morning, and churchill for the first time in his life heard the little town of bethlehem song. he was not a churchgoer. >> stanley weintraub, this is your third book, isn't it, on christmas time? >> i think it may be my fourth. silent night was the first. i did one on the revolution, george washington coming home at the end of the war and actually arriving at mount vernon on christmas eve. i did another on the battle of the bulge, 11 days in december that was a wartime christmas and still a fourth called general sherman's christmas and the capture of savannah in the civil war. >> what is it about christmas? what is it about christmas?

>> it's a remarkable time for families. and it was a remarkable time in our history over the years. i hope this'll be my last christmas book. >> pearl harbor christmas: a world at war, december 1941, is the name of the book. historian stanley wine straub is the author. >> up next, eliot cohen talks about the battles fought along the 200-mile corridor between albany and montreal since the 1600s and discusses how those battles shape the way we wage war today. this program is just over an hour. >> well, welcome to johns hopkins school of advanced international studies. i am charles duran, i'm the andrew w. millen professor of international relations here. we are absolutely delighted to

have you participate in this lively discussion of a very important book, "conquered into liberty: two centuries of battles along the great warpath that made the american way of war." we're going to start off with a little exapplication of what is in the book by its author, eliot cohen, and then we're going to have some discussion afterwards, and we hope to have some time for a response to those comments and maybe even a chance to hear a couple of questions from the floor. eliot cohen is the robert osgood professor of strategic studies. he has served on the policy planning staff of the office of the secretary of defense before coming here in 1990. he has always been an officer in the united states army reserve. from 2007 to 2009, he was a

counselor, was counselor of the department of state serving as secretary condoleezza rice's senior adviser on strategic issues. and i must not forget he is also the founding director of the phillip merrill center for strategic studies here at sais. he also has done a lot of things in academia but i, in fact, didn't add those things in. [laughter] our first discussion is tom ricks. he is the author of a number of very successful books on the u.s. military including, for example, these are the titles: "fiasco," "the gamble," "making the core." all of these have been bestsellers. he has served on the staff of "the wall street journal" for some 17 years. more recently, he's been with

"the washington post." he is currently a fellow at the center for new american security and is a contributing editor to foreign affairs, excuse me, foreign policy magazine for which he writes the blog, "the best defense." finally, our third participant, nicholas westerbrook, is an independent historian. he's the author of a number of articles on american history. between 1989 and 2009 very significantly for this book, he was executive director of fort ticonderoga. and, of course, this location plays such a very significant role in eliot cohen's book. nicholas westerbrook previously was curator of exhibits for the minnesota his to have l call society. -- historical society.

he is, to us, really, an expert on a number of aspects of locale and setting that are crucial to "conquered into liberty." eliot, tell us what your week is about. [laughter] [applause] >> well, thank you. thank you for the introduction. thank you all for coming, it's so great to see so many old friends, former students. colleagues that i appreciate everybody on the panel, particularly my friend, nick westbrook, for making the journal frey from the north -- journey from the north country to come here. i'll say more thank yous at the end of this, but let me now say something about the book. those of you who are standing along the back wall, there are plenty of seats up front. the dean is lonely, you should keep her company. [laughter] okay.

so in graduate school, like most students of international relations, the path that e studied was the second world war, and the present was the cold war and our conflict with the soviet union. from 2007 to 2009, as professor duran has hold you, i was counselor of the department of state, and i spent a lot of my time fretting about the taliban and al-qaeda and the iranian revolutionary guard corps. so after leaving government i came back and finished a book on america's most persistent, effective and, i would argue, important enemy of all. canada. [laughter] it describes how war originated,

the northern border of ours was anything but the sleepily, undefended frontier of today. it was a menace and invasion. conquered into liberty is more about a particular place, what native americans called the great warpath, that 200-mile stretch of water and woodland between albany and montreal. the book is framed by a series of battles. to give you a feel for that, here's how chapter one opens. at 5:00 in the morning on february 9, 1690, a bleeding man on a wounded horse staggered into the fortified winter-bound dutch town offal albany. despite the bullet in his thigh, he had ridden nearly 20 miles in six hours from schenectady to albany through knee-deep snow. the mayor, peter sky lahr,

hastily convened a meeting of the aldermen to hear the grim news. just before midnight on the 8th, a party of french and indians had stormed she knechtty, killing most of the inhabitants, carrying off others and setting houses on fire. in the following days some survivors, many suffering from frostbite, approached albany. they and their horrified hosts eventually pieced together what had happened. we go from there. the story, the burning of schenectady by a franco-raiding party, begins the book's battles with begin with a confederate rate on vermont in 1864 and a raid into canada by irish-american veterans of the civil war in 1866. some of the fights i talk about were very big. the attempted 758 by the publish to --

