policy during the war tore the zionist war the arabs or the turks? i do not believe that for a minute. i think the book will show there were many other hard headed reasons for the policies that followed. >> how did you get interested in the subject?

i didn't know anything about this or about my grandfather's ideas, so that just sort of lodged in my head. then i read a book by margaret macmillan called paris 1919, which is about the framing of the treaty of versailles in which is quite a brilliant book and which brilliantly succeeds at teaching, but also at reaching an audience not composed of family members and graduate students, and i thought i would like to do something like that some day. and trying to think about what i could write with my expertise as

a british historian i came up with "the balfour declaration" which coincided nicely with this discovery of my family papers. what was the second part of that question? [inaudible] i will probably but i'm waiting to see. it will not be connected with the middle east. [laughter] yes. >> as i recall -- [inaudible]

>> well, as you say it is a long complicated process. the very short outline is this. i could go back to that map i suppose but essentially, let's see, the grand sharif hussein wound up only as the king king of the who jobs and then he was booted out in 1924 by saudi and he went and lived in one of his sons forever after. faisal had.he would become king of an independent serious, and in fact for a very short period of time he was, but this conflicted with french interests in the middle east and so, they kicked him out and he was given a consolation prize, which was

to be really the puppet ruler of iraq under the british. and in the other brother, abdul, and you see this goes past my period, so i'm not an expert, but he does become eventually the king of what they called transjordan, which is now jordan and his family is still the hereditary ruling family in that country. [inaudible] >> well you are going beyond my period of expertise. they certainly did not -- here you see the british, the british are jug rings so many different in the air at once so they are juggling the arabs but also the french. the french were determined to have damascus, so i do not

believe that in the early 1920s the british were saying saying to abdullah you can have damascus. the french had it so i don't think that. i could be mistaken. i don't think so. i mean in the book i do speculate if you see, faisal who is another son of the grand sharif hussein and his army are trying to move to press north from above the golf of aqaba up to damascus. if they could have gotten there and taken it before november 2, 1917, in other words if an air of army had been in possession with guns and weapons and so forth, i am not sure that "the balfour declaration" would have ever been written but they didn't get there until the end of 1918. >> what became of mr. balfour?

[inaudible] >> balfour serves after the war and -- and continues in lloyd george's government. lloyd george's kicked out in 22 and replaced as prime minister for sure period and l. for circuit knows governments for a short period. what are his reflections? that is actually key, because it is hard to know what he really really wanted to happen in palestine. i think after the war, he probably hoped and thought that the jewish would essentially form an independent state, or what have autonomy. they there would be an autonomous state within the

british empire in which the jewish were a majority and in which they were the main governors. i believe that is what balfour wanted. now why he wanted that is complicated and it had to do with his complicated ideas and understanding of the jewish. he was probably happy. he probably didn't believe there really could be assimilated in great britain. speak it has been a fascinating evening to night. if you have not gotten a copy of balfour declaration you can purchase one in the lobby. jonathan schneer will be signing copies in the lobby. please join us there, but first let's give jonathan schneer a big hand. [applause] >> this event is hosted by the jimmy carter library and bayesian. to find out more about events

there, there's the jimmy carter library.org. daniel rasmussen recalls the largest slave revolt in american history. on january 8, 1811, 500 slaves adorned in military uniforms and equipped with assorted weapons embarked on taking new orleans. the author reports on their march upon the city and the outcome. he discusses his look at garden district up shop in new orleans for about one hour. [applause] >> thank you so much for coming tonight. before i start i want to thanks and special members of the audience, my aunt judy who is here to listen and a group of people who are sure heroes of mine, the afro-american historical association who fought for decades to keep this memory alive so i wanted to give them a round of applause and thank them for their hard work. [applause] today january 8, represents the 200th anniversary of the largest slave revolt in american

history. yet as you read the textbook whether it is louisiana history or american history, you won't find this revolt mentioned. in fact, there is a vast collective popular amnesia about the 1811 revolt that persists to this day. so i'm very excited to be here on january 8, which is the 200th anniversary of when they launch their revolution and try to conquer new orleans. you might be wondering why did the slaves picked january 8, 1811, which is today, or 200 years ago today? there are three reasons the slaves chose january 8, 1811. but he described to you a scene. 1811, the planters gathered. they cut open a king cake. was january fifth, 12th night or epiphany. after cutting open the king cake

