altitudes and low multitudes. and that 500,000 entitles them to one representative, even though the average congressional district today is about 670,000 members. so they're less than the average congressional district, but they are entitled to one representative. so anything in the house of representatives, there's a dispute between california and wyoming. wyoming is outvoted 53-1. and the united states' senate, there are two senators from california, and there are two senators from wyoming. so this is a tremendous disparity of -- in population. half of the population in the united states lives in ten states. they have 20 senators. the other half of the population lives in 40 states, and they have 80 senators. so a majority of the senators actually represent a very small minority of the population in the united states. so by definition, the u.s. senate has never been a majorititarian body. it operates differently from the -- from the house of

representatives, and part of that is that the size of the two bodies require different things. the constitution is a very thin document. my students used to complain, because the first week i was teaching, i would always make my class read the entire text of the constitution. and they would complain bitterly. and i would say, you're lucky we're not studying any one of the states, because all of the state constitutions are huge documents. they tell you how tall a curb has to be. they're very much detail-oriented. the u.s. constitution is some 6,000 words. by contrast, the european union constitution is 60,000 words. so this little document, you have to read very carefully every phrase. and there are little throw-away lines that have enormous impact. one of those lines is each house of congress shall write its own rules. seems very easy. but that has meant the house and the senate have evolved into remarkably different institutions. they operate out of the same building.

the capitol building. but they are entirely different ethos. entirely different rules, entirely different leadership. he compare them to a liberal arts school and engineering school on the same campus. they operate right next to each other, but don't have much to do with each other on a regular basis. the house was a big body, and so it wrote rules that would restrain people, it put time limits on how long they could speak. and it basically wrote the rules so that the majority party or the majority of the house can get its way as long as it sticks together. in fact, the majority in the house can do what it wants without even talking to the minority, which is usually the way it is, actually, over in the house. regardless of who happens to be the majority. it's completely different on the u.s. senate side. where it's a smaller body, the rules of the senate have always given more muscle to the minority. and that's not necessarily the minority party. it could be a minority faction within the majority party, and it can be a single senator who

stands up and says i object. and your former senator, jim bunning, for instance, i objected several times last year to one particular bill. kept the senate in half the night. i object, i object, i object. that's all he had to say. he didn't have to give a mr. smith speech. he just had to say i object. and that's why every single u.s. senator is a very powerful player. from the moment that they take the oath of office, as the most junior freshman member of the body, they carry enormous amount of individual power. in the house, however, you have to essentially serve in the house for years to accrue the kind of seniority to become either a party leader or committee leader that enables you to have the power that every senator gets on the first day they come into office. well, the u.s. senate and the house of representatives are also exactly example in their po pour powers. every bill the house passes has

to be passed by the senate exactly right down to the last semicolon to become law. the one advantage the constitution gives to the house is that the house starts revenue bills, which the house has interpreted to be appropriations bills as well as tax bills. they start over there, but the senate gets to amend them as they go on. the senate also has are remarkable powers that the house does not have. and those are the powers of advise and consent. all nominations, all treaties are only handled by the united states senate. back in the early days and the days when the senate was just getting started, they were trying to figure out what this meant. now, the consent part we understand. the consent is a majority of the senate have to vote for a nomination, and two-thirds have to vote for a treaty. that's spelled out. but what does the advice part mean? they have never figured out the advice part of the advice and consent provision. the first congress said to george washington, well, we would like you to come here to -- in person to give us all

your nominations and all of your treaties, and then we can give you advice about them. and washington thought it over and he said, well, that's far too many nominations. i would be down there all the time. so why don't i just send you the nominations, but i'll come in person with the treaties. and they said, well, that's fair. and so in august of 1789, george washington actually went to the senate chamber with a treaty with american indians and the southeast who were treated as separate nations in those days so he had a treaty and a series of formal questions about those treaties. well, george washington was an imposing person, and standing there in the chamber, the senators were a little uncomfortable debating in front of him. plus, it was august and it was in new york, and the windows were open, and there was street traffic even in 17 89s and they couldn't hear in the back of the room and finally one of the senators said i suggest we refer this to a committee to study. and is washington said, well, that defeats my whole purpose of

