audience. so thank you and we say good night. >> thank you all very much. [ applause ] this week on the communicators, we take you to the consumer electronics show in las vegas and speak with industry leaders about their latest developments in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, 360 degree cameras and enhanced communications for self-driving cars. watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on cspan-2. next on american history tv, journalist coky roberts moderates a discussion on the first federal congress at the annual meeting. it talks about the nation's founders including james madison and george washington who met from 1789 to 1791 to determine the structure of the new federal

government and decide how it should function. this is an hour and a half recorded at the american historical association annual meeting held this year in washington. >> hi, everybody, i'm cokey roberts and i'm here in my history hat as a writer of history and student of current history, but it is a thrill to have this panel on first federal congress. it is such an incredibly important subject and one that these folks have mined asid uously for many, many years. the history project on the first federal congress is really one of the most remarkable institutions and outputs that i've ever seen. among other things, it's complete, which you know, doesn't happen that often. i mean, the founding fathers

papers will be you know, being published when we're all dead. and so this fact that this group of people so marvelously put together 22 fabulous volumes and really tell the story of the founding of the country in a way that is incredibly important and one that i recommend to all, because you know, the guys got together and wrote the constitution pretty quickly. given the fact that they had as bill clinton says, constitution should be called let's make a deal. and but you know, we in the press weren't there which made it a lot easier and then they've got this piece of paper. and come out and basically then they sell it and they solved it quite variously with different people selling different things and contradicting each other. i re-read quickly the executive

sections after reading the executive sessions sections of the federalist papers and the differences between the way madison and hamilton saw that is quite stark. so here they are, they've written this thing and sold it to the public and or at least to the ratifiers and now they have a country to figure out. and that is left to this group of, what, 95 men meeting in new york. they finally met in april of 1789. and then did remarkable things in the course of that first congress that we are all living with today. and the project really did bring it all together and bring it to life. the documentary history of the first federal congress and ken bowling immediately to my left

was one of the directors there. he has been an expert on the history of the revolutionary war and early republic since he was a mere boy. and his written a great deal about it. but i think you can read more of his bio, i think you're more interested in hearing from him than hearing about him. so ken is going to talk to us a little bit about how this all happened and how you found the documentation. you have to get close to the mike -- >> i'm going to sit, much better. >> unless you want to stand? >> no. i may have to -- about thousand they found these documents and made it all happen. >> so, i'm going to tell you history story that covers 80 years. the documentary history of the first federal congress and its sister project, the documentary history of the ratification of the constitution, was envisioned

by the centennial commission on the constitution, 1937 to 1938. that was the original idea but during the 1930s, a group of american jewish leaders in response to the rise of nazi germany, begun a process of iconicizing the federal bill of rights, which most people knew as the first ten amendments if they knew it at all, certainly didn't merit sitting in the ar rotunda, saul bloom, of new york city, the chairman of the committee, made the bill of rights an essential part of the centennial and the susqe s

centennial was december 14th, 1941. franklin d roosevelt's address about the bill of rights is almost entirely about adolph hitler and nazi germany. and since 1941, those of us who were born -- matured since 1941, we've known this great document but those who came the generation ahead of us wouldn't. >> that's interesting. >> one of the things that the susqe centennial recommended when it went out of business, of the time of the bicentennial of the ratification and first congress, which would be 1987 to 1991. by the time ofbicentennial, the american people should have access to all of the documents relating to ratification and the first federal congress. and that was the origin of the

projects. well, nothing happened until 1950 when julian boyd of princeton university published the first volume of the thomas jefferson papers and presented it to president truman. president truman then simply wrote a line item into the federal budget appointing someone to work at the national historical publications commission at the national archives to work on these projects. beginning in 1950, the search for the documents about which i intend to focus my remarks begun. it was very easy to gather the official records, the senate and house records are on departmeost the national archives, they don't really have custodianship of them, they are part of the

legislative branch not the executive branch. but everybody agrees their in much better condition at the archives than when they were in the capitol building and in closets and small rooms in the attic and basement and the judiciary act of 1789 was being stained by water dripping from the roof. it was the predigital age. so the question was how to gather the unofficial records, the letters to and from members. well, essentially at the beginning the search went -- the searcher went out to the places where everybody knew first federal and ratification documents would be. massachusetts historical and new york historical and new york public, library of congress and his ttorical society of pennsylvania. they gathered the cream of the crop so to speak from papers,

the collections that were known members collections primarily, rufus king of new york and theodore saidgewick of massachusetts but didn't look beyond that. by the 1960s, the search was in the hands of an incredible person that some of you may have known, leonard rapport. and for me, leonard taught me about manuscripts and my graduate education didn't teach me about manuscripts, only about what was in them. you use them to write history. but the physical man uscript and what it might tell you and also what other sources there were forem manuscripts other than th repositories. for example, by then almost

100-year-old autograph market after the civil war, wealthy americans begun to collect manuscripts of the founding generation, putting together collections ever signers of this articles of con federation declaration, constitution, et cetera, presidents of the continental and con federation congress and the most obsessive of all, simon grotz of philadelphia had collections of doctors and lawyers and indian chiefs and if you were a lawyer and an indian chief, he had to have two letters and it's a vast collection of thousands and thousands of often very, very valuable records. leonard filmed his own documents on a little camera. he taught me that you can't rely on the catalog as i say, it's predigital. the only kind of information we

had was what the descriptions the societies had of their collections. he said, you need to look at every single collection that has anything dated 1787 to 1791. and i followed him in the 1970s, spent two months at historical society of pennsylvania alone. he took up the fight when the national historical commission, national historical publications commission said okay, the search is done we're satisfied with the 1950 search and satisfied with qu what leonard has done. leonard wrote to merle jenson and lind da duepaul editing the first congress project and said just not true.

