College professor bradley bircher, former Washington Post reporter Molly Mccartney examines the u. S. Military industrial complex, jack cashin takes a critical look at the crash of flight 800, and booktv visits peoria, illinois. For a complete television schedule, booktv. Org. Booktv on cspan2, its 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, its for serious readers. And now were kicking off this weekend with John Strausbaugh, author of city of sedition. Its about new york city during the civil war. [inaudible conversations] good evening. Good evening. Thank you so much for coming out here to politics prose. Thank you so much for coming out here to politics prose for yet another one of our enlightened and lively author talks. You cant hear me . Okay. Well be quiet. [laughter] and at that cue, please let me please silence all your cell phones at this point, and also let me just go through a few other housekeeping details. So the author will speak for about 20 minutes, 20, 25 minutes, and we will break into a question and answer period. During this question and answer period, we kindly, kindly, kindly request for you to use the microphones over here by the pillar and then or just that one, okay. So this, this talk is being taped for broadcast on cspan and also, in addition to recording your questions for prosperity posterity [laughter] we want you to, we want to be able to, the audience members, other audience members as well as the author to be able to hear your questions. So, please, use the audio, the microphones over there for the question and answer period. Thank you so much. And also as a reminder, copies of city of sedition are on sale at the register right by the door where you entered. So without further ado, city of sedition the history of United States during the civil war, the history of new york city during the civil war, is a very appropriate book for revising and reconsidering history. History in regards to the civil war, we have often encounter ored a very narrow dialectic perspective of the civil war where the adversaries are pretty much divided along the Mason Dixon Line between the slave holders in the south and the industrialists in the north. But thankfully for the past couple of decades, theres been a movement to basically deconstruct this very faulty lens of looking at history, and isty of sedition by John Strausbaugh is one of those books that continues moving us in a better, in a better direction. So it seems to have taken a new yorker to write a book about new york that reveals how complex the city was during the civil war and how, of course, different parts of the city, how new york city itself was definitely entwined with the cotton industry, and because of that not everybody sided with Abraham Lincoln as some history books expect us to believe. John strasbourg covered Downtown Manhattan history in the Manhattan Press be, for the New York Times he wrote and hosts a seriesed of articles and podcasts on new york city history. He has written for the Washington Post, npr, pbs, his previous books include reflections on the birth of elvis, faith rock til you drop, and, of course, the village. A former resident of Greenwich Village in hells kitchen, he now lives in brooklyn heights. Please welcome John Strausbaugh. [applause] thank you. Can you hear me . Is this all right . Okay. I used to do theater, so im good at can you hear me . [laughter] i want to thank politics prose for having us, thank all of you for for being here. Its very nice of you. And thanks, booktv, for being here as well. Its entirely appropriate, i think, to come to washington and talk about new york city in the civil war because the two cities had very high level of interaction, of course, and effect on each other. While washington was the nations capital, new york city was the capital of just about every other thing that mattered. It had a huge impact in creating the conditions for the war and also in the conduct of the war. But it was a hugely confused impact as well. New york was both a great boon and a great bane to lincoln. No city raised more men, money and is material for his war or raised more hell against it. Its easy enough to explain its huge influence just starting with its size. It was huge. New york city was huge. And at this point, were talking about just manhattan and not even just manhattan, just the southern half of manhattan. From 42nd street up was pretty lonesome. In that space you had, in 1860, around 800,000 people. That was 200,000 more than the nearest big city of philadelphia. If you add brooklyn which was then a separate municipality but, of course, they made a metro poll tan area, that was another quarter Million People. D. C. At that point was, i think, 75,000 people. So it was tiny. So new york, its this huge thing sitting up there. Its the center of banking and commerce. There were more banks in new york city than in the entire plantation south. Its center of merchandising. We dont think of new york as a factory town, but it was, in fact, the biggest factory town in the country. And not just then, for a long time afterwards. It had the biggest and busiest seaport, and it was the media center. The tribune and the herald were national pape beers, they went out all around the country. People all around the country read them. I say it was hugely confused because new yorkers were fighting their on civil war amongst themselves, and it was even in some ways a north and south conflict within the city. Is and from the south came cotton. After the spread of the cotton june in the late 1790s, the cotton trade, the International Cotton trade exploded. The u. S. Exported half a Million Pounds of cotton in 1800. It was exporting two billion pounds by 1860. Cotton represented 60 of what the u. S. Was exporting to the world, and it was 40 of what was going be out of new yorks harbor. So it was a huge deal. The next biggest commodity was, i