Portion and it will get passed around if you raise your hand as you can see we are recording this evening. Copies of the book are available at the register if you would like to purchase one copy or many copies. We encourage many. There will be a signing after the qanda so if you would like to get your book signed, please sign up in an orderly fashion in this cabinet this is the word im looking for. It is now my pleasure to introduce author of you never forget your first a biography of George Washington. Following the award murder in memphis soon to be a major motion picture. With a look of George Washington that firmly separates man from ththe menfrom the legend, the ho mans land, cohost of our people, too and a consulting producer on the forthcoming History Channel series of George Washington purview as the founders lens drawing on previously unexamined archival material she recounts how he was raised by single mother and thed the stubbornness that caused him to never back down relates the error that caused an International Incident and traces the effect of the failure to face a contradiction of the free nation reliant on the state labor. She will be in conversation with the columnist from the new york times. Please join me in welcoming alexis coe and jamaal politics and prose. Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello, audience. Lets get started. So, what was the genesis of the book because as mentioned, it is about a murder of a young couple and this seems like a very different direction than crime. Im asked this question and im going to go on they seem really different. As a historian, when you are in grad school you study this very narrow time period whichtt i studied literally a year, 1922. But thenar after that my first b was at the New York Public Library and i worked in exhibition and my job was collective memories. You have the Walking Stick it is all over the place. During that time i begin to thinbegan tothink about this whe found as like an example in the book when i was in grad school but i didnt want to be someone who was known as a woman i thought i wanted tenure and you cannot touch was as a woman as a historian or else youre not going to get a job. I thought about it for years and it is so much of the origin and prejudice against samesex love and iai felt like if i knew the story and i didnt make the connections i was somehow complicit in and that is what i felt about washington, too. It would emerge with an understanding of the president hopefully and that never have been a. I had to do something to that bookshelf. It needed something. In the introduction you talk about how these biographies all the bits not just all of them but they have a sort of cast into the beginning you say they grew up going to the historical sites and also what they were kind of responding to in the world of washington biographies. I found that i joked that when they got their book contract before they signed it they have to take a solemn oath and to say i will proceed in the same manner and to say all these things and have the same goals and then i will do with the same way. I didnt take the oath. At first i thought it was sort. Of funny they all say he has to marvel to be real and then they do talk about things we joke about, they are really into spies in a way that seems inappropriate because its funny and they are nice to. I have seen nicer. Its also a double standard and works both ways and i thought that was very strange. There is a defensiveness around washington. There is zero interest in women. I didnt understand we talked about obama and clinton raised by single mothers who struggled. Why arent we talking about washington, and hes the ultimate american story. His motheran was born in indentured servant. That is amazing. So, why dont they talk about that. Nothing made sense to me. At the same time we all know what that little number means can you check the note and if it keeps quoting a secondary source and that keeps happening, you know something is going on. I so that kind of takes us to the proper and its divided into four sections, his early life into his early inct the wage thn the revolution and his death and i found that first part to be so fascinating in part because it is a series about washington and you can talk about that even ask someone that knows a bit about thebi guy. I would love to hear you talk about the reasons for approaching and they would try to weave that into the narrative is but her that here you dont t kind of jumps out at you but its also a very useful way of getting into theso book. So much of this early part of washingtons life as you discuss that it is a consume of people of context as this kind of young virginia shriver. He can feed his horse. Theres a lot of struggle going on. If you block it off you are looked down upon and that was essential to him. The titles are Like Washington and a tv destiny no one is destined to do anything. It takes away a lot of agencies hard work and i want the president ial history because the presidency and especially the person that established the office and that it was built around but everyone pressured into it, its really important that everyone understand, but i think that the biographies are alienating those in the way that they are the visual presentati presentation, the titles into the way that they are written. I really wanted the reader to feel like they had never read a president ial biography. They had everything they needed at the beginning of the book anf the beginning of each section two equip them