Christopher Hitchens on Thomas Jefferson: Enlightenment, Nation Building, and Slavery (2005)

my mission statement would be the following I imagine the people contrivances kind to a pine as well as to listen and I'd never leave well anyone can decently claim that they have an unanswered question and a second I think one has to be a spellbinding person to speak for more than say half an hour even if one spellbinding one doesn't really need the half hour either but I did want to say a few things about the jefferson factor and then to become your prisoner as you've been my hostage so so kindly up till now and i want to talk about him under three or four headings really enlightenment warned revolution nation-building and slavery philadelphia in the second half of the 18th century may not exactly have been 5th century Athens but it was an extraordinary place and time and coincidence of what I think of as in Enlightenment scholarship people who knew and cared about the sciences about biology about medicine about law about engineering all seemed to be there at the same time in an extraordinary way some of it was connected to the Scottish enlightenment some of it to the French but it had a distinctively American flavor to it and it drew other people to itself as well not just of course the famous dr. Franklin and dr. Benjamin Rush and others but when dr. Joseph Priestley for example who went we can more or less say discovered oxygen half his laboratory smashed in Birmingham England for his profane experiments in his dissenting opinions by a mob calling itself Church and King for royalty and for the altar when his scientific career was put an end to in Birmingham he took ship for Philadelphia it was a magnet place one of the ways in which I sometimes try and make audiences cry and sometimes succeed will see is to remind you what choice the American electorate had in 1796 for candidates for president it could choose between the chairman of the American Society of Arts and Letters and the founding president of the American Academy of Sciences has been a bit of a decline in the standards of candidacy since then and not only did have this choice but none of the rules of obtaining at that period it could and in fact did vote for both of them because the runner-up in those days was vice president so we're talking about a serious moment of what I still naively like to think of as the Enlightenment I would define it like this the the belief in free inquiry the belief in scientific experiment the ability to conduct and test such things and the belief that this was itself an emancipation not just from disease or ignorance or stupidity though there were such conflicts for example Thomas Jefferson not only organized a program of inoculation against smallpox which he extended by the way to all of his slaves at Monticello but he also helped dr. Jenner organize a system whereby the vaccine could be transported without losing its efficacy once the method of cooling it and keeping it cool had been found and this was at the time when Timothy Dwight the best-known divine of the day still celebrated at Yale was saying that inoculation against smallpox was a interference with God's design which of course if you believe in intelligent design would be true or in yaghan from design at all it was indeed an interference with God's design if if such there be these were the sort of stakes that were being played for I suppose I mentioned the Dwight Jefferson difference for for a secondary but important reason those who believed in scientific inquiry and and in the life of the mind and in the proper conduct of experiments where they be astronomical or biological did believe that it was time that human beings took responsibility for themselves and ceased to rely upon divine suasion of any sort and I think that that essentially secular insight was what made possible the American Revolution there was going to be an American Revolution anyway here I moved to the Warren Revolution point effectively once General Wolfe has defeated the French army in Quebec on the plains of Abraham has defeated General Montcalm the American Revolution is is more or less inevitable because it's the product of a struggle for power between three empires in the North American continent the French the Spanish and the British and once the French had been evicted from Canada and the English of signed the and the French of signed the Treaty of a Miao which gave England the right having defeated France in North America in India on the high seas and in Europe to claim one French colony many said in London let's take Guadeloupe it will complete our control of the Caribbean Basin will ensure our control over sugar and slaves others said no surely Canada would be better more mercantile future a greater future for our settlers and our manufactured goods and the Guadeloupe faction the paid pamphleteers of the Duke of Bridgewater as it turns out journalists were paid off even in those days said we'll watch out what beware of what you want because if you take Canada then the North American settlers the colonists will no longer require our protection against France and what stirrings of Independence there seem to be already among them they seem to be in Philadelphia and elsewhere developing ideas of their own and actually the Duke of Bridgewater faction was very prescient as in a very few years the supporters of King George in those colonies were heading for Canada as Tory refugees but at the importance of Jefferson to this stage is as follows he was um in several ways almost a Leninist to his absolute concentration on three things handling of interim purest contradictions playing off France written in Spain at all times trying to enlarge the scope and power of the United States insisting that the United States have a declaration of independence that involved and program promulgated as far as it could enlightenment opinions and always seeking to extend this power to the Mississippi and the interior if it weren't for his extraordinary focus on this the United States might have been to North America what Chile is to South America a long literal ribbon of a country caught between the ocean and the mountains no shame to be Chile to be sure but it wouldn't have become the United States as we think of a nerve it today and worn revolution were his speciality and he was extremely as I say very cold and ruthless in pursuing the American interest at all costs in this respect always backing the French Revolution always saying even that the cost of his political career at one point as Secretary of State that the fact that there was now another Republic on the face of the earth that America was no longer alone that the ideas of the American Revolution had been written partly by himself and by Thomas Paine into the first French Universal Declaration of Human Rights that this was above all important that it meant that there was going to be a limit eventually