[inaudible conversations] next on booktv pulitzer prize-winning david brion davis. in the final volume published 38 years after the second installment the author focuses on emancipation from the importance of the haitian revolution to the american civil war and its aftermath. this is about an hour. >> welcome. i am mark weisman and and on

behalf of the center and the new york office i would like to welcome you all here for what i think is a momentous and landmark event for us, an evening honoring the launch of david brion davis's new book. i have a couple of acknowledgments and a brief introduction and then we will start the program an alternate over to the speaker. i would like to begin first of all but sending my thanks to my colleague and friend dr. bragman who is the person who arranged or this event that brought dr. davis in the center together i would also like to thank michelle from the publishers of the book. she is the gilda lerman institute for the help of operation in arranging this evening. i also would like to very much welcome and recognize alan and francis members of the board of

trustees who have taken their time to come here this evening as well. thank you for that. a few brief words of introduction. one of the reasons i was so glad and jumped jump at this opportunity was because this work and the work of professor davis has met such a great deal to us. personally my own work is drawn upon in benefited from professor davis's writings particularly years ago when i was researching anti-separatism and anti-catholicism and to give you a sense of some of the breadth of professor davis's work didn't include slavery which is what we are here to talk about tonight. i -- we are greatly indebted to professor davis' courage and in printing anti-semitism particularly a few decades ago when it was a time of great

controversy and great tension and yet he stood up and forthrightly condemned what needed to be condemned and did it in a scholarly and dispassionate manner that left a great impression. in many ways it is a natural fit to be able to host this event. the center is named after survivor of the nazi holocaust who devoted his life to justice to the victims of the holocaust and becoming a human rights champion in a broad sense trying to ensure the lessons of that period would never be forgotten and no group would ever suffer such a fate again. in a sense there is a great affinity between that and the trailblazing work of this or davis. for example it doesn't take more than a cursory glance at her own world to see how short of the idea we have falling despite the

defeat of the nazi genocide and since oppression and genocide are continuously present in our world even today. professor davis reminds us in the epilogue of this book that slavery still exists and under certain conditions may be restored on a large scale in certain areas in today's world. the affinity runs deeper. in light of simon wiesenthal center or vester davis -- were shaped by the events of world war ii and as he himself has written and stated quote living in the shadows of the holocaust amid the rubble and ruins of the world's greatest war was where he decided to embark as a career is a historian with the goal of unearthing the truth long buried in superficial effects of propaganda a perspective and an overall conference of you what people did and thought and why they did it. and finally to make people stop and think before blindly following some negative group to make the world as --

this was written in 1946 so the only thing i would suggest has changed is the list to endanger democracy has grown longer and wider. as i read the book i was trying to reconsidering relationship similarities and differences between the holocaust and the system of slavery that purpose purpose -- professor davis explores. some examples against one with the role of the victims often ignored in the first wave of study or example in dealing with the holocaust. a landmark study the destruction of the european would he based on the nazi perspective the documentation the witnesses from the oppressors, the nazi side and totally ignored the role than the impact on the victims of the holocaust itself which leads to a consideration of the perspective of the oppressed including the cost of collaboration which is also exemplified by the telling quote from frazier douglas the professor davis twice brings in

the new book about self-preservation at minimal cost to degradation and loss of self-respect and that in turn is a question much raised in the literature of the holocaust. what is the impact of survival? what is the cost of survival and for example from the new film the last of the unjust. these issues are of course based upon the application of terms of unionization and animal a station which professor davis uses very much in his explorations and the internalization the impact they have on the oppressed. which goes a long way to shaping the discourse of human oppression. even the role of space of geography is raised which is also reflected in current literature on the holocaust. as in timothy snyders book bloodlands or locating the killing sides of eastern europe and the baltics were the nazis slaughtered more victims than they murdered in the death

