and making sure we lead third or fourth or seventh or eighth in the country, i want to be ranked first. i want to have the best schools and the best opportunities for businesses. and we are far and away the lowest tax base. doing good on that one. i want to make sure that the "live free or die" spirit does not disappear. that we are not falling back and becoming complacent like other states. we are different. we are new hampshire. this is a special place. anyone who comes here quickly realizes it. i think that is why you see such influx in terms of immigration into the state. when people come here, they realize the special intangibles we have. but you have to stay diligent on it, you have to stay right on top of it. if we do so, i think there is no end to the potential we can truly have in this state. >> governor sununu, thank you for your time. gov. sununu: thank you. it was great. >> they say all politics is local, but in new hampshire that phrase really rings true. american history tv visits the

new hampshire historical society to take a look at the long history with politics of this state. [chatter] >> this was the site of the first primary and on the eve of the elections there were quite a few undecided voters. >> people in new hampshire take politics seriously. they study it. they spend a lot of time meeting with candidates, reading about candidates, interviewing candidates. and it is politics at all levels. new hampshire people are very curious about their politics at the local level, whether it is a town meeting or a school board, and they are equally passionate about politics at the county level, the state level particularly, and they get very interested in national politics, especially in regard to the presidential primaries. what we will do today is take a

look at some items that reflect not only on new hampshire's politics, and new hampshire politics within a larger scope of national and even international politics. first item right here is a portrait and the subject is , governor benning wentworth. governor wentworth has the distinction of being the longest tenured royal governor. he served for almost 26 years as governor of new hampshire. serving basically from 1741-1767. that by itself is not that remarkable, except that he was a hot tempered, arrogant person who made a lot of enemies. the miracle is he survived even one or two years. he was there almost 26 years. with good coaching from his own father who was a lieutenant , governor, and from good friends and relatives both in england and new hampshire, he learned how to make the system

work. he understood the whole colonial system, to the point that he knew how to please the authorities in london, they could hire and fire him, and he could also please almost everybody in new hampshire by giving them something. he gave away most of the land in the state. facts he gave vermont away as , well. so by a mixture of patronage, good politics, good connections, he survived not only for almost 26 years, but made himself very rich in the process. he finally was more or less forced out, partly because of age, he was suffering badly from gout. in addition, the authorities in london had heard complaints and they came to the conclusion that he was operating perhaps too much out of private interest and not paying attention to the public good.

iner wentworth left office 1767, he was replaced by young john wentworth, who was yet to be 30 years of age. the next and last of the royal governors. because we had had such a strong chief executive, new hampshire was very leery of having a strong executive in any form of government. so when john wentworth left, the state had no government. basically the government at this , time consisted of the presence of the governor and his commission. when john wentworth fled in the middle of revolutionary events, new hampshire found itself without government. so the leaders wrote to the continental congress meeting in philadelphia, basically saying, what are we supposed to do, we do not have a government? john adams among others led the charge for new hampshire. he wanted a new england state to be the first state to actually declare a form of government independent of the crown. so we drafted a small two page

form of government, seen here, that was approved by the congress on january 5, 1776. this basically states that we, the small provisional congress of new hampshire, are now the government. it created a legislative branch. no executive branch at all. said nothing about judiciary. it could not be amended. it was a very flimsy little document, but it is the first of the so-called state constitutions independent of the crown. these are paintings of two of our most distinguished native sons. and in the early 19th century, little tiny new hampshire had some clout and some of our native sons did very well. on the right we have david webster, who was a lawyer in both his hometown in salisbury,

but also then in portsmouth. he served in the house of representatives. he was a federalist politician and eventually he would move on to massachusetts and become a major national figure, depending on whether you like him or not, he was either godlike daniel or black dan. but he never lost his ties to new hampshire. he maintained a farm here and he was very active in that he knew all the political leaders and figures of new hampshire. he constantly kept in touch with them and spent a good part of every year here. so webster was always here and present, even if he was living in washington or boston. he was too big to ignore. one of those who he had detested during much of his political career was our other famous native son, and that is franklin pierce over here. while daniel webster was a federalist and a whig

politician, is he opponent in new hampshire was franklin pierce, somewhat younger than webster. pierce was a jeffersonian and he later turned into a jacksonian democrat. he did serve for a while in the u.s. senate, but he did not stay there long. his wife hated public life in washington. so he returned to new hampshire, but was known here primarily as the enforcer of democratic harmony and unity. he wanted a democratic party that was saying the same thing in alabama and new york. he was known as a true democratic party man. everybody knew the democratic 52.inee would win in 18 it was the democrat's year they , just did not have a person. so the potential nominees at the time did not go to conventions, they sat at home hoping somebody would bring them good news. franklin pierce was not on anybody's radar screen.

nobody knew anything about him outside of new hampshire. but the democratic members of the convention could not arrive at any kind of consensus. and finally after about 40 , ballots, people started to mention franklin pierce because he was a good solid democrat and he seems to have, although he was a new englander, no particular bias against the south. so the southern delegates sent telegrams up, asking questions of pierce who was in new , hampshire. and they liked the answers. after maybe the 49th ballot, he was finally nominated, to the surprise of everyone. the problem is that nobody knew who he was outside of new hampshire. so this painting was done in order to publicize franklin pierce and what he looked like. there were photographs of him wearing his mexican war uniform, which he still fit into.

