Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts 20160326 : vimarsa

States, staying out of a war, trading with all sides in europe, not being limited by alliance to france or Something Like this. So were really seeing this treaty become kind of of a symbolic head point between these two sides. And the Senate Approves the treaty. Now according to the constitution Senate Approves treaties and theyre done. The problem is the house of representatives this is our first treaty. 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. Senate approves it. You dont have anything do with it. What the house essentially is going doing is they say, maybe what we will try do is take away the funding. We wont pay for this treaty. Anything that has to be paid for, we will not spend the money. Therefore, the treaty will die at this point this time. 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. Theres days of debates. On the last day, theres a big crowd in our public balcony. You have men like Vice President john adams, Supreme Court justices in the balcony. The big this is, of course, an era where we love speeches, long, political speeches, deep, infused with rhetoric. The best speaker of the time is a man named fisher ames. He is a federalist. He is definitely wanting this treaty to survive. He has been ill. He hasnt said anything. Of course, this last day everyone is waiting to see if he with i will make the last statement. He does. He says, if my strength can hold up, i would like to say a few words. He speaks over an hour. Its about 55 pages in the congressional record, his speech. He collapses at the end. He talked about the last war we fought with the british and if people remembered all the devastation and did we really want to do this again, fight another war for years. Apparently, some of the men have tears in their eyes. When he finally finishes, a Supreme Court justice turns to the Vice President and says, isnt that man great . 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 committeemuhlenberg speaker of the house. He breaks the tie. He is on the democratic republican and jefferson side. He is yshould be against it. He is convinced maybe not going to war is a good idea. He ends up voting 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 shortterm, he is stabbed on the sidewalk of philadelphia by his brotherinlaw because of his vote. He survives but im sure family gathers are awkward. It tells us how high our political tensions can be in our early days. Yet, yet at the same time, were also proving that that 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 by the speaker of the houses platform. He will stand on the platform with Thomas Jefferson 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 parades and parties. 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 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. At the end of the first term, he didnt want a second term. He was talked into it. Essentially kind of almost guys on both sides talk him into another four years. He doesnt really run. He is unanimously reelected. At the end of the second term, people try to talk him into a third. He is not having it. He wants to retire at this point in time. Its somebody elses turn. He will step aside for john adams. Now, we dont know if this works. We have never done this before. We have never changed our president. 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. These two had been friends, obviously, they wrote the declaration of independence together. Now opposite sides of the fence. They dont want to talk to each other. The election is very ugly, its nasty, very close. Its sort of for us today a normal president ial election. John adams wins by three electoral votes. We have never had a president who got half the votes. We have never had a president who had to really fight for an election. Of course, the other problem in the early daze ys is if you comn second, you are Vice President. The new president is one party. The new Vice President is the other party. Pincknck any modern election ant them together and you can see how neither would be particularly happy. They are not happy to be up in the front of the room together. This is a full house that day. The balcony, seats, you have most of the government here. A lot of curiosity. You can also figure 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 not happy to see tophos jefferson up there. Nobody is happy that George Washington is leaving us in this time. 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 their eyes that washington was leaving them. He kind of would later say that as 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 face that said, you are in and im out. Now lets find out who is the happier. 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. 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 capitol in washington, d. C. Adams and jefferson would have another difficult election at that time. This time jefferson winning. He would be the first president inaugurated in the new capitol of washington, d. C. But 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 being built during the constitutional convention. So when they are finished construction is around the time that philadelphia offers it to the u. S. Government. I think philadelphias secret hope is if were nice, they will stay here and not go to the new city. So they give them the new courthouse building. They end up actually expanding it a little bit to make more room for congress. We think the setup looks like this. We 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 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. For this room as far as original items goes, the chair on the platform for the speaker of the house is an original. We have three chairs exactly like this. We dont necessarily know which was which. 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. So what we can fairly say is that somebody important sat in that chair for the speaker of the house, whether it was the speaker of the house or not were not sure. As far as this room went, in the early 1800s when the federal government moved out, it went to become a courthouse again. In fact, this was divided into two rooms for a long number of years. They built a hallway down the mi middle to have two courtrooms instead of one large one. About the time of the first world war, the City Government has left this block and moved to our current city hall in philadelphia. The city is recognizing the historic value of the buildings, has some restoration work done. They kind of want to turn them into museum space. If you visited this building in the years around the first world war, the 1920s, you would have seen the building the room rather restored back to the big single room it would have been. But it would have been just a room filled with old stuff. Kind of the oldfashion museum. After world war ii when the National Park Service Comes in to take over the Historic Builds here, again, the goal is to get them back to how they looked in the important days. Thats where we try to study, how did they have the seating set up . 