[inaudible] in which nearly 15,000 troops were hurled back with horrific loss by barely a fifth as many frenchmen. the other fights i talk about were mere skirmishes. some of these battles were decisive, others were not. but individually and collectively, they reveal a great deal about why the united states waged war the way it is, and that is why these struggles of long ago are alive and, in some ways, visible to americans today. a word about the title, "conquered into liberty." i explain it in chapter five which deals with the american invasion of canada in 1775. launched, i would point out, before the united states had even declared its independence from great britain. it is the opening phrase of a subversive pamphlet printed in french by order of the continental congress, and this was spread throughout canada by american agents, and it begins

"to have been conquered into liberty." that's a pretty interesting notion, isn't it? that people can be conquered into liberty. yet it is an idea americans have pursued sometimes with great success, sometimes with failure, sometimes with uncertain results for a long, long time down to the present day. and it started here. in the case of canada, the americans failed. that was, it was probably inauspicious that the pamphlet was not widely read because most of the population of canada were illiterate. [laughter] and neither the clergy, nor the gentry were inclined to put subversive inside into the heads of the -- [inaudible] but the americans tried hard. george washington who had orchestrated this assault ordered his subordinates to subdue their deep-seeded mistrust of the catholic french. while we are contending for our own liberty, he wrote in his orders, we should be very

cautious of violating the rights of conscious in others. ever considering that god alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case are they answerable. george washington was motivated by some very hard-headed notions about power. he favored invading canada because he wanted to push britain off the north american continent. but he was activated by these ideals as well. but, by the way, washington did not want the french back in canada either, and he was quite willing to double cross his protege, the marquee delafayette, in order to keep them out, but that's another story in another chapter of the book. i describe benjamin franklin's journey north along lake channel plain in april 1775, a real ordeal for a 70-year-old man for that time of year, and, in fact, he thought -- with perfectly good reason -- it was going to kill him. his instructions make for fascinating reading.

my favorite line is you are to establish a free press and give directions for the frequent publication of such pieces as may be of service to the cause of the united colonies. [laughter] franklin failed, but he gave the british quite a scare, and in so doing, inaugurated an american approach to warfare, "conquered into liberty," that is being played out, as i say, even today. let me give you one more example of how the connect is drawn from past to present. in 1777 american forces evacuated fort ticonderoga in the face of an invasion from canada. the retreat turned into a rout. the americans lost their equipment, their stores and a lot of their self-respect. some of that self-respect was regained a few days after the abandonment of fort ticonderoga at the only real battle ever fought in vermont, the bloody

little action at hubberton, and one of the chapters is about the battle of hubberton. a year after these events a court-martial brought major general arthur sinclair who was a professional, he was a veteran of the british army, he was a real regular in his outlook and in his background. he had been at odds throughout the whole campaign with the militia, the part-time soldiers with whom he had to depend, and in particular one of the other leading figures in the book, seth warner. now, at the end of that chapter where one of the themes i explore is the relationship between the professional and the citizen-soldier, i bring the reader up to the present. and i describe a trip that i took to fort ticonderoga accompanied by my friend, nicholas westbrook, with about 40 colonels. and there, among other things, we reenacted the court-martial of arthur sinclair.

we had some of the officers playing prosecutors, some playing sinclair and some of the witnesses. and is the basic charge was we boiled down for the record was ip competence as a general which is what he was actually accused of. and at the end we took a vote, and he was acquitted by a pretty respectable margin of that charge. so here is how that chapter ends. having completed the exercise, the instructors made some final remarks, summed up the arguments on both sides, suggested parallels with the kinds of problems the colonels might find themselves dealing with in the future. saying a few words about the carefully-reconstructed site of fort ticonderoga itself. and can then a poll. and then a poll. would all of you who voted to acquit arthur sinclair, please, raise your hands again? about 25 of the 40 raised their hands. now, would all of you who would be willing to have your son or

daughter serve under him, please, keep your hands up? one by one, the hands went down. after a pause to digest this ambivalent outcome, the instructors recounted arthur sinclair's further career after the revolution during which he continued to serve but never again in command, he became, in 1787, president of the continental congress for one year just as the new constitution was being drafted. ..

