Speaker 1: My hope is that by the end of this evening
Speaker 1: you will have a deeper understanding of what it means
Speaker 1: to say that one is a Hamiltonian or a Jeffersonian
Speaker 1: in terms of their political ideology and their worldviews. The
Speaker 1: science of happiness, Appreciating modern painting, dilemmas of modern medicine.
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln at the Civil War, history of the artistic
Speaker 1: genius of nicel Angeli, When intuition fame, turning points that
Speaker 1: changed American psychology of religion. One Day University. The most
Speaker 1: acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures,
Speaker 1: fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn you understand
Speaker 1: and appreciate that. There's really only one way that I
Speaker 1: can possibly begin this lecture. This is the story of
Speaker 1: two founding brothers, not really brothers. They had different fathers
Speaker 1: and mothers. Filled with hate. They called each other names.
Speaker 1: George Washington thought they were both insane. Hamilton's was the best,
Speaker 1: that Jefferson was gentry. If t J had his way,
Speaker 1: he would have borrowed Hamilton's entry. But immigrant Alex had
Speaker 1: something to prove. He wanted to move America in a
Speaker 1: particular groove. Jefferson had his doubts. The two of them fought.
Speaker 1: Here comes the story of the warfare they wrought. My
Speaker 1: name is new Major. I'm a distinguished professor of American
Speaker 1: Studies in history at Rucker's University. It's great. I tried
Speaker 1: it out on my wife. She said, I don't remember
Speaker 1: that from the play. The pilo was Hamilton's versus Jefferson,
Speaker 1: the rivalry that shaped America. I love the way your
Speaker 1: lecture begins with this wonderful reference to the musical Hamilton's.
Speaker 1: Why is that important in our current context as a
Speaker 1: history orion. I welcome anything that gets people interested in
Speaker 1: American history and what has been fabulous about Hamilton's Besides
Speaker 1: how great the play is and how creative and how
Speaker 1: inventive is it suddenly has people asking questions, who were
Speaker 1: these guys? What do they believe in? What's the real story?
Speaker 1: And it's important to note that it's a play, it's
Speaker 1: not a documentary. I don't think today you can give
Speaker 1: a lecture on Hamilton's and Jefferson without acknowledging the significance
Speaker 1: of the play and the interest in Hamilton's and so
Speaker 1: I use that in a way at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the lecture to sort of draw the audience in, but
Speaker 1: also to invite them to understand that what I'm about
Speaker 1: to explain is in some ways part of, but different
Speaker 1: from the experience of seeing the player listening to the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: The rivalry between Jefferson and Hamilton's was about two very
Speaker 1: different visions of government exactly. They fundamentally disagreed over the
Speaker 1: role of government, the power of the federal government, the
Speaker 1: extent to which government should be centralized or should be
Speaker 1: left to the states and to the individuals, And a
Speaker 1: lot of the policy issues over which they fought really
Speaker 1: came down to differing opinions about the role of government. Well,
Speaker 1: let's take Hamilton's first. He wanted a strong federal government
Speaker 1: and also powers for the federal government that we're not
Speaker 1: enumerated in the Constitution. Well, let's start first with the constitution,
Speaker 1: because he's one of the pivotal figures for the creation
Speaker 1: of the Constitution in the summer of seventeen seven. So
Speaker 1: Hamilton's is among the first to recognize that the Articles
Speaker 1: of Confederation were not working Articles of Confederation that was
Speaker 1: the document agreed to win the Federation of the first
Speaker 1: system of government under which the United States operated, indeed
Speaker 1: even during the Revolutionary War, and carried over beyond the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War into the early seventeen eighties. But in post
Speaker 1: Revolutionary America, with inflation, with needs to raise money, with
Speaker 1: various other questions that were coming up, they realized that
Speaker 1: this form of government was so loose, so weak. It
Speaker 1: was a confederation, it was a general agreement among the
Speaker 1: thirteen states, but they couldn't get anything done this financial
Speaker 1: economic crisis that afflicts of the states in the immediate
Speaker 1: years after the revolution seventy two seventeen eighty four. Hamilton's
Speaker 1: is among a group of people who begin to realize
Speaker 1: that perhaps something needs to be done. Is Jefferson the
Speaker 1: big ideas guy and Hamilton's more the pragmatist. I think
Speaker 1: that's a nice distinction how I think of it. As
Speaker 1: I think of Jefferson as an idealist, Hamilton's is a realist.
