in any case, that never happened. he became actually rather adroit at managing his time, managing his stress, and generally positioning himself to get through his second term. >> to watch the rest of this program visit our website booktv.org and search for author susan eisenhower or the title of her book using the box at the top of the page. >> good evening, everyone. we're delighted to have you with us. welcome to book talk tuesday. my name is jim and busk. happy new year to you all. glad to see back in this new year and delighted you joined a decide to spend your evening with us. tonight i'm very excited because record have an opportunity to explore the challenges, the

stresses, , the opportunities te early americans faced while living under british military rule in the american revolution. before we get to that and to our distinguished guest, just a programming note. i want encourage you all to join us on january 27, the next week when we will have special symposium entitled leadership for for a more perfect union. this is a symposium, a one-day symposium done a partnership with the brookings institute. we will be talk about some of the serious issues acing this country at this time and solutions for the way forward. we will be joined by some esteemed figures from government, from philanthropy and from business including former secretary of state colin powell, current governor of maryland larry hogan and an current associate justice of the supreme court sonia sotomayor smiler. please go to mount burned out or come check us out there where you can register for this event we encourage you to join us in these important discussions and we look forward to seeing you there. i also want to encourage you to help support mount vernon and

other and of the public history sites over this difficult time. we are delighted to bring programs like this to you free every so often but that does come with a cost. if you are able and jets a means to do so we would appreciate you throwing a few clans our way right now. you can find a way to do that by going to mount vernon.org and clicking the donate button. let's talk about two nights main topic. in 1815 as many of you might know john adams wrote to thomas jefferson, he argued the revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people in 15 years before a drop of blood was spilled at lexington and concord. he argued the war for independence in the revolution were two different things. were they really? that's one of the things will explore tonight in many of the questions as well. our guest this evening is doctor donald johnson, assistant professor at north dakota state

university, former washington library research fellow and the author of a brand-new book, "occupied america: british military rule and the experience of revolution" published in 2020 by university of pennsylvania press. if you would like to purchase a copy of that we will drop a link in the comments at this time. it's my distinct privilege to welcome doctor johnson to the screen. >> thank you for having me. >> it's a great honor. thanks for joining us. am i correct in assuming you're coming to us from fargo? >> i am. >> i had to ask him what is a temperature by the? >> i haven't checked lately but this morning it was not five degrees above, so a little nippy. >> and you have heated garage in that part of the world. >> yes. >> all right. thanks very much and am excited to talk with you about this book. i was fascinated by your findings and your discussion and

discussion people faced during the occupation during the revolutionary war. i want to start with the big picture question. a lot of our colleagues in the historical profession have been writing a lot about american loyalists, writing a lot about the ordinary americans during the revolution, looking at women, slaves were escaping and pursuing freedom. what was missing? what did you think was missing from that conversation? >> specifically from the question of loyalists in patriots, what's missing is kind of the people who wouldn't have identified as either/or who could have identified as both at various points throughout the war. there's this whole category of people who have called different things like neutrals are like eric sullivan called them that this effective. these people who at certain points side with the crown, side with the revolutionaries at certain points, side with

neither. i felt like those types of people first of all were not well served in this categorization we have of patriots on one side, loyalists on the other. and that it was a much more complicated story, that there had to be room for change over time for people's loyalties to be much more complicated, much more inflected by their day-to-day existence. in terms of the everyday experiences of women, of insulate people, native americans, there has been a time of great history on that. written in the last decade or so. but i felt it takes the exceptional, it takes these kind of disenfranchised kinds of groups but it doesn't integrate their stories into a more

coherent narrative. it doesn't integrate it with what kind of everyone else is doing. and so i was trying to get at kind of ordinary people different races, genders, backgrounds and get that kind of how the ordinary experience of revolution really shaped political allegiance. >> i'm curious in how our early ancestors, and ancestors being our predecessors in the historical profession, shaped this narrative early on. you said we have had been d to thinking of two categories, patriots and loyalists, and this great area to gets lost in b. very early on in the immediate aftermath of the war people started writing the histories of the war, made those determinations, helped shape the store you were telling even up until recently. >> absolutely. two of the earliest historians of the war were actually ones that were involved in military

