American History In Video: The Congress
The Congress from PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, 2004) 109:14.
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James Madison What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. James Madison
DAVID McCULLOUGH Writer
David McCullough That's the place where our government works. It's the engine of democracy. This is our most important building. We're so accustomed to seeing our history measured by the presidency that we forget the extent to which the real story of our country takes place right there. That's the place to go, to the Hill . All the voices are there.
THE CONGRESS
The House will be in order. Our prayer will be offered by the chaplain.
Oh God, as we think on the glories of your spiritual world, may we also see you in these glories and to realize (inaudible ) (crosstalk).
All right, folks, as you enter the rotunda please grab a ticket, one per person for the tour of the historic section of the building. All the way forward.
We're now standing in the original section of the Capitol. George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant . (crosstalk)
John Quincy Adams[non-English narration]
Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.
Senator McCarthy , have you no sense of decency, sir? (crosstalk)
Mr. Rodino .
Mr. Rodino Aye.
Mr. Angel .
Mr. Angel Aye.
Is it possible for an American to disagree with you on aide to the Contras- (crosstalk)
Mr. Jordan .
Mr. Jordan Aye.
- and still love God and still love his country?
Mr. Speaker, the official state song of my home state is entitled "Beautiful Nebraska." I want my colleagues to know about the accomplishments of Nebraskans.
With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law, you know. And every, and every time they make a law it's a joke.
Look! Look! There it is!
Who? What?
The Capitol dome.
Yes sir. Big as life, been there a long time now.
Yes sir. This way Senator.
CHARLES McDOWELL Newspaperman
Charles McDowell The Congress, and the President, and I guess, the Supreme Court are, they're the three things we got. But the Congress is where we speak. The Congress is where we are. The Congress is where ordinary mortals go about the business of compromise, of compromise which gets us through the day.
BARBARA FIELDS Historian
Barbara Fields Congress is the first branch of government in the sense that it is the reminder that people in a republic are supposed to do their own business and they are su, not supposed to abdicate their business to someone else.
JOHN STENNIS Former Senator
John Stennis There was still some lingering thought, you know, that they made a mistake in giving up the idea of a king. Benjamin Franklin came along, said, the story is, he came along and he, he stopped and listened a moment and when there was a chance to say a word he, he just said this, says " In America , the people govern."
This huge gray hall filled with perpetual clamor, this multitude of keen and eager faces, this ceaseless coming and going of many feet, this irreverent public watching from the galleries and forcing its way onto the floor all speak to the beholder's mind of the mighty democracy destined in another century to form one half of civilized mankind whose affairs are here debated. Of what tremendous struggles may not this hall become the theater in ages yet far distant, when the parliaments of Europe have shrunk to insignificance.
David McCullough One mile east and 88 feet above the Potomac River , on what was once called Jenkins Heights stands the most recognizable building in America . Designed by an Englishman, inspired by a Russian church, decorated by Italian craftsmen and built in part by slaves, it is the nearest thing Americans have to a national temple. Davy Crockett sat here, so did Joseph Pulitzer and Horace Greeley , William Randolph Hearst and Emily Dickinson's father, and Isidor Strauss , the founder of Macy's, and the man who pitched a perfect game for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1964 . Over 10,000 men and women have served here. Farmers and housewives, Rhodes scholars and ex-slaves, astronauts and priests, basketball stars and convicted felons, schoolteachers and playwrights, and lawyers, always lawyers.
If the present Congress erred too much in talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers whose trade is talk by the hour?
David McCullough One member has gone insane in office. One has taken maternity leave and several have served jail terms for bribery. Members have fought on the floor with fists and fire tongs, shot each other on dueling grounds and been shot at from the galleries. Twenty-three from Congress have become president. In 200 years, Congress has in the name of the people pushed open the West, built railroads, freed slaves, made war, passed social security, put G.I.'s through college, and paid to land man on the moon. They've driven Indians from their land, outlawed alcohol and filibustered without mercy. They've created Mother's Day and daylights savings time, dominated presidents and been dominated by them, started wars and stopped them. "Congress," Thomas Jefferson said, "is the great commanding theater of this nation. It is the place where laws are made."
ALISTAIR COOKE Journalist
Alistair Cooke He was once asked by a rather impatient man at the Constitutional Convention, " Mr. Madison , could you please tell us what are the principles, if there any to be of American government?" And he said, "Yes there are three. Compromise, compromise, compromise."
David McCullough I'm most impressed by their imagination. This was a leap of the imagination. The idea that you're gonna turn over the, to the people, through their representatives, the power to make war and the power to tax.
COKIE ROBERTS Journalist
Cokie Roberts That the people who were gonna either take your money away or take your sons away were the people who had to go home every single-- at that point it wasn't every weekend-- but there was the notion that they had to be up for re-election every two years.
DAVID BRODER Reporter
David Broder It's hard to imagine that when they met in New York , there was no structure for them to begin with and they invented this Congress that still exists today, recognizing that every decision they made in those two years would become a precedent for as long as the Congress endured. If that's not a miracle that we had that kind of political talent available in a small country of four million people at that time in our history, I don't know what a miracle is.
THE BUILDERS
John Adams You and I, dear friend, have been sent into life at a time when the greatest law-givers would have wished to live. How few of the human race have ever enjoyed an opportunity of ah, making an election of government for themselves and their children. John Adams
David McCullough In 1789 , kings still ruled in France and England , a czar in St. Petersburg , a sultan in Constantinople , a divinely invested emperor in Peking , and a shogun in Japan . But on March 4th, 1789 , in the sun-filled chambers of New York's City Hall, newly remodeled as a temporary capitol, the First Congress of the United States took up its business under the new Constitution. Only 21 members showed up, however, and the First Congress adjourned without a quorum.
Fisher Ames This is a very mortifying situation. We lose credit, spirit everything. The public will forget the government before it is born. The resurrection of the infant will come before its birth. Representative Fisher Ames
David McCullough When they finally all assembled, Congress addressed itself to ten constitutional amendments. A Bill of Rights guaranteeing among other things the separation of church and state. The House then picked a former preacher for its first speaker, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania . They created new departments of state, treasury and war, devised the machinery of committees and set President George Washington's salary at the huge sum of $25,000 a year. All the time improvising freely. They were inventing Congress and they were inventing themselves.
John Adams I am vice-president. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything, but I am also a President of the Senate. When the president comes into the Senate, who shall I be? John Adams
Charles McDowell I'd like to have been a reporter at the First Congress, in the first days when those guys came in there to invent what they'd planned at Philadelphia . And there was a moment when the president had a treaty for the Senate to ratify. The Senate had never ratified a treaty, there'd never had been a senate, there've never been a treaty. George Washington bore the treaty to the Capitol in his hand and he delivered it to the Senate, and he said in effect, "Ratify it." And the Senate just took it and looked at awhile and said well, "Yes sir. Yeah." And it became clear that Washington expected them to ratify it. And the Senate asserted itself, not knowing what it was asserting, and said, "We'll have to look at it." Washington paced the halls, irritated, angered. The conger, the Senate told him that they believed it would take 'til tomorrow or maybe another day, and Washington had to leave the Capitol and go home and he never returned to the Capitol, but the Senate had asserted that it would do what the founders, which George Washington agreed with, they ratified a treaty by arguing about it and making a little change somewhere, and the government was operating.
Abigail Adams After leaving Baltimore we wandered about for two hours without finding a guide or a path. Woods are all you can see from the time you leave Baltimore until you reach the city which is so only in name. I have been to Georgetown . It is the very dirtiest hole I ever saw for a place of any trade or respectability of inhabitants. Abigail Adams
David McCullough After a year in New York and ten in Philadelphia , Congress finally found a permanent home. Government settled on the banks of the Potomac at the west end of Jenkins Heights . The move was made in June, 1800 . The government's documents came by sailing ship. Clerks, congressmen, and John Adams , now President Adams , by stagecoach and horseback. A Library of Congress was established and a sum of 15 million dollars voted to purchase all Louisiana territory, doubling the size of the country. An additional appropriation of $2,500 went to Lewis and Clark to find out what 15 million dollars had bought.
[sil.]
David McCullough Congress was boisterous, homespun, enlivened now by a two-party system and outraged over British harassment of American shipping. Some wanted war. Most persuasive of these war hawks was a young congressman from Kentucky .