this dancing began. the guests, english dances in france dance is. men smoked and gamble that tables. you never saw anything more brilliant renée french colonial official fresh from paris. at 3:00 in the morning slaves would bring in gumbo and turtle to serve huge tables of 70 people each. after the initial parties, many of the planters would go on to mixed-race and other such celebrations. when william claiborne, the mayor and governor, took over control of the city in 1804 the french planters informed him that the only way they could win their loyalty was to hold a party. i want to read you a description of what they served at that party. 196 bottles of madeira, 144 bottles of champagne, 100 bottles of hermit tasha wind, 67

bottles of randy, and 81 bottles of porter, 258 bottles of ale and 11,360 spanish cigars. the morning after that party it seemed like a pretty good time to revolt. [laughter] now the next reason the slaves chose january of 1811 is because in december and in the fall of 1810, liam claiborne the governor was raising a proxy war with spain over west florida. they had just conquered west florida here in the illegal military filibuster and there was rumors in the air that the spanish were going to send a counterattack from cuba to retake baton rouge. in december william claiborne who ordered the dragoons who were the most skilled and trained an effective military force the americans had new orleans out of the city and up to baton rouge to protected from

from -- the planters were drinking and celebrating carnival as we still celebrate carnival here today. the american military was distracted fighting the spanish in west florida and to top it all off on january 4, rainstorm blew in. i january 6, correspondents reported that the roads were half leg deep in mud. why was this rainstorm significant? for two reasons. the first was that rain meant the slaves could not work. there is nothing to do on a plantation in the middle of the pouring rain and the second was it was impossible to move heavy artillery and the roads were covered in mud. the slave army armed with cutlasses cane knives, axes and muskets would he facing an american military who strongest fighting force were hundreds of miles away and who could not bring out their best weaponry from the city. it was a perfect time. i want to tell you a little bit

about the leaders of the revolt. there were 11 separate leaders and i am going to talk about four of them. the first was a man named charles salon day whose name i hope will be in every history textbook in the country in the next few months or years. charles deslondes was an interesting man to say the least he was the son of a white -- and he served as the driver on this plantation. slave drivers were the at the top of the hierarchy. beneath a master was the overseer overseer and the beneath the overseer was the driver and beneath the driver were the slaves. charles deslondes mr. the punishment for the other slaves. he held the keys to all the doors on the plantation. when slaves escaped he would help to chase them down. drivers like charles were often regarded as traitors to their race and by the white's planters they were regarded as close accomplices and trusted advisers. charles would have been with his master of every morning to

discuss when the sugar would be planted and how the work was going. but charles was doing something else with the liberties granted to him as a driver. on the weekends he would visit his wife wife a few plantations down and as he traveled he would meet up with two men, kook and quamana in their native tongue. quamana was over 6 feet tall when the average high was over 6 feet 4 inches and was a looming figure. he was recently brought from africa in 1806. via chante kingdom was a warlike and powerful empire spread over much of the coast of africa. quango and coming up with work with charles and discuss the plans for what would become the largest revolt in american history. charles deslondes you see with the ultimate sleeper cells. using his privilege vision not to aid the planters but to subvert them.

on january 6, it was the final meeting between charles the three, harry kenner who was the son of the white a white planter and born in virginia and then kook and quamana and they met together on january 6. what did the slaves discuss? what were their motives and how did they organize? these are questions which no historian can answer definitively. slaves did not write anything down and they kept their actions completely secret from the planters. but let me tell you what the slaves would have known, what they would have been familiar with. i have not sure how many of you know about the revolution that occurred in haiti in 1791 to the 1800's. today i think when we think of haiti we think of those devastating scenes we see on television. in 1811, haiti was a beacon of

hope to all slaves across the american atlantic because haiti was the site of the first successful slave revolt in the history of the new world. not only was it a slave revolt, this was a political revolution. lack haitians abolished slavery declared racism illegal, and banned the french who settled in haiti or santo domingo just like they settle here in new orleans. i want to read to you from the haitian declaration of independence which i think can give you some sense of the political ideology that was flowing through the slave quarters. let us imitate those people who extending their concern into the future and dreading to lead an example of cowardice for prosperity preferred to be exterminated rather than lose their place as one of the world's free people. they went on, may the french trumble when they approach our code if not by the memory of the cruelty they have inflicted, at

