it is now my honor to introduce

our speaker candice shy hooper, our fine careers on capitol hill and as a lobbyist, candice earned a master's degree in history with a concentration in military history from the george washington university. she has served on the editorial advisory board of the journal of military history, the advisory board of the ulysses s and julia d grant home, and the board of directors of president lincoln's cottage. her work in the historical field has also included publications in the new york times. the journal of military history and the michigan war studies review her book lincoln's

generals wives for women who influenced the civil war, for better or for worse, won three national awards. her most recent publication, delivered under fire, absalom margolin and freedom's mail, is the first biography of the childhood friend ulysses us grant. and while serving as a special agent of the us post office department, he was often called grant's postmaster general in his role as agent of the us post office department during grant's presidency. mark lynn also contributed to the passage of the ku klux klan act of 1871. candace will be speaking to us about her book delivered fire, which adds to the scholarship to the understanding of the union's postal network during the civil war and crucial years during. and i had the privilege of talking to candice just before the program, and she shared with me that her uncle bob was a longtime letter carrier in

indiana and gave her an appreciation for the of working for the post office. so thank you. please welcome candice. anthony. see. so thank you much, lynn. and thank you, susan in the back. the two of them have been great great help to me and writing this book here in the only place i could find that knew. absolutely. mark lynn's name before i started. and thank all of you for coming and including those on zoom, i first encountered absalom on when i was writing my first book because he popped up when in the letters between julia grant and ulysses grant and between eleanor sherman and william

tecumseh sherman and the name, of course, mark one that's going to stick in your mind. and even though i thought was going to write a different book after this one, i just get that name of my head. i realized the papers i found at the library of congress while i was doing this book that he had something to do with the mail during the civil war. but that's all i could tell from those papers. so that made me begin to think, you know, how did mail get delivered during the civil war? in fact, the last statistic is that there are more than 100,000 books that have been published about the civil war since. it started, but could not find one of them that told how the letters that nearly all of them cite in those books got delivered between, the front lines and the home front.

so this book is the first biography of absalom maclean, but it's also the first book about delivery of mail during the civil war. absalom markland, born in kentucky, when he was a young, very you man, six year his father moved the family to maysville, kentucky, which is right on the ohio river. u can see it in the background. kentucky was then, of course, a sle state. ohio was a free state and maysville, among many things that it was, was stop, an important stop on the railroad for slaves who were trying get to freedom literally. they sold slaves on the steps of the courthouse in washington county at maysville. and people hid slaves and helped them escape to freedom. there. so markland grew up in what

lincoln later called a house divided. just that one town was a microcosm of the whole of the civil war while he was there, maysville he attended the maysville academy and for 11 months another young man also attended. at that time his name was hiram ulysses grant. he later became known course as ulysses us grant the two of them were good friends, they they partici painted in a debate society. there are records of their debates and the subject matter i talk about in the book some of it's very ironic. but then grant's father decided he wasn't paying enough attention. his studies for what he was paying into with and for him. so he sent him off to west point where tuition was free and the

two of them in 1838 sort of separated separated. marquand went on to go augusta college in kentucky and to study the law and became a steamboat clerk and then in 1848, he and, his father went to washington, d.c., where they each became clerks in different offices and mark then became a clerk in the pension, which dealt with the pensions for revolutionary soldiers still alive at that time. and soldiers the war of 1812. he a busy, busy young man but. 1850 he married the daughter of a wealthy developer in washington, d.c. his name sampson sims and martha sims is a beautiful young was you can see. we suspect that this made about the time of their w. and so that's that's why we've got the dat that is the only photograph we

although later in the book i do have a description of her that was written by one of the generals who met her. that is one of only three photographs of absalom so he married. and as the war began to build or at least the move for secession built steam marshland became a part of abraham lincoln's, kentucky inner circle because kentucky was so important as a border state to. the the success of the union lincoln is supposed to have said and there are a number of people who have reported this that he said you know i would like have god on my side but i must have kentucky. and so he scour washington to what people there knew about kentucky and kentucky politics.

