Each week American History tvs american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. Next we travel to the National Constitution center in philadelphia to learn about 42 bronze statues in signers hall and learn about the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Im Jeffrey Rosen president and ceo of the National Constitution center and im thrilled to welcome you to signers hall. So let me just tell you about the National Constitution center and thennel you about this tell you about this incredible room were standing in. The center is a special place. It is the only institution in america that has a charter from congress to disseminate information about the u. S. Constitution on a nonpartisan base. And that means that in those polarized times we are the only place in america that brings together all sides in the constitutional debates that transfix the country to debate and discuss not political but constitutional issues so that you the people can make up your own mind and we do that in three ways as the museum of we the people here on Independence Mall here in philadelphia with the most beautiful constitutional views in america looking out on Independence Hall where the constitution was drafted and a taun howl where you a town hall where you can see here at the center and thanks to our great fans on cspan, debates and panels debating the constitution and we have this phenomenal podcast, our we the people podcast where every week we call up the top liberal and conservative scholars to debate the constitution so you can engage in that great question and finally a civic for education and a tool that allows you to click on the bill of rights and see the ant seed ebts and trace that across the globe. I say this is constitutional heaven. Im a law professor at George Washington university and i feel every day so lucky to be able to be engaging in this great project of constitutional education. So signers hall is in some ways the heart and soul of the constitutional center. This beautiful room, so simple and so powerful, that contains livesize statues of the men who signed the constitution. There are 42 statues in this room 39 people signed the constitution and they are all here and they are lifesized. This was an extraordinary process of creation to make the statutes. It is based on a 1940s painting about the Constitutional Convention and about ten years ago when the Constitution Center opened, a studio in new york commissioned 50 actors to stand in the positions that you see here, in period costume, to give you a sense of what it was like to be in Independence Hall at the time the constitution was drafted. This same has the same proportions as Independence Hall so it is more or less the size of the room that the framers stood in. And there is something so viscerally powerful about just being able to see how big this the framers were. So go up and kind of see the kids who love to just touch them and sit on Ben Franklins lap and touch their hands. Can you see the shiny parts are where they get specially rubbed and touches. Actually shes statues have just been repolished because we opened the great gallery with the bill of rights and already within just a few weeks they are getting nice and shiny again which is great to see. And people want to know how tall was James Madison and George Washington. They are right behind me here. And i think i can squeeze in between Abraham Baldwin from georgia and he is here and he is the last to sign and he is gesturing to the constitution itself. And now im standing in between George Washington and James Madison. And George Washington is the tallest man in the room at 62, he is towering over everyone else in his physical presence. He is commanding in every respect. And James Madison, over whom im absolutely towering, i think he was 54 and the smallest guy in the room and thinboned and juan and he had epilepsy and had challenged in health and there is a great new biology by lynne cheney who talked about his illness and physical frailty shaped many of his ideas and created this great man the father of the constitution, if there was a single father, who was so devoted to moderation and pragmatism and compromise and the great genius of the constitution was the balancing and mixing of interests. The challenge for the men in this room was how to balance interests that seems at times irreconcilable and it was balance over the small states versus the large states. The small states wanted to make sure their interests were represented and they favored equal representation in congress. They wanted one representative or two representatives for every state. Big states didnt like that at all. They wanted to be represented by population so they would have more power. So the question of how to reconcile those interests led to a clash known as the virginia plan and the new jersey plan and i want to talk to you about that. The virginia plan proposed by the virginia delegation, which included madison and washington was favored by the large states. It would have had bicammera legislation, two houses but the states were to be represented by population. So new york and virginia would have far more weight than new jersey and delaware because they had greater population. That wasnt going to fly at all with the representatives from the smaller states. And they rallied around something call the new jersey plan. And so lets go to the new jersey delegation and see what they thought. Im going to avoid Abraham Baldwin and pass respectfully by Alexander Hamilton who well come back to in a moment and move right up here to William Livingston of new jersey and William Patterson who was the guy who came up with the new jersey plan. And William Patterson is in energetic