The American Story

by David M. Rubenstein

  Jefferson was not one to get in the arena. He would not get up on the floor of the Continental Congress and say what he really thought. He wasn’t that kind of man. That’s in keeping with when he goes to France. It was all safe. The war was over.

  Adams gets there and discovers that Franklin is loved by everybody. Anything the French want, he’s all for it. His way of dealing with them was to just be as nice as he could and try to be as much like them as they were and enjoy some of the privileges of life that weren’t always approved of at home.

  And he was not well, so he couldn’t get around very well. He really didn’t swing into action until about eleven-thirty in the morning.

  DR: He seemed to have a lot of girlfriends. He was very popular?

  DM: He was very popular with the people out in the street. I hate to use this analogy, but it really was a good cop / bad cop situation. Franklin was the one the French all loved; Adams was the one who kept saying, “You gotta do something. We could lose this war any day now.”

  Keep in mind—this is so important to understand—how different that time was. We think of transportation and communication as two different things. In that day they were the same. You couldn’t communicate anything across the ocean any faster than it would take you to go across the ocean on a boat.

  So when a diplomat arrived in a foreign country, the decisions that that person made, the actions that he took or things that he said, were his decisions. He wasn’t getting orders from back home. If he did get orders from back home, they might be two, three months late getting there. The war could have been over back here, and John Adams and Benjamin Franklin might not have known until three or four weeks or more after it had ended.

  The responsibility they felt—it’s the same thing with women at the time. When Abigail had to decide whether to inoculate their children for smallpox, knowing that the very process of the inoculation could cause the death of one of her children, she couldn’t call up John down in Philadelphia and get advice over the phone or tell him: “You get on the next plane and come back here. I want you to be here for this decision.” She had to make that decision herself. And right or wrong, it would always be her decision.

  We spread responsibility. We divide it up. They had to make decisions themselves, on their own, and right or wrong, it was their responsibility.

  DR: The Americans win the war, and Adams is appointed to be our ambassador to, of all countries, England. What was it like for him to go over to England and meet King George III, who was the terrible hated figure? How did that work out?

  DM: It worked out quite well. They really admired each other. George III was a much more interesting and appealing man than I ever understood before. Yes, he made very unfortunate decisions. And yes, he could be stubborn in the extreme. But he was interesting and not without feeling. He had a good heart.

  Once they got over the stagy difficulties of the first presentation, when they first met each other in the ceremony where the new ambassador goes to present himself, both of them were so emotionally moved by that moment they couldn’t speak. A very powerful scene.

  I must say that the rendition of it by Paul Giamatti in the HBO miniseries John Adams was superb. The whole series was superb. That’s the finest rendition, the most accurate portrayal of life in the eighteenth century that’s ever been on the screen.

  It’s really due to the integrity of executive producer Tom Hanks. When we first met to talk about it, I said, “I don’t want it to be a costume pageant. I want you to show what life was like—dirt under the fingernails, bad teeth, suffering, smallpox.” When the British representative was tarred and feathered—tar and feathering was cruel punishment, it was torture, it wasn’t some adolescent prank—that’s all in that film, which is sometimes very hard to watch.

  And the other thing I said was: “Don’t violate the vocabulary. Keep it in the language of the time. Let’s hear that beautiful use of the English language.” And because both Paul and Laura Linney, who played Abigail Adams, were trained as classical actors, they could handle those lines. To my knowledge, there was never any complaint from viewers that they couldn’t understand what the characters were saying.

  DR: When Adams is finished as ambassador and comes back to the United States, we have a new Constitution. After spending a little time on the side writing the Massachusetts state constitution by himself, he’s elected vice president. Was it a foregone conclusion he would be vice president? And how did he get along with President George Washington?

  DM: He was elected vice president by popular vote, and he took his job very seriously in that he officiated over the Senate every day. I’m sure there were days he wasn’t there, but very few. Probably no one who’s ever had the job was more conscientious about showing up for work.

  And you think the Congress has its difficulties today? They went at each other one day on the floor of the Congress with fire tongs. It was rough and tough, lots of contention. Washington stayed away from it. He didn’t want anything to do with Congress. He wanted to play the role of the chief executive, and he played it superbly.

  One of the greatest, luckiest breaks in our whole history as a nation is that George Washington was our first president, because he set the example of integrity, strength of purpose, and devotion to the country. Patriotism—not just the flag-waving kind, but real love of country. Keep in mind too that he was our chief executive, he was our commander in chief, for sixteen years, because we had no president during the war, and he was the commander.

