tv", journalist cokie roberts moderates a discussion on the first federal congress at the american historical association's meeting. they talk about 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 cokie roberts. i am here in my history hat as a writer of history and a student of current history, but i'm thrilled to have this panel on the first federal congress because it is such an incredibly important subject and one that these folks have mined 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 doesn't happen that often. the founding fathers' papers will be published when we're all dead. so the 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 to, as bill clinton says, the constitution should be called "let's make a deal."

but we in the press weren't there which made it a lot easier. and then they've got this piece of paper and basically they sell it, and they sold it quite variously with different people selling different things and contradicting each other. i reread quickly the executive sections of the federalist papers and the differences between the way madison and hamilton saw that is quite stark. so here they are. now they've written this thing. they've sold it to the public or at least to the ratifiers. 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.

they then did remarkable things in the course of that first congress that we are all living with today. 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's been an expert on the history of the revolutionary war and the early republic since he was a mere boy and has written a great deal about it. you can read more of his bio -- i think you're more interested in hearing from him than hearing about him. so ken's going to talk to us a little bit about how this all happened, how you found the documentation. you have to get close to the mic. >> oh, okay. >> about how they found all these documents and made it all happen.

>> so i'm going to tell you a 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 commission on the constitution 1937 to 1939. that was the original idea, but during the 1930s, a group of american jewish leaders in response to the rise of nazi germany began a process of iconizing the bill of rights, 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 archives

rotunda in the minds of the american people, but these gentlemen, spearheaded by representative saul bloom of new york city who was the chairman of the committee, made the bill of rights an essential part of the centennial. the centennial of the ratification of the bill of rights was december 15, 1941. franklin d. roosevelt's address about the bill of rights is almost entirely about hitler and analys nazi germany. for those of us who have matured since 1941, we've known this great document, but those who came a generation ahead of us wouldn't. one of the things that the commission recommended when it went out of business was that by the time of the bicentennial of the ratification and the first

congress which would be 1987 to 1991, by the time of the bicentennial, 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. 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 nat 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's very easy to gather the official records. the senate and house records are all on deposit at the national archives. the national archives doesn't really have custodianship of them. they are part of the legislative branch, not the executive branch. everybody agrees they're in much better condition at the archives than when they were in the capitol building in closets in small rooms in the addttic and basement. the judiciary act of 1989 had 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. essentially at the beginning the sear searcher went out to the places

where everybody knew first federal and ratification documents would be, massachusetts historical, the new york historical, the new york public, the library of congress, and the historical society of 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 for manuscripts other than the 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 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 face and recited verbatim the last paragraph of mcclay's diary. he said wait right here and i grabbed my colleagues. senator bird chatted up the young lady again and repeated the whole thing. we managed over the course of 25 years to locate approximately 105 of those 120 letters that

were written from the first federal congress and sold in the bidle sale. so we start out by only wanting the letters of great white men and then the letters that were written to the great white men and then in 1990 and 1989 time of the bicentennial 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?

a short story. somewhat salacious perhaps in the end about one of the congressman. congressman george thatcher from maine. he came to congress confederation congress in 1788 and served continuously leaving his wife and family at home on their farm in maine during the winter. they had help but nonetheless sarah thatcher became as she said melancholic. he writes to her and says let me tell you what a woman ought to do when she is depressed. i thought, oh boy.

feminist hairs on my neck started tingling. he said go to the barn, saddle the horse and ride. it was my favorite story. i told it to i assume a rather wealthy couple who were big donors of 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, of course, obviously more than the official records. i had colleagues who really knew the official records really well and could recognize which clerk

drafted, 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 stiets ates including th that did not ratify. saul bloom did a survey and found that everybody had them except for a new states. since that time the editor of the documentary found the new hampshire copy on top of a book case on the archives. south carolina didn't have its copy but it did find it. the north carolina copy came up for sale in the early part of this century.

