The same place anyway. After words airs every saturday at 10 p. M. And again sunday at 9 p. M. Eastern. And you can watch all previous after words programs on our web site, booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations] good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to barnes noble upper west side. Tonight i have the distinct pleasure of introducing author sean wilentz, a George Henry Davis 1886 professor of American History at Princeton University and author of the vancroft prize winning the rise of american democracy, bob dylan in america and many other works. He brings us today his new book, the politicians and the egalitarians the Hidden History of american politics, in which he reminds us of the commanding role Party Politics has played in our struggle against economic be inequality. At nations founding, americans believed that wealth extremes would destroy their revolutionary experiment in republican government. That idea has since shaped National Political conflict. Mr. Wilentz transforms our understanding of this nations political and moral character. Historian and intellectual Henry Louis Gates jr. Writes wilentz influences a vast knowledge of the american past while exploring in his unique way the interplay between raw Party Politics and the ebb and flow of reform efforts. In offering his take on pivotal figures from jefferson to duboise, lincoln to lbj, wilentz challenges us to debate history and ideas in a way that honors the best of the democratic system he has written about so provocatively throughout his career. Even when i most disagree with him, his arguments are always vigorous and passionate, lively and engaging. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming author sean wilentz. [applause] thank you, maya, for that lovely introduction. Thank you all for coming out on this rainy night. Its great to be back at barnes noble on 82nd. Im back home. Its great to be here. It always seems to rain when im here. I dont know why that is. At any rate, okay. The book tonight is the politicians and the egalitarians. A few words of background. Im going the read a tear amount to read a fair amount because thats the best way to get across what this book is about. But a little bit of background. Sometimes you write a book without realizing youre writing it, and that was very much the case with this book. Back in 2001 i wrote an essay about egalitarianism in american political life. And it was about economic egalitarianism, it was called the lost egalitarian tradition, and it came out just after 9 11, and nobody cared. It bombed. As far as i know, the editor and i are the only two people who read it. Some years later i was thinking about politics and postpartisan ship, and just at time when the president , president obama, was beginning to become even more partisan so that kind of fell away too. But i realized that, in fact, those two essays put together actually had an argument to them. And the more i thought about that argument, the more i realized that id actually been making that argument for a very long time. In one way or another, in a variety of essays and reviews and all sorts of things. So i looked over that a lot and thought, well, you know, with a fair amount of work, theres a book here on this theme of politics, equaltarianism, Party Politics and how they Work Together and how they have worked together in the american past. So here it is. This is the result. The politicians and the be egalitarians. Two groups and maybe the key to the entire title is this very nice, sweet provided by the publisher whos actually here this wonderful ampersand in the title. The ampersand is about the and. Very often americans think of political life as pitting politicians against egalitarians. Egalitarians against the politicians. Theyre always at odds. Politicians wont do anything unless pushed, egalitarians the politicians think are all a bunch of kooks. Well, american politics, i argue, works at its best when those two groups converge. Indeed, you can actually understand american political history, the great events in political history in those moments, and theyre very unusual very often. They dont happen all the time, when the politicians and the egalitarians actually converge. And thats really what that book is about. But it is a book of parts, and it begins actually and i want to open this up. Its not simply about hard headed politics, it actually has a moral purpose as well. And that moral purpose is underlined in the epigraph which comed from reinhold neiper. Ill read it. It may be well for the statesman to know that statesmanship easily degenerates into opportunism and cannot be distinguished from dishonesty. But the prophet ought to realize that his higher perspective and the uncompromising nature of his judgments always has a note of irresponsibility in it. Francis of assisi may have been a better christian that Pope Innocent iii, but it may be questioned whether his moral superiority over latter was as absolute as it seemed. Nor is there any reason to believe that abraham lincoln, the statesman and opportunist, was morally inferior to William Lloyd garrison, the prophet. The moral achievement of a statesman must be judged in terms which take into account the limit of Human Society which the prophet need not consider. That is the moral underpinning of this book. And i lay it out in the introduction, and ill read some more from there. There are two keys to unlocking the secrets of american politics and american political history. Current historians in their enthusiasm for incite of a new and attractive sort have mislaid these keys, and now they are hidden from sight. Once recovered, though, and put to