Spectacular program on americas founding. Spec so just to get a few logistical items off first, todays program is one of many that are comingng up at the fall season of the constitution center. Next week we are going to tackle the question of is the constitution judeochristian which would be a great discussion for the scholar residents herthis callerresidene discussion. In twossio weeks we are hostinga conference with robert strauss, author of the new book worst president ever, James Buchanan and the legacy of the least of the lesser president said that should be a really sort of aga again. You can learn about some of the benefits of becoming a member of the constitution center. Gram otherwise just a couple of lo logistics. We will be rethinking americas founding. Some of the great characters in American History without further ado, the two speakers are the kirkland and ellis professor at Harvard Law School in his marvelous neand hismarvelous nee down here is the framers to the making of the constitution again and his one volume is obviously an impressive overall side. But what is amazing about it is before the creation of the constitution and the articles of confederation and the stories of all of the walls of consideration all the way to tha bill of rights, so it is a single volume that captures the Amazing Things that happened during the period. The politics of war and early pennsylvania. [applause] what we are going to talk about today. We think about refashioning americas founding and can be placed on the table what you take to be the traditional narrative. We all know the story really well that begin what begins in h the act to announce thisti opposition to the policy that leads to the tea party and the boston massacre and ultimately independence. The story is focused on thet isv eastern seaboard. They are representing the American Revolution. They look at other cities tot understand why did the american revolutioamericanrevolution hapd and why did the revolution include all these other areas as well. Bringing up my book at the beginning you have a provocative title of the framers. Why that title and more generally what is the impetus behind offering this book . That title goes to the marketing people. En you spend four or five years and then the marketing people get a hold of it to come up with something that has fewer nounse2 in it. I had the idea to write a short hook for a series of Oxford University press called the at inalienable rights integrated into the volume on thee was no constitution. I had written a volume on their racial equality in history and they were looking for 50,000 word books which are short books. I got interested and made the mistake of gettin getting him dd up in the primary sources and got a lot of the secondary literature in the founding but the more i got into the primary sources are more it occurred to me not just a small book on the founding but there isnt one book that tells the whole story so there were fabulous books on the Philadelphia Convention. Nobody tried to tell the story between the confederation and the Philadelphia Convention and gratification. One of the issues and topics is the degree to which the revolution on the one hand and the constitution on the other hand were a product of the American Publics preferences versus something other than that. And i think what both of you do is complicate the sort of Public Opinion around both of those projects. So i would love to start with you. How did the American Public to fighdivided over the revolution . One of the lessons you can take is to a mobilized minority can make a huge difference and so generally speaking, john adams is famous for saying a third support of the revolution and a third opposed and a third were in between somewhere so that means that 60 of the population was opposed to the American Revolution. So that has a lesson that i take throughout American History. When you look at Abraham Lincoln received 39 of the vote and its mobilized and motivated the minority to have a huge impact on the course of American History. How did those if we are thinking about the American Public in terms of demographic groups or others who tended to support the revolution and oppose it and who tends to beto neutral . That is exactly what historians are starting to askt now. And i think that is part of this reexamination of the revolution to say we have to look at the American Revolution and the experience as an event that is multifaceted and doesnt have any clear answers. So there are many people who work may be neutral at the beginning of the revolution and as the war passed through it they began to support. So generally speaking i think the areas they havent been affected they were especially in the countryside largely neutral. The seaports that were affected by the policies were generally supportive of it except for the belief that were part of the administration or the apparatus in some way and then on the frontier they tended to be supportive of the revolution in large part because they saw the empire trying to restrain their expansion west because of policies. So its divided throughout the country. Every colony has its own story. Thats terrific. Turning to the constitution itself, if we are thinking of prior to philadelphia, who were the main folks pushing us toward a Constitutional Convention and at that point in time, where might the public have been on wm the debate between retaining the articles of confederation versus blazing out a new . I think there is a consensus among those that are thinking about things which National Governments and that the articles are not working very well. Congress doesnt have the power it can only ask the states for monestate formoney and they ofto contribute. Congress only has the authority. For the greatest troops in the Congress Makes treaties but it has no authority to enforce within the states and states are systematicallthe statesare syste enforcement if they dont agree with a particular