what we've done with these timber frames is we've just outlined the buildings with a framing because if we put on the siding, we don't have enough information to put on the siding, put in the win tdows an the doorways because we haven't done enough archaeology in this area. the second point with not doing the archaeology in this area, if we put a roof and siding on these buildings, they'd have a wind load, we'd have to tie them to the ground and we'd have to put in footers which would disturb the archaeology. the footers here are on the ground surface. the archaeology below there can be excavated. if we need to we can take these buildings down and do the archaeology in this area. the reason why it's important we're doing this research and spending a year doing the archaeology on these particular quarters is, is we just recently restored the house. we spent about six to seven years doing the restoration of james and dolly madison's home.

and one thing that we're able to represent with the restored home are -- is the space where james and dolly lived. and what we're able to show in the house is the basement area, some of the service spaces, is where slaves worked on a daily basis. what we don't have represented there is where the slaves had their homes. this is what we're doing with the excavations in the south yard and the timber frame outlines you see right here is actually representing these spaces. this is where slaves -- the houses were they would have worked. it's where they would have served the roles that were expected of them by the madisons. it's here in these spaces where the slaves -- this is what they called home. so their daily lives, their roles as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, all would have been played out in this area. and to really talk about that with visitors to bring humanity to the people that were enslaved by the madisons. we felt it was important to show their homes and represent their homes in a physical way. so many times when visitors come here, before we had these timber

frames, people would understand that madison had slaves. but to be able to understand what slaves' daily life was like and how they had -- you know, they were part of a much larger community, very difficult to do without these structures either being investigated ark logically or the actual timber frames in place. we've got an archaeology team here in montpelier that works here full time. we also have field students during the -- during the summer. and during the fall and the spring, we have what's called expedition partners so people come out for a weekend, work side by side with the archaeologists and live on the property. this is a five foot by five foot square. the reason why we excavate in five foot by five foot squares, we all want to know where all the artifacts are coming from from the site. so by excavating this five foot by five foot squares what we're able to do is see where artifacts are concentrated. see where different artifacts are located. also what we can do is all of

the nails are mapped in with a laser transit. what you can see on the map right here that nicole has drawn is she's plotted in where all the artifacts are, but then we also have drawings of where features are such as this. what we'll do, we put all of these maps together at the end of the excavation on auto cad and produce an overall site map of the entire project area. what we can do is relate that site map to the larger land. where the fence lines are, how far this is from the mansion, how far it is from other archaeological features we found. it's nice. that's like a platter. >> yeah. >> you put this stuff back.

>> what's that? >> this is decorated on the interior. >> and the exterior. >> this looks like a chamber pot from the size of the foot rings. >> that makes my day. in a really sick way. >> actually, this -- this pattern looks like a little bit later. like 1830s transfer decoration. which is still -- matches with -- >> this has got a little guy on it. >> oh, yeah. a little cherub with a heart there. he's holding a torch. that's more of a floral pattern. yeah. >> it's real thick. it's got this etching. >> that looks like some sort of table glass. >> yeah. it's cleaner. >> definitely leaded table glass. maybe a large pitcher. this seems to be something that

might have been broken in the house. in some cases, for example, we found pieces of a gravy boat. might be the handle broke off the gravy boat and miss dolly said, okay, that needs to leave the house. so the slave decides do i throw this down in the trash deposit or do i reuse it? it might be reacquired and reused. other cases it might be that something broke and the household's inventory, it happened the day before, well, time to throw it away. one thing we're looking for is pattern. for example, if some of these items like this, this feature here, this could be an item -- we haven't seen this in any of our excavations of the trash deposits from the madisons which is just on the other side of the temple. we haven't seen this pattern. this could be a piece that the slaves bought at market. what we're interested in looking at are some of these broken

madison household ser rceramics located in a different place than ceramics that the slaves purchased? if they are that might support the case that these are items that when they're broken, they're trying to keep these out of sight out of mind. if they're all being deposited in the same place, maybe it's something not desirable for the table and they're being reused by the slaves. it's these kind of larger stories we're interested in building to understand not only how slaves are obtaining their household items. because one thing that people are often surprised at is that slaves were part of the market economy. not only were they -- they were also selling small produce, small items to the madisons' neighboring planters. and using that cash or a barter system to buy their own household goods. we're suspecting more and more slaves are responsible for purchasing most of the items that were in their house through their own means.

