>> and it will change just like it was before. i think the interesting part is constantly is the fact there are cycles. and it's looking at a time in which there wasn't a collaboration of large stores which may be a boon for the independents. >> next kate masur presents a history of washington, d.c. during reconstruction through her book "an example for all the land." the author recounts the many

organizations and public works that represented racial equality. the discussion is about an hour. [applause] >> good evening. thanks to tom for inviting me to speak here tonight. and also i would like to thank sabrina mancy doing a good job on my visit. and i want to talk about what i try to do in this book that i wrote. and i'm going to talk about it basically in terms of two threads. first, this book is designed to offer an updated history of washington, d.c., during the civil war reconstruction that highlights the significance of the national capital for understanding reconstruction writ large. and second, the book makes the importance of the debate over the meaning of equality in a period after slave emancipation. and i want to say something about my approach. i'm interested in a 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 kind of an eclectic combination of all three. the focus is on the legal and popular development of concept of equality. on the processes by which people make claims on the government and how policies are shaped by popular politics and now in tern political structures shape and constraint the arguments that are available. the claims that are possible. indeed, the very lives people live. now, why did i study washington? this slide didn't turned out particularly as well as it translated. this is a 1865 map. the history wouldn't necessarily tell us anything usualful about anywhere else besides itself. this is largely because washington is entirely a creature of the federal government. it didn't spring up as an industrial hub it's not in a

state. it's really an odd ball. the city district and the city itself were invented by the united states government and slaves by the constitution under the exclusive jurisdiction of congress. but i found this unique status of washington's history all the more interesting. in the mid-19th century and specifically around the period of the civil war. washington was a place where political and local affairs collided sometimes generating sparks. local citizens attended sessions of congress. congressmen rode in street cars alongside of the general public. the largest questions of the civil war era, questions about slavery, freedom, equality and the role of government and the lives of citizens played out writ small in washington. in some ways this was a normal city that followed normal patterns. but in the ways that it wasn't and in its peculiar relationship to congress, it is a

particularly interesting and telling place to study. and i just wanted -- i know it might be a little bit hard to orient on this map because it doesn't represent the city that we know and i'm going to point out a few landmarks. this first arrow, that's the capitol. there's the white house. that is where the washington monument is, and you can see the mall as we know it now, beyond there is the lincoln memorial. the mall kind of ended and the potomic river began just off to the left there of where the washington monument is so you can see some of the effects of urban development on the capitol and that's dupont circle and that gives you a sense the gridded, the kind of populated urbanized area was much smaller than the block we know now. anything up past -- you know, occupy connecticut avenue up

toward woodley park, up past where howard university is now going north on seventh street, none of those are on the map. those weren't considered kind of the main parts of washington city so that kind of 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 touching on three different points. first, i'm going to talk about the relationship of african-american history to this story, second, the story of urban reform in washington and its context and third, why washington was an example for all the land. so first washington was the site of remarkable african-american activism in this period. and i like to talk in kind of general terms about three groups 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 enslaved. and what that meant was that there was an enormous kind of an organized institutions, there were churchs, there were civil society kind of organizations. african-american men and women ran schools. there were 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, positions in the federal government, not necessarily -- or not at all in kind of clerical positions, but as messengers. and so forth. and in those roles they actually knew many of the most powerful men in the country and so interestingly, free black washingtonians -- many of them had powerful ties to people who could help them later. and these folks -- the kind of

pre-african-americans who lived in washington before the war were poised to exert a special kind of leadership as 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 were so many thousands of people. and they became important political constituents for the republican party. they charted out their own political course going forward. and the third group were african-american northerners or people who had been in the south, moved to the north and came back like frederick douglass is an example of prominent african-american 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

because they were looking a little bit later at washington's really unparalleled african-american education institution. 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 really like it, the figures in the foreground are so interestingly drawn. in the center -- now, i hope you can see this. in the center you have a set of three figures, a man and two women who are really well dressed. they're wearing relatively fancy clothes. off to their right, you see a figure of two women and a younger sort of smaller woman who are wearing much more casual clothes. they're wearing april and head scarves, more characteristic of people who had been enslaved and then off to the west in the photo you see a group of pen that are sort of similarly dressed. and what i like about this, is

