History inf american the middle of the 19th century, when nothing much happened. It was just the womens movement, and the country divided in two, and spiritual spiritualists, dt bonomo, all part of the same cultural moment. Just in case you were getting bored, there was a war, a dreadful war where 750,000 people were killed. Thats probably notgure that is not has been finished being revised upward. Then there was the period of reconstruction in the south. At the same time, settlement in the west, the gold rush back in 1848. It completed with the slow and painful and very disturbing removal, of the indians from that particular part of the country. Just a few things that i concerned my with that i concern myself with for the last years. The strange and complex series of moments in American History populated by very a very Unusual Group of people you wouldnt think of necessarily occupying the same historical time, never mind place. I would introduce some of the names. Ulysses s grant and Abraham Lincoln, who always threatens to take over every book that he is a part of, understandably enough. Susan b anthony and frederick douglass, charles sumner, william r garrison, Harriet Stowe tuning two areas. Writingwas still alive, long after this time. Dickinson, twoly people i would have loved to have seen the one another. Woodhall, victoria who was the first woman who ran for president in the United States and not victoria woodhall, but a man whose name i want even bother you with. The man who invented the word scientology, which is rather strange, interesting, and unusual. And of course, Nathan Bedford forrest. I could spend the whole time allotted here just listing names, but dont worry i am not going to do that. Iwill give you background, got into this book. Some of the things important to me in the writing of it, then i will read briefly and be very delighted to take and answer your questions if i possibly can. To go back to the book itself, i did name some names. Now i want you to think for a moment about the tremendous particularly technological, but not exclusively technological, innovations during this particular period. The first that comes to mind is who livehy, many of us here in new york have probably gone to see the mets show up civil war photography, and also the civil war painting. Its interesting to think the civil war was documented in this country from beginning to end by photographers, which is shocking. Often, when i thought about why it is the revolutionary war, which is in a sense also brother against brother, country against nottry, why that war has captured the imagination of the civil war has. In addition to obvious reasons like lets get rid of slavery, the reader that the reason is there wasnt photography at that time. We dont know what people looked like, we can see them strewn for good reason or for better on the battlefield. Unto this photography, theres also the time of the railroad. The railroad started just before this particular period, and became so instrumental in the war effort because they moved so many men and so much munitions during the period of the war. You can imagine why it was that the south was at a disadvantage because there were fewer lines in the south than were in the north. Really important, because by 1869, after the war, the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and that took even more settlers from the east to the west and resume ugly back again, although i am not sure about and presumably back again. Im am not sure about that. Before whatt was important before, the maid of americans lived in those areas where they were going. Development of a brandnew american religion, which is interesting, it really becomes dominant and important in this particular period. When i mentioned the list of names i could have put brigham young, as well as everyone else. Imagine him meeting Emily Dickinson. Began in newually york state, as many of you probably know. Right in upstate new york in a place called the birth over district because of the series of revivals that have been sweeping that particular part of the country and went west. That is part of this period and cant go without saying is the Antislavery Movement, which was gathering more momentum in the years after the, particularly after mexican war ended in 1948 when the United States became a much better country. The land thatn of was acquired from mexico was a matter of concern. Shall it be free or shall it be slave . Sot was dialogue that became acrimonious, it became so spiraled intot what we think of as the civil war. States, or asthe southerners sometimes called it, the war of northern aggression. Rights,o of womens which i mentioned before. Early antislavery. Veryates were of course much involved in the womens movement, and were women themselves. After the war, we had a very complicated historical moment when black men are given the vote, but not white or black women, leaving black women double the disenfranchised. Doubly disenfranchised. What was interesting about the disenfranchised amendment was at both blacks and women like to pick blacks and women over black men and all women against one another, which was something that seemed to me to happen again in 2008 during the primary for president. That, think of the change in laws. Thinking about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment, the serious and regular rather horrible slave law that allowed southern planters, slaveowners, to travel north to places like massachusetts and knab when an men and women, former slaves or free and bring them back south. Horrible, it began to be a Resistance Movement there began to be a Resistance Movement around it, and