[inaudible conversations] >> booktv covers book fairs and festivals around the country. here's what's coming up. our 2020 festival season will kick off in january with the rancho mirage writers' festival in california followed by the savannah book festival in georgia. then in march booktv visits arizona for the tucson festival of books. and later that month, the virginia festival of the book will take place in charlottesville. for more information and to watch our previous festival coverage, chick the book fairs tab on our web site, booktv.org. >> good afternoon, everyone. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. [laughter] i don't like to always shout people out at the very beginning, but in walking right now is p.t. barnum's great, great, great granddaughter eleanor biggs and her husband,

jim biggs. [applause] it's always special to have them. welcome, everyone, to the barnum museum. i know many of you have been here before, but is this anybody's first time here? oh, well, welcome. welcome to the barnum family. we're delighted to have you on this beautiful day in downtown bridgeport, connecticut. this is the barnum museum. it is, in fact, p.t. barnum's last museum. as we all know, he started his museum inn 1842, and this was hs last gift not just to city of bridgeport, but really to the global community that we serve. many of you are very familiar with thewe museum. in 2010 we were hit by a tornado because that's the kind of stuff that happens to barnum. and then the year after that it was hurricane irene, and then the year after that it was superstorm sandy. want to also give a huge shout-out to state of connecticut and our delegation who supported a $7 million

bonding because we are just about to embark on a historic recap of thatde gorgeous barnum building from 1893. so that's a huge thing. and to add to that -- [applause] thank you, yes. and then to add to that also our congressman, congressman himes, has also really been working very hard with us to get the barnum building. it's on the national register of historic places which is a fantastic thing. i feel like i'm on the national register at this point. but we are in the process of being reviewed to become a national historic land mark, and that is -- there's only about 250 in this country, and that is -- 2500 in this cup, and that is a significant, significant thing. so we've been working on that for a long time. and it's reasons for why we're here today, because we're still talking about p.t. barnum. he is still relevant in our lives today. and robert wilson is here to talk about the fact that you can

contextualize him in a modern way, andex it's something to be looked at and examined and re-examined and brought into modern culture. he is the father of the entertainment industry, but he was a philanthropist, he was the doer of good deeds many times. and those are the lesser stories that we know about barnum. but enough about me. thank you all so much for coming to the barnum museum. please support us. we do programming all year. the museum is opened during the week ayo couple of days, even during the big historic construction project that's going to be happening soon. but with no further ado, let me just introduce you to bob wilson. bob has been the editor of the american scholar since fall of 2004 which won the national award for the bestor feature sty in may 2006 and digital national onmagazine award for commentaryn 2012. bob is the editor of the 35 million circulation of aarp bulletin of which i am now a

member -- [laughter] and he is also the editor of preservation magazine with the national trust for historic preservation.wi winning the national magazine award for general excellence in 1998, and it's the national trust that to got me into this field. so i am credited to you. bob was also -- bob's also founding literary editor at civilization, the magazine of the library of congress, in 19 is 94 and '95 during the time there, the magazine received the award of general excellence. and before civilization he did a few little things. he was the editor and columnist for "usa today" for 11 years, and he happened to be one of the assistant editors at "the washington post" for six years. bob holds a b.a. in english from washington and lee university where he was inducted into phi beta kappa -- [inaudible] he's taught at the university of

virginia and writing programs at johns hopkins university, george mason university as well as american university, and he's the author of the explorer king: a narrative on the adventurer clarence king and math brady: portraits of -- matthew brady. we are honored to have bob wilson speak today on barnum: an american life. welcome, bob. [applause] >> i have so many microphones going on here, i -- and now this is on too. thank you, kathy, for that lovely introduction. thank you for everything you do for the barnum museum.

thank you for having me here at the barnum museum. and thank you for everything that you and the people who work with you have done to help me in writing this book, researching and writing this. book. i also want to thank adrian st. pierre, the curator here, and really just throughout the years of working on the book offered me encouragement, lots of good information and helped me a lot with the photographs in the book later on. i'm also really pleased to be able to tell you that the great barnum scholar of this time or any time, arthur saxton, is here in the front row here -- [applause]

arthur could have been or forgiven for not being wholly welcoming of someone who wrote him a letter and said i'd like to write a biography of barnum. said, well, i did that. and i did it pretty well. not pretty well, very well. but another person that's written very well about barnum wrote to me when i was setting out on this and said, well, i think barnum is somebody who deserves a new book every generation. and although it wasn't arthur who said that, i think arthur must have believed it, because he's just been stalwart in his help, his encouragement, his humor, helping me to find things i didn't know i was looking for.

