at the equal rights heritage center here in downtown auburn. we're incredibly thankful to them for hosting just, as we are to professor david gellman, for making trip here to histories, hometown the home of william seward, harriet tubman and so many others. professor gilman has a new book. i encourage you to read it. it's we have copies available sale tonight and he's very happy to sign tonight's program. we often think of william henry seward as part of lincoln's team of rivals. we think of him as having gone a hard fought political defeat and learning to live within this rivalry through the civil war years. but as i learned from professor gilman's rivalry started very early in seward's career and he was well seasoned and well versed in them as a result, coming of age politically in new york state during the age of john jay and then his son, william jay, who often challenged push seward in ways that i'm sure he would prefer they not done. professor gilman comes to us tonight from depaul university, where he's been teaching since 1999, his first book was on emancipating new york and the ending of slavery here in the empire state. this is his follow up and we are going to follow him, the j family and the seward's as well. through many debates and challenges again, thank you so much for coming. thank you, jeff, for that introduction and. thanks to the seward house. and i also want to thank my editor at three hills, michael mcginty, who i know played a role in bringing me here and the entire team at cornell university press for seeing us through. but most all, i want to thank you, the audience, for being here. so it's a real pleasure and a real honor to spend the evening with you all. so i want to start two anecdotes, both relating upstate new york in august 98, judith watkins, sister of sara livingston j and sister in law of governor, wrote a letter from the finger region where she had recently relocated. she complained about the difficulties providing her daughter, susan, with a suitably genteel upbringing in, this remote location to chores prevented susan from having sufficient to read. so judith made, a special appeal. i do earnestly and entreat mr. jay that he will be good enough to purchase, quote, a -- girl she knew of interconnect city and sent her westward. judith recognized that she might be putting governor jay in an awkward position, john jay had a long association with anti-slavery causes and was governor of new york in 1798, just a year shy when the state would finally pass a gradual emancipation law. and so, judith, sensitive to this, proposed the actual bill of sale for the enslaved woman from schenectady be put in the name of another livingston sister. i don't know whether john jay demurred to or even knew about his sister in law's scheme, but it clear that this daughter of one of new york and new jersey most prominent lineages clearly black labor with social status. and even after new york state passed a gradual abolition law, with governor jay's approval, she still imagined that upstate new york would be a place where african-american laborers would undergird wealth status and regional development. in a may 1800 letter, she wrote her sister about, migrants from maryland and pennsylvania, who will, quote, introduce a more polished society. they including one man who had purchased 20,000 acres and quote, will bring 70 blacks with him. john jay's attitude towards the utility of black service in the era ushered in the new abolition regime in the north's largest slave state. we're not as far off from his sister in law's. we might wish i. submit to you one more opening anecdote from upstate new york to make this point. in february 1797, governor jay purchased dinah, a black woman who he planned to free, quote, after serving faithfully for a certain term. but dinah had a two year old child with the governor, wanted a dedicated servant and did not like. the idea of someone distracted of a mother, distracted by her toddler. so jay wrote dinah's uncle, peter williams, senior, who was a leader of the free black community in new york city, in hopes that williams would take the child after jay got nowhere with this plan he sold, dinah and her son to a man named inman with the stipulation that inman would eventually free them both. fast forward to 1808, john jay's eldest son, peter augustus, jay is a pro bono lawyer for the new york manumission society. the path anti-slavery organization that john jay was the inaugural president of in 1785. dana had sought peter out because while she was now free, her child was not, in fact inman, to whom governor jay had transferred, and her son had subsequently sold them both, one to utica and another, the other attica, when she eventually got her freedom, it came without any payment that she claimed john jay had promised. but more importantly, her son remained enslaved. the governor, it should be said, hadn't violated any laws, but he exposed a mother, a son to the very sort of abuses his son. peter investigated as an attorney in new york city. the now retired john jay's response to his son was legalistic and unfeeling indeed chilling. he wrote, i do not recollect dana was to have money at the expiration of her term. he told peter to seek out inman and to check the bill of sale, essentially washing his hands of the affair and and deciding not to invest of his considerable prestige to help the matter along. and make no mistake, there were and are few names associated with the nation's founding. more than john jay. in fact, john is easily one of the seven most important founding fathers. you're going to note that there are only five other people up here. i included the important founding fathers, major founding fathers who owned enslaved people. that's why john adams doesn't appear up here. but john jay, george washington, thomas jefferson. alexander hamilton. james madison. ben franklin. all were slave holders. john jay's influence on the founding of the republic is is hard to underestimate. he was the inaugural chief justice of the us supreme court. he was president the continental congress during the war. he was secretary of foreign affairs after the war, and he negotiated two of the nation's most important early treaties, the 1783 piece of paris that confirmed our independence and the 1795 treaty with great britain that bears his name, the jay treaty, to this nature, to this day. he's also one of the principal authors of new york's first constitution and one of the leading advocates of the ratification of the