c-span, where history unfolds daily. created as aan was public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to today are cable or satellite provider. brought to you today by your cable or settle at provider. announcer: december, 2016 -- the first 10 amendments the competition. up next, thomas jefferson and house in a hamilton reenactors debate the need for a bill of rights. their debate was at the museum in washington dc and is 30 minutes. >> good morning. i am an educator here at the museum. we are a museum in washington dc and we are here to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the bill of rights.

behind me you can see a printing press. back in 1788, this without everyone cheered important news of the day -- shared important news of the day like whether or not to ratify the new constitution. luckily with me today i have steve of the american theater and bill kristol, and we are going to go back in time to have thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton tells about exactly why we should or should not have a bill of rights. just to set a little context come in 1788 -- context, in 1788 we have successfully revolted from england. we have the articles of confederation, which unfortunately are not working very well. we have a government but it is tenuous and we think what really really need to do is create a new constitution that will bring us all together. but the question is, should this new constitution be ratified?

is it good enough? mr. hamilton, i hear you have some very strong opinions about this? there is a rumor you might have been writing under the name -- could you tell me about why we should or should not sign on to this new constitution? >> clearly the new constitution was not the best constitution it could have been written. it was the best that could be achieved under the conditions in which we were operating. i have long known that the articles of confederation were not working, as early as 1780i proposed we had a constitutional convention that we write a constitution that would actually do what people needed it to do. i think most of you realized we have gone to the american resolute -- revolution like a miracle. we were absolutely devastated.

our credit was nonexistent come we cannot service loans, we issued bills to soldiers and were not being honored. it was a terrible time. the commerce between colonies was also very tenuous. we were calling ourselves states by them. it became abundantly clear. i was serving in the continental congress in a became abundantly clear to us that we need to do something different. mr. madison and i proposed there be a trade conversation between the states. we met in annapolis. only five states showed up. they gave us an opportunity to say we need to revisit the articles of confederation. we are greedy following summer that we would meet in philadelphia and do that. mr. madison and i from the beginning realized that we would , we would try to revise the articles of confederation. actually, we wanted to write a new constitution.

we enlisted the help of those americans who had the greatest prestige to participate in this process. i think it is safe to say some of the greatest minds of the country were there. jefferson certainly would have attended had he not been serving as a minister to france. we knew we needed a new form of government because without it we were languishing. it was only a matter of time before we either collapsed or another for power came in and declared war on us and we would be defeated. that is the backdrop to the constitutional convention. we work over the course of the summer. i am not as active in it as it might have been. i spent more than a month away. by then i only realized that the government that we were going to have, were this to be ratified, was not going to be perfect but it would certainly be better than what we had. i also have my own ideas about how we could knit ourselves together in a better, federal union which is of course, another story.

over the course of time, i was the author of more than half time, i was the author of more than half what would become to be known as an federalist papers. there were 85 of them. john j wrote five, mr. madison wrote around 30 and i wrote the remainder. they were a public relations blitz, answering the critics of those who did not want a new constitution ratified in it the same time try to explain with the new government would do. >> mr. hamilton, one of the things you hoped it would do is to bring everybody together so that we would have a federal government that could better protect and serve everybody. it sounded like a really good idea. your campaign was quite convincing. but there were some doubts, some holdouts. mr. jefferson, i think you had grade -- grave concerns in paris. >> i was given the first copy of the new constitution in late

1787 and i wrote about in december. i believe that it was an excellent start. it was a good canvas on which only a few thoughts did retouching. i was entranced by some of the improvements. for instance, especially the legislature balancing the larger and smaller states. i thought the electoral college was a good temporary expedients until americans were educated enough to be handled to handle the authority to elect their own senators and the president, which will only take a few generations. but there were some things in it that started all of my dispositions to subscribe to it. for instances there were no limitation on the number of terms that any of the elected officials could serve, especially in regard to the president. this concerned me. ife someone was elected and they had done any kind of decent

job with it, they would not be impeached. we're so used to aristocracy, inherited monarchy that there is something in human nature that sounds -- finds comfort in that familiarity. people want to elect the same families over and over and it would create essentially will be a president who serves for life and then perhaps his son would serve and so on. and it would not improve on those who came before. i also very much did not like the essence of a bill of rights. i was most concerned about the lack of a bill of rights. a bill of rights is something every person deserves to protect themselves from the government. he writes that should be listed in the bill of rights. freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from monopolies, freedom a freestanding military. these rights could not be left to inference, they should be

explicitly stated. i thought it was a terrible weakness in the document. you thatearing from the constitution, while a good start, was just too vague. without specific limitations written in, we could be on a slippery slope back to a monarchy is that correct? >> that is a good summary. all we have known is a monarchy. fear of moving back towards it was imminent and constant and certainly a rational fear. >> mr. hamilton, i cannot imagine you agree with the spirit -- with this. realizede it or not i if the government did not become something that was owned by all levels of society, we would fail. not only did the ordinary people need to subscribe to what we were doing but also the rich. if the money is not supporting it you will get nowhere. the me back up.

