>> adams did not believe that all men are created equal. he did not believe in american exceptionalism. americans are no better than other nations. >> jefferson was the opposite. all born equal, and we are subject to different experiences and environments. that is why education is important to americans and jefferson. >> gordon wood, tonight at eight eastern on c-span. yale university historian and talks about her lifelong research on alexander hamilton. she tells the story of how she became interested in this particular founding father and discussed how she used hamilton's letters and writings to understand what motivated him.

it is about an hour. > [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] not only grown gray, but almost blind in the service of this museum. exciting toibly welcome joanne freeman. i have gotten to know her when we were both graduate students, if you can imagine us in our 20's. i don't know how i got in to yale, there were a lot of smart people. was already had and shoulders above everyone else, and was already talking about this founding father guy, alexander hamilton. the rest of us were come on, that is boring. >> [laughter] but there were lots of

pressing things about her work as a scholar. her first work was published in 2001. does this sound relevant today? "a rousing discourse on the utopian republic." she has gone on to edit several works that are letters or writings of hamilton, one was named atlantic monthly's best book of 2001. i hope she tells us how close to a life-long interest she has had. she was in eighth grade when she wrote her first essay about him. 14 years old. she sent me a picture of her essay, which she has preserved. philip mead in the corner, is a guy who was reading joseph plumb martin when he was 14 years old and running around a revolutionary war battlefield. when you have people with a

life-long passion, you know you are in for a good ride. another thing i appreciate about joanne as a public historian is she does not limit herself to the words on page. she is very experiential in the way she did research. you are going to laugh a little bit that she had to go to st. , croix and places down there to explore the caribbean roots of alexander hamilton. she was lead consultant when the national parks department was hamilton'salexander new york palm, understanding home, understanding the physical settings of these stories matter. she has been on a police firing range and shot a flintlock dueling pistol. yes. it is that type of holistic way

of approaching the past. this is a true story. that is partly why lin ma nuel-miranda spoke with joann on numerous occasions as he was doing the unlikely project of doing a musical based on the life of alexander hamilton. there is more. a lot of times, scholars are just minds for public historians to go, to take their scholarship and interpret it to the public. but joanne is an incredible public intellectual and public historian. she is a frequent commentator for media outlets. we are being recorded by c-span. everybody turn around and wave at the c-span audience. this will live on after tonight. most extraordinary is her course, appropriately given the number of yale persons here, the american revolution course,

which was taped in 2011 -- taped in 2010, and i think it was put on to the internet in 2011, which joanne was telling me earlier this evening -- she thought who in the world would , want to watch a professor lecture? by our calculations, it has been viewed actually more than a million times now by people online. the bootleg version of it is on youtube, and that version has been viewed 250,000 times. >> [laughter] >> you are in for a treat here. finally she is a weekly co-host , of a wonderful podcast called backstory, which was founded by some of our former and current professors at u.v.a. it is a weekly podcast that sort of looks at the news -- and there has been a lot of news in the news lately, hasn't there -- that it is very important to understand deep historical context for things like charlottesville, the federal city and whatever is going on down there.

i would encourage you all through itunes to look at "backstory," because it is a great treat to watch the podcast. her new work, finally in april of 2018, coming up in a couple of months, and i hope that means you will be able to return and talk next year about the new book. how does this sound? "the field of blood -- a study of physical violence in the u.s. congress." maybe a bit of historical context for where we are today. and then finally the book i know i am going to enjoy the most. it is titled "hunting for hamilton." you will be hearing a more rollicking version of getting to know alexander hamilton in his world. please join me in welcoming joanne freeman. [applause]

>> i feel so tall. powerful. >> [laughter] >> thank you, scott, so much for that introduction. i appreciate it greatly. it is my great, great pleasure to be here. and not only that, to be here in front of a museum and a yale crowd, and to get to talk about hamilton. so good on all fronts. as scott suggested, i have indeed been studying hamilton for a really long time. i was indeed 14 years old when i stumbled across hamilton, and it has indeed taken me to some wonderful places. i did get to go to the caribbean, struggled to to go to the caribbean, such a sacrifice, because i wanted to get a sense of the places where he was. the things he did. i did manage to shoot the black powder dueling pistol at the gilford police firing range because i wanted to see what , that felt like. as a matter of fact, i basically put myself through 18th century

