American Founding -- John Adams 4

His Rotundity -- His Own Worst Enemy

Like any public figure who lives into his nineties, Adams experienced his share of setbacks -- more than a few of his own making. Isn't one of the most difficult things any of us learns is how to deal with our own personality and its liabilities? Adams fessed up that he had a difficult personality. He could be his own worst enemy -- ironic given that he once wrote Abigail a letter cataloging all her faults!

Examining the numerous liabilities of his personality, biographer John Ferling observes, "Adams struck many people as vain, irritable, irascible, supercilious, and tactless. He maintained a stiffly formal and aloof demeanor, what one acquaintance called a habitually 'ceremonious' manner.... Abigail once scolded him for his tendency to indulge in 'intolerable forbidding expecting Silence' while in the midst of a conversation; 'tis impossible for a Stranger to be tranquil in your presence'" [Ferling 170].

Moreover, he nursed a tendency toward brooding pessimism. As he revealed to his diary on the eve of the Second Continental Congress -- the Congress that would declare independence -- "I wander alone, and ponder. I muse, I mope, I ruminate. We have not men fit for the times. We are deficient in genius, education, in travel, fortune -- in everything. I feel unutterable anxiety" [McCullough 23].

Adams also had a hot temper. He managed to keep his outbursts confined to private conversations, but there was widespread conjecture that he might be emotionally unstable. One of the most egregious outbursts occurred the only known time Adams demeaned a subordinate to his face. In the presidential mansion one day he dressed down an aide, James McHenry, unjustly accusing him of scheming with Hamilton to bring Adams down. Then came the volley of insults. He frothed that that "foreigner," Hamilton, was "the most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable, and unprincipled intriguer in the United States, if not the world." "The bastard brat of a Scotch peddler” had a “superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off.” Finally Adams decried “the profligacy of his life; his fornications, adulteries and his incests.” Such a surprising outburst, this, that McHenry later wrote down what happened in letters to friends and family. He ventured that the second president of the United States was "actually insane" [McCullough 538-39].

Besides a penchant for being his own worst enemy, there were situations that arose which Adams thought might do harm to his reputation.

1. At great risk to his young law career, Adams defended the Redcoats who were involved in the Boston Massacre because he believed that the law rather than popular passions should rule Massachusetts.

2. Adams's two terms as Vice President were frustrating for a man of his restlessness, vigor, brilliance, and vanity. Complaining to Abigail, he opined, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." After eight years of biding his time, a lesser man might have given up and gone home.

3. The four Alien and Sedition Acts as well as the so-called Midnight appointments to the judiciary -- on the eve of Jefferson taking office -- made Adams look thin-skinned, unprincipled, and unpresidential.

Scumbag: James Calender

4. Perhaps his most bitter setback was losing the White House to Jefferson in the Election of 1800. Adams despaired that his reputation could ever recover from such an ugly campaign. We think politicking is a dirty business today, but we forget that it was even dirtier in the early republic. In 1800, Jefferson and his allies roused an unprincipled journalist, James Callender, to attack Adams's character in the Richmond Examiner. The sitting president was accused of being a monarchist, a warmonger, and even a hermaphrodite who had "neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Callender especially wanted to drive home the impression that Adams was insane with rage. He spread the unfounded rumor that Adams once became so enraged he ripped off his wig, threw it on the floor, and stomped on it [McCullough 536-37].

It gets worse. Callender, with Jefferson's blessings, accused Adams of importing two mistresses shortly after being elected president in 1796. Ridiculous rumor, of course, but in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, this was a serious allegation. One of the mistresses supposedly was from France, the other from Germany. As Alf Mapp humorously puts it, "While retaining the French charmer ... Adams supposedly had returned her rival to her native Germany. The Pennsylvania Germans were incensed, not so much by reports of sexual immorality as by the thought that the president would reject a fräulein while holding fast to a mademoiselle [Mapp 55]. Because Adams couldn't carry Pennsylvania, he wasn't reelected, and to Adams, this further robbed him of respect.

*     *     *

This essay is the fourth in a series on John Adams. The Adams series served as the basis for my talk accompanying the exhibition, John Adams Unbound, organized by the Boston Public Library and the American Library Association. The talk was given at the Loutit District Library, Grand Haven, Michigan, on June 30, 2011.

This Adams series is posted on July 2 because he thought that was the day our country's independence should be pondered and celebrated.

For more on presidents and leadership, see http://www.allpresidents.org/.

American Founding -- John Adams 3

The Thorn of Fame

John Adams has finally gotten the fame he craved, but it was a long time coming over a rough road. Already as a young man he tortured himself thinking about a future without fame. Historians don't need to speculate on this point because he and his wife Abigail seemed to write down everything. Because of the thousands of letters they left us, we know John Adams's inner life better than the inner life of any other founding father. We know, apropos of this talk, that he thought he should be famous, once declaring that the "Times alone have destined me to Fame" [Ferling 170].

Yet the quest for fame was a thorn in his side. As David McCullough put it, as a young man "John Adams was not a man of the world. He enjoyed no social standing. He was an awkward dancer and poor at cards. He never learned to flatter.... There was no money in his background" [19]. Everything he earned -- from respect in the courtroom, to readership in the newspapers, to leadership in Philadelphia -- he had to work hard at. He knew that fame can be fickle and fleeting. For that reason, he feared posterity would not pay him sufficient homage.

Moreover, he was eaten up with envy when he thought of the more illustrious founders of his own day. Given his Puritan New England heritage, Adams knew envy was one of the seven deadlies, but he seemed helpless before the green-eyed monster. Even when Adams was the runner-up to George Washington in our first national election, he still felt green with envy. One year after that election, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, Adams railed: "The history of our revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod -- and henceforward these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures, and war."



Adams gold coin

Adams's hunger for fame stands in stark contrast to the easy-going attitude of a later president, Ronald Reagan, who quipped: "There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." Lacking Reagan's insouciance, Adams yearned for the credit. But here's the good news. If Adams didn't get enough of it in his own time, he perhaps is finally satisfied with the credit he receives today. Looking down on us (for he believed in eternal life), this stubborn man would likely be happy to concede how wrong he was about posterity. Americans have been lionizing him since the Second World War.

*     *     *

This essay is the third in a series on John Adams. The Adams series served as the basis for my talk accompanying the exhibition, John Adams Unbound, organized by the Boston Public Library and the American Library Association. The talk was given at the Loutit District Library, Grand Haven, Michigan, on June 30, 2011.

This Adams series is posted on July 2 because he thought that was the day our country's independence should be pondered and celebrated.

For more on presidents and leadership, see http://www.allpresidents.org/.

American Founding -- John Adams 2

Rising Tide

Tides do rise, and John Adams's reputation started to rise a half century before McCullough's biography. In 1953 Russell Kirk canonized John Adams in his magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, arguing that of all the patriot founders, it was our second president who best understood history, constitutions, and the consequences of ideas. Kirk realized Adams's intellectual achievement was one key to any fame posterity would confer.

Two decades later the musical 1776 came out, and it was not Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin in the limelight, but the brainy delegate from Braintree, Massachusetts, who took center stage. In the movie that followed, Adams's irritability was turned into a clever device to make him more human and approachable than he otherwise would be.

Also during the Bicentennial celebration, PBS aired a 13-part series called the Adams Chronicles that presented 150 years of the family's history and fetched many Emmys.

And then McCullough's masterpiece came out in 2001 and brought about a historiographic revolution, a paradigm shift in the way we regard America's founding fathers. Adams waxes, Jefferson wanes. As of this writing (June 2011), according to amazon.com, McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Adams is the 9th-most-purchased book on the American Revolution, and the 14th-most-purchased book on US presidents. And the HBO production based on McCullough's book is the 4th-most-purchased miniseries on the site.

The book's splash caused more than a ripple. The historian Gordon Wood, who is currently editing a collection of Adams's papers for the Library of America series, observes that Washington and Jefferson got only one volume each of their writings, whereas Adams is getting four volumes.