discussion with jacob broom and i gather of all of the statues in the room, broom is the only one for whom an image didnt exist so the artist had to imagine what his face looked like but everyone else is represented according to contemporary pictures and patterson proposes the new jersey plan that each state will get equal representation and that is great for states like new jersey whose vote counts as much as big states like virginia and new york but as can you imagine, virginia and the larger states werent happy with that. So what to do. It looked like an irreconcilable clash. And fortunately, as was so many times at the convention, someone proposed a compromise. And that was Roger Sherman of connecticut and so lets go look at him and see what he came up with. The connecticut delegation is here. And i have to apologize ladies and gentlemen, because whenever i think of Roger Sherman i cant help but think of that great musical 1776 and Roger Sherman was one of the six people at the convention that passed the declaration of in dependence and in 1776, mr. Sherman and adams are debating in song about who should write the declaration and thompson jeffer said i dont know a part issicle from a predicate im just from connecticut. But he wasnt singing or dancing but coming up with the connecticut compromise. Look he looks so stern but impressive. How could you resist a gaze like that. The connecticut compromise was to blend the virginia and new jersey plans and propose the system that we have today where we have two houses, the interest of small states is represented in the senate where every state has two votes regardless of how big it is and the interest of the large states is represented in the house of representatives, which is created or portioned by population. So that beautiful compromise, which allowed the constitution to be passed is just one example of the incredible pragmatism of these delegates. I mentioned the spirit of moderation and compromise being so central to madisons achievement, these men were not i deal logical, they certainly had strong views which they were not willing to compromise in some cases and ultimately the question of whether the constitution should contain a bill of rights or not is one that led three men to refuse to sign the documents and well see those three dissenters in a moment. But generally, the spirit of compromise infused the documents or rather the convention. They operated in secret. It was important that they were able to test out ideas without having them exposed to public scrutiny and they took their secrecy very carefully although madison took notes that were later published and ultimately came up with the document they did now. This is a room about personalities but also a room about ideas because these great men who came up with a document that some described as the most perfect in history, it is hard to think given the constrainted of human frailty, a document that would have endured for the ages the longest enduring written constitution in history, it is exciting to learn their stories and also to talk about their ideas. So lets do that. Right here is a framer who is next to madison, perhaps the most important philosopher of the constitution in this hall sorry, ill add one more to the list, that is james wilson. Madison, hamilton and wilson were the most important. And this is hamilton. And what he lacked in stature, he made up in fiscal responsibility. He was secretary of the treasury and a great defender, both both an energetic Central Government Strong Enough to regulate the economy. Some acuted him of been monarch and hamilton like madison was an author of the federalist papers which were the documents issued anonymously to give the arguments for and against the ratification of the constitution before and after it was proposed and he had a lot of contributions in the federalist papers not least of which of why it is okay for the cores to strike down unconstitutional laws. And so what he wrote it contains the philosophy of the government in a few paragraphs. It says the will of wee the people of the United States has the special ratification, because of the will of the force of law, hamilton said imagine a conflict between the will of the people represented by the constitution and the will of legislature, represented by ordinary statutes it is the obligation of the judges to favor the will of the sovereign to that of the agent basically the master has to be preferred to the servant because legislatures are servants of the masters, who are we the people. And that is why, according to hamilton, it is not undemocratic for them to strike down a law when they set aside a law that clashed with the constitution, they are favoring the will of the people over the will of the legislature, a brilliant theory like so much of what hamilton did. Now i want to introduce you to the pennsylvania delegation. Hugely important and also contains the most under appreciated framer and in some ways the greatest constitutional philosopher of the convention and that is james wilson of pennsylvania. So james wilson, age 45, born in scotland, lawyer and politician, would go on to serve on the supreme court. James wilsons central contribution to the Constitutional Convention was his theory of popular sovereignty. You remember the preable to the constitution, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union. It didnt originally read that way. The original draft said we the people of of new york of virginia, new jersey and so forth and lists the states individually, because there were those at the convention who following the model of the articles of the confederation felt each state was sovereign and had Sovereign Authority and that had huge consequences