Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20110820

empire. they fled to canada and british territories in the caribbean. the author spoke at the harvard bookstore. [inaudible conversations] >> hi, everyone. i'm alex meriwether, pleased to welcome you to this afternoon's friday forum with author maya jasanoff here to discuss her newest book, liberty's exiles. before we start, i just want to take a moment and mention a few upcoming author talks. upcoming events include james carroll on march 11 discussing his new book, jerusalem, jerusalem, how the ancient cities ignited our modern world. next, american tempest, how the boston tea party sparked a revolution. upcoming ticketed events include james glike, sarah, and governor duvall. find a list of events at harvard.com and the events flier. after maya jasanoff's talk this afternoon, we'll have time for questions after which we'll have a book signing at the table, and you can find copies of liberty's exiles at the registers. know when you buy a book from harvard bookstore, you're supporting a local indidn't institution who cares about books, and this series would not be possible without that support. we're pleased to have c-span's booktv here taping the event. when asking questions in the q&a, note you're recorded, and wait a moment for the microphone to come over to you before asking your question, and finally now is a great time to make sure you silenced your cell phones. this afternoon, on behalf of harvard bookstore, i'm pleased to introduce maya jasanoff here to discuss liberty's exiles: american loyalists in the post revolutionary world. she brings us a largely untold story in this newest work. the story of 60,000 men and women who remained loyal to the british empire at the conclusion of the american revolution. these loyalists decided to leave their homes and become refugees elsewhere in the british empire and all over the world. boston globe calls this a masterful account, ace historian joseph j ellis notes losers seldom get to write the history, but the british loyalists timely met their historian. she tells the story with uncommon style and grace. she's an associate professor of history at harvard university. her first book was awarded the 2005duff-cooper prize and was a book of the year selection in the economist, the guardian, and the sunday times. we're very pleased to bring her to harvard bookstore this afternoon. please join me in welcoming maya jasanoff. [applause] >> well, thank you, all, for coming, and let me thank harvard harvard bookstore for hosting me. i've been coming here since my undergraduate days a long time ago, and i feel as my reading tastes mature, harvard bookstore has been here to fulfill them. let me begin at the beginning with this book. there were two sides to the american revolution, but only one was on display. early in the afternoon of november 25, 1783 when general george washington road on a gray horse into new york city. by his side trotted the governor of new york flanked by an escort of armed guards. henry knox was not far behind. long line of civilians trailed after them, some on foot, others horse back wearing sprigs in their hat, hundreds crammed into the streets to watch. since 1776 through seven long years of war and peace negotiations, new york had been occupied by the british army. today, the british were going, a cannon shot at 1 p.m. founded the departure of the last troops from their posts, marched to the docks, went into boats into the transports waiting in the harbor. the british occupation of the united states was officially over. george washington's entrance into new york city was the closest thing that the winners the american revolution ever had to a parade. for a week, they celebrated the evacuation with feasts and fires and illuminations, and the largest fireworks display ever seen in north america. generations of new yorkers congressmen rated november 25th as evacration day, one that was folded into national togetherness, thanksgiving day. what if you didn't want to british to leave? mixed in among the happy crowds, there were other less cheerful faces, loyalists, ones who sided with brit tap in the war. the departure spelled worry, not jubilation. tens of thousands of loyalists moved for safety into new york and other british held cities. the british withdrawal raised questions about their future. what kind of treatment would they expect in the new united states? would they be jailed? would they retain their property or hold their jobs? confronting real doubts about their lives, liberty, and potential happiness in the united states, 60,000 loyalists decided to take their chances and follow the brit ire elsewhere into the british empire. they took 16,000 black slaves with them bringing the total exodus to 75,000 people or one in 40 members of the american population. they traveled to canada, britain, journeyed to the bahamas, some ventured further to africa and india. wherever they went, this voyage of exile was a trip into the unknown. in america, the refugees left behind friends and relatives, careers and land, houses and native streets. the entire area in which they built their lives. for them, america seemed less an asylum to the persecuted as the patriot posted it than a personal prosecutor. it was the british empire that was their asylum offering land, emergency relief, and helping them start over. evacuation day did not mark an end to the loyalists. it was a fresh beginning, and it carrieded them into a dynamic, if uncertain new world. now, i just read you the first couple pages of the book, and in this book, what i tried to do is lay out and explain what happened to the lislists next -- loyalists next because our stories end, the conflicts in 17 # 83, but as i show for this population, the repercussions went on and unfolded in disant places. in the book, i try to distill the experiences of the 60,000 civilian refugees into a kind of meaningful overview of what this meant, and this afternoon, i'm going to be more kind of grossly reductionist in my remarks because after sort of sketching the big picture for you, i'll focus on the experience of just one of the 60,000 people. let me explain a little about the big picture. you know, stereotypes still suggest that loyalists were shared an elite profile that they were white, wealthy, anglican members of the colonial population. in truth, royalism ranged right across the spectrum, social, geographic, ethnic, and religious spectrum of early america. notably, not all loyalists were white. about 20,000 black slaves during the revolution responded to promises extended by british governors to offer them freedom if they agreed to come and join the red coats, so, again, about 20,000 patriot owned slaves joined the british. this makes it, i think, the largest mass emancipation in american history until the era of the civil war. by the same token, many american indian nations were also drawn into this conflict and divided by it, and for them, they had often been harassed for generations by hand hungry colonists, some were allied with britain over the course of previous wars against fraps and so on, and so many native americans also joined the war on the british side, notably the moo hawks in the north and the creeks in the south. loyalism cuts right across the population of early america. there's a element to the stereotype worth correcting. loyalists are often referred to as torres. it's the nickname for the british conserve tiff party and the implication is loyalists were conservatives. they couldn't see the future, the up no vaition was to -- innovation was to become republican. in fact, many prominent loyalists were actually reformers in their own way, and they advanced schemes for imperial reform that are worth paying attention to and that anticipate much, much later developments elsewhere in the british empire, and so for most of the people who were caught on the front lines of this conflict, which they called a civil war -- not a revolution -- this wasn't so much a war of ideals as it was often a war of ordeals, a war in which violence came to their front doors. they had windows smashed, livestock poisenned, and property seized by the state. the violence of the war as much as ideology is very important in compelling tens of thousands of loyalists to take shelter in british held cities during the war and then decide to leave the colonies at the end of it. what happened to them next, and where did they go? well, fewer than 15% of these refugees want wac to britain, and it wasn't back for most of them because for all that american colonists were raised to think of britain as home, but very few had been there. when they went there, they found themselves in an alien place, different the surroundings they knew in the colonies. the vast majority of the loyalists, more than half of them relocate the to eastern canada to nova scotia which received something like 30,000 of the refugees doubling the prudential population overnight leading to the creation of a new province, new brunswick, to accommodate the new arrivals, a very transformative impact in canada, and another 10,000 or so of these loyalists moved south, particularly those who lived in georgia, south carolina, north carolina, and they traveled to jamaica and the bahamas, and they brought with them the vast majority of those exported slaves, the 15,000 slaves who trailed a-- traveled along with the black and white loyalists. some even ranged further up field. the most surprising aspect of this migration happened in 1791 when 1200 of the black loyalists, the freed slaves, moved from their initial place of refuge in canada across the ocean to west africa. they did it under the sponsorship of british abolitionists who wanted to found a black free colony on the coast of west africa, and the black loyalists were the pioneer settlers which became as free town in sierra loenne. they were more fortunate than some others who were bopped for australia and others end up in india, including two sops of the one of the most infamous loyalist at all, the turncoat benedict arnold. he has two sons that go to india and he has a half indian grandson. the point is the end of the rev lyings, the map of the loyalist diaspora, and there's a map a few pages into this book, the map of the loyalist diaspora looks like the map of the british empire as a whole, and this points to one of the key features that i wanted to snag -- signal about the significance of this disas play because it helps make sense of the a seeming paradox. the american revolution was the greatest single defeat for the british empire until the era of world war world war ii. it's the greatest loss of territory, plonged them into debt. it was a humiliating deaf feet seeing their own closest colonist people they saw as brethren break away, and, yes, within just a decade or so, britain had bounced back to a striking extent, and it was to be the leading empire to be the world power for the entirety of the 19th century. how do we explain the paradox of britain coming out of a devastating defeat, but in short order going on to rule the world? well, we usually think about the sort of international significance of the american revolution in terms of the 1776, the values, you know, that helped mobilize other people around the world to express their own desire for liberty. in fact, i contend, it's by looking at the revolutions impact on the british empire we can see an equally significant international consequence of this war, and in the wake of the american revolution, we see the british empire becoming a great loser. they regroup. they consolidate, and they retool in three key ways which i think we could aptly label the spirit of 1783. you will not hear that necessarily proclaimed in the streets of tripoli or tarhir square, but it's worth noting the significance of this making the empire the global power for about a century. there's three key features to this. one is territorial expansion and the fact the map looks like the map of the british empire is not an accident because a lot of the loyalists become sort of pioneer settlers in different parts of the empire such as sierra leonne and australia is put forward by an american loyalist. another feature of this spirit of 1783 is the clarified sense of imperial pirp, imperial miranda moral purpose more particularly, and this is apparent in a variety of dimensions regarding loyalists. for example, the british government offers a range of charitable measures to get started giving them free passes to domains, land grants where they can establish themselves anew, they give them basic food rations, things like hose and shoes and nails, a whole range of things that resemilled the things that modern international aid agencies give out to refugees today, and this moral purpose is also apparent in things like upholding the commitment to freedom, to the black loyal us -- loyalists heavily contested my american patriots who don't like their property selling off, and finally the british also end up establishing a government commission which gives loyalists compensation for the property that they've lost in america, and this is at the time, a very novel sort of expansion of contemporary ideas of state welfare which barely resembled its current form. it's old if you see these commitments of empire as humanitarian entity, and yet there's a final element to all of this because at the same time they are being expansive and they are being sort of humanitarian and paternalistic, the british also realize that the defeat in america means they have to change their governing style in certain ways, and in particular they realize that what's gone wrong in america is the colonists have been given too much liberty, it's too easy for them to protest, and so in the after math of the american revolution, the british authorities are more tight handed, more authoritarian, more centralized and this ends upcoming of something as a shock to the loyalist refugees coming out the colonies where things were easier and go into the post-revolutionary empire and find themselves at odds with the new style, and so one of the things i was not surprised by in researching the book is places in far as st. john, new brunswick, the bahamas and free town, loyalists are rebelling against british authority asking for greater representation and lower taxes claims that are rather familiar to us from revolutionary history. now, to give you a flavor of this -- those are the big arguments in this book, but it is also a nationtive history, a history about individual figures, and one of the things i was concerned to do is recover the experiences of these people who are a really kneeing legislated sort of -- neglected sort of population in our historical understanding. what i want to do with my time is read to you portions of the book which explain the story of the first refugee who drew me into this project, and she was a georgia loyalist called elizabeth johnston and she wrote a memoir that i came across early in my research. the memoir was here. i was not living here so i made a copy of this and carried it around with me when i moved from one place to another. only then to discover google books put it up online in short order. that was extremely convenient. anyways, she wrote a memoir that got me into the prompt and her story weaves in and out of the book in various ways, and so what i'd like to do, as i said, give you a bit of the flavor of the book and her life in what remains. now, she was about 12 years old when the war began. her far was a well-off -- not well -- he was sort of a planter in georgia, reasonably well-established on a plantation outside of savannah. he had a minor government office, and when the war began, he was accosted by local patriots who wanted him to sign on to a local patriot association, and he refused to do so. a gang came to his door, basically, he was able to run away on seeing them approach, but the 12-year-old daughter was left there. her mother died and she was an only child. she goes to the country to stay with relatives and family friends ultimately in savannah. the war went on. the years went on. her father was fighting with the british in different parts of the north. after three years apart, they were timely reunited again when the british retook savannah. the two of them remet, and she also at that time met her future husband, a fellow brother officer of her fathers. her father was not happy about this match. her future husband, william johnston was describedded as one of the dashing fashionables of occupied british new york. he was sort of a gambler and a flirt, very charming. he had been a medical student before the war, but