being here and stormed out of the chamber. and he came back a couple days later and they gave him the answers and he said thank you very much and never came back again. and that was the end. and presidents do not come back to ask for the advice of senators. this is something that had to evolve over time out of experience. and, in fact, it was the advice and consent provisions that was the reason why the senate met in secret for those first six years. and even after they built a gallery, they continued to hold all of their executive sessions, which is any nomination hearing or any treaty, they held them in closed secret session. they would close all of the doors to the chamber, and put out the press and put out the public, and then they felt they could talk confidentially about the character of the nominees. they did that until 1929. and if i beliefinally in 1929, decided they would open all of these, unless there was some

particular reason to close it. the -- nowadays, the only time the senate holds a secret session is when they're dealing with very highly classified confidential information, and interestingly enough, when they do that, and it's only every half dozen years or so they have one of these sessions, they don't even stay in their current chamber, because quite frankly, even after they have cleared the galleries, there are all these cameras up there and all this electronic equipment that could promote eaves dropping. so they move back down to the old senate chamber, the henry clay chamber, and they actually hold their closed sessions when they do need to have them in that chamber. one other issue about the difference between the senate then and now is that in those days, senators were elected by state legislators. and interestingly enough, that issue has become a issue for political discussion. the seven people who have campaigned for office in this last election to repeal the 17th amendment, to take the election of senators back to state

legislatures as opposed to the general public. and one of the arguments behind this is that the early senators who are really ambassadors from their states, rather than necessarily individual politicians who are appealing for the vote. it's hard to know exactly what the authors of the constitution had in mind for this. we have the debates that notes at least on the debates -- there are a lot of different opinions about approximate what senators should be. one of the provisions was that senators should serve for life. and that they should not be paid. and so part of that was obviously an assumption that senators would be very wealthy individuals. sort of like a house of lords. that provision was not adopted by the constitutional convention. but we know the debates were going on, we don't know specifically what they envisioned these people to be. but there are some interesting provisions. one of which is, if these were to be ambassadors, you would

assume the ambassadors would be paid their salary by the states that sent them. but, in fact, the constitution provided that senators would be paid by the federal treasury. also, you would assume that if they were ambassadors, that the states could bring them back if they weren't voting the right way. but there is no recall provision in the constitution. states can recall their governors -- if they have a law that permits that, but they cannot recall their senators or their representatives. in just a few years ago, actually, there was a group in arizona that was trying to recall senator mccain. he voted some way they didn't like. and they had quite an active movement. and i got called by a reporter from arizona who said, is any u.s. senator ever been recalled before. and i said no, u.s. senator has ever been recalled and is none ever will until they rewrite the constitution. and that was printed in the newspapers and the website identified me as a legislative lackey. but i was just telling them what the constitution said. and you can't recall u.s.

senators. in that early senate, vice president thomas jefferson presided from over the senate from 1797 until 1801. and he didn't find that really a taxing job to sit there and listen to all those speeches. maybe it was taxing, but he was too discrete to say. but he had to occupy himself, so he spent his time writing a manual. he wrote the very first rules manual that was published in the united states. and it was jefferson's manual, still part of the rules of the house of representatives. it's not officially part of the senate's rules, but the senate has lived up to thomas jefferson's rules and manuals from the very beginning. and, in fact, the language that senators use today that henry clay would have used, and that senator mcconnell uses today, is very much dictated by what jefferson suggested, which was, issues can be so emotional and so divisive and so heated, you have to cool things off so you can have a rational discussion.

