Journalists and Science Fiction novelist discusses his book and activism. After a day of social distancing, get close to a good book tonight printed book tv from cspan2. Kathryn good evening everyone and welcome to book passage. Thank you for coming up tonight on a tuesday night. There are so many things that you could be doing. You made a really good decision coming here, this is a smart crowded pretty you will be mesmerized and just fascinated by the program we have for you tonight in the vein we ask that you turn your cell phones off because you will not need them. Do not look at your cell phone for the next hour. I guarantee it. You will be completely mesmerized by our authors. We are so proud to bring you today. So thank you for supporting book passage and we are an independent bookstore, one of the very few remaining independent bookstores. [applause]. Thank you and we are very proud of that fact. Thanks for comingan to our location here. We also have a beautiful store in the seri building in San Francisco and if you have never been there, it is a beautiful building. Go in and buy a few books and go have dinner in the city. It is really wonderful way to spend yourr evening. And remember book passage is just sous much more than a bookstore. We bring to you probably 1000 author readings every year if you can believe that. And in addition we also have all ddkinds of classes, language and writing and book groups we have childrens classes and finally, i am proud to say that we are going green. We have been introducing paper newsletter which i know some of you received in the mail starting in march. And were going to do email only starting in march so if we dont have your email youre not getting our email list papers please sign up with these little green pieces of paper the hard at the registers. We will get you on that list. We still have calendars and Event Promotions in the store. When rents are spaced too. I know there are some events, corporative Party Planners out there, and talk to me afterwards and im happy to give you any information regarding our vent and spaces for rent. Book passage, has a mission to enrich and engage and inspire. And we have been a wonderful family owned, they area institution for over 40 years. So thank you to our patrons. We want to keep the doors open for another 40 years rain and to serve. [applause]. In this newest book, the First Congress, they tell a story of the most momentous and most Productive Congress in t americn history. When the members of the First Congress met in new york, in 1789, the new nation was still fragile. It was torn by sectional differences. Hobbled by competing currencies and customer debt. In this ditch together only tentatively by the constitution. While the constitution provided a set of principles but it offered few instructions about how the system should invest work. Limit to congress and the president , to create the machinery of government. Had congress failed, United States as we know it may not exist. Will Abraham Lincoln lead the nationon of Congress Actually directed the civil war. History written by an amazing storyteller offers a riveting history. And is this book argues that congress got it right. Fergus, is the author of seven nonfiction books and he is published an illustrated a childrens book. It and wrote the script for a pbs documentary about thomas jefferson. He softened edited 1989 men and the mask her. Lisa frequent book reviewer for the wall street journal and other boat publications. His war in new york city, and well growing up he often traveled to indian reservations around the United States with his mother. This served as the executive director of the association on American Indian affairs. Then, the only independent organization for native americans. This early experience helped to shape his life long 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 was also here joining us. And it is my greatest pleasure to welcome to our book passage stage, a master storyteller, vargas. [applause]. Guest thank you. How does the sand. Does that sounds okay . Thank you think you open the book passage and having me here and in my commendation to the store, thousands of writers come here every year. They are working and gasping free of any air. Also for sustaining the writing life in keeping books available to people in an independent venue. You dont have to go through that place online that we all know about. [laughter]. Hungry to be speaking tonight about my most recent Book Congress and war and i really appreciate the shout out for my last book which was the First Congress which came out three years ago and soon 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 and dramatic. I am interested in writing the books id like to read. And that is to say, i think there is no excuse for book about politics being boring. You might read it, and you might not think i have accomplished it but ive been surfing in all the books ive done to make an challenging me and keep challenging material accessible. I think what i would like to do this by the way is right now, this minute is the first step in the launch of myis book. This is the first event, this in the first talk, thank you. [applause]. Im not entirely sure what you will get here but i do my best. I go from here, baltimore to washington and that i am speaking at the National Archives and congress and some other places in washington after this. I want to read a very short section here from the book to create a mood. And this is washington in early 1861 and then i will take off from that and talk to you more generally about the book of paul hung over that area. Even in the best neighborhoods, the yards saint from putrefying house. The rooming houses