on line with the c-span video library. now through tuesday our c-span cameras are following the 2012 republican candidate that events route this stage every morning from iowa. .. apple was book panel ace panel on civil

war perspectives. >> please take your seats and welcome. my name is joseph glatthaar. i am the distinguished professor at the university of north carolina chapel hill and this is the panel called civil war perspectives. today we have two outstanding folks. the first, the new york times -- "the new york times complete civil war 1861-1865" compiled and edited by craig symonds and harold holzer. and we have "andrew johnson," a presidential biography by annette gordon-reed. one would think initial these books don't have that much in common but in fact as i read through them it became apparent to me they had an enormous amount in common. andrew johnson was a southern unionists and the war was over the union.

furthermore there are huge constitutional issues. huge raise issues in both books so they dovetail nicely. let me introduce our authors and the authors will speak and then we will have a question and answer session. hopefully there will be lots of times for questions and answers and i expect you to participate. when we begin i remind you this is not a moment for you to give speeches, it is time for you to ask questions and for the authors to answer. first, harold holzer has written or edited several dozen books. he is by my standards perhaps the best authority on abraham lincoln in the world. i recently had the opportunity to use one of his books in my undergraduate class with great success. harold has received the national humanities metal and he is senior vice president for external affairs at the

metropolitan museum of art. his associate, craig symonds is professor emeritus of the u.s. naval academy and former naval officer. he is a very famous on these grounds because his wife worked here for many years and craig was a volunteer cross country coach. my favorite of all his books is lincoln and his admirals' which i am going to use in the fall semester for my class. it won the lincoln prize which is exceedingly prestigious in the field of the civil war. he also has written the best biography of joseph johnson and patrick clayborn. our third participant is annette gordon-reed who received her law degree from harvard and had a youthful fascination with thomas jefferson. she has written several books on sally hammons and her third

major book is andrew johnson. annette gordon-reed has a string of awards that would occupy the bulk of our sessions so i can't quite do it. she is a professor of history and law and recipient of the national book award, the pulitzer prize, macarthur genius award, on and on and on. an extraordinarily accomplished individual. let me start by passing the microphone to craig symonds. >> harold is going to start off. >> with all of our rehearsals. >> i will go through the chronology of the way we have been presenting our book, "the new york times complete civil war 1861-1865". there is a confluence of fuse here that unites this panel. because the new york times cover all of the major figures of the

civil war era including senator and later vice president andrew johnson. we have to set the stage by saying it was not the same new york times that we know and either love or hate today. the new york times now relishes the idea that it publishes only the news fit to print in the 1850s and 60s. it printed all the news fit for electing republicans and supporting the union and later emancipation. this discussion also requires a giant leap of historical imagination, something akin to the kind of social media revolution that can start a real revolution. newspapers of the nineteenth century were busy fomenting passion and concern over major issues. they were specifically on one side of the slavery issue or the other. they were pro republican or pro

democratic. people measured their affiliation and loyalties by the newspapers they carry. in new york the for the middle just like in small towns, one republican and one democratic newspaper. new york was of course different because it was the publishing center of the world. in this atmosphere, publishers were often politicians as well. the chairman of the new york state republican party was a publisher. simon cameron. the governor senator from pennsylvania and later secretary of war in the first lincoln administration was a publisher. or they were politicians first and publishers later. new york as i say was different. almost 200 daily and weekly newspapers in new york city at the start of the civil war. when craig and i were asked to

focus on the new york times we took into account three major newspapers. the new york herald which is the most widely spread was the most conservative, pro democratic, and i emancipation. the new york tribune, famous for urging american young men to go west was the most progressive. they were urgently for emancipation earlier than abraham lincoln as it turned out was prepared to order it. in the middle was the new york times. its editor was a politician. harry raymond who founded it was the speaker of the new york state assembly. he decided to found a newspaper. this in new york gets gas because new yorkers imagine the current speaker of the assembly of owning the new york times so it is a big leap of imagination.

the times was clearly pro republican and anti slavery but their whole m o was to delay education, not excited asian. they wanted changes to be made in thessaly and painlessly. they were anti secession but not immediately pro emancipation. the times originally favored william seward for president of the united states in 1860. they were converted to admiration for lincoln after the cooper union address as joe mentioned a moment ago and were reliably and ardently pro lincoln in the 1860's election. in fact, i don't think anyone in any city to they can imagine this occurring from the print newspaper aside from television. the editor of the new york times campaigned across new york state into the midwest for abraham

lincoln. for one quick diversion, president bill clinton wrote the preface to our book and made what seems like an obvious point but a very interesting point that the analog of the fiercely partisan newspaper editors of the nineteenth century are the commentators on ms nbc and fox today. the only difference is the commentators on ms nbc and fox are not quite willing to go so far as to say i am a john boehner republican or barack obama democrats and president clinton's recommendation in his introduction was it might not be a good idea if they did. it would make things so much simpler and more direct. we have the editor of the time campaigning for lincoln and the assiduously covering lincoln during the election, editorializing for him every day and in the secession crisis that

followed his election covering lincoln every move even though he is not speaking. covering the floor of the senate and covering lincoln as he begins his long meandering inaugural journey that takes him into new york state and eventually into new york city. he had 20 correspondence with him on this journey. as many of you know when he approached the neighboring city of baltimore and he was advised by allan pinkerton and others to cancel his public schedule and go directly to washington being not a flying bird he had to go through baltimore so he did so at night and what arose from that as he did so wearing a disguise in a scottish cam and military cloak was actually the work of the correspondence of the imbedded correspondent of the new york times. his name was joseph heller and and he had no reason that anyone

can the deuce except he woke up one morning in harrisburg and said this is exciting. we are on the last leg of the journey. where is the president elect? and they said sorry, he is gone. you missed him so all these reporters who had traveled with lincoln all this time were left without a subject to cover and without news to report. it was a rather dicey situation. the times resumed its editorial support of lincoln in his conciliatory inaugural certainly after the attack on fort sumter nearly 150 years ago as we speak today at annapolis. and yet right after for its under and the patriotic exuberance it reported in new york city the new york times ran out of patience with abraham lincoln certainly for the first

and perhaps the only time in the succeeding four years. they wrote an editorial called wanted:a leader and lincoln was so upset by it he started a new file on his desk called phyllis articles and put this one in the file. to conceal the fact the administration so far has not met public expectation. tours carrying the country through the tremendous crisis which so rapidly and steadily selling down, the union will not only be severed but the country disgraced. in a crisis like this there is no policy so fatal as that of having no policy at all. lincoln pulled the editor to washington, took him aside and put his arms around him and said you're absolutely right.

