>> announcer: you are watching american history tv, 48 hours of program on american history on c-span3. follow us on twitter for information on her schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. next, on history the exile that saved american independence. she reflects on when john quincy was appointed to the ambassador to russia. while there, the family built trade relationships, solidifying america's credibility as a nation.

paulette: i am also a member of the board. i'm delighted to be able to introduce jane cook to you. she makes biographies and histories relative to today's news current events and issues of modern life. jane is the author of eight books including "american phoenix" which we have for sale here and that she will be happy to sign. it is about john quincy adams and will lisa and the war of 1812. she also has a soft cover book here called star-spangled story , which is celebrating 200 years of our national anthem. jane has authored several books on faith and courage from

the revolutionary war, days of american first ladies and co-authored faith encouraged and as anar in iraq, aside, she is also a former white house webmaster, so jane, we are happy to have you today. [applause] jane: thank you so much for coming and thank you to fall for the book for hosting today and to the lifelong learning institute at george mason. i really appreciated and also to c-span for being here as well. she mentioned my book. these are some cover images of them. this one i have here today, but these are all available online and through your bookstores. my passion really is to bring history to life in ways that are real and relevant to our lives today. we can't relate to what it's like to ride in a carriage everywhere, but we can

understand what it's like for our families to be separated from one another by distance. that's what i try to focus on , are those things we still have in common with people who have gone before us. mentioning,a way of she mentioned i worked at the white house for a few years and i was president george bushes bush's webmaster. president clinton was the first person to have a web site and this was the second person in the first time we transitioned web sites from president to president, so it was an exciting time. it was before broadband and smartphones and things like that. technology has really changed a lot since 2001, but i have a love for writing before he moved to washington d.c. i've written a little book about sam houston and his daughter maggie. it was my first book. it was a children's book, but it didn't come out until 2002 while

i was working at the white house. so you can imagine just the excitement of having your first book in print. and so, but i was really sweating it because the night before i was supposed to leave to go to the texas book festival in austin and i was going straight from the office to the airport. i didn't have my books yet. and i got home and sure enough there was a box of books. and i finally had my first copy. i was really nervous that i wasn't going to have a copy to take with me to this book festival. i go to the office the next day and i was housed in the eisenhower executive office building which is next door to the west wing. it is that big victorian era building. and we arery excited going to pretend this a book. i wanted to go show it to a friend of mine in another office. i walk out into the hallway and there's nobody around except for secret service agent standing to

the side with the curly cue cord coming out of his ear. i knew he was secret service. they don't normally just stand around inside of the building , so i thought somebody is coming. now when you are a white house staffer in the president is walking through, that is not your time to chitchat with him. you're supposed to stand to the side and let him pass. you can smile and wave but you are not supposed to stop them. it's an unwritten rule that you figure out pretty quickly. well, i was really excited about my book, and sure enough the doors open and president bush starts walking straight towards me. and without really thinking, i didn't say anything to him, i just did this. [laughter] jane: he saw me do this and he came over and started flipping through the book. i thought, oh i have to make sure he understands that this is not about him. this is about sam houston, governor of texas before the civil war. and so he is flipping through it and i am telling them about my book, and then looks at me and

he says i will need an autograph. he thinks i'm giving it to him. and i'm really not because i needed it to go to austin for the next couple of hours. what do you do? the president of the united states thinks you are giving him a book, you had better give him the book. i was so nervous and i said to him sir would you like me to sign this for you now or later? he gave me that puzzled look, then he figures it out. he goes, later. so he goes on its merry way and i go on my merry way, and i go to austin with my book, and when i got back i photocopied the inside cover and practice what i was going to say to him in the space that i had. once i had it down i wrote a little note and send it to the oval office and got a really nice note back from him. and so, i have never given a book to the president of the before since then, so it is really nice to have my

first book just to share with the president. you just never get to do that. now, something else about working at the white house i really fell in love with white house history. i found that for the white house website i could write about white house history and it was bipartisan. so it didn't matter what your political affiliation was . you could come to the white house website and read about biographies of a presence in the rooms of the white house. so i really became enthralled with the history of our presidents and first ladies in and our white house. that is what launched my desire to go on and write about american history. i received a fellowship from the white house historical association, an organization of american historians to do some research on the white house. and so i left my job in 2003 and started pursuing writing. what, i fell in love also a few years ago with the story