occupation themselves, mercy and david ramsey. they knew well, ramsey writes a history of the revolution of south carolina in 1785. warren publishes for multi volume history of -- the american revolution in the first date of the 19th century the first decade -- ramsey was a prisoner of war in occupied charleston. warren was witness to a lot of the trials and tribulations of occupied boston in newport. they would have known from the personal experience the ambiguities, the nuances, allegiance during this time but is in their interest as kind of the ruling elite of the new republic after the war, not to cast the struggle itself like that. it's kind of like the adams quote that you open with. adams writes that something i'm

going to butcher here, but the revolution was complete before the first shot was fired, that everyone had turned against the british well before the war. and that the war was aftereffect of this kind of change in people's minds. people like ramsey in war and it was in their interest to create this narrative of patriotic kind of revolutionary cadre to which people could cling. and to which people whose own experiences didn't necessarily fit that, could then claim after the war and say i was always the patriot i was always on the side. it's interesting in reading their histories one of the things i found it going back through with an eye towards how their defining loyalty and political allegiance is how very few loyalists they actually made

outright. the people the name are either notorious loyalists, people like joseph galloway or the brothers in philadelphia who have already fled the united states, or else they are this hate group of kind of the loyalists, never kind of with an actual definition. and how far they bend over backwards to forgive people who kind of straight at certain points from what they see as the patriots path. >> dude you get a sense to doing that because after the war there were attempts of reconciliation all across in the 13 colonies during the state? >> absolutely. it's one of the things that even some of that kind of higher profile founding fathers are involved with. john jay, alexander hamilton, a lot of these figures in new york are making the argument that you

can't really alienate some of these people who sided with the credit early on in the war because they are contributing a good deal society. they have money, expertise, the tools people need to build a nation. if you are going to have this strict like you did anything during the war you could not be part of the american equality then you have to exclude one historian history estimated half a million people either served in arms for the crown, spoke in support of the crown or took some action that could be determined as follows. if you're going to exclude that many people, that's a quarter of the population at least. >> i want to take this opportunity to remind the audience to have a chance to ask questions in the second half of

the program so please do post your questions in the comments on facebook, twitter or youtube. just a second ago you mentioned boston, newport, charleston. your book does look at port cities. why port cities? what do we get from these urban spaces we will not get from the hinterland or the backcountry? >> i looked at urban spaces for two reasons. first, records are more likely to survive from these places, and in greater concentration. this is where the sources that spoke to the experience of military occupation really existed and survived. and second is these were places were occupation was the most intense and had the highest stakes. in terms of intensity, the british occupied vast swaths of elsewhere in america, in rural

america come pretty much the entire state of georgia, , the entire state of south carolina at various points. most of new jersey, large parts of new york and pennsylvania. but in the countryside in places that were ostensibly controlled or occupied by the british, ordinary people might go months or weeks without even seeing a single british soldier, , wheres in cities where people are living cheek by jowl, you are interacting with the occupied force every single day and things move much more quickly and with a greater intensity. in terms of the stakes, the cities were crucial to the plant on both sides. for the british, the strategy was to take the cities and use them as basis to conciliate loyalty from the surrounding

countryside. if there was anywhere that would be welcoming of the british army it was likely to be these port cities which were much more cosmopolitan, much more transient in their population, and was largely dependent on trade with the rest of the british empire for your livelihoods before the revolution. in many places, for example, newport, rhode island, welcomes the british army was kind of a council of their higher citizens reading a proclamation of greeting for clinton when he lands. a lot of these places there were kind of people who welcomed the chance to get back to business when the british arrived. but over the course of the war they realized that the cost of having soldiers quartered there and experience of occupation made them realize that the

empire wasn't kind of a place to go back to. >> i want to come back to the british occupation in a second but one of the things that struck me about your book and maybe think about things in different ways is the extent to which the revolutionary regimes arise and come into being in the immediate months or the early months of the war were themselves a kind of occupying force. what do these rebel government look like and how do people respond to them when this dramatic change occurs the 75 and 76? >> a lot of people didn't know what to make of them. there were these groups of citizens that formed themselves into committees, councils, militias, kind of resistance organizations. starting around april 1775 after the battles of lexington and concord they started seizing the apparatuses of power. the six cities that i'm looking

at here in the book were each capitals of their respective colonies, and in order to obtain legitimacy and the sanction of a proper government, revolutionaries made moves almost immediately to secure those places, secure the records, secure the apparatus of civil government. this took place almost kind of in somewhat of a comical way. one of my favorite examples happen in savannah, georgia, where the clerk of the kings council in savannah, basically the person in charge of record-keeping at the colony house in savannah i guess gets woken up in the morning by one of his neighbors saying hey, the provincial congress, this revolutionary organization, we broke into the courthouse and what the keys to your office so

we can get the colonial records. he basically says i'm not going to give you the keys. they come back a a couple hous later and they threaten his life and the say they would rough you up if you don't let us in and give us the colonial records. he still says no, i'm not going to give you the keys to an office. they come back a couple hours later and say okay we broke and your office, we can't make heads or tails of the records. what you show us what's what? he says all right, if you have already broken and i will go and at least you will not make a mess of it. they let him organize the records for them and take anything that is private for him and go about his way. it's at this kind of soft occupation almost, this seizing of public buildings and records and offices of power at the beginning of the revolution.

