#1552 Ten Things: If George Washington Could Drop the Mic
2023-06-20 00:55:51
Listening to America aims to “light out for the territories,” traveling less visited byways and taking time to see this immense, extraordinary country with fresh eyes while listening to the many voices of America’s past, present, and future. Led by noted historian and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson, Listening to America travels the country’s less visited byways, from national parks and forests to historic sites to countless under-recognized rural and urban places. Through this exploration, Clay and team find and tell the overlooked historical and contemporary stories that shape America’s people and places. Visit our website at ltamerica.org.
Hello everyone and welcome to this introduction to the podcast edition of this week's Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson. Everyone, we're underway. We recorded the first program in Norfolk at WHRV just a week or so ago. Hereafter, you will be listening to America with Clay Jenkinson rather than to the Thomas Jefferson hour. There will be more continuity than change, and one of those continuities, of course, will be our spirited, young correspondent, Lindsay Chervinsky.
Today, we talk about 10 moments when George Washington would have dropped the mic as it were, had such technology existed in his time. One of the questions I ask her is, is he the kind of person who would ever drop the mic? That does sound more like Barack Obama, who was the first president to do so at the White House Correspondents dinner in 2016. I can't tell you how excited I am about the new look of the program, as I say, more continuity than change.
Joe Ellis will be coming from time to time, and David Swenson will be there to help broker those conversations. More reports from the field as Listening to America begins its wanderings throughout the course of this country. I just finished a two-week stint down in Canyon Country, down at the four corners area, in which we investigated one of our first themes Water in the West. You can find all of that at ltamerica..org and you can sign up for our newsletter there. Which I very much hope you will do if you can contribute in any way.
Airstream just need an airstream. I'll be thrilled. I'm planning to spend the next 15 years of my life on the open road, going to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Of course, going to look at all of Theodore Roosevelt's conservation properties in the American West, of course, going to follow the entire journey of John Steinbeck in 1960, travels with Charlie.
Yes, of course, can't wait. That will be early in 2024 and so much more. Our plan is to fan out.
Country, as Steinbeck called it, and listen, listen, listen. And what made our Water in the West trip so interesting? This was with my colleagues Dennis McKenna and Frank Lister, both of Utah. Is that we met people that would normally not be part of the conversation about water in the West. And we listened to them and we learned, and we actually changed our minds about what we thought. The lead of the story was Met Elders on the Navajo Reservation, on the Hopi reservation, on the UTE reservation.
Spent time with the great, somewhat zany, magnificent, really people at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez. We stayed in funky motels, ate interesting food, met extraordinary servers, one of whom, when he brought our meal, said, Heck, yeah. It was a glorious time and it was just the beginning. We came back with a couple of things. One is we felt vindicated that this idea of listening to America is going to work. Because we really do mean to listen and not presuppose what the stories will be.
And secondly, it's amazing how little you hear the words Biden, Trump, or the border, or the deficit, or the debt ceiling, and so on. When you get out from under MSNBC and Fox and CNN and all of the rest, there's a sort of distorting lens that gets in the way of most Americans understanding of where this country is. My goal as we approach the 250th birthday of the United States 2026 July 4th, is to be able to report something more authentic about the mood and the soul of the country. At that time, I also gave a talk in Norfolk about the future of Thomas Jefferson.
As you know, he is in the crosshairs of some people in the world of cancel culture. And of course, he richly deserves whatever criticism he gets for his attitudes towards race and slavery, his dispossession of Native Americans in the West, his somewhat comic but still offensive attitude about women in public life. And a certain machiavellian capacity. He had from time to time, to put it in the terms of one of my interlocutors, quoting Nixon to screw his political enemies. So this is all a remarkable period in my life. I can't tell you how excited I am about all of it and I can't wait to get out there. To stay in national Forest campgrounds, to visit all of the national parks and monuments and historic sites, to float on the Great Rivers, sometimes in rafts, sometimes not, to meet people who are doing extraordinary things.
I'll give you one example. A man named Scott Baxter in Salt Lake City came to our hotel and I interviewed him about the future of Great Salt Lake. You know, you don't spend a lot of one's time thinking about that Brackish lake, but he's almost the Henry David Thoreau of Great Salt Lake. He speaks meaningfully and with great concern about its future. It could die, and it will, by the way, die before it's empty, because it supports a very fragile brine shrimp ecosystem.
Once we met him, we learned that he also is a.
Exquisite maker of kayaks Just go in Scott Baxter Kayaks and you will see what amazing pieces of art they are. And he and his daughter's boyfriend, his future son-in-law, circumnavigated Great Salt Lake more than 130 miles. And this is not for the faint of heart, you know? The salt crusts up on the bottom of the kayaks until they become too heavy to move.
There are very few good places to camp, there are brine shrimp, of course, there's no rest from the wind out there, there are. But it was a spiritual experience for him, and we would literally never have understood this or known about it, even if we hadn't met him. On the question of water in the West.
Join us, send suggestions of places we should go, people we should interview, themes we should pursue, and we're very eager to do this right. I have a personal stake in it because I'm taking the risk of transforming the Jefferson Hour, which has been very successful, into Listening to America. Because I believe that a wider lens, a wider embrace, will allow us to explore the Jeffersonian as much as Jefferson himself. But don't worry, he's going to be here.
He'll be back. And I almost never am engaged in a conversation for more than a few minutes in which the name Thomas Jefferson doesn't come up after all. I've essentially been married to him now for 35 years, so as they say in North Dakota, he ain't going away. We want you to be part of this program to sign up for the newsletter, to visit our site.