about john quincy and the lisa adams and the war of 1812. that is what i want to focus on today is the story. this is a picture of john quincy adams as a younger man, a young diplomat with lots of hair. he does not keep that hair for very long. so what i want to do is start with july 4, 1809. it is independence day, and we are going to hone in on boston. boston is a town of 33,000 people. it is the fourth-largest city in the united states, but adams is not a very happy fellow because he has lost his dream job a year earlier in the u.s. senate. he's teaching at harvard at the time. he is practicing law, and to you and i that would be perfectly respectable if that is what we did with the rest of our lives , to teach and practice law, but if you are the son of john adams and you're not serving the

public, nothing else compares. so he has really lost his dream job, and really his wife talks in her diaries about how miserable it was to live with him during this time because he was just very unhappy. but this makes them very relatable because we have all known someone who has lost a job or who has had to change jobs and maybe didn't want to. and this is what makes him angst of, just that losing your purpose in life is in doing something you don't really want to be doing. so how did he lose his dream job? well, in 1807 the british navy off the the chesapeake coast of norfolk. three were killed, 18 were wounded, and were kidnapped. seizedtish navy captain all the men on that ship and

accuse them of all being british -- in fact two of them were legitimate american citizens. this is called impressment, the act of taking someone and forcing them into the british navy. this is what john quincy adams thought about impressment. he thought the impressment is too all intensive purposes to practice as unjust, immoral and oppressive and tyrannical in as the slave trade. and he was someone who opposed slavery. he thought it was just abominable to take someone and rob them of their citizenship and force them into military a military that could potentially be at war with that person's native country, and that was awful to him. so the practice of impressment was going on because britain was at war with france and they needed every man they could get. and some of the men they impressed were legitimate british deserters, but many were american citizens. the state department estimates that 5000 men were impressed. john quincy adams thinks the

number was low and thanks a lot were not reported. he thinks the number was more around 9000. you can understand the injustice that a lot of people felt about this practice. the other thing that was going on was that we are a country that only has four ambassadors around the world. and they weren't even as a high rank as ambassadors. they were a country that was struggling for its identity and sovereignty. in order to survive as a country we really had to thrive economically, and this is what is happening. britain and france were at war. so britain created a policy that if you were an american merchant ship and you wanted to go over to europe and trade, you had to get a license from great first britain. france led by napoleon turns around and makes the same policy. if you are an american merchant ship and you want to trade in europe, you have to first go to a french port and get a french license. well you couldn't possibly, legitimately have a license from

france and the license from england, so this created havoc for our merchant ships. there is a lot of forgery going on. a lot of british ships would fake american papers and pretend to be a american ships. it was just chaotic. and that is the economic problem we were facing as a country. after the british attacked the uss chesapeake in 1807, president thomas jefferson took his time to find out what he wanted to do. he didn't want to go to war with england, so what he decided to do was sent the senate and embargo and asked them to cut off trade with england. just cut all of it off. does senator john quincy adams of massachusetts to do? his father ran against thomas alsorson and loss, but he knows that the men back in boston aren't going to be happy

if he cuts off their shipping trade, but what do you do? he really was concerned about impressment, and he he decided to put the union above regional interests and he supported jefferson's embargo. and as a result he lost his senate seat. they were so mad at him they didn't even put his name on the ballot in 1808, so he resigned when he realized he wasn't on the ballot. he just out and out resign. and this is what he said. he wrote his mother a letter and said this, "i discharged my duty to my country but i committed the unpardonable sin against the ." and that's how he viewed his loss. he felt it deeply. it was a deep wound for him. to do what he thought was right and then to not be supported in that. on there's a new july 4, 1809. james madison became president president in town. james madison became president

in march of 1809. on july 4, john quincy adams received official paperwork from washington. and keep in mind he is doing very much what we do on july 4. he's going to an independence day parade. he is watching fireworks. and he receives a packet of paper saying he's been appointed as the minister plenipotentiary to the court of st. petersburg, russia. this was quite an astonishing development. he was quite stunned at this, because russia had not officially recognized our independence at this point in time. now his friends and foes responded very differently. his enemies thought it was a great way to get john quincy adams out of the country to send him off to russia. his friends call that an honorable exile. because it was an honorable position to be a diplomat but it was in exile because russia was so very far away.