and i probably could have written the book without arthur, but it would not have been nearly as good a book, and it might have taken me years longer. so thank you, arthur. arthur never blushes, so i don't have to worry about that. so i'm in this funny position of i don't know how many people in the world know more about barnum than i do at this point. maybe a lot. but i do know for sure that three people who know a lot more aboutno barnum than i do are hee inin this audience, so it's mily intimidating to be standing before you. it was such a great pleasure to work on this book not only because of these three people and others who were very helpful to me, but just because of barnum himself. he's just a wonderful character to write a book about, and i mean character in the sense of, you know, a character in a

novel, say. a person of many parts, a person who, let's say, had his dark side as well as his bright side, someone who just never failed to engage me intellectually, emotionally. i was just drawn to his wit, to his verbal skill. he just had remarkable skills as a speaker and as a writer. who knows where they came from. i mean, if you want evidence that certain gifts are innate, i don't think these were learned skills particularly, or they may have been self-taught, but he just had some, something in that mode that was unusual.

this is partly to say for now that, you know, barnum was a wonderful character. was henu a wonderful man? this is something we'll get to infu a few minutes. and it's part of what, that question is part of what made working on this book so interesting. most of you know, i think a lot of you who are from around here and know the barnum museum, you know, know the brief outline of barnum's life. i mean, you probably know that he was born 22.3 miles from here, at least according to google this morning -- [laughter] in the village of bethel. and that he early on buzzied himself -- busies himself with a lot of sort of smaller and then

larger entrepreneurial activities. i thought i'd just read just a very, one paragraph from the book where i kind of talk about, a little bit about the arc of his career. he is known today primarily for his connection to thehe circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his life. his principal occupation before that, occupations were running the american museum and being the impresario behind the witty and talented or dwarf tom thumb, the an yellic swedish soprano jenny lend and dozens of other acts and traveling shows. less well known today is that he was also a best selling author, an inspiration aleckturer on temperance and success in business and in life. a real estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, the mayor of the

city of bridgeport, near or in which he lived for most of his adult life. he was even a candidate for congress, losing a bare knuckle contest to a cousin also named barnum. in all of these endeavors, he was a promoter and self-promoter without peer. a relentless advertiser and an unfailingly imaginative con concocter of events to draw the interest, often the feverish interest, of potential patrons. i'm goingng to read one other jt paragraph in a preliminary way just to sort of get you situated with barnum. some of the things that come later. central to barnum's philosophy and success was the relationship to his audience that he developed during his decades as a showman. that relationship centered on the single word most associated

with barnum in his lifetime, humbug. as he himself wrote in his 1865 book "the humbugs of the world," weber the's definition is -- webster's definition is to deceive, to impose upon. definitions today include the words hoax, fraud, imposter, nonsense, trick. barnum's book is a survey of such practices intended, he said, to save the rising generation from being bamboozled by the unscrupulous whether in religion, business, politics, medicine or science. but for barnum not all forms of humbug were hurtful. sometimes humbugerry could be harmless, evenn joyous. he claimed that for him the generally accepted definition of humbug focused on this benign variety, what he dined as putting on glittering appearances, novel expedience by which to suddenly arrest public attention and attract the public eye and ear. in other words, what he did.

