 Good afternoon, this is Jeff Crow and I'm here with Paul Escott who is the Reynolds professor of history emeritus at Wake Forest University. I'm the retired deputy secretary of archives and history in the North Carolina Department of Natural and cultural resources. Paul and I have been friends for a very long time we went to graduate school together we've actually collaborated on a couple of articles and books together so I'm very pleased to be here under the auspices of the National Archives to discuss Paul's new book. And so Paul, let me start by asking you, you've written many books on civil war and reconstruction era. How is it that you came to decide on this particular book and format. As you say I have written a number of books in which I was doing a lot of concentrated research some of which took place at the National Archives, very pleasurable place to work. But after I retired, I got to thinking about the fact that not only had I studied and written about some of the people who are covered in this book but I had been teaching about them for 44 years. And in the course of doing that I had learned things about them and I had developed ideas and presented arguments to students. I got to thinking that it would be a useful effort to write about 10 major figures from the 19th century, all of whom had important roles to play in the issues of slavery, race and equality, which were dominant problems and issues in the middle of the 19th century and beyond in fact. So, I undertook that project to write about these 10 people, and I had a wonderful time doing it. It seemed that the book almost wrote itself, because there were so many years of thought and work behind it and the ideas just came out on the page. So, I'm reminded that you and I both read Richard Hofstadter's book on the American political tradition when we were undergraduates and I think that model sort of had an influence on this book, didn't it? Yes, it certainly did. The Hofstadter book was a great success when he published it. And it stimulated a lot of thought among undergraduates and graduate students. One of my hopes for this book is that it will be useful to ordinary citizens who are interested in learning about important events and people in our country's history in the 19th century. But also, I hope this book can be used by undergraduates who are just beginning to get their feet wet in analyzing some important historical issues and getting into primary sources for the first time. I have designed the portraits and the essays about these individuals to be argumentative and stimulating and to arouse thought and I hope a great deal of interest among people who will read it. I believe that college professors could use this book quite well in assigning it to students and having students begin their deeper research into some of these important questions in American history and important people. Let's talk a little bit about how it is you chose this particular group of 10 because obviously most of them are very well known to Americans but there have been others who could have been included. How did you go through a selection process and decide on these particular 10? Well, the idea was to make the book of a reasonable length so I couldn't include everyone. But we have here some people who obviously were central to political battles and to questions either of compromising issues or resolving issues. And I felt that I could not leave out the reformers who were pushing the nation toward change that would bring us more into conformity with our national ideals. And when you look at someone like John C. Calhoun, you're talking about somebody who was pushing hard in the other direction that is pushing to make sure that slavery would be permanent and protected in the government of the United States. So you have people who were prominent in the political scene and then we also have some reformers and commentators who were important in the development of people's understanding and ideas and who, if they didn't succeed in what they were aiming to do, nevertheless, I had an influence and pushed the national agenda forward. Lincoln is an example of someone who was not going to compromise, who wanted to move toward a solution, a true solution of the nation's issue. Henry Clay is an example of the great compromiser, the man who wanted to find a way to avoid conflict about fundamental issue over slavery. Well, let's talk about some of these individuals and greater depth. You talk a little bit about leadership style among some of these people that you studied. Could you elaborate on that a little bit. Yes, there are some very interesting differences in leadership style. John C. Calhoun always said that he believed it was necessary to meet what he called aggression at the outer boundary and to concede on anything was to be willing to become a slave. It was so extreme throughout all parts of his career that he ended up being quite an inspiration for other Southern leaders who fought hard for slavery. Many people forget I think that Calhoun had two phases of his career. At first an extremely dedicated nationalist phase and then later this defender of slavery. He's an example of someone who never wants to compromise, who's always demanding that his view become the accepted view. With Henry Clay, you have someone who's always working for compromise. Clay really represented the feelings and the