[applause] good evening and welcome to the New York Historical society but im the New York Historical president and ceo and thrilled to see all of you this evening in our beautiful Robert H Smith auditorium. Tonights Program Gives me liberty, history of americas exceptional idea is a part of our Bernard Schwartz established Speaker Series and as always i k like to thank mr. Schwartz or his great generosity which is enabled us to bring so many fine speakers to this stage and i also want to thank all of our Chairman Council members who are in attendance as evening and to thankk you for your great suppot which enables us to do our work. Tonights program will last about one hour and it will include a question answer session but you should have received a note card and pencil as you entered the auditorium and this afternoon or this evening and it is not my colleagues going up and down the aisle with note cards and pencils in the note card will be collected later on in the program with your questions. Following the program there will bee a book signing in our ny history store and copy of our speakers books will be available for purchase. Tonight we are thrilled to welcome richard rook back to the New York Historical society. As a senior fellow at the National Review institute and a Senior Editor at the National Review and the author of numerous books including john marshall, the man who made the sabine courts and Alexander Hamilton, america. Sorry. I got to know him when he was our historian chief historian curator and on the blockbuster show Alexander Hamilton, the man who made modern america way back in 2004 and he and we were way ahead of our time in the hamilton craze but it caught up with us. Richard rook was a awarded the National Humanitarian medal by president george w. Bush in 2008 and his newest book, give me liberty, was published just this week. Congratulations. Our moderator this evening is our own trustee, sterling professor of law and legal science at yale university. Before joining yale faculty professor [inaudible] clerked for judge now associate Justice Steven breyer when he was on the u. S. Court of appeals for the first circuit. In 2017 professor amar received the Bar Foundation annual outstanding Scholar Award as well as the howard art lamarr award and is the author of numerous books including his most recent, the constitution today. We are grateful the professor amar is our very own, as i said, a trustee at New York Historical. As always before our speakers begin their conversation id like to ask that you make sure that anything that makes a sound like a cell phone is switched off and now please join me in welcoming our speaker this evening commack. Good evening. Its great honor and personal pleasure, a treat to be here with one of my heroes. Rook i have admired richard ever since the first time i saw him it was my very first week at yale college and i just turned 18 and that week and listened to rick hold forth the Political Union and ive been following his word ever since. His latest is, as a part, this book, give me liberty a history of americas exceptional idea and its dedicated to the american people. It is up it is slender and has your trademark with and in fact in your decisiveness but also a big book in a way because most history books dont try to take on such a broad sweep of time. Talk a little bit aboutf the choice that went the basic training of the project. Writes, i am making an argument in this book and i am saying that the characteristic of american nationalism is our concern with liberty. That is the thing that makes us not to canada and not mexico and not whatever. This has been going on a long time and it began before we were a country and began in our colonial past so in this book i take 13 episodes, each of which produces a document of some kind and the first one is 1619 and jamestown and the most recent one is 1987 in berlin when president reagan gives the tear down this wall speech. Its not quite 400 years but for centuries of concern with this concept of liberty to defining it, fighting for its and announcing it. You know, three of the episodes are colonial. They are the four independents or the declaration of independence because of this concern of ours goes back that far. You have to trace it back that far to begin to get a grasp on it. Now, you wont be surprised to expect to learn that there are 13 different episodes, he described them as snapshots in an album, a marital album of over these 400 years but we cant do all 13 probably in the time we have today so since this is the New York Historical society we will focus on the new york aspect of my story but why would you, just before we focus in on that line tell us what is the 13 episodes are, if you can and you do all their team. Okay, the 13 are the first are the minutes of the first meeting of the General Assembly at jamestown. Jamestown colony in 1690. Number two is the flushing remonstrance, 1657. Number three is the trial and particularly the argument to the jury at the trial of john peter singer in 1735. Number four, the declaration of independence. Number five is the constitution of the New York Manumission Society and that is 1785. Number six is the constitution, 1787. Number seven is the Monroe Doctrine which is 1823, number eight is the seneca falls declaration of sentiments, 1848. Next is the gettysburg address, 1863 and next is the new colossus which is written for the pedestal of the statute of liberty and i paired the two. The poem has to be seen along with the statue but the poem was written in 1883 and the next is the cross of gold speech, 1896 and the penultimate one is the fireside chat on the arsenal of atdemocracy, 1940 and the last , as i said, we tear down this wall speech berlin, 1987. Wild hundred 13 out of 