thank you. [applause] >> this event was hosted by valley forge park. for more information, visit to nps.gov/vafo. this summer booktv is asking what are you reading. >> i have several books i am reading and intend to read over the next several weeks. right now on i am just about completed with with wings of

eagles by michael quarter which is the battle of britain actually from both sides of the english channel. the raf on the one hand and the german wooful the other and it is a fascinating and well researched book. i have in front of me the american line, which is about the life of andrew jackson particularly during white house days by john meacham. , rick's i guess is my favorite author and wrote a fiasco and has a new book entitled the gamble which is general petraeus's efforts in iraq between 2006 and 2008. and several others here. ..

a great deal of military history, that is all i do. i'm chairman of the armed services committee and is a born the people involved with the military understand history, where we have been and it helps us determine where we're going. >> for more summer reading lists another program information

visit our web site at booktv.org >> columbia university professor simon schama claims and that the first mass emancipation of slaves in the americas was actually due to the british across escaped slaves freedom during the american revolution. he spoke about his book, "rough crossings", in washington d.c. for just over an hour. >> we are going to get started, i'd like to welcome the apparent high and the deputy editor of the washington post book world and i'd like to thank you all for braving the tempestuous weather to come out for our event. if you been two our evidence before you know how nice they are so we are not going to waste much time this evening and get right started but i do want to remind you that the books are available for sale and signing

after the event. borders as a table in the back there so please take advantage. we are going to have it simon schama be introduced by warren, senior editor of book world and our in-house a guru for all things nonfiction. and. >> good evening and thank you all for coming. it is probably a purpose that the book we're going to talk about is called "rough crossings". i am more in bass, the nonfiction book review editor at the washington post book world section and also a former student of simon schama the sow is a particular pleasure to be here tonight to introduce a friend and mentor and one of my favorite writers. simon schama is a university professor at columbia university with a joint appointment in the history and art history departments. in an age in which historians are supposed to have a, b

blinker the little specialists, he has a breathtaking range of interest and expertise. he studied history at cambridge university and received an m.a. from christ's college there in 1969 which not to make simon feel bad is in the year i was born in. [laughter] key was a fellow at christ's college 1966 to 1976 at which point he moved over to the press knows college of oxford to teach history. in 1980 he crossed the atlantic and moved to harvard or he stayed until the of sensibly chose to come to columbia in 1993. his current range of research includes 1770 dutch art, 18th-century french painting, 16 to 21st century british and visual culture and 20th and 21st century landscape in environmental history. if you think that a sort of range as rare in the academy today, you are right. in 2001 simon schama was made commander of the british empire and we historians don't get a lot of that either.

[laughter] in 2001 simon schama delivered a lecture at yale whose title i think makes the point of what type of restoring he is rather nicely, he was entitled english history: in defense of the epic and that is the sort of book that he writes. grand sweeping narratives that we -- weave in art and culture, their wonderful person he rise at a pace that is the rest of us look pretty bad. he's the author of among others embarrassment of riches, the favorite of his book glorious citizens wish to depress his entire columbia university seminar by telling us he voted in a year, a puckish historical novel of sorts entitled dead certainties, unwarranted speculations, rembrandts eyes and three volumes that make up his history of britain. in his abundant spare time simon schama has been a regular contributor to the new republic, the new york review of books, the guardian and since 1994 the art and culture critic for the

new yorker. for which he netted a national magazine award for our criticism in 1996. he's also well known for his television work for the bbc and elsewhere. simon schama how ball finds his medium in books and he rides like the dickens. in fact, he writes like dickens. [laughter] in his hands characters leap off the page in the dust of history falls away, it is my great pleasure and i university career by taking his columbia doctoral seminar and writing history beyond the academy which may help explain why one up at a major tenure granting institution like the washington post. [laughter] it certainly helps explain why we at burke world wanted you to have that treated hearing from simon schama paragon one of his mentor's once lamented about his inability to write a short book but the work that he is here to discuss with us tonight is actually rather a short book. in a taut morally complex and passionate book that is probably the most strictly american thing

he's ever done. here is how the evening will run -- simon schama will talk about his wonderfully rich new "rough crossings" and then throw it open to your questions. you can ask those questions from the microphones located in the aisles and when he is winding down his talk he will invite you to move toward the mikes. after the q&a he will stay around for a bit to sign the books that are on sale at the back of the room for those of you would like to buy them. is a great treat for us to have simon schama here as the guest and a retreat for us to have you on such a wretched weather day. ladies and gentlemen, simon schama. [applause] >> thank you so much. first of all, of the most boring question and a performance -- can you hear me? great. thank you so much for coming in this horrible weather. in you all want to know when you have done to deserve a the rauf of providence falling on you.