the crux of the matter was that a person who attracted patrons in this wayay but then foolishly failed tosh give them a full equivalent for their money would not get a second chance from customerss who would properly denounce him as a swindler, a cheat and an imposter. i think this is really, this whole idea of humbug and his idea of humbug is one of the things that distinguishes him from his h reputation as you gin to look at him -- as you begin to look at him in more depth. and i'm going to get to that in a second, but i wanted to tell you that since the book has been published, a few surprising things -- this is my third book -- a few things have happened that have not happened to me before and probably won't again. and in addition to having you all here and c-span here, i was

astonished to see that my publisher madeub an incredibly beautiful book. [laughter] i can say this because i had nothing to dono with the physicl nature of the book. but it has, i think, a wonderful cover. it has wonderful, a wonderful inside design, and it -- i'm not seeming to be selling here, forgive me, but it has a 16-page color insert which adrian and elizabeth van tool from down the road helped me postulate. it also has something called deckinged edges. i don't know if you know what those are, but often a book is cut straight on the edge, and if it's cut rough on the edge, it's called decled edges. and to me, it's something very elegant and wonderful. and i told my editor early on i

really want a book with deckled edges. [laughter] and he said, oh, wee can do tha. i didn't really believe him. i thought, no, that'll never -- until i opened the box and saw they were there, i didn't think it would happen. but i told this to my wife, who's sitting right here, martha, and i said, yeah, i told him i've always wanted deckled edges, and she said, well, i've never even heard that word in our 455 years of major. and so my -- of marriage. and so my response to that is every marriage that's successful must have its secrets -- [laughter] and my secret was deckled edges. [laughter] another wonderful thing that happened that i'll just mention briefly, it happened right here in the spot in which cbs news, in its wisdom, decided to do a piece about barnum, about the book "barnum," about barnum

museum, kathy, me. and so i had this wonderful wexperience of, that as a small -- editor of a small magazine and somebody who spends a rot -- 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. and then 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 its most prominent writers, elizabeth kolbert, who won the pulitzer prize for her book "the sixth extinction." and this was utterly 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. [laughter] so naturally, this was deeply exciting and something that made

me very happy. although i couldn't help noticing as an editor and a writer and someone who tries to be, you know, to pay attention to the p nuances of language tht she seemed to be implying that i had spent six years writing a book about barnum in the era of trump and other things going on in our, in the present day. had not made the connection, any connections at all between them that i am somehow living in this complete bubble. so this raised a further puzzle about the review which is how did this rather dim witted person, meaning me, manage to write a book that was worth -- didd i mention four pages? -- in the new yorker. [laughter] and also four pages, i should say, with very little attribution to my book. so anyway, there's that.

and then some of that can be forgiven, but i felt there was a moment in her review where he really tried to sort of twist the knife, that she took her language and honed it to a fine point. in fact, there's a sentence right in the middle of the evreview that's only three word, and the words are wilson admires barnum. this was meant, this was meant as a great, a great critique, i think. finish it didn't wound me as much as he might have thought it would because i do admire barnum. i think there's so much to admire about him. but you know, as i said earlier, one of the things that made him interesting for me to write about him was that, you know, he

was not continuously admirable so that as i went through his life, i found myself constantly looking at things in the context of hisf own time, you know, is this something he did, is this a display he was able to bring himself to make because this was generally accepted at the time? but i also tried to, tried to look at him as a man too, as a human being and say, well, sure qualities that are beyond the pale, i don't -- in whatever century or millenium you live in. and that, to me, gave me the chance to be kind of continuously engaged

intellectually. one thingng i tried not to do ws to work from the assumption that we have achievedded perfection in a given moment, which i think is an idea, the idea of presentism that's out there very much in the culture now, that it's very easy to dismiss people who are not, who don't represent everything that we in our great wisdom have achieved. i mean, one could easily poke holes into this notion of presentism. but anyway, that was something i didn't do. some of the things i did admire about barnum, his eagerness to make other people happy, his commitment to larger ideas, temperance, 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. that the stage in the early years of barnum's involvement with it, he -- when he started the american museum on lower broadway, it had essentially a theater. he called it a lecture room because the reputation of the theater was so low that he didn't want to call it that. and as i learned from arthur and others, theaters in those days were often places where prostitutes worked the balconies. even in the, you know, the ec pepsive seats -- expensive seats there was drunkenness, rowdiness. so one of the things that barnum and others did in that time period was to really commit themselves to moral

