original was on display here in charlotte at the museum of the new south is a letter our children to dr. hawkins dated april 2nd, 1968 explaining dr. king would not be able to attend a scheduled meeting here in charlotte on april 4th because of the situation in memphis was the striking sanitation workers, poignant in part because it would be dr. king would never made it. he was assassinated the very day that he was to be here in charlotte. ..

>> host: how is it you were living next to czar ray palin when you were researching your book? >> guest: i got very, very lucky, peter. i was in alaska in 2010, looking for a place to live because i knew i was going to be out there for a few months, and i wanted to live in wasilla because in that point in my research, about 80% of the people i needed to talk to were in or near wasilla, but i couldn't find anything there, so an hour and 20 minutes away in anchorage, much bigger

city, i found an apartment, and a little mother-in-law partner rented by a schoolteacher, and i was going to go over there at six o'clock that night to sign a four-month lease for that apartment, and at three o'clock that afternoon, by cell phone rang, and it was a woman named katharine taylor calling said i've been trying to reach you were months because i heard you're coming back this summer, and i heard you're looking for a place to live, and i have a house in wasilla that would be available for you to rent. i said, well, where in wasilla is this located? she said, well, it's next door to todd and sarah palin. i said, this is my lucky day. i drove up there the next day, looked at the house, and moved in the following weekend. >> host: what was the reaction of the palins? >> guest: well, they were not

happy, not happy at all. i didn't think they would be happy because they knew i was writing a book about sarah. i had already published an article in "portfolio" magazine about her failed attempt to build an alaska pipeline, and that piece annoyed her considerably, but i expected they would at least be mature about it. the second -- the third day i was there i was out on my porch in the early evening, and todd walked around very same house. they rented this house through the previous fall. they decided they didn't want to pay the $3,000 a month anymore, so they can selled their rental leaving mrs. taylor for a new ten ant, and i was the new tenant. he said, i don't like this because you're writing a book about my wife, and now i'm worried about our privacy.

will you have long lens cameras, you know, taking pictures and sticking microphones there to hear what we're saying? i said, no. i said listen, todd, you know, i'm not the "national inquirer," and in fact, as long as i'm here, your privacy is guaranteed, and i'll do nothing to violate it. it's a buffer zone. no one else can approach your property unless they get through mine first. he was not convinced by that. he felt this was just by very presence there was something that was a front. a couple hours later, i was on my porch, the end of it that faces away from the pais lip's -- palin's property looking at a vacant lot, talking on the cell phone to my wife back in massachusetts, and they sent

their son who was just out of the army out in the backyard to certain tishesly take a cell phone picture of me. that night, she posted that picture on her facebook page, and she said, we have a new neighbor, joe mcginniss, and here he is peering over the fence at our property. he could see into my 9-year-old daughter's bedroom, and who knows what he's up to. we feel we are being stocked. i forget the exact words, but it was a funny outburst, and the next day she was on glenn beck's radio show saying this is terrible. i fear for the safety of my children. all kinds of crazy hysterical overreactions to the simple fact my moving in there next door, if she and todd had handled it differently, nobody would even had known that i was living next

door because it was not something i had any reason i wanted to publicize. that was just my location. we didn't have to be friends, but we could have got along in a civilized manner, and that's what i was hoping for. >> host: what that your only face-to-face meeting with the palin family? >> guest: that's right. >> host: right after that, a new fence went up; correct? there's a picture of it in the new book, "the rogue". >> guest: yes, there was a 10-foot high fence. it was built next to mrs. taylor's house up next to the property line and put up this 10-foot fence up in mrs. taylor's face. it was an aggressive gesture on their part. that fence had always been there, but the next day todd brought in a crew of carpenters and add the height of the fence to be 16-feet high, and they nailed up on top of it a 16-foot

high fence. that's the fence actually that when sarah did that reality tv show on discovery channel last year, and in the very first episode, she talks about me living next door, and there was footage taken of me sitting on my deck reading a book minding my own business, and sarah said that's that new neighbor. is he looking at us, todd? oh, my gosh, i can't sit out here and work because he's looking at me. i want you to drill a hole, drill a hole in the fence so i can spy on him and see what he's up to. i mean, that was -- that was the approach they took. they were very, very aggressive about it, and todd actually said to me that first night, he said, how long are you going to be here? i said i think probably three or four months, and he said, yeah,

