Just a few quick details before introduce myself. First, please take a moment to silent your mobile devices. Second, you will notice we have cspan recording tonight program. For information regarding todays broadcast please check out the replay section of our website. Also the first time ada missoni and program we extend a warm welcome. For any members, we thank you for your ongoing support. Without you the programs would not be possible. Tonight we are very pleased to welcome elizabeth kopp. Elizabeth is an Award Winning novelist and documented filmmaker, author of eight books including nonfiction and americas first lemon soldiers in the New York Times bestselling historical novel the hamilton affair. Her newest novel the command is available for sale after the program outside of the lecture hall. With that said, i know were alla in for a fascinating talk, without further ado i would like to please join me in welcoming elizabeth cox. [applause] thank you so much. I really honored to be here, i cannot think of any better place to launch a novel like this, here in washington, d. C. And at the smithsonian. Thank you so much for being a part of my first audience to talk about. Tubman. I am very honored. We began with a mystery. We all love mysteries. [laughter] we begin with a mystery on jun june 1, 1863 to u. S. Gunships craft upper river, Blackwater River and South Carolina towards confederate rifles in a river that studded with underwater mines in infested with alligators. The river leads deep into that part of america that is known as Enemy Territory. Aboard the 300 men holding their breath, 300 uniformed american men and a handful of white officers who were led by a colonel who once rode with john brown. They are creeping c upper river and these men have agreed to risk their lives and perhaps die for our country, half of which is a struggling to keep them entertained and half of which is struggling to make them free. The question in the mystery, why did they pick this target. Why did they go this night, why did they go this route . Why were 300 brandnew soldiers able to triumph over confederate stronghold that had 2000 soldiers 10 miles away. They go 25 miles upper river in 2000 soldiers, veterans stationed are close by. So the question is, who was guiding them. It may have been Harriet Tubman. The former conductor on the underground railroad who many historians believe without the scene even though nowhere in the military record does it say that Harriet Tubman walked at the right hand of colonel James Montgomery. The man leading these troops and ridden with john brown. One historian has raised legitimate questions which is if you have no record, how do we know. Harriet tubman mightve stuck out like a sore thumb. How could she have infiltrated behind lines a woman from maryland down in South Carolina place she did not know well in most insight people spoke of a dialect which he would not haveh understood practically a separate language. So areod we seeing evidence that we have, im speaking as a historian not a novelist, we will get into that. Are we seeing what we want to see . Which is thegl single most heroc female patriot in American History. Who was Harriet Tubman in the civil war . Was she able nurse and a washer woman . For Union Soldiers or was she aa scout, spy and ultimately a veteran . So today i want to sketch the scenetio until you what you fort about the civil war and get this off on dry ground which is a good metaphor in this case and i want to ask you after i sketch at the scene and laid out the evidence, i want you to draw your own conclusions. About the Company River raid of 1863, by the way, be as they say in South Carolina which is how i started out when i started this research, not knowing the train myself. I am hoping what this will do and in the nove novel to bring o light the story that is mostly forgotten and help us all understand from the experience of what is our greatest fema patriot Harriet Tubman. First i want to say a few words of why it applied the techniques of fiction to a story which could be told as nonfiction quite naturally. I think it is become essentially its a curious problem in a problem we have when writing about women in history. Theres two problems but in a way Harriet Thomas is not that unusual its about most women in history, most people but especially women at first their lives are only documented, people did not go around writing things they did note was important and what to do that would be important. So the evidence is often scanty and as a result we think i did not read that in a book so it must not have happened. So we tend to believe the evidence. Theree is also the second problm which we tend to disbelieve, and all advanced my slides, this is a ship very similar to the kind we are using at the raid. And you see the American Flag flying. So the other problem is not only do we have not a lot of evidence but the evidence we have we tend to disbelieve. This is because of what psychologists call selective attention. That is a process in which our brains are trying to focus all the time and focus on a problem at hand. We tend to ignore stop that does not fit with our assumption of what is important in peripheral to our brain, assumptions about reality. By the way we be applying this to Harriet Tillman no see this twice, its a very famous photographph recently found. Tubman about the age or little bit older than she was at the American Civil War when she was a tiny flip of a thing. 