Nations history from 1783 to 1861, the political history of our nation. I guess i want to say if youre looking at american politics from the beginning strawing through, past the civil war, youre talking about par dockses and conflicts improv. The period i tend to focus on more at the early part of that arc, and its the improve vacational nature of that, that fascinated my more than anything else of. The nation was find founded in a world of monarchy and the United States was a republicful. What that means wasnt clear and people knew they were trying to do something that wasnt there. The president wont be a king but beyond that there was a lot of open ground. So theres a lot of improv in those early decades about what the nation is, how it functions, the tone of the government , and how this nations going to stand up amongst the nation of the world that are other kind of nations. What does it mean to be a republic in a world of monarchies and how is the new nation going to get any degree of respect and equally, if not more significant as far as the inside of that nation is concerned, what kind of nation will it be . And that is true, that question is true on every level. Theres a broad consistent of ideal level which that is true but theres a ground level, how democratic a nation will this be . Who is going to how is the land going to be literally wrested from other people . What kind of rights will some people have and other people not have at all. A lot of the questions were grappling with now, questions about equity and equality and right and race, those go back to the beginning of their republic and beyond. As a historian living in he moment we are living in now and thinking thinking in that broad arcing way, we deal with these Big Questions and these big legacies of undecideds things. Were still dealing with them and they good all the way back. Host were we inherently democratic to begin . Guest no. Well, so, we werent a monarchy, and americans had a very strong sense of certainly elite white male americans had a very strong sense of their rights, and they felt that they were creating a more democratic regime that what had been around before. So they their thinking but rights theres a reason theres a bill of rights attached to the constitution inch that sense they were very rightminded but by no means was the country founded with people thinking everyone will have rights and there will be equality. There were different i dont like to call them parties but two different points of view with the found, the federalists, hamilton and the republicans, which is jefferson, which is oversimplified but the two camps and they had a different view, each side, as to how democratic the nation should be. Federalisted wanted it to be somewhat less democratic and republicans some would more but a limited view of democratic. So when i teach about the period and i tell my students, all kinds of words to think but the meaning of , democracy is a big one because if you see that word in the founding period it does not mean the same thing it means now. You have to rethink and recalculate what youre talking about when you look at the founding and seeing these word that now are kind of political buzz words. Host how many point of view were there back then . A sense today we are divided democratics, republicans and independents. Was that the case back then . Guest id say more complex than that. They werent thinking in the way we think about party. We think of party its an institution, a party is aen institution, structure, an organization. You affiliate yourself with one. You beam yourself back to the mindset of the founding they were they were assuming a National Part issue like the idea the nation they could get something that overarching and that many people would buy into, that would not have occurred to them. Beyond that, they didnt think that a National Party was good thing. They assumed that a republic meant a lot of viewpoints banging up against each other and that in the National Center those viewpoints would bang up against each other and ultimately some kind of decision or compromise or something would be work out of that, and that was the point of the National Center, was to how all of that banging up of opinions, but initially they werent assuming there should be two or three viewpoints. There were federalists and there were republicans but even under i like to call them umbrellas of political thought. There were vast differences. Federalists in massachusetts or a federalist in South Carolina, that could mean something really different. So more a spectrum id say than categories in the founding period. Host what were the improvisations that did not succeed and some that did . Guest well, the improvisations that are fun to teach about are political culture improv. One of the wonderful thing because studying and writing about the founding is they put all kinded of things in writing that you dont expect them to put in writing. John adams, writing to a friend and saying, how should an american politician dress . I want to look monarchical, those sort of british or french european aristocrats the clothing have is from europe, a lot of lace. There is too much lace to be american . Or washington, how many horses with a carriage would seep appropriately american which sounds really trivial and goofy and part of why its so much fun to teach, but theyre seriously thinking about the fact that those kinds of little seemingly stylistic decisions are really going to shape the tone and the character of the government and the nation, and when everything set as precedent, that kind of improv can have a big impact. It seems trivial. On the other hand it isnt trivial and that is really interesting. Host so, we had several hundred white male elites forming this country. Was there buyin from the threefour Million People who lived here at the time. Guest on the one hand theres small group of elite people that have power. On the other hand, the revolution was popular revolution, not conducted by 30 guys in a room. Appointor to remember that whatever is going on in this time period, although the elite have power ander worried