Revolution 250 Podcast
Revolution 250 Podcast
The Memory of '76 with Michael Hattem
For the last 250 years Americans remain conflicted over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution—including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. All of the social and political movements of the last two centuries have been shaped by the work of the founders and they in turn shape the way the next generations view the founding of the nation. We talk with Michael Hattem, author of The Memory of '76 on how we remember the American Revolution.
WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution
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two fifty podcast.
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I'm Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev two fifty advisory group.
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We are a consortium of
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seventy five or so
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organizations in
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Massachusetts looking at
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ways to commemorate the
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beginnings of American independence.
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And I also teach at Suffolk
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University and our
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Guest today is Michael Haddam.
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Michael Haddam is the
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director of the Yale New
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Haven Teachers Institute,
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and he is the author of two
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really good books about
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remembering the past.
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His first was Past and
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Prologue about politics and
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memory in the American Revolution.
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And his new book is The
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Memory of Seventy-Six,
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The Revolution in American History.
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So thanks for joining us, Michael.
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Thanks for having me, Bob.
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It seems like we know what
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happened in the revolution
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and we've always thought
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about the revolution in the same way.
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And often we think, boy,
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if we can only get back to
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that spirit of unity then.
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But your book shows that
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we've been arguing about
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the revolution really since it happened.
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Yeah, I mean, I mean, indeed, you know,
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as most historians of the
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of the revolution in the
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early national period know,
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the founders themselves
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really didn't agree on.
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what the revolution meant or
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what its quote unquote
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first principles were.
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And so this book really
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explores the sort of long
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history of how Americans
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have defined and redefined
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and fought over the
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meanings and the legacies
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of the revolution.
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And in doing that, I'm trying to
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uncover something about this
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unique role that the
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revolution has and has had
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since the very early
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nineteenth century in our
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political culture and just
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in American life generally
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as a sort of national origin.
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Right.
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It just occurred to me that
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in his inaugural address,
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Thomas Jefferson, well,
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he talked about the
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revolution of eighteen hundred,
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meaning a return to the
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principles of seventeen seventy six.
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And he wrote to John
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Dickinson and Samuel Adams.
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And he's you know, we're all Republicans,
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we're all federalists.
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But he gets to this position
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by defeating John Adams,
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who was his partner in
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creating the declaration.
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Yeah.
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I mean,
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that's the very eighteenth century notion,
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right,
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of revolution is the idea not of
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creating something new,
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but of returning to something.
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And that's really a key part
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of the memory of the revolution, because,
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you know, in the eighteenth century,
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a lot of people thought
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that history worked
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cyclically rather than in a
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linear fashion.
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And that meant that, you know,
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empires sort of rose and fell and
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you know,
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and as a sort of inevitable cycle
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over time.
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And one of the ways that
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people in the eighteenth
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century thought you could
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forestall your inevitable
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decline as a society was to
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return to what they called
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first principles.
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Right.
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And so much of the fights
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that we have had over the
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meaning and the legacy of
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the American Revolution for
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nearly two hundred fifty years
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you know,
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in large part has been about
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choosing and defining and
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justifying which first principles,
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you know, come from the revolution.
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And this desire to return to them,
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you know,
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is a sort of expression of a
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sense that we have as
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Americans that there is
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some kind of sense of
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protection in going back to the past,
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right?
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Yeah.
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And for someone like Jefferson,
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he has certain first principles in mind,
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which he thought we had
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strayed from in the
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Washington and Adams administrations.
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But they clearly didn't
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think they had strayed from
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the principles that they
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had also helped to create.
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Yeah.
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And many of the founders themselves,
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the ones who lived well
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into the nineteenth century,
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in their later years,
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had a very sort of doom and
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gloom take on the
00:04:06.013 --> 00:04:09.455
revolution and just where
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the nation was going.
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Yeah.
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It's always reassuring to see that,
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that we're not unique.
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Your book begins on a much
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more kind of cheerful
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summer note with the story
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of Eliza Wadsworth.
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Yeah,
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Eliza Wadsworth was this young woman.
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She was twenty years old in
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eighteen hundred and she
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lived in Maine with her family.
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And her father was Peleg Wadsworth,
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who had been a Continental
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Army officer and at the
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time was serving in Congress.
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And this is right around
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when George Washington dies
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at the end of seventeen ninety nine.
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And I found these letters in the Maine
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And she asks him if he can
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maybe get her some memento
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of George Washington.
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She's still moved by the
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death of Washington.
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And she asks, maybe you could get
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you know,
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a scrap of paper with a signature
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on it or something.
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Then she kind of,
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she kind of goes a little further and she,
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she, you know, she, she asks, did he,
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did he have hair basically, you know, and,
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uh,
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she sends this letter to her father
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and her father was so moved
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by it as obviously as a
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continental army officer, he has a,
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he had a Washington too.
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And so he,
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he sends her letter to Martha
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Washington and, uh,
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A few weeks later,
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he gets a letter back from Tobias Lear,
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who was Washington's personal secretary.
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And in it,
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Martha Washington enclosed a
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lock of George Washington's hair.
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You know,
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we know that that's a common
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practice in those days for, you know,
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for famous individuals that
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they would clip, you know,
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locks of hair to be given
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away to family members or, you know,
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sort of blueberries and
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For Martha Washington,
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she was so moved by this
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letter from this young girl that she,
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you know, sent her lots of hair.
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And then, unfortunately,
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Eliza Wadsworth died in
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eighteen oh two from tuberculosis.
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And she left the she left a
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lot of hair in the care of
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her sister and then who
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then left it in the care of her son,
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
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Right.
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who eventually donated the
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letters and the lock of
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hair in a locket to the
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main historical site where
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it's still there today.
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It's amazing.
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And did you find many other
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mementos of the revolution
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that people are keeping as
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a way of holding on to that legacy?
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Yeah, I mean,
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I didn't go more deeply into
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that kind of thing like that.
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the Declaration of the
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Constitution as part of that,
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which I talk about, you know,
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the care and the keeping documents later.
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But there is some work on
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people in the early
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nineteenth century treating
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not even objects from the period,
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but just, you know,
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there is a sort of
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beginnings of a kind of
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material culture in the
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early nineteenth century
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And, you know,
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Washington's death plays a role in that.
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All of a sudden, he's on all kinds of,
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you know, all kinds of things from,
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you know, tankards to textiles to,
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you know, anything you can imagine.
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And people would buy those
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and they would treat them
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as these sort of, you know,
00:07:43.994 --> 00:07:44.834
sacred relics.
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That's what the scholarship was.
00:07:47.615 --> 00:07:48.536
And the same thing I talk in
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the book about how that
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grew even more in the
00:07:52.579 --> 00:07:54.321
eighteen twenties with Lafayette's visit.
00:07:55.790 --> 00:07:56.752
is a sort of marketing
00:07:56.812 --> 00:07:57.872
explosion around him.
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And there's a great
00:07:58.454 --> 00:07:59.495
collection at Lafayette
00:07:59.535 --> 00:08:01.697
College of all these kinds
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of items that were being
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sold in those years with his face on it.
00:08:06.262 --> 00:08:06.562
Right.
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And we'll just talk for a
00:08:08.863 --> 00:08:10.386
minute about because you have
00:08:11.007 --> 00:08:12.327
We have in Washington at the
00:08:12.387 --> 00:08:13.247
National Archives,
00:08:13.367 --> 00:08:16.048
the shrine with the charters of freedom.
00:08:16.228 --> 00:08:18.250
And so we look at this and
00:08:18.269 --> 00:08:18.970
we think this has been
00:08:18.990 --> 00:08:20.471
there since time immemorial,
00:08:20.610 --> 00:08:22.250
but your book tells us it's
00:08:22.331 --> 00:08:24.132
actually a relatively new
00:08:24.172 --> 00:08:25.653
thing in the history of the
00:08:25.673 --> 00:08:28.134
history of the revolution.
00:08:28.153 --> 00:08:28.233
Yeah.
00:08:28.254 --> 00:08:28.394
I mean,
00:08:28.413 --> 00:08:30.415
it's kind of surprising to think
00:08:30.435 --> 00:08:30.814
about it,
00:08:31.615 --> 00:08:32.155
you know,
00:08:32.176 --> 00:08:33.878
the actual parchments of the
00:08:33.918 --> 00:08:36.460
declaration and the constitution, um,
00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:37.721
let's say we're not
00:08:37.841 --> 00:08:39.422
especially well cared for
00:08:39.522 --> 00:08:40.962
throughout the nineteenth century.
00:08:41.023 --> 00:08:41.302
Right.
00:08:41.764 --> 00:08:45.025
And, um, uh, it starts to come to light.
00:08:45.086 --> 00:08:45.426
In fact,
00:08:45.527 --> 00:08:46.788
for most of the nineteenth century,
00:08:47.827 --> 00:08:50.210
the declaration is kept in the,
00:08:50.429 --> 00:08:51.910
in a drawer in the U S patent office.
00:08:51.931 --> 00:08:52.111
Yeah.
00:08:53.452 --> 00:08:53.692
And, uh,
00:08:54.865 --> 00:08:56.086
People start to become aware
00:08:56.105 --> 00:08:56.765
of this during the
00:08:56.826 --> 00:08:57.745
centennial of eighteen
00:08:57.785 --> 00:08:59.907
seventy six when the
00:08:59.947 --> 00:09:01.048
documents were brought to
00:09:01.067 --> 00:09:03.489
Philadelphia to be put on
00:09:03.528 --> 00:09:04.928
display for the centennial
00:09:05.109 --> 00:09:05.970
exhibition there.