well, we'll just see how long you stay here, and those were the last words i heard from any member of the palin family. >> host: did you fear for your safety in alaska? >> guest: i did, peter, i did because the palins have an ability to insight strong emotions in people, and a lot of the people they insight the emotions in own guns to put it bluntly, and i had the mayor of wasilla offer me a gun for my own protection, and i declined the offer, but he did put police pa trails on -- patrols on to watch my house, keep it under surveillance, and also the alaska state police were parked just down the road checking out anybody approaching my house, but a couple of days after this, a right wing radio talk show host named mark leben

broadcast my e-mail address on his show, and urged his listeners to write to me and express their opinion of what kind of person i was for daring to move next door to sarah palin, and i began to get the ugliest, most hate-filled threats of violence i had ever seen transmitted to anyone. not only i was threatened, but my wife was threatened back in massachusetts. someone said we should go visit nancy because she must be lonely with joe away. let's stop by and pay a little call on her. i had another one write say you're planning to bring your grandchildren out to visit you this summer? they better just buy a one-way ticket, because if they come out, they are not coming back. you'll find their bodies floating in the lake.

>> host: describe wasilla as you saw it. >> guest: it's a town that's come out of nowhere almost overnight. i was in alaska in the late -- mid to late 1970s to work on my book "going to extremes," and i can remember driving from anchorage to fair banks, about an eight hour trip, and just an hour up the road, there was a blinking light, yellow blinking and red on either side, telling you to slow down, and there was a gas station, and there was a general store, and a post office, -- and that was wasilla. they must have had about 500 people living in it then 59 most. -- at most. not even a traffic light. over the past 20 years, it's become the fastest growing city in alaska. a lot of people came up to work on the pineline settled in

wasilla because land up there was cheaper than anchorage itself, but it was close enough to anchorage that they could fly out the anchorage airport to the north slope and more. it was a boom town in the pipeline years and then was a commercial center. palin encouraged as nay your, the development of the big box stores, wal-mart and lowe's and fred meyer. wasilla now has every major franchise, restaurant or department store, target, you know, all of these things. they all have branches in wasilla. wasilla is now the most congested hodgepodge surrounded by still the most serene and glorious gland scapes -- landscapes that stretch on for hundreds of miles, but wasilla itself is a congested clog in

the artery right there an hour and a half north of anchorage. >> host: what do you mean when you describe alaska, wasilla as palin land? >> guest: she was born in idaho, but arrived in wasilla very early in life, and that's where she grew up. she went to wasilla high school. her father was a teacher for many years in the wasilla elementary school, and her mother was a secretary in the assembly of god church. the palins became one of the first families of wasilla so to speak, and when sarah got into politics, you know, she began by running for city council of wasilla, elected to that, and then after two terms on the wasilla city council, she stepped up to run for mayor, served two terms as mayor all the while expanding her political influence, then ran for lieutenant governor, lost,

and then came back to run for governor and won, and then, of course, john mccain nominated her for vice president, and she personified the values that were particular to wasilla as opposed to the rest of alaska. by that i mean especially an extreme form of evangelical christianity. people now come to call it dominionism because it's a militant fringe on the evangelical right that wants to end the separation of church and state in america. that's what sarah palin advocates and that's what she would try to bring about if she ever had the power to do it. she's representing that extreme christian right trying 20 impose their values on the rest of secular society, and that's -- there are -- there must be 75

tiny little store front evangelical store front churches in wasilla. early on the road, i list the churches in wasilla, and it goes on and on and on, a page and a half of all the church, and that's the essence of wasilla society. tiny little store front bible-believing, bible thumping churches, evangelical christians who believe that evolution is a myth and should not be taught in public schools who believe that many, including sarah, believe that jesus, jesus christ will actually return to earth during her lifetime on it, and her goal has always been to prepare wasilla, alaska, and america to be the sort of christian republic that jesus would find himself at home in. >> host: it was a city of character. what does that mean? >> guest: well, sarah, as mayor, went to an evangelical