to the to the power of the British Empire to circumscribe American independence but I can't claim that he was always on the side of revolution because the most important revolution that occurred after the French on this side of the Atlantic in this hemisphere in the Caribbean was the Haitian Revolution to which all of you here our debt but I don't think all of you understand there's a wonderful book by CLR James called black jacobins it's about the first slave successful slave rebellion in history and the proclamation of the first ever black emancipated Republic under the leadership of a brilliant general named Toussaint L'Ouverture which took the slogans of the French Revolution and turned them on the French colonial masters and slave owners of Haiti and was drowned in blood but not before it had destroyed a French army and a French fleet and not before it had forced Bonaparte to consider that he was in urgent need of money to finance is equally ludicrous and sane war against Russia and that therefore he might as well abandon Haiti and offer the churches of Louisiana for sale to the United States Jefferson is an irony of history if you like Jefferson hated and feared the Haitian Revolution he feared that a slave rebellion might spread to Georgia and the Carolinas that it might be about example but thanks to the extraordinary courage and determination of the slaves of Haiti the French Empire is broke enough to say we will I think Henry Adams puts it the best gives you the opportunity to double the size of your country in one day for 10 cents an acre unfortunately the money for this had to be raised privately Jefferson didn't feel that necessary to consult Congress but there was as you'll find in any study of his contradictions nothing he wouldn't do and no principle of his that he would not negate if it would lead to an enhancement of the size or the scope or the strength of the United States of America and that explains some but not all of the ways in which he contradicts himself moving staying with war leaving revolution for a moment the other great thing oh I should just say one more thing about the Louisiana Purchase which was his great stroke of genius it was something that had been meditated by him for a long time he'd always wanted to control of the Mississippi and especially of New Orleans but he'd prepared for it were in advance he wasn't just improvising or opportunist on the day which happens to be the 4th of July that the Gazette in Washington announced the Louisiana Purchase on that exact same day Lewis and Clark received their instructions to depart on their expedition to the west which had been long in preparation again an Enlightenment project Jefferson sent them to Philadelphia to be educated in mapmaking in astronomy in biology in medicine indeed in in conducting inoculations against smallpox mother thinks he sent them to see Benjamin Rush and many other very celebrated physicians and scientists and he was able to tell them as they set out on this occasion you can tell the chiefs of the native peoples and tribal nations who you encounter you can tell them when you meet with them and treat with them and I urge you to treat them with respect and courtesy you can tell them that they already live in the United States they may not know it yet but they do they are no longer sovereign subject to the sovereignty of the Emperor of France so the combination of these two things makes it a certainty that one day the United States will become what it now is a continental power that's the sort of wars I promised you Jefferson is the first president to commit the United States to war overseas and to send the US Army Navy and Marine Corps across the Atlantic and to make them plant the Stars and Stripes on foreign sort of the occasion on which chooses to do this is almost as soon as he's elected president for many years he's decided that the must and will be war with the Muslim slave states and piratical states of the Ottoman Empire in northwest Africa what we what we now know as Algiers Algeria Libya Tunisia and Morocco then called the Barbary States partly because of the presence of a large Berber population partly cuz Barbary is a good propaganda word because it sounds like barbaric but actually the word for the policy of these states at that time was was barbarism their empire depended on piracy hostage taking and slave owning it's been estimated by the best historians of the most brilliant recently Linda Colley has written that upwards of one and a half million Europeans were taken and held as slaves by these countries who commanded the Straits of Gibraltar and the opening to the Mediterranean between about 1750 and 1850 raid east west as well as north south but their principal slave population was as it were European they are very sophisticated ships they could send them as far north as Scotland in Ireland the whole population of the town of Baltimore in Ireland was carried off in one day into slavery by these people and they exactly attribute on all countries wishing to do business along that coast with this blackmail in mind and claimed the right of the Koran in order to do so because when Adams and Jefferson went to call upon their ambassador and said look the United States didn't take part in the Crusades the United States did not take part in the reconquest of Andalucia we have no quarrel with the Muslim world in fact that one of the first treaties the United States over scientists were interesting to look it up is an attempt to make a deal with Tripoli and it's in that treaty that it is explicitly stated which is worth knowing and voted on by Congress I think without a descending verge the United States says that it is in no way a Christian country or Society this attempt at bargaining doesn't work and furthermore stronger countries signed separate pieces with the Algiers and Tripoli and Tunis saying if you will pay you to leave our ships alone and we don't mind to say the British if you attack the Americans because they don't a longer deserve our protection having become independent Jefferson says all right this is going to start we will not bargain we will not pay we will send the US Navy and the Marine Corps and we will bombard these these states until they give up savory until the group hostage-taking in piracy it takes only a couple of years before that works he doesn't again consult Congress he waits till the fleet is just far enough over the horizon to be beyond recall before he notifies anyone of his action which has been I think meditated by him by then for nearly 25 years he's waiting for a chance for his revenge on these states he doesn't insist on a regime change in these countries but he does insist on a behavior more if occation policy change and jaws gated at the point of a gun it's announced by him what he really believes that the United States is an empire of Liberty and will be an empire for liberty and will be taken seriously by the