tv Book TV CSPAN August 25, 2013 10:00pm-11:01pm EDT
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u.s. and he's been a bit of an outsider therefore he's extremely sympathetic to the immigrants and is one of the leading figures in the immigration policy today. he's widely credited for having delivered the latino vote to president, but nonetheless he's been arrested twice outside of the white house for protesting the current immigration policy. so i think we have a wide variety of books that would appeal to many of the viewers. ..
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mid presenting a history of the united in the mid 189th century. the author recounts the ever changing american landscape during this time from the growing borders to the debate over slavery. the civil war, and reconstruction. this is about ab -- an hour. [applause] >> thank you, knick. thank you to all of you for coming tonight. thank you to the people at harper colins to give support and making a beautiful book. as you can see, it's quite lovely. i'm talking just about the physicality. you can judge the odds -- inside on your own.
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as nick said, this book covers a thirty year span of american list i are in the middle of the 19th century when nothing much happens. there was just -- so i don't know the women's movement, and the country divided in two, and there were spiritualist and a spirit rappers and pt barn all part of the same cultural moment. in case you are getting bored. there was a war, a dreadful war where 750,000 people were killed. it -- that's probably a figure that is not finished being revised. and of course there was a period of reconstruction that occurred in the south, and at the same time there was the settlement of the west, augustered by the goal
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rush in 1848 and completed with the slow and painful and very disturbing removal of the indians from that particular part of the country. just a few things that i concerned myself with for the last year. and this is a strange and complex moment or a series of moments in american history as i just suggested. populated by a very unusual group of people you wouldn't think necessarily occupying the same historical time. i can give you some of their names. there's of course, you you lis susan b. anthony, and frederick douglass, william lloyd garrison.
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harriet beecher stow, emmerson was still alive, and writing until long after the period. long fellow, you have emily dickinson, william sherman. who people i would have loved to see meet one another. [laughter] swells victoria. the first woman who ran for president in the united. and not victoria woodrow there was a man -- i won't bother you with his name. a man who invented the word scientology which is rather strange, interesting, unusual and. maison bedford. i could spend the whole time a lotted here just listing names. i'm not going to do that. i'm going to give you a little bit of how i got in the book.
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so. things important to me in the writing of it. i'm going read very briefly and be very delighted to take and answer your questions if i possibly can. so to go back to the book i.t. i named some names. now i want you to think for a moment about the tremendous innovations particularly technological but not exclusively technological innovation during the particular period. think, for example, the first that comes to mind is of course photography. we have many of us who live here in new york who have probably gone to see the met show of civil war photography and civil war painting. it's interesting to think that the civil war was documented in the country from beginning to end by photographers. which is shocking, really. and often why thought about why it is the revolutionary war, which is brother again brother,
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country against country, why the war hasn't kept to the imagination the way the civil war has. in addition to obvious reasons likelet get rid of slavery once awhile. the reason is, i think, there wasn't photography at that particular time. we don't know what people looked like. we can't really see them strewn for maybe good reason or better. the battlefield. on to the photography. the railroad. it started just a little bit before the particular period and became so instrumental in the war effort. after all they moved so many men and so much munitions during the period of the war, and to a certain extent you imagine why it was that the south was at the disadvantage and became disadvantage because there were fewer and fewer lines in the south than there was --
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were in the north. that's really very important, by 1869, after the war, four years after the war, the transcontinental railroad was finished. that took even more settlers from the west to the east and back. i'm not so sure about that. but nonetheless, that too is very important in this period. it was important for -- as i mentioned before, the native americans who lived in those areas where settlers were going. and when i mentioned the list of names, i could have put brig ham young in that list as well as everyone else. imagine him meeting emily
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dickinson. mormonism actually began in new york state, as you probably know. right in upstate new york because of the series of revival, religious revival sweeping through that particular part of the country, and then went west and then farther west. that's part of the period too, of course. and of course the the antislavery movement that gathered more and more momentum. and the dispositions of the land that was acquired from mexico was a matter of some concern.
