Working on the First Congress program. He has put together a very imaginative presentation using primary sources, letters of the time, where people wrote to one another about science, food, culture, and the back and forth that made early days in washington. We invite you to stay with us for questions and answers. Chuck will do his presentation and i will work through the questions. We have a couple of questions we may be able to do during the presentation. The majority of the questions will be at the conclusion of the presentation. Please put your questions in and i will try to work them through both at the end and as we move forward. Thank you very much for the work you have done to put this together and welcome to the platform. Chuck welcome, everyone. I am really happy to pull this off. Imaginative tell an story. So let your minds go. This is not a straightforward narrative. We will touch a lot of points. The point of departure for me came with the publication of my book. It is my book on board stature. George stature. Volume of his letters, the point of departure for me was at the second session, the last session of the six congress. He comes to washington, d. C. When the federal government first moved here in 1800. He arrives from maine with his fellow congressman, who was a portland merchant and revolutionary war veteran. For many new englanders, this exposure to washington, d. C. Is their first exposure to rural slavery. He writes to his daughter a few days before the opening of that session of the sixth congress, the first session to meet in washington, d. C. , he writes, the ground as you approach georgetown is excellent for roads. But it is in very bad repair. Here was exhibited the precious effects of slavery. Of soil and progress to telling, settled with nigro huts with negro huts. On, what of the capital . It is but one wing of the original design. The body has only appeared to the imagination of the foundation which is laid in stone and lime. You can see this illustration here. This is the capital that they appear at at the end of the century. November 1800, when they convene. They meteor i show this because not many people get to see this evidence. This is a blueprint of the main floor of the capital at that time when Congress First moves in. The senate was below where the Old Supreme Court chamber is now. The gallery is depicted here. The house of representatives is actually meeting where the library of congress was are going to eventually be meeting. Was going to eventually be meeting. In the third session, im sorry, there is no third session. In the second congress, he decides he is the only congressman to happen reelected as often as he was at that point in congressional history. He decides his family is better served as a separate court justice. Maine was part of massachusetts at that time. He gives up his seat in congress. His old roommate is now e, orsenting main massachusetts. Nathan read was a scientist from salem, massachusetts. He is interested in steam engines. He applies for patents from congress before he is elected in 1800. He only serves this one session. They reside in a boardinghouse. The seventh congress meets wadsworth finds other housing. Reverend Vanessa Cutler is a a congregational minister from hamilton, massachusetts. He is kind of an everyman. A lawyer, a merchant. Many might know him as the subject of a book about the ohio country. He is one of the main lobbyists of the ohio country that promotes settlement. Most of the letters, most of the voices you will be hearing are nathan read and manasseh cutler. They both left illuminas records of their writings. Mostly up in salem , massachusetts. Besides being colleagues in terms of the record they left behind they are colleagues , spatially. They inhabit the same boardinghouse room. I dont know if you can see my cursor. It is right here, it is where the library of Congress Jefferson building sits now. Those of you know this is carol low, they occupied the southern most on the far right. A boardinghouse won by just highest king. Jusias king. Just the way he described it to his daughter. This is the first session of the seven congress. This is the first entire congress that is called washington, d. C. Home. He wrote it is situated east of , the capital. Nathan read and myself have the most pleasant room in the house. It is a third story, commending a delightful prospect of the capital, on the president house, all the houses in the city, along the river and city of alexandria. You can imagine how beautiful that mustve been. Exceedingly happy with mr. Reed. If i had made my choice of all the members of the congress to live with me, all things considered, i should have chosen mr. Reed. I am not much pleased with the capital. It is a huge pile built with handsome stone. Very heavy in appearance but not pleasant within. If they were looking out their window tour the capitol, this is what they would be seeing. The north chamber on the right side. The left, that odd structure is called the oven. Some of you may have seen images of it before. None of this would be contemporary. These are all reconstructed images. We dont know exactly what it looked like except from verbal descriptions. They are connected with the central part of the building with this walkway where there were stairways to the gallery leading to the top of where the houses are at. They stayed there through the seventh congress up through the first session of the if congress. From now on, i will be using the words of these three men. At some point, i will be throwing in some words from william plummer, a senator from new hampshire. He came a year later to fill a vacated seat. He shows up in 1802. All of these things are spinoffs of my book on thatcher. I was curious once he leaves congress, what happened afterwards . What happens to the federalist congressman from massachusetts, the other new england states, who were left behind to carry on the federalist fight . Defeat,his experiencing a ripoff of the book the experience of defeat which looks at how quakers and others dealt with the restoration after the english civil war. I wanted to see how they dealt with defeat. From that chronological episode, i teased out four themes. They all cover