was happy to fore sake books for the gaming table, and in in case, the two of them get married, and so it is that elizabeth married life unfolds against the backdrop of british defeat in america, and as the british are pulling out of different locations in the colonies, elizabeth and her husband, william, still in british forces, move with them from one city to another. let me try to -- jumping through different parts of the book -- tell you about the first set of migrations. we're in charleston. it's being evacuated -- savannah, sorry, it's being evacuated, and they join the fleet to go to charlestop with elizabeth and william together. it's an unusual choice for her to go to charleston with william rather than st. august gus teen. she was seven months pregnant and passed up an offer to stay under protection in savannah until she was fitter for moving. they had been apart for their short married life, and she wanted no more of it. she suffered the loneliness of raising their first son alone, a sweet fellow with his father's passionate temper. she had acquired another reason to wish william close at hand. beyond her watch, william had fallen into his old habit of gambling, a vice so droughtive and ruleness in nature, she said, that it threatens to wreck their growing family. he did not reveal the alarming extent of the losses to his wife, but wrote to her father em plorring to support the family and their need. what was worse is william's behavior opened a rift with his own father and sisters. you know not how wretched you made me and it's cruel to disstress a father who only care is to see his children happy. with wealth and connections, he was not a man to the alienated lightly. a rift with them would cut off the couple from their support. when british power collapsed aarp here in savannah, she followed her impulse and spouse. my husband would not like the separation, and i refused to remain. not once did she mention the issues of principle involved in leaving her home nor more strikingly notice the obvious everyonetous for the family's departure. every single one of her close relations had been prescribed under the georgia con -- banishment act. she left emotionally. the johnston arrives in charleston to find that city, too, in the throes of evacuation mayhem. they dealed with shortages of food, rum, chips, and cash and falling mori real and more than 10,000 civilians clammoring for relief and assurance. while in the occupied city that's evacuate the around them, elizabeth gave birth to the first daughter, katharine, in the comfort of a house. around her in the city, everything is in motion and turned top simulator tour vie. it's impossible to explain the confusion. one buys everything he can to complete his goods, the second is searching for a pass to another garyson of his troops, and third is going house to house to collect his debts. they have no property to handle, they also faced fresh choices. william was due to ship out to new york city. far away and likely facing imminent evacuation itself, new york made little sense as a destination for elizabeth and the children and this time decided do go to st. augustine until he could join them there to establish the family home. in early december 1782, she stepped into a small boat with her family and a black nurse and road out into the harbor to board a florida bopped scooter. it was like a jigsaw puzzle. above her were the curved wooden walls with a city afloat. the outlines of figures going along decks and rigs, sails stretched on a lattice of mast. row boats traced ripples across the water, loyalists, slaves, food, supplies, furniture, life stock, and the bells of st. michael church were on the ships. another group of 200 black loyalists gathered to sail for st. lucia. a few individuals including various government officials joined a convoy for britain. on the amp of december 12, the soldiers began assembling on the war ofs to board the transports for new york. they formally reoccupy charleston while they go out to sea in opposite direction. he to new york city, she to join the rapidly growing loyalist community in east florida. now, many went to east florida thinking this would be the perfect place to rebuild. it was a lot like georgia, land available, and they were promised it as sort of an asylum. the problem, however, was that the british were going to hand florida over to spain in the peace treaty, and the loyalists when they went did not know that it was going to be a horrifying thing. after three tedious weeks, elizabeth traveled down the georgia coast to st. augustine and then they felt a stomach dropping thud as they struck a sand bar. they cleared the obstruction more than said for another convoy wrecked across the shoals and ruining many carefully exported property. half a dozen ships scaled the sand. her first impressions of the flat foreign place were not good. she found her up-laws most dissatisfied with their situation, grumbling over their future prospects. andrew was sick, the weather was wet or cloudy, and as she wrote her husband, she repented of not going to new york for what is life when separated from my kind william? a touch of sun and time to settle in awakens her to the charms and curiosity of this spot. she would have recognized dozens of familiar faces from savannah there. georgia this was not, she could see that much on the shelfs of the houses, the former san fransisco, now the army barracks, and the presence of another mediterranean islanders recruited a decade earlier as laborers for a settlement further south. she the breeze against her skirt, and what a pleasure it was after the supply shortages of wartime savannah and charleston to feast on fish fresh from the sea. i never was in better health and never was so fleshy as my resident there. best of all, william got leave for a brief visit from new york, and they could plan their future face to face. could it be that loyalists would achieve in east florida what two decades of the maimingtive british coal anyization efforts had not making profitable plantations out of the subtropical swamps, flourishing tops from outposts, the hopes of the people there. in the event, in april 1783, the news of the peace treaty hit east florida loyalists like a hurricane. .. the challenge of starting over in an underdeveloped land. now we even this asylum was denied them and buy their own and government at that. loyalists were prepared to swear allegiance to the king of swain spain they had 18 months to gather up their possessions and ago. the war never occasion have the distress which this piece has come to the unfortunate loyalist, elizabeth johnston wrote. no other profession may have been recommending them to the clemency of commerce which is in fact casting them off altogether. so they become one of these many thousands of refugees in florida that have to move again and figuring out where to go the explore the possible pettis of jamaica, the bahamas, different sorts of regions and finally the majority of the florida loyalists in that going to the bahamas with the johnsons have another option they are reasonably well off and have a lot of slaves and elizabeth johnston's father is able to sell off the sleeves and use the proceeds to move on in their case to britain. britain, you will detect a theme in all these places, the loyalists were not happy and that pleases the in the killing and britain was no exception. the johnstons ended up selling in edinburgh because william johnston is a medical student and at that time it in bird had the best medical school in the world so they go there and he finishes his medical training but like many of these refugees, they find that the opportunities for employment are not so great. there's already a lot of professionals there in britain and they don't necessarily need these colonial upstarts to come in and fill in the ranks so they move on again and go under the patronage of a wartime supporters of william to jamaica. the last part of the story that i will tell you about in a little more debt is their experience in jamaica which at that time was the richest colony in the british empire, and seeing a very alluring place for the refugees. its duty could take your breath away from the sparkling surface of the water, swept off to the mountains climbing into the clouds. over the slopes felly living green blanket textured in the vegetable forms of the tropics, giant firms and brunelli ads, plants, muscular trees draped in epiphytes, careening stands of bamboo and palms. when you turn passed the harbor view floats over the broken stones of the old capital mostly destroyed in the 1692 earthquake but the sand sculptor of the shore line to kingston, the replacement, the greatest mitropoulos in the caribbean. the sliced circles around the masks, the sum up the water into liquid diamonds. no wonder the loyalists for captivate. such hills and mountains everything so bright from this spectacular landscape. an 18th-century diffusive we compared the bay of kingston tabare of naples with the blue mountains standing in and the submerged ruins of the fort like a pompeii under the sea. others like to the grand jury and supply many simply overcome them mocking language from their lips. whatever else the refugees knew of the island vacancy it wasn't the 13 colonies any more. now, jamaica was a very wealthy place and it had wonderful sugar plantations that generate enormous amounts of wealth for britain. on the and the things that made it rich also made it rather challenging as an environment for the white refugees. one of the features of the tropical island is that it was written with dizzies of which i will say more about in a moment and another is one that made it so well fees it had these big plantations which were worked by japan tick numbers and the ratio of the slaves is something like eight period one, 10 for 1 and the rate tiny minority dead lived in terror that there would be uprisings that would knock them out and white women were particularly rare on jamaica because for the most part the people who actually lived there were professionals involved in the plantation business and very few have actually made a family life so elizabeth johnston finds herself in this environment which seems to be full of promise and yet turns out to be a very alienating sort of lonely place. and so, william johnston is very busy kind of working here with attempting to cure all these diseases which are all over particularly things like yellow fever, but elizabeth feels fairly isolated. i will read you a little bit about their life. now johnston is a doctor on a plantation since he's treating a lot of the black patients and they continue to treat white patients as well. a pan american yellow fever epidemic in 1793 proved a bonanza to his practice when his merchant clients in kingston called on him to attend the sailors on their incoming ships. yellow fever produces internal bleeding and jaundice and starts with a headache than fever, nausea and vomiting. when the bomb it turns black and agree with the blood it is almost over the victim is usually dead within days. dr. johnston have the technique of bloodletting that others prescribed for the disease the was he dosed one patient after another with calomel, a mercury solution given as a perk of, his treatment may have harmed as much as it helped. sometimes there were 17 or more funerals today, elizabeth johnston remembered with distress, the family house and halfway up by kingston she had a large sabrue of young children to worry about. eliza born in 1787 come haydon of 1789, then john parley and james wild men. the congratulated but none of her family contracted yellow fever. the resistance to the island of disease with not much must longer. by the end of 1793 the johnstons youngest daughter would stead of scarlet fever age two. you could not avoid death but come to terms with that. to replace the lost child they name their newest infant born in 1794. because the williams constant exposure he arranged to have the baby girl inoculated as the procedure had become widespread in britain by then there was always comes our, jamaica by then there was always a risk that rather than developing antibodies to fight off the controlled infection, the patient might contract in able case of smallpox instead. appearance anxiously monitored the incisions with the virus had been applied to make sure the infection hadn't spread. the second james farley johnston just three months old was not so lucky. after lying on my lap a very small spectacle one sorbian quite black she died in my arms, her angelic blue eyes never to open again and william carried the small body from her lab and she collapsed on the floor convulsed in grief and prayer. she had lost two children already, one in edinburg and another in jamaica. but this dirty flight touched elizabeth johnson more deeply than any other. perhaps it had something to do with the sense that she could have stopped it, that she had actually approved and watched when the fatal germs were applied. but to be there in that strange suffocating place with nothing familiar around her having a female relation to be with me only black servants on having to think about and direct everything for so many little ones it seemed too much to bear. much exhausted in the mind and body when she fell into a serious depression. not long after the baby's death, a patron family and to adopt the johnstons of our allies and ticker with them to britain we could not for weeks ago our mind to part with turkoman johnston comes just as they wrestled with the dilemma that faced generations of parents and and and hospitable. outpost is it better to keep the children close to home and to tropical dangers and to the thousands of miles away, to distant britain and the end of sending the children back. as the next roll pressures of mortality closed around them the johnstons discovered jamaica to be false refuge for them, too. but succeeded where many southern refugees had not by carving out a professional career, the hostility of this alien environment broke down his family both physically and psychologically. 76a devotee did elizabeth johnston admitted defeat. she decided to return to edinburgh with the children as a duty to their health and their morals, quote on quote, while william had to stay at the practice remained in jamaica. fully 40 years later the grief still well up inside her when she remembered, quote, the morning of that sad day when i heard the vote was coming to take on board. another atlantic crossing. i hardly think i was in my senses. i ordered screams that distressed my husband to such a degree he would have been glad i did not going. all like to say was it is too late. as the figures on the dhaka dwindled into the blurs and beneath the ship and the green blue mountains receded into the gray out lines she drew strength from a fresh source. in her darkest hours of mourning and isolation, johnston had been saved. she's all the arms of an unfamiliar got stretched out to embrace her and a loving and acceptable presents the god of the baptist the old anglican piety she had been trying to console herself with since florida seemed nearly cold war now ready to occur now. she saw solis and the preaching of the dissenters which has been the means of the awakening many of the poor souls. her own path to conversion for the personal people and distress seemed to crystallize the larger process of the recovery across the anglo-american world torn by the war. she had lost so much in jamaica but this discovery she could carry with her always. just as well elizabeth johnston his memoir that she wrote much later saturated in this religious language that she did have this experience because people would go on in a similar way, lots of migrations, lots of losses and separations and so it was finally after back and forth across the atlantic between the couple more death of her children and travails that finally in 180630 years after the declaration of independence elizabeth johnston moved to nova scotia, the number one retreat for the loyalist refugees. she arrived within six months her husband william had died in jamaica. she stayed on in nova scotia and in the that having her family about her going forward. and so does the final word on elizabeth johnston by a generation after the war many of them white her hat found resting places. and by the time johnston rehearsed the event of her life for her memoir in 1837 she was 73-years-old. her side was dimmed by cataracts from memory to a study of the trauma like a tree growing around a board fired all those movements, all those abrasions and so many deaths. she had come of age during the civil war and had spent