like to download and listen to it afterwards while you travel. for the next three hours is your chance to participate in a discussion with author and historian calling there. the mit american history professor and expert on the revolutionary period has written several history textbooks including american scripture, making the declaration of independence and their most recent release, ratification. .. the ideas that were pressed

expressed by a familiar person, john locke, other writers of the 17th century and popularizes the 18th century and they became basic political truths for americans of 18th century. >> what were those ideas? >> the government isn't determined by god. people come together, associate with each other, form compacts, to create society and governments and that they ash points officials, to serve their end, and the ideas are summarized neatly in the second paragraph of the declaration of independence. that all men lived once in a world where they were equal and there were no kings and every man was his own king and the

inconveniences of that world, or the desire to protect people's rights, in a more durable way, brought people together, to form governments, and governments are created to protect those rights. to serve the people's security and their interests, and, if the government fails to do that, it is the right of the people to reform them or replace them. >> now, in your first book, "from resistance to revolution, colonial radicals and the development of american opposition to britain" you write that the colonists sought a british revolution, one that would reconstitute the british government with new rulesest rulers and a firmer establishment of basic rights and there by save not only america, but britain, too. >> well, their comprehension of the political situation, for the greater part of t the period, t

decade before independence, the problem was not just theirs, there was a problem in britain. the ministry had corrupted the parliament, and that they were moving toward absolute power and it was not just the american fate but that of the people at home in the british isles were also affected by this. so, there were -- but a traced the efforts, at the hands across the sea efforts, the correspondence of american radicals with people in britain, like the bill of rights, which was formed to support the radical john wilkes. and, that correspondence existed when the great -- it was a great surprise to me when i first discovered it was when i was a graduate student, writing a seminar paper and, basically the book followed -- the dissertation of the book followed from that discovery and, the interesting cross-atlantic correspondence. >> who was john wilkes and why do you call him a radical.

>> well, he was an opponent of the british government. he argued for greater political rights. he was worried about the corruption of parliament, he actually criticized the king as well as the ministry and went into exile for a period of time over this, and, what was interesting was the stents to which developments in his struggle paralleled events that were happening in america at the same time. he ran for parliament, i think, four times, and was elected by the free holders of middle sex county and, eventually they seated his opponent and he was roundly defeated at the polls and if americans were concerned about the fate of their assemblies they had reason to think the problem wasn't just theirs. and, at one point he had -- there were a group of his

supporters, st. georges field the army fired on. it sounded like the boston massacre to americans, and they sensed there was asymmetry of issues in that they could work together, to get rid of the ministry and get a new parliament, and they could get to the root of the tree of parliament in britain. >> one more quote from "resistance to revolution" only under free governments were the people nervous, spirited, ready and able to react against unjust provocations. as such, popular insurrections could be interpreted as symptoms of a strong and healthy constitution while they indicated lesser shortcomings in administration. >> a sign of power. we need to remember that sometimes, i think. i've heard people argue that our democracy was in trouble, given the evidence that these -- up risings in wisconsin, i think it is a sign of the good...

democracy. and people should be -- they used the word "jealous" and, it is not our sense of jealous, that is a sense of envy but they were sensitive and they reacted and if somebody did them a wrong they didn't just take it. they responded. they defended themselves. they spoke up. >> pauline maier could you give us a snapshots of america in 1775. >> a snapshot. it is a very different place in 1775 and is a number of very different places. we tend to think north-south and this is through the civil war and it was a much more complex place than that. and new england had a kind of a common system, it had a town governments, and had a common religious tradition, and there were a lot of differences within the new england states and you

go a little further south and the middle colonies, new york, new jersey, delaware, pennsylvania, very diverse in terms of their population. again, farming, largely, and, then you get into the chesapeake, maryland, virginia and a very different place and you have plantations rather than the family farms further north and producing tobacco, and, slaves, yes, a larger slave, but, slaves were not unique to -- and the south wasn't one thing and, you had north carolina and georgia and i left north carolina, sort of between the -- like 40% of the population in virginia was slave and had been a majority, since 1708 in south carolina. but, slavery was everywhere. 3% in new england.

it wasn't... the remarkable part of it, it wasn't much criticized, i think. the real opposition to slavery came, except the quakers who saw it was wrong earlier, largely with the revolution because it violated the principles expressed, for example, in the declaration of independence, and i know that is what you mean but there is no one picture of the u.s. in 1775, because there are so many different united states, if you will and it isn't the u.s. yet, they have the colonies and they have distinct cultures and economies. >> was there a similar political mood across all 13 colonies, in 1775? >> here we get to the issue, how could they ever act together? i think they could act together because they had the same political assumptions and political values and, they had a common enemy. there is nothing like an enemy to pull diverse elements together. and to the extent britain had

begun to, first of all, to try to tax the colonies, although they weren't represented in parliament, and then, when the colonies resisted, followed with others, yes, they pulled together and understood the interest of any one colony was the interest of others, and if they could -- if britain could get by, for example, destroying the assembly of new york, because it had resisted a... refused to supply british troops, if they could do that in new york they could do that in any other colony and so, the british assumed that the colonies were so diverse they'd never get together and fact britain pulled them together by its policies. >> in your 1997 book, "american scripture", making the declaration of independence, you write: "in the decade or so after 1850, i discovered -- 18915, i

discovered the document began to assume the quasi-religious attributes later institutionalized without a shadow of subtlety at the shrines in the library of congress, and, more recently, the national archives. i confess that i have long been and remain uncomfortable with the use of religious words and images for what are, after all, things of this world. that practice strikes me as idolatry and, also, curiously at odds with the values of the revolution. >> i'm not sure i would write that in quite strong terms right now. i began that book thinking the declaration of independence -- it wasn't the declaration i knew. i knew it from 1776. i knew it through my studies of the revolution, of course. and, it was a kind of a working document, the second continental

congress. it was only when i wrote the book and then, read twrote the chapter to understand how that became transformed as an icon of american culture that i think i really understood what was going on. i mean, it became a statement of rights, because the constitution didn't give us one. it stated all the principles that americans held very dearly in the revolutionary period, but, that had not been stated so clearly in any of the legal documents. i mean, you know, the constitution does not say anything, all men are created equal. it doesn't even have the virginia declaration of rights, which is all men are born equally free and independent and they changed that slight level those were george mason's words. and, jefferson, i think, took the words, from the second paragraph, the declaration of independence, largely from the virginia declaration of rights

and compressed them. but, these ideas were common. they were expressed in many state declarations of rights, but appeared nowhere in the constitution. and, the ten amendments, the first ten amendments, ratified december 1791, nobody called those a bill of rights at the time. and if you looked at the whole panoply of amendments that congress had proposed, september 1789, you would understand why, the first two don't look like they are part of a declaration of rights. once had to do with a plan by which representation would be increased as population grew and the second was our 27th amendmen amendment. but, with americans who valued those rights, they turned to the declaration and it became our bill of rights, i think, through

this greaters part of our history. >> well, write in the book, "american scripture", essentially the declaration of independence was a press release. >> it was a way of telling the american people what the congress had done, the critical vote was on july 2nd. then the congress spent two days editing a draft, declaratiodecl. we tend to date the independence, july 4th. because that is when the declaration was finally approved t for dissemination. >> by the second continental congress. >> but the critical vote was july 2nd and when he was asked when we should celebrate, john adams said we should celebrate the 2nd of july with all kind of festivities and people think, ha, ha, but that was an argument for john adams's thinking that. kind of an accident that we ended up taking the fourth of july.

>> but they didn't release it right away? >> they didn't release it, until they had edited it. the critical debates of independence in the second continental congress were in early june. and, for two days, they debated it very seriously. and, then, essentially, they decided that although they seem to have a majority for it they really needed to be unanimous and if they delayed the vote, they thought they would be closer to unanimity and you don't go out and fight the greatest military power in the world, unless you have your ducks in line, so to speak and it was a tremendous effort between june 10th and this beginning of july, within the states, to try to get all of the states in line and, there i should explain that there were several states that had instructed their delegates to congress, they could approve

anything so long as it led toward reconciliation with britain and wanted to address their grievances in reconciliation but wanted to remain british. people were proud of being british and ended up accepting independence i think only because they had they had no viable alternative. and certainly, the news that the king hired german soldiers argued forcefully for the conclusion. >> but you write in "american scripture", pauline maier, that the delegates, continental congress, did not send out the declaration of independence to the states, until january -- >> i see what you mean. >> 1777. >> they didn't... well, they sent out -- they had various versions of the document. what they approved on on july 4th, was the text. and then, they had it printed

immediately, and which people can see, it is imprinted in black letters and there is no signature except john hancock's name appears on the bottom and charles thompson attesting to the signature of john hancock. >> who served as president -- >> was the president of the congress. so -- but you don't see signatures. all you see are the block letters. because, it is printed. and it is printed in block letters. that was send out. that was sent out broadly. so, the text of the declaration was broadly disseminated. to see -- it is possible to say this is a press release. so that the people of the state and members of the army would know that their cause had changed dramatically and now they were fighting not for reconciliation of grievances but for independence and that is circulated largely domestically. they do send a copy to silas dean in france with orders to give it to the french court.

but they -- congress doesn't do it. it is done by a committee and they do it in the most lackadaisical way imaginable. i mean, they send it on one ship. you don't do that in the 18th century. if it is important, going across the north atlantic, you put it on two ships, and, maybe you would like to translate it, they said, and well, i should think so. of course it didn't arrive. it got lost somewhere be a it was intercepted and finally they sent another one and by then, dean was embarrassed and he said it is all over the newspapers and i'm supposed to present it to the french court and you didn't even send it with a seal? they took seals very important -- seriously, in the 17th century and i think congress thought the declaration originally was for a domestic audience. now, you are talking about is another version and a much more familiar document to people, i

think, than that one and, they abstained on july 4th. >> the colony -- >> the only colony that did not vote. they manage tod to get all the others in and a week later, new york, who was not enthusiastic about this, said, oh, heck, everybody else is doing it, i will, too. which meant that congress could have it, what they called engross engrossed, and got a scribe to write it out and the hand-written version, the copy of the book, the background in the book, and is a familiar document to people, now. that that inscribed copy, you cannot see too much of it, can you? this was then signed and it begins the anonymous declaration of the united states of america -- >> in the national archives. >> in the national archives.