conference in indianapolis paid for by the taxpayers -- already a blending of church and state there, and this was a conference sponsored by the cities of character organization. cities of character are cities that vow to follow 49 biblical principles and to conduct their city business, and to develop a way of life in the city that is in accordance with the 49 specific biblical principles such as obedience. you must obey higher authority. they have lists of flash cards you look at and learn all these applications of biblical truth. sarah returned from this conference and proposed to the wasilla city counsel that wasilla become "a city of character," and the city council

authorized this, and wasilla became the only city of character in the state of alaska. these are mostly based in states with strong evangelical traditions. south carolina and texas i believe have the most cities of character of any of the states in the union. for example, none of the new england states, none of the new england states are there any cities of character. it's a designation that denotes a commitment to following biblical teachings in government. in other words, having the city government influenced by the fundamentalists' beliefs in biblical truth as literal truth. >> host: why do you describe sarah palin's terms as mayor as a reign of terror? >> guest: because she began to

fire people as soon as she took office. she fired the police chief. she drove the town librarian to resign. she fired the public works director. she fired or forced the resignations of anyone who had supported her opponent in the mayor election, and she replaced them all with high school friends or members of her assembly of god evangelical church. she tried to pack the city council with right wing supporters. she became this autocratic leader overnight, and i had talked to many, many people during my research who lost their jobs when sarah palin was mayor. some had to move out of wasilla or alaska because they displeased her, and she brought an end to their terms of public

service, and in many cases, she would not stop there and tried to prevent them from finding other jobs. this is where the fear began. people began to fear sarah palin. if you're on the wrong side of sarah, she's going to hurt you. she and todd will come after you and get back. people began to live in fear. this had never -- wasilla had never seen anything like this before, and there was actually within months of her election, there was a meeting held in the city to discuss a recall petition to recall her from office as the people realized what a mistake they had made, however, she did moderate to a degree, and was elected easily to relerks as a second term, but the way she tried to impose her will and personality on every aspect of city life leaves people looking back at it and saying the phrase was used by

half a dozen people that said, you know, when sarah was mayor, that was really a reign of terror because you got on the wrong side of her, and you were in trouble, and it was, you know, not exactly a happy place. >> host: joe mcginness author of several books including "blind faith" with the newest released today, september 20th, "the rogue: searching for the real sarah palin." did you experience the fear when you lived there last summer? >> guest: i sure did. i sure did. i witnessed it when i would call people for interviews, and people would say, well, i'll talk to you, but you got to promise me you won't put my name in your book because, woah, if you do, god knows what will happen to me.

this was exaggerated after sarah had her reaction to my moving in next door. people saw what she tried to do to me just for having the nerve to live next door to her without talking to her or bothering her in any way. if she's that crazy about you reading next door, imagine her reading the book and saw i said something critical of her. we wouldn't be safe. our children might not get into college. we could lose a scholarship or a job. she has a lot of ways of getting back, a lot of power in the state even though she's not governor anymore. people were fearful. i remember one incident where i had some defective smoke alarms in the house i was renting, and they had to be replaced, and the handyman who was going to replace the smoke alarms called me and said, well, i'm right down at the end of your street there, and i said, well, come on

down. he said, i will, but i have to get my car ready first. 15 minutes later, he pulls up. i had a chain across my driveway to keep out unwanted visitors, and i was down there to unlock the chain to let him in, and i noticed that both his front and rear license plates had card board taped over them so nobody could see the numbers, and he said that's what i meant about "getting my car ready." he says, i can't take a chance someone is in the palin's house next door and see my license plate number and know i came here to repair your house, he said, that could put me out of business. that's the fear i encountered every day. >> host: were they rational fears? >> guest: i think they were because her history of vick kicktiveness -- look at the stories of trooper gate which is when that's the story of her illegal attempts to use the

power of her office to force the firing of a state policeman in alaska whose only offense was the fact he got divorced from sarah's sister. it was a bitter divorce, and the palins set out to destroy this man, and they stopped almost at nothing, and, in fact, they did fire the highly acclaimed public director of alaska when he refused the direct order to deliver the trooper's head to them on a platter. they wanted him fired. she continued as governor and that got her in trouble in 2008. she lied about this. she said she'd never done anything with the abuse of power of office to force the firing of the trooper, and it was proven through tape recorded phone conversations, ect., that she had.

