Captioning performed by vitac hello, my name is bill white. I am in the Cornerstone Program at purdue but in another life i was a historian. I walked into graduate school in 1969, not quite 1912 when the book on the cabinet was written, but a long, long time ago. So i have a generic history graphic question that i want to take all the panelists to the first word of the conference, remaking american political history. Are there sources or questions that you and other scholars are asking in 20182019, 2020 that just would not have been asked, would never have been thought of when i walked into graduate school 50 years ago . Great question. Thank you. Somebody want to be brave and go first . Sure. So i think that from my own personal work there has been a renewed turn to looking at institutions as structures, as bodies of people who are responding to International Issues and pressures and trying to prove themselves on an International Stage, to understanding that the states the federal state was much larger and powerful than perhaps we initially gave it credit for and formed much earlier. My work suggests that sort of the executive turn of the federal government was actually much earlier than a lot of previous scholarship suggested, a lot of previous scholarship puts that turn after the civil war and my work suggests that there was a lot of executive energy and intensity from the very beginning. So weve mentioned the whiskey rebellion, weve mentioned the french revolution and neutrality crisis, jays treaty, these are all instances that i use to show that washington and the cabinet really seized the opportunity to embolden the executive branch and boost president ial authority and power way earlier than would have been previously argued. So i think the institutional turn is a big one for me that i see and looking at it beyond sort of just a biographical focus, but saying what are sort of the cultural forces that are shaping this institution, what are the international forces, and how do we study it as a body of people . I will jump off of this. I think the institutional stuff especially about the rise of the federal state is related to questions of putting things in a broader transatlantic context. Katlyn can definitely talk about this more authoritatively than i can, but im not sure when palmers democratic revolution came out, if it was before or after you got to graduate school, but i think all of us take for granted that the American Revolution had impact on the stories were telling. Later the haitian revolution. And that this could affect the way the institutional structure, the norms, the ability to maintain norms, the ability to maintain trusts, that all of these currents are coming in and from the outside and that its not just this sort of internal dialogue among insulated, you know, pennsylvanians and virginians and maybe some nationalistminded people. I think that theres a notion that this broader context is pretty important. I will just jump off of that. I think both of those things are exactly right. I would just add one other thing to that which is i think theres a renewed investigation of democracy which david was talking about also. Theres a real i think there was a long trend in American History to take it for granted that its democratic you know, it was democratic, its inventing a democracy, we live in a democracy. I think there is a renewed questioning among historians, what was that actually, what did it mean to people at the time, how was that constructed, how is a represented democracy constructed because that was a new concept at the time. It took a lot of work to actually think of and legitimate. So i think there has been a renewed investigation of that and i think, like all historical moments, its coming from, you know, current questions and crises are informing the kind of historical questions that were asking. Thank you. So i would just add that the broad investigation of culture and as part of that the inclusion of people that were previously ignored, which is something that, you know, we havent necessarily gone into great detail about, but looking at how it is that africanamericans, looking how it is that women, you know, the poor, how did they participate in the political process . What did these institutions and ideas mean to them . Where do native americans fit in this story . Some of these questions were asked beginning right around when you started, but i think, you know, just as we might take for granted that the french revolution played a part, theres almost an extent to which we now take it for granted that, of course, were including discussions of these previously excluded groups, but it is worth emphasizing that, you know, this look at political culture more broadly is designed in part to take account for these other voices. And i would say for me the question of liberalism and i will liberalism not in a louie harts sense, but as we look at the resurgence of what we could call illiberalism, conservative illiberalism, whether it be in the u. S. Or around the world, that i as someone who went to college at the tail end of the cold war, that illiberalism was understood to be something of the past, it was around but was eventually fading and going away, and liberalism the sort of liberal threats were the future. So and that shaped the way we told the history of, say, for example, the alien and sedition acts which are always understood as these weird 18th century things that we then shed and went away because of course we dont talk about immigrants that way because, of