i am so busy making a point that i don't have time to deal with this crisis. somehow lincoln's personal magnetism was enough to win the day or at least l.a. the antagonism and the times when don to reliably support lincoln throughout. after that at least publicly the editor of the new york times never left lincoln's side again and four years later when it was time to name the chairman of the republican national committee guess who got the job? henry raymond, publisher of the new york times. that is another relationship that would not exist. as we would like to insist there is a fire wall separating journalism from propaganda. at the dawn of the civil war there was only a very fine line. the times walked it gingerly but

they never failed the breathalyzer test of professionalism. their biases would not pass the smell test today but in 1861 their pro republicanism and emancipation is some, qualified it even then as all the news that is fit to print. that takes us to the war. >> that is great. we sit here today on the ninth of april, 2011. 150 years ago this week america was wary about what was going to happen at fort sumter and 146 years ago, today, ready lisa rented the army of northern virginia at appomattox so this is a very patient moment. we need to discuss what really was the most dramatic event in our national history and there have been thousands, tens of thousands of books written about the american civil war.

half were written by harold. but in doing this project it gave me -- the reason there are so many is there are so many facets of this experience that were investigating and useful to consider today in our own troubled times and in doing this project, i think i and my partners realize that reading of the war through the eyes of the newspaper and particularly the paper that was becoming the paper of record for the union, new york times gave yet another perspective on this because events were encountered not necessarily as they unfolded but as you read about them in the paper. today of course we have a wide variety of media sources to inform us what is going on in the world but newspapers were pretty much the only game in town in 1861 to 1865. and as harold mentioned they tended to adopt a particular ideological point of view.

but what happened during the civil war is not just transformative to the nation, not just transformative to the character of warfare. what with the advent and widespread use of the railroad and telegraph, armored ships of additional submarines, all the new technology that characterized civil war that sat on a ticking point between old-fashioned napoleonic wars and the horror of trench warfare in western france from 1915 to 1918 but in addition to that all so reinvented in a way the nation reported its war. the new york times the relatively new paper had to come up with almost a new way of reporting that war. there are several sources a newspaper could go to to provided readers with the information it craved. official reports, public documents were made available by the government or the people in the field. these tended to be dry and worse

for newspapers and competition one with another they tended to be late. if you waited for the government to put out an official bulletin, number killed and what the army did it would be of less interest than an eyewitness account and would also be a couple days after your arrival scooped you on the front page. newspapers began for the first time on a wide scale. at first henry raymond thought i can do this. setting aside his editorial responsibility he accompanied the union army of the battlefield in virginia along the banks of bull run creek and being a new yorker and knowing his readers will want to find out what is happening to new york units the company a new york unit. he was an embedded journalists. he said i am with 146 -- on the right side of the road.

he is seeing the battle from soldier's eye view. not this olympian height where he can see everything that is happening. that is his reporting. i can hear guns rumbling in the east. it is not all that helpful in terms of what is going on. it is all the reporters knew. it came because he came to get his story into the hands of a courier by 2:15 on the 20 first of july. in order to get to the telegraph in washington to be telegraphed and printed for the paper, at 2:15 he could report union troops are being successful. the enemy is fleeing for the field. the day is ours. half an hour later considered reinforcements arriving on the field turned that around completely and henry rain along with most of the union army had to flee the field back of the

road across bull run and back toward washington. he rode all the way to washington with a revised story in his hand and got to the military telegraph operator dusty and dirty and smelly, rushed in, i need a new story. the union army is defeated and a telegraph operator decided it was in the interest to send that story. this is why new unit--new york readers don't find out until july 26th what actually happened at bull run. here we have an innovation henry raymond decided his fields were over. he went back to new york to resume his editorial responsibilities. he began to hire dedicated professional war reporters who went into the field with the armies and with the army's blessing and often without the army's blessing.

there was a natural competition give-and-take between vote reporters and the generals that you still see a little bit of today. a couple of examples, since 1863 after ambrose burnside conducted in his failed offensive in the last weeks of 1862. he then tried a march around robert tv's army and it began to rain. the army got bogged down. burnside decided to boost their routes by issuing whiskey and the army was both drunk and bog down and it deteriorated into an absolute mess. became known to historians as the mud march. the reason is a new york times reporter sent back a story. burnside was helpless. they were bogged down and drunk. burnside wanted to have him arrested and shot. here we have a first confrontation between generals

in the field and the reporters who are there to watch what is going on. there is that tension that continues to exist throughout the war. sherman in particular was very in tolerant of reporters in his ranks. grant much more tolerant. there was an occasion in did 1864 campaign when grant was sitting by his headquarters and his general came and said we need to arrest williams went and who has issued a report in the new york times that says this and grant said i read his story. it is remarkably accurate. stories from the west took longer. one of the good things about reporting in the civil war is armies began dragging telegraph wire behind them as they move. the story is not quite in real time but a lot more immediate response than had been possible in many of america's previous wars the news from the western theater and by that i mean anything west of the