other powers in the world from now on and we'll back up this with force when and if it feels it the need perhaps I dwell on it slightly in my book for another reason which is that at least that was one slave trade he was able to put out because I should now mention my fifth point which infects and and inflicts all the others which is the consistent threat of the slave the slavery argument in all the phases of his political life going back to my beginning Jefferson and his friends in Philadelphia at the American Academy of Sciences loved to see new inventions brought and tested they would have special meetings to do this they loved nothing better than to see someone invent a protest a new balloon for example Jefferson's very interested in possibilities of air travel to try the cutting of a new vine to see if it would transplant into American soil it's not entirely Jefferson's for the Virginia wine isn't quite up to snuff yet it's better than the Connecticut chardonnay but it has a way to go to see a new weapon a new gun being tested and designed to see a new experiment with vaccination they'd love to listen they believe that it would increase the power of man of a nature and diminish it free if you like the power of man over men and they were a little naive in believing that all technology was improving and civilizing because of course mr. Eli Whitney Whitney's mr. Eli Whitney's cotton gin turned out not to have this enlightenment effect you've made in fact the cotton economy stronger and more profitable and increased the demand for people who would do the heavy lifting and work in those fields to feed the cotton gin and therefore to prolong chattel slavery long beyond its natural span if the if such a thing can have a natural so from the very beginning it's the worm in the but it's the some would melodramatically want to say it's the original sin of the United States Jefferson tries to write a paragraph into the Declaration of Independence forbidding slavery it's struck out by the majority because they fear they can't bring Georgia and the Carolinas along with them if it's kept in Jefferson when he doubles the size of the country at San Samson acre is besieged by Thomas Paine and many others don't allow any slaves into the New Territories don't do that you promised you wouldn't do it in the Northwest Territories Joan do it in Louisiana we have a chance to start again without the original state he says no we're in a hurry we we need to cultivate the sugar there if we don't do it sugar is almost as bad as cotton as a slave economy if we don't do it other countries will rival us in the Caribbean market we need to move slaves in there now Payton says again Jim no don't do it many many thrifty industrious Protestant German immigrants who would love the chance to settle and work in Louisiana territories send them instead that's a that takes takes too long and you feel an awful knell of tolling at this point because with this vast new access of territory that's going to clone into more and more new states very soon almost in Jefferson's lifetime in fact it it occurs that the number of slave states becomes to equal the number of free ones now the efforts of the American anti-slavery society have been in vain and once the number is equal and the Republic the New Republic is half-slave and half-free there's going to be a terrible war and as Lincoln said later so bleakly and the war came and so it has to be said of Thomas Jefferson then he deeded this on that he knowingly passed this curse on to the next it's the next generation and it's it's not as if because you can find it in the notes on the state of Virginia it's not as if he isn't an abolitionist and he doesn't know what he's doing if you've read Jefferson on slavery you don't need to read Frederick Douglass he understands exactly what's wrong with slavery he understands why it's economically inefficient he understands why it's impossibly unjust and outrageous he says even if it's true which he's never sure about even if it's true that the Africans are different species in an inferior work even if that were true it wouldn't justify this and he also understands the debauching effect the corrupting and depriving effect that it has on those who hold slaves and your profit by them he has the argument completely down he's forced to fall back onto the ludicrous priorities of religious speech in which he doesn't really believe and to say that he trembles for his country when he reflects have got his just whereas of course if God was just or if there was a just God there wouldn't be that much to tremble about he's always showing ago as well never misses the poor should never miss a chance to point out the pathetic fallacies that are involved in religious invocation so that at every stage when we even when we we describe him as an Enlightenment man a man of learning and science and optimism as a man who believes in nation-building and in the expansion of democracy to the West as a man who believes that there should be a democratic republic strong enough to take on all the old empires and vanquish them and strong enough even to take on the other Empire the Ottoman Empire and to force it to give up slavery his steps a dogged at all times by this fatal compromise and so one has to accept it and one has to accept this as the central one of these many contradictions I was in California giving a lecture on Jefferson in San Francisco about a week ago and happened to be the day that the Jefferson Elementary School in Berkeley decided to change its name rather than have any further association with this disgusting slaver and changed the name of the school to Sequoia and I thought to myself well I could be I could try be funny about this after all yeah the trees were here first it's an arboreal Republic trees have rights too or I could be annoyed with it thinking honestly you know what next the abolition of history the pretense that we don't come from anywhere but I decided to think no I didn't really care what they think there it doesn't matter what they think it's it's a pseudo radical position that has no real consequences it doesn't mean anything it doesn't commit you to anything it's a it's a striking of an attitude and there wouldn't be such a place as Berkeley Norwood Bishop Berkeley have been able to imagine the new world being projected that far west if it wasn't for Thomas Jefferson so whether they know it or not they're only entitled to this futile exercise because of mr. Jefferson's labors my great mentor of mine the late I have stone who impelled quite a number of us into the hope that we could one day become independent radical journalists used to call himself when he was like editing I have Stern's weekly and I'm sure there's some people here who still remember that and its influence in Washington good I've like more people to nod they're actually but not more thank you used to describe yourself as a Jeffersonian Marxist