resounds today, and this question is about the -- how many people were fathered by gis, u.s. gis in vietnam, how are they treated 45 years after the u.s. departure. >> announcer: you could be featured during our next live program. join the conversation on facebook, facebook.com/cspanhistory and on twitter at cspanhistory. >> announcer: yale university historian joanne freeman talks about her life-long history on hamilton. she discusses how she used his letters and writing to understand what motivated him. this talk is about an hour. for give me. i have not only grown gray, but almost blind in the service of this museum.

well, it's incredibly exciting to welcome my friend of nearly 30 years now joanne freeman who i got to know running the streets of charlottesville when we were both young graduate students. it was already apparent at the time that there were a lot of smart people, i don't know how i got in, but joanne was already sort of head and shoulders above her colleagues, just had an incredibly sharp mind, was already talking about this founding father guy alexander hamilton, who most of us were like, come on, that's sort of boring. but lots of pressient things about joanne's work as a scholar. her first book "affairs of honor" published in 2001, does this sound relevant today, arousing exploitation of the

dis-topian political culture. she was gone on to edit hamilton's writing. i hope joanne with tell us about how close to being a life-long passion for alexander hamilton, she's add, was it the eighth grade. 14 years old she sent me a picture of her essay which she has preserved about the duel. this is something you share in common, phillip mead over in the corner, wrote, wonderful water color as a guy reading joseph paul martin when he was 14 years old. when you find people that have had a life-long passion you know you're in for a good ride as you you will be this evening. the other thing i appreciate about joanne as a public historian is that she does not

limit herself to the words on the page. she's very experiencetial in the way she did research. you're going to laugh a little bit that she had to go to saint croix and nevus. she was a lead consultant when the national park was reinterpreting hamilton's home. the settings these stories took place in, the weather, all of that really, really matters. she's been on a police firing range and shot a flint lock dueling pistol. this is a true story, lin-manuel miranda, spoke with joanne on numerous occasions as he was doing the unlikely project of developing a musical based on alexander hamilton.

he called her work indispensable for the creating that incredible sensation ""hamilton" the music sal. scholars are minds of public historians to go and pick from their scholarship and interpret it to the public. but joanne is also an incredible public intellectual and a public historian. she's a frequent commentator for national media outlets, we're being recorded for cspan. everybody turn around and wave to the c-span audience there. this will live on after tonight. i think most extraordinary is her course, appropriately given the number of yale folks here, through yale open courses, her american revolution course which was taped in 2011, and i think -- taped in 2010, i think it was put onto 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's been viewed actually more than a million times now by people online. the bootleg version of it is on youtube and that has been viewed a quarter of a million times. so you're in for a treat here. finally, she is a weekly co-host of a wonderful podcast called back story, founded by some of our former professors and current professors, i guess, still professors at uva, a weekly podcast that sort of looks at the news, and there's been a lot of news in the news lately, hasn't there? that it's very important to understand deep historical context for things like charlottesville, the federal city and whatever's going on down there. and i encourage you all to look at back story, a great, great treat to watch the podcast. her new work, finally in april 2018, so just coming up in a

couple months, and i hope that means you'll be able to return to talk about the new week "the field of blood," a study of physical violence in the u.s. congress. maybe a little historical context from where we are today. and finally the book, titled "hunting for hamilton." we'll experience a more rollicking version of fun and challenges of getting to know alexander hamilton in his world. please join me in welcoming joanne freeman. [ applause ] i feel so tall. i'm powerful. thank you, scott, so much for that introduction. that's -- i appreciate it greatly. and 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. and 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 go to the caribbean, such a sacrifice. because i really did want to get a sense of the places where he was, the things he did. i did indeed manage to shoot a black powder duelling pistol at the shooting range. i wanted to see what that felt like. as a matter of fact, i basically put myself through 18th century gentleman 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. so i took writing lessons, i

took fencing lessons, and what i discovered is i would have died a thousand times. as an 18th century gentleman, i was bad at all of it. but i tried, i really tried. and the other thing that i did, and this is going to be more what my remarks come from this evening and i've read hamilton's writings, 27 volumes of his writings, and he died pretty young so 27 volumes is pretty good. and i read those, actually was interested in hamilton. i wish i could remember what led me to question this, but i read a biography, as again when i was 14, the bicentennial, the founders were everywhere, read a biography of hamilton, didn't like it. i will not name which biography that was, didn't believe it and went to the library and asked the librarian what the person who wrote the book had read that gave him the right to say the things that he said in the book. and the librarian pointed me to hamilton's writings. do you see those 27 volumes