>> and we were showing that up on the -- >> and it is signed. they didn't distribute it right away, and, the war was going poorly in 1776. this is when -- well it starts with the defeat to the brooklyn heights an washington retreats through manhattan and, goes down, crosses the delaware, and, it looks like, i think even -- these men were not putting their heads in the nooses, unnecessarily. so, only after washington managed to reverse the downward trend were the victory at trenton and princeton, did they issue a copy of the signed declaration of independence, again, and send it to the states for their records. >> good afternoon, and welcome to book tv's monthly program, in-depth. this is where we feature one author, and his or her body of work. this month we are pleased to have with us, mit history

professor, pauline maier, the author of four popular books and worked on a couple textbooks as well, of course. but here's are her four books, 1972, published "from resistance to revolution" and 1980, "the old revolutionaries" which we'll get into as well "american scripture in 1998, and her most recent book "on the constitution, ratification," and it came out, last year. what do you teach at mit. >> i teach american history to 1865. i teach a course northern revolution. and, with a colleague, professor focalson i teach on riots strikes and conspiracy in american history and class called american classics, all the good parts that you should have read but probably haven't. >> with all of this information and we hear about history being taught in schools and the

memorization of dates, et cetera, et cetera, what is the best way to teach history, in your view. >> we are always trying to figure out the best way to teach history. we teach it well at mit because we have small classes, we don't have the huge halls an thousand people and i get a small group of people around the table and we read the documents and talk about them and students often remember best what they think and not what they are told and let them discover the past through the documents and it speaks to them directly and that is the way i like to teach history and is possible at a place like mit and it is especially good for the humanities. >> 202 this is area code, 737-0001 if you live in the east and central time zone and would like to participate in our conversation with pauline maier, 7

737-0002 more found and pacific time zoneses and you can send an e-mail, booktv@cspan.org and you can tweet as well, to the professor. and, now, september 17th, 1787. why is that date important? >> the date of the federal convention, some people call it the philadelphia convention adjourned and told the country what it had been doing for the previous four months. >> they met -- >> from may through september. >> what did they do in those four months? >> they were supposed to propose amendments to the articles of confederation and that is what it had been caused and authorized to do and instead it proposed and wrote an entirely new plan of government, which is of course our federal constitution. >> who was responsible if one person was responsible for going from amendments to the articles

of confederation to a brand new constitution, who is that person. >> i would have difficulty saying one person. certainly the virginia delegation was the most important and the virginia delegation included george washington. had he not been there, i am doubtful whether the convention would ever have happened. the fact his name was on the virginia delegation, meant that the convention would be and events of significance and encouraged other states to send important degradations as well. and george mason, one of the leading constitutionalists in the country, who wrote the state declaration of rights, and james madison, who we'd like to think of as the father of the constitution, but, god bless the man, he said the title was inappropriate and it was the work of many, many hands.

and it was a very impressive delegation. edmund randolph, the governor. and, this was -- these were -- this was a group of -- >> why was virginia so responsible for this? >> that is an extraordinarily good question. i suspect washington's presence had something to do with it. certainly, mad done who had been in the congress and understood first hand how debilitated the government of the united states was, was an important figure and, there were term limits on congress and madison served his time and was back in the legislature and he was sent back to congress again when his period of being... couldn't serve any more. and, when he went back again, but, i think he was probably one of the most forceful people arguing for it but he couldn't have done that alone.

he had the support of the governor of virginia, who was edmund randolph and i think probably had substantial support of the legislature as well in virginia. >> your book, ratification, opens with september 17, 1787. where does it go follow there? >> well, the book itself starts from there, i have a prelude where i look at the background, because, you know, you couldn't say, now we have to figure out what to do with the constitution, you want to figure out, you know, why there was a constitution, why people thought it was important to do that and i do that through george washington who retired, was at mt. vernon and start with his getting notice of his election to the convention and his effort to get out of it. and, how randolph and others persuaded him or decided that he should go, and this is with my -- this was my way of explaining

the situation of the country and giving an idea about what people were thinking previous to the convention, the country needed. but, once washington gets on his horse and the convention happens, there is a gap, the convention happens, between the prelude and they first chapter. but, once the convention adjourns, you know, all he has given the country is a proposal and the proposal the convention was, again, not authorized to produce. and, if that wasn't nervy enough, they told the country how to ratify this unauthorized constitution. if it had been proposing amendment to the articles of confederation, those amendments would have had to have had congress's approval and the approval of all 13 states. the convention didn't even ask congress to approve it, it submitted it but didn't ask for its approval and said the constitution should be submitted to specially elected

conventions, in the states. and, that when nine states approved it it would go into effect, not even unanimous. so what would happen to the other four states, we'll talk about a reconstituted government which left several members behind? needless to say it was shocking proposal, and, essentially, from that point on, the congress looked at it and, they said what are we supposed to do about it and they debated it and some people said, we should fix it. it's not -- and, they said there were obvious problems and we should -- and they said what do you have in mind and he gave a list of changes and they decided, oh, that is too much and, they simply sent it out to the states, and, one by one over the next ten months or so, the states called conventions and debated the constitution and

decided whether or not they would ratify it and i think, this was the equivalents of the first national election and it is not like the presidential election, clearly, because it didn't happen in one day, it is more like a primary, where you know, one state votes and states had their own peculiar traditio traditions. and what are the iowa caucuses and, you could see, south carolina saying what are they doing in massachusetts and the massachusetts convention was covered fully in the press, throughout the country because people knew it was important and if somebody in south carolina is following an event in massachusetts, knowing their future is tied up with what the vote would be, it is a nationalizing event. and is profoundly exciting and filled the newspapers, the debated over the constitution and the convention, too, were different than the federal convention, which was secret.

they locked the doors and didn't tell anyone and, the delegates said you cannot tell what is going on here until we are done. but the convention were to act in the name of we, the people and you couldn't keep the people out, so, you know, people would crush to hear the debates. >> in the various states. >> did it take two years? >> no, it did not. the ninth state to ratify was new hampshire, june, 1788. at the time new hampshire voted the conventions of both virginia and new york were also meeting. virginia voted soon thereafter, and, new york went to the end of july. and, there was one more convention to meet, north carolina and north carolina voted the end of july not to ratify but propose amendments

tots constitution. so when the constitution, finally in september, 1788, the congress met, and, the confederation congress and declared the constitution ratified and set up the procedures for the first federal elections for the congress and for the president so it took roughly a year, and september 1787 to september 1788, and at that point two states were not in the union, north carolina and rhode island and they came in later, after the government began. >> when did they start saying states rather than colonies? >> i think in 1776. the language is a little confusing, but, they were the united states, appeared in the declaration of independence. >> pauline maier this e-mail is from bob lipa, sports editor for

"the times" review newspaper and you compare it to the world series, in fact... >> i do, yes. >> do you please talk about the role of the press during the colonial period? how influential was the printed word? and how widely read were the papers of the time? also, could you give us your thoughts on ben franklin and the role he played in helping to establish the american press? >> the first one, the press, we speak of the media, there weren't media in the 18th century and that was the press, which was the only communication means to get to a mass audience and of course the audiences were relatively limited, compared to what they are today. and the press -- and these would be published within, within a city or a town. usually the port towns which were often capitals as well though some were published in the interior, and a limit perimeter of circulation and

though, sometimes, if there was a river they would go, you could expand the leadership in that way. but, this was the main way that you could get to a larger audience. than what the voice could carry. and the newspapers are profoundly important and the problem and is a surprise to us and certainly to me in the ratification debates, were how one-sided the press was. most of the newspapers were published by those who wanted the constitution ratified by federalists. who -- why? because they were in port cities. and the port cities were profoundly in favor of the constitution, because they felt a stronger national government would support congress and the laggard economies would start to recover and they'd get business again. they saw their future really tied very intimately with the strengthening of a national

government that could protect american commerce and the whole sea coast is arguably for the constitution and it was difficult for those that saw problems with the constitution, to get their ideas in circulation. and i don't think they did it very successful until october 1787. and still there were only a handful of newspapers that published substantial numbers of criticisms of the constitution. now, franklin had, of course -- of course, his career was tied up with the fact that his brother had been a printer and, in his biography he talks about his father trying to decide what trade she should apprentice yung ben to and finally decides to apprentice him to his brother who had the second newspaper published in the colonies and, at the beginning he was a good writer and retired from active work in the press in the late 1740s. and still had newspapers -- was

like a -- call him a murdoch or -- had several presses he helped set up in other places and got a stream of income from that and that is where he went into politics and did the scientific work and kept his tra in the press. but with the ratification of the constitution, he was the oldest person at the federal convention, and gave a wonderful speech at the end, asking people to pull together, even if they had doubts and his one greatest advice to his countrymen i think which we should all remember, doubt a little of are inf infallibili infallibility. >> 12 newspapers published the essays critical of the ratification, and do you know what the literacy rate then

states was. >> it was high. it was always highest in new england from the beginning, because, people had to read the bible. so, they were taught to read from a very young age and we have substantial -- ordinary farmers and artisans who could read and write in many cases. and it is a little less certain if you are talking about, for example, the back second of the carolinas, but by and large there is substantial evidence people were aware of the arguments, that were being made or, all people read the constitution, and, they had thoughts on this and it helped a lot if they had a previous experience debating excuses, and, states like massachusetts an new hampshire, had state excuses -- you know, in new hampshire's case, had an early

state constitution in place and people in towns debated these and massachusetts didn't get a state constitution until 1780 and they look at one in 1778 and rejected it and also, they were asked to express their opinions on independence the articles of confederation and felt capable of discussing the issues and coming to a decision. >> pauline maier is our guest, a history professor at mit, author of four books, the most recent, called "ratification". tim, palm desert, california, go ahead with your question. >> caller: yes, this is tim johnson, of palm desert. and good afternoon. when we hear people argue for the original reading and the original intent of the constitution, it seems it is usually conservatives who make the argument, almost invariably

they seem to believe that the original intent exactly matches their intent or their own interests. but as you know the authors of the constitution did not share the same intent at all. >> absolutely. >> one might ask can we honor the intent of those at the founding who sought to establish a fair and just society, or are ses stu we stuck with the intent of slave holders and other conservatives, that is my first question. >> we have to leave it there. pauline maier. >> i think the original -- first of all, if you ever look at the literature on the original -- you understand, it is sounding to look like medieval theology. however, now, it is my understanding, people like justice scalia talk about original understanding, not original intents. what they meant to do, doesn't

count for anything if it's not in the words and, it is what the words of the constitution meant. my sense of the original understanding in a broader sense, is that the founders understood very well that the world was going to change. and the constitution had to be adaptive to those changes and even gave us a mode of adjustment called the amendment process, which is in article 5. and they had no idea that they could predict the future, and, they also had no idea slavery would last forever and they did not use the word, slaves, in the constitution, and, they put a 20-year protection on the slave trade and, after that, they understood that it was in all likelihood the -- made illegal. and they anticipated the end of slavery, and, they anticipated that there would be a lot of other changes that would be necessary along the way, in

order to make the constitution serve its basic ambition, which is, of stability, freedom over time. >> bob franklin e-mails, when did the revolutionary war come to be known by that name? >> that is a good question, we debate the term still. it is a revolutionary kind of war, the war for independence? people did speak of the revolution. that is clear. they spoke of their political craft as a revolution, because they were found in a republican, which is a dramatically different form of government than they had been under in the past. did they call it a revolutionary war? i cannot give an authoritative answer because i haven't looked carefully at the terminology used. >> davidson, north carolina, good afternoon to you. >> caller: in your opening

snapshot of the united states, 1775, you left out north carolina. and i needed to bring that up. and i'd like to ask you whether on may20, 1775 the mecklenburg declaration of independent was true or fictitious. >> there is a version of the mecklenburg which is fictional and another version which is accurate. >> what is the mecklenburg declaration. >> it was alleged the freemen of mecklenburg county passed resolutions which called for independence long before the united states did it. in fact, they did take a radical stand and, think it fell short of declaring independence. >> what is the true version. >> the true version is a little more modest than that which was

alleged. >> was there any danger during the ratification process following september 17th, 1787, of some of the states becoming independent nations? was there any real danger? >> there certainly was -- yes. there was a possibility, hadn't ratified, did not come in until it was basically forced to by threat of commercial coercion and maybe congress would pass laws that said anybody who traded with rhode island be subject to severe punishment and would have to pay the revolutionary debt right away. and, it is a tiny little place and they couldn't solve the problem by dividing it between -- invading and dividing it between connecticut and massachusetts. clearly rhode island thought better of taking on the risk and came in, and virginia, patrick henry, and her -- virginia was

the largest state in the union at the time in terms of territory and population, and could have been an independent country and it was, the california of its time, and, he seriously argued virginia could, virginia did have to ratify right away and i don't think they went so far as to say it could be an independent nation and others answered him quickly, arguing that actually virginia needed the union more than the union needed virginia, because it needed help from other places to help defend itself, had a large coast, it had a slave population, didn't have a sufficiently high militia 0 take on its own defense and the arguments of this issue are an important part of the virginia debates. i don't think they wanted to stay out of the union forever. there were a lot of accusations

and then new york, new york went -- the constitution was already ratified by the time new york had to decide what it was going to do and, it was -- a lot of it was arguably a majority, certainly a majority going into the convention. felt that it should be -- rejected or not adopted unless certain changes were made beforehand. so, that was the real problem, that there would be states left out and think of how strange the u.s. would look, without new york or virginia. without rhode island it would have been less of an issue. >> who was patrick henry. >> he was who thomas jefferson called the greatest or ator whoever lived and, we were living in an age of oratory and they didn't have microphones and voice enhancement systems and so a speaker who could project and

could speak dramatically, could command great audiences. i think that is one reason why people were crowded into the conventions, to see the performances of the greatest orators of their day and henry, thomas called him the greatest orator whoever lived and jefferson hated henry. their politics were 180 degrees apart and, he told henry's grand son that his grandfather was a mean-spirited person. >> what did he do for a living. >> he was a lawyer, and henry had a planation that mostly he -- but mostly he made his money by law and jefferson said he wasn't a very good lawyer, either, but obviously he was very effective before jurors. because he was a good speaker. >> speaking of thomas jefferson is it fair to say in american

scripture you call him the most overrated founding father. >> and, people hadn't beaten up thomas jefferson as much as they had beaten him up by now and at that point he was, you know, a god. and i never understood how much jefferson's reputation actually turned on the declaration of independence. it is the cornerstone of his reputation and many americans basically assumed that the declaration is like a piece of legislation, written by jefferson and if it hadn't been for him, you and i would not be created equal and would not have certain inalienable rights and that was the story of the declaration, but it was much more complicated than. >> >> you call him the draftsman and not the editor -- author. >> can anybody be an author of a public document? like the declaration of independence?