gentlemen training, because i figured if i was going to write about this population of people, i should kind of have a sense of what they would have been doing in their lifetime. i took riding lessons and fencing lessons. what i discovered is i would have died a thousand times as an 18th century gentleman. >> [laughter] >> i was bad at all of it but i , really tried. and the other thing that i did, and this is going to be more of what my remarks come from this evening is i have read , hamilton's writings. 27 volumes of hamilton's writings. he died pretty young, so 27 volumes is pretty good. i read those. i was actually interested in hamilton. i wish i could remember what led me to question this, but i read a biography when i was 14. it was a bicentennial, so the founders were ever. -- were everywhere. read a biography of hamilton. didn't like it. i won't say which one it was. didn't believe it.

library, and asked what person in the book had read that gave the author to write the say the things he or she said in the book. the library pointed out those , are the things he wrote and that is what this author read. i took down volume one and starting reading and got up to 27 and started again. what was fascinating to me, and this will be clear in some of the comments this evening. what was fascinating is that was a real person to me on those pages. that is the things that one person wrote over the course of a lifetime. as you will hear, some of them are formal writings and reports. some of them are letters to political figures, some are letters to friends. some of them are informal memos. sometimes it is the things that don't seem official and don't

seem formal that are the most interesting. so reading those papers really did give me a sense of who he was as a person. but as scott suggested, it has been about 35 or 40 years that i have been studying hamilton. for most of that time, no one knew who he was. no one had ever heard of hamilton. so when i first, in light of the play, began getting invited to give lectures in a variety of different places, i went on my computer and thought well, i have a lifetime of giving lectures of alexander hamilton, so surely i can begin to recycle some of them. all of them are premised on the idea that no one knows who he is. they all start with there is this guy, and you have never heard of this guy, but let me explain because he is significant in the early republic. we are in a different universe. so rather than wandering around saying you haven't heard about this guy, i spent a lot of time saying he is not as great as you think he is. >> [laughter] >> interesting, but he is not as

great as you think he is. so clearly for me this is kind of a surreal moment. but what i want to do this evening as scott suggested is give you a sense of who hamilton was, for better and worse, and i want to do that partly through his writings. not the official things he wrote, but some of the informal things that he wrote. in essence i want to give you a sense of what it is like to hunt for hamilton, and to give you some insight. actually hunting for hamilton is something you can all do because of the wonderful 27 volumes of hamilton's papers. as scott suggested, i am in the process of beginning. so i am finishing my book on physical violence in the u.s. congress. i found about 100 violent incidents between 1830 and 1860 that were censured out of the record. that is the first book. i am excited to do "hunting for

hamilton." biographical,tly but it will also be talking , int, how do you define him his writings, among other things? how do you find him as a politician? how do you figure out who a person is by reading what was written over the course of a lifetime? understood in the right historical context, even a person's personal letter can be amazingly revealing in really giving you a sense of a lifetime, a person, a personality and a mind at work. how many people here have a sense of hamilton lyrics? ok. once you have seen the play, it is kind of in your brain forever. "mind at work," is a lyric from the play. i apologize in advance for any

hamilton lyrics that come out of my mouth. i can't quite help it. they are in there, and now they will stay there forever. i should say that actually testament to the fact that i really do -- i am a person who is passionate about historical evidence, documents, and really pulling the past from these that are left from the past in writing. when i heard there was what i considered a slightly crazy human being out there who was going to write a musical on alexander hamilton, and i heard it was going to be based on a biography, my immediate reaction is well, hamilton's words and writings have to be in that play. there will probably not be another musical about alexander hamilton. >> [laughter] >> so given this is the one, hamilton's words have to be there. so i actually had a friend who managed to contact him through twitter. he responded.

he crashed my 50th birthday party so that i could hand him hamilton's letters so he would put them in the play. i basically gave a version to him that i just gave to you. "he is in here. you have to put hamilton's words in the play." and he did. there are actually a lot of words pulled right from hamilton's correspondence that are in the musical. a lot of people probably don't realize that, but that is a sense of a person in the past in these documents. before we plunge in, i want to offer a really quick rundown of hamilton's life just so i can , set the scene for those of us who aren't immediately familiar with that. as you will hear, it is logical that hamilton's life translates well onstage because there is a , sort of dramatic shakespearean arc to his life. he was born as an illegitimate in the west indies -- people on -- he was soon orphaned at a