  As you know, when George III heard that he was going to retire and not take power after winning the war, the king said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth.” And, again, there was the example. And Washington retired in 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the war. He was elected president in 1789, after the U.S. Constitution was ratified. He really did nothing wrong or embarrassing or corrupt or self-serving as president.

  DR: But Adams thought that the title “Mr. President” wasn’t appropriate. The president should be called something better?

  DM: Yes.

  DR: There was a little fight over that, and George Washington and Adams for eight years barely talked. Is that true?

  DM: No. Not true.

  DR: How much did they talk?

  DM: They didn’t talk the way we do today. Well, yes, maybe they did. Not too much talking seems to be going on today.

  No, I think it had more to do with the interpretation they each had of the role they were playing. But there was no animosity between them. It was difficult sometimes. They were two very different human beings. But Adams hugely admired Washington, and so did Abigail. Abigail just thought he was “it.” And he was “it.”

  DR: When Washington says, “After eight years, I’m going to retire,” was it a foregone conclusion that Adams would become president?

  DM: Yes. But of course he had to get elected. And he would have been reelected.

  This is something that isn’t taught, and we don’t know it—he kept us out of a war with France. And he knew that if he did that, it would probably cost him reelection.

  He did it because he had common sense. We were up against this very powerful nation. In that day, if you went to war with France, you were going to war with Napoleon, and you didn’t mess with that guy. We had no money, we had no army, we had no navy to speak of.

  Adams and John Marshall, who became chief justice, figured out, “We can get out of this and we don’t have to go to war”—and they didn’t, and thank heaven they didn’t. Adams said, “If I have anything on my gravestone that I should be remembered for, it’s ‘I kept us out of an unnecessary war.’ ” And it was true, and of course he did lose the election of 1800.

  DR: He lost to his own vice president, Thomas Jefferson?

  DM: Yes, he did. And he lost in a very major way because of what he did.

  I wanted to tell you a little story about Adams. His son died of alcoholism and his mother died, all right around th
e change of the new year into 1801. He’d lost the election. He had every reason in the world to be the bluest, most depressed creature imaginable—and he was, to a very large degree.

  One night in the White House, before he had to leave—with newly elected Jefferson coming in—he looked out and saw that the Treasury was on fire. There was snow on the ground. He immediately jumped up—the president of the United States—grabbed his coat and hat, ran across the lawn over to the Treasury building to help the bucket brigade put out the fire. And they succeeded. The next day there was an article in the paper saying that citizens all gathered and got the bucket brigade going and, inspired by the example of their leader, put the fire out.

  Now, the question is, why did he do that? He didn’t have to do that. He was the president. There’d be other people doing that. It was instinctive. You’re a good citizen; you pitch in. Very New England, very rural, very understanding of how we make civilization work.

  When Adams lived in Washington, D.C., as president, much of the nation’s new capital was still semirural.

  Late-eighteenth-century plan of the city of Washington.

  DR: If you had the chance to have dinner with John Adams, what would you want to ask him?

  DM: I’d want to ask him: “What can we do to increase the love of learning? What can we do to bring back the attitude toward reading and books and knowledge and thinking that was such a part of the adrenaline of your time?”

  I’d like to read you a clause in the Constitution of Massachusetts, which John Adams wrote. Wrote the whole thing. It’s a clause that was never in any constitution up till then and is still not in any other constitution except New Hampshire’s. I think it’s a reminder to all of us of what our obligations are, not just to these oncoming generations, but to our country and its future.

  He says, “Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people”—in other words, everybody—“it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish”—wonderful word—“cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them in public schools and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufacturers, and the natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people.”

  How about that?

  DR: If you had a choice to have dinner with John Adams or Harry Truman, who would you have dinner with?

  DM: John Adams, because I want to know more about that very distant and different time.

  I didn’t know Harry Truman. I saw him once. But I really understood a lot about Harry Truman. I would love to have talked to Harry Truman. There’s so much about him that people of the time didn’t know. People of the time didn’t know that Truman sat at home at night and read Latin for pleasure. This was the failed haberdasher. He knew nothing.

  Truman had many qualities that are similar to John Adams. They both had great courage. Backbone. They were willing to say what they felt. They knew how to make decisions.

  And they also understood that they were a link in a long chain, that the sun didn’t rise and set on them; they weren’t the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the country, and they better act well their part and play their part. “There all the honor lies.”