he drafted it for a committee that was appointed by congress and, the committee, you know, he told later, he said -- he submitted the draft to the committee and the committee basically said, thomas, that is perfect, just send it to congress, no changes. but the record does not support that, in fact there was a letter he sent to ben franklin who was on the committee and said, i have just shown this draft to the committee, which asked me to make some changes and i've made them and now i'm sending it to you. could you please read it and ut get it back to me by the morning because i have to show it to the committee again and the committee was not passive. the committee intervened with the text. go back a step, when the committee met it seemed likely they discussed what the declaration would say and john adams divided it into articles, what we would say they basically

outlined it and then said to jefferson, okay. now you write it up. we have no support, no second accounts that supports what he said. because nobody was interested in how it was written until almost 50 years later, and other people were dead but it makes sense to me and we have been on committees and can you imagine being on committee to write something and you walk into the room and sit down and you say, peter, you write and now we're off to lunch. you would talk about it and i think the committee did and i am persuaded by john adams' account that this probably is what happened and jefferson never disputed that point. he disputed other things adams said and, we have a committee that outline it and intervened with the text and, asked jefferson to make some changes, before approving it. and sentence to it congress, which after, spent two days

editing the document. jefferson was very uncomfortable while that was going on. his pride of authorship hurt, was injured by all of this. and took off -- huge chunks, heaving clearly proud of. and, produced the document we know and love, and i think most modern readers will say the congress improved the text of the declaration over the jefferson draft. so i would call him a draftsman. he had a lot of help from committee. a lot of good editorial help from the congress and this was as much as the constitution, the work of many hands, no one author. >> next call for professor pauline maier from bill in seattle. thanks for holding, bill, you're on the air. >> caller: good morning, doctor. as a former marine i have to come to the defense of our president jefferson, because he had the stra teenage, nature of the -- strategic nature of the

barbary wars and most americans think between 1783 and 1787, not much happened and we think yorktown happened and the next day we had the constitution. >> absolutely. >> which didn't happen. do you have a book i could read that... talks about the development of the articles of confederation and the whole period between 1783 and 1787. >> bill, thanks, great question. >> the book on the articles of confederation is written at a historian, at the university over wisconsin, merrill jenison and a fine book, jack raykopf of stanford, "the beginnings of national politics" and, they wrote on the congress. >> give us a snapshot, again of 1783 to 1787. what basically occurred and i know that is a huge snapshot. but... >> well, what we have is government under the articles of

confederation after the war is done and the articles had not gone into effect until march 1781. so, mostly, the war was fought under the second continental congress. but without the war forcing the states to come together, and their outside enemy was gone, well, push came to shove and the questi question is, can we hold the nation together and it is no easy thing to do the end articles of confederation, form a flawed national government and the central government had no capacity to tax, all money had to come from the states. they couldn't even put duties on imports. there was an effort to limit the power to tax imports, so there was an independent stream of revenue and it couldn't get the unanimous consent of the states and that failed and it had no

money. no money, those were the two major problems with the articles of confederation. and it defaulted on interest payments on the french loan, and 1787 they could look forward to a big chunk of the principal that had to be paid with what? and, we were only paying off the loan by borrowing more money, and a kind of a bernie madoff-style ponzi scheme and this was not sustainable. and, there were more problems with it. in order to exercise the most important powers the confederation needed the consent of nine states and there weren't nine states represented often in congress. and if there were nine you needed unanimous consent to do anything. and, the state had to have between 2 and 7 delegates though it had only one vote and if maryland had one person on the floor, well, he couldn't vote.

if there were two marylanders and they voted -- had opposite opinions, it was just -- through the went of 1786-87, with the rebellian being fought in massachusetts the confederation congress was incapable of doing anything because it didn't have enough states represented on the floor. didn't have nine states represented until february of '87 and it was designed in a way that turned out no be nonfunctional. and the manus consented to make any change, turned out to be impossible to get, and, certainly, you know, a majority could not rule. so, it needed redesign and this became powerfully clear by 1786 and early 1787. >> may 1787, was that the last gasp to save the country?

>> well, i think people saw it that way. people were terrified and they were terrified by the insurgencies which were, you know, in massachusetts, because the -- >> what was the sheas rebellion. >> an up rising by farmers largely in central and southern mass and started by -- property lines, they had state taxes that were not collected in hard money that they didn't have and were basically unrealistic pressures being put on these people and feared they would lose their farms, and couldn't pay any debts because there was a system of deflation and, there was no separating medium in massachusetts and they couldn't get hard money, because everything -- there was a deficit in trade and they didn't have any gold or silver. and how were they to pay that are taxes and debts?

they couldn't. and they feared that the debtors, the state, tax collectors would bring them into for the court and seize their farms and then how do they support their family and they petitioned for redressive grievances and the legislature decided to be conservative fiscally, and, they said, no, you just pay and then they tried to -- closed the courts, so their funds could not be foreclosed. around ultimately, they -- they rose up against the government. so this was extremely frightening to people, because through their studies of history, they had concluded, a standard rule, that republics failed because of popular unrest. that if the people ruled who will be ruled and if they would not be ruled, well, what happens? what happened is that the better

-- think a strong ruler. think a caesar, in england in the 1650s, would take a cromwell and the french revolution and napoleon though they clearly couldn't know that and saw the sequence played out and feared the republic, would see that as a sign of the failure of the republic and the whole revolution was going to be proven to have been a failure. >> once again, to bill's question, what was the book that you recommended to him. >> merrill johnson on the articles of confederation, wrote a book hope to congress by jake raykopf of stanford. >> and covers the 1783 -- >> covers the congress. basically. >> next call, for professor ball lean mayor, author of "rat fiction", "american scripture", is david, rochester, new york. hi. >> hi, i'm needing "american

scripture" now and is a wonderful book and i'm enjoying it. my question to the doctor is, there is a controversy about how much the iroquois confederates had as a role model for the formation of the united states and what is your opinion on that controversy. >> it is of no significance, you will look hard at madison's notes of the convention, for a reference to iroquois confederacy and i don't think it was of any significance to it at all. >> doctor we have a tweeted question for you. this is from red forest. what was the significance of alexander hamilton's plan to exchange u.s. debt for state debt? >> profoundly important proposal of hamilton and kiosks it went into effect. all of the unrest on the states was in part a response to the taxation of the 1780s, by

states, which were -- they were trying to retire the revolutionary war debt by taxes on land that were a multiple of what they had been before independence. and the people -- what he had proposed, a brilliant idea, was all the state debts would become national debt and they would fund it. and that is, he would fold them all, issue bonds on the united states, paid 4%, rather than i think the 6%, and, you didn't have to pay the principal off immediately and all you had to pay off was the interest. and if he could do that the revenue coming in, from the taxes on imports, plus excise taxes including the unfortunate one on whiskey, but... basically, what he did was to release the states of a component of their budgets which

were the majority of what they were raising money for and when the states no longer had to pay off the revolutionary war debs s and no longer had to impose the repressive taxes, suddenly the country became much more peaceful. >> next call from john in dallas. hi, john. >> caller: hi. i'm reading a book about the history of propaganda in america. >> yes. >> caller: and the author speaks of a massive propaganda machines of woodrow wilson's administration and fdr's and the postwar corporate propaganda machine that thrived ever since. along with the corporate domination of media, campaign financing and lobbying. to the degree that he says we don't truly have participatory democracy any more today. but the engineering of consent by corporate elites, and he says that hamilton might have been a

way the government should be run but, jefferson might have seen it another way. do you have any thoughts on that. >> people were used to sort of -- people trying to sell us things, aren't we? we are used to that. we should have a more sophisticated population now, of educated people and don't take all of this very seriously. i mean, we take these with a grain of salt and discretion and i'm not sure i see that this is as much of a threat to participatory democracy as we would -- one might charge the influence of corporations, i think, are represented in institutions, maybe and of lobbying, maybe -- another issue, to discuss. and, this one -- you ask what the 18th century would have thought and they had to real

experience of this, so, all we can do is put words in their mouths and though they were very concerned with corruption, with having private interests and representative institution, there is no doubt they cared about that and what they would think of the particular form that occurs in our day, most often, a person says what they think, it is another question of their politics being put en to the mouths of people who never understood the situation we face. >> book tv's in-depth program, we are live. barbara, in seattle, you're on with pauline maier:

>> guest: in the spring and early summer of 1776 don't always repeat payne's argument. payne's argument was that the british form of government was flawed and that any reconciliation would yoke us to a flawed constitution and that we should start over. it doesn't have a lot to do with the revolutionary war. i think you may be hig of his -- his writings subsequently in favor of the war, but i think washington -- why did we win the revolutionary war? it wasn't payne so much, it was france. we needed the support of france. without the support of france, we would have a more difficult time predicting victory, i think, or explaining victory. >> host: who was tom payne? >> guest: tom payne was an englishman who came to the united states only in november

1774. his life had sort of gone nowhere. he was the son of a stay maker who made those stiff little things in women's corsets that they then tightened. his father did this for a profession, but he was trained to it, left it, became a tax collector -- >> host: in england. >> guest: in england because it's, basically, union organizing. ended up coming to the united states for a new start on life after two failed marriages and went to pennsylvania, became an editor and, my goodness, a little over a year after he arrived he published this pamphlet, "common sense," which suddenly got americans talking about independence which had been the forbidden topic, basically. everybody wanted to deny that this was where they were going. suddenly, he made a positive argument for it. and also laid down a plan for

how we could go forward, how if we were going to found a new government, we might design it. so i think of "common sense" as a transitional document. it ends -- it doesn't end, but it marks the beginning, almost the end of the debate over who's responsible in england, can we ever, you know, patch things up and go on. basically, he says, that's a very bad idea. and then the whole new debate that came in with how do we design our own institutions, how do we write constitutions, how do we design the governments that are outlined in constitutions? and that became the whole new issue. >> host: professor, did "common sense" get out into the public organically, or did somebody take it and really push it? >> guest: oh, it just went through the country like wildfire. i mean, people were reading it. we have letters from members of congress who went home and came back and all along the road they

see people in the taverns, in the coffeehouses were reading it and talking about it. it's difficult to get concrete figures on how many copies of the pamphlet were actually published, but it was clearly america's first bestseller. and, of course, any one copy, you can read it in half an hour, and then you give it to your friends. so how many people read any one copy, there's another issue. clearly, it was enormously influential. >> host: chris smith tweets in to you, was there a global audience for the declaration? who was listening, and who was with inspired to political action from it? >> guest: as i have argued, i think the declaration was meant primarily for an american audience. there are historians who disagree with this, but as i look at the way that congress dealt with it, i think that argument is justified. it was, however, sent abroad, and it was reprinted in the

press. a whole series of american revolutionary documents were collected including the first state constitutions and translated and published in france. it's clear there was an international audience that was interested in what was going on in the united states, and the declaration was one of a whole series of revolutionary documents that a attracted their attention. >> host: another tweet, this is from a.j. jones. what book would you recommend for a bright high school grad joining the army? >> guest: depends -- joining the army. depends on what this bright high school grad is interested in reading. [laughter] of course, i recommend "american scripture," you know? or "ratification." >> host: if a.j. jones picked up "american scripture," what would they learn?