decades of her adult life coping with this location and bereavement. yet there was no anger in johnston's recollection or any nostalgic longing for her lost home. if anything she sound itself satisfied for she had written herself in a new home. little dillinger think that all of my family would ultimately settle in nova scotia, she recalled. while she achieved stability and social comfort she had never before known from her surviving children became prominent members of nova scotia's professional and political elite and in some cases achieving the positions of the higher status than they could never have plausibly enjoyed had they remained in the united states. after all of their trials and migrations, the johnstons arrived and evolves from american loyalists to the british north american patriots. to follow johnston's narrative, fees' losers were winners in the end and i will leave it at that and i am happy to take questions. [applause] i was wondering if you get a sense that there is a strong sense of identification as the loyalists in these other areas. beyond the loyalists in canada they answer would be no, and i think that the reason for that is loyalists are the beginning subject of the british empire and at the beginning there also subjects of the british empire and so i see the absence of this kind of nostalgias a lost cause sort of thinking as a reflection of the fact they are successfully absorbed into the refurbished british empire and johnston is one example of course in canada where this is most pronounced but you can see that elsewhere elsewhere in the diaspora as well. >> i read the first 100 pages and i'm anxious to get to the end. but i was struck by the number of loyalists who seemed a full third when they went to these other places did the fact that they were suddenly free blacks have any affect on the case of the abolition in any of these parts of the british empire? >> it did. of the loyalists who left, about 1/6 or three blacks which is the ratio in the colonies, now the abolitionism was a sentiment that had been articulated in the run-up to the american revolution and britain where the slavery was effectively illegal from seven to 72 and onward with the revolution gets pushed forward because these influential owners are no longer part of the empire and partly because there's a large black population that's free that's being freed during the war and britain sees this increasingly as a contrast, one of these contrasts by upholding black freedom and they are different from americans who are enshrining in the black slavery as they see it. so yes, the american revolution is seen as a kind of galvanizing factor in accelerating the abolitionist cause in the british empire in the 70's as a time of enormous popular abolitionism in britain and the empire it should be said that despite the british even to this day our celebratory of this tradition, and there is a lot of sort of reference paid to those early abolitionists in must be said that the trade was not abolished for the whole generation yet, but there's no doubt that the idea that there would be freed blacks and that their freedom would be upheld by britain was really gaining ground in those years. >> one person mentioned in the book which is beyond just the general. >> the question is to what extent is it to britain, or was the fact that they've probably perceive them as the factor command i wonder is this the conflict and so on so what extent in this case and then how much of the personal sector happens to be known and i think [inaudible] and i was wondering what is the motor of the way this particular case became? >> the first one of the gentleman refers to is benjamin franklin were founding father, his own son of william was a well-known loyalist, he was the governor of new jersey and in the the being in prison as a loyalist and can ultimately a leader of the loyalist community and occupied new york and better and disheartened refugee in britain. now, the risk between them was a deeply felt 13 william was benjamin's only son and only child and, not only charnel but only son, and they basically seized communication because of this this can the significance of the time of the peace negotiations at the end of the war in which benjamin franklin was one of the key everest negotiators and over the course of many months, the five peace negotiators are meeting in paris in hashing out all of the terms of the independence of the united states and lots and lots of sticking points along the way that they resolve all of them until they get to one last one in the kind of fall of 1782 legacy this, and the sticking point concerns whether the u.s. is going to be made responsible for giving compensation to loyalists whose party has been confiscated during the war command of this point most of the other american negotiators are okay with that, john adams and john jay but benjamin franklin will not given on this point and he says if you grant compensation i'm not going to sign the treaty to be we have to keep on fighting the war. so if you want a m edible -- it anticipates a leader act of sort of properly related interest he largely rights william out of the war leader and the two rarely ever meet again. so, i think these families do matter and i think what i mean about most is that getting into the personality and getting into the individual experience is important for explaining how history has operated. >> estimate use it in your introduction this is the first book about loyalists and exiles and refugees. now that you have written this what do you think should be the second book about? >> by somebody else that picks up where you left off. >> what would you like to see in the next book on this topic? >> that's a great question. i think -- well, one thing that needs to be written up in a better form as it happens to the loyalists who don't leave. there is a big -- there's a lot of sort of dissertations on this, some very recent. there are some monographs, but i would like to see more about the reintegration of loyalists and how that might change our picture of the creation of the union in the early republic comes about would be the kind of american history side. there is also in international history which i think would be the natural next step. well i don't think that i will do it, but which is the american revolution seen at the beginning of the age of the revolution the revolution in france and he and there's a lot of people in latin america, and in all of this period the revolutionary napoleonic for 1915 there's an enormous amount of political switching and movement and of refugees leaving from haiti and france and from all over the world and i would like to see if some sort of book that is able to lift of life similar sorts of approaches to looking at the next loyalties caught in these other revolutionary movements so there's a really interesting history to be written about the shape of the united states in connection with some of these schemes, and i think also a kind of interesting comparative history to be done about the british empire, the french empire in the american ambition in the places like south america from these figures. >> we have time for one or two more questions if anyone has any. thank you. [applause] on book tv historian gordon would present a series of essays examine the ideological underpinnings of the american revolution. these essays were organized in the book of the idea of america, reflections on the birth of the united states. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> it's good to be here with you. i just want to say one thing to the audience before we start. it is a treat. corydon wood is one of the -- she really is one of the nation's preeminent historians of the revolutionary period if not the preeminent historian, and he is learning and is at times, and i say this in the best sense of the word country in coming and he says what he feels and this is just a fabulous book and you will be doing the book signing afterwards if i'm not mistaken, and it really is one of those books that if you love history, not just the revolutionary period, that history in general this is something you should have on your bookshelf. so having said that, i'm hoping for 10% afterwards. what i thought we would do is start off by -- i would like to pose general questions about history, and then dhaka to you a little bit and ease our way into the book as well. since we are here the national archives, the first thing that i wanted to get your thoughts on is the following. many of those within the historical field have lamented the lack of historical knowledge among young people, and can you take a second and tell us why is it important that we study history? >> welcome history is to a society i suppose what memory is to an individual without knowing what you came from and what your background is, you lost. i think there's a movie with a man has no memory and it's just can you imagine how terrifying that would be not knowing your past? and i think that is for society a comparable situation. if you don't know where you come from, it's going to be difficult to know where you are going to go. so to get our bearings where our directions, we need to know where we've been. so that's the classic answer to why we should study history. i think it is the queen of the humanities and without knowing history, i think one is living in a two dimensional world, not experiencing the reality is about to be experienced. i think history is a mode of understanding. i think it is as important as the other senses, and once you acquire of historical sense, and i don't think the history is just information about the past to i think once you study history and reading that you develop political a historical sense so to see the world differently. and that is to mention on the world come on the reality. and suddenly the whole world is different, the perception is different because you have an understanding of the past. >> as we sit here speaking, these set of remarkable for momentous events are sweeping the world today in the middle east, the so-called era of spring where people are wising up and trying to grab a piece of a greater say in their destiny, a greater sense of self-determination. what do you think the founders could teach them and then in the same breath, what can they learn by looking at the experience of america as the young americans wrestled with setting up their republican? >> presumably these people are seeking democracy, that's what we are told and that is true. they want all the other things that come in their mind with democracy, and they see how the rest of the world is living and they want a share of that. i think that the issue is that the democracy is hard work. it does not come easy to read and an offer of here and governments are easy to put together. and the world has always had the authoritarian government of the monarchies the wrong word to use now because half of nato, we have a lot of the nine monarchies, england, sweden, holland, so the monarchies not quite the word that as of the founders saw it. markey is the enemy and with the wind is the author of syrian government. authoritarian governments exist because it is difficult to govern democracy because the democracy is to be governed from the bottom-up. people have to be willing to sacrifice their selfish interest for the good of the whole. that is what the founders meant by virtue, classical terms, surrendering tribal interests for the sake of a public good. it required a lot of self sacrifice, and it's not easy to do. montesquieu who is the leading french philosopher of the 18th-century very much read by the founders said that democracy can exist only in small states because you can't build a consensus if you have a large diverse population. that is a very, very important principal for which the founders had to confront when they were drawing up the federal constitution. because mollusk you would not at all be surprised by what happened tdo was removed from the authoritarian government removed from yugoslavia and suddenly the serbs and the other ethnic groups were at each other's throats in the yugoslav area. so, the soviet union was removed suddenly all of the various plots began fighting with one another he would have said of course once you remove this authority from the top down, then the ethnicities and the differences are going to come to the floor, and the make democracy very difficult because people have to willingly surrender some of the selfish interest and that is not easy to do. the founders would have been -- and they became very pessimistic about the ability of other people to become democratic. they thought the french were following them. and of course many essential years fought so, too. lafayette, who was at the outset was one of the leaders of the french revolution of 1789. he sent the key to the bastille be in the prison, and of course in france it is still july 14th, they still saw the british as the beginning of the french revolution. she said that for george washington and it hangs today in mt. vernon. that was his way of saying to washington you americans are responsible, and the americans assumed that, that they were responsible, and they thought they were responsible for all of the revolution that took place. somehow or other they were a vanguard of the st. spreading democracy around the world. the french revolution was spiraling as to you have written about a great book agree that people, then they became pessimistic about the devotee of other people to be like them which gave them that notion that they were exceptional. the exceptional the sum was a very controversial and is in comparison with europe. but the hope, the dream of that other people would follow us to and has always been there and the essays, my last in the book is why america wants to spread democracy around. we want to do that from the very beginning and not necessarily to the troops but by example, and that is what it was all about, mobilizing the north, the last best hope that could we survive, the world was already that marked call. napoleon st was in the new empire in france there were no democracies left. and so lincoln was appealing to that dream that we had to keep hope alive so that's been part of the history from the beginning. >> what the founders the counseling the patient development would they say this should be happening quickly or communicate to us time and come it took us many years and we can out of it and i in the tradition they are not coming out of that tradition and maybe we should expect this would take perhaps a generation or longer. >> some of them would be big. they didn't have a single vision somebody like jefferson will be enthusiastic and hopeful and people are naturally, the oppressive authoritarian government that what people just love one another everything will work out. on the other hand the pessimistic and cynical about human nature and he would be very pessimistic about what is happening and say well, we will see. and then the one thing that they would say is that voting is a prerequisite for the democracy. people should vote but it is the least important part of the democracy and that is where the falsie comes in and they tend to think that voting by itself can solve a problem when in fact you need a civic society and all those institutions which make up our success ayittey that make us ungovernable if you will and make our system work. all of those things like the rotary clubs, religious groups, voting anything that ties people together and makes the world war complicate is you as an individual in the state that no democracy can work with that kind of gap, and i think that they wouldn't have put it in these terms this is how the political scientists would talk about it today that they understood that the democracy was hard work and it does not come easy. >> a very interesting sticking on the scene for one second i want to switch the fraiman for a second to read a lot has been written about or talk about how our readers and the president, whenever the president might be, that they need to know more about history as they govern. you said some interesting things over the years about presenting a more nuanced french work in terms of how much our readers can learn from history as they seek to the policy. tell us a little bit about that if you can for the second. >> that is a very tricky issue. obviously we hope to readers understand the past because they are carried on the traditions of the have to have some ground in an america's cast or else they will lose their way. i don't think there is any doubt of that. of course too much historical consciousness can have