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We have been a wonderful family owned Bay Area Institution for over 40 years. 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 and political power today he lives in San Francisco with his lovelypo wife was offered to join us and it is my greatest pleasure to welcome a master storyteller. Think youtube a passage for having me here and the commendation and the poor desperateor hungry writers who are gasping and also for sustaining to keep books available to people in the independent community. And then we dont to go to that place online that we all know about. [laughter] and my most recent book when that which it isnt day prelude but it read to this book. So this is as you can obviously tell it is a political history. Hyphen policies history dynamic and i was interested in writing the kind of books i like toed read and that is to say there is no excuse for a book about politics. You might read it and might not think i have accomplished it, but i have striven in all the books i have done to make challenging political material. So what i would like to do. And the first step of launching my book. This is theta first talk. Im not entirely sure what you will get and i wanted to read very short sections from the book to create a mood. And this is washington. And then i will talk more generally about the book. So in pennsylvania avenue. So even in the besta neighborhood from the future frying household slop the where most members lived in the hall of capital smelled of what woolenn clothing and cigars and those in congress. Slavery pervaded the city like course maneuver. And investors of human flesh. And then to shop. The 3100 and slaved men and d women and children that were woven into the fabric Holding Doors and writing d carriages. Oysters intending tables it reminded whites at every turn the institution was alive and thriving in the capital. Only the semi urban quality. At the western end of thehe National Mall the ugly stump of the aborted washington monument. And then abandoned for lack of financing. And Charles Dickens sarcastically and those that petered out and empty fields there are nothing more epitomized in the capital itself for the new dome like the symbolic fragment of a nation pieces. And the city Jefferson Daviss i 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 voice rose to a war on to a roar he which of of the coat sleeves yank off the collar and hold his arms high as he brought his arms down. The egalitarian was uncompromising no black or white or created by one god all entitled to the same privileges. That is ben wade. Talks about Thaddeus Stevens and as chairman respectively of the Senate Finance committee through the house ways and Means Committee the responsibility for creating Financial Security commensurate with the governments need fell to stevens both men understood better than the secretary of the treasury that is strong and trusting relationship between the treasury and money men was imperative with the combined energies they had much in common they were skillful tacticians and warriors by training singleminded in the Union Straight from the same new england soil. He made his career in pennsylvania born in vermont. Both could be harsh calling sometimes referred to stevens chairman to the committee of means and ways. [laughter] while the other had no tolerance for borders. This was reserved to the point of ics although not gregarious was the most flamboyant man in the house and was better with a sarcastic blasting wit. But stevens was notorious is one of the leading abolitionist and counted himself as a pragmatist but yet could be unexpectedly touched and brought with a small in slave child who played on the carpet and chattered for an hou hours essendon wrote afterwards to his friend the talk by one of the fellow creatures the fresh malediction that hold such the atrocity these are the men driving the war effort. The fourth figure to whom i have great length in the book is ohio representative the northern democrat with southern sympathies and as the physician has also used coming close to treason and although the racial beliefs in particular are repugnant, very repugnant to