In that vein, we ask that you turn your cell phones off because you wont need them, you can look your cell phone for the next hour i guarantee it. It was good to be completely mesmerized by our author, that we are so proud to bring you today. Thank you for supporting book passage. We are an independent bookstore one of the very few remaining independent bookstores. [applause] thank you. We are very proud of that fact. Thanks for coming to our core the madeira location we have a beautiful store in the siri building in San Francisco. If youve never been there, its a beautiful store, go in, by a few books and have dinner in the city. Its a wonderful way to spend your evening. Remember, book passage is so much more than just a bookstore, we bring to you probably a thousand author readings every year, if you can believe that. 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Thank you to our patrons we want to keep the doors open for another 40 years and serve you. His newest book the First CongressFergus Bordewich tells the story of the most momentous and most Productive Congress in American History. When the members of the First Congress met in new york in 1789 the new nation was still fragile. Torn by sectional differences. Hobbled by competing currencies, crushed by debt and just stitched together only tentatively by the constitution. The constitution provided a set of principles but it offered few instructions about how the system should best operate. Leaving it to congress and the president to create the machinery of government. Had congress failed, United States as we know it may not exist. Abraham lincoln led the nation but Congress Actually directed the civil war. This fine history written by an amazing storyteller offers a riveting history in the book argues that convincingly that congress in the end got it right. Fergus bordewich is the author of seven nonfiction books, is also published and illustrated a Childrens BookPeach Blossom spring and wrote the script for pbs documentary about thomas jefferson. Is also edited and illustrated book of eyewitness accounts of the 1989 tiananmen massacre. He is a frequent book reviewer for the wall street journal and other publications. He was born in new york city and will growing up he often traveled to indian reservations around United States with his mother who served as the executive director of the association of American Indian affairs. Then the only independent Advocacy Organization for native americans this early experience help to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American History. The settlement of the continents and issues of race and political power. Today he lives in San Francisco with his lovely wife, who is also here joining us. It is my greatest pleasure to welcome to our book passage stage, a master storyteller Fergus Bordewich. [applause] thanks. Hows that sound . Thank you to book passage for having me here. I had my commendation to the store for sustaining a thousand writers every year, poor desperate hungry writers who are gasping for an ear also for sustaining the writing life and keeping books available to people in an independent venue so you dont have to go to that place online that we all know about. Im going to be speaking tonight about my most recent Book Congress at war and i appreciate the shout out from my last book which was the First Congress which came out three years ago and in some respects i wouldnt call it a prelude but it led to this book. This is, as you can obviously tell, a political history. Personally i find politics fascinating dynamic and dramatic. Im interested in writing the kind of books i like to read and thats to say its no excuse for a book about politics being boring. You might read it and differ you might not think of accomplished it but ive striven in all the books ive done to make two challenging political material accessible. I think what i would like to do, this by the way is right now this minute is the first step in the launch of my book. This is the first event this is the first talk, thank you. Im not entirely sure sure what youre getting at here but i will do my best. I go from here until tomorrow to washington and speaking at the National Archives library of congress and washington after this. I want to read very short section from the book to create a mood. This is washington in early 1861. Then i will take off from that and talk to you more generally about the book. A pole hung over washington that january. Rain turned pennsylvania avenue into a muddy trust. Even in the best neighborhoods yards steak from privies, the rooming houses where most members of congress lived in the halls of the capital itself smelled of wet wool and clothing, cigars, and charcoal that struggled to warm the under heated chambers of congress. Slavery pervaded the city like the stink of horse manure that everywhere but domes the streets. Although free blacks now outnumbered slaves in the Capital Investors in human flesh had merely to cross the Potomac River to the markets of alexandria to shop the 3100 enslaved men women and children who were still inextricably woven into the fabric of Washington LifeHolding Doors driving carriages cleaning the mud from boots hawking oysters tending tables, suckling white babies waiting on tables touting trunks reminded whites at every turn that the institution that was for sharing the nation was alive and thriving in its capital. There was this tentative only semi urban quality to much. That ended the National Really just a field where sheep and crowds grazed rose the ugly stop of the aborted Washington Monument like a finger lopped off the first joint banded for lack of financing. Little had changed since 1849 with the visiting Charles Dickens sarcastically described its nondescriptive dwellings into wide streets that petered out in empty fields as the city of magnificent distances. Nothing more aptly epitomize the unfinished city than the capital itself surrounded by a astrewn around the building like a symbolic fragment of a nation and pieces washingtonians felt the probable sense of doom the city, Jefferson Davis his wife irina felt as her husbands last days in the senate slipped away was like some kind of mausoleum with no one visiting, no dinners or parties, just a sullen gloom and pending overall things. On january 27 ohio representative claimant to landing him wrote to his wife, i am able to do no good here so i sit and obliged to sit quiet and sorrowful condemned as one who watches over the couch a beloved mother slowly dying with consumption to see my country perished by inches. Americans who had taken their nations immortality for granted knew that things would never be the same again. The empty seats in the house and senate they spoke of revolution in terms of more graphic than any of the stormy words that had been spoken during the months passed. With the departure of the southerners gloom shaded inexorably into fear that events were spinning out of control and that the worst had really come to pass. Worrying rumors flew through the air that the defenseless capital would be attacked by a virginia mob that a coup dctat would come any day and unexplained fires around the city were part of a terrorist plot. The landing him mored his wife that an uprising was so likely he might have to send her to safety someone loans. Others dispatch their wives and children to philadelphia or new york for safety. Of the nations entire army 16,367 men few were stationed east of the Mississippi River and most of them were in the seceding states. Even the armies gentlemen in chief Winfield Scott who loathed president buchanan made his headquarters in new york city. Scott quickly recognized the gravity of the danger to the