think, tobacco, and it was less than 10 . So cotton threads tied new york and the south together, i believe, in a long and codependent relationship. The cotton south, the plantation south and new york city grew up together. The explosive growth of the cotton plantations straight across the deep south was largely funded by new york banks, because thats where all the banks were so, of course, you came to new york for your funding. The new york merchants supplied the planters with everything from the pianos in their parlors to their plowshares to the clothes they put on their slaves. New york not only shipped a significant portion of cotton, but new york harbor was where those ships came back to filled with european goods, and that made new york important to washington d. C. Or washington city, as people called it back then. It had a big impact on the federal government because the government drew large, large portions of its revenues from the Customs House in new york harbor. There was a period where the entire federal budget was coming from the Customs House in new york city. Now, it wasnt just the bankers and the shipping magnates who profited from new york city. The thousands and thousands of workers were directlyover indirectly profiting from cotton. Dock workers, obviously, but also people in the shops, people who worked in the hotels and the gambling houses and the restaurants and brothels where hot of southerners lots of southerners would treat new york city as their home away from home during the summer months. Everybody was in various ways dependent on maintaining the cotton trade which means they saw it in their best interests to maintain the plantation system and slavery. New york workers at also feared that if the four Million People enslaved in the south were suddenly set free, theyd all come flooding up north and take their jobs away. The big irony there is that the 12,000 free blacks in new york city, the exact opposite was going on. White workers took their jobs from them, froze them out of the unions. So wasnt really going there wasnt really going to be a problem with white guys fighting for their jobs against black workers. So because of cotton and because of those tie ands that long and enormous tie to the cotton south, the majority of new yorkers not all new yorkers, but the majority of new yorkers were protosouth and antiabolition. They were, in effect, what people called copper 45eds at the time, northerners who were sympathetic to the south. Its also worth mentioning that new york was a major northern hub of the transatlantic slave trade. Doesnt have a direct effect on slavery in the country anymore because slaves arent being brought into the United States by that point, but there was still a huge international, transatlantic slave trade. Ships out of new york were picks people up in africa and taking them to be slaves in cuba and brazil and places like that. Congress had declared this piracy, which was a hanging offense, as early as 1820, and then everybody turned a blind eye. It was an open secret that new yorkers were investing in slave ships and the profits were enormous. Many, many slave ships were fitted out in new york harbor and sailed out of new york harbor right under the eye of the harbor masters. If they were caught, the slave ship captains which didnt happen very often, by the way, because the u. S. Navy was, like, a dozen ships, and the atlantic is pretty big but if a slave ship captain got caught which didnt happen very often and brought back to new york to trial, it was very, very, very rare for him to get convicted. More than half the time they never even made it to the trial, they were just allowed to slip off the jail. Judges and juries were notorious toly lenient with them. If they were convicted and sentenced to anything, they would be sentenced to, like, two months or four months in jail as opposed to being hung. In fact, in the whole long history of new yorks involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, only one slave ship captain was ever hanged for it, and that was because he had the bad luck to get caught after lincoln was in the white house, and the civil war had started. So the politics had shifted, and there were republicans now running things. He was hanged in the tombs which was the notorious jail in manhattan in 1862, and believe it or not, the slave trade from new york dried up right like that. [laughter] so they should have hung somebody a whole lot earlier. [laughter] thats the lesson there, i think. All right. So thats proslavery new york. There was also, on the other side as i said, they were fighting their war amongst themselves a small but very vocal and influential core of abolitionists. And and they tended to be from the north. They were new englanders who had come to new york city. Men like Horace Greeley whom people knew as uncle horace in the day, the founder and editor of the tribune, and reverend henry ward beecher, i play him at the church in brooklyn heights. It was Plymouth Church that invited Abraham Lincoln to speak in 18606789 at that point 1860. At that point hes not even a dark horse. He hasnt announced his candidacy yet. Hes so unknown that the new york newspapers couldnt figure out his name. They were calling him abram lincoln, and several of them went with a. Lincoln because they didnt know his first name. Because of that, the church got cold feet. They didnt think hed attract a crowd, so greeley and others brought him over to manhattan and switched the venue to cooper union in manhattan. And the speech he made there in february 1860 is arguably the most important speech of his career, because it made his career. At the same time, he got his picture taken by matthew braid key, that famous photo of him standing in his wrinkled coat because hed just gotten off the train. Copies of that photo and speech went out around the country and introduced the entire country to