congress hall was home to congress in 1790 to 1800 when philadelphia served as the temporary capital of the united states. you are watching american history tv. every weekend on c-span3, explore our nation's past. c-span3, created by the american television company as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. each week american history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. up next we travel to philadelphia's independence national historic park to learn about congress hall, the meeting place of the u.s. house and senate between 1790 and 1800. our guide is park ranger matthew eiffel. >> we are standing in the old house of representatives in a building we call congress hall, though it was originally built for a county courthouse in

philadelphia. originally that's what it was. but in the years the city of washington, d.c. is being built, philadelphia serves as our temporary u.s. capitol. this room serves for the house of representatives. the second floor of the building that we'll see in a moment was the united states senate. the house of representatives, each representative at that point in our history represented 30,000 people. we had a population at our first census of about 3 3/4 million. we had six members of the house would sit in this room and eventually from 16 states. the story of the u.s. capitol is the story of where we're taking a new constitution and actually operating it, doing things like adding new states to the original 13. also the bill of rights would become a part of our constitution while philadelphia was the capitol. in fact, secretary of state thomas jefferson would formally announce the amendments to the

constitution by basically coming to congress here in this building and officially announcing that we've changed our constitution, which the bill of rights is a huge part of our history and will be in the future as we continue a talking point on political life. but it's also the amendment process itself were proving that that part of the constitution works, that we can update and make changes to that constitution without having to start completely over again from the beginning. but, really, for this building, it's -- to a large degree it's sort of creating the american political system, the two-party system that we know today is going to begin here, and it's going to begin with issues, much as you would expect, early issues that we would face as the united states would be in debt. we had debt and arguments and spending in this building. it's not very different except for the details as to what we do today in washington, d.c. we argued about that from the

revolutionary war. our early government, alexander hamilton, treasury secretary, wanted all the debt from the states to come to the federal government and then to use that debt paying it off to build credit for the young united states, and not everybody agreed with his plans. so you start seeing division. then foreign policy questions would arise. britain and france go to war in the 1790s. and a lot of americans would feel like we owed france. they helped us in our war, we still don't like the british very much, but for george washington, the first president, the notion of neutrality is preferable. we don't really have any money. we didn't really have a navy at all and our army was not much to speak of, so we certainly weren't in a position to go and fight a war, certainly not in europe and probably not even fighting our neighbors in british canada in those days. so he's going to present, with

his cabinet approval, that they thought we would do more to help france. washington sent john jay, who was in the supreme court, sent him to develop a new treaty with the british, trying to keep us out of war and solving those questions of the border and rights and stuff that we were discussing with the british. it becomes very controversial and is one of the points of creating these two parties as sort of leading to what we know today. the treaty basically starts becoming publicly attacked in the press, the press of what would become the democratic

recommend can party, the party of men like thomas jefferson and james madison would start vilifying this treaty. what's interesting is no one actually read it, it hasn't been published yet, but it's going to be pilloried in the press where people actually hate this treaty they don't know anything about. on the federal side, the side of alexander hamilton's, is in favor of the treaty. they're in favor of building the young economy in the united states, staying out of war, trading with all sides of europe, not being limited by alliance to france or something like this, so we're really seeing this treaty back kind of a symbolic head point between these two sides. and the senate approves the treaty. now, according to the constitution, senate approves trea treaties and they're done. what happens is the house of

representatives says, we want a chance to discuss this treaty as well. and so they demand of washington to see all the papers and so on. well, he says no. if senate approves it, you guys don't have anything to do with it. what the house is essentially going to do is say, maybe what we'll try to do is take away the funding. we won't pay for this treaty. anything we have to pay for we'll just not spend the money, therefore, the treaty will effe effectually die at this point in time. so the fight in this room is whether or not to pay for this treaty. there are days of debates, and on the last day, there is a big crowd on our public balcony. you have men like vice president john adams, supreme court justices sitting in the balcony, and the big -- this is, of course, an area where we love our speeches. long, political speeches, deeply

infused with rhetoric, and the best speaker of the time is a man named fisher ames. he is a federalist. he is desperately wanting this treaty to survive, but he's been ill and hasn't said anything. so on this last day, everyone is waiting to see if he'll make a last statement about it. and he does. he stands up and says, if my strength holds out, i'd like to say a few words on the subject. he proceeds to speak for about an hour. i think it's about 55 pages in the congressional record, his speech. he collapses at the end into his seat but he talks about the last war we fought with the british and if people remembered all the devastation and do we really want to do this again, fight another war for years, and, you know, some of the men have tears in their eyes. and when he finally finishes, supreme court justice james eridell turns to vice president john adams and says, my god, isn't that man great? and adams says, yes, he is.