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shall it be freed or shall it be slaves? that was dialogue that became so acrimonious debate that became so furious that, of course, it spiraled in to what we think of civil war war between between the states or a southerners sometime called it the war of -- [inaudible] think too of women's right, which i mentioned before, early antislavery advocate which, of course, were much involved in the women's movement and were women themselves. after the war we have a very complicated historic moment when black men are given the vote but not white or black women leading black women doubly disenfranchised. what was interesting about the pass able of --
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passage of franchisement amendment. enemy of both black and women like to put black men and all women against one another. which was of course something that seemed to me happen yet again in 2008 during the primary for president and maybe still happening. absolutely. and thinking of that, think of the change in law. i'm not just thinking -- the amendment. but i'm thinking of that the knee fair use and horrible and men and women black men and women slaves, former slaves and bring them back south.
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and it was so horrible that particular law. it began to be a kind of resistance movement against it, of course, many what they call in 18949 civil disobedience. that's before the fugitive slave act. nonetheless civil disobedience became a important way to push back against the government as it stood at the time. it was also a way of taking the law, i'll talk about it in a minute, in to one's hands which culminated in the array of john browne and the associate in harper's ferry. which to some people really began the civil war. and in that particular case, it also involved people who were then, which was interesting to
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me to find the term was used in that period of time, people who were then gorilla and also took matters -- law, in to their own hand. you would often see them in the kansas plains people from missouri would go to k and make sure people couldn't -- kansas people couldn't vote against the slavery. couldn't vote against a free constitution. this was a time, in other words, it was a time of great change. tremendous amount of change. technological, term change in term of the law, and opportunity toward one another.
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when you believe you could change even nathaniel haw thorn didn't believe in change for a little bit. he went to the utopian community. it's a time of tremendous expectations. huge exeb -- expectations and great failure as well. it was a time of boiseerousness the expansiveness, hopefulnd and greed. and good old american greed which was part of the period. and one of many things i learn the gilded age didn't start in the 1870. it's not consecutive at all.
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all of these settings are happening at the same time. the narrative nightmare. what was i was going to do i suggested i came from a way in two earlier ways. i written a biography of haw thorn as nick mentioned. he was a very elusive 19th century figure. it seemed as though he belonged in the 17th century. a couple of things about him were so out of keeping with our stereo type of haw thorn. for example, he met lincoln. they didn't spend very long together. lincoln had more important things to to than meet delegation from montana who was presenting him with a whip. something he found amusing in a grim sort of way. he said he later wrote that
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hawthorne -- handsomest man. lincoln was m homeliness man he had ever seen and was wearing shabby slippers. he liked him for the wise look. it seemed like phrase praise. one of his friends was franklin pierce. you may have forgotten that. it's not exactly a name to con jeer with the particular days. he was a southern sympathizers which is all you need know for the purpose of the talk to of him being friends with franklin, and that is what i used to like say is they were friends with, i don't know, george bush. [laughter] the example has got, a little dated. dickinson, i wrote a book about
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dickinson her relationship to a man. which was face mate -- fascinating to me. it was a strange historical moment you have the reclusive poet who never crosses her father's house of grounds for anybody or anything. enter to a 24-25 year friendship with a man lost to what is -- but known in his own time. famous as a fervent abolitionist. so fervent was he that he was the leader of the first federally authorized group of black troops during the civil war. long before the massachusetts 54th and which which was stationed in all places south carolina. in that particular point i was
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intrigued by the period. wanted to know more about it. wanted to do it justice in that was one of my first questions to myself how can i be responsible to the complication, the pain, the sorrow, the death of the death toll the great sense of liberation, the -- how can i be responsible to all of those historical events in many of those people who gave everything to make the country a better place and also gave everything to keep country from being a better place. how can i be responsible to those events and people and issues and yet tell the story in a different way. a way that might actually say not just another boring book about this particularly -- not boring time, but nonetheless. and so i decided to do is first approach the book as i said
