 This is a re-recording of the webinar, Teaching with the Records of Congress, a presentation offered by the Center for Legislative Archives for Educators on Thursday, April 18, 2019. The Center for Legislative Archives, part of the National Archives and Records Administration, preserves and makes available the historical records of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Educators can use these historical documents to teach about representative democracy, how Congress works, and the important role Congress has played throughout American history. What do we mean when we say the records of Congress? Well, since 1789, Congress has legislated, held hearings, or debated nearly every subject you could think of. Consequently, the records of the Senate and House of Representatives reflect the full spectrum of the nation's political concerns. Petitions to Congress reflect the voices of the people, their concerns, their beliefs, and offer multiple perspectives on issues throughout our history. Among the holdings of the Center for Legislative Archives, you will find the records of the United States House of Representatives committees and offices, the records of the United States Senate committees and offices, and the other types of records you see on the screen now. The Center for Legislative Archives does not hold the private and personal papers of Senators and Representatives. Additionally, laws signed by the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and the President of the United States, and records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses are located elsewhere within the National Archives. The goal for today's program is to connect you with new primary sources from the Center for Legislative Archives that you can incorporate into your history and civics lessons. I will also share the Center's classroom resources for teaching about Congress. Hopefully these records will help your students develop a new appreciation for Congress as the direct link between the American people and their government. Let's start at the beginning. The first Congress is arguably one of the most important Congresses in the United States history. Everything the first Congress did set a precedent. Early accomplishments include setting up the rules, procedures, and establishing the roles of officers in the House and Senate. Early legislation that raised revenues by setting duties on imported goods, establishing the departments of states, war, and treasury, and creating a federal judiciary to tame just a few. Most of the actions of the first Congress broke new ground. In addition to everything else that was going on, James Madison introduced the first set of amendments to the Constitution. The omission of a list of individual rights in the Constitution had hindered its ratification by the states. The states of Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Virginia, and New York submitted proposed amendments for individual freedoms with their resolutions for the ratification of the Constitution. On June 8th, 1789, Representative James Madison proposed new amendments to the Constitution in the House of Representatives. That summer, the House debated these issues, and on August 24th, past 17 proposed constitutional amendments. Then, the Senate took up the matter, cutting the 17 amendments to 12 by combining and deleting items. On October 2nd, 1789, 12 articles or amendments were sent to the states by December 15th, 1791, 3 fourths of the states had ratified 10 of them. Articles 3 through 12 on the original document, known thereafter as the Bill of Rights. To dive into this process, the Center for Legislative Archives has created the Congress Creates the Bill of Rights app. This app is also available online as a PDF, so if your students are unable to access the app, all this information is available in PDF form. There's also a supporting ebook on the Center's website as well. This app provides an overview of the background of the Bill of Rights. It helps take students inside the first Congress. It looks at the amendments in process and gives students a chance to join the debate. When students go inside the debate, they'll think about questions like, should the Constitution be amended? Should the House of Representatives have fewer many members? Should the people have the authority to instruct their representatives? Should the Federal Bill of Rights apply to the states? And other issues that the first Congress considered. In one section, students will be able to look at track changes to the articles 3 and 4 on the Senate markup of the House's proposed amendments to the Constitution and see how changes were made to this text. Article 3 and 4 would ultimately be combined and are known as today's first amendment. Students will also be able to trace changes to the other amendments proposed by Madison as well. The Center has created an accompanying lesson plan. Congress creates the Bill of Rights, completing the Constitution to help walk students through this process. This lesson plan helps students take a closer look at this document, the Senate markup to the House's proposed amendments to the Constitution. This is a fascinating document because we can see where things have been crossed out, added on, and really look at the Bill of Rights as a work in progress. Additionally, students can use the app to, again, take a look at those changes in the Close Up on Compromise section, and trace the history of the different amendments from their origins as ideas proposed by state ratification conventions to final versions as ratified by the states. Using this lesson, completing the Constitution, you can assign students one or more of the 17 amendments passed by the House. Each group will then use this worksheet to translate their assigned amendments to a 8 to 12 word tweet. Then, students will study the historical context of their proposed amendment and trace their amendment's history and determine if the main idea that they identified was present in each of the steps. The next worksheet can be