Good morning. I am an educator here at the museum. We are a museum in washington, d. C. , and we are here to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the bill of rights. Behind me you can see a printing press. Back in 1788, this was how everyone shared Important News of the day like whether or not to ratify the new constitution. Luckily, with me today i have steve of the american historical theater and bill chrystal and we will have Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton tell us about exactly why we should or should not have a bill of rights. Just to set a little context , in 1788 we have successfully revolted from england. We are trying to form a new nation and we have the articles of confederation, which unfortunately are not working very well. We have a government, but it is tenuous and we think what we really need to do is to create a new constitution that will bring us all together. The question is, should this new constitution be ratified . Is it good enough . Mr. Hamilton, i hear you have some very strong opinions about this . There is a rumor you might have been writing under another name in some newspapers. Could you tell me about why we should or should not sign on to this new constitution . Mr. Hamilton clearly the new constitution was not the best constitution that could have been written. It was the best that could be achieved under the conditions in which we were operating. I had long known that the articles of confederation were not working. As early as 1780, i proposed we have a Constitutional Convention. That we write a constitution that would actually do what people needed it to do. I think most of you realize we , got through the American Revolution as if by a miracle. When it was over, we were absolutely devastated. Our credit was nonexistent and we were unable to service loans. We had issued bills to soldiers and they were not being honored. It was a terrible time. The commerce between colonies was also very tenuous. We were calling ourselves states by then. It became abundantly clear. I was serving in the Continental Congress with a virginian named james madison. And it became clear to us that we needed to do something system. Mr. Madison and i proposed there be a trade conversation between the states. It met in annapolis. Only five states showed up. But it gave us the opportunity to say, we need to revisit the articles of confederation and we agreed the following summer that we would meet in philadelphia and do that. Mr. Madison and i from the beginning realized that we would try to revise the articles of confederation. Actually, we wanted to write a new constitution. I am not sure most of the other delegates were as certain. We enlisted the help of those americans who had the greatest prestige to participate in the process. I think it is safe to say some of the greatest minds in the country were there. Mr. Jefferson certainly wouldve attended had he not been serving as minister of france. We knew we needed a new form of government because without it we were languishing. It was only a matter of time before we either collapsed or another foreign power came in and declared war on us and we would be defeated. That is the backdrop to the Constitutional Convention. We work over the course of the summer. I am not as active in it as it i might have been. I actually spent more than a month away. By then, i already realized the government we were going to have were this to be ratified was not going to be perfect, but it would be better than what we had. I had my own ideas about how we could knit ourselves together in a better federal union, which is another story. Over the course of time, i was the author of more than half of what had come to be called the federalist papers. There were 85 of them. Ay wrote five of them. Mr. Madison wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 and i wrote the remainder. They were a Public Relations blitz, answering the critics of those who did not want a new constitution ratified. And at the same time, trying to explain what the new government would do. Anna mr. Hamilton, one of the things you hoped it would do is to bring everybody together so that we would have a federal government that could better protect and serve everybody. It sounded like a really good idea. Your campaign was quite convincing. But there were some doubts, some holdouts. Mr. Jefferson, i think you had some grave concerns even in paris. Mr. Jefferson i received my first copy of the new constitution in late 1787 and i wrote about it in december. I believe that it was an excellent start. It was a good canvas on which only a few spots needed retouching. I was entranced by some of the improvements, some of what they accomplished. For instance, the bipartite, especially the legislature balancing the larger and smaller states. I thought the Electoral College was a good temporary expedients until americans were educated enough to be able to handle the authority to elect to their own senators and the president , which will not take but a few generations. But there were some things in it that staggered all of my dispositions to subscribe to it. For instance, there was no limitation on the number of terms that any of the elected officials could serve, especially in regard to the president. This concerned me. I thought once someone was elected and if they had done any kind of a decent job where they would not be impeached, people would become accustomed to that and were so used to aristocracy and inherited monarchy that there is something in human nature that finds comfort in that familiarity. People would want to elect the same people and families over and over again. And