Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20150323 : vimarsana.com

Was not in the south telling them to a scape. So the first thing was actually running away in various modes but then they would make contact with either agents of the underground railroad or might know okay this is of. This is a fugitive slave up the road. One shouldnt take the railroad metaphor literally that it was a success to them. There were 8,000 out of slavery to this north and canada in the 30 years before the civil war so that would be 30,000 people. There were 4 million slaves in 1860. They gained with the assistance of white and black activists something i think i could look back at with pride in our history. The Hidden History might be slavery misleading. I was trying to say the new york part of this is unknown. They were the abolitionists involved in the movement so on the one hand they are engaged in secret and illegal activities and sheltering and assisting escaped slaves and on the other hand going to public meetings. They are petitioning the legislatures of the states and in some places and bake sales to raise money for the fugitive slaves and when you get up to upstate new york it is completely open. They said im the head of the underground railroad if anybody knows anything about a slave send them to me. He had fundraising parties at his house. They didnt bother them so depending on where you were coming it was more or less secret and more or less openparen in new york it was secret because it was a place with close ties to the south with south with Public Officials who were happy to help at three and. Lets talk about that for a minute. This sentiment in the New York Times leader he ends it theres a strong sentiment in favor of the south. What is this connection with new york . This is something not emphasized. We dont emphasize this in our view. New yorkers we pride ourselves on being a bastion of liberalism and tolerance and multicultural cities. It wasnt like that in the first part of the 19th century. First of all slavery was a presence in new york in the colonial era and it lasted all the way down to 1827 and even after that they were on the streets of new york visiting the were allowed to bring the slaves along with them for up to nine months until 1841 to 20 years before the civil war they were still visible on the streets of new york thats the key thing is new york was economically tied to the south. New york merchants controlled the cotton trade the bankers finance the expansion of slavery in the south. New york insurance companies. The review of the most the most important southern monthly periodical before the civil war which was actually published in new york city said it is as it depends on the slavery as much as charleston does. Its closely tied to that of the south and has the ramifications. They want to appease the south and politicians were pro southern in their attitudes. They were weak compared to other places. They had vigorous community and people are willing to take to the streets to protest the apprehension of the fugitive slaves. Host there is a vibrant community in new york and so they are very much involved in supporting those that are arriving but free black people have a prominent role to play in the underground railroad and what happens to people when they arrived in new york. We dont know much about that report. Guest that is absolutely right and i try to emphasize that in my book. The vigilance communities in new york boston, etc. Which are what they call themselves were almost entirely black they were in new york city the first one by david a. Black abolitionist. But they were white abolitionists involved in the sport interracial organizations and much of the money they were rather poor in this pure code they had limited economic opportunities. It was a welltodo merchant was a dedicated abolitionist and they went upstate. So they were contributing money and taking part but most of the activity is by screen blacks and one of them are unknown to us for example they were fugitives that came in hitting on ships and they would notify the activists or send them to the office. They worked at the Railroad Depots and hotels as cooks or Domestic Workers is a southerner came to new york it with a slave they would say you can become free if you want so their activity was important. Why dont we hear more about it. After the civil war they wrote their own histories. They wrote their memoirs and about the underground railroad and even though theres a lot of valuable information they tend to make this a kind of White Enterprise giving assistance to help us black people and the heroes were the white abolitionists. Im not trying to deny that, but the story was skewed in the reminiscences in the late 19th century and its taken a long time for scholars to put the communities back at the center. You mentioned that by 1830 there is a presence of the militant evolutionism abolitionism. Why is it happening, why are both happening at this particular time in history . There have been sentiment had been sentiment as you have the revolutionary era in the society created in 1785 to push for abolition in new york that those groups were very moderate. They did a very important things. They set up the preschool to educate children. They certainly didnt violate the law. They tried to help them legally but they said we are not going to violate the state or federal law to help people get out of slavery. The new generation that comes about