>> thursday morning, we're live in columbia, south carolina for the next stop on the c-span bus, 50 capitals tour. south carolina lieutenant governor kevin bryant will be our guest on the bus during washington journal starting at 9:30 a.m. eastern. >> next on american history tv, journalist cokie roberts moderates a discussion on the first federal congress at the american historical association's annual meeting. the panel 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 cokie roberts, and i am here in my history hat as a writer of

history and a student of current history. but it is a thrill to have this panel on the first federal congress because it is such an incredibly important subject. and one that these folks have mined assiduously for many, many years. the history project on the first federal congress is really one of the most remarkable institutions and outputs that i have 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 -- 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. and -- but, you know, we and 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 sold it quite variously, with different people selling different things and contradicting each other. i reread quickly the executive sanctions after reading the book, 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. and now they have a country to

figure out. and that is left to this group of what, 95 men? meeting in new york. well, 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 the early republic since he was a mere boy. and has written a great deal about it. but i think you can -- 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 how this all happened, how you found the documentation. you have to get close to the mic. >> i'm going to sit. >> unless you want to stand. >> no. >> about how a 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 sec k-- 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 begun 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 sesquicentennial and the sesquicentennial and the ratification of the bill of rights was december 15th, 1941. franklin d. roosevelt's address about the bill of rights is almost entirely about adolf hitler and nazi germany. since 1941, those of us who were born, or who 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 sesquicentennial commission recommended when it went out of business was that by the time of the bicentennial of the ratification in 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. 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 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. so 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 all on deposit at the national archives. the national archives doesn't really have custodianship of them. they are a part of the legislative branch, not the executive branch. but 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 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 t to and from membe. well, essentially at the beginning, the search -- the 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 pennsylvania. and they gathered the cream of the crop, so to speak, from the papers, the collections that were known, members' collections primarily rufus king of new york, thomas sedgwick -- theodore sedgwick of massachusetts. but they 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. my graduate education didn't teach me about manuscripts, on the what was in them. you news them to write history. but the physical manuscript itself, and what it might tell you. and also what other sources there were for manuscripts, other than the repositories. pre for example, by then the almost 100-year-old autograph market after the civil war wealthy americans begun to collect manuscripts of the founding generation, putting together collections of signers of this, articles of confederation and --

philadelphia has collections of doctors and lawyers and indian chiefs. if you were a lawyer and an indian chief, you 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 pre-digital. so the only kind of information we had was what 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 the 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 1950s search and we're satisfied with what leonard has done. well, leonard wrote to merril jensen who was editing the radfication project and linynn de-paul, 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 the historical society of pennsylvania and many other places throughout the united states -- spent six months at the library of congressman script division. i will tell a quick story, i hope it's going to be quick, about what i learned about manuscript sales. most of you are probably familiar with benjamin rush, the great revolutionary era gadfly, and the most hyperbolic of his

generation. >> a bad doctor. >> a 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 executor, 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 bidle, the son of nicholas bidle, the editor of the lewis and clark journal, and the president of the second bank of the united states. when they died in 1898 she still

had the collection. she put them all together and numbered them. but there was a problem. it's 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 -- or at least a thousand 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 berne the auction house didn't want to sell them all

because they're interested in having things available on the market. in 1980, something, or maybe it was the early '90s, me a postca size. and it said, big sale at blue ball, pennsylvania, barn auction. and listed all 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, 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 boggs, and the senator from west virginia by the name of bird. senator bird was very, very, very interested in william mcclay. i can remember, when volume nine 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 didn't pay any attention to me at all. and he's going on and on. and i'm going, why am i here? and the historian of the united states senate actually kicked me, calm down. all of a sudden, senator bird spun on his feet, looked me right in the face and recited verbatim, the last paragraph of mcclay's diary. so i said, wait right here and i went and grabbed my colleagues and said, come over, listen to

this. senator bird 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 the first federal congress, and sold in the biddle sale. so we start out by only wanting the letters of the great white men. and then the letters that were written to the great white men. and 1990 -- 1989, actually, time of the bicentennial. project got a new colleague, chuck dejockman antonio, 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. now, of course, we don't have sarah thatcher's letters to