appalachians included if the vicksburg campaign had ago by steamer up river against the tide to illinois and then to new york by telegraph so that news of vicksburg and gettysburg which historians look at simultaneously arrive in new york ten days apart. the sequence of events is slightly changed in terms of the newspapers with and if you look at it through the history books. that is one of the insights that we got. the other in sight is how remarkably good the new york times reporters were. they were vivid, dramatic, occasionally worried. it was the day of dickens and they were paid by the inch. dickens was paid by the word. i will give one example in closing. the example comes from samuel wilkerson who was a new york times reporter. one of the better known n.y. times reporters that was heading out to a little farm town in

pennsylvania called gettysburg. he knew his son who served in a new york artillery battery was there too so one of the first things he did when he arrived on the second day of the battle was to find his son's unit. he found the sun had been on a little eminence just north of gettysburg, had been mortally wounded there, carried to a field hospital and abandoned in the field hospital when the union army retreated back through gettysburg on to the heights of cemetery hill and cemetery ridge. so wilkinson filed his report as a professional must do. i will read a brief -- is a very long report that we included in the report. who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are in move of lee fastened on a central figure

of a absorbing interest? the dead body of an eldest born, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent and abandoned to death in the building where surgeons dared not stay. but wilkinson did write the story and perhaps most poignant part of that is he happened to be in general need's headquarters building during the bombardment and advancing that has gone down in history as picket's charge and this is what he wrote. in the shadow cast by the county--tiny farmhouse which general meade made his headquarters for weary staff officers there was not one thing to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird which had a nest in the peach tree within the tiny yard of the white wash cottage. in the midst of this a show screamed over the house instantly followed by another

and another. in a moment the air was filled with the most complete prelude to an infantry battle ever exhibited. every size and form of sheldon to british and american gunnery sweet and whistled over our ground. as many as 6 in a second, two burning over and around the headquarters made a very hellfire that amazed the oldest officers. they burst in the yard and next to the fence on both sides garnished with the hitch forces of aids -- one fell and then another. 16 led mangled before the fire ceased, fastened by their dangers. these. victims of a cool war touched all hearts. through the midst of storms, screaming and exploding in shells and ambulance driven by its friendly conductor a full

speed presented to wallace the marvelous spectacle of a horse going rapidly on three legs. then he describes pick it's charge very vividly and ends this way, my pen is heavy. oh you dad who are at gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of freedom in america. interesting phrase. how you are to be envied. i rise from a grave whose wet clay i have passionately kissed and i look up and i see christ spanning this battlefield with his feet and reaching for heaven. his right hand opens the gates of paradise. with his left he beckons those mutilated, swollen bodies to ascend. it is altogether possible, even likely that lincoln read this article. he read the new york times

regularly. it was his party's paper and that phrase the new birth of freedom may have resonated when he went back in november to give his most famous address. so thank you. [applause] >> my facet of the story doesn't really come with the civil war. obviously andrew johnson was alive during the civil war. he was part of it. he was a military governor in tennessee and this time period. he was also a southern unionists, the only member of the senate who remained loyal to the union and for that reason he was known by his newspaper and very much liked by northern newspapers because of his stance. johnson's claim to fame other than appearing on modern-day rankings as one of the worst presidents, before this was published it was the absolute

worst. but he may have been considered one of the worst presidents but he was settling one of the most important presidents for what he did after the war was over. the aftermath of the war. of the things they're talking about. the country had to be put back together again. he was chosen as lincoln's running mate. we could talk a little bit about how that happened. i described it as mysterious. carroll thinks it is still mysterious. we can talk about this but surely he was in lincoln's eyes and the people who supported lincoln the right man for the job because he was symbolic anyway as a southerner who remained loyal to the union. he was the embodiment of the hope that one day the country could be put back together again. there were enormous hopes for have. following lincoln there were people who were lincoln admirers who had become exasperated with lincoln who thought johnson might actually be better.

it is hard to imagine that because lincoln is considered one of the best presidents and johnson is considered the worst. to go from best to worst in what terms there, but he dashed the hopes of many because he did not rise to the occasion. the thesis of my book is the story of anti johnson is the story of missed opportunities. for the country, for himself the leader of the list opportunity for great is for himself. most people think presidents have to have a war in order to be great. he came after the war but he had something that is certainly the moral equivalent of war, reconstruction. to try to figure out what was going to happen to african-americans who have been freed by the civil war and down in the south in a place where peace 0 -- people look upon them as their property or their property to be at some point in the future.

a great amount of hostility was unleashed after a war in the south against the freedmen. andrew johnson had the hostility towards african-americans. you think about the story and tell in the book of what it meant to have a person who was so personally hostile to african-americans is not something that was unusual. it was the currency of the time but he in particular had great amounts of animosity towards african-americans and yet he was in charge of figuring out how these were going to be brought into citizenship and he was quite recalcitrant. for he had come into office as a loyalist to the union. once he becomes president it is almost as if he reverts to vis other. the southerner in him comes

out-basically believe blacks should have political rights. he did not believe that. he believes america was the white man's government and it would remain a white man's government as long as he had anything to do about it. he comes into office. there were high hopes for him because he talked about punishing traders. when the war was going on he was giving speeches and being very harsh on southerner is saying trees and must be punished. so people in the south when you add to the fact that to them he was calling them traders so they hated him and feared him and when lincoln was killed, they thought he is going to be an avenger. he will be terrible to us and in fact for a while he did make the setting randys and planter class come to him and ask personally

for pardons but he cut that off at a certain point. people have wondered why he changed his tune on the planter class and why he was not so hostile to them. once he realized what the republicans wanted to do it was not just get rid of slavery and leave blacks in a position of serfdom or worse than serfdom that they wanted to transform the south. than he thought it was more important to stop them than to deal with this sort of old animosity and jealousy towards the planters and he began to oppose every single program the republicans put into place in order to bring blacks into citizenship and for the longest time most republicans held out hope they could work with him. it was really the radical republicans that term described a small group of people who were never in control of a party.