us constitution in this state. and as i already mentioned, he was a two term governor of new york, his anti-slavery resume is not quite as spectacular, but really important. as i said, was the first president of, the new york manumission society, one of the first anti-slavery societies in the western world. he was governor, as i mentioned, when new york passed its gradual emancipate in law in 1799, freeing children born to enslaved mothers. after july 4th, 1799. but those children were required to serve their mother's masters well into. so that of his anti-slavery resume. but one thing that people often leave off it is where john jay wound up on slavery. so he from public life after, a quarter of a century of nonstop public service lived until 1829. and he mostly stayed out of partizan politics or politics with a capital p. but his son, peter augustus, jay, was a determined foe of the admission of missouri as a slave to state. that, in other words, for many of you remember the missouri, missouri crisis and the missouri. so while peter augustus jay was organizing a rally in new york city against the admission of missouri wrote a letter. and in those days people understood that letters on certain subjects were going to be released to the public. so this is not some sort of leak or something that wasn't to get out. and here's that. and in that letter, the agent founding father quoted both the constitution and, the declaration of independence, to make case that the founders would have supported and did not they did not encourage or the extension of slavery westward and would have supported. and it was constitutionally illegitimate to prevent the admission of missouri as a slave state. and he quoted jefferson's famous preamble, all men are created equal part of his case that absolutely had a right and a responsibility to prevent the admission of missouri as a slave state. so that is in marked contrast to an aging thomas who panicked at the crisis over the mission of missouri because. he likened it to a fire by fire bell that went off in the night and, castigated the radical sons of the of the founding fathers for threatening the integrity of the nation. so john jay wound up in a very place than his colleague thomas late in his life, as already suggested, john jay was a slave holder through of his adult life and is the scion of an elite new york family. this did not make the j. family remarkable. all the dutch initiated slavery, as this illustration suggests, and the english ramp it up and slavery was part and parcel the economy, new york's economy started to thrive in the early 18th century because it provisioned the west indian sugar colonies and enslaved people were working from africa and still more imported via the west indies and all the elite families and many not so elite in new york owned slaves. so it doesn't set him apart, but it makes it an essential part of his family story and his family tree. so tonight, i want to emphasize that this talk is not exclusively or even primarily about john jay, nor is the book. it's a multigenerational biography that features his sons, peter jay and william jay and his grandson john jay the second as much or than it features john jay and the goal was to study the transmission and the transformation values, particularly values around the of slavery and race and across time because much was passed on from one generation to another in the jay family. but as you'll see, the jay's transformed this sort moderate anti-slavery legacy into much more combustible, much more dangerous, much more threatening to the survival of all of the nation because there is no cause more likely to render part the nation that the jay family is is synonymous than the issue of slavery. so when the sons and grandson embrace radical, they are embracing the cause that will undo the nation is what that is founded and is what makes these people famous like the jay name is famous because of the founding, yet they're willing to risk it all. and so in that sense, it's also a study of an interrogation how we use words that we think we know what they mean, but maybe they mean different things when we put them in historical context. and those words are radical concern of and patriot words that you can find in any newspaper on any day in america, amidst our political and tussles and verbal wrestling matches. and i wanted to interrogate those concepts through the js and we could learn something about plasticity of the meaning of these important words. if we look at history rather than if we just look at cnn or the new york times amidst the tug and pull of our politics. and i'm really grateful for that i've had a chance to come to upstate new. i was at colgate university the last couple of days and i'm here now. and so i it gave a chance to revisit my research and something that is in the book is not a major theme, which is the relationship between upstate new york and the downs. js they are creatures of manhattan in westchester county, but as i thought about coming to upstate new york, i thought the upstate new york place is an absolutely role every step of the way in antislavery story that i'm telling to sharing with you tonight and that i share in the book, because it could being an abolitionist in westchester, in manhattan, in this era could make you a pretty lonely person. it made a particularly elite family. this this is not the common path of most elite families in certainly in southern york in the and then the precincts where the js inhabited. and so i realized, well, without upstate new york, in some ways the anti there js anti-slavery world doesn't make any sense so i'm going to really feature this part of the country so let's let's let's do it so this map is useful for again situate us so the js are from down here but this world up here where are standing today is really essential and. it's worth noting that from what you heard from me right now, you think, well, john jay, is he even an abolitionist? is all this is is even really against slavery? well, it's i mean, he's definitely moderate and a self-serving one at that in that gradual emancipation formula really displaces the cost of abolition on to the that's nominally receiving its freedom birth but at from another lens john jay actually did pay a political even for his moderate so believe it or not being the chief justice of the us supreme court of the united. had a lot not to recommend it back in those days they had to ride. there was no supreme court building or place where supreme court