news of the regulars or the militia accompanying them to 25. stalin over 600 soldiers and wounding 250, inflecting the greatest defeat ever suffered by the united states army from the native americans before or since. after careful deliberation washington replaced mcgwire with none of the rich and the defeated general's predecessor 15 years before at ticonderoga, anthony wayne. in the meantime congress once again investigated sinclair. after due consideration, vote quality of the troops and the predicament and the challenges he was acquitted. whose fault was it? sinclair or the people who kept

him? a long silence and pondering the last question reflected colonel smiled to a pleasant dinner and comfortable dining room overlooking dark waters of lake george between the hills. that chapter like the book as a whole does several fingers. describes dramatic events, choices and personal conflicts and shape events and consequences and suggests the enduring legacies and their implications. the book, i hope and think is a good read. but it makes some serious arguments. as a close friend said it is a kind of love note to the great warpath since i was a boy. let me conclude where the book begins in the introduction. after describing the big things in the book including that notion of conquering others into

liberty, last paragraph describes my deepest aspirations. as for the charm of the subject this book prompts those who read it to explore the places -- i will be glad. it will discover as i did that it was an attentive ear, modicum of the imagination and wholesome curiosity about the past one can still hear the echoes of musket and can and shouts of commands and clap of hand and creaking of wars and even some effort of near silent padding between shots. i hope you will read the book. at if you i can promise you that vicariously at any rate you will hear something. [applause]

>> before we start, a lively panel, i would point out one thing that makes this book fascinating is eliot has the eye of a historian but also the mind of a strategist for a person in international relations. that is something deep in authorship. >> thank you. mark company makes a living from writing. i don't care if you read the nothing is more painful to me of a library. what is more painful is the guy who says it was so good i eliot cohen has done something unusual and even daring.

made canada interesting. he will never again think of canada as american junior. it is a terrific book. i read it twice. once as manuscript and just read the hardcover last night. it is a fun back -- book. more fun the second time around. battle for you and connect something like playing chess. i read the book and you can my favorite is the chapter--chapter 3. into the final notion repeatedly rangers in october of 1993. today's military. the connections are made.

point mayor leon that america, unlike in europe, became a year-round business. second the french did better with the indians than the english americans did. this struck me because it took us four years to engage in iraq. he points out another way. to pass is not the past in every way. like a code name he points of the navy seals gave to their target in pakistan some -- osama bin laden, but geronimo. most striking to me is professor sustained campaign against americans with a terrorist campaign. series of indian raids along the

american frontier in places like massachusetts where my family lived. fort william had the same effect as the attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon. a galvanizing effect that provoked a certain type of response. thinking about this analogy all week, working on my own book. should take this. for example the colonial war with india last decade. general officers will tell you repeatedly americans cannot fight long wars. but eliot present that they do. not only are they comfortable fighting a long war but along limited war. that is not what douglas macarthur believed.

one question i would like to hear professor cohen a chess -- address is the the american response on the war on terror campaign he writes about in this book than it does with the wars this is a book about the past. found myself wondering as i finished last night the second time, is it quite a feat that does this? it is clear when you read this i wonder as i finished it if our global warming and energy shortages have the effect many experts predict it will have been coming decades, then within

livable for somebody from the united states and once again canada would be a prize worth fighting for. thank you. >> there goes my canadian book tour. >> i did you a favor. >> our next -- eliot cohen's conquered into -- "conquered into liberty" sweeps up and down across three centuries of conflict to tell the story of a contest for empire. with an enthusiasm for more fair. we heard that in the first words

of the discussion. cohen also focuses cold analytical eye on the modern strategist operating at the highest international level. the drama is played out by dozens of remarkable characters captured in we not show portraits. eight major battles in two periods extending strife and uncertainty sends tremors and quakes across a complex web of diplomatic and political maneuvering. repeated efforts at grand strategy are dissolved by ego courage and the often competing psychologies of tradition and defeat. sometimes selfless fowler, personal courage and the enormous perserverance save the cause from the best capabilities in human nature and a new way of making work and striving for

