Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts Congress Hall 20240711

Each week American History tvs american artifacts visits museums and Historic Places and up next we travel to philadelphias Independence National historic park to learn about Congress Hall. The Meeting Place in the u. S. House and senate between 1790 and 1800. Our guide is park Ranger Michael ifill. For we are standing in the house of representatives Call Congress how and was originally most of the history that is when it was but in the years that the city of washington, d. C. Is being built, philadelphia serves as our temporary u. S. Capital. This room serves for the house of representatives. The second floor of the building that we will see in a moment if the United States senate. The house of representatives each representative at that point in our history represented 30,000 people. We had a population in our first sense of about three and three quarters million. We had 106 members of the house would sit in this room and then eventually from 16 states. And the story of philadelphia as the u. S. Capital is a story where we are taking a new constitution and actually operating it. Doing things like adding new states to the original 13. The bill of rights would become a part of our constitution while philadelphia was a capital. In fact the secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson would formally announced the amendments to the constitution by basically coming to congress here in this building and officially announcing that we have changed our constitution. Which of course the bill of rights is a huge part of our history and will be in the future. Continuing talking point in our political life but also its the amendment process itself. We are proving that that part of the constitution works. That we can update and make changes to that constitution without having to restore completely over again from the beginning. Really for this building, its to a large degree sort of creating the american political system. The two party system that we know today is going to begin here and its going to begin with issues much of you would expect. Early issues as we face in United States would be debt. We have debt and spending, arguments and debates in this building. Its not any different except for the details as to what we do today in washington, d. C. We argued about that from the revolutionary war. Our early government, alexander hamilton, the treasury secretary wanted all the debt from the states to come from the federal government and then to use that debt paying it off to build credit for the young United States and not everybody agreed and you start tv division in Foreign Policy questions would arise. Britain and france go to war in the 17 nineties and a lot of americans will feel like we owed france. They helped us in our war, we still do not like the british very much but for George Washington the first president the notion of neutrality is preferable. We dont really have any money. We did not really have a navy at all in our army was not much to speak of so we certainly were not in a position to go and fight a war. Certainly not in europe and probably not even fighting our neighbors and british canada in those days. So he is going to present with his cabinet approval a neutrality proclamation, which starts again dividing us in this question of a week to be doing more with friends . The same notion of keeping us out of war, George Washington will spend john j who was at that time our first chief justice of the Supreme Court, sent him to britain to negotiate a new treaty with the british and again with the idea of keeping us out of this european war and settling some of those questions of border and ocean rights in such. John j had been on the team that negotiated the peace treaty that ended the revolutionary war so he seemed like a good candidate for washington to stand. The treaty that he brought back becomes very controversial. Really wanted the tipping points in creating these two parties as sort of leading to what we know today. The treaty is basically starting to become publicly attacked in the press. The press of what would become the democratic republican party, men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, would start vilifying this treaty what is interesting is nobody has actually read it. It has not been published yet and yet its going to be pilloried in the press to the point where an awful lot of people hate this treaty that they do not actually know anything about. The federal is side, this decide of the john adams and hamiltons, is in favor of the treaty. They are in favor of kind of building the young economy of the United States, staying out of a war, trading with all sides in europe, not being, you know, limited by alliance to france or Something Like this. So we are really seeing this treaty become kind of a symbolic head point between these two sides. And the Senate Approved the treaty. Now according to the constitution, Senate Approved treaties and they are done. Now the problem is the house of representatives, this is our first treaty ever. The house of representatives basically says we want a chance to discuss this treaty as well and so they demand of washington to see all the papers and says, no, senator cruz you have nothing to do with it. So with the house essential is going to do is they say, well, maybe what we try to do is take away the funding. We will not pay for this treaty. Anything that has to be paid for will just not spend the money. Therefore, the treaty will effectually die at this point