Broke loose on the night of the future, jordan wrote it werent the klan done this, it was just ordinary people of the county. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Excited to be here tonight to be able to talk with you about my new book, my first book, if this be treason, hopefully just the first of many. As most of you know, my name is jeremy duda, and i know many of you know me as a political reporter for the arizona times, ive been delving into the arizona political scene. The politics, especially arizona politics is, of course, a passion of mine, but i think those of you who know we personally me personally know probably my greatest passion is history. If youve been to my house, youve seen wall after wall of doublestacked history books. I got the opportunity last year, and the result is if this be treason. Before i start, i want to extend a special thanks to changing hands bookstore, a fantastic local bookstore that has [applause] giving me this opportunity to come and talk with you tonight. Also a special thanks to cspan which is here recording this for booktv, which is good because its also been to dream of mine to be on booktv. [applause] so if you though someone who wanted to come or you just find me so captivating that you feel compelled to watch this again, it will be on booktv hopefully very soon. [laughter] so the original title of this book was almost treason, and i think that goes a long way towards kind of explaining the concept behind the book. Another thing i think that helps probably explain it a little is our recently ended president ial election. I dont know if you noticed, but it was a very contentious affair [laughter] certainly the most contentious president ial election of my lifetime, and treason was a word that probably on a daily basis if you were on social media you heard being thrown around, applied to both major party candidates, so is their supporters to their supporters, and i wouldnt blame you if you didnt notice, it was a lowkey affair thatll mostly be remembered for its grace and civility. [laughter] but some of those accusations were flying around just a bit. But when people say treason, what do they really mean . You know, treason is defined in the u. S. Constitution as levying war against the United States or providing aid or comfort to its enemies. Its actually the only crime defined in the u. S. Constitution, and the framers had a very specific reason for doing that. Under british rule, which they were very familiar with, treason was applied to a great many to offenses that were simply, you know, simply used against people who were opposing the government speaking out, to posing the king. Opposing the king. In one of the cases ill be discussing tonight from my book, there was a Supreme Court justice who noted that under british rule treason was not only raising a hand against the king, but simply thinking murderous thoughts about the king. And we saw an example of that at the constitutional convention. One of the delegates, when they were debating this provision, recalled the case of an englishman who had wished death upon a man, an unknown man who had killed his favorite buck. Unfortunately for him, that man turned out to be the king, and for wishing death upon the king even though he had no way of knowing who it was he was convicted of treason. As i said, the framers were very familiar with the way that the treason laws could be abused, and they wanted to make sure that couldnt they wanted to try and prevent that from happening in their new country, so they put the definition in the constitution to that congress would not be able to change it at its whim. Now that, of course, has not people from using the word treason over and over and over again, but most of the time you hear it such as, you know, certain president ial elections or pretty much any election, any Political Blog anywhere, most of the times you hear that, what people really mean by that is not that theyre levying war against the United States. They mean that they feel like someone is being disloyal to the u. S. , theyre betraying the country, theyre being seditious in some way. Its kind of a i know it when i see it definition of treason. And there was one incident in particular that actually, of that that actually inspired this book, and id love to be able to take credit for it, but my publishers came up with the idea and let me run wild with the rest of the book. You may remember in 2015, just last year, president obama was trying to negotiate a deal with iran to end the countrys nuclear program. Republicans were not happy about how that deal was going, and 47 republican senators, led by tom cotton of arkansas, sent a letter to the leaders of iran warning him, warning them that any deal they reached with obama would need senate ratification, and if they didnt get that, then it could just be scrapped by the next president. If youve been following the news lately, it seems like a pretty likely outcome at this point. Now democrats, Senate Democrats accused senator cotton of violating an archaic 1789 law called the logan act. And some even went so far as to accuse him of treason. Now, the logan act may sound a little bit familiar from our recent president ial election. Just a few months ago, which i know seems like an eternity at this point, you know, donald trump made a comment imploring the russians to release Hillary Clintons missing emails, and democrats said, you know, thats a violation of the hogan act, again like with senator cotton, some said, hey, thats treason. But the incident with senator cotton, i think, is a really good launching point for a discussion of this book not only because that incident was the inspiration behind the book, but because the logan act the law he was accused of breaking is the focus of my first chapter. Ive got 12 chant chapters plus an epilogue, and as much as id love to get into all of them, that would keep you here until midnight. So im going to focus on a small handful, and im going to start with the logan act. In 1798 the United States and france