and this was in the time of Nixon ISM and he always thought he'd get into trouble for saying Marxist but actually he always got into trouble for saying Jeffersonian because of the the fatal taint the fatal compromises of the Jeffersonian settlement and when taxed with this used to say well nonetheless one has to recognize that history is a tragedy and not a morality tale and that's how I end my book and that's our end this phase ladies and gentlemen thank you for patience I'm I'm all yours thank you I don't know if it would be invidious if I point it to questioners you are not to know for example whether or not I seeded the room with members of my immediate family will you trust me to point to people very well bring it on then sir you mentioned that there are two biographical essays that help you understand the origins of America Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln are you planning to write anything about Lincoln no I'm not my water right next about Thomas Paine but I think the only two presidencies I've some people might want to add Theodore excuse me Franklin Roosevelt to this the presence is that in a sense create the world we actually live in the jefferson one is in a way the most much and that's difficult because his political life is so long i mean by the time he goes to administer to paris in 1788 which is very senior job in the US government from from then on he's in power almost continuously with nearly a quarter of a century as Minister secretary state vice-president and twice president and that's before he founds the University of Virginia and does the Jefferson Bible and after doing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute on religious freedom the last three being the only things that he had on his headstone as you probably know what his headstone where there's no mention of any divinity as there was no matter for cloth at his bedside waning tonight he asked to be remembered as the founder of the University of Virginia the author of the Declaration independence and of the Virginia statute on religious freedom didn't think the two presidencies or Secretary of State worth mentioning it sir it is a remarkable thing perhaps I should have said something about the Jefferson Bible I will in a second I wanted to say just one thing about Lincoln that accidental and in a way completely meaningless discovery that I made while doing this I just hadn't realized that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on exactly the same day I regard Darwin is much the greater of the two emancipator's I must say but the great tragedy of Jefferson in all his investigations into the ecology and archeology and nature and back and what should we call him substratum of the state of Virginia is that he's still living even though he's a man of the Enlightenment and a man of science in the era of alchemy and phlogiston effect he and the French biologist Buffon have an argument about why are these sea shells so high up on the mountains how do you think get there I have no idea they don't know enough to it's maddening to think what he might have been able to do if he could see as far as any of us can that's really the tragedy of him he's also in the era when race theory is still possible he speculates he thinks well why are these why are these black chaps from Africa and Chapare says so biddable is it because they're inferior biologically is it something to do with the climate they come from still he's still at that stage he can't make up his mind he sort of hopes not but he suspects it's true it's very sad you yeah do you think Jeffersonian democracy is a chance in Iraq or do you think the critics earn there's just a certain - II criticizing effort um conceptually the flag of Kurdistan in my lapel gentleman asked if the Iraqi flag the force of your question is just as good I mean camp can to be Jeffersonian democracy in other countries well I used to get taunted about this a few months ago you would say so your your Rakhi pals are going to be Jeffersonian Democrats are they and I said well none of my Nawrocki Oh Kurdish friends owned any slaves so I should think probably not but I realized that was a cheap report I made it all the same but I was boring actually from the factory of their for cabaret to sort of give them the cheese well I think what can say is the following the Russian Revolution is finished to stretch it over the Chinese Revolution of 94 day 49 likewise it servi survived by mutating metamorphosing into something else human Revolution is dead in the water has been for some time the American Revolution is the last one standing and its principles if for anything that can provide what you might call universal emulation or somewhat crude appeared export I wouldn't say that the principles of 1789 were dead by any means but the Universal Declaration of late wild alarm the rights of man in France was probably written by Jefferson and by Thomas Paine so it takes a part in the American Revolution to I've been to all three of the axis of evil' countries in the last few years I think I'm the only writer and I'm a writer who has done that and just some other very up places to and in none of them would it not be a huge improvement to have a written constitution with the Bill of Rights and above all the separation of church and Party from stage so yes there are many people who do hope and do wish to adopt what might be called a Jeffersonian see and it's just a really question of whether we care about them or support them or not but even if we don't they will still be there from Ray given the popularity of the eugenics movement and eugenics way of thinking social Darwinism that was popular among certain circles in this country in certain classes well beyond world war ii yes was some of the assumptions associated with that how can we now in the 60s or now be judgmental of an eighteenth-century man which has studied empires in history where slavery was as natural as breathing air notions of eugenics as somehow being creation of a superior person and along a little path if you will was a popular and openly discussed was the question audible tool yes um let me just see if I can venture Lacroix's you the gentleman says that given the the appalling influence of eugenic theories in our own time up to our own time as you I think you put it how can one be judgmental as he phrases it about the the attitude to slavery of the 18th century where I think you said it was as natural as breathing if not just in the United States you mean it not just in America but in Africa and Asia and Lee and elsewhere was that a fair price of your question well you hear this kind of point made sometimes also about the anti-semitism of say cheers' Elliot people said well in those days my old anti-semitism was the norm was common and so forth so let's not use our standards to judge Australia I don't think that's true for example there were people who his contemporaries Jogger