george thatcher, because -- >> threw them away? >> kids threw them away. but he writes to her and he said, let me tell you what a woman ought to do when she's depressed. and i thought, oh, boy. the little feminist hairs on my neck started tingling. and he said, go to the barn, saddle the horse, and ride. and i thought, wow, what great advice for anyone. so it was my favorite story. i always told it, and i told it to a -- i assume, a rather wealthy couple of 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 loved the letters, of course, obviously, more than the official records, but i had colleagues who really knew the official records really well and could even 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 the two that had not ratified. obviously saul bloom was interested in whether or not they still existed in state archives. he did a survey. and found out that everybody had them except for new hampshire, maryland, north carolina, and georgia. since that time, the editor of the document found the new hampshire copy on the top of a

bookcase in 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 could tell that 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 as, of course, the north carolina copy. that's because george washington, who had nothing to do with the bill of rights, other than to send 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, later a 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 1789 that 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 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 say, well, we don't want to pay you 5 million for it because it's obviously north carolina's, and it can be

replefinned and we'll give you 2.5 million. no. 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, look, we have a very patriotic supporter, benefactor from san francisco who's willing to put up the 5 million. his position essentially is that he's doing public service. if north carolina replefins 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. i said, my conclusion about how we find manuscripts, meeting consisted of the historian of the constitution center, the dot-comer, and the attorney for the owner. and the dot-comer said, well, before i put up, give you the check for the 5 million, i would like to see the document. so they passed the art box over and the dot-comer looks over and said to the historian, is this the copy of the bill of rights that ken bowling said is north carolina's? and the historian said, yes. and the dot-comer said, fbi,

we're confiscating this document on behalf of the state of north carolina. charlene can tell you a little bit more if she likes about going to be interviewed by the fbi in north carolina. but i can assure you that when i go to raleigh, to the archives, they roll the red carpet out. thank you very much. >> that's great. [ applause ] >> so, taking all 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 had to stop being depressed because it made him sad. [ laughter ] yeah. anyway, but these documents are fabulous and they are so able to

tell a story, but not everybody's 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 invented the government. and he is, again, a very 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. >> all right. 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, i mean, frankly, it's -- it's maybe the best -- certainly one of the best -- archives collections i've ever worked in. and my gratitude for its existence and to the four members of the project. charlene, ken, helen vit, who is in the audience and chuck dejockman antonio who isn't here at the moment. my gratitude is absolutely unbounded. aside from their decades of heroic work, which ken described 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 -- or privilege, i should say -- of should go all these materials within a few steps of where i was writing. and i can't say that i've ever had such, such research luxury with any other project i've worked on. i first encountered the first federal congress 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, though not exclusively, on the significance of slavery and the politics behind the location of the federal city, the 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 -- the city's 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, they abandoned their opposition to it in order to allow the capital to come down here. but in the process of doing that research, i met ken, i met charlene and the 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. and i think it's fair to say that the first federal congress was certainly one of the quartet of the most effective and creative congresses in american history, if not the most. the others being parenthetically lincoln's civil war congress, franklin roosevelt's new deal congress, and johnson's great society congresses. but unlike those other three, the first congress was creating the government as we know it today. it was, as cokie said, it was essentially a piece of paper. it was a piece of paper. >> exactly. >> it was a sketch for a system. it didn't make the system. that was done by political men, politicians, nearly all of them lawyers and politicians.

so 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. >> right. >> 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, very interested in that. and the book basically takes the congress from its -- from the beginning, to its conclusion in a narrative fashion. and essentially, i think it demonstrates, one, how much it did, two, 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. and frankly, most of them were a lot like ourselves. they were extraordinary in what they achieved, but they were also ordinary human beings who -- 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 immense collection of personal correspondence which ken so colorfully and vividly described, was invaluable.

