Transcripts For CSPAN3 James Madison And The Constitution 20160725

For protestants. Then there was a provision, excessive bail ought not to be required nor excessive fines imposed for crucial and unusual punishments inflicted. This was saying the english legal system could not crush a person financially and it could not torture a person. And these were obviously principles that would march on. In the next century after american independence states passed their own bills of rights and the most famous of them was by the largest most important state that was virginia in the spring and summer of 1776 known as the declaration of right. And the man who wrote this was george mason. Now george mason, he was an interesting character. He was a planter, he was a neighbor of George Washington, the two of them hunted foxes together. He has a beautiful house, gunston hall, which is opened to tourists in virginia. It has just a lovely great hall that he commissioned and a lot of men of the founding generation deplored any expression of ambition. You werent supposed to be ambitious and you certainly werent supposed to show it. The ideal was the roman hero who left his plow to fight for rome and after the threat passed he went back to his farm and yet we see that a lot of these men, they held office, they ran for office, served in the army, had commanding positions in the army, george mason actually seemed to believe it. He talked the talk of no ambition and he also behaved that way. He did not like to hold office, he held it on rare occasions, when he was called in 1776 to be in the new postindependence Virginia Legislature he went and he took the job of writing a declaration of rights but he complained that the committee would have useless members who would make a thousand ridiculous and impractical proposals. So he was going to write it all himself. And he did and he did a very good job. He called for speedy trials by juries in criminal cases. So its not just trial by jury but speedy trials. And also trials in civil suits. He copy it had english bills of rights language on excessive bails and fines and cruel and unusual punishments. He condemned gin warrants that allowed searches without evidence of particular offenses. So in other words, if youre going to search a mans house you have to say what youre looking for. You cant just go in the house and see what crimes he may have committed, you have to have a warrant that specify what is you are likely to find or what you think youre likely to find. Mason praised freedom of the press, he praised militias composed of the body of people trained to arms and he also called for the fullest toleration of religion. Now there he accepted a correction from one of his committee members, this was 25yearold James Madison. And the language of fullest toleration comes from john lock and its a liberal sentiment for the late 18th century. But James Madison did not think it was liberal enough. He had been a defender of virginias religious minorities already for two years as early as 1774 when hes 23 years old. Hes enraged by the treatment that virginias baptists are suffering at the hands of the established episcopal majority. Hes not a baptist himself but it disgusts him that men are being imprisoned for their convictions. He argues about it with his friends, probably with his father who was a vestryman and when he is on the committee to write the declaration of rights he insists that the language be changed to all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion. So its not just toleration its an entitlement. You dont have it because someone allows you to have it, you have it because you are entitled to have it and its the free exercise of religion, not just worship. Its broader than worship. Its the free exercise of your religion. So this was a world historical shift in the understanding of religious liblerty in the virginia declaration of rights. This was approved in june, 1776, three weeks before the declaration of unleindependence. So now lets go back to 1787 and philadelphia. Why, with all these precedents had the Constitutional Convention not written a bill of rights . Well, certainly by the time george mason spoke they were all tired and they wanted to get home but justifications were given when the constitution went out to the states for ratification. One of the first states to ratify at the end of 1787 was one of the largest, pennsylvania. And that was a very rough ratification process. The supporters of the constitution had the majority, they knew it, they wanted to vote the thing through and get it done. When antifederalists tried to deprive them of a quorum they sent people out to snatch them on the streets and hustle them into the room so they could be counted. It was bare knuckle hard ball politics. There was one supporter of the constitution, a scottsman originally a lawyer now . Philadelphia who gave some intelligent and long defenses of the constitution. And one of the things he defended was the absence of a bill of rights and the argument he made was that the english bill of rights and magna carta had all been carved from a background of royal power. England had a king so therefore you needed statements of what the king could not do to the people but, said wilson, in the United States power remains in the people at large and by this constitution they do not part with it. So the implication was the people will not oppress themselves therefore we do not need a bill of rights in the new constitution. Another defense of an absence of a bill of rights was offered by Alexander Hamilton in new york and he did this in the secondtolast federalist paper, federalist 84. And here hamilton said mason had said power rather wilson said power remains with the people. But what hamilton said in federalist 84 is that there is no power to do the things that the