Clay is an eloquent man with very popular manners and great political management. His school has been the world and in that he is proficient. His morals, public and private, are loose, but he has all the virtues indispensable to a popular men.
David McCullough On November 4th, 1811 , his first day as a member of the House of Representatives, Henry Clay was elected Speaker. He was tall, gallant, shrewd and ambitious, a natural leader. Only 35 years old, he took his place in the great chamber and quickly challenged the White House in its handling of foreign affairs. The balance of power shifted to Congress and to Henry Clay .
Henry Clay Sir, no man in the nation wants peace more than I, but I prefer the troubled ocean of war with all its calamities to the tranquil and putrescent pool of ignominious peace.
David McCullough In June of 1812 , the Congress of United States declared war for the first time. Then adjourned without voting the taxes to pay for it. Two years later, the British invaded Washington . Congress was not in session when the British Army marched into the city and burned the Capitol. But the problems had just begun.
Two great questions have prevailed all the way through from the time of the earliest congresses right up until the present, and those are civil rights and growth.
David Broder I suppose the crucial moment in the 19th century was when this nation was trying to avert the tragedy of the Civil War which finally overpowered the statesmen of that era. But there were men, Clay and others, who tried and used up their lives and careers trying to avert that calamity and that would have been a time to have been a fly on the wall in the Capitol.
THE DEBATERS
Frances Trollope The mists of morning still hung around the magnificent building when first it broke upon our view. We were struck with admiration and surprise. None of us, I believe, expected to see so imposing a structure on that side of the Atlantic . The beauty and majesty of the American capitol might defy an abler pen than mine to do it justice. It stands so finely, too, high and alone. Frances Trollope .
David McCullough By 1819 , the Capitol had been rebuilt under the direction of Benjamin Latrobe and Charles Bulfinch . There were spacious new chambers for both houses joined by a handsome rotunda and a low wooden dome sheathed in copper. A proud congress sat while the artist Samuel F.B. Mores painted it in session in its new quarters then subsidized his new telegraph system. Growth and improvements were the spirit of the times, but because of confusion as to whether the Senate or the House had authority in the rotunda, merchants set up shop there and sold stoves, pianos and mousetraps.
John C. Calhoun Let us then bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space. We are rapidly, and I was about to say fearfully, growing. John C. Calhoun .
David McCullough But there was one problem that could unbind the Republic. As each new state was added to the Union, it threatened to tear the country apart. Southerners feared the north might forbid slavery, Northerners feared slavery might move west.
There was never a moment in our history when slavery was a not a sleeping serpent. It lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations to the Constitutional Convention. Thereafter, slavery was on everyone's mind if not always on his tongue.
David McCullough The first great crisis came in 1820 . After fierce debate, Congress passed the Missouri Compromise admitting Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. Henry Clay engineered the compromise using all the force of his extraordinary personality. There was widespread relief, they had saved the Union for now.
Henry Clay All legislation is founded upon the principle of mutual concession. Let him who elevates himself above humanity say if he pleases, I never will compromise. But let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.
David McCullough It was a time of oratory and there were giants on Capitol Hill . Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri , the voice of western expansion who had once shot Andrew Jackson in a street brawl. Sam Houston , future president of Texas , who sat in the House chamber whittling a pine stick. John Quincy Adams , Old Man Eloquent, who, like no other president, went back to serve in the House. And Webster . "Godlike" Daniel of Massachusetts . It was said no man was ever so great as Daniel Webster looked or sounded.
Daniel Webster When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in the heavens, may I not see him shining on the broken fragments of a once glorious Union, on a land rent with civil feuds or drenched it may be in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic still full high advanced. Liberty and Union now and forever, one and inseparable.
David McCullough Speech by speech, compromise after compromise, words held the country together. Generations of schoolchildren learned Webster's words by heart and took them to heart.
Before delivering a speech, he often appeared absentminded. Rising to his feet, he seemed to recover perfect self-possession which was aided by thrusting the right hand within the folds of his vest while the left hung gracefully by his side. His dark complexion grew warm with inward fire, his eyes would start from their cavernous depths.
David McCullough Webster was a genial host. A warm friend of business and of the sideboard decanter and not averse to taking cash gifts from admirers. Henry Clay too enjoyed his whiskey and high living, gambling and horse racing. A war hawk no more, he had become the supreme charmer of American politics. The great compromiser.
John C. Calhoun I don't like Henry Clay . He is a bad man, an impostor. A creator of wicked schemes, I wouldn't speak to him but by god I love him. John C. Calhoun .
David McCullough Somber intellectual John C. Calhoun had no interest in compromise. Like Clay , he was a slave owner, but unlike Clay he became so single-minded in his defense of the institution that he seemed possessed. He gave up the vice-presidency to take a seat in the Senate to lead the Southern cause.
John C. Calhoun Nothing can be more unfounded and false than the prevalent opinion that all men are born free and equal. For it rests upon the assumption of a fact which is contrary to universal observation. John C. Calhoun .
Henry Clay Here is our country upon the very verge of a Civil War, which everyone pretends to be anxious to avoid yet everyone wants his own way irrespective of the wishes of others. Henry Clay .
Alexander Stevens The feeling among the Southern members for dissolution of the Union is becoming more general. Men are now beginning to talk of it seriously who 12 months ago hardly permitted themselves to think of it. The crisis is not far ahead. Alexander Stevens .
[sil.]
David McCullough When the cornerstone of the Capitol was laid, there were only 209 post offices in the country. By 1850 , there were 21,551. Gold had been found in California ; Texas was in the Union. The country now stretched all the way to the Pacific .
It is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
There are grave doubts at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.
David McCullough The next crisis came in 1850 over California . Will the new state be slave or free? Clay took the floor on February 5th. He had arrived at the Capitol so weak he had to be helped up the steps. But in the overheated chamber he spoke nearly three hours pleading for another compromise. He warned that the Union might be destroyed and called for a free California to please the North. To please the South he proposed to strengthen the law that returned runaway slaves to their owners. Clay knew what a concession he was asking of Webster and the North.
Henry Clay You are numerically more powerful than the slave states, and greatness and magnanimity should ever be allied together.
David McCullough Calhoun , wracked with fever, too ill even to talk, sat wrapped in a black cloak glaring defiance while his speech was read for him by James Mason of Virginia . He was sure the abolitionists would make slaves into masters and masters into slaves. On March 7th, Daniel Webster took his turn. Plagued by insomnia for weeks, he reinforced himself with drugs. It was his last great speech.
Daniel Webster Mr. President, I wish to speak today not as a Massachusetts man nor as a northern man but as an American and a member of the Senate. I speak for the preservation of the Union, hear me for my cause.
David McCullough He had made a brave decision. He would support the Clay Compromise, including the Fugitive Slave Law his constituents so despised, because he thought it the only way to stave off Civil War. Clay and Webster won. The Compromise of 1850 held the Union together for ten more years. But Webster , Clay and Calhoun were spent. Defiant until the end, Calhoun died even before the compromise was enacted into law. Clay and Webster died in 1852 . Henry Clay of Kentucky was the first man to lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol.
CHARLES McDOWELL Newspaperman
Charles McDowell I like, I like oratory, it's a, it's one of my character failings, and Webster , Clay , Calhoun apparently were this, were three just magic orators. I would have sat and I would have listened as you would listen to a great Wurlitzer somewhere. I would have, I hope, been absolutely awed at the way in the middle of all that mellifluence raging, they were isolating issues as very few members are able to do today. They were speaking about the greatest divisions in the country with incredible precision apart from their eloquence, but when I'm in the presence to that I, I read about it the next day. I sit and listen as to a concert.
[sil.]
David McCullough Now Capitol Hill became a construction design. Two huge new wings were planned, grand stairways, sumptuous reception rooms and a new dome.
[sil.]
David McCullough The architect was from the north, Thomas Walter of Pennsylvania . The man in charge was from south, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi . But while the Capitol was growing, the country was coming apart. Finally, words failed. On the floor of the Senate, South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks savagely beat the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane. Sumner tried so desperately to get away he wrenched his desk loose from the floor. Members of the House began carrying pistols. In November of 1860 , Abraham Lincoln was elected president. In December, South Carolina seceded from the Union. There were more and more empty seats in the new chambers. On January 21st, 1861 , Senator Jefferson Davis rose to speak.
Jefferson Davis I am sure I feel no hostility towards you senators of the north. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot say in the presence of my god, I wish you well.
