Thank you for braving the elements and joining us this evening. I am the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. As our members and regular attendees know [laughter] that is wonderful, i have not done anything yet. We provide workshops, run National History day, convene academic seminars and mount exhibitions. More than anything, what we do is hold an amazing collection of almost 14 million items, and we provide to historians and researchers for free. In our holdings we have the equivalent of 2. 5 president ial libraries. We have the papers of john adams, John Quincy Adams, and personal papers of Thomas Jefferson. That is important to mention because we have a special program with a special connection. We will hear about the publication the president s, in which noted historians rank the president s in a variety of categories. Persuasion of the public, leadership, moral authority and more. If theres anything we like to talk about more than president s, it is historians talking about president s. This is on brand for us. As we do with most public programs, we have pulled together a small display in the room with the reception. If you did not have a chance to see it, please go by because it has some treasures. Including the first letter written on the white house, Thomas Jeffersons own copy of the inaugural address, and two volumes of John Quincy Adamss diary. [chimes] that signals that we should tell you the program is divided into two parts. We begin with an overview from susan swain. She helped launch book tv, American History tv, and traveling local content vehicles. I was interviewed by her on first ladies. After she has set the stage, we have a conversation between james and peter moderated by brian lamb. James is an author and a friend of ours. Peter is on staff and is a librarian and a nearly boundless source of information for American History. Peter set up the little display as he always does. Last but i no means least, brian lamb is the founder of cspan and serves as its executive chairman. Since cspans founding in 1979, oncamera presence, interviewing all of the president s since ronald ragan, members of congress, journalists and authors. His work has been recognized with a president ial medal of honor and National Humanities medal. So please join me in welcoming this distinguished panel. [applause] susan welcome. It is a delight to be back in boston. I always get reconnected with my youth when i come back here. Thank you for having me back tonight to tell you about this project we were working on. The genesis for this was cspans 40th anniversary. In 1979, the house of representatives decided to put itself on camera and the cable industry, with some nudging by brian lamb, agreed to televise the house of representatives gaveltogavel without commentary, and cspan was born 40 years ago. We stay with a mandate and it is funded by our affiliates who carry programming around the country to the tune of about 60 million per year. A staff of 260 people to bring you the house, senate, white house, and maybe someday the supreme court. Wouldnt that be a good thing to get their sessions televised . When we were thinking about how to celebrate our 40th anniversary, the idea came to do this book on the president s. The reason why is it allowed us to bring together two very significant resources. First of all, we wanted to engage readers of the book in a dialogue about president ial leadership as we head into the 2020 campaign. It serves the purpose of showing allowing us to talk about what we do at cspan, but also to engage those interested in leadership and Public Policy as we look to elect a leader in 2020. There are two resources involved in the publication. First of all, the archives of our interviews, mostly done by brian lamb over the past 30 s, and we his program have had the opportunity to work with the best contemporary historians in the United States to give us their scholarship to share with you. We tapped our resources and you can recognize some of the names up there. We use that as the basis for this book of collected biographies. We decided to join that together with a second resource. For the past 20 years, we have done surveys of top historians, 100 historians, 10 qualities of president ial leadership. Weve done them in 2000 when bill clinton was leaving office, and 2009 when george w. Bush was leaving office, and in 2017 as barack obama left office. The 10 qualities were decided upon back in 2000 with help of three historians we worked with so often, Richard Norton smith, might be a familiar name to you. If you watch pbs, he has been on cspan and pbs many times over the years. Douglas brinkley, who has worked on a number of president ial biographies. And Edna Greene Medford of Howard University in washington, d. C. A historically black university. She is just stepping down as the dean of a liberal arts program there. She is a specialist on the civil war and reconstruction era. They helped us devise the 10 qualities of president ial leadership that the historians have ranked the president s on. They include public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, International Relations, administrative skills, relations with congress, vision and setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and then the 10th is a bit of a catchall category, which is performance within the context of their times. The historians wanted to do this because the office of the presidency has changed so much over the course of our history. Its to add some context of the times in which they serve and for our changing society. It gives people a chance to even out some of the others. What we did with the book was take rankings from 2017, and the chapters are organized in the