Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keane. Daily
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Speaker 1: as well. Russell short Of has written The Jewel of
Speaker 1: this Fourth July Revolution song, a story of American freedom.
Speaker 1: It is about six people involved in our revolutionary war,
Speaker 1: and we are thrilled we're joining Russell short Off and
Speaker 1: Brown University. Gordon Would is well. Wonderful that both of
Speaker 1: you on. Russell, let me give you first word, although
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'd like to hear from Professor Would and
Speaker 1: as well. Russell, you have six different, different different people
Speaker 1: in your book. How did you choose them? Well? First
Speaker 1: of all, thank you very much Tom for having me on.
Speaker 1: And I have to say what an honor it is
Speaker 1: to be sharing your microphone with a great Professor Would,
Speaker 1: whose work I have admired forever and I also want
Speaker 1: to just get in a quick thank you to him
Speaker 1: for doing me the honor of blurb ing the book,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure made a lot of people who otherwise
Speaker 1: wouldn't have given it the time of day. Um Uh,
Speaker 1: take a look at it, short, Short has taken the
Speaker 1: lives of six very different figures and woven them seamlessly
Speaker 1: together into an engaging, readable, and surprisingly complete account. I'll
Speaker 1: add lib here Russell of the emotion, the passion, the gore,
Speaker 1: the anger in the fragility of our American Revolution, Professor
Speaker 1: Wood says a tour to force Russell, how did you
Speaker 1: pick the six people? Um? That the whole idea was
Speaker 1: to pick people from different walks of life, because of course, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's the revolution was about everyone. And yet we
Speaker 1: tend to get the perspective of of the men in
Speaker 1: the powdered wigs. So I wanted to and their perspective
Speaker 1: is important, and I wanted to include uh them as well. Um.
Speaker 1: But I did it over a long period of time because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, unless you were one of those
Speaker 1: powdered wig people, um, it was it's difficult to find
Speaker 1: people whose lives are well documented a slave Native American.
Speaker 1: These people's lives were not, by and large well documented,
Speaker 1: So it took me a couple of years of kind
Speaker 1: of auditioning people for roles in the book. And I
Speaker 1: had to find people who were from diverse backgrounds, whose
Speaker 1: lives were well documented, who I cared about um and
Speaker 1: who you know. The trickiest part is I wanted to
Speaker 1: find people who, in some way or another cross paths
Speaker 1: with each other, so that because I care about writing
Speaker 1: narrative and I want to care about the reading experience,
Speaker 1: and I wanted it to read as as one as
Speaker 1: one narrative. Gordon would, I walked across George Washington with
Speaker 1: James Thomas Flexner of Another time and Place. You are
Speaker 1: our arch expert of the core research of the Revolution,
Speaker 1: including your work on Benjamin Franklin. I was thunderstruck early
Speaker 1: in Revolution song professor would of how fragile in what
Speaker 1: a failure George Washington was discussed that Gordon would, Why
Speaker 1: was George Washington such a failure early in the war. Well,
Speaker 1: he he was facing the greatest power in the world
Speaker 1: with a rag tag army that had very little experience.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that he did as well as he did.
Speaker 1: But uh, it's just extraordinary that he learned how to
Speaker 1: how to fight the British in the course of losing
Speaker 1: those battles. You're thinking particularly of the Battle of Long Island,
Speaker 1: which was a near disaster. Uh, and he escaped by
Speaker 1: the skin of his teeth and very lucky. Uh So
Speaker 1: he The first year of the war was terrible for
Speaker 1: the Americans, and it looked like they might just fail,
Speaker 1: but they didn't. And he uh he managed the uh
Speaker 1: the Battle of Trenton, and and that that brought back
Speaker 1: the uh, the morale of Americans at that crucial time. Russell,
Speaker 1: you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and you
Speaker 1: pull down their perfect restoration of Washington crossing the Delaware
Speaker 1: with James Monroe on the boat. It's all that you know.
