we are delighted to have you on this beautiful day in downtown connecticut. it is in fact the last museum for the community that we serve many are familiar in 2010 we were hit by a tornado because that is the kind of stuff that happens and then the year after that was hurricane irene and super storm sandy so thank you to the delegation who support the bonding appropriation because we are just about to embark on a major historic rehab of that building from 1893.

to add to that also the congressman has been working very hard with us to get the building on the national register of. we have been working on that for a long time and the reasons for why we are here today because we are still talking about pt barnum relevant in our lives today. robert wilson is here to talk about the fact you can contextualize him in a modern way and it's something to be looked at and examine and re-examine and brought into modern culture. he is the father of the entertainment industry that he was a philanthropist. the doer of good eats many tim

times. but enough about me. thank you for coming to the museum. please support us. we do programming all year the museum is open during the week the couple of days even during the big historic construction project that's going to be happening soon but with no further ado let me introduce you to bob wills. the editor since 2004 that won the national award for the best feature in may of 2006 and digital national magazine for commentary and 2012. for the aarp bulletin of which i am now a member and also the editor of preservation magazine. i want to thank you for that because it is the national trust

that got me into this field so i am credited to view and the founding literary editor of civilization. the magazine and the library of congress in 1994 and 95 during the time that the magazine received the award of general excellence and before civilization he did a couple things. he was the editor for usa today he holds a ba in english from washington and lee university where he was inducted into phi beta kappa and m.a. in english from the university of virginia. now she's taught at the university of virginia and a writing program at johns hopkins university, george mason university as well as american university and he is the author of the narrative on the inventor of clarence king and portraits of a nation that today we are here to celebrate his new book

published by simon & schuster. we are honored to have him speak today on foreign and american life. welcome. [applause] >> i have so many microphones going on and now this one is on. thank you for the lovely introduction and everything you do for the barnum museum. thank you for everything you do and the people that work with you have done to help me in writing this book.

i also want to thank adrian the curator and just throughout the years i was working on a book that offered me encouragement and lots of good information and helped me a lot with the photographs in the book later on. i'm also pleased to be able to tell you that the great barnum scholar at this time or any time arthur is here in the front row. [applause] he could have been forgiven for not being welcoming of someone who wrote a letter and said i'd

like to write a biography of barnum. he said i did that and i did it pretty well, not pretty well but very well. but another person has written very well wrote to me when i was setting out on this and said while he is somebody that deserves a new book every generation. arthur must have believed it because he's just been stalwart and has held courage and good humor helping me to find things i didn't know i was looking for. i probably could have written a book without arthur but it wouldn't have been nearly as good of a book in it might have taken me years longer so thank you, arthur.

arthur never blushes so don't worry about that. i'm in this funny position of i don't know how many people in the world no more about barnum than i do at this point. maybe a lot but i do know for sure three people who know a lot more than i do are here in this audience so it's mildly intimidating to be standing before you. it was a great pleasure to work on this book not only because of these three people and others who were very helpful to me but because of barnum himself. he's a wonderful character to write a book about and i mean in the sense of a character in a novel, a person of many parts, a person who lets say had his dark side as well as his bright side.

as someone who just never failed to engage me intellectually, emotionally. i was drawn to his wit and verbal skills. he had verbal skills as a speaker and writer. who knows where they came from if you want evidence that certain i don't think that these were learned skills particularly. they may have been self-taught but he had something in that mode that was unusual. this is partly to say for now that he's a wonderful character. was he a wonderful man this is something we will get to in a

few minutes, and the question is part of what made working on this book so interesting. most of you know the brief outline of his life. you probably know that he was born 22.3 miles from here at least according to google this morning, in the village of bethel and early on he busied himself with a lot of smaller and then larger entrepreneurial activities. i thought i would read a paragraph from the book where i talk a little bit about the arc of his career. he's known today primarily for

his connection to the circus that came in the last quarter of his life. his principal occupation before that occupations were running the american museum and being the impresario behind the talent, the evangelic soprano who created a sensation in america in the early 1850s and dozens of other acts of traveling shows. he was also a best-selling author and inspirational lecturer on temperance and success in business and a real estate developer, builder, banker, state legislator, the mayor of the city of bridgeport near or in which he lived most of his adult life. he was even a candidate for congress losing a contest to the cousin also named barnum.