13. [applause] we will not talk about 6019 in jamestown but we are going to talk about something that i will be honest with you, i had never even heard of before you help teach me about it, the flushing remonstrance. What the heck is that . This is when new york is still new netherland. It is still a dutch colony and it is being governed by a man who turns out to be the last governor, Peter Stivers and. I lived on 16th street and third avenue near stuyvesant park and they have a splendid statute of peter and it really captures the mans personality and he looks vigorous and he looks energetic and of course he has a wooden leg and lost it in the wars against spain and looks like he would not want to cross this guy. Hes very much wants to be in charge of everything. Although he did a lot new yorkers can be a lot like that. He reminded me a little bit of giuliani. [laughter] but somewhat crazy but also effective. Despite all the good he did for new netherlands he was a bigot. He was a dutch calvinist, his father had been a minister and he wanted to impose that on his domain here in new netherlands. He tried to throughout lutherans and jews at different points but because there were jewish investors and directors in the Dutch West Indies company which employed him he was told to back off and let them alone. Then he decided to pick on quakers. There were no quakers on the directors of the Dutch West India Company so hideous freehand for a while. Quakers then were an extremely countercultural religion. They did not recognize [inaudible] and they were not doffed their hats. They used the same forms of address for everybody. They let men and women preach equally because they believed everyone had access to the inner light and so this made them very very peculiar and frightening, certainly to Peter Stivers in. They started appearing in new netherlands and he handles them in various ways and he expels a couple of them and almost whips to death another one and then he decides okay, we cant have any of them in here, we are just not going to let them in at all. He then we will send it back and anyone here who harbors one in his house will be a crime. You cannot let a quaker in your house. He promulgates this. And then 30 men in flushing which then is now same place it is now and that was part of his domain and they sent him a remonstrance im a public letter puand they tell him we cannot oy this order of yours. And they say its for religious regions. We would do on two other men as we would have other men do unto us andey this is the law of chuh and state and this is what god and the prophets tell us to do. They send thiss letter to him ad its a remarkable stand for freedom of conscience. What moves me most about this and you can find this online, six of them could not find their names. They did not know how to spell their own names so they made marks. But they lay down a marker and they were standing up to this guy and he leaned on them. He had them arrested. He brought in the guy who was the actual scribe of the document a man named edward hart and the dutch kept very good records so we have the record of his interrogation of edward hart and its like he told you to write this and no one told me to write this and well, how did you come to write it and i was just listening to the sentiments of the people. Where did they express their sentiments . No place in particular but where did you write this . It waser in so and sos house. Its an interrogation and no beating up of him, no torture but its really an interrogation. He made them all crack. He did make them all crack. But quakers continue to come in in defiance of his order and he decided to send one to amsterdam to be tried and he wasnt going to do it here but would send them across the ocean and then finally his boss even though there were no quakers among them decided lay off these people too. They said to him we dont like quakers anymore than you do but we want population so if they are willing to come in mind, let them come in and he finally does back off. Speaking of thinskinned people running new york like you mentioned Rudy Giuliani but the next one is the trial of john peter singer and we have another thinskinned person, now the governor or royal governor, english. Yes, english royal governor but connect tell us the story. Thats right. The english, of course, concord, New Amsterdam and then in the 18th century we had a series of royal governors who have been sent over and some of them are worse than others and the New York Historical society owns a portrait of one of them in womens dress because he allegedly that should be a Rudy Giuliani saturday night live,da just saying affects connect this man allegedly would lurk on the street corners at night and tugged mens ears and womans dress. This picture depicts him in drag although its probably a forgery done by a hoax, done by his enemies, political enemies but there was another man, william cosby, who becomes governor of new york because he married the daughter of an oral and when he gets his appointment it takes him six months to get over here from england. Arena time the job of governor was filled by a substitute. When cosby arrives he says well, you owe me my back salary for these six months i wasnt here. And they dont want to pay him and it goes before the local courts, presided over by a manned name lewis morris, the judge of the local supreme court. Rules against cosby. So, Cosby Byers Morris and puts in morris place a much younger man, last name of delancy as in the street down on the lower east side. And what morris does to fight back iso he hires an immigrant named john peter singer, german immigrants, to start a newspaper. Newspaper culture has already started in the 13 colonies. There are the Franklin Brothers have started a newspaper in