there, those are the things that he wrote, that's what this author read. so i took down volume one and started reading. and basically just got up to 27, and then started again. what was fascinating to me, and this will be clear in some of the comments i'm going to make this evening. what was fascinating to me is that that was a real person to me on those pages, the things that a person wrote over the course of a lifetime. as you'll hear this evening, some of them are formal writings and reports, some of them are letters to political figures, some of them are letters to friends. some of them are just little informal memos and sometimes it's really 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's been about 35 or 40 years that i've been studying hamilton. and for most of that time no one knew who he was.

like 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 about alexander hamilton. all of them are premised on the idea that no one knows who he is and has ever heard of him before. they all start with, there's this guy, you've never heard of him before, let me explain to you who he is, he's significant in the early republic. we are in a different universe now clearly. rather than wandering around all the time and telling people you need to hear about this guy, i spend a lot of time saying he's not as great as you think he is. he's interesting, but he's not as great as you think he is. so clearly this is -- for me this is 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. some of the things he wrote, 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's like to hunt for hamilton and to give you insight, actually hunting for hamilton is something you can all do because of those wonderful 27 volumes of hamilton's papers. and as scott suggested i am in the process of beginning, so i'm finishing my book on physical violence in the u.s. congress. i found about 100 violent incidents between 1830 and 1860 that were censored out of the congressal record and that's what the book is about. that comes out next year. but i'm now beginning to gun my engines for the next book, which is hunting for hamilton, the first book i've written about hamilton explicitly. i'm excited to do this and it's partly buy graphical, but partly talking about how do you find him? and how do you find him among other things in his writings?

and not just for his ideas, but how do you find him as a person? 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 letters can be amazingly revealing and really giving you a sense of a lifetime and a person and a personality and a mind at work. hamilton lyrics, how many people have a sense of the lyrics, once you see the play. mind at work is a lyric from the play. i didn't do that on purpose. i apologize in advance for my hamilton lyrics that come out of my mouth. they're in there and will stay there forever. i should say that actually testament to the fact that i really do -- i'm a person who is passionate about historical

evidence, historical documents and really pulling the past from these things that are left from the past in writing. when i heard that there was what i considered to be slightly crazy human being out there who was going to write a musical about alexander hamilton, and i heard it was based on a biography, my immediate reaction was, hamilton's words have to get in there, hamilton's writings have to be in that play. there will probably not be another musical about alexander hamilton. given that this is the one, hamilton's words have to be there. so i actually had a friend who managed to contact him through twitter and he responded, and he crashed my 50th birthday party so that i could hand him hamilton's letters so that he would put them in the play. i basically gave a version to him of what i just gave you he's in here, in the letters.

you have to put hamilton's words in the play, which he did and there are actually a lot of words pulled right from hamilton's correspondence, in the musical. a lot of people don't realize that. but again, that's the sort of reality of a person in the past in these documents. now, before we plunge in, i do want to offer just a really quick rundown of hamilton's life, just so that i could sort of set the scene for those of us who aren't immediately familiar with that. as you'll hear it's pretty logical that hamilton's life translates well on stage because there is something to a kind of dramatic shakespearean ark to hamilton's light. he was born poor and illegitimate. the fact he was a good writer brought him to people's attention, people on st. croix set up a charitable fund to send him to north america.

he got there as soon as the revolution was beginning to take off. and in not a very long amount of time she was washington's right-hand man, he became revol. now, when washington became president in 1789, he made hamilton the first secretary of treasury. in that post hamilton structured a national financial system and pushed to strengthen and empower the national government, launching a really fierce political battle against those who wanted a far less powerful national government. and obviously thomas jefferson and james madison were his foremost political opponents. when washington retired, hamilton tried to continue 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 then ultimately blocked out of having any influence over the