supporters of the bill of rights fear. He said why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do . And the example he used was freedom of the press. He said if you say that the press shall not be restrained, couldnt that give someone the idea that maybe it could be regulated . In other words if you draw a line, arent you tempting people to come right up to that line . Isnt it better to just leave the whole subject alone . Now that could sound like too clever by half argument but that is the way lawyers think and its [ laughter ] and its certainly the way ambitious men think so it was an interesting argument that hamilton was making. A third man who defended the fact that the constitution had not included a bill of rights was James Madison and he did it in letters to his best friend, mentor, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was in paris when all this was going on and he and madison wrote back and forth. Madison was keeping him informed of the new constitution. He was also keeping him on board. Madison agreed with jefferson, he admired jefferson. I think he was charmed all his life by the lightning flashes of jeffersons mind but he also knew that lightning was uncontrollable so there were occasions when he had to guide jefferson and prompt him and bring him back down to earth. We can see madison trying to do it about the bill of rights. He wrote jefferson and says virginia has a bill of rights which, of course, jefferson knew. Madison helped write it. But he said that i have seen the bill of rights violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current. In other words, its in the virginia constitution but the Legislature Just goes ahead and violates it wherever the people are in favor of it. He said its only a parchment barrier. The only security for peoples rights would be the structure of government, what we now call checks and balances. Well, jefferson wasnt having any of it, he kept responding to madison saying that a bill of rights was something that every people was titled to have from every government. He used a metaphor drawn from architecture, which is one of the subjects dearest to his heart. He said a brace will often keep up a building which would have fallen without it. So you may think youre build is strong but put up an extra brace. Just do it. That will help keep the thing up. There were other forces working on madison and one of them was the states baptists, his old political allies and they were alarmed there was no guarantee of religious liberty in the constitution and they knew madison was their friend and madison knew that they were his allies but they shared their concerns with him. They told him that they were upset and he paid attention to them. He also had to Pay Attention to a man he didnt particularly like, who was Patrick Henry. Now, Patrick Henry was brilliant. He was patriotic. He was eloquent. Madison and jefferson were certainly brilliant and patriotic and jefferson was eloquent on the page but neither of them were great speakers. Patrick henry was the greatest speaker of the late 18th century and jefferson and madison did not like him. Patrick henry seized on the lack of a bill of rights. He said a bill of rights may be summed up in a few words so why not write them down . Is it because it will consume too much paper . [ laughter ] and henry made many, many, many arguments to this effect. So madison, although virginia does ratify the constitution by the summer of 1788 its the 10th state to do it and the margin is very narrow, there are 180 some delegates in the Virginia Convention and it passes by a margin of only 10. And it passes without any conditions. Its a full ratification. But it does say that there ought to be a bill of rights added, that it should be the first order of business of the new congress to add a bill of rights and other states have made similar provisions in their ratification debates, massachusetts, another one of the three largest states had done so, so had several other states, so James Madison is elected to the First Congress which means here in new york in the spring of 1789 and one of the top items on his agenda is to get a bill of rights through congress in that first year. Now there are a lot of potential rights to choose from. When virginia approved the constitution, they added a list of 20 rights that they would like to see ratified. 20 changes. Most of them rights. New york had a list of 33, and there were other suggestions that came in. Madison had to deal with two sorts of skeptics. There were a number of the members of the First Congress who said the constitution was brandnew, shouldnt we let it operate for a while and well see what we need to do. A more dangerous kind of swekepc were opponents of the constitution, they were unhappy it had been ratified and what they wanted were structural changes to the document. Madison was determined to keep those out. He thought the balance of power in the constitution between divisions of government and between the federal government and the states, he thought that had been very well arranged. He wanted that to stay. But he was determined to have a bill of rights added. So, thanks to his persuasion, congress forms a committee, which meets in the summer of 1789, and madison has a list of rights. Many of them incorporate these provisions that ive discussed from virginia and from england. Theyre not quite what we got in the first ten. Madison has them in different order. Some of them were taken apart, some of them were joined together. He also wanted to add to the preamble. He had a statement that all rights come from the people and that people always have a right to change their form of government. He also thought that the addition should be incerted at the constitution in the relevant places. He lost fortunately, i think, on both of those. Roger sherman who