Two unlikely tourists traveled through the Hudson Valley and New England in the early summer of 1791, wanting to study the region's flora and fauna as well as the Native American languages. Or were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on a political mission? We talk with Louis P. Masur, cultural historian, who has written books about Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, photography, baseball, and rock and roll, and is now writing a book about Jefferson and Madison's exploration of this distant country, where they are looking for the Hessian Fly, become enraptured with sugar maples, meet with Native Americans, and meet Prince Taylor, a free African-American farming near Fort George. Masur, the Board of Governors Professor and Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, unpacks the world from a grain of sand, and this encounter with Jefferson and Madison in the summer of 1791 tells us much about the remarkable friendship of these two men and the country they helped to bring into being.
Two unlikely tourists traveled through the Hudson Valley and New England in the early summer of 1791, wanting to study the region's flora and fauna as well as the Native American languages. Or were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on a political mission? We talk with Louis P. Masur, cultural historian, who has written books about Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, photography, baseball, and rock and roll, and is now writing a book about Jefferson and Madison's exploration of this distant country, where they are looking for the Hessian Fly, become enraptured with sugar maples, meet with Native Americans, and meet Prince Taylor, a free African-American farming near Fort George. Masur, the Board of Governors Professor and Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, unpacks the world from a grain of sand, and this encounter with Jefferson and Madison in the summer of 1791 tells us much about the remarkable friendship of these two men and the country they helped to bring into being.
WEBVTT
00:01.186 --> 00:04.508
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
00:04.528 --> 00:05.409
I'm Bob Allison.
00:05.469 --> 00:07.730
I chair the Revolution 250 advisory group.
00:08.250 --> 00:16.055
We are a collaboration among about 70 organizations in Massachusetts looking at ways to commemorate the beginnings of American independence.
00:16.135 --> 00:18.657
And our guest today is Louis P. Mazur.
00:19.237 --> 00:26.422
And Lou Mazur is the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University.
00:27.262 --> 00:33.865
and author of more books than I can count, books that actually span the foundation of the Republic.
00:33.885 --> 00:52.292
He edited a great edition of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and books that include Autumn Glory about the First World Series, a couple of books about Abraham Lincoln, a book about the year 1831, a book about Bruce Springsteen, a book about photography and Boston's busting crisis.
00:52.312 --> 00:54.193
I mean, it's a tremendous span of
00:54.813 --> 01:17.456
books that you've written actually i could spend the whole half hour just talking about your books but you're talking about a book that you're in the process of writing yeah well thank you so much bob thanks for having me i mean this has just been fantastic what you've been doing for revolution 250 and i'm glad that i'm back working in the 18th century for for the first time in a long time yeah uh yeah i'm i'm
01:18.399 --> 01:21.122
in the middle of just about finishing up a book.
01:21.483 --> 01:31.375
And what ties all of those books together in some ways, I've often been asked this because I have so many different interests, is my approach to writing history
01:32.290 --> 01:34.051
is sort of the world in the grain of sand.
01:34.271 --> 01:39.134
I mean, I like to take a moment, an instant, a text, and unpack it.
01:39.574 --> 01:55.324
So whether it's a year, 1831, or a speech, a book about Lincoln's last speech, or a record album, Bruce Springsteen's first run, or a photograph, the famous photograph, The Story of Old Glory, that sort of ties things together.
01:55.364 --> 01:59.466
The only exception was this concise history of the United States.
01:59.486 --> 02:00.607
So this brings me back.
02:00.627 --> 02:01.908
The sum of our dreams, yeah.
02:02.338 --> 02:03.399
Yeah, exactly.
02:04.039 --> 02:04.439
To that.
02:04.459 --> 02:15.987
And what I'm writing about is a brief, but I think revealing trip, road trip that Jefferson and Madison took together.
02:17.475 --> 02:20.598
in between May and June of 1791.
02:21.479 --> 02:34.812
And I'm just having a great time sort of thinking about these two friends and collaborators out on the road together, leaving from New York and going up
02:35.424 --> 02:37.405
through New York into Connecticut.
02:37.745 --> 02:40.207
They made their way to Vermont for the first time.
02:40.287 --> 02:45.490
Vermont was recently had become a state and they were interested in visiting in Vermont.
02:45.870 --> 02:51.134
And they came back down through Massachusetts, crossed over into Long Island and back into New York.
02:51.154 --> 02:57.978
They covered over 900 miles in between May 21st and June 16th.
02:57.998 --> 02:59.999
They averaged something like 30 miles a day.
03:00.499 --> 03:04.442
So it's just- How do they travel?
03:07.323 --> 03:10.104
they sent ahead a Phaeton.
03:10.144 --> 03:12.086
There's a great word, good vocabulary.
03:12.506 --> 03:13.867
P-H-A-E-T-O-N.
03:14.507 --> 03:15.648
A good 18th century word.
03:15.848 --> 03:16.888
Jefferson's carriage.
