Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capital News Today 20130103

To produce more. A limit on the sick classic example. Huge shortfalls before the war begins. By 1942 is reaching critical factors and are wondering why we have all these great restraints on whats been used for civilian manufacturing. The fact was what got reynolds, alcoa and other Companies Online producing and speeding up the process as one war production board official put it in 1944, weve got a limit on coming our ears likewise the steel, critical to War Industries. Its ration supplies with god and of course real solution was the Technological Breakthroughs coming like electric furnaces which would send production skyrocketing is applied not just us, but all allies with it. Webber is another classic. You need rubber for tracks. You need advertisers and other things. Lets try to scrap rubber. Versatile secretary of interior was placed in charge of that effort. Were going to convert all of our tires and so on. Dont make any more new tires. Well convert it all here heard of courses taught files were nowhere near whitby needed. It got to the point where a key suspending people around to pick up rubber mats around the white house to god full text i also wore. What was the solution . Synthetic rubber. A coming together of Chemical Companies and also oil companies, including standard in order to produce synthetic rubber is necessary here for production. They create an entire new industry of wartime necessity by getting Companies Involved in the process. If they had had a sophisticated understanding not just of economics, but also of how American Business works here, all of those wartime rationing controls were probably completely unnecessary and yet for most people as, dissecting their members notice. Rationing of sugar, rationing of coffee, shoes. Yes, christopher holliman, Small Business administration. What changes were there in government policy . You alluded a little at the beginning in terms of the new deal taking a very taken us to view towards business for a while. The undistributed profits tax come which took a very hard to let business. What kinds of concessions to set time knudsen and others that reduction more effective . Amortization was one of one economic historian has said those changes in amortization schedule, which seemed like a minor kind of thing actually did more than anything else to spur wartime production in the prewar period, that crucial 18 months knudsen said would be crucial to it. The other big change was they called out the antitrust stocks. Attorney general thurman who was antitrust crusader had over 300 people on his Justice Department staff. Seems like a drop now, but in that time is a sizable adjustment to investigating antitrust violations. Key industries like, for example, the oil industry, the aluminum industry are under investigation at the very time roosevelt and knudsen are trying to get started and ive been running. They say you cant do this. We cant have these Companies Spending all their time and energy dealing with antitrust suits when we need their cooperation will wartime production. But the dogs get caught up in antitrust. Thats another crucial change that takes place. There were a lot of safeguards built in to protect against evils of capitalism. Theres an excess profits tax that was imposed. There is income tax races across the board and also renegotiation law that Congress Passed in 1843 that allows the government to renegotiate navy and War Departments to renegotiate contracts, where they felt the charges in terms of costs were just exorbitant. That really did have been in one of the reasons was the contract would dissipate sort kosovar materials, materials, but as production takes, the cost go down. So one way for companies, Aircraft Companies in particular to get around an excess profits tax was due voluntarily renegotiate your contract, reduce the numbers of costs in the process. Your profit goes down. Your profit maker down, but it will not be taxed at the excess profit kind of a level. Theres a big battle over Small Business, which you read about in the book. The big contractors are going to control everything. Gm and ford and general lack trick and the little guy is going to nothing. There is even a Small Business defense contracts committee set up to do this. It was a big crusade in washington to do that. Knudsen you the truth and that was once you engage the prime contractors, there would be plenty for everybody down the subcontract to network to get everybody to not only gain employment, but also spawn a half million new jobs in the process and not of course is exactly what happened. Thank you. Carmella chiswick, economic historian at gw university. Im fascinated by your story, especially about the prewar buildup of production. But i wonder if it is these contracts that the firms are competing for, where did they come from . Were they building up to start pilot material in anticipation of wartime contracts for work contracts being let out early . And if so, by whom . The contracts produced certain specific materials, but these are the warplanes, for example, most companies didnt even know how to make them. So the initial contract then would come up in advance. This is also different from language defense contracts have been awarded before the war, with an advance to allow you to expand your plant, to retool, take on the expenses that would go with conversion to wartime process. Most of the money was not forthcoming from congress until pearl harbor. There were not at all interested in the very suspicious of the process. A lot of it has to be done through most of the reconstruction finance corporations still left over from the depression years, which converted to the defense planned corporation and a lot of that was two letters of intent, another important thing. We intend to give you an order for 1200 fighters here. He took a letter to the bank and the bank even for you to contract drawn up. Very often it is done with a handshake. Bill knudsen to say this is what i need. Somebody goes lets do it. Lets get it set up to go. The army at first was very suspicious about the process, but then began to realize that they were setting in motion a something truly unstoppable and in fact, Army Procurement officials in dealing with the aircraft industry began to take on what they called the rule of three. You ever hear about the rule of three . If you placed an initial order was somebody, say 1002 engine bombers that they come at the end of the first street they deliver three passing once the conversion was all done. At the end of the second year, the number would grow by a factor of seven. So we talked 21,000 bombers at that point. At the end of the third year, the only limits to production and expansion of it was from materials and labor and labor was always a problem. Not just in terms of Union Resistance to wartime conversion to use their power over the shop floor, but also because everybodys working somewhere else, so this became a constant problem. For deeper factories, where the expanded places where you will not and not siphon away labor from vital wartime Work Authority under way, but were also going to try pool of labor, which can be trained to do the kinds of work that can be done. Of course, thats the Economic Opportunities to upward mobility. Women or hispanics, people dont talk about the number of hispanics to get employment places the california shipyards. For africanamericans, all of this is made possible by we dont care what you look like it will train you to do the job you need to do. I am very chiswick from George Washington university. I am interested in roosevelt. Roosevelt sets this process in motion and sees that its has been very successful. So did influence his attitude towards the Business Community . Thats a really good question and i have to say roosevelts attitude about this is rather surprising to me because i thought he wouldve endorsed a lot of his new deal friends, including his own wife, which is unique to war production czar, covered overnight to wartime production and the sacrifice involved should all fall in the hands of business. Roosevelt didnt do it. He refused to appoint an allpowerful war production czar, not even bill knudsen was entrusted with that kind of power and later on, although people have unified position, they never really have any power over it. By then the system is up and running and they cant control it. The real problem becomes how to shut this down, to stop the production is taken on a life of its own. I think in many ways historians give them a kind of reasons for doing a bad one is that he didnt want to have been a single one agency or person have power over this war production effort. He didnt want to give up his own power as commanderinchief to a person who would read, if they have Statutory Authority to close factories are up in factories or tell people what you can make them but you cannot, basically means a second president on your hands. I think maybe he was also, and i also think to a degree he was kind of realizing there was nowhere else to go. The new deal had played out, they were run out of ideas of how to direct and control an economy in peacetime, let alone carried up for wartime and he was going to try this and see what happens. It may be in many ways but he also instinctively realized they were production effort, National Effort of any kind the required commands issued from washington probably wasnt going to be worth much of an effort after all. Had to come for bottom set. Did he change his attitude . Not at all. In fact, just by 1944, having seen the transformation of Free Enterprise, the next step for him as now is our chance to really get the new deal finished and done in the process and economic bill of rights turn the wartime production machine into a civilian collective economy in the process. And of course truman carries out aspects as well until the Republican Congress in 1846 stops them cold. Roger p. Line with the cato institute. I want to pick up a couple of the questions, intriguing question they have a race the outset about parallels to the present. In your opening remarks, you mentioned how the depression policies didnt get us out of the depression, the war production did. Towards the end you sent something that caught my attention. He said the government was buying things the government needed. One could think today about government buying things the government needs. Can you i know you are in historian, not economist, but are you suggesting that paul krugman might be right . [laughter] at the story of Paul Krugmans column that suggests a facetiously or have facetiously do we need to do a repeat of the world war ii world were to production and machine by declaring war on alien sun ours and then we would suddenly mobilize an annual personal democracy would appear out of nowhere, subsidized and paid for by more and more washington deficit spending. Now, im not endorsing now. And the point that you made, you have to subtly correct that it is not the world war ii production that this country out of the depression. It didnt. In fact, i think you could have some argument that in many ways it prolonged the depression. Certainly ways of deprivation of an economy which had fewer shoes, fewer goods, washing machine contract or since i want. If you look at the numbers come in this is very interesting. Look at the production standpoint. The rate of increase we talk about, the industrial miracle of world war ii to get underway here if you compare it to Industrial Production in the 20s, its about half. Its not interesting . The 20s was much more project to the nonsense in the increase that goes with it over the course of the decade. If you look in terms of numbers, of wealth, real wealth, assets, they change almost hardly from 1940 to 1945. What you really see it, however, what world were production didnt end the production, but it brought business back. It cured of business for making things and engaging in an expanding facilities and training the workforce and reopening warehouse is in to stock in venturi here and to create all of the assorted machinery, which could then be turned loose after the war when private investment comes back. All that pentup demand, all the business savings that adults have during the war because theres nothing to spend it on. Its the people now come back to consumer demands and thats exactly what happens when these companies. The go for making washington machines to machine guns, refrigerators, frigidaire, that they do it in a much leaner factory, which is a streamlined production line and they know now how to adjust to shifting retool in this. Its a tremendous boost unleashing the potential for business. Then comes the private Capital Investment and now youve got a base from which a real consumer economy can grow from that point on. Hi, joe jensen with free think media. Im working on the other flight, which is getting world war ii veterans to seek a memorial at no cost to them. My question is to highlight contributions these factory workers made to the overall war effort, but this happened seven years ago. What resources were available to you to identify stories and capture stories . Theres a number of websites. It operates out of richmond, california at the Richmond Shipyards war memorial, historic memorial to the shipyards built there. A lot of it is oral history, especially of women. A lot of fascination in women workers in the stories are incredible that comes out from other process. And a lot of it is just material you can find because all this come in a scummy factory member, were proud of their war effort. They publish their stories they cant wait to tell about workers who came in, we did what we accomplished. The stories are incredible as well that you get people working. My favorite one with a letter i found on the mersey river website, a letter from a Woman Working the Richmond Shipyards, married to a marine serving in the pacific she tells him in a letter, down in the bowels of these liberty ships, she says, i like to think im building the ship that will bring you home. One more. Mike overrun with agi and washtington examiner. Arthur, you mentioned the recruitment of blacks in the War Industries in a million southern blacks moved mauritz, more than 75 years between these two. The sep see, Fair Employment Practices Commission [inaudible] play any significant role in not . Svoboda business figures in particular auto company guys make concerted efforts to seek black workers at the south . There was a very interesting aspect in a what about in the book because i thought it was quite striking. Knudsen was in favor, but he thought fair practices was totally the wrong way to go. He said go factory by factory. These guys can do work. Show them examples and do it in a stepbystep contract by contract process, not some point to changes in the rules of who could be hired and who cannot. By a large there was segregation varies from company to company. Not even industry to industry. The gm plant, for example that i was talking about earlier was completely integrated. It was a shock