the locals told him that there were so many bodies inside the river that the river actually change the course and was flowing slightly differently and there was an island in the middle of the river that was created as the silt endured was carried over the bodies of the perished. most of the dead were noncombatants. many of these were not soldiers, were people of french and other who follow the army for moscow fearing for their safety from the russian troops. they perished there in the south. one of the reasons that the story has been looked from one side is the language barrier, is that not many napoleonic scholars speak russian or have the opportunity to go to russia to work in the archives.

so what happened is that over the past two centuries, much with what has been written about napoleon was written from the french perspective since frenchman to is much more readily available. .. >> partover this ongoing -- part of this ongoing series of napoleonic wars is based on looking at the war from -- [inaudible] >> for more information on shreveport weekend on booktv,

visit c-span.org/localcon p tent. >> next on booktv, jennifer ratner-rosenhagen talks about the impact of german philosopher frederick in each nietzsche. >> i'm so pleased to welcome my friend, jennifer ratner rosen haggen, this evening. she earned her ph.d. in history at brandeis university and her ba from the university of rochester. prior to landing in mad southern, jennifer -- madison, jennifer taught at the university of miami where we were colleagues not so many years ago. jennifer's book, "american nietzsche, a history of an american icon and ideas," was just published.

she examines how nietzsche's writings about the death of god and the challenge to universal truth have inspired american thinkers, journalists, academics, philosophers, theologians, poets and others have drawn on nietzsche for inspiration. "american nietzsche" already has been reviewed widely and positively. new york times book review editor alexander starr wrote: today's inescapable and perplexing nietzsche is not the same who inspired readers in the past, and it's the achievement of "american nietzsche" to show how that is case. her ability to help her readers think more historically about nietzsche and american intellectuals than we high in the past is one of the great successes of her book. in the compelling prologue, jennifer ratner rosen haggen -- beginning in the 160s.

she writes, it was emerson who first instructed nietzsche about philosophy in life. nietzsche was powerfully drawn to emerson because he understood what it meant to travel imaginatively through time and space in order to find a thinker to think with. i know a few individuals who travel through time and space as imaginatively or who are as compelling thinkers to think with as jennifer herself, so we're all in for a real treat this evening. please joan my in welcoming -- join me in welcoming jennifer ratner-rosenhagen to the newberry. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction. thank you, newberry library, for hosting tonight's event, and thank you all, of course, for coming out tonight. all right. so it is very fitting that i

find myself in chicago talking about nietzsche because it was in chicago in the early '90s during my gap years between undergraduate and graduate school that i began to read his philosophy. i knew i wanted to go on to do graduate work in u.s. intellectual history, but like many people interested in ideas, i was nevertheless drawn to european thinkers; karl marx, emil dick heym, sigmund floyd and nietzsche, most especially nietzsche. after i moved on to graduate school, i felt a little sheepish about my attraction to it. after all, i had gone to graduate school to study american intellectual and cultural history. and so i felt compelled to turn back to my american thinkers, ralph waldo emerson, margaret fuller, w.e.b. duboise, john dewey. i thought it was time for he to find myself back on american intellectual native grounds.

but in my effort to put nietzsche to the side, i came to discover how difficult that was going to be in contemporary and american intellectual life, especially in the american academy. nietzsche's philosophy figured prominently in scholarly monographs, journals, and university courses and all fields of the humanities and social sciences. there wasn't a university library or bookstore that didn't have a nietzsche section. but even as i widened out, i was repeatedly foiled in my efforts to move away from nietzsche and move back to my america. even the most casual survey of american culture at the time made it unmistakeable that this 19th century german philosopher was a towering public intellectual in contemporary american life. he was everywhere. images of his furrowed brow and moustache were on t-shirts, his

aphorisms were on our bumper stickers and tote bags, his faces, his concepts like will to power were studding our morning papers and advertisements. nietzsche could be found in contemporary novels as well as our television shows and movies including the simpsons, conan the barbarian, blazing saddles, a fish called wanda, clueless, and i couldn't resist putting a few recent shows on, and that includes the sopranos, the day after tomorrow, the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and little miss sunshine. nietzsche even made it to off broadway in richard forman's 2000 bad boy nietzsche. along the way i would come to discover that nietzsche had inspired some food including nietzsche pops, there is a nietzsche will to power bar which is the official nutritional supplement of the superman, and for those of you

who are weak and eat too many of them, there's even a nietzsche diet as advertised in the mid 2000s. new diet lets you eat whatever you fear most. [laughter] and we even have a plush 11-inch nietzsche doll to snuggle with at night. so there was this quirky, harmless figure of our material culture, but, of course, we know there's also the menacing teenage rambo teach chi as well. right in the early years of the project, 16-year-old luke woodham of pearl, mississippi, exemplified of the angry, disaffected young man who brandishes a nietzsche text in one hand and a gun or a knife in the oh -- other, and this, of course, became quite conventional as we moved throughout the is 1990s with the columbine, colorado, massacre,

