they went on to a third generation of people who never left. those people are coexisting with more recent populations who came in 2011 and everybody is existing in this makeshift metropolis. and of course we have all seen the images of grids of tents laid out, crazy aerial photos that suggest the scale of the place. ..

>> i very least introduce chandra manning. he is the author of, what the school war was over. her most recent book, "troubled refuge" talks about what it is like to escape slavery, how emancipation happened and how citizenship in the united states was transformed. "troubled refuge" is striking, the engaged narrative gives a sobering and uplifting story of the journey toward freedom. in her telling we learn something invaluable about the fragile and chaotic nature of the coming of freedom and the enduring enduring technique dignity of the people who secured it. please join me in welcoming chandra manning climax. >> thank you taulbee for coming today. to to tell you the truth,

a bit surprised to see everybody. with election three days ago and an outcome that we know will make history going forward i wasn't quite sure anybody would show up to listen to what happen 150 years ago, but glad you did. the story this book tells really matters. a story of refugees at the center of american history. a story about both success and failure and story about both success and failure and how those two things are intertwined. a story about making and defining citizenships, not once and for all, but on an ongoing, day in and day out basis. and it something all of us bears responsibility. i want to talk about how this book came about and how i came to write it. i give you a glimpse into what it says. and that i will end with with what i hope the book achieves. all start by by asking if any of you have ever been to a cycle? do you know what it is?

it's an enormous painting, a circular painting. the one i know is one of the battle of gettysburg. the battle of gettysburg one is 377 feet long so imagine a football field wrapped in a big circle 42 feet high and you walk into the middle of you walk into the middle of it and every inches painted. and intricate and elaborate detail. that's that's what it is. they are overwhelming. they are impossible to enter gradually. you can only enter via total immersion and once you do your overwhelmed and don't know how to make sense of what you're seeing.

you have to remain lost and disoriented for a long time before you have any idea what you're looking at. that's how it felt to write this book. which i wasn't prepared for. it is my second book. i thought i should've figured the book thing out and this one should be easy and straightforward. that was only the first thing i had wrong when i first started. it did grow out of my first book. my first book was about what civil war soldiers thought about slavery. and in the spring of 1865 and it ended at a moment of tremendous promise and fluidity. where race and fluidity. where rayson writes were concerned. it ended at a moment when the united states quickly passed three amendments to the constitution, the 13th amendment ending slavery, the 14th expanding citizenship and the 15 expanding the right to vote for black. all of those were a revolution. to put that in perspective the united states have only has two amendments ever since the bill of rights up to that point. so it was clearly a rich moments.

what i want to know is how do we get from that moment to 1896 in plessy versus ferguson and jim crow and race relations. and and so that was the book that was a question that i set out to answer when i began my second book. i still don't have an answer to that question, i wish i knew, i don't. but what i but what i have is this book instead, "troubled refuge". as i set out to write the book about citizenship and rights in the decades following emancipation timing had everything to do with it. it was 2009 and i was the 200th anniversary of abraham lincoln's birth. that was followed in 2011 and through 2015 by the cesc continual of the civil war. thanks to those things i received a lot of invitations to give talks. usually about emancipation and citizenship. on the surface though should have been the

center of the play. easy talks to give and what i was working on. i should've been able to wake up in the morning give them. i couldn't. i quickly discovered his emancipation and citizenship were two different things. we didn't didn't understand either one of them very much. i figured i should start by understanding the differences between emancipation and citizenship. that was the basics. it was emancipation first but where, where did it happen, where'd two people stop being slaves and stopping something else? nearly half a million of them went through that process of exiting slavery in places called contraband camps. contraband camps were refugee camps that followed the union army throughout the civil war. i find that contraband camps, i don't know too much about him

when i say contraband camps people get mental images like tense full of smuggled cigars. sounds sounds like a good place to start, now have an introductory section in my book about that that takes place in contraband camps so let me find things about it. deciding to do it was like entering the middle of this enormous story and be overwhelmed by the details of what i was finding. the details of people whose lives inside these refugee camps. was overwhelmed by the particular eddies of men, women, children experiences. i cannot i cannot find any kind of analytical framework or narrative arc to make sense of them and put them in conversation with each other up with them in conversation with the president or larger story of