was in the First Congress, said if we change the preamble, it will injure the beauty of the preamble we have. He said lets put all the changes at the end. So congress the house comes up with a list, they send it to the senate, then the two the two houses dicker over it and a list of 12 amendments goes out to the states for their consideration. Now, the first one of these has to do with the size of congressional districts. It never passes and this is a question that congress has simply addressed by legislation. I think the size of a house a district in the house of representatives was the represented 30,000 people and obviously as the country grew, the size of districts had to expand or wed have thousands of members in the house. But this has all been done not by an amendment, but by congress simply passing a law. The Second Amendment had to do with congressional pay raises, and it said there could be no pay raise until after the next election of representatives. So in other words if youre a congressman, you cant vote a pay raise that youre going to get until you face the voters. All right . So now this, it was ratified by a number of states, and then it stalled out, and then in 1978, a college kid at the university of texas at austin noticed that this potential amendment was still floating out there. It had some states had ratified it so he began a letterwriting campaign to state legislato legislators, and in 1992, this amendment was finally ratified. It became the 27th amendment. So, it had a 203 year path into the constitution. That is still the record. Then there were amendments 3 through 12, which i will talk about i will identify by the numbers we know them as, 1 through 10, but originally, they were 3 through 12. And what we have is a review and kind of summary of what has gone before, plus some new provisions. The First Amendment is an omnib o omnibus, that prevents congress from exercising freedom of speech and religion, or the right to potential to assembly for the assemble of grievances. That was a little bit more recent. The Second Amendment broadentd e right to bear arms from pr prodistants. The Fourth Amendment described the proper scope of warrants. The sixth and seventh amendments said there should be jury trials in both criminal and civil cases and said criminal trials must be speedy. The eighth amendment simply repeated the language of the english bill of rights and of the declaration of the bill of rights about excessive bails and fines and cruel and unusual punishments. The other of the first ten amendments broke new ground. The third amendment addressed a grievance from the colonial period. It said it regulated the armys power to quarter soldiers in private homes and said it had to be done with the owners permission in times of peace and had to be prescribed by law in times of war. In other words, even in times of war the army just cant come to your house and say, were sticking a platoon in here. There has to be a law passed to allow it to do so. The fifth amendment is a great omnibus. Is concerns grand jurys for infamous crimes. It says that people should not be subject to double jeopardy. You cant be tried twice for the same crime, or you cant keep being tried until youre finally convicted. It forbids self in crimination, and you cannot be prescribed without liberty of law and it says property may not be seized without compensation. This is now what we being of as eminent domain. And then, the ninth and tenth amendments address the concerns that Alexander Hamilton and james wilson, the ninth amendment says, the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. In other words, if we say, there is freedom of the press, you cant creep up to the very edges of that. There are still uninienurated rights to the press and by stipulating something, were not inviting to you come up to the borders of it. The tenth puts in black and white what wilson was talking about. The people and the states retained all powers not delegated or prohibited by the constitution. These amendments were submitted to the states. There was a flurry of approvals by january of 1796 states ratified. New york ratified in february, pennsylvania in march, 1790, rhode island in the summer, and the last two making them ratified were vermont in november 1791 and virginia 17 no 91. Patrick henry said virginia had been fooled and beaten, meaning he had been fooled and beaten. Now, the for the longest time, the bill of rights was not referred to in legal cases. There was a reference to the bill of rights, a bill of rights, in an 1810 decision by the Supreme Court, fletcher versus peck. This is one of chief justices marshalls great decisions. And he said there was in the constitution a bill of rights for the people of each state, but what he was talking about was article 1, section 9. And in his mind, the bill of rights was the provision that no state shall pass a bill of attaineder, an expost facto law, or a law of contracts. We just dont think of that when we think of the bill of rights. Why would marshall say that . He was a smart, thoughtful man. And the best i can come up with is that these are, in a way, even broader provisions than the ones that are in the bill of rights. These are very sweeping prohibitions. A bill of attainder forbidding bills of attainder means you cannot pass a law criminalizing a person. You have to criminalize an act, not a person. You cant pass a law criminalizing syed farook. You can pass a law criminalizing murder. You cannot pass laws that criminalize people. Very sweeping prohibition. You also cant criminalize acts that were legal when they were committed. You know, if murder hadnt been i i illlegal after somebody commits mass murder you cant pass a law and say, that was illegal. You cant do that. You cant criminalize the past. You have to pass the laws and then whatever