David McCullough Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on the east steps beneath the booms and scaffolding for the colossal new dome of cast iron. Cannon guarded the Capitol grounds, sharpshooters lined the roof. Despite protest of the cost, Lincoln insisted that work on the unfinished dome go on. "I take it as a sign," he said, "that the Union will continue." But on April 12th, 1861 , war came. Now, there was another American Congress, the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama .
[sil.]
Washington City was no longer a name to the mother waiting and praying in the distant hamlet. Her boy was camped on the floor of the rotunda. Never till that hour did the federal city become to the heart of the American people, truly the capital of the nation.
David McCullough The Capitol became a makeshift barracks, then a hospital. Congress and the country were now confronting their greatest crisis. At noon, December 2nd, 1863 , as the war dragged on, a 19-foot bronze goddess of freedom triumphant was at last hoisted into place. The great dome was finished.
[sil.]
David McCullough In January of 1865 , Congress passed the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery everywhere and for all times. Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black man ever to serve in the United States Senate filling the seat last held by Jefferson Davis . Only one Southern senator had remained loyal to the Union, Vice-President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee . When he assumed the presidency after Lincoln's assassination, a violent power struggle broke out between Congress and the Executive. Johnson's reconstruction plan was too lenient for radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who wanted to vigorously enforce civil rights throughout the South. In 1868 , Congress voted to impeach the President. Johnson survived removal by only one vote. But Congress, not the President, would continue to dominate Washington for the next three decades.
Not a bad desk either. Daniel Webster used to use it.
Daniel Webster sat here? Holy mackerel.
Give me somethin' to shoot at, Senator. If you figure on doing any talking.
Oh no, I'm just gonna sit around and listen.
That's the way to get re-elected.
THE BOSSES
These hardy knaves and stupid fools, some apish and pragmatic mules, some servile acquiescing tools. These, these compose the Congress. When Jove resolved to send a curse and all the woes of life rehearse, not plague, not famine but much worse: he cursed us with a Congress.
David McCullough Government during the first 76 years meant building and then saving a nation. Now, in the aftermath of Civil War it often meant exploiting it.
[sil.]
Mark Twain It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. Reader, suppose you are an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress, but I repeat myself. Mark Twain .
David McCullough The lead parts on Capitol Hill now were assumed by a new breed, the Bosses. Through their political machines and the power of patronage, many senators controlled the state legislatures that elected them.
Scarcely any of the great railway men go into Congress, a fact of much significance when one considers that they are really the most powerful people in the country. The absence of railway men by no means implies the absence of railway influence, for it as easy for a company to influence legislation from without Congress as from within.
We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates from the same prolific womb of injustice we breed the two great classes, tramps and millionaires.
David McCullough Leland Stanford of California was president and director of the Central Pacific Railroad the whole time he sat in the Senate, now known as the Millionaires Club. But most conspicuous of the Bosses was Senator Roscoe Conkling , Republican of New York . He was handsome and hugely vain. Women thought him gorgeous, he was for big business and the railroads. They made the country great. He sneered at reformers and called the civil service the "snivel service."
James G. Blaine The contempt of that large-minded gentleman is so wilting. His haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic super eminent turkey gobbler's strut has been so crushing that it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him. James G. Blaine
David McCullough Conkling's chief rival for the public spotlight was Speaker James Gillespie Blaine of Maine . Able and warmhearted, he might have become president had he not like so many others accepted financial support from the interests. In his case the Little Rock Railroad. He became the symbol of a whole political era, the Tattooed Man. In the deadlocked presidential election of 1876 , a backroom deal between Republican and Democratic bosses in Congress sent Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency instead of Samuel Tilden who had actually won the popular vote. In exchange, federal troops were withdrawn from the South; Reconstruction collapsed. The few Blacks in Congress disappeared almost overnight. It would be 75 years before Congress seriously considered civil rights again.
George Henry White This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress. Let me say, phoenix-like we will rise up someday and come again. Representative George Henry White
[sil.]
David McCullough But even in the age of the Bosses, Congress passed the Land Grant College Act, granted millions of acres to homesteaders, finally enacted civil service reform and set up the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate the railroads. Government and the Congress grew and one man in Washington was big enough to keep it all going.
He was a slow moving, giant hulk, out of whose collar rose an enormous, round, clean -shaven baby face like a casaba melon from a fat, black stalk.
David McCullough He was also distinguished by his belief that the purpose of Congress was to accomplish something, and in the end he gave up his power on a matter of principle. Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine , the Speaker of the House stood 6'3 and weighed nearly 300 pounds. His wit could be withering. He remarked to two colleagues that they never opened their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge, and he defined the statesman as a successful politician who is dead. On seeing his portrait as rendered by John Singer Sargent , Reed said "All my enemies are revenged." When asked whether he would attend the funeral of a political enemy, Reed said, "No, but I approve of it." He was called Czar Reed . In one stormy session, relying on his authority as Speaker, he began to count as present any member currently in the chamber whether he answered the roll call or not. Members screamed in outrage and when Reed kept on counting, hid under their desks. The Speaker kept on and when others tried to leave, he had the doors locked. From then on, Reed rules were in effect. A minority could no longer block a legislation with its silence.
[sil.]
David McCullough Reed's 51st Congress in 1889 was the first to spend a billion dollars in peacetime. To handle it all, members of Congress were finally authorized to maintain a personal staff of one . And still the country was growing. Hawaii was annexed in 1897 , the next year the Spanish-American War brought Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands into the American empire. Reed liked none of it. Imperialism, he believed, was contrary to American ideals.
Thomas Brackett Reed At the beginning of this year, the quarrels which other nations have we did not have. Our drumbeat did not encircle the world with our marshal airs. Our guns were not called upon to throw projectiles which cost each of them the price of a happy home. Thomas Brackett Reed .
David McCullough Rather than preside over a House that supported a policy he despised, he resigned. Asked once if his party was likely ever to nominate him for the presidency, Reed said, "They might do worse and I think they will." He went out on the eve of the new century.
[sil.]
Charles McDowell Great bosses are not the story of the Congress or of American politics. The Congress is the story and how in the end it always asserts itself against the bosses and the public view does prevail.
THE PROGRESSIVES With legislative battles raging, Congressman old and young keep fit in the House gymnasium. KINOGRAMS DAVID McCULLOUGH Writer
David McCullough It was the new 20th century. All kinds of miraculous events were taking place, changes taking place and people felt the country had grown too big and that the government was out of touch with the people. That there were many people in society who were not getting a fair shake and they wanted that corrected.
I have been a member of this House three successive sessions and during that time I have caught the measles, the whooping cough, and the influenza, but I have never been able to catch the Speaker's eye.
David McCullough For reform-minded congressmen in 1910 , the sins of the old order could be summed up in a name. Joseph Gurney Cannon , Speaker of the House known as Foul-mouthed Joe .
Uncle Joe's restless teeth bit off large, untidy sections from the near end of a maltreated cigar until his wet lips was strewn with sodden, shredded leaves and the neglected fitful smolder at the cigar's far end seemed to be in a greater danger from flood than from fire.
David McCullough He swore unrepentantly, spat into an umbrella stand when no spittoon was handy and boasted, "I have oats in my pocket and hay seed in my hair." Nobody disliked Uncle Joe personally, but as Speaker he was the absolute dictator his opponents called him. The voters of Danville, Illinois had first sent him to Congress in 1872 , and his beliefs had not changed since then. He ran the Rules Committee and the Rules Committee decided which bills should be considered. No bill came to the floor of which he did not approve. One after another he strangled progressive measures to regulate the railroads, break up the trusts, guard public health and public lands.
Joseph Gurney Cannon I am goddamned tired of listening to all this babble for a reform. America's a hell of a success. The country don't need any legislation.
David McCullough No one who valued his career in Congress dared cross him until 1910 . The revolt was led by an idealistic former judge from Red Willow County, Nebraska , a progressive Republican named George W. Norris . On St. Patrick's Day, with Cannon's Irish allies out of the House, Norris introduced a resolution that he had been carrying in his pocket for months. It gave the House, not the Speaker, the power to elect the Rules Committee. Cannon ruled it out of order but was himself overruled by a combination of Democrats and insurgent Republicans. After 29 hours of debate, the resolution carried. The iron rule of Speaker Cannon was ended.
