>> good afternoon. we will get started here. my name is -- and i like to welcome you all this afternoon to politics and prose. couple quick notes. not already done so please take a moment to silence your cell phones. prefer to take pictures and do whatever you would like in that fashion. do it silently. the reason being we record all of our events audio for archival

purposes and we also have c-span book to be here with us this afternoon. when we get to the q&a portion of the event if you have a question which we highly encourage please make sure to step up to the microphone that is here so everyone can hear your question here and everyone can hear your question at home when c-span airs the stock. this talk is for joe kellyanne his new book and one. in the old retelling kelly does not just record [inaudible] he gives an entirely new reading of who the first settlers were, why they came to north america in what world i hope to build here. rather than seeing jamestown as a failed plymouth colony kelly, professor of literature at the college of charleston and author of america's longest speech, recasted as a struggling band of marooned castaways, not pilgrims but rebellious commoners eager to resist authority of the off the channels of the reddish cap

system and probably a system of self-governance that it owes more to the quality and survival skills many learned from the native americans. please help me welcome him to politics and prose imac. [applause] >> thank you, liz. thanks to politics and prose for inviting me here and thank you to all of you coming in such a beautiful fall day to listen to me talk. i hope i can make it worth your while. that was a wonderful summary and stole my thunder but i don't know what i will now. [laughter] i will begin by telling you a story. in the beginning a storm at sea, waits higher than a house, wind chopping the tops of the waves off like and ask, throwing the water into the heavens and joining the very lightning with

sulfur and pitch raining down across the ship. a brave ship full of noble creatures. that is how shakespeare's tempest begins. the play that was staged in 611 in a drafty london theater in the winter of 11 was ripped from the headlines, if you will to use a phrase from today, only there were no headlines or newspapers would not be invented for a couple of years yet. but it was a two-story and shakespeare had a scoop, so to speak, he got it from a narrative that was written by a friend of his a crony who would share drinks with him at the mermaid tavern in london. he was on board the ship and the name of the ship was the sea venture it was the flagship of the third resupply of jamestown which had been founded a couple years earlier. a toehold at that time on the entire vast north american

continent, the only english colony overseas. there were about nine ships filled out from london sliding down the thames river, flags billowing, crowds cheering and the biggest overseas endeavor that england had put together up to this point. heading into the empire business pretty late in trying to catch up with spain and portugal and even trying to catch up with friends who got a slow start. they had beautiful weather when they put england into the rearview mirror. weather like this, blue skies, wonderful breezes and normally what people would do going across the ocean even if they were going to the chesapeake is island hot going on a southern route but they took a direct route across the atlantic. they would not see land for weeks. an unusual way of crossing the atlantic. they had wonderful weather for weeks and weeks until the estimated they were about a week away from getting to the

chesapeake bay. that is when they got overcome by a hurricane, a kind of storm that english sailors and very few european sailors had ever experienced. three days and three nights. it's more fantastic than what shakespeare does is play which is full of fantasy and magic. three days, three nights and struggling against the waves. the very boards of the ship began to come apart in the -- they are down below looking for where the leaks are and there are leaks everywhere and trying to plug them in taking their soft peat and pounding it to the gaps to stop the water. they can't do it. the sailors are stripped naked working the pumps and they are billing and even the gentleman on the ship are stripped down to their shirtsleeves. they are helping as well. for three days and three nights and still the water is rising. it gets to the point that

they're in the middle of the atlantic and the land anywhere for 1000 miles and no way they can survive. they decide to close hatches and consignment cells to city. at that moment the site link. the admiral is able to turn this water logged ship just enough to ram it up on a reef and on the very edge northeastern edge of the bermuda islands. this is not a new story and since 2007 there's been by pretty soon the books that have come out about jamestown themselves and the 400th anniversary of deep sound and several very good books about the sea venture and this shipwreck itself. but when i'm doing different from what everyone else is done is telling the story from the point of view of the common settler. the laborers and the tradesmen and the people who signed on to this venture who bought shares in the virginia company with

their bodies, not with their money. what we know now and what we know now and this is some of this amazing and wonderful book by a guy named steven manske who the title of the guy is shipwrecked and he studied every text about shipwreck in the 16th and 17th century and identified a three-part psychological experience that people go through. metaphorically speaking and sometimes literally but metaphorically speaking the first is a shop in your hit in the face with cold seawater, salt water and it shocks the sensibilities. can't believe this is happening to you. then immersion with your feet leaving the deck and you're floating in see the rest of the passengers floating away from you and detach from everything else. you see the wreck of the ship itself floating away from you.