You'll see an ongoing series of reports from the road. And to help us in any way that you reasonably can. So Lindsay Trevinsky is one of the gems of Listening to America. And she's going to be a regular correspondent approximately once every four weeks. And this week was on her man, George Washington. You know, she's writing a book on John Adams, who's another really extraordinary figure.
But this is about 10 moments when, if it had been possible, George Washington might have dropped the mic. So let's go to the show.
Hello everyone and welcome to Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson and across from me.
And co-historian Dr. Lindsay Trevinsky, author of an excellent book on George Washington's Cabinet and another book coming out soon, you chose the topic today, Lindsay, George Washington. If the technology had been in place, when would he have dropped the mic?
Yes, well, thank you for having me back. it's always a delight to be with you. I chose this topic because I think that we often make the mistake of looking at our historic figures with such seriousness that we risk losing. The elements of the theatrical, which are a part of our daily life today, are an essential part of politics and political institutions, and were very much so back then. Especially as you're trying to build things from scratch, sometimes the presentation is almost more important when you're trying to instill something new with legitimacy. And almost no one was better at that theatrical moment than George Washington.
So I thought it would be worth some of the mic drop moments when he really, really lays down the gauntlet.
I do think there was perhaps one person who was better at this one, Thomas Jefferson. He was a master of political theater, walking to his inauguration and all that Jefferson stuff. But first of all, the microphone didn't exist then, and I looked this up because I was charmed by your suggestion.
The first recorded use of dropping the mic was Johnny Rotten, a British rock star back in the 70s. But it became popular with Eddie Murphy in a standup thing he did called Delirious in 1983. And then, of course, the first president to drop the mic was Barack Obama during the White House correspondents dinner in 2016. And after that, of course, things Obama, it became.
Viral. That is fantastic, and I think there is something extra hilarious about the fact that Obama was the first president to do that. And we're talking about Washington. There's a great bookend there, and I'm not describing it well, but it really brings a good image to our mind.
You know, Obama, whatever your policy, so cool, he did so many cool and groovy things. But here's my question, can you imagine George Washington of all people, dropping the mic and just let me make quickly the case, you know? We think of him as with those awful teeth that were springing up. And his very stiff public presence, his deep commitment to decorum and not an aloofness, but how he bore himself.
In any situation, it takes a certain amount of mischievousness.
Can you imagine him dropping a mic? Well, I think, maybe if the moment called for it. The idea that he didn't have that mischievousness, or that he didn't have the ability to kind of make that sarcastic comment is a misnomer. Or creation that he intentionally crafted, but was not actually.
Reflective of who he was, So let me ask you this, What kind of man was he? He could relax, he loved to dance.
He loved ladies, he loved to dance with women and could dance all night, could relax in private company quite a bit. But in public, he was much more careful about his deportment. He was a witty and sometimes sarcastic person. That he had a very serious temper, which he had, by sheer force of discipline, managed to keep under control. Most of the time. I would add that he, you know.
He did have a sense of humor, he loved dogs, he loved writing. I think that he was a very well intentioned person. I don't think that you have the person who serves for as long as he does, in capacities as he does.
If he wasn't well intentioned, I think he had an incredible willpower to kind of grind through the things that he had to grind through. He was not an intellect in the way that Jefferson or Hamilton or Madison were. He was curious and interested and wanted to learn, and was committed to constantly and continuing his own self-education. But he didn't have sort of a natural, sparkling talent that I think they did.
He valued loyalty.
Almost all other qualities, which put Jefferson in a very difficult position with him, Jefferson said. Not only was he the greatest horseman of the era, which is very high praise because Jefferson was a man of horses, too. But he also said that Washington was wise, that his judgment was nearly perfect. Slow to make up his mind, a little bit cumbersome, self-conscious about his intellect and his pros particularly, but that once Washington made up his mind, he was impeccable in.
His judgment? I think that's absolutely right. I mean, there are moments when he makes poor decisions and we're going to talk about one of them here. At the beginning and at the very end of his life. But in the middle there, when things are really important, he gets most things right. And I think that that is worth considering. As we in the future talk about other presidents, do we?
Need someone who makes really good choices and surrounds themselves with sparkling intellect? And I can make both sides of that argument, so Washington puts a point in the column for. It's more important to be a good listener and to be willing to ask questions. And then make nuanced and balanced decisions based on the information provided than necessarily to be able to come up.
With those ideas yourself, all right, let's go to your list. You mentioned a moment of snark.
Let's hear one. The moment where I think Washington is perhaps the snarkiest occurs in a letter. On March 30th, 1796, Chief Justice John Jay went to Great Britain to negotiate a new treaty between the United States and Britain. To resolve many of the lingering issues from the Revolutionary War, in particular, the Western Forts property that was seized, and then ongoing impressment by British ships of American merchants and sailors. This treaty was very unpopular in the South. It was ratified in the Senate. But then the House got a hold of it because it had to raise money to supply funds for one of the provisions.
Republicans in the House, this is, of course, Jeffersonian Republicans or Democratic Republicans thought that it was an opportunity to scuttle the treaty, and so they requested all executive papers pertaining to this treaty. Because they assumed they had set out from the beginning to sell out southern interests and it would be so embarrassing that the treaty would fail, Washington wrote back. And this moment is very important for a couple of reasons one, it's the first time that a president asserts executive privilege. It establishes a difference between, well, first of all, it acknowledges the right of congressional oversight, but then it establishes the difference between regular oversight and an impeachment proceeding.