there was civil disobedience. Thats before the slave act. Became a veryence important way to push back against the government as it stood at the time. It was also a way of taking the law into ones own hands, which culminated in the raid of john brown and his associates. Really it began the civil war. Case, it alsoular involves people who were then, which was interesting to find this term used in that period of time, people who were then guerrillas, and also took law into their own hands. Very often you would see the kansas plains, where people from missouri would go into kansas and make sure people couldnt a freeainst constitution. This was a time of great change, tremendous amount of change. Technological change, in terms of the law. Change in peoples attitude towards one another. And the belief that for this period it culminates in the belief you could change anything. You could change your poetry, your prose. Shentioned Emily Dickinson, is the freshest voice in american literature, even today. Think of hermann neville changing the shape of the novel, he changed it so much in 1858, when moby dick was published. He torpedoed his career and went from being a best seller right to obscurity. He believed you could change , even Nathaniel Hawthorne believed in change or a little bit, but didnt like what the change was going to bring. Utopianlf had gone to a community. Its a time of tremendous expectations, huge expectations, and great failure, as well. It was a time of expansiveness, hopefulness, and greed, lets not forget good old american grade. It is very much part of this period. One of the many things i have learned is the gilded age didnt start in the 70s, its not consecutive at all. All of these things were happening at the same time. A narrative nightmare, as i will speak to you about. I came to this book in a way from two earlier books. One i had written a biography of hawthorne, to me, hawthorne was a very elusive 19th century figure because it seemed as though he belonged in the 17th century. A couple of things about him were so out of keeping with our stereotypes of hawthorne. He met Abraham Lincoln, lincoln had more important things to do then me a delegation from massachusetts who was presenting him with a list, something hawthorne found very amusing. Said hawthorne was he said lincoln was the home latest man that he is ever seen, and that slippersaring shabby when he met the delegation from massachusetts. He liked him for his wise and kind look. Praise to me because you mustnt forget that one of his dearest friends was Franklin Pierce. You may have forgotten, because Franklin Pierce is not exactly a name to conjure with these particular days. He was a southern sympathizer, which is all you need to know for the purposes of this talk to think of hawthorne, being friends with Franklin Pierce. Thats what i used to like to say is a jd salinger were friends with george bush. The example has gotten a little vague. Dickinson, i wrote a book about dickinson, her relationship to Thomas Wentworth wiggins, which was interesting because it was the idea of this strange historical moment when you have the reclusive poet who never crosses her Fathers House for into a or anything enter 25 year friendship with a man named thomas higgins. Lost to us now, but known in his fervent as a abolitionist. So fervent was he that he was the leader of the first federally authorized group of black troops during the civil war, long before the massachusetts, which was stationed south carolina. In the particular sense, i was very intrigued by this particular period, i wanted to know much more about it. I wanted to do it justice, that myself. Irst question to how can i be responsible to the complications, the pain, the sorrow, the death, the death toll, the great sense of liberation, how can i be responsible for all of those historical events . Many of those people who gave everything to make the country a better place, and will also give everything to keep the country from being a better place. How can i be responsible to people, and and issues, and yet tell the story in a different way, a way that actually may say not just another boring book about this particular time. So i decided to approach the if i were a visitor from another planet very far away. Theve just dropped down in 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, and the first thing you would want to do is read the newspapers. At least thats what i wanted to do. I thought how would i make sense of it of a newspaper from 1850, 1857, 1864, and on. In other words, if you were to come from my other planet and sit down today and read the times, i looked at it and thought i understand everything on the front page. To give you an example, theres tremendous and terrible violence in egypt going on. I see chargesme, against two traders for lack of oversight. Then i see poetry on the page, and later on the canvas. Where am i . . What planet is this . Ist i was wondering about what sense what i make of these juxtapositions as i literally did read them . And the questions that would come to my mind would be Something Like what does the rise of the Mormon Church have to do with the lincolndouglas debate . They are both at the same time, there must be a connection. I dont know what the connection is between them, but that was my job to find it out and create a path between these two, among many of its. In this particular among many events. This seemed to me the connection between them was the issue of popular sovereignty, that was the issue of whether you can vote in a libertarian if you can vote wherever you want in or out of the law. Take for example slavery at one extreme, take