunk in america than in any other country in the world. and many americans thought that was their primary liberty. so, we have bad water, what about drinking other things? what about drinking soda? or drinking juices, were those options? >> sell zer did not exist. >> rare. >> fruit juices again, you have the refrigeration problem.

so people might drink some juice right away during harvest season, but there's no way to store it except to turn it into alcohol. so you would turn apple juice into a hard cider or you would turn pear juice into a pear brandy. but there's very little to drink in america that's not alcoholic other than water and the water was bad. when they asked one new yorker what he thought about the local water, he said, quote, it's very good for navigation. in other words, you can sail on it but you don't want to drink it. okay. so we have the bad water. we have the fact that whiskey is quite cheap. any other explanations that you can think of for why people drink so much in this period of time? yes. >> being drunk makes you feel better about whatever is happening in your life. >> certainly it does.

okay. in the short term. so, there are stresses in this society. it's a very competitive society in terms of people seeking to make money and not everybody is going to succeed. there will be a fair share of failures. and so just the stress of this more competitive society is going to lead a lot of people to drink to console themselves or to drink to celebrate that they're successful. any other things that you can think of? yes. >> going back to the domestic production, the cost of transportation between out west and the cities of the east was a lot cheaper. >> okay. transportations costs are going down and transportations is being improved, particularly in this period of time with the steamboat. but also early canals, such as the eerie canal which was completed in 1825. so that's helping to lower the

cost of whiskey in the east when that whiskey is being brought from the west. now, let me also suggest to you that the high geographic mobility of americans contributes to this. that americans are moving around in pursuit of economic opportunity, not always finding it. and when they do move around, they're trying to form new social bonds with people. and they often found it easier to share a drink with some new acquaintance, to try to get to know them. and so almost every social occasion featured drinking. every corn husking, barn raising, funeral, marriage, birth called for alcohol. one farmer remembered a country funeral in maine.

quote, the minister could not stand to preach without holding on by the side of the door. the bearers could not walk straight or the mourners keep in line of procession. yet it was not noticed in those times, end quote. now, the same man recalled the local wedding. quote, we all took so freely of the good cheer that the minister forgot his verses. so after trying several kinds of poetry and ditties, he gave it up and said to the couple, you may consider yourselves married and i will come out some other day and finish the ceremony. now, these were stories that were told during the 1830s looking back on this earlier time, of very heavy drinking. now, another factor is what americans ate. what do you suppose the diet was very heavy on in this period of

time? lot of health food? no. what do you suppose people ate massive quantities of? meat. now, we come to the refrigeration issue. could you go to the refrigerator and pull out a steak? no. were there any grocery stores to go to? no. so, how did you preserve meat at that time? you salt it or you smoke it. in either case, if you eat a lot of that, you're going to be very thirsty. and then you're going to face the choice, water or whiskey and most americans will choose the whiskey. there was a belief that after you've had a heavy meal, heavy and salted or smoked meat that you need alcohol to settle your stomach. now, americans were notorious for eating massive quantities of food. and eating it as quickly as

possible. european visitors were just astonished. they would bring stopwatches to time american meals and they would just marvel to see these huge quantities of hams and beefsteak and bacon being bolted down in five minutes and then of course they have to settle their stomachs and it's with whiskey. one visitor noted, quote, as soon as food is set on the table, they fall upon it like wolves in an unguarded heard. yes. >> do they get a lot of alcohol poisoning? >> we're going to come to problems. i promise that. we're going to come down to those because none of this is going to be without problems. and we're going to talk about social consequences. but in terms of causes, i also want to talk about the nature of

work. there was the belief that alcohol helped people work outdoors. it helped them deal with extremes of temperature, either very hot or very cold. helped them cope with it raining or snowing. now, did most americans work outdoors or indoors at that time? >> outdoors. >> outdoors because what sorts of jobs did they have? they're farmers overwhelmingly. that's the number one occupation in america. 80%. then other common -- relatively few americans worked indoors at desk jobs. and so if you believe that this helps you cope with the weather outside, you're going to be drinking on the job. and even people who worked in

shops, let's say as black smiths or shoe makers, they also drank during the job. and the belief was that it helped people do their daily work. and so it was a common practice, it was almost universal that employers would provide alcohol. if you were a farmer and you hired farm laborers, those la r laborers expected that in addition to the pay you were going to give them that you were going to feed them a meal and provide them with alcohol so they could keep working. if you went into a shoe maker's shop, it would be the same story. the master would provide alcohol. it would be a bond between the master and the journeyman or the apprentice and it would keep the work going on. question? t -6 slaves? >> no. the slaves are the exception to this. with the exception during harvest season. so it's a special bonus to get slaves to work harder during say

the cotton harvest or the tobacco harvest by providing them alcohol at that season. but otherwise, masters are trying to deny alcohol to their slaves. but slaves can see the free people all around them drinking very heavily. so it becomes a goal to try to steal alcohol and share it with your friends in the slave quarters as an act of defiance. as a way to say, we're just as good as free people and we ought to be able to drink, too. now, in the military, the army and the navy had to provide alcohol. george washington's army often ran out of food for long stretches of time. his army never ran out of alcohol. and washington understood, as did all other commanders, that if you wanted to keep men in the ranks, the number one thing you could do, even better than paying them, was to provide alcohol everyday. same thing in the navy.