in the late 1820s to mid1830s arises partly out of the evangelical movement into the revivals that inspires to kind of think they can read the society right away they also have this militant Community Coming into its own which is partly because of the opposition to the movement in 1878 is established and they find that a tremendous threat to their status so by the 1830s you have these two groups come together to form an activist Abolitionist Movement and then they start assisting fugitive slaves in in a legal ways and its against the law but they say this is the law of god and not of men that we are abiding by. And i think more start escaping because of knowledge that there are people willing to assist them. They escaped used it ever since there were slavery. There are no organizations to help them and they probably got recaptured back then. But now you have groups being formed to our saying we are going to help the fugitive slaves in percolates back to the south. The main point is running away broad implications more than just what that individual act would seem to suggest. The actions of fugitives and their allies forced onto center stage questions about the balance between federal and state authority and to the extent to which they extended into the north north and the relationship of the federal government. So can we talk about this especially be issue of rendition from the beginning of the founding. Absolutely. Its in the constitution. This was debated and it doesnt mention the word slavery. Thats not in the original constitution but the persons held to labor is getting from one state to another must be returned. But like many parts they dont say who has to return them. The federal government, the state of the procedures, the trial, would have been. It doesnt say that in the constitution. It was passed in 1793. They were certainly owners and agencies in the south trying to grab fugitives in the north north but there were people that resisted them. It makes it a federal responsibility. The federal commissioner will hear the cases indicated that the army can be used if there is a riot or something. Theres strict punishment to people that helped fugitive slaves or even people that refuse to help the government track debate could capture them. They returned to the local procedures and laws in the north. Its probably the most vigorous expansion of federal power over the states in the whole pure code before the civil war. So this is part of the runup to the civil war and the fugitive issue becomes part of that but the point i wanted to make that is obvious in a way that we might forget is that without the slaves running away none of this would have happened. Im going to become an issue in the National Political debate. Its probably noting as well the act of 1850 was probably the most unamerican of the law because it didnt give the person that is being accused of having been a fugitive. It was to release the person. Its very unamerican in that regard. Its a property operation. The owner would turn up with a deed or description to say heres proof that he escaped and i own him told him and i purchased him come heres the deed and thats it its like finding a piece of furniture. There is no trial by jury, no local authorities involved. They found this an outrageous violation of Civil Liberties in the United States therefore thats why it heightened the tension because far outside of the movement. It is a judicial procedure. Host and of course the war comes into president lincoln makes it very clear the south had nothing to fear in terms of him attacking their domestic institutions and so in the first doctoral address, he is very clear that he is going to enforce all of the walls including the fugitive slave act and associate associated very clear before he actually was sworn in. He is willing to ensure that act was enforced. They were caught up in it and we could never be certain. He was strongly opposed to the western expansion of slavery but he never called for the violation. Lincoln was a lawyer and who believed in the role of the law in a famous letter in 1855 to his friend a slave owner in kentucky he said about fugitives i hate to see them hunted down by bite my lip and keep silent. This was in the constitution the sixth of all law. He said i dont believe in a higher law. I dont believe that you cannot abide by the moral law rather than the actual law on the books its not only expansion of slavery although i would like the law to be amended so that a free person couldnt be caught up. They were sent back and cannot testify. From the very beginning they run away to the union army in maryland but say in the army sends them back to his owners early on but that begins to fall apart. They send them back and lincoln himself. This is a sign how the war itself begins to destabilize the institution of slavery. Host you introduce the historical figures. He was a key underground Railroad Agent for people coming into philadelphia and who himself actually kept a record of some of the people who arrived. Really interesting details of their lives. Then there was william j. And john j. To who were involved with working with fugitives that were representing them legally. I was most intrigued by napoleon. Can you tell us about that particular figure and how instrumental he was to new york . Guest hes one of the most important figures. Ive studied the century and ive heard of john j. And i do about william i never heard of napoleon when i started