i think they're going to evolve in the certain directions on their own. stapleton roy, a former american ambassador to china, pointed out 20 years ago, i think, that there are more chinese free now than anytime in chinese history. that as china has pluralized -- not democratized, pluralized -- you no longer have to wear a mao jacket. you can now travel abroad. there are lots of things you can do. you can even go on the internet even though there's a great firewall. there are ways to jump over the firewall. chinese have more freedom than they had before. this is likely to continue. i don't think it's going to be a sudden change, but i think it's going to be a continuous change. ..

>> it's interesting. if you look at -- if you look at the statement that donald rumsfeld made, it's quoted in the preface to my book on soft power, he followed me as a keynote speaker, and one the generals said what about soft power. he said, i don't know what it means. robert gates is secretary of defense even when he was serving

the bush administration in 2007 gave a speech -- [no. audio] >> the course of the supertanker and government bureaucracies don't change quickly, and particularly when you have 435 hands on the wheel, given the case i gave you a minute or two

ago about an aide program that was transferred. are we making progress? yes. are we there yet? no. a long way to go, and part of it is bureaucratic inertia and the political culture. that same reason that a congressman says i can stand up and justify this aid program if it's in defense. i can't support it if it's at the level of the state. we got to get a lot smarter in our political discourse before we can really have a smart political strategy. >> [inaudible] what was the next step? how do we put -- [inaudible]

>> has the same accommodation. >> you're right. you can't always predict what the top leader's personality is going to be, and that can make a big different. on the other hand, you can try to get an idea approach more broadly understood in the attentive public, and then in broader public. in 2007 richard and i cochaired a commission that the chis smart power that was bipartisan, and the idea was to have a significant republicans and democrats talk about exactly that. how do you get beyond the personality to being something more broadly understood in the

policy discourse? jim locker had this project to think about how you reorganize the american government. dnas makes a contribution here. many places are beginning to think about this so it's not going to happen quickly, but it just relies on personality, you're right. it can be changed as the personality changes, but a broader sense of the understanding, the point i make in the book, the need for a broader power and gradually politicians start telling that more broadly to the electorat, and then there may be less personality. in a democracy, basically it depends on consensus from below. it's not a fast process. >> joe, thank you very much for a great presentation. thank you for your friendship

and most particularly to our interns, not only an important part of the team ear but the ecos of the place. we know you're off to new york with charlie rose, and we'll get to hear more. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> thanks to all of you for coming, thank you to the interns for coming back. joe has a few minutes to chat and sign books before catching a plane. please join me in thanking him for this afternoon. [applause] >> remarks from joseph nye, a university distinguished service professor and former dean of the kennedy school of government at harvard university discussing the changing nature of power in global affairs. to find out more, visit booktv.org.

>> next, kate masur presents a history of washington, d.c. during reconstruction in her book, "an example for all the land," and she recounts the works and racial inequality. the discussion is about an hour. [applause] >> good evening. thanks to tom for inviting me to speak here tonight, and also i'd like to thank sabrina for doing such a great job of making arrangements for my visit. i want to talk somewhat briefly in an overview way of what i try to do this in book that i wrote. i'm going to talk about it basically in terms of two threads. first, this book is designed to offer an updated look of washington, d.c. during the civil war and reconstruction that highlights the capitol for

understanding construction at large. second, the book makes an argument about the importance of the debate over the meaning of equality in a period after slave emancipation. i want to say something about my approach. i'm interested in the relationship between people and government, policy, and the law. this isn't strictly social or political history. it's not legal history, but it's a combination of all three. the foe -- focus is on the con cements of equalitity and the process of which people make claims on the government and policy is based on popular politics and how structures shape and constrain arguments available, the claims that are possible, indeed, the very lives people live. now, why did i study washington? well, it didn't turn as as well as translated. this is an 1862 map of washington. the capitol is seen as an

anomalous city, one whose history wouldn't necessarily tell us anything useful beside itself. this is largely because washington is a creature of the federal government. it didn't spring up as a hub, it's not in a state. it's really an odd ball. the federal district and the city of washington itself were invented by the united states government and placed by the constitution under the exclusive jurisdiction of congress. i found this unique status made washington's history all the more interesting. in the main 19th century specifically around the period of the war, washington was a place where federal and local affairs collided sometimes generating sparks. citizens attended session of congress, congressmen rode in streetcars. the lives of citizens played out

