A history of the United States in 100 objects: 1: The Century Safe

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:31Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place, so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Roman Mars. To mark 250 years since American independence, the BBC has launched a new podcast, A History of the United States in 100 Objects, which you'll be able to hear on the BBC World Service starting in October. For the anniversary, we are bringing you the first episode, The Century Safe.

1:11You can hear more episodes from the series by subscribing to A History of the United States in 100 Objects wherever you get your BBC podcasts. It's 1976. The average annual salary in the U.S. is just over$9 ,000. There is no internet to entertain us, but Jaws is back in theaters, and Afternoon Delight is burning up the charts. Nixon has resigned in disgrace, so now Ford is president. The Vietnam War has finally come to a close. And now an ambivalent country is about to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All of Washington is trying to get hyped. There's going to be fireworks, a huge celebration on the mall.

1:58And in the U.S. Capitol building, in the marbled, beautiful Statuary Hall, there's a big iron safe.

2:09Like a picture, like a Western where they're robbing a train and there's a safe on one of the cars of the railroad train. and it's this big iron monstrous thing, but it's sort of portable. That kind of a safe, like a 19th century safe. This is historian Jill Lepore. The safe, which is known as the century safe, sometimes called the centennial safe, was specially built on the occasion 100 years before, not of the bicentennial, but of the centennial, the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Century Safe was created in 1876 to mark the country's 100th birthday.

2:47The idea was to make a time capsule to fill the safe with objects, things hand-selected to represent the moment they came from. Those meaningful objects were hidden away inside the safe and the doors were sealed. And written on the doors were instructions to the future. It is inscribed upon it the promise that it will be opened by the president of the United States in the crazy futuristic year of 1976. And now that crazy futuristic year had arrived. And President Ford has been coerced by his aides to carve out a few minutes in his schedule to traipse from the White House over to the Capitol building into Statuary Hall, where a fleet of photographers is assembled, awaiting this century-long wait finally coming to an end.

3:48with the opening of an iron and glass door. When the safe was first sealed, there was a record of what had been put inside. But by 1976, after its 100-year journey through time, most people had no idea. And so now they were gathered around with one shared question. What was in there? What objects did those Americans from the past think would really say, this is who we are? These are the things that represent us and our values. I mean, what a daunting task. What a fraught exercise. What objects could anyone possibly pick to tell the story of the country, of our country? What fool would even attempt such a thing?

4:40from 99 % Invisible and BBC studios this is a history of the United States in 100 objects I'm Roman Mars

5:00okay so let's go back 100 years before 1976 when the safe was first being filled which to my understanding was at the World's Fair of 1876. So could you give a sense of what the general mood of 1876 is? Are people really feeling like celebrating the United States? Like what is going on? It is a big commercial hullabaloo to get people to celebrate the United States in 1876. Recall, we're only 11 years from the end of the Civil War, in which three quarters of a million Americans died. We are at the turning point in which reconstruction, the plan for a fully multiracial democracy in the United States for the first time, is just about to be abandoned.

5:51And there is a great spirit of reform in the United States still, especially under the banner of the women's suffrage movement. So there's a lot of political tumult in these years. But there is a tremendous amount that Americans who have an appetite for celebration are very keen to celebrate. It may be surprisingly less about American freedom and liberty and democracy and more about American economic and industrial might and geographic expansion. One in five Americans came to the 1876 World's Fair to see all of that innovation for themselves. In fact, progress had accelerated so much. Life was changing so fast that for the first time, Americans were becoming fascinated with the future.

6:38You would say now, OK, for all of human time, haven't humans always been interested in the future? And I would say no. That is like people like we just live in like, what is the future of work? What is the future of automation? What is the future of AI? What is the future of democracy? Like all of our political debates are about the future. It is like a kind of like Davos to Aspen pipeline of like, we must talk about the future at all time. Nobody thought about the future until the 20th century. So, but there is kind of the beginning of a notion of historical time that is novel in the 19th century.