looking through this document the record of the fugitives would say napoleon took them to the station or who is this napoleon . He is a black man born in new york in 1800 which meant the law had been passed. They had to serve an apprenticeship of 21 years to his owner until he became fully free. By the 1840s napoleon is working in the office of what they called the antislavery office where there are newspapers published that his job is to help fugitive slaves. She goes and needs them at the train depot and then they are sent to upstate new york and canada. They go to get rid of pbs corpus for people who are brought to the state trying to get them free. Whats interesting about Louis Napoleon is that he is illiterate. There are papers marked with an x. And yet he is an activist, very courageous and he takes Funding Legal cases and i know nothing about him until i discovered him in the manuscript. Napoleon had gotten pbs corpus to free some slaves brought into the state by a virginian. The lawyer says in the case is this Louis Napoleon who was brought to the emperor of france and john who was representing them says no she is a much better man. So napoleon was a very outstanding courageous man. Host hes just one of many that are so involved in helping these fugitives. We know so much about. Tubman has made several trips out to free relatives and people she didnt even know. We dont know about these other people. We dont know what these people until now who are escaping either individually or in groups. Can you tell us a little about how their experiences showed the diversity of why people left and what they encountered around the way and what theyve received in the system once they arrived in new york. They were names we never heard of before but have interesting stories. These were all names of the record of the fugitives. Unlike Harriet Tubman who is pretty well known of course. But the thing that struck me the most in reading this document is the incredible friday of the ways in which people escaped. Some escaped on foot which is a traditional idea they went through the woods at night but actually most deadend escape that way. They worship captains in virginia that were willing to hide the fugitives on the boat heading north. They had to pay the money to do that. Some of them eastgate on train. If you could get the papers you could get on a train and go to the north. Some of them appropriated the horsedrawn carriages and fled from maryland to pennsylvania. Many of them eastgate in groups and that is another thing that surprised me, groups of relatives and women with small children even come it is difficult to do that of course. They were held by people either slaves or free that would point them on their way and give them some food and hide them along the way. They didnt go from station to station. There were these stations in the south. Its below the line where it was once they got over the border into pennsylvania they encountered many farmers in southern pennsylvania and then they were sent to pennsylvania where they ran the vigilance committee. He would very quickly put them on a train to new york and notify them by telegram that two are coming or Something Like that. They would meet them at the depot. You couldnt stay in philadelphia. You were liable to be captured. It was to get them moving on to upstate new york which is a lot safer but after 1850 had to get to canada because of the fugitive slave law. It is a commentary that these were people immigrating to the United States to seek freedom but here were people that had to flee the United States for another country to enjoy liberty. Host not just the fugitives either but free black people who were leaving the United States and coming to canada because they dont feel safe anymore. They dont feel safe in the south and they dont even feel safe in places like about you and new york either. You could escaped 30 years before and loved it perfectly law abiding life in new york and are still liable to be grabbed and sent back to slavery. Moreover because of the law that we discussed it was hard to prove you were not the slave. In the 1850s is the only decade. They avoided the danger posed by the fugitive slave law. Host you mentioned the fact that women are sometimes fleeing as well. It is a story that you dont hear very much about. They were hoping the fugitives when he arrived in the city as well. Can you tell us a little bit about what they are doing. Guest you have these families one of whom i wrote about. She and other women had a circle where they just made clothing because they were wearing rags basically when they escaped and she said we didnt want them to look like slaves so we made this clothing for them. In new york and other cities women held these antislavery bazaars or affairs where they sold things and sometimes the money would go to help fugitive slaves like bake sales. In the 1850s they were going to raise money. It was both male and female working to assist. They are antislavery that but many of them are also antiblack how do you explain this . Guest it was deeply embedded in the society in the 19th century and this is something that i often find it difficult how could you be antislavery and racist at the same time . There were plenty of reasons that had nothing to do with it. You could think its an economic drag on the country. You could could think that it gives too much political power. You dont want to slavery going into the western territories. They dont want