Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20101103

physicist who searched this again but as someone who's spent my entire professional career in examining the link between the environment i realized like the rest of us, science and scientists follow fads and fashions. sometimes what everyone wants to believe turns out to be inconveniently long. authorities and technologically a chance to nations like israel and finland where the phones had been used longer and more heavily have issued warnings about salles phones, and i wanted to know why, and that is why open the book. talking about my grandchildren with their helmets and their seat belts and their car seats and all the protective devices we have been wondering about their brains. so i'm going to walk you through the evidence we have today on cell phones and what we know about them. >> [inaudible] could you raise your microphone a little that? >> this one? okay. thank you. well, the title of the book is a disconnected, and i'm going to talk with you today about four major disconnects. the first is that most people don't know cell phones are small microwave radios, and they've never been tested for safety, ever. they were marketed without any safety testing. but people may not know sulfone radiation can be damaging. we assume it is harmless. in fact i'm going to go with you today through very briefly some of the scientific evidence that's been developed by countries outside of the united states as well as scientists working in a number of major institutions. some here and oftentimes the scientists who started to come up with research findings the industry didn't like found themselves without funding shortly thereafter. i'm going to talk about models of the brain, expert on middle evidence telephones had actually damage or dna, not by causing heat but by other means and human studies that show harm. finally another disconnect i'm going to tell you about is that other nations that advice protecting your family and companies are issuing fine print warnings but we know nothing about that. industry, finally, has fought through confusion, which encourages the unprecedented use of this largely untested technology but never fear i think we can use cell phones more safely, and i feel we need to put our faith in the ability of technology to lead us out of the problem that has been created. let's take a moment and look with the electromagnetic spectrum is. it ranges all the way from here with a very, very low frequencies of light and electricity that powers our homes up to the gamma rays and x rays that's the electromagnetic spectrum, the things you can't see that we know can be legal. there's no debate x-rays can be lethal. the question is what about the stuff in the middle? we've seen radio waves, cellphone and radar. they are all very similar spectrum's, and it turns out that spectrum is a question for the perfect for having an effect on human biology. let me tell you how the cellphone got invented. the first radar range of income and that's a picture of it actually on your right, had its own water pulling system, wait about 700 pounds and cost about as much as two cars, and operated at 1.9 megahertz with 1600 watts of power. that's huge. you can imagine they were not great commercial success and it turned out people didn't exactly like the word radar range. it was in fact the case young sailors during the war mike figured out the to the form of themselves by standing in front of the radar, and that is in fact they were getting a warm from the inside out, turned out not to be a good idea. microwave ovens, the name was given afterwards, offered a bit to plead for megahertz, thousand watts of power and the boiled water in two minutes today. cell phones operate at a similar bandwidth, 1.9 to 2.4 megahertz. on less than 1 watt of power they can be used for hours a day now when the radar range was renamed microwave ovens and 92 there was one problem that had to be fixed. there were hot spots and cold spots if you put a frozen turkey in the oven, and you let it run for a long time, you would end up with over the meat in one section and cold stuff and the other. how many of you remember that? the cold spots, right? well, the solution was to use a turntable to rotate the food. that's why all microwaves come with turntables today. you can't rotate your head when you're using a small microwave radio next to your brain for hours a day. the progress itself owns has been phenomenal. they are now smaller, faster and more powerful. the first phones, they are not so much portable as lovable, they wait several towns and use analog signals of several watts of power. smart phones today way a few ounces and use digital signals of the tenth of what sometimes a little more. so they are much, much faster, and they are much less powerful in the amount of energy they need to use. so what is the problem? well, the brain absorbs radio frequency radiation and this model shows you the parts of the brain. notice the frontal lobe and this is a slight cut of the human brain. mediation we no breaches twice as far into the human head and it doesn't a larger head. and these images were defrauded by the professor in 1996 when he was working for the cell phone industry to develop models of the brain. i tell his story in my book. he trained most of the people who do this work for world. the industry wasn't too comfortable with this finding because he issued a warning. he said i think we need to rethink what we are doing for children because we are getting twice as much exposure into the brain and the brain is not just smaller than ours, of course the fluid and has a greater potential for absorbing radiation into the brain. in fact the measure of exertion of electricity of the air is one. that of an adult brain is perhaps 30 to 40. the by electric and constant of a child's brain can be eda. so a child brain alone soared more electricity, and we know that the child's brain is exquisitely sensitive to all sorts of things. we know of lead exposure in the first two years of life can cause permanent damage to children years later. so the question i began to ask is what about the radio frequency radiation? and in the book disconnect i tell the stories of trying to understand these complicated models and sitting with an engineering book on one side and physics of the giver and trying to make sense of this because you see, i am like most health scientists in the world today pretty ignorant about electricity or at least i was because there is no training program. there is no research under way. there is no way to support looking into this question with experts who understand it. in fact, motorola cut its own research program a year and a half ago. and the federal government was told to study radiofrequency radiation and its ability to cause cancer in the year 2000. that study is starting this year and will be finished in 2014. let's talk about self own standards in terms of what we know about the brain. this guy on the left, that's sam, stands for the standard man. he weighed about 200 plus pounds, 6 feet tall. his head weighed 11 pounds. the cell phones were tested to see how long they could be used without warming the head for six minutes back then in the first place. six minutes. when cell phones were not being used heavily and those who were using them are mostly in fact men. the average height of the world's person today is 5 feet seven. sam stands over 6 feet tall and weighs over -- and think about 220 pounds. if you look at the difference, you will see on the right the head of a child, and this is 1800 megahertz, which is the newer phones, not 900 megahertz. the point is the mediation gets into the brain, and now we have millions of children said using cell phones today. three out of every 412-year-old has a sulfone today. the standards for cell phones were set for this big brain and we have millions of children in the united states and around the world using cell phones. that's the first disconnect. with 4 billion phones in use, and some people having more than one, fewer than one of ten users have heads the size of sam, 6 feet tall. here come actually models that have been deep love and you can see from the models, that's sam, look at the difference and they are not just different in size, they are different in the fitness of the skulls and the amount of fluid, and the more fluid in something the more it can absorb radiofrequency microwave signals. dna we all understand is the heart of every living cell and without it we wouldn't be here. its exquisitely it is constructed with a double helix and they can be damaged and repaired because we have inhabited the ability to repair ourselves. that is the good news story here. it's not too late with what i'm going to tell you. i'm going to show some of the evidence that post digital signals can damage dna. modern agents some of which are familiar to you here create free radicals like the cougars of the body they go wherever they can and pick up whatever they can. because a lot of damage. we know the ultraviolet light, sunlight will cause a free radical formation. we no x-rays will cause free radical formation and that tobacco will. we also know that radiofrequency mediation compost digital radiation can do this and and so can read our and studies on this phenomenon have been carried out largely in europe by teams of researchers funded by the european union by a program called the reflex program there was a $5 million study that was carried out by the different laboratories throughout europe. and when they first got the results, the researchers thought the it made a measurement mistake because they knew the general belief was it's impossible for cellphone radiation to damage dna. the physics or it's impossible. the head of the team was sure of it so he took the money to show what he thought was the case, and when i got resolved that showed this, the first time he got the results he actually sent them back. the second time he got the results he sent them back. the third time he got the results he bought new equipment. he really didn't believe this could be possible but let me explain to you what this is carried on the left is healthy dna. it's intact, the whole double helix is together. on the right is what happens with the gamma ray which we know are carcinogenic. down here is what happens with exposure to 1800 megahertz like a cellphone. when he first got those results he didn't believe them. now she does. and he has had an interesting experience in dealing with the consequences of that belief. because what happens is the fellow who did this work was basically supported by the european union, which was encouraged to give him money by the cell phone industry because this man had a reputation of being a bit of a company man. his previous position had been director of research for the tobacco industry. [laughter] that he became a bit of a nuisance to the tobacco industry because, you see, he started to produce findings they didn't like. he actually developed research showing that tobacco could cause cancer and he didn't know that his work would the kind of snags the tobacco researchers had because he believed that science would for will the day. he really believed it. so, i'm going to read you a section from the chapter some people tell me read like a hollywood film. it's called the doctor who deals with the devil. damage from cell phones. what they were. subject to tobacco industry carried out for years against his own critics. he had a strange sort of self understanding throughout his career. he recognized the tobacco he was doing. it was a way to stave off the regulatory action and responsibility. so long as his own work was in fact truly independent and scientifically grounded he felt no moral compunction about carrying out, but the cell phone story was different. he had a grand children and had reached a moment in his career retire to a very pleasant life. but he could not leave in disgrace because he knew something others did not. he knew that the work carried out on dna damage caused by the radio frequency radiation was firmly established. he suspected how will play behind the twist and unusual efforts to charge him with fraud, so why then go on to describe what happened and i basically have recently found out that the fraud with which he was charged was itself a fraud and was perpetuated by a scientist who claimed to be an independent analyst. he failed to mention for years he received millions in funding from the mobile pond function. 8.5 million heroes to be precise. as you know that is a lot of money that can have a lot of influence. now other work has been done, this has been done increase to the university athens where one of the world's leading laboratories exists and they have shown that the blood brain barrier can be weakened by exposure to salles from radiation. the reason for this research was it was originally started by neurosurgeons who wanted to find a way to deliver into the drug they wanted to get chemotherapy into the brain. eni to get chemotherapy into the brain. and it's hard to do that when you have a brain tumor. so if you can weaken the barrier of the brain you can get the chemotherapy into the brain, they thought. that is why did the research. not because they're trying to study cell phones that they were trying to show whether or not you could weaken the barrier or see here on your right that they were able to do so. i'm sorry, on your left that they were able to do so. that is the weekend blood brain barrier, and the other is the impact. now, i said another disconnect was human studies. let me be clear with human studies are complex and costly. think about it. the last epidemiological study in the united states on cell phones and health was published in 2002. 