5 feet tall, as you see probably couldve been blown away in the wind. Very slender. I found this problem not just applicable to harriet, my last one was the first woman in soldiers in the United States and they had an odd situation which was as you see them pictured here, they were recruited by the American Army to go in france and they served and connected 26 million telephone calls from the trenches to headquarters in world war i and stood on the front lines at muster calls at the end of the war that we now have video footage which was released by archives showing women in fron front rows. The army forgot when they got home that they had been there. They said they were not actually veterans despite the dogtags that they were and it took them 60 years to get military recognition. A it is a problem that we tend to have which is we sort of forget about people that we think were not important at the time and assumed they were not. The problem with Harriet Tubman, i was lucky with the hello girls because i find personal files. D we found this new film footage and have photographic evidence of the slide is showing you with Harriet Tubman, there are no personnel records for voluntee volunteers, there is no footage of the American Civil War, there is very precious few photographs and what we have to do is accept the evidence it will never be complete. We will have to reason t our way through the evidence that we have and we will come up with our best guest weighing the evidence which calls to mind president trumans request for one arm economist. In hishi advisors asked why do u want an economist. And that was tell me on the one hand and on the other hand. [laughter] so it is frustrating. So im going to tell you on the one hand and the other hand the evidence that we have but i will encourage you to read my historical novel and this is why i applied fiction Harriet Tubman because fiction lights the dark corners of evidence. And it helps us to work through and by using knowable and known facts, it allows us to imagine how the unimaginable might possibly have occurred. How would puny 5foot tall illiterate black woman with a bounty on her head infiltrated Enemy Territory in South Carolina multiple times, gathered intelligence at the risk of her life, this is a group of highly educated white men to takeey her advice and guided the first Major Mission of black troops in america to victory. So as a promise, im going to set the scene because i have to remind myself of the details in the war first breaks out in South Carolina, and breaks out the this shows you for sumter South Carolina and bombarded by confederate troops. When the federal government refused to evacuate the confederate troops began t. This wasnt surprising that fort sumner was in charleston because South Carolina was classically the session when i became an historian i study at Stanford University when i got my phd emigre professor who wrote on the subject in the hotbed of succession and sometimes i have to get onto the hpf. [laughter] the hotbed of secession. Anyway, they were made in south kelowna in South Carolina became the first state to succeed from the union. Following the 1860 election of abraham lincoln. In this is what initiated the battle but the warco went on foa long time and it went on for four years and the first two years it seemed not particularly likely that the union would prevail, the north so to speak would win and hundreds of thousands would die before there was any indication of who would win. Part of the reason is the south is a big place. The 11 states of the confederact are bigger than all of europe. So how is the union going to keep a place bigger than all of europe. And the europeans did not think that was going to happen. In fact we are visibly supplying both sites, and taking a position especially since the north had not taken a position of what the real issue was and wasnt about slavery or pride or Something Else they cannot understand. So this made one of his decisions very important and this was the decision to block the coastline of the south. To keep the south from being supplied by the rest of the world and by runners, i know some of you remember rhetti butler, it was mostly british and french and other people are running the blockade. They came up with a anaconda plan which this map shows you that basically try to barricade 3000 miles of coastline. To blockade 3000 miles you need a navy which the union did have but you also need a place to water your ships, repair your ships a place to launch outward in a place for ships to be protected as they go on various errands on various attacks. So the navy rather decided upond trying to get some peace of the islands of South Carolina south of the coastline near charleston and you can see charleston at the top and down here is the sea islands. They are so close to the shore that honestly dont tell anyone. All well, when i first went i did not know i was on an island, i thought it was but to be on an island by now. Their short bridges and you dont feel like you crossover much. So what that meant, these become the base of launching expedition and hopefully to retake sumner and simply have a safe place for the squadron. Earlier in the work in 1860 when the Navy Launches an attack on Port Royal Island and is the main town of beaufort in this slide depicts that which was undertaken, and by the way they got it in a day. They quickly overtook the island, they ran ashore with the American Flag and then they found themselves marooned for the next four years. [laughter] of course they could get out i see but it would be another four years before charleston could be successfully taken by union troops. So they were there for quite a long time. By the way often i said north versus south they sided with the south and southerners who sided with the north. One of the ships i showed you was this man