book by how the president s fared in the survey. Over the course of the survey, you might be interested to know who changes, because historians have had a chance more papers and biographies have come out, American Society has changed, and there has been some movement in the ranks, which is one of the reasons why we do these polls. It is fascinating to see how the rankings change. Andrew jackson has gone from 13 to 18 in 20 years. Woodrow wilson has gone from the sixth spot to the 11 spot. Rutherford b hayes also dropped from 26 to 32. And grover cleveland, 17 to 23. The historians dont tell us why the rankings have changed, but there is a commonality and i think our historians can speak to that tonight, that is under the category of pursued equal justice for all. Rutherford b hayes is tagged with ending reconstruction, Woodrow Wilson and andrew jackson, we have learned so much more about their policies, in jacksons case with native americans, and both he and Woodrow Wilson with africanamericans. Grover cleveland does not have the best record either. Dwight eisenhower has gone up. A theory had been emerging about his hidden hand presidency. He went from ninth ranked up to fifthplace today. Bill clinton came in at 21 when we first surveyed, on the heels of his impeachment process. He then on the second survey, he went to the 15th spot and remains there today. And this is interesting. Ulysses asked grant moving up 11 spots from 33 to 22. And again, when we look at the big biographies that have come out and change public perspective on these president s, that is some of the reasoning behind it, because historians are subjected to the changing society we are in and so grant benefited from that. So who are the top five . Dwight eisenhower, as i mentioned, Theodore Roosevelt this will look like mount rushmore. [laughter] Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, and guess who is number one . Abraham lincoln. Earning a 903 out of a possible 1000 perfect score. Not surprising, everyone who does president ial rankings, Abraham Lincoln generally comes in the top. Far and above. So who were the bottom five . [laughter] john tyler, son of tidewater , virginia, who after he left the white house, ran and was elected to the confederate congress. He never got a chance to serve and died before the congress met, but he was buried in richmond, virginia with the Confederate Flag on his casket. He is not in the last position. One thing i want you to keep in mind, William Henry harrison was in office for one month and he ranks higher than all five of these. [laughter] next, Warren Harding in the 40th spot. We all grew up studying in school about teapot dome and the v. A. Scandal and weve learned more about his love life in the past few years, which probably doesnt impact on his service as president , but in fact, a lot went on during his presidency, he which he did not finish. He was felled by heart attack. 31, Franklin Pierce from your neighbor to the north in new hampshire. Franklin pierce had a problem with alcohol for a lot of his presidency and understandable because he has a very tragic story in his life that he had, he and his wife had had three children. Two of them died before he was the train office, and coming to washington, there was an accident with the train and the young son bennie was thrown at the age of 11 out of the train and he was killed and Franklin Pierce carried his sons lifeless body up to the train to his wife, and in fact, they had to deal with that as he was getting his administration settled. In number 42nd position, andrew johnson, first president to be impeached, the person that lincoln had put in office as compromise to appease the south. In fact, he ended up having a terrible record towards African Americans and Voting Rights and earned 42nd position. 43rd, james buchanan. Pennsylvanias only president. His biography is one of my favorites of all the ones we work with. It captures him perfectly. The title of it is worst. President. Ever. [laughter] i will let you read the chapter in the book why, historians robert stress credits with him and historians apparently agree. In those categories, mr. Buchanan ranked 41, 42 or 43rd in every single one of the 10 categories. Quickly through modern president s. Ronald reagan is the only president in the past couple of decades to be in the top 10, hes in the number 9 position. George h w bush in the 20th spot in between the two adams which we will talk about tonight. Bill clinton in 15. George w. Bush is 33rd. He was actually in the bottom 10 in the survey right after he got out of office but we added one more president so hes just out of the bottom. [laughter] it will be interesting to see. Thats where he started, and we will see whether time and distance changes the historian ranking. Barack obama debut in the survey in number 12 position. I wanted to tell you that the whole point is to get you interested to learn more. We have the website all for free, cspan. Org thepresident s, that has more information on every single one of the president s, has the full interview that we did that was the basis of the chapter and annotated. If you are reading a chapter, we have the link for you there. You can learn more of things as you go along. Quickly about the two president s we will learn about tonight, john adams is in 19th position. Highest category was in moral authority. Our historians will tell us more about whether they agree with the rankings. He was in 24th spot, total score 604 out of 1000 in 2017. John quincy adams, highest category, pursued equal justice for all, number nine position in that. His lowest category and you might agree with this, public persuasion, where he ranked 33rd among the president s, total score in 2017, 