>> thank you, professor amar, for that engaging, entertaining and thought provoking insight into the framing generation, into our jacksonian constitution. we have time for a handful of questions. there's an open microphone so i would encourage to you come up. let me exercise the moderator's prerogative and ask the first question. i would like to turn the historical lens around and ask you to imagine, if you will, what the framing generation as well as what the jacksonian generation might think if they look through that historical lens at us and at the constitution we have today including all the post-civil war amendments, banning slavery, guaranteeing equal protection under the law, much later giving

women the right to vote as well as brown vs. board of education, post-1937 that gave an expansive authority for congress to regulate the economy and many aspects of our daily lives. the one person one vote principle as well as perhaps more modern and controversial decisions like citizens united. what would the framing of the jacksonian generation think of the constitution that we have today and should their reactions matter to us? >> wonderful question. you're hearing from people from different disciplines, trained historians often hesitate to answer presentist questions, what would a historical figure think about today. they often emphasize the pastness of the past. lawyers use history. we have to because we have to decide the case either for the plaintiff or the defendant and so we have to figure out in the end does the history support more the plaintiff's vision of

the present or the defendant's vision. his t historians have the great luxury of not having -- you know, you put ten historians -- you lay them end to end and they'll never reach a conclusion but lawyers actual ly have to -- an judges -- decide i'll answer that question even though the pure historians may sort of cringe. our constitution intergenerational project. the founders' vision failed. it gets reborn in the civil war and the story doesn't end. my claim is that the founding is like a big bang and it creates a tremendous democratic energy that sort of gives momentum for all that happens subsequently. so the bill of rights, which as i mentioned has five mentions of the word the people and the first amendment and then eventually look at the trajectory of amendments. isn't it interesting almost all of them have expanded liberty

and equality and no restrictions with the possible exception of prohibition which, of course, fails. so no anti-flag burning amendments or anti-gay rights amendments or anti-catholic amendments or all sort of pro-liberty, pro-equality. it's striking. the constitution gives us a momentum. it gives us a narrative. gordon wood asked, why do we study history? and i think he said partly to understand who we are, a people without a history is like a human being without memory, amnesia. so who we are, where do we come from and presumably then where might we be going? it sort of gives us a sense of -- and what i'm saying is i'm so proud to be an american, so lucky that this country let my family in a few years before i

was born because in the history of the world we are part of an epic project. there are very few societies, i think, where i could get up and say this year in the history of this nation is the hinge of modern history and not be laughed at. so it's an extraordinary project. i'll give you one other example how you have to -- so i think they would say we've actually been completing their project. they -- 7 of the 39 of them were foreign born. and you actually could be foreign born and be a president at the time, alexander hamilton was fully eligible. otherwise i'm not sure he would have wanted -- he would have liked the thing. so they were far more open to immigrants than anyone before and it if we made it still more open we'd be carrying forward their project in the same way that the 13th, 14th and 15th

amendments, legal immigration, the 19th amendment rosemarie zagarri told you how it is building on a certain tradition of more inclusion than what happened the day before. that's my claim about this year. it's more democratic energy, more free speech than we've ever seen before. so i think, although they'd be shocked at the leveling tendencies and the fact that leaders actually don't lead so much anymore but just follow. there are things i think and gordon wood captures a little bit of this, their sense that something has been lost, some of the aristocratic virtues. but for all of that, i think they would recognize in us their posterity, the continuation of their radical revolutionary project. [ applause ]

>> because the confederation of the states was in jeopardy, they wisely chose to stress unification of the states rather than the controversial subject of the abolition of slavery. as such the constitution was not necessarily pro-slavery. do you have any other proof that the constitution promoted slavery and, also, what is so terribly wrong with minding our own business and not interfering arguments of other nations as the doctrine clearly states that america is to do? >> thank you so much for that very good question. so, look, the question is at what point the civil war becomes inevitable. historians often ask questions about inevitability. is this a greek tragedy? no matter what odeipus does he's destined to kill his father and marry his mother.