least by the terrible resolutions that we are about to devote to death anyone born french with his sack with the -- lander pretty. those are amazing words. how did the slaves here in the do we as in a know about haiti and island island 200 miles away? let me tell you a little bit more about it. the people that transported the sugar from one place to another, the sailors, many of them were black and any of them were slaves. the people besser to self the sugar in the marketplaces were also slaves. messengers, carriage drivers, tradesmen, all of these people were black, many of them were slaves. as they traveled around, because they traveled across the atlantic, the carriage drivers and messengers from plantation to plantation, they were not just carrying their masters goods, they were carrying their own political ideology their own

ideas about just how this world that developed in just what it was going to become. and so what the planters knew, the slaves new is what the planters discussed in their fancy dinners, their lavish, who attended those and who brought them their food? who sat silently as they ate and listen to the conversation? slaves permeated every part of the society and the slaves here in louisiana coast were aware of political development, very aware of republican ideology. copies of the french documents from the french revolution were found in the slave quarters in 1800. in fact, few years before the 1811 revolt, the white colonial officials had expelled a french diplomat for spreading the word of the revolution in france. the slaves involved in planting had it complex political ideology. what i want to dive back into

what happened today, 200 years ago. i've talked about the brain. was pouring rain on the morning of january 8 when charles deslondes gathered a group of 25 lakh slaves on the plantation, the present-day woodlawn plantation. every man assembled a that his participation in the revolt with mean a certain death sentence, near certain death sentence. no slave revolt in louisiana had before been successful and the punishment for insurrection was clear, death with one's head on a pike. the planters distracted by mardi gras, the american military distracted by fighting a proxy war against the spanish, the rain preventing heavy artillery from being moved to the chairman coast. they might just have a chance. no record survived to tell us what charles said as encouragement in the final hours before they launch the revolt but i want to read you a passage from another preval purple that happened a year later, but that

leader said to his men in the final moments because i think he gives us at least an idea of what might've been said. this leader took a planting and sharpened machete, step for planting with a machete and said this is how we will drive through the stomachs of the whites. in the wake of the uprising planters only asked one slave why he decided to revolt. and he said, i wanted to go to the city and kill all the whites. and certainly, that violence and that death was a precondition to black freedom. there was no way for them to secure their independence or their emancipation without complete military control. otherwise, the white à la terry forces the americans in the winter militia would execute the slaves. this is a system of slavery at its up most basic level, system of violence either kill or be killed. as the slaves made their final preparations they lay asleep in their beds. in the quarter stick rated with

family portraits in richer imported from france. even the darkness manuel cast a formidable shadow. high roof soared into the sky shielding of piazza and abroad gallery from the rain. i don't know how many of you have traveled to the plantations are along or longer are along the river road that but they are beautiful. man wealth well the snow even today throughout the rest of the country. the french planters in new orleans were famous as the wealthiest and richest planters in all of north america. john said that without chattel slavery cultivation must cease the improvements of the century be destroyed in the great river resume its empire over ruins and demolished capitation. slaves built in new orleans, slaves built the foundation from the german coast, slaves made the wealth and made new orleans became a city. the city without it survive. they built the levees that prevented the river from taking

over new orleans. john newell destrehan said that in 1806. and it is true and remains resonant today. manuel awoke with a fright this morning 200 years ago. charles deslondes his trusted adviser, his right-hand man, standing in his room with an ax. the plantation tool transmitted into an icon of violence insurrection. manuel andre knew what to do. he ran. as he ran, the slave rebels cut three long slices into his body leaving scars that he would care for the rest of his life and as he turned around he saw the slaves driving their axes into the body of his son, and gilbert andre. manuel andre escaped from the slave rebels. i don't know how. letting him go was the slave rebels first mistake. slaves did something very interesting after killing gilbert andre.

