then later today the house rules committee will meet to discuss debate on the tax reform bill and changes to the dodd-frank wall street reform and consumer protection act. live coverage starts at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. you can also watch that online at c-span.org. or listen with the free c-span radio app. he -- announcer: this week on "q&a," professor and historian gordon wood. he talks about his book, "friends divided," about thomas jefferson and john adams. brian: gordon wood, author of the book "friends divided: john adams and thomas jefferson."

as a longtime historian, what impact does it have on you that you were born in concord, massachusetts, grew up around boston? what has it done to your thinking of history? gordon: it made me a fan of john, just because he was a good old yankee. i am not sure that being a new englander has affected me onsciously, i do not like to think that i am letting the present influence my conception of the past. so i am not sure. but i am a new englander for sure. brian: can you remember when you first heard about john adams? gordon: probably not until high school. i did not know much about him, not until college. i had not gotten to see his home until after college. so it was a long time before i got to know him. now, because i did three volumes in the library of america about his writings, i

really got to know him. i think i got to know him better than i know most of my friends. he is really something. brian: you said in your book that he had a diary and thomas jefferson did not. why do you think one had and one did not? gordon: well, i think adams was somebody -- first of all, an old puritan in that sense although he's not a congregationalist, he's not a serious puritan but he came out of that tradition. they kept diaries. he needed to write out his emotions and feelings. he put everything in that diary. as a young man. i mean, he said things about himself that most people would say, most people would not say. even in their diaries. he expressed himself and even talked about his vanity. he talked about every intimate feeling he had. that is not something jefferson would do. jefferson was reserved and would never write what he did, what adams did, even in his letters. he was not a simple -- he had a

very different temperament. they couldn't differ more in temperament. brian: so what were their differences? go through a litany. gordon: physically they differed. but most importantly, jefferson was a wealthy slaveholder. he was a leader of the slaveholding society. he acquired quite a bit of land and money from his father, but also from his father-in-law. he became very wealthy. he became --it was automatic he would go into the house of burgess and become a political leader. it was a consequence of his social status. adams came out of a middling background and whatever wealth he acquired he acquired through his law practice. he did not inherit much from his father. he was not wealthy. he never became one of the richest men of massachusetts and he always resented that, because he was always regarded as of middling background and he suffered a little bit of contempt from some of the

wealthy massachusetts men for that reason. brian: if you were in the same room with the two of them, talking just to the two of them, what would you notice? gordon: adams would be talking and rattling people. he had a sharp, sarcastic tongue. jefferson was restrained, reserved. he kept his arms folded in front of him when he talked. adams made mistakes because adams said what he thought and offended a lot of people. jefferson was the opposite, very polite and obsessed by politeness and civility. he lectured his sons in laws on that issue. he thought politeness was crucial and part of being enlightened. being polite was to be enlightened and civility was very important to jefferson. adams knew about this but just couldn't help it.

he said he did not have the gift of silence. which is what washington had and jefferson had. he did not have that. brian: what kind of an environment, media environment did they grow up in gordon: jefferson grew up in a slaveholding society. he became one of the wealthiest planters in the colony. whereas, adams grew up in braintree with very little connections. none of the connections that jefferson had. jefferson's mother was a randolph, one of the most prestigious families in the whole colony of virginia. he had in a sense a silver spoon. from the outset. whereas adams did not. so there's a big difference in their backgrounds and, of course, the massachusetts was a relatively egalitarian state ompared to

the hierarchyial virginia. there were a few slaves in massachusetts, but nothing comparable to the 40% of virginia that was enslaved. so the worlds they grew up in were different. could not have been more different. brian: what kind of students were they? gordon: they were both smart, bright right from the outset. jefferson probably knew more about more things than any single man in north america. i include franklin in that, who would be his only rival. everyone was impressed by jefferson, the extent of his knowledge. adams was smart but he did not have the breath but he had some depth in history and in law that jefferson didn't have. not because jefferson couldn't. he just wasn't as interested in he law as adams. in fact, although jefferson became a lawyer, he did not think of it as a career. he came to hate the law and hate lawyers.

whereas adams loved the law, he mystery of the common law and he was of course a superb counsel. he was one of the best lawyers and certainly the busiest lawyer in the colony of massachusetts. brian: tell me, how many books have you written? i counted eight plus this one would be nine. i'm sure -- gordon: i've edited some too for the library of america. brian: of all the books you have published, and you got a lot of awards and medals, which of all of these books have been your biggest success? gordon: biggest success is one thing. i don't know how you measure it. by sales i guess. that would be the "radicalism of the american revolution." my favorite book is my first, the creation of the american republic, because it was my dissertation. that is my favorite, but it is certainly not the best seller.