and they had 2,000 documents. when we finished the search we had 10,000 documents. most of course by northern members of congress because northerners tended to have more interest in history and also didn't suffer from mold or the civil war. leonard said you can't understand -- and this was julian boyd's great contribution to documentary editing, you cannot understand these letters by these members of congress who are writing back to somebody if you don't know what that person wrote to them. so we have to include all of the letters from constituents and friends to members. as i say, i did historical owe society and pennsylvania and many other places throughout the united states, gaspar saladino spent six months at the library

of congressmanuscript division. i will tell a quick story what i learned about manuxscript sales, most of you are probably familiar with benjamin rush the great revolutionary era gadfly and most hyper bolic of anyone in his generation -- >> also a really bad doctor. >> a bleeder. founder of american psychiatry interested in female education and abolition and prohibition. he willed his papers to the library company of philadelphia. but before his son the executer gave the papers and they included 120 letters written from the first federal congress alone, before he gave them to the library of congress, he went through them and took out every letter written by someone important that he knew was

important, jefferson adams, members of the first congress and gave them to his daughter as a wedding present. she married alexander bitle, the son of nicholas bitle, the editor of lewis and clark journal and the president of the second bank of the united states. and then when they died in 1898, she still had the collection and put them all together and numbered them. but there was a problem it was called probate, in 1940, the estate was finally out of probate and the family sold all 2,000 or so letters that had been given -- at least 1,000 had been given to julia bidle on her wedding. they went for $5 apiece. actually, william mcclay, the

senator from pennsylvania, the first person elected to the first federal congress, his letters went for two for $5. there were 24 of them. the library of congress bought 22 of them because of course park burnet didn't want to sell them all because they are interested in having things available in the market. in 1980-something or maybe early '90s, a friend of mine sent me a postcard, this size and it said big sale, at blue ball pennsylvania, barn auction and listed all of the things for sale, complete set of pennsylvania magazine of history and biography, complete set of hustler magazines and two letters from william mcclay.

so i contacted the manuscript division library of congress and said the two letters you don't have are available and the manuscript division said well, we're not interested. so then the first federal congress has had many wonderful supporters like lindy bongz and senator from west virginia by the name of bird and senator bird was very, very interested in william mcclay. i can remember when volume 9 of the project was published, mcclay's diary, the historian of the united states senate took me over to meet senator bird at the reception and senator bird was chatting up a very young lady and not -- didn't pay attention to me at all. and he's going on and on and i'm going why am i hear?

and the historian of the united states senate actually kicked me, calm down. all of a sudden senator bird looked me right in the me in th verbatim the last paragraph of mcclay's diary. he said wait here. i went and grabbed my colleagues, said come over, listen to this. senator byrd turned around, chatted up the young lady again and repeated the whole thing. but we managed over the course of 25 years to locate approximately 105 of those 120 letters that were written from first federal congress and sold in the biddle sale. so we start out by only wanting the letters of great white men, and then the letters that were writd ento t-- written to the

tte m then in 1989, at the time of the by centennial project, got a new colleague who was educated in a different world than the older editors. and social history, and women of all things were important. how can you understand what it was like to be a member of the first congress if you didn't know how they lived and what their relationships were with their families, whether those families were in new york and philadelphia when congress sat there or whether they were at home. so a short story, somewhat salacious perhaps in the end about one of those congressmen. congressman george thatcher from maine. he came to congress confederation congress in 1788 and served continuously every

winter until 1800, leaving his wife and his family at home on their farm in maine during the winter. now, they had help but nonetheless sarah thatcher became as she said melancholic. we don't have sarah thatcher's letters to george thatcher. >> threw them away. >> the kids threw them away, but he writes to her and he says let me tell you what a woman ought to do when she's depressed. and i thought oh boy. little feminist hairs on my neck started tingling. he said go to the barn, saddle the horse, and ride. i thought wow. what great advice for anyone. so it was my favorite story.

i told it to i assume a rather wealthy couple, big donors at george washington university at a benefit and the wife said when she heard the story, well, of course. what woman wouldn't want something that big between her legs. i haven't told the story quite as often since. but it was a wonderful, wonderful professional life. i love the letters. i have colleagues that could recognize which clerk drafted or copied the bill of rights. there were 13 copies of the bill of rights. one for the federal government and 12, one for each of the states, including two that hadn't ratified. obviously saul bloom was very interested in whether or not they still existed in state

archives, he did a survey, he found out that everybody had them except for new hampshire, new york, pennsylvania, maryland, north carolina and georgia. since that time the editor of the document, the ratification project, found the new hampshire copy on top of a bookcase in archives. south carolina found it. the north carolina copy came up for sale, constitution center in philadelphia was offering it, and they asked me to verify it was authentic. one that you could tell it was authentic, and two, that you could not tell what state it had

been stolen from. it took us one minute to recognize it, because george washington had nothing to do with bill of rights other than send it to the states, sent a letter to the governor of each state saying here are the amendments to the constitution that have been proposed by congress, please submit them to your legislature, and the clerk of the governor of north carolina who was samuel johnston at the time, later senator in the first congress wrote on the back, he docketed the document, both the amendments and the letter, and said this is a letter from president george washington transmitting amendments to october 17, '89. absolutely matched. so the constitution center i should say the lawyers for the constitution center, the lawyers for the owners of the north carolina copy of the bill of