For three days, Uncle Joe has been like an old gray wolf at bay. I don't especially admire him. He is a flippant, coarse-natured, brazen old man, but today I am sorry for him.
[sil.]
David McCullough It was an extremely important change in our country because Joe Cannon stood for no change. What is is what should remain, in his view, when in fact we did need legislation and these insurgents, progressives spoke out.
Robert La Follette The supreme issue is the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many. It is against the system built up by privilege that we must make unceasing warfare. Robert La Follette .
David McCullough Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin , charging that fewer than a hundred men controlled the great business interests of the whole nation, became the conscience of the new progressive movement.
[sil.]
Colliers Weekly. Fifty years from now, the future historians will say that this was the period of the greatest ethical advance made by this nation in any decade.
David McCullough There was unprecedented cooperation now between the new progressive Congress and the new progressive president, Woodrow Wilson . A former professor of history, Wilson had once written a book on congressional government without ever actually visiting Capitol Hill . His thesis was that Congress didn't work very well. Calling Congress into special session in the spring of 1913 , he went in person to present his program, something no president had done since John Adams . By custom, Congress took long recesses but Wilson would keep the 63rd Congress in Washington fighting and arguing and making laws for a year and a half straight.
[sil.]
David McCullough The 63rd Congress was the last Congress before the 17th Amendment transferred the election of senators from the state legislatures to the people. It was the greatest single change in Congress in its history. A graduated income tax was adopted, a Federal Reserve Act stabilized the nation's banking system. Congress went on to pass tougher anti-trust laws and create the Federal Trade Commission. Improve conditions for merchant sailors, ease credit for farmers, provide workman's compensation for federal employees and limit child labor in mines and factories.
[sil.]
David McCullough But everything changed on the rainy night of April 2nd, 1917 , when President Wilson went before another extraordinary session of Congress, this time to ask for a declaration of war against Germany . On the morning of Wilson's speech, the first woman ever to serve in Congress took her seat far back on the Republican side. Jeannette Rankin of Montana .
Jeannette Rankin I love my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.
David McCullough She was not alone, but other progressives voted for war and split the movement. The alliance between Congress and the President ended in a quarrel over America's role in the world.
"There it is!"
David McCullough By the 1920's , crusades and crusaders were out of fashion. The Speaker of the House was Nicholas Longworth , a dapper, popular Ohio Republican who had no interest whatsoever in reform. There were still men on Capitol Hill who wore white linen suits and black bow ties, who looked like the cartoonist's image of the old time politician. And dipped snuff from the lacquer box in the senate rostrum. But there were younger voices too. Congressman Fiorello La Guardia was one. A progressive Republican and sometime socialist from New York , he could denounce exploiters in six languages. And there was one unyielding old voice. For years, George Norris fought almost alone trying to develop the resources of the Tennessee Valley , a part of the country where he had no constituents, but a property, he said, which belongs to all of us. A source of human happiness. Now, in 1932 , the people sent heavy Democratic majorities to Congress and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House. Their partnership would transform American government and make a reality of George Norris' dream. The Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA, including the giant Norris Dam, became a showpiece for the new generation of progressives that called themselves New Dealers.
[sil.]
I hope this autogyro won't be as much up in the air as the Senate was in balancing the budget.
Coming straight up.
I know.
[sil.]
David McCullough In the midst of the great Depression, the progressive movement continued. New Deal legislation represented the most sweeping reforms in history. Foremost among the New Dealers was Senator Robert Wagner . Born in Germany , soft-spoken but tough minded, who had learned his politics on the New York City streets. Legislation he sponsored guaranteed labor's right to organize, provided social security to the elderly and public housing for the poor. And there were others, Congressman Sam Rayburn of Texas and his eager, young protege, Lyndon Johnson . In the Senate, Hugo Black of Alabama , Alben Barkley of Kentucky , Harry Truman of Missouri . The old progressive call was being sounded now by Robert M. La Follette Jr.
Harry Truman used to say, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," but in July of 1935 , if congressmen couldn't stand the heat, they'd have to get out of Washington , where the temperature hit 105 degrees.
[sil.]
And if there was one congressman who always let his constituents know how hot things were in the nation's capital, it was cowboy congressman, Percy Gassaway .
Percy Gassaway I never saw such hot weather in my life. I'll tell you what's a fact, Mr. Congressman. I can actually cook an egg right here in a frying pan on the steps of this House building right now.
The heat wave became a hard-boiled fact. But like the egg, Congressman Gassaway kept his sunny-side up.
Percy Gassaway Boy, listen here. This is the hottest place this side of hell, believe me.
You're telling me.
David McCullough On a chill night in December, 1941 , the Capitol dome was a blaze of lights. The following day the President went before Congress.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt December 7th, 1941 , a date which will live in infamy. United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan .
GEORGE TAMES Photographer
George Tames It was just a, just electric the, the feeling in there. In fact, it was, it was a, it was a combination of a fear and excitement and determination. And it's, not only could you feel it, but you could smell it. It, it was almost the, like the smell of a high school gym before the big game.
On this roll call, 388 members voted "Aye," one voted "No." The rules are suspended and the resolution (inaudible)
[sil.]
David McCullough This time only one member of Congress opposed the Declaration of War. As she had in 1917 , Jeannette Rankin voted, "No."
THE HILL CHARLES McDOWELL Newspaperman
Charles McDowell I have resolved that it's a hat. It's a hat. It's a very majestic nice hat but a little bit ludicrous, on something that we all care very much about, which is the democratic system and the notion that the people are under that hat, somewhere the body politic, to stretch that metaphor, is at work. And that we're all okay. And that the people are being represented under that thing. And I can live with that corny thought.
George Tames It's almost a reverence that the, like being in a, in a Russian cathedral or Greek cathedral, where when you look up to the dome there's the painted icons and the various saints and God himself is looking down at you. Well, you have, I have that feeling that I'm, I'm in a political cathedral. The world's greatest political cathedral.
COKIE ROBERTS Journalist
Cokie Roberts It's not just beautiful to walk into from the outside, but you've walked in on the tiles on the floors and mosaics on the ceilings. And you just come upon some totally accidental spot, where there'll be stained glass out of the blue. Or they're just windows leading to nowhere or stairs that dead-end in some place. And it's great fun to tiptoe around it. I, it would be a true disaster if the modern demands of security keep American children from the ability to just sort of roam the Capitol building.
Charles McDowell It's like a little town or a small medieval state. There's a bank, there's a post office, there's a subway. It has its own police force. Something like 44 doorkeepers. No end of clerks. There's a carpentry shop, an upholsterer, a resident architect, a resident physician. There's a daily newspaper, Congressional Record. There are restaurants. It's a world within a world. And some people I think probably never come out. There's at least one ghost.
[sil.]
Charles McDowell It, the, the, the Capitol building contains its own history. I mean, you can go deep in that, if you find some old tubs in the basement where the old members could go two centuries ago and get a hot bath or whatever. It's all there and the way it's grown and expanded is all marked on the walls. So, if you like museums, it's the best museum in the United States . But it's a museum in which the life throbs every day.
And from this point a whisper can be heard 50 feet away due to an architectural defect. John Quincy Adams would sit here around his desk pretending like he was taking a catnap. He was really listening to the opposition on the other side.
DAVID BRODER Reporter
David Broder And it's also a kind of a wonderful place if you just let yourself have the freedom to do it, to stand still for a moment and look at the people who are coming there to see their Congress hard at work. It's marvelous to see their expressions as the dignity and the beauty of that building reach them for the first time.
[sil.]
David Broder One of the things I'm gonna do when I retire, and this sounds ridiculous, is just give myself a few weeks to explore the Capitol building. I have been covering up there for 30 years now, and I still get lost in that building.
[sil.]
David McCullough In the old House of Representatives, which is now Statuary Hall, the members of the house looked up at two statues which are still there. One is a figure representing Liberty, and the other, behind them, was Clio, the Muse of history, keeping note of their actions and holding the clock. Very important idea that what they did there didn't just matter at the moment but for time to come. That they would be measured by history, that they had to live up to standards that would be set by historical precedent. Well, you know, what they look up to in the present- day House of Representatives, the television cameras.
THE MANAGERS
Franklin Delano Roosevelt I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt , do solemnly swear.
Harry S. Truman That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States .
Dwight D. Eisenhower And will to the best of my ability.
John F. Kennedy Preserve, protect and defend.
Lyndon B. Johnson The Constitution of the United States .
Richard M. Nixon So, help me God.