constitution center in philadelphia was offered it and they asked me to verify that it was authentic. one that you can tell that it was authentic and that you could not tell what state it had been stolen from. it took us one minute to recognize it as, of course, the north carolina copy. that's because george washington who had nothing to do with the bill of rights other than descend it out 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 wrote on the back, docketed the document both amendments and the letter and said this is a letter

from president george washington transmitting amendments to october 1789. absolutely matched. so the constitution center, i should say the lawyers for the constitution center and the lawyers for the owners of the north carolina copy of the bill of rights and the lawyers for the people who were going to put up the $5 million to buy it meeting in new york city. the lawyers for the constitution center said we don't want to pay you 5 million for it because it is obviously north carolina's and it can be replevined. we'll give you $2.5 million. apparently after the meeting somebody said something to the effect, well, 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 we have a very patriotic supporter benefactor from san francisco who is willing to put up the 5 million. his position essentially is that he is doing public service. if north carolina replevins it, it will still be in public hands. so the owner sent the document down to philadelphia for a meeting to finalize everything. the owners' employee bicycled the north carolina copy of the bill of rights in a big art box across the benjamin franklin bridge into central philadelphia for this meeting.

my conclusion about how we find manuscripts, meeting consisted of the historian of the constitution center and the attorney for the owner. and the.comer said before i give you the check for the 5 million i would like to see the document. so they passed the art box over and he looks at it and says is to historian is this the copy of the bill of rights that ken bowling said is north carolina's and the historian said yes and he said fbi, we are confiscating this document on behalf of the state of north carolina. >> wow. >> charlene can tell you more if she likes about going down to being interviewed by the fbi in north carolina.

i can assure you when i go to the archives they roll the red carpet out. thank you very much. >> that's great. >> so taking all of these documents, the letter about the depressed wife, john marshall when he was in france wrote to his wife who had ten children at home and said she had to stop being depressed because it made him sad. these documents are fabulous and they are so able to tell a story but not everybody is going to sit and read 22. so we are lucky that he 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 invented the government. and he is again a very distinguished historian and author. again, let's hear from him rather than about him and about the book. >> 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 of incomparable detail and sophistication that ken has colorfully described. frankly, it's maybe the best, certainly one of the best archive collections i have ever

worked in. and my gratitude for its existence and to the four members of the project, charlene who you will hear from shortly, ken, he'll invite chuck who isn't here at the moment. my gratitude is unbounded. aside from their decades of heroic work which ken described in some detail, they were all 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 or privilege of have lg lg -- having all of these materials within a few steps of where i was writing. i can't say i ever had such

research luxury with any other project i worked on. i first encountered the project about ten years ago. i wrote another book, washington, the making of the american capital which is about the creation of the federal city through the decade of the 1790s. it's a political narrative that focuses primarily on the significance of slavery in the politics behind the location of the federal city capital here in dc. why aren't we in the 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 cities first draft, so to speak, in that decade. and thus 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 to the abandonment in order to allow the capital to come here. but in the process of doing that research i met ken and charlene and the other members of the project and i became aware of how immensely rich the project's material was and how significant first federal congress was. and how wide ranging its achievements were. i think it's fair to say that the first federal congress was certainly one of the kwaur tell of the most effective and creative congresss in american history if not the most.

the others being lincoln civil war congress, franklin roosevelt's new deal congress and johnson's great society congre congress. the first congress was creating the government as we know it today. it was essentially a piece of paper. it was 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 lawyers and politicians. when you hear as we all do 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 the vast

extent of the project prompted me to plan a larger book on the first congress itself. happily, my editors are very interested in that. and the book basically takes the congress from the beginning to its conclusion in narrative fashion. and essentially i think it demonstrates how much it did, how it functioned, who made it function and i hope convincingly makes the case that i just suggested that it was very likely the most productive congress in american history. now, apart from the official records of the first congress my goal was to bring members alive