He's kind of daring them to impeach him, which is obviously not going to happen. So that is sort of snark one. So he says, No, I'm not going to give you these letters. I give you the right to do oversight, to practice oversight. But in this instance, he basically makes a national security argument, or what we would think of a national security argument. That diplomacy requires more secrecy, and he has to honor that secrecy.
And then he goes on and he says, By the way. And I was there when we were discussing how treaties would be made and what powers would be granted to the different branches. And the Senate was given the right to approve the treaties. The House had no role and you are trying to usurp additional authority and that is not appropriate. And if you don't believe me, you can come check the journals that I have in the Department of State offices. From the convention, it's the ultimate mic drop moment.
It's so good.
All right, so a couple of things about that. First of all, the Jeffersonians opposed all this. And it wasn't a particularly good treaty, maybe the best treaty we could get at that moment. But Washington's original hopes for the treaty did not come to pass, and both Jay and Washington were disappointed. But all historians now think it's the best we could have done under the circumstances.
Yeah, United States had no leverage in any way, so the fact that we got anything was.
Pretty remarkable. And so the Jeffersonians were going to lose this battle in the Senate and did. Madison then said, Well, if we don't appropriate the money to fulfill the treaty, we can perhaps stop it, and this was very uncharacteristic for Madison.
He was also at the Constitutional Convention and knew the Senate had exclusive right to approve treaties. And so this is. It just feels like Jefferson sort of seduced him into a wrongheaded response to the Jay Treaty.
What's your view? I agree with that. And, in fact, when I think it might've been Livingston who made the request for the papers, Madison objected to it. He did not want that to happen because he knew that he did not have any. He did not have the upper hand in that situation and so when that request was made, he was very unhappy about it.
So I think Madison was definitely quite torn.
Jay was burned in effigy around the country. This was one of the early rallying points that helped to create the beginnings of our two-party system. All right, drop the mic Let's go to the most famous I think of all the drop the mic situations, the Newburgh conspiracy. So the war has begun.
We have won, we're broke. There are officers who haven't been given the emoluments that they've been promised for their duty. They're not wanting to break up and go home because once they do, they reckon they'll never get their payments. They're in a very grumpy, restive mood.
A meeting is called Bang In Walks. George Washington. The soldiers and officers have.
Not been paid in some cases for years, they are owed extensive back pay. And they've been fighting this whole time. So it's not like they're asking for anything other than what they were promised. Washington gets wind of this plot, which is basically a design to hold a meeting, to sign a letter that was kind of going to threaten a military coup. It's a little fuzzy, exactly what the intentions were.
If it was sort of a subtle nod in that direction, how serious they were is kind of hard to say. Hamilton kind of warns Washington, thinking, Maybe that Washington?
Might actually support this concept, and Hamilton is kind of hedging his bets on this thing.
So Washington says initially he's not going to go to this officer meeting, and he says, this is a terrible idea. And he kind of, you know, reams Hamilton out for doing it. And then, at the last minute, he changed his mind, or he wanted the element of surprise. He showed up at the meeting, he had a prepared address to talk to the soldiers and to the officers. He starts the address and sort of fumbles, and he pulls out a pair of glasses, which is a sign of weakness.
At the time, you generally didn't wear glasses in public because it was, you know, a feebleness of your body. And he apologizes, and he says, Gentlemen, I have gone blind in the service of my country.
I've not only given these years to it, but I've gone blind in service to this cause.
And apparently the officers kind of like, burst into tears because it was, I'm sure, part of it, was a guilty conscience. It was also such a human moment from him, in a way that he was usually, he did not portray, he was usually on horseback, he was the commander, he was this fierce person.
And here he was, showing this human moment and acknowledging the sacrifice and the pain that they had all experienced over the last several years. And so then he finally reads the address, and the address really isn't the important part. The important part is that they have all now cried and acknowledged. They're going to follow his lead. And the conspiracy completely falls apart and they're not threatened.
And so if there ever was going to have been a military coup, that was probably the closest it got, and Washington really nipped in the bud.
Was this political theater or did this just happen?
Probably some of both. I suspect that Washington knew how to use the element of surprise. I suspect that he maybe didn't need his spectacles and used it to sort of demonstrate his point, but I think it was also genuine. I mean, we've talked about this before, but he was home for one night in eight years.
And when the soldiers were on the battlefield, he did not go into winter quarters until they had winter quarters. That doesn't sound like much, maybe to us today, but it meant a whole lot to them at the time. And so when he said, I've gone blind and gray and they knew that he meant it.
We need to take a short break here. LINDSAY This is extraordinarily interesting to me. You're listening to, listening to America. We'll be back in just a moment.
So, welcome back to this edition of Listening to America with Lindsay Czerwinski 10 Things, 10 Times. That George Washington might've dropped the mic if there had been microphones in his time. I'm pretty skeptical of the whole trope, but I get the point, it's fun. The Newberg conspiracy, I think, is one of the pivotal moments of early American history.
Let's go to another one. The war's over. It's been a long, difficult war. George Washington could have remained a military commander, he might've even conducted a coup.
The country was deeply grateful. Might've made him something for life, president for life, dictator or king, something in that line, but instead, he resigns his commission. Tell that story.
Yeah, so it's important for us to remember that the war did not end at Yorktown, and he instead was at headquarters, which were in Newberg. Until they received word that the Treaty of Paris had actually been signed and made sure the British were indeed leaving New York. Because there was always a question if they were going to try and pull one last heist or attack. And then Congress was at that moment in Annapolis, he traveled to Annapolis and he returned his commission in person.