the artist who drew this picture was able to capture some of the diversity, some of the class of diversity of washington's african-american community in this picture. now, beginning during the civil war, black washingtonians sought recognition as members of the civic body and full and equal access to street cars, theaters, public schools and even the proceedings of congress. they demanded fair treatment by the police and the fair share of public works employment, equal access to trade unions and official recognition of their militia organizations. looking at what was going on here with all of these claims and all of these demands, was an eye toward the relationship between popular activism and policy, it became clear to me that african-americans were demanding rights and privileges in advance of legislation. in the book i call those claims upstart claims to emphasize that these weren't claims to existing

rights, nor were they supported by existing policies. let me give you an example of that. in the spring of 1863, as recruitment was underway for a black union regiment, what became the first u.s. colored troops, and by the way this isn't really them. this is a photograph of the fourth u.s. colored trip by the end of the war and i think it's a really nice photo in part it represents black soldiers with their uniforms on and uniforms, i think, play an important role here. so the first u.s. colored troops were being recruited and the new soldiers immediately, while starting to pull the different companies and the regiment together were beginning access to the city's street cars. now, the cars themselves were a wartime innovation. they were built in order to facilitate getting troops and materials from one side of the city to the other, washington never had -- and also the general public but washington had never had street cars before

1862. now, when they were first running, conductors immediately knead their practice to either completely exclude african-americans from the street cars or to make them ride on the platform in the front. you can see two guys kind of in the front right behind the horses. they would make african-americans who want to ride rides separately on the platform in the front and you can imagine that if it was raining or sleeting or also just muddy, which washington was famous for its mud in this period, that you would be much more exposed to the elements. it's not as nice of a place to ride. so 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 while wearing these uniforms that declared them to be worthy of respect and deference. legislators of the capitol took note and began to discuss the

matter. and this protest kind of insisting on the right to ride begins in the spring of 1863 and by the winter of 1864, this man, alexander augusta, he was refused a seat on the streetcar while traveling on official business. augusta was forced to walk to a court martial hearing in the rain and so he was very annoyed that they wouldn't allow him to sit inside the car. and he outlined the incident in a letter to a military judge and then afforded it to senator charles sumner who read it on the floor of the senate. and what i'm describing here is a process of kind of impulse among every day soldiers followed by a more prominent man making a direct protest and all of this, because it's washington, is being discussed in congress at the same time. so in the case of the street cars and in many other cases as well, black activism spurred a republican-dominated congress to act.

some congressmen including charles sumner were primed for their own action and to lead to the implementation of what were essentially abolitionists, ideals of racial equality. this is a notion that freedom itself wouldn't be enough in a kind of country that was going through emancipation but that policies would need to be implemented to produce a more equal society that just simply saying labor couldn't exist anymore was simply the beginning. so together black activism and congressional activism made the capitol an exemplar of racially progressive policy nationwide, from 1862 when congress credit emancipation for the capitol months ahead of the emancipation proclamation until about 1869. and some examples of that are the end of the black codes racially black codes in 1862, the passage of a law against

discrimination on any public conveyance, usually manhood suffered in 1867, again, before universal manhood suffrage was mandated for the former confederates. i paid attention to the rights of votes because it was the vote that people were able to reshape the priorities of city government. african-americans at about one-third of the population wield considerable power in the electorate and they did so. during the period when the republicans were in charge of the city government, that is before a major reorganization of the structure of the government which i'm going to talk about in a minute, to local governments past its local accommodations laws, that is barring discrimination in a variety of public accommodations and

appointed african-american men to prominent offices and also the populace elected men to the city council. most important perhaps the city government inaugurated major public works department and distributed jobs on those projects fairly between black and white laborers. and so you see with the onset of black men's right to vote in washington dramatic changes in the local city government. this cartoon is from "harper's weekly." it's entitled "the georgetown election: the negro at the ballot box" and because georgetown held its election, its 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 the kind of typical kind of caricatures or stock figures. you have an african-american man casting his ballot behind him a republican looking sort of lincolnesque with the top hat

