captioning performed by vitac came with the publication of my book. some of you have seen it before. it's my book on george thatcher. the screen you see is of a painting of george thatcher. i edited a volume of his letters and the point of departure for me was his attendance at the second session of the sixth congress. george thatcher was a member of the congress through the last few years of the confederation period. six congresses under the federal government, under the u.s. constitution. so he comes to washington, d.c., when the federal government first moves here in november of 1800. he's from maine and arrives with his fellow maine congressman who was a portland merchant and revolutionary war veteran. for many new englanders in particular, these exposure to washington, d.c., is their first exposure to rural slavery. a few days before the opening of that last session of the sixth congress, the first session to meet in washington, d.c., this is in late 1800, he writes the ground as you approach georgetown is excellent for roads. it is in bad repair by reason of many gullies and a great want of labor. here it was exhibited the precious effects of slavery. a soil impoverished by overtilling, scarcely settled with negro huts and a landlord who speaks great pride, but little money. he goes on, but the capital, what of the capital? why is a pile? it is one wing of the original design. the body and other wing is yet only appear to the imagination from a view of the foundation which is laid in stone and lime. you can see that in this illustration here. this is the capital that george thatcher and his roommate, both from maine, appear at in the -- at the end of the century, really, 1800. it's november 1800 when they convene. they actually meet here -- i show this because not many people get to see this image. this is a blueprint of the main floor of the capitol at the time when congress first moves in. the senate was down below where the old supreme court chamber is now. the galley is depicted here. and the house of representatives is actually meeting where the library of congress was going to eventually be meeting. in the third session -- i'm sorry. there's no third session. in the seventh congress, george thatcher decides he's been re-elected. but he decides his family is better served by him earning a nice salary as a supreme court justice back in massachusetts. maine was part of massachusetts at that time. he gives up his seat in congress and his old roommate is now representing maine -- or massachusetts, rather, with nathan reed. you see nathan reed on the right here. nathan reed was a scientist from salem, massachusetts, he starts out as -- he's really interested in steam engines. he applies for patents from congress. and he only serve this is one session. and he and thatcher and wadsworth reside in a boarding house. the seventh congress meets. thatcher is gone, wadsworth finds other housing and he has a new roommate. cutler is a minister from hamilton, massachusetts. that's in northern massachusetts. he's kind of an every man. he's a lawyer, a merchant. he's a subject of many david mccullough's latest book. so from now on, most of the letters, most of the voices, the primary voices you're going to be hearing are nathan reed and cutler. they left letters and writings mostly up in salem, massachusetts. and they're also -- besides being colleagues in terms of the documentary record they left behind, they're colleagues spatially. they inhabit the same boarding house room here -- i don't know if you can see my curser. but it's right here and it's where the library of congress jefferson building sits now. those of you who study washington, d.c., you know this is was a boarding house. it was run by king. this is the way that cutler describes it to his daughter. this is the first session of the seventh congress. this is the first entire congress that is calling washington, d.c., home. and cutler writes about life on carol row. it is situated east of the capitol on the highest ground in the city. mr. reed and myself have, i think, the pleasant in the house or indeed in the whole city. it's the third story, commanding a delightful prospect of the capitol, of the president's house, all the houses in the city, a long extent of the river and the city of alexandria. you can imagine how beautiful that must have been. i'm happy with mr. reed. were i to have made my choice among all of the members of the congress, all things considered, i should have chosen mr. reed. i'm not much pleased with the capitol. it is a huge pile built with handsome stone, very heavy in its appearance without not very pleasant within. if they were looking out their window towards the capitol, this is what they would be seeing. the senate north chamber on the right side, the left, that odd structure, is called the oven. some of you might have seen images of it before. none of them would have been contemporary. we don't know exactly what it looked like except from verbal descriptions. but they're connected where the central part of the building is now, the rotunda area, this walkways where there were stairways to the galleys. they stayed there through the seventh congress up through the first session of the eighth congress in 1804. from now on, i'm using the words of these three men, wadsworth, nathan reed, cutler. at some point, i'll throw in some words by william plumber who is a senator from new hampshire. he came a year later. he shows up in december 1802. so, again, all of these things are spin-offs of my book on thatcher. i was curious once thatcher leaves congress, what happened afterwards? what happened to the federalist congressman from massachusetts, new hampshire, the