2002. obviously that was analyzed in the use of cell phones by the small minority of people like me who had them back then. but few people usedavily for a e this work was done, and cancer is not the only income of interest. i want to show you what's wrong with a lot of the conclusions that you've seen on the headlines. you know you've seen the headlines cell phones do not cause cancer. well, here's why. after the atomic bombs were dropped in japan, there was no increase in brain tumors and of the survivors. until 40 years later. it took 40 years. most epidemiological studies of cell phones do not find an increase in brain cancer. until at least ten years of heavy use. all of the studies that looked at people that use cell phones heavily for ten years to find a risk. do we really want to wait until we have a major epidemic like we did with tobacco and asbestos? isn't the whole purpose of public health to prevent harm rather than to prove it's already taken place? the ander phone study, the world health organization study found no overall increased brain tumor risk. the average user in that study used a phone for two hours a month. two hours a month for seven years or less. how many of you use your phone for two hours a day? i think quite a few people according to the statistics a large number of young people. they also found risk was increased in the heavy users but only after a decade and heavy use was defined as 15 hours a month. the average u.s. use is now 14 hours a month. all right? so obviously the lack of definitive human evidence shouldn't make us feel that we don't have a problem. we have to ask have we learned nothing since what happened with tobacco? human studies are problematic. we need to do them, but we should not make the absence of the definitive evidence a ground for continuing to act as if cell phones are purposefully innocuous. there is a disconnect between what we know from studies of long-term users, and what we see in how we use phones today. we act as if they are completely benign, yet we have growing evidence they may not be. and technology and use patterns are changing so we've got to take some precautions to it let me just show you a little bit of the evidence that we have and all the references from the book can be on line. this is a very rare tumor i'm going to show you of a cheek, a sovereign gland tumor. the past six years the trouble in israel. one of five is now occurring in someone under the age of 20, and the israeli dental association has issued a warning about cell phones. this is the site. crimber the models i showed, this is the site salary gland tumor and they are one in five now under age 20. the israeli dental association is concerned, and so am i. and the israeli health ministry posted warnings on its website about the safe use of cell phones. other studies have been done in seven different countries all showing a reduction in sperm count with of those men who don't use a cell phone having twice the sperm count of those who use phones for four hours a day, which in the study done in 2008, there were quite a few of them. but this is not one study in monoclinic. these are many different studies around the world today. but we don't hear about them. pittard there is a disconnect between the way that young men are using cell phones and what we know from this research. in fact, these are the precautions that now appear on the web sites of the federal communications commission, the fda and the american cancer society as of september, 2010. if you are concerned about radio frequency radiation than you can use an earpiece or headset, avoid the continually wearing a wireless your piece, and we have grocers to give you what other information is available and anyone who wants to give them away you can take as many as we've brought here today to give particularly to the young parents who need to know it's not a good idea to download white noise and put it under your baby's perlo or gavankar iphone it to the radio frequency wireless and let them play or read to themselves, and those things are being done now. we need to let parents know and the world know that there are safer ways to use cell phones, considering text in the rafters and talking, and of course don't text when you're driving. you can do something radical. you can limit the amount of time we talk on the phone and you can do something even more radical. you can turn your phone off so that you get calls when you want to be called instead of always being in a state of interruption and emergency. now the back story, the last disconnect. the last disconnect between the public thinks about this issue and with the industry has done to make sure we remain confused. doud creation remains its own industry. you've seen the story in tobacco. we know the same story applies with asbestos. unfortunately, we've seen it with some pharmaceutical products as well. here's the disconnect that nobody's told you about. in 1972, aníbal researcher showed the post microwaves affected cellular resonance, that is the way we all library, all of our cells are vibrating at low levels. that's part of being alive. henry and v-j demonstrated the cellphone radiation affected the dna president, and the industry response was to war demon. they said the work raises interesting questions of possible biological fact spirited summer understanding there are too many uncertainties to draw any conclusion. we should be able to say that the studies were not conducted at the cellular frequencies and so are of questionable relevance and run counter to other studies. and this is a memo from motorola planning a strategy. the industry didn't just outline a public relations strategy. they also did a couple other things. dammit to the journal editor that has accepted the article and asked him to and accept the paper. they wrote to the washington and the nih from seeking to have the funding revoked which for scientists is like being accused of the worst crime in the world. and then they concluded, and this is a quote from the memo to reality we have sufficiently war gained the issue assuming the scientific advisory group and the cellular telecommunications industry association have done their homework. that was the response. i would submit that this is too important an issue for games and it isn't about a war. what they did next was to hire a new scientists to discredit. a hundred jerry phillips under a contract for motorola and used part of energy, but there was a little bit of a problem. phillips showed that they were right. and phillips, lai and singh never work in this field. other funding dried up. that's one way that we have a disconnect between science and what we think about cell phones. the researchers to do with the university with all of the studies, the dna damage, those little circles, that was done by investigators of the university of vienna, and they were charged with fraud. a vienna study was headlined around the world. science magazine, frog admitted. the provost of the university went quickly to admit is, we are wrong, and he even asked the researchers to destroy the data which made adlkofer, the man i read about, very suspicious. well it takes a long time, but eventually often the truth rollout just this month the austrian university and the court declared the fraud itself was a fraud but the damage has been done. of those investigators loss of their funding while they were being accused of fraud. as of the research hasn't gone forward and i would submit its a very important question we need more answers to at this point so now the advice how do you protect your family? france, finland, israel and on the website you can find more than 12 different countries all say these are the things you can do to reduce radiofrequency radiation. and the advice is pretty simple. using a speaker phone, use your pieces, do not keep the following on your body and don't use it in areas of weeks signals. we need to limit children's use of phones next to the brain. testing is ok. this is what happened in france in 2008. billboards, this is what we need to see in the united states as well. it says cell phones before 12 years of age is no, no way. let's keep them healthy, away from mobile phones. that's what the french did and now the french government has passed restrictions on cell phones out of both houses, banning advertising to children under 12, banning of the design of phones to be used by the was under six, and handsets have to be sold with all phones in france. you don't have to buy them and lose them as we all do anyhow, and an official campaign to discourage the use of phones by children carried out by the city of cell lyron. george bush's panel issued a report that said the true burden of environmental lead to burdened cancer is the underestimated and recommended long-term monitoring and qualification of the truman and the energy exposure related to sell phones and wireless technologies and that is the same advice the national academy of sciences issued on the subject. so we have lots of advice. we have a full research program the dr. recondite developed at a conference that we testified before the house and the samet but there is no shortage of ideas. there is a shortage of public will and understanding of the problem and that's why i wrote this book. i am concerned about the marketing that take place and five-year notes. 5-year-olds need their parents. if they were in an emergency, i don't think a cell phone is going to be helping their. let's look what other kind of ads in the past times we have had to deal with. believe it or not this was an actual ad using beebe's to promote smoking. before juice's called me and you ought to light up, by more world. this is another promoting cigarettes. and remember the sports heroes and physicians for both saying it was okay to smoke, it was a good idea for a while. well now i want to raise another issue. we know now that the smoking forces made good use of information and the book thank you for smoking, made into a movie, included the story of some people that had a difficult job. they had to sell people on smoking, guns and alcohol. the got together once a week for lunch and called themselves the mog squad, mod stood for merchants of death. and the last scene of the movie is quite interesting. this is the last seen him verbatim. gentlemen, we have new clients before him looking uncomfortable practice these words in front of a mirror. although we are constantly exploring the subject, currently there is no direct evidence that links cell phone to brain cancer. now it was in a dark comedy written by a brilliant writer. this is the current response with the cell phone industry said in 1993 about the possible dangers of cell phone radiation. more than 10,000 studies show that cell phones are safe. there were not 10,000 studies done. in fact there were fewer than 1,000 studies on cell phone mediation according to a government resource that i site here. calling for research becomes an excuse not to change policy. fast-forward to 2010, and the golden gate opens as i write in my book. san francisco's mayor proposed a really radical idea. you should have the ability to find out how much radiation yourself on the mets before you buy it instead of after. it's called the right to know. well, the objective wild a lawsuit against the city for trying to do this, saying it is going to confuse people. volume honored to have represented here today because she is the woman who first put this issue on the map for the country by proposing warning labels on cell phones in the state of maine. at that hearing that was held by the state of maine, when asked why the fine print warnings come with phones now, the cta vice president replied we will get back to you. mr. snoden, it is six months later and we want to know the answer. but i think i can give you a clue. i know you can't see this very well but i want to show to the size of the print. that is the fine print warning -- that's my book -- this is what it says. i don't think you can read it in the axson let me read it to you. iphone measurement may exceed the fcc exposure guideline for body operation if positioned less than 15-millimeter, that is five eighths of an inch, from the body when carrying the iphone in your pocket. well, you see we are going to see a new style for the man bags or the steny pact because the iphone is telling you can't keep it in your pocket safely and i think that is good advice. and i don't think we have to wait for the ctia to collis this is for all of the new smart phones and our web site includes all of these fine print warnings so you can find them there. this is what is it in yesterday's washington post. warning labels on cell phones proposed by the circuitry of transportation to reduce distracted driving deaths and accidents. and there is every day there is a new horror story. a surgeon, people magazine, went off the cliff while tweeting and died. there are incredible stories of the arrogance of people. everyone thinks he's above average. everyone thinks it will never happen to me. i am in control. i know what i'm doing. well, the short-term impact of the cell phone we already see the legislation in 20 states about this. okay, on destructive driving, which is like driving john. but the longer-term impact of salles phones is something their representative and growing numbers of people are concerned about. the mayor and the council of jacksonville wyoming have declared october sulfone ct awareness month. we have to campaign for business salles phone >> i am a member of the chamber of commerce and many of my colleagues who are members of the chamber are joining in providing free headsets to all of their employees who use a cell phone for business. members of universities are doing that as well. the campaign for safer cell phones is what i invite you to join. we describe it in this book to read the advice is very simple. the world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything. and i am going to read just one final passage from my book. on one of the last mornings i was finishing the writing of this book three young man phoned me on a conference call excited about what they had invented. they're not a brain scientists but businessmen. one has a fresh doctorate in applied mathematics, and another is an attorney. one is a first person in his family to go to college. they hailed from my home town region in western pennsylvania. i imagine some very proud parents. quote, when i was doing my doctoral research at mit, i figured out there's got to be a way to reduce the amount of radiation going into the brain and out of the found by using secret materials i can't tell you about. jeff, the mathematician and from me. jeff played football for the major negative league school. before he got out, before getting badly hurt, he had developed headaches that wouldn't go away. until she started to use an earpiece. could be a coincidence, but he doesn't think so. so he began talking to others about how to make a better and safer phone. quote, we secure that it can't be good for you to hold a microwave radio next to your brain. we know that cell phones are revolutionary and that they are here to stay. we are going to make them safer. our invention will reduce radiation into the head and increase the amount going out. others are already working on redesigning phones with a different antennas. despite our growing dependency on phones for many functions of our daily lives, it makes no sense to continue assuming that today's phones are safe based on standards that were created for big guys who didn't use them very much when the current technologies did not exist. one thing is clear this point. cell phones have become as essential to modern life as cars and trucks and jet planes. we spend billions to make the vehicles safe to drive or fly. we need to do the same thing with salles phones prieta rather than pitting assurances of safety east on old science, outmoded theories of physics and bullied scientists, we need to invest in cellphone safety as we do with other modern technologies. of course, more research is needed. on that we are all agreed. but the need for research should not be allowed to become an excuse to carry on as though everything is fine until we have incontrovertible proof that it is not. yes, we do not have an epidemic of brain tumors in the country that have used cell phones heavily for little more than a decade. but ten years after cigarettes began to be heavily smoked, we also did not have an epidemic of lung cancer. years from now, our grandchildren will look back and ask did we do the right thing and act to protect them or did we harm them needlessly, irresponsibly and permanently blinded by the addictive do lots of or technological age? i have to say i'm very grateful to the doctor who brought me to pittsburgh to set up the center. he's no longer there, nor am i. we are working on environmental health trust because we think we face a potential global public of catastrophe. it can be averted by taking simple steps. the science tells us there's a problem and we would be foolish to ignore the science. the doctor is a very distinguished cancer researcher who is now working in immunology and biotech and is here to make a few remarks to expand on what we have done at the center and what he is doing now. thank you. [applause] >> country pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words. just simply to echo what deborah davis -- devra davis expand to you. shettle man of two and half years ago with the university of pittsburgh cancer institute she was concerned about the health effects of cell phones. when she did that, i was very skeptical and i said aren't there more things we need to be concerned about them