>> guest: "american scripture" tells the story, essentially, of the last stages in the development of american independence. it talks about the -- the first chapter gives the background to the document itself -- >> host: to the declaration of independence. >> guest: right. and how people, you know, the chronology of it. it also, the second chapter looks at some of the local documents. i mean, what was the documentary history of it? the great discovery that's in the book, probably the greatest contribution to scholarly knowledge of the topic was my discovery of all these local documents that towns wrote, what they thought about independence. massachusetts is probably the most dramatic because the end of may 1776 the legislature asked the towns to debate the following proposition: should the congress decide for the safety of the united colonies to

declare their independence of britain? would you, the inhabitants of the towns, be willing to support that decision with your lyes and for-- lives and fortunes? the that isn't just a graceful way of putting it. it u it -- everybody understood that the punishment for treason was death and confiscation of the state. so lives and fortunes meant are you willing to risk the punishment for treason? and the towns debated this very seriously, and some just, you know, said, sure or no. hardly any said no. but several of them explained why they had come to the decision. and those are, those are wonderful documents. and then i discovered there were others from counties in virginia, in south carolina -- >> host: multiple declarations. >> guest: many of them, statements, and so we get the voice of the people in a way we wouldn't. and they're interesting to compare to the language of the

declaration of independence. >> host: from your first book, "resistance to revolution," you write: the colonists were emotionally and intellectually unprepared for war and a potential withdrawal from the empire. >> guest: yes, yes, yes. >> host: jay in asheville, north carolina, you're on booktv's "in depth" program. this month, professor pauline maier of mit. >> caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. most high school students that i talk to don't know anything at all about the american revolutionary period. they don't know anything about really pivotal military leaders like nathaniel green, daniel morgan, even washington himself. and what a bitter struggle it was. my question is, why do you think

this portion of american history is so abysmally neglected in public schools? and i'll take my answer off the air, thank you. >> guest: well, is it always abysmally neglected in public schools? i think american history in general is not taught terribly well, but there are some extremely bright spots not necessarily on the revolutionary war. i've become aware of a national competition called we, the people, where high school students understand the constitution and issues that are related to it, to the whole documentary tradition of the revolution with amazing fist caix. i gather the program is in some funding peril at present, but i, you know, there are bright spots like this. but, you know, on the whole the tradition has been to have history taught by, you know,

coaches. they always say the first name of your history teacher is always coach, and they keep one chapter ahead of the kids. you have to know the history better than that in order to make it interesting, i think. >> host: this e-mail, by the way, if you'd like to call in and talk with the professor, 202 is the area code, 737-00 o 1 in the east or central time zones, 737-0002 mountain and pacific time zones. this is from jan in boise, idaho. i've never been able to get an explanation of why and how madison evolved from being a co-author of the federalist papers to being a staunch republican. what am i missing? i don't think it's as simple as jefferson's influence on him. i really hope you take my question because i've been passionate about american history all my life, and this has puzzled me for years no matter how much i read on the subject. >> guest: well, one problem -- i guess what she's really trying to get at is why this strong supporter of the constitution

could become a critic of the federalists in power during the 1790s. and i think -- well, first of all, the federalist, we misunderstand the federalists. glses who were the federalists? >> guest: well the federalists, sometimes called the federalist papers, are a series of essays that appeared during the ratification debates in the newspapers. they were written by john jay, by james madison and by alexander hamilton. they are often taken as the essence of everything that was said during the ratification debates on the constitution or the most profound analysis of the constitution that emerged during that time. in fact, they were relatively ineffectual with regard to swinging votes. they were not circulated very broadly until they appeared in book form in the spring of 1788 when most of the states had already met.

that was late in the game. i think it did have some influence at that point, but rell thetively less. it did have some influence in new york. it was written primarily for new york which was a swing state where the opposition was very strong. now, it did not equal jay plus madison plus hamilton. publius with was a fictional character, so what he said wasn't always what the writers honestly believe. and i think this is particularly the case with ham hamilton. and the views changed in the 1790s in some of the debates you'd see. madison and hamilton were taunting each other with passages from the federalist which were inconsistent with their current politics. but the real thing with madison, i think he expected -- he really believed that power was, would

almost automatically go down to the states. he saw no real danger of having a centralized government that seemed to be a threat to the freedom of the people. and he changed prison view, certainly -- changed his view dramatically by the time of the alien and sedition acts and went the other way. so i think it's really the development of national politics in the 1790s that made madison rethink some of his assumptions that he had expressed in the federalist papers and elsewhere, to see a danger in national government he had not anticipated. >> host: your second book, "the old revolutionaries: political lies in the age of samuel adams," why did you write this book? >> guest: i wrote this book because after "resistance to revolution" i remained a little unsatisfied. i mean, i could explain the course of politics, i could

explain, i thought, reasonably well why it was that americans had come to embrace independence. but i didn't think i really knew them personally, and i wanted to look at some of the individuals who were in that earlier story more closely and try to understand what they did and how they differed from each other and why they took the political courses that they took. >> host: who was samuel adams? is. >> guest: samuel adams was with probably the leading massachusetts politician of the period before independence. >> host: so the 1750s, 1760s? >> guest: well, he was of an older generation, so actually he was active in the 1750s and then in the 1760s i think became a clerk of the massachusetts legislature. he was a boston tax collector. but his, he was mostly important in the boston town meetings and became, he proposed and was the

chair of the boston committee of correspondence which was formed in 1772 and then carried on correspondence with the town. now, one earlier, a viewer, an earlier caller asked about the newspapers. it was a caller. newspapers didn't always circulate to all the towns, so if you wanted people to be joining the resistance, they had to know what was to be resisted. so what the boston committee of correspondence did was to establish contact with the towns and then tell them what was going on and encourage people to discuss these and to respond in an appropriate way. in this way he managed to get massachusetts rell -- relatively united in its politics. >> host: who was isaac sears? >> guest: he was a member of the resistance movement in massachusetts. he came from -- new york city. but he was a sea captain, and in

new york that was extremely important politically. there isn't a boston town meeting. he was the son-in-law, actually, of the owner of a very popular tavern, jasper drakes. and this, too, gave him, you know, access to a large part of the pop husband that would go into these taverns and talk and fight and argue. but sea captains were very influential over all the sailors. they looked up to them and, you know, he was a big supporter of the revolution, and it was interesting to see what a different kind of a role he played in the development of independence. >> host: henry, in miami. good afternoon to you. >> caller: good afternoon professor maier. my question concerns john marshall. we all know he was central as a federalist and nationalist on the supreme court, but i'm curious about his role in the

ratification. >> host: all right, henry, thank you. >> guest: well, john marshall was in the virginia ratifying convention and, clearly, the young john marshall was already highly respected by his, his fellow delegates. he did speak up, he was in favor of ratification and, indeed, in some ways he -- pardon me. he defended article iii. on the court. >> host: and we'll let the professor, who's been talking, now, for about an hour and 17 minutes very general generously, we'll let her get a sip of water, anything else you wanted to add about the john marshall? >> guest: his memory of the ratification turned out to be extremely important. in an important case of the 1830s, baron v. baltimore. this was a case that had to do with whether the states were bound by the fifth amendment.

and in the case, pardon me, marshall basically said the whole of the rights amendment -- we would say ten, but certainly one through eight are specified specific amendments, bound only the federal government. and he said this on the basis of his memory of the ratification debates. i would argue that the words of the amendment do not support that. so it was a decision of lasting significance because it means we needed the 14th amendment in order to make the first eight binding on the states through separate court decisions. >> host: our next call comes from doug in aberdeen, south dakota. hi, doug. >> caller: hi. dr. maier, wondering if you could comment, please, on colonial script, the currency used between the colonies at the time. finally, i believe it's article x specifically p demand withing

the use of silver and specify being exactly what the monies for the nascent nation would be and, finally, the coin act of 1792 and the penalties thereof. thank you. >> guest: oh, you raise a very large, complicated issue. in the colonial period, the states did often issue paper money. look, they needed paper money. you needed a circulating medium, otherwise, you know, how do you, how do you have economic exchanges by barter? and you cannot have a specialized economy on the basis of barter. the difficulty was that sometimes the currency lost value, and the british ultimately said that they couldn't pass, that the states could not issue legal tender currency, and this is one of the big grievances. but in some states they held value, and they supported the economies quite well. later in the colonial period,

after independence, pardon me, this became an issue again. i mean, the states issued paper money, or they did not. and there was a tremendous fear that they were issued, that they would lose value as continental currency had lost value in the early years of the war and that they were simply a means of trying to defraud creditors. that is, if you negotiated a death, say, in -- a debt in sterling, and the debtor tried to pay it off with depreciated paper money, well, the creditor might, you know, come out having lost a great deal of money on this particular transaction. article i, section 10 which has limits on the state said the states could issue no money except gold and silver as legal tender. this was one of the reasons why states like rhode island were very hesitant to ratify.

they had issued a fair amount of paper currency, and they had no idea what its status would be once the constitution went into effect. >> host: we have two teachers who have tweeted and e-mailed you. >> guest: okay. >> host: this is from stan brown of macon, georgia. just a comment rather than a question. your contributions to the pbs series on the american revolution, "liberty," are so wonderful. i use that in my high school u.s. history classes. >> guest: that's wonderful. >> host: and this tweet is from a middle school history teacher. it seems it is not possible to determine original intent. your thoughts, please, and that's from chris. >> guest: well, depends on what you mean by original intent. as i've said earlier, scalia said he is not interested in original intent, that is that he's not interested in what people meant to say which is very difficult to determine. but in what they say in the meaning of the words of a given statute.

i think, i think that it is useful to look, for jurists to look at what either the drafters or the ratifiers said about given provisions of the constitution. there you can, i think, find information that is of use. there is no original intent, there is no original understanding of the constitution as a whole, but usually the questions are much more specific. and you can find some information, but i see no reason to think that we are bound to understand those or to continue the provisions, to say precisely what people originally thought. as i've said earlier, i think the original understanding was that the constitution would be adapted over time to changing circumstances that the founders knew they could not anticipate, and that's why we have the amendment process. >> host: you've worked on textbooks for high school or

middle school level. >> guest: right. >> host: if you were to -- what do you think middle school and high school kids should know about the revolutionary period? >> guest: well, i think it's extraordinarily important that they should understand what the revolution tried to accomplish. and have some idea of the revolutionaries' origins of our current institutions. you know, it came to me as epiphany in writing "ratification" that most americans had not even read the constitution. perhaps they'd read it in high school, but they hadn't read it since then. now, there are those that say, well, that's for lawyers and courts to decide, but certainly the ratification itself gives us a very different read on that. but to put it into effect, americans knew it inside out, they read it carefully. we had the debates on the local level. i mean, this is our government. if we're going to decide whether

it's acting legitimately or illegitimately, if it's acting consummate with the ideals we hold or whether it is, you know, being true to the documents that we, the people, have enacted. it helps a lot to know what we enacted. of i mean, this is just civics, isn't it? i think we have neglected this over much in our educational system. >> host: what's the relationship between the declaration of independence and the constitution? is. >> guest: well, the declaration of independence ended the old regime. it said britain had no more power to govern us. and with that the states went about enacting their own constitutions, that is their alternative governments that would be for the states themselves. the constitution, ultimately, was a -- the constitution was a similar government for the national scale. the articles of confederation

