WEBVTT - Hamilton v. Jefferson: The Rivalry That Shaped America 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:03.600 My hope is that by the end of this evening 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:07.680 you will have a deeper understanding of what it means 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.160 to say that one is a Hamiltonian or a Jeffersonian 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.800 in terms of their political ideology and their worldviews. The 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:19.040 science of happiness, Appreciating modern painting, dilemmas of modern medicine. 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:22.680 Abraham Lincoln at the Civil War, history of the artistic 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:26.520 genius of nicel Angeli, When intuition fame, turning points that 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:39.000 changed American psychology of religion. One Day University. The most 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.720 acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures, 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:52.200 fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn you understand 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.200 and appreciate that. There's really only one way that I 0:00:55.200 --> 0:01:00.080 can possibly begin this lecture. This is the story of 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:05.720 two founding brothers, not really brothers. They had different fathers 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:08.240 and mothers. Filled with hate. They called each other names. 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:13.280 George Washington thought they were both insane. Hamilton's was the best, 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:15.680 that Jefferson was gentry. If t J had his way, 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:18.760 he would have borrowed Hamilton's entry. But immigrant Alex had 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.440 something to prove. He wanted to move America in a 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:25.400 particular groove. Jefferson had his doubts. The two of them fought. 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:31.560 Here comes the story of the warfare they wrought. My 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.640 name is new Major. I'm a distinguished professor of American 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.759 Studies in history at Rucker's University. It's great. I tried 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:41.680 it out on my wife. She said, I don't remember 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.200 that from the play. The pilo was Hamilton's versus Jefferson, 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:48.520 the rivalry that shaped America. I love the way your 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:54.120 lecture begins with this wonderful reference to the musical Hamilton's. 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:59.560 Why is that important in our current context as a 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:04.080 history orion. I welcome anything that gets people interested in 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:08.560 American history and what has been fabulous about Hamilton's Besides 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:10.880 how great the play is and how creative and how 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.720 inventive is it suddenly has people asking questions, who were 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.120 these guys? What do they believe in? What's the real story? 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.639 And it's important to note that it's a play, it's 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.799 not a documentary. I don't think today you can give 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.480 a lecture on Hamilton's and Jefferson without acknowledging the significance 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:31.960 of the play and the interest in Hamilton's and so 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:33.840 I use that in a way at the beginning of 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.160 the lecture to sort of draw the audience in, but 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:38.400 also to invite them to understand that what I'm about 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:42.120 to explain is in some ways part of, but different 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.600 from the experience of seeing the player listening to the soundtrack. 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:51.320 The rivalry between Jefferson and Hamilton's was about two very 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:56.720 different visions of government exactly. They fundamentally disagreed over the 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:00.040 role of government, the power of the federal government, the 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.800 extent to which government should be centralized or should be 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.720 left to the states and to the individuals, And a 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.919 lot of the policy issues over which they fought really 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:13.200 came down to differing opinions about the role of government. Well, 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:18.560 let's take Hamilton's first. He wanted a strong federal government 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.119 and also powers for the federal government that we're not 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.519 enumerated in the Constitution. Well, let's start first with the constitution, 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.720 because he's one of the pivotal figures for the creation 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.160 of the Constitution in the summer of seventeen seven. So 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:37.200 Hamilton's is among the first to recognize that the Articles 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:41.240 of Confederation were not working Articles of Confederation that was 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.520 the document agreed to win the Federation of the first 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:48.560 system of government under which the United States operated, indeed 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:53.120 even during the Revolutionary War, and carried over beyond the 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.560 Revolutionary War into the early seventeen eighties. But in post 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:01.800 Revolutionary America, with inflation, with needs to raise money, with 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:04.960 various other questions that were coming up, they realized that 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:08.760 this form of government was so loose, so weak. It 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.120 was a confederation, it was a general agreement among the 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.480 thirteen states, but they couldn't get anything done this financial 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.400 economic crisis that afflicts of the states in the immediate 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:26.520 years after the revolution seventy two seventeen eighty four. Hamilton's 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.320 is among a group of people who begin to realize 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:33.240 that perhaps something needs to be done. Is Jefferson the 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:38.360 big ideas guy and Hamilton's more the pragmatist. I think 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.039 that's a nice distinction how I think of it. As 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:44.440 I think of Jefferson as an idealist, Hamilton's is a realist. 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:51.960 You have to understand in Jefferson we have the consummate 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.400 Enlightenment figure. Many of you have probably heard the story, 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.440 but it's always worth retelling. In nineteen sixty two, John F. 