>> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> now on booktv from the annapolis book festival, a panel on civil war perspective. it's about 15 minutes. -- 50 minutes.l >> please take your seats, andpv welcome.esseats h last countr . of no .. perspectives. today we have two outstanding folks. the first, the new york times -- "the new york times complete civil war 1861-1865" compiled and edited by craig symonds and harold holzer. and we have "andrew johnson," a

presidential biography by annette gordon-reed. one would think >> as i read through them, itmu became apparent to me that they had an enormous amount innt common. andrew johnson, of course, was a southern unionist, and the war was over the union. furthermore, there are huge constitutional issues, huge race issues in both books, and sormor they do have tail nicely.ge r dovetail nicely. let me introduce our authors, and the authors will speak, and we'll have a question and answer session. we will have a question and answer session. hopefully there will be lots of times for questions and answers and i expect you to participate. when we begin i remind you this is not a moment for you to give speeches, it is time for you to ask questions and for the authors to answer. first, harold holzer has written or edited several dozen books. he is by my standards perhaps

the best authority on abraham lincoln in the world. i recently had the opportunity to use one of his books in my undergraduate class with great success. harold has received the national humanities metal and he is senior vice president for external affairs at the metropolitan museum of art. his associate, craig symonds is professor emeritus of the u.s. naval academy and former naval officer. he is a very famous on these grounds because his wife worked here for many years and craig was a volunteer cross country coach. my favorite of all his books is lincoln and his admirals' which i am going to use in the fall semester for my class. it won the lincoln prize which is exceedingly prestigious in the field of the civil war. he also has written the best biography of joseph johnson and

patrick clayborn. our third participant is annette gordon-reed who received her law degree from harvard and had a youthful fascination with thomas jefferson. she has written several books on sally hammons and her third major book is andrew johnson. annette gordon-reed has a string of awards that would occupy the bulk of our sessions so i can't quite do it. she is a professor of history and law and recipient of the national book award, the pulitzer prize, macarthur genius award, on and on and on. an extraordinarily accomplished individual. let me start by passing the microphone to craig symonds. >> harold is going to start off. >> with all of our rehearsals.

>> i will go through the chronology of the way we have been presenting our book, "the new york times complete civil war 1861-1865". there is a confluence of fuse here that unites this panel. because the new york times cover all of the major figures of the civil war era including senator and later vice president andrew johnson. we have to set the stage by saying it was not the same new york times that we know and either love or hate today. the new york times now relishes the idea that it publishes only the news fit to print in the 1850s and 60s. it printed all the news fit for electing republicans and supporting the union and later emancipation. this discussion also requires a giant leap of historical imagination, something akin to

the kind of social media revolution that can start a real revolution. newspapers of the nineteenth century were busy fomenting passion and concern over major issues. they were specifically on one side of the slavery issue or the other. they were pro republican or pro democratic. people measured their affiliation and loyalties by the newspapers they carry. in new york the for the middle just like in small towns, one republican and one democratic newspaper. new york was of course different because it was the publishing center of the world. in this atmosphere, publishers were often politicians as well. the chairman of the new york state republican party was a publisher. simon cameron. the governor senator from pennsylvania and later secretary

of war in the first lincoln administration was a publisher. or they were politicians first and publishers later. new york as i say was different. almost 200 daily and weekly newspapers in new york city at the start of the civil war. when craig and i were asked to focus on the new york times we took into account three major newspapers. the new york herald which is the most widely spread was the most conservative, pro democratic, and i emancipation. the new york tribune, famous for urging american young men to go west was the most progressive. they were urgently for emancipation earlier than abraham lincoln as it turned out was prepared to order it. in the middle was the new york times.

its editor was a politician. harry raymond who founded it was the speaker of the new york state assembly. he decided to found a newspaper. this in new york gets gas because new yorkers imagine the current speaker of the assembly of owning the new york times so it is a big leap of imagination. the times was clearly pro republican and anti slavery but their whole m o was to delay education, not excited asian. they wanted changes to be made in thessaly and painlessly. they were anti secession but not immediately pro emancipation. the times originally favored william seward for president of the united states in 1860. they were converted to admiration for lincoln after the cooper union address as joe mentioned a moment ago and were

reliably and ardently pro lincoln in the 1860's election. in fact, i don't think anyone in any city to they can imagine this occurring from the print newspaper aside from television. the editor of the new york times campaigned across new york state into the midwest for abraham lincoln. for one quick diversion, president bill clinton wrote the preface to our book and made what seems like an obvious point but a very interesting point that the analog of the fiercely partisan newspaper editors of the nineteenth century are the commentators on ms nbc and fox today. the only difference is the commentators on ms nbc and fox are not quite willing to go so far as to say i am a john boehner republican or barack obama democrats and president clinton's recommendation in his introduction was it might not be a good idea if they did.

