House and senate between 1790 and 1800. Our guide is park Ranger Matthew ifill. We are standing in the old house of representatives, what we Call Congress hall. Originally it was billed as a town courthouse for philadelphia, from worst of its history thats exactly what it was. But in the use of the city of washington d. C. Is being willed built, philadelphia serves as the temporary u. S. Capital. This room serves for the house of representatives, the second floor of the building they will get him out it, was we the United States senate. The house of representatives, each representative at that point in our history represented 30,000 people. We had a population, who first census of about three and three quarters million. We had 106 members in the house, who would sit in this room. And eventually from 16 say states. Mr. Philadelphia as the u. S. Capital, we are talking about a new constitution, and adding new states to the original 13. Also, the bill of rights, would become part of our constitution while philadelphia was the capital. In fact, secretary of state Thomas Jefferson would formally announced the amendments to the constitution, by basically coming to congress, here, in this building. In officially announcing that we have changed our constitution, which of course, to billet writes is a huge part of our history. And will be in the future, a continuing talking point in political life. But, its also the amendment process itself. We are proving that that part of the constitution works, that we can update and make changes to that constitution, without having to start completely over from the beginning. But really, for these doping, to alerts degree its 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 as you would expect. Early issues that we face as the United States would be 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 are good about that from the revolutionary war. Early government, Alexander Hamilton treasury secretary wanted all the debt of the state to come through the federal government, and then to use that depth paying it off to build credit for the young United States. Not everybody agreed with his plans. So you start seeing division, and then Foreign Policy questions would rise. Written in friends, go to war britain and france could warn the 17 nineties, and a lot of americans would feel like we owed france, they helped us in our warm, we still dont like the british vermont. But for George Washington, the first president , the notion of neutrality was preferable. We dont really have any money. We didnt really have a navy, at all. Our army was not much to speak of, so we certainly werent in a position to go and fight a war. And certainly not in europe, we would have probably been fighting our neighbors in british canada, those days. So he is going to present with his cabinet approval, a neutrality proclamation, which starts, again, dividing us into this question of are we doing more to help friends . Now in the same notion of keeping us out of war, George Washington will send john jay, 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. Again, with the idea of keeping us out of this european war, and settling some of those questions of border and ocean rights and such. We were arguing those with the british. John j had been on the team that negotiated the peace treaty, so he seems like a good candidate for washington to. Send the treaty that he brought back becomes very controversial. Really one of the Tipping Point in creating these two parties, as sort of leading to what we know today. The treaty is basically starts becoming publicly attacked in the press. The pressed which would become the democratic republican party, party of men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, they will start vilifying this treaty. Now whats interesting is that nobody has actually read. It hasnt been published, yet. But its going to be hillary eat in the press to the point where a lot of people hate this treaty, without knowing anything about it. The federalist side, the john adams in the hamiltons, is in favor of the treaty. They are in favor of building the young economy of the United States, staying out of the war, trading with all sides and not being limited by an 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 Approves the treaty. No, according to the constitution, the Senate Approves a treaties in their down. Now the problem is the house of representatives, this is our first treaty ever, now the representatives basically says we want a chance to discuss this treaty as well. So, they demand of washington to see all the papers and so on. He says no, the Senate Approves it, you guys dont have anything to do with it. So at the house essential is going to do, is they said well maybe what we will try to do is take away the funding. We wont pay for this treaty. Anything that has been paid for we just want when the money. Therefore, the treaty will effectually die, at this point in time. So thats 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. And theres days of debates. And on the last day, there was a big crowd in our public balcony, you had men like Vice President john adams, Supreme Court justices sitting in the balcony. And this is an area where we love our speeches, long political speeches, deep, infused with rhetoric. And the best speaker of the time is a man named fisher aims. He is a federalist, he is definitely wanting this treaty to survive. But he has has been ill, he hasnt said anything, and of course this last day everyone is waiting to see if hes going to make a statement about it. And he does, he stands up and he sort of against by saying well if my strengths can hold out i would like to see a few words on the subject. He proceeds to speak for over an hour, i think its about 55 pages in the congressional record history speech. He collapses at the end it is, seat but he talked about the last war that we fought with the british. And if people remembered all the devastation, and do we really want to do this again . Fighting another war for years . Apparently, some of the men had tears in their eyes. And when he finally finishes, Supreme CourtJustice James era delta, turns to adams and says my god is in that main great. And item 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 whole, was our first speaker of the house, and he breaks the tide. He is ostensibly on the democratic republican, the jeffersonian side, so he should be against the treaty. But he is convinced that maybe not going to war is a good idea. So hands up voting to passed a bill, for the funding of the treaty, and he is vilified. He is vilified that he voted for this treaty against his side, to the point where he loses his seat in the next election to congress. But in the next short term, he was stabbed on the sidewalk in philadelphia, by his brotherinlaw. He survived. I am sure the family gatherings became awkward for a little while. It tells us how high the political tensions can be no early days. And yet, at the same time, we are also proving that new constitution, despite the sort of difficulties, works. Because probably the best day in this rooms history, in a lot of ways, is the day john adams is inaugurating the front, by the speaker of the house platform. He will still be on that platform, with Thomas Jefferson, also at the front of the room, outgoing president George Washington. 