So thank you for supporting book passage. We are an independent bookstore one of the few remaining independent bookstores. [applause] thank you. We are very proud of that fact. Thanks for coming to our location. We also have a beautiful store in the building in San Francisco if youve never been there. Its a beautiful store. Go in by a few books and go have dinner in the city. Its a wonderful way to spend your evening. Remember book passage is so much more than just a bookstore. We bring to you probably a thousand author readings every year if you can believe that. In addition we also have all kinds of classes, language classes, writing classes. We have a group simply of childrens classes and finally im proud to say we are going green. We have been introducing a paper newsletter which i know some of the received in the mail starting in march. We are going to do email only so if we dont have your email and you arent getting our email letters please sign up. You can register at all the registers and put your name down will get you on the list. We have Event Promotions in the store. We rent our space too so i know that there is some event or Corporate Party planners out there. Come talk to me afterwards and im happy to give you any information regarding our event spaces for rent. But passage has a mission to enrich, engage and inspire and we have been a wonderful family owned a area institution for over 40 years. Thank you to our patrons. We want to keep the doors open for another 40 years and serve you. [applause] in his newest book the First Congress south bay tells the story of the most momentous and Productive Congress in American History. When the members of the First Congress met in new york in 1789 the new nation was still fragile , torn by differences hobbled by competing currencies, crushed by debt and justtogether only tentatively by the constitution. The constitution provided a set of principles that offered few instructions about how the system should best operate. Leaving it to congress and the president to create the machinery of government. Had congress failed the United States as we know it may not exist. Abraham lincoln was a nation that congress directed the civil war, defined history written by an amazing storyteller offers a riveting history and the book argues convincingly that congress in the end got it right. Fergus bordewich is the author of seven nonfiction books. He has also published an illustrated a Childrens BookPeach Blossom spring and wrote a script for pbs documentary about Thomas Jefferson and edited an illustrated book of a 1989 tiananmen massacre. Hes a frequent look reviewer for the wall street journal and other publications. Fergus bordewich was born in new york city and when growing up he often traveled to indian reservations around the United States with his mother who served as the executive director of the association on American Indian affairs. Then the only independent Advocacy Organization for native americans. His early experience help to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American History. The settlement of the continent and issues of race and political power. Today he lives in San Francisco with his lovely wife who is also here joining us and it is my greatest pleasure to welcome to our book passage stage a master storyteller, fergus bordewich. [applause] thanks. How is the sound . Thank you thank you to book passage for having me here and my commendation to the store for sustaining a thousand writers every year poor desperate hungry writers who are gasping for an ear and also for sustaining the writing life and keeping books available to people in an independent venue so you dont have to go to that place on line that we all know about. Im going to be speaking tonight about my most recent Look Congress at war and i appreciate the shout out for my last book which came out three years ago and in some respects i wouldnt call it a prelude but it led to this book. This is as you can obviously tell a political history. Personally i find politics fascinating dynamic and dramatic and im interested in writing the kind of books that i like to read. Thats to say i think theres no excuse for her a book about politics being boring. You might read it and you may not think ive accomplished it but i have striven all the books ive done to him made challenging material accessible. I think what i would like to do and this by the way right now this minute is the first step in the launch of mike look. This is the first event. This is the first talk. Thank you. [applause] im not entirely sure what you are going to get here but i will do my best. I go tomorrow to washington and im speaking at the National Archives and library of congress in washington after this. I want to read a very short section here from the book to create the mood. This is washington in early 1861 and then i will take off from that and talk more generally about the book. A pall hung over washington at january. Rain turned pennsylvania avenue into a muddy trough. Even in the best neighborhood yard sank to the future fighting household fluff. The rooming houses where most numbers of congress lived and the capitol itself smelled of wet woolen clothing cigars and charcoal but struggled to warm under heated chambers of congress. Slavery pervaded the city like the of horse manure in every room and down the streets. Although free blacks are in the Capital Investors in human flesh nearly crossed the Potomac River to shop. The 3100 enslaved men women and children were still inextricably woven to the fabric of Washington LifeHolding Doors driving carriages hawking oysters tending tables waiting toting