again, thank you to our speakers, thank you to everyone at home. as we always say at gatsby's tavern museum, has not everyone. >> tonight on american history tv, a look into the supreme court landmark case, plus levers is ferguson which solidified the separate but equal doctrine and provided legal protection to segregation laws passed by the states. scholars look at its impact on education and housing's. and how we still live with a legacy and the decision. we will look at the life and legacy of the first african american supreme court justice thurgood marshall and his impact on u.s. history. watch tonight beginning at 8 pm eastern.

>> it, rick merrick in history tv's american artifacts visits museums and historic places. up next we travel to philadelphia's independence national 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 that we call congress hall, although originally was built as a town to the -- county court courthouse for most of its history, it's exactly what it was. but in the years that the city of washington d.c. is being built, philadelphia serves as a temporary u.s. capital, this

room serves as the house of representatives, second for the building that we see in the united states senate. the house of representatives each representative at that point in our history represent 30,000 people. we had a population that our first census of about three and three quarters of 1 million. we had 106 members of the house, which sat in this room. and eventually from 16 states. the story of philadelphia as the u.s. capital is a story where we taken a new constitution and actually operates in doing things like adding new states to the original 13. also, the bill of rights we will become a part of our constitution while in philadelphia was the capital. in fact, secretary of state don thomas jefferson formally announced the amendments to the constitution in... my basically coming to congress here in this building and officially announcing that we have changed our constitution which of

course the bill of rights is a huge part of our history, and we will be in the future and continuing talking point in our political life. but also, it is the amendment process itself 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 is creating an american political system, a two party system that we know today is going to begin here. it is going to begin with issues as much as you would expect, early issues that we faced as the united states would beget. we have debt, and are spending arguments in this building. it's not any different other than the details as to what we do today in washington d.c.. we argued about debt from the revolutionary war, our early government. alexander hamilton, treasury secretary they wanted all of the debt from the states to come from the federal government.

and then to use that debt, paying it off to build credit for the united states, and not everybody agreed with his plans. so, you start seeing division. and then foreign policy questions would arise france and britain go to war in the 17 nineties. 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 through george washington, the first president the notion of neutrality is preferable. we don't really have any money. we did not have a navy at all, and our army was not much to speak of. so, we certainly were not in a position to go and fight a war, and certainly not in europe and probably not and fighting in our neighbors in british canada in those days. so -- so he is going to present with his captain approval, a neutrality probably ambition which starts again dividing this question of helping france. now, in this same notion of

keeping us out of war, george washington will send john j, who is at that time our first chief justice of the supreme court and send him to britain to negotiate a new treaty with the british. again with this idea of keeping us out of this war and settling some of those questions of border, and ocean rights that we are arguing with the british. john j had been on the team that negotiated the peace treaty and ended the revolutionary war, he seemed like a good candidate for washington to send. the treaty that he brought back -- into creating these two parties as sort of leading to what we know today. the treaty is basically starting becoming properly attacked in the press. the press of what will become the democratic republican party like thomas jefferson and james manson would start vilifying this treaty, what's interesting

is that we can actually write it, because it hasn't been published yet. but it is going to be pilloried in the plus to the point than an awful lot of people hit the street that they don't actually know anything about. the federalist side, the side of the john adams and alexander hamilton's, is in favor of the treaty, they are in favor of building the young economy of the united states, staying out of war, trading with all sides in europe, not being limited by alliance to france or something like this. so, we are really seeing this treaty become a kind of symbolic head point between these two sides. and, the senate approves the treaty. now according to the constitution they prove treaties and are down. the house of representatives the house of representatives basically says that we want a chance to discuss this treaty as well. and so they demanded washington

to see all the papers and so on, and he says no. the senator proves it, you know what to do with it. with the house essentially is going to do is we'll do what we'll try to do which is take away the funding. we will not pay for this treaty, anything that has to be paid for we will not spend the money. therefore, the treaty will affect and in truly die at this. point, this is what we see in washington d.c. today. the big fight in the want house of representatives in this room must also pay for this treaty and on this last day there's a big crowd in our public balcony. you have men like vice president john adams, supreme court justice sitting in the balcony and the big this is of course an era where we love our speeches long political speeches deep and infused with rhetoric and the best speaker of the time is a man in fister aims he's a, federalist and