use, the keys quickly demonstrate their usefulness. The first key is to recognize both the permanent be reality and the effectiveness of partisanship and Party Politics. Americans have been loathe to believe these things. The founding generation distrusted parties. The frame beers of the constitution designed a National Government they hoped would avoid partisanships, debase ambitions and destructive tendencies. Americans in our own time, we think likewise. We deplore partisanship. We want government conducted in a lofty manner without adversarial confrontation and chaos. But more than 200 years of antipartisanship has produced nothing. This is because despite their intentions, the framers built a political system which inspired partisan politics. After some badlyneeded constitutional tinkering, the system soon fostered the rise of professional massbased national parties. A nation as large and diverse as United States has required parties both to turn discontent boo laws and institutions into laws and institutions and to prevent chronic political breakdown. Americans devised election rules that hand victory to the winner of a plurality of votes which, according to the axioms of political science, virtually assures a twoparty system in which third parties do not last. Possibly politics is built in partisan politics is built into human nature. It is certainly built into the the american version of human nature. And partisan politics has survived because in the United States its worked well or well enough. Historians nowadays dismiss this basic truth. They regard Political Parties as hindrances to democracy and glorified political outsiders and social mental cruelties. Movements. They point with justice to the countless and unending episodes of partisan politicians corrupting our politics and sustaining social wrongs. Yet the great issues in our history have been settled not from friction between politicians and egalitarians, but from the convergence of protests and politics. Party democracy has succeeded even in addressing the most oppress i have of all oppressive of all american problems which was slavery. Impeded by a party system designed to keep slavery out of national politics, antislavery partisans and politicians built parties of their own, and the carefullyrigged party system fell apart, and the election to presidency of one of those, abraham lincoln, forced the crisis that led to the slaveholders rebellion and, in time, emancipation. Ever since all the Great American social legislation from the progressive era to the new deal to the Great Society has been achieved by and through the Political Parties. The second key to american political history is the recognition that from the very start americans have recognized and sometimes been consumed by the need to combat economic privilege and to strengthen what walt whitman called, quote, the true tbraffation hold, a vast intertwining articulation of wealth. Sometimes breaking through the surface be, sometimes returning underground. Americans have fought endlessly about the meaning of democracy and about Government Authority and about rights and about social justice. Running through these fights has been a recurring insistence that vast material inequalities directly threaten democracy. This, too, weve been reluctant to see. The founding generation did not proclaim economic equality as the founders believed that sound Political Institutions would sustain a just and harmonious society. We dont read about it in the declaration of independence and the constitution or the bill of rights. We do read about it though in numerous pamphlets and speeches as well as in the correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and conflicts over economic privilege dominated american politics, national politics, from the battles between jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to the furious clashes of era of andrew jackson. Slavery first stunted and then deformed american democracy and its racist legacy is complicated, distorted and sometimes disrupted the politics of economic inequality. Not only does white racism sustain and deepen great disparities of wealth, it has stashed American History so strongly that economic inequality has become symptomatic of racial injustice. To talk about one has often meant talking about the other. Thus, when antislavery forces attacked human bondage as immoral, they also attacked it as the cornerstone of hateful economic and political privilege as exercised by the aristocratic slave power and its northern accomplices. The war became a war of emancipation, but it was also from the start a fight to vindicate american democracy against a domineering and finally secessionist slaveocracy, its wealth and power be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. After the egalitarian impulses of the civil war years dissipate bed, an ideology of individualism, White Supremacy and the blessings of big business subdued all talks of ine what until inequality. Efforts were crushed after the overthrow of reconstruction and created a new class of Industrial Workers which suffered harsh repression. The socalled Progressive Movement and even more the new deal brought the issue of economic inequality back front and center as in time did Lyndon JohnsonsGreat Society which transcended the new deal by joining the fight for economic equality to the one for racial justice. But in the late 1960s, the egalitarian politics unleashed by the Great Depression and then recast by the Civil Rights Movement began losing steam and losing its way. The long conservative era heralded by the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 seemed a repudiation of Great Society