in washington. in some ways, this was a normal city that followed normal pattern, but in the ways that it wasn't, and in particular the relationship with congress, it is a particularly interesting and telling place to study. i just want to -- i know this might be hard to orient ourselves on this map because it doesn't represent the city that we know now. i'll point out landmarks. the first arrow, that's the capitol. there's the white house. that is where the washington monument is, and you can see that the mall as we know it now, beyond there is the lincoln memorial, that's the landfill. it's the period i'm talking about. the mall ended and the patomic river began off to the left there of where the lincoln

monument is. that's dupont circle. there's an urbanized area that was much smaller than the washington we know now. anything up past, you know, up on connecticut avenue towards the park up past where howard university is now going north on 7th street, none of those made it on the map, not because people didn't live there, but they were not considered the main parts of washington city. that gives you a sense that we're talking about a city that's relatively smaller, of course, than the city we know now as washington. now, i'm going to talk about this as washington history on three different points. first, i'll talk about the relationship of african-american history to this stir. seconds, the story of urban reform in washington and its context, and third, why washington was an example for all the land. first, washington was a site of

remarkable african-american activism in this period. i like to talk in general terms about roots that made up african-american washington. first, from before the civil war, washington was a hub for free african-americans. in 1860, 60% of black washingtonians were free rather than enclaved. what that meant was there was a culture of organized institution among african-americans. there were churches, sieve societies, they ran schools, there was a fair number of people who left dc for higher education and went to the north to get educated and then returned and often became teachers. some also worked in federal positions, in positions in the federal government, not necessarily or not at all in clerical positions, but as messagers and so forth. in those roles, they knew many

of the most powerful men in the country. interestingly, there that, many of them had powerful ties to people who could help them later, and these folks, kind of free african-americans who lived in washington before the war were poised to exert a special kind of leadership and emancipation took shape. the second population were the thousands of former slaves who came into the capitol from maryland and virginia during the civil war. these people were often escaping from slavery, and they kind of became the backbone of black washington because there were so many people. there was so many thousands of people, and they became important political constituents, the republican party, they charted out their own political course going forward. the third group were african-american american northerners or people born in the south, moved to the north and came back like frederick

douglass is an example of prominent northerners who came to washington in this period because they wanted to be close to the heart of the political nation, because they wanted to get involved in activism, and they were looking a little bit later as washington's really unparalleled african-american educational institutions. so what this slide shows is a celebration of emancipation in washington in 1866, and this is the image that's on the cover of my book, and one of the reasons i like it because the figures in the foreground are so introssingly -- interesting drawn. now, in the center -- and i hope you can see this relatively well -- in the center there's a set of three figures, a man and two women really well-dressed, relatively fancy clothes. off to their right, there's a figure of two women and a younger sort of smaller women wearing much more casual

clothes, aprons and head scarves, more characteristics of people who had been enslaved. to the left, there's a group of men similarly dressed. what i like about this is artist who through this picture was able to capture some of the diversity, the class diversity of washington's african-american community in this picture. now beginning the civil war, they sought to be members of the civic body with full and equal access to streetcars, theater, schools, and even the proceedings of congress. they demanded fair treatment by the police and a fair share of public works employment, equal access to trade unions and representation of their militia organization. looking at what was going on here was all of these claims and all of these demands was an eye towards the relationship of popular activism and policy.

it became clear to me that african-americans were demanding rights and privileging in advance of legislation. in the book, i call those claims upstart claims to emphasize claims to existing right, nor were they supported by existing policies. let me give you an example of that. in the spring of 1863, as recruitment is underway for a black union's regimen, what became the first u.s. colored troop -- by the way, this is not them, just a photograph of the 4th group, but i think it's a really nice photo in part because it remits black soldiers with their uniforms, and uniforms play an important role here. the first color trooped were getting recruited and while beginning to pull the different companies and renne mines together began to demand access to the streetcars. the cars themselves were a

wartime innovation. they were built in order to facilitate getting troops and material from one side of the city to the other. washington had never had three cars -- streetcars before 1862. when they were first running, conductors made the practice to completely exclude african-americans from the strait cars or made them ride on the platform in the front. you can see two guys behind the horses. african-americans who wanted to raid had to be separate on the front. you can imagine if it was raining or sleeting or muddy which washington was famous for mud in this period, you were more exposed to the elements. it's not as a nice of a place to ride. the soldiers didn't wait for lawmakers to recognize or create a right to ride. rather they sought to create it themselves by creating equal access by wearing the soldier's

