g20. we need both. we need everything, and i think it is incumbent upon all of us to search within our unconscious, our unconsciousness or how we respond. i'm with you. i think that, you know, you pointed out a fair failing at the end of the book that i probably should have focused a little more on that. thank you. .. >> well, i love ralph, and i actually slogged my way through the book.

but i did ask him when in human history the oligarchic class had ever step inside to save anyone, and he sort of mumbled something about fighting robber-barons or something. [laughter] and then he said something that sort of broke my heart. he said, look, it's all we have left. and, and ralph -- who has a kind of eternal optimism, maybe, that i don't share -- i think, was really seriously trying to appeal to enlightened figures of the oligarchic class which is why he names them, although i can't figure out why yoko ono was in there. [laughter] but i, it's not worked. the rich take care of the rich. and, boy, human history has borne that out. so i would break, as i'm a huge admirer and friend of ralph, but

i would break with him on that one. yeah. i don't think the super rich are going to save us. >> we have time for one more question. >> okay o. right over here with the red hat. >> it's purple. >> purple. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> so thank you for coming. i heard you on the radio this morning, first time i've listened to the news in a long time. i have a question regarding to the fact that every time i spend money, we're voting to keep those things in business, right? >> yeah. >> and christmas is right around the corner. i thought, i'm 23, a lot of family i could buy presents for. and if we're spending money which is, obviously, supporting these big businesses which support, like, the propaganda and the media and support all these things that keep us down as, you know, the lower class people, why is it this group, like, what can we do especially like us young people? how are we supposed to, like,

overturn this? is it just, like, giving up on, like, spending money? i mean, is that an answer? spending money on what we want? >> well, i always tell my students when they get out of school, i say, don't get in debt. i mean, a lot of them already have tremendous debt. can you imagine in france if they told university students they'd have to pay $50,000 a year to go to college? [laughter] they'd shut the damn country down. [laughter] what are we doing 1234 i mean, you people from your generation are graduating, and that's what they want -- >> i chose not to go to college until i was 24 because then i'm not on my taxes. so then i thought, well, ultimately, i have a luxury. i can read, and that is something that the majority of the women of the world can't do. and if we can self-educate, then we should be educating the people around us because, obviously, like-minded people create the most social change. >> well, wendell berry?

>> who? >> wendell berry? >> wendell berry? >> after you buy my books. [laughter] wendell berry is one of the great prophets, and he's an amazing figure. and he writes on precisely this issue. we have to learn to live with the new simplicity. 70% of the american economy is driven by profligate and wasteful consumption. and you're right, we have to -- the more we can sever ourselves from that consumer society, the freer we become. and i recommend berry to you. he's a great, great writer. >> one more thing. i think we should all talk to each other more. none of us -- like here, we should be spreading the news and let people know that we're here because like-minded people stick together and change things. >> all right. thanks. [applause]

>> this event was hosted by powells books in portland, oregon. to find out more, visit powells.com. we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. up next, from the booktv archives, chicago tribune cultural critic julia keller talks about her book "mr. gatling's terrible marvel: the gun that changed everything and the misunderstood genius who invented it." she recounts the life of the inventer of the gatling gun at the printers row book fair. he died on february 26, 1903. >> it's a terrific honor for me to be able to introduce julia keller and to also have a dialogue about her wonderful new book. i have for years enjoyed reading, i'm sure o as many of u

have here in chicago, her essays in "the chicago tribune." and then i had the great pleasure last fall when i received or, rather, the age of lincoln received the heartland literary award for nonfiction, a and we had a great dinner, and n discovered she was just as engaging a person as she is a writer, so i think you're in fou a real treat. julia keller is cultural critic at "the chicago tribune." the 2005 pulitzer prize f for feature writing. she's been a nieman fellow at harvard university and mcgraw professor of writing at princeton university. born and reared in huntington, virginia, keller is a graduate of marshall university. she earned a ph.d. in english literature at ohio state university. mr. gatling's terrible marvel: the gun that changed everythingr and the misunderstood genius who invebted it, published by viking, is her first book. i want to briefly read a "the age ofom lincoln." between 1865 and 1896 as