they kept trying to work with johnson and he would not be worked with. whatever they suggested he and vetoed bills, the freeman bureau's built literally was opposed to the fourteenth amendment. all these things. at some point people in congress felt they couldn't take it anymore and that brought about the impeachment process. the only time--president clinton wrote the forward. interesting if he could have provided -- the only other president in peach, clinton and johnson. for johnson it really was nothing to be done. if they passed a law he would veto it. finally they had enough and decided to get rid of him. they were not successful. he was in impeached but save

from conviction and removal from office by one vote and he continued as a sort of lame duck as the world passed him by. people have said to me that he did bring something good. as a result of his recalcitrance we have the fourteenth amendment and that is true. that is the silver lining. but on the other hand if you think about -- i think about the missed opportunities in terms of land reform. he was against land reform. think what the lives of african-americans would have been like, how different they would have been if the freemen could have had farmers to grow their own food, to become independent, sort of delay of black advancement as far as economic prosperity. this was a result of the things he did. i want to make plain that i don't believe -- there is

criticism of great man's history that one person is responsible for all the good things that happened. that is not true. nor is it true that any one person is responsible for all the bad things that happened. johnson is not totally responsible for this but johnson was president and in our system of government the president is symbolic leader. when the president doesn't lead it is a problem. we don't look to congress or the supreme court for leadership. you look to the person in the white house. it was tremendously important that he decided to throw the weight of his leadership power and capacity against the forces of reaction, people who did not want to transform american society and put us hundred years behind. so that is the story of johnson and his role in this particular era. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i would like to open the

floor for questions. please wait until the microphone is given to you and meanwhile, while the microphone is going to this individual here i am going to oppose the first question using the moderator's prerogative. my question is henry raymond and andrew johnson were both rather close to abraham lincoln, indicated support for lincoln and lincoln's policies but in the aftermath of lincoln's death they seemed to be trey his policy and vision. why? >> just to go back to something annette gordon-reed said it is interesting to think of the transformation of johnson from the person expected to be an avenger. malval rights immediately they have killed him, the avenger takes his place in a poem called

good friday 1865. raymond was by his nature rather conservative republican. he was dragged kicking and screaming for emancipation convinced it is a war measure. he is not very progressive on race relations. raymond in the 1864 election in which he is lincoln's favorite cheerleader and head of the committee and chief fund-raiser also runs for congress from new york. he wins. as it happens he becomes one of johnson's key supporters in the united states congress. it actually spelled the end of raymond's influence as a leader in the press world even though johnson makes a come back in the united states senate raymond is done as the most influential editor in the united states. >> do you want to address that?

>> no. >> how different was the personal relationship between a prominent afro-american republican like frederick douglass with abraham lincoln and andrew johnson? >> i strike the book with frederick douglass and his first encounter with andrew johnson. and he sees andrew johnson across the room and johnson looks at him and a fleeting moment, he realizes that this is a man who had contempt for african-americans. what johnson realized, he does this face up and respond appropriately. but he says he saw -- the title of the chapter, the index of his heart and in that moment he could see this was a guy who was no friend of black people and it turned out to be -- turned out to be the case. there was no relationship

between the two of them at all. at one point he comes to the white house with a delegation of blacks and johnson is very hostile. he basically says black people, slaves and slave masters were in league with one another to keyboard white people down. you would love to see frederick douglass's place as he explains what do the slaves get out of this little arrangement? there is no relationship. >> frederick douglass has several meetings with lincoln. lincoln famously hatches a plan with him which i often cite as evidence of lincoln's sincerity in making sure emancipation was promulgated even if he was defeated in the 1864 election that saw johnson's live and that is to spread word of the emancipation into the deep south so that even if he lost to

mcclellan in 1864 a larger number of enslaved people would be liberated under terms of the proclamation which hopefully the courts would validate so frederick douglass has a plan of creating an army of bounty hunters to go into the south, pay these people to get the word out to the deep south and frederick douglass says lincoln is the one white leader who treated him as if there is no difference in color. after the second inaugural which douglas witness saw johnson behave in a drunken way at his swearing-in. cold medicine or liquor. >> he was drunk. >> he comes back to the white house and is barred from the white house. african-americans didn't come through the front door to go to receptions. he got in and lincoln said there is my friend douglas to a group of white people. on heard of in the united states. there was no one his opinion

high-value more than yours. almost a variation on enough about me, what did you think about me? and frederick douglass said i think it was a sacred effort but of course frederick douglass rethinks lincoln and by 1876 the unveiling of the freedom monument in washington he is quintessentially the white man's president also in 1865 he said he was the black man's president so a lot of evolving fought on that relationship. >> johnson had been drinking because johnson had been ill and in those days people fought whiskey was medicinal. >> you mean it is not? >> i had been drinking because johnson had been ill and in those days people fought whiskey was medicinal. >> you mean it is not? >> i was setting somebody up to say that. >> i want to add a note to. the curious psychology of this man -- annette gordon-reed did a good job plumbing that psychology the 2-hour i it is odd because he was only acceptable on the 1864 platform because he was willing to buy

into an anti slavery position. he was against slavery. but the reason he opposed slavery so much is because he believed it the 1ve the aristocrats, the white aristocrat's an unfair advantage. the best window into his psychology is the statement he once made where he said i pray to god that every man should have a slave, for then all of us would be equal. the other the lacks what lincoln had which was empathy, considering blacks fellow human being that fog them only as giving an advantage to the aristocrats who had humiliated him in his youth. that security is -- that psto >> somebody who was president at a critical time. that is the real paradox. here was a person who was not lovable in the way that we think of people who are lovable but nevertheless he is there at a

critical moment that you have to know about this period. >> yet the revisionism -- so we can get another question. when the age of this surrounding -- johnson was considered a misunderstood hero. he was still being taught in schools as the guy who the, quote, radicals gain the pawn and at this time ts the e we we reading profiles and courage one chapter was devoted to senator ross of new york. what did we know? we thought it was great that he was being -- tested deciding vote to acquit andrew johnson. this has turned 180 degrees on that. >> next question? you in the blue shistt. >> two questions. i can to wait to read the book, the compilation of new york