blacks around or slaves or free blacks around so they oppose the expansion on the ground. Even the same person could be contradictory. Definitely an evolutionist, no question about it. He had a big firm. They will not come to the shop if they see black people working there so im not hiring any blacks but on the other hand he held blacks in his home and gave a lot of money to the movement so even in his own life you could see the contradiction which proves people and history are complicated. Host despite this you have some of the states passing these laws. What was the reaction of southerners to this . Guest many states tried to procedures either to just make it more fair said they would say they have to have a trial by jury or they try to impede the rendition by saying no public official can help or arrest a fugitive. Public jails cannot be used. Some of them were put off by the law because they seem to be a direct violation of the constitutional obligation of the north to return fugitive slaves. If they are going to pass the law taking away that constitutional right, how can we trust that they will not violate other constitutional rights. So they became another part of the conflict. And you get this situation where the states are calling for another big code modification where the southerners are usually associated with the doctrine of qualification. Host when the war is over and there are no more fugitives to assist the members of the committees we channel the efforts, so to speak and they try to ensure the quality for the newly emancipated. Given the role of africanamericans the role they played, why was it so difficult for people to convince white americans that africanamericans were entitled to more than just freedom. Guest the first woman to edit the newspaper was the editor of the antislavery before they took over the post. She said right at the end of the civil war something to the effect that the problem is that slavery was abolished because of a miserable military necessity. They called on people more than south to have this transformation to understand and admit that slavery was a sin and a crime and when they acknowledge that they would abolish slavery. Many people came to support the slavery because they felt it was necessary to defeat the south but that of course doesnt carry with it the commitment to the quality. Now as you know in the immediate aftermath of the civil war as the Southern States pass the measures trying to almost put them back into slavery, the socalled black codes and things like that many northerners were outraged even if they were not egalitarians they were trying to undo the civil war. We can balance the slavery and they wont accept that and so for a time they supported measures to protect the basic rights of the former slaves. The act of 1866 eventually even giving blacks the right to vote in the south which launches the south which launches the radical reconstruction. Those had a pretty widespread support for complicated reasons but then by the 1870s it is reasserting itself into the commitment to black in quality not just quality not just in the south but in the north. Certainly it was always there but wide by this time do they throw up their hands and say enough already we are not going to do anything else to help people. Guest i wrote a book about this. I think it did wane a bit in the end of the civil war partly because the black soldiers 200,000 into some of them died to save the nation but that convinced many that they deserve basic citizenship rights. People want normalcy. They dont want a constant crisis. There is a desire to return back to normal. The country also enters severe economic depression which is sort of sort of takes the public sentiment in the north away from the issues to economic questions of unemployment and that sort of thing so the commitment is a complicated story. Racism has a lot to do but obviously, so does the rise of the social darwinism among intellectuals and others that you cant do much to change the hierarchy of the people at the top are the thickest set to take those at the top and try to him leftparen is against nature, to save a species that is going to be doomed because of the evolutionary conflict of Something Like that. So all of these become grounds to say we did our best. Its up to them to forge their way in society. Its to intervene and help them. They are was reconstruction so i feel comfortable asking you this question even though there wasnt a focus of the book. Even though there were efforts what do you see is the greatest failure as the greatest failure of the postemancipation era. They were not supposed to be involved in what is that its always fun to do that so lets do that for a moment. The greatest failure is a simple thing which is the commitment to enforcing the law. The price was falling throughout this period. If they distributed land then you would have given an Economic Foundation to the freedom that they have acquired its better to have landed landed in the plot of land if you are in an Agricultural Society but that wouldnt have been a panacea either. They were in dire straits and the failure which could have been avoided. They are saying we passed the law and changed the constitution they enforced it for a while that the commitment but the commitment waned and it took almost another hundred years. In the construction of the 1960s when again the federal government finally stepped in. Then things changed. People understood they have to