to feel as though they were the expert and so that was part of it. I did think a lot about my reader and the other part of it is that washington has been called by an Addams Family series editor, president ial editor, they edit the paper called and vanilla ones to my face. [laughter] and i think that is first of all, adams, like you cant compare. They are too much fun. The letters survived. They knew that. But the thing is you can break him out of the mold. He can be fun and interesting but you have to have fun with him which i think is a whole different thing. I organized the material in my head when i was trying to make sure i got things across and then i decided to be vulnerable and share it with everyone. And i do think that there aree certain things that help you understand. I can tell you in a sentence for example at the beginning of the revolution okay we can say what they all do. He lost more battles than he one. So then why are we talking about the battles . He isnt fighting on the frontlines. He is not out there and is a white are we wasting time talking about it and why dont i just told you about the battles but thats whats important to me that you understand them something that is usually just a sentence that gets lost in the paragraph which is that the war went on for a long time. It wasnt quick and we had one general and the british as many generals, and by presenting you with a chart at the beginning of the section and just listen to the listing all these other guys you get it and take that knowledge with you and i just wanted you to have those. And i dont want my readers, this is the longest answer ever i dont want my readers to come i dont expect you to turn around and gave a really long talk about this. I want you to be excited about it and turn around and talk about it like a cocktail party. I will say i read half of the book recently and when i was talking to my wife i was like did you know washington loves dogs and she was like i did not know that and we talked about the dogs. So, to your point, i wanted to talk about these facts. And its important to know dogs. E loved youd have to be a fully formed person to you he would be silly enough to call his dogs suite plus. [laughter] you needat that. Like you imagined that is ridiculous. You also need details around other things. You cant just know how many people he owned and felt a certain way about this. You need to know that he assaulted his slaves and you can just hear that. You need an example of it, so it is giving every detail i can squeeze out of it. Because this book has so much to demystify washington because he was the model for the presidency, but it kind of almost does is demystify the presidency and there is a way in which the book unlike the more traditional biographies that feel like they are really biographies about roman emperors, this is a biography about a presidenofthe president n points hes just someone we chose. And i think its interesting throughout the book you always are sure to emphasize to us not just the people around them, but washington is uncertain and as someone who has gold but also someone that came to mind is danny glover in Lethal Weapon who was too old and doesnt want to do this anymore. We think of them as a monolith like an agreement at all times and that they understood that they were doing. They set out with all the details worked out and i that jt isnt true. She was doing the best tea he c. I found that so revealing. Getting into his head about how he understood himself doing the job. I think that again this humanizes him in the office and it should give us comfort in the messiness in some ways. Is a mean business. Hes always concerned about what he is going to do about the farming is going to feed and house the people he owned and then i wonder if you can talk about his ambivalence, his unwillingness to take the extra step because he appears in virginia he did take that extra step. I also feel like this was something that the biographers would pull over on us. They make it sound as if washington has this beat and i think it is helpful to them because it is hard to revere someone which i think they do which is a bias. Its hard to do that if you cant see him as having a beautiful realization. Washington begins to have not a change ofve heart, but a changef priority. Its not the argument is sometimes a of the black men that fought during the revolution and thats what changed his mind. No, he didnt want that. He was reluctant about it just like his righthand man and if he is a representative of everyone rather than the exception, so what i wanted to do is have th the present becaue it is present in his mind and its as important to him as anything else. It is as close as i could get it and the material is there and its like i wanted to smash it into one biography because i think it can be that way. But i think that the thing is washington, its not and i wish he would havyou would have done. Its understanding why he ultimately did the things needed. He h could have fooled his land. We call them planters which i think is misleading. They are plantation owners which is a reflection for the camp and they were all cash poor but have planned and no one had more land than George Washington because he had gained a lot of land during the french and indian war when he fought for the british which i think that he would have continued to do and it might be uea british subject had they gin him the promotion that they wanted. He was a reluctant rebel, not some idealized we are not talking about thomas