young age. the fact that he was such a good writer, really brought him to people's attention. people on st. croix set up a charitable fund to send him to america to get an education. as luck would have it he got to , north america as the revolution was just about to take off. in not a long amount of time, he was washington's right-hand man. he became an aid-de-camp to washington, where he spent the revolution. when washington became president 1780 nine, he made hamilton the first secretary of the treasury area -- secretary of the treasury. hamilton structured a national financial system and pushed to strengthen the government. watching a fierce political battle against those who wanted a far less powerful national government -- thomas jefferson and james madison were his foremost political opponents. when washington retired, hamilton continued to try to exert influence over the

national government by secretly advising john adams' cabinet behind the scenes, but he was found out by president adams and ultimately blocked out over having any influence over the cabinet. this did not make hamilton very happy, and he wrote a lengthy pamphlet attacking adams, who was his own party's presidential candidate in the election of thinking he could 1800, sway the election to a different federalist. it did not work. hostile, incredibly over the top crazy pamphlet. i just yesterday have an undergraduate student come into my office. my students are all writing 20 page research paper's right now. a lot of them are excited about the fact that they are rummaging around in the 18th century. one came in and said i saw that hamilton pamphlet thing he wrote about john adams. whoa!

[laughter] it is a nasty pamphlet. it did not do any favors for adams, and it also did not do any favors for hamilton. that political move, joined with a variety of others helped , to destroy hamilton's political career. in 1804, hamilton's ongoing 15-year duel with aaron burr ended hamilton's life. that is the dramatic life arc. his politics were also extreme and could be kind of dramatic. he powerfully felt that the national government needed to be centralized. where the government had just broken away from a age where thend government had just broken away from a monarchy, that was a radical thing to do. that made him unpopular.

he also was the sort of people who tended, when people went up in arms, and he thought they weren't respecting the national government enough, his immediate impulse was to call in the military. this was a bit of a scary impulse on his part, too. he was not super trusting in democracy. he was an extremist in his politics. musical theater doesn't need to talk about all these things, but his politics are interesting, extreme and tangled, and there is a reason why he was a really controversial figure during his lifetime. the fact of the matter is his personality, too, is dramatic and extreme. he could be arrogant. he was definitely aggressive. he was really touchy, extremely touchy person. when i was working on my first book, and there is a chapter on the burr-hamilton duel. and the logic of dueling in the early republic. i discovered over the course of his lifetime, 10 times he almost got involved in a duel before that final duel. 10 times.

that is a lot for someone in that time period. ten times he got in a fight with someone, they exchanged harsh words, they negotiated back and forth, and then ultimately managed to settle things. but that is a touchy individual is what that is. so in all of these ways he is a dramatic character. again, discovering him at 14 is the reason why i found him interesting. you can't question the fact that he is interesting. but what is particularly interesting to really sort of get beneath the drama into who hamilton really was, then you have to turn to his writings. what i want to do this evening's in twoout his writings different ways. i want to talk a little bit about how you can read letters and find patterns in them that really reveal something about a person. then i want to show you about how you can read between the lines and uncover really interesting things about a person. let me start off by talking a little bit about patterns.

just two little anecdotes that i think are going to give you a sense of what i am talking about on how you can decode a person, things that seem minor but open a personality to you. one of the things is what he did when he first got to north america. he comes from the caribbean. he has nothing but this charitable fund. he doesn't have a great family to turn on. he doesn't have very much money to rely on. he gets to kings college, to columbia, which is where he goes to college. clearly, for someone who came from where he came from, this was his moment. in his mind, i either make something of this moment, or i have nothing. what does he do? i think it is interesting. when you read accounts of what he did in college, and you read reminiscences of what he did in college, he did a number of things. he took anatomy classes, which is interesting. he worked on his debating skills. he established himself as being very interested in religion.

and he did a lot of military drilling. that sounds kind of random, but there were a limited number of pathways you could take in the 18th century to become a gentleman, someone who was of higher status. army officer, clergyman, doctor, lawyer. he covered every base. he went to columbia, and he was like ok, i'm coming out of here as a gentleman with a career. here we go. and he literally mapped a plan of actions. that is really what he did throughout his life. he was very good at doing the sorts of things he needed to do as secretary of the treasury. that is kind of the way he thought. a second example of that, and this was from a letter i stumbled across and couldn't figure out what it meant and thought it was hamilton being hamilton.