brian: what led to your interest in that at the time and where did you do your dissertation? gordon: i went to howard graduate school. and worked with bernard baylen. and i had no interest when i first went to graduate school. i worked with arthur schlessinger, jr. this was in the late 1950's. he was not interested in graduate students. he was gearing up for the election of 1960. he was a stevenson supporter but quickly shifted to kennedy. we know the rest. academic. i took a seminar with him and i said, this early american stuff is really interesting. i have never regretted that decision. the wisest decision i ever made. brian: bernard is still alive, he is 95. gordon: he's 95. brian: do you have any relationship with him? gordon: we celebrated his jubilee of his ideological origins last april.

this is the 50th anniversary of that book and we had a meeting, celebrating the book. a number of us who knew him. and, he is fine. he came and gave a talk. these essays, i think, going to be published. that were presented. so he's fine. he's 95, i guess. brian: yes. gordon: it's nice to know that you can still be doing stuff at 95. brian: it makes you feel like a youngster. gordon: yeah, that's right. brian: when did you start working on this book and why? gordon: well, i did -- i think i mentioned -- i did the prevolumes of writing on john adams for the library of america. he got three volumes. that's more than franklin got one volume, jefferson one volume, hamilton one volume. dams, each of his was smaller. coming out of that experience, i thought i would write a book on adams. e was fascinating to me.

but my publisher suggested, why don't you do a comparison with jefferson? and suddenly that intrigued me and i'm glad he suggested that because i think i learned more about each of them by pitting them against one another. and that's how it arose. i was originally going to work on adams but then he suggested comparing them and it was marvelous. i just read everything that they wrote. it's all available now either the letter press editions or the internet. it's just a marvelous -- i dedicate the book to the editors of the adams papers and jefferson papers because they've done all this work presenting this material to us historians. and they don't usually get the credit that they deserve, these people, these editors. at any rate that's how they arose. brian: how do they differ in age? gordon: eight years older

adams. and that counted because when jefferson joined the continental congress in 1775 he saw adams had already been there and is in the lead pushing for independence and i think jefferson saw him as his senior and adams certainly saw him as his protégé. he took him under this wing. this younger man. only eight years difference but that can be big when you're young. and jefferson played that role, which of course, in other words listen to adams, his opinion and probably said the right thing to him because jefferson was very keenly aware of people and he was always sensitive to people's feelings. i think that's where the friendship started. he deferred to adams and that was important. brian: in your first chapter, you write, jefferson told the american people what they wanted to hear.

how exceptional they were. adams told them what they needed to know, truth about themselves that were difficult to bear. over the centuries, americans have tended to avoid adams' message, they have much preferred to hear jefferson's praise of their uniqueness. gordon: right. adams was a realist. he did not believe every man were created equal. he believed that every man were created unequal. he did not believe in american centralism. we americans are no better or different from other nations, just as vicious, just as corrupt. these are things he is saying. that is not the american myth, this is not the american dream. he took on every single dream or myth that americans live by. we could not live by adams's message, it would be too much to bear. i think. and jefferson said what we needed to hear in some respects because you can't have a nation

based on the notion that we're all unequal from birth. in other words, adams is a real -- he didn't know about genetics or d.n.a. but he believed that people are unequal from birth. he was all into nature, not nurture. jefferson is the opposite. he's into nurture. and i think that's what most americans believe. in other words, we are all born equal and the differences that emerge are due to different experiences, different environments. that's why education is so important to us americans and it was important to jefferson. now, adams didn't disparage education but he said that's not going to make that much difference. what we're born -- he told jefferson in their later years, i went to a foundling hospital in paris and i saw babies 4 days old and already they were

unequal. some were smart, some were dumb, some were beautiful, some were ugly. he says, those differences were right there at 4 days. that is not an american message. that's a jeffersonian message. that is why we honor jefferson in the way we do. we tend to honor the two men very differently. jefferson has a beautiful memorial on the tidal basin in washington here right off the mall. there's nothing for adams. monticello is a world heritage site visited by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. i don't know how many people come to quincy, mass, to adams' home, very modest house relative to monticello. and it's very hard to get to. he has a fraction of the visits. brian: why? gordon: he's not in the same

