- [clinton] every president since george washington,
Has had to define what we mean by the words, we the people,
And a more perfect union.
In moments of harmony and conflict,
Of growth and severe distress,
In times of triumph and tragedy,
Each of our presidents has had to make a choice.
To take us forward or backward,
To unite us or divide us,
To greet the future with open arms or a clenched fist.
The choices they made and how they acted on them,
Is the story of the american presidency.
Every presidents since our founding,
Whether consciously or not,
Has had to define who constitutes, we the people?
Who's really entitled to those certain inalienable rights
That we declared our independence to secure?
I've always believed that, we the people,
Should mean all of us.
And as president I tried to keep widening the circle of us
And shrinking the circle of them.
I thought it was the right thing to do and I also thought
It will strengthen all our futures.
Because diverse inclusive groups of free and equal people
Make better decisions than homogenous exclusive ones do.
My predecessors and successors
All had their own definitions of, we the people.
Some broad, some narrow
And all of them shaped, at least in part,
But he culture and conditions of their times.
Sometimes those definitions have changed
Within a single presidency.
That was certainly the case for abraham lincoln.
Who over the course of his presidency,
Took increasingly bold steps.
First to preserve the union
And then to redefine
Who would be included in we the people.
(suspenseful music)
- By the time abraham lincoln takes the oath of office
In March of 1861, seven states had seceded from the union
And more would follow.
And a month after his inauguration
There's an attack on ft. Sumter and the civil war began.
- Winning the war was his number one priority,
As commander in chief.
The confederacy was capable of winning the war.
The confederacy had a number of different advantages,
In its favor, that lincoln was very well aware of.
And one of those advantages was slavery.
- It is, as the war continues
That he starts to think about the connection
Between the war effort and ending slavery.
- Lincoln is remembered as the great emancipator.
But lincoln did not engage in civil war
As a primary function to emancipate slaves.
- He was committed to preserving the union at all cost.
He famously said that if he could free all the slaves
And save the union, he will do that.
If he could free no slaves and still save the union,
He would do that too.
- If you read his state papers,
You'd find that he was a creature of his time,
In that he was antislavery.
But being antislavery did not make you
A racial integrationist egalitarian.
- The difference is that he was able to rise above
Some of his prejudices
And look at what was best for the nation.
- And his thinking on slavery and emancipation,
Gradually evolves, as the war evolves
Between 1861 and 1862.
- Then it becomes a political reality he cannot avoid.
- Lincoln realized that slavery was at the heart of the war
And that if you brought the union back together,
With slavery still in place,
It was going to solve nothing.
That a few years down the road,
You would have the same problem.
So I think he understood
That he had to do something about slavery.
- Lincoln begins contemplating the possibility
Of an emancipation order with his cabinet
In the summer of 1862.
- Abraham lincoln once told the congress
That the question in politics was not,
Can any of else imagine better?
It is that can any of us do better?
- Black people saw this as a war for their liberation.
So they were already on the road to freedom.
He understand that if you talk about freeing them,
It throws the south into chaos.
He knows that if he can free them
And can get them into the union army,
Then he might win this war.
- At that point, the course of the war
Is still very much in flux.
He recognizes that there is no way that he can get support
For an emancipation order, unless it was clear
That the tide of the war was shifting
In the favor of the union.
So he waits until September 1862,
A union victory at antietam,
To issue the preliminary emancipation proclamation.
- It said if you don't return to the union,
I'm going to free your enslaved laborers,
You have a 100 days to make a decision.
Of course none of the southern states
Come back into the union and lincoln knew
That they weren't going to do that.
But he felt he had to give them the 100 days.
And so on January 1st, he issues the final proclamation.
- The emancipation proclamation,
Would free the enslaved people in every part of america,
Over which abraham lincoln had no control.
He was doing it as a war measure to some extent.
To try to encourage the enslaved to join the union cause.
- Lincoln certainly saw the emancipation proclamation
As a military document
One rooted in very careful legal reasoning.
But by January 1, 1863,
He also recognized the moral importance
Of what he was doing.
It is one of the most transformative moments
In american history.
- As he was about to sign the proclamation,
Lincoln's hand shook,
And he says as he's signing,
If his name goes down for history for any event,
It'll be for that one thing that he's doing
And his whole heart was in it,
Although his hand was shaking initially.
- And from that point on, the civil war,
From the perspective of lincoln,
Was no longer just about preserving the union.
It was about remaking the union,
It was about remaking the united states
And creating a new united states.
One in which black people were free
And had the potential to be equal citizens.
