Todays first todays speaker. Ata hunter is a professor princeton. She specializes in 19th and 20th century history. A little bit about her publications, which are multiple awardwinning, her most recent in wedlock slave and free black marriage in the 19th century published in 20 17, a book about africanamericans and marriage in the 19th century. It won a memorial prize from the aha and a variety of other prizes. The list goes on and on. Let me mention her first book, to join my freedom, southern. Lack womens freedom another prizewinning book about women in the postemancipation south. Dr. Hunter has agreed to speak with us about the history of emancipation in the civil war, a topic that is always on the peoples agenda for teaching and discussed but we earlier this summer on the history of juneteenth and that is what got us started thinking about inviting her to speak to us about that history that is complicated, exciting and always in need of clarification. Let me turn it over to you tera hunter. Talk about the process of wartime emancipation. What happened and what are the most important things people need to know . Dr. Hunter thank you to greg and kate for inviting me be a part of this. Thank you to everyone resisting and watching. I wanted to start by giving an overview of the process by which slavery was destroyed during the civil war. It is important to keep in mind that this process of emancipation is part of a much longer movement of resistance by africanamericans and their allies going back centuries, but this movement picked up speed in the early part of the decades of the 19th century into than accelerated a great deal during andcivil war between 1861 1865. There are three things i want to emphasize about what we need to understand about this process, how emancipation was achieved. The first thing to understand is emancipation was not the achievement of one person alone. The second thing is that emancipation was not the result of one event or one policy. The third thing is that emancipation was the result of a process, a drawn out process, a contentious process that took place over the course of the war. Lots of people played pivotal roles in bringing about him its patient of course. The president , bringing about emancipation. Of course the president , abraham ,incoln, citizens in the north and africanamericans both enslaved into free. I want to highlight the roles africanamericans played. This is the group that typically gets left out of more traditional accounts, the kind of history were typically taught low the College Level below the College Level. Africanamericans made it clear from the start of the war that they saw it differently from lincoln, the other leaders on the union side for the most part because they saw it as an opportunity to end slavery. They made themselves a thorn in the sides of both the United States and the confederacy by running away from slavery whenever they could. We started to see this at the start of the war in april, but it is the actions of four enslaved men who lived in the hampton roads, Virginia Area who set off a chain of events by fleeing to fortress monroe in 1861. They ran away because their slaveowner was planning to take them with him when he was going to fight in the war going to the battlefields in north carolina. Benjamin butler, general Benjamin Butler decided to treat these four men as contraband of war, which allowed them to stay at the army camp rather than sending them back, which is what the policy was previously. Butler realized these were people being used basically to help the other side and he didnt understand why that should be allowed to happen. Butlers decision was then copied by other officials in areas whereof the the union army was making progress and was eventually formalized by congress as a policy. Wherever the union army appeared in confederate territory, slaved people fled and were housed in contraband camps, campsites that were situated next to union army camps. They provided an important source of labor in those camps. They provided intel, information the war. Ed crucial to over the course of the war, africanamericans, even those who did not run away, began to make mischief by being unruly, cutting down on the quality or quantity of their work, sometimes not even working at all. Africanamericans initiated the process of their own emancipation. Onto theed themselves National Agenda by refusing to standby on this the sidelines. They pushed to lincoln basically to eventually see the military necessity of having the kind of the vision that africanamericans had foreseeing the war as a war of Liberation War as aor seeing the war of liberation. There were another 186,000 africanamericans who served in the army, the navy, and then whoe were two to 3 million stayed on the plantations, helping to undermine the institution where they were. President lincoln had to be persuaded over the course of the war to embrace emancipation. He had promised at the outset not to interfere with the slavery, but he was forced to see that implementing emancipation was crucial to winning the war. 1862, lincolnof came to see emancipation in these terms. At the union army was not doing as well as expected. They were not winning soundly or quickly. He understood how africanamericans were playing a vital role. There were manpower needs. There were not enough white soldiers being recruited into the army. At northern opinion was also shifting. He came to embrace emancipation. To stop the possibilities that europeans would side with the confederacy and recognize them as a legitimate