03:17.889 --> 03:20.911
And they had horses that they brought along.
03:20.991 --> 03:22.331
Madison brought his horse along.
03:23.592 --> 03:24.533
James Hemmings
03:25.832 --> 03:27.554
accompanied Jefferson.
03:29.256 --> 03:41.788
There's no other record of him anywhere in the trip except a note in Jefferson's memorandum book that he sent Hemings ahead with the horses on the trip up the Poughkeepsie.
03:42.809 --> 03:43.930
And then we have a puzzle.
03:45.195 --> 03:49.900
Was Madison accompanied by an enslaved person or a servant or was he not?
03:50.701 --> 03:51.721
And it's fascinating.
03:51.741 --> 03:56.546
I mean, the uncertainties of history, of course, are always compelling.
03:57.086 --> 03:59.248
There are several secondary sources.
04:00.188 --> 04:10.998
that say Madison was accompanied by a servant or a slave named Matthew, I cannot find any reference anywhere in the primary sources to this having been the case.
04:11.679 --> 04:15.262
So where did Irving Brandt come up with this in 1950?
04:15.382 --> 04:17.364
And then we apply a certain amount of logic.
04:20.575 --> 04:25.816
You know, Madison was accompanied by a slave when he went to Princeton as an undergraduate.
04:25.837 --> 04:30.438
He was accompanied by an enslaved person, Billy, when he went to the Confederation Congress.
04:30.818 --> 04:33.639
What are the odds that he would go on this trip with Jefferson?
04:34.279 --> 04:35.219
Not accompanied by one.
04:35.499 --> 04:41.341
So it raises these really interesting questions for us as historians in terms of examining the historical record.
04:41.441 --> 04:41.561
Yeah.
04:42.216 --> 04:42.416
Yeah.
04:42.716 --> 04:47.200
I mean, you raised a question about how do you write about something for which there is very little documentation?
04:47.260 --> 04:49.482
I mean, they aren't keeping travel journals.
04:49.522 --> 04:52.144
They're not writing letters saying, here we are in Vermont.
04:52.264 --> 04:54.946
Well, yeah.
04:55.026 --> 04:56.448
I mean, fortunately, there's some stuff.
04:56.628 --> 04:58.049
I mean, there's just enough.
04:58.769 --> 04:59.670
So it's really interesting.
05:01.548 --> 05:04.170
Jefferson kept a journal for part of the trip.
05:05.391 --> 05:07.413
Madison kept a journal for part of the trip.
05:07.433 --> 05:10.657
So we do have some journal entries that were taken during the trip.
05:11.818 --> 05:19.906
Jefferson, being Jefferson, kept a list of all the inns and taverns they stayed at, and he ranked them based on how good they were.
05:20.546 --> 05:20.727
Wow.
05:22.210 --> 05:23.410
Like a Yelp review.
05:24.190 --> 05:25.851
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
05:27.191 --> 05:47.995
And then finally, one of the purposes of the trip, and this is also a debate within the historiography, those who've noted the trip, I should say that while I think the trip is important, it receives a couple paragraphs, understandably, in any biographies or other works of Jefferson and Madison.
05:49.576 --> 05:50.356
But to the extent
05:51.383 --> 05:52.984
that there was a purpose to the trip.
05:53.644 --> 05:59.546
One of the purposes, self-avowed purposes, was to investigate the Hessian fly.
06:00.446 --> 06:06.928
The Hessian fly, of course, was an insect that destroyed wheat crops in post-revolutionary America.
06:07.708 --> 06:09.089
The name itself is...
06:10.189 --> 06:32.904
uh something that was given to the fly because of the belief that it was brought by hessian soldiers in the beds uh during the revolution uh it turns out that's not the case but um but prior to going on the trip jefferson uh at the american philosophical society they had a meeting in which they created a set of queries and part of what he did on this trip was everywhere he went
06:33.524 --> 06:44.835
He asked people about the Hessian fly and was for a while obsessed with trying to understand its advance and what might possibly be done about it.
06:45.916 --> 06:46.377
Interesting.
06:46.957 --> 06:47.318
Interesting.
06:47.638 --> 06:55.025
And then they also were interested in, I mean, both were interested in botany as well as in Native American languages and linguistics.
06:55.045 --> 06:57.428
I mean, they have a wide range of interests that they have.
06:58.021 --> 06:58.821
Yeah, exactly.
06:58.881 --> 07:01.502
And see, and that's the window in the grain of sand part of this.
07:01.563 --> 07:07.485
So what I do is I can't write a story of them sort of day by day.
07:07.505 --> 07:10.266
They did this and they did this and that would be boring anyhow.
07:11.107 --> 07:14.068
So I actually take these four moments and you're absolutely right, Bob.
07:14.828 --> 07:21.732
The moments illustrate the breadth of their interests of botany, horticulture, linguistics.
07:23.293 --> 07:23.853
You name it.