[sil.]
David McCullough After the war, business went on as usual in the cloakroom, back quarters and dining rooms. There was the old backslapping, arm-twisting, lapel grabbing, handshaking, finger jabbing, head scratching and lint picking. Crusades were mounted against jellyfish and comic books. To make chili without beans the official food of the United States . And to establish a national Mule Appreciation Day. But now, America was a world power, and the forces that have provoked and stirred the country from the start, growth and Civil Rights, had become inseparable, and they confronted Congress everywhere. The recovery of Europe and the military intervention, voting rights and civil liberties, the exploration of space and the responsibility of science, and the old conflict of power and ethics. The heroes on the Hill were no longer great orators. They were committee chairmen, investigators and managers.
The total number of votes cast is 426, of which the honorable Sam Rayburn has received 217. Therefore, Honorable Sam Rayburn , the duly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 78th year.
[sil.]
David McCullough The ultimate manager was Sam Rayburn of Texas , who served in Congress for 48 years, 17 of them as Speaker of the House. He preferred persuasion to power and distrusted speechmaking, telling generation after generation of newcomers, "You don't have to explain what you don't say."
GEORGE TAMES Photographer
George Tames One day, I was leaving the Capitol and I run into Sam Rayburn . And he was outside and he looked at me as I came out. I said, "Mr. Speaker," and he says, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Nothing." So he said, "Come with me." And so, the two of us walked around the Capitol from the House side to the west side, all the way around to the Senate side and back again. And during the whole time, he was telling me about what he thought of the Capitol. He said, "This has, this has been my, this has been my home. It's been my whole life. It's been my wife. It's been my children. I love this old building."
David McCullough Congress doesn't just legislate, of course, it investigates. And particularly in the era of television, we have come to understand that this investigative power is not only an aspect of congressional character and congressional performance, but it's a way in which certain individuals in Congress become instantly overnight famous.
McCarthy Hearings 1953
Answer that yes or no. Do you know this man?
I will not answer yes or no. My answer to the question is. (crosstalk)
You are ordered to answer it.
I'm answering it the way I can. I've said that... (crosstalk)
Do you. (crosstalk)
...your statements about him have made it unsafe for me to answer that question. And I will therefore refuse to answer the question on the grounds that it will attempt to incriminate me.
You have that right to think that we'll incriminate you.
And I would be very happy to have our legal counsel here, our legislative representative here, assisting-
Labor Management Hearings 1957
Jimmy Hoffa -me in spending as much time as necessary, to acquaint the American people whether or in fact that this is a strike-breaking, union-busting bill, in my opinion. (crosstalk)
John F. Kennedy Oh, Mr. Hoffa , this bill is not a strike-breaking, union-busting bill. You're the best argument I know for it, your testimony here this afternoon, your complete indifference to the fact that numerous people who hold responsible positions in your union, come before this committee and take the the fifth amendment because an honest answer might tend to incriminate them. Your complete indifference to it, I think, makes this bill essential.
David McCullough In the 1950's , Congress and the country were Conservative. And legislators were divided between show horses and work horses. One who came to combine the qualities of both was silver-tongued senator Everett Dirksen , Conservative Republican of Illinois . Known to his colleagues as the "Wizard of Oz."
George Tames Senator Dirksen , I think, was a shrewd political clown. But in the sense that he used humor to make his points and to put down people. Not once did he ever call me George . He'd always say, "Dear boy, what can I do for you, dear boy?" Maggie Smith used to always introduce legislation to make the rose a national flower. And Dirksen would always get up and oppose her, and he would say, "You know, a rose, a rose. A rose by any other name would be as sweet as a senior senator from Maine . But as for me, give me the marigold, who asks nothing except a little spot in the garden and a little care." And that, and then, and then Margaret would go down in defeat.
And the Capitol gets it face washed by the fire department. They do a thorough job and the statues emerge dripping but spotless. And with no dirt left on the doorstep, Congress can get away to a fresh start. All this proves that while you can't take the government to the cleaners, you can take the cleaners to the government.
Charles McDowell We enjoy bashing Congress and have since before Mark Twain , because there's something ludicrous about ordinary mortals being that pompous. There's somethin' just funny about ordinary people, which is what founders had in mind, the representatives of ordinary people being so formal, so bureaucratic, so structured, so filled with sort, not quite American graciousness.
Cokie Roberts It's the only group of people in this country that has to go out year after year and beg for their job, and say, "Please, please, please, send me back to that building with the dome." And uh, so that it makes you feel superior to the Congress, because you're the people who get to decide that.
JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS Historian
James MacGregor Burns We enjoy bashing Congress because they are us. We have no illusions. We know that they do essentially represent the good and the bad in us. And what's an easier scapegoat than to pick on somebody who has the job, has the responsibility and is supposed to rise above us, and so often fails to rise above us.
Mr. Eves (ph).
Somebody better wake up McCaffrey and tell him we need his vote. (crosstalk)
Yes.
Mr. Evans .
McCaffrey is asleep again.
No. (crosstalk)
Mr. Everett .
Wake up McCaffrey . We need his vote.
Yes.
Mr. Farmer . (crosstalk)
Wake up McCaffrey , we need his vote.
No.
Wake up the senator. (crosstalk)
Mr. Foley .
Yes.
Mr. Frank .
McCaffrey Opposed, sir. I'm opposed. (crosstalk)
No. (crosstalk)
Mr. Gatson (ph) (crosstalk)
No, no, senator, not yet. (crosstalk)
No.
Mr. Hatson (ph). (crosstalk)
And I believe that you're not opposed. (crosstalk)
Yes.
Charles McDowell The Congress is a takeoff on itself at the surface, and the public picks that up fast. But ask the public about its congressman, "How's your congressman?" "Well, he's better'n those other ones. He's pretty good. I've known the guy, I know his grandmother. He's all right. He's pretty good." The average American member of Congress gets about a 60-65 percent approval rating from his or her own constituents. The rest of Congress ranks below newspapermen for having any, any quality.
BARBARA FIELDS Historian
Barbara Fields The criticism of Congress that says in essence, Congress has a way of making situations complicated, of making it harder to do things, of, of making it impossible to move in a streamlined fashion. This is a way of saying that democracy is a pain in the neck, which of course it is. And that style of criticism of Congress is not so much a criticism of the individuals who are there now, many of whom deserve even more criticism than they have receive, so much as it is a criticism of the whole idea of a government by as well as for the people. And that is a criticism of democracy. I wonder whether the ideal of democracy lives in a real sense in our country today.
[sil.]
Martin Luther King In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Yeah.
Martin Luther King They were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as White men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has. (crosstalk)
David Broder I don't think I've seen any debates that came closer to really dealing with the heart and soul of America , than the debates on Civil Rights in the late '50s and 1960's . These were people who knew that they had been cast by history in the position of righting a historic wrong. And they entered that debate knowing that they would be judged by this chapter of their lives more than any other part of it. That was the highest drama I've ever seen up there.
David McCullough Civil Rights could no longer be ignored, but Congress still seemed unable to act, as filibuster after filibuster thwarted the majority will, turning back or weakening every Civil Rights measure that came before it. Congress was not yet ready to lead.
[sil.]
Charles McDowell I stood and sat and crouched in the rotunda all night when John F. Kennedy lay in state. And I remember that night, there were just the honor guard and a pretty steady flow of people.
[sil.]
Charles McDowell And here came just a moment before dawn, old Everett Dirksen , the Republican leader, and stood in the rotunda with me and two casual tourist, and talked about the Congress, talked about the Capitol and talked about John Kennedy . Other members of Congress wandered through. Policemen and guards joined and we talked all night about the Capitol, the Congress, the traditions of the country. Jokes were told; we had funny times. Dirksen told hilarious stories about Kennedy , about the Capitol, about the history of the country. There was no stuffy reverence involved, it was the best possible wake and it was the best night in the Capitol that I could ever imagine.
David McCullough Now with Lyndon Johnson , the Senate's most masterful manager, in the White House, Congress moved at last to make good on the promise of the Constitution, passing the most sweeping Civil Rights Bill since reconstruction.
[sil.]
David McCullough Stronger than all the armies on earth, Everett Dirksen reminded his colleagues, is an idea whose time has come. The time has come for equal opportunity. Words could still change votes.
JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS Historian
James MacGregor Burns It elevates me to see the dome, but then I begin to think of what happens under that dome and I get de-elevated. What part of us are they representing? Are they representing our real needs? Or are they representing our artificial needs, our selfish needs? Or are they representing the best in us? Most of our government is an elaborate set of compromises. It's really the political equivalent to the stock exchange on Wall Street . The question is, when government has to rise above trading and brokerage does it do so? And so often Congress fails to rise above trading.
Charles McDowell I think the danger to Congress is the weakening of the party system. We have a bunch of independent operators. It's harder for people to see the point of rallying as a group. That really troubles me because it makes compromise harder. It makes factions that develop develop around the sort of zealotry of left or right.
David McCullough Very often they are not voting for or against an issue for their appear, for the reasons that seem apparent. They're voting for some other reason, because they have a grudge against someone. Or because they have to satisfy some old ambition that is in no way on the surface. Or because they're doing a friend a favor. Or because they're willing to risk their political skin to invoke their conscience.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1967
Would the president, if there was no resolution , be with or without Constitutional authority to send U.S. soldiers to South Vietnam in the numbers that are there today, if there were no resolution? (crosstalk)
It would, it would be my view as I indicated Mr. Chairman, that he does have that to author-- authority.
Would you say the same as to the authority to bomb North Vietnam as opposed to repelling and attacking South Vietnam ?
Well, I don't see it as opposed to, to it... (crosstalk)
Well, in contrast. (crosstalk)
...sir, and I believe that the objectives and the reasons that we're in there have been made repeatedly clear by the president. (crosstalk)
Were the answer is yes then, is it, is that it?
Barbara Fields When I hear a members of Congress themselves say, "You know, we have abused our power. We have interfered in foreign policy." I say to myself, "Where did these people study their own history?" Legislatures have the right of appropriation so that they may inhibit the powers of the executive. And if they're not proud of that right, they should move aside for somebody to sit there who will take pride in it.
I believe the Congress set up the FBI to determine what was going on in this country, didn't it?
Among other things, Mr. Chairman. (crosstalk)
Yeah. And it set up to CIA to determine what was going on in respect to foreign intelligence, didn't it?
Yes, sir. Among other agencies.
It set up the National Security-
Watergate Hearings 1973
Agency, didn't it?
And the Defense Intelligence Agency. (crosstalk)
And the Defense Intelligence Agency... (crosstalk)
And a number of others.
...but it didn't set up the plumbers, did it?
Of course, the Congress doesn't do everything, Mr. Chairman. (crosstalk)
No, but Congress is the only one who's got legislative power and I don't know anything, any law that gave the President the power to set. (crosstalk)
Cokie Roberts This is a remarkably strong democracy. And I remember, a member of Congress go into Greece right after President Nixon was forced to resign and saying, "Do not underestimate the strength of the American democracy. The commander in chief of the American Armed Forces was forced out of office and not one soldier left the barracks to defend him." Now to us, that's a given. We wouldn't imagine a soldier living the barracks but in most lands that is very, very unusual indeed.
House Judiciary Committee 1974
All those in favor, please signify by saying, "Aye," all those opposed "No."
Mr. Donohue
Harold D. Donohue Aye.
Mr. Brooks .
Jack Brooks Aye.
Mr. Mann .
James Mann Aye.
Mr. Sarbanes .
Paul S. Sarbanes Aye.
Mr. Hutchinson .
Edward Hutchinson No.
Mr. McClory .
Robert McClory No.
Mr. Drinan .
Robert F. Drinan Aye.
Mr. Rangel .
Charles S. Rangel Aye.
Ms. Jordan .
Barbara Jordan Aye.
Mr. Rodino .
Peter Rodino Aye.
Twenty-seven members have voted "Aye". Eleven members have voted, "No."
ALISTAIR COOKE Journalist
Alistair Cooke I think the finest moment was the last two days' hearings of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 , which spoke with such extraordinary seriousness and candor in those two days without rhetorical flourishes, which was astonishing, granting that they are Americans. It showed, the Supreme Court taught the President, that he is the servant of the people and that the people are supreme.
[sil.]
Cokie Roberts At the end of any session you always see the stories about the dams in Mississippi or the roads in Tennessee or whatever. But the fact of the matter is that's what they're elected to do. They are here in Washington to represent the energy- producing states versus the energy-using states. The, the rural areas versus the urban areas. And I think quite frankly by the time the whole messy business is over with, Congress after Congress, that they have done a pretty good job of it.
The promise of Congress is that at the heart of the government will be people who are very much like ourselves, who are part of our local community not separated from it, and bring to the center of government the sensibilities, the sensitivities and we hope, the common sense that you find in American communities across the land.
[sil.]
Charles McDowell I'm hopelessly optimistic, disqualified of any intellectual pretenses when I say that, "Of course, the Republic has a future because the Congress is there. And because the Congress works, the system does work. And when we say, "Oh, but we're moving into a period we can't possibly salvage." We moved into the Civil War. We salvaged. We went on. We've been through nearly every variation of trouble that you can go through. And I think the Congress can adapt to the world of the atom bomb and high technology, and has a better chance to prevail than the other way to try. So, I'm optimistic.
Alistair Cooke Madison said self-interest is the, is the engine of government. And, you know, somebody got up and said, " Mr. Madison , are you saying that the frailty of human nature is the only basis of government?" And Madison said, "I know no other."
They're listening to him. Anything might happen now.
Just get up off the ground, that's all I ask. Get up there with that lady that's up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won't just see scenery; you'll see the whole parade of what Man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. And fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so's he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed.
[sil.]
David McCullough What impresses me most is that the founders were willing to trust the human personality and human intelligence. That man, woman, after all, is not entirely misguided. That we have the wits to solve her own problems. That the best judge of how we should be led and governed is us.
[sil.]
Let me say to the gentleman further reserving the right to object. Let me say to gentleman that the problem is that democracy sometimes gets a little messy. And you do in fact when you're managing bills under the democratic (crosstalk)
No other agricultural exporting country is taking a whipping like we are in the international market.
House Joint Resolution 412, joint resolution to congratulate King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand on his 60th birthday on December 5, 1987 . (crosstalk)
There are sixteen Virginia Sandstone columns. On top of each column for declaration, we have tobacco leaf from the tobacco blossom. And then we (crosstalk)
What did the president know? And when did he know it?
I reserve the right to object. I'm, I'm trying to figure out what it is we're doing here. Do I understand we are now coming back to the previous (crosstalk)
This bill is not what the poor need, is not what the country needs, and certainly not what this Congress should pass.
Oh, Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the remarks made by ah, Congressman Tom Bevill today on the five-inch guided projectile, and I ask you that (inaudible ) (crosstalk)
Mr. Speaker, I ask you now to consent to, to take from the speaker's desk, H.J.RES.412, and ask for its immediate consideration. (crosstalk)
Consent that all members may have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.J.RES. (crosstalk)
I understand that we are now going to try by unanimous consent to overturn the provisions of the rule by which this bill was brought to the floor, that limited time of debate. (crosstalk)
So, I congratulate the ah, Clean City Committees and the cities of the Western Nebraska : North Platte , Ogollala , Kimball , Scottsbluff , Gering and (crosstalk)
I believe the Congress set up to FBI to determine what was going on in this country, didn't it?
Among other things, Mr. Chairman. (crosstalk)
Yes. And set up the CIA to determine what was going on in respect to (crosstalk)
Twenty-seven members had voted, "Aye." Eleven members had voted, "No."
Will the gentleman yield. (crosstalk)
This coming from my opinion and uhm, I'm not going to object to this but I, but I will, I will tell the gentleman that I think. (crosstalk)
And the committee will recess until 10:30, Monday next.
10:30 when?
Monday morning.
Monday morning.
Monday next.
Monday next.
