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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World on this July fourth Sunday,

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Speaker 1: I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the

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Speaker 1: significance of Independence Day, from the year was established in

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Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six with the signing of the Declaration of

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Speaker 1: Independence by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to our

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Speaker 1: modern day celebrations that include backyard barbecues and fireworks displays.

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Speaker 1: My guest is a long time friend and fellow historian

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Speaker 1: Alan Galze. He is director of the James Madison Program

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Speaker 1: Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship and Senior Research Scholar in

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Speaker 1: the Council of the Humanities SORRY and Senior Research Scholar

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Speaker 1: in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He

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Speaker 1: is also the best selling author of Gettysburg and is

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Speaker 1: a new book coming out of September. Robert E a lot.

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Speaker 1: I have never talked with him without learning an immense amount. Allan,

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Speaker 1: I'm so glad you could join us, and I want

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Speaker 1: to start, Allen, because I know you are those very

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Speaker 1: rare people. You actually sort of have the history inside,

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Speaker 1: you live it, you feel it. It's not just some

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Speaker 1: abstract knowledge. And so I'm curious if you go back

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Speaker 1: to say, January February March seventeen seventy five. How much

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Speaker 1: do you think they were in the process of really

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Speaker 1: talking themselves into moving towards independence and how much were

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Speaker 1: they just caught up in a dialogue that wasn't quite clear.

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Speaker 1: Yet that's a difficult question to answer, because, of course

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Speaker 1: there's no polling and no polling questions in the age century.

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Speaker 1: We have the writings of a number of people who

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Speaker 1: reflected on exactly those issues and the distance between those points.

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Speaker 1: So even with that, it's still hard to come up

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Speaker 1: with a figure and say, well, this is where the

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Speaker 1: trend of things was going, and this is the point

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Speaker 1: at which public opinion, such as it was in the

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Speaker 1: eighteenth century had developed. And yet I think two things

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Speaker 1: it is safe to say. One is that by the

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Speaker 1: beginning of seventeen seventy five, most Americans realized that there

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Speaker 1: was going to have to be a completely dramatic reshuffle

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Speaker 1: of the relationship between the American colonies in Great Britain,

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Speaker 1: and that there was a very strong risk that it

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Speaker 1: was going to come to blows. And people had, by

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Speaker 1: the beginning of seventeen seventy five begun to get used

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Speaker 1: to the fact that there was something coming over the

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Speaker 1: horizon that could be extremely challenging. The other thing that

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Speaker 1: enters into this is they really didn't know quite how

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Speaker 1: they were going to do this rearrangement of things. There

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Speaker 1: are a number of people who believed right up to

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Speaker 1: the brink that you could still work out a deal

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Speaker 1: with Britain. Even Thomas Jefferson believed that right up until

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Speaker 1: seventeen seventy five, there just might be a possibility that

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Speaker 1: the Imperial government in London could be persuaded to adopt

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Speaker 1: something of what we might today recognize as a Commonwealth

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Speaker 1: model on the relationship between America and Britain. And even

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Speaker 1: if it didn't take that shape, many people still were

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Speaker 1: puzzling over what kind of shape this new arrangement would take.

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Speaker 1: For some, it might be outright independence cut the ties

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Speaker 1: completely with Great Britain, something which was almost unthinkable. First

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Speaker 1: of all, these were all people who tended to think

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Speaker 1: of themselves as British in one way or another. And

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Speaker 1: also because Britain is the greatest imperial power on planet

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Speaker 1: at that point, and the idea of these colonies militarily

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Speaker 1: in some fashion or other challenging Great Britain was almost

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Speaker 1: more than they could fathom. So what we're looking at

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of seventeen seventy five is a lot

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Speaker 1: of confusion, a lot of hesitancy, a lot of uncertainty.

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Speaker 1: And yet one thing which was certainly clear was they

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Speaker 1: were not taking any steps back from everything that had

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Speaker 1: happened over the previous ten years. There was going to

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Speaker 1: have to be a new relationship with Great Britain, whether

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Speaker 1: the King of England liked it or not, and they

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Speaker 1: were going to have to explore the permutations of that relationship,

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Speaker 1: which could take anything from simply reshuffling the relationship between

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Speaker 1: the colonies and Britain to perhaps even outright independence. There

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Speaker 1: were some people who, in fact were willing to use

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Speaker 1: the eye word as early as the beginning of seventeen

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Speaker 1: seventy five. It's interesting because it, in a sense begins