times articles and there is the cd and it to. are these digitized? can i search by word through those? >> yes. if we have all of the articles published on the civil war congressional there is a lengtua piece also on the run up for did. it beackns in 1850 and does not to the end of reconstruction but what textbooks call the end of reconstruction if we had all the articles published in that the book would fill the room. we selected 600 to 630 of the key articles we thought best explained what the times was telling its readers but the cd contains all of them. and it is searchable. >> one admonition. not a great sales pitch but the new york times were pioneers in scahe cing. some of the scahe cing is not

exactly perfect. we cheered on for doing it so rarely and giving us a complete batch. >> the other aspect of c. herering the war, winslow homer and the poet, what was the situation of yetting illustrations? >> all hole other session. the illustrated weekly published in new yoristt frank was lee, harper's weekly and several others send war artisper' out a others to the front. they generally did what photat.raphers did and that was stay out of the way. going through the air in the o.anner craig described final day of gettysburg it was not a great idea to have your head buried in the sketchbook or under a photographer's hood.

that they did create a remarkable record of camp life and the aftereffects of battime and they brought the war visibly of 2 people, the photographer and the artists. they were an extraordinary bunch. and i would suppose just leave it at the fact that homer, alone among them, evolved into a great american artist and there will be a museum exhibition in washington and the metropolitan museum between 2012, and 2013 on the art of the civil wang a ne lobur at photat.raphy and paintg as it much tours and goes from news medium to ier aressionisti medium and history medium. >> if you want to learn more about this you need to read two of harold's 218 books, the union s the age and the confederate i.

>> what was the new york times editorial position during reconstr01tion and did it evolve? >> the new yo one ts the es rema party paper under the tutelage of henry raymond and is s01cessor. ral.ond died in 1869. fairly young and was taken over by his business partner. they pretty much -- president johnson's position on these issues. they did write stories about the activities of the klan and we included those in the book but not as many and they tended to be pif ye 3 or 4 and fewer as te

went on. the clan bill was covered but not with the same kind of enthusiasm and dedication with which they covered the war. >> not until the 1890s, the new york times from its owners in terrible shape and losing readers that the modern new york times that we know comes into being. they are the antecedence of the soul brother family. that is when the times we know, non-partisan in news and very progressive in editorial policy begins to take shape. >> one last question. wait for the microphone. >> there has been some allusion to the ambivalence about slavery. peter drucker and paul johnson, the historian, have recently written about this and said that

the founding fathers meaning washington and jefferson and others had given up on slavery until james watt invented the steam engine in 1776 and then he lot of whitney came along and invented the cotton gin and it may keep textiles in the cotton picking solve much more demanding that they have cheap labour and that reinvented slavery. do you have a reaction to that? had the founding fathers really given up? >> i don't think the founding fathers had given up on slavery because of the cotton gin. what you are describing is exactly what happened. that is the change in industry and efficiency but washington

died in 99. jefferson a don't think had -- jefferson continued to believe until the end that slavery was going to die out. i don't think he thought about the full implications or understood the full implications of what the cotton gin would bring about. i think he had given up on slavery in the sense that he thought it was a retrograde system that would die away but i don't think it was those two inventions -- it was not linked to those two inventions. >> i think it is time to bring this session to a conclusion. the 146th anniversary of we's surrender, what emerges knowledge the union won the war but won the piece partially. that emerges from these two books. the first, complete history or new york times complete civil war edited by harold holzer and

craig symonds and "andrew johnson," annette gordon-reed's wonderful little volume. thank you very much for attending. all the authors will be available to sign books in the gymnasium next door. thank you very much >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> as part of our cities tour, booktv visited baton rouge, louisiana, with the help of our local cable affiliate, cox communications. next, a look at the bloody book at the hill memorial library on the campus of louisiana state university. >> hi. i'm elaine smith, i'm interim assistant dean of the lsu libraries, and i also serve as

the curator for the rare book collection. and what i'm going to show you today is one of the more infamous books in our collection. um, it is the new voyage, it's actually, um, infamous because it is known as the bloody book. um, but the book itself is quite fascinating in its own right. it is the story of a dominican fry car who came to the islands, caribbean islands in the 1790s, and he spent many years here, kept copious journals. and when he went back to france, he then turned those journals into this two-volume work. and it was a wonderful, wonderful source of information about the caribbean and the people who live there, the animals, the fauna and the flora, all kinds of things. and that's one to have the reasons that it's important for us -- of the reasons that it's important for us because it's

about the history of our region. but it's infamous because it has what appear to be blood spatters on it. and you can see some of them here. and there is a note, um, that is written on here that says -- [speaking in native tongue] and then it's signed lawrence bass and it's dated the 14th of july. lawrence bass was present at the murder of jean paul moira who was an infamous revolutionary during the french revolution who was, in fact, killed, um, by charlotte cordet in a famous assassination that happened the 13th of july. but bass, who was there, apparently wrote this note in the book. um, it's a great story. we have no way of knowing whether it's true or not. um, but the book has a very

interesting prove nance. it came to us from the wife of j.t -- [inaudible] who's a famous family here in louisiana. and she was the daughter of judge jones, judge joseph jones, i'm sorry, not judge, dr. joseph jones, who was the commissioner of public health in louisiana in the late 19th century. and he had really, um, done a lot of research on various kinds of diseases that were prevalent here including yellow fever. and so one of the books that he obtained in order to find out about how people had dealt with yellow fever and typhus and other diseases of that type over the years was this book by bach. so he got this book because he was interested in what had been found out about the diseases.