and mark on was one of them, one of the young ones. so as he's as the war is coming on and then as the war begins, markland decides, well, it's not just enough to be practicing and doing a little bit of real estate speculation. he wanted to do something more for the union now his brother went into the army did not he decided he would ask lincoln to make him an army paymaster. so he would be the person who would pay the soldiers. it would be, you know, a relatively calmer existence and he wrote a letter, a lengthy letter, lincoln, which is in the national archives and lincoln wrote on the back of it the first one, says, respect fully submitted to the war department. on stember 5th that should have gotten secretary of war cameron you know atttion that he wanted to that lincoln wanted him appoint this man a

paymaste but the next day he'd heard nothing. and so he writes again to lincoln on ptember six and says, you know, let's get on it. in fact, he wrote three times to secretary cameron who shortly thereafter but not shortly enough was to russia as as minister to russia and maybe his attitude toward lincoln was was one of the reasons. but why secretary cameron was delayed in responding to lincoln and a kentuckian in lincoln's cabinet reached out and brought him into his his cabinet department. and that was postmaster blair, who had to west point, who was a kentuckian and and was postmaster general. he appointed marquand in t fall 1861 to be as special agent. the us post office department.

now at that time sci agents were the police department of the post office and indeed their successors. today are called postal inspectors. i met one of them when i gave this talk and charles, then a couple of weeks ago it was to you was wonderful to actually meet one of them. but they are ones that that cracked down on crime dealing with mail. if you remember when steve bannon was arrested on the russian yacht for the let's build the wall scam, he arrested by a postal inspector. these men that have to be smart, brazil elegant, resourceful and courageous in dealing with problems. so he becomes this special and he's sent to cairo, illinois, at that time, the biggest crisis in the post department was the number of soldiers until the civil war started. most of the mail that the post

office carried was really newspaper and some letters. but once the war started and had all of these men moving all over away from their homes, mostly for the first time ever, thousands of letters, a torrent of letters came into the post office department and chaos reigned in cairo, illinois. the postal there. when mark one got there, it was a little bit smaller than this room. it was 11 by 14 was filled to the ceiling mail that had not been sorted or and there were 40 cars on the side full of mail that had n bn delivered it markland got to work, captured e ople he needed to it done and got it done and was was doing that one day on the street ulysses grt o had been made

commander of the department of soutllinois. at southern department came by and recognized mark cohen. now this is the they last saw each other in 1838 this is 1861 they were just teenaged years 13 and 11. and now they're men and they're men with beards i've got pictures of the beards in the in the book but they are, you know, some of the worst hair that you've seen even in the context of the civil war. but in any event, grant recognized him. they they fell in together as friends and soon in february, grant asked him, do you want to see a fight? and mark? one said, yes. so mark one got on board the that grant took two fort henry, which was the first major battle in west of the civil war.

and it was a victory. and that made i in essence the firsvictory that the uon had had had in the civil war on the way toort henry, grant asks mark one, welly're with the post office. do you think you can help me keep up the mail to the soldiers as we move along? because if you've read my first book and even if you hadn't, i'll you he longed for mail his wife his wife was not just notorious about not writing, but almost criminal about not writing. and he loved her. and she's a nice person. and she had several reasons why she not have written, but it just made him so depressed that his one of his top priorities ever was getting the mail to the soldiers to keep up morale. and that really one of the top priorities of all commanding officers in every war that ever been fought to be to have

communication between home front and the front lines, because that keeps up morale on both sides of the war. and it is important in the success. so as marquand took on this job and, he said he'd do it and later he got the postmaster general's blessing do it. but you know, like a smart guy, he took the job. he became and you don't need to read any of this. but he became famous a whereas there's almost no purse rquand.ef ablom the newspapers record of him are extensive extensive because. everywhere he went, the people knew that the mail could get through and. so. so at fort and the next battle was fort don osten. and that was the first one that he really worked at in when grant sold years were coming in

one side of the fort at fort henry and taking from the confessor. that's who had surrendered the mail carriers coming in from the other side to bring the mail and then he went from there to nashville or to memphis. he was always with grant. he was everywhere. and that made him one of the most beloved men in the united states. so here's our man. in 1862, colonel marquand, superintendent of mails, and y'll see that this photograph is from us army heritage center in carlisle. and the interestinthg to note is,f course he's not wearing a uniform. in fac h was ner actually commissioned a colonel but grant called himolonel to give him the status he needed to cut through red tape, which was in fact a term that originated in the civil war, to cut through

