listen to c-span's all caps, the weekly. we are talking to purdue university political scientist, robert browning address the c-span archives about congress' increasing use of lame-duck sessions to tackle big-ticket legislation. >> good evening. warm welcome to another biography event, i hope everyone is staying, wearing masks and reading biography. i am the director of the center for biography, unique institution caused by the graduate center of the city university of new york. founded by shelby white and the young foundation in 2007. i want to thank shelby for her steadfast support for the

biography center overall this year. it is her vision that's made this program possible. please note our next event is coming up in two days on this thursday october 15. we will interview larry to is timely and important new biography of joseph mccarthy. tonight, we are here to celebrate the publication of aid from lincoln in his time. a new biography of lincoln by david reynolds watch the book has received early reviews in publishers weekly and elsewhere. we encourage everyone to look it up on amazon or preferably your own independent store. david reynolds is a distinguished professor at the graduate center, author the

cultural biography, winner of the bancroft prize. his other books include the american renaissance, john brown abolitionist and mightier than the store. uncle tom's cabin and the battles for america. our regular for the review books, new york times book review and "wall street journa journal". david will be in conversation with james, one of the leading historians of the 19th century america. james is pioneering works include the ruling race, 1982. slavery and freedom and interpretation. the radical and republican, frederick douglas abraham lincoln and the triumph of antislavery policy. his latest book, freedom

national, the destruction of slavery of the united states, 1861 to 1865. they will have conversations for about 40 minutes, 45 minutes and then take questions ten or 15 minutes. please click on the question box below and type in your question. jim will be sure to get to as many of you as you can. will try to this program about one hour, 7:00 p.m. eastern time. thanks to the foundation for funding all the events. i'll turn the conversation over to you now. >> thank you. i really appreciate it. i'm happy to do this because congratulations, festival. congrats on the reviews in your

book, it's been terrific. david is one of my favorite cultural historians. >> your good. >> looks like a lawsuit -- >> no, you're fine. >> one of my favorite cultural historians. he brings cultural history, a virtual that's not always present. first is a genuinely awesome american cultural history from high to low and everything in between. one of the effects of the

knowledge of cultural history, david has always been sensitive to the conflict, he doesn't say this is what american culture like. if there's anti- if there's racist, there's anti- racism. there are religious conservatives and religious radicals, he brings back sensibility, it's great and all his work. associated with that, a democratic sensibility about culture this is worry as much about high culture versus low culture doesn't care too much about that, and it shapes the kind of books he likes and the

democratic american democracy and literary values but also the popular books finally, need which i think is for similar reasons. around 718. praising lincoln for his, being attuned to all specs of american culture. a religious sensibility and the like. i think all of those virtues show up in this book. let me begin by asking you a simple question, what is the difference between this

biography of lincoln and the kind of biography by richard for donald or michael. >> such a great question. there have been some marvelous, superb by lincoln. what they do generally is follow his life, sometimes his political context, the kind of standard one volume, michael does a wonderful job but there's david donald classic single volume biography. donald says in his preface this is a biography from lincoln's view because didn't have too much connection to society

culture of his era. he was self educated, the ultimate man and donald even says he enters the presidency the least prepared of any resident with other had it in a sense, i guess it's kind of the opposite view, emerson said that of all the great heroes in history, we can stand alone for embracing the entire realm of experience from, he mentioned this now, the highest to the lowest until the very dogs believe in him emerson felt the same way about shakespeare, too. shakespeare uses the scraps and transforms them into something new. lincoln early on would speak of

popular humor, dirty humor or whatever but also memorized very long tones of shakespeare and didn't do this impressive cocktail party, these passages meant something to him and once he read a passage a couple times, he had it memorized so in the middle of his presidency, he would break out by claudia or one of the great experience tragedies and even april 9, 1865 when leak was surrendering and lincoln was on a boat going from virginia to washington, he had been visiting grant and everybody around him was

cheering, this is wonderful and great and i guess today we would have said mission accomplished with the lincoln said i'd rather talk about shakespeare, i'd rather talk about shakespeare, he spent several hours discussing poetry from shakespeare and longfellow and others about death. there is a 750,000 americans died in civil war, that's where his mind was. it wasn't mission accomplished or i am the greatest or whatev whatever, i am the leader here, he was thinking about those who had died. it is quite moving and i think that's part of where democracy comes from, his ability to identify people of all classes. >> it's really interesting in

