Thing specially in fields that are really dominated by the left and i think this is because more conservatives would improve social sciences. Host is there an intimidation factor about teaching sort of things . Guest what do you mean by intimidation factor . Host theres a couple of movements in our current policy, all lives matter, black lives matter, triggers. Guest i think there is. I think its a problem that affect the left more than than the right because liberal professors tend to teach the courses to have subjects that might get them in hot water. Liberal progressives are more likely to teach courses on race, gender and thats largely because a lot of conservative professors teaching courses because theyre dominated by the left and does provide one benefit for conservatives which they tend to teach courses that are less likely to incite those kinds of movements and energies and passions, so theyre somewhat shielded, i think, from those movements. Host have you ever steered away from a potential course . Guest i have not. But certainly some conservative professors we interviewed do steer clear. Host have you ever gotten yourself in trouble for teaching anything . Guest i have not, i have not. Host jon shields, thank you for your time. Thank you. Youre watching book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers, here is a look at prime time schedule for tonight. We kick off the evening with John Strausbaugh at 7 45 p. M. U. S. Lessons that president s learned during first year in office at 9 00 p. M. Nadia lopez discusses work as principal in brooklyn and at 10 00 p. M. Eastern time former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez sits down for book tvs after words tv program and talks about his new book, truth faith and allegiance, time in george bush administration. We wrap up book tv in prime time at 11 00 p. M. , its political cartoonist gary, the use of donald trump as character. That all happens tonight on cspan2s book tv. [inaudible conversations] good evening. Good evening, thank you so much for coming out here to politics and pros. Thank you so much for coming out here to politics and pros to yet one of our enlightened off the talks, you cant hear me, okay. Please let me please silence all your cell phones at this point and also let me just go through a few other housekeeping details. So the author will speak for about 20 minutes, 20 to 25 minutes and we will break into a question and answer period. During this question and answer period, we kindly, kindly request for you to use the microphones over here by the pilar and then just that one. So this talk is being taped for broadcast on cspan and also in addition to recording your questions for prosperity we want you to we want to be able to the audience members other audience members as well as author to hear your questions. Please use the audio. The microphone is over there for the question and answer period. Thank you so much. And also as a reminder, copies of edition are on sale right by the door where you entered. Without further due, city of sedition, the history of new york city during the civil war, a very appropriate book for for revising and reconsidering history. History in regards to the civil war, we have often encountered a very narrow dialectic per speckive of the perspective of the civil war where the adversaries are divided between state holders and the industrialist and the north, but thankfully for the past couple of decades, theres been a movement to basically deconstruct this very faulty lens of looking at history and city of sedition by John Strausbaugh is one of those books that continues to move us in a better direction. It im sorry to take a new yorker to write a book about newark that reveals how complex the city was during the civil war and how, of course, different parts of the city was how the economy of new york city itself was definitely ib twine entwined with the cotton history. John covered downtown history as a writer as editor from 1998 to 2002. He wrote and hosted explore articles and video and podcasts on new york city history. He had also written for the washington post, npr and previous books include reflections on the birth, faith and black like you which is book and, of course, the village. Please welcome John Strausbaugh. [applause] can you hear me . I used to do theater. Can you hear me . I want to thank politics and pros for having us. Its very nice of you and thank you book tv for being here as well. Its entirely appropriate, i think, to come and talk about new york city in the civil war because cities had a highlevel interaction, of course, an effect on each other while washington was the nations capitol, new york city was the capital of every other thing that mattered. It had a huge impact in creating the conditions for the war and also in the conduct of the war. But it was a hugely confused impact as well. New york was both a great boon and bane to lincoln. No city raised more men, money and material for his war or raised more hell against it. Its easy enough to explain its huge influence just starting with its size. It was huge, new york city was huge and at this point, we are talking about just manhattan and not even just manhattan, just the southern part of manhattan. Seventh street and up was pretty lonesome. That was 200,000 more than the nearest biggest city philadelphia. If you had brooklyn which was sen a separate muin cippality but, of course, they made a metropolitan area that was another quarter of a Million People. Dc at that point was i think 75,000 people. New york, a huge thing sitting up there. The center of banking and commerce. There were more banks in new york city than the entire plantation south. Its the center of merchandising, its the biggest Manufacturing Center in the city. We dont think of new york as a