cell phones? but she said you know, you really should look into it coming and i had the opportunity to meet one of the leaders from the national institute of environmental health scientists who told me that he had looked into it and was involved in a panel to examine some of the data and felt that there was something to it. and that particularly propelled me to begin to examine the information. and the more that i read about it, the more concerned that i had, not that there was compelling or conclusive evidence, but there were a number of hits that were disturbing. the ability of this range of radiation to damage dna is perplexing as to how that happens, although being free radical possibility is perhaps the best one that's been put forward so far. but that's not clear. and then the decrease in sperm counts, just to make it clear, the reason it was focused on in man, these were people keeping their cell phones in their front pant pocket. and therefore fairly close to where sperm production goes on. the epidemiological data which i reviewed very carefully and talked to various experts in the field overall don't give a very positive signal about what has really struck me is that in virtually every study that had a significant number of subjects that were examined the had been using solvents frequently for more than ten years there is a signal about an increased risk that let me at two years ago when i was the director of the university of pittsburgh cancer institute to send out a advisory memo to our faculty and staff saying i've reviewed the data recently. i become concerned and it is still unclear if i advised them to follow what i think is a very important principle, namely the precautionary principal that if you don't know and there is some concern, do something to prevent rather than wait until there is conclusive evidence. so i sent out an advisory to our staff with ten points because as nicely summarized by deborah in her book basically keep the cellphone away from your head, and particularly i was concerned because of the increased absorption and kids to really avoid or limit the use of self loans by children. since i put out that advisory there was a publication from a very distinguished epidemiologist and sweden that followed teenagers who started using cell phones and sweden and had used them for ten years or more, and for that group there was a fivefold increase in risk for brain tumors compared to ones that didn't use it, and that particularly just increased my level of concern. so i really applaud devra for sounding the alarm and writing the book and doing what she can in a variety of ways to help prevent a potential calamity and the hon ecologist by training i feel very strongly this is a terrible disease of mullen net bv, would that bring tumors and should we wait another ten or 20 years before it becomes conclusive to send the alarms out about what should be used or rather to take simple precautions i strongly believe what i did a couple of years ago is the right thing. i feel even more so now and i did at the time i put it out. so i also applaud andrea for taking this into the legislative arena and i hope you get it passed soon. [applause] >> andrea is fiercely independent and really phenomenally effective taking on this issue and met a few years ago and at this point she's done more to bring this issue forward in the political arena so that people in jacksonville wyoming, philadelphia, burlingame california and san francisco are all looking to the concerns she portrays and i'm going to ask her to tell you about what she did and then we will have an opportunity for questions. thank you deborah. thank you, everyone, from georgetown university is a wonderful day because this book when you see is absolutely remarkable we have a scientist who is willing to risk issues of her own career to speak out on subjects others have not had the strength to do so and she tells the story for both scientists and average people so that we read the stories of some of the people who've been important in who this whole research and issue raising realm she tells in such an interesting way, such a compelling way, and delivers a lot of information but she is a wonderful service for all of us most of the folks i associate with myself are not scientists were not experts. i am a religious leader from maine and i have been concerned about health and wellness and prevention and what can we do not have problems and when i got on to this issue and started realizing all the information the was out there i was astonished and talking to people whose names were on the materials i felt like i just stepped into another world because most of the folks i knew nothing about the whole issue was a starter scientist and intelligence the yahoo understood it down to the last electron. so obviously i wasn't going to litigate to that degree, but i represent the people of a town in maine, the name is samford, it is an average town, working people from upper-class people, some people we have to help along. it's just a regular maine town. and there are good people there. they care about their families, the turnout for all of the defense of their children, and these are the people who have elected me to the office to represent them. when i discovered the kind of information that was available from the work these scientists have done, it was just so surprising to me that they had not been on the public regard screen at all. and beyond that, the government hadn't taken any steps all to tell us, to warn us. so it became apparent to me that would be very good to put a warning label on fees' devices that everyone is using. this is the warning label that we came up with. it's pretty simple. it says what the case is, that the electromagnetic radiation exposure may cause brain cancer and its smart to keep it away from your head and body. that really astounded people when they saw that. everybody uses cell phones certainly would know, and that wasn't the case. but i brought this warning label and i asked for it to be passed by a legislator and we had a short session and it didn't get past but the amount of information i got out as a result of that was covered in all of the states of the union and other countries people were contacting me. the bottom line to me is a representative of the main people of anyone. that we can't go on not telling our people about this terrible danger that they are inviting by putting cell phones to their head, and young people planning to have children not understanding if they hold that cell phone close to the area where the fetus is growing it could damage that child before it's even born. and this is the kind of study that we are seeing. now and may and it's a rather small population state, 1.3 million. you could fit them in a corner of d.c. any day of the week i'm sure. but that's still a lot of people coming in out of the population about 950,000 or more have cell phones. i venture to say that probably not 5% of them have really focused on this issue until i read it forward with the whole ball of all of these wonderful scientists at your doorstep and it really was stunning testimony to get that 750,000 people, 950,000 people using cell phones without knowing that they could be damaging their own brains and those of their children and the other loved ones. we have 15,000 a year that is a small number for some places. 15,000 babies being born and their parents not knowing they could be damaging by helping them and holding a cell phone at the same time to read these are things that concern me, and when this legislation was brought to maine i conferred with the attorney general's office to see if the bill was written in an improper way, and they found that it was, and we had some discussion and what i was told at the time is that the industry had already been and let them know that the state of maine would be sued if this legislation passed. this is a multi trillion dollar industry threatening one of the smaller states in the union. that didn't affect the thinking of the attorney general's office. they were back and they were defended. but that's what we face, and perhaps for that reason it's not surprising that the bill didn't pass in its first pass the governor flatted beano and write off that he didn't want it to pass. the director of the cdc let it known she didn't think there was anything to it. after all she studied it for three weeks. you know, what problem could there be? but this is the problem we have today. good people not speaking when they see that there is a problem or not being willing to accept the fact that as the doctor says we need to exercise the precautionary principal and use our brains to figure out that maybe it's a sensible but to get the information out there and let people be cautious when they use cell phones. thank you very much for permitting me to speak. [applause] and >> we are going to start our question and answer period. we will have about 15 minutes, and as we mentioned, the books are available for purchase, and dr. davis will be available in sure for a short conversation following the talk, too. the procedure we are going to use is that i have a mic here, and because this is being taped, if you will raise your hand and we will recognize you, we would like you to please state your name and your affiliation before you ask a question of dr. davis. i saw a hand over here. >> dr. davis, i [inaudible] professionals washington, d.c. and i have gotten wise to the dangers of cell phones and radiation in the last two months, and first thing i want to say to you is thank you, god bless you for the work you're doing. it's been a tremendous help to a concerned father. [inaudible] however here is the thing i want to ask you. your work is incredibly important but i'm not sure if you would agree [inaudible] cell phones handle statistics just on the screen [inaudible] we are being very bombarded up this very second all over georgetown, every public school in fairfax county, virginia is wi-fi. we noted just last week the fcc reported it's probably going to make a decision within days over the so-called white spaces of radio frequency that will enable the telecom industry to wi-fi 500 sq ft areas. [inaudible] if you take all the steps you take and incorporate them into your lives, how do we deal with this larger pervasive issue wi-fi, etc.. it is an enormous issue. where do we start? >> you know, i have to say i am not as informed on this issue as i will become, okay? fighting we start with the realization that we don't need to have all of the world made safe for wi-fi. there are some people who feel they may be sensitive to this. this is proven to be a very difficult thing to study. they're really has to read and i think that as i am sure you are just starting to get into this issue there are groups that have developed information on this, and they can provide you with better information than i can to read but it gets down to the basic right to know, and the presumption that there is no biological fact i think is questionable, and margaret mead once said the only thing that really affects a democracy is when a group of concerned people get together to work on an issue and i think this is an example of one, and while i am not well informed on this issue at this time, i would agree with you this is the tip of the iceberg. i started out with the issue for one simple reason. there is nobody that is going to tell me that it is a good idea to hold a microwave radio next to my granddaughter's head, and if somebody likes to tell me that i would like to see that person. it's not a good idea. and moreover, there is a whole set of social, emotional and spiritual issues being raised about shortened intentions and an electronic occasion of our lives is doing to the dinner table. you have all gone out to restaurants, whether they are fast food or nice ones and ravee sitting their like this. and what's considered sinful behavior is totally transformed. people will think nothing of talking to you, and working on their phone at the same time. on contact, empathy, all of those things are on the table. so i appreciate your concern. i think that you are doing the right thing to become informed, and i am focusing on this issue because this one is clear. it's clear and it's something you can do something about. now, wireless has radically improved our ability to do things in medicine in terms of transmitting x-ray is long distances in terms of a lot of good things. so what i am betting on again, and i've had conversations with electrical engineers, is that there are safer designs for towers. there are safer ways to transmit information. fiber-optic would be what i would be bidding on over the wireless in many cases, and i think we need to work together, and frankly there needs to be a level playing field of getting the information and there isn't one. thank you. >> [inaudible] mitigate the radiation from cell phones [inaudible] my question is the advocacy -- are there any champions on the hill or efforts out there now that light on a national basis [inaudible] >> will come in my book i document the sort of pattern that has gone on for about 20 years of congressional hearings, gao reports that call for more research and other hearings, and there is a proposal that i made. i testified before the u.s. senate and before arlen specter and tom harkin, and i joked that it actually was a partisan hearing because i started talking to our inspector when he was a republican and testified before him before he can a democrat. although he is going to be leading the senate soon. and at that hearing, we talked about the fact that there needed to be massive funding and training and research for this area. i know alford is a very distinguished engineer and i anderson and this is an excess of what i write about at the last segment of my book. i think there will be some opportunity. on the other hand, if you're in device works by redirecting it, then you're free directing it away from me, it may be right into my 3-year-old grandchild. so we need to think about how we handle these things in a very broad way. and i have no doubt that it can be done. and congress, what i testified is we need a dollar per phone fee on every felon for five years, and that will provide us with the amount of money that we need to train engineers and scientists to do the work that has to be done and though that is a broad public policy initiative which is why i am excited to be talking about it here at the school of service because i think this issue cuts across every nation. it really does. it's one that gets to the core of what if we are as a people in terms of how we use science for public policy, and do we wait until we have definitive proof like we did with tobacco or asbestos or to be act, and i think we need massive funding for training and research and there are some champions on the hill. unfortunately, from my point of you, senator specter will not be there. senator harkin remains interested in the there are a number of members of the house as well isi think all of you know there are numbers of priorities in the congress right now. for most people is getting elected and after that we will have an opportunity to revisit this issue. perhaps even when they come back after the november elections and i will be happy to talk with you more about that. .. >> my understanding is in chambers. your entire body get the radiation? and i wonder how can you tell if someone is holding the cell phone up to their head? >> you know, that's a very good question, angela. it's hard to get rats and mice to make phone calls. one research team in sweden designed the deluxe cages where they can keep the head propped and have the cell phone go into the brain. if you are going whole body