course, we dont talk about, you know, the government sort of playing a really strong forceful role in culture, whatever it might be. Or conspiracy theories, thinking about the roles that those play in a particular political culture that i had maybe taken less seriously as objects of study that now appear to be the kind of coexistence of illiberalism and liberalism in american political culture, whether that be the existence of slavery or patriarchy or all these illiberal forms of culture and social structure that filter into politics and shape politics in a way. So thats just something that has been of renewed interest to me but which hadnt been when i went to graduate school in the 90s. Thank you all for your lovely papers. Im johann niemm. As much as i would never disagree with my colleague john larson whose work i respect so much i want to disagree on his depiction of the enlightenment and that leads to a question which is, you know, that i dont think the enlightenment was quite as heroic or, you know, good versus bad as he portrayed it, but rather as carolyn winters work suggests there was a more humble approach, more empirical, more investigative, more practical. You know, there was a real humility to the capacity to generate knowledge during the enlightenment and that humility has implications for policy making in terms of what works, what doesnt, whats good, whats bad. It seems to me the four papers are asking questions around if we take the enlightenment that sort of idea of investigation and finding out how things can work seriously, the four papers are asking these questions and i just want to hear your reflections on it about the 1790s, who gets to deliberate and where, who is able to deliberate and how do we translate institutionally the products of that deliberation into policy. So i would just those are just some thoughts that i had that i would love to hear your thoughts about. Thank you. So i would i would absolutely agree with the i mean, part of the problem with defining the enlightenment as anything is that theres going to be a counter example thats just as much a part of the enlightenment, but i think youre right that its as much a recognition that they dont know and that the idea of empirical evidence and right hand deliberation can lead to progress, if not the ultimate single truth. There was this hope that maybe you can, you know some of the writing, i think, pointed to this maybe state of nirvana, but i agree. The question of who gets and how and who gets to deliberate and how i think it fundamental to our country today as just as it was then because what does it actually mean to be involved in this deliberative process when what happens in government is by definition beyond the scope of what most americans are capable of discussing. I mean, we as individuals have lives, i mean, even today when information is so widely available and we have cspan that can broadcast whats occurring in congress, i mean, you know, i dont know what the house is debating today, and part of that is because ive got my own life to live. So what does it mean to participate in the deliberative process . I would love to have that answer. At the time i would say ultimately the understanding would resolve around property owners, of course, but nevertheless there was this sense that you could participate through your actions, whether it be demonstrating patriotism, demonstrating a love for liberty. Just building off of that, i wanted to mention two things, which is that they were deeply concerned the people who were doing the deliberating were deeply concerned about who was doing the deliberating and recognizing that it was a really complicated process and the issues facing the nation and the issues facing trying to sort of figure outer these problems required a lot of knowledge and experience and practice. If you only served one term in the house for two years, you are not going to acquire the knowledge and the practice and the experience necessary to wrap your head around these things. So madison in the federalist papers talks about this extensively, that his biggest concern was that especially in you know, in the 1780s in the house you just had this revolving door of congressmen and how can you have an effective government if they dont know what theyre doing. I also want to mention that there was a hope that people would get better at it. There was a hope that the next generation would have more understanding and would come to better agreements. I often call the constitution a hodgepodge of compromises and suggest that all of most of the participants, i would even go so far as to say all the participants felt as though they didnt get everything they wanted and knew that there were things on the table that were going to be a problem and they hoped that future generations would be able to come to a better solution than they had. So i think thats a really important thing to remember when we are talking about this sort of first generation is they understood their limitations very, very much. Im going to answer your first question with your second. I think who gets to deliberate is who is able and i think the problem thats the problem, right . One of those questions in theory answers the other and thats what they kind of have to deal with and sometimes thats and i think this runs back to the original revolutionary constitution making, its definitely there in the constitutional convention. What should what should differentiate the senate from the house . Well, its something about ability, but how do you