 Hello everybody, my name is Professor Rob McDonald from the United States Military Academy, and I'm here with my friend Professor Kevin Gutsman from Western Connecticut State University. He is the author of a brand new book called The Jeffersonians, The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson Madison and Monroe, and we're here to have a pretty casual relaxed and informal discussion over the course of the next hour. So Kevin, welcome. Thanks Rob, happy to be here. Yeah, this is great. Nice way to end the semester and begin the holidays. And when I think of various gifts that people could receive, I have to tell you a book on these administrations is right up there and that's not a shameless plug. You know I've taught the early Republic course at West Point for many years, and it strikes me that there really isn't any recent book that covers the presidencies of Jefferson Madison and Monroe am I wrong or have you really done something here that's overdue and very much needed. I'm not aware of any other book that does this know that's what led me to the idea there, of course, is a tendency among scholars to think of the period is having had a break at 1815 and the concede underlying the book is that no there wasn't. And I hope that people who read the book will come to the same conclusion among other conclusions. So, you know the book is called the Jeffersonians. I guess that that gives a little bit of due deference to Thomas Jefferson. You know who is the namesake of the party the Jeffersonian Republicans which took shape in the 1790s in opposition to, you know many of the policies of Alexander Hamilton and his coalition artisans the Federalists. What degree do you think these presidents all can be considered Jeffersonian I mean are they really all that similar in terms of their outlook in terms of their agenda in terms of their ideology, or you know do you. Well, I've read the book so I know but how you perceive there might be some some shades of difference between the three. I do think that all three of them thought of themselves as pursuing a common program. It's certainly the case that for example, Monroe was more interested in achieving a point at which there was no party division in the country. I think that he took significant steps to ensure that the Federalist Party and the Republican Party would be no more and this was fully in keeping with what Jefferson said in his first inaugural address. People supposedly in the audience gasped when he said, we have called by different names of brethren of the same principle we are all Republicans we are all Federalists, but I think he meant it. I think he had the idea that there had been a kind of deformity of American society in 1790s and now Americans could be back to a situation in which being citizens of a common Republic meant that they were in some sense, all friends that's what he hoped for. That sounds good. I think there are plenty of people today who pine for the same sort of possibility. I wonder though, I mean, you know, certainly parties are an extra constitutional feature of the American political system, they were not envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. I think Washington very much wanted to pursue a course of unity, I think you would agree. You know, he saw himself, you know, solidifying these bonds which at that point really were perceived by many to be quite fragile. You know, the American Revolution we knew what we're against, we're against rule by the British. But what exactly are we for is a different and perhaps more difficult question. And, you know, I think it's a question that animates a lot of the debates of the 1790s. You, you talk a good deal about Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address and I'll point out. I mean, when you say that this is a book about the administrations of Jefferson and Madison and Monroe. It really is. And you really do begin, you know, with the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. There's not a whole lot of backward glances. So on March 4, 1801, when Jefferson, you know, stands in front of Congress and the people in the audience and reads aloud his inaugural address. What's the vision that he puts out there? Well, besides the fact that he hopes party contestation is behind. He looks forward to a day when people will be free to make their own way in the economy that the burden of the federal government on them will be substantially reduced from what it has been in 1790s that there won't be the kind of reflexive animosity toward people who have different political views that there has been that when it comes to the military, the first recourse will be to reliance on the militia that there shouldn't be a contest between the United States on one hand and Spain, France and Britain when it comes to naval armaments. Essentially, he thinks that Americans should be free to make their own way and that the government of the 1790s really has kept them from doing that. So the changes he envisions are going to be in a liberal direction. That is that he wants to have substantially lessened burden on your typical citizen from the federal government. And he'd like to see decision making decentralized as much as practicable. Of course, that means that common people who can't really be involved in making decisions in Congress can be involved in shaping their own lives as far as practicable. They can be involved in making decisions in their own wards. That is their own precincts. So it's democratic, the lowercase d. That is, he hopes that his program is going to mean that people are going to be freer than they've been before. And he thinks that'll mean that they're friendlier than they've been before. He says that getting rid of the old party animosity means eliminating a barrier to friendly interaction among Americans that has to some extent made life not worth living. So he's very, very hopeful. In another way to see it is that he thinks that the last Americans have decided they all agree with him, which of course is a bit of a reflection of his own optimism. Yeah, well, his optimism that people all agree with him on all the particulars is perhaps a conceit that is a little bit appealing, but it is a conceit, of course. So, you know, when I think about the first