breakaway nation so takeln in a sense did not a lead on the issue but he played the most important singular role as the commander in chief. He was ultimately willing to change his position as the war dictated, which he did quite dramatically when he issued the emancipation proclamation in january of 1863. It was not just one person that can take credit for emancipation. No one event or one policy can also be attributed to bringing slavery down. Most people think of the emancipation proclamation as ending slavery by itself but he did not really do that. The federal government as well as Army Officials initiated several policies before the emancipation proclamation, which helped to chip away at slavery as an institution. Butlers contraband policy was one step. Congress followed up with other policies prohibiting the return of fugitives, outlawing slavery in d. C. And the territories, freepassed legislation to the families of black men who worked as military workers and eventually as soldiers. When the emancipation proclamation was issued in january it announced a major change in the objective of the war. Initially it was a war to bring the union back together again. Now in addition it would be a war to bring down slavery. But the proclamation was not the universal emancipation. It applied primarily to enslaved people in confederate states, not those living in the border states where slavery still existed but those states had remained in the union. It exempted some areas controlled by the union army in the areas of louisiana, areas of virginia and tennessee. Historians estimate it freed 20,000 people who had come under union control, people who were captured or had run the way, those working for them military or working on plantations released to northern entrepreneurs. There was an inherent limitation of the emancipation proclamation. President lincoln could not force the confederates to free enslaved people. They had broken away from the United States. There were not abiding by federal authority. It worked for other reasons and i will mention a few of them. It provided an open invitation for enslaved people to run away and to receive protection from the United States. All, itolutionary of basically authorized the enlistment of black men as soldiers. This was a thing that slave owners everywhere feared the most, having armed soldiers basically, enslaved men be armed soldiers. That was the most revolutionary part of the emancipation proclamation. The third point i wanted to make was that we have to think about emancipation is a process. It is a protracted process. It began at the outset of the war. It was not a Straight Line from slavery to freedom. ,here were fits and starts retaliations by confederates, not even all people on the union side necessarily supported emancipation. Process. It took a while. It took basically working over the course of the entire war for emancipation to be achieved. Once the war ended, in order to neededemancipation, we to take another step, which was to abolish slavery. It required legal abolition to put the final nail in the coffin, which was done with the 13th amendment, which Congress Passed in 1865. Enough states ratified it by december. That is the long answer to your opening question. You. Downs thank one of the things we received a number of questions about was about juneteenth and especially in relationship to your much distributed and widely praised once in essence that ran june 19 of this year. I wonder if you can talk about that. We may end up with some followups. If you could talk about that starting with the history of it and you talked about the movement, what happens if we understand emancipation shifting by time . What happens if as you weiculated in that piece, if understand emancipation as a shape to geographically, as having a geography endocrinology . A chronology . Nd thatunter it is a holiday former slaves in texas declared when they were freed on june 19, 1865. They started celebrating that emancipation a year later. There are a few key facts to remember about texas. It was the last day where africanamericans receive their after the civil war. It was isolated from the action taking place. It was on the far western side of the confederacy. By theargely untouched union army. It actually became a place for fleeing slaveowners that left louisiana, arkansas as they were being encroached upon by the union army. It was a haven for slavery as it was deteriorating in other parts of the confederacy. There were very few black soldiers who came to texas. Another key consideration was there was a violent backlash by confederates. That is partly what caused the delay. After the war ended in april, they were still armed, still basically attacking africanamericans who tried to claim their freedom. They started in galveston and worked their way across the state. They lynched africanamericans, they caught them fleeing. The process was fiercely contested in texas. It is ironic because texas did not see a lot of action in the war. The action heated up oddly enough when the war came to an. Nd in april texas slaveowners were holding out. They thought they could help sustain slavery for longer period of time. They were hoping they would get compensated if nothing else. Most people were not freed until the army came in in june and basically had to fight once again to put down those confederates who were living in the state of texas. I think there is this notion that africanamericans did not get their freedom at the time of the emancipation proclamation in texas and that is what marks what is