thoughts of a lot of the early founders of the country. And as time went on, society changed, but his view of slavery and those issues really didn't change. He disapproved of slavery but he was a slave holder and he accepted it and made excuses for it. But he worked to try to bring about some kind of compromise. The reformers, people like Frederick Douglass or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was working for not only for black rights, but for women's rights in her career, were people who were trying to inspire the country to develop new approaches to realizing the promise of America. Realizing the ideals that were part of the Declaration of Independence. And one of the things that's most striking about Frederick Douglass or about Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the degree of independence and self confidence that these people had. Both Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were subject to repeated attacks and reverses in their career, but they always pushed on and never were dismayed by the kind of difficulties that they ran into. I feel as somebody who's just, you know, lived my life and seen what people are like, that it's quite difficult for most of us as individuals to be really independent. We would like to be accepted and supported by the friends and the people we work with. It's difficult to go against the grain, but Douglass and Stanton had a leadership style that was remarkably independent. So I also want to respond to your question by saying something about Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a very interesting kind of a leader. He knew what he wanted to happen for the United States, but he was not somebody who tried to impose his view on events, rather he cautiously carefully rode with events. What was going on, and when opportunities arose to make change, then he took advantage of it. But we forget when we don't realize all the details about Lincoln's career as president that much of the time he was moving slowly. He was trying to be a centrist. He was trying to appeal to white Southerners to come back into the union. And then Vince developed and he found opportunities to act against slavery. He took those opportunities. And in the closing year or months of his life, I believe that he was even more determined to work toward equality in the United States. It's a lasting tragedy for us all that he was killed and that we will never know what he might have been able to accomplish. Let's go back to a little earlier in their careers, and I'm thinking of Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun in particular, and they build a reputation for being compromisers pretty early on, even going back into the 1830s. And as we know, Calhoun became more ossified than ever as time went on. But as you pointed out earlier, he started out as a nationalist back in Monroe administration, 1810s and 20s and so on. And then what propels him towards more extreme views as we get towards Jackson's presidency and the crisis in the 1830s over the bank and states rights and that sort of thing. I think it's clear that what propelled his change was a growing sensitivity and worry among southern slaveholders about the permanence of slavery Calhoun did change, but he always had a commitment to slavery in the early days of his career. He didn't feel that there was a threat that he needed to respond to. Adams knew him well in 1820 and said that he was a man who not only was intelligent but who had the greatest degree of nationalism and was most free of sectional prejudices of anyone that he knew, but when the Missouri crisis came up in 1820. And he also discovered that Calhoun, and he had very different ideas about slavery and about what its place should be in the future of the United States. Calhoun made it clear to John Quincy Adams at that time that slavery was a fundamental importance to him and to South Carolina, and that if it was necessary to make a choice he would always choose to defend slavery during the 1820s and going into the 1830s. He was concerned about slavery, extreme worries about the attacks that abolitionists were making, and I say extreme because the abolitionists were a tiny minority at that time. Not only not well known by many people in the country but despised by most respectable citizens at the time. Nevertheless, those abolitionists aroused great fears in southern slaveholders and Calhoun makes that transition during that time. To becoming somebody who wants to be the defender of the South. It seems clear that he had national ambitions early on, and would have wanted to be president, but as slavery becomes a more fundamental or crucial issue. And then I think changes his goal and wants to become the man who will defend southern interests for slavery, and he does that throughout his career in a very extreme way that influenced many other southern politicians. Henry Clay, I mean he, he was very much a nationalist from War of 1812 on, and he becomes a compromiser 1830s and into the compromise 1850 even so. A little bit about his evolution and did he change much or was he pretty consistent in his views. Clay is a lot more consistent. He began his career staying some things against slavery about its undesirability and he did not pursue that but he continued to feel that slavery was undesirable. In 1850 near the end of his career. He says on the floor of the US Senate