Welcome back to part two of Alexander Hamilton. In the last episode, we talked quite a bit about the absurdity of the sitting vice president dueling, the former secretary of the treasury. And how after his unfortunate upbringing and indiscretions hamilton was never going to be president. In this next episode, Hamilton is going to convince me that the bill of rights is a bad thing. . He is persuasive.
He'll also explain how Jefferson was a terrible person and a coward, but not a bad president at all. And he'll explain why those who called Hamilton a mushroom gentlemen. We're right. And then I mentioned my speech of the 18th. There are those who question my motivation because in that speech on the 18th of June, I went on, as I say, for some five hours explaining why we needed an even stronger plan, an even stronger central government.
I called in that speech for a president for life, senators appointed by the president for life, and a few other incredibly strong central government notions, one of which came within a single vote of being put into Constitution, which would have allowed a vote of the federal Congress to nullify any act by any state government.
And I think perhaps from your perspective, looking back, you can imagine times when had a state action been able to be nullified, the peace of the nation might have been protected. But in my speech, as I say, I talked about an incredibly strong central government, which caused some to say that I was a monarchist and a militarist. Others, perhaps more savvy.
suggested that what I was doing by creating a pattern far to the right of the Virginia plan was to suddenly make the Virginia plan appear as the , middle position Between the New Jersey plan and my speech. I agree. You can decide , whether I was clever enough in my politics to have done that. . So this was a negotiating tactic that you were using. Well, I certainly believed in a strong central government, stronger than we saw.
In the Virginia plan, I would ultimately say of the Constitution, there was a thing of milk and water, a frail and worthless fabric. I spent my life propping up, but that was in recent days as my life has descended into darkness. But I will say this it did work as a negotiatory document in making the Virginia plan appear a reasonable middle. Whether that was my intention all along, I shall keep to myself. , I'm backstepping a little bit. What did General Washington think of Aaron Burr?
He, General Washington despised Colonel Burr because he lacked honor. I mentioned he opened the letters of the General. Yeah, what's up with that? You would have to ask Colonel Burr. I remind you, I will repeat my earlier evaluation that he is for or against nothing but suits his interest or ambition. If there is an embryo seizure in America, tis Burr. I'll say this, he and I oddly worked together well on a number of things. He was a brilliant man, and we worked together on many law cases.
But he was without the fundamental principles of honor that must exist in a chief magistrate. Which is why you can imagine what, how we, in my day, I would say we dodged a bullet in the case of Colonel Burr not being successful in getting himself appointed over Jefferson as the president. When a person is without honor, there is almost no limit to what they might find reasonable.
It seems that at that time, when there's gotta be spies running around everywhere, if somebody catches Aaron Burr snooping through General Washington's private correspondence, they've gotta ask, is this man a spy? Even beyond honor, am I wrong? Well, you certainly would wonder. There were a number of spies. I was involved to some degree with the spy networks. They were important.
I will say this, it pains me to say something nice about Colonel Burr, but I don't think the expectation was, would have been that he was a spy given his length of service, but rather that he was simply a fully corrupt and dishonorable man. Looking for his own interests and not a foreign nation's. Okay. , so we were talking about the Articles of Confederation.
So, if you go through the timeline of the United States, you've got the Declaration of Independence which says, hey, we're doing our own thing now, thank you anyhow to the English. And then we've got the Articles of Confederation, which is basically a kind of a watered down constitution that focuses more on the states rather than the country as a whole. . Yes, that, that was the first governing document of this nation was in fact the Articles of Confederation.
So then what happens, that is way too weak and now that it's time to make the constitution. And the first ten, Articles of the Constitution are considered the Bill of Rights. No, the First Ten Amendments. Oh, the First Ten Amendments. Yeah, the First Ten Amendments. Were you against the Bill of Rights? Yes, I'm against the Bill of Rights for a couple of reasons. The Bill of Rights are a political compromise. The Anti Federalists, the Anti Constitutions, those who oppose ratification.
At the various state conventions they wanted to be rid of this, and they argued that, in part, that the Constitution did not protect individual rights. Well, that's nonsense. As I said in Federalist 84, The Constitution is, to every reasonable virtue and every practical effect, a bill of rights. There are some 27 different, if I recall correctly, specific rights guaranteed.
No titles of nobility, no working corruption of the blood, no, a variety of other specific protections that are in there that we felt were important. So first, there were a lot of protected rights in the body of the Constitution. So second, there are two tremendous dangers. The first is that by specifically saying what a right is, you will potentially give a future demagogic leader a chance to say what the right is not.
The First Amendment that is so often listed as being so important talks about freedom of speech. Now clearly they're talking about political speech, but it simply says freedom of speech. Now, let us say that in your day, some demagogue was elected who believed and said it does not protect freedom of song. It does not prevent freedom of play, that is to say a theatrical production or any other entertainment machine in your day.