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.560 Kennedy had all of the Nobel prize winners in the 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.919 Western world to the White House for dinner. And he 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.840 stands up and he says, there is more genius and 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:16.440 talent assembled in this room tonight, except when Thomas Jefferson 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:23.760 dined alone. That was Jefferson. The man was remarkable. He 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:27.440 was a polly math. He was a scientist. He was 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:32.600 a naturalist, a philosopher, an inventor. You cannot come up 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:36.520 with a field that he didn't pursue. He learned Latin, 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.680 he learned Greek, he learned French. He had trouble with German. 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:41.559 By the way, it's the only language that in trouble 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:46.919 with music. He loved music. He played the violin, apparently terribly. 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.400 John Adam said he couldn't stand listening. Jeffers said, play 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:54.279 the violin. He is the embodiment of the Enlightenment. He 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.960 is the sort of philosophy. He spends his whole life 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:01.960 redesigning Monticello. There's not a single piece of the of 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.360 the universe that didn't interest this guy, and that he 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:11.200 didn't write about. Hamilton's not so much. Hamilton's is much 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.240 more the practical politician. Uh, he understands that not so 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.560 much ideas, but interests motivate people, and that if we 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.839 can harness those interests, perhaps then we can create a 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:28.960 sort of productive society. What was Jefferson most worried about 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:35.599 over Hamilton's view of government and needing these additional powers. 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:41.800 Like anything, there's a spectrum, Jefferson Madison, the party that 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:46.280 will become the Democratic Republicans are worried about centralized authority 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:51.719 of any kind. They worry about their liberties being taken away. 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.719 For them, localism is what should govern. As long as 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.120 you can keep government close, as long as you could 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.000 keep an eye on it, as long as there's tendencies 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:06.479 towards tyranny, we're okay. The problem with Hamilton's is he 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:10.600 not only favored a strong central government. On the spectrum 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.680 of people who favored a strong central government, he tended 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:18.200 toward the more extreme side, and over time some people 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.160 saw him as becoming a little bit crazed with power, 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.000 wanting to be more and more authoritarian, thinking that perhaps 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.760 the United States needed a king like structure, perhaps believing 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.400 in hereditary government. Even the federalists on his side, including 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.040 John Adams. John Adams and Hamilton's also dislike each other. 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:40.320 They disagree fundamentally over this question of power. So we 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:42.760 have Jefferson in part to thank for the Bill of Rights. 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:46.160 In this debate over the Constitution. One of the reasons 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.560 why we get a Bill of Rights is because Jefferson 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.960 and Madison basically say, Okay, fine, if we're going to 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.040 give the government more power, what are we going to 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.240 do to assure the fact that the government will not 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.920 rob us of our rights at root? That's what the 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:06.280 debate is about. You talk about how the founding fathers 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:11.600 were actually suspicious of democracy. That's right. That's right in 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.680 the same way that too much power in the hands 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:18.680 of a single individual becomes tyrannical, too much power in 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:26.080 the hands of the people becomes anarchy. I think Hamilton's 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:28.960 is very early on someone who understands the importance of 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:31.640 the nation. The concept of the nation is going to 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.640 take a long time to development, but Hamilton's he had 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:41.120 a vision of a nation. Jefferson, it's the individual right, 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:45.760 it's individualism. Uh, it's it's freedom, it's it's the word 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.120 democracy is still an epithet in the eighteenth century. This 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.280 comes as a news to a lot of people. None 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.079 of them like the word democracy. And the problem with 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.280 democracies that put too much power in the hands of 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:00.960 the people who ultimately can't be trusted. Listen to this. 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:08.839 I walk around with random federalist papers, and I'm not 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:14.480 making any comment whatsoever about current events. I'm disclaiming right 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.280 now that this has anything to do with that. I 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.040 just want you to understand the anxiety that the founding 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:25.079 fathers had about the people. He said, we know from 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.960 experience that the people sometimes are and it is a 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.600 wonder that they so seldom are as they do, beset 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:36.600 as they continually are, by the wilds of parasites and sycophants, 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.560 by the stands of the ambitious, the avaricious, and the desperate, 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:43.280 by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.440 than they deserve it, and of those who seek to 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:54.280 possess rather than to deserve it. That's Hamilton's Federalist number 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.040 seventy one. But so that's the other side of it, right, 0:09:57.480 --> 0:09:59.640 you know, at the end of his life, Hamilton's is 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:05.160 gonna say democracy is our real disease, all right, I mean, 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:10.160 that's fine, But for Jefferson. Jefferson's famous saying is that 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.960 government is best which governs least Now we've talked about 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:20.160 Hamilton's being ahead of his time in terms of understanding 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.280 the important role of finance and economics, but it sounds 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.640 like Jefferson was also ahead of his time in appreciating 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.959 the importance of the role of the individual and the 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:38.640 wisdom of the collected populace, the people. I make this 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.560 argument that I think is right, that that Jefferson is 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.080 sort of optimistic, but he's backward looking. He wants to 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.920 preserve things the way they are in a certain fundamental sense. 