lives for us and they're asked to do their job but because of a bad policy from the top that i described from mayor bloomberg those officers can be caught in a cycle of that humiliation that they don't want to be a party of either. trouble. how you explain that you have the right to do this to people. stop and frisk never should have been allowed.

bloomberg knows better than that. thatheard some people say we stop crime. i can go door to door and stick it in. we cannot do that. i wish you would emphasize that we cannot allow police officers to do that because the constitution says you cannot. >> i appreciate the point. that is one more point from the judges ruling. judge's ruling. it may lower the crime rate but it is unconstitutional. that is not where we begin, that is where we end. situation, you can lock down an entire city. in that particular situation, that made sense will stop -- sense. legal and moral problems. we cannot look at these issues

through the narrow problem -- prism of what could reduce crime. we have to look at public safety and the fact that we are a democracy with open values and tolerance. some sense of equal treatment. even people who disagree with me and think that this is a toward that should be used sometimes and disagrees with the court, i should mention, we have to look see our eyes wide open to how these programs are working. try to come together as a society which is always been hard for us. our raciale of experience and figure out how we can work together as a society. this is why these issues are important and i appreciate our last call and everyone's input on this. re: melber. you can watch them on "the cycle."

he is a correspondent on the nation.com. if you like to do that, his guilty" issumed premiering on msnbc will stop on the next washington journal, the rise of the conversation on drones and privacy issues. 745, -- and seven: 45, would talk about domestic drones -- at 7:45, we talk about the usage of domestic drones. , a privacy and west. washington journal begins live at 7:00 a.m. eastern time every day on c-span.

wednesday, the center for american progress hosts a former -- a forum for preventing and ending human trafficking. obama's half-sister will be a speaker at the event. remember the march ending and dr. king delivering that speech will stop president kennedy invited us back to the white house and he stood in the door of the oval office to meet each one of us. he was like a beaming and proud father. he was glad that everything had gone so well. .e said, you did a good job he said to dr. king, you had a dream. >> tomorrow, we will look back with a panel conversation with john lewis and your chance to

call in and comment. starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. ladieson two of first begins monday, september 9 with a look at the life of the edith roosevelt will stop we have encore presentations of season one. each weekday, at 9:00 p.m., programs from martha washington to ida mckinley. margaret taylor and abigail fillmore. >> sarah polk was up on diplomacy and intelligence. she made no bones about having an interest in politics and

being her husband's partner. she group in a political household. she grew up loving politics and she married james after he won a seat in the legislature will stop he not does she would not have mailing -- legislature. she would not have married him otherwise will stop -- otherwise. >> throughout their long and illustrious political career. she lived there many years. generals on both sides would pay their respects. it is an interesting commentary on what beloved status she held. >> she was honest about her husband's work. she went to every post she could go to with him. she went through the arduous journey. she was very well-liked in the diplomatic community. they met all kinds of people.

friends and enemies and others. they had to make things work. they were very experienced people. they were more sophisticated than what is around them. >> she felt that women should develop their mind and cultivate scholarship as much as men. pretty groundbreaking at that point in our history for a first lady to do. >> today, first ladies have causes, literacy and reading would have been abigail fillmore's cause. this bookshelf was of the first white house library. she much preferred being in a room with a good book to standing in a receiving line making mindless chatter. >> abigail was a wonderful seamstress. we do have her quilt here. a very colorful quilt. >> she was one of the true

intellectuals. she loved reading. she was very caught up on politics and very much liked being a part of all the cultural accoutrements that came with living in washington. >> welcome to c-span series "first lady's influence and image." in this we will meet three first ladies. they served during the 1840's and early 1850's as tensions continue to grow over the issue of slavery. to introduce us to sarah polk emma margaret taylor, and abigail fillmore, we have two historians. an author and historian in historic preservation. and a historian and legal scholar based at albany law school, the author of a biography of millard fillmore. welcome to both of you. james k. polk is sometimes described as the least known influential president.

would you agree with that and why? >> is certainly not are well- known, and he is certainly important. when he was nominated for president, he had no public office. he had twice lost the governorship of tennessee. before that he had been a one term governor, and before that a member of congress. he was a lawyer, practicing law in tennessee. he was what is known as the dark horse candidate. he had hoped to get the vice president's nomination, that is what he was pushing for. and suddenly, out of nowhere polk is the presidential nominee. most people don't know who he is. he becomes president and almost immediately puts us in a position to have a war with mexico. he pushes for the war. he is prepared to declare war on mexico, and sends troops, including zachary taylor, who will be the next president, he send zachary taylor to the

mexican border in an area that is completely disputed at all international asset belongs to mexico. polk says it is american land. while taylor's troops are there, he goes to his counted and they vote on a saturday afternoon to ask for a declaration of war against mexico. that night, he gets a message, because it takes a long time to get information from mexico to washington. that night he gets a message that taylor's troops have been in combat. he rewrites his message to congress, saying, american troops have been killed on american soil. abraham lincoln would later give a speech in which he would say, show us the spot where it took place. it was not on american soil. he gets us into war in mexico. it also means the complete blowup of all the compromises and cushions the country headlong into what would ultimately be secession and civil war.

but we don't know anything about him. >> his wife is also, frequently when you do modern struggle surveys of influential first ladies, she is always in the top tier. always. >> why? >> she was truly a political partner with her husband. they did not have children at a time when women were expected to be mothers and hearth and home, the keepers of the faith. she was very much her husband's political equal and his partner. she never went too far within the boundaries of what a proper victorian or early victorian lady should be in the 19th century. that everyone knew that they shared an office in the private apartments. she was active in discussions at the many state dinners they had. and he would ask her to mark newspapers and articles for him to read. she was a sounding board. franklin pierce before he became president, told her husband that he would much rather talk

politics with sarah polk then with james polk. and yet, the women of the time excepted her. she was very highest, very religious. a strict presbyterian. she did not allowed to go white house. she got rid of hard liquor. but they had wine and brandy with the frequent dinners they had. she was not a prude, but very much a woman who knew what she wanted and that her rules out and everyone had to play according to those rules. she was respected for it. she was very popular. >> to introduce you to the polks, we will take you to the polk ancestral home. the house they lived in together no longer exist. but this historic site contains much of the history of the family. we will take you there next. >> this is the inaugural fan. an incredible piece of history.

it was a gift from president polk to his wife, sarah. she carried it with her on day of his inauguration. it is gilt paper with bone styles and lithographic images of the first 11 presidents from washington all the way through james k polk. she carried it with her all throughout the inauguration in the spring of 1845. the back is as beautiful as the front and features a lithographic image of the declaration of independence. the pokes came into the white house, a young, vibrant couple amidst a democratic party that was widely split. james k. polk said he would run for a single term only and then step down. sarah polk used the white house to enhance her husband political prestige. dining in their white house was a serious affair.

twice a week, on tuesdays and fridays, mrs. polk would entertain 50-75 people coming to dinner. the china that they used was beautiful. it is considered some of the most beautiful of the white house china. it features the presidential seal embossed along the side, the dinners that is white embossed with gold. they had a tea set that was blue and a dessert set in green. she did not allow alcohol in the white house, her presbyterian upbringing precluded that. that is not exactly the case. she stopped the serving of whiskey punches, but mine was one of their largest goals during their years there. the more interesting objects in the collection, speaks to sarah and her ability with music am a we have a music book that has handwritten notations. one of the songs featured inside is the song hail to the chief, which she is credited with starting as the official presidential anthem during her time as first lady. >> a moment to ask about that.

there is a little controversy between our last program with the tylers, who are also claiming that they introduced "hail to the chief." is there a definitive answer on that jacko >> i won't touch it. [laughter] [laughter] >> it came about in the 1840's it is possible that the tylers used and the polks and confirmed its use. it is silly to worry about something about that. there are so many more important is to talk about. >> you drew the contrast with juliet tyler who brought dancing to the white house. who ended her brief tenure by throwing a huge party as they left the white house. was sarah polk more in touch

with the times? >> sarah polk -- it has been called an imperial presidency. meaning that the couple fought the office of the presidency and the white house as the official executive residence needed to be highly respected. it was more formal protocol and so on. it was a very liberal approach. you could come with an introduction to any of their receptions. polk was a democrat. at the same time, they were well dressed, there were more formal dinners. there were multiple courses. it was considered an honor to be at the white house. basically, sarah polk said, dancing at the white house is not dignified. >> she was known for frugality. the president making a $25,000 a year salary, and expenses for

the what has huckabee paid out of that. how was her frugality seen by washington and the public? >> she reorganized the staffing at the white house. she was very well organized. what she did was hired a steward. they brought in their own servants and got rid of some of the paid that the white house. she then got her steward to cut deals with the various vendors, grocers, and so on in the washington area. if they give them significant discounts, they would give them the royal seal, as it were. >> endorsement? [laughter] >> it is the american version of that. if you want us to buy all of your roles for all of our white house dinners, which were a lot, then you'll have to give us a discount. it worked. they were very frugal in that

way. during the entire time they were married. >> just to clarify, she brought in her own servants, these were slaves. >> i was about to say, she owned those servants. that is important to understand. that they come from very wealthy circumstances and our slaveowners and bring a lot of assets with them. again, they can afford to be president, just as john tyler can afford to be president. >> we have a quote from her, i would like to have you put this into context. she writes -- if i can be so

fortunate as to reach the white house, i expect to live on $25,000 a year and i will neither keep house or make butter." >> like hillary clinton the cookies. >> the context of it, someone said, i think i will vote for his opponent in the race, because they say his wife keeps a good house. and makes her own butter. that was sarah's retort. by god, she did live on the $25,000 a year and did not keep house. she ran the house. she did not make butter. she made sure that utter was made efficiently and the place was run well. >> slave mistresses don't make butter must they enjoy the handicraft of making butter. it is important to see this love for sarah polk and for margaret taylor. >> i want to tell folks that this is an interactive program. we are working facebook comments and tweets in already. we also want to take your telephone calls. who put the phone number on the screen and began taking your phone in questions as well throughout our program here. the three first ladies we are featuring in this part of the series.

dolley madison has been part of our series -- this is her last hurrah. what was her role with the polk white house? >> she had come back to washington. sarah polk and dolly became very close. dolly mentor to sarah and sarah fed her. >> which was important because she was very broke. >> she treated her as the grand dame and honored her in their entertainment. they were the two war first ladies. war of 1812 in the mexican war. there are many parallels between the two. the sense of self, the sense of fashion, the understanding the role of the first lady and conveying of the -- sort of, indirect that would support her husband's residency. it is not easy to be a first lady during war.

you were many detractors as the war went on. polk went in and said i will do the following things in four years, and he did. >> this is also the first time we have photography. and we have a fabulous photograph to show you on screen right now. which brings together a number of these characters all in one place. here are the polks, dolly madison is the second from the right with her turbine. and we have an opportunity here to see harriet lane, served as white house hostess later on. and sarah polk and dolly madison and james k. polk. photography as a political tool, how do politicians absorb this

new technology and begin to use it for their benefit? >> they are just beginning to figure this out. you really don't get it until the 1850's and maybe the 1860 election when photography is everywhere. now it is almost a novelty. it is not all that terrific. you have to sit for a long time. it is not a single shot in the picture is there. you have to sit there rigidly and not move while the photograph is being taken. they are moving toward photography. much more important than

photography is the very sophisticated line of type and art in newspapers. you have wonderful campaign posters being done. when polk runs, currier of currier and ives does a campaign poster for his opponent. with a picture of henry clay. they are using that kind of technology. photography you probably want to save for the fillmore's and beyond. >> we also have the first known photograph of the white house. we will show it next. we are working with the white house historical association throughout the series. as we look at this white house of 1846, sarah polk brought some innovations to the white house. central heating and gas lighting. >> she didn't actually bring them.

[laughter] let's say they arrived. central heating and asked lighting, she didn't hold out when they put in the gaslight and insisted the oval room of the white house be left with candlelight. when they turned on the gaslight, when they shut it down for the light, the whole white house went dark. the oval room was still lit with the beautiful candlelight. there were experiments. it ultimately failed the presidential family a lot of money. they had to keep the white house out of that $25,000 salary. these efficiencies did come in, starting with the polks. >> central heating in the white house must've been a great innovation. >> it must've been a joke. [laughter] i don't think you would have been very warm. >> other than the alternative. >> got it. >> you wonder, the nice warm fireplace in the right room keeps that room warm. what you are getting at, which is always true for the white house, for every presidency, is that technology is going to change the way president campaign, the way they betray themselves and the way presidential families live.

notice, by the way, you just had a picture of him sitting there. that is what you had to do when you are getting a photograph taken. i just saw a picture of john kennedy giving a speech with his fist in the air. you can almost see his fist shaking in the photograph. you can do that here. >> not as much sense of personality in the us photographs. >> we get a bad sense of personality. that these people are absolutely stiff and frozen and have no personality. they are dead. >> it is daybreak to keep them still. >> they are not smiling. it would be too hard to smile that long. >> the question from twitter -- what was sarah's educational background that allowed her to be so politically savvy and an

equal to her famous husband? >> her father was a great leader in educating women. she and her older sister were educated at academies in murphysboro, nashville, and then he sent them to the salem academy in winston-salem. salem college today. 500 miles away. it took him a month to get there. they were there for two years. she was unusually well-educated for her time. i think that atmosphere encouraged her to speak her mind and participate in discussions. she grew up in a political household. >> next question on twitter -- we will answer by video. dave murdoch asked -- let's watch this video. then we will talk with you about this, because you have done some work on her gowns. let's watch. >> how sarah looked was important to her and how she was perceived by the public. it was also a reflection on the presidency itself.

she was known for having beautiful dresses and looking incredible in a white house that was equally beautiful. the blue dress was purchased in paris in 1847 and worn by her late in the administration. it is basically a robe. it was the undressed dress costume of a first lady if she was taking visitors before she was properly dressed. the white dress is a ballgown, also made in paris, france. high-end fashion for the 1840's. the cat in the center. a stylesheet used again and again. we get the indication she found a style she liked and kept with it. it is a beautiful gown in silk and satin. a great deal of lace attached, as well. always the frugal woman that she was, she often purchased dresses and would buy a great deal of material to go along with them

so she could enhance them and change the way they look. instead of having to buy five or six gallons, she would buy a single gown, and change them. she had a wonderful collection of handbags and purses. her jewelry was of the american mode in the 19th century. it was thought to be un-american for women to wear precious gems and semi precious stones. you would wear gold and silver, french paste and enamelware. her headdresses were unusual. only a few have survived from this time. because they are made out of silk and satin and tend to get worn out. we have a wonderful collection of headdresses. one unusual piece, a turbine.

by the 1840's which probably would have fallen a little bit out of fashion. we wonder if sarah polk may be adopted that style after dolly madison. >> the author of this cover story in the white house history magazine, published by the white house historical association, showing that you have done a lot of work on sarah polk's approach to fashion and what it symbolized. what can you tell us the bikes she had a well-established sense of style from her childhood. during the white house years, she dressed elegantly for evenings and receptions. in the summer of 1847, they sent an order to paris for some downs for the first lady. it was not the usual style. all the invoices arrived, and so did the gowns, which is amazing. the top designers in paris were asked to make some gowns are the first lady. this is usually done by a commercial agent that they had. he got the order and immediately found his good friend, "good friend", when around the paris

shops and found and made three gowns. one at the smithsonian, the pink one, and the blue gown survive. it was very unusual for her. this order for clothes, lots of accessories, about $450. dolley madison's order in 1811 cost $2000. to give you an idea. the pink gown you saw had more lace on it. the others were about $25, made by seamstresses in washington. the fabric would've an extra. >> she was trying to find that sweet spot between frugality and image. >> she did so so well. everyone said she was beautifully dressed, had been full deportment. she carried herself like a lady, acted like a lady and was very gracious. >> at the same time we are learning about sarah polk and her modern approach to being a political partner, what is happening to women out large and

united states? what is going on with women overall? at a beginning to ask for more power in society? >> the people in seneca falls are. it is important to have some perspective on what is happening to women at this time. for most american women, not much is changing and being asked.