00:09:06.570 --> 00:09:07.389
And, you know,
00:09:07.429 --> 00:09:08.130
people are seeing the
00:09:08.171 --> 00:09:09.051
declaration and it's
00:09:09.110 --> 00:09:11.491
already very faded right now.
00:09:11.552 --> 00:09:13.913
It's not not that, you know,
00:09:13.952 --> 00:09:15.033
it hasn't gotten that much
00:09:15.073 --> 00:09:16.553
worse because the preservation efforts.
00:09:16.754 --> 00:09:19.095
So people were people had a
00:09:19.134 --> 00:09:20.615
real emotional reaction to
00:09:21.220 --> 00:09:22.181
traveling a long way to
00:09:22.201 --> 00:09:23.000
Philadelphia to see the
00:09:23.022 --> 00:09:24.062
decoration and they can't
00:09:24.142 --> 00:09:25.443
even barely read the name.
00:09:26.644 --> 00:09:27.605
So it sparked a little
00:09:27.664 --> 00:09:30.707
public outcry and the
00:09:30.748 --> 00:09:34.171
Congress apportioned money
00:09:34.350 --> 00:09:35.611
for preservation efforts
00:09:35.652 --> 00:09:36.432
for the documents.
00:09:36.513 --> 00:09:38.094
But even then,
00:09:38.453 --> 00:09:41.657
it took a few decades for
00:09:41.677 --> 00:09:43.839
those efforts to really begin.
00:09:44.379 --> 00:09:45.379
And there's some argument
00:09:45.399 --> 00:09:46.301
about that some of the
00:09:46.400 --> 00:09:47.802
earliest efforts in the
00:09:47.822 --> 00:09:48.822
late nineteenth century to
00:09:48.863 --> 00:09:49.764
preserve the document
00:09:50.153 --> 00:09:51.934
might have done more harm than good.
00:09:52.595 --> 00:09:53.596
And then, of course,
00:09:54.375 --> 00:09:56.996
they get transferred to the
00:09:57.317 --> 00:09:58.918
Library of Congress in the
00:09:58.977 --> 00:10:00.139
early twentieth century.
00:10:01.038 --> 00:10:03.660
And Herbert Putnam was the
00:10:03.701 --> 00:10:04.740
Librarian of Congress,
00:10:04.760 --> 00:10:05.961
and he was very protective
00:10:06.001 --> 00:10:06.861
of the fact that these
00:10:06.902 --> 00:10:08.462
documents were at the library.
00:10:09.063 --> 00:10:11.945
And during the Roosevelt presidency,
00:10:11.985 --> 00:10:13.725
when the National Archives was completed,
00:10:14.605 --> 00:10:15.907
Roosevelt and a lot of
00:10:15.986 --> 00:10:16.846
other people thought that
00:10:16.886 --> 00:10:18.288
these documents belonged at
00:10:18.307 --> 00:10:19.369
the National Archives.
00:10:22.008 --> 00:10:23.308
And there was a lot of
00:10:23.369 --> 00:10:25.090
political squabbling that
00:10:25.129 --> 00:10:27.049
had to go on to eventually
00:10:27.090 --> 00:10:28.211
get those documents to move.
00:10:28.250 --> 00:10:31.231
In fact, Roosevelt said,
00:10:31.451 --> 00:10:32.471
we basically have to wait
00:10:32.511 --> 00:10:34.932
for Putnam to die or leave
00:10:34.952 --> 00:10:36.994
the position to be able to
00:10:37.033 --> 00:10:38.894
move these documents, which they did.
00:10:39.154 --> 00:10:43.255
And there was a big
00:10:43.296 --> 00:10:44.417
procession of moving these
00:10:44.456 --> 00:10:45.576
documents in the very early
00:10:45.616 --> 00:10:47.097
fifties to the National
00:10:47.158 --> 00:10:50.239
Archives where they sit today.
00:10:51.177 --> 00:10:51.557
Yeah, yeah,
00:10:51.577 --> 00:10:53.038
it's really an extraordinary story.
00:10:53.058 --> 00:10:54.900
And we're talking with Michael Haddam,
00:10:54.941 --> 00:10:56.221
who is the author of The
00:10:56.261 --> 00:10:57.722
Memory of Seventy- The
00:10:57.783 --> 00:10:59.484
Revolution in American History.
00:11:00.024 --> 00:11:01.706
And you make the point in
00:11:01.725 --> 00:11:03.226
the book about how this is
00:11:03.267 --> 00:11:04.748
all part of the Cold War
00:11:04.807 --> 00:11:05.788
and thinking about what the
00:11:05.808 --> 00:11:06.369
importance of the
00:11:06.408 --> 00:11:08.169
revolution is for Americans
00:11:08.210 --> 00:11:11.013
as opposed to the Soviets
00:11:11.052 --> 00:11:12.894
and communism that were in this struggle.
00:11:13.014 --> 00:11:14.115
And these documents are
00:11:14.134 --> 00:11:15.436
really critical to how the
00:11:15.475 --> 00:11:16.716
Americans will think about
00:11:16.897 --> 00:11:18.298
themselves and their own history.
00:11:19.335 --> 00:11:20.515
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:20.556 --> 00:11:21.535
The importance of the Cold
00:11:21.556 --> 00:11:22.775
War is sort of one of the
00:11:22.796 --> 00:11:24.116
more surprising aspects of
00:11:24.517 --> 00:11:25.116
writing the book.
00:11:25.136 --> 00:11:26.677
But it's in nineteen fifty
00:11:26.716 --> 00:11:28.217
two when those documents
00:11:28.317 --> 00:11:29.498
are moved from the Library
00:11:29.518 --> 00:11:30.479
of Congress through what
00:11:30.558 --> 00:11:31.958
was basically a military
00:11:32.019 --> 00:11:34.419
procession from the Library
00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:35.960
of Congress to the National Archives.
00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:39.600
And it is occurring in this this early,
00:11:39.721 --> 00:11:41.621
very early Cold War context
00:11:41.701 --> 00:11:43.601
of the nineteen fifties.
00:11:44.283 --> 00:11:44.423
And
00:11:45.734 --> 00:11:45.933
You know,
00:11:45.974 --> 00:11:47.534
what happens in the very late
00:11:47.575 --> 00:11:48.554
forties and the nineteen
00:11:48.575 --> 00:11:51.355
fifties is there because of the Cold War,
00:11:51.456 --> 00:11:54.017
there is a real sense of
00:11:55.597 --> 00:11:56.798
political and cultural
00:11:56.918 --> 00:11:58.818
urgency to define
00:11:59.538 --> 00:12:00.980
Americanism or the United
00:12:01.039 --> 00:12:03.279
States in opposition to
00:12:03.561 --> 00:12:06.341
this new geopolitical enemy,
00:12:06.381 --> 00:12:07.302
the Soviet Union.
00:12:07.381 --> 00:12:12.823
And so a few ideas that had emerged
00:12:13.889 --> 00:12:15.750
In the nineteen tens, nineteen twenties,
00:12:15.890 --> 00:12:17.611
in response to the
00:12:17.672 --> 00:12:18.732
progressive movement and
00:12:18.753 --> 00:12:21.815
the Bolshevik Revolution, you know,
00:12:21.934 --> 00:12:23.696
this is when the ideas of
00:12:24.517 --> 00:12:25.798
individualism really,
00:12:25.937 --> 00:12:27.578
really starts to become more prominent.
00:12:28.340 --> 00:12:29.059
The idea that the
00:12:29.100 --> 00:12:33.303
Constitution is about limited government,
00:12:33.323 --> 00:12:34.745
this idea that the Constitution,
00:12:34.904 --> 00:12:35.825
the first principle of the
00:12:35.846 --> 00:12:37.326
Constitution is about limited government.
00:12:37.346 --> 00:12:38.648
That also arises in the
00:12:38.687 --> 00:12:40.129
nineteen tens and nineteen twenties.
00:12:40.668 --> 00:12:43.171
It's really not until the Cold War period
00:12:44.379 --> 00:12:45.620
that these principles sort
00:12:45.660 --> 00:12:48.120
of come together and the
00:12:48.201 --> 00:12:50.341
liberty that the Declaration,
00:12:50.422 --> 00:12:51.341
the liberty that Jefferson
00:12:51.361 --> 00:12:52.481
talks about in the Declaration,
00:12:53.482 --> 00:12:54.582
starts to become talked
00:12:54.602 --> 00:12:56.302
about as individual liberty.
00:12:57.063 --> 00:12:57.923
I wouldn't say liberty of
00:12:57.943 --> 00:12:59.443
the society as a whole.
00:13:00.485 --> 00:13:01.784
It's this more libertarian
00:13:01.884 --> 00:13:03.184
reading of the Declaration.
00:13:03.764 --> 00:13:05.466
And what's interesting about
00:13:05.505 --> 00:13:06.666
that is that for most of
00:13:06.686 --> 00:13:08.307
the nineteenth century and
00:13:08.326 --> 00:13:09.586
the first half of the twentieth century,
00:13:10.509 --> 00:13:10.749
you know,
00:13:10.769 --> 00:13:12.210
the Declaration was a document
00:13:12.269 --> 00:13:14.071
for liberals and liberal social,
00:13:14.350 --> 00:13:15.691
what we would think of as liberals.