league, celebrity league, if you will. even then, at one point, when they reconcile -- their friendship broke up but they came back together in 1812 and they exchanged about 158 letters. adams writing three to every one of jefferson's. but that's understandable because at one point jefferson -- adams says to jefferson, well, how many letters do you get in a year for yourself? how many do you receive? this is i think 1820. and jefferson said, i get 2,000-something. and adams said, wow. only get 200. 10-1. and jefferson felt obligated to answer them. jefferson was corresponding with the great naturalist, the czar of russia. he's corresponding with great people. adams is not in that league at all. so he says, oh, look. i'll write more than you because i know you're businessy writing other people. he's -- busy writing other

people. he's got to answer over 2,000 letters. so they're in a different league right then and they still are in our consciousness. there's no way adams can compete with jefferson. jefferson stands for america. now, unfortunately, he's a slave holder and so that's tainted him very badly as you know in these days. brian: when did jefferson meet adams and what was he doing? gordon: they were in the continental congress. adams had already been in the first continental congress. jefferson did not make that one. i think he became ill. he sent along instructions which got printed as a pamphlet. some review of the contest between britain and the colonies, which established his name in 1774. this very radical pamphlet. as radical any pamphlet ever written until thomas paine because he takes on the king in

his pamphlet. this is before the declaration. it anticipates the declaration, because it goes through a series of things that the king and government were doing. that establishes his name, but he did not make the congress because he became ill. he comes to the second continental congress in 1775, adams had already been in both congresses. adams is serving on about 20-some committees, chair of many of them, including the committee on war. so that when the declaration of independence, that committee is formed, and adams and jefferson are both on it, it's -- adams is happy to have this young guy take on the drafting of the declaration because he's so busy doing really in his mind more important things like running the war against great britain. and so little did they realize, did adams realize and jefferson, both, realize how important that declaration would become later, of course. adams becomes quite jealous of

the fame that jefferson's getting. brian: during the constitutional convention in philadelphia, where these two -- where were these two men? gordon: jefferson was minister to france and adams was minister to london. interestingly enough, i think adams had a profound effect on the constitution, on the kind of government. he had written the massachusetts constitution in 1780 and set forth a structure that gets copied by the federal government. a strong executive with a veto power. now, what adams wanted was absolute veto over all legislation, but he had to bend to his colleagues and he gave a limited veto. the reason most of our governors -- i think all of them have limited vetoes, including the president, is because of adams. there are no -- in 176, none of the govern -- 1776, none of the

governors in the state constitution had veto power. e pushed that. so he had an influence on the federal constitution. they are away and so they do not know about it until two months later. adams loves it. he think it's pretty good because it seems to fit his own description of what a good government should be. jefferson is appalled by it. the power of the president is too great, he sees the president as a version of a polish king, a polish king was elected for life, serves for life, and then dies. then the aristocrats would elect a new king. that is he thought the president of the united states would be. now, washington only served two terms. he couldn't wait to get back to mount vernon. otherwise he might have stayed in office until he died. if he hadn't been what he is, if he hadn't been george washington who really was not someone who loved power.

so he leaves after his second term. he could have stayed on if he wanted to. and so that's how jefferson thought the presidency would evolve. it would be like a polish king, serve for life. brian: there are threads through your book, britain versus france, aristocracy versus commoners. where were they on both of those? explain what an aristocrat is. gordon: well, it is controversial. they actually talk about this in their correspondence in their retirement years what's an aristocrat. adams was obsessed by oligarchy. he believed there would inevitably be oligarchs who run the country -- who run things, who attempt to run things. he feared aristocracy more than he feared monarchy or a single

ruler. he was willing to give much more power to a president or to a governor than jefferson. jefferson, as adams says, he fear the one, mr. jefferson, i fear the few. so he's obsessed by aristocracy. although he is one of them. he's emerged as an aristocrat. his notion -- jefferson's notion of aristocrat would be the talented and the virtueous like himself. e assumed that the people once educated they would elect people like himself. jefferson was confident of the populous. he did not fear demagoguery would take place. adams is much more doubtful of democracy. adams comes to doubt american elections. he thought they would soon become so corrupt, to partisan that we would have to adopt