we did not think a bill of rights was necessary because we -- and i say we, virtually all of us who were at the constitutional convention who were present at the end -- when suggested by george mason that we needed during t freedom of the press, we took a vote. mr. mason said he would second emotion. mr. macon -- tend to nothing. not just i, but many others felt we had not taken any rights away did people and therefore we not need to enumerate and guarantee any of them. >> mr. jefferson, i am concerned you are getting a little heated, i do not want a duel to break out. >> you have no worries about my entering into a duel. [laughter] >> madam, i would not challenge

anybody. i will challenge ideas. one of the fears of having a bill of rights and one of the rationalizations, as mr. hamilton has articulated, is we are not taking away rights. rights -- weg your did not put any of those in the constitution explicitly. [indiscernible] it is better to have a half a loaf the no bread at all. i'm afraid that a government so scarcely sketched out as ours is will follow the direction of every government in existence, which is to take more and more power to itself. consolidating that power in a central powerful government in taking the rice from the people. there are certain rights that

are so essential to the existence of a free society and must be drawn out explicitly or they can be too easily challenged. >> but mr. hamilton come is in government going to be run by people that the public have children -- have chosen to arrest them -- unless fits people are elected, the system will not work as well as it ought to. let me just say this about the bill of rights before i move on. in the beginning, mr. madison and i agreed completely. we realized a bill of rights, which mr. madison called a parchment partition, would not stop a government from doing whatever it wanted to or needed to, especially at a time of war. as one looks at the quads i war with france -- at the quasi war with france, you realize the

passing of the alien and sedition acts, which i did not favor, violated entirely the bill of rights. the government took it upon itself to do it and it didn't. government will always do that when they feel threatened. they will remove these parchment walls. >> what has separated us from the people who have come before? from the constitutions that have come before? know -- we know who wrote this constitution. rules by which the government must abide. we wrote that at the very beginning. we did not create our government by warfare, by taking power. our wise men gathered together they'reussed, cooley, informed, educated in rational concerns and plant a government

based upon their experience, their knowledge, and knowledge of the ages. this set us apart. we wrote down those rules. that is why we must also write down specific limitations of the government as much as we feel we are being threatened. if the government threatens more rights than we add those two amendments and i think every generation, a new constitutional convention. >> why freedom of speech, press, and religion? i understand the draft of the constitution there are limitations that have already been written in. so why these extra ones? i will throw that do either of you. >> i think it is habitual. because generations have become accustomed to it. this is not something i think will depart from human nature. for us to turn to our government as to define what our rights are. that is dangerous.

it is a source of a threat and a source and why we have to write some of these rights down. people make the following error. they wonder do i have such and such a right. let me check my government. let me check my constitution and find where in the writing of the government or the constitution says i have that right. that is the opposite of how rights work and especially high constitution works. the way our constitution works as articulated in the ninth amendment is the following. you are wondering whether or not you have a right -- unless you look at the constitution and you see you gave in writing that you give that right to your government, you have it. so why do we have constitutions at all? we do not have a constitution to limit the people. we have laws to limit the people, keeping people from breaking each other. we have the constitution to limit our government.

we -- if we fall into that old habit to discover our rights to the government, mr. hamilton will be proved right. we lack a certain rights will be construed as the people not having them. if we hold that knowledge that we have created something new and we have all the rights, then yes, i think writing them down on paper in a bill of rights will give them an additional level of a barrier against being taken away. >> sir hamilton, what do you say to that? >> i'm not opposed to it. mr. jefferson's sounding remarkably enlightened. i once of the masses are turbulent and changing. they seldom judge right. it is for that reason we need good government to keep all of out of what would clearly be the best interests of the american people. clear me, it really was that this was not the best

constitution that could have been written, it was simply the best that we would be able to enact even that opportunity. as much as your opportunity of meeting every 19 years in forming a new constitution, as wonderful as it was, i remember what a miracle it was that we were actually able to ratify the constitution that we wrote only summer of 1787. the american people would not have allowed another constitutional convention. already we moved on to other issues. already there were grave difficulties. i personally felt the best way to knit us together in a federal union was use the power that had been given to the federal government to tax. that would be the best way for us to become a single people. when i say tax, in my time, taxing was not taxing individual citizens, it was taxing imported , not, taxing luxury goods

necessaries people needed for their everyday lives. >> one of the few things we agree on. >> since we have that, i would like to end on a note of agreement. and hope, i think, for how we go. we have about 10 minutes left for question and answer. we have a wonderful audience here with us at the museum and we have students online. i'm going to open up to the audience. i will repeat the question so everyone online can hear. mr. jefferson and mr. hamilton will help us work through any questions. from the audience -- >> while they're waiting to percolate, i would like to repeat with the great dr. franklin said shortly after the constitution had been ratified. he said, it is in place, it looks to be a sound document, but the only things in life that are certain our death and taxes

