September 18, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the new Constitution was an experiment—a unplayed sheet of music— and we wouldn't know what it would look like in actuality until people picked up their instruments. Here to tell the story of the first real test is Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope.
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 returned to our American Stories and our series
about Us, the Story of America series with Hillsdale College
professor Bill McLay, author of Land of Hope. Let's get
into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Take it away, Bill, George Washington was our first president
and the logical man, the inevitable man, the indispensable man.
But the funny thing about this man is that he
wasn't a politician. He was a military man. So Washington
(00:45):
had a different set of criteria, more like what a
general might have perhaps than a typical politician. Of course,
nobody had been president of the United States before. He
chose his cabinet on the basis of who were the
most competent people in his view, who were the most skillful,
most intelligent, most experienced, most far seeing. He didn't play
(01:10):
favorites according to politics or party. There were no parties,
so he chose his cabinet from all over. He did
not show any loyalty to region. You know, he was
a loyal Virginian, but he didn't appoint all Virginians. His
top cabinet picks were Alexander Hamilton of New York, who
(01:31):
didn't know very well. As his former aide to the
Treasury Department. He was Secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Jefferson
of Virginia, Secretary of State, and Henry Knox of Massachusetts,
who would be the Secretary of War. That's a pretty
nice distribution. This was a very unique approach because he
(01:53):
wasn't look at, for example, did Hamilton have a different
view of the Constitution than Jefferson, which it actually turns
out they were fiercely opposed, But that didn't matter to Washington.
He was interested in what they brought to the table
in terms of fulfilling the particular function that.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
He had in mind for them. It would be a very, very.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Long time before we have another leader that taught quite
in those terms.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was unique. It was important.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Because at this stage of the national enterprise, when things
were brand new and very fragile, the Constitution was like
that unplayed.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Piece of music.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
We didn't know what it was going to sound like
until actual musicians picked up their instruments and started to
make sounds. So Washington's approach was quite appropriate to that tentative, exploratory,
experimental character of the Constitution once it was put into action.
(03:01):
He was not a fan of political parties. He thought
partisanship was one of the worst things that could befall
a nation. He saw the effects of it in Great Britain,
so he didn't want to encourage political parties. Some kind
of partisanship, however, was going to be hard to avoid.
(03:24):
People are going to have loyalties to their region no
matter what.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
They're going to have.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Loyalties to their local institutions, no matter what. They're going
to have loyalty to the economy that fuels the life
of the region.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
In which they inhabit, no matter what.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
This was not going to be something he could completely avoid,
but to mitigate the effects of partisanship was one of.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
His goals, so he took no notice.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Of partisanship in making his appointments.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hamilton was a.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Very inspired choice for Treasury. Hamilton had thought a lot
about the American economy, the American future. He called America
the Hercules and the Cradle, meaning they could be a big,
big economy. It had all the advantages of natural resources, parts,
(04:18):
all of the things you needed to become a commercial
power in the world. Hamilton had a vision of an
American economy that would be not merely agricultural, but would
also be commercial and industrial. It involved in the production,
so that we would not be importing those things from
Europe and thereby placing ourselves at risk from Europe cutting
(04:42):
us off or charging exorbitant rates. So Hamilton had a
very shrewd, well informed, economically literate understanding of the American
economy and big plans for it. He did not think
small Alexander Hamilton. But he had some obstacles to overcome,
(05:07):
perhaps a severe obstacle, since any Secretary of the Treasury
would face for another one hundred and thirty years or so.
The biggest problem under the new constitution was the dire
financial situation of the country. The war had been fought
by borrowing money printing money. The account books of the
(05:30):
country were a messed. It was not the kind of
economy that foreign nations with whom we would be trading
could have much confidence. Just as you wouldn't have much
confidence in doing business with somebody who owes more money
by three or four or five times and the value
of their property. He would think twice and three times
(05:52):
about doing business with such a person. So Hamilton realized
we had to clean up our act, we had to
clean up our books. We had to get ourselves out
of dead or at least show ourselves to be credit worthy.
And this is something that others like him, like Jefferson,
were not really thinking much about.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Hamilton had a plan, a three part plan. The first
part meant paying off the national debt in full and
the state debts that were incurred in fighting the revolution.
