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Interview Only w/ Scott Greenberger - The Founding Father You’ve Never Heard Of · The Chuck ToddCast

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
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Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
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2:06
Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Well, as many
2:18
Speaker 1: of you know, whenever I have an opportunity to remind
2:24
Speaker 1: people of what's in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers,
2:29
Speaker 1: I want to take that opportunity. And there's a terrific
2:31
Speaker 1: new book out. The book is by my next guest,
2:35
Speaker 1: Scott Greenberger, and it's called The Forsaken Founder. It's about
2:40
Speaker 1: he gets to use the French version of Gouverneur, Governor Morris,
2:45
Speaker 1: basically the person who literally wrote the Constitution and certainly
2:49
Speaker 1: is accredited with making the preamble something more than just
2:54
Speaker 1: perfunctory words. But he was a lot more than that.
2:57
Speaker 1: He was an interesting character in that he was a
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Speaker 1: bit of an aristocrat. Not fully, you know, pro-democracy, but,
3:07
Speaker 1: you know, not for everybody type of thing. And it
3:11
Speaker 1: lived a remarkable life, had a front row seat for
3:14
Speaker 1: the French Revolution. So it's a it's a terrific book
3:17
Speaker 1: and it's going to spark, I hope, a great conversation
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Speaker 1: with Scott, who joins me now. Scott, it's nice to
3:21
Speaker 1: meet you.
3:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.
3:24
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Morris. He's you know, he's he's.
3:30
Speaker 1: You label him as forgotten. He's not fully forgotten, right?
3:33
Speaker 1: He's been dealt with in the past in history. So
3:39
Speaker 1: give me your sort of thesis as to why you
3:44
Speaker 1: wanted to resurface his contributions for the modern era.
3:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, he hasn't been completely forgotten, and I think there
3:53
Speaker 3: are some Morris fans out there, people who have really
3:56
Speaker 3: done a deep dive into the Constitution and the Convention,
4:00
Speaker 3: certainly are aware of his contributions there. But I think
4:04
Speaker 3: that your average American is not really aware of him.
4:09
Speaker 3: He's certainly not in the pantheon.
4:11
Speaker 2: Of the founders.
4:12
Speaker 3: That includes probably Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson. I argue that
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Speaker 3: he probably should be. At the convention, he spoke more
4:21
Speaker 3: than anybody else, had more motions accepted than anybody else.
4:27
Speaker 3: He really was the one person who stood up and
4:29
Speaker 3: spoke up against slavery, and more specifically against the Three-Fifths Clause,
4:34
Speaker 3: and gave a very impassioned eloquent speech against the three-fifths clause.
4:38
Speaker 3: And then, as you noted, he did write the preamble
4:41
Speaker 3: and really transformed that from a sort of a dry
4:45
Speaker 3: contract between or an introduction to a contract between states
4:50
Speaker 3: into something much more than that, a blueprint that lays
4:54
Speaker 3: out our aspirations as a country. He also, as the
4:57
Speaker 3: writer of the final draft of the Constitution, in a
5:00
Speaker 3: very subtle way, managed to insert some of his own
5:03
Speaker 3: views into the document, including taking several steps to make
5:09
Speaker 3: sure that there was no endorsement of slavery either implicitly
5:14
Speaker 3: or explicitly in the document, even though it did include
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Speaker 3: the Fugitive Slave Clause and it did include the Three-Fifths Clause.
5:20
Speaker 1: The word slavery is not mentioned in there. Let's discuss
5:24
Speaker 1: sort of Morris and Madison here, right? If Madison's the
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Speaker 1: father of the Constitution, you're putting him as the writer
5:28
Speaker 1: of the Constitution. um, who's, who's, uh, who's got a
5:33
Speaker 1: bigger stake?
5:35
Speaker 3: Uh, well, I would say that Morris and Madison, uh,
5:38
Speaker 3: had their differences. Uh, I should say for one thing,
5:40
Speaker 3: Morris just personally, uh, was, was kind of the polar
5:43
Speaker 3: opposite of Madison. He was, uh, Morris was a very, uh, uh, imposing, uh, figure,
5:49
Speaker 3: very good looking guy who, uh, enjoyed, uh, having a
5:53
Speaker 3: good time, did quite well with the ladies. Madison was
5:55
Speaker 3: probably the opposite of all of those in all of
5:58
Speaker 3: those respects. Uh, shorter of stature, unassuming guy. Madison is
6:07
Speaker 3: often called the father of the Constitution because he did
6:11
Speaker 3: the very important job of sitting at the front of
6:13
Speaker 3: the room and taking notes on everything. He, of course,
6:15
Speaker 3: had very particular ideas, which he brought to the convention
6:20
Speaker 3: and to the debates. I would argue that Morris has
6:23
Speaker 3: just as much of a claim on being the father
6:28
Speaker 3: of the Constitution. And you mentioned the Federalist Papers earlier.
6:33
Speaker 3: In fact, Hamilton and Jay, their first choice as a
6:35
Speaker 3: co-writer for the Federalist Papers was Morris. It was only
6:38
Speaker 3: when Morris declined that they had to go with Madison,
6:41
Speaker 3: who was really their second choice.
6:43
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine Morris obviously had been Because the preamble
6:48
Speaker 1: said said something more than just here's a list of proposals. Right. Obvious.
6:56
Speaker 1: And the whole point of the Federalist Papers was essentially persuasion.
6:59
Speaker 2: Right.
7:00
Speaker 1: You wanted to find your best writers. Is that essentially
7:03
Speaker 1: what Hamilton was looking to Morris for?
7:05
Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, but Morris, he was the
7:07
Speaker 2: best writer.
7:08
Speaker 3: I mean, he was generally recognized even in a room
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Speaker 3: full of brilliant men who were terrific and very talented writers.
7:14
Speaker 3: He was recognized as the best, which is something in
7:17
Speaker 3: and of itself. But he also, you know, he wasn't
7:19
Speaker 3: just a writer in addition to standing up and speaking
7:23
Speaker 3: against slavery. He, like Hamilton, believed in a strong executive,
7:27
Speaker 3: so he pushed for that during the convention. He also,
7:31
Speaker 3: like many of the men in the room, recognized that
7:33
Speaker 3: it was absolutely essential for there to be a balance
7:36
Speaker 3: of powers. He actually feared, in thinking about our own
7:40
Speaker 3: time and what's happened over the past several years, he
7:43
Speaker 3: actually was more afraid of legislative tyranny than executive tyranny.
7:47
Speaker 3: But he, like the other men in the room, never
7:50
Speaker 3: imagined that there would be a branch of government that
7:52
Speaker 3: would willingly forfeit its power to another branch. The whole
7:55
Speaker 3: system was created under the assumption that each of the
8:00
Speaker 3: branches would jealously guard its own power. And so what
8:02
Speaker 3: we've seen recently where we have a Republican-dominated Congress that
8:06
Speaker 3: really is not exerting its power with the Republican president
8:11
Speaker 3: would be very surprising to Morris and others. The whole
8:14
Speaker 3: system they built was built on this tension between the branches. So,
8:18
Speaker 3: you know, Morris, all of which is to say that
8:20
Speaker 3: Morris was more than just a writer. He did bring
8:22
Speaker 3: to the convention, you know, specific ideas of what the
8:26
Speaker 3: government should look like. And he also, from the very beginning,
8:30
Speaker 3: made it clear that we needed to have a federal
8:32
Speaker 3: government that was supreme to the state governments, that the
8:35
Speaker 3: problem with the Articles of Confederation was that each state
8:38
Speaker 3: could basically do what it wanted and that the only
8:41
Speaker 3: way that what they were doing in that room in
8:43
Speaker 3: Philadelphia would work is if they recognized right off the
8:46
Speaker 3: bat that there needed to be a federal government that
8:48
Speaker 3: was supreme to the state governments.
8:51
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, your theories as to why he got
8:58
Speaker 1: put up, put in the back, you know, it's almost
9:00
Speaker 1: like put in the back row of the, of the
9:02
Speaker 1: proverbial photo. He wasn't a front row person. You also
9:07
Speaker 1: paint him as somebody who was a ladies man who
9:10
Speaker 1: enjoyed being, you know, sort of, holding court right um
9:15
Speaker 1: the fact that he had a peg leg was almost
9:17
Speaker 1: sort of like hey aren't i interesting that's right attitude
9:20
Speaker 1: he was yeah it gave him a clean frame yeah
9:24
Speaker 1: it's like we're out to a bar or something you
9:26
Speaker 1: know right it like you know i'm i'm pretty i'm
9:28
Speaker 1: pretty cool wait till i tell you the story yeah
9:31
Speaker 1: um could it be he rubbed so many people at
9:34
Speaker 1: the time the wrong way is that the issue and
9:36
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like Yeah, we're not inviting him
9:40
Speaker 1: to this party or this. I mean, did he alienate folks?
