Dr. Kevin Waite, a UT-Dallas history professor and documentary filmmaker, wants to make history lessons more accessible to the public.
He sat down with NTX Now's Ron Corning to discuss American life in the late 18th century, and what the Founding Father's would think about modern day America.
These interview highlights have been edited for length and clarity. To hear the full conversation, click the 'listen' button above.
Were there any revelations about this period, the birth of our nation, that you weren't fully aware of or became aware of differently?
Yes, I would say there was a revelation almost daily. That's the fun thing about being a historian. The more you study, the more you learn and the more it surprises you.
To be a little bit more specific, I think what really surprised me is just how fragile the entire experiment was. From what I had learned in graduate school and school before that, the Revolution felt to me a little more foreordained. Making this series and, again, keeping the viewers in suspense, I appreciated just how touch-and-go it was, how many moments it could have potentially broken up.
At the 50th commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, so about 200 years ago, the signers — most notably Jefferson and Adams — were still alive. Do we have a sense how they were assessing and feeling about this country that they had set in motion?
I think most of the Founding Fathers recognized that the United States was an experiment. An experiment that they hoped would last, of course, but an experiment that could have broken up at almost any moment. So, I think it's safe to say that both Adams and Jefferson were quite pleased that it had endured in the way that it did. Of course, it took a fundamentally different character than the one they could have envisioned. I mean, the United States has always been a work in progress, right?
To give you one example, Jefferson thought, looking westward across the continent, that eventually the American citizens would fan out across the continent and bring American political institutions with them. But the United States itself wouldn't necessarily occupy the space it now does. He thought that's what the North American continent might one day look like.
To bring this full circle, we're in a moment of, some would say, great polarization and great division as it relates to the two-party system, with extreme opposite ends on each party. Do you think, given the benefit of hindsight, that that's what this country has always been, a cycle of moments of division and restoration and division, etc.?
Yeah, division and restoration, union and disunion, and reunion. Of course, in some moments, the crises are deeper than other moments, and you might be right in that this moment is particularly fraught. I think there is a lot in the United States now that would sort of confuse the Founding Fathers.
For example, immigration, did they not accept that we were going to be a country of immigrants?
Yeah. Everyone was coming from somewhere else. They all were subjects of a different nation before the revolution, of course. They were mostly all British. They couldn't foresee, I think, the waves of immigration coming from all over the world. I think that would have surprised them.
Do you think they foresaw, however, that we would be religiously pluralistic in the way we are with global religions finding homes here in the United States?
Maybe not to the extent that we have today, but you have to keep in mind, this is another thing that sort of surprised me in writing the series, is that the United States in 1776 was diverse. There were people of different religious affiliations, obviously different ethnicities, spoke different languages, certainly practiced different political traditions. So, the fact that we have this big polyglot union today, I don't think would have surprised them. Maybe the ways in which it's become more diverse would have, but they were comfortable with a diversity of opinion and ethnicities and religious beliefs.
Sounds like they fundamentally believe that the structure of government was a framework that everybody could operate within regardless of their differences. Have we lost sight of that?
I'll say that it's fraying and it's being challenged, but going back to what you said earlier — it's always being challenged, and the Constitution is always being refined right through the courts and sometimes through constitutional amendments.
I mean, to be a patriot is to recognize the shortcomings of your nation and to try to address those, right? I don't think a real patriot is satisfied with the status quo. I think a real patriot always wants his or her country to be better. That's what the founders recognized, that this was a work in progress and that every generation would try to make the union a little bit stronger, a little better.
Ron Corning is a host of KERA's NTX Now. Got a tip? Email Ron at rcorning@kera.org.
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