[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everyone. i'm stephanie from jackson state

university from the division of grad answer the question studies, college of liberal arts and the department of english, foreign languages and speech communication, and i want to welcome you here today. we're so glad that you decided to choose this panel. we want to thank our sponsors for this southern history panel. our sponsors are the mississippi state university and the university of southern mississippi school of humanities, and the center for the study of the gulf south. i'd like to ask you to silence your phones so we won't have any interruptions. i also like to ask you, feel free to take pictures during the panel and also if you're on facebook or you do twitter, i'd like to also ask you to please use the hag hash tag for thundershower histories, #literary lawn party or #ms book

fifth, literary lawn party or ms bookfest. and i also want to remind you that promptly after the panel we have to move out of the room so we can move in the audience nor next panel, so, again, thank you for being here. at this time i am very happy to ask dr. rebecca tourry from the usm school of humanity and center for the study of the gulf south to please come and join us on the dyas as she will introduce our moderator for this panel. [applause] >> thank you, dr. mcdaniel for your introduction. greetings, thank you all for attending this panel on southern history this afternoon and thank you also to those whoa might be tuning in via c-span. i'm assistant professor of history at the university of southern mississippi and a representative of two of this panel's organizational sponsors.

usm school of humanity and center for the study of the gulf south. southern school of the humanity is accompliced of 65 fantastic faculty members in english, history, philosophy and religion, many of whom are scholars of southern history and literature. likewise, southern mississippi -- center for theside of the gulf ought is them to ten historians in slavery, an thrix civil war era, and civil rights. the centers faculty benefit from the strong archival collections at the university, including those at mccain library and archives and our renowned center for oral history and cultural heritage which houses over 4,000 interviews. as many of us in both the school of the humanities and the center for the studies studies of gulf south examine race, incarceration, crime, justice, and identitity in the south wore proud to sponsor this panel.

while dr. daphne chamberlain with introduce panelist i have the privilege of introduce her as moderator, she is a nate tv of columbus, mississippi, and received her ba from and masters in ph.d from the university of mississippi. and in 2010 she was named the first research fellow for the fanny lieu hamer national institute or citizenship and democracy, two years later she became the founding director of the council of federated organizations or cofo, civil rights education center at jackson state university. and in 2013, dr. chamberlain returned to her alma mater where she is an acity is stand professor of history, dean of the division of social sciences, and coordinator of civil rights and social justice initiatives. she is also currently completing a book manuscript on children's role in the mississippi civil rights movement. welcome, dr. chamberlain.

[applause] once again, on ball of southern center for the study of the gulf south and school of the humanities i want to thank you for the honor of sponsoring this informative compelling panel. thank you. >> good afternoon. thank you, rebecca, for that introduction. rebecca and i belong to a very special club that many of you are probably a part of as well, we are scholars, we're mothers, and that's probably the best part of that club so we have to juggle our schedules to make sure our hiss are well equipped with toys and books, prepared bottles and lots of hugs and kisses for the husband and those children. so it is my pleasure to be here. again, i am daphne chamberlain, and i would like to thank the coordinators of the festival for allowing me to serve as moderator for the southern history panel.

i would like to also welcome each of you to 2018 mississippi book festival. so without further adieu i will introduce our panelists. one of mississippi's several literary giants william falkner expressed that to understand the world you must understand a place like mississippi and such a profound statement can even translate into the region in which we live, so perhaps we can say that to understand the world you must first understand the place like the american south. our panelists for the afternoon have produced powerful written works that offary broad and provocative look at how race, culture, economic and criminal injustice have affected the south from the 19th century to the present. our panelists include, tucker carrington, lisa corrie began, jean daddle and tk thorn. according to published weekly, the country dentist is a, quote,

clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the u.s. criminal justice system. this emmentally readable book builds a hard to ignore case for comprehend see form. coauthors tucker carrington is a associate dean for clinical programs and an assistant professor of law at the university of mississippi school of law. he is also the founding director of the mississippi project and clinic which has a mission toy identify and investigate and litigate actual claims of innocence in mississippi's prison system as well as advocate for systemic criminal justice reform. under the direction of professor carrington, the work of the mississippi innocence project has garnered attention from "the new york times," "the wall street journal," and the "huffington post" to name a few. please welcome, tucker carrington. [applause] >> our next panelist is dr. lesion a corrie began the author of prison power, how

prison influenced the movement from black liberation. she is an associate professor of communications, director of the gender study program and also an affiliate faculty member in african and african-american studies and latin american studies programs at the university of ark. her first book won the national communication associations 2017 diamond anniversary book award and the association's 2017 african-american communications and culture division outstanding book award. professor core began is more than a school. she is an activist and has committed her life's work to sad he indicating for marine layerizeeyed and underarrest end group shed regularly leads political trainings and workshops in arkansas and nationally. she also co-hosts a podcast, lean back, with laura waterhouse, which centers around critical feminist conversations and with name by pace magazine

as one of the top 35 podcasts in the nation. she is currently working on he second book "black feelings" please welcome lisa corrie began. >> our next panellest. >> reckoning with race, america's failure, saying it is, quote, compelling accountant of both racial history and race today, and should be required reading in the classroom and in incorporated in public dialogue. in its provocative work, jean daddle sayres that race problems not just a southern issue. they're an american issue. mr. daddle who published two memoir articles chronicling his families' jewish immigration story to the mississippi delta, grew up in ruralville, mississippi. lived and worked overseas for 15ers in in london, hong kong and tokyo and in addition to

wreck nonning with race, he is the air of the cotton and race and hi making ofs her and the son that never -- he sun that never rose. es a consultant for mississippi civil rights newman and the new york historical society. welcome gene daddle. [applause] >> last and certain he not least, we have tk thorn. writer, humanist, dog mom, servant, cat slave, lover of so manyitude and the company of good friends, new places new york ideas and old wisdom. t. college thorn is a retired birmingham police captain who writes from mountaintop home near birmingham, alabama. knows that's telling stories have been part of hero live since child and the women in her life and her family have applied an integral roll in her passion for reading and writing. last chance for justice, how

relentless investigators uncovered a new evidence convict thing bermingham chump bomber is her first nonfiction book feets on the new york post become you should be reading list. she is the author of two award winning historical novels. please welcome, t.k. thorn. [applause] >> now each of the works written by today's panelists has a way of being in conversation with one another. offering historical context to how we understand race in america, how we understand collective organizing for black freedom, and even how we understand the american judicial system, particularly in the south, and the need to reform systems that are deemed unjust. so at this time i will begin with a few discussion prompts for our authors before opening the floor to the audience for

questions. so, gene, this first prompt is for you. in september 2017, a:almost you wrote which was published in the clarion ledger, you made such a profound statement that, quote: both it woulds and blacks have viewed the south as the exclusive and durable scapegoat of america's racial ordeal. i will repeat that again. for the audience. he wrote: both whites whites and blacks have views the south as the exclusive and durable scapegoat in america's racial ordeal. if you would, please discuss the historical roots of racial attitude in the north and how they have impacted the south. >> thank you, dr. chamberlain. i wanted to talk about a topic which is either ignored or underappreciated, and that is the impact of race in the north on southern history, and it

leads to the -- what we have today in terms of results and consequences, and my journey in terms of research and personal experience has led know that. i have lived in the north or over seas for a long time, and the issue will start will in terms of the antebellum north. how did it impact reconstruction and how did it impact where we are today? first of all, it was exclusionary. if you look at the states in the north, the first thing that we need to know there's not been a clear distinction and they're should be, between what white northerners thought but slavery and what they thought about free blacks, and let's go to three states. illinois, ohio, and indiana. all of whom had exclusion laid. did nod want blacks there. they were actually enforced. in oregon, 1857, the constitution

was written and it had a black exclusion law. there were 52,000 people living in oregon at the time, 100 fee blacks. they wanted those free blacks out of there. so what we have is an antiblack attitude even though you could be antislavery. let's look at connecticut, for example. 1800, there was a survey done in connecticut and article 26 of that stated the following: was the person born enslaves or born free different in terms of industry and morals? and the results came back and they were scathing. timothy dwight, the president of yale, wrote that they could not make their freedom a blessing, that they had no understanding of morals or industry, and that the majority of whom would end up as in poverty or in vice. within a few years, connecticut

had established a colonization society to rid itself of the black population which was 2% at the time, and also it disenfranchised before that blacks were able to vote. after that, they disenfranchised 2% of the population. why would you even care about this? well, this was a foreshadowed would would happen in america if you can't intel greg and assimilate 2% of the population what's going to happen late center let's look at massachusetts. during the civil war in 1862, there refugees. the question is that would do with them general john texas wanted them sent to massachusetts. this governor of massachusetts, john andrews, said we don't want

them. they'll 'onas paupers. william henry sowards, lincoln's right hand, south that black people were not assimilatable. he was giving out pardons after the civil war to con confederate officers. so we arrive at them end of the civil war, february, 1865, "the new york times," we must get cotton back interest production. that means black labor, and white ingenuity it and continued saying that black person must live side-by-side for centuries with the white person being elevated a few of whom will rise to the level of equality. so that's what we end up with in terms of the attitudes in the north. so how could we expect the reconstruction to be anything but a failure? not even as dubai said, a splen dead failure way. as failure. there are troop withdrawals.

the second thing was how do we deal with the 14th and he 15th amendment? george aboutwell, rat cal, republic -- radical republican frommen in abolitionist massachusetts said we need to give blacks rights because then they won't come north. so there was the enormous fear in the white north there would be a migration of blacks north and even used the worded anden si. so the -- expediency so the rate was extraordinary. there was a containment policy of keeping blacks in south after the civil bar and man nested in numbers between 1865 and 1914, the black population of the white north -- of the north, stayed at 2%. now, how did this happen when 18 million white immigrants came into this country? what would have hand had the

north been racially tolerant. it would have three -have been an economic event. when you create a labor shortage, what happens is is white southerners would have had to acquiesce to some form of black economic civil and economic rights. when did the containment policy end? another economic event. and that was world war i. at that point what happens during a war? industry booms, unemployment goes to nothing, one and a half percent, and there is no white immigration. so, what propelled in the catalyst for the black migration was an economic event, which was world war i. what happened immediately after world war i? race riots throughout the north. the big one was in chicago. in july of 1919. scores of people were killed. and the trigger for this was a

black kid named eugene williams, swam into the white part of lake michigan and was stoned to death. so scores of people were killed. and there is a direct and unambiguous line between the violence today in chicago and what happened in 1919. so, what i think -- this failure of reconstruction which is really, really important in terms of transition from slavery to freedom, did not occur, and what happened in the next 100 years, before the civil rights movement in the 1960s, was a hardening of racial more rays inch north you have race riots and get to thed. the -- be toes in the south you had overt legal segregation and violence. that that is the context within which the civil rights

legislation was enacted and only -- that would be the difficult part in terms of the situation that we live in today. so, what i wanted to say, this is not included in most courses. when you ask a professor, either in college or a teacher in high school, and they say, we know this, then you ask them what the their sill husband looks like they go -- syllabus looks like and it's blank and then you ask the reads list. that's neats to be brought forward in terms of american history and its impact on southern history. the next thing want to talk is to something i'm very interested in which is heritage, and, again, what is going on in terms of memorialization and heritage of the north. virtually everything has a positive spin, let's go back to

the chicago race riots of not 1919. how is memorialized in chicago? so, what i found was that there was a rock on the shores of lake michigan with a plaque this big and donated by a high school in 2009. it is totally absent from the historical monuments in terms of the north. look in connecticut, look in massachusetts, look in ohio, look in indiana. it's not there. and that's something that bothers me. so, even the national civil rights museum is misnamed. it's a regional civil rights museum. it is not a national civil rights museum. and what is the consequences of this? terms of the north psyche? in terms of the north psyche it may be soothing for their conscience but it's not reality, and later on, i would like to talk to where we are today.

where we are today i think -- what interests me the most is economic empowerment and i think there are huge opportunities at this point for the african-american population. >> thank you, gene. my next discussion prompt will be for your, tucker. so, wrongful convictions and legal ethics have informed and influences the year you have engage inside. in the forward offer book, john grier shop writes that wrong. convince rates change from 2% to 10%. which is shocking meaning there 2.4 million people incarcerated in american prison sim. share the impact wrongful conviction has had on innocent people and how this influenced you to produce such a powerful work. >> well, thank you for the opportunity to participate. my co-author is actually in the

back. let me answer your question this way. one of the thrives been think about very recently in the context of jeff sessions department of justice and particularly its sort of most recent posture with respect to forensic science reform. i'll quickly add -- i think this is important -- that the obama doj was not much better and so one thing i want to say off the top is to the extent it's true that forensic science reform in the way it forensic science has impacted wrongful convictions -- i suppose i should pause for a second and say that for those who are not familiar with the book, the narrative arc of the book follows two wrongful convictions that occurred in

mississippi from the early 1990s and the exonerations happened in 2008 but the fundamental basis of those wrongful convictions was flawed forensic science. but one thing that interested me, i think this is the gist of the question -- is and continues to interest me particularly within the context of the current department of justice conversation around forensic science reform and wrongful convictionses is this. in the -- let me start just briefly and talk for a second about the two cases in the two cases in knocks city county, the wrongful convictions were caused in large part in one case and almost exclusively in another, on false bitemark identification. the victims in the cases were three-year-old girls and in each case, the assumed perpetrator,

brooks and brewer, were matched to the bitemarks. as it turns out, that area of expertise is utter nonsense, and it wasn't until 2008 through the post conviction dna testing that mr. brooks and mr. brewer were exonerated, and the forensic science discipline has been debunked in almost every jurisdiction in the country. hearings the part to me, today, that is interesting. in mr. brooks' case, there was an eye witness identification, and i know that at least one judge in the audience today, and he and probably many others will know that for decades, the u.s. supreme court has worked hard to come up with a structure for both administrating and admitting identification

evidence into american courtrooms. i it has to comport with the basic notions of fairness but also explicit notions of due process likewise, confessions. there have been enormous juris prudence around confessions 'how does law enforcement interview people? under what circumstances? what can they say? what can they do? how long can they hold people? and there's been -- there's a significant amount of case law around when is it proper to admit a so-called confession? and in both cases there was evidence of identification and statements from the defendants which were supposedly indicative of guilt. here's what i think this is responsive to your question. here's what i find interesting. for us. and scary at the same time. not only is the forensic science in these two cases problematic,