we would create essentially, a president who serves for life and then perhaps his son would serve and so forth and we would not improve on those who came before. I also very much did not like the absence of a bill of rights. I was most concerned about the lack of a bill of rights. A bill of rights is something that every people deserve to protect them from their governments. The right that should be listed in the bill of rights freedom of , speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom against monopolies, freedom from a freestanding military. Habeas corpus, these rights should not be left to inferences. They should be explicitly stated. I thought that was a terrible weakness in the document. Anna i am hearing from you that the constitution, while it was a good start, was just too vague and without specific limitations written in, we could be on a slippery slope back to a monarchy . Is that correct . Does that sum up your fears . Mr. Jefferson i think that is a good summary. All we had known was monarchy. Fear of moving back toward it was imminent. And certainly a rational fear to have. Anna mr. Hamilton, i cannot imagine you would agree with this. Mr. Hamilton believe it or not i realized , if the government did not become something that was owned by all levels of society, we would fail. Not only did the ordinary people need to subscribe to what we were doing but also the rich. If the money to are not supporting you you will get , nowhere. Let me back up and say that we did not think a bill of rights was necessary because i say we at this time, virtually all of us that were at the Constitutional Convention who were present at the end when suggested by george mason that we needed to guarantee freedom of the press, we took a vote. Mason said he would not propose it, but he would second such a motion. It was proposed and mr. Mason seconded it and it was defeated 10 to nothing. Not just i, but many others felt we had not taken any rights away from people and therefore we did not need to enumerate and guarantee any of them. Anna mr. Jefferson, i am a little concerned you are getting heated and i do not want a dual duel to break out. Mr. Jefferson you have no worries about my entering into a duel. [laughter] i would not challenge anybody in that way. Anna explain your challenges. Mr. Jefferson i will challenge ideas. One of the fears of having a bill of rights was, and one of the rationalizations, was that we were not taking away the rights and your freedom of press and speech and to assemble we do not put those in the constitution as rights that you have given explicitly to your government, that you have given away. Therefore, why have a bill of rights . You cannot list all of the rights. I say it is better to have a half a loaf than no bread at all. I am afraid that a government so sparsely sketched out as ours is will follow the direction of every government that has ever existed, which is to take more and more power to its self. Consolidating that power in a central powerful government in and taking those rights from the people. There are certain rights that are so essential to the existence of a free society that they must be drawn out explicitly or they can be too easily challenged. Anna but mr. Hamilton, isnt the government going to be run by people that the public have chosen to elect them . Shouldnt we just assume they will have the best interests of the public at heart . Mr. Hamilton one would hope. Unless bitalized people are elected the system , will not work as well as it ought to. Let me just say this about the bill of rights before i move on. In the beginning, mr. Madison and i agreed completely. We realized that a bill of rights, which mr. Madison called a parchment partition, would not stop a government from doing whatever it wanted to or needed to, especially in time of war. And i think as one looks at the quasi war with france in 1798 and the 1800s, you realize the passing of the alien and sedition acts, which i did not support or favor, violated entirely the bill of rights. The government took it upon itself to do it and it did it. And governments will always do that when they feel threatened. They will remove these parchment walls. Mr. Jefferson what has separated us from the people who have come before . From the constitutions that have come before . Though there may be in legends certain peoples who have written your constitutions, we are not sure who wrote them. We know who wrote this constitution and the fact that we wrote the roles by which the government must abide. We wrote that down at the very beginning. We did not create our government by warfare or power. Our wise men gathered together y, theirussed, coole informed, educated rational , concerns and planned the government based on their experience, their knowledge, and knowledge of the ages. This sets us apart from history and all governments that came before. We wrote down those rules. That is why we must also write down specific limitations of the government as much as we feel we are being threatened. If the government threatens more rights than we were not stipulated we add those as , amendments and i think every generation, an entirely new Constitutional Convention. Anna in that case, why freedom of speech, press, and religion . I understand in the draft of the constitution there are limitations that have already been written in. Why these extra ones . I will throw that to either of you. Mr. Jefferson i think it is habitual because generations have become accustomed to it. This is not something i think will depart from human nature. For us to turn to our government as if to find what our rights are. That is dangerous when you