President ial biographies. American history tv airs on cspan 3 every weekend telling the american story through events, interviews, and visits to historic locations. This month American History tv is in primetime to introduce you to programs you could see every weekend on cspan 3. Our features include lectures and history, visits to College Classrooms across the country, to hear american artifacts takes a look at the treasures at u. S. Historic sites, and archives. Real america revealing the 20th century through archival films and newsreels. The civil war where you hear about the people who shape the civil war in reconstruction, and the presidency focuses on u. S. President s and first ladies to learn about their politics, policies, and legacies. All this month in primetime and every weekend on American History tv on cspan 3. Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park service. Tomorrow night we bring you a number of National Park service tours from our american artifacts and real america programs. Some of the sites include Congress Hall in philadelphia. The battlefield in frederick, maryland, and the hapamatics courthouse. That starts at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3s American History tv. Next well hear from adrienne harrison. She talks about the George Washington she discovered through the books he read and collected throughout his life and about how the first commander in chief inspired her. Harrison is a former west point cadet who served three tours in iraq. The fred w. Smith library for the study of George Washington at mount vernon hosted this hourlong event. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. For those of you that dont know me, my name is doug bradburn. This is where you are. Youre in the library. Of course, i would like to welcome cspan here as well tonight. This is our ford evening book talk. Were thankful to be sponsored by the Ford Motor Company who have been longtime donors to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association going all the way back to henry ford who provided the first fire engine to keep the mansion from burning down, which we like to see. That is the mansion you see right there. Maintained and managed by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association since 1860. Built before that by the washington family and expanded by none other than George Washington. Of course, Mount Vernon Ladies Association have maintained this property at the highest level of Historic Preservation so that people everywhere could learn about the lessons and life of George Washington and thieyve done this without taking any government money. They are a privately funded institution and educational institution, and its part of our mission to help people everywhere learn about the principles of the founding and, of course, George Washingtons life. The topic tonight is perfect for what we do, says and were really excited to have a special presentation for you tonight. Today please where the mount vernon ladies please welcome adrienne harrison, dr. Adrienne harrison is currently a fellow and consulting historian with battlefield leadership. She is a graduate of west point who later went on to earn her ma and ph. D. Degrees in early American History from rutgers university. She has been an assistant professor of American History at west point. Shes here for 12 years as a commissioned officer in the u. S. Army, including three combat tours in iraq. So she brings a certain amount of experience to this project, and i think shell talk to you a little bit about how personal it is and how exciting it is for her to explore the life of George Washington in this way. Shes here tonight to talk about her great new book, a powerful mind, the selfeducation of George Washington, and shes doing exactly what we like to try to do here at mount vernon, which is make George Washington into a human being. Not the person that is just a marvel statue, although we love the great icon of George Washington. We also want to recognize that he was a human who lived in the world, and one of the great ways to get at this man of action is through his reading and through his mind. He is not often associated with those things, and adrienne will talk more about that. I did want to say after her talk tonight and, of course, well have a chance to have questions from the audience, my colleague, mark, chief librarian, and michelle lee, special collections librarian, have made a special effort tonight to bring out some of the items from George Washingtons library, and youll have an opportunity to tour the vault and see George Washingtons books that we have here really in the holy of holies in this temple of washingtons learning, youll get a chance to get in there behind the scenes so those of you who are able to stay a little later. Its a special evening, i think, and it should be an exciting one. Everyone give a big hand for adrienne harris. Good evening, everyone. Its a privilege to be here. Especially in such a packed house. I wasnt expecting that. Thank you for having me and for allowing me to indulge you with what has become one of the biggest and almost all encompassing things i have ever done in my life. I was on facebook. Everybody is on facebook these days. When i was on facebook, about the same day, actually, that i received the very kind invitation for this talk, i saw a suggested ad pop up in my news feed. You know you get those, and its like Mark Zuckerbergs minions are figuring out what you would want to purchase based on who you are, who your friends are, what your interests are, and what your friends like. As it