other states, primarily, who were left behind to carry on the federalist fight? i called this talk experiencing defeat. it's a riff off of christopher hill's famous book which looks at how levellers, quakers, parliamentarians dealt with the restoration after the english civil war in the 1860s. so i wanted to see how they dealt with defeat. and from that chronological episode, if you will, i teased out four themes. they all cover -- it's kind of like microhistory. i tease them out of their records three or four days. during the first session of the seventh congress. i began to realize that what they're talking about is basically the politicalization of everything. we're talking about sociability, food, science, and historical memory. those are the four themes i'm going to be teasing out of here. the first one, sociability, well, the social life in washington probably then as now, revolves around the white house. and the white house's new occupant at this point was thomas jefferson. he had been inaugurated in march 1801. and we all know from jefferson's famous first inaugural where he says, we're all federalists, we're all republicans. he's trying to conciliate all parties. but what he really meant was, we're all republicans. the federalists just don't know it yet. so he decided -- he's not naive. he realizes the federalists need special treatment. one way he does this is to use one of the greatest informal resources at his disposal which is the washington social life. this is the highly exaggerated mid-19th century view of the artist's imagination of one of martha washington's levies looked like. he writes to his son-in-law on the 4th of january, 1802, a couple days into the session, he writes, under the new order of things, there are no levees. nothing like this. but the members are invited to dine with the president. i include this also for the information people maybe haven't seen this before. this is latrobe's blueprint for jefferson's white house. the dining room you can see in the upper left was where these events would have -- these dinners would have taken place. he continues, what is strange, if anything done here can be strange, is that only federalists are only democrats are invited at the same time. the number in a day is generally eight and when the federalists are invited, there's one of the heads of departments which make nine. mr. reed and myself and wadsworth and others were honored with an invitation. we enjoyed things very well, we were received and entertained. now jefferson wanted to create this idea and succeeded of having a very informal white house. one of the images -- the best image i think to illustrate this is one of the wonderful portraits by peter waddle. he depicted jefferson's study here which is this room right here. it's the southwest corner of what is today the state dining room. you can see it's filled with paraphernalia of his studies. the idea here is that what jefferson is trying to depoliticalize is dinners. jefferson hates conflict. no politics were to be discussed at his dinner table. my friend and colleague wrote about this by trying to defuse the small conflicts that might erupt at the table, he may have fostered a deeper division. one should note that jefferson's invitations to dinner were sent out under thomas jefferson, not president of the united states. the idea of being that he wand to create this image that it was more democratic. it was just a gathering of friends, not a political meeting in any way. in fact, inviting people under his own name rather than in the name of his office as president was an excuse for him to invite who he wished and that's why he ends up being able to invite just federalists all at a time or just democrats. and eventually as time goes by we learn that he uses his dinner invitations as a way to punish members, primarily federalists. we know this from some of the words of william plumber. plumber decided that jefferson used friendly conversation and good food and wind to bind congressmen to himself and divide them from one another. in plumber's own words, i have myself no doubt of this being the true ground of his adopting the present form. in the last session there were gentlemen who -- though they called on him -- were not invited to dine with him. it is true these gentlemen reasoned against some of mr. jefferson's favorite measures and their arguments made his recommendations appear ridiculous and this conduct is styled by him abuse. it discovers a little less of mind and worthy of the president of the united states. as president, he ought never to act towards an individual as if he knew what was said for or against him or his measures on the floor of the house. plumber, i realize, at least in the way he doled out dinner invitations to the white house. politicalization of food, i'm sure some of you might have just tuned in to see what the heck that meant. in the first few days of january, 1802, in fact on new year's eve day we pick up with cutler's journal. although the president has no levees, a number of federalists agree to go from the capitol to the president's house and wait upon him with the compliments of the season. we were received with politeness, entertained with cake and wine. the cheese having been presented this morning with all of the parade of democratic etiquette, the president invited us to go to the mammoth room and see the mammoth cheese. we viewed this monument of human weakness and folly as long as we pleased and returned home. the cheese was a gift to jefferson from the largely baptist community of chester, massachusetts, western massachusetts, to thank jefferson for his work moments religious freedom. this would have been important