red tape. and because grant called him colonel, everybody called him colonel, literally for the rest of his life. there is not one iota of evidence that grant ever made a formal gave him a formal commission. but, you know, here here he is in charge of the mail for us army. now, i'm going to take just a moment out to give you of the bigger picture and let know what was going on in the south with their mail in the south, the postmaster was a man named john regan, who had been a us congressman from texas, and he realized that he was in deep trouble. the the confederate constitution included a clause that said that the post office was supposed to pay for itself that was never going to happen. so he pretty much just didn't handle the mail. and in fact, he had very little infrastructure to do it. the south had very poor railroad

ties and those were all being used for soldiers. and so what happened was there were sort of independent contractors and this man and there was a man, the confederate side, this is have civil war coincidences go who was from kentucky who had been a steamboat man to and who's name was absalom? and he was the confederate mail runner. the for the confederacy. and he also spied and he got caught and. he escaped it time and time again. in fact, you know, the stories his life are are truly amazing, but that was the situation in the south was very much patched together, poor mail service, very poor morale. so to go back in this first full year war, winter of christmas you have this need for communication and mark on is

starting to stand it up but what you also had and i try to give a bigger picture of the whole postal system then is a postal system that required that everybody go to the post office to their mail and you wouldn't know exactly when the mail was going to come in or not, but you had to to the post office to get your mail. it's just what i have to do on my little island in florida. i have to go to the post office to get the mail, but when it's winter and it's freezing in cleveland or new york, when it's summer and it's hot, when there are crowds all these women, mostly women waiting in line. and in the new york city post office, a big post office, they had a lady's window, but in most places they did not. so they would be waiting in line and they would finally make it up to desk and they'd give their name. and they might often be presented with a letter like this one telling this woman that her husband been killed at

gettysburg and the woman would break down or she would be given a whole stack, undelivered letters that she had written to her husband that that the minute that the postmaster started to hand them over, she knew that he was dead. so the postmaster in cleveland, a man named joseph william briggs decided that he just uldn't he was not going to let the post office become a public place of grief for these women. and he started this system of home delivery with his post offi. and as all good bosses do. montgomery blair, postmaster general heard about this and he agreed with that. by the end of the war, there were 49 cities that were getting home delivery. so the civil war is why you get mail delivered at home. it's also why your street has a

name and there's probably a street sign in your house has a number, and there are rules about cleaning the sidewalk of snow because all of those things had to happen in order for mail to be delivered to houses. so that the whole mail system that most of us except me enjoys is because the civil war and direct i mean, they would have gotten it too, at some time. but but joseph briggs jumped, the ball now by the end of the war markland had been everywhere that grant had been. and you could see this and at the very end he was even ine appomattox. but one of his great adventures was when grant aroved march to the sea and he sent markland down to atlanta to confer sherman about how to handle all of the mail that would be still coming into atlanta from their

families, while the soldiers were on the march completely cut off in less contact with the rest of world than we now have. men on the moon. and so went down there and he not only figured out how to handle that mail, but he figured out to do it in a way that could confuse the confederates and keep them not knowing where sherman was going for at least the first couple of weeks that worked. and then a little more than a month, sherman shows up outside of savannah. he's his army just outside of savannah. nobody really knew that was where he was going to end up. in fact, sherman's brother asked abraham lincoln at a reception, do you know where my brother is? and lincoln said, well, know what hole we went into, but we don't know what hole he's coming out of.

but when he came out of that hole and markland was there just off shore with a boat with 28 tons of mail, those soldiers, it is the most remarkable logistical in the civil war. i, i haven't heard anybody dispute that. but it is just amazing. and so he the war is over in april of 1865, mark en to go into civilian life, become a lawyer, lobbyist and and grant who has just done, you know, just accepted the surrender of lee on april 9th and is now trying to get the get everything in order to reduce the army, put everybody back in the into civilian mode, takes out from his busy schedule to send mark

on this this is a saddle this saddle that grant used throughout the civil war and the letter that accompanies it is just beautiful. i have it in the book, but it basically says this is a token of my esteem and friendship with the hopes that wcan continue our service together. it is the prize of th quartermaster museum at, a place that used toe called fort lee, virginia, but has since been changed to fort gregg adams and it is it is stunning. and when i called the ulysses grant presidential library to the head of the library there and museum, if they had any information, other gifts that grant had given to people during the war, in addition to the saddle, they were just stunned. they didn't even know about the saddle, but more importantly,