it would make things so much simpler and more direct. we have the editor of the time campaigning for lincoln and the assiduously covering lincoln during the election, editorializing for him every day and in the secession crisis that followed his election covering lincoln every move even though he is not speaking. covering the floor of the senate and covering lincoln as he begins his long meandering inaugural journey that takes him into new york state and eventually into new york city. he had 20 correspondence with him on this journey. as many of you know when he approached the neighboring city of baltimore and he was advised by allan pinkerton and others to cancel his public schedule and go directly to washington being not a flying bird he had to go

through baltimore so he did so at night and what arose from that as he did so wearing a disguise in a scottish cam and military cloak was actually the work of the correspondence of the imbedded correspondent of the new york times. his name was joseph heller and and he had no reason that anyone can the deuce except he woke up one morning in harrisburg and said this is exciting. we are on the last leg of the journey. where is the president elect? and they said sorry, he is gone. you missed him so all these reporters who had traveled with lincoln all this time were left without a subject to cover and without news to report. it was a rather dicey situation. the times resumed its editorial support of lincoln in his conciliatory inaugural certainly after the attack on fort sumter

nearly 150 years ago as we speak today at annapolis. and yet right after for its under and the patriotic exuberance it reported in new york city the new york times ran out of patience with abraham lincoln certainly for the first and perhaps the only time in the succeeding four years. they wrote an editorial called wanted:a leader and lincoln was so upset by it he started a new file on his desk called phyllis articles and put this one in the file. to conceal the fact the administration so far has not met public expectation. tours carrying the country through the tremendous crisis which so rapidly and steadily

selling down, the union will not only be severed but the country disgraced. in a crisis like this there is no policy so fatal as that of having no policy at all. lincoln pulled the editor to washington, took him aside and put his arms around him and said you're absolutely right. i am so busy making a point that i don't have time to deal with this crisis. somehow lincoln's personal magnetism was enough to win the day or at least l.a. the antagonism and the times when don to reliably support lincoln throughout. after that at least publicly the editor of the new york times never left lincoln's side again and four years later when it was time to name the chairman of the republican national committee guess who got the job? henry raymond, publisher of the new york times.

that is another relationship that would not exist. as we would like to insist there is a fire wall separating journalism from propaganda. at the dawn of the civil war there was only a very fine line. the times walked it gingerly but they never failed the breathalyzer test of professionalism. their biases would not pass the smell test today but in 1861 their pro republicanism and emancipation is some, qualified it even then as all the news that is fit to print. that takes us to the war. >> that is great. we sit here today on the ninth of april, 2011. 150 years ago this week america was wary about what was going to happen at fort sumter and 146

years ago, today, ready lisa rented the army of northern virginia at appomattox so this is a very patient moment. we need to discuss what really was the most dramatic event in our national history and there have been thousands, tens of thousands of books written about the american civil war. half were written by harold. but in doing this project it gave me -- the reason there are so many is there are so many facets of this experience that were investigating and useful to consider today in our own troubled times and in doing this project, i think i and my partners realize that reading of the war through the eyes of the newspaper and particularly the paper that was becoming the paper of record for the union, new york times gave yet another perspective on this because events were encountered not necessarily as they unfolded but

as you read about them in the paper. today of course we have a wide variety of media sources to inform us what is going on in the world but newspapers were pretty much the only game in town in 1861 to 1865. and as harold mentioned they tended to adopt a particular ideological point of view. but what happened during the civil war is not just transformative to the nation, not just transformative to the character of warfare. what with the advent and widespread use of the railroad and telegraph, armored ships of additional submarines, all the new technology that characterized civil war that sat on a ticking point between old-fashioned napoleonic wars and the horror of trench warfare in western france from 1915 to 1918 but in addition to that all so reinvented in a way the nation reported its war. the new york times the relatively new paper had to come