00:13:17.631 --> 00:13:19.273
And the Constitution, you know,
00:13:19.332 --> 00:13:20.634
had been a document, you know,
00:13:20.894 --> 00:13:22.434
that had been more favored
00:13:22.475 --> 00:13:26.376
by slave owners before the
00:13:26.417 --> 00:13:30.759
Revolution and the new
00:13:31.178 --> 00:13:32.860
elite and status quo during the
00:13:33.916 --> 00:13:34.976
during the Gilded Age.
00:13:35.197 --> 00:13:37.759
And those two documents is
00:13:37.798 --> 00:13:39.561
about the context of the
00:13:39.581 --> 00:13:40.942
Declaration of the Constitution,
00:13:41.162 --> 00:13:42.322
which is the defining
00:13:42.403 --> 00:13:44.304
document of the revolution.
00:13:44.865 --> 00:13:45.846
But it's really in the early
00:13:45.865 --> 00:13:48.788
nineteen fifties that conservatives,
00:13:48.847 --> 00:13:50.089
especially anti-communists,
00:13:50.149 --> 00:13:51.811
come up with a way to
00:13:52.291 --> 00:13:53.471
reconcile those two
00:13:53.511 --> 00:13:55.533
documents almost for the first time,
00:13:55.614 --> 00:13:56.114
I would say.
00:13:56.674 --> 00:13:58.336
And they do it by saying
00:13:58.416 --> 00:13:59.277
that the Declaration
00:13:59.773 --> 00:14:02.754
is about the right of individual liberty,
00:14:02.774 --> 00:14:04.195
the liberty of the individual.
00:14:04.716 --> 00:14:05.936
And the Constitution is
00:14:05.975 --> 00:14:07.476
about limited government
00:14:07.976 --> 00:14:08.717
because you limit
00:14:08.758 --> 00:14:10.578
government to protect the
00:14:10.639 --> 00:14:12.119
liberty of the individual, right?
00:14:12.359 --> 00:14:14.259
And it's such a neat
00:14:15.280 --> 00:14:16.841
reconciliation of those two
00:14:16.902 --> 00:14:21.144
documents and that it spreads widely,
00:14:21.183 --> 00:14:22.264
becomes really predominant.
00:14:22.303 --> 00:14:22.745
And in fact,
00:14:22.845 --> 00:14:24.384
it's it's seventy five years
00:14:24.424 --> 00:14:26.025
later and still many
00:14:26.046 --> 00:14:27.187
Americans think of the
00:14:27.226 --> 00:14:28.628
revolution in that way.
00:14:30.149 --> 00:14:32.571
And yeah,
00:14:33.291 --> 00:14:35.232
it's a real sort of sea change moment,
00:14:35.332 --> 00:14:35.653
I think,
00:14:35.832 --> 00:14:36.774
in the memory of the American
00:14:36.813 --> 00:14:39.034
Revolution to reconcile
00:14:39.075 --> 00:14:42.778
those in such a neat and tidy way.
00:14:43.519 --> 00:14:43.859
It is.
00:14:44.019 --> 00:14:46.059
And you also you make the
00:14:46.100 --> 00:14:47.280
point about how the
00:14:47.441 --> 00:14:48.802
abolitionist movement in
00:14:48.841 --> 00:14:50.163
many ways creates the idea
00:14:50.222 --> 00:14:51.744
of the Declaration as the
00:14:51.844 --> 00:14:53.224
liberty giving document.
00:14:54.205 --> 00:14:56.306
Earlier it had been the, you know,
00:14:56.346 --> 00:14:57.826
the grievances were the
00:14:57.907 --> 00:14:59.427
issue up until about the
00:14:59.447 --> 00:15:00.467
time of the eighteen twenties,
00:15:00.508 --> 00:15:01.308
eighteen thirties.
00:15:02.109 --> 00:15:02.750
Yeah.
00:15:02.809 --> 00:15:04.931
I mean, in the first fifty years, really,
00:15:05.010 --> 00:15:07.912
of the nation, the Declaration
00:15:09.385 --> 00:15:10.746
It wasn't necessarily
00:15:10.807 --> 00:15:12.028
venerated the way that it
00:15:12.068 --> 00:15:13.389
has become venerated.
00:15:14.571 --> 00:15:16.572
It was thought of mostly on July fourth.
00:15:16.613 --> 00:15:17.413
And of course, you know,
00:15:17.453 --> 00:15:18.335
Jefferson would get a lot
00:15:18.375 --> 00:15:20.596
of credit for that to John
00:15:20.716 --> 00:15:23.419
Adams annoyance annoyance.
00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:23.679
Right.
00:15:24.841 --> 00:15:25.721
But the way that people
00:15:25.741 --> 00:15:26.243
thought about the
00:15:26.263 --> 00:15:27.464
declaration was that it
00:15:27.524 --> 00:15:30.326
symbolized independence from Britain.
00:15:30.639 --> 00:15:32.360
symbolize the union of the states.
00:15:32.821 --> 00:15:34.221
And it really wasn't until
00:15:34.341 --> 00:15:35.482
abolitionists in the
00:15:35.562 --> 00:15:36.322
eighteen thirties and
00:15:36.363 --> 00:15:38.144
eighteen forties really
00:15:38.183 --> 00:15:39.565
adopted the Declaration.
00:15:39.745 --> 00:15:41.706
And, you know,
00:15:41.865 --> 00:15:43.547
they mentioned the
00:15:43.586 --> 00:15:45.028
Declaration in abolition
00:15:45.087 --> 00:15:46.489
newspapers and speeches.
00:15:46.908 --> 00:15:47.168
I mean,
00:15:47.408 --> 00:15:50.150
so often and because they're
00:15:50.270 --> 00:15:54.413
they're they're grabbing on
00:15:54.472 --> 00:15:56.073
to the Declaration's idea
00:15:56.114 --> 00:15:57.534
of liberty and equality,
00:15:57.914 --> 00:16:00.076
and they define the Declaration
00:16:00.784 --> 00:16:02.166
by those two principles,
00:16:02.265 --> 00:16:03.407
not independence and union,
00:16:03.607 --> 00:16:05.229
but by liberty and equality.
00:16:05.308 --> 00:16:06.269
And that's really a new
00:16:06.289 --> 00:16:08.231
thing in the late thirties.
00:16:08.871 --> 00:16:12.796
And that essentially creates
00:16:13.235 --> 00:16:15.298
the modern memory of the
00:16:15.418 --> 00:16:16.499
Declaration of Independence.
00:16:16.619 --> 00:16:18.520
And that would later be sort
00:16:18.561 --> 00:16:20.221
of reiterated for a more,
00:16:21.984 --> 00:16:23.965
for a broader audience by
00:16:24.044 --> 00:16:25.066
Abraham Lincoln in the
00:16:25.125 --> 00:16:25.767
Gettysburg Address.
00:16:25.787 --> 00:16:26.147
Right, right.
00:16:28.452 --> 00:16:31.875
And also with the other big Cold War event,
00:16:31.894 --> 00:16:33.455
if we can go back to that for a minute,
00:16:33.475 --> 00:16:34.975
is the publication of the
00:16:35.096 --> 00:16:37.437
Jefferson Papers, the Adams Papers.
00:16:37.496 --> 00:16:39.418
And you make a point of how fraught,
00:16:39.538 --> 00:16:41.198
particularly the Jefferson Papers were,
00:16:41.219 --> 00:16:42.279
because even though he
00:16:42.320 --> 00:16:44.200
meticulously kept everything,
00:16:44.640 --> 00:16:45.600
it was scattered by the
00:16:45.640 --> 00:16:47.581
time the idea comes to publish them.
00:16:48.206 --> 00:16:48.605
Yeah,
00:16:48.625 --> 00:16:51.288
his papers were treated even worse
00:16:51.327 --> 00:16:52.388
than the Declaration and
00:16:52.408 --> 00:16:53.288
the Constitution.
00:16:54.168 --> 00:16:57.451
In the mid-nineteenth century,
00:16:59.371 --> 00:17:00.712
his immediate descendants
00:17:01.692 --> 00:17:02.673
were trying to raise money
00:17:02.714 --> 00:17:04.914
to cover the debts that were left,
00:17:05.515 --> 00:17:08.656
and obviously they sold Monticello.
00:17:08.676 --> 00:17:10.657
The story about that is in
00:17:10.678 --> 00:17:13.940
the book as well, to a local pharmacist.
00:17:14.680 --> 00:17:15.760
But they also...
00:17:17.127 --> 00:17:18.648
offered his papers to sell
00:17:18.689 --> 00:17:20.290
his papers to the federal
00:17:20.310 --> 00:17:22.813
government uh and there was
00:17:22.833 --> 00:17:24.094
an agreement made and the
00:17:24.134 --> 00:17:25.094
documents were sent to the
00:17:25.114 --> 00:17:26.494
government and they would
00:17:26.535 --> 00:17:28.136
decide which were public
00:17:28.356 --> 00:17:29.718
and which were private and
00:17:29.738 --> 00:17:30.618
they would keep the public
00:17:30.719 --> 00:17:31.278
and they would send the
00:17:31.318 --> 00:17:33.181
private documents back and
00:17:33.421 --> 00:17:34.741
um that process took
00:17:34.922 --> 00:17:37.223
decades yeah and there was
00:17:37.243 --> 00:17:38.464
a lot of politics that was
00:17:38.525 --> 00:17:39.766
involved with the selection
00:17:39.806 --> 00:17:40.727
of those documents which I
00:17:40.747 --> 00:17:42.307
talk about in the book but
00:17:42.407 --> 00:17:46.191
um you know so basically by the time uh
00:17:46.597 --> 00:17:47.398
By the time that you get
00:17:47.419 --> 00:17:49.161
around to the the nineteen
00:17:49.201 --> 00:17:50.622
thirties or nineteen forties,
00:17:50.942 --> 00:17:51.903
Jefferson's papers,
00:17:51.942 --> 00:17:54.085
which he had kept neatly organized,
00:17:54.125 --> 00:17:56.567
really obsessively organized,
00:17:57.568 --> 00:17:59.109
scattered all over the place.