the context and sometimes a difficult marriage this is really interesting but let me ask a few questions, i'll start with a simple one. why able? >> is a great question because he didn't like the name abe, he didn't like it when people called him abe. but he would not have been elected without the image of honest able or uncle abe, he knew in 1860, he was beloved among the people as abe so it's

the whole idea in the book about the way he identified with average americans in the way they saw him and loved him. the people around him new he only wanted to become, be called abraham. he signed his name a lincoln, he only wanted to go by the name lincoln. it is a tossup, yeah abe is his densification with the common person back then. >> honest abe or father abraham. >> father abraham was in the. a lot of nicknames for him. >> running all the way through the book, being left out, this

cultural difference between puritans and you set this up as well as the culture of florence as well as the way people at the time were in terms of the book, can you tell us about that? >> a lot of people back then really thought the civil war was about the age-old difference between new england puritans, new england early on had been settled by a generation of puritans escaping is occasion in england and on one hand and the cavaliers who were the supporters of royalty in england

and when they came to power, they were fleeing to america and settled in the south charles sumner to a lot of other people, basically a fight between new england, which included anti- slavery you and the cavalier which believed in hierarchy and institutions including the institution of slavery. lincoln was aware puritans cavalier but someone at the time said the great thing about president lincoln, he combines the puritan and cavalier. i explained that in my book because as early as ancestors on his father's side, samuel lincoln came over in 1637 and was a puritan and most of his

descendents were puritans and became baptist eventually. on his mother's side, there was illegitimacy in the background. they were really sure who his grandfather was that he was convinced it was the virginia planter, a man of aristocracies of the south and that kind of thing so in a way, he associated with a sense of honor, he had both peers and cavalier running through him even though he didn't want to identify with either side because a lot of people were saying i'm more of a puritan accent and i'm more cavalier. the fact he chose to empathize with this quaker background, turns out one of his great grandmothers was but all his

biographies, he was a quaker background, quakers were accepted by both puritans and cavaliers, they were kind of a buffer. you think cavaliers would hate them because they are anti- slavery but no. the quakers were pacifists. they were conscientious, they didn't want to go to battle over opinions over slavery even though they were, the quakers were okay with the south but also beloved in the north early on, they were persecuted, hanged in early new england but by this time, settling in the middle atlantic states in pennsylvania and kind of a buffer between the puritans and cavalier. i explore in my book how lincoln emphasizes that aspect in the background. >> people at the time, writing a

wonderful years ago, seeing how many people at the time did, it wasn't just new england, they had -- they didn't like the cavalier, they were not only self images, talk about how each section was. from the other. >> i think even in our culture has back then, mushroom and become caricatures. these were definitely caricatures. at the time of the 19th century when all of this was being talked about, both sections which you probably

block to be dismissed and the stereotype like puritan and cavalier but that image overwhelmed a lot of people began to believe it. a lot of people were saying while the division between the north and south can never be repaired because there will be nothing but hate forever between the puritans and cavalier. it is kind of ridiculous view but widely accepted. >> the cavaliers saw people identified themselves as cavalier and even the puritans -- but also busybodies, nosy. >> moralistic, they used to hang quakers and burn which is and hang which is and so forth, also very materialistic.

the lowly. >> the cavaliers, aristocratic, and a democratic. >> that's right. making other people labor for them and slave, they were laboring for them. the cavaliers were on their porches, enslaved people were working. >> right. so that runs all the way through the book. i this book up by grady, has it framed as the difference between puritans and the cavaliers. they are still there. >> it is to some degree.

let me ask you another thing that shows up, it doesn't run all the way through but has to do with niagara falls. i remember when it was a little larger in the culture, in the middle of the 19th century, niagara falls was a huge deal. a lot of people use it metaphorically including lincoln himself. as an incident in 1858 but also happens at niagara falls becomes a metaphor people are communist but president lincoln, maybe you could expand on what niagara falls meant in the american

culture, what it meant. >> it was a great tourist attraction and when we can went there on the way home from washington, he'd been serving in congress stopped over at niagara falls and went from the great lakes to chicago and he lived in illinois. stopping over at niagara falls, he was stunned by the spectacle. part of my book is influenced by a school of thought called post- humanism the fact that nature and things, nonhuman things have on people, today even right now, we are very much experiencing post- human existence because we are speaking the way we do because of covid, there's something out there, in california people are dealing with a thing called fire a hurricane or something, i used

to live in california. it would be earthquakes. lincoln was immersed from the very beginning in nature. just on the front tier, totally lived off the forest and was surrounded by the kind of savage nature. when he sees niagara falls in 1848, he's overwhelmed by the sheer energy and power but it makes me think in a post- human way, this spectacle has been here ever since adam, if we believe in adam. it's been years since ancient rome, all the civilization and human beings, this is constant throughout history so in a way, his expanding backward in time but thinking of thing in front of him, niagara falls, thinking how immense it was.