up with almost a new way of reporting that war. there are several sources a newspaper could go to to provided readers with the information it craved. official reports, public documents were made available by the government or the people in the field. these tended to be dry and worse for newspapers and competition one with another they tended to be late. if you waited for the government to put out an official bulletin, number killed and what the army did it would be of less interest than an eyewitness account and would also be a couple days after your arrival scooped you on the front page. newspapers began for the first time on a wide scale. at first henry raymond thought i can do this. setting aside his editorial responsibility he accompanied the union army of the

battlefield in virginia along the banks of bull run creek and being a new yorker and knowing his readers will want to find out what is happening to new york units the company a new york unit. he was an embedded journalists. he said i am with 146 -- on the right side of the road. he is seeing the battle from soldier's eye view. not this olympian height where he can see everything that is happening. that is his reporting. i can hear guns rumbling in the east. it is not all that helpful in terms of what is going on. it is all the reporters knew. it came because he came to get his story into the hands of a courier by 2:15 on the 20 first of july. in order to get to the telegraph

in washington to be telegraphed and printed for the paper, at 2:15 he could report union troops are being successful. the enemy is fleeing for the field. the day is ours. half an hour later considered reinforcements arriving on the field turned that around completely and henry rain along with most of the union army had to flee the field back of the road across bull run and back toward washington. he rode all the way to washington with a revised story in his hand and got to the military telegraph operator dusty and dirty and smelly, rushed in, i need a new story. the union army is defeated and a telegraph operator decided it was in the interest to send that story. this is why new unit--new york readers don't find out until july 26th what actually happened at bull run.

here we have an innovation henry raymond decided his fields were over. he went back to new york to resume his editorial responsibilities. he began to hire dedicated professional war reporters who went into the field with the armies and with the army's blessing and often without the army's blessing. there was a natural competition give-and-take between vote reporters and the generals that you still see a little bit of today. a couple of examples, since 1863 after ambrose burnside conducted in his failed offensive in the last weeks of 1862. he then tried a march around robert tv's army and it began to rain. the army got bogged down. burnside decided to boost their routes by issuing whiskey and the army was both drunk and bog down and it deteriorated into an

absolute mess. became known to historians as the mud march. the reason is a new york times reporter sent back a story. burnside was helpless. they were bogged down and drunk. burnside wanted to have him arrested and shot. here we have a first confrontation between generals in the field and the reporters who are there to watch what is going on. there is that tension that continues to exist throughout the war. sherman in particular was very in tolerant of reporters in his ranks. grant much more tolerant. there was an occasion in did 1864 campaign when grant was sitting by his headquarters and his general came and said we need to arrest williams went and who has issued a report in the new york times that says this and grant said i read his story. it is remarkably accurate. stories from the west took

longer. one of the good things about reporting in the civil war is armies began dragging telegraph wire behind them as they move. the story is not quite in real time but a lot more immediate response than had been possible in many of america's previous wars the news from the western theater and by that i mean anything west of the appalachians included if the vicksburg campaign had ago by steamer up river against the tide to illinois and then to new york by telegraph so that news of vicksburg and gettysburg which historians look at simultaneously arrive in new york ten days apart. the sequence of events is slightly changed in terms of the newspapers with and if you look at it through the history books. that is one of the insights that we got. the other in sight is how remarkably good the new york times reporters were.

they were vivid, dramatic, occasionally worried. it was the day of dickens and they were paid by the inch. dickens was paid by the word. i will give one example in closing. the example comes from samuel wilkerson who was a new york times reporter. one of the better known n.y. times reporters that was heading out to a little farm town in pennsylvania called gettysburg. he knew his son who served in a new york artillery battery was there too so one of the first things he did when he arrived on the second day of the battle was to find his son's unit. he found the sun had been on a little eminence just north of gettysburg, had been mortally wounded there, carried to a field hospital and abandoned in the field hospital when the union army retreated back through gettysburg on to the heights of cemetery hill and cemetery ridge.