how slavery ended. i was lost. it really stunk. it also felt like i was i was just going in circles. finally, a basket of eggs drove me first to utter distraction and then to try and experiment. and about women in north carolina as she put a basket of eggs and her children into a canoe and she walked that canoe 12 miles up the coast to the union army. she delivered those eggs to general and she does it delivered herself and her children to freedom. that that story stuck with me. eggs. in a canoe. the most fragile product you could think of and she has her

kids in the canoe. if they're anything like my kids the eggs would be broken in half a mile. how was she going to get them to safety. never mind the eggs, how she going to get the people to safety. i didn't know she could swim or if her children could swim. i could swim. i couldn't make sense of the story. and right about the time the story wouldn't let go of my brain my own kids were experiencing significant challenges and we are undergoing some intensive testing with them. it came to pass that my oldest son has autism and that means a lot of things. but it means something specific for the story. he has a lot of ways that life is hard, but one has to be do with how he perceives perception. when most of us come into a new place we proceed from the general to the specific. he walked in here today and so to do and that first we were aware of ceiling, floor, walls, we know we are in a room and we

pretty quickly now that were in a bookstore and it's a familiar place that safes were fine. so even though we haven't been here before not lately are often we know where were aren't say. sourcesafe and security go about the business of what we do in a bookstore. and maybe eventually we fill in details and start to notice the book were looking for but we noticed the big picture first. my son perceived in the opposite order. totally unaware, his no matter where where that history and it then you are, but he begins with that the very specific and works out. so he'd walk into a place like this and depending where his eye fell first, maybe it would followed this endcap first. he would have to take into account that every single book on that endcap. the pictures on the covers would register. he would notice the titles and he'd work out that there are three rows said some cubbies underneath a many to have the

whole endcap and then go out a little further and further. but for very long time, most of the time he's disoriented. he doesn't really know where he is. it feels overwhelming and feels panicking and superhard. but it also means that he almost always notices things that the rest of us miss. when he's shares them it changes my world. so if i look at these eggs the way my son would. what if i stop trying to see a big big picture that they fit in and start with the eggs and see what a wide notice that i missed before. what i noticed was that the eggs were probably what the woman hide have that day. i noticed the waves and i noticed the shakiness of the canoe and i noticed that she couldn't see an outcome to this story anymore

than i could. all she could knows the details of what that they brought her and the enormous risk she faced and to decide to take one step and another anyway. she made me see in a way i had not before. the two exit slavery was to go up against heart power with absolutely no assurance of success. tillich threats in the face and have no idea what happened. and to do it anyway. that's what it felt like to leave slavery. the first part of the book, "troubled "troubled refuge" tries to tell that story. the story of leaving slavery, of exiting the state of being on by another person and doing it in these places called contraband camps. i want to emphasize what that woman help me see. everybody's experience of emancipation began in the particular details of

exactly where they were. so start with a paragraph or two from the first contraband camp at fort monro in virginia. as the story goes, "comfort at the tip of the peninsula, about midway down the atlantic coast of north america got its name from weary, grateful travelers who spent months at sea in the 17th century ship guaranteed to make any landfall look like a refuge. to judge my first appearances it's not that beautiful. it skirted by the atlantic ocean and chesapeake bay with sandy pieces and rocky outcroppings. the breeze that blows brings cool relief, the oysters that was once littered its shores added a touch of luxury. certainly compared to a disease ridden 17th century ship it must've seemed like a haven or paradise until the jurors notice

it had plenty of oysters but no water. no matter how deep they don't. in the 1860s u.s. soldiers went to drill a well. they drilled at 900 feet into the ground without finding a drop. they realize they realize the futility and gave up without intervention the refuge of fort monro was neither helpful or permanent. with the absence of friends freshwater no place can sustain life. so too was the contraband camps the first switch of took place at fort monro. as the first of many contraband camps, the camp spread wherever the union army went out the occupied. there is specific places were emancipation began for nearly half a million former slaves. contraband camps black men,

