February 11, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Jon Meacham, the bestselling author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, shares with an audience at the Library of Congress the story of Thomas Jefferson...and explains why his life mirrors the lives of many Americans today.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we return to our American stories. Up next, a
story from John Meachum. He's the author of numerous best
selling books on American leaders and visionaries, from FDR to
Andrew Jackson to George H. W. Bush. But today we'll
hear John discuss Thomas Jefferson at a Library of Congress
book talk. Let's get into the story, take it away.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
John Jefferson remains today what he was in life, a vivid, engaging,
contradictory figure, flawed and imperfect, at once monumental and very human.
His vices and his virtues are outsized, epic, and all
too real, So too are Americas. To look closely at
(00:58):
Jefferson is to look closely at ourselves.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Then and now.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
His circumstances were particular, yet the general issues that consumed
him are constant. Liberty and power, rights and responsibilities, the
keeping of peace and the waging of war. He was
a politician, fundamentally a politician, a public man in a
nation in which politics and public life became and remain
(01:27):
so central. He once wrote, man feels that he is
a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at
an election one day in the year, but every day
and In doing so, Jefferson anticipated a world governed by
cable news. He is, in his way immortal, yet because
(01:50):
of his flaws and his sins, he strikes us as
mortal too, a man of achievement who is nonetheless susceptible
to the temptations and compromises and ambitions that ensnare all
of us. He was not all he could be, no politician,
(02:11):
no human being ever is. Yet despite all his shortcomings,
and all the inevitable disappointments and mistakes and dreams deferred,
Jefferson left America and the world in a better place
than it had been when he first entered the arena
of public life. That he did not live a perfect life,
(02:33):
that he failed to deliver on the promise of his
own words in the Declaration of Independence, that he has
been condemned as a hypocrite in the eyes of history,
are to my mind reasons not to excoriate him, but
to engage with him. George Washington inspires awe John Adams respect,
(02:54):
But with his grace and hospitality, his sense of taste,
and love of beautiful things, silver and art and architecture,
and gardening and food and wine, Jefferson is more alive,
more convivial politically. Nineteenth century secessionists and twentieth century States
rights purists have found him a hero. Progressive leaders from
(03:15):
Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Truman have believed him to
embody the best impulses of the American tradition of popular government.
FDR had what I would safely refer to as a
man crush on Thomas Jefferson. So let's spend a moment
with the man himself. Lean and loose limbed, Thomas Jefferson
(03:39):
rose with the sun every morning, swung those long legs
out of bed, and plunged his big feet into a
basin of cold water, a lifelong habit he believed good
for his health. WebMD did not start the various issues
we have with slightly shaky houses. At Monticello, the metal
(04:03):
bucket was brought every morning to his bedside. It wore
a groove on the floor next to the alcove bed.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
In doing this.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Book, through the great grace of the trustees of the
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, I was allowed to spend the night
in Jefferson's bedroom. It wasn't as much fun, apparently, as
he often had, but I found that they put me
on an air mattress. It was fascinating. What I learned
(04:30):
was I saw that groove and ask what it was,
and it was the bucket that was brought so his
feet would be sort of wake him up.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
The other was that he had.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Designed the house and very little was done by accident
Thomas Jefferson's life. He designed the house so that as
the sun rose every morning, the first set of rooms
the light hit were his rooms. And later that day
I happened to walk down to the graveyard on the
other side of the hill at sunset and realized that
(04:58):
the last place on Jefferson's mountain where the light hit
was his grave. So from the beginning of the day
to the very end he tried to soak up every possible.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Moment to make something of it.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
He was six foot two and a half and the
Jefferson who came to the presidency had sandy hair, which
had been though although reddish in his youth, was graying.
His freckled skin, always susceptible to the sun, was wrinkling
a bit. His eyes were penetrating but elusive, alternately described
as blue, hazel or brown.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
He had great teeth.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He loved his wife, his books, his farms, good wine, architecture, Homer,
horseback riding, history, France, the Commonwealth of Virginia, spending money buying.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Books, and his daughters.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
He believed in America, and in Americans he thought they
were capable of virtually anything. They put their minds to,
whatever they can, they will, he said of his countrymen.