posted in the classroom for students to add their findings and keep track of their findings as they examine the evolution of these different ideas and see if they made it into the final version of the Bill of Rights as ratified by the states. When we apply a historical lens to the records of Congress, we can discover the process behind landmark legislation, explore the diverse and shifting perspectives of Americans on issues like slavery, women's rights, and Congress's work to expand these rights. We can also see examples of situations when Congress also worked to restrict rights, like with the Alien Sedition Acts or the Gag Girl. It's all there in the records of Congress. The Center for Legislative Archives has created a series of lessons that can help you dive into the history of important issues using the records of Congress. Many of these lessons focus on petitions. Throughout our history, people have influenced Congress through the power of petition. Congress's actions impact people's lives, and we have many examples of what this looks like in the holdings of the Center for Legislative Archives. I'm going to share two examples of lessons with you today. In Congress and Harriet Tubman's claim for a pension, students will explore records from the U.S. House of Representatives to discover the story of Harriet Tubman's Civil War service and her petition to Congress for compensation. Students will be familiar with Harriet Tubman's work on the Underground Railroad, but she also served as a nurse, cook, spy, and leader of a raid during the Civil War. It was on this basis that she requested a federal pension after the war. At the time of this pension, this pension petition was filed. She was receiving a pension as the widow of a Civil War soldier, but this makes the case that she should receive an additional pension as someone who served during the war. Using historical thinking skills, students will examine the evidence of Tubman's service and assess Congress's decision to grant her a pension. Students will use this worksheet to analyze different evidence from the records of the U.S. House of Representatives, including supporting documents from Civil War officials indicating the breath of Tubman's service during the Civil War. This lesson will help students think about to what extent and for what services did Congress officially acknowledge Harriet Tubman's Civil War service to her country and discuss the limitations of this recognition. In another lesson, students will use facsimiles of historical records from the files of the U.S. House of Representatives to a judiciary committee to evaluate evidence and consider constitutional issues that the committee encountered as it deliberated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In this lesson, Congress protects the right to vote. Students will examine the concept of federalism and weigh the proper balance of powers between federal and state governments when it comes to protecting the right to vote. By analyzing evidence reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee related to the Voting Rights Act, students will wrestle with the same issues faced by the committee as it created this landmark civil rights legislation. Ten primary source documents allow students to see multiple perspectives and evaluate Congress's actions as they created this legislation. Some of the documents students will look at will include this petition from George New, who was against the Voting Rights Act, as well as this petition from Mrs. Jackson, who asks for Congress to take action, especially after seeing the events in Selma, Alabama. Students will use this worksheet weighing the issues to think about evidence supporting and evidence opposed to the Voting Rights Act and evaluate it based on how persuasive the evidence is. And then students will think about which document makes a stronger case for its position and based on this evidence should Congress pass this legislation. These two lessons are just two examples of some of the available lesson plans on the Center's website for diving into the history of the United States with the records of Congress. We can also use the records of Congress to study the legislative process, the concepts of representation, separation of powers, and the constitutional role of Congress. For example, in the lesson, what Congress does and why it matters, students will connect different roles of Congress to real-life examples from our holdings. Students start with this graphic organizer. Taking a look at this graphic organizer, we can see there are four different sections. Exercising constitutional powers, legislates, represents constituents, and balances power. Students will start by brainstorming different ideas of how Congress does each of these four major actions. Then students will receive 20 game pieces, and we'll need to collaborate to identify the best match, which overarching umbrella of four type of action does the game piece fit. The final graphic organizer will look something like this. As we can see, there are different actions in each section, and ultimately the graphic organizer will spell out Congress represents us. The next step is then to assign a different document to student pairs or individual students, and the students will work to analyze that document using a document analysis worksheet and think about which action their document best represents. Students can either analyze the document online or in a PDF form, or you can print out the documents to share with students. We also have miniature versions of the documents that can be printed out and placed around this graphic organizer. To show you just a brief selection of the documents that students will take a look at, here's one example. This is a nomination of Ulysses S. Grant by Abraham Lincoln for the Lieutenant General position in the Army, and it's being sent to the Senate of the United States. This is a great example of the action of the one thing Congress does is confirm presidential nominations. Another example of a congressional action is