define what the ability is to create the greatest deliberative body, right, in the world. And so i think that this i dont have an answer because i think its kind of it sort of runs in a circle in some ways. I just have a i will just jump on quickly to say i think as lindsay say they were extremely concerned with deliberation, how it could best work. Something ive been thinking a lot about is the way they discuss conditions for deliberation and particularly the use of secrecy and its utility to deliberation is essentially to insulate the process from factional passions, they talk a lot about passions. So the ideas that you need to have a cool, right hand space that is separate from all of that where you can actually have solid and sound deliberation and ive been thinking a lot about that, you know, in our modern world because the notion that you should have any space or time to deliberate and complete a policy or make a policy is almost antithetical to our media environment and to the way that politics works now. Its so much fast, you know, go, go, go, and we want to see everything and we want to talk about every step of the process and pundits are annualizing it all the time. So in many ways i think where we have arrived at is very, very different from the vision that many of the framers of the constitution had and to some extent, i mean, part of that is just technological innovation, but also its, you know, changes in values and expectations and so i think that thinking that through and thinking through that transformation is challenging, but very you know, potentially really interesting. Thats a very wide open answer. Thomas pane i think its in rights of man said the people will not decide wrong unless they decide too hastily, Something Like that. He had this faith that if you just let the people decide now, sometimes they might make mistakes, but thats only if you dont do it right, if you go too fast or if theres selfinterest that finds its way in there. Im also thinking about like whenever i teach about the revolutionary era i always remind students that the largest city i teach alt salem, oregon, in salem, oregon, which is 150,000 people, which is, you know, roughly three to four times the size of the largest city in the United States in the 1790s. So the extent to which people live in these facetoface communities, so like robert quorum who was brought up by mark, his idea of how you should adjudicate property disputes you just get trusted people in your community to sit together, sort through it all and make a decision. Lawyers and the legal system is the way that rich people tilt property arrangements to your own benefit. Come on, if we were just all in a room, you get seven trusted people you can figure this out. I think for payne and some of the people who followed him, there is this image and common sense of people under a tree. The First Legislature will just be everyone sitting under a tree hashing it out. Cool, got our rules, lets go back home. We are just sitting under the tree and we can work this out, unless we do it too quickly or are doing it in bad faith. Depending on my mood sometimes i think thats the most inspirational thing i have ever heard and other times i think that is the dumbest idea i have ever heard. Today i think its a cool idea. Yea yeah. Hi. Thank you so much. Im cole jones, i have the honor and privilege to teach early American History here at purdue. So i was thrilled to see a panel in my specialty. But my question is really for all the panel. How does your research speak to a tension that seems to exist in this fragile period of the 1790s between the desire to create a new government based on this principle of popular sovereignty with the desire to create a government that would be respectable in the eyes of the world, right, what elijah gold calls treaty worthiness, that they must be among the powers of the earth. It seems like all of your papers in some way reflect this tension and it seems to me a tension that has some contemporary relevance today. On the one hand balancing the desires of the constituents who elected the president with this desire to also balance the u. S. Position visavis the rest. World. So if you could elucidate that a bit for us i would appreciate it. Well, i will just say that i think part of it is this question of, you know, how do you achieve respectability. I mean, is it through emulating the old world, you know, is it is it through getting as close to, you know, england as you can because thats their role model, or do you seek to provide some other example. And i think there was a lot of tension there about how much to focus on what it would mean to have a radically selfgoverning country versus one that is a nation among the nations. So, i mean, i know for me they were acutely aware that people were watching globally, but at the same time i think its worth remembering that just as people did not live in cities and while the global turn is very important, the vast majority of americans were much more concerned with their day to day lives. So, you know, if we are talking about average americans, i would say that they were probably you know, they would know about it, but they were a little more concerned about their basic needs. So my work very literally encapsulates these two quandaries in the cabinet. You had Alexander Hamilton on one hand who was advocating for this very sort of global, banking, merchant heavy, respectable sort of englishbased system with Strong Military power and strong presidency and then you had Thomas Jefferson