the answer is invited me. wherever i go this nasty black cloud of not a moral or metaphorical but a meter logical occurs. we did was kind of a musical performance whether as a huge time passed overhead and, this was providences saying simon schama is not yet ready to sing actually. it found out to be true. thank you, warren, this is a washington post audits other is in much british empire to command. it is like a free scuba diving like the queen's personal order really. but given the way things are going and republic of the free, i have been authorized by david manning in the ambassador and britain is sending applications for readmission. [laughter] let it not be said we are heart of hearts or prepared not and,

of course, we are the money of the revenue we can get. i actually had it when i got a wonderful thing on the loan all about the usefulness of monarchy almost every day and when i went to go to buckingham palace, when i went up to the queen and i just finished event in history and a. with a television performances in 15 films and she said i believe you have a video para [laughter] yes, as we have been told to say. have you seen it? would you like a sad? that would be nice. i have been panhandled by the queen in buckingham palace. [laughter] what is wrong with this picture? not goodall. so here is my book. history is a fragile thing. my god, it is fragile, hardwired

for history and yet it can go just like that. and i will tell you to stories. one sort of, goal and one really sad actually in the second one in case you're wondering what until in the first one is a port and relevant i think this particular history which we are in danger of not noticing or losing all together, but i first realized history is fragile when i was working on a citizen's or as a war and calls it rather wonderfully revolution of 1688 in britain and was known to the corrupt whigs as the glorious revolution in the war and called my book the glorious citizens which i liked better than the actual title. from now on it is going to be like glorious citizens. so when i was working on citizens in paris a lot of you

here i know have worked in the archives anything of the archives as a sort of it democracy a scholarly study but it isn't, not in paris like general de gaulle in 1968. intensely hierarchal. it would recognize this right away but i did not know this and was kind of green and ingenuous and generally pleasingly juvenile. i think was the way one of my professor describes me. i was really juvenile anyway. i swore into the lecture and imported at my dossier and not realizing that i planted myself with the table of a particular senior researchers who worked on the late charters, late medieval history, and no one did anything hoping to get the delivery of the archives until the latter performance which reminded me of the morning rituals of the law was the 14th.

he arrived, everybody sort of registered he arrived, he took off his jacket to reveal sleeves with a sort of bicycle clips thing on them, he took his jacket and put it on the second chair because he was with two seats, and then when he was ready for his charters' sort of millions approach which was rather like lewis the 14th taking lunch to be brought in his or procession to the courtyard. the meat of the king approaches and it was sort of like that, the meat and history. they all hated them, i especially hated him, on my dwindling dollar was actually being wasted on this. and then one day as a kind of -- he would pick up at the end of the branded this, he would pick up the sort of first charter rather sacramental lee as a raising the host, and he would put it down and then we could all do what the hell we had come

for coming to work. so one day he went to all of this and he picked up this beautiful thing and started to fall apart in his hands. i was torn between her the kind of tragic and the deeply comic, it was terrible that disappearing history the so happy that this moment of archival penitente fall in this otherwise in vulnerable tyrant. and then he tries to put it together again and it is started to turn to talcum powder basically and suddenly all of his friends, the ushers turned into the evidence and descended on him and the, first of all, took the box away which is now a kind of dusty mass and then they took him away. i like to think of the bicycle clips, but we see. >> a deeply jason the men with one seed only. it was a the kind of cautionary moment to realize that history can, indeed, be extremely agile.

it is not in the least bit comic this story because, in fact, about a month ago i think, three weeks or a month ago, the tiny but incredibly precious museum of the black loyalist heritage society, and other words the museum which had in his rudimentary precious archeological artifacts from nova scotia, a village of a free blacks on the south shore of the island, it was burned down from top to bottom. by persons unknown, but since attila the other museum of loyalists history just outside halifax had been vandalized with clear racist intention of. what we think of it has been

tolerant pluralistic light and domicile canada. it happened just a few months before. it is quite obvious that this took place to do the most sinister. probably some very hideous white supremacist gangs operating in canada just as in the rest of north america and mostly their work and the most hideous thing of all is that they knew it was a black institution but did not know actually how incredibly important to the history of a transatlantic history and british in north american history this sort of a toehold of memory represented. the excavations will go on at birch town -- i talk about fragments of a uniform types, glasses, but from those little modest prosaic things you can restrict -- to reconstruct a life of committee and since we're talking about a community, in other words, the settlers who had been soldiers and the british army and come to nova scotia as free blacks, former

slaves along with the british. we're talking about their daily lives and it's precisely because the little artefacts were so domestic and some mundane. and they told the story of the daily life achieved at a moment of great hardship and struggle. and difficulty. and social pain. that the losses kind of devastating so this is another lesson to us all that something out there does not want this story to be told, to be registered. this story that is nowhere to be found in i am confident in saying in high school social studies curriculum because we know -- we don't know about the boston black barber who was a witness called by john adams. remember he was counsel to defend in the boston massacre. he defended the british as old as against charges of massacre

quite rightly claiming it had been an excuse what happened in a been a response to a panic stricken response to being stoned basically. so newton prince was there. >> up the stories that john adams was telling and within three days he was tarred and feathered and this was somebody who then could not wait actually to join general gauges army when it arrived at boston. this complicated story and tragic difficult story that if you are black in the american colonies on the eve during the revolution you had a choice, and a very large number of blacks in the south, slaves and the south loaded with their feet against america and under an illusion not entirely without some substance, a kind of wished that was setting them up for all kinds of heartbreak. they voted with their feet with a king with the union jack and the inclusion, of course if you

been following this story or no, that the slaves of some of the most of this founding fathers, george washington's slade henry washington, for example couldn't wait to join the british army. a week after patrick henry stood up in the house of the purchase in the virginia assembly and said give me liberty or give me death, his own a slave and said i will have liberty, the buy. [laughter] he was to be found in the british camp. i want to start and go on i should say with a quote because at least 3,000 of these escaped slaves and those who actually made the attempt to reach a the british army, most historians think and i think we are now being more modest and our numbers because jefferson told us of 30,000 of them in virginia alone, i think we've tended to round up rather too freely and i'm guilty of this along with others but my view it as a less than 50,000 which is an