captain and he was one of the captains from charleston. He was from charleston South Carolina captaining a union chip on shore was his brother general thomas who is in charge of the confederateis defenses. I think of hardly any more classic a examples as the war turned out to be. Now i know, youre thinking what happened with Harriet Tubman. She enters in to the scene very soon after this because what happens when the union takes them the victory accidentally liberates 10000 contraband, these people pictured here. Contraband is a term that is used in naval exercises in a time of war where you can seize your enemies property if theyre going to use the property to make war against you. They had no laws against anybody against slavery the way that they took the property to declare them contraband. There were many, 10000 people on the island that were liberated in that way. Theres many photographs you can look up of the port royal experience, whats involved in tran2 free people and how do you make them take that c transitio. The man in charge of the expedition that project was named david hunter, general hunter was the head of the department of the south. It was his job to figure out what to do with these people, how to secure the island which is so close to the mainland, i swear you could throw a baseball if you had a better arm than me. You can hit someone on the other side. What he wanted to do, he wanted to liberate these people but he also wanted to put some of them into uniform. Why . To protect the island. You have to keep the island and it can be easily overrun and theres many threatened moments when it looked like the confederacy would take back the island. The problems, he was on both sites. In trying to do this. He was signed by the fact that lincoln was r reluctant. In fact congress positively approached the idea of putting black men into uniform and giving them guns. So that was the first problem to be solved in the second problem was the reluctance to be coerced into joining the army. These people spend their whole lives being cohearst and also altogether clear that they were free just because they were contraband. And in fact, there was the 13th amendment and it was not passed until the end of the war and before that was innocent patient a proclamation which went into effect under the emancipation on generally first 1863 and you see black men in uniforms and this is when the proclamation is being read out. Even that is not a very clear guarantee because first of all it only applies tos the states so Harriet Tubman is from maryland which is a loyal state and this means that her family remnants were still there are still not free. So there was a challenge to some extent in recruiting them for what became known as the first and second South Carolina volunteers however, men did join and this is the photograph that is very dear to me i wish we could get closer, obviously they had to get everybody in the picture but this is the first South Carolina volunteers which was the first regiment of the United States government of africanamerican men formally enslaved people. They were the first because he got special permission from lincoln and set obviously you have to hold the island see can form regiments that begin in the process of 1862. So thison is where we again come to the story of Harriet Tubman. Because a large civilian population in addition to the men on this island and you saw the photograph and the large civilian population in many not just from the island but refugees from other parts and other islands and people finding their ways from the shores onto port royal and the refugees so one of the things that this brings about is t an influx of missionaries. Missionaries and abolitionist whond go south and feel impelled to go south and help figure out how can we help people who spent their whole life been enslaved and how can we make this experiment t succeed. Harriet tolman was one of the earliest to arrive and this was the engraving from the book in which she later described what went on in this is a woodcut that she wouldve seen in her lifetime and that was made with her wearing the coat of the Union Soldier and her rifle was in the background of the first or second South Carolina volunteers. An interesting thing to know about. Tolman and how she gets her is that shes representative remanded. John andrew recommends to be sent by government expense into right hes a very valuableha woman. It doesnt seem likely that the governor wouldve had her scent at the expense of the government or that he wouldve singled her out in particular. No one recommended me as a valuableg. Woman. So it takes something for a governor to write a general and send Harriet Tolman down. So what is she going to do that. So that is one clue, that is a clue not a fact. We know he wrote this letter, we dont know what it meant really. But another thing to couple paid, why shehe even went. Not just Frederick Douglass, he is about three years older they knew one another and they were from the same part of the Eastern Shore of maryland both from Dorchester County but he did send two of his sons and this is a picture of one of his sons who served as the 54 regiment and had a very famous expedition after the raid. Even so you think about how she had done enough. Had she done enough between 1849 liberated herself which itself was quite an achievement. This is the runaway notice that was put up. Which is taken out by the plantar you might notice every first to 27 years of age. She went by mitzi and later took name harriet as she got to be an adult. Because you want people to spot them in a crown this was a woman who if somebody saw her in the also becomes