in time. So that is not necessarily a new strategy that you see with things in washington, d. C. Today. So the big fight in the house of representatives in this room is whether or not to pay for this treaty. There are days of debates and on the last day, there is a big crowd in our public balcony. You have men like Vice President john adams, Supreme Court justices sitting in the balcony and the big this is of course an era where we love our speech. Its long, political speeches, infused with rhetoric. And the best speaker of the time is a man name fisher aims. Hes a federalist. He is definitely wanting this treaty to survive but he has been ill. He has not said anything and of course this last day everyone is waiting to see if he will make the last statement about it. He does. He stands up and he sort of begin by saying, well, if my strength could hold out, i would like to say a few words on the subject. He perceives to speak for over an hour. I think its about 55 pages in the congressional record. He collapses at the end into a sea but he talked about the last war that we fought with the british and people remembered all the devastation and we really want to do this again, fight another war for years. Apparently some of the men have tears in their eyes and when he finally finishes, Supreme Court justices james yodel turns or Vice President john adams and says, my god, isnt that man great . Adam says yes indeed he is. So the treaty will end up passing by just a couple of votes. At one point there is a committee of the whole vote. The head of the committee of the hold was frederick who was our first speaker of the house and he breaks the tie. Now he is ostensibly on the democratic republican, the jeffersonian side so he should be against a treaty. But he is convinced that maybe not going towards a good idea so he ends up voted to pass the bill for the funding of this treaty and he is vilified. He is vilified that he voted for this treaty against his side to the point where he loses his seat in his next election to congress but even worse, in the short term, he is stabbed on the sidewalks of philadelphia by his brotherinlaw because of his will. He survived but im sure family gatherings would become awkward for a while. It tells us how high or political tensions can be an arm early days. Yet at the same time we are also proving that the new constitution, despite the difficulties, works. Probably the best day in this rooms history in a lot of ways is the day john adams is inaugurated at the front by the speaker of the house is platform. He will stand on that platform with Thomas Jefferson. Also at the front of the room, outgoing president George Washington. Now this is a big deal. Changing president s for us today is a fairly normal thing. We have big parades and parties and its a big thing but this was a really important day because this is where we are proving that the system where we, the voters, elect our leaders and we change them when we vote. We are proven that this system works because the john adams election is a lot of first. The first time we are not going to have George Washington as our president. George washington is the only man to be unanimously elected president , which he was twice. He did not particularly run for office. At the end of his first term he did not even want a second term. He was kind of talked into it. Essentially kind of almost guys on both sides talk to him in another four years. He does not run. He is unanimously reelected. At the end of the second term, he will try to talk to him into a third but he is not having it. He just wants to retire at this point in time. Somebody else is turn. So he will step aside for john adams. Now we do not know if this works. We have never done this before. Never actually changed our president so will the people accept this . We do not know. The other thing to remember is john adams is contested in his election. He actually had to fight his battle against the opponent was Thomas Jefferson. And these two obviously were friends and obviously wrote the declaration of independence together. And the election is very ugly, its very nasty, its very close, its sort of, for us today, in normal president ial election. John adams wins by three electoral votes only slightly more than have. Now we never had a president that only had half the votes. We never had a president who had to really fight for an election and of course the other problem in those early days as if you come in second, you one Vice President , which means the new president is one party, the new Vice President is the other party. Just picky any modern election you like. Put the two opponents together for four years are the executive and you can see how neither them will be particularly happy. John adams and Thomas Jefferson are not happy to be standing in from the room together. This is a full house that day. The balcony, the seats, you got most of the government here. A lot of curiosity but you could also figure out about half of the men in this room are not very happy to see john adams standing up there. The other half of the men in the room are now very happy to see Thomas Jefferson standing up there and generally speaking, nobody is very happy that George Washington is leaving us in this time. So john adams would kind of look around the room and see a lot of people who were not very happy. He can see people with almost he is in their eyes that washington was leaving them. And he kind of would later say that he looked around. He only saw one person that day who particularly looked happy, which was of