they said no. grant didn't give gifts except to his family. they had no record of any other gifts. so this was really an extraordinary tribute to the man who did exactly what he was asked to do in the early stages of the war. and so in this hope that they might continue their services together when grant became president in 1868, he called markland in and asked him this was 1869 when he took office, asked him he would take on the job of being in charge of the mail in kentucky and. tennessee. now, that sounds like sort of a step backwards for somebody who had been the postmaster general of the entire army across the entire united states. but in fact it was a huge, huge responsibility. the ku klux klan began in tennessee immediately as the war

was ending and was just wreaking death and destruction, particularly only in south carolina. north carolina, but was also very active in tennessee and kentucky. and in kentucky, it was called the bluegrass klan. so mark one takes on this job. and the first thing he does is he hires this man, william gibson, who is a free black man from baltimore. when he was 18, he was he was very well educad, played the violin. he wanted to be a minister. t when he was 18, he went to louisville, kentucky, and up a school for blacks. and he was very success for that. and he became quite well known. and when marcon was looking for somebody to help out grant's efforts at, increasing civil

rights and integrating the postal service, he was the first man he chose, and he gave him a. he gave him the most important mail route in the state of kentucky between louisville and lexington. in the middle is frankfort, which is the capalf kentucky on the first day out for gibson, everywhere he went. and he wrote about this later becausheid write his memoirs. he wrote about this later. he said, everybody just looked at him like they were seeing a ghost or something wrong. the second day they were prepared and. that place that i mark north benson when the train slowed down for gibson to hand off the mail for that post office and take on the ma fm the postmaster there these four n

jumped out and began to attack him and they were trying for jeff davis and were telling him they were going to kill four white men. obviously, ku klux klan. he it out of there, but they did put bullet holes in the train door as he got it closed. from that point on, mark kirkland, who had responsibility for that, sent guard of ten soldiers with gibson every day for a month on that route every day he was that he was going back forth he had ten soldiers the klux klan members were still out there, but there was nothing that they would they would not engage in a firefight. the with the soldiers. but by the end of the month, as we read in ulysses president grant's cabinet memos, grant want this to happen anymore, he

this is this is not sustainable. and so, of course, grant had a choice. and you might think well, he'll just put a white guy in there. you know that's what that's what the kentuckians that's what everybody in the state is up talking about. no, he didn't. what granted was he he told markland to shut down the mail service between louisville and lexington so that there was no mail would be carried on the railroad on that most important rail route in the state. and the white kentuckians, all of the white southerners, south carolinians and north carolina, every they started howling because was the first time that anybody had been dealt a consequence for the actions of the klux klan. and grant said, you know if i can't if the state won't protect people, if the state won't

enforce civil rights of these people, if the state won't federal workers who are doing work for them in the state, then i need power to to protect them and, to prosecute them and fact that's what happened. and less than a month after the attack, grant went to the cabinet room in, the capitol. he didn't he didn't wait for the bill to be carried up pennsylvania avenue to the white house. no, he went to the capitol and he signed the ku klux klan act of 1871. then. and of course, that is that is t right now under which the capitol policemen who were injured in the january 6th riot are suing. and it was it's the the law under which the charlottesville attackers were prosecuted.

so fact what grant had asked for had hoped for when gave the saddle to mark when came true that they did continue services together and that it has helped all of us ever since. by 1885 and this is the third and last photograph we have of mark one he's age 60 he's tned he's withdrawn from from society. but he starts writing anhe starts wring. and so now the man who used to deliver people's mail, writing these just hundreds of letters, everybody, including jefferson davis and the president and and then they're all very interesting and often important letters. but the other thing does is he starts to look into his heritage and wonders whether. he's related to abraham lincoln,

whose mother, of course, was nancy hanks. lincoln, they were both originally from virginia, went kentucky. he's not to finish that. he died three years later. and i was unable get that work done. i had pretty much hired a genealogist and but covid shut all the archives for genealogy and he died. and when he died there were newspaper articles him all over the country remembering him for the work that he did, keeping the front lines in the home front together, and then reuniting the north in the south through the mail after the war, he is buried in dumbarton oaks cemetery and this memorial, not for him. this catherine, a great friend of ours, of mine, took of photographs fore of the

gravesite and his name is etched on tone. but that is really was really originally put there for his father and motheaw. and so they are buried there. he and his wife are buried there. and en a number of other symmes relatives are buried there. so there's at least that that we have in the washington area about him. and then here at the postal museum. as you go into the wonderful mail exhibit here, there is this letter fm howard. oh, howard, about the of the mail in war time etched on the or. and i urge of you to do to see that whole exhibit. but i'm going to just take one more moment to read you part of the obituary for mark cohen that appeared in the new york times by general van ness boynton, who was a congressional medal winner