abide by what the law is. Host it wouldnt have made much difference. Guest it would have been i dont think that it was a full solution. Its much better to have land but the plight was desperate throughout the south and throughout the world. Many lost their land and thats why you have the populist movement in the 1890s. So in and of itself was not enough. Host in my own research i found in virginia its very different from mississippi or alabama. Guest postconsumer in other areas there and other areas there was a possibility that people would have at least been economically independent of the would have been very poor, but they wouldnt have to rely on the very people that had enslaved them. Guest a considerable number did acquire land, but they still lost. Host in terms of your review of the records of those arriving in new york, was most surprised you about that collection . Guest whats most surprised me was the resourcefulness of the people that planned for years how they were going to escape. They have been to come upon them. Ive heard this. But its this variety. We are talking mostly about people in the upper south. Most of the people are from maryland, district of columbia or virginia where it is a little different from the deep south although it is still slavery and it is just a variety of experiences. No escapes are the same, no personal experiences are the same. The one thing that is constant is the desire for freedom. When they ask why do we escaped some gave very specific reasons my master treated me so brutally etc. Often times they said my wife was sold or i was afraid i was going to be sold into the masters were losing money, but many of them said i was tired of being a slave. I wanted to be free. So there was a kaleidoscope of experiences and impressions. By the way and let me say that record is now online. We have digitalized it with a transcript and if anyone wants to pour through it just, you can google it and you will find a link to it put up by the Library System and its fascinating stuff. Host i know that you are familiar with the collection. How do the records compared with today at all . Guest he is still online in the Historical Society and not all of them have survived that very similar he still was not a journalist and still you dont get the stories he recorded because hes a journalist and hes writing although hes writing newspaper articles here. You can use the two together to link to stories. So over half the people that pass through new york city came from they still talk about their experiences. They got to new york and the way he sent them from new york so also you could use them to see if they are consistent. Its what they were told still. You can use that information to track down who were the owners. Is this true okay he said i is gaped from the plantation in maryland and he owned 50 slaves. There he is in exactly the right county. So you begin to find that they are quite reliable when you can check them against other sources and you can also see the information and go back to the Baltimore Sun and find the fugitive ads where the owner will actually put an ad in the newspaper reward of 100 for the person that will get him. If anyone can get him and bring him back. So that is a pretty good illustration of where they came from and who owned them into the physical description so you put all this evidence together and you get a pretty comprehensive picture. Host do we have any sense of how successful these people were that it escaped to the north . Guest the problem is most of them just disappear. Some of them pop up in the canadian census. There was a census in canada and a number of them are living there and they are recorded in the ontario opposite of buffalo and there were these settlements so we know for some of them what they were doing and the job but most of them disappear. We cannot track them down. Some of the most famous ones you can. We know his story. We know frederick douglass. Some of them pop up in these records but most of them we know little about what happened after they managed to get to freedom. Host its extraordinary how willing people were to go to great lengths. They are walking great distances men and women. If i have to walk more than a few blocks but these people are walking sometimes 200 miles. These are extraordinary stories. Guest thank you for saying that. Ive written a lot of books as youve said. These are stories of unknown people which can be claimed for the document that we have put together here and i just wanted people to get a sense of what it was like to escape. They are walking hundreds of miles. Some of them were arrested and then he escaped from jail and continued on their way. So i think its just that these stories of ordinary people we know little about other than how they escaped but i also would like people to take away admiration for the people working on the underground railroad. Weve gone from a fairly tense. Co. Of Race Relations because of some famous events that have taken place in ferguson and Staten Island new york this is an example of an interracial movement of people working together for the just cause and that is i think part of our history we can look back on with great pride. Host there is a series airing this week titled book of negroes and of course its about those africanamericans who evacuated new york at the end of the American Revolution so they are talking about the population. Have you had the opportunity to see the episodes . Guest i