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so there were huge counties settled up in the frontier. they had two seats and then there are two in new york city and then two in smaller places. it's not one man, one vote. and certain rich lan lords had their own seats in the assembly. they didn't have to stand for election. they held these seats. the higher house, the council appointed to life terms. the royal governor appointed and serves at the will of the imperial bureaucracy. yanked out of there if he doesn't do what he's told.

you can say there's popular government in colonial america but the reality is that electoral turnout in new york or virginia, if it got to 40% of the eligible voters, that was considered unusual. most people didn't bother to vote because they didn't think it was that important. it's just one of the political institutions, the sheriffs are appointed, county clerks are appointed. judges are all appointed by a system that has very little say for popular participation. now there are some examples that work against that. massachusetts has more of its participation, its elected assembly is much more powerful than council. that's one of the reasons why the british picked on massachusetts so much. they blamed massachusetts as specially democratic constitution for the troubles that seemed to be specially

conspicuous there. going back to new york. both houses of the legislature elected. principle that counterries with more populations will have more seats. the governor is elected and now you get to elect something to this supra-state institution, congress. you get to elect the electors for somebody called the president, which could you never do before. there's thorough republicanizing of the political structures which i think we have underplayed and i think the primary reason it continues to happen and unfold is because anybody who there after wants to argue sovereignty can then be called aristocrat.

one was thomas jefferson, cast federalist opponents in the politics of 1790's as people who were out to restore aristrocasy and he could present them as so and this is was quite devastate to go political prospects. [inaudible] >> is that in some ways religious life anticipates this republican culture, i argue, in that there is a major movement within protestant denominations

beginning in 1730's which argues in favor of individual choice, that every believer is individually responsible at the end of days, and, therefore, no individual can be bound by some sort of parish commitment by the community. if an individual believes, i'm not a congressionalist, why should i be force today pay taxes, forced to go in here, ministers whose words do not convey true grace to me. i want to go hear my own preferred person. well, that laggic was corrosive and when the revolution comes along it great deal accelerates the erosion particularly in the south.

virginia is a good example of that. in some ways accelerated by the revolution. yes. >> could you tell me the numbers of populations of patriots versus the royalists and give a better definition of the irregulars and how they were defined? >> irregulars can take many different forms, but almost everyone who is male and over the age of 16 up until at least the age of 45 but could be 60 is supposed to enroll in a malitia, as you can imagine the training of these men are nonexistent.

you don't want to put these guys into a field with british regulars because they are going to do the sensible thing and run away. a lot of time george washington is dependent on these guys. being in the regular armies is a set of miseries, food is bad, officers are not polite, they treat you bad, they tell you to do things you don't want to do, they treat you bad, in the words of soldiers, slaves and then you're not really paid most of the time. and you are subject to diseases of the camp and there are common americans, yeah, i really want the patriots to win but i don't want to serve in the continental army and that's why george washington has to use supplement

with militiamen. there's really no higher command for them. they're operating on their own. they're waging their own war and soldiers aren't paid. malitiamen and all the incentive in the world to define wavering people as loyalists whose horses an cattle have to be taken to make a political point and to keep your own force going. so one of the consequences of that is it doesn't really pay to be a wavering person toward the end of the war. you better pick a side so you can make a plausible case for half of them to plunder you rather than both sides plundering you.

>> could you please speak a little bit more to economic consequences of the war? did it affect some regions more than others or certain sectors more than others and how was that used to the advantage of one side versus the other? >> okay. the question were the consequences. there's the violence they literally do but also the fact that they need forage for the horses, food for men and firewood. the easiest place to get firewood are fences so almost every fence in the county affected by the revolution gets burned up at one point or another during the war because the soldiers go pull the rails out and build fires. these guys are hungry. they're going to help themselves to all the chickens and pigs that they can get their hands on.

nathaniel green put it, the visitation by an army is a disaster to the civilian population. this is going to be affecting both sides. now, when the war is over and the british have gone home, loyalists come back and try to lay low, everybody has to try to pick up the pieces of all the devastation, but the other thing that's contributed to negative economic trends is trait disrupted. we often assume that the british empire was a bad deal for the colonist, economically for both colonists it offered a very good deal. largest protected trading community in the world and lots of americans benefited from that. this is something that's giving loyalists pause.

why do we want to give this up? do we really want to be independent operators in a world of empires rather than the most successful empire on earth? when you get frozen out then at the war from access to british colonies and you are frozen out of the protection that the royal navy had protected like the mediterranean it's going to shrink dramatically in 1780's and contributes to the lingering depression of 1780's which is an essential backdrop to the decision that the political leadership makes that they have to have a stronger union than had been provided by the first constitution, the articles of confederation. mary, did you have a question? the microphone, excuse me.