to africanamerican workers coming in from the south to sit down to lunch with white workers in white employees, et cetera. Acclaim Martin Plante were separated. Kaisers think completely integrated. You should appear as a pitchman at the end of the war, 70 of the employees on his payroll were women. Thats how crucial a role they played fair. And in the south, obviously a lot of work bases were separated and a lot of racial tension says that the detroit case. This hair inched into one segment of the population who are protected under the fair practices act, who receive no federal support whatsoever in terms of their rights to work, et cetera, employment were placed, but in a fit of the most were the women. Very interesting. Thank you very much for a very interesting discussion. Klotzbach coming up on a special Weekend Edition of booktv, david talbot talks about San Francisco in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Being a Roger Williams, while he was a member of the clergy was also trained in civil law and the workforce or hook in the British Parliament and the star chamber and we see a lot of these ideas in civil law and separation of church and state began to be articulated in text like this. As the famous bloody tenant of persecution. This is really where we see Roger Williams talking about the idea of the freedom of religion. He is very much showing at this point why he is different and why his thinking is different and why rhode island will be different for massachusetts, the plymouth bay colony and other colonies to the north. He was creating a land where people could come, worship as they chose to not always be protected by civil law. This did not of course if i was inclined orbit massachusetts. By active British Parliament, all the copies of this book were set to be burned. Luckily, not all of them were were able to show that to people today. In the book season of the witch, author david top it presents San Francisco from the inside the 21962. He talked about. In the citys history, including the Counterculture Movement of the 60s and the onset of the aids epidemic. This is about 50 minutes. [applause] thank you so much in thank you for braving the San Francisco juggernaut of fog as i call in the book to be here tonight. Its actually thank you for b booksmith for having me. I love to hang out at the store. I am a customer more than i am an author. Hopefully i have hope keep you in business over the years. Actuy but its appropriate action at this weather because its very Dashiell Hammett alike and with theason of the witch, people need to hit bdp, may bet waereotypes the city, but i rel really wanted with season of t the witch to tell a history ofe the city as Dashiell Hammettve might have written it, with thee same sense of the citys toughness, of this mystery andof of its kind of racket atmosphere. Many people forget the san italn catholic t they hit the era was a tough Irish Catholic town, traditional city in many ways in the first wave ofo came hippies they came to the city really had the drawbridge pulled up on them. Many of the kids couldnt get treatment when they had droppedd problems and other medicaloblem. Problems. Th they were given a Cold Shoulder by the city officials. The cops harassed them. So that y so that was sold at the beginning what became the very firstbe culture war right here sanhe francisco. Americas first culture war was afi civil war within san francio itself between these new forces, social forces that began seeping into the city in the 1960s and 9 1970s with gay. One step war really took hold and became quite bloody. Write in i read in the book the San Francisco, socalled San Francisco values were born with flowers in their hair. They were born howling. Ho the book does whave a happy a happendingse the city ultimatelyink the city ultimatey triumphed or good results as differences after a very butyl brutal time and with the help of a mayor who was not terribly beloved in the city couldnt win the office because she was a little straightlaced in San Francisco, dianne feinstein, but she was the kind of calming hand, the stable political figure that the city needed after all the trauma that went through in the 1970s with jonestown and the peoples temple and the assassination of mary mayor moscone he. This city triumphed because of the 49ers and most people dont think of sports teams and think of having that kind of power but i think the 49ers, team that kind of mirrored the eccentricities of San Francisco itself were very poetic and coach joe walsh in more ways a gladiator really brought the city to gather with us or first super bowl victory in 1982 and finally the way the city dealt with aids was very significant. Heres a city that had gone through a fractious times over and violence directed against gays in the streets and the city could have gone really backwards. It could have gone into an abyss at that point. The early aids of the epidemic and there was panic that began to arise in San Francisco and throughout the country. People didnt know where and y we could be in restaurants. Stores or in the castro. And once again though, the city came together though and again because of Dianne Feinsteins leadership in part, someone who had a medical background and was married to a doctor, and the medical community and the city led by some heroic young doctors, nurses and aides wart, San Francisco general. They didnt know at that point whether they were taking home the infection to their children or their families but they stood their ground and began to treat the sick and the ailing as if they were our children and we were part of San Francisco family. That in essence is what San Francisco values are all about. We take care of our own to gues here. In the rest of the country was rejecting patients and actually dumping patients and putting them on the airplanes to be flown to San Francisco on their dying days, San Francisco took the man into care of them. Really take care of our own. That is the value here and one of the few people who did that going back to the 1960s who is here with us today, dr. David smith who was the brave young doctor back in the 1960s who stood up to the medical establishments in town when they were not treating people on the streets, the runaways who are swarming into San Francisco in 1967, st. Marys hospital nearby would not treat young people who were having drug overdoses and emergency situations. They Haight Asbury free clinic under dr. Smith in his braves staff scraped together 500 to open a clinic in the first day there were hundreds of young people lined up outside the clinic in the next day there were even more. They ran out of medicine and bandages. They were treating people with problems that were more akin to problems in third world countries than a prosperous american city. That but they stood their ground and thats the kind toughness that San Francisco really people forget how to top of the town this is and because of that toughness, we do have lasting institutions here that it become the embodiment of San Francisco values and they Haight Asbury free clinic is high among them. We also have a wonderful resident of the Community Back in those days someone who lived across the street from the grateful dead, maryland kreegel who i interviewed in the book and tells wonderful stories. I hope she tells some about what it was like. The hate was like a small town in the grateful dead and janis joplin wondering around the neighborhood, the jefferson airplane. Maryland, glad you are here as well. Want to end a reading of section from the book that i think also conveys the sense of toughness about haight in particular. Calvin wells told me about this group the neighborhood activists and i was amazed, never read about this group before. To commune called the gay the gooders commune. How many of you have heard that before . Good earth commune had several houses in the neighborhood here. We were not the stereotypes hippies. They were excons and Vietnam Veterans and had been on the streets for a long time. They were tough and they knew how to take care of themselves and they stood their ground. They moved into some of the abandoned houses in the area and fix them up to start businesses, clothing businesses, car mechanics and painting business, housing business and they became a fixture in this community at a time when other distressed neighborhoods like the fillmore were being bulldozed by the redevelopment agencies in San Francisco and that is the great tragedy of coors once thriving black neighborhoods in sand and cisco which was once called the harlem of the west, it had been leveled and the haight couldve gone in that direction as well. By the late 60s hard drugs were taking over the neighborhood and it took the good earth commune in part to stand their ground and help clean up the neighborhood. That is the part of the book i want to share with you right now and then we are going to go to questions but i would love to have backandforth with you all and hear from dr. Smith in maryland. This is chapter 17 in my book. Loves last stand. The haight was a war zone by the time Robin Mccarthy came in 1969 but he had seen worse. Mccarthy had served in vietnam as a counter on a patrol boat on the upper mekong river near cambodia. It was the whole apocalypse now experience he said many years later. I was terrified the whole time. Mccarthy lost a number of friends there. When mccarthy returned to the United States he was based at Treasure Island and Sanford Cisco bait. He tried baking mental him is to get a medical discharge but it wasnt that far from the truth. One time while way too high on white lightning acid he considered suicide. The reality was setting an nfl good to have a gun he recall. Really crazy ones on Treasure Island for the guys who clenched pouches they had made from the scrotums of deadbeats. The navy patched up their heads and put them back into action. The haight beckoned to mccarthy from the choppy cold waters of the paper going Christmas Eve he went strolling in the hippie haven in life magazine. He wasnt looking for but for mystical camaraderie. It was a harder connection to find in those days. As you walk down the haight street some were hanging out in front of him hang hassling anyone who went by. She broke away and a navy man high on lsd fix them with the look of death and they backed off the one. After vietnam it was look the came naturally to mccarthy and it was only enhanced by the acid. 20 yards past the toll bridge mccarthy heard aloud scuffle and the sharp crack of a gunshot. As he spun around the young man blurted out my god they shot me. The kids who ventured the haight from outlying suburb had been shot through the side. Mccarthy threw him over his shoulder and cured into the corner where his friend and girlfriend were waiting in her father steeper. A kartheiser introduction to the haight started out with pure misery, but then he got lucky. He stumbled upon a store called the ever loving trading post where a swarm of young men and women were caught up in the christmas celebrations singing and dancing and exuding good chair. He began talking with them. They had long flowing hair and men and women alike looks beautiful to mccarthy. Even though he was trying to hide where he was from the took one look at him and knew he was military. But they received him warmly. They understood mccarthy, they knew what i was looking for. I was looking for it. Mccarthy spent the night in a dilapidated house in the haight, no vibes, just junkies crashing around. On Christmas Morning he woke up and went back out on the street still searching. He ran into one of the young men he talked to the day before at the ever loving trading post. He had a strong body and his long blond hair and beard he looked like floor. I just wanted to touch not his hair dogun, but his vibes. He asked what he was looking for. He invited mccarthy for christmas dinner at his communal house that evening. When he showed up in 1915 oak st. Headquarters for the good earth commune mccarthy and simply felt he was stepping into a dream of what the haight was supposed to be. The ornate threestory victorian was well kept with shiny oiled wooden floors and staircase and heavy velvet curtains. The high ceiling was dominated by huge tables that look like was constructed of Railroad Ties and then bolted together. The table was built with patterns of food, winter vegetables and mashed potatoes and the room was spilling over with people, men, women and babies of all ages, white, black brown yellow and red. Mccarthy stood there quietly in the midst of the chaos and took it all in. He knew he had found home. The good earth commune was a central part of the second wave of the Haight Asbury settlement. The commune was founded in 1968 i am exconvict whom he had met in prison where he served four and a half years for armed robbery. The idea came while he was on parole and working on the Rapid Transit those being constructed in and debate. He in this excon friends pooled their resources and move to the haight. At first it was a small group of the men and the women you love them but the good earth rapidly growing to us a Sprawling Network of the halfdozen houses in the haight and the loose everchanging membership that was estimated to number over 700 people. The good earth commune took over where the dickers left off in many ways they were tougher and more resilient. The core group is in the commune were lighthearted young men and women, excons vietnam betters streetwise runaways who knew how to survive through to that call themselves the church and claimed pot is a sacrament and preached the useful peace and love philosophy. Still there were no pushovers. They love their neighborhood but they knew it was turning into a juggle jungle. They made it widely known that it was prepared to end the fight. At first it was escorting female members from house to house through the haights streets but then it became a campaign to clean up the streets themselves. By 1970 the neighbor it was swimming with heroin and speed, scrappy crew of junkies that moved into a boarded up house. With communes decided to go. Calling the police was not considered an option. They took the opportunity to raise the good earth commune. Besides the place closed down nearby places and abandoned the Haight Asbury area to the institutes in cloth. So one day a group of the tucker members including mccarthy now known as mouseman simply paid the junkies of visit and convince them to leave. The good earth took over the house fixed it up and moved in some members. Heroin dealers still roam the neighborhood as if they owned it but good earth began to run them out. One afternoon is not pusher named rico came more roaring down the street in his flashy car nearly running over several commune members. They loudly let the dealer know what they thought of him. 10 minutes later rico later rico returns and stepped out of his car with a gun. What are you going to do now he said. He and several commune members began walking straight at him. They had no fear. Rico freak out and raced away said a commune member who was there that day. He and his posse