9:44
Speaker 1: What's what's your theory as to why he's essentially put
9:47
Speaker 1: into the back row?
9:49
Speaker 2: That's definitely part of the reason.
9:51
Speaker 3: I think his personality, the fact that he was such
9:54
Speaker 3: a colorful character, he did.
9:57
Speaker 2: Rub some people the wrong way. You know, John Alexander.
10:00
Speaker 1: Adams in particular. When you ever describe somebody as a
10:03
Speaker 1: colorful character, it's usually they're dead. Which means in their life,
10:08
Speaker 1: people thought they were probably a-holes, right? Isn't that what
10:12
Speaker 1: we do in history sometimes?
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Speaker 3: Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote a biography of Morris and was
10:18
Speaker 3: a big Morris admirer, referred to Morris' extreme aggressive frankness.
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Speaker 2: So he was very.
10:24
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt acknowledged extreme direct pranking. Hey, man, game recognizes game.
10:30
Speaker 1: Thanks one to no one. Right. So, yeah.
10:33
Speaker 3: So I think that was certainly part of it. His personality,
10:36
Speaker 3: his success with the ladies. You know, some people viewed
10:39
Speaker 3: him as somewhat of a libertine, though he was a
10:41
Speaker 3: he was a bachelor till late in life.
10:43
Speaker 2: So, you know, that needs to be said.
10:45
Speaker 1: But yeah.
10:45
Speaker 3: He enjoyed great success with the ladies. And I think
10:48
Speaker 3: that some people frowned on that for moral reasons and
10:52
Speaker 3: others were frankly jealous. And there's plenty of evidence in
10:54
Speaker 3: that in the letters and memoirs of the time and
10:57
Speaker 3: in Morris's own diary, where he acknowledges that and recognized
11:01
Speaker 3: that there were people who were jealous of him. He
11:03
Speaker 3: was not a modest person. We've talked about how he
11:06
Speaker 3: was a very talented writer. He was extremely bright, even
11:11
Speaker 3: in a room full of bright men. He didn't hide
11:14
Speaker 3: that fact. He was not modest. I think another reason
11:19
Speaker 3: why he hasn't made the front row, as you put it,
11:22
Speaker 3: is that He made a lot of people uncomfortable when
11:25
Speaker 3: he stood up at the convention and talked about slavery
11:27
Speaker 3: in moral terms.
11:30
Speaker 1: Maybe everybody around there felt judged by him. I think
11:33
Speaker 1: some of them did.
11:34
Speaker 3: There were some people there who were unabashedly pro-slavery, the
11:38
Speaker 3: South Carolinians, for example, but the Virginians– all of whom
11:41
Speaker 3: owned slaves, were conflicted about it.
11:43
Speaker 2: And that includes Madison and George Mason in Washington.
11:46
Speaker 3: I mean, they recognized on some level that this wasn't right,
11:50
Speaker 3: that it wasn't compatible with the principles of the country
11:53
Speaker 3: that they hoped to build. And I think it was
11:56
Speaker 3: embarrassing for a lot of the people at the convention
11:58
Speaker 3: for this guy who was 6'4 on his peg leg
12:01
Speaker 3: to stand up and give this impassioned, eloquent, to make
12:05
Speaker 3: the moral case against slavery, while the rest of them
12:07
Speaker 3: just sort of sat there uncomfortably. Even abolitionists such as
12:12
Speaker 3: Hamilton and Franklin didn't speak up.
12:15
Speaker 2: During the convention.
12:16
Speaker 3: Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society at the time,
12:20
Speaker 3: and the members of that organization said, Hey, Ben, would
12:23
Speaker 3: you mind raising this during the convention? He said, you
12:25
Speaker 3: know what? I'm not sure that would be such a
12:28
Speaker 3: good idea. He sort of read the room. Morris did
12:30
Speaker 3: not read the room or didn't care about reading the room. And,
12:34
Speaker 3: of course, it was those Virginians, in part or in
12:38
Speaker 3: large part because of the Three-Fifths Clause that Morris had
12:40
Speaker 3: been unable to remove from the document. They dominated the
12:43
Speaker 3: presidency for many years after the convention.
12:46
Speaker 1: Right.
12:47
Speaker 3: And the victors write the history, right? They were the heroes,
12:49
Speaker 3: Jefferson and Madison and Monroe. They were the ones who
12:52
Speaker 3: wrote the history. And so I think Morris got written
12:55
Speaker 3: out of it. You know, another another factor you alluded
12:58
Speaker 3: to earlier is that he was a bit of an aristocrat.
13:01
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say he was, you know, fully
13:03
Speaker 3: democratic as Hamilton was, but he was an aristocrat from
13:07
Speaker 3: an aristocratic family and had sort of aristocratic tastes. I
13:11
Speaker 3: think that maybe also rubbed some people the wrong way.
13:14
Speaker 3: So for all of these reasons, and then there was
13:16
Speaker 3: a later one, which we haven't gotten to, he was,
13:19
Speaker 3: during the War of 1812, he was still so disillusioned
13:23
Speaker 3: by the inclusion of the Three-Fifths Clause, he thought that
13:26
Speaker 3: that had led to the War of 1812, that the
13:28
Speaker 3: Virginians were dragging the country forward At that point, Madison
13:31
Speaker 3: was president, into a pointless war. silly fantasies of conquering Canada.
13:37
Speaker 3: He thought they had it in for New York and
13:41
Speaker 3: New England and the commercial industrial part of the country.
13:45
Speaker 3: He was so upset about the course that Madison and
13:54
Speaker 3: Jefferson had set the country on that he considered whether
13:57
Speaker 3: maybe it was time for New York and New England
13:59
Speaker 3: to go their separate ways. He was an early secessionist.
14:02
Speaker 3: He thought This country can't be half slave and half free, which,
14:06
Speaker 3: of course, is what Lincoln said 50 years later. But Lincoln,
14:08
Speaker 3: his credit said, we're going to be all free and not,
14:11
Speaker 3: you know, we're going to let some states go their
14:12
Speaker 3: own way.
14:13
Speaker 1: You know, I remember when I read the McCullough Adams book. Yeah.
14:18
Speaker 1: And way back when. And now I'm a younger person.
14:21
Speaker 1: And so you're absorbing history and, you know, you got
14:23
Speaker 1: taught it a certain way. And McCullough's book on Adams
14:27
Speaker 1: really sort of helped reshape and rebalance the founding a
14:30
Speaker 1: little bit. But I always got the impression that, you know,
14:34
Speaker 1: and I know this now, right, more so than ever,
14:36
Speaker 1: that whenever you read a book on the founding, you've
14:38
Speaker 1: got to find out, is the author essentially a northerner
14:42
Speaker 1: or a southerner?
14:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
14:44
Speaker 1: There is this, right, those with southern sort of biases,
14:50
Speaker 1: I don't know what else to call them, you know,
14:52
Speaker 1: there's the rationalizations of the Virginians.
14:55
Speaker 3: Right.
14:55
Speaker 1: And there's those that, you know, write from Boston or
14:58
Speaker 1: New York and look at it in a different perspective.
15:02
Speaker 1: I mean, if John Adams is not president, is John
15:05
Speaker 1: Adams a vice president? Does he get shoved into the
15:08
Speaker 1: back row, too, by the Virginians?
15:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think he was shoved to the
15:12
Speaker 3: back row for a long time before that McCullough book
15:16
Speaker 3: and the series with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney that
15:18
Speaker 3: came out, which was so excellent. I think for a
15:21
Speaker 3: long time, Adams had sort of been shoved to the
15:23
Speaker 3: back row. Also, because of his personality, I think he
15:27
Speaker 3: rubbed plenty of people the wrong way as well.
15:29
Speaker 2: And even even fellow federalists.
15:31
Speaker 1: He was the opposite of Morris. He was a little
15:33
Speaker 1: bit of a puritan, right? Yes, he was. The unladies man,
15:36
Speaker 1: if you will. That's right.
15:36
Speaker 3: He was the unladies man, but he rubbed some people
15:40
Speaker 3: the wrong way. I mean, in fact, when he ran
15:42
Speaker 3: for re-election, a fellow federalist, Hamilton, savaged him in the press.
15:47
Speaker 3: I mean, Adams was a very unpopular incumbent when he
15:51
Speaker 3: ran for re-election. So Look, I think that's true. You know,
15:54
Speaker 3: the Virginians wrote the history and the Southern historians. You know,
15:59
Speaker 3: we have a we have a monument in Washington to Jefferson.
16:02
Speaker 3: We don't have a monument to Adams. Right. No, they
16:07
Speaker 3: this was and history builds on earlier historians. And in
16:12
Speaker 3: the you know, these early perceptions of Morris, both by
16:14
Speaker 3: the historians and his And the resentments of his contemporaries
16:17
Speaker 3: really colored our view of him. You know, the other thing,
16:21
Speaker 3: which sounds kind of silly, but I think it's a
16:23
Speaker 3: factor as well, is his name is sort of inaccessible.
