Test. Test test test. Test. Test test. Test test test. Test. Test test. Test test test. So i am just going to talk about what my research us. The reteak that they serve on existing elite, or aristocratic, didnt really fit republican ideals, and because they were privately run they could not be changed enough. So they thought that the academies that the federalist created just credentialed people that had status. So create a public system that allowed people to rise that would often have a universalish for white man Public Schools and a nation nal man and finally the was those that thought all white men should get the same education and sufficient to prepare any citizen for public office. And this was the way to make sure you could have competent ones. In the end, i think this debate reminds us that decisions about who to educate and how our so ill leave it at that. And pass it down the line. Thank you all again for being here. I think if i looked at the program correctly, this is the only strictly 18th Century Panel so i appreciate the sort of vote of support by showing up and engaging in conversation with us. So as seth said, my work is on the president s cabinet and the origins of the cabinet. And as many may know if you look at the constitution the word cabinet does not exist and no legislation was ever passed creating it. Yet it is an institution that we are all wildly familiar with and public and enduring. So my book set about trying to figure out where it came from and what kind of practices led to its creation, how it evolved and developed and what sort of role it had in the early republican. And i ended up arguing that there were three real origins of the president s cabinet. In particular, washingtons military experience from the revolutionary war, he drew several parallels from his counsels of war into his cabinet, so once he determined that a cabinet was necessary to provide the sort of advice and support that he required in the face of constitutional, domestic and international crisis, he drew on what served him well as commander of chief of the continental army. Second, all of the states had counsels of state or they had governors comb counsels or executive counsels. And first of the members had experience in some way or another, either been a governor. And by and large they kind of thought they were crap. And they really felt that they limited executive authority. They were a tool that the legislative used to control the governor or to control the executive. And that was a system that they were looking to not replicate in the new federal government. Finally, the british cabinet. The word cabinet comes from the british government. Most americans were very familiar with it. They blamed the british ministers for really instigating the conflict behind the revolutionary war. And while none of the first cabinet members wrote this, i believe strongly it was always something on their minds. They knew there was a possibility they might be compared to it. Now of course they didnt write it down so i cant say that definitively but i believe it strongly. So all of these origins shaped much more than just washingtons perspective on the cabinet. They shaped politics, culture, and society in the early republican. The United States was very much part of the International Community. And their interactions with that community were reflected in the way that they approached the new nation. I think that the cabinet is a perfect case study to understand the early republic and the government more broadly. It was created in response to challenges and crises that came up that perhaps werent expected. International forces often forced the cabinet to meet and to respond. This was something that the entire early republic grappled with and really created to meet the needs of the people governing in an organic way when the constitution doesnt provide that many details about what the daytoday governing experience should actually look like. So this sort of organic Reactive Development is a key to the cabinet and i think its also a key to the early republic. So all that being said, i still get asked the question why do you study these dead old white guys. Dont we know everything about them. Whats possibly left to write . Its been hundreds of years. Yet the last book written was in 1912 and the origins about the different departments. So sometimes when we think we know something or assume its been written, its actually the case it hasnt. So i think thats sort of an experience we have all had is looking back at the 1790s in particular saying there is so much stuff here that needs to be examined and studied and is relevant for all these reasons, first because historians are constantly finding new documents in attics and basements and things we didnt know existed. And second they havent really been studied. And i think something we are all going to speak to is this decade in particular set so many precedents that we are still grappling with today because so much was unwritten in legislation or in the constitution. So the first people in office were really crafting a model that for a better or worse were still dealing with in some ways. For my purposes, i argue that washingtons cabinet has left a very significant legacy. Obviously, the institution has expanded exponentially. Its institutionalized and National Security counsel has usurped a lot of the original functions of the cabinet. And yet each president gets to decide who their closest advisors are going to be. They get to decide if they are members of the cabinet, if they are outside people from the institution, if they are family members. And when we have elections, we ask them who are your Foreign Security advisers going to be. The constitution says that that should be the senate. But we ask this question because we all acknowledge that the president has the power and the right to select their own advisers, to determine what that relationship is going to look like, when they are going to meet with them, when they are