factory town but, it was, in fact, a factory town. It had the biggest sea port and the media center. New yorks papers like the tribune and the harold were national papers. They went all around the country. People all around the country read them. Now, i say it was hugely confused because new yorkers were fighting their own civil war amongst themselves at the same time that the largest civil war was building and it was on the north and south conflict within the city and from the south came cotton and after the spread of the cotton gi, in the cotton trade exploded. It was 2 billion pounds by 1860. Cotton represented 60 of what the u. S. Was exporting to the world and it was 40 of what was going out of new yorks harbor so it was a huge deal. The next biggest commodity was, i think, tobacco and it was less than 10 . So cotton threads tied new york and the south together in a long and codependent relationship. The cotton south, the plantation south and new york city grew up together. The explosive growth of the cotton plantations straight across the deep south was largely funded by new york banks because thats where all the bankers, of course, you came for your money. They surprised from everything from piano and new york was where those ships came back to filled with european goods and that made new york important to washington, d. C. Or Washington City as people called it back then. It had a big impact on the federal government because the government, large portions of its revenues from the custom house in new york harbor. There was a period where the entire federal government was coming from the Customs House in new new york city. Now it wasnt just the bankers and the shipping magnets who profited from cotton in new york city, the thousands and thousands of workers were directly or indirectly profiting from cotton. Dock workers but also people in the shops, people who work inned the hotels and gambling houses, lots of southerners and plantation owners will come and treat new york city as their home away from home during summer months. Everybody was in various ways dependent on maintaining the cotton trade which means they saw interest and slavery. New york workers also feared that 4 Million People enslaved in the south, suddenly set free, they would come up and take jobs, 300 free blacks in new york city, the exact opposite was going on. White workers took their jobs them and froze them out of the unions so there wasnt really going to be a problem with fighting for white guys fighting for jobs against black workers. Because of the cotton and long Enormous Economic tied to the cotton south, the majority of new yorkers, not all were prosouth. Its also worth mentioning that new york was a major northern hub of the transatlantic slave trade. Doesnt have impact on the country anymore because slaifs arent being brought in by that point but a Huge International transalantic slave trade and ships out of new york were picking people up in africa and taking them to slaves in cuba and brazil and places like that. Congress had declared this piracy a hanging offense. Everybody turned a blind eye. Open secret that new yorkers were investing in slave ships. If they were caught, the slave ship captains, which didnt happen very often by the way because u. S. Navy was like a dozen ships, the atlantic is pretty big, but if a slave ship captain got caught which didnt happen very often and brought back to new york for trial it was very, very, very rare for him to get convicted. Half of the time, more than half of the time didnt make it to trial and were able to escape out of jail. If they were convicted and sentence today anything, they would be sentenced to two months or four months as oppose to being hung. In fact, in the whole long history of new yorks involvement in the transalantic slave trade, only one slave captain was ever hanged for it because that was he had the bad luck to be caught when linkon was in the white house and the civil war had started so the politics had shifted and they were republicans now running things. He was hanged in the tombs which is the nit notorious jail and the slave trade from new york dried up right like that. [laughter] think should have hung up somebody a whole lot earlier. Thats the lesson there. Thats proslavery in new york. Also on the other side they were fighting war amongst themselves, small and very vocal influential core of abolitionists and the white abolitionists in the new york city tended to be from the north. They were new englanders that came to new york city. Founder and editor of the tribune, one of the two most widely read papers and henry at plymouth church. It was church that asked lincoln to speak in 1860. Hes not even the dark horse. Hes the darkest possible dark horse of candidate. He hasnt announced candidacy yet. The new york newspapers couldnt figure out his name, abram link own. Several went with a. Lincoln. Because of that they got cold feet and didnt they he was able to attract a crowd so they brought him over to manhattan instead of brooklyn and sweeps the venue to cooper union in manhattan. And the speech he made there in february 1860 arguably the most important of his career because it made his career. At the same time he got his picture taken, the famous photo of him standing in his wrinkle coat because he had gotten off the trade leaning on some books. A. Lincoln. Pretty soon he announces candidacy and he gets elected president. Its been said without that speech and without that photograph, its highly unlikely that the Abraham Lincoln we know as the historical figure would have happened. For all of that, even though newark new york state voted against him, they saw lincoln as the man who was going to go to the white house and freed slaves and slaves would come to new york. They never d new york city and brooklyn never elected Abraham Lincoln to nothing. Now, the instant hes elected as you all know the Southern States start to succeed. New yorks Business Leaders panic at that point. 