#1225 Liberty's First Crisis
Listening to America
Listening to America
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2017
⏱️ 56 minutes
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Summary
Our conversation this week is with the scholar, Charles Slack. Slack is the author of Liberty's First Crisis: Adams, Jefferson, and the Misfits Who Saved Free Speech. His book chronicles the tumultuous early years of the United States when dissent was so feared that those who dared to criticize the government were put in prison or deported through the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Our discussion focuses on three individuals: Matthew Lyon, the congressman from Vermont; Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of the famous Dr. Franklin; and James Thomson Callender, the notorious Scottish journalist who helped break the Sally Hemings story in 1802. Once again, we find out how little some things have changed over the years. Sometimes the less-than-wholly-respectable journalists wind up doing a very important service to democracy.
Find this episode, along with further recommended reading, on the blog.
Read Clay's essay, "Ranking American Presidents."
Learn more about Odyssey Tours and the summer 2017 Lewis & Clark adventure on odytours.net.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good day and welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour podcast listeners. This week a |
| 0:05.2 | conversation I've been looking forward to for quite a while. Mr. Charles Slack |
| 0:10.6 | author of Liberty's First Crisis, joins us on the show. |
| 0:15.2 | And I can't recommend this book highly enough. |
| 0:18.0 | I really enjoyed it. |
| 0:19.7 | And as I said, towards the end of the show, |
| 0:21.7 | I can't imagine a Thomas Jefferson hour listener who would not really enjoy |
| 0:27.2 | this book but it was a great conversation great fun. Well he was so |
| 0:30.6 | interesting and you know something I want to do a lot more of and I by the |
| 0:34.7 | way to our 1776 club listeners and others if you think of people we should interview |
| 0:39.4 | people who are writing about Jefferson or writing about the founding era, people you know who bring an important perspective |
| 0:46.5 | to this subject, this broad subject of Jefferson in his world. |
| 0:49.7 | Great perspective in this book. |
| 0:50.9 | So this was your idea, David. You had come upon Charles Slack's book before I did. I then ordered it. It's fascinating. You called him up. He was willing to do it and it was a great interview. You know he really you can tell he |
| 1:05.1 | loves history. You know one of the things we did not talk with him about and I |
| 1:08.4 | wish we had and I did some searching and I should call him back but he had all of these quotes from the Aurora and some of the |
| 1:18.1 | other newspapers in Philadelphia. |
| 1:19.8 | So the Aurora was the was the anti-Federalist newspaper that was edited by the grandson of Benjamin |
| 1:25.5 | Franklin, Benjamin Franklin Beech. |
| 1:27.7 | I did find one book in order it, but you know I have the Aurora at home. |
| 1:32.2 | Are you serious? I can bring you a loner copy. Well, maybe I ordered the same thing. |
| 1:37.0 | Okay, but it's about the Aurora. It's a thick book about the history of the |
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