problems as was pointed out of you want to be a man on horseback, forget the past because the more you are aware of the difficulties into the unanticipated consequences of action that history does brief, there is no -- history teaches you that nothing quite works out a way that the perpetrators intended, and if you absorb that message you are going to be paralyzed and not know what to do for fear to create the contrary results and that is one of the lessons of history. i don't think there is much danger of our leaders becoming paralyzed in that sense so i think probably we can take a little more. what history does is take you off the coast of emotions that this is the best of times or the worst of times you can get a perspective on things and therefore you get the sense it is not as bad as you think it is what it is not as great as you think it is, and that is probably healthy for any society, and i think that we are a fairly healthy society compared to many people and i'm confident we have the right balance for the most part. we are not on a roller coaster. and this is the end somehow people feel the united states is declining and it is certainly schumer the 1980's japan was going to take over the rockefeller center and put us into the history. well it didn't happen and i think we needed to have a little more perspective and now it's going to be china that is i think we are going to be around a little while longer so i think that is what history does is level out the emotions. it's not the end of the world, nor is it the apocalyptic time coming either. >> i guess the lesson is in part "the new york times," watch c-span and agreed history. >> "the wall street journal" balanced view. >> our friends at the journal will like that. >> the founders were somehow magically transported here today what would they recognize and what shocked them? >> the question is it is interesting in itself. i give talks like this audience here and inevitably someone will say what would thomas jefferson think of the affirmative action or what the george washington think of the invasion of iraq? those are fascinating questions that ordinary people with asked and you can't imagine other countries to mean that. i don't think anyone in england would say what they think of david cameron's government to simply wouldn't ask that kind of questions we have a connection with the fees' founders, an intimate connection, and it's easy to mock that and historians have yet i don't market. lincoln had that connection however and it's not so easy to mock when gen. he said we are one of these founders. blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh that's really identifying with them, and he says there's an electric cord that ties us to them, and i think that's the feeling we have that this is the source of our identity we go back to these people to find out who we are. they created a rich institutions by which we still governor ourselves and their forced into the culture almost everything we believe our globalist ideals and highest aspirations come out of a revolution, the revolution is the most important in the history, and so it is natural to go back there because there's nothing else that holds us together. we are not a nation and the usual sense of the term. there is no -- every race, creed and color during the united states and will not like the british or the english were the french were the germans. they have a sense of their ethnicity, of their nationhood which makes it very difficult to learn to handle immigration. now we feel we have immigration problems but i think they palin sycophant to the problems these european states, these european people are facing and will face over the rest of the 21st century as we have a massive movement from the soft. a day, you know, they have been living in france for several generations and yet most can't believe that the art french. we don't have that kind of problem. really compared to the europeans and it is because there is no american ethnicity, and what -- what makes us are these ideals. to be in america is not to be submitted to believe in somebody. what do we believe and? that there is a founding of this revolution. the quality, liberty, constitutionalism and the institutions the constitution created. so i think we go back and that is why i think people have this instinctive relationship with them, they identify with them in this unusual if not unique manner dealing with the flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood as lincoln said. so that's where we get -- we've reaffirm who we are by going back to these founders so that's how we have the special importance even though they differed on themselves on roger in hamilton is very pessimistic about human nature and the of radical like jefferson who had a unanimous view of human nature be deferred tremendously yet we allow them to get a because they are meaningful to us. in the spirit of not wanting them together let's pretend we are able to attend a dinner party with the founders. who was the one founder he would most want to sit down next to? >> i think franklin and jefferson would be the most interesting adams would become to back to the george washington who i respect the most wouldn't be a good dinner partner. [laughter] >> we didn't talk much, and he was not an intellectual. he had no intellectual intentions. she did not go to college, but he had what you want in your leader is wisdom and he was a great leader and of course he stands head and shoulders above all the others in their eyes. we tend to lump them all together in our eyes they are all a part of that funding group but in their eyes there was one person that stood way ahead to and that's washington. they concocted the presidency because, and they gave a so much power simply because they knew george washington would be the first president and he could be trusted with good reason. he had acted in a manner that nobody had ever heard of before except that is to say that he had surrendered to the authorities and said i'm going back to my farm at mount vernon by want no more public office. no general in the recent history had ever done that or going back every successful general wanted political office commensurate with their military victories and that was true of cromwell and william orange to become the king of england and was true he got a cabinet position. these people wanted political office and he didn't, washington didn't and they were stunned. that is what created his mystique. it's not a victory in the war because he didn't have that many but he held the nation together, and then he surrendered this position he could have been a dictator, he could have been king and he didn't want it. and that awed people. he said if he does that, retiring he would be the greatest man in the world. so he had this elevated position in their eyes, and he represented everything they wanted the leader to be. virtuous, very self consciously he worked at that. there is still a person in our history who was so self-conscious about being virtuous this was the term often used as a seven men meaning we don't even use the term that way anymore. it is interested means uninterested for us, but for them it was a in partial rising above one's interest. we don't believe anybody is truly is interested in the to the disinterested people left in our country, not judges anymore because they run for office at the state level, but on players and referees, those are the only people we really count on to be truly is interested in and partial, rising above the emotional interest or economic interest. they counted on the leaders being disinterested in washington was. yet talk about the relationship for a minute. it's often said today one reads all the time the politics is really vicious and by the same token there is a general impression among many that the founders were chiseled out of marble and these figures were somehow benignly creating this magical government called the united states of america. how did they get along with each other? >> in his book and read of people she knows this as well as i. the 79 these are one of the most vicious decades in our history coming very close in 1798 traceable war as close as we would come until the actual civil war they do not get along. i mean, hamilton is frightened of what jefferson represents, and washington, too bad. washington and hamilton are on one side frightened of what they thought were francophile. jefferson and madison or leading a fifth column that is going to support a puppet, french puppet regime, french army is going to invade the united states, this is a real fear retrospective it looks foolish but they don't know the future. deutsch always understand the people don't know what is going to happen to them any more than we know the future of ourselves. so they feared the finalists, hamilton, washington's parties and many federalists feared the french invasion because after all it's going to holland to create the puppet regimes all over why couldn't they just invaded the united states. they got all of these columnists , jeffersonian republicans who are very pro french and they want to create the puppet regime. that's the fear that lies behind the alien and sedition act of 1798. truly frightened. now the thing that kills off the fear is of course nelson's victory who destroys the fleet, and once there is no fear of the invasion. now washington is truly frightened and he talks about we cannot have a french president, meaning jefferson. so, they were very much at each other's throats and very frightened of one another in the 1797 and the press, we think the press is kind of lost but you know better than it was just a vicious in the 1790. i mean, they accused washington of being a mole in the revolution he was working for the british government to the that's the accusation that was made. this incredible the kind of distortions and lies that were flying about. washington could shake his head he just couldn't believe it. they were saying these awful things and he was so desperate in 1796 to get back to mount vernon and get out of this. >> they said his cabinet would actually notice that he was aging before their very eyes and didn't he have one cabinet meeting she cursed wildly and said by god, and he just -- i don't think i can say this because it's c-span -- no, he was very disillusioned by what was happening, and his last letter or one of his last letters before he died in july the federalists were desperate to get his back. they want him to run against jefferson. we are going to save the country. this was in july of 1799, and he writes really disturbing letter says look, it doesn't matter to the you can put up the way things are now, parties have taken over you can put up a broomstick and call it the son of liberty and the broomstick would win and he says that's true of the franc files and says alas it is just as true of us. the character, stature, individual character no longer matters. >> the the begun to emerge in our taking over and he felt the kind of leader what no longer matter and that became increasingly true over the next 20 or 30 years as a became more space, much more populist and by the time you get to someone like martin van buren he never won the battle as a great figure she was a canny politician and the biggest protest party organization the state of new york had ever seen and probably has ever seen a and catapulted to the presidency, but that was the world that the founders had anticipated, that popular world and when jefferson heard that andrew jackson almost won the election of 1824, he was appalled. he says that man has no college education. he's from the west and from 1826 he didn't get to see jackson to be president, but those who live to the 19th century were deeply disillusioned with what they had left. i don't know any who -- i mean, franklin died in 1790 because he didn't witness this world of those who lived in to 19th century were deeply disillusioned with the populism, the kind of democracy that had emerged. as much to volatile and of course the founders did not start out wanting to create a democracy. >> not that kind of democracy. i mean, they didn't have any objection to voting that they wanted -- i mean, the constitution is a kind of curve on the democracy. 1781 of the major problems the founders face was excess of democracy, state legislatures running one of passing what madison referred to as a factional tierney that haven't been anticipated by the patriots in 1776. no one in 1776 anticipate or imagined the kind of strong national government that cannot of the constitution years later something had to happen between 1776 and 1787 to convince people to create the government hadn't even been on the radar screen, hadn't been in anyone's mind. and we know how strong that government is because we still live under it. so the thing that happened was a witness in the articles but more important was this year of democracy running -- running amok and it acts as a kind of limit on democracy. the courts, the courts became a very important for the list device for the limiting democracy. we don't like to think in these terms because we have tremendous trust eight of the people but we know that we have built in all kinds of limitations on the people. we don't like unadulterated majoritarian democracy. and if the egyptians or the other half live in states create just majoritarian democracy, then they may experience some of the problems the americans faced in the 70's because you want limits, you want rights, individual liberties, minority rights. we have a lot of checks on the democracy to read our democracy is a mixed bag. it's not just pure majoritarianism and that is a lesson that the learned and that is why the constitution is so complicated the separation of power, the breaking up power, limiting the government because they learned the lesson and a very short kirker of time in the 70's. >> talk about the caliber of the founders for one more moment. when we think of the fact that they had created this constitutionalism to this day it really is a remarkable event. what happened in those 55 days when they went to philadelphia and they just wanted to redo the article of the confederation and obviously they did something of extra and totally unexpected, and then related to that if you could talk for a minute to just about the caliber of these people, these founders, these men who put all together in a way that no one else in the history had quite seem well they were demagogue's although jefferson referred to that they were very well-educated, most of them college graduates about 44 of the 55, they were experience political figures that served in the continental congress or the state legislatures or have been governors or diplomats. they were experienced people. they were -- there was a loaded convention. most of the more nationalist that is to say they wanted a strong government. it's probably a good thing that jefferson was abroad as minister of finance because by the federalists he would have raised because they would have not liked the virginia plan which is an extraordinarily strong government. so you have a kind of no to the convention landscape lansing and yates from new york who come to the convention with the plan and they begin to grasp the implications of it and the walkout and this is what we bargained for. and so, the result of course is the left for almost four months. think of it, they closed off to the closed the windows, they didn't want anybody to know what they were selling. they took vows to proceed and that no press. of course they couldn't get away with that today. and madison leader said we could have never done it if the press had been involved. but this allowed people to make the statements they could then retract because there was no record. nobody's going to hold you to it, you could move back and forth and of course there is something to be said for that kind of secrecy behind doors because otherwise if the press is there you make a statement and are held for that and have no compromise. that compromise all over the place. now madison is the one who drew up, he wrote it, and was deeply disappointed in the result. he had two main points that he wanted. one was a negative veto power given to the congress over the state law. think about it, the impracticality. what would it be like if the 50 states had to spend all of their bills the converse to keep them to veto this and okay this that's how they saw the veto it was totally impractical and gets thrown out of the place by article 1, section 10 which lists a few things the states can't do a print paper money, thank god. [laughter] stephen the other thing