camps. there are of course differences as well. one such for the mental distinction while slavery was a -- the holocaust economic needs were ultimately subordinated to the pursuit of genocide thus rendering any method of accommodation by the jewish population pathetically useless. fundamentally it comes down to the idea that their evils in our past that we must learn from in order to have a brighter future or is professor davis concludes history matters. i would add it also helps to have a master teacher who can eliminate educate and inspire us to grow for our own answers to these questions is professor davis has done for so many years. tonight we are gods celebrate the launch of the third and final volume of his magisterial trilogy on slavery "the problem of slavery in the age of emmancipation." we have to distinguish speakers who will join in the conversation about the book and anything else they want to talk

about. following that you were invited downstairs for a light verse -- recession and the museum of tolerance which deals with a much different matter with some of the same issues that professor davis has worked upon. go for range reduced the speakers i would affect everyone's silence your cell phones or whatever electronics everyone is holding onto. we are filmed by c-span. there will be time for questions afterwards and now i would like to introduce our speakers. i'm going to introduce to students of professor davis who are now master scholars and researchers in their own right and they in turn will introduce their teacher as they go along with the events. sitting closest to me is william casey kaine from yale university and honored to be a doctoral student.

he was inspired by david davis's wisdom and culture. his work them clues to pbs documentary on the life and work of the -- coproduced with museum of art and award-winning children's book on the civil rights movement and body and a book on the history of rendition published by yale university press. edition is written for the "washington post" "wall street journal" and "the new york times". dr. king was formally at harvard is the executive director of the w. e. pete dubois museum of african-american research. he serves as executive director at the yale school of public health. he is named the co-recipient of a grant from darpa is part of the white house research and development institute and is developing tools to combat money laundering through the department treasury.

john stauffer's profession or of english at african-american studies at harvard university. he lectures on the civil war era and social protest movements and photography and is author and editor of lenin books with 60 articles including two books that are national as sellers. his most recent book is the battle, the republic. a lincoln prize finalist in the best book of 2013. his reviews have appeared in time wall street journal and numerous scholarly books. he has been a consultant to to hollywood films quentin tarantino's changi and a screenplay based on david jones. he did a pbs documentary -- with those backgrounds i think we are

all looking forward to an incredibly exciting discussion and the floor is yours. [applause] >> our goal and assist to have a conversation and you are all part of this conversation but before we launch into this informal discussion you know we often have to or at lease once he or we will meet at a café in new haven and john will come down and share a couple dozen oysters and have a conversation about everything and everything. we thought on the occasion of the completion of the trilogy it would be a nice sort of spirit to attempt. maybe some oysters? a bottle of wine. but i'm going to turn the floor over to john stauffer to introduce my friend and mentor. >> so we will hopefully allow

david to give a summary not only of the problems of emancipation but at this trilogy and briefly his public life. i will start with a very brief summary. as most of you know if david is a sterling professor emeritus at yale university. he has won virtually every award that a historian can when including a pulitzer prize and the national book award historical association. i wanted to start by having davis elucidate a bit of his background that led to this trilogy and the introductory remarks, one of the things that was highlighted was that you became interested in slavery in the shadow of the holocaust as a

world war ii or post-world war ii soldier create i'm wondering if you would be willing to elaborate on the background that led you to become interested in slavery and abolition at a time in which the subject was in large part unexplored, unwritten there were a few books that you to a large degree helps to create the field of slavery and abolition. as you know in the preface of the "the problem of slavery in the age of emmancipation" stamp was an important influence on you but in terms of abolitionist studies. >> what the departure from your first book the study of homicide

he is at cornell and published his book and dissertation and was careful to remind you that he did his dissertation and in three and a half years. his mind went on and on and all of a sudden he turns to slavery and antislavery at a time in the 60s when the nation is being torn apart bi-racial strife and racial tension. i'm just fascinated by how suddenly he would make this kind of paradigm shift worship in interests and activities. >> let me start by simply saying my interest in homicide did extend over to slavery in the sense that i was very much interested in the history of ideas and what was called intellectual history. i was hired at cornell in 1985 to teach intellectual history which was already beginning to be seen as an elitist brand of

study as we have this vast flood of social history from the bottom up taking over the whole field. i was interested in finding concrete subjects like homicide or universal subjects like homicide or slavery is the most extreme combination as a way of looking at changes and moral perception of these worms of behavior. so there was that connection but i did as i mentioned briefly in the introduction in the 1930s and early 40s my family traveled all over the country. we went coast-to-coast and i went to many different schools, five high schools in four years

but i was never in a classroom of african-americans. in other words even though i was in the north i was in a segregated society. that all ended when i was drafted into the army in early 1945 and was trained for the invasion of japan. i was down in georgia for the first time in the south where i saw jim crow america at its worst and then suddenly the war in japan ended and i was on a cruise ship bound for germany and was ordered to go down into the hole of the ship to keep the as they said from gambling. i had no idea there were innate lacks on the ship but it was like a slave ship down below.