entertainment but also to, you know, lack of drunkenness, to creating an atmosphere where families could airily -- could safely come. i also, i mean, as is implied by, you know, if being the mayor of bridgeport and many other things he did, he was truly civic-minded. he was actually a philanthropist. there are certain people in life today that claim to philanthropy that it turns out don't actually give money. his philosophy early on was one that he called profitable philanthropy. if nothing else, it shows you his mastery of language to have come up with the phrase profitable philanthropy. and, you know, what he meant by that in part was if you go down

the road here and look at east side park, that was a large part, a large chunk of property that barnum and others but largely barnum, gave to the city to create that park. but he kept out a chunk of it for himself. so he had a, he built beautiful houses in the middle of a nice park with a great view. that's's profitable philanthrop. he helped develop east bridgeport, and they had a very generous scheme for developing housing across the river. they held out every other hot for themselves -- lot for themselves. their own holdings create some

value as well. but profitable philanthropy turned into real philanthropy later in his life, and he gave a great deal of money to his church, the local hospital in bridgeport, to tufts, now tufts university, other universities. and i think the thing that sort of sold me on barnum -- i'll get to the -- [inaudible] of his personality in a minute, was this phenomenon of him becoming a better person throughout life. as i've got to know him better and better, i was just so impressed with the idea that here was a man who had a lot of success early in life. and i think how many people do you know who are very successful early in life are not convinced that it's because of their perfection as a human being,

that somehow they did everything right and so good things happen to them. barnum had, you know, had success and yet throughout his life he evolved. his beliefs on race evolved. his beliefs on philanthropy if evolved. and that quality of kind of renewing himself into becoming a better person was another thing that really made me admire him. i mean, the racism early on is despicable. you can justify it to some degree by the racism of the times, but it's also, there are also people who are ab lissists -- abolitionists from the day, you know, the declaration of independence came

out. there are many people who were not racists, and so it's not something that you can dismiss. he did become an abolitionist himself. he did run for the connecticut legislature after the war saying that one reason he ran was that so he could be, so he could vote for the 13th amendment. he gave a speech favoring, giving the vote to then-freed blacks inac connecticut. if you read the speech, you will not feel completely comfortable with the terms on which he said that blacks deserve the vote. but nonetheless, he did that. some of his lumbar bugs were -- humbugs were beyond the pale,

often early. many of you probably know the story of joyce heff who, a slave woman who was being promoted as being 161 years old and the nurse maid of george washington as a baby. even barnum became embarrassed by that part of his life later on. his treatment of his wife certainly towards the middle and end of their marriage was not, not acceptable, i think. finish part of it, i think, grew out of this he came from a culture that's very much into practical jokes, into very rough humor. arthur pointed out when, when

barnum took tom thum to meet queen -- thumb to meet queen ,victoria, everything you read about it now is what a wonderful rfimpression both men made on te royal family. but arthur went and read victoria's diary for that day. her journal. and she was very troubled by the way barnum spoke to tom thumb. i suspect itar was partly that e didn't understand, you know, 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 are pretty hard to forgive. and it, you know, it must be said that barnum, you know, that barnum was somebody who was unusually needy for wealth and for admiration. that's not a quality i, you

know, that i particularly admire. so the question in the book, i think, and the question that's come out of a lot of the reviews is, you know, was barnum admirable, was he not admirable, how admirable was he, how justifiable is my admiration for him. if.m .. t so that's what i would do ifi were barnum . i'm going to read to you just a few short passages of the book, from the book. two of them have to do with

things that happened nearby. i thought they might be appropriate . barnum was a sort of jeffersonian democrat who was a member of the universalist church . he, even as a young man he was more comfortable with the sort of energy and ferocity i guess the word you could say of the role of religion in public life. and he believed very arstrongly in the separation of church and state. so strongly that at the ripe old age of 21, he founded a newspaper icalled the herald of freedom in which he

propounded this idea that you know, the church and state should be separated but he wasn't content to do that. he also wanted to attack the people who felt otherwise including his uncle among others. and barnum managed to get himself sued for libel several times in a short period of time he ran the newspaper. a year after he started it resulted in a judge ruling that he could either pay $100 for having libel somebody for , or spend two months in prison or in jail. the dan barry jail. and he decided even though he ehad the money to take the latter step and here's how he talkedabout that .