capital, however, although washington boasts several Militia Companies they were more social clubs than military units in many of the members were sympathetic to confederacy. The National Rifle in particular had quietly been supplied with arms and you tillery like abits commander openly admitted he intended to prevent Union Volunteers from reaching the capital. Government spies also reported a plot informed provisional government. Three companies of light artillery were ordered back on the frontier and another contingent from west point but would take weeks for them to arrive. Where would the crisis and under citizens asking each other representative john mclaren of illinois worried not only will state secede from the union but counties from states and cities and towns from both and this is the work of disintegration and dissolution will go on and on until the whole Frame Society and government will be engulfed in one bottomless boneless chaos ruin. The panic wasnt limited to washington, with Coastal Shipping shrink by half, shipyards and ironworks on ab new york city commercial froze hundreds were collapsed entirely from the self suddenly disintegrated. And most people give up all hope of saving the government to anticipate general bankruptcy revolution, mob law chaos and ruin. President one president you can add remains supine. It in the echoing halls of congress too angry or too ashamed to speak this is what it felt like on the cusp of the war when we think about the civil war most writing frankly is about what happened on the battlefield and politically about Abraham Lincoln its easy to understand more books have been written than any other Single Person its not hard to understand but there is more happening politically and most of what is happening on capitol Hill Politics led to the war the state of the Union War Effort to our revolutionary conclusion but the story that happened is epic of anything that took place between the opposing armies and its also a human story about men very few of whom to save the worst crisis in the countrys history a radical republican from indiana and elbert riddle wrote mr. Lincoln is cabinet in the 37th congress to do anything or everything and to fight the greatest civil war of history it came upon them as the utter surprise in Congress Face the multitude of existential challenges with the war of unimaginable magnitude so could the republicans who were managed to govern with the sanctity of southern property that would bring the estates more quickly to their knees but when the constitution survived the constitutional civil rights in the name of National Security how will the war be paid for . What a break the northern economy . What should americans do about slavery . And those you are willing to tolerate as contained in the south and the democrats had already broken into should africanamericans be recruited to serve in the army when white soldiers fight alongside them assuming that the north triumphed should the Southern States be broken up there was no consensus on any of these and suspicion from the executive in particular with states rights in the north as well as the south deep racism many unionists especially the border states like kentucky maryland and delaware regarded any type of tampering with slavery is basic property rights. Representative critchfield for one approached slavery unionist to declare if you take from us today the right to hold slaves how long will it be before you take from us other Constitutional Rights . And with the majorities of both houses of congress. And the absence open the gates to the era of legislative sexism to change American Society beyond recognition. And then to reinvent the nation Financial System and enact forwardlooking legislation that was lost for decades by southern intransigence. In the course of doing that congress laid the foundation for the strong activist Central Government they came into being. And to permanently alter the relationship with the federal government and to enshrine civil rights as part of the federal government. And with the urgency with astonishing productivity the most effective in American History john sherman a republican from general Tecumseh Sherman to be a monument that are so farreaching and their effects congress to raise hundreds of thousands of troops, more than 1 million to the union when volunteers ran out. And then with a more those generals against the south and that recruitment and then to provide financing with the First National currency and long before lincoln emancipated the slaves Congress Demanded it and enacted incremental during abolitionism from a french belief of public policy. The homestead act so the Pacific Railway act to linking the heartland of california by rail the largest most expensive Infrastructure Project undertaking in the United States at that time. So to lay the groundwork for public and state universities nationwide and also the last three i mentioned are not commonly recognizeds but happily the widespread monitoring of the dissidents created a precedent of private communications and unpatriotic political activity that has become a feature of presentday life. Not least, congress began a racial and economic revolution to overthrow the economy and transform 4 million slaves into property into soldiers and free men and women cultivating culminating in the 13th amendment as Frederick Douglass said the angel of liberty has one year of the nation and the demon of slavery for the other they both shouted into the ears of congress. In this book, i treat congressional politics as an art with the endless seeking of compromise and the transmutation of ideas into policy but generally to keep the story within historical present that i want you to feel the anxiety uncertainty and the fear and despair as well as the patriotic fervor and sometimes irrational confidence that would characterize when nobody knew what the outcome would be the Union Victory was never ordained in 1864. This isnt the book of politics in the abstract i would like to say to the men and women who practice it and to capture their sound of their voices and their passion that still stir our concern and emotions. Most members were personal politicians and lawyers and farmers and journalist and opinionated and brilliantly eloquent and combative the house of representatives later wrote there is no place to save your reputation previously acquired no place was so little consideration with the failure of beginners. What he gains here but sheer force of his own character and if he loses and falls back to expect no mercy and manners were only notionally better in the senate. And when you read the debates that members that were writing about their fellow members. Three of them were republicans of these outspoken radicals representative Thaddeus Stevens of pennsylvania as well as the master a parliamentary strategy and the de facto majority leader in the house then wade of ohio was a driving force in the senate against the confederacy joining the joint committee on the conduct of the war that oversaw the Union War Effort but the main the conservative from maine was more than any other man responsible for the legislation to enable the north to win the case of war. Im not sure how the time will work out but i want to give you a snapshot of these three guys. I love them. I love writing about these men. And i think one or two lines so first i will read about then wade chairman of joint committee on the conduct of the war northeastern ohio and then has remained restrained until now with the debate the whole angular man with high cheekbones and a sharp eye with bulldog obduracy. In which the merciless i of a gladiator. His style of speech was offhand and profane. And with his iron gray hair his