Thank you, guys, for being here. Welcome to politics and prose at union market. We are so excited that youre here. Im jennifer mcdvitt, owners Bradley Graham as well as staff, we would like to welcome you to todays event. To briefly note housekeeping items before we get going, we would appreciate it if you turn off or silenced your cell phones. This is my favorite part. Everybody start reaching. So not to disturb the conversation. We do have ats microphone. Its going to be this one for the q a portion of the event. We do want to use microphone for any questions that you have. Copies are available if you want to purchase a copy or many copies. Theyll be a signing after the q a. This is the word im looking for at the conclusion of the talk, its my pleasure to introduce alexis coe, you never forget your first followed murder in memphis, soond to be motion picture. Lively look at George Washington that separates man from the legend. Host of audibles no mans land, founder through lens. She recounts how he was raised by a single mother and stubborn ness and face contradictions of a free nation reliant on free slave labor. Okay, good. Warmly welcoming alexis coe and jamaal bully to politics and prose. [applause] hello, alexis. Hello, everyone. Hello, audience. So lets just get started. Lets do it. So your first mentioned is a murder of a young couple and this seems a different direction. Im going to go on, they seem really different. As a historian when youre in ergrad school, you study this in theory. I studied literally a year, after that my first job was at new york public library, building in brian park and my job was collective memory, so youu start with tomorrows, its all over the place. During that time i began to think a lot about Allison Freda forever. I didnt want to be someone who is known as a woman. I thought i wanted tenure and you cannot catch love as a woman or historian or else youre not going to get a job and so i thought about it for years and i felt like it was a really interesting story and explained so much about the origin of prejudice and i liked president ial biographies. The audible series would require to my mind to really understand what was going on as i would read micro histories but i would also read 3 or 4 biographies at the same time in conversation with each other and i would buncher with some sort of understanding of the president hopefully and that just never happened for me with washington. Its a surprising assertion to make because you look at washington books, theres quite a few. One book on Allison Freda but i felt like i had to do something to that book shelf. It needed something. In the introduction you talk about the washington biographies,n its not just theres a lot of them but have a similar task, written by a similar kind of person, ill be honest, in the beginning typical biographer, grew up going to historical sites and grew up in virginia, i was like, damn, it sounds like me. What you were responding to in the world of washington biographies . I found that i joke that when these men got their book contract that before they signed it they had to take a solemn oath and say that i will proceed in the exact same manner. I will say the same thing and have the same goals and i will do it the same way. I didntt take the oath. Me[laughter] the thing i at first i thought it was sort of funny, they all say hes too marvel to be real and break him out and they doto talk about things thai jokegs about, they are really io his size in a way that seems appropriate. Its funny [laughter] i see nicer. Hamiltons are also nice. Founding father size or adam driver . [laughter] here is the thing while ths is called often a feminist biography, if they had written about marthas size, i mean, we would all be up in arms. Theres also the double standard. It works both ways and so i thought that was very strange. Theres a defensiveness around washington. Zero interest of women. We talk about ford, obama, lineon as clintons as president s who were raised by singlee mothers. Why arent we talking about washington . Why dont we talk about that . Nothing made sense to me and as soon as i checked the primary sources, what i do specialize at the same time we all know what the little number, you know, in a sentence means. You check the end note. If the end quote keeps quoting a secondary source and that quotes a secondary source that keeps happening, you know something hankie is going on. That kind of takes us to why didnt the four sections, one dealing with washingtons early life and i found the first part to be fascinating in part because you begin with a series of list of washington. You can talk about that. Even as someone who knows a bit about the guy, i still find it immensely useful to be giving info dump like that. I would love to hear you talk about that information like that because i think in a more more biographers think about it like that. His context as young virginia driver. A social climber. As a guy who wants to have his eyes at the top. He cant feed his horse. Theres a a lot of struggle goig on. In early virginia if you walked at all you were poor and looked down upon, that was essential to him, but i think the thing is, you know, if you also look at the front,i call them visual coffins. I dont think they do for you. Maybe like destiny which i also have a big problem with. No one is destined to do anything. Takes a lot of hard work. I want president ial history because the presidency and especially the person who was established the office, who was built around, everyone pressured but i think that the biographies are alienating in visual presentation and titles, the way they are written and so i really wanted the reader to feel like they had if they had never read a president ial biography, that they had everything they needed at the beginning of the book and the beginning of each section to feel as though they were i did think a lot about my reader and the other part that washington has been called by an adams family series editor, president ial editors, they edit the papers, called him vanilla once to my face and i think that is, well, first of all, you cant compare, too much fun thats why the letters survive. They knewer that. The thingt is, you can break hm out of the mold. He can be fun and can be interesting because you have to have fun with him as the person is called reverend which i think is a whole different thing, but a lot of the things