sat for months at a time and an army of clerks, let alone district courts and, circuit courts to handle things. they were sent on circuit. and john jay decided, you know what, i think i'd rather be governor of new york and the js who are federalist really did not like the sort of populist long time governor george clinton. and they thought the federals thought they well. js going to be our guy to finally unseat clinton but jay had a bit of a problem is that some people thought anti-slavery because in in the hudson valley and in staten island and parts long island there's a lot of slave holders who owned one or two enslaved people and you know, sometimes 25, 30% of households own, at least one slave. and so the word got out you know this j he might take your slaves away and one of his operatives wrote him a letter and sort of alerted him to this and rather than trying. sales in john jay his response he referred he celebrate the new york manumission society which was no longer a member of because he resigned when he joined the us supreme court and he was proud of their reputation for protecting black new yorkers from what he referred to as men who spirited people out of the state into, you know, into southern slavery. and he lauded the manumission for its african free school, which educated black children and here i'm quoting jay, who will now become members of society. and in this letter he said, in my opinion every man of every color and description has a natural right to freedom. so we didn't trim sales. he did plan his flag on the larger principle. and that may be why lost the election. it was a razor thin margin. it sort of hinged on some you know, you can't you know some things never change and some contested ballots in the steel county that william cooper father of james benham where cooper you know had marshaled a lot of support, but there were questions about that. but if you look at vote tallies from various counties jay lost almost the counties with large percentages of african-american mostly enslaved people in their population and did better in counties where there was low population of enslaved people, with the exception of manhattan, which knew the new york manumission society was about. and an election is close that may well have tipped the balance. so you know it matters. his stance on slavery mattered. it's also noting that the ultimate success of gradual emancipation, which finally passed in 1799, has to do with the expanse in of the legislature. and they of representatives from northern and western counties where there were few enslaved people and who had no interest in demands of some slave holders and their representative was in this part of new york that they be comp and stated directly in cash for even for gradual emancipation and that was a nonstarter with people in the north, the west who were not about to use their tax money to buy off slave holders in the hudson valley or in staten island in places that. and so it's the addition of counties like montgomery and dago and ontario and steuben and tonga and delaware, herkimer, that takes the whole notion of directly compensate slaveholders off the agenda and makes it possible to move gradual emancipation all the way to the governor's desk. actually, the council of revisions a constitutional apparatus that no longer exists so, you know, despite what his sister in law, judith what livingston watkins imagined might the future of this part of the state, western new york, this part of the state did not envision itself as having a vested interest in the expansion of the state or the maintenance slavery that did not. however, that all was a good in light and a march of progress was underway as peter augustus jay john jay, his older son, discovered at the new york constitutional convention of 1821, which was called by martin van buren and his allies to radically change john jay, 1777 constitution their vision expanding democ racy by eliminating property requirements which were the sort of standard of 18th century state constitutions. they wanted to eliminate property holding requirements, open up politics to more voters but not all voters they wanted to open it up to white male voters. but at the same time, there were proposals by people like john z ross of genesee county and delaware counties, erastus root to basically create color bar to prevent african-americans voting. and as a side note, i mean, african-americans were voting in new york in the arts in the teens of the first two decades of the 19th century, and sometimes because of the closeness of elections between federals and republicans, they were critical swing voters. and so the republican party, which is really the antecedent of today's democratic party, worked to try to use legisla lation to put up barriers to black voting, to put up bureaucratic paperwork basically to say prove that you're not a slave and go register yourself to prove that you're a legitimate voter, which of course implies time and cost. but at the constitutional convention, they said, let's just put it in the state constitution. and peter augustus j. gave eloquent speeches. one that was successful and one not so successful. he convinced his fellow delegates not to put a hard racial bar on voting, but he could not convince them to do against having a property holding requirement that only applied to african-american voters and not to white voters. and that made its way into the 21 constitution, much to peter augustus j. j's chagrin. the real inheritor and transformer of the j legacy. however, was william j. who lived this house as a contemporary picture, the john jay homestead, which is a great historic site in westchester county. i encourage you all to go there after you visit the seward house, then go south and. go there, william j inherited lived in the house with his father and with the final two enslaved african-americans to receive their freedom. the mother and clarinda and zopa in ultimately when john jay dies in 1829, by that point, clarinda and are free, but they're servants in the house and william jay inherits the house the grounds all of john jay's papers and the sort of responsibility least he feels to write his father's biography which he sets himself. you know, to doing in the next few years and publishes in 1833. and william jay, much later in his life said and here's in using his words i imbibed his words my antislavery from my father and but the slavery that william jay embraced was a much more radical version of anti-slavery than his father