she -- they spent three to four years to try to force this man out of a job. his only offense was that he had divorced sarah's sister, and sarah's sister was unhappy saying i want to get back at him. sarah said, well, i can take care of that. she and todd devoted a lot of time and effort and state time, state personnel to try to get the man fired. >> host: joe, you referred to them as, the palins as they quite often, talking about sarah and todd as a unit. >> guest: todd actually had a desk in sarah's office when she was governor. he conduct the -- conducted state business from the office. he met with department heads and committees. sarah really didn't want to do the job. she wanted to get elected, but then she found the details of

governance to be confusing and boring and didn't tend to them carefully. todd stepped in with particular interests in fisheries, the oil industry, and he was the power not very far behind the thrown. a lot of people understood that when todd called and said he wanted something done, he was speaking for sarah. that's the same as the sarah had called. it was really basically the two of them governing the state together up until the time when sarah was nominated for the republican vice president sigh in 2008. >> host: joe, you also refer several times to the status of the state of their marriage. >> guest: everyone -- well, i shouldn't say everyone. okay. let's be fair.

the vast majority of people who i talked to during my time in and around wasilla who have known the palins for a long time, who know them well, knew them from even before they got married, throughout their marriage, the common thread was this marriage is held together by the slender threads. there's ongoing and constant threats of divorce, rumors of break up. it's a loveless marriage. it's essentially a business relationship. it's something that -- there's simply not closeness to each other. one person who i cite in the book, gary wheeler, the director, the head of the security deal of the state police when sarah was governor, he was in charge of her security and he traveled with sarah and todd outside the state to governor conferences when she

would go to washington. gary was the personal security officer, and he got to observe sarah and todd close up both in the state, driving them in state automobiles or traveling on airplanes with them outside the state, and he said these two people wanted nothing to do with each other. he had been also the head of security for the two previous governors, governor knowles and governance november rutowski and saying the contrast of those marriages from his vantage point and todd and sarah was striking because there was just not closeness, no togetherness. people who know them better, more personally, people who have been house guests at their home, have known them for many, many years told me about nothing but fights, arguments, screaming matches, slamming doors, throwing things, and no love, no

closeness, and this, you know, this wouldn't matter. this would be of no cig caption. i wouldn't even have written about this in the book except for the hypocrisy that sarah displays when she tries to present herself as the personification of family values. sarah sells herself as the mom, hock ky mom, working mother with a wonderful relationship with her close partner todd, and that's an utter myth. that's less than an myth, but an utter fraud because that's a corner stone of her political per sewn that that i found is necessary to write about the reality opposed to the image in the rogue. >> host: but, joe, did you talk to people who were friends with the palins, supporters of

them, as well as people on the outs with them? >> guest: they were really hard to find, peter. i'll tell you, hard to find. the biggest surprise that i had when i got to wasilla in 2010 was how few friends and supporters she had left. the people who know her best like her least, and the people who've known her longest trust her least and fear her the most. those friends that she still does have, she instructed not to talk to me. she said i don't want you talking to this fellow joe mcginniss. her daughter bristol's lawyer told johnton's sister not to talk to me otherwise he could not visit his son. that's the lengths they went to to prevent me from talking to me. the family members, i called

todd's father two or three times on the phone, had pleasant conversations, but he said i can't talk to you. i'm a member of the family. they don't want me talking to you. i can't sit down with you. i have nothing against you, but i'm not going to see you. i called sarah's father and mother, i talked to her mother twice on the phone. told her who i was. oh, yes, i heard about you. can i visit with you? no, i don't think that would be a good idea. you know, i better ask chuck, but call back next week. i called back next week. she said, no, that's just not going to work. sarah doesn't want us doing that kind of thing. she tried to throw a screen around herself and keep the people close to her on the other side of it like the fence they had between the two houses, and honestly from a political or public relations point of view, i think that was probably a mistake on her part because i would have been happy to include