A Film by KEN BURNS Produced by KEN BURNS STEPHEN IVES Written by DAVID McCULLOUGH BERNARD WEISBERGER Editor SALLY JO MENKE DAVID McCULLOUGH Voices JULIE HARRIS DEREK JACOBI PAUL ROEBLING ARTHUR MILLER GARRISON KEILLOR KURT VONNEGUT DOUGLAS TURNER WARD SHELBY FOOTE WALT McPHERSON CHRIS MURNEY WENDY TILGHMAN JEROME DEMPSEY RONNIE GILBERT Cinematography KEN BURNS ALAN MOORE BUDDY SQUIRES Associate Producers MIKE HILL CATHERINE EISELE Production Coordinator CAMILLA ROCKWELL Assistant Editors JEAN TSIEN YAFFA L. LEREA Apprentice Editor JOSHUA LEVIN Additional Cinematography TERRY HOPKINS PETER HUTTON FOSTER WYLIE Additional Writing GEOFFREY C. WARD RIC BURNS Consultants JOHN A. GARRATY WILLIAM E. 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SMITH RICHARD SNOW MARY BETH SPENCER SCOTT STRONG TINA TATE OLIVE TAYLOR FLORIAN THAYN MARK TRICE HON. GEORGE M. WHITE BARBARA A. WOLANIN U.S. CAPITOL POLICE REP. LINDY (MRS. HALE) BOGGS FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY Produced with the Cooperation of: The United States Senate Historical Office RICHARD A. BAKER Office for the Bicentennial of the United States House of Representatives RAYMOND W. SMOCK United States Senate Curator's Offices JAMES R. KETCHUM Produced in Association with THE GREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATION TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION, INC Project Director for WETA TAMARA ROBINSON Program Development for WETA JACK DUVALL 2002 Digital Re-Mastering Supervisor PAUL BARNES Spirit Data Cine Film Transfer THE TAPE HOUSE Colorist JOHN DOWDELL III On-Line Editing GEORGE BUNCE Re-Mastering Special Thanks CAROLINE YEAGER DAN WAGENER GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE TIM SPITZER MARK POLYOCAN TRACEY BAUER THE TAPE HOUSE STEVE RUSSELL THOMSON MULTIMEDIA Rebroadcast of The Congress is presented by WETA Washington D.C. Executive in Charge of Production DALTON DELAN Project Director DAVID S. THOMPSON Associate Producer KAREN KENTON President CEO SHARON P. ROCKEFELLER Funding Provided by AMERITECH
George Tames About 40 women showed up. They were elderly. They were concern with social security. So the senate noted to Dirksen who was on the floor. So, he comes tippytoeing out with that great mass of white hair just looking the way he does, and, and he looks up and down and he says, "Girls, I was on the floor defending the republic against the onslaughts of the opposition. When I was informed that 40 lovely ladies wish to see me, I immediately removed the armour of the warrior and put on the cloak of the poet. Now, what do you girls wish of me?" There's absolute silence, and then one little lady in the back pipes up says, "Nothing, senator. We just wanna hear you talk."
A Production of FLORENTINE FILMS Executive Producer KEN BURNS 1988 KENNETH LAUREN BURNS PBS DVD
Ken Burns Rolling.
[sil.]
Ken Burns Okay, that was a tilt. Medium tilt to doorway.
Ken Burns : Making History Walpole, New Hampshire
Ken Burns We approach our projects with ignorance and curiosity. This, it allows us to have a process of discovery. We don't know until it's over. We have certain biases and sympathies which we try to exposed to ourselves and we allow the consultants, mostly academic historians, to help us root them out. At the same time, we have a kind of joyful relationship to the process of learning something new. That's what I loved about this job.
the images
Ken Burns Can you imagine if every filming location you went to, you knew exactly which you wanted to get instead of being open to the possibilities.
Ken Burns Well, we actually picked up the reflection in the other side.
Ken Burns The possibilities in the case of live cinematography to light. In the case of still photographs to a new one which is not on your list, of what you wanna collect, but a new one nonetheless is gonna take you in a different direction. We shoot not worried about whether there's a place in our script to illustrate this. And we work on a script unafraid of whether there's pictures or not. And that makes it hell in the editing room. We have huge battles.
But, but the fact is you've invested in a certain interpretation of the history. I mean, that's what he's career is. (crosstalk)
Everyone we interviewed invested in a... (crosstalk)
And you know what? (crosstalk)
...certain interpretation and I think that's why you have to go back to it. (crosstalk)
It's so highly difficult.
Ken Burns And quite often a good deal of what you did shoot gets set aside and sometimes you have to cut out something from your script because there's nothing to show. But more often than not, because you've filmed with this open manner, you find new ways to tell stories. The script and the filming are two parallel tracks until we, we begin editing-
Paul Barnes EDITOR, LEWIS CLARK
Ken Burns -and so we're constantly developing the script from the very beginning and we're constantly shooting from the very beginning.
Allen Moore CINEMATOGRAPHER
Ken Burns And research goes on from day one and ends after we finished the film. Research isn't a period and we don't have legions of researchers. We do that heavy lifting.
Ken Burns What we need to do, these are, these are definitely original so we take that.
Ken Burns I can imagine sending anyone else other than the inner circle to go to an archive and choose photographs. That's terrifying to me.
Ken Burns That is a great shot. We still, I wanna still savor this guy. Yes, I think there's gonna be a few more things to do. (inaudible ).
Ken Burns As I'm looking at this photograph, I'm not bound from a requirement of what the film but in free to explore and I, I think that's makes all the difference.
Ken Burns Oh, I have an idea. Okay, two, three. It's not good to have an idea in the middle of the shot.
the voices
Sgt. John Ordway Honored parents. I am now on an expedition-
LEWIS CLARK VOICE OF MATTHEW BRODERICK as Sgt. John Ordway
Sgt. John Ordway -to the westward. Through the interior parts of North America .
Great is baseball.
BASEBALL VOICE OF Amy Madigan
The national tonic, the revival of hope, the restorer of confidence.
Ken Burns In some cases you know in the voices that you choose exactly who's gonna play what part. I knew Sam Waterston was gonna play Abraham Lincoln and I knew that I wanted to give him a chance at Thomas Jefferson and he hit home runs in both cases.
Thomas Jefferson Assure all your party that we have our eyes-
LEWIS CLARK VOICE OF Sam Waterston as Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson -turn on them with anxiety for their safety.
Ken Burns In others you don't know and in many cases you bring in a voice that you've worked with or a new voice that you're attracted to, and have them read a variety of voices.
When things look dark, void, and altogether-
BASEBALL VOICE OF Ossie Davis
-hopeless of colored youth of America . They will only need to read and reflect upon the remarkable career of Jackie Robinson .
Ken Burns What people don't remember is how much of an iceberg this production is. Where every shot they see in the screen there's 20 or 30 other shots. For every voice they've heard that's been read five different ways by five different readers. And that with choosing a subtle-
Lee Dichter SOUND MIXER
Ken Burns -characterizations and sort of modalities. All of these have to be listened to, recorded, put together, spaced-out, added to a particular photograph which will constantly change and within a sequence which is always evolving all during editing.
Let us seek their deepest recesses where unknown to our destroyers. We may hunt deer in the Bighorn and bring gladness back to the hearts of our wives and our children.
Ken Burns That's great.
By(ph) Shoshone .
the music
Ken Burns Film scoring is traditionally a mathematical application of music written after the film has edited. We record 90 percent of our music before we even start editing. And then we go in and from the very beginning of editing start to engage music. So that music becomes not something that you add to amplify an emotion but something that's organic to the original emotion. And I think that's why music is always one of the first things that people speak about when they react positively to the films because it was there from the beginning and seems to belong.
the promise
Ken Burns It's not so much that I've chosen-
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
Ken Burns -PBS but, but PBS has chosen me. There's no other place on that dial-
THE SHAKERS HANDS TO WORK, HEARTS TO GOD
Ken Burns -than public television where you can develop your attention.
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
Ken Burns And at the end of the day our attention is all that we have.
THE CONGRESS THE CIVIL WAR BASEBALL THE WEST Thomas Jefferson A FILM BY KEN BURNS
Ken Burns I have not made a film in the last 15 years that wasn't the first-
LEWIS CLARK The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
Ken Burns broadcast on public television and I hope that that's due for the next 15 years.
A Conversation with Ken Burns
Ken Burns There's a great moment in the opening of the Baseball film where Gerald Early one of our great essayist and writers right now says, "There's only three things America is gonna be known for."
Gerald Early The constitution, Jazz music, and baseball. They're the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.