so wilkinson filed his report as a professional must do. i will read a brief -- is a very long report that we included in the report. who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are in move of lee fastened on a central figure of a absorbing interest? the dead body of an eldest born, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent and abandoned to death in the building where surgeons dared not stay. but wilkinson did write the story and perhaps most poignant part of that is he happened to be in general need's headquarters building during the bombardment and advancing that has gone down in history as picket's charge and this is what he wrote. in the shadow cast by the county--tiny farmhouse which

general meade made his headquarters for weary staff officers there was not one thing to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird which had a nest in the peach tree within the tiny yard of the white wash cottage. in the midst of this a show screamed over the house instantly followed by another and another. in a moment the air was filled with the most complete prelude to an infantry battle ever exhibited. every size and form of sheldon to british and american gunnery sweet and whistled over our ground. as many as 6 in a second, two burning over and around the headquarters made a very hellfire that amazed the oldest officers. they burst in the yard and next to the fence on both sides garnished with the hitch forces

of aids -- one fell and then another. 16 led mangled before the fire ceased, fastened by their dangers. these. victims of a cool war touched all hearts. through the midst of storms, screaming and exploding in shells and ambulance driven by its friendly conductor a full speed presented to wallace the marvelous spectacle of a horse going rapidly on three legs. then he describes pick it's charge very vividly and ends this way, my pen is heavy. oh you dad who are at gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of freedom in america. interesting phrase. how you are to be envied. i rise from a grave whose wet clay i have passionately kissed and i look up and i see christ

spanning this battlefield with his feet and reaching for heaven. his right hand opens the gates of paradise. with his left he beckons those mutilated, swollen bodies to ascend. it is altogether possible, even likely that lincoln read this article. he read the new york times regularly. it was his party's paper and that phrase the new birth of freedom may have resonated when he went back in november to give his most famous address. so thank you. [applause] >> my facet of the story doesn't really come with the civil war. obviously andrew johnson was alive during the civil war. he was part of it. he was a military governor in tennessee and this time period. he was also a southern unionists, the only member of the senate who remained loyal to the union and for that reason he

was known by his newspaper and very much liked by northern newspapers because of his stance. johnson's claim to fame other than appearing on modern-day rankings as one of the worst presidents, before this was published it was the absolute worst. but he may have been considered one of the worst presidents but he was settling one of the most important presidents for what he did after the war was over. the aftermath of the war. of the things they're talking about. the country had to be put back together again. he was chosen as lincoln's running mate. we could talk a little bit about how that happened. i described it as mysterious. carroll thinks it is still mysterious. we can talk about this but surely he was in lincoln's eyes and the people who supported lincoln the right man for the job because he was symbolic

anyway as a southerner who remained loyal to the union. he was the embodiment of the hope that one day the country could be put back together again. there were enormous hopes for have. following lincoln there were people who were lincoln admirers who had become exasperated with lincoln who thought johnson might actually be better. it is hard to imagine that because lincoln is considered one of the best presidents and johnson is considered the worst. to go from best to worst in what terms there, but he dashed the hopes of many because he did not rise to the occasion. the thesis of my book is the story of anti johnson is the story of missed opportunities. for the country, for himself the leader of the list opportunity for great is for himself. most people think presidents have to have a war in order to be great. he came after the war but he had

something that is certainly the moral equivalent of war, reconstruction. to try to figure out what was going to happen to african-americans who have been freed by the civil war and down in the south in a place where peace 0 -- people look upon them as their property or their property to be at some point in the future. a great amount of hostility was unleashed after a war in the south against the freedmen. andrew johnson had the hostility towards african-americans. you think about the story and tell in the book of what it meant to have a person who was so personally hostile to african-americans is not something that was unusual. it was the currency of the time but he in particular had great amounts of animosity towards african-americans and yet he was in charge of figuring out how these were going to be brought into citizenship and he was

quite recalcitrant. for he had come into office as a loyalist to the union. once he becomes president it is almost as if he reverts to vis other. the southerner in him comes out-basically believe blacks should have political rights. he did not believe that. he believes america was the white man's government and it would remain a white man's government as long as he had anything to do about it. he comes into office. there were high hopes for him because he talked about punishing traders. when the war was going on he was giving speeches and being very harsh on southerner is saying trees and must be punished. so people in the south when you add to the fact that to them he

was calling them traders so they hated him and feared him and when lincoln was killed, they thought he is going to be an avenger. he will be terrible to us and in fact for a while he did make the setting randys and planter class come to him and ask personally for pardons but he cut that off at a certain point. people have wondered why he changed his tune on the planter class and why he was not so hostile to them. once he realized what the republicans wanted to do it was not just get rid of slavery and leave blacks in a position of serfdom or worse than serfdom that they wanted to transform the south. than he thought it was more important to stop them than to deal with this sort of old animosity and jealousy towards