had provided us a form of national government that proved to be wholly inadequate, a kind of a league of nations of sovereign states. and finally, we created a government whose authority itself was founded on popular consent and that could enforce its authority on the people directly. >> host: ron in seattle, thanks for holding. you're on with professor pauline maier of mit. >> caller: thank you very much for taking my call. before i get to my question, i'd like to make a comment on an earlier question and response. dr. maier, you may recall in an earlier interview regarding the neglect of the american revolution that even professor alan taylor in his multicultural book on the american colonies which however valuable you said virtually ignores the revolution itself. [laughter] so i think that might be one reason. but beyond that, i'll get to my question. in the opening paragraph of the

book, your mentor and ph.d. adviser bernard baylin said the revolutionary's background constitutes an important chapter in american intellectual history and emphasized the importance of periodically challenging prior interpretations based on new evidence. in that book and in his subsequent work, he articulated a fresh viewpoint that has become known as the ideological interpretation. and from my reading of your first book, the old vintage paperback, you further elaborated on this quote-unquote real league restrained revolutionary viewpoint. so i'd like to ask you to, one, briefly summarize for the audience this ideological interpretation and, two, now four decades later in the spirit of those earlier calls for continuing fresh interpretations, if you have modified those viewpoints at all, especially in the light of dr. t.r. breen's recent book, the marketplace of revolution: how consumer politics shaped

american independence which includes a critique of the ideology school. i'll take my -- i'll stay on the line. >> host: thank you. and if you lost any of that, fortunately, ron also sent an e-mail. >> guest: yes. well, that's a heavy question and a couple parts. first of all, the ideological interpretation of the revolution. we should go back a few steps and say at mid century several prominent historians had argued that the writings of the revolution were propaganda, that is that they weren't sincere statements of beliefs, but they were efforts to manipulate the public, to pull them into a resistance movement that was largely self-serving or that served their private interests. in the 1950s or '60s, a couple of historians and actually then a larger army of historians, basically, came to the conclusion that that really wasn't true, that the arguments made sense and that they developed not as an effort to

pull in the public, but that they had a logical spine. and so the whole literature of the revolution was opened up again for serious study. when i teach the revolution, i take the students through the pamphlet literature of the revolution, and we see how thought was changing in a relatively logical forum. this also included the discovery of the colonists' attraction for a particular tradition in english thought which went back to the glorious revolution of 1688-'89. that is the whole basic what we call lockian ideas although they come from a whole panoply of writers that the colonists were reading; that government is based on concept, on contract, that -- consent on contract, that governors and rulers are appointed by the people to serve their rends ends, and if they don't protect their rights and their security, they have a

right to be replaced. or -- and, indeed, it would justify limited resistance to unjustified acts of authority as well as revolution if things went to a more extreme stage. these ideas were expressed broadly in the colonists, and i think it made sense in the literature once again. now, what do i think about this? well, you know, i think this -- what i thought was wonderful about this was that it got us away from our historically reading the -- our historical understandings of the revolution. we could get within the shoes, within the mindset of people who were looking at unfolding events, and we could understand in their terms why they responded in ways that we might not have responded. that is, they were very sensitive to issues that we might not be sensitive about, and be it was important to understand the revolution in

terms of those, of course, who lived through it and who accomplished it. all right. tim breen's marketplace of revolution. i, it's been a few years since i read it carefully. i did look at it again since i saw your e-mail before this program. basically, i didn't find tim breen's argument persuasive. i thought that one of the failures of the book was its, it was breen's unwillingness to look carefully at the ideology of the revolution, if you will, or at least the assumptions that a colonist took from it about how one resisted authority. i thought that he could have explained the nonimportation associations, for example, more persuasively if he'd seen them in that context. that is, what the colonists were interested in doing is finding a nonviolent way of posing britain. of opposing britain. nonimportation or commercial boycotts were one way of doing that. in fact, that's very relevant today.

you know, we see so many of these insurgencies in the middle east who are influenced by the writingings of gene sharp who talks about nonviolence as a way that you can move from dictatorship to democracy. well, the circumstances of the colonists who were, of course, very different, but i was struck in looking through sharp's lists of nonviolent techniques how many of them the colonists had actually employed. they understood that violence, gratuitous violence at least simply alienated people. and they were, they looked for ways you could bring pressure to change policies without the use of violence. and it allowed them to coordinate their support at home, not alienating people who they might otherwise alienate, and they did not eshoo for us, but they needed to answer for it and that the rule of law should be held up to the extent possible. so i think a little more

attention to the thought and the assumptions of the revolutionaries would have made tim breen's work stronger. >> host: and very quickly, who was bernard baylin? >> guest: bernard baylin was a leading professor of history at harvard, the man who whereon a pulitzer prize-winning book called the ideological origins of the late revolution in, i think, 1968. >> host: roger in burbank, you've been holding on for a long time. go ahead with your question. >> caller: thank you so much. the word "ideology" has come up, but i'm wondering if role of history or the historian has changed. and by that it seems to me there were charges that professors and eggheads had rewritten american history, and now it seems conservatives are rewriting the history i grew up in. [laughter] i'm just wondering, maybe i should say i thought the role of

a historian was to try to discover what really happened. but now it seems to be history as a means of furthering an ideological agenda. i wonder if you could comment on that, thank you. >> guest: well with, you and i are of a mind. i mean, i like to write a history that is true to the document that tried to tell the story in it own terms. i read the work of other historians not so much to see if i can make an argument against them or for them, but to see what they learned that is of help in adding to my understanding of the past. in "ratification" i worked very closely with a new set of documents that are being published out of the university of wisconsin, the documentary history of the ratification of the constitution, but they have not covered all the states, and even for the states that they do cover there is, there is some literature that is of relevance, and i just tried to use what i, what i could of them.

i made a very conscious decision in "ratification" to say nothing about its contemporary significance. i have some of my convictions, of course, on what it means for some issues that are important today, but i wanted the book to be what it was always meant to be, and that is a history, to tell the story. and like most stories, people can draw different significance out of it. but it isn't one that was shaped by my politics. i'd like to believe it was shaped by the documents i've studied. >> host: how is it that the university of wisconsin, the wisconsin historical society -- >> guest: yes. >> host: -- got ahold of all these original documents? who started that process, and is this material available online? >> guest: they have -- some of it is. they have, meryl jensen who wrote the book on the articles of the confederation that i mentioned earlier was a major historian and of a progressive, a progressive tradition.

one of those that was interested in socioeconomic determinants of politics, but he wasn't confined by that. i mean, he had a wonderful book on the founding of a nation which is sort of my bible if i want to know precisely what the stamp act said or precisely what the townsend duty said. he was meticulous in his faithfulness to the details of the historical record. and he founded a whole series of these documentary records books. and the documentary history of the ratification of the constitution is the one that seems to me of potentially the greatest significance, although there are others, also, of importance. he started it. it's been carried on by john kaminsky in a serious of other wonderful editors, rich leffler -- >> host: all at the university of wisconsin. >> guest: all there. and he had, the project has the advantage of having seniority, people who have worked all of their careers on this.

what they have done is to send -- where they deal with the ratification history in a certain state they'll send teams in, and they go through the archives, they go through the newspapers, they'll go through local libraries that have relevant documents. they'll survey the towns, see what kinds of documents they can get there. they pull them all together, transcribe them, order them and publish them. and this is a fuller documentary record than we've ever had before. what we had was really flawed and biased. the reports of debates even in the state conventions were often taken by federalists or published by federalists, often they had certain biases in them. now we also have letters, we have other delegates' notes, we have newspaper accounts, and so we're not so dependent on any one authority, one source on

what happened in these conventions. it's opened up the summit entirely -- subject entirely. but it's out of -- they just started this, and they've kept doing it. they still have five states to cover, and then they're going to work on the origins of the o bill of rights, and i think see if they can find some more documents on the state level to do this. now, you ask, are they available online? is some are available online. i think on the site of the state historical society of wisconsin, i think montana is up. -- massachusetts is up. i don't know that the other states are yet up. there are five volumes on new york. this is, this is serious stuff. but it's fascinating. >> host: our guest this month on "in depth," professor pauline maier of mit. she is the author of four books on the revolutionary period. "from resistance to revolution"

and "ratification." we have an hour and a half of live television to go with her, and we'll be right back.

and he had been a president, of course, this is looking at his later career. he was -- one member of the congress was elected to preside over it. you know, it was the president of the continental congress was not like the president of the united states. he was a presiding officer. hancock was also the president of the massachusetts ratifying convention although he did not attend until the end. he had a serious case of gout. he was home suffering until, finally, a political deal was cut, and he discovered that he could overcome the pain and appear. >> host: this is booktv on c-span2. this is our monthly in depth program. our guest, mit professor pauline maier, and we're discussing the revolutionary period in american history. 202 is the area code.

737-0001 if you'd like to participate from the east and central time zones. 7347-0002 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you have a question that you'd like to call in. you can also send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or send us a tweet, twitter.com/booktv. next call for professor maier comes from william in manhattan beach, california. william, thanks for holding. you're on the air. >> caller: thank you. and, professor maier, and i want to know how you say your name, that's first. [laughter] you're a national treasure, thank you, madam. >> guest: well, thank you, thank you. i say maier because i inherited the pronunciation from the family of my husband to whom i will soon be married for 50 years. so, you know, at this point it would seem to me to change the pronunciation would be an act of hostility. however, i will say i answer to meyer as well, and two of my daughters have chosen to

pronounce it meyer, so it gets a little confusing in this family. >> caller: maier it is, and i have two quick questions. on booktv a year or two ago i saw a gentleman talking about his book that put the american revolution as much on the -- [inaudible] and the constitution, he put it in perspective worldwide and said that the american revolution was small potatoes worldwide at that time. and secondly, don't you think the way to change a constitution is to amend it and not have the supreme court rewrite it? thank you. ghg is the constitution -- >> guest: is the constitution and the american revolution of global significance? you know, i think so. we founded the first modern republic. this was a very dangerous thing to do, or it seemed very dangerous in 1776. republics are everywhere now. we have the world's first written constitutions, even written constitutions have become an item in politics worldwide.

not universal, but certainly this is, they're not unique to the united states anymore. so it seems to me very clear that this is part of a world narrative, not simply our national politics. and what was the other part of -- >> host: about amending the constitution? >> guest: oh, amending the constitution. this is extremely interesting. i kept saying this is the way the founders expected the document to be daytimed over time. adapted over time. maybe it's become too difficult. i mean, you think about it, we managed to ratify ten by 1791, what we call the bill of rights although that terminology came in later, and after that we now have 27, so 17, but take off two because one enacts prohibition, and one undoes prohibition, so that means 15 in 200 years. well, more than that, 220 years. that's very few. really. is it because we respect

constitutional stability? i think that's part of it. or maybe that the process is just too difficult. you need a two-thirds vote in either congress or a special convention which is not a chosen mode of proposing amendments, and then the consent of three-quarters of the states. this, like the procedure for electing the president, was written before the development of a two-party system. the 11th amendment took care of the difficulty with terms of the presidential election because of the emergence of a two-party system, but the amendment process may be too difficult. i don't know. i haven't really made up my mind. but it's clear we've made very few and that the court itself, the questioner is absolutely right that we have been much more changing -- that that it'se court more than the amendment

process which has been changing the constitution. and now, you know, of course with all the talk about originalism, putting the brakes on that as well. but it certainly is clear to me that the founders were not so sill crouse to think the document they wrote that enacted an understand anything the 18th century was going to work for all time. they knew it would have to be adapted, or it could be replaced. many state constitutions have already been replaced. by 1787. so, you know, we have not chosen to do that. massachusetts still has its revolutionary constitution, but it has a little book like this of amendments. >> host: pauline maier, who's mr. pauline maier? [laughter] >> guest: i don't think he would answer to that. charles maier is a professor of history, does european history at harvard university. >> host: when did you first get interested in american history like this? at this level? >> guest: well, i went to

college as a -- i thought i was going to be a political science major. i was interested in journalism and in government and so on, and i took early government courses, i was at radcliffe which is now harvard but was a women's college that was with harvard. and somehow my mind did not work well with political science. they made great leaps of assumptions, and i need -- somehow my mind needs to have the points spelled out as you go from a to b. and then i started to taking history, and i just loved it. it was exciting to me. and the wonder, i had the wonderful joy of working in harvard's widener library with, you know, stacks and stacks of books and sources and, you know, to me to sit there in a stall in the widener library with the sun pouring in and all these books reading this wonderful stuff, to me this was heaven. and i thought, you know, the

idea that i could spend my life doing this was just beyond belief. and, you know, i have done it. i still work in widener library. it's, it has been the joy of my life. >> host: where did you grew up, and who were your parents? >> guest: i grew up in st. paul, minnesota, and my father, irvin, who is alive at 97 in st. paul was a st. paul city fireman. and my mother was, she was a housewife who raised five children, and she died in november 2009 and it's much regretted, but she lived to be 92. they are long-lived people, and we have a strong family, and i am the only one that left minnesota. >> host: did you you up with books and reading and learning? >> guest: i have a memory as a child of going to the library and bringing home a pile of books to read.