In eighteen fourteen, his longtime rival Alexander Hamilton. And a
word on Hamilton. I've been out now for three years
(06:08):
or more talking about Jefferson, and in many audiences I
will have someone say, well, I'm really a Hamiltonian. What
that means is they're a banker.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Theree.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Alexander Hampton once said that Jefferson was quote, I love
this among the indolent and temporizing rulers, who loved to
loll in the lap of epicure and ease, and seemed
to imagine that to govern well is to amuse the
wondering multitude with aphorisms and oraculous or oracular sayings. Oracular sayings.
(06:42):
He was a brilliant man and an invaluable founder. But
I think Hamilton had this wrong. Jefferson craves control over
people and over at events, and he knew that to
govern well required unrelenting, if largely hidden work. There was
nothing indolent about the policeitical ambition of Thomas Jefferson. Judged
(07:03):
by the raw standard of the winning and keeping of power,
he was the most successful political figure of the first
half century of the American Republic.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
For thirty six of the forty years.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Between eighteen hundred and eighteen forty, either Thomas Jefferson himself
or a self described adherent of his philosophy was President
of the United States John Quincy Adams being the one
exception Madison Monroe, Jackson van Buren. This unofficial and I
(07:36):
think little noted Jeffersonian dynasty is unmatched in American history.
He had big dreams, but he understood that dreams become
reality only when their champions are strong enough and wily
enough to bend history to their purposes. Broadly put, philosophers
think and politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he could
(08:00):
do both, often simultaneously, and that is the art of power.
He possessed this talent for politics, for philosophy, for education.
He was a vital maker of the nation's public, intellectual, cultural, lives.
He was a master of emotional and political manipulation, sensitive
(08:21):
to criticism, intoxicated by approval, obsessed with his reputation, devoted
to America irresistibly, drawn to the great world. As a planter,
as a lawyer, as a legislator, as a governor, as
a diplomat, as secretary of State, vice president, and president.
He spent much of his life seeking control over himself
(08:43):
and power of the lives and destinies of others.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And you've been listening to John Meacham, author of Thomas
Jefferson The Art of Power, a speech he gave it
the Library of Congress, and my goodness, dead on in
all aspects and respects to Thomas Jefferson. He was vivid
and engaging, contradictory, flawed, and monumental. Meacham said, to look
closely at Jefferson is to look closely at ourselves. He
(09:12):
was not all he could be. Meacham said, no one
is that Jefferson left the world better when he left it.
When we come back, this man who could maneuver and
think the story of Thomas Jefferson continues here on our
American stories. And we returned to our American stories and
(09:41):
The story of Thomas Jefferson is told by best selling
author and historian John Meacham. John is the author of
Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
He has most commonly been thought of as the author
of America, or as its architect, a figure who articulated
it vision of what the country could be, but was
otherwise kind of a detached dreamer. Yet he did not
rest once his words were written or his ideas entered circulation.
He was a builder and a fighter. What is practical
(10:14):
must often control what is pure theory. Moreover, the habits
of the governed determined in a great degree what is practical.
The habits of the governed determine in a great degree
what is practical, by force of nearly two and a
half centuries of habit. We tend to view our history
(10:36):
as an inevitable chain of events leading to assure and
certain conclusion. There was, however, nothing foreordained about the American experiment.
To treat it as a set piece pitting an evil
empire of Englishmen against a noble band of colonists does
a disservice to both, for it caricatures Britain, and it
minimizes the anguishing complexities that Jefferson and his contemporaries faith
(11:00):
East in choosing accommodation or rebellion. The most fundamental political
decision of all was the decision for independence to break
the bonds, and it was painful and it was difficult.
You may remember at the Continental Congress, second Continental Congress,
there was a great, big, heavyset man from Virginia, Benjamin
(11:22):
Harrison and Elbridge Gary, of the Gary Mandarin family. I
don't think they call themselves that anymore, but it was
this little guy, and they were getting ready to sign
the declaration, and Harrison, the big guy, looked down at
Gary and said, you know, when they hang us, it'll
all be over for me real quick.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You'll dangle for months.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So most Americans, after all, were of British descent, and
American culture in the decades leading up to the Revolution
was quite deferential to an even celebratory of the monarchy.