the most important changes for women, the cutting edge of women in politics, is coming out of the antislavery movement. you have thousands of women who are politically active, really for the first time in american history. starting in the 1830's, the great petition campaign. hundreds of thousands of petitions show up in washington, asking congress to do things

like not annexed texas. it was seen as a great slave conspiracy, which it was. end slavery and the district of columbia. many of these were gathered by women, and many women sign these petitions. what you get is women actively participating in politics to change america for the better. the other great women's movement is the temperance movement. they are active in movements to prevent prostitution. these are things that are close to what would be considered domesticity for women, but is outside the house.

it is in the public space. someone like sarah polk, with the exception of temperance, would have been appalled at what these women were asking for. eventually, by 1848, someone in and a few men, such as frederick douglass, are asking for the right to vote for women. that is a long time in coming. it is beginning at this time. >> headers on the phone from jackson,, mississippi. what is your question? >> i would like to know who ran against james k. polk when he was running for president and did sarah polk play the part? >> polk runs against henry clay from kentucky. clay had run twice again before this. he thinks it is his turn. he expects it will be a cake walk, because nobody has heard of jim spoke. he makes a number of mistakes during the campaign, and in the end, in a very close vote, clay loses to polk. oddly enough, he carries polk's home state. >> the issue of a presidential campaign at that time, very different from what we see today. it was considered a proper for the candidate to be called to office. active campaigning went to state

offices like the governor. the candidates did not show up at the nominating conventions, afterwards when the were drafted and accepted the nomination, air with letters and the editor, but very little stump -- no stumping at all. sarah was her husband's campaign manager for his congressional campaign and gubernatorial campaign. during the presidential campaign, it was very much, basically, whatever you do they say, don't say anything. >> when he ran for congress, he would tend the district. he ran for governor three times, went all over the state of tennessee. one wonders what was going on in his mind when he was nominated for president. he had to sit home and do nothing except write a few letters. >> next is a question from mary in little rock. hi, mary. >> i heard somewhere that barbara bush is related to the polks and she used their dinner service while her and george bush was in the office. is that true?

>> i don't know. good question. >> as our series progresses, as we get it barbara bush, we'll answer that question for you. we'll go back in time and learn about how that political partnership came together. you told us sarah polk was from a wealthy family in tennessee. how did she and james polk meet? >> they ran in the same circles. probably through -- either through andrew jackson or through her own father's family. polk went to the -- graduated from the university of north carolina and then went into law and studied in nashville and became clerk of the legislature and they met there or they met at andrew jackson's because the polk girls were often at the jackson's home. certainly jackson is known or we think that he advised polk to marry her. this is who you need as a wife, he would say. and then it is commonly said that she told polk she wouldn't marry him unless he ran for office but and of course he did and he won and they were married in 1824.

>> so andrew jackson played something of a matchmaker here? >> he and his wife did not have children of their own and had many, many different young people that they took in. jackson would write to sarah and call her "my daughter." >> and patricia on facebook asked, is it true that a nickname for sarah polk was the spanish madonna? >> yes. >> where did that come from? >> she had extremely dark hair and olive skin and they thought she looked european, exotic. >> the jacksons had no children but sarah and james k. polk had no children. what was the impact of being freed up from housework and not having to do that and her ability to become a political partner?

>> i think they breezed into that through the years when they realized they weren't going to have children. by the same token, they spent a lot of time with nieces and nephews and sarah, as first lady, brought her nieces into the white house to help her with entertaining and returning calls because she did not return calls. as first lady, she did not it, which was a change in tradition. but and then when of course she was a widow, she had a niece and great niece who lived with her. >> can i also add, had they had children, she would have had slaves who would have raised the children who would have done all the diapers and slaves who would have been wet nurses when the children were infants so the notion of the burden of families for someone like sarah polk would be very different than, say, when we talk about abigail fillmore who is a woman of modest means and those raise her own children without the help of a house full of slaves to do the work for her.

>> so sarah and james come to congress here in washington. what is washington like at that time and how involved was she in listening to congressional debates? >> she was very actively involved. he went for his first term without her and never tried that again because she didn't like being left alone at all. it was at that time he lived in a boarding house and several different elected officials lived together and shared meals and a parlor and they did that for years until he became speaker and then they had to have larger apartments but she attended the sessions of congress. she was very, very attentive to the issues of the day, and the elected members of congress who

were in the mess with her knew she was a very tuned in congressional wife. >> james k. polk makes it to speaker of the house. how did that happen? >> politicking. i mean, he's a very good politician in the house. the first time he runs for speaker of the house, he loses. and he loses to a man who would later run for president in 1860, and then in the next time around he manages to win. part of it has to do with jacksonian politics. polk is jackson's man in the house of representatives and so when jackson has a strong majority in the house, polk gets to be speaker of the house. >> we have throughout our history seen the ascendancy of the presidency and the ascendancy of congress. at this point in our history, which branch of government has more power? >> i would say congress. >> so being the speaker was important? >> being the speaker -- now, being the speaker is not as powerful as being president and we should understand that. but in terms of the politics of america, more, i think, is happening in congress than in

the presidency. andrew jackson is an extraordinarily strong and dynamic president who pushes the envelope of the presidency and really alters the dynamics of the presidency for his presidency. it reverts back, say, when john tyler becomes president. he's a very weak president. and so being speaker of the house was important just as it's important today. >> it sounds like from this quote that sarah polk had a view of this when her husband was in the role. here's what she wrote -- "the speaker, if the purpose person and with the correct idea of his position, has even more influence over legislation and in directing the policy of the

parties, than the president." says she. >> the polk -- particularly when he became president was a powerful president. in terms of waging war, he pulled a lot of power into the executive branch, but henry clay is the one we all think of as building the job of the speaker of the house, the man who ran for president forever. but through the years the speaker's job grows, the presidency grows in power. it ebbs and flows, the balance of power is the key to the whole thing in that nobody ever just completely runs away with it and it was set up so that could not happen. >> our next video demonstrates the role of sarah polk as the political wife. >> the traveling desk is really indicative of sarah's life with james k. polk mainly has his help mate. james k. polk had no staff either as politician or president of the united states.

the traveling desk she took with her on the long trips to washington, d.c. as a congressman, they traveled to washington in trips that could take 30 days and she's of course communicating with family and friends back home which means she wrote tens of thousands of letters during her lifetime so the traveling desk is indicative of communication in the time period. the portraits are painted by ralph earl when james and sarah were in washington as congressman and lady. sarah was a help mate to him through the his political career. when he was writing speeches, he would get her opinion and she would critique them for her. daily she would read the newspapers and underline passages for him to read. she was a regular fixture in the gallery in congress and this is a great time to hear speeches of politicians like henry clay and john calhoun giving their greatest speeches in the time period and she was in the middle of all of it, very much a part of his political career so 14 years a member of the house of representatives, last four of those the speaker of the house, the only speaker to become president, which brings with it

a new level of social status in washington, d.c. and sarah very much played the part of one of the official hostesses in washington. typically, congress would enact a memorial to the outgoing speaker of the house officially thanking him for his service. when james k. polk left congress to run for governor of tennessee, the congress was so divided, they refused to do that but in the newspapers a number of politicians wrote poems in honor of sarah at the time she left. one was united states supreme court justice joseph storey who wrote a lengthy poem lamenting the loss of sarah polk to washington society. >> today we would be amazed at a speaker of the house stepping down to run for governor.

why did he decide to do this? >> i think because being speaker of the house is something that you didn't do for a really long time in those days. congressional careers are often short in the 19th century and three or four terms in washington is probably enough. again, think of the arduous task of just getting to washington from tennessee, once or twice a year. it's a lot of work, a lot of effort, and being the governor is somewhat easier. it's probably less expensive. you are home and being the governor is a good way to build a political career for the vice presidency or presidency. what polk's eye is on is the presidency. he doesn't think he could be president. but he thinks he could be vice president. >> next, the vice president next. >> and the pathway to the white house? >> the vice presidency is not a very good pathway to the white house. since thomas jefferson, only martin van buren had made it as vice president and tyler did only because of the death of the president. >> sandy is watching from new new castle, delaware. >> my question is, what did sarah think about slavery and was she a kind slave master?

>> the -- james k. polk in his will made an expression that he hoped that when she died she would manumit their slaves. as it turned out, she sold their plantation before the civil war but the issue of slavery was not really brought to the forefront during -- either in this marriage or during his administration. it became much more critical with the administrations that follow polk. >> i think in some ways that's not true. >> go ahead. >> the politics of america from the 1830's to the 1860's is swirling around slavery all the time. the opposition to the mexican war which polk starts and which

we did not have to have, the opposition to the mexican war in part comes from northerners who see it as a vast conspiracy to steal mexico so that slave owners can have someplace to go and southerners say as much. they say we want mexico because we want a place for slavery to spread to. slavery is on the table. the reality is. the polks are slave owners, they are not opposed to slavery. they like being slave owners. being a slave owner is very good for the polks and i suspect that she treated her slaves as kindly or as unkindly as was necessary to get the labor and the support from the slaves that she wanted. >> heath in franklin, tennessee, your question. >> a hero of mine is a nephew of sarah polk named general lucious polk. he served with general patrick claiborne and tried to get the confederacy, petitioned the confederate government to end

slavery and get african- americans to fight for the south. he was wounded several times during the war and at some point he was sent behind lines and allowed to stay in columbia, tennessee, and he would eventually run the ku klux klan out of murray county but sarah polk, i've heard, somehow, kept him from going to union prison camps when any other confederate prisoner would have been sent to union prison camps. i heard she was afforded power because the union people just respected her so much. >> heath, thank you. i'm going to jump in because our time is short and it's important to say james k. polk announced he would be a one-term president and we will get to your question because the civil war does come and sarah polk is a widow. how long does james k. polk live

after leaving the white house. >> three months. >> three months. and so what happens to sarah polk and especially during the civil war? >> she becomes a widow. she wore widows weave for the next 42 years until she died practically at the age of 88 and the house they purchased and fixed up for retirement was a shrine for her husband. she was reclusive, only went to church,but received people. during the civil war, she did not take sides. the mayor came to her and said the union is coming into the city, what should i tell the union general and she said, you may tell him i am at home so he came to call and the confederates and the union troops respected her. she did not take sides. she was completely neutral and

she isolated herself into that period prior to the civil war. people put their artifacts in storage at polk place to preserve them but she just went right on through and she earned a great deal of respect for that. >> from both sides? >> from both sides. >> you have any more comments to add to this period? >> no, only that the contrast of course would be with president tyler who becomes a member of the confederate government having once taken an oath to support the constitution of the united states so in that sense the contrast i think with sarah polk was revealing. >> jenny standard weber on facebook who apparently portrays her as a docent in canton, ohio. mrs. polk lived more than 40 years as a widow. did she continue to be involved in politics after the president died? >> no, she did not.

she would speak about her husband's time. any honors that were sent to her, she accepted on behalf of his memory. she was conversant with what was going on but not an active political player. >> we have one more video from the polk era. let's watch. >> james k. polk was a promised one-term president. as such, after four years, james and sarah polk were going to retire and while they were in washington still in the white house, as they were outfitting the white house as part of that restoration, they took the opportunity to purchase things for polk place, that home in nashville they were going to retire into. they purchased all of the furnishings for polk place through alexander stewart's shop in new york city and they picked some of the finest american furniture made at the time. they are rose wood framed with red velvet so we have gentlemen's chairs and sofas. the side chairs, they had 33 of them.

we have 18 remaining of the original set so they would ring the room with little chairs so they would have guests and bring them into the room. we have interiors of what it looked like probably taken around the time of her death in 1891 and the house is still filled with objects they collected throughout their political lives together. unfortunately for james k. polk, he died three months after leaving the white house and sarah began a 42-year widowhood. every new year's day she opened polk place and held a levy for the state legislature as a body. polk place became something of a shrine to her husband and she would invite anyone who wanted to to come for a visit and see the objects they collected throughout their long and illustrious political career. >> patricia lynn scott on facebook writes, "when i visited nashville, i was amazed at the plaques that recognized the homes and office of polk that were razed. why would they allow those buildings to be torn down?"

>> progress. i worked in historic preservation over 40 years. if we didn't need to preserve history, i wouldn't be in the field. the polk home was torn down in nashville and the great niece kept the artifacts together until they could find a home and that's what the museum in columbia is but montpelier, the madison's home, in private hands for years and really not saved until the 1980's. these things go on and on all the time. the homes of the presidents are deemed to be among the most important but in some cases you have multiple homes that one president lived in. >> as we say goodbye to dolley madison's influence, sheldon cooper -- we can't do a program without dolley in it. sheldon cooper asked, did sarah polk provide guidance to future

first ladies? >> yes, 50 years after she was alive, you see, until the early 1990's, dolley died in 1849. so sarah was the embodiment of the elegant proper first lady after dolley died and the respect passed down with her, yes. >> so building on that, the question is, what is sarah polk's legacy? >> i'll let her answer this since she's written a great deal on sarah. >> i think that james k. polk probably might not have been able to achieve his ambitious one-term agenda without her help. she certainly kept the white house running because he literally worked himself to death and she handled his legacy well after his unfortunate early death. we have most of the legacy is

his, first postage stamp, permanent treasury department, almost doubling the size of the united states. and many things to be thankful for. the first ladies themselves are not so much innovators as they are sometimes they embrace those aspects of the american character that the public needs and i think she did it very, very well. >> the election of 1848 brought the taylors into the white house and as we continue our program tonight, we'll learn more about zachary taylor and more importantly for our first ladies series tonight, his wife, margaret peggy taylor but it is

a brief stay in the white house so it will be about 10 minutes' worth of exploration here. tell us the -- set the stage for the 1848 election. >> polk is leaving office. he chose to be a one-term president, which probably was good because he probably would not have gotten the nomination again and probably would have been defeated. he was not very well liked when he left office. it is true that he started and a war was successfully won but when he was over, he didn't want to have peace. he fired his envoy to mexico and his envoy to mexico negotiated a peace treaty after he had been fired and sent it back to washington and polk was forced to bring a treaty to congress that he did not actually want to sign or have congress ratify but he was forced to do it. during the war, he became very jealous of the very, very successful general zachary taylor and so he demoted taylor and put general winfield scott over him and then he got jealous of scott because scott was getting all the headlines.