now we're going to see that this is going to start to change during the 1830s and it's going to produce a great deal of strain in social relationships between employers and the employees when employers try to cut off the providing of alcohol. alcohol. elections promoted alcoholic consumption. we might like to think that people would be sober when they are making their very important political decisions but in the early republic, most voters were not sober when this happened. indeed, the friends of different candidates would be at the polling places and they would have flasks of whiskey with them and they would be up slapping people on the back and offering free whiskey and encouraging them to cast their vote for the candidate that was providing them with the alcohol. it was -- so for example, a traveler reported quote, an

election in kentucky lasts three days. during that period whiskey and apple toddy flow through our cities and villages like the uphradiies through ancient babylon. a number of runner were busily employed driving voters. now today there are laws if you're promoting a candidate you have to be a certain distance from the polling place and you're not allowed to be pressing alcohol on potential voters but there were no such laws in the early republic. george washington was one of the most successful politicians of his time in virginia because he understood a practice known as treating which is that a candidate should host a barbecue in the run up to the election, invite all of the voters of the

county to come to his barbecue and provide them with free food, these heaping slabs of smokes and salted meat and all the alcohol they could drink. now, the belief at the time was that a candidate that is so generous is proving that he's accessible to common people. he's not some sort of stuck up, distant arift oe krat. washington was a very dignified man who would not show up at his own barbecue but he would have friends who would host this and washington pays the bill. he's not alone in doing this. almost everyone who runs for office in the early republic, particularly in the south would do this. one of his more successful campaigns, washington served 144 gallons of alcohol to 307

voters. what about the politician who develops principals and decides he's not going to serve alcohol in a campaign? well, there was a rare example of this. his name was james madison. as a young politician in virginia, he refused to treat the virginia voters. he deemed the practice quote inconsistent with the purity of moral and republic principals, end quote. how do you suppose james madison did in his campaign. he went down in defeat. the next time he ran for office, he resumed treating the voters and he won. okay. so we've explored the reasons behind this very heavy drinking in america of this time. we have to consider what do you suppose the social consequences were of this level of alcohol

consumption, particularly by men? what would be some of the problems you would find? >> much more domestic violence, particularly of men hitting wives, hitting children. that's a problem. yes. >> more violence in general. >> more violence in general out there in the taverns, you're surrounded by fellow drunks. you start arguing about politics. you start arguing about the weather. you start arguing about the color of people's eyes and a brawl breaks out so there is that. >> bad decisions made. >> bad decisions made in terms of -- >> political. >> political decisions. we can sometime wonder about some of the zipdecisions being e by voters given the state that they were in when they go to the polling place. that's why we now have laws saying it's not a good idea to get people drunk just before they go to vote. other consequences you might think of, yes.

>> health problems. >> health problems. this is a level of alcohol consumption that can invite health problems. we're not talking about people taking an occasional drink at a meal, we're talking about people drinking all day long, hard stuff. now not all americans are doing that but among american men, a majority of them were doing that in this period of time. that's going to take a toll on people after a while. for some people the toll will start pretty quickly because some people really don't have the capacity for this but they feel pressured to do it because that's what everybody around them is doing. any other problems you can think of, yes. >> bad decisions in the work place. >> in the work place. this is going to become much more of a problem let's say when you add machines to the work place. it's one thing if you're making a shoe by hand but what if

you're making a shoe with the help of machinery and you've had too much to drink? you can start to lose fingers and hands and arms pretty quickly. employers didn't like that because it messes up the machines. they spent good money for those machines. what were you going to say. >> i'm guessing that production also goes down if you're more drunk you're not as coordinated. >> you're not as coordinated so once you got machines then the level of production is more noticeable to the employer because the job of the employee is to keep pace with the machine of the. so setting a brisker pace than a lot of people were used to working. now if you're drinking you can't keep up with the machine than the shoes will come out all screwy because you didn't as the worker do your part in the work process. this is going to be particularly of concern to the people who are

organizing new work places, particularly factories. yes. >> also the economic slow down because the people who are drunk don't work so hard. >> that's right. employers in general want to get more work out of people because they are engaged in a competitive marketplace. so if your competitor manages to reduce the drinking by his workers and you don't, who is it that's going to be more successful in selling the product for producing more product? it will be your competitor and not you and you may go out of business. yes. >> military consequences because the navy and the military are drinking so much they might lose battles because of that. >> it might be but the good thing for the american military is the other militaries were also drinking. right? so the military is going to be the last element of american society to change. they are going to be continuing to provide alcohol to the

soldiers through the civil war. other questions or comments. yes. >> is there a drinking age? >> no drinking age at that time. so you could come in as a 6-year-old and if you had the money they would sell you a drink. okay. well this is good. you've covered the essential elements. if you can think about it, it's heavy level of drinking that's going up. it's leading some americans to question it because of these different social problems. women in particular. they are not drinking as much as the men but they are bearing many of the negative consequences. when they give consequences, poverty. if your husband is drinking up his wages, then there's not going to be enough food or decent clothing for the children

and for the wife at home. so women are becoming very concerned that a heavy level of alcohol consumption is leading to high levels of domestic abuse and it is impoverishing many families. we talked about this concept of republican motherhood where women feel they have an obligation to teach virtue to their children. it's pretty hard to teet virtue in a household where the primary male example is drunk a lot of the time. so women would say, our responsibilities as rooepublica mothers means we ought to be heard in the political sphere on issues that affect our household. the number one negative issue affecting our households is a high level of alcohol

consumption. really the two strands of culture which are coming together, we could say really three strands. one this idea of republican motherhood. another strand is evangelical religion. the united states is primarily a protistant country at that time. the most dominate form is ev evangelical churches are increasingly coming to the belief that drinking any alcohol is a sin. it leads people to other sins. so if you are to perfect your moral behavior than the convert to your faith must stop drinking. now earlier in the colonial