paine, so i think that is important to think about the things that hes saying are not quit or not quitt have money, i cant do this. He could have if he really wanted to come if he wanted to be the person that lafayette thought he could have. And they had examples, there were people in virginia who did this have had to leave under address because other slave masters. It was kind of a dick move for martha, he left her in this incredibly vulnerable position. Hee would be responsible for it and its the separating of familiesic forever. If you could refresh the memory, how many were enslaved and throughout . It fluctuated and there were differences. Martha was married before. She had two children in her previous marriage and the estate had over 130 enslaved people. And washington inherited ten enslaved people when he was 11 and that number because he purchased them from the other thing is this biographers would say in enslaved man was sold to him. [laughter] he went to richmond and wherever with the explicit purpose of buying people so that number swelled to 214 by the time he got it. The thing for me reading about washington most were enslaved people, and i think, i live in charlottesville and when i went up there and they talked about it in those terms most people jefferson saw most of the time the people that he enslaved and they radically changes how you think about these men and how they must have thought about themselves because it wasnt a salon every day with, you know, all the others. Buddies. It was from sun up to sun down seeing the people into thinking at some point. I dont know if i have a question, just an observation i find it very spinnaker and there is something very worthwhile in thinking about and intalking about washington was always so impressive to me that he thought about all these new schemes and inventions. To maximize the profit and labor, to make sure that he was a prime and i think that is important because we do think of them as sort of like doing important work overtime. They were messy, they were drama queens and they would. Also cruel. Its important they understand that washington would hang out with his wife and make ends enslaved people rowboats across the potomac and that is what he did on l a sunday. He went to church sometimes but i also want to know that he did that. A big part of the book is washington is the patriarch not just with enslaved people but for the large number of young men and young women some related to the various connections although not so much but still part of the washington household and washington as this keeper of many wars and you say this is something they dont really deal with at all in terms of washingtons life. But it seemed to be a big part of his life in something he was very interested in. They are married to this narrative which is if he has no biological children on our conception of children has really changed over time. It wasnt uncommon to marry a woman with children. That was a good find that she could have more and he wasnt the only founder. Founder. Dolly madison had a child and they were all sort of terrible. A lot of large adult sons in large ways. [laughter] so it was easier if they spend so much time again because the further understanding to talk about why she couldnt have children. Instead why dont we look at the fact that hed was lousy with children. They were always giving him problems and also that is what the archives tell us. He wrote so many letters every single day lecturing, finding a better tutor, giving a lot of unsolicited advice and that was part of his world view that he saw every day and you dont read those letters and think hes not really invested in this. Hes so angry and again, its not like they are just like us but once he lectures his grandson and doesnt say step grandson, what he lectures its like losing his umbrella. The other part ofe that and something that strikes me throughout is not just that washington seems followed like most key at some point becomes hyper aware of his death and almost acting with his legacy in mind how are people going to remember me when im dead, so what should i do now to ensure that those memories are positive. I think that is absolutely true. He was sensitive and untouchable and then in the second four years he was not and he became really angry about that. Hehe surrounded himself and created a cabinet with people who disagreed, hamilton and jefferson leading the pack. He thought okay this will be like a council of the war and i will ask them offer their opinion because he did value other peoples opinions and then i will decide what i want to decide, and he thought he was still a general and that would be fine but it was a disaster. And hed realize the partisanship and he became really aware of how people thought about him when they were not saying nice things all the time. He did think about how can i get control of the situation, and that was not to say that emancipating the people that he enslaved was legacy building that it was certainly a big part of it. We dont want to deny that it had an impact on these peoples lives good and bad because again, they never saw family members ever again. But he was aware of that and what he chose to preserve and what he did and is very telling. He understood that we would probably judge him about slavery and he would have to take care of that and he begins to edit his papers back. There are parts he doesnt touch and those parts are about native american and he is awful. I use words i think should be again when we talk about this