extraordinary number in the south alone to in response to the famous downhill proclamation in november 1775 offering freedom to all slaves escaping from a rebel plantations, this is not a deal you're going to get if you are loyalists slave which tells you something about british motives which not on humankind as an analyst at the end of the more there were 3,000 famously at least free slaves left in new york, now free blacks, and slaves in new york and here's what one of them -- apart from anything else the story gives us some of the first very articulate voices of african-american self-determination. two memoirs were left behind, won by a man named boston king who am going to read from a second becomes a methodist preacher and the other at famous baptist preacher called david george to both spent time with the british army during the war and left little memoirs later about their experience.

here is what boston king says. much of this book actually i hope those of you who migrated or those who have read it will feel it is simply an active ventriloquism by me. it is so moving and demanding of their eloquence and articulation and so important for the way we think of our life in america now. that's all i thought i could do was simply actually give them a voice coming to set them down really. here is boston king. in the spring of 1783, bear in mind new york 1783 the war has vanished. it is chaos in new york. there is still a very large british and defeated garrison 1,018,000 soldiers, considerable british fleet in the harbor. the peace treaty has been negotiated. article seven of the peace treaty negotiated in paris between the british and the americans specified that cold,

shall be no caring of the property and the gross. this was done with the assistance of the south carolina henry lawrence at the very last minute two so there were slave catchers who had come from the south from the carolinas and georgia in order to return what they think of has stolen property, still in human property back to the south, but guess what, these people are all free now and some of them have documents. they have had children many are in families, the children have been legally baptized and many have little certificates would say the born free behind british lines. i will say a word in a minute about what happens in this kind of a face-off between washington who wants to get them back to the south in the last commander of the british army, a very unlikely hero in just one event. here is boston king -- about this time in boston king rice,

peace was restored between america and great britain. which diffused universal joint among all parties except us. he would escape slavery and take refuge in english army, for a report prevail and new york that all the slaves were to be delivered up to their masters. although some of them had been three or four years among the english. this dreadful of rumor and filled us with inexpressible anguish and terror, especially when we saw our old masters coming from virginia and north carolina and other parts, seizing upon a slaves in the streets of new york or even dragging them out of their beds. many of the slaves had very cruel master's, and the thought of returning home with them in better life to us. for some days we lost appetite for food and sleep departed from eyes. in english had compassion upon us and the day of our distress and issued a proclamation importing all slaves should be free to have taken refuge in the british lines.

in consequence of this each received a certificate from the commanding officer at new york which dispelled our fears, filled as with joy and gratitude. in some of the joy was to be short-lived at least in respect to the material hardships that these people were going to undergo a for one moment there was a real moment of how does one put it, the kind of fragmentary reclamation of honor on the part of the british and it was in bonn this is very unlikely person of the last commander in chief, your basic imperial never went. a minor officer career is, totally nondescript and becomes governor of canada. groce stature but not very much, but he is a good as we say in britain and wasn't a man without instinctive sense of decency and he is very angry at the government for abandoning all loyalists black and white.

the end of the war should be seen as two kinds of civil war particularly civil war in america. 100,000, there is this image of the tories as kind of fat pipe smoking court is willing plutocrats. there were just like the patriots, there were shopkeepers there were exactly like him the patriots. you would not know this from the epic film, a professor of mel gibson called the patriot. how many of us have seen that? that moment were actually basically the british are represented as kind of bs s. i say sergeant, and hill that baby, would you? [laughter] it was a german director, is that unreasonable of the? of course, the pitcher was based on the life of francis merit, the real swamp fox this ferocious brilliant man of

action but he is represented as free his slaves. gimme a break. not only did francis marion not free his slaves, they actually, a group of them across as mounted british troops against francis marion. i wonder what we don't see that in the movie? i was going to say in this digression -- was going to say that when mel gibson makes another movie which i think probably we won't anticipate too soon to call the tory, will have known that the sense of the revolutionary war and the civil war is actually respected so we're in a very bad time in the spring of 1783 and it was conscious on how are redeeming some shred of honor so there is a conference called an ambulance on the west sign of the hudson and in a place to castillo go to. not much change.

a small dutch house washington against shortly after boston has written what he's written in washington wants to know what a timetable evacuation including the return of negros is going to be. he takes this fantastically condescending superior. air. washington did not like growth in any way because mostly people kept saying how much like the look. [laughter] and they didn't and washington hated that actually. both rather taciturn a. the and so carlson said my dear general, this incredibly awful british tactic up attending to be too stupid to understand what the other person is saying when you know perfectly well what he is saying, i'm probably too dense to quite a grasp of but

you couldn't quite possibly want me to violate the seventh undertaking in respect of these people of all colors. people of all colors to rendered service to his majesty in the land war and, of course, exactly what george washington wanted him to do and the account given by william smith of the loyalist disguised washington reddening when he discovers there is no way the british are actually going to deliver up these free blacks to be returned to the plantation in the south. wasn't his choice. if you want to enforce the letter of the treaty he could actually restart the war and is not prepared to do that so some of the colleagues wished him to threaten the british or the refusal ever to exchange prisoners but washington basically except this as if read accompli so of the blacks go with the white loyalists to nova scotia at this moment.