it made him think of all the people coming to view it. at that time as you mentioned, it was real, nowadays, sure how much it was a tourist attraction but all back then, it was, he was thinking of all the rivers that ran into it, in the channel. part of my book is how he channeled these streams of culture. i'm not saying niagara but channeling focus -- anyway. eight to ten years later in 1858 and nine, a tight rope walker came, he was french and put on a spectacle on crossing niagara falls on his tight rope. he would push wheelbarrow, he would carry a man on his back across niagara falls, he'd do flips, he walked across on stilts, incredible.

lincoln said, some for times he compared himself right in the middle. why? he was living in such divided times, the worst thing he could do was to pour more gasoline on the flame of division. step off the tight rope. people would say, why can't you make this a more antislavery or from the beginning? he said look, if i were carry the entire nation's future in my wheelbarrow, would you be yelling lean left? lien right, think this way? jump up or down? no, you'd allow me to keep right in the middle here. this is the best way to do it and preserve the union. one reason he didn't make it antislavery work was that he said if we lose kentucky, we lose everything. there were four states who still had enslaved people and yet, they were oil to the north.

if you lose some of these states, we lose the war. he had to stay on this tightrope those states in the union. >> sometimes the tightrope seems to be between deep moral convictions, slavery was wrong and the need to build and then hold onto, hold together a political coalition that had a lot of people who didn't share. sometimes it's between morality. >> exactly. it is very morally opposed to slavery and once said i hate slavery as much as any abolitionist would, it doesn't

matter, i hate it. i am morally opposed to slavery but sometimes early on, he said things today doesn't sound quite conservative and backwards but struggling to get ahead politically strategizing. people in illinois early on and even during his presidency sometimes, he had to behave a little more conservatively than he actually felt morally inwardly. >> right. that shows up now and the way people talk about lincoln most mostly, it appears no question that he hated slavery, he himself said he's always hated slavery. he says he's always hated it. he grew up in the and --

[inaudible] he had no reason to doubt that. it is a different thing. nowadays, people have a difficult time separating this. in the middle of the 19th century, one of the things lincoln and republicans were actively trying to do was say it's about slavery. wanting to talk about race, lincoln wanted to talk about slavery. historians -- one of the things that do, use of race in the context of our culture.

why don't you talk about that a little bit in particular, the kind of, the significance you attribute to this. >> early on, i mentioned earlier that said a couple of conservative, almost racist things in his debates with douglas but douglas was a thorough going racist. frederick douglass and stephen douglas, he did more harm to african-american people than just about anybody. he kept on with all these debates, he kept on forcing the issue. lincoln finally said -- he was thinking in illinois which it went into effect in 1853, frederick douglass called the worst black law in the state of the union, so-called negro

exclusion act. if you were free african-american, you couldn't enter that or you would be fined and kicked out of the state. it was a terrible environment. certain things there but then later on during his presidency, he gained quite deep respect and affection, even in springfield he lived in a neighborhood in illinois, a neighborhood full of african-americans, being friendly to them and kept responding with several of them while in the white house and while in the white house, frederick douglass, who at first thought he was quite conservative on slavery, met him a couple times in the white house and was astounded. he came out of this thing of these is the least prejudiced white person i think i've ever met. an older african-american

feminist, she came. she said before i die, i want to meet this guy, this president, abraham we can. she had a delightful time with him and felt very close to him. martin delaney, we would call him beyond black lives matter, a black nationalist. very militant. at the end of the work, lincoln appointed him the highest appointed army officer -- he didn't get to serve very much because the war was almost over but he became close to lincoln. when lincoln died, he cried for like a day, he was totally devastated. had a monument from an african woman kneeling, even a monument of lincoln himself, a woman in tears coming out of her eyes.

each tier being paid for a penny by each of the 4 million enslaved people. on a personal level, he was very close. he grew to respect african americans in civil war the way they fought. if you've seen the movie glory in the sense of fort wegner and any other battles, you have the same devotion, sometimes even more energy and self-sacrifice in white people did so he really admired that but he also relied on a popular humerus who was riding were on race on the cultural front, impersonated the copperhead, the opponents, the conservative democrats. back then, democrats were mainly conservative on the issue of slavery and race.

