Associate director of the institute on constitutional democracy. Thanks to cspan for being here. We are doing something a little differently because of cspan being here. For instance, im going to say a little bit more about what the institute is at the beginning for the tv audience. Founded in 2014, it is a joint project between the university of missouri Political Science and history departments in cooperation with other scholarly groups on campus. Dedicated to research, teaching, and Community Engagement on the subject of american political thought and history seen in broad context and from a wide variety of perspectives. It is created from a generous gift from the Kinder Foundation of houston, texas, and we are they made history and social sciences at the university of missouri as one of their philanthropies among many others they could choose. Our goal is to teach and learn about american constitutional democracy as the founders created it, but not just that. We want to understand the ideas that inspired the founders as well as those they disagreed with and over. We want to understand public shortcomings as well as accomplishments. The changes it has gone through as all as its eternal truths. Finally, and here is the big one, we want to model what we like to think is the true spirit of deliberative constitutional democracy and academia properly understood and practiced, and that is working intellectually toward enlightenment, liberty, and justice for all and the renewal of our democracy through searching inquiry and vigorous discussion, such as which i am sure we will have right now. In addition to our programs for graduate and undergraduate students, we put on an extensive series of public talks and lectures such as the series were kicking off today. If you are in town, please come back, and i think on cspan, if you come back, come back for constitution week next week where we will be hearing from speakers about Thomas Jefferson and james madison. This is tv, so i need to say you can find all about the institute and all of our programs online mocracymissouri. Edu, or on twitter. Lets move on to todays speaker. Todays speaker is professor craig smith from William Woods university. Full and missouri, about 30 miles from here. Fulton, missouri, about 30 miles from here. Craig is an assistant professor of history and director of the History Program at William Woods. He graduated from st. Johns university in new york. He earned his phd at brandeis university, where he studied with the great David Hackett fischer. He has studied at numerous areas around the boston area and has won awards and fellowships, including the fred w smith study of George Washington that is at mount vernon. He has already also won the above and beyond award and has only been there for a year. Good job, craig. One of the reasons craig is here is he has a book coming out in april from the university of North Carolina press called american honor the creation of the nations ideals during the revolutionary era. It promises a strong return to the notion of ideas as the driving force a behind the American Revolution. It will argue the revolution was not only a revolution for liberty and freedom, but a revolution for ethics of the good kind. Much has been written about concepts like virtue and honor as they relate to early american thought and culture and maybe of heard about this hamilton musical. Maybe you have heard of that. Craig has returned to these topics with bold, new thoughts and we would like to welcome craig smith did the institute today. [applause] thank you for that fine introduction, and thanks, everyone, for turning up. I usually sit back there and get to relax, but i have people watching me, so i have to Pay Attention for the next hour or so. But thanks so much to kinder. They have welcomed me with open arms. I am new to the missouri area, and i feel right at home here. It is a Great Community the progresses, the staff, the graduate students. I see many new faces and i hopefully will get to meet you at some point. Thank you for the kind introduction, and im thrilled ideashere to talk about drawn from my new book, american honor, and again, shameless plug, april 23, up four amazon preorder next week. Done with shameless plug. For now. Thank you for coming, and like jeff said, really good introduction, looking at the American Revolution based on ideas honor and virtue, ethics, things that are often dismissed. Today we are talking about ben rise,in, and early to Benjamin Franklin and the creation of of ascending honor. You are probably wondering, what on earth is ascending honor . Hmm. So, we join our story in the 1784. A 78yearold Benjamin Franklin nine years paris for on a diplomatic mission. , stoppingde paris off point to the royal splendor of the versailles, Benjamin Franklin resided in le petit hotel. He was a nonpaying guest. He has been here for online years. Terrace,d on the watching as the waters meandered past. War, threeish of the months after the piece of paris, a war that ravaged his native country you wont begrudge and a moment of respite , to watch the rivers flow. Inside, she wrote to his firstborn daughter, and the words he put down in 1784 fundamentally revolutionized the concept of honor, the concept of aristocracy, the concept of birth status that had basically consumed europe most of its history. Inside, he wrote, honor does not descend, but ascend. What does he mean . 