happens, there was an ad that popped up for a Clothing Company called ranger up peril, and if you have never heard of it, its a company that makes military themed tshirts and sweat shirts for all the branches of the service, all patriotic sayings. It was this particular ad in question that got my attention because it had a picture on it of George Washington crossing the delaware extracted from the famous painting. Underneath the Screen Printing it said in one simple phrase, get some. The tshirt was funny, but the tag line really caught my attention. It said, if you insult George Washington in a dream, you had better wake up and apologize. Total stud. It shocked me when i saw this because this is really why i wrote this book. Because this is how we think in kind of these swaggering g. I. Joe type terms. George washington is the myth. He has ceased to be a real person. He is the guy thats in the painting leading this rag tag band of patriots across the delaware to slay the invaders and kill them on christmas morning. You know, he is now to us two centuries or more than two centuries removed. He is twodimensional. He is flat, and he is far removed from us. You know, there had to be a way to make him a real person again and for me this was something that was intensely personal story because i had an interest in washington going back to my childhood, and it was something that had stayed with me all through my schooling from Elementary School age all the way up to when i was an undergraduate at west point i did my thesis on washingtons tour of the south in 1791, and it was something that i carried with me after west point in the army, and it was a moment that hit me when i was a brand new second e Second Lieutenant. I was 23 years old. All army stories always start with the phrase so there i was. So there i was, a 23yearold Second Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division in what was to become the first phase of Operation Iraqi freedom, and i had the lives of 27 soldiers in my hands as well as the lives of the soldiers that we transported in the back of our trucks to and from the Different Missions we were assigned. I was in baghdad where we ended up after the invasion, and it struck me it was an air assault mission. It went all night long. After we got back we had narr narrowly invaded an ambush. We had to fight into the traffic jam. That was the definition of a theory. Traffic in washington d. C. Or new york city does not compare to what you see over there, and it was just one of those experiences that you are drained afterwards. It hit me how did washington do this . Right . How did he experience combat, Armed Conflict for the first time . I realized to you that may seem strange, right . Here i am in iraq in 2003 and my mind randomly goes back to George Washington . You have to understand in an experience like that, Everybody Needs a bit of a mental escape. You need something thats going to at the end of each day, which is very long. The days and nights all started to blend together. You need something that is going to get you through, thats going to help you reset normally so you can face the next day. For me it was reading. You know, thanks to my generous family and friends and the extremely slow but usually reliable postal service, i had a steady stream of books sent to me that i would read every day. Its how i would decompress. My old thesis advisor, professor rob mcdonald, he sent me all the latest books on George Washington. It kept his example always before me even though i was far removed from academia at that point. So i was thinking about washington and how did he do this . Although he and i were separated obviously by more than two centuries, vastly different circumstances, there were some similarities. We were about the same age. I was a little bit older than he was when he led his first troops, but he and i both had very limited almost no professional experience at that point p when we were each given the opportunity to lead on our own for the first time. Fundamentally i thought our emotional response to having to lead soldiers and having to give orders to people looking to us for direction must have been fujds u fundament fundamentally the same on some level. Then the comparisons have to stop, right, because reality comes back into play. I was at least had the benefit of four years of a westpointe education behind me. I had been taught the fundamentals of how to lead people. I had extensive military training. I was an officer in the most professional, most powerful army in the world. Washington had none of that. He was younger than me, and he had some fencing lessons. That was it. So no wonder. You know, when you look at my First Experience compared to his, okay, his actual execution of his First Mission didnt go well. Lets just say that. You know, after you know, after leading his troops bravely with all of the brashness of youth out into the wilderness and he picked the absolute worst spot where you could possibly put a fortification. Lets see if i can move these slides for you. Worst place ever. He goes to an open clearing in the woods. Depressed, Higher Ground around him, nothing but trees and high grass. Thats where he put his fort. He willfully went beyond the extent of his orders and attacked a party of frenchmen and diplomats and soldiers and basically started the seven years war. His experience and mine were very different. At the found himself when we didnt have the special to set up the fort fiction he did. He didnt speak the language of his enemy at all, and he didnt have anybody with him who could, so in this first firefight that descended