Jefferson & the Revolutionary War

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2:05In the dusky light just before sunrise, the insistent hooves of a single horse are heard charging uphill. It is June 4, 1781, and horse and rider have been traveling 40 miles through the Virginia night, barely avoiding British cavalry on their way to Monticello, the plantation estate of Thomas Jefferson. Upon arrival, the rider, a 26 year old American named Jack Jouette, dismounts out of breath and warns Jefferson, the British are coming. But Jefferson, who just had finished his term as the second governor of Virginia, appears remarkably calm. Dispatching his family ahead to a neighboring farm, he offers Jouette a glass of fine and a glass of wine, and steps outside with his telescope to assess how much time he has left. Jouette will ride on that day, alerting many others in the Virginia legislature of the imminent threat. Another young Virginian, Lieutenant Christopher Hudson, a neighbor of Monticello, arrives later, only to find Mr. Jefferson still at home, calmly stashing important papers and

3:06belongings into his saddlebags. But this time, Jefferson mounts his horse, and heads off into the woods, he knows so well, leaving his home behind. The British arrive on a doorstep. Hello, and welcome to another episode of American History Head, I'm Don Wildman. We drop episodes twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, thanks for joining us. Unlike James Wilson, the founding father we discussed just a few episodes ago, Thomas Jefferson has had no trouble being remembered as instrumental in the building of our nation and for good reason, of course. Interestingly, Jefferson never actively served in the revolution that followed that founding. Quite famously, in fact, when once faced with a threat of approaching British forces, Jefferson mounted up and took flight, a choice that would dog him for years afterwards. But does that make Thomas Jefferson any less of a factor in the victory to come? He may be no George Washington, huddling with his troops at Valley Forge, but really, who is?

4:07What did Thomas Jefferson bring to the table in the revolutionary struggle that followed? What was his role in the founding of the nation beyond his fabled words? To find out, I'm joined by Michael Hadam, a returning guest to this podcast. He is a leading historian of an American Revolution, an author of The Memory of 76, the Revolution in American History, a finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and past and prologue, politics and memory in the American Revolution. His most recent book Declaration of Independence, A Consize History, will be released in just a few months. Michael, good to have you back on the pod. Always glad to be back. You know, I had to catch myself when we asked the question, what did Jefferson do during the Revolution? My knee jerk was hello, France. But then I remember Jefferson goes to France after the war. It was Franklin who was in France, not Jefferson. Generally Americans are vague on this, right?

5:08Yeah, Jefferson, it's interesting because he, I'm like, many founders has no real military career to speak up, right? In our popular memory, he plays this important role in independence, and then he plays an important role after the war, like you mentioned in France, and then later as Secretary of State and President. But there is this sort of missing middle period, the sort of lost years of Thomas Jefferson, right, that encompassed the war. The musical Hamilton, where the Revolution has been taught since 2015, when Hamilton wraps, we almost died in the trench while you were getting off high with the French. That's really actually incorrect, isn't it? That is incorrect. Because as you mentioned, Jefferson did not go to France until after the war. And just before that, he served in the Confederation Congress for a couple of years, for a little over a year. So yeah, that's one of several, let's say, less than entirely accurate lyrics in the Hamilton

6:11Council. Well, it's theater, what do you want? And this isn't a gotcha. We don't, I don't mean this. He is a profoundly important figure, obviously, who served the nation in many different ways, not to mention had a big part in creating it. John Adams never fights in the war. And of course, Benjamin Franklin was too old, but he does craft the alliance with France that saves the war. Jefferson spent the years elsewhere, and it's interesting to understand this. So for a quick chronology, just as a reminder to folks, revolution obviously begins around 1775. The war runs from 1775 to 83, battles of Lexington, conquered until the Treaty of Paris, declaration independence, 1776, Cornwall is surrendering 1783. It's not until 1789, the new US government is finalized and the US Constitution takes effect. That's why 250 didn't end with the 4th of July folks. 250 goes another 13 years until 2039. I've been screaming this from my soapbox for years. Jefferson is born April 13, 1743.