but in both cases, when identification testimony was admitted because it supposedly comported with fairness and due process, and likewise the statements, when the exoneration occurred, it not only does it ask to us reflect on the value and soundness of a specific forensic discipline but it also forces us to confront some very difficult questions about decades of case law surrounding the admission of eye witness identification testimony. or statements. suddenly, all the architecture, the underpinnings of the rules and case law that allowed those things to be admitted into court in my mind, ought to be seriously questioned because the eye witness identification in

the brooks case, it was the three-year-old sister who said mr. brooks did it. that was, we know, wrong. and likewise, identification -- wrongful identifications in other cases. if you understand what i'm saying, what forensics science and innocence indicates and wrongful convictions do is, one hopes, ask fun.al profound question -- fundamental profound questions, particularly as lawyers and as judges, to what extent do we need to go back and reexamine the way we've done business over the years with respect to these component parts that are critical in homicide cases, identification. confessions. and that -- i'll end my answer this way. i think for those of us particularly lawyers and judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys, it can be very

difficult to go back and ask those questions and honestly answer them because in essence, what you're being asked to do is really to be candid and honest about many of the sort of fundamental bases which you yourself may have made kissings doubt. prosecutor made me a prosecutor cases based on eye witness identification and to the extent you're being asked as a prosecutor, was that eye witness identification sound? can we still rely on the mechanisms and the sort of basis of understanding that we onced a? which now seem to be at least at the very least, up for question, based on these wrongful convictions? those are difficult. likewise for defense attorneys, whichs what i am, the advice i may have begun my clients over time about whether they should go to trial, whether shay that plead, based on what i

understood to be the factors of admissibility in disciplines that may no longer hold water the way i thought they did. those are -- can be very question difficult question and they are both examples of courts and jurisdictions and lawyers around the country who, by virtue of wrongful convictions, have honestly confronted the questions and then you'll know the second part of my comment there are jurisdictions, courts, lawyers, prosecutors and defense attorneys and the jeff sessions doj who in my view, have not honestly reckoned with what the fallout from wrongful convictions can be. thank you tucker. powerful piece for me as professor. i'll see if we can push attorney timothy howard and our prelaw society to make sure that's a reading for. the. thank you. lisa, this next prompt is for

you. there are ongoing conversations about mass incarceration as it exists in he 21st century, but in your book, you offer this clear articulation of how imprisonment and detainment were central to the black tribulation movement and black power movement of the 1960s and ' 0s those who aresive rights scholars we look at the strategy of -- filling the jails. what you haven't create aid compelling thesis, would you please share with the audience examples in your book of how activists use imprisonment as a political tool for liberation. >> thank you for the init addition to be here, prison power is really about the languages and strategies that were developed both in the county jail in the south in the early part for movement after background v. board and actions like albany, birmingham, during the freedom rise.

...

and the war on drugs and while certainly three strikes laws and minimums have been really terrible for communities of color, i think a strong historical argument looks at the johnson administration and the way in which protests became crime in both the policies of democratic administrations and later conservative administrations as a way of using the department of justice to undercut civil rights activism. so i look at the memoirs and writings produced from southern jails and northern penitentiaries as black activists really started to grapple with what prison meant in their communities and what it meant to be in prison both for the folks who were inside and their families and community members outside. i'm very interested in the way black activists started thinking about new ways to describe the

prison as the fundamental barrier to equality in the united states and especially the way that they started thinking about all prisoners as fundamentally politicized, primarily because the bulk of black prisoners are still there for property crimes, and so the way in which black activists talked about their politicization both in the prison and as, you know, political agents outside of it, is i think a fundamental feature that is understudied so prison power talks about how the prison has been a central space for interrogating the politics of what i call un-freedom in america, particularly as it pertape pertains to black america, particularly black men. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> last but not least, many of us in the audience understand that the 1963 16th street

baptist street church bombing was a watershed moment for the civil rights era in birmingham, alabama and also a watershed moment for the national civil rights movement, one that demonstrated that children were not exempt from the violence during those turbulent years. but it even illustrated that justice could and would be served even if it was 32 years later. so t.k., if you would, please share what influenced your decision to write "last chance for justice" which you gave something very interesting about your mother's involvement in the 1955 montgomery bus boycott. perhaps that is one of the reaso reasons, so if you would share that with the audience. >> thank you. and thank you for inviting me here. as was mentioned, my career is not in academia. i was a police officer with the

birmingham police department for 20 plus years. most people when they meet me, they say gee, you don't look like a policeman. to which i respond thank you. my background, i will kind of circle around back to that, if you don't mind. the reason i wrote this book was not because i had any kind of epiphany about it, but i was at an event in 2004 where all the players in that trial, the families, the prosecutors and the investigators, were there and it was a rather large room and i was looking down from the very top row listening to the investigators talk about this fascinating story behind how justice was brought in this case, and if you remember, it

was, you know, almost 40 years it took to bring justice in this case. and i realized that i knew one of the primary investigators, that he had been a birmingham policeman with me. we had ridden in patrol car together and worked vice and narcotics together, and so i went up to him afterwards and said ben, i can't believe this story and i can't believe you were doing that and how come i didn't know. and he said oh, because we lied about it. we told everyone we were on an investigation with the feds of an auto theft ring. so for five years, he had gone to the fbi to investigate this case and i said well, somebody's got to write that. this is a story that needs to be told. to make a long story short, i was that somebody.

in writing this, i think the important thing that hit me about what was the 16th street bombing, if you recall occurred in the fall of 1963, it was -- school was back in session after the children's marches in the park, the dogs and hoses in birmingham, the confrontation with the police commissioner, eugene "bull" connor and school had started, and integration had started. it was a token integration, but it was that. and one night, four klansmen drove a car around the back of the church, stopped the car and got out and put a bag full of

dynamite next to the church wall, and that next morning, it exploded and four young girls who were in the ladies' lounge were killed. the fifth one survived, but she was blinded in one eye and covered in burns. as you said, this was a watershed event for civil rights. it shook everyone. it shook the city. it shook the police department. it shook the black community. and it shook the world. and the result of this, i think it was a cumulative type of thing. the children's marches kind of caught the nation's attention, but in the end, no one was injured there, thankfully, but

four girls were killed over this issue. it woke up the country, it woke up our congress, and i think as a direct result, the 1964 civil rights act was passed. the importance of that, if you look at history, up to this time, beginning at least in 1954 with brown versus the board of education, the courts were pushing integration, but it required going to federal court over every single issue of discrimination or not allowing schools to be integrated. it was slow. it was laborious. who was going to fund the court cases, the naacp was funding

some of those early court cases until alabama attorney general kicked them out of the state as being foreign agents. so it was a very, very slow proce process. witness 1963, alabama's just now starting to integrate after nine years of it being a supreme court ruling, but the civil rights act was law, which is different from a court ruling. when it's law, it means -- when it's a court ruling, it means that somebody does it and if you have unconstitutional bases, you can take it to court and sue in federal court and go through that long process. if it's the law, if you break the law, you could be arrested that day, or the next day in the

federal system. so it changed the country and i believe that the church bombing had a great deal to do with that. for me personally, i have never had a real interest in civil rights or government at all, and it really wasn't until i finished writing the book that it felt like i was coming home to my own family background, because my parents, i'm also jewish and i grew up in montgomery, alabama, and my parents were one of the very few people, white people in the community that supported the bus boycott. that's just the way i grew up and the way i thought. i didn't really realize i was carrying on any kind of tradition until i finished it and i'm really honored to have

had that privilege. >> thank you, t.k., for your powerful testimony. so we have tucker carrington, c co-author of "the cadaver king and country dentist," lisa corrigan, author of "prison power," gene dattle, author of "reckoning with race" and t.k. thorn, author of "last chance for justice." give our panelists a round of applause. [ applause ] at this time, we would like to open the floor to the audience for questions. there's a podium at the center of the room and if you would, please, step forward to be acknowledged, if you have a question. >> good afternoon. >> afternoon. >> my question is for mr. dattle. could you speak about the nefarious nature of sundown towns in the north and the

midwest and their influence on the national narrative regarding race relations and the civil rights? my premise is that it seems that our national dialogue on civil rights is exclusively focused on events that have transpired in the south, instead of what actually occurred in the nation. thank you. >> surely. the sundown towns were a black person had to leave before sundown in several midwestern towns. i don't think it really has affected the narrative the way that the urban areas were significant and let's deal with hartford, new york, chicago, milwaukee, los angeles, in terms of the ghettos that were created during and after the great migration. what you have is the school systems, particularly i can go into great detail in terms of new york, where you can't integrate the school systems

there, and they knew that in 1966. they're still trying to do it now, and they have asked for voluntary department of education in new york has asked for voluntary desegregation in the upper west side. the very liberal part of new york. the parents don't want it, et cetera. so what you've got, these are the lasting, powerful influences. hartford, connecticut, abolitionist connecticut, the senator abraham rubikoff had agreed in 1969 with john stennet that you shouldn't integrate the south unless you integrated the north. he has a book about this. 1989, hartford, connecticut, hartford, connecticut, look at these towns, detroit, hartford. they went from minuscule black populations to dominant. hartford, connecticut is 90%

black or hispanic now. there's been a desegregation suit, scheff versus o'neill there, since 1989. it's still not settled. look at what happened in detroit. 1.3% of the population in boomtown detroit afterwards, in 1910, it's 85% black at this point. so the significance is the lack of physical and economic mobility within the black community at this stage, and afterwards, i would like to talk about the availability and what's happened now in terms of the potential change for that. >> thank you. other questions? >> i happen to be the brother of gene dattle but i will not ask my brother a question. i would like to direct my question to lisa. you talk about the prison

situation and how it doesn't seem to be getting any better, it looks like, from the outside. when i was growing up in rural mississippi, there seemed to be a stigma against anyone going to prison. that seems to have broken down. could you explain to me why the stigma of guilt about going to prison is no longer there? >> so maybe -- the best place to talk about that is in birmingham, because one of the things that they found when they were invited to come to birmingham to try to desegregate it, it was actually the black business owners who didn't want to participate in any marches and they were having a terrible time getting middle class black folks who had profitable relationships with whites in the city for years and years to participate in any of the sclc direct actions. so the reason children were used is because nobody else would show up for king to march in birmingham. but it was an intentional decision. all of the direct actions around prisons in the u.s. south that

were initiated by the sclc were intentionally designed to draw new black activists into the movement. how else to get them to care about civil rights and disrupting the racial train of the south except to have their kids or their neighbor or their friends or wives or husbands imprisoned? so from albany or the freedom ride all the way through birmingham, there was a strategic incentive to bring more people into prison so that they could fundamentally understand visually, viscerally with their bodies, politically, what the prison was doing to build and maintain racial and residential segregation. it was intentionally -- they talked about it openly and a goal of jail, no bail or of being jailed together as something that would transform not just white attitudes in the south or the north, not just to fund a movement, but to bring

more black participants into the struggle. >> thank you. >> on the question that someone asked about sundown towns, there's been an excellent book written on the subject. i would make reference, i would refer you to that book. but i'm interested in hearing what you have to say on making reference to the opportunities for blacks and i'm anxious to hear what you have to say. because i'm not sure you and i are on the same page but i'm anxious to hear what you've got to say. >> surely. edgar and i have had lots of conversations about this. the opportunities available, what i see that's substantially different than anything before, it happened early in the 1960s but you are seeing massively aggressive recruitment by american corporations of african-americans at this point in time, and what you are finding is a pipeline is not enough to fill those situations.

one of the reasons is the focus, the focus, which we haven't talked about on this panel, the commercial focus that needs to take place. when you look at the georgetown study, for example, of college majors, 40% of african-american college majors are in community service related activities and in the higher-paying jobs, business, finance, s.t.e.m., even when you get to health care, health care, they are all low-paying so what concerns me is let's say income gap, not necessarily poverty, but income gap, which -- and income and wealth gap, which has actually widened in the last 30 years over various administrations. so what we are dealing with is preparation and this is one of the things that martin luther king talked about in 1964, we must prepare for competitive society. this is exactly what whitney

young jr. had recommended at exactly the same time. whitney young was head of the national urban league. so i think that given an emphasis on a commercial mindset within the black community which presupposes an educational background, which we have to address before any of these topics can be resolved, the building blocks of civil society has to take place very early on, and so i think there's a hugely different -- there is discrimination, of course, in this country. there always will be in every place. but i think the barriers are moved such that there are significant opportunities at this point. >> thank you. thank you for your question, dr. smith. are there other questions from the audience? >> my question's a little bit different. this is directed to anyone who

would like to answer it on the panel. what credence do you give to -- what do you think of attorney general herbert brownell's success in the civil rights movement? no one has talked about him yet, and i would be interested to see what any of you think as to the importance he had in the movement. >> are you talking -- i didn't hear your question specifically. what attorney general in particular are you asking about? >> herbert brownell, what he had to do with the civil rights movement. >> i mean, here's what i will say about the department of justice. i think a book needs to be written that looks at the doj and the way that the attitudes of the officials in the doj changed from brown v board forward. the lbj archives are fascinating

because they did administration interviews with all of the officials who did federal desegregation, and they are amazing. ramzi clark, for example, talks at length about being from the north and all of the guys at doj, the group in new england had never been to the south, had no friends in the south, they didn't know black people, they hadn't seen what segregation looked like geographically in the south. they certainly hadn't given any thought into how residential segregation or educational segregation changed the physical landscape of northern cities, and so the archives, presidential archives, are rich with primary source material of doj officials and the attorney generals as well as doj officials talking about how their attitudes towards race relations changed when they were forced to go down and deal with bull connor or deal with the aftermath of the bombings of the freedom riders or deal with rock barnett. they are fascinating because

thee ta they talk about racial encounters of extremely privileged white men who went to private schools together who were groomed for public service, who had the comfort of a white governmental pension job, then they were sent down to the american south to actually watch with their eyes what it looked like to disenfranchise an entire state full of sharecroppers. somebody needs to write that book. anybody? any takers? any takers? >> one of the contrasts would be coming from new england where all of the schools were effectively segregated and still are, from hartford, boston, bridgeport, new haven, new york, albany, and to give you an example of this is tracing back to reconstruction, in 1850, the black population of the state of massachusetts was 1.3%. in 1935, it was still 1.3%.

this was not mecca for black people. >> thank you. before we conclude, we have to acknowledge all of our sponsors for this afternoon's panel. if there are any representatives from mississippi state university, would you please stand? wave your hand. also, from usm. [ applause ] there is an opportunity to further engage in conversation with each of our authors so if you all would, please give our authors another round of applause. [ applause ] they have established why you should purchase your books and of course, you can find out more about what they would like for you to take away from those books, but this concludes our session on the southern history panel. thank you all for coming to this session of the 2018 mississippi

book festival. >> that was history of the south. in a few minutes, we will be live with a discussion on today's politics led by former mississippi governor haley barbour. you're watching book tv's live coverage of the fourth annual mississippi book festival.

>> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> this summer, i just finished a book that is "the triumph of william mckinley." that's why the election of 1896 still matters. it was a really, really good read because you don't realize how many issues that they dealt with then that we are still dealing with today.

of all things, one of the major issues of concern was trade. another issue besides that was currency, whether going to the silver or gold standard and the arguments that occurred and what was really wild, this was one of the first times that the big bosses weren't really controlling the local election. it was really, really good. mckinley did what was known as the porch campaign. he sat on his porch and people came to him. it isn't quite like that anymore but it was a great read. i always try to have one book with politics, one book with fiction and one -- there's a new book coming out by max cahill, "unshakeable hope." "unshakeable hope." i'm looking forward to have that. max is actually going to be doing a book signing tour in the first week of august here in d.c. at the bible museum.

looking forward to reading in the evening whenever i get that chance. that's important to me. >> book tv wants to know what you're reading. send us your summer reading list at book tv on twitter, instagram or facebook. book tv on c-span 2. television for serious readers. >> here's a look at some of the current bestselling non-fiction books according to "publishers weekly." "the russia hoax." in the book, he argues against the investigation into russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. then event planner rachel hollis offers self-help advice in "girl wash your face." after that, "liars, leakers and liberals" by jeanine pirro. in fourth, "magnolia table" a cookbook from joanna gaines followed by a collection of

monologues from greg gutfeld. some of the bestselling books continues with the donald j. trump presidential twitter library by trevor noah. in "death of a nation," dinesh d'souza provides a critical look at the democratic party. "educate "educated," and her introduction to formal education at the age of 17. and summing up, a recount of the sinking of the "uss indianapolis" one of the worst disasters in u.s. naval history. some of these authors have appeared on book tv. watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> president obama did not want

to be perceived as political, and you know, there's a lot of his own self-image there, i don't want to be out there and be accused by my foes of trying to tilt the election. >> paul ryan and mitch mcconnell weren't going to help. >> oh, no. we tell that story, too, how the president tried to come up with a bipartisan response. he thought, you know, this was an attack on the american election and you know, i don't always like the word meddling even though we use it. it was an attack. information warfare attack. he was hoping he could get paul ryan and mitch mcconnell to join together in some sort of public statement saying this was happening and these are steps the country had to take to deal with this. and we describe in the book that paul ryan was somewhat empathetic to trying to work together, and mitch mcconnell just adamant, no, this is b.s.,

this is politics. he was also boxed in, because he had his candidate. donald trump was out there saying this isn't happening or it's a hoax, or you know, this is part of rigging the election. he was doing this even after he had been briefed on august 17th, 2016, as the republican nominee. he gets an intelligence briefing and in the book, james clapper, who was then director of national intelligence, confirms to us that at that briefing, trump is told all this hacking, all this stuff has been going on, gucifer 2.0, wikileaks, it's all a russian operation. he's told this. chris christie is in the room, he was working with trump at that time. has no impact at all, not on trump, not on the campaign. they continue for weeks afterwards and even after that statement comes out in early october to say it's a hoax, they

are making this up. it's not happening. one thing we do say in the book, you know, little bit of editorializing, perhaps, or at least coming the a conclusion, is if you look at what trump is saying at this point in the campaign and onwards toward election day, in a way he's aiding and abetting, those are our words, the russian effort. we don't put this in the book, but the way i like to think of it, if you are in front of a bank and you are told there's a robbery going on in the bank, and people are walking past you and you keep saying there's no robbery here, that only can help the bank robbers. people go on about collusion. i doubt very much donald trump had a meeting with russian agents and figured out what documents to steal by hacking and to release by wikileaks, but this is kind of a cooperative arrangement at least implicit, you know, that he was helping

them by making the picture confusing. you know, if you're moscow and you're watching this, while the campaign is also reaching out to you, george papadopolous and others by means we haven't discussed yet, i don't know, if i'm putin and i'm running this operation, i'm getting the signal trump is not unhappy with us. >> i want to ask you about that now. because the country has really been quite honestly torn up for awhile now over the question of collusion. >> yeah. >> whether donald trump or his campaign associates colluded or conspired with the russians who interfered with our 2016 election. >> right. >> if somebody was going to make the case for collusion, what would it be based on what you found? >> first of all, you know, to some degree, the debate has been sort of clouded by the use of the word, because it's kind of elastic. one can define it the way you want to. i agree, we found no smoking --

we found no smoking gun evidence of, you know, there was an explicit agreement to work togeth together. i think the aiding and abetting metaphor is a better one to use. it clearly was a conspiracy to attack our election by the russians and trump and his people aided and abetted it. now, they did it in many different ways and they may not have been acting necessarily in coordination, but it is kind of strange when you take a step back and look at all the various connections that people who flocked to the trump campaign had with russians or russian cutouts. we have discussed trump and his interest in doing a business deal -- >> talking about carter page, george papadopolous --

>> paul manafort, the campaign chairman. victoria newland was assistant secretary -- in many ways, the first victim of the putin information warfare campaign. when she finds out manafort is chairman of the trump campaign, she goes manafort, he's been a russian stooge for 15 years. she knew this because manafort had been a very major presence in ukraine as the consultant to the pro-russia political party, to yanukovych, the pro-russia president of russia -- of ukraine, and collected millions of dollars for that, had as his chief assistant in kiev a guy, kilimnik, who we write about in the book, who was a known russian intelligence agent. in fact, we just learned in recent days, in the recent

filing by robert mueller, the fbi said he has ties to the russian military intelligence agency, the gru. so you have manafort. >> paul manafort ends up stiffing a russian oligarch. >> that's the new one in which we are learning even more about as days go on, but deripaska had been a business partner of a guy who was a billionaire oligarch who was as close to putin as anybody, deripaska, who also had been tagged by the fbi, blocked from entering the country, because of his suspected ties to organized crime. manafort and deripaska had a falling out. deripaska was pursuing manafort for millions of dollars. he thought he had stiffed him in the ukrainian cable deal. this is all while manafort is about to take over the campaign, he's being hounded by this putin-connected oligarch and how does putin respond? he starts e-mailing with his

trusted deputy there, kilimnik, manafort responds, maybe we can offer deripaska briefings, private briefings on the campaign. he's giving him -- he's offering him a position in the trump campaign. think about what he's offering. he's not just offering information to deripaska. he's offering information to putin. if you give information to deripaska, you have to expect or assume it's going to go elsewhere. june 14th, 2016 is the day "the washington post" reveals the dnc has been hacked and right away, you know, the news reporting is that the russians are behind it. at that point in time, any point from that point on, if you are talking about giving information to the russians, if you are meeting with the russians, if you are reaching out to the russians the way george papadopolous was, you are

working with or agreeing to help people who there's very strong evidence, it's not conclusive yet, who are attacking our campaign, our election. >> watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> i'm reading for the second time, by the way, david grant's bo book. i don't usually read books that are on the bestseller list. i like to go off into the wilderness there. but it's a great book about the sage indians from the end of the second decade to beginning of the third decade in the 20th century who were pillaged, in fact, murdered in order to get land that they owned because it

was giving up oil. and it happened at a very interesting time in american history, if you remember, because in the beginning of the '20s, 1920s, we had the famous teapot dome scandal where the secretary was giving off public lands to private developers, in fact, naval oil reserves in wyoming, and this was opening up a whole kind of thing. it was definite corruption and in this book, david points out very, very clearly in this particular instance, the indian tribe in oklahoma, there was murder, there was conspiracy and you know what, one of my favorite writers said about conspiracy in his book "the

libr libra," he wrote this, a conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. it's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. we are the floorboards, the innocence, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. conspiracy has a logic in it and a daring beyond our reach. all conspiracy are the same story of men who find coherance in some criminal act. i couldn't find a better definition of conspiracy anyplace. what we were doing is not only being prejudiced against the indians which americans have had a knack of, but also taking what was deserving of them.

they were on this land, oil was discovered, and we folks come along, the conspirators, in order to get it back and if we have to use murder to do it, we'll do it. so many of these tribespeople were killed and murdered, poisoned. doctors had to conspire, judges had to conspire, lawyers had to conspire. this was a true conspiracy and if i told you this story before this book came out, you would have said that's crazy, that couldn't have happened. by the way, this gave way to the fbi. j. edgar hoover fumbled with the conspiracy in the '20s, was trying to make sense of it. not until a texas ranger really came to help him, mr. white, and there's a story in and of itself of how he pursued it

persistently and how people were keeping quiet about it. this was a real conspiracy against an indian tribe and this book is a fantastic book. david has done a fantastic job as far as i'm concerned. the mystery of it, the historical nature of it and it's true. >> book tv wants to know what you're reading. send us your summer reading list at book tv on twitter, instagram or facebook. book tv on c-span 2. television for serious readers. >> here's a look at some authors recently featured on book tv's "after words" our weekly author interview program that includes best-selling non-fiction books and guest interviewers. former white house press secretary sean spicer reflected on his time in the trump administration. former military intelligence officer malcolm nance examines cyberwarfare and other tactics

used by russia to interfere in the united states 2016 presidential election. and d.l. hughley looked at race in america. in the coming weeks, economists will weigh in on why democracies around the world are failing to produce economic growth. former education secretary arne duncan will discuss the successes and failures of schools in america. this weekend, retired marine corps lieutenant colonel kate germano offers her opinion on bias in the military. >> what i was seeing when i was on recruiting duty the first time was a hands-off approach, like the male recruiters did not want to engage with the females because of the negative perception they felt could come out of it, that there would be some sort of inappropriate relationship. so i changed that. i made it very clear i had the same expectations for my female recruits as i had for the men and i expect for them to perform. we were able to achieve the lowest attrition rate in the history of the marine corps by having high standards, the same for men and women.

but the problem is that because the marine corps doesn't want to change what happens at that foundational level and because everything is so segregated, those stereotypes persist and the stereotypes as i mentioned earlier sort of feed into the perception that women can't, because they are women, and they are not respected. the lack of respect between men and women in the marine corps is legendary. it's the stuff that men hear all the time. you hear male recruits who happen to be slower told they are women, they are the "p" word, they should be sent to force battalion. so it becomes normal to say derogatory things about women. so that's sort of the dilemma that women have in the marine corps when they graduate from boot camp, that that is the culture they are then brought into. >> all previous "after words" are available to watch online at booktv.org.

>> starting now, former mississippi governor haley barbour moderates a conversation about national politics live from the mississippi book festival here in jackson. >> good afternoon. good afternoon. we're about to start our session. i'm stephanie mcdaniels from the division of graduate studies, college of liberal arts and

department of english, foreign languages and speech communication. i have the privilege of welcoming everyone here today. if you're looking for panels and need more information, and you have not picked up a guide, make sure you pick one up. we also want to let you know that the governor's in charge of this session so he will let me know what we're going to do and where we're going to do it. the other thing is, you may feel free to take photos any time during the session. we also invite you, if you are on twitter or facebook, to also post those. there's a hash tag for literary lawn party or #msbookfest. also, because we do have a panel at 4:00, we may also give you a chance to come up and speak with our panelists before you leave the room, but we will also be shifting our audiences so if you

are going on to another panel, we will kind of shift you out. we're not making you leave, but just reminding you we will have another panel coming up, so thank you for that. at this time, i would like to thank our sponsors for this 2:45 session "inside american politics." congressman greg harper and capital resources. congressman harper is sitting next to me. i'm very privileged at this time to ask him to introduce our distinguished moderator. >> thank you so much. i hope you have enjoyed your day here at the mississippi book festival. i hope that you will always mark down the third saturday in august. it is just, believe it or not, it's gotten better and better each year. it's a great way to spend your day. it's also a great way to find christmas gifts, new books, new authors and things of that nature. it was just a year ago we were in this room with dr. carla hayden from the library of

congress, the librarian. so to have the significance of the people that are here as panelists is very, very special. but it's my great honor today to get to introduce our former governor, haley barbour, really, truly a man who really doesn't need an introduction. everybody here knows governor barbour, who served as our governor from 2004 to 2012. but really took mississippi to a level that she had never been before, and it really goes back to something that i'm sure governor barbour never anticipated, and that was hurricane katrina. the way he handled himself, handled our state at a time of greatest crisis we had ever seen just really speaks to his character and his ability and i know he would give most of that shout-out to his wife, marcia, who was just steadfast during that time.

i also think of those of you, if you are here, you are a political junkie. we know how that works. those of you that followed ronald reagan and kept up, the last letter president reagan is known to have written was to governor barbour in 1994 after the republicans took over the house of representatives and governor barbour was then chairman of the rnc, and it was a short congratulatory letter which, when they were putting together the book of letters, they didn't have a copy of that letter and they contacted him. he actually took it out of the frame so they could include it with the letter. but we have such great standing and respect in mississippi because of our former governor. would you please help me welcome governor haley barbour. >> thank you very much. thank you very much, congressman. i will take one second to say

we'll miss you after the end of this year. stephanie, thank you for leading this and coordinating this, organizing this. i promise not to talk too much. that's not easy, but i promise. this is a panel today that i think you will find fascinating if you are interested in politics and government because it is about what has been happening recently in government and politics, and in some ways, looking back to how we got to where we are, what changed, how it changed, with whom it changed, and with salena, she's talking about what literally has happened in the last very few years, and they have come at it, as you will see, from different angles. but i will be shocked if you don't find both of them fascinating. i will now let each one have five minutes or so to talk about

their books. since his name begins with a.b., dr. abramowicz is not uncomfortable going first because he always has to go first. so he's a professor at emory. he has written prodigiously on american politics. one of the people i admire most in academics about the american political system, larry sabatow at the university of virginia speaks extremely highly of his thinking, his writing and his vision about taking american politics and making it where we can understand it better. with that, doctor? >> thank you. thank you very much for that very kind introduction.