period, churches had tried to reduce drinking a little bit but they hadn't really pushed on it. now you get churches pushing very hard especially in the period after 1830. so you've got republican motherhood is one strand of influence. you've got e57ing evangelical as another strand. employers were in a more competitive marketplace. they didn't want to be spending their own money buying drinks for their workers when that is just complicating and reducing prouk productivity. >> would you say that this heavy alcohol consumption deepened the divide between domestic sphere and public sphere or connected it. >> it's deepened it that the women are feeling that the public sphere particularly all of this public drinking at elections is causing a problem

for them in their households. so they say if we're going to protect our sphere, this domestic sphere we need to have a whole lot less drinking in the public sphere. so if they succeed in this temperance movement and the public sphere becomes one that's much more temperant than the argument is the domestic sphere and public sphere will be in more harm ony when you have thi high level of drinking both public and private. >> wouldn't increasing the amount of alcohol go against the idea of increasing productivity because that would promote things like protests among the workers? >> well, it might but workers like to have their jobs. this is a time in which the union movement was very weak. so not all employers can get away with this but most

employers can get away with it because even where people are unionized there are other issues that are more important to them such as having better pay. so sometimes employers are improving pay a little bit at the same time that they are taking away the provision of this alcohol in the work place. now, i say sometimes. often the employer is just taking away the alcohol provision and not improving the pay but workers have to take it because they are not unionized. this is a time in the country when the government, state, and national do not recognize unions. that's a development of the 20th century. okay. so the work place is changing. now, again i want to remind you most americans stay farmers. providing alcohol so it's not so much that the work place is changing for farmers, it's that a lot of farmers are becoming

evangelical christians and they want to reduce alcohol consumption because it's in their conviction, the moral thing to do. some employers are not only eliminating the alcohol they provide in the work place, they are also telling their workers, don't you bring your own flask in here. no more drinking on the job. some employers go even farther where they can gaet away with i. they say if you really want to keep your job here i'd like you to go to the local e57ivangelic church and take a pledge of temperance and preferably one of abstinence now this means of alcohol. now, a lot of workers would say no way but workers concerned about keeping their job would say okay, i'll see you on church on sunday. so this is developing attention.

not all workers want to go along with what their employers want them to do in terms of changing their behavior not simply in the work place but also in their leisurely time. some workers go along with it. some don't. it also becomes a class divide. now which social class do you think is going to be pushing hardest for temperance? >> upper. >> well, yeah. the people who will be owning these workshops or owning farms. so what class who we call that. middle class and wealth we are people. the people who would be most desid deresistant would be the people who feel that they most need alcohol to cope with their hard lives. that would be working people. i'm talking about a general

pattern. you will find plenty of working men who joined temperance groups because they wanted to get better control of their lives. i don't want you to go away from this thinking all workers wanted to get drunk. that's not true. there were many workers who cared about temperance but the people who cared most deeply about temperance were middle class people. any questions so far? so i talked about -- there's something of a gender divide. women care very deeply about temperance. most of the resistance to it would be male. it's a class divide. much stronger among middle class people than working place people. there's also an ethnic divide. people who are already born in the united states were more prone to embrace the temperance movement than immigrants. immigrants often felt this was a form of cultural warfare.

there's also a religion divide. many of the immigrants to america were catholics. they didn't quite see the same problem with alcohol that proddist ants were identifying. they felt that attempts to reduce their alcohol consumption was a way of attacking their ethnicity and faith. if you wanted to find the setting where you would find probably the greatest commitment to preserving traditional customs of drinking it would be in neighborhoods that would have a large number of immigrants, relatively poor, often catholic. they would just say it's none of your business what we do on our own time. leave us alone. there becomes a political divide. by the 1830s and 40s, we've got a new pair of political parties. the old federalist gone.

the old jeffersonian republicans have evolved. what are the names of the parties we find in the 1830s and 1840s. the democrats and the wigs. now, the wigs drew very heavily upon those social groups that favored temperance. so the wig party made a commitment to pushing temperance because the wig party was strong in the northeast. strong among business owners. strong among evangelical christians. although women couldn't vote. if they could vote, they would have voted overwhelmingly in the north east for the wigs. the democratic party on the other hand draws support from those groups that tend to be most skeptical about temperance. immigrants, working class americans, more rural americans. so there's something of a

cultural divide that's emerging in the country that has political consequences. now the temperance movement does start to have an impact during the 1830s and 1840s. initially, it's in the form of what we call moral swasion. that's like persuasion. now for example, if you're watching television, you will see ads were there are warnings against the consequences of drunk driving. now there's certain law against drunk driving but there's also a publicity campaign that's mounted by social groups and by the government to try to persuade people to change their behavior. similar efforts to try to persuade people today to stop smoking cigarettes. that's what we call moral swasion. an attempt to persuade people to

make the choice themselves to change their behavior. temperance initially focused on moral swation and achieved some gains. it essentially became disrespectable to be a middle class person and to be a heavy drinker. middle class people start to police themself. they don't like to associate with people who are heavy drinkers. it starts to dissipate in the middle class particularly in the northeast and midwest. it persists in the working class where working class people are reinforcing more traditional behavior. temperance groups are finding that there's kind of a cap to how far they can go in achieving the reduction of drinking if they just rely on moral swasion. so the alternative is so get

localities and states to pass laws that would forbid the sale, the consumption, the production of alcohol. now, you're thinking about the famous prohibition law that congress passed in the 1920s. we're talking about an earlier period when it is not a federal issue. it's a state issue. there are a number of states now that take up this question of should they ban the production, the sale, and the consumption of alcohol? the first state to do this is the state of maine in 1851. so this first attempt at prohibition in the country was done at the state level. the very first state to try it was maine. now maine is a north eastern state. had a lot of evangelicals.