happens in the future can be dealt with. And then the right of contracts, you cant pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts. Well, that is a little more specific. Were talking about something as specific, say as freedom of speech, but if you think about it, i mean, how many times do we enter into contracts versus how many times we make speech, that government might prohibit . I mean, even contentious people in the audience. Think about it. Maybe you argue with your family or whatever, but its not that often compared with all the contracts you enter into every day. So marshall is saying, no, this is the bill of rights. This was the bill of rights that was in the constitution before any amendments were passed. Its an interesting thought. He also made a ruling in 1833, a case called baron versus baltimore. John baron was a man who owned a wharf in Baltimore Harbor and the city diverted some streams, which caused silt to pileup by his wharf and made it impossible for ships to dock there and he sued baltimore saying they had taken his fifth amendment right. In effect, they had taken the value of his property without any legal proceeding. And this case went up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that it was a matter of great importance but not of much difficulty. They said that the fifth amendment and the other amendments contained no expression indicating an intention to apply them to state governments. This court cannot so apply them. So, the Supreme Court made the point that the first ten amendments apply to the federal governme government, they do not apply to the states. The fifth amendment appeared in a very important decision in 1857. This was the dread scott decision where chief justice tawny ruled that property cannot be taken without due process of law, therefore a slave owner can take his slave into any territory of the United States. The missouri compromise which forbidden taking slaves into the northern part of the louisiana territory was unconstitutional. So thats not a very auspicious appearance of the constitution in the 18th century. The 14th amendment was passed after the civil war and things began to change. The 14th amendment says that no state no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty of property without due process of law, nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. So here and it also that says Congress Shall have the power to enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation. Here, the federal government is taking control of things that states may do and theyre applying the due process of law clause to states. Now, the intention here was to protect freedom after the civil war. Slavery had been destroyed by the course of the war and abolished by the 13th amendment, which was ratified in december of 1865. But then what happens to the fre afreedment, a lot of them were reduced to in effect, pienage. They had to get permission from white employers to show they were employed. If they didnt have such a document, they could be arrested as vaguerance. It was not a good life they were leading, and congress was trying to rectify this. Only in the 20th century, did the Supreme Court begin using the 14th amendment as a way of applying the bill of rights to state laws. Its a doctrine called incorporation. In one of the most recent instances of it, and controversial, was the heller decision in 20 t10, which struc down a local gun control law because it says the Second Amendment refers to a right that people have and states may not prohibit it. But im not going to go into detail on that. That is a topic for a second lecture on where we are now. I just hope ive showed you how we got here and where we started. So thank you very much, and ill take your questions. Now, we have where are the microphones . Weve got okay. Theres microphone there, theres microphone there, and eain each one of the hallways. So you get to ask its not like the Constitutional Convention. You get to ask one question and i get to hold you to that. So any questions . I see someone coming to a microphone. Yes, sir. Great lecture. Thank you. [ applause ] i respectfully suggest that John Marshall was right, that there was a bill of rights in the original constitution, and i would like your commentary on this. An independent judiciary, prohibition of expofacto, and bills of attainder, and the tradition of the common law that developed over many, many years protecting individual rights. What is your thoughts on that and this is not to say that we didnt need a bill of rights that would make it make the rights textually clear from that point in time onward. Right. Well, i should tell youall that my next project is a biography of John Marshall, so and ive just begun and you know you cant help but being impressed by this man by both his intelligence and his clarity of expression. And the certainly he makes a very powerful case. Hes very interested in contracts and not, you know, prohibiting anything that will inhibit the obligation of contracts. And thats where hes you can say hes very forwardlooking. I mean, he does see the United States as an economic unit and he really pushes that as far as he feels he constitutionally can. Isnt the freedom of contract free choice . Well, you only get one question, but but oh, yes, i said as much. We make contracts every day. If you consider any purchase a contract, which i suppose you could. We make dozens of contracts sometimes every day. Thats what makes the world go round. And marshall was smart enough to recognize that. His cousin, Thomas Jefferson, they hated each other by t way, absolutely hated each other. Jefferson thought of different things. He thought you know, i think its fair to say he thought of things he himself did. He cared about freedom of speech because he was a great writer. He cared about religious liberty