who was supportive of some of those things in much smaller doses but had a different vision of what they should look like and they literally dukd it out in the cabinet to the point where Thomas Jefferson described the Cabinet Meetings as a cock fight. There is no better way to describe that. If you think of sort of a bloody, violent spectacle where youre fighting to the death, and they did meet in a room that was 15 by 20 feet, filled with furniture, it was five very large men by the standards of the day and they met for hours at a time, they met up to five times per week in the summer of 1793. We know that that summer was very hot and humid because there was a very bad yellow fever outbreak that fall. They had no air conditioning, it was philadelphia, it was very humid and they hated each other by that point and they were just locked in these battles over, you know, in some ways really small details of things, but in some ways this much larger vision of what the nation was going to look like. Im not sure that actually answers the question of, you know, which one i mean, i dont think necessarily either came out on top. Hamiltons vision of sort of banking and merchant system sort of transpired, but there is a jeffersonian ideal that a lot of people hold very closely to. So in some ways that battle is still sort of the political concepts that were grappling with today. Its a great question. So i think theres a lot going on there, but in the work i do you see both theres sort of anxieties about how europe views americans and theres anxieties about how europe views america. So what i see is a lot of the impulse towards in federalist education policy is one status anxiety among elites trying to hold their position. You see this weird outpouring of dancing schools and french schools right after the revolution. They are supposed to have everybody is dressed in home spun fighting a revolution about virtue in the face of luxury and then the officer corps comes out and goes and learns how to do a minute u wet. Thats definitely what you are talking about and its really weird, but that has implications for how Government Resources get used, should you create schools, universities, institutions that teach people to do that because on the International Stage having somebody who can talk into, you know, a court and do a minute u wet is pretty important, or do you need to do the thing where you teach people how to be as johann said before, a humble kind of Practical Enlightenment that would maybe make would make the new more republican american version of things take root. In all sorts of policy arenas where historians wouldnt have noticed this years ago its become evident its not just necessarily the socioeconomic stuff im talking about but also this kind of geopolitical situation that we are now aware of because of work like gould and others. I would just say that i think youre absolutely right to identify this tension and i think youre right that it endures to this day, but one thing that i think is significant about the 1790s is that some of these things are changing the International Community is really changing. So, for example, when im thinking about the use of secrecy, a lot of times its justified on the basis of an international level. We need to keep secrets to be able to function as a government internationally. So that seek ratty is necessary in military realms and diplomacy, for example. But with the french revolution there is a movement to change that, actually, in the International Community. I mean, the french are talking about all diplomacy should be open. Jenair comes to the u. S. And said we have abandoned the crooked ways of diplomacy and im going to do everything in the open. There are interesting ways in which i think International Norms and questions about things are changing at the same time. So the u. S. Is this kind of move to adopt aristocrat tick french manu richls and clothing and things like that, soon thats going to be a lot more complicated because the french revolution is actually throwing that stuff out and, of course, not everyone goes with it, but i think it complicates those questions a lot. We have ten minutes. I want to gather a few questions. I want to be sure everyone gets a question to ask. If you have a question raise your hand. Theres Something Back there. Over here as well. So thank you all so much. I was listening to your papers wondering if maybe an institution that could bring them all together would be the u. S. Senate in the 1790s, it meets in secret, its supposed to be the bastion of the elite, its supposed to be the cabinet but it doesnt quite work out that way and its not directly elected, its kind of separated from popular politics to some extent. Could you weave all of the themes together maybe in an edited volume about the senate to make that work . Im just wondering if you have given thought to whether or not that could be the representative body for all of these ideas. Thank you. And we had a question over here. While we are waiting is there anyone else who has a question who wants to ask . Okay. Because these were facetoface communities i was wondering if the location of the capital is changing your deliberations that youre seeing about each of these issues. Does it matter when its in new york or philadelphia or washington and that 15 by 20 foot overheated room, does it matter where that room is and where the shaded tree is . Thank you. Any other questions . So we will sort of take those together. A question about the senate and a question about