that he will never vote himself to expand slavery into new territories of the United States. If that is done he said he would acquiesce in it in order to preserve the Union but he would not favor the expansion of slavery at any time. Nevertheless, well I should say to that, you know he was one of the founders of the society that was developed to remove freed slaves and send them to Africa, the American colonization society, and he served as president of that at various times. He continued to feel that slavery wasn't a desirable thing but he was a slave holder he benefited from it, he was dependent upon the money that the slaves, you know made for him to support his family and his plantation and his career. But he loved the Union and he was a very skilled negotiator in the legislative chambers he knew how to work with people, how to find common ground, how to bring about compromise. And he does that on three important occasions in the Missouri crisis of 1820, and then in the nullification crisis in the early 1830s. And then once again in 1850, when the war with Mexico has added a vast amount of territory to the United States and people are greatly divided over whether slavery should be allowed to go into those territories or not. That's his legislative skills and his personal skills to bring about compromise. I think it's striking that William Seward, who did not like clay, nevertheless wrote that clay was the most charming individual that you just could not resist him. And that helped to explain how he could bridge differences among people and bring about legislative solutions. And today never really changes his own perspective on things as the society was changing around him. And when he is at the end of his life, he has attitudes about slavery that are probably identical to the ones that he had in 1810. And it's in his will that his slaves should be allowed to earn some income during the last three years before each one would become free at a certain age, and that would supposedly enable them to colonize in Africa and leave the United States. And the whole situation in regard to slavery and abolitionism had moved far beyond the kind of perspectives that clay was advancing in the 1810s and 20s and 30s. So he is a man who really didn't change with the times. You've brought us up to the compromise 1850. Let's move on to Stephen Douglas and he becomes a slave holder through his marriage to North Carolinian and he also was the primary force, if I'm correct, correct me if I'm wrong. He's the primary force behind the Kansas and Nebraska Act in 1854, which just accelerates all the hardening sectionalism going on north and south. So let's talk a little bit about Douglas and how you perceive him and his ambitions to be president. Douglas is a very interesting figure. I felt as I examined his career that if you look at him in 1850, he appears almost to be the most representative American politician at the time and the man perhaps with the greatest future ahead of him. He favored expanding the country and this was a time when manifest destiny was very popular. Most Americans north and south wanted to see the country grow and become larger territorially. He was always an advocate for expanding the country and a spokesman for the West. He chaired territorial committees in the House and then in the Senate, and he always worked to make it easier for Americans to gain land in the West and to expand the country's territories. He also was enthusiastic about the technological and material progress that the United States was making, progress that excited people very much at that time with railroads and canals and telegraph and other inventions. He was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He had attitudes toward race and slavery that matched those of many people in the country, not only did southerners support slavery but racism and the ideas of white supremacy were very popular in the north at that time. And Douglas moved forward as a white supremacist. He will probably many people in the north were not particularly aware of his connection to slave holding. As you said, he became a slave holder through the death of his first wife and the slave property that he inherited for her, and he managed that for his sons during the 1850s and until his death. But few people knew about that. What was really important to Douglas was that he could gain support for his presidential ambitions from southerners in the Democratic Party. The south formed a major part of the Democratic Party in the 1840s and 1850s it was often providing about 40% of the electoral college votes that one might need to get elected president. If it was a solid south and it often was. Douglas wanted to advance and become president. He was certainly very ambitious. And in 1854, when he wanted to encourage settlement out in the Great Plains, he put forward a bill to create territories in Kansas and Nebraska. The governor came to him and said, we'll support your bill but only if you include a repeal of the Missouri Compromise law because that law said that in those territories which were above 36 degrees 30 minutes, slavery would not be allowed to enter. And they said, well, how can it be left up to the people in the territories to decide what institutions they will have if slaves are not even allowed to go there. And Douglas had argued in 1850 when he helped get the compromise of 