cabinet. this did not make hamilton very happy, and he wrote a lengthy pamphlet attacking adams who in the election of 1800 was his own party's presidential candidate, thinking that he could cleverly sway the election to go towards a different federalist. this did not work the way that he thought this would work, and it was an incredibly hostile, over the top, crazy pamphlet. i just as a matter of fact yesterday, i think, had a student, an undergraduate come into my office. my students were all writing 20-page research papers right now and they all have to be based on primary materials so a lot of them are coming into my office now very excited about the fact they're rummaging around in the 18th century. one of them came in and said, i saw that hamilton pamphlet thing he wrote about john adams. whoa! [ laughter ] >> it's a nasty pamphlet. so, it did not do any favors for adams but it also did not do any favors for hamilton and that bad political move joined with a variety of other bad political moves ultimately really helped

to destroy hamilton's political career. and a few years later, in 1804, hamilton's ongoing 15-year political rivalry with aaron burr led to the duel that ended hamilton's life. so, clearly that's a really dramatic life arc. his politics also are kind of extreme and could be kind of dramatic. he was someone who really powerfully felt that the national government needed to be centralized, powerful, at an age when america had just broken away from a monarchy, that was kind of a radical thing to do. it helped to make him pretty unpopular. he also was the sort of person who tended, when the people went up in arms in a way that alarmed him and he felt they weren't respecting the national government enough, his immediate impulse was to call in the military. this was a little bit of a scary impulse on his part, too. and he was not super trusting in democracy. you know, he was an extremist in

his politics. and obviously musical theater doesn't need to talk about all of these things, but his politics are interesting and extreme and tangled and there is a reason why he was a really controversial figure during his lifetime. the fact of the matter is that 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 in that first book on the burr hamilton duel and the logic of duelling in the early republic. what i discovered over the course of his lifetime, ten times he almost got involved in a duel before that final duel. ten times. now, that's a pretty -- that's a lot for someone in that time period. so, 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's a touchy individual is what that is.

so, in all of these ways, he's a dramatic character. and, again, discovering '14 is a reason i found him interesting. you can't question the fact that he's interesting. but what's particularly interesting to really sort of get beneath the drama into who hamilton really was, then you really have to turn to his writings. so, what i want to do this evening is talk about his writings in two 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. and then i want to show a little bit 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 i think are going to give you a sense of what i'm talking about as far as how you can decode a person from things that seem minor but then they kind of open a personality and a person to you. so, one of them has to do with

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, and clearly for someone who came from where he came from, this was his moment. this was going to be it in his mind. i either make something of this moment or i have nothing. so, what does he do? well, it's really interesting when you read accounts of what he did in college and reminisce entitles of some of the friends he had in college, he did a number of things. he took anatomy classes, kind of interesting. he did a lot of debating. he debated with friends and sort of worked on his debating skills. he established himself as being kind of very interested in religion. and he did a lot of military drilling. now, that sounds kind of random, but there were a limited number of pathways you could take in the 18th century to become a gentleman. you know, someone who was of

higher status. officer, army officer, clergy man, doctor, lawyer. he covered every base. he went to columbia and he was like, okay, i'm coming out of here as a gentleman with a career. here we go. he literally mapped a plan of action. that's really the way he thought throughout his life. it really does kind of give you a sense of why he was very good at doing the sorts of things he needed to be able to do as secretary of the treasury, because that's just 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 realized, oh, it's hamilton being hamilton. i stumbled across a letter written during the war in 1780, and for context, by this point in the war, by 1780, hamilton had been working at washington's side as an aide for several

years and he was desperate to have a field command. he didn't know george washington was going to go on to become george washington. 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 that he was a man of honor and bravery and he had reputation and he was someone who should be respected. now, he wanted that really badly, but the fact of the matter is that washington wanted him at headquarters. so, he kept not getting a field command. so, i find this letter from lafayette and it's 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 mean, i'm right here with washington. i could go talk to washington and ask him. why are you making me write a letter? and i thought, why is he making

him write a letter? that's kind of strange. so, i backed up to look at how hamilton asked for a field command. lo and behold, what did i find? he had a four-part plan to get to field command. first he went to washington and wrote a letter to washington and washington said no. so, then he went to washington in person and washington said no. so, he wanted lafayette to first write a letter and if he said no he wanted lafayette to go in person and can him again. so, he had four possible ways in which he might get the field command. lafayette skipped a step. so, hamilton was like, no, you are denying me one of my opportunities to get a field command. again, this is who he was. this is how he thought and it partly helps to show you why that kind of a person is going to be someone who certainly thrives in the kind of position 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. and what i suggested a few minutes ago is what i want to do