And this has been depicted, perhaps most famously, in a painting of Washington returning his commission. I think it's in the Capitol Rotunda, if I'm remembering my location correctly. It has been mentioned in many historic moments because it is the start of a concept of a peaceful transfer. But what I think is important for this conversation is not so much that. He did it because he did. But he didn't have to do it in person. He could have mailed a letter and resigned or sent in his official commission.
And instead, he went to Congress, he sort of symbolically gave it back, and then he went home. In doing so, he did a couple of things, he demonstrated that he was subservient to Congress.
He was military authority was subservient to civilian authority. It was a poignant moment of sort of the real close of the war for him to go there and do so and humble himself. That symbolism was essential for people at the time, and they understood exactly what it was, and he knew exactly what he was creating when George III, the King of England, heard this.
He was deeply impressed, he was not as bad a guy as he's usually portrayed. He is said to have said. If Washington really did this, he's the greatest man in the world. Because these things usually.
Dictatorship? In the musical, it's depicted as I didn't know that was something people could do.
Right, so you had to bring up the musical, your source for all things on? George Washington, Yes.
We were agreeing too much. I had to rattle you just a little bit.
No, because you're going to the musical as if you know when he sings, you'll be back. I suppose you're going to hang your head on that one too. All right, so he does resign his commission, and I think everyone got it. This doesn't really happen.
Napoleon didn't do it, Napoleon became Julius. Caesar is made dictator for life, is even flirting with the kingship when he's assassinated. Everyone gets it that this is one of those moments. Will Washington be just another military commander who gets a thirst for power and can't let it go, or will he be a true small R Republican who will resign his commission?
And as you say, he didn't just send it in by. Fedex appears in person, and the painting is of him very humbly saying. And then he wants to go, he says. He uses biblical language, he wants to go home and sit under his vines and his fig tree.
He uses that language a lot, actually, I think that the combination of the biblical language and the reading, as you suggested. He's immediately called the American Cincinnatus, and that is in reference to Cincinnatus, who was a general and then went back to his farm.
Right? And Aaron Burr becomes the catiline of this story, and both Jefferson and Adams see themselves as Cicero. And they're all playing roles from the end of the Roman Republic. But nobody is claiming Julius Caesar, not even Hamilton.
Let's flash back to the beginning of the war. Because one of the weirdest things about Washington, something I can't even get my head around, is that. The second Continental Congress is planning to declare independency. And the war has sort of begun at Lexington and Concord, and Washington comes up to meet with the second Continental Congress. And he comes in uniform that doesn't sound like Cincinnatus, he's wearing his uniform, it's like, here I am.
Give me my sword. Well, he wants to be Cincinnatus in 1783..
He doesn't want to be Cincinnatus in 1783.
Don't you find this odd that he appears in uniform?
Um, no, I find it totally consistent, because at that point, I think that he was so. He was still so ambitious, he was still on the rise, he still had so much drive. Whereas in 1783 and in the presidency, he had nowhere to go but down, he was already on top of the world.
He was the most famous American, and he was the father of the country, so where else was he going to go? But in 1775, this is a great example of you got to dress for the job you want. And you know, he. The best part, though, is so. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He had been in the Virginia House of Burgesses for quite some time.
Prior to this point, he had been out of military service for quite some time. At this point in 1774, when he goes to the first continental Congress, I do not believe he wears the uniform.
I just want you to kind of picture this moment at the second continental Congress, and they're everyone's there and they're, you know, all meeting. They're wearing their their 18th century duds, some of them in wigs, all of them in buckled shoes and breeches. And there's one guy and one guy only in a full military uniform. And then Adam says, Well, now we're going to need a commander in chief. Any thoughts? any thoughts?
Here's this guy who's. I mean, what do you do now? If they had given it to somebody else, does he go home and say, Martha, I shouldn't have?
Shouldn't have worn the uniform well, so, I mean, so, the reason I started by, like, taking down all these different factors is because there were lots of things, of course, that went into play. He did of the people who were sort of left under, you know, after we've filtered out those others, he did have some of the most military experience. And we should also point out that at this point. He was also one of the tallest men in the room and one of the broadest sort of stature.
He was a very imposing presence, and then you add the military uniform. It was very much a not subtle look at me, and I find that really, very, quite amusing. So Lindsay, one of my favorite moments, comes in.
August 22nd of 1789. Very early on, Washington had already tried to get the Supreme Court to play a role advising him, and the court had said no. That's a separation of powers problem. So these norms were beginning to gel. Washington sends papers over to the Senate about a treaty with the Creek Indians, and then comes himself on August 22nd, thinking that they will quickly.
Answer a few questions and be out of there. And then it's endless. Because Adams tries to read the whole thing as the vice president, it goes wrong, people can't hear it, he's rereading parts of it.
The president, who has a short patience anyway, is getting more and more upset.
Washington. On that day, he had already met with a committee to try and nail down a lot of these details. Because, as you said, this was a first and so they're trying to figure out how to do this first. And what does advice and consent look like?
The clause in the Constitution says the Senate will advise and consent, and they meant that advise part quite seriously, not the rubber stamp that we have today. So with that goal in mind, Washington brought an address kind of explaining the situation, and then a list of questions. And this is exactly what he had done during the revolution with his councils of war. He would bring a list of questions to spur debate that he wanted advice on.