i stumbled across a letter to lafayette, written in 1780 by this point, hamilton had been working at washington's side as an aid for several years, and he was absolutely desperate to have a field command. he didn't know george washington was going to go on to become george washington. in his mind, he had to leave the war with something that he could claim that would give him a way to promote himself on, that he could advance further. so in his mind, the field command, that was it. he had to have a command in the field to prove he was a man of honor, a man of bravery, and that he had a reputation and that he was someone who should be respected. now he wanted that really badly, but the fact of the matter is , washington wanted him at headquarters. so he kept not getting a field command. so i find this letter from lafayette, and it is kind of quirky. it basically says, why are you making me write a letter to washington to ask for a field

command? what are you doing, hamilton? i am right here with washington. i could go talk to washington and ask him. why are you making me write a letter? i thought, why is he making him write a letter? that is strange. so i backed up and looked to see how hamilton asked for a field command. he had a four-part plan. first he went to washington and wrote a letter to washington, and washington said no. then he went to washington in person, and washington said no. so he wanted lafayette to first write a letter, and then if he said no, then he wanted lafayette to go in person and ask him again. so he had four possible ways in which he might get the field command. lafayette skipped a step, and hamilton was like, no! you are denying one of my opportunities to get a field command. again, this is who he was, how he thought, and it partly helps to show you why this kind of a

person is going to be someone who certainly thrives in the kind of things that secretary of the treasury was. but i want to move on. i want to talk a little bit about his actual writings and reading between the lines. what i suggested a few minutes ago is what i want to do now, which is not look at his great reports, important documents, important letters to washington or his important letters to , jefferson. i want to look at seemingly unimportant documents and see what we can pull from them. in this case, i am going to look at a few of these really private personal memos that for the most part, he probably didn't show anybody else. they were just written for himself. and i want to look at one or two of them and see what you can pull, even from a little something like that. the first one i want to look at that i think really does give you a gut sense of what he is thinking about at the time, what he is thinking about of america, and what he is thinking about when he thinks about the american government. it's a memo that he wrote right after the constitutional convention.

so he is at the constitutional convention, and leading up to it for a while, he had been one of the new nation's leading nationalists. one of the earliest and loudest voices saying we need a stronger government. he was out there chiming a way for this. he finally gets to the constitutional convention. you would think hamilton would be yes, finally we have a new constitution. i have been wanting this all along, and now finally we are here. to know what he is thinking, a memo after the convention. he goes home and in a very lawyerly kind of way, he sits down and says what do i think is going to happen next? it and he kind puts this down and weighs it on paper. he says ok, so if washington becomes president, probably washington will put good men into office, and americans will probably trust those good men because they are coming from george washington. he appointed them. and so probably the government will make have a chance.

-- maybe have a chance. if washington doesn't become president, probably the states are going to turn on each other and begin to fight and war against each other. possibly a foreign power will come and sweep in and swallow up either pieces of the new nation or the whole nation itself. but the fascinating part of the memo is the kicker at the end. after describing the political apocalypse where the states turn on each other and france or england comes in and swallows us up, he comes in and writes this as a paraphrase. that is probably the most likely result. think about that. he just left the federal convention, signed his name, and he basically concludes -- i don't think it is going to work. i really don't think it is going to work. that wasn't a conclusion for show. he is not trying to impress. he is not politicking. he was musing on paper for

himself, which does give a sense of what he was feeling. and what he was feeling was fear about the strength and survival of this new government. he really did believe that the new national government at some point down the road would probably fail. you can see this idea echoed again in another of hamilton's private memos. this is a personal favorite of mine, because it is somewhat goofy and revealing. not long after he left the hamiltondepartment, decided for some reason, which we do not know, that he would try his hand at creating a national seal for the united states. i will note at the outset he does not have a graphic sense. this will become screamingly apparent when i describe what he decided our national seal should look like. he actually describes it in great detail. he says national seal, a globe.

on one side of the globe will be north america, and on the other side of the globe will be europe. standing on europe will be a colossus, a giant with one foot on the european continent and the other foot looming over north america. hovering above it. standing on it north america will be added athena-the like ,igure, with a shield essentially doing this. >> [laughter] >> hamilton basically creates this national seal that is screaming panic at europe and maybe france somehow coming in , and taking over. how he thought yeah this is the national seal we want to make, i don't know. it is bizarre. it captures the kind of fear he is feeling at that moment, about whatever the craziness is that is going on in france and how that might somehow contaminate america.