peace. this is a book about a place and i would like to take you to that place as europeans were taken there for the first time. we need to reach back 150 years earlier than that chapter on the french and indian raid that took place in early february of 1690. i want to take you back to the st. lawrence river in 1535 on board a tiny little ship. the shot cartier --jacques ca i cartier on his way to the rivers draining lake george to lake champlain north into the st. lawrence. 1535. he talks to the natives who live in the era and gathers as much

geographical information he can. he doesn't plunge into lake champlain. he is collecting world geography. cartier's geographical report gets turned into a grand compilation mapping prepared for king france's first in eighteen 50 and by 1567 europeans are seeing for the first time in printed form of mercator mapped the interior of north america and this great warpath in 1567 appears the first time undefinable place the interior of north america. it doesn't show the hudson river or long island or cape cod but

shows this awkward reaching waterway stretching from the st. lawrence river down to the place the waterway forks. at that place where the waterway forks to the south, that is the place of the mohawks. this is america's warpath. off in that distance is the place where we will meet our enemies. france is not able for a variety of wars of religion taking place in france to follow upon cartier's exploration at that time. almost 75 years, champlain comes back and penetrates into the lake which he modestly named after himself, lake champlain. the great explore we all learned growing up in new york city was an explorer by force, not by

choice. he was being taken as a dwelling captive, a willing prisoner by a party of pure on, algonquian who were penetrating the lakes of lake champlain, the iroquois lake and that place where the mohawks live. the reason montagnais and the your aunt's --hurons retaking them was they had fire power. they could use their fire power. the first time ever in the champlain basin to make a power play, power move against the mohawks. in an illustration in champlain's book published that year, 1609 when he returns to

france he illustrates the sight of that battle and it is built by the mohawks on bland and night before the battle. the first pictorial representation of the interior of north america on the shores of lake champlain. on the shores of this great war path that connects the native people living in st. lawrence valley with mohawks and other members of the iroquois confederacy. that is the prequel to eliot's book. eliot's tale of the next 200 years. we talked about place and a long history of america's great warpath. we can talk about grand geography and rand international alliance strategy, bose alliances between montagnais and the elbow when and their french

allies in this driving mohawks' end of lake champlain. war as you all know is a story of individual valor, individual fear, individual courage and the individual memories. i want to wind up by showing you the story of one young man who was born the year of the fort william henry massacre in new haven, connecticut. the man joined the connecticut regiment after the fighting begins in lexington and concord and marches off with daniel worse perhaps regiment to lay siege to the british tracked inside boston. he spends the summer helping build the american fortifications around boston and when the drum is beat to recruit men to follow benedict arnold on a crazy march through the maine wilderness benjamin warner

signed up for that effort and marches to lay siege to quebec. that invasion of canada has elliot has hinted. don't want to give away the whole book but that invasion, american invasion of canada and to conquer them into liberty was an abject failure and they ticonderoga. benjamin warner went home after country called him again just three months later and he signed up with washington's army to fight defense in the battle of long island. benjamin warner went back to work three more campaign years before the war was over. we had the fort ticonderoga museum a great treasure, simple knapsack made of linen and painted barn read about this big and inside that knapsack is a note written with a quill pen by

a very old man in his 80s. benjamin warner, he tells us in that note, this knapsack i carry through the work i carried through the revolution, i transmitted my oldest son with directions to keep it and transmits it to his oldest son and on to the latest austerity. and one shred of it will remain, never surrender your liberty to aspiring demagogues. benjamin warner lived another nine years and was buried in ticonderoga. and he has a simple epitaph on his gravestone. 1846. benjamin water, a revolutionary soldier and a friend of us wave. those are the stories that eliot tells in this grand book.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you. interesting comments on the book. let me start with nick and go to tom. my oldest son and i, he is a veteran, were in a discussion this morning about what should be the meaning of veterans day? is it about today's veterans? i felt at least -- one point was we have memorial day for people who fell in battle. that is what veterans day is about. it is really those who didn't fall in battle. i think the conclusion i came to

after an interesting discussion is what veteran they should be about all of them going back to benjamin ward because if it were not for the willingness of the benjamin warners to go and fight, go home and come back we wouldn't be here today. pause to respond to tom's question is the american response to the war on terror -- the things people talk about in the book. i would say yes in a number of ways. i will mention some of them. the first is off of nick's earlier description of champlain's famous battle with the iroquois. when you best accounts of that we realize it is not much that champlain -- is the indians who were the actors and the indians are manipulating him and using