Jordan was one George Orwell was another wouldn't put up with it and didn't think it should be accepted as a as a common social prejudice so yes one has to extend the right to be judgmental and yet there's no question that just to think the three names I mean Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine and and Benjamin Rush were all in the both by 1775 before before there was the United States for the members of the American anti-slavery society and I think there was a Mennonite petition against slavery in Pennsylvania or even earlier than that even though it was true that up till then as far as I know there's no Christian protest against slavery until the 17th century Christianity is not as compatible with slavery recommends it in many places in the Bible mandates is in fact in some places doesn't condemn it in the 10 commandments certainly all is it - and genocide to be carried out in other as just Judaism for the same reason and as jazz Islam mandates slavery or license said and certainly did in Africa and in the and in the Mediterranean and as far north as Ireland in fact some the does the famous song called Rule Britannia that some of you may know with the refrain of which is Britons never never never shall be slaves and it's written by Michael James Thompson in about 1750 and the reason why it is in there is because certainly British and Irish people are being taken as slaves by Muslim pirates and their and their rogue states but this was a huge campaign you know the tiniest villages in England would raise money for to try and redeem the captives and this happened also in America before Jefferson sent the fleet they kept hearing terrible stories about what happened to American slaves in Tunis but for that very reason the more the more that that tone was struck that slavery was intolerable than no one would should ever be one it did become a little easier to raise the subject of whether we should be inflicting it as well as suffering from it there was a dialectical relationship between the two things and so yes I think that people are the same moral animal at all he parks it isn't it isn't a matter of the superiority of our own time that allows asked to be judgmental because in what possible respect could we say that our own vantage point was a superior one sir the general wants to know why he should buy this one and not another well it's the only one that's written by me and I did not want to be the only person in the United States who had not written about Fiat honest answer it gives one a certain position in society to have done this and there are so many good ones that it's quite easy to do a short one I think that'll have to be my defense and also well when I was asked to do it I would never have had the nerve to propose myself as his biographer when I was invited to do it I thought I had to say yes because we are anyone who writes about America which is the great subject he's in fact always writing about Jefferson in one way or another it's latent its imbricated in the whole argument about about the country so it's part of one's education I suppose I might make the claim that into my book materializes that so when you think about Jefferson think about the United States and vice versa so I bought mine here and also an I haven't read it yet but I'm looking forward to reading it thank you for writing a concise biography of Jefferson I also plan on presenting it to my daughter will be attending the University of Virginia in the fall so I'm hoping that she will read so thank you again question I had how does your book treat Jefferson's relationship if at all with Adams I remember reading about the relationship in the McCullough biography of Adams and it seems like a fascinating relationship I don't know if it's treated in your book or if you came across it in you are preparation for writing for Jefferson and Adams is is inescapable it's very interesting actually they start off I really dislike another and really not being in any way similar and Adams is a bluff ol Tory in some ways and Jefferson suspects him of being a pawn of the British indeed Adams did propose the ludicrous styling for President Washington it's in the book I can't quote it exactly but it's something like his presidential magnificence and Supreme Commander it's like an El Salvadoran title for General Washington and Jefferson Lampoon and ridicule distance of mr. president will define thanks but he thought Adams was a secret angler main as he put it and this also of course licensed Jefferson in taking the view that he did that it was perfectly alright to be privately aligned with the French Revolution and they cordially detest one another because of this I mean if I think the difference if I could find a an encapsulation for it would be this if Adams used the word democratic or democratical he would mean it as an insult as most people then did what we might now say some say autocratic mob rule is what would be meant by that it's as far as I'm aware until Thomas Paine rights the rights of man the word democratical remarks is never used in a positive sense Jefferson was a great admirer of the rights of men and in fact contributed an introduction to its American edition very much angering Adams by doing so so that and the argument over France divides them terribly an atom's doesn't at all like being defeated by Jefferson and doesn't stay there's inauguration leaves town sourpuss the correspondence goes on later into life and it becomes rather charming as they get older and as they become the only two real survivors of the early attacks a lot of Correspondence about wine have you tried this new case of saturated our Virginia wines getting any better all this a lot of a lot of talk about wine and it's strange enough it's Adams two encourages Jefferson to do his his Bible miss Jefferson Bible genitive how many of you know about this but in retirement he took a copy of the New Testament in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other and cut out everything from the New Testament that was absurd or evil or wicked or stupid or mythical or contradictory or otherwise Oh Cheers she left him with a very short book as you can easily imagine which you can now get the beautiful addition from the Unitarian Church in which Jefferson had a slight interest he had penis sort of the window reformed Jews in those days so he thought unitarianism was the next best thing that's my surmise and who Adams is the one who encourages him to do it strange that I don't quite know whether it was Adams thinking I'm not going to so you do to it but that is in fact the origin of the Jefferson whatever which is well worth reading sir you spoke about the war against the Barbary Coast pirates almost as a kind of idealistic campaign I'm just wondering whether where they're also prevailing economic reasons behind that particular adventure in other words protecting shipping now if the gentleman asks whether the