if they have backup. Houston who had grown up in the bible something family and served briefly in the air force for station on the roof of the good earth house with a rifle. I was ready to shoot if necessary he recalled and i knew how to use a rifle from my military and hillbilly background. Not long after rico moved out of the haight. On another occasion said Darryl Ferguson known like many other good earth members by their astrological nicknames witnessed a gangster roughing up as grover and on the street. We stepped in said ferguson and we didnt tolerate that kind of behavior. If you beat a girl youre going to pay for. A big mistake said ferguson have learned how to handle himself on the streets after being kicked out of his familys house when he was just 16. We chased him like lightning down the haight treat and he kept pointing like he was going to shoot me. When we caught and we smashed them over the head with a gun in the hell out of him and drum dumped them in a trashcan and left him for dead. Good earth became a bulwark in a neighborhood battle by crime and deserted by the citys authorities. Some longtime residents like the free clinic dr. David smith credited with saving the haight. Smith no other urban neighbor that admin rescue this way once the scourge of heroin had taken over the streets. Good earth one because they were warrior tribe. They knew how to fight. Thank you. [applause] that is your history, haight. You are tough. So im going to take questions now and we would love to hear from you, particularly neighborhood residents like marilyn and dr. Smith. Do you want to say a few words . Thank you, david. The book was absolutelabsolutel y fascinating and david has played an Important Role in our history. He asked to share memories of our favorite stories that so many thoughts came back as he was talking. The Haight Asbury free clinics played the good earth and touch football. [laughter] who won . Well, thats my story. [laughter] they had a cheerleading squad. Very Haight Asbury and their chair with some like it hot, some like it cold, we like it anyway, go team go. I see one of our former cheerleaders. [laughter] that is a story shed probably rather not hear. I think he told the country here david. Their fullback, was racing for the gametime touchdown and our ceo was the former wrestling champion, knocked him out of bounds and assumed a giant fight fortunately since he was a champion he subdued him. They won the game and everybody smoked a joint and that is the way it was. Peace pipe. We had the fillmore and the Haight Asbury clinic and the good earth come down. This booksmith brings back so many memories and we used to have this building for a rehab center and upstairs we had our board of directors meeting in which many of the people were there. That is when Diane Feinstein was on abortive direct theres. I saw her a month ago and anybody who has been to [inaudible] everybody has those memories. The 49ers and watching the games from the rough and one story was david asked us to share with you, its 1967. The neighborhood was totally crazy. I am a graduate of Uc Med Center and my professor of medicine said david where youre going . Coming down here was a sign of career failure or Mental Illness or someone who was totally insane. And what happened, we were built on rock n roll, the concerts and that is how we survived and we had all of these celebrities come that wanted to visit us. Then of course i would try to get a donation from them. That is all we did, one of which was preminger coming to make a movie. We were totally on volunteers and another part of davids book that was so good was when he said the hells angels ran a Daycare Center or Something Like that. Only at that time but that makes sense. [laughter] so what i did was i worked at San Francisco general you see during the day and the clinic at night. So a Arlo Preminger was going to come and make a movie and make a big donation. There is a big limo parked right out there and had dinner at one of the now closed restaurants just down the way. I told everybody that Arlo Preminger was going to come and this might the an opportunity for a donation for us. We got a lot of volunteer doctors and nobody checked anybodys credentials. The patients, and the staff and whatever. There was this volunteer physician in the medical section. His name was, whatever, and so the next day i was up at Uc Med Center and i heard his name being paged. So i go to see him. He is not a doctor. [laughter] and dr. Whatever says i have had my license stolen. So the person that was masquerading as dr. Whatever with his license was not dr. Whatever. So i come back and Otto Preminger is going to, and i said we have a problem. I went in the backroom and confronted dr. Whatever and i said you know this will close the clinic and i asked him a simple medical question. I said you know this is very serious. He proceeds to throw the chart at me, started running down the hallway past Otto Preminger and the film crew, the lemieux and the hells angels chasing him. Right down the street and in 1967 there were about 100 people after you. This fake doctor whatever they caught them in the bush and he was scared out of his mind. He had gotten caught up by about 100 people including the hells angels. If you did something bad to Haight Asbury clinic, something really bad happen to you. Again, thats my story. [applause] Haight Asbury is not in the book but its in paperback. [laughter] Otto Preminger, it must have been the same day or the day before, because someone from the dead came across the street and said somebody has got to take this guy around the haight on it to her. [laughter] and so i took Otto Preminger, who is very sh, and i dont know, a very gorgeous lawn young man. [laughter] on a tour of the haight. I moved into the haight in the early 60s because i could afford to live here. I was a schoolteacher, and i was really glad to live in this neighborhood. It was a mixed neighborhood, a lot of working class, folks that i felt as a single woman i had moved into a real community. When it came to california i didnt know anybody and it was within a short period of time that i was in the community and i had a family. And of course the family then that i ended up with was the grateful dead across the street from my third floor walk out. And of course this is the story that has i have done a lot of things in my life but nothing that got me more credit than this and especially with my kids, who are almost twice the age that i was when i was living here. So i was a disaster. Actually the sixday war, where i lost the guy i thought was going to be my life partner. My life partner of 40 some odd years is sitting over here. And that summer i was supposed to have met him in israel and of course i didnt go because of the sixday war and i was at loose ends, and i ended up, because because the hunt st. Clinic i dont know if you guys remember the signs that said take the trip to end the trip or love means care. I should have come over to the clinic and not gone there because they were using disposable needles and i got a blood test and i became really ill with hepatitis within six weeks. And i mean really ill as an i couldnt pick up the telephone to make a call. People i taught with put a sign up outside my door with three meals a day, early morning, late at night for people to sign up and take care of me. And the dead filled in most of those times, and took great care. I had food and i had my linens changed and people helped me to the bathroom, all those things that only comes from family. When a family is taking care of you. So around the time that i was recovered enough to get out and sit in my wing chair and looked out the window and the view i would have is down the asbury st. To the dead house, i watched the big famous go down. I sat there and i just noted who was taken away and who was allowed to run away. Little mary, 16yearold neighborhood kid who eventually died of an overdose in our neighborhood was let out of the house. But i notice that jerry and Mountain Girl werent taken, and so i sat at the window and when they came home from the Grocery Store that is jerry garcia when they finally pulled up and parked, i opened the window and just started shouting, oh, god i thought you would never get here. I need that so badly and they just looked. [laughter]. And so thats my story. [applause] thank you, maryland. Why dont we open it up for questions. Does anybody have any questions . Hi, my name is cozy. I was fortunate enough to work arche fat and i met the dead before i came here in what ways unobscured was the consummate great men assemble a power that. Everyone was there. When i arrived here, i think that first thanksgiving was the congress of wonders. I First Congress was spent with the whole five over in east bay and then just been in the middle and it was glorious and coming from london, where we were so gray and hate and even the big rock stars only made 20 pounds a month. When i met her dad, what really struck me was the inclusiveness. If even that one, you met 40, but this is completely alien to me. I did that for three months and that was 40 years ago. Because i was in music, i like to share list at the back and was delighted to see that you have tracy nelson down so low. I mean, thats not. Thats great. Thank you, great work. Just another shout out to kmt expert one of the chap there is another joseph fm radio and how San Francisco was the credo for underground radio. Tom donohue and the other great pioneers. That was preinternet. It was fm radios that pull together the youth culture. As a youth society, messages we all needed to hear to keep us in touch with each other. For a kid like me growing up in the suburbs of l. A. , it wouldve been may feel saying that i could turn that radio on at night and hear that music under his long sword of winded wraps at the dj would do in those days. That commercials, no jingles. One shadow to a person in the front row, someone i should also acknowledge in the book. Another hair when of San Francisco, alyssa florez, who participated in the first point that i know of. Behind the green door remake back in the eighth area. So hello, nancy, thank you. [applause] [inaudible] [laughter] thats for my next book. Any other questions . So what happened to the good earth commune . Well, that is a sadder tale. Part of their revenue was a strict policy against doing hard drugs. After a few years, cocaine started coming into the city and he was a heated debate within the commune circle. Theyre sort of governing group, about how to care your eyes cocaine, whether with a hard or soft drug. Fiddling tragically they decided was a softer and was okay to deal. They started making a lot of money. It created a lot of tensions within the group. They had to beef up security because it brought a harder element around and they fell prey to the hard drug scene that they came in fighting in the group split up by the mid70s. But happy note, i found them because theyre all online. There is a forum that his brought out the survivors together. Its a very vibrant foreign and they not only go over the old days and all that, but you can really see what these peoples values were and how they seem to disco values at delays in their hearts. Its really great. Obviously people in San Francisco are familiar about a lot of the aspects that would seem unreal to people from other parts of the country between a cult leader that was very influential in local politics, that led a massacre an african man to having a politician murdered to other politicians. Those kinds of elements. So in terms of when youre writing this book, what were the kinds of things you try to think about in terms of making it accessible to the rest of the country that might not be familiar with how much craziness that was in San Francisco, but also understand how greedy city ablaze. It was tough, but thats why its divided into three parts. The enchantment is the first part in the 60s starting with the summer of love and then terror, the middle section of the book or see that cisco does fall into this very dirt. Of the zodiac murderers and the kidnapping of patty hearst. Jim jones and peoples temple and how jim jones inserted himself into the liberal power structure in this town and really compromised great heroes of the city like harvey milk and mayor moscone and double assassination of mayor moscone and harvey milk. One thing after the next. I do think the city came out with its values intact and stronger than either of those values of tolerance, and openness to the new comer to change, to experimentation are deeply embedded in the city and now that weve cornered civil war and its values are enshrined, its the rest of the country thats wrestling with right now and the reason is president obamas embrace of gay marriage shows how these values are. Its a laboratory for the neocon a laboratory for new ideas for medical marijuana to gay marriage to immigrant sanctuary, a livable minimum wage, universal health care, which is something that are smacked in the free clinic really popularized, that health care is a right, not a privilege. All of these values were fought out here first and stanford disco and other rest of the country to the horror of fox news is grappling with them. So i say right on, San Francisco. [applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] cheneys Growth Without i was going to one of the armpits of the United States, but i ended up with my first job in richmond, virginia and my landlady, family to be, their last name was bugs and they were like the grandfather of the neighborhood. And so they had never met an asian before. In fact, one week and they invited their whole family to come see an asian and one of the relatives was disappointed because i was not wearing one of those ching dynasty cubes. When i told them i was in favor of cisco in europe here, the city made the city of san . [laughter] im so glad we have so many wonderful friends from the neighborhood here tonight. You spoke of the oldschool irish americans who are here. Is there anyone who was like a liaison between the old and the new that was sort of heroic . Absolutely. In fact, as i said, i wanted to write a history of San Francisco as Dashiell Hammett had written it. The opening of my books about the wonderful legendary wientzen himalayan, the crusading lawyer who grew up very catholic family, but rejected a lot of what he had grown up in and became the link to the new. He starts off as sort of a nick and nora character with his beautiful wife. I tell this wild story of the murder case they were involved in in the 1930s. He was defending frank egan, the public defender in this town and thought of as the next mayor of the city. But it turned out frank egan was actually running a racket, where he was using excons to bump off elderly women and steal their pensions and savings. So anyway, it was a wild story, but since hallinan goes on to be the longshoremens leader when the fbi and federal government in the cold war were growing after harry bridges and were determined to throw in prison because he was such an Effective Labor leader. This