you saw a picture of him. that's james monroe. vice president of the united states, george clinton. justice on the supreme court. samuel chase. it's pretty extraordinary. you can be for it. you can be against it. remarkable free speech and beard makes you forget that. beard makes you forget all the elections. beard is the only with one who knew it for a very long time. i asked ed morgan did you know the fact? that's kind of interesting. in 8 of the 13 states property qualifications were actually eliminated or lowered in the special election on the constitution. more people were allowed to vote on the constitution than had ever been allowed to vote on anything else. in new york, for example, here are the rules. all adult free male citizens could vote for the constitution.

the property quaul fications, the disqualifications, the race qualifications and rosie with would remind you that, yes, there is a gender qualification. that's not so much new. that's old. that's just always been. in 8 of the 13 states more people got to vote or voted for in the special convention. the special conventions were allowed to vote for anything else in the history of america before. in short we, the people, do ordain and establish this constitution. ordainment is a deed, a doing, constituting. and what is done is nothing less -- there's the big first claim -- than the most democratic deed in the history of planet earth up to that point. it is the hinge of modern human history. that one year in which for the

first time an entire continent, up and down a whole darned continent people got to vote on how they and their posterity were to be governed. more people were allowed to participate than anything else before and to speak freely. that's what beard gets you. and the world will never be the same. if you look back 1786, let's say. you look back to the previous millennia of recorded history, which ones existed existed in tiny little city states where people met face-to-face. they worship the same god, they spoke the same language, they had the same climate, the warm weather and cold weather people have never gotten together democratically. you want to pull together different time zones, different climactic zones, different religions and races and nationalities and languages, that's an empire. you need an emperor and a standing army to pull the roman

world together and, by the way, two religions, catholics and protestants, that's plenty enough to kill each other for a century and america has more than that. it's got quakers. it's got a baptist and episcopalians and catholics so plenty enough to slaughter each other over if you want to do that sort of thing. so looking backwards, very few democracies, tiny little city states and even if they have democratic constitutions, ways of life, even if they have written documents, never a constitutional -- a democratic constitution making process. one man create inging a pipelin god or something is the law, handing down the law. they're not putting their constitutions to a popular vote in athens or rome or florence or anywhere else in the world. before 1776, the brits, they claim that they have some kind of constitution and it does have

some democratic elements created by tradition, a house of commons, jury trial, but they never have a democratic constitution making process. before 1776, that had never been done. the declaration isn't put to a popular vote. there isn't time. we're in a war. the shooting has already started. that's what david mccullough's magnificent book is all about. we're already at war. we don't have that kind of thing. in 1777-'78 we do. this is the year and it builds on some is dress rehearsal for so they seem in retrospect, early efforts to do this sort of thing at the state level, massachusetts actually adopts a constitution democratically in 1780 and david mccullough wants you to know john adams was the draftsperson there and new

hampshire follows in 1784. but now on a continental scale and my claim is the world is never the same. it almost failed. the civil war, lincoln comes along and you heard about that. now, just so we're clear, hatch the world is democratic. very few democracies for the previous millennium in recorded history, we do this thing up and down the continent and we manage to actually survive an effort by one group to set aside by force of arms a proper election, the civil war. you can't have government by and for the people if the people lose a fair election fair and square, actually try to undo it by force of arms and try to shut down free speech which they tried to do. it is a crime to be anti-slavery in the deep south in the 1850s. it's a crime, a capital offense, to criticize slavery in the 1850s.

abraham lincoln's name doesn't get put on the ballot south of virginia and he gets zero popular votes. not electoral but popular votes out of virginia. so democracy was under assault because there's also the slave-ocratic principle i will tell you about. the civil war proved that we could actually make democracy work and it does end slavery and the world will never be the same. look at many more democracies at the beginning of the 20th century and then you look at the end of the 20th century, we won that century. we won it big time. i like our prospects for the future. the world is becoming american in this very deep way. big claim. it is way more democratic than we were taught by charles beard and his disciples. nothing less than a hinge of human history. it's the big thing we are still feeling the reverberations of that. just to give you an example of