treaty provision. I think most americans agree some change was needed. What happened in philadelphia as patrick was saying the kind of spirited minority that wan thata different system decided not to adopt an incremental reform. They decided to go for a massive overall system. Sy theyve been sent to philadelphia to revise the articles and the ended up scrapping the articles from day number one and created a different system of government that was a shift of power from the state and local level much more dramatically to the National Level being those people anticipated or wanted. I of his fundamental changes to people like madison, hamilton and washington wanted very much to constrain the popular influence on the National Government so they set up a system with long terms in office in large constituencies and that was an effort to prevent ordinary americans from playing a very large direct role in governing themselves less than theyd taken from the 1780s which was a time of severe economic turmoil in the state. If you have too much democracy, farmers would get state legislators to pass paper money losmoneylaws and pass this reals and most of the kiwi framers thought those were irresponsible confiscation and redistribution of wealth and drew the lesson that it was very troubling and if they wanted to set up a system that would come straight. That is where the idea comes from. We dont have opinion polls so we dont know exactly what ordinary americans thought. Most historians agree roughly half the country supported the constitution and roughly half the country opposed the constitution. I think most americans were somewhere in the middle. They thought the articles were flawed and the constitution had gone too far in the opposite direction. Te they would have preferred an intermediate option but the framers were quite skillful at keeping such an option off the table. One of the wonderful things about the terrific set of essays is the degree to which the essays themselves bring the American Revolution down to a human scale. We often think of it as this war for independence but often forget about sort of how it affected the lives of Everyday Americans. Can you talk about some of the stories in the volume of how the revolution itself was transformative for Everyday Americans . Theres two questions first is the everyday lived experience and then how did the evolution transform america and i think in 1777 philadelphia was an occupied city. What was it like to live in an occupied city that is what philadelphia was. New york city itself is headquarters of the british army military. In newport, rhode island they were taking lists of those that were loyalists and those that were not into th there to greety with them. What was it like to live through that experience and to be a farmer in the countryside in pennsylvania or the carolinas when all of a sudden you have competing British Forces and American Forces coming to your farm and taking your supplies so what was the revolution like in that experience for the everyday colonists and i think that is separate from how it transformed america. To see the transformative effect of the revolution they are different stories. Theres the war itself, the coming of the evolution and then the legacy and it really rests in the declaration of independence got the principle that all men are created equal and the constitution and we all governed by and that is theis transformative part. We move past those. To what degree should we think about it as the american t revolution to the articles of the constitution and bill of bif rights and to what degree should we think of that as a continuous narrative almost like what you get from miranda hamilton versus more destructive . I consider myself a historian and American Revolution and my specialty is studying 1755 to wt about 1785. I study the coming of the revolution and the revolution itself and i do see the constitution as a very different period of course it is formed by the revolution, but it is i cant create a coherent narrative around it because it does change the politics and the way people behave. One of the things i was a historian when i am looking in the 1760s, 1770s, the amount of documents that are available are much smaller than after the American Revolution. There is an explosion of evidence. So even looking at it historically, they are disconnected. You have better and different sources available postrevolution than before thee American Revolution. I think they had a different mindset and the government was different. All those factors can mean a different era. Now you have a continuous narrative that begins in the revolution and returning to something that you said earlier, can you talk more about how the democratic constitution was . Line is connecting with patrick saying the state constitutions at the time but also placing the constitution in the context of other nations at the time. How do we think about that . The Philadelphia Convention co and delegates in the constitution itself would have been seen as profoundly democratic. From our perspective it doesnt look that democratic so women didnt participate in politics. Africanamericans were mostly enslaved, they didnt participate because you nee neea certain amount of property. But from the perspective of the world is one of the most participatory democracy is that the world had ever seen. There were states where 80 or 90 of the adult white males participated. So that constitution in massachusetts was ratified by delegatedelegates whod been see by the town meetings and virtually everybody was enfranchised. Having said that, you have to understand the constitution is a kind of counterrevolution against even more Democratic Forces that were set in motion by the revolutionary war. It takes pennsylvania as an example. Pennsylvania had the most democratic constitution adopted. In the nation was adopted in 1776. You had the annual elections and only a one house legislature. There was no upper