they went to the militia depot on the andrea plantation and they take out the militia uniforms and they put them on. these were slaves donning the garb of the military. they were described as -- and they waved flags. this was a politically motivated revolt and when they put on on those uniforms they were making a statement, we are not slaves. we are no longer slaves. we are free men and will fight to the death for our freedom. it is set according to oral for clarke here in the german coast that the slaves had to chance if they would shout as they proceeded. one was on to new orleans and the other was freedom or death. the slaves began to march towards new orleans. as i mentioned they were wearing military uniforms. they were flying legs and beating drums and marching in

formation. these men were organized and sophisticated and they knew what they were doing. now, almost as soon as the revolt began the trails also started because the surest way to freedom and a slave society was not to participate in a revolt but to betray one. france watcher pun a bloke with a fright in the morning a few hours after manuel andre had been attacked. a slave named dominique told him that there was a large number of rebel slaves moving down the river pillaging farms in killing whites. he ordered dominique to travel to the other plantation to one the other planters from there to new orleans to flee for their lives. he then ordered his wife and children to head to the swamp, to hide in the swamps which have been the refuge but many escaped slaves. françois did not leave his plantation that day.

he believed that he could defeat any ragtag band of slave rebels. he thought the slave army amounted to very little. they were a mere group of criminals as they would later be described. is arrogance and contempt was well-known. or supported that he had a slave named gustav holy treated like a dog, tossing him table stratton -- scraps under the table. france watch have been a was confident that he would be what he saw must have been a very big surprise. around the bend of the levee came the slave army divided into companies each under a headman or officer. black men in less uniforms militia uniforms advance with the pollution chanting flying flags on bits mud pits as many on horseback is on foot. the slaves quickly dispatched. it is said that gustav swung one of the axis.

you can see his grave out along the river road this day in one example the best historical amnesia about the revolt many history books claim that francois trepanier back the rebels. i want to see him back into new orleans and what was happening where we stand today right about this time in the first warnings came and the western edges of the city, scouts were the first to hear the news. within hours, there is a traffic jam miles long of refugees fleeing from the german coast. the slaves had formed force the complete evacuation of planters from the german coast. they were in control of about 30 miles of coast from what is now the airport controlled by slaves and all of the white managers were fleeing in terror.

the accounts we received were various reported one correspondent, fear and panic and it was not possible to estimate the force of the reagans. day to enter the stories of hades not as a beacon of liberty or is a testament to let it go ideals but rather as a warning about what would happen if they lost control because the slave rebels of haiti had defeated 80%, they killed 80% of the army that napoleon bonaparte had sent from france to fight them. just think about that one more time. slave rebels bringing to their knees the armies of one of the great generals. that is what they fear. they feared they too would be brought to their knees and executed. now you might be wondering what chance of the slave rebels have of success? how close do they really come to conquering new orleans?

i want to take you back to the primary sources and give you an idea but commodore of what commodore john shah, the tenant the admiral the controlled new orleans, thought. , door john shah wrote that the 68 regular troops here in new orleans were a weak detachment. he went on to say all were on alert. general confusion and dismay prevailed throughout the city. scarcely a single person had a musket for his protection. the 68 regular troops, weak detachment protecting a defenseless city of unarmed residents. that against the slave army now numbering between 20500 fighting for their freedom, marching towards the city. i don't know about you but i think the odds at that point were on the side of the slaves.

now what happened next? the american military, the 68 rigor chips march out into the cane fields boldly. they knew that the survival of new orleans depended upon the defeat of the slave army. and they came upon the slaves at around 2:00 a.m. on a plantation. they could see light and they knew they were there. there there is much evidence that slaves were camped out at the plantation, resting and eating. general wade hampton the american general ordered a full-scale attack after extensive preparations. they realize that the slaves were all gone. it was a trick, a classic bruce. the slaves forced the american military to wait hours attacking an anti-plantation. general wade hampton at this point was so tired his men were exhausted and they could not proceed any further. at this point it was up 4:00 the morning so they stopped to rest. not far from new orleans. this is a classic of a terry technique familiar to any of you

who know about guerrilla warfare. you draw the enemy out for us and for power and draw them to a territory you know better understand any work on the enemy until they are destroyed. that is what the haitian military did and that is what the rebels of the team of more intended to do. now they marched up river. i mentioned earlier that the slaves had made a mistake. give that man while andrade lives. manuel andre crossed the river somehow we got to to the other side he alerted the planters on the other side of the river what was going on. these men gather together armed to the teeth and cross back over the river, 40 or 50 men and the march down the river. not long, sometime after sunris, they encountered the slave army. the slaves were traveling at force marchant very short distance numbering 200 men as many mounted as on feet. what does the slave army do next?