i mean, this was something we did. it was part of our, you know, we did. but i can't say that my family was a family of readers. neither of my parents were college educated. i think my mother or read novels and read magazines, i think my father probably read the newspaper but, you know, he was a -- he was a fireman, and he fixed refrigerators in the his spare time. he didn't have a lot of time. they went fishing, and they gardened, and they did all of those kinds of things. but they were very supportive of education. my father never went to college and always regretted that he hadn't gone to college. and so he was intent that his children would be able to do what he had not been able to do, and i was the oldest. so i was the first to get the benefit of all of his encouragement. and was lucky enough to get support to go to radcliffe which nobody had heard of in my immediate circle. it was a total fluke.

[laughter] that i found out about it. and managed to go there. and, obviously, went on to graduate school, married when i finished, had a fulbright scholar and married in england charles maier and then went back to graduate school. >> host: what was -- >> guest: i've been doing history ever since. >> host: what was the fluke? >> guest: well, the fluke was that i went to -- this is a longer story than you really want to hear. i had been part of a program by the american legion auxiliary for girls' state where girls in high school went and they reenact government. and i'd run for governor and lost, and the girl who won, i met her at a reunion, and she was going to a radcliffe tea that afternoon. and did i want to come along? and i went along. and asked questions which they noticed. [laughter] mainly because i'd never heard of this place, you know?

[laughter] and they recruited actively. >> host: pauline maier's our guest. john in tupelo, mississippi. hi, john. >> caller: i'd like to ask professor maier and, first of all, she's spell binding in her explanations. but nowadays there's a lot of discussion about the separation of church and state, and so i would like to have her explain do we really believe that this is a christian country that is founded upon christianity and whether or not the founding fathers would approve of what's going on today. thank you. >> host: professor maier. >> guest: all right. well, the one point where this issue came up in the ratification of the constitution concerned the provision that there would be no religious tests for office.

and this caused a considerable amount of concern among some people. north carolina and new hampshire, for example, had provisions in their state constitutions that only protestants could hold office. pennsylvania state constitution of 1776 said people's religion, religious believes would not effect their civil rights. however, to sit in the legislature you had to swear that you thought both books of the bible were the revealed word of god which, of course, effectively excluded jews. the founders, clearly, had moved on to another place that there would be no religious tests for office, and there were those that thought this was very dangerous. i think that their idea of religious freedom -- and we have to remember this was an intensely protestant country in the 18th century -- they feared catholic domination. they thought of the story of the

hugh nots, they thought of the salzburgers. puritans had an old anti-catholic tradition. the founders really were having none of this, and at one convention after another if some rural delegate often questioned the provision on the lack of religious qualifications for office, somebody stood up, interestingly, often a clergyman and said that was precisely the way it should be, that we should have a level playing field, and whoever the people chose to select for office the people should be able to choose. and i was very struck because the opposition would say, well, we would get what they called catholics or muslims by our language, and it made no difference at all. the constitution is not a constitution for an exquisitely catholic country. it is the constitution for a

country where religious beliefs are irrelevant to people's civil identity, i think. >> host: laura monroe from cleveland, ohio. e-mail. the map of the colonies in the introduction to your book shows the colony borders extending all the way to the mississippi river, land that was later purchased in the louisiana purchase. ..

>> guest: i will confess. i can't answer this in any detail. there's a great deal that i haven't followed. >> host: who was he? >> guest: connecticut, yes. he was involved in the diplomatic corps, and there was a lot of questions of spies. >> host: okay. two questions, to e-mails, professor maier about canada. this one is from michael o'grady of california. why did the 13 colonies break away from england when canada didn't? and secondly, along the same line, why didn't canada join in the effort for independence from britain? >> guest: canada was of course primarily french. and it was settled by the french and it remained french until

after the french and indian war. that is in 1763, britain acquired canada. why didn't it come into the american revolution? well, the greater part of the people in canada in that part where french and they were catholic. and i've already expressed the rather powerful anti-catholic sentiment is very important in the 13 colonies. i could understand very well the french canadians didn't want to come into this revolution. the canada we know was people who went to nova scotia, some went to québec, largely. so it was a result of the revolution that the canada we know is predominantly a british loyalist. empire loyalists. and subsequently there was something called -- canada

invited in to settle their territory. you can well imagine a population that had a substantial component of loyalists might not have been the most excited about joining the united states. >> host: to e-mails about slavery. this is from noel in fairfield connecticut. can you tell how many and which philadelphia convention delegates were also slaveholders? and from tim anderson in michigan, there were several are divisive issues discussed at the constitutional convention, particularly slavery? what kept the convention together with those controversial issues? why didn't the states walk out of the convention instead of compromising? >> guest: i have not seen a precise count of how many members of the convention had slaves. we know that it was the most important institution.

south carolina, georgia, virginia, maryland. benjamin franklin was raised in a family that had slaves. he didn't have them i believe at this point in time, but people had experience with the institution. why didn't this -- well, why, one thing, why did they get votes based on the basis of the slave population? basically because south carolina and georgia insisted that there be recognition of slaves, or they weren't going to join the union. and then other said representation for a percentage of the slave population you will encourage increased, and those were morally contemptible. which is why they limit -- they went into the slave trade for 20 years. they just didn't want this over them.

there was hostility towards slavery in the convention. the result said why are we represent slaves? is it because they are people or property? if they are property, why are we represent slaves? these issues came up and were debated passionately. the constitution itself is a bundle of compromises. as madison said, we have allowed the slave trade to go on for 20 years, two in georgia and south carolina in the union. george mason said, and he's a virginian, he said we should have let them go. he thought that the continuation of the slave trade was a mistake, although he himself was a slaveholder, that slavery itself was on republican and todd habits that were incompatible with the health of the republic. cigarette credits of slavery even within what we think of as slave states at the time of the

ratification of the constitution. there's no real simple issue. all right, how did they overcame their differences? they overcame them by compromise. we know this. there are a whole series of compromises. the compromise over representation, delaware said we could agree to nothing that violates the equal representation of the states. delaware. you know, shock, pennsylvania through most of the colonial period which it shared together. when they thought it through, new jersey join, other states join. via the compromise what we know. equal representation of the states and popular representation in the lower house. there were those who thought this was an atrocity. it was james madison who thought this was a violation of the republican principle that all representation should be in

proportion to the population. so there's one compromise. then the compromise is over slavery. indeed, that commercial boat would not need a two-thirds vote they would pass a commercial legislation, simple majority. and in return, arguably the south got some protections for the slave institution. now, what does it mean? at the end of the convention nobody thought the constitution was perfect. and if you look at the final days of the constitution, one person after another say well, this is not what i'd hoped for. hamilton says nothing, madison wrote jefferson this will never work. it's not going told the union together. franklin gives his speech saying i don't like a lot either but i'm not sure we can get anything better. we should pull together.

what they said was this is the best we can get under the circumstances. and those who supported the transitory pull together to get it ratified as written for fear that any changes the whole thing would simply unravel. and that could be adapted over time and improved over time by the amendment process. so we look at this as saying, you know, the creation of men were brilliant and anyone who walked the face of the earth before, i don't think the record really supports that. between 1787-70 and 88, the constitutional serving not that i compared it was a punching bag. people said was the most shocking negative things about it. but once it was ratified, the country pulled together behind it. i mean, you started -- people thinking as if it was divine origin. and people like smith in new

york, they can't believe this is happening. it very quickly took on that, you know, sacrosanct quality. >> host: you write and record as saying these are ordinary men doing extraordinary things. >> guest: and we still have people who could do extraordinary things if they are called upon to do it. john adams said beautifully in the 1820s in a letter to a younger american, best i can tell, your generation, my generation was no better than yours. in fact, he said shockingly there weren't that many talented people in the generation 1776. so it's much easier together, to make a reputation. and he said that there are more people with college degrees, more educated people, the population had increased. so there were more people, and

even a given percentage of highly capable people and clearly the numbers were greater. i think in some ways the founders had more faith and posterity than posterity sometimes had expressed in itself. >> host: were any of the founding fathers harvard grads? >> guest: yes. there were some. now, who do you include in -- turn this around now. do you include only those who were in the -- >> host: those that i have heard a. >> guest: oh, yes. the roof came down. there were, certainly there were. now, you count john adams? john adams of certain important in designing the constitution of the united states. he was not at the said convention. in massachusetts, i'm very proud

of my chapter on -- chapters on massachusetts because it made such a lovely story i think i had a count of the main delicate who traveled to boston, i think there's nothing to get you a better sense of how much, how the passage of time, that to explain what it took to get from maine to boston. we can drive it in a couple of hours. it took them a week, and that he had to figure out who would take care of his horse during the convention. as they say it makes the trip to boston child's play. and then taking home at the end. and the debates themselves were so rich and so tense because it wasn't clear what the vote was going to be. and the federalists, the federalists didn't want any votes until they knew that it

was going to be in their favor so they were avoiding votes. they did want the opposition to be that strong. this was excited and i could book in debt with -- but often they said the federalists said, the critics of the constitution were uneducated, sort of rural -- what you would call it, you know, hicks. and they are often farmers. but they also had a number of people who counted as educated in terms of the 18th century. they had a handful of harvard graduates among them. that's what it meant in massachusetts. >> host: and if you're interested in that texture view of the times, holly near an american scripture also recounts the journey down from boston of john hancock or from massachusetts of john hancock and john adams together as they

come down for the second can't know congress on july 4, 1776, declaration of independence. tenet in connecticut, you've been very patient. banks are holding. you on with professor pauline maier. >> caller: professor maier, everybody has seen that famous picture of george washington standing crossing the delaware. but i don't think most people understand how an incredibly brave and critical that move was. don't you think it's entirely not only impossible but even likely that without trenton and without princeton there might not even be a united states of america today? >> guest: absolutely critical. david isby wonderful job of describing washington's crossing in his book with that title. and we also, they could have been standing at. he said they were standing up because a couple inches in the bottom and this was a kind of

boat that was used for ferrying across the river, and you stood up. yes, the importance of trenton and princeton, they are among the most important battles of the revolution. december 7 and in early january, 1776, ingenuous 1777. it look like they'll revolution, revolutionary resistance, because the continental army was simply unravel it. they lost at brooklyn heights. they lost in manhattan. washington was retreating, crossing the delaware and in re crosses it. and those two victories, minor though they may seem in great military victories, at least stop the downward spiral. and through that winter as well as david fisher explains very, very well and washington's crossing, militiamen or groups throughout new jersey we claim

territory that the british had help and put the british on the defensive. so it really was a turning point in the part of the war. on the other hand, you know, if you say what it the army had been defeated? what would have happened? we have the story in the south later in the work when, in fact, lincoln was defeated, gates was defeated. and before green had brought a third continental army into the field in the south, the war continued but it continued at a devastating way. one of the earlier callers talk about the brutality of the war. we think of it in civilized terms as if it were lexington and concord with the americans militia. in the civil war, in the south between 17 -- after 17 -- you have a civil war and it is brutal. it's nasty. it's a bloody. and it continued even in the