so the treaty will end up passing by just a couple of votes. at one point there is a committee of the whole vote. the head of the committee as a whole was a man named fred muhlenberg who was the first speaker of the house, and he breaks the tie. he is ostensibly on the democratic republican, the jefferson side, and he accepts the treaty but says maybe going to war is not a good idea, so he passes the bill for tundi ifund this treaty and he is vilified that he voted for this treaty against his side to the point where he loses his seat in the next election to congress, but even worse in the short term, he is stabbed on the sidewalks of philadelphia by his brother-in-law because of his vote. he survives, but i'm sure family gatherings become a little awkward after a while. it tells us how high our political tensions can be in our early days. yet -- yet -- at the same time we're also proving that new constitution despite these sort of difficulties works.

because probably the best day in this room's history in a lot of ways is the day john adams is inaugurated at the front by the speaker of the house's platform. he will stand on that platform with thomas jefferson also at the front of the room, outgoing president george washington. this is a big deal. changing presidents for us today is a fairly normal thing, we have big parades and parties and it's a big thing, but this was a really important day, because this is where we are proving that the system where we, the voters, elect our leaders and we change them when we vote, we're proving that that system works. because the john adams election is a lot of firsts. it's the first time we're going to not have george washington as our president. george washington is the only man to be unanimously elected president which he was twice. he did not particularly run for office. at the end of his first term, he didn't even want a second term. he was kind of talked into it,

essentially men on both sides talk him into another four years. he doesn't really run, he's unanimously re-elected. at the end of that second term, people try to talk him into a third but he's not having it. he just wants to retire at this point of time, it's someone else's turn, so he will step aside for john adams. now, we don't know if this works. we've never done this before. we've never actually changed our presidents. so will the people accept this? we don't know. the other thing to remember is john adams was contested in his election. he actually had to fight a battle against his opponent who was thomas jefferson. now, these two had been friends. obviously they wrote the declaration of independence together, but now opposite sides of the fence, they don't even want to talk to each other. so the election is very ugly, it's very nasty, it's very close, it's sort of for us today a normal presidential election. john adams wins by three electoral votes, so only slightly more than half. we've never had a president who got only half the votes.

we've never had a president who ha to real had to really fight for an election, and another problem in those early days is if you come in second, you are vice president, which means one president is one party, the vice president is the other party. just pick any modern election you like, put the two opponents together for four years as the executive, and you can see how neither of them would be particularly happy. so john adams and thomas jefferson are not particularly happy to be standing up in the room together. this is a full house, the balcony, the seats, you've got most of the government here. a lot of curiosity. but you can also figure that about half the men in this room are not very happy to see john adams standing up there. the other half in the room are not happy to see thomas jefferson standing up there, and generally speaking, no one is happy that george washington is leaving us in this time. so john adams would kind of look around the room and see a lot of people who weren't very happy. he would see people with almost tears in hetheir eyes that

washington was leaving them, and he would say later that he only saw one person who was particularly happy, which was george washington, saying, john adams, you are fairly in and i am fairly out. but washington would quietly go to private life, and i think very happily withdraw from the scene. adams himself would be inaugurated. he would have a difficult presidency because now, really, we're seeing the throes of political fighting going on. but it happened peacefully. we proved that constitution worked and we proved that we could continue in times of difficulty like this, that we could continue forward with a system in place. in 1800, they would leave this building and move to the current capitol in washington, d.c. adams and jefferson would have another difficult election at that time, this time jefferson winning and he would be the first president inaugurated in

the new capitol in washington, d.c. but these are setting the tone for the rest of early history and all the way up to today. so the room itself will start out as a courthouse, so this would be a courtroom. when they're finishing construction is about the time philadelphia offers it to the federal government. i think philadelphia hoped if they were nice they wouldn't go to that new city by the potomac, so they give them the courthouse building and end up expanding it a little bit for congress. we think the setup looks like this. we actually have a seating chart from one session of congress that shows the design of the desks and all. we don't have any of the desks that have survived. we're fortunate we do have some of the chairs today. unfortunately, we only have about 30 of them between the two