location. Take it away. Well, i will start with location. You know, i mean, i deal a lot with pennsylvania and it factored heavily into what occurred in the federal government. I mean, philadelphia was the sort of preeminent city to begin with, it had sort of established itself as the economic heart and once it became the political heart what happened not just in the politics of pennsylvania, but in philadelphia i think factored heavily into what occurred in government. I mean, pennsylvania had a long history of frack dishes politics, much more so than some of its neighbors which werent to say that those were peaceful, either. And that definitely spilled over into what was occurring in congress. I mean, these individuals were talking to each other, they were interacting with each other. Its an interesting sort of counterfactual about how washington might have responded to the whiskey rebellion had it not been in pennsylvania, but the fact that it was made it all the more important that the federal government show a force. As to the question in the senate, you know, i think thats a good point. You know, one thing that i would say, though, is that its worth looking at the process of selecting the senators themselves could be very contentious and i think this is one of the problems you get into with any sort of body of that sort, that egos and personalities clash and, you know, if you look at william mcclays diary from the first senate, i mean, all he does is sit there and grumble. And part of that is, you know, hes performing for an audience back home, but based on that evidence it didnt appear to be working out very well as a deliberative body. Again, its one disgruntled voice, but when youre passing notes about the weight of the Vice President , might not be the best example. So the Senate Question first. Actually, i just want to back up. In response to your whiskey rebellion comment, he didnt do anything when North Carolina or kentucky ignored the tax. Thats right. So i think youre absolutely right that pennsylvania was really important. In response to the senate, so washington, of course, has his very famous august 22nd, 1789 visit to the senate which we know because of mcclays diary, it goes very badly. He has these expectations that the senate is going to operate like a council of war and the senates are going to debate like his officers would and offer him advice and instead it acts like a perfect legislative body and refers it to committee and asks him to come back later. So he says that hes never going to go back and he doesnt. So i think that really speaks to the norms issue that weve been talking about a lot and how thats very much in flux. In terms of the location, it absolutely shifts a lot in terms of the cabinet. So in philadelphia the heart of the city was very much around high street or Market Street and hamilton and jefferson lived six blocks from each other and they were sort of the outskirts of the cabinet community. They went to the same shops, they went to the same tailors, they went to the same social environments. They could not avoid each other if they wanted to, it was very much a hot house for political tensions and elite society was all in that one little clump. When the capital moves to washington, d. C. Its much more spread out. There are little chunks of communities, sort of the its an older work, but james youngs the Washington Community talks about how sort of the executive Branch People cluster around the executive Branch Buildings and the ljs lay testify Branch Building people cluster and there is a wilderness with cows in between. He is not wrong. So i think it is much more spread out. There is much more space. But then also what we see in the white house in terms of the Cabinet Meeting space is i think very informative. Jefferson selects his private study in a much bigger space. He has it set up much more comfortably so the secretaries actually have proper work space. Theres larger tables and more comfortable chairs, has great lighting, its on a first floor, its a private space. I think there is a lot to be said that his experience in washingtons cabinet absolutely informs what he then creates once he is in the white house. I dont have a great answer for the Senate Question. I think you are right, i think its super interesting. The debates that ive read in ratification conventions and in madisons notes prompted a lot of the questions ive been asking about the role of education in determining access to power and really how they kind of dealt with this thorny question of having an upper house as opposed to in addition to the lower house. On the question of location, i dont deal too much with national politics, but i do think an important thing to talk about is the presence or lack thereof of women in the capital. D. C. In its early years is not exactly a fun place to live and so i think if im remembering correctly the number of spouses who come with congressmen goes like really far down and also there is not that many women living there. The ways in which people do politics informally in private spaces or semipublic spaces is really different when you have, you know, women or not. So there is that. And then i would just say on the local level this matters a great, great deal. State controls pretty much all move in this period to make them, you know, more accessible to people who live in new york and some places Northern Areas versus western areas. Even if you go down even more local level, should school taxes be town level or should you divide your town into districts