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Janine, Juliette, Mr. Terry Cherry (Immediate Past President of the National Council of Social Studies), Cathy Gillespie, Jeanette Kraynak and/or our Contest Winners will provide a non-partisan, age appropriate conversation about the Constitution for any educational department: Drama classes, music classes, government and history classes, English classes and more are all welcome! Our winners will show you how they used their songs, short films, public service announcements, artwork, poems, and speeches, to both promote the U.S. Constitution, and to win scholarships, trips around the country, cash prizes and more!
We will teach your students about the U.S. Constitution – in a non-partisan way – covering a fun “Constitution Quiz” that emphasizes the roles of various branches in our government and some of the most important points about the U.S. Constitution.
This is also a unique opportunity for your students to speak with Janine about pursuing a career in Radio, Television, or Film.
These non partisan, educational internet sessions are tailored to your teaching schedule and classroom needs – we can work with speaking slots as short as 15 minutes or as long as 35 or 40 minutes and can cover specific topics upon request. These sessions are free learning opportunities for your students. There is no cost to your school! Internet sessions are perfect for home school groups, scout troop meetings, Patriot Club meetings or anywhere else that young people are gathered who want to learn about the Constitution, and our exciting “We The Future” Contest!
NEW – Our Civil Civic Conversation Program for Schools & Civic Organizations
Constituting America’s program, “How to Have a Civil Civic Conversation,” gives your students the opportunity to learn about how to have a meaningful Civil Civic Conversation. In America’s current divisive atmosphere, it is important for students to learn how to listen and become informed about opposing points of view. Through our Civil Civic Conversation process, students will discover how to be an active part of the political future of our country, exercising their first amendment rights, protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Two passionately politically opinionated students from opposing points of view will debate a difficult timely topic chosen in consultation with you, the teacher, with the class observing. The entire classroom will then be involved, learning new skills by reading two points of view on the chosen topic in order to assess the alternative point of view. This will be followed by watching a peer to peer video, discussing dialogue techniques, and then re-engaging in conversation in a newly informed calm manner.
Students will put their Civil Civic Conversation skills to practice in the final segment of the program where they will compromise in order to create a bill simulating the process in U.S. Congress. After class participation and writing their own bill, the two starring students who started by passionately opposing each other politically, will now present their bill to their U.S. Representative, having found common ground.
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Watch our Peer to Peer Teaching Video – “How To Have A Civil Civic Conversation” below!
What Teachers Say
“Wow! To hear someone with this much passion for making sure our youth have a thorough understanding of the Constitution is amazing. Our students at “The” Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy enjoyed the challenges presented by Janine and appreciated the opportunity to learn from a truly zealous advocate of the document that founded these United States of America. Thanks for a GREAT presentation. The students enjoyed it and so did I. They are chomping at the bit for your return.”
– Tom McLaughlin, Teacher, “The” Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy, Dallas, Texas
“Thank you and Juliette for using your time and energy to Constitute America’s young people and to make our genius Constitution accessible to them. The education you offer enefits them now, but it will also ensure freedom for their children and grandchildren if they rise to the high calling of getting involved!…You were so gracious to gift us a webcam on top of th ecopies of the test, the glossy colored contest flyer, bracelets and sunglasses and your time. Your kindness and concern for students’ futures shone through the screen and was heard in your gnetle yet passionate voice. The Constitution and the contest are the focus for the short remainder of our year. You are a true Patriot. Salute! Mrs. Moss, San Jacinto Academy, Amarillo, Texas.
Our experience with Constituting America was unique and inspirational. My students were able to make real-world connections with people who care deeply for our country’s founding documents. They were blessed to receive relevant material that bring the subject to life in a way that traditional textbooks do not. I often struggle as a teacher with a balance between that which we must learn and that which makes learning worthwhile. Constituting America brought both of those together in a memorable way that my students and I will never forget. Thank you from East Texas!