the spanish by a new orleans wrote what happened next. the blacks were not intimidated by this army and formed themselves on line. they did not blink in the face of the splinter militia. they formed themselves into a firing line which is exactly the right thing to do for a military perspective. what were the slaves thinking at this moment? again, we will never know but i want to read you a kohl from a slave that fought, slave from louisiana sugar plantation and fought in the civil war for his own freedom. he said we are not writing and asked no more glorious death than to die for freedom and for our race to go back into bondage again, to be hunted by dogs in the swamps, to be set upon the block and sold for gold and silver, gladly we would die first. and to the slaves who took their place and that firing line. we don't know exactly how the battle unfolded as with many battles the battlefield was

quickly engulfed with smoke and chaos. descriptions of the revolt are pure chaos. but what happened next. either the slaves ran out of ammunition or they discharged their weapons too soon. the plantar militia broke the slave line. what followed was a massacre and one of the darkest moments in american history. whether they killed the insurgent slaves immediately upon encountering them after slow torture or following a court trial, the planters performed the same spectacular violent ritual. obsessively, collectively, they chopped off the slaves heads and they put those heads on display. one plantar recalls the spectacle. they were brought here for the sake of their heads he wrote, which decorate are laughing all the way up the coast. they look like crows sitting on long hauls. the plantations, government

officials and american military officers reenacted the same right of violence. rituals they understood intuitively oppose coherency anther coherency control. the planters had several trials. one at the destrehan plantation and another in the center of the city of new orleans. these trails were not meant to determine guilt or innocence, but rather to assert that the planters and the american military were in control and that the actions they have taken were righteous and legal and the slaves were criminals who had violated their laws and thus deserve to die. i want to read from you from the court transcripts that said these are such as rebellion of assassination pillaging etc. etc.. planters did nader feel the desire to list all the crimes.

for them it was just etc.. these were criminals. their actions were not worthy of extensive description. but beneath this façade of simplicity by a much more complex story. the slaves who testified in those courts described 11 separate leaders. these leaders came from louisiana from the congo from virginia, from the ashanti kingdom and some are born to white fathers. the politics of the slave quarters was in atlanta. there is no single ideology and no single leader that defined their agenda. rather the slaves counted in their ranks men from such revolutionary chavez is congo haiti and louisiana marin colonies and the swamps. but amidst this chaos and complexity the planters deemed only to assign the descriptor guilty. the german coast uprising had raised serious questions and

they new orleans territory about the strength of their empowered, the expense of the spanish thread and the possibility of a haitian style revolution on american soil and about the character of america's newly acquired french citizens. the planters realized the urgency of these questions and answer them with 100 dismembered corpses and a set of show trials intended to speak to the local slave population. in letters and newspaper accounts william claiborne, the governor of the new orleans territory in the planters sought to write this uprising out of history. they describe the slaves the brick comes, the revolt quickly suppressed in wade hampton's vision of the story it was he who has pressed the rebel army even though he had been resting at her plantation a few miles away when the slaves encountered the plantar militia. 200 years later, on the bicentennial of this revolt, we must look back on this story. for despite his absence from the

textbooks, the story of the 1811 uprising is one central to the history of this country. this is not just a story about a history or louisiana history. this is a story about american history. and charles salon day and kook and kook quamana. these men saw violence as a mean to them and they never realized but that they did not achieve those goals is not meant that the sum total of the story was one of a horde of brick comes that were suppressed. rather 200 years later we must reckon with the politics of the enslaved with the world the slaves made here in new orleans and with the humanity, bravery and heroism of the men who fought and died for their liberty. only through understanding their stories can we come to understand the true history of this city, of louisiana, of the south and with it the nation. thank you.

[applause] thank you and i'm happy to answer any questions as best i can. if you could come up to the microphone over here it would be great. >> thank you for that excellent, excellent rendition. my name is tina edmonds and i must african and nigerian. my question is what was it that piqued your interest in writing this book? what was your motivation and how did you start in that kind of thing? >> i started out of high school in journalism and when i got to college i started studying mechanist rand i came upon mention of this revolt they usually said three things. wanted have been enormous, and that there was nothing known about it.