going to ask them for advice, whether or not they are going to take that advice. Tan there is very little over sight to those relationships. So i think thats a big legacy of the cabinet. And i look forward to our further conversation. All right. Well i just want to also echo my gratitude for mark and copanelists and the conference organizers. I also think its worth mentioning it being the 75th anniversary of d day, i find it particularly a moment to see what american democracy means or meant in the 1790s and how that might translate to today. So my work focuses broadly on getting a better understanding of the meaning and scope of the democracy in revolutionary america. In particular, im looking at gaining a better understanding of how it is that americans participated in the political process and why elections and Political Parties emerged as the primary vehicles for the expression of the public will. So at the conclusion of the revolutionary war, most americans accepted that citizens had a right to participate in their government. But what this meant in practice remained highly contested. The constitution provided a broad outline of what american democracy would mean. But thorny questions stemming from the amorphous concept of popular sovereignty remained. What we see in the 1790s is real debate emerging what exactly it means to have a government based on the notion of popular sovereignty and how the people have the right to speak. On the one side we have federalists who argued that the constitution quite clearly established elections as the only legitimate expression of the public will. Beyond casting a ballot, citizens were expected to defer to their elected officials. They could petition but they were table to ignore this right. In effect, federalists believed that by doing a ball lot succeeded at least until the next election. They had the public symbolically through attendance at parades, festivals and celebrations. But these rituals were inherently differential and designed nationalism and rev ance for the federal government. So in contrast to this deferential of this, they had their will. So these americans drawing inspiration from french turned to different forms of mobilization such as town rallies in an effort to engage the public more directly in the deliberative process and give them a voice. Some residents even went so far as to reject the legitimacy of the Constitutional Government and turn to violence as a way to assert individual sovereignty. In the mid 1790s however i argued that two events did the limit of these forms of popular sovereignty. The first being the whiskey revolution seemed to quite clearly indicate the dangers of an excess of democracy. Just an as if not more important the failure to prevent the implementation of the jade tree which they admit to embarrassing to them and humiliating insult to ally in france. So i suggest these two events seem to point to the fact that the constitution had had been built to be insulated from these forms of public and popular politics. So as a result, beginning in 1796, critics of the federalists began to abandon their efforts to engage the public more directly in the governing process and started to focussing on winning elections. This process, which occurred from the top down, bottom up, middle out, resulted in the emergence of the Republican Party. This new Party Organization would serve as an intermediary body between the people and the government. Instead of engaging directly in the deliberative process, citizens were encouraged to participate in the Political Party through a variety of means they could attend local meetings and communicate with like minded individuals. They could oversee election efforts and help nominate candidates. The understanding was, however, that when the election was over, citizens would defer the actual governor go to their representatives. So in this sense they did a retreat from a more participatory form of democracy advocated in the early 1790s. Whats more as been pointed out by several copanelist, that the rise of the Jeffersonian Republican Party also necessitated the coalition of building which resulted in pushing more radical views to the fringes, if not out of the public sphere all together. However, i would argue the Party Structure ultimately succeeded because it produced results where other forms of mobilization had failed. The voter turnout surged in the years following the emergence of the Republican Party and recent scholarships say they became more engaged in the political process than ever before. Whats more, incidents of Political Violence which had spiked in the 1790s declined dramatically as partisans worked to harness popular passions and channel them into more constructive political action. Now, its worth pointing out that the party system would ultimately fail when confronted with the issue of slavery. But i believe it ultimately succeeded and emerged as a powerful tool for the people to assert their will. All right. Thanks. So what i want to do is just draw out sort of the four big questions, themes that we had developed here and give folks a chance to weigh in a bit morph they want and then turn it over to you all for questions. As i listen to these four presentations, for some reason i started this i go about originalism. And the idea that heres a constitution and here are the words and thats what we need to know. And what these four presentations suggest is that there is a whole host of other things that surround the constitution. The political culture that makes a constitution function that brings it to life. The constitution as we all know was an organic metaphor that people would refer to the body as a constitution. And its healthy or less healthy, more functioning or less functioning. And the words on the page or the physical structure of a body is not sufficient to fully understand what makes a constitution healthy or less healthy. And so what i heard kaitlyn talk about is basically the problem of trust which is the problem that