the planters and he began to oppose every single program the republicans put into place in order to bring blacks into citizenship and for the longest time most republicans held out hope they could work with him. it was really the radical republicans that term described a small group of people who were never in control of a party. they kept trying to work with johnson and he would not be worked with. whatever they suggested he and vetoed bills, the freeman bureau's built literally was opposed to the fourteenth amendment. all these things. at some point people in congress felt they couldn't take it anymore and that brought about the impeachment process. the only time--president clinton wrote the forward. interesting if he could have provided -- the only other president in peach, clinton and johnson. for johnson it really was

nothing to be done. if they passed a law he would veto it. finally they had enough and decided to get rid of him. they were not successful. he was in impeached but save from conviction and removal from office by one vote and he continued as a sort of lame duck as the world passed him by. people have said to me that he did bring something good. as a result of his recalcitrance we have the fourteenth amendment and that is true. that is the silver lining. but on the other hand if you think about -- i think about the missed opportunities in terms of land reform. he was against land reform. think what the lives of african-americans would have been like, how different they would have been if the freemen could have had farmers to grow

their own food, to become independent, sort of delay of black advancement as far as economic prosperity. this was a result of the things he did. i want to make plain that i don't believe -- there is criticism of great man's history that one person is responsible for all the good things that happened. that is not true. nor is it true that any one person is responsible for all the bad things that happened. johnson is not totally responsible for this but johnson was president and in our system of government the president is symbolic leader. when the president doesn't lead it is a problem. we don't look to congress or the supreme court for leadership. you look to the person in the white house. it was tremendously important that he decided to throw the weight of his leadership power

and capacity against the forces of reaction, people who did not want to transform american society and put us hundred years behind. so that is the story of johnson and his role in this particular era. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i would like to open the floor for questions. please wait until the microphone is given to you and meanwhile, while the microphone is going to this individual here i am going to oppose the first question using the moderator's prerogative. my question is henry raymond and andrew johnson were both rather close to abraham lincoln, indicated support for lincoln and lincoln's policies but in the aftermath of lincoln's death they seemed to be trey his policy and vision. why? >> just to go back to something

annette gordon-reed said it is interesting to think of the transformation of johnson from the person expected to be an avenger. malval rights immediately they have killed him, the avenger takes his place in a poem called good friday 1865. raymond was by his nature rather conservative republican. he was dragged kicking and screaming for emancipation convinced it is a war measure. he is not very progressive on race relations. raymond in the 1864 election in which he is lincoln's favorite cheerleader and head of the committee and chief fund-raiser also runs for congress from new york. he wins. as it happens he becomes one of

johnson's key supporters in the united states congress. it actually spelled the end of raymond's influence as a leader in the press world even though johnson makes a come back in the united states senate raymond is done as the most influential editor in the united states. >> do you want to address that? >> no. >> how different was the personal relationship between a prominent afro-american republican like frederick douglass with abraham lincoln and andrew johnson? >> i strike the book with frederick douglass and his first encounter with andrew johnson. and he sees andrew johnson across the room and johnson looks at him and a fleeting moment, he realizes that this is a man who had contempt for african-americans. what johnson realized, he does

this face up and respond appropriately. but he says he saw -- the title of the chapter, the index of his heart and in that moment he could see this was a guy who was no friend of black people and it turned out to be -- turned out to be the case. there was no relationship between the two of them at all. at one point he comes to the white house with a delegation of blacks and johnson is very hostile. he basically says black people, slaves and slave masters were in league with one another to keyboard white people down. you would love to see frederick douglass's place as he explains what do the slaves get out of this little arrangement? there is no relationship.

>> frederick douglass has several meetings with lincoln. lincoln famously hatches a plan with him which i often cite as evidence of lincoln's sincerity in making sure emancipation was promulgated even if he was defeated in the 1864 election that saw johnson's live and that is to spread word of the emancipation into the deep south so that even if he lost to mcclellan in 1864 a larger number of enslaved people would be liberated under terms of the proclamation which hopefully the courts would validate so frederick douglass has a plan of creating an army of bounty hunters to go into the south, pay these people to get the word out to the deep south and frederick douglass says lincoln is the one white leader who treated him as if there is no difference in color. after the second inaugural which douglas witness saw johnson behave in a drunken way at his swearing-in. cold medicine or liquor.