to baptists who were a minority in most of the country at this point. certainly in new england. the cheese itself was four feet wide, 15 inches high and weighed 1,230 pounds. i don't have an image of the cheese. there's no contemporary image or even any image that i know of of the cheese. but we have -- one in a would be famous painting by peter waddle. this shows the big cheese that was given to andrew jackson. there's a tradition at this point of giving presidents cheese that they can host with. this is the big cheese that was presented to jackson in 1835. and it was there for people to munch on for a couple years. it looks ridiculous, i think, right? but this cheese is in fact at least to federalist's thinking, really a symbol of jeffersonianism. it's impractical, the idea of it is driven by folly and it's a case where the idea or the ideology doesn't always play out as planned in the reality. it doesn't help at all that the cheese is presented by the leader of the baptist community in chester named john leland, a baptist preacher. this is cutler writing to his son-in-law. last sunday, the cheese monger, who was the conductor of this monument of human weakness and folly to the place of its destination, was introduced as the preacher to both houses of congress and a great number of gentlemen and ladies from i know not where. the president made one of the audience. such a performance i have never heard before and i hope never shall again. horrid tone and extravagant gestures was never heard before. shame or laugher appeared in every countenance. this is a guy who presented the cheese. so whatever glamour the cheese might have added to jefferson's white house soon began to lose its luster as it increased with its aroma. one year later on new year's eve, cutler writes again, after we left the levy room, as we were passing through the great hall, i happened to think of the mammoth cheese. and one of -- excuse me. and i happened to think of the mammoth cheese and i asked one of the servants whether it was still in the mammoth room. it's the east room today. he replied it was and i might see it if i pleased. i went with the member who happened to be wishing for another look at it. the president had just told us when we talked with him that 60 pounds had been taken out of the middle in consequence of the puffing up and symptoms of decay. in case you're wondering what happened to the mammoth cheese, plumber writes about it a -- two years later in december 1804 that at that point, it was very far from being good. it was seen a year later in 1805 and it was either totally consumed or some scholars think it was dumped in the river. when cutler wrote, quote, to the mammoth room and see the mammoth cheese, he bothered to put that in quotes because he was quoting jefferson verbatim. it was a very novel use of the expression mammoth. imagine my surprise, i went to the dictionary and found that it credits thomas jefferson with coining the adjective mammoth. by the time the cheese arrives in washington, d.c., people have picked up on this terminology, mammoth cheese. it was an adjective for something huge, weird, gauche, serving no practical purpose. who needs 1,200-pound cheese. but it's not a perfectly politically neutral word either. in time, this world would come to enjoy or suffer the widespread usage and impact that the word "atomic" what have in the 20th century. it means something. so what are the origins of the adjective mammoth? the noun mammoth was a phenomenon that historians of science and social historians more began to recognize of one of thomas jefferson's hobby horses. he imagined himself among other things as a scientist, just like benjamin franklin. they had to have fur-lined jackets, of course. jefferson for most of his public life is interested in science in a way that can refute the arguments made famously by a french philosopher who insisted on a theory of american degeneratecy. fauna that are found in the western hemisphere are inferior to those found elsewhere in the world. they degenerate on this side of the globe. with jefferson, at least, it became an article of faith that americans had megafauna, at least as mega as europe did. we see this in his notes from 1785. he endorses an expedition into the -- beyond the mississippi where he specifically charges him under the head of animal history to make notes on the mammoth that he might find there. the mammoth is particularly recommended to your inquiries he writes. of course, ten years later, he sends out lewis and clark with similar instructions on their famous expedition to the west. so needless to say, jefferson's really excited when in the summer of 1801 charles wilson peel is told about mammoth bones in the hudson river valley. by the way, it's not always called mammoth. sometimes it appears as the word incognitum. they drained the morass and dug out the remnants of the skeleton what they're calling a mammoth. jefferson is calling them mammoth too. but we know today, thanks to the work of an anatomyist, it was the mastodon. the teeth are shaped like ridges. lewis finds evidences of them in the ohio valley. but the east coast variety comes to be known as the mastodon. this famous painting done in 1806 is renamed the exhumuation of the mastodon. it's erected in philadelphia. the skeleton ends up in independence hall where peel opens his museum eventually. we see it there in the background on the right. partially hidden by the drapery in this famous painting by peel called artist in his museum from 1822. so despite its obvious scientific significance, the federalists followed jefferson's lead in using it as a political symbol. the search for the mammoth, like his cheese, the