now today is constitution day, and this was really the basis for john quincy adams' decision. he said "i had determined to go, have acquiesced in the judgment of those to whom the constitution has lifted and thought it best to place me abroad." he was very dedicated to the whole concept of the three branches of government and two to those branches have called it him to service. he ultimately believes that public service to patriotism needed to be solicited nor refused. think about that in our modern politics. it is neither to be solicited , neither is it to be refused. it was different back then. this was his philosophy. he really believes and this is a quote that he shared with the sons, "but the uniform principle of your life be how to make your talents and knowledge most beneficial to your country and

useful to mankind." that was his governing philosophy. and i again think this is what makes him relatable, because we know people who have dedicated their talent to their country and to humanity. sometimes it's service nationally in the military and sometimes it is organizing -- for the book. it is making your talent useful to your community. and i think that philosophy really makes him relatable. now what about luisa? luisa was his wife. she was very musical. in fact, i got chills because when i was doing research on this -- a luisa, we know a couple of days before she finds out about his appointment she's singing and entertaining people at the piano after dinner. we don't know what song she sang, but we do know that one of the more popular songs in this time period was called the boston patriotic song or the adams and liberty song. they had two names for the song. the adams and liberty song was

written for her father-in-law. and so i don't know that she ever sang that song, but i would be shocked if she had frankly because it was for her father-in-law. when i looked it up i discovered through the library of congress that it's the same tune as the ."tar-spangled banner this was before the "star spangled banner" so even though was an old english drinking song most people associated it is the boston patriotic song. so louisa finds out that she's going to russia. she's very shocked as you might be, and then two weeks before they left her father-in-law made a very critical decision. he decided that of their three , they had three sons, eight years old, six years old, and two years old. they decided the two older sons would not go to pressure. they would stay behind in boston

setjohn quincy and the we would be allowed to take their -- john quincy and allowed to take their 2-year-old. she had no say in this decision. she was heartbroken. she wrote every preparation was made without the slightest consultation with me even the disposal of my children. she was stunned and shocked an anguished over this. this was the era of jane austen when women didn't have a lot of decision-making power even in their role as mother or things like this. she cried out in her diary this is agony can ambitions pay such such sacrifices? never was her answer to that. this makes her very relatable today in my opinion because we know people whose families are separated by distance, by divorce. we can understand her emotion s at being forced to be separated from her children. it makes john adams her

father-in-law seem really cold by our modern interpretation that he made this decision but , but he made this decision, he decided to separate the family in order to preserve the family line. because if the whole family had gone on the ship and that ship had wrecked, he would have lost all of them at once. he also really wanted those older boys to be educated in america. that's another reason why he made this decision, but it was very, very heartbreaking. on august 5, 1809, they embark for russia. this is the ship that they took. it's called the horus. it's a merchant ship. it wasn't enough time to acquire a military vessel. they were already worried that they wouldn't get to russia on time because the sailing season can end as early as october. the water can freeze in the harbor in russia as early as october so they were nervous about getting there. it took him 80 days to travel by ship and on their journey they

came face to face with the practice of impressment and . an english ship stop them, at all the sailors lined up and read the descriptions written about each one and accused each one of them of being a british deserter. john quincy had to intervene. this man'save known family my whole life. this is someone from boston, not london. he came face to face with it. he also discovered when they were in denmark that 300 u.s. sailors had been detained by the danish. the danish were under the umb of napoleon at this point. after madison became president , he lifted the embargo so all sorts of ship set sail for europe. some of these got captured in denmark and they were accused of being british, not being american and selling british cargo. so he comes face to face with the very problems that america is dealing with at that particular time.

this is a panorama of st. petersburg around the time period, illustrated around the time period they were there. it lookedry much what like. this is a library of congress image. when john quincy gets to russia he is a distinctive mission. his mission is to convince emperor alexander to trade openly that the united states. because this was the strategy. if we can get russia to trade with us, then that would put a lot of pressure on england and france to change their policies against us, because russia was the largest country in europe at this particular time. emperor alexander accepted john quincy's credentials. this is the first time russia acknowledged the independence of the united states. during the revolutionary war we sent a delegation over there and his grandmother catherine the

great was allied with england and refused to officially recognized american independence. so this is a big step here in our relationship with russia. emperor alexander is this dashing, charismatic, 30-something-year-old emperor, very charming, but he's also allied with napoleon at this particular point in time. he was at war with napoleon a couple of years earlier, but at this point is an ally. and there's not an ambassador from england to russia at this time. there is a french ambassador, and he holds the highest rank of all the ambassadors of europe. don't you just love this image of napoleon? let's see. did it go? there we go. they figure out they are fish out of water in russia. custom is the law. this is an image of the winter palace where the emperor held big events and everything you can imagine.