were most Congress Members left, the halls of capital itself smelled of wet wool and clothing and cigars in a charcoal that struggled to warm the under heated chambers of congress. Slavery pervaded the city like the stink of horse manure. Although free blocks and though there are number, investors of the human flesh, across the river. The 3100 is lame to men women and children, who are still inexplicably woven into the fabric of o Washington Holding doors driving can range charges cleaning the mud from boots and tending tables and suckling white babies and reminded whites at every turn that the institution that was featuring the nation was alive and thriving in its capital. It was still tentative only semipermanent quality too much of the city. At the western it and of the national mall, u really just a field where sheep and cows graze, the ugly stuff of the Washington Monument like a finger locked off at the first joint. For lack of financing. The lead changed since 1949, when visiting Charles Dickens described it as nondescript dwelling, and this is wide street that petered out and empty fields and city of magnificent distances. Nothing more epitomized the city than the capital itself surrounded by the marble blocks and they dome streaming around the building like the symbolic figments of the nation in pieces. Washingtonians had and felt dume. The city of jeffersons davis wife felt as though her husbands last days in the senate slipped away was like some kind of mausoleum with no one visiting and no dinners or parties, just a solemn gloom and pending overall things. On january 27, ohio represented and he wrote to his wife, i am able to do no good here. No one can. So i sit and obliged to sit quiet and condemned as oneob who watches over the couch of a lovedou mother slowly dying with consumption. To see my country perish by inches. Americans who had taken their nations and mortality for granted, knew that things would never be the same again. Maybe seats in the house and the senate and spoke of revolution in terms of more graphic than any of the stormy words that have been spoken during the months passed. With the departure of the. Southerners, gloom shaded into fear and events work spinning out of control the worst might actually come to pass. Rumors flew through the air that the defenseless capital would be attacked by virginia mob and they would come any day. Unexplained fires around the city were part of thert terrorit plots. And he and his wife and uprising were so likely that he might have a center the mountains. Others dispatch their wives and children to philadelphia or new york for safety. Of the nationss entire army of 16367 men, fewer stationed east of the mississippi river. Most of them were in the states. Even the armies general in chief who lowbu the date buchanan, mae his headquarters in new york city. Scott quickly recognize the gravity of the danger to the capital however and over washington boasts several malicious companies, they were more social clubs than military units. Many of their members were synthetic to the confederacy. The National Rifles in particular i quietly men armed and chilly Greg Buchanan disloyal former secretary of war. Clinic commanders openly he can wanted to prevent Union Volunteers for reaching the capital. Government spies also reported a pota from the Government Departments looting the treasury and provisional government. Three companies of artillery were ordered back from frontier and another contingent from west point would take weeks for them to arrive. Clear with the crisis and unnerved citizens asked each other. Representatives john millan i worried that emily will state succeed from the union, but counties from season cities and towns for both. And this is the work of disintegration and dissolution go on and on until the whole frame of society and governments will be involved in one bottomless and of chaos and ruin. Panic waso not limited to washington. Coastal shipping shrink by having shipyards going bankrupt in new york city, commercial firmsro made up of hundreds entirely truth itself suddenlyse disintegrated. Bond is secured by property crashed into commercial traffic happened in green prices fell by 20 percent cotton even further. Even the ice industry would shift new england ice to the south disappeared. Banks failed all of the midwest. And eventually including nearly half of those in wisconsin as many as those and three quarters of them in illinois. Financier is going for a ray of hope but found none. Rumors multiplied of the secret pro southern organizations that was seen as the armories breaking the banks and the homes of prominent republicans. Impression today deeper than ever, the new york George Templeton strongly recorded. Most people give up all hope of saving the government and anticipate general bankruptcy revolution, loblaw, chaos in ruins. In the white house, president buchanan remains there. Had this old mollusk become a series by darwin wouldve been confirmed he wrote. And the echoing halls of congress, the republicans and remaining southerners side stepped each other with our eyes and averted to angry or too ashamed to speak. So this is what it felt like on the cost of the war. And really think about the civil war, most people wrote about what is happening on the battlefield. When remarkably little that would happen politically. Most of that is about Abraham Lincoln. Its easy to understand why somebody would want to write about Abraham Lincoln. Hes been written about more than any other person that is not hard to understand but it was much more happening in washington and theres more ihappening politically, and mot of what was important that was happening was happening on capital hill. Politics