labels, all of that, it is two years, it will spend a year investigating the artifacts so we can figure out what the story is to tell. that will be something we're looking for over the next year are the stories involved with these artifacts so that when we put them on an exhibit in 2014, we can have that focus for them. all weekend, american history tv is featuring jefferson city, missouri, our local content vehicles recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about jefferson city at c-span.org/localcontent. next month, we'll feature louisville, kentucky. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. >> half of pigs, half of cows

and a lot of the turkeys this is a drug that most of the drugs are given to make the animals grow fast, they get more money. this particular drug is not withdrawn when they walk on to the killing floor. that means when the animal is killed and the meat is sold, the drug is in there. >> this weekend on afterwards, martha rosenberg looks behind the scenes of the food and drug industries and finds regulatory lapses and government complicity in undermining the public health. born with a junk food deficiency, tonight at 9:00, part of book tv this weekend on c-span2. up next, cornell university history professor mary beth norton discusses women's roles in colonial america. she argues that there were elite and influential women, but that they're overlooked by historians and the general public. professor norton also discusses the salem witch trials of 1692 and her book on the subject "in

the devil's snare." this 30 minute program took place at the organization of american historians meeting in milwaukee. >> american history tv, meeting in milwaukee. mary beth norton is a history professor with cornell university. a lot of your work focuses on -- a lot of your teaching focuses on pre-colonial and colonial women. you've written a lot about it. what interests you in this subject? >> well, for one thing, very few people really think about women in the colonial period very much. or if they do they think of them just as -- i don't know -- houseworkers, workers around the house. they don't think of their potential public roles. one of the things i'm very interested in, in the 17th century, is women who actually take prominent public roles in the colonies because there are some, and in the 18th century i'm interested in -- i did a whole book on women in the revolution. i'm interested in the -- how

women perceive their relationship to the public realm, how men see women in the public realm in the run-up to the revolution and during the revolution. >> what would be some of the early examples of women in the public realm prior to the revolution? >> prior to the revolution, one of the most interesting examples is a woman named margaret brent who was essentially the chief financial officer of the colony of maryland for 18 months in the 1640s. somebody that very few people know about, but when the governor died suddenly he named her the executor of his private estate, and he was the largest land holder in the colony or had control of the land of his brother, the proprietor, and the colony was in dire financial straits and there were some soldiers who needed to be paid. so they needed to pay off these soldiers so the legislature essentially designated her as the financial officer, the official financial officer of

the colony, so she would have access to the proprietor's estate to pay off the sailors. >> is that example rare? >> it is pretty rare. but what's interesting to me is there are a number of these high-status women in the 17th century who do take prominent roles because in the 17th century, status was actually more important than gender in determining people's public role. so that high-status people of either sex were to be deferred to by lower-status people of either sex. that also explains anne hutchinson who of course is an important religious leader who divides the massachusetts bay colony with her heretical ideas. but the reason people listened to her is she was one of the highest status women in the colony. her husband was one of the leaders of the colony, and so people deferred to her. and it wasn't just the attractiveness of her religious ideas. it was also the fact she was high status person who everybody

knew she should listen to. so they listened to her and they liked what she had to say so she became a very, very prominent leader in the colony. >> what are some of the things commonly taught about women in the colonial period that you look at and say, no, you're getting it all wrong? >> well, i think it is the idea that all women are somehow subordinate to all men, as i just said, high status men and women really ruled the society. we have to rethink how we conceive of the roles of women in the colonial period because there are these high status women. for example, in my most recent book i have a chapter on lady frances barkley, the wife of the governor of virginia at the time of bacon's rebellion. when her husband died, she became one of the most important political leaders of the colony. she became the focal point of the opposition to his successor and she successfully thwarted

him and what he tried to do for 18 months. he actually died early of disease. he was replaced by a virginian, in a temporary position, and that virginian somehow knew how to placate her and so she lost -- you know, she lost her power at that point. but the guy who replaced her husband was just so frustrated. he kept sending letters to england saying, she's thwarting me at every turn and nobody said this is not what she should be doing. >> you mentioned your most recent book, separated by their sex, women in public and private and the colonial atlantic world. i read that this was the third in a series of books that you've written. >> yes. >> what's the purpose and the point of the series? >> well, the purpose and the point is actually the sort of thing we've been talking about, that is, the relationship of women to the public realm. it is the third that i wrote, but it's actually the middle of the trilogy. i started off with a book on the

women in the revolution called "liberty's daughters," and then i went back to the 17th century, the founding of the colonies, and wrote a book called "founding mothers and fathers." that's where i talk about margaret brent and ann hutchison. so i had the beginning and end of the story but i didn't have the middle of the story. the middle of the story is what this last volume is, separated. >> you've also written about the salem witch trials. >> i have. >> tell us a little bit more. >> well, i could go on and on forever. i think that my understanding of the salem witch trials was really changed once i realized in the course of my research that the absolutely crucial factor in explaining the salem witch trials was the concurrent indian war which very few people know anything about. but if you know that there is a major indian war going on that salem village and all of essex county, massachusetts, was actually filled with refugees from the maine and new hampshire frontier, which is where the war

