nashville, tennessee. the nickname of the auditorium is the mother church of country music which definitely tells the history of both things that it is famous for. it was built by a river boat captain who was famously converted under a tent in downtown nashville in may of 1865. and after his conversion, he believed that traveling ministers should have a permanent home inside that was large enough to take the large crowds of the traveling ministers who came to town. so captain ryman built the ryman auditorium, and it opened at first in 1892 as a tabernacle. so that's the church part of the history. the music part of the history, the country music part, deals with the grand ole opry which came near 1943 after being in many different homes in nashville and stayed here until

1974 when the new opry house was built. but during the run of the '40s, '50s, '60s and early '70s, some of the most famous people in all of country music history debuted here at the grand ole opry including hank williams, george jones, dolly parton, all these brand names of country music cut their and got their start in this wonderful building. the ryman auditorium almost didn't happen because of the 1884 presidential race versus grover cleveland versus blaine. and the democrats had lost literally six presidential races and had not won since 1856. and tom ryman, who was a river boat captain here in this town, was a very bad gambler. and he was walking the streets of downtown nashville and got goaded on to start betting on the presidential election. and the blaine people were all out thinking that blaine was

going to win, and ryman basically took all bets or people that thought that blaine would win. so he'd say i'll bet $100 to you, $500 to you, $1,000 to you. and before captain ryman knew what he was doing, he had bet his entire wealth and his house on the outcome of the 1884 presidential election. thankfully for us in nashville, grover cleveland won, because if not, captain ryman would have been penny beless and broke -- penniless and broke and probably would not have built this grand building a few years later. during ryman's life he envisioned this building as a hall for all types of religious denominations. and it could be rented for anybody. so it did not have one particular slant for religion. it was available for everyone which it was the largest convention hall when it was built south of the ohio river. so nashville got a lot of groups

and people that came and had their events here because this was an incredible indoor space. around 1925 the grand ole opry started in another building in downtown nashville near our state capitol, but during that era we had fiddling contests here at the ryman auditorium. and one of the fiddlers, uncle dave macon who was later a member of the grand ole opry during that era, competed in a fiddling contest here at the ryman. so the fiddling contests were probably some of the early versions of country music. it was interesting that the ryman had been around more about 50 years -- for about 50 years when the grand ole opry came calling in 1943. and the building had seen better days from a physical standpoint. it didn't have any air-condition, of course, and it didn't have any, it didn't have proper heating at the time. so a lot of -- and then some newer buildings were being built

in nashville; the war memorial auditorium across from the capitol and other venues could now have concerted. and so when the grand ole opry moved from the war memorial auditorium to the ryman, it was a perfect marriage. we needed weekly events for this building, and the grand ole opry saved this building, in my opinion, because if it weren't for the weekly concerts that happened every saturday night in this building, this building would not have had the revenue to support it and would have been torn down long ago. but the opry coming in provided new energy to this building and provided a place where literally three or four or five thousand people a week got to hear the most popular and oldest country music show in the world. interestingly enough, there was a teddy roosevelt story related to the assassination attempt in 1912 related to the ryman

auditorium. teddy roosevelt was in milwaukee, wisconsin, and he was campaigning for president after he had left office, campaigning again. and an assassin shootses him, and the bullet enters his chest. he's got this long speech of about 50 pages. the bullet is slowed down, but it still enters the chest. and so in teddy roosevelt tough guy fashion, he goes out and gives the speech anyway. and one of the first things he says is i've just been shot and kind of shows the audience, but then gives this long speech and then goes to the hospital. the person who assassinated him tracked him down and was coming, stayed at a hotel a few blocks away from the ryman. in 1912 teddy roosevelt had been to memphis, chattanooga, knoxville and was supposed to come to nashville. but an anti-teddy roosevelt group had booked the ryman, and

only 200 people showed up. and so this assassin was down the street thinking that the president would be here. and probably the reason teddy roosevelt didn't come to nashville is because this other group had booked the ryman. and only 200 people showed up including a congressman, but that kept teddy roosevelt from nashville. and when they caught the assassin in milwaukee after they shot him, the plans that he had to shoot teddy roosevelt and follow him around were on the back of the hotel stationery from nashville, tennessee, two blocks from the ryman. the ryman auditorium played a very key point in the women's suffrage movement in passing the 19th amendment that gave 27 million women the right to vote. tennessee was the last state to ratify that on august 18th in 1920. but before that susan b. anthony spoke in this building in 1897

when tennessee was celebrating their 100th anniversary as a state with the tennessee centennial exposition. that was the first time that women were able to kind of hear from this national leader and get involved in the movement. in 1914 temperature had the first women -- tennessee had the first women's suffrage parade in the south. and based on that and what the local women did, the national women's suffrage convention that susan b. anthony started had their convention right here at the ryman. and many people have been to conventions that had more free time than work time. the women that came here the fall of 1914, they wanted the right to vote, they were going to work hard. the sessions lasted until be three a.m. in this building when the women got the right to vote. and interestingly enough, the ryman has always been a place, because it's so large, for political conventions of the state parties; the democratic

party and the republican party. so in 1920 when it was time to select delegates to go to the democratic national convention held in san francisco, they met here at the ryman auditorium. and for the first time, tennessee sent two women delegates to that convention which was historic. and that was really months before they passed the 19th amendment where women could get the right to vote. so history was made here at the ryman before the right to vote was granted. the civil rights movement was very important many nashville, tennessee -- in nashville, tennessee. a few blocks from here young students from fisk university, tennessee a and i, now tennessee state university, all did the runs are. counter sit-ins including congressman john lewis. they got arrested here, they challenged the system of what was going on in nashville, tennessee, and the conscience of the country.