Speaker 1: It's whether it's Stan Freeberg comedy or it's what we
Speaker 1: learned in school. It's not reality, is it. I mean,
Speaker 1: how did they, Russell Shorto, how did they really cross
Speaker 1: the Delaware? Uh? Well it wasn't. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: if you're you're taking the famous painting which was on
Speaker 1: the cover as as that's your reference. Um, if there
Speaker 1: are several things wrong with that painting. For one thing,
Speaker 1: they haven't as I recalled, there's an American flag that
Speaker 1: they're holding, which didn't exist yet in the painting. Um.
Speaker 1: And Uh, they were crossing at night, so if you
Speaker 1: you know, if they if you were being literal about it,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't be able to see that, to see
Speaker 1: the figures. So it was and it was actually the
Speaker 1: recrossing coming back that was the that was the surprise.
Speaker 1: I mean he that was Washington's brilliant maneuver to cross
Speaker 1: back and surprise them. Uh. And that again is one
Speaker 1: of these skin of the teeth moments where he pulls
Speaker 1: Um pulls victory out of the jaws of defeat. The
Speaker 1: fragility of the revolution, professor would was this because the
Speaker 1: politicians didn't they have their back? I mean, you are
Speaker 1: are expert and Benjamin Franklin. Do we blame the early
Speaker 1: years of the revolution on John Adams and Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: the others? Did they Did they get what was going
Speaker 1: on out in the battlefields? Oh? I think they did.
Speaker 1: I think they they What's incredible is the confidence they
Speaker 1: had that they would win. I find that, you know
Speaker 1: the fact that they were taking on the greatest power
Speaker 1: in the world with with no experience, very little military help,
Speaker 1: and and constant problems. Nonetheless, they had this confidence right
Speaker 1: from the beginning that they were going to win. In in
Speaker 1: in some sense they were right. I think the British
Speaker 1: had an almost impossible task. I know that's difficult to
Speaker 1: appreciate in the in retrospect, but I think they had
Speaker 1: an impossible task to put down rebellion three thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: We found that difficulty in Vietnam, and any nation that
Speaker 1: tries to UH to deal with it with an uprising
Speaker 1: thousands of miles away, UH has has a real has
Speaker 1: a real problem, and a British face that right from
Speaker 1: the beginning. You know, I look at this Russell, and
Speaker 1: just to finish up here and we'll come back with
Speaker 1: my colleague Pim Fox. Is what Russell? You have a
Speaker 1: scene and this is so great for those of you
Speaker 1: coast to coast. Russell Shorto takes you to Parliament where
Speaker 1: Edmund Burke and the Whigs. Basically, Russell explained to the
Speaker 1: elites of Britain, you're not going to win this thing.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the courage of the Whigs to stand
Speaker 1: up in Parliament and say to Lord North and the
Speaker 1: rest this isn't gonna work. Well, what I think is
Speaker 1: fascinating about the situation in England, and one that was
Speaker 1: one reason I wanted to have one of my six
Speaker 1: people be a British in this case the George Germain,
Speaker 1: the men who really ran the war for Britain. Is
Speaker 1: that then you get the sense of how divided Britten was.