course George Washington who had a look on his first and said, john adams, you are fairly, and i am fairly out. So now lets find out whos happier on the state. But washington would quietly go to private life and i think very happily withdraw from the scene. Adams himself would be inaugurated. He would have a difficult presidency because now really we are seeing the throws of political fighting going on. But it happened peacefully. We proved that constitution worked and we prove that we could continue in times of difficulty like this that we could continue forward with the system in place. In 1800, they would leave this building and move to the current capital in washington, d. C. Adams in jefferson would have another difficult election at that time. This time jefferson winning and he would be the first president inaugurated in the new capital of washington, d. C. These years in philadelphia are setting the tone for the rest of our early history and all the way up to today. So the room itself will start out as a courthouse so this would have been a courtroom but around the time this building is finished construction, its actually being built during the Constitutional Convention. So when they are finished construction, its around the time the philadelphia offers it to the u. S. Government. I think philadelphias secret hope is that if we are really nice, maybe they will stay here and not go to the new city. So they give in the new courthouse building and they end up actually expanding it a little bit to make more room for congress. We think the setup looks like this. We actually have a seating chart from one session of congress that shows the design of the desks and all. We do not have any of the desks that have survived. We are fortunate that we do have some of the chairs today. Unfortunately, we only have about 30 of them between the two houses of congress and most of them we do not know necessarily which house they were in so today all of our regional chairs are in the senate. Now for this room as far as original items goes, the chair on the platform for the speaker of the house is an original. We actually have three chairs exactly like that. We do not necessarily know which was which but we have one today that we assume was for the speaker of the house. One for the Vice President as president of the senate and the third for the chief justice and the Supreme Court. Now we do not, again, know which one is which so what we can fairly say is some buddy important sat in a chair for the speaker about, whether was the speaker of the house or not, we are not sure. But as far as this room went in the early 1800s when the federal government moved out, they want to become a courthouse. Again, in fact, this was divided into two rooms for a long number of years. They build a hallway down the middle so they could have courtrooms instead of one very large one. About the time of the first world war, the City Government has left this block and move to our current city hall in philadelphia and the cities recognizing the historic value of these buildings has some restoration work done and they kind of want to turn them on to museums face. If youd visit this building in the years around the first world war, the 1920s, you would have seen the building or the room rather restore back to the big single room that it wouldve been but it wouldve been a room filled with old stuff. Kind of the oldfashioned sort of museum. After world war ii when the National Parks Service Comes in to take over the Historic Buildings here, again the goal is to try to get them back to how they looked in those important days. So that is where we try to study. How do they have the seeding set up . Again, we have one chart that we have been able to find. One of the members drew, showing who was sitting where. At least for one snapshot for the session of congress. We have some sketches that show the platform for the speaker of the house. We have enough original furniture that we can sort of matchup things that we think were here. Unfortunately, a lot of the items that were here, if the city needed them like chairs, they kept using them. Desks, not so much. Things that the government might have own for example, the library of congress started in this building. They started buying books for congress here in philadelphia. It was not the library of congress as we know it today but it does begin here. A lot of things that went to washington, d. C. , are burned when washington is burn in the war of 1812. We lose a lot of those early things. So that is one of the challenges with a building like this, is you do not necessarily have all the things but you try to make do the best you can to give people that sense when they come in to see them of what it looked like when men like James Madison or Young Andrew Jackson were sitting in this room as members of the house of representatives. We are in the Senate Chamber here a Congress Hall in philadelphia. The room, as you can see, is quite a bit more grand than the riot house of representatives wouldve been. There are a couple of reasons for that. Our roots, as a nation, go back to when we were british. The british have a parliament with two houses, an upper house, house of lords, lower house, the house of commons and there is definitely parallels with our congress today. The house of representatives is very similarly set up to the house of commons and then the senate would therefore be left to be based on the house of lords. Obviously we are not going to have to candles and noble titles like that, but we have states and every state is equal