we currently are living through as well. What is it the role that trust plays in a healthy policy and healthy republic and healthy democracy . And as kaitlyn showed, its not a simply matter if we show you everything you will trust us, right. If we have more hearings on benghazi, then we will produce trust. Doesnt work that way. But yet trust is important somehow. Its an essential ingredient. And this is was one of the questions in 1790s is should we trust the people who we have empowered to run this to staff these positions in the government. So thats the first, the question of trust. Marks presentation made me think about the problem of equity or the problem of fairness. How essential is it for a republic or democracy to have less extremes of wealth and poverty . Oftentimes we tend to look at these Socio Economic realm being separate from political realm. And what mark suggests is even back in the 1780s and 1790s people were thinking very selfconsciously about what sort of social structure or economic arrangements make for a more well functioning, healthier constitutional democracy. And what is the role that the state itself should play in fostering such a world . And, obviously, anyone familiar with this knows one of the great concerns about 18th century is liberty and state power. So clearly answer wasnt in 18th century, they just thought the states should make everything equal and everything would be great. But yet its not clear that the answer is everyone thought the state should just do nothing and let things work out as they were already. So that seems to me like a rich and fruitful place to dig in. Third, and by the way im not suggesting that mark hasnt thought about this. So framing it for all of us, right, to sort of think through this. Lindseys presentation made me think about the role of norms which is something we have been talking about for the last three or four years, probably more so than we have in the past. But this has been an issue in american political history since the 1990s especially, but long past. Anyone familiar with john free man book about the break down of norms and civility in the congress in 1850s, and again nothing in the constitution, so many of these norms are just customs or they are traditions or habits or procedures. What is the status of those . How seriously should we take them . How do they get built . Why do people build them . Why do they evolve and shift and change over time . Obviously, the cabinet has changed over time, right. Yet its also remained constant in the whole host of ways. And how did the people who built the country, how selfconscious were they about establishing a set of norms . Cultural norms. And why would did they see those cultural norms contributing to the health of a Constitutional Republic . And then, finally davids presentation made me think about the Political Party. As we all know, the this continuing that none of the founders ever thought or expected or hoped would emerge, and within a couple years there they were. And so what is it the role of a Political Party . How should we think about parties . I mean, parties always change over time. But this feels like a particularly transitional and Pivotal Moment for both Political Parties. And how should we think about the role that and its also a moment when Political Parties have less buy in than historically they have when more and more ordinary citizens dont identify incredibly stronger with one party or another. Is that a good thing . Is that a bad thing . How should we think about the roles that these imperfect institutions that the founders did not want to exist called Political Parties, how should we think about the way they contribute or dont contribute to the health of a constitutional policy . So those are my four rubrics or general questions around the political culture in the 1790s and what we might learn about it and use it as a touch town thinking about where we are today. So you folks have thoughts, take it away, then we can turn it over to the audience. All right. Yeah, ill start. So i think ill address the issue of trust which i think you addressed at me. Its absolutely central. And as you say its central today. And it was central then. And i think that actually brings me back to what david was speaking about is there are kind of different visions of whats going to what should make you trust politicians. Right. And the federalist vision is really you should trust us because we are wise and we are natural leaders in some sense because of that. And if youve elected us, then we are working in your best interest. And that is where the trust should come from. And i think on the opposite side of that democrat republicans in the 1870s, and they are saying, no, thats not really where trust should come from. It seems to be systematized in some way. And those people they elected were supposed to be faithful with where they wanted them to do. So thats where the notion of transparency comes in. Becomes getting trust. And it becomes complicated that we can break it down in that way. When we think about what should be secret or transparent, really it is situational. A lot of us have and just speaking from experience or in the modern world, a lot of us it comes down to a situational question. And it usually is secrecy is okay if we think that its being used to advance a policy that is good. But if we think its being used to advance a policy thats corrupt or bad and being used to hide it so that its not known about and there cant be backlash to it or influence on it, then secrecy is pernicious. And i think a lot of that comes down to trust. Do we trust the people making that decision and do we agree with the decision. So it ends up being complicated and really hard to draw firm lines in terms of when we think transparency is necessary and not. It is often situational. I will tackle equity. The thing here is all men are created equal. Right there in the founding moment. So as daivid and kaitlyn have been talking about, they took the position