inauguration of donald trump is friday and c-span will have live coverage of the days events and ceremonies. watch live on c-span and c-span.org and listened live on the free c-span radio app. ♪ announcer: december 2016 marks the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the bill of rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution. up next, thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton reenactors debate the need for a bill of rights. their debate was at the museum in washington, d.c. and is 30 minutes. >> good morning. i am anna, i am an educator here at the museum. we are a museum in washington, d.c. 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 was how everyone 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 historical bill chrystal and we will 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 , in 1788 we have successfully revolted from england. we are trying to form a new nation and 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 we really need to do is to create a new constitution that will bring us all together. the question is should this

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 -- in some newspapers. could you tell me about why we should or should not sign on to this new constitution? mr. hamilton: clearly the new constitution was not the best constitution it -- that could have been written. it was the best that could be achieved under the conditions in which we were operating. i had long known that the articles of confederation were not working, as early as 1780 i 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 got through the american revolution as if by a miracle. when it was over, we were absolutely devastated.

our credit was nonexistent and we were unable to service loans and we issued bills to soldiers and they were not being honored. it was a terrible time. the commerce between colonies was also very tenuous. we were calling ourselves states by then. it became abundantly clear. i was serving in the continental namedss with a virginian james madison and it became clear to us that we needed to do something system. mr. madison and i proposed there be a trade conversation between the states. it met in annapolis. only five states showed up. it gave us the opportunity to revisit the to articles of confederation and we agreed the following summer that we would meet in philadelphia and do that. mr. madison and i from the beginning realized that we would try to revise the articles of confederation. actually, we wanted to write a

new constitution. we enlisted the help of those americans that had the greatest prestige to participate in the process. i think it is safe to say some of the greatest minds in the country were there. mr. jefferson certainly would've been in attendance had he not been serving as minister of 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 actually spent more than a month away. by then, i already realized the government we were going to have were this to be ratified was not going to be perfect, but it would be better than what we had. i had my own ideas about how we could knit ourselves together in a federal union, which is

story. over the course of time, i was the author of more than half of all would be known to be called the federalist papers. there were 85 of them. john j wrote five, mr. madison wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 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 and of the thing time tried to explain what the new government would do. anna: 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 some grave concerns even in paris. i received my first copy of the new constitution in late

1787 and i wrote about it in december. i believe that it was an excellent start. it was a good canvas on which only a few needed retouching. i was entranced by some of the improvements, some of what they accomplished. 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 able to handle the authority to elect to their own senators and the president, which will not take but a few generations. 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. i thought once someone was elected and if they had done any

kind of a decent job where they would not be impeached, people would become accustomed to that and we are so used to aristocracy and inherited monarchy that there is something in human nature that finds comfort in that familiarity. people would want to elect the same people and families over and over again and it would create, essentially, a president who serves for life and that perhaps his son would serve and so forth and we would not improve on those who came before. i also very much did not like bill of rights. i was most concerned about the lack of a bill of rights. a bill of rights is something that every person deserves to protect them from their .overnments freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from monopolies, freedom from a freestanding military. habeas corpus, these rights should not be left to inferences. they should be explicitly

stated. but that was a terrible weakness in the document. that i am hearing from you the constitution, while it was a too vague, was just and without specific limitations written in, we could be on a slippery slope back to a monarchy? is that correct? does that some of your fears -- sum up your fears? >> i think that is a good summary. a of moving back toward it was imminent. and certainly a rational feel -- fear to have. anna: mr. hamilton, i cannot imagine you agree with the -- with this. mr. hamilton believe it or not i : realized 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.

