Think tanks, dedicated to civil education political reform. He is a frequent media commentator on cnn, and foxs special report with brit hume, msnbc, usa today, the new york times, and the bbc. Dr. Watson has lectured at the four arts numerous time, and he will do so again in the future. We again welcome him as he works his formidable magic with our historians. There you go. Okay. Everybody hear me all right . Most importantly, i have a signed copy. Well, thank you again, molly, dr. Brennamen and the entire team at the society and congratulations on yet another important and successful and exciting program. Id also like to thank cspan as mentioned earlier for covering the program, and jay gaines and the others who underwrote the program. The opportunity to sit and talk history, if anybody knows me, i never miss the opportunity, and Nothing Better than a nice history talk. But to sit and talk history with one of my heroes and arguably one of the preeminent historians of our time or any time, a man that has been called the capital t the historian of founders is gordon wood who is the dean of historians will be here for a week. I paid him 100 to say that. I would like to thank joe ellis for coming, and thank him for the remarks. [ applause ] we have about an hour, and we may go over [ laughter ] we will try to keep it tight to the hour. And i thought that we would cover a few topic, and one being professor el ellis books, and the writing process, and i want him to take us behind the scenes in his research and the writing process. And get back to the founders and talk about the eternal and important legacy contributions up to today and the meaning today and the relevance today, and we want to touch on a few historical topics that he alluded to in the the remarks and get back to that and i would like to open up with knowing joe ellis the person. On that note, can you tell us what sparked your interest in history, and at what age did you realize that this was your calling . Well, i dont have a canned answer to that, and usually, i have heard the questions and so im scripted to do this and i went to college at the college of william and mary. Before that i went to a school in d. C. Which was a Jesuit School called gonzaga and so i was classically trained in terms of the latin and greek and stuff, and so i didnt really take much of the way of american history, but when i had philosophy at william mary, and then afterwards and people would come up to me in my junior year and say, what are you going to do . You know, a horrible question. Yes, we all get it. And you had to have an answer so i said that i would go to law school, and i hadnt thought about it, but i knew that everybody would accept that answer. So then my senior year, i realized, i didnt have the money to go to law school, and i was on my own, and wilm ya and mary was cheap and i was working as a lifeguard in d. C. Overseeing the pools for the kafitz corporation. And i could not afford law school, so i thought, well, i can get into the graduate school, and i did want to go into the philosophy, because they were heading off in the direction of symbiotics, and so i was more interested in ideas. People at william mary said you could do history. So i applied and i got into yale, which nobody understood how i ever got in. Did you ever ask them how you got in . Well, i didnt know who to ask. I think that i wrote an essay that somebody thought was good, but the people at yale at the same time as me were much better read than i was. And at the end of the year i sort of thought, im not cut out to do this. And theres a, i could feel that i was supposed to write a certain way, and i didnt want to do that. And so i sort of started saying, im not coming back. What was i going to do . I was going to run swimming pools, okay . And the guy named steven woodward, a prominent historian at yale, called me into his office and made me promise that i would come back, and i said to him, mr. Woodward, i dont really think im as good as alls these other people. And he said, joe, youre right. They actually know more than you from reading, but you can learn that. You know something is that they dont know and they can never learn. I spent the last 40 years trying to figure out what that was. [ laughter ] i was leaning forward, waiting for that moment of truth. I dont know. Im hanging off the edge of the cliff here. I think it has to do something with write being. If y if you werent a writer and a historian, what could you see yourself being . Id be a lawyer, but not a corporate lawyer. Id be a, like, but, you know, i cant, i wouldnt be happy, i mean, i have lawyers making a lot of money write me and say i want to do what youre doing. Right. And i say give up. Right. Because its not going to work for you. Im really, in other words, hike most of the things in life, most of the Big Decisions that ive made in my life to include what i want to be when i grow up and who i want to marry and those kind of things, you make those decisions before you have enough information to really know whether they are good ideas. Whether its the right decision or not. Isnt that right . I mean, that, and so sometimes they work out. Like, in this case, it worked out. Right. Im really happy. And like, when i get up in the morning, i go down to my study, and i drink my coffee, and i try to skrcribble away, and i writen long hand. Im not technologically committed to anything, other than a roller ball black ink pen. Okay. And for me, thats, to say its always fun isnt true, but its fulfilling for me in a way thats really wonderful. Sure. And teaching for me, i retired formally from teaching, i taught at williams last year. But most of the time at mt. Holyoke. That writing is a solitary activity. Its lonely. Teaching is a social activity. I like the combination of those two things. Mmhm. Right. And i missed teaching. I dont miss grading papers. I dont miss, you know, writing, and one of the things thats happening out there in the world of undergraduates, and if you dont know this, you need to know this. In the last couple years, students would give me their papers, and i would make all kinds of comments on the margins and at the end. Laborintensive process, you know what im talking about. It is, it is, it is. But thats really important, a central part of education, youre