i want to start off by saying one thing i can see immediately is the people attending here are very much like my students at emory university in that you don't like to sit in front of the room. everyone is back. feel free to move up if you want to. so this is definitely a panel that will run the gamut from a to z. one thing we can definitely agree on is that both of our books are great. >> exactly. >> so my book is really an attempt to try to understand how we got to the place where we are in american politics, particularly with regard to our parties, both in the electorate and in washington and in our state capitols. starting off with the party system that existed back in the united states in the post-new deal era of the 1950s. obviously, the party system has undergone very dramatic changes

since that time. the coalition supporting the democratic and republican parties today are dramatically different from the coalitions that supported the parties back in the 1950s and '60s. in fact, in some ways, they have been flipped upside down and on their head. we can see that both in terms of the class divide in american politics, where back in the 1950s and '60s if the white working class was really the core of the democratic electoral coalition along with the white south, white southerners were the most democratic voting group in the entire electorate. today, of course, we see that white southerners are overwhelmingly voting republican and much of the white working class both in the south and outside the south has also moved away from the democrats, while the democrats in turn have become much more of a party

based on more educated white electorate, those with college degrees and of course, racial and ethnic minorities. so we see a very different party system today, and this is a transformation that took time. at the national level it worked its way down to the state and local level. mississippi still had a democratic majority legislature until pretty late. >> when i was governor. >> pretty late in that process. so did georgia. today, what we see is a party system that is very much aligned pretty much from top to bottom, where people vote a straight party ticket. there is much, much less ticket splitting than there used to be. a lot of that is extremely important because it means that now, the party strength at the state and local level in congress is determined to a much greater extent than in the past on how voters feel about the national political parties and how they vote in presidential

elections. there's much greater consistency between presidential voting and voting down ballot. why does all of this happen, how did this come about? that's the story of the great alignment. it's the fact the divide between democrats and republicans today to a much greater extent than in the past reflects deeper divisions in american society. the first and foremost of those is race. it shouldn't surprise anyone in the state of mississippi that the racial divide in american politics is very deep, that we see that the democratic party today is a party that has an electoral base that is 40% to 45% non-white. that includes african-americans but also a growing share of other non-white voters, meaning mainly latinos, asian-americans, mixed race. the republican party, although it has become somewhat more diverse, remains an overwhelmingly white party. so that's probably the most significant divide because it affects all the others.

it reinforces the idealogical divide between the parties because white voters by and large gravitated to the republican party over the last several decades, tend to be conservative on racial issues but also other issues, economic and cultural issues as well. and non-whites on the democratic side, at least on economic issues, tend to support a larger role for government, more generous social spending on government programs and things like that. that's reinforcing this idealogical divide. we also have this cultural divide based on a large extent on people's religious beliefs that didn't exist 40 or 50 years ago. today we see white evangelical voters and religious white non-evangelical voters, catholics and other, protestants, other than evangelicals, are overwhelmingly republican. on the other side, we are seeing

particularly among whites those that are religious skeptics, religious liberals, non-religious secular voters are overwhelmingly democrat. that's a group that's actually growing in size. we have this religious divide, cultural divide, idealogical divide. there is also a big generational divide in our politics today because younger voters tend to be much more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity and also more liberal, particularly on these cultural issues than older voters. so we have all these divisions in our society. the parties reflect those divisions. what this has led to, this is what i think may be the most unfortunate part of this growing divide, is what we sometimes call the affective divide, a-f-f-e-c-t-i-v-e. affective polarization which means essentially we really don't like each other. that democrats and republicans increasingly hold very negative views of the other side, both of the leaders on the other side but even of their fellow

americans who support the other party, and are therefore voting increasingly based on not so much how they feel about their own party, how much they like their own party, and its candidates, but more based on how much they dislike the other side. this is a phenomenon that i refer to as negative partisanship, where we are voting against the other side. we saw that in 2016 to a greater degree than at any previous election. i think it's likely to persist into the future. so polarization leading to negative partisanship, leading to strongly partisan voting which makes the task of governance in many cases very difficult. i could say a lot more about that but i think i better stop at that point. >> doctor, thank you very much. the name of the book is "the great alignment" and we will talk about it more.

but as he says, from a to z. salena zito is a well-known pittsburgh-based political writer who has been writing about american politics, particularly in the midwest, for decades, believe it or not. she also now writes for "the washington examiner." you may see her on television on cnn and other programs. she and her partner, brad todd, who i have to say once in his career worked for me, when i was chairman of the republican national committee, she and brad had written a book also, "the great revolt" about looking at some of the same subject matter in a different way. it's all yours. >> thank you, guys. thanks for coming to listen to us. so i grew up in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. i never left. is anybody here from pittsburgh?

no one? . . i tree from fourth mississippi but i only take back rooted. there's no interstates and adon't bly so i get to understand what is happening, not just in my destination of

where i'm going, but in the areas around it. so you understand what kind of economic and cultural issues that might be going on in a region. in 2016, i was covering the presidential election, and i decided to drive all across pennsylvania, pennsylvania is a state that is gone blue since 1988. one of the things that was -- people were missing was that since 1988, every presidential election, it was .4 less democratic. bill clinton won pennsylvania by 28 counties in 1996. barack obama won them with 13 in 2012. people didn't notice that erosion. so i already went with this idea, something different might be happening. is a drove around the counties, there were ten counties -- there's 67 -- a lot of driving -- there were ten counties that really stood out to me. these were counties that voted

for romney, but didn't really -- there one a big turnout. three counties that voted for clinton but i saw all these political signs, all these trump signs and brad todd, my co-author, would yell at me and say, salena, signs don't vote. okay, i understand that it don't vote but these are not the kind of signs you wasn't down to local republican office and pick up a sign. these were homemade signs. there were hundreds of them. in areas where you didn't expect them. i'm not just talk us about democratic strongholds. places where there's a lot of blue collar voters. i'm talking about sub burn areas -- un-under an areas and peopled a mid-and people said they won't vote for donald trump. suburban republicans won't vote for him. i saw houses painted with trump on the side, barn, a horse. i'm not kidding.

there was a horse with "trump" on the side. the owner assured me it was safe paint or whatever. but i came back and i wrote story. i said, donald trump has already won this race. here's why. if only 2,000 more voters show up in those ten counties that i outlined in pennsylvania, it doesn't matter what happens in pennsylvania, it doesn't matter what happens in philadelphia. doesn't matter if hillary clinton turns out as many voters as broke broken did. doesn't matter -- as barack obama did. doesn't matter itself she turns out more. she's going to win. by about 40,000 votes and it was 45,000. i also said, if he is winning, if he is then winning pennsylvania, he is also winning north carolina, florida, wisconsin, michigan, ohio, and iowa, also states i went to. i did 52,000 miles in 2016 in 49

states. but if he is winning pennsylvania, those states are already gone. the race is already over. when i was out interviewing people, i started to notice different archetypes of voters emerging that other people in the media didn't see. they didn't see these types of voters. they made assumptions that they wouldn't vote for trump. and in the great revolt, we outline those voters. i'll get back to that in a minute. on september 19th, 2016, i lost my job, at the newspaper, after covering politics forever. there was a buy-out and it was clear i had to take it. as i was walking out of the newsroom door i get a text, and it said you have an interview with donald trump tomorrow. that's great. i don't have a job.

this is going be a problem. i called a bunch of newspapers. they turned me down. and family the atlantic took my story. in that interview with mr. trump, i made the note that voters take him seriously but not literally, and my profession, and people that don't like him, take him literally but not seriously. and that is sort of prell propelled me goo a couple of free chance jobs worked every day from september 19th until 2h , writing for four different publications and traveling cruise the country, writing every day and not making mitch now. on election night 2016 i interviewed mike pence on the tar mark in pittsburgh and i went home, filed my story and i cried because i nye just interviewed the next

vice president of the united states and i didn't have a job the next day. when i say, i understood he was going to win issue want you to understand, i didn't -- not because i voted for him i don't vote in elections cover it but because of where i live, geeing geography was on my side. say pittsburgh is the paris of appalachiaity. understood that there was -- that the potential existed and that at the excitement was out there, but also because of my career had spanned so many years, i had seen this change coming, seen this erosion in institutions coming so i knew that we -- i had watched these parties realign like on the ground, interviewing people, talking to people. so, on election day 2016, i had my last job, free lance job, with the "new york post." went to file a story on election

night. the told me don't bother showing up. heels not going to win pennsylvania. said, yes he, i, they said, no, he's not and i'm like, yes, he is, so fine. but we're not paying you if he doesn't win. i show up, i write the story, i'm watching my ten counties, and everybody else is watching philadelphia. i'm watching my ten county but at 8:45 i knew the was was over. filed my story. next day i didn't have a job. so there was a bakery next door who was hiring, i thought, i can bake. i can do this job. as i was walking down to the bakery, i got a phone call from cnn saying, hey, can you be on the show today on jake tapper. said, sure, what's the subject. they said you, being catholic, i thought i did smog -- did something wrong and i thought i was in trouble. trying to think whale. do they're like, no, no you're the only reporter that got this

election and you -- despite all the crap -- can i say that done despite all the crap on social media and you're peers you stuck with it, not because you voted for him but because you flood something -- you standard something different was happening. they hired me that day. there were tears, too. i sat on the sidewalk and went. it was in that moment that brad todd and i decided that there needed to be a book. he wanted to explore, was this a fluke, was the election of donald trump a fluke or was this a new populace conservative re-alignment and connect it is. they're similar to you talk us about the parties realigning. and so we went back -- well issue went back out there on the road. 32,000 miles, went to ohio, michigan, wisconsin, and iowa. and pennsylvania.

and went to the counties that voted obama, obama, trump. why? because we wanted to go to the places where there was that swing vote. people always say, pundits say there's no such thing as a swing vote. well, 2016 was about a lot of swing votes. and we looked at the different archetypes that i saw emerging, so in the great revolt, you meet whether or not decided to be pragmatic and vote priorities rather than values. there's suburban -- i call them girl gun power, suburban women who believe they're feminists and believe the most empowering thing they can do protect their children and family and that was the second amend. even though hillary clinton should have persuaded them on that issue they stood with the

trump vote. the great revolt takes into the liveses of seven arc types. i spur seed hundreds of people. we-- interviewed hundreds of people. there's a lot of data. we did a lot of detailed polling afterwards to make sure that these answers and these archetypes weren't just anecdotal, and if you didn't understand this election, kind of the book for you, but if you voted for him and felt like you were, like -- is there anyone else that are like me? theirs is also the book for you. we concluded this is a realignment but also this coalition is going to impact thing us outside the ballot box, things in commercement we have healthy skepticism to media,

hollywood, sports, it's sort of everywhere. so that's in a nutshell the book. >> selena, thank you. i-- in 1986, eight senate seats went from republic county ya democrat. eight governorships went from democracy to republican. that election day in 1986, 12 states elected a governor of one party and a senator of the other party. on the same day. you mentioned very little cross-over, very little split ticket voting. talk more about that? >> sure. so first of all, a great point. that would be less likely to happen now, i would say. however, governorships are a little different. so we see even today that voters

will sometimes vote for a candidate for governor of one party and then cross back over and vote for their normal party for president if there's a presidential election, senate, house, et cetera. when people today vote for president and also when they vote for the house of representatives and senate, increasingly they're thinking but less who do i want to represent me and my state, my district, and more about which party do i want to be in charge in washington. when they're voting for governor it's less true because they're there you're voting for an executive, somebody in charge of your state and people are willing to cross party lines to a greater extent there that might be part of the answer. it's also true issue think, that these are -- these trend are affecting governorships we see it in state legislatures where if you look today, control of state legislatures across the country is now reflected the partisan ideologyiality

orientations of states much more than the past. so you don't have kivett states with democratic legislatures anymore. don't have lib ran state width republic republican lookures. you can still have states go back and forth and may see that in the mid-term elects this year but overall must more consistency in that. so, i think i was fascinated by the story but traveling around, visiting on the back roads. admire your willingness to do that. i can't imagine spending that much time on the road. i didn't even drive from atlanta to jackson. nearly as far from pittsburgh. >> my 14-year-old jeep has 400,000 miles on. >> i believe it. >> i hug it and kiss it all the time. >> what -- you were able to pick up the -- some things going on, that are easy to miss, but i

would say at the same time, that approach might miss some things going on in the places where most americans actually live. the fact of the matter is that most americans actually live in these big metropolitan areas. most americans, like los angeles county, has more people living in it than many of our states. nine million people in los angeles county alone. and that's where the population is growing these days. and in term of the future of american politics, and i think if you look what happened in many of the big metropolitan areas, at the same time that, as you correctly noted and saw, what was going on there trump was really winning over some of these voters in these small towns and rural areas. at the same time, we saw a shift going in the opposite direction. so, for example, in metro atlanta where we live, we saw a

remarkable shift where some of the counties that had voted steadfastly republican for many years, kind of like cobb county and -- sounding atlanta, they shifted back -- actually went the other way. there were individual districts, state house and stat senate districts, that were voting for hillary clinton that had not voted for a democratic candidate for many years. so, i think you have to look -- so my point it nose dish think you're right what you saw, but i think you have to look at this shift is going on, there's a -- this realignment is going both directions. >> absolutely. >> and the problem, i think the republican party has going forward this areas where it's doing better now and the areas where it's doing very well are not really in the areas that are the most dynamic and growing parts of the country.