and this was -- this is a way that we can see how different groups of slaves might have had different access to market goods, meaning they had more disposable income, per se, through marketing their own items. or had, you know, different status within the community. and used their position within the labor structure to exert authority over other slaves. these are the kind of relationships we're hoping to build from, you know, studying the trash we're finding here in the slave quarters and build a much larger and more complete picture of, you know, what the slave community was like. the folks that lived here are more than just property. they were human beings. they had families. and they had relationships with each other. that's what we're trying to reconstruct here. but what we can see we're excavating here, is we're in between these two buildings. you've got a quarter of a building right here. you can see the corner that's right here, go 16 feet over in this direction.

you've got another brick corner that's located right here. then on this other side, we found brick tiers up in these locations. it gives us evidence this structure was 16 by 32 feet. this would have been -- would have had brick footers, but this structure would have been a wooden building with wooden fill similar to the ones we've reconstructed with the other structures. then this is the base of the chimney stack. this stack would have been brick all the way up through the top of the roof. and this little indent here is where the hearth would have been located. now, we don't have any evidence for a hearth actually where the slaves do their cooking on a daily basis. this hearth was probably built up off the ground because there's no evidence of burning in this area. which means this structure would have had a raised wooden floor. which is very different than those early 19th century slave quarters of the time period. it gives us an idea that the

structures that were in the south yard were actually built to be seen by visitors. they we there were a little more resources put into these structures than we're finding in slave quarters in other areas of the property. this is the second duplex structure. this one is a little bit different than that one in terms of how it was built. this one had a stone chimney base. again, you would have had two households in this duplex. one would have had a space, 16 by 16 feet here. and would have had a hearth that was inside of this chimney. on the other side there would be a hearth here, there would have been a raised wooden floor and a 16 by 16 space for another household. and it probably would have been anywhere from four to six people living in each one of these -- these spaces. so total, you'd get maybe 10 to 12 people in one of these duplexes. you'd get three of those. so you're looking at maybe 25, 30 people in this area.

alternatively, one of these duplexes could have been used by -- when visitors would come to see the madisons, they would have been bringing their personal slaves, their coachmen, a number of folks that would have been serving them. they would have needed a place to stay. maybe that was servant guest housing. it's hard to say. it's been seen in other plantations of the time period. with the excavations, what you see here is the completed excavation of this site. we've excavated all the structural remains that were -- that had feature soil. what happens to all the artifacts is each one of these units, each of these five by five units are excavated separately. each strata within these unit are kept separate. all these artifacts are taken to the lab for processing. here we go. here's a piece of -- oh, very

cool. this is like -- it's a piece of glass, bottle glass. it's either melted or it looks like there's molded glass. very, very thin glass. that's very, very neat. i haven't seen one of these in a long time. but it's clear. the archaeology lab is a short walk down the hill from the mansion. we have it open to the public. visitors come down and see artifacts we found at the site. previous ceramics we've restored into whole vessels. in the lab we get two different areas. we've got a working deck where we process and power wash all our rock and bricks that we recover from the site. we also have a water screening station where we take the soil samples that we bring back here and instead of putting them into

the quarter inch screen like we do at the site, we wash it through window screen. what do you see helen doing right here, is she's washed down some of the soil through this window screen. you can see all the small artifacts that are coming out. fish bone, egg shell, straight pins, smaller pieces of ceramic and glass that would be lost at the site. so there's some element, some groups of artifacts that we would never recover if we didn't go through this process. what we do is we soak the soil in these compartments of water. what happens is all the sediment sinks to the bottom. that's what helen has water screened right now. but then the charred wood floats to the top. we skim that charred wood off because what we find with the charred wood, in this case this sample has a few specks of charred wood you can see right here and these smaller black flecks, which are potentially

not just charred wood, but also charred seeds. we dry this, wash it, dry it and send it off to a paleo botanist. what the paloebotanist does is she's able to identify some of the smaller seed specimens. we're able to get more evidence of the slaves' diet. not only bones from the kind of animals they were eating. also evidence of what kind of plant material they were processing as well. with this, what we try to do at this site is recover every bit of information from the soil. and sometimes that's information you can't see with just the naked eye, and it takes, you know, some further processing. thanks, helen.