of were wise and we should be in power, but where did it come from . In europe, youre wealthy, its passed down, and you real. And so they this is why in large measure, they turn to education as a way to launder what they have to keep peoples trust. I think in large measure that is what theyre responding to. They are creating more Democratic Political arrangements and the nexus there is the school system. This is not a sit back and do nothing level. They rp trying to create the version of economic and political arrangements they desire. So all three of the groups that i was talking about earlier all see a pretty prominent role. Their education policy is a less direct use of the policy. They are sometimes funding it through indirect means, where as what you get with republicans is a real sense that florida to make a more democratic arangsment, you have to distribute through schools that can use that money to make a more Democratic Political sys m system. We dont often think of more radical jeff sewnian they Say Something about robert of delaware who is a really interesting guy that thinks that not only does the government owe it to him, but that the government owes it so the people. They mitigate what the unnatural inequalities are that they produced. The schools start with a school fund, like an endowed fund. They tax tafer licenses. They are creating an arationment between economic and political democracy across the board. So to address norms and customs, i think it is important to start with a disclaimer which is that i cannot pervaded the 1780s and the 1790s. It is hard to look back and get a sense of what that was like. And the history of the they were deeply concerned that if they failed once they were in office the republic would fail and this was their last shot. They werent particularly worried about what washington was going to do. They were worried about what would happen afterwards. And they expected that virtuous and upstanding men would serve. And they expected they would be turned out of office through election or impuchment. I think there was a fairly widespread expectation that if it was judges or a more heavily utilized tool to keep political norms in check. Filling them with people is an important part of it. But having that culture that actually functions and gets people to accept the institutions and makes it plug along and work, and the idea is that if you can accomplish norms that insure there would be little republican virtue in every branch of government, then the institutions would have a good chance of surviving. What that meant was different for a lot of people. For washington it meant a homespun wool suit for his inauguration that was made in the United States. Very nice homespun, with diamond shoe buckles. He had a combination of American Made products that were simple and not us austentatious. All of his horses matched, but to show he was common, he would take a walk every day and get his boots dirty. So there was a balance between demonstrating youre a virtuous republican. There was no deliberative process. Washington had a vision. Jefferson had another vision. If you compare the jefferson portraits, there is one from when he comes back in france, and he has a super frilly lace cravat. His hair is fancy, a fancy jacket. And two years latter is as secretary of state and it is starting to shift to a more simple look, and by the time he is president he looks shabby. So these norms were constantly shifting. They were being negotiated, and some of them continue to governor todagovern today. They want to make sure that people will not profit from office. They dont expect the president to show up to office in a cream colored carriage. Working to address all of them, i think in many ways it comes down to this question of how exactly do you keep a Representative Government from failing. When you look at it at the time it was universally accepted that man was at base selfish. When humans are left to their own devices, their lazy. So if you start from that premise selfgovernment is a terrible idea and dwlyet there a experiment in doing just that. And i think the founders were aware of the fact that citizens needed to be molded and shaped for this to succeed. That there was a hope that perhaps, yes, mankind prefers ignorance and selfishness. But with the norms, perhaps these citizens might be able to succeed as a republic. And for me i see sort of Political Parties emerging as a perennial balance for power and liberty. The question of public engaged, informed, and active while at the same time channelling some of that energy directly into achievable goals as opposed to each individual pryi trying to pursue individual goals and ends. It functions like a filter not unlike how madison imagined the system working. Someone can participate, have their voice heard, and in the process it will filter up. It is very unrealistic and it is absolutely true that none of them wanted it it, most of them didnt they they were part of it, and you can debate all you want if they were parties. In the end it comes down to a matter of semantics. But the role that i think they could play continues to be keeping people involved, engaged, and informed. Recognizing that when left to our own devices, not that there is something wrong with every american, but perhaps it is human nature to choose selfish n ness and ignorance. We need to be trained, we need to be taught. We need norms and institutions to prevent us from falling back to our more natural instincts. Lets turn over to the audience. Wait for the microphone that is coming. Sorry. Were on tv here. I forgot were filming everything. Thank you for the conversation here. Im struck by something that kaitlyn said kind of in passing, but in which i think will lift all of this into a then and now conversation. And that is the idea of good or bad policies. The american founding in my understanding is such a product of the enlightment era notion that some things are good, some things are bad, we can tell the