War, Frederick Douglass emerged as the foremost orator and writer for the abolition movement. Abraham lincoln said of douglass, there is no man in the country whose opinion i value more than yours. And that lincoln second inauguration douglass sat near the president. How came to be on the side of the president is a story told in the color of abolition. Our featured book for todays program. Linda hirshman describes how the team of Douglas William garrison and Maria Weston Chapman successfully promoted the antislavery cause in the 1840s. By the early 1850s, however, douglass joined with those who actively engaged in politics to achieve abolition and rejected the nonpolitical means espoused by garrison and chapman. New york times review. William g. Thomas the third cause the color of abolition. A fresh, provocative and account of the abolition movement. And in the boston globe review, lydia molen declares hirshman the book is a wonderful cataloging of americans white and black, who devoted their lives to ending slavery. Then the hirshman is the author of reckoning the epic battle against sexual abuse and harassment of the new times bestselling sisters in how sandra day oconnor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to the supreme and changed the world. Margaret sullivan is the washington media columnist and of ghosting the news local, journalism and the crisis of american democracy and the forthcoming memoir newsroom confidential lessons and worries from an ink stained life. Now lets hear from linda hirshman. And margaret, thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much for coming to this session. Im very pleased be here with linda hirshman, who is a dear friend of mine and a brilliant author. And her book is, wonderful. And im looking forward to this conversation with her. So id like to start off with a sort of a general question and one that perhaps is given that our and our sponsors here are the National Archives. Tell us, if you would, how you came to research this book and how you came up with the one of the aspects that that gotten so much attention which is the role of the female protagonist who which really wasnt well known before how you know and how did how did organizations such as the archives and and libraries which are so play into that that discovery process. This is the first book that i have ever written, which is set entirely in the past. So i didnt have any living people to interview, which is a big answer. Having women is a big asset when youre writing a compelling story. So i knew it was going to be hard and. I did what i think a lot of us do. I started with the secondary literature, so i read what other people have written about the period, and then when they said something that interested me, i followed their trail back into the archives and i quickly learned that there was a staggering of archival material about the abolitionist period. Lets say from 1832, 1865, like in second inaugural. And its small period in a bunch of places, including here on the National Library of congress. But one of the books i was a letter, a slim volume about the western family of boston. The western family and one of the western sisters is Weston Chapman after she married chapman. And so i was alerted to. Maria Weston Chapmans seemingly Important Role in the Abolitionist Movement, and yet there was nothing about her. So the author of that book alerted me to the fact that the Boston Public Library had a collection of the western letters a huge collection of, the western letters. These women did nothing but write letters to one another. And the other people on abolition movement. So i knew that if i could go to boston and use their archival, i could find out who maria western catherine and try to figure out why shed been neglected. But of course, was the hour. And luckily for me the Boston Public Library, put all the letters online. So i had complete computer access to. All of this rich course among the many players in. What turned out to be my story. And since the pandemic confined me to my all i could spend all day, every day looking at these illegible and trying to figure out what they were actually saying to one another. This book is a tribute to the power of archives. There is no chance i would have understood what was going or how important she was without. Thats wonderful to hear. So tell me what your what your feeling, what your emotion was when. You realized that Maria Weston Chapman could be a major character in your book and that she really hadnt written about before. I mean, was a eureka moment and, was it did you see all of a sudden how this could this could play . And did it change your approach to the project . It was a eureka process, right . I pitched the book as being about garrison douglas, the Interracial Alliance. So im very interested in how people overcome the things that divide them and act collectively. So originally, Maria Weston Chapman was not a very important character in the book at all, but as i slowly realized how important she had been and how she was. She just brought it by proxy. I mean, she was just it just went off in an arc. And i have to give my editor at Houghton Mifflin harcourt now Mariner Books at harpercollins diane ermey a shout out because about halfway through the process i got back a version of the book for my editor and she said, you know, i think you should feel free to make more of maria. And of course, once unleashed, i have the woman who ran the bazaars right on . The daughter of a rock merchant. So i love the idea of this high society woman, the bazaar. So i could really run with it. I dont know if someone whos a professional historian would have so quickly realized that she was underserved, because this is not my specialty. My degree is in philosophy and. Im interested in