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Speaker 1: to drive us towards the notion that this really was

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Speaker 1: a straight up issue of whether or not you were

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Speaker 1: going to be free. There weren't these abstract secondary you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not just about the right detaxation other this or that,

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Speaker 1: but it's a question of where is the locus of power. Well,

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Speaker 1: this is true because everything that had flowed into the

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Speaker 1: minds of the people who meet in the Continental Congresses,

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Speaker 1: the First Continental Congress from seventeen seventy four, second Continental

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Speaker 1: Congress in seventeen seventy five, everything that they had read,

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Speaker 1: everything that they had learned about political theory and political science,

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Speaker 1: even though they didn't use those particular terms for it,

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Speaker 1: had taught them things that were very different from the

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Speaker 1: way human societies had been organized previously. Human societies up

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Speaker 1: to this point had by and large been organized as hierarchies,

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Speaker 1: and in that respect they owed a great deal to

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Speaker 1: the influence of Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophy. But they understood

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Speaker 1: that the human societies were hierarchical in nature. Authority started

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Speaker 1: at the top with a king with a monarchy, then

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Speaker 1: flowed down through the new ability, and then finally got

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Speaker 1: down to the commons. And then, you know, maybe below

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Speaker 1: the commons there was a layer of serfs or slaves

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Speaker 1: or other kinds of people who really didn't have much

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Speaker 1: status at all. But it was a hierarchy in which

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Speaker 1: authority starts at the top and comes down. Everything that

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Speaker 1: these people had read in Enlightenment political philosophy, whether it

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Speaker 1: was John Locke, whether it was the Baron Montesquieu, whether

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Speaker 1: it was Cesare Beccaria, taught them the exact opposite, that

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Speaker 1: the natural organization of society moved from the bottom up,

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Speaker 1: and it moved not by authority and power, it moved

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Speaker 1: by natural law. That was what they the Enlightenment had

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Speaker 1: discovered about the physical, scientific organization of the universe. People

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Speaker 1: now transferred that to trying to understand the political organization

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Speaker 1: of things. In Europe, that kind of thinking was read.

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Speaker 1: It was very popular, but at the same time people

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Speaker 1: really couldn't take it very seriously because look, Europe is

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Speaker 1: all monarchies at this point. People say, well, this is

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Speaker 1: very great, mister Locke, this is very great, Baron Montesquieu,

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Speaker 1: wonderful thought experiment, but it's not going to happen in

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Speaker 1: real terms. In America, it was different. Americans, in a sense, had,

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Speaker 1: in their experience as colonies, had lived out exactly the

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Speaker 1: kind of political relationships that Locke and the other Enlightenment

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Speaker 1: philosophers had described. And whereas in Europe it's read as

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Speaker 1: a thought experiment, Americans read this and say, hey, this

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Speaker 1: is the real thing. This is exactly how we came

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Speaker 1: into being. So when Americans enter into this era of

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Speaker 1: crisis between seventeen sixty five and seventeen seventy five, they

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Speaker 1: already come with a mindset that is against notions of hierarchy,

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Speaker 1: that prizes notions of liberty and sees society as a

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Speaker 1: place where sovereignty, where authority comes out of the people

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Speaker 1: and moves upwards to whom the people delegate that authority.

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Speaker 1: The fundamental value for them is always going to be liberty.

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Speaker 1: So when they come to the Continental Congresses in seventeen

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Speaker 1: seventy four and seventeen seventy five, these delegates are already

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Speaker 1: primed to think about liberty as the prime virtue and

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Speaker 1: asking how political organization permits liberty to operate in the

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Speaker 1: best and the most responsible fashion. That's what their assumptions are.

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Speaker 1: And those assumptions could not have been more far removed

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Speaker 1: from the kinds of assumptions that governed monarchs, tyrants, and

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Speaker 1: despots three thousand miles away in Europe. And if I'm

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Speaker 1: over correctly, you're describing even among the enlightened people in

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Speaker 1: Europe who realize that that's not going to happen in

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Speaker 1: their world, they are actually a minority, because it's still

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Speaker 1: a massive majority who are genuinely monarchs or who are

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Speaker 1: hierarchically committed to very large, powerful systems that way from

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Speaker 1: the top down, So that in a sense, the Americans

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Speaker 1: are more isolated and are more unique than even a

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Speaker 1: categorization of who they read would have implied. Is that

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Speaker 1: a fair statement. Yeah, this is exactly the case. Americans