>> so this is the question mostly about the sources you encountererred throughout the research and how it was underacknowledged and not acknowledged at all about their contributions. what exactly did you come across that illustrated their role in the revolution, how were you able to discuss that in your book? >> okay. there are several formally enslaved people who leave memoirs and of their experiences and so those are primary sources. there are the records of the british military of their efforts to entice enslaved people to run away and organize some of them to military units

and most of them to logistical support and also experiences and several thousands relocate in 1790's and go to sierra leone in west africa and provides echo effect to their experience in the revolution, the british empire is not fulfilling its promises it had made onto them and so they would go to sierra leone which new problems were made to them which also would not be fulfilled. yes, sir. >> my question about the population. >> i left that out. >> yes. well, this is a tough thing to do because people are swinging

back and forth. there's the famous john adams statement. a third of americans were patriots, a third were loyalists and a third in the middle. i think that's almost certainly too high on the loyalists and probably too low on the patriots. and too low on the people in the middle. so my best sense, we are talking about the very start, 75, 76, about a fifth of the american people are willing to make a pretty strong commitment to the union of the empire. two fifths are willing to make a strong commitment to military resistance to the empire and ultimately to independents and that leaves two-fifths of the population in the middle. what i think pretty clearly happens is that loyalists fifth will be shrinking over time because they are frustrated with

british treatment and they are so often experienced being subject to severe punishment when the british failed to protect them that they make the quite rational decision that if order is ever going to be restored in this chaotic war it's going to be done by the patriots and not the british. that's the conclusion that most people make and the loyalist proportion shrinks over time. patriot grows and a lot of wavering people who are mostly going along with the patriots by tend of the war. >> how are the numbers when you're talking -- >> we are talking about a population of 2 and a half million people, okay, 500,000 of whom are enslaved and most of those 500,000, if they get a choice to express themselves, will support the british. that's a lot of people, but a lot of enslaved people are in situations where they can't express and can't express

themselves, so not all 500,000 of them run away from the british, it's just not possible. the highers estimates maybe 30,000 of them did so. and i think it's probably even lower than that. in large parts, family pins you down. you have cousins and so forth and you can't get everybody out at once so you stay put. >> thank you. >> okay. >> i will have to -- have to make this the last question. [laughter] >> the title of your book is american revolutions. >> you get an extra for your money. >> are the revolutions talking about not only revolution of independence but social revolution, religion revolution and why did you chose the date? >> the question is why the date,

the start date 1750, why the end date 1804 and why call it american revolutions plural rather than just american revolution. 1750 is for me to set the stage for colonial americas plural because the war doesn't just strofl british colonies, it will involve the spanish colonies and involve méxico and cuba, spanish colonies, california and new mexico indirectly. it will also involve british colonies to the north that are not part of the united states, it will involve newfoundland and quebec and west indies. what is it? 27 british colonies in 1876, i think that's the number that i got from your book, only half of them will reject the british empire but they are the half

with most of the people of british decent and of british culture, so it's the settler colonies overwhelmingly that will revolt whereas the colonies of smaller populations, more dependent upon maritime trade. the american revolution, it's also talking about the coming of the haitian revolution. i'm ending in 1804 when haiti declares independence. the united states sets a precedent and the french colony which will become haiti in 1804. because this is being done by formerly enslaved people of african decent and a fair number of white people are going to be killed in that, this actually ends up being disturbing of the people who have come to be the leaders of the united states who

are appalled by this and then contributes to a redefinition of the american revolution as the orderly revol uig, as the right kind of revolution, as something that perhaps only people in the united states were capable of, which is a great far rowing of the vision of revolution like somebody like thomas payne or thomas jefferson had back in 1776. that's one of the reasons i chose 1805, a moment for what does revolution mean in the americas and who is eligible in the eyes of american leaders. and so thomas jefferson is going to come up with a very different vision of what revolution was than alexander hamilton, trying

to sort out whose vision of the revolution will be triumphant. in the shorter time jefferson. it's a discussion we are still having in politics as to what exactly did the founders intend and we have to keep arguing about it. [laughter] >> there are no great british paintings of the american revolution. [laughter] >> there are paintings of naval victories against the french and caribbean and the defense of gibraltar. i want to thank alan.

