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[applause] in his newest book the First Congress, he tells the story of the most momentous and most americane congress in history when the members of the First Congress met in new york in 1789 the new nation was still fragile, torn by the differenc differences. Hobbled by the curtains these and just stitched together only tentatively by the constitution. There are few instructions how the system should best operate. Leaving it to congress and the president to create the machinery of government. Congress failed, the United States as we know it may not exist. Abraham lincoln led the nation but Congress Actually directed the civil war. This fine history written by an amazing storyteller offers a riveting history and the book argues congress in the end got it right. Fergus is the author of seven nonfiction books and also published and illustrated a Childrens Book and wrote the script for a pbs documentary. He is also edited and illustrated the eyewitness accounts about the tnm tnm and massacre. Hes also worked on other publications. He was born in new york city and while growing up he often traveled to the 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 Advocacy Organization for native americans this early experience helped to shape his lifelongg preoccupation with American History, the settlement in issues of race and political power. Today he lives in San Francisco with his lovely wife who is also here joining us. Andt it is my greatest pleasure to welcome to our book passage stage a master storyteller, fergus bordewich. [applause] how does this sound. Thank you to book passage for having me here and to the store for sustaining every year for desperate writers that were gasping and also for sustaining the life and keeping books available to people in the independent d venue so you dont have to go to that place online that we all know about. So, i am going to be speaking tonight about my most recent Book Congress asked for and i appreciate the shout out for my last book that came out three years ago and in some respects i wouldnt call it a prelude but if led to this book. This is as you can obviously tell that a political history is no excuse for politics being barred. You might read it and think that ive not accomplished it, but in all the booksn ive done to mae the challenging political material accessible this by the way is right now this minute is the first step in the launch of my book. Is the first event and first talk. Thank you. [applause] i go from here to washington and then speaking at the National Archives and some other places in washington and afterhe this. Ion want to read a very short section here from the book toto create a mood and this is washington in early 1861. Its from the household swaps the house is where most members of congress lived into the halls of the capitol itself smelled of wet clothing, cigars and charcoal that formed the chambers of congress. Slavery predated and everywhere it was in the streets. Although they are now in the capital being invested in human fleshre and had went across the Potomac River to alexandria to shop. The 3100 enslaved men, women and children who were still inextricably woven into the fabric of Washington Life holding doors, driving carriages, cleaning up the mudin from boots and tending tables, waiting on tables reminded them at every turn the institution was alive and thriving in its capital. There was a tentative too much of the city at the western end of the mall whereas be aborted Washington Monument abandoned for the lack of financing. Little had changed since 49 when Charles Dickens described its nondescript dwellings into the streets as a city of magnificent distances. Nothing epitomized the city more than the capitol itself surrounded by the blocks for the ndw dome strewn around the building like the symbolic fragment of the nationke and pieces. Washingtonians saw the palpable sense of doom. The city Jefferson Daviss wife felt as her husbands last days in the senate slipped away was like some kind of a mausoleum with no one visiting, no dinners or parties, just glue them and pending over all things. Im able to do no good here. Condemned as one that watches over the couch of a mother dying of consumption to see the country parish by inches. Americans have taken the nations immortality for granted new things would never be the same again. It was i more graphic than the stormy words that have been spoken during themy months pass. It was shaded into fear that the events were spinning out of control and the worst might really come to pass. Atmors flew through the air at different is capital would be attacked by the virginia mob in the coup detat would come into unexplained fires around d the city were part of the terrorist plot. He might have to send her to safety somewhere in the mountains. Others dispatched them to philadelphia or new york for safety. Over thorganizations entire armf 16,367 and few were stationed east of the Mississippi River and most of them are in the succeeding states. Even the armys general in chief Winfield Scott who loathed president buchanan made their headquarters in new york city. Scott quickly recognized the gravity of the danger to the capital, however, although washington boosted several militia companies, they were more social clubs and many of the members were sympathetic to the confederacy. The National Rifles in particular had been supplied with the arms and artillery by the disloyal secretary of the war. The government spies also reported a plot to seize the Government Departments including the treasury and the provisional government. Three companies of light artillery were ordered back and another contingent from west point could take weeks for them to arrive. Where the crisis and. They represented john of illinois worried about only will the states succeed from the union but the cities and towns into this is the work of the disintegration of dissolution would go on and on until the whole frame of society and government would be engulfed in the bottomless and boundless chaos of ruin. The panic wasnt limited to washington. The Coastal Shipping shrink by half. Shipyards an in the ironwork wet on bankrupt in new york city the commercial firms laid off hundreds and suddenly disintegrated. Bombs secured by the properties of swedes crashed into commercial traffic. Grain prices fell by 20 and cause an evecausing even furthe. Even the ice industry that should to the south was crippled by the disappearance of the orders and sailed over the midwest eventually including half of those in wisconsin and as many as three quarters in illinois. The financiers pray for a revote but found none. Rumors multiplied the pro Southern Organization that would seize the armories break into banks and the prominent republicans. The oppression that a deeper than ever. Most people give up all hope of saving the government and anticipate general bankruptcy and law and chaos and ruin. And the white house, president buchanan remained. Had he become vertebrates the series by doran would have been confirmed. In the echoing halls of congress, republicans and the remaining southerners sidestepped each other with their eyes averted too angry or ashamed to speak. So, this is what it felt like on the cusp of the war. When we think about the civil war most frankly is about what happened on theie battlefield ad remarkably little about what happened politically and most of what happened politically is about abraham lincoln. Its easy to understand why we want to read so much about lincoln and about whom more books have been written than any other single person. As i said, it isnt hard to understand, but its much more