so when the war ended, polk is leaving, and taylor is the great hero of the war. taylor had never voted in an election. taylor had never done anything political. he had been a career military officer for his entire life. his wife, margaret smith taylor, peggy taylor, as she's known, had traveled with her husband to some of the most remote military bases in the country. she had been a military wife, the wife of a man who started as a lieutenant and ended up as a major general and taylor's politics were almost unknown other than that he said over and over again, he wanted henry clay. henry clay, of course, had lost to polk, and henry clay believed it was his time to win, 1848 was going to be a wig year, clay's party is the wig party. clay thinks he will win and out of nowhere taylor gets the nomination and clay is absolutely devastated that he doesn't get to be nominated and

in addition to taylor getting the nomination, a completely obscure almost unheard of person, millard fillmore, who, when nominated, is the most obscure person ever to be nominated for president at the time, gets the vice presidential nomination so you have this axis of taylor, a louisiana sugar planter, running with fillmore, the comptroller of the state of new york. for me there's a personal thing which i have to say, i currently teach at albany law school where fillmore was living and next year i will be a visitor at l.s.u., a law school in louisiana, so i'm the embodiment of the albany-baton rouge accent, as well. >> i'd like to say, let's don't discount that the mexican war brought us all of the western southwest -- california, new mexico, et cetera.

he was the commander-in-chief and he acted like it and if it upset winfield scott who had quite a temper, and zachary taylor, so be it, but as it turned out, that's what history has recorded. we greatly expanded the united states during that time and we got those properties for very, very little. in terms of the history of real estate, polk rates high. >> on to zachary taylor. >> only if you think that going to war with a country to steal half their country is an appropriate and legitimate thing to do and significant numbers of americans believed that the mexican war was purely a land grab and a war of aggression and many americans, including john c. calhoun, a great defender of slavery, believed the mexican war was a huge mistake because calhoun predicted correctly that

once you had the mexican war, you would open up again the question of slavery in the territories and that would cause a catastrophe, which it does. >> zachary taylor, old rough and ready. he was the last southerner elected for 64 years until wilson and the last president to hold slaves while in office in the white house but his partner in all of this was margaret, known as peggy taylor. what do we know about her? >> she was not particularly keen on being first lady. she had gone around to all of his postings with him. they had innumerable children. it's interesting that their daughter, knox, married the young jefferson davis, who fought with taylor in mexico and unfortunately their daughter died after only three months of marriage but later when they were in the white house the taylors became quite close with jefferson davis and his second wife, varina, and varina was close to the first lady. the first lady let her daughter do a lot of the entertaining and it was such a brief amount of

time, really, that they were in office, that -- what else? >> he was inaugurated in march of 1849, elected in 1848 but didn't take office until march of 1849 and taylor dies in july of 1850 so there's essentially a 15-month period when they were in the white house and she doesn't want to be there. >> she retreats to the upstairs of the white house. >> she basically retreats to the upstairs of the white house. oddly enough, like her predecessor, she came from a political family. one of her aunts was married to a three-term governor of maryland.

one of her cousins was married to senator reverty johnson of maryland. she came from a very, very wealthy family of maryland planters although she grew up most of her early years in the washington, d.c. and northern virginia area. among other things, one of her playmates was nellie custis who was the granddaughter of martha washington. so this is somebody who's been around politics, as well, but the opposite of sarah polk. she doesn't want to be involved in politics. she didn't want her husband to run for president. >> here's a snapshot, according to the census of america, in 1850, as this president is serving. the population was by that point 23 million and there were now 30 states in the united states, that's almost 36% growth since the 1840 census. slaves in the united states numbered three million or 13.8% of the population and the largest cities in the country in

1850 were new york city, baltimore and boston. washington, d.c., we've learned throughout the series, as a capital city, traded on gossip and the gossip about peggy taylor was much like rachel jackson, that she was a pipe smoker and didn't bring style and substance, very different than what paul described. what's the truth about her? >> i don't think -- >> she didn't smoke a pipe. let's start with that. the pipe smoking is utter nonsense and in fact all of the people close to her say she was in fact allergic to smoke and nobody smoked around her so the problem is she is a military wife who's traveled from base to base. she lived in some style even on

those bases because the taylors were very wealthy, they had lots of slaves, they had a plantation in louisiana. some of the slaves would travel with them to bases but she was not a high society woman. she was not a woman who wanted to be around a crowd and this was not a world that she felt at all comfortable with and i'm sure when she got to washington and dealt with the gossip and the parties, she simply felt that this is not where she was comfortable and she didn't know how to compete and she didn't know how to operate and so she retreated to the second story of the white house and let her daughter do most of the entertaining. >> and the gossip continued because she was an enigma. >> and she wasn't there to defend herself from the gossip. >> how did zachary taylor die? >> he had cholera, didn't he? >> no. zachary taylor went to a july 4 parade and watched the parade on a hot july 4 day. zachary taylor was a teetotaler and he either spent the day eating cherries and milk or cucumbers and milk, depend on

who you ask, and if one imagines what a bowl of milk would look like after a hot july day in washington, d.c. without ice to keep it cold, he got some kind of intestinal disease and he was a very tough man. he had survived winters in michigan and minnesota. he had survived the deserts of mexico. he was rough and ready. the one thing he could not survive was mid-19th century medicine so when he got sick he was bled and they did all sorts of other things, including giving him mercury which would have killed him if they gave him enough.

he may have died from an intestinal virus. he may have died because the doctors killed him. what we do know is that he died very suddenly. perhaps taylor was the last president who could have managed to somehow change the civil conflict. he did not believe in spreading slavery to the west. he thought all the territories taken from mexico ought to be free. he was a man who was willing to stare down and if necessary, lead an army to suppress southern, anti- nationals, the suggestion of secession. at one point, but texans were planning to march into santa fe, and taylor sends troops. one can imagine that if they did this again, he would have said i would that be happy to personally lead the army to austin and personally hang the governor of texas.

>> a couple of quick questions. i read that mrs. taylor was a devout episcopalian and she promised got to give up the pleasures of society if her husband returned safely from work. >> i have read that as well. in several different publications. i don't think she realized that when her husband came back from the war, she was going to end up being first lady. >> bethany johnson has two questions about margaret taylor. did she play any instruments that we know of, and how old was she when she died? >> she was born in 1788, so that makes her about 65. >> she died by many accounts from a broken heart. she was convinced that zachary

taylor was poisoned. >> that is right. >> that was a story that stayed with that retailer for many years. in our lifetime, zachary taylor's body was exhumed. no poison. >> when fillmore becomes president, he gets letters from people saying that taylor was poisoned. americans love conspiracy theorists. >> we are probably not alone in that. let's listen to sean in columbus, ohio. you are on the air. caller: i was wondering if it is true that when margaret taylor prayed for her husband's defeat for the presidency, she was that much against it.

when she an invalid in the white house because of difficulties of having so many children? >> i don't know that she actually prayed for his defeat. he was the first to admit that she was not very happy with his victory. >> many of these stories are written well after the fact. as a historian, we have to question where is the source of these stories? if you hear the stories told in five different stories and it turns out it is the same story told over and over again. we don't know if it is true. there's a story that apparently he was on the steamboat when the movement was to make him the nominee and somebody asked him who he was going to vote for. taylor said i am not sure, and the man said i am voting for taylor. he does not know he is talking to tayler. he said i would not vote for taylor because i personally know his wife does not want him to run for president. taylor was very unassuming and

often did not appear to be who he is. there is a true story that when he was in mexico, he was sitting in front of a tent, not with his general's stars on, and a young officer came up to him and said, will you shine my boots? taylor shined the guy's boots. the next day the officer came to him as commanding general. >> this is the second time in history a president dies in office. did we do a better job with it the second time around? it was not a constitutional crisis the first term. >> quite frankly, they never fixed it until after the kennedy assassination. >> when harrison dies, the question is, does john tyler become president or does he remain vice presidents and acting president?

that is something the constitution does not addressed. john quincy adams, who hated john tyler, used to refer to him as his accidentcy, rather than his excellency. by the time fillmore becomes president, there's no question the vice-president will be inaugurated and sworn in. fillmore and graciously asked margaret taylor to stay on in the white house as long as she wishes. she moved out two days later. she had had enough. >> you told us earlier about the new york and baton rouge access. we will learn more about that from video. here is a bit of the millard fillmore home that you will see now on the videotape. [video clip] >> we are in the home little home that belonged to mildred and abigail fillmore.

they did meet when they were both teachers. they both had this desire and love of reading. abigail was brought up in a family that had many books. her father was a baptist preacher, and he loved to read. so she was surrounded by books her whole lifetime. when she moved into this house with millard fillmore, she continues that. they had their own personal library, and she wanted to let young people learn extensively about the world as it was. this room that we are in is actually the focus of the entire house. history is made right here. she independently employed herself as a teacher. she tutored young students in the evening, mainly in the

course of history. this would have been living room, but also serve as their kitchen. here in front of the fireplace, they would spend hours by the light of the fire. they would do their reading and writing, and abigail fillmore cooked in this very room. this was her kitchen. here we are in the bedroom. their original staircase had quite an angle to it. we do believe there was a wooden ladder at the time when they lived here. as a young wife and mother, dressed in a long skirt, and with a toddler on her hip, she ascended that ladder into the bedroom. in this room have the fillmore bed and dresser. we know that abigail was a wonderful seamstress. we do have her quilts here, a very colorful quilts here call the tumbling blocks pattern. this was a very busy place. east aurora was a vibrant community.

she would have had many people come in to have tea. we can envision abigail having a very full life. we do see her as a hospitable young woman, young life, young mother, a teacher. >> that house is still available to visit if you are ever in east aurora, new york. the 13th president of the united states was the last whig president. all came from modest means. all the presidents before brought personal wealth to the white house. this begins a series of presidents who are more or less middle-class. what is the impact of that on the institution? >> long-term, i think that what we see with the fillmores was something of a change that will follow through in the 20th century, looking forward.

but the economy -- the civil war is a giant hiatus in terms of business. who were the others that are not wealthy? >> there are four presidents before this, counting fillmore, who are not wealthy. john quincy adams is probably close to being wealthy at the time. martin van buren comes from a middle-class family. millard fillmore grows up in abject poverty as does andrew jackson. millard fillmore's family does not own their land.

abigail fillmore, abigail powers grows up, her father dies when she is two. they don't have very much money. she becomes a schoolteacher. she is the first first lady to have worked outside the home. she not only worked outside the home before she was married, but after she is married for the first few years, she works as a schoolteacher. these are people who have experienced poverty and have not achieved anything other than middle-class status. after her death, millard married very well. lives his life with wealth. >> paul has written a book on millard fillmore. here is his biography if your interested in reading more about our 13th president. it is still available where you shop for books. we have about 20 minutes to learn about the fillmore presidency and about abigail. she brings a sensibility to the role of first lady.

how does she approach the job? >> what she is known for, her legacy, is that she created the first white house library. what her father left to our mother when he died when she was just a little girl was books. they kept those books and it became the core of her education, and obviously instilled in her and love of educating others. the congress appropriated $2,000 for the president to establish a white house library, but it was pretty much understood that she would be the one who worked on the library. she really prefered to read and engage in intellectual pursuits. but she did her duty. she helped her husband, and she had a bad ankle, as i recall. >> she has an injury shortly before he runs for vice president and she cannot stand. she cannot go to receptions and stand, so she avoids things like that as much as possible and let

her daughter do much of the role of the white house hostess. >> the introduction of the white house library became a controversy with congress. i read that she successfully lobbied key committee members to bring the library to the white house. >> she would go out to dinner parties talking with them. it was the standing that she could not do. but she obviously convinced them. here comes $2,000 to set up a white house library. apparently she did a very good job of selecting a broad category of volumes for the library. she was interested in music.

>> they were also very interested in geography. they loved that. they are very interested in the world in that respect. she is the schoolmarm. the little film about the fillmore house, there was one slight error. they were not both teachers. millard fillmore was actually her student. she was 21 years old and she was teaching in a private academy, and millard fillmore had been apprenticed to a textile factory to learn how to run cloth making machinery. this was during the 1830's in the middle of the depression. the factory laid off everybody for a while. so fillmore used this term to go back to school, and fell in love with his teacher, and she fell in love with him. both are described as attractive people.

queen victoria would later say that he was the most handsome man she had ever met. that might be an exaggeration. here you have these two young, handsome people, and miller fillmore is over 6 feet tall at a time when most men do not grow to be that tall. he must have been a striking figure. they glom onto each other and have a very long courtship. her family doesn't want her to marry. they ultimately do not marry until about five or six years later. at first the courtship was by letters. >> north dakota. you are on. thanks for waiting. caller: i was just wondering, did mrs. fillmore -- what did she do after she got out of the white house?

>> let's deal with the white house years first, and we will come back to your question in just a little bit. tuscaloosa, alabama. caller: did the white house have plumbing, and if it did not, when did they get plumbing? are they still in use today? >> we learned about gas light and heating coming into the white house. what about plumbing? >> fillmore is credited with having the first bathtub in my house. it is not clear if it is true. this is the problem whenever you say what is the first in the white house. we do know they installed either the first bathtub or a new bath tub in the white house. >> do you know if religion played a big part in their life and their presidency?

>> let me take that, because it is important to understand how it worked. abigail is the daughter of a baptist minister and she is raised in a baptist community in rural upstate new york. they are raised in the middle of nowhere in central new york. millard has various religious training growing up. but they were married by an episcopal priest, because in the town that abigail lives then, the most prestigious churches are the episcopal church. they then moved to buffalo and become unitarians, because of the smart and successful people are becoming unitarians. in fact, religion for the fillmores reflects what i would call as their journey from poverty to middle-class status, to ultimately a secure position

in society. they changed churches as they go up the social ladder. >> we are going to learn more about her love of books and her establishment of a white house library in this next video. [video clip] >> when she came to the white house, she was appalled there were no books. this bookshelf was part of the first white house library that they were able to get congress to give her money to start the first white house library, which still exists today. literacy and reading would have been abigail fillmore's cause. it was very important to her as a teacher. abigail suffered from illness and during her time as first lady. mary abigail would have been a hostess for many of the events. this would have been one of the many items used during entertaining at the white house. mary abigail followed in her

mother's footsteps and was very educated herself. she spoke five languages. she would play the harp for congressmen who came to visit the white house. we have her piano in her music books that she would have played from, and we also have her harp, that was in the white house. she literally entertained. >> the room in the white house that they established as their library was in fact an oval room. this is from our white house documentary when we visited there. that room during the fillmores time was filled with bookcases and musical instruments. it became a salon. how did they use it? >> exactly as a salon.

