Our Founders were devoted to Roman and Greek classics. We can refer to their time in the late 18th Century in their world as a classical era which quickly ended as the country quickly changed.
The first four Presidents came to their classical knowledge in different ways. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his age. Adams learned it from the Roman logic and rhetoric. Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially epicureanism. Madison, a groundbreaking researcher and deft politician, studied the world like a political scientist.
The author turns to first principles motivated by the stunning election of Donald Trump in November of 2016. Stunned he wonders what kind of country do we have. What is this country about. P. vii
The author asks what is America? We are still trying to answer that question. P. xvii
The starting point for our country is the contradiction of slaveholders and a country upholding slavery in its constitution boldly declaring also that all men are created equal. P. xxii
The classical world, Roman and Greek, was close to the Founders. That is the theme of this book, that how it ended around the time of the election of Thomas Jefferson. At least Adams thought it ended then with in his opinion the end of American virtue. The Greeks and Romans were daily attendants in their lives. It shaped their world view and was a part of their daily vocabulary. Jefferson was an Epicurean. Adams modeled himself after Cicero. Washington became Cincinnatus. P. 3
For the colonial Founders the key word was "virtue," which meant putting the common good ahead of personal interest, which there is little of in today's politics. P. 7
Roman before Greek. More Sparta than Athens. Adams said the two ancient republics he admired the most were Sparta and Rome. Roman literature before Greek literature except for Jefferson, the Greek tragedies behind all except for Jefferson. P. 8
Hamilton said that the Roman republic achieved the height of human greatness. P. 9
Cicero was the greatest Roman. P. 9
These Founders who were steeped in the literature of the late Roman Empire were mostly college educated. William & Mary, Harvard, Yale, the College of New Jersey eventually named Princeton, and King's College eventually renamed Columbia built to counter the radical politics of Princeton. P. 9
Classical Republicanism went wrong in thinking it could depend on public virtue. P. 11
During this period Cato was the embodiment of virtue. Naturally Cato was Washington's hero. Plutarch's Lives speaks robustly of Cato's brilliance. P. 19
Washington was not a thinker, but he was a sturdy, practical thinker. P. 21
Washington's education was his life story. P. 38
Which would be most important in the American story: Washington's practical education or the intellectual eduction of Jefferson and company? Both were important. You can't separate the two. P. 40"
"The dominant political narrative of colonial American elite was how the Roman Cicero put down the Caitline conspiracy to take over Rome. John Adams aspired to be the Cicero of his time---that is, the key political figure in late eighteenth- century America. P. 41
John Adams was the ONLY one of the top 4 who never owned a slave and he was the FIRST to move toward revolt. P. 41
Cicero was central in the life of Adams. P. 44
According to Plutarch Cicero was vain. So was Adams according to his critics. P. 45
Catililne attempted a coup which Cicero exposed. P. 46
For Adams Cicero was a model for his life. P. 50
If Adams was a Cicero, Washington was a Cato, which frustrated Adams all his life. P. 52
Cato was known to be virtuous.
At Harvard Adams learned to be a child of the Enlightenment. P. 55
Adams had to mentor himself. He owned over 3000 books. P. 61
Adams set out early in life on a goal to become a great man and he certainly succeeded. P. 62
Books were his initial path to greatness. P. 63
Thomas Jefferson was the most aesthetically minded of the first four American presidents. He read widely, conducted scientific observations, played music, and created wonderful architecture, most notably his Roman-inspired home, Monticello. Historian Darren Stayloff says that Jefferson was America's first great Romantic artist. He had howling contradictions. Romanticism privileges the heart over the head, excuses illogical thinking, and exalts unreasonable passion. This sounds like Jefferson. He liked dreams of the future more than study of the past. He loved what he could see and feel without giving a reason and not caring if there was a reason. He was self-indulgent in a way that George Washington could never be. He was more Greek than Roman. More Epicurean than Ciceronian. His Romanticism became more popular in the 19th Century. P. 65-66
The rich elite in colonial times all had tutors. The purpose of education amongst the Virginia elite was no rot to produce intellectuals, not even doctors and lawyers, but to form young gentlemen where dancing was just as important as reading books. P. 66-67
I wish I had grown up and learned from good tutors. P. 66
To be a Virginia gentleman! P. 67
Jefferson liked Cicero's essays. P. 68
Scotland's influence on America's founding remains largely unknown and under appreciated. P. 69
The Encyclopedia Britannica began appearing in Scotland in 1768. P. 70
Jefferson read Pope's Essay on Man. P. 80
Jefferson identified as an Epicurean. He considered the ancient Greek to have given us "the most rational system of the philosophy of the ancients, as frugal of vicious indulgence, and fruitful of virtue as the hyperbolical extravagancies of his rival sects." To understand we might look at Epicurus. P. 84
Jefferson was the most complex of the Founders not necessarily making us think better of him. He transmitted every vibration in the intellectual air of his times. He criticized slavery all of his life, but didn't do much to end it. He did not experience the frontier like Washington. He never did physical labor to my knowledge even though claimed to be a farmer to idolize the agricultural life. He would not bear arms in the war. Though intellectually curious he never ventured into the woods. He was a European to the bone, too Epicurean to get his hands dirty. Avoid pain and retire into yourself---very Epicurean. He could not deal with his own contradictions. In my opinion, he was a coward. P. 84-85
Of the first four presidents Madison was the one most influenced by Scottish thinking of the time, which led him to the Enlightenment and on to Greek and Roman history and philosophy. P. 87
Madison was influenced by Montesquieu and his Spirit of Laws.