because his own religious opinions were rather excentric. He cared about he cared about Thomas Jefferson and and i dont mean that as a joke or to diminish him because we all partake of that and he you know, he wasnt passing a bill of attaineder. He was doing it for everybody. Its a deep debate and its an ongoing debate and one of the pleasures of this project will be to see it in its early stages and to follow it out at its origin. Next question, sir . Good evening. When you mentioned the word ambition probably about ten times and i assume thats a reference to bet 51 and madisons ambition must counter act ambition. It seemed that another founder, hamilton, uses the term energetic. Are a. Mbition and energetic mutely exclusive . Certainly they thought they were mutely excessive in hamiltons case. They were very alarmed by his energy and what he seemed to be doing with it. But you know, look, i said there is a paradox here. They know the myth of sense natis. They apply it to themselves. They see it as an ideal, but they all go out into the arena. They all stand for office. They all hold office when duty calls, which it frequently does. They almost all respond. So theres attention. Theres attention, and i think one of the things that struck me has struck me over the years and writing about George Washington is how i think his contemporaries were watching him, it was like a tight rope act. You know, here was this man. They had made him commander in chief, and he was chaommander i chief for eight and a half years and there was a Constitutional Convention and of course hes the presiding officer and he goes home again, and a presidency is established and hes elected twice, and he goes home again and i you know, i think people, they knew him, they lived by him sometimes serving at his side. They watched him, and they and i think i dont know if they would have ever formulated this but it was like, well, yes, he didnt let us down there. By god, he didnt just let us down. And it was admiration, maybe also tinged with anxiety. You know, suppose he slips. Suppose he grabs too far. And the anxiety of course is about themselves, too. Well, i say, okay, fine. You know, youre the man. Go ahead and do it. It was a very interesting dance that he performed both for himself and with all his peers. Yes, sir . I know you said that the heller case and the Second Amendment could by themselves be the subject of a separate lecture, but i do have a narrow question. Whether there is anything in the writ wri writings, or the comments that would be instructive on how he would view the heller decision. The one thing he said in the federalist papers i think its 39 and its a passing remark. And he is comparing the United States favorably to europe and he says, well, you know, europeans will put up with a lot of stuff that we dont put up with here and that we can resist because were armed. And hes not talking about armies. Maybe hes talking about m malicias. Maybe hes talking about armed and even if its militias, hes talking about ordinary people who you know have their hunting guns and are familiar with the use of them. And he says this even though hes a civilian and hes never hes not one of the founders who fought himself. But thats what he says. So thats the only indication that i know of. So next. My questions a little bit broad and maybe a little simple. But basically, from what i understand, theres a way to describe the constitution of the United States as a living document, thats something that a lot of people use. Would you say that bill of rights adds a lot of that fluidity allowing it to be such a document that in any way, it also just changed the perception that we have about rights because of just how it changed our understanding of laws and rights . Right. Well, marshall does address this in in one of his decisions. He says and this is a famous line of his. He says, you know, must never forget this is a constitution that we are expounding. What he means is laws are specific. They are to address particular problems or particular issues. You know, we want to build a canal. We need to clear a harbor. We need taxes for suchandsuch an amount. You know, and on, and on, and on. Hundreds of thousands of examples. But a constitution is not like that and he was saying if you try you know if you tried to put to address every specific instance in the constitution, youd probably fail for the present and youd certainly fail for the future because he says this is built for the future. And he uses at different times he uses phrases like centuries or for all time, forever. So, you know, new stuff comes up and you have to react to it and the constitution both allows to you react to it and also allows to you change the constitution. There is an amendment process. We had these first ten by 17 non1791. Its not easy and its not impossible. That was deliberately done. The only thing you cant do, the constitution says you cannot do this, is you cannot deprive a state of equal constitution without its consent. They also you could not forbid the implementation of slaves for 20 years after this is ratified but thats a dead letter since that was 1808. But no, so the constitution is was made to admit the possibility of change. Now, you know, people also look at the whole document and try to see what is the spirit of the constitution, what is the ethos of it. What are the guiding principles, can we draw any hints or clues to how we should be ave from the constitution. Would it be a good idea to pass an amendment to say, well, the presidency, shall henceforth be an inherited office and the holder of this time should be ratified, and passed to the rules of prima geniture. I know do there was an argument when the prohibition amendment was being ratified and it went to the courts. Ella hue root was the litigator, and they made an argument that