And the U.S. Treasury has issued a John Adams gold coin honoring the 2nd president, an unwitting double-entendre for his "currency."

*     *     *

This essay is the second in a series on John Adams. The Adams series served as the basis for my talk accompanying the exhibition, John Adams Unbound, organized by the Boston Public Library and the American Library Association. The talk was given at the Loutit District Library, Grand Haven, Michigan, on June 30, 2011.

This Adams series is posted on July 2 because he thought that was the day our country's independence should be pondered and celebrated.

For more on presidents and leadership, see http://www.allpresidents.org/.

American Founding -- John Adams 1

America's greatest philosopher president

Once Forgotten Founding Father and Philosopher President Makes a Comeback.... Why?

Ten years ago, David McCullough told audiences something that still has the capacity to surprise us. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author said that he initially intended to write a joint biography of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. At first his concern was that Adams could not hold his own next to Jefferson. But the more research he did, the more his concern shifted. At some point he realized that Jefferson could not hold his own next to Adams, so he decided to devote the biography to our second rather than to our third president. As the distingished historian Pauline Maier notes, "McCullough's biography of Adams inevitably has a lot to say about Jefferson, but on virtually all points of comparison between the two men, Jefferson comes in second."

High recommendation, that, and arguably so. John Adams's public life makes for a compelling story. Consider the number of firsts that he is associated with during the early days of the republic. He was:

• the lead author of the oldest constitution in the world still in use (that of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, dating from 1780);
• the first vice president of the United States;
• the first president who lived in the White House;
• the first president who was challenged for re-election, indeed, the only president in U.S. history who was challenged by the sitting vice president (Thomas Jefferson);
• the first one-term president (because he lost to Jefferson);
• the first commander in chief who had to direct major military operations off U.S. territory (the Quasi War that was fought against the superpower of the day, France, in the Caribbean Sea);
• adapting Plato's term, "philosopher king," let us also call Adams our first "philosopher president" -- the best we have ever had.

All of these points make Adams worthy of admiration, but the last point makes him worthy of the fame he coveted and that we posthumously confer on him. And yet, from my experience in the classroom, I am not certain that most Americans are aware of his intellectual achievements.

One of the greatest first ladies, Abigail Adams

I will come back to the intellectual achievements of our philosopher president later in these remarks, but first let's remind ourselves that, in the pre-David-McCullough world, John Adams was our "forgotten founding father." If you go to Washington, DC -- the city of great monuments to presidents -- there is not a single statue of John Adams. His absence in Statuary Hall is especially conspicuous in light of the statue of his cousin, Samuel Adams, and the marker where his son, John Quincy Adams, died at his desk. There is not a single statue of him in Philadelphia, even though he was the most ardent defender of independence at the Second Continental Congress. There is not a single statue of him at the U.S. Naval Academy, even though the first vessels of our permanent U.S. Navy were launched during his administration. The most prominent statue of him you'll find is in his hometown of Quincy (Braintree), Massachusetts; yet even this memorial was erected just a few years ago, after McCullough's biography.




"Dearest Friend" -- John to Abigail, September 14, 1774

Adams himself predicted that he would be the forgotten founding father. To Benjamin Rush, he wrote with mock humility, “Mausoleums, statues, monuments will never be erected to me. I wish them not. Panegyrical romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors. No, nor in true colors. All but the last I loathe” [John Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 23, 1809].

Why the neglect relegating Adams to the founding fathers' back bench? One explanation is that his presidency was shoe-horned between two very dominant figures -- George Washington, the indispensable man who became a legend in his lifetime, and Thomas Jefferson, who was not keen on rehabilitating Adams publicly. Moreover, Jefferson and his party enjoyed longevity in contrast to the Federalists, who would soon die out as a political force. Jeffersonians set the nation's political agenda for more than two decades following the Adams administration. For many decades, the New Englander got lost in a Virginia crowd.

And even though John Adams's son, John Quincy Adams, won the White House in 1825, he also was a one-termer. The Adams name again went into decline because Andrew Jackson booted JQA out of the White House in 1829. The succeeding "Age of Jackson" was not friendly to the Adams brand. As a consequence, the reputations of our 2nd and 6th presidents suffered in the popular imagination.

*     *     *

This essay is the first in a series on John Adams. The Adams series served as the basis for my talk accompanying the exhibition, John Adams Unbound, organized by the Boston Public Library and the American Library Association. The talk was given at the Loutit District Library, Grand Haven, Michigan, on June 30, 2011.

This Adams series is posted on July 2 because he thought that was the day our country's independence should be pondered and celebrated.

For more on presidents and leadership, see http://www.allpresidents.org/.

American Founding -- Top Ten

The professor in me is always curious to discover what a class finds most memorable -- what nuggets will they carry with them long after our course together ends? By way of review, I surveyed my OLLI class at Aquinas College during the last meeting (May 19, 2011), asking them what they most enjoyed learning in "The Amazing American Revolution." More than 50 students participated in polishing these nuggets.

10. Don't believe everything you hear on cable TV. Most commentators don't know the founding well at all. To get a better grasp of what Gordon Wood calls "the most important event in American history, bar none," it's useful to correct some misconceptions.

    



Misinformation began early in the republic's history. This painting is typical in that it depicts the founders as unified statesmen possessing calm resolve. Yet at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, 16 delegates would not even sign the document they had debated. This 1856 painting by Junius Brutus Stearns -- titled "Washington as a Statesman" -- shows the General addressing the Constitutional Convention. It is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. By the way, Washington spoke only once at the Convention, toward the end of the deliberations.


• Despite assertions to the contrary by some cable TV commentators and pols, the founders were a diverse lot when it came to religion, philosophy, and politics. That's why the question -- What would the founders do? -- is tricky. True, they shared the conviction that King George III and Lord North had violated the English constitution to an unconscionable degree. Applying the principles of the 1688 Glorious Revolution, they agreed to throw off the British Crown (though some were willing to crown George Washington in his stead). They also subscribed to the idea of "ordered liberty" more than we do. Beyond that, the founders could not even agree on what the American republic should look like. 16 of the delegates to the Constitutional convention refused to sign the document. Splitting up into Federalists and Antifederalists, most of the former championed a commercial republic (Hamilton); many of the latter, an agrarian republic (Jefferson).... You could hardly find two more diverse leaders than John Dickinson and Sam Adams. The intellectual antipathy between John Adams and Tom Paine was palpable.... Perhaps it was precisely the tensions among them that led the founders to become the greatest generation of statesmen ever.

The most famous duel in American history: Aaron Burr, our sitting vice president, killed Alexander Hamilton, our first treasury secretary, in Weehawken, NJ, on July 11, 1804.

• It is mistaken to think that the founders basically got along well with one another. Some wore white hats; some wore black hats. Like the rest of us, they nursed resentments, held grudges, and had knock-down-drag-outs. Recall: a sitting vice president shot and killed the first secretary of the treasury in a duel. George and Martha Washington felt personally betrayed by Jefferson.... Then there's John Adams, who had a plethora of apparent foibles. He could not stand Thomas Paine. He poked fun of John Dickinson for hiding behind the skirts of his Quaker wife and mother-in-law. He envied the credit George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson received for the founding. By the Election of 1800, Adams and Jefferson were not even on speaking terms. Each of these "statesmen" had mobilized partisan newspapers to write such scurrilous things about the other that it is a miracle they ever restored their friendship. The campaign rhetoric in 1800 was much more vicious than anything you see today, even on cable TV.




Ever wonder how Gouverneur Morris lost his left leg?