in the senate so the states kind of take the place of our house of lords in our Senate Chambers. So the british, you know, often using that green color in government, the colonies would use it and then to the American Government but the red would be much more of that house of lords kind of color so youre going to see read in that early senate here in philadelphia. And definitely has that kind of look to it that seems a bit on the higher end. Now the interesting thing about the senate is they are created with a bit more power. The power is a tied to the president but the house of representatives does not have. Treaties in the United States are with the advice and consent of the senate, approved by the advice and consent of the senate. So the senate has to approve all treaties, the house does not, the senate does. So there is one power. Also anytime the president makes an appointment to his cabinet, ambassador, Supreme Court of course, those folks would have to come in from the senate and be approved by the senate or rejected. And so here in philadelphia, we have our very first treaty approved by the senate which is the jay treaty and that led to the big fight in the house of representatives over whether or not to pay for it. But over that same issue, we have the first rejection of a president ial nominee by the senate. John roth lids who was actually a side of the u. S. Constitution actually one of the players to enact the constitution is one of washingtons first choices for the original six justice on the Supreme Court. He actually accepts but then resigned the post without having ever served on the Supreme Court. He would later become the chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court juan john j, who was the first United States a cream court chief justice resigns, hes elected governor of new york. He leaves the post of chief justice, that leave anti. But he will come back to philadelphia this time and actually serve as chief justice however, he is appointed during a recess of congress and so technically the senate has not confirmed him but he actually serves a session of the court as chief justice and the zone through some cases. When the senate comes back later that year to return to session then they take of approving john. Now john which washington has never had anyone rejected that he is appointed so this is never happen in our young history well John Rutledge has a couple of things going against him. Number one, there are guys in the senate that think the guy is a little crazy. He is definitely had some kind of strange things that we have had to say at different times in the years of the 17 nineties. So he has got a bit of a kind of reputation among some people but also where he is going to get into trouble, is he made some very pointed comments about that but jay treaty that was by his predecessor. They tended to be a bit rambling speeches. He was very critical of some of the things he said about the senate itself, which of course senators would read the newspapers and they would read with the South Carolina Supreme Court chief justice had to say about that and when he came in front of them, they would remember the sorts of things and then they would decide then that perhaps this guy is not the best choice to be the chief justice of the Supreme Court so even though he actually around the court for a little while, it was kind of send packing back home. So the very first rejection of the president ial nominee. Again, here in philadelphia, you are seeing the constitution in a lot of Different Directions being explored and used for the first time. And of course you go through our history and you see other occurrences where this has happened. Now the one other power the Supreme Court or the Senate Rather that is not going to get exercise here in philadelphia is the power of impeaching, if the president is impeached, the house would vote to have an impeachment. The senate would be basically the jury and what is essentially a trial to decide whether or not the president should be removed from office. You look at the power of the senate and you see these things that they can do that tie them to the president in a lot of ways. And so therefore give them that little bit of extra advantage of the house of representatives. Plus they are a smaller body man with only two senators per state. You represent an entire state which you for from a large st. , means represent an awful lot of people. Finally, the other thing about the senate that makes it a bit unique is you get that longer term. The longest elected term in the United States with six year term but early on, senators were not even elected. Senators are appointed on the basis of the constitution, originally. Senators are appointed by their state legislature so senators do not have to run for office. As a result, senators here in philadelphia met in private. They did not meet in public. The house of representatives all we did so the house was open to the public, the senate was not. Now the Senate Starts getting into their own controversial bills like the jay treaty. One of the early senators that is sent by pennsylvania is a man named albert he, he is famous for being a longtime secretary of treasury. Hes a democratic republican side and so the federalists side of the early senate and basically looking at the strict rules would say albert, whose swiss, has not lived in the United States a good number of years to actually serve in the senate. So the senate actually voted him out. He is later elected to the house of representatives by pennsylvania. But he is