professors brutally killed in their home and more p recently the shooting of congresswoman gabrielle giffords and 18 bystanders at a meet and greet in an arizona parking lot last january. trying to move back to american native grounds, move away from nietzsche, going to politics was a bad idea. i discovered very quickly that nietzsche's there too. in his address to the joint session of congress on september 20, 2001, the first major address that president george bush gave after the 9/11 attacks, he condemned the 9/11 terrorists for their vicious will to power. but i came to see that nietzsche was not simply a figure of the right, but he was also a figure of the left or the center left fending on your angle of -- depending on your angle of vision. of course, it was many years later that i would learn in an october 2008 interview that then-candidate barack obama who was asked by "the new york times" about his philosophical

and literary influences would name friedrich nietzsche as one of them. he had come into contact with nietzsche while a student, an undergraduate at occidental college. i could turn to popular music and, again, nietzsche was there as an inspiration. from performingers as diverse as marilyn manson and joni mitchell. joni hitch el even named her cat nietzsche and dedicated her 1998 song "man from mars" to him. mitchell explained in an interview what nietzsche meant to her. quote, nietzsche was a hero he gets a bad p rap, he's very misunderstood. he's a maker of individuals, and be he was a teacher of teachers. end quote. and just in case you think that this was some curious fluke, on your ride home tonight turn on your radio to a top 40s station, and you will likely

hear kelly clarkson's hit song "stronger," which the lyrics are nietzsche's maxim what doesn't kill he makes me stronger. and i won't sing it for you. if you prefer rap, then you can listen for kanye west's 2007 hit version, also stronger, also using nietzsche's maxim. so let's back up a bit. what was already clear from the outset of the project was that nietzsche had this dominating presence in 20th century inte lek smell cultural life. and yet it was pretty easy for me at the time to assume that this fascination must have been of a relatively recent vintage. to track it i thought maybe we could look at the psychic and moral dislocations of americans trying to come to terms with the horrors of the holocaust and the atomic bomb in the post-world war. i thought maybe it's even more recent of that, maybe i can trace it to the '60s when americans struggled with the bankrupt ideologies of the cold

war world and bristled against the lingering bourgeois conventions of their parents. and yet in my effort to reclaim my mind for morier hand -- pardon me, more american thinkers, i was foiled yet again as i thought let me just move back in time and surely this will go away. in fact, it didn't take long or much effort before i started to take note of the cure quos nietzsche traces in american thought there earlier periods. indeed,s,s in very text i was reading while trying to get back to my american native grounds, william james' variety of religious experience, ruth benedict's patterns of culture, richard of stetter's paranoid style of american politics, and david reeseman's lonely crowd. all of them had engagements with nietzsche in them. nietzsche under every bed? not quite, although there are a lot of nietzsches under lots of beds. but in this effort to move back this time, i was able to start

to connect the dots and see how much nietzsche was cropping up. in fact, i was able to connect the dots all the way back to the turn of the last century when the interest in nietzsche was so intense that observers could without hyperbole talk about a nietzsche vogue. this was the term used in the beginning of the 20th century. and as one commentator put it -- and he was right -- quote, he who will know the zeitgeist must know nietzsche. and yet at every new discovery i could not help but ask the same l question that the nietzsche commentators i was reading were asking themselves, and that is, why? what's the work of an anti-christian, anti-democratic, anti-enlightenment thinker doing in a culture like ours? and asking these questions my project was born. why nietzsche and why in america? so in the time that remains, what i'd like to do is to try to

offer some answers to these questions about what nietzsche's philosophy has been doing in and has done for 20th century thought and culture in the united states. my book examines nietzsche's longstanding impact on 20th century thought and culture. it examines how nietzsche's denial of universal truths together with his critiques of christian morality, enlightenment rationality and democracy have compelled generations of americans to question their religious ideals, their moral certainties and their democratic principles. i trace out episodes in the history including, and i'm just going to name a few, the early 20th century christian commentator's use of nietzsche's philosophy as a register of the soul of modern man under secularism. i look at early 20th century literary and political thinkers who turn to nietzsche's nomadic intellectual life as an example of the perils and promises of the freelance intellectual life that they hope to inhabit themselves. i look at the debates of the

roots of imperialism during the first world war and totalitarianism during the second world war. i can think of no other philosopher who has been blamed for the two world wars but, in fact, that's nietzsche, was blamed for both world war i and world war ii, and i look more recently at developments in the american academy and popular culture when nietzsche was transformed into the father, or if you will, the grandfather of postmodernism. many of the names of the commentators that i discuss in the book will be familiar to you. they're names like h.l. mencken, emma goldman, walter whitman, khalil yes baron, william jennings bryan, lionel trilling, huey p. newton, jude at this time butler, harold west. while some were enlightened by his writings and others mortified, none were indifferent to the implication of his