house because they didnt want an upper house constraining the will of the people. It was an incredibly weak governor, no veto power and to governor george is only held a limited term in office. Requirements for Public Meetings the legislature meet in public unlike the Philadelphia Convention which sat in the statehouse but ironically was closed to the public. They have requirements about the wall being published that intervened on the elections to give people a chance to express before the law could go into effect. The framers, people of madison, hamilton, washington were a little bit aghast that so much democracy have led to these paper money laws in the mid mid1780s and they wanted to move in the direction of the government that would be more tr constrained or independent of the popular opinion and that actually could shut down the populist forces in the state. So madison for example wanted to get the federal government an absolute veto any law passed by the state, but that turned out to be too extreme for the convention. They wrote a provision on section ten which bars states from adopting paper money laws and from passing the better relief laws at th and the idea e National Government with longer terms in office, sixyear senators, for your president s. There was nothin nothing analogo that in the state constitutions in direct elections legislators pick senators cut electoral picks the president. E enormous constituencies. The house had 65 members and the lower house of the massachusetts had over 350 delegates. The u. S. Congress had 65. They thought the larger constituency the more you whatrg you like and better sort that you need welleducated affluent people in the community. And they thought the larger the constituency foconstituency fore independence a representative would have from the constituent influence. So, in a sense, they were profoundly antidemocratic and wanted to move from the more Democratic State constitutions in the direction of the more kiwis rule because they thought you couldnt trust the average person in government they thought they would redistribute property and this wouldnt have been happening. Ri thats why hamilton of the convention favored a lifetime senate and lifetime tenure as president. Hes a monarchist basically. That was extreme at the convention but it wasnt that extreme. The ability delegations voted for the lifetime tenure as president because they thought Property Rights wouldnt be protected in the more republican form of government. Interesting. To take one quick thing we are obviously as is the case during president ial elections, people often have questions about how we got the Electoral College. Can you just take a bead on sort of what [laughter] where that came from and what was the rationale for its . For most of the convention, they thought that the congress would pick the president. Thats the way most state institutions worked as the legislature picked the governor. For most, they had agreed the president would be selected by congress for a single term of seven years. But the problem with a single term as they thought that it would term if they thought that the deprived the president of the best incentive for behavior which is the ability to be reelected. The problem with giving theee ability to be elected if he was picked by congress is that he would be dependent on congress for the reelection but the whole point of having an independent president was to check congress, they were giving a veto but if the president was dependent on congress for Reelection Committee would b, hewould be wg a veto. Another possibility would be the direct election by the people that there were three problems in that. First they didnt trust the people with that important task. One of my favorite quotes from the convention as george mason they delegate from virginia. It would be like returning the t choice of colors to the blind and. They didnt trust the people so that is one problem. The second, 40 of the population they thought they ought to count in terms of increasing political power in the nation, and finally, they thought if you have direct election estates would never have a president , this is poor communication, transportation and they were not assuming the existence of the political parties, so for their candidate if you came from massachusetts he would vote for john hancock come if you came from pennsylvania you would vote for james wilson. The small states would never have a president. So the Electoral College system actually enabled them to compromise lots of differences. One thing is youre not going to have t the president picked directly by the people. You will have state legislators deciding how they are chosen and then the assume they assumed thd exercise independent judgment. Then they portion the Electoral College in such a way that the south gets greater clout than they would in the direct election of the state states hat great opportunity to elect somebody. So the apportionment of the Electoral College as though, the number of house members plus a number of senators. Virginia is by far the largest state with 12 times the population of delaware. In the house there attend virginia representatives, one for delaware. But in the Electoral College coming to add the senators to the house members which means 12 electors from virginia and three from the word before1 advantage rather than 101. So the small states like that, the state selected because the house members included a number of slaves come and theres other complications worked in their. The only way to defend it with total college today first of all, the indirect election no longer works that way because now we have a essentially a popular election to choose the delegates except for the possibility of the elect are. But in terms of kamal apportionment of electoralal college does icollege does is gs in wyoming four times the power of the voters in california. California has 55 electoral votes in wyoming has three. That is