the hundreds -- i don't even know what the total is -- >> about 10,000. >> 10,000. i was going to say thousands and i didn't want to exaggerate. 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 the 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 both land-wrecked and shipwrecked in the same journey. he eventually made it and then he died a while later. >> his furniture didn't. >> i mean, the editing in the

largest sense of this massive project is absolutely superb. and for me, in particular, the annotation of these thousands of letters and other kinds of documents, but anyone who's tried to work -- who's tried to decipher 18th century handwriting will appreciate the untold hours and sheer intellectual heroism that went into the transcription of these documents. i mean, the handwriting, as many of you know surely, of many people in the 18th century, in the pre-typewriter era, someday i'll write a book that takes place in the typewriter era. i'm looking forward to that someday. i'm currently writing about a congress during the civil war and a lot of the press is brutal

also -- the penmanship, i mean. at any rate, so the letters gave me access to the inner lives, or at least to the private thinking of dozens and 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 ames of massachusetts, a brilliant man, absolutely brilliant, dynamic, the webster of his age, in terms of his expression, his soaring prose. this splendetic george and james jackson who was so loud that the windows of the center upstairs had to be closed if jackson's 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 and in that morris was a financier, 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 sedgwick, whom ken also mentioned. and madison, of course. 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-grain rendering of the man than i might otherwise have. i mean, one of them that just pops to mind was a letter -- although, truth in packaging, it dates him just before the first congress, in which he's corresponding with jefferson, i believe. he's 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 writes with not the faintest whiff of unease about this, a man who often is credited with stronger

anti-slavery feelings than he actually had. there's an immense amount of correspondent by other observers, the two french ambassadors are two of the most marvelous commentators -- insightful commentators on the first congress. 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 capital, but i may be mistaken. and he writes, the intrigues, the cabals, the under-handed and insidious dealings of a factious and turbulent spirit are even much more frequent in this blake than in the most absolute monarchy. what he's talking about is democracy in action. >> right. >> 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 specially revealing to me of how members thought about what they were doing. and often what they thought of each other, if i can pull this out, yeah, what they thought of each other. this is fisher ames on madison. fisher ames is quite young, harvard-educated. as i said, reads like the webster of his day. very idealistic on his arrival. he'd beaten samuel adams for his congressional seat by a hair. at any rate, very idealistic, but he found that most of his new colleagues fell rather short of the, quote, demigods and

roman senators he'd seapanticip. their liableness to the impression of arguments, their prejudices, their refining 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. he wrote, 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. he goes to say, but on the whole, he's a youthful, 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, they're a gold mine. gold mine, material like this. i could sit here all day quoting similar comments. also, so what else? 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 simply wouldn't work, this was, afterall, plan b. the 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. >> right. >> 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. he said, we are in a wilderness without a single foot step to guide us. and -- and, despite fisher ames's comments, these sort of ordinary people rose to the occasion. and that's wonderful to watch. another item, the critical fishers over slavery, even at this early date, there were serious southern threats of secession surrounding the debate over the location of the federal city. and the language that is used by -- by certain southern members is virtually identical to what you will hear in 1860. and the -- the commonality of the rhetoric is revel tory. perhaps it shouldn't be, but it was to me at the time. the debate over amendments or

another way of putting it, the non-debate over many of the amendments, was remarkably interesting. the debate was less over content for the most part, than over the 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 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 in here. but many of the eamts juamendme didn't interest many of the members.

as i said, didn't want them at all. and i was also really struck, and this has vast ramifications, with 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 -- i'm paraphrasing, but pretty closely -- what is this thing called finance that mr. hamilton discusses? and this is america in 1789, and what hamilton accomplished, as we all know, because we've seen the musical, is to lay the

ground work for this nation's financial structure. and yet it was revela tory, radical, and brand-new at the time. so i can't reiterate often enough how much -- how many gold mines, it's not just one. there isn't just this one book -- many books will be written from this material. many, many, many. there are 23 volumes of the project work that will be in years to come, scores, dozens, hundreds of books that will use this material and its organization is absolutely wonderful. so user friendly. i can't express enough thanks to ken, charlene, and the 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 marbles deities, and one of the great joys of writing women's history is the women did not see them that way. and i do think that the -- i'm sort of sorry you have the word extraordinary in the title because your quotation from charles francis adams, basically saying, it takes away from them to see them as demigods. because it's much harder for people to do what they did. you know, 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. kat bartoloni has done something which is a great deal. the fact that you could write