7:12He is 32 when Lexington and Conquered happened, grown man, but compared to Washington who was in his 40s, he's a young guy, Adams 39. It's Hamilton who's the outlier among these guys. He's in his 20s. Jefferson was never a soldier though, was he, even before the revolution? No, it really was not in his makeup whatsoever to have any kind of military inclinations. That was a significant difference between him and Hamilton of course, because Hamilton sought out the revolution for the purpose of achieving military glory for himself, right? But Jefferson was a more intellectual kind of person and he made his contributions to the revolution, not through the military, but he made very important, of course, intellectual, contributions, political contributions, diplomatic contributions, and then governmental contributions as a Vice President and President. I think if him is a political intellectual, and you've got to have those if you're going

8:12to have a revolution for sure, to be fair, he served as a colonel in the Albumar County militia in Virginia, starting around 1770 before the revolution, but his duties, even there were administrative. He kept muster roles, collected fines, organized supply replacements rather than any kind of battlefield fighting. He also gave John Adams somebody to argue with, didn't he? Absolutely. And Adams was very much in that, in that vein, also a very intellectual person, but the difference maybe between Adams and Jefferson is that in the Connell Congress, in 75 and 26, Adams does play a leading role on many committees related to the army in terms of securing funding and materials and things like that. And Jefferson never did any of that really. I think if we're going anywhere with this conversation, it is to find that strange essence of Jefferson in the American consciousness, which eventually plays out in a very profound

9:12way, perhaps more later on in the Democratic Republicanism, I guess, that party that comes to pass because of him. But in the meantime, we're sort of setting up those building blocks on the way there. How did he get involved in the revolutionary struggle to begin with? When is he drawn into that? I mean, Jefferson takes his seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769. The Imperial crisis is already well underway at that point. And he would have been in his early 20s when the Seven Years War ended and the Stamp Act and those early years of the crisis. So he would have lived through the crisis as a young adult studying. So he's in meshed in that sort of intellectually, but he's not a political figure yet. And that doesn't really begin until 1769 when he enters the House of Burgesses. But again, as a new member of the House of Burgesses, which was a very sort of hierarchical body, he doesn't just arrive one day and start playing a major role, though he does propose

10:16some interesting things, including a manumission law which went nowhere. But it's really in 1774, as the first Continental Congress is called Jefferson writes a pamphlet and called the summary view of the rights of British America, which was basically he was making a case to the Virginia delegates to the convention to really support not independence, but continued resistance. And that pamphlet got noticed, not least in the Congress in Philadelphia. And that's one of the things that leads to his having a role on a number of committees in 1775 and 1769 when he eventually goes to the Congress as a delegate having to do with all kinds of writing responsibilities. That's even a broader question. Like one that has always confused me. We understand how the revolution really takes root up there in New England and all the way down to Philadelphia, that northeast experience where people are close enough to talk to each

11:18other. But then you got Virginia way down there, which is in the business of selling stuff. They're doing tobacco, they're making money and they have a whole institution going on about that. And it's interesting to me that they would be receptive to these ideas that were really the conflict that was brewing up there for the New Englanders. Yeah, there's an interesting historical aspect to that because Virginia was sort of the most infamous royalist colony in the 17th century, right? But a big part of it has to do with that, the fact that they were selling stuff as planters, dealing with British merchants. You know, a lot of that business was conducted through credit and debt, right? And many of these Southern planters were in sort of cash poor situations, right? And many, you know, many owed lots of debts to British merchants and credit houses. And so historians have typically attributed that as one of the factors in leading to support

12:18in Virginia amongst the elite. On the other hand, you know, amongst like non-elites and small farmers, there have been lots of arguments recently by historians about the role of slave uprisings in causing non-elite small farmers in Virginia to support independence if we think about Lord Bundin Wars proclamation in 1775 and that kind of thing. Was Jefferson an original thinker as the politics shapes itself towards revolution? Or was he kind of somebody who synthesized and adopted other people's ideas? Yeah. In a lot of ways, he was a master synthesis. I mean, the summary view pamphlet is probably the best summary of all of the arguments that the colonists had been making over the previous, you know, 70 years against these British reforms. So it's not, he doesn't make an original argument there, but it's his ability to synthesize a variety of ideas and then express them in a way that is convincing and understandable.