different about them, as i have already said, not very many people in the confederacy got their freedom as a result of the emancipation proclamation. What was different in texas is what happened between april into june and the fact that there were retaliations going on april and june and the fact that there were retaliations going on. Africanamericans started to mark this occasion, because it did take another year for them to realize their freedom in 1866, a year from when general granger came into galveston and announced that they were free. We are now having conversations about confederate monuments for example. One of the ways that i like to think about juneteenth is to think about it in terms of almost a kind of counter history part of what those confederate monuments represent assert aere erected to counter history of what happened in slavery and the civil war. Africanamericans in texas were celebrating this history and their achievement. They emphasize the fact that this was not something given to them, this was something they fought for and they achieved. When we think about these commemorations, they started in texas, they migrated to other states as africanamericans left texas and now they are being celebrated in virtually every state and even in some foreign countries. Prof. Masur thanks so much. Another thing that is interesting about that story is thatthe emancipation juneteenth commemorates is an example of that process you described at first where freedom comes to different people in the south at different points. There are a lot of contingencies involved. Where are the u. S. Forces at any given time . Who is able to escape into to where . Who has powers locally whether it is occupying Union Officers or enlisted black men versus areas of the confederacy where there were no u. S. Forces until after the war ended . Of that process into the variability of the process. We want to come back to some of these questions about commemoration and holidays, but before we talk about that more, i wanted to ask you because your work has been so particularly important when you have written about the experiences of africanamerican women and more recently about black families, could you talk first of all about how the experience of wartime emancipation might have been different for women as opposed to men may be you can add children if you want. You can open the door to talking about marriage as well. Just euro mind the people in it people in remind the attendance, you can ask a question in the q a box. Dr. Hunter one of the ways in which men stood out were the opportunities available to them compared to africanamerican women. I mentioned those first runaways in fort monroe virginia. These were men. They were motivated by the fact that they would be separated from their families when they ran away. We initially have a flood of men running away and then the women into children follow them women and children follow them. The men are welcome. The military officers could envision what to do with the men. Much more unsure about women and what women do. Could do. They saw women interfering in many ways. One officer referred to them as encumbrance. An womens labor was crucial. They washed, they cleaned, they. Ooked, they were nurses they did labor on confiscated plantations. They were hospital attendants. Children when they whirled enough to perform these kinds of jobs were they were old enough to perform these kinds of jobs were also important. Some of those tuning and may have read or heard about susie king taylor. She was a woman who was a fugitive, former enslaved person who worked as a cook, teacher, laundress for a South Carolina regimen. If you read her memoir, it is striking that she is making a case for future generations to understand women were important. They played an important role. They were brave, loyal, they put themselves, their bodies on the same way in the exact that men dead but in ways that were important for the war effort. Many of them were punished for taking the stance that they did. The biggest distinction between women and men of course was the fact that men were allowed to enlist in the army and navy as soldiers. Being in the military came with privileges. What was striking to me too while i was doing the research for the buck was noticing how quickly northern allies were was noticinge book how quickly northern allies were willing to recognize black men their ns after because of their military service it wasnt considered a baptism by blood where men literally their military service. It was considered a baptism by blood or men literally their lives on the line for the United States. Men were considered ushered into freedom, ushered into citizenship and women basically were secondary. They received their emancipation and ideas about citizenship basically through men, being the wives of men, being the daughters of men. That is the real distinction there. It is important again to emphasize that women saw their services as vital. When we things like so they sawrmy themselves as making vital contributions. Much. Downs thanks so i wonder if we can bridge from in boundhe question in wedlock, it is one of the central questions, which is the gendered experience of emancipation, to make a strong case for the gendered roots of emancipation. What is it about centering marriage that helps you to capture that gendered experience of emancipation in bound in wedlock . Dr. Hunter marriage reached a turning point for africanamericans turning the civil war during slavery marriages were not legally recognized. Because of the