and his longtime friend, a college classmate nathaniel , hawthorne, actually wrote one of the early authorized biographies of franklin pierce. so if you look at nothing on -- all of nathaniel hawthorne's work, along with "house of seven gables," you will see a biography of franklin pierce. not one of his greatest works, but pierce was the nominee and he wins on to win the election in 1852 and he served for one term. here is a picture of a cornish town meeting, 1947. new hampshire is proud of the fact that it has town meetings. they have a long tradition of thinking their government is best when it is small and close to the people. this is fairly typical of what you might have seen in 1947. people would have gathered in the town hall. what you see in this picture are a group of people who are concerned and they know exactly what they want to do, what items

will be on the town warrant, who they are going to vote for. sometimes the meetings would last not just a few hours, but maybe two or three days. it actually goes back to massachusetts in the 1630's, when they began to incorporate separate, small towns in and around the boston area. they allowed each of the towns the privilege of electing their own officers and to tax themselves. in new hampshire today, there are 234 incorporated municipalities. on town meeting day, which is always in march, this is the one time when those folks in town actually get together. one thing that new hampshire developed during the progressive era the first two decades of the , 20th century, we developed a system for holding not only a primary election for the state officials, but we also developed a system for holding a presidential primary for actual

delegates to go to the conventions. since 1919, new hampshire has been the first state to select delegates to go to the presidential convention. but not that many people participated. for just picking those candidates out of a hat to go to the conventions. so we changed the law in 1949, saying in the future primaries we would not only pick , individuals to go to the conventions, but we would have what they call the beauty contest. we actually put the name of a candidate on the ballot. 1952, our presidential primary did not just list candidates from new hampshire, but it also listed the actual names of candidates. each town runs its own election in the way it sees fit.

they run it through the secretary of state's office. has happened in a few of the towns is they decided to jumpstart the time. they had to do it on the day of the primary, but some of them jumpstarted the time. one small town did that in 1948. a little tiny town. it had about 50 voters at the time. but it was a railroad town and the only time they could get everybody together to actually vote was around midnight, because after that the railroad workers all took off they were , maintaining tracks and doing all kinds of other things. so they decided to have its primary, the presidential primary, in 1948 at midnight. and then off they would go. since that time, other small towns have jumped into it. dicksville is another. mills field jumped into it as , which is not even

unincorporated town. there is a state law that says if you have less than 100 voters, you can actually hold the presidential primary at midnight. so it became a proud tradition to be the first ones to jump in. what we have here is a little wooden ballot box, this is from hart's location. this little, tiny simple box is , in many respects are most -- our most valuable artifact. you have to think about it on two planes. on the one plane, this is just a little wooden box. it is a relic, an artifact from the little town of hart's location. on the other plane, this little wooden box is a symbol of who we are. we are a republic. we say that every time we salute the flag. a republic is by definition a form of government where the governed govern themselves according to the laws that they make. the minute that we fail to see this little wooden box as that

second item, the symbol of who we are, we cease to be a republic. it is important to people to understand the whole concept of voting. this little box is good at showing it. the new hampshire primary was not very significant nationwide until 1952. in 1952, the front runner of the republican nomination was robert taft, also called mr. republican, a fairly conservative republican and he , was well known by the party regulars. however, many party regulars thought that he was too far to the right and they did not like him. so a number of new hampshire people rallying around their governor at the time, sherman adams, decided to push the candidacy to dwight d. eisenhower. he was serving as the commander of nato in brussels at the time and he was not allowed to run he did not even come to the , state. so there was a backdoor effort orchestrated by the likes of

henry lodge and sherman adams to get eisenhower on the ballot. it worked. at least he said he was ok with having his name on the ballot. on the democratic side, president harry truman was planning to run for another term. and he was contested. he had some problems in terms of the korean war and other things, and he was contested by a guy from tennessee, who nobody had ever heard about except he headed up a crime commission that got a lot of publicity on television. so the 52 primary -- 1952 primary breaks wide open with taft, eisenhower, and the outlier from tennessee campaigning against the incumbent president. so we have a lot of artifacts. eisenhower was a popular figure at the time, although he could not campaign yet in new hampshire, not during the primary. so his name was floated out there.

he was considered one of the heroes of world war ii. he was renowned for his work as a nato commander, but he could not campaign in new hampshire. campaign in new hampshire, and maybe he should not have. he was not a good vote getter or a popular figure. so new hampshire came out in force, saying "i like ike," and eisenhower won the primary. much has been made about the fact that we are the first in the nation for the primaries. we did not mean to do that in 1952. it was almost by accident. the decision was made to hold our primary election on the same day as the town meeting day, a way to get a big crowd there and you would not have to have two different elections, which cost a lot of money. the decision was made in 1949 to and so hold the 1952 primary the , presidential primary, on town meeting day. that meant we had a big turnout.

the other thing that made it, and why we were the first in the nation, the other thing that made it a big deal was the nature of the election itself. you had an incumbent president running against a challenge or -- challenger within his own party, and you had a well-known established republican running , against a very popular military official. it was a wide open primary. one of the reasons it is important, summed up very nicely some years ago by a commentator, john chancellor, he said we have ls galore ae, -- pol , lot of talk about who will be winning and who is the front runner and who has raised the most money, but until we get to the new hampshire primary we haven't really asked the ordinary voters in the privacy of their voting place to actually cast their votes. what you get with the new hampshire primary is an actual secret election by individuals, ordinary people, casting their

preference. and that is going to be full of surprise. looking at politics in new hampshire government, it is fun. it is a small state and people say it is not important. it is a small state. that is not true. every voter is important, every town meeting is important, every congressional session in concord here is important. it is important in that people have the right and the willingness, and certainly the aptitude and desire to make themselves heard. [cheering] despite its penchant for politics, new hampshire only lays claim to one u.s. president. coming up, "american history t"" goes inside the home of frequent -- franklin pierce and learns , about a presidency marred with traged