we should just say it. He was sort of proud of it, proud to become a town destroyer and that means raising the town. He was proud of telling their way of life was over the white mans way of life is better and why dont they just follow his example and he was saying it in this incredibly paternalistic way. You should figure out your farm. Its the only way of life. And heha thought that that was great. That we would think it was a very positive thing. So, before we go to questions, theres one thing that i think strikes as relevant today. In washingtoand washington as in that when he left office the farewell address he warned them about but as he made mention of earlier, he sort of unavoidably became a partisan figure. One of the most interesting anecdotes someone made a motion in the house to adjourn for a little bit. It was like dancing in the street before that the people said they are not interested in that anymore. So, what do you think not of his life per se but his presidency and the way to the partisanship consume american politics very quickly. What elephants do you think that hase when people seem to have n idea that they could banish those things. Partisanship is inevitable and it doesnt have to be a terrible thing. He was wrong about that but you could just have a unifying figure. Its the job of the president to do a much better job of being a unifying figure and then say what you will about obama, he could control himself and he did in an appropriate manner because at the end of the day h hes serving the entire american whdy, not just the people that voted for him. So, i think that we need to expect more of the leaders, not stability. Thats meaningless in a lot of ways. Say what you mean but also act in a way that served everyone and i think at the end we have more power and its hard and we get frustrated and he was impossible to fix it again washington wasnt a natural revolutionary he got pushed into a corner. We are at the point we have people like mcconnell washington did a sort of warn against that they would get nothing done. They would try to maintain power and so we really need to focus on holding them accountable and that is the best way that we can improve upon the legacy of the founders, not in the least been exactly because that was never the intention. Im going to urge you to ask a question. I can say loudly if i dont think youre asking a question so please, get that sort of at the end and it will make me a very happy person. [laughter] thank you very much. Its a fascinating talk. So, my question is basically you eluted to the aspects especially slaveholding so im curious if you can tell us the most dislikable and if theres anything that talks about the personality. That was three questions. [laughter] i will try to get through them. He could be very cold and you possibly diewh in a french pris. He could, you know, claimed he didnt want to so enslaved people and then he would so what he couldn could and disciplinen he put on ad ship to barbados d he told the captain of the ship this guy is bad news knowing that he might not even make it there so he knew what he was doing. I think that washington did have a great sense of what was right and what was wrong and he did believe in ambition and opportunity and those are fundamental values that apply to a Certain Group of people. And i think that he was a good friend. He could be a good friend. He was very into exceptional people, soli he had been an amazing athlete and that is something we always grasp to describe why him and suddenly we could describe it about someone we see in this room. His charisma. Its the hardest thing to go into detail about and that is his greatest attributes that we can least describe. Im curious how you think of the importance of telling a complicated narrative about a circle figure thinking about it in me to era when we are figuring out what is black and white is right anwhat is right e sense of the gray areas and everything with a kobe bryant and how he was memorialized and telling the story and what you think is important. You might be able to answer in a y contemporary sense of. Fobut for me, for someone Like Washington or jefferson, we cant really allow canceled culture because you cant cancel washington which is why i dont understand that defensiveness. I dont pose a threat to washington. [laughter] he is going to be just fine. So i think the thing is a we have to remember that these poor people and so we see them on their best days and worst days and havin have to allow that toe dybalanced. Someone might kobe bryant, i dont know. Im not a big sports fan, but i think it is sort of the same have to tryu just to look at them on the whole not by the worst thing they ever did were the best thing they ever did and that is difficult when you dont know theow person. I think that washington now as a person that would haunt me. [laughter] that a person that was amazing in a lot of ways and disappointing and its like d that you know. Part of what you have to do is avoid memorializing. Its difficult especially for men Like Washington or jefferson or madison because they were waslved in something that evil and we can communicate that, but i think its important to present not matteroffactly that this is just a part of her life we are trying to understand the relationship to it you can draw your own conclusions but the goal is to understanding and that is a difficult thing to do in all kinds of writing but especially writing about fraud. Interesting about people that get really mad jefferson and his hypocrisy