women, children sought refuge from slavery. they found it in the basic sense of escaping their owners grasp but the environments both natural and man-made they encountered their mate for "troubled refuge". when the commonwealth of virginia left the union in 1861 fort monro remained in the hands of the u.s. army and it was to that army that three enslaved men ran on may 20 third, 1861. making themselves the business of general butler. there's more to the story butler and his contraband decision in the lives of the three men that meets the eye. we'll look at both later. in chapter three if you're counting. but a brief a brief outline goes like this, shepherd, david were put to work building fortifications. when they learn that their owner the confederate plan to remove them federal saw and separate

them from their families they decided to try their luck at fort monro. the colonel sent an agent to demand the return a compliance of the slave law. butler refused on the grounds that they had used the man to build fortification that would aid to force an armed civilian against the united states. and so the rules of role conferred authority to confiscate the three slaves as contraband property. in a stroke butler use slave owners owners assistance as slaves or the legal property of the owners to release slaves and their owners grasp. he illustrated how ror could create possibilities unavailable in peacetime. the phenomenon of the civil war contraband camp was born. wherever the union army went tens of thousands of enslaved men, women, and women, and children made the way to the blue lines briefing on imaginal risks. they gambling in in stocks, heavily armed search parties, or union who might shoot. they defied their masters,.

and so they came. they found work where they could and still they aided the union army when and where they are able and they began the long journey from slavery to freedom. part one of the book tells the stories and tells the stories of the journey from slavery to freedom literally in stories. and stories of people who made that journey and contraband camps in the east wanted to establish themselves early in the war in 1861 and stay put. if you are to pitch of the camps you might think of the landscaping too. tell stories of camps in the west. camps in the west you have to think of a kaleidoscope. the army the army moved more in the west. camps sprung up in one away all throat the west. from east and west, day in and day out, men, women, and children had to build a path out of slavery into something they hoped would be

freedom. i love part one because chapters one and two because it does tell their story. and i'll tell you one of them. there's a lot and are not all happy happy but i'm going to tell you a happy one. my favorite takes place in presidents island which is an island off from the mississippi river near memphis. a woman found herself a presidents island about 1864, she's in this mass of people and doesn't recognize anybody and it's confusing and overwhelming. till suddenly she hears a voice that sounds familiar but she hasn't heard the voice in 15 years so could it be who she thinks it is? it is exactly who she thinks it is. her sister. she hasn't. she hasn't seen her sister in 15 years. her sister was sold 15 years ago sister was sold because the sisters two young boys have been sold away and the sister was

grieving and crying so hard she was thought to be no good and not fit for labor. she would not stop grieving for those boys. the woman and the sister reunited effort to minutes they couldn't speak because they're so overcome. more good news, the boys were in the camp too. those stories repeated over and over again. and some other ones that aren't quite so wonderful. the story of a woman a woman who followed sherman's army through georgia and through the carolinas made it to freedom and then collapsed on the beach and died of exhaustion, alone and by herself. each of those stories is like a little vignette on the wall of a painting. in the first several stories i try to take you to that and understand it as its own self. if we stop there, if we just told the stories would never move into this middle of figure

out what the meaning of the whole transcending some of the parts might be. chapters two and three of the book do that and come to an understanding of what the stories at up to together. and what they add up to is a story of how formally powerless and stateless people built alliances with the union army and the united states government and contraband camps. they were on even an imperfect, they did did not achieve everything that former slaves hope they would. but those alliance helped win the war, they help destroy slavery and they redefine the relationship between the individual and the national government in the united states. they redefined what citizenship meant not for themselves but for all americans. parts two and three of the book tell that story. they hinge on two insights, the first is the risk of her was

very high and remained very high throughout and after the war. as as one of the things that most surprised me. the second insights is that the civil war was a refugee crisis. the first one every enslavement, most wars make more slaves not fewer. let that sink in for a moment. were used to the fact that the civil war ended slavery, we forget how likely it was that no such thing would've happened at all, not because of any union reluctance ten slavery because that's not what wars do. they they spread slavery. they make more slaves. this one ended the institution of slavery in the united states. it is not inevitable that it would do so in the story of how it did so was more complicated