Therefore, I as the executive can restrict freedom of speech in those areas. But of course, for your political speaking out loud, you can say whatever you want. There's a danger that when you list rights, you are listing the only rights that will later exist. And as the nation grows and hopefully becomes an industrialized nation, it will in fact need flexibility in the constitution as a living document to be able to grow successfully, to not be tied down by.
18th century notion of what, say, commerce is. And the other danger is that the individual rights themselves may become unimportant or tedious or worse, counterproductive. In my day, very few people worry About the third amendment, that is to say that troops would be quartered in their homes against their will, that is simply not something that is a concern.
The second amendment seems an odd thing indeed because virtually everyone in the country has a weapon to deal with getting food and protecting themselves. It seems an odd thing to put in there , and there were actually In Mr. Madison's original, there were 12, not 10, but 12 proposed amendments.
The 11th potentially would have been to restrict pay raises for elected members of the house and Senate and the presidency until If they vote for a pay raise, an election has to take place before the pay raise kicks in. And then the other one proposed to limit the size of the standing army to 5, 000 members. And this is one of the two times that General Washington spoke.
He rose from his chair and said, I will agree to this restriction on the standing army, as long as the constitution also prohibits any invading army from being over 5, 000. At this point. Was taken, and that was dropped. The 11th, I'm not sure what, in my day, is still hanging out there. But these built in rights I accept it as a necessary, if unneeded, mechanism by which to get the Anti Federalists to support the Constitution. Gosh, that is hilarious what General Washington said.
It kind of reminds me, in our time, I had heard somebody on one of the borders, of the United States, they were talking about building a 20 foot tall wall to prevent people coming in that weren't supposed to be here. And somebody said, well, you If you build a 20 foot wall, you think that's going to do a lot, but the main thing it's going to do is it's just going to create an industry of 25 foot ladders and which is exactly what General Washington was saying, speaking of let me ask you this.
Why? Why would you be walling off America when? Every single American, save the natives that were here, are in fact immigrants, or trace their lineage to immigrants. It seemed enormously foolish to wall off a nation from potential tools of talent. It it does, no, it does seem like you'd want the talent in here, but weren't you talking about just a little bit ago, I think you were saying, to prevent people from coming into the country without paying their proper taxes and so forth.
Well, I'm referring to criminals attempting to sneak in and sell goods. I'm not talking about shiploads of hopeful people arriving from Europe. We definitely do not want criminals able to bring their items to port and evade paying taxes. Understand that as of this day, roughly 95 percent of the budget of the state of New York comes from tariffs from the port of New York. And if a mechanism was established that allowed them to simply drop anchor.
In Maine, and bring their goods down that way without passing through New York or paying their tariffs, it'd be very difficult for New York to continue. So it is important to have a revenue service in ships at sea in her coastal waters to make it difficult, if not impossible for criminals to enter the nation illegally to sell their ill gotten goods. But these revenue service vehicles, ships and such will not be seeking out folks trying to come here from our original lands.
Yeah, I think that's Because we need immigrants.. If we're to have a continental nation that spans this continent, we're certainly going to need more people.
Yeah, no, I actually agree with you and I think when people talk when people are for this giant wall Which I just don't think it solves anything because again somebody just makes a bigger ladder or a way to go under it But I think that their thinking is that the wall would probably have a gate somewhere so that the criminals would be on One side and the people that we could benefit the country could come in very much like you would you might patrol the ports But again, I don't think
that That is the way to go, probably. But let me go back to, it seems like you have a strong position to avoid foreign entanglements. When I first read that, it seemed like it was in conflict with your desire to also make us a country that is involved with all these other countries through commerce and so forth. But there was a time where you wanted nothing to do with the French during the revolution and Right after they had helped us. And that was a little confusing to me.
What's the thinking on all of that? Well, allow me to clarify. I probably could clarify in less than an hour, so I shall begin now. The key word that is missing from your analysis is permanent for an entanglement. If you look at what I wrote for the general for his second farewell address, he talks about avoiding permanent. And those are my words.
The idea being, and you mentioned the French, we had a treaty of enmity with Louis XVI, and then when the French Revolution came along, the government changed, and Louis XVI became much shorter and much less able to function, as he was guillotined. Right. The government that took over in France was not the government with which we had made the treaty.
Right. And when France then began rattling sabers after this horrible horrible revolution, you, I understand, I know that you know about the guillotine, but you also probably know that at the city of Nice, they simply chained 2, 500 of these so called aristocrats together, sent them on a raft to the middle of the river, and sank the raft, drowning these people by the thousands. Gee. This was the horrible. It's a monstrous thing.
And Jefferson, because he was the ambassador to France, he was there, he actually would, in his carriage, see protests stop, allow him to pass, and then the fighting would restart because of the respect they had for Jefferson as the author of the Article of Declaration of Independence, which is a brilliant piece of work, I will admit.
But Jefferson wrote, , and I paraphrase, forgive me, if at the end of the revolution there is but one French man and one French woman alive, but they are free, it will have been worth it. And I will say that this is the kind of bloodthirsty talk one sees from someone who has not seen war. And Mr. Jefferson was governor of Virginia when the British invaded. He noted his turn, his power. His tenure had ended, , he decamped, he immediately left for Carter Mountain.