definitely wanting this treaty to survive. but he's been ill, and has not said anything since if he's making the last statement about it and he stands up and begins that if my strength can hold out i'd like to say if you are on the subject. and he perceives to speak for over an hour and i think it's about 55 pages in the congressional record, his speech. he collapses at the end in his seat but he talks about the last word of when we fought to the british and if people remembered all of the devastation and if we really want to do this again? fight another war for years? and apparently some of the men have tears in their eyes and then these supreme justice turns -- and says, isn't that man? great and adams says, yes indeed, he is. so the treaty will end up passing by just a couple of votes. at this point there is a committee of the whole vote, the head of the committee of the whole vote frederick

muilenburg who is the first speaker of the house. and he breaks the tie, he is ostensibly the democratic republic, and the jeffersonian side. he should be against the treaty. but he is convinced that maybe not going to war is a good idea. so, he ends up voting to pass the bill for the funding of this treaty. and he is vilified. voted against this treaty to his side to the point that he loses his seat in his next election to congress. but even worse, in the short term, he is stabbed on the sidewalks to philadelphia by's brother-in-law because of how he survives, but the gatherings become a little awkward with family for a while. it tells us how high political tensions can be in the early days. yet, yet! at the same time we are also proving that that new constitution just how those difficulties work. because the probably the best day in this -- in a lot of ways, the day john adams is inaugurated at the

platform here, he stands on that platform with thomas jefferson, also the front of the room, now this is a big deal. changing presidents for us today is a fairly normal thing for parades, parties, it is a big thing. -- this is where we're proving where the system that we the voters elect our leaders with, and we change them when we vote. we have proven that that system works. because the john adams election is a lot of firsts. it's the first time we are not going to 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 did not even want a second term. he was kind of hawked into it, essentially kind of almost looking at both sides being talking -- being those who talked him into. it he's unanimously reelected after not even running. at the end of the second term

to try to talk him into a third that he's not having. he just wants to retire. so, he will step aside for john adams. now, we don't know if this works, we've never actually changed our presidents. so, will the people expect this? we don't know. the other thing to remember is that john adams was contested in his election. he actually had to fight a battle against his opponent who was thomas jefferson. now, these two have 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 is very nasty, close, it is for us today normal presidential election. john adams wins by three electoral votes, only slightly more than half. we never had a president who got only half of the votes. we've never had a president who had to really fight for an election. and of course, the other problem in those early days is that if you come in second, you

are vice president, which means the new president is one party, vice president of the other party just pick any modern election you like and put the two opponents together for four years as executives, and you can see how neither of them will be particularly happy. so adams in jefferson are not happy to be standing in a room together. this is a full house that day. balcony, seats, most of the government here. a lot of curiosity. but you can also figure that about half of the men in this room are not very happy to see john adams standing up there. the other half of the men in the room are not very happy to see thomas general person standing up there. and generally speaking, nobody's very happy that george washington is leaving us in this time. so, john adams are gonna look around the room and see a lot of people who are not very happy. people with tears in their eyes, that washington was leaving them and he kind of would later say that as he looked around he only saw one person that day who particularly looked happy. which was of course george washington who had a look on

his face and said, john adams you are fairly in, i am fairly out. so, now let's find out who's been happy on this day. but washington worked quietly. he would go to private life. and, i feel very happy to withdraw from the scene, he said. adam silver we not curated. he would have a difficult presidency because now really we're seeing the throws of political fighting going on. but it happened peacefully. we proved it he can continue an in times of difficulty like this, that we could continue forward with the system in place. in 1800, i would leave this building and move to the current capital in washington d.c., adams. and jefferson would have a difficult election this time, jefferson winning any be the first president inaugurated in a new capital of washington d.c.. but these years in philadelphia are setting the tone for the rest of our early history. and all the way up to today.