ever did. he threw in with the garrison irons and the movement for immediate emancipation, which is the idea based on the notion that slavery is a sin and it's dangerous that the south was sitting on top of a volcano so moral and actual, and that the safest, most practical thing do would be to persuade southerners of their moral and actual danger and emancipate the enslaved people of immediately. and they wanted to flood the south with pamphlets and letters and newspapers to make this moral case and that was considered dangerous and radical and no less a figure than president andrew himself said so. and andrew, postmaster general, with andrew jackson's tacit approval basically says southern postmasters can burn, can interdict, can prevent any of these anti slavery materials from circulating. and it occurred to me the other day this is the equivalent of the russian government. so shutting down internet sites that publish any other thing other than the official line on the war in ukraine. you know, it it really is almost an identical kind of notion, right, that these are dangerous thoughts that we cannot allow to be spread. and they were dangerous. they threatened one of the most important economic and political in america, the slave power, slave power over the economy, over politics. and once william j. threw in with this movement there no turning back. and in doing so, this conservative property owning episcopalian, pro temperance, pro bible and tract distribution, evangelical approach to sort of ensuring the sort of moral fabric the country survive as it move westward. as the economy became more intensely. in other words, a man, a very conservative, tastes embraced a radical, radical cause. and that could be a very lonely thing, because although there thousands of people who joined the banner abolitionism, there were many, many thousands more in the north as well. in the south who thought that this was fanatical or even anti-american. and when you are in for a fight of this length, you need friends. and a lot of his friends came this part of the region, particularly garrett smith of peterborough, new york, in madison, which is not terribly far from here, and garrett smith's anti slavery journey mirrors william j is in lots of interesting ways. his father made a fortune by working with john jacob astor on fur trade and also married into the livingston family. and so garrett is the son of a sign of family that owned 500,000 acres in western new york like and also owned enslaved people like william j. he was a supporter. bible distribution and temperance before becoming an abolitionist and william jay the trauma of anti abolitionist violence is what pushed garrett smith over the edge into the camp of the radicals. in william james case, it was observing from a distance the anti abolitionist riots in the summer of 1834 in new york in garrett smith's new york city and garrett smith's case, it was anti abolition riots in utica in 1835 that sort of pushed him over the fence and into the radical camp. and so these two guys had a lot in common and they worked together in material ways. but also i want to argue in ways that was just sort of psychologically and emotionally sustaining. but let me talk about the work first and we'll talk about the sort of softer but equally important side later. the two of them collaborate and i'm short lived but very important series of long form anti abolitionist publications, the cabinet of freedom, whose most achievement was publishing the the fugitive slave narrative that, is now now known as 50 years a slave by charles that kicked off a generation of sort of slave fugitive, most famously. douglass but charles ball's really kicked that sort of next generation. and william j was an active champion of publishing this. he talked he wrote to garrett smith that ball's narrative, quote, makes almost as familiar with southern slavery and plantations as if you were overseer, which i found so compelling because he's acknowledging. right, this is for a white audience but think of what he's saying. i'm putting the reader in the moral the morally compromised position of being white overseer and in experiencing that through this harrowing narrative of abuse and suffering and relocation, the idea is northern readers will understand what by being there doing, by being complicit or on the issue of slavery. and william jay understood that, saw that in that narrative. and that's very important. but want to talk about someone closer to home literally which is william seward. so smith and jay did something that i think is very modern, is they said, let's let's have a candidate's questionnaire that we're going to distribute the gubernatorial candidates and, the lieutenant and the candidates for lieutenant governor. and let's sell them out on issues to slavery and see what they say as a way of smoking them out and maybe moving them closer, the abolitionist camp, or making them unacceptable to abolitionist voters. and so they issue page three questions. and these are shared with you are did the candidates support trial by jury for accused of being fugitive slaves. that's question number one. question number two, did they support eliminating all legal provisions that, differentiated the rights of new yorkers according to their color? question number, would they support the elimination, the legal legal loophole a loophole that allowed slave holders to bring their human property into the state for up to nine months, which was part new york law. so southerners could bring in slave people for up to nine months. the first debate was the whig lieutenant governor candidate luther british. he gave very satisfying answers to smith and j. he even cited cited peter augustus j's 1821 constitu zero convention speech about the wrong ness of discriminating on voting rights based on color. seward's answer not so laudable, much more wishy washy indeed, he only answered the survey because brady had answered it and he felt like, well, if he answered it, i can't not answer it. seward affirmed his support for fugitives receiving due process in the courts, but he had no interest in repealing the state's constitution's discriminatory voting standards. nor did seward see merit in eliminating the nine month loophole, allowing southerners to bring enslaved people in and out of the state. while seward was more progressive than his democratic rivals, his was disappointing, to say the least. indeed, british and seward both won, but seward got more votes, which suggests that