– Jeff Sims, East Texas Charter School
February 14, 1876: Alexander Graham Bell Files His Patent for a Telephone
90 in 90 2020, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, James C. Clinger 10. Dates in American History, 2020 - Dates in American History, 11. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, 90 Day Studies, James C. ClingerAn attorney representing Alexander Graham Bell and his business partner, Gardiner Hubbard, filed a patent application for an invention entitled an “Improvement in Telegraphy” on February 14, 1876. That same day, Elisha Gray, a prominent inventor from Highland Park, Illinois, had applied for a patent caveat for a similar invention from the same office. On March 7, Bell’s patent was approved by the patent office and the battle over the rights to the invention that we now know as the telephone began. The eventual outcome would shape the development of a major industry and the opportunities for communication and social interaction for the entire country.
The invention came from an unlikely source. Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born teacher of elocution and tutor to the deaf whose family had migrated to Ontario, Canada, after the death of two of Bell’s siblings. Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander Graham Bell’s father, believed that their new home in Ontario offered them a better, more healthful climate. The elder Bell was a student of phonetics who had developed a system of “Visible Speech” to allow deaf people the chance to speak intelligibly. Melville Bell lectured periodically at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and his son Alexander moved to Boston permanently to assume a teaching position at the Boston University.[1]
Though trained in acoustics and the science behind the sounds of the human voice, Bell did not have a strong understanding of electrical currents or electromagnetism. But early on he realized that the magnetic field of an electrical current was capable of vibrating objects, such as a tuning fork, which could create audible sounds. As he was learning of how electrical currents could be used for sound production, other researchers such as Joseph Stearns and Thomas Edison were developing a system of telegraph transmission in which multiple signals could be sent over the same wire at the same time. These systems relied upon sending the series of dots and dashes at different frequencies. Bell joined that research to find a better “multiplex” telegraph. In order to develop what Bell called a “harmonic telegraph,” Bell needed more funds for his lab. Much of his funding came from a notable Boston attorney, Gardiner Hubbard, who hired Bell as a teacher of his daughter, Mabel, who had become deaf after a bout with scarlet fever. Hubbard, who had a dislike for Western Union’s dominance in long-distance telegraph service, encouraged and subsidized Bell’s research on telegraphy. Hubbard and another financial backer, Thomas Sanders, formed a partnership with Bell, with an agreement that all three hold joint ownership of the patent rights for Bell’s inventions. Bell made significant progress on his research, and had more success in his private life. Mabel Hubbard, who was his student, became his betrothed. Despite the initial objections of her father, Mabel married Bell shortly after her eighteenth birthday.[2]
Other inventers were hard at work on similar lines of research. Daniel Drawbaugh, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, and especially Elisha Gray all were developing alternative versions of what would soon be known as the telephone while Bell was hard at work on his project. Most of these models involved a variable resistance method of modifying the electrical current by dipping wires into a container of liquid, often mercury or sulfuric acid, to alter the current flowing to a set of reeds or diaphragm that would emit various sounds. Most of these researchers knew more about electrical currents and devices than Bell did. But Bell had a solid understanding of the human voice. Even though his research began as an effort to improve telegraphy, Bell realized that the devices that he created could be designed to replicate speech. His patent application in February of 1876 was for a telephone transmitter that employed a magnetized reed attached to a membrane diaphragm when activated by an undulating current. The device described in the patent application could transmit sounds but not actual speech. Months later, however, Bell’s instrument was improved sufficiently to allow him to convey a brief, audible message to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, who was in another part of his laboratory. In the summer of 1876, Bell demonstrated the transmission of audible speech to an amazed crowd at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Elisha Gray attempted to demonstrate his version of the telephone at the same exhibition, but was unable to convey the sound of human voices. The following year, Bell filed and received a patent for his telephone receiver, assuring his claim to devices that would both transmit and receive voice communications.[3]