in all of these endeavors he was a promoter, relentless advertiser and imaginative concocted of events to draw the interest often feverish interest of potential patrons. i'm going to read one other paragraph in a preliminary way just to sort of get you situated with some of the things to come later. central to the philosophy of success was the relationship to the audience that he developed during the decades as a showman. that centered on the single worst disassociated in his lifetime. huge self wrote in the 1865 humbug of the world, webster's definition is to deceive, to

impose upon. definitions today include folks, fraud, imposter, nonsense, trickery debate coach rick. his book is a survey of such practices intended to save the rising generation from being bamboozled by the unscrupulous other religion, business, politics, medicine or science. but not all forms of this wonderful. sometimes it could be harmless. he claimed for him generally the accepted definition focused on the des moines variety that he defined as putting on appearances to suddenly a arrest public attention and attract the public eye and ear in other words, what he did. a person that attracted patrons in this way but then foolishly failed to give them to equivalent for their money wouldn't get a second chance

from customers who would denounce him as a swindler to the swindler and imposter. i think that this whole idea is one of the things that distinguishes him from his reputation as "an in-depth, and i'm going to get to that in a second but i want to tell you since the book has been published, a few surprising things have happened that haven't happened to mhasn'thappd probably won't again and in addition to having you all here and c-span here, i was astonished to see that my publisher made an incredibly beautiful book. i had nothing to do with the physical nature of the book but i think it has a wonderful cov

cover. it has a wonderful insight design, and i know i seem to be selling here, forgive me, and it has a 16 page color insert which adrienne and elizabeth from down the road helped me to populate. it also has something called double digits. i don't know if you know what that is often a book is cut straight on the edge and if it is cut rough on the edge it is the voltages and it's something very elegant and wonderful. i told my editor early on i really want a book with those edges. he said we can do that. i didn't really believe him until he opened the box and saw that i didn't think it would

have been. i told this to my wife, that i said i always wanted those edges and she said i've never even heard the word in our 45 years of marriage. my response to that is every marriage that is successful must have a secret and mine is these edges. another thing that happened that i will mention briefly it happened right here in this spot cbs news and its wisdom decided to do a piece about barnum, the museum and me. i had a wonderful experience as an editor of a small magazine and somebody that spends a lot of time in his study at home i don't spend a lot of time in

front of national tv cameras so that was something else. the third thing is the new yorker of all places in its wisdom did a major piece on the book. they gave four pages by one of the most prominent writers who won the pulitzer prize for the book extinction and it was unexpected most of all by my publisher and one of my friends now refers to me as four pages because i got four pages in the new yorker so it was deeply exciting and something that made me very happy although i couldn't help but noticing as an editor and writer and somebody who is trusted to pay attention to the nuances of language she

seemed to be implying i spent six years writing a book about barnum in the era of trump and haven't made any connections between them that i was somehow living in a complete bubble. so this raised a further puzzle about the review which is how did this dimwitted person, meaning me, managed to write a book that did i mention four pages in the new yorker -- [laughter] and with very little attribution to my doc. anyway, so there's not a. some of that can be forgiven, but i felt like there was a moment in the review she tried

to twist the nice tomato knife, she took the language and twisted it. there is a sentence in the middle of the review with only three words and the words are wilson admires barnum. this was meant as a great critique. it didn't win me as much as she thought it was because i did admire him. i think there is so much to admire about him. but as i said earlier, one of the things that made it interesting for me to write about him is he wasn't continuously admirable so as i went through his life, i found myself constantly looking at

things in the context of his own time is this something he did, the display he was able to bring himself to make because it was generally accepted that the time? but i also tried to look at him as a man coming as a human being and say here are qualities beyond the pale and whatever century or millennium that you live in. that to me gave me the chance to be kind of continuously engaged intellectually. one thing i tried not to do is to work from the assumption that we achieved protection in the given moment which i think is

the idea out there very much in the culture now that it's easy to dismiss people that don't represent everything we and ourr great wisdom have achieved. one could easily proved to be kaput holes into to the notion of presentism but that is something i did not do. some of the things i did admire about barnum, the eagerness to make other people happy, his commitment to larger ideas, tempered and eventually to abolition, his commitment to make public entertainment safe for families and children, arthur has written a lot about that in a definitive way to get

the stagthestage in the early yf involvement when he started the museum on lower broadway it had essentially a theater, you can call it a lecture room because the reputation was so low he didn't want to call it that. as i learned from arthur and others, theaters those days in most places is where prostitutes worked the balconies. even in the expensive seats there was drunkenness and rowdiness so one of the things they did in that time period was to really commit themselves to moral entertainment and also to lack of drunkenness to create an atmosphere where families could safely go.