00:17:59.310 --> 00:18:01.252
And so, you know,
00:18:01.313 --> 00:18:03.034
as part of this post-World
00:18:03.054 --> 00:18:07.578
War two context and a part of defining,
00:18:08.058 --> 00:18:09.721
you know, the the
00:18:11.181 --> 00:18:11.981
the nation and the
00:18:12.001 --> 00:18:14.763
revolution in opposition to
00:18:14.784 --> 00:18:15.644
the Soviet Union,
00:18:16.345 --> 00:18:17.685
the publication and the
00:18:17.726 --> 00:18:18.686
collection of these
00:18:18.727 --> 00:18:20.167
Jefferson Papers becomes a
00:18:20.248 --> 00:18:21.068
really big deal.
00:18:21.368 --> 00:18:21.628
You know,
00:18:21.648 --> 00:18:22.630
I want to say real quick about
00:18:22.650 --> 00:18:26.492
the Cold War stuff is, you know,
00:18:26.512 --> 00:18:27.993
the Cold War memory of the revolution,
00:18:28.013 --> 00:18:28.875
which is what I call it,
00:18:29.915 --> 00:18:31.116
really is three principles.
00:18:31.156 --> 00:18:32.317
It's individual liberty.
00:18:33.499 --> 00:18:33.878
Of course,
00:18:33.919 --> 00:18:35.319
that contrasts directly with the
00:18:35.339 --> 00:18:37.602
collectivism of Soviet communism.
00:18:38.907 --> 00:18:40.368
limited government,
00:18:40.429 --> 00:18:42.509
which is also contrast
00:18:43.009 --> 00:18:46.351
directly with a centralized bureaucracy.
00:18:47.030 --> 00:18:47.830
And then, of course,
00:18:48.651 --> 00:18:50.051
free trade or capitalism is
00:18:50.071 --> 00:18:52.853
the third principle, which contrasts,
00:18:52.913 --> 00:18:54.353
of course, with socialism.
00:18:55.333 --> 00:18:56.814
But the Jefferson Papers and
00:18:56.834 --> 00:18:57.733
the other papers of the
00:18:57.753 --> 00:18:58.513
founders that were
00:18:58.634 --> 00:19:00.775
published and the projects
00:19:00.795 --> 00:19:01.855
that were started later in
00:19:01.875 --> 00:19:04.016
the nineteen fifties are
00:19:04.076 --> 00:19:05.356
part of this milieu.
00:19:05.477 --> 00:19:06.317
And the idea is
00:19:07.510 --> 00:19:09.833
We need to redefine America
00:19:10.073 --> 00:19:11.114
in these terms.
00:19:11.734 --> 00:19:13.556
And the way to do that is to
00:19:13.576 --> 00:19:15.617
go back to the papers of
00:19:15.657 --> 00:19:16.959
the founders and to make
00:19:16.999 --> 00:19:19.721
them as widely available
00:19:20.221 --> 00:19:23.644
and in as scholarly a way as possible.
00:19:24.805 --> 00:19:27.707
Lots of historians know, but Julian Boyd,
00:19:27.747 --> 00:19:28.827
who was the editor of the
00:19:28.948 --> 00:19:30.470
Jefferson Papers and was a
00:19:30.630 --> 00:19:34.633
former librarian at Princeton, he really
00:19:35.701 --> 00:19:37.743
created a lot of standards,
00:19:38.545 --> 00:19:40.686
documentary editing and scholarly editing,
00:19:40.906 --> 00:19:42.548
that are still a part of
00:19:42.587 --> 00:19:43.689
the practice today.
00:19:43.749 --> 00:19:44.890
So the Jefferson Field is
00:19:45.069 --> 00:19:47.432
really significant in a lot of ways,
00:19:47.471 --> 00:19:48.553
but not least because of
00:19:48.613 --> 00:19:51.655
its role in this sort of
00:19:51.955 --> 00:19:53.156
cultural cold war.
00:19:53.992 --> 00:19:56.394
Yeah, and it's interesting, too,
00:19:56.433 --> 00:19:57.673
to see that they, you know,
00:19:57.733 --> 00:19:59.335
the Jefferson Papers have
00:19:59.414 --> 00:20:03.656
this connection with, you know, Princeton,
00:20:03.817 --> 00:20:06.017
but you also get support to
00:20:06.057 --> 00:20:09.598
raise money from the Edel-Solsberger,
00:20:10.358 --> 00:20:11.259
the New York Times then is
00:20:11.298 --> 00:20:12.059
a co-sponsor of this,
00:20:12.099 --> 00:20:13.140
and the Adams Papers,
00:20:13.180 --> 00:20:14.961
it's Time Magazine who is
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:15.840
the co-sponsors.
00:20:15.881 --> 00:20:16.320
You have this,
00:20:16.740 --> 00:20:19.602
both universities with the
00:20:19.821 --> 00:20:20.742
strong media component.
00:20:21.630 --> 00:20:22.690
Every time there's a volume
00:20:22.730 --> 00:20:23.570
or something happening with
00:20:23.590 --> 00:20:24.431
the Adams Papers,
00:20:24.451 --> 00:20:25.991
there's a spread in Life Magazine.
00:20:27.653 --> 00:20:29.012
Yeah, I talk about that in the book,
00:20:29.073 --> 00:20:31.413
and it's really fascinating to look at.
00:20:31.993 --> 00:20:32.914
These issues are actually
00:20:32.934 --> 00:20:33.954
available on Google,
00:20:33.974 --> 00:20:36.576
the old Life Magazine issues.
00:20:36.915 --> 00:20:38.196
But yeah,
00:20:38.237 --> 00:20:40.157
that's how big a deal these
00:20:40.198 --> 00:20:41.038
publications were.
00:20:41.278 --> 00:20:42.318
When the Jefferson Papers
00:20:42.358 --> 00:20:43.439
published its first volume,
00:20:43.459 --> 00:20:45.920
there's a spread in Life Magazine.
00:20:46.579 --> 00:20:48.340
And for the Adams Papers,
00:20:48.381 --> 00:20:49.161
not even when the first
00:20:49.201 --> 00:20:50.582
volume was published, but when
00:20:51.128 --> 00:20:52.430
A deal was made between the
00:20:52.549 --> 00:20:53.730
Adams Family Trust,
00:20:53.769 --> 00:20:54.911
who controlled the Adams
00:20:54.931 --> 00:20:56.451
family paper really tightly,
00:20:57.071 --> 00:20:57.832
when they struck a deal
00:20:57.852 --> 00:20:58.732
with the Massachusetts
00:20:58.752 --> 00:21:01.453
Historical Society and with
00:21:01.673 --> 00:21:02.414
Life magazine.
00:21:02.934 --> 00:21:05.415
There was an enormous, like, fifteen-page,
00:21:05.556 --> 00:21:07.136
full-color spread of
00:21:07.656 --> 00:21:09.178
documents and all kinds of
00:21:09.218 --> 00:21:12.599
things in what was, you know, probably,
00:21:12.740 --> 00:21:15.601
like, one of, if not the, you know,
00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:17.082
most widely circulated
00:21:17.162 --> 00:21:18.462
periodicals in the country.
00:21:18.482 --> 00:21:19.083
Not really.
00:21:20.095 --> 00:21:21.915
That's what a big deal the
00:21:21.957 --> 00:21:25.598
publication of those volumes occasioned.
00:21:25.979 --> 00:21:26.960
And of course, you know,
00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:28.721
many of those founders projects,
00:21:28.780 --> 00:21:32.364
the Jefferson papers, the Adams papers,
00:21:34.045 --> 00:21:37.207
the Washington papers, the Madison papers,
00:21:37.547 --> 00:21:38.768
those are continuing.
00:21:39.901 --> 00:21:40.101
Oh, yeah.
00:21:40.121 --> 00:21:40.980
It's seventy five years
00:21:41.020 --> 00:21:42.102
later and they have still
00:21:42.182 --> 00:21:44.301
not finished publishing all
00:21:44.902 --> 00:21:47.041
of these of these edited documents.
00:21:47.061 --> 00:21:48.843
That's what a major project
00:21:48.903 --> 00:21:50.063
these paper projects were.
00:21:50.103 --> 00:21:51.202
And I think a lot of people
00:21:51.262 --> 00:21:53.263
don't think about how
00:21:53.324 --> 00:21:54.203
significant they are
00:21:54.243 --> 00:21:56.243
because there had been lots
00:21:56.284 --> 00:21:58.344
of additions earlier that
00:21:58.384 --> 00:21:59.585
were not very scholarly.
00:22:00.825 --> 00:22:01.845
But the amount of money that
00:22:01.865 --> 00:22:02.744
has been put in the amount
00:22:02.785 --> 00:22:04.385
of time put into these
00:22:04.425 --> 00:22:06.786
volumes of founders papers.
00:22:07.698 --> 00:22:08.920
will never be done again.