the strategy had not worked, that british lost some because of his abolitionist stance and. seward's wishy washy ness allowed to do better, although they both won 21 year old john jay, the second found the results infuriating. he denounced abolitionists who had voted for seward on the basis of he's the lesser of two evils and invoke ecclesiastes the ancient biblical reassurance of momentarily defeated the battle is not always to the strong nor the race to the swift. garrett smith drew different conclusions from this this attempted intervention. did william jay or did john jay the second in any preparation for the upcoming 1840 presidential race. he suggested that william j. join new liberty party and be the gubernatorial candidate and run against seward. william j. decided that was not such a good idea. he was skeptical of third party. the efficacy, third parties. but he also thought that seward had acquitted himself surprisingly well once in the governor's chair, seward had resisted a demand from virginia counterpart that that new york sailors who abetted runaways be so that was a good sign. moreover, new york legislature under seward passed a personal liberty law guaranteeing accused of the right to a jury trial. william referred to this as the glorious and blessed jury. so he's coming around on seward and seward maybe is coming around to whether correspondent appears to have been limited. j was aware of seward's sending in anti-slavery politics in june 1842. j responded to letter from seward, who, writing a sort of notes on the state of new york and was seeking out information about history of new york. j responded by sending him his searing tract on northern racism because and i want to stress, as john and j. the second and william j got deeper into the abolitionist movement, they did not just criticize the south in fact, they were tenacious critics of northern racism in particularly in institutional settings like the church. jay also took advantage of the fact that he had seward's ear to denounce the slave power and, to sort of expose all the ways in which the fifths clause distorted american politics, not just the electoral college, but now william said the south wants to apply this principle to two appointments to the naval academy. no doubt, he said, they'll start making demands about the army and the diplomatic corps as well. both john and william j. and john jay the second were very happy with seward's march 1850. higher law speech in, the midst of the crisis of 1850, according what william j. he called it. he said it was it. he thanked as an american and as a christian for this speech. and, john, the second, who had had such sour grapes in 1838, said, recited the high eminence of truth and justice, and contrasted seward very positively with daniel webster, who felt had sold out the hopes and dreams of north. so the js and seward are traveling down similar paths. but i want to stress right again, we know the story goes, but it was hard, too hard sledding to. watch politics unfold in the 1830, forties and fifties. and as i said earlier, activists need friends and supporters. so moving back a little to the 1840s, seward successor, a democrat, has william j. remove from westchester bench as a judge. and meanwhile, the crisis over texas is being admitted to the union is heating up and william writes to smith that you know if we if texas in we might need to think about dissolution then we might need to think about dissolving the republic. right. this is the son of a founder. and in an intriguing set of so william j. with his his forced retirement from the bench he and some of his family members traveled to europe in the middle east including to egypt and you can't make this up. he a letter from atop the pyramid of giza about abolition in and he's reflecting on egypt's fall from its know great mighty empire millennia ago and calls egypt a land cursed with that sort of egypt's fall is punishment the reason it's buried in sand and these treasures are sort of isolated is because this is what happens to slaveholding empires. but he looked homeward from his perch atop the pyramid and said to smith, while trembling for my country, i here devote a new to the cause of american abolitionism. as the 1850s progressed, there lots of reasons to feel discouraged as william enters his mid sixties, the dred decision in particular was a gut punch for him. he felt like tony, who is sitting in his father's chief justice position, has corrupted the constitution. he writes to smith, who who, by the way, the the pretext for this letter is that smith says, i'm thinking of coming in visiting you at your house and he launches into this alien base william lambastes chief justice tunney's historic falsehoods and his diabolical then turning biblical. william j anticipates america's proud boasts of material property would be turned into lamentation and woe. you don't get much more testament sounding than that. but then jay caught himself. by enough of this, i intend merely to tell you. i should be glad to see you. but when writing to you, i it were think aloud and he underscores that and i found this very moving. we sometimes forget like the people who have to live these times and stand up for unpopular causes. it can be very discouraging, very frightening, because he knows he may die and never see what happens next to, his country. but he's just sitting around lamenting, anticipating. william j was an active participant in the underground railroad. here is another up upstate new facet of my story. well, his contribution to the movement was with his pen and he wrote amazing pamphlets and books on, all aspects of the issue of slavery. he was hooked up albany's chief african-american underground railroad activist stephen meyers. and shortly after, william james death, stephen meyers writes, john jay the second and sort of gives a tally of how helpful william jay had been in his final years. he said that over the past eight years william had sent along three people from norfolk, two from alexandria, two from new orleans, and most recently two from north carolina. william j. meyers also reported regularly contributed money. the albany activists labor william, a true friend of humanity who remembered the poor fugitive defiance of the law. two years later, meyers reported to john jay, the second that he had recently named a grandson, william john j. meyers, in tribute to family stephen meyers was not the only upstate who took notice of william j's commitment to fugitive slaves the