drunks reminded whites in return the institutions that were fissures in the nation was alive and thriving in the capital. Though its still tentative semi urban quality much of the city. The western end of the National Mall really just a field where sheep and cows grazed where is the ugly stump of the aborted Washington Monument like a finger lopped off at the first joint abandoned for lack of financing. Little had changed since 1849 when the visiting Charles Dickens sarcastically described the nondescript dwelling as wide streets that peter daut in empty fields is a city of magnificent instances. Nothing more aptly epitomize the unfinished city and the capital itself surrounded by the marble block strewn around the building like a symbolic fragment of the nations peace. Washingtonians felt a sense of doom. The city Jefferson Davis since wife marina and her husbands last days in the senate was like some kind of mausoleum was no one visiting, no dinners for parties just a sullen gloom and pending over all things. On january 27 ohio representative clements landing ham wrote to his wife i am able to do no good here. No man can so we said end of obliged to sit condemned as one who watches over the couch of a loved mother slowly dying with consumption to see my country parish. Americans who had taken their nations immortality for granted new that things would never be the same again. The empty seats in the house of the senate spoke of a revolution in terms more graphic than any of the stormy words that have been spoken during months past. With the departure of the southerners gloom shaded inexorably to fear that events were spinning out of control and the worst might really come to pass. With rumors flew through the air that the defenseless capitol would be attacked by a virginia mob and a coup detat would come any day and unexplained fires around the city were part of the terrorist plot. Landing ham warned his wife that the uprising was so likely that he might have to send her to safety somewhere in the mountains. They often send their wives and children to philadelphia or new york. The nations entire army of 16,367 men view were stationed into the Mississippi River and most of them were in the states. Even the armys general in chief Winfield Scott who loath president buchanan made his headquarters in new york city. Sky quickly recognized the gravity of the danger to his capitol however although washington hosted several Militia Companies they were more social clubs than military units and many of their members were sympathetic to confederacy. The National Rifle in particular had quietly been armed and of artillery by disloyal secretary of war and its commander openly at knitted feet attempted to prevent Union Volunteers from reaching the capital. Government spies often reported to plot by the Government Department including the treasury to inform the provisional government. Three companies of light artillery were ordered at to the frontier into another contingent from west point that would take weeks for it to arrive. Where would the crisis and unnerve citizens asked each other. Representative John Mcclaren of illinois worried not only will states receive from the union but counties of states and cities and towns and this is the work of disintegration and dissolution will go on and on until the whole frame of society and government will be indulged in a bottomless and boundless chaos ruin. Panic wasnt limited to washington. Coastal shipping shrink by half the shipyards and ironworks went bankrupt. In new york city commercial firms paid off hundreds to collect entirely the south disintegrated. Bond secured by property enslaved crashed. Commercial traffic began to hault the mississippi. Grain prices fell by 20 and cotton further. Even the ice industry would ship new england eyes to the south crippled by the disappearance of southern order. Banks all of the midwest eventually including nearly half of those in wisconsin and as many as threequarters and alumni. Financiers prayed for hope it found then. Rumors applied to this pro Southern Organization and would seize the armies breaking the banks of prominent republicans. New york iris jorns templeton recorded most people give up all hope of saving the government and anticipate general bankruptcy. Revolution mob blog chaos ruin. In the white house president buchanan remains opined. Had this old mollusk become vertebrate this theory of darwin would have been confirmed strum rotini echoing halls of Congress Republicans and the remaining southerners were too angry or too ashamed to speak. So this is what it felt like on the cusp of the war. When we think about the civil war most civil war writing frankly is about but happen on the battlefield and remarkably little about what happened politically. Most of what happened politically is about Abraham Lincoln. Its easy to understand why we want to read so much about lincoln about more books have been written than any single person. As they say thats not hard to understand but there was much more happening in washington and there was more happening politically and most of what was important that was happening was happening on capitol hill. Politics led to the war. It drove the war to a revolutionary conclusion and it was a revolution and gave a lasting meaning. The story of how that happened is epic, at least i think its an epic anything taking place between the opposing army. Its also a human story about men very few of whom face the worst crisis in the countrys history. Representative albert riddle who was a radical republican from indiana in the days of when indiana elected radicals albert riddle wrote mr. Lincoln his