uniforms and publicly declared worthy of respect. legislators at the capitol took note and began to discuss the matter, and that winter -- this protest insisting on the right to ride begins in the spring of 1863, and by the winter of 1864, this man, alexander augusta, a physician in the u.s. army, he was refused a seat on the streetcar while traveling on official business. he was forced to walk to a court marshall hearing in the rain, and he was annoyed he couldn't sit inside the car and outlined the incident to a letter to a military judge and forwarded to and it was read on the floor of the senate. i'm describing a process of a popular impulse among every day soldiers followed by a more prom innocent man making a direct protest, and all of this because it's washington is discussed in

congress at the same time. in the case of the streetcars and in many other cases as well, black activism spurred a republican dominated congress to act. some congressmen, including charles sumner were primed for action because of their own view that emancipation should not stop with mere freedom, but lead to the implication of ideals of racial equality. this is a notion that freedom itself wouldn't be enough in a country that was going through emancipation, but that policies need to be implemented to produce a more equal society. that's saying slavery couldn't exist nymphs only the beginning. together, black about vism and political activism made the capitol an exemplar of freedom nationwide. in 1862 when congress declared emancipation for the capitol

months ahead. some examples of that are the end of the blacks in 18612, the passage of a law against discrimination on any kind of public conveyances, streetcars, railroads, and steam boats in 1865, universal manhood suffrage before it was mandated for the former confederate states, and then the dropping of racial qualifications for office in 1869. now, in the book i pay particular tans to the right to vote because it's with the vote that the people were able to reshape the priorities of city government. african-americans had one-third of the population and wielded considerable power in the elector yat, and they did so. before a mar joy re--

major reorganization of the structures of government, local governments passed its own local public accommodations law bars discrimination in a variety of accommodations and appointed african-american men to prominent offices and also the popular elected black men to the city counsel. most important, perhaps, the city government inaugurated major public works projects and districted jobs on those projects fairly between blacks and whites. you see with the on set of black's right to vote, dramatic changes in city government. this cartoon is from harper's weekly and because georgetown held its election, first election where black men could vote before washington did, and so all eyes throughout the nation were on this election to see how it all went, and this cartoon features a kind of typical, kind of caricatures or

stock figures. there's an african-american man casting a ballot. behind him, a republican looking at him with a top hat. behind him, a guy second from the left has a cfa on his hat, a builter former confederate standing next to and kind of supporting the man on the left who is andrew johnson, the president who vetoed the universal manhood suffrage legislation that congress passed for washington and then congress had overridden that veto, and so johnson is clinging to his veto, physically clinging to his veto while the african-american man casts his vote. the second major thread is the impact of urban reform on washington. the book tells a story of the dramatic restructuring of the district of columbia first in

1871 and again in 1874. the restructuring of washington as a territorial government and then a commission form, and i argue that these innovations in the form of government, the first of which was demanded by a bipartisan group of coalition leaders, these innovations were direct responses to or more precisely reactions against the changes, particularly the enfranchised men of amp men. -- african-american men. most historians viewed the leader of the business coalition that sought to reorganize the existing structures of government, al exlander shepherd as a visionary who sought to bring it back from the mud and back wardness of his past. they don't drive the reform in the context of slave emancipation, black migration to washington, black

african-american activism. my argument is what shepherd and the coalition were doing was leading a backlash against the enfranchisement and the power that accompanied it. they called themselves taxpayers and citizenned and persuaded congress to restructure the government by first creating a territory. under the territorial government, the only elected offices that remain are a lower house of the legislature, but all the most powerful offices in the government were held by appointed officials. i call this creation of the territorial government washington's first redemption in order no emphasize this restructuring in the name of good government and progress was consistent with movements elsewhere in the south, remove republicans from office. i should say that shepherd while

in power from 1871-1874 accomplished quite a bit in modernizing the city. this is a bird's eye view of the city from that period that shows in quite a bit of detail did you see the actual image some of the development especially the northwest section of washington during this period. the placement of the capitol dome itself directing your eye right to that area in northwest washington, now dupont and logan circle were the places where these prodevelopment governments and their kind of real estate investor friend were focusing their development. a lot of the remaining kind of beautiful brick buildings in that area for those of you familiar with that area around logan and dupont circle are from the 1880s. they date back to this area of