collective action. Thats what brought the historical story. And so im not part of a club. So i was like, well, this is an important person. Theres no books about her. Why would that be . Maybe because for generations, most historian those were men, specifically white, and they didnt know her. And were very that you did the these. Ive always been fond of the subtitle of your book, which im going to recite for a moment, which is how a printer, a prophet, a contessa moved a nation. So tell us, tell us why you use those three nouns, and particularly i suppose the contessa, which is, which is a wonderful word and that kind a real draw to, you know, how can you not want to know about that exact. So my dads old portraits and i to sell books and and contessa was written i didnt make this up that she nicknamed the contessa because in that rather Modest Movement she was wealthy and she was beautiful and she was gorgeously dressed. So it was kind of understandable that those of snobbish bostonians would name her the contest that her called her lady macbeth. And thats also a novel title. And i wanted i wanted to the book to tell the reader, even at a casual, that the role of princeling and proxy, which is mostly spoken words and social power came together to make the Abolitionist Movement. So the subtitle conveys a lot of information as in a little book, right . It is a book and its a one. So you do as you have said and as we can tell from your past work, which has to do with women coming on to the Supreme Court, with with with gay rights and with these the Metoo Movement. You write social movements. What what is it that ties these movements together. What, what are the necessary sort of what is the necessary underpinning and what what are the whats foundation for social movements . How does it work . So i only write about america. I, which is a selfgovernance driven republic to this moment. This is selfgoverning republic that is are and are like a state of the enlightened west. So thats my specialty in those circumstances there are conditions that give rise to movements for social change and i specialize movements that try to make the world better for people who are less power. I was a youre an inside labor lawyer when i to was very interested in the distribution and the wider distribution of power wealth and meaning and opportunity. So i only write about those and what you look for is that there is a crack in the establishment. Theres a change in the media. Goes all the way back to the invention of movable type. And the faster information people all have enough maneuvering, enough security, material security and security. Theyre not threatened with the good life so that they can see the horizon. And usually theres charismatic leader who that the oppression is not a law of nature, but is a decision a political decision by other human beings when no circumstance are present, then this was ripe for social change and then i look at what works right . So theres conditions for it but it doesnt always take root. For example, occupy wall has been a very unsuccessful so far. So of poor social change. So looking at what works and i have over the years that ive looked at a lot of romans i think developed some ground rules for what works. Do you want to hear the grammar . I, i think im fascinated by this. And im you know, as im listening to you, im putting this in the context of of this moment in and american history, which i think your book is so timely, though. It is. It is a historical book. It is so timely because of the the civil rights reckoning that have been through and in the past a couple of years. So it. Well, one thing im wondering, listening to you talk about this is are you essentially optimistic about about social change . And yes, i would like to. So maybe we can come back to that. But, yes, what are the requirements what are the underpinnings for a successful for successful social movement . So they reverse engineer them right to . Get these roles i didnt make so i didnt come with this in mind. One is they have to take the moral high ground. Social movements that rely on relativism are rarely redistribute power. They might change the among the powerful, but they rarely redistribute it to the less powerful. So if you go all the way back to Martin Luther or karl marx, there is a very potent moral argument in favor of the change. And the second thing i look for now is that they they they have a revolution theres a change in the Media Technology and they explore the change in the Media Technology going all the way back to the invention of time. And they have regular meetings, right the churches talk their the potent how are regular and they get out do retail politics so there was no way that occupy wall street was going to succeed doing the hard work of retail politics. I call it walk and talk and the movement, the women and the men thought it was heavily run by maria and her women troops would knock on peoples doors and get the signatures on petitions to abolish the slave trade in the National Capital and. In that retail Political Movement would walk and walk the streets of all the cities of massachusetts and knock on the doors of the houses. During the day it was the women more prominent couldnt even vote, but they would get their signatures and because you dont have to have the right vote to petition the legislature and then those women would be converted to abolition, and then they could serve their families. So my rules are take them off the ground, have regular meetings, walk and talk to retail politics. Thats fascinating. Is retail politics now in the age of the internet, does actually not require shaking hands, but sending things out, twitter, i think that is not true. Okay. I think that the the the internet is the media technological change that is drive a lot of the currents are from moment. And i completely recognize respect that but i want to call attention to the difference between. 