led to the war, war effort, it drove the war to revolutionary conclusion and it was a revolution. And give us lasting meaning. I think it is an epic, as gripping as anything that took place between the opposing armies. Also a human story about man very few of whom expected to face the worst crisis in the countrys history. Everetalbert riddle, radical republican, from indiana he wrote, mr. Lincoln, cabinet and the 37th congress were elected to do anything, everything except what was billed to them to do pretty despite the greatest civil war of history. They came upon them is an utter surprise. Congress saved a multitude of challenges. How could the north be mobilized for this more, unimaginable magnitude with congress, or the president responsible for leading the war efforts. The sanctity of southern property including safes, or the ruthlessness that would bring the seated states more quickly to the knees. But the constitution says in the name of national security. How the war be paid for read when the financial burden break the northern economy. What should white americans do about slavery. Could republicans prevent their party from splitting between antislavery radicals and those who are willing to tolerate slavery as long as it was contained in the south pretty bare in mind the democrats had already broken it. Should africanamericans be recruited to serve in the army. When white soldiers refuse to fight alongside them. After the war was on assuming that the north triumph, through the Southern States be broken up for the should they be prosecuted as criminals. There was no consensus on any of these questions. And many others. If suspicion of Central Government, and distrust in general of strong executive in particular and embedded traditions of the states rights in the north as well as the south. They threatenor to undermine the countrys warmaking ability. Deep racism present any attempt to emancipate slaves. Many unionists, especially in the border states, especially like missouri, maryland and delaware. Many unions in the states regarding any kind of tampering with slavery as a it was a threat to basic Property Rights rep. Of john of one, proslavery unionists for maryland declared that if you take from us today, our right to hold slaves, how long will it be before you will take for most of other constitutional rights. He was a unionist. The southerners had gone to the republicans for the First Time Ever held the majorities in both sides of the congress. Both chambers by 1861 or empty and abandoned. Their absence opened the gates to europe legislation activism that would change American Society beyond recognition during the next four years, congress would help when the war, have peace and reinvent the nations Financial System and forwardlooking legislation that had been lost for decades by southern interest in them read at a course in doing that, Congress Also laid the foundation for the strong activist Central Government that came fully into being in the 20th century. Inpermanently, also altered the relationship between the states and the federal government and enshrined the protection of civil rights as a responsibility of the federal government. Measured by the urgency of what they faced and binder astonishing productivity, the torah wartime congressman, were among the most effective in american history. Ohio senator a republican, the brother of general william sherman, predicted that the many landmark laws that they pass will be a monument for good or evil. The covered such vast delegate and regulate good power and so their effectsn that generations will be affected will or ill by them. Congress rate raised hundreds of thousands of troops actually millions and instituted the actuallyn the First Military graph and volunteers run out. The project consistently against we can for more aggressive strategy because the south and the recruitment of africanamericans. In providing financing for the war, congress created the First National currency, the front runners of the Internal Revenue service. The foundation of the Federal Reserve system. Hello before lincoln became willing to contemplate emancipating the slaves, members of Congress Demanded and enact an incremental series of wars that turned of volitional is him promote free belief of her public policy. The homestead act changed the face of the west, the Pacific Railway act connected the nations heartland when californian was the largest and expensive project undertaking in the United States at the time. Relandgrant act laid the groundwork for public state universities systems nationwide. In these last three that i mentioned were not commonly recognized as more measures, it was the war that made them politically possible. Unless happily the wide spread monitoring of antiwar dissidents created a surveillance of private communications and allegedly unpatriotic it became the future of presentday light. Now at least Congress Also beginning a racial and economic revolution that was over the economy and transformed 4 million slaves from pieces of property and his soldiers and free men and women and ultimately culminating in the 13th amendment. At one point during the war, the angel of liberty has one part of the nation and the of slavery the other. Both of them whispered and shouted into the years of congress and have struggled forward through the war years. In this book, i tried or treat conventional politics is a dynamic art and in endless seeking of compromise and the transmutation of hopes and ideas into politics and generally try to keep the story within the historical presence and by that, i mean, i want you to feel the anxiety and the uncertainty is sometimes the fear and despair as well as a patriotic server and s