it is remarkable, but they goofy document that gives you a sense of what he is thinking. i have to add because it is particularly ridiculous. as if that wasn't crazy enough, he adds at the bottom of it, i think in the ocean we can have neptune with a trident and waves. no problem at all. no graphic sensibility. but what you are seeing here is a sincere fear on his part about the fate of the republic. before i talk about what this all means, one other document i want to mention here, and it is a particularly dramatic one that really drives this point home. he wrote it actually in 1804, a few days before his fatal duel with aaron burr. so he is aware it is possible he might get killed in that duel, so he bites an independent watement -- so he

rites an independent could usually people don't die in duels, but you are running a risk. if you fight a duel, you write a statement. hamilton wrote one, and he explains why he is dueling, and he is hamilton because it goes on for pages because this is what hamilton does. first he says first let me explain to you why i really don't want to fight this dual. he explains he has a family, children and dead he has to worry about. he was called a monarchist for most of his life because he was trying to hard to centralize the national government. he kept writing these statement saying i am really not a monarchist. essentially what he said was i am totally willing to give this a go. i signed on for this. i am willing to give it a go,

but it is probably not going to work, but that is ok. i am not going to do anything to hurt the republic. i am going to do everything i can do to make the republic last. by his life, he was doing everything, in ms. mind that was but it is probably not going to strengthening the nation, as extreme as though politics seemed at the time and might seem to us. i think to understand his view, to understand the early republic, you really have to understand how he saw his world, and that exists between the lines of his writings. again, even his personal memos that he wrote for nobody else but himself. i think it is pour foe a couple of reasons. first it is a reminder for hamilton, and for every other founder as well. they weren't just spouting policies or coming up with great thoughts. they were reacting to unfolding events, and they were doing that not only with ideas, but with feelings and impulses.

inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular. that's very hamiltonian. what he's really saying is he's predicting a major crisis down the road for the republic and he feels the need to defend his rotation because he wants to be useful at that moment of crisis and if he doesn't defend his reputation he thinks that he will not be someone people will follow as a leader. part fighting the dual in to preserve his youthfulness at an inevitable moment of crisis for the republican. clearly throughout his life he really did sincerely believe that the government eventually in one way or another would fall.

i does help to shed some light on some of his extreme politics. he at least had a logic for them. he had a reason for them. he was doing what he felt was necessary to preserve the republic. it was extreme and people at the time didn't trust him. he was called a monarchist for most of his life because he was trying to hard to centralize the national government. he kept writing these statement saying i am really not a monarchist. essentially what he said was i am totally willing to give this a go. i signed on for this.

i am willing to give it a go, but it is probably not going to work, but that is ok. i am not going to do anything to hurt the republic. i am going to do everything i can do to make the republic last. by his life, he was doing everything, in ms. mind that was strengthening the nation, as extreme as though politics seemed at the time and might seem to us. i think to understand his view, to understand the early republic, you really have to understand how he saw his world, and that exists between the lines of his writings. again, even his personal memos that he wrote for nobody else but himself. i think it is pour foe a couple of reasons. first it is a reminder for hamilton, and for every other founder as well. they weren't just spouting policies or coming up with great thoughts. they were reacting to unfolding events, and they were doing that not only with ideas, but with feelings and impulses. they were in the moment trying

to figure out what to do, and that is as true of hamilton as it is to anybody else. so his political decisions were born of his inner convictions as well as fears and ideas. and his feelings and fierce about unfolding events. that is really easy to forget when you are talking about america's founding, which we tend to envision, and i certainly know this is true of a lot of my students, as kind of an abstract debate. folks doing this, i have a great thought. we see it as a moment of people having great debates, and we assume that it is going to succeed. of course it is going to succeed. my student do it all the time. of course we were going to win the revolution. of course they wrote a constitution. people liked it, and it worked. but the founding wasn't an abstract debate. politicians weren't just spouting policies, and there were no of courses in the

process of figuring out how to launch the republic. the founding generation as a whole consisted of real people caught up in the moment trying to chart a course, and these real people were often scared, confused, testy, didn't know what they were doing. they were improvising. the founding generation didn't know what would happen next. to fully understand the founders and america's founding, that idea that nobody knew what would happen is a vitally important thing to remember. america's new constitution was an experiment in government, and that is a word they used all the time, that they were launching an experiment. it was a republic in a world of monarchies. they had no idea in it was going to work. people waiting to see what would happen and responding in the moment, and some were fearful as hamilton was. whether early politicians or early america generally, you have to remember this feeling of