1850 through that the rule should be let the people in the territories make their own decisions about these things. In the midst of a carriage ride that Douglas took with a southern leader, he was pressed to repeal the Missouri Compromise add that to his bill. And he said, you're right, I will do it and it will raise a hell of a storm but I'll do it. He did. He went forward he got Jefferson Davis to take him to see President Pierce at that time, and to get it made an administration measure that all Democrats should vote for it got through and it raised a true hell of a storm. And he found that when he traveled from Washington back to Illinois, he said he could almost see his root by the light of the effigies that were being burned against him along the way. And, as you pointed out, Jeff, the Kansas Nebraska Act greatly inflamed the whole sectional issue. It was the Kansas Nebraska Act and the outrage over it among many Northerners that led immediately to the foundation of the Republican Party. And Lincoln and other Republican leaders are saying, we need those territories as places where slavery will not be allowed. This needs to be land where free white people can go settle and where future immigrants can find a home. Let's talk a little bit about some of the information you uncovered in your research, which most readers probably won't know about. I'm thinking in particular of the careers of people like Jefferson Davis and Horace Greeley and I guess most people have a certain perception of them and I think your research indicates that the so-called model that has come down to us is not particularly accurate that these people didn't really represent the lost cause or the liberal Republican Party as it was called when Horace Greeley ran for the president. So talk a little bit about them and how they evolved. I'll be happy to. You know, when people think back about their history, they often embroider it or simplify it and the Civil War and that period was so important in our history that a great many myths have grown up about it. In the case of Jefferson Davis, the truth is that his career and his policies really do not fit with the image that most people have of southern political leaders in the period of the sexual crisis or with the lost cause myth about the Civil War. Many people think about the prominent southern leaders of the period of sexual crisis as coming from old settles, wealthy families, established plantations, people who were well educated and who had had money in their family for a long time. Jefferson Davis instead is an example of a new aristocracy that had grown up a one generation aristocracy that developed in the Gulf States as people moved into those areas once the Indians were removed by the federal power. And Davis came from a poor family that was on the edge of settlement just like Abraham Lincoln, but he had an older brother who went to Mississippi and became quite wealthy. This man was much older than Jefferson Davis and when Davis was growing up, his brother Joseph Emery Davis helped get him started and arranged for his good education and he was able to go to West Point and receive an education there. But Davis was a one generation aristocrat, and he modeled himself in many ways after John C. Calhoun. Here's an example of the unfortunate influence that Calhoun had on so many southern politicians who wanted to take up his mantle or to be thought of as strong and demanding as Calhoun had been. Davis is chosen to be the president of the Confederacy, because he had defended southern interests in the territories, and had a strong record there, but he also was not seen as as extreme as some of the others who maybe wouldn't have made appropriate decisions for a Confederate government that wanted to have both the Gulf States and the Atlantic Coast States. Many of those states that were further north or along the Atlantic Coast did not succeed immediately. And the Confederacy wanted to make sure that they would join the Confederacy. Four slave holding states never did join the Confederacy. So Davis becomes the president and his intelligence leads him to take measures that he thought were essential, but measures that were completely surprising to Southerners. The South wanted to have limited government, a small central government, little interference from central authorities with local affairs, but in order to wage any kind of effective war, Davis realized that a lot would have to be done. So the Confederacy is the first part of our nation to ever adopt conscription and to adopt a whole series of other strong measures in order to carry out the war effort. Davis was determined that the South should gain its independence. So he pushed through a lot of these strong measures, and they were unpopular with tremendous number of people in the South. They contributed to the suffering that a lot of ordinary Southerners had who found it difficult to maintain their economic situation when the man and the family might be often in the army or would be conscripted and sent into the army. And then the most remarkable thing that represents a clash between the actual career of Jefferson Davis and the feeling that people had about what the Civil War was like in the lost cause myth is that toward the end of the war, Davis argues that it's necessary to arm and free the slaves. He was determined that the South should become independent. It was