rights and the lawyers for people who were going to put up the $5 million to buy it, meeting in new york city, the lawyers for the constitution center say we don't want to pay you 5 million for it because it is obviously north carolina's and it can be replevened, we will give you 2 million for it. someone said after the meeting if you're not willing to pay 5 million for it, somebody in saudi arabia will, and a month later the constitution center called the owner of the document, called the attorneys for the owner of the north carolina copy of the bill of rights and said look, we have a very patriotic supporter, b

benefactor willing to put it up. he is doing public service, if north carolina replef ens it, it will still be in public hands. so the owner sent the document down to philadelphia for a meeting to finalize everything. the owner's employee bicycled the north carolina copy of the bill of rights in a big art box across the benjamin franklin bridge from camden into central philadelphia for this meeting, and my conclusion about how we find manuscripts, meeting consisted of the historian of the constitution center, the dot commer, and attorney for the owner. the dot com mer said before i

give you the check, i want to see the document. they passed the art box over. the dot commer looks at it, says to the historian, is this the copy of the bill of rights ken bowling says is north carolina's? and the historian said yes. the dot commer said fbi. we are confiscating this document on behalf of the state of north carolina. charlene can tell you a little more if she likes about going down to be interviewed by the fbi in north carolina. but i can assure you when i go to raleigh to archives, they roll the red carpet out. thank you very much. >> that's great. [ applause ] >> so taking all of these documents, i must say the letter about the depressed wife, john

marshall when he was in france wrote to his wife who had ten children at home in virginia and said she couldn't -- said she had to stop being depressed because it made him sad. yeah. anyway, but you know, these documents are fabulous and they are so able to tell a story, but not everybody is going to sit and read 22 volumes, and so we are lucky that fergus bordewich took the information and wrote it into a very readable narrative, the first congress, how james madison, george washington and a group of extraordinary men -- and he is a distinguished historian and author, but again, let's hear from him rather than about him and about the book. >> thanks.

>> take it closer to you. >> so this book, the first congress, this book couldn't have been written without the first federal congress project. this monumental and wonderfully accessible mountain of material, comparable detail and sophistication that ken has so colorfully described. frankly, maybe the best, certainly one of the best collections i've ever worked in. and my gratitude for its existence and to the four members of the project, charlene who we will hear from shortly, ken, helen veit, and my

gratitude is unbounded. they were aside from their decades of heroic work which can describe in some detail, they were all personally invaluable resources and guides throughout my research and allowed me to essentially set up shop in the offices of the project where i did most of the writing and had the extraordinary good fortune of having, privilege i should say, of having all of these materials within a few steps of where i was writing. and i can't say i've ever had such research luxury with any other project i worked on. i first encountered the first federal congress project about ten years ago. i wrote another book, washington, the making of the american capitol, aboal, about making of the city through the

1790s. a political narrative that focuses primarily, not exclusively, on the significance of slavery in the politics behind the location of the federal city, capital here in d.c., why aren't we on the susquehanna river in pennsylvania as perhaps we should have been. and also i wrote a great deal on the role of slaves in the building of the city's first draft so to speak in that decade. and i wrote a great deal about the great compromise of 1790 which resulted in a capital located here in a place safe for slavery, and the agreement by a certain number of southern opponents of hamilton's financial plan, abandonment of

their opposition to it to allow the capital to come here. in the process of doing that research, i met ken, i met charlene and other members of the project and i became aware of how immensely rich the project's material was and how significant the first federal congress was and how wide ranging its achievements were. it is fair to say the first federal congress was certainly one of the quartet of the most effect effective, creative congresses, the others being lincoln's civil war congress, franklin roosevelt's congress and johnson's great society congress. but unlike those other three, the first congress was creating the government as we know it

today. it was as cokie said essentially a piece of paper. a piece of paper. it was a sketch for a system. it didn't make the system. that was done by political men, politicians, nearly all the lawyers and politicians. so when you hear all the time how rotten professional politicians and lawyers are, they were the men who created the government and amateurs couldn't have done it. but at any rate, discovering this wealth of material and vast extent of the project prompted me to plan a larger book on the first congress itself. happily my editors were very interested in that.

the book basically takes congress from the beginning to its conclusion. an narrative fashion. essentially it demonstrates one, how it did, two, how it functioned, who made it function, and makes the case that i just suggested that it was very likely the most productive congress in american history. apart from the official records of the first congress, my goal was to bring members alive to make it a people about people, human beings, more or less like ourselves. frankly, most of them were a lot like ourselves. they were extraordinary in what they achieved, but they were also ordinary human beings who

rose up to the challenge that they faced. and i wanted to show them struggling with this utterly new, untried system, creating it as they went along. and for this, the project's immense collection of personal correspondence which ken so colorfully described was invaluable. the hundreds, i don't even know what the total is. >> 10,000. >> i was going to say thousands, i didn't want to exaggerate. but thousands. thanks. thousands of letters, personal, political, full of anecdotes, uncensored comments on fellow members, observations on life in new york city, travel, the primitiveness of travel in america of 1789 and 1790, carriages being overturned in the rocky hills of connecticut,

and members being shipwrecked on the coast of new jersey. one poor guy was land wrecked and ship wrecked in the same journey. he eventually made it and died awhile later, but the editing of -- in the largest sense of this massive project was absolutely superb, and for me in particular the and notation of thousands of letters and other kinds of documents. anyone who has tried to work, tried to decipher 18th century handwriting will appreciate the untold hours and intellectual heroism that went into transcription of these documents. i mean, the handwriting as many