then if you do not around you can stumble up on the beach. only two stages of psychological experience but the third one when you climb up on the beach and the sea water is dripping off you in off your hair and blinking at the sun and the ground and see the other survivors doing the same thing who themselves have been immersed and detached from every connection they have had any look at the debris of the ship and material coming on shore. then you're faced with the next step. how will we survive human this is the third stage called stoppage. literally salvage the materials and let's get what food we can and get what tools we can and get what lumber began to try to construct something that will allow us to survive on the desert island. but it is also the salvage, old way of life. your political organization and

social organization. what will you pick and choose that will help you survive and what will you leave behind. it's the psychological experience of going through shipwreck and facing this necessity for survival that allows people to make these otherwise impossible choices. let's take an example and maybe not the best example because they don't know the answer to the question i will post but two very interesting people who are on this shipwreck on the sheet venture shipwreck in bermuda. one is elizabeth person and she is the maid of someone we know as mistress horton, they are both on the manifest. one is the servant and one is a mistress. what happened they do when they wake up they get onto the beach and survive and sleep it off and get up the next morning and what

does elizabeth parsons do? does she go back to being the maid of her mistress or is she looking out for herself? we don't know the answer to that is a question but in general we do know an awful lot. let me take a step back for second and tell you about how this whole venture was set up. as i said this is the third resupply of jamestown and also bringing the second charter because for two years team -- the virginia company wrote an entire new charter that was getting brought to jamestown on the sea venture and the governor was with them and admiral was with them. two ways you can invest. [inaudible conversations] way use money, time and a half pounds would buy you a share in the company and all the gentleman in the shipwreck had bought one chair and purchased another share by virtue of the ship itself. all those commoners i was talking about, laborers, tradesmen, the maids the

mistresses they own a share because of their body did not invest any money. what we do know and what historians have not paid attention to is that each one of these people entered into a literal contract when they get on that vote. they went down to philpott lane in london and went to the house of thomas smith who was the treasurer and ceo of the virginia company and explained to them the terms of the contract and they did not really sign for took an oath took two oh switch were equivalent to signing and giving their consent to this contract and the contract meant mutual obligation. they would give a term of labor and at the end of the term of labor the virginia company would give them 100 acres. we think 100 acres. some dispute in the documents about that. what's important is this is a set of mutual obligations. when the settlers set foot on the ships in london they knew

they are putting themselves under the jurisdiction of the virginia company. soon as they departed england they started having buyers remorse and the reason was because the sailors who were sailing the ships did the jamestown before. the settlers had the propaganda and the sailors had been there and started telling them what was going on in virginia. what was going on in virginia was not what they expected from a plantation. an english person, establishing a plantation thought it would be like a plantation that england had been establishing an island where you basically have a group of people who go over together and establish a town and forms outside the town that you are english rising ireland and turning ireland into a little piece of england that's what they were expecting but what they were going to find is when the sailors talk to them the jamestown was a military

garrison. it was run by soldiers and the settlers had become against their will but soldiers in the scares and under a military rule. to make things worse those generals were incompetent. they were at least three factions among the counselors who were governing jamestown and maybe four. by this time one of them had been executed and another was in chains below deck on a little ship they had sitting in the james river. incompetence and the place was messed up. after the first summer half the people had disappeared and most of them having starved. this is not the starving time that you have heard of. where they reduced to cannibalism but the starting time that we don't even talk about, the first summer on the james river.

this is what we would call trouble times and i take that term from the 1950s for a couple historians who were elaborating on the famous frontier thesis of american exceptionalism. not entirely popular thesis these days although it's coming back into fashion, i would say. ever since the 1990s when there have been new attention drawn to what was called the middle ground in this meeting split space between civilization and european civilizations and european civilizations. with the new attitude and new scholarship that done to the middleground the frontier thesis is coming back into play. basically, the frontier thesis suggests that what makes americans distinct from european is art competition with the frontier.