>> he was drunk. >> he comes back to the white house and is barred from the white house. african-americans didn't come through the front door to go to receptions. he got in and lincoln said there is my friend douglas to a group of white people. on heard of in the united states. there was no one his opinion high-value more than yours. almost a variation on enough about me, what did you think about me? and frederick douglass said i think it was a sacred effort but of course frederick douglass rethinks lincoln and by 1876 the unveiling of the freedom monument in washington he is quintessentially the white man's president also in 1865 he said he was the black man's president so a lot of evolving fought on that relationship. >> johnson had been drinking

because johnson had been ill and in those days people fought whiskey was medicinal. >> you mean it is not? >> i had been drinking because johnson had been ill and in those days people fought whiskey was medicinal. >> you mean it is not? >> i was setting somebody up to say that. >> i want to add a note to. the curious psychology of this man -- annette gordon-reed did a good job plumbing that psychology the 2-hour i it is odd because he was only acceptable on the 1864 platform because he was willing to buy into an anti slavery position. he was against slavery. but the reason he opposed slavery so much is because he believed it the 1ve the aristocrats, the white aristocrat's an unfair advantage. the best window into his psychology is the statement he once made where he said i pray to god that every man should have a slave, for then all of us would be equal. the other the lacks what lincoln had which was empathy, considering blacks fellow human being that fog them only as giving an advantage to the

aristocrats who had humiliated him in his youth. that security is -- that psto >> somebody who was president at a critical time. that is the real paradox. here was a person who was not lovable in the way that we think of people who are lovable but nevertheless he is there at a critical moment that you have to know about this period. >> yet the revisionism -- so we can get another question. when the age of this surrounding -- johnson was considered a misunderstood hero. he was still being taught in schools as the guy who the, quote, radicals gain the pawn and at this time ts the e we we reading profiles and courage one chapter was devoted to senator ross of new york. what did we know? we thought it was great that he was being -- tested deciding vote to acquit andrew johnson.

this has turned 180 degrees on that. >> next question? you in the blue shistt. >> two questions. i can to wait to read the book, the compilation of new york times articles and there is the cd and it to. are these digitized? can i search by word through those? >> yes. if we have all of the articles published on the civil war congressional there is a lengtua piece also on the run up for did. it beackns in 1850 and does not to the end of reconstruction but what textbooks call the end of reconstruction if we had all the articles published in that the book would fill the room. we selected 600 to 630 of the key articles we thought best explained what the times was

telling its readers but the cd contains all of them. and it is searchable. >> one admonition. not a great sales pitch but the new york times were pioneers in scahe cing. some of the scahe cing is not exactly perfect. we cheered on for doing it so rarely and giving us a complete batch. >> the other aspect of c. herering the war, winslow homer and the poet, what was the situation of yetting illustrations? >> all hole other session. the illustrated weekly published in new yoristt frank was lee,

harper's weekly and several others send war artisper' out a others to the front. they generally did what photat.raphers did and that was stay out of the way. going through the air in the o.anner craig described final day of gettysburg it was not a great idea to have your head buried in the sketchbook or under a photographer's hood. that they did create a remarkable record of camp life and the aftereffects of battime and they brought the war visibly of 2 people, the photographer and the artists. they were an extraordinary bunch. and i would suppose just leave it at the fact that homer, alone among them, evolved into a great american artist and there will be a museum exhibition in washington and the metropolitan museum between 2012, and 2013 on the art of the civil wang a ne lobur at photat.raphy and paintg

as it much tours and goes from news medium to ier aressionisti medium and history medium. >> if you want to learn more about this you need to read two of harold's 218 books, the union s the age and the confederate i. >> what was the new york times editorial position during reconstr01tion and did it evolve? >> the new yo one ts the es rema party paper under the tutelage of henry raymond and is s01cessor. ral.ond died in 1869. fairly young and was taken over by his business partner. they pretty much -- president johnson's position on these issues. they did write stories about the activities of the klan and we included those in the book but not as many and they tended to

be pif ye 3 or 4 and fewer >> the clan bill, for example, that came up in 1872, '73. it was covered but not with the same kind of enthusiasm and t dedication that they covered the war. >> it's really not until the 1890s when knox buys "the new york times" from its owns when it's in terrible shape that the modern new york times that we know comes into being. mod the oxfamly is, of course, the antecedents of the sulzberger family. nonpartisan in news and progress i, very progressive in editorial policy begins to take shape. >> okay. one last question.