7:12And people can picture rockets and going to the moon and they're not called robots until the 1920s, but you can kind of, there's a lot about mechanical men. So people begin for the first time really thinking like, if machines keep getting better and faster and bigger and stronger, what will the future look like? And it's in this moment of celebrating the past and thinking about the future that one woman, Anna Deem, a magazine publisher, dreams up the Century Safe. She was a Civil War widow and, you know, was a canny businesswoman. And here was a stunt to get some attention for and sell subscriptions to the magazine and the newspaper.

7:54So she commissioned the building of this elaborate safe, which is kind of cool. It has like engraving all over it and then it promises on it that it's going to be opened by the president of the United States in 1976 on July 4th, which is just cool. It would be would have been like looking at a rocket ship.

8:15So she gets space at the World's Fair to set this thing up and then people interact with it. Like, how do they what is on display? Well, the thing itself, but then you could look at what was already in there and you could pay money to have yourself put in. You could pay to sign your autograph in an autograph book of just anybody. And these chumps did that. It was a clever ruse. Give me a kid. You got a nickel? So she made a little pretty penny.

8:58So, like, if the idea of time capsules is quite new and the idea of, like, thinking about the past is kind of is actually a new concept. Thinking about the future is kind of a new concept. How does she convince people to care about this enough to get floor space on the World's Fair? I think she was a great show business woman. And it did speak to the moment in the sense of it was a clever idea, right? Here we are 100 years from this Declaration of Independence. Why don't we think about where the country will be 100 years from now? After the fair, having done everything she could to drum up excitement, Anna sealed her safe full of objects and entrusted it to Congress.

9:40And it goes down, you know, into the Raiders of the Lost Ark storage facility. So like it really over the course of this hundred years, despite the ornate bigness of the safe itself, it really does get kind of forgotten. Yeah, it's meant to be forgotten for a century. Like what are you going to do? Check on it? Yeah, I guess that's true. What is it? What's the point of seeing what it's looked like since 1929? So the safe sat in the nation's capital as the country changed around it. It sat there as debates about segregation grew from Reconstruction. As the Washington Monument went up, and eventually Lincoln's, as men in uniform filled the streets on the way to World War I, then World War II, it sat, not bothering anyone, through the Great Depression and Wounded Knee, and the Titanic, and the creation of television, and the Korean War, and the March on Washington, and the Stonewall Riots, and men walking on the moon.

10:42Time went on and on and the country changed and changed. And suddenly, it was the 1970s. Yeah, so a newspaper article appears, I think in 1971. There's a lot of newspaper coverage of the bicentennial. And there's a story about, hey, aren't we supposed to be opening up this centennial safe? Because some clever reporter got the idea to go back and see what happened at the centennial. And then they go to the Smithsonian this morning and say, yeah, I think we still have that. but we don't know how to open it. The New York Times runs an article, quote, Smithsonian can't find keys to Centennial safe.

11:17That's right. In the intervening decades, they had lost the key. And then a man in Florida sees the article and realizes he has it. Because Anna Deem didn't have any children. So what happened to the key? And she didn't somehow, for some reason, she didn't get to the Smithsonian. She gave it to her, like, great niece Edith or something. And this guy in Florida was Edith's, I don't know, I have great aunt Emma. Is that OK? Emma, Edith, Gertrude. We could just make up a name that belonged to the Edwardian era, Roman, and we would be covered. It was the guy's great aunt Emma who had gratefully passed on the key.

11:53So the safe could now be opened. And so then there's a whole rigmarole of like, are they going to get it out? Are they going to bring it to the Capitol? and they managed to find it in storage. They bring it to the Capitol. In January of 1976, they have gotten the key from that guy, but maybe it's rusted. They have to hire a locksmith to jimmy the thing. Okay. So we have at least some of the parts here all coming together in 1976. And again, I kind of was hoping if you could sort of characterize the national mood at this moment, as opposed to 1876. I mean, this is the bicentennial. Again, it's really tumultuous time.

12:33Watergate has happened, like a real change in the sense of what people feel about their government. What is the temperature around the country and how is the bicentennial unfolding? Yeah. So we're barely out of the Vietnam War. Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Nixon's resigned. In 74, Ford very controversially pardons him. And for Ford, really throwing himself into the hoopla of the bicentennial is about healing the country from those divisions and those wounds. And he comes to really believe that that is his main task as president. It was also controversial because, you know, the country's vision of itself was not a unitary vision anymore than it was at any other point in American history.