exposure, it's a funny story. you can fry the tail off of the rat. it has not much tissue, just a little cartilage. our hands and ears, you are not going to get tumors developing here in your hand. because you don't have as much soft tissue. soft tissue full of fluid is earthing that we have to be concerned about. the rat studies, we study rats because we are trying to prevent harm in people. that's why we do it. and the fact is it's an imperfect approach. but it's been delayed already a decade. i know the investigators are trying to come up with a perfect way to model the cell cell phone exposure. you are right, whole body exposure isn't going to get you that. i brought this for a reason. because this is part of my discussion with dr. herberman with ongoing. we don't know the mechanism that causes cancer. but the mechanism by which cell phones may be affecting us maybe this. listen for a moment. that's resonance. all right? that's what our bodies are going all the time. your riding an airplane, or in a car or in a bus. you are resonating and the bus is resonating like this. you can read or work on your labtop or write. if suddenly the bus on the plane stops and starts, stops and starts, you can't read, you lose. if your normal resonance is disrupted by on and off signals all the time, that'll be the way that dna is getting damaged. now through the breaking of iconic bonds, a classical approach that happens in x-rays. the theory of resonance needs to be pursued. i don't know if they are able to do that at nhis. when you have this kind of resonance and you stop it and start it, you are interfering with normal healthy cells, homeostasis, the condition out of which life we evolved. we came from the microwave world. i will leave you with one other passage that struck me as amazing. how much microwave radiation we had at the beginning of the world so to speak? microwave radiation was around with the big bang. we know that because the scientist that received the noble prize in 1974, robert wilson, got it for discovering the cosmic microwave that supported the theory of the big bang that occurred about 15 billion years ago. this explosive radiation and energy gave rise to all of the wonders in nature and civilization that we observe today. it's sobering to think that the microwaves found in the world and spewed from that expotion are billions of times less freak than those emitted by the planets, cell phones, and other devices today. i think it's something to think about. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> next on booktv. a look at the relationship between two american founding fathers in the book "madison and jefferson." >> tomorrow instead of our usual coverage of the british house of commons, we'll bring you analysis of the election results. we will be hosting discusses with journalist about what the elections mean. live on c-span2. >> your watching a special presentation of booktv which airs every weekend here on c-span2. this weekend joinous three-hour conversation with wesseling author jonah goldberg as we discuss the election results, conservative moment, and next wave of leaders on the right. nonfiction books and authors every weekend on c-span2's booktv. >> saturday landmark supreme court cases on c-span radio. >> the school calls it the voluntary bible reading statute. there's nothing voluntary about the bible reading. >> this week involving prayer in public schools, mr. schempp felt students should not be required to read from the bible in class. in washington, d.c. on 90.1, nationwide on channel 132, and nationwide at c-spanradio.org. >> next, "madison and jefferson." they were recently invited to speech at jefferson's home in monticello. >> good morning, i studied here at month monticello. it's my pleasure to invite nancy and andrew on their book "madison and jefferson." they are both his ton yours, and written on the early 19th century done two books on jefferson. "jefferson's secret" which was published in 2005, and "the inner jefferson" published in 1995. nancy earlier published on the origins of the women's rights movement in america in a book called "sex and the citizenship in america." andrew and nancy are old time friends of the thomas jefferson foundation. they are both former fellows and residents. they are known to many members of this audience. i'm delighted to welcome them back. please join me in welcoming andrew and nancy. [applause] [applause] >> within days of taking office of the fourth president of the united states, james madison received a letter from rebecca, a well educated philadelphiaian, one of the gent of folk of that city. he asked him to start with an act of kindness. to pardon someone living in london. he unloaded on a friend of madison. i despise your predecessor too much to petition from him. heaven forbid i should place myself in a light of an inferior to thomas jefferson. a political is weak and wicked. the shifting, shuffling visionary. an old woman, a wretch without nerve, pardon me sir, my pen does a strange trick. although i often caution it, it will tell all of the secrets of my heart. they sparred each other. madison and jefferson was a remarkably relationship. something rebecca didn't get. people perceived him as independent, not dependent on madison. she would not approach with so blunt of an opinion unless she thought she had a chance of getting through. this exposes one of the parts of our central theme, which is easy enough to identify if you look at the title and see who gets top billing. in every historic treatment that describes their partnership, jefferson has received most of the attention, positive and negative. madison descends to us as an emotional neutral actor. it's a false portrait. true, jefferson was and replains -- remains thoroughly fascinating. madison has been diminished in stature. maybe that's a play on word, he was 5'4", and skinny. this is physical stature has been used against him, they called him little jimmy and called jefferson tall tommy. reducing masters by giving them slave names. we see them equal. our book shows that madison was a leading partisan, not a zealot, but a forceful advocate. he took on hamilton before jefferson did. in the 1790s, he's the first leader of the democratic republican party. while jefferson stayed back and did his politics over dinner and through private correspondence, madison wrote strong pieces in the press. does that make jefferson secretive or dexterous? well, both. it's how their world worked. both madison and jefferson came to believe that political progress was best arranged in secret. madison was no boy scout. he was no wall flower. the dull cerebral madison. our book is a drama and a dual biography. many individuals who modern americans have never encountered, but whom all of the headliners paid keen attention to. virginians, such as edmund pendleton, william jones a merchant sea captain who became secretary of the navy under madison. they all matter. they all carried influence. we speak to that part of the founding area which the popular imagination has occurred. we open with the line madison and jefferson were country gentleman who practiced hardball politics in a time of intolerance. as much as theirs was an age of enlightened pop -- proposition, if the founders have been said to be geniuses, they studied the history of government. they recognized american government would always be torn by clashes of opinion. they had to withstand the unavoidable clashes. what the founders did not anticipate was that strict party organizations would form. they did not even see the need for president and vice president to campaign as a ticket. whoever received the second most votes became vice president. in the supremely ranker of 1790s, the opinion makers protested what they called the spirit of party. fashionism. they said they had no reliability for it. one reason is the counting stories of triumph draw upon the fashion by the participates themselves and the generation born during and just after the revolution. both wish to be known as a positive message. but what really thinks american politics was a game played by sue people your gentleman in fashionable wigs? the founders were motivated by local as much as national interest and fear as much as hope. that localism is another key theme in our book. rhetoric aside, they weren't sure if the glass was half empty or half full. the america put itself on course three years before the civil war. >> generation of mistakers have glossed over one the central realities about the founders. like their peers in new york, in massachusetts, in pennsylvania, james madison and thomas jefferson were virginians first. and americans second. if we were to understand the revolution in it's aftermath, knowing the virginians is critical. into the 1780s, virginia claimed all of the land west of the mississippi on the basis of the 1609 jamestown charter. virginia best legal mind suck scribed. this included madison and jefferson. the revolution virginia belonged to land syndicates, investing in land they had never seen. it's not insignificant that after writing the declaration of independence, jefferson was anxious to return home and take the lead in writing his state's constitution. virginia was his priority. virginians fought big. the planter lee had expansive plans. half of the land of the state was owned by less than 1/10 of the white population, and nearly 40% of the people were enslaved. virginia tobacco represented 40% of the what the 13 colonies exported to great britain. but tobacco destroyed the soil. so they looked westwood. these people were madison's jefferson's prime constituency. the fathers of madison and jefferson both invested in the loyal land company which claims a million acres. virginiaians had to have kentucky. the continental congress finally recognized their claim in the critical year of 1776. at the constitutional convention, madison led the delegation in defending virginia's right. he wanted to make virginia the preeminent state in the union. he told the supportive george washington, the smaller states should be made in his words subordinately useful. madison disliked small d democracy. he had encountered state legislatures whom he considered unenlightened. he watched as they were easily swayed by the oratory of patrick henry. madison identified. henry in 1785. henry had every last reform and policy that he and jefferson championed. madison feared demagoguey. he identified henry with demagoguey. jefferson always saw tyranny at the top of the political hierarchy, until he was elected. for madison, tyranny had more than one source. it could manifest if too much power was in the state or executive branch. power could shift. it was only in the 1790s that identify noticed the sense of tyranny between him and washington in a bid to con system date national power in one plait place. madison and jefferson differed in meaningful ways on slavery. both advocated recolonization on the west coast of africa. but their thinking was similar. jefferson the scientist saw the inevidentability of a body war if the races were not permanently separated. he believed this despite having witnessed first hand the productive lives of african-american in philadelphia. he wouldn't turn away from the series of bloodlines through breeding practices. on a trip with jefferson through new york in 1791, madison observed the talents of black former who hired white labors. he was impressed with the man's understanding the economy. the ideal farmer was meant to possession. at his home? central virginia, madison entertained a free slave, named christopher mcpherson. he was treated as a social equal at the table. jefferson referred to the same individual by his slave name. mr. ross' man kit. telling difference in the two friends attitude towards race. madison served as president as the american colonization society because he knew his peers did not show his enlighted perspective on race. again, he and jefferson were virginians first. modern americans are told so little about madison that they don't even know the man most associated with the federal constitution never practiced law. jefferson did. he rode the circuit. and he became an expert on divorce. this is important because the declaration of independence was drafted in the language of a divorce petition and a divorce decree. instead of describing the king as father of his colonies, he demoted george iii. consigning him to the role as abusive husband, and the patient colonies as his spouse. we know jeffersons borrowed from the theories of the social contract. as john locke argued, the first society was marriage. the same rational that approaches in jefferson's 1772 notes on divorce on a divorce case reappear in the declaration. in the earlier instance, attorney jefferson also sited the argument the philosopher david hume, justifying worse. -- divorce. cruel to continue by violence, a union made at first by mutual love, but now dissolved by hatred. jefferson's declaration sights the king's violence which produced hatred. describing the mercenaries as home wreckers sent to harass america. he finds just cause in the abandonment in the liberty of affection. which underlying every individual natural right to happiness. this new perspective finally suggests a reason for jefferson having adjusted life, liberty, and property to read life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. he states powerfully with regard to the british we must forget our former love for them. >> there is love and there is political ranker. students know the views. the virginiaian wanted an unobtrusive federal government. they sought to powerful the executive within he personally controlled. within the full decade before washington's presidency, madison and jefferson faced a different enemy. whom nancy briefly eluded to, the most popular was patrick henry. give me liberty or give me death. the color, theatrical henry was the first governor. in a real way, madison and jefferson who met for the first time in fall of 1776, found common purposes in the their shared distrust of governor henry. madison was demon demonstrative, but he did not use the males -- mails. again, let's wrap our minds around the notion that virginia claimed all of the land to the west of mississippi, including modern kentucky, illinois, and missouri. that's where virginian george rodgers clark ranged in the revolution. trying to stay one step ahead, jefferson gave clark a guide to who his friends were and who was undermining him. resorting to invective, he displayed a gentleman's delicacy when he damned a person someone as all tongue without either head or heart. one the great putdowns of the 18th century. jefferson went on to fain surprise with support for clark. in the letter again, speaking again of henry, he asserted the clause as far as he has personal courage to show hostility to any man. this is an early example of what jefferson did so well. he could write off a political rival with one twist of the knife. the way to secure an ally was to impugn another man's courage, manliness, honestly. jefferson found himself attacked as coward. having his governor, they ascended monticello in 1780. what kind of idiot would have stayed around to take on the army? that's what jefferson asked. we know the answer, it's the crazed mel gibson in "the patriot." [laughter] >> it was meaningful. this was how politics of the madisonian, jeffersonian and kind would be constructed. identifying friends and enemies, then molding opinions, building alliances, and forging plans and betters and finally presenting those well forced plans to large bodies. in general, it would be jefferson who issued the controlling statement while madison reshaped the strategy, when necessary taking a chisel to trim