Thomas Fleming was an American historian and author who appeared as the guest on a 2011 episode of The Bob Zadek Show. Host Bob Zadek introduced him as one of the nation’s leading historians, the author of around 20 non-fiction books on American history focusing on the American Revolution and 23 novels, a past president of the Society of American Historians, a World War II sailor, and a frequent contributor to a column called “Channeling George Washington.” George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
The Society of the Cincinnati
Zadek noted that Fleming was an honorary member of the Society of the Cincinnati, which he described as one of the oldest organizations in America, founded in 1783 by veterans of the American Revolution to ensure that America honored its promises to those veterans. Fleming corrected the membership rule: it was restricted to descendants of officers, with only one officer descendant per family, divided by state like the 13 original states. He explained that he received the honor during the Bicentennial in the 1970s after giving many speeches to the society for which he was never paid. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming said George Washington was uncomfortable participating in the society because Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others thought it would become the foundation of an American aristocracy and undermine the Revolution. Franklin wrote a satire of it. Fleming described the society as honoring American history and giving money to causes that teach it, and identified himself as the George Washington scholar for the New York State Society of the Cincinnati. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Channeling George Washington
Zadek compared Fleming’s blog on the History News Network to the reenactors at Colonial Williamsburg who spend their lives living the lives of Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Fleming said he got into channeling Washington after hearing a voice say, “To see this country happy is so much the wish of my soul, nothing else can compare to it, this side of Elysium.” He realized this was something Washington wrote to a friend while deciding whether to attend the Continental Congress and risk the reputation he had achieved as general of the armies during the Revolution. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming described the blog as a device in which George Washington channeled him, or vice versa, to talk about politics as Washington understood it in his time and from the viewpoint of someone who had been watching the country for over 200 years from Elysium. Zadek framed the hour’s topic as money and politics: whether money is a pollutant or necessary in domestic politics, and how the Founders would view the present. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Money and politics: the Founders’ view
Zadek set up the discussion by describing the McCain-Feingold Act, enacted in 2002 or 2003, as in his opinion an anti-free speech, anti-First Amendment piece of legislation that attempts to restrict how money can be spent in politics. He then described the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case as allowing corporations and unions to spend as much as they want in support of a candidate, though not to give money directly to the candidate. Fleming said the Founders would divide on the topic and were no more united than people are today. He said George Washington would be appalled by current finance laws and inclined to agree that there should be no restraints on free speech, citing Washington’s motto: “We must take men as they are, not as we wish them to be.” George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming illustrated Washington’s practicality with the Valley Forge winter, when 300 officers resigned in front of him. Enlisted men could not leave without being hanged, but officers were gentlemen and could resign. Washington said there would be no army at the end of the war unless officers received pensions. Sam Adams and John Adams screamed and yelled in Congress, and the vote carried by one vote. Fleming said that was how close the country came to losing the Revolution, and that Washington never forgot how important money is in real life. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Property requirements and the presidency
Zadek observed that imposing a property requirement on voters was not unusual. Fleming said it rested on a common-sense idea that unless a person owned a certain amount of property—in some states as little as $50 or $100—and had a stake in the country, he was likely to vote for reckless ideas. It was a check on the tendency of people at the very bottom of society to vote for wild ideas. Zadek raised the fear of tyranny of the majority, and Fleming said it was all too familiar, calling the attack on millionaires and the idea of paying for everything by taxing millionaires absolute idiocy and contrary to the Founders’ approach. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming said the distribution of wealth in 1790, when the Constitutional Convention met in 1787, was about exactly the same as now: the top 10% owned 50% of the property. What made the United States a successful republic was a thriving middle class whose members had a stake in the country. He attributed to James Madison the idea that majority rule can be just as tyrannical as a dictator, and said Madison was a strong believer that legislative tyranny was a danger nobody was willing to recognize. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming described Washington as determined to make the president a figure known to all the people, visiting every state while president and insisting the president was the leading politician. He told an anecdote about John Hancock, governor of Massachusetts and a former president of the Continental Congress, who sent word that he would be happy to see President Washington when Washington called on him. Washington replied that President Washington would be even more pleased to see Governor Hancock when Hancock called on him first. Jefferson and his followers called these trips “royal progresses” and said Washington was acting like a king. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Corporations, wealth and the 1792 crash
Asked how the Founders felt about corporations participating in politics, Fleming said there were not enough corporations in the first ten years of the Republic to make much difference. There were wealthy men and people who controlled banks, such as Robert Morris in Philadelphia, and they felt there should be no bar to participating in politics by running for office or supporting candidates with money; it was part of their rights as citizens. Fleming said money as speech means a corporation should have some rights to participate in politics since corporations are affected by it, the way the Supreme Court recently ruled, but that the Founders did not get into the corporate issue to any great extent. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Fleming said the Founders had a strong sense of ongoing conflict between rich and poor, and gave Jefferson his due for insisting that all the people feel they were participating in politics. After 1800, when Jefferson became president, there began a tradition of fighting and defeating the rich in American politics. The Federalists were the heirs of today’s Republicans, and Jefferson called his party the Republicans; by 1828, when Andy Jackson was elected, they had more or less agreed to be called Democrats. Fleming also wrote an article for American Heritage magazine, “The First Bubble,” about the first stock market crash in 1792, when a man named Duer tried to corner the market in shares of the Bank of the United States, failed, and lost his shirt. Jefferson, then Secretary of State in Philadelphia, was ecstatic and wrote in a letter that there was not a single man in New York who was not bankrupt. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Benedict Arnold
In the closing segment, Zadek asked Fleming to answer as George Washington the question he had not asked the reenactor at Williamsburg: how Washington felt at West Point when he learned Benedict Arnold had betrayed him. Fleming said, with tears in his voice, “Oh, if we can’t trust Arnold, who can we trust?” He was tremendously shocked. Fleming then commented as a historian speaking from Elysium that it was not as surprising as it seemed, since more historians are catching on that Arnold’s treachery might have been known already and that the elaborate business of catching him and letting him get away was part of a plot to conceal spies inside New York who had told them about him. He added an anecdote: Arnold had his men row him to a British ship, then turned to the oarsmen and invited them to join the British Army and make a lot of money; they all said no and rowed back to West Point. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
Across episodes
The excerpts come from a single episode, so they show no development across episodes; the topic of money and politics is treated only in the 2011-06-04 conversation with Thomas Fleming. George Washington Was Our Guest (2011)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not give Fleming’s birth or death dates, the titles or publication dates of his books, or the name of the television program beyond the caller’s mention of Liberty! The American Revolution, which Fleming said was written by Ron Blumer and on which he was a consultant. They do not state the outcome of any case beyond Zadek’s description of Citizens United, nor the text or fate of the McCain-Feingold Act. They also do not cover Fleming’s later appearances, if any, on the show.
Episodes
3 appearances, 2011–2012.
- George Washington Was Our Guest (2011) — Money and politics in the early American Republic. Historian and Author
- Who Should Be President and Why? (2011) — The American Presidency and the Founders Vision. Historian and author
- Was The Ratification of the Constitution A Mistake? (2012) — Ratification of the US Constitution and Anti-Federalist Arguments. Historian and Author