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 of a session of congress. We have some enough sketches and show the platform for the speaker of the house. We have enough original furniture that we can match up things that were we think were here. Unfortunately, a lot of the items that are here, if the city needed them, like chairs, they kept using them. Desks, not so much. They didnt save. Things that the government might have owned, for example, the library of congress started in this building. They started buying books for congress here in philadelphia. Wasnt the library of congress as we know it today, but it does begin here. A lot of the things that went to washington, d. C. Are burned when washington is burned in the war of 1812. We lose a lot of the early things. Thats one of the challenges with a building like this, you dont necessarily have all the thing things, but you make due the best you can to give people the 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. Were in the Senate Chamber here at Congress Hall in philadelphia. The room as you can see is quite a bit more grand than 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, lower house, house of commons. 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 would, therefore, be left to be based on the house of lords. We dont have dukes and earls and noble titles like that. We have states. Every state is equal in the senate. So the states kind of take the place of our house of lords and our Senate Chamber. The british often using that green color in government. The colonies would use it and into the american government. But the red would be much more the house of lords kind of color. You will see red in that early senate here in philadelphia. Definitely has that kind of look tore to it that seems higher end. The interesting thing about the senate is they are created with more power. The power is a tie to the president that 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. The senate has to approve all treaties. The house does not. The senate does. So theres one power. 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. So here in philadelphia, we have our very first treaty approved by the senate, which is the jay treaty. 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 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 accepts but then resigns the post without ever really having served on the Supreme Court. He will later become the chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court when john jay, who was the first United States Supreme Court chief justice, resigns, he is elected governor of new york, he 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 serve as chief justice. However, he is appointed during a recess of congress, and so technically the senate hasnt confirmed him but he actually serves a session of the court as chief justice and leads them through some cases. When the senate comes back later that year to return to session, they then take up the question of approving John Rutledge. Now, George Washingtons never had anyone rejected that hes appointed, so this has never happened in our young history. John rutledge has a couple of things going against him. There are guys in the senate that think the guys a little crazy. Hes had some kind of strange things that hes had to say in the years in the 1790s so hes got a reputation but also where hes going to get into trouble is he made very pointed comments about that j treaty that was negotiated by his predecessor. He was very critical in some speeches and they tended to be a bit of rambly speeches. He was very critical about the senate itself which of course senators would read the newspapers and they would read what the South Carolina Supreme Court chief justice had to say about them and when he came in front of them they would remember these sorts of things and then they would decide perhaps this guy is not the best choice to be the chief justice of the Supreme Court. So even though hed run the court for a while he was sent packing and back home. So the very first rejection of a president ial nominee. So here in philadelphia youre 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 happened. The one other power of the senate thats not going to get exercised 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 in what is essentially a trial to decide whether the president should be removed from office. So again, you look at the powers of the senate and you see these things that you can do that tie them to the president in a lot of ways, and so therefore, give them that little bit of extra advantage over the house of representatives. Plus, theyre a smaller body of men with only two senators per state. You represent an entire state, which means if youre from a large state you represent a 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 sixyear 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 legislatures. So senators do not have to run for office. So as a result, senators here in philadelphia met in private. They did not meet in public. The house of repts alwaresentat always did. The senate gets into their own controversial bills like the j trayty. One of the early senators that is sent by pennsylvania is a man most famous for being a longtime secretary of treasury and he is of the democratic republican side and so the federal aside of the early senate and basically locking at the strict rules would say that albert galton has not lived in the United States for the requisite number of years to be in the senate. So the senate voted him out. Hes later elected to the house of representatives but hes rejected from the senate. So they 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 whats going on when the senate meets here in philadelphia and add to that the press, obviously wants to know whats going on because theyve got guys sitting in the balcony watching the house, they want to have guys sitting up here watching the senate because thats news. Finally, i am sure of it, that the house of representatives is sitting in public saying why do those guys get to meet in private when we have to sit in front