And he expected that the senators would do the same now. The problem, as you laid out, was that the windows were open and people couldn't really hear, and there was a lot of noise. Because the Senate chambers in New York City at the time were on the first floor, and it was Wall Street in New York. And so John Adams read the address, he read the questions.
No one could really hear. He read them again, and then Washington was met with silence. Some of the senators were kind of fiddling their papers and, I suspect, avoiding eye contact because they didn't want to be called on.
Some of the senators began to be concerned that Washington would not return, and so they suggest, why don't we refer this to committee? We'll study it and then the president can come back next week and get our recommendation. And this was not what Washington wanted, because Washington wanted to be present for the debate, that was what was important to him.
After all of this hullabaloo, he stood up, he lost his temper, and he yelled This defeats every purpose of my being here. He did eventually regain his composure and he agreed to return the following week for recommendation. But on the way out, he reportedly said that he would never again return for advice.
So a couple of things about that. So first of all, what's the tone of? This? Defeats every purpose of my coming here. We can imagine that being said calmly, we can imagine that being said with an edge of distaste.
How do you read it? Based on what I've read, he was very, very angry and he.
Was yelling and there was no mistaking how he felt about the moment. Very seldom does this ever.
Happen, and this is a reactive norm. In other words, if this had gone well and Washington had come away saying this is exactly what the constitution's. And this is great because these senators are really able to give me the right kind of advice. I have some cover for the decisions I make. This is great.
We might be living in a very different system. Yes, absolutely.
He. Instead, he concluded that the Senate was inefficient, was annoying and frustrating, was not able to provide the sort of immediate feedback that he wanted. If we think about a military, superior, officer demands that you answer a question, you answer the question. And so that was the context under which Washington was operating, and he ended up creating that context in his cabinet.
But that's what he was looking for is the immediate feedback, the discussion, the debate. He wanted to hear, the different ideas, he didn't want just one written answer to his questions. And so, you're right that it absolutely is this turning point on how the branches could have interacted with one another.
And because it goes so badly, the Senate really was blind in foreign policy. That being said, I don't necessarily think that it had to go exactly the way it went. Like, I could see the president consulting with a committee of the Senate on foreign policy, as opposed to a National Security Council, for example. Your book, The Cabinet.
George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, 2020.
Lindsay, When's your next book going to actually hit the stores? August 2024? Title to be decided.
Subject.
The presidency of John Adams, What happens after Washington creates it? How does it still survive?
How does it not fall apart? He was left, as Jefferson said, holding the bag he was. Indeed, let me ask this question. So it's on the historical record.
Is it true that, because of our relationship, Jefferson will come out a little less badly in your book than otherwise? He?
Would have come well. So here's the thing with Jefferson. He is kind of a great villain, he and Madison kind of drags him down then for a bit of time, he's really kind of a great villain. Sort of borderline, treasonous behavior.
But then again, when the moment requires it. He has a base level of civic virtue, which is so essential and so essential to creating really important political norms that he very much redeems himself at the end.
I'm going to take that as a victory for Mr Jefferson. We're on Washington dropping the mic today, so we just have a couple of minutes before we need to take a break. About three tell us the story.
That puts him in a less good microphone light.
So a bit of a spoiler here, because this will be in the book, so I'm going to give you the abbreviated version. In the summer of 1789, Congress has created a new army in the event that France does invade. And Adams appoints Washington as the commander in chief, there is some disagreement about how the subordinate officers are going to be selected. And Washington, after a summer of negotiations, essentially threatens to resign unless he gets his way.
And in doing so, he really hobbles Adams, he hobbles the presidency, he undermines civilian authority that he had worked so hard to respect. And had diplomacy gone differently, had politics gone differently, had there actually been a war? And I think also more importantly, had he not died when he did, I think that it could have gone very, very wrong. So he comes very close to throwing away almost everything that he had worked so hard to build.
A couple of things about that. First of all. One of his demands was that Hamilton be second in command, and this really upset Adams, who couldn't stand Hamilton. He called him the bastard, Brat of Scotch, peddler and so on, and he had no trust in Hamilton.
And he was right to have no trust in Hamilton. And so Washington is really too old for this. He's a former president of the United States. He's really going to be kind of a figurehead at the head of this army. And so he rightly says, I can't do this.
And Hamilton's the person I trust most in the world. I want him, I'm insisting that he be the second in command. And Adams really finds that appalling. And at that point, Washington throws a real fit and says, OK, I'm out.
Go ahead, see what happens now. And it puts him in, I think, in the least favorable light of anything that he did in that.
Era of his life. Yeah, I think so, and, you know, partly, as you said, it was because he needed someone who was going to be able to really manage everything. Because he was not planning to be with the troops unless France invaded. And he was right that Hamilton, in terms of capacity and ability for organizational skills was unsurpassed. I mean, he was absolutely the right person for the job.
Now he also kind of wanted to use the army to invade South America. So maybe not the best morals and values. You mean Hamilton? and yes, Hamilton, not Washington. Sorry, Hamilton.
And maybe going through Virginia to get there, he said.
Yes, so, you know, so Hamilton was both the right person and very much the wrong person. And the problem was that there wasn't really anyone else that had that capacity. And so the person Adams wanted was Henry Knox, and he did not have the capacity, so he wasn't necessarily in the right either.
But you are correct that Washington is. He comes, he looks kind of like a grouchy old man in this moment.
It's good that the war petered out, it was just a war scare. You know, I'm uneasy with the idea of a former president suiting up as a commander.