of beautiful words. Its okay to also engage in magical thinking. Jefferson didnt have the clout if he had written these things and acted in a way that was consistent, we probably wouldnt know hisha name, and when i interviewed a few years ago but that isnt true for washington. He could have said the same. Would have made a difference or what we have the war sooner, i dont know the ten k. To becomeo engage in that and keep dealing with a person. And it is a circular thinking but that is sort of how life is a. The first, thank you for coming. I was reading through a bit of the introduction and i was curious to hear how you thought about writing so directly about historians and i was curious about the dynamic itself in choosing to name people and how you decided to do that. I have a graduate degree and i come from this background in which i think of the historiography and how all these things that have been written before or in conversation and what i could possibly learn from that and how i want to enter the conversation, but i am a popular historian which means when i get to chapter one is a narrative and im telling you a story so i needed to be direct in the beginning and such of it quickly into hundreds of years of research and the only way i know how to do that is to give you the best examples i have and to talk about why id felt it was wrong and to do that in this way that again is revealing of my process which is i began to think of them as history and that was the name i gave them and whats funny i put it as a placeholder which was by the way also the title and it was in brackets and then my editor at viking they both took the bracket out and capitalized so i thought okay they are reacting to this and if that is making you understand it and not just the disincentives that as a general approach then we are in it together and it is inviting you into that process and begin that whole section is meant to prepare you to start out in a totally different way because then we start out withtht his mother, his story being told through his mother and its never told that way. Its always his father or someone. We dont know what happened before. It was enviable at times. The last few weeks theres been discussion of what the founders thought about the limits of executive power everything from they were very the tyrant or the ability to do whatever you want. But im curious as a fram a dred also as the first president , the religious perspective on the executives how does that change the role from the dimension . He was always presiding and wasnt always writing those things. He was giving his input and saying how things work this madison and jefferson. It wasnt in that group if you talk to the washington scholars like munro wasnt a big thing. [laughter] there is so much change but the idea that the founders were monolith like this is what we decided and this is how we are Going Forward is total bullshit. They were fighting all the time and that is how we know partisanship happened. So i think that its important to remember that. A healthy amount of fighting is good. It is a conversation. But it is so ridiculous to imagine a country that had fought eight long years to break free of a monarch wanted absolute power. If they wanted that they would have had a king. Theres a romance novel called american royal and it had washington that decided to be a king and its sort of like its interesting its the same publishers who they sent it to me. But we dont have that for a reason so it makes me so upset to hear that. I also think it is as if a piece of our history to present it and when people are being general you just shouldnt trust them. They can see it three times and then you take it away by the toy. I do think it is ridiculous and i also felt it was inappropriate from the white house account that was the envy you have to present yourself as representing all american. Universal obama do this but i dont think w. Had twitter. There was a tweet is said by todays standard the following people would be impeached. Anyone can be impeached. The whole point if you are a president who can be impeached. I think inea other words, the greatest fear is that we fell into decay because we allowed corruption to be rampant. If you can say that they agree on anything that wasnt. Buwas it. That corruption was, they didnt agree on so i think that is the best way to think of it at any time it is presented otherwise you know that they dont know what they are talking about. You mentioned looking at the sources into their biographies. I wonder where you started with your sources and if there was anything you were trying to uncover like what sources you used to find your new perspective. When you research a woman there is little in the archives. You have toy y work hard to fid it. There is an embarrassment and that is why there there is noe offered to generalize about the material there is too much of it. There is something cofounders online but you and your home can google and type in dog for example in sleepless and jefferson asking about it. Theres all kinds of results. Like queen of the sluts, jefferson telling his daughter not to dress like a slut. So it is easy to check these things. And what i did was when something seemed strange Like Washingtons father this is the first time i realized something was wrong he said washingtonss father wanted to tame his mother and he had this desire to do so. There is no end nod note and he didnt feel like he had to get one. I say this in the book. Im plagiarizing myself insane but we accept