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Morning News

Founding Fathers or Founding Rivals?

Aired February 19, 2001 - 10:25 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Today is a national holiday: Presidents Day. If you are home watching television this morning, you may already know that. And with that holiday come thoughts of America's founding fathers, or, as the cover story in "U.S. News and World Report" has it: "Founding Rivals."

The story's author, senior writer Jay Tolson, joins us from our Washington studios to explain just why the founding fathers were more like squabbling siblings.

Good morning, Jay. Good to see you.

JAY TOLSON, "U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT": Good morning, Leon.

HARRIS: Now, tell us more about this. You know, the basic mythology about the founding fathers was that they were all a bunch of very wise, prescient -- a collection of prescient men who had no problems getting along. And that apparently is not the story, huh?

TOLSON: Well, there was a lot more bickering and backbiting and devious behavior than we like to think. A number of our national icons, like Thomas Jefferson and -- oh, even Ben Franklin and certainly Alexander Hamilton were engaged in some pretty fierce squabbling.

HARRIS: And how did that squabbling all turn out?

TOLSON: Well, it turned out, fortunately, in general for the better. They didn't resolve a lot of the big issues, including the glaring contradiction of slavery. But somehow, despite the fact that they didn't create what they thought they were going to create -- they thought they were going to create a nice gentile republic that would be led by a bunch of gentlemen much like themselves, who would be above petty interests.

But it turned out that they created a very rough-and-tumble democracy. And they participated in that democracy themselves even while they pretended that they weren't. Jefferson is a prime example of that. He -- while he was serving as the secretary of state, and then under George Washington, and then later served as vice president under John Adams, he would do some fairly nasty stuff against the people he was working for.

HARRIS: For example? TOLSON: Oh, well, Jefferson encouraged his friends in the press to attack the secretary of treasury, Alexander Hamilton, whom he despised because he thought Hamilton was a reactionary who was going to take the United States just back to the condition it was in before the Revolutionary War. He hated Hamilton because he thought was pro- British. He also hated Hamilton because he thought he was for big money: the bankers and others.

Later, when he became vice president under Adams -- it was a different system of election then -- but he was not at all loyal to Adams. He, again, sent items to the press. He encouraged the French -- who were engaged in what was called a quasi-war with America -- to prolong the conclusion of a treaty even though his president, John Adams, was trying to conclude it as quickly as possible because it was a very unpopular war -- or conflict. It wasn't actually a war. The French were stopping our ships in the Caribbean and sometimes taking our sailors.

HARRIS: Yes.

TOLSON: And they were also treating us in a number of other snide ways. And this created a great deal of anger in the United States. Many people wanted to us go to war with France. Others wanted us to submit to their terms.

And, basically, what Jefferson did is, he stoked the flames. So I think today we would consider behavior like that borderline treasonous.

HARRIS: That's interesting. So instead of basically being the group of gentlemen who all got along well, these all could -- these guys could have all starred in "Dynasty," as it turns out. Did any one of them turn out to be bigger than we even thought?

TOLSON: Well, I think, in a way, by seeing them with all their flaws, as some of the recent historians have done -- particularly Joseph Ellis -- I think we end up admiring them a lot more. We sort of see that -- well, Washington, for example, probably came as close as any of the founding fathers to living by this ideal of being above politics.

He really didn't want to join either of the two major factions: the Federalists, as they were called, or the Republicans. That was Thomas Jefferson's group. And he more or less held to his position of neutrality. And it probably made governing a little more difficult. Jefferson, of course, thought that Washington was the only man who could hold the North and the South together. This is in the early 1790s.

So he thought that tensions were already so great that only a figure with the reputation of Washington could hold things together.

HARRIS: Interesting.

TOLSON: I think Adams is another hero -- John Adams -- if you are looking for heroes from the early republic. He was the only founder who never held slaves, for example.

HARRIS: No kidding. That's interesting. There's a lot of interesting tidbits in it. The article is "Founding Rivals." It's the newest edition of "U.S. News and World Report."

Jay Tolson, thanks much for the time.

TOLSON: Thank you.

HARRIS: Appreciate it. Great article. Take care. We'll talk to you later on.

TOLSON: Thank you.

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