the reverberations, you bring all these people in these state conventions, what's the first thing when you bring people together? they can talk amongst themselves and they actually say, listen, version 1.0 is really -- where are the bill of rights? the thing called the bill of rights that comes out of this year of actually asking people what they think. the phrase that appears more than anything is we the people. where does that come from? from the actual practice of free speech actually existed in this year that people get to talk which they couldn't do in 1776 because we were in the middle of a war. way more democratic, the hinge of human history. to get the people to say yes, this isn't one person, one vote, one time, something like that. they have to actually put, the framers do, all sorts of democratic sweeteners in the

constitution to get people to vote for the thing, otherwise they're not going to vote for it. what are the property qualifications to be a member of the house of representatives? correct. none. what are the qualifications to be a senator according to the constitution? none. you can be a u.s. senator and not even be eligible to vote in your home state. we -- this is a point -- what are the qualifications to be president? every state has basically -- virtually every state qualifications to vote for or be governor but not in the constitution. no religious qualifications to be a federal officer. indeed a ban on religious testses in article 6. no state in its tunings has a ban on religious tests. open to everyone. in order to be a member of the

so-called house of commons at the time, you have to own or rent real property, to have a seat in england. you have to open or rent real property generating 600 pounds sterling. not worth but generating annual income 600 pounds sterling which is roughly the equivalent of bingely's estate or darcy's pemberley or something like that. you can just be a schoolteacher, a minister held in high regard and you can be a senator of the united states, president of the united states. we have low born people who are presidents of the united states. we have one now. we had one in abe lincoln, in jackson, low born. maybe not only in america but it's very distinctive. two of the four guys up on mt. rush more not members of any formal church at the time of their ascension to the presidency. pretty striking stuff. the rest of the world even today is up to.

gordon wood would want me to remind you of one other thing. you mate be annoyed the people in congress take your money and don't pay themselves, don't help the rest of us so much. don't resent congressional salaries. the remarkable democratic future that we pay our lawmakers because if we don't the only people who can serve are aristocrats. to make public service open to low-born folks who aren't independently wealthy, england doesn't do that until 1911. we're that far ahead of the world. now where are all these democratic ideas coming from? i don't think these guys at philadelphia are geniuses. they're lawyers and i know a lot of lawyers, very few of them are geniuses. lawyers copy what has worked before. on issue after issue after issue they actually borrow from best state practices. how should we launch?

massachusetts and north carolina put it to a popular vote. that's a good idea. should we have a census, very democratic idea. should we have direct election? all of the states have direct election. represent the articles of confederation didn't. that's a big democratic reform. should we pay people? yes, pennsylvania does and that's actually a good system. how should we structure our executive, well, massachusetts has the best model and so let's sort of copy that one and add to it. if you read gordon's first book, creation of the american public, it's how the federal constitution is a reaction to the first and second is round of the state making in 1776. more democratic than you thought. that's the good news. we the people.

do establish this constitution for the united states of america. alas more slave-ocratic. they get one thing wrong, it's not so little a thing. three-fifths means this -- what does it mean? whbeenat sho slaves are counted for three-50s of purposes. that's wrong, right? everyone should count for one, right? should be five-fifths, right? no, should be zero-fifths. no state should ever getittror . the question isn't whether slaves are voting. of course they aren't voting and married women aren't voting. rosemarie gave you a story about unmarried widows, but they can't vote easily because there's no secret ballot. if your husband and the laws can not voting your own interests

will. it was unmarried women. the question isn't how much clout slaves are going to have but how much clout slave states will have. three-fifths you get more voting clout in the house of representatives and that's the constitution. not in the house of representatives. where else could you get credit? the electoral college. yes, they didn't believe in democracy and thought republics were different. baloney. i gave you arguments that it they were far more democratic than we've been taught and they believe in direct election of governors and direct election of the members of the house of representatives there is a balance between big and small zats. the big state guy always wins. we have three small state presidents, bill clinton,

zachary taylor and franklin pierce. that's it. virginia is the biggest state and for 32 of the first 36 years it's virginian and massachusetts is the second or third biggest state depending on how you count anded adamses. they dominate. it's not big state, small state. it's house versus senate. it's slavery, stupid, as james carville would say. that's what it's most about. before you have political parties to know if you're from massachusetts who is good from virginia and vice versa but once we have political parties merge, you can vote, even retrospective whether you like the incumbent, whether he's done anything good and you know enough to vote on that rhett respectively.