were on the brink of war. It was a time known as the cause iwar. France was at war with a bunch of its neighbors in europe, and it was trying to stop neutral shipping from sending goods to its enemies. That, unfortunately, included us. They were attacking our shipping, capturing our sailors, and war seemed pretty imminent at that point especially because congress and the white house under president john adams were controlled by the Federalist Party which was pretty hostile to france. The Democratic Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson, very profrench and antiwar, but they were in the minority and out of power, didnt have a lot, you know, not a lot they could do about it. So in the midst of all this, there was one democratic republican who thought maybe he could do something about this. He wasnt a congressman or anything like that, he was a philadelphia doctor named george logan. You know, he was a democratic republican, a friend of Thomas Jefferson personally. He was a quaker, a pacifist, very profrench. And he thought if he could just get the france and somehow meet with frances leaders, he just might be able to kind of talk them back from the edge and keep his country out of war. So george logan, you know, he was a pretty prominent person, you know, in his day, but certainly no one of the stature that you would imagine would be needed to go and actually negotiate with a foreign countrys leaders. Itd be kind of like one of you taking out a second mortgage to, you know, go to iran and try to negotiate a better nuclear deal. This is basically what he did. He spent his own money, actually sold several parcels of land to finance this trip, and he went to france, and he actually was able to meet with frances leaders. He got an audience with the leader of the french directory. France had seen the wisdom of walking things back too. They realized another war was not exactly what they needed at the time, so its kind of impossible to determine what George Logans impact was. But the french certainly thought there was a lot of impact for his attempt to come there and make peace. He was hailed as a hero, he was a guest of honor at state dinners, he became a celebrity in paris. Now, you would think that he would probably receive similar treatment back in his home country for going out on his own initiative and trying to make peace. That was most emphatically not the case. The federalists were outraged. They viewed this as inexcusable interference in americas foreign policy, and by someone with what they viewed as very dubious profrench sympathies as well. You know, they basically viewed, or many of them anyway, viewed the democratic republicans as kind of a fifth column seeking to import the atheistic mob rule of the french revolution to america. So they wanted to do manager to make sure that something to make sure that someone like george logan could never do this again, and what that ended up being was the logan act, making it a crime for a private citizen without authorization from the government to correspond directly or even indirectly with a foreign power over any dispute or controversy involving the United States. Now, this has turned out to be pretty much one of the most worthless laws ever passed by congress, and i know thats a very high bar [laughter] but they might have set it back in 1799 when they passed this. You know, Something Like 225 years since it was passed, not a Single Person has actually been convicted of violating this law, and only once has someone actually even been with charged with it. That is a distinction that belongs to a kentucky farmer named Francis Flournoy. Back in 1803, he felt and stop me if youve heard this anytime lately, he felt like the political elites on the eastern seaboard were out of touch with the rest of america and not paying attention to americans needs. In the absence of any new York Real Estate moguls to vote for, he decided he was going to write an article under a pseudonym in a local newspaper calling for kentucky and other western states to secede from the union and form a union with the french territory to their west. This was shortly before the louisiana purchase. France still controlled all that land. The local u. S. Attorney who, perhaps a bit overzealous, decided this was indirect correspondence with a foreign country, indicted him under the logan act. Now, there isnt a lot in the historic to call record about this case was it was, obviously because it was, obviously, very flimsy from the start, fell apart quickly and never went to trial. Was dropped before ever going to trial. So while the logan act carries a edgety of 5,000 and up to three years this prison, the worst penalty Francis Flournoy faced was to become a historical footnote for authors like me. [laughter] the only thing that the logan act has ever been good for is accusing your political enemies of violating that. We saw that in the past couple years with tom cotton and donald trump facing accusations from the democrats. A few years earlier, republicans made a similar action against nancy pelosi for a trip she took to syria. Jesse jackson for trying to get back american hostages, for jim wright, to helped negotiate an end to the nicaraguan civil war. The the Nixon Administration thought about filing charges against jane fonda for her trip to vietnam. Process perot even when he was trying to get missing servicemen back after the vietnam war ended, and, obviously, nothing has ever come from any of this. Now, as we see from george logan who had nothing but the best of intentions having good intentions is absolutely no protection from being accused of treason which is very much an accusation he faced from the federalists in congress. They denounced him on the senate floor, basically, as a traitor. Hes actually not the only person who found his way into my book for trying to make peace. The other was a man named nicholas tryst. Now, tryst did not betray his country or government so much as he betrayed his president which, of course, under the british was kind of one and the