so in 1962 martin luther king was here at the ryman to present an award -- or scholarship money to some of the freedom rider students. one of those students who got a check to go to school from martin luther king and the southern leadership conference was john lewis. so part of the history of the ryman is also martin luther king was here and spoke as well. jackie robinson spoke a few years later here on the civil rights movement as well. and even before that, booker t. washington came to the ryman and spoke about three different times, sometimes for graduations. and so he had a crowd of about 5,000 people which was the capacity back then. so if you wanted to hear one of the leading voices in america during any time of the ryman's history, they came to the ryman auditorium. the ryman auditorium is the most

interesting place to hear a speech or music in america. it is part home of the grand ole opry, it is a museum, but today it's a thriving concert venue which has over 200 bookings. in the last five or ten years, people like diana ross, paul simon, iowa aretha franklin, the foo fighters, mumford and sons, the list goes on and on and on. some people that normally play arenas of 15 or 20,000 play the ryman because it is such a interesting building that people want to perform in. the acoustics in the ryman are some of the best in america only most people think the mormon tabernacle in utah has better acoustics. the reason that people like the ryman auditorium is because it's unique, it's a small venue, there's not a bad seat in this whole place.

and the great thing about seeing a concert is you get to see one of your most favorite performers, but you get to see them in a much smaller space. when you go to a concert now, most performers thank their band, they thank their fans. when you walk across the stage of the ryman, you pay homage to the building. most people the first words out of their mouth is saying something about the building and how wonderful it is to be in here. i talked to former face the nation host bob schieffer. during the presidential debates in 2008 that were at belmont university, gaylord entertainment, now ryman hospitality group, had a special performance of the grand ole opry in this building, and they invited bob schieffer who has a country band to perform, and brad paisley was hosting that night.

and interestingly enough, i talked to bob schieffer about that because later on he was moderating another presidential debate that cycle against president obama and john mccain. and i asked him, were you more nervous moderating a presidential debate or playing at the ryman? and that was an easy answer. he said i was so nervous here at the ryman. this was my childhood dream, to play the ryman auditorium, and it was as exciting as i thought it would ever be. the ryman's legacy on a national level is a venue that has literally had speeches of presidents that have organized parties here. we have had famous politicians even in the 20th century, al gore or sr. and al gore jr., another name that a lot of people may not know is joe burns who was speaker of the house during president roosevelt's time. he had many debates for congress here in the ryman.

and when joe burns died, his funeral was in nashville, and fdr came to that. so the legacy of the ryman is tied with the legacy of the opry. today the opry is heard worldwide because of the internet and still because of wsn. the grand ole opry is the oldest radio show in the world, is and we're fortunate that although the opry has a new home, it comes back here in the winter for a few months, and you can still see the grand ole opry where it was famous, in the ryman auditorium. ♪ ♪ [cheers and applause] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. this weekend we're in nashville with the help of our local cable partner, comcast.

next, tennessean columnist gil hunt will tell us about the abrupt removal of governor ray blanton in 1979. >> seek the people's wisdom and we hear the people's wisdom. our days of agony can soon go forward to days of pride. i ask for the prayers of the people. mr. chief justice, i am ready to take the oath of office. >> will you place your left hand on the bible? raise your right hand. repeat after me. i, lamar alexander -- >> the title of the book is "the coup." the day the democrats ousted their governor. and it's about the early swearing in of governor lamar alexander in early, in january of 1979. he had just been elected governor three months before in the november election.

and by this time, the fbi was deeply into their investigation of the prior administration of governor ray blanton. the crisis had to do with how the blanton governor's office was releasing prisoners from tennessee prisons for all the wrong reasons. there's a process to go through, pardons and parole, but that was all being sidestepped. and this came to be known in the news media as the clemency for cash scandal. >> this afternoon carl burr meister walked out of the tennessee state prison a free man. his 99-year sentence for first-degree murder commuted by governor ray blanton. normally, no one would have noticed. but for two years charges of political favoritism and more recently of bribery have plagued the blanton administration's handling of executive clemency. >> turns out the fbi became interested in the blanton administration very early.

and it's important to remember that they were focused on the governor's office, particularly the office of extraditions, working on pardons and parole process. but you had this small crowd in the governor's office that were up to no good. and it wasn't just pardons and paroles and the clemency for cash scandal, it was liquor or store licensing -- liquor store licensing, and it was highway construction bid rigging and all this stuff. people went to prison. governor blanton himself later went to prison. and so that was the -- there was this, you know, nest of corruption in the governor's office on the first floor of the state capitol. and so on december 15th of 1978, just a month and a half after the election where blanton actually could have run for

reelection, but there was so much controversy at this point, he said i'm not going to run again. on december 15th the pbi execute z -- fbi executed a sweep in which they arrested three people. one of them was in our state capitol. on ground floor. and they came in, and they arrested the governor's chief legal counsel. and he had money in his pocket. he had cash that had been marked by the fbi. they had gotten into several of these cases and had money that was changed hands, obviously, and this marked money was on this man's person. he was arrested. same time at the nashville airport, the state extradition officer who reported to the legal counsel was stopped before he could get on a plane to memphis.

and he had clemency documents in his briefcase. at the same time in memphis, there was an arrest of the governor's chief security detail officer, a lieutenant on the tennessee highway patrol. and by this time the fbi knew this man, this lieutenant had become the man to see, you know? if you had a friend or a loved one in prison, well, you were eventually led to this man. and two of these three went to prison after trials and so forth. and that was the flashpoint in the middle of december. and so you jump ahead another month to january 15th, and actually governor blanton in his office in that building on night of monday, january 15th, '79, signed clemency documents for 52 people. three of them were outright pardons.