cabinet in the 37th congress were like good to do anything come everything fight the greatest civil war history. In came upon them is an utter surprise. Congress faced a multitude of existential challenges. How could the north mobilized for this war of unimaginable magnitude with congress, with the president responsible for leading the war effort . Could the republicans are completely managed to govern. Should the war be fought with respect for the sanctity of southern property with or the ruthlessness that would bring the seated states to their knees . But the constitution survive the suspension of civil rights in the name of national security. How would the work be paid for . With the financial burden break the northern economy . What should white americans do about slavery pics could republicans prevent their party from splitting between antislavery radicals and those who are willing to tolerate slavery as long as i was contained in the south. Bear in mind the democrats had already broken the deal. Should africanamericans be recruited to serve in the army . Would white soldiers refused to fight alongside them . After the war was one assuming that the north ramp should the Southern States be broken up . Should confederates be prosecuted as war criminals . There was no consensus on any of these questions and many others. The decision of Central Government in general in the strong executive and particular and embedded traditions of the states rights in the north as well as the south threatened to undermine the countrys ability. Deep racism threatened any attempt to emancipate the. Many unionists especially in the border states like missouri maryland delaware. Many unionists regarded any kind of tampering with slavery a threat to basic copyright representative of john kurtz filled a proslavery unionist from maryland declared if you take from us today our rights to hold slaves how long will it be before you will take from us some other constitutional right . He was a unionists. The southerners gone to republicans for the First Time Ever held the majorities in both houses of congress and by the spring of 1861 both chambers were abandoned by an members who defected to the confederacy. Their absence opened the gates to legislative activism that would change American Society beyond recognition. During the next four Years Congress would help win the war, reinvent the nations Financial System and an act forwardlooking legislation that had been locked decades by southern intransigence. It in the course of doing that congress laid the foundation for the strong activist Central Government became fully into being in the 20th century. Permanently it also permanently evolved into a relationship with the state states and federal government in ensuring the protection of civil rights as a responsibility of the federal government. Measured by the urgency of what they faced in by their astonishing productivity the two wartime congresses of the 37th and 30th were among the most effective in American History. Ohio senator john sherman a republican the brother of general William Tecumseh sherman rejected the many laws they passed would be a monument to good or evil. They covered the vast sum to delegate or regulate such vast powers and so farreaching in their effect generations we will be affect did well or ill by them. And to act in incrementally series of laws to turn abolitionism into Public Policy work on the homestead act change the face of the west it was the largest and most expensive Infrastructure Project undertaken in the United States at that time and of the last three that i mentioned are not commonly recognized it was the war that made them pathetically possible. Though widespread monitoring created a precedent private communications and unpatriotic political activity. Congress also began a racial and economic revolution to transform 2 million slaves from pieces of property and culminating in the 13th amendment. As Frederick Douglass said at one point during the war the angel of liberty had one era of the nation and demon of slavery on the other. Although shouted into the ears of congress as it fell forward. In this book i trade congressional politics with the endless seeking compromise and the mutation of popes into politics i generally try to keep the story within the present by that i mean i want you to feel the anxiety and uncertainty as well as the patriotic fervor and the irrational confidence to characterize every stage of the war when nobody knew when the outcome would be. Emancipation was never named or the reelection this isnt a book about politics in the abstract but the men who practice it. I would like to be able to say that men and women but im out of luck. [laughter] i tried to capture the sound of their voices of those issues that still stir concern and emotions. Most members war professional politicians they were opinionated eloquent and combative the house of representatives james bling wrote there was no other reputation previously acquired or for eminence were so little consideration was shown by the failure of the feelings of beginners he gains by sheer force of his own character with the loses and falls back he must expect no mercy and receive no sympathy in matters were only notionally better in the senate if you read the debates and the letters that members were writing i build the story around format three republicans and at least two were outspoken radicals Thaddeus Stevens of pennsylvania was the fiercest abolitionist as well as a master of parliamentary strategy and a de facto majority leader in the house then wade of ohio was a driving force in the senate with a hard war against the