had a lot of middle class entrepreneurs. it was very strong for the wig party. so it's an ideal place to try this for the first time. during the next four years, another 12 states will adopt their own version of the maine law. all of the states were in the north. all of the new england states adopted such laws. new york adopted it and about half of the states in the midwest adopted it. did any southern state s adopt such a law? no. so we're seeing that the country is dividing over the issue of temperance and particularly over the attempt to use political prohibition to force people to change their behavior. >> i have a question.

why does the southern part of the united states not go -- not pass prohibition laws? >> this is a very good question. can anybody think of reasons why the south might be particularly reluctant to jump on board with this northern phenomena. yes. >> with the examples of a factory there's not as many in the south. >> there's not as many factories. we talked about industrial capitalism being one of the three sources. that force is particularly weak in the south. >> people in the south work outside. >> they are working outside. it's a very rural part of the country. yes. >> the town hall meetings -- >> okay. it's harder to organize social groups in the south because the population is so disbursed yes. >> you don't give alcohol to the slaves. >> so it's all for themselves. so they think of it as an

important right of being a free person is to drink all you want. do they want outsiders telling them not to? no. there's also a developing suspicion about the north and any kind of social movement that develops there. it's perceived to be some sort of dangerous fad and that northerners shouldn't be telling southerners what to do so part of it is just trying to defend traditions in the south because they don't want to do anything that's new and comes from the north. traditions of drinking suits their way of living just fine. now that's not to say there weren't southerners who favored temperance. there were. but there weren't enough of them to pass any laws. in general, southerners do not like an activist government. they don't like governments passing laws making people change their behavior. they just don't like it. they don't like it when their own states do it.

they especially don't like it if any outside government tries to do it. now, why do you suppose southerners are so sensitive about an activist government? what kind of activist by a government, that would be especially concerning to them. yes. >> the emans ipation of slaves. >> they don't want white governments to get it into their head that they can do things like mess with people's property. now, messing with tavern keeper's property or distillers property is not as bad as messing with slavery because so much was invested in that. it's a slippery slope. if a government thinks it has the right to shut down distilleries or shut down

taverns, what's to stop them from shutting down slavery? so just to be on the safe side, southerners, meaning white southerners likes to say the government that governs best is the government that governs least. so they didn't like what they were seeing in the north. these northerners using state governments to try to change people's behavior. question. >> weren't they also still mad over the protective tariffs and how they had to -- >> they are. who is it that's pushing the protective tariffs. the wigs. the same people pushing temperance. so they just don't the messengers who are the wigs. >> american history tv in prime time continues tuesday night with a look at jewish history. a hallow cost survivors personal account followed by a look at what passengers aboard the transatlantic ship the st. louis faced when leaving germany for havana cuba in an attempt to seek refuge from the nazis.

the lives of american jews during progressive era. all of that tuesday night beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on cspan 3. >> here some of the highlights for this weekend. friday at 8:00 p.m. eerastern. a look at the civil war. 6:00 p.m. eastern a technology fair. sunday, political commentator, author and former presidential candidate pat bacannon. 8:00 eastern books on hillary clinton, barack obama and edward snowden. 10:00 p.m. eastern on afterwards, the weekly standards daniel halbur and sunday morning at 10:30 we tour can as per wyoming. saturday at 6:00 p.m. the civil war. the depiction of slavery in movies and sunday on real america at 4:00 p.m., an a look

in the 1790s and alcohol con sumgts in colonial america. getting advice was so -- in the letters they wrote. william crystal read through some of those letters and applied their advice to the present day. he talked about advice from the founding fathers at the tavern museum for about an hour. >> it's a delight to be with you again. i love this place. it's so much a part of where we are, if you know the story of the american revolution, you

realized this is where general washington said good-bye to some of his principle senior officers. this was the place a week before colonel burr and hamilton faced one another in a duel and they sat next to one another. if you imagine, with all of this impending. burr was somewhat sullen. hamilton was animated and induced to sing his favorite favorite song here. the drum. which is a fascinate iing song. i love the way it ends. it's with hamilton really singing pay ons to this country and the fact this country would live forever. the tavern, an incredible place. it's fun for me to be amongst a group of people who know lot about american history.

that doesn't happen very often. i -- you all know this. the same problem. and when people find out you're interested sm history, they sort of look at you like, what's wrong3#lwith you? why can't you get a life and do something useful? but i like you have always enjoyed reading history. and quite by accident, i game a scholar performer of john adams and thep later alexander hamilton. yes, i wear a wig and tights. an unusual thing to do, but it's a great, great medium and you can get people who hate history, really involved in whatever you might sacrifice in terms of accuracy, you more than make up for in terms of audience participation and involvement. i've been to prisons and schools that feel like prisons. and it's incredible. it's just amazing how excited people get when they actually have a chance to talk to a founding, the founding member of this country.