Brilliant idea for all sorts of reasons. It would make
(06:32):
the nation as a whole seem more credit.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Worthy to pay off the national debt.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
But also paying off state debts. What this did was
it lifted off of the states a great burden, in
some cases an enormous burd particularly in the some of
the northern states where a lot of the revolutionary battles
were fought, like Massachusetts. Those debts would be paid by
(06:57):
the federal government. So this was a a genius plan
for welding the state's loyalty to the country which had
bailed them out. It was not equally well received in
all the states. The southern states had far less debt
to pay than their northern counterparts, but the disagreement was
(07:17):
settled by the location of America's permanent capital, what's now Washington,
d c. In as it so happens a swamp on
the Potomac River, but in the South. Hamilton also hoped
to use tariffs to develop an industrialized America. This was
(07:37):
not quite as controversial as you might think, the notion
of using taxes taxation of imports, that's what we mean
by tariffs, to protect nascent American industries from being swamped
by foreign goods that were much cheaper and therefore much
more attractive to hard pressed consumers. So gariffs were part
(08:01):
of the plan. It was not seriously challenged. Now, what
was seriously challenged was the third part of this three
part approach.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
That was the idea of a national bank.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Madison James Madison, with whom Hamilton had written the Federalist
Papers in New York, disagreed on this, so did Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
For them, the idea of a national bank.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Would be a way that the financial elites, which were
so worrisomely powerful in Great Britain, could grasp hold of
the national economy by controlling banking from a central source.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
They didn't like that.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
They saw this as a aggrandizement of national power, of
power in the national government. So it was a bit
of a constitutional crisis. This not only produced a crisis
over the policy, but it produced the first great debate
over the nature of the Constitution. And it was simply
(09:07):
a debate between the strict interpretation of the Constitution that
was Jefferson's point of view.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Hamilton's point of view.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Was that the Constitution should be interpreted loosely.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
When we come back more of the Story of Us,
the Story of America series with Bill McLay here on
our American Stories, and we returned to our American stories
(09:41):
and our Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor
Bill McLay, let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We have the golf between these two visions. The golf
between Jefferson and Hamilton. Their visions of America was gulf.
These were competing visions of America for the kind of
nation that America was going to become. They were competing blueprints,
(10:14):
and that they were reflected in the difference between the
two men. Jefferson, of course, was a very sophisticated man
of the world who spent a lot of time in
Paris and was involved in the international discourse of the
Enlightenment as a scientist. But when you boil it all
down He was a rural advocate. He was an advocate
(10:36):
for rural, agricultural Virginia. He remember he said that those
who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
If he had a josen people, that farmers are the
source of national virtue. They live virtuous lives. Their virtue
is communicated to the larger populace of his idea of
(11:01):
the way America would expand as simply as a farming
nation going westward, further and further. Hamilton wasn't that guy.
Hamilton actually was not born in the United States. He
was born in the Caribbean, and he found his way
to New York, which was a place where he was
able to realize his dreams of being a greater man
(11:24):
than whatever have been possible on the island of Nevis
or in the places where he grew up. He was
the opposite of Jefferson. He was a big city boy.
Hamilton was a guy who liked stock exchanges. He liked
the flexibility that paper money provides. He was very interested
(11:44):
in developing trade. Interested in commerce, he was interested in
making America into one of the world's powers, and not
only economically, but in other respects. He saw the possibilities
as being limitless for America, the United States of America,
to take its place among the great nations of the world.
(12:05):
He was frankly not much of a republican. He often
said privately that he might have thought a monarchy would
be better for a mayoric there was fighting words for
people like Jefferson. Jefferson had no such aspiration. Jefferson wanted
to see America beat the odds and be a republic that.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Would last and last and last, and.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Not founder on the rocks of factionalism and partisanship and
loss of civic virtue. We were not going back to
the idea of monarchy. Republicanism forever would have been their motto.
