All the way down. Can you hear me . Good evening. Thank you, paul. And were delight partner with the Bryant Park Corporation and Oxford University press on this exciting series. Tonights program will be followed by question and answer session and a book signing, so please do join in for both. Im really delighted this evening to welcome author and historian fergus bordewich. Hes the author of six nonfiction books. Hes published and written childrens books and written the jefferson pbs documentary. Hes a regular contributor to Smithsonian Magazine mainly on subjects in 19th century American History and his articles have appears in many magazines and newspapers including the new york times, the wall street journal and american heritage. His new book americas great debate explores the way in which slavery distorted american democracy in the years leading up to the civil war. David Levering Lewis is one of the countrys most distinguished historians of the civil rights movement. Hes the Julius Silver University Professor and professor of history at the New York University and recipient of the National Humanities medal. Which was conferred by president barack obama in 2009. Hes the author of many books, including king a critical biography, which is an essential exploration of the life of dr. Martin luther king jr. , and a twopart biography of w. E. B. Dubois, which earned him a prize, Department Prize and two Pulitzer Prizes in biography. Im proud to welcome both of them back to a New York Historical societysponsored evening. They are great favorites with us. And delighted to ask them to begin their conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Fergus, what a cast of characters your book has. The familiar ones, thomas heart benten, perhaps not so familiar, james seward, William Seward, perhaps not so familiar, but still of great importance at the time. But clay and calhoun and webster. And you catch these men at what must be the epitome of their public lives, a moment in American History. 1850, the great debate. And the compromise that preserved the union. And we follow this debate some nine or ten months, i think, of 1,000 pages of discourse and expatiation and debate. And god knows how many votes. And finally, in september, thanks to the wizardry of stephen a. Douglas, we have a compromise that not even henry clay had the alchemy, the political alchemy to produce. Well, all of this was necessitated, i suppose, wasnt it, by the regime crisis of 1850 coming from americas first imperial venture. This is when we become an empire and we havent stopped since. The Mexican American war of 184648. But as i read these debates swirling around the dividends and consequences of that Mexican American war, i thought id ask you this question. Is it mischievous, counter factual, but nonetheless i think useful, would the topic of your book have been unnecessary if the whig party headed by henry clay, had won the election of 1844 . You cite historian gary cornblitzs counter factual presentation of that of a different outcome in 1844. Henry clay president , not james polk. And a very different scenario. Well, before asking you to answer that question, would you remind us of the National Real estate options presented at the conclusion of americas first empir imperial war . What did the treaty of guadalupe hidalge actually give us . Well, im eager to get to the hypothetical that you pose. But to answer the perhaps larger question of what this war meant, and indeed, it was the countrys first openly and eagerly imperial war. The creation of an american empire was part of the warp and woof of the language at the time. Americans by and large, not without exception, were proud to march off to earn an empire on the battle field by marching into mexico. What we acquired, what the nation acquired, of course, was virtually all the rest of the continent. As you know, from the western edge of the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean including all of the giant new mexico territory, which encompassed far more than the presentday state of new mexico. And significantly california. Just on the cusp of the discovery of gold in california. And already without gold stirred into the political mix here, the question, the country faced the question, what was this going to become . This vast, largely terra incognita west of the presentday United States. What kind of states would be formed there . Would there be states in fact . People assumed there would be. Would they be slave . Would they be free . Because by the end of the 1840s, slavery of course infected every question bearing on the expansion of the United States. And to put this into context, of course, there were many additional imperial ideas circulating ranging from the conquest of chunks of canada, the acquisition of cuba, which could form one or two new slave states, to compensate for free states that might be carved out of the western territory, or perhaps a second mexican war that would incorporate getting more of mexico into the United States. So the country faced huge questions about what it was going to be, what was going to be the political nature of this vast western territory. And to come to your teasing question about the outcome of the election of 1844 and henry clay, henry clay for those who may not be quite as immersed in him as you and i have been at one time or another, clay was a was probably after webster regarded as the most compelling and charismatic orator of his day, founder of the whig party. A man who inspired an intensity of emotion both enthusiasm and among his enemies contempt. He was so charismatic that there was kind of a cult of kissing henry clay. Women swarmed after him and competed with each other to kiss him as many times as possible or to snip bits of his hair when he wasnt looking. But at any rate, here was clay at the one could say the apigy or at least the great final phase of his career. Hed aspired to be president for decades. Having given us of