now, is not look at his great reports, important documents, his 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. and in this case, i'm 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. and the first one i want to look at that i think really does give you a gut sense of what he was thinking about at the time, what he's thinking about of america, and what he's thinking about when he thinks about the american government. it's a memo that he wrote right after the constitutional convention. so, he's at the constitutional convention and leading up to it for a while. he had been one of the new nation's leading nationalists. at one of the earliest voices and loudest voices saying we need a stronger government, we need a stronger government.

he was out there chiming away for this. you finally get the constitutional convention. you would think hamilton would be like, yes, finally, we have a new constitution. i've been wanting this all along. and now finally we're here. okay. so, to know what he's thinking, there is this little memo. after the convention he goes home and in a very lawyerly kind of way he sits down at his desk and says, what do i think is going to happen next? and he kind of puts this down and weighs it on paper. he says, okay, so if washington becomes president, probably washington will put good men into office and americans will probably trust those good men because they're coming from george washington. he appointed them. and so probably the government will 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. which is fascinating, but the real face nation is the kicker at the end of the after this political apocalypse in which the states turn on each other or france or england comes in and swallows us up, hamilton writes, and this is a paraphrase, that's probably the most likely result. think about that. he just left the federal convention. he signed his name, right, yea, we have a new constitution. and he basically concludes, i just -- i don't think it's going to work. i really don't think it's going to work. that wasn't a conclusion for show. he's not trying to impress anybody. he's not trying to persuade anybody. he's not politicking. he was just sort of musing on paper for himself, which does give you 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's somewhat goofy and yet revealing. not long after he left the treasury department, hamilton 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. so, he actually advise in great detail. he says, okay, national seal. a globe, and on one side of the globe will be north america and on the other side of the globe will be europe. and standing on europe will be a clos us, a giant, with 1 foot standing on the european continent and 1 foot looming

over north america, hovering above it and standing on north america will be a figure, a sort of athena like figure with a shield, essentially doing this. [ laughter ] >> okay. so, hamilton basically creates this national seal that is just screaming panic at europe and in particular france somehow coming in and taking over. how in his mind he thought, yeah, that's the national seal we want to make, i don't know. but it's such a bizarre image and it gives you such a -- it captures such a sense he's feeling at that moment, the fear he's feeling at that moment about whatever the craziness is going on in france and how that might somehow contaminate america. it's a remarkable and yet goofy document that gives you a sense of what he was thinking. i have to add only because it's particularly ridiculous, as if that wasn't crazy enough, he adds at the bottom of it, if it

doesn't render too complicated, i think that in the ocean we can have neptune and lots of waves. it's not too complicated at all, hamilton. no graphic sensibility. but what you're really seeing here is a sincere fear on his part about the fate of the republic. now, before i talk about what this all means, one other document that i want to mention here -- and it's a particularly dramatic one that i think really drives this point home -- and he wrote it actually in 1804 a few days before his fatal duel with aaron burr. so, he's aware it's possible he might get killed in that duel. so, he writes a kind of a final statement to be made public only in the event of his death in which he tried to explain why he was going to fight the duel. and i should adhere because i think mo-- add here, because i think most people don't know, burr wrote a statement, too. most people don't die in duels.

you're running a risk. if you're going to fight a duel you do write a statement. in this case hamilton writes one and he's going to explain why he's duelling and it goes on for pages because this is what hamilton does. first, he says, okay, first let me explain to you why i really don't want to fight this duel. and he talks about how he has a family and he has a lot of children and he has debt that he has to worry about and he's a christian and as a religious man this doesn't seem like a thing he should do. he has legal obligations, a list of all the reasons why he doesn't want a duel. plus, i don't really want to die. there are many reasons why he doesn't want to fight the duel. in a lawyerly way he goes on and says, here's why i feel like i have to fight this duel and he goes on to explain how for about 15 years he's been saying horrible things about aaron burr and he's bluntly honest. the fact of the matter is, i believe them all so i can't apologize for them. [ laughter ] i think they're all true. so, i can't really apologize.