the areas where it's doing best are actually tend to be part offices the country that are 0 not growing,in some cases losing population, and when you look -- trending forward -- and not just in terms of geography but in terms of the racial and ethnic makeup of the american population and the american electorate clearly -- the demographics are very telling there. and they're not -- there's no way you can mistake that this country is becoming more diverse, the population is becoming less white. the elect electorate is coming bess white. nonwhite schrotters voting overwhelmingly democratic so this is a problem for the republican party that was recognize after the 2012 election when the report was written. now, that doesn't mean republicans can within elections. doesn't mean republicans can't

necessarily hold the house and senate this year. doesn't necessarily mean that donald trump can't be re-electioned in 2020. it does mean that looking ahead, that in the medium term, certainly, and definitely the long-term, don't think it's a viable business model if don't think doubling down on conservative white voters and conservative white working class voters in particular, is a way that the republican party will remain in the long run, at least, viable competitive national political party. i don't think mr. trump is helping republicans, i really don't. we can argue about that. >> i don't like arguing. >> i want to go in a little bit different direction because this presidential election, 2016, we had the two most negatively perceived nominees of the two national parties, certainly in the history of polling, and

maybe in the history of the united states. >> ever. >> and on thursday after the election, not days later but nine days later, peter hart and i were invited to a dinner of political people in washington to talk about the election. peter hart is one of the great, great democratic pollsters and very smart and he is the dean of democratic pollsters. he said if you looked at the exit poll? i said i kind of did him reached in his pocket and he has this exit polling in which 19% of the people who voted, because they get interviewed when they come out of the polling place -- said they didn't like either one of them. >> absolutely. >> didn't want to vote for either one of them. yet-- and i frankly think that 19% may have been low. but it's a percentage that would admit it. they voted 50-29 for trump. did you see that as you -- you

want to talk about how much of this was trump won and how much of this was hillary lost? >> well, yeah. there's definitely that. our elections are binary choice. we get one or the other. and neither of them were particularly popular, even within their own party. when you read "the great revolt" you see people saying, i don't like either of them, but let's just go with evangelical christians in our book. because they believed he had -- like, he would go to the mattresses on the supreme court, that they -- they knew they didn't like hem personally but knew that would like his results. think what encapsulates this the best is the other day i was covering ahead in columbus, not

as far as jackson, mississippi. i want 'opoint tot that. 0 woman there, just talking to her about trump, and she said, it's really hard for me to make that decision, but she said, i thought about it this way. afterwards she said -- eventually voted for trump but the life and the gun issue were very important for her. she was a democrat but didn't feel that the democrat allowed her to hold those feelings and that they would have her back on those issues. show asset she said all of money life i voted for pom politics have done amazing, beautiful speech e speech, speech that moved me to tear. voted for barack obama twice and just an example but she also voted for john kerry, al gore, bill clinton, and these speeches were in the moment they happened, they were great, and

they talked but results. but never got the results they talked about. but the speeches were great. she says, donald trump gets up there and i just want to crawl under a chair. i just want to dish just want to scold him. he's terrible. but i love the results. she said that's sort of where i am right now. and i think a lot of people had picked up on this. look, donald trump -- the reason i think he prevailed over hillary clinton because he was as equally disliked, was because he showed a willingness to blow up both parties. remember during the primaries, i don't think i'm going to stick with that pledge i signed. i might run as an independent. it's a rigged system. i heat the republicans. he not only blew up the democratic party, he blew up the republican party, too. a lot of people liked that. a lot of people liked his willingness to blow them both

up. they believed these institutions have been putting these beautiful, wonderful candidates out there for them, for a very, very long time but never got the results they wanted but they get great speeches. enough they get really sucky speeches but give something of the things they want. >> alan, we talked earlier that when you look at polling before the election, most americans, 60%ing are thought thought the country was going to the wrong direction. many liked obama but thought the country was be the wrong direction. since less than 40% of the americans who are republicans, that means a whole lot of democrats and independents didn't like the way the country was going. do you think that is -- i should mention, when you see the bernie sanders people and he got about as many votes in the primaries

as hillary clinton -- do you explain that large group of democrats who were thinking the country is going the wrong direction as the bernie sanders left or do you think it was other democrats who were just different chaotic reasons. >> i would say that question is a little hard to interpret when people say the country is going in the wrong direction, they can feel that way for different reasons. and i think that the bernie sanders supporter -- i'm not sure. i suspect they were probably more likely to agree with that statement -- they're probably saying the country is going in the wrong direction because they think own spoke the democrats should be much further to the left, singing payer health care rather than obamacare, want to see a larger role for government and things like that, whereas when conservatives and

republicans say it's going in the wrong direction, they mean something very different. they don't like the whole direction that obama was taking the country in. so, overall, democrats actually liked obama, not only liked him but agreed with most of his policy us. i don think it's true that lot of democrats disagreed with obama's policies. you had some people moving from obama to trump, between 2012 and 2016, for -- it wasn't a really big group. it was certainly important in she's swing states. but-- in these swing states. some of these people were actually republicans who voted for obama so you have to be careful wheno you look at obama trump vote erred. this movement of particularly white working class and white rural and evangelical voters, away from the democratic party and towards the republican party, began long before donald trump. >> yes, absolutely. >> goes back a long way.

actually you can trace it back to the 1970s and 1980s, and it's continued to this day. think with trump what you saw was that it went -- continued -- he intensified that process, but also intensified that countermovement i'm talking about, of more liberal progressive white voters, college educated white voter, women in particular, so there's been a big swing among college educated women towards the democrats. a big swing even since trump became president, during this presidency. so when we look at the polling right now, what we're seeing is that college educated white explode especially women, are moving away from the republican party and moving toward at the democrats and this is a group eight or ten years ago was still pretty reliable republican

voting groups. so, again, the point i would make is that we're seeing the shift going in both directions. the final point i would make is, we're trying to understand the shift toward trump. why did some of these voters move toward trump from 2016, both in the republican primaries and later in the general election? we cannot ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room and that's race. donald trump ran a campaign in which he, from the very outset and before he ran fop president, made a very overt appeal to white racial an an animus and hostility toward immigrants. so he began his campaign by talking about mexican americans and mexico immigrants as criminals and rapists, he is continued to go back to that theme and others. he constantly making negative comments about prominent

african-americans, athletes, celebrities. this does not go unnoticed, believe me, by the electorate, and when we look at the data -- and i'm a data person, so i don't trust my own just instincts. they're not that good in terms of figuring out what is going on out there. i look at the data and what the dat tells me when i look at that time why did people vote for donald trump the n the primaries, why did we see some of this movement, at least a large part of it, toward trump in the 2016 election in keep in mind that hillary clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes but why do we see some of the movement toward trump? the strongest predictor of that, the strongest predictor of that, is racial -- race and immigration. that outweighs anything else in terms of predicting ever that's not the data and i'm not the

only one that found it. i know a lot of people don't like that, find that uncomfortable but i think that is the reality, and there's no reason to think it's changed now. >> i have -- >> before i let you -- this -- we'll take questions from the audience after this so if you want to -- think you want to ask a question, you're up next. >> i'm going to have to strongly disaggrieve with nat my reporting -- disaggrieve with nat my reporting and that heat tended to marginalize voters and place the voters in a box, and it was something that was rarely brought up. yes, sure, always a percentage of people that are like that but as you said, many -- i have to strongly disagree with that. >> anybody want to ask a question? there's a podium right there, and while we're waiting -- >> comen, you guys. >> i'll ask you both, 1994 i was chairman of the republican national committee, the first

time in american history that more republican catholics were elected to congress than democrat catholics were elected to congress. can remember the -- talking about catholics, somebody said that they heard senator so and so told her mother, changed parties and become a republican and the mother says, not true issue saw him in mass on sunday. >> among catholics -- i'm a practicing catholic, unfortunately i'm also from pennsylvania site been a rough week. but there are two different kinds of catholics. the liberal catholics and there are conservative catholics, and the conservative catholics tent to vote just on the life issue. >> you're absolutely right. a big split among catholics now.

the catholic vote was overwhelmingly democratic in the knew deal era because chocks tended to be working class, termed to be people who benefited from the new deal program its but there's been a big realignment among catholics. the i big split in catholics -- it's ideological and the choice issue is one issue. not the only one that divides catholics but there's also the big racial divide among catholics and a growing proportion of catholics in the united states are hispanic, and hispanic catholics are very democratic, very democratic. white catholics tend to be republican. not entirely. obviously there's still a pretty large share of democrats there, but they've swung toward the republican party considerably. but the hispanics are the only part of the catholic community that is actually growing in size. white catholics are shrinking,

and so if the catholic church in this country is going thrive in the future, it's going to be because of this growing latino presence in the church. >> we have to take questions. let me just ask you this smart lady is where you're supposed to go and get in line if you want to ask a question. of you'd identify yourself and if you're with the media, identify what media organization you're with. >> i'm deanna mccarthy, i'm not with the media. i'm an -- about life-long mississippian. i have two kind of related questions. one is i was curious as to why -- i don't know if you can speak to this -- why in a forum about political divisions between two parties, we have all conservatives with one unbiased scientist. so that struck me as interesting. so, my next -- so, that kind of

led know think maybe the presentation was going to be about the war within the republican party and congressman harper, rather exemplifies that. one of a large number, record number, i understand, of republican incup bents who are choosing not to run against because of the the blue wave they see coming and because of so much of the republican -- >> let's me just -- >> let me just -- >> i'm sorry are'll take that back other people don't ask questions, too. the ron the two authors are here is it's a book festival and it's about -- this is supposed to be about their two books. congressman do you -- >> and in case you didn't hear me above i said i don't vote in elect is cover. >> i understand that -- >> my book is about what happened. >> i'm delighted have haily barber on the panel.

i think his prince why many people are here. >> let me -- >> hopefully buy his book. >> didn't come for a to z. >> you want him to answer your question. >> yes, i'm sorry. >> since you alluded my reason not to run again is because of worrying but the blue with a couldn't be further from the treating, and remember that 67% of all statistics are made up on the spot. so, 58 -- you couldn't be more wrong and every decision of anybody, republican or democrat, is always an individual decision. just had my first grandchild onh . might have had lot to do with it, the reason why i decide not to run again, plus 139 takeoffs and landings on delta last year and tetch years -- i never considered this to be a career. ten years of service is long enough and it's been a great honor, but don't lump everything and everybody into one group. >> i don't think there's --

>> ma'am, ma'am, let's let the man behind you ask a question. >> i don't think there's blue wave in mississippi. i don't want to disappoint anybody but a blue wave won't won't we right here. >> can rephrase my question. >> let somebody else ask a question. sir, would you like to ask your question? >> i'm jimmy robertson, i have not been a member of the media since 1961-'62 when i was editor of the dailey mississippian at ole miss and the statute of limitations has run. in listening to your discussions, i couldn't help but put my lawyer's lens on it, and lawyers are accustomed to a system where there are two totally different points of view but there's a system where you

have to ultimately decide what are the facts, the systems not perfect. makes mistakes. but you do -- finding out what are the facts has a hell of a lot to do with how case is going to get decided and not anything of the stuff, frankly, that i've heard you talk us about for the last half hour. so, what i'm wondering is, doesn't seem to be any way you -- of court the white house can make up its open facts, whoever is in the white house. but within the congress you can't make up you're own facts. i've always heard -- probably attributed to eight or ten different people, republicans and democrats, that a person is into it told this open opinions but you're not entitled to your own facts. but how do you make a rational

decision to vote guilty or not guilty in a -- if you're on a jury, or to vote for justice of the peace or governor or whatever, you've got have some view of the facts, and i don't -- i would ask you, is that -- have we passed the point where what the facts are even relevant to the discussion of what is our political future? >> i would say democrats and republicans see lately have difficulty agreeing on what the facts are. so it's -- it's gotten to that point. that's not entirely. that's not always true. not an every issue but i think that on these very contentious issues -- and don't forget, really, a lot of it has -- your preference, whether you vote for republican or democrat is not just based on facts. it's based on value and what you

i believe is right and wrong, what you want to happen, based on what policies you prefer. that's not facts. might be influence evidence by facts but i don't think that really is the most important reason why people choose. >> i understand that's whatow -- >> not a jury. >> any can he. >> not a jury trial feel. >> feels like it right now. >> if i'm concerned but climbed -- climate change, to make a rational statement or cast a rational vote, i have to have some view of the facts, and yet that is one of a -- two or three dozen different issues where you can't get two people to sit down in the same room and agree that the sun is going to come up in the morning. >> you can. you can but it's hard to get democrats and republicans to agree. >> i completely agree with you.

look, voting is -- and political preference is not data-driven. when you good to vote, you don't have data in your hand. a lot is emotion or how you -- not just feel about yourself -- one of the interesting thinged in survey for the book was, there was this perception that all trump voter were angry. actually, they were very aspirational. we found this -- we surveyed just trump identified voters, in the five states we did the book, and they felt very good about their personal fortunes this, lives, but the thing they were worried about was their community. that's what drove them a lot to the polls, was the state of their community. they didn't believe that their community was going to get better. and so when you take those kinds of emotions into an election

booth, sometimes you put things aside, data, things that make sense, sort of like dating, this guy is really wrong for you, although on paper he's great. it's a very emotional choice. >> professor, can i make this point about -- from when you and i in the '60s were looking and 59% of all tv sets in the afternoon were on abc, nbc or cbs, and we were all essentially getting the same information and today you not only have a vallanization of the media, cnn and nbc, msnbc and fox over here and increasingly americans watch the television they agree with, and so liberals watch cnn and msnbc and conservatives watch

fox. that's compounded dramatically by social media. people are inundated with information, a lot from groups or people they think wouldn't lie to them, and a lot of what they get is not factually accurate and it come from conservatives and not factually accurate and liberals and a whole bunch of other people but i think we as a country have a little -- going to need also time to figure out how we deal with this massive amount of information and so many people, their decision of how to deal with it thus far, ain't going listen to anybody who i think i already agree with. that's not the right answer. >> makes -- i tried to say makes governing very difficult. because it's hard for dem contracts and republicans in congress or in the states to

work across party lines because if they do that, you can be punished. you can suffer electoral consequences if you're viewed as too friendly to the other side. working across party lines. >> thank you. we have four minutes. this lady is in line. if you'll ask a short question i'll make them gave short answer. >> very short. >> we have to be off the stage at 45. >> my naama rhea, and i used to be a mississippi voter. i'm a political describes professor and i study congress. it's not -- there seems to be a divide in the republican party between those who support donald trump and what is going on in our government no matter what, and those who have gone against

trump, and what is going on, so i just wanted to sigh if you could maybe discuss where you think that divide is or what is causes a republican to continue to support him and this administration, and what might -- and maybe even talk about the end or the life of the republican party. >> you have two minutes each. >> i think actually both parties are very divided. both of them going through changes, these cools change -- coalition changes, as he rightly points out in the book, i believe, it's pretty much been since 2012 that at the democrats have gone from being new deal coalition and now a different coalition, and -- >> started before that. >> yeah. yeah. but i always mark that moment when -- with president obama's

2012 campaign. that was the clairetive moment. i think -- clairetive moment. both parties are a hot mess and they both have problems and i think it's probably going to be a decade before both of. the work it out. >> i would say a couple things. one is that the anti-trump republics are mainly republicans not run are for re-election and those who are out of office and those in the national security establishment who served under previous president there are some strong anti-trump republics and conservatives that are not current office holders because the current office holder see their votes supporting trump and they don't -- at this point at least so far, they have been reluctant to turn against him. the divisions wince the two parties i think were deeper in the past, within the two parties. if you go back the 1950s and 6 odd, the republican party then, liberals like jacob javits, and

conservatives like barry gold water, you halt conservative southern democrats, james eastland of mississippi who is as conservative as any republican and certainly on civil rights issues he was and then within the democratic party you hale had very liberal democrats as well ump you don't have those divisions in either party today but if the munch lessigant in terms of the policy divide than they used to be. >> want to thank you very much. >> want to thank a lively audience for being here, and to remind you that the moderator and author book signings will be taking place on the lawn and also to thank our sponsors, congressman greg harper and capitol resources. anybody from capital resources? please stand. [applause]