because each state sovereign would have taken unanimous approval to ratify the constitution which after all violated the rules of the aprofit of the articles of confederation which did require unanimity and nothing could get done and if it was sovereign then any state to choose to leave on its own but he insisted we the people as a United States as a whole are sovereign and this is the difference between britain where parliament had sovereign power and do whatever it likes and the United States where the people and not parliament were sovereign and the relevant denominator of the people was that of the entire union and not the state. This great contribution to american popular sovereignty was at the heart of the civil war. Abraham lincoln challenging wilson agreed that because we were sovereign when those people ratified the constitution, they created an in dissolvable union that would require the support of the entire union to allow any state to secede. People like calhoun and other state rights advocates channeling the antistate said any state could leave on its own. It took the civil war, the bloodiest in history to establish that lincoln and wilson were correct and state sof rib ty were not and we the people as a whole were sof win. And madison was probably conflicted on this score. Federalist 39 talks about a dual sovereignty when they occasionally rule and sometimes we the people rule. And they thought it was an im it was an imperial impeerio a state within a state which considered a solisism you couldnt have two sovereign powers but it was his vision and today our National Unity represented by National Popular sovereignty is all thanks to james wilson. But of course james wilson i said he was the most underappreciated and he is not the most famous. And the most famous and the most beloved based on the shininess on his hands in a few weeks is Benjamin Benjamin franklin. At age 81 it is the oldest, printer, statesman and he is not well at the time of the convention but he is so respected and his wisdom so acknowledged that when he did speak, he was closely attended to. The main thing to say about franklin is kids love to sit on his lap. He is just very cuddly. He is the pillsbury framer in that respect. But he was sharp as a tack. And there is an amazing moment at the end of the convention where he was looking at the chair that George Washington sat at which had a sun inscribed in it and we dont have a replication of the chair here you can see it in Independence Hall and he said throughout the convention he was wondering whether it was a rising or a setting son and he said now im confident that the sun is rising. And next to him is governor morris of pennsylvania. I thought he was a governor but he wasnt he just had a distinctive name which was governor. And he also had a distinctive peg leg. How did he get his peg leg you may ask. Well the story is he was in a carriage accident and some say that he was escaping from an as ignition with a lady and some say he was escaping. And he is peering over Benjamin Franklin along with the rest of the pennsylvania delegation and it is striking how central these delegates were here in their home state. So the great issue, in addition to the presence or absence of the bill of rights the divide of the Constitutional Convention was the question of slavery. This is the great moral stain in American History. The original declaration of in dependence promised that all men with created equal but the Constitutional Convention was not able to vindicate that promise because of a disagreement about the status of slavery and also about the political consequences that would result from allowing slavery to continue. There were some famers framers who opposed slavery on moral grounds but the more practical question the framers faced if the souther states were allowed to count their enslaved men and women as part of the baseline for apportionment and representation, then they would dominate the legislature. So this is the conflict between the big and the small states an the slate states and the free states and they were at an impasse. How should slaves be counted for purposes of representation. What saved the convention, although allowed slavery to continue until it was eradicated after the 13th amendment after the civil war was after the threefifth compromised originally proposed by james wilson of pennsylvania, as we talked about the great architect of popular sovereignty and seconded by Charles Pinkney of south carolina, and im standing here with pinkney and coats worth and pinkney who seconds the three fifths compromise and believed it was a way of reconciling the maintenance of slavery and the political concerns of the northern states. Here is what the three fif nls famously or infamously says. Im reading from my riveting National Constitution center i think you can get these on amazon but if they are on our website they should be up and running and this is be me and David Rubenstein about the bill of rights which discusses the status of slavery and here is what the clause in article one section two says article one sets out the power of the congress and section two talks about how congress should be apportions and the clause said representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within the union according to the respective numbers which shall be determined by determined by adding to the whole number of three persons including those bound to services and excluding indians not taxed three fifths of all own persons. So that is one of the great compromises, one could say one of the great moral dignities of the convention to decide to count enslaved persons as three fifths of a person for purposes of apportionment. That compromise