inaugural address, two sets of quotes come to mind, one you've already shared with us. Jefferson says we're all Republicans, we're all Federalists. Let's set that aside for just a second. The other one that comes to mind is when Jefferson, I think he asks, you know, what remains to close the circle of our felicities? We have so many great advantages as Americans. And then he says, you know, one thing more, my fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall otherwise leave them free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This, he says, is the sum of good government. And when you add it all up, there's really not much in the addition column there. I mean, he says what government shouldn't do, you know, it shouldn't regulate people's pursuits of industry and improvement and it shouldn't take, you know, the fruits of their hard earned labor. It says essentially government should prevent people from injuring one another. That's not a whole lot. That's a pretty radically limited vision for government. And I'm just curious how well do you think Jefferson manages to carry that vision into reality? Well, he of course thinks that via the Louisiana Purchase, the federal government has made possible that the descendants of the people who are hearing him or reading about it can be farmers to, he says, the thousands and thousands generation. So obviously he's, he's not looking to substantial immigration, but we know that Jefferson thought that the ideal life for a Republican was that of an independent farmer. And now he would be able to be that if there weren't some other wrongheaded fellow in charge of federal government that there was now enough farmland even for younger sons and youngest sons to move west and, and put their plow to work. And I think that the unforeseeable territorial acquisition that the United States accomplished during this 24 year period could have made that possible if that had been a shared goal. But of course, it turns out it wasn't really a shared goal, but certainly Jefferson was sanguine in the hope that there would be many generations of people who now could be independent Republican farmers that they would be able to cast their votes as was done in those days, at least in Virginia orally, securing the knowledge that it wouldn't be down to their detriment economically because they were independent. So he was very successful at it. It wasn't really because of any genius on his part, though it was more kind of a fortuitous circumstance that Napoleon decided, well, Louisiana isn't worth my effort. I guess I'll maximize my profit from it by selling it to the Americans. But yeah, I think, I think he was very successful. And that's why within a very short time, the opposition party would cease to exist. Of course, you know, Henry Adams, who is perhaps one of the first historians to give us a version of the 1801 to 1815 book. You know, with with his history of the administrations of presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Adams wrote that it's hard to imagine any president who would be more of a federalist than Thomas Jefferson himself. Henry Adams points to things like the Louisiana Purchase as evidence that Jefferson is actually willing to flex the national government's muscles and willing perhaps to broadly interpret the Constitution. Well, you want to tell us a little bit more about that and maybe share your your take on on that. Well, of course, what he has to do to come to that conclusion is to agree with Jefferson, who was isolated among leading Republicans in having his constitutional scruples touched by the idea of buying Louisiana. Of course, people like Madison said that since article two of the Constitution said that the president can enter into treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, but didn't specify what kinds of treaties that a lot that the obvious reading was that that included all of the kinds that were common at the time the Constitution was adopted, which, although now wouldn't include treaties to purchase territory from other countries, then did include treaties to purchase territories for other countries. So even the greatest constitutional sticklers among the Republican leadership didn't have any problem with this. Only Jefferson seems to have a constitutional problem with this. And I guess in this case, I agree with the majority. Of course, his position was, if I find myself out a step with the majority of Republicans, I must conclude that I'm mistaken, which would have led him to change his mind about that, even if he hadn't already been talked into it. I actually, I think it's a cute move by Adams to try to hold Jefferson up against his own principles in this case, but I actually think Madison was right about that. It is an interesting situation. I mean, so first of all, we should make clear that everybody who's listening understands the Constitution doesn't grant the national government the power explicitly to add new territory. And you can make the argument as Madison did, and I believe Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin did, that through the treaty making process, the national government could in fact acquire additional territory. And that's what they went with, of course, with the approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives funded the Louisiana Purchase Treaty of 1803. So in the eyes of many, it's it's constitutionally sound. But but Jefferson has his doubts. And, and of course, you know, he desperately wants to purchase Louisiana. As you pointed out, you know, the early 19th century and Jefferson's eyes, at least we're sitting on this ticking demographic time bomb. I mean, our population is doubling every 20 years. And if we are going to sustain ourselves as a nation of virtuous family farmers, and not become increasingly, you know, quartered and densely populated cities where people are exploited as wage laborers working for others and losing their own independence of means, which could lead to a loss of one's intellectual independence, we needed to find some way to perpetuate, you know, this this nation that is based on agriculture. And so Louisiana is a wonderful solution to that problem. It also solves a foreign policy problem. If we don't possess the land west of the