the excess. it was madison that knew congress. though it was jefferson who suggested that they pray devoutly for henry's death. he was forward in expressed distaste for his approval. in 1789, henry presented madison from becoming a u.s. senator. madison was the anti-henry. in his style of address as a legislator, his of the art of persuasion rather than the art of captivation. he took notes, fought through arguments, and spoke to influence. he usually succeeded. in the early years, madison and jefferson combined on the statute of religious freedom over the objection of governor henry. which explains his play on words with praying devoutly for henry's death. jefferson had went to france to serve as the u.s. minister. when madison was able to seize on an opportunity. he offered one the most vivid and striking pieces, memorial and remonstrance which arosed his colleagues to take action. it was so strongly encouraged, madison did not admit authorship for 40 years. in the paper forshadowing the separation of church and state, the religious of devow the attendance on the powers of the wonderful. what had it brought to civilization in centuries? bigotry and persecution. the virginia declaration of rights of 1776, the virginia statute for religious freedom, 1785, its ringing phrase, almighty god hath created free. it was a voice within the republican progress within the union. in the 1790s, they criticized jefferson and madison. they refer to the virginia party. in 1808 and 1812, they were tired of virginias hold on the ms. presidency. they sought to elect george clinton, and his nephew, dewitt clinton in 1812. first as jefferson's successor, and then as an incumbent. one pamphlet read that virginia saw the rising greatness in rank new york would assume among the states. in all of the blackness and envy, immediately plotted the dismemberment and two disstink states. this man is now in the hands of james madison. a scheme as diabolical as could. that was the allies venting their fears of virginia tyranny. you can imagine what the opposition federalist were saying and writing. in the mid 1790s, federalist dubbed jefferson as the m.a.d.s or mad democrats. partisanship was the order of the day, so was hyperbole. >> it is misleading to call madison the father of the constitution. now this maybe conventional -- conventional, but hear me out. even in his own note taking, his own renders of the philadelphia convention in 1787, he does not come across of victor or hero of the convention. in anyone deserves, it might have been roger sherman of tiny connecticut who was manager of address was scribed as laughable, but who effectively stood in the way of virginia domination. madison's virginia plan hammered out in private over many months was mostly rejected. his most sought was position was rejected. he wanted the u.s. senate to be granted a negative in all cases whatsoever. madison's word, over state and national legislation. he would have had the senate as an intellectual elite. more or less, the plant the supreme court in lecturing to the states as to what legislation made sense and what did not. madison had no patience for mediocrity. what he and alexander hamilton had in common was that neither cared for the constitution at the time it was passed. they were coauthorship of the federalist papers represented the means of the union. for that which the states would continue to argue among themselves. madison believed even after the constitution was adopted and he wrote this in a long letter to jefferson that the u.s. still remained were for him a lose confederation of states. what he wanted a futile system of republics, and he thought this might lead to alliances between states and the regional coalitions. the other thing we have to remember is that the federalist papers which we often think of as some of the most important writings were not particularly important at the time they were written. no one sited the federalist papers in any of the ratifying conventions. and when we think of the importance of federalist number 10. this founding document really only achieved renown in the 20th century. as the leading voice of the first united states senate in 1789-1790. madison wrote the inaugural address and congress' official response to it. yes, you heard me correctly. you might call it the madison administration. he set the legislative agenda, and he assumed the central role in proposing the bill of rights, despite his belief they were unnecessary. our point here is that the founders were not prophets. they spoke with many voices. discorrespondent voices. jefferson had reservations about the constitution, notably because it lacked the bill of rights. he sought to undermine madison's work by writing letters from france, proposing that the constitution be turned down by both the virginia and maryland ratifying conventions. he wanted a majority to ratify the constitution, but he also wanted a few ores -- others to hold out until the bill of rights was added. there was no straight line from the revolution to the democratic government and even jefferson and madison already in close confidence worked across purposes. jefferson came home in 1790, and with no small effort on madison's part, became the first secretary of state. step by step, congressman madison became jefferson's handler and chief political consultant. when jefferson tired of the in fighting in washington cabinet and went into a mid career retirement, he urged madison to stand for president against john adams in 1796. madison did some arm twists and obliged jefferson to re-enter politics. he had done this before when he convinced jefferson to join the democratic corps and join franklin and adams in europe. without that time, jefferson an ex-governor and widower might have been holed up in his library. madison was ambitious. he found hid friend president washington turns away from checks and balances and instead turning towards hamilton's view of cultivating money men and making them a special class. madison was no longer satisfied just to be the leader of a growing congressional opposition. he understood the power of the press, there was at this point only the proadministration vehicle, and he recruited his college roommate, the poet philips fernot, to editor a paper. madison wrote under a pseudonym in the paper, taking on hamilton, and proclaiming the difference of what he said was the real friends of democracy. madison was a sturdy political operative, not merely a political thinker. >> in 1793 when war between england and france placed americans in one of two camps, there was no middle ground. hamilton wrote of madison and jefferson they had a womanism resentment towards england. jefferson spelled out who he thought of his enemy, the armed chair specklator, a species that produced nothing of value. men of commerce who thrived on their association with the brittish juggernaut and had transferred loyalty to london. madison had a hatred of monarchy. it produced an observative fear that the republican government and i quote, only as a stepping stone to monarchy. drawing a line in the sand, jefferson claimed for his and madison side the small, modest hard working the american nation. of course, when he used the innocuous word farmers to describe americans republican corps, jefferson concealed the truth, wealthy, slave-owning aristocratic virginians. it was jefferson's habit to personify his enemies. he dubbed the federalist monocrats, monarchies and aristocrats. it was a feminism disorder, embodied in a timid nervous constitution and a desire to worship the strong. pseudoaristocrats were backward in their thinking and out of step with the times, dysfunctional and do you doomed. it was a monstrous recreation of poison introduced into the natural environment. an unnatural entity unable to progress and adapt to new ways of thinking. dr. jefferson aimed to create new healthy cells who the body would heal once the disease died off naturally. or in the case of african-american, unloved offspring of the constitution of slavery. he preferred to purge the body, expel, and replace by the form of white european peasants. madison adopted anglicans, he was less likely to blame them on failing. madison focused on social forces, errors and reasons and demanded structural solutions. madison approached policy as recommending a healthy lifestyle , madison saw it as a chess master with his steady eye on the move with the most valuable pieces and people as so many pawns. regardless of the met -- metaphor that we choose, there's was a cut throat business. it does not have to diminish the achievements of either madison or jefferson. in writing their story of a rise to power, we have tried to shift emphasis from the less tangible judgments of their private character to the culture of competition and that a nationwide struggle to define how a public should constitute itself. there's rarely a single moment in historical research, a smoking gun that permanently changes the way he think about the past. the madison, jefferson relationship is too complex to be understood in sound bytes. the most extraordinary misjudgment in the historical record is, of course, the portrayal of the cerebral. while it's true he was opaque to many observers, he was not unemotional. he had a raw sense of humor. those who saw him up close over time, particularly in the context of political performance knew he could become flustered, and quarrelsome. jefferson held on to his resentments. madison was able to move beyond them. however, both felt the pressure from europeans. and so expansion akeenly absorbed them. florida, cuba, canada, the west. america, especially in jefferson's eyes, could be peaceful and resilient as a breeder nation. it was affection, attachment, health, good air, natural abundance, and the almost historical rejection of bad blood. it all added up to expansion of the white american species, pioneers carrying the spirit of personal independence with them. what nancy and i have learned most in the research process is the humbling fact that the american past cannot be told in any one book. past is dirty, messy, the region had and arguably still had distinct political and culture. interstate relationships, especially the virginia/new york access, have not been studied sufficiently, yet the power dynamic there was certainly volatile. >> so that's some of what we've learned as scholars. what we've learned as writers is that a dual biography is much more than a standard single biography. by focusing on two lives going on at the same time, often in two different places, one is periodically engaged, and the other disengaged from key political events. their communication reveals the proactive and reactive. one man playing off against the other, trusting, doubting, second guessing. it's more like real life. you see their egos in motion. the dual biography adds a level of intensity to their humanity. there's a collaborative tension as they consciously struggled to change the course of history. what we've also found that virginians, madison and jefferson never thought about the republic without thinking about slavery. almost every policy matter or every to reform had to engage with the national sin. in 1775, madison called the institution of slavery virginia's achilles heel. jefferson's awkwardly worded paragraph declaration, blaming the king for imposed slavery on america had to be eliminated because of opposition from the deep south. when it came to foreign policy, madison and jefferson focused not only on the european powers of england and france, but also on the tiny island of haiti. where slave rebellions happened and fearing they were contagious and might spread to the south. madison believed the southern economy with its dependence on slave labor was viable. they both sold slaves as a last resort, yes. but still they did so into their retirement years. jefferson, especially, envisioned nationhood in rationally untainted hues. in 1836 in his death, madison left to the american society. who was design was to remove black people, but the call was couched in terms of philanthropy. even abraham lincoln the great emancipator saw the removal plan to whiten america. the point here as throughout our book is that america's early leaders had few long-term solutions. as all people do, they rationalized in action. our task is historical investigators is not to indulge ourselves in transferring moral judgments to the past. whether it is to glamorize the achievements and imagine a golden age that never existed, or to use their failures to express self-satisfaction about our own motives as a modern, more progressive future. our task is to recover the language, the issues, and the people that mattered to them. their political environment, not our fantasy of sturdy nights who's elegant prose is reflected in their shining armour. madison and jefferson stood out because of campaigning psyches. they knew the revolution. yet they chose to remember it as a moment of promise. they realized that political success was built on productive alliances. that one man alone could not transform a nation. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [applause] >> we look forward to your questions. go ahead. >> well, i wondered about the great distaste they have for patrick henry. i'm guessing it's mutual. i wonder how much of that is style and how much is substance? >> it's substance. in the legislature, the virginia legislature, before madison and jefferson shifted their focus to national matters, they found themselves stymies every step of the way. whenever they sought some reform, patrick henry would automatically be on the other side, standing in their way. jefferson tried to influence william warts biography of patrick henry. that's the biography that gives us the quotes that may or may not be accurate. give me liberty or give me death. so much of the knowledge, the little knowledge that we have comes from william's biography. jefferson tried to correct by making sure the biography did not gloss over henry's weaknesses. and especially jefferson wanted to say that make sure that we're emphasize that henry had a love of money. and he would do anything for a dollar. that he was ill educated, studied the law for just several weeks and barely squeaked by in his examination for the bar. so he looked upon henry at the time and historically when he was carrying about legacy as a man of minor intellect. shall we say? >> i want to add one point, one the interesting things about madison, he writes a very important manifesto of the constitution, it's called vices of the united states, where he's describing the you seductive or- oratory, and he's using the life and blood of henry. he didn't think of abstract. he based his encountered on the virginia assembly. madison had to take on henry in the ratifying convention. and it was -- you know, henry basically took over the show. he refused to follow the designated plan of the way they were going to debate issue by issue, and it's an interesting moment. because there's an effort to corral people, know their votes even before the ratifying convention is held. you know, madison, even before the actual meeting in philadelphia makes this claim, you know, we're going to have to like tie henry down. make sure to tie him down by the instructions. make sure he doesn't interfere. he even imagines before the meeting in philadelphia that henry is plotting disunion. so these are real, not only emotional, only not about style, but they are also about the kind of very personal, political tension that's existed among virginians. >> henry mattered very much. he died in 1799, the same -- just a few months before george washington. and not long before his death, washington urged patrick henry to run against the