• It is also mistaken to think that all the founders were buckled-shoe Puritans in their private lives. Several of our statesmen were not "family values" people at all. Luther Martin was such a lush that historians like Gordon Lloyd joke that it would be more accurate to call him "Luther Martini." Gouverneur Morris's many affairs on both sides of the Atlantic -- including sharing Talleyrand's mistress -- gives new meaning to the idea of (to use his words in the Preamble) "domestic tranquility." While Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton had a notorious affair with the financially desperate Maria Reynolds, making him vulnerable to bribery. (As Hamilton himself later confessed, "I took the bill out of my pocket and gave it to her. Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable").... In his Autobiography Benjamin Franklin admitted he frequently visited prostitutes; moreover, he was not very considerate of his wife Deborah, abandoning her for long periods of time; and he refused to reconcile with his son when he declared with the Tories. George Washington was still flirting with Sally Fairfax after his engagement to Martha. Washington's famous will, in which he released his slaves (the only founder to do so), certainly betrays mixed motives upon closer inspection. Thomas Jefferson was not only accused of sleeping with his teenage slave, Sally Hemings, but also with trying to seduce his neighbor's wife, Betsy Walker. The sins and peccadillos of our founders would fill an Everest of People magazines.... But that's okay. It is important to see the founders as they were. They were not marble statues, cold and unapproachable and inaccessible. When we bring them down from Mt. Olympus, when we see them as they were, warts and all, we can respect them all the more as flawed humans who nevertheless accomplished much good.... Plus, we can identify with them. If these flawed human beings were capable of such heroic personal sacrifice in the service of a greater good, then perhaps we really can follow in their footsteps and expect better from ourselves.

Politically, America was founded as a constitutional republic. But direct democracy was practiced in early New England town meetings. This illustration is from a civil government text used in the early 20th century.

• It is misleading to assert that America was founded as a democracy. That statement is only partially true. Constitutionally, America was founded as a republic. The populist element in our early history was situational. Ad hoc direct democracy arose on the Mayflower, in New England town meetings, and along the frontier. Moreover, our civil society, marketplace, and militias were democratically organized. The democratic principle in our culture would spill inexorably over into politics during the Progressive Era a hundred years after the founding. But the national government would not change significantly until many decades after the founding generation had passed. Strictly speaking, the national frame of government that came out of Philadelphia in 1787 was republican. A republican constitution by definition balances rule by the one (presidency), with rule by the few (Senate and Supreme Court), with rule by the many (House). America was founded as a constitutional republic. 

• I sometimes hear it said, erroneously, that America was the world's first republic. Actually there were numerous republics that preceded America. Ancient Carthage was a prominent republic that contended with Rome for control of the Mediterranean. Ancient Rome was a republic for almost 500 years. Medieval Venice was a republic for more than 1,000 years. Prior to the American Revolution, in the 17th century, the Dutch formed a powerful commercial republic, and Britain experimented with republicanism under Cromwell. It is more accurate to say that we were the modern world's first constitutional republic.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton (Maryland) was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the last surviving signer of the document. He was educated in Europe by the Jesuits. This serene oil painting, by Thomas Sully in 1834, fails to convey all the suffering Carroll and his family endured both as Catholics and as nation founders. Bradley Birzer's authoritative biography, American Cicero, brings to life one of the most fascinating statesman of the founding era.

• "America is a Protestant nation" -- a largely true statement at the time of the founding, but one that needs qualifying. Most citizens were indeed Protestant, but two percent of the population was Catholic and heterodox faiths abounded, as did people who professed no faith at all. In British North America there were numerous Quaker settlements, for example, and many of our foremost founders were either Unitarian (John Adams) or Deists (Jefferson, Franklin, Paine). Only once in his public life did George Washington speak the name of Jesus. (He was nominally Anglican.) Only one of the nine most prominent founders, John Jay, was a devout, orthodox, church-going Protestant during the revolutionary period. During one particularly tense session at the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin suggested that the delegates pray, to which Alexander Hamilton quipped that Americans had no need of foreign intervention. There is no question that most American settlers were Protestant, and that most of the founders were Protestant. But it is also accurate to say that a small number of prominent founders were like flying buttresses -- supportive of the church but happy outside of it.

Texas vaqueros helped win the American Revolution. This historical plaque in New Orleans commemorates the role of Spanish Governor Bernardo de Galvez in defeating the British. Galvez fed Spanish and American armies with cattle from Franciscan ranches around San Antonio, in the Spanish province of Texas.

• When speaking of the War for Independence, it is misleading to concentrate solely on the upper East Coast between, say, Fort Ticonderoga and Yorktown. To do so is to neglect other critically important theaters in the Western Hemisphere. Historically, Boston and New York publishing houses tended to focus on their own region to the neglect of (1) the Carolinas, which saw some of the heaviest fighting in the war; (2) the Caribbean, where the French navy kept most of the Royal navy pinned down; (3) the West, where George Rogers Clark subdued Britain's Indian allies, even in far-off places around Fort Detroit; (4) the Southwest, where Spanish Governor Bernardo de Galvez kept the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River cleared of the British, with even Spanish vaqueros in Texas playing a logistical role. Each theater contributed to the successful quest of the Americans who sought independence. It's not just an East Coast thing.

      Also:

• July 4th, 1776, is not technically Independence Day. As John Adams pointed out, July 2nd was the day when the Second Continental Congress voted on Richard Henry Lee's resolution (introduced on June 7, 1776) to separate from Great Britain. July 4th was the day the Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, setting forth the rationale for the break with Britain. It was intended for both for domestic and international consumption.

• George Washington was a great man, but he was not a great battlefield general -- certainly no Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon Bonaparte. In fact, GW lost more battles than he won. His strength lay in his ability to hold a ragtag army together, his example of sacrifice, his intelligence gathering, his holding an international alliance together, and his ability to walk away from power. That is why he was great and it is why we honor him. (Even his enemy, King George III, remarked that Washington's ability to walk away from power made him "the greatest man in the world.")

A set of George Washington's dentures, obviously not made of wood. 

• George Washington did not have wooden teeth. His dentures were made of slave teeth set in ivory that were stained by tea, so they eventually looked like wood. They caused him much difficulty (stories about which prompts laughter at the expense of the Father of our Country).

• It is not true that democracies (and, by extension, representative democracies) do not go to war against one another. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant foreshadowed the "democratic peace theory" in his essay, "Perpetual Peace" (1795). Kant reasoned that a majority of the people would never vote to go to war, unless in self-defense. Therefore, if all nations were constitutional republics, international warfare would end, because there would be no aggressors. It's a bad theory refuted by history. Numerous times a body of people or their representatives have elected to go to war against each other: Athens vs. Sparta; Rome vs. Carthage; Great Britain vs. the U.S. in the War of 1812; the North vs. the South in the Civil War, and both, by the way, were the largest two democracies in the world at the time. 

9. The American War for Independence was both a civil war and a world war. It began as a civil war. A formerly united empire consisting of Englishmen loyal to the Crown split up when about 1/3rd of the colonists in British North America decided they had put up with too many abuses for too long. They justified their violent breakout in the Declaration of Independence, citing some two-dozen specific abuses.... Within three years the conflict morphed into a world war, and here the larger global context is important. England and France had fought four wars in the hundred years leading up to the American Revolution. They had scrapped in Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, and North America.... In 1754 a young George Washington precipitated the fourth of these wars in a glen in southwestern Pennsylvania. Britain eventually won the Seven Years War, but at a high price -- literally. The American Revolution grew out of the tensions that arose when Britain, financially strapped, taxed colonials without their consent to ease the crushing debt of empire. Patriot resistance led to the War for Independence, but Britain would end up fighting not just 13 of their former colonies, but also France, Spain, and Netherlands, all of which had scores to settle with the British.... After Saratoga, France came in on the American side hoping to humiliate the British after their own humiliation in the Seven Years War. Although France got the satisfaction of seeing Britain humiliated, her war debts, in turn, would lead to the calling of the Estates General and the outbreak of the French Revolution.... Out of the chaos of the 1790s rose Napoleon, whose wars in turn led to financial troubles that would open up the opportunity for Americans to purchase Louisiana, recently purchased by the French from Spain.... The American revolt is further linked to her former allies through the Haitian slaves who unsuccessfully attempted to break away from France and found the New World's second republic, and to all the South American republics that successfully broke away from Spain. It's all linked -- like that old toy, the barrel of monkeys. The American founding is better understood when seen in all its complex linkage to the broader world.