to make this a book 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 and untried system creating it as they went along. and for this the project's immense collection of personal correspondence which ken so colorly described was invaluable. hundreds, i don't know what the total is -- >> 10,000. >> i was going to say thousands and i didn't want to exaggerate. 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 is 1790, carriages being overturned in the rocky hills of connecticut and members being ship wrecked on the coast of new jersey. one poor guy was both land wrecked and ship wrecked in the same journey. he eventually made it and then he died. the editing in the largest sense of this massive project is absolutely superb. and for me in particular the trans literation and annotation of the thousands of letters and

other kinds of documents, anyone who has tried to work and decipher 18th century handwriting will appreciate the untold hours and intellectual heroism that went into the transcription of these documents. the handwriting as many of you know surely of many people in the 18th century and in fact in the pretype writer era, someday i will take a book that takes place in the type writer era. i'm looking forward to that someday. i'm currently writing about congress during the civil war. a lot of the prose is brutal. at any rate, so the letters give me access to lynner lives or at least private thinking of dozens of members of the first congress. and opened to me individuals who otherwise were mostly just names

or in some cases even prior to that unknown to me fisher aims of massachusetts. a brilliant man, absolutely brilliant dynamic, kind of the webster of his age in terms of his expression. the georgian james jackson who was so wowed that the windows of the senate upstairs had to be closed as jackson is talking again and who may or may not have brandished a pistol on the floor at one point. george thatcher whom ken already talked about and his 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. and in that morris was a power broker, a very tough customer in the committee room, so to speak. the warmth of his letters to his wife are really quite revealing. theodore sedgewick who ken also mentioned. and madison, of course. hardly unknown. but there were innumerable pieces of prose by madison that were -- that enabled me to develop maybe a more fine frain rendering of the of the man. one of them that just comes to mind was a letter -- although to

be absolutely -- it dates before the 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 aristocrat in france who has a black girl so the two of them can breed. this is madison who is not the faintest with unease about this. a man who often is credited with stronger slavery feelings than he actually had. immense amount of correspondence by other observers, french

abdom ambassador. otto in july of 1790 is observing the debates, the full force of debates i believe at that particular point over the location of the capitol. i may be mistaken. he writes the intrigue, the under handed and insidious dealings of a turbulent spirit are much more frequent in this republic than in the most absolute monarchy. what he is talking about is democracy in action, 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 many examples, they were especially revealing to how members thought 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 aims on madison. he was quite young, harvard educated. reads like the webster of his day. very ideaalistic on his arrival. he had beaten samuel adams for congressional seat by a hair. at any rate he found most of his new colleagues fell rather short of the demi gods and roman senators he had anticipated. he wrote to a classmate i felt chagrinned in regard to the great objects of the government, the reliableness to impression of arguments, state prejudices and overrefining spirit in relation to trifles.

i was sorry to see that the picture drawn was so much bigger and fairer than the life. then he gets on to madison at whom he was acutely disappointed. i see in madison with his great knowledge and merit so much error and some of it so unaccountable. goes on to say respectable worthy man but let me add without meaning to detract that he is too much attached to 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. they're a gold mine of material like this. i can sit here all day quoting similar comments. so what else?

just a couple of things i found very revealing. and have quality of discovery for me digging into these collections. the tremendous fear is that everyone felt that the system simply wouldn't work. this was after all plan b. the articles of confederation were plan a. the anxiety is 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. and later he writes and many members express something like this. said we are in a wilderness without a single foot step to guide us. and despite the comments these

sort of ordinary people rose to the occasion. that's wonderful to watch. another item. the fissures over slavery there were serious threats of sesation surrounding the debate over the location and the language that is used by certain southern members is virtually identical to what you will hear in 1860. and the commonality of the rhetoric is revelatory. the debate over amendments or the nondebate over many amendments was interesting. the debate was less over content for the most part than over point of 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 those parts of the amendments that we call the bill of rights particularly the first amendment freedoms and the second amendment gun rights which loom so large on today's political landscape, barely a shrug. i addressed it as best i could in here. many of the amendments just didn't interest many of the members. and as i said many didn't want them at all. and i was also really struck and this has vast ramifications of how unfamiliar nearly all members were on basic elements of financial theory and policy. this comes up in the debate over