but that's not why i'm here tonight. you heard this jennifer's introduction, my wife janie and i are coming out with a book called founder's advice. secretary ben it e et did it a number of years ago, but it was different from what we're trying to do. i have a background as ayg?z historian, but i'm married to a woman who was in business. she was in washington d.c. working for a defense contractor and had the opportunity to go to seattle to work for a small start-up company that had not yet gone public. microsoft. and when she started with microsoft, it was such a small company that they could have employee meetings in a small auditorium, a lunchroom, and she had the opportunity to listen to this man time and time again named bill gates, who didn't talk about making good products

and capturing market share. but he talked about changing the world. and i think for her, that was such a, that was such a heady experience and the experience of being in a company like that at that point in time was so remarkable she really began to take an interest in the whole idea of success. what is it? how does it happen? what do successful people have in common with the rest of us in equal measures? and so, with her background and mip, we reasoned that maybe, we might be like reeces peanut butter and find a way to merge our interests, but perhaps it's even more important than that. some of this stuff is very timeless. when you see some of the advice the founders are giving her, it's most poignant to a child or grandchild. you realize that these are,

these are the kind of insights that probably didn't go around sharing with the rest of the world. one of the definitions of secret, something shared by the initiated. in a sense, these are initiated insights. these are prime things that the older generation found useful either because they did them or failed to do them and that they wanted to give to their offspring and their children's

thought you could learn a lot more about life from the ancients than you could by reading modern thipgs. and a huge part of their education was determined by how well they knew various ancient writers. a good education in the time of someone like thomas jefferson consisted of learning ancient languages, latin and greek, you're better off if you can learn hebrew along the way and you read ancient texts, just as the original authors wrote them and the more you mastereded them, the more educated you were assumed to be. i had the opportunity to be at

the boston public library and to hold john adams' copy of cicero's orrations in my hand. every time adams read that book, it was a lifelong favorite of him, every time he read it, he wrote his name is it. his name was written six times in it. all he did throughout his life, all he read in his library is massive, he went back again and again to that original text that meant so much to him. the founders learned enormously from the ancients. not just about war and politics, by the way, have any of you read or dabbled in plu tark's lives? i bet a number of you do. that was sort of the poor man's classical education. if you didn't have the

opportunity to read all of these great ancient works, you could sit down with a translation and you could read these moral biographies of these incredibly successful people throughout ancient times and also a few as well and plutarch is very, very good at giving you the things that worked, that made their lives particularly successful and occasionally showing you you could ruin your life by doing something that wouldn't be constructive at all and the thing that's amazing is that these lessons stuck. they were incredibly important. general george washington said good-bye to his senior officers here. was called during the revolutionary war, the american fab yous. any of you know who fab yous was? the american fabiuk. and read about fabius maximus.

he was considered successful because he managed to ultimately win a war by never fighting a major pitched battle with his opponent. he avoided fighting major battles against alexander the great because he knew if he did like the other romans, he'd be defeated. so he would avoid a major encounter until he got an opportunity to strike, perhaps not decisively, but meaningfully. that was the bottle. that george washington used during our american revolution. we did not have an army that was sufficiently strong to be able to fight the british. so, we only did it well actually, washington broke his rule a time or two and it was nearly disastrous when he did. but primarily, that was the rule of thumb thumb, to behave as fab yous. keep his army, then when the

opportunity presented itself, to strike. of course, he did that decisively, with the help of the french or help with the incredible strength of the french navy and army. amazing. absolutely amazing. a military strategy in the 1700s being guided by a roman who lived well, well in the ancient past. the founders were incredibly important. again, to the founders, the ancients were incredibly important. that's one way we're different. i think you could read ancient writer to your benefit. how many of you have been forced during your education to read plato or cicero or any number of people? did you find there was benefit in there? to the degree that we're open and that we believe perhaps that certain, certain sort of things

are natural laws and that they recur, to that degree, i think we can find great benefit in the past. in any case, the founders did. a lot of their advice sounds like the advice of ancients, but not all of it. a lot of it is personal. one of my favorite letters is a short one written by john jay. to his son. in which he gave a few seeds and told him to plant these seeds in his uncle's estate. and then says you know, when i walk around my place, i'm sensible to the fact i've -- and i derived a wonderful feeling from that. soim simple as planning trees. that's the degree to which they're their advice extended. the founders are extraordinary. you've got one of these hand outs, if you don't raise your

hand, i think they can get one o to you. it's hard to talk about a back the that isn't finished yet. where i do, is that i get to go over -- who is an extraordinary american, not as -- how many of you know something about chief j justice marshall? for our judiciary system was really brought into being and without him, we'd be in a terrible state. he's really the one that initiated the whole idea of judicial review. i don't want to get into a political discussion, but judicial review has kept us more cognizant of first amendment rights than anything else that would have happened. chief justice marshall writes this incredibly beautiful letter

to his grandson. how many of you have had a chance to read it? okay, while you were sitting here. interesting. of course, he makes the plea for reading the ancients that you might expect him to make given what i had just said to you, but perhaps more importantly, he has this wonderful section on how to become a good writer. how many of you have been schoolteachers in your life? any of you? a few of you. isn't that great advice? how do you become a good writer? you have to have 30 students in a class and a teacher in front, no. he's saying you do this yourself. sit down with a page of a book written by an author you find to be a good writer. he named someone he thinks might be to his grandson's benefit. sit down with it and then, read it, digest it, then try it in

your own words and after you've written it in your own words, compare it with the original. in it doesn't measure up, do it again. a great, great platform for self-learning and it's an amazinging thing. strikes me as timeless. i'm not a teacher, but just strikes me as a timeless thing. that one could still learn to be a good writer usinging this particular formula. marshall was an incredible man. had such a commonness about him. he never intimidated anyone. except for one, his second cousin, thomas jefferson. if any of you have been to monticello, it's a little mountain, well, marshall got back as him by calling him the

llama of the mountain. but in any case, marshall was extraordinary in not given offense. he was so common, they tell this wonderful story about him, he's at some kind of a farmer's market in richmond, a woman has just bought a chicken. she offers him a quarter to take it home. he was a very common man, but an extraordinarily gifted human being and this letter to his grandson when you know about marshall i think to me is an extraordinary look at how a successful man built his own successful life. even though he had some formal educati education, he none the less developed himself. that's what a lot of secrets of the mound er founders are built

around. developing themselves. one of the ways the founders differ from us enormously is that they loved to use guilt. how many of you were raised with guilt? hate guilt. how many of you use guilt? you're in good company. the founders absolutely loved guilt. i'm going to read a couple of things. i'm going to have to put on my glasses here. couple of wonderful things they said about guilt. a couple of wonderful examples of guilt they used. dr. philip rush, an extraordinary man, was considered in some circles, to be the one from saving philadelphia and yellow fever. he was a great advice giver and inventtive letter writer.