rejected from the senate. So naturally people pennsylvania want to know why their senator has been kicked out of the senate. So you start getting this growing public feeling that we want to see what is going on when the senate meets here in philadelphia and add to that the press obviously wants to know what is going on because they have got guy sitting in the balcony watching the house, they want to have guy sitting up here watching the senate because that is news. Finally i am sure of it that the house of representatives are sitting downstairs meeting a public going, you know it, one of those guys get to meet in private we have to sit in front of all these people . Im sure there is pressure coming from any different direction so finally after about five years of meeting behind closed doors, the senate will lands and built a small balcony and they start to as well meet in public here in philadelphia. Again, that is one of the longstanding traditions but again when you go back to our earliest days, this is where you are seeing that they do not have anything set in stone. They have a constitution that is only four pages long. These men have to figure out what their job is all about based on a few paragraphs that say, duties and powers that they have. George washington essentially invents the job of president here in philadelphia. Again just going on some, you know, paragraphs in the constitution on figure out, okay, what does that mean that i do every day . For example, when he wants to negotiate a treaty with various indian tribes, what he will do, the first time he is going to do Something Like this, is he will actually come into the senate and sit down and say, well im supposed to treaties with your advice and consent so i want your advice and consent on these issues. The senate kind of goes, wait a minute, we are not really interested in talking about that with you in the room. Why dont you give us some stuff and we will talk about it and get back to later . So that is about the ones that the president comes and goes in the senate. Its more strict and separation than we are used to. Now for washington, he is not a guy who likes tons of, you know, public accolades and does not like to give a lot of speeches. He will do one address to Congress Every year. They do not call of the state of the union yet but his address to congress, which he writes with his cabinet, he will come to the senate for his inauguration for his second term as president. He kind of keeps it lowkey. He does not do the bigger event that we saw downstairs in the house of representatives with john adams, which was a much bigger deal. Washington just going to a second term, basically comes and takes his oath of office and more lets goes back to work because he did not really want the big public ceremony to take place. That is something that would change with adams integration and of course when you move down to washington, you start having inaugurations at the new Capital Building so that would be a change. Again, we are sort of growing into what the United States is today. Now as you look around this room, a lot of the guys that sat here in the senate where the architects of our constitution because senators being chosen by their states, a lot of the guys that had a big impact on writing that constitution would be then sent by their states to philadelphia. One of the ones that is not is James Madison. He runs into the problem in virginia that Patrick Henry is one of the great powers of virginia. Henry is not a big fan of madison and his big role in the constitution so essentially madison is sort of, you know, even though he is one of the week on the father of the constitution, the obvious qualm of getting a seat in the senate does not happen for James Madison. He has to suffer through being elected and running for office and becoming a member of the house. As for election of senators, that is actually very recent phenomenon in our history. That would be the 17th amendment so 1913 when we start electing our senators, just over century ago. So all the men prior to that just have to court their state legislator. You think of the lincoln, douglas debate over senate. They are not actually debating for people to vote for them, they are debating for people to vote for people for the state of government to vote for them. Its a very complicated system which is why when you get into that 20th century populism, people are saying, you know what, we want to be able to vote for our own senate. We vote for pretty much everyone else in government, why not the senate . So that is one of those things that changes. Again, we have to kind of grow into how some of these things work. But the remarkable thing when you go back to these years in philadelphia is other than that, most everything does operate pretty well the same way. We are pretty much using the system designed in Independence Hall that they kind of take into this building and use and continue on when they move to washington and 1800. Now as you look at this room, and like downstairs in the house of representatives, the second floor of the building with the senate is a lot more original as far as the things in the building go. We have the setting for 32 senators. We start with just of course 26 representing 13 states and, as each new state, vermont, kentucky, tennessee, will come into the unit, you will add two new senators so up to 32. Now when they lead for washington. 