And clearly, he was saying, I'm Washington, Who are you, John Adams? you might be president, but I'm George Washington. I get my way, you don't.
And that, I think is was a really mean thing to do to Adams, however much he was angry at Adams. It also, I think, could have damaged the very idea of the transition of power.
Yes, so yes, I agree with all of that. And what's worse is that Washington knew exactly what he was doing, he knew that Adams would back down because he was Washington.
And that's a real jerk move. And then Hamilton, to add insult to injury, writes the famous pamphlet, saying You should vote for Adams. But here's everything that's wrong with him. And it's a long pamphlet, and Aaron Burr leaks it to the public. And you know, who knows what effect it had on the election of 1800? But it did not have a good effect, and it sealed once and for all Adams view that Hamilton was a very dangerous figure.
Yeah, Adams was pretty convinced of that as of, like, March 1797..
But Hamilton sure gave him a lot of evidence to be confirmed in his rightness from that point on.
As long as we're on this, I want to do a very quickly, an easy one. When Hamilton was caught in this sordid blackmail scheme by the Reynolds, Maria and her husband and was paying $1,000 to shut him up. And it was horrible. And he had to write this pamphlet that he published, proving that, however ridiculous he was. Personally, publicly, he was a good manager of the nation's finances, thus sacrificing his private reputation for his public. But that's how honor worked, maybe in those days.
Anyway, this was a scandal and it was a horrible embarrassment and poor Betsy Hamilton has to put up with this horrible thing. It's all over the musical and I think they overstated it, maybe a little in the musical, but it was a horrific moment for all of them. And then Washington, in retirement, sends Hamilton a basket of figs from his vine and his fig tree. But figs are, as you know, a metaphor for male testicular potency.
And so whether this had any irony or cheerfulness, or who knows what it meant, but I love it.
Was it a metaphor back then, too? Oh yes, the fig has been an aphrodisiac from time immemorial.
I was totally serious, I would 100 believe that that was intentional. That's so funny.
But I mean, it would be. It's a lovely thing to do because it's not like saying, I know what you've done. It's more subtle and more it's generous and forgiving.
Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of a funny thing. It's a funny way of saying, like, Wow, that was really dumb of you. But I also like, I'm still here.
But this I had a good thing this year, too. We need to take a break we're talking with.
When George Washington might have wished to drop the mic, we'll be back in a moment. You're listening to, listening to America.
Welcome back to this edition of Listening to America. Lindsay. I'm having so much fun with this. Of all the founding fathers, who would be the most likely to drop a mic?
Hamilton.
I was going to say, Burr, but one of those two, I mean, it's not Jefferson, he's going to be way too stiff. Adams would have somebody else drop the mic in front of a scepter. But you're saying, I think that George Washington was not the stiff, unapproachable guy that is kind of his.
Usual place in American memory. He certainly cultivated the sort of unapproachableness in public, so he certainly cultivated that, but that didn't mean that he was without personality. My favorite sense of humor story, and I may have told this to listeners before, but if not, it's worth repeating. He loved his hounds.
His favorite hound was Vulcan, a really big foxhound. They, I guess, had sat down to dinner one night. And Martha had ordered a ham prepared, and Vulcan came in to the house and stole the ham and ran out of the house. And George thought it was hilarious, and he burst into laughter now. Martha did not think it was funny. I know that in these dinners, I think this dinner was post-presidency. He had very few meals when there was not a guest around.
And the fact that he wasn't appalled by this behavior, and he thought it was funny, indicates to me that he was able to see the humor in things.
But let me ask this, and I'm not trying in any way to be critical or snarky myself. But it sounds like you can make the case that Washington was less stiff than we think, but he still seems pretty stiff. I mean, he won't shake hands with people, his levies are very formal. I mean, a man who, from an early point in his life, decided that he was a kind of icon and that he had to protect that image assiduously. And that he could relax. But he was not that much fun on a day-to-day basis to be around. I've read all the books on this subject, and I want to like Washington more than I do.
I admire him deeply, but I'm not sure that I like him that much because I think that.
He's always kind of in uniform. Well, I think that if you were a man's man at the time, or what we would think of as man's man, like sports. And if you loved hunting, he was the best friend to have, if you enjoyed dancing, he as a lady, he was a great partner to have. But you are what I would consider to be a Renaissance man. And so then. It's therefore not surprising that Jefferson would be more likable or more appealing. Because Washington didn't necessarily have those qualities in that way. But I also think, you know, it's been very interesting writing a book on Washington.
I spent 10 years with Washington and now I'm spending all these years with Adams, and I have really just an enormous amount of respect for Washington, but I really like Adams. Don't you wind up laughing out?
Loud about John Adams All the time, I do all the time say to your husband, you got to hear this.
You got to look at this. I do, I will. I will copy and paste lines and send it to my husband all of the time. He's much more accessible.
He's much more sort of understandable and human, but I wonder how much of that is. We don't have George's correspondence with Martha. If we did, would we feel differently? The reason we think that about Adams is because we can see how he talks to Abigail.
But I don't think that your reaction is all that unusual. Because he was so intensely protective of his inner shell and crafted the image he wanted people to see. And I do think he was a little bit stiffer, you know, my liking of John Adams does not diminish my respect for Washington. But it is interesting to write a book about a character that I really like.
And I find very amusing. John Adams had a tremendous sense of humor and self-depreciating humor. He could see himself as a kind of a comic figure and often does. But I just want all the listeners to this program to remember this moment where Dr. Lindsay Trevinsky said to me, Well, if you were a man's man.