>> so we didn't have heart occupation with the british take new york or newport or savannah, charleston, boston, philadelphia. what does it look like? you mentioned a moment ago one of the goals was to conciliate the american colonists back to the cramped into the kings government. what does that process look like and what the role of collaborators i guess would be the word in this process? >> collaborate is a great word. i use it in the book in the sense historians of the french, britain and german occupation of france and that almost anybody living under occupation collaborates to some degree or another. what the british do is pretty much immediately when the land and they retake these cities starting with new york and then newport, philadelphia, savannah and charleston, they start distributing loyalty oath, and

they go around and the first do this in new york in the fall of 1776 and they get people to sign these loyalty oaths. they give up these things come basically slips of paper that are held in duplicate, one of them is in the book that is held at military headquarters and one of them is given to the person who signs of them. that has them renounce any loyalties to revolutionary, sign over their loyalty to the crown. in some cases promised to defend the crowns interest, though they're not usually interested in making people the fifth suspect loyalties of fight for them. what they do is they get people to sign these loyalty oaths as an affirmation of their acceptance of loyal rule. it's kind of a character they hold out the prospect of

returning to what kind the kings peace, which is reconnecting to the old british empire, dating back kind of that access to trade routes, getting back access to loyal courts, the ability to sue and reclaim property and debts, kind getting back all these old connections to the british empire. for a lot of people, especially people living in urban centers, this was attractive. these were people who made their living based on transatlantic trade and depended upon the notes of the british empire for that livelihood, and so for a lot of people kind of signed on thinking they would get their lives back essentially. it turned out to be very different. >> how successful was the british in i guess the best sense in their life in achieving

a king's peace restoring civil government? maybe we can look at new york city and savannah which are two of the critical places where these experiments are taking place? >> they are great compare and contrast because they're different in the ways that they succeed. in new york the british invade in the late summer, fall of 1776. they seize long island, manhattan island, staten island, what we now think of the boroughs of new york city is full of some of the surrounding area but never able to penetrate deeper into the country. there exists this kind of no man's land, this kind of hard border in between revolutionary new york and british occupied new york. and because of this the british are unwilling to restore full civil government to the areas they occupy.

instead there is this a mix of military government led by the commanding general of the army, william howe and carlton. and the commandant of the city of new york itself are responsible for keeping order on the streets. they work with a series of a group of civilian former officials, led by andrew elliott, former customs collector who is given the title of chief of police or chief magistrate of police depending on which source you read, and he is kind of responsible for the civilian apparatus that thing keeps order in the streets and reports back to the military with kind of offenders. in this way they get civilians a stake in the administration and

actually provide, for example, lodging for the poor and people who couldn't afford it based on professional loyalty and adherence to the crown. they confiscate houses of know what they would call traders or revolutionaries, and rent those out to loyalists or people who adhere to them come into the city. and they employ a lot of people as street cleaners, as clerks, as wind collectors and so forth. so there's this kind of -- rent collectors -- there's this weird civilian administration but it never really has the full force of law, as long as it is only backed by the military. there's this idea a could indent any time when the military comes out, and especially poignant

examples of boston, newport and philadelphia which the british army does leave before the war ends, and which loyalists who collaborated with the british or help the british in that kind of their -- faring really poorly. in savannah where the british to bring back the royal governor, they're able to conquer the entire province of georgia by the end of 1779, 1780. and they are able to call the colonial assembly back into session in 1780. savannah and later charlson where they attempt to do the same thing, though charlson doesn't succeed as well, it's really kind of their best hope, their best hope to restore and show they would be restored