The whole structure of the lives of Jefferson's American ancestors
and of his generation was built around membership in the
British Empire. For many, if not most, Americans, the hatred
(12:08):
of King George the Third that marked the active Revolutionary
period was the exception, not the rule. Jefferson lived his
political life and worked in a political time when nothing
was certain. He knew, he felt god, He felt that
America's enemies were everywhere. The greatest of these was Britain,
(12:29):
and not only during the struggle for independence. Rather than
recalling the Revolutionary War in its traditional way as the
armed struggle that lasted from Lexton conquered in seventeen seventy
five until the British defeat at Yorktown in eighty one,
I think it's illuminating to consider looking at it the
way Jefferson looked at it, which is that the struggle
(12:50):
against Great Britain and its influence in American life, opened
in seventeen sixty four, the end of the French and
Indian War, and did not end until the Treaty of
Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans brought the War
of eighteen twelve to a close in eighteen fifteen. Seen
this way, which is how Jefferson saw it and experienced it.
(13:13):
Jefferson lived and governed in a fifty years war from
seventeen sixty.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Four to eighteen fifteen.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It was a war that was sometimes hot and sometimes cold,
but it was always unfolding.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It took different forms.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
There were traditional battlefield confrontations from seventeen seventy five to
seventeen eighty three, and again from eighteen twelve to eighteen fifteen.
There were battles by proxy with loyalists and British allies.
Among Native Americans, there were commercial strikes and counter strikes.
There were fears of political encroachment within the United States
that could be aided by British military movements from Canada,
(13:49):
Nova Scotia, or Britain's western posts posts they declined to
surrender after the Revolution. There were anxieties about disunionist sentiment
in New England and in New York. There were terrors
about monarchical tendencies, wherever they might be. Jefferson thought he
was in a perennial war, so he spoke and acted
(14:10):
in tones and terms that may seem extreme to our ears,
but which were natural if one saw the world as
he saw it. From Alexander Hamilton's financial program to John
Adams's weakness for British forms, to the overt New England
hostility toward his presidency, it may seem overheated. It certainly
(14:32):
did to some of those who lived through the time,
but it was real to him. And if we are
to understand what he was really like and what life
was really like for him, then we must see the
world as he saw it, not as we know it
turned out. So I'd like to offer three quick thoughts
for us about our own time, some possible lessons to
(14:55):
draw from Jefferson's era. One lesson is to strive mightily
to resist reflexive partisanship, not parsonship itself. Parsonship is part
of the air we breathe for a democracy. That was
clearly Jefferson's view. He once said that there have always
(15:15):
been divisions of opinion in government since these questions troubled
Greece and Rome. So disagreeing with one another is not
the issue. It's when we reflexively do so. It's when
I reject what you say because you're the one saying it.
And Jefferson was a deep center on this point. In
(15:37):
seventeen ninety, when he came back from France, he discovered
he had been appointed Secretary of State. In the newspapers,
proving that leaks were a problem. Even then, he went
to New York he wanted to live on the Broadway,
but couldn't find quarters, so he took up quarters on
Maiden Lane, I believe, and immediately went to war with
Alexander Hamilton. They were like two cocks in a pit.
(16:00):
Every day they fought over everything. They fought over the
nature of a financial system, they fought over the even
the ceremonial of the presidency. Should George Washington repay visits?
Are calls that were made to him. And they fought,
and they fought, and they fought, and finally President Washington
had had too much of it. So Washington wrote them
both a letter, and this is what he said. How
(16:22):
tragic it is, how unfortunate it is that, whilst we
are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends,
that internal dissensions should be.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Harrowing and tearing our vitals.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Jefferson wrote back, saying that he would not suffer the
slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at
which history had stooped to notice him, had been nothing
but a tissue of machinations and lies against the country
which had not only accepted him, but heaped its honors
upon his head. Hamilton Hamilton, supporter in that same period,
(17:01):
wrote to Washington that I think you ought to get
a damn kicking, you, redheaded son of a bitch. So
George Washington as family therapist was not a growth industry.