great cause of human freedom. indeed, toward the end of his life, william to make made sure that he left behind a symbolic and also functional legacy in his last will and testament. william j. left to his son john jay second this dynamo of a pro bono fugitive lawyer in, new york city. he left john j. second in trust $1,000 to support his son's work on behalf of fugitives. remember, this is a retired constitution officer, son of one of the founders. not only is he secretly because you had to do it secretly aiding fugitive he's now publicly in his last will and testament saying i bequeath $1,000 to support the cause of the fugitive slave and that 1000 that won a lot of back then. but to it's not chosen at random that's what you would get fined for and abetting a fugitive slave in new york or any other northern state. so is open defiance of the fugitive slave act of 1850. and word got out about this as william jay surely anticipated his word the new daily picayune denounced this legacy as not only legally void but an expression of, quote, flagrant and ostentatious contempt for the nation's laws. william j. according to the southern newspaper, was not a wise man, but a none than rochester, new york. frederick douglass matters very differently. douglass was recruited with support of the j. family to deliver a major public eulogy for william j. although i found no evidence that douglass and william j were knew each other well, they were both very close to garrett. but douglass not have to know william j. well he knew his work and he knew what to of it. he delivered a stirring address to a largely african-american audience and met in a manhattan church in 1859. douglass the racial politics of the event to brilliant effect, the former fugitive stated, who but the slave should lament when the champion of the slave has who should rise to vindicate, honor and bless the memory of william j. if the colored people of this state and country may not properly do so so, he's claiming territory that william j. is are not theirs. he's certainly not the new york orleans picayune version of william j. he belongs to the african-american community. and one of the most apt phrases written about william j. or any other j. douglass declared in the great cause of universal freedom, his name, a tower of strength, and his pen a two edged sword. jay's name that famous founding name, mattered. it lent legitimacy and strength to the cause. but william james pen meant even more quietly, bringing his rousing remarks to an end. the former fugitive frederick douglass gestured toward jay's unusual bequest in support of fugitive slaves. he has taught us how to live. he has us how to die. william j. had may have done most of his from his quiet book field study, the home that he inherited from his famous father. but that work resounded from harbor up the hudson to albany, west to the shores, lake erie and indeed all the way to the gulf of mexico. i think i will leave it there and save as much time as you want for your questions. so please. yes, person the newspapers were distributed by usually so. just to keep the historical society. on the basis of the ideas that the postmaster general and their officers in the south could ban, whatever incendiary literature that they want. and also think of the president of united states using the bully pulpit of, his office, to also say these people are trying to destroy your country. right. that, you know, that's a pretty. and they hate. you know, the abolitionists particularly, william j. he hated jackson for all kinds of reasons. and that didn't help. but. yes, and as a colleague pointed out to me today, colgate, i mean, we think of the mean who can name the postmaster general in 19th century, the postmaster general was, a important cabinet post. and most of what the federal government did and most of its employees were connected to the postal. so this is no minor thing to say, like the entire premise of this radical abolitionist movement is the somewhat naive but still powerful idea that ideas, if freely disseminated about slavery, will win out. and now we can say, well, that never would have happened, but of course, and it wouldn't all by itself. but southerners and their northern allies were willing to take the chance that it might have an impact. and that also tells you a lot. the great question. yes, but you setting out to look at how the values and beliefs transfer of multigenerational did you find any patterns or principles that that might be useful today? well, i so i think that if i've learned anything and we're saying i started this book a very long time ago so i could not possibly have imagined the current moment when i started this book. i mean, truly, you know, that's long. i worked on this, but that said, i think it does have value in the current moment. i think it that we not think of ourselves regardless of what our political ideology as so by narrow notions of what the founding or did not stand for, whether you are in the camp of and there are many want to blame the founders for everything or probably the larger camp that to deify them. i think what the j story about the way that values are transmitted and transformed shows is that you know we have to think of these and we should think of them as more flexible plastic, more open to the moment that william j. d drove him crazy like fingers and nails on a chalkboard because was some truth to it when people would say, did this son of moderate both ideas and temperament founding father throw in with the radicals he must be a fanatic, right? they must have captured him and every and this criticism would come up on and off throughout his life, into his adulthood. and every time it came up, it would you know, you can see the smoke coming out of his ears and in because there is at least some truth to the fact that william j is going to places in both his rhetoric and underlying policy that were not his father's, but for william jay, he said, look, important thing is ends, not means. and the ends matter, the ends that matter are abolishing slavery and. moving towards that time when natural rights and, natural law is the principle that races the color line and in his father's era immediate ism was a nonstarter. but in his era he thought it was the only possible solution to this problem that one way or another was going to blow up the republic. and so that's sort of philosophically the way he rationalized it. but think it's worth noting that he is making moves that that are more bold, but his