mammoth cheese, became a word for jeffersonians political quackery. and a word for democratic success in all of its manifestations. within days, in fact, reed and other jeffersonian -- and other federalists are calling the jefferson administration the mammoth and company. plumber writes how the word is used in yet a different context but with the same intent. plumber two years later writes, the baker of the navy erected an oven and having made a barrel of flour into a loaf he baked it and called it the mammoth loaf. this loaf was borne on the shoulders of men and carried to the capitol and lodged in a committee room. roasted beef and casks of wine were deposited in the same place. the chamber was crowded with people from the president of the united states to the meanest slave. mr. jefferson took his jackknife and cut and ate of the beef and bread and drank of the liquors. he compared this to the sacrament of the lord's super. you can image what that's doing to new england federalists. the skeleton, meanwhile, just like the word mammoth, the mastodon skeleton took on a life all of its own. today the focus in kids' books is on the search for scientific truth. while the mammoth cheese is presented to kids as a tail about the ingenuity and spirit of one small new england village or an exploration of the burdens of joys in rural america and the history we owe to our parents and ourselves. so before i move on -- >> where is the mastodon today? is it in the white house now? >> no, it's not in the white house. >> is it in the capitol? >> it's not in the capitol. i'm not sure it ever made it to washington. the mammoth cheese that's in washington. the mastodon that was an inspiration for this frenzied use of the word mammoth, it ended up in philadelphia. his sons open up a museum in baltimore and it's there until the 1840s when they move it over to europe. they thought they had a buyer in france and the revolution of 1848 kicks in. it ends up in germany. i have a -- that's the picture i showed you earlier of the full mastodon skeleton there in germany in a museum in germany. now, the neat thing about the subject of my talk and everything else that's going in washington, the mastodon -- i have to swallow my words. the mastodon is here in washington. it was moved from germany for the first time in 170 years to the smithsonian where it was erected in the museum of american art for an exhibit on alexander von humboldt and the united states. and they thought that the skeleton represented the highest aspirations of american science and europe science meeting together. so they actually brought it here. it was supposed to open this month. obviously that didn't happen. maybe the shutdown will end before we have to ship the mastodon back. so it would be lovely to see. back to new year's eve day in 1802. after taking an early dinner, eight of us set off from mt. vernon says cutler in his journal for that day. pilgrimage to mount vernon and the politicalization of george washington's memory is another theme i wanted to touch on. and it comes out in this visit to mt. vernon. the bigger story of memoryizing george washington happens in the capitol building. they arrive at mt. vernon on saturday the 2nd of january, the day after new year's. cutler writes to his daughter again, a servant conducted us to madam washington's room where we were received in a very cordal and obliging manner. we were all federalists which gave her great pleasure. her remarks were pointed and sometimes very sarcastic on the new order of the things and the present administration. she spoke of the election of mr. jefferson whom she considered as one of the most detestable of mankind as the greatest misfortunate our country had ever experienced. her feelings were naturally to be expected from the abuse he's offered to general washington while living and to his memory since his decease. after breakfast, these federalist members from massachusetts rambled about until they arrived at the too many -- tomb of washington himself. this monument was the first object of our attention. i will not attempt to describe our feelings or the solemn gloom on every countenance. the tomb opens towards the river and all the stone work is covered with work, overgrown with tall grass. between the tomb and the bank, a narrow footpath passes around it. here mrs. washington often takes her walks. here, every visitor in slow steps approaches this mound. while all of us too boughs from the trees as relics of our own, i shall enclose a twig of the cypress and a leaf of the holly. a few months later, wadsworth writes to his daughter. he has pretty much the same experience. we viewed the gardens before dinner and the tomb of the great washington. there was awe in the approach of the place where his remains were deposited. how disgraceful to the united states to suffer these remains after having been solicited of and granted by the relic to remain unnoticed, condemned. will not the all mighty blast the gratitude of this ungrateful country. your loins have not half the merit of his little finger. congress in fact did have plans to honor george washington. most of us know of the existence of a tomb below the crypt level of the capitol building that was intended to hold washington's remains. martha gave permission before she died a few years later. but it was kind of a moot point. the jeffersonians resisted efforts in 1800 and periodically thereafter to have a mausoleum built to washington, either near the capitol or somewhere else in washington. burying him in the capitol was a moot point until that central portion of the capitol could be finished where the tomb eventually was created. but by then, it was 18 -- the