is a great champion of civil rights. He runs for president and the Progressive Party ticket in 1852. The fbi goes after with everything they have and hes thrown in prison on trumped up Tax Strategies twice, but he raises the sprawling brood of tough irish kids. Terence tallon and, who grew up in this neighborhood, listen this neighborhood, his brother patrick, who had gone on to be great players themselves and of course da of San Francisco. The only da who was given a hot fix by janis joplin of the sub six and overdosed and lived to become da of San Francisco. This is a book that really told itself i have to say. The stories and characters are truly larger than life. The just after that my companion and brian rohans work 10 hallinans office and they were the guys who started halo, sub one Legal Organization and they ran out out of the dead font color, it taurean house and they were providing Legal Services to other kids that got arrested in the neighborhood. Its true. Ms. Callanan was the godfather for a whole new generation of travelers like ryan and michael and also tony ssierra of course he went on to defend among other things that the Paris Commune when they were subjected to a police raid after the next. [inaudible] party imac [inaudible] that is a good testament to tony skills. And by the way, thats another great hero San Francisco, a great photographer and his photographs, some of them featured in the book. Michael has been the longtime photographer for the 40 niners, going back to the first glory days and maybe we see then begin again. So thank you, michael. [applause] i think we have time for a couple more. Just another followup from michaels story about a group of lawyers, michael japan and is the chairman of the board here at the haightashbury clinic and Terence Hallinan organized in mississippi freedom writers on cole street. I would come home at night and was the university of the haightashbury. I had never heard anything like that and i was the first time i got the idea of segregated health care in the south. And we would go over to their office at 81980 and everything since hallinan in that mix was also eddie brown. So thats another thing about your book as there is this group of lawyers would testify in court cases for tony sir. Nic was tony with tommy stories. He was this incredible storyteller. He was not good at finance. His idea he was driver car coming to so many tickets you want the police take it away. He never paid any bills. I just want to say when david called me up to be interviewed about the book, i said god, can we even remember that time. And it was a really weird moment in the sun and Hunter Thompson was night manager at the theater and i have lived with already mitchell and jim mitchell and david talbot k. Mastiff he could follow us. I was actually going out. I was a reporter, not a stalker. What to make that clear. I used to go down polk street and passed out condoms to the prostitutes. And when the prostitutes were arrested, the sf pd would take them in and when they released, they would poke holes in all of the condoms. It is just a very, very rare moment in the sun when we shared that. Thanks for shedding light on that. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] of course, hi. Well, just briefly, you know, i think it all comes to a head. The cops were sort of the bastian of the old Irish Catholic San Francisco and it all gone to the same parochial schools together and i was an all boys that were. There is a lot of Great Police Work they did, particularly in some of the cases i read about comment is either case, which they finally cracked when the city was on the verge of racial civil war by the time the case is correct. But theres a lot sfpd has to answer for, too. All these tensions come together research to boil over during mayor moscones tenure when he tries to reform the Police Department and brings an outsider after promising initially hell appoint another on his cheek. He brings inside the outside reformer, charlie king and all breaks loose. You know, people are hunting Death Threats in the bathroom. Against both moscone and gain. Another San Francisco hero, the organizer of the prostitutes union coyote has some good friends and clients among the San Francisco police force and one of them tipped her off one night to the fact that charlie team is going to be killed that night, but sensibly by cops and he was out speaking somewhere and she wanted him to get home as quickly as he could. So this is the kind of violent tensions brewing in the city over reform because what moscone wanted to do is open the police force to minorities. It was a White Department in the state senate were fighting it to the nail and two women. In soweto mayor moscone a great debt for standing his ground. He was the son of catholics have a cisco, had been a basketball star at Saint Ignatius and he was seen as a traitor by many kids, the man he grew up who later became a part of the power structure of time. Adding a mark [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] i want to say one thing. And its illustrated with a chapter i read about better commune because that gentleman, Robert Mccarthy was a vietnam veteran and he came to the haight and was embraced by people here. He was at least on the brink of the nearest breakdown hours coming out of his experience in vietnam. He was not spot on, not rejected. These lies have spread and become mythology is spread by hyper nationalistic teacher addict types, the right wing. For the most part are completely groundless. In this community, and the city come the veterans by and large were warmly embraced and when they had drug problems, when they were in dire need and no one else is taking care of them, not their families are patriotic types, it was hippie San Francisco that took them to their heart and took care of these men. I really wanted to reinforce that, david, was started here over on brawler. And the haightashbury clinic, with its nonjudgmental approach all the fats in the 70s came to our clinic for detox and medical problems and the da decided that they needed to fund wherever the vets went and thats when the haightashbury clinic got its first government funding. I recall being over here on the block and government officials came across and wanted to give me money. As of last year you try to arrest me and now you want to give me money. It is the vietnam vets in that era come which has a rich history. The head of our rock medicine for a long time was glen ross lake who came out of the air at and country joe and the fish, but you really caught the violence of that era over here on haight street, the packs quite came down. I can see it right now they have this week shields, they beat the out of all the hippies about 1968. I was standing up there and i came down because they were just beating this kid and i came down and they started whacking me with a night stick. And herb caen the great dane was journalism. Herb caen wrote inez how smith got beat up and they dont even beat of the red cross in wartime. So you had this kind of liberal journalistic forests state fish shamed the establishment into backing off and certainly you have chronicled that very well. Thank you. Well, thank you everyone for coming tonight. Books are for sale at the front counter and david talbot will be signing at the front. So go ahead and continue the conversation at the signing table. Thank you to booksmith. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming in tonight. Tomorrow, we will have live coverage on cspan network of the 113th congress. House meets at noon for a vocal members and election of the house speaker. You can watch it on cspan. While he was a member of the clergy, he was also incredibly trained and worked for sarah cook of the British Parliament. And we see a lot of his ideas in the separation of church and state. He articulated himself in text like this. This is really where we see Roger Williams talking about the idea. Also the freedom of religion is something that he talks about. He is showing at this point why his thinking is different and we are all different. He was creating a land where people could come and worship as they chose. This did not sit well with england were with massachusetts. Luckily, not everything was burned, this copy was not, and we are able to have it today to show. More from rhode island in their state capital. Cspan looks behindthescenes at the history and literary life of providence, rhode island. Saturday at noon eastern on cspan2 and booktv. Sunday at 5 00 p. M. On American History tv on cspan3. Paul jennings was a slave born in 1799 who served president James Madison. The book is by Elizabeth Downing taylor, and she talked about her book at the library of congress. This is just under one hour. Col, good afternoon. Library welcome. I am john cole, the director fo the center of the library of congress. We were created in 1977 byulatec Daniel Boorstin to help the library of congress stimulateerc Public Interest in reading ands. Literacy. We operate primarily through a couple of national networks. There are states featured in the books, and they work with us to promote booksular and readings m their respective states. In many we also have national readingven promotion partners likeoks an nonprofit groups and government. Organizationwe organizationsk promote reading. Out we are a major component in the National Book festival. Thisyeas i hope many of you know about ii and have attended in the past. I can tell you that thisma years festival will be on the National Mall from september 22 until that september 23. s we are delighted to expand theld book festival, and thats going toco continue. There is plenty of room if you would like to come out. Kind of t today, we are featuring another way to be promote books and to reading. Wed love to give book talks at of Congress Make a couple of points. A lot of research at the library of congress result in thee libry printed word. We are pleased to offer books that have a special relationship with the library of congress. Klr much of the work for this book was done here at the library. We also help sponsor projectrs. Books and books that come out of longterm library of congress efforts. We are pleased to have you here. There is a listing of future talks. In this case, we are so gratefuu by cspan and the library of congress to have many of ourlbrr book talks film. O in a sense more than 200 are available on the library of congress website. It is also through the National Book festival programming. Since the book festival was created in 2001, we have accumulated more than 700 talks of links of 30 minutes or 45 minutes. It shows american writing that is growing each year lo and behold we are growing. Because todays talk is being filmed, i urge you to turn off all things electronic and we will have, once our speaker iswt introduced, more seats up front are available if youd like to come up. Then there will be a session o about a 20 minute session ofks questions and answers and there will be a book signing. T books are for sale at a special library of congress discount at the back of the room. In you can also pick up the head schedule of the library of congress were upcoming talks. We will be filming that part ofo it for cspan as well. Sk i also want to tell you that you are welcome to it asked questions and we will haveve sie answers from our lovely speakers. Im very pleased to introduce julie miller, who since june of 2009 has been served as a specialist in early american or history. Ut her shortly after julie join our staff, she spoke in our books and beyond series about her new book, abandoned. O see to it you have authors and readers coming at you from all angles when you come to books to julie m and beyond talks. I would like to turn this over to julie miller. Julie . Our [applause] tod thank you. I paid him to say that. Ay [applause]been direcr of Elizabeth Taylor has a doctorate from the university of california at berkeley. She has been the director ofucan interpretation at monticello. Mas the director of education at montpelier, James Madisons house, and a color fellow at the Virginia Foundation for humanity. Now she is the author of thistha book. I might also add that she appeared on the daily show. I met her in the manuscript papers o of the library. She realized that the librarysa collections of colonial and National Figures containedse papers and information abouturro people who are not those people, but other people. People who surrounded him. And very often, those people were slaves. Jour that takes the form of writers journals and records. But sometimes the letters written by the slaves themselves and this is the case of Paul Jennings the Paul Jennings re letters. Surve documents like these survived only because they were swept up the papers of prominentme ases people. People who were recognized for being prominent. In some cases, we can assume that these records are the only, written records available. They are very valuable things. Gd the best of punishment in this book is estimating the story of paul jenkins. Im very proud to introduce Elizabeth Taylor. [applause] well, i think john and julie for having me today. I thank all of you for turning out today. A slave in the white house, about Paul Jennings and the madison, was a great labor of love. I spent three years researching the book in the year writing it i have a fondness for good narrative nonfiction. And a lot of times, if i read journalistic pieces, i enjoyy ba when they begin with then extended into dolby. Call a so i adapted that approach in my book. And each chapter starts with what we might call a vignette. I really labored over the book. You today is interspersed my comments with reading excerpts from some of these in yet. They all placed jennings at or near a doorway for some kind of opening in one case its the hatch of a ship and in this first one, its an open grave. On or about 28 february, 1801, montpelier, the madison plantation in Orange County, virginia. The old master died in the dullness of february. On their way to the burial of the family graveyard, the house servants passed by the slave graveyard, where most of them expected to be buried sunday. It was cold and they walked on, passing between the tobacco fields to the east and the original homestead to the west. The madison family graveyard was located in the backyard of this first homesite, the main dwelling among burned to the ground has supplanted by the georgian mansion once theyve started their third mile in formal profession. Once the household was circled around the open grave, the house servants raced expectant eyes to the new master of montpelier, James Madison junior standing next to his mother, nellie. There was a stay of montpelier another mother and son present. The mothers name is unknown. The name of the toddler at her skirt was Paul Jennings. She perhaps told the little boys hand, hoping not to transmit her anxiety over what might happen next for the death of a master was always a time of tension for his enslaved people. They would have little control over decisions about your futures, including the fates of their nearest family members. Well, James Madison junior became the fourth president of the United States. Paul jennings jeremy from slavery to freedom of play out in the highest circles of ideas and power. The white house. James madison study and in freedom, he would author is to create the White House Historical association the First White House memoir in its full text is included as an appendix in a slave in the white house. It was my familiarity with this memoir the first roomie to jennings story. It is titled, he colored mans reminiscences of James Madison ms that title implies, it is more about the socalled great man and it is about the author himself. But my interest was in jennings, so i set out to discover elements of his biography, uncover circumstances behind the publication of the memoir in 1865 and track down and interview living, direct descendent. Paul was only 10 when he came to washington in 1809, the first year of the madison administration. He was chosen from among 100 montpelier slaves as just a two or three to be part of the white house domestic staff. And he found washington to be dreary as indeed it was, not only because he was slightly homesick, but because this was a planned city and at that time existed very much more on paper than it did on the ground. But i think soon enough paul realized he was at the start of a great adventure. He would eat footman and the president s house for eight years. He would come of age in washington, aged 10 to age 18 and in the process he would need an important witness to history in the making. 