He saw not a single day in uniform and does not understand military things. In fact, he disdains them as useless wastes of money. But, I understood. That in 1798, we began having this quasi war, what we call the quasi war with the French, because we had now made friends again with Britain, and the French were no longer the French we had dealt with. And Jefferson and Madison and others were shouting to the rafters, , we have a treaty with France saying if they go to war, we'll come on their side.
. This was a foolish idea for a couple of reasons. First, as I mentioned, the government we had dealt with were all dead. And the other is that we as a country. Much to Mr. Jefferson's chagrin. We as a country, for all of its faults, for all of its impositions, align far better with Britain than with France. We are a nation of English influence, far more than France. France in our customs, in our trade, in our governance, in our economics. And so to take up arms against Britain would be foolish.
Now, in this quasi war as the French became more and more hysterically, it was not entirely clear if the French would invade the United States our lands. And so then President Adams, who, as I say, despised me, but was now president realized we needed to raise an army to deter the French from invading. He went, of course, to that first and greatest of all Americans, General Washington, And asked him to become commander of a new United States army. Now, Washington agreed, but with two conditions.
First, he would only take the field if a foreign invading army actually landed on our shores. But until then, his second condition was that I, Hamilton, would be the day to day commander of all U. S. military forces. And so recognizing he had to have Washington on board, Adams reluctantly agreed. And I became the commander of U. S. forces. I raised an army of roughly 12, 000. There was marching mobility. There were marching in ranks.
Training went on to a great degree to create a standing army, which I've always believed in, of such power that the French would not dare to invade. And ultimately they did not. But you can chafed Mr. Adams to have to appoint me commander of all military forces. I became a major general, the title I go by to this day. And we detered the French. Is Washington, General Washington, is he just made of courage?
Because when he says that I'm only going to take the field if they invade the land and there's soldiers actually on American soil, there is no question in my mind, no matter how old he was, that he is on a horse with a sword in his hand, , leading the men. ? Well, let me tell you a couple of notions of the general to give you a sense of that. Yes. He is a man of tremendous courage, but recall, please.
When he was a British subject in the French and Indian wars, his commands were disasters unfortunately. , leave it to you to read the history of that, and the general learned a great deal from those military shortcomings. He learned, for example, that we as a tiny nation with a tiny army, Cannot take on the open field, the most powerful military the world has ever seen in the form of the British. But he understood we could nip at their heels.
, the general was engaged in roughly nine major battles. He clearly won only three of them, New York Princeton and of course, Yorktown. But in the others, he inflicted such losses that the British became unwilling to sustain the war effort. So he was brilliant in that manner. He was also unbelievably brave as a person.
At the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, early on in the war, General Charles Lee, one of our terrible generals, was attempting to command a group of American soldiers in their battle against the British, and he was incompetent, and the British advanced, the lines fell apart, the men retreated, and General Washington and I rode on to the battlefield to see General Lee and his men running from the field.
And we came up to the general, and he said to General Washington, Your men sure they will not fight. And Washington said, you goddamn Paltroon, which means coward, you goddamn Paltroon, you have not tested them. And he and I then rode directly into the British battle and rallied the day, achieved essentially a tie as opposed to a horrible defeat. But in that battle, two buttons were shot off of General Washington's coat.
Can you imagine our nation's history if a single British soldier had aimed A couple of inches to the other side and taken down General Washington, who was leading from the front, sword in hand, in battle. As I mentioned earlier, without Washington, We are all Canadians. The man is, , his effort is mythical. It really is. It's hard to believe, and , you can imagine what the myth of Washington would be like, , all these years later. He just seems superhuman.
He seems like, , he's 20 feet tall, and I, like that wall, right? You could just step over it. He's 20 feet tall. I would argue that he is more interesting as a man to know him as the man with his foibles, his swearing and blaspheming, his yelling at me from the top of the stairs. , in hindsight, now that he and I are completely reconciled, it was a remarkable moment, but it showed the humanity of a great man.
And this was not some mechanical man who you wound a key in his back and he strode his way toward American victory. Thank you. This was an amazing human being, unlike any other, a man who had been the greatest horseman in Virginia, a man in his youth who could crush a walnut between his thumb and first finger. He was that massively strong. , he stood six foot two in an era when most men were five age or smaller.
So he was, This incredible figure of a man who understood his power and used it for the greater good. And when the time came again as Cincinnati's before him resigned absolute power to promote the rule of the people. Speaking of war, it seems like you always wanted to be in the battles. You have all this other intellectual talent, and yet you always wanted to be , in the battle. And what is that? Why risk your life , and be willing to risk your life so often?
As I mentioned before, when one has only a sense of honor cannot rely on his upbringing, cannot rely, he knows that horrible things will be said about his mother, a saintly woman who died you know. When I was young an absent father who was but a kind man, the kinds of horrible things that would be said about me the honor was all I had. And for someone in my situation, as I mentioned earlier, the military was really the only route toward greatness. I was never going to be in commerce.