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Speaker 1: had a very unusual experience in their colonial past. When

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Speaker 1: Britain sets out to establish colonies in the Americas, especially

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Speaker 1: along the North American Sea coast, the words set out

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Speaker 1: really don't characterize how the British did it. The British

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Speaker 1: did colonization by default. The British government really never set

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Speaker 1: out to do colonization because look, colonization is expensive, and

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Speaker 1: the one thing that the British monarchy did not have

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Speaker 1: through the sixteenth and the seventeenth century was a lot

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Speaker 1: of spare change. So basically, Britain authorizes the establishment of

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Speaker 1: colonies in America in New York and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: in Maryland and Geor. It basically organizes these colonies like

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Speaker 1: franchise operations, and it says to a group of potential

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Speaker 1: colony organizers all right, here is a charter for a

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Speaker 1: certain stretch of territory that we're claiming as our own.

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Speaker 1: You guys, go over there and you establish a colony,

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Speaker 1: and please don't let us hear from you again, because

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Speaker 1: we don't want to take responsibility for you. We're not

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Speaker 1: going to send you soldiers, we're not going to send

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Speaker 1: you money. We might send you a royal governor, but

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Speaker 1: in most practical terms, the royal governors who were appointed

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Speaker 1: for these colonies never actually crossed the Atlantic. They sent

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Speaker 1: one of their lackeys or one of their lieutenants to

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Speaker 1: become a de facto governor, a lieutenant governor in these colonies.

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Speaker 1: So basically Britain looks among the colonies as a place

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Speaker 1: where you take all of your unwanted social trash. Okay,

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Speaker 1: all those religious nuts with guns, all those debtors, all

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Speaker 1: those people who in the sixteen eighties Thomas King counts

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Speaker 1: up as detracting from the wealth of the Kingdom. You

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Speaker 1: package them all together and you send them to North America,

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Speaker 1: and you hope, devoutly you'll never hear from them again.

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Speaker 1: Three generations pass. Oh, big surprise, Britain wakes up and

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Speaker 1: suddenly finds out that it has an unfavorable balance of

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Speaker 1: trade with its colonies, that all those social misfits whom

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Speaker 1: It's sent over to America they turned out to be

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Speaker 1: extraordinarily aggressive and prosperous. And now suddenly the imperial planners

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Speaker 1: in London have to try to readjust what's going on

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Speaker 1: between Britain and America, because from their point of view,

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Speaker 1: America should exist for the benefit in the enrichment of

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Speaker 1: Great Britain, not the other way around. Something very different

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Speaker 1: had happened in America. Americans had made a world all

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Speaker 1: pretty much on their own, without a whole lot of

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Speaker 1: direction from the people in London. And the chief proof

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Speaker 1: of that was the way they governed themselves. Because these

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Speaker 1: thirteen continental colonies in North America, they all created their

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Speaker 1: own legislatures. That's a shocking thing when you think about

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Speaker 1: it in the context of British imperial policy. They had

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Speaker 1: no business creating legislatures. There's one legislature for all British subjects,

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Speaker 1: and that's Parliament. But look, there's three thousand miles of

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Speaker 1: ocean in between London and the New World. So the

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Speaker 1: colonies invented their own ad hoc legislatures. You get to

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Speaker 1: seventeen sixty five and the decade after seventeen sixty five,

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Speaker 1: and what you really find is this Americans had created

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Speaker 1: their own world, a world which looked an awful lot

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Speaker 1: like the world described in the thought experiments of the

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Speaker 1: enlightened and political philosophers. And now suddenly the British imperial

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Speaker 1: planners in London wanted to change all the rules for

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Speaker 1: their own profit and benefit. Americans basically said, nope, We're

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Speaker 1: really not going to go along with it. You know,

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Speaker 1: many years nude after the Revolution, one of the captains

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Speaker 1: of the militia that turned out at Lexington and conquered

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Speaker 1: was interviewed by a young man who was writing a

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Speaker 1: history of the Revolution. Now this takes place in the

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Speaker 1: tens eighteen twenties, The exact date escapes me right at

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Speaker 1: the moment. But they approached this former militia captain and

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Speaker 1: they said, well, what did you go out to meet

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Speaker 1: the British? And was it for this reason? No, not that,

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Speaker 1: was it for that reason? No? Not that? Well why

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Speaker 1: did you confront the British? And he said, look, young man,

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Speaker 1: the reason we went out to fight the British was

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Speaker 1: because we had always governed ourselves, and they intended that

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Speaker 1: we shouldn't. And we had come right down to all

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Speaker 1: the history of the American Revolution. That is really the

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Speaker 1: bottom line. Americans were used to governing themselves. They really

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Speaker 1: balked at the notion that now government was going to

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Speaker 1: take place from far away, in the hands of faceless

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Speaker 1: bureaucrats in London. I mean, isn't that in a sense

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Speaker 1: it's a cultural not a political moment. Oh, it is,

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Speaker 1: it is, and in itself it is you might say,

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Speaker 1: the beginning of what we might call American exceptionalism. I mean.