07:23.873 --> 07:24.974
They were fascinated by it.
07:25.054 --> 07:27.575
So the Hessian fly is one element.
07:28.476 --> 07:32.478
They become Jefferson in particular with the sugar maple tree.
07:32.878 --> 07:35.760
Now, it turns out there's an entire movement at this moment.
07:36.584 --> 07:42.186
to try and replace imported cane sugar with the sugar maple tree.
07:42.467 --> 07:43.967
Really?
07:44.327 --> 07:50.910
For a variety of different reasons, not the least of which is a certain anti-slavery element of it.
07:50.970 --> 07:59.354
I mean, Benjamin Rush is one of the founders of a society to promote sugar maple, thinking that we would become less reliant on cane sugar coming from the...
08:00.234 --> 08:06.937
from the West Indies or from British colonies, as well as to encourage domestic production.
08:07.177 --> 08:13.300
So when they're in Vermont, both Madison and Jefferson go on and on and on about these sugar maple trees.
08:13.580 --> 08:17.262
And then let's not forget that among other things,
08:17.902 --> 08:21.547
They're farmers and they're interested in agriculture.
08:21.787 --> 08:27.594
And Jefferson in particular, they visit a famous nursery out on Long Island, Prince's Nursery.
08:28.515 --> 08:32.580
Jefferson buys every single sugar maple that they have to sell.
08:32.600 --> 08:34.262
They get shipped to Monticello.
08:34.823 --> 08:36.945
And you can read this correspondence.
08:37.779 --> 08:39.500
where it's driving him absolutely crazy.
08:39.880 --> 08:45.563
He's trying again and again and again to plant these sugar maple orchards, and he can't understand why it won't take.
08:46.984 --> 09:04.834
So the trip to Vermont, I mean, so there's this moment, you know, I may have a couple of lines in his diary, in his journal about the sugar maple, and then I can use it to sort of unpack it into this whole story of the attempt to sort of move away from imported sugar to domestic production through the sugar maple tree.
09:05.575 --> 09:06.316
That's fascinating.
09:06.336 --> 09:07.117
It's fascinating.
09:07.157 --> 09:12.825
Also, Madison is planting wheat, and so the Hessian fly is a threat to wheat.
09:12.865 --> 09:16.310
He also sees wheat as a way to wean us from a dependence on enslaved labor.
09:16.750 --> 09:17.271
Exactly.
09:17.391 --> 09:22.677
And it's part of that transition from tobacco to wheat that's taking place in Virginia and in the Piedmont.
09:22.717 --> 09:25.260
And then let me say this is not just Jefferson and Madison.
09:25.280 --> 09:33.529
I mean, Washington, their correspondents are filled with concern and anxiety over the advance of the Hessian flag.
09:34.671 --> 09:37.234
Jefferson at one point had somebody send him
09:38.382 --> 09:41.263
insects that he then studies under the microscope.
09:41.863 --> 09:45.125
And he reports on the various parts of the Hessian fly.
09:45.645 --> 09:55.809
So, you know, these are the kinds of topics that, I mean, rightly so, you know, we tend to focus on the political and what they're doing at this moment with respect to that.
09:56.189 --> 10:00.791
But I think we need to try and have complete multidimensional pictures of
10:02.672 --> 10:24.530
And only by doing that do we really see them in all that complexity and the ways in which the political and these other elements of their ongoing intellectual interests that have all kinds of ramifications help us to understand them sort of more fully as complete and fascinating human beings and also as lifelong friends.
10:25.031 --> 10:28.274
So I should say, Bob, that a huge focus of the book
10:29.269 --> 10:30.310
is about their friendship.
10:30.971 --> 10:36.215
A friendship that is legendary.
10:36.315 --> 10:46.925
I mean, it lasted 50 years, probably the most, Gordon Wood has made this point and others have made this point, the most important political collaboration, political friendship in American history.
10:47.746 --> 10:49.547
And this journey together,
10:50.228 --> 10:53.090
They were already friends before 1791, obviously.
10:53.390 --> 11:06.339
But even Madison will write about this trip 30 years later in a letter and say that it made them both immediate companions.
11:06.359 --> 11:07.639
It's amazing.
11:08.020 --> 11:18.246
It's a trip that I think is critical to understanding their relationship and their lifelong friendship because they both come back to it again at the end of their lives.
11:18.647 --> 11:19.047
Right, right.
11:19.600 --> 11:31.747
We're talking with Lou Major, Louis P. Major, Board of Governors, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, and actually an author of a forthcoming book on Jefferson and Madison.
11:31.848 --> 11:37.251
In your preface, you have this wonderful quote from John Quincy Adams, which I will read if you don't have it handy.
11:37.851 --> 11:41.914
It's given on the 50th anniversary of Washington's inauguration.
11:42.494 --> 11:44.195
And John Quincy Adams said,
11:44.574 --> 12:04.311
The mutual influence of these two mighty minds upon each other is a phenomenon like the invisible and mysterious movements of the magnet in the physical world and in which the sagacity of the future historian may discover the solution of much of our national history, not otherwise easily accountable.