him as much as he is using them and one of the interesting thing about contemporary history about native americans is makes it clear that they were in important ways actors and not necessarily victims. in a similar way as we think about different adventures this country has been on the last ten years it is important to remember we may think we are moving the chess pieces around the chessboard we are actually a powerful piece often being moved around there chessboard. so i think there is a similarity there. the second thing, one of the underlying themes of the book, the book has the first two fifth or half of it are about the contest with the french. through the seven years war. one of the points that i make is

the french -- there is this question. why is french canada going by 80,000 people able to hang on against these english colonies which have over a million. their numbers of reasons for that and one is the french were better dealing with the iroquois. so much better understanding the indian culture and ability to work within indian cultural context. but what you eventually got on the side of the english and the americans was a good enough ability to deal with the indians. i would say that is where we are. not as if we naturally have a report where the locals may be bought by dint of a lot of effort and in a variety of ways we can do well enough. a third thought is there seems

to me that the book talks about a number of different dimensions of the american war some of which are essentially in regular in nature. you mentioned roger's action -- a little skirmish--a bloody little fight which takes place on snowshoes. it is a disaster for rogers and his men but things are really sort of industrial warfare as when benedict arnold -- the southern edge of lake champlain and this is repeated later on in 1814 when the united states navy built a more substantial flotilla on lake champlain and completely defeat a slightly superior royal navy. one of the things the book brings out is the multiplicity of that.

that remains true today. even as we do these things in iraq and afghanistan, we are getting ready for a much larger conflict with much more conventional forces in the other places. >> we actually have a little time because of the efficiency of town so we might take a couple questions from the audience. if there are any. go-ahead. [inaudible] [laughter] >> we would have to go through an institutional review board at johns hopkins university and people from the medical school would be passing on whether i could use human subjects and work with dead people. >> are there archival materials?

>> no. as i said it is a real book. ft notes and foreign languages and everything. in washington that is sometimes a rare thing. i very much tried to use primary sources. not entirely. one of the joys of this book is the different pieces have been the subject of fabulous historians over the last century. what on earth are you doing on their turf? i really did try to use documentary collections. for a book like this you don't go to a single archive. there are different documents published in different times.

massive documentary film on colonial history of the state of new york in the nineteenth century, and collections used by all students of the american revolution people shall american archivists which cover 1774-76. a lot of that stuff is on the web. so you can tap it there. there is other stuff here and there. it requires that a more scattered shot but you're going lots of places. there is no central repository that you can go to but there are some quite wonderful documentary collections and in the same way we look at the ground or the book when you look at the documents they reveal a slightly

different world than the books would have you think. the most notable case, one of my pet obsessions is benedict arnold. i do my best to be above and take his reputation. former colleagues in government are rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as i say that but one thing that strikes you when you read his correspondence in the 76-77 campaign and read these letters all that you see is a shrewd commander and truly balance patriots. which makes it a puzzle even greater. it really hits you when you see these letters. even with the benefit of hindsight you feel it couldn't really be improved upon, his assessment of the situation and recommendations about what ought to be done.

including french documents. >> in the back? >> what impression did you come away with about jordan washington, military commander and the strategies? >> glad you asked about george washington. there are two chapters about conflict that never happened. i think this is one of the ways in which having been in government affected how i wrote the book because those things i took away from my own government experience is a very powerful bit of the reality of the things that don't happen. as strange as that may sound. one of the things that don't happen. there's a chapter called phantom campaigns and it deals with two things. one was an effort to make

vermont and independent republic under british protection. a series of negotiations conducted by ethan allen of all people. not the british coming. the outsized figure from vermont history. it took place in 1780-81. there is a fantastic intelligence story in this which is in the chapter. the americans get with of this because new york has spies from all over for months and report back and washington is brought into this and writes a letter to the governor of vermont who was part of these negotiations. the letter reads like something out of -- i hate to say it, michael corleone. it would be a truly awful

feigned -- fin -- think if all the states turned on their brothers because it would mean the a ruin. that is all he has to say. we are with the united states of america. the others thing is the campaign takes place before that, the second invasion of canada. the first invasion failed in 76 for a variety of reasons. there was an idea about one in 78 but there was a serious of consideration of the second invasion in seventeen 79 that a french fleet would sail up the st. lawrence and american army led by lafayette along the great war path. benjamin franklin was really keen on this.