when frederick jackson turner positing the thesis because they had been closed in the late 19 century and said this is what's causing anxiety in america and no frontier so how will we define ourselves as americans. it happens on the frontier and this is coming back to the term trouble times -- a group of people will go across the appalachian mountains to settle a new settlement somewhere west of the mountains and get over there and have a confrontation with the frontier in a matter we go if you are settling a new settlement of the frontier it is tough and hard and run into problems. life challenges problems. if your leadership is incompetent democracy presents itself. that is the term. democracy presents itself as a natural way we will deal with this situation and we have leaders who are no good and too far from the east and are not getting help from them and we

have to do it ourselves and how will we make decisions and figure out how to save ourselv ourselves. democracy. trouble times have come to jamestown and those leaders were backstabbing each other and people were starving trouble time came to bermuda. bermuda was a paradise and the thought of it in those terms. fish, fowl, fruit and enough pigs to have people eat barbecue forever for 153 people and the survivors could have lived wonderfully. what happened is the settlers after hearing the stories from the sailors that we will not go any further. we will start our colony right here and why would we go to virginia when we can do it right here and not die. if we stay here. they decided to stay but the

virginia company for different ideas. which brings me or brings on to state a character named steven hopkins who is the most important founding father that you have probably never heard of. anyone heard of steven hopkins? i'm teaching you something today. good. he's probably the original stefano in shakespeare's campus. according to william, the guy who wrote the narrative of william shakespeare hadn't adamant time talk which my knowledge that's what the cause of wolverine so i guess it was a tone that could cut through anything. yet the gift of gab and persuade people. william is describing in the state because he's a villain in williams tail. steven hopkins who was just a

failed farmer which is why he was going and sometime in keeper one of those commoners into not buy his way and did not buy a share in the virginia company but bought it with his body, not money. what he started telling people was that yes, everyone had consented to come on the sea venture in the first place but our contracts ceased when the rack was committed. this was his argument. when they were immersed in that sea water to come back to the metaphor that steven gave us when they were immersed in that seawater their contract with the virginia company had dissolved. i will read half a paragraph from the book because i want to make sure we are using steven hopkins exact words. he said the shipwreck had freed each castaway and i was his term. they were freed. from the government of any man and even the meanest by which he meant the poorest laborer among

them and even the meanest was bound only by the law of self-preservation. this compelled him to quote, provide for himself and his own family as he saw fit. this condition of political detachment depended entirely on the fact that they were confronting a wilderness. this is basically what being rude means. you are castaway into a wilderness beyond civilization and beyond the law. essentially this is the state of nature and a foundation of hobbes and locke's social contract theory and only steven hopkins voiced it 40 years before his leviathan was published. castaways of the sea venture experienced the phenomenon but they did not use those terms. they did not use the term

agreement because it marooned did not carry this meaning in the english linkage until nine years later. the original meaning of marooned this is something i want to make sure i captured in the book and i thought any origin story of america has to include this and this is one of the contributions i hope i am making. the original meaning of marooned is not castaways being hurled into the wilderness but enslaved people having the courage to flee into the wilderness. we need to recover this origin of western democracy. democracy did not begin in the governance of puritan churches in europe but on the frontier experience of escaped slaves. panama, jamaica, haiti wherever spain had its colonies and when they imported africans to work on their slave labor camps -- in

each of those places people escaped into the inhospitable hinterland whether swamp or mountain or wherever they would not be followed. they would go there. as a matter fact the very first settlers in the continental united states something probably nobody knows, a couple historians know but certainly not in the popular imaginatio imagination -- in the 1520s before spain had settled anywhere in the continental united states the first settlers were bound workers, africans, who had escaped spanish slavery somewhere, not sure exactly where but somewhere on the carolina coast. okay, that term slave labor camp the brings us back to bermuda because what was happening in bermuda was a slave labor camp. they were work gangs and overseers and people with guns taking the settlers build the