an 181 disparity that california actually has 70 times the population of wyoming. And unless you can provide a good account for why wyoming voters are somehow it is committed against minority to deserve enhanced cover in the electoral clutch system, there probably is no good defense. It just gives some people inflated power in choosing the president. But the senate is still subject to the same and more extreme. Sso this into senators of california that california has 70 times the population. That is the power play by the small states and the Philadelphia Convention. They try to justify it with fancy philosophical reasons for why the small states would be overwhelmed by the large estates. But it is basically just a power play on the small states that would walk out of the convention if you dont give us equality in the senate. Im sorry that was longwinded. [laughter] [applause] so, patrick, again we often think of the American Revolution is primarily a war of independence. Independence. But one of the ways in which your text pushes the narrative another direction is to get usar to think about as americas first civil war in a sense. Can you talk about why that was anthe end of the degree to which that is true . Schema people refer to it as a civil war. Those were supporting the revolution eventually start to site a english civil war as the reason for rebelling to say this is working in the british tradition of the revolution in overturning the government of this tyrannical. So people saw it in the civil war and you have the loyalists being targeted for their beliefs by the patriots. You saw patriots being targeted in some cases as well. You saw neutrality. This is a sign of how it is in the civil war. If you were natural, you couldnt be neutral if the war was in your backyard. You have to be on one side or the other. The could see the countryside became torn apart into factions. Brothers, family members torn apart fighting each other. G so i absolutely think it is a civil war. But hearing michael talk i was thinking about your previous question about the revolution into the constitution. I dont know how you want to respond to this but it came to mind when you were speaking. It is about individuals come individual rights. It was about tearing down the monarchy and you can see that expressed in the documents. The executive is what they targeted. It has to be for the people. And the constitution is lessti about individuals and more about governing and good governance. The bill of rights is the way to get that back. I dont know how we came upon hearing you talk about the electors which is about getting it in the hands of the eu leadt and the governing view. Definitely wanted to move in the Philadelphia Convention and a more powerful president and any state governor so only a couple of states with governorss with veto power, usually legislators exercised the appointment power and in the Philadelphia Convention they agreed first of all for the unitary executives. Some people were proposing a plural executive and you could have three president s elected for different parts of theec country. They won the unitary executive and the they wanted a president i would providthatwould provide bd the government. Hamilton had been a big fan all the way back to the early 1780s for creating more powerful executive figures under the articles of confederation there was no executive under the articles of confederation. Congress was both the legislature and the executive and they wanted to create an executive veto power because they thought if the congressif ever does get overrun by populist factions, the president could veto that. So they wanted a powerful executive and thats why it isec different from the imposed ten years earlier which was to tear down executive power. Again they are moving against the dominant thrust of the revolution by transferring power to the National Level and transferring it away from the people of a transferring i the t away from the legislature in creating the lifetime tenuredre judges who may be exercised the power to strike down legislati legislation. In the American Revolution, we often think of it is at least a battle between good and evil, the patriots and the british empire. What was the rationale for lawyer was on . Why did they reject this Insurgent Movement . We are being filmed so i hate to say this but i have been a loyalists. [laughter] if you were born in the 1750s, 1740s, you are veteran of the wealthiest and most prosperous empire in the entire world thatt the world has ever known. It is proud of its liberties. You have a parliament in a monarch but it works collaboratively unlike other models in europe. You have this idea of the british constitution and liberties. The idea that you couldd throw overthrow that i dont know that i would go that far. R. So why would you be able a lists to say these policies are bad but look at the empire. Es we have the strongest most wealthy empire in the world and thats because of british liberties that have allowed us to have Economic Freedom andght. Individual rights. The stamp act that is only to find. The stamp act, the money that is raised is to fund the military on the frontier. None of that is supposed to go back to great britai great brity to offset the cost of the i wonse of north america. So i would say surely have to pay our fair share and support the military and frontiers. We have a great trading empire and weve now expanded to other places. Why would i take this risk of this new thing that would upend everything that weve known andt possibly fail . Why would you b he be a patriot . [laughter]patr a similar question to you. Again, we revere the constitution today. But what was writing with georgd mason and some of the folks that came out on the antifederalist imposing the constitution . May be the principal antifederalist charge against the constitution is that youre going to create an aristocracy. They think that you are transferring power away from ordinary