americans struggled to formulate a coherent response to the cultural challenges theyt perceived, the accent fell on w reigning in passion -- reining b in passions of the law brakiers. -- lawbreakers. the great inventer, thomas edison, worked hard to argumentallize the eliminationme of wrongdoers.e by harnessing his competitor, h george westinghouse, alternatine current mechanism to the device he called the electric chair, edison's company promised to dispatch killers both quickly and humanely.erfo they would have done better using an axe, an angry westinghouse declared, yet suchc recognized process a long stepns forward from the macabrer executions and hangings of bygone years. as with other wonderful inventions that closed out theno

age of lincoln -- the cash register, barbed wire, the the zipper, bicycle -- novelty seldomly seemed an accurate indicator of social progress. the sewing machine and the m machine gun creating genderedrce atmospheres of -- spheres of. labor. the marvelous writer, julia j keller, tells us one of thesein inventions and weaves a great story about the birth of modern america in the process.ll u she tells us, in fact, something we don't always want to hear about america: why guns matter. julia, would you like to start out and maybe introduce your book a little>> bit? >> t yeah. let's do that, and then we'll take questions. let's see, this was supposed to be a session with richard won preston, the wonderful new yorker writer who writes about smallpox and cholera and allgica

kinds of biologicalble catastrophes. t mr. preston was not able to be here today, but we didn't want to just have a great gulf ofhing nothingness, so professor burtoo agreed to stay, and we're doing a continuation of a series we did earlier on the gatling gun. it's not really as disparate topics as you might think in because i used richard preston's research this my book. in the late 1840s, smallpox epidemics became a realcour scourgeover american life. they were -- steam boats were linking cities as never before,o bun of the things they -- but one of the things they brought was also the smallpox virus. b and richard preston in hisne wonderful book, "demon in the freezer," was able to describe the horrific effects of smallpox. when a friend of mine first lookedine at my book, she openet random, and it was right at the place where i was using preston's description of and

then in the latter stages ofody small px, the skin falls off in bloody, partly sheets. [laughter] so my friend says, now, thisorta looks like a wonderful book i'mf ready to dive into. but it's important for us to o understand some of thesee diseases and some of thesey we pathogens in human history we only understand by really understanding the horror ofness them, the real terribleness that they brought to populations tham didn't understand them at theha' time.he and that's the great virtue of his work. it's splendid work, and those oa you who have come to hear him, my apologies. we'll be just a faint shadow of what he would have done, but i'' glad you're here, and i hope you enjoy this program as well. one of the things i try to do in the book in the great range of tangible products that werete created in the 19th century, all these grey great things we takee for granted today, things like locomotives and all of those,man they also included a machine i gun, the gatling gun.

gatling truly thought that this gun would end up shortening ware perhaps even eliminating it. t and as we all know from our own lives and some of our well-meaning leaders, often the very worst things happen from the best of intentions. so there are a lot of lessons to learn, a lot of lessons from the 19th century we can apply to the 31st century. -- 21st century. that said, we're very lucky to have professor burton here.e you might be thinking, lincoln, lincoln, enough with lincoln,li right? every time you turn around,d there's another lincoln book.er but to have one that truly giveo you a new way to look at this oft-studied man is a really celeb did thing -- splendid thing to have in our world. so what we thought we'd do inist lieu of richard preston's visit, and i'm very sorry he couldn't be here.e'll we'll do our best to give you a lively and invigoratingo conversation. we're going to chat just a bit, and then we'rens going to take

your questions about lincoln, about gatling who i maintain was the inventer of the pivotalat technology of the 19th century, the gatling gun. not much used during the civil war, but later used quite a bitb relentlessly marketed around the world by richard jordan gatling, again, for the best of reasons. he wasn't a warmonger, he wasn't a blood thirsty, terrible man. he was a well-intentioned, quite wonderful man, a family man who truly thought that he was doing something good for humanity and not ushering in the worst period of destructiveness. he himself came to regret having invented the gun and really wished he had stuck is with they early inventions that initially made his fortune and name, agricultural implements likeag seed drills and plows ands tractors. alas, he invented the gatling gun. that is what has stuck after more than 50 patents. the only one we remember now is the gatling gun, and that's a