king's peace. it does work for about a year, but again when the british army marches north out of the low country into north carolina towards yorktown, it kind of goes away. you get revolutionary guerrilla forces fighting in the backcountry through the swamps, and kind of these feuds between people of different allegiances break out, and even though he tries his best as governor to facilitate the situation, he's never able to retain the power that he had previously. so even where civil government is technically put in power, while the war is still raging the military is the ultimate be-all and end-all. >> is the british army try to take his various cities and in some sense success in holding at least some of them at least while they're sitting there and

not heading towards yorktown which didn't end well for them, how are the people you spoke of earlier sort of in this middle ground hedging their bets trying to figure out how to survive, how are they as you say in the book reinventing and also ruining themselves in the process? >> a lot of them are doing ingenious things. there's an innkeeper in new york city who runs this kind of arbitrage scam with continental currency where she keeps, opens her house to prisoners of war from the continental army, houses of them, takes their rent in continental dollars it's not a lot of landlords would do and occupied new york, and then she asked the military authorities for pass to go outside of the lines, crosses a river to new jersey, uses that continental

currency to buy a bunch of food, come comebacks inking york and sells it at three or four times the price she paid for it in british currency, and pockets the difference. there's a lot of people who are working these angles, these kind of schemes to enrich themselves. in her case she actually breaks her way free of an abusive husband who she is able to throw out of the house and break free from because of this new source of power, this new source of income. for other people they are more fundamentally reinventing themselves. one of the people i follow in the book is an enslaved carpenter and later sailor named boston king. he is born on a plantation outside of charleston, south carolina. he is trained as a carpenter, skilled trade. he flees to the british lines.

the british were offering freedom to the enslaved people of the revolutionaries who fled behind the lines and willing to serve in the army. service in the british regiment as an auxiliary or a grunt worker, then ends up escaping to new york where he marries another freed slave, works as a carpenter, a hairdresser, i manservant, eventually sales on a whaleboat and in south reinventing himself as the free person, inns of leaving with the british and living out the rest of his life in nova scotia in a free black community. there are tons of people like this, kind of that are totally changing their circumstance through the occupation. >> that raises a question about source material. in some ways it's easier to write about guys like clinton

folks like that because they can't limited papers, truth washington of course but these folks that we don't often see or write about people you are tracking across large states through time. where did you find some of these individuals? >> through a lot of digging. a lot of it was going to historical societies and kind of digging through people's papers for these years and seeing what they had. part of the reason for that is again, going back to the beginning of our conversation, some of these people went to efforts to hide the extent of their activities during the occupation. one of the stories i found most faceting was that of mary who was the owner of the boarding house in newport, rhode island. she was a diehard loyalists even though her husband served in the continental artillery. she wrote a series of letters to

him during the battle of rhode island where he was actually commanding a unit that was attacking newport. she writes these furious letters saying i can hope the continental army earns in hell and its commander dies a horrible death, and when i see you again you are being marched through the streets as a prisoner of war. but then she hides that, like she wants newport to revert to revolution work as the british evacuates in october 1779, she takes the bundle of unsent letters, hands them to a good friend of hers and says hi to these until long after i'm dead. actually she continues to operate this boardinghouse with her husband well into the 1790s and has a may be legendary washington connection where george washington stays at this house when it comes to

newport in the 17 '90s, and the newport historical society has a blanket they say belonged washington slept there. but they don't find these papers of hers until 1845, 1850 when her grandchildren are going through the attic and if i'd go my god, my god, grandma was a loyalist. a lot of people went to great lengths to hide the activities which made hunting for their stories that much more challenging and rewarding when we find them. >> that's amazing. it's also a good example of always looking grandmas basement. it's also a concrete example of how the occupation of the war put stress on individuals and families. we may have joked about it being cold earlier because it is winter and i was outside the other day chopping down some trees and splitting logs with my

mighty acts. i was thinking about that when i was reading your book and you have a wonderful discussion about the stress that the occupation puts on the natural landscape and the environment and the ways in which people cheated their homes, built shelters. can you tell us more about those stresses? >> the army was an extraordinary drain on resources in the cities, and especially when you consider that these places were not set up for large influx is a population. the largest city in colonial america, philadelphia, had about 25,000 25,000 people living in it during peacetime and that was with trade open from the countryside. took an incredible amount of wood, of food, fuel to actually heat and keep these people alive. the british army comes in with

about 35,000 troops. in newport, rhode island, they come in with 8000 that almost doubles the prewar population of about 10,000 living there. and by the end of the first year of the occupation of rhode island, they cut down every single tree on the island and their beginning to tear down fences and outbuildings and barnes and even send armed ships to go and read the connecticut coast for lumber, and even as far away as long island. eusebius also with prices for food and shelter. tons of complaints even from well-off people in new york city, that prices for rent are skyhigh. a lot of it has to do with,