a part of my story not only did she free herself and they comfort in that mustve been to walk 80, 90 miles by herself that she started to come back. And she said Different Things and explained why she did and she said that one of the good freedom if you have to enjoy it alone, of all the people in your family, the people you know and the people you grew up group with your brothers and sisters and parents and nieces and nephews are still there, sometimes when i think how could a woman have done this i think only a woman would have done this. You have to go back for every Family Member and a lot of the people were younger men, people who can run, who can get away who have the strength and stamina and the opportunities and more often they were men than for women. So i like the question when you think only a woman can do it. But only a woman wouldve done it. But namely one other person in American History about whom we can say this. If you want to stretch your imagination in a different. If you think of a jewish person going back into the warsaw, heaven go back nine times, ten times, 12 times and have them rescue, 910 90 100 people. We dont know every person and we do not know all the names so we never ever will. She was committing a crime. So spies dont take selfies of themselves walked. And criminals dont generally document what theyre up to that is for someone else to do. These are pictures that depict the things in this is from the famous book Uncle Toms Cabin and the woman was trying to walk away which is based on a true story a woman crossing the ohio river clutching her infant tried to get away from dogs across the small ribbon of water that meant freedom on the other side. Thomas wentworth higgins was a good friend and introduced her and boston went to get public addresses and later by the way becomes the commander colonel of the first South Carolina volunteers. What he said early on, he said she has a reward of 12000 offered for her in maryland and will probably beba burned alive whenever she is caught. So again o maybe one person you can say that has that off the chart bravery. So one might think in a way having accomplished all this that when war broke out she mightve been to let the armies fight it out finally at last but she wasnt content she volunteered toosh go south to we the war was very hot and to spend another four years of her life, there she did nurse the wounded and there she did wash clothes and she helped freed women start Small Businesses and interrogated refugees that could bring information that might be helpful to theon union. And if the written testimony of two american officers count for anything, their testimony is to be believed and why would not. She was a spy who made many irradiance inside the enemies lines. Unquote. And was invaluable as a scout. And by the way you might say how did she get so brave and sometimes i like to speak of her bravery but i dont want you all to think that that lets you off the hook. Somehow she was born with the gene that some of us did not heinherit. In fact we speculate because of a profound disability that she had and more people no but maybe some of you dont that she was a disabled woman. She got on disability as a child when she entered the store in cambridge and maryland, a picture i took not long ago and she walked in the store as a young child and was sent there in a man ran in after a young child ran in trying to escape a man who is armed with a whip trying to catch the child, the slave and they run into the store and there Harriet Tubman puts upper arms and the little boy runs behind her and runs out the door in the slaves owner was so mad he picks up in the the store a scale which is common in Country Stores which are heavy iron objects that help you tell how much something is. The man picks it up and chalks it up the boy and mrs. The boy and his Harriet Tubman and the head and then she had a traumatic brain injury for the entire rest of her life she slipped into unconsciousness it be as easy if i suddenly did this. Im doing it for the fun of it butid she never ever did it for the fun of it. So again, some people say maybe that impaired her brain in a way, brain traumas due on things to the t head. Epilepsy is its called impaired her ability to instill fear and to make as a o fact that she std up before the injury to protect the child as a 12yearold she stood up and confronted a white male twice her size so that bravery came from deep within and also fear that you might feel in the moment and she knew intellectually her entire career that she could lose moment. Sness at any on the trail. We have all heard we may know and maybe disabled thats what how many people go into the army with a profoundl disability, volunteer and stationed in the most perilous assignment with the profound disability going in. That was harriet tom impaired this brings us to the combi river raid. What historians can tell us in nonfiction books is that we do know that Harriet Tillman was a person who is in between people recently off the mainland or the sea islands and she wouldte interrogate for information that was abuse. As. I said the islands were very close and we know of radio people including Susie King Taylor was a nurse with the first South Carolina volunteers. Ndr husband was a sgt in a regiment and her husband edward and she said later that these memoirs, sometimes one or two soldiers with dessert to us saying they had no negroes to fight for, and of course what this meant, they also thought her retirement but they did not get the second or third they see. Theseit people came with very, very valuable information. In fact we know no source and robert delete who wrote