They period i can to focus on whittemore the early part of that art and its the improvisational nature of that the really fascinates me more than anything else but its because the nation was founded in a world of monarchy, and the United States was a republic. What that means wasnt so clear at that moment, and people knew there their target something that wasnt that. Were not going to degrade a monarchy of the president is not going to be a king, but beyond that there was g a lot of open ground. Theres a i lot of improv in the early decades about what the nation is, how it functions, the tone ofun the government, how ts nation is going to stand amongst the nations of the world of the kinds of nations. What does it mean to be a republic in the world of monarchies . How was this patient going to any degree of respect, and equally if not more significant as far as the inside of that nation is concerned, what condition is a going to be . That is true, the question is on every level you can imagine it to be true. Theres a broad ideological level which at that is true. But theres a groundlevel, how democratic and nation will this be . Who is going to own the land and how that land be literally wrested from other people . What kind of rights was some people have and what kind of rights one of the people i have met all . A lot of the questions we are grappling with now, questions about equity and equality and rights and race, those go back to the beginning of the republic andub beyond. We deal with these pig questions and these pig legacies of undecided things. We are still dealing with them. They go all the way back. Host will we inherently democratic to begin . Guest no. We were at the monarchy. Americans had a strong sense of elite, white, male american, very strong sense of their rights and felt they were creating a more democratic regime than what has been around before. They were thinking of a much better life. In that sense they were very right minded but by no means was the country founded with thinking everyone wouldnt have rights, there would be equally, there were different dont want to call them parties but two different points of view, jefferson is oversimplified but those were the camps and they had a different view by how democratic the nation could be. Republicans somewhat more but even so limited view was democratic. When i teach about the period there are all kinds of ways to think about the meaning of it democracy is a big one. If you see the word in the founding period it does not mean the same thing. You have to rethink what you are talking about when looking at the founding and seeing things. Host how many points of view were a . Democrats, republicans and independents, was that the case back then . Guest it was more complex than that. They were not thinking the way we think aboutarties we think of party as an institution, structure, organization, you affiliate yourself with one. Back to the mindset of the founding, they were assuming a national party, the idea of the nation, ey could get something that overarching that that many people would buy into in all these diverse states, that would not have occurred to them but beyond that they wot think a natiol par was a good thing they assume a republic, banging against each other. Some kind of decision or compromise, that was the point to have a national center. They were not assuming there would be 2 or 3 viewpoints. And umbrellas of political thought. If you were a federalist of self carolina. There is a lot on the spectrum. Category and founding periods. What did not succeed and what did. Political culture improv. One of the wonderful things about studying and writing about the founding, that you dont expect them to put in writing, john adams writing to a friend and saying house and an american politician, and the british or fresh european, too much laced to be american. How many total horses were appropriately america how many seem monarchy call which seems trivial and so much fun. They are seriously thinking about the fact those little stylistic decisions are going to shape the tone of the nation. When everything sets a precedent, that can have a big impact. On the one hand it is almost comical because it seems trivial and it isnt trivial. Host we had several hundred white male elites forming this country with the buyin with 3 or 4 Million People who lived here. Guest a small group of people have power. On the other hand revolution was a popular revolution not conducted by 30 guys in a room. It is important to remember whatever was going on although the elite have power and were worried about maintaining power there was a lot happening around them and part of the challenge i dont want to say difficulty but the tension of that period is the American People figuring out how to demand what they want, how does the system work for them and if it doesnt how to make it work for them better. It isnt just a handful of elite guys running everything. They have the power. The American People understood in a broad sense that they have rights and different people had an understanding of what rights but there was a broader sense whatever the experiment was going on in this new nation that rights were still being worked out and determined and potentially extended more widely than what had come before. Host what was a wig and what did he believe . Guest i will move ahead in time. People like to go back in time between the party of the present and the parties of the past and say republican republican republican goes back to jefferson. There are no Straight Lines in history when it comes to political parties. Parties bounce back and forth, names change all the time, you have the Democratic Party which was its own thing on the one hand, no more than anything else, the antijacksonians, people who are not that we dont like what they represent, that becomes the wig party and you end up in the midNineteenth Century essentially for a while with two main parties, when is jackson, democratic, supposedly popular, the common man, the common white man and on the