philosophy for the promise of american life. and be yet today, however, i want to look at a different kind of reader. i want to look at a very different kind of source, and namely i'm going to look at the fan letters that were written by nietzsche's american readers and sent to the nietzsche archive in germany. i do so not only because they give us access to the intellectual world of, quote-unquote, average americans often lost or at least overlooked by intellectual historians, but because they signal how and why nietzsche's philosophy and his image of the suffering, martyred mad genius became some instrumental in american intellectual life. we see how americans press nietzsche into service using him to criticize the shortcomings of american democracy, the moral timidity of their priests and the hollow promises of enchantment by a secular pop culture. the value of these letters as historical documents, as historical sources, it seems to

me is not their philosophical value, that is to say how good ey one can surely read them for their fell soft call merits -- philosophical merits and shortcomings, but what i think is important is to listen for their historical value, and i think that has nothing to do with whether they get nietzsche right or wrong. those kind of judgments matter, but they're judgments for another day and i think, probably, another book. but not for the historian who is interested in using these letters to listen in to people from the past, to listen in to people's moral reasoning, to listen into people's longings, their pathologies and their fears. so that's what i do with these letters, is to listen to how people are making, using nietzsche to make sense of their moral world, not to adjudicate who's getting him right and who's getting him wrong. and the beauty, i think, of doing that is that we begin to understand how and why nietzsche

goes from being an obscure thinker in 19th century germany to a pop icon in american intellectual life. if book sales are a measure of literary achievement, friedrich nietzsche this 1881 was a positive failure. his first work, "the birth of tragedy of 1872," caused quite a stir but failed to catch the attention of the broader literary press and reading public. and yet this was the best-selling book during his lifetime. after that it was pretty much downhill. the next year his essay, "david strauss," the first of nietzsche's untimely meditations received some initial attention but then, also, quickly faded from view. the works that followed, "humannal too human" of 1878, "daybreak" of 1881 went virtually unnoticed, and

nietzsche never tired of contemplating the travails of untimely genius. in a letter to a friend in 1881, he bristled about an indifferent reading public who let him starve on silence. quote: if i were unable to draw strength from myself, if i had to wait for applause, encouragement, consolation, where would i be? what would i be? there are certainly moments and whole periods in my life when a robust word of encouragement, a hand clasp of agreement would have been the refreshment of refreshments. and it was just then that everybody left he in the lurch, end quote. but a few months later as the protracted neglect exacerbated nietzsche's frustration, out of the blue three admirers from baltimore, maryland, sent him a lifeline. i realize it's not very easy to see. it's a very old letter, it's from 1881, and these things don't reproduce well. but this is elissa finkman's letter of 181, and let me read

for you in translation. esteemed doctor, perhaps it is of little concern to you that here in america three people often sit together and allow nietzsche's writings to edify them at their most intimate. but i don't see why we shouldn't at least tell you so once. we are counting on the fact that due to the depth of your thoughts we will never be able or want to ever read anything else again. we need not merely imagine how pleased nietzsche was to get this letter, for preserved on the back side of the letter, written on the back side of the letter that is now preserved in the nietzsche archive is his handwritten note to self. [speaking in native tongue] the first american letter, introduction to world glory would be literal, a better translation would be the beginning of world fame. so first american letter, the beginning of world fame. finally it seemed the world was

awakened to his genius. during the next few months, however, silence settled back in. never the less, nietzsche enjoyed a stretch of exuberant productivity in which he wrote his next work, "the gay science." it was also during this period he was rereading one of his favorite philosophers, ralph waldo emerson, and thanks to his renewed inspiration, used an emerson quotation for the book's epigraph. how fitting, then, that while writing his philosophical love letter to his american hero that a second letter should arrive there the states, indeed from the very native grounds of the sage of concord. in a letter from boston dated may 29, 1882, a professional violinist wrote to nietzsche to express as he put it, quote, my most humble thanks for the benefit i have derived from your works and the wish which i've long entertained to possess a likeness, be it ever so small, of the man i have learned to adore for the greatness of his

mind and the sincerity of his utterances. bear in mind that was a translation from a german sentence, so this was actually quite an elegant sentence in the original. so this letter is used also as an occasion to tell nietzsche that he had such admiration for an essay that he had written in his untimely meditations that dan outer had, as he put it, translated it, quote, no less than three times not so much with a view to publishing my feeble reproduction as to that of becoming more intimate with your work. but in spite of my efforts, my version fell so far sort of an adequate rendition of the original that i was only too glad for the sake of your reputation to keep the manuscript this my desk. since then the memory of exalted moments remains, and i am sure my work was not wasted upon myself. we have no record of nietzsche's response, but one suspects that he might have figured -- perhaps

