Constitutional convention in philadelphia during the spring and summer that year and profiles the men who wrote and signed it that september day. His book is titled plain, honest men. The National Constitution center in philadelphia hosted this hourlong event in 2009. I guess were ready. I want to first of all thank steve for that wonderful introduction and especially for not comparing us to bonnie and clyde or abbott and costello. Which if you had been at some of the original conversations, you could have easily concluded. I also want to say to steve and stefan and all of the trustees here and real linch in the audience who are part of the National Constitutional center extended family it is just wonderful to be back here but even more than that, its wonderful to be back here without any real responsibilities whatsoever. If you have any complaints about tonights program or acoustics or parking or accommodations, i can give you linda johnsons email at the end of the program and urge you to be in touch with her. Most of although, its great to be here but its an extraordinary honor and privilege to be here with rick. Rick really was the intellectual Guiding Light behind the creation of the exhibits which as magnificent as the architecture of this place, the exhibits are its heart and soul. Over those conversations in his college hall office over many, many months the story of we the people took shape. The unsung hero of that, by the way, was ricks then dog named chief justice john marshmallow. If you buy and read the book, as steve urges, i also urge, you will see that Abigail Adams is the new plays that role now. But rick has a hero isk interelect and written a remarkable and compelling and wonderful book. Im looking forward to the conversation. I hope you enjoy it and i hope you enjoy the conversation you will have with rick as you read through those pages. The first question i think, rick, is really the dog that didnt bark, why hasnt there been a book since Katherine Rinker wrote miracle in philadelphia 40 years ago . 43 years ago. Was she a philadelphiaen . She was a philadelphiaen. Im going to answer that question and i promise this is not going to be a love fest between bonnie and clyde or whomever. What i do have to echo what steve frank said about joe and terrific relationship we have had over the years and all you need to do is look out that window at that spectacular vista and look at this amazing institution that joe built. He is the founding father of the constitution center. I do count it as the greatest thrill of my life to be part of it. [applause] thank you. So youre going to go easy on me now. I was going to go easy on you before that. Now its going to be [laughter] 40some years have elapsed since there was a full narrative history of the Constitutional Convention. I think that time elapsed because katherine drinker bones book was a really terrific book. In fact, i was first inspired to love the Constitutional Convention by reading an earlier book by carl van doron, the great rehearsal as a school child. But as a firstyear graduate student i read katherine drinker bones book and although in fact the academic reviewers were a little hard on it, as academic reviewers are inclined to be, i thought it was a wonderful book. It inspired me. I have gone back to it over the years. But over the years i have learned more about the Constitutional Convention. I think scholarship on the Constitutional Convention has changed. And i decided that it was perhaps time to take those wonderful bronze statues over there in signers hall, and they are perfect likenesses. You will never see a better rendering of the found fathers than the bronze statues in signers hall but i decided i wanted to take those bronze statues and bring them to life, not as mythic figures but as real men. The title of the book plain, honest men comes from one of he convention dell gets, governor morris of pennsylvania. And morris was acting against attendance which was a few months after the convention adjourned to make these folks larger than life. There are two very important letters that contribute to this. The first was from Thomas Jefferson to john adams. While the convention was going on, adams was serving in paris ambassador to france and he wrote adams and he said, im given to understand that an assembly of demiigods has gathered in philadelphia. I actually think jefferson meant that somehow sarcastically because he wasnt the kind of demiigod orlieve in much in divine inspiration. The other letter is the famous letter from George Washington to lafayette written in february of 1788 in which he said he believed it was a standing miracle that the founders could create a constitution so little liable to wellfounded objections and katherine drinker bone began her book with those words and went on to add the miracles did not happen by accident. They are prayed for. And that was a very compelling otion that i think in fact governor morris came close to the truth when he said although some ascribed the constitution to heavenly origins, im inclined to give it a more earthly explanation. I believe it was the work of plain, honest men. They werent so plain. They were mostly wealthy, white, privileged, 18th century americans. And young. And remarkably young. Average age of 44. And you have to remember Benjamin Franklin at 81 brought that average age way up. So i wanted to tell the story of the making of the constitution through the eyes and actions and thoughts not of largerthanlife gods but real men. Its very important to understand them in their historical context. By the way, i cant resist saying that im trying in one sense demystify them but in every