early 1830s and the washington family has changed their mind and they left washington in the new tomb they had created for him in mt. vernon. that's where he's to be found today. but long before then, jeffersonians had other ways of consigning washington's memory to oblivion. a few months later on a friday before washington's birthday in that year 1802, the house was listening to one of these wild debates on the judiciary bill and at the end of the debate, a federalist member rises to adjourn until tuesday. the idea was that it would give workers a chance to install ventilation in the oven. that's that makeshift house chamber that i showed you earlier. it's called the oven because it got quite hot as you can imagine. but the federalists wanted to remind members that it was washington's birthday and he presumed so much respect would be paid to washington's member, that congress would do no business on that day. it was the intention of those to devote the day to a commemoration of this man who this country gloried. as soon as members found this out, realized what was happening, they decided, no, we would be meeting on monday. cutler writes, has it so soon arrived that the memory of washington should meet with marked contempt and so pointedly by almost a majority of the national representatives. the federalists met that day regardless. they had dinner together at a local hotel and this again is nathan reed writing to a friend that month. in the evening, the vp of the united states, aaron burr, joined us and gave a sentiment which should it become operative principle, would prove fatal to him and his party. he requested it might not be published however and we have no wish to do it. i had to throw in leslie odum there as burr from the hamilton play. jen, that's for you, really. the last sunday of the sermon is the last sunday sermon given in congress. the house of representatives, some of the audience might know, is actually holding religious services in the house chamber in the capitol building because it's the largest single chamber in the young city. so the last sunday sermon of that session that i've been focusing on was in may of 1802, a few months later. we know about it through cutler's journal where he says he attended the hall mr. parkinson preached. he had the same kind of reputation in federalist minds as that john leland did, the cheese monger who preached a few months earlier. our chaplain who is an illiterate man preaches in the same style as leland. they disgrace the cause of religion and bring it into contempt. this was probably one motive the democrats had in choosing a chaplain of this stamp. you have to admit, he's a little tone deaf because he chose to preach as a subject of his sermon the biblical passage about lots leaving sodom. so two days later, cutler takes a packet with reed and 20 other members of congress at the top of chesapeake bay and then by stage to new castle, delaware, and then to philadelphia where he visit peel's museum and sees the skeleton of the mammoth. that's a drawing of the skeleton as it exited in the 1830s. so this has been our sort of tour of the landscape of the very first months of the first congress -- the first full conference to meet in washington and how different aspects of society, food, science, social life, the way you memorize -- memorialize people, how it's all politicized during this day when the federalists are still hanging on. although the jeffersons have created the first major regime change in national history. and that's the end of the talk. hopefully -- maybe there are some questions i can answer for people. >> we have a number of questions, chuck. and we have one piece of good news for viewers which is that there is an exhibition tour online with curator eleanor jones harvey of the smithsonian that you can see online the skeleton of the mastodon. and that is -- it's called "art, nature and culture," and that can be reached with the -- through the smithsonian website. and i think we can figure out a way to send to the registrants of this the link so you can go and see what's going on at the smithsonian while they are under the work from home order just like the rest of us. >> it's a wonderful tour that she gives, by the way. >> great. a couple people indicated they know about it and it is a fabulous tour. it is now available online. but here's the question that a couple people asked, is that it seems like you have really gotten to know these people, that you've -- you know, i often have heard doris kerns goodwin when she's presenting one of the books she's written, whether it's lincoln or tedly roosevelt or franklin. she talks about him as my people. and she feels sad to leave them when the book is finished. it sounds like you've built a relationship with these individuals. can you describe, how does it work, how does it feel and how do you maintain a relationship with people who lived 200 years ago. >> in some ways it's easier than it is with people in our lives today. the reality we know of them is the reality that comes out through their letters and it's -- most people's whose letters survive, they knew their letters would be saved. i'm not convinced thatcher expected his letters to be saved. he had a magnificent correspondence with his wife just like abigail was to john adams. but we have only two of her letters for the hundreds that we know she wrote. the family didn't think her letters were worth keeping. there's a big blank in my heart for sarah thatcher, his wife. george thatcher like most of the early political figures in the republican, you can't help but fall in love with them. joe ellis wrote his wonderful book founding brothers instead of founding fathers. they're