16:26
Speaker 3: You know, you pronounced it Governor. Others pronounce it Gouverneur.
16:30
Speaker 3: There's some disagreement. And, you know, the problem with pronouncing
16:34
Speaker 3: it as Governor and why I've.
16:36
Speaker 1: It feels like a title, right? It feels like a title.
16:38
Speaker 2: And that's one of the few things he didn't do.
16:40
Speaker 2: So it's very confusing.
16:42
Speaker 3: It's much better to be named Tom or Ben or
16:44
Speaker 3: George if you want schoolchildren to remember you. And I
16:47
Speaker 3: think that's also part of the problem with why he
16:50
Speaker 3: hasn't been remembered. Of course, also, there's no Monticello or
16:54
Speaker 3: Mount Vernon for him. His estate, which is now- I.
16:57
Speaker 1: Was just going to say, I mean, being an aristocrat,
16:59
Speaker 1: I assume he had some- He did.
17:01
Speaker 3: It was called Morsania, of course, and it was in
17:04
Speaker 3: what was then Westchester County, but is now the Bronx.
17:08
Speaker 1: It was a huge piece of land.
17:11
Speaker 2: But it was.
17:13
Speaker 3: Carved up by one of the railroads at the turn
17:16
Speaker 3: of the 20th century and disappeared. So there's nowhere to
17:18
Speaker 3: go remember him. I actually went to his grave site,
17:22
Speaker 3: which is in the churchyard of St. Ann's Church in
17:26
Speaker 3: the South Bronx. And there's just a very very modest
17:29
Speaker 3: uh tablet there that was placed there in 1932 i
17:32
Speaker 3: read the newspaper coverage of that event and uh you
17:35
Speaker 3: know it's actually kind of sad it's just it's sitting
17:37
Speaker 3: back there near the the recycling bins and the garbage
17:40
Speaker 3: cans uh for the church and um you know there's
17:44
Speaker 3: so there's no natural place to go remember him now
17:46
Speaker 3: hopefully there's been people who showed up at some of
17:49
Speaker 3: my events who from the bronx who are dedicated to
17:52
Speaker 3: to changing that we'll see what happens but Before.
17:55
Speaker 1: I get to his time in France, because that's, in
17:57
Speaker 1: some ways, a whole subject change on the French Revolution,
18:01
Speaker 1: and I want to get to that. He ultimately looked
18:06
Speaker 1: back on the Constitution and thought it was still a
18:08
Speaker 1: worthy document, correct? He did, but he thought that the
18:13
Speaker 1: three-fifths clause was the fatal flaw in the document. Was
18:18
Speaker 1: it fatal, though, in that we eventually got rid of it?
18:22
Speaker 3: We did eventually get rid of it, but it took
18:24
Speaker 3: a war that killed 800,000 Americans to get rid of it.
18:28
Speaker 2: So he was very prescient.
18:29
Speaker 3: I mean, he thought early on– And he he thought
18:34
Speaker 3: that this was going to lead to disaster, that this
18:36
Speaker 3: this idea of having slavery legal in some of the
18:39
Speaker 3: states and not others was going to was going to
18:41
Speaker 3: lead to trouble. And he was not wrong about that. So, yeah,
18:46
Speaker 3: I mean, he did, though he believed in the he
18:48
Speaker 3: believed in the Constitution and he believed in the.
18:51
Speaker 1: He didn't believe in it because the Articles of Confederation
18:54
Speaker 1: were such a failure and this was just an improvement.
18:57
Speaker 1: Or did he?
18:57
Speaker 3: Well, look, everybody, you know, even Franklin, you know, everybody
19:01
Speaker 3: said this is not perfect. Men are not perfect. The
19:03
Speaker 3: people who drew up this document are not perfect. But
19:05
Speaker 3: this is, you know, this they view this as an experiment.
19:09
Speaker 3: And they felt like this was a good foundation for
19:12
Speaker 3: that experiment, that the system they had created with this
19:15
Speaker 3: balance of powers and the power with three branches of
19:19
Speaker 3: government and. Ultimately, this compromise between the big states and
19:25
Speaker 3: the small states, where you would have one house, the Senate,
19:28
Speaker 3: where the states would each have equal representation, another one
19:31
Speaker 3: that would be based on population.
19:33
Speaker 2: They felt like, okay, let's see how this goes. We've
19:36
Speaker 2: done the best we can here.
19:38
Speaker 3: As Franklin said, perhaps apocryphally to the woman who asked
19:43
Speaker 3: what they had done, you know, we.
19:43
Speaker 2: Create a republic if you can keep it.
19:45
Speaker 3: So they weren't absolutely, you know, it's easy for us
19:48
Speaker 3: with the hindsight of 250 years to say, oh, this
19:51
Speaker 3: was all, you know, the success was preordained, right?
19:56
Speaker 2: This was going to work out. But they didn't feel
19:57
Speaker 2: that way.
19:58
Speaker 3: They knew that, I mean, also looking across the globe,
20:01
Speaker 3: this was the first experiment of its kind since, you know,
20:04
Speaker 3: the first democracy since ancient times.
20:06
Speaker 1: So they were, I wouldn't say they were overly.
20:08
Speaker 3: Confident, but they were hopeful that they had created something
20:11
Speaker 3: that would endure.
20:15
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Speaker 1: was the Chuck Todd cast. It's the best way to
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Speaker 1: support the show and the best way to make sure
22:43
Speaker 1: you're getting every discount. He was an advocate for direct
22:50
Speaker 1: election of the president. Yeah. To the point of– and
22:54
Speaker 1: how much of that was just he didn't– he wanted
22:56
Speaker 1: to have a weak– he thought the legislative branch should
23:00
Speaker 1: be weak, right? Yeah.
23:01
Speaker 3: He feared a– the tyranny of the legislative branch. And
23:06
Speaker 3: I know, and once we talk about France, you know,
23:08
Speaker 3: we'll talk about the fact that he saw that his
23:10
Speaker 3: worst fears play out in France, where the radicals in
23:13
Speaker 3: the National Assembly, you know, created the reign of terror there.
23:16
Speaker 2: So that's what he feared.
23:17
Speaker 3: But yeah, he did believe, you know, that's why I
23:19
Speaker 3: don't think it's fair to characterize him as anti-democratic, because
23:23
Speaker 3: he did believe that there should be direct popular election
23:27
Speaker 3: of the president. He saw the president as sort of
23:29
Speaker 3: the tribune of the people. He felt like the president
23:31
Speaker 3: would be the one to For that reason, to represent
23:35
Speaker 3: the people's interests, he feared that the wealthy sort of
23:37
Speaker 3: ironic because he was wealthy, but he felt like the
23:39
Speaker 3: wealthy would dominate the legislature.
23:43
Speaker 1: And yet, though, he was a believer that only landowners
23:46
Speaker 1: should vote. True.
23:48
Speaker 3: However, to be fair, that was not an unusual opinion
23:51
Speaker 3: at the time. And there were many states where that
23:53
Speaker 3: was true into the 20th century. So, you know, there were,
23:58
Speaker 3: you know, that was not a crazy or a minority
24:00
Speaker 3: viewpoint at that point. Many people, including Madison, I think,
24:04
Speaker 3: stood up to say, you know, we do think that
24:06
Speaker 3: they're not everybody should be able to vote.
24:09
Speaker 1: Are you surprised he never sought higher office or ran
24:14
Speaker 1: for anything?
24:15
Speaker 3: You know, it's one of the interesting things about him,
24:17
Speaker 3: and I think it's another reason why he's been forgotten.
24:20
Speaker 3: He seemed to– he was the rare person in public
24:24
Speaker 3: life who sort of felt– it almost felt like he
24:26
Speaker 3: could take it or leave it. When his country called,
24:28
Speaker 3: he answered, but he never– Why was he there?
24:31
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess what got him there? What made
24:33
Speaker 1: him somebody that should be a delegate to that country?
24:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he just– he impressed people every step of
24:40
Speaker 3: the way, right? So as a very young man, he
24:42
Speaker 3: started the first– Public role he had was as a
24:46
Speaker 3: member of the New York Provincial Congress. And he really
24:50
Speaker 3: shined there. Also, incidentally, argued against slavery there. Played a
24:55
Speaker 3: huge role in drafting the New York State Constitution. And
25:00
Speaker 3: in particular, impressed people with his knowledge of fiscal and
25:03
Speaker 3: financial matters. Based on that, he was elected by his
25:08
Speaker 3: colleagues in the Provincial Congress to serve in the Continental Congress.
25:12
Speaker 3: In the Continental Congress, his colleagues there immediately sent him
25:16
Speaker 3: to Valley Forge to help Washington reorganize the Continental Army,
25:19
Speaker 3: which he did with great success.
25:22
Speaker 2: He kept succeeding at every point.