tragedy we all can maybe feel a bit of resonance from. so with that said, professor burton and ith will chat a bit, and then we'll welcome you tod t join the conversation. and once again, do move to the microphones, if you will, if you have a question or a comment so that everyone can partake of what you're asking or telling ug about.abou so thanks so much. a >> julia, as you know, i really enjoyed your book with so very much. one of the things i was struck by is something you justtwee mentioned, the parallels betweeu the 19th century and our own day. anything there you'd like tortic comment that struck you particularly? >> you know, i have a line in the book when i talk about the f beginning of the civil war, of course, you discuss at length in your book, and i say, you know,o initially, obviously, a lot of peoplee thought this thing's20 d going to be over, 10, 20 days. the editorial writers of "the chicago tribune" thought, why, illinois herself could whip the south, you know? we don't even need any other troops. and i have a line in there where

i said, but wars have a funny way of circumventing the carefud language of their planners. friends read that and immediately say, aha. i think we all kind of know e that. it's those analogs between history, and i think you can do those without a smart aleck-y way, you know what i mean? sometimes people will look back retrospectively with a kind of smugness like, well, howf couldn't they have known?ple i hear that said of gatling. h people say, oh, please, heoing really thought he's going toease invent a machine gun, and it's h going to eliminate war? please. loo again, we have the lovely perch of hindsight.en the an lolls between the 19th and 21st centuries, i think, are immense, the way technologicals endeavor always has a dark sidee the things we invent always end up packingth something else too. there's also something else there alongside them.

things end up happening in ways we could not have foreseen. and we see that with our technology. today.en i mentioned steam boats. steam boats were wonderful. they could shave days and weeks off journeys. but but they also enabled smallpox to go along the rivers and infect populations as never before.do so everything that we do hasis d this dark side of technologicalk endeavor, and it's important to keep in mind in the 21st -- as we kind of embrace technology with all ofn this passion and ardor to remember that, not so fast. >> i also was struck by,he basically, the unfetteredca capitalism, the rise of t fortunes, the loss of fortunes,e the extremes of wealth, the great poverty as more people got poorer and yet some people got richer that comes true in yourht books and the reasons for that. >> yeah. i >> at some point during this discussion i think you should talk to something, and that's the patent office and how youel. see the importance with all of this as well, why that has a

particular genius for what has happened in america. inv >> ah, chapter two is imbued with my passion for the patent3t office. the great genius of the founders, i mean, we hear all this stuff about representative democracy, yeah, yeah, yeah. the real genius was the patent system. for the first time in the history of the world with a cou nominal fee, a couple of bucks,n a good idea, anybody from anywhere, nobodies from nowhere could show up at thee patent -- office in washington, d.c.,heir plunk down their money, small c model of what they'd created and get a pat patent. there had been nothing like ithe in the history of the world.th this enabled an 18-year-old richard jordan gatling to try ts obtain his first patent, and later it would enable all the great inventions of the 19th century. and the great genius was, in lincoln's words, it added the fuel of interest to the fire of

genius. by fuel of interest, he meantrom trying to make money from it. that's often seen in somewhat of a pejorative light today. well, you're just trying to make money. well, in the 19th century a s person would have said, yeah. or to use more common language, duh. [laughter] of course they did.n they had a nation to create.ey h they had a world to build. everything depended on your effort and your vision and your ambition and what a wonderful time that was. a time -- now, i say wonderful y time, also a terrible time for those who didn't prosper because we didn't, of course, have thedn kind of social networks in placw to catch those who didn't achieve the great fortune. but i would just remind you, you know, there's a lot said about how terrible people were with the rockefellers and carnegies,d but remember they also ushered in a period of philanthropy that has yet to be surpassed. they gave a greater percentage r of their incomes than do philanthropists today.we w we would not have a university of chicago without rockefeller.

