He is professor of history at the university of North Carolina at chapel hill and the former director of their program in, sexuality studies. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the humanities, the mellon foundation, the National Humanities center, the institute for the arts and humanities at usc. Others. His first book, body politic negotiating race in the american north from 1730 to 1830, was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass book prize. He was named a top young historian, the history news network, and has as an organization of american historians, distinguished lecturer. He currently lives in chapel hill with his husband son and daughter. Please join me in welcoming wood sweet. Right. All right. Thanks, ashley. Im so glad to be here and to be in greensboro. The southern girls tale tells a story that for a long i thought i understood. And its a story that even seems eerily familiar. One day, late in the summer of 1793, a 17 year old selling girl named lorna sawyer was walking down broadway in york city when she was harassed. A group of frenchmen as cat called her. She, a young gentleman, stepped forward to rescue her. He escorted her home. He asked her out for a walk a couple of evenings later, and he introduced himself as lawyer smith smith. That was not actually his real name. He didnt tell her his real name because he didnt want her to know who he was, because they already had established a reputation for himself as a notorious rake, which in the 18th century meant a sexual predator. Literally, it meant what you got when he raced through the coals of hell. So these in romance novels, the rake, is kind of a charming bad boy in this period. More like satan. So a few days later, they went out for the walk and it started innocently enough with a glass of ice cream and a turn around the battery and ended with him dragging her into a brothel, kicking and screaming. The brothel was run by a woman named mother kerry. Lorna was traumatized and disoriented by what had happened, but the next day she gathered herself and went home. And within a week she had formally charged the man whose real name was henry bello with. Rape within a month was trial, and after a wrenching courtroom that lasted about 15 hours, the jury took 15 minutes to deliberate and returned a verdict, which was actually surprising a lot of people in the courtroom of not and that pretty much i thought was the end of the story when first encountered this back when i was in graduate in the 1980s. That was right around the time that ms. Magazine coined term date rape. And i saw it as a particularly vivid example of acquaintance rape. And i started using this case in College Classes to explore the modern origins of rape culture. But then about ten years ago, a graduate student who was working with me and doing her own research came across piece of evidence that just threw for a loop. It it challenged what i had assumed about the story. It threatened my sense of confidence. An historian, i was like, could i have been so wrong about this case for so long . Could i have really been so misled . And so i began to poke around and i started digging and i started investigating them. And more i learned the more astonishing and the more surprising the story became. At the most basic level, i realized that a story that i thought pretty much ended with the rape trial actually went on at least five more years in the historical record. Ultimately, for this book became an opportunity to the momentous, the tumultuous period after the american revolution, not through the of some founding father, but rather through the eyes of a young working class woman, a 17 year old who had to work as a seamstress, order to help make her help her family make ends meet. And if lorna sawyer responded to a Sexual Assault, a very unusual usual way she might well have vanished from the historical record without leaving any trace at all, but emerged was the story of a young woman looking to make her own way in a world full possibility and danger . A story of working men fed with being disparaged and by snobbish elites clinging to an inherited privileges. And the story of early feminists making bold new arguments about rights at a time when pretty much the only way a single woman without capital could earn a living wage by working as a prostitute. Today i wanted to spend about half an hour or so sharing with a bit about how i went about exploring when i saw your story and how i struggled to make sense of it means for us today. And i thought i would focus on three research puzzles that i face and struggled with my best to figure out. So the first puzzle is who was linda sawyer and where did she get the courage to stand up for herself. The answer is that late in the summer of 1793, it was easy to underestimate laura sawyer. She was only 17. She came from a family of modest means. As i mentioned, she had to work to help support her family. And working as a seamstress, the man who called him lawyer smith on the other hand, and who actually was a rich and rake, henry bello clearly made assumptions about her that turned out to be wrong and did the madam who ran the brothel in which she was raped. Mother caring. Both of them assumed that what happened that night would be the end of it, that lana would shrink away, shame and silence that she would want to cover up what had happened to her, that she wouldnt dare to stand up for in a way that would cause problems for. Either of them. And there was good reason for them to think that. Thats the way most of a queens rapes respond to it. Back then and its the way most survivors of acquaintance assaults respond today. Today, a large majority of assaults are among acquaintances, meaning the survivor knows, the assailant knows the identity of the perpetrator, but only a small fraction of those cases, perhaps as low as 15 ever get publicly reported or reported for example to university officials. Most survivors for understandable reasons, dont feel that seeking Legal Recourse or a College Education is in their best interest interest. And then in lorna sawyers day, there were extra reasons, additional pressures that kept Sexual Assault