programs of a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span 3. tonight, you begin with women's history, the national world war one museum and memorial memorial hosted mona to talk about her book piece on our terms, the global battle for women's rights after the first world war. the sacramento state history professor argues that a diverse group of women from around the world pushed for more rights in the wake of world war i. and that some of these women who are attending the 1919 to 1920 paris peace conference helped push president woodrow wilson to support the 19th amendment. watch beginning at eight eastern, and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span 3. each week american history tv american artifacts visits museums and historic places, and up next, we travel to philadelphia's independence national historical park, to learn about congress hall, the meeting place of the u.s. house and senate between 1790 and

1800. our guide as park ranger matthew. >> we are standing in the old house of representatives a building we call congress hall, although originally was billed as a county courthouse for philadelphia for most of its history, that's exactly what it was. but in the years that the city of washington d.c. is being built, philadelphia serves as our temporary u.s. capital. this room serves for the house of representatives, the second floor of the building we will see in a moment was united states senate, the house of representatives each representative at that point in our history represented 30,000 people. we had a population in our first census of about three and three quarters of 1 million. we had 106 members of the house, that would sit in this room. and eventually from 16 states, and the story of philadelphia as the u.s. capital is a story that 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 part of our constitution while philadelphia was the capital. in fact, the secretary of state's thomas jefferson would formally announce the and manage to the constitution in -- by basically coming to congress here in this building, and officially announcing that we've changed our constitution. which of course the bill of rights is a huge part of our history, and will be in the future, continuing to talk point in our political life. but also, it's the amendment process itself, we are 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, to a large degree it's sort of creating the american political system the two parties system that we know today it's going to begin with issues much as you would expect early issues that we face as the united

states would be debt and spending arguments and debates in this building. it's not any different except for the details as to what we do today in washington d.c. are early graham -- 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 bill credit for the yang united states. and not everybody agreed with his plans, so you start seeing division, and that foreign policy questions would arise, britain and france go to war in the 17 nineties. 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 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 much not much to speak of, so we certainly were not in a

position to go and fight a war, certainly not in europe, and probably not fighting our neighbors and british canada. so he's going to present with his cabinet approval, a neutrality proclamation which starts again dividing us into this question of what's -- in the same notion of keeping us out of the war, george washington will send john j who was at that time the first chief of justice at the supreme court, send him to britain to negotiate a new treaty with the british. again, with the idea of keeping us out of this european war, and settling some of those questions of border and ocean rights and such we were arguing with the british. john j had been on the team that negotiated the peace treaty that ended the revolutionary war. so they seem like a good candidate for washington to send. the treaty that he brought back becomes very controversial and really one of the tipping

points and creating these two parties as sort of leading to what we know today. the treaty is basically starts becoming publicly attacked in the press, the price of what would become the democratic republican party. the party of thomas jefferson, and james madison, would start vilifying this treaty. now it's interesting. nobody has actually read it. and yet, it's going to be pilloried in the press to the point where a lot of people hate this treaty they do not know anything about. the federal side, -- they are in favor of the treaty in favor of building the young economy of the united states, staying out of a war, trading with all sides in europe, not being limited to a alliance with france or something. we see this treaty become a symbolic head point between these two sides. and the senate approves the treaty.

now according to the constitution, the senate approves treaties and they are done. the problem is, the house of representatives basically says we want a chance to discuss this treaty as well. and so, they demand of washington to see all of the papers and so on. he says, no, the senate approves it, you have to deal with it. what the house is going to do, is say maybe what we will do is take away the funding. we won't pay for this treaty. we will just not spend the money, therefore, the treaty will effectually die at this point in time. so that's not necessarily the strategy that you see in washington d.c. today. so the big fight and house of representatives in this room is whether not to pay for this treaty. on the last, day a big crowd in our public founding, you have

men like vice president john adams. supreme court justices sitting about. and this is of course a era where we love our speech. long, political speeches, deep, infused with. rhetoric and the best speaker at the time was a man named fisher, aims he's a federalist, he definitely wants this treatment to survive. he's been ill. he hasn't said anything. and of course this last day everyone was waiting to see if you make a lasting with about. it and he. does he stored of start-up by saying if my strength will hold, it i will proceed to speak. he presses speak for over an hour. i think it's about 55 pages in the congressional record. he collapses in his seat. he talks about the last war that we fought with the british, and do we remember the rev devastation, we want to fight another war for years? apparently some of the men had tears in their eyes, and when

he finally finishes, the supreme court justice james turns to adams and says, my god, isn't that man great, and adam says, yes, he is. 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 of the hold was the first speaker of the house. and he breaks the tie. he is ostensibly on the democratic republican jeffersonian side, so he should be against the, treaty but he is convinced that maybe not going towards a good idea. so he ends up voting to pass the bill for the funding of this treaty. and he is vilified. 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's stabbed on the sidewalk by his brother in law.