12:05.692 --> 12:06.513
That's a phenomenon.
12:07.548 --> 12:08.189
It's amazing.
12:08.389 --> 12:22.539
And as I say in the preface, my book does not seek to solve the problems of national history, but it does provide a window onto this friendship and a window onto what interested them and onto these times.
12:23.680 --> 12:33.788
You mentioned earlier, and I just want to come back to it, Native Americans and Jefferson's fascination with vocabulary, with language.
12:33.828 --> 12:34.929
So as part of the trip,
12:35.748 --> 12:43.229
They end up on Long Island and he understands that there's a reservation of Unka Chung Indians on Long Island.
12:43.990 --> 12:49.191
And he stops by and he pulls out an envelope from his pocket.
12:49.231 --> 12:50.711
This is a letter that someone had written him.
12:51.551 --> 12:54.392
And he was always interested in Indian vocabulary.
12:54.412 --> 12:58.892
This is one of the many amazing Jefferson projects.
12:59.913 --> 13:01.993
And he writes down on this envelope,
13:03.055 --> 13:07.236
a series of words, and he's an anthropologist.
13:07.256 --> 13:30.401
I mean, he's doing his own work, and he literally writes down the Unkachag native words for those, and he devoted, this is the only list that he personally compiled, but then down through Lewis and Clark expedition, he's collecting and gathering Indian vocabularies
13:31.261 --> 13:45.927
under the belief that he wants to somehow find the key to the origins of Native American life and where did it begin under this philosophy that the longer time passes, the more diversity of language you have.
13:46.827 --> 13:51.049
It's an amazing story in of itself that hasn't been told enough.
13:51.789 --> 13:52.790
He's heartbroken.
13:53.652 --> 14:04.618
Because at one point when he leaves the presidency and sends his trunks to Monticello, one of the trunks with Indian vocabularies is lost or stolen.
14:05.379 --> 14:11.282
Some have survived, including that original envelope, which is in the American Philanthropical Society holdings.
14:12.242 --> 14:17.625
And I would encourage listeners to go online and take a look at it because it's really amazing.
14:18.806 --> 14:31.392
Again, it's one of those moments on the trip that then allows me to write at length about this whole idea of vocabulary and collecting Indian vocabularies and what can we learn by comparing these languages.
14:31.412 --> 14:33.032
It's amazing.
14:33.513 --> 14:38.034
It's amazing the variety of interests that they have aside from politics.
14:38.155 --> 14:41.396
And we'll get back to politics possibly at some point.
14:42.490 --> 14:46.533
But also they encounter a free Black farmer on their trip.
14:46.853 --> 14:47.794
Yes, yes.
14:48.675 --> 15:03.124
In the same way that Jefferson's interaction with the Unkachug allows for a chapter on Jefferson and Native Americans, Madison's entry on this free Black farmer is absolutely, absolutely fascinating.
15:04.440 --> 15:06.622
I actually have it here.
15:07.203 --> 15:12.067
So let me just read it to do justice to it.
15:13.888 --> 15:21.275
He says, at Fort George are a few families concerned in the litter trade and ferrets through the lake.
15:21.375 --> 15:27.421
On the east side, no house is seen except one owned and inhabited by a free Negro.
15:28.061 --> 15:38.069
He possesses a good farm of about 150 acres, which he cultivates with six white hirelings, for which he is said to have paid two and a half dollars per acre.
15:38.550 --> 15:42.232
And by his industry and good management, turns to good accounts.
15:42.293 --> 15:47.757
He is intelligent, reads, writes, understands accounts, is dexterous in his affairs.
15:48.257 --> 15:51.200
During the late war, he was employed in the commissary department.
15:51.580 --> 15:52.501
He has no wife,
15:53.396 --> 15:57.219
And it said it's disinclined to marriage, nor any women on his farm.
15:57.559 --> 15:59.480
It goes on for a few more lines.
15:59.781 --> 16:04.424
It's the longest entry we have from Madison in his journal.
16:04.784 --> 16:11.369
Never names this person, who we know is someone by the name of Prince Taylor.
16:12.710 --> 16:18.594
Fascinating figure who was from Worcester County, Massachusetts.
16:19.334 --> 16:20.816
His father had been a slave.
16:22.026 --> 16:28.791
We know that Taylor served on the brig diligent in 1779 before being discharged in 1781.
16:29.652 --> 16:32.394
He accepted a bounty to enlist in the Continental Army.
16:33.114 --> 16:46.084
And we have enough details about his life to both tell the story of Prince Taylor and also, though, to use the ways in which Madison wrote about this free black farmer to contemplate
16:46.784 --> 16:54.726
The big issue, and this is the issue that has gotten attention, of course, Madison and Jefferson on issues of race and slavery.