but, in fact, when he received the book, he then saw this note, and he saw the blood spatters, and he thought how strange, and so he did some research on it. and he also is said to have conducted tests to determine whether it was really human blood on the book. but, um, i don't know whether that's true or not. he has said, the story goes, the story was passed on to us that he was satisfied that it was human blood, but we don't really know. um, but in any case it's a wonderful volume that has all kinds of beautiful maps of the islands, it has, um, also there's a page that shows you the blood spatters. >> how did the blood spatters get on the book? >> well, charlotte cordet standed jean paul moira. he was sitting in his bath. she came, and she knocked on the

door. his wife, moira's wife would not let her in because she knew that charlotte kcordet represented a segment of the french people that moira was very much opposed to and she was very angry with him because at that time they were beheading the people they were opposed to, and moira taunted her that he would have all the people that she cared about guillotined. so she became extremely angry and pulled a knife out of her dress and stabbed him in the heart, and he expired very quickly thereafter because he, basically, bled to death very quickly. so there was probably blood all over everything. so that part seems reasonable enough. what i don't find very convincing is that you have this blood-spatter ored page opposite a page which has no blood spatters on it at all. now, back in the days of the hand press as this book was printed on a hand press, on

handmade paper, um, these plates, um, were printed on different paper and were printed using a different method of printing than the letter press, than the type would have been printed. so, um, it's reasonable to think that before this book was bound these might have been separate. so he might have been looking at the plates separate from the rest of the text. but in any case, it would have been rather bizarre for someone to take these blood-spattered plates and then bind them up. so i don't know what was going on, but, um, the book itself is quite valuable for us because it does have so much information about the people who were living there, the way they lived, the fauna and the flora, um, and so it's an important book, a book that we would be delighted to have, um, in any case. but the story of jean paul moira's using it in his bath and

holding it when charlotte cordet stabbed him to death is, adds a little extra to the book. >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> and now an interview with greg langley, book editor of the baton rouge local newspaper, "the advocate." >> well, books are, i think, doing pretty good. you know, i don't have the figures on publication, but i understand that they're publishing more titles than they ever, now more titles in hardcover, in e-books, more titles in self-published books? i don't know. i think it's probably some of each. but books are still vital, and you've still got a couple bookstores going in town, the big boxtop stores. a lot of the neighborhood bookstores, though, have gone out of business. but i'm finding a lot of people

are moving to e-books, and i have an e-reader, and i don't like to read books on an e-reader as much as i like to read a real book that you hold in your hands with pages and covers and everything, but it is convenient. first it was just the marketing. you ordered books online through amazon.com or barnes & noble.com, and now you actually get the books themselves in an electronic form. um, but it's still, you know, basically telling the story. so i think that part of it has stayed the same, and people are looking for a book that if you really wanted to sell somebody a book, it'd be a book about them. so the local angle is still important, and so they still do that. they still have local authors come and promote their books. and for people that are small authors that are not with a big publishing house or something, self-published books are important. it's harder for them to market

them because the big bookstores don't want to give them signings as much. but they, they still publish a lot of those. local histories are important. certainly, university publishing houses like lsu press and ole miss press publish a lot of local history, and not all of it is by academics. some of it is local people. so, yeah, i think it's changed in that respect that it's harder, i think, to get a deal with a big publishing house, but i think it's easier to publish a book if you want to publish a self-published book or an e-book. in fact, i think if you're a writer and you've written a book and you want to publish it, you can publish it now. ..

literary books. we have a huge book special here sponsored by the state library in november. we were involved with that.

but but for newspapers, people to read in any kind of read. so we are supporting all that. spared that is keeping the books section going. it doesn't generate a lot of revenue. the newspaper's right now, that's really key. we are facing some tough times. i can enumerate all the region. some of it is migration of advertising dollars to the internet, but we are fighting back and trying to, you know, keep the services. we want to provide them with the information they need. you want to provide them with the entertainment there want. we're going to give them the book reviews and coverage of the arts and things like that. there will be able to get online with the new york times or the atlanta journal or something. you won't read my book reviews there. you only read them in the

advocate. so that is an important thing. we are paring back. we are cutting costs, and really try to be more aggressive with will recover. trying to think of ways to cover stories and present them, appeal to the assessments of the market . give more young people involved. and really the among sent people really has been high. we want to get them. find out what is the one to read. certainly they're destroy how right now. especially if it's somebody local, won the national book award. we feature books like that. and so we try to find out things

like that the people reading. yet people, and we try to target that marketing get them interested so that there will start reading books, start reading the newspaper hopefully so that we can keep our up and continue to provide services that we have in the past. i don't think books and publishing will ever go away as long as stores need to be told. sitting around campfires, and that of the growing to start. is the way we tell them, the medium we use. on her computer screen or tell them the pigs of the buck. strain into somebody's iphone. >> we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback. twitter.com/booktv. >> tell us about that and what he is and what he does.

he said that he is the most complex individual the you have written about in any of your bucks. take that to mark zucker bird. >> tell us a little bit about him and what mainly attracted you to tell his story. >> well, basically came from bavaria our background, very fundamentalist mormon family. he was to tell this house and he was 18 for admitting to premarital sex. and then he decided he wanted to be an astronaut, and he chases a life and kind of became james bond. he majored in geology and physics and astronomy at the university of utah. he led to fly airplanes and scuba dive and but, you know, when i said five languages. then he got into nasa's johnson space center. a co-op program for college kids, but it is really ethier to the astronaut training program, said he was achieving his dream. he was a standout, big star. the social leader of all the co-ops and interns. then he fell in love with a

young intern. we have all done something stupid out of love. well, he stole a 600 pounds safe full moon rocks from his professor's office. as i said, spread them on a bed, had sex with his girlfriend, and then tried to sell them over the internet to a belgian gen dealer >> his name is. >> his name was axel and merman. he could not have invented this guy. this guy has never been out of hand for but his life. he is -- >> rocks and trees and every monday night in this huge center where all the guys in and for trade talks. his hobby is bachmann j. which i have never heard of which is a sport where they're is a wooden bird on a hundred foot pole all these men stand around and she had it with crossbows. this is a real sport. i had never heard of. he is this guy, and he sees this and the internet, have moon rocks herself. he is a big believer in right and wrong, so he really called the fbi, you know the fbi in

