need to be told. we have been telling stories since receding around the campfire, so i don't think we're going to stop. if the media we use. do we tell them on my computer screen or on pages of a book? to restrain them to someone's iphone or how do we tell them? tell stories. .. 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 18615" we have andrew johnson: a presidential biography by annette gordon reid. one would think initially these books don't have that much in comn, but as i read them, it was apparent they had an enormous amount in common. andrew johnson, race issues and they.gov tail nicely. let me introduce the authors, and the authors will speak, and then we'll have a question and answer section with hopefully a lot of time for questions and answers, an i expect you to participate, and when we begin, i'll remind you, this is not a moment for you to give speeches

but ask questions and the authors to answer. first, hared holtzer has written or edited several dozen books and he is, by my standards, perhaps the best authority on abraham lincoln in the world. i rantly of had opportunity to use one of his books in my undergraduate class with great success, he's received the national humanities medal, and his associate, craig simons is professor at the naval academy and former naval officer, and, in fact, craig is famous on these grounds because his wife, marylou, works here for years, and craig was the volunteer cross country coach. my favorite is lincoln an his

admirals that i'll use in the fall semester for my class, and it won the lincoln prize, which is exceedingly presting yows in the field of the civil war. he also wrote the best biographies of patrick clayburn. third participant is annette gordon reed who received her degree from harvard. he wrote thomas jefferson and sally hemmings and the hemmings' of monticello. her third major book is this one, andrew jackson. she has a string of awards that would occupy our session, so i can't do it. she's a professor of history and law at harvard university, recipient of the national book award, the pulitzer prize,

mcarthur genius award and on and on and on, an extraordinarily accomplished individual. i'll start by passing the microphone to craig simon. >> i think harold will be starting off. >> with all of our rehearsals -- [laughter] i'll start with the cronology and how we present the book. there's a conflict of views here that unites this panel because the "new york times," of course, covered 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's not the same "new york times" that we know and either love or hate today. the "new york times" now relishes the idea they just publish the news and all the news put to print. in the 1850 #s and 60 is printed

all the news fit for electing republicans and supporting the union and later emancipation. this discussion requires a giant leap of historical imagination, something akin to the social media revolution that can start a real revolution. newspapers of the mid-19th century were busy fermenting passion and concern over major issues. they were specially on one side of the slavery issue or the other. plo-republican or pro-democratic. people measured their afghanistan -- their affiliation and loyalty by the people they carried. in new york, like in small towns, there were at least one republican and one democratic newspaper. now, new york was, of course, different because it was the publishing center of the world.

in this atmosphere, publishers were often politicians as well. therma weed, ed forof the new york state republican party was a publisher. the senator from pennsylvania, later secretary of war in the first lincoln administer was a publisher. they might have been politicians first and publishers later. new york, as i say, was different. there were 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 there were three major papers. the new york herald, it was the most anti-emancipation. the other was one for

encouraging young men to go west, and it was the most progressive, urgently for emancipation earlier than abraham lincoln, turns out, was prepared to order it. in the middle, in a way, was the "new york times". its editor was a politician who purchased it, founded it, was the speaker of the new york state assembly. he decided to found a newspaper. this, in new york, always gets gasps because new yorkers imagine the current speaker of the assembly owning the "new york times," so it's a big leap of imagination. now, the times was clearly pro-republican and anti-slavery, but their whole mo was to allay agitation, not excite agitation. they wanted changes to be made incrementally and painlessly. they were anti-suggestion, but

they were not immediately pro-emancipation. the times favored william seward for president in 1860. they were converted to lincoln after the cooper union address, and they were reliably pro-lincoln in the 1860 election. in fact, i don't think anyone in any city today can imagine this occurring, at least from the print newspaper side, maybe from television. the editor of the "new york times" campaigned across new york state into the midwest for abraham lincoln, openly. you know, just for a quick diversion, president bill clinton wrote the proface to our book and made what seems like an obvious point, but it's a very interesting point that the analog of these fiercely partisan newspaper editors of the 19th century are the commentators on msnbc and fox