>> i'll also invite you to stay a few minutes before we have to clear the room if you have more questions if i saw somebody still standing and and i asked congressman harper three time if he was sure he wanted to sit up here. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> brings an end to the conversation on current political issues. we'll be back with more live from the mississippi book festival in just a few minutes. the final program of the day is coming up. a discussion on the leadership of presidents ulis sis s. grant and abraham lincoln. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at becomes become published this week. an couple at the's observation about the -- ann coulter, resistance is futural. the chosen wars, former "new york times" correspondent and editor city men weisman private history of judaism in america. a look at the life of late professional tennis player and civil rights activist arthur

ashe. also being published this week is godless citizens in a godly republic. the history of atheism in america. a look at changes in the american work force of 70 years in the book" temp." a recount of the life of the vice president and 1968 presidential candidate, hubert humphrey. in eraseing america, thought on on relationship between the left and american history. and a recall of her life in syria and her family's attempts to escape in "the boy on the beach." watch for the authors on booktv on c-span2. >> book tv visit capitol hill to ask members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> reading a few books.

with my staff, i -- everybody that comes to downour tomorrow i give. the and force them to read three books try to read once a year. the first is do the work, which is a cool short little book beaut getting things down and conquering the force office resistance and friction that try to slow you down. also force my staff to read marine corps national publication one, war fighting. this is a distillation of the marine corps philosophy how to fight and win wars but amick candle to thingson the realm of war fight. the final thing which i carry with me and i enforce a rigid system of discipline any offers, book on writing, which is worth reading at least once a year. there's some other books on writing that i try to read, but this is -- in terms of something that can you can keep in your pocket it's the belles.

just finished recently reading a great book, that my best friend recommended, not a new book. the journalist me and murderer and about this case where this army doctor, jeffrey mcdonald, was accused of kill husband wife and three children and not convicted in military court. later put on trifle as a civilian and famous journalist signed a contract with him to write his story and became imbedded in the defense team, became friended with the guy and the guy this murderer thought he was going write a very positive story other, become loud basically saying -- book saying he was innocent and the opposite happened. saying this guy is a psychopath. was a fascinating more andation of journalistic ethics and to what extend you're always deceiving a source and how many liberties to take when you're telling someone elses story and it's bizarrely compelling, and

janet malcolm who was sued by someone show wrote a book about but misrepresenting something, he writing is incredible. some of the best writing. i try mix it up and do fun books at the same time, so for those who like i are addicted to thrown thrown thrown and -- "game of thrones" and recognize that george r. martin wail never finish writing the novels i stumbled on a different epic fantasy -- the blade by joe anber come by it and is awesome. looking for summer reading , fun, even if epic fantasy is not your think, you'll like this book this characters are well-drawn and interesting. it's funny, too, and so this is like a beach read, summer read i would highly recommend. you have to space out fiction, nonfiction, and have some fun. the two kind of big projects

that i'm halfway through this one right now, written by michael green, a professor at georgetown, particularly at time when year considering -- all of our national security strategy and national success distribution are talking but how to prepare withlong-term competition we china. this takes a historical look at american grand strategy in the asia-pacific since 1783 and digs to our for most thinkers and geopolitics and it is comprehensive, it is not an easy read but fascinating read. the is a book i refer to almost every single day on the armed services committee when i think but how to work with allies in that region to express american power. the final one, which i have not started yet, but i am -- as the core of my office will suggest, i'm a huge eisenhower fan.

i await reading a new book and this is the latest one. a book but eisenhower and his downfrom tom soldier to statesman which i read but this by william hitchcock has gotten great reviews. a uva professor. and i haven't read itout so i can't give a review bit i'm excited to dig in and eisenhower remains endlessly fascinating. at the time of his presidencies, despite bag war hero -- being a war hero, at the time he was perceived as a figurehead executive, who played golf all the time while john foster dullless reason the country and world. there was a wave of revision gist historian? shows once the archives were opened, that the opposite was true, started with the book called the hidden hand

presidency which high thought size it he had sotting and devious methods and controlled everything and he has become one of of the most popular presidents and i have didn't drawn foe erred 1946 to 1961, and i think we're kind of going through a similar period of transformation in the international environment and thinking howl we handle that transformation, modernize our defenses, bring men and women of good faith from both parties together to talk but what is america's role the world, what is the foundation for a bipartisan foreign policy we manage do it and that's why the period offering enduring -- >> what source does you use. >> i actually just my friends who are constantly recommending books and i sort of -- i have -- my system is also -- if i get a recommendation or read something, that suggests that a

book that is worth reading, and then in this job, people send you books all the time, which is crazy but i welcome it. i'll sort of put it in a bucket on my amazon list and save it for late and are i'm not allowed to buy a knew book until i finish the ones i'm reading and if revisit it's month later and it doesn't interest me, i'll not buy it. ryan holliday wrote a great book called conspiracy but the gawker case, which i highly recommend. the lawsuit between hulk hogan and gawker which is fascinating. a rule that it hadn't known before which is you take your age and you subtract it from 100 so i'm 34 so 66, right? correct me on that. always dangerous do math in public on c-span. if the book hasn't captivated your interest by that page, then put it away, because the author has an obligation to you, even if you're reading nonfiction to keep you interested and engaged and if you're there, and you've done the work of buying the book

and reading it if you're not engaged by 66, then you can put it away. i guess ifover 99 you earned the right to discard it after page one. >> i'll put you on the spot. obviously a big reader. give me a two of your favorite books of all-time. >> great question. so, i'll do one fiction and one nonfiction. >> that's fair. >> also, there's a -- when you ask this question, which i ask people a lot, you're not allowed to say the bible or something. thosenss are a copout. so on the fix side my favorite book is a become called the look goodbye by raymond chandler, the prototypical noir fiction. his a phenomenal writer and i have a weird tick where there's a great book store, the milwaukee airport, a used book store and if i flew through milwaukee i have to buy a copy of a raymond chandler book,

phillip marlow the detective and on the nonfiction side, the best book written about the -- both the founding and a really interesting book, about leadership, is a book called "washington's costing" by david acts fisher, a phenomenal historian and takes washington's crossing of the test as delware a jumping off point for going into detail what the different armies looked like at that time. the british arm, the rag tag american original and and and you leave the book with an freshes for con continue general -- appreciation for contingency, so many things could have gone wrong and washington was losing the war and if it had not gone the way it did, this country might not kansas. i always recommend that as a book to give you an appreciation

about being an american and lessons on washington's early mistakes and what made him a great leader. send us your summer reading list. booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> my wife is pregnant with our first child, and so just started talking to us about just basic family history, and so i'm saying, well, my father is jewish and talking about some of the diseases that are more common in that community, like -- and she's not too worried about that but she keeps asking more questions about her family history, and i'm thinking, i never sat down and drew a pedigree and put down everybody's diseases that they had and so i'm struggling to

remember, and the fact that i can't remember kind of puts me into a bit of a panic. think well, if i had inherited one of these genes, whatever it is, i may have passed it down to this new person and i feel completely irresponsible because i can't enremember, like, what some relative died of. how pathetic. the power or her ready was hit -- her resident diwas hard and i was taking it out on the couple i almost start shouting until i realized what i was doing and then just very quiet for the rest of the session. my daughter is fine. >> you didn't pass anything along. >> not that i know of. >> it is a burden. we think of heritage and having a lot of possibilities, but can

also have this weight as well, and it seems like that is what you experienced was your first brush with genetic testing. >> i think for a long time her ready has had this -- that lightness and darkness to it, the title of the book tries to speak to how it is we look at children and their things we find delightful and then we try to figure out where that came from. and-- but then at the same time, there can be that anxiety that maybe you're harboring some hereditary legacy you may not know about. this episode was in 2001 -- 2000, actually, when my wife was still pregnant and the technology for sequencing genes is so primitive compared to the way it is now.

so there was absolutely now noh way to know about anything except a few genes but now it's totally changed in the past 16 years. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. ...

>> welcome to our last panel of the day. i would like to take this time to ask you to silence your cell phones, also to remind you that there will be moderator and author book signings after the panel. i'm also going to let you know that you can take photographs any time during the panel and we ask that if you are on facebook or twitter, that you please post at #literarylawnparty o or #msbookfest. also, i would like to take this time to let you know that i'm stephanie mcdaniels from jackson

state university from the division of graduate studies and from the college of liberal arts and the department of english, modern foreign languages and speech communication, and i have the privilege at this point of introducing to you our distinguished moderator, chief justice frank williams, retired, who will be conducting this session. he's in charge. also, i would like to let you know that his book is "lincoln as hero" and he is the instrumental person in establishing the grant and lincoln collection at mississippi state university. also, our sponsors for this panel are mississippi state university and taggart, rimes and graham, are there representatives in our audience? if so, would you please stand? i see a hand waving. or from taggart, rimes and graham, any representative? at this time, you are in the hands of chief justice frank williams. >> thank you very much.

thank you very much. you are brave people to be here at 4:00 on a saturday. i am frank williams, the moderator of this session, lincoln and grant. before i introduce our distinguished panelists, let me say it's a bit of deja vu to be here in another supreme court chamber. and it's like the proof that old judges never die, they don't even fade away. so we have great scholars with us. in the middle, that's because that's how my notes read, in the middle is professor john f. mozolick from the ulysses grant association and presidential library at mississippi state university and editor with david nolan and louie gallo of the memoirs of ulysses s. grant.

he's also the author and editor of 15 other works, especially the classic "sherman, a soldier's passion for order." joining him on my left is professor charles calhoun, author of the well-received "presidency of ulysses s. grant." one of his ten books. he is failing in retirement like john and myself, but did teach at east carolina university. on the far left, my far left, jonathan w. white, associate professor of american studies at christopher newport university, and a very prolific author, including books on lincoln, lincoln on law, leadership and life, as well as a co-author on a new book, "our little monitor" with anna gibson holloway. after a few opening remarks, i will ask each of the panelists

to make a few statements, then we will address questions of specific and general interest before we open the floor to you, our listeners, and there is a dais for you to use in the back of this courtroom. americans have been avid readers of presidential biographies since the birth of our nation. the first was written by mason weams, a traveling bookseller and preacher, who published his biography of george washington in 1800, three years after washington left office. it was an immediate bestseller with almost 2,000 washington biographies published thereafter. since 1960, the number of presidential biographies has mushroomed. more than 2200 of some 16,000 total of abraham lincoln, almost 1200 of john f. kennedy, 800 of franklin delano roosevelt and

recently, significant biographies of ulysses s. grant that include gene edward smith, ronald white, ron chernow and chuck calhoun, who is with us this afternoon, as well as the annotated memoirs of ulysses s. grant. these have been a major factor in improving the ranking of president grant in the 2017c-span presidential historian survey. his rank went from 33 to 22. abraham lincoln remains at position one, as he was in all prior c-span surveys. historians have long looked to a few criteria in evaluating a president's administration. first and foremost, any new president should execute public duties with a commanding civility and poise befitting the

nation's chief executive, but without appearing aloof or haughty. as george washington observed at the outset of his presidency in 1789, a president cannot in any way demean himself in his public character, and must act in such a manner as to maintain the dignity of office. presidents also try to avoid partisan and factional rancor and endeavor to unite the country in a great common purpose. in line with their oath of office, they dedicate themselves to safeguarding and even advancing democratic rights and to protecting the nation against foreign enemies. they avoid even the slightest indication of corruption, of course political, but above all, financial. taking this as a paradigm, let us ask the panelists in their opening statements to briefly

evaluate how the backgrounds of ulysses s. grant and abraham lincoln helped prepare them for the civil war and in grant's case, after the war. and how important were lincoln and grant as presidents, in their times and later. so let's start with professor calhoun. >> thanks very much, frank. it's great to be back in mississippi. when i was researching my book on grant's presidency, i spent a good deal of time in starkville at the grant presidential library that john manages so well and believe me, it's the starting point for anyone working on grant's scholarship. grant of course is one of our most controversial presidents, i think, in history. the myth is that he was detached and not engaged, but what my research showed was that he indeed was very much a hands-on president and that he had his

ideas about the issues of the day and participated very much in the conduct of his administration and in relations with congress. he had two very difficult acts to follow. one predecessor, abraham lincoln, was of course the greatest president we have ever had. his immediate predecessor, andrew johnson, was probably the worst president we have ever had. in fact, johnson left the white house really in sort of metaphorically speaking, shambles. relationship with the congress was very, very bad. one of the tasks grant confronted, not only did he confront the issues of the day, reconstruction and otherwise, he also confronted the problem of really what amounted to a dysfunctional government. he did a great deal to repair relations with the congress that johnson had done so much to destroy. he brought to the presidency a number of assets. he was highly intelligent. he had a great memory, had a great grasp of issues and was a quick study.

