The founding fathers of the United States of America: An overview

I'm Walter Isaacson and I'm here with Professor Joe Ellis we've been talking about the founding of America and now let's talk about the personalities because your books are so rich with the color of the people involved why don't we start with George Washington tell me about him yeah we start with him we might never get past him he's the founding his father of them all if there were two founding moments in American history I think though were one was declaration of independence and independence and the other is the Constitution what we've been talking about most recently a nationhood he is the central figure at both moments and what's he like he's quoting austere as if he's made of marble he is he's about six three there's a disagreement about how tall he is if you go to Mount Vernon they say 6-2 but when they measured him for his coffin he was six three and a quarter hmm now they said they could bend his toes or something like that anyway but he is a physical specimen now all the pictures we have of him come from him an old age you know the famous Gilbert Stuart that's the one we're looking at right now yeah but in his youth he was sort of like John Wayne circus stagecoach 1939 he is at some point he becomes a monument the man becomes a monument at the other extreme in a way as Benjamin Franklin they're sort of casual and fun and chatty and not austere no although Franklin is a man you know you never know when Franklin's winking or his tongue is in cheek you never know I had always assumed it maybe yes he doesn't link with us off from history stage yes he does and I mean I think that if Washington is the greatest leader Franklin is the wisest man he's sage because he brings us together in a way and he's a person who can take a passion a person like Adams and a brilliant person like Jefferson and be friends with Washington and make the group dynamic work he he didn't get along much with Adams but Adams deserved it in some respects one timed adams went to a play in Paris and Numerical Franklin was there too and in the middle of the play they came out with pictures of Franklin and he got so mad he just walked out and lets down the theater he comes to Adams is also a little bit jealous of George Washington theory said we're the way history will be written is it all Franklin in Washington Franklin struck the earth with his electrical rod and up popped General Washington and from that point forward they conducted all diplomacy warfare by themselves that was Adams his line probably the only funny line Adams every letter of 1790 to Benjamin Ross but I think that if you voted in the world at the time mm-hmm who was the greatest American Franklin would win because of his contribution in science yeah his electricity experiments and made him enormously famous both in Europe and the United States and the lightning rod was the great invention and to also tell my old friend dr. Benjamin Franklin he was the only one who was at all five moment really the Albany convention he puts together the Declaration of Independence Washington would have been there but he was off leading the Continental Army the Constitution the treaty that brings France and on our side in the war and then finally the Treaty of Paris that ends a revolution Franklin's at all five events it's like if you say that history is a movie he's in every scene people sometimes ask me why wasn't he president didn't he want to be you know he was 81 by the time they write the Constitution which back then was rather old maybe not today and he still had a little vanity he thought maybe maybe maybe but in order to suppress his vanity he asked to be the one to nominate Washington as the president of the convention people knowing that that would be the first president to come out of the convention now tell me about some of the others you have a Madison and somebody Madison is usually considered the father of the Constitution I think that that's a plausible thing I think that Governor Morris and Madison are the ones most responsible for the shape of the document Morris actually gets up and speaks more frequently than Madison but it's Madison who wrote the Virginia plan to set the agenda for the Constitution who insisted that it be not just a read of reformation of the Articles but a replacement of the Articles and who in the course of his arguments began to present some ideas that we have come to regard as major contributions in political science especially the way in which a large Republic stunted over space is a more stable Republic rather than unstable one than a small Republic that's a big idea he was really the ideal man he was he was along with Thomas Jefferson though Jefferson's of visionary now he's not present in in the Constitutional Convention he's very obviously present in the Declaration he's an ambassador in Paris that's wrong he's American in voir to the court in Paris he's over there working with the creation of a of a constitution for France right but Jefferson tell us about him six-two tall burned skin reddish blond hair but a sort of a philosopher philosopher yes read lucky Barrett one of the best read men conflicted on slavery conflicted on slavery because he does right all men are created equal he that's his phrase in the Declaration and yet so his life he owned slaves I'm not sure he meant oh he means that all men are equal in the sense that they all possess a soul do you think he felt conflicted on the issue of slavery yes I mean he said so and he people kept coming to him and asked him to take a leadership role in ending slavery and he kept saying I can't do it it's beyond me now it's it's the next generation if you read notes on the state of Virginia the other the only book he ever published there is a couple of horrible paragraphs in there in which he says basically that african-americans are inherently and biologically inferior to whites and we have to remember this about our founders of that they had a certain greatness but you have to take them in the moral context of their time well yeah but we went in the context of his time Washington didn't think that Adams didn't think that Madison didn't think that Hamilton didn't in Franklin is a head of the Pennsylvania Society abolition of slavery so I do think you also have to say who actually ended up being on the right side of the moral issue in fact I agree and if Jefferson is the most resonant figure in American history because he spoke the magic words the ones that began we pulled these truths but he lived his entire life as a slave powder that reminds us that there were all humans and that even as we study them you know we should understand the moral questions that still linger we've got to get rid of all this you know that's fairytale stuff that's you know like Easter Bunny stuff and you know Washington and the and the cherry tree stuff as teachers we're now adults sometimes you have to kill your parents you know there the oedipal complex here and in some ways that's what Charles beard was doing when he tried to undermine their authority but we're now at a place with their places on the mall and on Mount Rushmore are secure we can get to know them as they really were as brilliant but flawed human beings and that helps us wrestle with always trying to make a more perfect union as I said thank you very much all right