13:23We can talk about that same question for the declaration, but I think it's essentially, you know, the same case. Jefferson is immersed in enlightenment thought, right? And you know, for Americans, there's a big debate amongst historians has been for decades, you know, about what was Americans' contribution to the enlightenment? And the sort of standard line has been that the Americans are dissipating the alignment, but not by creating new ideas, but by being one of the few places that actually put those ideas into practice, right? And synthesizing those ideas is part of the process of being able to put them into practice. Yes. I often find myself in conversations with friends and family who make the America as an exceptional nation kind of argument about itself, which, you know, is a beautiful idea. But in fact, what is most beautiful about this country and about these founding fathers is that they were taking so much from the rest of the world and bringing it to a place with incredible resources, a stage where all this could play out.

14:28And that explains so much about the American identity and the experience of this nation for 250 years, never mind Thomas Jefferson, who is curious enough at a time when it's difficult to be that curious about European ideas. Are you going to get enough information, you know, and build it all into a broader argument that becomes a revolution. I mean, it's extraordinary what they do with the ideas. Yeah, I mean, that's part of why, you know, the American cause and Jefferson himself was so celebrated in France. Right. Is because the Americans were seen as, you know, as putting into practice a lot of these ideas came from the French and then also some from the, these, well, in Scotland, you know, recently in an episode we talked about Scotland as being this major bastion of enlightenment thinking and a lot of New England comes, a lot of New England thought comes from that. In 1775, Jefferson is a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he sent by Virginia, remind me what the primary function of the Second Continental Congress was.

15:31So the Second Continental Congress was contingent because when the first one ended, the idea was, this is in the fall of 74, the idea was if this is not resolved by the spring, then we will have a second, another convention. And of course, it was not basically as soon as the delegates started arriving in Philadelphia and the spring, Lexington and Concord happens and, you know, and essentially, essentially war has begun, military hostilities begun. That was not for seen. The idea was if they were going to come back and they were going to renew their efforts to reconcile with Great Britain, but it's hard to reconcile and profess your loyalty to the crown when continental troops are attacking the King soldiers, right? And so the, the Second Continental Congress ended up having to be something very different from what it was initially planned to be. It becomes a de facto national government, doesn't it?

16:31Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is in some sense that is created by the Continental Association that is passed in, by the first Continental Congress at the end in the fall of 1774, but especially once military hostility breaks out, they all was set in become, they have to become an administrative body in a way that they never had before. And those, that's the kind of duties I was talking about, you know, Adams taking up very much in the Congress, but Jefferson was never, you know, a great administrator. Yes, exactly. How did he act in Congress? You know, you're so famously defeated and remote. Was he that way at Independence Hall? Yeah, very much so. He was, you know, Jefferson admittedly was not an order, was not a great speaker. He did not, you know, relish or seek out opportunities to speak in, in front of crowds and that includes in the Congress, you know, he made his contribution and his views known through his committee work and the documents that he was asked to draft, eventually culminating

17:37with the Declaration. His political identity, everything really is about defeating tyranny. That's so much of what his nerve endings are about. How much is he watching his fellow members in suspicion, isn't he? Yeah, I mean, Jefferson is one of the more radical, you know, members of the Congress, and you know, we talked about the Virginia delegation, you know, so was so was Richard Henry Lee for that matter. So Virginia had some of the most radical delegates outside of, outside of New England. What do you mean by radical? Radical in the sense of, you know, their willingness to criticize just parliament, but the, the British crown and their willingness to eventually to be able to get to the point of wanting to seek independence. I mean, Adams in 75, Jefferson, even in 75, you know, they're already contemplating independence, but it's not a thing that can be discussed on the floor of the Congress yet, right? And popular sentiment is just starting to move in that direction, but in their minds, in

18:39Adams and Jefferson's mind, you know, I think they came to the Congress understanding that independence was a real possibility, even though most delegates absolutely did not come to the Congress thinking that. If the second continental Congress really manages the war, Jefferson isn't really a part of that though, isn't he? He's not in the trenches of day-to-day operations. He's not interested, which is so ironic. Yeah. So I lay, I said, you know, he does his work by writing primarily. He writes a number of documents besides Declaration of Independence. And then he leaves the Congress after, you know, in the fall of 1776 and goes back to Virginia. And that's really it for his time in the Congress. He, you know, he served in the second continental Congress and then returned home. He always, all the time that he was in Philadelphia, he really rude the fact that he was not back home because the Virginia Constitution is being drafted and he wants to play a hand in that, he wants to play a role in that.