>> was it useful in their legislative role? >> she participated in the formal dinners downstairs, but there was receiving always going on. the white house had very little privacy. she was known for her interest in writers. >> she had charles dickens come to the white house. >> she brought some of the leading lights into the white house. she was interested in these more intellectual, literary pursuits, and with her bad ankle, i don't think anyone understands what those receptions were like when they threw open the white house for thousands of people. hours and hours of standing on your feet. >> but this a largely created, it would seem like a very intimate place to bring key

members of congress and others. was it a way to be at the inner sanctum as the president and and advanced the goals? >> i think there were few congressmen in those days that were interested in talking to a novelist or a cultural figure like that. she brought the woman known as the swedish nightingale. that would have been a celebrity. perhaps the members of congress would come to see the celebrity. i think that in a sense, there is a bifurcation here between abigail fillmore creating a cultural setting that the former schoolteacher really wants to do. as a mother, she is always a schoolteacher. she writes letters to her children at various times in their lives. correcting their spelling in these letters and giving them lists of spelling words to learn. she may also be always educating

her husband, who is not quite as well educated and she was. >> what kinds of titles and offers were in the first library in the white house? >> a lot of shakespeare. it was a mixture of the classics. probably lots of histories. >> and i know a lot of geography books. they were very interested in foreign countries. as president fillmore sends commodore perry to open up japan, this is in part because fillmore has a personal interest in it things foreign and exotic. >> it is so important, but we have to talk about the major legislative peace, because zachary taylor died just as the compromise of 1850 was being debated. millard fillmore picks up the

debate over that legislation. what is the significance of the compromise of 1850? what did millard fillmore do? >> it was introduced by henry clay, the disappointed guy who did not get to be president. the goal is to solve the nation's problems. as it emerges in congress, it is a series of separate bills, not one bill. among other things, it will organize the new mexico territory that includes arizona, the utah territory which includes nevada and utah and parts of colorado. it would admit california into the union as a free state. it also would prevent the sale, the open auction of slaves in washington d.c., but it would also give millions of dollars to texas. it would subdivide a portion of the mexico and give today what this west texas to texas, which

previously, no one had believed belonged to texas. and most importantly, created the fugitive slave law of 1860. it is an outrageously unfair law in which alleged fugitive slaves are not even allowed to testify at hearings on their own behalf. if a free black is used in new york, the man cannot say no, you have the wrong person. fillmore pushes the fugitive slave law, signs it, almost immediately after it is passed by congress, and very aggressively enforces it. >> how did the compromise of 1850 work into the timelines of abigail fillmore? do we know about her position on

slavery and how it might have complemented or been different from her husband? >> i don't. >> what is odd about millard and abigail is that they come from a part of new york known as the burned over district. it is said that the fires revival has been burned over so often, it was the most antislavery part of the united states. it was the center of the anti- slavery movement. william seward, is starting his political career. just down the road, frederick douglass will live in rochester, new york. neither of the fillmores ever lift a finger to fight slavery. they never show any hostility to slavery at all, and they showed no sympathy whatsoever to free blacks. it is really quite shocking that they are completely clueless about this. when he is running for a vice- president, someone accuses him

of helping runaway slaves escape. in a letter that is so shocking i would not say it on air, he says incredibly horrible things about black people, like why would i ever lift my finger to help them? >> any trend in national education or in the library expansion? >> to my knowledge, no. but you have to look for the long term. they did not have the instantaneous communication. her books were not going to set off a trend for banks like modern communications do. what we are beginning to see as we go into the second half of the 19th century is normal work for middle-class women, teaching and so on and so forth. obviously they would be aware that they had a first lady who was a teacher, an honorable profession, and having that library certainly was known.

>> thanks for waiting. you are on. >> i was just wondering how many children did the fillmores have? >> two. >> and one of them served as the official hostess in the white house. time is short, let's hear from ben next, watching in los angeles. >> what was his foreign relations policy like back then? >> in part it was to enhance trade with europe and other countries, so he sends perry to japan. at the time, japan was completely closed to the outside world, and fillmore sends the

united states naval vessels and says we are here, you are going to trade with us whether you like it or not. the japanese refer to it as the dark ships. i saw an exhibit in japan of japanese cartoons in which perry is portrayed as a monster. they thought this was horrible. he also negotiated treaty with switzerland to allow trade on equal terms for a swiss and american citizens, but the treaty has a clause that says this can only happen if people in america would be eligible to own land or have businesses in switzerland. many swiss cantons did not allow jews to own land. when fillmore was told about this, he said it should not really be a problem. he does not seem to be interested in issues that would involve minorities. he later becomes a know-nothing. >> last question.

>> thank you for this series on the first ladies. the fillmores met charles dickens in washington in 1842. they did not host him at the white house. also, they did entertain washington irving and william make peace thackeray. it was reported millard did not sign the fugitive slave law. one of her best friends and buffalo was the most prominent abolitionists there, george washington johnson. >> tell us about abigail fillmore's legacy. >> books.

learning and literacy. >> and the fact that she might have influenced literacy by being a working woman. >> yeah. careers for women. >> sadly, she dies very shortly after, and her daughter dies two years later. i can only say that there is no documentary evidence whatsoever that she advised fillmore not to sign the fugitive slave law. people like to throw this out there because they want to enhance people's reputations, but there is not any evidence whatsoever. >> abigail fillmore died in the famous willard hotel just very shortly after the inauguration of their successor, franklin pierce. we got a lot of tweets about the barbara bush connection, telling us her name was actually pierce. >> yes, it is. >> thanks to both of our guests for being here. thanks to the white house historical association. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪ >> wednesday we continue our on core of the first season of "first ladies." join us for season two september 9 for a look at a first lday.

-- lady. i were website has more on the first ladies. theur website has more on first ladies. we are offering a special "first of the book ladies of america." it is available for the discount price of $12.95 plus shipping. it is available at c- span.org/products. >> c-span, we bring public events from washington to you putting you in the middle of congressional hearings, ravings, and offer them pretty -- complete coverage of the u.s. house as a public service of private industry. by the cable-tv

industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. nook and watch us now in hd -- you can watch us now in hd. is theng up next discussion of doma and proposition 8. future followed by the of the army and the use of drones. army ga chief of staff rclayal barkley -- ba speaks about unmanned vehicle systems. you can watch the event in its entirety at c-span.org. >> you are in some tough times now.

not only the department of defense, but our nation as we try to get our arms against -- around the fiscal issues that we have. as we go into some of these new programs, we have to be honest with ourselves and know that as we develop these things, they have to be affordable and bring more than just additional burdens and costs to us. as weew that i am taking look to develop our future systems for the army of the that isthis is an area a look back over my career of about 35 years. unmanned systems, no way. no way. it has got to have a man in it. everyone was scared that everything would become unmanned and it would do away with our jobs and stuff.

i will tell you that is not the case. you need to have manned and unmanned teams. there are better capabilities to our force. that is the future of our army. we have got to incorporate this. even in a fiscal environment that we know is challenging, we know that we have got to continue to look at it. we have partnered to move forward. in axt, participants supreme court case discuss the future of marriage in america. lgbt rights and the affect of the supreme court decision to strike down the defense of marriage act and proposition 8 of california. this is an hour and 15 minutes. [applause]

good evening. you how excited i am to be at a podium again with a group of illustrious, or trailblazers. they never disappoint. you will walk away scratching your head and ready to scrape -- cry a little bit or smile a little bit. there is still a lot of work to be done. i want this panel to help all of figure out what the next steps are and what it means for us.

i would like to take the moment to introduce our president this year, our 100th president. [applause] ok. i will do a brief introduction of our esteemed panel this evening of stuck to my far right is enrique. couple.e attorney for a he is an attorney with the law firm of -- s. perry.ft is mn she is one of the plaintiffs in the hollings case. ms. stier.r is

next her is mr. coles. let's welcome our panel. [applause] matt, and he had a chance to catch your breath? >> i have. >> did the supreme court get it right in their decisions? >> the supreme court litigated -- one, there are two sets of marriage cases for the supreme court. there was the windsor case and the perry case. there was an opinion by john roberts. there was a windsor case and the cbs andse reported on

the new york times. they are very different cases. the political cases were enormous victories. the prop 8 case needs no introduction. right? we all remember it. the california supreme court decided that it was a violation of the state constitution not to allow them -- same-sex couples to get married. we lost. there was a state court challenge that failed. there was a famous challenge that prop 8 violated the federal constitution.

claiming it was invalid. the states under the federal constitution prohibit same-sex couples from marrying? it was originally claimed as a 50 state case. it has a surprise in it. that is to say the state of california walks in and our steam governor, arnold schwarzenegger, says come is a constitutional? i do not know. why don't you tell me. issue themoing to marriage licenses, so we are enforcing them. but i think they are right, it is unconstitutional. the windsor case -- congress passes the so-called defense of marriage act. it was supposed to be used as a device in the upcoming presidential election.

the defense of marriage act says when you put it together with the rest of the federal code, we the federal government really do not care very much about the definition of marriage. we leave it to your state. sometimes the state performs that marriage and some do not have a definition of marriage. underl not recognize it any circumstance. a remarkable thing. nothing like that had ever passed before. the cane -- the case comes up with windsor. she has been married for the last -- her partner dies. she is the executor of her state. she had to pay the federal estate tax could the federal government under doma things they're not married even though their home state, new york, says they are legally married.

she says they are discriminating theret them under doma. is another surprise. the federal government comes in and says we will not give her the check. defense ofrcing the marriage act. but we think it is right, it is unconstitutional. posing similares questions -- can you deny same- sex couples benefits that you gave to straight couples in marriageagre?e to, agree on a governor -- ite the case arrives at the supreme court. does it deny equal treatment?

is there still really a fight here? we have to use a lawyer technical term? this is how they come out. in the prop 8 case, the court says there is no one in the fight anymore. there are people were trying to defend their states. wouldn't it be better. they would have to pay attorney fees. they would not have to pay court costs. the case is over. the attorney general failed to file a notice of appeal. it is what would be called a real, but terribly interesting case. a case of standing around the there is a real case. the windsor, 5-4. she wants her money and they will not pay it. even if they have an agreement of what the law is. 5-4 in a vintage, classic, anthony kennedy

opinion. he says that doma is unconstitutional. very little constitutional law. they are modest legal victories. the supreme court essentially says, take this away. we do not want to decide this yet. , 5-4 is assor case close as it could possibly be. this kind the different treatment is unconstitutional. it does not tell us a lot about the future. politically, very different. >> this is for the plaintiffs. decided to be the lead plaintiffs in the cases, what was the greatest impact of the actual trial on you and your family and what were the most challenging moments? most rewarding? alexandra, we will start with

you. >> wow. that is a lot to answer. we believe in the approach. we have been through the prop eight campaign and sever the same disappointment that everyone else does. it was devastating. married when it was allowed and that right was taken away. it was a lovely wedding and our friends and family saw it, but it was taken away from us legally. that dealt a blow to us. we had that humiliation of losing that. about thencerned possibility of suffering the same humiliation. we decided to wait until it was legal and we could does have that and not worry about having it taken away.

when we had the opportunity to get involved in the case, we talked about it and thought about it. we agreed on the strategy. we knew it was possible that he would impact our family. we asked the kids if they would support it. we told them there could be a certain amount of media involved. we did not know at the time how large it might become. it became quite large. [laughter] the kids all supported us. it was really heartening to us. we made the decision because we thought it was a right fight and the right lace and the right lawyers. the right strategy. it was. we were thrilled with the victory. that is how we got involved in the case. >> kristen? plaintiffs don't choose to be

plaintiffs. they come to you with a problem. the problem was that they had been any relationship for 10 years and had four children and they wanted to be married and .oing everything couples do we tried through the city hall weddings in 2004 and that was taken away. so, we sort of went dormant in the sense that i think that we took you're lives back private and just started going back to work and parenting like we always had. when we found out that there might be a heal challenge and -- legal challenge and i was an acquaintance of tkhad griffin who is working in los angeles and president of the human rights campaign was looking for people to help with this case. by being an acquaintance of his we became involved in the case. that's how we got involved. i believe that the other plaintiffs were his acquaintances as well. some of the challenging parts of

the trial is number one there was a trial. [laughter] what you might want realize or maybe you remember now that most of the marriage cases as a nonlawyer i can't tell you with 100% certainty but i'm almost positive marriage cases in california have been handled through an administrative process and plaintiffs were not really visible. they were not spokes people for a group. they may have had their names lent to the effort and made some appearances but in this case we thought we would be doing that. we found out more. it didn't turn out that way. i can remember when we went it court to hear about the challenging and scheduling that the lawyers needed to know about to file their briefs and do the work they do and boy did they do a lot of work and you are all amazing. for anybody who helped with briefs or came to watch or lent support to the lawyers

thank you because it took a team of dozens of attorneys over many year years. the challenging part is there was a trial and having to is the through almost three weeks of testimony and arguments from the other side that were very familiar because they sounded like the political rhetoric they used on the campaign. as you recall, the sort of strategy they relied upon and political campaign and in court was to sort of cast lessbian and gay couples as different and deviant and not worthy of marriage and not good enough to be parents. for us with four children who we love dearly and all the other children in california that was too much it tolerate and it was hard to be in court when that was going back over. we watched the ad and listened to them talk to a judge about how we were not woeurpt and our andere not worthy

children were there and heard it. it was a very difficult experience and i hope some day the video is unsealed and you can see what we saw and heard because even though they wanted to convince the judge that they were right, they had no evidence and they couldn't back up any of theirs claims and i think into is why we won. the 17 witnesses we had compared it the two we had were using data and evidence to explain how meaningful and helpful marriage is. people who are married are healthier and wealthier and happier in many cases. their lives are enriched by marriage. you have thethat option to be married or not is helpful. the hard part was the news that came from their side. >> thank you. enrique, what made you choose these particular plaintiffs?

perfect case? the attorneys to fight for civil rights and issues -- did that factor into your decision? heroes in our nation's fight for equality. their current and tenacity and their true sacrifice -- courage and tenacity and their true sacrifice -- people denied their fundamental right to marry. we didn't have an official search party for plaintiffs. acquaintances. our friend asked of them and they agreed.

or couples that were in loving relationships are willing intake this step forward what other people were not linked to do. -- willing to do. i think their stories and rang true. you spoke with him. you felt that they should be together. -- with them. you felt that they should need to gather -- together. we were in a beautiful day. congratulations on getting married. >> thank you. >> where were you when this is -- decision canal? >> is a brain -- where were you when the decision came down? >> we were at the supreme court. [laughter]

we have come to respect the protocol and processes and the formality of it. it brings respect to couples like us who often are not treated that way. to come into a place at our nation's highest court and be treated in the same way as everyone is treated was a very personal and meaningful thing for me. i am really happy we were able to be in the courtroom on both the days and on decision day. we were in a room with people who cared as deeply about this as we do. hasink the whole country helped in these decisions even though i think the public opinion and the court opinion are slightly different, i think it runs together as a country and a state.

about beingoved there was forever remembering andy by my side and jeff paul and all of the people who had been with us for four and a half years just waiting for the day it would be over. it ended differently than we what -- what we might have held, but it was over. [laughter] every time we thought it was over, a lawyer said, no, it is not over. ok. day.ll be back on another but it was over and we walked out and people were joyous and celebratory. ridingwe were writing -- on the scott of happiness and relief. chris, anyway these decisions can be undone in the future? >> that is an easy answer.