and gettysburg and was one of the first to help create the national military battlefield park at gettysburg. and he, colonel marquand, was well known throughout the armies which grant commanded as the originator of the army mail system. it was more wonderful in its workings than the mail service of today. those faithful servants of the public the letter carriers do their work in the face of storm and heat and bitter cold. but under general mark, system letters were often collected and delivered under fire as well. thank you. so we'll take questions both in the room. i'll have you raise your hand. and my colleague alison will bring a microphone over so that

everybody on zoom can hear you. and those who are zoom, please continue to put questions and the question and answer box and we'll start with one online. susan, please thank you very much candy the first question that's come in online is i've heard that post office inspectors were the first federal police force. what other historians you come across? we're working on the history the post office within a policing history. and how did the term special agent come to be used for postal police. boy, i'm stumped. i really hadn't dug that much into the the policing aspect and the larger history of that. i know that there are some histories of the post office and i'm blanking on wilfred gallagher. did. that's very good. and, and there are some others.

yeah my my guess as to how the terms agent came to pass is that there were lots of special agents in lots of departments at that time and in fact absolom marshlands father mathew was at one point a special agent of the indian bureau, and he was the one that took money and peace medals out to indians to try to get them to leave their lands or to the to the military men who were to get the americans, indians, to leave lands. and so they were called agents. so i'm it was just sort of a term of art was being used in a lot of places. had martin untangle those tons of letters the bible though there's lots of it a nightmare

and with the curator of the museum what was most like. well, you know, it's interesting because he never left any evidence. what he did there was. another military re postal worker who actually was one of grant's nephews named ross, who left more detailed accounts of how they did some of these things. but mostly they ended up just dumping out a bag of mail and having different ways of sorting it and and usually it would go by, you know, division brigade you had to you were supposed to write the name of of the you wanted to get the letter but you had to have their their commanding officer on. you had to have what unit they were in. and if you actually knew where or thought you knew where they were, that would help and the

amazing thing is that while i cannot imagine doing that in a non digital age, they, they made it happen and in his papers in the library of congress, there's this huge sheet that's like a battle order of the army of ohio in 1863 that does list you know all of the division brigade all down the line regiment to almost company level officers and the postmasters were to use that now the mail the military mail would come let's say it's a letter from the home front it would go through the regular mail until it got to the major post office nearest where that particular unit was staying. so let's say it got all the way to nashville and then it would be all of the mail that was supposed to go to military people be taken by enlisted men

that were six to mach one from grant by grant. and then they would start the sorting as, as they sorted it, they it. but there is a it's almost like magic. i mean i just have to say the more i looked into it, the more i just couldn't believe how did it but maybe the people in the postal in the museum in postal history know how they do this because was just amazing you pegged it standards really not that many details about how it's done it's just sort of they get the work done and there's mail release within each unit. they're taking the mail to and from the headquarters to to get sorted. and then a lot of it, once it gets into the hands of the civilian post office, it's all hands on deck to to deal with it. and it's just those as those years of skill reading the addresses and figuring out

what's the next route. these are people that have that kind of phenomenal geographic sense and memory that are working towards this, this like kansas city talking in terms of your question, the postage, how much it cost, the it's the same for union as it was before the war. during the war, what people getting used to just recently as war comes along is postage stamps were only new as of 1847. my 1851, they're required to be this is almost still kind of a new thing for people who are writing these letters during the war to even have a stamp on them and they give the government gives a provision for the military members allow them to not have to pay a stamp to have their mailed sent at the means the recipient pays on the other. so there's no free mail as there

is for contingencies own zones today for the military. when the department of the secretary of defense says that they're in a zone that it's too difficult to get the postage through that, they get a privilege of using the mail for free. but it was this is the first allowance of that in acknowledgment both of the importance of the mail, but also what kenneth says about the supply the supply line of getting all those stamps, all those those letters would be prohibitive. that the more difficult. and so. yes, yes. and they they never went to the system. they could write soldiers letter on it. and i mean it was it was just a very, very weak system of mail and in fact, know the only thing. the only way that they could get