The neoclassical painter, John Trumbull, actually took part in the scene above, titled "The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775." The painting hangs at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.



8. The casualty rate of the Revolutionary War was much higher than anyone today realizes -- second highest of all our wars. In the Civil War, America lost almost 2 percent of her population. In the Revolutionary War (which was also a civil war), America lost almost 1 percent of her population. Out of a population of 2.5 million, the Americans lost close to 25,000 people by mortal wounds, subsequent infections, and disease.... By contrast, in World War II and the War of 1812, the U.S. lost about 1/3rd of 1 percent of her population. In World War I we lost about 1/10th of 1 percent of our population. In Vietnam we lost an even lower percentage of our population.

It was once common to depict George Washington sporting a Roman toga, symbolic of the old high Roman virtues -- labor, pietas, dignitas, gravitas, and fatum. This period piece from the 1840s, by Horatio Greenough, is part of the Smithsonian collection.

7. The American founders were latter-day Roman republicans. Many could read Latin, were classically educated, and consciously identified with some of the leading republicans of ancient Rome. They especially valued the civic virtue of the ancient Romans that made men capable of great sacrifice for others and for the community.





Cincinnatus put down his plow and took up his sword when he was called to lead Rome against tyrants. In this sculpture (in Cincinnati, OH), the republican leader is handing the fasces, symbol of constitutional authority in Rome, back to the republic's legitimate authorities. Fasces are a common symbol of republican power -- and also the origin of the word "fascist." Fasces are depicted in the U.S. House of Representatives on each side of the rostrum. 


• George Washington was alternately regarded as a Cincinnatus (for laying down his sword and returning to his plow) or Fabius the Delayer (for patiently avoiding a military catastrophe with the British). He also was a great fan of Joseph Addison's play, Cato, which he had performed again and again for his men. In both sculpture and painting, contemporaries frequently portrayed GW in a toga.
• John Adams, an attorney, looked back to the greatest lawyer of ancient times, the Roman republican Cicero, for inspiration. 
• Alexander Hamilton signed his Federalist papers with the name of the early Roman republican, Publius. There is evidence that he signed early papers "Julius Caesar."
• James Madison signed his Federalist papers with the name of the early Roman republican, Publius.
• John Jay signed his Federalist papers with the name of the early Roman republican, Publius.
• In fact, when debating the merits of the Constitution, most of the Federalists and Antifederalists used Roman noms de plume.  
• Nathan Hale's last words -- "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" -- were likely based on words from Joseph Addison's play, Cato.



In this famous sculpture of George Washington by Houdon (in the Virginia Capitol in Richmond), the General and first President of the United States rests his left hand on the fasces, symbol of Roman republican power. Fasces were composed of a bundle of rods around an axe. Compare Washington's pose with that of Cincinnatus, above, who is handing the fasces (power) back to legitimate public authorities.

• It was fashionable for earlier generations of Americans to have Roman names. Did you notice the painting of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 at the top of the page? The artist's name is Junius Brutus Stearns (1810-1885).

6. The American Revolution and founding should be chronologically and spatially s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, seen as (1) beginning much earlier, (2) including more Indian battles in the West, and (3) ending much later than the conventional wisdom suggests. Following Longfellow's famous poem, we tend to put the start of the Revolution at April 19, 1775, when Lexington and Concord flared up. We conventionally mark the end of the Revolution at either the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 or the Peace of Paris in 1783. But John Adams claimed the American Revolution began much earlier, in a Boston courtroom in February 1761, when James Otis delivered a speech asserting that Americans had the right to interpret English constitutional principles and rights differently from British politicians back home. In fact, according to Adams, many Patriot Americans had already declared their independence from the mother country in their minds and hearts before a shot was fired.... But to mean anything, ideas on parchment had to be backed by victories on battlefields. Americans simply had to wear down the British will to keep them in the empire.... We tend to overlook the importance of the Indian battles. Successfully confronting Indian unrest among the Iroquois, Shawnee, Cherokee, and Miami was critical to the struggle for independence. Many Indian battles, even as late as Fallen Timbers (1794) and Tippecanoe (1811), were due to British agitation of her Indian allies who continued to harass American settlers in the West.... As for an ending date, Jefferson called the Election of 1800 the Second American Revolution. And the War of 1812 was widely perceived to be the Second War for Independence because it was not until the conclusion of that conflict that the British seemed truly resigned to having lost her 13 North American colonies.

In 1794 the Battle of Fallen Timbers took place outside of present-day Toledo, OH. It should be seen in the context of the War for Independence and American Revolution.

5. The American founders, a minority of the population, were gutsy. Given similar circumstances today, we would probably be either Loyalists or fence-sitters. I'd wager that most of us today would not be treasonous but play it safe. Americans in 1776 were, after all, part of the greatest empire on earth. We enjoyed more rights and liberties than any other people. Why risk it all?... John Adams observed that 1/3 of the population was Patriot, 1/3 was Loyalist, and 1/3 was opportunistic or neutral. We are not as animated by constitutional ideals and historic precedents as much as they were. Maybe some of us would tip our hat to the most conservative founder, John Dickinson. But probably not. The War for Independence was a vicious civil war here at home. Even non-combatants paid dearly. We'd seek convenience and try to avoid the pain.... American Patriots were fighting the superpower of the day, against the greatest army on earth and the greatest navy on the seas. The odds of winning were slim. There was much to lose if you committed high treason against the Crown, not least of which was life and limb. Most people are not willing to risk their all.... The American Revolution almost didn't happen. On several occasions, it was almost aborted. That's why I title my course, "The Amazing American Revolution." It is amazing that the founders pulled it off.

4. In its street plan, Washington, DC, is one of the great Baroque (and broke) cities of the world. Architecturally, it looks like a latter-day outpost of Rome. In plan, L'Enfant, Ellicott, and the McMillan Commission all reinforced the classical and baroque motifs. Even as late as the 1930s, FDR's Washington seemed to be competing to become the Third Rome (as were Hitler's Berlin, Mussolini's Rome, and to some extent even Stalin's Moscow).

L'Enfant's street plan for the new capital city appealed to the Baroque imagination.

3. George III was every bit the revolutionary that George Washington was. The king was a revolutionizing tyrant, destroying the English constitution and denying the ancient rights of Englishmen to colonial subjects. His tyranny was as revolutionary as George Washington's principled resistance was. Perhaps the American founding could best be described with the Burkean phrase, "a revolution not made, but prevented." For the revolutionary impulse was largely kept within bounds when compared to the later French Revolution or Russian Revolution. As the historian John Willson suggests, maybe this is the true achievement of the American founders, to form a more perfect union without turning the world upside down.

2. The founders' understanding of freedom was different from ours. They did not think it was the right to do whatever you wanted. They were not libertarians. The founders' understanding of freedom merged two intellectual streams of thought. One was the civic republican tradition, an inheritance of classical, Renaissance, and English Whig thought; it emphasized the citizens' duties to the commonwealth and engendered the habit of putting service before self. The other was the natural rights tradition, influenced by William of Occam, John Locke, and the Enlightenment; it emphasized the government's duty to the individual, especially to protect one's God-given right to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. Taken together, both the republican and liberal streams of thought recognize that freedom comprises rights and duties.... Further, freedom must be ordered to be secured; otherwise it can devolve into licentiousness and/or anarchy, as Polybius, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus taught when meditating on the Roman experience.... Gouverneur Morris's 52-word Preamble to the U.S. Constitution offers a sublime lesson in the five conditions that must obtain before a people can be truly free. Every American should know this wonderful little lesson in political philosophy.

The first page of the U.S. Constitution containing Gouverneur Morris's 52-word Preamble, one of the most sublime lessons in political philosophy ever crafted.

