own name but also because i just found that as a biography it was more deeply invested in understanding the character more than the other biography. this character came alive for me and remained with me more than any other character in any book i read this year. i think louisa made so many fascinatings decisions in this book that for me the most interesting was the decision to explore sort of every shifting letter of this character as much as she was exploring that kind of fascinating facts of her life. so i'm looking forward to talking about all the other decisions made. just as a little introduction, the store of louisa adams follows her from her giddy, romantic meeting with john quincy adams, if it can be described as such with a character of john quincy adams

and followed her to berlin and russia and back to washington where she was the wife of the president, and talk about that. so one of the things i wanted to ask you right off the bat, since the theme of the night is louisa's, is whether the fact that the character's name louisa drew you to the snook. >> i think it is true that it probably noticed her a little bit quicker than i might have if her name was jane. but beyond that i it was just a coincidence. but i think when you writing about historical figures you cannot -- [inaudible] -- you need a crack of the window and probably sharing -- i don't

know -- i only -- so, probably -- it was a little bit of -- >> i feel like for me, my name had to do with who i became as a person itch was interested in the fact the name was louisa growing up. do you think her name affected her personality? >> it was quite a common name at the time. in fact there's a funny story in berlin everybody was named louisa. the queen, all of the -- royalty, everybody seemed to have that name. so i think it was not quite a -- i actually feel much more comfortable answering the question.

>> i -- i do think -- had to make her own identity so think we are probably a little bit more -- >> the otherring? that fascinated me about this book it read like a novel. felt like i was sort of in a world that was somehow fictional and i was trying to put my finger on what it was that cause ed that feeling of.

>> she spend at the time in england jockeying for a husband, and was in to the eve of the napoleonic invasion, and i wonder what kind of strategies you used in order to make this biography feel so like a novel and whether that was a conscious decision you made and why. >> tried to balance

>> really unusual in that she talks so much about her feelings and her thoughts. for a figure of that time, lot of the people tend to read biographies and they were write ing for posterity, and they -- we all have feelings but in those days nobody could admit it. but i do think that she was not always the best interpreter of her own feelings but they were there on the pain and you could weigh them and put them in context but she gave me so much material to work with. so, at the same time i wanted to see a great story because her life was a great story, and i always wanted it to unfold as it happened, and so much of the -- i wanted the ideas to be -- i didn't want it to be written

from 10,000 feet and have these undigested -- we'll talk about the second -- talk about how women were regarded in salons or whatever. want it all to be the soil from which the whole thing grows so it's in there. it's like rooted in -- what we get is the kind of flowering of that. i also did actually read some -- i had some novels in mind when i was writing. i kind of actually thought of it in three parts. she was born the same year as jane austin, and she was born in london. she was raised as a girl like jane austin was raided. -- raised. i went back and re-read -- i was

not a completing this as a novel but i learn something from them that was really important. i learned not to read them as romantic novels like when i was in high school but i learned too toupe into the financial language think way they talked about marriages as -- very kind of -- not really helped me understand something which is that her father goes bankrupt in this book right after she is married and she is devastated to a degree that -- by the fact her father -- she actually comes back to this year after year after year. not even like a trauma that she just is able to get over. and i always thought this was -- scholars recover to it as her crazy. that was like the way they described it. and then you go back and you read these novels and realize

everybody had a price tag, and that actually if you didn't -- if you -- that was grounds for getting out of a marriage, and you go back -- his diary actually refers to this. actually said i'm doing any duty, my duty, and you realize the thought crossed his mind, he had to decide to stay in that marriage, which meant that he -- and this was deeply upsetting for her and destabilizing and i don't think i would have appreciated that in quite the same way had i not been able to put that fertilizer into the soil. then of course they go to russia and she is in st. petersburg during the years of war and peace, and she had czar

alexander -- there's a kind of -- not even written. you can't take too much from it but you can kind of get a feeling for how to talk about the place. a book that was really important -- there was a travel journal that accounts -- i don't remember how the -- but christine. which was written at the same time, and a beautiful writer. really wish i could remember his name. i want everybody to read it. a new york review book. i'll figure it out. just e-mail me. and that also helped get -- and then middle march kind of -- not the same time. it was a historical novel in it own time. these were not -- to get the feel for how its to tell a story. what i was after was -- john

quincy was interested in facts and dates, what happened and what -- and that often is how a biography is written. someone does something and you get from one place to the other. what she was interested in was not being this emotional landscape, and i have two kind of con contemporaneous downies. there's the journey of her life. she called one of her moment moyers record of a life, the other one narrative of a journal. and i thought of it as narrative of a life. and then the other is the emotional journey she goes through and you grows so much and that was one of the most exciting thing about her, how how much she changed. i didn't want to write a biography about this static figure ship was this dynamic changing, growing figure. she lived in that way and i wanted to map that growth.