19:41And he deeply regretted that he missed out on being able to do that and instead had to just settle for writing the Declaration of Independence, right? Interesting. Well, let me talk about that a little bit. It's conception and its writings. I mean, these are famous stories, but I want to review how did he become that author? Why was he the one? I mean, he's the one, what? Firstly, because of his reputation as a writer, right? Also because of his reputation as radical, but not a Adam's kind of radical, not the loud kind of alienating radical, right? He was quiet, but it was known that he was a strong supporter of independence. So the fact that the Congress believed, and I think rightly so, that it would be alienating to appoint a New Englander to write the Declaration, right? Because they had been at so at the center of all of the, of each development in the crisis and especially the military developments. And the idea was that Virginia being the largest and wealthiest colony, you know, really

20:43had to not just play a forward role in the movement for independence, but then it should be a Virginia and that writes that document. Interesting. There is, of course, a five-man committee that joins up on June 11th, 1776. That's comprised of Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston. And then Jefferson, probably at his most comfortable moment, in a little apartment by himself upstairs on Market Street, drafts this text. We did such an interesting episode on James Wilson and his thinking was Jefferson a big fan of his, because a lot of that language of Wilson's documents previously found their way into Jefferson's text. That's true. Wilson also had a sort of, how do I put it? He had some royalist tendencies, let's say. So he still had much more affection for the monarchy than Jefferson did, but Jefferson did have a lot of respect for Wilson. And his relationship with delegates in the Congress, we actually don't have a lot on that

21:43if besides, you know, say the most obvious like Adams and Franklin and in Washington who he exchanged many, many letters with. But yeah, we don't have a lot. Because it's not just because Jefferson didn't write a lot about them, but they didn't write about him either because he wasn't up, you know, speaking and grant standing. And so he didn't get mentioned a lot in a lot of letters back home from other delegates. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. It's a new school year, which means yet another back to school shop and list. Luckily, when you use your Apple Card, you can earn 3% daily cash back on everything in Apple, including the new iPad Air and the MacBook Pro. Apply for Apple Card today and unlock the tools for a productive school year. With credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at Applecard.com. Are you looking for the perfect podcasts to hunker down with during the longer, colder,

22:43darker nights? Well, look no further than the award-winning After Dark Myths, Misty's and the Paranormal with me, Maddie Pelling and me and Tani Delaney. We are historians and love all things gloomy and macabre. From Tudor Executioners and Ancient Egyptian Death Ritchwals to Witch Trials and Folklore, feel transported back in time on After Dark. Out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. And guess what? We're also now on YouTube. After Dark, a podcast from History Hit. Michael Bonhamline, Thomas Jefferson was a Virginian. What does that mean in the scheme of America at the time? Yeah, it's hard to imagine it now. But colonists in the 18th century, especially before independence and still even after, thought of their colony as their country.

23:43So if yes, a delegate to the Connell Congress, especially like Jefferson, what country are you're from, he would save Virginia. Virginia is my country. And so he was deeply Virginian. He was deeply enmeshed in the social, economic and political lives of that colony that really shaped him as a young man and then well into adulthood. So he strongly identified with Virginia. And it's a good reminder of the fact that the 13 colonies and then new states coming together and starting to think of themselves as part of a shared polity is a really important development. And it was a process that occurred over time. It didn't happen at the moment that the declaration was passed by the Congress or assigned. Yeah, no, the idea was they stayed apart. That was what ironically we're going to make this country so unified as that everybody could leave each other alone.

24:44I mean, it was one of that was one of the factors that many in the British ministry were sort of banking on. They were saying, look, these colonists from different colonies, they don't get along. There's no way they could ever unite against us, right? And of course, the colonists, the American colonists proved them wrong. So many of these figures of the American Revolution, go on to become the leaders of the nation, obviously. Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Mason, these folks down there. And they become the Federalist Party, which is so interesting that Thomas Jefferson turns away from those folks that he cooked up this nation with, didn't he? Yeah. I mean, Jefferson, as much as he was a Virginian, he was just as deeply a Republican. And what Republican has meant for Jefferson was it meant independent citizens who were free of being able to be coerced by others. And that's how you become a virtuous Republican citizen, right?