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 this system, where we the voters elect our leaders, and we change them when we vote, we are proving that system works. Because the john adams election is a lot of firsts. Its different time we will not 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. I do one of his first, when he didnt even want a second term. He was dropped into it. Guys on both sides talked him into another four years. He doesnt really run, he is unanimously reelected. At the end of that second term, people try to talk commit to a third, but hes not having it. He just wants to retire, at this point in time. Its somebody else this turn. So he will step aside for john adams. No, we dont know if this works. Weve never done this before. With never actually changed our president. So will the people accept this . We dont know. The other thing to remember is john adams was contested in his election. He actually had to fight a battle against his opponent, who was joe Thomas Jefferson. Now these two have been friends, obviously they wrote the declaration of independence together. But now, opposite sides of the fence, they dont talk to each other. So the election is very ugly, its very nasty, its very close. Sort of for us today, a normal president ial election. John adams winds by three electoral votes. So only slightly more than half. Weve never had a president who got only have the votes, weve never had a president who had to really fight for an election. And of course, the other problem in those early days was that if you came in, second you are Vice President , which means a new president is one party, and the Vice President is the other party. Just pick any modern election, like put the two opponents together for four years as the executive, and you can see how neither of them will be particularly happy. So john adams and thomas efforts and jefferson are not happy to be in the front of them together. This is a full house that night, the balcony, their seats, you have most of the government here. A lot of curiosity, but you can also figure about half of them in this room are not very happy to see john adams standing up there. The other half of them in the room are not very happy happy to see Thomas Jefferson standing there. And generally speaking, no one is happy that George Washington is leaving us, at this time. So john adams would kind of look around the room and see a lot of people who were not happy. He would see people with almost tears in their eyes, that washington was leaving them. And he kind of would later say that as he looked, around he only saw one person who particularly looked happy, which was of course George Washington. The look on his face that john adams you are fairly, and i am fairly out. So now lets find out whos a happier on this day. But washington would quietly go to private life. I think very happily withdraw from the scene. Adams himself would be inaugurated. He would have a difficult presidency, because now were seeing the throws of political fighting going on. But it happened peacefully, we proved that the constitution works. And we proved 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 of washington, d. C. Adams and 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. But this these years of 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 wouldve 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 up to the u. S. Government. I think philadelphias secret hope is that if they are really, nicely will stay here, and not go down to the city along the potomac. So they go to the new courthouse building, and they actually end up spending it a little bit more, to make more room for congress. We think the setup looks like this, we actually have a seat in charge, from one session of congress. It shows the design of the desks, and all. We dont 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 dont know necessarily which house they were in. So today, all over original chairs are on 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 dont 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 , though its president of the senate, and one for the chiefs to justice of the Supreme Court. Again, we do not know which one is which. When we can finally say is that so many important sat in the chair, for the speaker of the house, whether it was him not. But as far as this room went, in the early 1800s, when the federal government moved out it went to become a courthouse. Again, this was divided into two rooms, for a long number of years. They put a hallway down the middle, so they could have two courtrooms, instead of one very large room. About the time of the first world war, the City Government have left this block and move to our current city hall in philadelphia. And the citys recognizing the historic value of these buildings, they have some rough restoration work done, and they kind of want to turn into a museum space. So if you have visited this place in the years around the first world war, in the 1920s, you wouldve seen the building, or the room rather, resort back to the big single room, that it wouldve been. But it would have just been a room filled with old stuff, kind of the oldfashioned sort of museum. After world war ii, when the National ParkService Comes in to take over the Historic Buildings here, again, the goal is to try to get back to how the looked in those important days. So i would try to study how did they have this eating set up . Again, we have one charge that we have been able to find. One of the members drew, showing who is sitting, where at least for one snapshot of a saying session of congress. We have enough sketches to show the platform for the speaker of the house. We have enough original furniture that we can sort of matchup things that worry he think were here or there. Unfortunately, a lot of the items that were here, if the city needed, them like chairs, desks, not so much so i didnt save, things that the government might have owned. For example a library of congress started in this building. They started buying books for congress, here in philadelphia. It wasnt the library of congress, as we know today, but it did begin here. In a lot of things that went to washington, d. C. , are burned when washington is burned, in the war of 1812. We lose a lot of those early things. So thats one of the challenges, with a building like this. Its you dont 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 what it looked like, when men like James Madison or Young Andrew Jackson was sitting in this room. As a member of the house of representatives. Were in the Senate Chamber here in philadelphia, the room as you can see is quite a bit more grant in the house of representatives would have been. Theres a couple of reasons for that. Our roots as a nation go back to when we were british, of course. The british have a parliament with two houses, an upper house the house of lords, the lower house, the house of commons. And theres definitely parallels with our congress, today. The house of representatives is very similarly set up to the house of commons. And then the senate, they would be left to be the house of lords, but obviously we are gonna have dukes and hurls. No 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 the Senate Chambers. So the british, often using that green color government, the colonies would use, it and then into the american government. But the bread would be kind of that house of lords kind of color, so youre gonna see right 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 tied to the president , the house of representatives does not have this power. Treaties in the United States are with the advice and consent of the senate, approved by the advising council in the senate. So the senate has to approve the treaties, the house does not. The senate does. And, so there is one power. Also, anytime the president makes an appointment to his cabinet ambassad