british technique -- we'd have to adopt first lifetime tenure for the president and for the senate and eventually having to make them he had red tear. just following the english model. well, the question is, have we reached that point yet, you know, in our elections? he would certainly believe that, well, i told you so. this is what happens when you have too much democracy. jefferson had none of those doubts. none of those fears. brian: you wrote caught him he -- he -- gordon: right. jefferson really had contempt for organized religion. he made a couple of mistakes publicly. one in his notes on virginia he said something to the effect, who cares whether you believe -- my neighbor believes in one god or 20 gods, it bonet break

my arm or something. that came back to haunt him. then he made a mistake in his preface in his bill for religious freedom saying our religious opinions -- he didn't say faith -- our religious opinions have no more importance to our civic life than our opinions of physics and geometry. well, most americans didn't believe that. most americans today don't believe that. that got him into trouble. so he was -- he was accused of being an atheist in 1800. he mocked christianity. thought the trinity was a joke and so on. he would say this in private to his friends. but he didn't really care more about organized religion at all and he didn't think religion was important to people. jefferson, like he was a unitarian, that is to say they didn't believe in the divinity of jesus, adams has tremendous respect for religious feelings and for religion.

he thinks it's useful, necessary. people need to have religion. he never mocked it, infer made fun of it. he's very different in that respect of jefferson. brian: why was adams so attached to britain and why was jefferson so attached to france and the french revolution? gordon: oh, the french revolution, of course the moment us event and jefferson sees it as being influenced by our revolution. he sees a worldwide revolutionary wave beginning with us that's going to spread eventually and revolutionize the world. brian: how soon after the american revolution -- gordon: 10 years later you have the french evolution and that's the first of what's going to be many revolutions and he -- complete ideologue. caught up in the french revolution. at one point his successor, as president clintonster in france, writes to him and says, mr. jefferson, your friends, this is 1793, right in the middle of the terror, brights to him and says, mr. jefferson,

your friends are being guillotined by the thousands and jefferson writes back, well, so be it. he said, if only adam and eve are left alive but left free it will be worth it. well, that led -- brian, the irish journalist who wrote a book on the 1790's and jefferson, this maked jefferson the pot paul of the 1790's. pot paul, the cambodian leader who killed millions on behalf of the communist cause, that's how jefferson appears in letters. now, whether -- it's very doubtful he would have behaved that way because he was tended to exaggerate but that's the feeling i had about this revolution that was worth -- it was worth many deaths. o he's a complete radical, 18th century style radical. his difference are no different than thomas bain's age of reason. he was right -- thomas payne's

age of reason. he was right in the vanguard of radical thinking as he could be and still be an elected official. adams is committed to the english constitution from the beginning. finest in the world. he actually wants the american republican government to be a kind of republican model of the english constitution. he is completely taken with the english. so that's -- and of course when the revolution breaks out, england and france are in a titanic struggle for supremacy over a 10-year period of warfare. adams' sympathy is with england and jefferson is totally with france. that's the source of their ultimate break. because the two parties that emerged, the federalists, are pro-english and the republicans, jeffersonian republicans are pro-french.

so the two men are caught as leaders of these two parties by the end of the 1790's. brian: based on what the federalists stood for back in those days, does it make sense that the conservative legal group here in town called the federalist society is called that? gordon: well, i don't think they see themselves as heirs to those federalists. i think they think of it in terms of federalism. that's the separation between the state and the federal government, the states. federalism, of course. hat was the name chosen by the designers, the framers of the constitution. a very shrewd title, because they should have called themselves nationalists. because the real federalists were the anti-federalist. that came out of the constitutional struggle of 1787. 1788. so the party continues to call themselves federalists even though they are pushing for a strong consolidated kind of state, a national state.

they get stuck with the name. they acquire this name, federalist. i do not think the modern federalist society of attorneys is thinking in those terms. they are not trying to duplicate that, although it does not hurt them to that identification because they are conservative. brian: this is your writing. adams also thought the dynamic world of the early republic was going to hell in a handbasket. he hated all of the banks and the proliferating issues of paper money as much as jefferson. gordon: right. neither of these men understood banking. they didn't know how a bank brighted. -- operated. adams said at one point, if the bank has more money and paper outstanding than it has gold and silver in the vault, to back it up, then it is a cheat on somebody. well, obviously no bank can make any money if it doesn't print more paper which says we