other, more centralized, big National Government, two threads you can see a different point of view. If you were president of the United States, who held more political power . At that time or whenever you wanted to be . Guest if you go back to the founding, thats a good question. People like hamilton and the federalists assumed the bulk of the power and not the National Government, knew what was encompassed above and beyond the skeletal constitution. The constitution is brief for what it does. Who thought the answer to that question would be the governor of massachusetts probably although on paper the president has a lot of power and their loyalties and sense of belonging and understanding will be grounded in their state. Overtime it shifts but in the Nineteenth Century if you were to pick up a newspaper from that Period Congress would get more attention. We assume the president is allpowerful and at the center of the news and that is not an early american way of thinking about it. Host in reading your book, dont know if this is purposeful or if i missed it, the president doesnt play the large role the president plays today. Guest that is partly deliberate and partly reflects my interest but it is true that throughout this period, americans understood the president was significant in the early founding period, trying to figure out what that means, hundreds of people understand that congress is really where the nation is worked out and people felt they had a great connection with their member of congress. Members of congress stood up, particularly in the 1840s and 50s, assumed they were speaking to her constituents and the press, creating that conversation back and forth. Congressman and tremendously in ways that nowadays are more focused in Different Reasons but the Twentieth Century we can focus on the president and that was not necessarily the case. Host would we recognize Congress Today as it was back then in the early republic . Guest in the early republic i dont think we would recognize in the early republic with the Nineteenth Century. The early republic might be what we assume congress should look like. With what i have just written about in my book, it is a group of men, white men above and beyond that, they are debating and making decisions, passing legislation, the things we assume congress should do, over time the United States becomes more violent and congress is a representative body and Congress Becomes more violent. In that case it looks in some ways we would not necessarily expect. Host from your book the field of blood an apt metaphor for congress in the decades before the civil war, there was soaring oratory on occasion, there was union shaking decisions being made but underneath the speech and pontificating and politicking was a spit spattered rug, had its admirable moment, and assembly of demagogues, a Human Institution, human failing. Guest that was an important point. My assumption of what most people think about particularly congress in this period of webster and this sort congress was a bunch of people in black suits, it was important for me right off the cuff this is a Human Institution and an unruly institution, a different world than you are assume and the book is about this Human Institution and how that shaped not just the nations politics but americas understanding. Host what is fairmont . Guest that is another fundamental thing in affairs of honor. I talk about. Allencompassing term. They are shooting at each other. An affair of honor is bigger than that and the point of an affair of honor or dual is counterintuitive. The assumption is two men on a field facing each other and shooting someone must be trying to kill someone. One of my early points is now, the point of an affair of honor or a dual is to prove you are willing to die for your honor. An affair of honor means it is a long, ritualized series of letter exchanges and negotiations, it can often take place, two men can redeem their names and reputations and you dont have to make is to a dueling ground was an affair of honor includes that ritualized negotiation and once you get past that point it becomes a dual but even at that point that isnt the point. The point is the performance of it. When you think about it it is a terrifying thing to face someone with a gun, stand there and allow someone to shoot at you. That is the point to prove you are this kind of man who is willing to die for your name and education. Makes no sense to us now but made so much sense to them, hundreds of people ended up. Host why are we taught at the beginning of us history about the burr hamilton duel of 1804 . Guest partly because sometimes history is about ways in which some people teach history, being good stories so you get the burr hamilton duel, jefferson versus hamilton, the caning of charles sumner, dramatic stories people used to encapsulate lots of things. If people teach that they teach it as the one and only instance, a kind of great m nettie of these two men and somehow typical of that period and hamilton and burr are dramatic characters. It does a lot of character work more than anyone else but not until recently has it been taught as a way of getting deeper into understanding about politics in that period and how they worked. Host what happened on that day in 1804 and why did it happen . Guest host guest burr and hamilton had been opponents for a long time. Hamilton was behind much of the opposition. He thought of him as a demagogue because he was someone who came from new england royalty. He was someone hamilton saw as an opportunist, early on in their relationship in 1792, pretty much a direct quote, i consider it my religious duty to oppose his career. That is in serious opposition you have going but he is determined to quash burrs career for quite some time. In the election of 1800 when it is a tie between the two candidates of the same party and hamilton steps forward and says that is what it takes to quash burrs chances that does not make a happy, it got smooth over. Four years earlier burr is running for governor