he had a son studying medicine. expected his son to be regularly in touch with him. it appears that after asking for a pair of boots, his son somehow fell out of communication with his parents, so that when the boots arieffed, they arrived with this note. my dear son, here with, you will receive your boots. they will serve i hope two purposes. first to keep your feet and legs warm during the winter and secondly, to remind you that you have a father and mother in philadelphia who have never forgotten you for a whole week since you came into the world. i never knew an instance of a man becoming imminent, respectable or wealthy in the profession of medicine who was deficient in punk yalty in

letter writing. you have parents who have never forgotten about you for a whole week during your whole life. i think in the guilt school, nobody beats abigail adams. she mastered it. in a letter written to her son, john quincy, when he was in europe with his father in 1780, abigail said you need to attend constantly and steadfastly to the precepts and instructions of your father. will i hope have a due influence upon your conduct. for as dear as you are to me, i had much rather you would have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed or any other untimely death prop you in your infant years rather than see you

an immoral prolif gut or a graceless child. whoa. abigail had high expeck tases. of course, both parents did. we got a couple of letters from her and we have a couple that john quincy wrote in reply, so you can see the effect of all of that guilt on a child. of course, john quincy is an incredible overachiever. at 14, goes to russia as the secretary of our delegation. he is serves in congress for some time. serves as a cabinet member and of course, becomes president of the united states. and the most extraordinary thing about john quincy is what happens after he serves a term as president. he becomes a member of the house of representatives and serves 30 years in the house.

what an extraordinary thing for a president to do. he didn't seek fame and fortune. what he sought was to serve the people with the united states of america and he does it extraordinarily well. he does things that i think deserves our eternal thanks for. he defends some of the slaves, the would be slaves accused of rioting. the riot as they were being taken to this country against their will. he successfully manages their defense. he is a lifelong opponent of slavery and dies pretty much in the south after a member of congress. he learned his parent's lessons well. one of the appenducovvclj six ws

advice he gave to his children. it's kind of collective. it's pretty detailsed about what sort of an education they need and what sort of people they need to become. we've used the word secret. i'd just like to ask any of you if you could think of one secret that the founding fathers might have believed was essential. what would be a secret piece of advice that you would give someone you love? any ideas? that's big. actually, i think what i'll do now is share ben franklin's list of virtues with you. george washington of course carried a list of 110 virtues around when he was a young man and worked at practicing them, but wasn't as systematic as benjamin franklin. he determined that each and

every week, he would practice one of them every day. and of course, keep a record when he was successfully doing it. 12 virtues initially, let me name them for you. would you like to hear his virtues? the first is temperance. silence. speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. avoid trifling conversation. order. let all your things have their places. let each part of your business have its time. resolution. resolve to perform what you ought. perform without fail what you resolve. frugality. make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. that is waste nothing.

industry. lose no time. be always employed in something useful. cut off all necessary actions. sincerity. use no hurtful deceit. think innocently and justly and if you speak, speak accordingly. justice. wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty. moderation. avoid extremes. forbear resenting injuries as much you think they deserve. klein kleinlyness. tolerate no unkleinlyness in body, clothes or habitation. fran quillty. be not disturbed at trifles or accidents common or unavoidable. number 12. chastity.

rarely use veinry but for health or offspring. he worked at these so regularly and so well that he let and was talking to one of his friends one day, b b b a quaker, and he told him how, how extraordinarily able he was able to practice these 12 virtues and his friend said, benjamin, you need another one. humility. imitate jesus and?l2(+ socrate. that's what he said. franklin was probably the most great at working at self-improvement, but i think many of the founders embodied that as a principle.

they knew we needed to make progress in life. that if we wanted to be successful, it wasn't enough to have a dream, but we needed to have a plan and we needed to work at that plan. in order for it to come about.

just a small quote. how many of you know about him? he was from elizabethtown right across the river. elizabeth today. he was an extraordinarily capable human being. one of the founders, a trustee of princeton and later become one of the founders of princeton seminary. he was part of a remarkable congregation in elizabeth that had so many revolutionaries in its midst and this was written to the son of one of those people. be a citizen of the world, he's telling us and you know, the more you do that, the more you're going to realize that even as you go about doing your regular business that the great

obligation we have is to those in distress and the happiness of mankind at large. there goes that word, happiness. it's really a recuring word in that period of time. thomas jefferson uses it in the declaration of independent pennsylvania. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. which was really a twist on john lock, who uses life, liberty and property when writing his thesis. happiness. happiness. what the heck is happiness? how many of you have pursued it somewhat in your life? how many of you know when you don't have it? i think it's huge for us. a wonderful letter that we're going to share a part of with you. is by someone named phillip