houses of congress, and most of them we don't know necessarily which house they were in. so today all of our original chairs are in the senate. now, for this room as far as original items goes, the chair on the platform for the speaker of the house is an original. we actually have three chairs exactly like that. we don't necessarily know which was which, but we have one today that we assume was for the speaker of the house, one for the vice president as president of the senate, and the third for the chief justice of the supreme court. now, we don't, again, know which one is which, but what we can fairly say is someone of importance sat in that chair as speaker of the house. whether it was the speaker of the house, we're not sure. as far as this room went, when the federal government moved out, it went to being a courtroom again. this was two rooms for a number of years. they built a hall down the middle so they could have two rooms instead of one very large

one. about the time of the first world war, the city government has left this block and moved to the current city hall in philadelphia and they have some restoration work done. they kind of want to turn them all into museum space. if you visited this building in the years around the first world war, the 1920s, you would have seen the room restored back to the big single room that it would have been, but it would have just been a room filled with old stuff, kind of the old-fashioned sort of museum. after world war ii when the national parks service comes in to take over historic buildings here, again, the goal is to try to get them back to how they looked in those important days. that's where we try to study, how did they have the seating set up? again, we have one chart we've been able to find one of the members drew showing who is sitting where, at least for one snapshot of a session of congress. we have enough sketches and all that show the platform for the

speaker of the house, we have enough original furniture that we can sort of match up things that were -- we think were here. unfortunately, a lot of items that were here, if the city needed them, like chairs, they kept using them. desks not so much, so they didn't save. things the government might have owned, for example, the library of congress started in this building. they started buying books for congress here in philadelphia. it wasn't the library of congress as we know it today, but it does begin here. a lot of things that went to washington, d.c. are burned when washington is burned in the war of 1812. we lose a lot of those early things. that's one of the challenges with a building like this is you don't necessarily have all the things but you try to make do the best you can to give people that sense when they come in to see them of what it looked like when men like james madison or young andrew jackson were sitting in this room as the house of representatives.

we're in the senate chamber in the house of representatives. our roots as a nation go back to the british, of course. the british have a parliament with two houses, an upper house, the house of lords, a lower house, the house of commons, and there is definitely parallels with our congress today. the house of representatives is very similarly set up to the house of commons. and then the senate would be based on the house of lords. obviously we're not going to have dukes and earls and noble titles like that, but we have the senate. the states take the place of the house of lords in our senate chamber. the british using that green

color and kohl -- colonists use it. you'll see that red here in philadelphia and it definitely has that kind of look to it that seems a bit on the higher end. what's interesting about the senate is they have more power. the senate is tied to the house of representatives that chamber does not have. the senate has to approve all treaties, the house does not, the senate does. also any time the president makes an appointment to his cabinet, ambassador, supreme court, of course, those folks would have to come in front of the senate and be approved by the senate or rejected. and so here in philadelphia, we have our very first treaty approved by the senate which is

the jay treaty, and that led to a fight in the house over whether to pay for it. in that same issue, we have the first rejection of a presidential nominee by the senate. john rutledge, who is actually a signer of the u.s. constitution, actually one of the players in creating that constitution, is one of washington's first choices for the original six justices on the supreme court. he actually accepts, but then resigns the post without ever really having served on the supreme court. he will later being the chief justice of the south carolina supreme court. when john jay, who was the first united states supreme court justice, resigns, he's elected governor of new york. he leaves the post of chief justice. that leaves it empty. washington will eventually tap john rutledge of south carolina. rutledge will come back to philadelphia this time and actually serve as chief justice. however, he is appointed during a research of congress. so technically the senate hasn't

confirmed him, but he serves in senate of the court as chief justice. when the senate comes back later that year to return to session, they then take up the question of approving john rutledge. now, george washington has never had anyone rejected that he's appointed, so this has never happened in our young history. well, john rutledge has a couple things going against him. number one, there are guys in the senate that think the guy is a little crazy. he's definitely had some kind of strange things to say at different times in the years of the 1790s, so he's got a bit of a kind of reputation among some people. but also where he's going to get into trouble is he made some very pointed comments about that jay treaty that was negotiated by his predecessor. he was very critical in some speeches, and they tended to be a bit sort of rambly speeches. he was very critical in things he said