32 senators would go, the room would turn into a courtroom and eventually actually it was the United States Federal District courtroom in the 19th century. They do not necessarily need this stuff that is here. So desks, kind of go away, we do not know what happened to them. These are sort of our best guests. But chairs you always need. So when the mid 1800s when people started actually thinking about American History like we do so much of today, they started saying, what we need to collect things for Independence Hall and somebody says, when we got a bunch of these chairs, a couple of dozen chairs and at some point, somebody start to think, maybe they were the chairs for the Continental Congress so they stop them in the room but of course they were in chairs for the federal congress but either way, these chairs were displayed in Independence Hall for a long time. And so fortunately when we actually are restoring Congress Hall, the old u. S. Capital to look as it wouldve, we had 20 united regional chairs. Some of them, the majority were in the house. A couple of them were marked senate, some had different color upholstery, somewhere in the senate they have different colors. We said, lets put them all in the Senate Chambers. We will fill them with 29 of the 32 chairs being regional. Either for the house for senate, but original nevertheless. The eagle on the ceiling, we are not sure the date 100 percent, the one thing i can tell you is are 15 stars above it. So it is somewhere after the 15th state. And there is the union, we dont exactly know when and we may never know when it was painted. But it was an artistic rendering of this ill of the u. S. That was another thing created here that in 1782 in and bennetts hall. Something they worked on throughout the revolutionary war, they kept changing a little bit here and there until they finally worked out the final version of the seal. We have a carpet on the floor that is a reproduction of the original carpet. That more than likely went to washington when they moved. Whatever happened to it, it is long gone. We dont know what happened the original senate carpet. It was made specifically for the room. There is enough written description of exactly what it was that enabled us to recreate the carpet it would have also featured the seal of the United States, but it would been encircled by the original state seals. It was a pretty common motif of the time. Chaining the states together to create this bigger thing with the United States. A lot of those interesting symbols, weather for the states themselves or the United States, they have their roots in philadelphia. One original desk we still have is the secretarys desk and the Vice President would sit in the back of the room. Thats another interesting part. The Vice President starting with john adams and succeeded by Thomas Jefferson, they would be here a good bit of the time. Probably more so than the Vice President would be there today. Today he can sit in the senate any day he would want. Early on they made it clear that john adams, they didnt want him talking. That lets them very disappointed. He was one of the first but not the last Vice President s to complain about the limitations of that job. He is allowed to vote only to break ties. Again, that carries through the years. The Vice President is always the tiebreaker. Any big day or big vote, the Vice President will be there. Other than that the Vice President john adams finds himself stuck in Philadelphia Running a bunch of meetings with guys who would not let him talk and it was very dissatisfied. When Thomas Jefferson was Vice President his opponent is the president. He doesnt necessarily agree with a lot of the policies he has to be part of the executive over. It was a difficult situation, which leads to creating the system where we are going to elect president and Vice President a little bit more carefully. Rather than the Electoral College voting for two men, together against the most those votes being president , would make a system where there is candidates for president and Vice President. The real impetus is not the adams election, of the jefferson election in 1800. That is when they are packing up and moving to washington dc. There was no one election day in those days. They will start meeting and the new capital in december of 1800. They leave philadelphia that summer. In the midst of this we elect adams versus jefferson. The two sides have learned their lessons. They say we will both run two guys but you can not specify which is which. When jefferson wins the election technically he ties his own Vice President of candidate, aaron burr. Burr and jefferson being tied means by the constitution because of the house of representatives. The first thing we do in our new capital is the house of representatives has to elect a new president and vote more than 30 times before the tie can be broken. We have learned a lesson with these two elections, lets fix it so the 12th amendment comes along to straighten out the way of electing president. They are managing to find out what does work, which isnt much, and find out much of the constitution does. Today we look at a room that was much smaller than the senate today, of the senators who sat here pretty much do the same things as the senators in washington today. During the Constitutional Convention in philadelphia, the issue of slavery was frequently debated throughout the summer as 1787, next didnt discussion hosted by the Colonial Williamsburg foundation, law professor and two actors who portray free and enslaved blacks and williamsburg, discuss the role compromises made over slavery played on the constitution. This program also includes two dramatic interpretations of 17 eig