and the guy second from the list has a csa on his hat and he's a bitter confederate and he's standing next to and kind of supporting the man on his left is andrew johnson who vetoes the universal manhood suffrage legislation that congress has passed for congress and so johnson is clinging to his veto, physically clinging to his veto while the african-american men cast their vote. so the second major thread that i want to talk about is about the impact of what you might call urban reform in washington. so the book tells the story of the dramatic restructuring of the government of the district of columbia, district of columbia first in 1871 and again, in 1874. that is first 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 coalition of local business leaders -- these innovations were direct responses to or more precisely reactions against reconstruction-era changes, particularly, against enfranchisement of african-american men. most historians have viewed the leader of the business coalition that sought to reorganize the existing structures of the government, alexander shepherd as a visionary who sought to elevate the capitol city from the backwardness of its antebellum past. it doesn't drive slave eman presumptive probation, african-american activism and the onset of black men's voting rights. my argument what shepherd and his coalition was doing was leading a backlash against black men's enfranchisement and the redistribution of power that

agriculture need it. they called themselves taxpayers and citizens and they persuaded congress to restructure the government. first creating a territory which dramatically reduced the power of elected office holders. sound the territorial government, the only elected offices that remained were a lower house of the legislature. but all of the most powerful offices in the government were now held by appointed officials. and i call this creation of the territorial government, washington's first redemption in order to emphasize that this kind of restructuring in the name of good government and progress was actually very consistent with movements elsewhere in the south to remove republicans from office. now, i should say that shepherd -- well, she said herd's government accomplished quite a bit in terms of modernizing the city. and this is a bird's eye view of the city from that period that shows in really amazing detail,

if you see the actual image, some of the development, particularly, of the northwest quadrant of washington during this period. and i think it's interesting the placement of the capitol dome itself kind of directs your eye right to that area northwest of washington, the area around what's now dupont circle and logan circle that were then the places that where these sort of prodevelopment governments and their kind of real estate investor friends were focusing their development so a lot of the remaining kind of bricks, beautiful brick buildings in that area, for those of you who are familiar with that area, logag circle, dupont circle, not too many of them are from the 1870s but a lot of them are from the 1880s and they kind of date back from this period from real focused development on that section of washington. so 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 elected by the people locally. now, the second stage of washington's redemption began in 1874 when congress once again reorganized the dc government this time placing it under the control under the three-man commission. under this configuration no one could go for an elected official and washington was governed exclusively by three men selected 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. and, in fact, that situation, the commission form of government would last into the 1960s. home rule was not established into 1963 and this situation persisted and the story that i'm telling helped 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 point i want to make stems exactly from that last point. washington as an example for all the land. this quotation is from charles sumner, the massachusetts senator who worked closely with blacks to pass legislation from the district of columbia that represented the most racially progressive policies possible at that time. conversely, though, as congress' politics 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, a example of the enfranzment the climate was a broader climate in both the north and the south of distrust and fear of democratic self-government. whereas, in the north, movements to the dramatically limit the power of urban voters and primarily the voters who were

most often maligned and attacked were voters of irish descent, movements to dramatically limit their power came in the end to very little. by contrast, by the south this impulse resulted in the 1890s in expansion of enfranchisement as we know. in 1868 george spencer, a white republican senator from alabama by birth a northerner, in other words, avenues carpetbagger, he argued that the permanent commission form of government in the capitol threatened, quote, the franchise of the poor man throughout the united states. whatever his race, his color, his nationality or his creed and even forecast the abolishment of an elected government all together. so in other words, at the time that the commission form was being implemented, people could see that this was kind of an extreme part of a large impulse, whether they agree with it or disagree with it. it was sort of the canary in the

coal mine. the constitution federalist order prohibited congress most of the time from acting directly on residence 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 how they wanted to make policy when there was virtually nothing in the constitution to restrain that power. so now, let me shift gears and talk about the debate over equality. my hope is that this book also sets out a new framework from the study of the civil war era by directing itself to a surprisingly neglected topic, the struggle over equality. in recent decades historians of emancipation have made the concept of freedom their principal analytical category. now, to be sure, after slavery the question of freedom's

meaning, particularly, as it related to the organization of labor was crucial. yet, slavery's abolition also inaugurated a great debate over the future of equality in america. in this 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. instead, i describe a struggle over equality, the air is completing -- excuse me, competing visions of equality and inequality and i cover who covered inequality in which places and for which reason. i try to untangle the knotty problem of what contemporaries meant when they talked about civil, mill and social equality. in 1858, for example, abraham lincoln said he had, quote, no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.