very ships that were going to take them away from the paradise and bring them to jamestown. they labored for several months under these conditions. this steven hopkins was whispering his insurrection, if you will, to his fellow settlers and conspiracy which included more than half of the 150 people that were there and went one person too far. some went against him. he was arrested and tried and convicted to death and his golden tongue as william puts it he talked his way out of the death sentence and given clemency by the governor. then he kept his head down and two more instructions and executions before finally the ships were finished but we don't hear any more about steven hopkins but he disappears from history. these are people in bermuda on

their way to jamestown. >> was there anybody there? back really good point. thank you for asking the question. and i had no human habitations. no inhabitants in bermuda at all. >> [inaudible] >> they do not call them slaves but that's what they were. they were forced to go to jamestown which was a slave labor camp itself. they proceeded to try to escape and their mutiny after many but with the narrative is called muni but in effect it were people trying to ruin themselves like those slaves and in panama in jamaica and trying to run out to live with the indians. they were prevented from doing it. hopkins did his years in jamestown and did his ears the way a convict those time and

after he was done he did not take his hundred acres but went back to england. ten years after the sea venture rack another ship sailed into a storm in the mid-atlantic and this, of course, was that may far. you know that story and it was not supposed to end up in new england and had a patent from the virginia company and go for the south and up in massachusetts in this narrative we get from the point of william bradford who became the governor of the plymouth plantation. as he tells us there are two different types on the mayflower. there were the saints and strangers. okay? while they were off the coast of massachusetts the strangers started on really talk and what they were saying was because we are settling in the territory that the virginia company owned the contract is dissolved. when we land we can do whatever

we want to do. the way william bradford tells the story they then wrote up a contract -- what we know as the mayflower compact to prevent that from happening, the unruly strangers from doing whatever they wanted. this is what is considered now the founding document of america democracy, the mayflower compact where they enter 41 people enter into a civil body politic. the very thing and using the very words that steven hopkins is doing in bermuda or failed to do or try to do in bermuda. it's no surprise that the words are so similar to what steven hopkins was using in bermuda because steven hopkins was on the mayflower. he was one of those strangers. >> why does this matter? let me conclude by gesturing a

little broadly and maybe canterbury times. why is it important to tell the story in this new history of america's origin? we have a pretty good origin. we all know this and it's the program tale and religious oppression, flight in the mayflower, skate to the promised land and it's not like were naïve but i saw on the table )-right-parenthesis you lies my teacher told me by james and across the way is billed may far which companies these mythology but the influence of the myth is still there. it's embedded in the image we have that america is a shining city on a hill that image that was made popular by the 1980s by ronald reagan and borrowed it, by the way, from john kennedy used it in the 1960s but it did not get on until reagan used it. america -- if this is america and this is our image america is

built on a covenant not between people but tween people and god. this image comes from the sermon from 1530 from john winthrop and what he said was if god would prevent them from having a shipwreck and if he landed them safely, safe and sound and dry where they do not get immersed, they would keep the faith and say pure and resist corruption and they will remain faithful to the faith of their fathers which was the european faith. and there is what the shining city on the hill will be. this right to state. so long as we retain this myth be imagined that our democracy grew out of religion and the consequence of that conceit is our firm conviction that we as americans are as moses and the

jews in exodus were god's chosen people. shipwreck and castaway, being marooned in a wilderness is a better foundation for our modern society, not only is a more accurate and that's what i am arguing but that's where our foundation of democracy comes that not only is it more accurate but he better myth. just think about the consequences between the myth that we have in the myth of castaways when we're dealing with something like the 14th amendment. we are not bound to each other by cleaving to the faith of our fathers made a promise to god in each generation is marooned, cast a short in a wilderness and we must reform a more perfect union by making promises to each other. thanks. [applause]