all fumbling along trying figure out how to move ahead in life together. for us to look back from 200 years later and see what it must have been like when you didn't know how the story was going to end, it's a really -- it's a real treat and an honor, really, to have access to these letters and to be able to make sense of them. sometimes you get so embedded in them that you forget that there is a post-1802. i made very, very few references to anything happens after 1802, 1803. my colleague is famous for saying if you ask him anything about anything after 1803, he's like that's science fiction to me. i don't know what you're talking about. your real world ends when these letters end and the members sign themselves yours dearest or whatever. it's a wonderful experience. even amateur historians, people interested in genealogy, their family histories, the first thing you should do is get your hands on the letters, read secondary literature and so on. start with the letters because it will provide the passion that is the fuel for historical research. >> is there anything -- one of the questions that a couple people asked, is there anything in the letters that talks about how did they travel from washington, d.c., to alexandria? was that a difficult trek at that time? >> yes, because, of course, there are no 14th street bridges. you don't have the 14th street bridge traffic either. but you would take -- it involved a ferry at this point in time. and it was -- from cutler's telling of it, if you left in the morning, you could be -- if you left like around noontime when they were done visiting jefferson at the white house at noontime, you would be at gatsby by the evenin as i said towards the end of my talk, it's mostly overland at first until you get to the bay. you might want to take the water route up the bay. it's a very interesting thing that comes out in the letters. today when we write letters, we don't write about how we get somewhere because we assume the recipient is going to be experiencing the same thing. so when you find references to travel, it's kind of a big deal. and it's always enlightening because we're always surprised at how difficult it was. i think i can say if most of the audience had to confront what these people confronted in the course of getting to work, if you were a congressman, you probably wouldn't do it. you probably would just stay at home. and in george thatcher's case, the distance from home was a deterrent to him coming back to congress. we know that for a fact. he's always complaining about how far away from home he was. he was doing it in new york, and that was one-third of the distance from washington, d.c., to maine. you can imagine. >> chuck, one of the other questions -- someone was asking about the religious services. were they held in the house chamber? is that what they called the oven? where were these services held? >> the references i found to it in the letters of reed, wadsworth and cutler, plumber doesn't talk about it, they refer to it as the hall. i'm thinking because a representative is using that expression, that he's referring to the oven which is bigger than the senate chamber. i'm thinking that's where they were held. they were -- there was a congressional chaplain from the very first week of the very first congress. but they opened the religious services to all different denominations. we saw, for example, leland. we know that there were episcopalians. the people that were speaking during these religious observances in the capitol were not technically servants of the government. they were just utilizing government space in a communetarian sense. this is the biggest room in the city so we're going to use it. i would be careful to say it's government endorsing any particular religion or the idea of religion, to be honest with you. keep that in mind when we read about religious worship in the early capitol building. >> and did those -- how long did those services continue? they continued through jefferson's presidency. >> they did. i don't know. i don't know. something for me to look into. i imagine when other space became variable -- certainly churches are being built at this time. a catholic would never be seen outside of a church, a sanctuary, we know catholics weren't doing it. there is a catholic church in georgetown, for example. i can't remember when the first catholic parish starts, but it's not long after this period that we're talking about. so at some point they do move out of the capitol building. i don't know when. >> chuck, one of the questions that, you know -- we have a couple folks who are still interested in this cheese now. and so we have two questions, one, i think is maybe not quite in your venue, but nevertheless, it was called the chester cheese because it came from chester. was it cheddar cheese? what's the relationship between the two? >> i don't know. it begins with the same three letters. it makes the -- the expression mammoth cheese all the more pointed. as i said, to coin the word around the same time. but it was also known as the cheese because it came from chester and it was cheddar. that's all i really know about it. maybe cheddar lasts longer? maybe that's why they opted for cheddar. i don't know. >> your friend from durham has been enjoying the talk and sends you his greetings. but he has a very important question. he said is that where they came up the idea of calling the president the big cheese. >> you would ask that. i don't know when that expression. i'm sure i'm not only the one who will google it as soon as this is over. maybe it is. i'm not sure that jefferson would not appreciate it, to be honest. >> and one of the people asked, were the