a prettier picture if i had been able to find it, but she made it just about impossible for me. i did talk to one woman at some lengths, and that's the conversation that's recorded in the book, reported, and she three times during the interview changed her mind about whether she would give me permission to use her name or not, and in the end after the interview, she got back to me and called and said, no, you know what? i decided you can't use my name because even though i had good things to say about her, i don't want her knowing i talked to her because that would make her angry, and i don't want to do that, so don't use my name in the book. of course, with any sources who i promise confidentiality to, i maintained that. her name is not in the book. >> host: joe mcginniss, if

someone were interested in sarah palin and picked up the book and read it, is it a fair assessment they would find nothing positive about sarah palin and might they you have an agenda? >> guest: oh, they might think i have an agenda, but my only agenda was to learn as much as i could about her and to write it in the best story i could tell, and when i went to also in 2008 for the first time, she was still governor. i was out there on election day in 2008 -- actually the day before election day -- the first time i was back in more than 25 years, and my goal then was to learn more about this gas pipeline she said she was building, but really wasn't. i spent three weeks focusing on the pine line, but learning a lot about sarah at the time, and i could see her popularity

already was waning, and i wasn't all that surprised when she quit as governor the following summer, and then i was back in 2009, and now she was no longer governor, and now was focusing exclusively on sarah, not just on the gas pipeline, and, you know, i found that she had lost support, that she didn't have friends, that there were not people ready to say good things about her, you know -- if she had lived a different kind of life, if she was a different kind of person, it would have been a different kind of book, but sarah is responsible for the tenor and scope and the tone of this book. >> host: joe mcginniss, do you think sarah palin and todd palin are the parents of trig palin? >> guest: i don't know. i think that's still a legitimate question to be asked about that. i go into this in chapter 19,

but i'm very careful not to go beyond where the facts take me. there are many, many people -- i've been blogging for the past six months, and i got thousands of comments from people who accused me of being afraid to tell the truth about him. there's a whole swath of people out there saying the pregnancy was a fabrication. i don't know. i do know that the story that she has told -- stories because there's a couple different versions -- of having her water break making a speech in dallas, texas, and rushing back to alaska and going to wasilla and giving birth the next day, there are many, many problems with that story, and i specify exactly what they are in the book, and it leaves me still

feeling uncertain. if she's not, it would be the most appalling hoax ever played in the american -- on the american people by a political figure, and that's a terrible accusation to make without powerful proof. i don't have powerful proof. i have misgivings. that's how i express myself bhowt the question in the book. >> host: if you had time to talk with sarah palin, what did would you ask her? >> guest: i would have said why not more than 10 minutes? let's have a meal or an hour, and i would have asked her, you know, what her plans were, was she running for president or striping people along? >> host: did you write the book that sarah palin feared you would? >> guest: i don't know that she had fear. i don't know that sarah really has fearment i think that she feels protected by divine

forces. she said, god opens the doors for me. anybody who thinks that god is their doorman doesn't have to worry about merely a guy who writes books. >> host: joe mcginniss is the author of this book being released today, coapt 20th, "the rogue: searching for the real sarah palin." he joinsbooktv from new york. thank you, joe mcginniss. glg thank you, peter. >> booktv's visit to charlotte, north carolina continues. next, we talk about press 53 publishing with founder, editor, and chief kevin morgan watson. >> we'll celebrate the 5th anniversary this october. it's a small literary publishing company based out of

winston-salem, north carolina. we publish short story, collections, novels, memoirs, and we ignore american trends. i don't publish what i think the market wants. i find literature that i like, that i love, and i put it out there and find people who agree with me. >> what methods to you use to promote your authors? >> the internet. we are very active on the internet. that's one thing that has changed the entire landscape publishing is that we no lopinger have to rely on those few people who used to have the capacity to get word out to our readers, that we can use the internet, facebook, twitter websites, blogs, and we can reach out and find those people who enjoy what we do. we can take an active role in