people. They dont like the idea that you aryoure going to have the sixyear terms for senators. They dont like the idea that there is perpetual eligibility for the reelection or the fact that youve deprived people of the ability to instruct theircte representatives to recall the representatives they think there should be mandatory rotation inn office. They are worried that he the lee is going to constitute an aristocratic and the people will no longer be able to govern themselves. They are worried about taxes in the same way the revolution in some senses about americans not wanting to pay with the british with regard as the americans fair share of taxes and support the military that protects them. At the constitution to a substantial degree is a fight over taxation for the federalists say youve been forced to pay these heavy taxes at the state level but if you ratify the constitution of the federal government is to take over the input duties and they will fund the National Debt and maybe the government will assume the state that and we will cut taxes and you will not have to pay these taxes on land and on heads. So the tax rate is going to go down which is what happened in the 1790s under Alexander Hamiltons policies. The antifederalists are saying if you vote for the constitution they are going to raise your taxes and there will be a swarm of revenue collectors across the land and they will have to raise money to fund this inefficient federal government which is going to have all the trappings of royalty such as a large extent, they were fighting over who you could trust reduce your taxes. Thats not al all of it, but tht is a significant part. 90 of americans are connected with farms into the federalists are saying to the farmers if you give congress the ability to regulate the international commerce, we are going to pry open the markets of europe. One of the problems under the articles as britain and france were shoving the United States out of the carrying trade and they were shoving the United States cruisers to beat coproducers out where they couldnt get the goods anywhere but from the United States. They are buying fish from newfoundland rather than from new england once the United States is no longer part of the british empire. Ou so one of the main arguments ise farmers, you should support this because we are now going to pry open the european markets and the value of the products and land will go up. On the other hand, the federalists are saying to the farmers, state legislators have been very responsive and saved you from the foreclosure of the land with debt relief and bypassing paper money laws whici are essentially just and banks with farmers money to monetize the wealth in their land so they can pay their taxes so they dont have to get foreclosed upon. Thats going to be shut off by the constitution. You will now have these people , the federal government is going to be distant and removed from concerns. They are not going to allow you to get any more debt relief so they are fighting over interest. Both sides have an interest and thats what theyre fighting over the idea that its a dispassionate political philosophy. If it is and how this debate was conducted and its probably not the best way to think about how the debate actually was structured. People were fighting over interest. We are thinking of translating some of those lessons about the founding into what we would want our School Children to learn. What would be some of the things the withdrawal out of this book that would be important to transmit to the next generation of americans . Politics can be a noble enterprise. Some of the most talented americans at the time went into Public Service and i doubted that is equally true today. I think politics has become a very different sort of enterprise. James madison, Alexander Hamilton committees are among the brightest most spirited people and they thought george mason hated to leave home and travel away from Fairfax Virginia and he showed up in philadelphia. Probably the only time in his life he left virginia that he thought he had an obligation. George washington wasnt sure whether he should go. He had to retire from public life and decided the country needed him and he was going to go w. The idea of Public Service by the most talented virtuous people, you know, we shouldnt think of them theres this old explanation written 100 years ago that the framers were mostly lining their pockets and they were holders of government securities and they basically wanted the federal government that could raise taxes to pay off the Government Debt at face value and they would enrich themselves. They are not trying to make a buck they have a vision of what is Good Government and Economic Policy and that comes from the status of the fairly welloff and educated people. There is a big difference of opinion between the elite and non eu wheat about the way to do things tha but this is incret talented. Part of what i think your i oject to be is to draw out new narratives and again we are looking to translate it to theal lessons. What would you want to draw out from this scholarship . From the each of the students that we are talking to, there is a need for that traditional narrative they talked about in the beginning and the stamp act, the crisis and the seaports, the t. Hardy and coming of the American Revolution in that way. It is a very wellknown narrative and that is still important. As the students mature and get older they have to startrt confronting different issues and that is one of the things this book does just look at the american frontier and what i argue in the book is there are two revolutions, the one in the seaports and on the americanntif frontier example of thesebe rebellions like th the stamp act and a tea party but overturning those policies it is a difficult story. Getting these authors it was a very diverse and divisive place. At the same time you have to remember that traditional narrative and not