we would not have a metropolitan museum of art without j.p. morgan. they believe you made a lot of money, you did the best you could, and certainly their elbows were sharp and their alw techniques and methods were not always savory, but what they die with their money was thethe crowning achievement of the 19th century, and that'sat one of the arguments in my book. yes, you had this rampant capitalism, but you also hadness this sense of earnestness, that we were all going to be swept up in this great tide of progress,u and if you were willing to work hard, it was open to you. and it was.ou again, elsewhere in the world you couldn't do that.tent you couldn't get a patent. they were expensive, they were limited to those already in the know, in the inner circle, andem the united states also began the patent examiner system where thereho was a staff of examiners who it would look at your patent and a decide if it was truly ned and then there you were, off you went. unique in the history of the world, and we know it's unique because every other progressiver country in the world imitated it. starting in 1851, england

updated it patent laws for the first time in centuries. japan came along and updated theirs, switzerland, every major industrialized country saw what it was doing in the unite and said, we want -- united states, and said we want a piece of that action too. >> i really appreciated the way you gave the complexities anders ambiguities these historical characters observed where perhaps i painted them too muchb in the robber-baron mode or others have glorified them too much in the way of the money they made and the contributionsm they did. so i thought that was a great strength of the week, justo th the -- book, just that they were people who were trying to do the best they could within the parameters as they understood it. it is lincoln who is the onlynt president that actually has a patent.oln lincoln was -- loved technology. in fact, i like to tell my students at the university of illinois that lincoln today would be a geek.ny he loved any kind of technologyn including, surprising to mostyo people, guns. you might want to speak to hishi

interest in guns and sort of the mythology that has sort of growt around this sort of passive, quiet lincoln, people not realize what a great athlete he was, how incredibly physically strong he was all his life. his father had worked him like a mule, so he was really strong, legendarily strong. i found one incident when after congress if you could imagine you're a congressman come back to chicago, and he's no loaner a congressman, but he takes off his shoes and runs a race against another 25-year-old attorney and beats him for a quarter of a mile of racing, and there are these stories we have documented of just how strong he was, picking things up. it goes on i along with his fascination with guns. >> very much so. i think that also speaks to the kind of odd role that armamentsn play in our lives today, that it's hard for us to envisionion lincoln who we know, of course, for this incredible ore story, the graceful speeches, private

letters filled with regret andgw the golden autumnal glow to think that he also could be somebody who every day would grab his son's hand and shoot guns. he loved experimental weaponry. he knew that weaponry was going to be very important.d be he did love guns, very much a man of the 9th sent ri, and -- 19th century, and that was a fas time when people were reallyo fascinated by new devices and ways to do things. i think he is characterized as this kind of intellectual who would sit back and have soft hands. not at all the case. i said he was a 19th century geek, and actually my editor circled it and put in the margin, too cheeky. so we took it out. did i'm going to be very -- >> did you have the same editoro i did?me a >> i'm going to go home and tell her professor burton at the university of illinois said ther same thing. [laughter] but it is importantl to see these historical figures in their full dimensionality,s r

people who if they were to walk into this room and converse with us would have some of the same s doubts and concerns is andcc passionsup and preoccupations as we do.s i because that, i think what happens in history sometimes is there is this kind of bland sterility, lists of dates, and the shame of that is you miss out on this rich what if, the contingency, the fact if one ore the other thing had gone a slightly different way, bee everything would have been w altered. everything would have beentere altered. way in a way it gives us great hopes because it means the world is a hand crafted world.worl it's a world that we're shapingi right now. the decisions we're making today about what we do or don't do. we may not be senators orpres presidents sitting here, but all of us are contributing in some way either bad or good. so that's the s study of history for me. you look at lincoln, and suddenly you see this was a guy living in his own time who did not know how things were goingno to turn out. therece was no assurance that te union was going to win. and and to do what he did and go ahead and fight for the