came along with a decision to allow the slave trade to continue until 1808 which is alsoen scribed in the constitution, and those two decisions meant that the great question of how to eradicate slavery would be deferred until the civil war. So it is not the proudest moment of the convention and it arguably is the most shameful but the reality is that the constitution would not have been passed or proposed without the three fifths compromise and it is an example of how the delegates were able to reconcile their competing interests of large and small states and free and slave states in a way that produced a workable document whether or not you think that compromise was morally defensible is up for you to decide. What i want to show you now are the dissenters, so lets go see them. So three men at the Constitutional Convention refused to sign the constitution. El bridge gary of the massachusetts and then randolph of virginia and george mason of virginia. First of all lets talk about each of them. El bridge gary. Ive learned to pronounce is gary and learned to pronounce the practice that his name inspired as gary mandery not gerrymandering, you cant really say it that way, is the practice of drawing voting districts so that they snake around in such funny shapes that they look like a salamander and jerry was famous for presiding over such a structure to make sure your party wins to protect incumbents or if the state legislature is drawing up the seats to make sure their party retains powir. So jerry created a district that looks like a salamander and they called it jerry mandiers and that is what we have today. And randolph from virginia and along with george mason was not happy about the rights that were proposed. Randolph and mason, interestingly, originally supported a strong Central Government and were supporters of the constitution, but during the course of the debates over the constitution they both became concerned it did not include a bill of rights and a radical Central Government might come to menace the rights retained by the people. Rand ol was from the rights that was so inspired by Thomas Jefferson that he had it next to him when he wrote the independence and he set out the basic natural and unalienable rights that mason believes that governments were built to protect and not menace. And can you check it out online at Constitutional Rights and compare the language with the bill of rights and you can see how madison cut and paste in coming up with the bill of rights. So it is an amazing story of principle really, because mason was not being an obstructionist, he did think that the Central Government had to be more energetic than under the article of confederation but he wanted it to be limited. So why dsht he go along with mason, jerry and the call for the bill of rights. For two reasons. He thought it would be unnecessary or dangerous. Unnecessary because the constitution was already a bill of rights,ly bimitying and spelling out the powers of congress and denying to congress any powers that werent explicitly enumerated. And dangerous, because people thought if a right wasnt written down and it wasnt protected and he thought since our rights come from god and not from government, he thought it would be bad to have a determine at list. But based on the opposition of the dissentered, the antigear antifederalist geared you up and wrote a list of counter pamphlets with vivid anonymous pseudonyms themselves, like federal farmer and so forth, and basically they said dont ratify the constitution unless it contains a bill of rights and based on this opposition, many of the state ratifying conventions came to agree with them and demanded subsequent amendments in the course of ratifying the constitution. And as a result of this groundswell of support for a bill of rights, James Madison changed his mind in 1789, went to congress and proposed a bill of rights that originally contained 19 amendments, congress sent 12 of those to the states for ratification and you can see in the next room, an original copy of the bill of rights along with rare copies of the constitution and the deck lar laration of in dependence and the original document doesnt cop tain just 10 amendments and the first 12 have not to do with free speech, but with the size of congress one for every 40,000 people which would have created a congress with 4000 people today and the Second Amendment says congress cant raise its salary without an election and that became the 27th amendment in the 1990s. So what a remarkable story that in this room, despite the fierce divisions of principle among the delegates, that these brave dissenters ultimately were vindicated and it is a reminder of the importance of dissent and political dissent was so crucial to the framing of the constitution and protections for dissent now expressed in the First Amendment are at the heart of what makes america distinctive. Lucy hayes was the first first lady to earn a College Degree and during the civil war soldiers serving under lincoln colded her servient. She switched to the antislavery First Republican Party and hosted the First White House easter egg roll. Lucy hazes, on the series first ladies. Examining the women of the first lady, from Martha Washington to michelle obama. Sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Coming up next, r. Scott stephenson from the museum of the American Revolution exploring 18th century battle flags. Three flags were on display at the winter storm museum in delaware. Mr. Stephenson discusses the importance of even flag and the role they play at symbols of american patriotism. This hour long event was cohosted by the museum of the American Revolution
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