let me back up and say that we did not think a bill of rights was necessary because -- i say we at this time, virtually all of us that were at the constitutional convention who were present at the end when suggested by george mason that we needed to guarantee freedom of the press, we took a boat. said he would not propose it, but he would second such a motion. mr. mason seconded it and it was defeated 10 to nothing. not just i, but many others felt we had not taken any rights away from people and therefore we did not need to enumerate and guarantee any of them. anna : mr. jefferson, i am a little concerned you are getting heated and i do not want a dual to break out. mr. jefferson you have no : worries about my entering into a duel. [laughter] i would not challenge

anybody. explain your challenges. mr. jefferson i will challenge : ideas. one of the fears of having a bill of rights and one of the resident -- rationalizations was that we were not taking away the rights, your freedom of press -- weeech and to assemble do not put those in the constitution as rights that you have given exquisitely to the government and therefore why have a bill of rights? you cannot list all of the rights. it is better to have a half a loaf than no bread at all. i'm afraid that a government so scarcely sketched out as ours is will follow the direction of every government that has ever existed, which is to take more and more power to its self. consolidate -- consolidating that power in a central powerful government in taking those rights from the

people. there are certain rights that are so essential to the existence of a free society that they must be drawn out explicitly or they can be too easily challenged. hamilton, isn't the government going to be run by people that the public have chosen to elect them? mr. hamilton: one would hope. i realized 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 agree completely. we realized that 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 in time of war and i think as one looks at the quasi war the france in 1798 and

1800s, you realize the passing of the alien and sedition acts, which i did not -- which were laws that i did not support or favor, violated entirely the bill of rights. the government took it upon itself to do it and it did it. government will always do that when they feel threatened. they will remove these parchment walls. mr. jefferson what has separated : us from the people who have come before? from the constitutions that have come before? though they may be in legends certain peoples who have written their constitutions that we are not sure wrote them, we know who wrote this constitution and the fact that we wrote the roles by which the government must abide. we wrote that down at the very beginning. we did not create our government by warfare or power. our wise men gathered together and discussed, ccooly, they're in formed, educated, rational concerns and plan the government

based on their experience, their knowledge and knowledge , of the ages. this sets us apart from history and all governments that came before. 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 were not stipulated couple we add those as amendments and i think every , an entirely new constitutional convention. anna: in that case, why freedom of such -- freedom of speech, press, and religion? i understand the draft of the constitution there are limitations that have already been written in. why these extra ones? i will throw that to either of you. mr. jefferson: 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 our rightsnd what are. that is dangerous when you have a government by the people.

source of a a threat and a source of my reasoning why i believe we have to write 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 it says i have that right. that is the opposite of how rights work and especially how our constitution works. the way our constitution works as articulated in the ninth amendment is the following. if you are wondering whether or not you have a right, unless you look at the constitution and see that you gave in writing that you gave that right to your government, you have it. and why -- why do we have constitutions at all in the tradition we started question mark we do not have a constitution to limit the people. we have laws to limit the people, keep people from breaking each other's legs and picking each other's pockets. we have a bill of rights to limit our government as an

extension to that. if we fall into the old habit of looking into the government to discover our rights, then mr. hamilton will be proved right. the lack of certain rights will be construed as people not having them. if we hold to the knowledge that we created something new where we have all the rights and we have it written down and not given it away, i think writing them down on paper in a bill of rights will give them an additional level of a barrier of being taken away. anna: sir hamilton, what do you say to that? i am not opposed to it. i think mr. jefferson is sounding remarkably enlightened. the masses seldom judge right. it is for that reason we need good government to keep all of us operating out of what would clearly be the best interests of the american people. alas, for me, it was really clear that this was not the best constitution that could have

been written. it was simply the best that we enactbe able to an act -- given that opportunity. your idea of meeting every 19 years in forming a new constitution, as wonderful as it was, i remember and think what a miracle it was that we were actually able to ratify the constitution that we wrote over the 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 to use the power that it be given -- 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 goods, taxing luxury goods, not

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

" mr. jefferson: who has the first question? anna: a question from the students online. could you please tell us about what you are wearing? sartorialson: a query. we are both in a similar fashion of the era. the clothing that i am wearing, except for the buckles on my shoes, they were beginning to get a bit out of style, is in the era of the early 19th century. this would have been appropriate 1804 towards the end of my first term of president. mr. hamilton probably for the : sake of the audience of 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 the wear date, you switched them. it seems odd that we would be wearing the same shoe on both feet but it was a custom of the time. it was for simple five manufacture, which was an important thing for me. anna: we would also like to know, what happened after the bill of rights was ratified? what happened to your friendship or no friendship? mr. jefferson: we never had what one could call a cordial relationship. except in what you would call cabinet meetings, where fortunately there was no recording what was said. we remained cordial in public, though attest toshington can the momentary lapses in civility that occurred in the cabinet meetings.