So Washington had a conflict, a fundamental conflict, right up
(12:54):
close and personal, in his own cabinet, between his two
leading cabinet of fiss He had to take signs. He
couldn't create a somewhat national bank, a regional bank. It
was all or nothing, and so he sided with Hamilton,
and so it was decided okay.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So one of the other.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Problems that Washington faced is that he was not starting
off this country, in this constitution, in a geopolitical vacuum.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
You know. It wasn't as if he could say to
the rest of the world, Okay, hold off for a
while while.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
We get ourselves started, maybe thirty forty years, don't bother us.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
No, we couldn't do that. We couldn't do anything like that.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
The French Revolution began in the same year that George
Washington was inaugurated as president. The French Revolution had been
influenced by our revolution. It was a very tumultuous affair,
and our own government became divided between those who favored
the reforms of the French and those who did not
(14:04):
favor them and in some cases abominate.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Hamilton was one of those who were opposed.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
To the French Revolution. Frightened by the French Revolution because
it was going around not just deposing and beheading the king,
but also deposing elite classes at all levels.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It was rattling the entire social structure of the French nation.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Hamilton was not a fan of that kind of social revolution. Jefferson,
on the other hand, he was a philosoph himself, a
man of the Enlightenment. He corresponded with French authors, French thinkers.
Some of the great influences on the revolution itself. Jefferson
thought a revolution every twenty years or so was a
(14:53):
good thing. Countries got stay, they got ossified, they got
our hardening of the arteries.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
They needed to be shaken up. So he thought boldly
for the French Revolution.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And you know, added to that as the time he
had spent in Paris, his great liking for the French people,
and particularly their wines, led him to side with them.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
But it's a serious debate. It's not just debate over
who likes wine.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
It's a serious debate over whether the sympathies of of
the American government would be drawn more to the French, who,
after all, had not only been our allies that understates
the extent of but the French had helped us incalculably
crucially to.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Win our revolution, to win our independence.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So it was a choice for me siding with them
or siding with England, which of course had been the
mother country against which.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
We had rebelled.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
But the English were the source of so many of
our institutions, of our cultures, of our taste, our language.
So you had figures like Jefferson who were drawn to
the French Revolution out of ideology and personal sympathies, and
then Hamilton, who for similar reasons was drawn to the England.
(16:10):
Hamilton and Jefferson were on different sides. Once again, Washington
sort of split the difference and decided to pursue a
course of neutrality, and in fact, he issued a statement
on April twenty second, seventeen ninety three, as followed, The
duty and interest of the United States require that they should,
(16:34):
with sincerity and good faith, adopt and pursue a conduct
friendly and impartial towards the belligerent powers. I want you
to notice something very small in that state. The duty
and interest of the United States.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Require that they should, with sincerity.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
He doesn't say it we would today say it the
United States. It required that it should sincerity and good
faith adopt.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
It, says the they.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
The significance of that is that Washington is using language
that emphasizes the degree to which the United States is
still best understood as a confederation of more or less
independent states. Washington warned Americans the federal government would prosecute
(17:26):
any violations of this policy by its citizens and would
not protect them should they be tried by a belligerent nation.
Now that's a serious infringement on the ability of Americans
who express their sympathies for one or the other of
the belligerate parties and be found to be in violation
(17:52):
of this presidential edict. But it was representative of how
important Washington thought it was to keep the America from
getting entangled in foreign affairs. This was a constant theme
for him, that we do not want foreign entanglements to
(18:12):
the degree we can avoid them. We must avoid them
to the degree we cannot avoid them. Let's keep them
as attenuated, as minimal, as small, and as temporary as possible.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
He really understood war.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
He understood the costs of war, the unpredictable nature of
the war. He did not want to see the United
States undermined by being dragged into a war that.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
They could avoid.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Washington showed his prudential wisdom, the aspect of his character
that we come back to again again. He's a great
statesman because he's prudent.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
He's able to.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Wisely, and not by using abstract reasoning, but by looking
at the facts of the case and comparing them to
abstract principles, working out the best possible combination of the two.
That was Washington, and that's one of the primary qualities
(19:15):
that a statesman in any time of history needs to show.
You've got to know what to do and when to
do it, on how to do it and when to
stop doing. He risked unpopularity, which is something he was
not accustomed to, but he did it for the sake
of the country.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery, himself a Hillsdale College graduate.
A special thanks to Hillsdale College professor Bill McLay, author
of Land of Hope and the terrific Young Readers edition.