luisa and john quincy realize they are expected to entertain these other diplomats. but, and john quincy writes his visitation is become a public duty because they were going to ball after ball night after night whether hosted by the emperor or one of the other diplomats. now louisa only had one dress that she could wear. it was silver tissue, which was a gauze-like material. she said she had a french maker show her different ways to wear it, but there was no hiding the fact that she had one dress. and he had one silk suit as well. it was embroidered most likely , but not nearly as decorative as the others. they said the first ball they went to the women were covered in diamonds and so were the men. plane, how different the frugal, yankee adams were in russia.

they really could not compete. so they realize very quickly that they cannot compete financially with the other diplomats. their disparity. john quincy adams salary was $9000. he's the second highest-paid u.s. government official only after james madison the president. the french ambassador salary is $300,000. there is no way that he could entertain. and the other problem was that he hadn't received his money yet. adams didn't have his checked yet from the u.s. government. so he was using his own savings until he received a salary check. that was a huge part of their problem. so how do you succeed? if you are an american how do you convince the czar of russia to trade with america he can entertain, your wife being teased by the emperor's mother because she only had one dress to wear question mark how do you overcome that? this is boiling it down pretty

simply, but they engaged in respectful debate about fair trade with the other diplomats. they made america's case. and they showed a genuine interest in russian culture. offdams would -- they go the record. they used a different term back then, but they would ask if they could speak to one another, these diplomats, the on to their country instructions, so they could have their official conversation about whatever issue and they would ask if they could talk freely as gentlemen not representing their country. so he spent a lot of time discussing with with russian officials and other european diplomats. this was sort of astounding to me. the russians and the french didn't believe or realize that we produce sugar, cotton, and indigo. it's astounding to me that there was a point in time when america was not known for producing cotton, but that is where we were at this point in time.

the senses from 1810 shows american families produced 16 million yards of cotton and cotton mills produce 146,000 yards of cotton every year. there's a humorous entry and ken john quincy's diary where he had 600 diary pages in his life. in his diary from this time period of his life. there was a lot of material to work from. we produced 8 million pounds of refined sugar. he gets into this conversation with the french ambassador, and the french ambassador doesn't believe we produce that much sugar and he kindly remind them that napoleon sold as louisiana. that is where most of the sugar is coming from. the other thing that really surprised me is that even during this time period americans in speak english differently than the britons. i wouldn't have necessarily

thought that but john quincy adams makes it very distinctive note in his diary several times. he said to the french ambassador , do you want to know how you can tell the difference between americans and people from london? we speak english differently. listen to how we speak english. and i thought that was very interesting and fascinating, because we don't have audio recordings from that time. we don't really know how people sounded. so i thought that was very fascinating. so that is some of the debates he got into with some of these diplomats, and with the emperor himself. o. made his case that way to john quincy and luisa take a genuine interest in russian culture and they find ways that don't violate the principles of living within their means. a lot of the things they did -- these are pictures from the late 1800's from the library of congress of st. petersburg, and you can get an idea of what the architecture was like back then. they would ask the government,

the russian government, if they could do places like the hermitage, which has an enormous art collection. they loved art. both luisa and john quincy were fascinated. adams himself went to a factory so he could see what russian commerce really had to offer america. hoff, whichd peter half are the fountains you see here. they also visited churches. we go to services with the emperor at the palace and to see how the peasants went to church. at one particular point he thinks the diplomats are expected to be at the saints day service led by the emperor, but it is where the peasants can, as well, the common man. he shows up and he realizes he's one of the only diplomats there. he made a faux pas. he was not supposed to show up, but the russian foreign minister sees him and comes to him and he begins to explain the liturgical nature of the service.

a sweeteally opportunity for adams to take a genuine interest in their church as stones, and that is how they won over the emperor -- church customs, and that is how they won over the emperor, art, culture, and the things they could relate to in russia. they also took walks around st. petersburg, where they would run into the emperor. i think they would try to time it sometimes of they could run into each other. the emperor would be relaxed, informal, and would talk to them. when he was at the palace, he had to be more formal. spoke french fluently. she grew up in france. her father was a maryland merchant running the london side of an annapolis shipping company, and so when war broke out during the revolution, he took his family to france, so

luisa was born in 1775, the same year as jane austen. her mother is british and they father is american and they flee to france. and his top five french nuns her mother always thought louisa spoke french better so she could engage in conversations about art or culture and it did she really did impress a lot of these diplomats, and the women, that she spoke to. so while they are doing this, showing an interest in the culture, things are beginning to change on the world stage. in may of 1810, napoleon gets married to the austrian princess. the french ambassador to russia is obligated as he put it to host a ball.