That did not work. But Jefferson got better as that
the seventeen nineties went on. He knew he had to
(17:21):
reach out. As president. He would write his daughters and say,
I am about to become an unpunctual correspondent because Congress
was coming to town. He had Congress down to dinner
every day. He didn't mix Federalists and Republicans. This is
not about being a pipe bipartisan Valhalla or a blue
ribbon commission. This is about his being able to build
(17:43):
bonds from the lawmaker, between the lawmakers and he himself.
But he worked and worked and worked at the politics
of the personal, avoiding reflexive partisanship, reaching out two good
things to look for the other. I think is so
important is I think we want political leaders who are
(18:04):
in tune with the larger sweep of the culture of
our times. What had happened in those three or four
centuries before the late eighteenth century in the United States,
you had the Protestant reformations.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
You had the entire structure of political.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Thinking through the European Enlightenment shifting from the idea that
society should be organized vertically to having it be organized
more horizontally. That the divine right of kings was shifting
to be understood as the divine right within each person
to be a free agent. We failed, we failed, We
(18:42):
failed to make that promise to extend that idea to
all people. Jefferson, as we've seen, fought for the greatest
of causes, and yet fell short of delivering justice to
the persecuted and to the enslaved. They said in motion, however,
or these men a long long ago on this eastern seaboard,
(19:03):
they set in motion a process to try to perfect
that union. In eighteen fifty nine, Abraham Lincoln was invited
to speak to a Jefferson birthday celebration. He couldn't do it.
He wrote a letter from Springfield. This is what he said,
all honor to Jefferson, to the man who, in the
concrete pressure and the struggle for national independence by a
(19:24):
single people, had the coolness forecast and capacity. It's a
wonderful phrase, the coolness forecast and capacity to introduce into
a merely revolutionary document and abstract truth, and so to
embalm it there that today and in all coming days,
it shall be a rebuke and stumbling block to the
(19:44):
very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Not a bad legacy, Not a bad legacy.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Indeed, you've been listening to John Meecham. He's the best
selling author and historian of Thomas Jefferson. The Art of
Power and America is unimaginable without Jefferson or the other
Virginia giants. The story of Jefferson. All honor to Jefferson,
as Lincoln said, his story here on our American Stories
And we return to our American stories. Up next, a
story from John Meachum. He's the author of numerous best
selling books on American leaders and visionaries, from FDR to
Andrew Jackson to George H. W. Bush. But today we'll
hear John discuss Thomas Jefferson at a Library of Congress
book talk. Let's get into the story, take it away.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
John Jefferson remains today what he was in life, a vivid, engaging,
contradictory figure, flawed and imperfect, at once monumental and very human.
His vices and his virtues are outsized, epic, and all
too real, So too are Americas. To look closely at
(00:58):
Jefferson is to look closely at ourselves.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Then and now.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
His circumstances were particular, yet the general issues that consumed
him are constant. Liberty and power, rights and responsibilities, the
keeping of peace and the waging of war. He was
a politician, fundamentally a politician, a public man in a
nation in which politics and public life became and remain
(01:27):
so central. He once wrote, man feels that he is
a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at
an election one day in the year, but every day
and In doing so, Jefferson anticipated a world governed by
cable news. He is, in his way immortal, yet because
(01:50):
of his flaws and his sins, he strikes us as
mortal too, a man of achievement who is nonetheless susceptible
to the temptations and compromises and ambitions that ensnare all
of us. He was not all he could be, no politician,
(02:11):
no human being ever is. Yet despite all his shortcomings,
and all the inevitable disappointments and mistakes and dreams deferred,
Jefferson left America and the world in a better place
than it had been when he first entered the arena
of public life. That he did not live a perfect life,
(02:33):
that he failed to deliver on the promise of his
own words in the Declaration of Independence, that he has
been condemned as a hypocrite in the eyes of history,
are to my mind reasons not to excoriate him, but
to engage with him. George Washington inspires awe John Adams respect,
(02:54):
But with his grace and hospitality, his sense of taste,
and love of beautiful things, silver and art and architecture,
and gardening and food and wine, Jefferson is more alive,
more convivial politically. Nineteenth century secessionists and twentieth century States
rights purists have found him a hero. Progressive leaders from
(03:15):
Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Truman have believed him to
embody the best impulses of the American tradition of popular government.
