>> guest: >> host: meredith lair, what duties? >> guest: american history, vietnam war, and war in american society. >> host: her new book just coming out is published by the university of north carolina, "armed with abundance: consumerism and soldiering in the vietnam war". thank you for joining us. >> guest: thank you so much. >> and now an interview from george mason university. >> george mason professor. in your book you begin by saying you have the deepest and most antagonistic conflict at the federal constitutional convention was the controversy over representation in the national legislature. why is that? >> well, i think that a lot of people think about the constitutional convention and

they think that slavery was the major issue in toward the delegates apart. and, of course, slavery was a major issue and it was very contentious, but the fact was that it was only the debate over how people would be represented in the upper and lower house of this new congress that was the major issue that nearly stopped the convention and send all the delegates on that nearly resulted in the the whole debate being ended. end i think it is of very little understood debate, but it is what the us the sort of odd system that we have today in congress where all the states have two representatives in the senate, in other words, an equal vote in the senate, and then representation on the basis of population. in other words, more representatives for states with more people in the lower house is, the house of

representatives. and so i think that debate has faded in people's memories, if it ever was there, and i think it is not well understood, and i wanted to highlight the fact that this debate was preceded by debates that also split states on the basis of their size. of course the question of size is an interesting one because size in terms of territory or size in terms of population? that is really what was being debated and discussed and figured out at the constitutional convention and in the decades afterwards. >> host: the first constitutional convention speech to yes. actually, raleigh federal constitutional convention in 1787 in philadelphia. >> host: as i was being debated, over the issues involved and who were on each side? >> guest: okay. well, it is important to understand that before the american revolution and the colonial legislature, the 13

colonies had the colonial legislature that was a little parliament. it was modeled on parliament, and so each had an upper and lower house. and in those legislatures people in the colonies, by that we mean property on the white man would elect representatives to their lower houses, and those lower house is where the bastilles of democracy in the colonial time. it is relief from those lower houses of the legislature that you get people like patrick henry and james otis and john adamson, samuel adams to came out and attacked what they thought were innovations in british policy that were pressing the colonists. and if you recall, no taxation without representation, but it does relieve those delegates that were on the forefront of observing that. they were elected within each

column. virginia legislature, 67 legislature, new hampshire had a legislature. these lower houses had delegates that were elected from towns and counties. there was no sense that more people should have more representatives. it was all done on the basis of geographic units and territorial units. one county from represent to five. county from virginia would have two representatives. what happens when the state's wrote their first pick constitutions, and they did that during the american revolution from 1776 to 1780 cell of the states began to experiment with a new form of representation in which representation was proportionate to population more people would get representatives, and that is the innovative idea, the experiment

to representation that james madison incorporated in the virginia plan that was submitted to the philadelphia convention in 1787 for debate. obviously there are some winners and losers when you have that kind of system of representation. in the previous congress, the congress under the articles of confederation, each state received one vote. that kind of equal representation honored the fact that states had been in existence for over a century and a half, had a corporate identity, and well defined geographic units. but madison and others coming from states that had experimented with this new kind of representation believe that it was only just and fair that more people in an area should have more representatives. and so the conflict at philadelphia in the philadelphia convention was how would

representation be apportioned in the upper house and in the lower house that was the huge conflict. in july of that year a whole debate came to a standstill because the convention was deadlocked and could not decide on how to move on. the small states who would lose under the new system because they liked having an equal vote because they have fewer people were the ones objecting, and there were threatening to leave the convention unless some concessions are made to them. and so what happened was the compromise. the great compromise then called the connecticut compromise the parties shall we have today which is to representatives from each state and the house of representatives. >> host: where did that idea come from. was it based in history, european history or was it just of folk what? >> guest: it was a melting of the traditional dreaded --

british system of representation based on a geographic unit, representing land, representing a certain territory in the legislature a lot with the new american idea of proportion of representation, representation before commensurate with population which is incidently why we have a sense this. pennsylvania and its constitution initiated the idea of a census, for a census every senior's. today will begin all sorts of things, education, race, ethnicity, except to read in the census. initially in pennsylvania and then at the philadelphia convention, the main idea of the census was to count people in regions, and that would be the basis for determining how many representatives the scent. and so how many representatives delaware would send as opposed to massachusetts as opposed to

virginia. this said pioneered in the state's. they experimented with representation proportional to population. it was a melding of the old and the new. >> host: what was the largest colony and the smallest? >> guest: the largest colony in terms of area was virginia. virginia extended to -- well, they claim the land that is not part of ohio and in illinois and indiana. it had a very large population as well, and then rhode island would have been the smallest both in terms of territory and people. >> host: when you look at the reapportionment that goes on to in years, how does this come back to our history. we're talking about geographical villains in the but now we're also talking about the redistrict. it's a little fuzzy.