egalitarianism. Conservatives advanced regressive economic and fiscal policies and launched a divisive and politically devastating culture war based on race and religion. Disscenting egalitarian dissenting egalitarian politics became framed, pundits wondered why so many ordinary americans seemed to willing to vote against their economic interests. Historians tried to explain the shortcomings and continual failures in american politics. Yet the issue of economic equality has been the great perennial question Many American political history. In american political history. In the has come back into focus this has come back into focus since the Great Recession of 2008, between the wealthiest americans and the rest of the country. How long the refocusing will last, its hard to tell. But it does prompt us to look at where it does prompt us to the look where we have not wanted to look when considering past politics in the United States and to see things that we have a failed to see. So with these two keys, the primacy of Party Politics and the eternal underlying question of economic privilege and inequality, whole of american political history begins to emerge more clearly. In the beginning, democracy in america rested on the proposition that vast inequalities of wealth were relate threatening and intolerable. Securing that proposition since then has required fitting it into Party Politics, which has not always been ease is city to do. Political leaders otherwise hostile to economic privilege have been crippled by their connections to slavery and jim crow segregation. At times Neither National party has been alert to widening gaps of power. Relations between Party Politics and protest politics have sometimes been fraught, and in the absence of capable leadership, they have become destructive. Till, the drive still, the driving force in american political history has been the effort to curb the power of concentrated wealth whether the power of the slaveholders or industrial pollute cat plutocrats. Often egalitarians berate politicians as slowmoving wafflelers and politicians despair of the obliviousness to democratic government. But just as it is crucial in a democracy for egalitarians to agitate, so it is vital that politicians do all they can to advance equality within the limits of Public Opinion and the constitution. Sometimes to the point of amending the constitution as with the final destruction of slavery. American political history can be understood as the fitful history of the politicians expect egalitariansbe of the fateful occasions when their labors converge. I should have stopped then, because thats basically it. Thats what i came here to argue in this book. But theres more. Theres a lot more. Basically, there are two essays at the start, one on partisanship and postpartisanship and antipartisanship this america and the contest over whether parties are a good thing or a bad thing. Arguing in the end the postartisans and antipartisans, they always come to nothing. A second essay on the egalitarian tradition updated to get through 2008 to show how, in fact, that idea has been the idea that, in fact, these wide disparities of wealth will ruin american democracy, how its changed, how its altered, how its threaded through American History sometimes plunging underground, but sometimes coming back up as it very much has since 2008, as is very evident in the current president ial campaign. And having done all of that in two essays, i then move on to look at some specifics. So we have chapters on Thomas Jefferson well, starting with tom paine to Thomas Jefferson, theres a piece on john quincy adams, lots on abraham lincoln, two chapters, on through to lyndon johnson. So what i think ill do before taking questions and how much more time have i got . Let me make sure. Is maya out there . How much more time have i got . [inaudible] 510 minutes. Well, lets see. In 510 minutes, what do you want, do you want to hear Thom Jefferson or w. E. B. Dubois . [inaudible] dubois wins right away. Thats good. Im happy to the read that part. He fits chronologically in the middle of book, and hes important because, well, youll see. In his mysterious education printed in 1907, the aging henry adam belatedly ushered in the century with accelerated historical time. A few years earlier, his fellow new englander and harvard man, the young w. E. B. Dubois, ushered in the new century with his poetic, equally mysterious the souls of black folk, and with it a prophesy of his own. Quote the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. Both prophesies still live with as many por tents for the rest of the century ahead as for the one just passed. The two men apparently never met or corresponded. Adams left his teaching post at harvard 111 years before du 11 years before dubois arrived, although he did end up working with adamsty signing disciple, hart. One was the chronicler of insiderhood, the other was the chronicler of marginality. Yet their careers and legacies bear comparison. Both trained in berlin as well as harvard without enslaving themes to its ponderous prose style. Neither intended to become a historian, and both wrote master works of American History fixed on what each believed was the nations development. Both wrote novels in which a woman was the protagonist. More famously, both were men of autobiographical imagination who wrote achingly of leading double lives, grandly acquitting the burdens of that doubleness with america itself. Long after his death, adams was remembered as an important historian, but was read mainly by professionals. His reputation revived roughly 60 years ago, achieving nearly cultish proproportions mainly because of the education. The post