here is how i see it happening. the accounts on what it felt like an look-alike is from lots of contemporary sources about the darks and the last days of the war unless you think it is me being extravagant in a keynesian way. one english paper, i like this actually, one of british newspaper gave me a very good review and did say simon schama takes purple or even purple dare not go. [laughter] i like that, i think i want that on my epitaph. [laughter] he won't agree. on the waterfront and the rank grammy high summer on the days before indication, and they would have observed in the heat mass on the canvas in a logjam of horses and wagons, the crack

of blips, cursing drivers, opportunists cowls, hogs and dogs, ships and house flooring as they were herded on board, skinny calves already prowling the dax, barrels and tons of salt tacked, biscuits, tar and rum blocking the war, drunks in the shops lurching between them, just piled high on the decks before being lowered into the hold. the usual swarm of sailors and buyers and vendors, thieves and whores, much kissing, the capering fiddler, the thunder handing out tracks to save souls less the deep take them. but also and as the melee the observer would have seen the passengers, men with their hats on and their coats off, scatters of children, some dozing and some scampering, some slouching toward a frightening future. ..

who god to retire to a country estate in the english and shirer's while they had to make shift hundreds of miles to the north beginning again in the fish scotia and the walls are in a by way of a town. and these dispossessed loyalists are less than delighted to be cheek by jowl with the other class of people. i found the white loyalist indescribable the class of

people dressed scarcely more than beggars, low tavern musicians, baby's sucking, the class of people that might teach slaves manners worse the began to sing while they were lost in sorrow same what was there to sing about? everything. rebirth, british freedom, god love and kindness, is all encompassing mercy, honest to goodness of the king, the premise of food for a year. a piece of land for the rest of their lives. born again, dear lord. the white sea later laid before them in the july hayes. there had been so many boats and passengers in the night, so many experiences on the water which they were about to be conveyed to the new life. there were the party workers, these flat bottomed boats. they lay in the reeds of the

current weiner, the timbers taken out to the big ships, the ins and outs of the violence and marshes of the chesapeake, their folks dying on the sand from fever, the whaleboat's that haunted them and the whaleboats the had hunted. rivers they have a swim and wherever they found themselves they had been looking for jordan for milk and honey. and we know so much about these people. we know for the first time they are not such a generic group because a book was set up to begin with in the tavern and in the dark side a committee was appointed, half american, have british to check whether or not the blacks who claimed entitlement to british freedom to a passport, to a document of their liberty had indeed come into british lives before the peace treaty had been signed. so we have in the case of the 3,000 african-americans and

account tiny biographies, swedes names, ages, physical conditions when they were not field hands. we know what jobs they had done in their slave life. we know how they traveled. we know for example an astonishing fact that before the war 80% of all the railways in the plantation as you may have guessed would be young, relatively young adult males. during the war, it's about 50/50. we are talking about a lot of women who take their children. the man go to serve on the british line, sometimes they disappear and sometimes are reunited. we are talking about a lot of women and children and have the first time as i say names and conditions, and we knew where they left and when they left. what and who left william smith of virginia in 78 with three children when she left. now she had five. margaret, who had got up and

gone when she was 60 and now, with his parents perceivable dead have charge of her own 15-year-old grandson, thomas. nancy moodie who left henry moodie of williamsburg when she was only nine, a child just walked off the plantation. lee hamilton, she had been 8-years-old when she walked off, charlotte hammond left john hammond on the river in south carolina at 15 in 1776. as soon as they could go, we are talking about the first great upheaval, the first great exodus of african-americans in history, should we not know this? should our children not notice in their high school curriculum? per your neighbor, venus, who had gone with her one-year-old son from the river and so on. so we have these names, women's names because it is striking to have black women's history appear suddenly in this form. anyway, they're often over

scotia -- how are we doing now? goodness. i should say a word about why so many tens of thousands of african-americans believe they might have better hope. many of them of course do also served. about the same number seem to be combat troops in one kind or another in the patriot army and then the british army but a larger number from the kind of a fan of the british army. 5,000 treated this the likably by wallace, but nevertheless stay with british troops to their final grew so idiotic as i think that at yorktown. but why was this intense believe? i've found the book if any of you know about this i found a sleeve and had been pompey or skip be or who knows what horrible slave name and he renamed himself at some point in

this experience british freedom. if your george washington british freedom is an oxymoron but it wasn't for him. so, why would he do this? and the answer can be found partly in extraordinary scrap of evidence to me that in 1773 and 1774 advertisements before the revolution, advertisements start to appear in the virginia gazette for the securing of runaway slaves which say paraphrasing a approximately william or palm v or what ever run to the british ships on account of the information in the late summer said case sometimes in the belief in old england slaves would be free. now the somerset case was the most famous of a series of cases which were fought by the first

white hero in the book. was illegal -- it was impossible to be a slave in metropolitan britain and england, scotland, ireland itself and the story is quite extraordinary. he was -- he is the dreamy some of the minor north of england where it and has a boring job in the ordinance in the town of ireland and what is exciting is the obscure arguments and biblical scholarship, but he's part of a large family famous for playing music and giving an inch or concerts' including floating concerts'. his older brother, william, is a physician to the king will many surgeons to the king, he needed all he could get even at this point. and they rehearsed every week at williams surgery on the board between the city of london and the much poorer eastern end.