the continental congress was really keen on this and lafayette -- at the end of his life to be polite it get to bring canada into the united states of america, fringe aristocratic stuff. the story there is how washington does him in. goes beyond his back -- congress is really enthusiastic and he finally goes up to the person and says let me tell you. you cannot trust the french. even if they act with genuine intention of turning canada over to us once you have a french fleet and a french army, the marquis they lafayette says i am

not so sure. and he encourages the marquee to take a long overdue leave to go back to congress. lafayette never tweaked this. he had no idea. is good buddy george washington who really put the, bosh on this project of his. he used this for information purposes, he puts the word out that this is actually going -- to canada or can't do any damage and the marquee falls for it. washington who did not visit the warpath until after the revolution is actually -- >> shopping for property. very interesting on what

happened. >> you have a question? >> congratulations. we are basking in your halo. question on the international partners use spoke of. it will be in britain. i want to know what you expect your most knowledgeable french, british and canadian readers, how do you expect them to react? and secondly what you can figure out quickly, you taught a generation of students how difficult the alliance words are. is there anything in this book that you think would have helped

when the allies were struggling this way. >> the annual staff ride. i will tell you what i think knowledgeable readers here and abroad say that they mentioned. warmonger, adviser to condoleezza rice now advising mitt romney that canada is the ultimate enemy. oh my god, make the stop. i think i can put that into a tweet but if it sells books it will be okay.

i hope knowledgeable readers from those countries particularly canada, it is a pretty fair shake. from myself into a very a ray of characters. one of the most sympathetic characters, what they heard of. with ps and alan -- when the revolution comes he cannot bear the idea of breaking with the marquee. families persecuted, he is thrown into the gulag of the american revolution in connecticut. it was like going to siberia. you are not going back. he escapes and comes ahead of

the intelligence network in canada. as i say at one point he is a decent man doing decent business. i think i portray him -- i admire the guy. one thing i hope i do is restore some interest on the part of americans in french canadians because some of these french canadians including chile are fantastic characters. they do extraordinary things. i will mention my favorite villain. according to that book, a french canadian who shows up in three of these wars, becomes a real bogeyman because he was a brilliant leader.

may have been responsible for the fort henry massacre, what exactly his role is. after canada falls to the british, he fails in a leaky old ship that catches fire three times along the st. lawrence. and a storm blows up. this ship is racked. there are 120 people on board all except six drowned including his two sons who are in his arms. six of them-or including the captain. they buried the dead and built the fire and goes into the woods and persuade the indians to take care of these five survivors and make himself snowshoes and walks

1500 miles to go back in the middle of winter. >> when the americans invade, offering service -- it goes back to the british, he is with gerald when he invades and quickly gets a sense that just before saratoga it won't turn out to well so he'd be materializes before saratoga and ends up with a beautiful young wife 35 years younger than he is and the second richest man in canada dying of old age. what a guy. other figures too. the governor of canada in the french and indian war.

actually denounced the lot, i try my best -- i told my students that the greatest virtue is empathy. i try to make this point -- this book as empathetic as i possibly can. a lot of the book is about coalition warfare although it is more about coalition warfare between very different kinds of people. particularly the indians and europeans and americans and canadians. it is about the difficulty of really understanding how even an allied culture works and what the war is all about. so i think that is a good thing. >> i think i must admit something to this group. most of you know this already. i have been and am the director of canadian studies and have

been for a long time and i have to tell you i think you are exactly correct when you say you are empathetic and fair with regards to canadian perspective but one of those things i am wondering about is this. of course in different periods, there really is not a canada per se but a group of people living in canada who are associated with foreign policy. france or britain depending on which period you are looking at. i am wondering. have you identified a sense of independence? a sense of somehow being canadian, canadian this in any of these periods prior to 1865 when canada became independent? >> that is an interesting

question. i think the french presidents already have a sense of themselves as not being simply french quite early on. the english who settled there after the seven years war don't really. i think it is the canadian story and basically true that after the war of 1812 where you have french canadians fighting alongside english canadians, there's a sense of canadians. basically the story is driven in large measure by the threat of invasion. canadians are aware of it but almost no americans i have heard of. in 1866 there is a substantial incursion into canada by something like 1,000 very mad irishmen who were veterans of the union army following a plan