in a stand-alone speech in pierre four years earlier, lincoln said his, quote, own feelings did not admit making former slaves, quote, politically socially our equals, end quote. yet, lincoln also consistently argued for certain kinds of racial equality. as he said in columbus, ohio, in 1859, quote, there's no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated 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 talking about equality? and what happened to them once the question of black equality was no longer theoretical as it was before but practical as it became after emancipation. answering these questions became one of the central goals of my research. what i found was that generally speaking republicans, including lincoln, agreed that civil

equality meant equal treatment bylaws and implicitly security of property. and they believed all people should have this formal equality before the law. most republicans also distinguished between this this kind of equality and political equality, which referred to the right to vote and usually to hold office. so moderate republicans, including lincoln, tended to support civil equality but not political equality for african-americans. now, here's where upstart claims came in. beginning during the war african-americans and some white radical republicans insisted on a far more expansion vision of fundamental equality before the law. one that would actually be familiar to us now but was very novel at the time. they argue that the civil equality should include the vote which was, they thought, a fundamental civil right like the origins of other civil rights were in natural law.

many also believed that the principle of civil equality required that african-americans must have equal access to public schools, common carriers such as street cars, railroads and steamers and other public accommodations. but during the post-war during equality, whenever they pushed the bounds of racial equality by demanding the equal rights of votes or hold office or access to public schools or public accommodations, opponents charged them with seeking something that just about everyone professed to despise, and that was social equality. so here's where that third category social equality comes in. social equality had no actual concrete. it had no concrete existence. instead, people used social equality to describe what they saw as inappropriate government interference in whatever relationships they believed should properly be considered private matters of personal

taste. for example, senator johnson from maryland argued in 1864 that a law forbidding racial discrimination in washington's street cars amounted to a social equality measure. protection of african-americans' life and property, he argued, was acceptable. this is an illusion to natural rights or civil rights in the narrow sense. but the government should not intervene in matters of, quote, political rights and social enjoyment. he said those matters, political rights and social enjoyment had to do with, quote, the preference on our part for the society of those whom we deem god has created our equals. so in other words, he's putting travel on street cars in the category of personal preferences as opposed to the kind of thing that shouldn't be legislated about. one conservative newspaper even insisted that congress should not enfranchise black men in the congress because the black vote was purely a social question.

so in other words somebody -- people came across things they didn't like, they said -- they called it a matter of social equality and said oh, no, no. you can't do that. now, so interestingly, this dynamic put african-american activists in an interesting position. their response to these arguments, for example, when they said well, we have -- we should be allowed to ride the street cars on a level of equality with equal access or we should -- we want access to the public schools, equally with white children -- they are argued that that had nothing to do with social equality, right? that they were merely seeking a broader vision, a more expansive vision of equality before the law than their -- the people who opposed them or the people who disagreed with them. okay. so the overall sort of picture is that the argument that people are having is an argument over

the content of these categories. we can't take for granted in the case of abraham lincoln or in the case of any of the people who followed him that it was clear what the content of those three categories, political, social, and civil equality was but rather what was animating the debate is 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 domains stopped and where civil or public life began. seeing the struggle over equality in this way helps explains why opening white schools to black children was more politically contentious than opening fancy restaurants and theaters to black patrons. it helps us understand why white republicans in the early 1870s could argue for racial equality while at the same time opposing independent black political organizations. and it sheds light on the crucial but slippery discourse

of social equality which became a key justification for racial segregation well into the 21st century. it's clear even on the most superficial assessment that there's something very complicated about this country's relationship to equality. we repeatedly declare that all men are created equal but it goes without saying that determining what that statement means and what its implications are, if any, for policy has been one of the central 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 that in addition to telling the story of the nation's capital in a pivotal period, this book offers a piece in the larger puzzle of assessing the history of equality and inequality in the united states.

thanks. [applause] >> i'm happy to take any questions or hear comments. [inaudible] >> we're going to be very organized beginning with turning on the microphone. [laughter] >> if you have a question, please raise your hand and i will represent that so that everyone can hear it and we can pick it up on tape. yes, sir. [inaudible] >> a comparison between antebellum washington versus washington of the civil war era. >> sure. on what kind of terms would you like me to compare it?

