for an amazing talk. >> thank you. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> more american history tv on c

span 3. up next, a yale university professor on president andrew jackson and the constitution. then, a panel of historians on teaching constitutional history. >> american history tv continues on cspan 3. each night the rest of the week. wednesday at 8:00 p.m. historians consider who time magazine might have picked to be person of the year in 1862 when the country was in the midst of the civil war. among the names discussed abolitionist leader frederick douglas, robert e. lee and george b. mclellan. >> this is cspan 3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week. every weekend 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv.

get our schedules and see past programs at our web sites. and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. every weekend, hear eyewitness accounts about american history and the people and events that shaped our nation. oral histories. saturday, 8:00 a.m. sunday afternoon at 3:00. and monday mornings at 4:00 eastern. only on american history tv on cspan 3. learn more about our programs and series along with schedules and online video are chive at cspan.org/history. next, as part of the university of oklahoma's teach-in on the founding of america, yale university law and political science professor, talks about how the presidency of andrew jackson transformed the constitution in ways that affect us today. this is about an hour.

>> thank you so much. it's -- thank you, thank you. it's such an honor to be with you all. i have learned a ton today. haven't the previous speakers just been extraordinary? [ applause ] so -- so -- presidents are important. presidents of universities are important. and it's a particular honor to be here at president boren's invitation. well had a wonderful time at the president's house. bo boyd house last night. but i also want to remind you of the, and i'm sure larry summers would want us all to understand the presidents of universities are important. but, so are presidents of the united states. and, we have heard a lot about presidents already.

i will come back to that unjust a minute. but i just can't resist beginning with a story about our eldest son, he just turned 13 this week. so i am feeling very nostalgic about recalling, you know he turns a man. recalling vic at age 6. i am going to say something here that is a challenge to you all, a point about civics education and constitutional education for which this university is, is, so justly renowned. at the age of 6, vic learned his presidents. and he asked me a question one day. just out of the blue. he said, dad, when did the british become our friends? i said that is a really interesting question, vic. why do you ask?

he said, dad, george washington fought against them. and dwight eisenhower fought with them. so some time in between they must have become our friends. now, what vic at age of 6 understood is it is a very deep point. if kids can, can learn about baseball players and trade baseball cards and learn statistics and pokemon, they can learn, you all can learn, the presidents, if you know each of the presidents, there are less than 50 of them, and their order, and -- and one page, a wikipedia like page about each president, the basingbasics, myd at your disposal, just with that the spine of american history. and to some extent, the spine of modern world history. just at your disposal.

and so, learn your presidents. if you don't know them. learn, one page about them. our conversation today has really been all about presidents. and you need to know them too. if you can't tell the difference between a green piece of paper with george washington on it and a green piece of paper with abe lincoln or grant, you are going to get short changed. okay. so -- we have already heard a couple of meditations, at least, about george washington that wonderful talk by david hackett fischer, gordon wood talked about his distinctiveness. we heard about john adams. of course later on david mccullough is going to be part of these proceedings and the pre-eminent scholar john adams. i asked a question about adams'

son, john quincy. we've heard about thomas jefferson. we've heard from the jefferson chair at the university of virginia which is jefferson's university in the person of peter onuf, the so-called father of the constitution, james madison, jefferson's good friend. we saw a picture of james monroe in that boat right there right beside george washington. again, john quincy adams was mentioned. that's the spine of american history. and i want to suggest, just because i wanted to -- my talk today is going to be about the constitution. that's what i do, that's where i live and move and have my being as intellectually as in the constitution, and i wanted to basically give you one kind of memorable way to to pull together the basic theme of my talk.

i want to suggest that our constitution is in its basic structure far more jackson, andrew jackson-like, than we've been taught. i'll tell you at the end of today, three ways to sort of remember that it's all about jackson and for all of you, but in a nutshell our constitution is more small "d" democratic, more open to men that are born in lower strata of society, small "d" democratic than the standard story that many of us were taught, a story in the 20th century is associated with a charles beard whose work was mention mentioned actually in several earlier today. more democratic talking, andrew jackson was basically the leader of the so-called capital "d" democratic party.

our constitution is also -- we've already heard a lot about this today -- more slave-ocratic, more pro-slavery than we've been taught. andrew jackson was much less apologetic, much more openly pro-slavery than the apologetic slave holders we've heard about, george washington, thomas jefferson. our constitution deep structure, despite maybe the best instreakses of the framers, more slave-ocratic, it's in the dna than we've been taught. and our constitution is much more about national security, about being able to beat the british, for example. vic at the age of 6 understood.

he isn't up there on mt. rush more because they burned the capitol on his watch and that's not such a good thing. our constitution, general jackson, like general washington, knows how to beat the british and so manifest destiny, the monroe doctrine, isolationist america, these are all captured by andrew jackson. they're epitomized by him, exemplified by him and that's the deep structure of the original constitution. more democratic, more slave-ocratic, more about national security and hemisphere isolationism. it unsurprisingly gives us it shall the constitution -- the dominant figure and peter onuf said this and i think several

others have and i want you to hear it clearly, and that constitution failed. we call that failure the civil war and it failed because of the pro-slavery elements and it's a challenge. our republic could fail still and to understand how theirs did and what the challenges are, even their vision of national security may not make sense for your world. at lunch talk about your world is very different than theirs and on national security i want to suggest, too, we need to rethink because our constitution of jackson and our world is not jackson. mr. lincoln fixed the second thing, the pro-slavery element, we still need to rethink the third, that challenge of your

generation that's all summed up with this idea of a jacksonian constitution. so let me say at least a few interesting things. as you heard before perhaps -- i think from paul the most -- before gordon wood comes along, the most influential book after the federalist proved this is by charles beard and that's the dominant paradigm, the dissertation and beard presents the constitution as largely sort of a pro-property instrument by the money men.

it's almost a cue day tau, going beyond their express instructions as they're pulling a fast one on the rest of us. that's the kind of speared of beard's critique that the constitution is basically designed for the property -- of the property, by the property, for the property. and whether you know it or not, a student of charles beard to some extent he influenced the people who wrote the textbooks you studied in high school and college unless you were lucky enough to just get someone who understood gordon wood's interpretation and not just gordon woods but douglas adair and others who began to reorient us away from that beardian thesis. i'm here to say actual ly it's

even -- beard was even wronger than wood suggested in this first book and later the radicalism of the american revolution gets it right. our constitution was a radically democratic document for its time. beard gets it absolutely wrong. he must be really gifted because he manages to get you to forget the elephant in the room which is they've put the thing to a vote up and down the continent and they won. in state after state after state. they lost in a couple of places. they lost in new hampshire -- in north carolina. they lost in rhode island and in new york. it is a very near thing, a very close thing, 30-27. and it's not just that one year. they keep voting for the people who gave them the constitution, george washington and james

madison and others. many of philadelphia and more. and more. there's remarkable free speech in the series of elections up and down the continent and you can be against the thing and you are not basically cast out. let me contrast it to 177. 1776 here are your choices if you're fiercely opposed to american independence. if you're a loyalist. here are your choices. one, leave. two, shut the hell up. that's it if you don't want to be tarred and feathered. this is not a joke. what did we hear from david hackett fischer? 60,000 troops all told, a massive projection of military force.

when they get here they're going to slit your throat and your wife's throat and your daughter's throat and your son's throat and your mom's throat. this is not a joke. no one who opposes the american revolution fiercely goes on to any position of public authority. the most prominent person i've been able to come up with is phillip barton key. flash forward the constitution. you can be fiercely opposed to the constitution and become president of the united states. 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