that he was in the south at the time he wrote to another officer that information to the enemy were to negroes and now has his own selective perception because they are easily deceived by proper caution, he knows these are source of intelligence and information but he doesntor wat to believe the negroes could be capable of this. By the way my word choice, negroes at this time was equivalent to slave and someone like robert did use the word slave he would say negro is apply toward inherit, prefer the word block and not something we knew that she was a person that took offense easily. She wasy. Good spirit was not holdingol anybody down but the word she preferred was black. Generall david and his two kernels were very eager for this information. They wanted information so maybe they could launch other against the coast and maybe capture that heated symbol of the rebellion that split the land of George Washington and john adams. The use information for Different Things. Then early on was arrayed againt jacksonville, florida and came away with 13 bills of cotton with 30 men, not a lot there, next month in april the union attempted at fort sumner. But they were foiled, by the way carefully planned, lots of ships, army at the ready, but they were foiled by underwater mines that themi south used arod fort sumner and by artillery in the south. A brandnew ship was sunk and others heavily damage. That is because these tornadoes were very deadlyec weapons. What happens the next month may of 1863, someone begins planning arrayed at the combi. This is where the information becomes parsed in the trail is k cold. It is announced by a local newspaper reporter and its hard to believe it couldve been undertaken without careful planning. Not only because you had to get 300 men for an assault but you to figure out a way around the underwater mines in the drawing of the underwater mines, this is what they look like they wereto lured to the bottom in different ways and the mind created impenetrable barrier of how big they were to block a time this is a natural photograph of the mind to get a basic accurately in the drawing. So they had to get around the underwaterne mines that were the chief defense and the defense had ruined the plan just the month before for the assault on fort sumter. By the way they were called torpedo. I know your thinking weight torpedoes i think in world war ii movie. Actually in this period of time torpedoes were underwater mines in the adderall said 1864 batt battle, damn the torpedoes for speed ahead he was speaking of underwater mines one of which had sunk the ship in front of him. In a matter of seconds. A lot of these are wooden ships but it would sink even iron hold ship. A tremendous explosion and you cannot see you then. It iss wore yet, a Black Water River and the rivers are so dark theres natural sediments and you cannot hardly see your hand and you put it down in the water. So this was a real danger and one of the ships a year later was in another raid in florida and was sunk by an underwater mind. When the second South Carolinahe set out of the ninth of june 1 in the stormy night in 1863 to penetrate 25 miles upper river they could only do so, surely. With excellent intelligence. Though we do not knowt it. On the one hand and the other hand. But i think we should make this, its a pretty safe assumption which is what is is fiction on the cover of the book somebody found out where the torpedoes were angry. Somebody discovered that the confederates had temporarily withdrawn their heavy artillery somebody seduced the they were under demand because of the change in the season and one they called the vapors and that kind of thing. They were lightly manned at the time and somebody else found out that the new commander of a nearby confederate encampment which had 2000 soldiers had a reputation of a slacker and had not been drawing them as rigorously as he might. Somebody put all of this together scented up the chain of command and then helped guide the gunship once the attack was undertaken. Likely it was somebody working with the team of negro scouts. As it turns out Harriet Tubman was in command of such a team of scouts. Or at least she claimed. Much of what we know about the raid comes from her pension which went through the American Congress and through the p American Government but a lot comes from autobiography which was penned out after the war and she got help from a woman Sarah Bradford and put together and ill autobiography. The details are sparse and theres never enough detail virtually and she does not describe the cia calls sources and messes. She was a good spy. So we dont know much about her process intelligence but she does collaborate what we know about that day from a variety of other sources sparse, colonel montgomery wrote one paragraph when the raid was over. One paragraph telling us it had succeeded. Hen is nowhere in the military pay record but we no there was a lot there. So her volume does collaborate a million details. We know that three ships sailed after dark at a beaufort South Carolina, one of which grounded shallow waters and had to transfer everybody to two ships from the third ship. These ships continued on up the river using a title search because ed great knowledge of the time had to work against you or for you. By dawn they were in sight ofrk people working in the fields. These were people like this who worked in the field in the right plantation of South Carolina for going on two centuries and using the water with to cultivate. So they go up this river and by don they see people. By the way they are being seen in one of the plantation owners sees with god horror a union ship with