absence of the army. so it could be it would have been so easy for the british to simply take this country. >> host: but you do right in "american scripture" that the trenton battle and princeton, it was after them that the declaration of independence was finally distributed. >> guest: that's right. the congress had to think their way, a possibility of pulling this project off before they would distribute it. their necks were literally on the line. it is interesting that they did for distributing copies of a signed declaration through the fall, but i think the only viable explanation i can come up with is that the army was doing so poorly. >> host: from michigan, this is william dilemma. kenneth roberts novel, oliver was well, pictures revolutionary america as around 50% loyal to

britain. the loyalists were very badly treated. is this a true picture? >> 50% is way too high. in libby's exiles, she said a fifth to a third, i think the third is the wrong figure. the third comes off john adams is estimates. he says a third lawyerless, a third of loyalists, if you're new to. he did give different. this was off-the-cuff estimates. modern historians have made estimates of the loyalists population, which is not easy to do. you have to take something that is measurable and then multiply it to try to figure out how much, what is measurable -- what larger group this is representative of. paul smith took a number of exiles who thought with the

british. another store and looked at those who filed claims. but the general estimate is about one in five of the total loyalists regulation say of the population in the mid-1770s, that would be about a half a million people. the exiles, there's 60,000 by the more careful calculation. they are minority of the loyalists. most manage in one way or another to remain within the united states. the exiles of course, the trick of those who were most alienated and really didn't think they could remain. >> host: was there a lot of fear and paranoia in this country in 1775-1776? >> guest: i think there was a lot of fear. paranoia, it assumes paranoia as the term assumes what the fears are irrational. i don't know if you are

irrational. what happened of course, once the war began the divisions became very serious. i mean, if the british are moving into your territory and john smith down the road is going to help them, that's a question of considerable importance. so we did have these organize committees on the local level, starting actually with 1774 and the continent association, which was an economic boycott program. we had local committees elected by those who were qualified to vote for members of the assembly, who were to enforce the policies of the continental congress. i think they moved into a military territory. so that anybody who was hanging back, they would get a visit from the committee. there are stories of people who found their cattle bed in the

morning. the signal was there. some people did suffer a physical attack, and actually both loyalists, supporters of the revolution and the revolutionaries are loyalists as well, but it was when the army moved into a territory that people had to declare the sentiments. and they fled into british lions. so at the end of the war they are gathered in new york, charleston and savanna. >> host: next call for professor pauline maier of mit comes from alan, washington. >> caller: hi. professor maier, you're very impressive. i want to go back to college. and sit in the front row of your class and ask a lot of questions. >> guest: well, i could use you. >> caller: i was thinking about the writer of the declaration, thomas jefferson. in my humble opinion i think he was a brilliant polymath. >> guest: oh, yes.

>> caller: if you -- there's a few things i've read on his writings on religion. do you think thomas jefferson could be elected president of the united states today? >> guest: i think we would have and upward struggle to get elected today. he probably was a little too radical for the current temper of the country. certainly on religion. jeffersons great cause was, but i don't hesitate to call the separation of church and state. the point is, the phrase comes from this letter, the danbury baptist association, 1806, and it isn't, it certainly is in the constitution of the first amendment. but jefferson himself, he drafted the virginia religious freedom which is one of the most important documents in american

history, 1785-1786. which basically said the state had no business passing any regulations with regard to religion. the state of virginia out of the religion business. and it begins with those moving parts, where almighty god has made the mind free. for jefferson and for medicine, religion was a form, and the state has no business in your mind, in your credo. you can be anything you want and not be regulated thought. within virginia they had a powerful political support from individuals who said that is not members of the established church which were anglican or episcopalian. they had suffered some legal discrimination in the past, and they really thought that the state should be out of the religion business also.

so they have a constituency and they had their own radical enlightenment taught. it was not in the religious position, the opening words made that clear. and it goes on to say that religion which is practiced only because of the support other portion of the state is hypocritical. and distasteful to almighty god. so it was itself religious, but the state has no business in religion. this was the cutting-edge of religious freedom in the mid-17 '80s. it wasn't until the 19th century that new england states like connecticut and massachusetts finally got rid of their state churches. but this was the trend. >> host: back to your book, "american scripture," again how did you come up with a name scripture in the book you write that you're pretty uncomfortable with how the declaration of independence and the

constitution are presented on the altar in the national archives. >> guest: they had we done it. yes. the national archives has -- my book is archaic. at least the description of the display is archaic. when i visited it, there was like an altar, and that particular configuration with certain changes -- will, this one back in 1952, but there have been an altar like device in the library of congress for the constitution and the bill of rights, pardon me, not right there for the constitution and the declaration of independence from about the 1920s. so they've changed the display. it's now much more democratic. you can walk along a look at what seems to be much more appropriate. >> host: potomac, maryland, hi. >> caller: like professor maier, i think history is exciting.

that was my major, history. and i agree with you. one of the greatest quotes is oliver wendell holmes, the past prologue to the future. and i wanted to find out in future opinion on the fact that during the revolutionary war it was earlier talked about the fact that someone had said something about the effect of a revolutionary war around the world. but i can imagine in europe there must've been some kind of steering because we certainly had several of the great military leaders come here to help george washington during war. and it's been said if it hadn't been for that we may not have one of the revolutionary because their teachings and von steuben coming in, disciplinarian the troops and that, and i would like to get your opinion on that. >> guest: we had no engineers. you know, whenever earlier wars, the french and indian war where colonial troops were involved usually in a subsidiary

function, was the british engineers who did all the work. so we were deficient to the revolution, the continental army was deficient in that category. foreigners helped to make up for our lack of capacity in that area. i think the french reliance was absolutely critical. we talked about at princeton but it was saratoga that absolutely was the turning point because it was at saratoga where the american victory was sufficient. we defeated the british army, and it allowed french to say they could come in. they weren't going to come in for a cause that was clearly stated to lose, and the french alliance was necessary. why? the french brought in for one thing a navy, and the french

navy was argued a superior to that of the british at this point. noticed that in the course of the war the british at one point or another held every major port. they held boston. they held new york. they held charleston. they held all the major -- they held philadelphia. they could hold any port because they had command of the sea. now, suppose we reached a stem and the british held all the sports and the americans held into your. what would be the logical result of? and it goes which would probably have kept the americans under the british ground, exit the republic, exit the revolution. a very different outcome, but the arrival of french navy made a victory possible, and i think also the advice, the commander. look, the critical victory at yorktown was a siege.

he never mounted a siege before. we had the expertise of the french officers to advise the continental army. and how to carry on this war. and we had their navy and we had their men, also. >> host: after yorktown, i'm thinking of v-j day or v-e day in the state anything like that? "american scripture" the british still held new york, charleston and savanna. so it didn't look like the war was over. why was it over? it was over because when lord north got the news, he said my god, it's all over. because he could not get parliament to replace cornwallis is arming. the british had been taxed to the hell. their tolerance of the sacrifices they had to make for a war which didn't look like we were going to bring proportion to the cause, they were done.

he knew. politically it was impossible to carry on. >> host: significance of benedict arnold? >> guest: benedict arnold, the greatest military hero of the american revolution, to a point. i mean, he was the great hero at saratoga. they told him go, don't go into an action but he couldn't get out of it and he rode his horse and he was shot and he kept fighting. i mean, he could've been the greatest military hero possibly, except washington in the revolutionary war. but the congress was slow and dancing him and he married, and loyalist. he sold out. he sold out to the british, and the story of what washington discovered this treachery is the most moving story. i remember reading it in the library sitting on the marble floors, not breathing minute for minute as i read this account. because washington happened to be there and discovered him at

the very last minute. but arnold fled, got away. it's a moving story aired and then, of course, he was fighting against the americans in the summer theater. he was in virginia leading an army against the americans. >> host: successfully? >> guest: well, they almost captured thomas jefferson in 1781. they didn't and there was a question whether, whether jefferson should be, you know, chastised for this by the legislature. they decided not to any end. but, you know, a cause a terrific amount of fear and terror, fighting against his own countrymen. with the king's army in the south. and his sons ended up in india according to a book. >> host: lewis in washington, good afternoon to you.

>> caller: good afternoon. could it be said, professor meyer, that the essential role of essential preference our constitution and bill of rights and declaration is to protect the individual from government? as some others have pointed out perhaps a flaw in our constitution was that unlike the declaration, we never mention the constitution them into the creator of god or and it leaves got but leaves of slavery in? >> guest: well, the references to god in the declaration of independence were not jefferson's. with the possible -- there's two exceptions. the god of nature, nature's god and the god who endowed us with certain inalienable rights. but the references in the final paragraph were added by congress. these documents as you mention have very different functions. i mean, the declaration of

independence basically it's british rule. it into the old regime which opens the way for the designing of new government. was the purpose of the constitution to protect individuals against government? i don't think the founders would have seen it that way. they understood that the actual exercise of freedom demanded protection. so they saw government as essential to the operation of liberty, to liberty any practical sense. that is, your security up robbery, for example, is rather weak without will of law, without loss to define the rights and with an infrastructure that will protect you against people who would just us and help themselves to what you have. liberty in a practical sense demanded rule of law for the founders. so was it to protect the people against government, or has the government to protect the rights of the people? if you read the second paragraph of the declaration which is a

kind of a summary of the basic political three of the revolution, government was created to help protect the people's rights. by the constitution, the protection of slavery and not of religious rites, i don't think so. slavery was understood as something which was not going to be lasting forever. otherwise, why did they avoid using the word slave in the constitution backs with regard to religion, i don't think that the lack, for several religious qualification for office meant that religion was unimportant. i think that people had come to understand that religious beliefs was important, but it was a private affair and that keeping the state out about, out of that area was, in fact, protection for people's rights. as the virginia statute said,

almighty god wants the mind free and that people should choose their religious beliefs freely and the allowed to follow those beliefs without any interference from the states. >> host: dear professor maier, professor maier, imaging at monster high school in munster, india. i participate in the we the people program and will be participating at the national level. >> guest: congratulations. >> host: my question is, during the ratification debates, some delegates argue that the traditional function of bills of rights, to mark the limits of a king's prerogative, made in a relevant and republics, where the people ruled. do you agree or disagree? >> guest: i disagree, and many people at the time disagree. this was an argument made, i think very powerfully by james in the north carolina conventions, that you really did need bills of rights in a

republican it and james wilkes of pennsylvania said we have a government that says what the, what the congress can do. anything else they can't do. so dangerous to say, for example, in a bill of rights that congress can't interfere with freedom of the press if they had no power over the press. some clever lawyer could say it must have powers over the press that are not enumerated in article 1, section 8, why would you have this provision in the bill of rights? and this is why in our first 10 amendments we say anything -- if it isn't -- that really you can't read it that way. that everything that is not granted is to the states are the people, and there was tremendous concern about whether it could be, could be read in that way. know, jefferson made the strongest case for bills of rights. he said if nothing else, they educate the people as to what

their rights are and what they should hold the government accountable for. moreover, and here he was really way ahead of his time, he said if they are written out they can be enforced in the courts are now, he's way ahead of his time on that point. but he was predictive of the way of the future would develop. >> host: patrick from baltimore who identifies as a student of david pierce quinn at st. mary's college of maryland, 1983 what founding father is the most forgotten in history but very are critically important at that time? >> guest: langston smith of new york. i'm using founding father in a very broad sense but and that is not just those who designed the constitution but those were important for getting into a fight. smith was probably more

responsible for anyone else giving about a fight in new york. and it was a courageous act on his part. basically he had to industry by voting for ratification. and he brought another 11 delegates with them. the country looked rather weird without new pics i think langston smith a summary we should raise our cups do. he was a merchant. sunset away but i don't think so. he sort of came from the hudson valley. had moved to new york. >> host: what was new york's resistance to the constitution? >> guest: the opposition was largely in the upper hudson valley, the lower counties which, of course, are much more commercially oriented faith of the constitution because again they thought a strong federal government would be good for the economy. in the hudson valley, they read the constitution. well, the reason people oppose it were not irrational.