but william did one of the remarkable thing. he had a free surgery for the poor of the area also on one of those days and was on such a day that he finished the rehearsal and stepped out of the house and there is a line of the impoverished and desperate and wounded stretching down the street. and prominent in the line there is a man who is almost don young. his master had simply hurt him so badly a pistol -- we know this from the notes, while they were trying to save his life, to and law all had actually broken the gun against his face and he was leaving who knows how so he was tossed into the street to die as if no particular value to

lyell and the brothers took care of him and this goes to the story. very moving account and strong as a language which is in a beautiful document, moving document preserved in the new york historical society actually. and they get him a job and pay for his hospital fees and all is well and that laws that and none of the shark brothers at this point, they were humane and deeply christian, but at this point they are not abolitionist fighters at all. but then something interesting happens. three years later rather like a dickens novel, credibly like a dickens novel, jonathan strong is standing at the back of the employer, mr. brown's carriage and his old master who nearly killed him season goes by and the old master thinks he was dead, i've lost an investment and he doesn't allow of masters who had slaves who have been runaway slaves, he hires a slave

capture, which there were many in london. and they jumped jonathan strong and bundled him off to prison and the idea was to haul him aboard a ship and sell them for money as a sleeve again in the west indies but something has happened to jonathan strong and that something is that he has learned to read and write and sends a letter after a bit of head scratching russia's over to the prison and insists on the writs of habeas corpus and it results in the liberation of jonathan strong, and almost as important it results in the conversion of the sharper brothers particularly of grindle to become to spend his life really being the sort of self appointed legal champion of kidnaps, runaway slaves in london. and it makes him the first utterly committed abolitionist. some one who finds it not only what he calls slavery engines a

clean morley loathsome but also intrinsically utterly consistent with the british and english common law. and it leads all the way to the case of somerset, the most famous case on which grindle sharks antagonist as he describes him, lord chief justice mansfield is forced to rule. it is thought to swing to be forced to rule whether it is possible to be a slave in england itself notwithstanding of course there were a million slaves in the british caribbean and mansfield wants to wriggle out and deliver and ad hominem decision. so this is the case and i'm going to read a little bit about that moment because it involves the black community in london. but this is the case which travels across the atlantic, takes wing in the world of the plantation slaves. one thing i have learned about trying to relay this important

moving history is important because we have this book. it's important because it is true and deeply a powerful piece of american history. but if there's one thing i've learned it's that you can't possibly increase this history or learn about it and believe the african-american population is somehow passive at this moment, the kind of credulous ponds or either tories or wakes an american or british. the of their own destiny to consider and it's true they go to the british and thousands because they are enemies and friends. it is true what else are they going to do once they've escaped these plantations, disappeared in the rivers and hills of piedmont virginia. they need protection of the british army. but it's also true they knew about james somerset. they had an incredible leap romantically flattering we believe in british freedom some of as we know believe king

george as one of them put was fighting a war to deliberate this leaves, which was tragically of course diluted you. british did this as they say out of military opportunism. i should add before i read the somerset section even though the british do this out of military opportunism it doesn't preclude the fact many junior officers in particular and some senior officers take the kind of moral implications what they have done entirely seriously and entirely sincerely of which at the end of the war was one example. here's what was like on that date for the black community in london who knew absolutely how important the moment was. on monday the 22nd june, 1772 at 11:00 in the morning all of london and beyond seemed to have come to west minister paul aspelin from coffeehouses and taverns and the establishment, the shops and exhibition rooms

coming by carriage and saddam chain and a horse and foot from the squares to the west and clattering city streets to the east. since 74, the interior of the ancient gothic chamber had been divided by an elaborate wooden screen. on one side, the two courtrooms, the kings' bench and on the other, a vast public space, fieldstone where people stood, sat, produced the shops on the walls and where judgment was to be given halted, listened. among the crowd that they were black faces who greeted mansfield, the lord chief justice come and justices ashton, willes and as the four long way spouse through the screen into the kings' bench ascending the low steps where once the judges of charles i had hectored the deposed king. so for town, the nickname for the lord chief justice, appeared for the moment tom tie it on

characteristically learned. his habitual affability oppressed by the burdensome expectations of history. more than ever bohol seemed not merely a court of law, his court of law but as it had been sentries before, the true course of the king, the court of the kingdom. england blyth word in the summer chill and for once the lord chief justice or his famous learning totally. but in the silence he proceeded lost to many as it floated through the wooden screen out into the dusty fastness where first he competed with a hub of boatpeople browsing the pan and wood stoves but then it became understood the judgment was supposed given and there was a hush. mansfield resumed it will stop, he said, to some indeed many my supposed great judgment, but merely whether or not there was sufficient cause for the return, the return to the rich mant if you were one of these people who have had a slave, you could not

taken off with habeas corpus you had the right of the return to the writ saying you were the wrong party because had property taken from you so the judgment to be given whether or not barong slave owners had just cause for the return to the rich. so mansfield goes on if there was cause the negro must be detained in other words if it was proved they actually had been the subject of theft in the negro, if not what it was as plain as that, only as rippled through the hole for some time the lord chief justice made his way through august this case but others concerning similar escapes and detentions. and said given all said that neither the fact of the sleeve coming into england much less his or her own baptism could be set and yet the public heard the shift while slavery had been and plus many things in different