course the missouri compromise. And indeed also crafting the compromise that terminated the nullification crisis of the 1830s. Clay had in fact been in retirement before 1850 for a while and was called back onto the stage to craft yet this third compromise. Clay hoped to be the whig nominee in 1844. Its been argued by gary cornblitz whom you mentioned that there probably would have been no mexican war. Clay opposed the mexican war. Though his son was to die in it. On one of the battle fields of the war. With clay as president would the nation have expanded all the way to the pacific . Would california ever have become part of the United States . These are open questions. What do i think personally . I think the imperatives of expansion and the desire for empire, american ambitions, transcended the personality of any one man. And i think clays politics might have held clay might have kept his finger in the dike a bit longer, but i dont really think that the on rush of empire would have stopped. And so then the will not proviso is the element that will make this disposition of real estate really incomparably difficult and challenging. Without that proviso of pennsylvania backwoods congressman rather shambling and stumble bum, as you described it, and seems to be just who proposed that any of the territory exceeded to the United States from the mexican war would be based on popular sovereignty. And that slavery would be absent from that territory. And this really fuelled the controversy from almost the getgo, didnt it . Yes, it did. The will not proviso is probably one of those items of American History that most High School Students forget instantly as soon as theyve gotten through the exam. But indeed it was the one of the certainly a pivot on which the crisis of 1850 began to turn. It predated 1850 by a couple of years. But it meant that every time the discussion of statehood for any western territory came before congress, there would be a bitter not to say violent increasingly violent collision between demographically increasing northern forces that wanted to preclude the westward expansion of slavery and increasingly fierce and secessionminded southern defenders of slavery who by 18 the late 1840s were insisting that slavery by and large was nothing to be embarrassed about but rather an essential part of the american dream. And to deprive any americans of the right both to own slaves and to carry slavery where any slave master pleased was to deprive him of his essential rights as an american. And this came to a head, of course, with the application of californians to enter the state as a free state. Why did that precipitate a crisis . Because at that point in 1850, free states or representatives of free states held an ever enlarging majority in the house of representatives. But in the senate, 15 slave states were balanced against 15 free states. The admission of california as a free state would tip the balance and southerners feared, with good reason, permanently. Because they could see that if settlers in the west by and large were allowed to choose whether it would be slave or free, very few would make their states slave states. California made the decision imperative because gold had been discovered. 200,000 settlers moved from the east coast or from the Eastern States to california in the space of barely a year, far far far more people than the law required to be present to form a state. So willynilly, california was going to come into the union. How was it going to come . So thats the challenge of henry clay, then. Who in january delivers his first address on this roiling question. And you paint a picture of such a tenseness, such drama. I think the guardians of the senate had to bar the door against naybobs who had come from afar, wanting to see this spectacle. This was the Television Drama of its day. And when quiet is restored, clay rises and he makes three proposals, or rather im sorry, he proposes eight resolutions, rather complicated. But the upshot of them would have been that there would have been to satisfy the south a prohibition on congress having anything to say about the constitution of the states from the point of view of the institution of slavery, that there would be a settlement of the border of texas finally with mexico, the rio grande, that there would be compensation to new mexico for the properties that it had lost to texas as the map was redrawn, that there would be this seemed to be not a great issue at the moment, a really effective fugitive slave law so that the property of southerners that migrated to the north and elsewhere on the underground railroad that you have described so well that filtration of property through the years would cease because the federal government would assure that the apprehension of these vagabonds and escapees would take place and there would be a return of the escapees. And then finally the guarantee that congress would never attempt to prohibit the slave trade within the slave holding states. Well, that seemed for a moment, i gather, to satisfy enough people that there seemed to be a compromise within reach that week. But i gather by the end of the week as people thought about it, as the details were scrutinized carefully, it began to be more and more difficult to press this. But on the fifth of march, he stood again. And this time with all the eloquence that you capture, he expatiated on these resolutions. Well, you say you ask, you say, how on earth, how on earth did they do it . How did they make the paralyzed system finally work . If we will just jump ahead to what actually did work. And i want to to read, if i may, the prose that applies to that question. You say, in your preface, the poll tested, spin doctored, solderly argued and dramatically challenged messaging that today passes for political communication is pathetic and often incoherent by comparison. It can be no surprise that Many Americans have lost interest in politicians who have forgotten how