the america that had -- [inaudible] two let, from america -- letters from america weren't much, but given the paltry response to his writings back at home, this surely seemed like an auspicious beginning. perhaps the dawn of nietzsche's world fame was breaking in the west. except, unfortunately, that it wasn't. these are the only two of the three letters written directly to in nietzsche prior to his mel collapse this 1889. during the 1890s, a handful of letters from enthuse christmases trickled in to where the invalid philosopher stayed in the care of his mother and sister, and later where he spent the last

three years of his life in a room atop the nietzsche archive which was now administered by elizabeth who was now his self-appointed literary executor, and she administered up until her death in 1935. by the time these fan letters arrived, however, nietzsche was totally unware of them. -- unaware of them. his days of intellectual ecstasy and agony were over, but o so, too, were his ability to read, write or even to recognize he was once a prolific writer. on their own these two letters from american fans cannot tell us much. but when we read them together with the letters that started arriving at the nietzsche archive in the immediate years following teach chi's death in 1900, we can see that they are, indeed, a fore taste of the feast to come. the confessions of, esteem for and adoration of nietzsche are repeated innumerable times in the letters written by

subsequent admirers. fans old and young, left and right, immigrant and native-born wrote to express their devotion to the thinker who had changed the way they thought about themselves and their moral worlds. they wrote for a picture, they wrote for an autograph, they wrote sometimes simply to say thank you, and sometimes they wrote to offer their assistance in spreading the gospel in america. these letters might appropriately be classified as american nietzsche e femora for they offer really just a snapshot in time, and some of them are no longer than a paragraph, sometimes two. in most cases, beyond having their names listed in census records or crop up in tiny obituaries, there's really little to nothing left in the public record giving evidence of the fullness of these letter writers' lives or the extent to whicthey incorporated nietzsche's ideas into their daily conduct. nevertheless, in all of their imperfect, fleeting brevity these letters offer insights into how nietzsche's ideas not

on traveled in the w but al how ed make americoreorlds new. and they swew and why the cuure that ntzsche took as his ey would come to e ictlistianat laeder told intellec life, whave start small. given nietzsche's increased presence in american intellectual and cultural life, commentators -- many commentators echoed the sentiment as one observer in 1910 put it that he was, quote, in the air. they wrote about nietzsche as if he were a transcendent spirit. however, the letters also remind us that nietzsche's thought was no mere vapor, rather they demonstrate the material dimension of ideas because for many they experience their initial contact with nietzsche's philosophy as so transformative

that they recorded in these letters the form in which they first encountered him, either as a photograph in a magazine, a name in a newspaper review or an author for sale at their local book shop. the letters testify to the ways in which the embodied forms of ideas that matter to people take on a psychic value much greater than their monetary one. letter writers commonly referred to their nietzsche copy -- pardon me, to their copies of nietzsche -- [audio difficulty] some little piece of the man who for them was the lived example of his heroic -- [inaudible] one of the most common requests was for nietzsche's signature. in big, bubble, cursive strokes, the 12-year-old john abusier jr.

of separate tord, pennsylvania, wrote, quote: my mother loves your brother's writings, and i'm going to read them when i grow up, but i read all about friedrich nietzsche in a book that has just been published by the name of "the story of philosophy," and i loved it, end quote. we can imagine he wanted to send nietzsche's autograph with his man or impress his schoolboy friends with it, but he reasoned the request that he would just, quote, love to have it. quote, if you have one i could have, i would be so happy. end quote. so this is just one of many letters requesting autographs. the request for nietzsche paraphernalia, that is nietzsche pictures, a lock of his hair, just a little piece of some writing that got broken off, these requests for nietzsche paraphernalia shed light on the broader context of the longing and desire he awakened in his

american readers. in a letter from 1923, hoffman of mount vernon, new york, wrote to nietzsche about where he could find, quote, a good picture of his brother, end quote. he -- pardon me, he explained the earnestness of his request demonstrating his devotion to nietzsche. two years earlier, quote, as a serious student i drew a small circle of healthy disciples around me. we hold in my library lectures on the small scale of your unique, eternal-held brother, end quote. in order to fully realize the experience, he and his i fellow disciples, quote, mowed through innumerable art galleries, end quote, on the quest to find a perfect picture of nietzsche, quote, so we can direct our reading -- decorate our reading room with such a relic. hoffman said this request was not made lightly. he added that he also want today

express his gratitude -- their gratitude. and he wrote, quote, please allow me to mention that we venerate your honorable person as true holiness. we are fully aware without you, the life of your brother would have been a much more suffering one. and so as a token of his gratitude, hoffman did what was not uncommon for the letter writers to do which was not simply to ask for something, but to send something. and so he sent a poem that he had penned in the flush of his inspiration of nietzsche. and so again we see this in some of the other letters. people put in photos of their houses, they sent their christmas cards. is the mic on? >> yeah. >> i had a funny feeling it was off. keep going?