ages and states the exercise of power of a master of his sleeve must be supported by a lot of particular countries, america, the west indies, spain, but no foreigner can in england claim such a right, such a right over a man, such a claim as not known to the law of england, the power plant never was here or acknowledged by the law. no master here was ever allowed to take a slave by force to be sold abroad because he deserted from service or any other reason but survivor. we cannot say the cost set forth by this return is allowed or approved of by the law of this kingdom. therefore, the lord chief justice made sure not to pause, there for the man must be discharged. he rose and so did the justices ashton wells and before they disappeared through the door on this side of the whole opening to the robing room something happened that stirred even the jaded said to mince in force

from the gazettes and chronicles composts morning and evening and daily advertiser. as mansfield and his colleagues emerged eckert of blacks in the public space, quote, bowed with profound respect to the judges. then they shook hands vigorously with each other congratulating themselves upon their recovery of the rights of human nature and that they're happy about them to breathe the free air of england. no site upon earth, wrote a reporter from the morning chronicle, could be more pleasing to the feeling mind and the joy which shone at that instant in the poor man's continent says. so this believe becomes amazingly in gray and. so what happens to it? blacks live in the army, the british pioneers, some were treated badly, some were treated well. they take a tremendous load of suffering. they have meaningful jobs, some

from that have less. they built bridges. one man who i argue is the first identifiable african-american politician who absolutely all to be known, thomas peters, a sergeant in the british army, twice wounded in the british pioneers. we ought to know about colonel hi, the ex sleeve titus from new jersey runs a band of black guerrillas for the british on the hudson river on till he's killed and wounded in the battle with white patriot and his hand gets infected with tetanus and he dies. these are very important figures in my view in american history they just happen to fight for the wrong side. so they go to of the scotia and the problem is of course as my reading early on suggested ago with a white loyalists who do not want them there and they -- their freedom is acknowledged in the nova scotia courts when

there is any attempt to free and slave then they go to the nova scotia and courts and there are enough judges to uphold more cases than not but some times than not. they cling to these precious documents in history but what they do not get this land. the white loyalists to everything because their interest in the cheap labor force to reduce these people to the state of desperate destitution. the stories we have of the villages where they hang on one of which is perched town, where the little museum has just been destroyed are extremely important in other places preston of the scotia still a black township just quite near halifax. and it's in this period of suffering diaspora that the first defining institutions of black community, for the black community, the first baptist churches, the first free black schools happened and the first political leadership. peters become as his comrades call him the speaker general.

he becomes a kind of focus of infuriated better sense of betrayal and petitioning movement to the government of nova scotia when he doesn't get proper attention he makes it all the way back to london. it is a story that i tell more links the lee and very powerful story. amazingly they don't know how he gets to london, but he gets the era of the black kennedy in london and a grant of sharp and for the government and there are more very moving petitions that sharp and peters, this middle-aged determined adamant particulate x sergeant in the british army drafts with this kind of dreamy expert legal campaigner and they always invoked movingly what they called the english constitution. there is no english constitution it is just of course the tradition. there's only 61 constitution at that moment which delivers freedom in the world and that's

the american constitution. peters doesn't think so. so, what happens is not to start another i just want to read one small section for you, is that the british government sends someone back with peters to nova scotia, a 27-year-old naval recalled john parks who is the younger brother of one of the great abolitionist campaigners thomas clarkson, and jon clarkson and peters, but particularly john clarks are authorized to make an offer to the veteran free blacks in nova scotia and the city if you wish to stay in nova scotia we will first examine whether or not you have been betrayed and we will see to it you do get the land as promised. if you wish -- if the adult males want to draw an aspirin in the british army serving in the caribbean, then we will pay supplies supplies not many people take the government on

that offer, or we will assemble a fleet to take you to west africa to ziara lenone to found freetown, to found a free self-governing black commonwealth. there had been an earlier foundation burned down by the chief of few days before itself. slightly heartbreaking story. now, clarkson is someone who had been a midshipmen and served in the caribbean and showed no sign of concern about slavery until they can back to england and had fallen under the magnetic influence of his mother and he went through an incredible conversion and becomes the clerk kind of tireless campaigner, but he is still a bit of a greenhorn at this. but suddenly i like heroes like shark and jon clarkson who walked backwards into history to have their moment. it seems unlikely they will ever be here and he's very conscious

that this is a kind of appointment in the kind of religious sense for him and so important he and his brother agree he's going to keep a diary and the diary is 800 pages long. it's an amazing document. he's sort of immensely outgoing, romantic evangelical confessional tied. he's very physically brave but also on believably neurotic. a cross between russell crowe and woody allen if you can imagine that. and the writing is fabulously over the top and she's discovered his relocation at this moment and he utterly false in love with -- and is deeply moved by everything the blacks have gone through, their story right from sometimes you know some of them who remember having been children taken in slavery to africa but he particularly is moved by the stories of the escape by everything they have endured by what's happened to