today. the difference is those commentators are not willing to go so far to say i'm a john boehner republican or a president obama democrat. bill clinton's recommendation in the introduction was it might not be a bad idea if they did. it would make things more simpler and direct. we have the editor of the times covering and campaigning for lincoln and the times covers lincoln during the election, editorializing for him every day, and in the succession crisis following the election that follows lincoln's every move, although he's not speaking, difficult to cover, covering speeches on the senate, and then covering lincoln in the long meandering inaugural journey that takes him into new york state and eventually into new york city. he had about 20 # correspondents with him on this journey.

as many of you know, when he approached # the neighboring city of baltimore, he was advised by allen pinkerton and others to cancel his public schedule in baltimore and just go directly to washington. being not a flying bird, he had to go through baltimore, and so he did so at night. what rose from that trip was lincoln wore a disguise was the work of the correspondent, the embedded correspondent of the new "new york times". his name was joseph howard. he had no reason to write other than this is exciting, last leg of the journey, where's the president elect? nay said, sorry, he's gone, you missed him. all these reporters who traveled with lincoln all this time was 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 inaugural, certainly after the atax on fort sumter and nearly 150 years ago as we speak here in annapolis, and yet, right after the huge excitement and patriotic exuberance it reported in new york city, the "new york times" ran out of patience with abraham lincoln, probably -- well, certainly for the first and perhaps for the only time in the succeeding four years. they are wrote an editorial called "wanted: a leader." lincoln was so upset about it that he started a file in his desk called villainous articles.

it said, it's idle to conceal the fact the administration, thus far, has not met expectation. they have done nothing to carry the country through the tremendous crisis that's so rapidly and steadily settling down upon us. the president must adopt some clear and distinct policy because the union will not only be severed, but the country disgrace. there's no policy so fatal as not having a policy at all. he called the editor to washington, took him aside, and said, you know, you're slantly right. i'm busy making appointments, i just don't have time. his personal magnetism was enough to win the day, and the times went on, as i said, and craig carries the story, to reliably support lincoln throughout.

after that, at least publicly, the editor of the "new york times" never let lincoln's side again. in fact, four years later when it was time to name the chairman of the republican national committee, guess who got the job? henry raymond, editor of the "new york times". there's another relation that would not exist, too. today, as we know or would like to believe and insist, there is a fire wall separating journalism from propaganda. at the dawn of the civil war, there was only a very, very fine line. the times walked is gingerly, but they never, somehow and rather uniquely, never failed the breathalyzer test of professionalism. their biases would not pass the smell test today, but in 1861 their gung ho lincoln was all

fit to print, and that takes us to the war. >> okay, thank you, harold, that's great. we were sitting here wonder what was going to happen to america, and 164 years ago today, robert e. lee surrendered, and this is a precious moment we meet to discuss what really was the most traumatic event in ore national history, and there's been thousands -- tens of thousands of books written about the american civil war, about half of them written by harold -- [laughter] but in doing this project, it gave me -- and the reason there are so many is because there's so many facets of this national experience worth investigating and useful to consider today in our own troubled time, and in doing this project, i certainly, and i think my partner as well,

realized that reading the war through the eyes of the newspaper and particularly the paper that was becoming the paper of record for the union, the new "new york times," gave yet another perspective on this because events were encountered not necessarily as they unfolded, but has you read about them in the paper. there's a wide variety of media sources going on in the world, but newspapers were pretty much the only game in town in 1861-1865, and as harold mentioned, they tended to adopt a particular ideological and political 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 of the widespread use, at least, of the railroad, armored ships, all the new technology sitting on the