there was a fire at the beginning of the occupation that burned about a third of the homes in the city, but this happens pretty much everywhere the british go because there's so many soldiers that need to be housed and fed and sheltered that get priority over the local population in a lot of places. and then there's accounts of people going hungry and even freezing to death on the streets. in newport, the winter of 1777, 78 we know by climate science one of the coldest of the second half of the 18th century, and we have accounts the people freezing to death and actually even burning animal fat and other things in order to try to survive. in new york city the price of regular brown bread, ordinary stuff goes up by about five

times its prewar high. this is despite british efforts to kind of protect these populations. so there's dire straits for a lot of people living in these towns. >> to what extent whether able to restart commerce especially when the british take places like new york or savannah where they have more stable control, charlson? are the people to resupply themselves and put back into place some kind of market economy? >> in a sense yes and no. they are able to bring in a lot of what we might think of as luxuries. so, for example, there's a merchant in new port rhode island come a day after the british land start writing to his suppliers in birmingham and sheffield saying send me hardware, send me silverware, send me ceramics. cindy all of this stuff because

there's this desire for british manufactured goods that pee been able to get since the outbreak of the imperial crisis. and there's a great deal of, a lot of these goods of that are selling very cheaply in a lot of these cities just because there's been a supply built up in england during the kind of intervening period, , and theres a lot of the band from american merchants to sell it. .. countless going on a day-to-day basis .

and the british army goes so far as to even try to ship in food from ireland, which spoils on the way and never really works so they ship in, they tried to ship dried grains. they tried to ship polls to heat fires and neverreally works . >> that's fascinating just to our audience we will be coming to your questions in just a minute so get them and if you haven't already and over the rest of theevening continue questions if they come to mind . don, a little bit ago you mentioned the fact the experience of occupation and if this eroded whatever trappings of loyalty collinsville for george iiiin his government just by virtue of experimenting and going through his hardships, can you tell us more about that process ? was it all at once, as some people decided that enough is enough or was it a slow burn by 1783 when peace comes they decided they were not going

to go into exile but to stay in the new unitedstates ? >> it's more of the slow burn and i compare it to muscle memory almost. what a lot of these people even if they were, they had this utmost loyalty to the crown. the beginning of the occupation, because of the hardships, because of the strain that the british army put on these communities they are forced to kind of break the law to turn to illicit means in order to survive. so for example the ridley family of rhode island which has branches in boston and new york is constantly kind of smuggling food and resources to one another across enemy lines. one brother in revolutionary newport, one brother in occupied new york, onebrother in boston .

they're constantly writing to each other and sending each other food and other moneyand other things illicitly , under the nose of the british. the same thing is happening in the south. people kind of keeping ties to revolutionary friends, neighbors, relatives. not necessarily out of ideological reasons but for practical reasons. so that they can survive and also vice versa. people in revolutionary held areas keeping ties to british occupied areas in order to save that. so i think by having the kind of constantly undermined these governments, these occupation regimes, it erodes their authority and it erodes the idea that king, the kings forces i should say can actually meet the needs of

the population. so while it doesn't necessarily turn into stalwart revolutionaries gives them this kind of alienation from royal governments that didn't necessarily exist before the war. >> that makes a lot of sense and before we turn audience questions i want to know you did teach two classes today so thank you for being with us and i want to close my portion of the conversation by asking what you tell your students is the most important thing they want to know about the occupation or maybe even better, what surprised me most about this product and your researching? >> probably most about the project and occupations was really kind of the amount of good faith people into making society work under british occupation and you know, we often think of when the

military comes it's this kind of catch all or this dire situation where people are kind of causing. a lot of people, i feel like this category in between patriot and loyalist, this category of people that don't either way is they get a bad rap in early history and other histories. i think it's a lot of people held strong political opinions, but they didn't necessarily have the luxury of acting on them. they didn't necessarily one of the best sources i found was this book of poems from a woman in new york who was -- lawrence, who was the daughter of a quaker merchant who in her poetry was