so he impersonated them. today it is hard for us to read his humor because it's full of the n-word but all he was doing in using this word, miming or impersonating these racist copperheads. people would laugh about this and a lot of people, several people said nasty was just a great force as sherman or grant and defeating labrie because he was so popular. lincoln would carry in his jacket the nasty papers, sketches by nasty and pulled them in and read them and he went said i'll give up my presidency if i could just write like this guy. it shows how deep his hatred of racism was because races -- nasty makes this very disgusting, almost as though

saturday night live against whoever, a political figure, were accepted as huge cultural force. i think today we are so diverse in our culture, it is hard to have single humerus, the force of nasty, the real best seller. of the of the more dispersed but same idea. >> it made me think of somethi something, most of the time when lincoln uses the n-word, he's doing what nasty is doing, he tends to use it in a way. hope by putting in and it made me wonder, lincoln was doing

already but it's true. you undermine the racist argument by caricaturing and that's a challenge in a way, it is, i'm not sure you could get away with it today. the culture is very different right now. >> it is a different culture. when i first encountered nasty humerus in the newspaper, this person is very disgusting and so offensive, i can't read this and then i realized this guy is being funny. he is disgusting, appalling. i suddenly realized, he was deciding lincoln left and right but what happened, is name is david, lincoln and him met in

the 50s. i think his use of that word, impersonating stephen douglas, it might have actually influenced on nasty because nasty number written -- lock have never written that way before. he had a long interview with lincoln, he overheard several of the debates and would follow lincoln around, he was a reporter met him and they were discussing stephen douglas at great length and lock detested stephen douglas. i wouldn't be surprised he heard lincoln impersonating and maybe, it was like two years later he comes out the sketch. the first nasty sketch, one,

lincoln in the white house. just that connection from the very beginning but it could be a case where i think lincoln had a sense of humor anyway and used his humor, it might have prompted something. >> there is minor in antislavery that does that. in exchange on the floor between williams, the republican and stephen douglas when it came about in 1860. he says to douglas, the idea that he could be possibly elected president on the ground that no one could be elected president. but nonetheless, as he is

increasingly appalled by the explosion of this racism, the most influential but unlike what can say about slavery, and that he does grow. >> i think he does grow. when he was in the legislature 30, he had a separate bill would give the right to vote and exclude them and yet, you write in your book, at the end of his life, the first president to public doors giving back the

right to vote. >> he's grown a lot and sadly of course, john wilkes booth was in the audience and said, he used the n-word, citizenship. i'm going to put this man through. three days later he killed him. ruth was a white supremacist but yes, i think he did progress. i agree with you and others, he does progress. 1864, he's sending a letter in which he says i think we should have at least limited suffrage for african-americans. african-american males, women did not get to vote until 1920 but still, he was really the

first one publicly to come out, the first president to come out with that. >> right. the other thing that i think on this subject, despite the remarks you mentioned, i do not know and never have supported, the worst one he ever made but despite that, what lincoln had to say, he meets back on that. also what he had to say right from the beginning and in your

speech, he is a man, all men are created equal and he says that over and over again. she earns from the sweat of her brow, stephen douglas. he says this over and over. the people talk about being racist, they pick one or two of these things out that are clearly driven by racism in th this. >> yes. i put him in this culture in the 1850s because the reason is that his cabin, it was a fairly simple thing. it showed that enslaved people were human beings with real feelings, religious feelings, a

sense of humor, love of music. today to us that sounds very old-fashioned to think about that but enslaved people are being treated as things, property. legally, they were property. they weren't really human beings. all of this was reported by the pseudo science of the era which some of which, african people were different species and so forth. a poly genesis, it was all kind of pseudoscience and even religiously supported by supposedly the curse of ham in the bible. we can cut through that, these are humans. enslaved people are yellow human

beings. even to say that, he doesn't go on and on about it but he says that is my fundamental view. in a sense even though he progresses, he doesn't really move beyond the is a fundamental understanding of enslaved peop people, and of black people. >> has your view of lincoln changed over the years? as you are writing this book? >> it did change a lot because i read a wonderful biography abo about, but other people but because they are standard biographies, the follow right back, they were very interesting and important, i really thought