them and frozen of the scotia and i just want to and he has won -- he ends up mobilizing, outbidding i should say, this 15 ship fleet. he travels in the hospital ship because he knows very well the last time many of these africans actually experience the atlantic ocean was of course on the middle passage of sleeves so he's determined that they should not, you know, undergo any form of that trauma again. so, he lays down careful specification about food, about medical treatment and distance between the decks and ventilation and sanitation. he's so expecting it takes forever to get the fleet to gather at the precious time when they land in nova scotia the it's the rainy season which causes further heartbreak. but his moment, the last moment on october 26, 17 -- let me find

it, yeah. and 1791 he goes to bridgetown, the place where as i say alas this little museum has been destroyed across from shelburne and he is going to have an open-ended meeting, but a day like today much colder so they have to have the meeting in the church and everybody in bridgetown probably 500 squeezing to the church for once the baptists seemed methodist repair to be the same church together which usually they were not and there are people who just are packed and jammed into the doors and around the windows and clarkson is worried that he doesn't need anyone us straight. he knows that it may be tough in the sierra leone and if he doesn't want those who finally got a little late and finally

have begun to make it as far to sell their land to hastily so he's determined to deliver a rather dry enthusiastic version what life might be like in her freetown. but at some point, since he is so emotionally engaged in what he is doing, but dryness stops. clarkson standing had done his duty. he had been stirred as he promised himself he should. yet every so often as he said something about their land or africa he cries and shouts of joy as if he were a profit. at the end he couldn't help himself, he had to offer himself in deed as the father patriarch, the white moses. they actually came to call him that as well. as soon as they got themselves to halifax that was the jumping off point. they had to come from different parts of nova scotia to halifax

where the fleet was being assembled. as soon as they had all got into halifax, he said and this is the journal entry, they must look at me as friend and protector. i should be happy to address their grievances and ready to defend them with my life. in return for which i expect good behavior during the passage that would give me as little trouble last possible and land a willing hand whenever their assistance might be required giving them however to understand this last request would be entirely voluntary on their part for they must consider themselves in every respect as passengers other words mosul leaves. no compulsive methods will be adopted more white sailor up on any account to be suffered with impunity to lift up his hand against them. when they got africa clarkson promised you glitzy each got their land and declared i would never leave them to each individual assured me he was perfectly satisfied.

no white man had ever spoken to them like this. the had endured captivity, they had been sold, made to leader like beasts than endure the terror of light have seen small pox, wasted bodies laying unattended, and buried on the short and soldiers and pioneers shout about frozen in the nova scotia winter and had their entitlements stolen from them. and somehow they still haven't abandoned hope and here was this pale young officer in his blue coat, finn as a swinging birch saying these things that opened their eyes, ears and hearts. clarkson and was done now and again there was a burst of great exultation from the congregation with shouts, praise and affirmation. coming down from the pulpit he was swamped by space diffusive joy.

thank you. [applause] thank you. i would like to end on an upbeat note but there are an awful lot of heartbreaks that and at that moment. so i'm happy to take questions providing they are incredibly easy to answer. [laughter] yes, the gentleman in the front row. >> i have to say i know you are a professor and i find myself interested [inaudible] >> we can make an arrangement. you can pay it off on visa for easy installments. [laughter] >> it's hard to hear in the back. >> should i repeat the question? the question actually hasn't been put yet. it merely flattered me and you don't want to hear that.

>> a couple of things. one, have you read [inaudible] >> yes beat >> the question is have alladi read an easy plantation which is about the kind of last and it's a wonderful portrait of conflict of feeling and in the south. one thing is true of land in carter who is a distant relative of washington, a friend of washington. so yes, is that the founding fathers, grand or not so grand -- you have to give them complete top notch for being candidly aware of the inconsistency between the rhetoric of liberty and their own position. washington of course is famously conflict. henry's terrific book is about that. but, you know, washington did indeed, his will said his sleeves should be freed but not when he dies, when martha dies of course, so there's all sorts

of reservations and qualifications about that. how do we feel? i don't know how i feel. patrick henry has an extraordinary letter to antonin, which the quaker abolitionist cents to grindle shark in which patrick henry attacked slavery of which he is the beneficiary, forthrightly and intelligently as if he were himself or franklin and adds that the end of the letter you will be wondering the inconsistency of my believe and then he says disarming we about how heartbreakingly i confess -- i cannot do without the convenience. a terrible thing to say. the convenience of slavery? and this is give me liberty or give me the death, patrick henry. so on one hand, they are full of shocking truth about your own hypocrisy. i will say there's loads of hypocrisy to go around. there are huge slabs of general

how for example who really is, was this terrible things about the black soldiers but there again, clinton absolutely is devoted to them. differences on both sides. so i do not want to replace on seen lee american with equal the unseemly british self congratulations and i think that point was taken on most of the british press. there is good -- the sense of awareness, which swings between anxiety and terror and how does one put this, in jefferson's case sort of all of schizophrenia what he believes intellectually and what he does social. jefferson is the man who has a paragraph and the declaration draft declaration which attacks slavery and yet is the man who believes utterly and unequivocally that blacks are

racially inferior to whites. you can't possibly read his own account of the races without believing that. but the most shocking moment ase -- well, the least shocking i suppose i about what the americans are faced with with this double thinking is if you are for example someone like john adams the only unequivocal, sorry, the only unequivocal massachusetts patriot from early on and says we cannot possibly, cannot possibly describe ourselves as sleeves of the british on less we free our own as james otis regarded as completely out of control, over the top and thought to go clinically mad. john adams on the other hand knows as a shocking disconnect, but he basically has a foul moment and says our enemy is king and his trip for ministers and we will never win this board

is united. so we will leave this as a national issue we can deal with as a massachusetts issue. we will leave it as a national issue for the time being and the time being of course turns into the civil war. in the south, the business of leaving it means on the verge of the war theory is such feature and terror of the british army and the slaves that actually in charleston for example it is quite clear that rank-and-file patriots in charleston start to demand arms in order to protect slavery in other words for them the war for liberty is the one to protect slavery. which makes it recalled one of the civil war, which is a sobering thought. the gentleman there, yes. >> thank you very much.