clear as the end of the war approach that the South could not win without it didn't have enough military resources or enough soldiers. So he suggests that the South should arm and free the slaves. This was regarded by many as an insane proposal. And he was harshly attacked. The Confederate Congress refused for months to do anything about this. Finally, when it was March and the war was almost over in 1865, the Confederate Congress does pass a bill that would allow slaves to be brought into the army. But Congress insisted that they should not become free. They would have to remain slaves. Davis was not arguing for equality. He still was very much in favor of white supremacy and felt that had his policy been supported, there could be a period of serfdom for these slaves, even though he argued that as service for the Confederacy, they should receive a reward of freedom. So Davis's career is really interesting and it shows that Southern history is not entirely congruent with the myth that we have heard and learned about it. Now you asked me about Horace Greeley too. He was an extremely influential public figure. Perhaps no newspaper publisher has ever had as much influence as Horace Greeley unless we think about Fox News right now influencing a lot of people. But Horace Greeley had an important role in promoting reform and in promoting the Republican Party. He argued that there was a moral revolution underway that the United States was seeking to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. And that the Republican Party was going to carry that forward in its desire to stop the expansion of slavery and to put slavery on the road to ultimate extinction. Greeley reached a very large audience throughout the north, not just in New York City but in a broad swath of states that stretched west underneath the Great Lakes all the way out to the Mississippi River. Many people read his newspaper or his weekly newspaper. Some prominent Americans later said that when they were growing up Greeley's newspaper was like the family Bible, something people always read. And Greeley was a promoter of reform causes and of the Republican Party. He helped to found the Republican Party. And his career during the Civil War and after is very disappointing, however, because he proved to be vacillating in constant, unable it seemed to deal with crisis or to see issues through time and again. Greeley uses a keen intelligence to analyze what the problem is and to talk about what needs to be done. And a month or two later, he vacillates, he retreats. Abraham Lincoln wondered at various times, what has happened to Uncle Horace? He had been promoting us and supporting our cause for all this time and now he has turned against us. Greeley simply wasn't emotionally or psychologically able to persist in what he felt needed to be done. Greeley was ambitious and he hoped that he could play a larger role in events. And that perhaps explains a large part of why he abandoned some of the issues that he had stood for throughout his entire life to join with Democrats in 1872 to try to run for president. He had always been in favor of the tariff, but the Democrats were always against the tariff. And it was a surprising thing when Greeley went back on a lot of his proposals. Stop talking about the need to change things in the south and started praising southern whites and saying that we should simply bring them back into the union quickly now that reconstruction was underway. Those surprising stands helped him get a nomination for president, but he lost badly. It was very easy for people to point out how he had reversed his position on issue after issue. And as a result, his candidacy was a big failure. I think that there's a larger significance in the vacillations and changes in Horace Greeley. He was a great enthusiast. He really believed in the future of America and he was always positive and optimistic and enthusiastic about things turning out well. Although he could see problems. He didn't stick with the idea of tackling the solution and seeing some difficult measure through. He had a short attention span really to deal with these issues. And this is something that people have often commented about our nation today, that we as Americans raise problems, talk about them briefly and then seem to forget about them without solving them we move on to something new. Very much the pattern with Horace Greeley as well. He was so enthusiastic that things would turn out right that he didn't tackle the difficult task that sometimes would have been required to reach the goal that he felt was needed. But let's move on and talk about the great dissenters in your book and I'm thinking in particular of Frederick Douglass and Albion Tourge and also Elizabeth Katie Stanton but but and you've talked a little bit about her, but all three of them were running against the tide, so to speak swimming against the tide. And they had remarkable careers and I'm thinking particularly of the longevity of both Douglass and Tourge so could you talk a little bit about them and how you see them overall and the scope of 19th century American politics. Certainly I'll be happy to. I have already talked about the remarkable independence and strength of character that Douglas tourge and Elizabeth Katie Stanton all had. So I won't elaborate on that very much. But if we take Douglas first. He was a remarkable individual