I could become a rich man like a John Hancock, but I wouldn't become a national leader. I really wanted to achieve and through military service was vital. And it is only by showing your bravery in the face of the enemy that you demonstrate your true commitment to these notions of what America can be and hopefully is in your day. I would hope that all American men would feel that if a war for America's survival was on the horizon. We would see them all leap to arms.
One time I had read in something, and I actually don't know who said this. It almost sounds like John Adams. And they had referred to you as a mushroom gentleman. And that is basically sprouting out of nowhere, a shot at you. Coming from nowhere and not being born a gentleman. Have you ever heard that phrase?
Yes, and it's true I mean it is an accurate reflection of their view of me In that to be a gentleman Not only do you have to have the intellect and the wit and the bravery But you have to have the family background which I was never going to have and as we discussed earlier Which would always have prevented me from becoming president, but men like washington understood , forgive me for I flatter myself, the remarkable capabilities that I had.
And I think Mr. Jefferson referred to me as the Colossus and, , others have referred to me in other ways in terms of being this massive force of the day. And it is true. As I said earlier, Washington took my advice over the Virginians on every occasion. I created an economic system. I played a vital role in your legal system. The first case involving the notion of what would become judicial review.
And so, yes, I was a critically important person in the founding, which I find myself as remarkable given what I had to overcome, but I'm sure in the history from my day to yours, you can think of other individuals who've had to overcome horrific upbringings and have achieved greatness and perhaps tragically, if you cannot wondering about what might have been for those gentlemen. Well, certainly there have been many, but , your reputation here is sterling.
In fact, using that word sterling, you'd probably like to know that your name, your face is on our money now. And I'm curious, if you were going to have your face on one of our dollar bills, whether it was a one or a five or a ten or a twenty or a hundred, which would you prefer? Which one would be appropriate? Well, how high do they go, sir? Just to a hundred. Ah, well, whatever, I would say this, whatever bill is the most important in your day should have the general's picture on it.
And I will say this one of my less modest moments, I quoted the French finance minister, Laguerre, who had said that if the king is made in the image of God, it must be the minister of finance who most next closely appropriates that image. I do not believe that I am divinely inspired in my looks, but I would say that if Mr. Jefferson is on the most important bill perhaps I can take some solace in being on the second most important bill recognizing my role.
You just said Mr. Jefferson being on the most important bill. I think you meant Washington. Oh I did indeed. I mean Mr. Washington. I apologize for that horrible misstatement. I suspect that in your day, Mr. Jefferson having been the president he has been and I will point this out interestingly enough, he's probably on your dollar bill as well.
However, Mr. Jefferson as president so far has been a federalist president, not If you look at what he has actually done, and I will put forward the Louisiana Treaty as the most remarkable example. In every case that a decision has been put forward that he must do, he has taken a federalist position. I'm sure it galls him enormously, but he's smart enough to recognize the importance of it. For example he believes that you can't do anything that's not listed in the Constitution.
I believe that the Constitution is a document which lives, and as times change, interpretations may change as well. And so, for example, on the Louisiana Purchase, now, in my view, for the dollars that Mr. Jefferson gave to the dictator Napoleon, he could have raised an army of 25, 000 and provisioned it for 25 years, and we could have taken what he calls the Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon was not there, he could not defend it, he could not exploit it, he could not use it.
It was his name only and we simply should have taken it. And I wrote this at the time and said, we should further them to a filibuster into Florida and kick the Spanish out of Florida. It is our continent. When Mr. Jefferson declined that and decided to pay the dictator the money, I did support the action and I supported his sending of Lewis and Clark off to see what they could make of it. Fundamentally, Mr. Jefferson did not have the power in his mind.
to sign a treaty paying a foreign dictator for a section of what he would make the United States. And he proposed two different constitutional amendments to his friend James Madison, who had been my friend before he flipped sides and became a Jefferson lackey. He turned to Madison and Madison said, Are you mad? In the time it will take to pass these amendments, Napoleon will change his mind. Take the deal, which he did.
And Congress passed essentially a law authorizing it and Mr. Jefferson with a stroke of his pen doubled the size of America. He did it the wrong way, but he did it in a way that ultimately worked out adequately and without an amendment to the Constitution. Imagine how much it must have galled Mr. Jefferson to take the Hamiltonian, the Washingtonian position of using a law from Congress to give himself a power he did not believe he had.
But a president, as I wrote in the federalist papers, a president must be able to act with secrecy, energy, and dispatch. In other words, he must be able to do secret negotiations. He must be able to do them energetically with that means with force and a force of military necessary and dispatch meaning speed. We cannot wait for a Congress to pass a bill to do everything we need to do. The president must have certain secrets energetic, energetic.
When you're talking about him as a president and going the Federalist way, he would have been considered a Republican prior to being president, but you're saying that once he became president, maybe saw a little less of his theory of how things should work and saw how they were actually working and acted a little bit more in concert with maybe what the Federalists, which would be the group that you would be involved with. Is that right? Yeah. That is correct.