Speaker 1: You have to understand in Jefferson we have the consummate
Speaker 1: Enlightenment figure. Many of you have probably heard the story,
Speaker 1: but it's always worth retelling. In nineteen sixty two, John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy had all of the Nobel prize winners in the
Speaker 1: Western world to the White House for dinner. And he
Speaker 1: stands up and he says, there is more genius and
Speaker 1: talent assembled in this room tonight, except when Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: dined alone. That was Jefferson. The man was remarkable. He
Speaker 1: was a polly math. He was a scientist. He was
Speaker 1: a naturalist, a philosopher, an inventor. You cannot come up
Speaker 1: with a field that he didn't pursue. He learned Latin,
Speaker 1: he learned Greek, he learned French. He had trouble with German.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's the only language that in trouble
Speaker 1: with music. He loved music. He played the violin, apparently terribly.
Speaker 1: John Adam said he couldn't stand listening. Jeffers said, play
Speaker 1: the violin. He is the embodiment of the Enlightenment. He
Speaker 1: is the sort of philosophy. He spends his whole life
Speaker 1: redesigning Monticello. There's not a single piece of the of
Speaker 1: the universe that didn't interest this guy, and that he
Speaker 1: didn't write about. Hamilton's not so much. Hamilton's is much
Speaker 1: more the practical politician. Uh, he understands that not so
Speaker 1: much ideas, but interests motivate people, and that if we
Speaker 1: can harness those interests, perhaps then we can create a
Speaker 1: sort of productive society. What was Jefferson most worried about
Speaker 1: over Hamilton's view of government and needing these additional powers.
Speaker 1: Like anything, there's a spectrum, Jefferson Madison, the party that
Speaker 1: will become the Democratic Republicans are worried about centralized authority
Speaker 1: of any kind. They worry about their liberties being taken away.
Speaker 1: For them, localism is what should govern. As long as
Speaker 1: you can keep government close, as long as you could
Speaker 1: keep an eye on it, as long as there's tendencies
Speaker 1: towards tyranny, we're okay. The problem with Hamilton's is he
Speaker 1: not only favored a strong central government. On the spectrum
Speaker 1: of people who favored a strong central government, he tended
Speaker 1: toward the more extreme side, and over time some people
Speaker 1: saw him as becoming a little bit crazed with power,
Speaker 1: wanting to be more and more authoritarian, thinking that perhaps
Speaker 1: the United States needed a king like structure, perhaps believing
Speaker 1: in hereditary government. Even the federalists on his side, including
Speaker 1: John Adams. John Adams and Hamilton's also dislike each other.
Speaker 1: They disagree fundamentally over this question of power. So we
Speaker 1: have Jefferson in part to thank for the Bill of Rights.
Speaker 1: In this debate over the Constitution. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: why we get a Bill of Rights is because Jefferson
Speaker 1: and Madison basically say, Okay, fine, if we're going to
Speaker 1: give the government more power, what are we going to
Speaker 1: do to assure the fact that the government will not
Speaker 1: rob us of our rights at root? That's what the
Speaker 1: debate is about. You talk about how the founding fathers
Speaker 1: were actually suspicious of democracy. That's right. That's right in
Speaker 1: the same way that too much power in the hands
Speaker 1: of a single individual becomes tyrannical, too much power in
Speaker 1: the hands of the people becomes anarchy. I think Hamilton's
Speaker 1: is very early on someone who understands the importance of
Speaker 1: the nation. The concept of the nation is going to
Speaker 1: take a long time to development, but Hamilton's he had
Speaker 1: a vision of a nation. Jefferson, it's the individual right,
Speaker 1: it's individualism. Uh, it's it's freedom, it's it's the word
Speaker 1: democracy is still an epithet in the eighteenth century. This
Speaker 1: comes as a news to a lot of people. None
Speaker 1: of them like the word democracy. And the problem with
Speaker 1: democracies that put too much power in the hands of
Speaker 1: the people who ultimately can't be trusted. Listen to this.
Speaker 1: I walk around with random federalist papers, and I'm not
Speaker 1: making any comment whatsoever about current events. I'm disclaiming right
Speaker 1: now that this has anything to do with that. I
Speaker 1: just want you to understand the anxiety that the founding
Speaker 1: fathers had about the people. He said, we know from
Speaker 1: experience that the people sometimes are and it is a
Speaker 1: wonder that they so seldom are as they do, beset
Speaker 1: as they continually are, by the wilds of parasites and sycophants,
Speaker 1: by the stands of the ambitious, the avaricious, and the desperate,
Speaker 1: by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more
Speaker 1: than they deserve it, and of those who seek to
Speaker 1: possess rather than to deserve it. That's Hamilton's Federalist number
Speaker 1: seventy one. But so that's the other side of it, right,
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of his life, Hamilton's is
Speaker 1: gonna say democracy is our real disease, all right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's fine, But for Jefferson. Jefferson's famous saying is that
Speaker 1: government is best which governs least Now we've talked about
Speaker 1: Hamilton's being ahead of his time in terms of understanding
Speaker 1: the important role of finance and economics, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like Jefferson was also ahead of his time in appreciating
Speaker 1: the importance of the role of the individual and the
Speaker 1: wisdom of the collected populace, the people. I make this
Speaker 1: argument that I think is right, that that Jefferson is
Speaker 1: sort of optimistic, but he's backward looking. He wants to
Speaker 1: preserve things the way they are in a certain fundamental sense.