i chose to go to prison, barnum wrote, to gideon wells, editor of the hartford times and later secretary of the navy and other secretary of the navy. i chose to go to prison thinking that such a step would be the means of opening many eyes. indeed, he continued, because of the trial, the excitement of this and the neighboring towns, it will have a grand effect. this purpose in writing wells was to tell him another newspaper editor would be covering the matter at length as with the herald of freedom of course and task wells to make suck remarks. his ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come. he was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs and

enterprises in himself. in his memoirs, barnum writes he was allowed to have his cell in the den very common jail fitted out with wallpaper and carpet . which was surely a rarity in the annals of imprisonment. twhile in jail he was allowed to continue editing his newspaper, to write numbers of letters and to receive so many friends that he found their ceaseless digits burdensome. these communications of the world beyond the cell allowed him not only to stir up local newspaper coverage but also to engineer what can only be called a local holiday to celebrate his release from jail. a group called the committee on arrangements was formed they met him at the jail on the morning of his last day there, december 5, 1832 and strolled with him across the village green to the very room in the courthouse where he had been tried and convicted . the crowd was so large barnum's paper reckonedit at 1500 souls and even at half

that size it would have been immense . but it was so large that those who could not fit inthe building formed a parting see for him to pass through. once settled in there, he was honored with an owed composed for the occasion and a speech offending freedom of the press . written and dedication to claim by a prominent lecturer who was himself the editor of the new haven examiner. there follows i him, strike the symbol after which a crowd of several hundred general one barnum recalled retreated to a nearby hotel of one jean nichols who enjoyed a sumptuous k dinner and posed for speeches. the 12 coach we were told described barnum as a terror to bigots and tyrants, a young man on the threshold of active life who near neither bolts nor bars through prison walls could intimidate. as if all this were not enough, to bolster a cautious 22-year-old who had not suffered, he stepped from the

danbury hotel into a coach drawn by a six horse team. seated with him was a small band of musicians playing patriotic tunes and a parade in his honor was formed to take him the three miles home. rra marshall carrying the stars and stripes led the parade followed by 40 people on horseback. but behind barnum's coach was a carriage carrying reverend fisk , master of ceremonies and the was present at today'sproceedings followed by 60 more carriages . filled with local people. as this revenue got underway, cannon boomed on the village green. several hundred more people who were gathered there gave cheer. when the carriage reached bethel, the band played home sweet home and three more cheers went upas barnum alighted . plus the day began in jail and in well orchestrated and

raucous triumph. neither barnum nor anyone else knew for certain who organize the many events but he chose the homatter of the committee of arrangements. barnum did not give or take credit when he later described the celebration in detail in his memoirs and without doubt it was in barnum's interest toimply that the day unfolded almost spontaneously , propelled by the enthusiasm of his neighbors for his cause and indeed for himself. after all, he had grown up in the village and have many relatives there. he had gone to church there, the clerk and its stores had owned the store there, heavily advertised its lottery now ran a newspaper from there. democrats, universalists and others who thought as he did would have wanted to support him. for those in formal speeches did not occur on the spur of the moment nor did bands and

coaches arrive by chance. and even if the celebratory luncheon involved only dozens rather than hundreds of countrymen, provincial hotels would need pheromone warning to feed so many. but the various tactics barnum would master as he became a successful showman, one was to know when to stand in the wings and when to step in the footlights to take about. it seems likely that in this case he was in both places at once. others might have thought to sponsor an owed or anoration, engagement chorus or a band . have a banquet or a parade. position 30 years rather than three cheers twice. they might have forgotten the canon salute altogether. but not barnum. beginning on december 5, 1832, more would always be more. keeping sympathetic newspaper editors" would always be useful. commissioning songs and poems and speeches would ever

enhance an occasion, mixing serious intentions with entertainment sure to draw a crowd would continue to be a good strategy for engaging the public. in his own notoriety would never fail to be a poem card ready to handle. seemingly small inconsequential details like returning to that courtroom where he was convicted or overlaying it all with patriotic zeal would never elude him. this they had all the earmarks of the barnum production. it was the day when his career as a showman began. >> i'll just read you one morebecause we are running a bit long . barnum became as i said increasingly interested in abolition and he became an ardent unionist as the civil war started. you may be shocked to hear that through part of