father in part because he's he's not a creature of political office, you know, every now and again, he would let the liberty party throw his name on a ballot for something, but he never and he never had any that he would win and really want to serve. it's been garrett smith out here in the much more radical burned over district he does get elected to congress and moves in that direction, but that's not william jay's ambition. and so it frees him to, use his platform and his name and his credible intelligence and his willingness to do the research work that tell the truth to tell the truth about the mexican war, to tell the truth about ways in which southern politicians wanted to use the state department to try to force the british enforce slave policies on the high seas to free the amistad africans. right. he had that sort of flexibility because. he was not in public life and not ambitious in that way to go to new places. but he also was living in different times and i think that's really important. right. that what do you take from the you take it as something that sort of prevents and narrows your options or is it a framework in which you can creatively look to solve problems and to bring your moral perspective to to new times, new areas with new technologies and new political dynamics. and so that's what i would like readers to think about when they think about today is if they could do it right, if they could move, beyond the limits of precedent to solve real problems, shouldn't we? yes, sir. i can't quite remember. what's the date for william j. so william dies in november 1858, and this big public occurrence occurs in may 1859. i'm just wondering so that. did he miss john brown or is it so? yeah, he would have he did miss bleeding kansas but he missed that would have been he william would have been gone before the raid on harpers ferry. so would he have been a secret six? you know, i don't know. that's a that's an interesting question. one of william james other causes was peace. international peace. he was the president of the american peace society. so another thing that where he sort of questions the past is, you know is violence actually, including organized state violence really, the best way to achieve political ends so and j family is not a soldier caste although william j the second does serve in the civil war, a lot of elite new york sons. he actually does serve in the civil war but i think he wouldn't have been shocked right that the idea that i mean he always this is you know this is combustible this dangerous the longer we let slavery spread, you know, the more profound the upheaval be so and on the other hand, john jay the second did correspond there is a letter he did correspond with the now prison waiting for his you know his capital punishment john. so like a lot of northerners john brown was particularly they love brown once it was clear that he was going to be a martyr and he and john brown it has to be said, died very well. whatever you think and there's an interesting argument to be made about john on all sides of of his story. he was a hero in his unrepentant embrace of the cause of freedom as he waited for his inevitable hanging by the virginia authorities. and so i don't know what william j. thought, but john, do the second like, you know, emerson and thoreau and others sort of acknowledged his heroism as his life was about to end. and could you give your take on garrett smith what happened to him with him after the john brown raid. i so the question is you know what happened to garrett smith i mean garrett smith a breakdown that he did. yes i mean and you know a lot of people fled i mean frederick douglass fled for life. i mean, they were, you know, knowledgeable, not actively participating, a conspiracy to attack federal facility, which then as now is crossing a line that puts you in a you in a very tenuous category. and, you know, garrett smith's, you know, after you you know, i have to be honest, you know, after the williams after william j dies. garrett smith ceases to be like, you know, sort of an important character to me. but, you know, his he he takes some interesting positions during and beyond the civil war for sure. but that's i don't want to pretend to some sort of expertise or insight that i don't actually have. i've heard different versions that it was about mental breakdown or not. yeah, i think, you know, there definitely other historians far more qualified to address that than me. so i don't want to i don't want to go beyond where you know, where i i'm not going to give a knowledgeable answer. yes. can you talk a little bit about the genes family connection to seward during, his later senate and secretary of state. yes. thank you so much for asking. question so the question is, what's the connection to seward? he becomes a member of the cabinet. and this part of my story, i mean, for john jay, the second the civil war is absolutely because this is in some ways the moment in which the jay family is going to reenter itself into the cause of the nation, of the nation, can plausibly the nation's survival can be plausibly linked to the cause of emancipation. and so he's both anticipates that maybe he can be a member of government but he's not. and so he writes his connections in washington, d.c., sumner solomon, jay's and william seward with kinds of suggestions. he's constantly writing these people saying, you know what, you ought to think. and he's and one of the things is he's a very early proponent of arming, putting them in the us army. he's very keen to persuade seward to keep your eye on the diplomatic ball. you know, here's what i hear is happening in france and britain. we need to get competent people in there, meaning people like me, john, the second i'm waiting here. ready? ready. you know, to suit up like my grandfather in the cause of my nation. it's critical. i mean, he really, really wants to participate, but he's not in seward's network and the way patronage works in washington even though. he's very close to sumner and chase they have their own people from their own to take care of. and so. john jay, the second sort of sits in this position where he feels he has a lot to give, a lot to contribute, and mostly what he gets from seward when when john jay the second makes all these suggestions is, don't worry, we got it you know, thank you for that. you know, kind of like what you get when you write your i write my congressman, you know you know thank you for sharing that but but but we've got this