Dan Snow's History Hit - The First President

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

George. Where did it all go wrong?George Washington could have had a comfortable career as a loyal member of HIs Majesty's Virginia militia and colonial grandee. But no, he had to go and roll the dice.I am thrilled in this episode to be talking to historian Alexis Coe about her new biography of Washington. She has a fresh take on the first President, but no less scholarly for that.Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, caused an international incident, and never backed down - even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won.For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, including our new in depth documentary about the bombing war, please signup to www.HistoryHit.TV Use code 'pod6' at checkout for six weeks free.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hits. I've got a treat for you today because we're talking about one of the most remarkable men in British and US history. He's a guy called George Washington. You may have heard of him. A wonderful historian called Alexis Coe has just written a new biography. It is called You Never Forget Your First, a biography of George Washington referring to the fact that he was of course the first president of the United States of America. This was, frankly, not one of his most important positions. He was a reasonably competent commander of the Virginia militia, serving under George II and George III. I like to think those were the glory days, really, of George Washington's career.

Went a bit pear-shaped later on, as we might say in Britain. He flirted with sedition, with outright treachery, rebellion. He went on to lead a reasonably successful, you've got to give him this, attempt to drive British rule out of the 13 colonies. Not all the colonies on the Atlantic, of course. Glad to see the Canadian colonies maintained the sense to stick with the Brits, give them another century or two. But yeah, Sir George Washington, actually fascinatingly,

as a young officer, he blundered onto the world stage by effectively starting the Seven Years' War, the French-Indian War. He was then defeated by the French and their indigenous allies. Then he did a reasonably good job of guarding the Virginia frontier for the rest of the French-Indian War. And then, as I say, unfortunately, became a traitor to the cause after that. Doggedly kept the Continental Army together, despite being underfunded, undersupplied, and led it to a few remarkable victories, particularly a place like Trenton. I was thrilled to talk to Alexis Coe. It's an interesting time to be talking about American presidents at the moment. It's always an interesting time, to be honest. I'm looking

forward to coming to America later in the year and interviewing some more historians, so we're going to be expanding operations over there. we have just released our most ambitious film yet history of strategic bombing in the second world war uh features james holland paul beaver victoria taylor max hastings victor greg veterans bombers veterans who witnessed bombing from the ground survivors all sorts of people so please go over to historyhit.tv check that out as ever if you use the code pod6 pod6 you actually get six weeks for free so you can watch the whole thing for free if you like as of today we are moving our 2015 and 2016 episodes all the episodes of the pod exclusively onto historyhit.tv you can't get them anywhere else in the world

please go and subscribe to historyhit.tv and as I say, use the code POD6. Binge them all there, if you like, for free. And also coming up this week on History Hit TV, we've got our film about notable women throughout London's history coming up to mark International Women's Day as well. So lots going on. Join the revolution. More subscribers than ever. It's a very exciting time. So thank you very much, everyone who's made the jump.

In the meantime, everyone, here is alexis co alexis thank you very much for coming on the podcast thank you for having me i'm a big fan well listen i'm a big fan both of you and of the first president a lot of a lot of brits in fact everyone the brits the royal navy lowered their entrance to half-mast when George Washington died, so much respect did they have for their great nemesis. But tell me why everyone is losing their mind about your book. Did you set out to consciously write a very different kind of presidential biography? I did. I'm a political historian in America, and I love presidential biographies, and I usually read three in conversation. But when I read Washington biographies at the end,

I couldn't get anywhere. Thousands and thousands of pages. I understood they thought he was great. They commented a lot about his manliness, which I feel like, as you've just pointed out, is sort of a foregone conclusion. Everyone respects him. He can take it. He can take a different kind of view. And so I wanted to present it differently. I wanted to proceed differently. And I also, when I checked their primary sources in the archives, I found that they either had just been quoting each other for hundreds of years, or, you know, the story just completely didn't check out. It was really different. The context was more interesting. And that's the story I wanted. I also, presidential history is written in America.

It's known as dad history. It's sold on Father's Day, on President's Day. It's a size matters crowd. It's usually like a thousand pages. And I wanted to take this opportunity to reach out to other readers who I fully believe, and I think this is a part of the reception, other readers who I fully believe, and I think this is a part of the reception, are desperate for good presidential history that isn't just about masculinity and destiny and American greatness. They just want to hear the story and they want to feel like they know the person. There's a lot of hagiography around you guys, those giant founding fathers. I mean, I have to say I'm a big sucker for them because I just love them, but they are just giant tomes, right? And there is a hushed, there's a hushed a big sucker for them because I just love them. But they are just giant tomes, right?