Mississippi River, someone else will. Spain was about to pass it along to France via treaty. France, of course, seems, you know, it was almost like a law of physics that France was at war with Great Britain, which of course occupied Canada to our north. So certainly our neutrality would be compromised if we're geographically located in between French territory and British territory. So there were all these these things sort of compelling us to want to purchase Louisiana. Jefferson thinks it's a wonderful idea. But but he is so hung up on the belief that it does not have constitutional sanction that he goes to the effort of actually drafting an amendment to the Constitution that would explicitly allow it. So so tell us a little bit about about that and what what happens that sounds like the perfect solution that you know for not sure let's amend the Constitution and let the states explicitly authorize this enterprise. Well, again, Jefferson was apparently the only prominent Republican who wasn't sure that this was constitutional under the vague language of article two's treaty provision. And so yes, he did draft a constitutional amendment, but he immediately received correspondence from Livingston, one of the two ministers who had purchased or who had agreed with the French government that America would purchase Louisiana saying, Look, Bonaparte has already changed his mind about this. If you don't hurry up and accept it, then it's going to be too late and Francis is just going to say no, we're not going to go through with this sale. So Jefferson seems to have decided as he said that he would make the purchase and then throw himself on the on the mercies of the electorate. And so far as his own constitutional scruples were concerned, I don't think that his constitutional scruples were widely known at the time, though. So there doesn't seem to have been any significant controversy about this, at least among Republicans after the purchase was made. In fact, it made him extremely popular. This is one of the main achievements, maybe the main achievement of his eight years as president. So his own ansieness about it is kind of amusing in retrospect. No, I mean, certainly you're right. And if he was throwing himself upon the mercy of the voters, the voters were quite merciful in return. The election of 1804 was a blowout. I mean, you know, traditionally New England had been a hotbed of federalism and, you know, the middle states and the southern states in the West was the point of strength for the Jeffersonian Republicans. But but even Massachusetts, the federalist star voted for Thomas Jefferson in 1804. I mean, it was it was incredible. It was incredible. And yet, I will say, maybe judged from the vantage point of 1804. This is a very sound decision. But maybe from the vantage point of 1864, or even 1854. It's not. In other words, you know, this, the Constitution, if you want to envision it as a marriage between north and south, with the addition of Louisiana suddenly becomes this weird kind of nashatwa with the West, right. And the question is, is the West going to be like the north, or is the West going to be more like the south of the future residents of Kansas, going to be cod fishermen, like the people of Massachusetts, or are they going to be farmers, like the people of Virginia. And of course, you know, in the early part of the 19th century, slavery has yet to rear its head as an important national issue. But it soon will beginning in the in the 1820s. And, and of course, the question of, you know, admitting new states, will they be a slave state, will they be a free states? I mean, you know, in some ways the tension between the north and the south running up to the Civil War is a tension about the character of the West. And so I can't help but think that maybe Jefferson deserves more credit than he is conventionally given for his misgivings. That's an interesting question, whether the sectional crisis of the 1850s is a result of slavery per se, or whether slavery is the issue that people in especially New England who were unhappy with Southern domination found was the most useful one they could use to try to elevate themselves back into control of the federal government. I don't know the answer to that question. But people do tend to think of it now as having been divisive because of its own inherent strength as an issue. It's not clear to me. People in New England already had the idea that they were unhappy with dominance by the Virginians long before slavery became a hot sectional question. Sure. You know, we could maybe skip ahead to Madison's administration and, you know, at the height of the war of 1812, New England federalists come together in Hartford, Connecticut in December of 1814 and January of 1815 for the Hartford Convention. Tell us a little bit more about that and some of the things you discovered. Well, one interesting thing that that's not in the book is I live in Connecticut now and when the bicentennial of the Hartford Convention rolled around, there was complete silence. No, there was no commemoration. There was no mention of it, even among historians. It just passed, which was kind of amusing, I think. Well, the Hartford Convention followed the effort for several years by Timothy Pickering and Gouverneur Morris, who had been prominent earlier to saw off New England and maybe New York with New England into a separate country because they thought that the Jeffersonian foreign policy was essentially inherently pro-French in the ongoing dispute, as you've said, endless tension between France and Britain. And so it seemed to them that number one, they didn't like being in a society that was dominated and apparently would always be dominated by Virginia. And number two, they thought that besides that, when it came to France and Britain, New England was far more like Britain anyway. So why shouldn't this lead to separation? And then of course, when the war came, a lot of people in New England, including Gouverneur Strong of Massachusetts were completely opposed. And you end up with substantial smuggling by New England farmers into Canada, which is say into British Empire. And there definitely was more sectional feeling in New England than patriotic feeling, I think, during the War of 1812. That's one