>> guest: that's where also talk about in the book. that's one of the compass -- consequences. this states that were electing representatives, the house of representatives, the national legislature, there would have to decide how their representatives to be elected. some of the states had general to get elections. every voter in the state voted, if the state that seven representatives, but would vote for seven and the top seven vote getters would be sent to congress. a few other states, though, the larger states, actually, started immediately experimenting with what we used today, the single district map that were estate is carved up into districts and these are geographic districts. and people in those states elect one representative who is sent

to congress. these kind of representatives to be more loyal to the test to test that led to them rather than to the interstates. this whole issue was debated almost every ten years until 1850 because every ten years after congress cut the results of the census congress would have to reapportion. ..

>> one representative for every 40,000 people. today it's more like one to every 670,000. so, obviously, things have changed a lot, but the basis of this representative, number of representatives being proportionate to population was forged at the constitutional conventioning. >> now, professor zagarri, the subtitle of your book is "representation in the u.s.," you just referenced 1850. what happened in 1850? >> well, in 1850 it was decided, congress was sick of fighting every ten years, so they passed a law that required that, um, that the ratio of people to representatives be fixed and that the frack chul remainders would simply be assigned to the states on the basis of their

population. and so that resolved at least for about another half century some of these issues that were plaguing congress. but within the states the issues of apportionment continued to be a problem. and, you know, there have been recently a number of apportionment cases that have come before the supreme court arguing that these districts that state legislatures have created are unconstitutional or oddly shaped or inappropriate on one basis or the other. and there's a lot of arguments that state legislatures play politics in apportionment and in creating these districts. but the truth is that from the very first congress it was understood that the creation of these districts was a political matter. and, in fact, even though the word didn't exist in 1788 and '89 when james madison was running for a seat if the house of representatives, the virginia legislature was hostile to him

and try today gerrymander him out of a seat. they created a district that was very oddly shaped that was full of people that they suspected were hostile to him, and he almost didn't get elected. but the truth was he was a very persuasive fellow, and so he actually prevailed by about 300 votes. >> host: what's the importance -- and you write about this in your book -- of the placement of state capitols? >> well, that's part of this larger shift that's going on in this whole period, i argue, from 1776 to 1850 from an understanding that representatives -- representation should be based on geographic units, on land, on territory. a shift from geography to demography, from land to people. and so there was a lot of controversy during and after the revolution about where state capitals should be located. and most of the states actually moved their capitals to new

locations during this period. and what i found, interestingly enough, is that smaller states put their capitals near the geographic center of the state. and the idea was, well, it's a small state, so people would have equal ability to travel to the center of the state for meetings of the legislature. the larger states, though, tried to determine the demographic center, the center of population, and placed their capitals in places where they thought were near the population. pennsylvania, for example, first tolan caster and then to harrisburg because the population was shifting westward, and they thought that the capital should be at the center of where the majority of people were live anything a state at that time. >> host: this is the book that we're talking about, we're talking about "the politics of size: representation in the u.s. 1776-1850." rosemarie zagarri is a professor

in virginia on the outskirts of washington, d.c. which is where we are now on booktv doing our university series. this book has been reissued just recently in paperback. >> guest: yes. >> host: why? >> guest: well, because i think apportionment has continued to plague the states and come before the supreme court as an issue, and i think that people all want to know what did the founders think, how did the, how did people at the time of the framing of the constitution think about these issues? and i actually think they don't provide definitive answers. i think what you see is that it was a political issue then, and it's a political issue now. what i would say is that they did strive for justice, they did strive to make sure that equal numbers of people received equal numbers of representatives so that the districts would have about the same numbers of people. and they would strive to have districts that made some sort of geographic sense, barring these

few, these few oddities that i mentioned such as james madison's district. and so i think those principles provide a guide for people, state legislators, supreme court justices, lower court justices trying to decide the issue today. >> host: professor zagarri, what do you teach here at george mason? >> i teach courses in the revolution, the early american republic, historical meds, founding mothers and fathers, women's history. >> host: ph.d. from yale university, grew up in st. louis. when did you get interested in the revolutionary period? >> guest: oh, wow. um, i think i was always attracted by the founding era, by the idea that americans made themselves into a nation, made themselves into a new people that they started from scratch, that it was a country that created its own institutions drawing on historical lessons and their own experience, but