religious services open to the general public or just for members of congress -- >> no, this is the point. it was the general public. it was -- as a public service to the community to have them in the capitol. so it was intended as a public service. so, yes, the community was invited. >> and one of the other things -- you noted in your comments that jefferson really was not very conflict adverse. but on the other hand it appears that he was very much in conflict both in life and death with the federalists. how do you reconcile those two things? >> well, jefferson's attempt to suppress conflict, it never works. we know this in our personal lives as well. it's going to come out sideways one way or another. in avoiding conflict -- he would do it in his cabinet meetings as well. there's stories of how some of his cabinet would start fighting with each other and he would pull madison aside and say, make sure that doesn't happen again, basically. he liked having his ducks all lined up to the point where -- and cutler's very detailed journal of that seventh congress, he's frustrated. there's no allowance made for debate. all of the votes are already arranged. jefferson made sure with john randolph roanoke and some of the other leaders, the speaker, all jeffersonians at this point, that as soon as the orders came down from the jefferson white house, all you had to do was vote on it and that was it. so you're suppressing conflict but in the very fact of suppressing it, you're not acknowledging other people's input and when people aren't involved in the process, they get -- they double down, right? we know this from the way politics is done today. so, yeah, i would say jefferson was a failure at -- certainly didn't make any attempt to reconcile. but he was also a failure to kind of erase conflict. as plumber said in his very acute observation, he's actually aggravating conflict as you're suggesting. he's aggravating conflict by not giving it voice. >> we have two more questions because we could carry this on for the rest of the day and be fascinated. but we're trying to be respectful of your time and everyone else's time. the one question was, has anyone ever done an analysis of the people who ran for congress and didn't win and who were they and what was the context of those campaigns when you talk about experiencing defeat? >> in this period, in this period? >> yes. >> i imagine -- certainly i like to think of myself as well read on the secondary literature. but you'll find only snippets. there's no systematic way of looking at how many lawyers lost re-election. i did it, for example, with my thatcher book. i did a very detailed analysis of who he ran against, what the issues were and why that person lost -- ultimately lost every time to george thatcher. it would be so difficult. i think it would be lovely if it happened. there are great websites. i want to encourage people to go on america votes, which is a website run by tufts, and the american antiquarian society. it is free. it will tell you every vote recorded from every office, from local dogcatcher to president of the united states up through the 1820s. it will give every candidate, whether the candidate is known anywhere outside his own family. if he got a vote, he's on that list in that website. so explore with that. it's fascinating. fascinating. >> you have to love our audience because they are better than google. >> we have an answer to one of the questions? >> we have an answer to one of the questions. this is about the church services that were moved to statuary hall, that began in statuary hall in 1870 and were there through 1857. the first catholic to preach in the capital was bishop john england, who preached there on january 8, 1826 for two hours. >> wow. >> now you know something you didn't know before. >> i would bet that's an episcopalian bishop and not a catholic bishop. >> it says the first catholic according to shane mccarthy. >> mccarthy should know. >> he put his name behind it. i'm just giving -- >> we'll stand by it. yeah. >> chuck, i think a couple people asked about your book. could you just hold it up again so that people can see it? >> my baby. >> there, this is the book. it is available through the united states capitol historical society. if you go to our website, there is a shop feature and you can get all kinds of wonderfulmemorabilia of the capitol. we have christmas ornaments made with metal from the capitol, and we have books like chuck's books. if you want to get the book, come join us if you want to be part of the continuing exploration of capitol history. we hope you become a member and supporter of the capitol historical society. thank you very much. chuck, we appreciate the depth of your knowledge and the fact that you shared it so well. >> it was fun. thank you. >> thank you. take care. bye. this morning, dr. anthony fauci and cdc director dr. rochelle walensky will testify with other federal officials on the covid-19 response. watch live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on cspan3, online or listen with the free cspan radio app. weeknights this month we're featuring programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on cspan3. tonight the book "contest for liberty" which examines the varying philosophies and leadership styles in the continental army and the impact it had on the enlisted men. lieutenant colonel scully is the author. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on cspan3. >> you're watching american history tv, every weekend on c-span3 explore our nation's past. american history tv on cspan3 created by america's television companies and today we're by these companies who provide it as a public ser.