convention of some as washington arrives the first thing he does is dhaka on the door and washington's policy wonk he's not a devotees there as a journalist and then the so-called convention men realize his talents and right after the convention the askin to draft a pamphlet in support of the constitution he does that and the story to the federalist papers and actually may well have been more influential because webster's pamphlet was circulated throughout the entire country and was ready and published right after the convention as opposed to the federal papers which were circulated mostly in new york. and now an interview from george mason university. >> george mason professor who rosemarie zagarri in your book the politics of size you begin

the book by saying that the deepest and most antagonistic conflict that the federal constitution convention was the controversy over her presentation in the national legislature. why is that? home is a lot of people think slavery is an issue that and i was a major issue in the was contentious but the fact is that it was only the deep eight over how people would be represented in the lower and upper house of the new congress that was the major issue that nearly stopped the convention and nearly cent of the delegates home who are that nearly resulted in the whole debate being ended, and what i think it is very little understood debate but it's what

got us when this sort of a sesto em ho we have today in congress where all of the states have two representatives in the senate in other words and equal vote in the senate and representation some the basis of the population in other words what more representatives for more people in the house of representatives and so i think that 20 date will has faded in people's memory if it ever was there and it's not well understood, and i wanted to highlight the fact that this debate was preceded and then succeeded by the dates that also split states on the basis of their size. of course the question of size is an interesting one because is it science in terms of territory or in terms of population and that's what was being debated and discussed and figured out what the constitutional convention and the decades after

a. >> the first constitutional convention? >> yes, our only federal constitutional convention in philadelphia, yes. >> as the was debated with the issues involved? >> it's important to understand before the american revolution the and the colonial legislature these are the 13 colonies had a colonial legislature there was a little parliament to bring it was modeled on the parliament cities chad and the war in the upper house, and in those legislators, people in the colonies, and by that we mean property owning a white men but the elected representatives to their lower houses and those lower houses were the bastions of democracy in the colonial period and it's really from the lower house is that the legislature you get people like patrick henry and james otis and john adams and samuel adams who came out and attacked what they

thought were innovations in the british policy that were oppressing the colonists and if you recall the major slogan was no taxation without representation but it's those delegates that were on the forefront of observing that. they were elected within each colonies of virginia has a legislature, such as its common and hampshire has a legislature and these new houses have delegates that were elected from towns and counties but there was no sense people should have more representative. it was still on the basis of geographic units so one county in virginia but sent two representatives whether it had 1,000 people were 2000 people. what happened when the state's quote their constitution and

they did that in the american revolution from 1776 to 1780. some of the states began to experiment with a new form of representation in which representation was a portion of the population. so more people in a certain area would get more representatives. and that is the innovative idea, that is the experimenter the representation that james madison incorporated in the virginia plan that was submitted to the philadelphia convention in the debate will. but obviously there are winners and losers when you have that kind of representation. in the previous congress and the the articles of the confederation, each state received one vote regarding the population. and that kind of equal representation armored the fact states had been in existence for and have a corporate identity and were well defined geographic

units but madison and others coming from the states that have experimented with this new kind of representation believed was only just and fair that more people in the area should have more representatives so the conflict at the philadelphia convention was how would representation be a portion in the upper house and the lower house so the was a conflict. in july of that year the whole of the debate came to a standstill because the deadlock and couldn't decide how to move on. the small state who would lose under the system because they like having an equal vote for the ones objecting to a convention unless confessions were made to them. what happened this then is the great compromise called the canadian compromise that produced what we have today

which is the senate with representatives from each state >> where did that idea come from? was a based in history, european history it was just a melding of the traditional british system of representation based on geographic units representing land, representing a certain territory in the legislature along with the new american ideal of the representation incommensurate with population and that is incidently why we have a census. pennsylvania in its constitution initiative that idea of a census every ten years and today we do all sorts of things. we look at education, race, ethnicity, etc., in the census but it's initially in