vehemently rolled revolutionary. these romantic couplets about revolutionary heroes and republican virtue and the next goes and marries a british soldier and living in and moving to british canada. disconnect is really fascinating to me and it doesn't mean that she didn't hold the police. she obviously did butagain in her day-to-day life she didn't have the luxury of acting upon them . i think that shows a lot of what happens during part of the revolutionary upheavals . >> has been great, thanks very much for talking with me and now let's talk to the audience. we've got a question coming about the transition of capital cities from leases like philly to harrisburg and charleston to columbia and to what extent if any does the occupation of these cities lead to the removal of these capitals to other places in

the states? >> interesting question. i've never thought of it that way. the traditional narrative is that it's this east versus west frontier versus establishment at least you kind of the movement that capitals like philly harrisburg, charleston to columbia, savannah, just like that. but occupation may have had something to do with it as well. again, i'm not sure on the timing so i'll have to pump on that question to one of my fellows but that's really interesting. >> as is your research topic. have a question about ways and yorktown energy and she's curious about the struggles of these cities that these overall british occupation as long as they could. >> you could argue that

yorktown does get occupied in the end of the war by cornwallis for two months. actually, norval virginia and up occupied at the beginning of the war and basically yours by patriot leaders in order to prevent its use as a base by governor dunmore. but the chesapeake towns tended to be too small really for the british to worry much about . it's one of the reasons and i mentioned this in the book as well that it's not a coincidence that the six cities that i'm talking about. boston, new york, newport, philadelphia and charleston were the biggest cities in colonial north america the most important economically . and most important kind of strategically. and williamsburg, yorktown, jamestown weren't kind of on

that kind of an imperial, from an imperial standpoint. they did face waves at various points in the war and yorktown gets occupied by cornwallis's troops . but really only kind of circumstantially, only when cornwallis is seeking. back to new york. and yes, there's again, there does not as important economically to the east atlantic trade. >> that makes sense. thank you very much. our next commission is looking at whether or not any of the cities occupied by the british were what you would regard as a failure boston is such an example or what are the common themes we saw in these various places. >> i think they all fail in the end. because they all get return to the united states. the british actually when they negotiate a peace, there

is a movement because of the end of the even after the battle of yorktown, the british full new york for charleston. and there is actually a directed by the ministry to save new york. to keep it as kind of an american gibraltar or a trading outpost. to which the british can keep some of their economic clout in north america. and it kind of station their navy and kind of have a strategic holdout. but really, the populations of all of these cities against the british by the end of the war. they don't by the end of the war even kind of the people who have been the most excited about british rule at the beginning of the occupation of new york, there exhausted. they're tired. they're ready to make peace with the revolutionary

government . i mean, even william smith junior with these kind of early cantankerous loyalists, they said enough is enough. the population here will follow you if you try to hold your as kind of an american gibraltar and a british post in north america. and they ultimately kind of have to give it up because the population hasturned against them . so i think the common theme is that they just kind of collapse after british military defeats. >> this question makes me wonder about what lessons the british learned in various cities during the course of occupations and the extent to which they for example apply lessons they may have learned in boston to new york or savannah or charleston or places like that.

>> it does evolve over the course of the war. the police system that they create in new york, replicated in philadelphia and savannah and charleston. and i believe in newport, for the records of newport occupation, sank to the bottom of the sea when the british evacuated and the ship carrying the town records said. but these police systems evolve. in charleston, former attorney general james simpson creates this really elaborate pen for different districts and tendencies of police. and even kind of ideological nations of the population. but again, it never really takes hold and largely it's not necessarily the fault of these officials. it's mostly kind of these military officers who are unwilling to kind of put conciliation in front of

military victory. >> one of the tools at their disposal is confiscation in the british authorities use this tool. in what ways are using properties confiscations as kind of carrot and stick and a means to entice people to one side or the other ? >> one of the things especiallyapparent in the occupied south in south carolina and georgia , the british sees large numbers of plantations, a large number of enslaved people. when they initially invade torture and south carolina. they kind of the lease out. and ultimately kind of reward people who return to their loyalty if there to reclaim their property for reclaim in some cases there enslaved people. and even for some people who you know, with stuck with the crown even before the

occupation, they're gifted. they're given the land of former revolutionaries. they're given the enslaved people to do what they will with. during this period. alternately the police courts in new york and charleston have the power to kind of take away. to educate. to seize land and disease material and goods. so there's a lot of kind of using people's property and people's wealth as a way to entice or punish them. alternatively. >> speaking of taking territory without question coming here about how far inland the british managed to occupy the country during the war . >> it depends on the region. in most of the places i'm looking at needed go in that much further than the actual city.