this went on until i became a security policeman in germany and was called out where there were shooed out conflicts between white and black american soldiers partly because there were many german girls who loves to date lack soldiers and they were many white soldiers who are outraged by that rated in germany where i spent a year in 45 and 46, it was an experience that for the first time introduced me to the racial issues of the country in a very dramatic way. there also was the holocaust of course. i was in the shadow of that and saw survivors going into the streets of stuttgart and so one

and called out to protect truckload after truckload of survivors. so i was opened up to a lot of different new things at a very very -- is a very young soldier. as i was on the g.i. bill to go to college i was very much interested in the racial issue even though i failed to take part in the actual civil rights movement, the movement. i read a great many works on race and when i was a graduate school at harvard kenneth m. stamp who was a very distinguished historian from per week came for a semester to teach at harvard. he had been in my department and we became good friends. the first really great look on

slavery in the american south was not based on the assumption that blacks were inferior to whites. it was a very serious book and suddenly talking with him made me realize that in my classes at harvard and dartmouth as an undergraduate that there had hardly been anything said about slavery let alone abolitionism. this opened up a whole new prospect while i was working on homicide. prospect of slavery and anti-slavery. i would move on to it a bit later so fortunately in 1955 when i was in a professorship at cornell to teach american intellectual history i found

material on slavery and to that end when i was a guggenheim fellowship in 1958 and then off to britain as the head of the guggenheim i thought i should go abroad given my interest and i immersed myself in london on what became the problem of slavery in western culture what was going to be just a background chapter on the background of slavery became a whole book. so it was launched that way on the first of the three volumes. >> you do know one day you would write a trilogy? >> i did. >> so when he finished he thought okay what is supposed to be my first chapter i'm just going to make it a book and then write to others'? >> i anticipated i would be writing more.

it's the. [inaudible] >> i'm not sure exactly. i thought it would probably be three. >> just in the wake of the narrative both of his parents were writers, his mom and his dad. he moved around. his father wrote gable's first film after the war. >> clark gable. c. was there a time that he thought i would really like to be a writer as well? >> i very much was interested in writing, yes though actually when i was an undergraduate i took some summer classes at columbia university in french language and writing fiction.

there was a a fairly well-known woman teacher of fiction who didn't like my efforts at fiction that summer. >> i was also struck by a remember we had a discussion about the necessity whether or not there was the necessity to drop an atomic oman japan and i remember you telling me that they told you while you were getting ready to prepare for the invasion of japan that you fully believe you would go and die at that moment in history. >> not absolutely dying but we knew that when we hit those beaches in japan it would make normandy look like nothing and they emphasize that in our training, where we were having to use all kinds of weapons.

in georgia they had fake japanese villages that we were capturing and so on but i actually haven't had physics in high school when the atomic bombs were dropped. i understood what's it meant and i thought we might not have any more disaster but it seems without those bombs we still would have been hitting the beaches of japan. >> the other thing i wanted to circle back to his you said you talked at cornell intellectually in cultural history which became the basis for the course that we both took at yale which is studying slavery and antislavery. did you feel it necessary to sort of because you are doing something new and something that

worked against american origin myths is that why you couched intellectual cultural history? >> i was thinking beyond slavery and anti-slavery. i was interested in a broad survey of american intellectual cultural history. i was teaching large lecture classes as well as seminars but the slavery was only part of it. >> was there resistance to use teaching slavery or anti-slavery? i mean at the time especially coming to yale in our work looking at attitudes towards anti-slavery even in the academy john. >> well before i ask that question i'm curious if you could just summarize some of the