Active at the College of New Jersey but not socially minded. P. 93
Madison must have thrived at Princeton which reeked of rebellion. Politics was Madison's profession. Never a backslapper, always serious. Didn't marry until he was 43. Princeton was the nation's first national university drawing from a wide range of students with different backgrounds. It was perfect for James Madison. P. 93
Madison encountered the Scottish born President of Princeton, John Witherspoon. P. 94
Witherspoon talked about virtue and checks and balances,which may have influenced Madison's famous 10th Federalist Paper. P. 98-99
After graduating from Princeton in September of 1771 he stayed on in New Jersey until the following spring perhaps not wanting to leave Princeton. P. 99
Jefferson and Madison met in 1774. P. 102
There are several Thomas Jeffersons---the Latinate lawyer, the flowery wooer of other men's wives, the slave owner looking to increase his profits, the direct and powerful stylist of the Declaration. A distant man socially and emotionally. With Madison he is conversational and lucid. In his letters to Madison we perhaps come as close as we can to seeing the real Jefferson albeit a guarded Jefferson. Their most noteworthy conversations are perhaps in the 1780's. P. 103
The Founders created a country by studying the classical world of the Roman Empire and the Greek cities. This was the only guide they had for creating a republic. P. 105
Adams said the real revolution was in the minds of the people. P. 107
One of Jefferson's favorite authors was Tacitus, the Roman chronicler. P. 113
A Summary View became America's first sustained piece of political writing. P. 114
Public virtue is the only sure foundation of republics. P. 119
Contrary to his image Jefferson was not really a literary man. He had a huge range of interests, but his tastes in literature were pedestrian as his prose often was. His choices in poetry were mundane. P. 122
Jefferson's literary tastes and preferences are very conventional for their time. P. 123
Jefferson disdained most novels which deemed poison that that did not instruct. The one exception was Tristam Shandy. P. 123
The Declaration was his shining master piece though unJeffersonian in its style. It is a mode of strong, plain, political prose. He felt like the Declaration being what it was required straight-forward simple prose. P. 123-124
The author presents an Epicurean analysis of the Declaration saying that Jefferson uses Epicurean words like "prudence" throughout. P. 124
Washington was the least classically trained of the four Founders yet he was the most Roman. P. 133
It is impossible to "figure Jefferson out." He is many things. My opinion in recent years is to think less of him.
In war he was a Fabian defeating the British like Fabian defeated Hannibal. After the war he was Cincinnatus, voluntarily giving up power. P. 134
Historians fumble Fabianism. P. 136
Hamilton explains the American strategy: avoid a general engagement while the enemy slowly wastes away. P. 154
As long as Washington held his army together, the British could not win. P. 156
Though forced to be a Fabian, Washington was a reluctant Fabian. P. 157
Despite losing more battles than he won, he found a way to keep his army together, which is what ultimately he had to do to win. He prove himself to b the noblest Roman of them all. P. 160
Virtue mean public-spiritedness, putting the common good over the individual good. P. 161
By the end of the war, Washington was sensing the limitations of virtue. P. 162
Patriotism alone cannot sustain a war Washington concluded. There must be interest or some reward. P. 162
The classical concept of virtue died during and after the Revolutionary War. P. 163
Washington as Cincinnatus, not Oliver Cromwell. P. 175
John Adams was always totally honest. No one can take that away from him. P. 178
Gordon Wood says the articles deserve more credit than they receive. P. 179
If the Revolutionary War was a civil, and it can be seen as such, the Articles did a better job of reconstruction than the reconstruction after the Civil War: Edmund Morgan. P. 179
About Thomas Paine. I have yet to feel the significance of Common Sense. P. 180-181
Jefferson's extensive library. P. 185
Adams in London. P. 186
The author plays up Shay's Rebellion.