real focused development on that section of washington. they accomplished a great deal but at an enormous expense in the sense that the government that they controlled was very much not a government that was legislated by the people locally. the second state of washington's redemption began in 1874 when congress reorganized the government again this time placing it under the control of a three-man commission. no one could vote for any elected officials and washington was governed exclusively by three men appointed by the president of the united states and confirmed by the senate. it was at the time considered very remarkable that in the capitol of the united states of america, the people, themselves were not allowed to choose their own representatives for their local government. in fact, that situation, the commission formal government, would last into the 1960s, in

fact, home rule was not restored to washington, d.c. until 1973. for close to 100 years, the situation persisted and the story that i'm telling helps us understand how that commission form of government was directly related to the politics and particularly the racial politics of the reconstruction era. now, the third appointment i want to make -- point i want to make stems from that last point. washington as an example for all the land. this quotation is from charles sumner, the massachusetts senator, working closely with black activists to pass legislation for the district of columbia representing the most racially aggressive policies at that time. as congress' policies shifted and a new coalition gained the upper hand in washington, d.c., congress' prerogative in washington made the capitol an example of a different kind, an example of disfranchisement. the creation of the commission government was part of a broader

climate in the north and the south of this trust and fear of democratic self-government whereas in the north, movements to dramatically limit the power of urban voters and primarily the voters who were most often aligned and attack were of irish dissent. in the end, this came to very little. this impulse resulted by the 1890s in extensive disenfranchisement as is well known. in 1878, george spencer, a white republican senator by alabama, by birth, a northerner, he argued that the current commission form of government in the capitol threatened, "the franchise of poor man throughout the united states whatever his race, color, his nationality, or his creed and even forecasts the abolishment of an elected government all together."

in other words, at the time the commission form was implemented, people could see that this was kind of an extreme part of a larger impulse where they agree or disagree with it. it was a canary in the coal mine. the constitution federalists order prohibited congress most of the time from acting directly on residents of the state. the district of columbia was different. this could be maddening for residents of the capitol, and, in fact, it still is, but it makes for an interesting and provocative history of how the nation's most powerful lawmakers and presidents too as it turns out made policy how they wanted to make policy when there was virtually nothing in the institution to restrain that power. so now let me shift gears and talk about the debate over equality. my hope is that this book sets out a new framework for the study of the civil war era by directing attention to a

surprising neglected topic, the struggle of equality. over the decades, stories of emancipation made the concepts of freedom their analytical category. now, to be sure after slavery, the question of freedom's meaning particularly relating to the organization of labor was crucial. yet, slavery's abolition inaugurated a great debate over the future of equality in america. in the book i start with the premise that to understand what was going on in the 19th century, we need to move beyond the familiar idea that people were either for or against equality. i describe a struggle over equality, the era's competing visions of equality and inequality, and i investigate who favored what equality in what places and for what reason. i try to untangle the problem of what contemporaries meant in talking about civil, political, and social equality.

in 1858, for example, abraham lincoln said, "no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races." in a standard alone speech four years earlier, he said, "his own feelings did not admit of making former slaves politically and socially equals." yet, lincoln argued for certain kinds of racial equality. as we said in ohio in 1859, "there's no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the rights stated in the declaration of independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." how are we to understand these seemingly contradictory ways of understanding equality? what happens when it's not

theoretical like before the war, but practical as it became after emancipation. answering the questions was the central goals of my research. what i found was that generally speaking, republicans, including lincoln concluded that civil equality meant equal treatment by laws and the securing of property and believed all people should have this formal equality already the law. most republicans also distinguished between this kind of equality and political equality which referred to the rights to vote and usually to hold office. moderate republicans, including lincoln tepidded to support -- tepidded to support civil equality, but not political equality for african-americans. now, here's where upstart claims came in. during the war, african-americans and some white radical republicans insisted on a more expansive vision of fundmental equality before the law, one familiar to us now, but

was very novel at the time. they argued that civil equality should include the vote which was they thought a fundamental several rights whose origins like the origins of other civil rights were in natural law. many believed that the principle of civil equality requires that african-americans must have equal access to public pools, common carriers like streetcars, railroads, and steamers, and other public accommodations, but during the post-war debate about equality whenever radicals pushed the bounds of racial equality, for example, by demanding the equal right to vote or hold office or ac -- access public schools, opponents charged them with seeking something that everybody professed, and that was social equality. here's where that third quality of social equality comes in. unlike the term of political equality, social equality had no actual content. it had no concrete existence.