secret in. The literature of the day. A woman lost her virginity outside of wedlock was considered fallen, was ruined. Was the term that was used she would become, at least in this cultural script, social outcast, a pariah destined, perhaps a life of prostitution. And but in any case, to an early death. And in this case, the man on a sawyer would be up against was not only older, but from a far higher status. I refer to him the book as a gentleman. I describe him as a gentleman. Thats not because he had good manners. Thats because in this period. Gentleman was a a social rank that that you didnt have to work with your hands. You lived on usually on inherited money. An early sign of how badly henry bello and mother carrie had underestimated lina sawyer came the morning after as she emerged from the brothels backroom in the hallway was the matter. Mother carrie. And she had been was had prepared for this moment. And she said, dearie in that kind of familiar tone, dearie, ive looked out front. Theres no one in the street. No ones going to see you. But can also spirit you out the back door if youre afraid of. Being seen on the street. So she was casting a lot of sawyer in the script of the ashamed survivor who wanted to slink away in secrecy. And long as response was really shocking. Lanas response was no, im not going to go out your back door. Im going to go out your front door. And i dont care who sees me, even if its my father. In fact, lana was terrified when she got out the front door of what would happen, she finally had to confront her stepfather, her ex, for her birth father had died about ten years earlier, and her mother had remarried her stepfather named John Callahan had a reputation for violence and was clearly impetuous. And she was terrified that if she went home, he would her up without bothering to listen what she had to say. And everybody in their social circumstance kind of understood that that was a perfectly reasonable expectation. So it took lana almost the entire day. But she eventually gathered her courage and headed and she reported what happened first to her mother, which was common in this period. And then to her stepfather. And instead of kicking her out of his house, he became an extra effective and ally and tenacious adversary for henry batlow. So part of what explains this reaction is the fact that lannisters family was, in fact, less humble than in my initially appear or certainly did appear to henry batlow and mother carey. Her father had been a skilled craftsman and thus of middling economics. Her her mothers family had deep roots in the city at a time and they were all respectable artisans and appointed to city positions like firefighter. Before the revolution his her grandmother had owned two houses and the neighborhood that lornas still lived in. This at a time when most people i dont know, Something Like 60 of new yorkers were renters. Perhaps most lornas great uncle who had started out as a baker. Had become a rich businessman. He had been elected an alderman, was the equivalent of a new york city council. Today. And he ended up renting out his bakery which was across the street from where lorna, in 1793. And he moved into an elaborate country seat, a fancy Country Estate up off bowery lane. And an alderman in this period, just to to to observe was was a city magistrate. He was one of the legal officials to whom you would typically report a crime. The top magistrate was, the mayor, but all of the aldermen were accustomed to getting criminal complaints. So a lot of may well have from her uncle before he had died. Five or six years earlier about the process of receiving criminal complaints. And in any case the first person that lorna sought out on the morning after this assault as she was gathering her courage to go home, was her aunt or widowed aunt. And as it happened, this widowed aunt lived with none other than the aunt of Alexander Hamilton. They live they lived on in a house overlooking the bowling green. But one of the landmarks in new york that is still there. And she was, to remind you, it was this hamiltons mostly came from his wifes family. So she was on the money side of hamiltons family. So lorna sawyers family was working class, but they had deep roots in the city and they had relations who are affluent and wellconnected. But i think wasnt just her economics circumstances that explain how the story developed. I think it was also in considerable measure as a result, her own personality and social skills as. It happened. She turned to be out to be really good at recruiting allies. When she got into when she got into court. She was clearly a very forceful, effective witness. We know this in part because of the way the spectators, the was packed with spectators and they stomped and they hissed and clapped depending on how they responded to what the attorneys, the witnesses were saying. Theres a chapter in the book called gatekeepers, because then and now in order to mount a legal prosecution, there were a whole series of people in this case. In her case, all of them being affluent, older men, who had the power to stop or dead by not taking it seriously or to give her momentum by putting their behind it. So lana saw your story is explained partly by her family background and in part by her own personality and skills. I naturally had similar questions about all of the characters that drove action forward in this story. One of them was the brothel keeper. My mother. Why did she let henry bowdler drag lorna sawyer into brothel that night . Why didnt you testify the way she did in court . Another was a stepfather, kellerman, who . Its a real question how he he got the gumption, the courage, the legal and the social support that made him such a powerful for lanas. And part, my answer to that had to do with the world of branch. And towards the end of the book, alexander himself appears in the role in a role that raised a whole other set of questions for me. But for now lets just say that i learned a lot about and business of prostitution the early republic and i learned a lot about the world of piloting which exists and Pilots Association is still the people guide vessels into