13:21But, you know, there Jesse Jackson called for a boycott of the Bicentennial. Gil Scott Heron wrote this great piece called Bicentennial Blues. There was a lot of kind of like Frederick Douglass vibe resistance to the Bicentennial. There were a lot of protests by Native nations, really effective protests. There were also a lot of powwows, like a lot of public celebrations of Native culture and Native politics. So it kind of had it all, the bicentennial. It is with high honor and deep personal pleasure that I introduce the president of the United States. And so like an effort to grab onto something that we can all rally behind.

14:04Let's get to this opening ceremony where Ford is in his three-piece suit. Obviously, I'm deeply honored to have the opportunity to open this historic centennial space. Ford stands in front of a packed room, cameras flashing, reading his speech from index cards. It contains many items of interest to us today as we celebrate the completion of our second century. And I think it's actually quite a special, I think it's a nice speech, right? I don't know, I guess if you don't like Ford, you're not, I mean, I kind of like Ford. He just kind of runs with the metaphor, right? As we look inside this safe, let us look inside ourselves.

14:46What does the safe contain? It contains our hopes and aspirations as a people. And nothing is more precious than that. America's wealth is not in material objects, but in our great heritage, our freedoms, and our belief in ourselves. Let us look into our hearts. Let us look into our hearts and into our hopes. Thank you very much.

15:16And now let's open the doors.

15:24You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. The CIA has been carrying out covert operations around the world for decades. How has it shaped how people feel about the U.S.? I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redman. And together we host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As part of our series to mark the United States' 250th birthday, we're exploring the CIA's hidden history. Do you think the word of the United States will be trusted in years to come? For more, check out the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

16:04So we're finally at this moment where the safe is going to be opened and we're going to find out what's inside. So Ford finishes his nice little speech. And can you tell us what happens as they start pulling out some of the items? Yeah. So he pulls things out one by one and sort of looks at them. Here is a. And tries to, like, identify it. That's a Tiffany ink stand, I understand. Like, OK, this is an ink stand. It looks a little different than the ones we have, Kyle. There's a room of photographers and reporters who are awaiting, you know, message in a bottle, confessions of Jefferson Davis, an unpublished memoir that explains the abandonment of reconstruction, like all the things that I want to see.

16:53This is a photograph of an early statesman. I don't see his name. But, I mean, really, it's a dud. Lindy, I have a picture of a chairperson. I don't have any indication of her name, but she looks mighty pretty. Like, it's just, they're just nothing, it's just like nothing after nothing. And so he pulls out more things and people just start laughing. I guess the other picture was Mr. M. F. Cooper, electoral commissioner.

17:28they always seem to get their picture in there someplace you have very high expectations for like what could you want to have seen from 1876 and nothing in there is anything that you would ever have wanted anybody to keep on any occasion in the end the safe turned out to have a lot of photographs abraham lincoln was there Ulysses S. Grant. There was one of all the members of the 44th Congress, the one seated in 1876, and one of Anna Deem herself. And then there's the temperance pamphlet. There is this inkstand that supposedly was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's. There was a book with the names of the 80 ,000 people working for the government in 1876.

18:12There was a picture of Anna Deem's family physician. He must have been a fantastic doctor. And a book of autographs from legislators, writers, clergymen, poets, scientists, and anyone who paid to sign it. Like forgotten nobodies, they might have well have been called. Like everyone's just like, oh, okay, yeah, what are we doing tomorrow? I hate to make this announcement, but the bells have rung in the House for a vote to all the House members. It's just like it's a non-event.

18:51So why do you think these objects were so disappointing?

19:02I think they don't cross the valley of time with their significance intact. So what was significant to the people who put them in there was the novelty of photography, the possibility of preservation. I mean it is kind of new to be keeping something preserved. Yeah. And this would have been a very well-preserved set of materials because they're sealed in a glass box. That would have seemed significant to them, the very fact of being able to seal it. You know, embalming was really new in the Civil War because, you know, your son or your brother or your father died far from home. And people could pay to have the body embalmed so that it could be sent by railroad to go home and you could still – it would still be something you could view before burial.