tampa. it became this big sting operation. taken down. i mean, i always give it away, but you know he got arrested. >> you obviously have come off of the enormous success with not only the books of and also the fact that they are then converted to movies, which obviously helps in terms of the notoriety. >> they're lowest since the titles of my movies, and it's really annoying. sex on the moon is the press what they have to keep. >> your lots of nylon. and certainly you have said that you are working on this at the time that the social network was being filmed, so there was some kind of overlap, but at that point to $5 thought that in the way the actors and actresses are only as good as the rules they choose to riders are only as good as the stories that the top. so explain notwithstanding compile all the stories you could have told, what was it that attracted you to this particular topic? >> from read the stories come to

me. i don't look for them anymore. ever since green down the house eight rodeo 30 melson phone calls a week. every college kid who doesn't increase you call me. you know, i always wanted to write about nasa. i think it's amazing, but when i think of the nasa i think of the 60's, tom hanks and a silver council. and this let me get inside nasa today. so at of the blue contacted me, had just another prison, was on probation. and it was weird. i never met someone who heads been almost a decade in prison before. i arranged to meet him in a crowded hotel lobby. but he was the nicest most charismatic of looking, like a smart guy who had done something stupid. >> the nicest felony had never met. >> he really was, and i was, you know, amazed. no one had written about the story. one article in the l.a. times. maybe in texas there have been more, but i had not seen anything about this, and i could not believe it. the first thing i did was i

filed of the of information act with the fbi did the fbi file which is thousands of pages. i even got with the fbi agents second down there where wires. i get the transcripts of everything that was set on the wires. the first thing he said when he walked into the restaurant is, if you're wearing a wire, i'm scared. that's on tape. so it was wild. but a year long interview airing everybody i could. >> there is one section in the book which i think is as great where there is that correspondence between that who is going by the name or by robinson. >> of play and run orbison. a zoologist it turns out. >> i did not know. your repenting their a mouse. those are, in fact. >> the really knows. in our room was very excited that i was writing his book. nasa gave half as a gift for solving the moonrock caper, they named astrid after him. so there is an emblem and astrid floating around the sons of mark

everything in the book is reprinted directly. a lot of the dialogue is actually straight from the transcript and everything. so, you know, i do get attacked a lot in the press for my style which is a very kind of dramatic the cinematic way of telling a non-fiction story, but the reality is, everything in here is from the file. >> you brought that up because of that supply wanted to visit with. certainly that's a lot. >> employ the writer. >> your controversial technique. >> controversial technique. but how you employ that new york, have to say, the new york times review that just came out yesterday. with that as part of it. >> spell like this.

this is the kind of stuff like to read. it's a form of the journalism. it does is the pages of court documents. of the fbi stuff, and i sit down and i tell a story in a very visual weight. they're going to be journalists to do not like it. certainly she's one of those. but, you know, i don't necessarily right for janet. i read for me in the people who like this kind of book. the reality is, it's a true story, and its sister is in the other day of the nonfiction list you see a biography of cleopatra. nobody does anything. >> deasy a biography of abraham lincoln. obama's barratry has invented characters. it is a process. you have to take the facts and then read it as certain way. i choose the right in a very cinematic wake. so for instance i have interviewed that roberts, the

other kids who was there, the sky gordon who is later in the book. so i no there was a conversation that took place ten years ago between these people. i know always said, but a dove of the exact words. when journalists might say they talked about moon rocks. to me that's a very boring and league play a ton messines. and nobody did. and describe what they did with the moon rocks. there are some levity and some don't. it will be a controversy forever in terms of seven journalists will never like it. with the social network and a maximum billionaires' marzook ever came out and said is not true. the call me. which i love. >> you know, he never but said a thing that wasn't true. he never said this is true in this is true. he said all things not true, in many cities and read the book. so it is a very story.

he meant to have sex on moon rocks because he wanted to be like having sex on the moon. he spread them on a bed. there was a problem with that scene. he put them under the mattress. he did this on purpose. i use the facts, and i tell them my style. some people like and some people don't. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> next from baton rouge, louisiana, a tour of the slave narrative collection at the john b. k. library of southern university. recently visited batteries is part of our cities toward exploring the literary culture of several cities across the country. this book to many local authors and toward a few significant can't literary applications with the help of our cable partner.

>> my name is angela procter. i am at southern university in bad reason louisiana. we are in the african american section of the library. right now we will be looking at a collection specifically from the archives. we have in our archives and original set of a slave narratives which are dated 1935. they are compiled in created by a john brother kate, the library named after him. he was the first scene of the institution as well as a director of our extension services center in 1960. when mr. kaytoo is here he was also the history instructor . he utilize the students. he has signed them this project to interview slaves.

this is her to go out -- on zurich, the students were to go and interview former slaves iraq's slaves. and from there he had given them a set of questions. all of these questions that was the social conditions of the slaves and things, for instance, the master of the slave, the social condition, the type of food that they were allowed to eat, the clothing, the punishment, the religion, and various and so they've lived in the social condition of various slaves. and to to give you an ideal, the collection that we are dealing with comprises of 16 different states and one country which is canada. in the box that we've had here is called a record storage box. and -- arranged alphabetically and then within the states.

had to give you an ideal of what they look like, they are encapsulated. santa -- trying to reserve them. the name of the slave business and boyd. she is from alabama. the type of slave, she worked in the house. at that time she would be considered a field's life. and her owner was named mr. oldham. the good thing about these, a great deal of them were also signed by the interviewers who happens to be students. this was a part of the collection. so one of the things that we actually did, the library went out and purchased a database that will allow us to be a will to create and scanned these messages and then be able to a help for these specific and tell the public to be able to have access to them by going directly to the web.

right now i'm up to 249 narrative's. >> how many total? >> according to the documentation we have a total of 400. in addition to this specific election there is another set that deals with the wpa which is the workers progress of ministration. so that collection is specifically for the state of louisiana. right now we have about 48 of those as well. that will be a cool -- a separate collection. >> over the things to come across? >> at think the most interesting thing about that was the punishment. i remember one narrative and particular. he was whipped into the blood.