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.839 Hamilton's the Realist, is much more pessimistic, but he's forward looking. 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:58.640 He really sees the direction in which American society is going, 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:01.679 and he helps to lead it. There the pessimism of 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:06.640 Hamilton's this this this sense that people are motivated by 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:10.720 self interest. They're not going to deny their self interests 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.480 for the good of the whole. And so therefore, once 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.000 we recognize that we can harness that we can harness 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:19.679 the power of people's self interests. Now, this is all 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.960 classical liberalism, and Hamilton's not alone and thinking of this. 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.160 Adam Smith at this time publishes The Wealth of Nations. 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.199 This is all lazy, fair economics. Let people basically do 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:32.719 their thing and in the end it will down to 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:38.520 the benefit of the society and the economy. Jefferson doesn't 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.560 want to unleash necessarily that kind of individual self interest. 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:47.400 He still believes in this older, what small our republican sense, 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.880 that people have to be moral, they have to be virtuous, 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.720 they have to be temperate and industrious, they have to 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.839 deny their self interest for the good of the community, 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:00.319 and only if the people move forward together there as 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.600 a whole in society prosper. There's a fundamental tension there 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:07.480 between the two of them on that question. Yeah, Um, 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.840 it is a rivalry that's personal, isn't it deeply personal? 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:14.440 And that's the thing that a lot of people don't 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:19.560 fully understand or appreciate, is that we venerate the founding fathers. 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.840 But they were deeply opposed on a number of issues, 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:27.600 and those opposition became not only political, but at times violent. 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:32.520 How do we know that the profound differences were not 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:37.360 just over matters of theory government. It's a great question. 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:40.720 And the reason why we know is we're fortunate enough 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.800 that the two of them could not help but write 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:49.280 lengthy letters to anyone who would listen. In which they 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.960 complained bitterly and denounced one another. And and they wrote 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.160 some of those letters to their boss. They wrote to 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.920 George Washington. People may not they served in the cab 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:04.119 of it together, right, Hamilton's secretary of the Treasury. Jefferson 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.120 is Secretary of State. So imagine these meetings with the 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.240 President and Washington. While he's sort of a federalist, he 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:15.640 stands above and beyond politics. So here's Jefferson's letter to 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.679 George Washington. He said, letter George ord top Serf, September nine, 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:26.559 everything right for us, Gary fit us. He's just warming up. 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:34.160 This entire letter is complaining about Alexander Hamilton's look at us. 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:40.360 There are no paragraphs. He is just blistering blue europe historian, 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:45.440 but also in this context a performer. Poor George Washington. 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:47.760 I mean, all the guy wants to do is like 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:51.160 retire and go back, you know, to mal Vernon. Well, 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.160 very few people expect a distinguished professor in suit and 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:59.839 tie to come out and begin by rapping. But I 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:04.800 think entertainment should be part of and is part of 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.440 of education. I think that's part of why I enjoy 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.240 lecturing for one day university. It's an opportunity not only 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:17.040 to present information, but to prevent it with passion, with engagement, uh, 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:20.800 to present it in a way so that people really 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.040 come to understand more than just the material that's being delivered. 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.840 The One Day University crowd they're amazing. Yeah, what do 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.600 you get from doing these lectures? I love doing it. 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:37.000 First of all, there's a tremendous energy. And while it's 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.040 wonderful to teach undergraduates, we all know that undergraduates have 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.160 a lot of other things going on and they're not 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.680 necessary at the point where they fully appreciate what it 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:48.400 is that you might be giving to them. The people 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.040 who come to One Day University are there to learn. 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:55.480 They understand what education means. They have a passion for 0:14:55.960 --> 0:15:00.080 deepening their knowledge of various events. And it's delightful to 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:02.840 hear people say to me, oh, I wish I had 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.280 you when I was a junior or Saphram College. And 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:08.600 I remind them that they're romanticizing their college years. But 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.440 it's delightful to hear it because the fact is, at 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:16.880 different times in our lives, we're ready for something else 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.960 to learn, to take in to study, to move us along. 