16:55.227 --> 16:57.527
So it's a pretty fascinating moment.
16:58.828 --> 16:59.568
Yeah, it really is.
16:59.628 --> 17:03.589
And here's Prince Taylor has these six white hirelings on his farm.
17:04.009 --> 17:04.529
Exactly.
17:04.590 --> 17:04.950
Yeah.
17:05.490 --> 17:05.670
Yeah.
17:09.904 --> 17:11.166
His success is remarkable.
17:11.186 --> 17:15.631
I mean, and you know that Madison doesn't use his name despite writing so much about him.
17:15.671 --> 17:25.982
And of course, Madison and Jefferson's complicated, complicated relationship, race and slavery, where, you know, intellectually they knew it was wrong.
17:26.042 --> 17:27.945
It was an evil, it was a blood on society.
17:28.665 --> 17:33.429
Each had different kinds of racial prejudices that in different ways they could never overcome.
17:34.430 --> 17:43.197
Neither, of course, freed their slaves, except Jefferson freed the slaves, those enslaved persons we fathered with Sally Hemings.
17:44.679 --> 17:44.799
It's...
17:47.011 --> 17:48.011
An important story.
17:48.251 --> 18:00.696
And I think Madison's encounter with Prince Taylor adds a dimension to it that isn't usually included when we're talking about Madison and Jefferson on the questions of race and slavery.
18:00.976 --> 18:03.457
And then add to that that we know James Hemings is there.
18:03.677 --> 18:06.158
So what did James Hemings think about this?
18:06.699 --> 18:10.420
And possibly Madison had a servant with him as well.
18:11.431 --> 18:22.775
Yeah, it does remind us too that there's this personal element that they are actually there seeing this person and seeing these native people, that it's not an abstract question.
18:23.235 --> 18:23.655
That's right.
18:23.675 --> 18:29.297
Here you have a real person they're talking to and hearing the story or knowing the story.
18:29.337 --> 18:33.378
And then it's important enough that Madison makes the longest entry in his journal about
18:34.113 --> 18:34.613
This guy.
18:34.974 --> 18:35.234
Yeah.
18:35.614 --> 18:38.516
That's a great point, Bob, because, yeah, this isn't book learning, right?
18:38.556 --> 18:44.301
This isn't reading Buffon and trying to sort of counteract Buffon's theories of degeneracy in the new world.
18:44.361 --> 18:56.690
This is experiential and how experience forces them to think through things and confront things that perhaps they wouldn't just confront by thinking abstractly about it.
18:56.730 --> 18:57.531
Yeah, I like that point.
18:58.789 --> 18:59.970
And they're going through this area.
18:59.990 --> 19:07.816
I mean, they're both Virginians, and they've been, Jefferson, of course, has been to Europe, and Madison, this is as far as north he goes.
19:08.196 --> 19:17.623
And so what is, and to New England, an area that had not, you know, there's going to be a political difference between New England and Virginia coming.
19:18.103 --> 19:22.066
Vermont at the time is a kind of a Republican bastion.
19:23.067 --> 19:27.770
So I'm just wondering what the experience of these New Englanders is for them.
19:28.433 --> 19:32.276
Okay, so two points, and we can come back to whichever one you like.
19:32.316 --> 19:35.599
But you mentioned the travel part, and I think that that's important.
19:35.619 --> 19:38.581
I actually opened with a section called Travelers.
19:39.982 --> 19:41.143
What does it mean to travel?
19:41.163 --> 19:43.825
What does travel mean for Jefferson compared to Madison?
19:44.365 --> 19:46.107
It turns out that this is the last –
19:46.883 --> 20:05.373
extended journey either one will take for the rest of their lives wow jefferson of course loved to travel right in england he he gambled through gardens with john adams and of course his journeys uh through france uh other gamble g-a-m-b-o-l that's correct gambled right uh the uh
20:10.881 --> 20:15.364
The founding fathers, many of them, of course, traveled, loved to travel.
20:15.424 --> 20:18.746
Franklin crossed the Atlantic more than any of them.
20:21.128 --> 20:23.869
Washington didn't travel much, of course.
20:24.790 --> 20:29.353
In fact, the only time he ever traveled across the seas is when he went to Barbados.
20:30.734 --> 20:35.358
But he is simultaneously at this moment touring the United States.
20:35.898 --> 20:42.484
One of the things he did as president famously was he decided it was important for him to visit all 13 states.
20:42.524 --> 20:44.485
So he did a northern tour and a southern tour.
20:44.986 --> 20:48.729
And his southern tour overlaps with Madison and Jefferson's tour.
20:48.989 --> 20:50.090
The thing about Madison...
20:52.426 --> 20:54.328
Madison was not a good traveler.
20:55.289 --> 20:56.190
He hated to travel.
20:56.230 --> 20:57.231
He never went to Europe.
20:57.391 --> 21:01.896
And this comes back to why are they taking this trip?