20:03And that form of preservation, preserving the human body long enough for a railroad journey to get home and be seen by loved ones, was a hugely significant thing. Like photography, where you could still see someone who had died. And the century safe is like – has that sense of embalming a moment in time. But it's more fascinated with the very act of preservation than it is with carefully thinking about what's worth preserving. Yeah. It's almost like a monument to the possibility that we could preserve something where like what to put in there was an afterthought. Yeah. So what would have been interesting?

20:51What could she put in there that you as a historian and you particularly as like an archive nut as the type of historian who likes old dusty things to pull out? Like what would you have liked to have seen? Oh, something totally sneaky. First of all, nothing published, nothing that is not handwritten or hand-drawn, like something that is one of a kind that exists nowhere else, that can be found nowhere else, that would be a revelation upon its discovery. Mm-hmm.

21:52pointing everything in the safe must have felt after 100 years of buildup. But I will say, even those objects that seem like they are absolutely worthless when you spend a little bit of time with them, they do take you somewhere. Like the temperance pamphlet. Of course, a handwritten original item would be more profound. But this mass-printed pamphlet represents one of the biggest social movements at the time. One that would ultimately amend the Constitution, not once, but twice. This fight over alcohol that is so far in the past for us was front of mind for them. Or that photograph of the 44th Congress.

22:36It features eight black members, more than ever before. But it was also the last time we would have so many black representatives for almost 100 years? Were they thinking at this moment in 1876 that this progress would continue? Or could they feel the failure of reconstruction on the horizon?

23:00Even that thoroughly unremarkable inkwell that Ford pulled from the safe, it belonged to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the celebrated poet and author of Paul Revere's Ride. He's the reason every American knows the Redcoats are coming. The version of the Revolutionary War most people carry around in their heads came from his pen. But when the safe was filled, he was still deep in mourning from the death of his wife. She was at home with him when her dress caught fire, and when Longfellow tried to smother the flames, he suffered severe burns to his face. From then on, he wore a long beard to hide his scars.

23:41He was never the same. One writer said his poems about mourning effectively turned him into the nation's grief counselor. And the only reason I know all this is because that inkwell was in the century safe. So I understand the disappointment of Joe Lepore and President Ford and the entire population of the United States in 1976. But I do think that in all these objects, in any American object, you can find America.

24:23The reason why I want to talk to you about this, about the Century Safe, is because we're embarking on this series called A History of the U.S. in 100 Objects. And so we're kind of picking things out, you know, to represent the United States. And I was just wondering, like, should we even be trying to do this? Like, do you have some advice? I don't know. Why not? I say go. I say I'm glad you're doing it. You will have fun. And I think that it is important to recognize that much like the present, the past is largely a chronicle of misery. I mean, people suffer. And the people who suffer the most leave the least evidence behind.

25:10And so any history that begins with what survives has a real challenge to arriving at any proper perspective on the human condition. I think of that as the asymmetry of the historical record, right? The people who were wealthiest and most literate and had the greatest resources not only made a lot of records, they managed to have their records preserved. and everyone else disappears and just vanishes. Their remains are gone. And I think it puts a special obligation in anyone who's trying to write history or tell a story about the past to be attentive, to not give up in the face of the asymmetry and to try to repair the historical record by finding other kinds of evidence, the evidence that does survive, that makes sure that we understand the lives both of the powerful and the powerless.

26:11But I wouldn't fall into the notion that it is, that you're assembling an exquisite and representative archive. We are not making an official archive. It probably won't be exquisite. But we are going to tell our story, the story of the United States through objects. 100 objects, to be exact. We are going to try to look beyond the official record, outside of the things we've already thought to preserve and put behind museum glass. Instead, we're going to talk to historians and writers and storytellers and just normal people about discarded objects and small personal keepsakes and all kinds of things that are so common we don't think about how important they really are.