Madison believed that regionalism, not small states vs. large states, most threatened the future of the Unison. He was right in that placating the Southern states and slavery eventually led to the calamitous civil war. P. 199
Madison lost on his most important goal, that of giving Congress to veto state laws. P. 201
Jefferson got to frolic in Paris as the Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia. P.203
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." Thomas Jefferson P. 204
In his heart Jefferson was not an advocate of a strong federal government. This would become the fundamental difference between his and Adams, and so between the Jeffersonians and the Federalists. P. 205
It seems to me that the so-called Federalists won over the so-called anti-Federalists in an upset. Vegas would have given the odds to rejection of the new Constitution---quite a sales job by the Federalists.
The author calls Adams a failed President. I haven't figured that out yet. The author does not mention how close we came to war with France and Adams's sending a mission to Paris which defused the situation.
I wonder if virtue as Washington, Adams, and Madison use the term is just another word for faction. After all, who pushed and benefitted most from the new Constitution but the so-called self-referred to virtuous?
In today's United States is Madison still right in Federalist #10 when he says to increase the number of factions? P. 207
I have this question for you Madisonians who have studied Federalist #10. Is Madison correct in saying that faction is unavoidable and the answer is in playing the factions against each other such that a large republic is more sustainable than a small republic? I am dubious.
Greater knowledge of books than the world. P. 219
Was the classical period a cover for the Federalist well-off?
What is the definition of a "Madisonian?"
A big part of early American history is James Madison talking to himself. P. 221
The 1790's would prove to be an alarming decade. P. 221
The Federalists never saw themselves as a party but as the beleaguered legitimate government beset by people allied with revolutionary France out to destroy the Union. Gordon Wood P. 221
The classical mindset could handle the emerging politics of the 1790's for the Federalists could understand opposition since they knew in their heart that they were always right with their supposed disinterestedness. P. 221
Lord Bolingbroke said that faction was a sign of corruption of the entire system. P. 222
Madison became partisan as he defended parties and checks and balances. P. 226
The division in the country in the 1790's was extraordinary.
Hamilton took factions and partisanship personally. P. 227
The inevitable beginning of political parties or "factions" in the 1790's mainly Jefferson and Madison vs. Hamilton with Adams hanging around. P. 229
Ricks treats Jefferson and Madison gingerly with regard to the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions.
It is implausible that Jefferson ever did manual labor. P. 232
The dangerous Aaron Burr. P. 250
Burr was a Catilline. P. 250
For a week in February of 1801 the country teetered on the brink of disaster. P. 251
The tie in the House held for 35 ballots. Finally on the 36th ballot James Bayard saved the country by switching to Jefferson. P. 251
When Jefferson was sworn succeeding Adams virtue sunk to something nice to have. P. 252
I have yet to understand the significance of the presidential election of 1800 and why it was such a big deal except that it was a real crisis and that disaster was averted on the 36th House ballot and Aaron Burr was not elected President.
The author seemingly lists the college affiliation of almost everybody he quotes as if to stress the eduction of everyone worthy of quoting.
John Adams left the presidency embittered blaming his loss on the country's loss of virtue. He was a Roman to the end, reading a biography of and identifying with Cicero. He could never forget or forgive a slight, glorying in the misfortunes of his enemies. Ricks dislikes and slights Adams to his own bitter end.
Aristotle was employed in the 19th Century to defend slavery. Whenever a slavery wished to defend the natural hierarchy of races and the ineradicable differences in types people he rushed to Aristotle's Politics. P. 281
Practical knowledge from experience or classical knowledge from education. I am firmly on the side of the latter.
The last line of defense of slavery in the 19th Century was the Bible and its seeming acceptance in the New Testament. P. 282
The decline of the classical world in the 19th Century is highlighted by the decline in the teaching of Latin. P. 284
The Founders classical world was the teaching of Greek and Latin and the study and references to ancient Romans and Greeks. Eventually it became the norm that this worldview lost its relevance. Virtue as the supposed common good died.
Finally in 1961 Harvard stopped issuing diplomas written in Latin. A large part of the American past was not only forgotten, but even when glimpsed in a reference to Cato or Cataline remained unrecognizable to most. The past had been buried. P. 284
What kind of country have we become. The picture is mixed. P. 285
Slavery was not a stain on the country; it was built into the fabric of the country from the very beginning. The country was founded in part because of the acceptance of slavery. Slavery was constructed along racial lines in the belief that black people were inferior to white people, which is the core of white supremacy. Slavery no longer exists in this country, but that belief system remains alive. As the nation moves along, we need to be educated about where it came from. Hence, the importance history education. P. 292
No comments:
Post a Comment