FDR had what I would safely refer to as a
man crush on Thomas Jefferson. So let's spend a moment
with the man himself. Lean and loose limbed, Thomas Jefferson
(03:39):
rose with the sun every morning, swung those long legs
out of bed, and plunged his big feet into a
basin of cold water, a lifelong habit he believed good
for his health. WebMD did not start the various issues
we have with slightly shaky houses. At Monticello, the metal
(04:03):
bucket was brought every morning to his bedside. It wore
a groove on the floor next to the alcove bed.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
In doing this.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Book, through the great grace of the trustees of the
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, I was allowed to spend the night
in Jefferson's bedroom. It wasn't as much fun, apparently, as
he often had, but I found that they put me
on an air mattress. It was fascinating. What I learned
(04:30):
was I saw that groove and ask what it was,
and it was the bucket that was brought so his
feet would be sort of wake him up.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
The other was that he had.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Designed the house and very little was done by accident
Thomas Jefferson's life. He designed the house so that as
the sun rose every morning, the first set of rooms
the light hit were his rooms. And later that day
I happened to walk down to the graveyard on the
other side of the hill at sunset and realized that
(04:58):
the last place on Jefferson's mountain where the light hit
was his grave. So from the beginning of the day
to the very end he tried to soak up every possible.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Moment to make something of it.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
He was six foot two and a half and the
Jefferson who came to the presidency had sandy hair, which
had been though although reddish in his youth, was graying.
His freckled skin, always susceptible to the sun, was wrinkling
a bit. His eyes were penetrating but elusive, alternately described
as blue, hazel or brown.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
He had great teeth.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He loved his wife, his books, his farms, good wine, architecture, Homer,
horseback riding, history, France, the Commonwealth of Virginia, spending money buying.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Books, and his daughters.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
He believed in America, and in Americans he thought they
were capable of virtually anything. They put their minds to,
whatever they can, they will, he said of his countrymen.
In eighteen fourteen, his longtime rival Alexander Hamilton. And a
word on Hamilton. I've been out now for three years
(06:08):
or more talking about Jefferson, and in many audiences I
will have someone say, well, I'm really a Hamiltonian. What
that means is they're a banker.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Theree.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Alexander Hampton once said that Jefferson was quote, I love
this among the indolent and temporizing rulers, who loved to
loll in the lap of epicure and ease, and seemed
to imagine that to govern well is to amuse the
wondering multitude with aphorisms and oraculous or oracular sayings. Oracular sayings.
(06:42):
He was a brilliant man and an invaluable founder. But
I think Hamilton had this wrong. Jefferson craves control over
people and over at events, and he knew that to
govern well required unrelenting, if largely hidden work. There was
nothing indolent about the policeitical ambition of Thomas Jefferson. Judged
(07:03):
by the raw standard of the winning and keeping of power,
he was the most successful political figure of the first
half century of the American Republic.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
For thirty six of the forty years.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Between eighteen hundred and eighteen forty, either Thomas Jefferson himself
or a self described adherent of his philosophy was President
of the United States John Quincy Adams being the one
exception Madison Monroe, Jackson van Buren. This unofficial and I
(07:36):
think little noted Jeffersonian dynasty is unmatched in American history.
He had big dreams, but he understood that dreams become
reality only when their champions are strong enough and wily
enough to bend history to their purposes. Broadly put, philosophers
think and politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he could
(08:00):
do both, often simultaneously, and that is the art of power.
He possessed this talent for politics, for philosophy, for education.
He was a vital maker of the nation's public, intellectual, cultural, lives.
He was a master of emotional and political manipulation, sensitive
(08:21):
to criticism, intoxicated by approval, obsessed with his reputation, devoted
to America irresistibly, drawn to the great world. As a planter,
as a lawyer, as a legislator, as a governor, as
a diplomat, as secretary of State, vice president, and president.