way i come away from my years writing this book with greater and greater respect for them. I frequently joked to my students and my courses, and i know many of them are actually out in the audience, which im gave rateful, that if you me the choice between the very best 55 members of our Current Congress and 55 guys who were gathered in the Assembly Room of the pennsylvania statehouse, and mind you, there were a few losers among that 55 in the statehouse, but on average, i would take 55 in the statehouse any day. Rick in his book says, he says he spent 40 years thinking about this book, which by the way, by my calculation works out to about page a month. We will leave that. We have a problem . Can we mic this up a bit . Joe and i have never been accused of failing to project. The email i was going to give you, i give you now. Take that one off. Can people hear me . They seem much happier about that. Is this on yet . Is it on now . Can i just try projecting . Rick in the book talked about how long he lived with these founders and talked about how happy he would be to take still not. All right. Joe and i have the same attitude towards technology. Its and highly adversarial one. Of the founders you lived with 40 years, we know you take the best of them but what about what you viewed to be the worst of them . For all of you who have not read the book yet, i will say rick is pretty hard on Alexander Hamilton, who i grew up thinking was one of the great heroes of the convention. Talk about hamilton but also talk rick about over time who did you grow to like less and who did you grow to like more . Ok, fair enough. I know theres hamilton buffs out there in the audience, so i know i run the risk of provoking hostile questions later in the program. Hamilton i think is deservedly praised for his work as secretary treasury during the 1790s. If youre going to rank the Founding Fathers in terms of i. Q. , hamilton would be up there at the very top. But if you were going to rank the men in the convention in 1777 in terms of e. Q. , i think hamilton would be pretty close to the bottom. He was just fundamentally out of step with the direction in which the nation was moving. He was at a disadvantage because he was part of a new york delegation which included two other delegates who were bitterly opposed to any efforts to strengthen the Central Government. He was outvoted in this delegation in every single issue. And perhaps it provoked him to the extremes to which he went but on june 18, he stands up in the convention and gives a sixhour speech in which he basically argues that we should recreate the british constitution. That we should install a president for life. That we should elect a United States senators or actually that the National Legislature should elect United States senators for life. Think about that, folks is, would you like harry reid and Mitch Mcconnell to be your senators for life . [laughter] youre going to get me in trouble. Joes a democrat so at least one half of that will be all right. In any case, he was just entirely out of step. He gives this overlong speech at the end of the speech, one of the delegates William Samuel johnson of connecticut comments that Alexander Hamiltons speech was admired by everyone and agreed to by no one. Really at every stage in the convention from that time forward he was marginalized. He disappeared from the convention for about a month, although he did come back and its not clear even whether he was authorized to sign the constitution since the new york delegation had already left in protest, but hamilton did add his signature. I think he was not a big contributor. If hes the one who sunk the most in your estimation, who rose the most . A man named james wilson. This might get boring, because ames wilson was pretty boring. Educated in scotland at st. Andrews university. A brilliant man. He was the only and a very strong nationalist. Somebody who truly thought it was essential that the powers of the Central Government be strengthened. He was the only man in the convention to argue consistently for direct popular election of the president. He understood that a government based on we, the will of we the people, had to have a strong xecutive who could speak unequivocally in the name of we the people. Of course, all of the jockeying back and forth that results in thatlectoral college meant wilson alas was a minority of one in the convention on that issue. By the way, when Prince Charles visited the constitution center, wilson was the found he he took a picture standing next to. As far as we tried to get him over next to George Washington, we thought that would be 200 years later a great photo, he took a fancy to wilson. What fascinated me and the sort of color and character for these guys whom i think we here thought we knew pretty well, just astonished me in the book. Just wonderful little anecdotes that bring each of them to life in a way they sort of seem distance. The one that sticks in my mind the most, rick describe Luther Martin as a better debater drunk than most of the delegates sober. [laughter] which i thought was very funny. But really was arresting was rick puts forth a pretty good argument in the book for why Charles Pinckney could be considered almost madisonen. Could be a claimant to the title father of the constitution. Can you talk a little about his history . Charles pinckney certainly would have wished he would have thought of his father of the constitution. Its a peculiar fact of history that so much of our understanding of the Constitutional Convention depends on the diligent notetaking and indeed integrity of one man, James Madison, who sat there day after day