about any debate in this first congress and have a book. whether it's the bank or where to put the city or creating the supreme court, you know, 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 just gone through a horrible ratification process. they didn't want to go through another one. but james madison made a campaign promise because patrick henry tried to defeat him with james monroe. so there they are going through all this, and among other things, they don't even know what to call the chief executive. and kat has written a wonderful book about that debate, for fear of an leelective king. one of the things i like best about it, 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 at one point when tom foley was speaker of the house

and some bushy-tailed freshman came and talked to him about the enemy. and he said, who are you talking about? and he said some republican. and foley said, they're not the enemy, the senate is the enemy. and so you really capture that in that very first congress, in that very important debate. talk to us about this debate. >> thanks so much, cokie. a appreciate it. and welcome to everyone. i'm pleased to see so many here, stlng attentively and hear to celebrate the first 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 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 at, will we say nicely awane, within the

profession? i was really looking for like-minded souls. we can talk about how exciting and how 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 -- in a deep and thoughtful way. not just a geographic way. and not just about the people, but the issues and events of the time. now, when i walked into the congress, which was, by the way, located not -- you know, an easy walk from campus, but in a non-descript 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 -- 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. 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's "founding brothers," and i thought that his discussion of the people's attitude toward washington as president had just got to the surface. it w i was such a pompous graduate student. [ laughter ] 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. but 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 went home, i thought about it

for about 24 hours, i walked in the next day wary, but nervy, and said i wanted to do it. this is what i wanted to do my doctorate on. and all four of them, in their own way, let me know that i would have challenges ahead. there were many unanswered questions about the meaning of the title controversy, and the motivations of the people involved, but it was the best decision of my professional life. although i certainly didn't have all the answers and i still don't, none of us do on our topics, let's face it, but i hoped if i listened closely to the 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? my experience at 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 at 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. the high standards of the congress project are testaments to their professionalism, and it rubs off when you're in their presence. my historian's work ethic and my understanding of research methods blossomed at my time there. and the insights i gained on the revolutionary area saved me from making, oh, shallow decisions and shallow analysises and to dig deeper. a also arrived at the congress project a a very useful time in his evolution. because 22 volumes don't happen overnight. they take 50 years. but all of the volumes dealing

with the records and documents of the house and the senate were completed and fully indexed, published, and the first three volumes of the infamous and wonderful correspondence volumes, the letters that we've been talking about so much, volumes 15, 16, and 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 correspondence of the senators and representatives. although still in draft stages, this means piles, all over the office. i still can't believe that 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 famous 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 a high title for the president. and his diary reflected his highly antagonistic view toward pretentious titles. it also documents his very antagonistic 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 between adams and mcclay, and mcclay's views as expressed in his 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 a hundred 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 is 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 that 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 despotic rule like they felt

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 gossip and innuendo to thoughtful discourses over presidential power and popular sovereignty. although the legislative part of the controversy lasted only three weeks, the public furor didn't really begin to die down until the end of september when -- 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 that was emphatically led by the house pulling the senate along. during the title controversy,

john adams was pilloried, both publicly and privately, not only by mcclay, but also in the press, in letters, and in private conversations. he was the butt of jokes, called his rotundity among his colleagues and political elite. yes, his rotundity, it always gets a bit of a smile. but it was an insult that we know about because of mcclay's diary. so it wasn't widely known at the time. it was bandied about a lot between the senators and the 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 the boston papers and later

in new york and throughout the states. and huge, huge, very publicly damaging. and the way it was written, the dangerous vice, vice, dot dot dot dot dot, enough dashes to spell out the word "president." so in this poem written by edward church, as i said, it linked the evils of the vice of monarchy with the vice president a heart-beat away from the president and a title's champion. the correspondence volumes, allusions to this poem abound. 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. and the more we know about adams, the more we know that he's the type of guy that would take it pretty personally and hold on to it for a long time. but it was so inflammatory, that there was backlash against the author and church actually fled boston where it was first published, to georgia, just to escape the heat. and that backlash became a cautionary tale between south carolina representative thomas tutor tucker and his brother saint george tucker. saint george was a lawyer who became a professor of law at the

college of william and mary. 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' titles, pompous congressmen who rode around in fancy carriages. and a dangerous vice also attacked abigail adams for riding around in a carriage at one point in the poem. and apparently, riding around in carriages was really seen as part of an elite activity that didn't -- the image just didn't sync with where americans wanted their country to be. in any case, saint george sent a