federal governments intervention, outsiders coming in, northern missionaries especially that africanamericans were sort of marriage,to legal even though what legal marriage meant during the context of war was murky, but northerners embraced the idea. It grew from antebellum ideas within the abolitionist movement. One of their strongest critiques of slavery was the ways in which familycally destroyed integrity. Eager to puty marriage on legal footing for africanamericans in the context of the war. When i was doing the research i was interested in tracing how that process occurred. I found what i think is the first missionary reverend lockwood who was working at fort monroe who was very interested in this question of marriage and immediately started to see the value of marrying couples, often in groups, marrying multiple couples at the same time, giving certificates to mark their relationship. This process of africanamericans adopting this marriage adopting under federal authority, we see them on the one hand eagerly embracing marriage. Your marriage is being formalized. We also see resistance because for many of them they did not think their relationship needed fromve that extra sanction the state. Insee this process unfolding the contraband camps. We see it on the plantations. These were confiscated plantations that were taken over by northern entrepreneurs, military officials and so on. The federal government was interested in creating what they called free labor experiments, on intomer slaves the process of becoming fullfledged citizens, becoming wage workers. They were interested in creating a familybased labor system. Marriage was considered the basis for organizing those families along a patriarchal idea. Federal agents into missionaries saw marriage as a way to inculcate certain values like sexual morality, work ethic, married men were told to assume the role of being the head of the household and basically have a wives and children as your dependents. We see that happening on the plantations and also we see on those plantations how the sort of double standards about measure about marriage because in those circumstances womenthe patriarchal family ides not being fully applied in the case of africanamericans. Another arena where we see isriage start to take hold in the case of the military. So, the federal government is, you know, very eager to marry men, when they joined the army, to encourage those who already , to families and wives basically formalize those relationships and to remarry again, under the flag. I was just reminded of one particular man, roger young, from florida. Who ran away to South Carolina. And his wife, basically, who followed behind shortly thereafter. They had already been married for seven years, but when they arrived, he basically was told by his Security Officer that he needed to marry. That he needed to marry and he was married there in the camp. That was a common theme of soldiers being married. Was also important because it gave men power as soldiers. It became a way for them to advocate for their families. Again, women and men are in a very different position and it allows men to write letters on behalf of their families, to ask for resources, to ask for protection on behalf of their wives and children. Thanks so much. That captures so well the various ways that marriage was so central to the process of emancipation, but also the different kinds of investments in it so these state actors, whether it was white ministers or army officers, they were looking for one set of issues to be resolved through marriage among africanamericans. While africanamericans themselves, who had been deprived of the right to marry for the most part during slavery were looking at these institutions in different ways. I wonder if you would be willing to kind of tell us a little bit more, maybe this grows out of our direct purview to connect to your current work, but more on what you see coming back to the institution of marriage in africanAmerican History. What keeps you interested in that complexity. Dr. Hunter well, i think i always come back to where i started with this project. What became a book, but initially, i had not planned to write a book about it. I had put aside some research that i had done, when i was revising. I had accumulated more records related to family and to marriage, and was really struck by what i was seeing in those records. I felt that the literature at that time did not capture the kind of complexity, the ambivalence, the contradiction, the ways in which africanamericans were negotiating with family. That is where i started to think about. At first, i would do an article on reconstruction. And then, really thought to fully understand what was happening in those records after slavery ended, i really had to go back and trace the family going back to the antebellum era and Going Forward to beyond reconstruction, going towards, into the 19th century towards the 20th century. Thats what really has always drawn my attention. Africanamericans themselves, how do they understand marriage . What does intimacy mean to them . There is a tendency to look at men as providers and protectors. But, what i saw in those records was like emotion, affection. Men saying, writing letters, having letters dictated to their sisters who they they had been separated from for a long time. Catching them up on the news, but also saying can you send me a lock of my nieces hair . That kind of affection we dont see represented. We had not seen represented in the literature very much. I think thats what brought me