And there is a hushed, there's a hushed reverence to that, which I think is, we Brits find that a bit weird because we think of you guys as the, you know, like Americans. You're not reverential about anyone. And yet you are about that generation. Absolutely. And I find that so strange. So as praise, one of the things that's been said about the book, about my book, is that it's irreverent.

You know, and this is a good word. They use it in the 20 books to read in 2020 sort of thing. And first I thought, oh, that's very nice. And then I thought, how odd. How odd that we think irreverence is, you know, something to comment on. And we're so accepting of reverence. It's strange because it implies a bias. So you can't trust the biographer.

And also, who do you know who's perfect? I mean, I have not lived through a single president that I can say was a perfect human. I've never met a perfect human. And it gives us the skewed understanding of the founding era, that these guys were sort of destined for greatness, and our country was always going to be what it was. And none of that is true. None of it was a foregone conclusion.

It denies Washington the real work and agency he had in his own story and the American story. It misrepresents our founding as if it was a monolith. And if we as a whole country wanted to rebel against the crown, that's also not true. There were plenty of loyalists. That's a part of the reason the war took so long. And it doesn't allow us to really reconsider Washington in his own world and his own time.

So, you know, this is a pretty big loss for you guys, right? But the thing is, he could have been yours. The whole trajectory of America and of the British Empire could have been different had you just given the guy the promotion he wanted. Tell me about it, dude. Tell me about it. But I mean, you know, that's something we've been beating ourselves up about for a long time, let me tell you. But his military career was, as you point out, it's kind of hapless military career, like obviously great successes like at Trenton and across in Delaware, but a list of errors. Like he's all too human, I think, if you look at his military accomplishments and failures. Yeah, I mean, let's be realistic here, because if we treat him like a god who could do no wrong,

we're never going to understand what happened. One thing is, you know, he started a world war, the French and Indian War. That didn't go so well. And we think of him as being like a great, promising young military man. And then, you know, during the war, he lost more battles than he won. He made all kinds of mistakes. And he wasn't fighting on the front lines. He was in a tent most of the time. We were completely outmanned and outgunned, as Lin-Manuel Miranda famously has put in hip hop form. So how did we do it? Washington was a

spymaster. Washington understood propaganda. He understood that the court of public opinion, not only in America, that the British army wouldn't recognize America as a sovereign nation and therefore didn't have to follow the rules of war. So every incidence he found of British cruelty, of rapes, of burning down of houses, of forceful taking of animals to eat, he made sure that everyone knew about that. And he also made sure that the world knew that you weren't following the rules of war. And that was important. And to deny him that sort of work is to also sort of degrade his legacy. He should get credit for that. And instead, we sort of focus on he was only good at the military and he was otherwise very self-conscious about his lack of education. Sure, but he made up for it in real time. his lack of education. Sure, but he made up for it in real time. Okay, so let's go through the things that we've given him a pass for that we should remember. I guess we've got to talk about slavery as an owner of enslaved human beings. Is that something that you think is important that

we put back into this story? Yeah. So there are two things Americans love. One is a man who overcomes a shrewish woman in order to achieve great things. So Washington's mother is presented as this terrible thwarting influence when in fact, she was a struggling single mother who worked really hard to give him all advantages and made sure that he found an occupation, his first one surveyor that served him well, and kept encouraging him actually to quit military service for the British because, you know, he wasn't getting paid equally, and it wasn't a good investment in his future. And the other thing we love is the redemption story. And so Washington, as the story goes, emancipated his slaves in his will, and he was the only founding father to do

so. That's a lovely story. That's not totally true. He emancipated one man outright, Billy Lee, who he had always thought of as exceptional he was you know by his side during the war and then when he was crippled in his service he retired him and replaced him the other hundred you know 213 people he did pave the road to emancipation which by the way ben franklin also found or emancipated his slaves during his lifetime so we can have that conversation another time but he paved the road and what was, you know, this was a good thing. Ultimately, it meant something to them. But it also, you know, meant that, that they had to wait it out, because it was up to Martha. She either had to die or decide to emancipate them. Martha was not of this mind. She would not

have done so if she didn't need to. But according to Abigail Adams and a lot of other primary sources, she feared for her life because Washington's will, this was a little bit about legacy, was published. So even if they couldn't read, you know, these rumors spread very quickly. And in order to keep herself alive, to protect herself, she emancipates his slaves who have married hers, who have had children with hers. So when she dies two years after him and her heirs split her enslaved people among themselves, families are broken up. You know, his slaves can try to live nearby. They can hope that they're allowed access, but that doesn't happen a lot.

