lman and a friend of his called "in full glory reflected: discovering the war of 1812 in the chesapeake." is other is a book by james johnston entitled from "from sle hip to harbor -- ship to harbor." both are extraordinarily wonderful works, beautifully written, engagingly written. one deals with the sort of general overview in history of the war of 1812 as it, excuse me, affects the upper chesapeake and also the whole of the chesapeake. but it not only tells you the stories, but it takes you to the places and helps you to envision it through some absolutely extraordinarily lovely illustrations that were commissioned for the work as well as drawing on contemporary illustrations. jim johnston's book is an extraordinary tour de force about the journey of an american, african-american family from a muslim context in africa to a slave ship that brought that individual to annapolis on to georgetown in a much larger context and then, ultimately, the family journey all the way to harvard and to directing education of african-americans in the city of baltimore right up to the near present. both books are wonderfully done. i think you will enjoy hearing about them, and hopefully, you will go out and buy them if you don't have them already. and after the session you're encouraged to come and meet the authors and get your books signed. so i'm going to turn things over now, first, to ralph to speak for a moment, and then he will turn it over to jim, and then we'll open it up for questions. >> thank you, ed. and good morning, everyone. and, ed, thank you so much for mentioning that i do have a co-author, and that's very important because we formed a great team. burt deserves great credit for also being a major contributor to this particular book that has an unusual titles, "in full glory reflected." and i don't know how many of you might recognize where that title came from, but in full glory are the words of a gentleman named francis scott key. and if you have an opportunity to read the book, you'll better understand how we came up with that title. i think it's very appropriate that we have a session here on the war of 1812, because we are right now in the middle of the bicentennial celebration of the war of 1812. and isn't it also appropriate that we were at the key school. because francis scott key played a little role, you could say, in the war of 1812 that has left us with what i would regard as one of our greatest icons, and that are the words to what is our national anthem. and that is a maryland story that has national significance. this book is really the result of a team effort. there's no way that we could have had the illustrations in here and the maps without partnering with other people that helped to pay for it. because this book is full color all the way through. there's over 65 commissioned pieces of art in here that have never been done before, and you can imagine when you start to do that kind of thing, it really escalates the cost. so i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the support that we got from the maryland war of 1812 commission and, also, the national park service chesapeake gateways program as well as private funding. without that this book would not have been possible, at least not in the way that you see it here today. the other thing that i want to make clear to everybody is that because it has been subsidized, the book only sells for $24.95. to get a book that's full color like that is pretty amazing. and the other thing that i'm really proud to tell you is that all of the profits from the book go to a restricted fund be that will be used to help maintain the interpretive signage for the star-spangled banner national historic trail. so when you buy the book, you're not supporting really and burt, you're actually supporting a national trail that would help people understand really the story behind what is the star spangled banner. a little bit about the book. it's not meant to be a scholarly book. it's meant to be a book to capture people's imagination as to what really is the story of the war in the chesapeake. and even though it was largely funded by maryland, we could not do that job without including virginia and washington d.c. so it is a book that i would say that covers the whole waterways of the chesapeake bay even though it does concentrate, i guess you could say, on maryland. i'm really proud of the book for several reasons. it's gotten many good reviews. in fact, there's one individual if you go on amazon and you look at the reviews that have been given there, it says that if you're only going to buy one book about the war of 1812 and the chesapeake, this is the one you should purchase. that's about the best kind of a review i think you could get. but the other thing i'm proud about is that this was truly a team effort. it was not just a burt and a ralph effort. this was an effort of two very distinguished artists. one was jerry embleton who lives in switzerland. he's actually english, but he moved to switzerland. if you've ever done or read any books that are put out by toes pray series which are military books, this is a guy that is featured in most of those. so we were very fortunate. but we also have a maryland artist, richard. shlek. another very well known artist. and then the cartographer, the individual who did the maps, bob pratt, is the retired director of the cartography division of national geographic. you just can't get great people like that unless you have sufficient funding. and so that's why, again, i want to emphasize to everybody how fortunate we were to have the funding from our partners to really help make this thing possible. i think at that point i will just close and turn it over to jim. but we really do welcome you to ask questions. and if you don't, then we're just going to tell you what we think about the chesapeake and slavery and all that kind of good stuff. so, jim? >> thank you, ralph, and thanks, you would, and the key school and all of you in the audience for coming. i want to first say, i've read ralph's book in preparation for this, and i highly recommend it. i'd do my book first, but his book is a really good book. [laughter] no, i do history all the time. he's got a good book. from slave ship to harvard is the true story of six generations of an african-american family from the arrival here in annapolis in 1752 through harvard in 1923 up until today. i'll speak fairly briefly and cover three things today. first, a quick run through the book and the six generations. second, i want to introduce the family, the fellow who went to harvard. they're here today, at