plus, in the negotiating for the duel, burr insults hamilton so now not only is there a history of things that he said about burr that are nasty and he believes, but burr insults him as they are negotiating back and forth. he says, i don't know how to get out of this. but at the very end of the letter -- of the memo, he says, and i'm going to quote it here because it's really interesting. it's the last paragraph. he says, "to those who with me abhorring the practice of duelling may think i ought on no account to have added to the number of bad examples, i answer that my relative situation as well in public, as private aspects, enforcing all the considerations which constitute what men of the world denominate honor, impressed on me as i thought a peculiar necessity not to decline the call. the ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or affecting good in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to

happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular." now, that's very hamiltonian. goes on at length there. but what he's really saying there is he's predicting a major crisis down the road for the republic, and he feels the need to defend his reputation because he wants to be useful at that moment of kriesericrisis. if he doesn't defend his reputation, he feels he will be someone people won't follow as a leader. he's fighting the duel in part to fight for his usefulness of what he considers the inevitable moment of crisis for the republic. clearly throughout his life he did sincerely believe the government eventually in one way or another would fall. now, that does help to shed some light on some of his extreme politics. rather than just looking at them and saying, well, he's kind of bonkers or he's an extremist, whatever we think of those

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 for some of those ideas that he had. he was called a monarchist for much of his life. he was trying to centralize the national government. over and over and over again he kept writing these statements saying, i'm not a monarchist. essentially what he said over and over again, i'm totally willing to give this a go, dot, dot, dot, you know. i'm willing -- i'm signed on for this. i'm willing to give it a go, but, it's probably not going to work but that's okay. i'm not going to do anything to hurt the republic. i'm going to do everything i can do to make the republic last. in his lights, in his logic what he was doing to strengthen the republic and calling on military force and everything he did, in his mind that was strengthening the nation as extreme as those politics seemed at the time, sometimes even in contemporary

times might seem to us. so, 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 little memos that he wrote for nobody else but himself. and i think this is important for a couple of reasons. i think first it's a reminder that hamilton and this holds true for every other founder as well, they weren't just spouting policies. they weren't just sort of 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's as true of hamilton as it is to anybody else. so, his political decisions were born of his inner convictions and his ideas and feelings about them and fears about them. and i think that's really easy

to forget when you're 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 of a lot of founding folk essentially doing this, i have a great thought. i have another great thought. we sort of see it as a moment with, you know, the image in our mind of people having great debates and we have also, of course, assumed that it's going to succeed. of course it's going to succeed. we assume, and my students do this all the time. well, of course we won the revolution. of course then they wrote a constitution. well, of course, that 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. they were confused. they were testy. they didn't know what they were doing. they were improvising. the founding generation didn't know what would happen next. and 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's the word that they used all the time. it's -- that they were launching an experiment. it was a republican world of monarchies. they had no idea if that was going to work. and people were waiting to see what would happen and responding in the moment and some of them were fearful as hamilton was. so, to really fully understand hamilton or early american politicians or just 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 captures that idea really brilliantly in the first paragraph of the first federalist essay, and it's a paragraph that i read in almost all of my undergraduate courses at some point and i am now going to inflict it on you. but it's a really, i think, moving paragraph and it captures this idea that i'm talking about, the sense of contingency that no one really quite knows if it's going to work. so, i've going to offer this to you now. i'm going to actually close my initial comments here with hamilton. i'm going to let him close my initial comments and then i'm going to be happy to answer questions. but this is the first paragraph, first federalist essay. it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country by their conduct and example to decide the important question whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety 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 ] >> so, the only rule is you've got to have a microphone when you're asking the questions. we have a timer on the right. who would like to go first? i saw you first, sir. >> hi. question, how do you rationalize your speaking about the letter and hamilton really thought at the end, i don't think it's going to work? then he wrote the passionate

federalist papers and how he defended it and so fantastically? >> so, how do i pull together the fact that he doesn't think it's going to work and that he's so passionately engaged in it? well, i think that that actually is exactly how you make sense of it. he doesn't think it's going to work and he's going to give his all to try and make it work. so, i think at the same time i think he was fearful always that it was going to collapse, but i think part of the reason why he was sort of, you know, i was going to say nonstop, it's another word from the play. [ laughter ] >> but one of the reasons why he was so passionate and engaged in his politics is because he really did think he might be able to do the thing that might help it to survive. there is a, there is a letter that he wrote in 1792, and i teach it in my classes, it's like a 40-page letter, you know. and he wrote it to someone in virginia basically saying, let me tell you what i think about the politics of this moment. and what's fascinating about it is he's really describing his relationship with jefferson and