his philosophy early on is avoiding what he called a profitable philanthropy and the mastery of language to come up with the phrase profitable philanthropy and what he meant by that in part. it was a large chunk of property that barnum gave to the city to

create that part but he kept a chunk of it for himself so he pulled the four houses in the middle of the nice park with a great view so that is profitable philanthropy. he helped develop east bridgeport and they had a very generous scheme for developing housing across the river. but they held out every other law for themselves as the price of land over there creeps up as people built houses. but profitable philanthropy turned into real philanthropy in his place and he gave a great deal of money to his church, local hospital in bridgeport, to

what is now tubbs university of and others. what sold me and i will get to the commons in a moment, but it was this phenomeno phenomenon ig a better person throughout life as i got to know him better and better i was so impressed with the idea here was a man that had a lot of success early on in life and i think that how many people do you know that are very successful early in life and are not convinced that it's because of their perfection as a human being that someho but somehow td everything right and so good things happen to them. he had success and get throughout his life he thought

his beliefs on race, philanthropy, and of that quality of kind of renewing himself and becoming a better person was another thing that really made me admire him. the columns are not small. the racism early on this despicable. you can justify it to some degree by the racism at the times but there's also people that are abolitionists from the day the declaration of independence came out and there were many people who were not racist and so it's not something that you can dismiss. he did become an abolitionist himself and run for the

connecticut legislature after the war saying one reason he ran his so he could be, so he could vote for the 13th amendment. he gave a speech favoring giving the vote to the then freed blacks in connecticut. if you read the speech you will not feel completely comfortable with the terms of which he says blacks deserve the vote but nonetheless, he did not. some of us were beyond the pale often early many of you probably know the story of choice was a slave woman being promoted as being 161-years-old and the

nurse made of washington as a baby. even barnum became embarrassed by that part of his life early on. his treatment of his wife certainly towards the middle and end of their marriage was not acceptable i think. part of that he came out of a culture that's very much into practical jokes and gruff humor. parts are pointed out when he took to meet queen victoria. everything you read about it now is what a wonderful impression they made on the royal family,

but he went and read victoria's diary, the journal, and barnum spoke to tom and i suspect it's partly shthat's partly she didnt understand american humor, but there was a lot in barnum's humor that was rough and a lot of it was directed towards his wife in ways that i think were pretty hard to forgive a. and it must be said that she was somebody who was unusually needy for wealth and admiration. so, the question i question in d it's a question that has come out of a lot of the reviews is

was he admirable or was he not, have justified is my admiration and it makes me think that if he were in this situation, he would say there is a dispute here. the atlantic says one thing, the new yorker says another. you must decide for yourselves by reading the book. so that's what i would do if i were barnum. i'm going to read a few short passages from the book two of these have to do with things that happened nearby so i thought that might be appropriate.

he was a sort of jeffersonian democrat, a member of the universalist church. even as a young man, he was a uncomfortable with the sort of energy and ferocity of the role of religion in public life and he believed very strongly in the separation of church and state, so strongly that at the age of 21, he founded a newspaper called the heralded freedom, in which he propounded this idea that church and state should be separated but he was not intended to do that. he also wanted to attack the people that felt otherwise including his uncle among othe

others. he managed to get himself sued for libel several times in the short time he ran the paper. about a year after he started it resulted in a judge ruling he could either pay $100 for having labeled somebody or spend too much on prison or jail and he decided even though he had the money to take the latter step yet here's how he talked about that. i chose to go to prison, editor of the hartford times and later the lincoln secretary of the navy. i chose to go thinking it would be the means of opening many