so, the room itself. we will start out with this as a courthouse. this would have been a courtroom, but around the time that this building is finished construction. it's actually being built during the constitutional convention. so when they're finished construction as around the time that philadelphia offers it to u.s. government. i think that philadelphia secret hope is that it would be nice to not go to the new city down the potomac. so, they gave them a new courthouse building and they're expanding it a little bit to make more room 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 deaths and all. we don't have any of the desks that have survived. we are fortunate that 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. today, all of our original

chairs are not in 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 one for the chief justice of the supreme court. now again, we don't know which one is which. so, what we can fairly say is that somebody important sat in that chair for the speaker of the house, whether was the speaker the house are not, we're not sure. but as far as this room went in the early teen hundreds, when the federal government moved out to become a courthouse again. this was divided into two rooms for a long number of years, they go a long way down the middle so that they have to courtrooms instead of one very large one. at the time of the first world war, the -- they move to the current city

hall in philadelphia. the city is recognizing the historic value of these buildings, it has some restoration work down. the kind of want to turn the moment to museums. so if you visited this building in the years around the first world war, the 19 twenties, you would have seen -- the room rather, it's a big single room. but it would have just been a room filled with a bunch of old stuff in it, an old-fashioned museum. but after world war ii, when the national park service comes in to take over the historic buildings here, again, the goal is to try to get them back to how they look in those important days. so, that is where we tried to study, how did they have the seating set up. again, we have one chart at least for one snapshot of a session of congress we have that chart. we have enough sketches that show the platforms for the speaker of the house, enough original furniture that we can sort of match up things that we

think we're here. unfortunately, a lot of the items that were here, if the city needed them, like chairs, they kept using them, desks not so much. things that the government might have owned, for example, library of congress. 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 the things that went to washington d.c. are burned one washington is burned, in 1812, we lose a lot of those things. so, that's one of the challenges with a building like this is that you don't necessarily have all of the things, but you try to make do the best that you can to give people that sense of when they come into see the building, what it looked like one man like james madison and young andrew jackson was sitting in this room is member the house of representatives. >> well, we are in the senate chamber here at congress home in philadelphia.

the room, as you can see, is a bit more grand than the house of representatives would. and there's a couple of reasons for that. a roots as our nation when the british were here. the upper house, house of lords, lower house, 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 the senate would therefore be left to be based on the house of lords. we aren't going to duke's and rose, noble titles like that. we have states and every state is equal in the senate. the states kind of take the place of our house of lords in the senate chamber. the british using the green color government and colonies would use it. the american government. the red would kind of be much more that house of lords kind of color. you see red in the early senate in philadelphia.

definitely has that kind of look to it that seems a bit on the higher end. the interesting thing about the senate is the are created with more power. the power is a tie to the president in the house of representatives, and they don't have treaties in the united states are with the advice and consent of the senate, approved by the advice and consent of the senate. the senate has to approve the treaties, the house does not the senate does. so there is one power. also and time the president makes an appointment in his cabinet and ambassador, supreme court, of course. those folks would have to come in front of the senate and be approved by the senate or rejected. here in philadelphia, we have our very first treaty approved by the senate which is the jay treaty and that led to the big fight in the house of representatives water not to pay for it. over that same issue, we have the first rejection of a presidential nominee by the

senate. john ratcliffe she was actually a signer of the u.s. constitution, one of the players and creating that constitution is one of washington's first choices for the original six justices on the supreme court. he accepts but then resigns the post about ever really having served on the supreme court. he will later become the chief justice of the south carolina supreme court, when john j who is the first united states supreme court chief justice resigns. he's elected governor of new york. he leads the post of chief justice that leaves an empty. washington will cap john of south carolina. he will come back to philadelphia this time and actually serve as chief justice. however, he's appointed to the recess of congress. so technically the senate hasn't confirmed him, but he serves a session of the court as chief justice and leads them through some cases. when the senate comes back later that year to return to

session, they then take up the question of approving john. george washington never had anyone rejected that he's appointed. this has never happened in our young history. he has a couple things going against him. number one, there are guys in the senate looking to get a little crazy. he's had some kind of strange things he's had to say at different times in the year of 1790. he's got a bit of a kind of reputation among some people. but also where he's going to get into trouble as he made some very pointed comments about the jay treaty negotiated by his predecessor. he was very critical in some speeches. they tended to be rambling speeches. he was very critical some of the things he said about the senate itself, which of course senators would read this newspapers and read what the south carolina supreme court chief justice had to say about them and when he actually came in front of them, they remember the sorts of things and they

would decide then perhaps this guy is not the best choice to be the chief justice of the supreme court. even though he ran the court for a little while, he was kind of sent packing back home. the very first rejection of a presidential nominee. here in philadelphia, you are 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 see other occurrences where this happens. the one other power 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 not the president should be removed from office. . you look at the powers of the senate and see these things that they can do. to tie them to the president in a lot of ways and therefore give them a little bit of extra