finding our readers. we are active in using the internet to do that. >> has the economy affected your business? >> surprisingly, the economy has not affected our business. press 53 has been growing substantially year after year. now, we're only six years old, so there's not a lot to base that on, but two years ago, we tripled sales. last year, there was another increase of about 30% above that, and this year, we're poised to double what we did last year, so we're growing alter an incredible rate. the downside to the economy is we have more and more bookstores wanting to carry our books, but they are slow to pay because of the economy because they have their own battles to deal with, but as far as the readers we're gathering, the books out there, it's increasing substantially. ten years ago, there, again, the

only books you knew about were the ones in "people" magazine, on the good morning america shows or the tonight show, whatever books were reviewed by the bigger reviewers out there by the magazines, tv shows, and radio show is, but today, if you're interested in anything, do a google search and get access to hundreds of different books suited for you. that's why there's a rise of small presses everywhere doing what i'm doing. i'm finding writing that i love and then putting it out there for people who like what i like. >> press 53 using the methods to keep up with random house? >> i don't know what they're doing, and i don't care what they're doing. they do what they do, a enthey

do it well, but my model was not to follow market trends, not to start any kind of market trend, but to maybe usher in a renaissance of short story collections. i'm a big -- i'm a former short story writer, and now a publisher of short story collection, and i knew there was a market for that if i could just find the people who loved short stories. we publish six to eight short story collections a year and do really well with those because we're able to find rairds looking for that type of material. >> can you explain an author's experience assigned to an independent publisher versus a larger one? >> yeah, that's a good question. last year, we signed an author who had his short story collection offered contracts

with two major publishers in new york, and he gave it to press 53. i told him you book will not be in the books of millions, and it's probably not going to be reviewed in the big pibly cationings and all of that. he said, i know, and i don't care. i want to go with a publisher who will not forget me after the 90-day marathon to get as many books sold as i can. i want a publisher who does not forget me after that, continues to keep my work out there, puts my work out there, and finds readers, and i think that's the big difference that larger publishers out of necessity because of the model they work under have a sprint race. they have to sell as many books as they can in the 90-day window that has been in place since the depression when publishers were sending books to bookstores and giving them 90 days to pay the invoice, and at the end of the

90 days, whatever they didn't sell, they ship back. i don't like that model. i.coop want to work with -- i don't want to work with that mote eel. if a book is good today, it's good five years from now. it's a marathon for us, a journey. we put the books out there, keep them out there, and we're trying to find new readers to introduce that to the readers, and the readers to the other authors within the bries press 53 family. >> can you go more in detail about your background and what made you want to get into publishing? >> yeah, well, it's interesting. i started out wanting to be a novelist like a lot of writers, and i realized after the 7th draft of my first novel, i had no idea what i was doing, and being a fan the curt, i read an interview where he said short stories are a good training ground for novelist because you learn to write in a very compact fashion.

i dabbled with short stories, fell in love with the art form, and so i began writing short stories, getting some published, won con contests, and i was earning a reputation for that. in 2000, i noticed that the short stories i was reading were not gratifying for me. they were on the darker side. they were a little depressing. there was no hope, and i think it might have been kind of a reflection of the political times. i approached the new york city arts foundation to put together an anthology of short stories that i liked that represented life of values, that you had characters trying to do the right thing in a messed up world, and maybe they didn't succeed, but at least they were trying to do something good. they agreed. i spent all of 2001 reading every short story i could find.

i read over 2,000 short stories, and i found 12 i wanted to publish in this collection called the silver rose anthology, and i got the bug, so in 2004 when i lost my full-time job in the airline industry and was looking for that next phase of my life, i thought, well, i'm going to start a small press, but i didn't know anybody with thousands of dollars to invest what could be a losing proposition, so what i did was i researched and found out that print on demand technology had reached a point to where i could learn how to use that. i could design and lay out my own books, put them out there using their distribution channels, lightning source is the printer i use, and they are wonderful to work with, so i was able to for a few hundred

dollars of my own money to start a small press and build it a book at a time, and we've just published our 77th book this year. >> for more information on booktv's 2011 city's tour, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> i'd like to weigh in on this. you're talking about fundamental confusions. if you think about what a warrior is, a warrior is a person who first of all chooses a side. the warrior clearly knows that these are my people and those are my enemy, and he will risk his life and limb to use violence to try and stop the people who are trying to do violence against his people. that's a warrior. a policeman will also risk life