He was a democratic Republican as he was called at the time which is the mismatch of a number of things, but the federalist notion of which Mr, obviously Mr. Washington, Mr. Adams were the only truly federalist presidents, but every my life has, what they may have pronounced as being a democratic Republican, renouncing federal power demanding more state power. They have all been put to task as president.
Enforced to use the energy secrecy and dispatch of a president of great power from a federalist perspective. It happens again and again with treaties, with negotiations, with actions of federal government, simply pointing out that we were correct, that a strong central government with states reduced in their power. Is vital to the nation surviving in the long term.
It is a tricky balance because when you give them that power, it's very easy for somebody to say, okay, I'm all powerful and then you end up with a monarch again, or, , a bad situation that we just got out of, not if you have the appropriate checks and balances as they were called in my day in that you have. In the document, I assume you have read all 85 of the Federalist Papers recently, re read them? Not recently, no. But I have read some of them.
Okay, well, I assume that your evening reading will consist of , the eighty five volumes of the Feralist Papers to be here on out until you've completely interpreted them again. But they are very clear, and there were three authors, mr. J wrote Foreign Entanglements. , and he stopped after about six because of an illness involving gout and some other illnesses. He was not a healthy man.
Mr. Madison, having received literally barrels full of books from Jefferson in France on previous government, from the Romans and the Greeks on, Mr. Madison wrote about the It's a fundamental historical basis by which we make our decisions on writing what's in the Constitution.
And I wrote the practical notion, looking at every section of the Constitution and what it really means, which is why I wrote on the Electoral College, I wrote on what the various departments would do, I wrote on voting, a number of different things. So I wrote the practical lessons on how it will function under the Articles of Administration.
And in fact, at the ratification at Poughkeepsie one of Mr. McClay, one of the anti federalists stood up and said Hamilton must think it's the divine guidance because he quotes it so much, because I quoted my own writings, which I did. Those federalist papers clearly lay out how a nation can survive In the long term by having a constitution that can and will and must adapt with the days as they pass.
. So the purpose of the Federalist papers was basically to make the Constitution palatable to the masses. It. To say it even more roughly the Federalist Papers were political propaganda published twice weekly in a number of newspapers. And it's exactly as you said, to explain to people why the Constitution was a good thing.
And for example in Federalist 51 Mr. Madison, although I will admit that the night a couple of nights ago I was at my friend a friend of mine's home and I wrote It is a volume of plenty, what, who wrote what, and I took credit for 51, but I will admit now that my judgment was probably spotty. Madison wrote Federalist 51, in which he explained, brilliantly, that the people were wrong when they thought a small republic, what Jefferson would call a ward republic, would best protect their liberty.
In fact, Madison in 51 argues why, , a large republic is vital. He said, essentially, that the only way to get rid of factions, be they political parties or other factions, the only way to be rid of them is either to have everyone believe the same thing, Or, to utterly repress them so much that you crush all free speech, which is anathema to the principles of the Constitution. So he said what we must satisfy ourselves with is mitigating the impact of faction.
And he said the way we do this is by not having a small republic, but by having a large republic in which there are so many factions that they will all argue with each other and no one faction will be able to achieve permanent supremacy, suppressing all the others. Over the years, they will battle and they will fight. Their power will come and go, will ebb. But the idea being that we need more faction, not less, given that we cannot be rid of it. And this is brilliant and accurate.
He said in 51, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. But men are not angels. And so a constitution like ours is vital to protect your rights. And most importantly, to protect the rights of those who at that moment, So would you say then that the way that America is set up where the political factions are constantly fighting each other, are you saying that is not a problem? It's a feature? It is precisely what we hoped for.
Because in your day, I will ask you this, do you have situations where your various political factions fight and have to compromise? Absolutely. Then we were correct, sir. That's fantastic. Which of the Founding Fathers is the weakest? Oh, that is an unkind question, sir. . I will answer the question because I am not shy. But you, sir, are what we would call a puppy. We're answering it. Puppy being one of the several terms that could cause one to come into an affair of honor.
In terms of physical weakness, Mr. Madison, Mr. Madison was perhaps five feet tall. He, I believe he claims to be five foot two. That is a kindness I will award him. He is slight of figure and coughs into a handkerchief with some regularity. He has been ill and weak his entire life. I'm surprised he has made it to the age he is today. Burr was not weak intellectually, but he was weak morally. Mr. Adams presents a very difficult conundrum.
Let me ask you this, in your day, Is Mr. Adams forgotten or is he highly respected? He's a complicated man because I think he's definitely respected because people certainly respect him for being the second president. But, he seems like a man who speaks very loudly with a lot of energy and is extremely forceful. I think , well let me say it this way. Mr. Adams is an American hero in some regard.