dont watch tv much. I shouldnt say this because we are on tv but ive heard about it and i hope it will be repeated or maybe i can just stream it online. Of course the book of negroes is new york city during the revolution new york was occupied by the british. They offered freedom to any patriots not available in the list that of a patriot who got to the lines in several thousand slaves got to new york city to gain the freedom and when it was over George Washington came up to new york to negotiate a surrender and he said we would like them back and the commander said unfortunately i cant give them back because it would be dishonorable. We promised these people their freedom. Clinton wasnt in abolitionist. The repricing at this time in the west indies. He said we have promised freedom and he keeps his promises. So somewhere above 3000 slaves left with the british including George Washingtons own slaves i would like you to keep an eye out for a couple of my slaves. They scattered all over the place ive been in canada, britain, sierra leone. Some of them were sold back into slavery by the british and the west indies so they had their own interesting stories but the fact that 3000 or so africanamericans gained their liberty in the british is another sign of the contradiction in American History right from the birth of the republic. Host the book is called gateway to freedom the history of the underground railroad. Thank you so much for joining us today. Guest thank you for having me. That was after words, booktv Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, Public Public policymakers and others familiar with their material. After words airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. I was at the marine corps at this point and did my first tour and came back and noticed immediately getting off the plane in california going to a bar and my best friend took me to this bar near the airport and we went to this club and it was an intimate scene. I remember looking out over the people and i could tell everyone was drinking and talking and socializing as if nothing had changed and i remember there was no particular reason to feel angry or upset and it struck me that i had changed. I remember not being interested in what was going on and i left and i think i went to use the atm at a local store and one thing about san diego is all of the stores are run by iraqis and so i went in and the owner was from baghdad so i ended up talking with him and i was just off the plane not really fitting in and what do i do, i walked next door and we started talking about the baghdad and hes like lets go over. There is a very strange feeling of apartness i felt returning in 2004 and i was also angry about the war could have been prosecuted. I have seen the tail end of the battle of falluja and marines that were explaining to me what they saw was gross mismanagement, poor leadership and completely irrational policymaking that they had lost men as a result of this and then a few weeks later it happened in the country and no wmd and then i was in iraq returning in july 2004 and a just a few months later in November George w. Bush was reelected and for me that was a difficult process to understand and in 2003 and 2004 it was difficult to accept that people would in the face of knowledge turn and re elect the person that had been in the first place and as i began researching and i began to develop symptoms of my own there was a Movie Theater in 2009 fast forwarding briefly in an action film there was an explosion that resembled one and i was a shot from the point of view where i would be in the humvee that was overwhelming for me and i sort of backed out and when i regained full consciousness i was in the hallway of the cineplex. There was an explosion and i began to sense on a personal level dot all was right upstairs and i didnt have full control of my memories. One i interviewed for the book told me having ptsd was like having memories gone wild to take on their own life so that is one of the impetus for me to begin examining not just in a personal level but also the historical entity. I was curious was a shortcut to the honest engagement with your service and post or service i thought of as a way to dodge responsibility until i started looking into it and started having these symptoms and what i discovered recently is that the original people that fought fall for the diagnosis in the 1970s felt very similarly to how i felt and the founder of the group that advocated for the diagnosis in the 70s, they solve a founder in his view there was no distinction to be made between the politics and their own personal psychological struggle and out of that conversation and acknowledgment came the diagnosis that we have today. Now joining us on booktv is a professor of jurisprudence here at princeton university. We want to talk to him about one of his most recent books conscience and it enemies of the liberal secularism. How do you define liberal secularism . It competes with other views some secular but not liberal and some religious. Its a view that is very common in places like the one we are right now in the University Community is i would venture to say it is a sector of the culture and its prominent in europe of course that has become a secular society. It embraces ideas about liberty and personality that are distinctive and in our own time with socially liberal views about matters of sexuality abortion, life and death issues, generally identity issues