- He believed that the nation was truly founded on
The idea that all men are created equal,
And that they are all worthy of certain rights,
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
He believed that firmly.
That was his vision for america.
- Emancipation proclamation is arguably the most
Significant executive order in american history.
It laid the groundwork for the destruction of slavery.
It allowed for the liberation
Of some 3.5 million enslaved peoples in the context
Of the war itself,
But it also set the united states on a new course.
Set the united states on a journey to try
And create a more perfect union.
To try and create a union that was predicated
On the ideal of a multiracial democracy.
And that struggle has continued
From 1863 up until the present.
- I don't think we do him or us, any favors
By pretending that he was a tall white martin luther king
From illinois. He wasn't.
He was as frederick douglass said,
"preeminently the white man's president,"
And yet, as douglass went on, "we knew that somehow
Our hour of liberation had met in this man and this moment."
The mystery and tragedy of history,
Is not that perfect people push us toward a better day
But that these flawed fallible people,
Manage to make things just better enough,
That enough of us believe the experiment
Is worth continuing.
And I think that's where lincoln fits in.
- [clinton] by the late 19th century,
The nation has more than double in size.
Ours is a vast land, in need of people
To fuel its growing economy.
And immigration seems like the answer.
New arrivals need jobs and the country needs workers.
Immigration is always been part of america's story.
But when it comes to including new immigrants,
In the definition of we the people.
The answers aren't so simple.
Who has the right to be here?
- On July 2, 1881,
When word spread that president james garfield
Had been shot by an assassin,
The immediate reaction was chester arthur,
President of the united states?
Good god!
No one to that point in time,
Had entered the presidency of the united states,
With less ambition, less experience,
Less name recognition
And less respect than chester alan arthur.
- Chester arthur was generally thought to be a party hack.
This was someone who will please the machines.
- He was a man who reveled in the material world.
He was impeccably dressed.
He had by one account, 84 pairs of pants.
He had this wide, sort of mutton chops
And mustache and that was chester arthur.
Nobody intended that he would become
President of the united states and yet he did.
When chester alan arthur became president,
American workers were suffering greatly.
The panic of 1873 had decimated the american working class.
And whenever there was an economic down turn,
People look for people to blame.
- The labor movement on the west coast,
Was pitying white workers against chinese workers
And the question of chinese immigration
Really comes to a central point of crisis.
- One of the concerns was that the chinese labor
Would undercut the american worker.
Because the chinese were
Willing to work for less pay
Or in more perilous conditions.
And economic anxiety combined with
Racism, xenophobic began to grow.
- In the 19th century, race is still
The primary factor in determining
Whether a group can become american.
And chinese immigrants are outside of the community of
We the people.
And so the slogan, the chinese must go!,
Becomes part of the labor movement
Relating to the danger of simply
Their presence in the united states.
- In the spring of 1882, these forces
That had been coalescing against chinese laborers
Come to a head with a bill called the chines exclusion act.
- This is the first important immigration
Restriction measure in american history.
- It allows the exclusion of chinese labors for 20 years.
And its the first time in federal history
That the united states has singled out
An entire population for exclusion
And it passes the senate with an overwhelming majority.
- The bill is placed on arthur's desk for his signature,
By a republican controlled congress.
With the full expectation that a republican president,
Arthur, will sign off on this bill.
- Arthur's aware of the really intense
Anti-chinese sentiment.
So, arthur says look these people were brought here
To build the railroads and they did.
And we've all benefited from it,
And this bill ignores that contradiction.
And if we exclude chinese labor, we're also excluding the
Trade and commerce of the orient,
And all of that exist in his mind as he contemplates
What am I gonna do with this bill?
And to the astonishment of just about everybody,
He vetoes it.
- President chester arthur's view is
That it was inconsistent with the economic interest
And the diplomatic and friendship interests
That the united states government had.
- And it did violate his sense of what was right.
But decency, honor and political power,
Don't often sit at the same lunch table.
And chet arthur is not a man
Who defines himself by principles.
He recognizes there is a high level of support
For this bill.
And so he sends the bill back
Suggesting that the problem isn't entirely,
That there's going to be an exclusion
Of chinese immigration but that a 20 year period
Is too long an exclusion time.
And the republicans re-craft the bill, largely the same
But with a 10 year exclusion period.
And this time, arthur decides to sign it.
About 40,000 chinese immigrants
Came in 1882, before the exclusion act was passed.
By 1885, its a drastic drop.
- Eventually chinese exclusion becomes asian exclusion.