His defense of the British soldiers at the Boston, Massacre demonstrates his commitment to what is right rather than what is convenient. That said he was a petty little man. And he assumed that given that Washington was afforded two terms, he too would be afforded two terms, as a matter of courtesy. And when Mr. Jefferson stood against him, and ultimately won the election of 1800 uh, Adams was greatly saddened by that, he did not attend Mr. Jefferson's inauguration
. Now, I will say this, he lived life of honor primarily, but he could be astonishingly petty. He was the man who spent the first three weeks of the first Washington administration as president of the Senate, which is the vice president's only true role. The first three weeks were spent deciding by what title Mr. Adams should be called in his role.
Should he be called some of the examples would be his excellency, the president of the Senate, his excellency, the vice president, the United States and president of the Senate, his most exquisite excellency, the vice president of the United States, it went on for three weeks as he sat there as they debated by what term he should be called. This is not what a vice president should do.
But his treaty with the uh, Pasha of Tripoli as president was an honorable thing, understanding our role internationally. He did many honorable things. So he is a difficult one. I certainly think he is intelligent. You asked about the weakest. Mr. Adams may have been second only to me. in terms of comments made that turned out to be self destructive. . So you think you had more of those destructive comments? Well, I published two of them. That's true.
The first was the Reynolds pamphlet, after which Mr. Adams in fact declared that my political career was over, and he was essentially correct. And the second was in the election of 1800, when Mr. Adams stood against Mr. Jefferson, I wrote a pamphlet it was titled a letter from Alexander Hamilton concerning the public conduct and character of John Adams Esquire, President of the United States. Now it was some 50 pages long. It's shortly over 50 pages.
The first 49 pages were attacks on John Adams, and his personality, and his capability, and his intellect. Then there were three pages defending myself, and the final four paragraphs stated that nonetheless, I do not wish to deny Mr. Adams any electoral votes. So, 49 pages of , anti Adams rants, three pages of station keeping, and four paragraphs of, nevertheless, you should probably vote for Adams. You can imagine the response to that.
Yeah. This was, the second great publishing stupidity of mine, but again, my sense of honor required it, even though it did devastating damage to my potential in the future. We've almost said nothing at all about slavery. And very early it seems that you had a strong position against that. Is that right? Yeah, I did. Well, more radically than you might think. , I grew up on an island with some 600 whites and 15, 000 enslaved Africans. Wow. And I grew up from that date with a visceral hatred.
An absolute loathing of the institution of slavery. But I will say this, I am careful in my criticisms of Mr. Jefferson and others on slavery. , during the Revolutionary War, the British Army offered the enslaved Africans in this country a pretty good deal. They said, run away from your masters, fight for us, and when the war is over, we will free you. The British Prime Minister at the time said of Americans, those who yelp most for liberty are the drivers of Negro slaves.
So this was a difficult thing, and I then wrote a letter to John, my friend John Lawrence and others, in which I said something truly radical for the time, in support of the argument that had been put forward, free the slaves, have them fight for us, And they can be free when the war's over. And I argued in this letter, and I paraphrase, a radical notion.
Not only did I argue that they were people and should be free, I, in this letter, I argued that I believe their faculties and facilities to be the equal of ours. And any difference of opinion is a function of our education and not their inhatability. I argued for the intellectual equality of Negro slaves, which, as you can imagine, was truly radical. There were others who were abolitionists besides myself. Abolitionists meaning someone who believed in the getting rid of slavery.
Mr. Jefferson, I believe in his heart, was an abolitionist. He was born into a situation where his first memory is being carried on a silken pillow by a slave woman. He's just writing the Declaration of Independence. Enslaved people are bringing him his lunch. And he once wrote of slavery, it is like holding a wolf by the ears. You cannot hold on, but you dare not let go.
And I would ask you, sir, with your wisdom of your day, if you come back to my day, a day in which there are enslaved Africans by the millions, do you, from your enlightened future, Have the words that can fix it, that can end it. , unfortunately, , no . And that is why the constitution simply kicked the can as one might say, down to 1820 and which of course in your day, looking back, it all seems like time crushed together, but we simply said we will not touch slavery for 20 years.
And had we not done that, we would not have gotten the votes of the Carolinas and Georgia, the Constitution would not have been ratified, the country would have fallen apart, and the British would have reinvaded. As a necessary condition of the foundation of the nation, we gritted our teeth and accepted slavery where it existed, and hoped that future generations would find a better solution than we had.
We were talking a little bit ago about battle that you were involved with, and one of them I hear about something where you stole some cannons, and then there was the another one where you charge without bullets in your gun, or without I, I liberated cannons. Liberated, right. Borrowed. Well, I had no intention of giving them back. At the Battle of Long Island, the Battle of, we had the Battle of New York, , I created, out of my own pocket, I had created a small military company of a few men.
We called ourselves the Corsicans later called the Heart of Oak. And we had green coats and leather caps with Liberty or death embroidered, we drilled in a courtyard and I, as their captain of artillery and captain of this group, one of the first ways I became known to the general officers around me was when we discovered that at the very point of Manhattan the, where it ends to the West is a battery.