eyes. indeed he continued because of the trial, the excitement of this and the neighboring towns is great and it will have a grand effect. his purpose was to tell him another newspaper editor would be covering the matter at length as word of the heralded freedom and to ask them to make such remarks. his ability to the goodwill of others was the harbinger of things to come. it is the first example of drawing attention to his debates come and represent himself. in his memoirs, he writes that he was allowed to have a cell in the denver area jail fitted with wallpaper and carpet, which was shortly a rarity in the imprisonment. while in jail he was about to continue editing his newspaper to write members of letters

received so many that he found a seems this visit to burden some. the communications were beyond the cell and allowed him not onlallow him not onlyto strip lr coverage but also to engineer what can only be called the locaa localholiday to celebratee from jail. a group called the committee on arrangements was formed. they met him at the jail on the morning of his last day, december 5, 1832 and a struggled with him across the village street by the courthouse where he had been tried as a victim. the crowd was so large this paper reckoned at 1500 even at half that size it woul the sizen a mess. so large those who couldn't attend the building formed a party to see him pass through. he was honored with two

declaimed by prominent lecture who was himself the editor of the new haven examiner. it followed strict the symbol after which a crowd of several hundred gentlemen retreated to the nearby hotel of g. nichols and enjoyed a dinner and toasts and speeches. the 12 boat described him as a terror of tyrants a young man on the threshold of the active life who neither boobs beer bars through the prison walls could intimidate. as if all of this were not enough for the cautious 22-year-old who hasn't exactly suffered at the hands of the law, he stepped from the hotel into a coach drawn by a six horse team and seated with him was a small band of musicians playing patriotic tunes and a parade in his honor for him to take him for 3 miles from

tobacco. a marshall led the parade followed by 40 people on horseback. behind the coach was a carriage carrying the reverend the master of ceremonies and president of today's proceedingpresident ofty 60 more carriages filled with local people. as this got underway, cannons boomed and several hundred more people who were gathered dave barnum three cheers. when the carriage reached bethel, ththeultimate demand. home sweet home and three more cheers went up. the day that began in jail ended in a triumph. near the bar him nor anyone else that organized the events of the day or who chose the members of the committee for arrangements and its president, he didn't give or take credit when he later described this operation in detail in his memoirs.

without thought it was i doubt s interest to imply the day unfolded almost spontaneously propelled by the enthusiasm of his neighbors for his cause and indeed for himself. after all he'd grown up in the village and have many relatives there and nearby. he'd gone to church there and clerked at the stores and still owned a store heavily advertised the lotteries and now granted a newspaper from there. democrats coming universalist and others would naturally have wanted to support him. but the speeches didn't occur on the spur of the moment nor did the band ithe bands and coachesg by chance and even if the celebratory lunch and involved d only dozens rather than hundreds, a provincial hotel would need fair warning to feed so many. of the various tactics he would master as he became a successful showman, one plus to know when to step right to take about.

it seems likely in this case he was in both places at once. others might have thought to sponsor the road or to engage a chorus or demand, plan a banquet or parade, in addition three cheers rather than the three cheers twice and might have forgotten the cannon salute altogether, but not barnum. beginning september 51832, moore would always be more. keeping sympathetic newspaper editors close would always be useful. commissioning songs and poems and speeches would ever enhance the occasion mixing serious intentions with entertainment sure to draw a crowd would continue to be a good strategy for engaging the public an in hs notoriety would never fail. seemingly small but consequential details like returning to that courtroom

where he was convicted or overlaying with patriotic zeal. this day and all of the earmarks of the production. it was the day when his career as a showman began a. i will read one more because we are running a little long. he became as i said increasingly interested in abolition and he became a very ardent unionist as the civil war started. you may be shocked to hear your part of connecticut was a sort of hotbed of anti-unionism and he put himself out there very often on behalf of the union

cause. after the first battle of bull run in july of 1861 in the northerners who sympathized with the secession began to peace rallies. at these events the white flag would be flown above the stars and stripes and in the region of connecticut it was especially active in this way so he decided to accompany about 20 like-minded friends to attend the meetings happening 10 miles north of bridgeport and to hear for ourselves whether the addresses were disloyal or not. as they were leaving bridgeport, they came upon two on the bus was carrying about 253 month militi25three-month militia vols who had just been mustered out were returned from the war. they had a number of others who were also headed to the skeptical frame of mind. to the very large gathering they were present when feature was delivering the benediction and it appeared over hill filled

with soldiers hollering prounion cheers to display the banners. in a later account written at bull run as a correspondent for the tribune and a local divinity student and journalist, according to them to the, the ss went straight to the flagpole where the peace flag had just been raised as well as the jackson wore flag. as the soldier should meet up and tore down the flag, the rally speakers flooded from the stage in panic indicated in a nearby cornfield. they referred to this account as bull run on a small scale.