one of the nice things about the supreme court is when you interpret the federal constitution, your decision is as final as final gets. the only way their decision could be overturned would be a federal constitutional amendment, which is difficult to do, or a future change in the composition of the court that would cause them to reconsider their decision and overrule themselves. neither are very likely. >> so, chris and matt, can you briefly describe what you believe the national impact of the two supreme court decisions is? and, from a legal perspective, can you respond to that from a civil rights perspective can you respond to that and from a societal perspective. >> well, from a legal perspective as i said, in some ways the case are modest. judge walker's decision was in place and it's the best decision

in a marriage decision so far. but as you all know 1st district judge's opinion is not binding. it's modest. the article three question is pretty uninteresting. judge walker's decision because it's so goodwill be valuable from a legal standpoint. the doma case gives us a little more. for the first time the court really suggests that even when it's the court has two basic ways of looking at equality. most of the time it says we'll leave questions of whether to two groups of people are equal or unequal to legislatures and congress. we'll presume that different treatment is constitutional

because people are really in a totally different situation. and, rarely they'll say we're historically suspicious of specific classification and we'll look at those carefully. the doma case doesn't say we'll treat sexual orientation classification carefully. it leaves it back in the presumptively constitutional. but it does say when there's evidence that you single people out for different treatment based on hostility or desire to treat them differently or a sense they're different, that that changes the calculus and makes the court look at it and that's helpful for us in taking down anti marriage laws in other places. i think it means we've got to be very, very smart about how we do it. we've got to look for the best targets out there and there are a lot of targets out there, about 45 targets out there. and we've got to look for the best of them and there are great differences between them. from the civil rights perspective, because the prop

eight case doesn't get to the constitutional issues and the doma case does so language wise at best i don't think they're much of a boost. the court decided its judgment about voting rights was more important than congress's voting rights and the unanimous united states senate just a few years earlier i don't think they're a great boost in civil rights, i really don't. politically they're fabulous! really, i think what you've been conveying is exactly right. this is a trade and not going to be stopped. we're on it and the key to meet how you follow up is to make sure you make maximum use of the political traction and smart use

of the legal traction which is probably at some point a somewhat modest pick the next best cases and get things lined up. you know, justice's vote says there is already five votes to strike down marriage. get the case here as quickly as possible. now you may think that the justice has had a sudden conversion and he's our friend and telling us what to do or you may think he thinks this is his last chance to get the supreme court majority to say that they don't have to require same sex couples to marry and he wants something there uncrafted as possible and see if he can get anthony kennedy. and kennedy says not a word in any of the opinions about how he feels about that question and if you look back at the argument,

he's deeply tormented. so what i take away from this, make as much as we can politically as we can and be as smart as we can. >> where is the next best target? >> i think there are a bunch out there. i'd go after the most extreme amendments and doma has been around there. virginia's people think, for example, even invalidates wills between same sex couples. i think that's really extreme. there's a case in north carolina that brings it up in terms of recognizing people as parents, i think that's a great way to do it. you don't have to ascribe a bad motive to the entire populous of the state. it's easier you've seen most state legislatures, it's easier

to do it there. i think there are a range of considerations out there that you take right out of the opinions. >> chris, legal civil rights, societal. >> i take a slightly more optimistic view of the decisions legal effects than matt does. we had this amazing language by the way, windsor was an aclu case, so we have something to thank for him for that decision. it is the most sweeping affirmation we've ever seen from

the supreme court. of the first time we've ever seen like justice kennedy's language talking about doma about a law that denigrates same sex couples and their children and sends this terrible message of inequality and their children and marks their relationships as second class marriages. all of the language and all of the reasoning behind it is going to be tremendously helpful as we go forward because a law from the state that says we're not going to recognize your marriage if you move here from california is every bit as denigrating and ever bit as much of a marker of second last status as doma was. i think we're going to find that

windsor is a big driver of equality as we move forward legally and socially. >> okay. enrique. >> prop 8 supporters have been making statements these supreme court decisions were not sweeping victories for the lbgt community and not create a right as it did for abortion and did not declare same sex marriage as civil right along the lines as it did for ethnicity and nationality. how would you respond? >> i think the perry case we defeated proposition 8 and

california is the largest state and 13th state that recognizes marriage equality. 94 million americans, 30% of the population. i think as we look at the political aspects, i think that's huge. i think that a big part of your case was the pr, getting to know kristin, sandy, paul and jeff and getting to know your gay neighbors you're not afraid. you recognize they're just like everybody else and that allowing gay people to get married is not going to affect anybody's heterosexual's marriage. when we have a state like

california allowing more same sex couples to get married and have families that pushes forward the discourse and marriage equality. >> matt? >> technically right and socially right. they're right that it doesn't establish a nationwide right for same sex marriage and right in the sense that's the legal watershed that roe against wade is. if you go back to 2008 when proposition 8 passed, right, we had two states that allowed same

sex couples to marry. within a few weeks after proposition 8 we picked up a few more, i think connecticut and iowa. since then, we've picked up enrique said the numbers got us to 13 with california and most of those states most recently through state legislatures and not through the court's doing and anybody who misses the significance of this becoming i think in america's sense,

something that needs to happen, something that historically will happen but needs to happen soon, in that sense, it's just to underrate the scope of the victory by focusing on the technicalities. >> kristin, many will tell you achieving marriage equality in california is just the beginning of a much bigger challenge. next up are issues like discrimination in employment for example like in 29 states and lgb employees are not protected by workplace discrimination and 33 states transgenders are not protected and protecting against bullying is an issue.

there has an untake in violence in the lbgt community and no marriage equality in other states just to name a few. what do you see is the next most important issue on the path to equality for the lbgt community? now that we have the marriage thing. >> first, we'll enjoy we have florida. one of the problems in california was this enormous problem of our government telling us we're not equal and the harm that was causing sandy and i and literally tens of thousands of other california residents, and most importantly children. and i think when you look at any of the other laws that discriminate in employment sites or in schools where children are permitted or encouraged to be mean to other children, what that really all reflects is a very big problem with homophobia still in america. those policies are just formal sort of mandates of that homophobia. what was really important about the trial and i do believe that the decision is incredibly powerful and so is the record, is that it shows how insidious and painful homophobia is and even internalizes homophobia we do things to ourselves as gay people and lesbian and gay people and transgender and queer people, that people aren't even doing to us. if we're doing these things to ourselves and telling ourselves we don't deserve to have certain jobs or live in certain places or be happy or be in love or parents and we're transmitting that to another generation and another generation of course there are policies and of course there are laws that formalizes this belief. i think the work may be to go out and undue a bunch of laws and go out and pass better laws that override those bad laws. my passion is more about humanity and human development and the capacity to be more loving and accepting versus be so separate and exclusive. and with that is a state of mind. i think you can make great policies. you can do great things and as a lawmaker and elected official you can do great things, as a teacher and employer, that someone has to get through to you that you are harming people in your workplace and in your school and in your home or your neighborhood. i really see that as the work sandy and i still have to do. it's one thing we got to be

married and if feels great and i really can tell you being equal feels better. [laughter] >> it does feel better. our children can tell us it already feels better. we're so sad they're already 18 and older and didn't have their parents married when they were growing up. they saw something historic

momentous happen. i hope all of you and young people across the country and the state will see this as an inspirational moment that helps them aspire to lead in their own lives. and that's what changes all of that other nonsense actually that's going on out there where people get away with putting these terrible laws on the books and then we live with them. >> it's just behaving badly.

so sandy, what do you think is the next most important issue on the path to lbgt equality? >> after this inspirational talk about humanity [laughter] >> i mean, wow! uhm, i think we have to have a country where you don't have to live in a certain state to get your rights. i mean, i think the fight is not over. i'm from iowa and i cannot tell you how ironic i found it to be [laughter] >> truly, with my mother my very conservative mother saying can you believe iowa has gay marriage and california does not? and i actually kind of couldn't believe it.

but i feel like marriage equality, workplace discrimination laws and anti bullying and transgender rights, they all matter, but we cannot have a country where just because you were born in a certain state that means you just have to live a second class existence your whole entire life. we have to have more balance in this country and we have to find a way to support our southern brother and sisters and families so we might have just more balance in our country. i feel like we have such a divide between urban and rural sometimes and coastal and non coastal and right now we certainly have a huge divide over how we are perceived in

terms of the government and the fact that the federal government now recognizes us, which is a fantastic wonderful achievement makes it all the more painful i think for individuals living if in these other states to get past their own state laws to try to reach the same benefits and the same rights that people who may be live ten feet away have. you shouldn't have to move. you shouldn't have to leave. you should be able to grow up, raise your family in the place that you want to be around your relatives and your home and have the same rights as anybody else in our country. so i think we have got to bridge

that divide that we have geographically that we have and address it as a human issue as well. >> chris, what is your thing on that? >> well, i think we can kind of take a page out of history and learn from the history of the civil rights movement and really see that obtaining formal legal equality is not the end of the struggle, it's really just the beginning. we've seen obviously in cases this year how long that struggle has been in the civil rights movement and how even now there

are defeats. and so, i want to agree with what sandy said with how important it is that we not leave out the other half of america in terms of getting formal marriage equality and relationship recognition but there are a whole host of other issues that are much longer term and much harder to solve and don't lends themselves to one big impact case and you're done. things like bullying at school and things like employment discrimination, all of these are things that require constant work in the legislatures through policy advocacy and on a case by case basis and they don't just get better with one case. that's what we'll be focused on i think.

>> matt? >> i think chris, sandy and chris have put it very well really. you can't really make enduring change. the lesson of every moment for social change through the 20th century you can't make enduring change unless you change the rules and get the people to accept the change of the rules. the movements that have sputtered have largely been movements that some point or other focus too much on legal equality and not on the second part.

i think it's essential to make any kind of change real. the other thing i think we should keep in mind, while public attention for the last certainly for the last five or maybe closer to the last ten years has been largely focused on lbgt issues on marriage, it's not like there haven't been other things going on i can tell you that the aclu didn't stop doing schools and bullying cases and didn't stop working on gender equality and child cases when the marriage cases started, what we did was expand and took on a big program and those things haven't gone away and marriage in california and federal defensive marriage act isn't going to make them go away. they'll move forward and the key to all of them is i think that persuading people that humanly we're not really different. we have the same kind of relationship, the same kinds of emotional attachments, good and bad, that everybody else does. when you see that range, that's the key to fighting on all of those front. marriage is a great way to illustrate it but not the only way. you got to keep pushing the whole thing forward.

>> okay. so, kristin and sandy, other than the fact that you were the first to be married in city hall, congratulations by the way, how has the outcome of these two cases changed your life in the last month or so? >> well, i'm 48 years old and for 30 years since i turned 18, i just assumed i would never be married and no matter whether i fell in love or not i would never be married. for two weeks i've been married. so i wake up every morning and i don't believe it, actually, actually see sandy and then i smile and i remember that i really am married. i can tell you that everything that our heterosexual lawyers and married lawyers told us was important about this institution is true. there is a sense of responsibility and commitment that deepened with that day for me. we've talked about it. i think we're both a little bit in awe about how it shifted us from this sense of temporariness and also worry that the outcome wouldn't be one that that would be one celebrate, that we would have taken a big risk and not been successful and so the worry of that was very big. having that lifted and then be

replaced with this sense of great permanence and bright future was wonderful. i want it to last a really long time. >> i had this interesting experience a couple of days ago. we were you in washington, d.c. and i was renting a car and chris wasn't with me. i said, now they said are you the only driver. they said do they have to be here. they said as long as you're married. and i said, oh, i'm married! and i wasn't used to. i thought, cha ching. it's my first little thing, you know, benefit. the guy said, i'll put your husbands's name down. and i said, no it's my a wife. he said i'm sorry. of course i'll put just that down. i'll put down spouse. i thought, yeah, put down spouse and change your forms and change your business practices. and don't ever ask anybody that again. but we are so used to i'm so used to using the word partner and having a feeling about that, like, oh, it feels sort of bad. it just feels it does feel second class and it is second class. i'm not a lawyer and i never aspired to be a partner in my life. but the word wife is working out pretty well. i like that one. it really does change. the day we got married i got my fourth ring because we are gay people we need lots of rings to commemorate our marriages, the day i got married i felt calmer. i felt like my heart rate and blood pressure went down a little bit. like, yeah, things will be okay. this is real. it's the real deal and our family's are going to understand it better and we can stop fighting for it and we can stop being in court over it. we both felt a lot calmer. i feel more legitimate in some bizarre way in this world. in our country and in our society marriage means something. and like one of the other plaintiffs said, it didn't matter so much we wouldn't be here. it does matter and that's why somebody spent $84 million to try to keep us from having it. it matters to us and benefiting us and other people. i cannot under score enough. we heard stories about couples had they just been able to get married, one couple we heard about from our lawyers, couple of them in california, one of them passed away right before you could get legally married. and before doma came down and because of that, her partner of many, many years will suffer

from the consequences of that and they're very severe for their families. their bread winning spouse passed away and the stat at home mom was left. these are consequences. every day that you do not undo this wrong people suffer and it's true. they suffer. it's not just emotionally. it can be financial and there are horrible consequences. for us it's wonderful being married and i feel less worried about our future but i feel like good. there are people out there that got their just reward today and that matters so much. it's just not even funny. we're so happy about that part. >> what have your children said that has changed for them since you've become married? >> well, our children are now adults. so we see them in this sort of random way that you see your adult children. they're all extremely happy and relieved as we are. i think that they've all had friends tell them how impressed and happy they are by this struggle we've been in and that we made it to the other side. so i think for them peer recognition and support has been

a huge part of this. they in some ways felt admired, i think, for having been involved in something that has affected lots of other families. also, i really believe they're so happy for sandy and i, that we're done with this part of our lives that was full of uncertainty and is now is so possible to map a future. they want that for us while they start their new lives we're starting our new lives. >> matt and chris, by disposing of the california case on narrow procedural grounds the supreme court perpetuated an irrational patchwork in which duly wedded couples cannot be considered married when they cross state borders. if a couple is married in a state who recognizes same sex marriage like california what are implications for moving to a

state that does not recognize same sex marriage and such as tax filings, et cetera. >> couples that are married in a state of california that permits same sex cup totals marry and live in state that permits same sex couples to marry those couples are entitled to every right and benefit that any married couple has. that's very clear and a matter of time before the government implements all those things as they move quickly to do. that's absolutely clear. the only the complication arises when a couple married in california or another state moves to state like florida or texas that does not respect their marriage. until we succeed in getting rid of the remaining marriage bans

in these states it's clear those governments will not recognize the couple that is married and they will get some but probably not all of the federal benefits they would get if they were living in a state that respected their marriage. at administration has been coming out with guidance on various benefits since the decision came down so we have some answers at this point. it seems pretty clear for immigration purposes, the federal government will respect the marriages that were married in any jurisdiction that allows it no matter where the couples live now. federal employees will be able to get spousal health insurance and other benefits if they're legally married in any state regardless where they currently live. same for military spouses. so we have some clarity on some of these issues. the two big ones that are sort out of out standing and waiting for guidance from the administration on are social security and taxes and i expect we'll get some guidance in the near future. there are additional issues with those two because of some

statutory language that exists and the administration is working through what benefits can be provided in those areas. so that's where we are as a practical matter in terms of federal benefits. >> one thing i want to say about taxes. if you're living in a state that recognizes the marriage of same sex couples this will is no question you'll be treated the same as for tax purposes. it's much tougher than it is in some other areas to do it because as chris said of the statutory framework. ultimately, people think that the federal constitution

requires the state to recognize marriage even though the marriage was entered into in another state. the truth is, states do that almost universely but not because anybody's ever interpreted the federal constitution to say they have to, they just do it. and any state can extend recognition to driver's licenses, corporation papers or marriages. the question that comes up what happens when a state doesn't. that was widespread in this country for much of the latter 19th and first 2/3rds of the 20th century that states that wouldn't recognize interracial marriages, but none of those cases ever got very far through the federal court system. we don't know whether one state can refuse to recognize a marriage from another state. i will say this, the way i get

the rule, it seems pretty clear to me if you're married in a state that recognizes your marriage, new york or california, and you're traveling to another state and that state institution doesn't recognize you're marriage, i think they're gonna have to. we may have to bring a challenge to do it but i think they have to. if you're traveling and in an accident or a state hospital that refused to recognize the marriage, i think we can force them to do that and i think that would be a good case to bring. [laughter] >> i think a transfer case is harder, but the more the transfer looks like something

involuntary the better i like the case. i think the case a person who hops the state line to get married and then hops back that's not a good case. >> this situation where we have many states not recognizing marriages means that even now, even for california couples who are married, it's very important to have things like health care proxies and powers of attorney for finances and to do adoptions for your children and have those papers with you because you never know what might happen when you're traveling in another state and you really want to protect yourself as best you can. >> tell your clients. >> yeah. >> so if someone wanted to learn about this mish mash of benefits that we know people have and some are trying to figure out, where can they go to figure out for themselves? >> we have lots of information on both of the websites. for the federal benefits all of the major lbgt organizations have put together a series of fact sheets that are available

on all of our websites that go through specific federal benefits and particularly dealing with this question about what happens if you move to a non recognition state. and on our website that's at nclrights.org/doma. >> we'll move to part of the program i'll call round robin. i'm going to throw out a statement and you are going to take about 15 seconds to give me a provocative thought or opinion on the statement. so, since the supreme court decision, how will these decisions in your mind impact spousal green card applicants. anybody? >> the federal government will recognize your marriage but still talk to an experienced immigration lawyer. because there are many other things that can affect you. >> he's right. [laughter]