Speaker 1: Hamilton's the Realist, is much more pessimistic, but he's forward looking.
Speaker 1: He really sees the direction in which American society is going,
Speaker 1: and he helps to lead it. There the pessimism of
Speaker 1: Hamilton's this this this sense that people are motivated by
Speaker 1: self interest. They're not going to deny their self interests
Speaker 1: for the good of the whole. And so therefore, once
Speaker 1: we recognize that we can harness that we can harness
Speaker 1: the power of people's self interests. Now, this is all
Speaker 1: classical liberalism, and Hamilton's not alone and thinking of this.
Speaker 1: Adam Smith at this time publishes The Wealth of Nations.
Speaker 1: This is all lazy, fair economics. Let people basically do
Speaker 1: their thing and in the end it will down to
Speaker 1: the benefit of the society and the economy. Jefferson doesn't
Speaker 1: want to unleash necessarily that kind of individual self interest.
Speaker 1: He still believes in this older, what small our republican sense,
Speaker 1: that people have to be moral, they have to be virtuous,
Speaker 1: they have to be temperate and industrious, they have to
Speaker 1: deny their self interest for the good of the community,
Speaker 1: and only if the people move forward together there as
Speaker 1: a whole in society prosper. There's a fundamental tension there
Speaker 1: between the two of them on that question. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it is a rivalry that's personal, isn't it deeply personal?
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: fully understand or appreciate, is that we venerate the founding fathers.
Speaker 1: But they were deeply opposed on a number of issues,
Speaker 1: and those opposition became not only political, but at times violent.
Speaker 1: How do we know that the profound differences were not
Speaker 1: just over matters of theory government. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: And the reason why we know is we're fortunate enough
Speaker 1: that the two of them could not help but write
Speaker 1: lengthy letters to anyone who would listen. In which they
Speaker 1: complained bitterly and denounced one another. And and they wrote
Speaker 1: some of those letters to their boss. They wrote to
Speaker 1: George Washington. People may not they served in the cab
Speaker 1: of it together, right, Hamilton's secretary of the Treasury. Jefferson
Speaker 1: is Secretary of State. So imagine these meetings with the
Speaker 1: President and Washington. While he's sort of a federalist, he
Speaker 1: stands above and beyond politics. So here's Jefferson's letter to
Speaker 1: George Washington. He said, letter George ord top Serf, September nine,
Speaker 1: everything right for us, Gary fit us. He's just warming up.
Speaker 1: This entire letter is complaining about Alexander Hamilton's look at us.
Speaker 1: There are no paragraphs. He is just blistering blue europe historian,
Speaker 1: but also in this context a performer. Poor George Washington.
Speaker 1: I mean, all the guy wants to do is like
Speaker 1: retire and go back, you know, to mal Vernon. Well,
Speaker 1: very few people expect a distinguished professor in suit and
Speaker 1: tie to come out and begin by rapping. But I
Speaker 1: think entertainment should be part of and is part of
Speaker 1: of education. I think that's part of why I enjoy
Speaker 1: lecturing for one day university. It's an opportunity not only
Speaker 1: to present information, but to prevent it with passion, with engagement, uh,
Speaker 1: to present it in a way so that people really
Speaker 1: come to understand more than just the material that's being delivered.
Speaker 1: The One Day University crowd they're amazing. Yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you get from doing these lectures? I love doing it.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's a tremendous energy. And while it's
Speaker 1: wonderful to teach undergraduates, we all know that undergraduates have
Speaker 1: a lot of other things going on and they're not
Speaker 1: necessary at the point where they fully appreciate what it
Speaker 1: is that you might be giving to them. The people
Speaker 1: who come to One Day University are there to learn.