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Speaker 1: George Washington recognized this at one point when he said

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Speaker 1: the timing of the founding of the American Republic was

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Speaker 1: in itself remarkable, because he said, it occurred at just

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Speaker 1: that moment when for the first time, people were beginning

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Speaker 1: to wake up to the real nature of the rights

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Speaker 1: of humanity. And Washington saw what was happening as not

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Speaker 1: just well, this is an incident in the history of

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Speaker 1: the British Empire. No, for him, this was an incident

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Speaker 1: in human history itself. When a people which had been

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Speaker 1: prepared by their own experience to think of themselves as

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Speaker 1: a people of liberty now confronted an immediate political situation,

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Speaker 1: where in fact the defense of liberty became the important consideration.

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Speaker 1: So yes, what happens with the American Revolution is really

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Speaker 1: this extraordinary conjunction of a cultural and intellectual moment with

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Speaker 1: a very specific set of political moments. There's always enemy

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Speaker 1: that the founding fathers had a particular deep belief in

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Speaker 1: the Second Amendment because they knew that had the British

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Speaker 1: head weapons and they hadn't, the revolution would have lasted

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Speaker 1: three days. Well, the Americans are really surprisingly well armed,

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Speaker 1: partly because you have most of the colonies protected by

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Speaker 1: their own militias. Very few of the colonies lacked some

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Speaker 1: kind of militia organization. And also remember in seventeen seventy

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Speaker 1: five were really not much more than a decade on

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Speaker 1: from the French and Indian wars known in Europe as

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Speaker 1: the Seven Years War, and many Americans still alive then

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Speaker 1: had been veterans of those wars. They had the weapons

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Speaker 1: of those wars, they knew how to use them. People

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Speaker 1: are often surprised that the Minutemen who turn out at Lexington,

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Speaker 1: and especially the ones who turned out it conquered. They're

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Speaker 1: often surprised. How did they manage to face down, organize

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Speaker 1: British regulars and British marines. Well answered was because many

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Speaker 1: of the militiamen had conquered had fought in the wars before.

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Speaker 1: They knew what military discipline was. They knew how to operate,

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Speaker 1: they knew how to use their weapons. So what the

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Speaker 1: British were encountering at Conquered Bridge was not just a

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Speaker 1: disorganized gaggle of farmers who were trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: which end to load their ball and powder in. They

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Speaker 1: were meeting people who were in fact quite skilled because

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Speaker 1: of their previous experience in the colonial wars, with how

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Speaker 1: to use those weapons and how to fight, and so

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Speaker 1: they did, you know, in that sense, I've always wondered

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Speaker 1: if the scale of the British victory in seventeen sixty

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Speaker 1: five wasn't sort of a genuinely mistaken thing, that they

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Speaker 1: would have been better off to have found some excuse

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Speaker 1: to have maintained some kind of French presence, because once

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Speaker 1: the French were gone, there was no reason for the

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Speaker 1: Americans to seek defense from Great Britain. I mean, there

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Speaker 1: was nobody in the neighbor or those going to threaten them. Ironically,

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Speaker 1: this is true in a sense the British were too

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Speaker 1: successful for their own good by eliminating the French threat, because, certainly,

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Speaker 1: through almost all of the eighteenth century, what is a

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Speaker 1: constant theme for the American colonists is the threat posed

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Speaker 1: by the French. The French not only in Canada, but

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Speaker 1: the French who were making aggressive incursions into the trans Appalachia,

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Speaker 1: who were acting in a way so as to contain

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Speaker 1: and create barrier fortresses along the western fringe of British settlements. Oh. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the American colonists at a healthy respect and fear of

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Speaker 1: the French. The British victory in the Seven Years War

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Speaker 1: removes that threat, and with it removes a sense of

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Speaker 1: colonial anxiety and connected with that, this is what makes

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Speaker 1: it even harder for the British. I don't mean to