the bank of new burry port, massachusetts, promise to pay the bear on demand, gold and silver, $100. they don't count on everyone coming to the bank and getting that gold and silver so they can issue more money out than -- more paper out, promises to pay than they actually can redeem. that's always a problem. if you get too far as one bank in rhode island, my own state, did in 1808, i think it had $600,000 in paper, promises to pay with $86 in gold and silver to bank up that $600,000. that bank went bankrupt the first bankrupt bank in american history. well, those -- adams did not understand banking. neither did jefferson. hamilton understood what the bank was, but he did not expect the proliferation of state banks. this is an important part of the making of the constitution. madison is frightened to death

of all this paper money being issued by the states in the 1770's. coming out of the railroads. 1770's and 1780's. one of the things he wants to stop is this negative that he wants to give the congress over all state legislation. because he is particularly concerned about the issuing of paper money. well, having a veto all over legislation will be too impractical. so it gets boiled down to article 1, section 10 of the constitution which prohibits states from doing certain things. they can't pass tariffs and they can't print paper money. well the tariff, if that had been enforced strictly, it would have stifled the economy. they get around that by chartering banks which in turn print the paper money. so you have these hundreds of banks by the early decades of the 19th century issuing scads of paper money. that's what jefferson and adams are appalled by.

most people were. look, all of these founders who lived into the 19th century are appalled by what they wrought. they're disappointed by the revolution, they are scared. it hasn't worked out the way -- it's too democratic. it's too wild. and certainly adams and jefferson both are -- have second thoughts. not that they want to reverse it but they say, this is not the world we wanted. brian: you mentioned your home state of rhode island. you taught at brown university in providence for how long? gordon: almost 40 years, 39 years. brian: you're emeritus. do you teach some? gordon: i don't teach. i am not taught for eight years now. brian: when you did this book, did you learn anything about either thomas jefferson or john adams? gordon: oh, yeah. no, i did. things got sharper. setting them against each other, particularly on the issue of equality. i hadn't realized how much adams was committed to the inequality of people and i got

a greater appreciation of what was meant by "all men are created equal." i think most people have taken that -- well, equal rights, yeah. well, that's not what they meant. they meant it literally. all men are created equal. born with a blank slate, sort of the notion of a blank slate that gets etched by experience. and the differences that emerge as adults are due to experience, through the environment. so that's a very different view than being born unequal where you are already etched so you can't do so much about -- you are going to be the adult you were at 4 days. that's adams' point, you won't e able to overcome your birth. -- and i an american think all americans accepted the jeffersonian view

which is embodied in the declaration. we are all equal at birth. that is why we put so much emphasis on education. the jeffersonian message is our message, it is an american message. it is good we believe that. even if it is not entirely true. it would be unbearable to take the opposite view. i think that would be impossible. brian: you write, this is about john adams -- he simply had more doubts about the rationality and the virtue of the american people than jefferson had. where did that come from in his life? gordon: think of it this way. jefferson never lost an election in his life, he had confidence in the people who always elected him. brian: how many times was he elected? gordon: well, he was elected to his house of burgesses and to the state legislature and then gets elected by the legislature to the continental congress and then he's appointed to the -- to ministers -- minister abroad and then, of course, he's

elected vice president because he comes in second to adams. adams in 1796, there are three electoral votes that separate the two of them. adams was appalled by that. he had been vice president to washington. he expected -- well, i should be acclaimed. like washington. washington got every single electoral vote he could. it wasn't the same with adams, he squeaked in by three votes. if it had gone the other way, jefferson would have been the president and he would have been the vice president. he said he would never serve under jefferson. he is not happy about that, he feels he has been humiliated by that close election. and then when he comes to the election of 1800, he loses and that's just -- that just is beyond belief for him. so he comes -- in fact, the federalist of new england are frightened of droiks because they see it. it's in operation. people are not being elected. you go to virginia and you've

got all these slave holding aristocrats who are the leaders of the republican party which is the more democratic party. it's a paradox but these people have confidence in democracy because there's no -- there's none of the problems that the leaders are having in massachusetts. massachusetts is a more egalitarian society, the so-called aristocrats are more vulnerable to challenge, it is easy to enter the aristocracy in new england and so they are much more frightened of democracy even though they are more democratic in fact. if that paradox can make sense. whereas, we have a hierarchical society of virginia. the people -- you have more limousine liberals, if you will. jefferson was a prime example of a limousine liberal. someone who is so confident of his own status and his position in society that he can afford to be democratic.