of you know surely of many people in 18th century, in fact, in pretypewriter year, someday i'll write a book that takes place in the typewriter era. i am looking forward to that someday. i'm currently writing about congress during the civil war and a lot of the prose is brutal also, penmanship i mean. letters giving access to inner lives or at least private thinking of dozens and dozens of members of the first congress, opened to me individuals who otherwise were mostly just names, some cases even prior to that unknown to me. fisher ames of massachusetts, a brilliant man. absolutely brilliant, dynamic. he was kind of the webster of his age in terms of his

expression, his soaring prose. this georgian, james jackson who was so loud that windows of the senate upstairs had to be closed, jackson is talking again, you know. and who may or may not have brandished a pistol on the floor at one point. george thatcher whom ken already talked about and these marvelous letters to his wife. and robert morris of pennsylvania, one of the titans of the era, who wrote also marvelously entertaining letters to his wife in philadelphia. very, very chatty, gushing with love. in that morris was a financier, power broker, tough customer in

the committee room so to speak, the warmth of his letters to his wife are really quite revealing. theodore sedgwick, whom ken also mentioned, and madison, of course, madison, of course. hardly unknown. but there are innumerable pieces of prose by madison that were that enabled me to develop a more fine grained rendering of the man than i might otherwise have. i mean, one of them just pops to mind was a letter, although to be truth in packaging, actually dates from before first congress in which he is corresponding with jefferson, i believe. he is trying to acquire a slave boy at the request of a french friend in order to dispatch him

to an aris tow krat in france who has a black girl so the two of them can breed, and this is madison who writes with not the faintest whiff of unease about this, a man often credited with stronger empty slavery feelings than he actually had. there's immense amount of correspondence by other observers, two french ambassadors, two of the most marvelous commentators on the first congress, otto in july of 1790 is observing the debates, full force of debates i believe at that point over the location of the capital, and he writes the intrigues, the cabals,

underhanded, insidious dealings of a fak issues, turbulent spirit are more frequent in this republic than the monarchy. what he is talking about is republican government in action. at any rate, taken together, the resources of the project were invaluable in a great many ways. just to cite a couple of examples, they were specially revealing of how members fought about what they were doing. and often what they thought of each other. if i can pull this out, what they thought of each other, this is fisher ames on madison. fisher ames was young, harvard educated, reads like a webster of his day.

very idealistic on his arrival. he had beaten samuel adams for his congressional seat by a hair! at any rate, very idealistic, but found that most of his new colleagues fell short of the, i am quoting, the demagogues and roman senators he anticipated, wrote to a classmate, i felt chagrinned at the yawning listlessness of many here, in regard to great objects of the government. their liableness to the impression of arguments, their state prejudices, overrefining spirit in relation to trifles. i was sorry to see the picture i had drawn was so much bigger and fairer than the life. then he gets onto madison in whom he was acutely disappointed. i see in madison with his great knowledge and merit so much error and some of it so very

unaccountable, and tending to so much mischief. goes on to say on the whole he is a useful, respectable, worthy man, but let me add without meaning to detract that he is too much attached to his theories for a politician. he adopts his maxims as he finds them in books, and with too little regard to the actual state of things. i mean, gold mine, gold mine of material like this. i could sit here all day quoting similar comments. also so what else. i mean, again, this is just a couple of the things that i found very revealing and had the quality of discovery for me digging into these collections. anyway, the tremendous fears that everyone felt in 1789 that

the system wouldn't work. this was, after all, plan b, articles of confederation were plan a, and plan a failed. if plan b failed, there was no plan c. so the anxiety was absolutely tremendous, especially at the beginning when nobody showed up. a handful, just a couple of people showed up, and madison is practically having a cow. later he writes, and many members expressed something like this, said we are in a wilderness without a single footstep to guide us. and despite fisher ames' comments, these sort of ordinary people who rose to the occasion, and that's wonderful to watch. another item, critical fisher, over slavery, there were serious southern threats of secession

over the debate. and the language used by certain southern members is virtually identical to what you will hear in 1860. and the commonality of their rhetoric is revelatory. the debate over amendments. and another way of putting it, the nondebate over many of the amendments was remarkably interesting. the debate was less over content for the most part than over the point of the amendments at all, whether there would be any. there was a great deal of opposition to the idea of it. and i was really struck by how little debate there was over parts of the amendments that we call the bill of rights, particularly the first amendment

freedoms and second amendment gun rights which loom so large on today's political landscape, barely a shrug. barely a shrug. i addressed it as best i could here, but many of the amendments just didn't interest many of the members, and as i said, many of them didn't want them at all. i was also really struck and this has vast ramification of how unfamiliar nearly all members were with the most basic elements of financial theory and policy. and this comes up in the debate over hamilton's quite brilliant financial plan. and again and again, you find in letters a member saying something like this. i don't really understand what mr. hamilton is talking about,

but it sounds quite intelligent. and another, impa am paraphrasi but pretty closely, what is this thing called finance that mr. hamilton discusses. and this is america in 1789. what hamilton accomplished as we all know, we have seen the musical is to lay the ground work for this nation's financial structure. and yet it was revelatory, radical, and new at the time. at any rate, i can't reiterate often enough how many gold mines, not just one, isn't just this one book, many books will be written from this material. many, many, many. there are 23 volumes of the project's work extent.