democratic republicans to deny national election to jefferson. and it shows that throughout their building careers, madison and jefferson faced henry in every way imaginable. after the falling out with washington, once again, patrick henry loomed as a perspective candidate to oppose jefferson, another virginian who might oppose jefferson for the presidency. is that all we got? yes. >> can you tell us something about how you collaborated on the two men? and if there was issues that went back and forth between them, how did you deal with that to make it, you know, continuity? >> yeah, the question is how we collaborated on writing a book about these two partners. and the simple answer is that we've been intellectual partners for close to 15 years. and we've been arguing history for all of that time. so we've taken part in the process when each of us was writing a book individually. and we happened to finish our last books at the same time they came out at the same time in 2007. it was that time we decided to do something together. and it turned out to be dirty politics in early america. >> i'll just add one thing, a lot of people imagine that somehow we're adopting the personas. you know? of the two people that we are studying. that's not what drew us into the project. basically we were interested in different themes or topics, we wrote on those different themes. then we would get together and revise it and work on it and debate it. but we're not secretly pretending to be the reincarnation of madison and jefferson. >> it's a book as much as the virginians edmund pendleton, albert randolph, and people who interact with jefferson and madison. we were always talking about a whole configuration of individuals and groups across state lines. and just trying to understand the dynamics of early american politics in a new way to show that madison and jefferson found that they had to ally with one another to deal with tensions that they saw across the country, when they themselves were very often, disputed one another in private. you get that through the beautiful body of letters that we have of them. but, yes, go ahead. >> yes, what was the themes of the book? ma -- that madison was much more disinstructful, and if you wanted to elaborate on that difference and some of the differences between madison and jefferson? >> well, they knew collaborative tension. we know collaborative tension. but it's a good thing. madison was less easily upset than jefferson was. jefferson you see the emotionality in his correspondence. sometimes madison had to quiet him down. madison had one particular dislike, that was john adams. he detested adams for years and years. and this was the one cantankerous member of the founding foundation that jefferson was always ready to make amends with. there's another interesting triangular relationship there. >> yeah, i think in terms of madison's view towards the people, this is one the things we had trouble understanding. he wasn't anticipating democracy. and, you know, one the debates that he carries on in the federalist papers has to -- as an unanimous writer in new york and believes they have to be closely influenced. madison was uncomfortable with that. based on his observations of what had gone on in virginia. he basically felt that have there -- what he really wanted, the constitution to do and the new government to do was to create a system that would filter legislation. remove impurities, remove the mistakes, and when he writes about the states in anticipation of the constitutional convention, he sees them almost as if they are a rambunctious group of children that need to be disciplined. this is an important difference. often if you follow one line of arguments which comes from hamilton that somehow jefferson seduced madison away from hamilton and hamilton can't understand why it is that, you know, madison seems to be his opponent. well, part of it is the way they thought about government was different. madison really wanted a government that would be more disciplined, you know, that would engage in discipline, would get rid of what he saw the excess of government, or excess of a concentration of powers. hamilton really wanted an energetic government which would augment power. so their views and their thinking about the kind of government that they envisioned was different. it's not particularly surprising that they would part ways in the 1790s. the other thing that's really important that's different from madison and jefferson is that jefferson we know his illusions to the farmer. he tended to romanticize the people. jefferson basically believed in the will of the majority. he believed that could be, you know, the ruling principal across the board. as you also discover about jefferson, occasionally he realized majority work didn't work when majority will seemed to be opposed to the policy he was backing. he do have abstract and look at the federal government in different ways. they don't completely lose that. one the interesting things about madison writing for the press, he beginning to value the importance of what is called popular public opinion. that public opinion was known in the 18th century. which was educated public opinion. he thought it was a good idea for educated people to write for the press. and how larger people should respond to certain issues. we have to take into account that madison and jefferson don't remain constant over times. there are fundamental differents that remain in their thinking. we don't want to lose sight. this is one the problems, we tend to trap the founders of one period of time. this is encapsulating all of their thinking. that's not true. people evolve, people change their views, you know, change in person directions. you know, as they respond to political situations. >> a good example of this is during the war of 1812. jefferson is an ex-president, he was coaching madison privately writing letters suggesting how to prosecute the war of 1812. madison ultimately found that the best means was deficit spending and to go back to a ham iltonian view of the bank. which jefferson opposed in the 1890s. jefferson found himself, his idead over turned by madison at some critical moments. so to look upon these partners as two who saw eye to eye all the time, is incorrect. and that's what makes the friendship, that half century of friendship so powerful and intriguing. because they did dispute one another from time to time. not just style, but substance. >> you were talking about dirty politics in the 1790s. we're currently in the midterm elections in 2010. what are the similarities that you see and differences that you see -- of course, we are a lot better wiring than those guys were. have they been through the -- >> the questions asked us to compare the 1790s to politics in 2010. there was no corporate finance. [laughter] >> the personal attacks are what's unchanged. and what we ordinarily don't associate with the pathological decade of the 1790s. but, you know, it's hard for historians to -- i mean what we do is we read 18th century newspapers. we don't try to find parallels to what's going on today. so probably we won't be able to give you a really colorful answer to that. >> well, i think just one point that you can add to that is you have to remember the contentious political style, satire, the nastiness of the press, we inherited from great britain. and that is not our own unique creation. although i think democracy fuels it. but clearly this -- this idea of attacking the enemy became much more poa lil -- poa lit sized through the newspapers. >> the activist in the popular press for english and irish immigrants, recent immigrants who sometimes madison and jefferson felt more comfortable dealing with through intermediaries. you didn't campaign for office. you didn't run for office. you stood for office. : >> do you have any particular reaction to any of the varied ways that jefferson in particular used -- >> well, how madison and jefferson are quoted in the press and in the senate chamber today. well, one of the things that encouraged us to write this book and to do the research deeply is that madson is generally known only as, you know, the so-called father of the constitution and a co-author of the federalist papers which nancy mentioned earlier the federalist papers didn't really become important national documents until the modern age, so when madison is oversimplified and looked upon just as the egghead of the founders who wrote the constitution and thought about in a language and perhaps spoke in a language that would be hard for us to understand you know, you miss humanity, but what we've done is to present madison as a partisan and just as bitter as jefferson in going up against hamilton and the federalists, so you know, jefferson is always intriguing, and we haven't written the last book on jefferson, his personality, his political views, but hopefully we've jump started a conversation. >> yeah, i add whenever jefferson or madison are quoted by politicians or journalists, it's completely out of context and even books that collect their quotes, if you just read the quotes, you won't understand. jefferson's case wrote one thing to one person in a letter. you have to understand letters were politicized. they were not shares -- sharing in confidence. they had to write in cipher if they wanted it to be secret. your mail could be opened and secrets could be revealed. it was jefferson who got into trouble that way. i think part of the problem is it's difficult for americans to understand the issues of the 18th century and it's difficult to understand what are the things that wild people in the 18th century about power? if you only cite references to tyranny, you won't understand. jefferson and madison were against a big army. is anyone today going to defend the dismantling of the military? no. >> what matters is context, understanding context so when you see the qowtble jefferson or madison, you can't take them out of context. you have to understand them within the moral boundary, within the emotional boundaries and intellectual boundaries in which they lived. i understand we're nearing the end of the hour, and i believe you all will be treated to mr. jefferson's favorite wine from 1786. [laughter] oh, i'm sorry -- [laughter] it turns out we're having a recent vine taj. thank you all for coming. [laughter] [applause] >> they'll be a book signing and a reception upstairs. my desire to reverse the name order of the book ought to represent the extent which madison has been obscured and andy and nancy have very properly attempted to resurrect madison in this relationship so thank you again for extremely accessible and readable book. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] coming up next on booktv, an interview with the author of bloody crimes, history of events following lincoln's assassination. that's followed by medical mysteries. you're watching a special weekend edition of booktv on c-span2. >> this is a special presentation of booktv. >> you're the author of the "new york times" best seller, manhunt, a 12 day chase of lincoln's killer that was published in 2006. now you pinned this book bloody crimes, and i think it's destined to be another best seller. >> guest: thank you. >> host: now, tell us briefly, just give us a brief overview of the particular work. >> guest: well, this is about what happened in america while the hunt for john wilkes booth was taking place. i couldn't tell the entire story of the spring and summer of that time. there's two great things that with happening. two men went on two of the greatest journeys in american history, and i think these two journeys of lincoln and davis are as important as the journey of louis and clark or even the journey to the moon because the jowrnny of lincoln and davis one a hero and one a lost man influence how we think about about race, politics, and the meaning of the civil war, and that's what captured me in telling the rest of the story. >> host: why the title bloody crimes? you indicate it's a prof my, a promise, and an ill lo ji. can you explain that? >> host: the title comes from the bible. before the civil war, he launched a ferry and when he was captured and sentenced to the executed, he leafed through the bible and folded over pages, underliped words and sentences. in one particular line he underline is make a chain for the land is full of bloody crimes and the city is full of violence. on the day he was executed, he handed a note that said i prophesied the crimes of this bloody land are only purged by blood. after the lincoln assess nation there was envelopes, receipts, flags people would wear, and one photographer in boston came out with an image of a woman dressed as liberty guarding a picture of lincoln, and there was an eagle perched on the picture. it was make a chain for the land of bloody crimes. certainly in the north and south believe it was the climax of an era and the north believe southerners murdered men on the battlefield and the union lost men and the conditions in the prison camps were horrific, and of course the climax of these crimes were the murder of the president himself, and so the north thought the south was guilty of countless crimes of blood, and then the south thought that lincoln was the criminal rav vishing towns, destroying crops, invading plantations and killing 240,000 of their men. each side agreed on one thing that april and may of 1865 was a great climax of bloody crimes and that prophesy was in the civil war. that's how i titled the book. >> host: because of all of those things and because southerners and northerners looked at the war differently, we know the view of the north was tarnishes and his image has been softened over the years, he does not guard the attention that abraham lincoln does. we tend to look at the differences between the two men more than the similarities, but you have done something extraordinary. you have been able to point out the of similarities and the no-so-obvious similarities between the two. can you give us information about that? >> guest: yes, when i started the book i knew more about abraham lincoln than jefferson davis. that's been the focus of most of my writing. i was intrigued by davis and that began in a cemetery in washington, d.c. in georgetown at oakland cemetery. he was buried temporarily in a tomb, a space for lincoln. one day when i was visiting willie lincoln's old tomb, jefferson davis also buried a son of his inspect same cemetery. we all know the differences between them. what do they have in common? both were born in kentucky, a year apart, 100 miles apart, born not under grand and wealthy circumstances. they were prankers and jokers. they were both wrestlers, both suffered great tragedies in their youths. we know the story of lincoln and anne rutledge. for years some historians have argued that there was no romance between them. it's been made up. the evidence says and the great lincoln scholars have now concluded and i'm sure they're right that there was love between lincoln and anne and she died suddenly of illness. it devastated him and he became a different man. some of his friends thought he might commit suicide. davis fell in love with tennessee 18 -- an 18-year-old named sarah cox. he quit the army to marry her. he married, they took her home to the mississippi river to his sister's plantation, and then they were struck down by a form of malaria. he recovered and she died in his arms. they were married for 12 weeks. davis said that was the time of his great so collusion. he vanished from life for years. they studied through the night, read books, studied politic, and he was a lost man. lincoln and davis both suffered tragic losses of their first loves and they became different men. lincoln