madison wanted was the representation of the house and wanted to get this case out of the federal government, no representation, no senate in other words for the states and when that is the convention wouldn't go along. there are small states to set like new jersey and connecticut that said we are not giving up at least in one house we've got to be represented as a state. and he loses the battle. mid-july if he caucuses with a fellow nationalists and says its walkout. maybe we should walk out of this convention. you have to understand virginia is the top dog among all the states. virginia has a population that's by far the richest and biggest state in the territory includes as much as the present midwest. so as virginia goes, so does the nation. without virginia you have no wish. it's not surprising. so when madison says to his colleagues shall we walkout? that's serious. that would have been difficult lack it would have collapsed. they decided to stay in the cobbled together this result which medicine is not happy about. he writes a letter to jefferson that some of it may be here certainly in thought congress where he says this thing is not going to work, jefferson that goes right by and he's been in paris for several years and he doesn't really grasp what madison as telling him to read all he says is we should have a bill of rights, and madison just groans when he hears that. and then jefferson writes to another friend in maryland say in the same thing. the bill of rights? then that becomes a principal argument by the federalism and one of the principal arguments and it almost brings the constitution down. there's a lot of fear. jefferson's reason for that is because his liberal friends say that no good constitution can be without a bill of rights. and all of my liberal friends say that. he hasn't fought for the problems the we madison has. madison has a jerry intelligent answer to that question. why this no bill of rights? but it doesn't have any effect on jefferson. and the power of the notion of the bill of rights which of course is part of the english tradition is picked up by others and it becomes one of the most potent arguments of the constitution. >> and of course near the end of your book, you have a very -- what i think is a very poignant instant you talk about giving us in the warsaw believe it was, and a woman says to you okay, you've been talking about the constitution. what about the bill of rights? >> this was an extraordinary experience in my life because it was 1976, and i was promoting the bicentennial of the revolution. this is before solidarity. communists are still in control. my room was barred and i have a handrail all over the place. it was an authoritarian state so i give this very conventional lecture on the young polish woman academic you left out the most important part of the revolution. i was stunned. the most important part? yes, you never mentioned the bill of rights, and i haven't. i had taken that for granted. but this woman living under an authoritarian regime concerned with individual liberty, she couldn't take those individual rights for granted so that for her was the most important part of the revolution. i've never forgotten that incident because it happened it took a lot of courage for her to say that. and then there were people in that audience who were probably going to investigate her. .. you deal with the larger world come to dealing. transfixed's book deals with russia and france as well as the united states. i mean, it makes the arab spring seen being by comparison. and all of them failed except the united states. now, some people say we failed in 1861. although we survived that, but it was not easy to build diehard quality. that's the one lesson to offer that experience. and in some sense we failed because we fell apart and we killed each other at the rate of 600,000 plus man died. to build this dream, which is what lincoln used. what's interesting about the civil war is not the fact that the south succeeded. people talk about succeeding in 1814 come this out pacific in a succession of iraq to the exorcist session. the not a big deal, but the interesting question is why did the north care? why didn't they let them go. what's fascinating is that lincoln i think boys the idea of america, that we are a grand experiment and it's worth fighting for that decodes we are the last best hope and if we fail, the democracy fails. the price people are looking to us. that's the message he gave. and as inspiring. i think they didn't go to our insight 307,000 men simply because of some economic interest in the nation. there is a string that lincoln -- and that's the genius of lincoln. not that he created these ideas, but he voiced them in a way that is appealing to people. he caught the mood of the country in a way that was able to mobilize before one bloody year. >> host: he was organically connected to which you write about in your book. what you say is the idea of america. >> guest: that's what he says. but if our blood, flesh of our flesh. he is the one great president who is done the founding better than anyone else. i think everybody had some connection. >> host: i wanted to ask you to come even though it's putting on my hat as a civil war historian, not the revolutionary. was lincoln correct in saying the secession, it in according to what the founders say that the secession was illegal? >> guest: i'll take my hat. my view is lincoln was not correct, but he did the right thing anyway. well, it depends what you mean by was that late goal or illegal to leave the union? the south had a case to make that that's how they saw the union, as a loose confederation. of course the civil war, the united states has always defining the plural. we were much closer to those years to the present day union then we are to the united states they have now, which they very, very committed really quite tightening national government. so especially in the south, thought of themselves as a big part of the confederation in the southern states. so when you talk about my country, where we had to make a decision, you know, he was the westport graduates here should i support the united states or should i support virginia? his emotional loyalty is still strong. hard for us to understand because we have so much mobility. we don't really think of ourselves as emotionally attached. but the founders did of course. and that's why forming the government was so difficult because people thought of their country as a junior in massachusetts or pennsylvania. it's similar to what the e.u. faces today. how can you create a european consciousness when you're a german or your frenchman. i mean, the loyalty to your nation is so strong for how he treats european union? wow, it's not easy. that's the problem to founder states. what does it mean to be american? that was very, very difficult. as a civil war moved, it fell apart. but there was lincoln to voice the other side and there is something that we have a dream. we have a train that we are a nation that has an exceptional mission in the world to preserve democracy and bring it to the rest of the world. not by force, not by troops, but you know, we've supported almost every revolution with one exception. we support all this revolution. french, bush revolution in 1830. revolutions of 1848, which toured europe all failed, but we were the first state to recognize the new republican democratic regime. they could overthrow, but we were the first state and we kept pushing for that. this one exception as you know. haiti. we don't recognize the haitian republic, which was the second republic of the world until lincoln's administration, for that very reason this out they dominated the government to such an extent it was an impossibility to recognize a slave regime. but lincoln did. but otherwise, we recognized these other states. not a big change comes in 1817. that is when it takes a very interesting turn, the russian revolution. in the spring you have bizarre advocate. seven days later we recognize a new russia republic and president wilson is ecstatic. but thick partner for his date, democratically. and where the first power in the world to recognize the new russian regime, republican machine. this is before the takeover. a few months later, the bolsheviks overflow the kerensky government and you have a bolshevik regime. what happens to the united states clicks instead of being the first, we become the last major states in the world to recognize the soviet union. 16 years, four presidencies. i think ireland was the last, but we are the last major state. what a contrast. why? my explanation and the only one that makes sense as we saw in the communist ideology a rifle of around. we were no longer in the vanguard of history. this is not a species of the revolutionary genus americana. this is a whole male soviet genus altogether. and i was a threat. the same kind of universal aspirations. for the conflict to the soviet union and the united states is really intellectual from the very beginning. not just competing market, but the fact that we were faced with the rival ideology that was as comprehensive and as universal as i round. and the cold war really began in 1917. now there is a blip for the war, that germany represented a much more serious threat it seemed. but we are quickly back after the war. and you know, some of you of a certain age remember president kennedy's inaugural address. we will pay any price, bear any burden on behalf of liberty. and that's why we went into vietnam. not for rice. we were trying to get oil are fresh out of vietnam. we went there because we -- we really fear the spread of this communist -- this communist ideology. but the clash of the union in 1989, everything changed. now i think we are in a state of confusion. not sure where we are, what she should do, for extraordinary moment in our history. military expenditures are equal -- almost equal to all the other nations in the world put together. we have troops in probably 40 countries. i mean, no country has ever dominated the world as we did. this is just extraordinary. we have days -- it may not be an empire in the usual sense of return. and yet, we're not quite sure what we should be doing. and that i think came not in the libyan business and it's our hesitation in the middle east. we are not sure that this is good for us. we'll have to see. at the same time we can't stand in the way that people wanted to be democratic. so we have an extraordinary history. and were living in a very difficult time -- a significant time, too. >> lets go typist at the very beginning. before talking about the soviet union, of course in the case as i showed they inherited large landmass and 800 years of history. they had stars who had ruled the world. and our founding and you write about this very powerfully in just a fascinating discussion we talk about the audacity of the young americans in as little landmass at the edge of the world and somehow they thought they were going to remake the world. how did that come about? >> guest: when you think about it, a country of two or 3 million people -- 3000 miles from the center of civilization on the outpost of civilization. the idea that there is little colonial value had worldwide significance is really eric and if you think about it. vicious css to do these people to think that. yet they did. and of course they're radicals in europe who agreed with them. i mean, richard price, the english lateral size in 1785, the american revolution is next to the birth of christ. and he's the minister is the most important event in the history of the world. so we respect it, but only the birth of christ was first. that's an extraordinary statement. people were interested in this revolution because it was a republican revolution. could a republic, mean that democracy. could it survive cliques especially over such a large extent? and said they were wondering, too. of course the british thought my god, this thing will last. it's about to fail because democracy just can't be that big. it's going to go kaput very quickly. and now is the expectation. of course that's what americans are thinking about. that is why lincoln is so obsessed with why we are an experiment. we've got to show them what the british were just hoping they would break apart. the british never studied american history very much. when they started studying it was only in the late 20th century. they studied only one subject. the civil war. what else would they study? they were hoping they could maybe come out differently if we study it enough. [laughter] you know, americans are filled with this notion that we were in the vanguard of history, delete a message to bring to the world and that's how we saw ourselves. now, it may be delusional. the french never have admitted that our revolution was more important than theirs. [laughter] in fact, they somehow think that there's kids first. they can't really admit that 1776 proceeds 1789. but the americans -- >> we may be historians, but we can do that appomattox. >> guest: americans never forgot we were the first and we always assume the french copy. some frenchmen agreed with that. for the most part, if you had two people mid-18th century, there's a classic example. you know, napoleon the third empire gets overdrawn in 1870. the third french republic was established. president grant has a message to the new french republic congratulating on adapting american political ideals. i mean, what these frenchmen must have thought when this message -- as if they had no democratic republic tradition of thereunto drawn. they say you become american is that grant was to them. it was incredible the kind of self-conscious -- i guess you would call it audacity or arrogance we had that we were the center of the revolutionary movement throughout the whole 19th century. and of course that's why we were so upset by the soviet takeover of the russian revolution. because we are the vanguard of history is leading the world and there are going to follow us. and we've continued to have that sense. we have something to say to the rest of the world. but i think it's a little confused because we are so powerful. it was easy for the americans and mid-18th century because they didn't have huge armies. they were powerful, and there were we could reach as much as we wanted without causing any grade trouble in the world. nowadays it's a little trickier. >> host: corrigan, i think we've had a fascinating hour. what it's like to do at this point is get the audience involved so much juice and q&a. there are microphones here on this side. so try to line up with those microphones because this is being taped and you'll be on c-span. >> okay, all right, i thought that this is a really great talk that you gave. very exciting. and i wanted to ask you about the totality's that the founding fathers faced. they were on the east coast and they knew perfectly well that there was a whole, long, 3000 miles to the west coast and thought that the police beat dean, you know, they weren't going to let just anybody occupied that area. so i thought that maybe there was that as the kindness inspiration to think of yourself as important. you really had quite a task ahead of you and it was a really rich part of the world. >> guest: until 1803, the united states stand on the territory west of the mississippi. but i think someone like jefferson, who is their greatest expansionist in our history had a vision that all that territory would come to us. he had what i would call it demographic imperialism. we were reproducing herself twice as fast as any other nation in western europe. we were doubling of population every 20 years. so the extent that we would simply take it over. as long as it was being held by the spanish, who were in his mind a decrepit, declining empire incapable of holding onto that territory. neither florida and louisiana could be held either spanish or long because our demography, our population growth which is fill it out. they were sending many people. i mean, did mexico, but demographically the spanish were not people would in their land. so we assume and i think jefferson more than anyone. now, when the spanish trade -- treaty, it sends louisiana back to the french in 1802, that's a crisis for jefferson because the french are different people together. and he is beside himself. and mrs. whitney makes an effort to. so to answer your question, and they had a window we would eventually some people had a sense that we would eventually keep all of this land. jefferson had a loose view of government. he thought would he very much a consideration. some people said this western portion will breakaway from the original united