than we thought and we don't understand it until we look at what's going on between former slaves in the union army. in chapter 33 tells that story. the second insight, emancipation was a refugee crisis it helps us to see and understand things more clearly. one is conditions, what conditions were like what in the refugees camps. for many people people who exited slavery and the closest thing we have got our refugee camps today. they're not places and if you would would want to be. today we have a red cross in a un and there were no such things in the 18 sixties. so understanding emancipation as a refugee crisis really lends texture to the story of what it was like. understanding emancipation as a refugee crisis reminds us that we have encountered refugee crisis in u.s. history before. we have not always done

everything right but they are part of the american story and central to who we are. and there, i think understanding emancipation as a refugee crisis helps us see the statelessness of the emancipated at the moment of their emancipation. because that is to be uniquely vulnerable. people who started world war ii tell me that the refugees who are most fumbles where the refugees without passports because you do not have the protection of a national government. that's exactly where the slaves found themselves. at at the moment they left slavery. the things they wanted is the things everybody wants to be able to care for the people they cared about. slaveholders had the power to deny them those things. meeting 60 slaveholders did not suddenly change your mind and decide

former slaves were entitled to these things after all. but what happen as former slaves had access to a source of power that could overcome those slaveholders. that power power was the union army. so the past former slaves got themselves to the force of power and they allied with the union army. they dug ditches and did laundry. they nursed they nursed in hospital and built fortifications they took care of livestock and did what it takes to keep a 19th century army in the field and in motion. and when they did, they staked a stronger claim to the protection of the union army into the national government and the slave over to overthrow the national government. they change citizenship in at least three ways. first before the war it was states and not the national government that adjudicated citizenship in the war change the partly because of what happened in the camps.

second citizenship of the war was no longer limited by race and that happened because of what went on in civil war contraband camps. and finally, as a result of the civil war citizenship involved rights protection in a way way it had not before the war. and that happened partly because it what went on in some contraband camps. so part two of the book tells the story of former slaves ending the war and redefining citizenship. it sounds like the end, right? well there's three parts to this book, that's not the end. it's not the end because as it turns out neither ending slavery nor redefining citizenship to be a once and for all kinds of task. part three of the book is about early efforts to translate that worktime alliance between between former slaves in the union army national government into peacetime alliance. that translation effort resulted

in the 14th amendment which is also imperfect. let's end with a couple of thoughts on what it is that i hope this book will achieve. i would like it to lead to a deeper understanding of what it was like to exit slavery. to go from being a slave to not being a slave. i like to make it impossible to ignore how great the threat every enslavement was and how long that risk lasted. i like its lead to an understanding of how former slaves and that includes women and children both of whom work for the union army, how they helped win the war and in slavery, but also redefine citizenship for everybody and not just themselves. i would like it if this book could lend appreciation for the success and failure bound up in

all of those things. none of those things, the ending of slavery the winning of the war, redefining of, redefining of citizenship, none of them was wholly triumphant. sometimes structural forces are just a huge, overpowering destruction of war and sometimes evil people just plain one out. the abolition of slavery was one of the most revolutionary things ever to happen in the united states but it was fragile and reversible. our job is not to celebrate it with triumph is a or scolded for shortcomings, our job is to protect it because it remains fragile even today. finally i would like this book to appreciate the definition of citizenship as an ongoing project. sometime the borders expands and sometimes they shrink. that's true in every era. including our own. so defining citizenship and giving it meaning in people's

lives was not just a job at people who live through the war, it is our job to come every day. thank you. [applause] i would love to take questions. >> i am curious how much of any direction union field commanders had about dealing with these situations, or were they winging it? >> that's a long and complicated story which that's a story in chapter three and four. was there direction? yes. was a clear and straightforward? no. the direction comes almost immediately but then is added on a piecemeal fashion as the war