point that the book makes in some detail, I think. I mean, it isn't incredible because it strikes me that one theme that runs throughout your book is this question of partisanship. And, you know, Monroe at the end of his two, you know, by all accounts at the time, at least successful terms, you know, very much envisions leaving a great gift to America, the gift of a nation without two political parties. And yet I wonder if that is somehow quixotic, if somehow that's a pipe dream. If people are just naturally inclined to gravitate toward one team or another team. I mean, it doesn't have to be this way. I think, you know, George Washington certainly believed that people would disagree about particular issues. But that the same people would be disagreeing about different issues that, you know, the people over here would agree about domestic policy and foreign policy and taxes and and customs and I mean everything and that, you know, the people on the other side would all be in agreement on those issues with each other and in disagreement with with the other party. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, is this dream of non partisanship? Is it going to always remain a dream? I mean, does history or at least the history of the first quarter of the 19th century suggest that people are hardwired somehow to be partisans? Well, one thing that this question shows us is that the significance, the pervasive, the pervasion of the knowledge of the Federalist is drastically overrated today. That is, apparently, although Madison wrote in the Federalist that party division was inevitable in a complex society, his friend, top cabinet member and successor as President James Monroe was not persuaded by that argument. So it does seem that people naturally divide even on trivial questions and dividing over leaders personalities and other inanities quite heatedly we see in our own day. So there obviously is a kernel of truth in that, although on the other hand, people in the Monroe administration, not just in the government but people in those years were happy with the idea that there was some kind of meeting of the minds between leading Federalists and leading Republicans. We can kind of imagine that now even if the way toward it doesn't seem obvious. And Monroe certainly thought that was an achievement. He thought this was a wonderful outcome. It is interesting. I mean, Jefferson himself seems to be maybe of two minds on this question. I mean, you can find some letters at various points in his life where he writes that some people are naturally Tories as he describes them and others are naturally wigs. And I think by using those those terms he meant some people are naturally friends of centralization and consolidation and political, the use, the vigorous use of political authority whereas others are, you know, maybe more liberty loving and and have a more hands off vision for for government. In his first inaugural address, you know, to go back to the the second major quote, this is the one that all the textbooks highlight. You know, as we've pointed out, Jefferson said that we are all Republicans, we're all Federalists. Most textbooks seem to take that to mean that he was saying that we are somehow all members of the Republican Party yet also members of the Federalist Party. You know, as you point out, in his inaugural address, he doesn't capitalize. Of course, we both know he doesn't capitalize much of anything at all. You know, it's just the idiosyncrasies of the Jeffersonian pen. But but do you think he means something else, or or at least something else as well? I mean, is this a rhetorical sleight of hand? Is he saying one thing but he wants people to hear another thing? Or is he saying what he wants people to hear, but but they misread his remarks. Well, I think he has in mind that people are that is Americans are Republican in the sense they don't want monarchical government and they are Federalists in the sense they want Union of the States. But he thinks people have concluded that the Republican Party was right in the contest of the 1790s. That's that's why in his old age, you referred to this as the Revolution of 1800. It was it was the culmination of the Revolution is having one. So it's hard to overstate the strength of his ego, of course. But I do think that he thought that this was going to mean that there's now more common feeling among people than there had been during the party conflict of the 1790s. And in that sense, Monroe was playing on this or he was trying to implement this program that Jefferson had laid out in his first inaugural address. So one theme of the book is that the first inaugural address really is a forecast of what these guys are going to end up doing for the next six terms. Of course, they don't realize there will be six terms or it'll be the three of them. But they did try to implement the entire Republican program. And for the most part, it was successful. There are, of course, the one great exception that for the most part it worked as they envisioned and better than they had had hoped by the great exception. I take it you're you're pointing us toward the embargo in the war of 1812. Oh, yes, the war of 1812, which is, of course, just an enormous disaster that was easily foreseeable when they decided that in the midst of the Great World War that they were living through, they would they would mothball much of the Navy and cut taxes and will rely on the militia which proved not very effective during the revolution. So, yeah, that's that's the great smear on their record, I think. So what explains that? I mean, you know, it strikes me that certainly we had endured during the 1790s. The very difficult situation of being between Britain and France. If not geographically, you know, Britain didn't want us trading with France and its allies, France didn't want us trading with Britain and its allies. Our ships were running trouble on the high seas during the Adams administration, maybe especially after the passage of the J Treaty, which very much alienated France from us. You know, during Jefferson's first term, this quiet's down a good bit, but tensions heat up again after his second inauguration. And, you know, the old, you know, saw that second terms are never as good as first terms, maybe, you