tipping point of old war and the horror of warfare on the coast of france, but in addition to that, also reinvented in a w5eu, the way the nation reported its wars. the "new york times," being a relatively new newspaper, had to come up with a whole new way to report that war. there's several sources a newspaper could go to to provide the readers with the information they craved. one, official reports, public documents made available by the government or by the people in the field. these, however, tenned to be dry and worse for newspapers and competition one with another, and they tended to be late. if you waited for the government to put out an official bulletin of the number killed and what the army did, not only was it of less interest than an eyewitness account, but it would be a couple days after your arrival scooped you on the front page, so newspapers began not

necessarily for the first time, but for the first time on a wide scale to send reporters into the field, and at first, henry raymond thought, well, i can do this setting aside editorial responsibilities, he went to the battlefield along the banks of bull run creek, and being a new yorker and knowing his readers would want to find out what was happening to new york units, he accompanied a new york unit. he was embedded journalist, and in the early reports, he said i'm with the 146 new york deployed in a corn field on the right side of the road. he saw it from a soldier's eye view from the bottom, not from the olympian height. that affected his reporting as well. he said, i hear guns rumbling off in the east. that's not helpful in terms of what's going on, but it's really all the soldiers and at that time, what all the reporters

knew. the worst example came because he had to get his story into the hands of a courier by 2:15 in the afternoon on the 21st of july, and in order to get to the telegraph in washington so it could be telegraphed to new york and printed for the next day's paper. well, at 2:# 15 in the afternoon, he reported union troops are being successful. the enemy's fleeing from the field. the day is ours. half an hour later, confederate reenforcements arrive, turn that around completely, and henry raymond and others had to flee the field, up the road, and back up bull run towards washington. he road all the way to washington with a reviced story in his hand, got to the military operator sunburned, dusty, dirty, smelly from the field, saying i have a new story. the union army was defeated, and

the telegraph operator decided it was not in the interest of the paper to send that story which is why new york readers don't find out until july 26th what actually happened at bull run. here we have the innovation in war reporting. henry raymond decided his field reporting days were over after this. he resumed his editorial intoments, but he began to hire professional war reporters going out into the field with the armies, sometimes with the army's blessing, often without the blessing. there was a natural competition, give and take, between the reporters and the generals that you still see a little bit of today, a couple examples of this in the first weeks of 1863 after ambrose burnside conducted the failed offense, and then in 1862

tried to flank march around lee's army, it began a rain, the army was bogged down, he boosted the moral by issuing whiskey, and now they were drunk and bogged down, and now it's known as the mud march. the reason is because a "new york times" reporter sent back a story. burnside was helpless, army was hopeless, bogged down and drunk. it was horrible. burnside wanted him arrested and shot. this is the first confrontation between generals in the field and the reporters watching whases going on. that tension continues to exist throughout the war. sherman was intolerant of reporters in his ranks. grant, much more tolerant. there was an example when the

general said we have to arrest william swenton o who issued reports to be printed saying this, this, and this, and grant said i read that story. it's remarkably accurate. [laughter] stories from the west took longer. one of the difficulties -- one of the good things about reporting in the civil war was that armies began dragging telegraph wire behind them as they moved so that stories not quite in realtime, but certainly a lot more immediate response than had been possible in any of america's previous wars, but news from the western theater, and by that, i mean anything west of the appalachians, news from vicksberg went by steamer, up river against the tide, all the way to cairo, illinois, and then to new york by telegraph to news of vicksberg and news of gettysberg which historians happening simultaneously, arrive

10 days later in new york. the sequence of events are changed when you look at it in the newspaper rather than the history books. that's one insight we both got in doing this work. the other insight was how remarkably good the "new york times" reporters were. they were good, dramatic, a bit wordy, and they were paid by the inch as dickens was paid by the words. [laughter] the example comes from samuel wilkenson, one the better known reporters, heading out to a little farm town in pennsylvania called gettyesberg, and he knew his son was there, too serving, and one of the first things he did arriving on the second day of the battle was to found his son's unit. he found, in fact, his son was an bar low's noel, was mortally