to it. The fact that family was so central to freedom, to the way africanamericans defined what freedom meant to them. So, they were constantly reminding, you know, the federal government, northern missionaries, entrepreneurs, the people they were coming into contact with in the context of the war that they were not just individuals. Even if they just appeared on their own, they had a family somewhere else and they wanted to make sure those people were being taken care of. Soldiers were very clear. They volunteered to fight. They wanted to fight from the very beginning. They offered, they were rejected. When they got the chance to fight, they were clear why they were fighting. Yes, they were fighting for the union, for the United States, because they saw that as their source of their liberation. But, they were fighting also for their families, and to the extent that the government could not protect those families while they were on the battlefield. They didnt see any reason that they would want to give up their families if they, you know they wanted to make sure they could do whatever they could to protect their families and have the benefits of being soldiers and treated fairly like other soldiers would have been treated and their families would have been protected. It is such a theme of importance in terms of the ways in which how the family has been used against africanamericans. How its always seen as a mark of something that is lacking, something that is wrong. Something that goes against what is supposed to be preferable, supposed to be ideal. That is kind of a moving target that has happened over the course of centuries now. That was also of interest to me as well, thinking about the controversies around marriage and the family that have trailed africanamericans throughout the entire history of africanamericans in American Society. Gregory thanks so much. Thats a terrific answer. We are going to start interweaving some of the questions that have been submitted. Just a reminder to people that are watching. If you want to use the q a. Function i want to thank the person who submitted the question. I know the links i mentioned in our introduction were not visible yet in the chat. We resubmitted those so hopefully they are. If they are not, feel free to submit that as a q a. We have a couple of questions that relate to this. One of the first relates to the questions of women who can disappear in the context of the history of marriage or family, especially of women who remain unmarried whether by choice or not. And by other people, whether orphaned or abandoned, who exist outside of that family structure. And how should we understand their terms of emancipation . Does that make sense . Dr. Hunter yeah, definitely. So, single women are interesting because they were very much marginalized because they were not married, not attached to men in the context of the civil war. That subjected them to often being treated poorly because they didnt have they didnt have standing in the same way that a woman who was married, even a woman who was married under the terms of slavery. Single women were especially around the army camps, they were considered sexually compromising in some ways. Compromising the men. Single women had a hard time working against those types of stereotypes. Its interesting, i focused a lot on the rural areas. Whereas in my first book, i focused more on cities. If we look at the two in conversation, the single women are leaving the countryside after the civil war because there is a lot of pressure coming from plantation owners in the period of reconstruction and beyond. They want husbands, wives, children. Family units to work on the farms and plantations. Those women who are single or widowed or never married, they end up going to the cities. They get pushed into places like atlanta or nashville or raleigh or new orleans or wherever because they can find work there. They are finding work as domestic workers. So, its important to see whats happening, sort of how the marginalization of single women, you know theyre marginal on especially if we think about the 1880s. Once we get into sharecropping, it becomes even more rigid because those landowners actually enforced they have in some contracts in some states that they want to hire family units. That really puts women in the position of not being able to make a living in the country. Whereas, it is different for single men. There was a place in the agricultural economy for single men. They could move around and do odd jobs. And be fine. But, women basically had to move in order to be able to take care of themselves. So, we see a disproportionate number of women living in cities as a result of that. Kate thank you so much. And thanks for connecting us back to how labor also forms the shape families took and vice versa. Since were in the middle of the commemoration of the 19th amendment, i think Voting Rights for women are on peoples mind. Weve had questions come in about the relationship between emancipation and womens right to vote. Whether you have seen any initiatives during the civil war for people arguing for africanamerican womens right to vote. And then the question about what were some of the twists and turns of the discussion of black womens right to vote that came at the end of the war . If you could address that in some way, that would be great. Dr. Hunter theres definitely there is sort of opportunities as well as tension around who should get to vote in the aftermath of the civil war. Theres the Womens Movement growing out of the abolitionist