Speaker 1: The leadership was where you had a lot of Whigs
Speaker 1: in Parliament basically saying, wait a second, we invented this
Speaker 1: Enlightenment stuff and now they're using it against us and
Speaker 1: guess what they're right? So, uh, you know, when you
Speaker 1: have that kind of almost split personality among the British Parliament,
Speaker 1: that adds to the difficulties in England. Faith to professor
Speaker 1: would if I could, first, Gordon, would you invented and
Speaker 1: demanded with great courage in the sixties that we go
Speaker 1: back to the original research of the revolution, take us
Speaker 1: back there to what it was like to actually go
Speaker 1: into the actual documents and archives of the revolution that
Speaker 1: have been forgotten by so many scholars. Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that it's been forgotten, because it is the most
Speaker 1: important event in American history. Your bar none, uh and
Speaker 1: not only legally created the United States the Revolution, but
Speaker 1: it infused into our culture almost everything we believe in
Speaker 1: our highest inspirations at noblest ideals. So the Revolution has
Speaker 1: always been um an important event for Americans. And even
Speaker 1: though we may think of July four just a time
Speaker 1: to have a barbecue, we should not forget that this
Speaker 1: is the most important day in the history of the
Speaker 1: United States, and since the United States has become the
Speaker 1: greatest power of the world has ever known, it's probably
Speaker 1: not only important day for us, but maybe important day
Speaker 1: for the world as well. Kim Well, I just would
Speaker 1: like to put to both of these scholars the question
Speaker 1: that you know, we study the Revolution, we praise the revolution.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we've learned from the revolution, because we
Speaker 1: always seem to be, at least in modern times, not
Speaker 1: necessarily on the side of other revolutionary movements around the world.
Speaker 1: And I believe your referenced Vietnam just a moment ago.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if you can each give us your
Speaker 1: thoughts about whether there's a contradiction in the way that
Speaker 1: we look at the revolution and apply it to our
Speaker 1: current situation in the world. Professor Gordon Well, I think
Speaker 1: that we have become since, especially since nineteen forty, a
Speaker 1: status quo power that is trying to maintain the order
Speaker 1: in the world. So we're not looking for revolutions. Although
Speaker 1: we were very supportive of the Arab Spring, perhaps prematurely
Speaker 1: since it didn't amount too much. Uh. It was it
Speaker 1: was a fear of communism in in ninety that led
Speaker 1: us into career and then into Vietnam. The fear that
Speaker 1: the Communist Revolution, which was a rival to our own
Speaker 1: ideological rival to our own that that we feared that
Speaker 1: they might be taking over the world. Now we're no
Speaker 1: longer fearing that kind of that kind of threat, but
Speaker 1: we're worried about terrorism and and disturbances elsewhere. So we
Speaker 1: are in that sense as status quo power, trying to
Speaker 1: maintain the order in the world. Russell short of your thoughts, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the fact that we thought a revolution doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that we should support every revolution. The revolution was fought
Speaker 1: over UH, certain beliefs and ideals about individuals and individual
Speaker 1: liberty and therefore society that in a government that would
Speaker 1: maintain those uh. And that goes back to into the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, that that building wave of awareness and the
Speaker 1: American Revolution in the late seventeen hundreds was that was
Speaker 1: a great explosion or of of a feeling and of
Speaker 1: collective will in that regard. Uh And ever since then,
Speaker 1: I think we've been trying to make good on it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the revolution was h was about certain things,
Speaker 1: and it succeeded and it failed in in in making
Speaker 1: those freedoms possible. And ever since then we've been trying
Speaker 1: to make good on it. So we have the fight
Speaker 1: over slavery, the fights over civil rights. I think that's
Speaker 1: why I am said early in my book that I
Speaker 1: think the revolution, the American Revolution is is ongoing and
Speaker 1: we're still fighting the granularity. Russell Shorter of your book
Speaker 1: of the Six People. In your book, whether it is
Speaker 1: an Indian spanning the Seneca of western New York over
Speaker 1: to the Mohawk and the Eastern New York and how
Speaker 1: they go back and forth of the British is profoundly
Speaker 1: focused on a black man on the Islands of New
Speaker 1: York who ends up in Connecticut. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about his path from Africa and how he became
Speaker 1: free and independent. Yeah, he was born brotier Furo in
Speaker 1: West Africa and his village was invaded by an African army,
Speaker 1: and they took him prisoner and took him to the
Speaker 1: coast and sold him into slavery to a ship that
Speaker 1: happened to be from Newport, Rhode Island. So he ended
Speaker 1: up having living out his life in New York end
Speaker 1: in Connecticut, and um and uh that he became. His
Speaker 1: name was changed to Venture Smith and UM. It's a
Speaker 1: remarkable story because, for one thing, his story is fairly complete, uh,
Speaker 1: going back to the problem of sources, um, from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, and it is this continual search for freedom
Speaker 1: for himself. Un once he's enslaved, he does everything he
Speaker 1: can to work for freedom and for himself and his
Speaker 1: family eventually buys himself out and his family out of slavery.