so when you're debating, you're not actually debating somebody else. you are speaking to the presiding officer. mr. president, my distinguished senior senator from the great state of such-and-such has incorrectly interpreted the constitution on this point. and i feel i must point out, you know -- very nice, polite, 19th century language that you still hear quite often in the senate chamber. senators forget from time to time. they turn around and look at another senator and say you, which is not permitted. sometimes reporters change that for them in the record when it's published the next day. but jefferson wanted to diffuse those tensions. you are not to mention another senator by name. you're not to criticize that senator's state. and you're not to question that senator's motives. and if you break those rules, you can be called upon to sit down and not participate in the debate for the remainder of the day. so the senate had a pretty stayed, quiet approach to things. in the 1830s, alexis de tuckville came and visited the chambers of the senate and house

and sat in the gallery and wrote that the house was so boisterous and so much commotion going on, this was obviously sort of the average -- the common people were serving in the house of representatives. then he came to the senate. and a single senator was standing up delivering a long oration and he said oh, this is where the aristocracy comes, and this would be a parliament on par with the great parliaments of europe. well, thomas hart benton who served both in the house and senate wrote a rebut tal, and said, you know, most of those senators used to serve in the house of representatives. they're not a different class of people. it's just that there is a different ethos in the senate than there is in the house. the big, boisterous house of representatives has always been a lot more tumultuous, which is what the -- and turbulent, the word henry clay used. the senate has always been a bit more is he date in its debates. i think, quite frankly, if he came back and sat in the galleries today, he would have

very much the same impressions of the two bodies and he would be just as wrong today as he was back then. the senate in the -- back in those days, it was different from the way it is today in that it had no standing committees. of all the committees were ad hoc committees. they were created to deal with a particular issue and then went out of business as soon as they were finished with. and senators could be elected to committees drop on and off committees pretty regularly. that meant you really for the most part were not accruing a lot of expertise in any particular issue. and finally, after the british came through and remodeled the u.s. capitol building by burning it to the ground in 1814 when a very sobered up congress came back and looked at the runts, they decided they needed to get their act together and one of the things the senate did in 1816 was to create its first standing committees, and that began a tradition we still operate under. interestingly, in the 19th century, there was still not a strict seniority system.senate.

he served many terms in the senate, and he would not necessarily start at the bottom each time he came. he would come back and immediately be elected chairman of a committee. and there was a brief period where the vice president of the united states was authorized to appoint senators to committee. just think how different the job of vice president biden would be today if one of his powers was to appoint senators to their committee assignments. that was a power that was given to the vice president, and then taken away very quickly by the senate that decided that they did not want that kind of authority. the senate has clearly changed enormously since the days when henry clay decided to walk out the door and go over to the house of representatives. where, by the way, he was elected speaker on his first day in the house of representatives. and the question is, why did it change? why did the senate come out of the shadow of the house of representatives? and in many ways, we can date that change to 1820.

and that was another emotional, divisive issue and was the issue of slavery. the -- at the time the constitution was adopted, all of the states had slavery. by 1820, all of the northern states had given up slavery. all of the southern states had grown more dependent on slavery. every time a new territory came in -- and there was a vast territory that had been purchased from the louisiana purchase in 1804, and a lot of settlers moving west and immediately applying for statehood, every time enough people gathered in a territory and applied for statehood, the question was, is this new state going to permit slavery or prohibit it? and when they tried to figure this out, they worked out a compromise in which they split the country with the missouri compromise line, drew the line across the united states, above that line they would not be slavery. below that line, the states could have slavery. and that meant when they admitted a state on one side, they usually admitted a state on the other side to create some

parity. and eventually, the bright, young ambitious men in the house of representatives, the henry clays and daniel websters and john c. calhouns, realized if there was going to be a solution to the biggest political issue facing the country, it was going to be in the united states state senate. and so they began to gravitate in the 1920s, '30s and '40s and the senate becomes the center of the debate. it's the golden age of debate when clay, calhoun and webster speak in the wonderful old senate chamber with the magnificent acoustics. when the first press gallery is established in the senate chamber in 1841, thanks to henry clay, who broke the compromise. and a senate seizes power and seizes attention away from the house of representatives, and never gives it back. in a sense, the senate has remained this unusually powerful body ever since that golden age in the 130s. and by the way, who was the speaker of the house who helped to broker the missouri