letter to his brother telling him about his farce. and 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 this dangerous vice, he knew that edmund church, had -- 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 if 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 and as a result, my book "for

fear of an elective king" -- here it is. anyway, i think it's fairly entertaining and it has a 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 and where washington -- where we started with our congress and with our first president, become more and more relevant. let's just say. 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's available on audible.com. and i'm sure, absolutely certain that all that gossip and innuendo that i had so much fun with, is one of the reasons, as well as those political discourses on popular sovereignty in the presidency. one of the reasons that cornell university press thought that it would be -- my book 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, and i can only hope that my work reflects well on their stewardship. and i want to take this moment to just 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 that part of the problem we were having, of course, 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 of that. and she was called lady washington throughout the war, all 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, as i say, living with today. and charlene bickford is really the person who's 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 the editor of 21 of the 22 volumes and co-authored "the birth of a nation" with ken of the first federal kpping. -- congress. charlene, ring us out. >> okay, i'm going to take mainly how we got to the point of 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, and i always loved picking up the phone and having her say, hello, darling, this is lindy. she served on our advisory board. she was responsible for getting us a special congressional appropriation during -- for the founding era projects, during the bicentennial period. and she just was a joy to work with and know as it was just a very special part of working for the first congress. >> she felt the same way about working with the project. she just loved it. >> yes. anyway, we want to just talk a little bit about the structure of what we did, that we started

with the journals, the basic thing that's required. first the senate journal and then the senate executive journal and then the house of representatives journal. and then we did legislative histories. and to do the legislative histories, we 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. so then we sort of -- we should have done the debates first, i almost feel like. but it was so hard to decide in a lot of ways, because we really thought, official records should go first. but then we would discover so much material in sources that were after what we were working on, that it was always a little difficult, but we did for the legislative history, we went ahead and read all 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 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 even remember what the name of it was. but we had a -- there was a machine that could print off of microfilm so that we could then 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 probably tools that were a little bit behind where we should be. but we did -- we started out with wang -- wang system five model two, in 1981. nhprc was trying to get everybody on track with technology. and then we went to an ois 50 that had four term nalds, and that was very much an improvement over just having one terminal in the office for all of us to argue over. and as we went along, of course, because we had all these new search tools, we were able to do some of the things that ken finished up at the end of volume

22, is to bring a lot of new documents into the edition that wouldn't have been there if we hadn't been able to find them with the electronic resources. so as the resources evolved and the more of these documents game 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, was a 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 and equipment and we had many

students from george washington that worked with us, some as volunteers, and some as paid staff. the national endowment for 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 publications and records commission, which is always endangered in its funding and again is endangered this year. we also had some private money, and that was very helpful. and we had some friends in those private foundations that were helpful to us in just -- they had -- both document collectors and would tell us about special things they had found when they were doing their personal research. we had other people like that who 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 know, you start doing something and you all of a sudden 50 years later, you say, oh, wow, we're finally finished with this. but it really, to me, anyhow, couldn't 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. so to me, anyhow, what i would say to anybody that working with historical documents, and really getting immersed in them, is a

great adventure. and i highly recommend it. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> so we have time for cspan is taping this and they need you to speak into the microphone, so if you have questions. and while you're thinking of questions, helen, would you just stand up quickly 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 congress project in 1980, '81, when we undertook being a political and scholarly organization to save the nhprc and the national archives. my question is a quick one.

and that is, are the volumes going to 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 those 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 their widows and other people saying help, help, help? and they're now one of the volumes of the 22. but there's two parts of that of the petition, and -- donald and duncan campbell outside. >> 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. >> that's great. >> i think the petition, constitution, first federal elections are also going to be involved, so, it's 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. but they didn't ever deal with titles specifically. >> yeah. i would say, similarly, i read a prediggous number of petitions. that doesn't quite count, i suppose. i think some found their way into my text. i can't cite one off the top of 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 controversy over whether to filibuster judge garland hearing or not. i mean, i found out, i know it may dismay you, i passed around -- i discovered in challenging both left and right wing. my twin brother dated judge garland later wife. i found that on the right and the left, they were arrogant and ignorant. your essay, i wrote 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's the one you gave for the

society of historians of the federal government of the member in shepardstown 2014, do you remember that essay? 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. i mean, that seems to be what happened. 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 make a record of this. >> that's such a great example of how we're still living with it, right? the first instance of senatorial courtesy and it still lives. >> i would add to that 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 that 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 tobias leer what had happened. and tobias leer's son, 25 years later, wrote a letter to a newspaper about that had happened in like 1814 that we were able to locate. and that's when charlene's 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 several times that the first congress was the most productive congress perhaps 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.