that you see is the way that i organize the material in my head when i was trying to make sure that i got things across and i decided to be vulnerable and share it with everyone. Certain things that help you understand i can tell you in a sentence, the beginning of the revolution, okay, we can say as they all do, he lost more battles than he won. Why are we talking about the battles. Hes not fighting on the front lines. Hes in the tent most of the time. Hes not out there so why are we wasting time talking about it. Why dont i just tell you about the battles. Thats less important to me something that you understand than a sentence that really gets lost. You know, the the war went on for a long time, wasnt quick. We had one general and the british had many general and i really by presenting you with a chart at the beginning of that section and just listing George Washington, George Washington, you get it. I wanted you to have those i dont want my reader, longest answer ever, i dont expect you to turn around and give a really long talk about this. I want you to be really excited about it and turn around and talk about it at a cocktail ngparty. I will say that i read like half a book and when i was talking to my wife, i was reading, did you know washington loved dogs, she was like, i did not know that. To your point i really wanted to talk [laughter] its important to know that he lovedle dogs. He has to be a fully formed person to you. You have to know that he was silly enough to call his dog sweet lips and you need that, thats ridiculous and you also need details around other things like you dont, you cant just know how many people enslaved people he owned. You need an example of it. You need every detail i can squeeze out of it. You said something earlier and that was because the book does so much to demystify washington and places the context of his relationships and because hes the model for the kind of almostt does biographies of roman emperors and this is a biography of a president. Its just a dude, a dude that we chose and i think its interesting how throughout the book you always are short to emphasize to us not just the people around them but someone who has, also kind of the thing i had in my mind danny glover in legal weapons. Too old for this and doesnt want to do this anymore. Yeah, i think the thing is we think of the founders as one thing like modelist and he was doing the best that he could. I found that so revealing. How he understood himself doing the job. Yeah. I think that again, this humanizes him and the office and it should give us comfort in the messiness in some ways. So big part of the book deals with washington as a slave owner. You cannot deal with that. Its one of the overriding identities of his entire life. He was concerned and always concerned about what hes going to do about the farm and how hes going to feed and house other people he owned and what they were going to do for him, so the thick that you talked about towards the end is how washington sort of would always say that, yea, im going to free my sleighs at some point but never really asked. I wonder if you can talk about his unwillingness to take the extra step because you make step, peers in virginia who did take the extra step. Yeah. I feel like biographers pull over on this. They make it sound like if washington had this view and i think this is helpful. I h think they did which is a bias. Its hardh to do that if you cant see him as having this beautiful realization and so washington begins to have not a change of heart but a change of priorities during the revolution and that he meets different people. The argument is sometimes that, you know, enslaved and free black men fought during the revolution, no, he didnt want that. He was reluctant about it just like billy lee, righthand man, like hes always been there and represented of everyone rather than the exception. What i wanted to do was have that present because its present in his mind. Wait is as important and hes concerned about, what hes concerned about, forced labor force. Ve to me to be honest and understand him and his anxieties and priorities it had to be there the whole time as close as i could get it and the material is there and last like i wanted to smoosh a bunch of micro histories into one because i think it can be that way. Its notwa oh, i wish he would have done this. Its understanding why he ultimately did the thing that he did. He could have sold his land. When we say we call them planters which is i think misleading. They are plantation owners which is inflection for forced labor camp and they were all cash poor but they had land and no one had more land than George Washington because he had gained during french and indian war when he fought for the british which he would have been happily to do and we would have been british subjects if they had given the promotion he wanted. [laughter] we are not talking about thomas payne here. Its important to think rabbit the things that hes saying are not quite true. I dont have the money. I cant do this. I cant move out. He could have if he really wanted to, you know, if he wanted to be the person that lafayette thought he could have. He had examples. There were people in virginia who had to leave, you know, under direct because other slave masters wereus terrified of this thd so i just think look at him clearly and when we also do that lets talk about how it was kind of vague, it was a move to martha and left her in incredible vulnerable position and end up hurting the inevitable but also the same problem existed that he didnt want to see and be responsible for which was the separating of families forever. If you could refresh my memory, how many people were enslaved at mown vernon throughout . So martha was married before. She had 2 children from her previous marriage and the estate had over 130 enslaved people and washington inherited 10 enslaved parttime when he people whee was 11. Its not like he was oh, fine. Explicit purpose of buying people and so that number swelled to 214 by the time he tied. The thing for me reading about washington as a slave owner is also remind you that most of the people he saw for most of his life were enslaved people and i think i lived in charlottesville and monticello is right there. That for me at least radically changes how you think about these men and how they must have thought about themselves because its not it wasnt a salon every