sinto a mass kerks he had no control when these poor frenchmen who most of them were mortally wounded or at least scared to death, when the when washingtons native American Allies descended on them and started to theyre pleading for their lives in french. Washington couldnt speak french. He had nobody with him who could. He lost control. There was nothing about him at that point that said, hey, future father of a nation. Nothing about that at all. As he reversed his fortunes in if the seven years war, he was charged with leading these officers as well as these soldiers who also had no experience, and in 1755 he said something prothetic to his officers. He said having no opportunity to learn from example, let us read. He was exposed in the british army in that war to the professionalization of reading. You read to gain background knowledge to go out there and then put it into execution. He didnt have the benefit of a formal education, but at the was going to go out there and do the best he could, and he expected his officers to dpo the same. He was called the indispensable man. Theres a part of washingtons legacy, why we remember him as being the steelyeyed general on a white charger, the first president in the in one of the Gilbert Stewart portraits. Theres a reason why we remember him that way. What is it . Theres more to it than just he was a tall guy who looked good in a uniform and he was in the right place at the right time. So i carry this question with me to graduate school, and i was so excited. I was i got to go back to school after three combat tours, and i was going to make my mark on the world, and i went to my dissertation advisor and said, hey, i have an idea for a dissertation. I want to write about how George Washington fashioned himself, and he said thats a terrible idea. Thats a horrible because the challenge facing in part, theres a grain of truth in what he was saying. The challenge facing any washington historian today is what else is there to say about this man . Right . He is one of the most studied men in history. Not just American History, but you think of the World History or you travel anywhere else, any other countries. Youre going to go to a bookstore and find something on George Washington there. What else is there thats different . I was told to go back to the drawing board and try again. But i was undaunted, and so i kept this idea. I was going to figure out a way to convince him that this was a viable project. I was set. It was actually in a different grad School Course that i was exposed to this book called reading revel usings by kevin sharp, and its about the politics of reading in early modern england, and it focuses on a guy named sir William Drake who during the previous century prior to washingtons life, he was a political operative who learned the art and science of being a public figure and a political figure through reading. It was something about what sharp had argued that in talking about drake sharp said that reading is essentially something that is political and its specific to times and places. We think about our own reading. Thats pretty much true for all of us, right . Our predelictions, our believes inform how we receive the things that we read. Whether you are conservative, liberal, religious, not. It doesnt matter. It somehow will inform the way that you receive things. In that i found an opportunity. He included an appendix about washingtons reading. This was something that, you know, longmore basically says that washington, the reader, was practical, but not really all that bright. He is not that much of an intellectual. The appendix itself kind of talks about the main topics that youll find in washingtons library, and sums it up by saying, yeah, he is not really that much of an intellectual. He left it at that. For me it was my opportunity. Thats the fun of being a historian, right . We debate things. For me taking the what sharp had said about reading being political and reading being relative to a moment and being Practical Knowledge that you can apply to your specific tasks in front of you with the ball that i viewed longmore had dropped, there was my opportunity for the dissertation. I wanted to look at washington, how he did it, how he did this selffashioning, this selfpresentation through looking at his reading. That was something that aside from longmore, you wont find a whole lot of biographies that talk about it to any great extent, and most of them tend to be dismissive of his reading efforts. Its want something we see. We remember the statue or the painting, and here the books are even theyre urnt the table. Like, he is not touching them. He is not looking at them. It looks like he would rather not. If you look at the expression on wash wishs face, right . Like he has been there, done that. Im over it. So really, that was my idea. I was able to sell that to my advisor, but then the next question for me was how do you approach that . So washingtons library, so what . What do you do about it . Well, i looked at i started with the 1799 inventory that was made as part of the estate inventory as required by law when he passed away. When he passed away, there were over 900 volumes, 1,200 different works that were in the library. Everything ranging from history to military science, to religion, to maps, political pamphlets, and the like. So, okay, 900 volumes. Thats a lot. So of that what did he read . When you think about it, think about yourselves and your own book shelves. Whether or not you have real book shelves, if you like to read real books, which i do, or if you like to have the nook or the kindle or ipad exper