his relationship with madison and people don't tend to read this letter closely. it's fascinating because it's as close as we can get to hearing about what's fascinating about government and the fight. he's talking about what he's doing and what they're doing and why he doesn't like them and they don't like him. my students say it sounds like high school. he's my friend first. it has a very personal tone to t. but at the end he goes on to talk about -- he'd be the first person to say he doesn't trust the gofrmvernment. he doesn't think it's going to last. he's going to do everything he can possibly do to keep it going. and people think that he's a monarchist trying to overturn the republic and as he explains in this letter, i'm not. i'm going to do what i feel like i need to do to push it to be as strong as it needs to be. in his mind, he was pushing it in the direction of monarchy. in his mind it wasn't the monarchy. in his mind you elect whoever is the president. if you elect him it's not a

monarchy, right? some people at the time didn't necessarily believe that, but i think those things to him, part of the reason he was so passionate was because he felt that 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 lawrence during the time of the revolution and i was curious about your thoughts on the tone of these letters. [ laughter ] >> okay. i know what that one is. okay. so, hamilton wrote these very passionate letters to john lawrence. so, john lawrence, they were a group of people who worked at headquarters who were all fellow aides and they all, you know, it's actually -- they were like young guys in a war together. so, there's like one of them is named james mchenry and james

mchenry wrote this epic poem about them. he describes hamilton snored. it's like this goofy sort of bunch of guys who are 18 or 19 years old in the middle of a war together. the letters to lawrence are really passionate, very passionate. and he talks about, you know, i love you, lawrence. so, they're emotional. unlike any of the other letters he writes in his lifetime, even though there are many letters which he's engaged and friendly towards people, these letters there is an intimacy about them and a trust, you know, he talks about wanting to have nothing else -- he just wants a brilliant exit. i don't know if i'm ever going to get anything i want. i don't know if i'm ever going to make anything of myself. sometimes i think i just want to make a brilliant exit. there is a lot in those letters that are strikingly passionate. now, some people read those letters and assume that there was a relationship of sorts between the two of them.

i'm undecided on that front because 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 is name robert troupe and i found letters between aaron burr and robert troupe that are equally passionate and emotionally engaged in that way. so, i don't know. i mean, because of the play people have delved in and there's a lot of feeling that perhaps they did have a relationship. i don't know that. i mean, i'm not saying yes or no. i actually honestly don't know. but i don't think that alone the fact that those letters are kind of zesty is enough in and of itself to conclude that. so, i sort of -- i am a firm believer that you never know what you're going to find as far as historical evidence is concerned. and over the course of my career i've found amazing things that you would think if you're writing about the founders, it's not possible, although we just discovered there's all kinds of things you can find including wonderful images of washington's

military tent. but you can find things all the time about the founders if you're thinking logically and you're digging, you know. when i was writing my book, i found eyewitness accounts of the burr-hamilton duel people hadn't discovered before, it's in the bottom of a box. you would think not only could i not find something new about the founders, but how could i find something new about the hamilton-burr duel. in one way or another, i will see more evidence or i will see something else that makes me see those letters in a different kind of way and then i'll have an opinion one way or another. i'm left with a question mark above my head as far as what that means. >> do you think that hamilton's writing is similar to anyone today? >> oh, that's a good question. do i think his writing is similar to anyone today?