is a young man and as a journalist that sort of raise my hackles and i said i want to figure out what happened. so i started doing a little research in and the first things i read, my first question was did this revolt even happen? is on this time is so insignificant. it sounds trivial. but as they dug further, i realized that those accounts were very biased and i went to write a counternarrative that would tell the truth about what would happen, what had happened. is a started to dig further realized this was a story ultimately about the heroism of it meant a band that produced that resisted -- richness did slavery. storage of courage and then who are willing to fight and die for surcharge of 10 is the a 20 thrill guy that was a story that was easy to fall in love with. >> let me give two comments. the first one is, i am biafran and i relate to some of the

response. being vulnerable, something they think should not have happened that you are willing to die. i served in the biafra army. it is about the oil in a chariot, being outside and the other side not getting it so i can kind of -- that is a kindred spirit when you feel like you are willing to say hitt i'm willing to die for this. the other comment i also want to make is when i was -- one of the anthropologists knew that i was liberal and she said to me, she said the haitians are even and she told a fascinating story of courage of how people refuse to be in their foreign land and because of that, they had to go back. most of them are either even

this. when my husband -- in 2004 on a medical mission, he saw people dressed exactly the way we dress at home. he saw people whose names were very close to what we happened when the haitian friends listen to ari debo music they say we can understand it even though he can't speak the language so i am saying all this to say that people are really the same end some form or the other. whether it is through what they have suffered or what they have been through our what they know. this sense of kindred spirit goes beyond race and goes beyond everything. whether it is injustice -- he said when one of us is suffering, it is actually all of us that are suffering but again i want to thank you for that. >> thank you for sharing that story. i have great admiration for the story of diaspra.

henry gates is one of my professors at harvard. we were talking about my interest in slavery and he said you know, there is a question about why people writing about slave history or black people writing about the history of american that is not what it is about. these are our shared stories and whether white or black it is important to share those stories and come to understand them. in the story even though i am white i can think of no greater role model than charles pallone they -- deslondes. it was really an inspiring story that i wanted to share so thank you. >> i am curious of how they revolt impact of the people of new orleans. the free people of color in the slaves who a lot of them got along pretty well with the people that were here, the french and the spanish but what was the impact after the revolt on the people in the city? >> absolutely. in the city there was a free black militia which many of you might have known. after the revolt the government

of new orleans offered accommodation to debt free black militia for not participating in the revolt. would they have participated at the slaves had gotten closer? i don't know. i severely doubt the free black militia would have fought on the side of the white planters. as to the impact on the slaves, the impact in the slave corridors, i think the oral history still survive today on the german coast and i met earlier today with some of the descendents of the rebel slaves who have kept the story alive for hundreds of years. if that story is alive on the german coast how much powerful powerful -- how much more powerful that story would have been in 1820 oregon 60 when the slaves in new orleans fought for and won their freedom even though the emancipation proclamation specifically excluded these perishes from emancipation. so i think this story and the martyr dumb served as an

inspiration and a powerful story that resonated throughout the slave quarters. in this immediate aftermath those 100 heads on pikes spread 40 miles outside of the city served as a tremendous message. i can imagine the fear, the feelings and emotions that must have been cited on both sides as people sat around nervously wondering what would happen next. >> the native guard as you know, the black native guard actually fought with the confederacy. it is interesting to think about what their posture might've been at that point. but i'm saying for those lax in the war who identified with the whites and who identified like the creoles who consider themselves a different status, i can't envision them going along with the slaves to revolt at all. i'm just saying and i

appreciated. >> that is a historical attendance that we can only speculate on. >> i missed your talk yesterday at the library. you have indicated this was a story that has been pretty much buried in history so it had to have been pretty difficult for you to uncover a lot of this. so what were some of the source materials he used and how did you come up with what you were able to find about this revolt? >> to questions about my sources and this was a lot of work, and it started first with gathering together every sort of description from planters letters, travelers accounts to describe what happened in the revolt. those were sort of the first layers but the bulk of my work was with the ledger ledgers and statements of financial accounts in the court testimonies. now the ledgers our lives so they will say something like quiet coup was bought in 1986 and served in the field and indict any to 11 and the court testimony says something along

the lines that charles swan and facts at francois trepanier. they are full of data but it is all fragmentary and not in any narrative form so what i did was took all the fuss and them into excel databases need to cross-reference each slave and what they had done and where they had come from, what work they did on the plantation, and that i took all the land maps in the area and map those databases onto the land maps so i was literally sitting in the library with crayons. until i built a spatial perspective so once i have alyssa slaves on what happened and how they participated all that cross-reference the database and i had the land maps. then i start to piece together the temporal hooks and so i knew from the descriptions of the planters in the military officials when certain events happen and where to go using google maps you can figure out