sir in the blue. wait for the microphone. >> yes. there's been some allusion toit the ambivalence about slavery, and peter drucker and paul johnson, the historian, have recently written about this andp said that the founding fathers -- meaning washington and jefferson and others -- had given up on slavery until james watt invented the steam engine in 1776. and then ely whitney came along and invented the cotton gin, and it made cheap textiles in theke cotton-picking south much more demanding that that they have cheap labor, and that reinvented slavery. do you have any reaction to that?labo had the founding fathers really. given up? hav >> i don't think the founding

fathers had given up on slavery because of watt and the cotton gin and whitney. on slavery because of the cotton gin. what you are describing is exactly what happened. that is the change in industry and efficiency but washington died in 99. jefferson a don't think had -- jefferson continued to believe until the end that slavery was going to die out. i don't think he thought about the full implications or understood the full implications of what the cotton gin would bring about. i think he had given up on slavery in the sense that he thought it was a retrograde system that would die away but i don't think it was those two inventions -- it was not linked to those two inventions. >> i think it is time to bring this session to a conclusion.

the 146th anniversary of we's surrender, what emerges knowledge the union won the war but won the piece partially. that emerges from these two books. the first, complete history or new york times complete civil war edited by harold holzer and craig symonds and "andrew johnson," annette gordon-reed's wonderful little volume. thank you very much for attending. all the authors will be available to sign books in the gymnasium next door. thank you [applause] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/book the. booktv. >> ben tarnoff, who was owen sullivansome. >> owen sullivan was one of the

most notorious counterfeiters in america. he was an indentured servant from ireland, and he ends up in boston in 1749 as a silversmith, and that's where he begins to counterfeit colonial massachusetts notes and builds a huge intercolonial network that expands from rhode island, new hampshire, massachusetts, all over. >> how easy was it to counterfeit at that time? >> well, the printing quality of the bills is fairly primitive by our standards, um, but it did require tremendous skills as an engraver. i mean, one of the things you see in the early period, most counterfeiters are former silversmiths or engravers was it takes dexterity to engrave a copperplate in reverse, because that's what was required. >> how much -- well, first of all, was there a national currency, or were there 1 different type -- 13 different types of currency that were official? >> in the colonial era, there were 13 types, and can after the

revolution it becomes even more confusing because you have private banks all across the country all printing their own notes. so first hundreds, and then later thousands. and the peak of it is more than 10,000 different types of notes in the 1850s circulating all over the country. >> how did that system work? if somebody lived in massachusetts at the time and wanted to go to a store or a mercantile? >> it's really, so confusing. i think this was the biggest discovery for me in my research was just to think of it from the ground's eye view. if you wanted to buy an apple from the local merchant, you could show up and present one of 10,000 different types of money. so there were ways to manage it. one of the things that happens in this period, they have something called a bank note reporter so you can actually look up twice a week in the mail in a little magazine the differing values of different notes and also see which are counterfeit, you know, that there are certain counterfit detectors. if this stroke is a little too thin, this one is a little too

thick, you might be dealing with a forged note. >> so was it a, was it a common, everyday thing to have money passed, forged money passed? >> extremely common. the one statistic we have, which is fairly rough s that at the height of counterfeiting in america around the the time of the civil war you have between a third and a half of all currency in circulation is forged. that's a fairly rough estimate, but even if it's half of that, just a tremendous amount of fake money in circulation. >> well, ben tarnoff, how did you find the story of owen sullivan when you were writing "moneymakers"? >> i started researching during the financial crisis, and that was my entry point because i was reading a lot about the history of american currency and finance and really struck by the powerful parallels between the past and the present. and is these three characters seemed like excellent windows into our very tumultuous financial past. >> did owen sullivan make a lot of money in be his lifetime?