and it's pretty agonizing because john jay, the second actually is right that it's absolutely essential both in terms of the principles of the war and the conduct of the war that african-american soldiers need to be in the army. he's there well before lincoln. is there or well before lincoln ready to be there. but seward's kind of, you know, holds him at bay and john jay the second never gets that diplomatic appointment and he's bitter about it because there is in westchester county surrounded by democrats who whether no matter how they feel after the war, they don't want to be lectured to by an abolitionist and not about to sort of put him in a position of of power. and so what sort of saves this is a very thing. but what if what saves john jay, the second desire to serve valuably in the cause of freedom is he's welcome back into the new york elite that had sort of shunned him for all these pro bono cases and suing the new york school over a racial discrimination case, doing things that really sort of sort of shook up the country club, if you will. but with a civil war, they want people like john jay the second to join the union league club, which is this organization in manhattan and other major by white elites to sort of occupy the space in the public sphere that is being they see as being trampled by democratic politicians who are undermining the war effort. and so having like jay some named literally john jay in the union league club is very important and in the wake of the 1863 draft riots, also coincides with the era where lincoln's like, okay, let's organize black troops and the governor of new york, horatio seymour, a democrat, has no interest in organizing regiments. and so john jay, the second and his colleagues at the union league club basically take on a quasi public function and organize and the transfer of the colors and marching you know, prominently down the street. i might even an image. well it doesn't matter actually i do have an image right. yeah it's my next image. you know the union league club organizes basically, participates in sending off black regiments from new york off to war to seize the patriotic, high ground and to confirm that, this war really is a war about emancipation. and to sort of reclaim the streets of new in the name of patriotism and black freedom after these horrendous violent, racist disorder that rocks new york city to its core. but never gets anywhere with seward and it really, really rankles him that he can't be as a founding member of the republican party where the action is. and then the action sort of finds him and that sort of improves the situation because he really wants to imagine being so imagine spending your entire adult life, he becomes an at age 17 and and here they are so close but war is all about contingency you never know what's going to happen you never know whether politicians are going to stick to their word. abe lincoln you never know whether roger tunney, who's still chief justice for most of the supreme most of the supreme court, for most of the war, there's a million things to worry about. and so he's a great lens for seeing like even on the eve of this great moment where freedom finally be achieved, watching him agonize about whether we'll get this close and what fall apart was a really part of the story for me, because you're there just like we're there in political moments where we don't know what's going to happen and where we think the stakes are high and perilous. and so that, you know, that part of the story sort of comes afterwards and is in later in the book. so thank you for that question. yes, sir. is anyone in their family in the last 50 years who would most closely that. yeah i mean obviously in the big someone or oh yeah in our living today that's a really interesting question. that whether there are people in american life who occupy a similar space or have acted on in similar ways in the name of a family legacy, one thing that i learned sort of indirect answer we'll never have a generation like the founding generation that has, even though people argue over what they stood for. everyone agrees that the founding generation in america in the 19th century, like all 19th century americans, including the confederacy, confederates, embrace and think acting in the name of the founders. and so that sort of there's no way to recreate that level of cachet in american life. the sort of the powerful symbolic hold that the names and legacies the actual founders have in the 19th century can't be recreated. even though we have political dynasties in. this book as again i've worked on it so long, that the first time i publicly gave a speech, it was right after in the of the bush v gore never ending election that didn't end and. i thought, oh, i'm writing about political legacies. and here's to people who are locked in a battle who are both from sort of political and. then, you know, you could play the tape forward. politics changed and changed again and. changed again. but you can never have families in american life like the families who who have that level symbolic power. that said, you know, i can't i can't resist trying. you risking getting myself in trouble right. there are people in american life right now who have decided to risk their political position to, stand up against what they see as mortal threat to the democracy and have been willing to give up office and up reputation amongst their peers. and so we know it's possible in the past and we know it's in the present. it's hard to get people with political power and influence and connections and to take big risks. but it is possible, and i think that is another sort of thing that i think hopefully people will learn from book that it's your own imagination or lack thereof that prevents some people in public life from taking risks that will really resound history in ways that we and their descendants can be proud of. but it's not common. i mean, elite new york families and elite new york episcopalian families with slaveholding, you know, in their past did not leap to the cause of abolitionism in in great numbers but the js did and today we see some thank goodness also risking status and peer approval for they believe in and i think that's an important thing is that those the people we need to celebrate in i think it's easy to do the right thing when things are easy but much when there are real stakes. all right, thank you. thank you. thank good evening, everyone. i'm victor olvera, director of merchandizing for the peabody