as i mentioned, all these artifacts come down to the lab and they're washed, sorted and then cataloged. then eventually restored. and this is an example of some of the units that we've -- we've recovered from the south yard. these are actually units that we were working on this past week. when we closed out that level, this is 1907, one of the five by five foot squares, the occupation layer, has all the trash remains from the slave households. for example, you get ceramic here. this is a piece of transfer printed willow ware. you can identify the pattern

from the edge here and the pattern right there. so these are the artifacts in their so-called native state. still having the virginia clay soil on them. here's a wine bottle fragment. the glasswares, the ceramics, these can all be washed in water. we use a toothbrush to clean them. the iron is dry brush. this if you submerge this in water, it's going to destabilize the iron and it's going to begin to corrode at a more rapid rate. the items that are many diagnostic, iron items are more tig nostic, we actually conserve. this appears to be part of a -- maybe a blade for cutting grass. this is the blade portion. it's just corroded away in this area. but if we didn't conserve these items, what would eventually happen to them is being out of the ground, they'd veeventually fall apart. we put them in these

conservation tanks where we run currents. it sloughs the rust off it until you get down to the bare metal. the next step in the conservation is to use a tool to clean up the remaining rust. then they're washed in a solution of distilled water, boiled distilled water, baked in the oven to dry it, and also dipped in acetone to dry up any remaining water. then they're coated with a conservation coating that keeps the oxygen off the object. some of these iron objects potentially, if they're here on the 19th century side. objects such as a hinge, they were made by the slave named moses who headed up the black smith shop for james madison's father. these are objects, again, that tell much more of the story of

just what they were, but about the plantation society that was here and everything from how it was used to how it was made. so we want to protect these for the future. these are the artifacts after they've been washed. these are -- this is the result of excavations from four strata from four different units. you can see the nails after they've been dry brushed. the ceramics, now they're clean. you can see the paste color. you can see the glaze. and what occurs once they're clean is they're bagged by artifact type. for example, the ceramics are separated from the nails and the glass are put into another bag. the bone is put into another one. all these go over into the boxes over here. where what we'll be doing this winter is cataloging all these artifacts. we've got staff and volunteers and interns who are doing this right now. charleen and emma are cataloging all the rock and brick from the

site. we'll dump out one of the sample bags. where's that one from? >> the southwest yard. >> that's in 18? >> '91. >> '91. so the unit. emma's separating the architectural material by type. she's separating the brick. also looking at how soft the brick is by marking it on the paper. the soft under fire brick. you can see what jessica's doing over here, she's taking the water screen sample after it's been washed and dried and it's been floated so the light fraction have separated it from the heavy fraction, she's doing what's called sorting. putting it through a series of radiated screens so the half inch is separated from the quarter inch. all the half inch material is cataloged by charlie and emma right there. then these remaining screens are

separated. she measures the volume so we can get an idea of the constituent sediments that are in the soils. then all these will be checked for artifacts. as you can see little bits of ceramic here. also bits of window glass. but the real exciting part comes when especially on the window screen, sometimes you'll identify small beads. straight pins. these are all items that they're put through the quarter inch screen that they'd be gone. we'd never be able to recover and never knew they were there. the next step is cataloging them. what pat and kim are cataloging right now are obviously ceramics. ooh, there's a neat one right there. this is probably part of a teapot lid. that's a piece that's glaze refined red ware. i've never seen the top with a

hole in it. i don't know if they would have, like, a screen or a ball you could put through here? >> oh, yeah. >> that's gorgeous. any steam. they didn't have tea bags then. what kim and pat are doing is they're separating these ceramics by type. so, for example, these are -- you know, originally when they came out of the unit, these two pieces weren't together. it was actually three pieces here. but what they've found is these three pieces actually mend. so these will be cataloged in one line. this is this same transfer print pattern that katie found out in the field yesterday. this brown transfer print. this is actually part of a plate, though. what she had found looked to be part of a larger pot, maybe chamber pot. the back of the plate, of course, is undecorated. the front has this transfer.

that's beautiful. they write these up on this catalog sheet and each you neek occurrence gets its own line. in this case this is the dagity pattern porcelain that they recovered -- found from one of the other bags. each ceramic shard is weighed on a scale in grams, measured. eventually what happens to all this data, it gets entered into a computer data base where we can analyze, for example, where are all the brown transfer prints ceramics at the site. what's the total weight of all the ceramics from the southwest structure, the southwest slave quarter, as compared to the southeast slave quarter. or look at the distribution by weight of ceramics all across the sites. tracy here is kind of a creme day la creme of the artifacts we