the key delivered the patriotism with the humor of the occasion. some of us at the peace rally betrayed the cause of peace by drawing weapons and the soldiers managed to disarm a few of them but not before one pistol was fired and in his speech they displadisplayed the great fallsd would serve as a private war into tolfloorand told the crowd, burn the whole town and i will pay for it. before there was necessary to, they had what was left of the peace flag in one of the omnibuses that the soldiers

remained and arrived and when they returned to bridgeport with several thousand people, it appeared on the streets by evening he sat in the offices of the bridgeport farmers and the democratic process session newspaper. bar none had wired several papers about the events of the day ending his first dispatch by saying that they had been talked out of attacking the former officers but a short time later at a:30 p.m. sundays and a second saying the newspaper had just been gutted. the windows were smashed and the press was destroyed. he wrote in his autobiography i didn't approve of the summary of the suppression of the paper and offered at the proprietors and e subscription to assist the renewed applications. remember these were journalists on the opposite side of the viewpoint. one of the editors escaped on

the rooftop of the riot fleeing to canada and eventually ending up in augusta, georgia. the other did we start. less than a week later after the arrest of one of the principle of peace meeting activists on the orders that the secretary of state keane wrote to president lincoln from his house in bridgeport reporting that the rest had rendered secessionists so scared i cannot find one for exhibition in my museum. [laughter] and praising the effectiveness of the administration's strong arm. let's go ahead and turn to questions now. if anybody wants to come up here or if anybody wants to sit to ask questions. so, we will do it that way if that is okay with c-span.

so, any questions. >> hell do you think that he would have adapted to twitter? [laughter] >> it's funny that is a question that i have been asked several times. he was somebody who really embraced new technology. i think one of his reasons for success and genius, one of the facets of his genius was that he knew how to use newspapers. he was a master as newspapers have become extremely prevalent over 150 newspapers or so in new york city alone and in his early days at the museum he was in avid advertiser of the newspapers. if the telegraph, he kept in

touch with people all over the world to find acts. the railroad as he got involved in the circus part of his life and moving circuses around. so, he was very interested in technology. so, i mean i assume he might not have used it in the same way as certain people do, but i think that he would have embraced it. >> any questions? >> you wanbut rescuers? i wonder if he had any relationship personal with abraham lincoln and its lincoln had an opinion about barnum. the one thing that strikes me as suggesting something about lincoln's opinion of barnum is

that at one point after he was president, he came to new york with his family and went to his hotel and more or less they tend to come to the museum. the hotel was just across the street from the museum. and lincoln did not. at the time, be whatever exhibit was on display, there were some other thing that were racially, the display of a black man as possible missing link. and there was also i believe a play on at the time that was somewhat controversial, so he is a good politician stayed away. members of his family didn't go to the museum. lincoln did in 1863 i think it was heated blog on -- and

mrs. lincoln welcomed tom thumb and mrs. come to the white house right after their wedding in new york city which borrow barnum engineered. and as i just read, he felt comfortable sending lincoln a telegram. so, i don't think that there was a close relationship. it's interesting that people who were very close to barnum such as forest braley, very close, they had spent many nights at the house. he doesn't mention him at all in the memoirs. there is no mention at all. there's other memoirs i can't recall at the moment but the same thing is true and of course he ended up running for office two and so they could be that he

was just very aware of the negative sides of the public reputation and so that's why he stayed clear in the memoir. >> could you explain please let the relationship wawhatthe relan barnum and tufts college, why was there some relationship to their? >> while, it is often described as a universalist institution. i think more properly, it was the institution founded by universalists but not with maybe hairsplitting outcome i don't know. but anyway as a universalist himself, somebody to did a lot of support in the religion, he came very involved in giving money to that institution. the president there was very

good at extracting money and one of those sort of enduring aspects of that relationship is that barred him at a building built on campus similar to this one for a science building and later the timing wasn't later but at some point after he brought the elephant to america and jumbo was killed after being hit by a freight train, bar none have him stuffed and also had his skeleton kind of rebuild said he had two exhibits instead of one. but the one that was stuffed ended up in the main hall of the science building and we have someone here who sold a.

of the athletic teams to this date are known as jumbos. in 1955, the building burned down. 75 clicks okay. that is in my book. i will have to fix that. [laughter] you look very young. i didn't mean to imply. the building burned down anyway and the carcass was destroyed. >> east of founded as a trustee. >> i should say he gave money to other universalist institutions like st. lawrence college and one other. he was quite the globe tracker for this time. could you tell us an anecdote from one of his uncommon adventures?