unfolds. they make the contraband decision in may of 1961. the war department endorses the decision and says yes you do the right thing. other commanders you thing. other commanders you should do the same thing. you shouldn't send slaves back. but then in august 8 they explain that endorsement with instruction from the war department. have to parts. to parts. one says soldiers do not send slaves back. but it also said soldiers do not entice slaves to come into camps in the first place and the reason is because slavery should be adjudicated by civil and not military authority. so who is and is not a slave, that should be the decision of civil authorities not military officers. one of the concerns central to the war that we missed his real fears about what the relationship between civil military should be an once the

august 8 borders come out you have commanders see in either part a, or part be. they either focus focus on don't send them back or you have other commanders who focus on part b, don't entice them in the first place and they do their best to keep them out. if you are in the middle of tennessee and arkansas trying to run you have no idea which guy you're going to get. so the risk to you is acute throughout the war. and then the main orders came down august 8 and they were ambiguous. >> you mention that it's unusual to have three amendments to the constitution pass so quickly. did the former confederate states vote on the was that just the northern states? >> that's a complicated history as well. the 13th amendment is passed before states are back in the union, before federal states are back in the union. ratification becomes a condition

for entering the union. if you want back in you have to ratify and then the 14th and the 15th, this is not exactly the same but it's similar. so those are in fact ratified by most of the confederate states, some holdout and don't for much longer. but they ratified under distress. >> after it ended in the political argument for the amendment started, how is the story of the contraband camps, how does it impact the argument in the debate? to feel commanders in someway argue for the mmn or something

like that? >> the army is absolutely behind the 13th and 14th amendment. the 15th amendment soldiers have gone home so it's harder to get their voices in aggregate. there behind the 13th and 14th, and the reason is twofold. one, by being in the state with the confederacy they become convinced that slavery started this were the first place so if you want to win this war and keep it one you have got to get ripped that thing out and make sure it can never come back again and you need the strongest tool you have to do it and that's a constitutional amendment. same with the 14th. even after the passage of the 13th amendment the the threat and risk of if not the institution of a legal slave really conditions like it remain strong. part of the 14th

amendment is securing the 13th amendment. it's harder to re-enslave someone who is a citizen. the other. the other thing the 14 the momentous and the 15th do, they help the republican party, the party of lincoln and the union have a constituency in the former confederate states. a former slave are part politically of their voting than the hope is that you be able to build the republican party in the states of the south. >> your first book was about soldiers and camps. this is about contraband camps. how did you get from the first topic to the second and if i'm not asking too much, what much, what might be next in your mind? >> it's much easier for me to see in retrospect the

relationship between the two books then it is at the time but not seems obvious. it was what things look like in 1865 in the years following the world. the quickness of those three amendments are much more fluid and political climate, then anyone would've thought was coming in 1861. i wanted to know how did we get from that to the 1890s and the early party of the 20th century, what happened in the interim. what happened in the decade after the war so that's the first question i began with but i quickly discovered i did not enough to answer that question. so i had to go back and look where did freedom really began in that for me back and camps and was soldiers. so i find some of the same guys i saw the first time i now see again but i'm looking at them from another angle which is a fascinating experience.

so that's a fit between book one in book two. what's next, i don't know. i was talking to people over the weekend at the conference and i said i want to write an essay about not having a book to write. so many people said you should i would totally read it and it would be an essay about living in suspense about without acute clerestory line. and writing this book gave me an appreciation for those moments of in between. if i could write anything i probably right about baseball because i need a break. but even that i don't know i don't know what i would say right now.

>> can you talk about what happened to the former slaves that fled to the contraband camps after the war was over and what happens physically to those camps. did they go back to where they came, did they stay put? how welcoming was the community that surrounded them? >> that buries. initially what i wanted to do was go a full decade after the war and follow where people went. and i ran out of steam but also the story of the war itself was so much more to it than i thought that they big came to separate stories for me. but what happens to them. some of the camps stated he would recognize them now as for example arlington nationals cemetery. friedman's village on the estate of robert e lee. was a contraband was a contraband camp during the civil war. it was the inhabitants of friedman's village that first dug the grave that became arlington cemetery. if you go to arlington today it's a moving place for lots of reasons.

