Curious about their politics at the local level, whether it is a town meeting or a school board, and they are equally passionate about politics at the county level, the state level particularly. And very interested in national politics, especially in regard to the president ial primary. What we will do today is take a look at some items that reflect not only on New Hampshires politics, and New Hampshire politics within a larger scope of national and Even International politics. First item right here is a portrait and the subject is governor wentworth. Governor went with has the distinction of being the longest tenured royal governor. He served for almost 26 years as governor of New Hampshire. 17411767. Rom that by itself is not that amarkable, except that he was hot tempered, arrogant person who made a lot of enemies. The medical is he survived the miracle is he survived even one or two years. With good coaching from his father, who was a lieutenant governor, and from good friends and relatives both in england and New Hampshire, he learned how to make the system work. He understood the whole colonial system, to the point that he knew how to please the authorities in london, they could hire and fire him, and he could please almost everybody in New Hampshire by giving them something. He gave away most of the land in the state. He gave vermont away as well. So with a mixture of patronage, good politics, good connections, he survived not only for almost 26 years, but made himself very rich in the process. He finally was more or less forced out, partly because of age, he was suffering badly from gout. In addition, the authorities in london had heard complaints and they came to the conclusion that he was operating perhaps too much out of private interest and not paying attention to the public good. Office, heorth left was replaced by young John Wentworth, who was yet to be 30 years of age. The next and last of the royal governors. Because we had had such a strong chief executive, New Hampshire was leary of having a strong executive in any form of government. So when John Wentworth left, the state had no government. The government at this time consisted of the presence of the governor and his commission. When John Wentworth fled in the middle of revolutionary events, New Hampshire found itself without government. So the leaders wrote to the coffin of the Congress Meeting in philadelphia, basically saying, what are we supposed to do, we do not have a governor. John adams among others led the charge for New Hampshire. He wanted a new england state to be the first state to actually declare a form of government independent of the crown. So we drafted a small two page form of government, seen here, that was approved by the congress on january 5, 1776. This basically states that we, the small provisional congress of New Hampshire, are now the government. It created a legislative branch. No executive branch at all. Said nothing about judiciary. It was a very flimsy little document, that is the first of the socalled state constitutions independent of the crown. These are paintings of two of our most distinguished native sons. In the early 19th century, little tiny New Hampshire had some clout and some of our native sons did very well. On the right we have david webster, who was a lawyer in both his hometown in salisbury, then in portsmouth. He served in the house of representatives. He was a federalist politician and eventually he would move on to massachusetts and become a Major National figure, depending on whether you like him or not, he was either godlike daniel or black dan. But he never lost his ties to New Hampshire. He maintained a farm here and he knew all the political leaders and figures of New Hampshire. He constantly kept in touch with them and spent a good part of the year here. He was always here and present, even if he was living in washington or boston. He was too big to ignore. And one of those who he had detested during much of his political career was are other famous native son, Franklin Pierce, who is over here. Daniel webster was a federalist and a whig politician. His key opponents in New Hampshire was Franklin Pierce, somewhat younger than webster. He was a jeffersonian and he later turned into a jacksonian democrat. He served in the u. S. Senate, but he did not stay long. And so he returned to New Hampshire, but was known here primarily as the enforcer of democratic unity. He wanted a Democratic Party that was saying the same thing in alabama and new york. He was known as a true Democratic Party man. Everybody knew the democratic nominee would win in 52 great it was the year 52. It was their year. They just did not have a person. So the potential nominees at the time did not go to convictions conventions, they sat at home hoping somebody would bring them good news. Lin waspares was frank not on anybodys radar screen. But the Democratic Leaders could not arrive at any kind of consensus. After about 40 ballots, people started to mention Franklin Pierce because he was a good solid democrat and he seemed to have, all the view was a new englander, no particular bias against the south. So the southern delegates sent telegrams up, asking questions of Franklin Pierce who was in New Hampshire, and they liked the answers. After maybe the 49th ballot, he was finally nominated, to the surprise of everyone. Nobody knew who he was outside of New Hampshire. So this painting was done in order to publicize Franklin Pierce and what he looked like. There were photographs of him wearing his mexican war uniform, which he still fit into. And his longtime friend, a classmate from college, nathaniel hawthorne, actually wrote one of the early biographies of Franklin Pierce. So if you look at nothing on see arnes work, you will biography of Franklin Pierce. Not one of his greatest works, but peers was the nominee but pierce was the nominee and he won the election and he served for one term. Here is a picture of a cornish town meeting, 1947. New hampshire is proud of the fact that they have town meetings. They have a long tradition of thinking their government is best when it is small and available to the people. This is fairly typical of what you would have seen in 1947. People would have gathered in the townhome. What you town hall. What you see is a group of people who are concerned and they know exactly what they want to do, what items will be discussed, who they will vote for. Sometimes the meetings would last not only a few hours, but maybe two or three days. It goes back to massachusetts in the 16 30s, when they began to incorporate separate, small towns in and around the boston area. They allowed each of the towns the privilege of electing their own officers and to tax themselves. In New Hampshire today, there are 234 incorporated municipalities. On town meeting