difference and that right thinking and decent honorable people will concur about what is right and wrong. So you to make sure the bad guys are not pursues bad policies and well get there. And what begins to rear its ugly head is the fact that we dont agree on what our good or ba bad policies are. We barely agreed then. As david said we were selfinterested, and overtime as you get into a global pluralistic widely incompatible set of norms, how on earth do we expect this procedure to result in people concurring on what is good or bad also. The possibilities are just almost beyond imagine. I will jump in to give an initial response. That is something i have thought about a lott and i think youre right that there was a fundamental belief at the time that if reasonable people had all of the information they would agree that something was good or bad. I think what is really significant is they dont let go of that for a long time. After the whisky rebellion, he says im convinced if people just knew the truth of it they could not be so mad about it. And he is really convinced it had is a result of people manipulating information and spreading misinformation. And that is, you know, strategic politics aside, which largely it was that, but i think there was a sincere effort behind that. Theyre saying if there is too much information going around. If we could just get things straight that people would agree with them. But people would be able to identify what is good and bad. But it comes down that that is not a matter of reason or truth, it is judgment and opinion and how do we actually deal with that . I think we have not really answered that question. Jefferson had a conversation shortly after his election. He wanted to use the act to silence his critics because unlike his people being arrested in the 90s, his people were telling the truth. There is no harm to arrest people that tell falsehoods, but dangerous to arrest people that tell the truth. There are federalists after the election that fight to extend it. They know they might be on the receiving end of punishment through that, but i think there is a real problem with the lying. And we should recognize is serves as a warning. As you say, that is not a solution when one team, so to speak, is calling themselves the referee. That is not a neutral notion of defining truth and falsehood. That adjudicates them, so the federalist newspaper said this thing. But of course they say you say x, you say not x. Youre lying, no youre lying, the notion of the objectivity in the press had not emerged yet. So it was like who will decide . So the government was like we will decide. It is a great question. And i think this pursuit of the one question did ultimately blow up in a number of instances. And while yes, they hold on to it, and people hold on to it deerly today. And we have the bipartisanship of the senate. While perhaps not agrees with each other, we might be able to understand each other. A and im not convinced it it is incorrect. It is not necessarily people that we agree with face to face and people we disagee with over the internet. We are following to the reasonable truth but the notion that deliberation cannot still produce some, at least, useful ends in a democracy, i think it still exists and perhaps it is gone and that may be the case. But it is worth knowing there is stig a strong sense that we as americans agree on more than we disagree on but we dont know it. The other thing a notice about the policy fights is some of the people most committed to the ideal, you mentioned there is right and wrong and good and bad policy, but also coming to some really cookie ideas. Im thinking of the illuminati thing, they created the first geography of kids in the United States. He is convinced that the illuminati have created the french revolution and there are designs on the United States and there is a conspiratorial thing. I see that there is another illuminati. The new england illuminati. A priest that comes up with the idea that the federalist are basically distorting truth and distorting peoples understanding of what is and isnt real through churches and universities. That is the new england illuminati. There is an underlying current of mistrust in the press and in these media by people who the connection between conspiracy theories and a lack of trust, that is one symptom, right . When the theories start to bloom, it is a symptom of a weakening of the trust. Yeah . Im bill white, i teach in the corner Stone Program here. I walked into graduate school in 1969. Not quite 1912, but i have a histohi historigraphic question. Remaking american political history. Are there sources or questions that you and other scholars are asking in 2018, 2019, and 2020 that never would have been asked . Never thought of when i walked into graduate school 50 years ago . Great question, thank you. Someone want to be brave and go first. Sure. I think from my own personal work there has been a renewed turn to looking at institutions as structures. As bodies of people responding to international issues. Trying to prove themselves on an International Stage, to understanding that the state and the federal state was much larger and more powerful than perhaps we terribly gave it credit for and formed much earlier. My work suggests that the che executive turn was more than the previous scholarship. It puts that turn after the civil war and my work suggests that there was a lot of executive energy and intensetive from the beginning. We mentioned the whisky rebellion. These are all instances that the cab gnat used to seize the opportunity to im bolden the branch and boost president ial authority and power. And looking at it beyond sort of just a biographical focus, what are the cultural forces, the international forces, and how do we study it as a body of people. Ly jump off with this. They are relating to questions of putting things in a broader transatlantic context. Im not sure when the democratic revolution came out. It was before or after, but