>> anybody? it doesn't have to be a legal opinion. any thought or idea you have on spousal green cards applicants after these decisions? >> i think a lot of people will be relieved. >> social security, pensions, 401(k) and veterans benefits. >> we're all getting older. we to have pay attention and it's important to have equal access to kinds of economic safety nets that the rest of our the rest of your society has. >> the stuff is damn complicated if you're in a heterosexual relationship and it was so much worse. >> health care rights and partner decisions for the lbgt community? >> i don't think you can just assume because you're married you really know what to do in the case of your partner having a health crisis or having to make decisions for them that they can't make for themselves. it doesn't automatically make you know, so we'll have a conversation again even though we did 112 years ago, we're probable due for a check up.

i would say, this is a nice reminder that it's time to get those conversations going again because of state planning and health planning are important and they are not addressed in your marriage. >> we see cases where people have the proper papers don't have their relationships respected and that can still happen. >> okay. having and/or adopted and raising children. >> is really, really hard. [laughter] >> speaking from the having. hopefully this will make it easier for people to form families but almost as importantly those children that they have can grow up more secure feeling like their family is more like family around them and that is remarkably around them for the social and psychological development of

children. >> for young people growing up that haven't fallen in love yet and decided who they want to marry or if they want to or whether they want to have children, the idea that all that potential is there is such a beautiful thing. to live with the feeling right there and thinking i don't get to believe what's above it is over for a number of people in this state with p we want it to be over for everybody. having kids is an incredibly wonderful thing and to feel protected statement is even better. >> we struggled across the country for years to get second parents recognized as legal parents and doesn't completely make the problem go away, but it makes an awful lot of it go away in the states that recognize marriages for same sex marriages. >> it was about their four boys and about the recognition and the state would give them and the way they would feel. that was a major theme that came up and justice kennedy was concerned about the 40,000 children that live in families raised by same sex couples. i think it's a good deal. >> anything from a legal perspective? adoptions? >> i think matt covered. >> after these decisions, what do you think about whether transgender rights are still a step behind lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. >> i think they are behind but in part because they're different so the things that are important are access, non discriminatory access to health care and things that don't face same sex couples necessarily. >> okay. after these two decisions, what do you think about political involvement in our personal lives? >> one of the great things about this case and the movement in general are the allies we've been able to make. being gay and lesbian is one aspect of our community, but we sit in many different communities. we're latino and african american and able to build these coalitions. moving forward i think our

community will build on it and be able to help others in their fights so we can get that support back for our continued movement towards equality. >> i think one thing that made our case so successful was that it was not really it didn't move forward on political lines by having these bipartisan lawyers you. we approached it as a common cause. it matters to everybody. it's on a political fight and a civil rights fight. and i think that that helped us be successful and i think that that could be we could leverage that type approach as to many other causes as well. they don't need to be political when they're civil rights. they mater to everybody. >> at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we have 13 states so we have 37 to go on marriage and all the other issues we outlined and the one thing we know would be a mistake would be start thinking about changing the legal rules and getting formal legal equality. if we do that we'll falter in a movement that has great wind behind it and will not succeed. the bottom line is get to work and that does mean political in your personal lives.

>> that segway is nicely into my last statement. what are your thoughts on how the impact of this decision will have on the discussions around racism, classism and sexism in this country? >> well, fools rush in, i guess. i would hope that the lgbt community would recognize that the key to continuing to make progress is the key to the progress we've made so far which is political engagement and engagement and recognize that both of the supreme court and elsewhere around the country we've systematically been limiting what was a limited democracy to begin with and making true government harder and harder. and recognize that our political progress and progress on race and gender are tied up into making this a self functioning

democracy again and recognizing that is critical politically. >> i would say that we need to recognize that issues of race, class, sexism are lbgt issues and we have an issue not only in cases like this one but in comprehensive immigration reform, in access to health care. all of these are lbgt issues because they look like the rest of the country and we shouldn't get so into our silo we forget that. >> there's something about being a minority you and know you always will be a minority. as a lesbian woman very few women are, and the important and instructive thing in this case as a plaintiff was recognizing really how much struggle and how hard it is to be different all the time. but my empathy and my ability to understand and be compassionate was greatly increased by the struggle and i think we were standing on martin luther king's

shoulder and rosa parks, cesar chavez. if feels like if you could grab all these movements over many decades we're just a dot on this line. now lesbian gay queer transgender got their day in court. they don't want to be treated differently either. >> okay. we are now going to open this up to a few moments of question and answer. if you have a question raise your hand and amy and rob, where are you? rob, in the back they have microphones. i had informed thought that

would apply to the two named plaintiff couples. was there any questions about that and if so, how did the ninth circuit handle it and should i be surprised it happened so quickly after the supreme court decision? >> you're technically right that the only person who can benefit from the judgment in a federal court case are the plaintiffs and since the case wasn't a class action technically the four people are the only people who have the benefit of the judgment. except with the trial court issued a broader order. i'm not sure he had the power to do that, but and of course that never stood in his way before. whether he had the power to do it or not nobody objected until the time to file a notice of appeal ran his order is final.

and the effect of the supreme court decision of course was to say the case ended in district court, right? so if the case had been legitimately appealed you perhaps could have rejected to the scope of the order. since nobody had the power to appeal the order is in effect. i think it's entirely right. i think i was a little surprised by how fast the ninth circuit went but as i thought about it the governor and the attorney general said they didn't want to a stay back in district court so it made good sense once the supreme court said this case ended in district court and the parties bound by it said they didn't want to stay to lift it. so i think the court did the right thing. >> thanks for your fabulous, fabulous work. question, what do you think is california will go the way that most other states have gone when they allowed marriage which was to eliminate the domestic partnership and in a sense upgrade everyone to marriage? >> sure. so, starting with the second part first, right now in california we have both marriage and registered domestic partnership available to same sex couples to couples can choose to do either one. each of those has more or less the same legal consequences under state law; but may have different consequences under federal law for purposes of federal benefits. it's not yet been tested in very many contexts whether the federal government will be providing registered domestic partners with any sort of federal benefits. most of the statutes talk in terms of spouses or married couples. but there is a provision in the social security act that says basically a couple will be recognized that they're married if they are married in the state in which they live or have the right succession. it could be language like that that there will be some federal recognition for domestic partners. >> another question? >> hi. i was wondering if there are any plans for ms. stier and perry to

be moving to ohio or nebraska? i go through 37 names. >> we don't plan to be plaintiff in any other legal cases ever. so probably i think i'm answering your question. we haven't going to fall into the scenarios that were described earlier, no. >> but be careful when you travel. >> believe me, i'm making notes because this is great legal advice >> we prefer flying. >> i'd also like to suggest something that sandy touched on which is the educational experience of being able to tell other people that you're married. you mentioned it at the rental car counter, but we did try and get we did get married in the window in 2008 and i have found that the difference in being able to say to someone that's my husband, we're married, their response and their understanding of who we are and how we behave and how they need to behave to us changes when we do that and they suddenly realize many times that they don't care, that there is no issue for them and that they say, oh, fine. >> right. it's like being at the grown ups table. who you marry is the single most decision one does make as an adult to be denied the ability to make that legal decision of

course is a great disservice and it is a humiliating situation. for us to be able to make that important decision to be legally married is very validating and i think people who experience that probably have somewhat of a similar feeling that it is remarkably and profound experience to be able to propose to somebody and have it be real and get married and have it be real. it is different and so far we're loving the difference. >> hi. thank you all so very much. we heard earlier about the current administration setting up some benefits for couples who are married in one state and move to state that doesn't recognize that marriage. if it's up to the administration to set up the benefits can the next one undue that?

>> i'm going to give this to chris but it depends. like on immigration it's by statute, the state that performs

the marriage, so i don't think the subsequent administration can stop recognize couples who come in and get married in a state that recognizes it. and i also think as a practical matter, what you start doing

when you unwind recognition may be it's precisely the kind of administrative nightmare that people at times suggested getting rid of doma would bring about. it's a real administrative nightmare. i think you'd have to be awfully hard ideologically set to do it. i think it would be a bad

situation. >> yeah, i agree with that. in some cases in addition, these things are determined by administrative rules but have to go through a whole rule making process to reverse it and i just think it's pretty unlikely that a few future, even republican administration would have much of an appetite to try that. >> hello. it's a little unclear to me how this problem with doma works. what happens if you're marriage

and you have kids you and need food stamps or you're on the wic program, can they hold these benefits from you? >> if the federal statute says that the federal government recognizes your relationship if you were married in a state that married same sex couples, then no, i don't think the state can start treating you in any for federal purposes as if you're unmarried. but it's going to be program by program, i think. >> yeah, actually if you go to the faq's i'm sure you can find

that out. i'm sure they'll make sure couples are treated equally to the fullest extent the law will allow. >> another question over here. >> there is any concern among you four precedent regarding standing to challenge legislation that isn't necessarily savory from these decisions that you're concerned about moving forward? >> you know, the aclu likes to take as broad of view as access to the courts as we can possibly take. the way i read the there's no standing decision in the windsor case. everybody agreed there was a legitimate case and controversy. the way i read the constitutional question in the perry case is if a state's all the state's elected officials refused to defend a state law and the state doesn't appoint someone who has some responsibility back to the state to defend it for it then you can't go into federal court.

no, that doesn't concern me terribly. >> is that it for the questions? yes. >> i will speak loudly. what impact, if any, do you think at obama coming out in favor of lbgt gay marriage during the pendency of the case had on the political impact of the decision and the ultimate legal impact of the decision? >> well, the president's

decision, a, that he was going to support marriage and, b, he thought it was unconstitutional to deny federal recognition resulted in a them deciding this way. i think it changed the calculus in all the federal courts where this was up. but i think that would be the least of it. it's no accident that at the same election where barack obama won a second term, the voters of minnesota came the first state in the country to reject the constitutional amendment and voters in maine, maryland and washington state all voted to

have marriage for same sex couples. we went beyond state legislatures into popular votes. i think the president was a major help in making that happen. i think the importance of it can't be overestimated. >> i think what he did, too, he talked personally about his how long it took him and how he got there to not being supportive and being supportive and referenced his own kids and they talked to him and they said you're not on the same page we're not, dad. you're going to have to be more like us. i thought that was instructive to the parents and people that this is what happens. do you change over time if you let yourself. and then on a macrolevel as a world leader can you see world leaders changing the way they're running their countries. it's happening since he did that. it happened today. it's happening because he is a world leader and he's also a dad.

and those things are really powerful and profound. and i think we all look to him as our country's leader and a father and feel proud that i think other countries look at him and say, i'm not going to be behind barack obama. i'm going to be a leader too. he's a remarkable leader. >> this is going to close our program this evening. i want to remind everyone there is a reception on the second floor so we can continue celebrate all of the great work that this panel has done and that some of you in the room have been a part of. you'll be taking the elevators down to the second floor and the staff will escort you down and so please be patient with the number of operational elevators with the room size filled with great folks like yourselves. please be patient with us. and please, please, please, join me in thanking this wonderful panel, kristin, sandy, matt and chris and enrique. [applause] thank you all for coming.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] , the c-span townhall on same-sex marriage. that is followed by the future of the army and use of jones. improving peacekeeping efforts around the globe. washington journal ," drones and privacy issues.

at 7:45, the president of the association about domestic drones, how they are used, and federal overtime. for grandty sheriff forks county, and professor of aviation in north dakota. ,nd an analyst for the speech privacy, and technology project. live at 7:00 a.m. eastern every day on c-span. >> wednesday, the senior commander in east afghanistan break -- briefs reporters. 10:30 a.m. eastern here on c- span. >> looking at the supreme court, the reason behind this evening.

earlier this summer on the defense of marriage act. welcome. we will spend a good portion of this evening talking about the future of marriage and your views on the issue of marriage and insect marriage in the u.s. and a couple of ways for you to participate in the discussion area -- discussion. we are handling the phones a little differently tonight. call in based on if you support or oppose same-sex marriage. you can also comment on facebook. and we are taking your calls and tweets. we will read some of those throughout the evening. we will get into a discussion more broadly on the issue of same-sex marriage, but also how this is affecting states, what states are doing, in particular, the tax features involved in same-sex marriage.

we do these town halls because congress is in recess. they are back in their home districts. that gives us time to open up our phone lines and hear from you on policy issues and more. today, there was an announcement about an attempt to block the merger of two very large airlines in the u.s., american and usa are. what did the justice department do today? what happened. pre-k's the justice department joint with -- >> the justice department joint with two other states to file a lawsuit alleging that the combination of the two companies would violate federal antitrust

law. >> what is the big deal? why did the justice department say this would be a violation of antitrust? what are they focusing on in particular? >> they are arguing that this is different than other recent airline mergers because these companies have too many similar structures -- similar route structures, which would increase pricing for passengers.

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[captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> if you stop and think about how much power that is, it is a lot of power. pat of the battle against cancer is to fight the fear that accompanies the disease. >> she transformed the way we bugaboos and made it possible for countless people to survive and to flourish as a result. i don't know how many presidents

had that kind of impact on the way we live our lives. >> just walking around the white house grounds, i am constantly reminded about all of the people who have lived there before and particularly all of the women. >> first ladies, influence and image, a c-span original series produced in cooperation with the white house historical association. season two premieres september 9 as we explore the modern era and first ladies from edith roosevelt to michelle obama. >> code pink protested tuesday's outburst came during james barclay's speech on the army's unmanned vehicle system technology. this is 20 minutes.