i'm sure the family gatherings became a little awkward for a while. it tells us how high our political tensions are in the early days. yes. yes. at the same time are also proving that that new constitution despite being difficult works, is probably the best -- is and a lot of ways the day that he is inaugurated on the platform. stand on the platform with thomas jefferson. also at the front of the room, outgoing president, george washington. this is a big deal. changing president today is a fairly normal thing. we have parties. 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 are proving that that system works. because that john adams election is a lot of. first the first time we're not going to have church washington

as our president. george washington is the only man to be unanimously elected president which he was twice. you didn't particularly run for office, at the end of his first term he did want to second term. he was talked into it. he had guys on both sides to come into another four years. he doesn't really run. he's unanimously reelected. at the end of the second term people try to talk him into a third but he's not having. it he wants to retire at this point of time. it someone else is 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 president so will the people accept this? we don't know. the other thing to remember is that john adams contested his election. he actually had to fight a battle against his opponent who is thomas jefferson. now these two have been friends obviously, there was 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 in normal presidential election. john adams went by three electoral votes. so only slightly more -- than. we've never had a president who only got slightly more than have the votes. we've never had a president who we had to fight for a election. and of course the other problem in those early days is the second you are vice president, the new president is one party, vice president is the other party. take any modern election. like put the pundits together as the executive and you can see how neither of them will be particularly happy. so john adams and -- arts happy to be standing in the room together. this is a full house that day. balcony, seats, you've got most of the government here. a lot of curiosity. but you can also figure but half of the men in this room are not very happy to see john adams standing up there. they're half of the men in the room are not happy to see thomas jefferson standing up there.

and generally speaking, nobody is very happy that george washington is leaving us at this time. so john adams would kind of look around the room and see a lot of people who weren't very happy. even to people the most tears in their eyes as washington was leaving them. and he kind of would later say, we only saw one person that. day particular looked happy which was of course george washington, who had a look on his face and he said i'm fairly, and and year out. but washington would quietly go to private life, and i think very happily withdraw from the scene. adams himself would be inaugurated. he'd have a difficult presidency because now releasing the throws of political fighting going on. but it happened peacefully. we prove that the constitution worked. we proved we could continue in times of difficulty like this. we could continue forward with the system in place.

in 1800 they would leave this building and go into washington d.c.. adams in jefferson would have in the third difficult election at this time. this time jefferson when ink and he would be the first president integrated in the new capital of washington d.c.. but these years in philadelphia are setting the tone for the rest of -- today. [inaudible] so the room itself will start out as a courthouse. so this would have been a courtroom. but around the time this room is finished construction it's actually being built during the constitutional convention. so when they are finished construction is around the time that philadelphia offers the u.s. government. i think philadelphia secretly was really nice to, them stay, here not tell them. so they give them their new courthouse building, and they end up expanding it a little bit to make room for congress. we think the setup looks like

this. we actually haven't seen a chart from one session of congress that shows the design of the desks. we don't have any of the desks that have survived. we're fortunate that we have some of the chairs today. unfortunately, we only have about 30 of them between 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 extended from 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 cheers exactly like that. we don't necessarily know which is which. we have one today that we assume was for the speaker of the house. one for the vice president, senate, and the third for the chief justices in the supreme court. now we again don't know which is which. but we can fairly say is that somebody important sat in that chair for speaker of the house, but as far as this room went in

the early 1800s when the federal government moved out and went to become a courthouse again in effect this was divided into two rooms. a long one. all the way down the middle so they could have to court rooms instead of one very large one. about the time of the first world war, the city government has left this bullet and move to our current city hall in philadelphia. and the city is recognizing the historic value of the buildings has some restoration work done. they kind of want to turn them into some space. if you visited this museum in the years from the first world war. the 1920s. you would've seen the building, whether the room was turned into the big single room that it would have been. but it would have been a room full of old stuff. kind of a old-fashioned museum. the national parks service comes in to take over the historic buildings here. again, the goal is to try to get them back to the way they looked in the olden days.