know, Washington's presidency is the first example of that. Adams's presidency is the second example of that. Adams's presidency could, would have been the second example had he had a second term. But of course, he never, he never did. What do you think of critics who might say that Jefferson was really a hypocrite? I mean, here's a guy who in his first inaugural address goes out of his way. I have to say that, you know, we're going to leave people free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement. But then imposes an embargo, which, and I want to make sure people understand it, it outlaws all international trade, not just trade with Britain in chance, but all international trade. I mean, that is a very heavy handed action on the part of the national government. What brings Jefferson to the belief that that is a wise policy to pursue? Well, because he pursues it because he thinks it's one alternative to just conceding that the federal is for right in the Adams administration to raise taxes and build up the Navy. So, Jefferson was one who was not going to admit he had been mistaken in his major policy claims or his major philosophical commitments. And so this idea, which, of course, Madison had floated in the 1780s, it was in the air among leading Republicans for a long time before it was actually tried. This was the way to avoid admitting that the game had failed, that maybe the federalist had had a point when it came to arming the country at least to some degree. Now, of course, the federalist hadn't had in mind that the United States should be a military state the way that any major European power was. That was not the game, but they thought there should be a significant American Navy and that in case there were a war, America would need professional soldiers. And Jefferson, we mentioned before, said in his first inaugural address that this was not necessary, that America had the strongest of governments. Although it might look weak, it was really strong because in case it needed to be defended, people would fly to defend it. Well, it turned out that not as many flew to defend it as Jefferson had prognosticated and the ones who did were militarily incompetent. So it was a debacle to some extent, I think, the War of 1812. When I was a kid, people were taught that the only war America had ever lost was Vietnam, and apparently somehow they thought that they won the War of 1812. Of course, I explained in the book how it was that people came to have that impression, but America didn't win the War of 1812. It strikes me that in politics, luck is always shifting. And if Jefferson has the wind in his sails during his first term, if he lucks out with such amazing opportunities such as the purchase of Louisiana, and it's not all luck, a lot of it is concerted effort and policy that is scrupulously followed through on. You know, one person who appears throughout the book is Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin. I mean, he's going to remain Madison's Treasury Secretary. He's going to remain a figure, you know, an important figure throughout these administrations. And I think, you know, the word that you used to describe him as parsimonious. I'll just call him stingy, but boy, we can use a guy like Albert Gallatin these days with $31 trillion in national debt. You know, he made it his singular focus to pay down the national debt that Jefferson had inherited from the Washington and Adams administrations. I think, you know, through a combination of cutting expenses as well as seeing revenues naturally increase, something like 37% of the national debt is paid off during Jefferson's presidency. Even though we have a big slurge of, you know, Louisiana, which came at a tune of $15 million. And we attempt to continue that during Madison's presidency, even though, you know, for a couple of years, they just have to tell Gallatin to can it because, you know, we've got a war to fight. And with the embargo and the, you know, diminution of trade doesn't help our revenues either. But, you know, Gallatin is really trying. And I mean, maybe you could speak to the point that seems to animate Gallatin. And to a certain degree, these three presidents as well, why did they consider it so important that the national debt be discharged? Well, of course, national debt eventually was discharged during the Jackson administration. And it's very common among libertarians at least to credit Jackson for that. But it was actually discharged on the day that Gallatin's program foresaw it being discharged. That is, it was Gallatin's doing it. Of course, it could have been reversed by one of Monroe's successors, but none of them did reverse it. The point is, Gallatin was brought into the cabinet by Jefferson with the idea of paying off the debt. And Gallatin's chief initiative for heading in that direction was to reduce, if not eliminate, the U.S. Navy. So this, if the only concern were paying off the debt would be reasonable. But at a time when major powers were at war and the war was all around the United States, it was, I think, foreseeable that the United States would be drawn into that and needed to have some kind of military establishment to defend it in case that happened. So Gallatin is in many senses an admirable person, but on the other hand, he's an ideologue in office. He's devoted to one issue only, and this proves ruinous when the war comes, of course. It is interesting when you think about what there was and what there wasn't available to cut during these presidencies. I mean, we think of the federalists as being the party of big government in the 1790s. And I suppose in the context of the 1790s they were. But it's not like Gallatin could have cut the agriculture department or the education department or health and human resources. So much of our present-day federal bureaucracy did not yet exist. And so I suppose if you were looking to make actual cuts in spending, you would have to look at the military establishment first and foremost. And yet, somehow we managed to... I'm not willing to concede, Kevin, that we were defeated by the British in the War of 1812. It was a draw. And we fought them through a draw. The world's greatest superpower, right? I mean, Britain was the world's most powerful nation. It