of new york, to stop that from happening and as luck would have it someone stepped forward after that, in a dinner party, burr needs to prove hes a man, a leader worth being followed losing contest after contest. He acts on that and happens to be hamilton so you end up with burr being handed something that is duel worthy so he commences an affair of honor with hamilton. They exchange individualized letters. Doesnt go swimmingly so burr sends a ritualized letter, when you initiate affairs of honor, i heard you said this about me, is it true or false, or deny it, deserves immediate response. If you get those letters you are in trouble, to think about how you responded. Hamiltons response was not ideal, but 18 words for one word, very lengthy response, something more despicable about burr, what do you mean despicable, what a despicable mean, what is the meaning of despicable . Is that a word . I dont know. That is insulting all by itself if youre an angry person who was just called despicable. To show that, hamilton says by the way, i stand behind all of my words and there is no exception to that now. Im willing to fight for any words i utter. It is not a strategically smart thing, and basically the response, not behaving like a gentleman, not a gentlemanly thing to do, and you see how things spiral to the point of a trip to the dueling ground is the outcome. Host was a dueling legal . Guest now. It was a statebystate thing. Every state has its own antidueling regulation, a challenge might be against the law, the duel itself might be against the law, punishment was different in massachusetts, publicly humiliating in some way, massachusetts, it is a lot less daunting. It was largely the lawmakers, the people making the law or breaking the law was such a wash about the elite and the power they had. Host do we spent too much time talking about the actual duels and the set up to this rather original microcosm of what is going on . Guest in the land of hamilton, front and center there was a lot of dueling, the practice of dueling is worth looking at because it tells you about week politics, being a politician, the political culture that can tell you a lot about the emotional guts of some of the politics of the period. The burr hamilton bill shouldnt stand for all dueling and the vice presidency of the United States, the secretary of the treasury, is a pretty dramatic story. If you are focusing on one dual it makes sense. For too long it stood in for what is worth studying abroad. Host we should note aaron burr did not get elected governor of new york. Hamilton is effective at helping to smash various aspects. Burr had a reason to be irked which is a controversial thing, i dont think burr wanted to kill hamilton. Most, andrew jackson, wanting to kill. I dont think burr did. Sometime before the duel hes asked about a doctor. We dont need doctors, lets get it over with. You shoot at each other, you shake hands and leave. Tragically he has become this villain of American History for killing hamilton and i dont think that was his aim. But i dont think that was the purpose in going to the dueling ground. Host what was his lifelike after that . Guest dueling is enough, all of burrs anomie is gaining up after his killing of hamilton, one reason people didnt try to kill people in duels, it is a widespread practice, you become vulnerable for having murdered someone, all his enemies in various politics tried to squash him. He, his friends, newspaper editors, the boatman who wrote them across the dueling ground, he ends in South Carolina, he killed hamilton, good place to be but ultimately he is Vice President , and he wasnt the bad Vice President , sticking around for jeffersons second term and he ends up going out west. It is in clear where he is going out west and marching around with young men with guns. He thought something was going to happen in mexico, somehow or other, literal new frontier, different kind of power. We are not sure, he gets tried for treason because what looks like treason elected but he is out west. What frontier has this left for burr . Local politics, national politics, basically and the exiling himself where he hangs out with William Godwin and mary wall stone craft, an interesting life in europe hanging out with intellectuals and in his old age he comes back to new york kind of a tourist attraction. Goes back to practicing law, an older man by this point. They can say they saw aaron burr, he gets snubbed in the streets. I am hamiltonian and still think it is a sad ending. He does not lots of accounts of members of congress see him when he comes to finish the vice presidency and what they say is you can see the fatigue and anxiety of what he is dealing with and you could see it about him. He doesnt have any the end of life, those are difficult years for him. He is one of two politicians i have seen describe politics using the word fun. He says he is in gauged in politics, almost a direct quote, fun and honor and profit which is pretty direct but his knowledge, i dont think hes the only one that sounded fun but he acknowledges that and you get that sense from him that he is enjoying the game. Hes more honest about the fact that hes enjoying it. In many later years host who was the other one . Guest Charles Pinckney from South Carolina is the other one who considered politics fun. There might be others floating around out there but ive read a lot of 18thcentury political correspondence and not more than those two times. Host you said you are a hamiltonian. What does that mean . Guest it doesnt necessarily mean i agree with hamilton. I am someone who finds him, for a long time fascinating. Hamiltonian in the sense that ive spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand him and why he did what he did and what he did and in that sense im hamiltonian scholar because i do think a question or personal problem grabs them and many grabbed me but he grabbed me at an early point. I am hamilton period scholar. Besides the 10 bill in relatively wellknown musical, what is his legacy . Guest on