hamilton's quite brilliant financial plan. and again and again we 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 -- i'm paraphrasing but pretty closely, what is this thing called finance that mr. hamilton discusses? this is america in 1789 what hamilton accomplished is to lay the groundwork for this nation's financial structure. yet it was revelatory, radical and brand new at the time. at any rate -- so i can't reiterate often enough how much,

how many gold mines, not just one, isn't just this one book that many books will be written. many, many, many. there are 23 volumes of the project. there will be scores of books that will use the material and the organization is absolutely wonderful. it's so user friendly i can't express enough thanks to ken, charlene and the others for that. thank you. [ applause ] >> i do think what is so interesting is how you make them come alive. we always think of the founders of the bronze and marble day dayties. the wem did not see them that way. i do think -- i'm so sorry you

have the word extraordinary in the title because your quoteitation from charles francis adams it takes away from them to see them as demigods. 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 for a bronze statue to do. i love the fact that you made them so lively. done something that is the beginning of a great deal which is the fact is you can write about almost any debate in this first congress and have a book because whether it's the bank or where to put the city or creating the supreme court. think of a currency. think of all the things they did and they didn't want a bill of rights. they had just gone through a horrible ratification process. james madison made a campaign

promise because patrick kennedy tried to defeat him with james monroe. there they are going through all of this. and among other things they don't know what to call the chief executive. and she has written a wonderful book about that debate "for fear of an elective king george washington and presidential title controversy of 1789.1789" it gets into the first big fight between the house and the senate of course which we see constantly going on forever more. i remember one point when tom foley was speaker of er of the and someone talked to him about the enemy and he said who are you talking about and he said some republican and then he said they are not the enemy, the senate is the enemy. you capture that.

talk to us about the debate. >> thanks so much. appreciate it. welcome to everyone. i am so pleased to see so many people here listening so taentively and here to celebrate the great valuable work of the first congress project. i wandered in over 16 years ago in 2001 shortly after i began my doctorate at george washington university. as a student who was interested in political history and the first presidency and at a time when interest in political history was what we say nicely awayne within the profession, i was really looking for like -- we can talk about how exciting it is and wonderful 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 and not just about the people but the issues and events of the time. now, when i walked into the congress which was located -- an easy walk from campus, but in a nondistribute bui nondescript building on the second floor. i go in 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. it seemed as if really it may be important but it was

undiscovered. it was basically the perfect storm for a graduate student. there was an archive that was under utilized that had to do with the ideas and the time period that i was most interested in. 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 founding brothers and i thought his discussion of the people's attitude towards washington as president had just scratched the

surface. 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 title controversy of 1789. had i heard of it? it was the dispute between the house and the 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 walked in the next day nervy and said i wanted to do it. this is what i wanted to do my doctorate on. all four of them in their own way let me know i would have

challenges ahead. there were unanswered questions about the meaning of the controversy and the motivations of the people involved but it was the best decision of my professional life. although i certainly didn't have the answers and i still don't, none of us do on our topics, but i hoped if i listen closely to the voices i encountered on primary material that i would be able to uncover answers in a story that needed it. my experience at the congress project was making of me. like ken said no one really taught you in school how to read a manuscript but the 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.