and should the districts then have to hammer this kind of stuff out. The real immediacy and facetofaceness it gets pretty intimate about some really important, you know, things, road building and other things that are just like absolutely fundamental to can you get your goods to market or can you get your kid to school, so on and so forth. So i think its not just a national story, thats happening in every Little Pocket of the United States. Yeah, these are both really great questions. I will start with the location issue. I mean, i think and everyone has echoed this, it absolutely matters. It mattered a lot to them and they thought about it a lot and i think the room where it happens to quote a hamilton song as lindsay said in the executive cabinet matters a lot, it also matters in the legislature quite a bit. Im thinking a lot about that in terms of accessibility, how many people can actually fit in the room if you are going to allow an audience, where can reporters sit where they can hear whats going said to record it. Those kind of things matter a great deal, i think. And also just to bring up the french revolution again, people like Thomas Jefferson when they are in france they are witnessing the estates general meeting and the crowds that are coming and, you know, invading the assembly at points and i think that that you know, he is writing home about that and i think that that even subconsciously is influencing how theyre thinking about where should the capital be, where should the legislature meet that is most safe or kind of insulated, if you will. And to the Senate Question, i think that thats an absolutely just great question because that is the institution that actually boils down a lot of the things that weve been talking about and ive thought about that so much recently because the senate is being discussed a lot right now in terms of is it still functional, does it work the way we want it to work. And i think that i come back a lot to how madison talked about the senate in the federalist papers as sort of a cooling mechanism. It is supposed to be the place of wisdom and its not going to be directly elected by the people and its supposed to be this kind of check and this wise body and i think whats interesting is that it was theorized in that way as sort of a limit on too much democracy as david was saying earlier and the ills that they think theyre guarding against are demagoguery and, you know, populist threats, these kind of things. I think whats kind of ironic is that actually we find ourselves in a situation where that institution maybe mortem kraes would be the solution, in fact, to those ills and its not the thing causing those ills. So we have a senate that was designed to be inherently undemocratic in many ways and not really reflective or overly responsive to Public Opinion and that might be whats actually causing a lot of the very ills that the framers feared when they invented, you know, the senate and that as an idea. It makes me think about how nowadays everyone is focusing on the breakdown of norms in the senate as the problem of democracy and if only the senate can get it right that can save democracy. If the thing designed to not be democratic ends up saving democracy, that would be a wonderful historical irony. All right. Thanks to our panelists for and thanks for all of our to the audience and the good questions. Enjoy the rest of the camp and enjoy the rest of the conference. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight we continue our look at apollo 11 starting with moonwalk one a 1970 feature length documentary about the mission commissioned by nasa. The film covers pre liftoff preparations to parades for the astronauts after their space return, rarely seen space footage and scenes from around the world. You can see it tonight starting at 8 00 eastern on cspan 3. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. All week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Lectures in history, american artifacts, reel america, the civil war, oral histories, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan 3. The first africans to land in english north america would arrive here in 1619 and that would begin an amazing experience in the development of the United States. Saturday a special American HistoryTv Washington journal feature. As we look back to the first arrival of africans to america 400 years ago at any Point Comfort historic ft. Monroe, virginia. At 8 30 a. M. Eastern we are live with Norfolk State University history professor cassandra alexandernewby. Then at 9 30 live coverage of the commemorative ceremonies with speeches by virginia government officials, including senator mark werner, senator tim kaine, Governor Ralph Northam and Lieutenant Governor justin fairfax. The history of africans in america from ft. Monroe, live, saturday beginning at 8 30 a. M. On cspans washington journal and on American History tv on cspan 3. Next on American History tv, backstory host brian balogh and Nathan Connelly give a behind the scenes look at their weekly podcast. They are joined by a former staff member and a regular guest. This was part of a twoday Purdue University conference called remaking american political history. Its an hour and a half. Okay. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the 10 45 panel called Something Like behind the scenes at backstory. Thats right. Maybe. Just so you know you are not on the wrong flight. Im brian balogh and ive been a cohost for backstory for over ten years now. Im going to introduce the