To study, although i wasnt planning on being a historian. I was originally going to go into the foreign service. Cspan can you remember when you first got interested in history, say, in high school, or even grade school . Guest no, because it was taught so poorly in high school i cant imagine why i would have been interested in it from the High School Teacher. He used to have us read from muzzey, the textbook. That was how we did history. Each would read a paragraph, and hed go up and down the row, and i would plan ahead when i would be reading, and then id go ahead and read on my own and keep my finger on the spot which i would have to read. But so it was not because of the teaching. It was just something i was interested in, despite the very bad High School Teacher we had. Cspan where did you grow up . Guest i grew up in new england, in Greater Boston lived in worcester for a while but graduated from waltham high school, which is a little town right outside of boston. Cspan and do you remember your first character in history that you got interested in . Guest oh, thats a good question. Probably in the in graduate school, i became fascinated with James Madison. It was that late. I didnt have any hero earlier. I dont think of i cant think of one, at least. But in graduate school, i became fascinated with madison. Cspan why madison . Guest because of his intellectual abilities. Ive gotten less enthralled by him as time has gone on, but at the time, back in the 1960s, early 60s, i thought he was the most remarkable politician in American History because he was a thinker, as well as a political figure. Cspan so why have you become less enthralled . Guest well, because i think hes actually much more ideological than i had thought and not quite as wideranging and as intellectually creative as i had originally thought. But hes still quite a remarkable man. Cspan whats his ideology . Guest well, hes totally caught up in an ideology of what you might call republican his notion of an alternative to war, which is quite appropriate today that is to say, commercial sanctions, the embargo, which is usually identified with jefferson, but its really madisons embargo that he promotes. That is, using commercial retaliation as an alternative to using troops, which we would call economic sanctions. Hes very much a proponent of that and very much caught up in it, which led to his peculiar behavior during the war of 1812 as president. Cspan now, waltham massachusetts, is in the suburbs of boston, and a lot of the characters in this small book you have here i know youve written a lot bigger books on the American Revolution come from that area. Lets try one samuel adams. Guest samuel adams, a real revolutionary, probably the first one of the first to aim for independence. I think he probably believed in independence as early as 1768. So hes a kind of fanatic, a rabblerouser and but a very skillful politician, as well who believed more devoutly than some of the other revolutionaries in republican severity, ascetic they had to fit him out with clothes to send him to philadelphia because he didnt pay much attention to how he dressed, although he was a harvard graduate and a gentleman, nonetheless. A very interesting character. Cspan how did he relate to john adams . Guest they were distant cousins. John adams was equally fanatical, if you will, as a revolutionary, but a little more skilled, i think, as an attorney and as a speaker and probably much more intellectual than his cousin, samuel adams. Cspan have you done the freedom trail around boston . Guest some of it, but because i was a bostonian, i took those things for granted. It took me its when visitors come to boston, they want to go to the they wanted to go to the freedom trail, i would id end up going. Often happens when you live in an area where there are a lot of tourist attractions. Cspan well, as you know, one of the things you see in boston right away is the john hancock building. Guest oh, yeah. The new one. Cspan now, when you look at that, what do you think of . Who was john hancock . Guest well, john hancock was probably the most successful massachusetts politician in the last quarter of the 18th century in the states history. He had lots of money. He inherited a fortune from his uncle, who was really his he was an adopted his uncle treated him as a son. And he inherited the fortune and went through it because he was not interested in mercantile business but interested in political career, and he did that by patronizing people. He bought he engaged in patronage that made him a very powerful politician. He built ships. He did need. He distributed money. He held parties on the boston common. He had about i think john adams had 2,000 people directly dependent upon him. So he was an 18th century politician of great skill. Cspan john hancock had 2,000 people dependent. Guest right. Cspan because i think you said john adams. Guest i mean john adams said that about. Cspan oh, he said ok. Guest . John hancock. Cspan go to this book. This is a small version of what you do. Why this small book . Guest well, it editor at random house asked me if i would be willing to write a book on the American Revolution, 40,000 words. It seemed like a great challenge. That, i think, was the challenge, to compress all of the information we have about the revolution or the revolutionary era, which runs roughly 1760 to 1790, into 166 pages. That was a challenge, and to try to make to account for every event and still get it within that small compass is a was an interesting challenge and since i had been working on the revolution for, what, 40 years i said, well, i can do this easily. It was a little more difficult than i had anticipated. Cspan is this your specialty . Guest oh, yes. Ive spent my whole career really on the revolution although i teach much more broadly, early American History from the beginning, 1607, you might say, or the late 16th century, up through the era of jackson, ive concentrated