In 1877, Bell and his partners formed the American Bell Telephone Company, a corporation that would later be known as American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The corporation and Bell personally were soon involved in a number of lawsuits alleging patent infringement and, in one case, patent cancellation. There were many litigants over the years, but the primary early adversary was Western Union, which had purchased the rights to Elisha Gray’s telephone patent. The United States federal government also was involved in a suit for patent cancellation, alleging that Bell gained his patents fraudulently by stealing the inventions of others. The lawsuit with Western Union was settled in 1879 when the corporation forfeited claims on the invention of the telephone in return for twenty percent of Bell’s company’s earnings for the duration of the patent.[4] The other lawsuits meandered through multiple courts over several years until several were consolidated before the United States Supreme Court. Ultimately, a divided court ruled in favor of Bell’s position in each case. The various opinions and appendices were so voluminous that when compiled they made up the entire volume of United States Reports, the official publication of Supreme Court opinions.[5]
The court decisions ultimately granted vast scope to the Bell patent and assigned an enormously profitable asset to Bell’s corporation. The firm that became AT&T grew into one of the largest corporations in the world.[6] Years earlier, the telegraph had transformed communication, with huge impacts on the operation of industry and government. But although the telegraph had enormous impact upon the lives of ordinary Americans, it was not widely used by private individuals for their personal communications. Almost all messages were sent by businesses and government agencies. Initially, this was the common practice for telephone usage. But with the dawn of the twentieth century, telephones became widely used by private individuals. More phones were available in homes rather than just in offices. Unlike telegrams, which were charged by the word, telephone service for local calls were priced with a flat monthly rate. As a result, telephone service was enjoyed as a means of communication for social purposes, not just commercial activities. Within a hundred years of Bell’s initial patent, telephones could be found in almost every American home.[7]
James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.
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[1] Billington, David P. “Bell and the Telephone.” In Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century, 35-56. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006.
[2] Billington, op cit.
[3] Stone, Alan. “Protection of the Newborn.” In Public Service Liberalism: Telecommunications and Transitions in Public Policy, 51-83. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
[4] MacDougall, Robert. “Unnatural Monopoly.” In The People’s Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age, 92-131. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
[5] The Telephone Cases. 126 US 1.
[6] Beauchamp, Christopher. “Who Invented the Telephone? Lawyers, Patents, and the Judgments of History.” Technology and Culture 51, no. 4 (2010): 854-78.
[7] MacDougall, Robert. “Visions of Telephony.” In The People’s Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age, 61-91. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
March 1, 1872: Yellowstone Becomes the First National Park and Begins America’s Park System
90 in 90 2020, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Scot Faulkner March 1, 1872: Yellowstone Becomes the First National Park and Begins America’s Park System – Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner, 10. Dates in American History, 2020 - Dates in American History, 11. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, 90 Day Studies, Scot FaulknerOur National Parks are the most visible manifestation of why America is exceptional.
America’s Parks are the physical touchstones that affirm our national identity. These historical Parks preserve our collective memory of events that shaped our nation and the natural Parks preserve the environment that shaped us.
National Parks are open for all to enjoy, learn, and contemplate. This concept of preserving a physical space for the sole purpose of public access is a uniquely American invention. It further affirms why America remains an inspiration to the world.
On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the law creating Yellowstone as the world’s first National Park.
AN ACT to set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming … is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed there from …
The Yellowstone legislation launched a system that now encompasses 419 National Parks with over 84 million acres. Inspired by Grant’s act, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand established their own National Parks during the following years.
Yellowstone was not predestined to be the first National Park.
In 1806, John Colter, a member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, joined fur trappers to explore several Missouri River tributaries. Colter entered the Yellowstone area in 1807 and later reported on a dramatic landscape of “fire and brimstone.” His description was rejected as too fanciful and labeled “Colter’s Hell.”
Over the years, other trappers and “mountain men” shared stories of fantastic landscapes of water gushing out of the ground and rainbow-colored hot springs. They were all dismissed as fantasy.
