The Living Past: Commitments for the Future The First Millennium Evening Hosted at the White House

Abstract

ED. NOTE: In February 1998, at the invitation of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Professor Bailyn was honored to give the first of nine Millennium Lectures at the White House. With characteristic wit, insight, and nuance, Bailyn chose the occasion to reflect on the complicated ways in which Americans as a people remain bound to the political concerns and constitutional innovations of the Revolutionary Era. Their preindustrial world and the primitive capital where John Adams and Thomas Jefferson first occupied a half-finished White House were vastly different from the global economy Americans came to dominate and the imperial capital Washington, DC has now become. Yet as Bailyn's lecture made clear, the persisting concern with checking and channeling the power of government that animated revolutionary thinking, in 1776 and 1787 and 1800, has remained both an inspirational and brooding force in American politics and culture ever since. In effect, Bailyn used the great themes of his most influential book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, to set an agenda for the entire series of Millennium Lectures.Jack N. RakoveProfessor Bailyn's speech may be accessed at the following: https://youtu.be/Yku4MzXT3sQ?t=413