Hate. [laughter] it is a little daunting. Trace the arc. Im going to do a historian thing and think generally. I guess i would say if yo they e looking at american politics from the beginning, we could even go past the civil war, we are talking about paradoxes and conflict and improv. The periods but i tend to focus on more at that part, its the improvisational nature of that fascinates me more than anything else. Its because the nation was founded in the world of monarc monarchy. What that means wasnt so clear at the moment. There is a lot of improv in those early decades about what the nation is, how it functions, the tone of the f government, hp a nationon is going to stand out among the nations of the world. What does it mean to be in a world of monarchies and was the nation going to get any degree of respect and equally and if not more significant as far as the inside of the nation is concerned, what kind of nation is tha it going to be and that s true on every level you could s agine. So there is a fraud kind of ideological level but there is a groundlevel how democratic a nation will this be. Who is going to own the land and how is it going to be literally rescued from other people. What kind of rights. Fullstop people have and what rights will other people not have at all. You know, a lot of the questions that they are wrestling with now, questions about equity and equality and rights and race, those go back to the beginning of the public and beyond. As a historian, living in a moment we arthemoment were livd thinking in a t broad way, we dl with these Big Questions and legacies of undecided things. Host where we inherently democratic to begin with . Guest no. We were not a monarchy and americans have a very strong sense of white male americans have a strong sense and they thought they were creating a more democratic regime than what had been around before so they were thinking very much and it is the reason there is a bill of rights attached to the constitution so msn, they were very right minded but by no means was it founded with thinking there will be equality. There were different i dont what to call them parties but different kinds of view, the federalist, hamilton, the republicans, jefferson which is oversimplified but those are the two camps and they had a different view, each is how democratic the nation should be. Federalists wanted it to be less,ic republicans, somewhat me but even so, it is a pretty limited view of democratics. So, when i teach about this period, and i tell my students theres all kind of words you have to think about the meaning of, democracy is a big one, because you see that in the founding period and it doesnt mean the same thing bu that it means now. You have to recalculate the way you look at the founding of seeing these words now that are kind of political. How many planes of view was there back then, today in a sense we are divided democrats, republicans and dems. Was that the case back b then . Test for they were not thinking about the way that we think of party. Its an organization you affiliate yourself with. You bring yourself back to the mindset of the founding. First they were assuming a national party, like the idea that the nation, they could get something that overarching among all of these diverse states, that wouldnt occur to them but even beyond that. It meant in the National Center those some kind of the position or compromise or something would be worked out a thought and that was the point of the National Center was to have all of that. Initially there were federalists and republicans, but even under i would like to call them under the laws of political thought there were vast differences they were federalists in massachusetts or South Carolina. That could mean something very different. So it was more of a spectrum i would say than categories. What were some of the improvisations and some that did . Guest one of the wonderful things about studying and writing about the founding is they put things in right and you dont expect so, john adams writing to a friend and say hello showed an american politician dress. I dont want to look like the isch of british or french european aristocrat. The clothing i have this from my years in europe and had a lot of ways. Is that too much leads to the american commercial by strip some off it away or washington, how many horses would seem appropriate, it sounds trivial and goofyfy and its part of why its so much fun to teach but on the other hand they are seriously think about the fact those seemingly stylistic decisions are going to shape the tone and character and when everybody sets the precedent, that kind of improv could have a big impact. On the one hand it is almost comical because it seems trivial but on the other hand it is and and that in and of itself is iainteresting. Host we had several hundred white males believed forming the country. Was there buyin from the people who lived here at the time . Guest theres a small group of people that have power and on the other hand the resolution was popular it wasno conducted by 30 guys in a room so its important to remember that whatever is going on in this time to count, although that you either have power and they are worried about maintaining power, theres a lot happening around them and part of p the challenge or the what o i want to call it, difficulties, the tension of this period is the American People figuring out how to voice what they want, how to demand what w they want, how does the system work for them and if it doesnt work for them, what can they do to make it work for them bittersweet isnt just a handful of guys running everything. They have the power. But the American People understood in a broad sense that they have rights in some way different kinds of people have a different understanding that there was a broad sense that wwhatever the experience was tt was going on in this new nation that the rights were something being worked out and determined and that they potentially extend it more widely. Host Joanne Freemanm, which was a whig and what did he believe . Guest im going to answer by moving ahead in time to