i have a rather mundane question. was nova scotia the only place that the slaves -- [inaudible] >> we are talking about 30,000 or so who depart with the british and their fate is various forms of travel. some go resold into slavery in the caribbean. there is charleston and savannah. a substantial number become free farmers. scotia the only place where the ex slaves go and you had the rest of my answer. some become of reformers and the bahamas and jamaica and so on. some go to east florida where alas florida is about to be traded to the spanish and very hard to figure out what happens to them. so, there are many other places they go. nova scotia is the designated place of settlement rall loyalists white or black who

didn't have the means to go to britain. a couple of them to go to london, about a thousand of them. maybe a little more. it is actually about a thousand. where they have to appeal for their pensions due to them before the loyalist claims commission. the trouble with the loyalist claims commission is scary in a long way this is that you are compensated for your loss is in america depending how much property you had while most of these people did not have property there had been property so the bottom of the totem pole. but we know quite a lot about those cases. some to get compensated and become reward. you know, as much as this book, and it is a short book, warren is quite right, it is a bloody pamphlet for me really. [laughter] , but really we are just starting this history i think actually and there are many others if you read the article

in the new yorker there are many young researchers starting to rediscover and enormous amount about black experience during the revolutionary war. >> he said 30,000, do you mean 30,000 loyalists? >> i meant, i just meant black. yes, yes. i think it was some people think, actually you know, again it is from looking at the figures because the naval offices are overwhelmed by the numbers that are there. so these thousands are suspicious because there are all of those notes. but we know between 15 and 20, there are 15 in savannah and at least 20i think in charleston that i might be corrected numbers. can i take one more. yes. >> -- east 82 florida -- did they end up seminoles? >> some of them do.

that's absolutely right. that's quite right. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> columbia university art history professor simon schama on his book "rough crossings." for more information on the author, go to columbia.edu. bookexpo america in new york city with craddock, founder of pm press. what is pm press? >> good to see you as always. pm press is a small group of publishers. we do different types of media. dvd, cd, audio lectors including music as well as fiction and nonfiction books. all the stuff we do has ideas behind it. the ideas are political in the sense that we want an open dialogue about not only current events but how history has been interpreted, who makes history, who defines what's important for people to know and how we can

empower people to make the right decisions. >> said this is your first year and you have a lot of books coming out or you have launched within this past year and science-fiction is writer is the new one you want to talk about. >> sure, what is new to us with pm press is to be doing fiction. again, because what is important for all of us is to have ideas behind what we do. fiction is a place where stories can also be told and interpreted in different ways. we started a series called the outspoken author series, which combines short fiction from popular science fiction writers such as kim stanley robinson, terry is an and long in-depth interviews where they talk about their personal politics, what they're trying to get across in the story and sort of demystify a bit of what the science fiction is about. so it can be shocking. you know as the author often, the personal ideas often are

covered up by these fictional narratives but it's fascinating stuff. >> what are the two books that you're starting with? >> the books we are starting with is kim stanley robinson is the lucky strike which is the alternative history about what would have happened in hiroshima of the bomb was and dropped. definitely not going to give away the ending were the story, but it brings into play to help people are responsible for their own actions whether it is from the loneliest soldier or the air man or as individual consumers. these stories say what can happen when people take control and responsibility for their own actions. the other one is terri, which is more of a parity of the left behind series and books where he gets his opportunity to blast the right-wing born-again christians who we also take great pleasure in blasting. >> so you consider yourself a politically leftist publisher? >> i am in on comfortable with using the terms leftist as with

a right-wing because i think they carry too much baggage with them. but with the people who use the term to the reader on a say leftist or perhaps extreme leftist would be the stereotype. >> what other books to you have coming out? >> well, we've been working a lot with an l3 mac named derrick jensen known for his nonfiction. he's done a good books on the environment, everything from climate change to history from prehistoric history, made american history to present day and what we are working on with him is a sort of different turn. he's done a different lawful under an imprint called the flashpoint print where he's writing again like most of our fiction a story behind it. so it's not -- he has a tale to tell that involves what happens when man exploits nature and when there is climate change, what happens when there is a

very bad power relationship between those on top and those on the bottom between the haves and have-nots. so she's been able to put these in fictional accounts that are good stories. we've also done books with him where he interviews his own influences. we've done a book called how shall i live my life where he interviews a wide variety of activists from environmentalists to spiritual folks to doctors to animal rights activists and finds out for himself how people can live in a way that is just live on a planet that is more just in a way we can somehow treat each other in a more humane and fair manner. >> you are primarily a book publisher but also double and other media. do you want to talk about your dvd that you're publishing and disturbing? >> we have tvs and cds as well. the dvds today are all documentary's and we've covered everything from -- we are much

the question was was no the