well, i tell you, in one way i would say no because he never stopped writing. you know what i mean? who writes a 40-page letter? and especially nowadays with like, you know, social media, right? twitter, right, where you get -- well, now, 280 characters. but still, you get -- people don't have that kind of an attention span. first of all, no one would pay attention, i think. but he also -- in some ways i would say there is something about his writing that does seem modern. i teach a course at yale about their letters. i divide the letters up into different themes. all i do is read jefferson's letters and hamilton's letters. jefferson's letters sound 18th century-ish. jefferson is a brilliant letter writer but he's very strategic. he writes letter that are very explicitly aimed at certain people to make a certain response. he's a brilliant, brilliant writer. hamilton is just like a canon of

a writer. he's like, boom. there is like this wonderful -- so, jefferson in 1791, i think, has a dinner party. and he invites all these people over. he invites congressman over. it's not a political dinner supposedly, it's just a dippnne party. he sets the table and on the table there are props so the conversation turns to political topics he would like it to turn towards. at some point in the dinner everyone leaves magically except a number of key congressmen who he wants to talk to. so it's this brilliantly strategized dinner party in which jefferson wants to have a political conversation, but there is nothing about if if you went there, you would say, ah, we are here at jefferson's house to have this political conversation. hamilton at the same time writes a letter and says, the topic is the debt. we're going to meet at my house tonight, bring papers. there is nothing subtle about

hamilton. sometimes my students get -- when they're reading them side by side. they get frustrated with jefferson. he's being so strategic to get to the point. hamilton barrels through and says what he wants. in that sense you could say there is something a little modern. i know i didn't give you the name of the person who i think 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 counter factual situations. >> oh, oh. >> what do you think if aaron burr had missed? what would his life have been like? >> there is a little bit of evidence about that. i don't have to be 100% counter factual. 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 and then, of course, nothing happened of it. but he might have been a political commentator. he might have been someone -- i think that he saw by the end of his life there was no way that he was going to be involved politically other than this amazing crisis, from 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's going in a direction, i don't know what it is, but i don't like it, you know. so, he began calling himself a failed politician. so, he really understood that, you know, jefferson becomes president, jefferson's party takes over, things are moving in a democratic direction. he's not very excited about that. but i think he probably would have become the sort of person who was a very aggressive political commentator. he probably would have produced some other great -- it's kind of a shame because you want to know

what that great tome would have looked like. i think that's where he would have gone. i think he would have been supremely frustrated by being the guy who commented and couldn't -- he probably would have gotten in trouble and fought a duel with somebody else. i don't know. but i think that's the direction he was going. >> the one president i can think of who shared that sense that america wasn't inevitable, you conveyed the first federalist, was abraham lincoln . and i'm just wondering if in your wanderings through our history you've come across linkages from lincoln , obviously was much better read than people appreciate. >> well, yeah. i mean, what's interesting -- it's 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, but i think his politics, too. so, i think he was a president historically attuned, not assuming all of them were. he lived in a moment that 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. but, yeah, i mean, it's interesting to read his writings with that sensibility, and you really do get a sense of him really deeply thinking about the founding and its meaning and the sort of unfolding tradition of american governance in a way that not a lot of politicians necessarily were doing at that moment. >> so, i'm going to address the elephant in the room and ask a shallow question. >> oh, oh. >> 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 go, lin-manuel, you nailed it, that was the best thing ever? [ laughter ] >> gosh. okay, i'll give like partial answers. one of them has to do with what i said, and that is hamilton's actual words are in the play, right? and jefferson's words, real words are in there, too. so, any time that floated by it was all i could do not to stand up and say, 1792. [ laughter ] >> that made me really happy. i went and i saw it a couple different times with different historians and they didn't all necessarily know like that's from that letter, but they all had a sort of, oh, my gosh, that's like washington's farewell address. they're singing washington's farewell address. how is that humanly possible? they're single about the assumption of state debts. really? [ laughter ] >> you could do that in a musical? so, part of it was i really did

appreciate that he really as a play write was thinking about the stuff of history and putting it in. the totally self-interested answer to that question is, i didn't know this till i saw the play. the first time i saw the play, there is a song in the play about the rules of dueling called the ten duel commandment s. i'm sitting with my friend in the audience and they started singing about dueling. this is something i've written about a lot, there is a whole chapter on it t. i'm watching, ooh, excellent, here's a dueling song. they're singing. wow, it's kind of familiar sounding. he kind of agrees with me, excellent. they keep singing, and i'm like that's kind of the argument of my chapter. and they keep singing and i think, that comes from a document i found at the new york historical society. [ laughter ] >> so, it actually was from my book, right? when i met lin miranda, is that

