But the upside of that division is it means that there is a broad
awareness in the political public that the future of the republic is at risk.
It's as if you're continuing the Revolution by other means.
And the kind of political education that the war itself had given to the people.
It had alerted them to their liberties, and they were vigilant about their rights.
Well, when you're a supporter of Thomas Jefferson.
And you're afraid that Alexander Hamilton, who was the second
coming of the evil Minister Robert Walpole, has got Washington's ear.
And that he's going to establish something very much like an English style
monarchy right here in America.
Well, hey, you've got reasons to be concerned right.
I mean you're going to be alert, you're going to have to read,
because it's gonna be right there in the newspapers, the Aurora.
>> There's a lot of them now.
>> Yeah, they [SOUND] spread like mushrooms.
So think of education and socialization in a broader frame.
It's not just the little red school house that becomes iconic later on,
it's also, well, it's the political cockpit.
It's the struggle over the future of America that keeps people reading.
Those skills of literacy are enhanced that all that communication,
all that information flowing through the whole system.
And Jefferson says, I think we are actually,
in ways that I never could have anticipated we are through the print
public sphere, as we call it, we are educating the people.
He wouldn't see partisan polemics against the administration on behalf of
his political allies, as- >> Propaganda.
>> Propaganda, lies, distortions.
>> That's the truth.
>> It'ss absolutely the truth.
Later he tells William Dwayne, who's the editor of the Aurora in Philadelphia,
one of the great republican papers and one of my favorite quotations.
This is on the run up to the war of 1812 and
there are divisions in the Republican Party cuz it's bad enough that you've
got Federalists but the Republicans starting sniping at each other.
Well he says, the Republicans, they've got to come together, they've got to work
together, solidarity is important, because the Republicans are the nation.
Whoa, they are the people.
So that idea of a big R Republican in a way
is engrafted on the small r republican.
And there is a kind of political education in partisan politics.
And so when Jefferson proclaims himself the beneficiary of
this revolution of 1800, a phrase he uses much later to describe his election.
>> Right.
>> And rise to power in 1801 when he's inaugurated.
He believes that he has, and this is significant,
risen to power on the crest of a mighty wave of public opinion.
This is enlightened public opinion.
So, hey, we thought we needed schools to inculcate virtue.
Because remember the function of the schools was political civic education.
Learn from history about your rights.
Be vigilant, defend them.
And what we have is a massive school house that covers
the nation in the form of the Republican Party.
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