00:22:09.279 --> 00:22:10.821
These are the final
00:22:10.961 --> 00:22:12.944
additions of the Founders Papers.
00:22:12.964 --> 00:22:14.205
And there's a real way.
00:22:14.346 --> 00:22:15.047
I worked at the Franklin
00:22:15.067 --> 00:22:16.127
Papers as a grad student.
00:22:16.469 --> 00:22:18.510
And even as
00:22:23.874 --> 00:22:26.096
It's amazing.
00:22:26.115 --> 00:22:26.296
And C.L.
00:22:26.316 --> 00:22:26.996
Sulzberger,
00:22:27.076 --> 00:22:28.836
when he helped sponsor the New
00:22:28.856 --> 00:22:29.657
York Times sponsors,
00:22:29.817 --> 00:22:30.778
the first volume is
00:22:30.818 --> 00:22:32.519
dedicated to his father-in-law,
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:33.279
the Adolf Hoeks,
00:22:33.299 --> 00:22:36.182
the founder of the Times.
00:22:36.301 --> 00:22:37.462
It's an interesting
00:22:37.482 --> 00:22:39.564
collaboration between the
00:22:39.703 --> 00:22:40.545
academic world of
00:22:40.644 --> 00:22:44.467
universities and also the
00:22:45.607 --> 00:22:47.949
corporate sector, the private sector,
00:22:48.348 --> 00:22:51.211
and then also the mass media.
00:22:51.510 --> 00:22:52.471
All three of these
00:22:53.672 --> 00:22:53.971
You know,
00:22:54.732 --> 00:22:56.075
very different sectors of
00:22:56.115 --> 00:22:57.758
American society all felt
00:22:58.798 --> 00:22:59.921
that there was an important,
00:23:01.202 --> 00:23:02.265
that they had a stake in
00:23:02.605 --> 00:23:03.807
these projects and that
00:23:03.826 --> 00:23:05.509
there was a real importance
00:23:05.549 --> 00:23:07.372
to sharing the founders'
00:23:07.432 --> 00:23:09.134
words with the American public.
00:23:09.973 --> 00:23:10.354
It's amazing.
00:23:10.733 --> 00:23:11.034
And of course,
00:23:11.355 --> 00:23:13.194
it's under the Franklin
00:23:13.214 --> 00:23:14.155
Roosevelt administration,
00:23:14.175 --> 00:23:15.916
the Jefferson Memorial gets built,
00:23:15.957 --> 00:23:17.557
which is, again, a shrine to Jefferson,
00:23:17.576 --> 00:23:19.657
the Greek temple with the
00:23:19.718 --> 00:23:21.078
quote they picked from Jefferson,
00:23:21.118 --> 00:23:22.019
as I have sworn upon the
00:23:22.119 --> 00:23:23.240
altar of God eternal
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:24.361
hostility against every
00:23:24.401 --> 00:23:26.381
form of tyranny over the mind of man,
00:23:26.401 --> 00:23:26.622
which is.
00:23:26.642 --> 00:23:28.803
Yeah, there's also, you know,
00:23:28.823 --> 00:23:29.682
one of the other quotes in
00:23:29.722 --> 00:23:31.243
there is about the need
00:23:31.663 --> 00:23:32.844
that government needs to
00:23:32.903 --> 00:23:34.285
change over time.
00:23:34.744 --> 00:23:35.226
That's right.
00:23:35.246 --> 00:23:36.086
Yeah.
00:23:36.105 --> 00:23:37.286
It's a good reminder of the
00:23:37.326 --> 00:23:38.386
fact that Jefferson
00:23:39.713 --> 00:23:42.195
It's easy to think now the way that,
00:23:43.016 --> 00:23:43.596
you know,
00:23:43.636 --> 00:23:45.377
Jefferson is not adored by many
00:23:45.438 --> 00:23:46.759
liberals today, of course.
00:23:46.838 --> 00:23:47.598
And really,
00:23:47.638 --> 00:23:48.579
it's been that way since the
00:23:48.599 --> 00:23:49.319
bicentennial.
00:23:49.660 --> 00:23:50.961
But in the in the the
00:23:51.020 --> 00:23:52.541
nineteen tenths or nineteen twenties,
00:23:52.862 --> 00:23:54.123
Jefferson became the sort
00:23:54.143 --> 00:23:57.505
of avatar for the new Democratic Party,
00:23:58.286 --> 00:23:59.365
not just Southern
00:23:59.665 --> 00:24:01.627
Democratic Party and the
00:24:01.688 --> 00:24:03.189
progressive Democratic Party.
00:24:03.709 --> 00:24:05.049
And and.
00:24:05.470 --> 00:24:06.070
You know,
00:24:06.111 --> 00:24:07.932
this is when Monticello is bought
00:24:07.972 --> 00:24:10.515
by a consortium of
00:24:10.596 --> 00:24:13.378
Democrats to turn it into a house museum,
00:24:14.058 --> 00:24:15.099
basically what we what we
00:24:15.140 --> 00:24:17.803
see today and basically set
00:24:18.483 --> 00:24:20.066
give this new Democratic
00:24:20.105 --> 00:24:23.328
Party legitimacy by
00:24:23.388 --> 00:24:25.050
connecting it back to the founding.
00:24:25.451 --> 00:24:26.553
through Thomas Jefferson.
00:24:26.593 --> 00:24:29.095
And Roosevelt was a huge fan of Jefferson,
00:24:29.134 --> 00:24:29.575
of course.
00:24:30.115 --> 00:24:32.376
And that's why he was one of
00:24:32.396 --> 00:24:33.917
the prime movers behind the
00:24:33.958 --> 00:24:36.259
creation of the Jefferson Memorial.
00:24:36.840 --> 00:24:39.742
And the fact that it was
00:24:39.843 --> 00:24:41.824
being stoked by New Deal
00:24:41.864 --> 00:24:46.208
Democrats is why that
00:24:46.248 --> 00:24:47.388
specific quote is included
00:24:47.489 --> 00:24:48.809
among some others.
00:24:48.910 --> 00:24:50.611
It's a reminder of the context.
00:24:50.904 --> 00:24:51.424
And then, of course,
00:24:51.484 --> 00:24:52.766
over the nineteen sixties
00:24:52.786 --> 00:24:53.526
and nineteen seventies,
00:24:53.566 --> 00:24:54.905
as Jefferson's reputation
00:24:55.326 --> 00:24:56.946
starts to decline amongst
00:24:58.647 --> 00:25:00.367
Democrats and progressives,
00:25:00.428 --> 00:25:01.328
mostly because of the issue
00:25:01.348 --> 00:25:04.230
of race and slavery,
00:25:04.990 --> 00:25:07.750
he becomes readopted by
00:25:08.270 --> 00:25:08.990
Republicans and
00:25:09.030 --> 00:25:10.811
conservatives as a sort of avatar,
00:25:10.892 --> 00:25:12.093
not of the New Deal,
00:25:12.192 --> 00:25:13.192
but of small government.
00:25:13.553 --> 00:25:14.032
Right.
00:25:14.192 --> 00:25:16.094
A reminder of how malleable
00:25:16.153 --> 00:25:18.134
founders can be.
00:25:18.194 --> 00:25:19.115
Yeah.
00:25:19.748 --> 00:25:21.429
I remember there was a thing
00:25:21.449 --> 00:25:22.891
in Esquire magazine back in
00:25:22.911 --> 00:25:24.010
the seventies about how, you know,
00:25:24.030 --> 00:25:25.051
if you're a liberal, how, you know,
00:25:25.071 --> 00:25:26.452
if you're conservative and
00:25:26.492 --> 00:25:28.054
Jefferson is on both lists
00:25:28.255 --> 00:25:30.916
is your affinity is with Thomas Jefferson,
00:25:30.936 --> 00:25:31.916
that he belongs in both.
00:25:31.957 --> 00:25:32.096
Yeah.
00:25:32.136 --> 00:25:33.258
That's the liminal moment
00:25:33.278 --> 00:25:34.298
for his reputation.
00:25:34.318 --> 00:25:34.419
Yeah.
00:25:34.578 --> 00:25:35.460
Yeah.
00:25:35.500 --> 00:25:35.579
Yeah.
00:25:36.856 --> 00:25:39.558
You also, a thing that sometimes we forget,
00:25:39.578 --> 00:25:41.220
we talk about the founders sometime,
00:25:41.259 --> 00:25:42.500
we as historians don't,
00:25:42.520 --> 00:25:44.061
but as this monolithic group.
00:25:44.261 --> 00:25:45.563
And again,
00:25:45.603 --> 00:25:46.943
you remind us that Warren
00:25:46.983 --> 00:25:48.023
Harding coined the term
00:25:48.044 --> 00:25:49.765
founding fathers and that
00:25:50.885 --> 00:25:52.146
they did disagree quite a bit
00:25:52.842 --> 00:25:53.583
Yeah.
00:25:53.603 --> 00:25:53.742
I mean,
00:25:53.782 --> 00:25:55.984
the term founding fathers is interesting.
00:25:56.404 --> 00:25:58.165
The term fathers was used in
00:25:58.185 --> 00:25:59.627
the nineteenth century sometimes.
00:25:59.647 --> 00:26:00.828
I mean, Lincoln used it.
00:26:01.148 --> 00:26:01.548
Yeah.