Ken Burns And you sort of laugh and go, "Yeah, those are three great American things and you sort of go on. But then try, I defy you, to try to find others that are equal to that in, in their true utter, inner significance. And think about them, four pieces of parchment paper written at the end of the 18th century, able to adjudicate the most complicated and thorny problems of the late 20th century. You got a simple children stick and ball game that has infinite ballet like combinations. And you've got this music. The only art form ever invented by Americans at whose heart is improvisation. That is the American genius. We do things on the flight. Thomas Jefferson said, "the pursuit of happiness." He didn't say happiness, he said, "the pursuit of it." It meant, we were always in the process of becoming. That's our geniuses of people. To me I think that the reason why these are the valuable milestone in human existence is because there's some larger emotional component to whom they aren't just the some other parts. And that's other emotional parts is what we're after. Why not have a history that's like that. Why not have a visual history that's like that, why not be able to hear the words as well as read them. Why not be able to see the mincing steps that Babe Ruth took as he rounded the base, his tiny legs on top of this barrel chested body. Why not look into Jackie Robinson's face and see what he had to experience. Why not talk about what he had to do then, just read the statistics on his plaque in the hall of fame. This is a different kind of history. But I think it's one that goes be, beneath the skin and gets into people. And that's the only one for me.
Describe for us if you will, what that alchemy is that you use?
Ken Burns Well, you know, I, there's not a primer and, you know, I've got lots of secrets that I'm willing to share. I mean, how you shoot archives, where you just don't hold them at arms length. You just, you, you, you sort of go in and you listen to the old photograph. What's the sound of the cannon? Or the birds chirping? Or the leaves and the trees of that photograph taken in 1863 have a sound? Do they rustle? What's the dust sound like? And that's the way I look and I do it. You know, I simply look through my camera and shoot and find a close-up in the new stories. My work is not just interested in the dry dates, and facts, and events of the past, but in the emotional archeology. And I've called myself an emotional archeologist because we know that that's the glue that makes this comples, complex past events stick in our minds and in our hearts. And permanently a part of who we are now. The big mistake is that history is back then, the past is gone. History is right now. "History is is not was," William Faulkner said. And what he's saying is that we're never gonna change what happened on the third day at Gettysburg when Pickett launched his ill-fated charge. But the way we engage our questions now about it, tells who we are right now and that's a great thing.
You're very passionate about this, aren't you?
Ken Burns Well, I don't know what it is. I, the, Harry Truman said, "The only things that's really new is the history you don't know." And you just sort of, just laugh it off, I mean, for most people history is just another subject in the curriculum and you forget that it is a pageant of everything that has gone before this moment. This moment, everything before that is history. And that's changes it a bit.
Your pieces can run long, they take their time. This is the age of fast cuts, how do you do that?
Ken Burns Well, you know, you have. (crosstalk)
We're not, we're not trained for that.
Ken Burns No, we're not and I get into a lot of problems and sometimes you get critics who, you could just tell and sat down with 18 1/2 hours of baseball and are pissed off, you know? But, you know, (crosstalk)
Eighteen and a half hours?
Ken Burns I'm gonna write the same length column for 18 1/2 hours as I am for the situation comedy that's a half an hour including ad, you know, with, minus the ad breaks. But, you know, we realize I think in the end that all meaning accrues in duration the things that we are all proud and stuff. The work we've done, the relationships we have accrue in duration is the thing that we've given our best attention to and we realize in the end, the only thing we have is our attention. So, I'm looking to try to create something that reminds people of that. We know that the human eye, the human body physiologically can read, receive an image and read it in a, you know, a fraction of a section. And, and second MTV tells us that all the time but what does that mean? What does it mean? Does it have meaning at all? And I'm suggesting that it doesn't. That sometimes if you say, "Look at this. No, no, no, don't cut. Look, hold, hold." The meaning accrues in some sort of duration.
You have stated that your mother's death had a profound effect on you. What was that effect if you could share that?
Ken Burns My mother had cancer. I mean, it's a story that's replayed in millions and millions of American families. Uhm, There wasn't a moment when I wasn't aware as a child ah, that my mother was sick and possibly dying. So that, if you're gonna understand a childhood that is colored by that overhanging ah, eminent tragedy. So, from three on till 11 almost 12 when she died ah, this was the operating vibe of my family. And sociologist was interviewing me recently for a book about people who had lost their parents as ahm, children and at the end of it she asked me this question and it surprise me in my answer, she said, uhm, "What is your mother's greatest gift to you?" And I instantaneously said, "Dying."
Hmm.
Ken Burns And started to cry. And I realized that, that was the truth. That it was for the first time almost 35 years after she had died, I had come to the very painful but obvious fact that having died made me who I am in not just bad ways as one would say but in good ways too. So, in some ways, amidst all the tragedy and I don't mean to say I'm glad she died obviously that, that event was a gift, a kind of challenge to have a life that would now be inexorably changed by disease and then death. But one nevertheless from which certain possibilities with then exist and how would I take those possibilities and make something of it.
Were you able to express your emotions? Was it an emotional home life?
Ken Burns I think yes and no. I certainly find that there is something, extraordinarily therapeutic release in the emotionalism of my films. I love the cathartic cleansing that dealing with sadnesses. I remember that I used to weep every time we got to our ninth episode of Baseball in the editing room. Even when it was unformed and pretty bad at Jackie Robinson's funeral.
Uh hmm.
Ken Burns I realized finally after a while that I missed him, I missed him. And a man I never knew, I had gotten to know him. It was just like Lincoln . There was a moment, the most powerful moment of working on the Civil War it wasn't done, it was in the mix of the, the, the last episode of the film and we were doing the assassination scene at Ford's Theater. And we had, we had, we had a very complicated and layered, textured sound effects track. You know, 25 separate tracks that now had to be melded into one in a very complicated and expensive process for us. And it had been going on for weeks and weeks and weeks and finally we are on this last episode and it was almost Christmas, we are supposed to be done weeks before and we laid in the tinny sound of the play that was going on Our American Cousin.
Oh, you always seem sure of hitting your mark.
Ken Burns The audience laughter that we had it in. We had our own music going on. We had the narrator describing the inexorable movement towards the presidential box.
Booth swallowed two brandies at a nearby bar then returned to the theater. He waited for the laughter to rise then slips silently into the president's box.
Augusta dear.
He held a dagger in his left hand. A derringer pistol in his right.
A nasty beast.
Sir, your vulgarity renders you intolerable in polite society.
Ken Burns And the foot falls. The door slams. We laid everything down. Now, it was time to go back and have the gunshots. So, the mixer went back and we're moving towards it and I remember one of my co-workers looked at me and our eyes were bright and I suddenly just realize what was going on, I yelled, "Stop." And the mixer hit the button and this thing just slowed down, boom, boom, boom, just to the moment before the gunshots came. And with five or six or seven hundred bucks an hour going through them either. We just looked at each other and just stopped. And for a moment with tears streaming down our faces in recognition of all the effort over five and a half years we'd put out. But also for the power we had as filmmakers, we kept Abraham Lincoln alive, alive. And we just looked at each other then everybody looked at me and I nodded, he backed up, we killed Lincoln and then finished the film and went home for Christmas. And I will never forget the power of that moment when for just a brief second we all kept him alive, you know? And that's why I'm doing this job.
Brooklyn Bridge
The, your first film you made out of school, Brooklyn Bridge . What were you? Twenty-four years old going around, trying to raise money for this film. (crosstalk)
Ken Burns You know, I, yeah, when I sort of working on the Brooklyn Bridge I was maybe 22 or 23... (crosstalk)
Hmm.
Ken Burns ...when I first started working, it took like five years to do... (crosstalk)
Uh hmm.
Ken Burns Because I look 12 years old and people say, "Oh, this kids try to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge ." And then slam the door on my face. "Hahaha." But eventually, I convinced enough people to buy my Brooklyn Bridge and I made a film. I had never doubted for a second that that's what I wanted to do.
Why is it Brooklyn Bridge ?
Ken Burns It is still to this day one of the best stories I know. I've gone lots of different place but I write a book by David McCullough about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge . Against all odds, a genius German immigrant who died in the first months of construction, leaving it to his son, designed and built the most beautiful and greatest engineering feat of that particular age, a bridge which stands today as a beacon to poets, and painters, and photographers, and filmmakers, and still does what it was originally intended to do just to get people from the bedroom community of Brooklyn into Manhattan to go to work and back again and did so by being more than the sum of it's steel and stone. And I was very fortunate, you know, I, and sort of reinvented the, a will of a documentary filmmaking or initiated this interest in the history with that film, and it was nominated for an Oscar. And it gave me an opportunity to sort of really say, "Okay, you can do something... (crosstalk)
Hmm.
Ken Burns in this regard and you can pick your subjects. I had already moved to New Hampshire , so, I know I was free of the kind of controls that other people would have.
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