1. The founders spoke of our nation's happiness. They were concerned about posterity -- about our happiness. Of all the state papers ever produced, one of the most famous is the Declaration of Independence. And of all the phrases Jefferson ever penned, surely one of the most appealing to modern sensibilities is "the pursuit of happiness." That line has played a part in shaping the modern world. Yet most Americans today are not familiar with older conceptions of happiness. The founders would not have confused happiness with power, profit, prestige, pleasure, or pride in getting our way. What does the pursuit of happiness entail? To the founders, above all it meant reconciling the public duties of our civic republican tradition with the private rights of our natural law tradition. But the private sense of happiness does not end there. At the end of Sophocles' play, Antigone, the chorus instructs us in the happiness we seek. The main ingredient of happiness is wisdom. How do we become wise? For most of us, punishment and suffering pound out our foolishness. They school us until we learn the lessons needed to live the good life. Experience teaches that wisdom mostly comes from keeping a clear conscience, worshiping God rightly, and learning from mistakes, our own and others'. If we are mindful of these things, we have a shot at being happy. We are smart about "the pursuit of happiness." For we know that, absent wisdom, there is no happiness.

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Final thoughts in the final class

There were several honorable mentions cited by the class, nuggets that almost made it into the Top Ten. For example, they enjoyed learning about the critical moment in American history that occurred in Newburgh, New York, on the Ides of March 1783, when George Washington saved the new republic from impatient, angry officers who wanted him to lead a junta against the Confederated Congress.

One woman in class was fascinated by how rifling a gun barrel was a technological leap over smooth-bore muskets, increasing the lethal velocity of a lead ball. In a related vein, a man seized on Nathaniel Greene's brilliant strategy at Cowpens and Guildford Courthouse.

Of course, they enjoyed all the people stories -- of Nathan Hale's bravery in the face of death, of Molly Pitcher manning the cannon after her husband collapsed, of Abigail Adams watching the early battles with her children, of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys in the Grants, of John Paul Jones's daring-do off the coast of Scotland, etc. There is never enough time for all the interesting people stories, but they are what make history come alive in any class.

Bottom line: Time will tell, future historians will ratify, whether America is the greatest republic ever founded. A little perspective is in order. Our republic has existed less than 240 years. Chinese dynasties passed the baton for some 4,000 years. Egyptian civilization lasted some 3,000 years. The Venetian Republic lasted more than 1,000 years. The Roman republic lasted some 500 years. A fraction of that age, our American nation is a relative new-comer to the world stage. Are we up to the awesome task of continuing it? As Benjamin Franklin told the woman outside the Pennsylvania State House in 1787, the founders bequeathed to the American people a republic. Now it is up to us to keep it.

The United States Capitol is freighted with architectural significance, marrying the eternal heavens with earthly ambition and achievement. Reminiscent of St. Peter's and (further back) the Roman Pantheon, the circular dome symbolizes the eternal first principles of a constitutional republic in which the people are sovereign under the rule of law. The rectangular floor plan that rises from the foundation symbolizes our nation's connection to bedrock, rich soil, and vast natural resources, a geographic grounding reinforced by the structure's orientation along the four cardinal directions.

*     *     *

For more about the American founding, please see my other essays on this blog along with the many links to additional works.

For more about leadership, please visit the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies http://www.allpresidents.org/.

Themistocles

Themistocles and the Strategic Imagination

America’s Founding Fathers admired a famous Greek named Themistocles. In fact, Thomas Jefferson compared John Adams to this Athenian statesman whose strategic vision (pronoia) helped Europeans turn back a massive invasion from Asia in the fifth century B.C. So to Themistocles’ gifts as a leader we now turn.

Some 2,500 years ago, a tyrant in the Middle East proclaimed that he would conquer Europe.[1] Had Xerxes succeeded, the history of Western civilization would have been much different. It is unlikely the Greeks would have ever gone through a golden age to inspire later generations. Further, the West’s birth and development as a distinctive civilization might have been delayed several centuries. It surely would have taken a much different course.

The series of conflicts that decided Europe’s fate at this time is known as the Persian Wars. Like the Trojan War, these conflagrations revealed the clash of civilizations. On the one side was Xerxes, the king of the Persians who had forged an army out of the greatest empire the world had ever seen; the Persians were “ruling over many peoples and all of Asia.”[2] On the other side were the Greeks, a hodgepodge of quarrelsome city-states scattered about the Aegean Sea and elsewhere, badly outnumbered by the Persians on land and at sea, but determined to preserve their freedom. By every measure, the Greeks faced daunting odds against Xerxes, whose expeditionary force was the largest in human history – perhaps larger than all previous invasion forces combined. The Greek historian Herodotus claims the Persian expeditionary force embarked with more than five million soldiers and camp followers, and upwards of one thousand ships.[3] So many invaders, they drank rivers dry on their march to Greece.[4] Moreover, Xerxes’ men had a fearsome reputation. The very mention of the name “Persian” caused fright in many a Greek.

To make matters worse, the Greeks were badly divided among themselves. Many of them believed that the Persian juggernaut was unbeatable. Certainly the oracles coming out of Delphi had been dispiriting. As the Persian juggernaut rolled into Greece, more than 200 Greek city-states either stayed neutral or went over to Xerxes’ side. (They “medized,” Herodotus says, referring to the fact that Xerxes was also king of the Medes.) Only 31 Greek city-states decided to stand up to the Persian king and fight to keep their independence. Let those odds sink in: just 31 Greek city-states would fight to preserve their freedom, despite staring into the maw of the greatest fighting machine the world had ever see, from an empire whose despotic king had intimidated some 200 Greek city-states into submission. In retrospect, no one could have blamed the Athenians, Spartans, and their allies had they sought terms or abandoned their homelands.

Yet the Greek freedom fighters did not abandon their homeland or the struggle for independence. One reason for their courage was their astonishing victory over the Persians ten years earlier on the field at Marathon; no one had expected the Athenians to win that battle – least of all the Athenians themselves. But now they had a spark of confidence.

Another source of encouragement was their leader – a Churchillian statesman named Themistocles. His vision (pronoia) enabled relatively modest Greek forces to slow down Xerxes and ultimately defeat the terrible Persian juggernaut.

Themistocles lived from about 524 to 459 B.C. He had fought against the Persians when Darius led the first invasion Greece in 490 B.C. Themistocles was in his mid thirties. He had risen in leadership when Xerxes launched the second invasion in 480 B.C. Themistocles, now in his mid forties, became the leading statesman in Athens and played such an important role in defeating Xerxes that he has been called “the guiding spirit of Greek resistance to Persia.”[5] The historian Thucydides believed he was one of Greece’s greatest statesmen ever. He cited Themistocles’ prodigious gifts of leadership, which included imagination, prudence, decisiveness, and persuasion.

To contemporaries, Themistocles was an unlikely hero. The historian Herodotus did not particularly like him,[6] and he was not especially well born.[7] But what he lacked in pedigree he made up in imagination. Indeed, it was Themistocles’s vision – his foresight and ability to see possibilities that others could not – that became the Greeks’ most powerful weapon against the Persians.

Like most leaders in the ancient world, Themistocles subscribed to the “great man” view of history. He believed one determined individual could make a difference in the fate of a nation – and he believed he was that individual, called upon to lead Athens through its greatest peril.

In the 480s Athens faced two threats. The lesser came from the nettlesome city-state of Aegina; the greater came from the mighty kingdom of Persia. When a rich vein of silver was discovered in Mount Laurium near Athens, many in the city thought that the silver should be distributed to its citizens as a windfall. But Themistocles saw the threats on the horizon and argued that it would be imprudent to disperse the public treasury in personal enrichment. To paraphrase Ralph Hauenstein, Themistocles could “see what was required.” What was required was a strong navy to defend their city-state. Indeed, Athens should become the greatest naval power the world has ever seen, for her security and destiny lay at sea.