least some of them, and maybe the rest will get here before i get to them. and, third, i want to talk about the significance of the book. so i'll begin telling you about each generation. the first was this man that's on the cover. he was a muslim from guinea. he and his sister were sold onboard the slave ship elijah here in annapolis on june 4, 1752. his portrait on the cover is painted by charles wilson peel, the great american portrait painter who did seven life portraits of george washington. and interestingly enough, he was a little boy living here in annapolis the day the slave ship came in. and he met, the two of them met, i think, 60, 70 years later when this picture was painted. and this picture was, of course, yaro as an older man when he was living in georgetown. in the next generation was yaro's niece. nancy hillman was one of them. she was one of the first, be not the first -- if not the first african-americans to win a lawsuit in washington d.c. also in that generation was yaro's son and his daughter-in-law, mary turner. and mary turner, when she got married to yaro's son, became mary turner yaro. and these people here today are related to mary turner. there's a community in western maryland named yarosburg, and that is named after mary turner or yaro because she was the midwife there. and the community is still in western maryland. the third generation of the family included mary's nephew, simon turner. he was born a slave near yarosburg. he joined the union army during the civil war and fought in the civil war. in the fourth generation was simon's daughter, emma turner. she was born after the civil war and was the first in the family to get a college degree. and i want to dwell on emma. her picture's in the book, but emma knew yaro's daughter-in-law, and these women here knew emma. so it's that short a span of time that goes back to 1752. emma married a minister. she was the first in the family to get a college degree, and she married a minister named robert ford and they settled, ultimately, in baltimore. thus, in the fifth generation their son, robert turner ford, was admitted to harvard in 1923 and graduated in 1927. it had been 175 years almost to the day that the slave ship brought yaro in here to annapolis. the sixth generation, i'm going to introduce the ones that are here, and i think their cousin will come later. the sixth generation includes these women. they're robert turner ford's nieces; cynthia richardson -- i wanted her to stand up -- denise -- [inaudible] and emily willis. [applause] and they have just walked in. great timing. alice robbins, stay standing. no, no, you stay standing. alice, would you raise your hand? alice is robert turner ford's daughter, and robin is his granddaughter. too shy to stand up. [applause] and you can ask them questions too. they're more articulate than i am. from slave ship to harvard, finally, let me get to the significance of the book. it's the first time in my knowledge that a family has been traced from the arrival on a slave ship to descendants living today, so that aspect is unique. but, of course, this family was just exceptional. and while this book tells the story of in this one family, there's more to the book than that. i call it a case study of race, of racial history. it places the family's constant struggles to succeed and excel against the backdrop of the tobacco plantations, slavery, slave codes, abolitionists, the georgia men -- which is a term i found, they were the slave will drivers who would take slaves from maryland and virginia and take them to the cotton plantations in the deep south. and i cover the slave drivers too. the protections that the family and african-americans received from the civil war amendments to the constitutions, the failure of the separate but equal approach to education and, finally, the civil rights movement and its achievements and what it did for african-americans. and some through this one exceptional family, i've tried to narrate the story of race in america. thank you. >> good, thank you. [applause] what we'd like to do now is to open it up for questions from the audience. and i'm just simply going to take my privilege as moderator to pass one question on to jim who started this off talking about the legacy, the giving voice to the african-american commitment. community. going all the way back to the origins of slavery. one of the things that i've been intrigued by, jim, is that you're talking in this particular book about a group of slaves really -- even though you focus on one family of muslim origins. and in particular one of the things that i found intriguing about sort of looking at the the history of the slavery in this state, muslims, black muslims are generally well schooled, and they're generally well schooled in mathematics. and one of the things that is rather interesting about the pattern that you're referring to in terms of being the body servant or the man servant or the person servant is that that servant's entrusted with a lot of responsibility. generally collecting debts, keeping track of money, dealing with things. so i'm just wondering is the fact that here you have this 14-year-old, you arrive, he's probably come already well educated and particularly in mathematics. and what i'm just curious about what you think. >> thank you, ed. yeah, yaro was educated in africa, and the way i know that is because at the national archives there's a deed that he signed, and he signed it in arabic. so he could read and write in arabic. and, in fact, he spoke at least three languages. he was muslim, so he spoke -- [inaudible] he was a good muslim, and so he could read the quran and he could write in the quran, and then, of course, he could speak english and in a quite poetic way. he was the body servant to his owner, it was the bell family which is a prominent family even today in maryland. and had this responsibility for doing things. his owner, first owner was an engineer, and so i think yaro learned a lot about ipg nearing from that -- engineering from that. and there is a tie with ralph's book, because before today's session we were exchanging e-mails. yaro -- islam follows a lunar calendar, and yaro himself talked about, measured his life in a lunar calendar. and i discovered in researching this another african-american that i think also was descended from muslims who called himself the moon man. and he told stories, you know, he would predict your future based on a lunar calendar. but that man also fought in the war of 1812. and so he was a figure in washington d.c. in the book i also trace, there were wars going on in