war against the Barbary States was merely a matter of principle or was a matter of economics I mean it was first and foremost a matter of economics the freedom of navigation across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean was being compromised by this I mean American ships were being captured not just off the coast of North Africa but by North African Raiders deep into the Atlantic and way up into the North Sea of the English Channel so and most European countries would make a separate piece on this and do their own bargain or trade with pay their own ransom or strike their own deal with these to avoid molestation so Jefferson's view was he tried for he tried for what he called a concert of powers to get an agreement with Britain and France and Spain and Portugal and Malta rather just say we'll collectively put it down and no one would do it they will feel thought they could get their own advantage all right then well we'll enforce the freedom of the seas for everybody and will bombard their ports and sink their fleet they also let him actually very interesting compromise with all diplomatic initiative he made a friend of John Paul Jones isn't long before he was president when he was first when he was Minister in Paris and having to pay for John Paul Jones his mistress by the way at all points in Jefferson's life I might just mention this now I guess no one's to ask me about it at all points you realize what a sexual being he was and how close was his commander the facts of life it's always there he's always handling delicate matters such as John Paul Jones as mistress when he's a minister and the and providing women of the night to the Islamic end voice when they come to Washington and expect to be amused he and Madison raised a private budget to keep them entertained and I can give you some other examples of it I mentioned it because so many historians write about Jefferson as if he didn't have a dick which he's sure dared well he makes a friend of John Paul Jones you realize this is one of those men who's meant to be an admiral been meant to be a Navy guy he's out currently beached and broke and screwing around appearances why don't you go and work for the Empress Catherin of Russia who needs a decent naval commander in the Black Sea because there you can you can make life hard for the Turks who are the Imperial commanders of the Ottoman States of North Africa why don't you do that keep you busy keep you in practice when we build our own Navy and we'll inflict pain on the Ottoman Muslim empire in the meanwhile Jones goes and does this and you had usually thought a long time ahead about things of this kind and about making alliances in tactical maneuvers and he was never one to forget any kind of grievance or offense or crotch I like that in a guy or a president anyway yes nothing to do mr. Jefferson has to do with an imminent urgent time I heard once that you would spend some time with war case yes if so I wonder how you two got along well it's a change of pace the gentleman wants to know is it true that I once spent some time with folk a Lewis book as in Buenos Aires which I did in the summer in the winter of them there was summer in Argentina of 1977 at the height of the what we history now calls the dirty war between the Argentine military regime and its civilian opponents and the man who I consider to be the greatest writer produced by South America and the greatest appreciator in the spanish-speaking world of English literature the greatest critic of it was by then more or less blind he couldn't move out of his apartment which made all this works of his about the infinite library and the role of memory in the unconscious rather than sight seemed even more affecting and we talked for a while he asked me if I'd read to him because he had new visitors and he couldn't he could point to where everything was on his shelf even in this infinite library and asked me to read Kipling which I did in particular the harp do you know the harp song of the day and women well I know how it starts it's a it's the morn it's the morning of the wives and daughters of the Vikings that their men prefer war to them and prefer the sea and fighting and violence and danger to them and it's what is a woman that you forsake her and the half fire the homemaker to go with that old grey Widowmaker it's a wonderful poem and all of the words in it are essentially anglo-saxon crippling picked only ancient English words to write it so at that time Borg is was very Pro dictatorship in Argentina he said he he had hated Juan Peron very much and quite rightly I think as a demagogue and a crowd pleaser a populist and thought that the military were more classy and said it's better to have a government of gentlemen that of pimps actually it was a much ruler worth as an Argentine work called can fin Flair oh it's a dockland term which is much ruder than I could I will not translate for you and when I told him I couldn't come back the next day so I had to go to Chile so but if you see that nice General Pinochet do please give him my greetings he's a he's a true gentleman and once gave me a literary prize but he towards it of his life he he changed his mind on all that and described the the mad war over the Falklands as some two bald men fighting over at home and began to criticize the Argentine regime for the desaparecidos that disappeared in the torture that's awful so he died as a man of honor but that secondary I mean we won can't one can't sir what calm politicized the Magnificent literary work he did in the first man in the hemisphere to appreciate Joyce for example I'm not he had you read town to and he virtually wouldn't let him out of his house for five or six days where he was there pressing her to keep wonders he's one reading and very anti-catholic Chesterton's chest marvelous Roger such a pity became a Catholic became a Catholic my god so do I see another hand yes mistaken you have correct me if I'm wrong but you have some background the new left movement and I was wondering if you had a very different view of Jefferson back in the day and if so how your view has evolved and changed and what factors have caused you to reconsider I'm asked if it's true that I have a new left background and if so whether evolving away from that has changed my attitude to Thomas Jefferson that'd be the forceful question well actually I'm young enough to have been old left as well as old enough to have been new left with an early left review I had a lot of friends have sometimes written for ideas but some of the definitions of you left I wouldn't wouldn't cover me in the SDS and so forth wouldn't but yes I I still think like a Marxist and I was one or am one sunny was one in a socialist sense for most of my life and the attitude to the American Revolution was actually the one thing I wish the left never made up its mind strange you know I think because they thought it had been superseded by more