whigs. So, this goes back to the question about parties and categories. Particularly now, people like to go back in time and make Straight Lines between the parties of th past and present d see if you are republican, go back to jefferson, there are no Straight Lines in history. And there are certainly no Straight Lines when it comes to political parties. Parties bounce back and forth, things change all the time, so for a while, you had the democratic party, and you had what was no more than anythingng else is the antijacksonians. It wasnt really a party the people that really are not for that. We dont like jackson. That becomes sdk to party and you end up in the mid19th century with essentially for 1 a while two main parties and one t the ms. Jackson, democratic supposedly popular, supposedly the common man or a white man on one side and then on the other side coming youhe have the whigs which are centralized and represent in a way sort of two threads we can still see that represented a different point of view. If you were the governor of massachusetts for president of the United States at that time, who held more political power . Guest at this time meaning the early founding or whenever i want it to be . [laughter] okay, well if you go all the way back to the real founding moment, that ismo a good questi. There were people like hamilton and federalists who assumed that the bulk of the power was with thpowerless withthe state and ne National Government, which was new and who knew what it and come test beyond the skeletal competitioconstitution. Its brief for what it does. So they both answered the question would be the governor of massachusetts probably. Although on paper you might say he has a lot of power. But their power is premature to be grounded inin their state overtimey, that shifts but in te 19th century, the first half of the 19th century if you were to pick up a newspaper from the period, congress would be getting a lot more attention we assume that precedent is allpowerful and at the center of the news coming and thatt is in an early american way of thinking about. Host the president doesnt play the large rol a large rolee president place today. That is partly deliberate and partly reflects my interest, but its true throughout this period clearly the americans understood that the president was significant in early founding period they were probably trying to figure out whatth that means. Congress, as the people understand congress is where the nation is being worked out in a groundlevel kind of way and people felt they had a direct connection with their member of congress. When members of congress stood up and particularly when you get into the 1840s and 1850s, the congress stood up and assumed they were speaking to theirr constituents and the pres was creating that kind of a conversation back and forth. Congress mattered tremendously in ways that nowadays we are more focused for different reasons, but i think the 20th century we tend to focus on president s, and that wasnt necessarily the case. Host would we recognize Congress Today as it was back then in the early republic . Guest in the early republic, no i dont think we would recognize it in the early republic or the 19th century. I suppose in some ways it might be what we assumed congress should look like. It is a group of white men in a room above and beyond that they are debating and making decisions and those are the things we assume congress should do. Over time, the United States become somewhat more violent and congress as as representative body and in that case it begins to look in some ways as we would necessarily respect. Host that tobacco juice rugs of the house and senate are an apt metaphor for congress in the decades before the civil war. Yes, there were soaring oratory on occasion. Yes, there were union shaking decisions being made, but underneath the speech pontificating and politics was a spit splattered rod. The Antebellum Congress had its admirable moment, but it wasnt an assembly of demagogues. It was a Human Institution with very human failing. Host that was important for me to make in the book because my assumption about what most people think about particularly congress and this time could come from the period of clay and webster is that congress was a bunch of people in black suits and it was important for me right off the cuff to say this is a Human Institution and number two, it is an unruly dictation. Its a different world then you would assume. And the book is about this Human Institution and how it functions and how that shaped not just nations politics but americans understanding of the nation. Host what is an affair of honor . N guest good question. That is another fundamental thing in early point of my first book i talk about. People think about goals, and i think that becomes an allencompassing term. And people assume that otherwise was people on the field facing each other and shooting each other. The point of an affair of honor or even a dual was counterintuitive. The assumption with the view of two men onou the field facing eh other shooting, someone must be trying to kill someone at one of my earlier point is the point is to prove that they were willing to die for your honor it means its a long ritualized series and negotiations very often that can take place and you dont even have to make it out to the dueling ground. In affair of honor includes all of that negotiation. Once you get past that point and you are on the dueling ground, it becomes a dual but even at that point, death isnt the point. The point is the performance of the. If you think about it, that is a terrifying thing to face someone with a gun standing there and allow someone to shoot at you. To prove that you are the kind of man, the leader that is willing to die for your name and reputation. It makes no sense to us now been madbutit made so much sense to n this time period hundreds of people end up looking through. Host why are we talked at the beginning of u. S. History about the hamilton global cto for . Guest why are we taught about it, partly because sometimes history is about, or some of the ways people