was the world's richest nation. I think arguably it was the world's second-freest nation. So the British had a lot going for them. How was it? I know that you give Madison a tough time for his leadership during the War of 1812. I think it's hard to underestimate Madison's war leadership. From the time he began choosing his cabinet, he just made terrible decisions in connection. Maybe I heard you wrong. You mean it's hard to overestimate his war leadership. No, no. I'm saying it was so bad that it would be hard to exaggerate. For example, when he picks... In those days, one shows a Navy secretary and a war secretary who was the head of the army, essentially. And Madison shows for these positions a fellow who was such a dipsomaniac that he was disabled by noon every day for one of those jobs. And for the other one, he chose a fellow who had been a surgeon in the Army during the Revolution. Well, neither of these fellows was appropriate for these tasks as the proof. And he ended up having terrible problems with the fellow who was his war secretary when the war came. He ended up more or less firing the guy for insubordination. Madison overlooked the insubordination for over a year, and the extent to which the War of 1812 Madison's performance was a debacle is hard to exaggerate, really. So the one big black mark against these three guys, the War of 1812, was very, very poorly run by the president and the people he made his media subordinates. Some of the generals were utterly incompetent, too. So your book goes into this in greater detail. And I'll point out to listeners that this is a very... There's a lot of very even coverage in this book. I look at Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3. And Part 1, as one might expect, is just slightly longer than Part 3. Part 2, of course, deals with Madison. Part 3 deals with Monroe. But they're of about equal length. It strikes me that you really look closely at all three of these presidencies. You devote considerable time and attention to the War of 1812. So I'm obviously oversimplifying here. Would you agree at the end of the day that the outcome of the war was an example of how we just got lucky? Yes, I would agree with that. Actually, supposedly there was a conversation between the prime minister and the Duke of Wellington in which the prime minister said, well, I'm going to give you an army and send you to North America. And the Duke said, okay, so I conquer the United States. And then what? And the prime minister said, well, then I guess we'll have to have a treaty. It's just... It was awful. It was just awful. They should have known better than to declare war without preparing first. And Madison repeatedly told Secretary Armstrong to prepare the approaches to D.C. And he didn't do it. And Madison didn't do anything about it. So, oh boy. Well, is it fair to say that? As president, Madison made a great Secretary of State. I guess I put it that way. That is a really great insult. Very well done. So, instead of maybe continuously trashing James Madison, let's talk a little bit about the Hartford Convention. And let me hold me in a counterfactual. Okay. You know, the war of 1812, the capital of the United States is in flames. Foreign army is marching through our territory. We have a foreign navy in the Great Lakes. And a sizable portion of the people of New England, which is a sizable region at the time of the United States, are whispering about secession. We have leaders on the state level who are actively not complying with national calls for support for the war effort. Including the governor of Massachusetts, which was of course the most important state in the region. He was completely uncooperative. And so it seems as if there was ever a time when a president might have used extraordinary war powers to clamp down on dissent. It would be the war of 1812. I mean, the ink wasn't even dry on the First Amendment in 1798 when during, it wasn't even official war, the quasi war with France. John Adams signed into law the Sedition Act. And we know subsequent periods of U.S. history. You know, maybe the Civil War is not a good example because, you know, the capital of the United States almost would have been in flames. And there were troops marching throughout American territory. But World War I, World War II, you know, we see curtailments of civil liberties. You don't see Madison doing that. And I can't help but wonder if Madison did in fact try to crush the dissents that was brewing in New England. If the outcome of the Hartford Convention might have been different. If rather than the people who gathered at Hartford, they came together and they passed a series of resolutions. And ultimately, if the national government didn't adopt their resolutions, what were they going to do? They were going to meet again. Cooler heads prevailed, in other words. And I can't help but wonder if Madison had tried to exercise more muscular leadership and had come down harder on dissent in the United States. If in fact the problems that we associate with the War of 1812 might have grown to an even greater degree. Well, this is the response that people make in defense of Madison as war president. But the thing is, I think we can distinguish between clamping down on constitutional dissent on one hand and just appointing, making reasonable appointments to the Navy secretary in the war secretary positions, for example, or choosing generals who had some kind of record of knowing what they were doing. It's hard, again, it's just hard to exaggerate the extent to which he put people who weren't fit for posts in important posts. And actually, I mentioned in the book that when he had been out of office for about a decade, he received a letter from a younger Virginian who was turning to writing history and he said to Madison, well, of course, I'm going to have to say something about the, I'm trying to remember exactly how the guy put it. It's in the book, but it's something like about the glaring incompetence of some of the people you appointed or something like that. And Madison explains to him that, well, of course, for somebody to be appointed to a top position in a cabinet, for example, he's going to have to have political support of his own. He's going to have to be financially independent. And