can you hear me? okay. all right. um, so if american nietzsche devotees wanted to possess a relic of him, it was because he possessed them. they did not simply ask for valuable goods to adorn their lives, they explained how the philosopher they adored had taught them something precious about the good life. virtually all writers had encounters with nietzsche's philosophy emboldened them or chastened them, liberated them from old falsehoods or saddled them with new moral responsibilities. helene wrote in 1922 to let nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the brief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. though unworthy of his greatness, he never the less awakened in her a longing for something deeper in herself. nietzsche confessed et saved her from, quote, her own inner

emptiness. the ohio country she called home had become, quote, tame and common place, filled with lives trivial and essentially ugly for they are engrossed with matters of money and motors, not with work or faith or art, end quote. she regarded the methodist church near her house as, quote, vulgar and pretentious, end quote. though disgusted by the offense of mediocrity around her, she was haunted by her own limitations. quote: it would be probably impossible for you to imagine anything more superficial than i am, end quote. but reading what we can presume was forester nietzsche's translation of the correspondence -- nietzsche had a relationship with wagner before it ended explosively, and forester nietzsche documented their letter exchanges, and this was translateed about this year, so i'm assuming this is the book she's referring to. reading this exposed her to, quote -- [inaudible] of one great soul striking fire

against another great soul, end quote. reading about nietzsche strengthened her resolve that, quote, all my life i will hold on to my hunger. if i never manage to have a soul at any rate, i will remain by hook or crook aware of it, and i will desire one all my life. i will not accept substitutes. we see an example of how a reader used nietzsche's philosophy to explain herself to herself. nietzsche had given her justification for and a language to articulate her feelings of displacement and disaffection in a world that seemed content with ugly compromises. nietzsche's philosophy gained traction in readers yearning for individuality as well as belonging. the desire for self-understanding, they fashioned their own o version of a nietzsche as exemplar of individuality and a new self in that image.

um, i'm pretty sure you're going to have a hard time reading the letterhead, but it's from one george e. nietzsche of philadelphia, pennsylvania. though george e. nietzsche of pennsylvania did not express the sense of -- [inaudible] surroundings, his letter is similarly shows a self-longing for exaltation and connection. it was quite literally nietzsche to whom he sought to cleeve himself. quote: my name as you will see from the above letterhead is one of the few nietzsche's in america, probably the only one. unfortunately, my grandparents in a legal document left the e out, and the error was perpetuated. however, i am proud to have name and that probably my ancestors came from the same stock as you and your illustrious brother, end quote. so in an effort to sketch out the possible trunk of their mutual family tree, nietzsche went on to tell the woman he hoped was his not too distant cousin about the the no --

moravian people and how his branch emigrated to pennsylvania in 1739. though centuries and an ocean separated them, he hoped, quote, to have a spes enof nietzsche's autograph and also an autographed inscription in your handwriting, end quote. just a few momentos of the thinker whom he hoped was in his blood. this desire to possess a piece of nietzsche as he had possessed his readers revealed the strong affinity for nietzsche's life and thought, and it shows that it takes many be forms in these letters -- many forms in these letters. john push of duluth, minnesota, for example, believed that he was nietzsche's philosophy realized. on december 9, 1919, he sent the first of three missives announcing his good tidings. he wrote, quote: dear madam. i beg to inform you i am here

one who is evil enough, and he refers to the passage where nietzsche has evil enough, written a chapter new tables by friedrich will hem nietzsche, your beloved deceased brother just in case she hadn't read it herself. you hereby have the consolation and delight to have lived long enough to know that the hopes of your brother have been fulfilled to the very letter. for the author of this scribbling is the very man prognosticated in the said volume. respectfully, john i. bush. and then he has a bunch of phrases from the strange figure of the north, one who is evil enough. when a week went by without hearing jubilation back from the archive, bush followed up with a telegram, and this is a little off, so i'm assuming that it's transcribed bay non-english -- by a non-english speaker. are your living yet one who is

evil enough, john bush. so inconceivable was it that forester nietzsche might be ignoring his extraordinary revelation, bush seemed to think that the only reason for her silence could be that she was dead. why else wouldn't she respond to the american? and so he sent a third attempt at contact on january 26, 19 20, in which he could barely contain his exasperation. and it reads, quote: i do beg humble to inquire does the elizabeth forester nietzsche live yet? i would greatly appreciate it if someone connect with the the nietzsche archive will kindly answer the above query. just one word will suffice. please, comply with this small request and oblige. enclosed, please, find self-addressed envelope for reply as it is inconvenient to remit postage but hope that you will incur in that trifle expense. and he signs again thanking you in advance, i remain very