my writing career on the era of the American Revolution. Cspan you grew up in waltham. You then went to tufts. Why that university . Whats that about . Guest i went to tufts because i had a latin teacher who was a graduate of jackson, which is the Womens College at tufts, and she was a great influence on me. My parents are not college graduates, were not college graduates. And so i was a little uncertain about what i should do, and she said, you must go to tufts, and it was a local school. I was a commuter. And thats the long and short of it. Cspan what happened to you there . Guest i was a history concentrator. I had a good time there and loved history. Cspan what part . Guest i actually was in modern european history mostly not American History, although i had a good American History teacher, a man named bartlett, ruhl bartlett. But i was in modern european history. And when i applied to graduate school, i was not certain i was going to work in American History or modern european history that is, 18th or 19th, 20th century american modern european history. Cspan where did you get your graduate degree . Guest i went to harvard. I was in the military for a couple of years and applied from overseas. I was in japan, stationed in japan, in the air force, and applied to graduate school from there and was accepted at harvard with a fellowship, and so i went. Cspan whats the dissertation . Guest it was the book that resulted in the creation of the american republic, which is a 17761787 a study of political theory and constitutionmaking in that decades time. It was, i think, the most important period in American History and the most certainly, one of the great periods of constitutionalism in western history. And that was the dissertation that resulted in that book. Cspan how many books have you written . Guest well, ive written this is the third, if you count books. Articles i have lots of articles, but only three books and edited a couple of things, as well. Cspan now, a couple years ago, i remember Newt Gingrich, when he was speaker, used your name about every 15 minutes, along with others. He said, go out and read `the founding of america by gordon wood. What was the actual title of the book . Guest the radicalism of the American Revolution, which he liked because it had a kind of toquevillian touch to it, i guess, maybe suggesting american exceptionalism, that he liked. And thats true. In the fall or the spring it was the spring of 1994, before he became speaker, before the big election he was actually minority whip he invited me to dinner at the house dining hall, and i got to know him from just that one conversation. I knew nothing of him, and i havent seen him since. But he liked the book, which was, of course, kind of the kiss of death for me among a lot of academics, who are not rightwing republicans, and therefore to be praised by gingrich was not necessarily a good thing from among my peers. Cspan what did they say . Guest well, they felt that if gingrich likes it, it cant be a good book. So i got a little flak from that. Cspan what did you say to them . Guest well, i said, well, i cant determine who what readers are going to make of my book. I tried to write a book that radicalism book was a book that i intentionally tried to reach both my peers that is fellow scholars appeal to them by saying something new to them, at the same time, reach out to a more general audience an educated audience that was not made up of experts. Thats a very difficult thing to do, and yet i think most of us who are professional or scholars, as we teach history, have been unable to reach a general audience. And thats lamentable because history is meaningless if it doesnt reach out to large numbers of people. And theres a good deal of, i think, jealousy in the academic world of people like david mccullough, who have a large readership. And its our own fault. Were writing for one another, and weve become very narrow and very specific. Theres a place for that, too, but at the same time, i think we have an obligation to reach a large readership, as well. Cspan go back to your comment about your peers not liking the fact that Newt Gingrich was heralding your book. There are conservatives watching this program that are saying yeah, thats whats wrong with academia. Theyre not the slightest bit interested in the other side. Guest well, there is, of course, and has been over the last, well, maybe 30 years, a good deal of criticism of ourselves. Its selfcriticism. I dont think thats wrong. I think any democracy, any healthy democracy has to have a certain amount of selfcriticism, and that often takes the form, for historians of writing critically about the past. I think there can be excesses in that, and i think people who say that the American Revolution was a failure are making a mistake. But nonetheless, one understands that selfcriticism is a healthy thing. And i have no gripe with that. And it goes on all the time, and i think thats good. I think it goes too far if you begin to see your past as totally full of faults and not see any good at all. As i try to say in the introduction to this book, i dont think our history should be seen as a moral tale, either good or bad. I think historians should try to understand where we came from as honestly as we can, without trying to say this was a great celebration or that this was a disaster. I dont think either of those extremes are true of our history. Cspan i dont want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that a lot of academics think that the revolution was bad . Guest well, i thats too strong. I think there are a lot of academics who have emphasized over the last 30 years that we didnt do enough. We didnt, for example, free slaves. We didnt change the lot of women. And because those are current issues, there is always a tendency in history to go back and to look at the past through the lenses of the present and lament the fact that slavery was not abolished and that the lot of women