Its really not until the mid 20th century,
That immigrants from asia are permitted back
Into the united states in large numbers.
In the debates over chinese immigration,
You find many of the same sort of arguments
And political dynamics that characterize
Our immigration debate today.
There is a consistent theme of scapegoating immigrants.
When there are pressure, such as a economic depression.
- What the president says
The rhetoric that they choose in describing
Whether immigration is a good thing for the country
Or a threat to the country, really has so much weight.
Because of the power of that office
And the ways in which that office
Is suppose to reflect our ideals, our better selves.
As well as the nation that we want to be in the future.
- The struggles faced by formerly enslaved people
And new immigrants,
Reflect how much resistance that's always been
To broadening the definition of we the people.
That resistance was especially fierce
Against native americans.
Who face depression from the earliest days
Of european colonization.
By the 1880's, native americans had endured
A succession of wars, forced removal, resettlement's
And near extermination.
Then in 1890, president benjamin harrison
Would extend that long line of suffering.
- Benjamin harrison was the grandson
Of one of the most famous indian fighters
In history, william henry harrison.
And of course someone who preceded him
Into the presidency.
At the time congress is almost evenly divided
Between democrats and republicans.
And so harrison and the republicans in the senate,
Are clinging to power by their fingernails.
And the republican party hits upon a masterstroke
For keeping control of the senate and that was
To admit new states.
Each of which would have two senators.
The idea was that these states will be populated
By republicans, they'll elect republicans senators
And we'll have permanent majority.
- The first four territories to gain statehood
Under benjamin harrison,
Were north and south dakota, montana and washington.
But this process of statehood
Lead to disposition of native people
And the destruction of native homes.
- The great sioux reservation is split up
Into a number of smaller reservations.
Native people lose something like 11 million acres
Of their land.
- That's about half of the land that they held at the time.
(native american chanting)
- And so out of the, this desperation comes
A spiritual movement called, the ghost dance.
Its a prophecy where the ancestors have come back,
The buffalo have come back
And the white people have disappeared.
- White authorities came to see the ghost dance,
As the basis for an uprising
Which they were sure was coming.
- Members of the military are riding to washington,
Talking about the ghost dance in really extreme ways.
Harrison felt some fear about when people were telling him
And he wanted to avoid a crisis,
He wanted to be perceived as strong
And so harrison sent approximately 5,000 troops
To the region.
A quarter of the standing army.
- Towards the end of December the 7th calvary
Surrounds a group of lakota at a place called wounded knee.
- The army was demanding that all indians stop ghost dancing
And moved where they can be watched by the army.
And the 7th calvary leadership demand
That they turn over all of their guns.
So, they hand over some number of guns,
And the army is not satisfied so they decide
They're gonna do a search of the entire camp.
One of the soldiers grabs a young man,
Whose got one of these guns.
- And then someone starts doing the ghost dance,
And the ghost dancer throws some dust up in the air
And a gun goes off.
- The commander of the 7th calvary looks at his troops,
And says, "fire."
- And then the massacre begins.
By the time the guns stop firing and the cannons are done
There are several hundred lakota people,
You know men, women, children, elders,
Who are dead.
- Harrison is at the center of this chain of decisions,
That results in this catastrophic atrocity.
- But even this did not outweigh
What harrison considered his primary responsibility,
Which was to protect the settlers.
Those were the people that he imagined as the we
Of we the people.
And the victims of the massacre
Were to harrison still them.
So he awarded 20 medals of honor
To participants in the massacre.
- One of the most powerful things a president could do
Would be to have native issues
Actually seen and heard and recognized.
Native people has never been part of the conversation
Of what it means to be american.
They've always been seen as an obstacle,
Something that's in the way of american progress.
- At the turn of the 20th century,
As many groups continue to fight for full citizenship rights
American women remained excluded from the right to vote.
Woodrow wilson takes office in 1913,
The suffragist movement has reached a boiling point.
But on the federal level and the white house in particular
There has only been silence about women's voting rights.
What will it take for president woodrow wilson
To break that silence?
- Woodrow wilson arrives in washington in March of 1913
For his inauguration and expects to greeted by the press
And thousands of people welcoming him
To the nations capital.
And when he steps off the train under the platform,
He's alone.
- And he says where are the crowds?
And he's told that there down on pennsylvania avenue,
Where a massive suffrage procession is being held.
- Wilson probably felt quite upstaged.
This is the first national suffrage parade,
This was a really monumental moment.