challenges that you face when you were writing "the problem of slavery in the age of emmancipation" and the problem of slavery in the age of the revolution which are very different periods. one published in 1966 and the second published in 1975 and then the challenges that you have faced as you tackle the problem of slavery. >> one beginning point of importance, i had other works at that time related to the problem of slavery in the american culture. that was originally an introductory chapter to a book where i needed to give some background on slavery in western

culture and si worked in britain thanks to the guggenheim fellowship it really grew. i go back to antiquity and look at the culture in general and it's somewhat more intellectual history. certainly there's not much social history and if but when i moved on to the problem of slavery in the age of the revolution i'm dealing with the industrial revolution as well as the american and french revolutions and political revolutions and so one so i am beginning to deal a bit hit with what the appalacian is where up against, the first abolitionist, and why at a given moment in

history did a fairly small group of men and women come to see slavery and absolutely terrible accepted pretty much for a millennia going back to plato and aristotle and so on. but in the age of the revolution we had already had a transformation of perspective where people thought we had to do something about it and its relationship with that and the need to legitimate -- so i get into all search of things without and with this book i'm able to be much more selective because i've written eight different books on the subject between the age of revolution

and the age of emancipation including a broad survey called in human bondage, the rise and fall of slavery in the new world which is an overall big survey. i didn't want to have that survey material here and here was able to select particular themes and subjects beginning with the dehumanization of the attempt to dehumanize slaves and then went on with the haitian revolution and i devote quite a few chapters to the so-called colonization of the broad consensus in the north as well as the south that there was no thought of for all slavery emancipation and in a large way unless you somehow to ported or moved to freed slaves -- slaves out of the u.s..

this colonization movement that i felt it in most understood and then i have a great deal on the crucial role of free blacks in the north in combating the colonization movement and launching an immediate abolition movement, whites and blacks in the 1830s, committed to what they called the immediate emancipation of slaves. so i stress again and again the role of the blacks themselves whether in haiti as rebels and the french and spanish and english or the north as i move on. i'm selecting things here and not trying to repeat them. >> that is one of the really unique things about this book for me is the way that i mean here it is the ninth decade and

a field of slavery and anti-slavery has caught up. there are so many monographs that it come out and david terms this book the last of his trilogy and manages to do something incredible. how does one do that in a year and a half at the way? he would complain about how slow the work was going and this is a in the middle of a bad fall. a year and a half it took and he saying i don't know what's wrong. it's like david it takes quite a few body parts to do a book like this in a year and a half. touching on the theme on the trilogy i was wondering if you could really turn to the haitian revolution and maybe read a bit from your book. dehumanization and animal essays and of the slaves and former and slave humans is really something

that you get at quite eloquently. this is in the chapter the first emancipator's if you would like to read along. >> do you want me to read there? on january 2, 1893, frederick douglass rose to the delivery speech dedicating the haitian pavilion to the world's fair. douglas was intimately involved in planning the pavilion. he took the opportunity in his speech to negate the common stereotype that haitians were lazy barbarians who devoted their leisure time to voodoo and child sacrifice. what is more significant is that douglas used the speech to reflect back on the past century of slavery emancipation. douglas after all was born a slave and he had won international fame through his writing and oratory in the service of lack of emancipation.

as the most prominent black spokesmen and statesmen of the waterworld douglas had no difficulty in identifying one of the central events in the history of emancipation and the right we should not forget or he speaks, we should not forget that the freedom you and i enjoy today, the freedom that 800,000 colored people enjoyed in the british west indies the freedom that come on the color of race the world over is largely due to the brave stance taken by the black sons of haiti 90 years ago when they struck for freedom. they struck for the freedom of every black man in the world. he made sure to note that the american and british abolitionists including anti-slavery societies and countries around the world but blacks he noted quote.