in another extreme, and im not saying the mormons were necessarily involved in this, but polygamy. Not . Nt to vote it in, why if we want to vote in the ownership of other people, why not . You realize that was what the debate was about, the underlying issue was popular sovereignty. It seemed to me the issue was ultimately slavery. Similarly, take the characters of people i mentioned. I called them characters, not because i think of them as caricatures, but i think of them as people who populate a kind of story like landscape. What did pt barnum have to do with Abraham Lincoln . What did i ever them have to do with what whitman . Lincoln and whitman because whitman adored lincoln and wrote a wonderful elegy certainly after lincoln was killed. Lincoln barnum, im not so sure. Whitman is the pt barnum of poetry. Whitman lovers may not agree with me. Disrespect, doy i contradict myself . Of course i contradict myself. I contain multitudes, which is exactly what the Barnum Museum did. Why was the spiritualism before the war . I can understand after what you would want to contact the recently departed, there were so many of them. Spiritualism actually started in 848, but i think of 1848 as in upstate new york, you see two sisters who here knocks. They interpret them and they can and put youl you, in communication with loved ones you have lost, or perhaps not even loved ones, but usually. The quakers who went to the fox sisters, they would find out that there was no slavery in heaven, which was what they hear. You see what i mean in the particular context. I was interested in bringing together various questions, or various items of various people and events, and trying to figure out what their relationship had to do with one another. Anything, because there may not be answers, or other people may have different answers. What did reconstruction in the south after the war have to do with the settlements of the west and the indian war . Thend behold, you realize war is over, but the wars are not over. That is something to think about as well. Affymetrix doesnt signal the end of fighting. The military you think of sherman, sheraton, costner, who were soldiers during the war, particularly in the north. They went to the west and became part of an Army Movement out there. Asking these kinds of questions, seemed these juxtapositions, coming in from my other planet. Disconnectedese , it suggestedle to make a different past that i could different path i could take through this material. It also allowed me to rethink the material itself. Instead of rehearsing for you , it happened at bull run thought i would think about how is it covered . Who covered it . Who were the journalists there . How did they get there . Tenthey write it in eight did they write it in a tent . That got me to thinking about the journalists who covered the work, not just the photographer. In that particular context, i began to wonder why was it that many of the photographers that we associate with the war, like Alexander Gardner and timothy osullivan, two major ones that you may see again at the met of the any discussion civil war. Why did they go away after the war . Thats what they did. They did landscape paintings with no people in them. Sometimes, but generally often not. The must be a reason for that. That struck me as interesting. I wanted to come at those events, people, historical schisms that we are familiar with in an unfamiliar way. Anothers assassination, example. We know lincoln was assassinated, i want tell you otherwise. What i will tell you is that when lincoln was assassinated, there were a group of guerrillas from missouri who were headed east, to washington. They were coming to kill the president. It makes you wonder if one didnt, somebody else may have. The other interesting thing is that they were too drunk to get i dontr than know where, but they didnt get very far when they heard the news, and that was the end of that. A very unsavory group of people. Words, want toer angles. Hese kind of instead of talking about the assassination per se, i am also going to talk about the conspirators who were executed because the first the first woman to be executed in the United States was one of lincolns despairs conspirators. When several people who were part of the military tribunal who called for this execution, they asked Andrew Johnson for ay of execution, and he said not enough women have been hanged in this war. So she was in fact hanged. I will try you the story of wilkie james, who went down to florida after the war. Plantation start a you want to start a plantation where he would pay black laborers and create a new brook farm. It didnt really work out because of the great backlash in the the free blacks south. I wanted to tell these kinds of stories, also partly because i believe history is embodied. It is often embodied in people at this time who are confident, confrontational, eccentric, sometimes fanatic, and who may , intent oncompromise redefining the american nation. Also in doing that, i wanted to cleanse myself as much as possible of received wisdom. A lot of things we know about, but there are number of things we think we know about, particularly me, who always feels she has been missed educated. In that case missed educated. Bethat is, one example would thaddeus stevens, who may have met most recently in the spielberglincoln movie where his play by tommy would jones. He did not seem like the creature out of the dw griffith birth of a nation, where he was dreadfully caricatured. It was that caricature of study stephenss thaddeus is a figure with a club foot. Me who recently said to taught you history . Part of a whole school of students