wounded there, carried to a hospital, and abandoned in the field hospital when the union army retreated back to the heights of cemetery hill and cemetery ridge. wilkenson filed his report ooze a professional must do. if i can find the beginning of this, i'll read a brief -- it's a long report, and it's in the book, but this is a brief version. this is wilkenson. "who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened on a central figure of 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 a building where surgeons dared not stay. who, indeed?" wilkenson wrote the story, and

the most poignant part was he was in general mead's headquarters building and this is what he wrote. "in a shadow cast by the tiny farmhouse, in which the headquarters was made, there was not wanting to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird, which had a nest in a peach tree within the tiny yard of the whitewashed cottage. in the midst of this, a shell screamed over the house followed by another and another, and in a moment, the air was filled with the most complete artillery prelude to an infantry battle ever exited. every side, form, and shell sleeked, whirled, moaned and flittered over the ground, as many as six in a second, two in a second burning and screaming

over and around the headquarters made a very hell fire that amazed the oldest officers. they burst in the yard, burst next to the fence on both sides, garnished with the hitched horses of aids and orderlies. the fastened animals reared and plunged with terror, then one fell, then another, 16 layed mangle before the fire ceased, still fastened. these brute victims after cruel war touched all hearts. through the midst of storm, a screaming shells an balance drove by the conductor at full speed presented to us the horse going fast on three legs, a hinder one shot off at the hawk." he ends it this way, "my pen is heavy. oh, you dead who are at gettysberg, have baptized with

your blood the second birth of freedom in america. 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 paternal and lovingly up to heaven, his right hand opens the gate of paradise, and with the left, he tells the bruised and bloody to ascend." we know he read the "new york times" weekly, and perhaps that phrase "a new birth in america" resinated when he gave his most famous address, so, thank you. [applause] >> well, my facet of the story does not come from the civil

war. obviously, andrew johnson was alive in the civil war, a part of it, a military governor in tennessee during this time period. he was also a southern unionist, the only member of the senate who remained loyal to the union, and for that reason he was known by the newspapers and very, very much liked by northern newspapers because of his stance. johnson's claim to fame other than appearing on rankings, modern day rankings, as one of the worst president whoever lived. before the book was published, he made it to be the absolute worst, but that's not -- that's neither here nor there. he may be considered one of the worst presidents, but he was one of the most important presidents for what he did after the war was over, the aftermath of the war. the country had to be put back together again. he had been chosen as lincoln's running mate, vice president, we

can talk about how that happen. i describe it as mysterious, and harold still thinks so, and we can talk about that, but surely he was in loing's eyes and the people who supported lincoln was the right man for the job because he was symbolic in a way as southerner who remained loyal to the union, an embodiment of the hope that one day the country could be put back together again. there were enormous hopes following lincoln. there were lincoln admirers but were tired with him thinking johnson might be better. it'shearted to imagine that because -- it's hard to imagine that because lincoln is considered one of the best presidents, and johnson considered the worst. in the book, you have the best to the worst in one term there, but he dashed the hopes of many because he did not rise to the occasion. thoors the thesis of the book that the story of andrew johnson is the story of missed

opportunities, missed opportunities for the country and himself, missed opportunity for greatness for himself. most think a war makes them great. he came after the war, but he had something that was the moral equivalent of war -- reinstruction, afterwards to figure out what was going to happen to former african-americans freed by the civil war, and were down in the south in a place where people had looked upon them as their property or their property to be at some point in the future, a great amount of hostility unleashed after the war in the south against the freedmen, and andrew johnson from the time of his youth had deep, deep hostility towards african-americans, and you think about the story i tell in the book of what it meant to have a person so personally hostile to african-americans was not

something 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 how how they would be brought into citizenship. he had come into office, as i said, as a loyalist to the union. once he's president, it's like he reverts to the southerner, the southerner in him comes out, and he begins to realize that the northerners and when i say "northerners" i mean people of the republicans basically believed blacks should have political rights in the south. he did not believe that. he believed that america was a white man's government, and he said it would remain a white man's government as long as he had anything to do about it. he comes into office. he, as i said, high hopes for