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before. as if i were a visitor from another planet. very far away other planet. and i had just dropped down in the 1850st, 1860s. i had come here. and the first thing you would want to do from another planet is read the newspaper. that's what i wanted to do. how would i make sense from a newspaper from 1850, 1857, 1864 and on and on? in other words if you came from the other planet i looked at the "times" and understand everything on the front page fop give you an example, i read, of course, there's an tremendous and terrible violence in egypt going on, and at the same time i see that headline i see charges
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against two traitors jpmorgan for lack of oversight and for lack of oversight and finding poetry on the page and later on the canvas. where am i? what planet is this? apology in wick key leek. what is that in and what i was wondering about is what sense would i make of the juxtaposition as i literally did read them. and the questions that would come to my mind, for example, would be something like what is the rise of the mormon church have to do with the lincoln/douglas debate. there must be a connection between them. and i don't know offhand what the connection is between them. that was my job to find it out and create a path between these two or among many events in the particular case just as a kind of attraction seem to me that
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connection between them is the issue of popular sovereignty. that was, as i mentioned before, the issue of whether you can vote in a almost sort of libertarian way. if you can vote whatever you want in or out of the law. take, for example, slavery at one extreme, taken another extreme. i'm not saying the mormons were necessarily involved. take another extreme polygamy. oh. if we want to vote in it, why not. if we want to vote in the ownership of other people, why not. you realize that's what the debate was about. and the underlying issue which was popular sovereignty. which said that the issue was ultimately flag grant. similarly take the character or people i mentioned. i call them characters not because i think of them as caricature. i think of people as people who populate a kind of almost like a
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landscape. what did pt barn nam have to do with lincoln. and what did they have to do with walt whitman? easy lincoln and whitman. he adored lincoln and wrote a wonderful eulogy. pt? i'm not sure. whitman is the pt of poetry, after all. whitman lovers may not agree with me. you can see -- i see there are some here. i don't mean nidis respect. it's do i contradict myself? of course. i contain multitudes, which is exactly what the museum did. other questions? why would the spiritualism before the war? i can understand after the war why you want to contact the recently departed. there were so many of them. spiritualism actually started in 1848, probably before. but i think of 1848, again,
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upstate new york. you hear two sisters who hear knock and begin to interpret them. they can actually tell you and give you quick communication with loved ones you have lost or not even loved ones but usually loved one. and many of them, especially the quakers, especially quakers who went to the fox sisters, the quakers would find out that there was no flagrant in heaven which was a big deal. you see what i mean that particular context. what, i mean, is that interested in bringing together various questions or various item, various people, various event in trying to figure out what their relationship had to go with one another. what did the construction, if any, there may not be answer or other people may have different
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answers bhap did we construction in the south after the war have to do with the settlement of the west and the indian war. you realize the war is over but the war are not over. it's something to think about as well. because it doesn't necessarily signal the end of fighting. many of the military think of sherman or here cherton of who were soldiers during the war. particularly in the north. they went to the west and became part of the army movement out there. so asking these kinds of questions. seeing these juxtaposition coming from my other planet, and looking at these disconnected event or people suggested to me a different kind of path, perhaps, that i could take through this material.
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also allowed me to rethink the material myself. instead of necessarily rehearsing for what happened at bull run i thought i would think about how was it covered. who covered it. who were the journalists there. did they write them at night in the tent and have somebody ride it to town very quickly? that intrigued me and got me to think about the journalist that covert the war not just the photographer. i began to wonder -- we associate with the war like alexander gardener and timothy o'sullivan two majors you see at the mets show or any discussion
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you see any viewing discussion of the civil war. why did they go west after the war? that's where they went. and they did landscape paintings. generally often not. there must be a reason for that. that struck me as so interesting. so i want to come at those events, people, historical, schism that were familiar with in unfamiliar way. another example, lincoln's assassination. question know lincoln was assassinated. i'm not going tell you otherwise. what i will tell you when lincoln was assassinated there were a group of gorilla who were headed east. they were headed to washington. they were coming to kill the president.