there will be in years to come scores, dozens, hundreds of books that will use this material and its organization is wonderful. it is so user friendly, i can't express it enough, enough thanks to ken, charlene and others for that. thanks. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> i do think what's so interesting is how you do make them come alive. we always think of the founders as these bronze and marble deities. the women didn't see them that way. i do think that the -- i am sort of sorry you have extraordinary in the title. your quotation from charles frances adams, saying it takes away from them to see them as demagogues. it is harder for people to do what they did, for ordinary men and women to do what they did in

the founding of the country is much harder than for a bronze statue to do. so i love the fact that you've made them so lively. kathleen bartolini-tuazon has done something that's the beginning of a great deal, the fact that you could write about almost any debate in this first congress and have a book, whether it's the bank, where to put the city, creating the supreme court, think of the things, a currency. think of all the things they did. of course they didn't want a bill of rights, they had gone through a horrible ratification process, didn't want to go through another one. but james madison made a campaign promise, so you know, there they are going through all of this. and among other things, they don't even know what to call the chief executives.

kath lean wrote a wonderful book. the title controversy of 1789. one of the things is that it gets into the first big fight between the house and the senate. and of course which we see constantly going on forever more. i remember one point when tom foley was speaker of the house and some bushy tailed freshman talked to him about the enemy. he said who are you talking about. he said some republican. foley said they're not the enemy, the senate is the enemy. so you really capture that in that very first congress and the important debate. talk to us about this debate. >> thanks so much. appreciate it. welcome to everyone. i am so pleased to see so many people here, listening so intently. here to celebrate the great valuable work of the first federal congress project. you know, i wandered into the congress project over 16 years

ago in 2001. shortly after i began my doctorate. as a student interested in political history and the first presidency, and at a time when interest in political history was at what we say nicely waned, we can talk about how exciting it is, but it was also a time where i really was seeking people who also were looking at the politics of the early republic in a deep and thoughtful way, not just a haj i don't see graphic way and not just about the people but the issues and events of the time. when i walked into the congress

which was located, you know, an easy walk from campus, but in a nondescript building on the second floor, and i knock on the door, go in for the first time, and here are ken and helen and chuck and charlene working away in this second story office building and i realized right away that they were working on extraordinary stuff, just extraordinary. and it seemed as if really, it may be important, but it was undiscovered as far as i was concerned. it was basically the perfect storm for a graduate student. there was an archive that was underutilized that had to do with the ideas and time period

that i was most interested in, and the people there were friendly, welcoming, and knew what they were talking about. i started hanging around because i was no fool and i was trying very hard as all of you know as a graduate student to try to settle on a topic. and one day over lunch i mentioned that i had just read joseph ellis' "founding brothers." i thought his discussion of the people's attitude towards washington as president had just scratched the surface. i was such a pompous graduate student. i wanted so much more. and ken mentioned that the project was sitting on a vast amount of information, no surprise, but a vast amount of information on the presidential

tit tit title controversy of 1789, had i heard of it, the dispute between the house and senate and later among the public over whether or not to give the president a regal title. and he mentioned that this treasure trove had barely been examined by anyone other than themselves. i went home. i thought about it for about 24 hours. i walked in the next day wary but nervy, said i wanted to do it. this is what i want to do my doctor doct doctorate on. all four of them let me know i would have challenges ahead, there were many unanswered questions about the meaning of the title controversy and motivations of the people involved, but it was the best decision of my professional life. although i certainly didn't have all of the answers and i still don't, none of us do on our

topics, let's face it, but i hoped if i listen closely to voices i encountered in the primary material that i would be able to uncover answers and a story that needed to be told because that's all we really want, right? well, my experience of the congress project was the making of me, and like ken said, no one really taught you in school how to read a manuscript, but people at the congress project taught me. charlene, ken, helen and chuck answered my questions, gave lessons in manuscript reading, and shared my excitement in discoveries big and small. the high standards are testaments to their professionalism and it rubs off. my historian work ethic and understanding of research methods blossomed at my time there, and the insights i gained

on the revolutionary era saved me from making shallow decisions and shallow analyses and dig deeper. i also arrived at the congress project at a very useful time for me in its evolution because 22 volumes don't happen overnight, they take 50 years. but all of the volumes dealing with records and documents of the house and senate were completed and fully indexed, published, and the first three volumes of the infamous and wonderful correspondence volumes, the letters that we have been talking about so much, volumes 15, 16, 17 which cover the period between march and november, 1789 were in progress, and there was a draft index. and that period of time from

spring to 1789 at the time of first congress is the period where about 95% of the title controversy occurs, the legislative phase is in april and may, then the public phase is throughout the summer into the fall. so although it was still in the draft stages i had access to an indexed and somewhat organized collection of all of the personal correspondence of the senators and representatives, although still in draft stages. this means piles all over the office. i still can't believe these wonderful people trusted me and granted me access to these great rough piles of unpublished documents. now, most of what is known about the dispute in the senate over titles came from the detailed diary of that infamous senator william mcclay of pennsylvania

and as ken said, his diary is part of the project's documents in volume nine. and mcclay was against high title for president, and his diary reflected his highly antagonistic view towards pretentious titles. it also documents his very antagonistic view of vice president john adams, who championed grand title. mcclay's disdain is loud and clear and seviews expressed in e diary had dominated our understanding of the presidential title controversy at the time that i was thinking about writing my book and doing my doctorate. but the diary alone presents only one voice and a very limited one. in addition, his diary wasn't even published or available

until about 100 years after the first congress in the late 19th century when it was first published. so other contemporary accounts of the title controversy were extremely valuable, all of the letters to and from people. there was a lot of other material out there, but the profession really only knew about this very enjoyable fight between adams and mcclay. what i discovered at the congress project archives helped give me voice to a broad array of americans who felt deeply about their new president, the presidency, federal power and other issues. all wrapped up in whether to give high title to the president. it seemed just about everyone had an opinion as it turned out, not just mcclay and adams.