recovered this summer. ranging from this bottle glass, part of a flask. you can see this great design right here. an example of embossed glass. part of an iron padlock. this is the body of the padlock. this is the hinge that would connect there. it would swing back and forth. the key would enter right there. then we found four navy buttons. these two are officers buttons. but we're -- these date to the late 1820s, early 1830s. we're not sure why they're in the slaves quarter. but it's a mystery that needs to be solved. this is part of a pharmaceutical vial right here. most interestingly recovered this past week, we recovered what is a real or a spanish coin that dates to 1801. and what's interesting about

this point is it's clipped. you can see this little piece that's taken out here. that was actually an illegal practice done by some merchants and consumers to take a little bit of silver out of the coin and then collect enough of those and i guess you could make something out of it or sell it. but the mint didn't like that when their coins were being clipped. what's more important about this coin is, is it's some direct evidence that slaves were engaged in marketing activities. they were, you know, selling items to either the madisons, to their guests, to neighboring slave owners or neighboring community members through paying cash or barter to obtain items you see here. some of the items, we've got evidence for the kind of food the slaves were eating. this is a -- a pig bone or a small cow bone. i'm not sure which this is. but it's been cracked for the marrow. might have been used for a soup.

this little guy, this is a fig figurine head. it seems to be a skater. see the pointed ears like mr. spock there. some kind of figurine from greek mythology. maybe when this broke some child found the little head interesting and brought it back to the quarter. hard to say. a number of stories you can figure from these. one of the end -- last sets of analysis we do, especially with ceramics and glassware is actually take the shards. once they're labeled, they've been cataloged and they're labeled, is to spread them out over a table and then mend them back together and restore them. this is an example of a piece of bamboo and peony sun china recovered from dolly. this is the trash deposit from

the madison's retirement years. down float from the temple. we labeled each shard so we know exactly where it came from. this is the site number. state of virginia. oerj county. 249 is the mansion site. this is the inventory number. 10208. that's how we can figure out what unit it came from. this catalog letter, "ax," matches up with one of the individual catalog lines you saw kim and pat writing up previously. this actually has a back mark. it allows us to know it's davenport stone china. this is made in england. once this is mended, what we can tell about the ceramic is the diameter of the plate. what form it took. then get a better idea of what the overall decoration is. this over here. we've got a wine bottle that we

recovered from the slave quarter. you can see the "j" there. this would have been one of the president's wine bottles he used when entertaining the constant guests coming here to montpelier. it would have been attached to the side of the wine bottle. not only about slaves, but also madison's view about slavery which is incredibly important for understanding who mr. madison was. we knew of mr. madison as his role as the politician, fourth president of the united states. his role as the political thinker was designing the virginia plan and the constitution. his role as an entertainer was dolly in the house. but a very important role he had was as a slave owner. and how is this -- how does this blend all these together, you know, the entertaining he was doing, how he had house slaves interacting with other slaves and with the guests. we're trying to put all this back together. and the documents don't tell us everything we need. so we're trying to fill in the gaps with the archaeology.

you can view more american history tv programs at our website, c-span.org/history. also follow us on facebook. facebook.com/c-spanhistory. the richard nixon presidential library convened a symposium titled "understanding richard nixon and his era." over the next hour, scholars focus on the vietnam war. they discuss the partnership between richard nixon and henry kissinger, the president's approach as commander in chief and the pentagon papers and the administration's response to dissent. >> welcome back to "understanding richard nixon and his era," a symposium. i'm ken hughes. i'm a researcher with the presidential recordings program of the university of virginia's

miller center. co-sponsor of this, the first scholarly conference after richard m. nixon library and museum. returning now to nixon and vietnam. a tragically timely subject when america finds herself embroiled in an inclusive war or two. and the editor of foreign affairs and the pages of the "new york times" has suggested that president obama model his exit from afghanistan on president nixon's exit from vietnam. we have some amazing, amazingly good scholars to discuss the subject with you today. i'll introduce each one right before he or she speaks. we'll start off with jeffrey

kimball. no one has done more to bring richard nixon's te cent integral exit strategy to life than jeff kimball. he has written two pathfinding books on the subject. "nixon's vietnam war" in 1998 and 2003's "the vietnam war files." a professor ameritus, miami university of ohio. jeff had had the great scholarly pleasure in the last decade with each new release of nixon tapes and nixon documents of seeing his work proved right. and i have the great scholarly pleasure of introducing him. ladies and gentlemen, jeffrey kimball. [ applause ] >> thank you, ken. i thank everyone who's responsible for the conference. what i also want to say o