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Speaker 1: say this sounding like I'm sympathizing with British policy, but

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Speaker 1: what made this harder for the British was that at

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Speaker 1: the end of the Seven Years War, Britain now has

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Speaker 1: to take responsibility for some kind of garrisoning of the

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Speaker 1: North American colonies, because all right, the French are gone,

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Speaker 1: but the Indian tribes are not. I mean once the

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Speaker 1: French pull out, that's immediately succeeded by Pontiac's conspiracy. So

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Speaker 1: there's a continuing threat that way, and Britain needs to

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Speaker 1: garrison soldiers in North America. Well, the costs of garrisoning

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Speaker 1: just seventy five hundred British soldiers in North America would

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Speaker 1: have amounted to something on the order of about two

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand pirates sterling a year. Britain was

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Speaker 1: already in debt from the Seven Years War, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it could barely meet the interest payments on that debt.

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Speaker 1: So the idea that it was going now to have

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Speaker 1: to assume responsibilities and costs for garrisoning North America that

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Speaker 1: is really staggering. The British response to it is try

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Speaker 1: to pair banks garrisoning to the least possible degree, which

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Speaker 1: of course gives an opening for disgruntled American colonists, but

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Speaker 1: it also means that the British decide that, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we should make the colonists pay the bill for this garrisoning,

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Speaker 1: which the colonists responded by saying, hey, we never did

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Speaker 1: that before, or why are we having to pay for

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Speaker 1: this now? And have you bothered to consult our colonial

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Speaker 1: legislatures for permission to do that? From those two conclusions

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Speaker 1: in the mid seventeen sixties spring all the dissensions, the disagreements,

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Speaker 1: the misunderstandings, and finally the violent confrontations that occur in

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Speaker 1: seventeen seventy five. Do you think that there is also

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Speaker 1: a degree to which, having watched the British operate, the

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Speaker 1: Americans were not as awe struck as they would have

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Speaker 1: been thirty years earlier. Well, when you consider how the

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Speaker 1: British operated in some places during the Seven Years War, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a perfectly legitimate conclusion. You might draw. One of

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Speaker 1: the most famous incidents, of course, from what we call

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Speaker 1: the French and Indian War was the expedition of General

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Speaker 1: Braddock marching into the Pennsylvania wilderness, assuming that Redcoat regulars

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Speaker 1: would easily take apart French fortifications and establish British suzerainty

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Speaker 1: over western Pennsylvania, only to find themselves ambushed and humiliated

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Speaker 1: at the hands of the French and their Indian allies. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: that would have given many American observers reason to question

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Speaker 1: British military competence, but in fact it actually doesn't get

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Speaker 1: any better. There are a number of other incidents during

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Speaker 1: the French and Indian War in which the leadership of

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Speaker 1: the British military does not exactly shine. Another major example

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Speaker 1: of this is what occurs at Fort Ticonderoga, which really

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Speaker 1: becomes a slaughter of British soldiers who are badly led

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Speaker 1: and who are put in a position just simply to

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Speaker 1: be cut down by the French defenders of Fort Ticonderoga,

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Speaker 1: like there were so many chickens in the yard. Again,

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Speaker 1: American observers of this would scratch their heads and wonder

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Speaker 1: is the British army really quite as formidable as we

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Speaker 1: think it is. There was certainly enough fodder in American

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Speaker 1: minds to raise that as a question. Do you believe

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Speaker 1: the story in trying to save Braddock that Washington actually

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Speaker 1: has two horses shot from under him and four bullet

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Speaker 1: holes in his jacket? Oh? Yes, I mean Washington was

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Speaker 1: serving at that point as colonel of the Virginia Militia.

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Speaker 1: The Virginia Militia course tagging along with General Braddock and

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Speaker 1: his British regulars, and Washington in large measure, helps to

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Speaker 1: rally and execute at least a half decent withdrawal of

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Speaker 1: that expeditionary force keep them from being entirely annihilated by

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Speaker 1: the French and their Indian allies. And Washington does put

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Speaker 1: himself at considerable risk. I mean, no one after that

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Speaker 1: could ever question the personal physical courage of George Washington.

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Speaker 1: What comes as a great disgruntlement to Washington is that,

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Speaker 1: after all that he is turned down for a commission

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Speaker 1: as an officer in the regular British Forces. One thing

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Speaker 1: that George Washington always aspired to was a military career,

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Speaker 1: and he wanted to do it as a British military officer.