emancipation proclamation at the time that he did was really going out on a very considerablg limb. and i think with gatling, too, had he not invented this gun, the changes we would have seen in the world without it. gun because one of the things the o gun did was ton put the world on notice and to say america is aeo nation to be reckoned with.it it's not just some johnny comehe lately to the world stage that went through this terrible civil war and now is going to kind of falter because how could they ever get it together again after this terrible strife they've been through? instead, the gatling gun in the last half of the 19th century as he marketed it around the globe was a signal to the world, lookh out. these are men and women of opportunity and of fierce drive and passionate interest in getting their ideas and devices out there. >> i thought you did so well the symbol of guns and their changing meaning over time in america. i ask all of my ph.d. students when they're doing their ph.d. w

defense, you know, please, tell me how i'm going to have to tea revise my lecture or teaching iy youou can call it teaching whens you stand before 750 students in a lecture hall and add what i'm going to have to take out of that lecture about american history to put in what i'veread discovered in reading yourngs dissertation. and one of the things i came away from is this understanding of guns and how guns have changed in the american mind symbolically over time. what it's meant. and i thought that was somethine you'd done particularly well,o and i'd love for you to talk about it. >> i appreciate that. it's hard to imagine a time whef a gun maker would be on theut cover of national magazines as a hero, but that was very much the case. gatling was a celebrity. he was on all the national circulation magazines of the day. he was a hero, someone to be emulated, looked up to. hard to imagine that today. in fact, almost unimaginable, i would say. our perhaps because of our continuing disagreements about personal gun ownership, and we

know there's no more contentious topic in any kind of politics or now. we forget in the is 19th century that wasn't the case. aaron burr made guns, gatling as a gun maker was not a sinisterne handshake with the devil, it was a business decision. the great arms makers throughout the world had done other things before that. henry bessimer who oxidized steel and a great businessman ih england began doing otherer this and then switched to guns.at all these great arms firms the throughout the world were not, were not shunned or vilifiedlt because they dealt in weapons. today we have a slightly different view. but it's important to remember that in a 19th century context, gatling was a hero. he was along the order of an edison of an alexander graham bell.terv you'd have people wanting to do interviews and profiles with him just like we do our bill gateslg

or warren buffett. nothing much was thought to miss about it at all. i wonder if we should take, i man all kinds of questions are brewing in the minds of our audience here.ds >> and we can. and why people come to the -- while people come to the microphone, i'll ask you one more question, but if people have some questions, please, come forward. as you know, for 34 years i have taught at the university of b illinois, but i am from south carolina, so one of the things n argued is that lincoln is aand southerner, and the importance a of lincoln as a southerner in how he fought in the civil war. and reading your book reminded me of my favorite illustration in the book, white southerners who commanded northern troops because gatling is from northgus carolina. he would only sell his gatling guns to the union, and he moved to indianapolis. but i'm very interested in thise north/south and just how much it was a civil war.

illinois itself, the southernthr part, was, i think, really settled by two groups of southerners, one like the lincolns who were trying, ini. fact, to get away from slavery,n who hated slavery, not a necessarily abolitionists. and then a group of white southerners who came in because they wanted to get away entirelc from african-americans. very racist. you have that sort of context, why illinois so fascinates me. you have the northern yankee portion, many people don't realize springfield, illinois, was first named calhoun after john c. calhoun who moste h represented slavery in the f south. maybe you could comment on that while we have some people come forward if they have anyt i questions about this wonderful book you've just done. >> that is a great point, southerners. the fact that gatling was from north carolina. his decision to just sell his gun to the union cost him a lotf it cost him friendships, it cost him intercourse with family members, and it cost him in ways that continue today.th c the state of north carolina, yot

know, you don't find a lot of t plaques or anything to gatling at all. kee they're -- their, you know, memories are long, so he is not very sta revered in the his home state for that reason. h he dide not -- he would not sell his gun to the confederacy at all though he was certainly urged to do so by friends and t family members. he went to the north and created the gun in indianapolis. he did return back to the south for visits, but his wife never- went with him. there's no evidence she evert accompanied him back home, and he would go back many, many times. there's not a correspondence tha record of that, but you can just kind of imagine, can't you, kind of conversations, their private conversations about that, about her not accompanying him back to the farm that he had grown up on. so it's a wonderful point to remember that where you were born is one thing, but then you can make of your life what you u wanted to make of it, and gatling was very opposed to f