[inaudible] it was haiti that struck first for emancipation. it was quote the original emancipator of the 19th century. haiti had instructed the world about the dangers of slavery and it demonstrated the latent powers and capabilities of the black race has only to be awakened. once awakened the former slaves demonstrated their strength in defeating 50,000 of napoleon's veteran troops. not only that but these insertions turned to an independent nation of their own making. the white world could and would never be the same until haiti spoke douglas pointed out quote no christian nation would abolish slavery. intel he spoke the slave. was sanctionesanctioned by all the christian nations of the world and our land of liberty included. until haiti spoke the church was silent and the pulpit young.

of course the history was more complex than douglas' decision -- he knew that haiti was a hell of horrors, the very name pronounced with a shudder as he noted in the beginning of his speech. and indeed the revolution had inevitably contradictory effects. as an abolitionist from 1841 to 1865 douglas had avoided the events of the haitian revolution in his public speeches debates and interviews. the abolitionist douglass knew the perceptions of the events all too well. for some the revolution had been an object lesson in the inevitable social and economic ruin that would attend any form of emancipation. for others is signaled blood a veritable massacre in nightmare made real. yet this was not changed

douglas' conviction that the haitian revolution was the watershed of man. >> that's pitiful. thank you for reading that. i want to ask a question about colonization. you devote four chapters to colonization in this book. could you summarize why colonization so attractive to so many different kinds of people? >> well in the beginning going way back to the 18th century colonization arose in the minds of people in terms of people returning africans, slaves who had been born and brought from africa are returning them back to their content. samuel hopkins was a protége of jonathan edwards who was

motivated by disinterested benevolence when he moved to rhode island and was very anti-slavery. he tried to make it possible for the black slaves who were freed to return to africa. they wanted to go and he assumed many of them would want to go. but as you move on into the 19th century of course more and more slaves were born in america. the slave. had been cut off in 1870 and also there was a danger of being re-enslaved in africa if you went back to africa but there still are, as more and more slaves were freed in the north

beginning in 1780 in pennsylvania a lot of people in massachusetts earlier as more and more slaves are freed in the north you have a tremendous increase in anti-black racism. the blacks were denied virtually all regular rights and privileges of various sorts. there was a broadening consensus among whites the only way you would ever get published opinion behind abolition would he if we moved these freed slaves back to africa or possibly in the 1820s thousands went to haiti and many returned from haiti.

actually very important black leaders went along with this so paul coffey who was half lock and half indian was very wealthy. he had a shipping empire and he went it in 1862 sierra leone the british colony and was hoping to set up a colony there that would be a model showing how freed blacks would achieve various good things. he actually was in talks with british abolitionists. he even interviewed james madison, paul coffey did. imagine a black man interviewing mattson and he wouldn't call him president mattson. because he was a quake or he

called him james. [laughter] but he died unfortunately in 1817 or his influence might've been somewhat beneficial on the colonization movement. james fortney a wealthy black major in philadelphia who was a great inventor and all was for colonization in the beginning and so was bishop richard howland who was a the major religious leader in philadelphia but in january 1817 after the founding of the american colonization society they had a meeting of 3000 -- 3000 and fortney put it to a vote.

none of them wanted to have anything to do with colonization. so fortney and allen had to shift that. it took everyone a while to change their minds because they had to go along with the overwhelming views of african-american in philadelphia. they were opposing the colonization so was set up getting in 1817 with black opposition to the colonization society which had been -- i forgot to say jefferson, president jefferson was for colonization and so was president lincoln. even after the emancipation proclamation for some time he still would cling a little bit to some kind of colonization. so i think it's a misunderstood cause.

one thing i do bring out is in the vast literature published by the american colonization society there is very very little that even hints at inferiority on the part of blacks. there is prejudice and black and whites degraded blacks in various ways in america but if they were in africa they could even become missionaries and so on. i think we have to look much more carefully and that is why i devote various chapters to the subject. we need to look carefully at this whole colonization concept which did promote is lacks realized it, promoted prejudice but i devote a lot of space to that.