manhattan harbor and i learned a lot about the practice of law law. All right. So question number two was how did henry end up getting himself acquitted in the rape trial, even though own attorneys admitted that his character was predatory and that his actions had terribly . Linda sawyer. And the answer to this question has do with the Power Dynamics of rape accusations and with the history of the law. And the key figure here is matthew hale. The the 17th century english jurist and legal commentator matthew hale. And the name may ring a bell for you now because he was at the center of the recent Supreme Court on roe v wade. And whats important for our purposes is not so much. Hales incredible misogyny. As impressive as it is, but more specifically his role in creating the modern distinction stranger rape and acquaintance rape. Even today, our culture tends want define violence assaults by strangers as socalled real rape and date rapes and involving acquaintances as some something else, something more ambiguous, something less clear after a of sawyers told her story to her step father, one of the curious things did was he took her to a private attorney rather than directly to a magistrate. And i think he did this first to get a sense from an expert about how strong her case was. And second to make sure that when they went to the mayor they brought forward the strongest possible case. And the attorney no doubt turned to a book. And whats kind of fun as a deterrent to this book. And in fact, you turn to this copy of this book and i know because it was published. In 1786 so seven years earlier he signed his name at the top. Its a good example. A good text for a young starting out attorney because kind of a cheap edition of a book. Then its an original edition. This is elaborate, huge thing like its an expensive this is a kind of cheap of blackstones commentaries on the law of england. And this is the fourth volume, which is the criminal vine treats criminal law. So literally this volume was would have been on the table and i randomly bought it on the inner. And the point of blackstone in this regard is that he pretty much summarizes and a little bit exaggerates. Hale had said a century earlier. So the sec action on rape in this book and in which is basically cribbed from hales commentaries is really extraordinary. And to understand that i think you to know what the original statute on the english on rape said and it was Something Like well it was passed in like 1285. So it was Something Like 500 years old by the time of trial. And defined rape as the carnal knowledge of a woman against her will will. That is to say that rape was about consent. But in this blackstones book of legal commentaries and hale himself flip flopped on this topic, rape was defined in a slightly way as the carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will. So one of the crazy things about these commentaries, as was pointed out by a former prosecutor reviewing my book last week, is the way prior private individuals comment on the law and redefine the law. And it makes us why were taking their word for it. So to define, to insert into the law of rape means rape is no longer a crime. Simply about consent. And its also a crime. Now about violence and this is this really shifts a shifting the Legal Standard of rape to, focus on physical violence helps to filter out some kinds of Sexual Assaults that really become very difficult to prosecute and makes other kinds of assaults still to prosecute or still possible to prosecute. And specifically ill just point out that this is your stranger rapes in which. Youre typically a lower class man makes a surprise attack. He jumps out from you in a parking garage, whatever. Thats what all the blue lights on College Campuses are about, because this idea of stranger danger. And thats because stranger assailant is typically a man of lower status. Who doesnt have other means violence at his disposal, whereas your acquaintance rape the boss in an employment situation. Some guy at a party they typically dont use. Your cousin, your uncle they typically dont use violence as a principal means of coercion because they have other social mechanisms that disposal. In the case with henry bowdler, he enticed as long as sawyer he isolates of sawyer gets her out late. He intrigues her. When it turns out that he is interest really is sex. Shes also stunned and surprised and selfdoubting because shes she realizes that shes been misjudging him for ten days now. So there are its not to say that assault wasnt itself forceful or violent. Its just that in acquaintance scenarios, the mechanism of coercion often includes many social mechanisms than simply brute force. Now, its not just inserting violence into the definition of rape. Thats important about hale and his interventions. Its also that he argued that because women supposedly so prone to lie about Sexual Assaults, he. He believed that woman or at least he argued that women were inherently inclined to be vengeful and malicious. That and and therefore, it was extra important for to pay special attention to the credibility of the womans testimony in rape cases. He did not propose similar questions evaluate the credibility of witnesses and other cases in criminal law that involve consent. So just to make this clear car theft my cars parked out front. Right. If somebody my car they could theoretically say, oh, i didnt steal the car. John said i could borrow. He left the keys there was begging to be driven. Even an assault be argued, you could say is in some circumstances consensual, as in we werent i didnt beat him up. We were boxing. Are you with me . So the specific notion that only in rape cases consent a crucial issue that is somehow ambiguous, that it needs special criteria to be evaluated is very partial. Its a very narrow approach to the law in case. Hale proposed a of criteria or theyre not really criteria they were circumstances that he said should be considered. First was the woman in question of good fame, by which he meant did she have a good reputation. Second, tichy the crime, while it was recent. What he meant by recent, he doesnt define but the actual ancient statue h