so that's how we try to study, how did they have the seeding set up. again we have one chart. one of the members true showing who was sitting where at least for one snapshot of the session of congress. we have enough sketches that show the putt from the speaker of the house. we have enough original furniture that we can kind of matchup things that we think are here. unfortunately, a lot of the items that are here in the city like chairs kept using. them desks not so much. didn't say. things that government may have owned such as the government of congress, -- wasn't the library of congress as we know today, but a lot of the things that went to washington d.c. are burned when washington is burnt in the ear of 1820. we lose a lot of those things. so that is one of the challenges with a building like this is you don't necessarily have all the things, but you try to make to the best you can

to give people that sense when they come in to see them what it looked like when james madison or young introduction were sitting in this room as members of the house of representatives. we are in the senate change or here in the senate hall in philadelphia. the room as you can see is quite a bit more grand than the house of representatives would have been. there is a couple of reasons for that. a roots as a nation go back to we were british of course. the british have a parliament with two houses. the upper house. the house of lords. the lower house. house of commons. this definitely parallels with our congress. today they are perils. very similarly set up to the house of commons. and the senate with their have to be based on the house of lords but obviously we're not going to -- noble pedals like that. but we have states.

every state is equal in the senate. so the states kind of take at the place of our house in our senate chamber. so the british often using that green color of government and colonies would use it and the american government. but the red would be much more of the house of lords color so you will see red here in philadelphia. and definitely has that kind of look to it. it seems a little bit on the higher end. now the interesting thing about the senate is they are credited with a bit more power. the power they tie with the president that the house of representatives doesn't have. treaties in the united states are with the advice and consent of the senate, approved with the consent of the senate. so the senate has to approval the treaties. the house does not. the senate does. so this one power. also, anytime the president makes a appointment. a cabinet, ambassador, supreme

court of course. those folks would have to come in front of the senate and be approved by the senate or reject it. so here in philadelphia, we have our very first treaty approved by the senate which is the g treaty. and that led to the fight in the house of representatives about whether or not to pay for it. but over that same issue we have the first projection of a presidential nominee by the senate. john roth ledge, who is actually a center of the u.s. constitution, one of the players and creating the constitution, as one of washington's first choices for the original six justices on the supreme court. he actually accepts. but then resigned the post without ever having served on the supreme court. he would later become the -- on the south carolina supreme court. john j, resigns, he's elected governor of new york. he leaves the post of chief justice empty.

washington will eventually tap jeff roth ledge in south carolina. he will come and serve as chief justice however he is appointed during a recess of congress. so technically the senate hasn't confirmed him but he actually serves in session as chief justice, leads, cases when the senate comes back later that year, during the session, they then take up the question of approving. him now george washington hasn't ever rejected that -- so this is never happened in our young history. well john has a couple things going against him. number one, there are guys in the senate who are a little crazy, he's definitely had some kind of strange things that he's had to say at certain times in the 17 nineties so he's got a reputation among some people but also what he's going to get in trouble for if he's going to make pointed comments about the treaty that was negotiated by his

predecessor. he was very critical in some speeches and they tended to be sort of rambling speeches. he was very critical about some of the things that he said about the senate itself. of course, senators would read the newspaper and they would hear with the south carolina supreme court justice had to say about them. when he came in front of them they would remember these things and decide that perhaps the sky is not the best choice for the supreme justice of the court but even though he runs the court for a little while he's sent packing home. so first rejection. in south carolina you are seeing the constitution a lot of different directions being explored and used for the first time. of course you go through our history and you see other currencies where this happens. now the one on the power of the supreme court, or on the senate rather, that's not going to be exercised in philadelphia is the power of if the president

is impeached, the house would vote to have a impeachment. the senate would basically be the jury and what is essentially a trial to decide whether or not the president should be removed from office. so again, you look at the powers of the senate and you see these things that they do. the tide them to the president in a lot of ways. and so therefore give them a little bit of that a show advantage over the congress. there is nobody of men with only two members of state, you represent entire, state if you represent a large state amuse you represent a whole lot of people. finally, the other thing about the senate that makes it a little bit unique is that you get that longer term. the longest elected term in the united states is a six-year term. but early on, senators were not even elected. senators are appointed on the basis of the constitution originally. senators are appointed by their state legislatures.