>> you also devoted an extraordinary amount of space to the crucial role of free blacks in emancipation and in fact you have the chapter titled for me both when i read it in manuscript form and in published form, it the title itself i found revolutionary. free blacks is the key to emancipation and i say revolutionary because free blacks never constitute more than 13% of the black and roughly 1% of the american population. so given that small number comparatively very small number of free blacks, why were they the key to emancipation? >> above all in resisting the hopes of the american colonists they decided to voluntarily go to liberia which was founded for

that purpose. in the 1820s as they show they began publishing their own newspapers and the freedom journal published by samuel cornish and john -- although he converts to the colonization side and i stress especially by the 1850s a very large numbers have embraced one form or another of colonization. this comes to the 1920s with marcus garvey who has the first mass lack movement black african

movement and today -- but martin luther king went to lay a wreath on his grave in jamaica because of his having the first mass black movement so even in the 1920s we have carrier first where garvey praises the american colonization society and praises the white colonization as. but the main issue that chapter raises is the need to elevate free blacks in the north so that they will be capable of achievement and i point out how not only frederick douglass but james smith --

mcewan smith who goes to scotland and gets an m.d. but becomes a very successful doctor in new york city and is a very important black -- before the civil war. there are various free black achievements in this effort to afflict the free black population but this is obscure to great deal by the dred scott decision and various things in the 50s. >> you also place a lot of emphasis on the importance of

fugitives and the fugitive slaves and how that contributes to emancipation. could you elaborate on that? >> yeah. of course the most famous was frederick douglass himself who escaped in 1838 and two in 1841 was invited and urged to give a speech at nantucket where all the faith massachusetts anti-slavery -- all these people were spellbound by douglas' speech and he was very much incorporated into the slavery movement -- anti-slavery movement. regardless there is bennett good bit of misunderstanding.

i go along with the conclusion of many historians that the number of fugitives was never large enough to endanger the institution in any way in the south even though in the south itself huge numbers of slaves were running away. in fact in the 1850s well over 50,000 slaves ran away from their owners but didn't go far away. in the free north by 1860 there were around 45,000 fugitives living in the north. ideologically it was enormous since the u.s. constitution had tried to allow even though they

avoided using the word slave but they tried to prevent them from giving them shelter and refuge to us live from the south. there was a 1793 law and the tariff fugitive slave law and only 298 slaves were returned to slavery by the end of 1860. but it was something that as you have shown the fugitive slave and is average -- and so one. it had a great impact on the coming of the civil war. >> back to the issue of freed

blacks and the fact that you are really highlighting this in the book and you have given a range of the free black experience. he probably saw 12 years a slave there's a depiction of the north as this ideal community. john pointed out that actually it's a fairly accurate for trail of this one community. the majority of freed blacks in america at that time as you point out in one of your chapters the challenges were far more significant challenges, freedom from slavery but not freedom from racial oppression. there is this really wonderful moment in his book. it's really unusual for an historian especially the sterling professor of history but all of a sudden we are in third person and david takes a tremendous amount of imagination

and a conceptual leap to imagine a free black and american he suddenly switches to first person. >> it such a great moment. [inaudible] david's book is really a fine history and a fine writing. it's such a pleasure to read and he takes risks that most people. >> i will start by saying it's worth underscoring the obvious

often neglected point that for the general public the key issue raised by abolitionism was the status and condition of freed slaves. while many free blacks overcame the british were still up against their incapacity and so on and the demand of keeping blacks in their place. the complexities especially involving such issues in reaction to white paternalism. imagine if efforts on the part of both author and reader we must try at the start to imagine what it would have been like to have been a free black abolitionist in the antebellum

north. so i then switch on thoughts so i now have a different kind of form. it free blacks in the mid-1840s read abolitionist and most other blacks are always conscious that most of our brethren are chattel slaves in the south and that we can easily be kidnapped or officially arrested and sold in the south. suddenly deprived of our family members and our names which of course happens in 12 years a slave but in some ways blacks are better off in the deep south. freed lakhdar. new laws have been passed to keep us from entering or settling in states north of the river. in many towns in the north they passed ordinances requiring us to register for post bond for

good behavior. most states deny us the right to vote. sit on juries or even testify against whites. most free blacks are illiterate and even our children have no chance of attending a gradeschool education. perhaps most importantly we are surrounded by white supremacy and are constantly viewed as inferior people in our daily interactions with whites who sometimes verbally curse or ridicule us or even spit upon us in the street. and whose egos climb when we step off the wall to let them pass. no matter how close we might become to a white friend we cannot accompany him or her two most restaurants, hotels, stores, libraries, lectures, concerts and public places.