they set the language is vague on critical points. it says you shall be no more than one member of the house of representatives for every 30,000 people, for example. now, get your head around that. it's like a double negative. you have to think about it. they said it should say there will be one member of the house for every 30,000 until the house gets to a certain size, and then you recalibrate. but it didn't, and they said this is dangerous. it loses all enhance of congress, the rights and representation are much more important to be left in the hands of congress. they should be laid out in defend and the constitution. it's not a stupid point. not stupid at all. they said representation is so poor -- or inadequate that congress shouldn't be able to lay taxes that could well affect

the welfare of the people. they won't know the circumstances of the people. they won't know what the people can bear. so direct tax should be passed by the legislature, state legislatures. or they should have a chance to raise their part of the burden because representation. that really through people like madison and washington. but it was not a stupid argument. >> host: what is the role of economics and taxes and the triggering of the mx revolution? >> guest: really important. i mean, i think the reason there was so much unrest because the taxes to pay off the state debt. and that's the one major opposition to the constitution was as i say, congress, congress hadn't had their taxing powers under the articles get wall-to-wall taxing powers under the constitution. there's no form of taxes which

are denied to congress. how would the state legislatures going to support themselves? the federalist said they have concurrent legislation, concurrent rights except with regard to taxing new ports. well, the critics had why doesn't it say that? that? you know? so that some of the rights of the states were protected. so there is enormous concern about if their taxing power in congress. this makes tremendous sense. the revolution was fought about taxes and representation. those were the central issues for that generation, and they came up again. >> host: we all remember lincoln smith after that. >> guest: i'm surprised you didn't know him. >> host: atlanta, georgia, hi. >> caller: professor maier, we can tell you how much i am enjoying this. the idea of three hours being presented in a world of immediate soundbites is so

impressionable. i represent the state legislature of georgia, and we're working on a constitutional plan to go after a problem identified as civic illiteracy. and we've been involved in this for 40 years, and it begins with a document that we thought so important. it is signed by 56 senators and 195 members of the house. the first document ever signed by the entire body. and this effort is going to be so exciting, people are even calling it the last battle of the american revolution. >> host: and i asked you a question? when you say you represent the legislature in georgia, what do you mean by that? >> caller: that's a good question. our secretary of state at the time, he set it up for myself and a handful of people to

utterly represent the legislature and advocacy of this. so we became what he called the first lobbyists for the legislature. which is the reverse of our experienced where people lobby the legislature. >> host: have you ever been an elected official? >> caller: no. i've done a lot of things, pretty much towards bad, but not that bad jet. >> host: now, is there a website for your organization? , it's not an organ station but there is a website. it's called our republic walk.net. >> host: did you just want to acknowledge professor maier or did you have a specific question? >> caller: i have a specific question, because in her effort to try to figure out what we're doing, we came across a

historian with amherst college named henry steele -- >> guest: right. >> caller: i was wondering, in your career and had the opportunity to visit with him, he was incredible. we spent quite a bit of time with him back in the '80s and '90s. >> guest: i've never met him. yesterday was a very distinguished member of the historical profession, however. have you heard of this group? >> guest: i have not heard about this group of. >> host: steve, high. >> caller: hi. my question is county of our touched on it a bit, but the establishment clause in the first amendment, a lot of educators today side this establishment clause for prohibiting things like prayer in school, and also things like any reference to christmas, like a can of christmas vacation and so forth.

now, isn't that an exact corruption of the establishment clause when they say that? because they are actually inhibiting the free thought, they're actually outline somebody that may believe in that. so when they cite that, on the incorrect or, you know, what -- >> host: thank you steve. >> guest: the first amendment, i suppose it is required everybody went to school on christmas, it would probably violate that. you know, what does it mean? madison himself gave it the most generous interpretation. he didn't think there shouldn't even be chaperones, religious chaperones for the army or for congress. but how it is interpreted over time has changed tremendously. i think that these provisions to

undercut the christian bias of our practice are well-meaning. i mean, are these practices offensive to non-christians in our population? of course the incidence of muslims, particularly increased. we have a substantial jewish population. are their rights violated by the provisions, by practices that are christian in nature? i think this is one of the concerns which have been behind these practices. personally, you know, i think prayer has no place in public school, and that indeed that the big problem is that when we first started public schools they were intensely protestant and many catholics felt they couldn't even attend event. we want the schools to be so

organized that everybody can attend him without giving to religious beliefs are offended by any practices. >> host: an e-mail, please discuss the role of the vanderbilt in the american revolution. >> guest: i know nothing about the role of the vanderbilt so i guess the answer is no. >> host: joe fisher, denver, colorado. at the time of the constitutional convention you mentioned there were several written state constitutions already. and, of course, the convention aimed at creating a written constitution. why do they seek a written constitution? where did the idea come from when england had no written constitution and none yet? >> guest: this is what's kept interesting is through the whole period before independence, the colonists had argued that parliament did, the stamp act, were unconstitutional. and to the british, this made no sense at all because the constitution was basically the

system. it's all of the laws, customs, practices, court decisions by which britain was discovered. so this made no sense. but the americans had the idea that a constitution should be written. why? that's the question. several of them had written charters. and they had a function like what we recognize is that of the constitution. it laid out the structure of government, what to do what, what could not do something else. others had the circuit. the governors came with written instructions, and they sort of have the same function. so there had been experience of written documents that laid out the structure and powers of government. on the other hand, these were not constitutions in our sense. they were issued by the ground. and somehow in their heads the colonists had confused the

experience of these written documents with what was called a social compact. that becomes the basis that the government comes, that the rule of government comes out of a compact among the people who create it. clearly their argument was very little to the british. once they declare their independence they had to face a challenge of trying to realize in fact is rather confused id in their head. clearly they thought that the constitution should be written. and our state riding and even before independence because the congress tells them right at the constitution for this period, until we settle this with the british. so south carolina and new hampshire had early constitutions that were meant to be temporary. virginia was told to do this and he didn't do it until it wrote a comment one and is one that didn't have a clear answer. and then the question was how do you make these documents ask of

the people? and that was finally worked out most successfully in massachusetts, where on the insistence of people in the towns, the constitution was written by special delegates to a convention that it only this. that is, that it only two of the constitution and then send it back to the towns for ratification. and the massachusetts constitution begins we the people of massachusetts dot dot dot who are ordained and established. where have you heard similar words? i mean, the federal constitution clearly built on the massachusetts presidents host the next call for mit professor pauline maier. we have about 10 minutes left, comes from arizona. >> caller: thank you both for doing this. i'm so excited to hear the professor's dissertation you. like a previous caller, i'm so

excited. if i was close i would sign up for your class and sit in the front row. >> guest: i wish my students were quite so excited about having as a teacher as your listeners are, peter. >> caller: my question is, my thought is, one of the previous participants have said, i believe it was madison, that he changed his views and became a republican. and i was hoping you could explain this ideology or the comparison between the parties of the 1700s and the parties that we have today, the democratic and republican. so if you could do that i would appreciate it. >> guest: oh, this is a very big question and there's a lot of ink spilled on this problem. basically the ratification of the constitution was -- there were no national parties in

1787-1780. i don't use anti-federalist unless the people describe, accepted it and on it appeared in a quotation because it suggested there were parties. there were no national parties. national parties did emerge in the 1790s out of congress, first of all, in divisions over hamilton's financial plans and over foreign policy. and here, jefferson and madison became the leaders of what became known as the jeffersonian republican party. and apposed is centralizing trend of the washington administration, particularly insofar as washington was by hamilton. and, of course, they didn't like john adams' administration either because the war with france et cetera. so you did get the beginning of a kind of party politics there. then they kind of die off by the

1820s. and emerge again it so you had jacksonian democrats and what were known as the whig party. and they fall apart in the 1850s when you get the new republican party of lincoln, who opposes the old democratic party. and those actually are still with us. but it's a complicated. and there's a reason to question when we got modern parties. what a modern party demands is i think a respect for your opponent. you don't think the opponent is seditious trying to undermine the state. that you accept the legitimacy of differences and the willingness to decide who wins through the procedures of democratic politics. without accusations of disloyalty. and i think certainly we are

there 1840s, 1850s. >> host: john clark, columbia missouri. you mentioned that isn't ideological origins of the american revolution there i suspect that they then used the term ideology in the neutral anthropological sense of the system of ideas. today the term ideology carries considerable negative connotations of limited prejudice unexamined beliefs. >> guest: beautiful. yes, i'm sure what bailyn met my ideology was a system of ideas. it was a system of belief. that was what bailyn describe. and i consider this a continuing contribution. earlier one of the callers talk about every generation should dispute with the earlier one day. we should contest all of these interpretations. occasionally there are contributions to our understanding which are of enduring value. and i think our capacity to

understand the events of the revolutionary period in terms of the ideas of contemporaries was an enormous step forward. >> host: this is from jim. why didn't rhode island ratified the constitution? >> guest: well, it had a lot of paper marks that had issued and it wondered whether it would remain valid. because article one section 10 said the states can issue nothing but gold and silver as legal tender. road island did this in order to address a committed, it had with regard to its revolutionary war debt. the amount it had to raise just an interest was five times what the whole budget had been before independence. and this was held -- and it was held, the debt was held by a handful of speculators. it was going to impoverish everybody in order to enrich a few. so they try to address with

paper money. they did in ways that was certainly very questionable. however, they were worried about what would happen, what would be the fate of the money if the constitution went in. that isn't really, really enough. i think it was also substantial opposition in rhode island to the constitution's provisions on slavery. rhode island had a very high incidence of quakers. >> host: jim's second question, what is your favorite painting from the revolutionary period? >> guest: i have great affection of the revolution is about what would be my favorite? what a question? i have never thought about this. i really love the portrait of paul revere. ..

>> guest: how the revolution changed the kinds of values and the way people wanted to present themselves to audiences. >> host: who was copley? >> guest: john singleton copley was one of the greatest painters of the late 18th century. he was part of a loyalist family and ended up, you know, he certainly wasn't through all of his career.

a painter found little consolation in a e republican country. he found much more business in england. >> host: gary in illinois, we only have a minute or two left. >> caller: eventually, i'll have my 15 minutes of fame if i get through to your wonderful show. i read a book called "america the possible: how and why our constitution should be rewritten" twice over the years, but not having a great memory, i can't summarize it for you. i wonder if you know about that. plus, a book that's rather controversial, looked upon through the eyes of liberals and conservatives by howard zinn. >> guest: i don't know the first book, and i will confess although i understand howard zinn's history is very popular, mea culpa, i have never really read it. >> host: dr. maier, as a textbook clerk, i literally

handled copies of your first two titles. in my own words, we are not actually guaranteed life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness. this is based on what his eighth grade american history teacher, the declaration of independence predates our federal government and is, therefore, not a document of that government. >> guest: well, that is a rather radical argument. without independence, of course, we would have no right to found a new government. i would think it's a critical component of, certainly, the american political system. are we with guaranteed? we say that good has given us, our creator has given us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that government is founded to protect them. why is the federal government exempted from that description

of fundamental principles? i disagree. with the assertion. >> host: david eisenberg, i've long thought that aaron burr has been demonized in our history books. i'm going to leave it right there because we're almost autoof time. -- out of time. >> guest: all right, fine. >> host: what do you think? >> guest: he has been demonized. he had a very checkered career. i think his contributions are highly questionable. he certainly isn't one of the great heros for me. >> host: mit history professor pauline maier has been our guest on booktv's "in depth" for the last three hours. here are her four popular titles. her first book "from resistance to revolution." "the old revolutionaryies," "american s