playing with their minds, the syntax of their sentences, youre talking about the way they think, and i spent a lot of time doing that. And they come up after class, and they say i cant read cursive. Yeah. Cursive and roman numerals. I mean, its like, so you cant do that, because its interlinear on paper. And thats, im, im anak ronnistic. A few years ago at our university, we had smart boards installed in all the rooms. Youve seen them on cnn when you can open up the Electoral College map or whatever, so im trying to think, how could i use a smart board to teach about gettysburg. So i thought i would show students original letters and take them back to these primary sources. So i pulled up, i dont remember if it was a washington or a franklin or lincoln, and the letter was written in cursive. And i asked the First Student if she would trade, and sread it, she couldnt. And i moved on to the next student, and none of them could. I had an outline for the historical periods, and i had it in roman numerals and one of the students said dr. Watson, why do you have a v in your syllabus, and it dawned on me they didnt know that either. I want to get back on the writing, your approach to it in just a moment. But if i may, all of us have a favorite historical place or site that we like to go to. And i know during your research, youd devote a lot of time to poring through all these letters. Do you have a favorite historic site, a place you go to to try to get into the brain of john adams . There werent sites a house, a battle sneeld. Not a place on the internet. Im not plugged in in that regard. I doesnt hant have Research Assistants. I do everything myself. Which is rare today. Which is not, i mean, its rare for people who are for people of your caliber. Who are trying to conduct research. But its because i, in doing research, in reading, ive discovered things that i would not be able to tell a Research Assistant to look for. Right, right. So, like general howell, in the battle of germantown returned washingtons dog, who he found on the battle field and had it personally returned. Now thats not going to change the direction of the american revolution, but i would have never found that. And, but the, i think its letters. I mean, its a real interesting fact that whats going to happen with the history of the 21st century, Major Political figures. Because no one writes anymore. There are no letters. And how much of the and in some ways, we have too much information, because emails proliferate in ways that are infinite. But reading letters, the adams, the adams family correspondence is to me one of the most, richest, perhaps the richest source. Also the, what i said at the end of my talk, the Adams Jefferson correspondence, its just, and you assign that to students. I assign the whole things to students. They almost always begin with the assumption that theyre going to like jefferson. Hes going to be the big hes going to write much more elegantly, and then they realize they dont like him as much as they like adams and that jefferson has a style that floats. His style is like his mind. Its rap sodic. Its romantic. It floats above the details of ordinary life, and its attractive in that regard. Its beguiling, but i had this one student who said this is jefferson. This is adams. Right. Right. And its pugilistic. Its aggressive. And watching that is, i mean, for me, thats a source. Thats a place. I mean, i love to go back to mt. Vernon. I love to go back to monticello. Those are the two most places that i go back to. Mt. Peeliers being recreated in a big way, madisons home. And i respect the work that they do. The adams, i like the adams homestead in quincy. Quincy. Which is run by the National Park service, okay . Its a real thing, and its a real home. The other places have become museums in some sense. People actually lived, you know, for the next three, four generations in the adams home. And i like that. I like that thing, that kind of but if theres anything creative that i do, it happens when im reading a letter and i see things in it that make me think about an issue in a way that i before had not been able to think about. I thinks fantastic that you do your own research. And i would agree that the story about the dog at german town in october of 77. A Research Assistant would have said, im not going to pass this along to professor watson or professor ellis. They were dog lovers. Imagine two leaders in a battle, after exchanging a dog that was running along lost on the battlefield. If you wanted to probe that you could go like this, howell didnt believe in this war. Howell didnt want to be fighting washington. Howell had hoped that they would be able to defeat the army of the Continental Army of long island and that was it. And he really, really didnt want to be there. And he had a relationship with washington in which he saw him as an honorable coequal. An honor exists in a way that we have a difficult time understanding now. I mean, think about this. Why is it in a revolutionary war battlefield, when the two sides approach each other they dont lie down. I mean, why would you tannstand there while somebody is about to shoot you, right . Because thats dishonorable. And like generals in battles in the revolutionary war, even though theyre being annihilated will not retreat. Right. Why . Retreat is dishonorable. Stupido. Just get behind a rock, you know . But its, it, so that one little incident can be a device that gets you into a whole mentality and one of the things i wanted to say that i, because i was going on too long in the talk. Were talking about a world, late 18th century, that is predemocratic. But gordon comes, you tell him i said its predemocratic, and hes going to go nuts, okay . They get along but they have their disagreements. Its predarwin. Its prefreud. Its prepicasso. Its prekaines. Its preinternet. Its even predonald trump. So its a really different world back then. Right. Now, does that mean its lost forever . I wouldnt go there. If it was lost forever, what in heavens name are we bothering ourselves to go back there. There are things to learn from that world. But, in the same way that lets say youre an anthropologist, and you go to samoa, you shouldnt expect the samoaen parents to raise their children like dr. Spock. And you get into fights about