micro history. I tease them out of their records of three or four days. Those first three or four days of 1802. I began to realize that what they are talking about is basically the politicization of everything. We are talking about food, science, and historical memory. , infirst one, sociability washington revolved around the white house. The new occupant at this point was thomas jefferson. He had been inaugurated in march 1801. We all know from his famous first inaugural where he says, we are all federalists. We are all republicans. He is trying to conciliate all parties. What he really meant was we are all republicans. The federalists just dont know it yet. He is not naive, he realizes the federalists special treatment. One way he does this is to use one of the great informal resources at his disposal, the white house social life. It sets up a contract with his predecessors, the federalist republican court. Exaggerated been 19thcentury view of an artist imagination of one of Martha Washingtons levees. Jefferson is more democratic. Session,days into the he writes, under the new order of things, there are no levees. But members are invited to dine with the president in rotation. I include this also for the information, maybe you havent seen this, this is the blueprint for jeffersons white house jeffersons white house. You can see in the upper left where these dinners would have taken place. Strange iss, what is only federalists were only democrats are invited at the same time. The number in a day was generally eight. When the federalists are invited, there is heads of departments, which make nine. Mr. Reed and myself were honored with a early invitation. Werejoyed ourselves, we handsomely received and entertained. Now jefferson wanted to create succeeded ofand , having a very informal white house. The best image i could think to illustrate this is one of these wonderful portraits who is wonderful portraits. He depicted jeffersons study. This room right here, the southwest corner, which is now the state dining room. The idea is jefferson is trying to depoliticize these dinners. Jefferson hates conflict. Were to be discussed at his dinner table. My friend and colleague wrote about this. By trying to diffuse small conflicts that might corrupt from both parties, he may have fostered a deeper division. Note that jeffersons invitations to dinner were sent out under thomas jefferson, not the president of the United States. The idea being that he wanted to create this image that it was more democratic, just a gathering of friends, not a political meeting. In fact inviting people under than inn name rather the name of his office as president was an excuse for him to invite to key west. Invite why he is able to just federalists or just democrats. As time goes by, he uses these dinner invitations as a way to punish members, primarily federalists. Ofknow this from the words william plummer, the guy from new hampshire. William plummer decided that jefferson used friendly conversation and good food and wine to bind congressmen to his self and from one another. The last session, they were gentlemen, who, though they called on him, were not invited to dine with him. He names some highflying federalists. It is true these gentlemen reason against some of his favorite measures. Their arguments made his recommendations appear ridiculous. Is styled by jefferson as abuse. As president , he vowed never to act toward an individual as if he knew what was said for or against him or his measures on the floor of the house. Jeffersons behavior, at least in the way he doled out dinner invitations, stifled freedom and debate. Of food, some of you may have turned in to see what that meant, we are in the first few days of january my 1802. Under your stay, we pick up with a journal. He writes, although the president has no levees, a number of federalists agreed to go to the president s house and wait upon him with the compliments of the team. We were received with politeness. That she is, having been presented this morning, was all the parade of democratic etiquette. The president invited us to go to the mammoth room and see the mammoth cheese. There, we viewed this monument of human folly as long as we pleased and then returned home. Cheese, as it was called, was a gift to jefferson from the Baptist Community of cheshire, massachusetts. Two thank jefferson for his work promoting religious freedom. This would have been important to baptists who are a minority by this point. The cheese itself was four feet wide, 15 inches high, 1230 pounds. I dont have an image of the cheese, there is no contemporary image or any image i know of, but we have one of a famous painting. This shows the cheese that was given to andrew jackson. There is something of a tradition of this point of giving president s cheese. This is the cheese that was presented to jackson in 1835. It was there for people to munch on for a couple of years. It looks ridiculous. But this cheese is, in fact, at least two federalist thinking, really a symbol of jeffersonianism. It is impractical. The idea of it is driven by folly. It is a case where the idea or ideology does not always play out as planned in reality. It doesnt help at all that the cheese is presented by the leader of a Baptist Community. This is a congressman writing to his son a few days later after the presentation of the cheese. Last sunday, the conductor of this monument of human weakness and folly to the place of his destination was introduced as , the preacher to both houses of congress. A great number of gentlemen and ladies from i know not where. The president made one in the audience. Such a performance i have never heard before and i hope to never again. A horrid tone, fight for grimaces, and extravagant gestures was never heard by any decent auditory before. Shame appeared in every countenance. This is the guy who presented the cheese. Whatever glamour the cheese might have added, jeffersons white house soon began to lose its luster. One year later, on new years eve 1803, he writes again, as we left the room, as we were passing through the great hall, i havent to think of the mammoth cheese. I asked one of the servants if it is still in the mammoth room. I went with a member who happened