an American Flag in front an American Flag in this context does mean the fog of freedom for all the people who are enslaved. They see that any notices one of the curious thing in his letter theres a woman on the top deck of the flexion. Isnt that strange. People began to stream towards these votes and very curious because some people expect the ships, a lot ofex people dont summer just surprised and off they go. This is from harpers weekly in june of 1863 the drawing done subsequently to show what the raid was like and you see the right field into american ships proceeding upper river and slaves jumping into the river trying to get to thein ships. They also discharge votes and got people on that way as well. Some of it when you use fiction you can imagine how it happened because allav we have, all you t is one drawing by someone who is not there and descriptions from officers. It is remarkable that it appears that this famous story, this famous story and you see in the bottom is a picture of a man which shows the terrible physical damage done to human body and this man, this is how he comes into union lines and the person clean slavery and the union doctors examine him and hohis fitness and the photograpr takes a picture and shows him uniformed as a proud member of the u. S. Colored troops as a u. S. Ct. In a sense it is relevant this is so many ways of what the raid was about. About taking war to the confederacy because not only they hope to have the same story to recruit them as soldiers but also beginning to destroy southern means of war. They are destroying food source, burning plantations that is one of the things you see the smoke up above on the righthand side. The southerners are shocked the plantations are being burned in the property and objects are being destroyed. It is a precursor. This is the second South Carolina and i want to mention something about that because the person in charge is not Thomas Wentworth higginson, i adore that man. Instead the honor is given to montgomery of second South Carolina. We dontom know why so Harriet Tolman says is in her biography, ogshe says that david hunter asd her if she would go along with the raid and she said i will go if you appoint James Montgomery to lead the raid. How do we understand this, he was a western man and had written with john brown and kansas before the emergence of a war broke out and of course john brown was somebody who Harriet Tubman meant but montgomery fought along side him. Its hard to exaggerate the importance of that time of the figure of a john brown and manyf us today dont know a lot about him that at this time for a white man to risk his life to try to start a war to liberate and slay people was a meaningful thing and this was a painting and a woman offers up her baby to kiss. So for Harriet Tubman, this is a leader photograph after the war is very important that it be colonel montgomery by the way her description of the raid was only one published. It was widely distributed and never contradicting. Instead her account and also her application for military pension was supported by u. S. Secretary of state in writing. He was almost assassinated the same time as lincoln, they went to his home and almost killed him and desperately wounded. So they recommended her for pension. They were in charge of civilians and military installation. As he wrote, tubman was a spy who made many a raid inside the enemys lines and was invaluable as a scout. Montgomery, the colonel praised her as the most remarkable woman and also terribly and valuable. An. I want to tell you, she was granted a military pension. Awarded the honor of a pension and the u. S. Government as a very old woman. It took her 30 years. It was retroactive. I think was that she was awarded a pension as a nurse. Which she was. But we have the documents on one man who served under her, which was identified as one of the men under her command, and applied for petition for sensation from congress for scout pension which he received so got recognition and herriot thompson was found in this ridiculous government. And in that way in some ways shes i like the women in world war i and world war ii as y you might be familiar with the air force Service Pilots who have the petitions to get all i want is a flag on my coffin. I want to thank my husband for being with me tonight and coming to all of my accent adventures. Anybody with military experience would think its hard to imagine it didnt pave the way. But it wasnt just some spontaneous thing. They maneuvered around the torpedoes. They seemedw to be expecting ths and are poised to rally other people. One spotted a man or a woman on the top deck of the flagship. Herriot tubman of w course wrote about this and by the way she never claimed credit for the intelligence for having led the raid and that is just. Then. She said you know, stop talking about, and this is a massachusetts newspaper. Let us acknowledge the troops that went along with him if this is right before the assault on fort wagner that was of course put into a film starring denville washington and Morgan Friedman said this was a bit before that. She went behind the lines many times, so apparently the language, this is something she had done before, gone into territory for a long time and the fact one of them was walter. If you start reading my book you are going to meet him right away. I will tell you things about them thahimthat are not being ad because that is the way fiction. But interestingly, he doesnt mention her by name and never satisfied witneversince i was o. Tuchman. I went upriver with her many times that he doesnt mention anybody by name. I went upriver and this is what i gave. What