After America’s Civil War, formal expeditions were launched to explore the upper Yellowstone River system. Settlers and miners were interested in the economic potential of the region.
In 1869, Charles Cook, David Folsom, and William Peterson led a privately financed survey of the region. Their journals and personal accounts provided the first believable descriptions of Yellowstone’s natural wonders.
Reports from the Cook-Folsom Expedition encouraged the first official government survey in 1870. Henry Washburn, the Surveyor General of the Montana Territory, led a large team known as the Washburn-Langford-Doan Expedition to the Yellowstone area. Nathaniel P. Langford, who co-led the team, was a friend of Jay Cook, a major investor in the Northern Pacific Railway. Washburn was escorted by a U.S. Cavalry Unit commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane. Their team, including Folsom, followed a similar course as the Cook-Folsom 1869 excursion, extensively documenting their observations of the Yellowstone area. They explored numerous lakes, mountains, and observed wildlife. The Expedition chronicled the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins. They named one geyser Old Faithful, as it erupted once every 74 minutes.
Upon their return, Cook combined Washburn’s and Folsom’s journals into a single version. He submitted it to the New York Tribune and Scribner’s for publication. Both rejected the manuscript as “unreliable and improbable” even with the military’s corroboration. Fortunately, another member of Washburn’s Expedition, Cornelius Hedges, submitted several articles about Yellowstone to the Helena Herald newspaper from 1870 to 1871. Hedges would become one of the original advocates for setting aside the Yellowstone area as a National Park.
Langford, who would become Yellowstone’s first park superintendent, reported to Cooke about his observations. While Cooke was primarily interested in how Yellowstone’s wonders and resources could attract railroad business, he supported Langford’s vision of establishing a National Park. Cooke financed Langford’s Yellowstone lectures in Virginia City, Helena, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
On January 19, 1871, geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden attended Langford’s speech in Washington, D.C. He was motivated to conduct his next geological survey in the Yellowstone region.
In 1871, Hayden organized the first federally funded survey of the Yellowstone region. His team included photographer William Henry Jackson, and landscape artist Thomas Moran. Hayden’s reports on the geysers, sulfur springs, waterfalls, canyons, lakes and streams of Yellowstone verified earlier reports. Jackson’s and Moran’s images provided the first visual proof of Yellowstone’s unique natural features.
The various expeditions and reports built the case for preservation instead of exploitation.
In October 1865, acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, was the first public official recommending that the Yellowstone region should be protected. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley was suggesting “Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever.”
Hayden became another leader for establishing Yellowstone as a National Park. He was concerned the area could face the same fate as the overly developed and commercialized Niagara Falls area. Yellowstone should, “be as free as the air or water.” In his report to the Committee on Public Lands, Hayden declared that if Yellowstone was not preserved, “the vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare.”
Langford, and a growing number of park advocates, promoted the Yellowstone bill in late 1871 and early 1872. They raised the alarm that “there were those who would come and make merchandise of these beautiful specimen.”
Their proposed legislation drew upon the precedent of the Yosemite Act of 1864, which barred settlement and entrusted preservation of the Yosemite Valley to the state of California.
Park advocates faced spirited opposition from mining and development interests who asserted that permanently banning settlement of a public domain the size of Yellowstone would depart from the established policy of transferring public lands to private ownership (in the 1980s, $1 billion of exploitable deposits of gold and silver were discovered within miles of the Park). Developers feared that the regional economy would be unable to thrive if there remained strict federal prohibitions against resource development or settlement within park boundaries. Some tried to reduce the proposed size of the park so that mining, hunting, and logging activities could be developed.
Fortunately, Jackson’s photographs and Moran’s paintings captured the imagination of Congress. These compelling images, and the credibility of the Hayden report, persuaded the United States Congress to withdraw the Yellowstone region from public auction. The Establishment legislation quickly passed both chambers and was sent to President Grant for his signature.
Grant, an early advocate of preserving America’s unique natural features, enthusiastically signed the bill into law.