him because he talked very much about punishing traders. when the war was going on, he was giving speeches and having very, very harsh on southerners saying treason must be pun ired. people in the south, added to the fact, he was calling them traitors, and they hated and feared them, and when lincoln was killed, they thought, oh, he's going to be terrible to us, an avenger, and, in fact, for awhile, he made the southern planters class come before him and actually ask personally for pardons, so have them gravel before him, but he cut that off, and people wondered why he sort of changed his tune on the planter class and why he was not so hostile towards them. what i talk about in the book is once he realized what the republicans wanted to do, that it was not just going to be get

rid of slavery and leave blacks in a sort of position of, well, serfdom or worse, they wanted to transform them, he realized it was important to stop them rather than deal with the animosity towards the planters, and he opposed every single program that the republicans tried to put into place in order to bring blacks into citizenship, and most republicans still held out hope they could work with him. it was the radical republicans that term that really described a small group of people who were never really in control of the party. the moderates and conservatives kept trying to work with johnson, and he would not be worked with. whatever he -- they suggested, he rejected. everything he could do. he was opposed to the 14th amendment, all of these things, and at some point, people in congress felt that they couldn't take it anymore, and that is

what brought about the impeachment process. it would have been interesting in clinton could have wrote a forward for my book. the only presidents impeached was clinton and johnson, and for johnson, it was, there was nothing to do anymore. he would veto laws, override the veto, and he would put things into motion saying the laws were not faithfully executed, and then they got enough, and they were not as successful as we know. he was impeached, but he was saved from conviction and removal from office by a 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. we have the 14th amendment, and that's true. that's the silver lining, but on

the other hand, i think about the missed opportunities in terms of land reform, he was against land reform for the freed men and think how different lives would have been if freed men had farms to work on their own, grow their own food, to become independent, economically independent, the sort of delay of black advancement in terms of economic prosperity. this was a result of the claim that i don't believe in, you know, the criticisms of great man history where you say that one person is responsible for all the good things that happen. that's not true, nor is it true that anyone person is responsible for all the bad things that happen. johnson is not totally responsible, but he was president, and in our system, a system of government, the president is the symbolic

leader, and when the president doesn't lead, it's a problem. we don't look to congress or the supreme court's leadership, but you look to the person in the white house, and i think it was tremendously important that he decided to throw the weight of his leadership power and capacity against the -- towards the forces of reaction, the people who didn't want to transform an american society and put us, i think, 100 years before. that's the story of johnson and his role in this particular era. >> thank you very much, annette. [applause] >> what i'd like to do now is open the floor for questions. wait until the microphone is given to you, and meanwhile, while the microphone is going to this individual, here, i'm going to post the first question using the moderator's prerogative. henry raymond and johnson were

close to lincoln, indicated support for lincoln and his policies, but in the aftermath of lincoln's death, both seemed to betray lincoln's policies and visions. why? >> raymond, just to go back to what annette said, it's entreesing to think of the -- interesting to think of the transformation of johnson with the person expected to be an avenger. in a poem called "good friday" 1865, and we forget johnson was considered dangerous enough to southern interests, we sometimes forget, you don't forget, that he was targeted for assassination on the same night as abraham lincoln. raymond, was by his nature, a rather conservative republican, and he is dragged kicking and screams towards emancipation, convinced it's a war measure. he's not progressive on race

relations. raymond in the 1864 election, lincoln's biggest press cheerleader, head of the republican committee, chief fundraiser, 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's actually spelled the end of raymond's influence as a leader in the press world even though johnson makes a comeback in the united states senate, raymond is done as the most influential editor in the united states. >> annette, do you want to address that? >> no. >> okay. sir? >> how different was the personal relationship between a prominent afro-american president and then with a president like andrew johnson? >> well, i start the book with frederick douglass and his first