so thunderstorm have to run for office. so as a, result senators here in philadelphia, met in private, didn't meet in public, house of representatives always. dead house was open to the public. now the senate started going into their own controversial bills like the g8 treaty. one of the early senators that is sent by pennsylvania, i managed a, like he's known for being a longtime secretary of treasury. he's up the democratic republican side. so the federal side of the early senate, basically looking at the strict rules would say that -- hasn't lived in the united states a requisite number of years to actually serve in the senate. so senate actually voted him out. he's leader elected to the house of representatives by pennsylvania. but he's rejected from the senate. so naturally people in

pennsylvania want to know why their senators been kicked out of the senate. so you start getting this growing public feeling that we want to see what's going on in philadelphia. and add to that the press obviously wants to know what's going on, because they've got guys sitting on the balcony watch in the house. the one i have guys up here watching the senate because that is news. finally, i'm sure of, it that's a four percentage to saying downstairs meeting a public going why buy those cuts upstairs and private while we have to sit in front of all these people. so i'm sure this pressure coming from many different directions. after five years of meeting behind closed doors the senate has a small balcony and they start as well being in public here in philadelphia. again, that's one of those long-standing traditions. but again, when you go back to her earliest days this is what you're seeing. they don't have everything set in stone. the constitution was only four pages long. these men have to figure out what their job is all about based on a few paragraphs that

say duties and powers that they have. george washington essentially invents the job of president in philadelphia. , again just going off some paragraphs in the constitution. fog read okay what it is it that i do every day. for example, when he wants to negotiate a treaty with various indian tribes, but he will do the first time he's going to do something like this is actually come into the senate and sit down, and say will i'm supposed to do treaties with your advice and consent, so i want your advice and consent on these issues that i want to discuss. and the senate kind of goes wait a minute. we aren't really interested in talking about that with you in the room. why don't you give us some stuff. we'll talk about it. get back to you later. so that's about when the president comes and goes from the senate. more strict separation. now for washington, he is not a guy who likes tons of you know, public accolade.

it doesn't like to give a lot of speeches if he can avoid. it he will do a address to congress every year. they don't hold the state of the union yet but an address to congress which he writes with his cabinet. he will come to the senate for his integration for his second term of president. he kind of keeps it low key. he doesn't did the bigger event that we saw downstairs in the house of representatives with john adams, which was a much greater deal. -- washington takes his oath of office, more list goes back to work. he didn't really want the big public ceremony to take place. but that is something that would change with adams integration, and then of course when you go down to washington he start having an operations in the new capital building. so that would be a change. so, again we're sort of growing into with the united states is today. and as you look around this room, a lot of the guys that sat here in the senate are the architect of our constitution. because senators being chosen by their states. a lot of these guys had a big

impact on writing that constitution would then be sent by their states to philadelphia. one of the ones bomb is james madison, who runs into the problem in virginia that patrick henry is one of the great powers in virginia. henry is not a big fan of madison and his big bold constitution. so essentially, medicine is sort of even though you call him the father of the constitution the obviously point of getting a seat in the senate doesn't happen for james madison. he has to suffer through running for election, and becoming a member of the house. but as for election of sanders that's actually a very recent phenomenon in our history that would be the 17th amendment. so 1913 when we start electing our son versus just over a century ago. so all of them and prior to that, just have to court their state legislature. so think of the lincoln douglas debates over senate. they're not debating for people to vote for them. they are 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 21st century populism people are saying we want to be able to vote for our own senate. we vote for pretty much everyone else and senate -- government, when at the senate? that's one of those things that changes. but again we have to grow into how some other things work. the remarkable thing when you go into the year in philadelphia, other than, that most everything does operate in the same way. pretty much using the system in independence hall that they kind of take into this building, and, use and continue on when they move into washington in 1800. now as you look at this room, unlike downstairs in the house of representatives, the second floor of the building with the senate is a lot more original as far as the things in the building go. we have the setting for 32 senators. we start of course with just 26 representing 14 states.