respectfully john i. bush. though bush's self-connection to nietzsche's ubermen. was certainly less abashed than most others, the ways in which he put nietzsche's philosophy to work for self-fashioning was a common strategy, a strategy we see in the all of these letter writers. they use nietzsche's terms and aspects of his own life to describe themselves to themselves. one of the reasons why so many readers sought to fashion themselves in his language or after his image was because as dr. marx of rochester, minnesota, expressed it nietzsche was, quote, more of a great spirit than a human being, end quote. so what we see in a lot of these letters is a very strong, unmistakeable religious imagery that demonstrates the self-spiritual dimension of the american nietzsche devotion. these writers still long to cleeve themselves to images of grandeur, to divinity, but this

time in the form of human possibility. nietzsche was that image of human possibility for them. and so what we see in some of the letters and, again, it's not just in the letters as i talk about in the book, i see this across the board even in the highest of highbrow, serious intellectual/philosophical works on nietzsche is this transformation of nietzsche into a kind of secular savior. certainly a language that has shot through -- that is shot through with religious or spiritual words. we see this as people talked about the nietzsche archive, they talked about it in terms of a pilgrimage, making a pilgrimage to the nietzsche archive, or as one writer put it, the holiest of holy places. that's a quote. so american readers' fascination with nietzsche took many forms, but a common way of expressing that devotion was to travel to the or archives, meet his for and to see his room in the personal library. some of the letter writers refer

to trips in in the planning stages and travel plans aborted and delayed. expeditions both realized and not provide a fuller view of the modes of the american nietzsche exchange. they remind us that when ideas -- they do so both in mind and in body. nietzsche's american readers went to a bookstore, went to a library, they went to a shrine in their friend's house, and some -- not a lot at least from these records -- made a transatlantic voyage to germany. the discussions of travel to the archives suggest that there's a two-way aspect to this story of the atlantic crossings of the nietzsche. not only did nietzsche's text travel to america with his ideas, but americans likewise traveled to germ think for them. germ think for them. what's significant here is it

was cast in religious devotion. we see this in the 1920 letters referring to a trip taken not only to the archives but also to nietzsche's birthplace where he went to see nietzsche's birth house. quote, the room which your dear brother was born, your father's study, the old kitchen. the trip proved so transformative, pardon me, that he informed forester nietzsche. quote, a pilgrimage, it is a tribute to nietzsche. end quote. the transatlantic travels of nietzsche text documented in the letters demonstrate that the transnational traffic of ideas, it shows how nietzsche's ideas and ideas about nietzsche traversed national borders thought to distinguish american from german or european intellectual life. and i think in doing so it encourages us to rethink the integrity of our national narrative regarding thought and culture.

in other words, the very national narrative that i was struggling with initially as i thought to study american intellectual history, you've got to stick with americans or thinking that there's somehow a distinct tradition here that is cut off the from the wider circulation of ideas in the world. alone just because a german thinker proved so inspirational to american readers that the periodic zeal in american life to celebrate american exceptionalism -- though sometimes admirable -- often sets up a false intellectual distinction between american world views and the wider views in the world. the letters, though small and fragmentary, help us to consider the ways in which moral outlooks and social concerns in america has have been forged through cross-cultural, transatlantic, wider-world system of exchange,

transmission, modification and transformation. in doing so, these letters help us to think or rethink some of the static categories that we work with like american exceptionalism or foreign thought, or we talk about organic ideas or truly american ideas, or we pooh-pooh radical imports. but before we too zealously embrace the artificiality of constructs like american or german, foreign and organic, we should not forget the power that such perceived differences had in shaping the lived experience of people we study in the past. and, of course; we see it still today. as these letter writers show, many readers' ideas about what's us and what's them were sharpened, not smoothed out in the friction of this movement. the letters in their own small way tell a bigger story about how the transnational traffic of nietzsche's image and ideas helped puncture and rebuild, traverse and reconstitute intellectual borders between america and europe.

and so though we might be tempted to view the vibrancy of nietzsche's posthumous american career as a sign of salutary transnational intellectual exchanges and mutuality, many american readers here saw just the opposite. they turn to nietzsche not because they thought he could make something possible for the pedestrian american intellect, but precisely because in their view he couldn't. the prospect that nietzsche's philosophy could shrink the distance between german and american culture was the last thing on many of these american writers' minds. though they were reading nietzsche in america, they never thought nor desired that his floss si could find refuge here. they simply wanted more of his philosophy with which to shield themselves from the crude, anti-speck lek chul mob men tagty of american life. so here we're seeing a very common concern that we can see

