With our partners at Elliott Bay Book company. Our civic series in our inside out theories at town hall is a special year for reasons i make clear in a moment supported by the true brown foundation. Our civics programs are sponsored by boeing, the Realnetworks Foundation and partnership. Doctor white will speak 35 or 40 moments and will have time for questions. The mike will rotate that way and be available to you for the q and a later. I would ask you keep your questions concise and in the form of a question so we get to as many folks as possible over the course of the evening, youre sure to have many questions. We have copies of the republic for which it stands available for purchase purchase and Richard White of signature back there. It is a big book, he will cover a lot of material with plenty left unread and unheard. If you dont want to pick up a copy, that is a sales pitch, it is the truth. I want to acknowledge the obvious, this is not townhall. It is a townhall program. As you know our historic home is closed for 27. 2 million renovation including seismic stabilization, new heating and cooling, acoustic improvements, 17 new restrooms. That always gets some applause. And an entrance to a completely reconceived downstairs performance base. Thanks 1000 supporters across the community we garnered today and surpassed 22 million raised for the project, thank for the applause. It is staggering actually. We have 3 million that we will finance the last little bit. New dipper jars, magically maneuvers out 25 or something. Theres more detailed information in the powerful sales pitch at townhallseattle. Org. Check out our digital stage, extremely data like that is where we host audio and video archives. I learned tonight at the event will be the first and only event he does for this book until january when he arrives in new york city. If you like what you hear and wants to revisit it or share with friends go to seattletownhall. Org and share it so they can share with their friends too. We reopen townhall. This is part of the experiment inside out season, neighborhood collaborators building programs around things they are interested in hearing and actively collaborating on programs together. Is this your time Editorial Program . Thank you for being here, we appreciate it. I cant help myself, we have a membership program, 45, and the calendar in the mail tells you everything we are up to and that will help pied piper be back, the old building, the new old building on the other side of the inside out, if you like what you experience tonight join us for more programs by becoming a member. I would like to thank the summit event for hosting us tonight. I want to call out a couple events that may be of interest, sunday evening, the neuroscience behind the power of our brains to influence one another, not through active persuasion but little queues the brains pick up. On 4 october, peter will explain how sea ice is the canary in the coal mine of planetary climate change. On thursday, 5 october, the musical traditions of mali, the second concert in the series. Said that mark dowden on the turning point of the vietnam war, the return of saturday family concerts tomorrow, with casper baby pants. We can talk literary apples with Stephen Greenblatt on adam and eve, being interviewed by leslie hazelton. What it means to have a good death with a celebrity mortician and Rising Star Chamber music, benjamin, and concert hall. That is the taste of insideout this year. Past president of the organization of american historians, Richard White, a historian and professor at stanford and the author of notable books on the american west, native American History and the environment. That implies there were less notable books and he is the author of that not what i meant at all. The ones that i am aware of the recipient of the existing whispers are is professor ward and former professor at the university of washington, his work has won numerous prizes and has been a finalist for the pulitzer prize. He was the former director of spatial history project at stanford which implement Digital Technologies and analyses to illuminate patterns and anomalies for research. He is the author of numerous books including railroaded, transcontinental, and the making of modern america in 2011. 1991, the middle ground, indian empires and republics and the great lakes region. And the organic machine on the remaking of the columbia river. His latest is the republic for which it stands the United States during reconstruction and the gilded age, 18651896. Which is published by our good friends at oxford press and the subject of tonights talk. Join me in offering a warm welcome to Richard White. [applause] good to be back, i taught here in the 1980s in 1990s, we refer to that as a graduate student in the 1970s as i came back this time with Something Else i hadnt thought of in years, first time i came to seattle, the traffic inspired me to think about it. The first time i came here in 1969 i was driving a volkswagen van, fishing rights activists for franks landing near olympia. Somewhere around tacoma we lost our breaks. I remember saying we lost our breaks, i remember them saying keep driving. Which i did. It is a testimony to my own stupidity that i kept driving and also to seattle traffic who made it into seattle and Still Standing there today. In a talk about the book, which is as Everybody Knows a very big book, as a matter of fact, the daughter of one of my friends said it was the biggest book she had ever seen in her life. It is the biggest book i ever intend to write. You might think that Oxford University press commissions