he could understand a situation very quickly. he had experiences as an administrator, obviously, and -- whoop. okay there? he had experience as an administrator -- okay. all right. sorry for the technical difficulties. as i was saying, he was -- obviously gained a great deal of experience as an administrator. he ran the fifth largest organization in the history of the united states up to that point, the army during the civil war. he also had great sense of determination. you could see that in his memoirs where he said i hate retracing my steps. always wanted to move forward

toward the goal i have in mind. finally, i will just mention that he had a very strong commitment to the nation's democratic ideals, something we would like to see in all of our presidents. i will stop there. >> john? >> you know, whenever we talk about or we hear anything about ulysses s. grant from the general reading public, what we usually hear is that grant was a butcher as a general, that he was a drunk all his life, he was an ignorant cadet at the united states military academy, he was just lucky that he had more soldiers than his opponent and he was just plain a dull person. that's the usual thing that we hear. well, in fact, as historians are writing today in their new books that frank williams talked about, grant was actually one of the greatest military and political leaders in all of

american history. he was the first of the modern american presidents, the first american chief executive to tour the world. he was the most popular american of the late 20th century and i might add in both the north and the south. what made grant so great, what made grant so great, was his ability to understand that the world was changing. from the time he was born in ohio in 1822 to his death in new york in 1885. in that time, he understood that the world was indeed a different place. he had lived his first year doing a lot of traveling, which a lot of people did not do in this early period. he read widely as a student at west point, and he read mostly novels, of all things, as a student. he was ready to move forward, no

matter what the obstacle was when there was a war or battles to be fought. he was willing to adopt new tactics and new strategy, unlike that used in any previous war. when he found himself bankrupt at the end of his life because of illegal activities of a man who is known takas the so-calle wizard of wall street, he accepted this fact and what he did is he wrote the greatest book of non-fiction in all of american history, his so-called memoirs. so in summary, i think it's fair to say that grant was a great general, a great president, a popular american. he was an impressive writer. he was a world traveler. and maybe the most important thing of all, he was humble through it all. his one weakness, and it was a major weakness as president, was his willingness to think that everyone was as honest as he

was. his mark on the history of this nation was as significant as anyone has made in this nation's history. >> thank you, john. jonathan white? >> i think that a big part of lincoln's success as a lawyer came in his preparation for being president as a lawyer. and lawyers often get a bum rap in our society. present company excluded, of course. >> be careful with that. >> but lawyers go through a certain sort of training where they learn legal reasoning, they learn logical reasoning and lincoln had an incredible knack for solving problems, for looking at seemingly intractable problems, figuring out how to find a good solution, so that sort of logical reasoning part of a lawyer's career i think did well for lincoln during the civil war. another thing that lawyers try to do is persuade people. they try to persuade juries.

lincoln was a master persuader, a great communicator. you can picture lincoln leaning over a jury box talking in a foc folksy manner as he tries to convince them of his side's rightness in a case. lincoln was able to draw from those sort of experiences as president. he could take really complex constitutional issues and pitch them in a way that ordinary americans could understand. when lincoln was a lawyer before the civil war, he once gave his law partner, billy herndon, advice on how to be a good litigator and the advice was don't aim high. intelligent people are going to be persuaded by good arguments, lincoln said to his law partner, so you got to aim low. you got to speak to ordinary people. if you can persuade them, that's how you are going to win cases. lincoln was able to translate that as president so that he

could persuade the american people when there were controversial things going on involving civil liberties or emancipation or any number of other issues, he was able to take these ideas and make them palatable to a vast array of voters. i think the third aspect of lincoln's legal career is he knew what it was like to lose and to overcome obstacles. that also, i think, helped prepare him for the difficulties he would face as president. another was that lincoln had a great reverence for the laws and a sense of justice. as a lawyer, lincoln only wanted to take cases where he knew that his client was in the right. he had a sense of justice, of following what was morally right, morally true, and he wanted to pursue that as president. then the last thing i would point to is that as a lawyer, lincoln dealt with a lot of many civil wars, a lot of human conflicts, whether it was a divorce case or a debt collection case or an assault case or a murder case, lincoln

was dealing with people who hated each other, who were in conflict with each other, and he learned a lot about human nature through those experiences. i think that those cases that he dealt with for decades before the civil war helped prepare him to be an excellent wartime president during a national civil war. >> you would put that down to empathy for people as well as his approachability, wouldn't you? >> that's right. lincoln had a great knack for being able to understand his opponents. in fact, when he would prepare for a trial, he would try to make sure that he understood his opponent's side better than they did. so that he could be fully prepared to argue in court. >> i would like to add something, too. one of the things i think about both grant and lincoln that we maybe realize but don't talk enough about is the fact that they were very humble individuals. they expressed themselves in such a way that the average guy

in the street, the average person, would say yes, i understand what he's saying. yes, i agree with him and maybe more than anything, even though he was disliked by some, people liked him. certainly as a lawyer when he got up in front of the jury and said something, they believed him. >> john, while i'm with you, who is really u.s. grant and also, roll into why did the lost cause dislike him so much? >> that's an interesting question. there's a lot of different ramifications there. the first thing we might need to say is that the lost cause, to put it in the simplest terms, was an attempt by southerners who, after all, didn't come out on the right side as they saw it in the civil war, and as a result, what they wanted to have happen is they wanted to win the war of virtue. yeah, those yankees may have won

the war but we were the people that did the right thing. robert e. lee is the greatest human being. well, it was said he was a christ-like figure. i think what happened was there was a series of former lincoln soldiers who decided and literally made a conscious effort to do several things, to make sure that everybody understood that the war was won or lost in virginia, not out here in mississippi or wherever. so that was a very, very important thing. and secondly, that the greatest general to come out of the civil war was robert e. lee. nobody else. how do you accomplish that? one of the easiest ways to accomplish that, to make your figure the most important figure, is to indeed make sure that you knock down that individual. so the stories about grant and how lucky he was because he had more people and because he was a

drunk and all of these other things, developed as a way to make the point that yeah, he won that war, he did it very well, but he was just lucky. it was just one of those things that happened. so i think the obvious answer or the most important answer to what frank williams just asked is that grant won. he wasn't supposed to do that. but he won. lee lost, but lee was the great gentleman. lee was the one who maybe he lost, but he did all the right things. he was somebody we could hold up to virtue, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. but there was a problem and this developed in the south particularly. the problem was that at appomattox, grant gave the south a very, very, very good surrender term. great surrender terms.

so as a result, it was hard for southerners in the late 19th and into the 20th century to say that grant was a loser, that he was terrible, he was awful, because most americans, whether northerners or southerners, saw grant as the most important figure of that particular century. i would dare say that most of the stories that we have heard about grant, if you read the literature that's coming out, are simply not accurate. finally, the big thing about grant was as president, one of the biggest things that he did, he wanted to make sure that the results of the civil war were followed. and that meant, of course, that african-americans would become equal citizens in this particular nation. so he fought to make sure this happened. he squashed the ku klux klan.

he did a lot of things like that. did it work all the time, no, it didn't, because many northerners and southerners thought blacks should be kept in an inferior status. but grant tried all he could to try to make sure that the results of the civil war were what he believed and what later on in the later 20th century, people believed is the main reason why the war was fought. >> frank, let me address the question of grant's image as president. we have this notion that grant was a great general, john addressed that to some extent, and then he became a not so good president. i think we have this myth that grant was popularly -- was elected in 1868 with a huge popular majority which is actually true. he took office in march of 1869 and then things began to fall apart, that he made a lot of

mistakes and reformists rose up and were critical of him and their criticisms supposedly were justified by the supposed mistakes that he has made -- he had made. actually, the reality is quite a bit different from that. grant took office in march of 1869 but from the very beginning, he had a number of critics, people who disagreed with him on politics. certainly andrew johnson, his predecessor, came to hate ulysses s. grant before grant ever became president. he hated grant because grant worked closely with the republicans of the congress to fashion the reconstruction legislation which essentially overthrew what johnson had done in the area of reconstruction. so johnson and his party, the democratic party, despised grant throughout his term. the newspapers, democratic newspapers, were full of criticism. democratic speakers, people in congress.

when congress, the house of representatives became democratic after the 1874 election, they launched all these investigations trying to besmirch grant as much as they could. grant also had a number of critics within his own political party, the republican party. charles sumner, henry adams. these are people who wanted office from grant. sumner wanted to be secretary of state. he didn't get the job. adams wanted influence and appointment. he didn't get either one. from the very beginning, these men and many others sort of a northeastern elite in the country in the republican party criticized grant, said he isn't really up to the presidency. he's a mere military man. he doesn't know anything about governing. their criticism was really unrelenting throughout his term. so when historians began to write about this period in the early 20th century looking back at grant's time, they tended to pay much more attention to grant's critics than to his

defenders. even to his own words, alas. so the idea of his quote, failure as a president became very much rooted in the popular imagination. there's another element in this not just historians' laciness of the time, looking at one side of the question. there is also the problem of what we might call the jim crow settlement in the early 20th century, the myth of the lost cause frank was referred to, and that is reconstruction at that time, the early 20th century, was looked upon as a terrible, terrible time in american history. it was when the federal government oppressed one section of the country. and grant is sitting in the white house for eight years, was the oppressor in chief. so when historians looked back at grant's period, they tended to find as much to criticize about grant not only about reconstruction, but all these other stories that his other

critics had brought up, drinking and so forth. so that remained historical orthodoxy until the 1860s, 1970s when you had the civil rights movement in this country, began to turn people's thinking around about reconstruction. historians in the '70s and '80s began to look back and say we really need to rethink reconstruction and what was going on then and this was the time when the grant administration and others were actually defending the right, were trying to do what was good for the country. so grant's image has risen tremendously, his historical image as president. frank spoke about his ratings by c-span, the survey they do of historians and political scientists. his rank went from 33 to 22 over a period of some 15 years in those polls. so grant now stands out as a champion of civil rights and in

that sense, quite a great president. >> so let's get this straight. when you think of grant having, and some of us believe this to be so, he had all popularity following the civil war than the recently assassinated abraham lincoln. all of a sudden, after his death in 1885, his reputation diminishes and are these the only reasons why that occurred historically? another way of asking, chuck, what part does the loyalty relating to politics play in the character of the president, and in grant's case, his refusal to believe the misconduct of his closest aides? did that have anything to do with grant's diminution in popularity? >> i think that's another myth, actually, that got very much rooted in our understanding of

grant. in my research, what i found is that you hear oh, grant hung on to these aides too long, he was too loyal to them, he hated to fire people, et cetera, et cetera. what my research showed me, with one very notable exception which i will address in a minute, was that when wrongdoing was brought to grant's attention, he rarely dallied in getting rid of the person who was guilty, who was thought to be recreant in his duties or otherwise. perhaps the best example, the secretary of war who, in march of 1876, it was discovered in a house committee investigation that he had sold a post tradership, kind of a px out in the west, to an individual who was going to then line the secretary's pocket.

but in fact, when that information was brought to grant i think shortly after breakfast one morning, grant had the secretary's resignation by 10:20 that day. in fact, he was criticized for firing him too quickly. he didn't leave time to impeach him. i think it's something of a myth. the one case in which it really is true, i think, that grant hung on to somebody a little too long, way too long, actually, was orville babcock, one of his private secretaries who really was a weasel. there's no two ways about it. he was caught up in the whiskey ring business in 1876, went on trial out in st. louis for his complicity in the whiskey ring. grant actually gave a deposition in that case in orville babcock's favor. it was an unfortunate thing that he did. you may ask well, why, why would he do that. didn't he realize that grant s

was -- orville babcock was involved in this thing? in his heart of hearts, he may have but we have to remember by 1876, his last year in office, all those criticisms i was mentioning earlier had been going on for a long, long time. most of those criticisms that had been going on earlier were actually unjustified. grant really felt that babcock's trial was in some sense an attack on him personally, and so -- now, he did give the deposition and babcock was acquitted. many people think because of the deposition. i happen to think it's a little more complicated than that. but babcock did not get his job back in the white house after the trial. he came back, he was very cocky, but grant asked him to go and he did lose the job. so i think the whole question of grant being excessively loyal to recreants in his administration, i have reexamined that and i

think it's a little bit different story. >> thank you very much. professor white, was president lincoln really the lawyer in the white house after his private practice of just over 24 years, and if so, how do you explain that? when he had an attorney general and a judge advocate general to handle legal matters? >> yeah. lincoln actually during the election of 1864 calls him the people's attorney or the people's lawyer. he referred to himself that way. and he certainly acted that way. now, he did have an attorney general and other lawyers in the federal government, but lincoln thought through the major issues in consultation with his cabinet and came to his conclusions in terms of what he would do. so when it came to emancipation, something that at the beginning of the civil war, he had said it would be unconstitutional to free the slaves of states that were part of the union, even in the south.

by the midpoint of the war, he comes to a conclusion that he can free the slaves and he then issues statements and opinions and public letters arguing for why he could do something that previously, he had said was illegal and now he says is legal. so lincoln was the one thinking through those issues, thinking through the arguments that could defend those kind of actions. >> can you comment on lincoln's notes for a law lecture which is an amazing document. we're not quite sure how lincoln used it, whether it was just thoughts for himself or for a speech, and one part, there used to be a time when these notes for a law lecture would hang in every law office in our country as an inspiration. but one section that appeals to many is the fact when he says in an admonition discourage

litigati litigation. there will be business enough. >> sure. in the early 1850s, lincoln started to think that maybe he could make some income delivering lectures, writing lectures and giving lectures so he wrote a number of these things. one of these are notes that survived for a lecture that he thought he would give to young men who wanted to become lawyers or to young men who were now lawyers. so i will read you a very short section of that. discourage litigation. persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser in fees, expenses and waste of time. as a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. there will still be business enough. and when you read the accounts of people who interacted with lincoln, young men and women who went to lincoln wanting to take him on as their attorney, what

you often find is lincoln pushing back a little bit. i found an account of a 21-year-old man who went to lincoln and he had some sort of problem with another person, and he said to lincoln here's my issue, and lincoln looked at him and said how old are you. the man said i'm 21 years old, mr. lincoln. and lincoln then encouraged him, don't sue in this case. he said there's plenty of other time to sue, there's plenty of -- you need to focus your attention on other things. another time, a man came to him and said i want to sue my neighbor for $600, and lincoln said i'm not going to take your case. you can make $600 a lot of other ways. go do that instead. i think that that mindset was something that was really important to lincoln's character. he probably could have made a lot more money than he did taking more of these cases, but he knew that it was better for a community if they could resolve their cases or resolve their disagreements outside of court, not go through the ugliness of a

case, and so you see testimony after testimony of people who knew lincoln, who interacted with lincoln where they said after his death, yeah, that was the advice he gave me, not to pursue these kind of things in court. >> john, you have had hands-on experience as david nolan and louie gallo did with annotating the grant memoirs which is considered a classic even by literary critics. why is this so? >> yeah, that is one of those questions that has been constantly answered or questioned to the point that some people actually believe and still believe that grant didn't write the memoirs, he was too stupid to write anything like the memoirs, it was actually mark twain that did it. absolutely not true. grant wrote every word of the memoirs and was edited by editors like any author might be.

i think one of the most important things to consider is the fact that he wrote those memoirs when he was dying from cancer, from throat cancer. horrible, horrible, horrible way of any cancer is terrible, obviously, but this was a particularly awful way. he couldn't even lie down and sleep, because the phlegm from the cancer would choke him. so he had to stay up all the time, 24 hours a day, yet he's trying to write these memoirs. why is he doing that? because he had lost all his money to a swindler, actually, a wall street swindler, and he wanted to do something to make sure his beloved wife julia would have something to live on when he knew he was going to die. so he decided even though he doesn't want to write the memoirs, he decides he will write them and get them published so that she can have something to live on.

