The wilson quarterly. And on the oped opinion and book review pages of the boston globe. He the New York Times, usa today and the washington post. He lives in manassas virginia. Please give a warm savannah welcome to robert wilson. [applause] thank you. I appreciate that introduction. Im hoping your app works a lot better than the app that was done for the iowa caucuses. [laughing] i trust it will. Youre probably actually tested it. And thanks to all of you for coming this morning on this cold morning. Its very pleasant to see soo many of you here. Its very pleasant to see cspan here and what you think cspan for all that does to support book culture in america. I would be tempted to say normally what remains of book culture in america, but on a day like today its very easy to be optimistic about the state of books. Books. I love being in savannah. My wife martha and i come here as often as we can and we live outside washington dc. And we have a in the panhandle of florida. We used to dread the 15 hour drive until we decided that we can stop off in savannah along the way and go for dinner and we look forward to the trip very much. As chris said, this is the third biography ive written. It is not really a trilogy. None at all. All three books are related to 19th century figures is careers were at the height of the middle of the 19th century. The first one was a book about an explorer named Clarence King and it was nice and are doing out west and explored california in his early days. Fans of major peaks and sierras and name some of them including mount whitney. Later did a survey of the great basin. One of the Great Western surveys of the 19th century. One of the people who accompany him on that survey, was a very fine photographer named timothy sullivan. And he had worked with matthew brady, the civil war photographer who is also a portrait photographer new york. I started reading about brady and was thinking it wasnt really good book about brady and perhaps for good reason. I thought well, brady turned out to be kind of hard subject because he did not leave a lot of written material. He may have been illiterate actually. Brady had a studio on Lower Broadway in manhattan. Clinic at a quarter of the street from Barnum American Museum. And Barnum American Museum was one of the biggest tourist draw in the city of new york. At the time. And barnum took over what was a very kind of dusty old museum that had sort of mineral specimens and things like that. Completely transformed it. He had flags flying from the roof and lights going up and down broadway. He had a band that was out of the balcony overlooking the street. The musicians were handpicked to be so bad that they would draw people into the museum. [laughter]. It was quite a lively place. Brady the photographer was very successful but i couldnt help thinking of him as looking kind of longingly across the street at barnums museum were so much was going on. And after a while began longingly looking across the street two. Partly because barnum was in a way of a subject, sort of everything that brady was not. In that he wrote a wonderful autograph biography and he was just a lovely writer. He was an exuberant fellow. Brady was thought to be or have a certain charm. His charm was kind of bringing people in. And seating them for the portraits and making them comfortable. But it was nothing like the boy it larger than life character that barnum was. So Clarence King which led me to brady and brady led me to barnum. One other reason to think of this possible trilogy is because is probably my last biography for the very reason i just dont think there is a better subject than barnum. Ive had so much fun spending years with him. Ive been thinking about him or talking about him for six or seven years. This may be the last time i do that because i want to move on. One thing that led me to brady, or led me to barnum was working and brady was that he went around to talk to maybe 25 different opinions about brady and always had a picture or slideshow showing his photographs. And one of them was a photograph of barnum. I introduced the photograph. He has a phineas is slightly an amusing name. There was also i think something about the way barnum looked in his photographs. Its sort of middleaged, he was rather handsome man early in his life and his wife that he was very handsome older men. But in midlife, maybe not so much. Im just going to read a very brief story about barnum telling about himself in his autobiography which is he lived in bridgeport, connecticut and he was very much became very much a republican prout lincoln man. But douglas came through bridgeport to speak during the president ial campaign. In his against lincoln. One of his friends said, what you know about douglas. To which barnum replied, is a red nosed, clear eyed, dumpy chap. Looking like a regular barroom local. To which is delighted friend responded, that mornings paper has said the douglas was a very image and personal appearance of pt barnum. [laughter]. Signing the other reason that i would show the photograph of barnum would to various audiences would be this kind of chuckle, i think people feel like even to this day, that they know barnum on some level. And obviously the name barnum and bailey and the circus, it is a name that weve all known throughout her lifetime. It ended as you know, in 2017 but so there is that name has carried on of our knowledge of barnum descendent extent. I think we also know him because of one thing from his early part of his career as a museum order. The famous sign of this way to the egress. Bejeweled and the story in school. He grasping the exit. People thought the egress was some fantastic beasts. And so they would fight follow the sign and find themselves on the street. [laughter]. And then they would have to pay another quarter to get back into the museum. That story is probably true. In the other story on the other think the real thing we know about barnum is that he said the phrase, there is a Born Every Minute. That story is almost certainly false. It is hard to prove that something didnt happen. The barnum road i would take hundreds of thousands of words himself. At least that many and probably many more words were written about him. Theres no sign anywhere that he ever said it. Raven thought