do you bring to the u. S. Congress i went up the river but by a woman. I dont know. I did something that sounds like a good application of the century so the choice of montgomery would suggest she played a major role in the strategy even though she didnt claimm it. But again, nowhere in the military record does it say that. Tuchman or anyone else developed the intelligent but obviously ensured the success, and it was successful and brings to life the adventures. This is the biggest building in town and theyy went only for their freedom and safety and to hear the recruitment of speech because the displa that is the t works in the army. In the process, she learned her code name and describes what happened that morning and it describes with his own eyes under the guidance of a black woman they dashed into the country and struck a full without losing a man or receiving a scratch. It no one can document what the source is exactly the role of. And played the account please grant me the rights to help us see it and help us feel it. By the way i thought the title was a pretty awesome title. It was first by herself its to help the nation be what every american somewhere in their hearts wanted. They use their own selection to see what theocracy. But i think that we are actually paying her proper attention. And it has been proposed and actually previously approved. I studied many characters in person and i truly believe and i think i know from this object is objectively but there is no other greater single patriot that approaches the statute said if you agreed with me and your conclusion today runs in the same direction as mine, i urge you to take this up with your representative in congress and representative in congress and ask them to support the bill which is currently underer consideration proposed by Elijah Cummings of maryland and the representative of new york to urge the administration to follow through o on the plan to. Trip o. Tuchman on the bill and i also urge you to read this new book called the tubman command. Thank you. [applause] yesmen here on the left. The. No, she was not literate. She never could read. It was illegal for her to learn how and maybe her brain injury made that difficult. She relied on other people to write that story. Yes sir, right here in the front. The [inaudible conversations] the answer is she didnt do any of this alone. David hunter recruited people and they have to recruit people that didnt have sufficient recruits. They have trouble getting some of the the men on the island to think this was a good idea. They have a lot of people who did volunteer and when people would come from everywhere there were people that werepl escaping literally all means to try to get the short distance to freedom and served as a recruiter. The. Now youve got to do this other unpleasant things, risk your life along the 54th massachusetts. The. Mother teresa, Queen Latifah and spiderman altogether. You want to humanize the person that humans have a lot of fault. You have to make them laugh and crcry and be irritable and crany sometimes is otherwise it is always a plastic figure someone who doesnt challenge us or somebody who herself had to rise up against the challenges. Lf so one of the things, she was married twice and was a woman with a very full of life. She left her first husband because he was free already. When she went back a year later to try to convince him that he already married another woman. He must have recognized how much he loved her and how much of the population was free and enslaved. It just took on different natures and different places. A fair amount to choose from during their children with the aenslaved would any man here in the audience to . She said it broke her heart intd it was at this point does this with my lifiswith my life work e in after the war she marries again and she could have, we really dont know, she comes to new york and they actually meet. The people of new york and she marries the man who is 6foot, now 5 feet in a kind of a handsome guy. We do have pictures of him. He was 20 years younger than her. I mentioned this because he could have made a better choice. Iit was indispensable to marry a free woman or a man 20 years younger too marry a woman his on age. She wasnt attached in that way that he thought she was pretty looking as the advertisement said. This is what. Tuchman does the she is a noble person. She took care of a lot of people she never married. So im just thinking she was a real human being that the model attempts to capture. Yes maam. [inaudible] i cant put my finger on exactly the source, but i think that it was a word, the plantation own owner. The one place there were these slave quarters because if anybody didnt get out they wanted to make sure they hav haa place to go to. So i believe that Joshua Nichols was the man. He saihes the type of indulgine torpedoes and angling around the torpedoes and through he had to get them up there over time and who would have known where they were. His people told somebody. Yes maam. [inaudible] did they understand or think that its so strange people from this one place keep disappearing over time it became known there were speeches involved in the greatov risk. She will be caught and burned alive. She was criticized in thehe Southern Press and helped her parents get to safety. By the way at this time unless you want a full biography on this committee and their lives they got their freedom. She went back for them. You might say they were already free. Why did she go back, but then you have to think through what fiction does and you dont want to think about that so you think my mom and dad were down there and i know they