He spent much of his life seeking control over himself
(08:43):
and power of the lives and destinies of others.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And you've been listening to John Meacham, author of Thomas
Jefferson The Art of Power, a speech he gave it
the Library of Congress, and my goodness, dead on in
all aspects and respects to Thomas Jefferson. He was vivid
and engaging, contradictory, flawed, and monumental. Meacham said, to look
closely at Jefferson is to look closely at ourselves. He
(09:12):
was not all he could be. Meacham said, no one
is that Jefferson left the world better when he left it.
When we come back, this man who could maneuver and
think the story of Thomas Jefferson continues here on our
American stories. And we returned to our American stories and
(09:41):
The story of Thomas Jefferson is told by best selling
author and historian John Meacham. John is the author of
Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
He has most commonly been thought of as the author
of America, or as its architect, a figure who articulated
it vision of what the country could be, but was
otherwise kind of a detached dreamer. Yet he did not
rest once his words were written or his ideas entered circulation.
He was a builder and a fighter. What is practical
(10:14):
must often control what is pure theory. Moreover, the habits
of the governed determined in a great degree what is practical.
The habits of the governed determine in a great degree
what is practical, by force of nearly two and a
half centuries of habit. We tend to view our history
(10:36):
as an inevitable chain of events leading to assure and
certain conclusion. There was, however, nothing foreordained about the American experiment.
To treat it as a set piece pitting an evil
empire of Englishmen against a noble band of colonists does
a disservice to both, for it caricatures Britain, and it
minimizes the anguishing complexities that Jefferson and his contemporaries faith
(11:00):
East in choosing accommodation or rebellion. The most fundamental political
decision of all was the decision for independence to break
the bonds, and it was painful and it was difficult.
You may remember at the Continental Congress, second Continental Congress,
there was a great, big, heavyset man from Virginia, Benjamin
(11:22):
Harrison and Elbridge Gary, of the Gary Mandarin family. I
don't think they call themselves that anymore, but it was
this little guy, and they were getting ready to sign
the declaration, and Harrison, the big guy, looked down at
Gary and said, you know, when they hang us, it'll
all be over for me real quick.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You'll dangle for months.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
So most Americans, after all, were of British descent, and
American culture in the decades leading up to the Revolution
was quite deferential to an even celebratory of the monarchy.
The whole structure of the lives of Jefferson's American ancestors
and of his generation was built around membership in the
British Empire. For many, if not most, Americans, the hatred
(12:08):
of King George the Third that marked the active Revolutionary
period was the exception, not the rule. Jefferson lived his
political life and worked in a political time when nothing
was certain. He knew, he felt god, He felt that
America's enemies were everywhere. The greatest of these was Britain,
(12:29):
and not only during the struggle for independence. Rather than
recalling the Revolutionary War in its traditional way as the
armed struggle that lasted from Lexton conquered in seventeen seventy
five until the British defeat at Yorktown in eighty one,
I think it's illuminating to consider looking at it the
way Jefferson looked at it, which is that the struggle
(12:50):
against Great Britain and its influence in American life, opened
in seventeen sixty four, the end of the French and
Indian War, and did not end until the Treaty of
Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans brought the War
of eighteen twelve to a close in eighteen fifteen. Seen
this way, which is how Jefferson saw it and experienced it.
(13:13):
Jefferson lived and governed in a fifty years war from
seventeen sixty.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Four to eighteen fifteen.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It was a war that was sometimes hot and sometimes cold,
but it was always unfolding.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It took different forms.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
There were traditional battlefield confrontations from seventeen seventy five to
seventeen eighty three, and again from eighteen twelve to eighteen fifteen.
There were battles by proxy with loyalists and British allies.
Among Native Americans, there were commercial strikes and counter strikes.