And it's a really devastating story. So to understand the full arc of it is to understand what he set out to do, what he really did, and how we remember it. He didn't make these claims. His biographers have since made that claim. They've tried to sanitize him. And as you pointed out, it just doesn't teach us anything about the founding of our country and why we're, you know, we're a mess. We were always a mess. I find that comforting. I find that a lot more reassuring than some fairy tale about these perfect men.

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or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. I agree, it makes me feel a lot better knowing that Napoleon and Caesar and George Washington were just losers like me, chronically insecure and always waiting for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them they've been checking them out and they're useless at their job. What else do we give him a pass for, do you think? How has his reputation been inflated?

We think of him as the great unifier. And that's certainly why he was elected. This was not a country that was born of one mind. There were still plenty of loyalists and people who thought that we should maintain a relationship with the British Empire. And then there were plenty of people who during the French Revolution thought we've got to get in there. We've got to help this country. We would have never beaten, you know, we would have never won it in Yorktown. We would have never been at Yorktown if it weren't for the French. We didn't, we barely had rowboats. You know, you had a pretty good navy. It was sort of famous. And so what we have here is someone who is a symbol and who thinks, okay, if I just keep being the symbol of unity, then the country will fall in place around me,

because he's also got the mindset of a military man. He thinks, okay, listen to people, but I'm the general. I hand down my pronouncement and everyone's going to follow what I say. That didn't happen. He said, I don't want partisanship. And what he did was he ended up ushering partisanship into existence. He had people, you know, famous founders like Hamilton and Jefferson, argue their opinions in his cabinet meetings, which he invented this cabinet. But, you know, he did it in a way that made them feel, as Jefferson would later describe, like they were in a cockfight. And that's an incredible, you know, analogy to use. Like, my God, that Hamilton and Jefferson, their razor beak, their drawing blood, Washington is either sort of like sitting silently watching this and not intervening,

or he's almost like, you know, ironically waving around dollar bills, like, you know, go, go, go. And that fight spilled out into the street and the country ended up taking sides. And he left an absolute mess, an absolute partisan mess in America that we are still living through today. That's fascinating because of course that's not at all his reputation. Before we come into the things he was great that you do think he deserves praise for, is there anything else that actually where his reputation is undeserved? Oh, sure. So it's funny, Washington, when he died, he was one of the greatest whiskey distillers in America, had one of the biggest operations.

You know, he was a businessman, which is a part of the reason he rebelled. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't a Thomas Paine. He wasn't just like revolution hopping. He wanted to succeed as a businessman. He didn't feel like the British Empire was allowing him to do so. And so he took matters into his own hands after he had tried everything possible, you know, to his mind. He made a lot of mistakes. And one of the biggest ones, to my mind, is something he's often celebrated for, which was a bloodless rebellion. Well, the rebellion didn't happen. What happened was it was the greatest instance of executive overreach in our history.

You know, he needed to pay off these debts that we were born with from the war. And so part of it was he agreed to Hamilton's whole financial scheme, a central bank ironically modeled after the British system, and a tax on whiskey distributors and distillers in rural Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Now this is pretty funny because these men didn't vote. So they were being taxed without representation and they didn't vote because they didn't own land. And they also were a relatively cashless society. They paid their rent in agricultural goods or in whiskey. So even if they wanted to pay these taxes, which they didn't because they didn't feel like they had a say in it, they couldn't. They really didn't have the cash for it.

So instead of sort of like listening to them, to any of their many protests and letters, which was funny because that's of course what like listening to them to any of their many protests and letters, which was funny because that's of course what the Virginia Assembly sent to Parliament so many times, it was just like almost textbook, you know, the swap out the names, the situation is pretty similar. Instead of just sort of like trying to deal with it, he has just a huge overreaction. He listens to Hamilton who says anytime the government shows force, it has to come out like Hercules and he has a military uniform tailored for him for his you know older body that he has now and he rides out he's in a carriage but he's still riding out with the military who by the way he sidesteps the constitution our

sacred document gets a judicial writ and draws arms on his own people. The irony is, you know, right before he gets there, he turns around. And the meeting place for this big rebellion that's supposedly happening is Braddock's Field, which is when, of course, you know, one of your generals was felled on the field. And Washington, this young man, takes over. He very dramatically grabs this red sash and he fights for the British. Well, they get to Braddockocks Field and there's nobody there. These supposedly 6,000 rebels who are ready to take on the government, who Washington has taken so personally,