and these were bad people. i mean, these were, there were convicted murderers, there was, you know, any crime is bad, but these were particularly bad. and so this set in motion this extraordinary three-day period that ended with the coup on wednesday evening. and right next door down the hill from our state capitol is the tennessee supreme court building. and in that chamber, governor alexander -- with the two speakers of our state legislature, house and senate, standing with him -- took the oath for office of governor three days early. three days early. and that had been kept secret from governor blanton, because they didn't know what he would do. he could have called out the highway patrol, he could have mobilized the tennessee national guard to come make a ring around the capitol and keep anybody else out. but he didn't know.

and so what i call "the coup" happened successfully about 6 p.m. that night. during the day that preceded the coup at 6 p.m., the early swearing in, from all outward appearances it had been a pretty normal day. we're standing on the legislative plaza, downtown nashville. the state capitol is in the background. downstairs from where we're standing are the legislative offices and hearing, committee hearing rooms of our state legislature. and there was -- the legislature was not in session on this particular week, but the state building commission was meeting, speaker ned mccourter, speaker of the house, lieutenant governor john wilder or, speaker of the senate were members of the building commission. attorney general william leach

had to interrupt that meeting to be able to inform mccourter and wilder of what had been happening and the phone call that alexander had received from the u.s. attorney that night. you know, one of the interesting aspects of the story is that who initiated the coup that morning with a phone call to the republican governor-elect was the u.s. attorney who is a federal government officer. and all of this is about our state government. so there had to be some, you know, leap over the jurisdictional boundaries that mainly apply all the time. and so it would involve some personal persuasion on the part of the u.s. attorney talking to alexander. alexander says, well, we have to involve the speakers of the statehouse. i don't want this to look like we're in some banana republic, because that's not how we do things in america.

there's always a peaceful transition of power after an election. that's what makes our country fairly unique in the world. so attorney general leach had to call mccourter and wilder out of their state building commission because that was a routine activity, and they did. and that set in motion this four or five-hour period through the afternoon of phone calls and meetings, all of which had to happen in private. >> and i was literally thinking what are with all the things that could go wrong. i mean, the governor could, as i said, general wallace is the head of the national guard. he wanted to keep his job, he was a democrat, so we needed to make sure he was loyal to me and not the guy that he worked for for the rest of that afternoon. i had forgotten it, but keel found out in his book, i called gene roberts, head of the highway patrol, and i said do

you have 50 loyal members of the highway patrol in case we need them this afternoon or tonight? if there's a contest about who the governor is and who's literally, who's literally in charge? and then we had the issue of the law, who would attend, and my thought was that we wanted all of the -- we wanted to look as much like a real swearing in as it possibly could which is why i insisted that joe henry come out of his hospital, not his hospital bed, but his recovery. and why i didn't want -- when mccourter and wilder said, you know, we'll stand behind you, i said, you know, that's kind of like you walk on out there and see how it is, you know? [laughter] so i said, no, you invite me. that's what i told -- >> yeah. >> he said, no, we're not going to do that. which i understood. so the way we worked it out within about two hours was i literally wrote out a statement on a piece of paper that said we together agree to do this

together. >> right. >> which is how we eventually did that. and that much resolved by 4 or 4:30. >> right. >> and we headed down to the -- i went back home again, got honey and the kids, loaded up, off we went down to the old supreme court building. that was another decision. if we were to do this, where would we do it and who would we tell beforehand? and how would people find out, find out about it? >> mccourter and alexander didn't know each other until the day of the crisis. but on that day, they had to get to know each other to to solve this problem. with a few other people. and they did, and they did, and both told me in interviews later that they, that they really developed a level of trust. and they also told me how that

in turn affected in a good way n a positive way their ability to work together as republican governor and democratic speaker. to me, the most important part of the story that we tell in "the coup" was not necessarily about the scandal and the corruption and all that. it's important to understand why all this happened. but how that crisis was resolved in a bipartisan -- an extraordinary bipartisan way by very senior leaders of different parties. they put all that aside, and they dealt with the crisis. they took care of business, and they moved on. and so what i think is "the coup," the book, is not so much a story of bad guys doing wrong as it is about good guys doing right. because when we think about senior leaders of a political party today, your mind does not

automatically leap to how well they're going to work together. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. this weekend we're in nashville, tennessee, with the help of our local cable partner, comcast. next, we talk with vanderbilt university professor john geer about his book, "in defense of negativity," about the value of negative political advertising. >> bush and dukakis on crime. bush supports the death penalty for fist-degree murderers. dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. one was willie horton who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. despite a life sentence, horton received ten weekend passes. horton ned, kid -- fled, kidnapping a young couple, repeatedly stabbing the young man and repeatedly raping the young woman.

>> i wrote it largely in a response to what was unfolding in the late 1990s and the turn of the century where we had the sudden rise of attack politics, and there was all this hand wringing about how horrible it was, it was undermining democracy, and i just thought, you know, that's overstated. that's not quite right that, in fact, attacks play a critical role in democracy, because the people who are out of power need to attack those in power. and that, those attacks check, they provide accountability, they sports responsiveness. -- they force responsiveness. so to say all these attacks were bad struck me as a false assumption, and we needed to look at it and try to figurous what was going on. there was a huge amount of attention being paid to the power of negative ads, but we didn't know much about how negative ads worked and how they compared to positive ads, for example. ..

they don't like the document. so, it's a classic example of how attacks work, but it's how is been part of the fabric of american politics. thomas jefferson faced attacks, abraham lincoln's based attacks, but within the current environment that is the popular television or quinn television

came in the 1950s. into together the first campaign 1952, though, truman made a get out the vote appeal in 1948 the television, but few people at televisions. 52 was the first tv campaign so to speak in their word negative ads. eisenhower attacked your advertisements. stephenson didn't pay attention to the ads and did not think they were necessary. he was wrong, but there was a steady period from 64 to about 84 or you have about 20, 30% of ads were negative and starting in 88 which was a watershed election you see a big increase in it continues to increase to the state. 2012 was the most modern and times and i see people break that record. although, we can be sure that. primaries have seen a huge increase in attack ads.