this is almost the death of us. why did they get this one number down? they didn't have any track record among the states. none of the slave states had census formula so they didn't know. they just plucked a number out of a hat, plucked a number used for tax purposes and had representation in the house and the electoral college where it didn't fit. turned out to be a huge benefit for the southern states. you heard about thomas jefferson, you heard about adams. who won the election of 1800-1801? you all say thomas jefferson, of course. take away the three-fifths, there are two elections of southerner against northerner, jefferson against adams and adams wins the first and then ohio flips. flips pennsylvania. the swing state at the time is new york which is a slave state at the time.

but it flips but without a pro-slavery bias of the extra three-fifths, john adams wins even in 1800. he knows that and all the federalists know that. the constitution is amended but not that one. the 12th amendment makes it safe for a populous presidency. jefferson and madison, in principle they are opposed to slavery but once they understand their bread is buttered on the southern side party, their founding has its base in slavery, you don't hear so much about anti-slavery from those guys. and even great northerners like john quincy adams, he doesn't say that much against slavery. afterwards he does. there's no openly anti-slavery presence before 1860. your simple test, someone gets

up, slavery is wrong, you should eventually get rid of it. there's no anti-slavery cabinet officer before 1860. all american history. slavery is wrong, we should eventually get rid of it. andrew jackson, john c. calhoun from my college. residential college named after him. it is pro-slavery. the democratic party more and more pro-slavery and ruthlessly so and aggressively so. it's a cancer that grows and grows and grows and that's called the civil war. we were lucky not smart. and sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart. bismarck said providence in its

infinite wisdom, god has a special place in his heart for fools, drunk ardz in the united states of america. so more democratic than you were taught, more pro-slavery than you were taught and, finally, much more about maturity. that's andrew jackson, too. why would 13 -- and you know the history of the world, up to 1787, why would you ever think a continental democracy could work? there's no model in world history. why would you think this could work? madison says and the federalist number, what is the federalist number? diversity will be good and the democracy will work better if it's modest diversity. mad madison persuaded everyone. federalist 10, that's what we're all talk. no one reads federalist 10.

no one at all. nor for the next 100 years, you read federalist 10 because there was a certain scholar who thought federalist 10 was front and center, really important. that scholar was named charles beard. okay? it's all about the class issue and religious diversity and other things. madison's federalist 10 is brilliant. i disagree respectively. i give madison tenure on the basis of federalist 10 and it's brilliant argument and precisely because of it no one pays any attention. no one understands brilliant arguments of their time. only after. if you had a good argument for why 13 separate colonies should quit one continental regimes, the likes of which you had never seen in history, would you wait until your op-ed to make that point. listen, this is what it is just so we see clearly, it's the equivalent of today proposing

world government. a real world government with a world president and a world army and a world legislature. it's that audacious. what the heck are you talking about? virginia is has been on its own from the 1620s, the house of burge burgesses, it has been a separate entity. it's connected to the other colonies loosely before 1776 in the same way 1930 has a british commonwealth of nations including canada, india, new zealand, australia, ireland, okay? a common crown but no real continental structure of any sort. now you're proposing to take these warm weather and cold weather people and create one sort of strong indivisible state. why would you do that? why the heck would you go for world government today? let your imagination roam as free as possible. there's only one reason today that would get you to vote for

world government. if the martians were coming. don't really love the chinese guys but they are homosapiens. yeah, okay 0. if the martians are coming and that's what the argument is. you almost lost the last war. we were lucky to win it. david fischer told you about some -- how fortunate. if you read mccullough 1776 you do see it seems the hand of providence even in the weather, you know, on all sorts of crucial days. we were lucky to win the last one. we might win the next one. here is the argument. my fellow americans, it's in federalist 2, it's continued in federalist 4 to 6, if you read federalist 9, if you read nothing else, if you read 8 and 9, look around the world today.