encounter with andrew johnson, and he sees johnson across the room, and johnson looks at him, and in a fleeting moment, he realizes that this is a man who had contempt for african-americans. he said once johnson realizes who he is, he kind of, you know, does the face up and responds appropriately, but he says he saw this -- actually, the title of the chapter of the true index of his heart, that this in moment he could see this was a guy no friend of black people, and it turned out to be the case, so 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, very hostile and sort of stone walling, and he basically says that black people -- the slaves and slave masters were in league with one another to keep poor

white people down, and, of course, i said you'd like to see douglass' face saying, well, what do the slaves get from this? there's to relationship, and you can speak to douglass. >> well, doug less has several meetings with lincoln, and lincoln famously hatches a 34r57b with him, -- a plan with him in citing lincoln's sincerity to ensure emancipation happened even if he was defeated, and that is a plan to spread word of emancipation into the deep south even so that if he lost to mcclellan in 1864, a larger number of enslaved people would be liberated and hopefully the courts would validate. douglass has a plan of creating an army of bounty hunters to go into the south, pay the people to get the word out into the

deep south. lincoln said he is the one white leader treating them as no difference in color. after the second inaugural that douglass witness, saw johnson behave in a drunken way, cold medicine or whatever it was -- >> he was drunk. [laughter] >> he comes back to the white house, and, of course, he's barred from the white house. african-americans didn't go through the front doors in those days, and he got in, and lincoln says there's my friend douglass to a group of white people, unheard of to people in the united states. there's my friend douglass, there's no opinion i value more than you. what did you think of my speech? frederick douglass said, sir, i think it was a sacred effort. douglass rethinks lincoln, and by 1864, he -- 1876 he says in washington that he's the white man's president.

although in 1865 he said he was the black man's president. a lot of thought and still evolving thought on that whole relationship. >> johnson had been drying because johnson had been ill, and in those days people thought whiskey was medicinal. >> you mean it's not? >> i was setting somebody up to say that. [laughter] >> a note on andrew johnson, the curious psychology on this, i think annette did a wonderful job of that, but to our eye, it's odd because he was only acceptable in 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 gave the aristocrats, the white aristocrats, an unfair advantage, and the window into his psychology is the statement he made that i pray to god that every man should have a slave

for then all of us would be equal, so he utterly lacked what lincoln had, which is empathy considering blacks are fellow human beings and thought of only of blacks of giving an advantage to the aristocrats who embarrassed him in his youth. 245 psychology ssh that psychology is essential. >> and somebody as president at that time. that's the paradox here. something not lovable in the way we think people as lovable, but nevertheless, he's there at such a critical moment that you have to know about this period. >> and yet the revision of johnson, and the surrounding, johnson was considered something of a misunderstood hero. he was still being taught in schools as the guy who the senate, quote, "radicals" ganged

up on, and we were reading john f. kennedy's book, and one devoted to senator ross of new york. we thought it was great he was a hero who cast the deciding vote to acquit andrew johnson. of course; now history turned 180 degrees on that. >> next question. sir, you in the blue shirt. right there. >> oh, yes, i got actually two questions. the first one i can't wait to read the book, the come pielation -- compilation of "new york times" articles. there's a cd in it too. are they digitized? can i search by word through those? >> yes. if we had all of the articles the "new york times" published on the civil war from 1860-1865, and, of course, there's a lengthy piece on the run up to the war, so it really begins to

1850, not the end of reconstruction, but what textbooks call the end of reconstruction in 1974, and 23 we -- 1876, and if we had all those articles, it would fill the room, 10 -- so we selected about ten articles, but the cd contains all of them, and it's searchable, so you can look up various things. >> [inaudible] >> one admonition, not a great sales pitch, but the "new york times" were pioneers in scanning, so some of the scanning is not exactly perfect, but we realized that, and we cheered them on for doing it so early and giving us a complete batch. >> [inaudible] my real question is about the other aspects of covering the war of winslow homer and the poets. what was the situation with getting illustrations?