25:24
Speaker 3: Then, during the Revolutionary War, he worked with Robert Morris,
25:26
Speaker 3: no relation to reorganize the finances of the country. And
25:33
Speaker 3: he was living in Philadelphia pursuing private business interests and
25:36
Speaker 3: was when he was elected by the Pennsylvania politicians to
25:41
Speaker 3: be one of their delegates to the Constitutional Convention. So
25:43
Speaker 3: even though he was a New Yorker, he represented Pennsylvania
25:46
Speaker 3: at the convention. So but he was one of these
25:48
Speaker 3: guys he had. In between all of those, he was like, OK,
25:52
Speaker 3: now I'm going to go make some money, pursue my
25:53
Speaker 3: private business interests, socialize, which he enjoyed doing quite a bit.
25:57
Speaker 1: You're painting the picture of just sort of what we
26:02
Speaker 1: would call today is a power broker. He wanted to
26:05
Speaker 1: help those in power maybe be adjacent to it. but
26:09
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily want to be the guy in charge?
26:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he never ran for office. He wasn't a
26:14
Speaker 2: politician in the traditional sense.
26:17
Speaker 3: And other biographers of him have noted, Richard Brookhiser noted
26:21
Speaker 3: about 20 years ago, that he was one of the founders.
26:24
Speaker 2: He loved his private life. He liked to fish. He
26:26
Speaker 2: liked to.
26:28
Speaker 2: Eat and drink and socialize and yes.
26:32
Speaker 1: You grow up with wealth he probably had pursuits yeah
26:34
Speaker 1: yeah he had that option yeah.
26:37
Speaker 3: He had that option when his country called he always
26:39
Speaker 3: answered unfailingly um you know when he came back from
26:43
Speaker 3: france uh hamilton urged him to run for they were
26:46
Speaker 3: best friends and hamilton urged him to run for congress
26:48
Speaker 3: he said yeah no thanks And then eventually he was
26:51
Speaker 3: drafted to fill a Senate seat. And even when he
26:54
Speaker 3: was in France, Washington nominated him to succeed Jefferson as ambassador.
26:59
Speaker 3: But Morris hadn't gone over there to represent his country.
27:03
Speaker 3: He'd gone over there to make money. And also because
27:05
Speaker 3: he wanted to travel through Europe. So, yeah, I think,
27:09
Speaker 3: you know, and as I mentioned, he declined the opportunity
27:12
Speaker 3: to be one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.
27:14
Speaker 3: I don't think he was that interested in burnishing his legacy.
27:17
Speaker 3: And a lot of these other guys had an eye
27:18
Speaker 3: toward history.
27:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:20
Speaker 2: How history would view them.
27:23
Speaker 1: If Hamilton lives, is Morris a bigger deal?
27:28
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting question.
27:29
Speaker 3: Perhaps he is, because if Hamilton ends up As president,
27:33
Speaker 3: they certainly saw eye to eye in terms of executive
27:37
Speaker 3: power and the importance of the federal, the power of
27:39
Speaker 3: the federal government, you know, as opposed to.
27:41
Speaker 1: Hamilton's one of my favorite what ifs. I mean, it's
27:44
Speaker 1: like if he lives.
27:45
Speaker 2: What would Hamilton have gone on to do?
27:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is.
27:47
Speaker 3: It is fair to assume that if he had gone
27:49
Speaker 3: on to the presidency that. that Morris might've ended up playing.
27:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Although there's always been a question of whether the,
27:58
Speaker 1: the issue of, of who gets, of who's eligible to
28:01
Speaker 1: run for president was designed to prevent Hamilton. That's right. Yeah.
28:04
Speaker 2: That's right.
28:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. But you know, it was how that challenge would
28:07
Speaker 1: have gone. Well, let's get to France. Now you say
28:11
Speaker 1: he got over, he ends up over there literally, you know,
28:15
Speaker 1: as soon as the constitution is finished and ratified, he
28:19
Speaker 1: ends up in France. You said he's, So he didn't
28:22
Speaker 1: go as a representative of the United States at first,
28:25
Speaker 1: and then he becomes one?
28:26
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, he did.
28:29
Speaker 3: He and Robert Morris, who I mentioned before, who had
28:32
Speaker 3: worked together to shore up the finances of the country
28:34
Speaker 3: during the revolution, were pursuing business deals there. They owned
28:38
Speaker 3: land in upstate New York. They were trying to sell.
28:40
Speaker 3: They had this scheme to perhaps.
28:43
Speaker 3: Purchased America's debt to France and somehow make some money
28:51
Speaker 3: off that. So he did not go there intending to
28:54
Speaker 3: serve in a public capacity. But almost immediately, even before
28:58
Speaker 3: Washington chose him to succeed Jefferson as our ambassador, what
29:02
Speaker 3: was then called Minister to France, And Washington did send
29:05
Speaker 3: him on a mission to London kind of unofficially as
29:08
Speaker 3: an emissary to talk to the British about some of
29:12
Speaker 3: the unresolved issues from the war, including some forts they
29:15
Speaker 3: had in the Northwest Territory.
29:19
Speaker 2: Money that was owed.
29:20
Speaker 3: So, you know, he keeps that was yet another example
29:24
Speaker 3: of where, you know, people in power kept asking him,
29:28
Speaker 3: you know, tapping him to do various things. So, yeah,
29:30
Speaker 3: he went over there not intending to be to serve
29:33
Speaker 3: in a public capacity.
29:35
Speaker 1: So he it's there. You referred to it earlier, but
29:39
Speaker 1: his his skepticism of giving too much power to a
29:42
Speaker 1: legislature in his mind was essentially reinforced. by what he
29:49
Speaker 1: observed in the reign of terror in France. Yes, absolutely.
29:52
Speaker 2: I mean, that was driven.
29:53
Speaker 3: By radical legislators in the National Assembly and the political
30:00
Speaker 3: infighting that eventually led to the most radical members kind
30:05
Speaker 3: of driving the bus there. He actually thought that given
30:08
Speaker 3: France's history and its politics, that the best possible outcome
30:13
Speaker 3: would be some sort of a constitutional monarchy. And he
30:16
Speaker 3: actually tried to advise Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to
30:20
Speaker 3: pursue a moderate course and to try to.
30:25
Speaker 1: So he was liaisoning with the King of France. He was.
30:29
Speaker 3: But it's important to remember that King Louis was an
30:34
Speaker 3: American hero at that point. He had helped us really
30:37
Speaker 3: play a gigantic role in helping us win our revolution.
30:40
Speaker 3: And And, you know, in the book, I quote, there's
30:43
Speaker 3: a letter from George Washington to Louis XVI congratulating him
30:48
Speaker 3: on his reign, you know, and thanking him again for
30:51
Speaker 3: all the help he had he had given us during
30:53
Speaker 3: the revolution. So most Americans had very fond feelings toward
30:58
Speaker 3: Louis XVI. So it wasn't unusual that Morris would try
31:01
Speaker 3: to to help him. And he thought that it was
31:04
Speaker 3: in America's best interest for France to be stable.
31:07
Speaker 1: It's sort of ironic. I mean, isn't the French Revolution wonderful?
31:11
Speaker 1: Essentially inspired by the success of the American Revolution?
31:14
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It was.
31:16
Speaker 3: But he and many others didn't feel like that, you know,
31:18
Speaker 3: given France's history and it's the power of the clergy there,
31:23
Speaker 3: for example, and obviously its history of of of. having
31:31
Speaker 3: a monarch, they didn't think the French were ready as
31:34
Speaker 3: a people for a republic. They felt like maybe a
31:37
Speaker 3: constitutional monarchy was what they were best suited for, certainly
31:41
Speaker 3: at this point. And again, given what happened during the
31:45
Speaker 3: French Revolution, which As Americans, we tend to forget because
31:50
Speaker 3: we do focus on the fact that it grew out
31:52
Speaker 3: of our revolution.
31:53
Speaker 1: It ended up.
31:54
Speaker 3: With Napoleon and a return to the monarchy. They embraced
32:00
Speaker 3: a lot of the same principles that we did, but
32:02
Speaker 3: they did not have a smooth path to a republic
32:06
Speaker 3: that we had. For Morris, this vindicated all of his fears.
32:12
Speaker 3: I want to get to the War of 1812. and
32:15
Speaker 3: his criticism of it, how much of it was personal
32:19
Speaker 3: with Madison, do you think?
32:21
Speaker 2: That's, yeah, he definitely did not like Madison.
32:23
Speaker 3: But he had a much better relationship with Jefferson. And
32:26
Speaker 3: he felt like really the road to that war began
32:29
Speaker 3: with Jefferson and the embargo that Jefferson placed on Britain
32:32
Speaker 3: and France to punish them for impressing American sailors into
32:37
Speaker 3: their Navy. So it's true. He had no love for Madison.