that being said, general washington himself was well-known and we both witnessed, you on the >> i think it might be nice for the audience to know you had a in one of your chambers at monticello. and when was of me. you were overheard to have told a few people that we were friends. >> as time went on, it was a shame you were not able to 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. >> that is actually a complicated question. i did not write the bill of rights and mr. hamilton did not

write it. 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 you think they're are doing it just to torture you, which of course they are. it builds character. but there are other reasons as well. amendments were proposed by each of the state. there were well over 100 amendments without counting repeated suggested once. -- ones. mr. madison being the one who was pressing most for the bill of rights, he was the one who brought them together, got rid of the repeats, the narrative -- narrowed down to about 17 that was originally proposed. that was sent into a smaller list that went to individual states. the only ones left of that list of over 100 were 10, starting with what was called the original proposition the third amendment now called the

,first. >> during the process, the people who opposed to the constitution were hoping to use the amendment process to derail it. it did not succeed. and a number of cases. mr. madison said if this 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 was the one who took responsibility. >> he eliminated the amendments that would have weakened government and only kept the amendments that had to do with personal rights. clever of him. >> 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. and read in his writings.

>> i believe 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 an anarchy. >> or the opposite extreme. our constitution is not meant to limit your rights. if you are wondering whether or not you are allowed 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 in smaller societies. 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, a 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 -- hit play "hamilton," but believe it -- >> they are writing plays about this now? not shown very positively in this play, i'm afraid. but i did sing, to be honest. i was known for singing. in fact the week before i died , in a duel, i was sitting at a meeting of the society of cincinnati and next to me was aaron burr. i was asked to sing my favorite song and i sang the story of

campaigning called "the drum." you are a soldier. >> do you ever chant rhythmically or in rhyme? [laughter] >> wonderful question. we are getting close to the end. any last questions from the audience? >> you are talking about how the government -- we should not look for them for rights. how do you stop people from being oppressed from other people who live in the country? have you sure equality? >> let me repeat that. the last question which is should we worry about oppression notches 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.

when the many were pressing the -- oppressing 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. and the judicial branch, which is a particular chagrin 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 people to get redress when they 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 end where another person's rights begin. slander, libel, these are 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. we have front pages from the

time, including some tragic announcements of a certain duel and its outcome. we also have lesson plans for teachers and videos on the creation of a bill of rights. i would like to wrap up today by saying our sincerest thanks to steve and william for joining us. we hope to talk to you again soon. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] >> interested in american history tv? visit our website, c-span.org /history. american artifacts, road to the white house rewind, lectures in history and more at c-span.org/h

istory. followan continues to president-elect trump and his new administration on the road to the white house. sunday at 6:35 p.m. eastern, from trump tower in new york city conversation with two administrative staffers, kellyanne conway and sean spicer talk about a new white house positions, their life and career in politics, and what we can expect from president donald trump. first we sat down with kellyanne conway, campaign manager for trump-pence 2016, and incoming white house counselor. --lyanne conway: he is that is liberating. >> then rnc communication director sean spicer on his new role as incoming white house communications director and press secretary. sean spicer: whether it is james carney, even marlon fitzwater,

everyone who is held this job has reached out and offered their advice and counsel. it's a pretty homely experience when you realize you are in a club of 30 people who have held this position. >> watch sunday beginning at 6:35 p.m. eastern on sees and and c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. next, architectural historian mary lewis talks about the construction of the brooklyn bridge. mr. lewis looks at why manhattan needed the bridge and how transportation through the city changed at the turn of the 20th century. the new york historical society hosted this hour in five minutes event. >> we are thrilled to welcome mary lewis -- barry lewis back to the new york historical society. he's an architectural historian who specializes in european and american arcct