was raging, and that a number of the afflicted people were among those refugees and that you can trace their biographies, as i did, and find out that they had traumatic experience as young people. one of the things that i argue is that we could today say, in modern terms, they seemed to have been suffered from post-traumatic stress. and if you pay attention to it, there are indians all the way through the salem records. people say they see the specter of the devil in the shape of an indian. people talk about having nightmares of indians. and actually a little-known fact is that there was a major indian attack within 20 miles of salem while the trials were going on. >> what year did the trials happen? >> 1692/1693. it went on for about 15 months total. we talk about the salem witchcraft trials mostly through

the vehicle of the special court that was established to try the witches, accused witches, and that special court sat in june through september of 1692. but even when that special court was dissolved in october, there were still hundreds of people in jail, and they had to be tried or dealt with in some way. so the trials actually continue into 1693 in regular courts. everybody is acquitted but three people, and those people who are acquitted then are -- are not acquitted are pardoned later by the governor. so the crucial set off the trials is during 1692. >> would those special courts have been set up by the colonial government of massachusetts? >> set up by the governor, yes. he had the power to set up a special court, and he did. and he named a bunch of prominent men in massachusetts as the judges. none of them had legal training. the only person who was a

trained lawyer in the whole sequence was the first prosecutor. >> with all that's going on, you talk about the refugees from the frontiers and the indians and the attack, where does witchcraft come in as a practice? >> yeah. witchcraft is for people in the 17th century, the default explanation for something that they can't figure out an answer to. so, for example, this is a period before the scientific revolution. this is a period before anybody understands germs. this is a period before anyone understands animal diseases. so if a cow suddenly falls ill after it's really in great shape, it dies the next day and no one has an explanation for it, it would be an attempt by the person who owned the cow to say, what could have caused this? and oh, my goodness, last week i had a fight with my neighbor when this cow got into her cornfield, and she said, you

better watch out, and i think she bewitched my cow and my cow is now dead. and this would be done with the deaths of children or mysterious accidents. >> was this a thing that was unique to the colonies, or was this happening in the uk at the same time? >> no. it happened in england at the same time. it happened on the continent of europe. it's a very common prescientific revolution kind of way of thinking. and i came to the conclusion, as a result of my book, that many of the small villages of new england had someone that they thought was a witch, that stories had built up over the years about this person, you know, mysterious happenings after someone had a quarrel with this person or something like that. and so one of the things we see happening in 1692 is bits and pieces of information being pulled together. if you look at the trial records, you'll see people come in and testify about things that happened five years earlier, ten years earlier, 20 years earlier.

so you can see that suspicions in different areas built up, not just in salem village but throughout essex county, about particular individuals. so once that person is formally accused, then everybody comes in and says, yes, i've long thought this woman was a witch or this man was a witch. i've long known it and i'm so glad you're now bringing this person to justice. >> so there were men accused. >> yes. and in fact it's a little-known fact that five of the people hanged were men. five of the people. so there were 19 people hanged, 14 women and 5 men. >> let's go up to just before the revolutionary war. >> sure. >> when with you teach about that time period and into the revolution, what do you point out as the role of women leading up to the revolution? >> well, one of the most important roles comes in the immediate pre-revolutionary period when the revolutionary leaders are attempting to attack the british.

not physically but by consumer boycotts and then, as now, women were the shoppers. so they had to persuade the women not to buy british goods or not to drink tea. this was a really crucial thing because tea -- i talk about this in my new book -- is really important in socializing in the 18th century, and it's something that women control, tea parties something that women do, and they host men. they're in control of the situation. so when they decide to boycott tea in particular, they have to persuade women to do that. otherwise it won't work. so there are all kinds of essays in the newspapers about ladies, come to the aid of the cause, boycott tea. one woman, very funny, i read a letter from her, she said, all my friends are boycotting tea. we're now drinking coffee and it's ruining my stomach. i can't stand it. i have indigestion all the time. so women trade recipes for local herbal tea.

you know, how do you make tea substitutes for the tea imported from england? so actually in it also as a part of it is making homespun cloth, another way women are sort of brought into it and there are groups of women who hold spinning bees in public spaces, not so much that they're spinning that much yarn at that time but sort of as exemplar so they can persuade women to spin in the privacy of their own homes and weave with their own cloth. this is a way you get away from buying british goods. >> so for references to history, we have for men a lot of great men that leave memoirs, war records and things like that. what do you find are your best sources for, written sources, writing about women in the -- >> mostly correspondence because women did not, for the most part, keep diaries in this period. keeping a diary requires a very high degree of literacy because it's kind of writing to yourself.