movement, advocating for womens rights after the civil war for Voting Rights. It ends up it is black men who end up getting to vote first. But, even in that process among africanamerican women, we still see a kind of viable Political Engagement on the part of africanamerican women. In terms of the ways they are participating in the political culture. Even though they dont legally have the right to vote, especially in those early reconstruction years, theyre defining the vote as theirs, partly theirs. As the vote like, who what the vote will be, who will be voted on, what positions people will take. Those decisions are made collectively in very boisterous political gatherings. Women are participating, children are participating. Men are expected to go to the polls. They are expected to go and represent the sentiment of women and children that had gathered together and deliberated. So, we see women taking off from work to go to the polls, to guard the polls. They are carrying rifles to guard the polls because there is a threat from the other side, the opposition. We see women wearing buttons to represent their candidates. Its happening in the rural areas, the cities. Domestic workers are complaining about the women taking time off from work. Even the women dont have the right to vote, they really are being very active in the politics that is emergent in the aftermath of slavery. Gregory great. Thank you so much. Lets go to another question that was submitted during the talk. And that is about the attention given the complex dynamics of families now, how do we tell accurate history of africanamericans of the age of freedom without romanticizing them . Dr. Hunter yeah, i think that is a great question. Because there is that tendency, or there can be that tendency and certainly some have fallen prey to that precisely because africanamericans have been under attack. It makes scholars defensive in trying to sort of tell the story from the other perspective that is not being told. So, for me in writing this book, there are lots of moments that come up in the book where it does not look favorable to the individuals involved. So, i kind of embrace that. Again, it goes back to that, to me, the idea of the complexity. So, not sugarcoating for example, the problems of couples, right . In writing about marriage and all the things that are wonderful about it and how important it was for africanamericans to embrace it, it is also important to understand that the process of marriage making is contentious. If you think about what africanamericans had to do, they had to sort of bitterly reconstruct their families, their marriages under vastly different conditions. The slaveowners were factors. Now you have these two people who have to negotiate what marriage means to them. What is their relationship going to look like . Is it going to look like more of the conventional patriarchal family . Is he going to look like egalitarian. These conflict are all over the record. We see it especially with couples not getting along. They are going to the freemans bureau. Theres fighting, anger. Theres resentment. Theres cheating. So, this is what happens in families, period. Families in American Society are no different for africanamericans. I think just embracing that and acknowledging the entire history and not just choosing to only focus on the socalled positive. We get that it comes up a lot in popular culture. In movies. Why cant we have more positive images . That kind of thing. It is important that we have images that actually reflect the real human being more than it is for us to have socalled positive rather be more true to how people represented themselves. How they understood their own life. How they lived their own life. So, that is the challenge i think scholars should do. Kate part of whats amazing and probably a lot of people here know, and you have viewed these records so well, just what kind of personal dynamics are revealed in those records and other records from the time that are amazingly rich and kind of unusual also from the 19th century. Well, ok, in the interest of time and to get through one of the things that a lot of people really wanted us to talk about, i want to come back to these questions about we could talk forever about the social history of emancipation in the civil war and africanamericans during that period. Thinking about the specificity of juneteenth. We know there have been local celebrations of emancipation and differing traditions of celebrating emancipation throughout American History. A celebration of august 1, emancipation of the british empire. Washington, d. C. Had its own celebration of emancipation. There are other traditions throughout the country depending on where emancipation came to that particular place. I just want to hear your thoughts on the idea of, first of all, the growing awareness of juneteenth. The idea that could potentially become a National Holiday or what will we think about that . What is gained, what is lost . Also, the question of the tendency that when these things become increasingly recognized, that they could also be coopted or commercialized. That some of the meaning, whether subversive or specific to africanAmerican History, gets sucked out of there when those things happened. If you could speak to the set of issues, that would be great. Dr. Hunter yeah, so, i think i am all for making juneteenth a National Holiday. Im certainly open to that and i think we should have more conversations about it. I think it does not negate necessarily continuing those local traditions of celebrating