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makes you wonder somebody else might have the interesting thing is that they were too drunk to get -- i don't think much farther than i don't know. they didn't get very far before they heard the news. that was the end of that. very unsavory group of people. i try not to make too many value judgment. i don't, in other words, want to ignore these kind of angle or different angle. instead of then talking about the assassination, per se, i'm also going talk to you about or tell you about the con spoor or it who were executed as because or one of the i suppose this is a change claim to fame. the first woman to be executed
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in the united states was one of the lincoln conspirator. her name was mary. and when several people on part of the military tribunal who called for the execution, they asked the then president andrew johnson for stay of execution, and he said i must devote too. he denies the stay and said not enough women have been hanged in the war. she was, in fact, hanged. i'll tell you the story about willkie, brother of henry alice, and william who went to florida after the war. went to florida to start a plantation he would create a black labor and create farm that didn't really work out of the because of the great back list against the free black in the
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south. i believe history is embodied and often embody in people at the particular time who are, as i said, confident, confrontational, eccentric, and may or may not comprise. that's one of the book's subtitle and intend on redefining the american nation. in also doing that, i want to cleans myself as much as possible with perceived wisdom. lots of things we know about. number of things we think we know about. particularly me. and in that case, one such example would be the personned that use stevens who may have met most recently in the lincoln
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movie. he was played by tommy lee jones very nicely. he did not seem like the creature out of the dw birth of the nation where he was caricatured. it was that caricature of thad use stevens as a devilish figure with a clubfoot that is supposed to be the sign of a devil that i learned about when i studied history. somebody asked who taught you history. it was actually -- part of a whole school of students reconstruction called the dunning school in dunning had been a professor at columbia a famous book of his who influenced birth the nation and me. that make me very old.
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one of the -- interesting things when he was sick and dying and knew he was going die. he a cemetery plot he bought near lancaster pewhennn realizey was not integrated. it was segregated. no black men or women allowed in it. he gave up the plot and he made sure that he was buried elsewhere. he had written on his tomb something that bears your attention. he said, -- so might be into be illustrate my death the principles which i advocated through a long life. equality of man before his creator. i found that moving, actually. that he would make those choices and that he would want that
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inperpetuity. in that particular sense, as i said uncleansing myself of certain kind of prejudice is. i want to expand our sense of this particular period. two other choices. many of you are writers and one of the things one thinks about how do i begin? where do i begin? this is another question. it begins with filibustering did not mean people standing up like wendy dave. it was a word that described expedition that went illegal
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expedition that went to various country like cuba armed to the teeth and also funded by former congressman in the government. the intefntion was to go cuba, liberate from the spanish and take to the united like the bay of pigs almost. go and say i'm bringing you home so you can wear it like a pin in uncle sam's breast pocket. no, that's not even what interested me. that's pretty interesting. what is -- we never think of a book that
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contains a middle section. large middle section about the civil war beginning in cuba. in the sense it does. and since it does. not just the west that is important. it's the extension of the south. and then i thought that's fine. why not begin even earlier. after all john quincy adams, the last sort of remnant genetic remnant of the founding father, who was the president himself and who was now in the house of representatives in 1848 he died the house of representatives. he died as he lived; serving his country. he chi -- died after saying no. emily dickinson said no is the wildest word we have the in language. and john quincy adams said no. he was voting against draping generals from the mexican war in
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more gold brass and metal. he wanted no part of the war. the war was over. he knew what was going happen or he forecast with gloom because he had been dealing with the antislavery movement far long time. and he no. and i thought that was rather marvelous, because at the end of one era and of course it's very much the beginning of another era. an era of resistance. as i said of change. an era of ecstasy in all sense of the world. ecstasy as liberation, ecstasy as happiness,. it was a way for me to understand what the noes come mean and what it meant to try to
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change the law or put yourself up against the law ore to say no in so many cultural and political ways. and with that, and with that sense is where i want to leave you from my remarking and actually read you very briefly from the opening of the book which is straight after quincy adams' death. the present was and the future would be -- refusal to find or listen and create the refusal to change and refew sam to imagine what it might be look to be someone else. john quincy adams knew how to say no. the negative could be inflexible, id logical, fanatical, particularly when
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some consider refusal a better stool than comprise or when comprise i.t. was so injust to be meaningless. particularly as it invaded matter of human right and dignity. in short american was an -- nation submit within prosperity, and invention. was there a problem, a hitch. that john quincy a adams knew. he forecast would doom the price the country would to pay. some of the people in many of the event in this book are so familiar they seem -- lincoln in the grief stricken flag. the con federal general the elegance and battle weary meeting the scruffy, cigar smoking and oddly gentle.