much can be accomplished by the persuasive power of wellcrafted english. In 1850, senators and congressmen who more often than not lacked college educations, spoke from the barest of notes or none at all for hours on end and were confident that their colleagues and the public would understand them in speeches that were peppered with illusions to shakespeare, the bible, American History, british common law and classical literature. They also said what they meant. Men who believed in slavery said so, as did those who hated it. No matter how much odiom the words attracted. By listening in on debate of 1850, we can learn much not only about the american thought, about what the americans thought about their new empire, about the profound ways in which slavery warped our political system, and about the creative craft of compromise, but also about how to talk politics to each other so that we actually listen. I read this as i had just listened to a talking head program about the gridlock in our congress. And i thought, is it really true that if salons have cogency and eloquence and candor that in fact they could deliver us from stasis and paralysis and an idealogical warp that makes negotiated settlements possible. So i really wanted to read what happened with clay and douglas and the compromise. What was the compromise . And then ill ask after you tell us what the compromise, what we might think of it. Okay. Well, first just a word or two to kind of create the atmosphere in which this was taking place. Its impossible to exaggerate the sense of crisis that pervaded the nation at large. Taverns, churches, crossroads, villages, cities, every class of americans, and of Course Congress itself on the cusp of this great tenmonthlong debate in 1850. There was a perception, a very widespread perception that the country was about to crack apart. As of course it finally would in 1861. Civil war seemed imminent. War pap warfare, an invasion of south by the north or vice versa. And newspapers predicted that there would be blood on the floors of congress itself any day. And indeed, in one instance there practically was when senator henry flick pulled a horse pistol on Thomas Hart Benton on the floor of the senate and threatened to blow his head off. I was talking to someone about this not long ago who said, well, if you listened to thomas heart benten for two months, you might want to do the same thing, but that was unkind. Might i add that senator was also a believeiator, and i think we were lose our president Zachary Taylor because on july fourth of 1850, foote is going to give the july 4th oration which will go on and on and on, under a sun hotter than today, so the president will die of sunstroke later. So the compromise itself, bear in mind this atmosphere of terrible crisis. Youre familiar with the sense of crisis of 1861. It was the same in 1850. People expected the country to break any time, and break not necessarily just into two parts, a southern confederacy and the remainder of the union, but perhaps into three or four because once secession had begun, it would be established as a precedent and on the floor of congress fearful congressmen and senators are talking about the near inevitability of a pacific confederacy, a northmidwestern confederacy, of new england going its own way. This is the fear that pervades people, and this is what clay is addressing when he stands up in the senate as david has described him. Clay has a profound faith in the power of persuasive political argument. He is indeed persuasive. His speeches are magnificent. Theyre literature that rises to the level sometimes of art, as many of these speeches by webster and many of the less well known men of the moment did as well, so he believes in the power of persuasion, and he believes that by persuading other members of the senate and bear in mind the same debate is taking place in the house of representatives although were dwelling here primarily in the senate, that he can win enough people from the radical fringes, that means the left and the right of the time, that means from amongst abolitionists who oppose any compromise of the south and from amongst southern nationalists who oppose any kind of compromise that would undermine their rights in their minds to enslave other people and to carry slavery as far as they wished. Does clay succeed . You have outlined his various proposals, and these are the core of the compromise. Clay comes into the senate with the idea in his mind, his brain as one of the commentators of the time described it. He has a rather large forehead that looks as if it is stuffed with wonderful ideas, and he is determined to craft a compromise that will answer all the countrys anxieties about slavery, not just the admission of california, not just a resolution of this extremely dangerous and contentious texas border conflict and a tiny correction, it was texas that got the pay off rather than new mexico. It was texas claim because texas was financially under water and was looking for a federal handout. I stand corrected. And it would be texas pay off for not invading the new mexico territory on behalf of the rest of the slaveowning south. Texas has mustered an army or is mustering an army of Texas Rangers ready to march on santa fe, and had there been a civil war in 1850 the first shots wouldnt have been in charleston harbor, they would have been in santa fe, new mexico, because the federal forces there were prepared to fight the texas troops if they crossed the territorial line. At any rate clay understands as many do that slavery is going to bring on a war unless the rush to war is halted, so he is trying to address the concerns of the north, concerns of the south, by giving a piece in his view to each part of the country, whether those pieces are fairly shared out in the end is a subject of very lively scholarly debate. Did his persuasion work . No. Clay did not accomplish the compromise that he believed over months and months and months of