But I then called you a Renaissance man. Isn't that a better quality? Is that a better description? Yeah, but no one will remember that part of the sentence anyway. Let it go.
I'll recover. So Washington is a pose and Jefferson is a lesser pose. they're different kinds of pose. I think Adams is a pompous fool at times, but he's not a pose, he's sort of John Adams.
Paul Giamatti is a perfect John Adams, he wears his whole soul. There's neurosis and self-pity and irascibility and envy of absolutely everybody who's accomplished anything that's not John Adams. But I love this about Adams. He's so accessible to us.
Well, the thing about Adams is the qualities that make him so endearing and accessible to us made him an anathema to 18th century Americans. Because the qualities we value, that openness, that self-deprecating sense of humor, his unbelievable adoration for his wife and respect and demand that she participate in things. These were things that people were uncomfortable with at the time, and we like them today. And so he's a man poorly suited for his time, but actually, I argue, perfectly suited for the moment, and thank goodness we have him in this.
Mix Oh yeah, he's so boring without him. Plaster cast saintly figures who are always striking a pose as if in a Jane Austen novel. And here's a real, real, real human being at the center of it, always.
I mean, he's the guy you want to be with at the reception, he's the one I want to have a beer with. All right, let's go back to our 10 moments when Washington might have dropped the.
Mic, give us another one. One of the moments that I think shows Washington's political savvy is when he is working with Alexander Hamilton to write the farewell address. But Madison does write him a draft, and Washington keeps it. And then, in 1796, when Washington decides, there's no amount of persuasion that's going to keep him in office, he asked Hamilton to write a new draft.
And at this point, Hamilton is out of the cabinet, but he doesn't really like his cabinet at that point, and Hamilton's a better writer. But when Hamilton discusses it, Washington basically says, Here is the first draft which Hamilton didn't know about. And he says, I want you to include the first paragraph verbatim. And Hamilton basically says, Why don't we just start from scratch?
And Washington says, No, you have to include the first paragraph verbatim. And he does so because at this point, Madison and Jefferson are building this new opposition party. Very critical of Washington, he thinks they're going to be very critical of the address, they're going to be very critical of everything he does. And it is a shot across the bow.
It is a way of saying, you knew that I was doing this and were supportive in 1792.
Here is your language, hold your tongue, and it works. They are not critical publicly of the farewell address because they can't be because he retains this evidence that they participated in the process.
And it is so smart and it is so sneaky. And I just really. I wanted to include it. Because people don't really think of him as this political figure, but it was his idea and his insistence.
That it was there, so, the first paragraph. Hamilton is the chief author of the actual final farewell address. But Washington keeps that. Not because he thinks it's a superlative thing to say, you're arguing that he keeps it to shut the Jeffersonians up. Because when Madison reads it, he's going to think, Oh my God, I wrote that you're saying that it was a piece of political strategy, as President Bush put it.
Was it? I mean, do we have any actual evidence, besides your fertile mind, that this was something that Washington intended? Washington says as much.
In his letters, he's pretty clear to Hamilton, because what happens is so. Hamilton came to visit Washington in Philadelphia and then went back to New York City, and Washington sends him reminders about like, this must be included, this must be included, this must be included. And Hamilton, at several moments, suggests taking the content of that paragraph.
But sort of revising it, he's the writer, he wants to have his own language, yeah.
He needs to put his own spin on it, and Washington says, No, it has to be exact. I don't think he was saying that because he liked the prose in particular.
Okay, I'm kind of semi-convinced by that argument. But it is true that when Jefferson got back from France, somehow his gravity pulled Madison away from Hamilton. Jefferson and Madison sort of broke with the fiscal program of Hamilton. Hamilton was bewildered, and I think his feelings were a little bit hurt, and Washington was bewildered, too. Like James Madison, my most reliable guy.
Now he's gone kind of nutty and so this is something Madison's, that part of Madison's shifts, his conversion experience when Jefferson got back, if Jefferson is. The main reason is one of the kind of great mysteries of this era. And I'm sure that there were hurt feelings all around, but particularly George Washington because he felt that Madison was a go-to guy. There's the politics of the era Lindsay, and then there's the kind of familial disagreements and heartbreak. Of these people who knew and cared about each other. They were this band of brothers.
They were the people in at the beginning and when they fell out, as human beings tend to do. It was an upsetting moment to absolutely everyone because they all had this kind of dream in their mind that this was going to be this harmonious new Republic. And it turns out, humans are humans, as John Adams would say.
Hamilton felt that Madison not only betrayed him and their partnership, but betrayed their ideas that they had fought for. That compounds the pain, because not only was it personal pain, but it was this big, grand idea pain. Talking to Lindsay Trevinsky about 10.
Moments when Washington might have been disposed to drop the microphone. Let me give you one. This is one of my favorites, too. At the Constitutional Convention, George Washington very reluctantly attends, because, again, it breaks the Cincinnatus trope. He's retired.
He doesn't want to come out. Madison puts on a full court press along with Hamilton. You've got to be there, if you're not there, it'll be on your shoulders if there's no constitution. Because you're the one and only person that can hold this together. And finally, Washington is kind of worn down by it, and he kind of grudgingly agrees to come.
He almost never speaks at the Constitutional Convention, he presides, he sits up in that chair and everyone has to look at the great man every day. And they have a secrecy rule, a gag rule. That they're only going to be able to really do this thing if they agree not to talk about it outside of this room. For the most part, that really worked.