25:47When you have independent means, and that's why he was such a supporter of small farmers and a sort of a grayery and approach to the future of the nation. And a lot of what he did in Virginia when he went back and served in the house there until he became governor, you know, was to propose a number of really important bills that were meant to further those Republican ideals. So for example, you know, he proposes these bills to eliminate entail and pre-mogenditure, which was basically laws stipulating that when the head of a family died, their property had to be transferred in its entirety. It could not be broken up and that it had to go to the oldest male heir, right? And by that process, which had been the case in Virginia for, you know, a century or more, that allowed these big plantations to avoid being broken up and to get bigger and bigger and that threat in the small farmer, these, the bigger these plantations got.

26:48And so he proposed a law that would change that. He also proposed the bill for establishing religious freedom, right? In the 1780s in Virginia, which would eventually be passed after the fact. And he proposed the bill for essentially a system of public schooling in Virginia. So, you know, he was just as much as he was a Virginian. He was a Republicanism and he saw, you know, education and the widespread ownership of land and religious freedom as fundamental to his Republican vision. I want to talk about what Jefferson did during the war. He was elected governor by Virginia General Assembly. It wasn't a popular vote in those days. In 1779, he becomes the second governor of Virginia. How was he instrumental in the war from that perspective or was he as governor? I mean, Virginia was not a site of much military activity, certainly up until that point. And so, you know, Patrick Henry, it was the first governor of the state and, you know,

27:51he really didn't have anything militarily to do. Jefferson was a wartime governor, which meant, you know, doing administrative stuff in terms of making sure that the local county militias are in order and ready to be, you know, activated if need be and basically carrying on, you know, correspondence with other governors related to the war, especially. So, you know, he basically becomes an administrator as governor until until the war finds him. Right. And finds Virginia. Thomas Jefferson would think of the governorship of a state as the highest office in the land. Yeah. Yeah. He did not, obviously. In all his later years of writing, you know, when, when he would list his, you know, achievements or things like that, his governorship, he never mentions it. Right. And part of that is because of a few incidents with really important incidents, which we'll talk about.

28:52But just generally, you know, you're right. And that's because for Jefferson and for many of the founders, especially of his persuasion, the real action and the real power was in the legislature, was not in the executive branch because new state governors were not especially powerful because the new state constitutions limited what the executive could do based on their experiences of overzealous royal governors, you know, before the revolution. The, the, the ideals of weak executive, too much power in the central government. And you allow for a new tyrant to, to rise. However, ironically, of course, when he becomes president, he ends up in situations that require a lot of federal power and oversight, which is just, you know, at all backfires on him in some ways. He also obviously had a concern about standing army. He didn't want to be the guy that royal governor. You're like, you're talking about who had all, you know, effectively created their own armies in those days. Is he good at raising militias? I mean, he didn't really have to do that much of it.

29:55I mean, that, the, the militia workers was really militias were a county level institutions. And so what his work related to the militias would have been more, you know, just sort of general oversight, the real work of making sure that they were armed and ready really happened on the ground in the counties. But those militias did have to be called out eventually in 1781. Right. He writes in Jefferson's hand, go and take them out of their beds, singly and without noise, Jefferson wrote, if they were not found the first time Jefferson continued to go again and again, so that they may never be able to remain quiet at home. This is an interesting thing about this guy because this is a man who is so in his brain as we are characterizing him. But his interest in governance and civics in general pulls him out of that brain into the work of people. And that inevitably creates the need for control and management, which all steers into the very direction he doesn't believe is best for the America to go.

30:58You know, and then you kind of have this sort of general flow in the psychology of Thomas Jefferson right there. Yeah. I mean, he was not a people person that much is clear. Though, you know, he had a small number of close friends in Virginia, largely family members or extended family members, strangely enough during his time in France as the minister in the 1780s, he was far more social. It seems than he ever was in Virginia. And you know, I part of that, I think, was that he ran with an especially intellectual and political crowd in France that shared a lot of his Republican sentiments, of course. But so, yeah. Interestingly, we talk about him being sort of, you know, arch-Virginian, but he's never more of a people person than when he leaves Virginia for France. Well, he's pulled out of himself. That's my, my read on the guy. Let's talk about the event we've already referred to June 1781.