they're not there because they didn't actually want to fight the government. They just wanted a fair shake of things. They have to work really hard to round up anyone. He ends up sentencing two to death and then he pardons them. So I don't understand why that's presented as a bloodless end, you know, a real triumph of his presidency. It was a crazy overreaction. Things could have been wild. And it also, he won't let it go. He keeps talking about it for a really long time. And he ends up talking about it like, oh, I'm sure the French had something to do with it. This is all about partisanship. It's a terrible look for him. Okay, so ignoring his leadership during the war, which at times was clumsy and at times very, very deft indeed. And you've mentioned the spy masters, some of the greatest achievements, some of the greatest praise for Washington. Am I right? It comes around him declining the opportunity to become a military dictator at the very end of the war when the army's refusing to demobilize. And then also his willingness to give up ultimate

power, to step away from the presidency, ensuring the tradition of peaceful transition. Does he deserve praise for those two particular foundational acts? Absolutely. But then in context, it wasn't that hard for him. You know, Washington had everything to prove. He wanted to be the center of his nation's story when he was a young man. It didn't really matter what nation that was. He would have been happy being, you know, the most famous colonist in the British Empire. That didn't happen. By the end of the revolution, he's pretty satisfied. He's done the unthinkable. He's got a plantation back home, a forced labor camp. He wants to get back to you. He's a businessman. He wants to make a lot of money. Martha does not like to travel. There's just a lot calling him. And so when he gives up power, he's eager to do so. He writes

to the powers that be and he's like, how do you want to do this? I really want to be home for Christmas. Everything about it is just like, okay, yeah, ceremony, ceremony. I just want to get home. I want to get home. And he indeed makes it home just in time for Christmas. The second time, again, he was desperate to get out of that situation when he was the president. Partisanship had erupted. He wasn't talking to half the people, half the founders, you know, I call them frenemies, but you know, by the end, he was estranged from Jefferson. Thomas Paine wrote a scathing letter about him. His worst nightmare had been realized. Partisanship was rampant. He was getting older. He wasn't just getting this blind respect he got as a general. He wanted to go home. And so that's absolutely true. He should receive credit for it.

But, you know, it was also sort of innate. He was by that time really secure. So, you know, the concern with Trump is that, you know, would he give up power? We don't know. He's not secure and he's so power hungry that, you know, we don't know this. But yes, it is an amazing thing that he did. If you know him, you know it was never an option. But look at the context he lived in. You had a king.

Most countries had a king. We are a few years off from Napoleon. Napoleon will say, everyone expected me to be George Washington. I couldn't be. There was only one George Washington. And that's absolutely true. Well, thanks for bringing in the current occupant of the office. I did it.

I made the mistake. Well, you know what? It's hard not to in these days. But I mean, what was it interesting? Last question, was it interesting writing this big work of presidential history. How do you feel about the current occupant? Did it make you think that this is an outrage? This is a sort of a long time, a well-researched book. When I started in 2016, there were certain patterns to the American electorate and to our presidential history. And so I knew it's really uncommon after eight years that the same party wins again. At the same time, Trump was so at odds with someone like Washington. I was

actually at Mount Vernon at his home the weekend before the election. And everyone seemed to agree it would definitely be Hillary. And I, in fact, was taking notes in a notebook that said first female president. And I thought, okay, I'm going to be writing this book while living through this time. How very lovely. And then, despite, you know, getting three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, Trump assumes the presidency, and for a while I play along as a presidential historian. I do my job, and I show up on television, and I give all the radio interviews, but I felt a little bit like a hack, and it also was such a dramatic experience to be living through that I didn't want to do it,

and I'm really glad that I saved myself up after the first hundred days, which is significant to us because FDR sort of threw everything at the wall for the first hundred days and since has been regarded as some really significant time when it's really just trying anything that works to write course. After that last interview, I was like, I'm out. And it's good because I'm asked about it constantly now. You know, it's like opposites day, every single day. Everything that I wrote, everything that I studied is just the exact opposite plays out in the media. It plays out on Twitter. He could not be more different than Washington and even is threatened by Washington. He, you know, Trump visited Mount

Vernon and said, you got to put your name on things or else nobody remembers you. Mount Vernon and said, you got to put your name on things or else nobody remembers you. Your job is in a city called Washington. No one's forgotten Washington. And I think a part of it is that, you know, he wasn't quite so insecure. So it's been, excuse my language, it's been batshit crazy. Well, thank you. That's good to know that you think so as well, because it looks like that from over here. So thank you. I was in Mount Vernon the weekend of the presidential inauguration. So we only just missed each other by a couple of months. Oh, my goodness. Next time. Yes. So thank you very much. Good luck with the book. It is called You Never Forget Your First, a biography of George Washington. And it's out now. Go and get it, everybody. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favor to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favor, it's for free.

Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. you