advantage over the house of representatives. plus a smaller body of men with only two senators per state. you represent an entire state which if you are from a large state media 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. the longest elected term in the united states with a six-year term. early on senators were not even elected. senators are appointed on the basis of the constitution originally. senators are appointed by their state legislators. senators don't have to run for office. as a result, senators in philadelphia might in private. they didn't meet in public. the house of representatives always did. the house was open to the public, the senate was not. the senate starts getting into their own controversial bills like the jay treaty. one of the early senators that is sent by pennsylvania, most

famous for being a longtime secretary treasury. he is of the democratic republic inside. so the federal side of the early senate looking at the strict rules would say albert is swiss has not lived in the united states the number of years to serve in the senate. the senate voted him out. he's elected to the house of representatives later by pennsylvania. he's rejected from the senate. naturally people of pennsylvania want to know why their senator has been kicked out of the senate. you start getting this growing public feeling that we want to see what's going on when the senate meets here in philadelphia, and add to that the press obviously wants to know what's going on because they've got guys sitting in the balcony watching the house. they want guys sitting up here watching the senate because that's news. finally, i am sure that the

house of representatives is sitting downstairs meeting in public going, you know it, why did they get to meet in private when we have to sit in front of these people? i'm sure this pressure coming from many different directions. finally, after five years of meeting behind closed doors, the senate robinson builds a small balcony and they start to join as well meet in public here in philadelphia. that's one of those long-standing traditions. when you go back to our earliest days, is where you are seeing they don't have everything set in stone. they have a constitution that's 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 they have. george washington essentially invents the job of president here in philadelphia. again going on some paragraphs in the constitution. they during it what does that mean that i do every day? for example, when he wants to negotiate a treaty with various indian tribes, what he will do the first time to do something

like this he will come into the senate and sit down and say i am supposed to be treaties with your advice and consent. i want your advice and consent on these issues. i want to discuss. the senate 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 and we will talk about and get back to you later? that is about the when the president comes and goes from the senate. since then, more strict separation that we are used to. for washington, he's not a guy who likes tons of public accolade and doesn't like to give a lot of speeches, if he can avoid. he'll do an address to congress every year, they don't call it the state of the union yet is addressed to congress, which he writes with his cabinet. he will come to the senate for his inauguration for his second term as president. kind of keeps it low key, doesn't do the bigger event we saw downstairs in the house of

representatives with john adams, which was a much bigger deal. washington going to second term, comes and takes both of office and goes back to work. he didn't really want the big public ceremony to take place. that's something that would change with adams inauguration, and when you move down to washington you have inaugurations at the new capital building. that would be a change. we are growing into what the united states is today. as you look around this room, a lot of the guys that sat here in the senate where the architects of our constitution. senators being chosen by their states, a lot of the guys that had a big impact on the writing that constitution would be then sent by their states to philadelphia. at one of the ones that's not is james madison. he 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 role in the constitution. essentially madden medicine, even though we call him the

father of the constitution, the obvious plum of getting a seat in the senate doesn't happen for james madison. he has to suffer through being elected and running for office and becoming a member of the house. as for election of senators, that actually bear recent phenomenon in our history. that would be the 17 commitment. 1913, we start electing our senators. only over a century ago. all the men prior to that have to court their state legislators. you think of lincoln douglass debate over senate. they aren't actually debating for people to vote for them. they are debating for people to vote for people for the state government to vote for them. it's very complicated system, which is why when you get into the 20th century populous people are saying, you know it? we want to vote for our own senate. we will prepare to much everyone else in government, why not the senate? that's one of those things that changes. we have to kind of grow into how some of these things work. the remarkable thing when you go back to these years in

philadelphia is other than that, most everything does operate pretty well the same way. we are pretty much using the system designed and independence hall that they kind of take into this building, and use and continue on when they moved to washington in 1800. as you look at this room, unlike downstairs in the house of representatives, the second floor of the building of the senate is a lot more original as far as the things in the building go. we have the setting for 32 senators. we will start with of course 26 representing 13 states. as each new state, vermont, kentucky, tennessee will come into the union, you will add two new senators. up to 32. when they leave for washington, 32 senators would go. the room would turn into a courtroom, eventually it was united states federal district court room. in the 19th century. they don't necessarily need the