>> i would now like to bring to the stage our next speaker, who faces challenges of an entirely different sort. james orgs barkley iii is the chief of staff. they are responsible for matching army's resources with its plans and strategies and given te events of the past several years, he must be reminded time and again of the ancient chinese curse, may you live in interesting times. the army's zeant chief. he has had numerous commands including commanding general, the united states army and aviation brigade and later chief of staff of the fourth infantry division recognized during operation iraqi freedom.

he is the 1978 graduate of the united states military academy at west point. a graduate of the army command and a 1998 graduate of the united states naval war college. he has been kind enough to consent to ask -- to answer some questions at the end of his talk, so we have some microphones set up, so be thinking about what you would like to ask the general about. please welcome lieutenant general barclay. [applause] >> first of all, you said i was willing to take some questions. notice how he said take. he didn't say i would answer questions. i'll do the best, though, at the end of this. thanks for having me out today. this is the first time to come to one of these, but it gives me

an opportunity to give you some of the things that we're thinking about at the army level and where we're going to go. as i start speaking today, we have to remember where we have been the last 10 or 12 years. and that really sets the stage for what we want to do in the future. you know, if you look at the past 10-12 years, the war fight we have been in, unmanned systems, both air and ground, have really come to life and have developed at a pace that i dare say that many folks would have thought unimaginable back in the late 1990's as we were trying to get our arms around where we were going to go with the unmanned system technology. but as we look back on what we have accomplished, i will tell you that we have an even bigger challenge in future. that is to leverage all of this knowledge that we have learned and put it against where we want

to go and lay out the road map. when i was down in fort rucker, we developed a -- a u.a.s. road map and i was really focusing on the unmanned ariel systems because of my job at rucker and that's when it came to light to me, even though we were dealing with a day-to-day war and try develop and field capabilities to the war fighter, we didn't really have a plan for what we were going to do further out in the future and how we were going to integrate and develop systems and improve the capabilities of those war fighters. in the systems at the u.a.s. level, you can see over the last 10-12 years, we have worked at three levels. we worked at the company level, the raven was the u.a.v. that kind of drove us down those lines. we have gotten great success, great utilization out of that and provided a significant

amount of information to those company level commanders in the eas of root clearance, counteri.e.d. at the brigade level, as we were coming in today, we were talking about the shadow. i happened to be at fort hood when we were filming there, bringing those first ones in and using them and taking those in, we were the first unit the take them into iraq, the shadow platforms and later on we can see what it has done. but it has continued to move forward. now we're linking the shadow with the first unmanned teaming. now we're integrating it with our other manned systems. at the division level we have been fielding the gray eagle platform working on our reconnaissance attack and teaming. in the future, we're looking to do some of the things on the airside, again, focusing on the companies -- we have the people that we're looking at, the raven

and in some of the other areas that we're looking at are the future microair vehicles, being able to put these things, the small ones, the microair vehicles, much smaller giving you capabilities other than just doing an orbit above you but being able to maneuver, hover and get in small type places and look at them, but again, it has got to be transportable by an individual and also at the same time, as he said in introducing me, it has to be affordable. at the brigade level, we're continuing to do the link, in the fy get that 14, which is still on track. we're looking at the universal ground and that is on track for amp an fy 15 fielding. as we started fielding the gray ego and we were looking at the

m.i. configurations, we're going to look at moving some of those and agles into that m.i. so the gray eagles that will be fielding them will be looking to do some integration, on to those platforms as we field those systems. on the u.g.s. side, ground side, that probably has not gotten as much attention as the ariel side. really where the work has been done and a lot of great work has been done is on the ground side. they have proven themselves in the last 10 years on the battlefield. arena it was in o.e.d. or counteri.e.d., it has been

the game changer when it comes to protecting soldiers. we have individual transportable. a lot of these were caught systems. they have been focused on again, as i said e.o.d., and then at the brigade vehicle transportable, some of the examples there and then of course we got the an kay systems. an talk about mobility police car kay systems. -- an lick kay. he talk about supervised autonomy. again, that is -- i thought it was interesting. this is something we have looked at to be truly autonomous. that is something that in the future we're looking at where you can program mission sets and it can go out and do the things that it needs to do without

being tethered, without having someone looking through a camera or tv screen. but you can sendette out and conduct a mission. so that to me, autonomous, and this is something i think is a challenge for this body as we look to future to develop those things about autonomy and what that means to the different users. some of the things we're looking at on the groundside is the common robotic system. part of that, you know, we're working the marine corps now as a joint program to consolidate efforts which helps us save dollars when we can get several different services going after that. we're looking at multipurpose equipment transport. that is one of those things that the autonomy comes into play as you're trying to develop something that will give the lowest level, the squad, some capability to move around the battlefield and carry the stuff that it needs. also provide power and network

extension. then of course the microunmanned systems which are those that again as we try to define what those mean both on the airside and the ground side, just what we're looking for. how big? what do we want it to do? is it pocket? o you put it in your pocket? s does it come with a backpack that contains it? then the brigade, we're looking at sem autonomous and automated convoy operations. again, this is one of those areas we're we're trying to define it. what does that mean to us and where do we want to go with it and how do we want it to provide those capabilities as we move into the future. but all of this as i just talked about, and how we're trying to link it into the future depends on the resources we have available as an army as we move

forward. as i'm taking a look at our modernization road map for the future for army, there are things i have to consider. first of all, we have to provide an affordable modern sized force, both that is manned and unmanned and it can team together. as we do this, what we're looking to accomplish is to improve not only what it brings to the soldiers, but also those systems, the protection, persistence, endurance and autonomy. this comes the word aon themy and how we define that and how we want to get after that at what level with which systems the degree we want to accomplish the autonomy or semiautonomous aspects. while we're doing this, we also have to identify the costs and capability thresholds. the cost and capability thresholds are truly interesting

because they compete with each other. you know, cost define where is we're going and it also helps us define just what capability level we need or can afford to get after over -- in next few years. all the while we're doing this, we want to improvefectiveness and efficiency. some of the things we're looking at are commonality, modularity. those are the thee key things we need to focus on as we're looking to become more effective and efficient when it comes to unmanned systems. while we're doing this, we know, as i said, a lot ever those grounds systems, most or just about all of them are cut. we know it is very important that we threverage commercial technology, the funds that you put into research and development and how that assists us as we try make decisions and move forward and gradually start

to introduce some of these systems because, as we're moving forward in developing the capabilities that become more autonomous, you know, there is always that fear of will it work? there is not a man in the loop. can it do the job? what -- is it fail safe? so as we look at this, we have got to be able to develop those definitions and parameters that will drive us to move to that truly autonomous type of operation. and then finally, as we're looking to the future, some of the things you to look at with a cost perspective is a contractor logistics support. in the past, not knowledge our unmanned systems, but in our manned systems, we with the c.o.s. to provide us different types of assistance, both manned and unmanned. as we move into the future, looking at costs, we're going to

have to be very cautious about how we went into this and that is where industry is going the help us whether it is done through contractor logistics or whether we have to go back and look at how we develop the military organic cape to believe the do that type of maintenance and work on those. those are some of the things as we move into the future that we're trying to look forward to and put our arms around and develop. now of course as we move forward, we all know that we have got challenges in the unmanned systems arena. i don't know if you have noticed, but it was announced several weeks ago, again, where we sold off some of our frequencies to industry. we all know that the band width and the frequent sis are very important to the unmanned system. again, as we start, as the nation starts to sell that to make money to put against other bills that it has, because that brings money in, as you know,

you have a lot of noolings come in and want to buy that and use them because it will help this with phones and anxieties to use that. that will be a challenge for us to make sure we protect enough wema that band width so that expand. what is the spectrum we're going to have and how far do we think weaver goinging two unmanned systems in future as we build our army in future. you have encroachment with other military equipment. as we expand our network and we say that the network is what drives our soldiers, our squads, our companies, everyone is reaching out trying to put some kind of claim on the band width. so that is a very important part of what we're looking at. also we have the willingness or unwillingness as we look across

the federal government, state governments to allow us to operate within the united states as we train and use these. you know, we all know that we are faced with working with -- the national air space and the f.a.a. and trying to get unmanned air systems in and get them certified, because there is a concern out there that you will lose control and then one of the cause and effects of doing that on the local populations around where we're operating these. but as we expand to the future, it is not just about only the air, it is also about having them on the roads. i think that is something that our nation as a whole is going to have to address. in the futures it is not only about military operations. you can see the commercial aspects. as we develop stuff in the military, it can move out into the commercial sector that you're moving stuff and trucks with cargo and stuff that are

autonomous operations allowing the country to move stuff back and forth across it much as we're drying to this the military. so again, that is a challenge that we will face and some of the things that we're going to have to really focus on as we move into the future. at is not something that prohibits us. some of the other things that i would like to talk about are the additional thoughts on unmanned systems and industries. there are some capabilities that we're looking at to develop, lex, modular interprabble, but at the same time, we want to have the inclusion turnover joint partners. at this point where we're drawing down, we don't have a lot of money, you have to

ensure that you do this in an environment where it is a joint cohesive effort with all the services together. as you're cutting budgets, everyone knows in the past, you can take a look back. it tends to get hammered pretty early on because everyone is trying to protect their own systems. i think that is very important to the future as we look at both joint and coalition because there are a lot of other nations out there that are coalition partners and allies making some great strides in dwropping some of these unmanned systems and that is very important to us as we move forward. finally, i guess i would just, in closing and before i take some questions, there are some basic key things that we're looking for as we're looking to develop some of these systems. and i think one of the key things i would like to say is we're looking at things that are going to have to be intuitive

the their use. that gets to the autonomous aspeck. they have also got to be energy efficient and flexible. and at the same time we have got to have systems, as as you look at the intuitive part, that are easy to train on, and can reduce training costs and sustainment costs. that's a key aspect as we're looking forward to the future, because as was said when i was introduced, we are in some tough times now, the department of defense. not only the department of defense, but our nation as we try get our arms around the fiscal issues that we have. and so that plays into every decision that we make and so as we go into some of these new programs, we have to be honest with ourselves and know that as we develop these things, they have to be affordable and they ever to bring more than just

additional burdens and costs to us. that's kind of the view that i'm taking as we're looki t develop our future systems and s we're laying out our mod earnizeation plan for the future. this area, as i look back over my career of about 35 years, i can remember when we said you know, unmanned systems, no way. they will never be. uh-uh. no. it has got to have a man in it. everyone was scared because at the end of the day everything would become unmanned and it will do away with our jobs and sfusm i will tell you that that is not the case. we know you have to have manned and unmanned teaming. we know it will bring better capabilities to our force and that is the future of our army. we have to incrorpt this and it is going to be a big part of it. even in a fiscal environment that we know is challenging, we know that we have got to

continue to look at and that will be where industry has to help us as we partner to move forward. again, thanks for having me out here today to just talk to you for a few minutes and i'll open it up for a few questions if anyone has any. [applause] this is good. this is great. i love it when i don't have any questions. that makes it great. i think the only person that had a question has already left the room. [applause] thank y'all very much. [applause] >> this morning on c-span, the stimson center examines ways to improve peacekeeping efforts

around the globe. at 7:00 a.m. eastern, washington journal is live on location looking at drones. how they are used and federal oversight. today, the senior commander in east afghanistan briefs reporters. we'll be live with him at 10:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span. tuesday, the stimson center hosted a discussion on the challenges of peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts in post-war countries like ishe, afghanistan and malli. this is an hour and 35 minutes. >> good morning, everyone. i'm ellen laipson. i'm delighted to welcome you to the stimson center for this

muggy, august conversation about between war and peace. do we need new tools for messy transition? e're gathering at a time where we can see the end of both the iraq and afghanistan engagement and this event in a way is pivoted around the offer by the special inspector general for iraqi reconstruction, stuart bowen, to present some of the findings of his report. the inspector general office which was created in 2004 is now completing its work. so it is a moment of reflection and looking back at what are some of the lessons learned in iraq. we know that iraq in many ways is such an outlier. it may be an exception of the kind of engagements both the united states, the u.n., the other parts of the international community need to prepare for perhaps things of a smaller scale or in places of less strategic consequence for the united states. but we have been struggling with this question of stability

operations, post conflict stabilization, how to do state building, peace building, etc., for a generation now and we have on our panel, i think three people who will bring very distinct and valuable perspectives on how to think about these issues moving forward. we're going to begin with stuart bowen. as i said, he is wrapping up ore than decade of distinguished service in iraq reconstruction. the his prior life he was an attorney. he worked in several capacities when georges w. bush was governor of texas. they have a long affiliation. we are really delighted that stuart bowen has developed such innovative and attractive materials to understand. i think it really does help that there is a lot of visual presentation of the lessons of iraq and the very complicated story of funding what didn't work so well and how we can do etter the next time.

we have invited stuart bowen to make his presentation first. we'll then turn to jim schear who has recently finished up his second term at the pentagon. as the deputy si assistant secretary. in his earlier career he was a research scholar at the national defense university, director of research there and worked throughout his career on these questions of stabilization and reconstruction including at the u.n., in some of its early post cold war success stories in cambodia, the balkans and elsewhere. jim will give us the perspective of how did stuart bowen's ideas, what kind of responses were there, more broadly in the pentagon and the interagency community and his own reflections on what would be would be the right tools of mechanisms to respond in post-conflict environments. and we're very delighted to have lee anne smith, let me get your

title right. the u.n. best practices service. she has been in that position for a year. she has a long career as an australian diplomat and as a person who has worked on humanitarian law and has worked both in the n.g.o. world and in government systems in both legal and diplomatic positions. so we really do want to bring in how does broader international community handle these questions? and our own bill durch and allison are here. the co-directors of our program on peace operations, grapple with these questions from the u.n. perspective. we really are glad to be able to broaden the lens and have both ee anne smith and bill durch offer their perspectives on how does the u.n. prepare and plan and organize itself for its very broad array of post conflict deployments and

responsibility? i think -- one last thought i wanted to share is that in a way what you're going to hear about today is the mechanisms, the governmental practices, the procedures, but we want to remember that before any of that gets put into motion, there are some very important policy questions and even political deliberations that are required. what level of engagement and responsibility does the international community feel it has or should have for some of these engagements? so let's recall that even prior to the decisions that we're going to be talking about today, are some very difficult policy decisions that have to be made to put this all in motion. so without further ado, stuart bowen. welcome to the stimson center. we're delighted to have you here today. >> thank you, ellen. thank you for hosting this event. it is an honor to be here and an honor to be here on this panel

with jim and lee anne and the thesis today is the united states interagency sufficiently well integrated to plan, execute and oversee stabilization and reconstruction operations? i pause that the answer is no. we are not yet sufficiently well integrated to accomplish such and that reform is needed. three premises at the outset that i think so we'll agree on. then we'll get into the meat of the subject. one is the iraq reconstruction program didn't go well. our audits and inspection, 390 of them, demonstrate that fact, but as important as our audits are, our lessons learned reports and the final someone learning from iraq, puts forward seven lessons that are that the government and interagency should take to

heart, but the most important one is the first one. the substance of this morning's talk and the need to form some sort of interagency capacity that improves our current structure. the second is that the interagency is not well ntegrated at this juncture and the evidence continues to be revealed in afghanistan and the question arises in afghanistan today and it arose in iraq as well. who is in charge? of the reconstruction program? it is an issue that the special inspector general for the afghan reconstruction has raised. it is an issue that the commission on wartime contracting raised in its hearings and in a hearing in march of 2010. jim was a part of a panel that delved into that and the panel concluded or the commission

concluded out of it that there wasn't clarity. there wasn't integration. there wasn't a good answer for who is in charge. we have to be able to answer hat question better. the third premise is how can we move forward with an effective ath toward reform? and the reality is spelled out in chapter two of learning from iraq, the iraqis i interviewed, the americans i interviewed, both leadership from iraq, leadership on the hill concurred that that path to reform must be towards an integrative capacity. the iraqis repeatedly identified for me in their interviews frustrations about the fact that state and defense were themselves at war. they spent more time bickering han providing aid.