sometimes people assume attacks are made up and you decide to go after someone and you will go after them no matter what. that is not quite right. you have to have basis of evidence for the attack to work. there is never been anyone that attacked bill clinton on foreign-policy but, they might attack him for certain personal infidelities because those exist and so you go after those areas of legitimacy and when you go after something that is that it tends to backfire, so attacks work only because we are all-- we have some sort of flaws and we have some weaknesses as candidates. that's were negative ads committed play because hillary clinton will tell you why she's a great candidate and should be president, but she won't tell you why she should not be.

that's involved with the republican nominee to weigh out why she should not be a good president. it central to democratic politics and yet be careful about when you try to figure out the power of an ad. summative headings are going on in the campaign and you can't say this moved public opinion 5%. there is the famous days he had from 1964 where lyndon johnson raised serious doubts nuclear weapons. >> one, two, three, four five seven, six, eight, nine, nine. >> nine, eight, seven, six,

five, four, three, two, one. >> these are the stakes to make a world in which all of god's children can live. we must either love each other or we must die. >> vote for president johnson on november 3. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. >> in fact, that ad which is still runs today one of the most famous attack ads of all time never mentioned barry goldwater by name. it was all implicit because barry goldwater had made these loose statements about using tactical weapons and throwing them in the men's room of the kremlin and soviet union, i mean, he had said these things, but his name did not need to be used and it was a brilliant ad

and a still talked about today. in some sense talk more about today than in 1964. another famous ad would be from 2004, the swift boat ad which was used to attack john kerry, again which was not aired by george w. bush campaign, but a third-party group, but he got a huge amount of attention. ♪ >> they personally raped, cut off the ears, cut off heads. >> the accusations that john kerry made against the veterans who served in vietnam was just a devastating. >> randomly shot at civilians. >> hurt me more than any physical wounds i had. >> cut off limbs. >> that was part of that torture was to sign a statement you had committed war crimes. >> raised villages. >> john kerry gave me for free what i am many of my comrades in north vietnam prison camps toward-- took torture. >> that had regionally 1 million

americans, yet by september 2004, over 80% of americans knew the term swift boat and the reason they did was the news media gave it unbelievable amount of attention. the swift boat ad during the course of 2004 campaign receive more attention from the press then the iraq war. i mean, it was a feeding frenzy of coverage and led to that ad being a powerful one that shaped the narrative of that campaign in a way that did not work to john carries advantage peer we pay attention to them because they raise doubts and there is a fear element to it, i mean, some people will argue that the reason why negativity works is we are kind of hardwired to notice a threat and therefore, when an attack ad comes on you pay attention to it. so, we pay attention to them, but it's also a product of the news media's attention. the news media loved attack ads

and gave a huge amount of attention to them because they are more interesting than positive ads. typical positive ad you find out that candidate favors educated children, clean water and more jobs for people. okay. who isn't for that? they are pretty dull on average. the negative ads have some pop and crackle and conflict which is what they are most likely to cover and so these ads have gotten into the consciousness partly because they are more powerful and they get people's attention and that's the way the news works. >> first of all the general purpose of the book is to try to put up a yellow warning lysate, wait a second there is a role here for tax that we absolutely have to have because without them the people in power can get away with a lot more stuff than they would otherwise so we need to realize they play a role. what i think is going on now between the rise of the super pacs between news media coverage

of attack ads giving candidates more reason to air them is i do think we have in excess of amount of negativity in the system, which is having consequences. i think it's making governing harder, making polarization more of a problem for those once they get into office. could do think there are those kinds of concerns, but there is always this belief of over blowing these claims and yet-- yes, it's true there may be too much negativity, but we need that kind of negativity especially in a country that is now polarized. the polarization means we have differences on issues and those differences have to be discussed. we don't necessarily agree on issues like the budget or what to do with foreign-policy or what to do on abortion, whatever those issues are and so negativity provides us important information so we learn about the downsides of various kinds of policies. in april, i launched with the glen who is a professor at ucla

called spotcheck and wet spot check is is an effort to get us data about the impact ads are having on the american public. when an ad is aired journalists will start to speculate because that's all it can do about this ad being a good bad, bad ad, effective at it may have almost no data. rather than doing these kind of fact checks with-- that are seat-of-the-pants efforts we get data and take it vantage of current technology, so with the professor and i do is we take some ads and show them to 1000 americans that are representative of the entire country and they get to see that ad and we ask a series of questions and we can do it so quickly that we can get it done within a couple of days while the ad is still fresh in part of the conversation, so we are not talking about the past, but the present. more importantly we are actually running an experiment in the experiment is as follows: we show one group of people one at, another group of people is

second, a third group of people know ads. in fact, it is an ad peyton manning nationwide and the fourth group sees both ads in those four groups, the assignment are randomly determined so that we have an experiment because for those four conditions the only thing that varies on those four groups are what adds you saw. so, you can take a look at let's say a hillary clinton ad and comparative power to a trump ad or to know out at all or to the interactive effects we can naturally sake is this ad judge by the public to be negative or does it make them angry, doesn't make them hopeful, doesn't move their opinion about hillary clinton and we can do so in a systematic way with real data to the internet now is a powerful tool. not everyone has access to the internet, but most people do and we can kind of weight the sample to make it representative of all americans and provide a real reading of what americans think about these ads as opposed to guesswork. we have the technology and so

the professor and i thought we would do this and we are doing it with the "la times" and it's a chance to move past speculation in into some relevance and hopefully advance the debate. i always remind audiences that if you go back and think about who was your most informative teacher, who was the person who affected you the most, was at that individual who told your work was absolutely wonderful or was it a person who challenge who said you have better abilities than what you are showing here you need to work harder and write more clearly and think more carefully. not getting you a a, but may be saying this is not very good work and getting you c and then you respond, so we always face that. we are better off when we have criticism, when we have the wedding. we don't want it to be personal, but we want a chance to learn