teach history is of good stories that seem to sum things up so you get a dual, jefferson versusto hamilton, charles sumner, dramatic stories people sort of used to encapsulate lots of things. I think if people teach that they teach it for us all as they one and only instance and its a siginto thiskind of this great f these two men and that somehow typical of that period and they were so fierce it was hamilton and burr are dramatic characte characters. I think it has a lot of character work maybe more than anything else, but at least not until recently has that been taught as a slave getting deeper and kind of understanding something about the guts of politics in the period and how they really work. Host what happened on that day in 1804 and why did it happen . Guest they have certainly been opponents for a long time. Hamilton was largely to fuel behind the opposition. He really thought of him as something of a demagogue because he can from the equivalent of new england royalty. He was someone hamilton saw as an opportunist. He says early on in their relationship is for back in 1792 pretty much a p direct quote, i consider it myre religious dutyo oppose his career. That is serious opposition you have going there. So, hes pretty bound and determined to quash his career and that goes on for f some tim. The election of 1800 when there ends up being a tie between two candidates from the same party, burr and jefferson and hamilton steps forward with everything he can do to quash the chances, this doesnt make him happy. I think they came near a dual at that point and it was over four years later. Berger was running for governor of new york on the hamilton once again forward to do everything he could do to stop that from happening, and as luck would have it, someone steps forward after that and says ken you see theres a newspaper report of rd that hamilton said about you at a dinner party, hands this over and burr who at this point needs to prove that he is a man and a leader worth being followed feels compelled to redeem his name and reputation so he acts on that and it happens to be hamiltons words so you end up with him being handed something that in his mind is dual worthy and so he commences with hamilton. They exchange these ritualized letters. It doesnt go swimmingly, said he spends a virtual letter and they usually say those when you initiate, they say the same thing. I heard you said this t about me is that true or false. About us or deny if i need an Immediate Response is a gentleman and a man of honor. If you get one of those letters you knew you were in trouble and in a dueling territory so you have to think hard about how you were going to respond. She uses 18 words for one word, a lengthy response in which he talks about why, you know, supposedly something more despicable, these are the words he picks up on. What do you mean despicable. When he writes this sort of letter in which he is talking about what does despicable mean, lets talk about word the despicable, is it a bad word, i dont know. So that is insulting all by itself. A challenge might be againstli the law, the punishment was different. Massachusetts you could be publiclyin humiliated and in rhode island there was a fine. But it was largely the lawmakers so the people making the law and breaking the law. Host do we spend too much time talking about the actual duels and the set up brother were is that a microcosm . People tend to focus on that story. But it does tell you the politician in the political culture at the time that i can tell you of the politics of the. And killing the former secretary of the treasury its a pretty dramatic story and it makes sense thats the one but for 21 that stood in for what is were studying as well. Member did not get elected governor of new york. He did not. We have reasons to be irked. And first of all some time before the dual he is asked about the doctor that normally came and ehrenberg said Something Like we dont need doctors. Just get it over with. He thought it would be typical. You shake hands and you leave but tragically he had become a villain for killing hamilton but i dont think that was his purpose. Host what was his life like after that . Not easy he flees because at that point although it is common all the enemies gang up after killing hamilton and he is foldable. Thats why you dont try to kill people and you become vulnerable for murdering someone. He and his friends and newspaper editors flee new york he ends up in South Carolina where he hides out. And Vice President goes back eto washington. And finishes the vice presidency clearly will not stick around for the second term. And appears to be marching around with the young man and guns and sentenced something would happen we can see where they would have a different kind ofo power. And then is acquitted and local politics are national politics. And then to have that exile. And t is a tourist attraction. People like to go to his law office and here in the window he gets snubbed insn the street. And i still think it is a sad ending. He does not have an easy time of it. There are a lot of aot accounts when he comes back to finish the vice presidency and what they say is you can see the fatigue and anxiety of doing what he did. And those are difficult years hes only one of two politicians ever using politics using the word find he said he was engaged for fun and honor and profit. And then just to be more honest but in some ways its not so fu fun. Who is the other . The other person from South Carolina i read a lot of 18th century political correspondence. Professor freeman you said you are a hamiltonian. It doesnt mean i necessarily agree with hamilton but i am someone who finds him fascinating but in the sense i have spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand why he did what he did. And the hamiltonian scholar. And there were many so i am a hamilton and curious scholar. Host rather than the tendollar bill and a musical what is his legacy . One of the things at the time he was known for a mixed legacy. But the National Government needed to be strengthened. And then pushed through to the Constituti