construction called the dunning school. Of Thomas Dunning inspired the nation and me. Many thaddeus stevens, one of the interest things interesting things i can summarize. When he was sick and dying, he had a cemetery plot that he bought near lancaster, pennsylvania. When he realized that cemetery was not integrated, no black men or women allowed, he gave up the plot and made sure he was buried elsewhere. Then he had written on his tomb domething that baird beare attention so worthy. This quiet and secluded spot not for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited by charters such as to raise have chosen it that it may be enabled to illustrate in my death the principles which i advocated through a long life. Equality of man before his creator. I find it very moving he would make those choices and would want that in perpetuity. In that particular sense, i am cleansing myself of certain kinds of prejudices. I want to expand our sense of this particular period. Two other choices i briefly want to mention, for you they both reside in the beginning of the book. Many of you are writers, how do i begin . Where do i begin . Why do i begin . It was another question i will not deal with. These are the questions i dont want later. First thought, my in the first chapter begins with ilibustering extradition expedition to cuba. It did not mean people standing in their house or senate particularly like wendy davis. It was a word that described expeditions, illegal expeditions that went to various countries like cuba, armed to the teeth and also funded by former congressman in the government. In this particular series of expeditions, the one i begin with, the intention was to go to cuba, liberate it from the spanish, and exit to the United States annexed it to the United States, and make it a slave state. What was interesting about that, besides the sheer insanity of this idea that one could ignore neutrality of laws and just go and say im bringing you home so that you could wear it like a pin. Thats not even what interested me, although that is pretty interesting. You never think of a book that contains a middle section about the civil war beginning in cuba. It does, its not just the west that is important, its the south and the extension of the south. I thought that is fine, but why not begin earlier . After all, John Quincy Adams, the last remnant of the founding fathers, who was a president himself, and who is now in the house of representatives. 1848, he died in the house of representatives. He died as he lived, serving his country. He died after saying no. Noause Emily Dickinson said is the wildest word we have in the language. John quincy adams had said no, he was voting against draping generals from the mexican war in more gold brass and metals. He wanted that war, the war was over, he knew what was going to happen. Because head bloomed had been dealing with the Antislavery Movement for a long time. He said no. I thought that was rather marvelous, because it is the end of one era and is very much the beginning of another era, an era of resistance and change. Ecstasy in all senses of the word, ecstasy as liberation, as freedom, rapture, enraptured, delirium. Begin toway to understand what those nos were going to come to me and what it meant to try to change the law or put oneself against the law. Or to say no for many cultural and political ways. With that, and with that sense is where i want to leave you for my remarks and actually read you very briefly from the opening of the book, which is straight after quincy adams death. The president was, and the future would also be a time of failure, greed, violence, and refusal. Refusal to listen or find or create there are Common Ground and compromise. Refusal to bend without the fear of breaking, refusal to change and refusal to what it might be like to be someone else. John quincy adams new how to say no, but that negative could be inflexible, illogical, fanatical, particularly when some considered refusal a better tool than compromise, or when compromise itself was so flaccid and unjust to be meaningless. Particularly as it evaded matters of human rights and dignity. America was an ecstatic nation, smith in with itself and prosperity, and invention. And in love with the country from which it drew its riches. A land from fertile that stretches. Yet there was a problem, a stain. The stain was slavery. That, John Quincy Adams new. He forecast this doom, the price the country would have to pay. Some of the people in many of the events in this book are so familiar they seem readymade. Lincoln and his grief stricken face, george picketts charge at gettysburg, the battle were robert e. Lee meeting cigar grant. And ulysses s. The rich sense of variety in American Life during this time ranknfidence and crisis into focus of another event, other characters. The impounding of the ima pearl as it tries to see washington dc with a boatload of fugitive slaves. Hungry women ran through the streets of richmond, begging for bread during the war. Elizabethony and stanton riding on wagons without springs through kansas to secure the ballots for women. , pt barnumen embracing the anguished honesty of hermann melville, the popular editor orens really his political strides bread the execution of the lincoln conspirators. The end of the anderson present. The impeachment of a president. Dickinson, aty the art cooper union. The saga of the antislavery general fired from the friedman spiro by a soon to be disgraced chief executive. And the grander and no promise to mormons, or two men such as Clarence King, who possessed nature in the wild. Then there was the war, the terrible war. All the