00:26:01.568 --> 00:26:02.630
Sometimes Jefferson would be
00:26:02.690 --> 00:26:03.810
called the father of
00:26:03.830 --> 00:26:06.452
American independence or, you know,
00:26:07.034 --> 00:26:07.794
Washington would be
00:26:07.834 --> 00:26:09.536
referred to as the father of the nation.
00:26:09.996 --> 00:26:12.718
But it's not until the nineteen tenths,
00:26:12.758 --> 00:26:13.618
nineteen sixteen
00:26:13.659 --> 00:26:14.980
specifically at the
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:15.901
Republican National
00:26:15.941 --> 00:26:18.001
Convention where Warren
00:26:18.403 --> 00:26:19.864
Warren Harding coins the
00:26:19.923 --> 00:26:21.585
term founding fathers.
00:26:21.605 --> 00:26:22.286
And it's become sort of
00:26:23.347 --> 00:26:24.008
you know,
00:26:24.028 --> 00:26:26.328
so ubiquitous in American culture, right?
00:26:27.469 --> 00:26:28.630
In the century since that,
00:26:29.730 --> 00:26:30.451
I think a lot of people
00:26:30.490 --> 00:26:32.151
think that that term is just always,
00:26:32.730 --> 00:26:33.832
but it has a specific
00:26:33.971 --> 00:26:36.051
origin in the nineteen tens,
00:26:36.373 --> 00:26:37.173
partly because.
00:26:38.933 --> 00:26:40.074
Progressives in the very
00:26:40.114 --> 00:26:41.034
early twentieth century
00:26:42.474 --> 00:26:45.415
began a sort of campaign of
00:26:46.016 --> 00:26:47.757
what they thought of as myth busting,
00:26:48.116 --> 00:26:48.936
and they you know,
00:26:48.977 --> 00:26:51.198
there were a lot of true histories of
00:26:52.256 --> 00:26:53.557
of the revolution written in
00:26:53.576 --> 00:26:54.798
the early twentieth century.
00:26:54.998 --> 00:26:55.699
And then, of course,
00:26:55.739 --> 00:26:57.480
there was Charles Beard's famous book,
00:26:57.820 --> 00:26:58.981
An Economic Interpretation
00:26:59.021 --> 00:26:59.821
of the Constitution,
00:26:59.862 --> 00:27:01.403
where he basically says
00:27:01.443 --> 00:27:03.244
that the founders at the
00:27:03.285 --> 00:27:04.586
convention just voted
00:27:04.625 --> 00:27:06.268
according to their economic interests.
00:27:06.788 --> 00:27:08.308
And this sort of burst the
00:27:08.349 --> 00:27:09.951
bubble of the idea that
00:27:10.526 --> 00:27:11.226
the founders at the
00:27:11.266 --> 00:27:13.167
convention were motivated
00:27:13.208 --> 00:27:14.949
by high minded ideals of
00:27:16.128 --> 00:27:17.970
liberty and and republicanism.
00:27:18.009 --> 00:27:19.371
And instead they were just
00:27:19.451 --> 00:27:20.672
based on voting based on
00:27:20.711 --> 00:27:23.093
their their their pocketbooks.
00:27:23.173 --> 00:27:25.275
And so there was a real
00:27:25.934 --> 00:27:27.155
reaction to Beard's book,
00:27:27.195 --> 00:27:28.317
a public reaction.
00:27:28.957 --> 00:27:31.577
It was a and it sparked a
00:27:31.637 --> 00:27:35.161
real a lot of condemnation
00:27:35.221 --> 00:27:37.041
from conservative Republicans,
00:27:37.102 --> 00:27:39.262
especially Harding.
00:27:39.829 --> 00:27:40.950
owned the newspaper,
00:27:41.431 --> 00:27:43.030
The Marion Star in Ohio,
00:27:43.351 --> 00:27:45.271
which actually was one of
00:27:45.352 --> 00:27:48.432
the more vociferous critics
00:27:48.593 --> 00:27:49.893
of Beard and his book.
00:27:50.294 --> 00:27:51.693
And so the term Founding
00:27:51.753 --> 00:27:55.515
Fathers by Harding comes in that context,
00:27:55.535 --> 00:27:56.395
and it's about sort of
00:27:56.715 --> 00:28:00.596
reasserting the importance,
00:28:00.656 --> 00:28:02.018
if not the infallibility,
00:28:02.238 --> 00:28:05.179
of the founding generation,
00:28:05.999 --> 00:28:07.459
especially the most famous
00:28:07.960 --> 00:28:09.019
founders that we think of.
00:28:09.787 --> 00:28:10.807
Interesting.
00:28:10.826 --> 00:28:12.048
We're talking with Michael Haddam,
00:28:12.127 --> 00:28:13.169
author of The Memory of
00:28:13.249 --> 00:28:15.430
Seventy- The Revolution in
00:28:15.490 --> 00:28:16.470
American History.
00:28:17.089 --> 00:28:18.330
And I'm just wondering, you know,
00:28:18.351 --> 00:28:20.092
sometimes we as scholars,
00:28:20.432 --> 00:28:21.372
maybe we don't imagine
00:28:21.392 --> 00:28:22.792
ourselves being simply
00:28:22.853 --> 00:28:23.833
disinterested in just
00:28:23.873 --> 00:28:24.894
focusing on the past.
00:28:24.913 --> 00:28:26.114
I mean, is it possible?
00:28:26.134 --> 00:28:26.253
I mean,
00:28:26.294 --> 00:28:28.474
how much does the kind of popular
00:28:28.535 --> 00:28:29.875
understanding of this bleed
00:28:29.915 --> 00:28:32.076
into the historiography or vice versa,
00:28:32.096 --> 00:28:32.557
do you think?
00:28:32.576 --> 00:28:32.676
Yeah,
00:28:32.696 --> 00:28:35.218
that's a fascinating question and one
00:28:35.499 --> 00:28:38.640
that I
00:28:39.146 --> 00:28:42.289
try to wrestle with in the book, you know,
00:28:42.890 --> 00:28:44.672
the academic historians
00:28:45.491 --> 00:28:46.613
that as a profession only
00:28:46.653 --> 00:28:47.594
sort of emerges in the late
00:28:47.614 --> 00:28:48.335
nineteenth century.
00:28:48.394 --> 00:28:48.615
Right.
00:28:48.934 --> 00:28:50.336
And in the nineteenth century,
00:28:50.355 --> 00:28:51.917
some of the most famous historians,
00:28:51.958 --> 00:28:53.259
if we think of like George Bancroft,
00:28:53.558 --> 00:28:54.940
he's a you know,
00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:56.560
he's a very he comes from a
00:28:56.621 --> 00:28:58.843
very elite New England family.
00:28:59.584 --> 00:28:59.743
You know,
00:28:59.784 --> 00:29:01.265
it's writing from a place of leisure.
00:29:01.325 --> 00:29:04.887
But academic historians who are professors,
00:29:04.948 --> 00:29:05.689
that's a very late
00:29:05.989 --> 00:29:07.130
nineteenth century thing.
00:29:07.671 --> 00:29:07.810
And
00:29:09.296 --> 00:29:11.178
Over the course of the twentieth century,
00:29:11.998 --> 00:29:14.480
there have been a few moments where,
00:29:15.280 --> 00:29:15.601
you know,
00:29:15.760 --> 00:29:18.163
the arguments that historians
00:29:18.242 --> 00:29:20.224
make sort of seep out into
00:29:20.265 --> 00:29:21.246
the popular culture.
00:29:21.806 --> 00:29:25.048
And Beard is probably the
00:29:25.128 --> 00:29:26.869
first of those and probably
00:29:26.890 --> 00:29:28.111
still the most significant.
00:29:28.685 --> 00:29:30.626
You know, but there are others,
00:29:30.686 --> 00:29:32.189
especially if we think about, you know,
00:29:32.229 --> 00:29:33.548
in the in the the nineteen
00:29:33.630 --> 00:29:36.551
sixties and nineteen seventies, you know,
00:29:36.612 --> 00:29:38.692
new scholarship on issues
00:29:38.752 --> 00:29:39.753
of race and gender had a
00:29:39.814 --> 00:29:41.434
real impact on the the
00:29:41.555 --> 00:29:43.355
dialog around the bicentennial.
00:29:43.375 --> 00:29:45.238
If we think a little bit
00:29:45.317 --> 00:29:46.558
earlier in the nineteen
00:29:46.578 --> 00:29:48.140
fifties and the Cold War context,
00:29:48.599 --> 00:29:48.799
you know,
00:29:48.819 --> 00:29:50.161
there were academic historians
00:29:50.221 --> 00:29:54.483
like Daniel Borson, Richard Hofstadter,
00:29:54.624 --> 00:29:56.726
Louis Hartz, who were publishing books
00:29:57.606 --> 00:29:58.686
if not about the revolution,
00:29:58.747 --> 00:30:00.647
but about early American history,
00:30:01.928 --> 00:30:03.228
that were read by huge
00:30:03.288 --> 00:30:06.009
numbers of Americans, bestsellers,
00:30:06.068 --> 00:30:07.409
really.
00:30:07.429 --> 00:30:08.209
Since the seventies,
00:30:08.249 --> 00:30:09.169
that's changed
00:30:09.209 --> 00:30:11.089
significantly as historians
00:30:11.109 --> 00:30:11.670
have become more
00:30:11.750 --> 00:30:16.611
specialized and as their
00:30:16.671 --> 00:30:18.431
topics of focus have changed.