so in boston they never really controlled beyond and by boston they never controlled beyond the auspices of the city itself. in philadelphia as well they controlled the city as some of the what will think of as theinner suburbs . but the lines were pretty narrow. and in the south it's a bit more all-encompassing. they occupy georgia up to augusta. so they got pretty far into western georgia, they occupied south carolina as far back as night 96 which was a frontier settlement. and for sorry, south carolina as far back as 96. and are able to kind of at certain points exercise control of the higher states.

so it really very from place to place. and then there are places that both sides claimed. a lot of kind of regions around new york city for about 100 miles in either direction. they were kind of a no man's land, places where militias either loyal to the king or revolutionaries fought one another for control and neither side really had a clear advantage. >> we have a question coming in about about disaffection amongst the citizens and i want to build on what you said because i'm wondering when rebel and british armies were contesting these noman's lands , to what extent did that lead to disaffection or lead to people to side with one government or the other? >> i think both, there were a certain amount of people willing to side with whatever

side looked more ready to win the war. i found correspondences between family members in different places where they say maybe next month is the time to jump ship and come over to the revolutionary side or maybe in a couple of months if they win this battle we should switch to the crown. so there's a lot of bench swapping or side swapping in these areas.in terms of disaffection there's also a lot of that. there are people who are militantly anti-at both sides. and i can draw a comparison to the english civil war where there are these groups called kind of club men who would defend their towns

against both the royalists and the parliamentary forces. and you see that more in kind of country of the carolinas andgeorgia . what they call these people beyond the mountains, these tennesseans and kentuckians who just kind of want to defend their settlements and will attack pretty much anyone who comes through their region. so i'd say yes, those are definitely different disaffection there. in terms of the question whether the experience of different occupied cities, yes and number there are when i tried to do in the book is drawn kind of common threads as much as i can. and in each city there is kind of an arc. there's a hopefulnessat the beginning when the british arrived . at least among a lot of the population they will be reconnected tothe british empire. that things will get more

peaceful, that this is kind of the beginning of the end of their travails . and then there's this kind of period deformation and hardship of military rule and the other thing that occurs is violence. a lot of militaries and the british army particularly were a very violent society and there's assaults, there's rates, there's murders. there are duels. there's all kinds of violence in these cities so that experience is common to all six. there are certain things that aren't in some cities that happen and don't and others. one of the things that the bostonians are constantly complaining about is the british soldiers cursing and not respecting the sabbath on sundays. and you know, not letting them go into their churches. one of the things that carolinians are always complaining about is how the british are free with enslaved people and that

their allowing blacks to kind of have more liberties than they are used to. so there are regional differences and cultural differences like that but there are a lot of common experiences. >> we won't swear on the program this evening . we got one final question here from niles and i want to build on these questions little, he's acting about the prominent rift between benjamin franklin and his son williams. the concrete example of a really powerful loyalist and revolutionary family that i want to build on that but also asking about the long-lasting effects of occupation and the postwar period. what did it mean for people to occupied or been divided and wanted to exile, what kind of lasting effects did theoccupation have on their lives ? >> great question and i guess because as many notable riffs

as thefranklins but there were a lot of families that were divided this way . brimley family i mentioned earlier about half of them and up in nova scotia and england with the other half remaining in rhode island. and both sides prospered and continue to correspond. it's just that one side can't come back. under kind of penalty of execution. so there's a lot of these riffs and again, the franklins with benjamin franklin's son the formal governor of new jersey going into exile whereas franklin himself becoming a prominent citizen, and these theories of occupation does over a lot of people that in a certain way they're able to kind of sweep it under the rug and forget it and there's this again going back to the beginning of thepower of conversation , there is kind

of a permissiveness in the early republic or willingness to forget a lot of the complexities. alot of the nuances of the wartime experience . one of the examples of that is someone that a lot of historians of the early republic are familiar with . chuck cox who was a political economist in the department of the treasury under both washington and jefferson administrations. and in his younger life he was a diehard loyalist. he lived in occupied philadelphia. married the daughter of a prominent loyalist family. basically made his money profiteering off of the occupation. of handing licenses to sell goods to the british west indies and imports stuff from new york and thecaribbean to philadelphia . but he kind of is one of these people who switches sides at the right time.