how i would have taken to walk from one place another city can backtrack and say this happened at 2:00 a.m. and if it was 50 miles, that must have happened at this time. but i true that map to fragmentary evidence that i figured a spatial into a chronological merit. this whole process sounds simple but it took about a year, then once i have done that i've layered on travelers accounts and other secondary sources about what slave like was -- slave life was like etc. etc. in order to build up a picture of how the slaves would have filled her with the plantation looked like and smelled like and although sort of thing so it was really piecing together a complex mosaic of fragmentary evidence into a narrative. >> daniela i'm amazed at the tactical knowledge that the slave revolt had and i'm curious how do you surmise they came up with this knowledge or came up

with a tactics to lead this and especially the organizational capabilities. >> the question was about the organizational ability. now charles deslondes was a slave driver. slave drivers were very aware of organizing large and complex groups of people. sugar planting is a very difficult thing to do. requires immense technical skills and involves a lot of sophistication. the process of granulated sugar is one of the more industrial prophecies available for times when men like charles who at the sophistication to run a plantation was very good at organizing large groups of people. than the question comes up we know these men were good leaders and could organize and execute various large-scale chromatin activities where do they develop any military perspective? how do they learn military tactics? there has been an excellent body of scholarship on the influence of west african military tactics

in the world slave. 70% of the slaves here in new orleans have been brought over from africa either directly or from shipping points like jamaica or charleston and many of those had been captured in war so they were very familiar with especially the congolese and the chante traditions of warfare. those were present both in haiti and here in louisiana. and finally you know i think as i mentioned earlier the slaves were everywhere watching for the planters did and how they behaved. i find it hard to believe that they would have learned and understood from the discipline and movements of the white militia and the american military how exactly those groups fought. i spent a lot of time reading things like old u.s. infantry manuals to try to figure out how military tactics worked at the time and what would make sense. and how once fought a war with muskets and that's. i was struck as they went to the

sources just how correct the slaves movements were. it is really fascinating to me to come to the realization of how sophisticated the slaves were. yes, sir. >> what most of the plantations in this region being -- planters when you compare the slave revolt here in the cultural issues with the slaves and also the plantation owners did you see a difference between this region versus the more anglo plantation owners in other parts of the country in relation to things like nat turner and some of the other rebellious? >> the question was about regional differences. louisiana, the flavor here was very different from the rest of the country. this is a sugar territory. they were not growing cotton or tobacco. among american slaves this was known as the most brutal place in the american continent. the average lifespan for the

sugar plantation was roughly seven years. sugar planting requires 16 hour days of labor. they asked one french planter wrote in his diary, how come we harbored sugar if we only work 16 hours a day? the answer he wrote is to consume men and animals. that was how the process of sugar planting went. and so just briefly to describe how they maintained order on these plantations there were three month primary modes of punishment. they would take stakes impact on the ground and tie one -- then they would eat the slaves. others had torture devices including, including colors to prevent the slaves from eating and colors with spikes of the slaves could not sleep and finally they would kill or decapitate anyone they feared would be involved in

insurrection or activity. slaver here whether french or american was incredibly brutal. part of that was because of the nature of sugar growing and the immense fortune to be made from sugar growing and the huge labor demand of sugar and part of that was because the brutality necessary to maintain the publicity of the slaves. i think it is interesting and i've been asked this question several times and i don't know if any of you were thinking it but i would like to go into one of the more interesting questions which was why if these planters on their slaves and the slaves were responsible for producing their wealth and working on the plantations with a wound or kill slaves? why wouldn't they want to keep them healthy? they would want to treat them well. it is a common misperception. now the slaveholders in an ideal world would want to treat their slaves well and keep them healthy. but, the slaves were not very thrilled about eating slaves and the level of violence that the planters were forced to use was necessary to keep the slaves

from revolting, to keep the slaves working. there was no way to treat a slave well and keep them healthy and not punish anyone and have them actually work on a sugar plantation as slaves. in order to force the slaves to work -- the essence of slavery at its most basic level is a fight to the death essentially. who will plan, the planter of the slave? that is more where brought into relief and in this ripple. does that answer your question? >> i would like to know are you planning on writing and the other books about obesity anna new orleans history? when it comes to mind that you might be interested in, there was one of the largest time, in 1887, a sugar strike of the