that and think the shrew needs a taming fair enoug. Like this,er things the story that washington, his mother wrote a letter to the Virginia Assembly during the war and asked for help and that was embarrassing to washington because he is the general. She never wrote the letter. She talked about struggling as people ined their 70s did which is why virginia was giving out pensions to older people and of course they were Like Washingtons mom was here. They were trying to do him a solid but they were thinking how could she do that, how could she embarrass him. She didnt. And not only that sh but she is really struggling and he admits that later. I guess she was telling the truth and he writes to benjamin harrison. Dont get any money its fine. Its fine and then he writes to his mother instead of viewing her as this awful person by dont they say he was being kind of negligence towards his elderly mother. So when it doesnt check out and asking what is another way to look at it it takes me forever to write these things because i have to think about what could have possibly been going on and present three different options and suggest which one i think my forecast. I cant decide between two questions to answer whichever one you prefer. The book is really funny and it says that on the back but its also in serious topics so i was wondering how you maintain that sort of humor playfulness and second, we mentioned in that prologue how your perspective as a woman allows you to read the sources differently than men and i was wondering how you were perspective as someone that has been in the world allows you to present the sources differently than the academic history. People keep calling it funny which is nice. I think the preface and introduction of funny because of these things. I dont think the rest is funny. I think that its i do have a dark humor. I a know that about myself. And i think that if you read my first book you would see that while they are different, they are the same sort of tone to them. But its not so much that i am hiinging this female perspective. I am just one of three women whove done it and compared to hundreds of men, hundreds. And these other two women, one was a conservative writer and the other with a novelist. They were not historians and so that is also Something Else that i am bringing. So it isnt so much about its deviating but i feel like its women and people of color and other people if they took on the president ial biographies that has been left out of the narrative. If they do this double duty and they do all the labor and dont think that they would miss these things either i think it is just the people that diverted these n these biographies on men of a certain age and they dont have curiosities about certain things but there are many men who i know right about the politics who have some curiosity about half the population or they are not obsessed with the burly so i think that theres like a changing of the guard. It was the last 100 years we figured out what it means to be a historian. So that is why it is so important that every generation needs new storytellers and they have to do all this work we have to look at these works and see whats going on. A more dramatic example of this she taught us we dont know what we think we know and it was really obvious. She wasnt the first person to say is that people have done it in sort of the wrong way. They had some sort of a psychological approach or whatever and she did it in the right way and have all the best examples and it was just a really tight delivery. So, if everyone is always improving on each other and i hope that this is not well, ths is the woman, this is the biography written by the women and the ones written by the man, by the men. I hope that this is the beginning. I cant do it all. There are too many president s. [laughter] i think that we have time for one more question. Now everyone is going silent. Said, kind of going off the last point you think we are entering into a new age of history like the new social history where they are like women do exist and we should probably talk about them now its safe to say okay now we should start taking shots at some of these figures that we thought were invaluable before. I hope so. I hope it is an ever evolving thing. Other books wouldnt draw this crowd. And at the same time while there is an interest within, i thought they told me that there were a few hundred people. I thought i was going to get a lot of comments and people were going to beou very offended. They were excited to bring some conflict that is not saying washington was awful, a terrible person and we should study them this. E he did this is very complicated to try to work this out. As a person, wife, mother i hope everyone aspires to be that way, too mac. Thank you so much. [applause] we will have the signing up frontt if you will line up going this way we will get started. Next, pulitzer prizewinning historian Edward Larson on the relationship between George Washington and benjamin franklin. He spoke about franklin and washington the Founding Partnership at the Atlanta History Center. This is one hour and ten minutes. Good evening. Welcome to the Atlanta History Center on this incredible night and i appreciate all of you coming out tonight and braving ithe weather to hear the author talked tonight about edward j. Larson. This is being recorded by cspan, so please be sure to silence your mobile telephone device. We dont want to be embarrassed on nationwide cable. This evening he will discuss both franklin and