about maintaining power, theres a lot happening around them and part of the challenge or the i dont want to say difficulties the challenges or the tension of that period is the American People figuring out how to cinderellas what they want, how to demand what they want, how does the system work and if it doesnt work for them, what can they do to make it work for them better. So its just at handful of elite guys who are running things the American People understood in a broad sense that they had rights in some way and different kinds of people had a different understanding what rights, but there was a brader sense that whatever the experiment was that was going on in this new nation, that rights were something that were still being work out and determined and that they potentially extended more widely than some of what had come before in europe. Host what was a whig and what did he believe . Guest a whig. Youre talking ill answer the question by moving ahead in time to whigs. So, this gets back to your earlier question but parties and categories, now people like to go back thyme and draw Straight Lines between the parties of the present and the parties the past and like so say if your a republican, republican, republican, goes back to jefferson. There are no Straight Lines in history and there certainly no Straight Lines when it comes to political parties. So, parties bounce back and forth, names change all the time. The whig party, for a while you had the democratic party, which was it own thing. On the one hand and you had what was known more than anything as the antijacksonians. Wasnt a people but people who arent that. Dont like jackson, dont like what they represent. That becomes the whig party and you end up in the mid19th mid19th century with essentially for a while two many parties and one of them is jackson, democratic, supposedly popular, supposedly the common man or the common white man on the one side, and then on the other side the whigs already mere centralize expelled big National Government, and represent in a way two threads we can still see, but really represented a very different point of view. Host if you were governor of massachusetts or president of the United States, at that time, who held more political power . Guest ooh. At that time meaning the early the founding or whenever i want it to be. Host whenever you want it to be. Guest okay. Well, if you go all the way back to the real founding moment, thats a good question. And there were people like hamilton and the federalists who assumed that the bulk of the power was with the states, and not with the National Government, which was new, and who knew what it income passed really above and beyond a very skeletal constitution. The constitution really brief for what it does. So, hamilton and his ilk thought that the answer to that question would be, well, the governor of massachusetts probably, although on paper you might said the president has lot of power. The fact of the matter is for people, their loyalty to sense of belongingness and understanding of power will be grounded in their state. Over time that shifts but in the 19th century, the first half of the 19th century, if you were to pick up a newspaper from that period, congress would be getting a lot more attention than the president at that point. So, again, we assume now that the president is all powerful and the president is at the center of the news, and thats not an mayoral early american way. Host in reading your books i dont he know if this is purposeful or i missed the president doesnt play a large role the president plays today in our world. Guest right. I would say thats partly deliberate and partly reflect mist interest, but its true that throughout the period clearly the americans understood the pratt was significant, and the early founding period, trying to figure out what that means. Congress as the peoples branch, people understand that congress is really where the nation is being worked out in a ground level kind of way, and people felt that they had a direct connection with their member of congress. When members of congress stood up and vote, particularly when you get into the 1840s and 1850s, members of congress stood up and assumed theyve are were speaking to their constituents and the press was creating that conversation back and forth. So congress mattered tremendously i think in ways that now daze we aremer focused on congress for different ropes but he 20th century we ten to focus on president s, and that was not necessarily the case for much of the 19th century. Host would we recognize Congress Today as it was back then in the early republic . Guest well, in the early republic, no dont think we would recognize it in the early republic or the 19th century. The early republic white might be what we assumed congress should look like, somewhat tamer. It is a group of men, white men in a room, above and beyond that they are debating and making decisions and passing legislation. Those are the things we assume congress should do. Over time the United States becomes a lot more violent and congress is a representative body, and Congress Becomes a lot more violent, and that case i think it begins to look in some ways we would not necessarily expect. Host from your book the field of blood, the tobacco juiced rugs of the house and senate are an apt metaphor for congress in the decade before the civil war there are soaring orator are on occasion and use there were union shaking decisions being made but underneath the speech fying pontificating and politicking was spitspattered rug. The Antebellum Congress had its admirable moment us but wasnt an assembly of demagogues. Was a Human Institution with very human failings. Guest that was an important point to make because my assumption what most people think about particularly congress in this time period, the period of clay and webster and the sort of great men, is a congress was a bunch of people in black suits being lofty. I have a lofty thought. Another lofty thought. It was very important for me right off the cuff to say, no, this is a Human Institution and its an unruly institution. Its a different world