while, before, during, and after it, the idea of compromise, which is being debated, and often held responsible for the countrys failure to face its fatal flaws for its show business and shortsightedness, and for the reconciliation at the end of reconstruction that opened a new era. Beyond the scope of this book of jim crow. I dont presume to say what people or should not have done, which is not to suggest i am without judgment, sorrow, for certain time or at certain times astonishment. By placing persons, events, contradictions, as suppose, and compromises that to one another, perhaps we can empathize with the choices other people may or thenot felt they had given circumstances with which they lived and the motives we come to understand if we threw if we do. In the middle of the 19th wasury when american within, not without, there was intensity, imagination, and exuberance. And spirited, nutty, and frequently cruel or brutal. There was an insatiable and almost phonetic quest for freedom in several competing ways for the position possession of things, lands, and the person. There was aances, passion, sometimes selfrighteous, sometimes self advocating, for doing good, even acts ofgood included murder. Thank you. [applause] brenda i will take questions. Choose. To choose a nice one. Im interested in Clarence King, a man with very big secrets. Can you say more about him . I can say much more. He became very interesting to me. Is secret to alluded here Clarence King was a young man, he didnt go to the war, but rather went west and surveyed the west. He became the first chief of the United States surveying expedition. , a clubman, a good man, a man who wanted to be a writer and wrote a very popular, d very good book called mountaineering in the sierra nevadas. A man who loved the west and kept a secret. He was the commonlaw husband of a black woman in new york city, in queens. Her he gave her an alias, she never knew he was Clarence King. His friends, who included henry adams, john hoeven, they never knew he had this secret marriage and several children. Hes interesting. The reason why he is in this book is not because of that, interesting though it is. Its because he brings us to the west. He is there as a pioneer after the war, who takes us to the west and seems to be an drawled by the beauty and mountains. Secret, he keep the begins to mine and explore the west for his and other peoples riches. He is a complex man, brilliant scientist who authored a paper ism. D catastrophic he was depositing a different view of evolution, different from darwin, and different from agassi. Way he talked about was catastrophe, and how catastrophes change the course of how geology. How the mountains, how all things develop. ,t was so interesting to me here is a man who evaded the war dealing with still the war in the 1870s, he had been a remarkable success by all standards. He had this secret life, which seemed to me to give us a sense of really what reconstruction was all about. It was about a westward move, it was about denial, it was about secrecy. It was about greed. It was about brilliance and achievement. As henry adamsly knew, it was about failure. Throughout the wars in vietnam, we had the gulf of tonkin and since. War, thefirst iraq babies being taken out of the incubators. Iraq. , side drilling into the weapons of mass destruction. You look at a lot of different groups and there were different groups that brought us into those wars. The groups that you look at, what were the alliances that you saw that were going across boundaries that you may not think of that were pushing towards war and conflict and shaping the forces of history to come . In one sense, and it what be very glib of me, my answer has to be is everyone was participating in what you are calling the shaping of history, or the move towards war. Its very confusing in many ways, and humbling, to be living now, whether to be at the end of lifetime,in anyones and looking back to the civil war and wondering how did it happen . Why did it happen . Who made it happen . . One of the things i was talking peopleyou realize many seem not to know what they were talking about. Not that they want brilliant, not that they want educated not that they were not educated, they didnt know what more meant. They didnt have that experience , they didnt have that imagination for some reason. When you talk about who brought the war, or the kinds of youssections of groups, had people in the south, people in the north. You have almost everyone, the exceptions would be more salient than those who were part of it. The exceptions would have been quakers, because they are pacifists. Whether its somebody like amy and isaac post, the quakers william wood garrison, who was also believed very strongly in nonviolence. He who wrote civil disobedience. The strange person i would put berlin, andn probably stephen douglas, he realized what was happening in the election of 1860. He began to really work very hard to keep the south from c seating seceding and actually sat near lincoln at the inauguration. Had he lived, he probably would have been a force for something very positive, more positive than the racism he is associated with during the next some years. How did you figure out what to leave out . Times, i felty every sentence in the book of bookshad a shelf written about it. Then when you have somebody like lincoln, you realize there is a president ial library dedicated to him. There is a huge amount i was leaving out all of the time. What i decided to leave out was categories didnt fall into two categories. I wanted to be responsible for the history i felt i had been contracted to tell. I cant leave out