>> well, that's a whole other session, but, of course, the illustrated weekly's published in new york, frank leslie's, harper weekly's, and lesser known ones sent war artists, homer and others, to the front. they generally did what photographers did, and that's stay out of the way. when shells were whizzing through the air in the manner in which craig described, it was not a great idea to is your head buried in a sketch book or under a photographer's hood, but they did create a remarkable record of camp life, the after effects of battle, and they brought the war vividly to home, both the photographers and the artists. they were an extraordinary bunch, and i pose just leave it at the pact -- i suppose just leave it at the fact that homer, of course, alone among them evolves into a

great american artist, and there's a museum exhibition in washington and at the metropolitan museum between 2012 and 2013 on the art of the civil war, a 234u look at photography and painting as it matures during the civil war and goes from news medium to impressionistic medium and history medium. >> i follow that up by saying if you want to learn more about this read two of harold's book called the union image and confederate image that he co-wrote with mark neilly. >> what was the position during the reconstruction and did it evolve? >> the "new york times" remained a party paper. raymond died in 1869, fairly young, and it was taken over by his business partner, and they

pretty much clinged to the republican party. that is to say president johnson's position on most of these issues. they did write stories about the activities of the clan, and we included those in the book, but not as many, and they tended to be page three and four and fewer and furor as time went on. their readers, northern readers, were getting tired of this. you wave the flag for four years and the bloodshed and terror, you celebrate, and there's problems to be solved, and we are tired of this, and by and large, the times tended to stay by the party machinery and not to be supportive of the clan bill, for example, that came up in 1872-73. it was covered, but not with the same enthusiasm and dedication they covered the war. >> it's really not until the 1890s when they were advised

from the owners and losing readers that the modern new york new york that we know comes into being, and the ox family is the antecedents, and that's the non-past san news and very progressive news editorial policy begins to take shape. >> okay, one last question. sir, in the blue, wait for the microphone. >> yes, there's been some elusion to the ambivalence about slavery, and paul johnson, a historian, recently wrote about this saying that the founding fathers, meaning washington and jefferson and others, had given up on slavery until james wait invented the steam engine in 1776, and then eli whitny came along inventing the cotton gin and it made cheap text tiles in

the cotton picking south much more demanding that they have cheap labor, and that re-invented slavery. do you have any reaction to that? did the founding fathers really given up? >> i don't think they did because of wait and the cot -- watt an cotton gin. you described exactly what happened. the change in industry and the efficiency, but, i mean, washington dies in 99, and jefferson lives until 19 # 26. jefferson believed until the end that slavery would 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, so i don't think --

i think he'd given up on slavery in the sense he thought it was a retrograde system to die away, but i don't think it was those two envengeses, not linked to those two inventions. >> okay. i think it's time to bring this session to a conclusion. this, the 146th anniversary of lee's surrender, what i think emerged is knowledge that the union may have won the war, but only won the peace partially, and that emerges from these two books. the first, a complete history or new "new york times" civil war, and andrew johnson, annette gordon-reed's lovely little volume. authors will be available to sign books in the gymnasium next door. thank you very much for coming. [applause]

>> and now on your screen at the national press club's author night is well-known author, ann coulter. i wanted to ask you, your most recent book "demonic," for the first time ever, you're wearing a white dress. >> yeah, i wanted to shake things up a bit. i stuck with the black dress for awhile, and sometimes the dress in the photo was green, but the design people, the art people back at the publishing house, looked better to be in black because it looks like i'm a letter. anyway, they were the ones who recolored the dress i was wearing black, and i was always in favor of it because me on the