and women didn't have access to paper, which was very scarce and expensive for the most part, and they didn't have leisure time. that's what a diary is. so in the 19th century you get a lot of women who leave diaries but in the 18th century and certainly not the 17th century, you just really don't have very many diaries. what you do have is correspondence, and they write to their husbands. they write to their siblings and so forth if they're far away. but it is hard sometimes to find this material for the colonial period. >> it's interesting, though. you point out they didn't have leisure time. >> no. >> so letter writing was an essential. >> it was essential if someone is a long ways away. if someone is not very far away or not gone for very long, they didn't write. so most of the surviving correspondence is by people who are separated for long periods of time. and that was actually a wonderful thing about working on women in the revolution, which i didn't realize when i started it, because women and men are separated for long periods of time.

the men are off in the army or in the continental congress and their wives are home. so they're writing letters to each other so things that would have been in conversations between husbands and wives get written down. and furthermore, it's very important for historians that these letters get saved because, oftentimes, families in the 19th century might come across old letters from the 18th century and say, oh, it's trash, i'll throw it out. but if it's from the revolution, you know, it's grandfather's letters from the great and glorious revolution to grandmother so we save these and then give them to a library. so i benefitted greatly from that. >> in general, how did you find the tone of the correspondence? was it stiff and formal, or were they very personal? >> some tremendously -- some very stiff and formal, some husbands and wives who address each other in very formal terms, what we today would regard as very formal terms, but mostly very down to earth, a wife writing and saying, what do i do about the back 40 this year? do i plant it in barley, in oats?

can you make a decision? and if she didn't hear from him, then she would make the decision herself as to what to do. then sometimes he wouldn't be real happy about the decision she made and he would write back and be a little upset with her and so forth. some of the fun letters i found were women saying, i'm here, i know what's going on, you're not around so let me take over. >> sort of like a husband or wife might just say to somebody on a long business trip, you're not around to raise them. >> exactly. you're not here to raise the kids. and one of the really dramatic moments actually comes from something like that, which is in this period smallpox was, of course, the great killer, and as the armies moved around the countryside, it didn't matter whether it was the american or british army, they often carried smallpox with them. and smallpox inoculation carried with it the danger of death because they hadn't figured out cow pox yet. they couldn't figure out you could be vaccinated with a

nondeadly disease and survive easily. so to get inoculated against smallpox required you to be deliberately infected with this deadly disease. and so women would have to make the decision for themselves and their children when their husbands were away. and some of the most affecting letters that i read were from women saying, i don't know what to do. i have to decide. do i deliberately put my children at death's door and risk about a 5% chance that they will die from this disease deliberately? or do i leave them unprotected and maybe there's a 20% chance -- they don't know the percentages but that was about it -- they'll die if they take it, quote, in the natural way. it's a terrible decision and they had to make it without their husbands there. >> outside of the family structure, when you read these correspondences, what's your sense of how women feel about

their stature in society, their rights? do you see some of the early inklings of wanting equal stature, equal rights with men? >> very little of it. women tended in these -- one of the things that was interesting to me was how much women denigrated themselves in these letters. >> why would they do that? >> well, they would say, my little concerns or they would say, i'm really -- they would apologize for their handwriting, for one thing. because they knew they weren't as well educated as their husbands or brothers or fathers. they would apologize. abigail adams, for example, is always apologizing. she hardly went to school. she was very smart and tutored at home. she always had terrible punctuation, terrible capitalization and not good spelling so she would apologize a lot. other women apologized even more. they had reason to in effect because she didn't know the rules and didn't spell very well. but that was one of the things that got me into this new book because i wanted to know the origins of this thinking of women that was that -- because i didn't see it in the 17th century but i saw it in the later 18th century, this

denigration of themselves and this notion that they had very little role in the public. so that's what i was trying to investigate in this book that went between 1670 and 1750. 17 >> abigail adams is a good example of a lot has been written about her corresponde e correspondences with her children. >> and her husband, yeah. >> and her husband in recent years. why has she such an important figure? >> for one thing she wrote reams of letters. you know, partly because, for exactly what i'm talking about, they were separated for so long so we have this huge amount of core spopd ens and all saved. they were great pack rats. they saved everything for hundreds of years so that's one reason why we have so much. we don't have it for thomas jefferson. he burned his wife's letters. we don't have it for george

washington because we have his public correspondence but after the death martha burned the personal letters to herment we don't have her letters so one thing is that they saved everything and other people burned it. it's not that other letters didn't once exist, it's that they're gone. >> as you continue to research and teach about this time period, and write about it, as well, what's still interests you? what do you have to find still? what are you looking in to that you haven't written about? >> i'm still interesting in examining more about this notion of public and private and how the ideas develop that there's in private realm that women belonged to and they shouldn't be involved in the public realm. the idea -- because women in the 18th century, even abigail adams, when they write about -- when the revolution begins and they write about public evens, they write this is beyond my