in fact, the public phase of the controversy which unfolded over the late spring and summer of 1789 was an inferno of different points of view, from fears that anarchy would reign without a high title to absolute certain conviction that the rule like they had under king george would return if the president had a kingly title. it was the 18th century version of a twitter feed gone viral and it was great stuff, full of everything from got in and innuendo to thoughtful discourses over presidential power and popular sovereignty. although the legislative part of the controversy lasted only three weeks and was over in mid may, 1789, the public furor didn't die down until end of september as congress closed its doors for the first session.

in the end, it became clear that a majority of americans wanted no high title and they approved the final decision in the legislature in the senate that had nixed a grand title, a decision emphatically led by the house, pulling the senate along. during the title controversy john adams was bullied privately and publicly, in the press, letters, private conversations. he was the butt of jokes, called his row tendity, among colleagues and political elite. it always gets a bit of a smile. it was an insult we know about because of mcclay's diary. though it wasn't widely known at the time, it was bandied about between senators and congressmen

among the political elite, but much more broadly. he became known in the summer of 1789 as the dangerous vice. and this was based on a poem by edward church, first published in boston papers and later in new york and throughout the states and huge, huge very publicly damaging, the way it was written, the dangerous vice, vice dot dot dot dot dot, enough dashes to spell out the word president. in this poem written by edward church as i said, it linked the evils of the vice of monarchy with the vice president.

a heartbeat away from the presidency and titles champion. correspondence volumes of the congress project, illusions to the poem abound, and it is obvious it made an immense splash at the time. made such a big splash that later when adams was president, he wrote to abigail and in a letter he refers to thomas jefferson as his dangerous vice. so it was a title that stung for years for adams personally and the more we know about adams, the more we know that he's the type of guy that would take it personally and hold on to it for a long time, but it was so inflammatory there was backlash against the author. and church actually fled boston where it was first published to

georgia just to escape the heat. that backlash became a cautionary tale between south carolina representative thomas t toother tucker and george tucker. he became professor of law at the college of william and mary, his brother a representative in new york at the time. saint george had written a play, a scathing farce of a play entitled up and ride. and he wanted to share it widely. it attacked john adams' pretentious titles, pompous congressmen that sought favor, rode around in fancy carriages, and dangerous vice also attacked abigail adams for riding around in a carriage at one point in the poem. and apparently riding around in

a carriage was really seen as part of an elite activity that the image didn't synch with what they wanted it to be. he sent a letter to his brother about the farce. although thomas wanted to read the play and say this is great, he advised his brother to be politically circumspect. he knew what was happening with dangerous vice. he knew that church had been -- there had been backlash against the poem. as he wrote to his brother, were we to make every man our enemy who is not wholly in sentiment with us?

we should have very little support left. and if only that advice were followed more today. so gems of discovery like these waited for me in archives of the congress project. voices from across the emerging american nation came alive for me and as a result my book for fear, if elected king, here it is. i think it is fairly entertaining and has meaningful examination of an important moment in our founding history. concepts of presidential power and the extent of federal power never goes out of style and depending on who the president is at the time, up until today, those kinds of questions, where we started with congress and with our first president become

more and more relevant. voices from across the emerging american nation came alive and as a result so did my book. and speaking of giving voice to the title controversy, i want to mention that i got this great christmas gift this year, my book just got made into an audio book. and it is available on audible.com. and i am sure, absolutely certain that all that gossip and innuendo that i had so much fun with is one of the reasons as well as political discourse on popular sovereignty in the presidency, one of the reasons that cornell university press thought it would be -- my book would be a candidate for a

narration. my journey as historian, writer, researcher benefitted from my time with the people and resources with the congress project, and i can only hope my work reflects well on their stewardship. i want to take this moment to say thanks very much and thank you all for attending today as well. [ applause ] >> one of the things you point out in the book is part of the problem we were having is this idea called america was convincing european powers that we mattered. i mean, these 13 little colonies huddled against the atlantic ocean, and part of the title controversy was that. you needed something grand to show that america mattered, and the person who really had to struggle with that a lot was martha washington and having to figure out the levies and all

that, she was called lady washington throughout the war, all of the soldiers called her lady washington, but her difficulty in figuring out how to be a republican queen was a very real one, and the country was just trying to figure it out. that's what's so remarkable about these papers is that you just see them figuring it out and coming to a conclusion that was as i say living with today. charlene is really the person who has done this the longest and steadiest, 50 years with the project. she and ken working together for so many years and doing such incredible work. she was editor of 21 of the 22 volumes, and co-authored "the birth of a nation" with ken, first federal congress. charlene, bring us out.