>> he certainly did. and there are various estimates. i mean, it's probably in the vicinity of hundreds of thousands of pounds, colonial currency. but differing estimates especially because if he engraves a plate, his accomplices can use it long after he leaves a particular community. so it's not just what he prints himself, but it's his tremendously diffuse network of accomplices over the northeast. >> so money was localized at the time? >> well, it was. it was. you could have different types of currencies in different communities n. the colonial period you could have currencies passing in a single colony. so you didn't need to be in massachusetts, for instance, to spend massachusetts money. >> so if somebody was traveling from philadelphia to new york city -- >> yeah. >> -- what would they bring with them? >> well, it depends. in the early republic period, what you'd want to do is buy what was considered eastern paper or city paper which is bank notes printed by very reputable banks in the east, places like boston, new york and philadelphia. but if you were traveling

particularly to the west, you would see quite a bit of what's called western paper which was passed at a discount. it was shaved a certain percentage based on the reputation of the bank that issued it. so you'd want to have, essentially, the strongest paper currency with you, and then you'd be able to buy up the cheap paper at a discount. >> did the continental congresses or the constitutional convention address the issue of money? >> well, the continental congress gets into a lot of trouble during the revolution because they start printing their own paper currency to fund the war. they are, they need money. i mean, there's really no options for them. they're isolated by a british blockade, they can't tax the states, so they start printing a legal tender currency which becomes hugely inflationary and almost sinks the revolutionary effort and becomes a major disaster in that revolutionary period. >> but no addressing of the thousands of different types of currency? >> well, what happens is when they sit down to write the constitution, the memory of both

all of those colonial currencies and, more vividly, the crisis with the continental currency means that virtually none of america's leading men in the revolution advocate a pay or money. so -- a paper money. so the constitution explicitly prohibits states from printing their own paper currency. >> what happened to owen sullivan? >> well, owen sullivan does very well for a period and then is tracked down by a posse of vigilantes and is executed in 1756 in new york in if what is now city hall park, actually. >> who were the vigilantes who tracked him down? >> well, that's the thing. in this period law enforcement is very primitive and amateurish, so if you want someone who's willing to do what it takes and travel across many jurisdictions to find a counterfeiter, you need to pay him pretty well. and there's a man named beecher who is paid by the connecticut colonial legislature to track down sullivan and bring him to justice. >> you profiled two other counterfeiters of the time.

one was david lewis. who was he? >> david lewis was born in the allegheny back country of pennsylvania in 1788. and he learned the counterfeiting trade in the money-making enclaves along the border between canada and the united states which is a major counterfeiting hot spot in this period. he returns to his home state of pennsylvania just in time, in 1814 or so, when the state charters a bunch of new banks which is part of this broader movement in the first few decades after the revolution. an explosion of both banks and bank notes across the country which really opens up the opportunities for counterfeiters. so lewis is perfectly poised to take advantage of the new events. >> samuel upham. >> he is probably my favorite of the three just because he's the least conventional. you know, he's not a bandit. he's a shopkeeper in downtown philadelphia. he runs a stationary store on chess nut street -- chestnut street. and when the civil war comes, he

starts to print confederate currency which he sees reproduced on the cover of the "philadelphia inquirer". now, he sells these notes from his shop, and he calls them facsimiles. and his idea is that they're going to be souvenirs, essentially, because -- which was credible because people mostly thought that the rebellion would be crushed fairly quickly. but as the war goes on and becomes more serious, he expands his enterprise to become a major, major counterfeiting operation. >> did he get caught on punished at the end? >> he's never punished. the south hates him. his name appears in a ton of richmond newspapers, but he is never punished because he is counterfeiting the currency of a government is emphatically not recognized by a union. there's endless conspiracy theories about whether he may have received funding from the secretary of war, but there's really no ed either way. -- evidence either way. they probably just let it

happen. >> at what point, ben tarnoff, did this country get to a single currency? >> well, it happens during the civil war, and there's a number of remarkable and unprecedented steps the federal government takes in the 1860s which really wouldn't have been politically possible without the civil war. so before the war, as we've said, you had more than 10,000 types of currency. after the war the only paper money is federal. it's either printed directly by the treasury in the form of greenbacks, or it's printed by a system of federally-chartered banks. counterfeiting, subsequently, declines quite dramatically. not only that, but you have the founding of the secret service in 1865 whose original mandate was to aggressively go after counterfeiters. >> was it controversial? >> extremely. there's a number of steps the federal government has to take. the most dramatic is to break the power of the state banks whiche