and that's the mechanism by which we do and sometimes it's unpleasant and some of the attacks are unpleasant. the comic part of the process in to do away with it rips away the foundation of democracy because we battled-- men and women died over the centuries for the right to be able to criticize government and go negative. that's really-- i don't want people to say-- i don't expect that, but it at least challenge them and think about it and say maybe there is a bit of a silver lining here more than i thought and if that happens, that's great. >> and now on book tv, a literary tour of national tennessee with the help of our local cable partner comcast. next, we speak with them about university professor richard blackett about the history of the underground railroad. >> we had always known how the underground operated, basic mode

of operation. what i attempted to do was kind of expand the range of operations, but we do know from william estill's record at philadelphia roughly how they operated, who he paid to help people out of boats and what ship captains he employed, how much he paid them. what agency paid, so you have a pretty good idea of the workings of the system. what i was attempting to do is to look at the people who the passengers of the underground railroad so to speak and how many from which they were drawn and what some of that aspirations were and why they decided to do it and what

possibly impact it had on the community that they were leaving. it started-- i have been working on this much larger project, looks at the ways communities on both sides of the slavery divide looking at how they responded to the 1850 fugitive slave law which nationalized the recapture of slaves and created a huge political firestorm. so, my interest is trying to understand that and i soon came to realize that at the center-- at the heart of that story of the slaves who are runaways, so my intent was to try to start looking by pairing priestly 10 states-- slave states particularly in the border, maryland and pennsylvania. illinois and missouri.

i would get a feel for the tensions that existed across that line, across that divide. what happens when slaves run away and what happens when slaves attached or their masters appear in a free state and try to retake them. and what conflicts emerged and what effect that had on the politics both in the state it is happening and state in which they are fleeing and or so by extension the national government. one of the things that we can trace in the decade of the 1850s is-- slaves had always escaped. i mean, wherever slavery existed slaves run away. apart from the 1860s what we see happening is slaves are running away in groups, so presuppose the kind of organization, not only family units, but groups of

people who are not necessarily rated-- related, but work together. the problem is now that we see a different kind in the context of the law we see a different kind of response on the part of slaves to continue slavery and that creates additional problems for those places that are most vulnerable and here we are talking about largely border states, folks way down in the deep south that have a different set of problems, but they are not confronted by the same set of problems, but if you are a slaveholder in texas your slaves are on their way to mexico, so wherever there is free territory slaves run away and in the context of the light it 1850s this complicates the whole effort to try to maintain the slave system and the law would continue to cause friction and

misunderstanding and disputes between two sections of the society, the south and the north up until the civil war. by the time we get to the civil war people are still saying-- what is causing this problem to considerable degree is the fact that you guys keep stealing our slaves and particularly there's another element to this in the 1850s and that is increasingly those four who are opposed to slavery are going into the south trying to get slaves out. so it's not just slaves on their own initiative running away. there are people who are going, both whites and blacks going into the south to persuade, to aid slaves run away. and if you can imagine-- in a society in which this period in which there is a large amount of mobility within the society in which people are trading, people

are moving about setting things. people are selling volleyballs-- bibles, this creates an incredible vulnerability as far as slave owners are concerned because they can't cut control the movement of people, so in that sense than the underground railroad in the context of this new law becomes much more interesting to explore there is a character in this little town called berlin on the eastern shore of maryland who was committed of getting free blacks out of maryland because he thought that was the way to protect slave property. free by population in maryland is the largest in the country, so they have always been causing headaches, their mere presence,

so this character decides the only way he can stop this by the end of the 1850s he is considerably worried about this, so he thought what he would do is move slaves out of harms way, so he sends them from the eastern shore of maryland only to alabama and releases them in alabama and that was his way of protecting his investments. what he does not realize is when many of the slaves when they get to alabama they run away anyway. there are different levels of the fact. there is the local effect in which people like this man attempts to send his slaves away from potential problems and their people locally who tried desperately to protect their

investment and protect their property and therefore use the court as well as use intimidation to stop people from interfering with their properties, so there is that little-- level of political strife locally in the community and we have multiple examples of people who threaten to tar and feather people enter into wedge people, so there is that level. there is at the state level in which slaveholders are trying to protect their interests against what they see as an assault on their property by passing laws that are much more stringent, by a whole number of means and then there is the national level in which people see the continuing strife over this issue as a way of the north trying to destroy slavery. now, it's a bit of paranoia

here, but if you have a group of abolitionists who are continuously condemning slavery, who are continually supporting the fugitive slaves, who are refusing to allow slave catchers to come into the community where black people are storming into court houses and taking slaves out and taking them away the country seems to be coming apart at the seams over this issue, so when we get to the eve of the civil war and it appears that really there will be secession this issue keeps cropping up as being one of the-- here's the law and you have systematically not enforced it. in addition to which you have passed laws in the northern states, which mace-- make it increasingly difficult for people to reclaim their slaves--

read since you cannot use pennsylvania prisons to hold it fugitive slave, so where do you keep people while they're waiting to to be transported back home? there are instances where for instance because the slaveholders could not hold their slaves temporarily in these prisons, there is one in pennsylvania where the lack community tried to burn the slaveholder down with a slaveholder was staying, so if the kids say there is stuff happening and it happened in all different sorts of efforts. in the north there are people depending if you are a democrat and therefore supportive of the slave system you are deeply concerned about all of these black people coming in. but, there are abolitionists who provide the means for people to stay to find them jobs, temporary housing, to give them