someone with a great deal of innate intelligence who comes out of slavery learns to read becomes an abolitionist and during the pre war career and on into the Civil War and reconstruction. Frederick Douglass is probably the most effective abolitionist in American history at least you know, among the one or two who would be most influential. He was adopted by the Garrisonians early on as somebody who could be an effective speaker and could prove that slaves had great potential. And he certainly realized their hopes in that regard became a very influential speaker, both here and in England. But when Douglass dealt with the issues of the time he began to differ with Greeley as to whether there should be some steps taken in politics to try to advance things for the African American population. Greeley was a person who who believed that you simply should never get involved with politics. You should stay out of it because it would morally compromise the movement. Are you talking about William Lloyd Garrison or Garrison. I want to clarify we're talking about William Lloyd Garrison. No, thank you. Yeah, William Lloyd Garrison insisted that abolition should have nothing to do with politics, because that would blunt their moral message. I believe that the Constitution could be seen as an anti-slavery document and of course the Declaration of Independence was full of ideals that should be realized. And he was brave enough to break with the Garrisonians in the 1840s and move out on his own. He's very influential throughout the 1850s. I would want to emphasize that during the Civil War years itself, Douglass is extremely important because he argues from the beginning that the crucial issue, the central issue of the war was slavery. And that if the Union was to be saved, it would have to act against slavery, it would have to strike down slavery and bring slaves into the battle to preserve the Union. As soldiers who would fight for the Union, they should be entitled to all of their rights. And he continuously works toward this and fights for it and is also very influential during the reconstruction period. In the case of Douglass in the later years. And with Torjé too, these are men who are going to have to deal with disappointment because reconstruction did not get carried through to begin that Douglass or others would have wanted to see. And he was going to have to continue fighting for a cause that had not been fully realized in the revolutionary moments of the Civil War itself. But through his later career, Douglass continues to be determined a strong advocate for equality and for equal rights. And he faces criticism from all sorts of quarters, including criticism from some rivals for African American leadership, and then particularly toward the end of his life. He criticized strongly because after the death of his wife, he later marries a white woman who is well suited to him in terms of her education and her interest in reform and literature and so forth. But many blacks attacked him harshly for marrying a white woman. He was unfazed. I'm glad to say that for him, he and his wife enjoyed some happy years toward the end of their life where they will have some nice travel together as well. But Douglass has left us with a legacy of courage and strong advocacy that for him was based on his religious beliefs drawing on the Bible. And also on his belief in the idealism that came from the American Revolution, from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Now, Torjé is another person that I think deserves a great deal of admiration. He came from Ohio and from a part of Ohio in the northern part of the state where reform causes had gained a lot of influence. There was a great deal of religious enthusiasm there and reformist influence. And Torjé was used to promoting democratic discussion and debate and seeing the need to improve things in society. Although until the Civil War, he wasn't particularly alerted to issues about race. Torjé is a Union soldier in the Civil War and it was his experience as a soldier that led him to realize how wrong slavery was and how much potential African Americans who were held down by slavery had and what they could contribute to the national cause. He came out of the Civil War and Reconstruction with a determination that the United States should realize its promise and its potential by pursuing equality in racial matters and giving equal rights and citizenship to black people. And I, as people who live in North Carolina, know how important he was in this state during Reconstruction because he stayed in North Carolina after the Civil War and was an influential Republican in North Carolina, particularly in the central part of the state. He became a judge, was fearless in holding court even when he was being threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. He bought land and made many parts of the land available for purchase on time by African Americans who would rent the land from him and then become the owners. And he worked hard to bring about the success of Reconstruction, which eventually did not occur in North Carolina nor in the rest of the South. But before he left, he finished working on a novel that he had been writing, which became an unexpected great success. His novel of Fools Arendt gives us a real insight into what it was like to be a Republican in the South during the Civil War. And it