emancipation. A lot of them have fallen by the wayside. They dont have the same longevity and vitality that was managed to create over a very long time. I think having a moment that we can mark, you know, the end of slavery, juneteenth seems like a perfect way of doing that. I think just looking at comments from people in texas, a kind of ambivalence on their part. Some of them want they dont wanted it to be necessarily broadcast. But, i think it marks new beginnings. It marks the second founding, kind of like a reset button after the civil war. We were able to sort of go back to those founding principles and universalize them. To make freedom more meaningful. All those kind of amendments that happened in the period of reconstruction. All the protection that were afforded. So it is a reminder as it was celebrated going back to 1866 as the beginning of something that really was a significant achievement. The end of slavery, the beginning of citizenship rights. The beginning of american democracy. A real democracy or at least there was a period where we have this real experiment in creating a real democracy. It would take another century after that to fully realize it, what we might call the third founding. The civil rights movement. In any case, i think it is worth considering as a National Holiday because also not just important for africanamericans to celebrate. You can think about it as marking the second founding. And then it becomes a holiday that everyone can embrace. As far as being coopted and commercialized, it is hard to avoid that in our country. What holiday hasnt been coopted . Martin luther king day. Lincoln, it used to be abraham lincolns birthday, president s day. Sales everywhere, the commercialization, products being sold. I think there are ways of working against that with communities working to remind people, having celebrations that are actually authentic that remind people of the value of this history and this moment of commemoration and what it means. Again, as we are thinking about tearing down, it is another reminder of that history that the lost cause tried to erase. It brings us back to a reminder of what emancipation meant. What and how important it is in our nations history. Gregory thanks so much. One more question. We want to apologize for the many excellent questions we have received beforehand and during. It is a tribute to your work and your presentation how many questions we have received, from the very detailed to the very broad. But we are conscious of peoples time. We will ask one last question and then we will look towards wrapping up. This is a question submitted ahead of time. It is one of my favorite questions but i did not submit it. Your book was so moving and powerfully written. Can you share any writing advice for new authors and historians . Dr. Hunter ok. My writing advice is very simple. Write. Write often. I think that is the best advice, or that is the lesson i have learned over the course of my career. After you make it past that first book, you turn it into a book. Future books, you are starting from scratch. It is a hard thing to do in the context of Everything Else that you have to do, as a professor teaching undergrads, graduate students. Being engaged. Whatever it is you are doing, not to mention anything else in your personal life. So, one of the things i have learned over time is, you know, when you are working on something to keep your head in it. So, writing even if you are just writing a paragraph, a page in a day. Just keeping that rhythm if you have 20 minutes, half an hour, it is better to do some writing than not do writing. Because once you get to that point where you may be blocked off a larger block of time and you havent been writing, you are kind of backtracking. Where was i the last time . Went and started writing whatever it is you are working on. My advice is to develop a practice in which writing is youre writing consistently, regularly even if it is just little bits at a time. Because it then accumulates. You end up with more than you think you will end up with if you do it that way as opposed to waiting for those elusive moments. I will write on friday, but i have not done anything monday through thursday. Kate thank you so much. That is great advice for everybody, including myself. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] cast off. D to you are watching American History tv, covering hes history cspan style with archival films, event coverage, lectures in college classrooms, and visits to museums and historical places. All weekend, every weekend, unseen for three. On cspan3. Richard thank you for attending halfway. Met him reagan encouraged him. Freedom of the press, i should just mention, madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press. Its freedom to print and publish things. Not the freedom of the institution that we call now the press. Every saturday, at 8 p. M. Eastern lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Next, a legal and tax historian discusses his book, making the modern american political state. He explains how and why the United States shifted from generating most of its revenue from regression consumption taxes to a more progressive tax on income with the passage of the 16th amendment. The legislative archive hosted the event in december of 2014. Richard thank you for attending todays researcher talk. Im richard mcculley. And for the legislative archives. Todays talk is the last of 2014. A year when weve really been treated to some splendid presentations by some of the centers most significant