same, and there actually is no question he betrayed his president. He was quite open about this. But whether he was doing this in the best interest of his country is a completely other matter. In 1847 we were in the middle of a war with mexico, and at that point we had marched very far south into the country, conquered a lot of territory, and president james k. Polk decided it was time to make peace on extremely generous terms for the United States, of course. So he and secretary of state James Buchanan sent tryst to mexico as a peace envoy. They wanted him to negotiate a peace deal, they gave him a set of terms. There was the minimum that polk was willing to accept which was a border at the Rio Grande River in texas and, basically, all the land that were standing on here today, the land we ultimately got, and then there was a few otherring concessions he wanted to get but, you know, werent particularly important and, you know, how much he was able to pay the Mexican Government for this land was dependent on how much he was able to get. Now, tryst seemed like a very safe choice to send to mexico. He was a loyal southern democrat, a very loyal supporter to buchanan, he was the second in command at the state department, and he was a very strong supporter of the war which was very controversial. He turned out to not be quite as safe as president polk had thought. Once tryst got to mexico, he was kind of appalled by what he saw. He basically viewed it as an unabashed war of conquest and an abuse of power by the United States, various shame to what his country was doing to mexico. And so he was having some serious misgivings about this war that hed supported, and he was supposed to negotiate an end to. Now, at this time, you know, mexico was losing the war badly, but they did not want to sit down at the negotiating table. They were, you know, proud, they wanted to fight, they wanted to keep fighting even though they were losing. So finally they got to a point where tryst was getting kind of desperate to, you know, to get them to the negotiating table. There was a temporary ceasefire, and genuinefield scott was on the out general Winfield Scott was on the outskirts of mexico city ready to invade, and tryst started offering a little bit more than president polk would have been comfortable with. He offered them the harbor of san diego which was very important to president polk, that he obtain that. He offered a neutral zone between the two disputed borders, and nothing ever came of this. But word eventually got back to washington, and president polk and secretary buchanan heard about this, and they went through the roof. They very quickly concluded that sending tryst to mexico was a huge mistake and immediately recalled him back to the United States. Buchanan sent him a letter, said return to washington immediately. Now, by the time this happened, the prospects for peace had actually improved a little bit. A propeace faction had taken over mexicos congress, and they were ready to sit down and hash out a deal. Tryst didnt want to lose this golden opportunity. He was also very concerned about what was going to happen to mexico if he left. At the time a lot of folks in washington had some very grand designs about what more they might be able to take. Tryst wanted to stop this from happening. So he made a very bold decision. He decided he was going to disobey his president. He was going to ignore this order to return to washington basically illegally negotiate a treaty with mexico and bring an end to what he viewed as a very horrible war. Now, tryst knew that he couldnt negotiate anything that would resemble a fair or just treaty, but he could negotiate what would essentially be the least bad treaty with mexico and stop any more of their land from being taken, stop the country from being further dismembered, he knew it would still have to be accepted by polk and by the senate which had to ratify it, but he could try to mitigate the damage quite a bit. The result of this was the treaty of guadalupe pay hidalgo which was eventually accepted by the president , ratified by the senate and gave us this land where we sit now for this book reading. Polk was furious, but the treaty was good. It was, basically, too good a deal the pass up. You know, he couldnt pass up it gave him everything he wanted, basically, so despite how angry he was with his envoy, tryst, he accepted it, he sent it to the senate, and it was ratified. Now, at the time, as i mentioned, there were a lot of people in washington who wanted to go a lot further. Some of polks allies in congress and even some of the members of his cabinet started thinking, hey, we could get a lot more out of this war which basically was a war of conquest. Some people wanted to extend our border several hundred miles further south, that wall our new president wants to build would be going up a lot further away from us than it will be now. Some people wanted to annex the entire country, and theres really no way of saying any of these things would have happened. There were a lot of other circumstances in play. You know, the whig party, which was very hostile to the war effort, had just taken over the house of representatives, a group that included a young oneterm congressman you might have heard of named Abraham Lincoln, and they were pretty keen on defunding the war effort and halting the war altogether. And even some of polks allies in the democratic party, they werent keen on taking more land mostly out of sheer racism. They didnt want to bring that many new nonwhite citizens into the United States. So its hard to say which faction would have ultimately prevailed if theyd had to fight this out, but what we can say for sure is that because of nicholas tryst and his decision to just disobey his president , we never actually had to go down that road and have that debate. Now, several of the chapters in my book, you might notice, follow a common theme, and that theme is the suppression of free speech and First Amendment liberties. Obviously, as a journalist this is a very personal s