150million is 4. 5 billion today. Theyre very upset. Theyre writing petitions and workers to sign them. Theyre writing their congressman, doing anything they can to stop the south from succeeding. When lincoln passed through the city on the way down to the white house after elected, he got a cold very cold reception that new yorkers gave lincoln and he got a lecture from the mayor, Ferdinand Wood who famously when all the southern Business Partners starting succeeding suggested that new york city should sucede along with them. People took it as a crazy idea then but i look at some of the president ial at least one president ial candidates now [laughter] i wont say his name. You know, maybe we should revive that idea. [laughter] okay. When lincoln gets to the white house hes inundated with Office Seekers which happened audiotape of the all of the time back then. Republicans are in. You need to remember that washington was at the time a very southern town and it was still a slaveowning town until a year after he was elected. And there were many southerners in federal government who quit when he got elected. A lot of them stood in line at his first reception for hours just for the satisfaction of refusing to shake his hand when they got up to him. [laughter] but the job seekers still came and one of the most came from new york. It was herman, years of writing popular Sea Adventures like tae taepi were well behind him. Most recent novels like moby dick had gone unread and unloved by the few people that read them. He was writing poetry which nobody read. So he came to washington hoping for a diplomatic posting. He didnt get it. So, all right, now we are back. For all that they had feared and try to stave off the work, flocked to sign up when the war started in april 1861. Part of that is because at the time they were signing up for three Months Service in the military. A lot of people were convinced that that was all it was going to take, you were going to get a uniform, musk muskett. It was a job, a paycheck. There had been a big depression in 1857. A hundred thousand workers in manhattan that lost their jobs and when the war started more lost their jobs because the trade with the south had suddenly disappeared. They were signing up for the work and they thought it would three months and go home. It didnt work out that way. Carnage in run, volunteers from new york city went [laughter] i bring that up because new york doesnt feature much in Civil War History writing because so much of that writing, i think, because so much of that writing is military history, battlefield writing and the nearest battlefield to new york was gettysburg which was 200 miles away. And yet some remarkable new yorkers played significant roles in the war on the battlefield including one of them that came in losing, one of my favorite characters of the 19th century. Dan was born 1819. Nobody knows for sure. He was mentored by lorenzo deponte, he had been an italy and rival of casanovas, he has to leave europe with creditors on his heels and comes to new york city and his household in the 1830s, nobody was using the term bohemian in 1830s, it may have been the first but certainly one of the first bohemian households in new york city and dan is the young man hanging out there. Dan eats spaghetti there which was a great rarity in new york city in the 1308s. It was still rare enough in the 1910s that people wrote songs about and they eat spaghetti in village. A wild thing to do. [laughter] but i digressed. Sorry. Gets them elected to state legislature and takes to legislature and hes elected to congress and hes down here. Hes down here, when he catches his wife with philip which was the son of Francis Scott key. Theres a hilarious where philip would stand on the street, they lived on Lafayette Square and wave a hanky. One night hes waving and its dan looking through the curtains. Shoots him dead like a dog. It was the biggest murder trial of the century. A lot of people say he got off because his lawyers used what was a very novel defense, the temporary insanity defense. They didnt need any defense. He had a jury of 12 married men so he was going to get off. When the war starts, not much longer after that, dan raises the bragaid. They fought bravely and well and dan who had no military training whatsoever was a very enthusiastic and reckless leader and they loved dan. But then he gets in trouble at gettysburg, the long union line. Dan marchs bregade out in front of the line and they get engulfed by confederates and while the line is scrambling to reform itself behind him a cannon ball shoots dans right leg, chatters dans right leg and the union survived, obviously and and luckily for dan general lee made moves a day later. Dan is in the hospital and amputate right leg and on those days they threw limbs outside. Dan had boxed up and sent to the Army Medical Museum here in dc and you can still see his leg bones to this day, the National Museum of health and medicine and when dan use today come to washington he would always go to visit his leg. [laughter] justice, swabs were recruited by a young friend of lincoln who modeled them on the french, the dashing north african calvary man and so they were wearing the outfits. By the start of the war there was all over both the north, the union and confederate army. They all loved being zoozoos, they were called at the time. Now, okay, the war starts and the u. S. Army is very small and out west and a lot of the officers are southerners and are going to fight for confederacy and scong congress is adjourned and he appeals to all the states to send any troops they can. Among the