did not change substantially and that the lot of indians was worsened by the revolution. That those are those facts are true, but i think its anachronistic to apply 21st century standards to an 18th century world. Cspan would they rather that we stayed, as a country, under the monarch of Great Britain . Guest i dont think anyone goes that far because that would really undermine the whole history of the country. Nonetheless, there is, of course, the british were much more the British Imperial officials were much more concerned with the native americans, with the plight of the indians than were the colonists. So from that perspective, the British Empire looks rather benign. But from other perspectives i dont think there are very Many American historians who think that the break from britain was a mistake. That actually was a feeling of some, i think, historians at the end of the 20th at the end of the 19th century, who were thoroughly anglophiles and felt that the englishspeaking world should be brought together, kind of the era that lay behind wilsons anglophilia at the time of world war i. So no, i dont think theres anybody writing today who thinks that this was a terrible mistake. I do think that there were there are lots of historians who feel that we didnt do enough for these oppressed or oppressed people, particularly black slaves and women. I mean, my answer to that is, of course, that the revolution did really substantially change the climate in which slavery had existed. For thousands of years, slavery had existed in the western World Without substantial criticism. And the revolution marked a major turning point. It suddenly put slavery on the defensive. And i think thats the point that needs to be emphasized, not that jefferson didnt free his slaves, but that as a man raised as a slave holder, in a world that was dominated by slavery, he criticized it. Thats whats new. Thats the point that i think needs to be made. Where did that come from . Why did this generation suddenly become critics of slavery and put it on the defensive . That i think is an important point. Cspan how many years have you taught at brown . Guest ive been there since 1969, so thats what, 32 years or so. Cspan what did you do in between harvard and brown . Guest i went to a i had a fellowship at the institute of early American History, which is sponsored at williamsburg which is sponsored by the college there, college of william and mary, and colonial williamsburg. I had a fellowship for two years, then went to harvard for an assistant professorship for one year, then went to michigan, the university of michigan at ann arbor for two years, and then had the offer from brown. And since i was a new englander, that seemed to be the place to go. And ive been happy there ever since. Cspan providence, rhode island. Guest providence, rhode island. Cspan how big a college is it, university . Guest its about 5,500 students, undergraduates, and about 1,200 graduate students, and now a medical school. Thats really the whole of brown. Cspan and you teach what now . Guest i teach three courses, actually, lecture courses, one on colonial history, one on the revolution and one on the early republic. So i rotate these courses. And i teach seminars and small classes for undergraduates. Cspan now, when the young student shows up in your class what is their whole attitude about American History, the revolution . Guest oh, well, i they know something, in many cases, because theyve had good training in high school. And other times, they know very little. I think theres a generally speaking, not a great deal of emphasis placed on early American History that is, history up to the civil war, in high schools now. Thats being taught in many states in the eighth grade, and when they get to high school they start with the civil war. So you have a kind of eighthgrade knowledge, in many cases, among some of these freshmen, which is lamentable because somehow, the implication is that, well, history back then isnt as important as the more recent history, when, in fact, i think the contrary is true that is, the revolution is the central event of American History, bar none. Theres just no more important event. And i mean, the civil war is important because it saved the union, but the revolution created the United States legally and infused into our culture almost everything we believe. Liberty, equality constitutionalism, all of this comes out of the revolution. So you cant understand what it is to be an american, i think, unless you get back to the revolution. So its lamentable that youngsters in high school are not getting early American History from in high school. Theyre supposed to be disposed of that in the eighth grade, and in 11th grade, they work on modern American History, where all the action is, i guess. Cspan when you first meet with them, that first, what, 50 minutes how long are your classes . Guest actually, i have a i teach on tuesdays and thursdays, so i have an hour and 20 minutes to work with, so i have a little bit more flexibility. Cspan what are the first things you tell them about the American Revolution . Guest i tell them that its the most important event in for the reason that ive just suggested, in American History and that i hope theyll come away knowing what this country of ours is about, what we why we believe the things we believe. And i end by contrasting us with the soviet the former soviet union because i think both countries had have or we have still a universalist ideology, with universalist aspirations. And that was i kind of account for the cold war in the last lecture, to bring it all up to the present. And now we have a situation, of course, where we are the only major world power, and its a very different situation now. Cspan what year would you say the revolution really started . Guest oh, well, i think most historians would say 1763, with the peace of paris, creates problems for the British Empire that forces them to take steps to r