compromise that made the u.s. senate the powerful body that it is today? it was henry clay, of course. and so that's my introduction to talk about the foundations of the united states senate. and we now have about ten minutes open for questions. and i would be very happy to entertain any questions about anything i said or anything i failed to say. thank you. we have a microphone, too. >> my name is charles thomas. thank you. what role does the sergeant of arms play in the u.s. senate today, terry gaynor? >> very good. we have the -- the senate elects its own offices, one is the sergeant-at-arms. we had one as earl as 1789.

his job in those days was to get firewood to keep the fireplaces going and to get the senate -- protect the senate to provide door keepers. and quite frankly, the sergeant-at-arms does the same thing to do, in charge of security of the senate, door keepers of the senate work for him. he's in charge of getting supplies for the senate, of keeping the senate operating. the other serious officer of the senate who is elected is the secretary of the senate, for whom i work. the secretary of the senate has -- is in charge of all of the clerks who work at the front of the senate chamber, also for all of the historians and curators and librarians. so the sergeant-at-arms and secretary of the senate are really the administrative leaders of the senate. they are elected by the senators to sort of do the work necessary so that the senators can pay attention to the legislative matters up and not have to worry about the housekeeping matters. the sergeant-at-arms is also the protocol officer for the senate, and so when a visiting

distinguished guest arrives, the sergeant-at-arms is out there greeting them. and you'll see the sergeant-at-arms taking the president into the house chamber, for instance, for the state of the union message. we once had a wonderful sergeant-at-arms named nordy hoffman who was a huge man, played football at notre dame. and he was the outgoing sergeant-at-arms in 1981, january of 1981. and incoming sergeant-at-arms was a very nervous man, who was -- just got the job, and very first thing he had to do was to greet ronald reagan to take him out for his inauguration and the incoming sergeant-at-arms said what do we call him, we can't call him mr. president, do we call him mr. president elect or governor or what? and hoffman said no worry, i'll take care of this and the sergeant-at-arms said hi ya gipper. reagan smiled. he was happy. any other questions? yes.

>> hello. aside from the roman republic and other things like the dutch republic that was around at the time the constitution was being made, what other models were the tibur, and they were very much interested in the roman roots because every government in the world at that time was a people who visited washington to be impressed.

the house chamber was the largest building in the united states when it was built and you get a lot of people from people that used to sit in the galleries at that point. while they were great students and, in fact, you read through madison's notes, they really did discuss a lot of what had happened before. they also used the british parliament a lot as a bad example. things that they didn't want to do. they just fought a revolution against the british parliament but they were conscious what the british parliament had done. they used their experience in the colonies and the state legislatur legislatures as well, so they were building from experience but not a lot of experience. yes? >> a few years ago a legislative aide from senator warren magnus wrote a book and he referred to the idea that house members often types refer to themselves as the workhorses and the senate

members refer to themselves as the -- the house members refer to them as the show horses. are there still those kind of views that each other have or any other rivalries you'd like to speak to? >> yes, definitely there are still rivalries. eric redmond's book was great, he was an intern when he got it passed. if you work for a powerful senator like warren magnuson you can do a lot of thing. there ceyrtainl has always been some resentment between the house and the senate. you remember during the presidential impeachment trial, the house manager said they had to go to mt. olympus, they said they were the blue collar body. when a house member ran for senate, they went to brothers brothers to get a suit. every time a house level was elected to the senate, the in l intellectual capacity of both bodies would improve.