slavery. his father had been a slave owner, he himself had been given slaves as a wedding present and then liberated those slave duringyes the civil war. yes. i see we have a -- >> i just wanted to make aa q comment -- ask a question. recently in new york, policemen havehoot been condemned for shob people like 50 or 60 times. but isn't it true they almost have a gatling gun in their hand in a revolver because you just i press it and it just keeps shooting? here in chicago our new police superintendent wants to outfit our policemen with much more iwo guess more like a machine gun,re and i was wondering what you thought about that. did as you said, gatling thought hei was doing a good thing, but it didn't always turn out that way, and i think you see this in lawi enforcement.e >> you know, in the late 19th century gatling guns weren'thase

just purchased by the military. theyased were purchased by factn owners and mine owners against striking workers. gatlings were used in the haymarket riots here in chicagon it's kind of a dark side -- morf than kind of -- a dark side of the use of gatling guns, just as you say, that they were used by state militias.guni the sight of a gatling gun wasmo itself, you can imagine, an ominous signal. were also used by british forces. so the fatling gun began -- gatling gun began to take on the a dark, shadowy overtone.nd gatling, of course, had spendedo them to be used by military forces for good causes around the world, and instead to sayun theyd were used against a lot d immigrant populations. in fact, "the new york times" reportedly had a gatling gun ong the roof of their building.bu i always hate to tell the story because, of course, i don't want

tribune editors to get ideas --t [laughter] i >> it worked too. >> what's that?ber >> it worked too. >> there weren't enougheren soldiers. you could pay $300 and get out of the draft, and people like j.p. morgan and jay cook paid their money no problem. fors the average person, $300 ws completely out of their reach. "the new york times""the editorialized in favor of the draft, and this didn't sit too well with some of the more w improve riched -- impoverished populations in new york city. they were marching towards "the new york times" building, and m theyar were stopped when they looked up at the top of theooke building, and there was the editor -- henry jarvis -- ofea "the new yorkdy times" ready wih a gatling gun. so, again, this is a somewhat unsavory use of the gatling gun, and i think there are analogs to today because you're always balancing. i mean, lethal force is the most solemn and grave responsibility we ever give to individual police forces and, certainly, to our military. dec those decisions have to be made

with great wisdom and with great clarity of thought trying to understand what the consequences might be. so i think your point is well taken which is we have to think of the gatling gun from an ideaa standpoint and think that when you put that much lethal firepower into anyone's hands, what. are you doing? what sorts of responsibilities are you endowing that personwi with?i and i think, though, this natioy does have a very good record of understood taking -- undertaking military activity both at the national level of our soldiers and our military and within our police forces with, with the gravity and the responsibility that we have had with some exceptions, of course. exa but in general, i think that is another lesson we take from the 19th century. >> gee, can i add that a littley bit of local lore? where i grew up in '96, south carolina, a little rural everybody farmed. theren m was a cotton mill. and the great 1934 textile strike was one of the largest strikes there. u and one of the stories i grewut up, the very mill they'd put

barbed wire around and machine guns were put on top in 1934 toi discourage -- but it goes to a i point you had made earlier and thatught is the idea that gatlig thought this would save lives. >> yes. >> it's the same idea that was behind the bomb that was droppe. on japan. and this is a way lincoln was thinking. b lincoln has to be considered responsible for allresp these o deaths, or so many of them. he and jefferson davis, i think, in you the civil war. but it was his way of if you could stop the war by winning it, he had nor force -- more o forces going forward as a symbol to stop it. and i think that's what goes onw with police force as well. d >> and that notion of deterrenct is absolutely true. scientists created the atomic e bomb and were facing the same situation. they were told create a weaponta so horrific it will stop the war and end up saving more lives. o >> driving up this morning there were signs on the way about the importance of owning guns as i,

drove on the highway 57 between chicago and champagne urbana. the issues are still there. >> the debate continues, yes. >> hi. julia, you're such a wonderful and prolific writer. thisow is now your first book. how did you decide to write witw about gatling, i'm curious. and, also, i'm wondering if you could talk about your writing process. do you write in bursts where it just kind of comes out of you? do you labor over sentences?wo so two questions. >> i came across the story ofs t gatling in the course of another -- i was researching something totally unrelated. i thought, oh, he sounds interesting. everyone's heard of the gatling gun, but it's like finding out the derringer, the little gun, there was a derringer who made it. when you're researching one thing, another comes up. i searched and searched. there were books about guns and armaments and their design all