- It was thousands of women who marched to illustrate
To the incoming wilson administration
That suffrages were numerous and disciplined
And determined to have the vote.
- Woodrow wilson was not a tremendous enthusiast
Of equal rights for women.
He tended to view women as having, if not lesser
Than different intelligence then men.
When he was a university professor he said that he feared
That teaching women was atrophying his mental muscles.
- Wilson was a democratic president
And the democrats were beholden
To conservative interest in the south.
Wilson himself have been born in virginia,
He grew up in georgia.
- And because of woodrow wilson's upbringing
And his leadership of the democratic party,
We the people had a much narrower focus.
We the people, did not include rights for people of color
Or for women, including the right to vote.
- Many white southerners dreaded the prospect
Of any kind of federal legislation to deal
With the right to vote.
Because any involvement would potentially infringe upon
The disfranchising of black people that was a hallmark
Of government in southern states.
- But by the time woodrow wilson starts
His second term as president,
Popular opinion is turning in favor of women's voting rights
Across the country.
- 15 states had enfranchised women.
- And yet, he still not interested advocating
For a federal suffrage amendment.
- So the suffragist shifts their strategy
And they start engaging in civil disobedience.
They're the first activist to picket the white house.
Wilson hates the fact that every time
He goes out of the white house he sees these women.
But then there is another wing of the suffrage movement,
Working from the inside.
- These women are society ladies
Who are lobbying behind the scenes,
They are feeding wilson arguments of how to support
Women's voting rights in a way
That will appeal to the public.
They really emphasize that women
Would be even better mothers and wives
If they had the right to vote.
And it felt like someone like wilson
Likes a less aggressive, less militant,
More conservative way of advocating
For women's voting rights.
But as he sees more and more of these women
In his social circles, that pressure increases.
- And then along comes the world war.
And takes front and center of american politics.
- Dirty little secret of war is that its good for women.
- They are an essential part of the war effort.
And so the war provided a nationalization
Of perceived responsibilities of the government.
- And wilson realize
That he would really be behind the times
If he did not eventually support women's suffrage.
- So at the end of September 1918,
Wilson goes before the senate
Asking for support for suffrage.
He says we have asked so much of women during the war,
To support the war, to take over the role of men,
How can we deny them equality when the war is over?
- Despite president wilson's support
For women's voting rights in 1918,
The vote actually fails.
- And it takes another year and a half,
For the united states senate to vote 2/3 in favor
Of a constitutional amendment.
But by 1920, the senate passes the 19th amendment.
And wilson begins claiming that it was
One of the great victory's of his administration.
- He sees this as a tangible piece of progress
And that does reflect a political shift
And a personal shift.
- President's are complex and they don't always lead
With the kind of moral courage that we would envision
And want from them.
Yet sometimes with the right pressure from the people,
They come about and do the right thing.
- Presidential records can be complex.
President franklin roosevelt is justly remembered
As a savior of democracy at home and around the world.
But after pearl harbor,
The same champion of freedom,
Also made the decision
To incarcerate japanese americans in interment camps.
His complicated legacy
Is one that reflects the broader struggle to figure out
Who exactly we the people are?
- After pear harbor,
The american government and the american people
Were concerned about the safety of our nation.
And would there be more attacks by japan?
- There is an enormous public pressure
Coming especially from the west coast
And from within the military
Arguing that it is unsafe
To allow japanese americans
To reside up and down the pacific coast
That they are too close
To militarily sensitive areas and that the risk is too great.
- [announcer] up and down the west coast,
The slogan of the day is, watch those japs.
- Fdr was always very sensitive to public opinion.
That was his genius as a politician and
He took very seriously the growing hysteria.
He as well as the country were in the throes
Of a great deal of uncertainty and a great deal of fear.
Roosevelt was trying to do whatever he could
To protect the country in time of war.
- Department of justice, leaders argue
Incarcerating an entire population
Based on race is unamerican,
It will infringe on their civil liberties
This is not what we want to do.
- But ultimately the buck has to stop somewhere
And it stops in the oval office.
- On February 19, 1942,
Fdr signs executive order 9066.
It grants the military full control over deciding
Which groups might be a national security risk.
And grants them the power to then relocate them,
And incarcerate them.
- [announcer] japs evacuate
Vital west coast areas
For the national security.
- Nearly 120,000 individuals of japanese ancestry,
2/3 whom were american citizens by birth,
Were forcibly excluded from the west coast
And incarcerated in camps
Across the continental united states.
- Yup, it was a few weeks after my 5th birthday,
And suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway.
They carried rifles with shiny bayonets on them.