creating something really new and different. so i think it was really, it was really in graduate school, although earlier i would say that i loved to read biographies of the founding fathers and of famous americans. so historically i've always been interested in the american revolution. >> host: give us a thumbnail sketch of who george mason was. >> guest: ah, george mason, the forgotten founder. george mason was the primary author of the virginia deck ha ration of rights, and the virginia deck ha ration of rights became -- it was a statement of basic rights and liberties, some of which were traditional rights and liberties of english people, some were the rights and liberties that americans felt that britain had infringed upon and should be protected in writing. britain didn't have one single document that protected all their rights and liberties. and so george mason in 1776 when virginia was writing its first

state constitution wrote a statement of rights that was appended to the virginia constitution. and this declaration of rights became the basis then for many of the other states that also attached bills of rights, and then in turn when the united states wrote a new constitution in 1787, many of those same rights were incorporated into the u.s. constitution in the first ten amendments. >> host: large landowner here in virginia? >> guest: oh, yeah. slave other than, over 200 slaves. yes, a very interesting guy. kind of grumpy, had a lot of kids, 12 or 14. and -- >> host: did not sign the declaration of independence, is that correct? >> guest: he was not at independent hall. he did not sign the constitutional convention document, the proposed u.s. constitution. because he was upset because it did not contain a bill of rights in september of 1787. the bill of right was added

later and passed by the states and only completely attached in 1791. >> does he get enough credit for his role in founding -- >> guest: i think for a long time he hasn't, but recently there's been an effort to revive him. there's a statue of george mason now on the mall, um, and, of course, george mason university tries to make itself known in basketball and research and in teaching. so we try to get his name out there. >> host: we are talking with rosemarie zagarri, she is a history professor here at george mason university. she's the author of this book, "the politics of size." recently reintroduce inside paperback, reissued in paperback. but she's also the author of this book, "revolutionary backlash: women in politics in the early american republic,"

published by the university of pennsylvania press. what's the word "backlash" mean in your title? >> guest: ah. well, as i studied this period what i found was that even though women couldn't vote for the most part or hold public office, that the revolutionary debate over equality and natural rights generated a large and wide spread discussion about whether women had rights and what rights women should have. and women had actually been important participants in the prerevolutionary era in the boycotts against great britain n attending protests, in if voicing their opposition to british rule. and women came to be acknowledged as political players, as political beings. so with the coming revolution, some women and some men started

talking about whether women should be allowed to vote and hold public office as well, what kind of rights women should have. and, in fact, in one state, in new jersey women actually did have the right to vote from 1776 to 1807. and, yes, a little known fact. now, we have to understand that at this time with most states voting -- in most states voting was a privilege of property, so only women who owned sufficient property could vote. and married women by law were not allowed to vote property. so it was really mostly single women, unmarried women and widows, who voted in new jersey. >> host: how many were there, four or five? >> guest: no, no. probably thousands. one estimate said 10,000. it was a kind of pulled out of the air number, but we know in many elections in the 790s hundreds of women voted in any given election and in some elections, and they voted for not just local officials, but also members of congress.

they played the determinative role in electing one candidate over another. so, um, there was a time then during the revolutionary period and in the decades immediately following where there was an opening, i would argue, for women in politics where women were welcomed into informal discussions about politics, where women were acknowledged to have a kind of informal political role in new jersey. they had a formal political role. but then around 1820 this what i call backlash set in, and at that time what happened, and this was a long time coming, but i think that both men and women began to feel that social change was outpacing their ability to absorb these radical transformations. and many people felt that the idea of women voting, of women being what they called politicians violated women's proper sphere, that week should

not transgress their role as wives and mothers, that women belong in the home, belonged in the home, that they needed to be taking care of their children, they needed to be taking care of their families, that they were not appropriate actors in the political realm. and so after that time you get a hardening of or boundaries between men and women's roles. you get a moving away from this idea of welcoming women into male politics. and you get, as i mentioned in new jersey, a rejection of women's formal political role in that place. so i think you see -- and this is, this often happens after revolutions. we know with the french revolution there's a period of experimentation and innovation and then society sort of says, whoa, this is going too fast, and they pull back. and i think that's exactly what happened in the united states with regard to women and politics.

and it took, you know, a century, more than a century before women were given the vote in the unite. now, that memory of women voting in new jersey did persist, and in the western states in the 1890s and '80s feminists would invoke that precedent. see, women did vote before. they're capable of doing it. they're smart enough, they're politically informed enough. and so that precedent was very powerful. what's interesting is that since women got the right to vote in the 20th century, i think that previous experiment in new jersey has been largely forgotten. >> host: dr. zagarri, who is one woman from the revolutionary period we should all know about but don't? >> guest: mercy otis warren. mercy otis warren was the wife of a patriot, james warren, the sister of another patriot, james otis, from a very well connected