day with, you know, all the founder buddies. Ben franklin, thinking big thoughts. Right. It was from sun up to sun down most days seeing the people that you enslave, thinking about fast track at some point when you had to discipline. I dont know if i have a question there. Just an observation. You know, washington was always people talk about impressive the way he thought of new schemes and inventions. To maximize profit and labor to apke sure that, you know, he was applying that and i think thats really important because we think of him as sort of doing important work all of the time, they were they were messy, they were drama queens and also cruel and thought themselves to be better. You know, its important that we understand that. On a sunday washington would hang out with his wife and make enslaved people row boats and race across the potomac, i want to know that he went to church but i also want to know that he did that. A big part of the book and i neverev really thought about as far as washington goes as patriarch not just for enslaved people but large number of young men and women, some related to them through various connections. You say that this is something traditional biographers dont deal at all. Seems to be big part of his life and something he was invested in. They are married to this narrative which is that he had no biological children are conception of children has really changed over time. Itit wasnt uncommon to marry a woman who had children. That was a really good sign that he should have a child. [laughter] so it was so strange to me to talk ten pages about why he couldnt have children, instead, why dont we look at the fact that he was lousy with children. They were everywhere and they were giving him problems. So m many letters lecturing, finding a better tutor, giving a lot of unsolicited love advice and that was a part of his world view. Thats what he saw every day and you dont read those letters and think, oh, hes not really invested in this kid. Hes so angry and, again, its not like oh, they are just like us, but when he lectures grandson, we say step grandson, its like losing his umbrella. The other part of that and something that really struck me throughout is how much not just that washington seemsso followed by death, hes sort of most of the men on his side, on the e shington side of the family die pretty young but also at a certain point becomes hyperaware of his death and how are people going to remember me when im dead, what should i do now to ensure that those memories are e. Sitive. He was really sensitive and untouchable the first four years and the second four years he was not and created cabinet with people that he disagreed, jefferson leading the pack. I will ask them all for their opinions because he did value otherer peoples opinion and he thought he was a if you believe and, of course, it was his disaster and he became really aware of how people thought about imwhen they werent saying nice things. That was really rough for him and he did really think about how can i because he was a control freak, how can i get control of the situation. That was which is not to say that emancipating the people that he freed was legacy, we dont want to deny that it had a real impact on these peoples lives good and bad because, again, they never saw family members. He understood that we would probably judge him act slavery, so he would have to take care of that and begins to edit his papers all the way to french and indian war when he was in his 20s and parts he doesnt touch and the parts are First Americans and those parts are native americans. We should just say genocide. He left all of that. He was proud to be called the town destroyer, that means raising a town. He was proud of telling indians that, you know, their way of life was over, you know, a white mans way of life was better and why dont just they follow his example and he would say in way, i will retire in my farm and you should figure out yours, he thought that was a very positive thing. This is well known when he left office, farewell address, all of the things. You mentioned earlier, he sort of unavoidedly became a partisan figure. One of the most things that you tell on his birthday, last year of his last term, someone made a motion in the house that kind of adjourned for a little bit to just celebrate washingtons birth and people are like no, we are not interested in that anymore. What do you think not washingtons life per se but legacy, what relevance do you think that has for the present and the moment where people are lots of partisanship and people have some idea that we can vanish those things. Seems like we cant. From washington what do any less sons to take about how to manage it or deal with it . Partisanship is inevitable. It doesnt have to be a terrible thing. It is i think the job of the president s to do a much better job of being a unifying figure and then say what you will about obama, he could control himself and he acted in an appropriate manner because at the end of the day hesct serving the entire american body not just the people who voted for him, so i think we need to expect more of our leaders, not civility, thats meaningless, say what you mean but also act in a way that serves everyone and i think at the end we as the electorate have more power than, you know, its hard and we get really frustrated an seems impossible to fix, but, again, Like Washington was not a natural revolutionary, you know, he had to fight his way out. [laughter] we are closesh but not there. [laughter] but that we can demand that things get done because we are at the point where, you know, we have people like mcconnell who washington did warn against that they would just get nothing done. They would try to maintain power and we really need to focus on holding them accountable and thats our job and thats the best way we can improve on legacy of founders and not emulate them because that was never the intention. The mic will be going around. Yost raise your hand, im going urge you to ask a question, i wont have a mic but i can say loudly if i think youre not asking a question. [laughter] so my question is basically you alluded about dislikable aspects of washington especially slave holding, im curious if you can tell us most dislikable that most people think is admirable, anecdote that talked a lot about personality, something that spoke to you about his personality . That was a question, 3