Three electoral victories in the 1980s. Around the publicsector unions thats why i say what happened is an expression of this larger trend. The one that created sci you said, and i think i quoted in the book quite directly it is the single most powerful force in the united states. He is right and we will have to deal with this into the future. [applause] he is going to be signing books outside. For the cspan audience you can buy these on amazon. Com. [inaudible conversations] the political commentator for npr and abc news recounts the lives of numerous American Revolutionary women from Martha Washington to Dolly Madison. This is about an hour. [applause] so is this cool or what you get out of school and come here to this bookstore which has been on saturday night live, and the president came to this bookstore so this is a very special place and its very special for me to get here so i am very pleased. But i am also pleased to be able to talk to you about this because when i was a kid growing up even well into my time as an adult i would look at all of these stories from history and all these pictures and paintings and all that statute i started to think maybe there were not any then. Do you think there are any around the time of the declaration of independence or the constitution and all that, do you think they were actual women . Probably. I did start to think about it and thought adam and e. , they were winning then although my favorite bumpers wicker is she was framed. [laughter] so of course living here and growing up here i did go to mount vernon all the time, so i did know that there was somebody named Martha Washington, but thats about it. Do you know anything about Martha Washington, go ahead and. But did she do anything herself does anybody know . [inaudible] she cheered up the soldiers at valley forge. That is what i knew about her is that she spent a winter at valley forge with the soldiers. But the revolutionary war was eight years long and she spent every winter with the soldiers and she hated it. She hated having to go because partly it was unpleasant, it was cold, there was no food, it was difficult and also the roads were very treacherous and she had to go over them and the british took people like Martha Washington was the wife o who wf the chief patriot George Washington. They took women like her hostage and put them in prison and some of them were killed. So it was scary for her to go but she went every winter of the war because George Washington wanted her to because she didnt cheer up the troops so much that she hoped to keep them in camps and keep them from deserting the army at times when they had no food and no shelter and no pay. Here she is with the soldiers. But she would come the soldiers loved her. She would come where over the summer be enslaved people have made preserves and cured meats and woven cloth so she would arrive with a carriage full of stuff and they would cheer and that was one of the many contributions that africanamericans made it to the revolutionary what Martha Washington was able to contribute to the soldiers but there was another important thing she did that i never knew about until i was learning about these women and that is smallpox was a terrible disease and would have and as more people were killed in the war by the disease than by weapons. And the americans were in danger of being wiped out by smallpox. So George Washington, the general, wanted the soldiers to take the smallpox inoculation. In those days that was a dangerous thing to do. If you took it and lived you were not likely to get smallpox but you might die from the inoculation itself. Martha washington went and had the smallpox inoculation and so he was able to say to the troops with the girl did it and they then followed suit and they had far fewer cases of smallpox within the british army data, so it was one of the many things that women did during the time period and i kept learning things like this as i learned about these women. Does anybody know anything about the Benjamin Franklins side . There it is. What do we know about the Benjamin Franklin . What else do you know about him . Over here yes. He married someone and had a child, yes. She signed the declaration of independence, he was one of the offers. He went to france. He opened up the first st. Library. Thats true. The fire department, yes. He was a cartoonist and. What i was hoping you might remember is that you usually learn in school he was also the first postmaster general in the colonies and he was in charge of the post office, but you know what, he doesnt hear. He wasnt in the colonies, and he was in england for years and years and years and that left his wife deborah to run the Postal Service and she did a very good job of it and it was a since we were still under the british at that point there was a british lord in charge and he tried to fire one of deborahs workers at the postal system and she got furious and she said you cant fire my people and by the way you are slowing down the postal system. To get out of the way. She was a very astute businesswoman and for Ben Franklins businesses which were eventually printing shops which were like franchises like mcdonalds. They went out to the frontiers which was western pennsylvania and was very grateful to her for being such a good businesswoman. Basically you do wonderful work and she said would you please come home from england . Im lonely here and i would like you to come home. He wouldnt defend some of their friends and neighbors thought he wasnt really fighting hard enough against the stamp act. Does anybody know what the stamp act is . That is one of the things that the americans started to rebel against the british is the stamp act. People in pennsylvania but he should be fighting harder against the stamp act. She said im not going to do that and she got a gun and she got some friends with guns and she defended her house and she said well