>> okay. i'm going to talk mainly about how we got to this point to the 22 volumes and it has to do with a lot of support from others. we were very committed to the project, sometimes i thought i needed to be committed, but we worked hard to keep the place operational. and first today i want to say thanks to cokie who has a history with this project. cokie's mother, the wonderful congresswoman lindy boggs was a huge supporter of our project. i always loved picking up the phone and having her say hello, darling. this is lindy. she served on the advisory board, she was responsible for getting us a special congressional appropriation for the founding era projects during

the by centennial period. she was a joy to know. was a special part of working for first congress. >> she felt the same way about working with the project. she just loved it. >> yes. anyway, we want to talk a little about the structure of what we did. the senate journal, and house of representatives journal, then we did legislative histories. to do the legislative histories, found ourselves exploring a lot of resources that were beyond the point where we were working to put the story together, particularly the newspaper accounts of the debates. then we sort of -- we should have done the debates first.

i always thought that. thought the official records should go first, but then you discover so much material in sources that were after what we were working on that it was always difficult. we did for legislative histories, we went ahead and read the newspaper debates and used those in the legislative histories. then the debates were i would say compared to some of the other volumes relatively easy to do if you had all of the resources. we did them before some of the tools that are available these days to get a hold of newspaper accounts. so we were working with pictures that were made on a machine, can't even remember the name of it, but we had it, there was a machine that could print off

microfilm so we could then put those in our files. and it took a lot of work to get those prints and get them controlled and into the files. we later were able to go back and put a few more things in that we missed in those volumes into later volumes. but we were always working with probably tools that were a little bit behind where we should be, but we started with wang, wang system five model two in 1981. that was nhprc was trying to get everybody on track with technology. then we went to ois 50 with four

terminals, that was very much improvement over one terminal in the office for all of us to argue over. and as we went along, of course, because we had all of the new search tools, we were able to do some of the things that ken finished up at the end of volume 22, to bring a lot of new documents in to the edition that wouldn't have been there if we hadn't been able to find them with the electronic resources. as the resources evolved and the more of the documents came into the public domain, we were able to have a level of evolution that made it so i think we have a very complete project, and

that's what we were looking for, complete documentary history of the first federal congress. and i think we came very close. and we would not have been able to do this without the support of our funders, george washington university, as i said, provided the space, equipment, and we had many students from george washington that worked with us, some as volunteers, some as paid staff. the national endowment for the humanities, we had funding from them for a large part of the years we were in business. most importantly, national historical publications and records commission which is always endangered it seems in its funding and again is in danger this year. we also had some private money and that was very helpful, and we had some friends in the

private foundations that were helpful to us. they're both document collectors, therefore would tell us about special things they had found when they were doing personal research, other people like that that shared their personal research with us. we just were very lucky to work in an environment where people believe in sharing and helping each other out. and that to me anyhow, i feel very fortunate that i fell into that kind of a job, kind of accidentally, but you start doing something and you all of a sudden 50 years later, you say oh, well, we're finally finished with this. but it really to me anyhow couldn't have been a better experience, even in the case when we were desperately

fighting for the nhprc when it was zeroed out in 1981 through 1988 or so. and then again, some other years. so to me anyhow, what i would say to anybody working with historical documents and really getting immersed in them is a great adventure. i highly recommend it. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> so we have time for a few questions. i need to ask you to come to the microphone at the center because cspan is taping this and they need you to speak into the microphone, so if you have questions. and while thinking of questions, helen, would you stand up so everybody can meet helen veit. [ applause ] >> do we have questions coming?

yes. please come and tell us who you are. >> i am connie schultz, and i'm a disclaimer to begin with in that i was privileged to be nhprc fellow at the first federal congress project in 1980, '81, when we undertook being a political and scholarly organization to save the nhprc and archives. my question is a quick one. will the volumes be digitized, can you tell us how and by whom. i think that at a minimum be part of the founders online, but the second question, my job was to work with some 750 petitioners to first congress, and i'm curious whether either of the two authors discovered some of the petitions and used them in your analysis and from the staff, has anybody else

showed any interest in sort of plumbing those wonderful letters of petition from veterans and widows and other people saying help, help, help,help. they were a wonderful volume, one of the volumes now of the 22. the two parts of the petiti petitioners. >> first digitization, is that happening? >> yes, it is. the johns hopkins university press has given up their electronic rights to the project. the project will now be part of rotunda, which is the university of virginia presses gold standard for editing or publishing these projects electronically and it will be with the founding fathers

papers. the first federal elections are also going to be involved. it is very exciting. eventually, it will come to be. >> that's fabulous. what about the question of the petitions? did either of you deal with the petitions? >> unfortunately, within the concept of the title controversy, petitioners are kind of like a side. we are kind of like a side issue. in some of the things that i read, i did see them with the congress, various people in congress, dealing with some of those petitions. they didn't ever deal with titles specifically. >> i would say similarly i read a number of petitions. that doesn't quite count, i suppose. i think some found their way

into my text. i can't site one off the top have my head. in a mere 350 pages, i had to make many very painful judgments about things i could include and not include. in and of themselves, i think there is a book there. >> sir. >> christopher gray, independent scholar. i would like to ask, miss beckford, if she realizes her splendid essay on the harbor master of savannah controversy that created the privilege of senatorial courtesy, that was circulated during the drocontro.

i found that on the right and the left, they were arrogant and ignorant. your essay i have read to three liberal professors. they didn't bother to reply. i guess it was unanswerable. did you know that? >> tell us about what is the essay. >> i'm not sure which. >> it is the one i gave for the society of historians of the federal government. i am a member in shepherdtown in 2014. do you remember washington nominated someone, georgia senators pugh and mcintosh didn't want any part of it. >> it was the first use of senatorial courtesy when a nominee of washington's was turned down. the person was named benjamin

fishborn. he was probably turned down because a senator from georgia opposed him. that seems to be what happen. therefore, it was seen as the beginning of senatorial privilege on executive business. >> how did george washington react to that? >> george washington was not happy and stormed into the senate to demand to know what it was, why this happened. he was not happy with the response and said this defeats every purpose of my coming here. it was an amazing scene, i'm sure, to actually be there. the only reason we know much about it is because of the diary of william clay, who did this.