these books by the pound and in a sense they do. They are meant to be big books. A short Attention Span theater version of the book. You will get the big themes and the take aways but i wont go into a lot of details. You can ask about those and the questions which is the part that i look forward to the most. There is no lack of american historians who want to write about the civil war, world war ii, the new deal. But the gilded age, 1865 to 1896 is usually flyover country. It is remembered mostly as the golden age of facial hair which we see here, these are the american president s who are the most forgettable in American History, ulysses s grant, rutherford b hayes, james garfield, the immortal Chester Arthur who there is a new biography about, benjamin harrison, grover cleveland. There is an age of jackson, and age of lincoln, an age of roosevelt, there is no age of benjamin harrison. We should be careful before we consign this period to a backwater because if it is a backwater we are living in one today, we are living in a second gilded age. A parallel has often been made and it is a very good parallel. I could start with parallels that are obvious and abundant. Partisan stalemate, check. Immigration ends reaction, check. Corruption in both politics and business, check. Rising inequality, double check. Environmental crisis, check. Claims of white supremacy, check. Attempts to restrict suffrage, check. All of these things were true then, all of these things are true now and i could go on. The period did not produce important political thinking. Not that there werent important figures, even when they were engaged in politics, perhaps the most adroit politician of the time was francis lewis, the womens christian temperance which is now parodied which is a Political Organization in the 19th century. Not only couldnt hold office but couldnt vote. Political activity went beyond Holding Office and holding votes. By virtue of gender, there is nobody in the 19th century who did more to lead the attack on lynching, she did farm work far more than any elected official. In literature, the great age of american realists. Mark twain, william james, william dean howell, a guide through this book. Edith wharton, charles chestnut, if it is a Popular Culture, a period of Buffalo Bills wild west, which is a massive spectacle, a tour for 30 years. Buffalo bill cody is the only real genius ever produced in the American Waste that is west. It is the rise of mass press and is the rise of professional sport. And american Popular Culture which from then until now, the most influential thing about this. The key to the period, the phrase william dean howell used, sufficiency, this is an age obsessed with lincoln. David kennedy, general editor of the series, the only great president and the only hero in my book was Abraham Lincoln and he died on the first page. That is true. Anybody remotely like lincoln, the point was by the end that doesnt matter. It is the insufficiency of the uncommon insufficiency of the common, if america means anything at all, sufficiency of the common, insufficiency of the uncommon. In a democracy, the sufficiency of the common is all that matters, if a common fail in a democracy, it is all over. The uncommon. It seems a thin thread during turmoil of the gilded age, in the second gilded age. Things did not work out as people imagined, they were astonished to find themselves living in a world many of them predicted never intended to produce. A feeling we could have sympathy with today, in 1865 the civil war ended with the north triumphant. The Republican Party was in the south. Theres only been one other time in American History the new deal held power. The republicans knew what they wanted to do. What they wanted to do was create the world of a homogeneous citizen. A cartoon thomas would not stick to his whole life but the idea was unlike before the civil war, everyone entitled for citizenship in the United States, would have an equal set of rides and they were guaranteed by the federal government, that is the same federal government which spread 3 labors across the entire United States. The age of slavery and coerced slavery was supposedly over. Along with them would spread the sovereignty of the United States. The americans claimed the whole continent, they didnt control. By the end of this period they would control. You want to know republican ambitions, the ambitions of reconstruction it boils down to this. This is springfield, illinois, Abraham Lincolns hometown. It was the place the great pilgrimage after lincoln was assassinated would bring him back to springfield to be buried. The idea of reconstruction would be all the United States would look like that. South, west, is going to be remade into a version of the midwest. They imagined that is where we are going, that is what they could achieve. That is not where they were going. That is not what they achieved. What they achieved was this, and chicago. No smalltown america. They achieved a nation of small producers, they achieved the nation of slavery. This is not a world of small shops but factories in chicago or outside chicago and workers, many not born in the United States coming off of work. It wasnt going to be a Peaceful World of small producers but a violent one and one of the things that happens in the book, i do not overplay the violence, neither do i downplay. The United States in terms of public violence was a very violent place in the 1870s and 1880s and 1890s. The question is going between springfield and chicago, to quote another author who has a book out this month, what happened . What happened is the