There were 21 nine pound cannons that were there and the British ship HMS Asia, which is a monstrous ship with dozens of cannon, I want to say 54, but I could be incorrect on that, but a large number of cannons all in one line firing these blasts. The people down there on our side with only these little nine pound cannons had fled, which meant that those cannons would be And their powder and shot will be captured by the British when they came ashore.
So I arranged for a small group of men, myself included, to run down and gather these 21 nine pound cannons which we did. And then when I got back to safety, I discovered that one of my men, to whom I had handed my musket as I was. Liberating cannon had left the musket behind out of fear. It was irritating me enormously, so I then ran back into the fire of the HMS Asia to retrieve my musket, which I did, and returned back, and then these cannons became guns for liberty.
It was a remarkable battle, I will tell you. You got a certain realization about life when dozens upon dozens of cannonballs are exploding all around you. , do you want to ask about which was the other battle you wish to ask me about? Where you took the bullets from your gun. Oh, well, this of course was Yorktown. Yes. The climactic battle.
You recall I spoke earlier of the argument that I'd had with General Washington, well, the dressing down I got from General Washington, from which I immediately resigned from his staff. I actually was there another couple of months. And then Lafayette, who would be given a large command to Yorktown, gave me command Over one of his subunits at Yorktown and this subunit, which I had command was going to be the first over the wall at Yorktown.
And as a result we had If I say what a redoubt is, do you understand, sir, in your day yes. It is a military fortress. That one might even call a small fort where there's a a trench. Often in circles, not always in circles. But it's a place from which an enemy can fire under some cover. And there were a number of these spaced out beyond the actual walls of the Yorktown Fort. These readouts were outer security, if you will. And readout number 10 is the one that that we attacked firsthand.
And I realized that because of the small size of readout number 10, there was going to be a very difficult time If the men had to shoot, stop, reload, and shoot, because recall please, that our brown best muskets fired a single round at a time. Now, you would have to then run a rod down to clean out the debris, run down a powder, a musket ball, a patch, ram it home, and then be ready to fire again. A very skilled rifleman.
could fire a brown best, perhaps three times a minute and stress beat times of great stress, like a battle or other less skilled individuals. It might take you a whole minute with shaking hands to reload. And that time an enemy can advance on you in a trench very quickly. So I ordered my men to to unload. The muskets and instead of fixed bayonets, the bayonets we used were triangular in shape so that the wound could not close and one might bleed to death if stabbed. Nasty weapon.
But I ordered my men to charge with essentially spears, muskets with these bayonets affixed, and I led them all with sword in hand, and we attacked the British, and it is not important nor dignified to describe what one sees in such situations, but we took the readout, and that readout capture was critical to the ultimate capture of Yorktown, giving us a position from which we could shell the facility into surrender when they finally had to run up a white flag.
The French were in the port to their back, so they could not leave and we had an army surrounding them on three sides, so it was a heroic and successful battle. It amazes me that when you look at your history and anything that you were willing to do for your country, whether it was hours and hours of work with a pen, or whether it was running into a situation like that with a sword in your hand and risking everything. How anybody could ever question your honor and your character.
It just seems like it doesn't even make any sense. . Well, you must ask Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams, that question. When you speak to them I suspect Mr. Jefferson would say he respected my intellect, but did not respect my character. I found his character weak, but I also understand the circumstance from which he came. It's interesting that you say that, because I did speak with Mr. Jefferson, and he said exactly that. Well, perhaps we're both insightful men.
One of us fought in battle, one of us twice saved Congress from capture by the British, one of us took sword in hand to defend democracy in the most literal possible sense, and one of us decamped to Carter Mountain when he found his term as governor had expired. I'm not necessarily calling Mr. Jefferson a coward. I'm simply recounting his actions, which somehow managed to always avoid military conflict. I see. in our time, there is a very popular play about your life.
And in that play , it talks about the women that you were involved with of course, there is Eliza, your wife, and then there was Angelica, who is her sister, correct? And Peggy, . I called them my brunettes. Well, in the play, they suggest that Angelica fancied you. Is that true? Not at all. Your playwright is a liar. Plays are not necessarily designed to be the accurate written history of any particular event, I suppose. Angelica and Peggy, for that matter were delightful people.
But my love was for Elizabeth, the most remarkable woman I think one could ever encounter. , but I will say Angelica and Peggy also were remarkable people themselves. But by the time I was attempting to get Elizabeth to fall to my, into my spell Angelica was already a married woman and a happily married one. So your author is taking great liberties. And I think that's unfortunate. Well, if I meet the author, I'll let him know he's a liar from you.
Well, tell him that in, in, I don't know if you still do affairs of honor, but perhaps it would be worth it. Well, in case he listens to this, maybe you should just say right now, Lin Manuel, you're a liar. Just say that. Well, I won't say that, because he may honestly believe what he believes. He's just maybe miseducated. But I will say that there was a A party we were attending. And to give you a sense of how, even in our day, there was humor back and forth.