i think all of us take for granted that the french revolution had impact on the stories were telling, right . The haitian revolution and this could effect the institutional structure, the ability to maintain trust, that all of these currents are coming in from the outside. And that it is not just the sort of internal dialogue among pennsylvanians and some nationalist minded people. There is a context that it is pretty important. I think both of those things are exactly right. And i would add one other thing to that. I think there is a renewed investigation of democracy. There is a real i think there was a long trend to take it for granted that it is democratic. You know, it is inventing a democracy. We live in a democracy, and i think there is a renewed questioning of what was that, what did it mean to people at the time. How is a Representative Democracy constructed. It took a lot of work to think of and legitimate. I think like all historical moment its is coming from current questions and crisis and they are informing the kind of historical questions that were asking. I would just add that the broad investigation of culture, and the previous people that were ignored. Which is something that we have not necessarily gone into great detail about, but looking at how africanamericans, looking at how it is with women how did they participate in the political process. What is the institutions and fr processes mean to them . Where do native americans fit in . They were asked when you started, but the french revolution played a part, now there is an extent that of course were included discussions of the previously excluded groups. It is worth emphasizing this look at political culture more broadly is designed in part to take connect for the other voices. I would say for me, the question of liberalism and ill liberalism, but we look at the resurgence of what we call illiberalism that i, as someone that went to college at the tail end of the cold war, that the illiberalism was understood to be something of the past that was around but fading and going away. And liberalism, liberal threads, were the future. And that shaped the way we told the history, for example, the alien extradition acts. Of course we dont talk about immigrants that way. Of course we dont talk about the government playing a really strong forceful result in culture. So in that sense, or conspiracy theories, thinks aboing about t roles that those play in a particular political culture that i had taken less seriously. As objects of study, that now appear to be the kind of coexistence of liberalism and illiberalism. There was many illiberal forms, of cultural and structure that filter in and shape politics in a way. That is something that has been renewed interest to me, but when i went to great school in the 90s. Thank you. Johan . Thank you all for your lovely papers. Im johan 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 reasoned 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, is 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 said, 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, reasoned 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 analyzing 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, in the 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 in 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 seven 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 their 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 . Excellent. 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 and wonderful thing ive ever heard and other times i think that is the dumbest idea i have ever heard. Today, i think its a cool idea. 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 of the 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 duked 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 america views europe. 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 minuet. 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 do a pirouette is really 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 secrecy 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 aristocratic french mannerisms 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 fractitious 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 legislative Branch People cluster and there is sort of a wilderness with cows in between. Hes 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. It is 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 capitals all pretty much 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 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 more democracy 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. Tonight on American History tv beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, more from Purdue Universitys remaking americas political history conference, violence and u. S. Political change from the time of the American Revolution to present day. Watch American History tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan3. Every saturday night, American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is . And raise your hand if you ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial, before this class. The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. So were going to talk about both of these sides of this story here, right . The tools, the techniques of slave owner power and well also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. And lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, with white house briefings, updates from governors and congress and our daily callin Program Washington journal, hearing your thoughts about the coronavirus crisis. And if you missed any of our live coverage, watch any time on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. More now from the Purdue University conference on political history. Well hear from the hosts of the podcast back story. 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 panel
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