sphere. i know i shouldn't be writing about it. men say women are doing something that's outside their sphere, outside their appropriate realm. and again, that language didn't exist in the 17th century. so i got very interested in why it exists, how it comes to exist, and the history of that. i'm still interested in pursuing that. >> do you have any early inklings as to some of the early causes of that? >> well, yeah. it comes from england. the idea originally develops in england at the turn of the 18th century and it is then incorporated in to american belief systems by people who are very awe current with what's going on in england. the educated people in america prided themselves on reading english publications and keeping up to date and some of the most important progeneral or thes of this idea are ady son and steel and their book or their series of essays "the spectator" which

is published in book form and i discovered the most advertised book in 18th century america after the bible advertised for sale. and people just thought the spectator was the -- be all and end all and told everyone how they should behave. and it said it was absurd for women to think about politics, absurd for women to think about public affairs and if they did that they would be neglecting their families, they would be creating sort of slovenly households. ady son saying i never knew a political woman to retain her beauty for more than one year so i say this to my students and i think what does it mean? on the day 366 after a woman active in politics, the beauty completely disappears? but he seriously argues a woman engaged in party rage as he

calls it will destroy her beauty and so therefore she has to stay out of the realm of politics. >> what do you think some of those early ideas of women and their opinions on politics have done to the view of women in politics today? >> oh, i think we still see some of the results of it. we still don't have 50% representation of women by any means in congress or in state legislatures or anything. there's still a notion that women should be in the home taking care of children rather than in the public realm and making public policy. public policy is what men is to do. how many women have we had run for vice president? only two. >> mary beth norton of cornell university here at the organization of american historians, the annual meeting, thanks for joining us here. >> sure. glad to be here. the life of a sailor includes scrubbing the deck in the morning, working on the sails, climbing aloft, whatever the duties assigned, gun drill practice, but by the end of the

day you're ready for some rest. you don't gate full eight hours of sleep. aboard this ship, it's four hours on, four hours off. >> this weekend on american history tv, the life of an enlisted man aboard the "uss constitution" during the war of 1812. >> sailor lived in fear of the possibility of being whipped by a cat of nine tails. it was carried by a petty officer in a bag and the thing a sailor never wanted to see was petty officer who was getting ready for a flogging. it is a phrase we still use today. don't let the cat out of the bat. you don't want to see the cat of nine tails out of a bag for a flogging. >> that's today at 7:00 p.m. eastern and pacific. also this weekend, more from the contenders, our series on key political figures who ran for president and lost but changed political history. today, 1928 democratic presidential candidate former new york governor al smith. that's at 7:30 p.m. eastern and pacific. american artifacts airs every sunday at 8:00 a.m., 27

p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern time on c-span3. >> and we have come now to a very proud moment. we are selling george washington's personal copy of the acts of congress. signed by the estate of h. david dietrich jr. and it is showing in the front of the room for those of you who have not had a chance to peek at it. you may do so. we'll start the bidding, ladies and gentlemen, at $1,300,000. 1,400,000. 1,800,000. $2 million. the gentleman. at $2 million. now at $2. $2,800,000 with paul.

>> further down is a passage which gives -- >> could you just begin by telling me who you are, what your position is and why you're here in washington. >> i'm the international head of printed books and man skrupts for christies and here in washington bringing one of the very significant items that we have ever handled, the acts of congress that belonged to george washington. from his library signed by him and ano tated by him in the margins. washington is an obvious place to bring it to you. >> you say it's one of the most important things you have ever handled. why is that? put that in perspective. >> based on the historical significance. here's washington, his copy of the constitution aannotating ths

copy in pencil and his role, outlining it. virtually outlining his role as president and setting the precedent for the future role of president, how it's interrupted from the constitution. >> you can see the very light bracketing in pencil and writing that says president. he's brac he's bracketed a portion of vetoing or approving the legislation which is, of course, the president's prgtive. >> it's so historically significant. we don't always handle things historical significant of that level. might be that value but another copy of a book. something like this is unique beyond compare. >> $3 million now. lots of paddles. $3,200,000. back to paul.

at $3,800,000 with the lady. coming now $4 million the lady's bid. >> how do you come about your $2 million to $3 millionest snat. >> we try to something comparable? this is handwritten and unique. this copy's unique. we try to find things that have sold before that you can relatively say they have similarity and significance, iconic stature, for example. we sold a lincoln's -- george washington group of letters to his nephew two years ago that kind of come in around that value. >> the exterior you can see is very, very fine binding. classical style. with a guild letter baroque letter label. to reinforce that ownership, washington is affixed his bookplate inside the front cover.