And there was what one might even call spicy humor back and forth. In this case I was at a party with the three sisters, and Angelica lost a bow off her shoe. And Peggy scooped it up and put it in my buttonhole and said, There, brother, I have made you a knight. Angelica said, But of what order? He cannot be a knight of the garter in this country. And Peggy said, True, sister, but he would be one if you would let him. So that is as off color as we would get in my day. Oh, that is spicy.
That is very spicy. Well, I'll tell you one thing that the playwright did get correct, and I'm glad you said that about your wife, Eliza, is that she shines in that as a strong woman that stood behind her man through some very difficult times and through some And and then, , it does many wonderful things later in life as well. So, obviously, you feel the same way.
Well, I do, and this evening I've written two letters to my dear Elizabeth to be delivered on the occasion of my passing, should that happen tomorrow. And in one letter, I urge her to be generous to relatives and things, which she always would be. But in the final letter, I end this way. I say, The scruples of a Christian have determined me to expose my own life to any extent, rather than subject myself to the guilt of taking the life of another.
This must increase my hazards and redoubles my pangs for you. But you had rather I die innocent than live guilty. Heaven can preserve me, and I humbly hope will. But in the event, I charge you to remember that you are a Christian. God's will be done. The will of a merciful God must be good. Once more, adieu my darling, darling wife. That will be delivered to her tomorrow, should the occasion call for it. Well, let's hope that doesn't happen. I hope things go well tomorrow. Indeed.
, let us hope that this is also finally the end of Colonel Burr's influence in America. The idea that a city vice president would duel with a former secretary of the treasury should be deeply offensive to most gentlemen. And Colonel Burr's, uh. economic incompetence and his moral depravity should have long since disqualified him from public service. And one hopes by the sunset tomorrow, he is forever doomed to be a footnote of history. Well, let's hope this is the end.
Again, I thank you for all of your time and everything that you did. It's just the list of things you've done for our country so that it can thrive now. It's, there's just no end to it. It's as long as that list of things that you wrote about that were wrong about Burr. But I guess I'd like to ask you, is there anything else you'd like to say as we finish?
Well, I can only hope you, you have hinted, both by the technology you present and some of your words, that the nation that we have founded And still sits on uncertain footing, has succeeded, at least in some degree, for the next two or more centuries. We look back on two centuries before my time, when settlers were first arriving, and you wonder what they might think of the city of New York today, or even Washington City.
And one hopes that the fundamental principles of the Constitution, the fundamental notions that if you breathe, you should breathe free. Those remarkable words that I credit Mr. Jefferson for saying in the Declaration of Independence, which begin with the phrase, we hold these truths to be self evident. Those remarkable words that government is created for the people and by the people. And when the government doesn't serve the people, it should be replaced. The most powerful words ever said.
In a political world. And I can only hope that Mr. Franklin was correct when he said a republic if you can keep it, and I hope you've kept it. General Hamilton, I thank you so much for your time. It's a pleasure speaking with you, sir. Now if you'll excuse me, I have more letters to write. And that was it. Hamilton's life ended the next day after he and Aaron Burr pointed pistols at one another. Uh, Hamilton appeared to be wearing his glasses, implying that he needed them to aim.
And although it is disputed whether or not he missed intentionally, he missed. Burt shot on the other hand was deadly yeah. Considering how tragically Aaron Burr's life ended. You could say they both died that day. Hamilton's legacy was that of a warrior who fought for freedom with both the pen and the sword. A politician who served his nation honorably. And the genius that sold the constitution to its own citizens and created the United States financial system.
Without Alexander Hamilton, how long would the states have had their own money causing us to fall behind while other nations were growing? What our land have eventually divided into four or five regions, all fighting for the same space and resources instead of one United States. And finally much like the play. I'm going to end with a story about Eliza Hamilton.
She died at the age of 97, surviving Hamilton by 50 years, she had eaten dinner with eight different presidents telling them stories about when she went on long horse rides with George Washington and danced with Thomas Jefferson. But. After his presidency. James Monroe was feeling terrible about what he had done to Hamilton by leaking information about the Reynolds affair. And he asked to meet with Eliza to clear his conscience. Eliza loved Hamilton and refused to see Monroe.
Her children said, mother he's a former president. You have to meet with him. She relented and Monroe was shown into a room where there was a single chair , already occupied by Eliza. He gave a speech about forgiving and forgetting, she looked him in the eye and she said, Mr. Monroe, if you have come here to say that you are sorry. Very very sorry about the misrepresentations slander and stories. You've told about my dear husband.
. So be it, but if not, no passage of time, no near-miss to the grave. Makes any difference. Then she threw him out. By the way in this podcast, many historical names were mentioned and nearly all of them have already been recorded. You can go back to the other episodes and listen to Aaron Burr. Albert Galatin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. But sadly, no James Monroe, because Eliza wouldn't let them on yet. Thank you for listening.
And don't forget that when you tell a friend about the calling history podcast, your plants will start texting you when they need to be watered. I'm Tony Dean. And until next time. . I'm history