>> the black population, where they were and at that time as opposed to that -- [inaudible] >> sure. well, the citigroup and the black population tripled and the government needed to performed all these functions it had never performed before. and so all kinds of new clerks and sort of government attaches are moving into the capitol during the civil war just as lots and lots of footage tives of slavery are coming in too and the capitol is growing by leaps and bounds in terms of population. washington -- the kind of stereotype of washington before the war was that it was a slippery back-water -- it's true

that many of the kind of main street -- very few of the main streets were in any way paved. pennsylvania avenue is one of the few streets that had any kind of pavement or finishing on it and so people complained about the ducts and the mud. and so that actually -- and then the sort of occupation that happens during the civil war only exacerbates the condition of the streets and so part of what's going on, you know, in favor of urban development in the period after the was that the city was never particularly well developed in terms of grading and paving and that sort of thing and then the civil war didn't help any in that respect. and the other thing -- and i guess i would say the work is so preoccupied in the questions of government is beginning -- so washington had its own city council and mayor from the early 19th century. from the first decade of the

19th century. georgetown add separate mayor and city council and the rest of the district of columbia was called the county. it was governed separately. and so originally the people who could vote vote for local offices in washington city were white men with certain property qualifications. in 1848, the property qualifications were dropped and so from 1848 until 1867, the voters in the capitol city were what were all white men. and so all white men could vote and then -- and black men and women could not vote. so there's also -- that gives you -- and then the government -- the city government was usually in the hands of sort of the economic elite, the business elite, and so one of the dramatic changes is once you have african-american men right to vote, it really reshapes the electorate. and it allows for people with different priorities to come in to 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? from looking at over 100 years? >> that's a terrific question. and it's a complicated set of reasons why. some washingtonians were not too unhappy with the commission form of government. one of the things that the commission form of government made possible was it, made possible that people with connections and in particular people with real estate connections had the ear of the commissioners, and so if you were of a certain class and a washington resident, you didn't mind that there wasn't local self-government because you could get things done that you wanted to get done through kind of back-channels or through talking directly to the people

who knew the commissioners. so 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 be again like in reconstruction being able to reshape or to 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 had 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 give local people more control died in the dc committee on the house of representatives -- or the dc committee of the house of representatives.

so things start to loosen up in the 1960s. and it very much there's a relationship between 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] >> if violence played a similar role in the washington dc. >> did violation play a role in the washington dc city? >> that's an interesting question, and, no, there was not -- there were periodic -- well, the answer's no. there were sort of episodes of racial violence but actually they didn't connect to the redemption that i'm talking about, the kind of changing form

of government. and so but one of the things that i want to highlight by talking about washington's redemption in those terms, redemption in the public confederacy wasn't always violent either. in some places our kind of vision of it, at least, i think, right now, many of us have a vision of a rampant and organized plan -- the kind of plan and democratic party planned coalition and these violent campaigns to overthrow republican governments and that certainly was the case in those states. but in a lot of states, particularly in the border south and particularly in places like virginia, not that there wasn't violence in virginia but in terms of politics, redemption happened much sooner in virginia. in fact, there was almost no reconstruction at all and it happened mostly through political channels. so i think the same or similar could be said with respect to

tennessee. but more to the point, a lot of the similar rhetoric about good government also characterizes kind of the period of redemption in other states and one of the things i think it's interesting about to think of dc this way because it draws our potential to the political rather than the kind of violent -- but to the violent machinations that many kind of of the more respectable but still anti-republican southerners went through in order to take back their states from the republicans. >> yes, sir. >> one of the most widely criticized episodes of the lincoln presidency was the meeting he had in august of 1862 with bob blackman urging him to make a conversation effort to serve the united states to new episodes on that. >> 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, on the famous meeting lincoln had in 1862 with five black men in washington. and kind of what got me interested in getting to the bottom of this was that usually the story is told that the five men that lincoln met with were just released from slavery, newly freed men who would be politically employable. he could give his proposal that they were going to take their people and go colonize abroad and they would supposedly say, oh, sure, whatever you say because you're the president of the united states. and so -- and there are reasons why historians thought that. actually one person, edward thomas, was known to not be a recently emancipated person but otherwise the other ones were. and the more i did research on the actual people who were

living in washington, and i kept coming across the -- i knew the names of the five men who met with lincoln, and i kept finding them in other places, too. they were leaders of 15th street presbyterian church, the most elite black church in washington. they were employees of the federal government who had connections to the white house or to congress. they were teachers a couple of them. they were active -- they were black masons, freemasons and so i began kind of keeping a running list of all the ways that i could identify these men and it was very clear from a variety of persons that they weren't, obviously, newly freed from slavery. they had been -- they were precisely members of that 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 about the meeting that i thought was considering the amount of attention that was given to that meeting and considering the importance of the issue at the time, the