certain things. I am not going to leave out say the gettysburg address, for anmple, because it is such important moment for language, for the work, for so many things, for lincoln himself. It had to fall into that category. The second category is it has to help me narrate the story i wanted to narrate. It had to have some kind of dramatic movement. It had to move the drama, move the narrative forward. If it didnt, it had to go to the cutting room floor. Withloor was littered things, events, people. Kind ofre the two litmus tests that i used. I was very grateful to my editor, who basically never gawked at the page number and to didnt say you have to do this. I kept in whatever i thought really was related to the story, which is why the book is not 20 pages. The war came, the war was over. The expedited version. Why do you think new york was such a hotbed of religion and spiritualism in that period . Brenda thats a good question. Myself, and asked am familiar with the area where there was a hotbed. For one thing, anyone who has been to the area in upstate new the left,syracuse to which is to say west. Anyone who is familiar with that area knows it is very different from downstate. In my mind, it always seems to me much more like the midwest. Its agricultural. I think there was a sense of forendous need and a need something that wasnt the congregationalism, or even the unitarianism of boston. There was a sense that you could create new things, and that you could speak to god directly through various means and groups. It became open in that territory, because it was somewhat open territory. That would be my offthecuff kind of answer. Its a fascinating question, i dont know anybody who has dealt with that efficiently. In the course of writing the book, did you change any preconceptions . Did you experience a change of opinion about feelings you had concerning this period . One change of opinion i had was i went from mass confusion to a lot less confusion. I dont know if that is an opinion. It always seems like a blob to meet, not to put too eloquent a point on it. Reconstruction was also a mystery to me because i was never comfortable, with the way it was handed down. It wasnt thats i went from certain knowledge to different knowledge, it was more as i went from no understanding to what i am comfortable with as the understanding mouth of reasons for the successes and failures of reconstruction. Me. Is very important to for some reason, i find that very satisfying, because i learned things about Political Parties and what happened in the republican party. The issue of carpetbaggers and scalawags, terrible radicals was not the issue at all. That was a happy surprise was i was a bit skeptical about Abraham Lincoln. Icon, i thought he cant be that good, nobody is that good. He can be that really, that eloquent, that sedation is, he can be those things. I found out that he was. He really was. That was kind of chilling, and again, very humbling. Those were two of the many things. Is so of the things that exciting about the book is reading stories that are familiar to us, yet you make them fresh, then reading a lot of stories that are not familiar to us. The challenge for you as a writer is how do you take Something Like the gettysburg address, how do you make it fresh for you, and then for us . The second part is what stories did you come across that you were especially excited about that were new to you, that you do have to be in this book that you could illuminate and expand our understanding of the era and give us different characters are different settings, or some other understanding of this period . Let me take the matter of the example of brenda let me take a matter of the example of the gettysburg address, that is interesting to me. As a writer, researcher, historian, whatever i am while im doing this book. Im thinking theres gettysburg looming ahead, what am i going to do . I went to gettysburg, went through book after book, im not a military historian. When my husband reads drafts of my book, he often says i have the guns pointing the wrong way, i shouldnt admit that. Right. Hem but anyway, when it came to gettysburg, book of battle and culminating the address, i remember the decision and you never know if it would work. With aht i would begin different rhetorical device, because also i am always committed to keeping a reader interested, especially one they think they know what is coming. The rhetorical device was had there been no gettysburg address , we may not. Used therough and device throughout the chapter, had there been none. Forto whet your appetite the coming of the address, which i dont spend much time on. You can read gird road term, whoever you want on the address. I was wondering what it would be like to live in that time and think you wouldnt have known this address was coming, you wouldnt even have known the battle was coming, because the battle almost started by accident. Had this not existed, we would have not done that. Thats how i would decide in those particular instances. Me, it wasn for exciting for me, because each event or person was a challenge about how i would then present it to a reader in a fresh way. About the different and new revelations, there are so many great and one mentioned Clarence King, when i finished a certain section of the book, i thought i could move westward because i realized i couldnt move west. I had to set the west up. The question was how do i set the west up . I didnt want to set it up as a place where we are going to destroy another people. I want to set it up for what it also represents, great beauty, the natural resources. Not just in terms of gold or copper, or trees