support and tide them over for a while and give them money so they can keep going north and into safety and many of them go to canada. canada becomes a kind of ultimate haven entry place for many of these fugitive slaves they are, of course they are received and they are allowed to stay, but there presents creates problems in canada as well, so it's not just a paradise north of the mason dixon line or north of the ohio river, but that free space becomes contested and that's what makes it so interested if you're interested in the political issues because people are struggling over what it means to have these people they are. there is an organization in philadelphia in 1850s, early 1850s called the vigilance

committee that was led by a black man called william stills who interviewed every slave, fugitive slave's office. not all fugitive slaves that passed through zero's, but those that did and he compile this history of it and later published around i think 1872 and is called simply the underground radio-- railroad which is often times a moving account of people seeking their freedom. it's also-- he also provides insights into those people who went into the south to attempt to help people to run away. in fact, the first account he has in this very zero luminous book is of a white man who goes into alabama to try to bring out stills family and winds up a face first in the ohio river that, murdered, so the people

who did this-- there was a price to pay for these a sorts of things, so we do have accounts in the narratives of people who escape. fred-- frederick douglass would come to mind. there are a host of them in which they are given accounts of why they decided to leave and how they succeeded and what were the end impediments they encountered along the way, so you can piece together, but my interest is not so much of those people that we know already, but i'm interested more of those people who have escaped history, but who i can find newspaper accounts and who i can identify and so the aim of the study is to tell the story of those people and then there is a second character that i ran into , a man called james cunningham who operated out of louisville, kentucky and he was

a musician and played on the riverboats and the authorities knew that cunningham was up to something they were trying to get him four years and they could not find him. they found evidence of escaped slaves from his house like close of slaves and letters from slaves, but they could never put their hands on old james cunningham. he drove them not send he and his friends, colleagues from across the ohio river and new albany indiana, report years later, the report of going to a political meeting in pittsburgh where they met fred-- frederick douglass and what they did is they took out a subscription to frederick douglas.

you cannot have an abolitionist newspaper in kentucky, but they had it mailed to new albany, and they would roll the paper across the river so that it could be distributed in louisville. so, by telling the stories you begin to get a feel for the range of things that people did and it's my view that the only way you can understand how those who have left no records think about freedom, for instance, is what they do about getting freedom. so, much of this is looking at what people did in order to acquire freedom. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. this weekend we had the scene natural tendency to talk with local authors into her this ditties literary sites with the help of our local cable partner,

comcast. next we hear from a political science professor at vanderbilt university about the level of polarization in american politics. >> why is our congress so dysfunctional? i believe there are three principal reasons, not of speaker. the first is the harshness of our tone. both parties are guilty of this, madam speaker, both parties. >> the name of the book is called why washington won't work in my co-author and i had a couple of reasons for writing it in the first one is about real politics. realpolitik is that in washington things are not getting done. we have seen some of the least productive congresses that we have seen in the history of the country and i think figuring out why that is is extraordinarily important to do and part of it was also academic, scholarly. there is this debate, although it might be crazy to people who are not scholars, but there is this debate that whether ordinary americans are actually polarized, so when tom and i

started to write the book the book was very much about trusting government, not so much about polarization. our first id. as they related to writing the book was people say they don't trust government and yet they want to do away with very very little of it. in fact, they love most of government. they love the military. they like the programs they benefit from like social security and medicare and things along those lines, the things government spending a lot of money on. our book was very much is supposed to be about that point that people really have no idea what government is. they have a stereotypical picture their mind of something, but it's not actually what government does, but as we started to explode is more, this is where we came to realize that this key change in american politics was not trusting government at its root. what was driving out with this negative set of feelings people

have about their opponents. this is relatively new. we started to see that really genuine almost hatred that develops among republicans about the democratic party and about democrats and about the republican party that really dates especially strongly to about 2004, around that kerry and bush election and it only intensified with each succeeding election. 2008, maybe a bit less because of the economic collapse and everyone just trying to survive, but 2012, was the worst we have seen and in 2010, we found some incredibly amazing readings in terms of just how negatively we feel about the other side. to put it into some perspective we ask these questions of people, we call them feelings and asked people to place them saves on a scale from zero to

make 100 and if you really let the group you give them 100 and eight you hate them what give them zero. if you have neutral feelings you give them 50. the feelings republicans expressed about the democratic party these days is more negative than the feelings they expect-- expressed about atheists and negative feelings that democrats expressed about the republican party these days is more negative than the feelings expressed about christian fundamentalists, which tends to be the group of that democrats most dislike, so we are talking about intense intense negative feeling that started in the early to thousands and are are worse today than they have ever been. well, the thing that is important to keep in mind is that what the public feels does affect the way that politicians behave. if you have republicans in the congress as we had in 2009, 2010, 2011 and so forth, they don't really have to worry too much about compromising because their reelection-- reelection constituents are going to

believe their side of things that is the republican representative fight-- side of things because their constituents dislike democrats a much, so in the mass, public people also say we want compromise, but what they are really saying is they want if they are republicans they went democrats to compromise with them and they don't really want to make any concessions themselves in the same is true on the democratic side of things. democrats say we want compromise, but they really want republicans to believe in the things that they believe in already. things that i think are really critical to understanding polarization and feeling as the way our politicians have been behaving over the course of really the last 15 or 20 years. they have nothing compromising with each other very much anyway and they increasingly disagree about everything. now, i think a big part of this is how close the margins are in congress he days, so every election the minority party

thinks we are close enough. we could be the majority if we just waited until the next time and then we will get what we want out of the political process, so there is no reason for them to compromise, but that sends a message to the people in the electric that the other side ideas are not worth anything, that they are all bad and now with absolutely nothing. so, as a result what we end up with is a lack of compromise at a representatives level which again send this message to ordinary people that the other side ideas are worthless and we get this sort of polarization. the thing i think fuels that even further is now, we live in that media bubble where ordinary people if they are republican they can follow their right-wing blogs and they can listen to bill o'reilly and rush limbaugh