the godfather is a tragedy because michael doesn't want to be like his father. that's my father's world. he gets sucked back in. that's why it's a greek tragedy. so the question is you see -- my claim is for geo strategic reasons you have to get south carolina onboard otherwise you have an undefended southern flank. how do you deal with that? you have to actually unify the continent geo tra tejcally because that's actually important. but if in order to do that you have to make such compromises with slavery that it's eventually going to doom the project, then it's just for ordained failure. my claim is that actually wasn't the case, that it was a failure of state craft. there was a solution that was imaginable and they missed it. and it's the same solution in my view our depend enence on forei oil -- you see, slavery was -- we are giving billions of

dollars to basically the most reactionary regimes in the world, these petro dictators. this is bad for the world. i happen to believe this is probably not great for our mother earth either. and we are addicted to it in the same way that they were addicted to slavery. that was part of -- so how do you solve this? here is how you solve it. in time using time, you have to compromise with evil now but this is lincoln's -- lincoln says two things. slavery is wrong. if slavery is wrong, nothing is wrong. i cannot remember a time i did not think so. then he turns around and says i'm not an abolitionist. how can you believe in both? he says because we're stuck with slavery. what's his solution? thesis, anti-they sis, i will put slavery on the path of distinction. eventually we have to get there.

and so here is what they did for importation. you can import before 1808 but after 1808 copping can prohibit interslave. must rather than can. but they could have said, you know, slavery what exists is okay but you can't spread it to the west. you could have said three-fifths of the existing states but not in any of the new states. you could have said three-fifths now but two-fifths in 20 years and one-fifth but eventually you can't get extra credit for extra slaves. that's just wrong in principle. you have to use time because if we as moral human beings -- steven douglas says why can do we talk about morality? let's just -- and lincoln says because we are human beings and moral characters. we can't not talk about slavery. now once we all admit that, there's lots of things we can do. we may have to make certain compromises in the here and now but let's all agree one day our

great-grandchildren should be freed from this blight. okay? so i'm saying that's what they could have done. and south carolina wouldn't have liked it. and the south carolinians with all due respect were nut jobs from day one. and in july 1776 -- the same month as the declaration, a south caroli south carolinian named thomas lynch, great last name, thomas lynch says to the other members of -- at the continental congress, you start talking about slavery, we're out of here. he would never persuade the south carolinians. here is what you could have done. you could have isolated them. you have to get the virginians onboard and some of the virginians, many of them, are reasonable. they're slave holders. they know that slavery is a bad thing. they don't want to actually pass it on to their children and grandchildren because they think it corrupts the souls even of

masters. george mason says that. thomas jefferson says it but doesn't do stuff about it because his party depends on it. james madison understands this in his bone. so does george washington. the reasonable virginians understand their slave holders, that slavery is a bad business. you have to persuade them. then the north carolinians have to decide whether they're going to cast their lot with the nut jobs down south or with virginia and they're going to go with virginia and you have to isolate the nut jobs. there are nut jobs, they have to be isolated. it at the time the center are the reasonable slave holders, george washington, preeminent among them, and you could have done it and it was a failure of craft. it seems mean to emphasize the one thing but the system basically did did break because of it. and we need to understand that

because our system could be at risk today. see, i'm a presentist. i want to you understand they almost failed because we could, unless we, the people, today solve our problems in time, we need a 20-year plan. it took us 20 years, 30 years to get into this hole. it will take a while to get out. we all agree we're in a hole and here is a long-term solution. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. we're going to take a brief break and when we return we'll have our panel discussion with all of our distinguished guests today. so please come back in a few minutes. american history tv continues. wednesday at 8:00 p.m. historians consider who "time" magazine might have picked to be