have a government by the people. It is though a source of a threat and a source of my reasoning why i believe we have to write these rights down. People make the following error. They wonder do i have such and such a right . Well let me check my government. , let me check my constitution and find where in the writing of the government or the constitution it says i have that right. That is the opposite of how rights work and especially how our constitution works. The way our constitution works as articulated in the ninth amendment is the following. If you are wondering whether or not you have a right, unless you look at the constitution and see that you gave in writing that you gave that right to your government, you have it. So then why do we have , constitutions at all in the tradition we started . We do not have a constitution to limit the people. We have laws to limit the people, keep people from breaking each others legs and picking each others pockets. We have a constitution, the bill of rights as an extension, to limit our government. If we fall into the old habit of looking into the government to discover our rights, then mr. Hamilton will be proved right. The lack of certain rights will be construed as people not having them. But if we hold to the knowledge that we created something new where we have all the rights and we have it written down and not given it away, i think writing them down on paper in a bill of rights will give them an additional level of a barrier of against being taken away. Anna sir hamilton, what do you say to that . Mr. Hamilton i am not opposed to it. I think mr. Jefferson is sounding remarkably enlightened. I once said the masses are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge right. It is for that reason we need Good Government to keep all of us operating out of what would clearly be the best interests of the American People. Alas, for me, it was really clear that this was not the best constitution that could have been written. It was simply the best that we would be able to enact given that opportunity. As much as your idea of meeting every 19 years and forming a new constitution, as wonderful as it was, i remember and think what a miracle it was that we were actually able to ratify the constitution that we wrote over the summer of 1787. The American People would not have allowed another Constitutional Convention. Already, we had moved on to other issues. Already, there were grave difficulties. I, personally, felt the best way to knit us together in a federal union was to use the power that had been given to the federal government to tax. That would be the best way for us to become a single people. When i say tax, in my time, taxing was not taxing individual citizens. It was taxing imported goods, taxing luxury goods, not necessaries that people needed for their everyday lives. Mr. Jefferson one of the few things we agree on. Anna since we have that, i would like to end on a note of agreement and hope for how we go. We have about 10 minutes left for question and answer. We have a wonderful audience here with us at the newseum and we have students online. I will open it up for questions and i will repeat the questions. Mr. Jefferson and mr. Hamilton will help us work through any questions. From the audience mr. Hamilton while theyre waiting to percolate, i would like to repeat what the great dr. Franklin said shortly after the constitution had been ratified. He said, it is in place and it looks to be a sound document, but the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Mr. Jefferson who has the first question . Anna a question from the students online. Could you please tell us about what you are wearing . Mr. Jefferson a sartorial query. We are both in a similar fashion of the era. The clothing that i am wearing, except for the buckles on my shoes, they were beginning to become a bit out of style, is in the era of the early 19th century. This would have been appropriate in 1804 towards the end of my first term as president. Mr. Hamilton probably for the sake of the audience of schoolers, if you could look down at my feet and mr. Jeffersons feet, we do not have left shoes and right shoes. There was a single shoe that was made. You had to wear them long enough so that they fit the one foot or the other foot. Frankly when you got past the , wear date, you switched them. It seems odd that we would be wearing the same shoe on both feet but it was a custom of the time. It certainly simplified manufacture, which was always an important thing for me. Anna we would also like to know, what happened after the bill of rights was ratified . What happened to your friendship or no friendship . Mr. Jefferson we never had what one could call a friendship. A cordial relationship. Except in what you would call cabinet meetings, where fortunately there was no recording what was said. We remained cordial in public, though general washington can attest to the momentary lapses in civility that occurred in the cabinet meetings. That being said, general washington himself was wellknown and we both witnessed, you on the battlefield and also the metaphorical battlefield of the meetings, his extremes of temper. Mr. Hamilton i think it might nice for the audience to know that you had a number of busts in the chamber of monticello. Among those is one of me. Have toldverheard to at least a few people that we were friends and had i lived longer, our friendship would have been much deeper. As time it on, it is a shame you were not able to continue longer than you did. I know it is an awkward subject to speak about. I did come to agree with more of your ideas. Anna yes . Ashley would like to know