happening in washington and politically and most of what was important was happening on capitol hill. Politics led to the war and sustained the Union War Effort and they drove the war to its revolutionary conclusion and gave it a lasting meaning. The story of how that happened is as gripping as anything that took place between the opposing armies. It is almost a human story about men very few of whom expected to face the worst crisis in the countrys history just as its described. Representative radical republican from indiana and the days of the radicals wrote they were elected to do everything to fight the greatest civil war history. It came upon them as an utter surprise. Congress faced a multitude of existential challenges. How could the north being mobilized so the war of unimaginable magnitude withh congress or the president responsible for leading the war effort. Should africanamericans be recruited to serve in the army . Assuming the north try and should ask confederates be prosecuted there is no consensus on any of these questions but that suspicion of Central Government in general and embedded of states rights and with those were making abilities. Deep racism with any attempt to emancipate slaves. And in the border states in maryland and delaware and then to regard any kind of tampering because of Property Rights proslavery unionist if you take from us today the right to hold slaves how long will it be before you will take from us some other Constitutional Rights but with the southerners gone the republicans for the First Time Ever been in the spring of 1861 both chambers were empty. That the absence led to legislative activism to change American Society beyond recognition and during the next four Years Congress would help win the war to help reinvent the Financial System and with that forwardlookingg legislation and in the course of doing that to lay the foundation with a strong activist Central Government that came fully into being the h century. Permanently its also permanently alter the relationship of the federal government to enshrine the protection of civil rightsve and as the federal government. So with their astonishing productivity with the 37th and 30 where the most the most in history. John sherman a republican and with that landmark would be a monument to cover such vast sums and vast powers so far reaching in their affect that generations will beff affected. Hundreds of thousands of troops and with the First Military draft of volunteers ran out. And then the recruitment for africanamericans in providing financing the First National currency in the foundation of the Federal Reserve system and long after contemplating the slaves they demanded and those that turned abolitionism from that belief into public policy. The homestead act basis one changes the face of the pacifica layoff act and then to lay the groundwork republican state universities nationwide so the last three that i mentioned and not to commonly recognize those measures but the antiwar dissidents of private communications and allegedly unpatrioticat activity that has become a feature. So the racial and economic revolution and then to transform 4 million slaves into soldiers and free men and women culminating in the 13th amendment. As Frederick Douglass had at one point of the war the angel of liberty with the demon of slavery the other. So as it struggles forward and in this book i treat congressional politics as a dynamic art and to seek a compromise for the transportation i generally try to keep the story within the historical president and by that i want you to feel the anxiety and uncertainty and sometimes as well as the patriotic fervor and irrational confidence with every stage of the war when nobody knew the outcome and what it be in the reelection of 1864. So this isnt a book about politics in the abstract and those that practice them but i have tried to capture the sound of their voices and the urgency over the battle that stir the concern and emotions. Most members were professional politicians with a sprinkling of businessmen and opinionated and brilliantly combated in the house of representatives James G Blaine later wrote there is no place so little differences paid to reputation previously acquired her too eminence and with the failure of beginners. And the sheer force of his own character and must expect no mercy and receive no sympathy. And this is no exaggeration that the members were writing and i build the story around for men three of them are republicans and Thaddeus Stevens in pennsylvania was the fiercest abolitionist in congress with the master parliamentary strategy and the de facto majority leader in the house and then the driving force in the senate with a hard war against the confederacy with the conduct of the war to oversee the Union War Effort a conservative by nature and only cautiously aligned himself as the radicals for more than any other man responsible for the legislation that enabled the north to pay for the war. But i want to give you a snapshot of these three guys. I love writing about these men. Just though one or two lines so the chairman of the joint committee northeastern ohio and had remained remarkably restrained up until now. At 60 a tall angular man and then actually with the merciless i have a gladiator the style of speech was offhand and very profane in his iron gray hair visibly bristled and to shove up the coat sleeves and to hold his arms high and then jump into the heels to bring his arms down. That egalitarianism was uncompromising i know no high or low or black or right and all are entitled to the same privileges. Ben wade who looms very large in this book. With Thaddeus Stevens and as chairman respectively of the Senate Finance committee and the ways and Means Committee the responsibility for financial machinery commensurate with the governments need and their views both men understood the secretary of the treasury a strong and trusting relationship with the northern many men have was imperative so the two had much in common they were skillful tacticians and singlemindedly committed to the union through the same rocky new england soil meeting his career to be harsh sometimes they referred to stevens as chairman of the committee of means and ways. [laughter] while fessenden was well known to have patience for humbug or tolerance. The selfcontained was i seen as bites but stevens although not exactly gregarious was one of the most flamboyant men in thee house with a sarcastic blasting to younger while stevens was notorious as the abolitionist process and then counted himself a pragmatist thebe yet unexpectedly touched in his home brought with a small and slave trial. A small and slave child who played on the carpet and chatted for an hour impressing them with his intelligence. So the thought it was owned like a dog by one of his fellowy creatures had fresh malediction which world such and atrocity. So the figure that i go towards great length was a northern democrat and the leading advocate as they were called as a spokesman for the antiwar opposition came awfully close to treason. But those are repugnant. But nonetheless one of the provocative dissenters in American History and the selfdescribed martyr of those welch views. But to be clear where he was coming from and was part of appalling public values. So to largely off stage presence those and many others but like most historians in a more skillful political then the contemporaries but in 1861 no more prepared for war than most americans and considerably less so than some members of congress so very much a work in progress and then it was more than any of his predecessors depending on the republicans in congress and vigorously insisted the cour