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.920 And in that sense, we're all lifelong learners. We venerate 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:29.920 both of these men, But what about their dark sides? Sure? Absolutely, 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:33.200 I mean we can't talk about Jefferson of course without 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:36.880 talking about Jefferson and slavery. Uh. It's the great enigma 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:41.000 of the great paradox. Uh. It troubles generation after generation, 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:43.280 and then well it should you know, how can the 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:45.280 man who wrote the line all men have created equal 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:50.120 not emancipate his own slaves? Uh? He understood that slavery 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.680 was wrong intellectually, and this goes back to the whole 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:56.560 idea of Jefferson as ideologue, but he can't ever really 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.520 get himself to the point of freeing him slaves, though 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.960 he lives long enough to predict that slavery's the institution 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:08.520 that's going through in some fundamental way under America. And Hamilton's, 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:14.360 for his side, is governed by personal passions. He has 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.760 an extra mental affair that he ends up talking about 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.000 publicly in all kinds of ways. His opponents cannot believe. 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:25.680 They're good luck that Hamilton would actually acknowledge this in 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.520 the seventeen nineties, and his ambition is so great that 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.280 some people see him as tending towards becoming the next Napoleon. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:41.560 So there are these darker sides, deeper passions behind both men. 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.800 I'm not sure you could have the one necessarily without 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.320 the other, but it's important to see them, I think, 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:52.280 in their whole, in their totality. Is Hamilton's overrated today 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:56.640 because he's become something of a historical rock star as 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:01.040 a result of the extraordinary success of this music. Hamilton's 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:05.080 musical is not overrated. Hamilton's the man is He's He's 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:07.639 having his moment, and I think that that's great. I 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:11.879 think every so often we recover really important figures from 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:16.520 the past and reassess them. It's not surprising that in 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:22.160 this moment of Wall Street and capital and development and progress, 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:27.040 that suddenly, instead of Jefferson and Adams in Washington, Hamilton's 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.320 has been recovered. The other really important point that the 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:32.800 play makes that really helps us to understand what is 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.280 it about historical memories? Why do we venerate and remember 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:38.800 some figures and not others. Of course, part of the 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.720 answer for Hamilton's is very easy. He's killed by Aaron 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:48.680 Burr very early on. One of the things that happens 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.680 about history is the survivors get to write it, and 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:59.200 Adams and Jefferson live until eight They've got twenty two 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.080 years held the story of the revolution, and they begin 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.600 this amazing correspondence with one another. Again, I know I've 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.399 given you a few things to read tonight. Another thing 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:13.119 to look at is the Adams Jefferson correspondence in retirement. 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.000 Because these two hated each other, not the way, not 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.760 the way Hamilton's and Jefferson hated each other, I mean, 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:23.400 but they had violent political disagreements. Jefferson said of Adams 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:27.159 that his presidency was a reign of witches. So uh, 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.119 there was some nastiness there. But they heal those wounds, 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.960 and between eighteen thirteen and eighteen twenty six they have 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:39.040 this amazing correspondence in which they reflect upon all subjects, 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:45.320 including Hamilton's, and it gives them an opportunity to write 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:49.680 Hamilton's out of the story, and they do. And I 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:51.440 think that's part of what happened. It's part of why 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:53.560 the play has been so successful. It's kind of like 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:55.440 suddenly everybody woke up and said, we'll wait a minute, 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.159 there's this other Titanic figure there. What did he do? 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:02.760 And so um, And that's great because he is a 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:07.200 Titanic figure in in all kinds of important ways, but 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.679 like all of them, a complicated figure filled with paradox 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:17.440 is filled with tensions, a figure who changes over time. 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.800 So I don't think Hamilton's is overrated. I do think 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.680 because of the play, there's a certain romanticization, a certain 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.720 idealization that goes on. And that's what's so nice about 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:34.640 setting him intension with Jefferson, because you get to see 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.040 them not as single individuals to venerate, but as as 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.120 real life and humans who are battling one another. How 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:48.440 does this rivalry influence today's politics. I think we have 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:54.119 a tendency to idealize or romanticize the politics of the 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:59.520 Founding Fathers, and I would caution against that. Politics is 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:04.200 all ways filled with conflict, it's filled with difference, it's 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:08.359 filled with contest. There's a line that one can trace. 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.600 Now at sometimes is it more intense, more rancorous than 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.840 at other times? Sure? Absolutely, But we have to be 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:18.680 careful not to believe that the Founding Fathers were just 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:23.680 brilliant men engaged in the politics of trying to create 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.600 this new nation. They were, but they were human, They 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:32.320 had passions, they had personal opinions, power was always at stake, 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.320 and they weren't afraid to use it against one another. 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:44.159 I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. Sign up on our 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:46.760 website one day you dot com to become a member 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:50.920 and access over six hundred full length video lectures from 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:52.520 the world's finance professors.