this. There was a young woman at williams last year. We were talking about slavery and the constitution and the constitutional convention. And she said, look, they made the wrong choice. They made the morally reprehensible choice. And thats the end of the story. We cant talk about it anymore. I said what do you mean we cant talk about it anymore . This is this trigger thing, you know . Youve got to recognize that this is a different world and come to terms with that world and understand in fact if they had actually tried to insert an article ending slavery or saying that slavery should be on the road to extinction, the constitution would have never passed. Right. So what happens then . Right. So you get your way, you know, what happens then . The south ends up being separate. They probably make an alliance with england because of the cotton trade. Slavery probably lasts longer, though its hard to know. You cant go back and play the tape. But i feel strongly that you cant impose a politically correct identity politics agenda on a 2017 perspective on something. Right. And there were founders who were opposed to slavery, but it was politically not going to happen. You mentioned john adams is one of these founders that is hard to like according to historians and probably not that popular, yet youve been enamored with him. I dont like him. I love him. Okay. So in terms of that, adams getting right to the point, is part of the reason why you like adams is because, ive always seen him a lot like truman and grant. I can read truman. I can raead grant, and they wer blunt, they got right to the point, whereas im still having trouble figuring out jefferson and washington. Is that part of the charm of adams, his bluntness and directness . Is that why you like him its partially true. Compared to truman and grant, adams is a genius. And hes also funny as hell. He has a real sense of humor about himself. Grant didnt. Grant didnt have that, neither did truman. Truman, yeah. He understands himself psychologically. Much more than any modern politician ive ever seen. He understands what love means. He understands what a realistic, and hes a contrarian. Yes, he is. Who thinks that the fact that he lost the election of 1800 to jefferson is the singlemost important contribution he ever made to american history, because he was right to keep us out of a war with france. And i lohe lost the election bee of it. For that reason. And his definition of leadership is a definition thats unenforceable in our modern, political culture. Rather doing whats right and lose, suffer the consequences. The people, republic, whats the people . The people is, you know, this swoonish thing that changes its mind and can be unpredictable. The public is the longterm interest of the people. Right. Which, at any given time, most of the people dont understand. Your job as a leader is to understand that. In terms of washington, passed the jay treaty. Very unpopular. The right thing to do. Lines us up with britain for a century. Avoid war with france, would have been devastating to the american economy, et cetera. Those are acts of leadership by washington and adams as president that would be unthinkable in a contemporary context, because everybody would be poll driven and they would say you cant possibly do that. And so its a form of leadership, you know, its like when mark twain went to the holy land. He said christs been here once, will never come again. [ laughter ] like youre not going to see these people arent coming back. But just to know that that form of leadership actually existed. People did that. Okay . Thats, thats really wonderful. Onmentionand you mentioned t Adams Jefferson letters which we agree are one of the most important sources to understanding the founding period and anybody who writes on this topic needs to go back through them. Theres a great story of adams and jefferson having that fallout over the 1800 election, coming back late in life, dying on the same day. Dying on the same day, if you made that up, nobody would accept it. A hollywood agent wouldnt put that in. A novel would say you cant do that. 50th anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence, they both passed on july 4, 1826. Adams last words, jefferson still lives, and jefferson had died earlier the same day. Remarkable. Almost to the hour. Again, you cant make this stuff up. Is there something about the Adams Jefferson letters that you particularly like or you find relevant or important for your work on the founding . Yeah. I sort of alluded to it in my remarks. They are a summing up of the evolutionary generation. The generations passing. Its 1812, 1826. Theyre getting to be old guys. And theyre looking back together at what theyve done and the way its, theyve shaped the revolution and the way it has shaped them. And as adams said, and i mentioned, you and i ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other. And they were bitter enemies throughout the 1790s, and jefferson was a duplicitous son of a gun. He hired several scandalmongers. Hes eventually the guy who blows the whistle on the Sally Hemmings thing with jefferson, but its watching two of the preeminent founders think about whats happened and what it means. And that the fact is that they dont agree. Two men have lived the same experience, and they dont agree about what it means. And its, its the begin, it is the, what i would call the american dialog that i, i find really compelling. Mmhm. The, and the, it reenforces my notion that history is an argument. And its an argument you can see it. You can see the american argument being formulated with them. So that, to me, is why that the correspondence is what i like about it is you have these two elder states men, late in life, reminiscing. These two old bulls reminiscing about their heyday and taking different perspectives, but jefferson to me has always been remarkably enigmatic, and he plants evidence and tries to be above the fray, but hes duplicitous in the fray. But in these letters to me, everseve jefferson is more direct. You want to depict it. Its like jeffersons standing, he liked to stand with his arms folded to sort of protect himself from intruders, and adams pacing back and forth, and periodically grabbing him by the lapel, like, god damn. Both of them are performing. They dont