contingency. you have to remember that nothing was predetermined, that nobody knew what would happen, or that this new government would function at all. hamilton capital tours that idea brilliantly in the first paragraph of the first federalist he is a, and it is a paragraph i read in almost all of my undergraduate courses, and now i am going to inflict it on you. i will close my hamiltons here with hamilton. i am going to be happy to answer questions. this is the first paragraph of the first federalist essay. it seems to be reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable of establishing good

government. or whether they are forever destined to depends on actions and force. the crisis at which we are arrived may be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made, and a wrong election of the part we shall act may deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. thank you. [applause] >> the only rule is you have to have a microphone when you are asking the questions. who would like to go first? i saw you first, sir. >> hi. question.

how do you rationalize -- you were speaking about the letter and hamilton thought at the end i don't think it is going to work. then either wrote the passionate federalist papers and he defended it so fantastically. >> how do i pull together the fact that he doesn't think it is going to work and he is so passionately engaged in it? >> well, i think that is exactly how you make sense of it, that he doesn't think it is going to work and he is going to give it all to try and make it work. i think he was fearful always that it was going to claps -- collapse. one of the reasons why he was so passionate and engaged in his politics was he really did think that he might be able to do the one thing to help it to survive. there was a letter i wrote in 1792, and i teach it in my

classes. it is like a 40-page letter, and he wrote it to into in virginia saying let me tell you what i think about the politics of this moment. what is fascinating is he is really describing his relationship with jefferson and madison. people don't tend to read this letter closely. it is fascinating because it is as close as we get to him saying let me tell you about the craziness at the heart of government and the jefferson versus hamilton fight. but he talks about what he is doing, what they are doing, and why he doesn't like them and why they don't like him. my students say it sounds like high school. there is a very personal tone to it. but at the end of the letter he says he would be the first

person to say he doesn't trust the government. he doesn't think it is going to last. but he is going to do everything he can do to keep it going. people think he is a monarchist trying to overturn the government. in his letter he says i am not, but i am going for do what i feel like i need to do to push it as strong as it needs to be. in his mind he was pushing it in the direction of monarchy. he says if you elect a president, it is not a monarchy. some people at the time didn't believe that. but part of the reason he was so passionate was because i think he felt it was weak. >> so i have a question about a selection of hamilton's letters. you probably have read the letters he wrote to his friend john warren during the time of the revolution, and i was curious about your those on the tone of these letters? >> ok. i know what that is. so hamilton wrote these very passionate letters to john loren. there were a group of people who

worked at headquarters who were all fellow aids. they were like young guys in a war together, so there is like -- one of them is james mckendry. he wrote this poem and it was like hamilton snored. it was a bunch of guys 18 or 19 years old in the war together. the letters to loren are very passionate. he talks about i love you, so they are emotional, unlike many of the other letters in his lifetime. these letters, there is an intimacy about them and a trust. he talks about wanting to have nothing else -- he just wants a good exit. i don't remember if i am going to get anything i want, or if i

am ever going to make anything of myself. i just want a brilliant exit. there are a lot of things in those letters that are different. some people read those letters and think there is a relationship of sorts between the two of them. i am undecided that. there are a lot of letters between young men at this point that have that tone. i found at some point in an archive one of hamilton's friends, named robert troupe. i found letters between aaron burr and robert troupe that are equally passionate and emotionally engaged in that way. because of the play, people have delved in and there is a lot of feeling that perhaps they did have a relationship. i don't know. i am not saying yes or no. i honestly don't know. but i don't think alone, the fact that those letters are zesty is enough to conclude that.