one particular is that in section 37 there's row after row of graves that says on it, citizen. citizen. those are freed people from freeman's village who died and were buried in arlington cemetery. so that stays almost to the turn of the 20th century. others in urban areas become neighborhoods and they say african-american neighborhoods for decades after the war. but there are plenty of camps that once the union is gone it becomes less 70 just in terms of protection to have former slaves in one place at one time particularly after confederate soldiers come home. there's a some of it happened as people leave, they hit the road

and try to find the left once ones i haven't seen in 20 years. some of the things you know army supplies are gathered for the army and not theirs and so some are left to their own devices. so so the story of what happens after's justice as any other part of the story. some do go north. in the summer of 1862 in particular ulysses s grant gets the idea that there is a labor shortage on northern farms. have northern farms. have a bunch of people here that could use something to do and i have a war to fights and they make me so bondable because there are other things i could

be attacked on size government expense he organizes the transportation of former slaves and camps along the mississippi river into the states of the midwest. he did this with lincoln's blessing weeks before the midterm election of 1862 which is one of the politically astute things lincoln never did. and you know how the election of 1862 web two when but the election of 1862 in the state to which these former slaves were sent to not go well for the republican party. there sent to indiana and illinois and voters may have thought getting reverend slavery i'm for that but i don't want that in my state. but rather rather than the government to chaplains were doing it so it they would send former slaves to their own churches and communities so that went better. but it remained uneven at best. >> i have a question about your sources. so how did you find these

stories? were they written where did you find the story about the eggs and. >> i could talk about this all day but i'll try not to. the sources are super question because the first book i wrote was about union and confederate and stories are easy and sources are easy. but the people i'm interested in this time are not sending mail. they don't write. most of them don't read. so finding the so finding the stories was a different process and one of the beauties about the army and the federal government is that they wrote everything down. so using war and government records in ways that they never envision are intended opens up

ideas of the world they lived inches one, or quartermaster records. they're records. they're in charge of logistics and camp. so that corner master records will list things like how many rations are coming into and going out of a particular camp. if there is a sudden jump all at once and no soldiers moved, i know what happened. i know people just came. records of who is on ships going up and down the mississippi river, same thing. so we can track people through pieces like that. there are some ledgers in the national archives listing the names of people who are contact us who work for the government and for the union army and i can find those names. sometimes i can trace those names back to the prewar records and find people that way. my very favorite source of evidence are transcripts. former slaves testified in the

martial law courts wherever the union army was. one big difference between martial law and civil laws that the testimony of african-americans was accepted in the courts for good reason. the provost marshals marshals want the union to win. so there transcription of testimony are fantastic. there's also the american friedman's inquiry commission. it was authorized by the secretary of war in congress and it was people traveling to can't contraband camps and report on conditions there. and they did that by interviewing people. soldiers and generals, but also former slaves. so those are fantastic. are fantastic. thousands of pages handwritten on microfilm. that's where the eggs come from.

as a lot of missionaries the people go to their churches and right back with a c and who they encounter and what they're doing. there's some former slaves who can read and write. susie taylor is born a slave in georgia and she makes her way to camp and writes her life story later. and pension records after the war. when black men joined the union army in the later years they're entitled to a pension or if they data soar their survivors. normally you you would have to produce a first certificate or marriage certificate but people who were enslaved at the time a marriage or don't have those things. so what they do is their right what they do during the worst that's another record. you have to read between but that's mostly where he found them. >> , minister, so i'm interested

to what you have to say about religion. the religion, say say more about that. >> the first thing i should say is that you'll believe delighted to another hsiung woman by the name of abby cooper who is writing a book about religion and contraband camp. i don't know where she is in the process but you should look for her book when it comes out. religion is in this book obvious and not obvious places. union soldiers are quite fascinated with a question of former slaves and religion. they're fascinated about the ways former slaves practice but also the fascinated dilemmas will get this out of the way. they're fascinated but what they see is a gap between former slaves is a fervency and a lack