person of the year in 1862 when the kcountry was in the mix of the civil war. among those discussioned abolitionist leader frederick douglass, robert e. lee, and george b. mcclellan, the general who had a campaign to take the confederate capital of richmond. c-span's 2012 local content vehicle cities tour takes our book tv and american history tv programming on the road. this past weekend featured little rock, arkansas. with book tv at the university of arkansas. >> the high school collected photographs and he was particularly, again, interested in the 19th century, the civil war in particular. these are two friends, union and confederate, who knew each other prior to the civil war, who fought against each other at the battle of pearidge in 1862, survived the war, came out alive

and remained friends after the war and here they are age 100 sitting on the porch talking about the old days. >> american history tv looked at life in a world war ii jap these internment camp. >> a lady wrote a wonderful book and gamman meant surviving the unsurvivable, sort of. and she talks a lot about how the arts and the crafts were how they kept their sanity and it gave them something to do and about how depression was so bad in a lot of the camps and that people -- there was the high incidence of suicide and so people would make these things of beauty to give to each other to say we support you and care about you. >> the tour continues. the weekend of may 5th and 6th from oklahoma city on c-span 2 and 3. each weekend on american history

tv learn more about the presidents, their policies and legacies through their historic speeches and discussions with leading historians. every sunday morning at 8:30 eastern and again at 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. here on c-span 3 and to find out more about the series and our other programming including our weekend schedules and online video. next, radio talk show host moderates a panel discussion on teaching constitutional history. david mccullough and gordon wood join a panel of five other historians and scholars at this event. it's a little over an hour. you know, i think we should begin by thanking david boren for this extraordinary day.

[ applause ] as i enter the stand, he picks up opponent to david mccullough. come out to the university of oklahoma. we need you to do this or any of these wonderful minds sitting here on this stage. as david has said our focus is teaching the u.s. constitutional history in the 21st century. i love akhil's story having his 6-year-old learn the names of the presidents. we had our son do exactly the

same thing. it's a great way to start. i also loved his idea of having each one of us go to wikipedia to look through the names of each of our presidents to learn one fact about each of those. i find myself thinking we are faced with a group of constitutional scholars who adore what they do -- adore the constitution, all of its inclusions, everything that was left out for most of us, at least i speak for myself.

growing up in high school if somebody mentioned learning about the constitution, it was a big yawn. so we are now here in the 21st century where there is a great deal of talk of exporting democracy, exporting the sense of freedom that this country has developed over these 225 years and yet here we are learning today from scholars but perhaps not knowing very much ourselves. so i start with each of you asking you considering the fact that you are so excited about

your topic what has happened to the are interest in learning about the constitution, where have we as adults, where have professors, with where have teachers somehow fallen down on the job and how can we in the 21st century make it something exciting. i'm going to start with a person you've not yet heard from but will hear from this evening at dinner and that's david mccullough.

thank you. very much. history is human. three words and i sincerely believe that is the essence of teaching history and of understanding history. and i also believe firmly that our teachers are the most important people in our society. they are doing the work. >> me, too. [ applause ] >> so i do not blame our teachers, and i object to anything that is proposed or enacted or becomes acceptable socially that makes the difficulties of teaching greater still. we should be doing everything we can to support our teachers and to give them our appreciation

for what they do. i think that history, the love of history, the understanding of history, begins truly, literally at home. i think if there's a problem with education today in the country, it's with us. we who are fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers. it if i were teaching a course, a high school course, in the constitution, i would begin by stressing that the very presence of george washington at the constitutional convention was a major reason for why succeed and he said very little. why was that? you have to understand that. in philadelphia, a huge

undertaking is in very serious trouble. attendance is not good. they really are struggling. and they made it kind of a huge electronic game show affair. i don't think that's the way to do it. it's about people. you have to understand those mew man beings. i think that's true about teaching any aspect of history, american history or any history. >> peter? >> i'll pick up on that, david. that makes a lot of sense to me. the humanity of the founders and identifying with what they did. i would say there are a couple of problems that explain the dire state of constitutional studies. one is they've been dominated by lawyers. i think -- i think akhil will agree with me. and it also is something we set