32:01It's known as Jack Jewett's ride in popular folklore, former Virginia governor, Jefferson at the time, former, flees Monticello just after his term is acquired and the British troops are approaching his home. That's kind of the backdrop for what is Paul Revere's ride type of, type of legend. Explain it in more detail to us. Benedict Arnold is part of this, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah. So this is after, obviously, his plans to sell out West Point and his defection to the British. And of course, Arnold, after defecting, fought with just as much intensity and ferocity against the Americans as he had against the British, one of the real first military forays into Virginia involved Arnold, who was general in the British army, invading basically the city of Richmond. And that's because Jefferson had previously moved the capital of Virginia from Williamsburg to Richmond. And so this was a British attack on the capital.

33:02And Jefferson eventually had to flee, flee the attack and then took up residence. Eventually, when back and took up residence at Monticello, along with the state, many members of the state legislature, when General Cornwallis launches a mission directly to Monticello to try to capture Jefferson, the governor and many of the legislatures. Right. The idea, generally, is to basically arrest members of the Virginia legislature to sort of decapitate the government there and therefore take over the land and so forth. Jack Jouet, who is Jack Jouet exactly? Jack Jouet is a small farmer. He's a member of a county militia, or the state militia actually. And Cornwallis sends his sort of most notorious officer, Bannister Tarleton, who was known for his wanton cruelty, sends him out to this on this mission to Monticello to cease

34:05Jefferson and the members of the legislature. And Jouet gets wind of the mission and essentially does the sort of Paul Revere ride of Virginia. He rides 40 miles to Monticello ahead of Tarleton and his unit to Warren Jefferson and the members of the legislature who were at Monticello. And so his ride is much less known than a revier, but in some sense, you know, was just as important. And I'm not to think about a counterfactual about what would have been different if Jefferson had been captured by the British. It's one thing when the British would capture officers, military officers, it was, you know, there were niceties of war and military officers if we're captured, we're often released on their own reconnaissance, right? They were not held like ordinary soldiers. But this would have been different. Jefferson was not a military figure. He was the governor of Virginia.

35:07He was also notorious as the author of the Declaration of Independence. You know, would the British have, have brought him back to England for, for trial, for, for treason, right? And if that had happened, it's interesting to think about, you know, what is the rest of the revolution and the, and the early national period look like without Thomas Jefferson. That's almost impossible to imagine. It's one of the miracles of the revolution, honestly, that they never captured Washington or Jefferson or Adams. Any of these guys could have been snapped up. They weren't exactly under high security in those days. Yeah, he rides there and as the story goes, Jefferson sends his family onward in a carriage to a neighboring farm. He takes his time. Jewek is not actually successful in getting him to move on or escape. It's later on that another militia man comes along. And that's when Jefferson's finally motivated to get on the, on a horse and, and march off into the woods. And that's the little legend that comes down or that's the story that comes down later

36:10on and becomes very politically useful for his enemies, isn't it? I mean, in some sense, it's also useful for Jefferson, right? Because there is fall out from this, there's political fall out from this event, right? He's in fleeing, especially fleeing his home from Tarleton and his regiments. You know, it was not a good look, let's say, right, for Jefferson. The idea of him, you know, fleeing from the British was used by people who were not the biggest fans of Thomas Jefferson. But in some sense, you know, the narrative of the story in which he didn't leave right away. He sat down and had Brett. And his wife away and then he sits down and have Brett fist, you know, I think this sort of maybe, you know, maybe helped him a little bit. But it was a real scandal in Virginia politics, the fact that he had fleed like this looking back on it. I get the, you know, the optics of it to use a 20th century term. But what was he supposed to do? I know.

37:10Well, he seems pretty brave to me. He's called the coward of Carter's mountain, which is the woods he escapes through. South Carolina, Congressman William Lotton Smith says he Jefferson deserves no credit because he fled in times of danger and without risk of personal convenience. All this is politics. You know, you can sort of tell even down the lines. I mean, you know, it cost him again. And so I'm costing him because he's not, he's not reelected as governor after that incident. I don't think that he was very distraught about not being reelected as governor. But the fact that he wasn't reelected was very much a sort of referendum on his behavior in that moment. This message is brought to you by Applecard. It's a new school year, which means yet another back to school shop and list. Luckily, when you use your Applecard, you can earn 3% daily cash back on everything in Apple, including the new iPad Air and the MacBook Pro. Apply for Applecard today and unlock the tools for a productive school year.