32:42
Speaker 3: He had a much better relationship with Jefferson. But no
32:47
Speaker 3: matter what his personal feelings were towards those two men,
32:49
Speaker 3: he thought that the embargo first and that the war
32:53
Speaker 3: were just a complete disaster, which they were. They were
32:55
Speaker 3: an economic disaster for New York and New England. And
32:59
Speaker 3: in terms of what the so-called war hawks in That
33:08
Speaker 3: was a fantasy that didn't– Man.
33:12
Speaker 1: There's a whole book to be written about all the
33:13
Speaker 1: different times we thought we were going to get our
33:15
Speaker 1: hands on Canada.
33:16
Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, you know, I write
33:18
Speaker 2: a piece for Forbes.
33:19
Speaker 3: There are a lot of, you know, in terms of
33:20
Speaker 3: the self-inflicted economic damage of the tariffs and going off
33:26
Speaker 3: to war, you know, having a president who has these
33:28
Speaker 3: fantasies of adding Canada to the United States and promising
33:31
Speaker 3: a victory in, you know, a few weeks. You know,
33:34
Speaker 3: as Jefferson said, conquering Canada would be a mere matter
33:38
Speaker 3: of marching.
33:39
Speaker 2: So it didn't turn out that way.
33:41
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I just... I remember reading in Grant's biography,
33:46
Speaker 1: there was a group of members of Congress who wanted
33:49
Speaker 1: essentially Canada as reparations from the Brits. This obsession with–
33:57
Speaker 1: we've weirdly had multiple generations of Americans with ambitions to
34:01
Speaker 1: grab Canada, and it's never happened. Yeah, it is kind
34:07
Speaker 1: of strange.
34:09
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, he saw the war of 1812 as
34:11
Speaker 3: sort of as the, you know, manifestation of what, you know,
34:18
Speaker 3: the original sin that had been embedded in the in
34:22
Speaker 3: the Constitution, the three fifths clause.
34:23
Speaker 2: Right here were the Virginians using their.
34:26
Speaker 3: Disproportionate political power to drag us into this stupid war,
34:29
Speaker 3: which was devastating. And the embargo and the war devastating
34:32
Speaker 3: the economies of New England and New York and sort
34:36
Speaker 3: of the industrial commercial part of the country. And, you know,
34:42
Speaker 3: caring only about the slaveholding states were obviously mostly agricultural.
34:47
Speaker 2: And, you know, Jefferson had this vision of an agrarian society.
34:50
Speaker 1: Republic.
34:51
Speaker 3: And Morris and Hamilton and other people in the North
34:54
Speaker 3: had a very different view of what the country should
34:57
Speaker 3: be like.
34:58
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, they were right.
35:00
Speaker 1: No, absolutely. I mean, you give you say he deserves
35:04
Speaker 1: credit for essentially the seeing the vision of the Erie Canal, right?
35:09
Speaker 2: That's right. That was a big part.
35:10
Speaker 1: That's right.
35:10
Speaker 3: And he predicted that that would really cement New York's
35:15
Speaker 3: status as the hinge of the continental economy and that
35:18
Speaker 3: it would, in particular, make New York City the most
35:21
Speaker 3: important city uh in north america which of course it
35:24
Speaker 3: did um.
35:25
Speaker 1: And albany it was so close yeah yeah or albany
35:29
Speaker 1: it was so close yeah.
35:31
Speaker 3: So um no he was right about that you know
35:33
Speaker 3: and one final thing he did near the end of
35:35
Speaker 3: his life which was another uh incredibly important contribution when
35:39
Speaker 3: he he was really the one who laid out the
35:41
Speaker 3: manhattan street grid so he he sort of plotted out
35:44
Speaker 3: the growth of new york and in that case uh
35:47
Speaker 3: in a very democratic way right the greatest robert moses
35:51
Speaker 3: huh Yeah, he's sort of an early Robert Moses, but he,
35:55
Speaker 3: you know, so the grid, the idea of the grid was,
35:58
Speaker 3: you know, it broke up the, ironically, because he was
36:01
Speaker 3: a landowner, but it broke up some of the properties
36:04
Speaker 3: of the large landowners. It was a very, you know,
36:07
Speaker 3: rational pattern. He did not want what Lafont did with Washington,
36:13
Speaker 3: sort of the circles and the broad avenues. He saw
36:15
Speaker 3: that as very European and royalist. And even the fact
36:19
Speaker 3: that the streets, were, you know, numbered and not named
36:25
Speaker 3: after famous famous people was a very democratic approach. So, yeah,
36:31
Speaker 3: he had a lot to do, you know, he and Hamilton,
36:34
Speaker 3: you know, as New Yorkers, they they were are certainly
36:37
Speaker 3: the most prominent New Yorkers of that of that period
36:40
Speaker 3: and did a tremendous amount to make New York, you know,
36:43
Speaker 3: for a long time, the leading state of the union
36:44
Speaker 3: and New York City, the leading city of the of
36:47
Speaker 3: the country.
36:48
Speaker 1: I want to dabble in your professional career because you're
36:51
Speaker 1: not somebody who's sitting in an Ivy League tower, you know, writing,
36:58
Speaker 1: doing this for a living. And God bless those that
37:00
Speaker 1: get to do that, you know, more power to them.
37:04
Speaker 1: You're basically one of us, working journalist who, you know,
37:09
Speaker 1: loves history. And I, you know, we've not really spent
37:12
Speaker 1: any time together, but you strike, it strikes me that
37:16
Speaker 1: you have a, similar obsession with history as I do,
37:19
Speaker 1: which is you love finding sort of hidden gems of
37:24
Speaker 1: history or moments that, frankly, we weren't taught well enough
37:29
Speaker 1: at the time when we were taking our history classes,
37:31
Speaker 1: whether in college or even high school. And so, look,
37:37
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with Garfield. I'm obsessed with that decade. I'm
37:40
Speaker 1: obsessed with that presidency. You wrote about my man Chet, Mr. Arthur.
37:45
Speaker 1: You know, who is who is. I think now at
37:51
Speaker 1: least getting a little bit more attention, maybe the Netflix,
37:55
Speaker 1: maybe the death. I still don't love that series could
37:59
Speaker 1: have been better. It's clear to me that the Netflix
38:03
Speaker 1: executive said, don't give us eight episodes on Garfield. Nobody
38:06
Speaker 1: will watch it. They were wrong because everybody watched the
38:09
Speaker 1: four episodes. And I'm like, you're missing all these great stories.
38:13
Speaker 1: And we never we never got to do it. But
38:18
Speaker 1: when it comes to Garfield's presidency, and obviously Arthur tried
38:23
Speaker 1: to fulfill some of it, at least on the civil
38:26
Speaker 1: service front.
38:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
38:30
Speaker 1: I will argue that had Garfield lived, we might have
38:33
Speaker 1: had this 1965 Civil Rights Act in 1883. Do you
38:39
Speaker 1: believe that? Or do you think I'm overly romanticizing Garfield
38:44
Speaker 1: here a little bit?
38:45
Speaker 2: Well, Garfield was an extraordinary person.
38:48
Speaker 3: I mean, just in terms of he was totally self-made,
38:52
Speaker 3: you know, much like sort of like sort of Lincolnian.
38:55
Speaker 1: He's the mythology. Right. Right. Is it like, you know,
38:58
Speaker 1: the whole like anybody could be president?
39:01
Speaker 2: It's him.
39:02
Speaker 1: He's the only one that's ever fulfilled that. Extraordinary person. Yeah.
39:05
Speaker 2: Like incredibly bright. Yeah.
39:09
Speaker 3: Certainly committed to civil service reform. And so the question is,
39:15
Speaker 3: you know, how, given what had already happened with Rutherford,
39:22
Speaker 3: we're really getting deep here, but Hayes, you know, sort
39:24
Speaker 3: of abandoned construction. You know, I wonder whether, you know,
39:29
Speaker 3: it seemed like things were already turning that way against,
39:33
Speaker 3: you know, although.
39:34
Speaker 1: Garfield's election felt like a no, you know, not quite yet. Right.
39:39
Speaker 1: It felt like reconstruction was was dying, but not dead. Yeah.
39:43
Speaker 1: And then he dies and then it resuscitated. Yeah.
39:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.
39:47
Speaker 1: I don't know.
39:47
Speaker 3: Maybe that's really a fascinating historical what if, because, of course,
39:51
Speaker 3: a lot of, you know, the Jim Crow stuff was
39:54
Speaker 3: after that.
39:55
Speaker 1: Right.
39:55
Speaker 3: It was heading into the turn of the century and
39:57
Speaker 3: all of this sort of the lost cause. You know,
40:00
Speaker 3: all of that mythology grew up after that. And that
40:03
Speaker 3: sort of racist infrastructure hadn't really taken root yet.
40:08
Speaker 4: Right.
40:10
Speaker 1: I wonder.
40:11
Speaker 2: I mean, it is one of the great what ifs.
40:13
Speaker 3: I mean, because for as much as I love Chet
40:15
Speaker 3: and I do give him credit for enacting civil service reform,
40:19
Speaker 3: particularly given his his previous history as a machine politician,
40:24
Speaker 3: he was not James Garfield in terms of his intellectual capacity.