00:30:19.090 --> 00:30:22.352
So it's become much less
00:30:22.392 --> 00:30:24.132
common in recent years, I think,
00:30:28.249 --> 00:30:30.309
cultural impact.
00:30:30.329 --> 00:30:31.191
And we lament that,
00:30:31.530 --> 00:30:34.432
but then we can go in a
00:30:34.492 --> 00:30:35.053
number of different
00:30:35.073 --> 00:30:35.814
directions with that
00:30:35.834 --> 00:30:37.875
particular line of analysis,
00:30:37.914 --> 00:30:38.954
and we resent that until
00:30:38.994 --> 00:30:40.336
your book sells more than mine,
00:30:40.615 --> 00:30:43.238
and then I don't lament the
00:30:43.278 --> 00:30:44.057
fact that mine doesn't.
00:30:44.198 --> 00:30:44.739
Well, anyway,
00:30:44.759 --> 00:30:46.440
but then you mentioned a
00:30:46.500 --> 00:30:48.280
couple of episodes where
00:30:48.300 --> 00:30:50.201
there is a beard is one,
00:30:50.241 --> 00:30:50.821
and then there have been
00:30:50.922 --> 00:30:52.242
other kind of big
00:30:52.303 --> 00:30:53.864
explosions of interest and things.
00:30:53.884 --> 00:30:54.865
David McCullough certainly
00:30:55.025 --> 00:30:57.026
wrote books that sold a lot of copies,
00:30:57.086 --> 00:30:57.165
and
00:30:58.645 --> 00:31:01.247
and other historians have as well.
00:31:01.366 --> 00:31:01.567
You know,
00:31:01.606 --> 00:31:03.028
Joe Ellis is another one who's
00:31:03.048 --> 00:31:05.048
written for a popular audience.
00:31:07.131 --> 00:31:08.612
Well, you know, that's, you know,
00:31:08.771 --> 00:31:09.612
those two authors
00:31:09.692 --> 00:31:11.692
especially are probably
00:31:11.753 --> 00:31:13.434
well known to many of the listeners.
00:31:14.154 --> 00:31:14.375
You know,
00:31:14.434 --> 00:31:19.077
they are part of a sort of
00:31:19.137 --> 00:31:21.960
explosion of writing about the founders,
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:22.920
about the founding,
00:31:23.500 --> 00:31:24.560
particularly the founders
00:31:24.601 --> 00:31:27.222
and biographies of the founders in the
00:31:28.247 --> 00:31:29.208
the mid to late nineteen
00:31:29.248 --> 00:31:30.669
nineties and early two thousands.
00:31:30.729 --> 00:31:30.969
Right.
00:31:31.368 --> 00:31:34.010
Joe Ellis's first book is American Sphinx.
00:31:34.391 --> 00:31:36.432
Well, it's popular because American Sphinx,
00:31:36.452 --> 00:31:37.874
which is nineteen ninety six.
00:31:37.933 --> 00:31:39.775
And it's about Jefferson and
00:31:40.095 --> 00:31:41.695
how unknowable Jefferson was.
00:31:41.776 --> 00:31:43.416
And then, of course,
00:31:43.436 --> 00:31:45.278
David Nicola's book on John Adams,
00:31:45.298 --> 00:31:46.900
which is the most popular of all of them,
00:31:46.920 --> 00:31:49.040
comes out in two thousand and one.
00:31:49.461 --> 00:31:51.962
And these are these are
00:31:51.982 --> 00:31:53.564
books that focused on the
00:31:53.663 --> 00:31:55.224
character of the founders.
00:31:55.583 --> 00:31:57.003
right they're not you know
00:31:57.144 --> 00:31:58.423
deep political histories
00:31:58.503 --> 00:32:00.065
necessarily they're you
00:32:00.085 --> 00:32:01.486
know they're biographical
00:32:01.685 --> 00:32:03.106
and and they're they're
00:32:03.146 --> 00:32:04.106
really trying to get a
00:32:04.166 --> 00:32:06.107
handle on the character of
00:32:06.147 --> 00:32:06.948
these founders that's a
00:32:06.968 --> 00:32:09.288
very slippery term but if
00:32:09.308 --> 00:32:11.009
we think about the context
00:32:11.069 --> 00:32:12.270
in which these books were
00:32:12.310 --> 00:32:13.832
being written and and being
00:32:13.872 --> 00:32:15.471
very popular you know the
00:32:15.511 --> 00:32:16.573
late nineties the the
00:32:16.593 --> 00:32:18.594
clinton scandals I mean you
00:32:18.634 --> 00:32:19.614
couldn't you know you
00:32:19.634 --> 00:32:20.894
couldn't turn on the tv or
00:32:21.290 --> 00:32:22.432
or look at a newspaper in
00:32:22.471 --> 00:32:23.873
the late nineties without a
00:32:23.932 --> 00:32:25.134
headline or hearing about a
00:32:25.173 --> 00:32:25.974
curtain scandal.
00:32:26.015 --> 00:32:26.255
Right.
00:32:26.715 --> 00:32:27.896
And so there was a real sort
00:32:27.916 --> 00:32:31.219
of crisis of confidence in,
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:33.381
in politicians generally,
00:32:33.560 --> 00:32:34.662
but especially at the
00:32:34.701 --> 00:32:36.923
highest level that really
00:32:36.963 --> 00:32:38.005
started with Watergate,
00:32:38.065 --> 00:32:40.946
but just continued into the nineties.
00:32:41.087 --> 00:32:43.169
And so people are looking at
00:32:43.209 --> 00:32:44.691
their current leaders and thinking,
00:32:45.171 --> 00:32:45.351
you know,
00:32:45.371 --> 00:32:46.571
they don't seem to have a lot of
00:32:46.632 --> 00:32:47.212
character.
00:32:47.373 --> 00:32:48.794
Maybe we should go back to the,
00:32:49.154 --> 00:32:49.335
you know,
00:32:49.355 --> 00:32:50.615
the founding generation and see
00:32:50.675 --> 00:32:51.856
what it was about their
00:32:51.916 --> 00:32:54.258
character that made them, you know,
00:32:54.298 --> 00:32:55.358
so unique and so much
00:32:55.419 --> 00:32:57.240
better than politicians today.
00:32:57.619 --> 00:32:58.461
And it's actually a really
00:32:58.500 --> 00:32:59.260
important part of the
00:32:59.301 --> 00:33:00.883
context of the success of
00:33:00.923 --> 00:33:02.604
those books by Ellison.
00:33:02.624 --> 00:33:05.566
And I was just reflecting
00:33:05.586 --> 00:33:06.766
that at the time of Watergate,
00:33:06.786 --> 00:33:07.606
there was kind of a boom of
00:33:07.646 --> 00:33:08.827
interest in Harry Truman
00:33:08.847 --> 00:33:09.607
because he seemed like a
00:33:09.667 --> 00:33:11.749
plain speaking guy.
00:33:12.230 --> 00:33:13.230
When he left office,
00:33:13.269 --> 00:33:15.092
he was really held in very, I mean,
00:33:15.172 --> 00:33:16.231
he was at the lowest
00:33:16.291 --> 00:33:18.713
ratings of any incumbent president.
00:33:20.006 --> 00:33:20.787
rediscovered.
00:33:21.586 --> 00:33:22.827
Are we discovering things in
00:33:22.867 --> 00:33:24.529
the past that we need for the present,
00:33:24.549 --> 00:33:25.049
do you think?
00:33:25.750 --> 00:33:27.092
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
00:33:27.192 --> 00:33:28.733
I mean, that's sort of, you know,
00:33:29.273 --> 00:33:31.715
that's the through line of the book,
00:33:31.756 --> 00:33:32.096
you know,
00:33:33.057 --> 00:33:38.162
as the sort of nation's origin story or
00:33:40.395 --> 00:33:42.776
you know, the purpose of that is, you know,
00:33:42.836 --> 00:33:44.856
of any origin story or origin myth,
00:33:44.876 --> 00:33:46.436
just like ancient societies had,
00:33:46.517 --> 00:33:49.897
is to explain how a society came to be,
00:33:50.178 --> 00:33:51.357
right?
00:33:51.557 --> 00:33:53.897
And to say something about
00:33:53.938 --> 00:33:55.638
the character of the nation
00:33:55.719 --> 00:33:58.159
and its people and its sort of, you know,
00:33:58.278 --> 00:33:59.598
its sort of core principles.
00:33:59.659 --> 00:34:01.119
And so just like, you know,
00:34:01.200 --> 00:34:05.039
Rome had the story of Romulus and Remus,
00:34:05.519 --> 00:34:06.460
which had many different
00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:07.961
versions that people
00:34:08.001 --> 00:34:09.501
subscribed to over many years.
00:34:10.657 --> 00:34:10.918
you know,
00:34:10.998 --> 00:34:13.179
we have the sort of the origin
00:34:13.219 --> 00:34:15.219
myth of the memory of the revolution.
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:17.880
It serves a very similar purpose for us.
00:34:17.981 --> 00:34:20.041
You know, the memory of the revolution,
00:34:20.061 --> 00:34:21.083
the study of the memory of
00:34:21.103 --> 00:34:22.583
the revolution really tells
00:34:22.603 --> 00:34:24.465
you more about the people
00:34:24.485 --> 00:34:25.465
who are remembering the
00:34:25.525 --> 00:34:27.545
revolution than the revolution itself.
00:34:27.686 --> 00:34:27.927
Right.