how long it took to write the bill of rights. Jefferson a complicated question. I did not write the bill of rights. Mr. Hamilton did not write it. Your teachers give you assignments to write drafts of papers and you think they are doing that just to torture you, which of course they are. It builds character. There are other reasons as well. The overall process by which the bill of rights was composed intensifies this. Amendments were proposed by each of the state. There were well over 100 amendments without counting repeated suggested amendments. Mr. Madison was pressing most for the bill of rights. He brought them together and got rid of the repeats and narrowed it down to a list of about 17 originally proposed to congress. That was narrowed down to a smaller list that went to all the states. Individual states ratified. The only ones left out of the 100 were 10. The third amendment is now what you call the first. Mr. Hamilton there was something occurring during that time, during the ratification process, that i refer to as a rage for amendments. The people who were opposed to the constitution were hoping to use the amendment process to derail it. It did not succeed. If thisson said document is to be adopted, it has to be adopted in total and forever. He did pledge to his own virginia delegation that when he had the opportunity, he would see to it that a bill of rights was championed. In fact, he did. As a member of congress, he took responsibility for it. He jefferson he made sure eliminated the members that would weaken the government and kept only the amendments that had to do with personal rights. I want to know what would happen without a constitution. Wea what would happen if did not have a constitution . Mr. Jefferson that is a lot like what we conversed with thomas paine about. Mr. Hamilton Thomas Hobbes said it best. We would be living in a state of nature where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Anna we would have no government, anarchy. Mr. Jefferson it bears repeating. Your constitution is not meant to limit your rights. If you are wondering whether you are allowed to do something, do not look to your constitution to find if you have permission. If your government is wondering whether it has permission to do something, it has to look at the constitution and show where it is written to allow them to do that. You look at laws that are passed to see what you are not in what you are allowed to do. If you do not have a constitution, perhaps there would be chaos. I think people would still gather together and Work Together in small societies. However, the bigger threat would be your government would see no limitations to its power and would become over powerful, worse than a monarchy. You would have the old roman dictators. You have tyrants, at radical government with no limitations on power. Anna a student question. Mr. Hamilton, could you sing for us . Mr. Hamilton i know this reference is probably as a result of the hit play, hamilton. But believe it or not mr. Jefferson they are writing plays about you . When do they do that . Mr. Hamilton you are not shown positively, i am afraid. I did sing. I was known for singing. The week before i died in a duel, i was sitting in a meeting of the society of cincinnati. Next to me was aaron burr. I was asked to sing my favorite song. I sang a song of campaigning. I doubt that you knew it because you were not a soldier. Jefferson do you ever rhyme . In meter adn questions from the audience . You are talking about how the government, we should not look to them for rights. How do you prevent people being oppressed by other people who live in a country . If you let people do whatever, how do you prevent how do you ensure a quality . Equality . Anna the last question is, should we worry about oppression not just from the government but from the people themselves . Hopefully, the system of checks and balances would hold. When the many were oppressing the few, it could be addressed. When a few are being oppressed by the many, it could be addressed. That was the system of having a house of representatives and a senate. That was the intent behind that. The executive branch was a check on the legislative branch. , theudicial branch particular chagrined to mr. Also asn, was intended a means of providing checks and balances. That was the way the system was intended. Our system of laws would enable people to get redress when they deemed it necessary. I know you did not agree with that always. Mr. Jefferson though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable. The minority possess their equal rights which laws must protect. To violate would be oppression. To in itsnt ought most essential form be constructed for the primary purpose of protecting your rights. Your rights e end where another persons rights begin. If you use your freedom of speech intentionally to harm someone else, that is only using your right to infringe someone elses right. The government should be a tool used by the people to protect from oppression. Anna that is all the time we have today. We would like the audience to know, if you would like to see more about the debate on the bill of rights, i encourage you to go to our free website. Newseumed. Org. We have front pages from the time, including tragic announcements of a certain d uel and its outcome. We also have lesson plans for teachers as well as videos on the creation of the bill of rights. I would like to wrap up today by saying our sincerest thanks to steve and william for joining us. We hope to talk to you again soon. [applause] this weekend on American History tv on cspan3. 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