connecticut it was a hotbed of anti-unionism and barnum put himself out there very often on behalf of the union cause.after the first battle of bull run in july 1861, those who sympathized with secession began to hold peace rallies and events like flag would be flown above the stars and stripes. barnum's region of connecticut was especially active in this way and so he decided to accompany about 20 like-minded friends to attend one of the meetings happening 10 miles north of bridgeport. here for ourselves whether the addresses were disloyal or not. as cthey were leaving bridgeport a came upon two omnibus is carrying 25 month militia volunteers who had just been mustered out and

returned from the war. they and a number of other bridge borders were also headed to any in a skeptical frame of mind. barnum's beat was for the on the bus and the large gathering and were present when it's preacher was delivering his benediction. the on the bus and secured heover a hill filled with the soldiers hollering prounion cheers and displaying union banners.in a later account written by william a crop it was then at bull run as a correspondent for the tribune and a local divinity student and journalist named john morris, according to them the soldiers went straight to the flagpole where the peace flag white with a black eagle and the word peace had been raised as well as an ancient jackson war flag. as the soldiers shimmied up the pole and tore down the offending flag , the rallies speakers fled from the stage in a panic and hid in a

nearby cornfield. crockett who as i said had been at bull run referred to this in his account as all wrong on a small scale . but soldiers then raised old glory and carry barnum on their shoulders to the stage where he delivered a speech full ofpatriotism fight with the humor of the occasion . the loyalists of the crowd path prounion resolutions and sang the star-spangled banner . among others who spoke was another member of the bridgeport contingent, elias howe junior. the sewing machine magnate. the son of those the peace rally had betrayed the cause of peace by drawing weapons. but the soldiers managed to disarm a few of them though not before at least one pistol was fired. in his speech how who despite his great wealth would soon serve as a private in the war told the crowd if they fire a gun boys, burn the whole town andi'll pay for it .

before that was necessary, the bridge borders decamped with what was left of the white peace flag dragging in the mud with one of the on the buses. but the soldiers remained in a riotous mood and when they returned to bridgeport and the crowd of several thousand people had appeared in the streets by evening, they sacked offices of the bridgeport farmer. the democratic process session newspaper. barnum and wired several new york papers about the events of the day, ending his first dispatch by saying the soldiers had lkbeen talked out of attacking at the farmer offices but a short time later and 8:30 he sent a second telegram saying the newspaperhad just been gutted . the windows were smashed, the type all thrown into the streets and presses destroyed . he wrote in his autobiography

, i did not approve of the summary suppression of the paper and offered the proprietors i handsome subjection to assist in enabling them to renew publication. these were journalists on the opposite side of hisviewpoint . one of the editors escaped to the rooftop storing the right , fleeing to canada and eventually ending up in augusta georgia. the other did restart the farmer. less than a week later after the arrest of one of the principal peace meeting activists on orders of secretary of state william h seward, barnum wrote to president lincoln from his house in bridgeport reporting that the arrests and rendered secession so scarce i cannot find one forexhibition in my museum . and praising the of the veness administrations strong arm. let's go ahead and turn to questions now .

>> if anybody wants to come up here or does everybody want to sit and ask questions? so we will do it that way if that's okay with c-span. so any questions ? >> how do you think barnum would have adapted to twitter ? >> it's funny, that's the question i've been asked several times. barnum was somebody who really embraced the new technology. i think one of his, the reasons for his success and one of his geniuses , 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, there were 150 newspapers or so in new york city alone and in barnum's early days of the museum, he was an added avid advertiser in newspapers. peof the telegraph, he kept in touch with people all over the world to find acts for him. the railroad as he got involved in the circus part of his life in moving circuses around, so he was very interested in technology . so i mean, i assume, he might not have used in the same way as certain people do but i think he would haveembraced it . >> any other questions? you want to ask yours? why don't you ask yours?