they took dogs and encircled the dogs around his body of the blood was dripping from his back. there were other cases where the slaves were also beaten until they had blisters. while the busters are open but taxol and pours salt directly into the wound. you can just imagine the kind of treatment they felt, it was just very horrendous. >> i would imagine this was a class of that time. a semester. because the class consists of over 25 students at that time. >> just to give you a little background, we actually purchased the software and implemented this in 2009. august of 2009, so i am two years out.

so i am hoping my time frame is next year by the summer. we will be ready to convince the general public. >> middle and high school students were this year's c-span student can video competition. we want to tell us what part of the constitution as many as you and why. let us know and a five to eight minute documentary and get to c-span by january 20th 2012 to less than about the way for your chance to win the grand prize of $5,000. $50,000 until prices. c-span soon came video documentary competition is open to students great 6-12. for complete details go online to see and cannot afford. >> when the president and the congress were debating after the 2010 elections whether the bush texas would be extended because of the recession and whether it would be a bad idea to raise

anybody's taxes in this down economy "one of the things the republicans said is tax cuts are always wonderful in a down economy, spending cuts don't her law which is self evident a crazy. there is really no difference from the macroeconomic point of view as our friends in the care funding. when they went for an austerity response with the current circumstance. bifurcate one of the things that wanted to get rid of was the tax credit. they said it was spending program. this is the kind of argument the not to be held in the seminary. but you be the judge. the republicans say it's a spending program. not a tax cut. and it is what is and.

when the congress did things like loan guarantees for new energy companies, the infamous solyndra loan guarantees. adopted during the bush to ministration signed by president bush and supported at the time by almost all the republicans on the energy committee. and it is hard sometimes to pick winners and losers. that's not what 16 of three does . sixteen up three recognizes that a lot of people building solar and wind is to license our startup companies. so if you give them up 30 percent tax credit that you would ordinarily give someone for building this new factory it will be worthless to them because they have no and come to ban the credit against. it basically gives them the cash equivalent of a tax credit as a startup. if you just like solar and wind and you want to keep the oral

completion announces you can make that argument, but it's a very significant number of the new solar and wind projects. so my argument is it out to be extended because they have thousands of more facilities in solar and wind power which becoming more economical every time the price drops about 30% for solar and wind. so in particular. it's one of the reasons solyndra went down because the technology, the technologies get cheaper faster it took them out of the competitive makes. it should be continued because

we should be supporting start-ups as well as existing companies. the new jobs over the last 20 years, it comes not from the small businesses but from a small businesses that were five years older younger. so this is the kind of thing that i think, you know, my argument is we should say where do we want to go in this country? we want to build prosperity and modern jobs. we back up from that and say, how do we get there? what is the government's supposed to do? i think if you do that instead of sank government, no government, you come out and say this is a heck of a good deal, and we ought to keep doing it. >> since you mentioned the end of 2010 amounted ticket you an opportunity to repeat something that you said to me earlier. the one part of your book, it was around the debt ceiling debate. and so we have been in the coverage a lot. i was really upset.

that resisted raising the debt ceiling in 2010. congress was meeting in november and december of 2010. i knew if we waited until january the republicans' drive a very hard bargain. and so i said in a very kind of muted way that for reasons that were still unclear to me this to happen. and gene sperling actually sent me an e-mail and said he worked for me with china. we didn't make a big deal out of it because the main subjects. the bush air attacks to its extension. but this shows you that i am trying to force myself to say once a day i there i don't know or i was wrong.

because i think it would be therapeutic if everybody in washington to that. and so i want to be as good as them. here is something i was wrong about. raising the debt ceiling simply ratified the decision congress had already made to spend money. since the budget is the only thing that the senate votes on that is not subject to a filibuster, i thought that raising the debt ceiling vote was not subject to a filibuster. and so i was under -- i was wrong. so he said he would filibuster. turns out they could not raise the debt ceiling.

airs the macon fess up. >> moving a bit out of washington one of the things that you do frequently in the book is to say examples of where you think this appropriate partnership and a shared responsibility between government and the private sector is working in the state level. maybe you can talk a bit about your theory of that and share some of these samples from your time and governor of arkansas. >> first, i think, we americans are used to people at the state and local level hustling business. trying to save businesses, trying to expand businesses in and try to look it businesses. it is was the a bipartisan activity undertaken with varying levels of exuberance pilot the

officials. one reason i was able to state governor for a dozen years and never get bored with the job is the whole economic development aspect. and the interesting thing is that most every state in the country, although it is done more partisan since 2010, although it will settle down, it's largely a bipartisan activity. and so i tried to cite some areas in the book. for example, to give you one practical example there is a long section in the book about what i would like to see done to clear the mortgage debt more quickly. and i guess i should back up and say, these kinds of financial crashes take historic -- to ten years to get over. and if you have a mortgage component it tends to push it up toward ten years.

we should be trying to beat the clock. we can't do it in my opinion, even if we adopt time for the president's jobs plan. there are a lot of get ideas in there, but it would give us one and a half to 2 million jobs according to the economic analysis. if you want to return to a full employment and having 240,000 jobs a month, i think we average 227,000 a month for eight years. if you want that you have to flush this debt. and so they recommend that some people say, well, but if we lower the mortgage rates, if we bring the mortgage is down to the value of the house then the people who hold the mortgages will lose money. what's it going to be? suggested that the banks of the

people who ultimately hold mortgages. instead of writing them down, cut them in half by taking in an ownership position in the house so that when the house is ultimately sold the people who issue the mortgage or on the mortgage will share in the profit. you get the same practical result. you no longer have the bad debt on the books. the homeowner had the mortgage. >> i know this will work because when i was governor in the late 70's as early 80's, we have hundreds of small state-chartered banks he did not want to foreclose on the farmers. there were just having a couple of bad years and could not pay them off. they did not want to take possession, so we allowed the banks, we change the law. give them a a