>> quite a picture of achievement. ambitious and the relative speed with which they moved is mind-boggling. and it would be a complete misapprehension to suppose there was a grand consensus here. they duked it out. they fought one another. there was bitterness, tremendous controversy. we have gotten some sense of that already. and they fought their way to decisions on these many things. and the quantity of legislation that was enacted and significant, lasting down to the present day to the city that we live in and the government that exists today on capitol hill, this is the egg from which it was born. >> you talk about 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 like a second. it happened all summer, but it was kind of interesting that there was such a furor in the public. and then the legislature made -- the senate made their decision back in may. but the public fights all summer. the public seems to come to this crescendo in july and august and september. is this crescendo.

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 histories, they'd been talking about it for months. >> yeah. >> it's been aired out. the positions are well-known to everyone. >> and if they don't do it, it dies and they have to start all over again at the next congress. 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. >> well, we know some of those 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. and, so, it was really this huge, broad basis, foundation that was worked out in those three consciences. >> i had a couple of questions. could you, one, 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 also didn't know what to call 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. >> 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 majesty. >> we have, in the appendix, you have the actually resolutions. why don't you read us that? >> i will read that. that is great. 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 of a more pedestrian, you know, the revolution that makes everybody equal. nothing besides mister and the name of the president will do. but in the end, what -- you know, the senate, even though they capitulated 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 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. >> so, we're 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. 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. >> yeah, on a grand barge, with -- you know, this appeared just a few weeks before he was due to arrive, actually. 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. and his black valet is on the back of the ass, you know, he's sort of riding along, you know. david humphries, his secretary, is in front of him shouting hose

sanaa hosannas, and he's riding basically into the new jerusalem to face his fate. christ went into jerusalem to be hung on the cross. so, there's this sense that there were people that realized he was being lauded to such an extent that it could be his downfall. >> what was the caption? >> 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 ]

>> thank you. c-span, where history enfolds daily n 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's television companies and brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> 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. >> by popular demand, it's returning. it's co-production with us and the national constitution center. and as i listen to the callers

this morning, they're talking about race. they're talking about the powers of congress, the constitution. and immigration and so what we've got in season two are 12 land mark supreme court case that's really take you through the history of the country and deal with all these cases that really, really have something to do with today. along with the national constitution center, we had a very, very long set of cases. what we want to do is really take cases ahead of human interest story to them. in the end, these cases affect human beings across the country. the cases came down to did they have an impact in the time? did they change the court? did they change the country in their time? and how relevant they today? all of them are relevant today. first case, this is the power of congress to write laws that can overrule the states. in 1886, anthony kennedy was an the supreme court and that's all about immigration. we'll have two very good guests on set here in washington and

we've got a video journalist producer who will go around the country to the places that help tell the story for each one of those cases. for wo we'll go to san francisco. it's about chinese laundromats in san francisco. for the civil rights cases, that was a case that was overturned in 1875, law. frederick douglas makes an amazing speech. we want your phone calls, tweets, interact with the audience to really talk about how these shows are relevant today. be sure to watch season two of "landmark cases" beginning february 26 at 9:00 p.m. eastern live on c-span, c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. to help you better understand each case, we have a companion guide, "landmark cases volume

2." it's $8.95 plus shipping and handling. go to c-span.org,/landmark cases. next on "american history the importance of these institutions and their methods for educating and offering information to the public. this is an hour and a half. welcome to all of you who have >> we can begin the session. welcome to all of you who have weathered the snow and ice to be here this afternoon. welcome to this panel, history and public policy center, sponsored by the national history center. i'm nick mueller, president and ceo emeritus of the national world war ii museum in new orleans and before that enjoyed a 32-career at university of new