>> i wonder if barnum had any relationship personally with abraham lincoln and if lincoln had an opinion about barnum ? >> the one thing that strikes me as suggesting something about lincoln's opinion of barnum was that for one point after lincoln was president, he came to new york with his family and barnum went to his hotel and more or less begged him to come to the museum, the hotel was across the street from the museum and lincoln did not . at the time, barnum's what is it exhibit was on display there and there were other things that were racially, it wasn't an exhibit. it was a display of a black man as a possible missing link. and there was also i believe a play on at the time that was somewhat controversial so

lincoln as a good politician stayed away. members of hisfamily did go . lincoln did in 1863, i think it was. lincoln, mrs. lincoln welcomed tom thumb and this is to the white house right after their gallo wedding in new york city which he sort of engineered self and as i just read, barnum felt comfortable sending lincoln telegram and so i don't think there was a close relationship. it's interesting that people who were very close to barnum such as forest greeley, very close. spent many nights in barnum's palace, it does not mention him at all in his memoirs.

there's no mention whatsoever of barnum. and there are other memoirs that i can't quite recall where the same thing is true. and of course greeley ended up running for office to so it could be that he was very aware of the negative sides of barnum's public reputation . and so that's why he stayed clear in his memoir. >> could you explain please what the relationship was ar between barnum and tubbs college. why was there some relationship there? >> top college is often described as a universalist institution. more properly it was an institution founded by

universalists but not as a universalist, that maybe hairsplitting, i don't know but as a universalist himself and somebody who did a lot to support his religion became very involved in getting money to that institution. the president there was very good at extracting money from mbarnum and one of the sort of enduring or almost enduring aspects of that relationship is that barnum had a building built on campus similar to this one for a science building. and later in, well in , the timing was later but at some point after barnumbrought jumbo the elephant to america , jumbo was killed after being hit by a freight train. barnum had him stuffed and also had his skeleton kind of

rebuilt and so he hadtwo exhibits instead of one . .but the one that was stopped jumbo and it up in the main hall of the science building. we have someone here who saw that and the athletic teams at tufts start what was known as the jumbo. in 1955 at building burned down. 75, okay. if it's in my book i'll have to correct it. but you look very young, i didn't mean to imply. in 75 the building burneddown anyway . and the carcass was destroyed . >> he's still listed as a founding trustee. >> i should say he gave money

to other universalist institutions do, st. lawrence college is one other. >> barnum was white the globe tracker for his time. could you tell us an anecdote from one of his uncommented ventures? >> i guess one of, one sort of defining moment in barnum's life was he took tom thumb to england with his soul plan for selling tom thumb in england was to introduce him to queen victoria. he had no earthly reason to believe he would have any access to queen victoria and in fact did not have access to her for a while but managed to work on various people and as i mentioned earlier, the queen. later he also took tom thumb to france and they traveled around thecountryside .

he brought charity, his wife anto england with him and then to france. she found the english to be immoral so you can imagine what she made of the french. so she soon went back home and really never traveled withhim much again . barnum had quite a revenue with tom thumb including carriage and shetland ponies and stuff and often barnum would go in front of the revenue set things up in the next town. and he was kind of on hisown . and at some point he became very interested in the great, both in its, in its drinkable form and there's also one of his letters to a newspaper back home talks about his pleasure in squashing rates

with his feet and that sort of thing and there's pretty clear undercurrent in that that he was a little bit too involved with the great in all its forms. and indeed, fairly soon after he came home he began to sort of strip away is interest in alcohol and eventually became this very id temperate speaker. so i don't know, i guess i think one of his adventures abroad issquashing those grapes . >> i wanted to know the role of the disability that he had in the world. >>. >> i mean, i'm, i don't

really think i havean answer for that question .i clearly, he understood the interests -- i might not have an answer but i'm going to answer it. he understood the interests of people in seeing people who were what were called freaks that had some sort of disability, people who were lacking in allpigmentation , people who were enormously fat, people who were enormously thin. the siamese twins. he did have, i don't know if you know the movie, and i

tried to forget the movie, but i think there is a very 21st-century hollywood take on how he became great friends with all the people in his service and i think he had relationships with some of those people that were i think admirable but bli think on the whole we would not be ld very comfortable with the way he thought about people of this type. >> and the people that have disabilities and no place to land in the age of 1870s and the idea of freak shows happens closer to the 20th century. any people that were part of his performance, his exhibits were marvels of nature or natural wonders though there was a whole different instability to that. anybody back here?