>> i guess one of the one sort of defining moments in his life was he took tom from the england. his whole plan was to introduce them to queen victoria. he had no reason to believe that he would have any access to the victoria and indeed did not have access to her for a while but managed to work on various people and as i mentioned earlier. later he also took tom to france and then traveled around the countryside. he bought charity, his wife to england with him and then to france. she found the english to be immoral so you could imagine what she made of the french. so she soon went back home and

never really traveled with him much again. he had quite a revenue with palm including hitomincluding his cae little show and ponies and often he would go in front of the revenue and to set things up in the next town. he was kind of on his own. and at some point, he became very interested in the great, both in its drinkable form, and there's also a in one of his letters to the paperback it talks about his pleasure in squashing grapes with his feet and that sort of thing. there is a pretty clear undercurrent and not that he was a little bit too involved in all of its forms and fairly soon

after he came home, he began to sort of strip o stripper free hs interest in alcohol and eventually became as i said, this trade tempered speaker. so i don't know, i guess i think one of his adventures abroad is squashinthis squashing those gr. [laughter] >> i wanted to know the role of the civilian that he had in the world. >> [inaudible] i don't really think i have an answer for that question. i clearly he understood the

interests come even though i don't have an answer, going to answer. [laughter] he understood the interest of people and seeing people that have some sort of disability, people who were lacking pigmentation, people who were enormously fat or thin, you know, the siamese twins. he did have -- i don't if you know the movie, and i tried to forget the movie, but i think there was a very 21st century hollywood take on how he became friends with older people in the circus and i think he had

relationships with some of those people that were i think admirable. but on the whole, we wouldn't be very comfortable with the way he thought about people with disabilities. disabilities.

>> that you may find down the road? >> there is a wonderful collection from barnum to figure with the boston barnum and also had a museum like the american museum and they put on dramas.

and there is one chunk of their correspondence and it's really all concentrated in about one year. it's a great collection of letters looking at any of these letters but i would love to see them show up. it would be nice to see a longer stretch and that came

right after my edition came out. and then to donate it to the public library. >> one more question. but that presentation and what that says about our birth as a nation. and that what he brought to his audiences and with her

life and her passing a note to the exhibition but i also got quite fascinated at pt barnum years ago. and then he jumped into my brain and said no no no you cannot compare me. so i made peace dedicated to him to clear his name from that. >> bravo for that. joyce had become ill if i recall two or three months

before she died and barnum hired a woman to take care of her as she was still being exhibited and taken to barnum's half brother's hous house. but i guess you could say he didn't have to do that but you could also say he was protecting his investment. i don't know if he showed any beyond the whole concept beyond visiting her or beholden to her that's pretty

much what i know. we are in conversation about the question whether barnum charge people to attend the autopsy. >> i have yet to see any current document as a result of the biography of what was written by the newspaper editor at that time to have 1500 people there and charge to become secondary and those that were invited to the autopsy. >> i have to research this

before but i think i could find advertisements. >> we have but they are all secondary. >> so that's the fascinating thing there is just more to look at go to the source and go to the source that's one of the tricky things and that's part of the re- envisioning we are doing with the museum because we have to lean into it. in the context of his time. and it's fair to history. and what just humanizes him.

and that's our responsibility. >> at the trump question there are so many superficial ways that their name was their brand. and then they call themselves philanthropists. it is far so great. >> thank you.

thank you so much there is tea and coffee take your time thank you all very much for coming. [applause]

>> it is time to begin there is a number of familiar faces. if this is the first time for you to visit a special welcome to you. we have a fabulous library which is available to the public for research this evening tony from the historical society will do the honors so we'll take a moment to greet