-- are death and taxes. >> who has the first question? >> a question from the students online. could you please tell us about what you are wearing? >> we are both in a similar fashion of the era. ,he clothing that i am wearing except for the buckles on my shoes, they were coming out of style, is of the era of the early 19th century. this would be appropriate towards the end of my first term of president. >> probably for the sake of the schoolers, if you could look down at my feet and mr. jefferson's feet, we do not have left shoes and right shoes. there was a single shoe that was made.

you had to wear them long enough so that they fit the one foot or the other foot. when you got past that where date that you switched and grained -- gained a great deal more aware. -- more wear. it seems on we would be wearing the same shoe on both feet when it was clearly a custom of our time. it simplified manufacture, which for me was very important. >> we would also like to know, what happened after the bill of rights was ratified? what happened to your friendship? >> we never had what one could call a cordial relationship. except in what you would call cabinet meetings, where remainedly -- we cordial in public, though general washington could attest to the momentary lapses incivility that occurred in those cabinet meetings. that being said, general

washington himself was well-known and we both witnessed those meetings, his extremes of temperature >> -- of temper. busts in your chamber wasn't -- was one of me. your overture -- you were overheard to have told many that we were friends. >> as time went on, it was a shame you could not continue longer than you did. i know it is awkward to speak about. [laughter] but i did come to agree with more of your ideas. ashley would like to know how long it took to write the bill of rights. >> is actually a complicated question. those of you who are students

who are watching, you have teachers i understand to give you assignment to write drafts of papers and you roll your eyes and i think they're are doing it just to torture you, which of course they are. but there are other reasons as well. the reasons the build of reason -- rights was composed exemplifies this. they were composed by each state. there were well over 100 without counting repeated suggestions. one whoson being the was pressing most for the bill of rights, he was the one who brought them together, got rid of the repeats, the narrative down to about 17 that was originally proposed. that was sent into a smaller list and sent to individual states. the only ones left of that list of over 100 were 10, starting what you now called the

first amendment. during the process, the people who opposed to the constitution were hoping to use the amendment process to derail it. it did not succeed. if thisson said document is to be adopted it has to be adopted in total and forever. but he did pledge to his own virginia delegation that when he had the opportunity he would see to it that a bill of rights was championed, and he did as a member of congress. he eliminated the amendments that would have weakened government and only kept the ones that had to do with personal rights. >> molly has a great question. what would happen if we did not have a constitution? >> that question is a lot like things i would converse with thomas payne about.

>> thomas hobbes said it best, that we would be living in a state of nature. and in a state of nature, life is nasty, brutish and short. >> we would have no government, we would have a nine or key -- an anarchy. >> or the opposite. the constitution is not meant to limit your rights. if you are wondering whether or not you can do something, do not look at the constitution. the government has to do that. if you government is wondering whether it has permission to do something, it has to look at the constitution and show where it is written that it allows to do that. you look at laws that were passed on what you can do. if you did not have a constitution, perhaps there would be chaos. i think people would still gather together in work together. however, the bigger threat would be your government would see no limitations to its power and would become over powerful,

worse than a monarchy. you have the old roman dictators. you would have a tyrant, tyrannical government that would have no limitations on its power. >> mr. hamilton, could you sing for us? >> i know this reference is probably as a result of the hip ity "hamilton," but believe -- >> you are not shown very positively in this play. but i did sing, to be honest. the week before i died in a duel, i was sitting at a meeting of the society of cincinnati and next to me was ehrenberg. -- was aaron burr. i sang "the drum."

you [indiscernible] [laughter] >> wonderful question. any last questions from the audience? you are talking about how the --ernment, we should look should not look for them for rights. how do you stop people from being oppressed from other people in the country? preventou [indiscernible] >> let me repeat that. we have a question from the audience. the last question which is much should we worry about oppression not just from the government but from the people themselves? >> hopefully the system of checks and balances, which was

devised as a means to prevent that sort of thing, would hold. with the many were pressing the few, it could be addressed. when the few are being oppressed by the many, it could be addressed. that was the system of having a house of representatives and a senate, that was the intent behind that. the executive branch was a check on the legislative branch. branch, whichal is a particular chagrined to mr. jefferson, especially the supreme court, it was intended also as a means of providing checks and balances. that was the way the system was intended. our system of laws would enable when theyget redress deemed it necessary. i know you did not agree with that always. >> though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable. the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must

protect and to violate which would be oppression. the government, any form of government ought to in its most essential form be constructed and actuated for the primary purpose of protecting your rights. and your rights and were another person's rights begin. areder, libel, these prosecuted but not by the federal government. if you use your freedom of speech to intentionally harm someone else, that is only using your right to infringe someone else's right. this is definitive of the limitation of individual liberties. the government should be a tool used by the people to protect from oppression. >> that is just about all the time we have today. we would like the audience to know if you would like to see more about the debate on the bill of rights i encourage you to go to our free website, museumed.org.

from theront pages time, including some tragic announcements of a certain tool and its outcome. -- duel and its outcome. doesn't have lesson plans for teachers and videos on the creation of a bill of rights. i would like to wrap up today by toing our sincerest thanks steve and william for joining us. we hope to talk to you again soon. [applause] announcer: you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. all weekenng