i am a firm believer that you never know what you are going to find as far as historical evidence is concerned. over the course of my career i have found amazing things that you would think if you are writing about the founders, it is not possible, although we have just discovered there are all kinds of things you can find, including wonderful images of washington in a military tent. but you can find things all the time about the founders if you are thinking logically and digging. when i was writing my book, i found eyewitness accounts of the burr-hamilton duel that people hadn't discovered before. it was in the bottom of a box. you would think not only came i not find something new about the founders, how can you find something new about the burr-hamilton duel. it seems like in one way or another, i will see more effort or see something else that will make me see those letters in a different way. then i will have an opinion one way or another. i am left with a question mark above my led as far as what that means. >> do you think that hamilton or

his writing is similar to anyone today? >> oh, wow, that is a good question. do i think his writing is similar to anyone's today? well, i tell you, in one way i would say no because he never stopped writing. who writes a 40-page letter? you know? and special nowadays with like social media, twitter, and now 280 characters, but still. but people don't have that kind of an attention span. first of all, no one would pay attention, i think. but in some ways i would say there is something about his writing that does seem modern. i teach a course at yale called the age of jefferson and hamilton, and the whole course is just their letters. i divide their letters up into different themes.

all they do is read jefferson's letters and hamilton's letters. jefferson's letters in a sense sound 18th century-ish. jefferson is a brilliant letter writer, but he is very strategic, and he writers letters that are explicitly aimed at certain people to make a certain response. he is a unit writer. hamilton is like a cannon of a writer. he is just like boom. there is like this wonderful -- so jefferson in 1791, i think, has a dinner party. he invites all these people over. he invites congressmen over. it is not a political dinner, supposedly, just a dinner party. he sets the table, and on the table he puts props so the dinner conversation will naturally turn towards political topics he would like it to turn toward. then everyone leaves except a number of key congressmen that he wants to talk to. it was a brilliantly strategized dinner party in which jefferson wanted to have a political conversation, but you wouldn't think that. hamilton at roughly the same time writes a letter to a number of people and says the topic is

the death. bring papers. there is nothing subtle. sometimes when my students, when they are reading them side by side, they get frustrated with jefferson because he takes time to get to his point, and hamilton pa are barrels through. so in that sense there is something modern. i know i didn't give you the name of a person who is exactly the same, but i don't know if there is somebody who is exactly the same. >> sometimes historians like to play around with counterfactual situations. what do you think would have happened if aaron burr had missed? what would his life had been like? >> well, there is a little bit

of evidence there. i don't have to be counterfactual. towards the end of his life, apparently, he was thinking about doing another federalist-ish kind of a thing about government, about american government. he began talking to friends and asking them if they might want to contribute. then of course nothing happened of it. but he might have been a political commentator. i think that he saw by the end of his life that there was no way he was going to be involved politically other than this amazing crisis, if there was an amazing crisis, he was going to ride to the rescue. other than that, he pretty much

at the end of his life was saying in one way or another this american world is not made for me. it is going in a direction, i don't know what it is, but i don't like it. he began calling himself a failed politician. so he really under understood -- he realty understood. jefferson becomes president, things are moving in a democratic direction, and he is not very excited about that. but i think he would have become the sort of person who was a very aggressive political commentator. he probably would have produced another great tome. it is a shame pause you would want to know what it would have looked like. and i think he would have been supremely frustrated by being the guy who could comment and not do anything. he probably would have gotten frustrated and fought a duel with somebody else. i don't know. but i think that was the direction he was going. >> the one president i can think of who shared that sense that america wasn't inevitable was abraham lincoln. i am wondering if through your wandering through our history you have come across linkages. lincoln was obviously much better read than people appreciate.

>> yeah. it is a good question because part of the answer to that is that lincoln was supremely attuned to the founders. he had a real historical sense. he read deeply in the writings of the founders, and i think that historical awareness informed not just his rhetoric and his politicking, and his politics too. he lived in a moment when having that kind of attunement to the past in that way, given the crisis that was unfolding, those two things were sort of conveniently aligned. it is interesting to read it with that sensibility, and you get a sense of him seeking the founding and its meaning in a way that not a lot of politicians were necessarily doing at that moment. >> i am going to address the elephant in the room now. for those of us like myself, and you, who have been blessed to see hamilton on broadway, what was the one part that you wanted to stand up in the audience and >> i am going to address the go you have nailed it, that was the best thing ever?

