#1334 Benjamin Rush with Stephen Fried

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2019

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"He and Jefferson talked about everything."

— Stephen Fried

Benjamin Rush was a physician, politician, social reformer, humanitarian, educator, and a signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Rush was a leader of the American Enlightenment and an enthusiastic supporter of the American Revolution. Born the son of a Philadelphia blacksmith, Rush touched virtually every page in the story of the nation's founding. It was Rush who was responsible for the late-in-life reconciliation between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. This week we speak with the author Stephen Fried about his new book, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father.

Find this episode, along with recommended reading, on the blog. Support the show by joining the 1776 Club or by donating to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Inc. You can learn more about our Cultural Tours & Retreats with Clay S. Jenkinson at jeffersonhour.com/tours. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good Day, Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners, and thank you for listening.
0:06.0	You know, a friend of ours from the state of California,
0:10.0	We need to thank.
0:11.0	Lisa Silverman, who is a community librarian wrote to us saying that we should interview Stephen Freed
0:17.4	I think he had been there and given a talk at their library
0:20.4	written this new book on Dr Benjamin Rush and it's gotten a lot of good press.
0:24.3	There was a really fine piece on CBS Morning Show, is that what it's called?
0:28.9	CBS this morning, right?
0:30.3	And he's a fascinating guy, he talks well, great story teller, and he calls Benjamin Rush
0:36.8	the founding father that needs still to be found. And you called him in our discussion this morning, a sort of a forest gum figure, he's everywhere.
0:45.6	Yeah, I apologize for the bad reference, but he just, he, you know, he's there when Adams first comes to the Continental Congress and he's
0:54.8	giving him advice as a 28-year-old young man. He ends up like you said crossing
1:00.6	the Delaware with Washington which is why we know what that was
1:04.8	like because he wrote about it. He winds up one of the signers of the Declaration of
1:09.9	Independence and has a friendship that he forms of Jefferson which lasts for 50 years.
1:14.6	And he is the man responsible for the reconciliation at the end of their lives between
1:20.6	Adams and Jefferson.
1:21.7	He was the father of dream psychology in America and he actually claimed that he had a dream
1:26.7	in which Jefferson, the South Pole of the Revolution and Adams, the North Pole of the revolution, worked things out and became friends again.
1:37.1	And so he made a campaign of it and he worked hard at it over a period of a couple of years of
1:41.5	Stephen Freed's analysis. His description of this is fascinating.
1:46.7	And finally, he talked to them into it. And Adams on the first day of January 1812 wrote Jefferson a really stiff and tentative little letter and
	...

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