There were fears of political encroachment within the United States
that could be aided by British military movements from Canada,
(13:49):
Nova Scotia, or Britain's western posts posts they declined to
surrender after the Revolution. There were anxieties about disunionist sentiment
in New England and in New York. There were terrors
about monarchical tendencies, wherever they might be. Jefferson thought he
was in a perennial war, so he spoke and acted
(14:10):
in tones and terms that may seem extreme to our ears,
but which were natural if one saw the world as
he saw it. From Alexander Hamilton's financial program to John
Adams's weakness for British forms, to the overt New England
hostility toward his presidency, it may seem overheated. It certainly
(14:32):
did to some of those who lived through the time,
but it was real to him. And if we are
to understand what he was really like and what life
was really like for him, then we must see the
world as he saw it, not as we know it
turned out. So I'd like to offer three quick thoughts
for us about our own time, some possible lessons to
(14:55):
draw from Jefferson's era. One lesson is to strive mightily
to resist reflexive partisanship, not parsonship itself. Parsonship is part
of the air we breathe for a democracy. That was
clearly Jefferson's view. He once said that there have always
(15:15):
been divisions of opinion in government since these questions troubled
Greece and Rome. So disagreeing with one another is not
the issue. It's when we reflexively do so. It's when
I reject what you say because you're the one saying it.
And Jefferson was a deep center on this point. In
(15:37):
seventeen ninety, when he came back from France, he discovered
he had been appointed Secretary of State. In the newspapers,
proving that leaks were a problem. Even then, he went
to New York he wanted to live on the Broadway,
but couldn't find quarters, so he took up quarters on
Maiden Lane, I believe, and immediately went to war with
Alexander Hamilton. They were like two cocks in a pit.
(16:00):
Every day they fought over everything. They fought over the
nature of a financial system, they fought over the even
the ceremonial of the presidency. Should George Washington repay visits?
Are calls that were made to him. And they fought,
and they fought, and they fought, and finally President Washington
had had too much of it. So Washington wrote them
both a letter, and this is what he said. How
(16:22):
tragic it is, how unfortunate it is that, whilst we
are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends,
that internal dissensions should be.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Harrowing and tearing our vitals.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Jefferson wrote back, saying that he would not suffer the
slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at
which history had stooped to notice him, had been nothing
but a tissue of machinations and lies against the country
which had not only accepted him, but heaped its honors
upon his head. Hamilton Hamilton, supporter in that same period,
(17:01):
wrote to Washington that I think you ought to get
a damn kicking, you, redheaded son of a bitch. So
George Washington as family therapist was not a growth industry.
That did not work. But Jefferson got better as that
the seventeen nineties went on. He knew he had to
(17:21):
reach out. As president. He would write his daughters and say,
I am about to become an unpunctual correspondent because Congress
was coming to town. He had Congress down to dinner
every day. He didn't mix Federalists and Republicans. This is
not about being a pipe bipartisan Valhalla or a blue
ribbon commission. This is about his being able to build
(17:43):
bonds from the lawmaker, between the lawmakers and he himself.
But he worked and worked and worked at the politics
of the personal, avoiding reflexive partisanship, reaching out two good
things to look for the other. I think is so
important is I think we want political leaders who are
(18:04):
in tune with the larger sweep of the culture of
our times. What had happened in those three or four
centuries before the late eighteenth century in the United States,
you had the Protestant reformations.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
You had the entire structure of political.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Thinking through the European Enlightenment shifting from the idea that
society should be organized vertically to having it be organized
more horizontally. That the divine right of kings was shifting
to be understood as the divine right within each person
to be a free agent. We failed, we failed, We
(18:42):
failed to make that promise to extend that idea to
all people. Jefferson, as we've seen, fought for the greatest
of causes, and yet fell short of delivering justice to
the persecuted and to the enslaved. They said in motion, however,
or these men a long long ago on this eastern seaboard,
(19:03):
they set in motion a process to try to perfect
that union. In eighteen fifty nine, Abraham Lincoln was invited
to speak to a Jefferson birthday celebration. He couldn't do it.
He wrote a letter from Springfield. This is what he said,
all honor to Jefferson, to the man who, in the
concrete pressure and the struggle for national independence by a
(19:24):
single people, had the coolness forecast and capacity. It's a
wonderful phrase, the coolness forecast and capacity to introduce into
a merely revolutionary document and abstract truth, and so to
embalm it there that today and in all coming days,
it shall be a rebuke and stumbling block to the
(19:44):
very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Not a bad legacy, Not a bad legacy.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Indeed, you've been listening to John Meecham. He's the best
selling author and historian of Thomas Jefferson. The Art of
Power and America is unimaginable without Jefferson or the other
Virginia giants. The story of Jefferson. All honor to Jefferson,
as Lincoln said, his story here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com