done, deborah but she still wouldnt come home. And their only daughter got married and he wrote to her and said lets make sure the wedding doesnt cost very much money but he still wouldnt come home and finally, she died. He said i have to come home now because my wife in whose hands i left the care of my affairs has died. So now i will admit that when he got home, he did sign the declaration of independence. There are a lots of reasons to be mad at him but he was there in philadelphia while they were assembling to decide what to do about the british because they were feeling more and more that the british were making it hard to be under them to be their colonists. They said we cant fight the cae british. They are another country we just have to work with them. But meanwhile they already had battles in lexington and concord remember those, the battle of lexington and concord and this happened in 1975 while the men were meeting in philadelphia and there were a couple of women who were staying for heavens sakes what is wrong with you man it is time to declare a independence in the british, and the men were not ready to do that and there was one woman in particular who was writing to them and saying youve got to understand how bad it is here. The british are occupying our churches, they are taking hostages into boston and there was one woman in particular. Has anybody heard of her . I suspected not. She was a very important woman at the time of the revolution because she wrote poems and plays and pamphlets to say how terrible it was with the british. Anand that would be like someboy today going on fox news or msnbc to say how terrible they thought the other Political Party was. Thats the way you did it in those days because there wasnt any tv or radio or internet. So she wrote these letters and poems and got them riled up against the british and she also informed the men meeting in philadelphia about how bad it was and they were energized to understand that they really did have to take on the british and the fact that they were in massachusetts and they were fighting the man into taking some of the men hostage was something very concerning obviously to the man from bost boston. John adams was in philadelphia having a perfectly nice time at the Continental Congress going out to dinner, having a nice life. Meanwhile, his wife abigail is back at massachusetts with four little children and the british are coming and he says to her at one point, and it gets really dangerous to your children and fly to the words. Even with the danger she was very interested in politics, and she kept saying to him you have to declare our independence from britain. When it looked like they were about to do that, she wrote to john and said well very good. You should remember the ladies and she said every man would be a tyrant if he could. And sean laughed at her and ignored her. But remember they have come down to be very famous words in american history. The situation was that women not only could vote, but married women couldnt even own property. The earrings that they were burying the longed to her husband so she was trying to fix the way that they were at the time. So finally, the americans declare independence and they name an army and they put George Washington in charge of the ar army. Im so sorry this is happening i know what is goin it is going ta lot. I have been named the commander of the army and they really didnt want this job. I dont believe him for a second because he went to philadelphia wearing his army uniform. So they were occupied with his little group of militiamen as cambridge right next door. Everybody in boston came to see him and one of the people who came to see him was mercy. They said general washington was accomplished with general lee was also there and said he was judicious but he was marked by ugliness and on politeness. So i dont think she expected us to be reading her mail a couple hundred years later. But how we learn about history is how we read the mail. And if we hav we have the we hae and if we are really lucky we also learned that things people publish. Her name was Phyllis Wheatley. Who knows about Phyllis Wheatley . Goahead. [inaudible] thats exactly right. She was brought from africa in the 1760s, and she came to boston and people dont realize that slavery unfortunately was legal in every colony at that point. And so she was in boston as a slave. We think she was about six, seven, 8yearsold when she got to boston. Can you guess how people know that . She still had her baby teeth. Thats right. And then the family where she was living discovered she was really smart and the teenagers in the family taught her to read in english and the bible and then she was so smart she started learning latin and greek just like you do every day and she started writing poetry and nobody believed that she was actually writing. Nobody heard of a teenage girl writing these problems much less a slave girl and so they tried to get her published and nobody in massachusetts published them so she got letters from a boston to say yes this is Phyllis Wheatley. She did write these problems. She had become an international celebrity. I would like to meet this person. She has been so blessed by the muse and she did get to meet with George Washington. The war was really on and there were lots of the women who went to war in one way or another. Some of them that went to the camp followers because they couldnt afford to stay home when their husbands went to the war there was no way for them to get money, to get food and housing. So they went with their husband is off to the war and they got paid a little bit of money by the army, very little that her r cooking and nursing and for doing chores like watering the canons. They would take over as the most famous case is Margaret Corbin after her husband was killed she took his cannon and she was hit three times before the british finally run. And the retirement