that. there were plenty of 19th century histories but none that kind of link the two. i did a lot of the research when i had a leave from the tribune last year, and it was actually doing the research that the ideas would come in linking things like steam boats and smallpox and linking the patent medicine phase with gatling went to medical school before he invented the gun. linking those two and saying this land of the amateur. the same kind of country, the united states, that would enable an amateur like gatling to invent a gun and actually get people to back it and put money behind it and off he went was the same kind of country that could have an unregulated patent medicine business thriving because you didn't have the government giving youco instructions about what youul could and couldn't sell. so there's always, again, good and bad sides, technological endeavors. writing process. i mean, the line i used to teach itude would tell students, the t cure for writer's block? low you -- lower your standards. [laughter] by which i mean just keep at itg

i think the book has been accused of being a trifle exuberant, but that was my reaction to the 19th sent ri. what a time. everything was up for grabs, nothing was certain, nobody knew how things were going to workul out. nobody had any idea the united i states was going to become what weou are today, and to imagine that time so effervescent withni possibility and with these great personalities that all bumped and rubbed elbows.s twain was gatling's neighbor, harriet beecher stowe was another neighbor.new? who knew? everywhere you turned around you were kind of bumping up against someone with else. bruce catton talks about the dav fact that lincoln and jefferson davis were actually byrne within, what, about -- born o within, what,th about 100 milesf each other? >> the big question to and is what would have happened if tomlin con had gone tore i mississippi? not >> what if? there's nothing more fun and

entertaining, more fruitful than these a great lattice of history because it empowers all of us. the what-ifs are the engine behind all of o us.mble we kind of jumble them around, and then wefo create the forward momentum for tomorrow.k >> and i think your book brings home so well the importance ofis decisions individuals make in their life that sort of reverberate throughout our culture and society effect us today. >> that's it, exactly. the individual decisions. even though we're not president, yeah, we can do a lot. >> please, you've been patient.. >> how many of the gatling guns still exist, do you know that? >> actually -- well, a lot. ori it's hard to tell from the original ones. i mean, there have been many, many replicas. i probably original ones probably several dozen. there's one in murfreesboro, north carolina, and when you say original, keep in mind he made them throughout the last half of the 19th century, so there were many, many incar nations. to my mind i don't know if there are any of the original 1862 but gatling guns, but there are aoto

lot of very authentic, faithful replicas out there. and he would change them on constantly. in fact, the one on the cover here, this one where it's encased, fully encased, isli probably not what you think of. you're thinking of the barrels around the axis. thishe is in the late 1890s he encased the barrels.ed f gatling never stopped fixing it and tingerring with it, he would respond to his customers' needsu and complaints and observations. so there are probably just apr couple of dozen of the ones from the late 1860s. but but many, many gatling guns were produced toward the end of the 19th century. >> what do you know about a club in aind annapolis called -- indianapolis called the gatling club? >> there is a club. >> and what do they do? >> yeah. they're basically a drill unit. there were a lot of gatling gun clubs in the late 19th century that were, that were developed, you wer know, to drill with gatg

guns. in fact, edgar rice burr rose, writer of tarzan, one of the first things he did as a young boy was to run a gatling company in michigan. his first real training. it was the thing to do of the day. the gatling gun was the sort of exciting symbol of this country on the move, and if you were a d young man and you liked the military, you wanted to get your hands on a gatling gun. theodore roosevelt always said he would never go into battlene, without one. used them in the spanish-american war and, in fact, i use it as one of the anagrams for my book when he's the famous cry, they hear this sound, and they thinka it's the enemy. then he realizes it's coming a from the direction of one of his soldiers, and he yells, it's thi gatling men, a very famous moment in military history. >> thank you. >> this is a question for professor burton and a complement. b i was privileged to be at thendo commencement of my grandson from