napoleon is nowhere to be seen, nowhere at all, but the emperor alexander is aghast. so he comes to this ball. they are all there. and suddenly louisa feels a tap on her shoulder and turns around and sees the emperor standing there, and he says to her in ?rench, which you dance with me she is quite stunned. dances.e very formal this is not english country dancing. this is formal dancing, so she is nervous, astonished. they take said dance floor and dance by themselves and others join in and they go to the formalities of it. she said she got through it will well enough. she said her heart was eating quickly. diaryuld read this in her , if you could only see the ladies in the room taking their

fans, covering their mouse, and with the is dancing american. they were also wondering if there was a romantic undertone to it. she was not sure what they were up to. and they did not know for a while, but suddenly within one week the french ambassador and all diplomats from france will start to pay a lot of attention to luisa adams. they are invited to a lot of parties. the french ambassador says, mr. adams -- a lot of attention is paid adams, and realizes it was the

ie emperor's way to signal will trade openly with america , and within four months there was a policy. the french ambassador, and they engage and john quincy adams. there is a lot of back-and-forth lot of attempts by the french ambassador to squelch the emperor's decision, but ultimately adams prevails. let me give you an example. , itships sunk in denmark would take six months for the ships to reach russia. whenortened to six weeks russia agreed to openly trade with the united states. so things are going really great. trade is open now. we have russia as an ally. so, what happened? well, several things do. in 1811, president madison sent since john quincy adams a letter notifying him that with unanimous consent with the u.s.

senate he has nominated him to be of the supreme court. we didn't have hearings back then. they just voted. they voted unanimously for him. we know he becomes president later. and he was a member of congress, senate, then after he was elected to the u.s. house. he is the only u.s. president to be elected to all three branches. now, what does he do with this appointment to the supreme court? it is what he wants, to serve the public back at home in an honorable decision. he knows his father is doing a happy dance. his mother knows he has been chosen to be on the court. it goes back to louisa. luisa is six months pregnant at this point. and if he accepts the position,

it is may or did they could get back to america, but what kind of danger in jeopardy would that put her and the pregnancy in. she loses two pregnancies while she is in russia. she already lost two pregnancies before this time, so her health is delicate. so they talk about different scenarios. what if they waited until after the baby was born in august? well, it would still be a while before it is safe for an infant to travel by ship. he turns it down. he does not use the term pregnant in his letter to madison, but he notes the dedication and devotion of parent should have to his family. madison can read between the lines about what that is about. he also tells medicine i have long entertained a deep and serious mistrust for a seat on the bench. he wrote his father a letter and tod i am very sorry

disappoint the expectations of my country by withholding myself from that judgment seat, but happier for me than it would be to disappoint their expectations upon the seat itself. what adams knew, he knew what his talents were and what they were not. he knew that he was not a judge. he was a bowyer by training, but as he put it, had some heretical views on common-law and we knew he knew that if he became a supreme court justice he would make some pretty radical thesions that would upset apple cart of the american judicial system, so he just decided that is not for me. but he also turned it down because of luisa, and that shows you he has grown, the man who did not stand up to his father on the decision of those two boys is now putting family into the nexen his decision-making, which shows some growth by our modern standards.

is goingides that he to have his sons come to him by boat in 1812. why not? trade is open. well, we know what happens in 1812. america declares war against england, and napoleon invades russia, all the same month. way he is putting his sons on a boat. he told his mother in a letter that if war came to the states, do not send them on boats to see me. this iswhat he wrote, " his response to finding out we were at war when he find out in calm,"if our trial is to god of justice and mercy give us your spirit with fortitude to

derive -- means even the passions of britain's was bad news in his mind. that is the way he looked at it. he wrote his brother a letter at , "i trustime and said the spirit of my country will prove true to its self." he really compares that the case opens before us a situation that is formidable as 17 75 in 1776 was to our fathers. do you see they are embracing the mantle of independence and it is on the line here potentially, depending on the outcome of the war. luis a gave birth in august, 1811, to a baby girl. thein a few months, daughter contracts a flu-like sickness and then starts having convulsions.

luis's diary gets pretty thin during this time period, and you realized she is very worried about the health of this baby daughter. sure enough, the baby passes away in september 1812, very tragic. we don't really understand how she died. i interviewed a pediatrician to try to get some perspective. she was teething in her teeth were coming in. they were trying to give her real food instead of milk. she contracted diarrhea, probably dehydrated. it could be she had an underlying genetic condition, which is what the convulsions were from, or it could be the flu-likemissy had -- sickness she had that and do something else. her diary becomes very dark. she is very suicidal actually in her diary. you should read her shock and her grief that she pours out into her diary.