states. he says what does it matter? is not a state in khmer can come in the western confederacy would be okay. so he didn't worry about the breakup of the union, as long as they thought america had american principles. others contemplated the future. madison thought that 200 years later the predictions that we would become like england, very luxury loving, you know, big states. so they had dreams of the future. but for the immediate future, they still had problems. they had written on the north, canada and spain was still in the south. so everything was a little tricky. but they had the vision of eventually taking over the whole continent. mexico, cuba. some of them -- a percent that he won't actually fall to us. other spanish speaking they are. yes, sir. >> and never occurred to me you mentioned way of american recognition of the soviet union. but since he did, i'm wondering, isn't this conventional wisdom a little bit mistaken because i was five beatitude in 1933, was that we did have relations with germany, but he held the government of that. as a group of psychopaths and gangsters who came to power by illegitimate means. and one could really say the same about finance seizure of power. was this really bad work on our part, or was there some fundamental illegitimacy of the communist regime from the start and not just an ideological nv? >> guest: amy, the fact that we were that said something. obviously the other western powers -- we send troops and to try to put down -- i'm not an expert on the russian revolution, so you know why and i'm sure jay does to you, but the western powers were frightened and we made efforts to put it down by force even and send troops. but i don't think the recent -- it could be that the rise and this would be interesting. the rise of knocks the sun played into our recognition of the final -- fdr's recognition of the soviet union in 1934. yes, sir, go ahead. >> first of all, congratulations. i'm hoping you can address an issue dealing with the political secession about how america and that tl of the founders is very much in killed the world with the idea of democracy in the political offensive exception. i'd like you to define it for the audience. >> guest: exceptionalism? >> wherein there is a treaty and many countries recognize way back in history, where freedom fighters from russia could come to america after committing a political offense with the treaty of non-extradition back to the country so that political offenders are treated as criminals. >> guest: i don't know ferney treaties -- extradition treaties in the early republic. we certainly welcome the refugees from europe and there were no visa in those days through the 19th century, except for late when the asian immigration. otherwise, anybody could come to america. between 18201920, about 35 million people migrated, which convinced a lot of americans that the oppressed people of europe are unable to overthrow their oppressive government and the only way it could get away from them is to migrate to the united states. so it helped convince americans that they were chosen people in a literal sense, not just a design sense. further, that image of ourselves. of course, a lot of these people migrating from europe are leaving because there were no jobs and they were going not just to the united states, but also to argentina, for example. but we thought, they're all coming here and that's part of the myth of america. we have a conception of ourselves, which follows what you're saying about exceptionalism. we were the only democracy and we were where people went to wanted freedom. and not with our image. paul's are not false, whatever. you can argue about it, but that's the exact image americans had. and that was shared by lots of people. why do we have the statue of liberty? that notion that we were there we sat to call for millions of people was very much a part of our self-image, our perception of ourselves. >> hello. i'm a student at marshall high school. i was wondering because they freedom ideal, the revolution was so widespread in the colonies. everyone was talking about it in the press. i want to know to what extent did the founding fathers manipulate into forming a rebellion? >> guest: do you know, i think you can manipulate certain things, but i don't think you can manipulate to hold people into revolution. i mean, there are incidents that are crucial. for example, a tea party. in december 1773, that was a really and the radicals in massachusetts. they wanted an incident. they're trying to provoke the british government because things have quieted down here the british had passed the stamp that and then boycott, rise. very difficult to take back what they had done in their very, very difficult decision. in all these rise, boycott pullback except for the one nt. and then things acquired between 17701723. samuel adams wants a revolution and he wants to provoke the british. and so he and a bunch of people disguised as mohawks, indians dumped 10,000 pounds of silver, about millions of dollars today into boston harbor. that provokes the british and away that was probably a mistake because the virginians are appalled by this tea party. i mean, this is destruction of private property. what are they doing? to british, however have had it. they've appease the americans all along for a decade. enough is enough and they commended the course of action and close the port of boston and put a military general as governor. they aggregate the massachusetts chart, appoint a council. they do away with the town meetings except for when meeting a year two of those funds. this is the real massachusetts government. the virginians say wow. because of the virginia there's no resolution. virginia as they said has top doctors at the virginians are upset for the tea parties. they say they can do that in massachusetts, they can do that spirit from that moment on, virginia was on board and the revolution is inevitable. some confrontation is inevitable. so there is an incident by a small tiny minority. it was really bold. it was tricky. it could have backfired the british had come in moderately. it's virginians might have said, were not going to come for the support. and it might have fizzled out that i hear they might have had to leave for some other format. do not sense, there isn't a little bit of manipulation, but you don't manipulate the whole people. there's too much popular support for it. yeah, go ahead. >> thank you for your excellent presentation. interview, today's world the 20 minute news cycle, cnn, at c-span, fox, twitter, facebook. could we have built the same democracy if is with the same instantaneous communication and new cycles we have today? thank you. >> guest: you would have had arab spring without of these instant communication. that really is the force that leads. i mean, we live in a different world now. everything gets telescoped. so i think you really would not have had the spread of the rioting in the middle east without these modern forms of technology that creates instant information. in the 18th century, the first might have held off. if they could have communicated back and forth more quickly, they might've been able -- things might have worked out a little better. they might have delayed the process. because it was a peculiar revolution because the americans revolting on behalf of english rights. it's a very peculiar revolution and you have to take that into account. the reason the french revolution failed in the american revolution did not is because the americans had 100 years of self-governance. we forget that. we just forget that massachusetts, virginia, pennsylvania had been in elections. no, they didn't have modern democracy, that two out of three white adult males could vote. that's better than england. we had the lowest rates. i mean, the english bill of rights. we had it. self-governance. so it made it so much easier for us. the french hadn't had a parliament in 1614. so they have nothing to draw firm. they had no experience with elected people. it's not surprising they spiraled. so we've got to keep that in mind. we are deeply indebted to her british heritage because of all those rights that are part of our common law and part of our traditions. saddam made a big difference. >> professor trained for, thank you for being here. in your work, the americanization of ben franklin county recount how ben franklin and we testified the u.s. or america as it was could not be governed by parliament and yet was still loyal to the king. could you distinguish out for americans the idea of loyalty to the king was different from loyalty to parliament and how that would work as a practical matter. >> guest: that's a very complicated issue, but it is crucial to the revolution. the reason franklin testified was because the rockingham whigs are now in control and they wanted to repeal the stamp act to get rid of these rights. at the same time, they were great believers in parliamentary sovereignty. they had to bring in the only american, benjamin franklin. so he comes and testifies that the american people will not accept the stat that he that gives them a call for repealing the stamp act. but they did a declaratory act, which says in effect, we are repealing this, but we have the right to do it. don't kid yourself you americans. parliament is sovereign. it's a lawmaking authority of the british empire and we have the right. we are just with china for prep to close fight, but don't get the message wrong. that's the declaratory act. now their englishman parliament has a sacred policy to it. parliament represents the people. the king in english history is always the enemy of the people. english history is a contest between going back to the magna carta. tyrannical kings and the people represented in the house of congress and the 13th century. and so they see the politics and parliament has a sacred quality. for the americans, parliament can't have that quality and they oppose parliament in 1765 in 1767 and so on. and the british are a little confused by that. how can you oppose parliament quiet it is the king that's always a good to liberty. but the americans don't quite see it that way. and they are forced by the doctrine of sovereignty. he better have one final lawmaking authority somewhere. when confronted with that choice and it's given in several different debates. they fill rate, were not into parliament at all. we are tied only to the king. and that's when the declaration of independence was so interest in if you read it. it's a series of georgia. to do this, this comedy series of things he's done. he never once mentioned parliament. parliament passed the coercive acts. and yet when it comes to the break, there's no mention. the closer you get is that doctors. i mean, read the declaration. that's as close as they come because constitutionally we have reached a point by 1774, forced into it really that we are not under parliament at all. were tied only to the king and therefore it's often called a common law. the empire. we anticipate the statute of westminster, which is the present-day commonwealth. that is the queen of england and queen of canada, quaintness new zealand, but each of those parliament history. so that's the commonwealth. we anticipate that commonwealth in 1774. we have a separate ledges nature skywatchers father. that's where the only type that has to be broken. it's a kind of upward situation because we had respect to parliament's right to pass navigation laws. controller trade. and so we were quite clear how we explain that. but none of us, it makes for an interesting constitutional issue. here's what everything could go unconstitutional. so in 1776, no mention of parliament. that would cloud the issue. >> when you mention the whole people, i was wondering what percentage of people in that time were tories, loyalists. >> guest: they had all kinds. some would start out a third. anything from studies that have been made using the ability of groups to raise militia, probably 20% of the population, which is an population of 2 million -- 2.5 million, that's 500,000 people. so it's a healthy portion. the majority of the population. many people were neutral, but the braves never fully appreciated how many or how few tories there were. when they're going down the hudson valley, he counts on tory support. he doesn't get it. instead he gets harassed by patriot phylicia and inspire me sort of weathers. by the time you get to saratoga, has lost a good portion of his army. >> were some segments more tory? >> yeah, there are more in the south, south carolina, north carolina, largely because the western portion had heeded the weak eastern, the scotch irish in the west and the eastern people who are whigs and they had been in fights with them for decades of war. so the enemy of my enemy is got to be my friend. so a lot of tories -- if you seen the movie the peachtree at, mel gibson's famous movie, where he plays the south carolina planter who has hired help, blackout, africans who can't be a slave owner. of course not gibson, a slaveholder. but there is some truth to the ferocious partisan fighting that takes place because there are lots of loyalists in the carolinas. also in new jersey, lots of loyalist militia. when the british army comes end, the loyalists feel strong. so they come out and punish the whigs who have been harassing them. so there's a lot of resentment at these loyalists. so they punish the peachtree is. then after harlow unger physics does position pics i've harlow unger, he says i have to pull back. a week later. he pulls back his troops. of course, that means they come back and then they harass the tories. so you have a vicious fighting that doesn't get into the history books because it's all partisan. we would call it guerrilla warfare. it's pretty brutal. i mean, a lot of people killed and we don't know the story as well as we know the battles because it's all local. >> thanks for the slight indiscretion. i'm wondering if you have found the rules of the members of the society of cincinnati after the war. it's interesting the patriots set up an almost european-style lineage society that's very a leap. but how did those guys and try to prove the ideals? >> guest: washington that first endorses it. they want a society to recognize their contribution to the war. but it's going to be hereditary. and that creates the opposition really quite deep. i've been reading john adams letters at the library of america. he's getting worried in the 80s. he's just appalled by this idea of cincinnati organization. in washington is very sent today's. as soon as he senses that there is any public opposition, he backs away and gets the organization to promise that they will not be hereditary. of course, they are still around. it is hereditary. in massachusetts has this huge building. and they have a great library, with a lot of documents. and it's innocuous. but there is a real fear that we are reading the very kind of thing that the revolution is about. the revolution is anti-blood. merit only should count. people should be distinguished on the because of talent, not because of who you follow, who he married. so the order of the cincinnati scarcity jesus out of a lot of people. samuel adams' the item sells. and it pulls in its horns and becomes more of an interest group, a lobbyist group. but washington thinks he's got to promise they are not going to be hereditary. of course they remain heather terry. >> are there any more questions? [inaudible] >> guest: the future? what is the future of the american idea? i wish i knew. i don't think anyone knows future. historians do not predict. >> host: if we do, or getting in trouble. >> host: what jay is saying is would have a better sense of what my not happening. we are not going to go off the rails tomorrow. china is not going to take over the world next year, but what the future brings, i don't think anyone really knows. it's not going to happen quickly. if we are in decline, look, the romans didn't know they were in decline. they went sentries thinking they were hot dogs. >> host: just remind you all, there'll be a book signing afterwards we can talk to profess her wood and get him to sign his marvelous book. and just to give you one closing thought i'm not so much a highbrow note, but may be a middle ground note. i'm not sure how many of you have seen the movie good will hunting, but there is a very famous scene in a bar, where matt damon is buying for his woman and she is dating a ta at the time, a graduate student at harvard. he says i think you must be really smart because you've been reading professor gordon wood. well, i don't think there's any doubt after having listening