and limb, but they can want choose sides -- cannot choose sides. they have to be on the side of the law. if a policeman chooses sides, it's called corruption. we have fundamentally confused the role of war roars with the role of police, and we put warriors who are trained to oppose another side into a situation to act as policeman where there's no agreed upon law. they have to be on the side of the law. if you go to the state penn, any state in the union, the people inside tell you if it's bad to kill or against the law to steal, they all agree. there's an agreement. we put people who are trained as warriors into a situation where there's no agreement. well, you know, it's perfectly justifiable to cut a woman's ears off if she humiliated her

husband in some way. oh, which law are we dealing with? second thing is if you have policeman who are trained, they are generally more mature. infantry men are young. would you take a 19-year-old and send him to a troubled neighborhood and, you know, with an automatic weapon? it's not likely he's going to do a very good job. you're sending, you know, to go up against the enemy, and he knows who they are, he'll do a magnificent job. that's what 19-year-olds do. if we don't get over the confusion, we'll find ourselves in situations time and time again where we put people who are trained one way into a role that has none of the requirements that make that rule successful. >> clarity of purpose in battle is a real force multiplier. middle of matterhorn, there's a devastating moment when a u.s. officer suddenly realizes and

begins worrying over the fact that the north vietnam army unit he's opposing are infused with a sense of purpose and mission, and he offered a devastating observation. you write, for americans, that thing of clarity was in the past. the marines kill people with no objective beyond killing itself. that left a hallow feeling of doing your job which was killing people. the cycle of this dynamic can quickly detach itself from larger strategic missions, especially missions with ambiguities, counterinsurgency. >> right. i think it's an absolutely interesting parallel between vat newspaper and the -- vietnam and the war in afghanistan. my fathers, oping les, they all -- uncles, they all fought. are we making progress? yeah, well, it was clear what we were doing.

you go to vietnam, and it's becoming like unclear, so how do we measure success? it dissolved into body count, and i'm clear in my own mind that body count is a very bad issue of success -- measure of success. first of all, it's immoral. the warrior's job is to stop the other side from using violence, and when the other side stops doing it, then you are done, and the job is not to kill the other side. you sometimes have to kill people on the other side to persuade them from doing what they are doing. that's the bad part of it, but the objective should not be killing people. that's not a proper objective. it's just inhumane. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> this month in partnership with our local cable affiliate, time warner cable, we explore charlotte's history and literary culture. next, we talk to david

goldfield, the author of "america aflame: how the civil war created a nation." >> david, in your book, you said the civil war is america's greatest failure. why is that? >> it was a failure because we went to war. it was a particularly great political failure because the political process could not accommodate differing viewpoints or not major issues of the day. the major issues of the day were, of course, primarily slavery, particularly slavery in the western territories, and secondly, immigration. believe it or not, americans were fighting over immigration in the 1850s just as much as we're fighting over immigration now, and the fight over immigration concerned the influx of 1 million irish catholics into america between 1847 and

1857. now, most historians talking about the coming of the civil war, talk about the issue of slavery, but, in fact, what i found in my book, "america aflame," these issues are linked, that's anti-catholic immigration and anti-slavery because both of these issues came together in the new political party in the 1850s called the republican party. now, the republican party initially was founded as an anti-slavery party. one of the important things that i like to tell my students is don't confuse anti-slavery with pro-black because the republican party advertised itself as the white man's party. that is, they wanted to ban slavery from the territories primarily because they did not want black slaves competing with white labor because if that were the case, then, of course, free

labor, slave labor, would push out the working man because you have to pay wages to the working man. you don't have to pay wages to the slaves, so the republican party advertised itself as for the white working man. it was very popular in the midwest, and in the cities of the northeast as well. now, the second strain in the republican party was the anti-catholic movement. in the early 1850s, a new political party appeared call the no nothing party, and this was in response to the irish immigration. the irish immigrated to america beginning even before the american revolution, but it accelerated as british policy tended to impoverish and otherwise reduce the irish to