devised by william tecumseh sherman's division commander who is also irish with vote view of creating new hibernia. a strategic notion they could come up with. that crisis is to consolidate the canadian sense of who they are. >> we have time for one question? right here. [talking over each other] [inaudible] about new england history. i have two questions. was the same lawrence river always a natural boundary between canada and the english colonies? were there ever french canadians who lived on the southern side of the st. lawrence river? second question is where did new

hampshire come from? >> the french settlement of canada is really along the shores of the st. lawrence. it doesn't actually penetrate in terms of settlements very deeply. early on -- to go very far west like hounds with french names which we tend to forget. the st. lawrence was not the boundary. the boundary was this bill the find -- very fine american historian named alan kissel has written a lot about this middle space where you have people with different royalty is. one thing i should point out in the great warpath, it is not a

commercial route. it is a group of warfare. if you are canadian looking to the west. milford trade and so on your looking along st. lawrence to france because we are very much connected. the americans are very connected to the atlantic system. the border land is quite mixed and people with mixed certainties, another one of the colony's. the interesting story which is this tested space because new yorkers think the long to them. the settlers many of whom are from connecticut to the connecticut river are getting these -- real operator, governor of new hampshire, a long and interesting story. we don't have time to do that now. i want to make some concluding

remarks if i might. this is really stupid but borrow a copy of the book. i forgot to bring it up here. >> i just want to save a few. first person i would like to thank is a person trying to slide out the door but don't. the students here all know her as the program coordinators of strategic study program. not only has she orchestrated this whole event to make everything the great english he is really taking care of me for years and years including all the years i worked on the book and i could not have done it without you. [applause] i want to thank my students and research assistants who are here and all the students who cheered

me on and kept asking me somewhat pointedly when is the book we're hearing about actually going to be done? you don't know it but you were indispensable to it in a number of ways including the experience of going on these staff rides. my current research assistant said to me it is like going on a staff ride. that is part of the idea. my friends here we are marching from quebec through maine following benedict arnold. but those experiences of walking around with friends and students and trying to piece what went on was incidental so all the students went on staff rides. you play a very large role in

this as well. our web to fake my colleagues. you couldn't ask for better bunch of colleagues. nobody ever has a nice thing to say -- let me say thanks to harrington in particular because at critical junctures they gave me a break. enough of a break from the teaching. hugely important and your support and encouragement means the world to me. what i want to do is conclude the last paragraph of the book and i should point out that i have -- my wife judy, daughter daughter vicki anderson putting granddaughter ryan down to sleep and son nation is watching us from singapore on the live web

cast. here is the last paragraph of the book. special word of thanks to my wife judy, four children and our son in law. with them by mount independence, walked the walls of grand point. savored the ruins of the fort of st. john's and the square of st. alban, visited william johnson's mansion in the woods and benedict arnold's headquarters in montreal, camp near fort william henry, snowshoed where robert rogers men word 250 years before. during that time i worked on this book judy and i and wonderful teenagers road to adulthood graduating fine institutions of higher learning. traveled to world and in gauging public service. go to war and returned from it, married and began having children of their own. their spirit of adventure with

fractionally dedicate >> there is a reception. [kissel positions -- >> every weekend booktv offers 48 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books.

watch it here on c-span2. >> we went to war after 9/11 on a credit card and didn't ask money on the credit card. we didn't ask anything of the rest of us. no sacrifices whatsoever. we were encouraged to go shopping again. we have this enormous boom in housing which was irrational from the beginning. i remember our daughter calling me from san francisco saying they are offering these 20 year deals with interest only for the first fifty years but you could see what was going to come at the end of the first fifty years and she said we are going to be more cautious. i worry about my friends. i went to a couple major construction people at that time. what is going on? they said there is so much instrumentation out there. people will loan anything. fannie mae and freddie mac were driving a lot of that and those

were two political institutions, quasi public and they got very clever. tim johnson and others about getting the idea of home ownership for everyone when plainly not everyone was qualified. we are paying a big price for that. we have twenty million homes in this country at the moment that are either in foreclosure or stressed or in danger of going into foreclosure. that means twenty million homes not buying new appliances or carpeting. they can't move to a new job. they are stuck. they are stuck with the biggest investment they will make in their life for many of them. this represents a lot of their net worth. we get the housing figured out it will be a harder job to get the economy really rolling back on track in the way we need to and neither party is talking about that which is striking to me. >> your book is made of some poignant questions.