  Harry Truman made some very difficult, very unpopular decisions, but he knew they were right, best for the country in the long run. They were willing to lose in order to do what was right. And to hell with what the public ratings and tomorrow’s headlines could say.

  3 JON MEACHAM

  on Thomas Jefferson

  “No one ever said it better and no one ever really fell so short, and I think in that tragic distance lies an extraordinary American life.”

  BOOK DISCUSSED:

  Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (Random House, 2012)

  The first of the Congressional Dialogues was the interview I had in 2013 with Jon Meacham about his new book on Thomas Jefferson. Had that not gone well, I guess the series might not have had a second interview.

  But Meacham did an extraordinary job of describing his take on our third president: Jefferson, for all of his considerable intellect and intellectual interests, was actually a skilled acquirer and user of power, and was much more politically skilled than is commonly thought.

  In focusing on Jefferson’s political instincts and capabilities, Meacham wrote about a subject that has not been heavily commented upon. And he brought to the task both a journalist’s easy-to-read style and a historian’s commitment to accuracy and detail. Meacham’s insights on Jefferson were so well respected by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello, Jefferson’s iconic home, that he was recently elected its president.

  Given Meacham’s background, this should not have been a surprise. He had been a newspaper journalist in his native Tennessee as well as the editor in chief of Newsweek and the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of a biography on Andrew Jackson. He also wrote award-winning biographies on Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, and on George H. W. Bush, and will soon complete his biography of James and Dolley Madison.

  Meacham brought to this interview another helpful attribute: he is an engaging and witty conversationalist and storyteller. That is clear to anyone who watches him on the various television news shows (such as Morning Joe) on which he appears. I have interviewed Jon on a good many occasions, and he is always able to capture the audience’s attention with his rare combination of knowledge, enthusiasm, and humor, not to mention an appealing southern drawl.

  I should note my own interest in and involvement with Jefferson. Perhaps this stemmed from my parents taking me as a young boy to Monticello and to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington. In recent years, I have worked with the foundation to rehabilitate and restore Monticello, including a re-creation of Mulberry Row, the area where the enslaved people owned by Jefferson—including Sally Hemings—worked.

  There has been considerable discussion about Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings. The Jefferson Foundation has adopted the position that the relationship did occur and likely produced six children.

  Sally Hemings was sixteen when the relationship with Jefferson apparently began in Paris. Jefferson’s wife had died several years earlier, and had asked him, on her deathbed, never to remarry.

  Was this a consensual relationship? Can an enslaved person and a slave owner ever have a consensual relationship? What was Hemings’s special appeal to Jefferson? Does this relationship of several decades change the generally high regard that historians and Americans have for their third and perhaps most intellectual president? Should it? These are some of the questions Meacham addresses in the interview.

  Also addressed is the other great Jefferson mystery: How could he write, in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, when he was a lifelong slave owner? In the interview, Meacham indicates that Jefferson was referring only to white men. According to Meacham, Jefferson had earlier spoken and written against slavery, but eventually realized such views would end his political career and sublimated them for the remainder of his public life.

  That sentence about all men being equal forms part of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. When Jefferson wrote that sentence, with editing by Benjamin Franklin, it was not considered all that important. The significant part of the Declaration was considered to be the list of offenses committed by King George III against the colonies.

  But as history ha
s unfolded, that sentence has become perhaps the best-known sentence in the English language. It has served as the creed not only for the United States but also for so many other English-speaking and Western societies: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  Jefferson did not realize, when he was writing the Declaration and in the years immediately following its dissemination, how significant that sentence—and the entire document—would become.

  It was nine years before Jefferson first publicly admitted to being the Declaration’s author. He earlier felt that his initial version was much better than the “mutilated” version the Second Continental Congress actually adopted. Much later, toward the end of his life, it was “Author of the Declaration of Independence” that Jefferson wanted listed as the first accomplishment on his tombstone. And it was.

  * * *

  MR. DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): Many people in this city, and people around the country, would say the highest calling in political life is being president of the United States. Maybe you would say being vice president isn’t too bad or being secretary of state isn’t too bad. Yet when Thomas Jefferson was asked what he would like to have on his tombstone, he didn’t say president of the United States, secretary of state, or vice president. He said, “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, Author of the Virginia Statute for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” Was he not happy with his tenure as president of the United States? Why did he not put his government positions on his tombstone?