H.W. Brands
speaker
313 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 12 May
H.W. Brands’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
He freed the slaves that he owned himself
not upon his death, but upon Martha's death, because there was going to be this very difficult complication if half the slaves at Mount Vernon became free and the other half remained slave.
The ones who remained slave, they would be sorely tempted to join the free ones and flee the place, and Martha would have to deal with that mess.
He would be absolutely amazed and he might be appalled at the strength of the presidency because under the Constitution that Washington held right,
The presidency appears only in Article II of the Constitution.
Congress is in Article I. Right.
And so Congress was going to take the lead.
Congress was going to have the initiative in American politics, which it did during Washington's life and for another 100 years.
It's really only in the 20th century that the executive branch jumps to the front.
So he would have been surprised at how powerful the president has become, and he really would have been appalled at how weak the Congress has become, because the whole idea was to have this government really of the people, not just this one person, but the ones they elected to represent.
So he would have been stunned at that.
He would have been
probably equally appalled at the fact that, I mean, as we speak, there are American soldiers stationed all around the world and America is fighting wars in distant lands.
He was the one who, in his farewell address, said to his fellow Americans, don't get overly involved in the affairs of other countries.
Precisely, precisely.
So Washington would have acknowledged the world changes, but the idea that somehow the United States would
feel it incumbent on itself, that presidents would feel it incumbent on themselves to engage in wars halfway around the world.
This really would have taken him by surprise.
Sure.
Okay.
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