she was very depressed. she gets to the point were all she wants is to be late to rest next to her daughter in the cemetery. that is how depressed she becomes during this time period . they are stuck in st. petersburg and napoleon is burning moscow, and they fear that the french will take over moscow, then things go bad for the french. adams is one of the few remaining diplomats in russia. all the other diplomats went home. russia whileere in his country is at war. imperva alexander held a lot of victory ceremonies at the caps kazan cathedral, and that is where a lot of the victory ceremonies were held when there

were victories during his pursuit of napoleon across russia. relationshipnder's takes an important turn. mediate ain 1813 to peace treaty between america and great britain. a lot of that was born out of his relationship. ly.m's response positive he is confident madison would agree to a russian mediation. he is right. madison sends the delegation. he does not wait for senate approval. he sends them onward to st. petersburg. the british however have a very different reaction. they ignore the offers to with america, but the british prime minister complains privately that the russian czar

has become half an american. can you imagine saying that about the current leader of a russia when it comes to america? a very different relationship. the british say no, but this forces them to directly negotiate with america. and tossed around a couple of cities. adams will leave luisa in 1814 to go to belgium to be part of the team of five americans. he is the lead. he goes to negotiate this treaty. also during the spring of 1814 and april, polling goes into exile. the world is changing quickly -- napoleon goes into exile. the world is changing quickly. the we set is now a loan charles with. petersburg -- alone

charles in st. petersburg. a lot of you probably know what 1812,ed in the war of 1814. adams writes luisa a letter. he writes are several letters. and has come to trust her judgment and ask her to keep whatever he writes to her on the subject of peace negotiations and close confidence, sake not a word until the results shall be publicly known. in other words he was sharing state secrets with his wife in the letters. he talked a lot about the negotiations in these letters. it shows a lot of love and trust between the two. there is a point where a british diplomat, and the british now have the dramatic relations with russia again, corners the and says, tell me about the negotiations. , mr.as to pretty much say

adams is not writing me on business. she is surprised this the asker directly if she knew what was going on at the negotiations. there is a setback in the negotiations. onre is a lot of dithering etiquette about the negotiations before they get to the details of the negotiations, and this is why. the british were waiting for the outcome of sending reinforcements to the east coast, our coast. on august 20 4, 1814, the british military burn our capital and white house. this is an illustration of the remains of the capital. the was no dome yet on the capital. it took about six weeks before the delegation learned of the burning of the white house. setback the negotiations. it would give the british the upper hand.

petersburg st. reading about this atrocity in is paper, and everyone saying you are part of britain again, aren't you? europeans,er diplomats, they thought it was barbaric to burn the white house , to burn the capital. it was ok to capture somebody's capital, that you don't burn , thene else's art, letters library of congress was burned. she witnesses several scenes where the british diplomats are shunned at these social event's have to leave early because these others, only napoleon burned moscow in their view, and sure enough it backfires at the congress indiana, which is where emperor alexander is at this point. the leaders of europe are dividing the spoils of napoleon. the british think they will have

the upper hand at these negotiations over what will happen to europe. they realize, no, it is back fronting on them and they better come up quickly with a peace treaty. delegates would get their instructions pretty quickly, and adams had to wait six weeks to get them six weeks from president madison. adams and the other negotiators recommended to british three different studies for the treaty of ghent, and everyone decides we will go back to prewar boundaries. the british say it was their idea. adams notes in his diary that if was the americans idea. everybody wants to take credit for the treaty of ghent and the outcome, which as we went back to the borders with canada as ony were before, and december 20 4, 1814, adams and the others sign the treaty of ghent, which is this lasting

peace between america and great britain. i met a group of belgians this summer who came and they were visiting and bringing yellow roses. the yellow rose was the symbol of the treaty of ghent, and they visited the white house and current locations to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the treaty of ghent, and this group is very proud that america and great britain signed the treaty on belgian soil. this is how adams reflected on the signing of the treaty. he wrote this to louisa. i consider the day on which signed it as the happiest day of my life because it was the day on which i had my share in restoring peace to the world." adams had been writing louisa he was going to come back to st. petersburg. that was the plan. treaty,e signing of the he somewhere along the way received instructions from madison that the delegates,

commissioners, were to go to paris and await further instructions from president madison on what their next assignment would be once they concluded peace, so he writes her letter and says, january 1815, and i'm going to paraphrase this, honey, sell the house, so the furniture, hire a carriage, meet me in paris. women just did not make those kinds of decisions back then. this was her response, consider the astonishment your letter has cost me. i fear i shall the much imposed upon. this is a heavy trial, but i must get through it at all risk. if you received me with the conviction that i have done my best, i shall be amply rewarded. potentiallyg to be a 40-day journey. women back then did not travel. women of her social status did not travel in a carriage without a male protector.