>> that was something that comes through really clearly in the book, just how mysterious a character she and is how changeable she is, how flexible she and how invested she is in learning her own voice ship seemed like a character. she wrote three different memoirs. she wrote troves of letters and each of her memoirs is written in a very different voice and each letter is written in a very different voice. sometimes she is kind of complaining and a hypochondriac and other times incredibly sensitive, and intellectual and other times kind of a satirist. so it does feel like there's a record of her voice but there's also a record of her many voices, and i did wonder whether that was a complicated thing as a writer to track this person who has so many different voices and so invested in finding her voice and where you got to know her by the end of the process.

>> i definitely felt like i go to know her. got to know her like i know my friends which is to say as complicated human beings. her voice is what originally drew me to her. her letters were vivid, and how funny -- which is not something i normally think of earlier public people being -- and how sharp and insightful. so, i do think that voice is actual -- the development of their voice is funny. it was interesting because i actually read her -- her earlier letters a little bit lateer and second letter to john quincy every and it's one incredibly wrong run-on sentence how much she -- and second sentence i

will therefore quit. and for years she was -- all she could write about was how she hated to write. but this is partly a story about her becoming a writer, not a published writer, although she did publish her poems. a little proud of her writing. that insight she had, these different voices is important because she is a complicated person. she actually wrote one satire of washington, and she called herself lady sharpley, and she described laid lady sharpley as being the honest, warm and cold dislikes of humor and serious stuff, she is right. she has a -- kind of driven by these penchants and paradoxes

but they add up to someone that is deeply human. that both made it easier to kind of understand where the voices were coming from and also obviously it could be -- if you want to pin someone down -- >> i love that better. i felt i hadmer questions about her at the end of the novel than at the beginning. that's terrible. but -- so i guess my last question and then maybe we can open it up to the audience, but just has to do with one of these complicating factors in her personality, which is that she really rose to the role of leader in the early republic, in a pretty magnificent way, and you can make the argument she was responsible in many ways for the success of her husband's

political career, and she was incredibly sharp and intelligence and could -- sarah jefferson down in one of her letters easily. but at the same time she is quite retiring and seems to really fully accept a woman's place as subservient to her husband and sort of less than her husband. one of her three memoirs was the adventures of a nobody. so she kind of fully embraces her nothingness and her smallness and her humility. i was interested in -- i think now we tend to want to find these fee money heroines who rise before -- female heroines who rite above and be bold and brave and have no doubt and to be humble. but i just wondered how you felt about her alteration between her

scourge. >> this is one of the ways in which -- this is one of the ways in which we do have to understand the past is not like the present. people want her to be someone she is not often when they first start talking to me. they want her to be margaret fuller, abby adams, a modern woman. want me to talk about how strong she was, and she was. this is a woman who made a 2,000-mile downfrom from st. petersburg to paris with her son, and on the way through she napoleon escaped. at the same time she wasn't secure. she was fragile. she was sick all the time. she was self-pitying.

she was complicated person. actually in some ways i think her insecurity, in some ways was freeing and liberating. her husband was -- he was very self-serious and he knew he was born to -- born for the nation he had this important role to play, and if he didn't play it, he was a failure, and he had to do these great things, and she had to feel that way. she could sort of live -- she didn't have to be this kind of american icon. she could just be herself. and she would take things too seriously, including herself. she laughed at everybody else and laughed at herself and there was a way in which her insecurity was very much part of who she was, some something would be lost if she had more kind of -- i'm in the boss

altitude towards life. so i think that the paradox between her accepting the constrictions in her life at the same time working against them is really important. she wrote an account of that journey, the narrative of the journey, and it is at once painful to read in -- it's a great story -- but she wrote it, she said, because she wanted to be remembered as, quote, one who was, which assaults -- which suggest she was afraid of being forgotten. she was writing it to show what a woman can do and that she said the thing that actually stayed with me, she said might never deserve ourselves. any questions? >> so revolutionary america is kind of -- [inaudible] -- do you

think that sort of historical blend has an effect -- [inaudible] >> sure. i think one of the great best friends of history -- people north john quincy adamss of the world. i think she was not part of the -- one of the threads in the book is about her own intimacy with slavery. she was antislavery but it's complicated. she had -- she lived in the washington -- in washington, dc, and did not say the right things. how do you deal with that? so i do think that -- that's not

why i probably approached this book. i'm just kind of drawn to people -- i'm usually drawn to a person who has been next to the person in power for some reason. but this is a kind of -- to answer your question in a totally different way -- this period in which john quincy adams was president was the first real kind of populist rising, and part of the way the in which they negotiated that was quite interesting. trying to figure out how to -- how the country was changing and how to -- what kind of relationship to have to people and the franchise was expanding, and really fraught time, and i think we tend to think that the early republic is the kind of -- they knew that why were doing and were handed this perfect