2018 when indivisible a bunch of Resistance Movement to the Trump Administration did retail politics in the living rooms of women all over this country. And 2020 when the democrats the white house but they seats in the house of representatives they did that in important ways shape the senate. So that they and then in one or 20 of course a pandemic the kind of retail politics that im talking about. So i think you have to have both the new Media Technology a huge role in terms of organizing, bringing people to street theater, which is another very important part, social change, gathering people on the street is very much tied to the Media Technology, but you dont get to come to the voting vote unless you knock on their doors. And the classic example of that is Stacey Abrams registering voters, black rural voters in georgia and flipping georgia. That is obvious. And i think both. Yep. Its got to be both. Well, thats a little bit refreshing in a way. I wouldnt like to think that that social media could take over for for face to face contact. And it is its a very different kind of thing. I want to mention to our audience, im very to submit or just to tell your questions to lynda, so feel free to submit them. I think in the chat or in whatever looks like the way to do questions here and will will integrate into the conversation. I can with lynda endlessly, but i would to ask your questions as well. So, so please feel free to submit those. So if you would talk little bit about how the timeliness of this book now, can you put it in the context of, the murder of george floyd, the reckonings that were seeing in, for example, newsrooms and other institutions like whats the relationship here, if there clearly is one . So i say this, i started out on this book years and years ago and. The question that i was interested in was you have an interracial a wire. Right. Ive always an interest of never wishing abolition is the single successful social moment in american history. So someone like me would naturally want to Say Something that. But theres not a tremendous amount of about it. So i thought what i could bring to the party is a current question, which is how do you have an alliance across racial divide are very important question and didnt think when i started out that it would be so relevant im actually not all that glad its that relevant because you may of the period that i wrote about in this new book ended in a civil war. So the the deep divide in american politics and the anger and hatred in american politics was not something i would have wished for i was hoping to tell a happy story about a black man in a white man worked together and abolish slavery. But here we are and and i would say that it is so relevant because after the i would say disappointing. Results of the 2020 election, i was disappointed with results were not glad that the democrats won white house. But i was i was surprised actually and disappointed that they didnt do better in the state legislature and so forth. So i want to say, the most Important Message that i can convey to the public from what ive done is that this is a marathon and, not a sprint. And abolitionists were faced with adversarial conditions that are much worse than what were at now for. A Million People were caught in the terrible system, enslavement in the slave states and the cotton, the single largest export that the American Republic had to send. And all of the financial in new york and boston were complete equally enmeshed in the financing, slavery and dependent on the cotton crops to make their fortunes. So it was and becomes the tuition a slave document, right . I mean, thats not an exaggeration. Constitution was written to preserve the power of the empire we were all slave states. So the situation for the 12 men in a basement of a black church in 1832 founding the first Antislavery Society was and terrible. So i want to say to people now its not as bad as it was then they thought they had a marathon and not a sprint it was 33 years from the founding of the first Antislavery Society to the signing of the emancipation proclamation in social time. Thats not a long time. So we need to take the lesson that you have to run a marathon and be committed deeply and in order be deeply committed for america you have to have what the movement had and is a clear understanding of the morality of your position. And in my opinion progressive politics now stands for the survival of the oldest modern self republic in history of the human species. Quote you have a higher purpose than that and. We have to remember that thats our purpose, not allow other kinds of side issues to get in the way and we need to use the moral power. What could be more honorable than helping people to govern themselves and its in danger. And thats our moral lesson. Just like the iniquity of enslavement and power violates both the christian religion and the of independence. Was their moral high ground. And we have to use the no technology in the Abolitionist Movement. It the invention of the term table movable press. Then later the steam driven movable press. There were more than dozen patterns taken out for improvements in printing during the ten years before the the founding of the Abolitionist Movement and the following ten years. So from 18, lets say 12 to 1840, to say in those period, there were dozens patents for improvements in printing. In our case, its the internet but its also the public funding and the philanthropy, the funding of local newspapers. So dont need to tell you this, but one of the really important that happened in the Abolitionist Movement is that there were little abolition of papers founded all over the n