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Speaker 1: And you would think, wouldn't you, that given the service

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Speaker 1: that he renders in the French and Indian War, the

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Speaker 1: British would be only too happy to commission a colonial

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Speaker 1: like him as a very good example and an encouragement

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Speaker 1: to other colonials. Instead, the British response is, we're not

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Speaker 1: commissioning people like you. You're from far far away, you're

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Speaker 1: not part of a great family in Britain, and cerly

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Speaker 1: don't have the means by which to purchase a commission

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Speaker 1: in the British Army. If you've ever read James Boswell's

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Speaker 1: Journal from the seventeen sixties, Boswell, a scott who liked Washington,

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Speaker 1: was very eager to try to obtain a commission in

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Speaker 1: one of the Guard's regiments in London. He petitioned, he badgered,

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Speaker 1: he pestered, he begged, and he got nothing for his efforts.

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Speaker 1: Despite the fact that he's strictly speaking part of the

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Speaker 1: landowning nobility of Scotland. Well, Washington was in an even

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Speaker 1: worse position. He's a colonial, he's far away, he's not

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Speaker 1: a great landowner. The British treat him with contempt. That

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Speaker 1: contempt stays in Washington's mind, and in seventeen seventy five, well,

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Speaker 1: it's George Washington who is going to take command of

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Speaker 1: Congress's new continental Army, and who is going to lead

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Speaker 1: it eventually to victory against the British. I'm sure at

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Speaker 1: some point someone in the hierarchy of the British military

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Speaker 1: must have slapped their hands against their forehead and said,

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Speaker 1: what were we thinking? We could have had him on

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Speaker 1: our side, but of course they didn't. There are such

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Speaker 1: great stories about Washington in the Revolution they bear telling

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Speaker 1: and retelling. Just to give an example. Washington was not

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Speaker 1: much of an ardor he was not much of a

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Speaker 1: public speaker. And it's a rare moment when you see

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Speaker 1: Washington in public exercising eloquence. He just was not that

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Speaker 1: kind of man. He hadn't been trained to it. When

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Speaker 1: someone asked him at one point about his education, he

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Speaker 1: described his education in one word, defective. And yet there

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Speaker 1: comes a moment, and this is the moment just before

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Speaker 1: the Battle of Trenton, when the enlistments of the Continental

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Speaker 1: Army are about to expire, and Washington has them drawn

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Speaker 1: up regiment by regiment, and he addresses them as best

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Speaker 1: he knows how, and basically what he tells them is this,

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Speaker 1: I understand that we have lost that repeatedly. I understand

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Speaker 1: that our numbers have been thinned. We are suffering. We

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Speaker 1: don't have adequate uniforms, we don't have food, and your

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00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 1: enlistments being ready to run out, you're eager to return

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Speaker 1: to your families. However, if you will stay with us

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Speaker 1: for just a month more, if you will participate in

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Speaker 1: this great plan to attack the British, to surprise the British,

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Speaker 1: you will at least have the thanks of all of

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Speaker 1: your country. Now there's an interesting moment here, because these

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Speaker 1: soldiers At first, nobody stirs, and then you see this

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Speaker 1: motion in the ranks of Washington's troops, people turning their heads,

400
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,320
Speaker 1: talking to each other, and they're saying things like, well,

401
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Speaker 1: if you go, I'll go. And finally some individuals step forward.

402
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 1: Then they step forward, by twos, by fours, by dozens.

403
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:03,919
Speaker 1: Finally the whole army steps forward. One of Washington's aids

404
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: asks him, should I take down their names, in other words,

405
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:13,439
Speaker 1: to ensure that no one deserts afterwards, and Washington says, no, no, no,

406
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Speaker 1: we may trust such men as these. It's really one

407
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Speaker 1: of Washington's great moments of eloquence in the war. I

408
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: think that he actually is the one person that probably

409
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Speaker 1: would have lost with that. He is the indispensable man.

410
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Speaker 1: There's no better word to use for George Washington this way.

411
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Speaker 1: He's indispensable because he provides leadership of such steadiness. It

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Speaker 1: does never seemed to be possible to disturb Washington, to

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Speaker 1: make him despair. I mean, despite what he might have

414
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Speaker 1: been thinking and writing privately, the public face of Washington

415
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: is always set firmly and utterly towards independence and towards victory.