when new senators come in, there's the question will they buckle down and work on the committees or are they at press conferences. there's still the tension that's there. but this is definite rivalry. very much like the engineering school and the liberal arts school. yes? >> could you briefly touch upon senator clay, the success he had in the senate but the trouble in getting elected president. >> here's the man who really ran the house. he was the first really powerful speaker of the house of representatives. he ran the senate. i'll talk this afternoon about

his leadership in the senate but he was the leader of the senate, we didn't have an official. there was no majority leaders and minority leaders when clay was there but everybody knew he was leader of his party. and yet he ran repeatedly for president and jim crowder will be talking about it later on today. i refer to it as sort of the hc problem. goes from henry clay to hillary clinton that the longer you serve in the senate, the more you have to vote on controversial issues and the more you have to define yourself and the harder it is to broaden your base when you run for national office. and it's no surprise to me that we've had three u.s. senators go directly from the senate to the white house. warren g. harding, john f. kennedy and barack obama and th veteran senators who had long track records. that the more you stay in the senate and the more you vote,

the harder it is to be a national candidate and it's one reason why governors often get the nomination because nobody actually knows what the governors' views are on most issues, foreign policy or some of the hotter issues. they can duck and try to be sort of everything to everyone. because once they get to be president, then they have to make some decisions and it's hard for them at that stage. but i think the same things that kept henry clay from being president are the same things that kept hillary clinton from being president. >> when the senate was created, did they have the leader of the minority and majority parties and president pro tem or when were they created? >> there are two constitutional offices. one is the president of the senate and the other is the pro tempore, who fills in for the time being that fills in whenever the president is not there. and the president pro tempore is president of the party and he gets people to be junior members on a rotating basis. it is not in the constitution. as a result in the order for the president, the president pro tem is in the list but the majority leader who is much more powerful person in the senate nor the minority leader are in the line of presidential succession and

that's because their positions are not in the constitution. the authors of the constitution kind of hoped we wouldn't have political parties. i think they knew we were going to get them, but they didn't want to encourage them. we began to get the first political parties as soon as they sent the constitution to the states for ratification and people broke in federalist and anti-federalist factions. as late as the 1880s when woodrow wilson is writing about leadership in congress, he says no one is the senator. they're all equal. it's not until 1913 that woodrow wilson now is president of the united states prevails on his party to have a majority leader and that, of course, the minority party will have to have a leader and starting at that period 1913 we begin to see the floor leaders. another thing i'll be talking about this afternoon how that evolved over time. very good. so, i think we're ready for a break. thank you very much.

the single largest and most impressive civil war monument in washington to a military officer is the statue to general grant. even though he was president of the united states, it's really his service as the commanding general of the union army that made him famous. it's a very unusual statue. it faces down the mall from the lincoln memorial and it's right at the base of the capitol. it's actually several statues together and it was constructed over time. it was constructed and designed by a man named henry schrady, who was a wealthy man that went into art and gave his life in to making this statue which took decades to do. and it was built in stages. first marble base was erected around 1910.

then in 1912, a depiction of the artillery in the civil war was added and in 1916 a depiction of the cavalry was added and in 1920 enormous statue of general grant. the statue itself is 17 feet tall. it's on i think a 20-foot pedestal. the statue weighs something like 10,000 pounds and bronze horse with a figure of general grant is sort of slumped down. people say that the horse looks more alert than general grant, the horse's ears are up as if it's hearing battle. but grant had a pose that seemed to be unfazed. he was sort of waiting in the distance for the report of what was going on i guess, is what the sculptor was trying to show. the two statues on the other side are not glory to war. the artillery is in the mud. it's raining. everybody looks wet and uncomfortable. one of the reins has broken

loose. some of the horses are bolting. it just looks like a miserable day. the cavalry, one of the horses is falling and a rider is being thrown to the ground and he's clearly going to be trampled to death by the other riders and schrady used his own face for the fallen rider, and it took years and took its toll on him and they were going to dedicate the monument in 1922 about the same time as the lincoln memorial was dedicated and it was going to boor grant's 100th birthday and schraddy died days before that, and he was literally trampled by that statue.