day, which is always in march, this is the one time when those folks in town get together. One thing that New Hampshire developed during the progressive era for the first two decades of the 20th century, we developed a system for holding not only a primary election for the state officials, but we also developed a system for holding a president ial primary for actual delegates to go to the conventions. Since 1919, New Hampshire has been the first state to select delegates to go to the president ial convention. But not that many people participated. For just picking those candidates out of a hat to go to the conventions. So we changed the law in 1949, saying in the future primaries that we would not only pick individuals to go to the conventions, but we would have what they call the beauty contest. We put the name of a candidate on the ballot. President ialre primary our president of primary did not just list candidates from New Hampshire, but also listed the actual names of candidates. Runs its own election in the way that it sees fit. They run it through the secretary of states office. What has happened in some of the towns is they decided to jumpstart the time. They had to do it on the day of the primary, but some of them jumpstarted the time. One small town did that in 1948. A little tiny town. It had about 50 voters at the time. And the Railroad Town only time they could get everybody together to actually vote was around midnight, because after that the Railroad Workers took off and they were maintaining tracks and doing other things. So they decided to have its primary, the president ial primary, in 1948 at midnight. And then off they would go. Since that time, other small towns have jumped into it. Dicksville is another. Jumped into it as well. If you have leslie and 100 voters, you can hold less than 100 voters, you can actually hold the primary at midnight. So it became a tradition to be the first ones to jump in. What we have here is a little wooden ballot box, this is from harts location. The simple box is in many respects are most valuable artifact. You have to think about it onto planes. On two planes. It is just a little wooden box. It is a relic, an artifact from the little town. On the other plane, this little wooden box is a symbol of who we are. We are a republic. We say that every time we salute the flag. A republic is by definition a form of government where the governed govern themselves according to the laws that they make. The minute that we fail to see this little wooden box as that second item, the symbol of who we are, we cease to be a republic. It is important to people to understand the whole concept of overloading. Oting. Ittle box of v this little box is good at showing up. The New Hampshire primary was not popular in till 1952. The front runner of the republican nomination was robert taft, also called mr. Republican, and he was well known by the Party Regulars. However, many Party Regulars thought that he was too far to the right and they did not like him. So a number of New Hampshire people rallied around their governor, Sherman Adams, and decided to push the candidacy to dwight d. Eisenhower. He was serving as the commander of nato at the time and he was not allowed to run and he did not even come to the state. So there was a backdoor effort orchestrated by the likes of henry lodge and Sherman Adams to get him on the ballot. It worked. He said he was ok with having his name on the ballot. And on the democratic side, president harry truman was planning to run for another term. And he was contested. He had problems in terms of the korean war and other things, and he was contested by a guy from tennessee, who nobody had ever heard about except he headed up the Crime Commission that got a lot of publicity on television. So the primary breaks ride open wide open with taft, eisenhower, and the incumbent president. So we have a lot of artifacts. Eisenhower was a popular figure at the time, although he could not campaign yet in New Hampshire, not during the primary. So his name was floated out there. He was considered a hero of world war ii. He was renowned for his work as a nato commander, but he could not come to New Hampshire. Taft did campaign in New Hampshire. Maybe he should not have. He was not a good vote getter or a popular figure. So New Hampshire said, i like ike. And eisenhower won the primary. Much has been made about the fact that we are the first in the nation for the primaries. We did not mean to do that in 1962. It was almost by accident. The decision was made to hold the primary election on the same day as the town meeting day, a way to get a big crowd there and he would not have to have two different elections, which cost a lot of money. The decision was made in 1949 to hold the 52 primary, the president ial primary, on town meeting day. There was a big turnout. The other thing that made it, and why we were the first in the nation, the other thing that made it a big deal was the nature of the election itself. You had an incumbent president running against a challenge or within his own party, and you had a wellknown established republican running against a very Popular Military official. It was a wide open primary. One of the reasons it is important, summed up very nicely some years ago by a commentator, john chancellor, he said we have polls, a lot of talk about who will be whinnying and who is the front runner and who has raised the most money, but until we get to the New Hampshire primary we havent really asked the ordinary voters in the privacy of their voting place to actually cast their votes. What you get with the New Hampshire primary is an actual individuals,on by ordinary people, casting their preference. That will be the primary. And looking at politics in New Hampshire government is fun. It is a small state and people say it is not important. That is not true. Every voter is important, every town meeting is important, every congressional sessio in concord here is important. People have the right and the willingness, and certainly the aptitude and desire to make themselves heard. [cheering] our cities tour staff recently traveled the concorde, New Hampshire to learn about its rich history. Learn more about concorde and other stops on our tour online. You are watching American History tv, all we can, every weekend on cspan3. On lectures in history, Colorado State universitypueblo professor fawnamber montoya teaches a class about the ludlow coal miners strike and massacre that took place in the early 20th century in colorado. Someollows the story of families, many of whom died when the Colorado National guard burnt the tent city where the strikers were living. She talks about how the event was remembered. This is about 50 minutes. Professor montoya so, sorry i
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