high standards of the congress project are testaments to their professionalism and it rubs off in their presence. my historian's work ethic and understanding of research methods blossomed with my time there and insights gained on the revolutionary era saved me from making shallow decisions and shallow analysis and dig deeper. i also arrived at the congress project in a very use full time for me in its evolution because 22 volumes don't happen overnight. they take 50 years. but all of the volumes dealing with the records -- completed and fully indexed, published and the first three volumes of the infamous and wonderful correspondence volumes and 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 the spring to the fall of 1789 of the time of the first congress is also the period where about 95% of the title controversy occurs. the legislative phase is in april and may and 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 the personal correspondents 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 his diary is part of the project's documents in volume nine. and mcclay was against the title for the president and his diary reflected his highly antagonistic view towards pre n pretentuous titles and documents his view of vice president john adams who championed a grand title. mcclay's disdain is loud and clear and salacious in his diary. this contentious relationship and mcclay's views as expressed in the 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 have 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 those 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 new presidency, federal power and other issues all wrapped up in whether or not to give a 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 rain without high title to absolute certain conviction that the rule 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. it was great stuff. full of everything from gossip 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 the end of september as congress closed its doors for the first session. in the end it became clear that a majority of americans want to know high title and approve the final decision in the legislature in the senate that had nixed a grand title, a decision that was emphatically led by the house pulling the senate along. during the title controversy john adams was -- not only by mcclay but in the press, in letters and private conversations. he was the butt of jokes, called his rotundity.

it always gets a bit of a smile but it was an insult that we know about because of mcclay's diary and so it wasn't widely known at the time. it was a lot between the senators and the congressmen among political elite. 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 the boston papers and later in new york and throughout the states. huge, huge, very publically damaging. and the way it was written, the dangerous vice enough dashes to

spell out the word president. so in this poem it linked the evils of the vice of manarchy with the vice president, a heart beat away from the presidency and titles champion. correspondence volumes of the congress project illusions abound and it is obvious it made an immense splash at the time. it 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.

the more we know about adams the more we know he is the type of guy who would take it personally and hold on to it for a long time. it was so inflammatory that there was back lash against the author and church fled boston to georgia just to escape the heat. and that back lash became a cautionary tale between south carolina representative thomas tucker and his brother. saint george was a lawyer who became professor of law at the college of william and mary. his brother was a representative in new york at the time. saint george had written a play, a scathing farce of a play entitled "up and ride." he wanted to share it widely. it attacked john adams'

pretentuous titles, pompous congressmen who sought favor and also attacked abigail adams for riding around in a carriage at one point in the poem. apparently riding around in a carriage was really seen as part of an elite activity that didn't -- the image just didn't sink with the way americans wanted their country to be. in any case, he sent letter to his brother telling him about his farce. although thomas wanted to read the play and said this is great, he advised his brother to be politically circumspect. he knew what was happening with the dangerous vice. he knew there had been back lash

against the poem. as he wrote to his brother, were we to make every man our enemy who is not holy in sentiment with us? we should have very little support left. if only that advice were followed more today. so gems of discovery like these waited for me in the archives of the congress project. voices from across the emerging american nation came alive for me. as a result my book "for fear of an elected king", here it is right here -- i think it's fairly entertaining and has a meaningful examination of an important moment in our founding history. concepts of presidential power

in the extent of federal power never goes out of style. depending on who the president is at the time up until today, those kinds of questions and where we started with our 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. 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. it's available on audible.com. and i am sure absolutely certain that that gossip that i had so much fun with is one of the

reasons as well as the political discourses on popular sovereignty and the presidency, one of the reasons that cornell university press thought that it would be a candidate for a narration. my journey as a historian, writer and researcher benefitted from my time with the people and resources with the congress project. i can only hope that my work reflects well on their stewardship. i want to take this moment to say thanks very much. 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. these 13 colonies huddle against

the atlantic ocean. part of the title controversy was that. needed something grand to show that america mattered. the person who had to struggle with that a lot was martha washington and having to figure out. she was called lady washington throughout the war. all the soldiers called her lady washington. 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 is what was so remarkable is that you see them figuring it out and coming to conclusion th. charlene is really the person who has done this the longest and steadiest, 50 years with the project.

working together for so many years and doing such incredible work. she was the editor of 21 of the 22 volumes and co-authored the birth of a nation with ken. charlene, wring 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 kokie who has a history with the project. her mother, the wonderful congress woman was a huge supporter of our project.