at the much higher registers of american intellectual discourse, you know, among professional intellectuals and america is anti-intellectual. and there's plenty of -- we've got plenty of documentation there. but what's interesting is that the letters showed that this was a concern in the lower registers of american culture as well. what we can hear this these letters, also, is a gnawing concern about american anti-intellectualism. what we hear is a worry that america does commerce, but it doesn't do culture. we can make or build mcdonald's and make dungarees, and we don't even do that anymore, but we don't do ideas. we don't produce ideas. and so here we see in the letters this fear of american anti-intellectualism were burrowed deeply into the imagination of general readers, this notion that nietzsche was a genius, and we could have never produced a nietzsche here, that our cultural soil just is too thin to produce this kind of genius. and so these letters document

that the longing for intellectual engagement, the reverence for ideas even as a stick to beat corporate capitalism or mass culture with was not exclusive to professional intellectuals. average americans long to inhabit the world of thought that nietzsche created and embodied. and so the letters -- and this was just a sampling of the letters i talk about in the book -- but i think they start to signal some to have ways american readers enlist the ideas to contemplate themselves and to critique their america. and i'd like to end now with one that i think does a nice job of pulling together many of the light no tiffs of american nietzsche devotion. the two-page, typed letter from the san francisco-based t.d. createn is a pseudonym for a greek name that i won't say because i can't pronounce it. um, but the pseudonym is critton, is german for plato's

creed doe. so this is a pseudonym that he's taking from plato, and we see already in the pseudonym a self-fashioning going on. in this letter, critton exalts a prophetic nietzsche as a timeless savior of modern humanity and a critic of a world out of kilter. quote: the life of your brother was the life of a christ pure and great. no man suffered what he did on account of his convictions, not even jesus christ, end quote. critton informed forester nietzsche that he had emigrate today the u.s. as a child and believed that nietzsche and the german people from which he came were, like him, the true descendants of the he elevennic spirit. he flashed back to 914 when, quote, a thunder bolt of zeus from olympus, end quote. when america entered the, quote, unjust war on germany, end quote in 1917, he opted for incarceration rather than to bear arms against these, quote,

true greeks, end quote. he was disgusted with american literature which produced only junk writers, none worthy of her brother, and then this his letter he moved from his critique of a botched american culture to contrast it with his esteem for germany and italy. quote, i only hope that america might someday produce writers worthy of nietzsche. then america will be in a place to show her savior as italy and germany, end quote. that these lines were written in 1933 can only suggest that hitler's rise to power confirmed his view of the unfortunate incongruity between german greatness and american poverty. he concluded by thanking her brother for having graced world history with his timeless and timely philosophy of life. so critton's letter is packed with many of the major themes running through virtually all of the american fan letters sent to the archive. it rereveals how readers young

and old, male and female from pittsburgh to san francisco made and remade nietzsche in their own image. general readers all lent a hand in putting their nietzsche, whether the personalist companion, the secular saint or the cultural critic to work on themselves and their america, and in doing so they naturalized nietzsche as an american or as one of us. for critton in particular, nietzsche as a he elevennic christ helped him fill in the contours of his own identity, helped him to articulate why he felt such a distance from american culture and hammer out his political ideas. his ideas moved through time and space, and every time teach chi's ideas did so, they were reconstituted when they got in the hands of an american reader. critton, as did the others, considered nietzsche's books among his prized possessions by writing to procure additional works, a photograph, a swatch of his handwriting, nietzsche's american readers sought tangible

records of the author's whose ideas had demonstrated practical power in their lives. the only reason why they wanted to possess some, however, was because nietzsche had possessed them. critton's letter, like the letters written before his, offer a preview of the varieties of american engagements with nietzsche for decades to come. the letter puts in ink on paper what many would put in their blood and on their bodies. for critton to get closer to nietzsche, he wrote a letter. for the 21-year-old jack kerr back, 11 years later, he wrote a quotation in his blood. he did so in 944 -- 1944. kerowac had borrowed alan ginsburg's library card, and in those texts he found a vision of the transformative power of art

that he was trying to achieve in his own life and work. as if to insure that nietzsche would stay with him after he returned to the library, he cut his finger and with his blood wrote the following words from the birth of tragedy. quote: art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life, end quote. over a half century later, that desire to bring nietzsche on to and into one's self can be seen in the nietzsche tattoos on the bodies of 20-somethingers and upwards like the actress megan fox who has on her rib cage a quotation. and like derek gottlieb, the indexer of my book, who incidentally is also an advanced graduate student in educational theory and comparative literature who, at our first meeting to go over the manuscript and talk about the index, showed me why it was kiss met that he should be the indexer of my book by pulling up