-- even though he would actually run the court for a little while, the first rejection of a presidential nominee. again, here in philadelphia, you're seeing the constitution in a lot of different directions being explored and used for the first time. and, of course, you go through our history and you see other occurrences where this happens. now, one other power of the supreme court, or of the senate, rather, that's not going to get exercised here in philadelphia is the power of impeaching. if the president is impeached, the house would vote to have an impeachment, the senate would be basically the jury in what is essentially a trial to decide whether or not the president should be removed from office. so, yeah, again you look at the powers of the senate and you see

these things that they can do that tie them to the president in a lot of ways, and so, therefore, give them that little bit of extra advantage over the house of representatives. plus they're a smaller body of men with only two representatives per state. you represent an entire state, which means if you represent a large state, you represent an awful lot of people. finally, the other thing about the senate that makes it a bit unique is you get that longer term

so the federalist side, looking at the strict rules would say. the senate voted him out. he was later elected to the house of representatives by pennsylvania. but he is rejected from the senate. so naturally people of pennsylvania want to know why the senator has been kicked out. you start getting this growing public feeling when the senate meets and add to that the press wants to know what is going on. they've got guys sitting in the

balcony watching the house. they want guys watching the senate because that's news. finally, i am sure of it. the house of representatives is sit go downstairs meeting in public going, why are they upstairs getting to meet in private when we have to sit in front of all these people? so finally after about five years of meeting behind closed doors, the senate relenlts and build as small balcony and they start to meet in public in philadelphia. that's one of the longstanding traditions. when you go back to our earliest days, this is where you're seeing that they don't have everything set in stone. they have a constitution that's only 4 pages long. they have to figure out what their job is all about based on a few paragraph that's say duties and powers that they have. george washington essentially invents the job of president here in philadelphia, just going on some paragraphs in the constitution figuring out, what does that mean that i do every day? so for example, when he wants to

negotiate a treaty with various indian tribes, what he'll do, the first time he'll do something like this. he'll come into the senate and sit down and say, well, i'm supposed to do treat business your advice and consent so i want your advice and consent. i want to discuss. the senate goes, wait a minute. we're not really interested talking about that with you in the room. why don't you give us some stuff and we'll get back to you later. that's about when the president comes and goes from the senate. since then, more strict separation than we're used to. now, for washington, he's not a guy who likes tons of public accolade. he doesn't like to give a lot of speeches. he will do an address to congress every year. they don't call it state of the

union yet. he will come as his second term. he keeps it low key. he doesn't do the bigger event that we saw downstairs in the house of representatives with john adams which was a. bigger deal. he comes and takes his oath of office and more or less goes back to work. he didn't really want the big public ceremony to take place. that is something that would change with adams' inauguration and then when you move to washington, you start having them at the new capitol building. that would be a change. so we're growing into what the united states is today. as you look around this room, a lot of guys that sat here in the senate were the architects of our constitution. because senators being chosen by their states, a lot of guys that had a big impact on writing that constitution would be then sent by their states to philadelphia. one of the ones not is james madison. he runs into the problem in virginia that patrick henry is one of the great powers in virginia.

he's not a big fan of madison and his big role in the constitution. so essentially, madison is sort of, even though he's one of, we call him the father of the constitution. the obvious problem of getting a seat in the senate doesn't happen for james madison. he has to suffer through being elected and running through office and becoming a member of the house. as for election of senators, that's very recent phenomenon in our history. that would be the 17th amendment. so 1913 when we would start electing our senators. so only over a century ago. so all the men prior to that just have to court their state legislature. you think of the lincoln douglas debates over senate. they're not debating for people to vote for them. they're debating for people to vote for people for the state government to vote for them. so it's a complicated system. which is why when you get into the 20th century populism, people say we want to vote for our own senators. we vote for everyone else in

government. why not the senate? so that's something that changes. we have to grow into how some of these things work. the remarkable thing when you go back to these years in philadelphia, other than that, most everything does operate pretty well the same way. we're pretty much using the system designed in independence hall that they kind of take into this building and continue into washington. as you look at this room, unlike downstairs in the house of representatives, the second floor is a lot more original as far as the things in the building go. we have the setting for 32 senators. we start with 26. representing 13 states. and as each new state, vermont, tennessee, kentucky, two new senators so up to the 32. then they leave for washington