after day taking detailed notes. On the first major day of business at the convention, may 29, Edmond Randolph presented really for James Madison the plan that madison, governor morris and james wilson had cooked up in the weeks before the convention opened, the virginia plan. Which we often think of as forming the essential basis of much stronger Central Government that emerged from the convention. And madison reports that plan and debates on that plan in minute detail. But towards the end of the day Charles Pinckney rises and presents a very detailed plan which bears, if anything, a greater resemblance to the finished constitution thans the virginia plan. He also, it is known, gave a long speech. We know not what he said in this speech because madison failed to record it in his notes that speech. And in the middle of the convention, pinckney gave another long speech defending his version of the plan. Did anyone give short speeches back then . Some mercifully did but pinckney didnt. Madison actually spoke more frequently than anyone in the convention but he actually was able to be concise at times. So i think there are two facts operating here. I actually do believe in the end madison was the brains behind our conception of the constitution. But pinckney deserves much more credit than he has received. I think there are a couple of reasons he hasnt received it. One is that he, along with his South Carolina colleagues John Rutledge and Pierce Butler are more responsible than any of the other delegates for enshrining flavor in the constitution. The other reason is hes really not a very popular person. Among other things, after the convention adjourned, he lied about his age. He was 29 years old. The youngest member of the convention was Jonathan Dayton of new jersey at 26. But pinckney wanted to go down in history as kind of boy wonder of the Constitutional Convention. He claimed he was the youngest member of the convention. So there was a tendency towards selfpromotion on pinckneys part that hasnt sat well with his torians. 29 wasnt young enough for him. Thats right. Got to go lower. Anyone else remember tom laird, musical comedian had a line, when mozart was my age, he would have been dead five years. When you read this about 44yearolds, its sort of astonishing. I want to come back you mentioned one of the key subjects in the book and thats the way that the delegates treated or did not treat the subject of the slavery. I want to come back to some of the personalities. In some ways when you read is the book, the slines is kind of striking and you even quote dickinson writing in his journal the debate on representation that essentially they should feel ashamed they had to use a ,uphemism or leave the word out but other parts of the book i thought made the subject of slavery more central than even some of the things we think of as main dynamics, north versus south, small versus by, that they were less relevant than slave versus nonslave, and even setting the stage in philadelphia talking about if you went down to the docks in philadelphia, youre very likely to encounter slaveship. Take about how you in the end placed what they did and didnt do. First, one of the i guess the reasons why i think you should read my book, even if you read katherine drinker bones book and loved it, was that you do think this is the first fullscale skt of the Convention Account of the convention which accords the issue of slavery its appropriate place. The issue of slavery was omni present in the convention. It ultimately did not fully shape the constitution but we cant understand the debates, we cant understand the convention without understanding what one historian called the paradox of nations for this extraordinary american dilemma. The one tragic failure of the Founding Fathers is their failure to grapple constructively with the future of the institution of slavery in this land. Almost all of the men in that room, Assembly Room of the pennsylvania statehouse, believed that slavery was wrong. And also believe that its days were numbered because they were operating at a time when the tobacco kingdom was in decline. Cotton had not yet become major export crop. This was a moment when americas founders could at least have done something modest to weaken the institution. Abolishing slavery was off the table. There was no way you could form a union when half of the states in that union were still committed to maintaining at least the institution as it exists at that time. And in that sense the threefifths compromise, which i think most people are most familiar with, was a tragic but predictable one. But there were other compromises that were harder to sanction, at least through our 21st century lenses. Theres an agonizing debate over the continuation of the International Slave trade. There were only two states in the convention, South Carolina and georgia, who want to continue the slave trade. The most eloquent speech against the International Slave trade was made by george mason of virginia. A man who ironically owned 300 slaves himself. But he said slavery makes every man a tyrant. And as a nations are blessed for their virtues, they will be punished for their sins and slavery is a sin. But basically the South Carolina and georgia delegates said if you dont allow to continue slave trade, compromise for another 20 years, were walking. We will not be part of this union. Looking back with 20 20 hindsight, which is always perfect, perhaps the Founding Fathers should have let them walk. I think the National Fabric would have been stronger. As a consequence of that compromise, more than 100,000 new slaves entered american shores during the period fro