cover of my book in a black cock tame dress drove liberals mad, and i enjoyed that. >> your most recent out for six or seven months now? >> not that long, it's just -- >> are you working on another book at this point? >> oh, no, no, no, no. this was a lot of work, this book. it took a lot of research. i mean, the whole -- i knew about the french revolution, but like most, i didn't know a lot about it. it was so much research and so little talking to other humans, but no, it'll be a year now. it's time to percolate what the next them will be, but also, i'm just tired. >> long book tour? >> yes. the book tour ended up being fun. i usually hate the first two weeks because i have to get up

early. that's all i hate about it, but then i out smart her by going to california, and she's not going to get me up at 4 in the morning, and i stay on east coast time so it's like i'm sleeping in. >> in two sentences, what is "demonic" about? >> it's about the mob mentality and how it is a part of liberalism, beginning with the french revolution and the american revolution which i contrast and explain in 200 years of the history of liberalism basically, how they rely on mobs, use mobs, what you see at occupy wall street, it's stunningly consistent with what i talk about in this book. >> your boy, chris christie endorsed mitt romney. >> yes. i hang on everything chris christie says, i guess i'm a romney girl now. no, i really am. i think it's going to be romney. i'll write about it this week. he's not ronald reagan. he's not running.

he's the best alternative, great in the debates, and best of all, he has a demonstrated act to trick liberals for voting for him. >> as part of the city's tour, booktv visited baton rouge, louisiana with the help of our local cable affiliate, cox communications. next, a look at the campus of louisiana state university. >> hi, i'm elaine smith, interim assistant dean of the lsu libraries and also serve as the curator for the rare book collection, and what i'll show you today is one of the more infamous books in our collection. it is the new voyage, actually infamous because it's known as the bloody book, but the book,

itself, is quite fascinating in its own right. it is the story of a dominican friar who came to the islands, the caribbean islands in the 1790s, and he spent many years here keeping copious journals, and when he went back to france, he turned the journals into this two volume work, and it was a wonderful, wonderful source of information about the caribbean and the people who lived there, the animals, the flowers, all kind of things, and that's why it's important to us because it's the history of our region, but it has what appears to be blood spatters on it, and you can see some of them here, there is a note that's written on here that says -- signed and

dated the 14th of july. voss was president at the murder of john paul who was an infamous revolutionary during the french revolution, who was, in fact, killed in a very famous assassination that happened the 13th of july, but who was there apparently wrote this note in the book. it's a great story. we have no way of knowing whether it's true or not, but the book has a very interesting prominence. it came to us from the wife the jtbourney, a famous family here in louisiana, and she was the dare of -- daughter of doctor joseph jones

who was the commissioner of public health in louisiana in the late 19th searching -- century, and he had really done a lot of research on various kinds of diseases pref -- prevalent here including yellow fever, and one of the books he obtained to find out how people dealt with yellow fever and typhus and other diseases over the years was this book, and so he got this book because he was interested in what they found out about the diseases, but in fact, when he received the book, he then saw this note and the blood spatters, and he thought how strange, and he did research on it, and he also is said to have conducted tests to determine whether it was really rule blood on the --

really human blood on the book, but i don't know if it's true or not. the story was passed on to us that he was satisfied that it was human blood, but we don't really know, but in any case, it's a wonderful volume that has all kinds of beautiful maps of the islands. it has also there's a page that shows you the blood spatters. >> how did they get on the book? >> well, john paul was stabbed. he was sitting in the bath, she came, knocked on the door, his wife would not let her in because she knew charlotte represented a segment of the french people that he was opposed to, and she was angry at that time because beheading

those people, and he was taunting he'd have all the people she cared about guillotined, and she became extremely angry and pulled a knife from her dress and stabbed him in the heart, and he expiredded quickly thereafter because he basically bled to death quickly so there was probably blood all over everything so that part seems reasonable enough. what i don't find convincing is that you have this blood spattered page opposite this page with no spatters on it at all. now, back in the day of the hand press as this was prevented on a hand press on handmade paper, these plates were presented on different paper, and they were printed using a different method of printing than the letter press, than the type would have been printed, so it's reasonable to think that before this book was bound, these might