38:13Subject credit approval, Applecard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch, Terms and More at Applecard.com. This football season control your game day your way with passes from sling. Choose a one, three or seven day sling pass to get instant access to live football on top channels like ESPN, starting at just $4.99. Watch or stream your favorite college or pro matchups at home or on the go because watching football shouldn't be complicated or expensive. Thing lets you do that. Learn more at sling.com. He goes to France in 1784. This is after obviously we've won the revolution. He takes over as US minister in France, 1785. This allows for him skipping the constitutional convention, which is the other irony of Thomas Jefferson. He's involved by letters and so forth, but he's not there in person.

39:17That is the Hamilton indictment. He was in touch a lot with Madison and so forth. He played a very important part in negotiating commercial ties with France in those days, right up until the French Revolution breaks out. A lot of the heavy lifting had been done by Franklin by the time that Jefferson got there. Like you said, there were commercial agreements to be done with ministers from various European countries. Most of what he did while he was there really seems to be socializing and also playing a role in the emerging revolutionary politics in France. He's steeped in that for sure. This is a man who would have been very comfortable sitting inside his house, inside his brain, inside his work, but circumstances beyond his control pull him out. This seems to have been his course in life. I'm totally reducing things down to the simplest thing here. In terms of America, he ends up in France, which creates in him, this is the first time

40:18over there, this picture of the world and the understandings of the complexities of Europe at least, and where America will sit in the midst of all of that. He loved Europe. Yeah, of course. And he loves so many things about it. And interestingly, upon his return, he would write letters to younger family members or just to other people where he would strongly recommend against young Americans going on like a grand tour of Europe, which had been something of a thing, more for British elites than American elites. But it's just funny because Jefferson enjoyed it so much that he actually thought it could end up being dangerous for other Americans, perhaps without the intellectual sophistication or political sophistication that he had. Yeah. I mean, in my mind, Jefferson never pretended to be anything he wasn't.

41:22And I admire that in any personality. I mean, I'm disregarding the screaming double standards of his life. His personality is so unique. And to see that personality infuse itself into the American governance is a remarkable thing when you consider, you know, it's really from one man or a few men that that comes through. It's certainly articulated by Thomas Jefferson. Any closing thoughts of your own that way? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's really a process that occurs after the war, right? I mean, it begins with the declaration of independence for sure, of course. But, you know, it's a process that comes after the war because he does find himself in meshed in, you know, once he comes home from France and he's named Secretary of State in the first Washington administration and engages in this political struggle with Alexander Hamilton, who's the Secretary of the Treasury. He finds himself in meshed in the emergence of party politics in the United States. And the part of the reason for that is, is that both Hamilton and Jefferson and what

42:25would become Democratic Republicans and Federalists, you know, had very different visions of what the future nation should be, what it should look like, right? For Jefferson, you wanted an agrarian nation made up of some independent, small farmers, you know, who prioritized individual independence and also prioritized the connection with revolutionary France, whereas Federalists like Hamilton, you know, wanted to become more like Britain. They wanted to develop manufacturing. They wanted to develop national debt like Britain had. And they wanted to, you know, basically more emulate Britain, but they have these very different visions of the nation going forward. And, you know, Jefferson's, even though it's interesting, if you, you know, if you think about it in the short term, Jefferson very much wins out, right? By the end of Jefferson's second term as president, the Federalist party is essentially defunct, right? But long term, Hamilton very much wins out economically, but yet even though Hamilton wins out in that

43:29way, long term, Jefferson still wins out intellectually long term. Nobody thinks of Alexander Hamilton as a major thinker of, you know, American identity, right? So even though Hamilton's system, you know, economic system wins out. Jefferson's intellectual system for the nation is what goes on to define what we think of, what we think it means to be an American. Well, and certainly in 250, we are celebrating his words, resonating forth. Michael Hadam is a leading light of the American Revolution, 250 years on. Author of several books on the subject mentioned at the top of the show. I'll repeat them now. The memory of 76, the Revolution in American history and past and prologue, politics and memory in the American Revolution keep a close eye out for his newest book, Do Out in November. The Declaration of Independence, a concise history, boy, we need that. Or just keep listening to this podcast because if the past experience is a guide, he will eventually return here and that is good. Thank you so much, Michael.

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