I a a professor at Boston College and i thrilled to be re at the National Book festival this year although of course im n in washington im here on the coast of maine sitting in front of all the books i used to write the books i write in the space where i produce things. I am thrilled to be here talking about how the south won the civil war, democracy and the continuing fight for the soul of america, i did n come up with but somebody listen tohat i was trying to worry about and sa this is only possible title you can have, theeason she said that was because the book has really started as an attempt tonderstand the Republican Party is so clearly tied to the image of the american confederacy, how did Confederate States of america which lost in the civil war become such a powerful symbol for todays Major Political parties, it is a funny questn if you think about it. The more i got into figuring out y that was the case, why republicans were interested in waiving confederate flags and protecting confederate statues. What i figured out,merican democracy has within it a fundamental contradiction and that is the founders who came up with the idea that all men are eated equal, in fact of a human being being enslaved afcan, being enslaved Indigenous People and they considered women a lessereing altogether, here was the concept american equality and also the concept of american inequality in that contradicti contradiction, tha paradox has driven our politics ever since becaus what that did, gave to oligarchs the languageo undermine democracy. The way it works with this, oligarchs have been able since a beginning to convince voters, whit male voters, the people who are cated equal from the start, anytime the people of color or women begin to approach her quality with american paradox what it would mean for women o people of color to get equality with inequity for the white men who had initially been the on included in the idea that all men are creed equal. With that to the First American paradox, we have whin ourselves within this country a fundamental weakness of american democracy. The book takes the central idea and plays it outhrough American History how in the 1850s extremely wealthy and slavers in the American South managed to use it to the american paradox fst to garner enough power to control the American South and then to take over the federal government and it seed like during the civil war the ideology of the south, the idea that really american democrac should be an oligarchy based in hierarchy me to the American West and in the American West the americans to move after the civil war discovered the ideology for very nicely in the west in that. Because the economy that was not unlike that of the American South and extraction wch calls for a small group of wlthy men and a lot of workers who were fairly interchangeable and that ideology got a second life in the american way and then over time because o the peculiarity of the american political system he took over the american politi, move from the arican west back across the american continent, the making government and took back ove our society. Th by 1819 so by 1964 when rry goldwater who built the western cowy is being nominated for the Republican National convention, the state that puts them over the top and that convention is South Carolina, the birthrates of american confederacy. Likell of my books, this book begans what i thought was a small idea, that was the question, trying to explain how todas Republican Party became attached to the confederacy which is really counterintuitive if you thi about it. The confederates were people trying to destroy america it was a rebellion ainst the United States government. Whys it that the 21st Century America Political Party has identified with that particular movement one thing fastening and about the materia that i covered in this book is the way it looks at the American West, many people think of the American West and they think of it as a ld of freedom, the land where anybody can bome prosperous and controlled, usually his destiny. What is interesting about the material in this book is adjusted the opposite was true, the image was a deliberate attempt justify a hierarch role society to put whiteman o top, these were symbolized by e american cowbo the guy who had his wife or women in the west but who ran their lives in a way that they insisted with independence but really depende on federal assistance in the way of life that deliberately setting graded people ofolor and put women to positions of being wives or somehow read out of acceptable ameran society. In realizing we are telling t story of the American West wrong popular mythology really emphases how important it is to keep reexamining our history in part because we get new sources but also in part because we changes people and as a countrynd the stories that we tell matter for how weefine ourselves. One of the things that jumps out at me as the book develops, once the idea that when people talk about the history of mexican americansr chineseamerican people or women, they somehow see that as being separate in history, in fact wha you realized when you look at the laer picture of america and what happened in the American West and how the rebirth or rejuvenation of the idea of american hierarchy in the American West after the civil r really reinstated the idea that a few good whiten should rule the country, what you do when you recognize that is rebuilt in the American West in the ideology has regained strength is a recognition that there is no separation, there is no separation between indigenous history and arican political history and womens history, these are all important pieces of our National Story and until we recognize the builtin to her story is a weakness that equality cannot depend on inequality because it alway gives oligarchs the ability to undermine democracy, went to realize that, you recognize the acquisition of equality for all before the law inequality to resource is not simply an issue of importance to an Indigenous Community but an empty issue of all of us to enable us to protect our democracy. For all of American Defense equality, the idea of a hierarchy with a few good educated wellconnected wealthy men should run the lines of everybody else never went away, that was a way that the world had been organized in the west for a very long time, the quality which is really radical, every individual should have the right of selfdetermination is what makes america a radical arrival on the international and 1776, the idea that some people should control everybody else has always been part of the American Team and the question is how did those people who believe that managed to get voters to believe in equality to sign on to the program in a way that they do that in the american paradox. It is important to remember that the reason that the oligarchs had the ability to leverage that language is because there is a good side to all of this as well, voters want to defend american equality and they do care about selfdetermination and care about the American Dream and that is susceptible to their manipulation by people who are using that and using them to reinforce their own power, that is going to be the challenge for america going forward, how do you keep the incredible power with the human selfdetermination in the idea that people should be able to have access to the resources in the equality before the law that they need to make their dreams come alive and make the newest entrepreneurs, the heavy ingenuity to do new and