and the room would turn into a courtroom. eventually it was the united states district courtroom in the 19th century. they don't necessarily need the stuff that's here. so desks kind of go away. we don't know what happened to them. chairs you always need. so the mid 18100s when people start actually thinking about american history, we need to collect things for independence hall. well, we have a couple does chairs. and maybe thinks they were the chards chairs for the continental congress. they were displayed in independence hall for a long time. so when we are restoring congress hall, the old u.s. capitol, to look as it would have, we had 29 original chairs. the majority were in the house

based on proportion. a couple were marked senate. a couple had different colored upholstery. they had a different one in the house so some of these were in the house. well, let's put them all in the senate chamber. so we'll fill the senate with 29 of the 32 chairs being original. either for the house or senate. original nevertheless. the eagle on the ceiling, we're not 100% sure of the date on that. the one thing i can tell you is there are 15 stars above it so it is somewhere after the foenlt state. and it is the union. we don't know when it was painted. it is an artistic rendering of the seal of the united states. it was created by the continental congress in 1782. something they'd worked all throughout on with different committees. they worked on it until they finally worked out a final

version of the seal. we have a carpet on the floor which is a reproduction of the original carpet. the original more than like i went to washington. whatever happened to it, we don't know what happened to the original senate carpet but it was made specifically for the room here and there was enough written description of exactly what it was that enabled us to sort of re-create the carpet and it would have featured the seal of the united states. but it would have been encircled by the original state circles. set up with a chain which is a monday motif of the time. change the states together to create these united states of ours. so they had their roots in philadelphia. the one original desk is the secretary's desk. then vice president would sit in the back of the room and that's another interesting thing.

he will be succeeded by thomas jefferson. they would be here a good bit of the time. today the vice president can literally sit in the senate any day they want. they made it clear, they didn't want him talking. it left him very disappointed. he is the first but not the last vice president to complain about the limitations of of that job. he is allowed to vote only to break ties. that carries through years. when there is a tie, the vice president is the tie breaker. so any big day, the vice president will be there. other than that, john adams would find he was stuck here in philadelphia running a bunch of meetings would guys who wouldn't let him talk and very dissatisfying. for thomas jefferson, when he's vice president hirgs opponent is the president so he doesn't even agree with a lot of the policies that he has to be the executive

over. so it was a very difficult situation. which is what leads to the situation where we'll elect president and vice president more carefully. so the guy getting the most being president and the second most being vice president, we would create where there is a candidate for president and vice president making it much more clear and that is 12th amendment. the real impetus to that is not the adams elections in 1796 but the jefferson election in each hundred. which is when they're packing up and moving. there is to one election day in those days. they will start meeting in the new capitol december of 1800. we're electing adams versus jefferson again. the two guys learned their lesson. we'll run two guys. so he ties his own vice presidential candidate aaron burr who had been a senator from

new york. and of course, burr and jefferson then being tied means by the constitution, the election goes tonight house of representatives. so the first big thing we do in our new comment, the house of representatives has to tlekt new president and they have to vote more than 30 times before the tie can be broken. so now you're saying, okay, we've learned our lesson with these past two elections. let's fix it so the 12th amendment comes along to straighten out the way of electing a president. you look back to the early days. they're managing to find out what doesn't work, which isn't much, and find out most of the constitution does. so we're able to today look at a room that's much smaller than the senate. the senators who sat here pretty much do the same things as the senators in washington today.

tonight we begin with women's history. the national world war i museum and memorial hosted mona siegel to talk about her book, peace on our terms. we will's rights after the first world war. the professor argues a group of women from around the world pushed for more rights in the wake of world war i and some of these women were who have were danieling the mean the 19 to 1920 peace conference helped push president woodrow wilson to support the 19th amendment. watch beginning at 8:00 eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. >> during the constitutional convention in philadelphia, the issue of slavery was frequently

debated throughout the summer of 1787. next a discussion hosted by the colonial williamsburg foundation, a law professor and two actors who portray free and end vlade blacks at williamsburg discussed the role compromises slavery played in drafting the constitution. and the enduring legacy. those compromises. this program also includes two dramatic interpretations of 1780s african-americans. >> good evening. welcome to so important an interest. slavery and the united states constitution. i'm deirdre jones and i want to welcome you to our final event for our constitution weekend. you may know me as a programming lead for the actor interpreters for free and end slaved black people. this evening i have the pleasure