Speaker 1: But it's transpiring against the backdrop of the American fight
Speaker 1: for freedom with within this Gordon Wood is when we
Speaker 1: walked away from the revolutionary ward James McGregor burns the
Speaker 1: giant of Williams College marks that day where Jefferson and
Speaker 1: Adams died. But did it happen before that? When did
Speaker 1: we move on from Russell Shorto's revolution song? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: I think from the very moment that the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 1: I think it marked a major turning point, not only
Speaker 1: in the U s history, but in the history of
Speaker 1: the world. We have to understand and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a problem for us today because we look back
Speaker 1: and these founding fathers, many of whom were slaveholders. Slavery
Speaker 1: existed at the time of the Revolution, and it seems
Speaker 1: embarrassing that they didn't do anything about it. But I
Speaker 1: think we have to get the context correct. Until the Revolution,
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, slavery was largely taken for granted by
Speaker 1: the world. It existed for thousands of years, went back
Speaker 1: to antiquity, and now it becomes a problem. It coincides
Speaker 1: with the American Revolution. The first anti slavery convention in
Speaker 1: the history of the world is held in Philadelphia in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy five. That's not a coincidence. So we have
Speaker 1: to understand that the American Revolution coincided the questioning of
Speaker 1: slavery and the opposition to slavery. Now, it takes a
Speaker 1: civil war for us to eliminate slavery, but certainly the Revolution,
Speaker 1: as Lincoln understood better than anyone, it was the revolution
Speaker 1: that lay behind the Civil War and the and the
Speaker 1: and the inconsistency of slavery. Uh, it's incompatibility with American values.
Speaker 1: Russell one final question on revolution song. Bloomberg will celebrate
Speaker 1: the fourth of July and the shores of the Charles
Speaker 1: River up in Boston. And one of the great hallmarks
Speaker 1: of your book is the distance from Boston to New York.
Speaker 1: There was a cultural divide. It wasn't the Hudson River.
Speaker 1: I'll let you decide. Maybe it was the Connecticut River.
Speaker 1: But but it was amazing the distance of New England
Speaker 1: from the rest of the country in the time of
Speaker 1: your book. Well, that was the speaking of the Hudson River.
Speaker 1: That was the British initial British strategy was if you
Speaker 1: take control of the Hudson River, then you are They
Speaker 1: thought that New England was the hotbed of the rebellion
Speaker 1: and that that would sort of cut New England off
Speaker 1: from the rest of the colonies. So there was that
Speaker 1: that sense, But there was also I think a different
Speaker 1: sensibility in New England and in New York, and I
Speaker 1: think New York that goes back to the Dutch period.
Speaker 1: New York was always there. He gets his second book
Speaker 1: in there, see how he's Russell's Russell selling both Russell
Speaker 1: selling both books today. Professor would if if we're selling
Speaker 1: books that I I would like to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to Professor Wood's latest book as well, Friends Divided,
Speaker 1: which all the period of the revolution uh in a
Speaker 1: biographic and it's in Goodwill Hunting. I'll let you know
Speaker 1: it is. You should watch that movie and check out
Speaker 1: and find those moments when they speak about Professor Woods.
Speaker 1: We will do that. Gordon would thank you so much
Speaker 1: from Brown University into Russell Short. Thank you. It is
Speaker 1: always I can't say enough folks about Revolution Song, a
Speaker 1: story of American Freedom. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tom Keene before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide.
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