that was the custom. she will have to travel from st. petersburg to paris by land because it was frozen. 40 days over 1600 miles. this is war-torn europe. napoleon and his troops have just been through. the russians have just been through. this is really rough country that she's going to travel through, so she is forced to make life-and-death decisions. one of the reasons why this would make a good film is because of this journey in particular. she reaches the corner of poland .o cross the river it is late in the day at about 4:00 in the afternoon. the local ice fisherman are saying we don't know how secure the isis for you to get your carriage over the river. your other choices you can take the long way around, but we don't think you'll find shelter for the evening. so what do you do?

theyecides to cross and are tapping on the ice to make sure they have the most solid path. you can just picture this on film, the ice cracks and the horses had to fight violently to keep the carriage from upsetting and to get to the other side. she is making those kinds of decisions. she learns that one of her servants is a thief. on and on it goes. she gets to ultimately the outskirts of france, to the champagne country of france, and she hears the rumor and finds out that it is true that napoleon has been in exile, but is no longer in exile, a is in fact marching to reclaim the throne in paris, so she is about to be caught up potentially in a civil war between the men supporting the king of france and the men supporting napoleon. she has to decide what to do.

is told she is a day and a half ahead of napoleon, so she decides to press forward. better to get to paris and meet up with john quincy there than to get caught up in what is behind her. a halfnot a day and ahead. she is 30 minutes ahead. sure enough they come across a road lined by a mob of people who are waiting or napoleon's passage. the french hate the russians at this point and they start chanting, take them out of the carriage and kill them. they are russian. sure enough, napoleon's imperial guard sweeps along her carriage, and the imperial guard was the guard closest to napoleon. they stopped the carriage. the nurse is screaming and crying. she has fears and members of the french revolution. luisa remains calm.

andpulled out her passport used her perfect french to speak to the officer and calmly explained who she was and why she was going where she was going, and he says to her, your french will help you immensely. you speak french beautifully. hold your handkerchief out the window and call out, long live napoleon to get you to paris. she agrees to do that even though she does not like napoleon. and this out the mob is just an american lady going to paris to meet her husband. in the mob when they hear that she is not russian, but american, they start chanting, long live the americans. long live the americans. you can imagine that happening today in france either, not as much as back then. that is how she gets to paris. there is a rumor that goes ahead that she is napoleon's sister, so she goes with that.

she makes it to paris and is reunited with john quincy. he finds out he's going to be the next diplomat to england and that their sons are going to england, so the family is soon to be reunited. this is how you she reflected on her journey. she wrote that when i retrace my movements through this long and arduous journey, i can't humble myself too much out of thankful adoration to the providence who shielded me and inspired me with whichnswerving faith teaches to seek for protection from above. write about her journey because she wanted it to be remembered. she recognized a few years later that this was part of her legacy and that maybe it would show that things are not quite so trying as imagination predicts them to be.

she really wanted to show that women were much more capable than many thought they were, and that is why she wrote about this journey. it seeks to our desire to be remembered for the things we have done in our lives. i found this quote, and when the publisher and i decided to name phoenix" iamerican thought it was appropriate to describe john quincy and louisa adams. morehoenix riddle has with. by us, we to being one our it. referring to marriage, perhaps. we two in one, her it. the phoenix is an eagle like bird, described like an eagle, who dies on the funeral pyre and then source to greater heights, and that is why the image of the phoenix fits john quincy and louisa adams quite well.

adams transform from a man down on his luck, losing his dream job. he is now on the path to become secretary of state and president. madison had been secretary of state. jefferson had been secretary of state. monroe have been secretary of state. he comes back to the united short after serving a time in england, become secretary of state, and immediately after that becomes president comes of that is his transformation, which is also something filmmakers look for, that transformation. luisa was the phoenix as well. she had overcome depression over losing her daughter and the journey really helps her and if id her to realize if want to live for my child, i have to pull it together and make these decisions to get safely to paris. she transform from a mother without decision-making power in her life into a woman entrusted

by her husband to make life or death decisions, to travel to paris. america itself is also a phoenix. we enter the era of good feeling good we never went to war with england again. our commerce derived -- derived. -- thirved. when john quincy adams was negotiated 17 commerce treaties with other countries, the most of any president, to put us on path to being not just a son or daughter of england, but really our own independent country, and that is the american phoenix legacy for john quincy and louisa adams. like, if you will go

