Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts Congress Hall 2024

Philadelphia. Originally thats what it was. But in the years the city of washington, d. C. Is being built, philadelphia serves as our temporary u. S. Capitol. This room serves for the house of representatives. The second floor of the building that well see in a moment was the United States senate. The house of representatives, each representative at that point in our history represented 30,000 people. We had a population at our first census of about 3 3 4 million. We had six members of the house would sit in this room and eventually from 16 states. The story of the u. S. Capitol is the story of where were taking a new constitution and actually operating it, doing things like adding new states to the original 13. Also the bill of rights would become a part of our constitution while philadelphia was the capitol. In fact, secretary of state Thomas Jefferson would formally announce the amendments to the constitution by basically coming to congress here in this building and officially announcing that weve changed our constitution, which the bill of rights is a huge part of our history and will be in the future as we continue a talking point on political life. But its also the amendment process itself were proving that that part of the constitution works, that we can update and make changes to that constitution without having to start completely over again from the beginning. But, really, for this building, its to a large degree its sort of creating the american political system, the twoparty 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 would face as the United States would be in debt. We had debt and arguments and spending in this building. Its not very 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, treasury secretary, wanted all the debt from the states to come to the federal government and then to use that debt paying it off to build credit for the young United States, and not everybody agreed with his plans. So you start seeing division. Then Foreign Policy questions would arise. Britain and france go to war in the 1790s. And a lot of americans would feel like we owed france. They helped us in our war, we still dont 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 didnt really have a navy at all and our army was not much to speak of, so we certainly werent in a position to go and fight a war, certainly not in europe and probably not even fighting our neighbors in british canada in those days. So hes going to present, with his cabinet approval, that they thought we would do more to help france. Washington sent john jay, who was in the Supreme Court, sent him to develop a new treaty with the british, trying to keep us out of war and solving those questions of the border and rights and stuff that we were discussing with the british. It becomes very controversial and is one of the points of creating these two parties as sort of leading to what we know today. The treaty basically starts becoming publicly attacked in the press, the press of what would become the democratic recommend can party, the party of men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would start vilifying this treaty. Whats interesting is no one actually read it, it hasnt been published yet, but its going to be pilloried in the press where people actually hate this treaty they dont know anything about. On the federal side, the side of alexander hamiltons, is in favor of the treaty. Theyre in favor of building the young economy in the United States, staying out of war, trading with all sides of europe, not being limited by alliance to france or Something Like this, so were really seeing this treaty back kind of a symbolic head point between these two sides. And the Senate Approves the treaty. Now, according to the constitution, Senate Approves trea treaties and theyre done. What happens is the house of representatives says, we want a chance to discuss this treaty as well. And so they demand of washington to see all the papers and so on. Well, he says no. If Senate Approves it, you guys dont have anything to do with it. What the house is essentially going to do is say, maybe what well try to do is take away the funding. We wont pay for this treaty. Anything we have to pay for well just not spend the money, therefore, the treaty will effe effectually die at this point in time. So the fight 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 on 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 area where we love our speeches. Long, political speeches, deeply infused with rhetoric, and the best speaker of the time is a man named fisher ames. He is a federalist. He is desperately wanting this treaty to survive, but hes been ill and hasnt said anything. So on this last day, everyone is waiting to see if hell make a last statement about it. And he does. He stands up and says, if my strength holds out, id like to say a few words on the subject. He proceeds to speak for about an hour. I think its about 55 pages in the congressional record, his speech. He collapses at the end into his seat but he talks about the last war we fought with the british and if people remembered all the devastation and do we really want to do this again, fight another war for years, and, you know, some of the men have tears in their eyes. And when he finally finishes, Supreme Court Justice James eridell turns to Vice President john adams and says, my god, isnt that man great . And adams says, yes, 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 as a whole was a man named Fred Muhlenberg who was the first speaker of the house, and he breaks the tie. He is ostensibly on the democratic republican, the jefferson side, and he accepts the treaty but says maybe going to war is not a good idea, so he passes the bill for tundi ifund this treaty and 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 even worse in the short term, he is stabbed on the sidewalks of philadelphia by his brotherinlaw because of his vote. He survives, but im sure family gatherings become a little awkward after a while. It tells us how high our political tensions can be in our early days. Yet yet at the same time were also proving that new constitution despite these sort of difficulties works. Because 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 houses platform. He will stand 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 the system where we, the voters, elect our leaders and we change them when we vote, were proving that that system works. Because the john adams election is a lot of firsts. Its the first time were going to 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. At the end of his first term, he didnt even want a second term. He was kind of talked into it, essentially men on both sides talk him into another four years. He doesnt really run, hes unanimously reelected. At the end of that second term, people try to talk him into a third but hes not having it. He just wants to retire at this point of time, its someone elses turn, so he will step aside for john adams. Now, we dont know if this works. Weve never done this before. Weve never actually changed our president s. 