and if you are democrat you can do the same thing with msnbc and the proliferation of liberal blogs and you don't really ever have to come into context with arguments that challenge your way of thinking about things. i think trust is central to this and it's been well known that trusting government has been dropping since the 1950s and 60s. we have been asking the same survey questions since then and to give you a sense of the survey question it is how much of the time do you trust the government to do what's right, just that i was, most of the time or only some of the time. back in the 60s somewhere around 70% of people would say just about always or most of the time. these days it's more like 20, so there has been a complete collapse. more consequential when tom and i find is more consequential than that is the partisans of the party that is not in the white house. these folks are completely unwilling to trust government

especially these days. so, we found in a survey in 2010 only 2% of republicans said they trusted our government in washington most of the time or just about always. in fact, zero people in the survey said just about always. only 2% said most of the time and these people are really important because these are the people who are willing they be to give the governing parties idea of a shop here they say, well, ideologically maybe i'm not with them my parties not with them, but maybe i will give it a shot and now there is no one on the other side who's willing to give the other ideas -- the ideas of the other party a shot. now, that is important because think about if you are a republican representative and you are trying to decide whether you should compromise with the majority party, well, none of your republican constituents, the people who reelect to support these programs, so why in the world which you. now, this has changed.

if you go back to the 1970s and 1980s and even into the 1990s, about 30 or so% a person of the other party trusted the government and the government in washington to do what was right and now it's about five%, so this is the key change in american politics. there is no pressure from the constituents of representatives to compromise. so, i mention these feeling thermometer scores from before and they are bounded between zero, absolute hatred and 100 and absolute love. when people used to talk about her when we asked people in the 70s and 80s and 90s about the other side they used to get scores of about 45 or 50. they were actually perfectly fine. this was during periods when like richard nixon was present and democrats did not exactly love richard nixon and this was when jimmy carter was president and republicans didn't exactly

like jimmy carter either, but we realized was the key change to politics over the course of the last 40 years with this increase in negative feelings towards opponents, the story of mitch mcconnell really drives home that the incentives for policymakers have changed. mcconnell started in 2009 with barack obama as president and the minority leader with 41 seats in the senate. he made a conscious decision, which he i'm sure regrets having broadcast that he was going to put a brake on policy that barack obama introduced using the filibuster and relatively unprecedented ways. all of that gridlock in did nothing to make the republican less popular with republicans and in fact, by 2015, mitch mcconnell is no longer the minority leader in effect is the majority leader with 54 seats.

now, if you are a party leader in the next time your parties in the minority what decisions do you make as far as cooperation and affiliation is concerned cracks of course, i think you make the same decisions mitch o'connell did because the next election is always the chance that you will end up being in the minority party. now, the only hope i have and that section driven by my experience here come the change will have to be generational. the change will have to come from people who have not been typically getting involved in the political process and changing things. it's going to have to come from a new set of leaders who have not been used by the other side in certain ways, that has not been abused by the other side in certain ways, so that they don't feel this sort of sting that they will do it to them because it's been done in the past. so, i'm hopeful as i teach these tremendous students semester in

an semester out and i see the potential for leadership at the key is getting these young people involved in politics rather than involved in investment banking or law school or something different to tell them that they-- their involvement in politics is worth doing, that they can change the world because it's going to have to be them who ends up doing it. >> during burke tvs recent visit to nashville tennessee we learned about the history of african-american representation in congress from kerala swain. while professor at vanderbilt university. >> blackface is black interest and the representation of african-americans in congress was first published in 1993 by harvard university press. it was enlarged in 1995 and i decided to write the book because in the late 1980s, while i was in graduate school

and i was finishing up, arguments were being made that black representation was in trouble, that as soon as the last weight representative of black majority districts retired or left congress that's a black members of congress would have nowhere else to expand and the most important argument that was behind my decision to write the book was the arguments that only blacks could represent black interest and so in this book i try to explore how well does the u.s. congress represent african-american interests. i looked at the objective conditions that black people living as far as poverty rate, health conditions, just things you can measure, housing and so there were objective indicators of the situations of black

american and other public opinion poll data about what blacks prefer, their preferences and last i looked at the position of interest group leaders and so i use that to develop an indicator of black interest. the most impressive black leaders during that era was william gray the third from pennsylvania and he was a baptist minister that decided to run for congress and he was elected and he rose to the rank of chair of the budget committee and that was a significant position for anyone, especially at african-american and he needed substantial white support to be able to get elected to that position. not only was he elected, he was seen as doing a very effective job in that role, so he was one of the people that just garnered

lots of media attention during that era. you can see some of the others included, mike espey who became the first i think black congressman elected since reconstruction, i believe from mississippi, so he and his strategy to get elected, that was something that was a big deal for that era. what i found was that when it came to the data and how people voted in congress based on the liberal policies that black preferred, hands down the democrats, there was the only game in town and i guess the major finding of the book that was so controversial and got me labeled as a conservative before i became one was that i argued that the political party was more important than the race of the representatives and as long as felt these ideas they may best be represented by democrats are consequently i question the

black district and i was among the people that argue that if you continue majority black districts there were 65% black or greater that you would elect more republicans and so this 1992 majority black districts all across the country, more blacks were elected, but the adjacent district republican and so the congress flipped and so by 1994 unit a situation where the blacks that had been committing-- committee chairman, a whole bunch of people that the names are not familiar to this generation, they eventually left congress because they had never been in the minority. for 40 years democrats had been the majority party in congress and after those majority black districts were drawn and the adjacent district turned republican congress was lost and