to be wishing for another look at it. The president had just told us when we talked with him back 60 pounds had been taken out of the middle because of the puffing up and symptoms of decay. Plummer writes about it two years later that at that point, it was far from being good. It was last seen a year later in 1805 and it was by that point either totally consumed or some scholars think it was dumped into the river. I want to talk about the word mammoth. When he wrote, to the mammoth room and see the mammoth cheese, he put that in quotes because he was quoting jefferson verbatim. It was a novel use of the expression mammoth. I my surprise, i went to the oxford increased dictionary and saw that it credits jefferson with coining the adjective mammoth. By the time the cheese arrived in washington, people have picked up on this terminology. Mammoth cheese, and adjective for something huge, weird, gauche, serving no practical purpose. Who needs a 1200 pound cheese . A politically neutral word either. Would suffer word the widespread usage and impact that the word atomic, for example would have in the 20th , century. It means something. What are the origins of the adjective mammoth . The noun mammoth was a phenomenon that historians of science and social historians begin to recognize as one of Thomas Jeffersons hobbies. Thomas jefferson imagined himself, among others, as a scientist. Just like benjamin franklin. Scientists had to have furlined jackets. Jefferson, for most of his public life, is interested in science in a way that refutes the arguments made by a french philosopher, a natural philosopher, who insisted on a theory of american degeneracy. It was an argument where he the megafauna found in the north american western hemisphere are essentially inferior to those found elsewhere in the world. They degenerate. With jefferson, it became a patriotic article of faith that americans had megafauna at least as mega as europe did. You see this in his notes on the state of virginia in 1775. He endorses an expedition beyond the mississippi in 1793 where he specifically charges him under the head of animal history to make notes on the mammoth that he might find. The mammoth is particularly recommended to inquiries, he writes. 10 years later, he sends out lewis and clark with similar instructions on their expedition to the west. Jefferson is really excited. In the summer of 1801, Charles Wilson peel is told about mammoth bones in the hudson river valley. By the way it is not always , called mammoth. They did not know what it was. But they did have some bones. You can see the diagram here. He hired a couple dozen men to rig up this contraption to dig out the remnants of the skeleton of what they are calling a mammoth. Jefferson is telling it mammoth, although we know today that as of 1806, thanks to the work of animists, it is not a mammoth but a new species entirely which he named the mastodon because of its teeth. The teeth are shaped like mammoths were found further out west. Lewis finds them in the ohio valley. But the east coast valley becomes known as the mastodon. This famous painting is quickly renamed the exhumation of the mastodon. R Christmas Eve 1801, peel erects it in the headquarters of the u. S. Philosophical society. The skeleton ends up in independence hall, where he opens his museum eventually. You can see it in the background on the right, partially hidden by the drapery. In this famous painting called artist and his museum. Despite its obvious scientific significance, the federalists follow jeffersons lead in using it as a political symbol. Jeffersons patriotic search for the mythic mammoth became a byword for jeffersonian political quackery. That is a direct quote from one of nathan reeds letters. A byword for an aquatic success. Within days, reed and other federalists are calling the Jefferson Administration the mammoth and company. Plumber two years later rights how the word is used in a different context, yet with the same intent. Plummer, two years later, writes, the baker of the navy erected an oven and made a barrel of flour into a loaf. He baked it and called it the mammoth loaf. It was carried on the shoulders of men and carried to a Committee Room adjoining the senate chamber. A large sirloin of roasted beef, casks of wine, cider, and whiskey were deposited in the same place. At 12 00, the chamber was crowded with people of all classes and colors from the president himself to the meanest and vilest virginia slave. Mr. Jefferson took his jack knife and cut and ate of the beef and bread. He compared this drunken frolic to the sacrament of the lords supper. You can imagine what that is doing to new england federalists. The skeleton, meanwhile, the mastodon skeleton took on a life all of its own. Today, the focus in kids books, for example, is on the search for scientific truth. While the mammoth cheese is presented to kids either as a tale about the ingenuity and Community Spirit of one new england village, or a triumphant exploration of the joys of Rural America and the debts we owe to our history, our parents, and ourselves. Before i move on jane where is the mastodon today . Peels mastodon, is it in the white house now . Chuck it is not in the white house. Jane is it in the capital . Chuck it is not in the capitol. I am not sure it ever made it to washington. The mastodon that was inspiration for this use of the white mammoth it ended up in , philadelphia. Eventually, peel opens a museum in baltimore and it is there until the 1840s, when they move it over to europe to try to sell it in europe. They thought they had a buyer in france, then the revolution of 1848 kicks in. So it ends up in germany. That is the picture i showed you earlier of the full mastodon skeleton there in germany, in a museum in germany. The neat thing about the subject of my talks and everything going in washington is the mastodon is now you know what, jane . I have to swallow my words. The mastodon is here in washington. It was moved for the first time in 170 years to the smithsonian, where it was erected in the museum of american art for an exhibit on Alexander Von Humboldt and the United States. They thought the skeleton represented the highest aspirations of American Science and europe