i always loved picking up the phone and having her say hello, darling. she served on our advisory board. she was responsible for getting us a getting us a special congressional appropriation nfor the founding era projects during the bicentennial period, and she just was a joy to work with and know. it was a very special part of working with the first congress. >> she felt the same way about working with the project. she just loved it. >> anyway, we wanted to talk a little bit about the structure of what we did. we started with the journals, the basic thing that is required. first the senate journal and then the senate executive journal and the house of representatives journal, and then we did ledge are slaytive histories ark aed on the do the legislative histories we found

ourselves exploring a lot of resources that were beyond the point of with where we were working to put the story together, particularly the newspaper accounts of the debates. so then, we sort of, we should have done the debates first, i almost feel like. it was so hard to decide in a lot of ways, because we felt that the official records should go first, but them we discovered so much material in sources that were after what we were working on that it was always a little difficult. and we did for the legislative histories to read the newspaper debates and used those in the legislative histories. and then 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 cool tools that are available these days to get a hold of

these newspaper accounts, and so we were working with pictures that were made on a machine that i can't remember what the name of it was, but we had, there was a machine that could print off of microfilm. so we then could put those in our files. and it took a lot of work to get those prints and to get them controlled and into our files. we later were able to go back and put a few more things in that we missed from those volumes into later volumes, but we were always working with tools that were a little bit

behind where we should be, but we did, we started out with wang or wang system 5, model 2 in 1991, and that was trying to get everybody on track with technology with the prc, and the went went to the four terminals which was a improvement for all of us was so much better than one to argue over. and so, of course, as we had more search tools we were able to do some tof the things that ken finished up at the end of volume 2 to bring a lot of new documents into the edition that wouldn't have been there if we had not been able to find them with the electronic resources. so, the resources evolved, and

the more of these documents came into the public domain, we were able to have a level of evolution that made it so that we have a very complete project, and that is what we were looking for was a complete documentary history of the first federal congress. i think that 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 proof the space and equipment, and we had many students from george washington university who work worked with us as volunteers and some as paid staff. the national endowment for the humanities. we had funding from them for a large part of the years that we

were in business. and, but, most importantly, the national historical of publications and h his or the commission which is always endangered it seems in the funding and again endangered this year. we also had some privatet mone that was helpful and friends in private foundations that were helpful to us, and also, to both document checks or the and they would tell us all about the special things that they had found or when they were doing the personal research. we had other people like that who shared their personal res 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, and kind of

accidentally, but you know, you start doing something, and all of the sudden 50 years later, you say, oh, well, we are finally finished with this [ laughter ] but to me, anyhow, it could not have been a better experience even in the days 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, and to me, anyhow, what i would say with working with historical documents and really getting immersed in them is at great ed a ven chur. i highly recommend it. >> okay. thank you. so we have time for a few questions. i need to ask you to come to the

microphones at the center, because c-span is taping this, and they need you the speak into the microphone. so if you have question, and while you are thinking of the questions, helenings would you stand up quickly, so that everybody can meet helen who is also such a great help. [ applause ] so do we have questions coming? yes, please come and tell us who you are. >> i am connie schultz and i'm a disclaim er er to begin with int i was privileged to be the nhprc fe fellow at the first congress project in 1980/1981 when we undertook being a political and scholarly organization to save the n p hrpc and the r archives. my question is a quick one. are the volumes going to be digitized and can you the tell us how and by whom? i think that they ought to at a minimum be the part of the founders online, but the second

question, my job was to work with some 750 pe tischerer ins to the 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 shown interest in plumbing the wonderful letters of petition from veterans and their widows and other people to say, help, help, help? they were a wonderful and now one of the volumes of the 22, but those two parts of that petitioners, and we can talk about donald and duncan campbell outside of the room. >> and first is digitization, and that happening? >> yes. it is. the good news is that the john hopkins university press has given up the electronic rites s

to -- rights to the project, and that is now going to be a part of the rotunda, the university of virginia's gold standard for publishing these electronically and with the founding father's papers. >> that is great. >> and the ratification of the constitution, and the first federal elections will be involved. so it is very exciting that eventually it will come to be. >> that is fabulous, and what about the question of the petitions? did either of you deal with the pe the tigss? >> unfortunately, within the n concept of the title controversy petitioners are kind of a side issue. in some of the things they read, you know, i did see them with the congress, various people in congress dealing with some of