That was an amazing moment that this couldn't happen today, of course, but it happened. Then. Somebody left notes in the room that somebody should have taken them with him when he left the room, and he didn't.
He left the notes and Washington came upon them. And so here are these notes that, if they leak to the press or the public, could compromise the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention. So Washington then speaks the next day and he holds them up, he said. I have these notes here, here's what I'm going to do.
You know, there's a secrecy rule, but I'm going to put these notes down on this table and whoever they are, go ahead and pick them up. Of course, nobody did. You can't admit that you were the guy. What a great moment this was. Because he's sort of daring some guy from Georgia to say, Oh, those are my notes.
Because Washington has come down like a ton of bricks on this thing that the person who was the culprit here never fessed up. That was a really smart move and after that, you can bet that people.
Were more careful with their scribblings. One of the things that I think is so interesting about Washington from basically 1775 to his death. Because of who he was, because of his stature, because of the respect people had for him. The last thing you wanted was to be in trouble with him and there are lots of different moments where people are in trouble with him. And you can just see that they want to die because they're so upset about it. And so he does really know how to use that when he wants to, to enforce a code of behavior or to enforce something. And it's very.
Interesting, his stature was so enormous that people were frightened of him. Yeah, I think.
It's actually really hard for us to think about because we don't really have anyone like that. We don't. I mean, maybe Dolly Parton, but not in a scary way, you know, in a beloved way. And so it's hard for us to imagine a politician or someone who is so enormous that they can, you know, almost sort of do no wrong in the public imagination. You heard it here first.
George Washington and Dolly Parton. So Lindsay, things have come up through your mouth that I've never heard on the Jefferson Hour. I'm so glad. Just so weird sometimes, all right. So Lindsay, we don't have a lot of time.
There are two more subjects I want to bring up from our list of the.
George Washington might have been disposed to drop the mic. And let's go to the end. First, his death. And you nominated this and I was a little bewildered by it. But you know, as they said of Elvis when he died in his 40s, great career move. I think that's where you're.
Headed with this, Yeah, I mean, so the thing with presidents is that they don't really know what to do after leaving office, because where are you going to go from there? And some presidents have done extraordinary things. I think we're going to do a segment soon on John Quincy Adams, who was extraordinary in his post-presidential life.
Jimmy Carter is an extraordinary person still alive.
He's on hospice, he's going to beat this one too.
There are a lot of presidents who have been.
Forgettable? And then there are some who have done some not so great things. And so Washington was heading in that direction, as we discussed, I think he was heading in a place where he could.
And instead, he died when his legacy was sort of at its apex, and at a time when people celebrated him and mourned him. And I think that kind of sealed the deal for his historical reputation in.
A way that wouldn't have happened had he lived longer. Agreed. He dies pretty suddenly, he has a kind of strep throat, and they bled him to death, probably dies of dehydration.
Nobody, there were no antibiotics, they didn't know what to do. They bleed him several times in the last 72 hours of his life. He dies with great dignity, as you would expect George Washington to die.
If he had stood for a third term, he would have died in office. What would that have meant?
Do you think it would have been a real problem? It would have been, I think, much more chaotic. Because the Constitution, as it was written at the time, was not totally explicit on how the vice president was supposed to take over. It would have been much scarier because there would not have been a transition. And while I think the nation probably would have gotten through it, it would have been extremely terrifying and extremely tumultuous.
And it's hard to know which direction it would have gone. And so his decision to leave office was multifaceted, but it did have this concept in mind. He knew that men in the Washington family didn't live very long, and he was already older than his father and a lot of the other men. And so he wanted to leave alive. So that this process would happen intentionally and by design, and.
With an election that was purposeful, I feel sad about this for a number of reasons. Number one.
He didn't get a well-deserved decade or more of retirement at home at Mount Vernon. He retires, his health is not great, he's dead within a couple of years, that's number one.
Number two Jefferson And this is why I think one of the least creditable moments of Jefferson. Did not go to the funeral, did not attend any of the obsequies, did not grieve publicly. They were at odds by now, but Jefferson should have shown up. You have to show up for any ceremony surrounding George Washington, no matter what is the current state of your relationship. And I think that puts Jefferson in a pretty grim light. He probably felt it would be hypocritical for him to turn up, but I don't agree with that at all.
But also one final thing, John Adams when he was president, and as you, I'm sure have been examining. Sort of thought that he could serve until it pleased him to retire. That it was kind of an automatic re-up every fourth year and he was pretty shocked that the American people retired him after a single term. If Washington had died in office, that might have encouraged other presidents to think.
I can serve as long as I can get reelected. Yeah, again, slightly different interpretation of John Adams. But we'll come back to that next year.
You're right, I think that the concept of a president for life would have been much more tempting had Washington died in office.
Without a doubt, yeah, last thing, and quickly, because we're out of time. Second inaugural address There have been a number of extremely short inaugural addresses.
FDR Lincoln and Washington number two. Yeah, this is great, because he basically says.
Like, I don't have anything to tell you, you know who I am and I'm going to do my best and that'll do for now. And I like, when you know someone doesn't bloviate for the sake.
Of bloviating. So if ever there really was a moment of drop the mic, it's if you don't know me, by now, I'm out of here. LinDsay, This has been such fun. Dolly Parton Elvis, You know, we're all over the map with mics and dropped mics.
I so appreciate you. Come back soon. We'll talk about J. Q. Adams, if anything as talented as his mighty father.
We'll see you all next week for another important edition of Listening to America.
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