BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The world of media has progressed wonderfully since my days at the Pennsylvania Gazette. Print indeed is like a healthy sexagenarian-still vigorous, but without much of a future before it. Books will continue to furnish rooms, but the newspaper and the magazine are going the way of the town crier. Radio, TV, the internet, IM, and podcasts arrest the senses, and therefore the mind. I was surprised, and not a little amused, by the media’s solemnity. Not one interviewer attempted to involve Mr. Brookhiser in a hoax. Apart from the Onion, I did not see one good one on any subject. Several blogs (which shall be nameless) appeared to me at first to be hoaxes, but then I was assured that they were in earnest.

THOMAS JEFFERSON
I must comment on an event that took place at Gibson’s Bookstore, that excellent establishment in Concord, New Hampshire. Mr. Brookhiser was asked a question by an admirer of mine who implied that my former colleague Mr. Hamilton, in his duel with my first Vice President, Mr. Burr, planned to murder him, using his knowledge of the allegedly secret hair triggers of the dueling pistols. The practice of dueling is one that a rational man must hold in abhorrence, so I will not descend to the particulars of the fatal weapons, how they compared with others of their kind, and so on. It is only justice to say of my longtime opponent that all who knew him deny that he could have done such a thing. Though Mr. Hamilton was, I firmly believe, a monarchist at heart, he was, as I wrote in the notes of my never-completed autobiography, “disinterested, honest and honorable in all private transactions.” Of Mr. Burr’s character, we may say, res ipsa loquitur. (Since the web master tells me I must translate Latin these days: the thing speaks for itself).

JAMES MADISON
All of those in attendance at Mr. Brookhiser’s talks, and most of those who questioned him over the radio, showed a civility gratifying to all who lived through the War of 1812. I detected, however, an undercurrent (which sometimes broke forth) of real despair over the fate of the country, the sagacity of the administration, and wars in which it is involved. Without presuming to address the merits of the cases (for those are matters for the present generation to decide), I will say, from having observed the conduct of my Federalist critics from 1812 to 1815, some of them former colleagues and (as I thought) friends, that despair leads to madness, and madness to destruction. My party marches on; where is theirs? Not even the ghost of a ghost. Contemporary Americans may be instructed thereby.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON
When we lived, it was in a small, poor country on the margins of the world, and even so our path was shadowed by wars, and possible wars. Now that the United States has risen to the empire and greatness which we foretold and worked for, how should it be possible that its enemies and ill-wishers would decrease in number? And yet many of Mr. Brookhiser’s questioners (and many more whom I read quoted in the daily newspapers he was kind enough to send me) talk, and act, as if the world naturally is a kind and welcoming place, and nations may enjoy their ease without taking the trouble to secure it. While Mr. Brookhiser spoke at the New-York Historical Society, I went to the site of the World Trade Towers. Such a marvel of engineering, brought so low; so many others, awaiting a similar fate; so many incensed souls, willing to accomplish it. I can do no better than quote Publius in The Federalist, #6: “Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”

JOHN ADAMS
Lucretius, and after him Shakespeare, knew that nothing comes from nothing. How is it then that Mr. Brookhiser’s audiences expect wisdom, prudence and experience, to arise in minds barren of them? Which have no knowledge of history and especially the history of politics? I do not say of the philosophy of politics, always a bog in which mistaken notions jostle and sink. But how can one hope to steer a republic, and provide for its temptations and characteristic ills, if one does not know the histories of the republics of Greece? Of Switzerland? Of Italy? Of, in my day, Holland, the misbegotten abortion of France, even of England (for England’s having a king made it no less of a republic, since Parliament arose from the suffrage of the people)? Of our own republic, and the many patriots who guided it well, as well as the H------ns and P---es who led it astray? Dr. Franklin besides being amused by the media, was also much taken with gadgets of every kind. Nay, they astonished me: carriages without horses, flight without balloons, cool air from wall cabinets in the rooms of inns (that did not always work, truth to tell). But of what use is all this hubbub of tinkering if knowledge of man, his passions, and his essays in government be neglected?

GEORGE WASHINGTON
I return with thanks the many courtesies shown us and Mr. Brookhiser on our trip to so many places that were familiar (I especially enjoyed seeing the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island once again), as well as so many that were new. Of the political questions of the day I will not speak, agreeing with Mr. Madison that these are the responsibility of present generations. Nor will I speak in detail of military operations, for the same reason, except to offer one observation, based on eight and half years as Commander in Chief during the Revolution and four years of militia service during the old war before that. If Americans find war long, how much more so do the soldiers in the field. No one knows better its difficulties and delays. Victory requires as much of patience as it does of ardor or skill.