people to sign up to be postmaster stores in the south is that they would give them a deferment they wouldn't have to fight if you you could either fight or you could be a postman straight and so people bid to carry the mail and there was one example i have it in my. that this one southerner bid that he deliver all the mail in oklahoma for 1/100 of a penny just so he wouldn't have to fight. he clearly wasn't going to deliver the mail either, but. was soldiers mail during this war is censored and if so, was it done by the army or by the postal carriers that i love that question because it lets me say that the civil war this magical point in our history where we a

literate population who were anxious to communicate with each other and we had at least some the union side except certain exemptions and no censorship and so that's why we can read other people's mail and i do just it's is a glorious it's a glorious time to do studies and that's why there is so much i think written about the civil war once once you got past the civil war and even as you were getting, let's say, the war, which didn't even last year, not much changed then there wasn't that much mail going to cuba or the philippines, but once you got into world war one, you began to have censorship and by world war two, it was a pretty fleshed a fleshed out routine.

and it was done by the by army or the navy and. and then finally, now you don't have censorship, but you you and you still have mail. but the big problem for the future is, we've got lots of emails and lots of tweets and lots of facebook posts. and how is anybody ever going to collect those and study those. i, i thought business and i've always been fascinated by coca-cola and the fact that they had coke in it at that time. what i was wondering is if they had was opium as a way to address how the don lemon for the soldiers and wonder family actually sending medication like that through the to their loved ones and you know how was that handled i don't i mean i know of the use of opium in that

context, but i don't know. i'm assuming that there probably were ways to try do it. but in fact, most of the medical supplies were handled through the services. but they sent lots of care packages, often didn't arrive, but they sent so could have been an interesting question, interesting question. i have to look that up in addition to the mail. so how else did families of casualties learn in addition to mail? the newspapers would carry casualty lists and newspapers often got names misspelled. you can imagine how sad that would be and what would happen. and this also goes back to that notion of the post office as being a place of public grief, is that whenever there was list of casualties, it would be posted in the post office. it would be put up in the post office. so you could just in.

and that would be the first thing anybody did this. they would go in and they look and see the latest casualty lists, but they they would also rely on it's still a letter writing, but not from directly from the person. but you know, through friends, oftentimes men would be sent back their hometowns because they were injured and then they could inform the families of the condition of of their relatives. but it it was primarily through the mail, because you also had the practice of the command officer writing a letter to the widow or being a mother or father of somebody who had been killed. and it was still mostly through the mail. and are there any known descendants of absalom markland or siblings today? they had no children, but there

was a large family that was called the beale family, ill. and sadly, me. but in 2011, before i had started to work on this, they up for auction. a huge number of artifacts and documents that had belonged to the americans including, you know, just priceless notes that grant had scribbled were handwritten to mark one link. the christmas annual christmas letters from william tecumseh to the mark ones silver goblets inscribed to them, just all sorts of stuff which which i could find i found online at the auction sites as having been sold. and when i would look at the prices, it was clear that everything was sold relating to the value.

the person who gave it to them or to whom whose signature was on it. so like the lincoln notes there, those i don't know how they got them back, but those were sold, valued at abraham lincoln's price excuse and and grant. and sherman. and yet there, there was the two fabulous engraved wineglasses that the entire congress to mrs. markland after this one tour that they did of new orleans. a group did it but the whole congress gave it to them and they were just sort of sold for the value silver goblets you know broke my heart and and as far as i can tell, the last bill that i could track had died here in washington, 1969.

so but i i'm not a genealogy just so. so i know when wrote your first book, you upon markland you know this has been so what else has been revealed you and all this research that has picture for another possible book. yeah well one of the things that that i had thought was going to write about next was, the two week period between when when jefferson davis inaugurated and when was inaugurated and. so in those two weeks, you had president buchanan in the north and you had jefferson davis, president jefferson davis in the and as i was reading through the congressional record about the ku klux klan act, this one man from indiana, john shanks, who

had been general in the civil war, was out at the at the south and and used the phrase that that we had two weeks where, you know, the united states was by two rebel presidents and i thought that such a great idea i'll look into those two weeks and so i i started into that and what i found out was going on then almost every well every single day was something fort sumter which was still being held tenuously by major robert anderson for the u.s. and and the confederacy at the south carolina wanted it and and he was holding off for five months the war and then finally on april 14th, they began bombarding it. they were tired of waiting.