the pe ttitiopetitions, but the ever deal with the titles specifically. >> i would say similarly, i read a prodi jous nu -- prodigious n petition, and that does not count alongside writing them, but some found their way into my text and i can't cite one off of the top of my head, but in a mere 350 pages, i had to the make many painful judgments about things that i could include and not include, but in and of themselves, i think that are there is a book there. >> sir? >> christopher gray, independent scholar and i would like to ask ms. bickford if she realizes the splendid essay, the lecture on the harbor master of savannah that created the kcontroversy o the senate privilege, and that

is the kcontroversy over whethe to filibuster judge garland's hearing or not, and i know it may dismay you, but i pass it around and i discussed from challenging the right wing and the left wing law professors that my twin brother dated ed whalen's future wife. and so i did try to write them, and it was unanswerable. did you know that. >> tell us about what is the essay? >> i am not sure what we are -- which thing we are referring to? >> it is the one for the society of the historians for the federal government on the membership of shepherdstown in 1714, and when washington nominated somebody, the georgia senators few and mcintosh didn't

want any part of. >> yes, the first use of the senatorial courtesy when a nominee of washington's was turned down. the person was named benjamin fishborn, and he was probably turned down because a senator from georgia opposed him. that seems to be what happened, and therefore, seen as a beginning of senatorial privilege on the executive business. >> and how did washington react to that? >> here you go. >> 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 that this defeats every purpose of my coming here. it was, you know, an amazing

scene, i am sure to actually be there and the only reason that we know much about it is because of the diary of william clay, who did make a record of this. >> but that is such a good example of how we are still living with it, right? this is the first instance of senatorial courtesy and there it still is. so so. >> i would add to that, that when washington was in the senate demanding to know the senator from georgia who had to oppose the nomination got up and said, because you are george washington, i will tell you why, but you need to know that no senator of the united states has any responsibility to the 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 tobias leer what had happened and tobias leer's son, 25 years later wrote a letter to a newspaper about what had happened in like 1814 that we were able to locate, and ha's when charlene is talking about going up ahead, we also have let hers that were discovered in the civil war by union soldiers, and then published in their hometown p papers like the "independence star" in the 1860s, and manuscripts don't exist. >> that is great. go ahead. hi, go ahead. i'm jonah, a ph.d. student, and

my question is for kathleen boling. you stated that first congress was perhaps the most productive congress, and i am curious what is the most productive. >> i believe that is fergus. >> i a apologize, and so what you meant by most productive and what sense you meant by that. >> constitution is bare bone, and written by politicians who wanted their work ratified. they could not make the hard ball decisions or it would have been defeated. they h left it for congress, and the first session of the first federal congress created the judicial bench and adopt ed the first federal incomes, and tax, and tariffs, and created a system that collected that money. later sessions organized in the

united states a army and naturalization and copyright, patents, the fiscal system that fergus talked about and the basis for the capitalism, and the british fiscal system, and not to mention 750 petitions, and several of which were granted. the amendments to the constitution. and the location of the capital of course. >> and funding the debt from the revolution. >> and so, yes, basically in sheer numbers of institutions organized in that sense? >> the breadth of what it had to do and what it did. >> it was a prodigious achievement, and the relative speed with which they moved is mind boggling. and, and it would be complete

misapprehension to suppose that there because grand consensus here. they duked it out, and they fought bitterness and tremendous controversy and you have a sense of that already, and they fought their way to the decisions on the many things. and the quantity of the legislation lasting down to the present day to this city that we live in, and the government that exists today on capitol hill, this is the egg from which it is born. >> and you know, you talk about how fast they did it, but i was looking it up recently, because of a listener question. they did an awful lot at the last minute, and just like we do today. it was a huge amount of legislation right at the end of the session. >> each time, and like september would get suddenly, the cabinets formed. and in like a second.

it seemed, and this is the payment on the titles all summer, but it is interesting that there is a furor of the public, and then the legislature made the decision back in may, and the public fights all summer, but it is interesting that even the public seem ts toe coming to this crescendo in june or july or august and september of this crescendo, and peters out, and it is like everybody has to rest before the next congress because they were duking it out each time. one reason that this climatic spate of legislation as so often in the history and they have been talkb ate for month, and it has been aired out, and the positions are well moan to everyone. and sooner ort later.