he lists all these criteria and among them is not, he's going to have to be capable of fulfilling the duties of the office. So it's true that in those days, it took wealthy, it took wealth to hold these top positions. It's not a surprise or it's not an accident that people like Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were president. It was very expensive proposition to be president in those days. But that I think still doesn't excuse putting a drunk who's disabled by noon in one of the military cabinet posts, for example, or choosing a surgeon for another one or picking people who were frightened at the sound of enemy guns to be generals in the army. Or you know, it's just awful. People may have the impression from hearing our conversation that the section of the book on the Madison administration is entirely negative. It's not. No, it's not happens that you wanted to talk about his war leadership, which I think was poor. Well, let me ask another question that will bring us into the presidency but allow us to continue to talk about James Madison. I mean, you title your book The Jeffersonians and certainly, you know, as as was Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were both Jeffersonian Republicans. But who was the most Jeffersonian? I mean, was Monroe more Jeffersonian than Madison? Or do you think that Madison had greater fidelity to Jefferson's to the vision that Jefferson laid out in his first inaugural address than James Monroe did? Well, maybe John Randolph was the most Jeffersonian. That's that's. No, pardon me. He certainly thought so. Yeah, yeah. He's John Taylor and John Randolph. There are various congressional figures in the book who are more ideological than than any of the presidents is. Of course, there's a difference between being a legislator and actually having to implement policy. It's an interesting question. I think that in general, Madison was was Jeffersonian, but there were points when he wasn't. So for example, people who've read my book about Madison know that I think he was a complete nationalist in the Philadelphia Convention. And he put off sending a copy or an account of the Philadelphia Convention to Jefferson for over a month after it ended because he knew Jefferson wasn't going to like what he had to tell him. So there's that. He actually might have known that Jefferson wouldn't even like the Constitution, which is an interesting possibility. Monroe certainly was a Jeffersonian. There's just no doubt about it. So one part of what the book is about is arguing against the tradition of saying that there's a kind of break in American history in 1815 and then something new happens after. I think I think Monroe's presidency is more of the same degree and so did he. Jefferson, of course, does some things that the more doctrinaire Republicans didn't like. But I do think that his first inaugural address really does lay out the program that all three of them are going to follow, more or less. I think you can say that all three of them were definitely Jeffersonian to a very large degree in office. It wasn't only an opposition persuasion. It was it was a governing persuasion. It's it's interesting, though, because when when readers reach the end of your book, you conclude on a poignant note. You thought that, you know, after after Monroe's presidency, we have the election in the House of Representatives, of course, of John Quincy Adams as president. And Adam very much like to present himself as as being a person who transcends partisanship. You know, he's not a Republican. He's not. He's all of those things and none of those things. And and we can break free of the prison of this dichotomy, which had once grabbed us. But in his inaugural address, he lays out all of these different government programs, all of these different projects, lighthouses in the sky. I mean, nationally all of it, you know, in all of it without the sanction of any corresponding constitutional amendment. And you point out that Jefferson, though, you know, his friendship with John Quincy Adams, his father has been patched up. And they're engaged in their amazingly enlightening, wonderful to read correspondence. There is there is a bit of the old Federalist still alive and John Quincy Adams. There is a bit of the Hamiltonian, you know, I think so. Definitely. Yes. And and Jefferson is not sees it. Yes. Yeah. So Jefferson, at the very end of his life, drafted another series of resolutions for the Virginia legislature to adopt, basically laying out that, you know, Virginia remain Republican, remain Jeffersonian, even though the new president seemed to be a Federalist. And that's, that's where you have one more opportunity for James Madison to keep Jefferson from doing what he wanted to do. He says, ah, let's let's see how things work. So Jefferson kind of puts politics aside, I think he actually congratulated John Adams on his son's taking office. I think he must have done that after reading the inaugural address, which, you know, he must have completely loathed. It was absolutely Federalist. I love the last three sentences of your book. You conclude. So Madison is aware of Jefferson's misgivings regarding John Quincy Adams's proposals for policy. And you write that James Madison persuaded Jefferson to keep these resolutions to himself. His day was passed. Or so it seemed. And it's almost as if you're setting us up for a sequel when Thomas Jefferson comes back. Well, we know that Jeffersonian principles would come back with a vengeance in the South, not too much later. But for a while in Jefferson's life, they were no longer going to be animating. So we have just we have just about five minutes left. And I mean, we could continue conversing for hours. I have no doubt. But we actually have a question from the YouTube chat. And I'm going to take the liberty of expanding it a little bit since you mentioned the coming of the Civil War. The question deals with women. But perhaps we could broaden it to include these Jeffersonian thoughts on African Americans as well. The question was, what were Jefferson's thoughts on the equality of women? Did he believe they had the capacity for higher intellect? And then what about women farming is the question? Well, boy, we have five minutes. And I ask you to expand