peasants, and the irish seeing no future for themselves in ireland, many dying from famine, and many towns in ireland were decimated by the father and mother min, they -- famine, they decided to go to america, the land of the free. when they got to america, they found prejudice against them. why? well, because they were roman catholic. what does catholicism have to do with decisions 234 america? according to some people, irish catholics owed their allegiance to the pope in rome, not to the president of the united states, and secondly in a democracy, individual voters have to have the freedom to make up their own minds on political issues, and the feelingfuls they would look to their priests, arch bishoped and ultimately the pope in rome for mash --

marching orders on who to vote for. this was considered un-american. of course, it was totally false, but nevertheless sometimes americans believe things regardless of facts, and that was the case and this new party, the know nothing party, limiting immigration from ireland and limiting the civil rights of immigrants once they were in the united states. they were called the know nothing party because it was a secret organization, and if you approached one of the know nothings, they would have said, oh, i don't know anything about that political party, so hence they were called the know nothings. the formal name was the american party. the american party was fairly successful in the early 1850s, but ultimately they thought that they would be stronger if they combined with the new party, the republican party, and so these

two strains, the anticatholic, antiimmigrant strain and the anti-slavery strain came together in the republican party. many people in the party were strong evangelical protestants opposing immigration looking upon slavery as a mortal sin. slave holders, in fact, as sinners. what this did is it tended to polarize the political process because you're enemy or your opponent was no longer merely misguided or misinformed on the issues. your enemy was evil. if you believe that america was a godless land and that the western territories were the province of the lord extending not only democracy but protestant christianity across the land and ultimately across the globe, than these two evils had to be vanquished. in fact, in 1858 when abraham

lincoln who, by the way,fuls not a religious big gat, but was anti-slavery. when abraham lincoln ran for the u.s. senate in illinois against steven a. douglas, the democrat, in 1858 and precipitated those great lincoln-douglas debates, the republican party slogan that year, the slogan under which lincoln ran his campaign was vanquish the twin december peetisms, catholicism and slavery, and those two strains in the republican party were essential for its success. in fact, in 1860 when abraham lincoln went to the white house as the president of the united states, many of his votes came from protestant working men in the cities who could care less about the slavery issue, but they knew the republican party as the evangelical christian

party stood for the rights of protestants over the rights of roman catholics, and they wanted to restrict the rights of roman catholics. the problem was, of course, by injecting evangelical religion into the political process, is polarized the political process. our system of government governs best from the center. our system of government governs best from moderation. if you look at all of the great legislation that we have had in our history, the deal legislation, civil rights legislation, they have been the result of compromise. they have been the result of moderation. rod ration was much -- moderation was much less possible in an environment where your opponent was the devil, and you were the saint. religion actually was brought into politics before the civil war. in fact, it was building and climaxed with the civil war. as early as the 1830s, the e van

evangelical movement, known as the second great awakening, started to entrued in the political -- intrude in the political process. i start with the disappearance of a nun. now, viewers ask what in a world does a disappearing nun have to do with the civil war? well, the outcome of that disappearing nun was the burning to the ground of the con vent in charleston, massachusetts in 1834, and fermenting that hatred and arson was the father of harriet beecher stoa, the author of "uncle tom's cabin" who said roman catholics are of the devil and are a foreign power to be dealt with as such. that led to the burning of the convent, but it's an early indication of the power and bigotry of northern

evangelicals, and so we have these great books written on the civil war where the north becomes the republic of virtue, and the south becomes the evil empire, and what my book does, my book changes that equation and says they were both at fault. they were both wrong in precipitating the bloodiest war inmen history because -- in american history because what happened in the civil war was 620,000 men died, untold losses in treasure and property, and the men who came home were often named in mind and body, not to mention the millions of people at home who mourned the loss of the people who lost their lives. now, historians say, wait a minute, wait a minute, 4 million slaves were liberated. the war saved the union. i want readers of my book to ask two questions after reading my

book. one, first, could this conflict have been avoided? secondly, could those great results of the civil war have been achieved by other means? in 1888, the great african-american leader, frederick douglass, gave a speech stating the emancipation proclamation was a fraud. now, maybe this was an overstatement 25 years after the emancipation proclamation, but as he looked around and saw the status of african-americans, particularly in the south, picking the same cotton they had picked under slavery and living similar lives as they had lived under slavery, he wond w