delegation should have given an official response to lincoln. like you would have thought that after this very controversial meeting the delegation would have said, okay, well, we've met with the president and here's what we think -- here's what we're going to do, either yes or no. but there was no response. right? so i was wondering why they never got back to lincoln and why there was never a prominent editorial saying here's what the delegation is going to say. and so basically i ended up feeling like if i. to write this story. partly to correct the record and partly to tell the interesting things of the debate among black washingtonians who should comprise the delegation in the first place. who would get to go to this meeting, what did they represent? what should their position be? and so basically my research on the history of washington as a city led me to kind of uncover some new aspect of that famous

lincoln story, kind of told from the perspective of the delegatio delegation. >> yes, sir. >> my question is not about statistics. it is about people and their movements. i have just read in your book -- [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> who is moving into washington in the 1850s in terms of the african-american population? and the -- or moving out? what's the -- can we offer any explanation to that discrepancy? >> i think there might be -- i think there might be a discrepancy in those numbers that actually doesn't exist. and so i'm not quite sure which -- which one it is. actually, the proportion of

enslaved black washingtonians did not go up between 1840 -- or sorry, between 1850 and 1860. it didn't go up. it either stayed the same or went down. and so that if i am remembering correctly, by the -- and not only that, the proportionate number of african-americans living in washington was also going down. so actually by 1816, black washingtonians were the least proportioned of black washingtonian than they'd ever been. in other words, the numbers, as you said, are not necessarily that reliable. the census numbers themselves. the cens your honor success numbers are out there and verifiable and how accurately they reflect population we don't know but the census numbers shows the relatively african-american numbers decreased in 1850 and 1860 and i

always thought the reason for that was just people leaving, freed black people leaving and going north. so basically when you have a via the civil war a proportion population that is smaller than it's been in the past and then it goes back up to one-third during the war and it stays at about one-third for the rest of the 19th century. a proportion of population that's smaller than it's been in the past and also equally proportionately free or a little bit more free than it's been in the past. [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> why were historians basically ignoring this reversal in washington? and then supplemented by, talk about some of your surprises. >> did you talk about rehearsal or reversal. >> i'm sorry. >> and i wasn't quite sure. okay. there's a famous book called "rehearsal for reconstruction" by willie lee rose which is about the south carolina port royal experiment which happens during the civil war. and for a while i was really thinking about that book a lot and thinking this was another version of the another rehearsal and i was thinking of that but probably wouldn't have been a good idea. why hadn't historians paid attention to this? in defense of the rehearsal for reconstruction, i mean, that was this very -- it was kind of a very nice little episode like a neat isolatable suggest of an episode where a bunch of people

from the north go to this area that's occupied in coastal south carolina. they have a different specify. some are more economically oriented and some are missionary and fill -- philosophical. as i kind of suggested at the beginning of the talk, i think people have shied away from studying washington in part because of the question, you know, of how strange it is, how anomalous, you know, that it's not a real city or -- but the port royal experiment is also anomalous. it only happened because the people occupying that little strip of land and it's south carolina and it's anomalous. so it doesn't really help us exactly explain why another anomalous and some interesting experiment in washington hasn't gotten the same kind of attention, you know, and part of what was to kind of segue into the second part of your question, part of what was

really fun about 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 from 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 continued to enforce the fugitive slave law and that meant particularly slaves fleeing from maryland could be caught up and their owners come in to washington and go before our fugitive slave commissioner and insist on them being brought back into slavery, which is kind of amazing because washington was under union control and was also freed ostensibly freed and people could be reenslaved and brought back. and 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 law, the general public wouldn't allow it. and i write about how crowds of african-americans would surround people who were trying to recapture these fugitives and kind of yell and say you can't do this. this is unfair and how can this be happening? and go to the court for the hearings before the fugitive slave commissioners and the reason we know about this was because it was covered in the press. and particularly the abolitionist press which wanted to see the fugitive rendition slave dropped, such a public outcry is raised. so much public clamour that it can't continue to be enforced. and so meanwhile there's a kind of illegal side of the story,