away, he was like the star in the heaven, there is a poem saying you will always be the western store in the landscape that is kind of how i view him in doing his own thing in this. i was surprised and thrilled by the fact that he was so incredibly involved in his culture. what i tried to do this, i try not to get too lost in cultural digression, i like to bring it back to lincoln. he is a the center of my book so it was a wonderful surprise for me. >> when i first started thinking about megan, i couldn't place him, my emphasis was and i

slavery and the more it seemed to me he was committed in much deeper antislavery policies than i had ever realized. >> if i could get people in your forthcoming, the constitutional view in a wonderful way but yes. >> let make it one last question in. you have a very sensible and tentative eager handed view of lincoln, in -- you also have an

interesting view and it was very different, what ways was it different to you? >> it was different in the sense that american culture but then was quite patriarchal, women can they marry, they get up property, there is a thing called overture in a way, women give up their independent identity and women were with the husband and that's kind of why the convention happens in 1848 to protest overturn and exclusion of women and so forth but mary todd lincoln was in a sense, domestic. she called herself domestic and she took care of the kids and all that but she's very independent-minded and not

afraid of expressing her political opinion and as parents, they were kind of unusual because back then, people in general punished the kids a lot but they gave the kids latitude. there were certain limits but lincoln would be in his law office in his voice would come in and upset the inks and scattered the ashes and break the pen in his law partner said if his kids -- he used the s word, sat in his hat lincoln would rub on his boots and approve of it. ...

and had died at age 18 but tad was mischievous and he was coming in the cabinet meeting climbing on his shoulders and everything. another very unconventional thing was the fact that during the lie years when they lived in springfield lincoln was away from most halves of the year because he was on the circuit. the little towns did not have lawyers of lincoln did and a bunch of other lawyers had to go to these little towns about the size of connecticut, the circuit so he was gone about 120 days a year. that's unconventional in their togetherness and in a way it developed a sense of independence on the part of mary

todd lincoln even on the part of abe lincoln so yeah quite unusual in many respects. >> there's a question i think you or i could answer quickly and i will run through those. one is this comes up last week and is there any evidence that link in october 1864 was looking to -- the election? >> there's no reason he would have even made the nomination until december so my sense is that it never came up. >> now, no, no it didn't come up. i will say he had written in august before that raigad written a note saying it looks like i'm going to lose and he

wrote a note to his cabinet and he sealed the venom below. it appears that war was going very badly and i just want to had have a smooth transition to my successor. he assumed he was going to lose but we really don't know about the supreme court. >> another one, did he keep a diary? >> no, unfortunately he didn't keep a diary. even diligent research of -- is not combat. here is one. what is your opinion of daniel day-lewis the trail? spain at well as a first time in my life i began to believe in guns because when i heard later that he was going to quit i'm

going to go buy it gun. you are not allowed to retire. i was stunned. i loved him. the film takes a little latitude here and there. we all know that but i think you did a really great job. >> i would never have imagined someone. >> don't worry i really do believe in guns. >> this one, how would you describe lincoln's leadership? that's a big question. >> a's leadership style was relaxed, casual but at the same time he could be very firm. at the beginning of the war just

before the war broke out six or seven people around him it said we have to strike a compromise here. let them take fort pickens and he said no, if they fire on fort sumter it's a war and they fired on fort sumter and he called up 75,000 troops. it was war and he kept another another -- another thing about him was that he managed to negotiate with people on kind of a friendly level, even people like mcclellan who ended up being very ineffective on the battlefield. he managed to finesse that relationship enough so he could work his way through to his generals and he finally fires mcclellan. he hires are inside and it doesn't work out. he hires another and that doesn't work out but he likes grant and grant is his old dog.

he sorts through very wisely his generals and thinks about strategies aboard the realize that war could no longer be what he called guns full of rose water. sadly it had to be a hard war. it had to be a hard war and grant and sherman, he finally and separate them and generals under them finish off a civil war. i think he did a great job and he also finesse his cabinet pretty well to as doris kearns goodwin's and others says in "team of rivals." >> the two things that strike me and struck me as i was reading your book is he came into, this is his relationship with other people. without putting his ego on the

line. with mcclellan for example. mcclellan was horrible. he didn't care any call them nasty and said awful things about him. >> even his cabinet felt superior to him and someone at the beginning of the war said you are going to hired chase as your secretary of the treasury? listen president lincoln he feel so much more superior to you, you can't believe it. he said oh really? that's exactly the kind of person i want around me. he didn't want personal loyalty. chase was incredibly progressive and disloyal as well because he tried to supplant lincoln and yet lincoln didn't hold hard feelings. he is the one that ultimately ends up on the supreme court and