416
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Speaker 1: There never seems to be a moment when he doubts

417
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Speaker 1: that this is going to happen, and he's able to

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Speaker 1: communicate that to people. He's also great for how he

419
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: recruits a wonderful group of young men around him, people

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Speaker 1: like Henry Lawrence, Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette, who

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Speaker 1: are just devoted to the man. And then there are

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Speaker 1: the decisions that he makes which are so self denying

423
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Speaker 1: that in the eighteenth century people could scarcely credit them.

424
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Speaker 1: At the end of the Revolution, George Washington is in

425
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Speaker 1: command of an army which hasn't been paid, it hasn't

426
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: been respected by the Continental Congress. There are members of

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Speaker 1: that Congress who want to march on Philadelphia and teach

428
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Speaker 1: Congress a lesson, and who knows, perhaps even make Washington

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Speaker 1: their king. And Washington, at Newburgh, New York, faces them down.

430
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Speaker 1: And not only does he face down the officers who

431
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: wanted him to take that kind of action against Congress,

432
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 1: but he actually at the end of seventeen eighty three,

433
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 1: once the peace treaty has been signed, he goes to

434
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: where Congress is meeting in Annapolis, and he turns in

435
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: his commission. He surrenders power. My goodness, knew in the

436
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. The idea that someone who had accumulated that

437
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: much credibility, that much strength, who had an army behind him,

438
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: an army that would do whatever he told him to do,

439
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: the idea that he would voluntarily surrender that power back

440
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: to the civilian government of the American Republic was just astonishing.

441
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: Nobody would have been surprised if he had decided to

442
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: pull an Oliver Cromwell at that moment. In fact, they

443
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: probably would have thought he was perfectly justified. But he doesn't.

444
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 1: He walks away from power. And it's so astonishing that

445
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 1: no one less than King George the Third says when

446
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: he hears about this, if this be true, he is

447
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: the greatest man of the age. That is the compliment

448
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: that seals, at least in my mind, the extraordinary reputation

449
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: of George Washington. It seems me that that's almost precisely

450
00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: when Washington lived. For Washington was a man of the

451
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:25,400
Speaker 1: most selfless integrity, who governed himself in the strictest fashion,

452
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 1: the strictest self discipline, the strictest self restraint. Sometimes it

453
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: was a little bit formidable. There were people who found

454
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: George Washington to be very difficult to get close to.

455
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: There is no record that I know of George Washington

456
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: telling a joke, And actually there's only one account I

457
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:51,920
Speaker 1: have ever come upon of Washington smiling or laughing, and

458
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:55,000
Speaker 1: that was at a play in New York City when

459
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 1: he was President of the United States. There was one

460
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: moment when Governor Morris, it was something of a character

461
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 1: Gouvernor Morris had a bet with Alexander Hamilton that, as

462
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: Morris said, he could get a rise out of George Washington.

463
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: So the bet went like this, Morris, Washington, and Hamilton.

464
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:20,880
Speaker 1: They're all together at a dinner and Hamilton's sitting on

465
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: one side and Gouvernor Morris was on the other. And

466
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: at one point, while the discussion and the conversation is

467
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 1: going on at the table, Morris leans back, claps Washington

468
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: on the back and says to him, and wasn't it

469
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: that way? Old boy? Washington turns and looks at him

470
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: with this death stare, like who do you think you are?

471
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: And it was a typically Washingtonian moment. He was not

472
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 1: a man that you trifled with, but when you were

473
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: in a pinch, this was an and of such unimpeachable integrity,

474
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: that there was no one you wanted more to have

475
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: on your side, and if he was on your side,

476
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 1: you didn't really need anyone else on your side. So

477
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 1: as you look forward from today and you think about

478
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: what it took to get here, what should got to

479
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: tell you? Are you an optimist? Are you a pessimist?

480
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: I look at certain circumstances and I'm a pessimist, But

481
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 1: when I look at the overall arc of American history,

482
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: I cannot help but be animist. One of the last

483
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: things that Thomas Jefferson wrote before his death in eighteen

484
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: twenty six, in a letter, he said that he believed

485
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 1: that the course of the American Republic was now so

486
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 1: set that the feeble engines of despotism could never set

487
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: it back. He believed that the example of the American

488
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: Republic had made it clear to the world that human

489
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 1: beings were not born with saddles on their back for

490
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: others their betters, so to speak, to ride booted and

491
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: spurred by the grace of God. That's hierarchy. Jefferson believed

492
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: that all through his life. Washington, also in his farewell address,

493
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: speaks a note of warning, but also speaks a note

494
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 1: of optimism and Lincoln in a generation that comes after

495
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: Washington and Jefferson. When Lincoln is born, remember Thomas Jefferson

496
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:13,800
Speaker 1: is still President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln, likewise,

497
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: believes that what the United States represents is the last

498
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: best hope of Earth, and he looks forward to a

499
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: day when, as he says at the end of his life,

500
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:29,919
Speaker 1: when the American landscape reunited after this terrible Civil War,

501
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: will bloom like the Valley of Jehosapha. They had gone

502
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 1: through crises that we have never begun to taste. But

503
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: we have seen critical moments in the life of our country.