They stomped up the front porch and with their fist,
Began pounding on the door.
The whole house trembled
And literally at gun point, we were ordered out of our home.
That morning is seared into my memory,
I will never forget the terror of that morning.
And we were innocent american citizens.
- Japanese americans lost their homes,
They lost their businesses, they lost their communities.
But most of all what was lost was a sense of place
At the american table of citizenship.
Were we american citizens or were we not?
This cut to the very core of how the community
And japanese americans saw themselves.
- There are 10 war relocation authority camps
Throughout the united states.
- The camps were located in the most desolate
God forbidden areas you can imagine.
In the middle of deserts, in the middle of swamp lands,
In the middle of nowhere.
- We were in a united states concentration camp.
The sentry towers had machine guns pointed toward us.
And the perimeter was guarded by 6 tanks.
Tanks! Those expensive equipment of war,
Belong on a battlefield.
Not there to intimidate innocent american citizens.
- President franklin roosevelt stated,
"we have nothing to fear but fear itself."
And in this decision he succumbed to the fear
That many americans had,
Of who the japanese in american were.
And through an executive order,
He was able to violate the constitutional rights
Of these americans.
And then in 1943, the army realizing
That it needs more men to go and fight,
Put out a call to have young japanese americans
Volunteer to fight for liberty and justice across the globe.
- President roosevelt made a speech saying,
"every american citizen has the right
And obligation to defend the united states of america."
This, after they imprisoned us.
We have the right to fight for our country,
It was the height of hypocrisy and irrationality.
Why should we do that?
- [clinton] the words, we the people,
Never carried more weight than when civil liberties
Are on the line.
Japanese americans are now asked to prove their loyalty,
By taking up arms and fighting for the country
That stripped them of their liberty, their property
And their rights.
- It was not a forgone conclusion that we
Would win the war.
And so many young japanese american men knew,
Right or wrong,
That loyalty needed to be demonstrated in blood.
How else do we demonstrate that we are american?
And so 1,256 signed up
On that first day.
- And they were taken from those barbed wire fences,
Put into a segregated all japanese american unit
And sent to the battlefields of europe,
Where they were used like cannon fodder.
The 442nd regiment of combat team
Sustained the highest combat casualty rate
Of any other unit and were the single most decorated
Unit of the entire war.
- They upheld america's promise.
The promise that in our nation
No one is to judged by the color of their skin,
The nation of their origin,
Or the god who they choose to worship.
And these young men and women embodied that.
They were fighting for their nation,
The united states of america.
But they were also fighting for equality back home.
- In 1944, there's a supreme court case,
The mitsuye endo case and the supreme court rules
That it is unconstitutional for the u.S. Government
To incarcerate a japanese american,
Who can show their loyalty to the country.
And roosevelt knows that this ruling
Is going to happen within days.
So within days of that anticipated
Supreme court decision,
President roosevelt formally rescinds the original order.
And eventually the camps close.
- The country is still hostile, we're are being let go of
The most notorious internment camp.
We were terrified, we got a one way ticket
To anywhere in the united states and $25 each.
$25 to start life anew.
- The internment of americans of japanese descent,
Was franklin roosevelt's greatest concession
To the politics of fear.
It was racially motivated, it was reactionary
And it is a blemish on what is a remarkable record
As a leader of democracy at home
And a defender of democracies abroad.
- Our history of japanese incarceration is on the one hand
A continuation of our history of racism
And also unequal rights.
But it is also a reminder of how important it is
That we hold true to those ideals and values
During times of crisis
Like war, like economic depression,
Like a global pandemic.
- My father said, we are imperfect human beings.
Our democracy is imperfect
Because the people,
We the people, are imperfect.
And great presidents too,
Are not exempted from fallibility.
We the people, we have to give those words meaning.
Infuse them with truth,
By what we the people do.
Otherwise they're just words.
It is a participatory democracy
And we have to be in there participating.
- Over the past two and half centuries,
A more inclusive definition of we the people,
Has emerged in fits and starts.
Progressive movements expand rights and opportunities
And in response reactions to them
Claw back whatever they can of those gains.
And even when we move closer to fulfilling
Our highest aspirations,
Its not always been with this much virtue
As we like to tell ourselves.
But on the whole, we've been stumbling
In the right direction.
We've come a long way since we started.
When we the people, meant white, male property owners.
But everyday, the headlines remind us just how far
We still have to go.
If we all do our part
To continue the hard work of democracy,
One day we can build a country where all of us
On equal terms will be at home.
(solemn music)