are too old to get out by themselves. They would rather be with their children. I will have to go down and get them myself, which is what she did. We know that there have been different estimates and it isnt clear how high it was but she was a wanted woman. Either way, shby the way, she wf disguise. And again youve encountere youa woman get away with it, she was a tiny little thing and acted like an old person. People never expect middleaged women to rob banks. She played uss all. It was worse but even so, people did come to know somebody was doing this. Yes maam. [inaudible] from one of my favorite people near to my heart because i wrote about people in world war i. Wasnt the government under an obligation to return and escaped slave. . The union wasnt doing it at that point, and there was a lots in a union policy. When they got to the islands, he wrote a thing saying they are free now, period. Thats why they use the term contraband. Then there is a legal fiction that allows you to keep the person because otherwise they could be used by the enemy, ass they were to put mines and rivers in an unpleasant task involving alligators by the way, and all kinds of favorite kind of writing a fine line and after the emancipation proclamation, anybody in the secessionist state was definitely free. What happened afterwards . This is kind of a neat story i cant wait to read it historian africanAmerican History at carnegie and shes written about that group of people. Shes used the record of the u. S. Army to search what happened and they came to call themselves a sort of large collection of refugees who end up on Hilton Head Island and build small houses for these people into becoming an identifiable community that over time perhaps even today people are like this is what we do. We always distinguish ourselves from somebody else. They were the folks that were there originally and if h they a very proud group. So they were freed and many of them stayed on the island is. Some of her family did return south. Maryland was home. It is a hard thing when people leave home. They leave behind so many things to feelhi like home. [inaudible] i do believe first of all i like to think of myself as a full service historian so i write nonfiction like the book about the u. S. Ri signal corps and ive written other novels because i shink people like to read Different Things. Some people are like just the facts, dont make up anything. I was just a fact. Okay, nonfiction some people want to go to the beach or read in the bathtub. My mom passed away a couple months ago but my mother likes to dust my books. They were always well dusted. Also i should mention my husband is here he is a documentary film maker and i collaborate on that as well so we have a film if you go to your application and download and look at the cyber workth at the Artificial Intelligence that is why come at kind of know what happened. So id like to try to elucidate what mightd, have happened and y the way, did she have a daughter . Some say yes. We dont know that we see what the plaintiff like. She did initially have a daughter she had to leave behind. Guests are the very back. If you are in the balcon were id have a question, please. [inaudible] the interesting question is the oral history to talk to her family today. The legitimate historians reason is that they are always remembering things that happened a long time before so. We have multiple generations intervening and they are getting more. You are not getting closer to the fact. She does have descendents. We dont know the she have any money all descendents that they come back up against, nieces and nephews, some of them are still in new york. One of them ive been tol them i never met her still plays the organ at age 98 or something. And by the way, i think it was 91, from a sturdy family. I hope they read it. I would be greatly honored. Yes maam. The question from the military person. She was called general tubman by john brown. She had no military rank and felt she should have and would have named her one of the generals and was supposed to go a long Harpers Ferry raid and wanted Frederick Douglass to go as well although douglas didnt have to think of experience. Tubman did. She was unable to go again but we dont know i why. One source says she was unable to go to a [inaudible] [inaudible] what a lovely voic voice the spr had. She apparently was very funny. The sauber speak to the number of audiences and said sh have sd make people laugh and cry so thats th a nice thing to know about her. I was dumbfounded but here im talking about another at the congresof thecongress for decade gets her pension. A different character of what happens and i thought to myself how did. The how did tubman do that. Men dont always look upon them like this anymore and so how do you put it all aside, and what sacrifice do you make because she left home again. It was an interesting thing and it brought that up to me again and made me feel that whatever we can do as americans as was recently said in a speech to the congress, we are better than that and the things we can do to remind us this request for freedom that runs through all of us and that someone like tubman represents the best of us. [applause] if you buy a book im happy to inscribe unto you or anybody else. Up next New York Times editor looks at the roughriders a volunteer cavalry deployed to cuba in 1898 during the spanishamerican war. Good evening, and welcome to green lights bookstore. We are honored [inaudible] Theodore Roosevelt the roughriders dawn of the american century. Before i turn things over these turnoffs or silence your cell phones or other devices. Books are available for sale