the u of i where you were the speaker, and it was an interesting, and it was short -- [laughter] one of the, one of the best as a teach or for many years, that is a complement. com >> thank you.n. >> i also wanted to know of your interest in lincoln, did it precede your time as a professoi in illinois, or did it come from living in illinois? hat >> i hate to take time away from julia's marvelous book, but it, in fact, i grew up in 96 south carolina. we didn't have a library. there was a book mobile that came from the nearest larger community, greenwood, south carolina. there's not really a language community nearby. and by the time i was 12 i had read, i think, every book in the book mobile, and i had two sorto of boyhood heros. i'm a little ashamed of one. l one was abraham lincoln, the other was jesse james. [laughter]mona now, i think the commonality war they both loved their mothers

which all southern boys really, really do tremendously. and i thought that lincoln did really good things for poorand people, and i had heard that jesse james robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, but the more i learned about jesse james, he has no longer remainen a hero. he he basically continued to fight the civil war as a outlaw confederate.e. but, in fact, the more i studied abraham lincoln, it's rare themo more you know about someone, i a have done a lot of studying ofvi individuals, we all have our demons. lincoln had his demons. he had tremendous demons. dea but how he dealt with them and how it made him more compassionate toward others ands understood other people was just amazing.ciat i not only came to appreciatee t him more, i actually came to love lincoln. i think i might have said he was the greatest president and thetu greatestry theologian of the 19h century. as you know, i have this goal that's shared by my chancellor at the university of illinois that we should be mr. lincoln's

university just as university of pennsylvania is mr. franklin's university or the university of virginia is jefferson's university. i'll take lincoln any day, and there would not have, in fact,ta been a land-grant school had the south not left the union, and p they only left because lincoln was president. so i think we have good claim to be lincoln's university. too much of a diatribe, but thank you.inco >> never too much of a diatribe about lincoln. he's one that rewards constant and continual study. >> he is.no >> i can't think of another figure even worldwide. it's really kind ofll remarkabl. we still have books like professor burton's that keep is coming out, and there's always more. the new book that just came out about lincoln's marriage. i'd seen that one, i thought it had interesting insights. things maybe you already know but turn it just a little bit. you have these kind of lives overlapping like that, and can

to be able to look at the letter that gatling wrote to abraham lincoln, a. lincoln, white house, washington d.c. it's like the and little kids tt cut out the picture of santa and put it on the envelope, and it gets there somehow, to the north pole. i can't think of -- i get a r little tired of reading about other characters, but neverdand about lincoln. had >> there's always something to learn. lincoln had that rare capacity for growth and even under stress was able to grow and appreciate differences of other people. he never understood why other people could hate him so much.vt he didn't have that sort of hatred for others and things.t w never understood that. i thought it was just amazing.ae you cover so many wonderfuln characters in your book, and you develop them so well. i'd really like to know who wase your favorite character of this and then the second thing is i think the audience would really be fascinated, why did soldiers object? i'd love to get those questions in before our time runs out.s t >> no, it's very important.

the ordnance reports were absolutely wonderful. i mean, these gunsful. were tes, they worked well. unlike other multiple firing weapons, they were tested during the civil war. why went they more used? why was it such an uphill climbe to get them adopted? the reason was soldiers didn'tei like them. soldiers liked the idea that the battlefield was a place of valor, individual valor.ed w what mattered was the one-on-one contest. fir along comes the combatling gun, and it was the first -- gatling gun, and it was the first inkling that it was going to m become a matter of technology, of machines. and imagine you've been told all along that it's your valor, youd bravery, your perseverance.ow and now suddenly, no, it's not.c it's machines. it's who has the biggest andines best machines. and to a world that had been used to that, to see battle as a place of really clear outcomes and simple black and white sud dichotomies, to suddenly have it be about machines seemed veryook unmilitary.t i have a line it was like hiding

a rock in a showball. you have this fight with these u clear outcomesnc and clear dimensions and suddenly it's all murky and muddled again.ted soldiers really resisted it. when they were used on ships, one soldier said it seemed sneaky.ll