it is such a great example of how we are still living with senatorial courtesy. >> when washington was in the senate demanding to know the senator from georgia who had opposed the nomination, got up and said, because you are george washington, i will tell you why. you need to know, no senator of the united states has any responsibility to tell the president of the united states why we opposed his nomination. we know this because when george washington got back to the presidential mansion with his head in his hand, he told his secretary what had happened.

his son 25 years later wrote a letter to a newspaper about what had happened in 1814 that we were able to locate. that's when charlene is talking about going up ahead. we also have letters that were discovered in the civil war by union soldiers and published in their home town papers like "the indianapolis star" in the 1860s. manuscripts don't exist. >> go ahead. >> hi. good afternoon. i'm jonah estes, a student at american university. my question is for kath bowling. you mentioned the first congress was the most productive in american history. i am curious as to what you meant by most productive? >> i think that was actually furges who said that. >> i wanted to know what you

meant by most productive and in what sense? >> constitution is bare bones. it was written by politicians that wanted their work ratified. they couldn't make the hardball decisions or it would have been defeated. they left those for congress. the first session of the first federal congress created the executive branch, the judicial branch. it adopted the first federal incomes, taxes, tariffs. it created a system to collect that money. later sessions organized the united states army, naturalization, copyright, patents. the british fiscal system, not to mention 750 petitions,

several of which were granted. >> the bill of rights. >> yes, the amendments to the constitution. >> and the location of the capitol. >> yes, i have heard of that. >> and funding of the debt from the revolution. >> so, basically, in numbers of institution organized in that sense? >> the breadth of what it had to do. >> the relative speed with which they moved is mind-boggling. it would be a complete misapprehension to suppose that there was a sort of grand consensus here. they duked it out. they fought one another. there was bitterness, tremendous controversy. we have gotten some sense of that already. they fought their way to decisions on these many things.

the quantity of legislation lasting down to the present day we live in and the government that exists today on capitol hill, this is the egg from which it was born. >> you know how fast they did it. i was looking it up recently, because of a listener question. they did an awful lot at the last minute, just like we do today. it was a huge amount of legislation right at the end of the session. >> each time, september, would get suddenly the cabinets formed, in a second. it was kind of interesting that there is suwas such a furor in

public. the senate made their decision in may. the public fights all summer. the public seems to come to this crescendo in july and august and september. then, it kind of peters out at the same time. it is like, everybody needs to rest for a while before the next congress. they were duking it out each time. >> i think one reason there is this climactic spade of legislation, as so often in our history, they have been talking about it for months. it has been aired out. the positions are well-known to everyone. >> if they don't do it, it dice and they have to start all over again at the next congress. that's p i that's it. >> we don't know the conversations they had at the boarding houses and the restaurant. we know that was going on. they were constantly negotiating.

>> we know some conversations because they wrote to their wives. >> or they wrote someone about that. those are the people we like the best are the ones that told us those kind of stories. >> i do want to answer one more thing to this last question, which is, i think, another reason you can make an argument for the vast amount accomplished, is how little has been changed and overturned in the years since. so it was really this huge, broad basis, the foundation that was worked out in those three questions. >> i had a couple of questions. could you give us some examples of the proposed titles and, two, could you talk about the cartoon? >> sure, sure. for one thing, i am really glad that cokie mentioned lady

washington. she not only was called that during the revolutionary era but during the time of the beginning of the first congress when everybody was up in the air and not knowing what to call the president. they didn't know what to call the wife of the president and the wives of the various congressmen. there was a lot of, lady this and lady that in the papers. >> or mrs. senator so-and-so. >> or first consort, those kinds of things. one of my favorite titles besides the more predictable ones in a way, were serene highness and your manjesty. >> we have that in the appendix. why don't you read us that? >> one of my favorite other

titles was washington. they wanted to call the president, the washington and make it this universal term so it would be washington obama and washington trump. it's true that there were a lot of different terms and you have to understand that these hurt the ears of benjamin eids and william mcclay. they hurt the ears of people that were more pedestrian. the revolution makes everybody equal, nothing besides mister and the name of the president will do. in the end, the senate, even though they capitulated with the house, and agreed there would be no title other than the title of

president, which was men quhuti in the constitution, the senate went on record to say that what they thought was that it is their opinion that he should be addressed as president. his highness, the president of the united states of america and protector of their liberties, his highness. >> we are really glad we don't have that today. thank you all so much. >> real quick. >> the cartoon. >> real quick, i will say that you think this was just outlandishness of a few people, specially john adams and his cronies or his best friends. a few other people who were enamored of aristocratic life but there was a cartoon that appeared as washington was entering new york on a grand

barge. this appeared a few weeks before he was due to arrive. they rolled out the red carpet for him, basically. a cartoon appeared where he is going down in front of the federal building on an ass like christ, entering jerusalem. his black valet is on the back of the ass, sort of riding along. david humphries, his secretary, is in front of him shouting hosannahs and riding into the new jerusalem to face his fate. christ went into jerusalem to be

hung on the cross. there is this sense that there were people that realized he was being lauded to such an extend it to be his downfall. >> what was the caption? >> i can't remember. >> the day shall come to pass when david shall lead an ass. >> thank you all so very, very much. [ applause ] >> in was great. next, a discussion on the importance of museums. after that, historians on the first federal congress and how the founders created a new government here in the u.s. this week on the communicators, we take you to the consumers electronic show in las vegas and speak with industry leaders about