Go to Amazon with the usual suspects to pick up
the book, and my goodness, what Washington faced, what the
Constitution faced? Immediately two competing visions for the country in
(19:59):
his own cabinet, Jefferson's the rural vision, Hamilton the big city,
big economic power, world power vision, and my goodness, there
are competing visions that sound familiar today. The Story of
Us is the Story of America series on our American
Stories
And we returned to our American Stories and our series
about Us, the Story of America series with Hillsdale College
professor Bill McLay, author of Land of Hope. Let's get
into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Take it away, Bill, George Washington was our first president
and the logical man, the inevitable man, the indispensable man.
But the funny thing about this man is that he
wasn't a politician. He was a military man. So Washington
(00:45):
had a different set of criteria, more like what a
general might have perhaps than a typical politician. Of course,
nobody had been president of the United States before. He
chose his cabinet on the basis of who were the
most competent people in his view, who were the most skillful,
most intelligent, most experienced, most far seeing. He didn't play
(01:10):
favorites according to politics or party. There were no parties,
so he chose his cabinet from all over. He did
not show any loyalty to region. You know, he was
a loyal Virginian, but he didn't appoint all Virginians. His
top cabinet picks were Alexander Hamilton of New York, who
(01:31):
didn't know very well. As his former aide to the
Treasury Department. He was Secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Jefferson
of Virginia, Secretary of State, and Henry Knox of Massachusetts,
who would be the Secretary of War. That's a pretty
nice distribution. This was a very unique approach because he
(01:53):
wasn't look at, for example, did Hamilton have a different
view of the Constitution than Jefferson, which it actually turns
out they were fiercely opposed, But that didn't matter to Washington.
He was interested in what they brought to the table
in terms of fulfilling the particular function that.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
He had in mind for them. It would be a very, very.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Long time before we have another leader that taught quite
in those terms.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was unique. It was important.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Because at this stage of the national enterprise, when things
were brand new and very fragile, the Constitution was like
that unplayed.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Piece of music.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
We didn't know what it was going to sound like
until actual musicians picked up their instruments and started to
make sounds. So Washington's approach was quite appropriate to that tentative, exploratory,
experimental character of the Constitution once it was put into action.
(03:01):
He was not a fan of political parties. He thought
partisanship was one of the worst things that could befall
a nation. He saw the effects of it in Great Britain,
so he didn't want to encourage political parties. Some kind
of partisanship, however, was going to be hard to avoid.
(03:24):
People are going to have loyalties to their region no
matter what.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
They're going to have.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Loyalties to their local institutions, no matter what. They're going
to have loyalty to the economy that fuels the life
of the region.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
In which they inhabit, no matter what.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
This was not going to be something he could completely avoid,
but to mitigate the effects of partisanship was one of.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
His goals, so he took no notice.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Of partisanship in making his appointments.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hamilton was a.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Very inspired choice for Treasury. Hamilton had thought a lot
about the American economy, the American future. He called America
the Hercules and the Cradle, meaning they could be a big,
big economy. It had all the advantages of natural resources, parts,
(04:18):
all of the things you needed to become a commercial
power in the world. Hamilton had a vision of an
American economy that would be not merely agricultural, but would
also be commercial and industrial. It involved in the production,
so that we would not be importing those things from
Europe and thereby placing ourselves at risk from Europe cutting
(04:42):
us off or charging exorbitant rates. So Hamilton had a
very shrewd, well informed, economically literate understanding of the American
economy and big plans for it. He did not think
small Alexander Hamilton. But he had some obstacles to overcome,
(05:07):
perhaps a severe obstacle, since any Secretary of the Treasury
would face for another one hundred and thirty years or so.
The biggest problem under the new constitution was the dire
financial situation of the country. The war had been fought
by borrowing money printing money. The account books of the
(05:30):
country were a messed. It was not the kind of
economy that foreign nations with whom we would be trading
could have much confidence. Just as you wouldn't have much
confidence in doing business with somebody who owes more money
by three or four or five times and the value
of their property. He would think twice and three times
(05:52):
about doing business with such a person. So Hamilton realized
we had to clean up our act, we had to
clean up our books. We had to get ourselves out
of dead or at least show ourselves to be credit worthy.
And this is something that others like him, like Jefferson,
were not really thinking much about.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Hamilton had a plan, a three part plan. The first
part meant paying off the national debt in full and
the state debts that were incurred in fighting the revolution.