troops that were the first to arrive here in dc were the fire and instantly made themselves unloved in washington. They were allegedly breaking into shops, raiding brothels and getting drunk in the restaurants. A lot of washingtonians were like, please just go home and a fire breaks out in the hotel and they go rushing and climbing all over and totally redeem themselves in the eyes of washington. [laughter] to route a small rebel force that was there. Elseworth leading them up the street. He rushes in and goes up to the roof, tears the flag down and coming down the stairs folding folding the flag when the owner shows up at the bottom and kills him. He was the first Union Officer to be killed in the war within sight of the white house and lincoln who was said to love him like a little brother openly wept when he got the news. One of my favorite new yorkers to serve during the war wasnt an officer, he wasnt even an adult. His name was gustav sherman. His family had immigrated from germany. His dad was a musician. He taught gus a bunch of instruments, he was 12 years old and shining shoes when the war starts and the father signs up with the mozart bregade. Gus signs up with him. His father gets sick and drops out leaving gus, by that point if you sign up youre signing for three years, hes now in the army for the next three years and he serves on the front lines and every battle up through gettysburg. Hes also the forest gump of the civil war. Hefts he was the onearmed devil. This period is just jammedpack with amazing characters. He got his aurm shot off in the mexican war. A couple days later hes in battle and everybody said, whoa. He kept doing that to the confederates. Whatever. [laughter] so back to gus. When lincoln and his son come to review the troops, tad is the same age as gus, they become pals and hanging around together. Gus spends two weeks with tad in the white house. They go see a play here in dc, theyre invited backstage to meet the star its john wilks who was polite to them. He lienses leans on little gus to get around. Gus is a character. Thats what the book is about. Im getting there. [laughter] the war did, indeed, create just havoc with the economy at first. The water front went silent because theres no cotton to be shipped out. Thousands of people lose the jobs, all the dock workers and Ship Builders and people in restaurants and shops and stuff. But new yorkers being new yorkers they turned it around almost instantly. By the end of the summer, war begins in the spring, by the end of the summer things turn around remarkably, it started when the new york biengs gave a large loan to federal government. These are the same banks that had been funding the south a good 150 years before that. By pumping a lot of money into the war chest right away, in fact, the unpleasantness will end quickly and collect. For new york the federal government turns around and spends that money in new york city. They are buying medical supplies supplies from squid which were in brooklyn at the time. They brought uniforms from brooks brothers. The water front gets busy, the business then replace it had lost of cotton from the south with wool, beef, lumbar from the west. They are looking to the west now. Theres a whole lot of investing on wall street and speculating on wall street and speculating on gold because the price of gold would go up and down during the war. It makes a whole new class of millionaires and multimillionaires in new york city who were called the shoty by the old money. And like new money theyre wearing diamonds and furs and doing the things that new money always does. Newspapers guys are commenting on it at the time. Of course, as always, things were very different for workers. After that initial of signing up and actually seeing war and not signing up for battle anymore, comes the signing of the emancipation proclamation which changed the agenda of the war in their opinion. It had been a war to preserve the union by bringing the south into the union, now it was awar to end slavery which some of them had any interest to go and fight and dying for. They saw slavery as a good thing for them, in their interest, because of that plummeting volunteerism, lincoln is forced to begin inscription. The draft allows a man to buy his way out if his name comes up and they turn to drum and they would pull names out of a drum and one of the newspapers named the wheel of misfortune. If your name got picked out of the wheel of misfortune you can buy your way out of serving for 300. 300 was a working mans annual wages in 1863. So to them it was a rich mans work and a and a poor mans fight and poor men were dying for it. To make things even worse, the wages had been were steady or had even dropped some, but wartime inflation doubled the price of all the staples, loaf of bread, they have a lot of grievances building up among them by the time of the draft. First names are drawn out of the wheel of misfortune by saturday and one historian noted that while the draft was the immediate spark, its really truly better to try to understand it as a city wide workers revolt. They had had it by that point. Its still the deadly rioting in american history. Officially 119 deaths, everybody in new york was convinced it was allow number to keep lid on things. They thought hundreds of people more died and nobody knows, of course, to this day. Afterwards lincoln puts the city of new york under marshall law. 10,000 troops come marching in and the great irony here is at the same time william come up with a system whereby they would pay the 300 for think man whose any new yorker whose name is drawn in the draft who doesnt wanting to. After all that rioting and all those bets, very, very few new yorkers were put in uniform who didnt go voluntarily anyway and offered nothing. But i love that they cranked up this entire bureaucracy in the city of new york, the point of which was to keep men out of lincolns army. Thats new york city at the time. And workers werent the only antiwar class in the city. Several of the citys papers were against the war. Benjamin wood, fernando woods brother. He called for open revolt in this paper against what he termed the hyenas of war. He wrote whats believed to be the antiwar novel published in the north during the war. Lincoln had several of the papers shut down because he decided they were printing extrason and treason. Editor a antiwar paper called freemans journal. He went from opposing link tone treason. 