>> and if they don't do it, it dies, and they have to start all over in the next congress. and that is the real conversations that we don't have the boardinghouses or the restaurants, but we know that is probably going on, and that they were constantly negotiating. >> we know that some of the conversations because they wrote to their wives about it. >> yes, or they wrote someone about it, and those are the people that we like the best, the ones who told us those kinds of stories. >> and i want to answer one more thing to the last question, which is i think another reason why you can make the argument for the vast amount accomplished is how much has -- changed and overturned in the years since and so it was a broad foundation that was worked out in those three congresses. >> okay. >> and a couple of questions for

carter. could you one, give us some of the examples of the proposed titles, and two, could you talk about the cartoon? >> sure. sure. for one thing that i am glad that cokie mentioned lady washington. she not only was called that during the revolutionary erare ra, but during the time of the first congress and especially at the beginning of the first congress when everybody was up in the air, and not knowing what to call the president, they also didn't know what to call the president, the wife of the president, and the wives of the various congressmen, and so there was a lot of lady this and lady that in the papers. >> and mrs. senator so and so. >> on concert and those types of things. one of my favorite titles besides the more predictable ones in the way which were

serene highness and your majesty -- >> in the appendix, you have the actual list. why don't you read that. >> that would be great. and one of my favorite titles was washington. they wanted to call the president the washington and make it a universal type of term so it would be washington obama and washington trump. so it is true that there were a lot of different terms, and you have to understand that there were hurting the ears of william mcclay, and a lot of what hurt the ears of the people that were of a more pedestrian, and the revolution makes everybody equal, and nothing but besides

mister, and the name of the president will do. but, in the end, what the senate recapitulated with the house, and agreed that there would be no title other than the title of president which was mentioned in the constitution, the senate went on record to say that what they thought was their opinion that he should be addressed as preside president. his highness the president of the united states of america and protector of their liberties. his highness. >> so we are really glad that we don't have that today. [ laughter ] thank you all so much. real quick? >> yes, the cartoon. >> oh, and i will real quick, i will say that, you know, you think that washington, and this is just the outlandishness of a few people, and john adams and

the cronies or his best friends and 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. >> yes, on grand barge and ap p appeared jaus few weeks before he was to arrive and they rolled out the red carpet for him basically, but a cartoon appeared where he had -- he's going down, you know, in front of the federal building on an ass like christ entering jerusalem. his black valet is on the back

and secretary humpheries is in front of him shouting hoe ssann and he is entering the new jerusalem new york city to face his fate. christ went into jerusalem to be hung on the cross. so there's a sense that there were people who realized that he was being lauded to such an extent that it could be his downfall in the end. >> and what was the caption? >> oh, i can't remember. >> the day shall come to pass when david shall lead an ass. >> yes. >> thank you all so very, very much. [ applause ] >> this is great. >> quite well. and next the discussion on

the importance of the museums and after that, the historians on the first federal are congress and how the founders created a new government here in the u.s. >> this week on the communicator s we will take you to the consumer electronic show in las vegas and speak to industry leaders about the latest developments in artificial intelligence, robotic, and 360 degree cameras and the enhan enhancements for self-driving cars. watch the communicators tonight on c-span 2. at 8:00 p.m. eastern. next on american history tv, representati representatives from a variety of museums and history and public policy centers on the importance of the institutions and the methods for educating and offering information no the public. this is an hour and a half. all right. we can begin the session. thank you to all of you who have weathered the snow and the ice