the election so even after he fires salmon chase and he knows salmon chase tried to replace him in 1860. he knows all of that but he didn't hold any sense of personal disloyalty as long as chase was doing a good job and he was doing a good job. under very different -- difficult circumstances. lincoln didn't care about the ego stuff and the other thing that he didn't like it in the way was ideology. you do a very nice job of showing how when the radical republicans were demanding that the only higher anti-slavery generals he would say look, no. i higher generals, i want a general who is someone that wall fight and win a battle. i don't care if it's a -- and if a radical general like let's say

fremont can do it i'm going to fire him. >> exactly and i mean even grand had said before i'm not a lincoln man and in the lincoln-douglass debates and so forth and grant was like his favorite general. he got the job done and the thing was sherman, sherman was frankly quite racist and he thought that frankly african-americans were better off as enslaved people and yet sherman you know whatever. he was a wonderful general in georgia and the carolinas. >> a couple of really remarkable notes that he writes. he writes an amazing note where he says i have heard in ways

that you are accurate that you call for a dictator. all the generals who win battles u.n. battles. >> yet he hires saying i want to be a dictator. >> and the one he writes to grant or he says look i wasn't sure you could do this. i didn't really believe in the strategy. i just want to go on record as saying i was wrong and you are right terry at. >> yeah he said i was wrong, sorry, i was wrong. he really didn't let ego get in his way. >> or ideology. >> let's take one last question because this is a big one and people don't always get this question.

how would reconstruction have been different? >> now we get into the counterfactual history. i don't know if you agree with me. he certainly would have handled it much better than andrew johnson did, much better and i believe he would have wanted to support the friedman spiro and support the idea of 40 acres and a mule. he was said to believe in free labor. i think he would have tried to encourage the advance of formerly enslaved people both politically and economically and i think when push came to shove any have the resurgence of these white supremacist groups i think you would want to put it down fairly firmly at that point. i firmly believe that. what do you believe about that jim? >> well it's you say obviously

there would have been a lot less drama between the white house and the president and whatever lincoln's racial views it wasn't the way hard-core andrew johnson was. >> you never expressed himself in favor of the lander institution and it was a little bit outside the mainstream of the republican party. even sherman ordered carefully. very clear it was a contingent and a grant of land. he can't actually give the land outright. but i doubt if he would have done what he did.

>> and yet he signed the homestead act which wasn't exactly a giveaway of land but almost a giveaway of land and surprising people in the western territories and now eventually it was taken over by a lot of the real roads and went to later on but still he had the concept i think, you are right probably 48 years was a little too much. that was like a metaphor that was using for the advance of the enslaved people. >> weather whether in the long run it would have changed very much let's say because john hope franklin which is a little book i'm reading just in passing he says sooner or later, sooner or later the federal government was going to lead and control of the senate would go back to the white electoral majority.

whether it would have turned out all that different in the end is hard to say because eventually he was elected president and may have been president in 1886 but might have been more or less the same with less drama and no impeachment but whether what it change things at all. >> i think the best that could have happened as he would have set a good example but the ultimate redemption and all of that and the disengagement of the federal government and so forth, you think that would have happened and maybe jim crow would have been a few years shorter or something, i'm not sure. >> let me give you an alternative scenario. given his long-standing belief

that there was a majority in the south that was hostile it's not hard for me to imagine that the republican party would have had an easier time building that bi-racial coalition that the republicans are trying to build. >> it may have made a difference. certainly in the longer-run back then but maybe not in the ultimate long run. their early 20th century and "birth of a nation" and all of that stuff. >> we have reached the end of our time and i want to thank you again for asking me to do this. >> thank you and i hope all the viewers will know my book is on amazon. >> it's a wonderful book.

>> thank you so much jim. it's been great. >> thanks a lot. good night. 61 million americans have some form of disability and yet we are less than 3% of filming tv shows and i would add the majority of those roles are. by nondisabled actors.

ultimately as somebody with a disability we want to see yourselves represented because ultimately not only are we seeing yourselves represented but it's going to help de-stigmatized disability and representation in general get society used everybody and ultimately it makes the world a more inclusive place. speak would welcome to the distinguished form dwight d eisenhower president of the united states of america. [applause]