Brilliant idea for all sorts of reasons. It would make
(06:32):
the nation as a whole seem more credit.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Worthy to pay off the national debt.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
But also paying off state debts. What this did was
it lifted off of the states a great burden, in
some cases an enormous burd particularly in the some of
the northern states where a lot of the revolutionary battles
were fought, like Massachusetts. Those debts would be paid by
(06:57):
the federal government. So this was a a genius plan
for welding the state's loyalty to the country which had
bailed them out. It was not equally well received in
all the states. The southern states had far less debt
to pay than their northern counterparts, but the disagreement was
(07:17):
settled by the location of America's permanent capital, what's now Washington,
d c. In as it so happens a swamp on
the Potomac River, but in the South. Hamilton also hoped
to use tariffs to develop an industrialized America. This was
(07:37):
not quite as controversial as you might think, the notion
of using taxes taxation of imports, that's what we mean
by tariffs, to protect nascent American industries from being swamped
by foreign goods that were much cheaper and therefore much
more attractive to hard pressed consumers. So gariffs were part
(08:01):
of the plan. It was not seriously challenged. Now, what
was seriously challenged was the third part of this three
part approach.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
That was the idea of a national bank.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Madison James Madison, with whom Hamilton had written the Federalist
Papers in New York, disagreed on this, so did Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
For them, the idea of a national bank.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Would be a way that the financial elites, which were
so worrisomely powerful in Great Britain, could grasp hold of
the national economy by controlling banking from a central source.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
They didn't like that.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
They saw this as a aggrandizement of national power, of
power in the national government. So it was a bit
of a constitutional crisis. This not only produced a crisis
over the policy, but it produced the first great debate
over the nature of the Constitution. And it was simply
(09:07):
a debate between the strict interpretation of the Constitution that
was Jefferson's point of view.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Hamilton's point of view.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Was that the Constitution should be interpreted loosely.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
When we come back more of the Story of Us,
the Story of America series with Bill McLay here on
our American Stories, and we returned to our American stories
(09:41):
and our Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor
Bill McLay, let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
We have the golf between these two visions. The golf
between Jefferson and Hamilton. Their visions of America was gulf.
These were competing visions of America for the kind of
nation that America was going to become. They were competing blueprints,
(10:14):
and that they were reflected in the difference between the
two men. Jefferson, of course, was a very sophisticated man
of the world who spent a lot of time in
Paris and was involved in the international discourse of the
Enlightenment as a scientist. But when you boil it all
down He was a rural advocate. He was an advocate
(10:36):
for rural, agricultural Virginia. He remember he said that those
who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
If he had a josen people, that farmers are the
source of national virtue. They live virtuous lives. Their virtue
is communicated to the larger populace of his idea of
(11:01):
the way America would expand as simply as a farming
nation going westward, further and further. Hamilton wasn't that guy.
Hamilton actually was not born in the United States. He
was born in the Caribbean, and he found his way
to New York, which was a place where he was
able to realize his dreams of being a greater man
(11:24):
than whatever have been possible on the island of Nevis
or in the places where he grew up. He was
the opposite of Jefferson. He was a big city boy.
Hamilton was a guy who liked stock exchanges. He liked
the flexibility that paper money provides. He was very interested
(11:44):
in developing trade. Interested in commerce, he was interested in
making America into one of the world's powers, and not
only economically, but in other respects. He saw the possibilities
as being limitless for America, the United States of America,
to take its place among the great nations of the world.
(12:05):
He was frankly not much of a republican. He often
said privately that he might have thought a monarchy would
be better for a mayoric there was fighting words for
people like Jefferson. Jefferson had no such aspiration. Jefferson wanted
to see America beat the odds and be a republic that.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Would last and last and last, and.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Not founder on the rocks of factionalism and partisanship and
loss of civic virtue. We were not going back to
the idea of monarchy. Republicanism forever would have been their motto.