that can turn into paper, but because of the grand expanse of sheer physical beauty. It enthralled the photographers, and and rolled many groups of people. That then allowed me to get to the west in that particular way. I could go on and on. Theres certainly people i have known about, but not quite known about. It was a revelation to me in many ways. Didnt know she existed when i was writing a book on emily dixon, a book would come about anna dickenson. Dickenson is an anna that was important in history. She was sent out into the mines, she was sent to pennsylvania coal miners to talk about Antislavery Movements. A republican in a hostile environment. It worked, so the rest of them would come afterward. Can you Say Something about coming from literature and writing history . Im intrigued that i am often now introduced as a historian, which is fine, i am very flattered. Historiansting and were Something Else that i had to throw out of my barrel of received wisdom and prejudices. Mentioned the book on hawthorne, and the book on dickenson and higginson, in both of those cases, i am writing about writers. What always interested me was they lived in time. Someone like hawthorne really did meet lincoln, he went to manassas, he was very close with the man who invented the term manifest destiny. I was never that far from history or writing about history. I was filtered through literature, literature is something that i love very much. Its a different time, that it exists in time, it it is embodied. When i wrote the book on dickenson and higginson, so much nonliterary. Is it really is about antislavery, the abolition movement, what happens to poetry, how it gets published. Thats historical, too. Or thet just need wars decimation of people to be history. History can be how a poem gets published. Wase, moving into this book a tremendous opportunity. Ecstatic to have the opportunity to be able to do what i had been drawn to all along. Cultural and i did political history. I think them as the same. Mean about reading the newspaper on that front page, you have egypt and chase bank, you also have a story lovesan art critic who Emily Dickinson and longfellow. There we are. Thank you. [applause] on history bookshelf, here from the countrys bestknown history writers of the past you can watch any of our programs at any time when you visit our website, cspan. Org history. Americanatching history tv. All we can every weekend, on cspan3. Tonight, at 8 00 eastern on lectures in history, American University professor aaron bell talks about privacy laws and federal surveillance of civil rights leaders. He was the head of the operations. Shortly after the march on washington, after Martin Luther ings famous i have a dream speech. Sunday at 4 30 p. M. Eastern, former members of congress and vietnam were veterans reflect on lessons learned. We learned the limits of military power during the vietnam war. We learned that as a society, and a culture that you cant kill an idea with a bullet. Thiserican history tv, weekend, only on cspan3. Afterwards,ght on after not scott kelly recalls his voyages into space in his book endurance. He is interviewed by a former nasa administrator. Servicingas the third mission. Having been a part of that oution and having to come on a hubble hugger, talk to me about what you think the legacy of hubble is . Or does it have one . Doing that kind of science on and you know, letting not only the scientists experience the data they get from it which is most of the stuff you dont see, but also the Public Engagement that is provided and let people kind of get a sense for where we are in the universe, which is pretty insignificant, if you consider those images. I think it has been a great success. And it was a great First Mission for me. Afterwards, sunday night on book tv on cspan2. Each week, American History america provides archival films for todays issues. First 90th congresss session reflects the contention over the vietnam war. Nevertheless, the congressional machinery financed the war, kept the important domestic programs going and passed some key a distillation. Was the largest increase in Social Security benefits in the programs 32 year history. And expanded federal jurisdiction over the control of air pollution. Remarkable was the recent history of consumer legislation. With the passage of the wholesome meat act, the full record would show more accomplished consumer legislation in a twoyear period and in all of the other 88 congresses combined. One of the honored guests at the bills signing was author upton sinclair. His articles and books had been the real the first real acks against the group against the meatpacking plants in america. I have heard them all and answered them all. Yes, it is for labor, the young, the old. The farmer and the teacher. Patient. Tudent and the and the doctor. Our fight is not the part of america, our fight is for all of america. At the traditional lighting of the National Christmas tree, the president and the first lady joined the nation in celebrating the holiday season. You can watch this and other American History programs on our website where all of our videos are archived. That is cspan. Org history. The novembere of 7, 1917 russian revolution, about 2. 5 million russians had been killed in the great war and some 6 million had been wounded are taken prisoner. Up next on American History tv, russian history professor Olga Porshneva discusses how the russian soldiers believed and their attitudes towards the war and how it contributed to their unrest and the revolution and birth of the soviet union. Was hosted by the kansas city war museum. It was part of a twoday symposium on the war