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 au 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.

little piece by goodno on the back page there, which have you looked at that as well? 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 they had done during the war. it was what they experienced. marshal was a virginian. he was a bit of a backwoods virginian, but he fought in a number of the battles in new jersey. but he became part of something that was a lot bigger than virginia. and he got to know people from many different states, many different backgrounds, and it changed, it changed him and he began to think of the united states as his country. not virginia. and he became to think of the government as the government of the united states, not the government of virginia. and of course, this gets revisited in the american civil war. this is exactly what's happening. the secession begins. these states are asserting the rights that they retained when they voluntarily became a part of the federal union. the view of lincoln was that's

not true. you can't leave. you're in it, you stay in it. but it's primarily over the belief of the southern states that they were the primary unit. they had given certain things to the federal government, but they hadn't absolutely given up their right to be virginians or south carolinians or whatever. i don't know if i'm answering your question well. marshal talked about it in a lot of different decisions. i can get a biography. >> you're -- let me just say this. not in any of his letters of advice to get the sort of answers you're looking for. >> came out of the church with the american flag and a woman said patriotic. i have two flags.

but i thought about it because i look up the word fascism. and i believe, this is me, i believe that americans born, americans and immigrants -- first let's talk about born americans. it's the lack of love for the nation. i don't feel there's a love. it's like i have this flag, it's like people look at me like what do i have a flag for. and as a teacher i bought the little flags. there's no r more. this is sad. but that's me. >> thank you for being who you are, really. yes, sir? >> did these letters touch on slavery and attitudes on

slavery? i shouldn't say that. i think george mason in one of his letters discussed slavery a bit. but i think for most of the southerners, slavery was a fact. they didn't see it ending. it would have been neat if i could have gotten letters from somebody like robert king carter who freed all his slaves or edward kohls. he comes along a little later. jefferson writes him and coles says i want to free my slaves. jefferson says it wouldn't be a good idea to do that. for a lot of different reasons. and coles gets the idea he needs to leave. he actually moves to what was then the west. he becomes an early governor of illinois. but frees his slaves as they are crossing the ohio river from slave territory to free territory. there were people that did it. here again, i think that letter of edward coles is beautiful.

i think he really understands that slaves are human beings. they are entitled to every right that a human being has. every natural right, which here again in the declaration of independence is well specified. during the revolution, he said the people that yelped most about liberty are the ones that are have a whip in the other hand and beat the slaves. something to that. >> last question. >> last question, okay. >> what was your thought process of collecting these advice letters? and also getting the letters. >> there are a lot of letters that should be in this. and in fact, this could be several volumes. if the the first one is perceived to have value, maybe we'll do another one. we have the letters. we have lots and lots and lots

of letters. reasons for selecting what we selected i think comes down to personal preference in many cases. making points that we think might be of interest to people. and dare i state the commercial motive. we include a lot of people who have homes that are still standing because they have booksto bookstores and it's an outlet for selling books that are not being published through traditional channels. and i think that's just recognizing what is. i would love to have some letters who followed oliver wolcott, followed hamilton and the secretary of treasury office. other people, there are a lot of