exciting things. At the same time, not leaving them vulnerable to the idea if they open up the great American Dream for people of color in for women they have somehow destroyed it for themselves, those two things are not incompatible but our history and the language that can be deployed to defend t history has made us vulnerable and its important u for uso recognize that. In the early 19thentury slaveowners bega to believe they were better than other people, you can see that in the way the talk about their enslaved people who are really doing the work in its building their society as a way they begin toenigrate those people in increasingly turned them into another that is not on the same planes the people that they consider humans and it a really clear construction of the dehumanizati of enslaved americans in the early 19th century but on the other hand they begano talk about themselves as somehow better the idea that pple are Running Society are better than the people who are actually doing the work in a sense of which society is spiraling, ministers begin to talk about how good that enslave a star in novels begin to talk about these patriarch, of the society in which they are in fac enslaving other human bngs and especially because theyre large in the south they begin to believe that they are better than other people and by 1858 there is a famous speh given in congress by james hry, the senator from South Carolina and here a speech in which he says we really think about how the world should work, a needs to be run by a few smart well educat people, the best people, we are really the os who know who how the economy works, look at how much money we have the rest of the room, most people are hard workers and loyal but they really dontant very much in they cant figure out how to make their lives work without us taking care of them, they are literally pieces of wood that a driven into the mud to support the building, whats above it, most people are down there in the mud and were the ones at the top to really understand what civilization is like, those people at the bottom needo produce a lot and that money we really need to go ahead and concentrate in the upper stories if you will in the grand society were building because were the ones understand what fine art is, were hanging fine art on the wall, we understand good food and have things in the 1850s by this exotic stuff called olive oil, we understand education and we have important connections and we are concentrating the power of the economy and ourselves in moving Society Forward and its very important that we never let those people at the bottom have any kind of political clout because if we do they will vote in favor of distributing the wealth that they in fact have earned and when that happens we will not have the money we need to keep moving that forward. You see this dramatically in the Alexander Stephens who will be the Vice President of the confederacy spend the idea of succeeding from the United States in the country, we are going to revive that stupid idea within the decration of independence all men are created equal, of course are not created equal, we will create a socie that doesnt write improves that we shoulde on top of everybody else and we should spread the idea around the world and create a new world in which very few of us will move the social ball forward and create a new prospero world. Abraham lincoln lisns to this and he comes from essentially the mockale, his father is barely making it by the time ey moved from kentucky to indiana and they mov there before they go to illinois, his father is barely making it and he worked at a day labor splitting logs and working the fields and he obviously is a genius and he looked at this and sa i should spend my life like this and he sai no and quite deliberate in 1859 he responds to james henry with hiswn speech before the milwaukee agricultural fair a he says no and h there are some people that the world works bestf you put a few very wealthy people o top of it. There are those of us who believe, that is the theory but there are those of us that we believe the way the world should work is t government to put its resources on the peoplet the bottom because if you give those people access to resources and equal protection before the law they will innovate, they will come up with new ideas and remember Abraham Lincoln as our only president who has a patt who invented him self, you have Constant Movement come fro, peoe thinking of new things and wha theyre going to do is find all sos of new ways to do things and they will create more value that they can possibly consume and theyre going they will support a class above them, the merchant and the small jper doers who will do the exact same thing and they in turn will support a ver small group at the very top of industrialist, we dont need a l of them but they in turn will hire people at the bottom. He says this is the concept of free labor and this is how he defines american democracy and american equaly because he said if you concentrate on the top those people will end up in their own bubble, those are my words notis, they will not innovate, they did not g lazy they dont have to do anything to take in all the wealt that is going to stagnate, if you want to move things forward, put stuff at the bottom, those two different, what democracy means and what equaly means, one thing reflected inmerica before the lincolns articulation of the importance of supporting people at the bottom and people inventing or working hard or changing is to my mind the heart of what american democracy shouldnt be about, its so exciting to be at a festival that actually talks about the importance of American Ingenuity because while lincoln is talking about the ingenuity of literally in his case armor in small inventors, one of the things i was trying to highlight in this book how the south won the civil war was the important of ideas and thinking in new ways and the ability of americans to take an old way of thinking and discard it and able to try something new and Something Better and to think of things and anyway, its one thing that is so exciting about the library of congress and a particular festival, the way that we communicate the new ideas and the way that we change the way we think is through books and writing and to be part of that in this moment in america when were seeing a world that looks like the 1850s did, a world that looks like a time when the very large slaveholders convinced a number of their own poor white voters that the only way for those people to stay in power was to keep people of color in women down to make sure they did not participate in the equality, were sitting at a moment, i think its exactly why todays Republican Party including the president is so defensive of confederate symbols and were looking at a moment that looks very much like that at the 1850s but while in many ways its very frightening its also a time of great new ideas in the chaos that produces new ideas, when Abraham Lincoln was looking at in 1859 he said no thats not what american democracy is about, american democracy is the hard workers, the people at the bottom, the people coming up with new ideas and new inventions and thinking of new ways to approach american democracy into create a new government is of the people, for the people and by the people and were in a moment just like that today and for all that is frightening is also an incredibly exciting time to be participating in american democracy. 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