forget it. One other thing is the degree to which we need to think about the revolution as a war. Ten you talk about that part of the human toll . One of the things the volume shows is the American Revolution was an extraordinarily messy affair. This is a global war. There are battles fought in europe on black caribbean and north america. It is something that was extraordinarily complex and events are happening on the ground and the theres all these diplomatic happening and to construct one coherent narrative would actually undermine the grandeur of the American Revolution as an event. Gr i am. They had a different views so they thought the United States was always going to be subject to the invasion of the war and thats how they defended thes hh taxing power. Ti they had military power you can raise an army, navy, state militia. The way to fund a war nobody would lend money unless you have the reliable taxing power so you could pay off the debt. They tended to respond they thought it was much less likely the United States would be invaded and they were not that interested in playing the Large International role so it wasr about the different editions in the country and how the risks in the country were. There would be two or three different confederacies and if you had two or three different confederacies on the same continent, they would constantly be at war with each other and if they are at war with each other you need a strong government. You will end up with a government rather than the republic anrepublican to the antifederalist said youre crazy youre just making this stuff up. One thing was exaggerating the threat because they needed to defend radical reforms of the exaggerated the threat of the invasion and dennis dicks so the controversy. At the other side said we dont need dramatic change everything you are exaggerating. This one is to you. You talk about the effect of the revolution on every day a columnists. Does this include women, the poor and nonwhite . That is one of the things this book does do is it studiese families that are torn apart. In philadelphia and solve there was a grand ball held and it was an opportunity for women in philadelphia to come out and participate in that same time were they being pressured to be a part of this british affair one of the most Untold Stories happened has anybody here heard of the quaker exile . One of the things that happened, they grew and were supported with Charles Wilson the Famous Artist involved in this and a bunch of others were active in the meeting that had been pacifists but they were respected to become expecteexped they were arrested and brought to the freemason building in philadelphia and shipped to virginia where they spent several months and the wives of some of these quakers petitioned George Washington and others individually supported the Continental Army that this is an incredible story that cuts across the revolution affected them. At the event on the frontier they were at the core of the story and it needs to be told. What the author shows is the used this as an opportunity so they simply transferred that into the patriot hans and so that is the narrative we are trying to tell if it is diverse and multifaceted and you cant get a simple way to summarize all that happened in a period oa time. If the majority was unhappy with the constitution hell did ittiti pass . The first thing to note is that it is not inevitable that it would pass. A couple states voted against the ratification in North Carolina, rhode island, new hampshire. They were going to vote against but they managed to butcher it and an in a bunch of states it s close, so that was 30 to 27 and in virginia it was 89 to 79 invo favor of massachusetts it was 187. Those are three of the five largest states and if one or two of them rejected the constitution, there is a good chance the union wouldnt have been successful. They had some advantages you could even say that it was braved a little bit. One advantage was the media there were about 90 newspapers in the country at the time only 12 of them were willing to publicize any significant amount of the opponents literature from antifederalist literature. They were published entirely, surresorry newspapers were publd entirely for obvious economic reasons even though 90 of americans lived outside of the cities and often for subscribers and advertisers who were overwhelmingly supportive, they would threaten to withhold their subscriptions and advertising if the newspaper publisher dared to publish any so there was some of that going on in pennsylvania. So they had the media almost entirely supportive and in some states antifederalist couldld barely get their opinions heard. In some states there was now a, portion in South Carolina so as the population moved west they would often resist redistributing the power because people generally are not very altruistic and politics. People stood on the eastern seaboard an and moved west withe legislature didnt reapportion themselves. The convention was apportioned in the same way the South Carolina legislature, 20 along the seaboard were overwhelmingly supportive of the constitution n and these are often the wealthiest in the country. Of those 20 elected 60 of the delegates and even though most agree that the referendum would have voted no because so much of the population moved west and there was a strong opposition, the convention voted to1 in favor so that was another factor. In both states the welleducat welleducated, the clergymen, large merchants overwhelmingly supportive and virginia was the one exception. What that meant is people showed up with open minds and they have an enormous advantage to the farmers they would often intimidated with their adversaries said they had another advantage and finally they created article seven of the constitution to specify once the nine states ratified the constitution goes into operation. That contrasts with the article where you need to get all 13 states to ratify