subject of this book. In any history, large trends are very often overtake the intention. The intentions do make a difference. Not everything was a failure. The United States did, to its great credit, abolish slavery. It would return in various forms but did abolish slavery and would expand. We tend to forget how quickly that happens, it had taken 21 2 centuries for americans of european descent to get from the Atlantic Coast of the 100th meridian halfway across the continent. Took a generation. This famous lithograph, american progress, symbolizes this and for many years i, like Many University professors and teachers, taught this as a symbol of american expansion in the 19th century. Writing this book, i discovered the Lucinda Williams song, everything is wrong. This is a picture of early 19th century america. It has nothing to do with late 19th century america. The first thing you can look for is what is missing. There are indians retreating, buffalo retreating, immigrants and pioneers going west, railroad following, lady liberty with the school book in her hand, the telegraph wire, and the problem is it is not there. No federal government. The indians retreat because of military force. The railroads advanced because of government subsidies and railroads dont follow, they lead. Settlers come because railroads recruit them. Everything this symbolizes has nothing to do with the way the country developed. The other thing to keep in mind, even though i am a western chauvinist, in the 19th century, in the west, there is a lot more land than people. If you look back, the population of the west through the period i am talking about is very sparse. In 1890 the collective population, chicago, new york and brooklyn, 2. 8 million people, west of the hundredth meridian. If you took San Francisco out of the equation, new york and brooklyn alone would have contained almost as many people as Rocky Mountain state, Pacific Coast states and the southwest. We conquer the west, dispossess any peoples but by and large it wont be the golden age of the west in the 19th century we often portray that way. It will be the golden age of the midwest. Immigration is going to be much more important than western expansion. You cant detach it. Many of the people who settled washington, california, dakotas, the majority of the people in some states. Are going to be immigrants. The immigrants are going to come in and settle on the countryside but also settle in the city. As you can see here when you take southern and Eastern Europe starting in 1890 the United States is going to be much more diverse. The country that had been largely protestant is going to be more diverse. Homogeneous citizenry which most republicans would imagine, would remain a protestant country by 1900, much larger proportion of catholics and jews. It is also going to be a country which industrialize us. Between 1839, and 1899 manufacturing output increases 40fold. By 1900 a vision of ourselves is still cold, i think. The United States had one half of the worlds manufacturing capacity. One half of all manufacturing capacity within the United States. Corporations were largely compliant to railroads and Larger Companies becoming more dominant and americans hate it. The southern pacific railroad, i could reproduce a slide like this for every minute of this lecture, every second of this lecture. The Economic Growth is dominated by the rich, the powerful, small producers are going to be the victims. By 1900, 80 of manufacturing work were factored but in 1865 like in Lincoln Springfield it would be a world of small shops and businesses. The any quality is symbolized in the things we associate with the gilded age. Prairie avenue in chicago, vanderbilt mansion on fifth avenue in new york. This is in back of the yard. We were supposed to be a goldilocks country, supposed to be in between. Everything we were becoming a country of what they called a dangerous class, the very rich and the very poor. The american dream, to use a word we still use in the 19th century was not great riches. It is something called competency. Competency meant you earned enough to support your self, have something to tide you over hard times, provide your children with a start in life and to take care of yourself in your old age. That is what you wanted. You dont want great riches. You wanted competency. Now competency begins to vanish and that is why they begin to talk about the dangers of life. One of the hardest things to do in the book was to figure out whether all of these changes benefit ordinary american this. They are not going to go into the economic literature but many of you have seen the grass starting in 1800 with industrialization in europe, production goes way up, the wealth of the world goes way up. There is no argument about that. The question is where the wealth goes. 19th century Economic Statistics are not good enough to measure that with any reliability. We dont have statistics on that. What i did following economists and demographers is make basic experiments. If they are more prosperous in an urban world, the marks of being healthier was they should be smaller, they should live longer and their children should not die in great numbers in childbirth. All the studies we have done so far, none of that is true. This is 1800. You see the trend line goes down through the 19th century, rising up only in the end. If americans were growing shorter, if americans were living shorter lifespans, if their children continue to die in huge numbers, it seems to me nothing something was going dramatically arrived. If you measure gdp, they grew. It is not about distrib