8 conservative filter into the city, their idea was that they were going to get new york city and chicago a like, they were going to burn them down and that was going to be a signal to what they thought were hundreds of thousands of copper heads in the north who would rise up and open revolt and end in war that none of them wanted. When they got to new york, they go straight and meets with him, oh, yes, we have 20,000 copper heads armed and ready, just set the fires and we will rise up. Friday november 25th, they went around hotels and Public Places where there would be going to be people in the city and try today set them alight. Theyre using something called greek fire which was kind of the 19th century, except agreement fire made smoke but didnt burn anything. So it was a momentary panic and then everybody was like, oh, well, nothing is really happening. They fled to canada, one of them was caught, brought back to new york and tried and hanged at forth lafayette which by no coincidence was the title of ben jamins novel. Fort lafayette. One of the hotels they tried to burn down was next door to the theater where the fame edwin and john wilks were on stage that night, november 25th for the first and only time together in their lives doing a performance of julio cesar. John wilks plan was not to assassinate him but kidnap him and hold him for ransom and release of confederate pows so the south can continue the war. He share that had plan with a few new yorkers who didnt bother to tell anybody in power. He also apparently bought rifles from one of them. There was a copperhead that owned a violinshop and seemed to be involved in the conspiracies of this sort. Another new yorker committing treason at that point. Across the street, from broadway , an actress named laura keane was having a big hit of her own. Shes not only a great actress, apparently said she was but she said to be the first woman in the country to be an independent theater producer and built her own theater on broadway. In 1858, she had had a giant hit with our american cousin. In 1865 she one night revival of it here in washington, the lincolns attended and so did john wilks as we know. Doctor who first rushed to lincolns aid, 23yearold new yorker. He had graduated from bellville Hospital Medical center six weeks earlier and was in washington to take a posting as an army surgeon. I could just keep rattling these off forever but lets end this. In the end for all the resisting and complaining andrei yachting and activities, the war was on balance good for new york city. The businessmen seized the opportunities it presented to expand their markets, to diversify, to head out west and after the war, the west wasnt won by cowboys, the west was won by new york money in a lot of ways, the railroads and all that stuff. These guys laid the foundation which set new york city on its course to become the capital of the world in the 20th century which happens to be the topic of my next book so i will shut up now. Thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] [laughter] im not sure that the museum is opened up in the location but it was great fun to go out there and see yeah. Lots of brains and dont they have rover clevelands brain out there . Yeah, ive been there, its a great place. Im from up state new york. Did you talk in the book about the abolitionists in up state new york . Not very much. Theres so much what i love about new york city history and the recent i where so much about it is that its so rich and messy and layered that even if you pick one subject out of it, its hard to squeeze it into a book. Actually this book was longer when i wrote it and made me cut it. So, i do very Little New York state. I almost dont do any brooklyn. I really concentrate of new york city in the book. The politics are reverse, though with back then being the seat of abolition practically in up state new york and more progressive, if you want to use that term. Than new york city, absolutely. Absolutely. It was more it was republican, new york city was democratic and in those republicans were the liberal and democratics were the conservative. Yeah. Thanks. I have two questions. One, how did you go about doing the research for this and the second question is sort of the atmosphere around lincoln and his thinking, in other words, we never get a clear picture of really how the man is thinking during these early years. There is nothing in the constitution that states that people cant if they want to and anything that hasnt been said its supposed to be up to the states, okay, slavery could have been handled differently. In other words, there were other strategies in which to resisted okay, so my point is, the formation of lincoln as he goes into this great commitment in the three months or whatever, where does this come from . Who is he talking to . Where i mean, are the bankers downtown coming down here to speak to him . Is he communicating . But its about winning the war. So people in. A lot of different motives to him. I just go with what was there. Its also over the years its become forgotten. The world is not about slavery. The war was about expanding slavery to