So Washington had a conflict, a fundamental conflict, right up
(12:54):
close and personal, in his own cabinet, between his two
leading cabinet of fiss He had to take signs. He
couldn't create a somewhat national bank, a regional bank. It
was all or nothing, and so he sided with Hamilton,
and so it was decided okay.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So one of the other.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Problems that Washington faced is that he was not starting
off this country, in this constitution, in a geopolitical vacuum.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
You know. It wasn't as if he could say to
the rest of the world, Okay, hold off for a
while while.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
We get ourselves started, maybe thirty forty years, don't bother us.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
No, we couldn't do that. We couldn't do anything like that.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
The French Revolution began in the same year that George
Washington was inaugurated as president. The French Revolution had been
influenced by our revolution. It was a very tumultuous affair,
and our own government became divided between those who favored
the reforms of the French and those who did not
(14:04):
favor them and in some cases abominate.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Hamilton was one of those who were opposed.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
To the French Revolution. Frightened by the French Revolution because
it was going around not just deposing and beheading the king,
but also deposing elite classes at all levels.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It was rattling the entire social structure of the French nation.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Hamilton was not a fan of that kind of social revolution. Jefferson,
on the other hand, he was a philosoph himself, a
man of the Enlightenment. He corresponded with French authors, French thinkers.
Some of the great influences on the revolution itself. Jefferson
thought a revolution every twenty years or so was a
(14:53):
good thing. Countries got stay, they got ossified, they got
our hardening of the arteries.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
They needed to be shaken up. So he thought boldly
for the French Revolution.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And you know, added to that as the time he
had spent in Paris, his great liking for the French people,
and particularly their wines, led him to side with them.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
But it's a serious debate. It's not just debate over
who likes wine.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
It's a serious debate over whether the sympathies of of
the American government would be drawn more to the French, who,
after all, had not only been our allies that understates
the extent of but the French had helped us incalculably
crucially to.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Win our revolution, to win our independence.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So it was a choice for me siding with them
or siding with England, which of course had been the
mother country against which.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
We had rebelled.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
But the English were the source of so many of
our institutions, of our cultures, of our taste, our language.
So you had figures like Jefferson who were drawn to
the French Revolution out of ideology and personal sympathies, and
then Hamilton, who for similar reasons was drawn to the England.
(16:10):
Hamilton and Jefferson were on different sides. Once again, Washington
sort of split the difference and decided to pursue a
course of neutrality, and in fact, he issued a statement
on April twenty second, seventeen ninety three, as followed, The
duty and interest of the United States require that they should,
(16:34):
with sincerity and good faith, adopt and pursue a conduct
friendly and impartial towards the belligerent powers. I want you
to notice something very small in that state. The duty
and interest of the United States.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Require that they should, with sincerity.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
He doesn't say it we would today say it the
United States. It required that it should sincerity and good
faith adopt.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
It, says the they.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
The significance of that is that Washington is using language
that emphasizes the degree to which the United States is
still best understood as a confederation of more or less
independent states. Washington warned Americans the federal government would prosecute
(17:26):
any violations of this policy by its citizens and would
not protect them should they be tried by a belligerent nation.
Now that's a serious infringement on the ability of Americans
who express their sympathies for one or the other of
the belligerate parties and be found to be in violation
(17:52):
of this presidential edict. But it was representative of how
important Washington thought it was to keep the America from
getting entangled in foreign affairs. This was a constant theme
for him, that we do not want foreign entanglements to
(18:12):
the degree we can avoid them. We must avoid them
to the degree we cannot avoid them. Let's keep them
as attenuated, as minimal, as small, and as temporary as possible.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
He really understood war.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
He understood the costs of war, the unpredictable nature of
the war. He did not want to see the United
States undermined by being dragged into a war that.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
They could avoid.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Washington showed his prudential wisdom, the aspect of his character
that we come back to again again. He's a great
statesman because he's prudent.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
He's able to.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Wisely, and not by using abstract reasoning, but by looking
at the facts of the case and comparing them to
abstract principles, working out the best possible combination of the two.
That was Washington, and that's one of the primary qualities
(19:15):
that a statesman in any time of history needs to show.
You've got to know what to do and when to
do it, on how to do it and when to
stop doing. He risked unpopularity, which is something he was
not accustomed to, but he did it for the sake
of the country.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery, himself a Hillsdale College graduate.
A special thanks to Hillsdale College professor Bill McLay, author
of Land of Hope and the terrific Young Readers edition.
Go to Amazon with the usual suspects to pick up
the book, and my goodness, what Washington faced, what the
Constitution faced? Immediately two competing visions for the country in
(19:59):
his own cabinet, Jefferson's the rural vision, Hamilton the big city,
big economic power, world power vision, and my goodness, there
are competing visions that sound familiar today. The Story of
Us is the Story of America series on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
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.