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but the richness in variety of american life during the confidence and crisis and punitive consolidation bring to focus other events, other characters. the em pounding of the spoon of parole as it tries to flee washington, d.c. the day hungry women ran through the street of richmond begging for bread during the war. riding on wagons to secure the ballot for women. excube use men such as walt whitman embracing multitudes. really changing the political strife the execution of the lincoln conspirator and the head of the anderson prison then the impeachment of a president. anna not emily dickinson on the
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stump of new york's cooper union, the saga of antislavery and fired from the free month bureau by a soon to be disgraced chief of executive and the grandeur and promise of freedom whether to the more -- mormon. and with the war the terrible war and all the while before, during, and after it. to face the fie tal flaw. i don't people to say what people should are or shouldn't have done. it's not without judgment,
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sorrow, or certain time astonishment. the people may or may not felt they have given contingency in which they live and the very mix motive. we come to understand if we do but through a -- [inaudible] look within and not without. there was a seemingly insituationble quest for freedom expressed in several competing ways. for the possession of thing, and person. s. in many instances there was a passion sometimes so rich use, sometimes self-abnegating for
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doing good even if that good included for it sake an in its name acts of murder. thank you. [applause] i will take questions. michael has -- he gets to choose. choose nice ones. >> i'm interested in clarence king, a man with a very big secret. could you say more about him? >> i i could say much more. he became very interesting to me. the secret to its alluded here is the fact that clarence king was a very young man. he didn't go to the war but
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rather went west and surveyed the west and became the first chief of the united surveying expetition and well known. brilliant man evidently. a club man, a good man, man whopted to be a writer and a popular and good book. and loved the west and kept the secret and the secret was that he was the demon law husband -- common-law husband of the black woman in new york city or queens, i think. he told her he gave her an alliance. she never knew he was clarence king. his friends who included notable -- they never knew that clarence
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king had this secret marriage and several children. it's interesting. the reason why he's in the book is not because of that. interesting though it is because he brings us to the west. he loves the west. these there as a kind of he is there as a kind of pioneer after the war who takes to to the west and seems to be enthralled by beauty. he wrote a paper cat -- he was talk abouting he was podsing a different view of evolution.
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different from darwin on the one hand and different fromming a seen who had none. the scientist on the other hand. what he talks about is catastrophe. and how cat fee is changed the course of how agreology had the mountain and all things developed. and so it was so interesting to me that hear he was a man who evaded the war for somehow and some reason a catastrophe a scientific term also still dealing with the war in the 1870 had been a remarkable success by all standards and had the set life which seemed to me to give us a sense of really what reconstruction was all about. it was about a west ward movement. it was about denial. it was about secrecy. it was about brilliance and achiew.