in small d. and big d, too. e becomes the jeffersonian republican party -- democratic party, leader of that party. brian: when they split, if i remember correctly, john adams did not ride with thomas jefferson to the inauguration and he left town at 4:00 in the morning or something. gordon: the only president in our history who was defeated who did not stay around -- the candidate to stay around to attend the inauguration. brian: how long was it between that time and the time they got back together? gordon: that is 1800, 1801 is the inauguration of jefferson. it is 1812 and that only occurred because of dr. benjamin rush who worked two years. he knew both of them. knew adams much better. and he felt the nation needed to hear these two men talk to each other.

that prosperity required their correspondence. he'll use that argument over and over to each of them. he played it beautifully. he would report back. jefferson -- he would say to adams, jefferson said he loves you and then he'd go to jefferson, adams says he loves you. he set them up. it took him two years. finally, they break through and then was the correspondence goes, adams is much more blunt and he says things. he is sarcastic, he is facetious. he jokes. jefferson keeps the correspondence going because it could have easily broken off and at one point in 1815, for example, napoleon is defeated, the bourbons are back in the throne of france. so what does adams say? mr. jefferson, what do you think of the french revolution now? well, i mean, jefferson could have -- that's really sticking a dagger into him because he believed so strongly in the

french revolution. he doesn't come back. he lets the razzing go. that is how adams was. he was always digging, way that guys do i think sometimes now if they are really good friends. it's jefferson who puts up with that. he doesn't come back and do the same thing. that's not in his nature. adams is a joker. he loves to make -- digs. facetious remarks. pushing his -- he's pushing a little bit too much. some sensitive soul would say enough is enough. i am not going to put up with that. brian: what would happen if these two men had to be on television today? gordon: well, that would be interesting. i think adams would talk too much as he lacked the gift of silence and jefferson would be reserve and he would say the right things. he would not make any mistakes. adams would probably put his foot in his mouth. brian: you say that where

jefferson was sincere, and earnest, adams was ironic and facetious. gordon: right. brian: and jefferson was unprepared to actually and emotionally for the rapidly changing world of the early republic. jefferson had always been the timate optimist, a virtual pollyanna about everything. his expectations always outran reality. there is such a lot of stuff coming at you and you read that. one was a slave owner, the other was not. who had the higher morals? if there is that too uses a word admits process. gordon: jefferson is such a complicated man.

it is sad because at the end of his life, he becomes virtually a fire-eating southerner. earlier in his career, he is a courageous man, he speaks out against slavery and his peers put up with it. even know they don't agree with them, they are not going to move against slavery. he wants to, he speaks out. he is caught up with in mind notions. enlightened notions. he proposes all kinds of reforms. crime and punishment. the abolition of a religious establishment. he is weighing the vanguard in his own state and because he is so smart and knows so much and is so polite and civil, his colleagues, they don't agree with him, they don't pass this legislation immediately but they don't agree with him. somehow or another they put up with him. it is extraordinary how advanced he is but by the end of his life, it is sad because slavery has become a nightmare for him and he hasn't done anything about it.

he doesn't know what to do about it. adams realizes that. brian: in the end, what kind of money did jefferson and adams have? gordon: adams was never really wealthy but he was always shrewd. especially abigail. they kept their expenses within their income. they didn't -- he did not die in debt. jefferson dies totally in debt. so much so he couldn't have freed the slaves even if he wanted to because his creditors would have owned the slaves. he did free the hemmings children which presumably are is children. he's an akris kratt. he doesn't think of money the way a yankee like abigail or john might think about money. he borrows money from the dutch to buy books. you don't borrow money from international creditors to buy your present expenses, consumer goods. he's just out of touch with reality in terms of his income.

he didn't keep -- he didn't have double bookkeeping. he kept records, extraordinary records but he didn't balance his full accounts. so he had no -- his son comes to him -- his son-in-law comes and says at some point, mr. jefferson, you're going to have to lose monticello and goes white. he could not believe that. his personal effects, maintaining his accounts, what a mess. brian: why did it take historians so long to deal with the sally hemmings issue? it appeared it was covered up forever. gordon: there was no evidence and jefferson indirectly denies it. so they took him at his word. he at one point is accused of two things by calendar. he said he put a make on mrs. walker, a married woman, when he was young.

and he also sired children with sally hemmings, his slave. he said -- he admits the walker thing but doesn't admit the other. eople took that at his word. the hummings children reported what he had done. it took in 1990, two books plus the d.n.a. findings. nothing is definitive of course. but annette gordon makes a powerful case in france where the two siblings -- because james hemmings is older. he's over there to learn how to be a french cook because jefferson wants to have a french cook. and james is old enough, he could have walked out and be free. he knows france could give him freedom and is learning how to be a cook. he could stay there. jefferson makes a deal with him. he come back and train another chef, another slave to be a hef and i'll free you.