particularly family relationships, habits and things like those, is not unseemly amount of commentary about how their habits and all that of inflamed women. the ways ways in there so much as soldiers and ministers they can't figure how people who are so sincerely religious seem not to take those adultery commandment so seriously. there's not a great deal of recognition about conditions under slavery would make the standards to which white, middle-class people could hold themselves unreasonable. there's not a lot of that commentary so that the unseemly side of the religion question. but also that soldiers and people come from northern churches in the association i really struck by expression. i think we we should be struck by

two are stories of religion, we know that most are many slaves are christian but i think we have visions of their christianity was circumscribed by owners and white people but what kinda lost about not been able to gather. i'm not sure we recognize the degree of truly unique religious form of expression that does come out in these camps. in south carolina and probably elsewhere, women at the age of 15 they become real leaders among the religious communities. if you want to get anywhere with the community you have to figure out who is seen as the spiritual leader among the women and that's how you get anywhere. there's a woman from massachusetts and she comes down to the school and the free

people want to school but the not so sure about this harriet. so she figures out that ants peggy is the leader of the purse circle and if she can get her at her side the school will be fine. so she befriends her and wants and peggy makes her mind up everybody comes to the school. so there's really an autonomous within the community among former slaves and finally i think it takes a great deal of faith to do it these people did, to put your kids in a canoe and got the coast. you have to believe in something you can't see in order to do

that. one woman puts her finger on it. union soldiers asked her, you were told these terrible stories about what happened to you if you came to us. why did you do it anyway? and her answer was because i knew you couldn't take me anywhere that jesus wasn't. and i don't think we can understand the fight of so many of them without appreciation for that force. >> anybody else? >> have a question about the amendment. you said the 13th amendment was passed by the states that remained in the union, but didn't the union government not really recognize was a just convenient to ask the northern states to ratify? >> the understanding is that it's illegal you can't up a so is murder and murder happens anyway. so once the wars over and confederates are out for a while then congress can pass the amendment and it does. it passes early. but to get back into the union a condition of being readmitted

and by that i mean representation in congress. i mean civil rather than military authority. in order for that to happen states were required to ratified the 13th amendment. there is argument about whether they're in a territorial stage or not. they're they're not outside the united states, but there treated as territories under in the time immediately following the war before they are readmitted back into the union. they are part of the united states and as soon as they can show us they're capable of state government that is loyal to the united states they can come back inches and they show us their loyal by ratifying the amendment. asked about the

timing of the three amendments coming said the 14th was set up secure some to cure some of the problems of the 13th. so that sort of answers the question of why they weren't done together. how was the last one. >> the the 15th was taking care problems with 14th. the 14th a memo doesn't include a provision for voting. because citizenship is an ongoing process, we think citizenship means voting but those were two different things for most of u.s. history up till that point. the 14th amendment doesn't automatically include the right to vote. after the amendment the amendment they hoped it would lead to the right to vote the voting had been a state matter. so there is a tricky mechanism in the 14th amendment that the framers hoped would encourage states to extend the franchise to black men on their own accord and make it happen at the state level and at the national level. what that was was representation within congress was a function

not of strata population but a voting population. the hope was that georgia would want more representatives in congress of the way to get him is in franchise your population. 50% of your population in georgia. and georgia decided not to. so once it's clear that confederate states will forgo representation mother there and pass but coverage of their own a cord that's on the 15th amendment is passed. the other thing it does is give them a constituency. >> so slaves were counted as three fifths of a person but once there were no longer slaves the southern states must've lost that representation. >> they were never you're talking about three fifths of a compromise. representation in congress is a function of all the white

population and then three fifths of the black population. what what that did was give southern states massive overrepresentation congress. the interest of slaves are not represented. so that's going out once the war happen. overrepresentation is part of they think of the first place. if you you want representation in congress you have to show us that the interest of everybody and former slaves are represented in congress and you do that by in franchising blacks. so representation with the 14th amendment when states don't enfranchise black voters but the 15th amendment is backed up because everybody because everybody counts for voting purposes.