590 out of the thousand. Three other president s, john kennedy, highest category, number eighth spot, public persuasion, lowest category, moral authority and administrative skills. Number 15, his total score was 722 out of a thousand. Calvin coolidge, we think of him as vermont, but in fact, he was the mayor of north hampton, massachusetts. His ranking was 27th. Relations with congress highest, lois had four different categories where he ranked number 29. Now you might not know that George H W Bush was born in massachusetts and so for that fact we included him on the survey here tonight, highest category was an International Relations number 8, lowest category vision and setting an agenda. Remember he used to talk about the vision thing all of the time . Well, historians agree with him, 27 plays for that. Total score was 596 out of a thousand. So that in summary is what you will find in our book on the president s. Its for sale after this is over and we really thank the Massachusetts Historical Society for offering it to you. If you decide to purchase the book, i want you to know that we are not doing this for commercial reasons. Its all about education and in fact, any loyalties that cspan makes to the book goes to nonprofit cspan education foundation. We make free teaching materials for high school and middle school teachers. With that little bit of a commercial, i will turn the agenda over to my colleague brian lamb. [applause] brian james, what role did this institution right here play in your book on John Quincy Adams . James that is easy to answer. I have to say one of the reasons im here is i am so grateful to the Massachusetts Historical Society and the adams project. The gentleman to my left is the person who made it possible for me to not have to spend any time at the Massachusetts Historical Society because everything has been digitized. I remember when i first thought i would write the book, i thought i would have to spend three months some boston looking at whatever it is one had to look at. Then i discovered that the entire 17,000 pages of John Quincy Adamss diary had been put online in its handwritten version, and that right before i started researching this, the first 15 or so years of his dairy had actually been rendered into type script. So between those things and the fact that adamss son Charles Francis adams produced a version of his diaries which has between a third or two fifths or so, the massive thing, everything that i needed was in a library, online, or something. So thank you much fond i am of boston, having made it necessary to leave my family in order to write the book. Brian peter, 41 years of this place. Do you ever get bored . [laughter] peter no, and thats largely thanks to you. Most of my time that ive worked here has been spent in this room as a reference librarian. In what we call reader services. The only thing you can be sure of is the next person through the door in here is going to have a subject, usually about history, but its going to be different from any other question you have been asked before. Sometimes, the questions that have come before make it possible to easily answer a new question, or assist any researcher, but more often than not, you are starting over every day with a sort of blank slate. I do want to point out, and in terms of jims book, we are also grateful to all of you as frankly as taxpayers of the United States because the ability to digitize this massive dairy that Johnson Quincy adams kept over 68 years was through a federal project, save americas treasures. And if theres any object of all the millions of pages of documents and thousands of collections that we have here, if you were going to say, what is a true american treasure, it is certainly John Quincy Adamss diary. So that was the easiest request i ever had to write to persuade the federal government to sponsor the project. Brian when you wrote your book, how long did you have to spend with it before you actually published the book . James i spent five years, i think, writing the book. One of the reasons i wrote the book is this diary answers the question that every historian asks about any person from the not very recent past, which is what was he thinking when . What did he do when . As it happens, i had just finished writing another short biography of a person named judah benjamin, who was jefferson daviss right hand man, and consciously destroyed any archive or material that might have given any insight into him. It is incredibly frustrating. I hate writing, he must have thought i go to Great Lengths to avoid that sentence construction. When i wrote about John Quincy Adams, its not that i thought that everything that he wrote was the literal truth but i did know this is what he wrote, this is what he thought and felt. Thats an extraordinary thing for a historian to have. Brian peter, what did you find the most interesting about John Quincy Adams and still discover new things . Peter i would think that John Quincy Adams is a person who i think a lot of people and you have expressed this very well, hes not an easy person to like. Hes hard, he can be terrifying, he can be cold and hard toward the people closest to him, the people he loves. And that i think and be offputting. I think often it is challenging for people looking at his life or his biography. I think that what you discover underneath through the inner reflection contained in this diary, how much how concerned he was about this, how much inner reflection there is about his life. And also in a person that struck a pose as a cold, cynical man, how funny he could be, often in a kind of cynical way. But how human and threedimensional he was. Its also a part of his life is revealed in the dairy and in the letter