this a. Lincoln that they hadnt known before. Pretty soon hes announced his candidacy, and he gets elected president. Its been said that without that speech and without that photograph, its highly unlikely that the Abraham Lincoln we know as the historical figure would have happened. For all that even though new york state voted for him, new yorkers and brooklynites did not. In fact, they voted against him more than 21. They were very antilincoln. They saw him as the man who was go going to go to the white house, free the slaves, and the slaves were going to rush up to new york. And they voted against him again in 1864. Now, the instant hes elected, as you all know, the Southern States start to secede. New yorks Business Leaders panic at that point. Secession would mean the end of their lucrative trade with the south as well as leaving them holding 150 million in unpaid dealts from the south. 150 million in those days would be about 4. 5 billion today, so theyre very upset. And theyre writing petitions, theyre getting their workers to sign them, theyre doing theyre writing their congressmen, doing anything they can to stop the south from seceding. When lincoln passed through the city on his way down to the white house after he was elected, he got a very cold walt whitman was there and writes about the very cold reception that new yorkers gave lincoln. And he got to a lecture from the mayor, ferdinand wood, who famously when all the southern Business Partners started seceding, suggested maybe new york city should secede along with them. You know, i people took it as a crazy idea then but, you know, i kind of look at some of the president ial at least one of the president ial candidates now [laughter] i wont say his name. [laughter] you know, maybe we should revive that idea. [laughter] okay. When lincoln gets to the white house, hes inundated with Office Seekers which happened all the time back then. Pew can man and the democrats buchanan and the democrats are out, the republicans are in. Also we need to remember that washington was, at the time, a very southern town. It was still a slaveowning town until a year after he was elected. And there were many southerners in federal government who quit when he got elected. A lot of them stood in line for hours just for the satisfaction of refusing to shake his hand when they got up to him. But the job seekers still came. And one of the most inept, i think, of them all came from new york. It was herman melville. His years of writing popular Sea Adventures were well behind him by 1860, 1861. His more recent novels like moby dick had gone unread and unloved by the few people who read them. He was now writing poetry which nobody read, so he came to washington hoping for a diplomatic posting. He didnt get it. So, all right, now were back in new york. For all that they had feared and and tried to stave off the war, new yorkers and brooklynites of all types flocked to sign up when the war started in 1861. Part of that is because at the time they were signing up for three Months Service in the military. A lot of people were convinced that was all it was going to take. You were going to get a uniform, a musket, march down south, kick some butt, this unpleasantness was going to be over, andyou were going to come back in three months. For a lot of the workmen, it was also a job. It was a paycheck. There had been a big depression in 1857, the panic of 1857, and tens i think it was like 100,000 workers in manhattan lost their jobs. And then when the car the war started, more lost their jobs because the trade with the south had suddenly disappeared. So they were signing up for the work, and they theyll thought itd be three months of fun, and theyd be home. It didnt work out that way. When they saw the carnage of battle, volunteerism in new york city went [laughter] i bring that up because new york doesnt feature much in Civil War History writing because so much of that that writing, i think because so much of that writing is battles. Its military history, battlefield writing. And the nearest battlefield to new york was getties wurg which was, like gettysburg which was, like, 200 miles away. And yet some new yorkers played significant roles including one of them who came within an ace of winning the battle for new york. One of greatest scalliwags, dan was born around 1819. Nobody knows for sure. As a young man, he was meant i love this. He was mentored by loren toe deponte who had been in italy and was a rival of casanovas then hes in vienna writing some of the mozart operas. Andhis household in the 1830s, nobody was using the term bohemian, but it may have been the first. It was certainly one of the first bohemian households in new york city, and dan is a young man hanging out there. Dan eats spaghetti there which was a great rarity in new york city in the 1830s. It was still rare enough in the 1910s that people wrote songs, oh, they eat spaghetti in Greenwich Village. [laughter] so it must have still been a wild thing to do. But i digress. [laughter] all right. So sorry. Tammany hall gets him, gets dan elected. Tammany hall was the democratic machine that ran politics in new york city. Gets him elected to the state legislature. He takes his whore up to albany with him and scandalizes the state legislature. Then in the 1850s, he gets elected to congress. Hes down here when he catches his wife dallying with bill lip barton key Phillip Barton key who was the son of Francis Scott key. Phillip would stand down on the street they livedover on Lafayette Square and wave a hanky, and she would give him a signal to let him know it was okay, and i guess he would go in. One night hes waving the hanky, its dan looking through the curtains. Dan runs down, shoots him dead as a dog on Lafayette Square. A lot of people say he got off because his lawyers used what was then a normal defense, the temporary insanity defense. He had a jury of 12