it. Because to me the most persuasive argument against is having said that, is the relationship he began to develop with his mouth is museum goers, and inside is museum was a theater. So there were people who would go to melodramas and he would put on there. In the later in his circus career was really just the last quarter of his he was always very, very careful about his relationship with his audience. And he did not ever sort of overtly exploit them in a way that a sucker Born Every Minute would suggest. After he bought the museum, he just spent enormous amounts of money to bring things in from all over the world, wild animals, objects, people of interest. And he continued to charge only a quarter, maybe a quarter twice if you follow the egress sign, and half of that, 12 and a half since, for children. His whole philosophy of this centers on as, word that is usea lot called humbug. He called himself the prince of humbugs. In todays world, the word humbug tendsds to mean somebody who exploits or tricks other people. But in his usage, he candid used the word come he defined the word to be what he did, which is he thought of humbug as creating some kind of a stir, hiding something to get publicity, get people in the building. But the crucial part of the idea of humbug was once you got been in then building or in the tent, they had to get much more than they bargained for. So if you brought them in under pretext, say, to see the remains of a mermaid, which was one of his famous exhibits, once they came in, they had to feel that when they were in the museum, well, maybe this isnt the remains ofbe a mermaid but there are all these other things here that we can see, and so people would go away happy. Thats to me one of the really crucial things about how we should be thinking about barnum. Barnum was not perfect, however. I have to say that in balance, i mean, he was Wonderful Company always for me, reading him. He was so witty and take a turn a phrase so well that i always enjoyed being in his company and i was often won over by him. One of the things that made him a great character to write about was that he wasnt perfect, like the rest of us, he was very imperfect. And one of the challenges and one of the things that really made the jump interesting day by day t for me was to think about the things he did in various contexts. One is, well, he may have done this, i then everybody did it in that day, that this was sort of a historical characteristic. You might think of his treatment of animals, which he was a very, very dedicated to bringing exotic animals to exhibit at his museum. It was often a grisly process to capture these animals, to ship them. Robert it was a process that involved the death of animals. In fact the Smithsonian Institution benefited from this thing that happened. Barnum would often send the carcasses of bones to the smithsonian. They have an amazing collection of such things as a result. Today, this is an unsavory event. And, it is one of the primary reasons why the circus in the Barnum Bailey ringling circus went out of business. When they stopped exhibiting elephants, we stopped going to the circus ri. We have certain values, and there are other values at the time. Have you way that into what or what you think of him. I am not a person who feels what i guess is called presentism that we have no reached a sort of state of perfection that we can look condescendingly on everyone who came before us. There are obviously ways in which our opinions about things like grace have evolved and even if they are far from the state of perfection, they are obviously better than the way they were then. So try it is hard as i could to give himld a break on the things that i felt were kind of related to the way people thought and his time. I also tried to think of him though as a man, and think about was he ever cruel to people. As a rule, i think he loved people. Any treated people very well. And many of the people who worked for him, socalled freaks, often were very devoted veto him and very grateful to h. It was not very nice to his wife. I dont think that is something that we can give a Historical Perspective read he came from a culture and new england that was very much all about practical jokes. Kind of playing tough jokes on people making people look silly and he often played jokes like that on hisis wife. And once after he had been in england for several years, he came home unexpectedly and hit a wife and two or three kids at the time. In fact, one of his daughters had died in the interim that he had not come back. He came back without announcing that he was coming and he sent somebody to tell his wife that she must come to the museum to find out some information about barnum and it was clear that she would think that he had died that someone had gotten notice of this. When she came and there was morning to greet her. And this is a great practical joke on her. I think the cruelty of that is selfevident. So it was really a matter of sort of going through his life and think through these things. Maybe because i am a journalist, i seem to be focusing on the negative here. It was a person who brought incredible amount of joy to millions of people and was dedicated to that as well. In his essay, he was just such a great company. I think one of the things i would, being a journalist and wanting to focus on the negative, i would like to start of talk a little bit about his attitudes towards race. One of the things that was interesting to me about barnums career for his life as a whole, he lived from 1810 1891. So he spanned the centuries most reamost. One of the things that i really admired him our came to admire about barnum was that he changed throughout his life. I felt he did. He became a better person did it is especially remarkable because he had a lot of success early on in his life. He became sort of notorious and he notorious. And he became quite famous. But i think about how few people who had success early in life, dont feel that it is sort of a reward for their own perfection as human o beings. How many people like that actually change and become better through their lives. Barnum, a bit of a problem with the grape as they say. And he began to notice the people around him, that he respected were similarly inflicted. And eventually