to the microphone to ask your question so they can hear you, i will be happy to answer your questions about this era. book, i, i used in the used original source material so everything in quotations was something they wrote in their diary or in a letter, so it is really aced on their original source material, and that is important to me as a historian, to look at the original text as much as possible and make that a starting point. you could not do that with dolly madison during this time period because there is not that much she wrote. asre is some, but it is not fast as what the adams here. is anybody have any questions? >> > what was the relationship with the mother-in-law? jane: the question is what is her relationship with her mother-in-law. is paintedtimes it they have a tense relationship and it was not until the wee some made the journey to paris

that abigail excepted her, but i found they had a very tender relationship. in the letters in the wee so would write abigail, she called her, my dearest mother. when she miscarried in russia, she writes her mother-in-law i'm sorry to let you know i have deprived you of another relation , that only you would understand my grief, but it seems like they had a very tender relationship. outte, 1811, luisa finds from abigail that her sister died in childbirth. abigail wrote three letters because january, 1811, because she kept finding out news like this, and so she would write a letter thinking this was her only a letter that she would send come and then something happened and she found out about luisa sister, so there was definitely a good strong relationship, and one thing that

helped the we so was that she knew her children were in good hands under abigail. wouldote that nothing console me other than the fact that i know they are in your hands. anybody else? go to the mic. that would be helpful. >> you talked about the fact the british and the american spoke differently. i'm curious about whether that of accents or pronunciation, or manner in terms of bluntness in that manner of speaking? jane: it could be, i don't know for sure. i am assuming that some of it is accident. madison was a fifth generation american. that is how far back his family went at this stage. probably your language and morect has evolved to southern, what we consider southern at this point, so it is probably both would be my guess,

but it was tricky because in fairness to the british there were a lot of deserters. you could get paid better so there was a lot of desertion. a lot of those deserters became american citizens legitimately peered it was not quite cut and dry. recordingad an audio to know the difference. anybody else? we would like to thank you very much, it was really interesting. you all have evaluation forms, if you could put them on one of the chairs upfront before you leave. sign auld be happy to book for you if you like. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> on history bookshelf, here from the country's best-known american history writers of the past decade, every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch any of our programs anytime you visit our .ebsite, c-span.org/history you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. "afterwords,ht on " the author of "the trump white house." boxer, bobbing and weaving, counterpunching. it is all an act. interviewed his top aide for

25 years, when she joined the company,on -- the there were only seven other employees at the time. she says there are two donald trumps. there's the one on tv, even if he creates negative publicity, he is the center of conversation. then there is the one insiders know who is the opposite. he is thoughtful, listens, very careful about making decisions. >> watched sunday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span2's book tv. >> tonight on lectures in history, a professor teaches a class about some of the people who challenge the status quo of the u.s. auto industry from the

post world war ii era to the present. here is a preview. in 1985, we have "back to the future" appearing, which inexplicably linked the delorean with the time machine. there is a line in the movie where marty says, "you mean to tell me you build a time machine out of a delorean?" and doc says, if you're going to build ae -- to timesheet machine, you might as well do it with style. the car became a collectors item. in that respect, the delorean might have had the last laugh and have been saved by hollywood. what is the take away from what we have studied so far?

what does history teaches about maverick automakers? they don't have a good track record of success. , becausethey fail they're trying to enter a business that has such high capital and financial costs. you are subject to the goal consumer taste -- two fickle consumer taste good you have to deal with dealerships in all of the complexities of manufacturing and sales. it is a very difficult business to get into. >> watched the entire program tonight at 8:00 p.m. and midnight history on lectures in history, american history tv, only on c-span3. history,n lectures in a tulane university professor teaches a class about moonshine drivers in the origins of nascar. he describes how after the civil war, particularly in the south,

moonshiners became antigovernment folk heroes. this mythology continued into the 20th century. many of the moonshine drivers would compete to see who had the fastest car and this led to the creation of professional stock car racing. his class is about 50 minutes. >> all right. i'm going to tell you about nascar today. i wanted to go over quickly what we talked about on monday. what i told you about, or what i hope you took away from monday's lecture, were key ideas that are going to be fundamental to what i'm talking about today. the first of those is how whiskey making came to the american colonies, mainly in the persons of scotch/irish immigrants. how they moved into the backcountry or the frontier of what was then the american colonies. they actually are the group of