this act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies. This is an example of Congress regulating commerce. Next, this excerpt from the congressional record shows us Mrs. Meek speaking out about the Everglades restoration plan, and this shows us that Congress has the job of advocating local concerns. And as another example, here in this engrossing copy of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, we can see where proposed changes or amendments are being made to the bill, and this reminds us that one of the jobs of Congress is to amend bills. By completing this graphic organizer and analyzing these different documents, students will see real-life examples of what Congress does and be able to make more connections to their own life, why Congress matters. Congress is where we see the idea of popular sovereignty translated into reality. House members and senators are accountable to their constituents, and each election allows voters to take stock of their representatives. Today, we've seen how you can use the records of Congress to explore the work of Congress. I want to share one more resource from the Center for Legislative Archives that can help your students visualize the role and work of Congress. Within the Center for Legislative Archives, we have a special collection that consists of over 2,000 Clifford Berryman originals. Clifford Berryman was a cartoonist in Washington, D.C. for over five decades, working first for the Washington Post and the Washington Evening Star. After the 1990s, a collection of over 2,000 Clifford Berryman originals was purchased and donated to the Senate collection. This collection also includes over 200 cartoons by Jim Berryman, Clifford's son. Berryman's cartoons provide keen observations of Congress and can be used to teach historical events, as well as provide insights into our institutions and civic life. Today, this special collection is a part of the holdings of the Center for Legislative Archives. I'm going to share just a handful of cartoons from this collection that will help bring to life the work of Congress for your students and help them make connections to life today. For example, there are Berryman cartoons that can help us look at the process by which a bill becomes a law. This one is a reminder that it's not always smooth sailing, and sometimes the process can be a bit messy. Here we have a bill returning from the U.S. Senate, covered in amendments that's nearly unrecognizable to its original House author, and a good reminder that a bill's journey through Congress is not complete until it has been passed in identical form by both houses. Berryman provided illustrations capturing elections throughout his career, and this can help these political cartoons, can help us think about and talk about elections as a part of our civic life. Finally, communicating with constituents is a critical element of representation, and here we see a congressperson returning home with explanations, questions to be answered, why I voted, main reasons why I did not vote, and the congressman says it's not going to be such a restful month at that. A reminder that the congressperson needs to be responsive to the voters back at home. To help bring these cartoons into the classroom, the Center for Legislative Archives has created a series of resources for you. There are several e-books available on the center's website as PDFs, including representing Congress, Clifford Berryman's Political Cartoons, that specifically look at how Congress is represented. We also have an e-book that looks at America and the World, taking Berryman cartoons that look at the American Foreign Affairs. The National Archives also has a series of primary source analysis worksheets, including one specifically for cartoons, to help your students understand what is happening in each cartoon by breaking it down into pieces. Finally, there are lesson plans specifically for bringing these cartoons into the classroom and getting them into your students' hands, including Congress represented in political cartoons, reviewing big civics ideas through political cartoons, and a constitutional scavenger hunt. Finally, we've also created several Dock's Teach activities that you can share with your students as well. Let's start with Docksteach.org, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives. Here we are on the popular topics page for the records of Congress. On this page you'll find collections of primary sources for teaching a variety of congressional topics. Clicking on one of these categories will take you to a page where you can refine your search or browse all of these different primary sources and then share them with your students. There are also teaching activities that the Center has created that can be completed by your students online or conducted with your class as a group, including the legislative process, Congress at Work, a look at Reconstruction, and analyzing evidence of the Pearl Harbor attack to name just a few. These lessons include a page that provides additional background information for you, the teacher, as well as a link that you can share directly with your students to complete the activity. If you create a free Dock's Teach account, you can save your activities and actually review your students' responses within Dock's Teach. The other page I want to highlight is the homepage for educational resources from the Center for Legislative Archives. On this page you'll find links to all of the lesson plans and more that were mentioned in today's program, links to the app, ebook, and more on the political cartoons. Links to all of the resources shared in this program are available in the description below. This concludes our program teaching with the Records of Congress. We've highlighted just a handful of records and resources from the Center for Legislative Archives in today's program and hopefully you have new ideas for how you can share these records and the story of representative government in the United States with your students. Thanks for tuning in.