song based on my book? yeah, of course. [ laughter ] >> that was kind of mind blowing. i was like, i'm the historian who has a little bit of my book sung on broadway. [ laughter ] >> how does that happen? so, that definitely -- i don't think it made me want to stand up, it made me want to pass out. that was kind of shock being. more than anything else, it was the stuff that historical artifacts, the words, you know, best of wives and best of women is from a hamilton letter. he calls his wife. you know, lin miranda once said to me, how could i not put those words? beautiful writing he stuck in there. the fact that he thought of that and did that, i appreciate that. >> i think the clock is telling me i have to exercise my host prerogatives in asking the final question. first of all, i just want to say how heartening it is, how many

young people are in the audience tonight, which is incredibly exciting and probably not unconnected to what we've just been talking about the last couple minutes. and as the future of the republic in front much 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 distauystopia that too strong a word? to look back and say, oh, if we just had the congress of 1776 or 1787, you know, we'd be in such better shape. i'm guessing you have a slightly more nuanced version of that. [ laughter ] >> and i'd like you to sort of reflect for all of our benefit, but particularly for young folks who i think, you know, i hope will see that there is a chance. of course, you're our chance as well. anyway, there's 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. like i do teach the course about the american revolution. at various points i think to myself, what am i going to do to end the american revolution? i think of something worthy to say to end the american revolution. it's been two or three years since i taught that course. i haven't since our politics has become so interesting. what i have said and what i would say again is in one way or another, what the founding generation of people wanted was -- they assumed this was going to be a government that was grounded on public opinion. they talked a lot about public opinion. they didn't necessarily know how to get public opinion. they weren't always talking about the same public. there's a lot of subtlety in there. what they assumed was unlike a monarchy that the american republic would be grounded on the american republic -- the

american public in a very immediate kind of way. what that says to me is it's public engagement. it's us watching what's happening, responding to what's happening, and acting on our feelings. that's the key. and they set a system in motion, a constitutional system in motion, banking on the fact that that process was what was going to keep the republic going. that even if things got bad, the process that they set in motion was going to be the thing that we could go back to the process, the process, we could cling to it and 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 much as it is anybody else's and you have the right to have opinions, to think about it and 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, you

know. i was recently at an event and some teachers were telling me they felt that their students felt afraid to have a strong opinion. and i guess what i would say is you guys have strong opinions. you know, have strong opinions. and then act. that is the future, is you guys thinking about things, having an opinion about things, and acting on your thoughts, so. >> thank you. [ applause ]

>> american history tv on c-span 3, this week in primetime tuesday 8:00 p.m. eastern, u.s. special forces detachment stationed in berlin, germany in cold war. >> two teams would remain in the city to give the russians and east germans a hard time, destroy critical targets like radio station ands power plants, while the other guys would cross over the walls to hit these targets. rail yards. >> wednesday night, black voter suppression in the 1940s. >> during the congressional debate representative lewis of indiana said, quote, what a travesty. we're sending negroes to the firing line to die and fight for freedom while telling them they shall have no part and parcel of freedom at home. >> thursday night, president andrew jackson's political struggle to challenge and even cripple the powerful bank of the united states. >> already by 1829, june of 1829

when he had been president all of three months, jackson was writing friends that the only thing that can prevent our liberties to be crushed by the bank and its influence would be to kill the bank itself. >> and friday night, an interview with senator john mccain on the vietnam war's impact on his life and the country. >> i don't hold a grudge against the north vietnamese. i don't like them. there are some that i would never want to see again. but at the same time, i was part of a conflict, okay. and i thought they were some of the mean est people i've ever met in my life. and i never want to see again. but there were several that were good people and that were kind to me. so, that's why it was much easier for me to support, along with president clinton and others, the normalization of relations with our two

countries, to heal the wounds of war. >> watch american history tv this week in primetime on c span-3. >> navy ill flyer john mccain was shot down over north vietnam during his 23rd mission on october 26, 1967. he ejected from his sky hawk bomber into a lake, was captured, beats enand held in filthy conditions with poor medical care despite life-threatening injuries. two of the more than five years he was held as a p.o.w. were spent in solitary confinement. on this 50th anniversary, senator mccain talks with the american history tv about those events and he reflects on the war's legacy and impact on america. >> senator mccain, when you look back 50 years ago when your plane went down there in hanoi and through the last 50 years, what today, in your opinion, are the legacies of