certainly death in his family and death of anne, he, too, had a different view of nature and the meaning of life. both had that and that's just one of the similarities. they had a similar physical appearance. they weral and lean with a look about them. they both loved books and learning. they were not men who sought luxuries of the world. neither one cared about expensive furniture or world travel or goods or superficial things. they were both deep thinkers and compelling speakers. when davis resigned from the u.s. senate and gave his last speech, people cried. he was known for having a beautiful persuasive or tore kl voice. leaning had a different -- lincoln had a different voice. both were incredible speakers and sought to master their passions. they were both opposed to succession. he traveled to the south and they were men of reason and not unrestrained passion and suffered terribly in the war. lincoln's son, willie, died. davis lost a son. they suffered the death of freppedz, family members, people they knew. there was one great difference between them, and this must not be overlooked. lincoln said if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. now, there's been controversy about what did lincoln believe about slavery and race at different points in his life. what does he say in northern illinois and southern illinois? we know one thing about lincoln. he always thought slavery was a great moral wrong. if -- and so davis did not agree. davis believed in white racial superiority throughout his life. davis believed that slavery was good, that is it actually helped people become civilized after being brought here from africa. i wondered if african-american lincoln and davis ever met. they're in washington at the same time at various times, but we know they never met. i think they would have got along in many ways talking about the greatness of america, both lincoln and davis were nationalists and they believed in american american exceptionalism. lincoln believed all men deserved to be free and the constitution guaranteed that. davis believed the opposite. he said the founders had slavery, why not us? he believed people always were meant to the slaves. it's tragic because they could have been friends possibly. possibly they could have avoided a civil war if they knew each other and were close friends before the war, but that great gulf between them on the nature of man divided them forever. >> i guess that's my basic question. how is it one is a slave holder, and the other could become an advocate for the freedom of all people if not for the equality of all people, certainly the freedom of all people if they were similar in terms of background. was davis' background that similar to lincoln's or was there just a bit more wealth on his side? >> guest: there was, there was more wealth. lincoln grew up in circumstances unbelievably poor. lincoln had a hard childhood. his father worked him like a slave would have worked. at age 9, he had an ax in his hand. lincoln worked incredibly hard. davis got privilege early on. lincoln had a year and a half of schooling at most. he's a graduate of the first or second grade. davis went to private academies and a college and was appointed to the united states military academy at west point. his older brother sponsored him, took care of him, gave him land for plantations, and his brother gave him his first slaves. the gulf began early in terms of experiences and wealth. davis made use of his skills by becoming senator and congressman. the difference began early in life. >> host: okay. you point out in the book as well that despite all that the north had suffered during the four years of war, lincoln was not inclined to punish the southern people or their leaders for that matter, and so he tells his generals to let them up easy, and there's an indication there that he really was more than willing to let davis escape, and in fact, he seemed to have preferred that happen, and i assume that's because he didn't want the country thrown into even more chaos because you put this man on trial and all of that, but given what the northern people had suffered, was he being just a tad naive or just wishful thinking, or what was going on in lincoln's head? >> guest: i think a few things were going on in lincoln's mind. first, he was an incredibly generous person. he was a kind person. he was not -- lincoln once said i shall do nothing through mailness. what i do is too vast for malicious dealing. he believed the wounds would be healed as quickly as possible. he was opposed to putting the confederate leaders on trial, just let the men go home. even davis because lincoln thought if davis is tried and executed, the south might revolt again or some of the south might fight a guerrilla war or resist reconstruction and be dragged kicking and screaming into the union. the constitution says treason trials take place at the place. in davis had been tried and in the of treason, a court would have validated secession and say the south is not wrong to leave. nobody wanted that, and if davis was guilty and was executed, lincoln feared there would be an upheaval and cause bitterness. some said do not execute jefferson davis. there was a newspaper in massachusetts that said let him live because if we hang him, a million southern women will dip their hander chiefs in his blood and hold a grudge for a century. it would have been bad to execute davis because it would cause a riff. two, what if we did try him and he was found in the and secession would be justified under the holding of the davis court. it's difficult to overestimate lincoln's great pes. when he went to richmond, the city was burning and there was smoke. the freed slaves met him at the dock and escorted him through the city. that was the height of his presidency. he was moved. when the former slaves bowed to me, he said don't bow to me, kneel only to god. he didn't exalt. long -- lincoln sat there, didn't speak, and asked for a glass of water. it's taken years to end the civil war, lincoln could have ended as a king. he walked as a plain man with 12 guards through the enemy capitol. that's the most volatile situation that an american president has ever placed himself in. he didn't go in triumph but are humility and gratitude that the bloodshed was over. he couldn't not have ordered punishments and hangings. it was not in his nature. he transcended bitterness and politics of the time which is why he was one the greatest of all americans. >> host: at the same time, he was willing to accept his generals using the hard hand war. how do you reconcile those two lincolns? >> guest: it's unusual because he was this kind man, but he also knew that he had to preserve the union. lincoln had two great public political passions. one, that slavery was a terrible wrong and could never be justified. there's other great political passions that's the union. it must not be destroyed, and he felt for the greater good of the nation even if he had to fight the civil war, it was worth paying the price to make america better and preserve the union and ultimately to end slavery. lincoln said he couldn't kill a chicken. you know, as the war progressed, he took on a more mysterious view that a divine hand was intervening, and he was an actor or agent of this devine hand. lincoln was surrounded by death through the the civil war. friends were killed, certainly colonel baker was killed and wrote a letter and tells a girl i more than any know this. the terrible episode in 1864 when those poor young girls are blown to bits when the washington arsenal explodes, 20 dead girls as young as 13 died. lincoln presides over their funeral. it's an odd thing to think of lincoln dealing with death every day knowing he is sending men to die, friends are dying, family is dying. he was willing to do it. lincoln, and i don't mean this in a bad way, but lincoln is one of the greatest killers in american history because of his decision, because of his will, hundreds of thousands of americans died, but he thought the price of the civil war was worth paying to preserve america as a great institutionings to preserve liberty, ultimately free the slaves and preserve the constitution. there was two lincolns wrestling with each other. he was a tortured soul in his presidency. he was stricken by the deaths and suffering going on in the civil war, but he thought the price was worth paying. >> host: okay, going back to the richmond visit, i agree that was an enormous thing to do, but lincoln seemed not to aware of the danger he was in or was indifferent to the danger really and you see a similar thing be jefferson davis. he's not anxious to leave richmond even though he was told by lee there's no way the army can protect richard monday any longer, and when he does leave, he go to danville and stays awhile and moves on, but he's not in any great hurry to get out of harm's way. you have both men who are very indifferent to the danger to their own lives, so what's happening there? is that just a characteristic of great men, or are they just simply out of their mind? >> guest: well, lincoln didn't believe in pomp and circumstance. he really believed he was a plain man, a citizen temporarily elevated to this great and high office. he didn't like having an entourage of guards or like having that protection. he thought it seemed impeer yule or -- imperial or kingly, unfortunately that's the way he thought. during the civil war washington, d.c. was a zest pool of disloyalty and agents and spies and multiple plots. at that point in time, anybody could have done to the white house and say i want to see the president, what's your business, i want to see him about this, wait on a bench, and it's a miracle that during the civil war someone etc didn't make an appointment to shoot him. i think it's a miracle no one assassinated him before john did. he was unprotected the night he was shot. he didn't care about that security. he owed it not nation and his family to protect himself better. i hate to say that, but he should have been more careful and thought about the consequences of his death, not only for his family, but the country. the country needed him at the end of the civil war. he would have been the south's best friend. everyone would have been better off in lincoln had lived. that's the great tragedy of the assassination. in the case of jefferson davis; davis was wounded in a mexican war and led troops forward in combat and defeated a charge by mexican lancers closing in on his troops. he was brave, hardy, he endured long journeys during his youth across the country. when he was a little boy at 7 years old, he road on a pony and met andrew jackson and then went to school. he was used to the hardships of life. he had many illnesses and almost died. he didn't view the civil war with ending when richmond fell in 1865. that's really one of the core stories of the book. dave didn't want to give up. he didn't view fleeing richmond as an escape to save his life or his family. he wasn't trying to escape to a foreign land. he believed he was carrying on the confederate cause, and his escape in his mind was an ordered retreat from place to place with a body of armed troops, with documents, papers, way wagons to keep the government going. he stayed in danville for a week to operate the federal government and awaiting news with general lee. lee had not surrendered yet. he wanted to go deeper south, then west, across the mississippi and form a new western confederacy. first, he wasn't trying to save himself but the country and continue the war. he believed he could do it and believed in lessons he could make the retreat, reestablish the heart of the confederacy elsewhere. secondly, he didn't really care about himself. he said that he was willing to die to save his people, and he believed that after he was captured. he said that if it will make the life of the people of the south better after the war, i'm happy to be the sacrifice. if the north wants to kill me, so be it, put me on trial. i can help my people. at the end of his life when he went on a grand tour of the south, davis had never been the number one hero in the south of the civil war. davis, i believe, was more popular near the end of his life than at the height of his power in the civil war. true also of lincoln. it's interesting how both men after the fall became bigger heros. he was shocked at how he was celebrated. tens of thousands of people with great acclaim, women passed out by his feet. veterans trembled uncontrol belie by him. davis' wife said you cannot meet anymore veterans, this is going to kill you. you will not survive. davis said i can think of no greater honor than to die in the presence of the confederate army and my men. he believed that during the escape. it was not a cowardly thing to flee and hide from history. in fact, i would say i don't think he ever wanted to escape. i think he wanted to be on stage at the end for the final curtain. he could have escaped. he could have fled the country. other members of the cabinet fled to foreign lands and prospered there. he could have done the same. his view was as long as my soldiers are fighting, i can't abandon them or abandon the country, and so like abraham lincoln, he didn't care in the end what would happen to him. >> host: but he does not give up until he's captured even those his generals are telling him the game is up. there's no way they're going to prevail, even if they make it west of the mississippi, they're not going to be successful. there's not enough troops there. he continues, and so one wonders is this a flaw of leadership? is it a character flaw or what? you think if he cares so much about his soldiers, then he would have given up so then that they would have an opportunity to live. i mean, that's what lee does. nobody understands there's nothing else he can do and instead of sacrificing the rest of his men that remain he decide the best thing for them is to vender. davis does not do that. >> guest: it's true. dais didn't want to surrender. he felt he had to to save what's left. davis at a certain point was told by almost everyone it's over. early on people thought, well, let's give it a try, maybe we won't lose and we can prolong the war. at the certain point, yes, the military leaders were with him saying we have to give up. there's nothing more we can do. lee surrenders. he has joe left. he surrenders and loses the army in the north carolina and lost the two principle armies east of the mississippi river. now what? now he's going from virginia to south carolina to south carolina to georgia. some men say it's finished. go to florida and run away or go to mexico. davis says, well, if it causes loss, why are you still with me? they say not to fight, but to save you. that's the only reason we are here because we can't allow you to fall into union hands. we will die to save you and your family, but we are not dying to save the confederacy. they have lost. it's an interesting thing psychologically. he was the reluck at that particular time secessionist and didn't lead of the south of the union. even when he agreed to be president, he looked like he had news of a great death. once he was president of the confederacy, he gave it his all, a total commitment, and i think he did not want history to say of him he quit, he gave up. i think he wanted history so say he did everything last thing he could before he gave up. i think that's why, yes, if he was concerned more about the lives of the soldiers, the remaining soldiers, perhaps he could have given up earlier and not waited for capture or surrendered. i know the reason he didn't was not merely to save his life. he believed there was a chance. one could say he was di lewded at the end and had too much confidence in his own