The Capitol Dome

Summer 2016

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32 THE CAPITOL DOME 11 Aug, 1902, 9 May 1910, New York Times (Historical) data- base [NYT] under the search heading "bill of rights." 6. The term "federal Bill of Rights" never appeared in the newspaper between its founding in 1851 and 1900. "Bill of Rights" occurs occasionally; prominent examples are a gov- ernor's veto message that references John Marshall's famous 1833 decision in Barron vs. Baltimore (11 April 1854); the New York City mayor's welcome to the banquet on the occasion of the centennial of George Washington's inauguration notes that Congress adopted the Bill of Rights in New York (1 May 1889); a book review of John Ordronaux's The Fundamental Law (26 July 1891); the Constitution originally did not contain one (30 July 1891); the American Federation of Labor claims a Pennsylvania court decision violates it (17 Dec. 1891); the defense argument in the famous Lizzie Borden case (13 June 1893); the University of North Carolina commencement address (5 June 1896); and as a reassertion of Magna Carta (22 March 1897). 7. NYT, 14 April 1927. 8. NYT, 1 June 1913, 13 June 1915, 14 Oct. 1928. 9. NYT, 16 Feb. 1902, 14, 16 Aug. 1911, 5 June 1912. 10. NYT, 23, 24 Sept. 1901; 13 March, 29 June 1919, 1, 14 Feb. 1920, 4 Dec. 1927; 7 April 1919; 12 Nov. 1923; 31 Aug., 6 Sept. 1911; 21 Feb., 4 June, 11 Aug. 1902, 9 May 1910; and 18 June 1915. 11. NYT, 20 Dec. 1908; 23 Oct. 1909; 17 Aug., 5 Oct. 1919. 12. NYT, 18 April 1915, 21 Sept. 1919; Michael Kammen, A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (New York, 1987), p. 337. 13. Kammen, Machine, p. 73. 14. NYT, 22 April 1937; Greg Ivers, To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State (Charlottesville, VA and London, 1995), p. 12; NYT, 20 Nov. 1938. 15. The American Presidency Project database. See also Sec- retary of War George Dern's comments about FDR and the Bill of Rights (NYT, 19 Feb. 1936). 16. www.spartacus-educational.com. Before assuming the chairmanship, Swope's knowledge about the Bill of Rights was woefully inadequate. In September 1941 he inquired of A. S. W. Rosenbach, "In whose writing is it—Jefferson's, or George Mor- ris' [Mason's] of Virginia? What's its history? Why should there be two copies?" (19 Sept. 1941, Rosenbach Company Papers, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia). 17. Phone conversation with Peter Samson, author of the forthcoming biography of Emanuel Cellar, who was elected to the House from New York at the same time as Bloom, 29 March 2016; Kammen, Machine, p. 282; Bloom to John C. Fitzpatrick, 27 Sept. 1939, Box 15, Fitzpatrick Papers, Library of Congress. In addition to the books, Bloom's Commission issued a series of contemporary maps of the states at the time of ratification of the Constitution, which are still in use seventy-five years later. The Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution Commission in 1987-1988 accomplished very little by comparison, leading this author to conclude that it served as little more than an ego trip for its chair- man, retired Chief Justice Warren Burger. 18. Edwin Wolf II and John F. Fleming, Rosenbach: A Biogra- phy (Cleveland, OH and New York, 1960), p. 14; Kammen, Machine, p. 297; A.W.S. Rosenbach and Free Library of Philadelphia, Historical Documents Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Constitution (Philadelphia, 1937); New York Herald Tribune, 4 March 1939; Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776–1985 (Detroit, MI, 1990) 4:286; Rosenbach to Her- bert Bayard Swope, 18 Sept. 1941, Rosenbach Company Papers, Rosenbach Museum and Library; NYT, 1, 2 Oct. 1939. 19. Bowling, "Overshadowed", p. 89; Gov. Leverett Salton- stall to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, 3 March 1939, RG 11, National Archives. 20. Kammen, Machine, p. 339; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 3, 4 December 1939; Important . . . Americana from the Albert M. Small Collection, Christie Catalog 2655 (18 May 2012). 21. The American Presidency Project database (www.presi- dency.ucsb.edu); NYT, 10 Dec. 1941; Kammen, Machine, p. 340 (quoted); Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 14, 15 Dec. 1941; Obitu- ary, NYT, 19 Oct. 2011. Eleanor Roosevelt mentioned the Bill of Rights in her "My Day" columns of 13 December 1939, 28 November 1941, and 28 October 1943. 22. www.presidency.ucsb.edu. Interested readers can hear FDR deliver the address as part of "Amending America," an exhibit at the National Archives through August 2017. 23. Kammen, Machine, pp. 388-89. Not everyone was happy with the name change. Historian Charles Beard, who along with Max Farrand had declined to serve on the 1937-39 commission, referred to the first Ten Amendments as the "Bill of Rights, so- called" as late as 1944, but that perhaps had something to do with his disdain for Sol Bloom (Kammen, Machine, pp. 307-08; Beard, The Republic: Conversations on the Fundamentals [New York, 1944], p. 151). 24. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XQ5B-L54; phone conversation, 28 March 2016, with Kathy Haas, curator of the Rosenbach Museum's 2016 exhibit about the Freedom Train; Thomas C. Clark to A. S. W. Rosenbach, 14 Nov. 1946, Ameri- can Heritage Foundation, Rosenbach Museum and Library; Milt Gustafson, "Travels of the Charters of Freedom," 34(2002):274.

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