>> gosh, ok. i will give partial answers. one of them has to do with what i said, and that is hamilton's actual words are in the play. actually some of jefferson's real words are in there too. any time that floated by, it was all i could do was -- to not stand up and say 1792. i went a couple of times with different historians. they didn't all necessarily know that is was that letter, but they had a sort of like oh, my gosh, they are singing washington's farewell address. how is that humanly possible? they are singing about the assumption of state debt. really?

can you do that in a musical? i appreciate that he as a play wright was thinking about the stuff of history and putting it in. the totally self-interested answer to that question, and i didn't know this until i saw the play. the first time i saw the play, there is a song in the play about rules of dueling called ten duel commandments. this is something i have written on a lot. i have been published on the burr-hamilton duel and in my book there is a chapter on it. there is a dueling song, and they are singing. that is independent could of familiar sounding. it kind of agrees with me. then they keep singing, and i am

like that is independent could of the argument of my chapter. then they keep singing, and i think that comes from a document i found at the new york historical society. so it actually was from my book. when i met lin and i said is that song based on my book? he said yeah, of course. that was kind of mind-blowing. i was like i am a historian who has a little built of my book being sung on broadway. how does that happen? [laughter] that didn't want to make me stand up. it made me want to pass out. that was kind of shocking. i guess more than anything else, it was the stuff, the historical artifacts, the words. best of wives, best of women. lynn moranda once said how could i nut put those words in there? beautiful writings that he kind of stuck in there.

but the fact that he shot of that and did that, i appreciate that. >> i think the clock is telling me i have to exercise my host prerogative of asking the final question. >> ok. >> first of all, i just want to say how heartening it is, how many young people are in the audience today, which is incredibly exciting, and probably not unconnected to what we have just been talking about the last couple of minutes. as the future of the republic in front of us here, i wonder if i might ask this question, joanne. it is particularly in moments like we are living through right now of political dystopia -- is that too strong a word -- to look back and say if we just had the congress of 1776 or 1787, we would be in such better shape. i am guessing you have a slightly more nuanced version of that, and i would like for you to reflect for all of our would be in such better shape. benefit, but particularly for young folks who i hope will see

that there is a chance. you are our chance as well. there is your pitch. >> thank you for the pitch. i mean i suppose part of my response to that would be something that i say sometimes at the end of my classes. i do teach this lecture course about the american revolution. at various points i think to myself, what am i going to do to end the american revolution. i have to think of something worthy to say for end of the revolution. it has been two or three years since i have taught that course. in the last two or three years our application have become so interesting. in one way or another, what the founding generation of people

wanted, they assumed this was going to be a government that was grounded on public opinion. they talked a lot about public opinion. they weren't always talking about the same public or how to get the opinion. what they a assumed, that unlike a monarchy, it would be grounded on the opinion of the american public. what that says to me is it is public engagement. it is us watching what is happening, responding to what is happening and acting on our feelings. that is the key. they set a constitutional system in motion banking on fact that that process what was was going to keep the republic going. that even if things got bad, the process they set in motion a process that would help us get through a crisis. to me, i would say for the next

generation, you guys should totally understand that the government is yours just as murphy as it is anybody else's, and you have absolutely the right to have opinions, to think about it, and then if you feel strongly about something, to act on it, to voice what you think, say what you think, whatever it is you think, whatever your opinion is. i was recently at an event, and some teachers were telling me they felt their students felt afraid to have a strong opinion. i guess what i would say is you guys have strong opinions. have strong opinions and then act. that is the future. it is you guys thinking about things, having an opinion about things and then acting on your thoughts. >> thank you, joanne. [applause]

>> interested in american history tv? website. you can view our tv schedule preview upcoming programs and watch college lectures museum tours archival films and more. american history tv at c-span.org. tonight, washington examiner editor keith koestler on his book. he's interviewed by republican texas representative louie gohmert. >> you spent a lot of time with stephen bannon. you heard his goals. you talked about what he wants to do.

what odds you give him for being able to help reach those goals? >> you want me to be utterly honest or utterly hopeful? i have come to agree with a lot of what he says. chance there is a decent because ben and believes the electorate has already changed. even in the general election trump was victorious. trump, obvious flaws in not a perfect person. he would certainly admit that himself and despite a lot of controversy they elected him. what then it believes is that already the belonging -- belonging for populism -- the longing for populism and nationalism is there. what hasn't changed is in the leadership in some parts of the republican party. that's what's driving him.

at 9:00 p.m.ght eastern on c-span2's book tv. c-span, where history unfolds daily. a 1979 c-span was created as public service by america's cable television companies. that is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> in 1777 there were two battles fought here near saratoga. they turned out to be the turning point of the revolutionary war. we talk with eric schnitzer here at the historic national park. >> the new york times magazine says the battle of saratoga was the most important battle ever fought in the last 1000 years because they resulted in a general surrender.