Speaker 1: They understand what education means. They have a passion for
Speaker 1: deepening their knowledge of various events. And it's delightful to
Speaker 1: hear people say to me, oh, I wish I had
Speaker 1: you when I was a junior or Saphram College. And
Speaker 1: I remind them that they're romanticizing their college years. But
Speaker 1: it's delightful to hear it because the fact is, at
Speaker 1: different times in our lives, we're ready for something else
Speaker 1: to learn, to take in to study, to move us along.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, we're all lifelong learners. We venerate
Speaker 1: both of these men, But what about their dark sides? Sure? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean we can't talk about Jefferson of course without
Speaker 1: talking about Jefferson and slavery. Uh. It's the great enigma
Speaker 1: of the great paradox. Uh. It troubles generation after generation,
Speaker 1: and then well it should you know, how can the
Speaker 1: man who wrote the line all men have created equal
Speaker 1: not emancipate his own slaves? Uh? He understood that slavery
Speaker 1: was wrong intellectually, and this goes back to the whole
Speaker 1: idea of Jefferson as ideologue, but he can't ever really
Speaker 1: get himself to the point of freeing him slaves, though
Speaker 1: he lives long enough to predict that slavery's the institution
Speaker 1: that's going through in some fundamental way under America. And Hamilton's,
Speaker 1: for his side, is governed by personal passions. He has
Speaker 1: an extra mental affair that he ends up talking about
Speaker 1: publicly in all kinds of ways. His opponents cannot believe.
Speaker 1: They're good luck that Hamilton would actually acknowledge this in
Speaker 1: the seventeen nineties, and his ambition is so great that
Speaker 1: some people see him as tending towards becoming the next Napoleon.
Speaker 1: So there are these darker sides, deeper passions behind both men.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you could have the one necessarily without
Speaker 1: the other, but it's important to see them, I think,
Speaker 1: in their whole, in their totality. Is Hamilton's overrated today
Speaker 1: because he's become something of a historical rock star as
Speaker 1: a result of the extraordinary success of this music. Hamilton's
Speaker 1: musical is not overrated. Hamilton's the man is He's He's
Speaker 1: having his moment, and I think that that's great. I
Speaker 1: think every so often we recover really important figures from
Speaker 1: the past and reassess them. It's not surprising that in
Speaker 1: this moment of Wall Street and capital and development and progress,
Speaker 1: that suddenly, instead of Jefferson and Adams in Washington, Hamilton's
Speaker 1: has been recovered. The other really important point that the
Speaker 1: play makes that really helps us to understand what is
Speaker 1: it about historical memories? Why do we venerate and remember
Speaker 1: some figures and not others. Of course, part of the
Speaker 1: answer for Hamilton's is very easy. He's killed by Aaron
Speaker 1: Burr very early on. One of the things that happens
Speaker 1: about history is the survivors get to write it, and
Speaker 1: Adams and Jefferson live until eight They've got twenty two
Speaker 1: years held the story of the revolution, and they begin
Speaker 1: this amazing correspondence with one another. Again, I know I've
Speaker 1: given you a few things to read tonight. Another thing
Speaker 1: to look at is the Adams Jefferson correspondence in retirement.
Speaker 1: Because these two hated each other, not the way, not
Speaker 1: the way Hamilton's and Jefferson hated each other, I mean,
Speaker 1: but they had violent political disagreements. Jefferson said of Adams
Speaker 1: that his presidency was a reign of witches. So uh,
Speaker 1: there was some nastiness there. But they heal those wounds,
Speaker 1: and between eighteen thirteen and eighteen twenty six they have
Speaker 1: this amazing correspondence in which they reflect upon all subjects,
Speaker 1: including Hamilton's, and it gives them an opportunity to write
Speaker 1: Hamilton's out of the story, and they do. And I
Speaker 1: think that's part of what happened. It's part of why
Speaker 1: the play has been so successful. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: suddenly everybody woke up and said, we'll wait a minute,
Speaker 1: there's this other Titanic figure there. What did he do?
Speaker 1: And so um, And that's great because he is a
Speaker 1: Titanic figure in in all kinds of important ways, but
Speaker 1: like all of them, a complicated figure filled with paradox
Speaker 1: is filled with tensions, a figure who changes over time.
Speaker 1: So I don't think Hamilton's is overrated. I do think
Speaker 1: because of the play, there's a certain romanticization, a certain
Speaker 1: idealization that goes on. And that's what's so nice about
Speaker 1: setting him intension with Jefferson, because you get to see
Speaker 1: them not as single individuals to venerate, but as as
Speaker 1: real life and humans who are battling one another. How
Speaker 1: does this rivalry influence today's politics. I think we have
Speaker 1: a tendency to idealize or romanticize the politics of the
Speaker 1: Founding Fathers, and I would caution against that. Politics is
Speaker 1: all ways filled with conflict, it's filled with difference, it's
Speaker 1: filled with contest. There's a line that one can trace.
Speaker 1: Now at sometimes is it more intense, more rancorous than
Speaker 1: at other times? Sure? Absolutely, But we have to be
Speaker 1: careful not to believe that the Founding Fathers were just
Speaker 1: brilliant men engaged in the politics of trying to create
Speaker 1: this new nation. They were, but they were human, They
Speaker 1: had passions, they had personal opinions, power was always at stake,
Speaker 1: and they weren't afraid to use it against one another.
Speaker 1: I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. Sign up on our
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