2 things. Linked. Or, merit become no longer are you honorable because of who your parents were. You are responsible for your own actions. Not just that, those who taught you to behave that way are also due credit. Before i get started, again, shameless plug. Leave this here for two seconds. Moving on. The question im often asked is what is honor, and this is a question im asked by academics, and, well, my family. What is honor . It is a very difficult thing to define. Ly, it israphical understood as many, many different things. Pointoblem is, at no real in history has anyone been particularly clear. You probably think this im not going to rap for you duel, the concept of reputation. What honor you had, you had to defend it, risk being shot to defend your position. Im here to say that this is only a small, small part of it. Part that was a dismissed by most of the key members of the founding generation franklin, washington among others. So lets look at some supporting evidence. There is no easy understanding to explain a word which is used by all men very unsteadily, and by most without any meaning at all. It is very difficult to define honor even in the 18th century. It was a concept that was understood, but what exactly did it mean . Maybe rutherford, cambridge [indiscernible] honor is a vague expression to which custom has given different meetings. Ar, military and if you are a literary man, the history of tom jones, true honor and true virtue or almost synonymous. Know what webster, honor was any particular virtue much value. Dignity, reputation, virtue. I too much apprehend that your notions of honor and mine are very different from one another. In the 18th century, it was confusing as to what these concepts were. Honor was probably Something Like reputation. Virtue, probably similar to morality, usually linked to religion. Ethics was a term not very much used in the 18th century. It was reserved literally for talking about aristotle. One of the earliest references to the word ethics in america is made by ben franklin. So where does this leave us . If anyone is familiar with engrams, you can search anything published from 1500 to 2008. I have done this apparently i cannot remember my slides quick rule of thumb, the further north you go, honor and virtue are separate. The termsuth you go, are used almost interchangeably. Honor isto argue that richer is ethics, as it was understood in the 18th century. When i say ethics, i mean the modern concept of the idea of doing what is right, doing what you believe is proper. Honor,in the word british and american spelling, the selling changes in the early 19th century, and virtue. What you notice here, the spikes are right around the revolutionary era. Curious why that was. The basicto this, premise of my book is that honor is a cause of the American Revolution and helps to shape how the fenders go into founders go into war and how they leave it. Why dont we think of honor anymore . Go to the top flight. Slide. Honor is slowly, slowly dying. But ethics is rising. You see in the early 20th century, there is literally a moment when honor and ethics intersect and change. So what i want to invite you all to do is consider the possibility that when the founders are speaking of honor, they dont mean just reputation, dont mean just courage. They mean something more. Born theanklin was youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back at a time when birth status actually mattered. He is the son of a candle and soap maker and born right about theire. If someone can tell me what address that represents, good for you. Humble beginnings. And his parents couldnt afford to send him to school, so he only had about 2 four more years huge 2 formal years. He turns to literature, and this is very common for the period. New england was one of the most literate places on earth can so he turns to literature. In boston, those are usually going to be religious texts, including bunyans pilgrims progress. Here he learns that honor and virtue are very much connected to religion. Here, he learns that honor and virtue are connected to religion. A man may cry out against a sin of policy, but you cannot abort by a virtue of a godly antipathy against it. I have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who yet can abide it well enough in the heart, house, and conversation. What are does that mean . It is not enough to speak about virtue, it is not enough to speak about honor, you actually have to live it. Who is the perfect example . Jesus was such a person of honor. Cotton mather, leading puritan figure, one of the big families in the boston areas in the boston area, he is going to say that his invaluable honor to do good is an incomparable pleasure a man must look upon himself is dignified and gratified by god when an opportunity to do good is put into his hands. A divine element. It is a service to god. Without christ, you are not christian. All virtue is by christ. So, franklin, from an early age has this idea of puritan honor where virtue is something akin to religion. But, he also has to struggle with his own birth. Lives,plutarchs which is sort of an ancient history of the classical figures, greece, rome, alexander, that sort of stuff. In there, he finds a reference of a spartan king granting honor and prestige to persons of worth and virtue but who were , miserably poor. This is one of the early references that franklin finds that if you are a virtuous person, if you behave well, you can make your way into society. He takes this to heart. One of the chief and points and factors for franklin was a gentlemans magazine called the spectator. They collected witty essays and things he would hang out at a coffeehouse with pure the spectator, by Addison Richard by addison steel is going to , make the following claims. These are all in volume three. It is the first volume that franklin picked up. In the founders of great families, such attributes of honor are generally corresponded with the virtues of that person to whom they are applied. But in the descendents, they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. Aristocratic rank, prestige, the first person to earn them, the idea that it comes from merit, then after that, it whittles down to the person who may hold the generations from now may have literally nothing to do with that initial action. Keep this in mind about ascending versus descending. If you are doing something for euro means, also. Already which is not founded on merit or virtue, so by birth, it is supported by stratagem. It is a way to advance. So, franklin, if you can see the backdrop, it is silence do good letters. As a teenager, he disguises himself as an older woman by the name of silence dogood. You may remember this from such films as national