modern ways wasn't true of Marx as a matter of fact or angles I mean Marx and Engels wrote that repeatedly that the great country of backwardness and superstition and tyranny and ignorance and barbarism was Russia and the great country of the future and of equality and Liberty was the United States and they were particularly strongly their defense of Abraham Lincoln organizing movements in support of the Union in Europe Henry Adams in his memoir says Marxist they're almost their only friend in London at the time advising Lincoln he wrote several pieces about it for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune advising Lincoln to fire general McClellan pro-slavery stressing the importance of ironclad ships over sale the superiority of capitalist move of feudalism and slavery and the rest to it very very interesting with it there is another strain in and very much not what they teach you in school I have the feeling that probably it's not taught in American high schools that Karl Marx was Lincoln's best friend would I be right in this so nice yes and I think so and the Lincoln thought so too but there is another strain in the left which I mean eventuates in this nonsense in the Jefferson Elementary School in Berkeley the other day and also with the writing of professor Noam Chomsky who is a very important figure on the American Left so he calls himself an anarchist he keeps forgetting he is one just the moments it might do him some good but he is a venerated major influence on the making left and I realized a few years ago that there was a difference between him trust Chomsky mean and my Selfridge he did not finally think that the United States of America was a good idea he thought it had been all genocide since Columbus basically I mean that's not simplifying his opinion by very much and as I said about the Berkeley motion to change the name of the School of Sequoia in a way it doesn't make any difference it's it's a radical attitude it's not a radical position because it doesn't commit you to anything doesn't mean anything it doesn't represent anything actually there are times when it can have significance if you basically think United States is a bad idea then you may feel a sneaking sympathy for others who feel the same such as for example theocratic nihilists who believe it's a crusader Jewish racket and of course it's very important that people make up their minds about this now and stop fooling around about it wouldn't you say so so - summer would you say them that your view of Jefferson has been consistent over time that you you had no point to ever subscribe to that when you call Berkeley interpretation no I would know I never there never was a period in my life when I thought that I was wanted to come to United States I had a very strong ambition to come here and identification with it well I guess I haven't quite answered the second half of your question which is this what difference would I has it made citing him more I tell you what about the slavery so which everyone thinks they know about and everyone does know about so it's a great deal worse than I'd of a suspect because it's not just his failure to abolish it it's his fetch of commitment to extend it and prolong it and deepen and entrench it that's inescapable if you if you decide that you're not going to get rid of a thing like that you are not in fact taking a neutral position you're not saying well we can't do it now we'll do it some other time you are you're making the other decision you're saying no we're going to continue with it at all there's implications opportunity including a civil war in which the whole Republic might be destroyed so it's very very difficult to overstate how ghastly that is something I certainly had not understood that element of it but the Enlightenment ideas persist in their own right it seems to me and are the negation of some of these practices so there's that much to play for yeah can you give it some way what would he think of it well I've given up on this writing about George Orwell persuading me not to do this if you don't mind because people would keep on saying well what would all we'll say about this or that and I think you can you can do it up to a certain point or we'll die unfortunately when he was 46 and I think I think I was strong enough to claim that I knew and could prove that he would not have supported the war in Vietnam which Norman Podhoretz and other neoconservative said they thought he would because he could have been alive for it and he had enough knowledge of and dislike for European colonialism in Asia very intense dislike and he would have known enough to know already in fact in his late writings from Paris and the 40s did know enough to know that French colonialism was being restored in Indochina after the war and everyone knows if they don't know they should know that the American war in Vietnam is a mere extension an attempt to to prolong the life of French colonial Indochina so I think I could reasonably make a case that I did know would say what he would said about that I couldn't have said what he would have said about some the Iraq war for example there would only be guesswork however there was a symposium on biography recently of the Smithsonian which I was asked here with greatest superior firepower Michael quarter for example whose book killed Ulysses Grant is in the same series and Francine prose I believe and some others and Michael Cordes said look at one thing about girl must never do is say at this point he must have thought or that moment he must have realized so he must have felt he mustn't ever do it it undermines their integrity as an author it goes farther than you can possibly know give it up and I thought well I've heard that before and I've always agree with them I've always nodded at the right place it's a completely respectable opinion but I had to say that I am certain that I know what Jefferson thought when he first saw Sally Hemings arrived in Paris I don't know anything about anything if I don't know what he thought and what he thought was maybe for the only time his life oh man there is a god that's what he thought Wow was what he thought I think one has to do it sometimes if you could see the United States today I think the thing that were most amazed him would actually be the position of women it's very interesting how little he pays attention to that he takes for granted the the place the domestic place of women the American womanhood would amaze him now and stir him I think a bit but it would absolutely astound I need some more water if someone can get me that or something liquid yeah well thousand how many was someone about whom Jefferson is consistently unfair and though I think well think like and believe that you couldn't have had the United States without Jefferson it's probably fair to say that you couldn't have had it without Jefferson plus Hamilton because Jefferson really does believe in