skylar. one of his desenn dents is sitting back there. great grandson. any way, skyler writes this incredible letter to his son. what will be shared when something happens to him and his wife and what he has to say in here is pretty interesting. happiness ought to be the aim and end of the exertions of every rashable creature and spiritual should take the lead. temporal happiness does not

really exist except in name. the whole idea of happiness was an incredibly powerful philosophical strin that runs through this generation and they had so many different ways to address it, so many different ways to work at it, but they all believed that was really the chief aim of human beings, that we need to be happy people. they think happiness is best achieved by working on yourself, your relationships to other people and by doing everything you can to benefit those. many do it in a consciously religious way, some that are philosophically, but happiness is our chief end in the vise of the founders in all we do for ourselves and for others, it is

designed to achieve it. suppose you're near death and someone asks you for a letter of advice for a child yet to be born or who has just been born. what would your letter look like? let me share with you what thomas jefferson wrote. i'm not going to read the whole thing, but this is written to someone named thomas jefferson smith. this letter will to you be as one from the dead. the wrirt will be in the grave before you can way its counsels. your affectionate father has requested that i address something to you which might have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run.

and i, too, as a name sake, feel an interest in that course. few words will be necessary adore god, reference and cherish your parents, love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself. be just, be true, murmur not at the ways of providence. so shall the life which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and efable bliss, as if to the dead to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. farewell. extraordinary as that is, jefferson includes a deck log of con nons. meaning there are ten of them. number one, never put off till

tomorrow wh you can do today. two, never trouble another what you can do to yourself. three, never spend your money before you have it. number four, never buy what you do not want because it is cheap. it will be dear to you. number five, pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold. number six, we never repent over having eaten too little. number seven. nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. number eight, how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened. number nine. take things always by their smooth handle.

number ten, when angry, count ten before you speak. if very angry, 100. a letter to someone just born. that it might continue to be an influence to people, but they believe that advice was a benefit. they all gave advice certainly and a number of them, the number of them thought advice was worth taking. one of the reasons that hamilton didn't like john adams was that he wouldn't take advice and in the mind of hamilton, he said, you know, the wisest of men may

profit from it, lesser minds certainly need it. one of the thipgs he thought was so great about general waugs was that he would seek the advice of those around him, then think about what needs to be done. revolve slowly, as hamilton put it, but surely. they believed that advice was absolutely essential to the world as we know it and we live in a time today that's conflicted on the subject of advice. have any of you heard the saying that advice is a form of abuse? ever heard that one? that one came to me not too long ago. i don't think i was given any advice at the time. but i think for some people, with the idea of learning that way from ore others is an

incredibly unuseful thing, but i think hamilton is closer to being right. who of us can't benefit from being right? when he was a young person study ing in kings college, he would listen to other people. there was a little group they had for self-improvement. their own private little group. it wasn't a college group and this little group would present papers to one another. there would be bits of advice offered on to how to make them more acceptable, better. hamilton wrote some of the most incredible pamphlets of the time. maybe that doesn't work, hamilton, you need to do this, do that. it was absolutely essential. this little move for self-improvement.

p participate in master mind groups? we think of them as essential and really successful people gather together to share advice and information with one another. i think highly functional people and the founders were among the most functional people in the world, realized that the best advice you can get will only make whatever decisions you need to make better than they would have been otherwise. so, i encourage all of you to rethink the whole subject of advice if you think it might be a form of abuse. guilt, might not be out of the realm of possibility. jefferson once said to his daughter, i will love you fo you learn to read liveie in the original language. you don't if don't? it was the world in dh they lived. a lot of their advice is timeless. how many of you would not think a letter like john marshall's

has a place in front of young people who have their lives ahead of them? there are certain things about it that are date d, but a lot o what he's saying is absolutely wonderful and useful and if you've never looked through plutarch's lives, look through it and look at some of the pseudonyms he used and look them up, see who he's referencing. see who they are and what they did and you'll understand our political climate in this country perhaps even better than you would have otherwise. absolutely essential. in the world of the founders, optional in our own world, but i think i'm trying to make a case that advice the not a bad thing, particularly when you think it's a truth and it will be beneficial to the people with whom you share it. as i look back on my own life, i

rue having to have learned these things. if i learned them earl i listen, wouldn't it have made a lot of difference? i'm going to quit talking now. i'd be happy to answer questions. i've got a lot more letters to share with you. i think you get the flavor that the advice of the trainers gave. you understand the whole thing is about happiness. ask me anything you want. thank you. >> you talk about cincinnati and what it meant to the romans. >> washington was considered about the societity of cincinnati. the organization formed after the revolutionary war of officers who had served in the continental army and it's a hereditary society.

there's only one hamilton, right? >> it's kind of like a back up plan on the older one. >> i think the episcopal church has one like that. it's be going on this time. it was considered a really, really dangerous thing by certain people after the war. of course, thomas jefferson was really fearful of the society. of any organization. he didn't like the military. it was this great roman at that point in history, the only one

having put together this big army and won this major campaign, left it and went home and became a farmer again. to be like cincinnatius. he consciously did exactly. one of the reasons he was hammered so much during the administration was because you can't attack george washington. he was off limits. even if you didn't like him, you couldn't say anything negative about him because he was the symbol of america, the noble virtuous person, so it's one of those examples. here again, there's a nice long

biography of him in advertise lives. yes, sir. >> there's like three missions in there. the second was to never let the people forget what they thought. it's kind of like the lessons learned from the war to promote and the third was to take care of the widows and children that were -- yeah, there's a great guest book entry. there's a wonderful enter tri that someone wrote b about having come here, by remembering what was and what happened, we will be better in the future, preserve our libertieliberties. any other questions?