helped many Northerners come to understand what was at stake in Reconstruction and why white supremacists in the South had succeeded. He had a lot of criticisms to make of the national leadership. He then wrote, after leaving the South, he wrote another novel, Bricks Without Straw, which also was quite successful. And he started promoting federal aid to education as something that could help to elevate the South and bring the South back into the Union in a much more productive way. He had a lot of influence on President Garfield on that issue. And Garfield was quite committed to it, but unfortunately Garfield was assassinated. And then during the next decade, although Torge continued to push for these educational initiatives, the bill in Congress never was adopted. But Torge kept up all of his efforts. He developed contacts with black leaders and black newspaper editors throughout the country. He wrote a regular column to a white and red newspaper. He sometimes shared his column with items from black editors and helped to educate Americans about this. He formed a national equal rights organization, which had hundreds of thousands of people who joined it in the 1890s. And we tend to remember him most today for the role that he took in arguing unsuccessfully for the plaintiffs in the Plessy versus Ferguson decision. Torge was hoping to prevail in a case that would overturn the Jim Crow segregation that was coming into practice throughout the South. And he worked closely with an African American editor in New Orleans in arranging the circumstances that would bring the case in choosing the attorneys. And Torge himself, who was an attorney, played a major role in arguing before the Supreme Court and arguing for the overturning of these discriminatory laws. We now look back on the Plessy versus Ferguson decision as one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court ever made. And Torge helped to establish the ideas that later were very influential, that there should be no color bias in the law, that justice should be colorblind. So he was a very influential person. And I have to admire him as someone like Douglas who fought against a lot of disappointment. We can say that that's true of Elizabeth Katie Stanton as well. Elizabeth Katie Stanton was the most radical and impressive advocate for the rights of women throughout a very long career. And she made important arguments in a judicial way, in idealistic ways, in political ways. And before the end of her career, she also raised religious issues, arguing that proper understanding of the Bible would help you understand that you did not need to have women in a subordinate role. And that was quite advanced for her time and probably would not be accepted by many people today. But Elizabeth Katie Stanton was truly a incisive radical with very impressive intellectual abilities and with determination to push on for equality for women. She wasn't perfect, of course, in frustration. She sometimes spoke negatively about the greater advantages that African American men were having instead of white women. But on the whole, her career was very constructive, very impressive and very far ahead of its time. We have a question from one of our viewers pass on to you. What person profiled in your book with the exception of Lincoln. Do you think most fascinating and how so with the exception of Lincoln. And Lincoln very, very intriguing and impressive because he embraced so many contradictions he was cautious but bold, he was a centrist but he made great change. But if I honor the question, I think I would probably have to say that Elizabeth Katie Stanton was even more intriguing to me and more fascinating to me than Frederick Douglass or Harriet Beecher Stowe. Elizabeth Katie Stanton, from a very early point in her life, resented the secondary position of women. She, as a young girl, found that various things that she wanted to do were not open to her. She told her brother, who died at an early age and her father, though he loved her, told her that it was too bad that she wasn't a boy. She wanted to pursue an education as her brother had and he, and that was not going to be possible because she was a girl. She learned a lot about law. Her father was a judge and a lawyer. She hung around his offices and learned a lot about the law herself, and spoke out in favor of equal rights in the law from an early age. She became involved with abolitionists and with women's rights leaders. She of course was a central figure in the 1848 meeting that that led to the announcement that women must have equal rights under the Constitution just as the Declaration of Independence had talked about equal rights for white men. And she then continues to fight hard for people's rights. And it's true that she encounters many disappointments. It's the greatest disappointment that struck her had to do with the sustained advocacy that she had during the Civil War for the rights of African Americans, as well as black people, and as well as women. She and others fought hard to create greater strength in the north for the Civil War, for the Union, for the policies of Lincoln's administration and for equal rights. She was consistent and loyal. And she found to her shock that when the question came of who now will be receiving greater rights, the men who were in charge. Many of them were willing to make changes for African Americans, but