too, where they're 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 a parole kind of conflagration of the enforcement of the fugitive slave rules get tightened number 1 that that there were slaves that forced the issue and the popular enforcement of those laws so that was one of the things i really enjoyed kind of finding out and figuring out how to write about. there's so many more, though. i don't want -- you know, i want to ask you more questions but i could go on about wonderful, fun anecdotes that i got to tell in this book. >> this is going to be our last question. yes, sir. [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> how was this power? yes, is this information getting -- if washington is indeed an example for all the land, how is that getting out to the rest of the land? >> yeah. well, let me give two examples of that. one, from the democratic press in new york city, the new york world was a major democratic newspaper. and by 1869, in washington, it's sort of another up next of radical reconstruction. you have for the first time african-american men are sitting on juries. there are seven wards in washington. each ward has at least one african-american councilman sitting on the council and the

new york world is aconfused about it and they do the series of articles about the negro nomination and they talk about washington as an exemplar for all that is bad about reconstruction that is bad. and this is the summerth 15th amendment is passed in the winter of 1869 and off of the summer when it's ratification and the 15th amendment was -- said nobody could be prohibited in the state -- nobody could be prohibited from voting on the race, color and previous condition and so northern states particularly the democrats were saying, oh, well, and they had to ratify, they were supposed to ratify and the new york world says do you want an example when we allow african-american men to vote. look at washington. and they're saying it's a negative example. so that's one very sort of clear example of how washington had

become an example. and so the by the end of the century when sort of disenfranchisement of the south is in full swing, you have sorn sort of propagandaists who are trying to persuade liberals in the north what they're doing in disenfranchisizing african-americans is good, is appropriate. and that northerners shouldn't be concerned about it and those folks also cite washington -- they like to cite washington because it was actually during a republican congress that washington, d.c., was disenfranchised and they talk about washington as a model for what they're doing and kind of say, look, the republicans in 1874, 1878 thought it was fine and why don't you go along with us. but on the positive side and on a slightly more -- what i see see as a more positive note washington also becomes for african-americans an example of a place with some of the best

institutions in the country. howard university founded in 1867, i think, and the public schools in dc, although segregated becomes that some of the -- some of the public schools become really terrific including a preparatory high school, the m street school that later becomes dunbar and so growing out of the period that i write about washington also becomes an example of educational opportunity and to some stents employment opportunity for african-americans that's kind of unparalleled elsewhere. >> once again, thank you very much, professor, for sharing your book with us. [applause] >> and i believe the outside is available to be signed on the tables outside of the door. thank you very much and have a great evening. >> this event was hosted by the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum in springfield, illinois. for more information, visit alplm.org.

>> c-span's local content vehicles partnered with bright house networks in campus st. petersburg, florida, to check out the local literary scene. here's a short video from that trip. >> i first got interested in the topic of the mafia because i grew up in new jersey. that should be self-explanatory. in the early 1990s, i started going online -- i actually found a historians from england who had collected a great deal of information on organized crime. and he said he had some info on tampa and so i contacted and he sent me a packet of articles and i have not heard much about organized crime in tampa and i started reading these fascinating stories of gang land killings of political corruption of wide open gambling and i'm like, this might make a good idea for a book and i started doing some more research and i built on it and the first book took a while to get more information because tampa at its heart is a very small city and

the guys that i wrote about, a lot of people are still in the neighborhoods and grew up here. so it was a really interesting topic to me and the more i dug into it, i found it a fascinating subculture of the underworld in tampa and now it was really connected to the mafia in chicago, new york city, new jersey. tampa was off the radar was tampa was for a very long time a small city. it wasn't a big metropolis like new york or boston. you didn't have the real flashy gangsters that you had up there and really these were small pockets. these were mafia families and organized crime were 20, 30, 40 guys and another reason is because the gambling that was going on at the time was really ingrained into the community. it wasn't really seen as being this terrible vice. so i think a combination of those factors but certainly a guy like santo was certainly known outside the tampa area and

i think in terms of name recognition he's probably one of the more recognizable mobsters in the country. some interesting pieces was the mafia itself is a strictly an italian organization. you have to be sicilian to be made into the mafia but there were guys in organized crime that were spanish, that were white, that were cuban. that was very influential and it was an interesting ethnic mixture that you didn't have in any other city. you didn't have that in new york. you didn't have that in chicago. the closest parallel was probably in new orleans but tampa had a really unique ethnic mix to the underworld. it was really unparalleled anywhere else in the united states at that time. and that really served it as organized crime figures from tampa like santo moved to cuba in the pre-castro era when