On September 8, 1978, Yellowstone and Mesa Verde were the first U.S. National Parks designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Yellowstone was deemed a “resource of universal value to the world community.”
Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.
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April 8, 1913: Seventeenth Amendment Ratified, Direct Election of Senators
90 in 90 2020, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog 10. Dates in American HistoryThe Seventeenth Amendment was passed by Congress May 13, 1912 and ratified on April 8, 1913. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan certified the ratification on May 31, 1913. Once the Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution citizens had the right to directly cast ballots for their state’s two senators. The Amendment changed Article I, Section 3, clauses 1 and 3 of the Constitution that had previously stipulated senators were to be elected by state legislatures. By allowing for the direct election of senators, a barrier was removed between the people and the government that moved the U.S. closer to democracy and away from a republican form of government.
At the time the U.S. Constitution was being drafted there was a clear apprehension toward monarchy but also an aversion toward democracy. The founders were suspicious of the capricious tendencies of the majority and considered democracy to be mob rule. With direct elections of members in the House of Representatives every two years, representatives could be swept into and out of office with great efficiency and would therefore bow to the will of the majority. If some interest that ran counter to the common good, but nonetheless gained the favor of the majority, the House would be ill-incentivized to look after the common good. The Senate, as it was not directly elected by the people, could be a check on the passions of the majority. In Federalist Paper #63 Publius wrote, “an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.”
Prior to the formation of the United States it was assumed that republics could only be small in scale. James Madison refuted such luminaries as Baron de Montesquieu in offering a solution to the problem of scale by introducing multiple layers of checks and balances into a federal regime that included a check on democratic rule at the national level. With the senate serving as a bulwark against the threat of tyranny by the majority, every viable interest could be given representation in the national debate. Now that this bulwark has been replaced with democratic elections, the president is now the only elected official at the national level shielded—at least somewhat—from public opinion as the president is elected not be the people but through the Electoral College.
At the time the Constitution was being drafted some in Philadelphia there was a strong push for states’ rights. The Articles of Confederation provided a weak central government and the new states were reluctant to give up their power to a central body as they had just thrown off the yoke of tyranny hoisted upon them by a centralized governing body. The election of senators by state legislatures was one way to assuage those concerns. In Federalist Paper #62, Publius writes, “Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial to public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government.” It was thought that the state’s interests would be represented in the Senate and popular interests would be represented in the House. With these sets of interests competing, the popular good would be represented in any bill that would be able to make its way through both chambers of congress. This was the very core of the theory of our constitutional government as envisioned and understood by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Both Madison and Hamilton argued that ambition should be made to counteract ambition and through the competition of ambitions the common good would be realized. It is only in republican government that the negative effects of faction can be mitigated and the positive aspects funneled into the realization of the common good. “The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater the number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.” (Federalist Paper #10).
The risks associated with democratization threaten the balance and principles republican regimes aspire to. Democracy aspires to nothing but its own will. Direct democracy offers too few safeguards against whimsy and caprice. In democracies individuals are left to put their interests above all others and be guided by little more than immediate need as long-term planning is disincentivized.
Understanding the ramifications of further democratization is a timely topic as it is likely to be a widely discussed in popular media in the upcoming presidential election. We see in every election a push for eliminating the Electoral College. With every passing election the cries for reform grow louder. Those who value republican principles should equip themselves to defend republican principles and institutions with evidence and theory and not rely on self-interest, cliché, or partisan allegiance. If interested, reread the Federalist Papers, but also, go back and read the press clippings from 1912-1913 and look for parallels to today. What you will find is a sense of connectedness with previous eras that will let the reader know these are permanent questions worth taking seriously.
Kyle Scott, PhD, MBA, currently works in higher education administration and has taught American politics, Constitutional Law, and political theory for more than a decade at the university level. He is the author of five books and more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles. His most recent book is The Federalist Papers: A Reader’s Guide. Kyle can be contacted at kyle.a.scott@hotmail.com