and james buys that. and sally, the same deal is made with his concubine sally, that she will come back, she doesn't want to be free but she wants her children free when they're adults and that happens too. that is what the children say later was the deal. it is perfectly plausible. i do not think there is a love relationship. jefferson is a cold fish towards these kids. he does not recognize them. he enters the birth of these children, presumably his children in his farm along with new hefers and pigs that are -- heifers and pigs that are born. many of these planters had concubines. they occasionally recognize the offspring with gifts at christmas or something. ut he shows no affection, no awareness really whatsoever of them. it's a very strange relationships. brian: let's talk about academia.

so much of the book said nothing is changed in the last 250 years. here you write this. he was surprised by -- this is jefferson. he was surprised by the immature and riotous behavior of his students at his new university -- meaning university of virginia -- in violation of the honor code and of course there was his deep faith in the french revolution that had gone awry. he was the pure american innocence. little understanding of man's capacity for evil and no tragic sense whatsoever. that is, he possessed no sense of the circumstances impinging on and limiting human action. the point is, a people struggling with the world, he scarcely understood. gordon: that's america. we are like that too. brian: but you said jefferson believed in exceptionalism and was positive and all this stuff. adams keeps telling us the real stuff. gordon: that's right. jefferson -- it's amazing he

doesn't seem to learn from all of his things going wrong. he just keeps hoping against hope. brian: who should have the monument jefferson or adams? gordon: we are all losing our innocence. people said we lost our innocence in 1898, and then we lost our innocence in vietnam. we are the only country that keeps losing its innocence. so in that sense we are very jeffersonian i think. we don't have a tragic sense. americans have no tragic sense of life. we don't think about how circumstances impinge on us. we believe we can do it. we don't want to be -- have a tragic sense. if you have too deep a tragic sense you don't do anything. the sense of their straints, the constraints that are limiting you. we have never been that kind of people. i think it's james polk, the

president, we are the only country in the world that has its history in the future. i mean, think about that. brian: i want to ask you about your own family because it seems to me they are all academics. gordon: i have one daughter who is married to a teacher at milton academy and she's tied up in academia in that sense but i have another daughter who teaches history out in the midwest in illinois state. she works on a later period of american history. she's really terrific. then i have a son who was at yale for 22 years and was commuting from new york city and he got tired of that so he's now teaching at n.y.u. he can walk to work. yeah, i have two who are professors of -- my son works in art history. brian: i want to ask you -- this is about historians. i want to ask you about a footnote. you go -- first of all to the back of your book and praise for advanced divided and

complementing this book by joseph ellis. and then -- you don't often see this. there is a footnote on page 481. where you take joseph ellis on for something called the mecklenburg declaration. gordon: he just made a mistake. i just wanted to point that out. pauline -- he made a mistake in reading something which can easily happen. brian: that's what i want to ask you about. he made a mistake and then it was passed on to pauline. how often have you found that as a historian? gordon: occasionally yeah. in this particular case i think it is important because it reflects on adams and a serious way. we need to have the record straight. brian: explain it. gordon: he said that adams didn't mean what he said when he agrees with -- this has to do with the mecklenburg declaration, which was a phony declaration of independence discovered by somebody in 1818

or something. andrews was initially very excited about this, because it showed that somebody had anticipated jefferson and therefore jefferson copying the mecklenburg declaration which occurred in 1775, a year before in his own declaration. brian: in north carolina. gordon: in north carolina. brian: explain what it was if they did it? gordon: they didn't do it. i think the evidence was discovered in 1818, 1819 because the original records are burned and so on. so it is a phony document but passed on as something authentic. adams is excited because it means jefferson isn't quite the genius that everyone is saying he is. he is actually excited to write jefferson. jefferson writes back and points out that we did not hear about this at the time. he poses all kinds of queries

about it and he thinks it is fake news. it is contrived after the fact and adams accepts that. now joe ellis, i think, read something -- a letter that misread it so that he adams doesn't agree with jefferson. i think he is wrong about that. minor point. brian: it was your largest footnote. gordon: it had to be explained because it makes adams look bad. it plakes him look dishonest because he's saying something to jefferson but saying something else to somebody else. rian: we better not leave the mecklenburg declaration without explaining it. gordon: because it anticipated almost word for word some of the words that were in jefferson's declaration which occurred a year later that jefferson must have seen this and copied it. well, this makes jefferson -- well, the authenticity of his