the amendment. Under the constitution nine states could put an end. But you have to think about what the pressure would be in the remaining four states. Once the nine states are ratified as the new nation. If you choose not to go along and some of the states like rhode island in the North Carolina held out for a while you will be denied federaled military protection and you might be subjected to the trade discrimination like a foreign country and congress was threatening North Carolina andat rhode island. You will be cut out of important decisions made by the First Congress like whether to amend the constitution. So the last four states ended up being pressured so once the states have decided that ends ut being the end of the game and most of the states that were most resistant came late and if they had gone earlier they might have rejected the ratification because the issue had already been resolved by the time it got to do. So it was very gratuitous and it could have come out the other way but they just had some advantages and their opponents made miscalculations. One of the other things that helped us immensely is that it was a yes or no vote. It wasnt the convention do we keep the article as amended, what do we do, do we support the constitution or not . That help them immensely. The federalists understood most thought the articles needed to be reformed. Bears is the only alternative in town. Most americans would havee preferred something in between. The constitution moves very farr in the antipopulist direction. Most americans probably would have preferred a point in the know of the spectrum. The federalists desperately tried to give them an all or nothing choice because they realized most would have preferred that isnt what the federalists were giving them and theres a couple of procedural mechanisms whereby you might have gotten something in theaniw middle and they ridiculed of those and try to keep them off the table so you could have had a Second Convention. The constitution was written inw private, not what people expected and now theres been a National Debate and you couldul elect them and send them to a convention to let them come up with something closer or you could have the ratification conditioned. Or so rather than do with the federalists are promising which is ratify this constitution ando we will give you some amend them down the road, they said lets c ratify the amendment being adopted first because we dont believe the promises about what we are going to get down theheee road. They made legal arguments and policy arguments against both of those alternatives. But i think the reason they rejected the alternative is the new if you have a Second Convention youre going to water down the document that they addressed and that is the document they wanted. So it was incredibly important and how they managed to get away with that is a good question. It wasnt ridiculous to say you surprised us with this and now we talked about it and we would like to change it a little bits and managed to convince people d barely got away with it. This is a great question in light of the strengths of your buck and its methodological diversity. Im curious about your primary sources was and where are they. The first stories were toldev by what was printed and what was available. What they are now trying to do is cover those like the one i oversee. Ying to we have 13 million pages to take up 2. 5 miles of shelf space. We have Hidden Treasures we dont even know about and what we are doing is trying to support the scholars to give new meaning to the documents. Thats what historians do is give meaning to the documents and more and more we are looking for manuscripts because thats where the other stories come into play. Th so if you are looking at slave slavery, it is a hard question and you will not find that answer you will have to go digging. The towns and the duties and so forth then all of a sudden the declaration of independence happened because i cant support that. He goes to a farm where he is targeted and harassed at the same time corresponded with john adams because they are friends. So they can get everyday life and perspective on the American Revolution so those are the sources i like. Of course theres a whole bunch of different pamphlets and materials to look at as well. You talk about some of the primary sources in your text. There is an incredible collection underway for 30 or 40 years. Theres the documentary history of the ratification of the constitution. Its been a project thats been ongoing since about 1970 and now 27 volumefound 27 volumes but it quite done. They have 400 to 500 pages, the letters, diaries and account books that theyve been able to track dow down and theyve litey gone around the world so some of the most interesting letters are written by the french consul and South Carolina. These are observers and they are not participants in th the debas but thedebatebut they are interd reporting back to spain orastu france or england and they collected these great letters from harvard. Hes 19yearsold apprenticing writing his College Friends and John Quincy Adams is an avid antifederalist who thinks the constitution is going to create and aristocracy and somebody points out they do crazy things. He wrote this book and its been foundational for everybody thinks about the founding era and its a great intellectual history and the United States from the political thought and thinthe revolutionary war to the constitution. He wrote this and it is published in 1969 and i think of him driving around in a beatup car with hundreds of archives. I considered it and all this stuff is digitized if you are interested you type in the documentary history of the ratification, type in a state that is all searchable. Theres the papers of the founders, the washington papers, hamilton papers they have their own collections edited by experts, so theres always footnotes and they will tell you what they are referring to when they make