the chief of staff to prime minister barzani underscored this. he said instead of getting help from state or defense had to observe this constant conflict and indeed, ambassador hill, our ambassador in iraq in 2010 said that the iraq reconstruction picture amounted to a bureaucratic clash of cultures between state and defense. ambassador jeffrey echoed that fact and agreed that we need reform to improve our approach. general austin, in my interview with him, commander of multinational force in iraq and u.s. forces iraq said that the approach that we have suggested in our reporting is a good one and that we should do it. general petraeus echoing similar sentiments. so the leadership in iraq on both the state and defense side with the iraqis as spelled out

in this report underscore the need for reform, to move towards integration of our interagency capacity to, execute stabilization and reconstruction operations. how to do it? that's the question. and there are there are lots of ideas and let me first lay out what the current structure is and then identify the approach that is now possible through h.r. 2606. a bill introduced six weeks ago by congressmen stockman and welch. a broad spectrum. it is gaining co-sponsorship and has interest on the hill that would implement the kind of reform i'm talking about. first of all, within the interagency we have today the bureau conflict and stabilization operations. it succeeded what is called the coordinator for reconstruction stabilization at the state department, which did not succeed in carrying out to mission identified when it was

effectively authorized through national security presidential directive 34. he is now a supporter of the proposal that we suggest in learning from iraq and is proposed in h.r. 2606. we have also towain state department at u.s.a.i.d., the officer transition issue. it has been around since the mid 1990's. it does a good job in carrying out targeted stabilization events, but it is largely done through contractors. it is not structured for carrying out at the treasury department operation. we have the office of technical assistance, which as we pointed out in hard lessons, did an excellent job with regard to stabilizing the bank and the currency conversion, it is one of the good news stories from the early

days. iraq one of the few. also created in response to stabilization demands of the early 1990's, but it is not of course an integrated capacity for planning and executing stabilization reconstruction operations. at the justice department, we have something that provides aid on rule of law. the most important aspect under addressed early on in iraq in the stabilization reconstruction peration context and it came forward later, provided good assistance and again, it is not an integration office for planning these operations. it is just a piece of it. at the defense department, we saw in 2005, the most revolutionary move. that is the creation of the stabilization operations as doctrine, now embodied in the army field manual. that has begun a transformation there but it is still somewhat ambiguous to what defense's role should be in these

operations. the proposal we suggested would help resolve that ambiguity. so you have at defense, state, the treasury and justice, big five in these operations. capacities that operate within their stove pipes, but these stove pipes endure and indeed, because of their enduring existence prevent effective integration. coordination doesn't work. and thus oversight is not effective and senator mccain, in my interview with him in chapter two learning from iraq, said we need to do the kind of reform that h.r. 2606 proposes. it would create something called the u.s. officer contingency and it would be charged with planning, executing, overseeing stabilization and reconstruction operations. ambassador crocker said of this

idea, it sets the course for the surest path to correct the failures of the u.s. over the past three decades by establishing that congress will create a lean institution dedicated to planning and preparing future s.r.o.'s. it will bring together the best of all worlds and provide unity of direction and uninterrupted vision so that the u.s. meets the challenges faced in future post conflict operations. this from the man probably preeminently experienced in the field having served during the surge successfully in iraq and then again as ambassador to afghanistan. so he has been there. e has done that. he sees this as a path forward that could work. ambassador hearst, the other preeminently experienced person in the field. the man who led the attempted solution this problem for three years, says with regard to this proposal, neither the state department nor you for stability operations.

this was evident during our engagements in iraq and afghanistan. experience has shown we need a core of dedicated professionals to conduct these operations. this is where it comes in to provide the first professionals ready to respond to emergencies abroad. finally, lieutenant general chief of staff to multinational core iraq says the fact of the matter is the department of defense has been in lead in our reconstruction stabilization operations. unfortunately this has created a situation where the core have not been adequately brought to ear. this is far from the allocation of burdens among agencies. better integration of government agencies into an entity like the as proposed by h.r. 2606 would be a giant step forward. so there is a solution on the table. it could feel this empty space. his lack of responsibility for

planning, excuth and overseeing these operations, but it is a heavy lift as they say on capitol hill. as is passing any legislation, but the argument has begun and i'm glad we're here this morning to continue the discussion and to move it forward, i trust. >> thank you. jim, would you like to widen the frame a little bit and give us your own thoughts on the dilemma before us? >> thank you so much, ellen to you and stimson college, first of all for orchestrating this conversation. to use the adjective in your invitation, this is a messy issue, and we're discussing it at a messy time. as we all know, the o.i.f. era is fading. there are still chronic violence and instability that affects various parts of the world, and yet large scale stabilization and reconstruction activities are not well beloved, either by would be recipients or by would be suppliers.

it is a huge challenge. i think it is an enduring issue, but it is a very messy time. so to navigate up toward stuart's proposal, let me give a little bit of context here. those of us working on stabilization issues in the last few years have really been focused on three urgent emergent issues. the first is the retrospective piece. looking back at the lessons. ere i give a big shoutout to stuart and colleagues for all they have known the iraq context to really explicate good solid lessons from the field. your good work in fighting fraud, waste and abuse through audits and investigations, but more broadly work from the

field, looking at the programatics of the o.i.f., how it worked. how it did not work. how it could have worked etter. i think it is really important that we absorb those lessons. second, there is the prospect of peace the looking ahead. i would say as we look ahead, we are have been and i think colleagues still would continue to focus on the preventive piece more and more, and here i would actually give a big shoutout to rick arton and his c.s.o. team in the state department for their work in developing this civilian response network, not core, a broad international network which includes a wide variety of expertise, stakeholders from the private sector, from nonprofits, nternational partners, civil

society members in local regions and countries as diverse as kenya or honduras or burma. i think that is an interesting development and i hope our state department leadership and colleagues can put energy into that and further develop it, because i think that is a key to important preventive ctivity. and the third piece is what i would call a preservation strategy. we need a strategy for proserving otherwise perishable kills and expertise. i will mention something that happened recently. our secretary of defense, chuck hagel, a couple of months ago signed a directive giving joint proponency for the stabilization to the army. this had not happened before. my former office and colleagues, some who are here today, have

been staunch advocates or as i call it, constructive irritants for the mission, but not wners. it means you own the mission in the sense of working in a joint context to develop the approach on the structure, core functionalities and who does what. and you're responsible to the secretary of defense. that is an important innovation. there is also an ongoing joint capabilities assessment which we hope will lead to clearer understanding of what the otherwise perishable capacities, capabilities are that we need to watch. so as we look ahead, obviously, it is clear that we are in a downsizing mode. ground forces are going to be cut. we know this.

we also know that there is a traditionalist argument, which as a history buff, i understand. that s.r.o. forces are not always prepared to launch back into traditional combat. the end of the 19th century, the brits have been fighting counterinsurgency in africa. ey did not have a clue on rench warfare. in 1950, our army occupying japan, doing stabilization there, was thrust into south korea, not well prepared to defend against north korea's assault. having said that, let me also say that our current context does provide continued incentive for our forces, especially our land forces, to continue to embrace this mission.

the irregular warfare context that, asymmetric threats that we find in various parts of the world where the u.s. military might be called upon to operate, oes give an incentive to population-centric approaches to operations. to understand the human terrain, i think that is critically mportant in terms of preserving, doctoring, expertise, training, the ability to maneuver and contest in environments, intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance, engineering capability, transitioning policing and other things. there are other incentives to keep the capabilities. ok. let me quickly turn to stuart's proposal. please count me as a sympathetic skeptic. i think we need to give serious consideration to his proposal. i think we also need to look hard at the political and bureaucratic dynamics which it

might shape inadvertently here. i'll identify three things. first of all what i would call the mainstreaming versus separation issue. right now i think our biggest concern is how to mainstream s.r.o. expertise within the existing bureaucracy. i worry that setting up a separate entity relieves pressure on those bureaucracies. they can outsource. some of you will recall the army's attachment in the 1990's to what they called the ootw. operations other than war. as we watched that metastasize, it became a concern for certain constituent sniss the army that army stituencies in the that to work on other than war was to get into what i would wall ootaswift. operations other than what i inside up for. we don't to do that, go through that phase again. i'm not saying that it would necessarily aid and abet that

trend, but it is something that has to be concerned. the second issue is what i would call the field of dreams problem. you know, field of dreams, if we build and they will come. worked great for kevin costner in building a baseball diamond in central iowa. it actually worked for our ucom commander in operation allied force, building refugee camps in northern macedonia, because once they were build, the refugees came. if you're nervous about using a certain capability, hitting that button is going to be hard if you think that hitting the button means something is going to happen you don't want to happen. and i worry that our leaders in the white house and state department and the defense

department are going to be nervous about hitting the so-called button, when they should be hitting it to do all the planning, the preparation, if they think it is going the lead to something, which at the end of the day, they want to avoid. so i think also there would be great reinforcement from our regional offices throughout the bureaucracy on this. so i would be very concerned about what i call the field of dream problem. thirdly, i'm not convinced this actually makes the chain of command easier. i think it may complexify it a little bit. i heard one general officer say at the end of the day, an ambassador will never report to a general and a general will never report to an ambassador. there has to be unity of effort and actually, general david petraeus and ambassador ryan crocker work very well. but i take stuart's point that early in the iraq mission there were serious issues and there was bureaucratic warfare. that's a reality.

i think there are ways to deal with that and i'm not at all sure it resolves the chain. where do i end up on this? i think at the end of the day, there are several must dos and we can talk about them in the general conversation here. i think we need what i would call scaleable stabilization. we need an ability to ramp up quickly. we also -- and that is preserving critical capabilities and the capacity to move quickly if we get into a large footprint situation, which will be rare. but you know, it is a low probability, high impact and oftentimes a sudden onset type of situation. we also need a value-added pproach. we need to have s.r.o. expertise and form high level policy

discussions generally led from the n.s.s. and i believe the -- this was part of stuart's set of recommendations on a greater n.s.s. role. i do think n.s.s. needs to step up to this more than they have done. it is very important to ensure value-added for regionally focused discussions n what do we do now? and i would trumpet the work turnover atrocity prevention board in this regard. it is low-vis. it is working on areas where there is not a lot of visibility now because all of our public focus is on the middle east and north africa. it is making, i think, useful contributions helping to foster collegial work looking at issues where mass violence could be lying around the corner.

so there needs to be a value-added approach here to that. i have a few other things, but i have droned on for too long. that is probably the wrong verb. happy to turn it back to you. >> thank you, jim. that is very helpful. lee anne. now a perspective from the u.n.'s peace keeping operations. >> thank you. thank you, ellen. thank you for giving us a chance to share our experience with you all. obviously i'm coming from a different perspective. a multilateral perspective. it struck me from some of the comments already how many similarities there are between what you're facing and what we're facing as well. also the differences. i mean, james, you talked about an ambassador never reporting to a general. in peacekeeping, we have over 100 nationalities reporting to one head the u.n. in a country and having to report to

the civilian head. you also talked about the field of dreams concept. we call it christmas tree mandates from the security council. it may not have the civilian expertise toi got a lot from that. handle it. thank you. i wanted to give you a quick update on some of the work we're knowing peace keeping in relation to not only how we integrate, but how we get out of a place in a sustainable way. this has become a big issue for us in recent years in countries like haiti where the u.n. has gone in, left and gone back again and left and gone back again. so we're trying to understand a bit better what went wrong in those situations, where the gaps were that we missed and why it involved us having to go back. the main objective being to ensure what we do on the ground as peacekeepers is sustainable

in the broader peace building objectives. so that's my job largely. i head the policy and our main function is to try to learn lessons from where we messed things up in the past or where we get something right and how we can apply that to other situations. a lot of my work now is looking at peace keeping operations in mali and what we can learn to help us both get in, set up and achieve our objective and get out as soon as possible. as peacekeepers, sometimes we forget that we're working ourselves out of a job constantly. people feel like they have an investment and they need to stay to make sure the work gets done. for the past three years, i've been leading some policy work on a u.n. policy on transition. as peacekeepers, historically we get a mandate from security

council and it says do a, b and c and when it is finished, we just pack up and get out. we started realizing that that approach to transition is not effective and there is a lot we need to do with our partners inside the u.n., the host government and the by lateral and regional as well to make sure our efforts are sustainable. we have been working with our missions on the ground, in particular, those in liberia, in haiti and even in place where is we have fairly new presences like in south sudan. to try and get a sense from them about what the problem has been and what they think we can do better. we built this policy up based on those lessons from our missions and also on pressure from states telling us what happened here. why weren't your efforts more sustainable? what could you have cone done better? the u.k. in particular has been helpful in helping us develop this body of work. so the policy itself is about

how u.n. peacekeeping missions transition out of the country. there are a lot of other kind s of transition they face but we thought it would be good to start with this particular aspect of how because that is where there was the biggest gap in guidance. the whole idea to have policy is to include both the management and planning of transitions at the headquarters level in new york, but also on the ground with the u.n. peace keeping mission. what we tried to do with the policy is develop rules and responsibilities to make clear that whoverb has a stake in all of this knows what they are supposed to do and when and can't shirk their responsibilities. so we came up with a set of five principles they thought i might share with you. maybe some of them are relevant with the lessons learned in places like afghanistan. i served in afghanistan for two

years frr 2005 to 2007 with the u.n.. worked pretty closely in the field with your p.i.t.'s, for example in some interesting places and i certainly saw a lot of similarities with the struggles that your guys are having that we're having too. there is a lot of interesting stuff there for the u.n. to take over as transition partner for the u.s. in terms of work that may need to be ongoing. so we came up with these five principles, and i have to confess, none of them are really brain surgery, but it is good to articulate them. the first is the number one thing we need to do is start planning early. from the day we hit the ground in a country, we need to be planning for our departure. i'm glad to see in a mission like the mission in south sudan, that is a brand new mission that started at the outset we said here is our mandate. here is our objective. how can we benchmark them.

what are the indicators we have to get there? when will we know we have gotten there? the second principle in policy is about an integrated u.n. response. so getting peacekeepers, whether they are uniformed or civilians who understand and are not in a country on their own, that they are there to work with other partners doing related or similar work and they need to be working with them on the transition planning as well from the beginning. it means, for example, if i'm a rule of law insofar as a piece keeping mission, i need to be working with the u.n. development program from beginning to see how my part of the pie fits with what they are doing and when i go how do i hand it off. this is a big intellectual shift i think for peacekeeping. the third principle of our policy is about national ownership and buy-ins. whatever we are doing at the u.n. surely has to be based on what's happening in the host country, in the host government, civil society, across the board. how do we tailor our work and

transition out of a place. how do we make sure that the government of the country we're working with appreciates the approach we are taking. if they are not interested in our early departure, or us staying too long, won't be effective at all. the fourth principle is similar, but distinct. ow do we convince peacekeepers that even though they are not experts, the minute they hit the ground, they need to be working with national partners inside u.n. peace keeping and the government and civil society, we're working with not just to do things for them but tell them how to do things and help them do the things that we're doing. so that when we leave there is a sustainable capacity left behind. i'm sure for the u.s. government, you face a similar issue. a lot of the societies and governments we're working with, the capacity is not there. it is not as easy as it might sound. you really have to identify the

capacity and start with it from a very early stage because it takes a long time to do. the fifth principle is really quite pragmatic. that is how do you communicate while you're in a place, how long you're going to be in a place, what you're going to do and how you're going to get out and maybe for the u.n., particularly what you're not going to be able to do and how do you communicate that to the host government you're working with? how do you communicate it to the population more broadly and how do you communicate it to the staff, within your mission, whether they are international staff or national staff. i think there is an aspect to being as transparent and honest as possible with all of those kind of partners that we haven't been very good at before. that raised all kinds of expectations about what we would be able to achieve. we should have been more realistic. so there are the principles that the policy operates under. maybe just to throw out a couple of other aspects for the policy

that maybe interesting for this discussion. something we're working on heavily now is the value of benchmarking. how much can you get out of benchmarking? how rigorous is that of a process? what do you do with a set of benchmarks that are not achievable in the political time frame you have? how do you make sure you can bring those together? we're also doing a lot of work on public perception surveys. bench marking as a quantitative measure. how does your average afghan province feel about related to that benchmarking is mapping the work we are doing. it is amazing how often we don't know what our staff are doing and how much time it takes for them to do it and who they are working with.