21:02.136 --> 21:06.261
You know, I mentioned the Hessian Fly, but there are multiple reasons for it.
21:06.481 --> 21:10.565
And I promise, Bob, I'm going to wind back to your question about- No, this is good.
21:11.266 --> 21:11.506
All right.
21:11.526 --> 21:12.347
I haven't forgotten that.
21:13.686 --> 21:15.367
But why are they taking this trip?
21:15.928 --> 21:18.570
One of the reasons that they say they're taking the trip, right?
21:18.590 --> 21:24.435
This is literally why they say they're taking the trip, maybe what others think about why they're taking the trip, is health.
21:25.860 --> 21:28.422
Jefferson, his whole life suffered from terrible migraines.
21:29.423 --> 21:41.716
And for anyone familiar with the politics of 1790-91, his migraines are extreme right now, having to deal with Hamilton and going through everything that they went through.
21:42.477 --> 21:44.620
Madison, his whole life was very sickly.
21:45.401 --> 21:49.146
And the historians don't really know quite what the diagnosis is.
21:49.226 --> 21:51.490
Some have said epilepsy, some have said something else.
21:52.010 --> 21:53.953
He used to go into these kinds of fits.
21:53.993 --> 21:56.457
He always complained of various bilious fevers.
21:57.318 --> 21:59.742
His constitution was fragile and frail.
22:01.368 --> 22:03.810
They both said, let's get away for health.
22:04.510 --> 22:08.974
The idea of just taking a trip, getting away from the day-to-day stresses of their lives.
22:09.434 --> 22:19.382
There's a wonderful line in the letter that Madison writes before the trip where he talks about why it is that they're going on this trip.
22:19.702 --> 22:24.446
And he talks about health, curiosity, and well-being, right?
22:24.506 --> 22:25.547
Being in these objects.
22:25.647 --> 22:28.949
Curiosity being one of the key factors.
22:28.969 --> 22:29.770
Yeah.
22:29.930 --> 22:51.417
okay i'll take a breath let me just say we're talking to lou major the board of governors distinguished professor of american studies and history at rutgers university about his forthcoming book on jefferson madison and their travels through upstate new york and new england and right now we're talking about why they took the trip and so
22:52.970 --> 22:53.170
Yes.
22:53.470 --> 22:56.091
So the exact quote is health recreation.
22:56.131 --> 22:59.672
That was the word and curiosity always being his objects.
23:00.092 --> 23:01.332
I'm never out of my way.
23:01.352 --> 23:07.414
And I'm thinking of calling the book Never Out of My Way, The Northern Journey of Jefferson and Madison.
23:07.834 --> 23:11.935
So what they said about why they were going is they were going for their health.
23:12.496 --> 23:13.876
They were going for recreation.
23:14.376 --> 23:16.657
Jefferson was going to check out the Hessian Fly.
23:17.037 --> 23:20.918
And they were basically going to take a break from the politics of the moment.
23:21.889 --> 23:25.192
The political opposition all said nonsense.
23:25.892 --> 23:35.140
They all saw in this trip an attempt by the two leading Democratic Republicans to build political support in a decidedly Federalist area.
23:35.741 --> 23:41.206
And there's all kinds of letters and nasty comments of...
23:43.260 --> 23:47.404
someone writes a letter to Hamilton telling him what's going on here with these guys.
23:47.485 --> 23:53.010
And when they come through Hartford, there's a meeting where they suspect that there's political motivation.
23:53.030 --> 23:53.751
Yeah.
23:54.152 --> 23:55.193
And obviously, um,
23:57.182 --> 24:01.943
Jefferson and Madison are politicians and there's going to be some political agenda.
24:02.363 --> 24:04.264
But it's not the purpose of the trip, right?
24:04.324 --> 24:05.484
It's not the purpose of the trip.
24:05.904 --> 24:06.965
Did politics come up?
24:07.405 --> 24:08.125
Of course it did.
24:08.965 --> 24:13.646
The hanging out with the governor of Vermont, who's going to be a longtime Jeffersonian.
24:14.547 --> 24:16.707
They tore revolutionary battlefields.
24:16.747 --> 24:21.948
This is another subject that's fascinating that I really would like to know more about.
24:21.968 --> 24:23.769
I mean, this is the moment when...
24:24.758 --> 24:29.668
Those battles are being memorialized and the idea of going to Saratoga and going to Ticonderoga.
24:29.688 --> 24:36.140
I mean, this, especially for these Virginians, I mean, they had heard of these battles and they knew the importance of them.
24:37.123 --> 24:39.645
So they actually take time to tour these battlefields.
24:40.245 --> 24:44.008
And Jefferson writes in a letter to his son-in-law about that experience.
24:44.408 --> 24:50.452
So there's certainly a subtext political context to them touring around.
24:51.373 --> 24:58.077
But when they have dinner in Albany with Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law,
25:00.064 --> 25:05.811
I'm sure politics came up at dinner, but what we have in Jefferson's journal is they talked about the Hessian fly.