when he gets worked the british are getting ready to evacuate , he writes to relatives outside of the town. he speaks out of philadelphia week before the british leave and assigns an oath of loyalty to the revolutionary state of pennsylvania . he comes back, he writes a contact in new york that he's basically breaking contact with them . and these rights that he's willing to be the most perfect american if no exception. and he's able to make a career of in politics even in the earlyrepublic. he's elected to the congress of the confederation in 1780 . serves in the treasury department in the 1790s and 1800s. andthis comes up every now and again when he's running for office , in public view but it's almost treated as kind of a useful indiscretion . his defenders are kind of like you can't blame him for that, he was only 20. you can't blame him for that, it was more so there's this kind of let's kind of let by

god be guidelines and part of that is everyone has something like that that they did during the war that's brought out so his critics are never able to kind of get any traction because there's this kind of forgive and forget mentality. >> i have to say i saw minor hitchcock from the early republic context and i had read much about his life before the 1790s he shows up in your book and i like what is he doing there? it was a great concrete example of the ways in which i think you talk in the book people are reinventing themselves even during the war and after. >> and he's another one of these that ended up mutilating his account books . you look at his records in pennsylvania, you can see that portions of his account books and letter books are ripped out during the occupation.

on the one hand it's frustrating but on the other, really interesting to see the way people reshape their lives. >> that's very telling. this has been fantastic. thanks so much andspeaking of travel were able to travel again let's occupy a table at a pub . i really enjoyed our time together. i want to thank you, thank our audience foryour terrific questions. thanks so much for tuning in to all of you out there . thanks also to sam snyder and jeanette patrick who are behind-the-scenes working their magic as usual.don, take care and hope to see you soon and everyone else, have a good evening andgood night and good luck . >> thank you, it's been a pleasure. >> you are watching the tv on c-span2 every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors.book tv, created by america's cable television companies brought to you today by these television companies who

provide tv to viewers as a public service . on our author interview program "after words", edward ball discusses the life of his great-grandfather and member of the ku klux klan in louisiana or in theyears after the civil war . here's a portion of that conversation. >> i think white supremacy is a spectrum of consciousness. it's not just white violence against people of color but it is an attitude of mind that crosses the whole political spectrum. many white people will tell anyone who asks that their families were not involved. their families do not experience the benefits of whiteness. their families have struggled and have come up from modest beginnings to find a

precarious foothold in economic life. and in many ways, they're telling the truth. an immigrant family who comes to ellis island in the turn-of-the-century the 1900s and 1910s answers at a quite low-level on the platform of american society but when they arrived at ellis island they set their foot on the upper tier of a two-tier cast society that has been shaped by slavery and jim crow. since they are able to rise into property ownership and economic prosperity. using tools that are denied african-americans. that's also a part of the family history that many people are unable to acknowledge.

>> wants the rest of this program visit our website . and click on the tab where you will find all our previous episodes of "after words". >> pulitzer prize winning author lawrence wright is releasing a book on the covid-19 pendant. the book titled the plate year will be available june 8 as the rights last book that came out in 2020 the end of october was a look at the world's response to a pandemic. and more publishing his best-selling author malcolm gladwell's next book the palmer mafia will be about world war ii. according to the publisher little brown will illustrate how differing ideologies about air bombing culminated in a single deadliest night of world war ii. it will be on sale in april area the library of congress has announced a program to enlarge its holdings to

provide minority groups of greater digital access to the library's archives support diversity in the next generation of archivists and librarians. the program will be rolled out in the next four years and may made possible by a $15 million grant provided by w mellon foundation. and authors guild has sent a letter to the department of justice requesting that penguin random house america's largest publisher not be permitted to complete their planned purchase of simon and schuster the country's third largest publisher publisher. the guild contends the consolidation will dampen competition for authors work and reduce advances. penguin random house has argued their market share with the addition of simon and schuster would fall below an antitrust investigation . book tv will bring you new programs and publishing news and you can also watch all our past programs anytime online at booktv.org. >> you're watching tv, television forserious readers . here are programs to look out

for. today at noon eastern, we're live with author and longtime editor in chief and ceo of congressional quarterly robert married. he will talk about presidential history, congress, the current stateof american politics and answer your questions . then tonight columbia university professor carl hart argues that the decriminalization of drugs has been more harmful to american society than drug use and on our weekly author interview program "after words", investigative journalist amelia pang reports from the labor camps in china used to produce us consumer goods. find full schedule information online at booktv.org. >> good evening everyone, my name is mckenna jordan andi'm the owner of murder by the bookstore in houston texas . we are one of the world largest prime fiction specialty stores and if you haven't heard of u