workers. it is another story that does not get much play in the history books, and that particular topic seems to be perfect as a second part but may be a trilogy about louisiana's, new orleans metro area history. >> thank you turkowski are you aware? >> i am definitely aware of that and i've read about it and this remarkable and some of those events and the testimony as to how long the racial violence has persisted in this country. you think about what happened during reconstruction here in louisiana. the same violent struggles continue and one of my favorite professors my thesis adviser, she told me look, in 1865 when the slaves emerge from slavery what did they do? they organize political organizations, union leaks. they would get elected to congress and ran for senate.

she said that doesn't just emerge and 1865 or 1866. those organizations were predated, the emancipation and there was a tremendous level of political awareness, organization and political debate within the slave quarters and a political debate you see reflected again in reconstruction. when you look at the level of violence with which sugar planters and new orleans even after the war were willing to use to continue and further their own economic goals is astounding so thank you. >> a couple of questions. you answer before about the process of research but where did you, by villagers and the primary sources of? >> the lectures are actually thanks to genealogists available in published form and i was actually -- harbert is a wonderful library and those genealogical ledgers when the library at harvard which is wonderful.

>> the second push ahead was about the writing process itself. if you could talk a little bit about that and in terms of since i have not yet read the book how dense it is and whether this would be appropriate for a high school population? >> absolutely. my thesis which is what this book emerge from is full of theory and i like to think of that is the google maps version of here is the overview of what happened. than what i wrote this book it was sort of all the sort of analogies are the way i think about it. this technology has an impact on the way i think so i try to write this book as much as possible for a popular audience. the goal of this book was not to write a dry academic track but reach as wide an audience as possible. is a shame the way we think about slavery and to make sure that this ripple than specifically the leaders of this revolt are recognized in every high school history left him every elementary school class that discusses lavery. i don't see how you can talk

about slavery specially slavery in louisiana without talking about the largest slave revolt in american history and the leaders of that revolt so i hope a year from now this won't be the untold story and i hope there will be three or five or six more books about this revolt. so the book is written in narrative style to hopeful being gaging. it is hard for me to just plug my book until you it is well-written and you will love reading it but it is a total page-turner. [laughter] if you start reading it tonight you probably won't stop until the morning when you finish it. but, as to whether it is appropriate for high school students, i think absolutely and i think the sooner the people start to breed and consider and deal with the truth of the past, the better able they will be to understand it and to make sure that we don't mistake, make the same mistakes again. and so i spoke to 8th-graders

yesterday who are incredibly engaged and asked me some wonderful questions. i don't think that this story is one that should be kept from children. in fact i think as a young man, when i was younger i would have loved to have heard the story. two of them only think about slavery and slavery is taught in school, we are taught to think about the slaves and think about slavery is guilty and depressing. when we look back i think we feel ashamed and rightfully so but there are also moments of heroism like this 1811 ripple. the more that we can recognize the tremendous bravery of the men who existed, the more we can celebrate that passed, the more we can look upon these people as having some of the same ideals we struggle for today of freedom and liberty, the more we can see that as part of our story and relate to that is part of our story rather than reading a narrative is history that only talks about what happened in washington d.c. and who thomas jefferson was talking with and who he was sleeping with and all of that. the more we can move on to

thinking about common people, people here working on slave plantations and what they contribute to the course of american history. i think the better understanding of american history will be. can you come up to the microphone please? trying to enforce the rules here. >> i actually had a couple of questions. one was, what was going on in europe because obviously there was the french revolution. when was slavery abolished in france and later in britain and then later and south america, leaving you know the north america's, the slaveholders. the second thing was this interesting thing that you hinted at about eight brutalized black slave culture and

coexisting you know with an obvious view and knowledge of freedmen of color, who were armed and obviously identified with the white slave owners. were there examples of black -- from the privileged class is trying to lead the revolts or in franchise there brutalized, you know, compatriots? did that happen? and it also brings to mind, did manuel ever, the survivor, ever you know sort of reveal what might have motivated his trusted slave driver to turn against him it is an interesting speculation of probably a great novel there of what motivated him.