Michael Hattem
speaker
434 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 8 Jan
Michael Hattem’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 Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Und in Wahrheit hat seine Tochter Eliza Wadsworth, ich spreche über das in dem Buch, es öffnet eigentlich das Buch, aber sie war... I tell the story where she was so moved by the death of George Washington in 1799 that she asks her father, who's in Congress in Philadelphia, if he could get some kind of memento of George Washington.
And so her father sends the letter to Martha Washington, who then responds by including a lock of Washington's hair. So his aunt Es erinnert mich, dass ich das Teil meiner Wille mache. Diese Lacken der Haare sind sehr wichtig. Ich vergesse das immer. Ich vergesse das immer.
Yeah, he's really part of the sort of first generation or so in which Americans could actually be professional writers. There's no real professional writers in the 18th century. Most of the prominent writers, they did other things. Jeremy Belknap, who you mentioned, was a well-known historian who founded the Massachusetts Historical Society, but his day job was as a clergyman. So that was common.
So he's part of that first generation of professional writers. And like you mentioned, he had a long history of not just being sympathetic with the cause of abolitionism and of freedom for African Americans, but supporting those causes. So his journals and his account books are full of these entries of him making not large, but pretty regular small donations to all kinds of
I'll be back with more American History after this short break.
I mean, you know, it's an early example of the effect that visiting historical sites can have on people, right? I mean, there's a reason that, you know, millions of people go to Mount Vernon or Monticello or the Boston Freedom Trail or Independence Hall every year, you know, and Die meisten dieser Orte, sogar 1860, waren noch nicht historische Touristenorte, aber er hat einen solchen Moment.
Es ist so erstaunlich.
Das ist der Kern meines Buches, wirklich. Die vielen Wege, wie die Amerikaner anders über die amerikanische Revolution nachgedacht haben, sowohl über Zeit als auch über Konflikte, die sie ständig hatte, über die Bedeutung und die Legitimität der Revolution.
Yeah, Brown was, I mean, among the most radical of the abolitionists, you know, and not just ideologically, but in terms of action, you know, he's at the heart of everything that's going on in bleeding Kansas, you know, in the late 1850s.
Und, und, du weißt, es gibt Quote von ihm, du weißt, als er diese Pro-Slavery-Mitglieder nahm, die in Kansas eingestiegen waren, und als er sie im Gefängnis nahm und sie lehrte, wie sie die Prinzipien der Revolution betrug. Ja. Richtig? Und die Declaration of Independence. Und, du weißt, das ist einer der berühmten Quote von Brown, du weißt.
Emerson sagt, dass er ein Mann ist, der in zwei Dinge glaubt, die goldenen Regeln und die Declaration of Independence. Richtig, genau.
Yeah, part of what's happening... As I write about this in the book is that, you know, that we think of the Declaration, that the modern sort of memory of the Declaration as being about liberty and equality really only emerges in the 1830s. Before that, it's a document that symbolizes independence and union of the states, right?
But it's really only in the 1830s with the abolitionist movement who basically redefined the Declaration by the preamble.
And this idea of these ideas of liberty and equality. And over the course of the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the Declaration becomes so identified with abolitionism that Southerners start to reject it. They say that the phrase all men are created equal was just a rhetorical flourish.
And one newspaper writer said that in the hands of the abolitionists, the Declaration had become a very seditious instrument. For the Southerners, the Constitution is the real document of the American Revolution. Because that's the document, one, that's the structure of government and all of that, but also it's the document that is protecting slavery.
And so I sort of characterized it by saying that, you know, the Die Anti-Slavery-Mitglieder hofften, dass die Deklaration die Nation von der Slavery retten würde, während die Pro-Slavery-Mitglieder hofften, dass die Konstitution die Nation von der Deklaration retten würde.
Sie kämpfen also wirklich darum, welche dieser beiden gesetzlichen Dokumente, sehr unterschiedlichen gesetzlichen Dokumente, welches das Dokument ist, das die Revolution definiert.
I mean, it does catch on, that's for sure. I don't know if it's... There's a way of thinking about this poem in its relationship, and we started talking about that, to Harper's Ferry. And Harper's Ferry is the raid... das John Brown in 1859 auf dieser Armut, dieser föderalen Armut in Virginia machte.
Sein Plan war, er würde die Armut besiegen, alle Waffen und Ammunition nehmen, und dann würden sie in die Wälder von Virginia rausgehen und sie zu Verstorbenen distribuieren. Und offensichtlich warnt er gegen diesen ziemlich verrückten Akt von fast jedem, insbesondere Frederick Douglass. But he ends up doing it and he is taken prisoner at the armory, put on trial in quite short order and executed.
But the John Brown raid really sent shockwaves throughout the country. It was the worst nightmare of Southerners. Southerners were constantly saying that these abolitionists, they're going to come and try to emancipate our slaves. And this seemed to be like their worst nightmare coming true. And so it was this really massively significant event throughout the country.
Showing 401–420 of 434 · page 21 of 22
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