>> if anyone has questions i'm happy to try to answer them. >> the ending came rather quickly. i thought you could talk more because you stopped the story of marooned in bermuda but the story goes on. >> guess, the story goes on. >> and the end up in jamestown and my understanding is terrible things took place and they all died. >> well, they do not alter but i only had 20 minutes to talk s so -- i do talk about this in the book. thank you for asking that question. when they get to jamestown people have already been there for two years but for two years they had been deserting the scares and at every opportunity and living with the indians. as a matter fact i talk about that first starting time in that first starting time ends because miraculously or apparently the

indians bring food to the fort and have been bearing their people in secret because they are afraid the indians know that everybody is dying in the fort and it will be overrun. the indians know it. they knew exactly what was going on and they knew how many people were dying and they give it the reason they say that is because people had deserted and as people had deserted the fort and living with the indians. i think what probably happened was they persuaded the indians to come save english. john smith and president winfield and the executives of the virginia company describe this as a miracle. god told them to come to this and how else could it be explained? >> the indians came in and explained how to -- after the harvest. >> right, but my distinction

with what is happening in plymouth and as i say this is if this is the origins of democracy we are basically looking at a failure because commoners did not win out and do not establish a democracy. a new book out and the pbs series begins at 1619 for the first burgesses was formed in jamestown but what we are looking at here is an attempt to form democracy but does not quite work. what happens in plymouth is not the assimilation or openness to change that we expect in middle ground of the frontier. the pilgrims succeed to the degree this is in their own words agree to which they were made impervious to the influences and they think of the indians is the devils out there in the woods. it will not adopt indian ways. that kind of thing. this is probably one of my favorite example of this is satire that the simpsons did of

the programs. i won't go into the building but marge says essentially something that comes right out of the world of william bradford which says he bragged about laws are stricter in massachusetts than they are in england and this is what made the righteous shining city on the hill is that there was less freedom in massachusetts than there was in england. >> i come from boston. that's why. >> i'm sorry. [laughter] there's an untold story in boston and we have not heard the story of the strangers. >> just a graphical or mechanical was in but [inaudible] >> he goes back to england and then back to england and died in newington. >> he signed up twice? >> yes. >> optimism is hard. >> he actually because he had been in virginia he had a very

salable commodity might have spoken the algonquin dialect in virginia and certainly knew how to deal with native americans. he was one of the more important people who were on the may far. you don't hear much about that. >> thank you. >> hello. i think both of them included part of my questions. i was just going to say when you refer to them experiencing the frontier that included their interactions with whatever indigenous people in that area -- >> absolutely. >> my question is do you know if anyone on the dickstein zero three ship or later were any on

the crew part of the expedition that landed in the roanoke island in 1587 and that 100 people that banished supposedly that people have been looking for ever since. well, the same people in charge of the virginia comedy had been involved in roanoke. they went to sir walter raleigh's house and had to talk them into giving them the patent because he was the one in charge of the roanoke county. you're exactly right. what happened -- they melted into native american villages and that's what scholars think is the best guess right now. probably they were killed in conflict with the native americans but many survived and lots of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence to suggest that they melted into

the native american society but the thing about roanoke that no one talks about in this comes back to the original meaning of marooned was that there were hundreds, hundreds of liberated african slaves that sir francis drake had gone down while they were establishing roanoke -- roanoke would be basically a pirate depot that would help english raids on spanish caribbean and sir francis drake went to the caribbean with 25 ships and thousands of soldiers and rated hispaniola and they almost rated cuba and rated florida and part of their strategy they would try to topple the spanish empire by getting slaves to rise up. they liberated hundreds of them took them on their ships and went to roanoke on their way home and those hundreds of people disappeared.

no one knows what happened to them. they got put off somewhere between florida in roanoke. i imagine they were put ashore at roanoke because they don't go back to england. those are the lost people of roanoke. have a pretty good idea what happened to the white people but no one talks about the black people. and they were hundreds of them. >> there's a few that talk about some of the africans that assimilated with the indians an- >> we think very quickly about florida and seminole indians and marines who were up in the swamps of carolina and virginia in the great as most. course, these people are sometimes assimilating into native american tribes and being helped by native americans. you are exactly right. >> i wanted to mention i met abel from various caribbean