all that New Territory in the west and everything from the missouri purchase to california was new. Whether those states were going to go free the slaves was a huge issue. It was a huge issue in the south because of course they would like to have some of those territories become slave states. That would give them more leverage or maintain the leverage they had in congress and in washington. He was a huge issue in the north because abolitionism got bigger and bigger and more importantly because free workers in the north were afraid that if the territory were enslaved they wouldnt be able to get work there because there would be slaves they are doing the work. So what his intentions were i think you can go with what he said when he wrote. He really believe that a union which any part of the union could just say im leaving im out of here was not reality with him. Theres no justification. Im just saying theres nothing in the constitution. Its a historic disaster in the other part about research. Its gotten easier to do research now. You can sit at home. Dogs love the internet. The internet has gotten amazing. They used to be a puddle that there are whole University Libraries and archives digitized an on line now where you can sit home and not have to go to the university of whatever library anymore because they have made their books available to you so i did a lot, the period newspapers and magazines a lot of those have been digitized and of course i read tons and tons of books as you can see from the bibliography. I am not a historian. Im a writer who writes about history so i read tons and tons of stuff. I read as much as i can and then i write a book. Just a very quick question. I always assumed that the british off the west coast of africa did a good job of cutting down the slave trade. Though not perfect to clamp down and made it harder to get slaves out of africa. Sea mate you know the rest of that story though. They werent freeing those people and sending them home. A were taking them to rich towns. They werent enslaving them but they were making them indentured workers so im the one hand the british are patting themselves on the back for ending slavery that they are still taking those people somewhere else and putting them to work in their own calories. There was an economic motive there. They were keeping slaves out of spanish colonies. The british were better at interdicting and they did do a better a much better job. I have the numbers in the book where in one year they would catch 50 and the u. S. Navy caught one that year or Something Like that. Hi. My understanding is the irish are the biggest and at the time and the vatican leaned heavily towards the confederacy. Did you pick up any Church Involvement . There are is tons of it in the book. Irish catholics and the irish and the chairman came in the famines and the political of people starting in the mid1840s. Its just a tsunami in new york today completely changed everything about new york city. By 1860 i dont even remember its like three fourths of the adults in new york city are foreignborn which is driving the native new yorkers absolutely and the natives were protestant. They had this tremendous fear that the pagans as they call them are going to take over and hand over, they were going to end democracy and hand United States the pope. The pope is going to run the vatican so there was a tremendous amount of that. The Churches Church is in a very curious position because they dont want catholicism is such a hotbutton issue they are walking a fine line. What the church basically said in america is that slavery, owning slaves is not a sin if its done somewhere where its legal like all the states in the south. Mistreating them is simple but not owning them and that was the basic catholic right. I just finished a book called underground railroad and i wonder if you had a comment of the blending of fact and fiction i have not read it but of course there are lots of civil war books that blend better historical novels or history books and theres some fiction. I get a little antsy about that myself. I get a little worried about when they mix the two. Im not always clear as to what is going on and you were learning from that by them doing that. You just alluded to this but when talking about the draft riots and all the violence and conflict between the antislavery and confederate etc. What goal does immigration and white ethnicity, the different factions of the partisan catholics irish chairman etc. Play in that. Always seemed to me that even though its often put in overwhelmingly white black racial terms thats the experience of the massive immigration and people that are all of a sudden being drafted and sent to a war played a huge role. Yeah absolutely the irish especially to the chairman have a somewhat different experience but they are the new people. They dont speak english. A lot of the irish didnt speak english either. There were some gaelic speakers. A lot of the irish were peasants , desperately poor drone in the city the dirtiest and most dense craziest urban center in the country so they are at sea and they are set upon by everybody. Tammany hall was in its way good to the irish because they wanted their vote. They wanted to naturalize them and have their votes and there was a point where tammany hall judges would crowd around the bible and put their hands on the bible because they were like the next, next bunch and of course they all voted tammany halls way. I just alluded to it here and i get more into it in the book, its called the draft riots. It was much more complex than that. It was a race riot. It was an economic riot. There were ethnic involvements. It was blamed at the time the republicans and protestants in town said it was the irish. The irish did. It wasnt just the irish. It was