ability to inspire the people west of the mississippi. if you read his letters though and one the great things about the davis escape is a wonderful exchange of love letters and urgent letters between he and his wife. she didn't travel with him during the escape. they were on parallel paths heading south. he thought that was safer. their correspondence and later correspondence while he was in prison reminds me of the one of john adams, a lifelong love, a support for each other, one could do a book about the correspondence of jefferson and his wife. >> host: we're going to take a brief break, and when we come back, i'd like to talk about how davis' image changes overtime because he was not popular at the end of the war with certain segments of his own country, those people in the confederacy at least, and i'd like to talk also in great detail about what you call the death pageant that you where egg gauntly about -- elegantly about, so we'll be back shortly. >> host: you talk about the death pageant, how -- you talk about lincoln's funeral, the train trip back to springfield, not directly, of course, but through many northern cities, and we understand that there had to be something extraordinary for this man because he had just saved the union. he had just won the war, but it seems that there was -- it's very much over the top. it was an extremely expensive funeral and return home, and there was some rituals that were agented out, -- acted out, i think, that gave me pause. if you could explain a bit about what's happening in terms of practices in the 19th century, how would his funeral reflected those practices? >> guest: yes. it was the biggest funeral in american history perhaps rivaled by the funeral of john f. kennedy or not because it was missing that pageant of going across the nation. of course when lincoln was killed, everyone knew there was going to be a great funeral. no president had a funeral like lincoln. this was going to be something special. the pageant really began what lincoln's body was taken from the peterson house to the white house, and that was one of the most dramatic moments in the white house, the morning of april 15, several hours after the president died, an army took him to the white house and took him to the guestroom and laid him out on boards upon two trestles, and then there was an autopsy. people don't remember that lincoln's body was autopsied in the white house, and there was the president of the united states laying naked on these boards when the army surgeons came and cut open longes' head, removed his brain. the bullet fell from the brain into a container and echoed in the room. locks of hair were taken and then after the autopsy, the embalmers came. now, they didn't know at that moment it was going to be a funeral pageant. this was shaping up in short notice. they had to have the funeral in washington by the same embalmers who covered body of his son. for the next few days lincoln's body was in seclusion while things were planned. there was decided to be a viewing in the east room and he was carried down the stairs for this viewing that began on april 18th and then it was to be the funeral in the white house. it was the most coveted ticket. then a procession took him down pennsylvania avenue and then the capitol dome and people viewed him there. his final procession took him from the dome to the railroad station. by then the nation was getting calls to send lincoln back to the people. secretary stanton was related to all things related to the lincoln fiewn -- funeral. telegrams started coming in, send him to philadelphia, we must see him in new york. the president was lincoln's great train journey east in february 1861 after being elected president. this was his inaugural journey in reverse. they sent him north first and then the great turn west to ohio, indiana, cleveland, chicago, and then south to springfield. mary lincoln gave permission for this. it wasn't known whether she would allow it to happen or if she allowed this plan, an open coffin all the way. 1 million people viewed the corpse of lincoln. children, several million people saw the train. there were exotic rituals along the way, thousands of flowers, women came on board at each stop of the trap and weeped at the tomb, left notes. little children sent a wreath for willie lincoln. lincoln, of course, planned himself to take willie home at the end of his second term in 1869, and they traveled together back to springfield. in new york city, a photographer captured photographs of lincoln dead in his coffin and it caused a national sen sensation. it caused an outrage. for one soul surviving print that ended up in the papers and was ultimately discovered. lincoln in philadelphia was laid at the foot of the liberty bell. in 1861 in philadelphia when he came east as president elect, he said that rather than give up on the promises of the delar ration of independence, he said i would rather be assassinated on the spot. there he was by the liberty bell now. then it was an iconic object than it is today. it was incredible symbolism. 36 girls dressed in white symbolizing the 36 stars on the flag leading parades in honor of lincoln. people stood with torchlights in rains, darkness, fires, bands, cannons, nothing like it had happened before in america. it was unbelievable, and it was that journey that transformed ab lincoln from a man into america's secular saint. it was not just lincoln coming home on that train. i'm convinced that the american people viewed that train as something bringing home every husband, every brother, every lover, every father who had been killed in that war. they were all coming home on that train, all 340,000 of them. that was the great emotional train. not for you, but for you alone, and his poem was not just about lincoln. the sprig of lilac was not for lincoln alone, and just as witman's poem was for all fallen men, that journey where millions viewed the train and the corpse, people stood in line for five or six hours, thousands of people passing in an hour by the coffin. they were not just mourning lincoln, of course they were, but mourning everybody lost in that war. it's the most powerful journey in american history, and in fact a century later after that bad day in dallas in 1963 when president kennedy's body was flown to washington, his funeral was modeled after lincolns. lincoln's funeral was researched and kennedy's funeral was based from lincoln's funeral. it influences how we think about it today. that funeral journey affected how we remember lincoln today and how people mourned him at the time of the civil war. it's the most underrated, forgotten, important journey in american history, those days from april 21st to may 4 from washington to springfield. it's an incredible journey. >> host: who's making the decisions for this pomp or pa gent -- pageantry? >> guest: his wife remains in seclusion. the death of her husband affected her mind. mary lincoln is a curious figure before i lincoln assassination. i think she made lincoln's life difficult. i like to say mary lincoln was no davis who was a wonderful woman and great support to her husband and a great figure in her own right. mary lincoln was so troubled. several of her children died, she was temperamental, jealous, benjamin brown french, the commissioner of public buildings in washington who is a great figure that i discovered while working on the book, his diary is one of the great american journals and says so much about all the events, he's really the person who i might have wanted to be at the time observing these events because he preserved these things wonderfulfully. he accused her of outright theft and stealing public funds. he wrote in his diaries, there are things i know about her i dare not mention here. mary lincoln was in no shape for the journey. she was in mourning, seclusion and would not let tad lincoln go. she should have. tad would have enjoyed see the nation's tributes to longes lincoln, but he was locked in the mourning chamber, and that was not good for him either. in each city, local officials were in charge of the arrangements. they built structures. in philadelphia there was no building large noser, so they built a chinese type building in an open park and people waited outside. it was the local committees in the cities that put on the arrangements and decide how the room would look like and lights and flags. each city tried to outdo the other, so of course, new york city tried to outdo washington, d.c. in terms of the extravagance and the display. new yorkersmented to outdo every city and chicagomented to outdosh chicago wanted to outdo new york. springfield with the display and pomp even made a special hearse. others made hearses so big and so fancy, they were bigger than the log cabin that lincoln was born in. they looked like little traveling houses being drawn by as many as 16 horses, plumed horses. lincoln elevated on a platform so everyone saw the coffin. the displays were as you say, they were over the top, unbelievable. no one who saw that funeral train ever forgot it. that's one thing i try to do is give a flavor of what it was like to be in each city and witness these displays. the newspapers were so obsessive with describing what everything looked like and who road in which carriage and what the ceremonies were simply based on verbal descriptions of newspapers, you could reconstruct the whole thing today without photographs. many were made, but if you read the newspapers from each city, every dignitary is named, every flower is named, the sayings on the wreaths are described. it's one the most well and overdescribed events in history and also very dramatic. one thing i found to be quite interesting is beyond the major events in the cities along the entire route millions of people turned out just to watch the train go by even when the train didn't stop. people held up infants so they could tell their children they saw the coffin pass by. it was the most emotionally profound event in 19th century america. >> host: it is not that stanton had an image of what he wanted when he started, but it got out of hand because each city could do it how they wanted. >> guest: yes, the funeral train took on a life of its own. it wasn't planned. it was spontaneous. no one ordered people to turn up by the millions at the trackside and have torches # and build fires, the people did it. they hand painted signs and nailed them to their barns or houses. it was a spontaneous congressmen ration by the american people along the way. the train resinated. it was like a tuning fork of american emotion, and that emotion got more and more intense as the journey progressed, and the major parts were planned it's stopping in this city on this day and his body is on displace and you can see it, but all the other things were spoon spontaneous. that's a great thing about it and that's why i think very much it's the american people remembering not only lincoln, but remembers what they lost and who they knew who was lost in the war. it was a kind of mast cay thor sis. >> host: if we go back to mary for just a moment. >> guest: okay. >> host: she does not, she doesn't look great between the covers of your book. you do indicate that she's -- that davis' wife is everything mary is not and mary is everything she is not. both ladies were southern bells. >> guest: yes. >> host: women of privilege. >> guest: yes. >> host: grown up with great wealth surrounderred by slaved labors and both married well as it turned out, but both were from different generations. davis' wife was younger than her husband. >> guest: yes. >> host: while president lincoln and mary were closer in age. i've always been struck by how strong-willed mary was, but also by the fact she was, i think, part of her problem might have been that she recognized her own abilities and understood that the conventions of the day prevented her from being all that she could be. she was a woman who was not satisfied with just being the little lady. >> guest: yes. >> host: while davis' wife was, and so could the difference not be not just madness on the part of mary, although there must have been something going on, and there was something going on with the president as well. he was no picnic and had his issues, but could it be just a generational difference and an understanding on the part of mary she was never going to be able to be the person she knew she could be because that was not allowed during that era? >> host: very much could be part of it because especially in lincoln's early career, i do think mary was almost indispensable. lincoln was rough beyond rough. he didn't know how to dress or comb his hair or clean his clothes. lincoln was simply a mess. if you look at the photographs of him, you see how unruly his hair is, his collars don't fit, the clothes are wrinkled. he didn't know how present himself. mary was a highly sought after woman in illinois. many men sought to court her. she saw something in lincoln that others didn't see. she was ambitious. she wanted to marry someone who was going to go places. she looked at this uncouth rough character and thought there was something about him and chose him. she was very intelligent, well-educated, a great reader, loved to talk about politics, loved to be part of the political mix in springfield, and she was a very cape l person and certainly strong-willed, but, of course, at this time there was no role for a woman in public life with those interests, so she channeled that in supporting lincoln and taking care of the family. beyond that though there was something wrong with her, some people think there was a history of madness in her family. some people thought she was unstable because of her family situation in kentucky where a stepmother came in, but if you look at all the things mary lincoln did, if you look at the vicious, cruel, monstrous letter she wrote to her son robert -- >> host: who had her locked up. >> guest: well if those letters were written to you, you would have had her locked up. i don't think we can explain mary lincoln away as someone who didn't have the opportunities that women had today and she was ahead of her time. many, that was the case with davis' wife. she was intelligent and literary woman. she was a beloved host of the political salon in washington. the political leaders of dc admired and respected her and found out how affective she could be later and she was a champion and saved her husband's life releasing him from prison. she didn't give up using every connection she had. as soon as davis was arrested she wrote to montgomery blair saying help me. she called on the men she knew in the past to get jefferson davis free from prison. mary lincoln is a subject of great contention among lincoln historians. some are very much partisans and believe she's a victim not only of lincoln, but of modern historians. others, perhaps air too far and demonize her. i could have treated her worse. she had a great heart, did great work for wounded soldiers, christmas dinners she prepared for soldiers, visiting the hospitals, she was moved deeply by the cause and by the car. she was certainlily loyal to the union, but there was something about her that triggered bad reactions in other people, officials in washington didn't like her and viewed her as a western person to take over the white house. it's a sad and tragic story. i agree with you. we can't dismiss her as a mad woman and write her out of history. her story is complex and difficult. she was talented, intelligent, helped prepare lincoln for greatness and suffered great tragedy in her life with deaths of her son, her husband murdered, 18 inches from her. >> host: blood splattered on her. >> guest: yes, she

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