was amendment was unconstitutional. Now, the court rejected the argument, but it led to a great headline. Ella hugh root is the lead council, so they came up with the highlight, beer hires root. You just have to grab them. In regard to the ninth amendment, it states that people are peoples rights shall not be restricted to just those that are in ienumerated in the constitution. Its stated in the negative, and because of that, i had the impression is potentially very openend openended, and the cause have therefore been reluctant to touch upon that. Were talking about the ninth. The eight signature about excessive bail and fines. Right, enemuration. Right. There is a people i dont remember the exact words but there is a kind of nickname for the ninth and tenth amendments among legal types because theyre less often cited. You know, people they go for the 14th, and they look at the fifth and then sometimes the second comes into prominence. But the ninth and the tenth, you know, its kind of hard to know what to do with them because as you say, they are very broad and they seem openended. And i cant do any better than that. I can just note the fact that its so and note what weve done with it and what we havent done with it, but there they are. So if there are any clever lawyers out there, go to work. Yes, sir . You mentioned that each of the states had bills of rights. I think you said not all of them, but a lot of them had. New york had 33 well, that was their that was their suggestion to congress after they ratified the constitution, they said, and by the way, here are 33 little ideas that you should that you should stick in there. But new york also did have a bill of rights for itself and one point that hamilton makes several times in the federalist papers is that, well, you know, our bill of rights says nothing about freedom of the press. You know, here are all of these people complaining theres no freedom of the press in the constitution here in new york, but our own constitution doesnt say anything about it. Im sorry. What was your question . No, not at all. The if you look at the set of 12 reduced to ten, were there any big ideas from the other states that were left out of the 12, or do the 12 then 10, just represent a clever summary of those rights that existed in the other states . Right. I think what was mostly left out were provisions to change what i called structural aspects of the constitution. Some of these measures that new york and virginia were saying were, you know, change the provisions that have to do with import taxes, or you know, export taxes or change the percentage of congress which is required for a veto to overturn a president ial veto, and those were the things madison was particularly keen to, you be, shoknow, shoot down because hed been in philadelphia the whole summer and people argued, and argued, and argued endlessly and this is what he came up with and nobody got what he wanted nobody got everything he wanted. The whole thing was a compromise. Every piece of it was somebodys compromise and he knew, you know, if you go back in and start pulling those apart, were just going to be here forever. I think one of the interesting things that didnt make it, madison, he suggested that there be prohibitions on state actions as far as freedom of i think it was freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and there was a third thing, he was willing to have the constitution forbid states from inhibiting those rights. That was way ahead of his time. You know, the congress were not going to do that, and it wasnt until the 20th century that the Supreme Court starts saying, oh, we can social media that into the 14th amendment. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you so rick brookhiser. Please stay for the book signing. Thank youall for coming. We hope to see youall again soon. Good night. Up next, on the presidency, author kathleen bartolonituazon talks about her book, for fear of an elective king , the title controversy of 1718. When washington was elected chief executive, congress was unsure how he should be addressed. He was commonly known as his excel see, pill it wuntil it wa to president , because it was too much believed to be like a monarch. George washington celebrated this honoring the president s first birthday. Its about an hour. Welcome to the fifth annual washington lecture. Im a member of the history department. I teach a course of George Washington, takes place at mt. Vernon state. Five years ago, president nab and the university, since that time, the event has flourished. Weve heard stimulating presentations from some of the most prominent scholars of George Washington and his times including ken bowling, patricia brady, gordon wood, ed blanco and last year, phil force amorg. For this years birthday, fitting for the first president , this is the first year that weve had the lecture of washingtons actual birthday, the true president s day. This is also the first year weve had the lecture in the George Washington University Museum and textile museum, which thanks to the generosity of albert h. Small, tells the hit re history of washington, d. C. Through the collection. There can be no more fitting location for the lecture. The third first is this is the first year we feature one of gws ph. Ds, dr. Cathly bortoloni, tuazol. The subject of tonights event. This years George Washington lecture is not a traditional lecture, but rather a conversation between me and the audience. Thats the fourth first. We felt in this president ial election year, this meant more to have an informal conversation of the presidency, and to welcome more audience participation. So please have your questions ready, in addition, immediately following the conversation theyll be a reception in the lobby and signing books. I brought my copy. If you forgot yours, theyll