00:34:28.407 --> 00:34:31.389
And, and, and I think as a nation,
00:34:31.429 --> 00:34:33.250
you know, you need that, you know,
00:34:33.309 --> 00:34:36.811
there needs to be a ground, a grounding,
00:34:37.092 --> 00:34:39.552
you know, and, and, and,
00:34:41.704 --> 00:34:42.644
And because of the unique
00:34:42.684 --> 00:34:43.824
circumstances of the
00:34:43.844 --> 00:34:44.646
revolution and how
00:34:44.706 --> 00:34:46.166
documented it was and everything,
00:34:46.527 --> 00:34:47.867
it's been so malleable
00:34:47.907 --> 00:34:49.228
throughout American history
00:34:49.568 --> 00:34:50.769
that it's been able to be
00:34:50.829 --> 00:34:54.972
adopted by Federalists and
00:34:55.672 --> 00:34:57.813
Republicans all the way to
00:34:57.974 --> 00:34:59.775
far left and far right.
00:34:59.954 --> 00:35:01.516
We'll talk about that in the book too.
00:35:01.795 --> 00:35:03.577
It's just so malleable that
00:35:03.797 --> 00:35:06.778
anybody can find what they
00:35:06.818 --> 00:35:07.900
want in the revolution.
00:35:08.532 --> 00:35:08.813
It's great,
00:35:09.253 --> 00:35:10.594
and we're talking with Michael Haddam,
00:35:10.673 --> 00:35:12.434
author of The Memory of Seventy-Six,
00:35:12.516 --> 00:35:13.916
and you have in your beginning,
00:35:14.157 --> 00:35:16.038
when you discuss the idea of the hero,
00:35:16.197 --> 00:35:17.958
the taxonomy kind of of the hero,
00:35:18.679 --> 00:35:19.760
and the hero isn't an
00:35:19.820 --> 00:35:21.121
individual in this case so
00:35:21.161 --> 00:35:22.521
much as it is this idea of
00:35:22.541 --> 00:35:23.461
the nation or the
00:35:23.521 --> 00:35:24.983
revolution itself as it's
00:35:25.364 --> 00:35:26.724
making choices and doing
00:35:26.764 --> 00:35:28.525
things that in Greek myths
00:35:28.646 --> 00:35:31.807
or Roman myths the hero would be doing.
00:35:31.947 --> 00:35:33.728
Yeah, the hero...
00:35:34.757 --> 00:35:36.759
There's a well-known story
00:35:36.798 --> 00:35:38.579
structure called the Hero Journey,
00:35:38.681 --> 00:35:39.561
which Joseph Campbell
00:35:39.601 --> 00:35:40.282
uncovered in the
00:35:41.583 --> 00:35:42.563
mid-twentieth century
00:35:43.204 --> 00:35:44.905
through his study of many
00:35:44.965 --> 00:35:45.987
ancient hero myths,
00:35:46.086 --> 00:35:47.427
especially Western hero myths.
00:35:47.947 --> 00:35:48.969
And it's just a sort of
00:35:50.505 --> 00:35:51.646
sequence of common plot
00:35:51.686 --> 00:35:53.586
points that he found in these myths.
00:35:53.887 --> 00:35:55.246
And what I found when sort
00:35:55.286 --> 00:35:57.867
of looking at it is that, you know,
00:35:57.927 --> 00:35:59.347
we essentially tell the
00:35:59.407 --> 00:36:00.608
story of the revolution
00:36:00.668 --> 00:36:03.188
broadly according to this
00:36:03.347 --> 00:36:04.088
story structure.
00:36:04.168 --> 00:36:05.208
And people know this story
00:36:05.228 --> 00:36:06.148
structure because it was
00:36:06.248 --> 00:36:08.309
used by George Lucas to write Star Wars.
00:36:08.809 --> 00:36:08.909
Right.
00:36:08.929 --> 00:36:10.710
You know, it's Lord of the Rings,
00:36:11.110 --> 00:36:11.710
Harry Potter.
00:36:11.750 --> 00:36:12.750
They all, you know,
00:36:12.809 --> 00:36:14.369
follow this sort of very
00:36:14.409 --> 00:36:15.469
popular story structure
00:36:15.789 --> 00:36:17.271
because it has this
00:36:17.490 --> 00:36:18.550
inherent power because it's
00:36:18.590 --> 00:36:19.451
been around so long.
00:36:19.775 --> 00:36:21.195
to a real emotional
00:36:21.356 --> 00:36:22.936
connection among people.
00:36:23.175 --> 00:36:24.916
And so we've told the story in this way.
00:36:26.516 --> 00:36:27.617
And I think that that helps
00:36:27.697 --> 00:36:30.378
explain why Americans have
00:36:30.438 --> 00:36:31.978
such a unique emotional
00:36:32.380 --> 00:36:33.800
connection to the revolution,
00:36:34.079 --> 00:36:35.340
that a big part of it is
00:36:35.740 --> 00:36:38.621
how we tell the story of the revolution.
00:36:38.681 --> 00:36:40.161
And so I hope that readers
00:36:41.023 --> 00:36:42.063
come away from the book
00:36:42.782 --> 00:36:45.023
with a greater sense of that,
00:36:45.083 --> 00:36:46.105
of the importance of how
00:36:46.125 --> 00:36:47.045
the story is told,
00:36:48.286 --> 00:36:49.887
and a greater awareness of
00:36:50.648 --> 00:36:51.989
when they see that
00:36:52.050 --> 00:36:53.130
happening in the present,
00:36:53.231 --> 00:36:53.851
especially as the two
00:36:53.871 --> 00:36:54.692
hundred fiftieth anniversary approaches.
00:36:54.711 --> 00:36:57.974
Well, thank you very much.
00:36:58.014 --> 00:36:59.496
We've been talking with Michael Haddam,
00:36:59.615 --> 00:37:01.496
author of The Memory of Seventy Six,
00:37:01.536 --> 00:37:03.699
The Revolution in American History.
00:37:04.179 --> 00:37:06.521
His previous book was Past and Prologue,
00:37:06.561 --> 00:37:07.842
Politics and Memory in the
00:37:07.862 --> 00:37:09.003
American Revolution.
00:37:09.063 --> 00:37:11.646
And Michael directs the Yale
00:37:12.405 --> 00:37:13.766
New Haven Teachers Institute.
00:37:13.967 --> 00:37:14.728
And I want to really want to
00:37:14.748 --> 00:37:15.588
thank you for joining us.
00:37:15.608 --> 00:37:17.070
This has been a great discussion of this.
00:37:17.927 --> 00:37:18.347
great book.
00:37:18.367 --> 00:37:19.708
Thank you for having me, Bob.
00:37:19.807 --> 00:37:21.588
I appreciate it.
00:37:21.788 --> 00:37:23.208
And I want to thank Jonathan Lane,
00:37:23.248 --> 00:37:23.889
our producer,
00:37:23.929 --> 00:37:25.110
the man behind the curtain
00:37:25.289 --> 00:37:26.610
and our listeners, you know,
00:37:26.650 --> 00:37:27.570
around the world, you know, Michael,
00:37:27.590 --> 00:37:28.710
when we started these podcasts,
00:37:28.731 --> 00:37:29.751
we thought we'd have, you know,
00:37:29.771 --> 00:37:30.711
a handful of our friends
00:37:30.771 --> 00:37:32.032
may be tuning in occasionally,
00:37:32.052 --> 00:37:34.032
but we have a really steady and, uh,
00:37:34.369 --> 00:37:35.809
engaged group of listeners
00:37:35.849 --> 00:37:36.929
really around the world and
00:37:36.969 --> 00:37:38.150
every week we thank some of
00:37:38.170 --> 00:37:39.309
them in different places
00:37:39.369 --> 00:37:40.791
and so if you're in one of
00:37:40.831 --> 00:37:41.831
these places and want to
00:37:41.851 --> 00:37:43.311
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:37:43.351 --> 00:37:45.572
jlane at revolution two fifty dot org,
00:37:46.012 --> 00:37:47.052
he'll send you some of our
00:37:47.072 --> 00:37:48.893
rev two fifty swag and you
00:37:48.932 --> 00:37:49.813
can then be part of this
00:37:49.913 --> 00:37:50.652
remembering of the
00:37:50.693 --> 00:37:52.353
revolution at the two fiftieth and
00:37:52.914 --> 00:37:54.556
We can argue about what it means.
00:37:55.436 --> 00:37:57.619
So this week, our friends in Philadelphia,
00:37:57.978 --> 00:38:00.201
Boston, Charleston, Savannah, three,
00:38:00.481 --> 00:38:02.422
four cities involved in the revolution,
00:38:02.463 --> 00:38:04.945
and in Charlotte, North Carolina, Detroit,
00:38:05.065 --> 00:38:07.748
Kalamazoo, Aurora, Colorado, St.
00:38:07.788 --> 00:38:09.048
Catharines in Ontario,
00:38:09.554 --> 00:38:12.996
Westminster, of course, in the UK,
00:38:13.257 --> 00:38:14.518
Hingham and South Dennis
00:38:14.538 --> 00:38:16.358
here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
00:38:16.699 --> 00:38:18.760
Steubenville, Ohio, Huntington,
00:38:18.780 --> 00:38:20.523
West Virginia, and Amman, Jordan,
00:38:20.563 --> 00:38:22.164
and all places between and beyond.
00:38:22.204 --> 00:38:23.125
Thanks for joining us.
00:38:23.565 --> 00:38:24.985
And now we will be piped out
00:38:25.025 --> 00:38:25.927
on the road to Boston.