document and had one problem which was slavery but everything else was figured out. in fact everybody disagreed about everything. they were arguing all the time. everybody was making compromises. they didn't necessarily believe totally in. and one of the exciting things about reading her is that you get that. because she wasn't sort of trying to reflect the world as she kind of wanted the future to be. she was just kind of exasperated and hopeful and fearing and. >> how hard is it to find references to her outside -- [inaudible] -- was jefferson writing about her? >> he was not writing about her. there are people, though, writing about her, dolly madison wrote something cutting about her being the leading -- dolly

maddison started the whole thing, and into people wrote --doll dolly's niece wrote a wonderful tribute how vivacious and funny and appealing she was. people wrote about her as a hostess, and newspapers wrote about her parties, actually. there is a lot of that. people in letters certainly john quincy and abigail wrote about her. people were drawn to her and they tended to reflect that. anyone else? >> context of another former first lady in the news, hour do you see the role of the first lady being different in the early republic vs. how we

conceive of them today. >> it was quite different. one of the interesting things about louisa's life is her period in the white house was actually a low point in her life. not in terms of being a low point but she didn't have anything to do. there wasn't any precedent for a kind of active role for a first lady. she stayed at home and ate chocolate, literally. and she copyied mozart scores but she prefigured the role of first ladies now. bag surrogate figure for someone who -- and kind of making up for some of the flaws of shortcomings of her spouse. you can't draw a straight line from her to first ladies now because for a long time --

probably because she was so forward and she was criticized for being forward, her role disappeared. in fact she was punished for it in some ways. one reason she kind of withdrew when she got to the white house, she said people are criticizing me for being too visible, and i need to step back. there was this complicated thing in the jackson administration which had consequences for women in washington. won't get into that. but there had been this sort of growing movement, people starting to get interested in women's rights and that shut down in the 1820s. especially there was a kind of -- women were elevated in their domestic spirit, and they consider called the angel of the hearth and those things. that started around the time

that john quincy was president, and the role willing to play in the washington was dim -- diminished. she prefigured a lot of first ladies. >> i'm curious since louisa grew up in -- [inaudible] -- she was -- tried to remake that society, when she was in the white house or see this as a new world to create? >> she was influenced by -- learned a lot about how to deal-she was very sensitive to you couldn't be too aristocratic, in the united states she knew she was -- the highest -- i have to pretend i

am not a traveled lady. so, there was a kind of suspicion of her already because of her french origin and she had to -- she was at once kind of -- didn't care and threw great parties and on the other hand she was aware of it and. one of the interesting things, 1828 campaign was very vicious, and her background was drama and her propriety, her -- she was accused of sex scandal, essentially, and john at the same time the adams camp accused an dry jackson's wife of not having divorced her husband before marrying -- that was not true. but it was a very vicious. i think we think of it like politics back then was very

civil, and actually it was -- it was very not very nice. >> was there a particular period of her life or episode in her life or aspect of her life that you were frustrated by the historical record about that you felt would have been more interesting to go into more detail? >> that's a good question. certainly slavery is one of the thinged became less interested in. it's frustrating because i had census records and legal documents that suggest one thing and the just didn't write about that stuff. to piecing together -- i can't talk about her attitude that way but she does start talking about slavery later.

but they go silent, and i felt the lack of her voice in those moments for sure. but she did leave -- she herself left a vibrant record that -- it's not like a lot of women of those times. they burned their letters because didn't want -- she burned her letters and people didn't burn her letters. she sometimes wrote at the bottom of the letters, "burn this." i love it. but i feel very lucky to have chosen this subject with those kind of -- she later said she had a mania for writing. it's good question.

i have to think about that and may come back to you with a better answer later. >> anyone? [applause] >> thank you all for coming. [inaudible conversations]

annette gordon-reed and peter onuf. this is an hour.

>> welcome to the free library of philadelphia. i'm representative jim roebuck, and i'm certainly very happy to be here this evening. i'm native philadelphian, i group up in philadelphia, graduated from central high school. but my particular -- [applause] -- my particular focus tonight is on the fact that i went to first college at virginia union university in richmond, from which i received a history degree of honors, and then i did my masters and ph.d at the university of virginia in charlottesville. so i'm a wahoo as they say. subsequent to that, i taught history at drexel university for more years than i like to think about. hitting all the right points here.

i worked briefly in the mayor's office as legislative assistant to mayor wilson. and i am chair of the house education committee. the free library is dedicated to advancing hit arrears, guiding learning and inspiring curious it. from it's award-winning author event series to it's thought-provoking programs like the upcoming american presidential series, which will present compelling programs through the presidential election season. it's now my pleasure and indeed honor to introduce the free imminent scholars annett gordon reid, and peter onuf, the presenters for this evening.

and annette gordon-reed received the 2008 national book award and 2009 pulitzer prize in history for the hemings of monticello. ... >> >> in the new book, they

have a revealing character study of the man from monticello that we thought we knew. darr praised of insight and intellectual rigor to have produced a powerful and lasting portrait of the mind of thomas jefferson purposes any central and billion blood book by to the nation's foremost scholars that like its protagonist into our we're so pleased to have them with this year this evening please join me to welcome our authors.