40:29
Speaker 1: No, I mean, it was. Yeah. I mean, you know,
40:31
Speaker 1: to be a little snarky, it was. It was as
40:34
Speaker 1: if Dan Quayle had become president and happened to meet
40:39
Speaker 1: the moment as best he could. And I guess we
40:41
Speaker 1: could say Arthur met the moment as best he could,
40:44
Speaker 1: unlike Andrew Johnson.
40:45
Speaker 3: He did.
40:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
40:47
Speaker 2: He did.
40:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know whether we would have had a
40:51
Speaker 3: Civil Rights Act. Also, the fact is the Supreme Court
40:54
Speaker 3: had already begun challenging some of those– you know, the,
41:03
Speaker 3: some of the laws that grew immediately out of the
41:05
Speaker 3: civil war, the civil rights laws.
41:07
Speaker 1: So, so right.
41:08
Speaker 3: There was a decision in 1883, I think, right. That
41:11
Speaker 3: was sort of anti-civil rights.
41:13
Speaker 1: So, well, that thing is, if we had had two
41:15
Speaker 1: terms of Garfield, what would that have been? Yeah. Yeah.
41:17
Speaker 1: I don't know.
41:18
Speaker 3: It is an interesting one because he was extremely impressive person.
41:23
Speaker 3: And you know, with a real moral core to him
41:26
Speaker 3: and that, that did come through in that death by
41:28
Speaker 3: lightning series, I think.
41:40
Speaker 1: No, it did. I mean, look, it was well cast. Yeah,
41:43
Speaker 1: very well cast.
41:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:44
Speaker 2: And I thought Nick Hoffman was great as Chad.
41:46
Speaker 1: He was really good. Over the top, but very entertaining. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
41:49
Speaker 1: I mean, it was sort of. Yeah. But. There was
41:52
Speaker 1: part of me, I wish Roscoe Conkling had been a
41:54
Speaker 1: bigger character because talk about colorful and over the top.
41:57
Speaker 1: Oh my God, Roscoe Conkling.
41:58
Speaker 3: That was the one bit of casting I wasn't sure
42:00
Speaker 3: about because Roscoe was a very big, imposing.
42:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought they missed it. Yeah, that was a win. Well,
42:07
Speaker 1: I bring this up because I often, you know, one
42:12
Speaker 1: of the things I hope, you know, I'm around 50
42:15
Speaker 1: years from now. I'm in my mid-50s. I figured there's
42:18
Speaker 1: probably a 60%, 70% chance. My grandmother lived in 99,
42:21
Speaker 1: so we'll see. Oh, wow. OK. So I'm hopeful. And
42:27
Speaker 1: I think about what will stand out and what gets
42:32
Speaker 1: conflated together. And I think about that era of the
42:36
Speaker 1: last 20 years of the 19th century.
42:38
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
42:40
Speaker 1: And I often wonder, you know, Grover Cleveland, doing what
42:42
Speaker 1: he did, probably thought he was going to be, and
42:45
Speaker 1: people around him thought he was going to be a
42:46
Speaker 1: super historical figure.
42:48
Speaker 3: Right.
42:48
Speaker 1: And he ends up kind of a forgotten president, only
42:51
Speaker 1: remembered for the non-consecutive terms.
42:54
Speaker 2: Literally.
42:55
Speaker 1: There is nothing else anybody remembers.
42:57
Speaker 2: He doesn't have that exclusively anymore.
42:58
Speaker 3: Right.
42:59
Speaker 1: And he doesn't even have that exclusively. Yeah. And yet
43:03
Speaker 1: he was an important figure in that period of time.
43:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
43:06
Speaker 1: Right. And the whole recency bias, right. And I... You know,
43:11
Speaker 1: I often look at these. I have a theory that
43:14
Speaker 1: in 50 years, the Bush era and the Trump era
43:17
Speaker 1: are going to get conflated and it'll all be seen
43:20
Speaker 1: as sort of one sort of the first quarter of
43:23
Speaker 1: the 21st century was just a political mess. It started
43:26
Speaker 1: with a terrorist attack. We had a series of crises.
43:30
Speaker 1: It led to a handful of presidents, you know, unusual presidents.
43:34
Speaker 1: We had the first African-American president. We had the first
43:36
Speaker 1: sort of basically non-resume president, right? Outsider in Trump. He
43:41
Speaker 1: won non-consecutive terms. But that the period will be more
43:45
Speaker 1: famous than any individual. And I throw that out there
43:48
Speaker 1: because that's... I'm sure in the middle of the 1880s,
43:51
Speaker 1: nobody would have thought those people wouldn't be famous 50
43:54
Speaker 1: years later. And yet they weren't that famous 50 years later.
43:57
Speaker 2: That's true.
43:58
Speaker 3: I mean, when Arthur died, Mark Twain, of all people, said, boy,
44:02
Speaker 3: it would have been hard to imagine a better president
44:04
Speaker 3: than Chester Arthur. I'm not sure we've ever had a
44:06
Speaker 3: better one. So did he mean it?
44:11
Speaker 1: Was he joking or not?
44:12
Speaker 2: No, I think he meant it.
44:13
Speaker 1: He meant it. Yeah.
44:15
Speaker 3: Now, we expected less of our presidents and they're more
44:17
Speaker 3: like a chief magistrate.
44:18
Speaker 1: Than a fair.
44:20
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, look, that's why it's it's good to be,
44:25
Speaker 3: you know, as journalists with an interest in history.
44:28
Speaker 2: It's good to take the very quick steps.
44:31
Speaker 3: Books on the administration, you know, on various administrations with
44:33
Speaker 3: a grain of salt. The Bob Woodward books are fun
44:36
Speaker 3: and interesting. The books that, you know, Maggie Haberman's book about.
44:39
Speaker 3: They're interesting, but without the perspective of time.
44:43
Speaker 1: I don't know. Aren't they the Mrs. Henry Adams letters?
44:46
Speaker 1: And I mean this with all with respect. They're going
44:50
Speaker 1: to be very helpful in explaining what was happening in
44:53
Speaker 1: the moment. Right, in the moment. So they'll be really
44:55
Speaker 1: helpful for historians to explain, but they're not going to
45:00
Speaker 1: be canon on their own, I don't think.
45:01
Speaker 2: That's right.
45:02
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right.
45:03
Speaker 3: They will give future historians a good sense of what
45:06
Speaker 3: we were thinking in the moment at the time, right?
45:08
Speaker 3: They are– even though they're books, they're sort of like–
45:12
Speaker 3: they're journalism. They're the first draft of history, right? And
45:15
Speaker 3: they will give– people in the future a sense.
45:18
Speaker 1: Of what we were... I'm glad they exist. I'm happy
45:20
Speaker 1: for the historian. They're going to be incredibly helpful. They
45:22
Speaker 1: don't have to write letters anymore. I often wonder how
45:25
Speaker 1: people are.
45:27
Speaker 3: They're the best that the future historians are going to have.
45:29
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's absolutely right. It's impossible when you're in
45:32
Speaker 3: a period. I mean, that's one of the things you get.
45:35
Speaker 3: That's what's interesting being a journalist and writing about history
45:37
Speaker 3: and reading about it is that it gives you that perspective.
45:40
Speaker 3: And you realize when people are in these periods you
45:42
Speaker 3: can't see what's coming around the corner you don't you
45:46
Speaker 3: don't know that you're even in an era sometimes that's
45:49
Speaker 3: going to be supplanted by another era right i mean
45:52
Speaker 3: did people during the gilded age didn't know that the
45:55
Speaker 3: progressive era would follow that right you know we're in
45:58
Speaker 3: a period now where people are are wringing their hands
46:01
Speaker 3: about um Income inequality and corruption in government. But, you know,
46:06
Speaker 3: for all we know, this next period that's coming is
46:09
Speaker 3: a great period of reform where we're going to clean
46:11
Speaker 3: up this mess.
46:11
Speaker 1: Right. Well, it's funny. It's like historical eras. You don't
46:14
Speaker 1: know when they begin until after they've begun. That's right. Yeah.
46:18
Speaker 3: And, you know, and you're talking about this era that
46:20
Speaker 3: that might have began begun with 9-11, which, you know,
46:24
Speaker 3: we just reached the 25.
46:25
Speaker 2: It was also human beings thinking blocks of time.
46:28
Speaker 1: Right.
46:29
Speaker 3: So we're just got through the first quarter of this
46:32
Speaker 3: century and we sort of I think it's only now
46:34
Speaker 3: that people are starting to think about, as you just did,
46:38
Speaker 3: this as a unit of time, right, that began with
46:40
Speaker 3: the 9-11, right? There was definitely this post-Cold War period,
46:43
Speaker 3: which definitively ended, we can see now, on 9-11, right?