not for women. And when the 14th Amendment is being passed. In her efforts, prominent leaders leave out women from any of these equal rights and she immediately calls for a 15th Amendment that should give rights to women as well as to men. She learned to her sorrow that most of the reformers prove to be unreliable when it came to the point of actually doing something to give rights to to women. Many of the other important leaders of the women's movement also refused to support her because they sometimes felt she was too radical. She had ideas about divorce and about equality and marriage that seemed to many of the other leading women's rights advocates to be too extreme ideas that might turn off a lot of ordinary women in the north. And so they split with her. And from, you know, the 1870s on her women's rights organization is separate from another one, and they do not link up again until 1890. By then, people are recognizing that she more than anyone else has been, you know, carrying forward the cause of women's rights, and she leaves her position, her final position as president of this United Women's Right organization, only to find that that organization refuses to endorse the book that she and others have written about religion. So she's extremely determined, extremely intelligent, and very independent. The organization that most struck me about her was this someone asked her, How was it that she could take so many positions that were unpopular and and move forward with them. And she said, Well, it never occurred to me that people wouldn't realize that this was the right position. I mean, it just seems so logically obvious that women should have equal rights as well that she never doubted her position. And to steal herself to push forward more than that quotation indicates I wouldn't be surprised or hold it against her, but she was really a remarkable advocate and very far ahead of her time. Paul, we're getting toward the end of our time here but I don't think we've talked very much about Harry Beecher Stowe could you briefly elaborate on the role in this, according to Lincoln she caused the Civil War but in any event talk a little bit about her. Yes, she is very important for what she did and also for the way that she connected with cultural forces that were at work in the north during that time. She has a religious perspective that comes out in the novel and shows how religious values are in conflict with the way the Constitution is being understood and the way that slaveholders rights are being understood. I'm talking about Uncle Tom's Cabin, the novel. Yes, Uncle Tom's Cabin is great success in the north. And it gains the success through her connection to religious currents and to currents of cultural reform and to attitudes that were very strong at that time as to the family and what the role of women should be in the family. Some of the characters in her novel who are very impressive are women who resist their husbands because the women stand up for what is morally right and who call the men to account to do what is right rather than what legal scholars may be telling them the Constitution requires. In termitizing these moral issues in her novel and doing it so effectively, she reached a very wide audience and, as Lincoln recognized, did a lot to change attitudes that would bring many people in the north to the conviction that slavery must not expand that steps must be taken to keep slavery from becoming a permanent and widespread institution throughout the whole of the United States. I loved writing about her connection with the culture and her influence on the culture were so great that you need to pay close attention to Harriet Beecher Stowe in order to understand this period of time and what was going on in the north and in the formation of the Republican Party. Okay, well, Paul, I think we've reached the end. I want you to take a minute or so to kind of sum up what you hope to accomplish in this book and what impact these 10 individuals had on 19th century America. The 10 individuals that I wrote about are crucial to a large piece of our nation's history and to history that continues to resonate with us today. I hope that citizens who read this will gain a more accurate sense about our nation's history and about what actually happened as opposed to some of the myths that have prevailed. I hope people will also be aware that events sometimes bring about more change even than political leaders and reformers can. And I also have a great deal of hope that college students can be inspired and stimulated by some of these essays to dig deeper into our nation's history to get into some of the primary perspectives and to begin to learn more about the history that has shaped us today. I think people will enjoy reading the book, and I believe that people can learn a lot from it, even those who are pretty well informed about American history. There's a lot about these people and about their lives that has been obscured by some of the myths and legends that have followed. I hope for wide readership and for success in those ways. Well, thank you, Paul. It's been a wonderful hour to spend with you and talk about your new book and encourage everyone to rush right out and buy a copy. So thank you. Well, thank you, Jeff. I appreciated your moderation, your questions. And I've had a good time talking with you about it. I did too. Thank you.