Some aristocrats snickered at Themistocles and wondered if he was paranoid; others thought he was acting too big for his britches. “It is true,” Themistocles told them. “I cannot play a lyre or tune a harp, but I know how to make a small city great.”[8] Themistocles’ words hit home; his great ability as an orator carried the day. Athens used the newly discovered silver at Laurium to double the size of her navy from 100 to 200 warships to defend against invasion. Called triremes, these warships were the most advanced weapon of the day, manned by some 200 citizen-rowers, -marines, -musicians, and -officers.

Themistocles also had the foresight to build up naval bases at the nearby port at Piraeus, and to construct a military highway – Athens’ version of an ancient Interstate highway – to connect the great city to her naval bases some twelve miles away.

Not long after, when word reached Greece that Xerxes was planning an invasion of Europe, emissaries from the various city-states met to decide whether to resist the Persians. Themistocles insisted that they could and must. Greece would never be great under Xerxes’ foot.

His confidence must have seemed misplaced to many who wondered how the underdog Greeks could successfully resist the greatest expeditionary force in history. But Themistocles knew that two of the chief rules of war involved timing and geography: pick your time and place to fight, and join the battle on terrain favorable to you. The enemy’s advantage of having a larger army and navy could be neutralized if squeezed into a bottleneck. In a narrow corridor, the Persians’ greater numbers would be to no advantage. So the Greeks decided to confront Xerxes on land at a pass called Thermopylae – at its narrowest, wide enough only for a single cart[9] – and at sea in a narrow waterway called Artemisium Channel. Some 20-25 miles separated these land and sea bottlenecks. The proximity of the two defensive positions would allow the Greek army and navy to stay in close contact with each other. With a little luck, holding the Thermopylae-Artemisium line would allow the Greeks to delay and decimate a vastly superior Persian force. At the very least, the enemy’s supply lines would be disrupted. The hope was that Xerxes would grow discouraged and return to Asia.

At first the Greek strategy worked. When battle was joined, Greek hoplites gave far better than they got and killed multitudes of Persians. Xerxes was angered and vexed. His best troops were of no use in such a narrow pass. It was only because of treachery (by the Greek traitor Ephialtes) and cowardice (by unreliable Theban and Phocian allies) that the Greek plan broke down. When Xerxes learned of a mountain pass around Thermopylae that could be used to outflank the defenders, he was able to deploy enough soldiers to attack the rear of the Greek defense. Xerxes’s crack troops met fierce resistance. Herodotus describes in a chilling passage how the battle unfolded. The Spartans fought first with their spears, then with their swords, then with their knives, then with their hands, and finally with their teeth.[10] Alas, slowly, inexorably, the Persians overcame the brave citizen soldiers whom history memorializes as the Spartan 300.[11]

Less well remembered is what was happening some 20-25 miles away at sea. At the same time the Spartans were holding Thermopylae, the Greek navy was attacking Persian ships in nearby Artemisium Channel. Few people nowadays realize that the Greeks bested the enemy in the naval skirmishes.

Be that as it may, Thermopylae was a dispiriting defeat for the Greeks. Athenians knew that once Xerxes made it through the pass, there was nothing to stop the Persian juggernaut from reaching their city and destroying it. What to do? Once again, Themistocles had seen what was required and had thoroughly prepared Athenians for a fallback position.

Some months before Thermopylae-Artemisium, when news of Xerxes’ invasion spread, the Athenians had sent envoys to consult the oracle of Delphi. The prophetess at Delphi – intoxicated by ethylene vapors rising out of the geologic fault beneath the temple – delivered ominous news. At first she darkly warned that all was lost; Athenians should flee their doomed city if they valued their lives; even Zeus could not save Athens. But then she cryptically prophesied that a “wooden wall” would be Athens’ salvation.

When the envoys returned to Athens with the mysterious allusion to a “wooden wall,” a debate broke out in the Assembly over how to interpret its meaning. Most citizens assumed that the “wooden wall” was a palisade around the ancient Acropolis. But Themistocles had the imagination to see the oracle differently. To him, the “wooden wall” was not the palisade, but the hulls, oars, and masts of the Athenian navy.

It was a risky strategy. But in an impassioned speech that historians have likened to Churchill’s addresses to the British during the darkest days of the Second World War, Themistocles proposed to the Athenians what they should do if the line at Thermopylae-Artemisium failed: abandon their city, remove to an island called Salamis, and assemble their navy in the nearby waters. There Athens – and Greece – would make their final stand.

In a bravura rhetorical performance, Themistocles carried the day. The people of Athens voted to support his high-risk strategy. He then had to convince the allies to support his plan history knows as the Themistocles Decree. Sparta and the others balked. Wouldn’t it make more sense to defend the Isthmus of Corinth, the gateway to southern Greece? Themistocles thought that idea was foolhardy. The Persians, he argued, would simply sail around the defenses at Corinth and attack wherever they pleased. Themistocles, summoning all his persuasive powers to get Sparta and the other city-states to adopt his plan, got the Greeks to unify for once.

It was fortuitous that they did. In the days following the collapse of the Thermopylae-Artemisium line, the well-prepared Greeks put their plan into action. On a late summer day in 480 B.C., the unified Greek navy met the Persian navy in the waters off Salamis and routed the invader. After the Battle of Salamis, Xerxes’ navy was no longer an offensive weapon. His supply lines were severely disrupted. And the Greeks suddenly held the strategic advantage – just as Themistocles had foreseen.

Do you see what Themistocles had managed to do? Using all his skills as an orator, and all his wiles as a strategist, he maneuvered both the Spartans (his ally) and the Persians (his enemy) into fighting the Battle of Salamis.[12] One year later, he did the same thing in a land battle, convincing the Spartans and others to fight the Persians at Plataea, a battle that ended the offensive capability of the Persians on European soil. It was Themistocles who chose the time and place of battle.

And what about that remark in which Themistocles said he knew how to make a small city great? The statesman knew that naval power was the key to Athens’ security. After repulsing the Persians, Greek warships turned the Aegean Sea into an Athenian lake. By dominating the Aegean, Athens not only became more secure militarily; she also protected important trade routes and grew vastly more wealthy. Recall how Themistocles had insisted on improving the port at Piraeus. His strategy paid handsome dividends. After their astounding victory in the Persian Wars, Athens became one of the most formidable economic powers on earth.

That she did not long keep her hegemony was not Themistocles’ fault. Democracy does not always appreciate her great leaders. Churchill, after leading the British to victory in World War II, was turned out of office by voters just two months after the war ended. Themistocles, after leading the Athenians to victory in the Persian Wars, was ostracized and then exiled by fellow citizens.

Nevertheless, Themistocles was one of the most consequential leaders a democracy has ever had. Again and again, he saw what was required to oppose the Persian juggernaut, keep his people free, and transform Athens into a great city-state. He led the Athenians by superior imagination, discernment, decisiveness, and persuasion.

Let’s unpack these four qualities. Themistocles could see what was coming (possessing pronoia, imagination, vision, foresight); knew what to do about it (using discernment, prudence, good judgment); could act quickly and boldly (with confidence, decisiveness); and convince others that he was right (by means of rhetoric, persuasion). These four cornerstones of Themistocles’ leadership so impressed the historian Thucydides that he called the Athenian leader the greatest statesman of his age. In fact, Thucydides penned a passage that has become a classic for leaders. The passage provides an excellent review of the timeless qualities of leadership. Words in CAPS are added by me.

- Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, which was neither shaped by education nor developed by later training [GREAT MAN THEORY],

- he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation [DISCERNMENT, PRUDENCE, GOOD JUDGMENT],

- and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities [PRONOIA, IMAGINATION, VISION, FORESIGHT].

- An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere of his practice [RHETORICAL SKILL, PERSUASION],

- he was not without the power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no experience [DISCERNMENT, PRUDENCE, GOOD JUDGMENT].

- He could also excellently divine the good and evil which lay hidden in the unseen future [PRONOIA, IMAGINATION, VISION, FORESIGHT].