people used social equality to describe what they saw as inappropriate government interference in whatever relationships they believed should properly be considered private matters. for example, a senator from maryland argued in 1864 a law prohibiting racial discrimination on streetcars amounted to a social equality measure. protection of african-american's life and property, he argued, was acceptable. this is an illusion to civil rights in the narrow sense, but the government should not intervene in political rights and social enjoyments. he said those matters political rights and social enjoyment had to do "with the preference on our part of the society of those we deem god to consider equal." he's putting travel on streetcars in the cat cars as

personal preferences and not to be legislated about. one insisted congress should not enfranchise black men in the capitol because the vote was "a purely social question." in other words, whenever people came across things they didn't like, they called it a matter of social equality and said, oh, no, no, no, you can't do that. interestingly, this dynamic put african-american activists in an interesting position. their response to the arguments, for example when they said we should be allowed to ride object streetcars with equal access, we want access to the public schools equally with white therapy, they argued that that had nothing to do with social equality; right? they were merely seeking a broader vision, a more expansive vision of equality before the law than their people who opposed them or the people who

disagreed with them, so -- okay -- so the overall picture is the argument people are having is an argument over the content of these categories. we can't take for gronted in the case of abraham lincoln or anyone who followed him that it's clear what the content of the three categories was, but rather that was animating the debate was a debate about what actually belonged in each of those categories. struggles to define the concept of equality before the law pivoted on the contested question of where the social or private domain stopped and where civil or public life began. seeing equality in this way helps explain why opening white schools to black children was more contentious than opening fancy restaurants and theaters

to black patrons. it helps us understands how republicans could argue for racial equality, while at the same time opposing independent black political organizations. it sheds light on the crucial, but slippery discourse of social equality that was a key justification of racial segregation well into the 20th century. it's clear even on most superficial assessments that there's something very complicated about this country's relationship to equality. do you repeatedly declare all men are created equal goes without saying determining what that statement means and what its implications are, if any, for policy has been one of the essential challenges in american public life. why do we tolerate certain kinds of inequality, but not others? what are the possibilities and limitations to creating a more just society? as a historian, i don't think we can understand these questions about the present without reflecting on the past. my hope is in addition to

telling the story of the nation's capitol in a pivotal period, this book offers a piece in the larger puzzle of aseesing the history of equality and inequality in the united states. thanks. [applause] happy to take any questions or hear comments. >> going to be very organized by turning on the microphone. if you have a question, please raise your hand, and i will repeat that so everyone can hear it and pick it up on tape, and then -- >> [inaudible] >> the comparison between

antebellum washington and the washington of the civil war reconstruction. >> sure. on what kind of terms do you want me to compare it? >> [inaudible] >> well -- let's see. the city grew dramatically during the war, so the black population tripled and the white population also grew very dramatically. as the federal government grew, right, the government needed to reform all the functions they never performed before, so all kinds of new clerks and sort of government officials are moving into the capitol during the civil war just as lots and lots of fugitives from slavery are

coming in too. the capitol is growing by leaps and bounds in terms of population. washington -- the spirit of washington before the war is that it was a kind of sleepy back water. it's true that many of the main street -- very few of the main streets were paveed. washington avenue was the only street with some sort of pavement or finishing on it. people complined about -- complained about the dust and the mud, and actually that sort of occupation that happens during the civil war exacerbates the condition of the streets, and so part of what's going on in the outcry or in favor of, you know, urban development in the period after the war is that the city was never particularly well developed in terms of grating and paving and the civil war didn't help any in that respect, so the other thing i guess i would say since this

work is so preoccupied with questions of government, beginning -- so washington had its own city council and mayor from the early 19th century. georgetown had a separate mayor and city council, and the rest of the district of columbia was called the county and governed separately. so originally the people could vote for local offices in washington city were white men with certain property qualifications. in 1848, the qualifications were dropped. from 1858 until 1867, the voters in the capitol city were all white men; right? all white men could vote, and then black men and women could not vote so there's always -- that gives you -- and then the city government was usually in the hands of sort of the economic business elite, and so one of the dramatic changes is once you have african-american men's right to vote, it really reshapes the electorat, and it

allows people with different priorities to come into office locally, and that's part of the reason why a coalition develops to kind of unseat that government. >> yes, sir. >> [inaudible] >> why did it take so long? we're looking at over 100 years, yes? >> that's a terrific question, and it's a comp my kateed set of reasons why. some washingtonons were not too happy with the form of government. one of the things made possible was that people with connections and in particular people with real estate connections had the ear of the connections.