there's going to be a reception to which i encourage you all to attend. i would also like you to let alan leave first so that he can sign books for anyone who would be interested in purchasing a copy, they're available upstairs on the balcony, but please join me as he leaves the center stage. [applause] >> here is a look at some authors recently featured at after words. new york times president and ceo mark thompson and how political speech has changed over time. former attorney general alberto gonzález recalled his time in the justice department and as white house counsel in the

george bush administration. the expanded role of the u.s. military around the world. in the coming weeks on after words faced the nation moderator about important moments in american presidential campaigns. thompson joans talk about investigation of thousands of leaked state department cables, also coming up temple university sarah describes possible solutions to rising college tuition costs and this weekend representative david on time in congress and economic challenges facing the country. >> if you got your eye on becoming leadership, et cetera, there's nothing wrong with that. there's a lot of guys in seniority and wisdom along with that, but this days the money is so dominant. 80% outside votes go to presidential candidates and yet the american people just put all incumbents again roughly in congress.

so there's an amazing power of the purse of winning elections and on top of the money part, people are lining themselves out to be a chairman of the committee. people want to do that, right, but if you vote with leadership in order to get that slot, you can just start looking. both sides do it. >> after words airs on book tv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous after words programs on our website booktv.org. >> after the spread of the cotton, the international cotton trade exploded. half a million pounds of cotton in 1800, 2 billion pounds by 1860, cotton represented 60% of what the u.s. was exporting to the world and 40% of what was

going out of new york's harbor. it was a huge deal. next biggest commodity it was tobacco and less than 10%. so cotton threads tied new york and the south together in a codependent relationship. the explosive growth of the cotton plantations straight across the south, across the deep south was largely funded by new york banks because that's where all the banks were. so, of course, you came to new york for the funding. the new york merchants supplied with everything from the pianos in their parlors to plow shares to the clothes they put on their slaves. new york not only shift the significant portion of cotton but was where the ships came back with european goods and that made new york important to washington, d.c. or washington city as people called it back then. it had a big impact on the

federal government because the government drew large, large portions of revenues from the customs house in new york harbor. there was a period where the entirely federal budget was coming from the customs house in new york city. now, it wasn't just the bankers and shipping magnet that is profited from cotton in new york, the thousands and thousands of workers were directly or indirectly profiting from cotton. dock workers, obviously, but also shops, people in the shops, people who worked in the hotels, the gambling houses, restaurants and the brothels and treat new york city as home away from home in the summer months. everybody was in various ways dependent on maintaining the cotton trade which means they saw it in their best interest to maintain the plantation system and slavery. new york workers also feared that if the people set free they

will come to new york and take jobs away. the big irony that the 12,000 free slaves in new york city opposite occurred. there wasn't really going to be a problem with fighting for -- white guys fighting for their jobs against black workers. because of cotton and because of those ties and that long and enormous economic tie to the cotton south, the majority of new yorkers were prosouth and antiabolition. they were in, effect, what people called copper heads, northerners sympathetic to the south. new york was a major hub for the transparency atlantic slave, no direct effect on slavery in the country anymore because slaves aren't being brought in the united states by that point but

a huge international transparency atlantic trade slave and ships out of new york were picking in africa and take to go cuba, brazil and places like that. congress has declared pirate cri -- piracy and many, many slave ships were fitted out in new york harbor and sailed out of new york harbor right turned eye of harbor masters. if they were caught, the slave ships, which didn't happen very often because u.s. navy was 12 ships and atlantic was pretty big, if got caught and to trial it was very, very rare for him to get convicted.

half of the time they would slip out of jail. judges were notoriously lenient with them. in fact, in the whole long history of new york's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade only one slave ship captain was hanged for it and he had the bad luck to get caught after lincoln was in the white house and the civil war had started and politics had shifted. >> you can watch this program and other programs online at booktv.org. >> retired army identifies he believes increase presence in the middle east in america's war for the greater middle east. in the fire brand and first lady

pa trish -- patricia bell scott. african-american history professor provides a history of racism in america in stamp from the beginning. in time magazine senior writer looks at the movement of the early 20th century in imbeciles. others include her report on the alienation felt by many in the political right on strangers in their own land. in nothing ever dies, weighs in on the vietnam war and kathy o'neil weapons of mass destruction argues that big data and computer models can be used to discriminate against people. our look at this year's nonfiction finalists for the book award continues with andre and look at native american in

other slavery. documents the influence of the haitian revolution on abolition in the slave's cause and finally heather anne thompson, 1971 uprising at correctional facility in blood in the water. watch the announcement to have national book awards live on c-span2 on november 16th. many of these authors have appeared or will be appearing on book tv. you can watch them on our website booktv.org. >> here is a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals in october. the southern festival of book will be held in nashville, tennessee, that same weekend it's the boston book festival held in the city's square. then it's the wisconsin book festival, that takes place at downtown madison public library in october 22nd.

october 29th, the louisiana book festival held in baton rouge in state capital and other downtown locations. .. to me it was real adventure, and i think that probably when the appetite. >> what kind of books did you gravitate towards?