the big thing i think that you will notice when you look at the memoirs is he writes very directly, very simply, right to the point. he's very humble in this. the memoir, by the way, deal only with the war. they don't deal with his presidency. he knows very well the general reading public wants to read about his role in the war. his style is basically simple. it's the sort of thing you pick up and you kind of are taken into it. he will say by the way, such and such and such and such. it's really very, very powerful. so as a result, literary critics like mark twain and like others right up to the present day have read these memoirs and have concluded that this is the greatest piece of literature, non-fiction literature, ever written by any american. now, what's intriguing is, when

they talk about fiction, you think of moby dick. that's the book that's considered the great piece of fiction. the greatest piece of non-fiction is considered ulysses s. grant's memoirs. why is this? i think because he just lays it out very simply. he doesn't really attack anybody. he simply states the facts, so to speak, and the result is that people read this, are taken in and remember, frank williams said this is the most popular man in the late 19th century america, and the memoirs are sold by union soldiers dressed in uniform going from house to house, following along with a book, a 35-page book telling them how to sell. don't ever leave the house unless you have sold that book. the main argument is, of course, you got to buy this book and put it next to the bible, because you can't -- we owe this to the

man who saved the nation. >> john, while we're with you, i think our listeners and viewers want to know about grant's relationship with abraham lincoln, the president. grant could not have been as successful at least towards the end of the war without the support of the commander in chief. what accounts for this? >> i think chief williams has hit it right on the head. i think the major thing is lincoln looks at what grant's doing and he says this is amazing. all my other generals are complaining. they want more troops, they want more supplies, they want more of this, more of that, and they want to blame me if they lose a battle. whereas grant says don't worry, mr. lincoln, i'll take the blame if there's any blame to be had in a particular battle. secondly, i think most important

thing to mention, too, is that grant and lincoln agreed on strategy. they both agreed they're not going to follow the old way where you flank -- outflank the other side, et cetera. you simply keep going and use your numbers as a way to win this particular battle or this particular war. so they agree on strategy. the other thing is, grant lets lincoln know what he's doing and lincoln doesn't care. you don't have to tell me, i agree with what you're doing, i know you agree with me, and that's, you know, that's the thing. finally, i think the reason they get along so well is lincoln supports grant and he stays out of the way and lets grant do what has to be done to win this war. and grant, on the other hand, is willing to accept the responsibility for anything that

happens. so the two men, by the way, two westerners, one from illinois, the other one born in ohio, lived in illinois. they are two westerners so they have some feeling toward each other that others might not have. maybe it's lucky, too, that grant had the advantage of having some pretty bad union generals that he was following and he looked so much better. why did he look so much better? because he didn't complain, he just did it. he kept pressing forward. my great superstition, he once said when he wanted to see his beloved julia before he left for the mexican war, my one superstition is when i decide i'm going to go some place, i go and i reach that point no matter what it takes. that's the way he fought the war. >> how did grant manage the question of reconstruction, which lincoln never had an opportunity to do?

>> grant of course ultimately had a great deal of sympathy for the former slaves and what we should remember is that reconstruction of course began immediately after the war. lincoln actually had a plan that was put into effect briefly, but grant as general in chief in washington, 1865 to 1869, participated pretty closely in the sense that he advised with the republicans in the congress as they wrote the reconstruction legislation. as i was mentioning earlier, this is one of the things andrew johnson didn't like about limb. when he became president, the 15th amendment to the constitution was pending. grant devoted part of his inaugural address to advocating the ratification of the 15th amendment. took another year, but as it came closer to getting the requisite number of states,

grant actually intervened with the state legislatures behind the scenes, of course, and pushed them to do the job. it was ratified in march of 1870, the 15th amendment, the right to vote amendment for african-american males. in proclaiming that amendment, grant said this is the most important event that has occurred since the founding of our country. a pretty amazing thing for him to say at that point. but what grant also knew was that the 14th amendment, the citizenship and equal rights amendment, plus the 15th amendment, the voting amendment, were not self-enforcing. so grant as a very effective legislative president, did meet frequently with republicans in congress to fashion enforcement laws to make sure that these rights, these newly conferred rights were undergirded. he on occasion used troops. he used troops in, for instance, south carolina in 1871 and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in a frontal assault on

the ku klux klan. his justice department was created during grant's term and was used, the idea was to get more order and system to the litigation the government of the united states conducted and largely it was motivated to try to assault the klan. it was fairly successful in that. it's interesting to note also that it was grant, during grant's term that you had the civil rights act of 1875 passed by the congress which was basically a public accommodations equality law. it was on the books only eight years. the supreme court after grant was out of the white house declared it unconstitutional in 1883 but grant had advocated that piece of legislation to uphold the rights of the newly enfranchised citizens. so in a variety of ways, he

attacked the whole problem of reconstruction but what he confronted ultimately was an implacable white south that one way or another, no matter how long it took, they were going to make sure that it was a white man's government. >> gordon's northern sentiment originally in favor of reconstruction began to wane particularly after the panic of 1873, when people throughout the country began looking out where their next meal was coming from rather than helping someone in another section of the country, and as northern public opinion waned, it was more and more difficult to get an effective policy accepted in the country, and of course, the democrats took control of the house of representatives in 1875 so there was no opportunity after that to pass new legislation. >> thank you very much. after the next question, we will

be glad to take questions from the floor, so please get ready to come up to the dais and do so now. i'm going to ask professor white about lincoln as mediator, a term that was not well used or known in his day as a form of alternative dispute resolution. so can you discuss briefly constitutional issues that were not likely to be mediated like the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, emancipation and the blockade? >> sure. so at the beginning of the civil war, southern sympathizers in maryland burned out railroad bridges around baltimore and that was a very important strategic thing that they did, because if any union soldiers from the north were to get to washington, d.c., they had to take the railroads through baltimore. so when they burned these things out, it made it very difficult for lincoln to get soldiers in washington, d.c.

he took a very big step in suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in april of 1861. what that meant was he could use the military to arrest civilians without charges and essentially hold them indefinitely as long as public safety required that. now, the constitution in article i says the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus may be suspended when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. lincoln looked at the situation and said well, i have a case of rebellion on my hands so i can exercise this power. but the problem is that article i of the constitution has to do with the powers of congress. so most legal thinkers at that time thought lincoln is violating the constitution because he's exercising a legislative power, something that is not delegated to him by the constitution. now, case after case after case came before state and federal

courts throughout the nation, beginning in 1861, when lincoln first suspended the writ, then extending into reconstruction, dealing with this issue. lincoln dealt with it in several different ways. first, when courts would say he couldn't do this, he simply ignored them and decided well, i have a rebellion on my hands, the constitution is vague about this power, i'm going to do what i need to do to win the war, and winning the war requires me to suspend the writ. another thing that lincoln did, and this sort of gets at mediation to an extent, i suppose, is he would appeal to the public. he would make the case, make the argument that what he was doing was required by the constitution, because the constitution required him as president to uphold the constitution, to preserve the nation, and if this is what it took to preserve the nation, then this is what he needed to do and it was therefore

constitutional. you can quibble with that line of reasoning but it was the argument that he made. he made a very similar kind of argument for emancipation. lots of his critics during the civil war said you can't free the slaves. the constitution doesn't allow you to do that. his response would be well, the constitution, my oath of office, require me to preserve the nation and if freeing the slaves and putting muskets in their hands and putting them into the army is the way for me to preserve the nation, then what i'm doing is constitutional. so you see lincoln thinking through these issues and doing what he can even when the courts are trying to stop him. and these issues have been controversial for the last 150 years. people still criticize lincoln for violating the constitution. there are plenty of websites out there that still call him a tyrant and dictator for exercising powers that weren't delegated to him. but what you can see in the arguments that he made was he

was looking at the text of the constitution and deducing from it how can i make a case for exercising these extraordinary powers. and at the end of the day when he ran for re-election, his view was that the people are persuaded by my arguments and they are going to re-elect me and if they're not, they will vote for the other guy. he felt justified in his re-election because for four years, he had been exercising these sort of powers in plain sight. the people knew it and he won in overwhelming victory in the electoral college. >> thank you very much. let's take some questions. yes, sir. >> can you comment on the horsemanship of grant and do you have any stories, and can you make a connection between his great skills as a horseman and his great skills as a general? >> you are talking about the horsemanship? >> right. right. i consider him to be one of the greatest horsemen in our country's history. anyway, can you make the connection between his horsemanship and his skills as a

general? >> yeah. >> any stories about his horsemanship. >> the thing about grant, if you look at the memoirs, there's a section there where he talks about several things that he learned as a young man, and he learned how to work with horses. that horses made his life simpler and he had some sort of talent, he had an ability to reach out to these animals and he could get them to do things that somebody else would not be able to do. so when he goes to, there are several instances, when he's traveling around ohio, he talks about how sometimes he's doing it with a neighbor, and the neighbor is having trouble with the horse but he can take care of it. he tells the story about how he wanted this particular horse badly. his father thought it cost too

much and he told grant listen, offer him 20 bucks. if he doesn't take it, offer him 22 1/2. if he doesn't take that, offer him $25 for the horse. what grant did, he didn't exactly follow his father's instructions. he went to this naeighbor and said my father said i'm to offer $20 for this horse. if you don't accept that, i'm to offer you 20 1/2. if you don't accept that, i will give you 25. guess how much he paid for that horse? of course, the biggest thing is grant held the record at west point for the highest jump on a horse of any cadet. i can't remember, it's 5'6" or something but he gets on this horse, very dramatic scene. they are in this west point place and the sergeant who is running, teaching the cadets how to ride horses and all, signals for this young man to come and

in comes grant on top of this horse, circles this place, jumps over some barriers and that is the record at west point from that period on. horses were very, very important to grant because he had an exceptional ability to deal with them. >> chuck, can you comment on the other part of the question, whether his horsemanship and skills as a horseman had any relation to his talents as a fighting general? >> i don't qualify myself as a military historian at all, but i think part of what i think makes up grant's personality is his ability to solve problems, and a horse can be a problem for him. he knew how to deal with the problem. the enemy in front of him could be a problem. he knew how to deal with that. his adversaries in the congress of the united states, when he was president, could be a

problem and he could maneuver around that one way or another, often successfully. not always. so i think -- i think we often forget how smart this guy was, really. he was very smart. and there's an intuition that i think goes along with that, not just book learning but an intuition. that comes out in his horsemanship. it comes out in his generalship. i think what i have discovered in his presidency, it comes out pretty significantly there as well, envisioning a problem and how to deal with it. >> thank you. yes, sir. your question. >> good afternoon. my name is lincoln boyd so i will ask a question about grant. in regards to moral leadership of ulysses s. grant, we talked about him being an advocate for african-americans, squashing the ku klux klan, working towards reconstruction. but we didn't really talk about issues surrounding native americans, them going against the treaty of fort laramie.

i know grant was pushed to run because when grant was president, seeing he was serving the best interests of those who are in economic power, the gilded age, skyrocketed under his presidency. in regards to the moral leadership in regards to economic issues surrounding ulysses s. grant in the late 1800s, where does he stand on those? we can talk about him being a great president, a great advocate for african-americans and civil rights but not necessarily for economic rights and economic justice. i was curious to see what you had to say about that. >> how about handling that, chuck? >> that's a great question. i'm glad you brought it up. i think it's part of grant's record that's often overlooked. if you read grant's inaugural address, of course he talks about the racial issues confronting the nation when he took office, but he also talked a great deal about economic questions as well. there were a lot of them in his time.

the civil war government had gone deeply in debt. the civil war government had raised taxes, it taxed just about everything that moved. tariffs went way up. internal taxes went way up. the government borrowed a great deal. as i think most of you know, at one point the government just started printing dollar bills with no gold or silver behind them. this was a whole raft of economic problems that confronted grant when he took office. johnson again typically made a mess of trying to deal with those questions. what you find during grant's term is that taxes were lowered. the debt was refunded, that is, a lower interest rate was charged for new bonds that replaced old bonds. the national debt was reduced 17% during ulysses s. grant's eight years in office. and ultimately, toward the end of his term, a law was passed for the payment of gold for the

so-called greenbacks. grant was -- a lot of people at that time, especially around the panic of 1873 came and the bottom fell out of the economy, some people said what we need is inflation and just pump a lot of money in and everything will be solved. grant belonged to a school that said no, he was tempted by the law that passed congress to inflate the currency but finally vetoed it because he said you know what we really need is a stable currency, because the more we inflate the currency, that's going to hurt a number of segments in the economy and he ultimately came down on the side that a stable economy was what we really needed to work toward. but it's a great question. >> thank you very much. time for one quick question and answer. hopefully. >> hi. do we have a clear idea of what

lincoln's ideas were for reconstruction, and if so, was grant able to implement a good many of those, not many of those? how did that look? >> good question. john? >> so i will take the first part, then turn it over for the second part. lincoln in december of 1863 issued a proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction. this was a plan that he put forward that would have brought the southern states back into the union. one of the things you have to keep in mind is lincoln's goal from 1861 onward is reunion. it's not so much conquering but it's bringing back, bringing back southerners, white southerners back into the nation and then ultimately by the end of his life, including black southerners as well. lincoln, right before lincoln is assassinated he delivers a speech from the white house in which he advocates for black men who were either educated or who had served in the army to be allowed to vote. so that's lincoln's vision,

reunion with white and black coming back into the nation. so in december of 1863, he issues a proclamation where he gives southerners and people who are indicted for treason in the federal courts the opportunity to take an oath of allegiance and come back into the nation, and they would have to also vow to oppose -- to relinquish slavery at that point. he realized that some people were taken advantage of that, so then not really supporting what they were taking an oath to support, and so in march of 1864, he revised the proclamation so that some of these people who were indicted for treason couldn't just get the indictment thrown out of court by taking an oath and saying something they might not really believe. lincoln's overall plan was that if 10% of the voting population from 1860 took this oath and then wrote a new state constitution, they would be welcomed back into the union.

radical republicans in congress hated this kind of plan. they thought it was way too lenient and so in the summer of 1864 they passed a bill known as the wade davis bill which would have had much stricter terms for bringing southern states back into the union. ...

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>> here we are in concorde massachusetts which is known as the battle room on april 19 starting the american revolution this house eventually much later than that becomes the home of his family and one of the daughters will be sent may all caught