to his enthralling conversation why. [applause] >> guest: thank you very much. >> booktv continues with harlow unger and this book "american tempest: how the boston tea party sparked a revolution." he talked about his book in new york city. this is 50 minute. >> there is nothing so easy as to persuade people that they are badly governed. those words were spoken by the 18th century massachusetts governor, thomas hutchison. and i'll tell you more about him later. let me tell you what else he said because his words hold true today as much as they did then in 1774. governor hutchison said you can take the happiest and most comfortable people and use malicious, rhetorical skills to arouse popular discontent with the government, with their rulers come with everything around them, even themselves. this is one of the weaknesses he said. these are his words. this is one of the weaknesses of human nature, of which ambitious politicians may choose to serve their purposes. a year before he uttered those words, a group of boston rabble-rousers had convinced americans that they were miserable and to quote hutchison again, those who think they are miserable are so. despite all real evidence to the contrary. now i doubt if there's a single one of today's so-called tea party patriots who knows that the original tea party and tea party about. far from being peachtree is, those original tea partiers were mostly smugglers. some of them among the wealthiest man in america, merchants. among them, john hancock. yes, the john hancock for old signature on the declaration of independence left his name synonymous with the word signature. but long before he put his john hancock on the declaration of independence, he was arguably -- arguably the wealth he is merchant banker living and populate mansion on top of boston's beacon hill, with a commanding view of the massachusetts landscape in seascape. far from espousing individual liberty, hancock and his fellow merchants in new england governed their businesses and communities with economic ruthlessness that often last their competitors homeless and penniless. like today's tea party movement, the colonial tea party had almost nothing to do with tea. tea was nothing more than a social beverage for wealthy women. men thought him drink it and it ranks below telling them on the beverages that american can you knows. the tea party movement that sparked the american revolution actually began 20 years earlier than the 1750s and 60s, when new england business leaders like today's tea partiers supported a costly government work, but refuse to pay higher taxes to cover the cost of that war. the war had started in the early 1750s, when overpopulation in the east, especially the northeast, said british settlers pouring over the appalachian mountains into what was then clenched territory, the new france they called it. france at the time claimed all of canada. the lands around the great lakes, the land around either side of the ohio and mississippi river valley down to the gulf of mexico. in 1753, the governor has virginiana sent a young major named george washington. most americans don't know the story. the governor of virginia said 21-year-old major, george washington to fort duquesne, a french word that sat on this site of present-day pittsburgh before the steelers started playing football player. washington orders the french chili's. the french refused in the following spring, washington returned with troops and attacked. again, most americans don't have the shortest, but wash team fired the first shot in what became the world's first true world were. his attack on the french and the western pennsylvania wilderness grew into a global conflict would last seven years and above england, france, austria, russia and because of other nations fighting for control of colonies in north america, africa, asia indices in between. the seven years war changed the map of the world, shifting national borders in europe and africa, india and elsewhere. a level thousands of towns and villages in europe, killed or maimed more than a million soldiers and civilians in bankrupted a dozen nations, including england and france. now remember, it started in britain's north american colonies in the british government and british people naturally thought her subjects in british north america should share the cost of the wars with their fellow citizens and written. in fact, the government had raised property taxes so high, the farmers rioted in protest and demanded that americans pay their fair share of the war. so in 1764, the british government extended to the colony is a stamp tax that everyone in britain have been paying for more than 70 years. it amounted to next to nothing for the average citizen. a penny or two for a stamp attached to legal documents, publications and the packages of such nonessential products is playing cards. the harshest effects of this tax, however, were on members of greek powerful special-interest groups. they have been back then, too. these three groups for the merchants, publishers and lawyers. the merchants had to put a stamp on every purchase order, on every bill of sale. publishers had to put a stamp on every newspaper and magazine and lawyers had to put a stamp on every legal document. steve, wills and such. to cover politically ambitious bostonians, james otis junior and samuel adams junior's an opportunity to make money and to gain political power by organizing mobs of unemployed waterfront workers to protest the stamp tax. and there are many of these workers left after the end of the seven years war. to win some public support for the protest, they coped better duties under the banner of constitutional rights. they claimed that americans had no representation in parliament and that for parliament to tax them without such rep as an tatian was a violation of the british come to to shame. they were under these mobs, under the secret pay at the merchants and newspaper publishers. addison out of sunday's monster terry's britain's waterfront. they attacked the tax collectors, burned their homes, prevented ships from landing. gradually they closed the waterfront in close to boston to almost all british ships. adams then wrote to political leaders and other coastal cities. he is absolutely filled with a sense of power and wanted to gain more. he convinced political leaders in other cities to follow suit. he soon sent harbor fronts up and down the coast over and writes and gained a national reputation as a great revolutionary leader. merchants meanwhile stop importing british good. within months, british manufactures and ask voters absorbed huge financial losses. british trade fell by 50% in the british merchants, british exporters demanded that parliament repealed the stamp tax in america to restore trade relations. in 1765, parliament did just that in turns and mountains james otis into heroes in boston and elsewhere in america. now, just who are these heroes? both were from wealthy family and like many sons of wealthy new englanders, they were harbored graduate. but we all make mistakes. if they'd gone to yale that would've behaved themselves and come out decent jobs. add-ons was the son of boston's ruler. you still see the name, but the current sam adams. has nothing to do with the original brewery. his father died when sam is 36 cared until then, did tend to take control of the brewery and quickly ran it into bankruptcy. and he allowed the family mansion to deteriorate. he seemed unconcerned with earning money. he married, fathered two children in after his wife's death, this champion of liberty bought himself a slave and raise his children in abject poverty. friends to his father found him a sinecure, an easy job is a city tax or to ensure he's earning enough to feed his children and his slave. but within a short time, his ledgers showed a shortage of 8000 pounds representing pat money yet either failed to collect or had embezzled and he was later convicted of embezzlement. as for otis, he was a young lawyer who felt deeply humiliated when the royal governor failed to appoint his father, james otis senior as chief justice of the colony because of a clear conflict of interest. john otis grew a rational spring undermined government retaliation. i shall set the province in claim, even if i die in the attempt to shut it. as his anger fester have choices sanity, wandered into a boston tavern by british officers to provoke a fight. an officer responded by clubbing him over the head with the broad side of his sword. although he recovered from the physical wound, he drifted in and out of insanity for the rest of his life. at times it polkas head out of the window and start firing into the park of the unseen british enemies. one time he wandered into the state assembly, drew his sword and challenged the prime minister of england to come to boston and fight a duel. eventually, france tightened down on a chair and carried him to the insane asylum. despite adams depravity and otis is insanity, the stamp at protest left adamson command of a powerful force of armed thugs involved in. but the repeal of the stamp act left britain still choking from economic problems. the british government remained bankrupt with a large army in america to protect americans without any financial support from the americans. so british chancellor of the exchequer, charles townsend, the equivalent of murder secretary of treasury, came up with a scheme to counter the adams otis argument of taxation without representation. he would no longer tax americans. he was shipped the goods. class, led, paint, paper and t. he weaves and that duties would be less painful for ordinary americans who could avoid paying them by simply using homemade substitutes. farmers and their families and 95% of americans were lived on farms. they already produce most of their own clothes, their own pottery, wooden utensils and tools that many of the other things they needed. the people most affected by import duties for the wealthy who loved their beautiful british and european furniture and furnishings, their wines and their fancy gourmet foodstuffs. so when the british impose duties to pay for the war, and the duties affect it the richest colonials, not the poor or the middle classes. it affected those who are profiting most from the war, the ship owners, merchants, bank owners. although the towns in active-duty status that ordinary americans, they infuriated the rich merchants and shipowners who resolve to evade taxes by smuggling. they didn't decide to smuggle because they were pitchers. they decided to smuggle out of greed for profit. and proof of their motives, but proof of their motives became evident to everyone when the british finally won the war against the french in north america. as british troops comb through the wreckage of french fortifications, they found that most of the french weapons had been smuggled through british male blockades are the same new england shipowners have been carrying military supplies to the british army. are these british subjects, merchants who were smuggling arms to both sides in the war. to the enemy as well as their own army. to quote their treason, smugglers transform themselves into outspoken patriot claiming they didn't oppose taxes as long as they had a vote in establishing tax laws. although that reads very well in today's histories books for children, their argument was not sent. it was nonsense then and it is nonsense now. you taxpayers in england had any representation in parliament. you couldn't vote if you didn't own property. and only 1 million of the 9 million adult males in britain were entitled to vote. now, fair or unfair, the makeup of parliament altered britain's need for money to pay for the wars for the obligation of every citizen to pay for the water, to pay taxes. the wealthiest of american columnists have profited handsomely from the war without paying for its costs. and when the same merchants began smuggling to evade taxes, the british government felt fully justified in cracking down. still puffed up with pride from the strengthen the stamp tax protest on the same adams merchants to sponsor another wave of protest, march and if they had a four under the banners of liberty, adams warfront thugs swarmed through boston's streets, earning the homes of opponents and dragging those loyal to the legitimate government to what the thugs called a liberty tree to be strict, swathed in scalding tar, covered with others and hung from a branch and subject it to agonies and humiliation. .. turned their rightful soldiers and to target's first of insults than the snowballs and stones and other missiles a troupe of redcoats finally retaliated and fired their rifles into the trending mark one night killing five civilians, all of them who turned out to be sam a adams' fugs and threaten to become a citywide ra yet and to prevent a real civil war the governor thomas hutchinson immediately offered the -- ordered the officer and the soldiers involved in the incident jail and brought to trial for murder. defending them were non-other than their respective american lawyers, and quincy adams a cousin of sam. neither currency or adams were tories or any members of the jury. they will all local farmers, and they voted unanimously to acquit the officer and four of the soldiers. they found the other two soldiers guilty of justifiable manslaughter a little more than a misdemeanor. just as important, the trial exposed the role of sam adams and james otas jr. and inciting the mob, and boston citizens decided they had enough of this, enough of violence and enough of sam adams and they ordered him out of office and sent otas back to the insane asylum. the army command felt the same way to read their troops they said had come to america to fight the enemies of the colonists, not the colonists themselves who were after all their own countrymen. so the army pulled out of boston and peace returned to boston and the rest of the colonies. the troubles between britain and her colonists should have ended then and there with everyone of living happily ever after under the union jag except the one that remained in the economic relationship with the motherland. in rebuilding the towns and duties, a small group of angry parliamentarians decided tuesday needed to retain some symbol of what they insisted was parliament absolute authority to tax all british subjects with or without their consent. they yielded to all of the demands of americans. it's the majority felt have a hat to retain at least one of the town duties as a symbol of its authority said it retained the smallest, most innocuous one,. what a colossal observation. t was nothing more than a woman social beverage in american homes. few americans drink even a cup of a or b today and in any case the tax on tea was negligible. about one-tenth of 1 penny 49 penni cup, nine pennies. that is a tax of about 1100 of 1%. thomas put it so small a spark a fire was kendal and his friends would eventually destroy the great empire and sparked a rise of another from its ashes as you may have guessed even the small tea tax cut somewhat into the profits of america's largest team so they resumed smuggling, and of course british customs officials tightened the antismuggling enforcement. and after the british seized one of john hancock's ships for nonpayment of duties, hancock reopened his cash drawer to sam adams and adams said his paid thugs to vandalize and destroy the shops and homes of anyone who sold or drink imported a or b from britain, or even reported by someone as having drunk some tea. so if your neighbor he to you, just call somebody over and say she is drinking british tea, and the house would be burned down. the tea breakout spread to other new england cities and down the atlantic coast to new york, philadelphia, charleston and other ports. this was the zero original tea party movement. it wasn't patriotic, and it wasn't pretty or glorious. if they defeat the it climaxed on december 13, 1773, just before christmas with the legendary boston tea party and the dumping about a million dollars' worth of british tea to read the people who dumped them amounted to about six or seven dozen men known, no one knows exactly how many were there. was dark. many described the to disguise themselves as indians. ironically the white colonists, who willingly slaughtered and i american indian onsite -- in the american indian onsite disguised themselves as in the hands and said they were a symbol of freedom. regardless of this phony symbolism, the participants in the boston tea party unleashed a social, political and economic upheaval that they would never again be able to control. the tea party provoked