46:47
Speaker 1: Yes, it's sort of like, you know, the Cold War
46:49
Speaker 1: technically ended in 89, but yes, I absolutely, like, September 10th,
46:54
Speaker 1: 2001 is the last day of the Cold War era.
46:58
Speaker 1: That's right, it was a different world.
46:59
Speaker 3: And everything, in some sense, in the past 25 years
47:04
Speaker 3: since 9-11 has flowed from that event.
47:07
Speaker 1: The new era, whatever that means. New era, right.
47:09
Speaker 3: And Bush's reaction to it. And, you know, if Gore
47:11
Speaker 3: had been president, I'm sure you remember, people thought that
47:16
Speaker 3: 2000 election, oh, what's the difference?
47:19
Speaker 1: What if that a million ways? I'll tell you, there's
47:22
Speaker 1: an equal chance that if 9-11 happens on Gore's watch,
47:26
Speaker 1: It becomes more politicized because you would have had 10
47:30
Speaker 1: years of democratic administrations. And then the the miss the
47:35
Speaker 1: missing intelligence would have stuck harder.
47:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:39
Speaker 1: At a at a former vice president who inherited the
47:42
Speaker 1: presidency from the same administration. Yeah. You know. You just don't.
47:47
Speaker 1: Would he have invaded Iraq? Probably not. But he might
47:49
Speaker 1: not have done that.
47:50
Speaker 3: Right.
47:51
Speaker 1: So there's all sorts of. That led to Trump. Yeah.
47:55
Speaker 2: Right.
47:55
Speaker 1: Well, and one thing, well, he might not have had Obama.
47:58
Speaker 2: And Gore, right. And Gore probably would have elected if
48:00
Speaker 2: it hadn't been for Monica Lewinsky.
48:02
Speaker 1: So, you know, one thing. There's always, you know, it's
48:06
Speaker 1: what makes the butterfly effects are what make me more
48:09
Speaker 1: interested in history than anything else. Yeah. So you seem
48:12
Speaker 1: to have a nose for the. Like I said, the
48:17
Speaker 1: historical figure that is more relevant than maybe your history
48:24
Speaker 1: class gave them. They deserve more than a page. Who
48:29
Speaker 1: are some other targets that you're looking at that you
48:32
Speaker 1: would like to write about? I need to find my
48:34
Speaker 1: next target. Yeah. The hardest thing is finding the right target.
48:38
Speaker 1: Are you interested more in an era? a period of
48:41
Speaker 1: time that you like to specialize in.
48:43
Speaker 3: I mean, I've done two biographies and so maybe it'd
48:46
Speaker 3: be fun to do something different.
48:48
Speaker 2: Um, but you're right.
48:48
Speaker 3: I am drawn to these figures who have been, uh, overlooked,
48:53
Speaker 3: you know, as, as a history nerd and a guy
48:55
Speaker 3: reads a lot of history and reads a lot of
48:57
Speaker 3: American history. It's, um, I'm always struck when I come
49:01
Speaker 3: upon someone who I really don't know about and they
49:04
Speaker 3: have some part of their story or multiple parts that
49:07
Speaker 3: are fascinating.
49:07
Speaker 2: That was true with both these guys for me.
49:09
Speaker 1: I was doing some extra work. I mean, you know,
49:12
Speaker 1: I've said this to others, full disclosure, i mean me
49:14
Speaker 1: and a friend um who's got experience in tv writing
49:18
Speaker 1: we had uh we had a competing uh garfield story
49:21
Speaker 1: for a while that was yeah that had gotten accepted
49:23
Speaker 1: and we'd had a production company and then netflix did
49:25
Speaker 1: with then you know we we weren't the game of
49:27
Speaker 1: throne guys and you know you know they are who
49:30
Speaker 1: they are right but in doing our own research to
49:32
Speaker 1: try to come up with some um I ended up
49:36
Speaker 1: coming across a senator named Blanche Bruce from Mississippi, who
49:41
Speaker 1: I just find to be You see the black senator?
49:44
Speaker 1: We see the black senator. He was the black plantation-owning
49:48
Speaker 1: senator from Mississippi who Roscoe Conkling befriended when his own
49:57
Speaker 1: fellow state senator didn't want to be standing next to
50:00
Speaker 1: him because he was white and he didn't want to
50:02
Speaker 1: show his Mississippi residents that he was doing that. It's
50:05
Speaker 1: just there are so many interesting stories that actually helped.
50:11
Speaker 1: tell that period of time better. Yeah. And we just,
50:16
Speaker 1: which is why I always love these stories. You know,
50:18
Speaker 1: you just don't know what you're going to come up with. Yeah, no,
50:20
Speaker 1: it's great.
50:20
Speaker 3: And, you know, as my brother said, when I was
50:23
Speaker 3: writing about Chester Arthur, he said, well, any schmuck can
50:26
Speaker 3: write about Lincoln.
50:26
Speaker 1: But, you know, I think- There's a million Lincoln books, right?
50:31
Speaker 3: I mean, I read my fair share of Lincoln books,
50:33
Speaker 3: and the guy deserves the attention he's gotten.
50:35
Speaker 1: Of course. But it's fun to do some books. In
50:38
Speaker 1: the English language, it's a close race between Lincoln and Jesus, right?
50:42
Speaker 1: Of like more books written in the English language. I
50:45
Speaker 1: think it's still Jesus, but it's not. Yeah, it's close.
50:49
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I think it's fun.
50:50
Speaker 3: Just personally, I find that it's fun to go in
50:54
Speaker 3: a slightly different direction.
50:56
Speaker 2: But I don't know what I'm going to do next.
50:57
Speaker 3: It would be fun to find another person, but it
50:59
Speaker 3: also might be interesting to do something a little different.
51:01
Speaker 3: As you say, maybe look at an era or a.
51:03
Speaker 1: Well, I'll be honest. I'm like trying to understand Grover
51:08
Speaker 1: Cleveland better because I'm– like I said, and maybe it's–
51:12
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm revealing a wishful thinking thought in my head,
51:16
Speaker 1: but I'm convinced Trump's not going to be that historically significant,
51:21
Speaker 1: that he's just going to be a piece of something. Look,
51:25
Speaker 1: he's dominating the era. Don't get me wrong. But he
51:29
Speaker 1: actually is not leaving deep footprints, right? There's so many
51:33
Speaker 1: things he's tried to do but can't, which may explain
51:37
Speaker 1: why he wants to quickly put his name on stuff.
51:39
Speaker 1: I think in his own way, he does know- you know,
51:43
Speaker 1: as you point out with Morris, right? Morris didn't worry
51:46
Speaker 1: about his legacy and he was more forgotten. Those that
51:50
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure they were historical figures made sure
51:54
Speaker 1: people could find all their notes. I think that's absolutely right.
51:56
Speaker 3: And I think it's important with regard to Trump to
51:58
Speaker 3: remember there's been very little legislation, right?
52:01
Speaker 1: Executive orders- It's really not going to- And be reversed
52:04
Speaker 1: with a stroke of a pen. It's empty calories, right? Yeah.
52:07
Speaker 1: It was like empty calories.
52:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. You're right.
52:10
Speaker 3: And I think there is something to this obsession with
52:13
Speaker 3: putting his name on the Kennedy Center and building arches
52:16
Speaker 3: and stuff, because I think he does have a sense
52:18
Speaker 3: that there's not much of it that couldn't be reversed
52:21
Speaker 3: almost immediately.
52:24
Speaker 1: Before I get, you have a day job and tell
52:27
Speaker 1: me about it. Stateline. Yes.
52:28
Speaker 3: I'm executive editor of Stateline, which is sort of functions
52:31
Speaker 3: as the national desk for the largest nonprofit news organization
52:35
Speaker 3: in America now, which is called States Newsroom. And we
52:37
Speaker 3: have outlets in 39 of the 50 states and partnerships
52:42
Speaker 3: with nonprofits.
52:43
Speaker 1: Is this Leland's old outfit? Oh, no. Okay.
52:46
Speaker 4: Leland Schwartz. I worked for Leland Schwartz. That's state's new service.
52:50
Speaker 4: Very different. How much money does he owe you? No,
52:54
Speaker 4: I never actually got– I never actually did. I worked
52:58
Speaker 4: for another low-paying outlet. Oh, okay, because there are a
53:00
Speaker 4: lot of us. A lot of alumni around.
53:02
Speaker 1: Oh, I know.
53:04
Speaker 2: Run to the bank to get to cash them.
53:06
Speaker 1: I used to hire basically– Because States News was the
53:12
Speaker 1: only one that paid less than the hotline.
53:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
53:14
Speaker 1: So I used to end up getting ex-States, you know,
53:18
Speaker 1: where they were like, I got to get out of here. Oh, yeah.
53:20
Speaker 1: We're all over the place. Yeah.
53:21
Speaker 2: If you were there for longer than like a year.