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-- achievement. ultimately, as henry adams knew, it was about failure. >> thank you. it throughout the war in vietnam we have the gulf -- [inaudible] first iraq war the baby being taken out of the incubators the second one, possibly kuwait side drilling in to iraq. then the weapons of mass destruction. you look at the a lot of different group and there a different group that brought us to the war and their incentive. the group you looked at what were the alliance you saw that were going across boundary you might not think of that were pushing toward war in the conflict and shaping the forces of history to come? [laughter] >> well, in one sense, and it would be glib of me what my
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answer has to be though is everyone was participating in what you're calling the shaping of history or the kind of move toward war. if it's very qon -- confusing in many ways and humbling to be living now and as you mentioned, you know, the recipient of many wars and anyone in here's lifetime and looking back and looking at a war like the civil war and wondering how it happened, why did it happen? who made it happen. and one of the things -- i was talking about this this afternoon. one of the things you have realize is that many people seem not to know what they were talkinabout. not they weren't brilliant. not they weren't educate in many cases. they didn't know what war meant. they didn't have that experience. they didn't have --
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they didn't have that imagination for some reason. so when you talk about who brought the war or what kind of cross section of groups, you have people in the south, people in the north, you have really almost everyone i would say except the exceptions would be more sail use than to go through who part of it in the exception would been perhaps strangely enough that not strangely enough but you'll see where i see strangely. the quakers, certainly. they are passivists. the quakers, william lloyd garrison who believed strongly in nonviolence. he who wrote civil dis0 bead imrens. and the change person i would put in this and probably or some
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may disagree with me is somebody like stephen douglas when he realized what was happening in the lek of 1860 began to really work very hard to keep the south from -- succeeding and. and i think had he lived he died shortly after that. probably would have been a force for something very positive more positive thant rays he's associated with during the next some years. thanks. >> brenda, how did you figure out what to leave out? [laughter] >> so many times, you know, i felt on the one hand every sentence in the book actually probably -- had -- i was sure, a shelf of books, you know, written about it. and then when you have like lincoln you real a prcial
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library dedicated to him there was a huge amount i was leaving out all the time. whey decided to leave out i guess basically two -- the sort of didn't fall in to two category. one, i wanted to be response to the history i felt i had been contracted to tell. in other words, i can't leave out certain things as i mentioned to you. i'm not going leave out the gettysburg address, for example. it's such a historical important moment for language, for the war, for so many things. so lincoln himself. so it had to fall to that category. the second it had to help narrate the disaster. it 4 to have a dramatic movement. it had to move the drama and narrative forward. it didn't, it had to go to the
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cutting room floor. believe me, the floor, so to speak was littered with things, events people, what have you that didn't get in. those are the kind two of litmus tests i used. i was great to feel my editor who basically never balked at the page number, and who didn't say you can't do this, and this and this. i kept in whatever i thought was germane to the story, which was why the book is not 20 pages. [laughter] or something like that. you know. the war, the war came, the war was over. [laughter] that's the extricated version. >> why do you think new york was a hot bed of religion and spiritualism in that period? >> that's a good question. i really, you know, it's -- i often asked myself i'm
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somewhat familiar with the area where there was a hot bed. for one thing, anyone who has been to the area and upstate new york from i suppose skews to -- syracuse to the left which is to say west, maybe albany to the left. anyone familiar with that particular area knows that it very different from down state. to my mind, always is seems to be more like the midwest what we call the midwest now. then was the west. it seems like the west in many senses and agricultural. i think there was a sense of a tremendous need and sense a need for something that wasn't the congregationalism or the unit -- straight-laced world there. there was a sense you also could create new things and that you could speak to god directly
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through various meanses or various groups that became open in that territory. because somewhat open territory. it was webster we think of webster. that would be my off the cuff kind of an. ultimately it's a fascinating question. i don't know anybody doubtful of it sufficiently. >> [inaudible] you changed any preconception did you experience change about feelings you had concerning this period? >> well, again this will sound -- one sense i went from mass confusion to a lot less confusion. [laughter] i don't know if that's an opinion, but it always seems like a -- it seem like blob to me.