504
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: But we've never seen anything like a civil war. We

505
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: have never seen anything like the American Revolution, and thank

506
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:57,840
Speaker 1: god we have not. If Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln could,

507
00:34:57,880 --> 00:35:02,239
Speaker 1: from out of those experiences still see that rainbow of

508
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: promise in the American experiment, then I believe that we

509
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: should see it too. And I think that in a sense,

510
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: John Adams was right when he said that American Independence

511
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: would be celebrated as the most memorable epic in the

512
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 1: history of America, and that it would be celebrated by

513
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: generation after generation as a day of deliverance. And I

514
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: think if we come to this fourth of July with questions,

515
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 1: with doubts, with fears, I think we need to look

516
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 1: to what those founders experienced and suffered and endured, and

517
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 1: yet came away with full of an optimism about the future.

518
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: As Jefferson once wrote, we place before mankind the common

519
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,879
Speaker 1: sense of the subject. I think we need to do

520
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: that again. I think we need to read that declaration again.

521
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:07,680
Speaker 1: I think we need to reappropriate that declaration again. I

522
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:11,920
Speaker 1: think we need, as Lincoln himself said, we need to

523
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: wash our garments in the blood of the revolution. We

524
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: need to be rededicated so that proposition that he described

525
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 1: at Gettysburg as being the central proposition, that all men

526
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:25,720
Speaker 1: are created equal. And if we can do that, then

527
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: as Lincoln said, we will indeed experience a new birth

528
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:34,160
Speaker 1: of freedom and government of the people by the people,

529
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: for the people will not perish from the earth on

530
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: those terms. Yes, I am an optimist. That's marvelous. It's poetry.

531
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: Thank you. So I really appreciate this, and I think

532
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: this will last a long time and influence many people.

533
00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 1: One last thing before you go out, and could you

534
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:05,440
Speaker 1: describe how fireworks displays started. Fireworks were an old British tradition.

535
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: The most splendid example of fireworks is the one for

536
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: which Handel wrote the Royal Fireworks Music. Is that right? Well,

537
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: it was the celebration of British victories in early eighteenth

538
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: century Europe, and for the celebrations of the victory Handled

539
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 1: composed music not only for the Royal barge in the Thames,

540
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:27,919
Speaker 1: but for the fireworks, and so you get the Royal

541
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: Fireworks music. So fireworks were nothing new at that point,

542
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: and for Americans to adopt an appropriate fireworks was a

543
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:38,880
Speaker 1: perfectly normal thing for people in the English speaking world.

544
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: What's interesting is how much the fireworks persist as a

545
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: way for Americans of celebrating it. Because even Lincoln in

546
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two and his eulogy for Henry Clay, he

547
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:54,360
Speaker 1: talks about the Fourth of July as an occasion for,

548
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 1: as he put it, burning firecrackers. So even up through

549
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: Lincoln's day, fireworks remain very much a part of the

550
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: scene of celebrating American independence. Of course, we still do

551
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: it today and I'm looking forward to a good fireworks

552
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:14,880
Speaker 1: celebration for this Fourth of July. Two. Thank you to

553
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 1: my guest Alan Gilsa. You can read more about the

554
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: history of Independence Day on our show page at Newtsworld

555
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: dot com. News World is produced by Gingwas three sixty

556
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 1: and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Debbie Myers, our producer

557
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:36,239
Speaker 1: is Garnsey Sloan, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The

558
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 1: artwork for the show was created by Steve bember Special

559
00:38:40,400 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: thanks to the team at Gingwish three sixty. If you've

560
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,840
Speaker 1: been enjoying newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple

561
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:51,319
Speaker 1: Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give

562
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:54,800
Speaker 1: us a review so others can learn what it's all about.

563
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of news World can sign up for

564
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 1: my three free weekly calls at Kingwish three sixty dot com.

565
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 1: Slash newsletter I'm new Gingrich this is new tweet