gave up drink. This was at the age i would say his late 30s. And became, and like all reformed people, he became a great advocate for temperance. And one thing that is really not known very widely about barnum essay became one of the really and most in demand temperance speakers of his day. And on a par with kerry nation. It hundreds of pre temperance speeches. He gave them. In fact later in his life, when he would go out with the circus when the circus was on the road, he would often schedule these temperance speeches. Because he was going to be in a town he had never been in before filing his partners to ask him to please stop doing that because of many people going to his speech rather than going to the circus that is hurting the intake there. So there was one way in which he changed his religious universals universalist. He was very opposed to sort of hardcore religion and very opposed to, while this was the day of sort of the great revivals and very opposed to any Movement Towards confusing the roles of church and state. In fact. At the age of 21, he started newspaper for the very purpose of fighting the idea of an religious party developing his part of connecticuts is the time im getting pretty far away from race but i will get back to it. As a result of his temperance speaking, he got to know a lot of the famous preachers of the day and they became friends of his. Many of those who were also abolitionists. So they had in effect on what he wrote. In one of the first acts thats got barnum into the public eye and in some ways healed reputation the farmhouse to this day. One of the other ways that we know the name barnum is often if they an scrupulous seeming person, i wont name name any such person who achieved high office inhi this country, thered be people would be an were immediately slapped the barnum label and say, and it would not be a complementary label. Thinking if a suspect in his first act. He did a lot of things in his teens and 20s and 30s. He started this newspaper, he ran lotteries, he had a dry good stores any work in them. When he was in his early 30s, he felt that his lifes work should somehow have to do with being a showman with exhibiting acts. Any at the time in a boardinghouse in a store in new york city. He read in the paper about an act that was on display in philadelphia. In a person who is associated with the acumen the store and talked with him about it. The act was a blind slave woman who reported to be 161 years old. To beo further claimed the nursemaid of george washington. And she would go around and she would tell stories about little george. And she would also seem sort of ancient sing them, nobody ever heard them before. By the way, i love this perspective. I feel like maybe i went into the wrong business. [laughter]. But anyway, barnum hurried up hurried down to philadelphia from new york to see this woman whose name was joyce. And he was favorably impressed with the possibility that she could be quite old. He never admitted throughout his life as he often did about other things he did that he suspected that she was not 161 years old and the Life Expectancy for a white woman at the time was about 40 years old. I would dare say for slave woman, it was less. But anyway, she was blind, sort of cripple, one of her arms would not move but her tongue moved very well, she was ever guitar and spoke in a strong voice so barnum decided to end the people who she was supposedly owned by a person in kentucky. And some of the people had paid him for the right to exhibit her. But they wanted to get out of that business of barnum made an offer and brought her to new york after kind of creating a buzz in the c newspapers and ben to exhibitor. It went over very well. He took onto her through new england and at one point, when he got to boston, he became acquainted with b the man was famous for having displaying automatons. Creations that were mechanical because somebody would maybe be in a box under the stage, would seem to talk and respond to questions. It occurred to him because the crowds and began to follow up for her, to plant a story newspaper saying that she was actually in time on, made out of indian rubber and gadgets and things like that. And sort of became a typical ploy for barnum he had an act. He would either create a kind of counter argument about the person or whatever is on display and then, sort of challenge audiences to come and see for themselves. If it was something in his museum, people may have paid once you go in and see this act whatever it was and then he would of course be encouraging come back again i do think you look theoo length of s career, one of the things that he knew that he was doing was it was not only people and would live lives that were pretty isolated, they you know, this was when he was born the telegram or telegraph had not been invented in the tote photograph the railroads were not running. And throughout his lifetime, people who lived in small villages like the one he was from, bethel, connecticut, get have more m access to the worldt large. I think one of the things that barnum did through his museum and his exhibits was to bring that world to people who are eager to knew more about it. In one of the ways i think one of the things hene was doing was he was challenging people teams are critical since an essay common or come and decide for yourself. So that is the sort of pretty part of this. In the case of this joyce half the seemed seems pretty awful, joyce was exhibited for a few more months and become static and she had died in barnum had an arrangement the surgeon in nw york to do an autopsy of her. The surgeon had been eager to sort of show that he had been a hoax. So barnum rented a big menu advertise and charged admission for this autopsy. Apretty awful. He invited churches and things like outcome. And as it turns out, the preacher the surgeon i mean found that all of her organs were in good shape except for her lungs, she had died of tuberculosis. He felt that she could not have been more than 80 years old. This did not slow down barnum at all. He continued, he was not at all she grinned and this was the case and she needed to get various kinds of publicity. So this is barnum to me at his worst. There are other instances where he had racial views that were not that we