the workers and so of course it was very complex and confused, confusing as most of new york city history is. Where their slaves in new york city at this time . Slavery ended in new york city over gradual period but it did in 1827 however southerners could legally bring slaves with them when they came to visit so there were slaves in the city but not local slaves. There were about 12,000 blacks and they were freed blacks. Beyond there being free the situation was not measurably better than being in the south. Not after 1827. One of the reasons they started it was called manumission, freeing the slaves. They started that in 1790 and let it go until 1827 partly to get the others the slave owners enough time to find buyers for their slaves. I should say thats my interpretation of it. Im not sure thats true. Actually i am sure that thats true. [laughter] im trying to imagine the geography of these factions in the city at the time where abolitionist and republicans sort of occupying identifiable neighborhoods. Its a very good question and yes they were. Abolitionism as i said technically this is the wide abolitionist. They tended to be from england. They tended to have some money. They were usually money people so for instance they were in the fifth ward which is the area around Washington Square park in Greenwich Village which was the only board that actually goes to lincoln where republican abolitionist lived. There were others over and what we called the east village now but that neighborhood was a relatively upscale neighborhood at the time. So they were there. There was was obviously invited and mentioned this before probably there was definitely a class divide going on. We have to remember almost everybody in new york city was, they were certainly a low 42nd street and a lot of them were below 23rd street and this is looking at 813,000 people crammed into a really tiny footprint so they were were in each other others hair all the time so you could consider the incoming irish to be tougher in their political leaning. A were definitely with the democrats against the war. They had a very complicated relationship with the blacks in the city partly because they were on the two lowest rungs of the economic ladder so they were living with each other, fighting each other, making love with each other. They really mixed it up a lot and you see that an early minstrel music. Early minstrel music or all of their singing were songs about the plantation south they were really singing about the urban north where they are from and a lot of those guys are irish. Early minstrel music is not really that hateful, hateful. His thick form that it became later. It kind of became that later when it became commercially successful and people were cranking it out and coming up at the worst possible song titles and song ideas that they could. Morally worse but in the early days you can see theres a lovehate relationship between a young irish and the blacks in the neighborhood. They are all together. The riots help to end that. Blacks wisely fled manhattan during and after the riots. The black population the why publishing goes down after that and then goes up at one point. Okay i think we are done. Thank you all very, very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] conservative activists Phyllis Schlafly passed away last week at the age of 92. The founder of the eagle forum she also authored over 25 looks on topics that range from Americas Nuclear strategy during the cold war and the harms of the feminist movement to childcare and education, the supreme court, abortion and religious freedom. Her final book published last week and coauthored with ted martin and. Decker lays out the conservative case for donald trump is president he Phyllis Schlafly has been on booktv several times to talk about her books. Here she is in 2003 on our indepth program discussing the release of her first book, a choice, not an echo. Well you remember kennedy was the assassinated in late november of 63 and i was at that time they present at the Illinois Federation of republican women and i had a whole series of republican speeches scheduled beginning in december. And it just seemed inappropriate to give the standard Antidemocratic Party speech so i worked up in a speech called how political conventions are stolen starting the first week in december of 1963 and then i gave a speech all january and february ended told a story of how the rockefeller establishment had outmaneuvered the conservatives and given the domination to people like thomas dewars. Im mark should i realized i could put it in the book and influence the conviction. It was a whirlwind year. I wrote it on my Royal Standard typewriter at night at home and then of course i selfpublished it. If i ticketed publisher would take them two years to get their act together and we needed it in 64. Thats a little publisher i set up to produce this book and so i sent it off to the printer in march and 25,000 copies arrived in my garage on april the 30th and i typed out a onepage letter that said dear friend, please. This book today and then buy enough copies to send your delegates to the 1964 Republican National convention. And i typed it on my typewriter. I had a mimeograph machine in the basement. I went down the basement and put the stencil on the round thing and ground out 100 letters. I send 100 letters out and one of those letters was red by a friend in california who called up and said i read it, im going to a xerox convention this weekend come united republicans of california and taking 5000 copies. Loaded them up in my Station Wagon and took them to the airport and set them out there that weekend we had statewide distribution in california and the california primary was the first week in
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