who is free in all the world? apart from us americans. not the russians, not the chinese, not the indians, not the turks, not the poles. british and maybe the swiss and that's about it. the netherlands are in the process of losing this. now why? by the way, what do the swiss have in common? not language. four of them. not religion, they have two which is enough to kill each other. these places have defensible orders. it's pretty hard to charge up a hill. it's naturally defensible and before it was unified, gordon mentioned scotland, when you had the scots battling, there's no great wall of china. he's not a defensible border and before actually the union of scotland and england, the sco it ts were on the english and the

english were fighting back and mel gibson was coming down and the queen of france was intervening and playing and no one is safe in that world. the unionists in england means you don't need soldiers on the island. you just need a small navy that needs to be able to beat the spanish armada and navies are threat threatening. my fellow americans, we need to emulate the model of england and scotland forming an indivisible union and here is what we're going to do. we will have this 3,000-mile-wide moat times 50 and it will keep the old powers at bay. we'll kick the brits out. a very small army, so small it wants to threaten domestic liberty, kick the brits out, kick the spanish out, kick the french out. we'll kill the indians. we'll control the continent, manifest destiny. no one will screw with us. that is andrew jackson.

by the way, you look at a map of the world in 1943, who is free. it's basically the brits and von traps in switzerland is the same thing because it's hard to charge up a hill and hitler hesitates to launch an a.m. f amphibious invasion because that's not so easy to do. it's what our friends in israel would call defensible borders. more democratic, more slave-ocratic. more about national security, more about -- andrew jackson's world. he can beat the brits, battle of new orleans. he doesn't like black people so much. he's emphatically pro-slavery, doesn't love the native americans. that's a structure of the constitution and it's not our world. i'm not -- i don't know which side i'd be on. i think probably the survile side in that world. why have i told you this story?

so two ways of remembering the story and one challenge. if you forget, go to any atm, and you're going to get andrew jackson's. so that's just sort of remember our constitution. you're from the great state of oklahoma, and that's, of course, if you understand your state history it's all about the cherokee and the trail of tears and andrew jackson. living through its legacy today but here is the most important point. the story i've just told is really inspirational in some ways. we give the world more democracy than it ever had before and we're feeling the reverberations before today. your lifetime. the wall comes down. india. this amazing multicultural democracy on the american model inspired by people like thorough

and jeffersovejefferson. we showed it could work. that's the inspiring part of my story. the challenge, though, is you need to understand, one, their constitution failed because they didn't really -- they wished slavery away rather than coming up with a credible solution to it. they could have. they could have said three-fifths now but two-fifths in 20 years and one-fifth, you know. now what are the issues today we are wishing away that might be the death of us? foreign oil, climate change. they fail because they ultimately -- hope is not a plan. for all their greatness we need to recognize that failure and then ask where we might be failing. that's one challenge i wanted to leave with you all. here is the second, the framers'

vision was of an isolationist america, what made america safe is not the bill of rights. bill bill of rights wasn't even part of the original plan, it's not enforced for most of its history. it's not about the bill of rights even though i know that's what you were taught. what made america free for most of our history, we had no major standing army in peacetime of any significance. until world war ii. we don't have these military thugs using other military thugs to sit on us the way saddam hussein sat on his people or gadhafi or thugs from around the world. that's what made america free. and 50 years ago this year general eisenhower, my son understands is like george washington. we've had three george washingtons. we called the second grant and the third eisenhower. three national generals and vic understood that at 6 years old so remember your presidents. you'll see interesting patterns

here. so dwight eisenhower recognizes that the world he's hang to his successor is very different than the world he grew up in. we have to think about these things because you are facing a different world than the founders world, challenges of the military complex but the rest of the world isn't -- and much of it is not oppressive anymore, it will be defeated, fascism and communism and the nazism. and so now the rest of the world is becoming more american. we are becoming more like the rest of the world. we're much more multicultural than ever before. we have immigration not just from europe but from all of europe and from south america, asia and africa, the world is becoming more like us, this is the challenge of your generation. i'm speaking especially to the

students here in the audience to try to rethink in a big way the doctrines you've inherited in the same way and here i close, they're young people in their 30s, madison and hamilton. doctrines of their world. they were taught you can't have a continental democracy. my claim is just as they had to really think hard about changes that were happening in their world that created unique opportunities, my friends, the same is true. history is still happening. there's lots of it to write and we can be founders for the future. thank you very much.