31 may 1809, the first of Dolly Madisons white house drawing rooms. It was a rainy wednesday. Likely the initial duty of meaning guess at the north interest with the number. Theres no portico then for protection from the elements. Tonight was the first of all the become Dolly Madisons legendary trigram, with the president ial mansion open for everyone who was properly introduced. More gentlemen and ladies attended this premiere night as would be expected anytime with many government men and residents about their families. Had my ladies and president , dollywood still has stood apart, not because she was seated on a platform as Martha Washington had been at her quirky receptions, but because of the charming intertwining of her personality and jazz. Jennings himself later describe some of her ensembles, fabrics a purple velvet in ways that, always a turbine suffice it to trim to match. President madison, happy to leave the limelight to his wife is as tired as usual in the old style, bridges and powdered hair. Paul had no way of knowing he would one day serve as Madison Salle and be responsible for his clothes and cute. As the guests mingled among the rooms, servants went through a trace of refreshment, wind, punch, coffee, ice cream, et cetera were liberally served. Dont jennings made and among the servers that are snide, but more likely was a runner from the pantry or took that up for the sellers. It is both frightening and exhilarating mix grants. The carriage coming music, mirrors and chandeliers, sophisticated conversation. While the observer, listener received an eiffel and fearful airflow this evening. As i began my research, i prepared a word document headed, what would Paul Jennings like . And added to it as i went along. Two characteristics among others became clear. He was a good listener and he was a good networker, two traits that serve anyone whos interested in getting ahead. I interpret jennings life is a deliberate, courageous and successful pursuit of the right to rise, which really is the most american of promises. Jennings after his eight years in washington thought about running away instead of returning to the plantation with the madison. The evidence for this is a letter in the madison papers, written by jefferson matthew, warning him that there was such a room or can i visualize jennings, his last window of opportunity to act in thinking not only about whether he had the nerve to chance an illegal run and perhaps be caught and punished, but realizing also but that virginia plantation was his home, too. Could he leave the scene of his could he leave the scene of his boyhood, the home of his mother never to return . Is not as if he could have said if i dont make it back this christmas, ill be sure to do that next christmas. This would be forever. What we now attend the event jennings indeed returned to virginia in the u. S. Promoted, if you will, to position of James Madisons personal attendant or body servant. And as such, as the constant servant in madison study, he was present as madison received a . Of notables in that room from Thomas Jefferson to and are shocked and, henry clay, Daniel Webster very many gunmen of learning that matter since nice wrote that jennings sighed for freedom was enamored with freedom. Well, you bet. Those young men of learning would wracks the guys about spending one evening listening to the father of the constitution holds for us. Jennings, the part of the wallpaper was present for hundreds of such discourse is and then the book, i developed it these days that jennings was able to absorb the theoretical underpinnings that would support his innate yearning for freedom and allow him to identify as a natural right of man. Late february, 1837, jennings prepared the madison city has been washing 10 for future use by the widow, dolly madison. Paul jennings had returned to Lafayette Square for the first time in 20 years. James madison died the previous summer and mrs. Dolly decided she would make use of her city has been washing 10 and send jennings ahead to ready the dwelling. It was still february, but in anticipation of new administration, already the time is gathering a lot with that of springs first frost. The atmosphere must have reminded jennings of James Madisons inauguration 28 years earlier. Jennings took stock of a much altered Lafayette Square. A block from the Madison House the restored white house now sported porticos that both the north and south friends. The buildings charred and weakened exterior walls had been rebuilt in the course of which the workmen dug out partially preserved in her display that jennings had prepared the day the british torched the mansion in august 1814. The George Washington portrait had long ago been retrieved from the maryland farmhouse, where where the thief rearrested after the fire and returned to the white house. As for jennings himself, his young manhood was behind him and he was still a slave. Nevertheless, my husband and father he led a life of meaning and take advantage of opportunities as they came out. Jennings rise would always require unremitting resistant against legal, social and psychological impediments. The contrast with dolly sima striking. Hopelessly alcoholic was the other occupations nor spouse seem to let purpose altogether. Of course one could say payne took advantage of the situation, too. He certainly had taken advantage of his mother and step father time and again, slowly draining their finances and goodwill. As you know, every president ial family needs an embarrassing neerdowell. [laughter] in this case it was dollys son from her first marriage payne todd. Being beautifully filled the role for me in the arc of my story as foil to Paul Jennings. He had every advantage in life and squandered everyone. Jennings had no advantage in life and yet even while still a slave managed to carve out a life of meaning for himself. Now, when James Madison died, jennings was disappointed to learn he had not been freed as he had reason to expect. He was then given to understand that madison had made an agreement with his widow that she was free all the montpelier slaves, all 100 slaves. I certainly wasnt going to happen. She and her son against the lastplace right away, although in her 1841 well, she did have a term that would free jennings at her death, the only slaves are treated. But he wasnt so sure about that as time went by. He got on her bad side. Now, hes back in washington, but his wife and his children are owned by another master in virginia, a neighbor of madison. So not only had he not lived with them up until now, visited with them only on the one traditional day of each sunday, but now he was altogether geographically separated from and. Dolly at this time is hiring him out to president james polk. That jennings had a second wife beginning in 1845 and at this point, the president and his mistress had given him permission to go back to virginia for a visit with his family. But he had stayed longer than dolly approved of and she wrote to her son and said that paul will lose the best place and his mistress convenient resources. Well, i want to stop with that story for a sack out because i want to tell you about my research at the library of congress and how it was here that i got my first hint as to pauls family and i think it is an an interesting episode because it illustrates undertaking Historical Research in this day and age and the likely path for a period often starts as it did for this particular asked at what google books and google books, you know, you never know what youre going to get because you put in different combinations of keywords and see what comes up and at one point, even though it does certainly i tried this many times before, i discovered here in the Manuscript Division of the library of congress was a 29 page manuscript titled Paul Jennings and his time. Well, i wish it so excited at this point is director of education at montpelier, but not when saturday comes ill be going to washington. Let me call ahead and make sure they really do have this item and can share it with me on saturday. So i called up in someone in the Manuscript Division, and i must say, everyone who works here is always assisted me with great thoroughness and kindness than it really, really appreciate. Such was the case with this gentleman on the phone, who said he looked it up, went away, came back and said let me look a little bit more. Yup another minute to hang on the phone . I thought i would be happy to hang on the phone and have you read me all 29 pages of this manuscript. So thats no problem. He said yes indeed we have it and i went up then on saturday in the fellow who was working that day in the Manuscript Division i showed him the printout from google books and he was surprised to see what had been digitized on google books was the actual handbook of manuscripts in the library of congress. He pulled out his copy and it was like the bible and he did display a search in a certain aspect of claiming the unfair special document. Dont tell me not anybody can get their hands on this from google books. But anyway, whats he brought forth the manuscript, i was just beside myself because right in the first page i learned like five facts about Paul Jennings biography. This was where i first learned he had a wife named fannie gordon. I also learned for the first time about Daniel Murray. Daniel murray was the first africanamerican assistant librarian of congress and he had been preparing a monumental, but never published biographical encyclopedia of the colored race, prominent africanamericans up to the time and he included Paul Jennings among them because he was familiar with his having authored the colored mans reminiscences of James Madison. In 1901, he had interviewed Paul Jennings only surviving child at that point, Franklin Jennings and put together some notes. So i got to see both on microfilm some of the notes that mary had put together as well as this opening page of this manuscript. Paul jennings and his time. What was interesting in what is kind of part and parcel of research so often is that according to murray, franklin had said his mother was leedys made to the sister of general eventually president coming thackery taylor. Well, i knew that wasnt possible because i was familiar with the Taylor Family, no relation, of Orange County, virginia and 90 Zachary Taylor was born in that area, but his immediate family had quickly moved on to kentucky. So that timing just wouldnt work out. But what it gave me was the hint that there was a mistress in the Taylor Family and in deed it was an later i was able to verify that six ways to sunday through the Orange County courthouse records and through other records at the National Archives and so on. But that was really one among many exciting days that i spend at the race. Now, the rest of the story. So Paul Jennings needs his freedom now. You see what actually happened about this time that his wife died. Now his children back in orange are motherless. The youngest two years old. This is when he went to senator Daniel Webster for help. Remember he said he was a good networker and you know it helps to have acquaintances in high places, even as a slave. Webster came to jennings rescue and advanced his Purchase Price and he wasnt a rich man. He struck a deal with jennings, whereby jennings would work in his household and pay the Purchase Price back at the rate of 8 a month. So finally at the age of 48, Paul Jennings became a free man. And here is one thing he got involved with that very first full year of freedom night saturday, 15 april 1848, a landing at the seventh street wars, washington city. It was a moonless night and that was an advantage for the activity at the wharf was highly illegal. Paul jennings played a role in the operation of such satisfaction and is thought to have been the black men felt observing the scene in the shadows, noticed the ship captain daniel drayton. Treatment purge the witness who told him he knew what was going on, but the cat in heat have no apprehension on his account. Before the night was overcome a 77 enslaved women and children were bored, anchored at the edge of the Potomac River and set themselves under the hatch before the new day dawned would be on their way to freedom in the north. Among the individual cinema hall was totally madisons runaway slave, alan stewart. Jennings had likely escorted the girl to the dock, i miler says so and watched her aboard the 5410 baycrest goodner. In the well of and desperate need for flight that precipitated jennings on involvement in the venture. When the approximately five minutes earlier, dali called on to the parlor of the house, nominally for an errant, but to show her to a georgian is the colored people called the slave drivers. After allen was dismissed, dali range with the trader to pick up a Public Square where she was sent her at a prearranged time under the roots of fetching water. The alan got wind of the maneuver and danced across Lafayette Square and escaped into the bustle of the city. Now, as i say, it impresses me that jennings would risk his hard ones status as a free man by helping others try to achieve that same condition. This was not to be. Jennings was one of the black operatives who worked with white northern abolitionists to plot this escape attempt out. As part of the underground railroad and turned out to be the largest attempted slave escape of her in American History. As with light winds on the potomac here that slowed it down, that the chesapeake and the winds were too heavy to enter the banks. So they might admit to freedom in