pay in the congress because of the work that she had done and she was buried at west point in the military academy because everybody honored her. And of course there were lots of spies. Some of them did things like i will tell you about one, the british were occupied in philadelphia, and they took her house and she said can i stay in my house while youre living here, too so she would listen in on what they were saying and she would write in code and then she would put it on the buttons of the little boys coat and then send him out to go see his big brother in the army and so thats the way they got these messages about what the british were up to. So, she was very useful. But then they did things like ride through the night. And i must say this illustration is exactly the way that i always thought of and they were just wonderful in this book and i am thrilled with them. Theyve done a wonderful job. So emily had a message to take from general greene and she got stopped by the british and they were going to search her but of course they wanted a woman to search her so she was waiting for a woman to search her and she read the message and memorized it and swallowed it. So they couldnt get it from her. And so they couldnt find the message and she was able to go on and instead of being scared and going back home, she went on to general greene and delivered her message. Did you know who one of them is . I bet you do. She dressed up as a man and fought in the revolution. Deborah sampson. You remember now, right clicks well, again, she enlisted as robert, and she was injured several times and kept not only fighting but volunteering for difficult duty and finally she got sick and she ended up in the hospital and the doctor discovered hold on this is a woman. She also did receive full pension benefits from the congress which said she had she was an example of heroism, fidelity and courage. So we have lots of different women who were actually in the battlefield but in the middle of the war, things were not going so well. The french hadnt shown up to help and of the soldiers were threatening to leave the army increased numbers of hydrogen and so there was a woman in philadelphia whose husband was the governor of philadelphia, pennsylvania, who decided that women of the country had to really do something to cheer up the soldiers and her name was esther as she was an english woman who had just come to the country a few years before she had quickly become a great patriot. And when she saw the situation she wrote something that was published in all of the newspapers all over the country called the sentiments of an American Woman and she organized a fund raising drive and had winning go from door to door all around philadelphia but she also contacted all of the other first ladies in the state say we need to have this and they set it up in their states, too and in just a few weeks in 1780 they made 300,000 which was just a huge amount of money and then she wanted to use it to give them Something Special that they wouldnt have otherwise that George Washington kept saying they need sure. But i dont want to give them shirts. Youre supposed to give them shirts. I want to give them something else. How about giving them gold and George Washington said dont give them gold than they will notice they never get gold of the rest of the time. So they fought back and forth and then she died. So George Washington one and the women made shirts and they made 2,000 shirts. But the wa way that they showede men that it was Something Special from women o the women f america for them was that each woman who made a shirt sewed her own name into it so they knew that somebody cared about him especially india boosted morale tremendously and the letters are quite wonderful about how the soldiers responded the women of america were supporting him and it kind of kept them going until the french showed up and so it was a very important. Finally, we one. It took a while. It took eight years, between one. And then there was a country to raise and that wasnt very easy either. A George Washington of course became the first president and first lady and had to figure out how to be the first lady and there were all kind of rules and people figuring out what she should do and should do and it was hard to make it work because you have to be kind of fancy enough so they would think we were imported as a country and not just a bunch of bumpkins to not be kind of a hayseed. [laughter] but it also had to be informal and friendly enough so that people that just fought the king would feel comfortable so she had to figure all of that old ot and she wrote at one point people say that im the finest lady of the land but i think that im the chief state prisoner because it was hard work and a lot of the first ladies have felt that way. But she did it and she had two little kids by the way. She had her grandkids and one of them was a wild crazy thing. But she did make it happen. And then of course that was in new york and in for the bell to you and of course finally, they moved to washington. Abigail adams goes into the white house, which was still under construction and it was so cold. But it took 13 fires to warm it up. But she wasnt there for very long because her husband left and at that point, jeffersons wife was dead and James Madison became the secretary of state and the Dolly Madison came to town. And she understood that even then very early in our history people were fighting with each other just like they do today. It was the republicans federalists were at each others throats and she figured that this fragile country might fall apart so she made everybody come together and get together and have parties together and behave. And she was very well aware of what she was doing and it did bring a lot of people who otherwise would be arguing with each other, they would come and have drinks at her house and talk to each other and make