so was the black influence in the title of my book, black faces, black interest in the representation of african-americans in congress captures the fact that i was pointing to black descriptive representation, black faces and black interest in the sense that you could end up with more black faces, which we did end up with more black people in congress, but less black representation because you did not have people in positions of power was this committee chairman ships were lost to advance their version of the black-- i think that lots of what has happened in subsequent years has not necessarily made black people better off in some ways i think it made them worse off. the congressional black caucus, the power they had before the republicans took over the

congress and that was lost and so if you are committee chair euchre larger budget for your staff, people in the majority party get the best offices, i mean, they have everything set up for the majority. all of that was lost and then the republicans when they weren't they had the contract with america where there were certain policy positions and they had advance on immigration, welfare reform. i can't remember all of the plates, contract with america, but they implemented an agenda that was different, very different from what the democrats had done in previous years. it was with the american people because the american people voted for this dramatic change, but i am among the people who believe that's had the blacks not focused so much on dry

majority of black districts and drawing them so large that may be congress would not have flipped then, but it was a change and i would argue some good came out of that change because the welfare reform, if you look at how it was structured i think it has benefited a lot of black people and i can talk about clearly back people that i know. i come from a large family in the south, so there were many people that were on welfare, young girls, you know like maybe they had a first child when they were 16 or 17. well, the way the welfare reform was set up you could only be on it a brief amount of time and you had get a job and so these people today are working. they have cars and i think if it they had been made more comfortable where you just get welfare that maybe they would have made a different choice, but i think for a lot of people the fact that welfare was limited to a fixed period of

time cause them not to make the lifestyle and i would say there was a positive that came out of it and looking back at that vote again that was-- book that was published in 1993, 1995 black interests and it seems to me that the preferences that blacks have had that have sort of always favored the democratic party that maybe it's not in the interest in i can even say that years ago before-- well, years ago as a teacher like i have been teaching out for about 26 years. i have argued to my students that it made sense for blacks to be in both political parties because when you go into a closed door meeting and you close the door you want people at the table from different sides. what i found was most interesting was with the white members that i traveled around with one of the things i noticed

about them was that the racial composition of that staff mirrored the district and that each one of them had a black legislative assistant that had enormous power in those districts and i have also noticed that with a constituency service that there were lots of members of congress and they were really concerned i would say about the people. they would have district offices that were accessible to those that were poor and so they would have one in the community or they might have a mobile unit that traveled around so they could do that casework and i remember setting in session with john lewis and there would be all of these people lined up to see the congressman and a lot of the issues came for for help were not issues that members of congress would normally be

expected to deal with. maybe someone was being evicted or had some kind of problem that did not involve the federal government, but there were caseworkers there to help these individuals that had needs. one of the white representatives that i spent time with was lindy barks. with her she would have constituents that will call her up and asked her to get them out of jail and she had enough influence in louisiana to pick up the phone and call a judge and someone could be released from a jail and her staffers followed her closely because they had to prevent her from reaching into her purse and giving to people that just passed for money to buy something like birthday presents for a child. so i found, and around with members of congress fascinating, but i was really impressed that even if the district did not have a representative of the same race, they would have those caseworkers and i saw the same

thing with alan wheat, a black representative from kansas city that represented an 80% white district. now, his staff was predominantly white as you would think and i don't remember how many blacks he had. he had three or four. they never work in the same car because they did not want to pull up and have a function with a bunch of blacks coming out of the car, so these were things that he had to think about that a white person would have to think about maybe in a different kind of way, but they really did what a good job of trying to help people that either spoke the languages of the people or were able to communicate with the people involved in the group, so i was encourage to some extent by what i saw on that was one of the reasons the book included the political party was more important in the race of the representative

because what i saw was white democrats sometimes doing a better job than black democrats in serving constituency needs. i think now people see that it's more important to have people that support your agenda. it's more important to have democrats if you are a democrat or republican if you are a republican and a so blacks today as far as i can see are not saying, and join the majority of black districts, they realize that if a district's democratic it's going to be conducive to the election of a candidate that the race will be less important and so i think that today with districting black voters are not one he to be packed in oversized black districts, that they would rather be able to influence the adjacent district and they see it's not about interest that has one district that might be 60, 70, 80% black and then the adjacent district 90% white because whites tend to be more

conservative than black and if you district that's adjacent to a majority of black districts it's going to be a more amenable to a conservative voter and it's more likely to represent-- to elect someone that maybe doesn't share your position, so i think that will shift, that the voting right act at least for now have realized that it has not been in the interest of minorities to pack them in oversized minority districts. at the time i wrote black faces black interests, the majority of african-americans believed whites were not-- would not support black candidates because whites were too racist to support black candidates and one of the arguments i made was that more black representatives could be elected in the majority of white areas and i looked at what was already taking place, that

blacks were being elected with white votes. the blacks that did choose to run for office a lot of times did not get support and now that we have elected our first black president in 2008 as well as blacks getting elected and for some time statewide all of the country i think it's pretty clear racism is not what holds up black candidates back. campaign-finance and maybe other factors, but it's not racism and so i would encourage the same encouragement i gave back in 1993 for more black candidates to run for office and read them both political parties and not feel heavy because of the race because i think that if they share the views of the voters whether those views are

conservative or liberal they are going to get elected and so it's more about the person's position , their character and what they represent them they are being disadvantage because of the color of their skin. >> for more information on book tv's recent visit to nashville and the many other destinations on our cities to her go to c-span.org/cities to her. >> clive is the publisher of public affairs books. mr. prato, what do you have coming out this season that you want to share with the tv? guest: i'm not a big computer games guide. on an innocent really, but what i know what i think almost everyone does it any ages tetris and we have a book on the origins of tetris and tetris is far more of a game of cubes and shapes falling out of a black sky lining up at the bottom of a screen. it's a fascinating story of a young brilliant