document brought into question. well, adams kind of liked that at first. because he -- at this point you see jefferson getting all this fame. the declaration is -- has made him -- jefferson had no idea he would become famous. by 1815 or so he is seen as the author of the declaration of independence. all adams could say, the author? he's just a draftsman. he's upset. he's jealous of the fame that's coming to this man. jefferson of course comes to realize -- he writes to his son-in-law. look, the desk on which i wrote the declaration, it's going to become a relic. i am going to give it to you. he realizes this and he wants on his tome stone three things. the -- tombstone three things. first, author of the declaration of independence. he doesn't mention the president sifment he says creator of university of virginia and the author of the

bill of -- bill abolishing established religion in virginia. those are the three things he wants on his tombstone but the first is the declaration of independence. -- he didn't no think this would make his famous. he never mentioned his presidency of his accomplishments. brian: here is what you wrote, during the last decade, jefferson's life came to have increasing doubts that the future would work out as he expected and his correspondence was punctuated with lament over the rising generation of which i once had sanguine hopes. ou're basically saying that he switched everything near the end. gordon: i have a chapter called "the great reversal," because in their correspondence, adams develops the kind of confidence and a feeling that he's -- he just feels better about himself and bout the country

jefferson is going the other way. john's son, john quincy, becomes president in 1824, jefferson congratulates adams but deep down, he thinks that is a mistake, he is frightened to death of what john quincy is proposing. quincy is coming in with an internal improvement and that is infrastructure if you will, let's build the federal overnment, it will build bridges, canals, all that kind of stuff, slaveholders, lanters, are worried because the federal government can do that, they can encroach and get involved in slavery and he becomes fiery, he is concerned about the federal government power to do something about the nature f the institution. brian: you wrote -- this is adams. the united states is no different than any other

nation. just as corrupt, just as sinful, just as vicious as other countries. do you believe that? gordon: do i think we are? nowadays we are not exceptional in the sense we were with jefferson. we were the only democracy. we're the only republican and that was true for lincoln. when he says the last best hope he's talking in the aftermath of the failure of the 1848 revolution. we were exceptional in the 19th century. now there are democracies everywhere. we happen to be the biggest power in the world and we are the biggest democracy in the world with 330 million people, there's nothing like it. but we are not exceptional in our democracy any longer. britain, france, the european union nations are democratic, too. so i think that kind of exceptionalism is gone. but we are exceptional in the sense we are larger, bigger,

more powerful. brian: we only have time for one more, this is thomas jefferson and you write that he was dismayed that the american people were not learning to love one another but were increasingly engaged in partisan, sectarian, and sectional strife. what has changed? [laughter] gordon: well, jefferson was an 18th-century radical which was very different from a modern liberal. he believed in minimal government, government interfered with the natural social feeling that people had nd he wanted, like william godwin, he wanted to minimize government to allow the free flow of the social sense that exists in every human being. that is the radical position of the late 18th century. it makes payne and godwin and jefferson alike in their radicalism. brian: for someone who has not

read the book and is listening to this, what would you say your perspective is the number one takeaway? gordon: the difference between these two men and how they work -- they embody different aspects of america, of us, of us as americans. i think both of them are an important part of what we are as a people. brian: are you going to write another book? gordon: i don't know about that. i'll see. brian: how long did it take you to do this? gordon: not too long because i had been working this stuff for 50 years. probably four years. brian: of all the awards you received over the years, what was the one that meant most to you? gordon: the pulitzer prize, but it's a journalist -- it gets all the fame. but the ban cross-is equally prestigious but not -- bran croft is equally prestigious but not well-known. i have not really sorted that

out but it obviously makes a big difference for anybody who gets one. brian: you mentioned bernard who taught you at harvard. who is your favorite historian? gordon: balin is the best historian in america20th century, there is nobody in the who comes close to his kind of insight. brian: why? gordon: he's a great historian. he understands what history is about. he is a contextualist. he taught me that. you don't bring the present into the past. you try to understand the past as a foreign country where they do things differently. brian: our guest has been gordon s. wood. professor emeritus at brown university. the book is called "friends divided: john adams and thomas jefferson." thank you so much. [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] announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at