also be on sale out there. For a few introductions, id like to welcome some special guests this evening. First, raul auazon our speakers husband. And second, part of her staff. Unfortunately, ken bowling and editor for the project could not be here this evening, but we also want to recognize him for a couple reasons. First, for participating in the inaugural George Washington lecture in 2012, and also for working closely with kata as she was a visiting scholar, and still is a visiting scholar during the project, and jamie bascet, Vice President of the Guest Experience at George Washingtons mt. Vernon. Welcome jamie. [ applause ] now im pleased to welcome back to campus tonights featured speaker, dr. Kathleen bartolonituazon. Kata. Kata is an alumni, and having received her documentary in 20 t 10. She has been invited to speak at the university at mount vernon, the daughters of the american revolution, and just this past president s day, she was featured on the npr program all things considered. Kata applied her knowledge of forestry, working as chief of Information Management for the u. S. Fish and Wildlife Services and director of the California Department of fish and game and the california state lands commission. Her wonderful book for fear of an elective explores the president ial title controversy. Basically, what to call the president. Katas Amazing Research tells the story how after the establishment of the government under the constitution, congress, the press, and individuals all debated more than 30 titles for the leader of our nation. A few that did not make the cut included his elected mamajesty, and his hieigness. That would make president obama washington 44. As the name selects a successor, washington 45, to the office that George Washington defined more than 225 years ago, we couldnt be any luckier without the expert like kata of the rid original presidency. It is my pleasure to welcome dr. Kathleen bartolonituazon. [ applause ] i just want to say hello this evening, thank you for coming and happy washingtons birthday. Get comfortable here. So you know that i love this book. Ill just show my harcards here the start. Thank you so much. What i really wonder about is why the president ial controversy me . Its something that will be a paradigm in a book at best. So im interested how you came to this topic . First of all, there were times when it was called a big hassle, or other historians wondered why the congress spent so much time on it when they could have been working on those amendments to the constitution, or you know, figuring out taxation policy. But what they didnt quite realize was how important was title controversy was to figuring out what they were going to do with this new office of the president. How i came about it, i was reading a lot about washington at the beginning of my studies and i came across different historoegraphy who said washington presidency was trapped within the dichotemist republican king. So i thought to myself. Trapped . Washington . I just didnt believe it. I think presidencies as dynamic and i thought his presidency must have been dynamic also. And i was having lunch at the First Congress project one day. I mentioned this much to my colleges there and we started talking about the president ial title controversy, and the republican king idea and they happened to mention that they had this multitude of materials at the project on the title controversy that had never been explored. And the more i thought about it i realized that my dissertation topic had basically hit me on the head. Those are the best kind. Yes. Great. And so lets take a step back because its not obvious to people today, because i couldthe take it for granted. If you could tell me a little bit about the fears of the presidency, of this new executive office . Well, you have to realize that a president s place within a popular sovereignty is complicated and the presidency was quite controversial in the beginning. We had just the american nation had just fought a war against a king and yet six years after the treaty of paris and the end of the war, this new constitution untried featured a federal singular central executive with no term limits and vaguely defined powers. And its really no wonder that people worried about a monarchy attaching to the presidency. What kind of a president did the country want and need . There were those that were worried that the president would turn into a dispotic, all powerful monarch, too much like the traditional kind of powerful king would be. But there was another group of americans that worried about a weak executive that would be subject to corruption and manipulation like a weak king could be manipulated by his court. And so for them it stood to reason that they would be more interested in a strong title to counter act this weak this fear of a weak president. But it seems like all sides agreed though that the person should be George Washington . Yes. He was the obvious choice. Yeah, he was really he was the most trusted man in america and i would say he was the most celebrated person in the western world at that time. I mean, really. When you think about it. So he studied as at the end of the war, he was he and the nation were one. You know, the union. He was, like a steady influence on an unsettled america. People celebrated him though with such enthusiasm that he was for the presidency a blessing, as i said, trusted guy that he was, but he was a bit of a curse for the presidency, as well, because he was so celebrated. The enthusiasms towards washington rps were so kinglik. He would have almost enlisted like a rapture at people in times. The public loved him and they loved to celebrate him in kingly ways, and as a result, he brought this whif of monarchy to the presidency just in the way people celebrated him and that was a problem for the