the north, before he turned coat of the black Community Back in washington, who informed them that the gunners on their tail sooner rather than later, with them and hold the pearl back to washington and those slaves aboard face the fate that which was filled to the deep south and permanent separation from home and family. Another thing Paul Jennings did soon after he achieved his freedom was to march himself down to the photography studio and sit for his garriott type. Here he is on the cover. Let me tell you how i discovered this image. It is the only known likeness of any montpelier slave. I worked to seek out jennings direct descendents and i had to to the living direct descendent of two of jennings children, but not for his son, franklin. When i finally cracked that line, it led me to jennings alexander. She was 93 years old and i had the privilege of meeting her and was the keeper of the Jennings Family oral tradition. On her living room wall with his likeness of Paul Jennings. Mrs. Alexander lived another year and a half after he met her and though she has physical maladies from when i first met her, her mind was sharp as a tack and her memories that she learned from her grandfather, franklin, franklin lived to be 90. And so, right from frankly many of the family stories go back to slavery days and she very much enriched my story and also my own personal experience. By the way, she shared many family photographs with me and the slave in the white house has photographs and graphics, but many more could go into the book and i hope that youll check out the Paul Jennings website, where many have been posed did. Its Paul Jennings. Info. But back to this likeness, it didnt take me too long to compare it with the statue of James Madison here in the Madison Building of the library of congress im not horses because madison, even fcc jennings here, hold the book in his right hand. So James Madison was always the state than with a book under one arm bandits Claire Jennings was proud of his the, that he is posing with the prop of his choice, it looked. Heres the last vignette excerpt that i will read. 31 october 1854, at 18th street atlas washington, paul and desdemona jennings appreciated their new home. As a small house on a small piece of ground, but of great because to them. Carpenter john james had owned lot 23 at square one of seven and having divided the land into three parcels, he built three wood frame houses facing ulster. Thats jennings account wyeth applied her mark, ecology and the same answer has been permanently moved of their payments were not made, the property would be forfeited. The arrangement specified quarterly installments of 100 for centrist come accumulating down payment could not have bee easy and coming up with 100theo every three months would not be. Either. Washington is one of the most world. Ve cities in the Pension Office clerks and a nin0 to 1800 annually wereprez to hardpressed to support their families. Jennings salaryje was a man regally held t 400 piece of land and modest house free and clear for himself and heirs other. There was a scattererring of houses in the area. The city established finer residences rain from capitol hill to the white house in a small section north and west from there. It was a few blocks further on paul and their new neighborhood in the midst of marsh country side where rabbits could be shot and blackberries grew in season. Im sure most of you know that spot l and 18th street. If youre book lovers, you will remember until not too long ago there was a borders book. I would go there and sit in the cafe get a coffee and think, i think i could be sitting at Paul Jennings Kitchen Table right now. Its interesting too many of the places where jennings either lived and or worked are still in washington. The buildings and the patented officer department where he worked, the dolly Madison House, the octagon, which was the first of the temporary white house after the white house burned. And of course, the white house itself. Well, before we get to a questions and answers, i want to make a couple of comments on Paul Jennings legacy. James madison wrote of liberty and learning. Leaning on each or for the mutual and surest support. Like madison, jennings applied his learning in the service of liberty. He secured his freedom and his familys future of intrepid antislavery activist. He forged passes and freed papers for slaves. Was an operative in a major attempted slave escape, and he raised funds for slaves in peril. Its a unique story. Its important to appreciate that at the same time he is rentivity of many africanamericans of his time. Who story may never be known. But who, like him, overcame a barrage of obstacles in pursuit of the right to rise. And i will close by referring back to the library of congress, and the great good say that do here in preserving the written word. You know when jennings authored that First White House memoir, it was a private printing. I adopt believe there were more than 150 to 200 copies. And so really its remarkable it survived at all and wasnt all together obscured or lost over the years. In part we have Daniel Murray to thank for that, but a that assistant library of Congress Helped put together an exposition in 1900 on the works of negro authors. And that included Paul Jennings. You know this is in contrast to lets say solomon twelve years of slaves. There were 8,000 copies printed and sold in just the first months when it came out in 1853. And many thousands and thousands to follow. So im grateful to Daniel Murray and the library of congress that jennings memoir is with us. I thank you for your preserving our heritage of the word. And i thank all of your for your kind attention. [applause] we are grateful to beth, of course not only the for the research that went in to the story, and high lighting a little bit of the library of congress own history and our own story. As part of the americans story. Were not done yet. We have a question and answer period to go. I did not mention deliberately that this discussion also can continue on facebook. The certainly for thebook as books an beyond Facebook Page you can learn about past talks and contribute your own remarks to the ongoing discussion were about to start now. I would like to ask for those who have questions for beth to please come to the microphone in the middle, and ask your question. I will be able to assure that you we have until 1 00 until the signings start. Lets start with one more round of applause to our excellent speaker today, beth. [applause] will someone take the first step . Well, if not. Ly ask the first question, and i spect others to come up and follow. I have an easy question. What was it like to be on the john stewart show . [laughter] what kind of preparation did you do mentally before you took that first step . Thank you. Well, you know, its funny because my the publicist at my publishers landed this gig, and i department know it until one evening why got back to my house in virginia having been up here in washington, picking up my son who is a College Student at american university, bringing him back home for the christmas holidays. When i got back, there were six telephone messages. Twenty emails, where are you . You have been booked on the john stewart show. We want to make your travel arrangement. Naturally my son being 21 is a prime john stewart fan and i sat him down and said i know youre not going to believe it im going to be a guest. Because it was his christmas vacation, he coached me asking me questions, and as if i was on the show for the period few weeks. I tried to get a grips on my nerves. Which i did the afternoon of that tapings that evening when i went over to the studio, that meant that the experience could be fun for me as indeed it was. The entire thing was just one of the most privileged and enjoyable experiences ive ever had. And of course, john stewart is my new best friend. I do feel like i have him to thank for the vigorous book sales. [laughter] hello, i was wondering if you got a sense of his personality jennings personality, and if it was what you expected when you set out on the journey of the book. Well, the question was within since sense i got of Paul Jennings personality. I got a good sense, i felt, as time went by. And i feel there are corp l of sides to him. He was ann intelligent, courteous, well bred, these are descriptions that would come up. He played the violin, he liked to read, he was steady and per size, he was patriotic, he had another side where that he was especially able to express in freedom, and i feel like he was a man about town in washington. He married three times, the last time at age 70. Jennings alexander, her father described him as a jim dandy. He thought he was hot stuff at times. [laughter] he said if he had any extra money he would buy fine skin shoes, for example. I think about how he watched washington change coming here in 1809 first as a 10yearold boy and then living and dieing in northwest washington. Dying at the age of 75. Yms even just take one thing like the u. S. Capitol, and imagine how he thought saw it evolve over the years, remodeled. Bushed by the british, burned by the british, and then finally during the civil war coming to its prominent as it looks today. Although he never saw the Washington Monument completed. That rose to onethird of the planned height, then for twenty five years remained a stub. He never saw that in the final form. [inaudible] i was about to ask how long it took him to say [inaudible] and how long did he get a chance to enjoy the freedom . Let me say about his life and freedom. Remember, Daniel Webster advanced Purchase Price and it would have taken him close to a couple of years to pay it back at the rate of 8 a month. He continued to work for webster for about four years. Then he decided apparently he wanted another kind of job and remember, i said he was a good networkinger. And so what he did was get a letter of recommendation from Daniel Webster, i found the original in the papers of Alfred Chapman . Who is that . He is from Orange County, and hes a cousin, he was a cousin of madisons he was living in washington at the time working as a clerk in the department of interior. And next thing you know, jennings gets a job in the department of the interior. So its easy for me to imagine him taking this letter of recommendation that webster wrote for him. Its Paul Jennings name on the envelope. And handing it over to his contact, where he knows connections, alfred schapman, who gets him a job in the same department. And he had a steady but lowlevel government job, this is about the most these were coveted among free black men, the highest black man at that time hoped to aspire to in terms of a livelihood. He worked as a Pension Office under the department of the interior for at least fifteen years. Hell row. What a fascinating project. I was wondering what compelled do you tell the story and bring it forth. Well, you know, i was first of all, i should say i worked at monticello and for a combination of twenty two years. I saw the opportunity to make a contribution to tell a story of the africanamerican heritage at the site whenever slavely existed its important tell the story. At the two president ial plantation its all the more poignant and important do so. So i had that ongoing interest. And Paul Jennings became the focus of my study because of this memoir. I thought, you know, my question its a precious document, and quite interesting. Yet when you finish it you feel like saying what about you Paul Jennings, i wish you included more about yourself. And the visitors who came were interested too. Originally you know, the memoir you can find the text online but they never come out in a new edition since 1865. I thought, well, ill bring that out, the reminiscences themselves and do a biographical essay with them, perhaps. And i got more ambitious from there until it turned in a physical fulleleventh book. You mention he died at 75. Where is he bury . Washington . Ill tell you that story. He was buried in Harmony Cemetery, which is southeast, and and that was okay, except that at as the years went by the Burial Ground became very much overrun with weeds and the metro itself encroached on it. As some of you may know, the burials there were dug up and reinturned in maryland except, i dont know if there were other cases, but Paul Jennings remained never made the trip. Mrs. Alexander paul jensings grade granddaughter remembered her cousin crying they lost grp paul they lost grandpa paul and so all though we know initially he was buried in Harmony Cemetery where his remains are at the moment are unknown. [background noise] when i first met beth, she was still at monticello she recalled the story a little earlier. I havent seen her for a number of years. Knew she was working on the book and she came wandering down the hall about an hour ago before the talk, i knew it will be to be beth she was carrying a decrypt but important bag to the center of the book. It was the old center for the book bag i had given her more than twelve years ago. Twelve years ago. A. I said that must be beth. I better check it out. And then i saw the condition of the bag, and i said, well that speaks well for the occur rehabilitate adulter durnlt. Well have a line come along that wall. I would like to present beth with [laughter] a brand new bag. [laughter] it is in great shape. Never been used. I will not take this one back. Accept mental value. Join me for one more time in thanking beth for a wonderful talk. [applause] thank you. I appreciate it. You dont always find many newspaper editors embracing investigative reporting. Its not just economics. Its a discomfort investigative reporting often causes any news term because his troubled son. Its that with an economics. If you ruffle the feathers of some of the powerful, that gets people running into complaint to the publisher and their stories there leeches over the years about those kinds of things happening. We were fortunate to the 70s and almost all our careers to work for people who are strong and upgraded the area and let the chips fall where they may, where the work way you. I primarily watch dallas in the senate. I tend to flip over, especially if theres something important going on, coverage of the florida works are not going to see that. Cspan is where you find something important going on thats not otherwise covered. Even listen to cspan radio in my car. We talked to her about the book on the campus of Georgetown University. Ning whos on your screen is professor chandra manning, author of this book, what this cruel war wasv, over soldiers, slaery, and the civili war. Thi professor mannion, what was your approach to this book worksoacht the first thing about approach is to give me way too much credit when you say i th approach. The book is not at all the book i thought it was going to write when i started. I started with an interest in civil war soldiers and a desire to read their mail, butriting eysolutely no intention of everh writing about soldiers in, none i was enlisted in the regular farmers and shopkeepers in the not slaveholders