25:06.412 --> 25:08.715
They talked about those kinds of issues.
25:09.416 --> 25:09.936
So, yeah.
25:11.292 --> 25:13.633
New Englanders, you know, your question is, what did they make of them?
25:13.713 --> 25:27.999
I mean, the Federalists were suspicious of them and thought they were there to try and promote this kind of Clintonian Livingston-Barr alliance and spread it further into New York and through Connecticut.
25:29.200 --> 25:39.084
I don't think politics was explicitly at all their agenda, but obviously politics came up again.
25:40.333 --> 25:44.215
Yeah, it's really a reminder of how broad their interests were.
25:44.475 --> 25:49.877
And maybe we live in a hyper-political age today where we think everything revolves around politics.
25:49.937 --> 25:56.000
But here, it's conceivable they did have dinner with Philip Schuyler and talked about lots of things other than his son-in-law.
25:57.620 --> 25:58.401
Yeah, absolutely.
25:58.521 --> 26:01.342
At the same time, and I love this.
26:01.622 --> 26:02.782
I love this so much.
26:03.183 --> 26:05.664
And again, this is 30 years later.
26:06.324 --> 26:08.485
Margaret Baird Smith wrote Madison.
26:09.130 --> 26:12.571
to ask him about this trip that they took together.
26:12.691 --> 26:17.673
So again, the trip is not just this minor thing that was forgotten.
26:18.493 --> 26:21.995
And 30 years later, Madison tells an anecdote.
26:22.455 --> 26:26.056
And what's so great about this is there's no other way of knowing these kinds of things.
26:26.096 --> 26:27.817
And this is one of the few anecdotes I have.
26:28.607 --> 26:32.392
And he says that they were having dinner.
26:32.452 --> 26:41.603
He writes to her, the new constitution of the United States having just been put into question, forms of government were the uppermost topic everywhere we went.
26:42.083 --> 26:42.564
Yeah.
26:43.677 --> 26:43.757
Yeah.
26:43.777 --> 26:43.897
Yeah.
27:04.057 --> 27:25.243
Because of an eloquent diffusion against the agitations and animosities of a popular choice, and in behalf of birth, as on the whole affording a better chance for a suitable head of government, Mr. Jefferson, with a smile, remarked that he had heard of a university somewhere in which the professor of mathematics was hereditary.
27:26.503 --> 27:32.465
The reply received with acclamation was the coup de grace for the anti-Republican heretic.
27:33.248 --> 27:35.029
It's so delightful, right?
27:35.090 --> 27:42.756
Just having this conversation and Jefferson standing up and offering that.
27:42.876 --> 27:48.080
So again, and this is Madison recounting that 30 years later.
27:48.100 --> 27:48.700
It's amazing.
27:49.121 --> 27:49.641
It's amazing.
27:50.101 --> 27:58.928
And then when Jefferson's granddaughter visits the area, he is fascinated with the changes she perceives in this area 30 years later.
28:00.533 --> 28:02.995
Yeah, that too is amazing.
28:03.135 --> 28:08.120
So she marries Ellen Coolidge at Monticello.
28:08.140 --> 28:12.964
This is early 1826, in fact, Jefferson's last year, or before, prior, maybe 1825.
28:13.044 --> 28:27.417
And her and her husband, who was from Boston, return back, and she writes to her grandfather, Thomas Jefferson, she was beloved to him, that the journey that they took
28:28.274 --> 28:31.039
which was very similar to the journey that he and Madison took.
28:31.239 --> 28:35.247
And Madison writes back saying, yes, that's the same trip that we took.
28:35.627 --> 28:37.010
Now here's the amazing thing.
28:37.992 --> 28:40.917
She writes about the difference between New England and Virginia.
28:41.952 --> 28:44.313
And the basic difference being slavery.
28:44.813 --> 28:44.993
Yeah.
28:45.353 --> 28:55.616
And how much more comfortable she feels being in New England and how much more profitable and successful and vibrant New England is because they do not have slavery.
28:56.437 --> 29:00.198
Jefferson, in his response, makes an allusion to that.
29:00.298 --> 29:07.300
Says basically, yeah, I knew you'd be happier in New England where the fatal stain is
29:08.683 --> 29:09.543
has been removed.
29:09.783 --> 29:12.164
That's the phrase he uses, the fatal pain.
29:12.884 --> 29:20.765
But then he goes on to talk about the trip and he celebrates 30 years of free government and happiness in America.
29:21.686 --> 29:25.386
So it's an important journey.
29:25.446 --> 29:34.008
It's an important journey both for what it tells us about them in the summer of 1791 in the midst of this cauldron
29:34.688 --> 29:56.056
of political explosion i mean my goodness you know everything that's going on with hamilton with the funded debt with the national bank i mean all the big issues jefferson gets involved in this controversy over the dedication to the rights of man thomas payne's book has been uh republished in america by accident
29:57.026 --> 30:03.609
Jefferson forwarded to the publisher with a note saying that he hopes it will do some good against the political heresies of the day.