pennsylvania and the convention than me an idea of the census is to count people in regions and that would be the basis for determining how many representatives in the region would send and so how many representatives as opposed to massachusetts as opposed to virginia but this was pioneered in the states in the constitution when mcveigh experimented with representation in population so it was -- >> what was the largest colonies back then and the smallest? >> the largest colony in terms of area was virginia. virginia and extended -- they claimed all and that is now part of ohio and illinois and indiana, and it had a very large population as well and then rhode island would have been the smallest both in terms of

territory and people. >> so when you look at the reapportionment that goes on in congress now, how does this come back from our history? we are talking about the geographical zones but now we are also talking about how we had redistrict and gets a little fauzi sometimes. >> that's what i also talked about in the book that is one of the consequences of this great compromise because the state's good for electing representatives to the house of representatives to the new national legislature would have to decide their representatives would be effected and some of the states initially had general ticket elections so every voter in the state voted for say if the state got seven representatives for seven representatives and the top seven votes would be sent to

congress. a few other states though, the larger states actually started immediately experimenting with what we use today the single district method where a state is carved into districts and either geographic district and people in those states to elect one representative sent to congress and there's a lot of controversy about using that method because some people argue these kind of representatives would be more loyal to the constituents that elected them rather than to the entire state but the whole issue was debated almost every ten years until 1850 because every ten years after congress cut the result of the census congress would have to reapportion and decide the congress was growing. now it is fixed in the early 20th century. it was decided to congress would

be fixed but at that time the number of representatives was increasing and after each sentence conagra's would have to decide how to apportionment the representatives and figure out the ratio of people represented. initially after the first congressional election there was one representative for 40,000 people. today it's more like one to every 670,000 so i think they've changed a lot, but the basis is a number of representatives in portions of the population which forged a the constitutional convention. >> professor zagarri the subtitle is representation in the u.s. 1776 to 1850. deutsch as referenced 1850. what happened? >> guest: it was decided they were sick of fighting every ten

years and is in the past and law that required that the people to the representative -- to and that the remainder of after you divided the population by the number of representatives would be a sign to the states on the basis of the population and so that resolve at least for about another half a century some of these issues that were plaguing the converse but within the states the issue of apportionment continues to be a problem and there's been recently in number of cases that have come before the supreme court arguing that these districts the state legislators have created or unconstitutional or oddly shaped or inappropriate and arguments on politics and

apportionment in creating these districts but the truth this from the very first congress it was understood the creation was a political matter and in fact even of the word didn't exist in 1780 come 88 and 89 when james madison was running for a seat in the house of representatives the virginia legislature was hostile to him and tried to gerrymander him out of a seat. they created a district was oddly shaped full of people they suspected were hostile to him and he almost didn't get elected but the truth was she was a persuasive fellow and prevailed by about 300 votes. >> what's the importance -- and you read about this in your book the placement of state capitals? >> that's part of a larger shift that's going on in the whole period i argue from 1776 to 1860. from an understanding that

representation should be based on geographic units on land and 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 moved their capitals to new locations during this period and what i found interestingly enough is that smaller states put their capital in the geographic center of the state. it's a small state some people would have equal ability to travel to the center of the state for the use of the legislature. the larger states though try to determine the demographic cents of the population and place their capital in places they thought were near the center of populations of pennsylvania for example moved first to lancaster and then harrisburg because the population was moving westward

and they felt that the capitol should be at the center of where the majority of people were living at that time. >> this is the book we are talking about, the politics of size, representation in the u.s. 1776, 1850. rosemarie zagarri as a professor of george mason university in fairfax virginia on the outskirts of washington, d.c. which is where we are now on book tv during our university series. this book has been reissued just recently in paperback. why? >> well because they think that apportionment has continued to play the states and come before the supreme court that's an issue and i've think that people always want to know what the founders thing, how do people with 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 than and a

political issue now. what i would say is they did strive for justice and to make sure that equal members of people receive equal numbers of representatives so that the districts would have about the same numbers of people, and they would try to have districts that made some sort of geographic sense borrowing of a few oddities that i mentioned and so i think that those principles provide a guide for people that supreme court justices, were court justices to decide the issue today. professor wendi teacher george mason? >> i teach courses in the revolution, the early american republic, the local map that, founding mothers and fathers, women's history to this gimmick ph.d. from yale, grew up in st. louis. when did you get interested in the revolutionary period?

