Last fall, academics gathered at Mount Vernon’s Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington in Virginia to offer historical perspective. The participants were Douglas Bradburn, the library’s founding director; Edward Larson, a historian and law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., and James Kirby Martin, a history professor at the University of Houston.
   They shared their views in two videos below: “Excessive party spirit — How might our Founding Fathers view today’s political troubles?”  and “Government in the 1790s— All Politeness and Compromise?”