africa, and so there were lots of muslims who were captured -- not, lots is extreme, not that many -- but muslims were captured in those wars and sold into the slave trade. and i believe on the ship that brought yaro there were a number of other muslims, and i found mislimb names in wills of people that were living back then and a small muslim community both in georgetown and washington, d.c. and in rockville, maryland. and these people tended to be, as ed suggested, educated in africa. and so, in fact, more educated than the people that that ownedm often times. >> one of the things i found interesting at sort of looking at this question of what the african-americans brought or the africans brought to the american world was this whole business of accounting system. when in the 19th century one of the scholars began looking at the indians from the eastern shore and how they'd moved up into canada and abandoned the eastern shore, they kept running up against an accounting system. it turned out to be arabic in origin. the idea, of course, is that slaves who were brought into the country often ran, and they ran to the comfort and the support of the indian community. so you find trails of interaction and ways in which systems are developed that can trace their roots back to the african origins. >> yaro himself in later life, once he was freed, became sort of a financier in georgetown and was loaning money to white merchants. and so that -- he obviously knew enough about both the law and business and money to handle his own finances. >> ralph, one of the interesting stories in trying to sort of sort out what happens in the war of 1812 is the role of the african-american community. the fact that the british come into the bay in your old home territory and issue a proclamation and say anybody who comes to us can be free and may even get a piece of land. and all of a sudden instead of getting the able-bodied 18 and 19-year-olds they think they might get by putting out that, what do they get? >> well, often times they got elderly people that were a burden, quite frankly, to the british. just to kind of go back a little bit, when the british put a blockade on the chesapeake bay, that was in february of 1813. now, keep in mind that war had been declared in june. england did not declare war back. they kept waiting thinking that the united states was going to realize this was a big mistake. but the united states never did that. so, ultimately, england then declared war also on the united states. the first thing that they did was to put up a blockade across the chesapeake bay. now, why would they do that? it really made a lot of sense. they had a superior navy. they wanted to bring the war right to the seat of where the american government was who had the audacity to declare war on great britain. it was to bring it right here. there was another reason. and that is if they could destroy the economy of the chesapeake bay, the people in the chesapeake would try to sue for peace or at least try to convince their politicians that we don't want to have this war. and what's the best way that you can destroy the economy of the chesapeake bay? and that's to destroy the money crop. and the money crop is tobacco. so when the british came in and raided a lot of these plantations, if they couldn't take the tobacco themselves -- which they often did and shipped back to england because it was or very profitable -- they would burn it. and that would hurt the economy. but if you left the slave population, next year they could replant. but if you offered to the slaves their freedom and you take away the work force -- and tobacco is a very, very intensive, labor-intensive product -- then what is the plantation owner going to do? we know and there may be earlier instances, but we know that on march the 10th of 1813, it's the first known instance of where slaves escaped from the plantation owners and boarded british ships. that's only a month after the british came in here and declared a blockade. during the total war, we'll never know exactly how many slaves escaped, but we're probably talking in excess of 2,000. when these slaves came onto these ships, think about the burden that it created for the u.s -- for the royal navy. that meant that they now had to shelter, clothe and feed those people. and so what did they do? they began to build a station on tan jeer island, and that's where most of the slaves went to, and that's where they lived. there was no room for them to be onboard the ships. and most of the military force that was in the chesapeake were essentially living onboard these ships. so that's why they built this base of operations on tangier island. and there's a fellow by the name of alan taylor, and if you have not read any of his books, he is a great scholar. probably book that most of you might know about is his book that's titled "civil war in 1812." he's right now doing a book on slavery in the chesapeake during the war of 1812. i've been very fortunate to get to know alan, and he has taught me a lot about what happened back at that time. but the most important thing he taught me is that the blacks that escaped were the navigators of the night. and what he meant by that is that if you were a slave, you essentially were working from sun up to sundown. and that meant that if you wanted to go visit friends or possibly even your wife or some of your children that might be on a. [inaudible] ing plantation, you had -- on a neighboring plantation, you had to do that at night. and you became very familiar of how to travel and what were the deer trails and rabbit trails and every other trail you could find to try to get from one place to another. and many of these blacks were also very familiar with the sandbars and the channels because they were the ones that were going out and fishing and doing the oystering and what not. and so the british realize that so that when these slaves escaped and got their freedom, they turned around and offered their knowledge of navigation of the night to the british raiders. and imagine if you are a plantation owner, and lo and behold one morning here is the british standing on your doorsteps and with them is one of your former slaves. and that's happened more than one time. there's actually a quote from a gentleman who was head of the militia in virginia who said that the slaves essentially have now become the pilots on the rivers and the navigators for the british to attack our plantations. another thing that the british did that's very, very interesting, if a man escaped and gets his freedom onboard the ship, the british would al