>> wow. 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 but it was a country that created the institution's drawing on the historical lessons and their own experience but creating something new and different i was in graduate school coley would love to say earlier i read biographies of the founding fathers and the americans so hysterically i guess you could say i've always been tested. >> you are teaching our george mason university on the campus. give a thumbnail sketch of who george mason was. >> of the forgotten founder. yes, george mason was the primary author of the virginia declaration of rights, and the virginia declaration of rights

it was a statement of basic rights and liberties of the english people and some were the rights and liberties that americans felt that britain had infringed upon and should be protected in writing to read burton didn't have one document that provided the liberty. so george mason in '76 when virginia was riding 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 but also attached bills of rights and then in her when the united states wrote the constitution and 1787 many of the same rights were incorporated into the u.s. constitution in the first amendment. >> large landowner in virginia. >> yeah over 200 slaves, so very interesting guy had a lot of

kids, 12 to 14, and -- >> the declaration of independence? >> he was not at independence hall. he didn't find it constitutional, the documents the proposed u.s. constitution because it did not contain a bill of rights in september of 1787. the bill of rights was added later and passed by the states and only complete the attached in 1791. >> does he get enough credit for his role in founding? >> i think for a long time he hasn't recently there has been an effort to revive him. there's a statue of george mason now on the mall and of course george mason university tries to make itself in basketball and research and teaching switch her to get them out there. spec we're talking with steve

zagarri a professor here george mason university and the author of this book the politics of size, representation in the u.s. 1776 to 1850. recently reintroduced in paperback but she's also the author of this book revolutionary backlash women and politics in the early american republic published by the university pennsylvania press. what is the word backlash in the title? >> well, as i study this period, what i found is that even though women couldn't vote for the most part to hold public office that the revolutionary era debate over the quality and natural rights generated a more large and widespread discussion about whether women have rights and what rights women should have come and women had actually been important participants in the pre-revolutionary era in the

boycotts against great britain in making homespun and attending protests and voicing their opposition to the british rule, and women came to be acknowledged as political players, political themes and so with the coming of the revolution and the emphasis on the actual rights some women and men started talking the but whether they should be allowed to vote and hold public office as well, what kind of rights women should have and in fact the one stayed in new jersey women actually did have the right to vote seven to 76 to 18 1/7, and yes little known facts. now we have to understand that the time in most states voting was a privilege of properties only women who owned a sufficient property could vote and married women by law or not allowed to own property and so it was really mostly single women who voted in new jersey.

>> how many were there, four, five? >> probably thousands. one estimate, 10,000. it was kind of pulled all of the air but we know that in many elections in the '79 these hundreds of women voted in any given election and in some and they voted for not just local officials but also members of congress, that they played a determinative role in electing one candidate over another. so, there was a time during the revolutionary period and the decades immediately following where there was an opening i would argue for women in politics where they were opened in to the discussions about politics, women were acknowledged to have a kind of political role in new jersey they had a former political will but then around 1820 this backlash set in and at that time this was a long time coming but

i think that both men and women began to feel social change was outpacing their ability to absorb the radical transformation and many people felt the idea of women voting and being what they called politician violated the proper sphere that women belong in the home and and the need to be taking care of their children and their families, that they were not appropriate actors in the political realm so after that time you get a hardening of boundaries between men and women coming you get a moving away from this idea of welcoming women into the meal politics and as i mentioned in new jersey a rejection of the role in that

place. this often happens after the revolution there's a pergolas experimentation and innovation and then when they say this is going too fast and they pull back and that is exactly what happened in the united states with regard to women in politics and it took a century before -- more than a century before women were given the vote throughout the united states. now that memory of the women voting new jersey did persist in the western states in the 1870's and etds feminists would invoke that and say women did vote before and they are capable of doing it. they are smart enough and politically informed so the president was powerful. what's interesting is since they got the right to vote in the 20th century i fink that previous experiment in new jersey has been