if you were a of certain class in a washington resident, you didn't mind there wasn't local self-government because you could get things you wanted done through back channels or talking directly to the people who you needed to, the commissioners, their staff. that's one reason. there was a certain amount of fear on the part of washington, some washingtonians that local home rule would mean a significant population of african-americans began like that reconstruction being able to reshape or shape the city government. another thing to keep in mind is that particularly in the house of representatives, the committee on the district of columbia for much of the 20th century was dominated and shared by outright segregationists from the south, and so to the extent that anything could have happened, any reforms could have been done by congress, congressmen used dc to make a

point about what their politics were and kind of bill after bill after bill to reform government in dc and get local people more control died in the dc committee of the house of representatives, so things start to loosen up in the 1960s, and very much the -- there's a relationship between the kind of flowering of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the opening up of possibilities for home rule in dc. >> yes, sir. >> [inaudible] is violence played a similar role in the redemption -- >> did violence play a role in the redemption of washington city? >> so that's an interesting question, and no, there was

not -- there were periodic -- well, the answer is no. there were episodes of racial violence, but they didn't connect to the redemption i'm talking about, the kind of changing form of government, but one of the things i want to highlight by talking about washington's redemption in those terms is actually redemption in the states of the former confederacy was not always violent either. that in some places, our kind of vision of it, i think right now many of us have a vision of kind of rampant and organized plan that kind of plan a democratic party together combined coalition and the violent campaign to overthrow republican governments, and that was the case in a lot of states, but in other states, particularly in the border south, particularly in places like virginia, not that there wasn't violence in virginia, but in terms of politics, redemption happened

sooner in virginia. in fact, there was almost no reconstruction at all, and it happened mostly through political channels, so i think similar could be said with respect to tennessee, but more to the point that a lot of the similar rhetoric about good government also characterizes kind of the period of redemption in other states, and so what i think is interesting to think about, and one of the reasons it's interesting to think about dc this way is because it draws our attention to the political machination that many kind of of the more respectable, but still antirepublican southerners went through in order to take back their states. >> yes, sir. >> one of the most --

[inaudible] >> sure. i'd be happy to. thank you. so in the course of those -- the question was, sorry -- >> that's all right. >> the question was i've done research on lincoln meetings, famous meetings from 1862 with the five black men from washington, and part of what got me interested in getting to the bottom of this is usually the story is told that the five men lincoln met with were just released from slavery, newly freed man politically viable, give a propose that they consider going to take their people and go, colonize abroad and say, oh, sure, whatever you say 6789 you're the president of the united states, and so there's reasons why his torians

thought that. actually, edwards thomas was known not to be a recently emancipated person, but the four other ones were. the more i did research on the actual people who were living in washington, and i kept coming across because i knew the names of the five men meeting with lincoln, and i kept finding them in other places too. their were leaders of some of the most elite black churches, and they were employees of the federal government who had connections to the white house or to congress. they were -- they were teachers, a couple of them. black masons, free masons, and so i began kind of keeping a running list of all the ways i could identify these men, and it was very clear from a variety of sources they were not obviously newly freed from slavery. they were members of the long standing free black community from washington, and so it got me thinking about a lot of

things about that meeting. one of the other mysterious things from the meeting i thought was considering the amount of attention given to that meeting and considering the importance of the issue at the time, the delegation should have given an official response to lincolnment like you would have thought that after this very controversial meeting. the delegation would have said, okay, well, we met with the president and here's what we're going to do, yes or no, but there was no response, soives wondering -- i was wondering why they never got back to lincoln and here's what the delegation is going to say, and so basically i ended up using like if i needed to write this story partly to correct the record and partly to tell the interesting things i found about a debate among black washingtonians about who should compromise of the delegation in the first place, who goes to the

meeting, what do they represent, what should their position be? my research on the history of washington as a city led me to kind of uncover new aspects of that famous lincoln story told from the perspective of the delegation. >> my question is about people and their movement. i have just recently read -- [inaudible] you stated in 1860, there was