- To sum up, whether we consider the extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application, this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others [GREAT MAN THEORY]

- in the faculty of intuitively meeting [DISCERNMENT, PRUDENCE, GOOD JUDGMENT]

- an emergency [REQUIRING CONFIDENCE, BOLD ACTION, DECISIVENESS].[13]

Themistocles provides a model of a great democratic statesman. Americans admired him for saving the West. He kept Europe from being conquered by Asians, and he saved Athens so it could develop into a distinct crucible of civilization. No wonder Thomas Jefferson compared John Adams to Themistocles when our second president advocated building up a strong navy to defend the U.S. against the great European powers that threatened the young republic.

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[1] The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), 7:8, pp. 496-97.

[2] The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), 9:122, p. 722.

[3] According to Herodotus, the Persian expeditionary force grew to 5.3 million fighting men and camp followers, as well as to more than 4,200 boats and ships, by the time it reached Thermopylae-Artemisium. The numbers are outlandish. For a realistic appraisal of the Persian army, see Michael A. Flower, “The Size of Xerxes’ Expeditionary Force,” Appendix R, in The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), pp. 819-23.

[4] Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7:43, p. 423.

[5] The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, ed. Paul Cartledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 365.

[6] Elizabeth Vandiver, Herodotus: The Father of History (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2002), course guidebook, pp. 117-18.

[7] “Themistocles,” in Plutarch’s Lives, ed. Arthur Hugh Clough, trans. John Dryden (New York: Modern Library, 2001), vol. 1, p. 146.

[8] John R. Hale, “The Greek and Persian Wars” (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2008), lecture 7, track ?

[9] Elizabeth Vandiver, Herodotus: The Father of History (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2002), course guidebook, p. 103.

[10] Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7:225, p. 483.

[11] There were actually about 1,900 Greek defenders who made the last stand at Thermopylae.

[12] Hale, lecture 9, on Cimon/Themistocles

[13] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book 1, chap.. 138, trans. Richard Crawley, in The Landmark Thucydides, ed. Robert B. Strassler, Introduction by Victor Davis Hanson (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 79.

Alexander "the Great" Hamilton: The Indispensible Aide

The following talk, based on the New-York Historical Society's exhibit of Alexander Hamilton, was delivered on August 1, 2006.

Given the esteem in which I hold my colleagues from Aquinas College and Calvin College, I am proud to conclude this series on Alexander Hamilton -- based on the exhibit by the New-York Historical Society, organized by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, and hosted by Spring Lake District Library.

Who is this man with the sharp eyes and chiseled nose on our $10 bill?

Jason Duncan opened three weeks ago with an overview of Hamilton’s “strange and amazing life.” He “overcame huge odds” (proving that truth is stranger than fiction). “None of the Founding Fathers came from such unpromising origins.” He was born illegitimate, was orphaned by age 12, and grew up on a couple of Caribbean island that enriched themselves on rum sugar cane and the sweat of the slave’s brow. Who would have expected anything great on the American stage? Indeed, “three years before the outbreak of the American Revolution, Hamilton was an illegitimate orphan working in the Virgin Islands as a merchant’s clerk." His break came when he was sent as a teenager to New York to attend what would become an Ivy League university, Columbia. He performed brilliantly in every endeavor thereafter -- well, just about every endeavor. He did not fare so well in his duel with Aaron Burr.

John Pinhiero spoke two weeks ago of one of the great divides in American thought and culture: the Hamiltonian versus the Jeffersonian answer to the question: How shall we then live together. There are two very different ways of ordering freedom in a republic.

Jim Bratt spoke last week about Hamilton’s religious outlook, placing it in the perspective of more general intellectual, moral, and spiritual currents in the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment and Great Awakening.

A fascinating figure, Hamilton. He always ranks among the top five Founding Fathers; is arguably the foremost political figure in American history who never attained the presidency; and is perennially recognized as our nation's first economist.

In the course of this series, we have been exposed to extreme views of Hamilton -- ranging from the flatteringly positive to the scurrilously negative. Much of the negative press about Hamilton was his own fault. In the struggle to put forth his vision for the new republic, he made as many political enemies as any Founder did. Among his most vocal critics was John Adams, who referred to Hamilton as "the foreigner" and called him "the most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable, and unprincipled intriguer in the United States, if not the world." Adams, never one to fall into the error of understatement, was even more complimentary when he called Hamilton, “the bastard son of a Scottish peddler.”

Jefferson did not like Hamilton either -- in fact, couldn't stand him. They were outright political enemies by the time they were serving together in Washington's cabinet.

It didn't boost Hamilton's reputation that he became the most notorious adulterer among the Founders. His own letters reveal that he carried on with Maria Reynolds in a seedy affair that had the approval of her husband -- but only to blackmail the treasury secretary in a weak moment.

Nor did his death at the age of 49 commend him. There was still so much that his demons of ambition were prodding him to accomplish. But Hamilton had the worst kind of enemy, a mortal enemy. The former treasury secretary suffered the most spectacular death of any of the Founders, shot by the vice president of the United States in a duel. He then lingered for 31 agonizing hours before mercifully dying. The same pistol that killed Alexander had previously killed his son Phillip -- also in a duel. Too weird.

On the positive side, we think of Alexander "the Great" Hamilton as a war hero at the Battle of Yorktown; as the principal author of the Federalist Papers; and as the trusted aide to George Washington for two decades, first during the War for Independence where he demonstrated how precocious he was (he was only 20 years old when he was promoted to colonel on Washington’s staff), then during Washington’s presidency, where he served officially as the Treasury secretary, but unofficially became a rival to Jefferson who was at State. (That may have been the longest sentence I've ever composed.) Hamilton was able to exercise considerable influence over Washington's policies, but the two men had a stormy father-son-like relationship.

The title of this talk, by the way, is a play on the title sometimes used for George Washington -- “the Indispensable Man” to America’s founding. Hamilton, we know, was Washington’s indispensable aide. This evening I’d like to talk not so much about how Hamilton was Washington’s aide, as how he is ours. After all, the America he helped create is our America. That’s why the exhibit is subtitled, “The Man Who Made Modern America.” Hamilton “left behind ideas and institutions that have lasted for centuries.” Whether we like Hamilton or not, if we have not grappled with him, we have not really grappled with the origins of modern America.

"In this exhibition, we wanted to show the startling degree to which, of all the founders, Hamilton had the most modern ideas--the power of the press, the need for a strong federal government and a strong treasury, a national banking system, a stock market and trade, and a mixed economy, not one only focused on farming…."

"It's phenomenal that this man, who died in his forties, could have had so many ideas that would become true for the America that we know today," says James Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and professor of English at Columbia University.

Now let’s take a look at three areas where Hamilton is indispensable to our understanding of modern America (with due acknowledgment to James Basker, Forrest McDonald, Ron Chernow, and other Hamilton scholars).

A. FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL ORDER

Alexander Hamilton made – and continues to make – two great contributions to our American understanding of political order:

1. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, as the dominant mind on the Committee of Style along with Gouvernor Morris, Hamilton helped shaped the Preamble with its incisive argument for ordered liberty.

2. After the convention, he wrote some 50 of the Federalist papers, expounding on the meaning of the Constitution and arguing for its ratification.

Where did his ideas come from? Many came from his years of military service. Hamilton, who rose to the rank of colonel in the Continental Army, watched as General Washington and his officers struggled to keep the army clothed, fed, and armed. Under the Articles of Confederation, the loosely organized confederation of states could not raise taxes. The army was dependent on the individual generosity of the thirteen legislatures.

"Hamilton saw that a decentralized government was helpless and incompetent at doing what needed to be done," says Basker.

Hamilton's army experience helped shape his ideas about the need for a strong centralized government. In his spare time, he read the works of European thinkers and economists--Adam Smith, Samuel Von Pufendorf, and Malachy Postlethwayt. Already in the late 1770s he began toying with the idea of revising the Articles of Confederation. But war's end, he had outlined a plan for a federal government with strong central powers. But for his plan to work, the Articles would have to be dramatically revised or discarded. Not uncharacteristically, he wrote the resolution calling for the Constitutional Convention.