boston. James and benjamin who later, much more famous than his older brother. Every sniffing into town along the coast has one newspaper, at least one newspaper and out new york has two because the previous one was the official one. It would print all the official notices and laws in what not to. Obviously it was in the pocket of whoever the governor was but now there is a rival one, the weekly journal and for a year and campaigns against governor cosby. Against governor crosby they run bogus ads for one of cosbys supporters and cosby doesnt like it so finally on his own sayso he has peter zenger arrested come issues of the newspaper burn and does grant him a trial. So the supporters higher from out of town the best lawyer at the time in british north america was a man named andrew hamilton. No relation to alexander but hes a lawyer in philadelphia who comes up to defend his client. As a law professor you would be very interested in the courtroom drama here. Because the law, the relevant law is the law of seditious libel which atva the time it waa recognized law in angloamerican law, and it criminalized criticism of rumors on the grounds that that could cause violence and upheaval and rebellion. Obviously we dont want that so, therefore, we will not permit criticism of rumors. And that is the law of the land, both in england and its colonies. So what hamilton does, and its a brilliant performance, hes basically asking for jury nullification, asking for the jury to ignore the law. He cant say that and are times when the judge pulls him up short, will you make a certain argument. What hamilton always does come hes twice as old lady knows his way around the courtroom, and so he will apologize and then you make the same argument later in a slightly different form. Its a brilliant performance and is also a very eloquent performance. He is saying what other recourse to friedman have if their big miss ruled . They have to have the right to complain because how else can anything be redressed if nobody knows what it is and nobody can talk about it . And if you dont allow this, the only alternative you are allowing is revolution. He mentions the overthrow of the roman kingdom by the first brutus. He mentions the english civil war, but he keeps coming back to this point that the right to complain to oppose and expose this rule is something that every free man has. The jury agrees with him. A leave the box for for a veryt time. They come back, these 12 ordinary new yorkers, id give their names, its an impressive group. Weve never heard of any of them, but they again didnt lie myth of flushing basted up and they quit acquit peter zenger. The effect of this is colonial governors will not bring actions for seditious libel after this because no jury is going to bring in a conviction. So the effect is pressed in colonial america would be the freest in the world. So this is in 17 1735. You say you said you mentioned the names, you do that threat. You want us to know these names and some are recognizable but today, many are not. Theres a name you mentioned before, you mention the name of lewis morris. Right. He is the backer. The next chapter isnt really completely a new york story. It happens down in philly, declaration of independence but my copy of the declaration back since a look at the next and you have them, theres a lewis morris they are. Same guy . Grandson. Grandson, okay. Theres going to be another Family Connection that you will tell us about. So were going to pass over the declaration of independence. You focus especially on the odes to liberty in the declaration of independence and there are other aspects of as well. Declares independence, for example, which has International Law significant and all the rest but we will jump over that becauseal we cant do everything so you just have to read the chapter for yourself to get his views on the declaration of independence. But now lets leapfrog to the constitution, not of the United States yet but the constitution of the new york its evenrelated come like the New York Historical society, whats up with that . Some of the chapters in this book are about filling gaps. Because i argue that this concern with liberty is centuries long and it is central to our experience but, of course, we also violated it in numerous ways and bad to correct those violations over the course of our history. The largest most inflamed because the issue didnt finally in in the civil war most painful was human chattel slavery. I wanted to do a chapter on a Northern State because we forget that this wasnt just a southern thing. New york was a slave colony and it was a slave state after independence. I learned in writing this book that new york city had more slaves than any American City except charleston. Thats partly a function of our size. We become the largest city but still that is a startling and shameful statistic. So after the revolution there was a scandalous event where some free blacks living in new york were about to be lured or shipped or take into charleston or the bay of honduras were a lot of slave trading went on. New york and other free towns were prey to man steelers or black birders, they were also called, people looking for runaway slaves but if he could find a runaway slave they make try and pick up some free blacks and carried them off into slavery. The authorities had stopped of this. It was a scandalous event and so there was a meeting in new york of an interesting combination of people. There was the elite of the city and of the state, governor George Clinton was part of this turkeys the first post independence governor. John jay, the great diplomat patriot and the young 20 these ranks, Alexander Hamilton who had a very good war, washington step and you can see them musical. But these men were als