aside when i was a boy and when many of you were in school in civics and this was the stuff that was so boring. because it wasn't part of our history i think we need to take it back into history and historians have their share of blame here, too, in that very few of us have focused on the founding. now i blamed gordon wood for that because his book was so great that nobody bothered to st study the subject anymore. so i think we've broken through and there's actually very lively constitutional scholarship that hasn't made it to the schools yet. i would just pick up on something that akhil said earlier, the first thing to say is everybody knows we live in an interconnected world now. we need to think about the constitution in its own time. what's happening geo strategically, geopolitically, war explains a lot. explains in akhil's talk, he

talks in 1776 a state of war, that moment of origins, i think we need to recover a sense of the contingency and of the failures of the founders authored to make it come alive so that we can relate to our world in a way that we begin to understand they related to their world. so i think it's something historians can do and that it takes the last generations to trickle down. maybe the internet will make it faster. but i think the new way of thinking globally about the generation of the founders and the challenges they faced abroad and at home, the threat of war with each other, the threat of war in the larger world, the reality of war, the american revolution is a 50-year period of war in the world. that's what frames everything. 1765 through 1815 and we can say beyond the civil war is yet another episode in the history

of wars. so i think you can make it compelling. kids love war. we began in war and in that c context that i think we can begin to recover what these human beings did. >> all right, i'll turn to kyle harper who is director of the institute for american constitutional heritage. tell me your approach. >> i think one of the exciting things about teaching college is you're teaching adults and teaching kids who are becoming adults. and you're not just kechg them facts. you're not just teaching them to memorize when an amendment was ratified -- you're not just teaching them facts. you're teaching them to become citizens. if you embed citizenship inside the classroom you cannot only achieve greater results in your teaching but excite them and

engage them to take what they learn into their lives as s citizens and so, to me, that means creating situations for debate and civil discussion in ways that make them realize that these facts on a page actually influence and deeply impact their political lives, and so whether it's religious freedom or privacy, whatever it is, these are issues with a history and history matters particularly when it comes to the constitution in a way that profoundly will shape the world they live in. so giving them a chance not just to learn that but to engage with that and to recognize -- to make it come alive because they realize that it shapes their lives and ask them to develop their voice is a way that i think we can do in the 21st s t century. it isn't just lecturing at them but asking them to develop their voice as citizens inside the classroom and then take it outside the classroom. >> akhil amar, do you begin by showing them what was left out?

>> well, them -- there are so many -- >> can you hold that microphone? >> from my 6-year-old to my undergraduates to my law students, different audiences when they get out to meet ordinary folks. here is my multipronged approach and it's very auto biographical. so my parents when i was a young boy take me to mt. vernon and to the white house and to congress, the capitol building, and to independence hall and that just wowed me. and then my teachers had role play exercises where it's 1850 and you're henry clay and you're daniel webster, and that was kind of cool. and i read storybooks, history

books, books of the sort david mccullough works for ordinary nonscholarly audience, full of immaculate scholarship but just accessible to ordinary people and then i get to college and i read gordon wood's work. and so now taking that, that's auto buy griographical. that's how i got into this. i do think the national constitution center is a great public space and i really got to know gordon when he was the founder. >> so you start very young. but let's say you didn't have such parents. let's say you get to college and you are required to take a course on the history of the constitution, i am required to

take that course. how do you engage me immediately? >> i think it's actually a little late to start then. so i think politics is sport. >> i agree. >> i think it can be fun. if you can know all about the football team and your favorite baseball team, you can actually follow politics, which is very interesting, and know your presidents and every july 4th i think we actually need materials. kid friendly, family friendly, like secular sadyr idea. we have to have -- our calendar is built for these occasions of remembrance, memorial day and flag day and constitution day and july 4th and veterans day and we're not using -- and presidents' day as proper occasions. just come up with materials so that families -- >> there are too many sales out there. that's the problem. >>