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not to put too eloquent a point on it. reconstruction, as i said was a mystery to me. i was never comfortable with the way it was handed down. erg there was new. and what changed it's not that i went from certain knowledge to different knowledge. i went from no understanding to what i'm comfortable with is some understanding now of the reason for the successes and the failures of reconstruction. that was one thing. that has been very important to me. for some reason i find it very, very satisfying. i learn things about political party and i learn things about what happened in the republican party, and i learned, you know, that the issue of -- -- scallywag and terrible radical was not the issue of what happened. another thing that i was -- there was a happy surprise was
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that i was a bit skeptical, forgive me, about abraham lincoln. i know, he's an icon. i saw somebody's eye brows raise, because i can't -- i thought he can't be that good. nobody is that good. i had can't be that good. i found out that he was. that he really was. that was kind of chilling, and very humbling. those are the two of the many, many things. [inaudible] >> one thing that is so exciting about the book as you point out is reading stories that are particular to us and yet you make them fresh. and reading a lot of stories that aren't familiar to us. the challenge for you as a writer is how do you take something like the gettysburg address and make it fresh for you and us?
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the second part is what stories did you come across that were especially exciting for you that you knew had to be in the book that were going to illuminate and expand and give us different character or setting or some other kind of -- >> let me take the example of the gettysburg address. that is interesting to me because as a writer, researcher, historian whatever i am while i'm doing the particular book. i'm thinking there's gettysburg what the hell am i going to do? went to gettysburg there was book after book after book. i'm not a military historian. when my husband reads drafts my books he always but often says i put the gunpoint the wrong way. [laughter] i shouldn't admit that. [laughter] but i guess i'm right.
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but anyway, so when it dime gettieses burg both the battle and culminating the address. i remember it was a conscious decision you never know if it's going work. i thought i would begin which is something that i don't believe. which is the counter factual. in a sen i was -- i began with a different rei or it call device. also i'm always committed to keeping the reader, if i can, interested. especially when he or she thinks they know what is coming. so in the reterritorial device was had there been no gettysburg address we may not. i went through and use that -- had there been none. so to try to whet your appetite for the coming of the address, i don't spend much time on. i figure you could read whom every you want on the dreatsz. i wanted to think about what it's like to live inside a time and think you wouldn't have
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known the address was coming. you wouldn't have know the battle was coming. it started almost by accident. had there been -- had this not existed then we would not have done that. so that's how i would decide in those particular instances. and that was fun for me. it was exciting for me. because event or person was a challenge about how i would then present it to a reader in a fresh kind of way. about the different and new revelation. there are so many. one mention clarence king. why finished a certain section of the book, i thought, good now i can move west ward. i want to get and i realize i couldn't move west ward. i hadn't set the west up. and the question is how do i set the west up? i don't want to stet up as a
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place we're going destroy another people. i want to set it up for what is also represents the people. great, beauty. tremendous natural resources. not just in terms of goals or copper or trees that can turn to paper. because of the grand expanse of sheer physical beauty which throw off the photographers and of course many group of people allows you to get to the west in that particular way. i could go on and on. there were certainly people i had known about but not quite known about. i mentioned man dickinson who was a revelation to me in in ways. i didn't know she existed when i wrote the book on emily dickinson and something would come up and said can't they get her name right? the reason anna dickinson and
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she was enormously important in history. they would send her out like canary to the mine. she was sent to the pennsylvania coal miners to talk about antislavery movement in a hostile environment. they sent her out. it worked out for the re of us come out after. it's interesting the use and abuse of women. but anyway. can you say something about coming from literature and writing history? >> yes. i'm intrigued that i'm often now introduced as a historian. which is fine. i'm flattered, in fact. history writing and historians were something else i had throw out of my barrel of received wisdom and prejudices against. but when i --
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as i mention in the book on hawthorn i'm writing about writers in both of those cases part behalf interested me they live in time. as i mentioned, someone like he was close with the man so i was never that far from history. or writing about history. it's just that i was circled through literature. literature is something that i love very much, but it existed in time. as i said, history embodyied literature in that way. so much of that book is nonliterary, it really is about
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