and so i thought well, this is interesting and. so let me learn a little bit more about robert major. robert anderson and every book about the civil war. again, a little bit about major robert anderson. and a lot of it's contradictory and some it's just plain false. but nobody had ever written a biography him. and so that's what i'm writing now. good. that's and i'm really excited about it because had an amazing life before fort sumter and an amazing life after fort sumter and knows it so instead of writing about somebody that nobody knows anything, i'm writing about somebody everybody thinks they know something about but don't. so thank you. what did you talk more about with? the the ku klux klan bill got passed okay when took office his

when grant took office in march of 1869. there there were already so many depredations by the ku klux and for at least three years since the civil war, members congress were getting up on the floor of the house and senate and talking about the towns that had been burned in south carolina. you know, the the the deaths in north carolina, the businesses that had run out of town the people who couldn't couldn't vote, even though they were supposed to be allowed vote. but nothing was happening. they couldn't get any traction for legislation. and the 14th amendment had been passed. but the states weren't enforcing it. grant could not find any way for him to enforce without a new law. and so he had start he had he had asked for new enforcement

bill and he'd gotten three different enforcement bills by let's by the end of 1868. but none of them were strong enough none of them had the teeth that they needed. and so it wasn't until until this attack on the black male real agent that the south, the southern members just up in fury and indignity and that a black man had ever been into that job and that he should not be on that train, and that he really wasn't hurt. and, you know, it was just guys with plain, you know, guys with guns, tourists, i guess. but anyway anyway, the fact that grant took it seriously and and stopped the male, as i said, was

the first time that there was any indication that white southerners would have to pay a price allowing the ku klux klan to run rampant. and yet they were still unwilling to give give powers to grant. they said he was trying to become a tyrant. he was trying to grab power, military power, but a congressman from ohio named sheila berger wrote a bill that would that enabled the federal government to step in to protect the civil rights of americans when states were failing to do. and also to prosecute people who were who were interfering with federal government agents in the of their duties. and that was certainly that was certainly. gibson that's certainly the capitol police. that was certainly the us

congress when it was trying to count the votes. and so that was the key. and in 60 pages of on that bill, the only who klux klan event that is spoken of is this is the attack on gibson and pages of the 60 pages is spent discussing that bill and. so it's just very clear that that was the tipping point for the passage and that bill. was margaret's life ever in danger. it appeared there were a couple of times he came very close to having to being either attacked or kidnaped, but but there but here here's where i mentioned this earlier today to somebody

that the one regret that i have is that i put enough in the book about the dangers that he encountered, which i know did, because he wouldn't write about them. i mean, almost no soldier will write back home to their mother or their wife or their daughters saying, you know, you just can't believe how how bad things are here and how close i came to death. i mean, that just wasn't to happen. and so and so that sort of missing from the book but it's implied by certainly that obituary and other speeches were made about him while he was still alive saying what a dangerous job he had. and i saw saw you mentioned little bit about researching and president lincoln i wondered, is there any great amount of material that's missing from that that would relate to period

and to mark on the you know the president to write three times hiram it he had like get with it i mean and you library congress and other places but well and also on to say obsession that he markham apparently had with proving the hank's connection to just wondered how much there was from the presidential papers were there is in the in the lincoln papers and the national archives and the library of congress. we we can get we get all those three efforts and we get some other intimations of things of lincoln trying to help on there. so that little record is pretty when it comes to sort of this inner circle. it's not. but that that wasn't the focus of of my of my talk. the the other thing that you

mentioned. oh. yes, the hank's the hank's the hank's quest station there is enormous of research on lincoln's genealogy. and and, you know, you you see that tom hanks is related to abraham lincoln. but but the the information nancy hanks is very spongy, very because she actually went to live with another when she was young. and there were all sorts of discussions about whether she had been an illegitimate child. and and so that's dicey. the tom hanks connection is one of the clearest. and from the little that i able to find myself non genealogical expert, there are indications that he could have been related

through almost through the same line but branching out differently because he talks about this you know great great uncle who was also like lincoln's great great and somehow that might have been the case. i, i still would love to get that work done. yes, that's i just hated not solving that mystery. thank you. and i think for the last question, why is it that you think, merlin, was forgotten. yeah, that's so hard to because he he appears in official records of the war of the rebellion many times. there were so many orders that grant gave him that back to him with sherman and everything but i think he he just fell under the radar because people were looking for bigger stories and

maybe not true. i don't understand it. i really don't. he he he corresponded with grant until his death and then corresponded with julia and his son fred after his death. he was there with sherman and sherman was there until the end. some people just disappear and it's really hard to to say why, but i'm happy to try to bring him back. so thank you so much.