a way in the agrarian future the rural and bucolic society and the small community partly owning chattel slaves and partly small enough to conduct business intimately whereas Hamilton correctly sees that the future the United States is mercantile and free trade and business and urbanization and Jefferson's one Bank and Jefferson is one of those people I think you've probably deep down thought that paper money was immoral somehow unsound if you can't bite it it's not cash and took a very reactionary attitude on all this but as every as with everything else would compromise if he thought it would advance the general cause and he said to Hamilton effectively well you can have your economic policy if we can have the capital in Virginia which is why we're stuck here today and Hamilton was very critical of the Louisiana Purchase but as was Adams but I think probably because they were furious that they hadn't been able to do it themselves to be fair to them rancheros book on Hamilton I thought was excellent and I say it was full of very very useful information and you have to send Jefferson was a very cold person as I've said before very ruthless almost Leninist in his ruthlessness and I think he was almost publicly pleased when Aaron Berger killed Halton he really hated him and suspected Hamilton of being partly Black Caribbean upstart immigrant which by the way Hamilton may have been we don't know but Justin really thought of him as the total inferior and was as mean about him as he could be and you see a lot of the newer side of Jefferson's character from studying its relations with help The Jeffersons ideas was we just pure Jeffersonian now I think Johnson in alliance with other men of the Enlightenment in his own country our country and others was a important revolutionary that he definitely believed this was for export that he thought that it should spread or be spread and the one day the United States would be a superpower for democracy strong enough to take on anyone else and I'd live the old empires and very few of the others had a vision as intense as that so I think that may be one reason why it's justifiable for us to say to use the word Jeffersonian a democracy in the same sentence as we as we in a shorthand way still do you know how do you reconcile Jefferson's javea support for the American Revolution where you know you see and the Federalists Madison writing that man is imperfect and therefore you need the Constitution to check him with his support of the French Revolution which was very small D Democratic did sort of believe in the perfectibility of man and the ability of any check on man was just going to be a bad man well Jefferson was lucky in the sense to skip the arguments of Philadelphia I mean one of the he's a lucky guy drafts in many ways he's often absent just when it's convenient most convenient for him to be he doesn't have to take a position about the Federalist Papers people send him their copies or their comments on it he comments him privately in Paris about it and he's in keys note and obviously is in two minds about it a lot of the time in the same way by the way he's in opposition very briefly when Adams decides to build a navy and a Marine Corps to fight France and he lets Madison Jefferson let's Madison criticizes in in the Congress while he's staying Perman Charlottesville's not saying anything what he thinks is valence bills this fleet I'm going to send it to North Africa he's you know he's Schrute Fox like I don't think he was a total believer in the perfectibility of man and his his influence in France was with and upon men like the Marquis de Lafayette who are not jack about but but it has to be said though that when the Jacobite turn on Lafayette and even on pain and try to institute a sort of engineering of the human personality through terror Jefferson thinks that may not be too high price to pay for the swipe of French Revolution he's pretty he's very Rufus about in fact his writings on it are exactly like the writings of an early communist would be about the need to defend the USSR from all all enemies it must be it must be defended at all costs now well I twice in my book quote Henry Adams because it's the most convenient summary of how much the United States is different at the end of the Jefferson presidency how much more of a modern country it's become how much more navigable how much more densely populated how much more committed to sending settlers out and then recognizing the new states they create how much more prosperous and how much more military power for me the best encapsulating paragraphs of that are in Adams so I merely annexed them for my purposes that that's what gives you an idea of the scope especially of his first presidency so marvelous all of Henry Ellis history and of course his men was a wonderfully interesting and no longer talked in school come back the most way to read there was one lady the back which she may have given out there she hasn't be up it's lost in the labyrinth of Homeland Security thank you I'd like and diverse ways well I don't know how well-stocked this bookstore is but they might sell you a copy of love publishing war which is a collection of essays that I brought out this year and in there there's quite a long piece about the collapse of history teaching of the accident and I could I can probably go through through through the curriculum in that way as long as it didn't have to do anything about science teaching but I mean I teach a course on it's basically on the English literary canon and in the new school in New York every year and it's a graduate course and every year becomes more more difficult to find a book that everyone is read it was to have a common stock of references or a common bookshelf with which one can begin a discussion and that the level which one can find a common a commonality is sinking every time one you three old accounts say on Fitzgerald and to some extent when you can't be sure about that now it could be the Simpsons and Toni Morrison the second which bitter which is not progress this Simpson said better than anything that was around when I was a kid I mean what if that's what one is counting on for irony and one is in low water so I yeah believe me it's in my mind we've have it you just wish it was longer well that's fine I can I think we can close on that thank you very much for coming

Channel: The Film Archives

Views: 100,703

Rating: 4.8073654 out of 5

Keywords: Thomas, Engine, History, Start, Documentary, Building (Ontology Class), Tank, Culture, Friends, Civil, Museum, Age Of Enlightenment (Literary Movement), Civil War (Type Of Morally Disputed Activity), Class (Film), Gas, Nickelback, Gasoline (Fuel), Cold, Project, Heritage, Starting, Rockstar, Motor, Diesel, America, Sound, United States Of America (Country), Pump, Power, Rev, Briggs, Pedal

Id: 99-72amEijM

Length: 65min 49sec (3949 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2013