it as well. Well, OK, let's take on race and gender. Yes, well, Jefferson had three children, one of whom died extremely young, one of whom died when she was a young adult and the other of whom outlived him. And he wrote an early point that the question had to do with education for women. And he wrote an early point. Well, you know, my daughters are going to marry blockheads. So it's it's you don't want to educate them too much because they happy in that kind of situation. However, Martha, the one who outlived him was clearly an educated woman, very intelligent. And obviously, Jefferson had something to do with that. And on the other hand, I show in the book that at one point, Albert Gallin, you mentioned was Treasury Secretary and that meant he was in charge of federal lighthouses. So he had the idea that he ran by Jefferson that a lighthouse keeper had died. And he said, well, how about replacing him with his wife? And Jefferson wrote back, the American people aren't ready for women in political office and neither am I. So this was in the 18 odds. On the other hand, when it came to blacks, my my immediate previous book was about Jefferson. It's called Thomas Jefferson Revolutionary, not a biography. It's about his political program. And after it was published, I got a letter from a professor at William and Mary, who is a historian of American education. And he said, you know, your book is the first book ever to mention that Jefferson said that the bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge could be read as applying to black people. And I think Jefferson thought that black people could be educated just as white people. He didn't really think there was some kind of genetic distinction between the brains of black and white people or the intelligence black and white people. And he, however, say something in that same letter would make you gasp. He said, as the slaves, it's unclear to me whether being educated would make them happier. Which, wow, how about that? But anyway, he had the idea that ultimately black kids in Virginia would be educated too. So make of that what you will. And to some degree, he was a man of his time. But in general, he was looking toward the way things could be improved. And his program was about improving things. And we would find congenial even if all the details, you know, weren't Ocaron in 2022. So one task of a historian, of course, is to try to contextualize things. You don't want to judge Jefferson by 2022 standards. And by the standard of his own time, he was way ahead of other people in these connections. Besides the fact that Gallatin did want to appoint a woman to be a lighthouse keeper. I think it is worth pointing out too, you know, when you think about the important contributions of Jefferson's presidency, you know, at the first constitutionally allowable moment, it's, you know, he called on Congress to pass a bill bringing about an end to the international slave trade. And so, you know, that is a significant achievement that I think people oftentimes overlook. Certainly it didn't prevent slavery from continuing to exist within the United States, but it did at least legally prevent, you know, people being kidnapped in Africa and brought in change to the New World and sold legally in the United States. And that's something. Yeah, I discussed that in the book too. And in fact, people may wonder, well, what about smuggling? But for all we know, there wasn't very much smuggling of people into slavery in America after that. It seems to have been a very effective law. So we have about one minute left. I just want people to realize this is a really readable book. I mean, it is a delight to read. I think, you know, my students will enjoy it in the future. Certainly I enjoyed it. Share your thoughts on writing. I mean, what is it about you as unlike some other professors? Yeah, I won't name any names. But how is it that you're able to write in such a clear and concise sort of way? Oh boy. Well, I imagine I'm writing for my mother who's now deceased. But she in her last years took to reading American history about the Revolution and after. Unfortunately, she didn't live to see my books on this period. But, you know, she was the kind of standard intelligent lay reader. And so I think of writing for somebody like that. I also try to limit try to repress my own impulse to use lots of commas and semicolons and, you know, just just punctuate far too much and make sentences run on forever. That's a real struggle for me. But anyway, thank you for the compliment. I appreciate it. Thank you for the very well written book. I appreciated that. Well listen, let's briefly talk about your research. I mean, it's worth noting that this was hosted by the National Archives and Records Administration. I know that you used a number of different repositories and a number of different sources. Is there anything from the National Archives that you would recommend to people as far as, you know, resources that they might use? I see over your shoulder many of the books I used in writing this book. Well, there is a site or a, I don't know, sub-site. There are materials on the Library of Congress website called Founders Online National Archives website. So you can just Google Founders Online National Archives and find all the surviving writings and all the surviving letters received by, for example, Jefferson and Madison. But there are many other people who's surviving writings are on that website too. I highly recommend it. I used it quite a lot in writing this book. I agree. That is a tremendous resource and something that really turbocharges scholarship in a way that wasn't available to us when we were graduate students. Right. I wish we'd had it. Yes. Well, Kevin, I wish we could speak, you know, for hours and hours. But unfortunately, we've only been given one hour and our hour has come to an end. But I really want to thank you for, you know, allowing me to have this conversation with you. I've enjoyed it. I hope our viewers have enjoyed it. And I hope that this will sort of wet their appetite for the period and cause them to go out and buy your book. Once again, it is called The Jeffersonians, The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Thank you, Kevin. You're welcome. Thank you.