treasure. He takes the name dogood from cotton mathers essays, to do good. He is understanding breath status and of the rules of honor. He makes sure in his fake introduction where he is posing as a middleaged woman, to point out that people need to know who it is that is speaking before they actually listen to him. Are they a person of status or are they lowly . He makes sure to remind his readers that she, i should say, is a friend to virtue. Therefore, she must be telling the truth. Everything, except the identity, i suppose. In there, he also takes aim at what he sees as more unworthy, nonmeritorious. He targets one particular institution of higher learning, and that is harvard college. He says let students get and only because of the purses of my parents, rather than their capabilities. Harvard produces nothing but dunces and blockheads. All they learn is how to carry themselves handsomely and enter a room genteel he. You can see there is a little bit of angst because he does not get into harvard. He views this as the idea of a sending based on your familys position as inherently wrong. 1723, the new england current, in the guise of the minutes of a Gentlemans Club meeting, franklin introduces his concept of ascending honor. On titles of honor. Honor properly ascends and not descends. Basically, he flipflops this in 1704. He takes my words got cut off. It takes he takes issue with this concept of had honor. What is hacked honor . Anyone know . The idea of doffing a cap to your superior. Franklin says, i am going to paraphrase, he says hi honor is false. Because honor exists from the beginning. But hats were an invention of man. So, therefore, hat honor must be newer and therefore not be true. To show you the comparison, this is very much modeled after the spectator. You will see the idea of virtue as the most reasonable and genuine source of honor and it comes from merit. Franklin here uses the bible. He says look at the bible, there are no titles of honor, it is not my lord abraham, the right honorable abraham. But is he not entitled to this position . So he is taking issue and using , the accepted ideology of the time to counter. This is 1723. He does not say another word about a sunday honor until 1784. Instead, he runs away from his apprenticeship and heads to philadelphia. Then he goes to london. In london, he has a different sense of his own morality. At the time, lord chesterfield who is going to write a very prominent dyad for how young men need to live their lives is going to be there at the same time. This is giving you a sense of what would have been understood the honor and virtue alone could help you advance in society. This is what franklin takes to heart. This is his way in. However, while in london he is going to come to the conclusion that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world and that device and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things exist. I ask you, was he one of those gentlemen, or that gentleman . He would not be the first young man to come to these conclusions, or at least wish them to be true. On his return to philadelphia, quaker dominated area, he suddenly recants of his sort of hedonistic guide to virtue. He comes to something that is closer to the greater good or the general good, the idea that actions are not right or wrong based on general ideas, but because they are good for the community. Something honorable must serve the Community Must serve the , general good. He influences the Broader Community in different ways. He forms the jintao, which is a joint meeting where they talk about morality, virtue, and politics. He forms the Library Company of philadelphia, which is still in existence. To allow people who cannot afford to purchase books to have access. He found spore Richard Stallman act, where he has his witty oneliners. And the pennsylvania gazette, where he publishes pieces on morality and he also publishes many of the early works that to deal with it, including novels. Like pamela. He lists them as books of ethics. This is one of the first mentions of the term ethics, something other than related to aristotle. Well, he also comes up with his 13 names of virtue. One of them got cut off. The last one is humility, something you could argue and franklin never had in his life. He comes out with this end he has a specific plan. Literally create a spreadsheet. He walks around with a notebook with columns. He marks off which of these he excels in every day, and one and he puts a mark if he doesnt. But it gets better. You can only do it one at a time. Man is only human. You have to go down the list, you will notice chastity is number 12. Even when we get there, his loose interpretation, chastity allows for affairs and premarital sex, as long as no one finds out, therefore no one can be hurt. These are coming from his audio biographies. They do not become public until it is published in the 1790s. This is what is he is this is what he is doing in his life. He comes to other conclusions, that selfdenial is not the essence of virtue. This is going against a self flagellating christian culture. You can be wealthy, you can enjoy life. It is nothing sinful. I chopped off he said, stop putting yourself on the cross, anyone not practicing this idea of selfdenial is a lunatic. Im sorry that got cut off. Imagine it was good. Literally, insane. He also wants to form what is called a knighted party of a united party of virtue. Literally he imagines a world in , which men of Different Countries get together, men of morals based on virtue, and they run this sort of wider World Community based on this concept of the general good. We are still waiting. He found sleek college of he founds a college of philadelphia. Which is based on the concept of honor and reputation, depend on the morals of the youth. The ideas that the college has to instruct the students and how the students behave. And it reflects back on the college. Similar to his idea of a sending honor which he does ascending honor. This is the ben franklin we think of. The whole kite thing. This is how we pictured right whe