islands who called themselves descendents of marooned. >> haiti, jamaica, absolutely. the biggest is in surinam. absolutely. what i think is what anthropologists recognize as distinctive about these ancestral communities people whose ancestors were marooned as they retain us as their identity with the people who identify freedom more than anybody. they are very existence is defined by the word freedom because their ancestors had the courage to escape slavery and it took courage. not only because you went to the wilderness and had to deal with the snakes and predators and the difficulties of living in the wilderness but you got caught and brought back and would probably be killed and in horrible waste because they want to make an example of you. amazing amount of courage to do

that. >> this will display a good deal of ignorance on the soul. here but what is known about the relationship between the marooned and native americans who ever had to receive them took them in and how much in the way of written accounts are there of the experience? >> very little which the reasons the story is hard to tell. what we know from -- the narratives were written by english if we talk about continental united states and not talking florida. of course, there's always -- we get the leaders in the executives of the virginia company and being bewildered by

why englishmen would go live with devil worshipers. that's what they were imagining. of course they cannot get out of the mindset but commoners got out of that mindset. and apologists know the study of the interaction between french colonists and native americans in the midwest now that if we drop by analogy from the studies what it suggested is the english settlers went into the tribes and probably took indian wives and their children would grow up indian and we have many examples of in later days of this happening. as a matter of fact, benjamin frequent comments on the fact that if a native american child is somehow kidnapped and brought into a white family at the first chance they get they run back out to what the whites consider the wilderness.

they don't want to stay in civilization. the white child is captured by native americans and goes up in a native american village even when they are recaptured by by whites, they desperately try to get back to the indian village. in later days we have a lot of testimony about what happens and there is something obviously very attractive to people about the native american way of life. >> that speaks and answers follow-up question i had in mind which i guess i could ask because there's no one in farmington. that is at least in some cases when an escaped marooned person of any sort after they had been taken in things like some would have some urge to go back and visit in some ways in disguise or whatever.

i don't know. but it seems amazing that none would make the reverse trip and perhaps not be identify themselves but nevertheless. >> it spends on -- if for thinking of the original sense where you are escaping from a tyrannical situation that is turning your life blessing you are to do is have anyone you want to know where you want. you do not want to go back. if you're shipwrecked in castaway the vast majority of castries want to reenter civilization and get out of that wilderness. we have situations like remarkable about jamestown and bermuda they did not. they wanted to escape civilization and restart society, civil society, on their own terms. in terms where they made mutual promises to each other and that is the lifestyle far more

attractive than what they had come from. >> [inaudible] >> well, we are here. part of the argument of my book is we need to this should be our founding. we think beginning of america you should not be thinking shining city on the hill, puritan massachusetts but you should be thinking people cast into a wilderness trying to we construct society where democracy presents itself. that's what we should be thinking. [inaudible] >> right, for those individuals it did not work out for them but what i would say even though i argue that we acknowledge and i think we live by this. these are the stories we tell each other. what got me into this product in

the first place was ten or 12 years ago i was fascinated by the fact that shipwreck and marooned with such a popular trove in culture and survivors and i think 37 different versions of the survivor series in the united states and other countries have them too but nowhere near this money. you're fascinated by this and we retell stories of shipwreck and marooned in the walking dead those apocalypse stories are basically the room details. people cast into a wilderness threatened by predators to reshape society so this is the myth of america. we have not owned up to it yet. we don't tell ourselves stories of exodus. we tell our source ourselves stories of castaway and being marooned. that's how each generation -- let's figure out what this marketing means. let me imagine a zombie apocalypse and what would we do and how -- we have a group of 15

people and how we will make decisions and who is in charge? that's how we discussed what democracy means. this already is our myth and we just have not acknowledged it yet. >> i believe i read recently that peggy noonan, reagan's speechwriter added shining to city on the hill. >> thank you for that. i'd like to retain that word because i like to think of what is the pit and polish on the shining city. the spit and polish are to be -- yes, liberty and equality. thank you very much. no other questions, i appreciate you all coming out. >> thank you everyone. please leave your chairs where they are. if you'd like to purchase the book they are available up at the register otherwise signing will be right in front of me. thank you.

[inaudible conversations] in time >> thank you for coming. very excited to be among so many friends and strangers than c-span. it is my honor to introduce justin peters it was a correspondent for slate and the author of the idealist parents were in the rise of free culture on the internet. aaron sorts of