one of them is a question john f. kennedy asked many years ago. what could you do for your country recently? how would you answer? how would you answer? >> i would say i appeared at the new york public library. that is one of the things. [applause] >> i honestly think i am at a stage of my life, if there is an oxymoron in american life, we don't exist. this is the modest of me. i seem to have earned a certain place where people will listen to me and i'll always cared about the country and the greatest generation, writing that book gave me a kind of a platform that was completely unanticipated. so i thought i ought not to squander that. i ought to step up not just as a

citizen and journalist but as a father and husband and grandfather and if i see these things i ought to write about them and try to start this dialogue which i am trying to do with this book about where we need to get to next now. and our family with all different things. a micro finance project going in malawi. i have a daughter on the board of habitat here. another daughter who spend a lot of time in haiti this year living in a tent with rodents crawling all over her. she was doing grief counseling would another daughter worked for the international rescue committee in san francisco. because we were raised by parents and grandparents who just saw that as part of the natural calling of life that you gave back in some fashion. i have done that but i like to think my larger contribution is

try to engage people in the events that define our time. >> you have passages in the book precisely about the legacy of parents left to you and how careful and cautious they were and thrifty and never spent more than they had. like almost everyone else of their age they were thrifty by nature and necessity. they didn't spend what they didn't have and they save something every week. >> sometimes to a default. they were too thrifty. i would say lighten up a little bit. you can afford this. it was hard for me to do it. hard to spend the extra buck sometimes. doesn't mean they had a great life. they did everything they wanted to do and i had the good fortune of having real resources so i

could help them in ways -- on trips or helping in my retirement place but it never defined our relationship. my dad died in the week before i began nightly news with a massive coronary but three weeks before i began nightly news it had been announced and this was a great thing for our family and for me to have this wonderful job and all this responsibility. it came with it a very substantial salary. i caught a wave of people getting paid a lot of money for doing this kind of work and got a lot of a publicity and my father never earned cash income more than $9,000 a year in his life. maybe at the end he did better than that. he worked as a construction foreman. recalled the. wonderful sense of humor. i was reading reports about your salary. is that true? i said we'd never talked about

my salary before. i made good money before that but this took me to a different level. i don't know, just reading. we went on to something else and we later time magazine did a very detailed report about what dan was making and peter was making and i was making. he called me back and he said i am reading time magazine. i said come on. why are we talking about this? are will tell you why. for as long as your mother and i have no new you always run a little short at the end of the year. we need to know how much to set aside this year. it was a perfect way of dealing with it. are also telling story in the book i toward him shopping in california. he came out to visit us. are had the card going through the supermarket and i thought i would show off my thrifty jean.

they had orange juice. i said to dad that stuff is expensive. let's get the box stuff. he reached into my shopping cart and picked up three expensive bottles of california wine and he said i guess the money saved on orange juice will pay for these. that put it in perspective for me. >> he must've been very proud. >> he was proud. he was not in a modest about it. you could not ask my mother about me without saying my son bill who lives in denver's running a restaurant and my son mike went to the marines and lives around a corner. they just didn't play favorites. my father when i first got to have some kind of public celebrity, somebody once asked him when he was at a gathering in our home town, are you related to tom brokaw? my dad says i think he is a cousin.

i am not sure. [laughter] >> another aspect of your book i would like us to talk about which i didn't really know is the incredible importance you attach to what one might call an enlightened form of philanthropy. philanthropy plays an important role. by that i mean foundations such as one of the ones i am particularly attached to in mississippi the robin hood foundation. and you talk about it and a way a model. the robin hood foundation would do well to expand in many different cities. >> we are fortunate to have a robin hood foundation. i was a skeptic when it started. these are a bunch of rich guys trying to buy a reputation. lot of guys were organized and

they invited me to their breakfast with another one coming up before too long. john kennedy jr. was there at the time and he introduced two young men he had gone to press school with in east harlem and he was moving about what they were doing and how john was attached to him so when john was lost i thought what can i do? i said i would like to help out for a while and the robin hood people came to me and said we could really use you on the board because we are all hedge fund guys and make a lot of money but we don't have much of a political year. we don't understand how the rest of the world works. we are used to having our way. we need someone to give this a reality check. i went on the board and i was astonished that the commitment of these busy people and the discipline they brought to how they gave away their money.