and northern iain growers so i was really interest did thn people who lived in an 18th century thought about this thing called the nation. What did you mean if youre from different parts of the nation. So my plan was to do that, to look at how these guys talk about america, how they talk about the United States, thehe union, how they talk about the subs confederacy. How did they talk about thisnd house, hoping they would be t substantially different from each other and i would have something to say. So i headed into the archives peered ars h first of all, what archives . T r. Kaiser member state tohe u thought. Ha 45 archives are present in this book. The hugeba vents immediately coe to mind, library of congress or Carlisle Barracks in pennsylvania, which has an Enormous Army history. Th collection, but also smallereale libraries. Depa datertof archive and history, Vermont Historical society, and independence, missouri, again, the point was i didnt want to read more about u. S. Grant, i wanted to more about the little grunt in the back of the line. Thats where i looked. What i wanted is the soldiers to say i look at the flag and think of my farm or i think of my wife or my mother. They wouldnt cooperate they wouldnt do what i wanted them to do. What were you finding a similar theme among both union and phone fed rate solders . Two things. I knew there was union and confederate differences. I was interested in those for Different Reasons east west and that sort of thing. I found very little of the eastwest difference that i was looking for. There were mid westerners that thought people from the east were price pricey and bad manners in the west. You can hear that today. It was not that surprising. They werent talking about what i wanted them to. They wouldnt stop talking about what they were supposed to do that was slavely. That was not what they werent supposed to care about. It wasnt supposed to care about the center of the world in the they it seemed to. I spent long time annoyed for not doing what i wanted them to do. Until finally dew i woke up and realized theres a story here. I didnt think they should be talking about slavery and they are. I need to understand why. What why did they care . What difference did it make to somebody from alabama or arkansas who never owned a slave whroornt slavery survived. What difference did it make to somebody who grew wheat in illinois or in massachusetts why did he care whether something called the union survived or whether there was slavery or not . Once i figured out that was my question, that became my approach, but again approach sounds like i knew what i was doing. It didnt. It took me of two years of days in the archives to figure it out. Professor manning, as you went through the letters, what were soldiers lets start with the north. What were you finding northern soldiers saying about slavery . At beginning i was struck by the wide range of opinions on slavery. At the beginning the war is about union for most northern soldiers, not all but most. What, i mean, by that is that most of them enter the war convinced that the United States has to survive. It has to survive to show to the world that representative of government can work. They were kids in 1848 in a series of revolutions in 1848 in europe as they see it they failed. They were failed democratic revolutions, and so they see the United States, this is it. Its the worlds last shot. Selfgovernment works or never be tried again. They think they can destroy the government which is how Union Soldiers see it. They didnt like who got elected. We have to prove that it can survive. Thats how they start. They dont have to be in the south very long before nay going think, why did we get to the fox begin with . They talked white southerners and slaves. They are struck by how we got in to the problem to begin with because of this institution of slavery. Do you want to solve a problem, the only way to do is it root out the cause. Union soldiers made a shift earlier than i had anticipated. The big shift begins in the summer of 1861 with soldiers beginning to write home to the families but also to the elected officials to say that if we want to win the war and dont fight it again in ten years, we need to get rid of the problem we need to get rid of slavery or its going to be right back at square one. So they at first take a really practical approach to the slavery problem. Its the way solve the problem. Get rid of the cause, problem goes away. They figure out that this is their first reaction to what they view as a cause of the war, but then as they stay in the south, more and more they interact with real live slaves. Real live people who run to the union army by the thousands, and suddenly its harder to dismiss slaves as an abstract or black people as a undefined category. Something you have never heard of before. Harder to think of them that way when you have individuals with names and with stories and with families in your camp. And they also do useful thing for you like your laundry. And so the initial feelings about slavery are quite instrument tal. The problem to solve it extended experience in the south humanizes africanamerican people for soldiers and begin to take a more reflective look at theres something wrong with this. Its not inconvenient. Its something wrong and it has to go because you only want a war when god is on your side. Theres no way god lets you win if you let Something Like slavery exist. A sort of prablght call response in the early months is joined bay kind of moral and religious reck knowledging as youre finding that across the board among northern soldiers. I am. Theres differences of opinion about everything. You have 2 million men in union blue but 2 Million People are going to disagree about things. But with the one exception is the food is bad. They agree. Other than that the division of opinion about everything. What is striking is how wade weighted the opinion is. Not at outset. As the war proceeds. There are a lot of guys who enter the war i want nothing do with slavery. I can think of one in particular mouthy chon sei. Hes 18 or 19 from ohio, and he enlists and he and his father and uncle are close and very active and enthusiastic in the sort of far wing of the democratic party. Sometimes called the copperheads. The wing of the party that is most given [inaudible] most opposed to the emancipation. Thats how he entered. He gets hid way through the war even as late as 1863 hes not sure the emancipation is good idea and not what he signed up for. Hes not going leave, hes not happy. But again he stays in the south, he goes through experiencing and no one at home can imagine. And he who is the most antiab abolitionist i found in the early months by the end of the war is writing home to his father and i think uncle to reeducate them. He writes and says you think that i have, you know, turned against my country, i think you are mistaken considerable which is the mouthy. He mouths off to his father. And he proceeds to explain exactly why the war has to take down slavery at the end of the war when it ends how he greets the ending is yes we are free, free, free from the. Thats a hundred m 180 degree turn around and so if you look any moment in the union ranks of course you find a range of opinions. By the ends of the war the range has narrowed any time in the war its there are a lot of people shifting. Were northern soldieriers censored at all . Thats a good question. No. Thats one of the charms. Here are three million men who fought in the civil war, most of whom would never have left us their personal thoughts or not for the war. Why would you . The people you love you talk to as opposed to wrote to. For four years they are away from home. They have to use writing as a way to talk about what they care about. Thats actually what drew me to the project in the first place. Its hard to get what did ordinary people care about and think about. They dont leave papers in the they George Washington does. That was how i was drawn to civil war soldiers. The letters are completely uncensored. They are expected to leave out, you know, sensitive military information. Theyll tell you thats not hard. We dont know any. Theres no office, theres no officers have enough to do. They dont look at the mens mail. They also dont look at the interesting publication soldier newspapers. And these were really interesting. So i looked at them and [inaudible] morale, welfare and recreation yet in the civil war. They have to amuse themselves. And one of the ways they do it in many regimen is they start newspapers, and sometimes they do it with a piece of paper and a pen and they are a handwritten. Sometime in this case do it by occupying the Printing Press of the local southern newspaper. The barryville, virginia. They were setting the type to his newspaper one day and i think early 1862, marches the first minnesota and they decide not to undo the work print the other three. The newspaper exists with one page of sort of local barryville news and three pages of first minnesota news. And in other places men travel with portable Printing Presses. And these newspapers are exclusively all enlisted mens idea and world and work. They write for themselves they circulate among themselves. They arent censored either or officially and not selfsensorred in the sense that if youre writing a letter to your mom you i wouldnt want to know that my son hasnt had a decent meal in two weeks and the socks had holes kinds of thing. When youre writing for other soldiers they know the stuff. Theres no need to soften edges a little bit. The newspapers especially uncensored because of the intended audience. They are the sort of almost raw voice of enlisted soldier. Its hard to imagine anything like that. Its not like stars and stripes in world war ii which goes through a formal censorship process. Nothing like that. When did you get interested in the civil war . What did you teach . I cant remember not being interested. 19th century history pry. I loved little house on the prairie when i was kid. It drew me to the 19th century. I was close to my grandmother the woman had to be a saint she taught me to read when i was two. She was fascinated by the civil war. I cant explain why. Our family was in the United States yet it wasnt a gene logical kind of connection, exactly. She was. And anything about her i was going to be just like her. I became very interested in the civil war pretty young probably eight or nine why read the life of johnny and the life of billy by bill. And those are one written in 1943 and they are descriptive book about civil war soldiers. If you want to know what a soldier wore or what the buttons on the uniform looked like or what kinds of practical jokes he played on the friends where he marred if want to know the daily life. They will never be surpassed. I read those young and the bug bit then. So ive been interested far long time. Here at georgetown i teach 19th history. I teach a class on civil war. We play civil war music every class. I make them eat things. I teach history on baseball and other 19th century topic. What did you find in the southern soldiers letters . They surprise me even more. I walked in to the project just convinced they were not going to talk about slavery. Why would they . I couldnt see how in a two out of three white families and the confederate sei did not own slaves. I really thought there would be a, you know, whats in it for me attitude toward slavery. Een war for them wuld. For Different Reasons. I read the order innocences and those kinds of things and make clear that succession happened to safeguard the constitution of slavery. I didnt think that the regular guy really saw the war in those terms. I expected the war to be for him sort prof sees of disillusionment, almost, i entered for one reason and i find its about Something Else and it isnt my war after all. Thats what i thought i was going find. I really didnt. What i found were men who did care as i suspected first and foremost about the loved ones, the their family, their homes what i was unprepared for was how closely they linked the things to the institution of slavery. You live in north carolina, or arkansas or virginia you dont own any slaves you are connected to the institution and you know it. In a number of ways. There a lot of structure ways kinship, your family doesnt own but your great uncle does. The wide spread process of slave hiring or slave renting. You dont you cant own a slave. You need help this year. You can rent one from the slave holding neighbor for far less than you can hire any other labor. That will help you in the crunch time harvest and planting. You also are no fool. You no the wealthy of your region is highly dependent on the enormously valuable source of property. There are structure ways in which regular white southerners are connected. Theyre not dumb. They know it. I think the connections are deeper. They go almost down to a gut level. If you are a white southern man, and you dont own slaves, you still enjoy a certain position in society. You live in a society that values equality. Real values the idea that you and i are just as good as one another. You also grew up in age of growing inequality, and age high mobility. People on the move all the time, you grew up in a insecure world. What i was if had a shack and you live in a plantation. What makes us equal . Neither can be slaves. Thats important. Not the whole story. Thats important to who these men think they are. They also think of themselves as husbands and fathers and brothers and protectors. What do they see at the greaters danger and threat to the people they loved . The emancipation as a terrible threat. They live in a society that is 40 black. What happens when 40 of the population who you know is pretty good reasons to be a little upset with the other 60 is freed . They really believe that this their loved ones are in danger if slavery goes away. Theres a safety genuine gut level safety issue. And the final maybe not final final one i talk about the final reason why i think slavery matters to the guys is religious. That sounds funny, but slavery is in the bible. Not even in the new testament does christ come out directly against the institution of slavery. Who are these northerners who think they know better than god how to Order Society . Thats crazy. Thats dangerous. And so if everything you know and love in the world seems to you to rest on the foundation of slavery and somebody is talking about messing with the foundation you felt like your world got raddled and so in that sense i found from the outset white southerners who really dont see themselves as having a District Economic interest besee the thing in this case love the most dependent on the survival of slavery. That keeps them in the field. How easy it was to find a trove of letters at the archives . Easier than i thought it would be, actually. I think again because i tended to go to smaller ones. So the letters tended to be the somebodys attic got cleaned and no one knew what to do. They went state or county. There were there are hundreds 77 thousands unan countable amount of letters out