thee vocal compromises, and at one point henry clay who was a very important member of congress at the time said to her Everybody Loves mrs. Madison. And she said thats becaus becae mrs. Madison loves everybody. Now, i have read her mail and that isnt true. [laughter] but she managed to convince people of it. Of course we had another war with the british under James Madisons administration. The war of 1812. And the british came and did what washington . [inaudible] they let a lot of the city on fire as it was and she saved with . George washingtons portrait. And lots of government papers as well. Here is the burning of washington. And then she escaped. Madison was not with her. She wrote today that it was happening i am still here within the sound of the canon she wouldnt leave until the picture was secure. Her friend was there to get her away and kept saying you have to leave now. Finally the british came in and she had kicked a dinner because she was expecting madison to come back to the cabinet. So they sat down and made her dinner and then she came back a couple days later even though the city was a disaster and started convincing the congress to keep the capital here because they thought of it al if its ad out whats not do that anymore. And she also started with some other women in washington and orphanage for the children who lost their fathers as a result of the war and that is the beginning of something that we see a lot in this perco with history of the women setting up organizations to help poor people and sick people and really working for the society as a whole. And that is why they have been so important not only in this perco throughout the history and its time to put them into pictures. I told you the best complement and the revolution came not from the americans although they kept talking about how important the women were. A George Washington wrote to one of the poets in the revolution and he wrote to her and said you are among the best patriots to win patriots can boast that the best compliment came from the enemy. Do you read about the name of the british commander was in the revolutionary war . Goahead. They destroy all in america that wbutwe would still have all thae can do to defeat the women. I know you are going to love getting to know them and looking at the terrific pictures and now i would be delighted to take your questions. Thank you. I dont have favorites. Im now in my day job and i interview people of the time and they say to me who is the favorite person youve interviewed and theres never an answer to that because people are so different from each other. One i havent talked about whose husband john was the first chief justice and she went with him to spain and france as the ambassador and her letters are so fun to read and funny and smart but i think that she would have been a lot of fun to just get to know. When you were researching about all of these women, how much more did you know going into it . How much did i know going into it . Hardly anything. The reason i got interested in them is because i in my job i have to spend a lot of time learning about the Founding Fathers because they wrote the constitution, and i have to deal with the constitution all the time and so i go back and i read their letters and arguments about things like the right to bear arms or what about the world of religion. I kept thinking about their ti time. I tried to find out things about them in books and discovered there were not any books. It was difficult to do the research because people who didnt think the women were important, so they didnt save their letters in any significant way. So we didnt have writing and that sort of thing. It wasnt easy to do but i loved learning about them and telling things about them. [inaudible] good. What is your name . I dont remember what she got. A George Washington was basically told by the doctors. But i dont remember what she got. I mean, the disease was so prevalent. I mean, thats one of the things that she learned about these womens lives is that it is so sad because sometimes they would lose two children in a week to disease. It was very, very difficult. And it was a good while after George Washington. What was my inspiration to write about . I told you already about doing the Founding Fathers. I was on a first name basis with them and i wanted to know more about their lives. But as you heard when i was being introduced i grew up with my father in congress and then my brother in congress and when i was growing up in how political they were at that time and what work they did in campaigns and voter registrati registration. And working with the African American women in washington to work on all of the social service organizations. So, i saw how influential they were and i wanted to know about the women in the earlier time because this time in our history it is crucial. And so i was very curious about what the women were up to at that time. I probably started the research. I started about 2001 and the book was published in 2004. That came out in 2008 so the total research was almost ten years. Who did the fabulous and wonderful illustrations . They were done by diane good whos a lovely person who got very interested in the research herself and got some oldfashioned quilt patterns and used them and rode with them so she could see how the women experienced the writing because she got so interested not only in what they wrote but how they wrote. This is Abigail Adams sort of disappearing into her words and she thought that their handwriting was so beautiful she wanted to copy it. And then right at the very end before they were ready to go to press, she said to me do you think that we can get all of these womens signatures . I said we can try. So i got in touch with all of the historic societies and universities where there has and speakers were kept and i got every single one of their signatures so that is how they got their names