thank you very much, all of you. [applause] >> thank you to chandra for being here, and remind you that books are available at the register at our 20% off today. thank you for being here. . . [inaudible] [inaudible] >> on book tv, georgetown university philosophy professor jay separate and weighs in on the plaza and democratic systems. on afterwards jonathan zimmerman argues free speech is threatened on college campuses. and we bring you the 37th annual american book awards. also this weekend, pulitzer

prize winning journalist thomas friedman on how technology and globalization are accelerating our lives. we discuss the contentious relationship between president truman and general macarthur. and we visit literary sites and talk to local authors in scottsdale arizona. that is just a few of the programs you'll see this weekend. for complete television schedule, book tv.org. book two b, 48 hours of nonfiction books 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. >> and marlene trestman, you're the author of "fair labor lawyer"'s, tell me about the book. >> bessie was born in a jewish orphanage in new orleans that states her life profoundly was social justice values. i like to say that before there

was a notorious rpg as justice ginsburg is affectionately known, there is not dacia's bessie margolin. we are her essentially the fair labor standards act and the equal pay act. she champion those laws in her 30 years as an associate solicitor at the labor department and she was a mentor to me. >> what were some of the significant cases she was involved in as well as the fair labor act? >> all of her time for the labor department was spent on the fair labor standards act. so is really the body of work that cause chief justice earl warren to say that she had put the flash on the bare bones of the fair labor standards act and without her work the bare-bones would've been wholly inadequate. her most perhaps significant case, standing alone, was the first pace which established the

rule that still exist today that jobs need only be substantially equal and not identical to warranty equal pay. and that is a standard that we adhere to today. >> in your research did you go into her personal life at all. >> i did and it was a big decision for me to do that. she was so jealously guarded about her personal life. but i was encourage by gender historians to tell the life of a pioneering, trailblazing woman i needed to do so. when i did i found perhaps not surprisingly that she had affairs with people who had not interfere with her trailblazing career and it led to her being

the subject of both fbi and congressional investigation. you could say her penchant for passion may have cost her a federal judgeship. but i think it's important for people to know today the choices that an ambitious career woman of the 1930s had to make in the choices she made to pursue her career. >> to think that because of the climate that it's a little difficult to interview or do research on a woman versus a man in history? >> that's a good question. to put it this way, bessie was already deceased when i started the research which in some ways freed me to dig deeper than perhaps i could've if she were alive. the thing that makes it harder to do research about a woman is that there are fewer pieces of documentation she had never been asked to do an oral history, although all of her counterparts have been well documented. she never kept a journal or diary, perhaps for fear that it could be used against her. i think that's a particular a particular challenge for people writing about women that is not

often the case with men. >> so how are you able to do your research? >> it took a lot of digging. not only was her nephew generous in allowing me use of her papers to the extent they existed, but i found essentially her needle and famous people's haystack. haystack. because she kept elite company, i could actually find in the miscellaneous correspondence file, a a lot to put pieces together. she also kept one very bundle of letters and photographs, many of which had the return addresses ripped off, but i compared handwriting to figure out who she was writing to and who is writing to her. so it was investigation and a

lot of making sure that i kept it to a high level of certainty. >> you mention she was your mentor, what is your background? >> it wasn't in a professional setting. she grew setting. she grew up in the jewish orphans home in new orleans. close to 1946 but i too was an orphan and became award of the same agency that had cared for her. when i graduated from the same high school that she went to 50 years later my high school guidance counselor introduced us. so i got to know her through my years in college, law, law school and into my own legal career career for the state of maryland. i think she sawn me a little bit of herself, that little girl from new orleans. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. this brought to today brought you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> from 2012 author steve author steve cole reports on exxon

mobil's influence in foreign affairs. we bring you the program in light of trump's recent nomination of exxon mobil chairman and ceo rex tillotson to be secretary of state. >> hello. thank you for joining us at afterwards today and congratulations on your achievement. i really enjoyed the book. it read like a novel. it read like nonfiction and places which i'm sure you have encountered some of that feeling as well. i know as a reporter who dealt with exxon mobil a good chunk of her career, how difficult it was to probe this company. let's start there. why exxon mobil? how did you come to the subject? why this company and