a reign of terror in boston and other american cities where the inflected a.m. on a vaginal border the on others. they dumped tea ships in new york, philadelphia, charleston, wallsten staged a second tea party a few months after the first one, the mobs broke no dissent. they burned the homes of england and they suspected of favoring the british rule and sent their dreaded imitation of the inquisition coach to the doors of citizens who dared to voice support for their church for their country, and they're legitimate established government. the squeaking cart arrived at dawn and its drivers breaking down doors and driving the victims from their beds for transport to the liberty tree. a cheering mob always awaited them to start them, and hang them with a rope around their waist from a branch to be scorned, beaten and humiliated. this was no fight for liberty or independence, this was a civil war between british subjects over the extent of state authority and the rights of the individual and independents do not in that conflict. the tea party and those who supported them work is essentially libertarians who have built businesses or carved of forms from the wilderness on their own, without government help, and they were not about to share profits of the labor with any government or any government tax collectors. independence did not change matters. almost immediately after britain recognized our independence, farmers across the nation, massachusetts, new hampshire, virginia began writing against the government taxation. this taxation by their own elected governments in each state. it was the same conflict between the collective rights of the state, the authority of the state versus the rights of the individual. taxation by any state, by any government invariably deprives the individual of some of his property, forcing him to contribute in voluntarily to the community's defense and other essentials services. and sometimes mauney essentials services. his postal service and the central government function of the private industry do a better job. the public transport, and the central government service or should we leave it in private hands, these are questions we still debate of the ratification of the constitution and the creation of a federal government and this answer some of these questions and calmed things down a bit. they erupted again in into all-out civil war in the mid-19th century when many americans felt the federal government had usurped state and local power. slavery was central to the civil war. but the more the first hint to oversimplify the nature of that conflict. even americans who opposed slavery in of the north as well as the south and supported emancipation, recognized that the emancipation proclamation with all of its good intentions also represented the government confiscation of property. it's horrible to think of human beings as property, but they were treated and the civil war didn't end the conflict. it flared up again during the civil rights movement in the 20th century when the federal government essentially usurped authority over education. and again during the vietnam war met when the executive usurped authority to lead the nation to the war. and that the date continues today with the emergence of a modern t party movement that is trying to hold and even reverse extending federal government intrusion into our daily lives. the problem of the tea party today is that which one man defines as government intrusion, another man defines as and the essentials of city for the national economy. i'm sure that farmers if you ask the farmer today or a highway engineer or an oil man, the definition of a -- boondoggle they are not going to say agricultural subsidies or subsidies of the zero allele industry or subsidies for highway construction. we can only hope that the growing tea party movement today doesn't divide the nation and produce the conflict it did in the 18th century. at that time massachusetts chief justice peter oliver described the horrors produced by the colonial tea party movement in his memoirs. pataki and federal and rockets rained on controlled. the liberty of the press was restrained by the very men who had been reviewing for liberty. those printers who were inclined to support the government with red and that the precious destroyed and all this uproar arose from the selfish designs of the merchants. glock patriots who disguise their private view by mouthing it for liberty. but who were willing to sacrifice everything for money. the term of the colonial tea party movement stretched tens of thousands of americans of their dignity, their homes, their properties and their birthrights. in the name of liberty and independence yielding $100 americans left of the land of their forefathers forever in what was history's largest exodus of americans from america, and untold thousands who have refused to leave their native land into the dangerous wilderness historic life under the new identities. along those forced to flee to england and be buried in a foreign soil was the last royal governor of massachusetts, thomas hutchinson, whose forebears arrived in america in the 1634 and included the great religious leader and hutcheson. he adored this country. it belonged to him as much as it did to sam adams. more so, he had served this country and its government and its war to this ann adams had never done that. before hutchinson died, he wrote these words. i am sometimes tempted to forget that i am an american and to turn my view from my native, to turn my view as to what remains of life in england. but my passion for my native country returns and though i know not how to reason upon that, i feel a fondness to lay my bones in my native americans will. justice peter oliver also from an old american family also fled to england and lies buried there. george washington and other respected american leaders across the country condemned the boston tea party has vandals and ended in jail and faded into obscurity have the british government not responded so rashly and violently by sending the troops back to boston, buy quarter and the troops in the private homes of the wallace as well as rebels the british military command seem to declare the war against all americans and that provoked the entire massachusetts citizenry into open rebellion. lexington followed. the americans discovered the importance of the individual's right to bear arms. then came bunker hill, and that was followed by a declaration of independence by the massachusetts legislature. virginia followed suit after patrick henry's starting call for liberty or debt and a declaration of war against britain. his call echoed across the continent and rose so many americans on july 4th, 1776 all 13 states declared independence from britain. and who were those original tea partiers, who were those men on the shifts that sparked a revolution and helped bring down the one entire and create another? who boarded those ships and dumped the tea partiers in the boston harbor? sam adams hancock at the time they swore never to reveal each other's names, to prevent their arrest for treason committed immediate death on the gallows. while the earnings remain secret for decades after the tea party, but they are now listed in my new book. the list will surprise you. one irony of the tea party, however, is that none of those who dumped tea into the boston harbor rose to prominence in the government of the nation that emerged from the revolution command that's because the kind of men who lead the revolution and destroy the government's, pierre and france, the sam adams in america, seldom have the qualities needed to organize and build a new government or nation. they never nurtured. their instincts are to destroy, to kill. and the second irony of the revolution that the tea party sparked is that instead of eliminating the taxation, it increased 10,000 fold. suddenly local governments had to pay for the cost of defense, law enforcement, postal services and all the other government services that the british government had paid for before the independence. instead of paying a small single duty on tea, massachusetts imposed a huge duties on every product that passed through its ports and collected it. apart from the cost of the tea that was lost in the tea party, it was dumped overboard. the boston tea party was undoubtedly the most costly tea party in the world history. thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. i'd be happy to answer your questions. [applause] thank you. thank you very much. i'd be happy to answer any questions and the gentleman will have a microphone for you to be heard across the nation and across the world. >> where it originates? was it from england? where did it or reject it? in europe or the colony's? senator and suffering, that would have originated here as far as i know. it wasn't a custom in england. yes, sir? >> he organized support in the colony, any of them in the state which were called loyalists to the summit organized support for? >> the loyalist supporting -- >> yes, across the nation at least one-third of the population or absolutely loyal subjects of britain, canada and in the debate in congress only days before the actual declaration of independence, john dickinson of philadelphia author the olive branch petition to the king, pledging our american law to the king, the love of the king, love of being a british subjects, and simply asking for him to control upon and let us raise our own taxes and keep the parliament out of it. had he accepted the olive branch petition we probably could have become a member of the british commonwealth. so there was a tremendous amount of loyalty, and even loyalist forces, there was a major battle that's often not mentioned coming and i don't know whether this is prejudiced or what, but a major battle in moore's creek north carolina, not far from wilmington, north carolina. a british fleet was going, soldiers at wilmington, and a loyalist army had formed a new one and was marching towards the coast to join up with the british regulars and of course were rebels but what we call patriots intercepted them and massacred them at the creek which there's a blind couch where the rebels were waiting for them and liked them out. so without loyalist support the british troops couldn't land, and that kept the south street of the british control for a few years until they land at charleston. yes, sir? >> you mentioned that the boston tea party spread south to new york and other cities. it almost sounds as if the net worth of people who had the same thought were were being inspired one way or another were working together. i never thought of the boston tea party has been that, but is that really -- >> this, sam adams set up because there is no other form of communication as they set up a series of committees of correspondence or instigated the formation of the committees of correspondence in every major city in the country and they start communicating with each other and that is how it was passed, that is we eventually decided on a continental congress for all of these committee members to meet in philadelphia and discuss independence. yes, ma'am? >> wasn't the tea party at greenwich new jersey, wasn't that before -- >> i'm sorry. i can't hear you. >> the tea party at greenwich common in jersey, didn't it happen before the boston tea party? >> grumet she new jersey? >> afterwards. >> another t. party they dumped at greenwich new jersey which most people have never heard of it i never heard of until i did research on this book but it's along the delaware river to philadelphia. just man. >> can you talk about what sources used and are the new ones were reinterpretations? >> nothing is new and the sources are if almost endless, the equivalent of the three shelves. obviously the diaries and writings of john adams, the writings of john adams are i think seven volumes of diaries and four volumes of the writings of sam adams and thomas hutchinson, all of these people were prolific writers and kept diaries and kept the correspondence. so it is a rich pool of research. yes, sir? >> all of this information that you of disclosed, why was it dormant for so long? >> wiltz not dormant. it's there in bits and pieces, and the problem with the american history, i think i can generalize all american history but certainly the history of the colonial and revolutionary war mcginn pos revolutionary war matt tero is that it's very complex and if - if when my son was about 14 he came home from school and said you know something, dad in american history all they do is talk in european history there's a lot of action that all they do is talk she's right. the talk is very complex and very complex issues that philosophers and political interests have been debating for many years its. this involved enormous important concepts implications from the entire world, the divine right of kings shall and aristocrats. the slavery itself, the rights of the individual cash, this was the age of enlightenment and our revolution culminated the enlightenment in which these philosophers and the authors and thinkers in the western world were debating. the rights of the individual and what they call the natural rights of the individual were all men born with equal rights as opposed to the divine rights of kings pish so these are very complicated issues and to convince all of this into the history book this big that an adolescent has to get through in the 26 weeks or with other went fiscal year is it is impossible. it's impossible. so the authors of american history and in the text that most americans grow up studying have to convince it and make it really simplistic. yes, sir? >> have you started another project that you could -- have you started another project that you can relate to us now what you are writing your next book? >> my next book, actually my next book is going to have a small leadership. it's about the french playwright who was also a brilliant inventor and thinker, brilliant spy, and a great libertarian, and he organized -- she convinced the french king that by surreptitiously supporting the american revolution the french could undermine and weaken the traditional enemy of britain who beat the pants off of them in the seven year war, and he was responsible for organizing the the dummy corporations that in france had shipped surreptitiously said shipped the french arms, they were not obsolete over here but they were in france from the seven year, war, shut them over here surreptitiously to the american rebels and indeed he was responsible for the surprise victory at saratoga if they had arrived in portsmouth just-in-time they were carrying overline and was about to beat us and suddenly they can and we were able to turn the war around so the book is called the improbable patriots, but directly on this period will come out and about a year and it's called the seven pillars of power and its help george washington took this they get, vaguely defined office of the presidency and turned into what many now call the imperial presidency. and he did this on his own. a lot of people credit hamilton but it was he, it was george washington. >> yes, sir. you mentioned the name john hancock and the boston tea party. john hancock was the leading merchant perhaps in the colonies. what was his part in the boston tea party? >> well, she wanted no part of it. he wanted to continue making money. he was arguably the wealthiest merchant banker in america. there was no hard currency in this hemisphere at a time, so the merchants often -- the merchants, large merchants like hancock hoard provided the tools to say a farmer or a smaller merchant against for example the farmer's crop in the spring, the futures it that's why they were called merchant bankers because they were lending money and doing it at a fulfilling the modern bigger as well as the modern merchant and was the largest since his own goal had built the business and the house of hancock was the largest merchant bank in america. now suddenly the rye it's all over the place and threatening any merchant who does business with england, and she tried to struggle for as long as he could but as they became more and more powerful and began burning on the mansion's the burned down the mansion of thomas hutchinson, thomas hutcheson father's was a merchant banker, and it was one of the most beautiful homes in america designed with a magnificent to uvula on top and the writers went out there and burned the house down from top to bottom, one of them his diary describe how the killer felt on the ground, but they destroyed manuscript that went back to america's

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