an offhand reference its unbelievable the luxury of having all this stuff. One of the privileges of the law school if they get all of these talented students who want to do work so they collect letters, they check my sources. It is a luxury to have all thi stuff. I didnt travel at all. Its all available on your laptop because the university of virginia digitized this documentary history. I have some worries about that and that is overwhelmingly printed sources for newspaper pamphlets. And the papers of the founders. Its absolutely incredible. People are going to prefer the harder Archival Research so you wont get a diary of a woman on the plantation because that isnt part of the elite story. You still have to go to the archives. The origina original sources stl matter and i worry that historians in this generation Going Forward are going toi am w prefer different over the archival and that is a concern i have and im also worried into this as a sort of existential threat. Kids right now in grade school are not learning cursive. [laughter] its true. In 50 years, the historians of that generation are not going to be able to read the original sources they will only read the printed sources. Cursive is going to be a foreign language. They wont be able to read their grandparents writing. I love the digitization. Its what we do and i rely on it in my own work but at the same time i am concerned. What was the most surprising thing youve learned . There was a story about a piece of human skin [laughter] that have become an artifact from the campaign coming if there was a young scholar working on a project which he is examining the history of this piece of skin. N. He doesnt have all the answers to those questions and ideas about it. But that is a totally newanswer approach to the sources but its also going to uncover a greatknw story. There is somebody in here working on environmental history. Vi this is a new field. How will the Environment Impact history and what this shows is because they rely so much on Great Britain for most of the manufactured goods and gunpowder, it was overwhelmingly provided by Great Britain. So the colonies didnt have the Manufacturing Base to produce so they couldnt fight the war. So he details the attempts to create a homegrown gunpowder manufacturing industry. Its not largely successful. But the new approach through incremental history will also change the way we talk about the revolution. That was an interesting essay. Essay. Ti by same question to you including this magnificent book about what is the most surprising thing youve learnedn the most surprising thing, we had a constitution thats filled exists that was important for structuring the government. The important nature of the debate that appeals to the interest and the political maneuvering and they are arguing about things like under the articles of confederation the states gets to control their own import duties. New jersey and connecticut and put most of their goods through new york to new jersey and connecticut citizens are supporting the new york State Government with their tax dollars and thats why new york actually doesnt want to give the import duties to the federal government and thats why new york wants to impose the ratification of the constitution and why new jersey and connecticut support the constitution. Small states support the constitution because they got a great deal in the senate. Virginia doesnt like the constitution for that reason. The kind of political argumentation. They make arguments tha but in a different context the arguments flip. In the states where they think they will dominate the convention they say we dont need a detailed paragraph by paragraph consideration. Lets have a vote. But when they outnumber them they think its important that you have a thorough examination. Examination. In one convention they say lots of churn because they think they are going to lose it in the next they are all up in arms thatat they suggested they are going to adjourn. There is character assassination, there is dirty tricks, threats of violence in some places people are threatening a duel over the constitution. Alexander hamilton is saying Different Things than he did atf the convention and one of the other new york delegates at the convention is at the convention and he says that hamilton in philadelphia you wanted to destroy the states but now youre celebrating the role of the states and hamilton says i resent that this is an asp version test on my character. People think they are going to end up in a duel. They manipulate the accounts in newspapers so people will quote each other but they will do it selectively leaving out things antithetical to their cause. Its like modern politics. O [laughter] dont think of the constitution that way but its just a political debate where both sides use whatever methods are likely to win. I think on that note we believe that they are. But thank you so much. [applause] the American Revolution reborn. Thank you so much, patrick and michael. [applause] which president s were the greatest leaders we asked for stories to rate the president s and ten areas of leadership. This year went to the president to preserve the union Abraham Lincoln. Hes held the top spot for all three historians surveyed. Three others continue to hold their positions. George washington, Franklin Roosevelt and theodore roosevelt. Dwight eisenhower served in the oval office from 1953 to 61 and thinks his first appearance in the cspan top five this year. Rounding out the choices, thomas jefferson, john f. Kennedy and ronald reagan. Lyndon johnson jumps up one spot to return to the top ten. He is ranked dead last in the surveybothsurveys and theres br Andrew Jackson as well he found his overall rating dropping this year from number 13 to number 18. Buhad good news for barack obama on his first time on the list historians placed him at number 12 overall and george w. Bush moved three stops with big gains in public persuasion