30:04.389 --> 30:07.291
Well, that note was meant to be private and confidential.
30:07.731 --> 30:12.793
It turns out to be the dedication printed in the book, signed by the Secretary of State.
30:12.813 --> 30:14.494
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:15.234 --> 30:17.638
It's just absolute, absolute chaos.
30:17.658 --> 30:19.441
So no wonder he wanted to get away.
30:19.841 --> 30:21.003
Exactly, exactly.
30:21.584 --> 30:28.173
And I'm reminded that one of the people who blasts Jefferson is Publicola in the Boston newspapers attacking him.
30:28.634 --> 30:30.457
And Publicola is John Quincy Adams.
30:30.777 --> 30:31.257
That's right.
30:31.357 --> 30:37.301
And in fact, Madison is the one who tells Jefferson it's John Quincy Adams because at first they think whether or not it's Adams.
30:37.381 --> 30:46.847
And of course, this is just one of the many times that Jefferson-John Adams relationship fractures because Adams sees it as a heresy on him.
30:46.887 --> 30:54.411
And then Washington gets involved, as he always is, trying to sort of keep his disruptive children getting along.
30:54.932 --> 30:55.432
So it's...
30:57.313 --> 31:05.219
It's quite a moment in American politics, in American history, in the story of kind of post-revolutionary America.
31:05.259 --> 31:07.160
And I'm having a great time writing it.
31:07.941 --> 31:10.162
My hope is it will be published in early 2025.
31:11.854 --> 31:12.174
Very good.
31:12.214 --> 31:17.756
No, it sounds like, and as you've been talking, I've wondered why no one's written this book before, but it was waiting for you.
31:18.856 --> 31:21.157
Well, yeah, that's nice of you to say.
31:21.177 --> 31:25.698
I mean, I sort of have an eye for these kinds of moments and these things.
31:25.958 --> 31:30.460
And I think the answer goes back to your first question, which brings this maybe full circle in some ways.
31:31.740 --> 31:34.101
They didn't leave a lot of documentation and
31:34.901 --> 31:36.202
You know, it's hard.
31:36.222 --> 31:49.010
It's hard to work with limited sources and it requires a certain amount of willingness to sort of to unpack those sources and to take them as far as one possibly can.
31:50.231 --> 31:53.954
But there are some letters and there are some diary entries and there's enough.
31:54.274 --> 32:04.761
There's enough to try and tell this story more completely than the two or three pages at most that it gets in any of the major books about Jefferson and Madison.
32:05.621 --> 32:14.687
And as I said, and to use it, not just to talk about Jefferson and Madison, I use it to talk about four pivotal issues in post-Revolution America, right?
32:14.927 --> 32:21.511
The Hessian fly, the sugar maple tree, race and slavery, and Native American languages.
32:22.312 --> 32:26.835
And to talk about those four issues and to see them all as part and parcel of
32:27.848 --> 32:44.135
of the kind of worldview of these men, I think helps to sort of reset us from just the sort of important but sort of endless focus just on political parties and just on the sort of political debates of the moment, as important, of course, as those are.
32:49.943 --> 32:51.944
Well, thank you so much, Lou, for joining us.
32:52.024 --> 33:09.153
We've been talking to Lou Mazur, who is the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of American Studies and American History at Rutgers University and author of a lot of books, the forthcoming one in early 2025 on Jefferson and Madison's journey.
33:09.233 --> 33:17.477
And I love that line about the world in a grain of sand, having just seen one of our favorite performers doing his
33:18.726 --> 33:36.703
ending his concert with every grain of sand it made me uh brings that memory to me so thank you so much this has been fun thanks thanks for having me this is just great i want to thank our many listeners and our jonathan lane who is our producer the man behind the curtain
33:37.145 --> 33:41.008
Now, in every week, Lou, I thank the folks in different areas who are tuning in.
33:41.489 --> 33:50.576
And if you are in one of these places and you'd like to get some of our Revolution 250 swags, send Jonathan Lane an email, jlane at revolution250.org.
33:51.397 --> 34:01.706
And, you know, initially we thought we'd have, you know, a few of our friends maybe listening now and then, but actually we have really a number of folks we know are tuning in regularly in different parts of the world.
34:02.761 --> 34:26.055
and so folks in manchester new hampshire san juan capistrano california sterling heights and madison heights in michigan natick drake and quincy here in the commonwealth of massachusetts um a couple of places that madison and jefferson might have gone through ballston lake in new york i don't think they made it to cooperstown um but they but
34:26.772 --> 34:31.858
Folks are listening in Queens and the Bronx as well as in Neptune City, New Jersey.
34:32.499 --> 34:36.644
And I want to thank all of you for joining us and folks in places between and beyond.
34:36.765 --> 34:39.368
And now we will be piped out on the road to Boston.