53:23
Speaker 1: But it was a weird, weirdly, he was weirdly a visionary. uh,
53:27
Speaker 1: into his credit. Yeah. Yeah. He wanted to put news
53:30
Speaker 1: on menus on the back of ATM receipts. He had
53:33
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird one on New York.
53:35
Speaker 3: He had this, this actually, I think, uh, happened where
53:39
Speaker 3: it was something somehow on the New York, uh, DC shuttle.
53:42
Speaker 2: He added somehow.
53:43
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. He put a newsletter on that back when,
53:46
Speaker 1: when God, I remember that when they, everybody wanted their,
53:49
Speaker 1: their newsletter on that. Yeah. So do you look, uh, the, the,
53:54
Speaker 1: Trying to rebuild local news, trying to rebuild state capital news.
54:01
Speaker 1: I grew up in Florida and there was a time
54:04
Speaker 1: we had five, six really good newspapers that had really
54:09
Speaker 1: good Tallahassee bureaus. Yeah, and there's like one. That's our
54:14
Speaker 1: mission of our organization.
54:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that state line sort of covers state
54:18
Speaker 3: policy from a national perspective, kind of the cross-cutting, cross-state stuff.
54:22
Speaker 3: But each of these state outlets is doing exactly that.
54:25
Speaker 3: And in many of these places, they're the only game
54:27
Speaker 3: in town now. It's incredibly– uh, sad and frankly dangerous.
54:31
Speaker 3: I mean, I, I was a, um, state house reporter
54:33
Speaker 3: in Austin for the American statesman and Boston for the globe.
54:37
Speaker 3: And as you described, I mean, there was a lot
54:39
Speaker 3: of competition in those state houses. You had other, um,
54:42
Speaker 3: you know, other papers you're competing against and a real
54:44
Speaker 3: presence in the state house.
54:45
Speaker 2: And that's just not true anymore.
54:46
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting with, with your experience at the
54:49
Speaker 1: Austin American statesman, it's, You know, I go I'm torn
54:52
Speaker 1: about I love the Texas Tribune. And yet I worry
54:56
Speaker 1: that a bunch of news organizations in Texas has decided
54:59
Speaker 1: to just, well, the Texas Tribune does it. So we'll
55:02
Speaker 1: let them do it.
55:02
Speaker 3: I think that is true. Look, we used to compete
55:04
Speaker 3: against the and we were the smaller one. We would
55:06
Speaker 3: compete against the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News
55:09
Speaker 3: and the Antonio Express News. And it's good to have
55:11
Speaker 3: that that competition and that tension. We were all fighting
55:14
Speaker 3: for scoops during the legislative session, which in Texas, as
55:17
Speaker 3: you know, is only.
55:18
Speaker 2: Every other year.
55:19
Speaker 3: So it was really a, you know, exciting time. And
55:21
Speaker 3: that competition is, is great. And I think you're right.
55:24
Speaker 3: It is, it is, that is preferable to having one
55:28
Speaker 3: organization that sort of, you know, where people assume, okay, they've,
55:31
Speaker 3: they've got it covered.
55:32
Speaker 1: That's not really. I'm watching it in DC, like a
55:35
Speaker 1: lot of places. It's sort of, well, punch bowl covers Congress.
55:37
Speaker 1: We'll let them do it. Well, you know, and they
55:40
Speaker 1: do a good job. Don't get me wrong, but it's,
55:43
Speaker 1: What aren't you seeing? There's only so many.
55:45
Speaker 3: Think about how many papers and newspaper chains used to
55:49
Speaker 3: have a Washington presence and no longer do. You know,
55:54
Speaker 3: and not only were they competing for the same sort
55:56
Speaker 3: of top line stories, but they were writing the stories from,
55:59
Speaker 3: you know, the stories that matter the most to their
56:01
Speaker 3: to their readers and sort of connecting what was going
56:03
Speaker 3: on in Washington to what was going on in their states.
56:06
Speaker 2: And it's just interesting.
56:08
Speaker 3: I just think it's terrible for democracy, and it goes
56:12
Speaker 3: a long way toward explaining the fix.
56:15
Speaker 1: We're in now, frankly, is that people don't have it anymore.
56:17
Speaker 2: They don't read.
56:18
Speaker 1: They're getting their news from– How are you managing AI
56:22
Speaker 1: in your newsroom? How do we manage that? Oh, AI.
56:25
Speaker 3: Oh, well, States Newsroom, at least at this point, I'm
56:28
Speaker 3: grateful that there is no AI rule.
56:32
Speaker 1: I mean, people. What does that mean, though?
56:34
Speaker 3: I mean, absolutely no, no use of AI for, you know,
56:38
Speaker 3: writing stories.
56:40
Speaker 2: You know, of course, whenever you do a search now,
56:41
Speaker 2: there's the AI generated.
56:43
Speaker 3: It's all AI.
56:43
Speaker 1: Right. I mean, I don't know how you can search
56:45
Speaker 1: without it.
56:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can't trust them. That's true writing a book, too.
56:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, fine.
56:50
Speaker 3: I mean, that sends you in a direction, but you
56:52
Speaker 3: need to find the actual sources. And I think, look,
56:56
Speaker 3: I mean, there's some– if you're working with data sets
56:58
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff, there's some– there are ways
57:02
Speaker 3: you can use AI to help do that. But, yeah,
57:05
Speaker 3: we are very– you know, we're like everybody else trying
57:09
Speaker 3: to sort of feel our way through this new era.
57:12
Speaker 1: But as of now, I mean, the rule, the rule
57:14
Speaker 1: is we're.
57:15
Speaker 3: We're really not, we're not using it and we're certainly
57:17
Speaker 3: not using it, you know, for photos and we're using
57:20
Speaker 3: it to, to write our stories.
57:22
Speaker 1: So, well, I don't know how AI exists without people
57:25
Speaker 1: continuing to contribute new information for the AI large language.
57:29
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why I'm both, I'm not as
57:33
Speaker 1: worried about it. Take it. Cause it's like, well, It's
57:36
Speaker 1: not like the robots can go out and get the information.
57:38
Speaker 1: Maybe cameras can to a point, but I don't know.
57:42
Speaker 2: I don't think we can automate it all.
57:43
Speaker 3: I guess maybe in Cleveland, they said that now the
57:46
Speaker 3: reporters go out and report, and then they come back
57:48
Speaker 3: and feed it into the– and.
57:49
Speaker 2: Let AI write the stories. But I just– Well.
57:54
Speaker 1: I worry that in 10 years, nobody's going to think
57:57
Speaker 1: that's weird. Yeah. I mean, I worry about it as well.
58:01
Speaker 1: I said I wasn't worried about it. I'm also worried about,
58:03
Speaker 1: you know, I have kids who are... Look, Ben Affleck
58:06
Speaker 1: is just basically greenlighting using AI for movies. I mean,
58:10
Speaker 1: you see Jeffrey Katzenberg sort of having an open... I mean,
58:14
Speaker 1: this feels like we're going to lose this fight.
58:19
Speaker 3: It scares me, and it scares me that we're sort
58:21
Speaker 3: of farming out these parts of our brains that we
58:25
Speaker 3: use for writing and thinking.
58:28
Speaker 2: Writing is difficult.
58:30
Speaker 1: You just wrote a book about a guy who got
58:34
Speaker 1: his position because he was a good writer.
58:36
Speaker 3: That's right. Is that going to be the skill that's
58:38
Speaker 3: not valued anymore? It's scary to think about that as
58:42
Speaker 3: someone who's made his living writing.
58:44
Speaker 1: No, I think.
58:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
58:46
Speaker 1: Why do you think I talk more now? I swear,
58:51
Speaker 1: you can't AI this, I think. I don't know.
58:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
58:54
Speaker 1: Not yet. Soon enough. Scott, like I said, I don't
59:00
Speaker 1: really know you, but I think we share our interest
59:04
Speaker 1: in the lesser known historical figures that matter quite a bit.
59:08
Speaker 1: And this was a terrific book on Gouverneur. Is it Gouverneur?
59:13
Speaker 1: How have you decided it's pronounced?
59:15
Speaker 3: I pronounce it Gouverneur just to make it easier for
59:17
Speaker 3: people because that's the way it looks.
59:18
Speaker 1: So it's not Gouverneur? Yeah.
59:19
Speaker 3: Gouverneur, I feel like I'm just going to confuse people
59:21
Speaker 3: because he wasn't a governor, but it might be. It
59:23
Speaker 3: might be Gouverneur. People, there is some dispute over how
59:25
Speaker 3: it was pronounced back then. So I'll go with Gouverneur.
59:28
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, being an aristocrat, it feels like,
59:30
Speaker 1: you know, you see the words aristocrat and I feel like, well,
59:32
Speaker 1: you have to pronounce it in French.
59:34
Speaker 3: I mean, that was his, it was his mother's maiden name.
59:36
Speaker 3: It's a French and she was from French.
59:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
59:40
Speaker 1: So, well, congrats. Appreciate it. Good to have you. Yeah.
59:47
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. It was fun.