it is each state, vermont, kentucky, tennessee come into the state will have another senator so up to the 32. now when they leave for washington, the senators would go, the room would turn into a courtroom. eventually actually it was the united states federal district courtroom in the 19th century. they don't necessarily need the stuff that is here. so desks kind of go away. we don't know what happened to them. these are sort of our best guests, but shows you always need. so in the mid 1800s, when people start actually thinking about american history like we do so much of today, they started saying we need to collect things for independence hall. and somebody says we've got a bunch of these chairs. a couple dozen chairs. and at some point somebody star something maybe they were the chairs for the continental congress. so they stuck them in the room. but of course they were chairs for the federal congress, but either way, the chairs were

displayed an independence call for a long time. so fortunately when we are restoring congress, all the old u.s. capital, we had 29 original chairs. some actually the majority were in the house. simple proportion. but a couple of them remarked senate. a couple of them had been in -- different colored won in the house and some are probably in the house. we said let's put them all in the senate chamber. so we will fill the senate chamber with 29 of the 30 chairs original either for the house or senate, but original nonetheless. the eagle on the ceiling is were not 100 percent sure the date on that. the one thing i can tell you is that there are 15 stories above it. so it's something after the 15th state enters the union. we don't know. when we may never know exactly when that was painted but it's artistic rendering of the seal of the united states. the seal was another thing

created in philadelphia by the congress in 1782. something that they worked on on and off, the committee skip changing a little bit, here a little bit there, until they worked at the final version of the seal. we have a carpet on the floor which is a reproduction of the original project -- carpet. it more than likely went to washington when they moved, we don't know what's happened to the original senate carpet but it was made specifically for the room. there was enough written description of exactly what it was that enabled us to sort of recreate the carpet and it would have featured the seal of the united states. but it would have been encircled by the original states as sort of set up like a chain. if you are common motif of the time. you know cheney the states together to create this bigger thing. the united states of ours. so a lot of those interesting symbols. weather for the states themselves, united states,

again have the roots here in philadelphia. the one original desk we still have is the secretary's desk and the vice president with him in the back of the room. this is another interesting part of the story. the vice president, we're going to start with john adams, and he will be succeeded by thomas jefferson, they would actually be here a good bit of the. time probably a lot more so than the vice president have the day. today the vice president could literally sit in the senate any day they want. but early on they made it pretty clear that john adams didn't want him talking. so he could just sit there and run the meeting. which left him very disappointing. he was one of the first but certainly not the last vice president to complain about the limitations of that job. he's allowed to vote only to break ties. which again that carry us through the years. so there's a timeout, vice president was the tiebreak. or so any big day and big vote for the vice president will be there. some other than that, the vice president, john adams would find that he was stuck here in

philadelphia running a bunch of games with a lot of guys who wouldn't let him talk and he found it to satisfying. thomas jefferson, he's vice president, his opponent is the president so he doesn't necessarily agree with a lot of the policies but he has to sort of be part of the executive. over so it was a very difficult situation which leads to creating this system where we're going to elect president and vice president a little bit more carefully, because rather than having the electoral college voting for two than the guy who gets most votes for president and the second for vice president we created a situation where there's a candidate for president and vice president which made much more clear. the real impetus to that is in the adams election in 1796 in the jefferson election in 1800, when they're packing up and moving to washington d.c.. so there's no one election day on those days. so we start meeting in the new capital and december of 1800, they're leaving philadelphia in the summer and in the midst of

this -- the two sides have learned our lesson. their world were one guys so you can specified who is. which when jefferson was the election technically he ties his -- who had been a senator here in new york. of course burr and jefferson being tied means by the constitution the election goes to the house of the representatives. the first big thing that we do in our new capital is that basically the house of representatives halves to elect any president, they have to vote more than 30 times before the tide could be broken. now you're saying we learned our lesson these past elections, let's fix it so the 12th amendment comes along to finally straighten out the way of electing a president. but again, you look back to these early days and they are managing to find out what doesn't work, which isn't much. we find at the most of the constitution does, so we are able today to look at a room that's much smaller than the senate today but the senators that sat here pretty much do the same thing as the senators

you watching today. >> [noise] , tonight we begin with women's history, the national world war one museum and -- to talk about her book piece on our terms. the global battle for women's rights after the first world war. the sacramento state history professor argues that a diverse group of women from around the world push for more rights in the wake of world war i. and that some of these women who are attending the 1919 to 1920 peace conference pushed woodrow wilson to support the

19th amendment. watch beginning at eight eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span 3. during the constitutional convention in philadelphia, the issue of slavery was frequently debated throughout the summer of 1787. , next in a discussion hosted by the colonial williamsburg foundation, a law professor and two actors who portray free and enslaved blacks in williamsburg discussed the rules compromising slavery played in drafting the constitution and the enduring legacy of those compromises. this program also includes two dramatic interpretations of 17 eighties african americans. good evening, and welcome to -- interest, slavery of the united states constitution. i'm deirdre jones and i want to welcome you to our final event for our