Hamilton got his chance when he became one of the three New York delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He argued for a concentration of power in the national government – for senators and a national governor who would serve for life, based on good governing. His ideas received no support and had little influence on the other delegates. But Hamilton served on the Committee of Style and influenced the ideas and language of the Preamble.

Compare the early draft: “We the People of the States of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island….”

[Hold up the $10 bill and reference the words, "We the People." ]

With the final version: “We, the People of the United States, in order to
- form a more perfect union,
- establish justice,
- insure domestic tranquility,
- provide for the common defence,
- promote the general welfare, and
- secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

These 52 words are the work of a genius who understood the political philosophy of ordered liberty. Ironically, a majority of Americans in 1787 did not want to be governed by the document.

If adopting the Declaration of Independence was the supreme Jeffersonian moment in American history, with its emphasis on liberty; then ratifying the Constitution with its Preamble was the supreme Hamiltonian moment in American history, with its argument for ordered liberty.

Take a step back and think about what Hamilton’s efforts mean to the human condition…. [See my Afterword in The American Cause]

Although they did not share Hamilton's federalist vision, the delegates had trouble devising a constitution. They disagreed on states' rights, representation, and slavery. With the existing government bankrupt and on the verge of collapse, a compromise had to be reached. After the other two New York delegates left in anger--they opposed any federalist provisions--Hamilton stayed behind and signed the final draft of the Constitution as an individual. Like other delegates, he recognized that the document, while imperfect, stood the chance of being ratified by the states.
"The most important thing Hamilton did was after the Constitution had been adopted by the convention, but before it was ratified. That was the real fight," says Basker.

Hamilton returned to New York, a strongly antifederalist state, to lobby for the Constitution. Hoping to turn the tide in favor of ratification, Hamilton, along with John Jay and James Madison, wrote The Federalist, a series of essays. Hamilton wrote more than two-thirds of the eighty-five essays, which were published in New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788 under the nom de plume "Publius." In the first essay, Hamilton wrote, "The vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty." Newspapers throughout the colonies began reprinting the essays, and little by little, opposition eroded. The thirteen colonies approved the Constitution.

B. FOUNDER OF THE MODERN U.S. ECONOMY

Hamilton's experiences in St. Croix also influenced his economic visions. He took the view that for the new republic to survive and flourish, the economy needed to be divided between agriculture and manufacturing. "As a pre-adolescent, Hamilton saw that on the islands, they manufactured nothing for themselves; they had to import everything," says Basker. "During the Revolution, any supplies needed by the colonies, guns or uniforms or anything manufactured, needed to be acquired from the French or Dutch or had to be taken from captured British supplies. So he knew that America would have to have its own manufacturing or it would always be dependent on other countries."

This was in contrast to Jefferson's hope for a republic of free-holding yeoman farmers, and would lead to political skirmishes between the rivals.

[Hold up the $10 bill and point to the image of the Treasury Building.]

As the first treasury secretary, Hamilton inherited a bankrupt nation. The war debt was crushing. In 1790, he published his "Reports on Public Credit," a plan to assume domestic and foreign debt, pay off federal war bonds, and create a national mechanism for collecting taxes.

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson vehemently opposed Hamilton's plan. The Virginians saw it as unfair to their state. Opposition arose from other quarters as well. To break the deadlock, Hamilton turned to back room politicking and cut a deal with Jefferson. The southern states would vote in favor of his plan in exchange for Hamilton's support in favor of moving the nation's capital from New York to a site on the Potomac River.

Hamilton also secured the establishment of a federal bank and a federal mint. Against long odds, he had placed the nascent United States on solid ground fiscally. Exhausted from the political battles, Hamilton retired from Washington's cabinet in 1795. He may have retired, but his ideas did not. [See my Afterword in The American Cause.]

[Tell the story of the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian bragging for their man's rightful place in American history.]

C. FOUNDER OF REALIST U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

Even though Washington asked Hamilton to head up Treasury, he was too self confident, assertive, and patriotic to restrict his efforts to domestic fiscal affairs. Indeed, a few years into the Washington administration, “the Treasury Department had … been more active internationally than had the State Department…. [Hamilton] understood European affairs better than did his counterpart in the State Department.” With his boss’s blessings, Hamilton debated Jefferson over foreign policy (which must have irritated Jefferson no end), and offered indispensable philosophical counsel and policy recommendations to the commander in chief when it came to foreign affairs.

Hamilton’s view of foreign affairs was shaped by four elements:
1. his realistic view of human nature (he has been called Machiavellian);
2. he was an astute student of history (he knew how difficult it was for republics to survive and left posterity some great lessons of history in the Federalist papers);
3. he participated directly, for more than a decade, in one of the world’s most significant revolutions and in a war for independence against the world’s then-greatest superpower; and
4. he observed the excesses of the French Revolution, which broke out the same year the Washington administration began.

As Treasury secretary, Hamilton was justified in his desire to help shape U.S. foreign policy by six factors:
1. the new republic’s small army and navy were paid for by the Treasury. Early in Washington’s first administration, there were Indian wars to deal with;
2. the new republic was becoming buried by crushing debt and needed to seek credit abroad;
3. revenues had to be raised by taxing international commerce;
4. a commercial treaty with Great Britain was desired by Washington, and Hamilton was in accord;
5. the Whiskey Rebellion: Knox went away on personal business at the moment when the new republic needed him most!
6. Washington explicitly asked Hamilton for an alternate opinion to Jefferson’s when it came to the Proclamation of Neutrality (1793). Hamilton thought that Jefferson had “a womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment against Great Britain.”

The outbreak of the French revolution coincided with the beginning of Washington's first administration, but by 1793 warfare had engulfed Europe, pitting Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Spain against the new French Republic. In the cabinet Jefferson opposed any expression of neutrality while Hamilton supported it. Washington eventually sided with the latter and issued a proclamation of neutrality that barred American ships from supplying war matériel to either side.

Forrest McDonald writes: “In the face of war in Europe, [Hamilton] saw neutrality as the great desideratum, but not because, having known war, he cherished peace. Rather, he understood that war, in the emotional and ideological climate of the United States in the 1790s, would divide the nation against itself and sap the strength of its infant national government. Every year of peace, conversely, would allow the country to grow stronger and its government to become more stable. As a matter of policy, he therefore regarded war as acceptable only if the alternative was national disgrace or the sacrifice of vital national interests, and only if the American people could be counted on to support the war with some measure of solidarity.”

You see these sentiments resurface three years later in Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796, where the out-going president urges Americans to avoid alliances that are not in the nation’s interest. Try to set a good republican example and be friendly to all to the extent possible. There are obvious lessons for today.

CONCLUSION

Hamilton had a vision. He believed the United States could become the world’s greatest nation ever. He foresaw us becoming a “republican empire”: at home, republican; abroad, first among the nations, with a commercial and military reach able to rival that of any other "superpower" (in Hamilton’s day, Britain and France). He thought our commercial and military reach should be proportionate to the nation’s vital interests. As our vital interests grow, we become richer, stronger, and – more subject to temptation. The temptation is to become imperial at home, dictatorial even. To Hamilton, it was necessary to avoid this temptation at all costs. No previous republic had ever quite succeeded in doing so. Ancient Rome came the closest. But Rome succumbed to imperial designs at home as its military conquered distant lands. In the United States, there would be a tension between the freedom of a republic, and the reach of a global empire. It would take time to grow the new republic. In the 1790s, to use Hamilton’s words to Washington, we were “a Hercules in the cradle.” Hamilton warned: “’Tis as great an error for a nation to overrate as to underrate itself.” Again, useful words for us to remember today.

How different Hamilton’s pragmatic vision is from Jefferson’s idealistic vision.