yes, sir. >> when i was in high school and college, i read a great deal of -- well authored. i really understand why, i don't think that our teachers knew well, but i don't think they understood the significance and now, i do understand the significance. >> absolutely, they were read k, they were equipping you to read the same things that our founders had read and read to such benefit. i don't think john adams sat down six times with cicero's orrations because he liked the way the text flowed. he was refreshing himself with themes of liberty, of

independence. transce senn dance. we can read them profitably in translation, but now, we're in a time where our educational system believes that if it isn't looking ahead, it's wasting time and energy and of course, we do that i think at some peril because not only are we inclined to forget lessons that shouldn't be forgotten, but we're consciously ignoring a huge part of the curriculum that shaped the very people that created this country. we, you know, i hear people all the time when dressed up as hamilton talking about well, they were such great men and where are great people like that. why do we live in a time when people are just not so smart and strong and motivated? we're educated differently and we need to be. we need all of the technical sorts of thins that can help us

compete. they lived in a three mile per hour world. they wrote with quills. read by candle light. it was a different world, but i think we may have lost something by breaking so completely with that past. and i'd like to think that's part of what you're saying. but you're right, we should explain why we're asking them to read latin. >> we often talk of the need for technological education and this is true, but what you can wind up with is a slave society. they know their own jobs very, very well. they don't know much else and they're ruled by a tiny elite who does not something else, but is not necessarily ben ef lens. >> thank you, give you a hand. i couldn't agree more. you're absolutely right.

>> i have two questions. did john and abigail adams ever send conflicting advice to their children? zpl. >> not that i know of. they were of one mind in terms of how their children should be raised. she of course did a lot of it on her own and you know, they actually had the, they had the terrible burden of having a son that didn't turn out well. if you saw the paul giamat giamatta mini series, you get the sense of that where john turns his back on his son and never wants to see him. i don't think abigail did that. are you contributing to this or have different question? >> different question. >> just a second then. so, you had question number two. >> i don't mean to be funny, but

ben franklin, his chassty, had an illegitimate son. >> we're asking to believe that these founders actually pract e practiced what they preached. brilliant man if -- clay jenkinsson does it brilliant, but we were going through this one night in the program and suddenly, he came to that one as jefferson. never ask another to do something which you can dpo yourself and he just erupted in laughter. jefr owned slaves. the only reason he was able to do what he did is because everyone else doing the other stuff. it's great advice. a story that's closer to home in new york, there was an imminent

theologian named knaver. broke the serenity prayer. suffered a stroke. his later years were difficult and onerous and he confessed to his doctor he was just getting tired of all these happy letters from people telling them about how the serenity prayer changed their lives. he said, you know, i just, i'm glad they're feeling that way, but i can't feel it. his doctor said don't worry about it. everybody knows that doctors and preachers don't practice what they preach. >> read the letter from abigail to john quincy. she comes across in that letter as somewhat traditionalistic as opposed to the image presented of her today as the first

women's liberation advocate. was there any element of advice she gave to her children that could be views add more modernistic than traditional? >> not really. >> keep your nose to the grindstone, work hard, give it everything you've got and you know, remember god, be respectful and you'll turn out just fine. pretty traditional. didn't want us to remember the ladies. she wanted congress to remember the ladies when they were deliberating over independent ens from great britain. i think what she intended probably was that they gain some rights under law. they had none. they were property. i don't think she was saying we want the vote. i think she was sayi ining we'de not to be property. we'd like to have laws that would treat us with with dignity and respect. by and large, the constitution

went along way to improving a lot of women i think. yes, sir. somebody in the back there? >> yes. >> read the note to the grandson yet, but the last page, not really the last page, you mentioned that when he started the army, his feelings about patriotism, that's what i call, he's different from the virgi a virginians. i'm looking at the world patriotism, in your book with the letter, anything even in last paragraph, you had massive devotion to his country was m mirrored in care of his family, however, his devotion to his country, any wording that really cater to say this is a country. you know, how to serve. i'm saying -- that clear? >> i think you read a lot of his

judicial decisions and you see how much he loved his country. within a year or two of the new government after the constitution, it was clear we had two political factions. you had the federalists, trying to put together a new government under the constitution that would knit these 13 littinging states, knit them together and provide for the commonwealth, the preamble of the institution. it would provide for the common defense, the general welfare. it had the power to tax, a year before that had ond before reserved for states. it was doing something con pleatly different and we have thomas jefferson who's read the ancients so much and he knows that almost in any republic, there's somebody hungering for power, somebody who wants to be he's suspicious of

everything. james madison, something of a federalist. i think interested in the entire union over perhaps the interest of their own particular state. madison joins him and they become absolutely masterful political opponents and i think the federalists never really recover from their efforts, well, they don't recover from them, but they just become incredibly ab instructionistic. we think of the political system toews at obstructionistic, but read about the democratic republican party and federalists and all the terrible things they said about one another. it's incredible. i think we've been there before. and i think we were there in a way that was profound. the thing that made marshall extraordinary in virginia was that there weren't many federalists there. by and large, they were democratic republicans. jefferson people.

and he paid no small price with his political views. he was really helpful to madison in the ratification convention getting virginia to ratify the constitution, but i think he became lonelier in the years past with views that were federal as opposed to the jefferson point of view. he speaks magnificently of it. i've only quoted a little bit there. he never wrote an autobiography of himself, but justice story, who was a contemporary of his on the court, delivered this wonderful essay about him after marshal died and incorporated a lot of what he had been given earlier by marshal. i think the part that i quoted really gets it why marshal was different and why a lot of the federalists were different from democratic republicans. it was what