stuff that's here. desks kind of go away. we don't know what happens, these are our best guess. chairs? you always need. when 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. somebody says we've got a bunch of these chairs, a couple dozen chairs. at some point, somebody starts to think maybe they were the chairs for the continental congress, so they stuck them in the room. of course there is a chance from the federal congress. either way, these chairs were displayed in independence hall for a long time, and fortunately when we add to the restoring congress all the old u.s. capital to look at some photos, we had 29 original chairs, some the majority were in the house based on simple proportion. a couple remarked senate, a couple of them had bits of different color couple stories, we are able to figure somewhere senate had a different color

somewhere probably in the house. we said let's put them all in the senate chambers. we will phyllis senate chamber with 29 of the 32 chairs being original either for the house or senate. original nevertheless. the eagle on the ceiling it is, we aren't too sure of the date on that, the one thing i can tell you is there is 15 stars above it. it's somewhere after the 15th state. we don't know exactly when that happens, and may never know when that was painted. it's sort of an artistic rendering of the seal of the united states. the seal was another thing created here in philadelphia by the continental congress and independence hall in 1782. something they worked on often throughout the revolutionary war, the different committees kept changing a little bit here and there until he finally worked out the final version of the seal. we have a carpet on the floor that is a reproduction of the original carpet. the original carpet more than likely went to washington when

they moved. whatever happened to it, it's long gone. we don't know what happened to the original senate carpet. it was made specifically for the room here. there is actually an effort in description of exactly what it was that enabled us to sort of recreate the carpet. it would've also feature the seal of the united states but encircled by the original state seals. set up as a change which was a common motive of the time. changing the states together to create this bigger thing, the united states of ours. a lot of those interesting symbols, whether for the states themselves or 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 would sit in the back room. the vice president, with john adams, he will be succeeded by thomas jefferson they would be here a good bit of the time, a lot more so than the vice president would be today.

the vice president can sit in the sun any day they want. early on the mid clear to john adams they didn't really want him talking, so he can sit there and run the meetings which left him disappointed. he's the first but not the last vice president to question limitations of the job. he's allowed to vote only to break ties, which again that carries through the year. if there's a time the vice president is always a tie breaker. any big day, any big vote the vice president will be there other than that john adams would find he stuck here in philadelphia running meetings guys would let him talk and find it the satisfying. his opponent is the president. he doesn't agree with a lot of the policies. but he has to be part of the executive oversight. it was it was a very difficult situation, a difficult situation which is what leads to which is what leads to creating the system where we're gonna elect president and vice

president a bit more carefully rather than the electoral college voting for two men, again gets the most votes be president, kyle gets the second most being vice president. we create a system where there was a candidate for the president, and vice president which makes it more clear. that is the 12th amendment. and the impetus to that is not the adams election in 1796, but the jefferson election in 1800 which is when they are packing up and moving to washington d.c.. so, there is no one election day in those days, but they pretty much will start meeting in the new capital, december of 1800. they're leaving philadelphia that summer, and in the midst of this we are electing adams versus jefferson, they both learn their lessons. we both have our two guys. and again, you can't specify which is which so in jefferson when the election, technically he ties his own vice presidential candidate erin burr who was a senator from new york and of course uber and jefferson then being tied means by the constitution of the election a ghost of the house

of representatives. the first big thing that we do in our capital is that basically the house of representatives has to elect new president, and they have to vote more than 30 times before the time can be broken. again, now you're saying, we learned our lesson with these past two elections. let's fix it so that the 12th amendment comes along to finally straighten out the way of electing the president. but again, the president looks back at these early days and they are managing to find out what does not work which is not much in find out that most of that constitution does. and so, we're able to look in a room today that is much smaller than the senate today, but the senators who sat here pretty much do the same things as the senators in washington.

>> tonight on american history tv, a look into a supreme court landmark case, plus you versus ferguson which solidify the separate but equal doctrine and provided equal doctrine to the -- scholars look at its impact on education and housing and how we still live with a legacy of the decision. we also look at the life and legacy of the first african americans supreme court justice, there were good marshall. and his impact on u.s. history. watch tonight, beginning at 8 pm eastern. >> weekend on c-span two you are an intellectual. feast