than you assume, and the book really is about this Human Institution and how it functioned and how that shaped not just the nations politics but americans understanding of the nation. Host what is an affair of honor . Guest ooh. Good question. So, thats another kind of fundamental thing in the early point of my first book, affairs of honor. Talk about. So people think about duels, and i think that becomes an allencompassing term. A duel and i think people im thats all there was was two men on a field facing each other and shooting at each. Other part of the point i make in the first book is an affair of honor was bigger than that, and the point of an affair of honor, or even a duel, its very counterintuitive. This assumption would be if you have two men on a field with gunners fating each other and shooting someone might want to kill someone. The point of an affair of honor or duel is proof youre willing to die for your honor. An afar of honor means its a long ritualized series of letter exchanges and negotiations. Very often that can take place two men can redeem their name and reputation and honor and dont have to make it tout a dueling ground. An fair of honor includes that riddualized negotiation. Once you get past that point and youre own the dueling ground, that becomes a duel but even at that time that point death isnt the point. This point is the performance of it. The point, really, its a terrifying thing to face someone with a gun, to stand there, and allow someone to shoot at you. Thats the point of it. Is to prove youre the kind of man and thus leader, who is willing to die for your name and reputation. Makes no sense now but clearly made so much sense to them in this time period that hundreds of people ended up working their way through the customs. Host why are we taught at the beginning of u. S. History about the burrhamilton duel of 1804. Guest partly because sometimes history is about at least for some the ways in which some people teach history, good stories that seem to sum things up. Youve get the burr hamilton child, the caning of charles sumner, dramatic stories. If people teach that, the tonight as this one and only instance, and its a sign of this great enmity of these two men, and it is somehow typical of that period, that enmities were so fierce, and plus hamilton and burr are dramatic characters. Does a lot of character work maybe more than anything else but i dont the not until recently has that been taught as a way of getting deeper and kind of understanding something about the guts of politics in that period and how they really work. Host what happened on that day in 1804 and why did it happen . Guest well, burr and hamilton had been opponents for a long time. Hamilton was largely the fuel behind much of that opposition. He really distrusted purr. He thought of him has something of a demagogue because he was someone who came from the equivalent of new england royalty him fast someone who hamilton saw an an opportunist. Hamilton says, i kirt my religious duty to oppose his career. Thats serious opposition that you have going there. So he is pretty bound and determined to quash burrs career and that goes on for quite some time. In election of 1800 when its a tie between two candidates from the same purr, purr and jefferson and hamilton does everything he can too to quash burrs chances. They came near to fight a duel and it was moved over. Four years later burr is running for for of new york and hamilton steps forward to do everything he cook to stop that from happening, and as luck would have it, someone steps forward after that and says, have you seen theres a newspaper report of what hamilton said about you at dinner party, hands this to burr, and burr who needs to prove that he is a man, a ledder who is worth being followed since he is losing contest after contest, feels compelled to redeem his name and honor and reputation and acts on thatten and it happens to be hamiltons word. So you end up with burr being handed something that in miss hind is duel worthy and commences an affair of honor with hamilton. They exchange these ritualized letters. Neither done doesnt go swimmingly. Burr sends a ritualized letter. They say the same thing who. Ive heard you said this about me. Is that true or false, avow or deny. I deserve an Immediate Response as a gentleman and man of honor. You got one letter like that you knew you were in trouble and had to think how to respond. Hamilton writes uses 18 words for one word and writes a lengthy response and talks about supposedly he said something still more despicable about burr. What would you mean despicable and hamilton writes a grammarless letter and talk about the meaning of despicable between gentleman, is that bad a word . So thats insulting if youre an angry person who has just been called despicable and then at the end of the alert to show hes not afraid of conflict with burr, hamilton says by the way issue always stand behind all of my words and thats not an exception to that now so i will stand and im willing to fight for any words i utter. So thats a not a strategically smart fog for hamilton to send that kind of letter. Its offensive and burr gets it and is offend and basically responded by saying youre not behaving like a gentleman. Its not a gentlemanly thing to do, that letter. So now theyre both offended, and so you can kind of see how things spiral to the point where a trip to the dueling ground. Host was dueling legal. Guest no. That was a statebystate thing. So every state had its own antidueling regulations, a challenge might be against the law, the duel itself might be against the law. It varied the punishment was different. In massachusetts, you could be publicly humiliated in some way in rhode island there was a fine. So if youyear in massachusetts you would prefer to go to rhode island. If you got caught you paid a fine. But it was illegal but the lawmakers doing the dueling so the people making the law were the people breaking the law, which tells you a lot about the elite in this period and the kind of power they had. Host do we spend too much time talking about the actual duels and the setup to this rat