there. That actually turned i didnt have a problem i couldnt find enough sources. I had to have a strategy there are more sources than i can look at. How do i choose the way i did it was i stuck with enlisted. Occasionally some of the guys would be promoted and become junior officers. I looked at men who enlisted as enlisted men. And i wanted to ordinary people. I wanted people you never heard of before. And i wanted my army to look close to how the real army had look. I had tried to keep the ratio of how many easterners and westerners. How many rural and urban. How many farmers and teachers. I tried to keep it as close to possible. I choose by demographic, data, as much as anything. I tried really hard not to overrepresent any particular group in who i looked at. In one way, though, there is one i should admit theres one, well, two, there are two not quite representations. One is obviously elite rate solders. There are fewer over 90 of the union army and 80 confederate could read and write. So literacy is not such a small thing as we might think. There are some that cant read and write. There are some that wrote for them. I read those. The group least likely to be able to read and write are the black people. They need the most digging, and there a couple of ways to get at those. One is the same way there is somebody in the regimen could write and wrote for others. The other is black soldiers wrote to northern black newspapers. And so there are column and columns of black soldiers letters in northern free black newspaper and i got at them that way. Sometimes black soldiers will hold Public Meetings and together they will come up with all soldiers do this they come up with a series of resolutions and somebody will write them down and record a vote or a reaction. And so its not the same as writing to, you know, your sister, but its a voice somehow. Those are the soldiers that are there purposefully there because they are part of the army but have to admit the escaped slave, who had never learned to write or read. His voice is the less likely to be captured. The other misrepresentation is probably not that meaningful, but i would get to an archive and look through all the soldiers they had and make a list of everybody i wanted to look at and start at a and go through and write around thursday if i was there a week and realize im only at m. So the beginning of the alphabet, theres the early alphabet named are overrepresented as oppose to the s or t. Other than that i tried pretty hard to not overly weight anybody. What about womens voices. Did you look at return letters . I did some when i wanted to sort of know what they were responding to. Those do exist far fewer of them, though, than the soldiers letters. I think some has to do with practicality. If youre a soldier and write home. They can put your letter in a drawer. And, you know, theyre afraid something might happen to you. They have an incentive to put it in the drawer and keep it. The soldiers were likely to survive than loved ones letter to the front. You have a snap sack and you dont have drawer to put in. It gets wet and muddy and survival makes letters back to soldiers from women harder to get. Sometimes they survive. Sometimes they send back the letter so say that get saved. I did not make a somatic inquiry to those on the particular project. There were a few people beginning to cot work. I think it would be interesting. We have been talking chandra manning, professor here at Georgetown University and also codirector of the georgetown workshop in 19th century in u. S. History. This is her book what the cruel war was over, soldiers slavery and the civil war. Thank you for your time. Roger williams was trained with civil lot and worked for a cook in the British Parliament. We see civil law and separation inhouse of church and state. Of this is where we see Roger Williams talking about the freedom of religion. He is showing why he is different and why road island will be different from massachusetts and the other colonies to the north. He created a land where people could come to worship as they chose to be protected by the civil law. By the actor British Parliament all copies of this book were set to be burned. This copy was not. [inaudible conversations] good evening. Im henry olson Vice President of the American Enterprise substitute and director of the Major Research initiative which is a good evening iaaf vicenal c president of the American Enterprise institute which is the Foundation Organization within the entity to support Domestic Policy Research book that is the subject of todays discussion. The 2012 election is in many ways a debate over the 1932 election. Should we continue or extend the legacy of fkr and in establishing the federal government as one of the preimminent director if not the preimminent director of Economic Life or should we embrace the creative animal spirit of Free Enterprise capitalism and trust more to other and the great men and women who fuel our nations economy and whose idea and innovations chain change our lives when we look to the future of American Public policy. Economists and historians have debated whether or not roosevelts move in his signature domestic accomplishmented helped or hurt. Whether or not it prolonged the Great Depression or helped bring us out. Whatever side you take in the debate theres virtually anonymous con wisdom agreement that the stimulus provided by world war iis continued purchase of munitions and vehicles and other things to fight the nazi and fight the japanese. Ultimately pulled america out of the recession. And of course, when we do that, the common wisdom focus on the collective. They focus on the government. They focus on rationing, shared sacrifice. Rose sei the riveter. The board of production board. The implication of that sometimes voiced by many people today who argue that president obama should move for strongly in embracing the legacy its a time when the government finally got the private sector out of the way. They got to steer the main they got it right. And the problem is that we have abandoned that legacy. Arthurs book shows that none of that common wisdom is true. That ultimately what saved america and saved the world was not the government finally getting it right, but private industry and all of the innovation and freedom animal spirits that been herd to the corner for the previous decade that came roaring tout save others and save the world. Without much further ado let me introduce arthur herman. We with can only hope that it brings so much critical and commercial attention. Arthur. [applause] how are all of you . [inaudible conversations] thanks for coming out. The weather has been, shall we say, less than cooperative . But im glad to see so many faces, many of them familiar, many of them new to my audiences. I also want to thank our host, American Enterprise institute forker that help not just with this event but the work and research i have done for the book, freedoms forge and the help and support from colleagues and others who have been so instrumental in helping me to not only shape the ideas that are contained in this book but also to give me a sense about what the real value of intellectual collaboration and cooperation is really all about. And as just as i discovered in many ways that capitalism contrary to not just about competition. Its about cooperation. It is in many ways a cooperative venture and so also intellectual endeavor. Now, what i want to do here tonight is to tell you a story. Its a story that usually is told backwards. If you got textbook, you got movie, grow the usual discussions of this very often you can see an illustration Something Like this. Ive been talking about the theme which is american wartime production in world war ii. Like this b29 being built at the boeing facility in wichita, kansas. And its the story as government bringing the resources of the American Economy toward a single clengtive end and achieving in the process outpouring american wartime ownership percents of all war equipment used by the allies of world war ii came out of american factories. Its an incredible story an industrial miracle of the 20th conche i are what 0 cared there. What im going tell you is a story that shows the urinal version has usual version has it backwards where we usually start is where it should finish. And where it should start is not in factories like watch thats b29 planet, but back in the spring of 1940, and i want to put you in the place of the man who would in fact set this process rolling namely franklin roosevelt. As he gets news sitting in the oval office that a new kind of warfare blitzkrieg warfare supported by mass air power is sweeping across western europe and overwhelming the democracy of europe. France, and also threatening to do the same to britain. Franklin roosevelt realizes sitting there that if frans falls and britain falls or remains isolated war is coming to the United States. Maybe not in a year, maybe a year and a half to two years, but war is coming. Views vellet realizing she will be facing a situation which america will be preparing to face an enemy who has a military might that looks like this when ours looks like this. This is the belly flopper who is an experiment of the vehicle tried out by the u. S. Army in the mid 30s later dropped. It gives you an idea eat the contrast in military technology the United States faced in the 1930s in and 190. Roosevelt realized there. He realized the United States has the 18th largest army in the world. Holland has a bigger army than the United States. Hungry hungary has a better army. It has a battle fleet the United States navy we built around world war i era battleship what has no mean of projecting power. How are you going it . Where do you start in the navy and War Department have no clue. They went through the process of world war i had been a fiasco trying to take over factory and trying to place orders and decide what was going to made. None arrived in time for the soldiers fighting overseas. He faces a congress which is how they do it . World war i was the war to end all wars. So authorizations forget it. Its not going come for any kind of military buildup. Hue are you going deal with the situation . Where do you turn to transform the American Military but also get the u. S. Economy after at david depression geared up for the kind of production record . The place you turn is American Business. Thats what roosevelt did. Roosevelt hated business, he despised businessmen. He campaigned two president ial elections against business blaming them for the depression. Blaming them for property longing of the depression. He saw them as the bitterest enemy. He had no choice. There was no one else to turn to. He is given the army the War Department National Mobilization plan to get the economy geared up for war across the country. It comes to 18 typed pages double spaced. He has nowhere else to turn and at the advice of the wall street fundraiser he calls this man. Bill newton. Newton danish immigrant who come over to america started work in a bronx shipyard with a rivetting gang. He worked his way to gate job with the company that was making spare parts for ford, works his way up from the shop floor to become henry fords right hand men and moved to chef lay and finally to president of the gm. He was a motor city legend. The man who had perfected the technique of what is called mass production. And had turned that in to the means by which the american Automobile Industry had become these single larger em employer in the country and become the master industry of technology logical innovation of quantitative production. He calls bill newton and said i need help. We face the dire situation, no one else knows what too go. How do we get the economy up and running and up and going . You have no authority whatsoever. Theres no strag Statutory Authority. You have to do with your own power and persuasion and the business connection you have in the Automobile Industry and all the industries that are connected and that support us at the same time. This becomes bill newtons shall we say job offer. In may of 40 and his response is traumatic. Hes a republican. Roosevelt a democrat. They have sparred and have been at opposite ends for more than a decade. When he gets the call the first thing he does is quit as president of general motors, move to washington and begin the process of figuring how hes going get the country up and running or wartime production. He has first of all the american industry which has been fallen in to hard times because of decade of depression streel try about onehalf of the production catch it had been in 1929. Hes also got the fact that many businessmen that hes dealing with including his own boss. Theres newton standing at the microphone. His boss standing to the left on your right alfred. Youre going work for roosevelt and make a among key out of you. Its not a project you want to get yourself involved involved in in my wayst. Its an expand to grow out at new deal. Dont do anything along the kinds of lines youre making a huge mistake. Newson said to his boss im an imgrant who came to the shores. Everything i have i owe to america. My president called im going answer it. And deal with the situation. The problem hes going face is not just opposition from many of the fellow businessmen who hate the new deal just as roosevelt hates them and not just opposition from ice Los Angeles Congress but the labor union. Working on the book one of the major obstacles he faced throughout the effort to get the economy going and geared up toward wartime production were the resistance of the union. They feared that the shift to wartime production from civilian production would seriously damage the gains they had made in terms of union power, in terms of Union Membership. They to a degree not just in prewar period up until pearl harbor that goes on after wards and extendson beyond. Thats. Its the shocking story. Grow to which the labor union the maintained a constant resistance strike every effort to get the wartime economy geared up. Newton knows it from the beginning. Its going to be a challenge he has to face. In the end he calculates that probably 25 of production was lost as a result of Union Resistance to changes in the workplace, changes in rules about Union Membership that flowed out. All the same newton Still Believes he can do the job that roosevelt put in front of him. Because newton understands that once you set American Businesses off in a distribution give them a task to do, give them something they need to produce here, they will be able to deliver under those source of conditions. To retool in order to shift her making washing machines and trary in civian cars to machine again and all the gns materials of for that you will need. Give me a. Q guest said byn you rylleagues and i will give vico you more war material thenmonths you could ever dreamed possible. He says if war comes this will be a war of mass production. Quantity. Not necessarily quality who will ruled the seas of land. R fi d us. Stepbystep evo valassis, first calling of his colleagues, who do subcontracting for