60% free. okay, i know that statistics lie, but my question is who was moving into washington in the 1850s among the black population? we know about the civil war period which caused the population, but is there some sensible way to give this contradiction -- [inaudible] >> who is moving into washington in the 1850s in terms of the african-american population and the -- >> or moveing out. >> or moving out. can we offer any explanation to that discrepancy? >> i think there might be -- i think there might be a

discrepancy in the numbers that actually doesn't exist. i'm not quite sure which is the proportion of enslaved black washingtonians did not go up between 1840 -- sorry between 1850 and 1860. it didn't go up. it stayed the same or went down, so -- and you know that if i am remembering correctly, not only that, the proportionate number of african-americans was going down. by 1860, african-american washessians were the least proportioned than they'd ever been. in other words, now the numbers, as you said, are not necessarily that reliable, the census numbers themselves. i mean, the census numbers are

out there, verifiable, but how accurately they reflect populations, we don't know. the census numbers show the relative number of african-americans in washington decreased between 1850 and 1860. i thought the reason for that was the black people leaving, going north, so basically what you have by the eve of the civil war is a proportional population smaller than in the past and goes back up to one-third in the war and stays at one-third for the rest of the 19th century. a portion of the population is smaller than in the past and also equally proportionally free or more free than it was in the past. >> [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> why have historians reversed the construction in washington and supplemented by -- talk about your surprises. >> did you say rehearsal or reversal? >> he -- rehearsal, sorry. >> there was a book about the expiermt that happened during the civil war. i was thinking a lot about that book and thinking this is another version of the reconstruction, and i wanted a title for my book with that, but wouldn't have been a good idea anyway. why haven't his tore yaps paid attention to this?

there is -- in defense of the rehearsal for reconstruction, it was kind of a very nice little episode, like a neat nugget of an episode where a bunch of people from the north go to this area that occupied in coastal south carolina with different perspectives k some economically oriented, others missionary oriented, and it's a great way to watch this play out. washington is more diffusive to me, but that doesn't answer the question. as i kind of suggested in the beginning of the talk, i think people have shied away from shieding washington in part because of the question that, you know, of how strange it is, how anomalous, you know, that it's not a real city or, but, you know, the poor royalist sermon is also anomalous and happens because the unions is occupying that little strip of land.

it's south carolina that's anomalous. it doesn't explain why in another anomalous in washington has not gotten the same kind of attention. you know, in part of what was to segue into the second part of your question, part of what was fun in doing this research was how many interesting stories there were to uncover that didn't seem to have been told before because there just hasn't been very much research on this. you know, one that comes to mind in the civil war years was a very big debate over the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws in washington. during 1862 including after emancipation in washington which was in april of 1862, local officials continue to enforce the fugitive slave law meaning slaves fleeing from maryland could be caught up and their owners come into washington and go before the fugitive slave commissioner and up cyst on them

being brought back into slavery which is kind of amazing because washington is under union control and was also free, sensibly free, and yet people there could be enslaved and sent back. one of the things i thought was really interesting to discover was real evidence that even though local officials wanted to continue to enforce the fugitive slave laws, the general public would not allow it, and i write about how crowds of african-americans would surround people who were trying to recapture these fugitives and kind of say you can't do this. this is unfair. how can this be happening? then go to the court for the hearings before the fugitive slave commissioners, and one reason we know about this is because it was covered in the press, and the particularly the abolitionist press that wanted to see this stop, wanted to see the fugitive slave stop said thing, well, it's clear in the laws and it's no longer

enforceable. so much public clam mori against it that -- clammor against it, it can't be enforced. there's a legal side of the story too shifting personnel on the court, and the court continues to be inclined to enforce the law, but then the military officials don't want to see it enforced, and so there's this whole kind of configuration around enforcement of the too fugitive slave laws and brings up forcing the issue, and number two by a popular uprising of enforcement of the laws. that was one of the i things i enjoyed writing about. there's more, but i could go on about sort of wonderful fun stories i get to tell in this book. >> this is going to be the last

question. >> [inaudible] is there information about how or what was going on in washington, what was communicated to the rest, anything in the editorials, commentary by the state legislators? >> how was this power shift, this information getting out if washington is an example for all the land, how is that gets out to the rest of the land? >> yeah, two examples of that. one, on the democratic city, the u.s. world was a major democratic newspaper. by 1869, in washington, that's the apex