>> i remember when he was contemplating this departure and my editor knopf may bristle that i'm switching and i said you now i have got one word for you. [inaudible] >> i see do have to keep it. do not allow them to change that passage. we will open it up for questions. i just want to end by saying that this trilogy began 48 years ago. the problem of slavery in western culture was published in 1966 and won the pulitzer prize in 1967. the pulitzer prize winner for history in 1966 was perry miller's posthumous book the life of the mind in america from the revolution to the civil war who you knew from harvard and

you had great respect for him. give your sense of the significance and back to perry miller's life in the mind there is not a single mention of slavery or abolition in that entire book. >> in history. >> in history generalized writing. >> andy is up against in cold blood. the problem of slavery in the age of the revolution or among both of them many other awards. the problem the slavery in the age of emancipation i will bet money that it will win many very prestigious awards. her out this entire period you have also direct did over. >> 58. >> 58 dissertations including mind and including casey's and many in this room and a number

of others. your former graduate students are represented at every major research institution in the united states and many are broad and not just in fields of history but fields as diverse as english, law, public health. it's truly extraordinary. and in the conclusion of this trilogy 48 years later it's an extraordinary inspiration not just to historians that to every writer, to everyone who writes. and so i want to thank you for that inspiration. >> i can't thank you enough for the review you wrote in "the wall street journal." [laughter] see when they asked me i confessed, i know -- david was my students but i had to disclose my relationship.

they let me write it and i acknowledged my relationship that you directed my dissertation so that was a real honor for me. >> was an honor for me to have you do it. see why don't we open it up for questions and comments and criticisms for us. >> thank you so very much. the first time i came to know your great work mr. davis was when i taught a course at harvard called concepts of western slavery and your book was of course a prominent book. it in those days there were not many important books like that. what has always bothered me was you are divided both and defending slavery and fighting

for emancipation. of course it's abhorrent to me that the bible defend slavery. on the other hand there's no question that those who were for emancipation did use the bible. you mentioned a few individuals and i'm wondering, i have read your books but i would like to read this one too. in your judgment what is the weight of the bible in that particular balance of the struggle to defend slavery or to fight against it? what is the role of the bible and i think personally it played a very important role but i would very much like to hear your voice. >> that's a very very important and extremely complicated question because the bible of

course has all kinds of conflicting messages. in fact in the bible study group tony and i had just been reading parts that call for and justified genocide. it's pretty shocking to see the lord is calling for the wiping out of entire peoples and so one and of course there are numerous parts of the bible that do give justification for slavery but also it seems to me that the great exodus narrative is extremely important in the sense

that the chosen people, the jewish, are freed from slavery in egypt and the lord brings them for 40 years out of egypt and all. this exodus paradigm becomes extremely important for the large numbers of african-american slaves who learned the bible and will read from the bible and so i think that it depends on where you look and what is going to be most important but i think in exodus the narrative is

extremely important. >> in the introduction there was a comparison implicitly made between the economic logic of slavery called successful versus the idea that the logic of genocide undermines economic self-interest. do you see part of the anti-slavery movement abolition was connected to an economic knowledge the slavery was not compatible with the new industrial free-market economy and the new ideology of free labor and does slavery in the same way that genocide does raise the question of and excessive aggression in society and one final question is how do you explain the fact that let's say the equivalent of zionism within african-american social movements didn't reach the same success that they did within let's say jewish society after the holocaust?

>> there were i guess three questions there. the one and i'm a little confused but --. >> the uconn aside. >> in slavery in the age of revolution i going to quite detailed the free labor ideology and i think that's there is no question that the need in britain especially pioneering the industrial revolution, they need to justify the kind of

industrial labor in the late 18th century that would really take hold contributed to anti-slavery movement and indeed there was a proslavery writer in britain by the name of gilbert franklin who claimed that in effect the whole abolition movement largely in the late 18th century was an attempt to divert attention from that terrible exploitation of workers in britain. ..