thomas cary and isaac cary wound up in toronto. it was an exodus.ause they had really reached the limits of what was possible in washington. and they had seen that they were not going to be allowed to go any farther. so they moved on. >> say something about the research, your frustrations? >> well, i always, like your question, i knew i was going to do this but because the sources were so interesting. there were so many good sources. probably the first and foremost was an important, by the time it takes place, she has been keeping a diary of her life for close to 40 years. pretty much wrote down every day, you know, five days a week, six days a week, what happened in her life. this is not an emotional diary. it was not a confessional of sorts, but she just wrote about what happened in her life. mr. adams, that was john quincy adams -- he came over. she read mary shelley's frankenstein. she went to the market and she paid, you know, 12 cents for a dozen eggs and she wrote down everything -- on her purchases. for re-creating daily life, this was an ex

thomas cary and isaac cary. the cary brothers would sell anti-slavery publications on the site. and the hero of the book, beverly snow, ran the city's finest restaurant called epicurean meetinghouse. i kind of think of him as a barack obama, slightly ahead of its time. very clever and intelligent, a mixed-race man who comes out of nowhere in order to conquer and charm washington. to serve the washington we would they want, only to face a tremendous backlash. if you read the book, you will see some parallels to our own time there. but anyway, in this book, far from slavery being dominant in washington dc, it was actually receding and the forces of liberty were going. that is really part of what this book is about. the second thing you think is probably the civil war began in 1861 with the gunfire at fort sumter. that is when the shooting of the civil war began. the civil war began 30 years before that. it is in the early 1800s that the anti-slavery movement first comes to washington and the direct ideological conflict that leads to the civil war between the people who are poor sl