>> thanks a lot. i grew up in bethel, i was here in bridgeport and i had the distinction of being a politician here. i also was with the university of virginia. you brought to life a lot of what barnum is, his self-awareness. i wondered in all your research, were there things ryou started to get onto and wonder about that you just are still today hoping to find an answer to that you might find some trove somewhere down the road ? >> well, there's a wonderful collection of letters from barnum to a figure that i think of as sort of the boston barnum and its moses kimball who is a close friend of barnum's. also has a museum very much like the american museum and also, just traded acts with

barnum. they put on similar sort of moralistic dramas. like barnum kimball also became a politician later in life. and there's one very intense chunk of their correspondence that is in the boston anthem, it's all from boston to and it's all concentrated really in about one year. i wrote to arthur who edited the selected letters and is great cover collector of barnum letters. he says since your book came out, many of kimball's letters turned up and he informed me they had not but i'd love to see themshow up and don't you think that would be wonderful ? it would be nice to see a longer stretch of that correspondence.

>>. [inaudible] >> use the mic, arthur. >> a cash of barnum letters that came to light after my edition came out in turn up in bethel basically and donated to the bethel public library in manuscript and some ofthose letters are very interesting . >> anybody have, we have time for one more question. >> i actually have two things to say. thank you forpersonal , the merciless and merciful presentation of joyce, i'm fascinated by that and what it says about our birth as a nation. and that's kind of, the monstrous aspect of barnum,

but also that exquisite witchery of bringing other to his audiences and i'm quite fascinated by that. do you know any, can you tell me more about his caring for her towards the end of her life and her passing -mark i know what happened with the exhibition andeverything afterward . i also got quite fascinated by pt barnum years ago. and when the recent residential election was happening, he kind of jumped into my brain and said no, no, you cannot compare me to this man. they are totally different because i had principles. and i made a piece of dedicated to him call what you believe down which is in coming back to earth to clear his name. that, so i look forward to

what you say about that. >> did, joyce became ill i think as i recall, two or three months before he died and barnum hired a woman to take care of her and she was a part of this time still being exhibited and she was taken to barnum's half-brothers house here in bridgeport where she died. >> that was bethel, thank you. and i mean, i guess you could say they didn't have to do that but you can also say he was protecting his investment . nvso i don't know that he showed any beyond the whole concept of sort of exhibiting

her. i don't know that he showed any particular cruelty to her or, but i don't, that's pretty much what iknow . kathy and i are in conversation about the question of whether barnum charged people to attend the autopsy of joyce death. >> it was a bake of the state and i've yet to see any current documents that says yes he was charging anything because it's even the article that was written by the newspaper editor time, doesn't talk about adding 1500 people there and charging. it all comes later on so it becomes resources to the original tory where there

were surgeons, there were students and there was press invited to the autopsy. >> and clergy as well. >> i am going to keep, i have to research this before the paperback comes out. but i believe that there were advertisements, i think i would be able to find advertisements . >> and we have and they're allsecondary to the question . >> is also saying it was coming out . >> the fascinating thing about martin, there's just more to look at, and it's always going back to graduate school, go to the source area so that's one of those things and we are so immersed in that because of the re-envisioning we're doing with the newbarnum museum story . it's those hard stories we have to lean into and not be afraid to analyze and discuss, to make barnum human . in the context of his time so that a course appropriate for

audiences today but they are to history. so we're going to be doing the authentic story about barnum that really humanizes him. who he was, good and bad and that's honest. that's what museums are responsible, not our responsibility. >> i would like to say the trump question is something that always comes up and you know, i think it's interesting there's so many superficial ways in which a scene similar. they have a slippery relationship with the truth. their name was their brand, they were in real estate, they went bankrupt. they call themselves philanthropists. i think that as you point out so well, the differences are just so great that it is an

insult to barnum. >> so with that, thank you. thank you so much. so please, don't feel you have to rush out. john and adrian and marion, thank you all so much. there is tea, there's coffee. take your time. eric is over there still selling books. bob and i will be here to get your book personalized and enjoy the afternoon and thank you all very much for coming . [applause] >> and now on cspan2's book tv, more television for serious readers .