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 Thomas Jefferson. Now, these two had been friends. Obviously they wrote the declaration of independence together, but now opposite sides of the fence, they dont even want to talk to each other. So the election is very ugly, its very nasty, its very close, its sort of for us today a normal president ial election. John adams wins by three electoral votes, so only slightly more than half. Weve never had a president who got only half the votes. Weve never had a president who ha to real had to really fight for an election, and another problem in those early days is if you come in second, you are Vice President , which means one president is one party, the Vice President is the other party. Just pick any modern election you like, put the two opponents together for four years as the executive, and you can see how neither of them would be particularly happy. So john adams and Thomas Jefferson are not particularly happy to be standing up in the room together. This is a full house, the balcony, the seats, youve got most of the government here. A lot of curiosity. But you can also figure that about half the men in this room are not very happy to see john adams standing up there. The other half in the room are not happy to see Thomas Jefferson standing up there, and generally speaking, no one is 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 werent very happy. He would see people with almost tears in hetheir eyes that washington was leaving them, and he would say later that he only saw one person who was particularly happy, which was George Washington, saying, john adams, you are fairly in and i am fairly out. 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, were seeing the throes of political fighting going on. But it happened peacefully. We proved that constitution worked and we proved that we could continue in times of difficulty like this, that we could continue forward with a system in place. In 1800, they would leave this building and move to the current capitol in 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 capitol in washington, d. C. But these are setting the tone for the rest of early history and all the way up to today. So the room itself will start out as a courthouse, so this would be a courtroom. When theyre finishing construction is about the time philadelphia offers it to the federal government. I think philadelphia hoped if they were nice they wouldnt go to that new city by the potomac, so they give them the courthouse building and end up expanding it a little bit 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 dont have any of the desks that have survived. Were fortunate 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 of our original 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 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 as president of the senate, and the third for the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Now, we dont, again, know which one is which, but what we can fairly say is someone of importance sat in that chair as speaker of the house. Whether it was the speaker of the house, were not sure. As far as this room went, when the federal government moved out, it went to being a courtroom again. This was two rooms for a number of years. They built a hall down the middle so they could have two rooms instead of one very large one. About the time of the first world war, the City Government has left this block and moved to the current city hall in philadelphia and they have some restoration work done. They kind of want to turn them all into museum space. If you visited this building in the years around the first world war, the 1920s, you would have seen the room restored back to the big single room that it would have 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 Parks Service Comes in to take over Historic Buildings here, again, the goal is to try to get them back to how they looked in those important days. Thats where we try to study, how did they have the seating set up . Again, we have one chart weve been able to find one of the members drew showing who is sitting where, at least for one snapshot of a session of congress. We have enough sketches and all that show the platform for the speaker of the house, we have enough original furniture that we can sort of match up things that were we think were here. Unfortunately, a lot of items that were here, if the city needed them, like chairs, they kept using them. Desks not so much, so they didnt save. Things the government might have owned, for example, the 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 it today, but it does begin here. 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. Thats one of the challenges with a building like this is 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 them of what it looked like when men like James Madison or Young Andrew Jackson were sitting in this room as the house of representatives. Were in the Senate Chamber in the house of representatives. Our roots as a nation go back to the british, of course. The british have a parliament with two houses, an upper house, the house of lords, a 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 be based on the house of lords. Obviously were not going to have dukes and earls and noble titles like that, but we have the senate. The states take the place of the house of lords in our Senate Chamber. The british using that green color and kohl colonists use it. Youll see that red here in philadelphia and it definitely has that kind of look to it that seems a bit on the higher end. Whats interesting about the senate is they have more power. The senate is tied to the house of representatives that chamber does not have. The senate has to approve all treaties, the house does not, the senate does. Also any time the president makes an appointment to his cabinet, ambassador, Supreme Court, of course, those folks would have to come in front of 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 a fight in the house over whether to pay for it. In that same issue, we have the first rejection of a president ial nominee by the senate. John rutledge, who is actually a signer of the u. S. Constitution, actually one of the players in creating that constitution, is one of washingtons first choices for the original six justices on the Supreme Court. He actually accepts, but then resigns the post without ever really having served on the Supreme Court. He will later being the chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. When john jay, who was the first United States Supreme Court justice, resigns, hes elected governor of new york. He leaves the post of chief justice. That leaves it empty. Washington will eventually tap John Rutledge of South Carolina. Rutledge will come back to philadelphia this time and actually serve as chief justice. However, he is appointed during a research of congress. So technically the senate hasnt confirmed him, but he serves in senate of the court as chief justice. When the senate comes back later that year to return to session, they then take up the question of approving John Rutledge. Now, George Washington has never had anyone rejected that hes appointed, so this has never happened in o