his shirt and showing me his nietzsche tattoo that reads -- [speaking in native tongue] and that is, there is always some madness in love, but there is always some reason in madness. how fitting that that quotation is pulled from a is section called reading and writing where nietzsche writes, quote: of all that is written, i love only what a person has written in his blood. he that writes in blood does not want to be read, but learned by heart, end quote. and those in the turn who wanted to learn nietzsche by heart, they did so by bringing them in their blood. example like derek's rib cage and kerovac's finger simply make literal what has been figural, and that is that nietzsche has been inscribed on the american body, that teach chi is in our blood -- nietzsche is in our blood, that in eachmy is, as alan bloom put it though he did

so mournfully, that nietzsche is us. are the risks involved in making critton's two-page epistle interpreting more weight than they can bear? can a cranky letter or a tattoo really tell us anything broader, of broader significance for understanding nietzsche's importance for 20th century american thought and culture? my belief is that they do precisely because they speak to the ways in which an astonishing array of readers participated this a much wider circuit of intellectual exchange than we normally appreciate. in addition, they show how nietzsche worked by making the designation average in "average american" no longer makes sense to his readers as a term of self-description. even for those when became to to nietzsche with a sense of inadequacy, he provided them a language to critique the church, the marketplace or their civics lesson that helped them to sharpen their sense of distinction in themselves, enabling them to feel their own particularity. the letters reflect a broader

sentiment that is also echoed in the publishing sources. namely, that nietzsche was a philosopher prophet who worked not by issuing instructions for conduct, but by serving as a guide to becoming. if they were unable to can chor their -- anchor their beliefs in universals, they could at least cleeve themself toss a thinker who had learned to live without them. thank you. [applause] so i will leave up the tattoos, um, and i'm happy to take some questions right now, and i've just been asked, though, that if yo want to pose a question to, please, wait until the mic comes to you so that you can ask the question in the mic. >> a lot of the, at least the letters you selected, seem to be either german or from people talking about german solidarity or with german names, and i

wonder how much of nietzsche's at least early popularity was a matter of ethnic solidarity and mid century immigrants who were longing for a connection to the old country? >> that's a wonderful question. um, a disproportionate number of the letters are written by people with german names. um, and the letters -- and some of them are written in german. some of them are written in english where the letter writer regrets that he or she can't write in his or her mother tongue, that this is a source of, you know, great consternation. and so i think it is very conceivable that nietzsche really resonated with german readers, but as we look out to the wider published sources, it just doesn't tell us anything, it doesn't seem representative. first of all, at the turn of the last century, most educated americans, i mean, german was a standard second language for educated americans. so you didn't have to be ethnically german.

and also the first translations were already available in 1896, so people could already start reading it in translation. so it seems to me the answer to your question is both yes and no. my sense is that for german, ethnic germans there was that sense of affiliation or bond. i mean, you see it in someone like a nietzsche, but you see also that longing to connect to nietzsche, to feel that nietzsche was a sibling soul also extends to people who were not ethnically, ethnically german. i'd make one more point on that, and that is that nietzsche in the early years of his posthumous fame as it were in america was seen as a polish, was as polish, ethnically polish and not german. nietzsche had described himself as the descendant of polish achris accurates, and -- aristocrats, and partly this was to criticize germany and so this is picked up and actually becomes a big subject of conversation and debate. and i think it's very interesting. so nietzsche is polish in

american intellectual life until world war i, and it's at that point that nietzsche becomes seen as the monster or the inspiration of the german mind. so nietzsche becomes german, but he starts out polish, and i think this is often said to criticize nietzsche. if he were german, we'd get him better, right? i mean, our universities are modeled after the german university, we all are reading the great german thinker, so this wouldn't have made him exotic enough. making him polish made him exotic. >> um, thank you for a wonderful presentation, and i can't wait to read the book. as someone who's read some nietzsche and teach some, one of nietzsche's main themes is the need for self-criticism and

against true believers and ideologies and deceiving of disciples. >> uh-huh. >> [inaudible] disciples at the first -- [inaudible] because you hadn't sought yourself first. >> yeah. >> do you see much of an awareness of that need and that theme in teach chi coming out of -- nietzsche comes out of these american responses, or is it more along the lines of looking for a new safe your? >> uh-huh, uh-huh. in -- well, i mean, that's a good question because i would say that is where we see a split between what's, you know, the interpretations in the letters and what we can see in more widely published sources.

so, no, in the letter, i mean, that kind of self-criticism that we see maybe someone like a helen backmiller comes close. that's not quite what you're talking about. but for certain in the broader reception many thinkers pick up on this, that to be a niche chan, you can't be a in each chan, so already hundredinger who is one of the -- in fact, he's credited for bringing nietzsche's fame to america, was an early inspiration on h.l. mencken, he said nietzsche was the only -- pardon me, the only in eachn died when nietzsche died. so you can't -- he recognized how ridiculous this was. and, in fact, he was very critical that, you know, should nietzsche ever get a reception here in america, should he ever get famous here in america, it could only be if people misunderstand him. and so, and he's not the first

to pick up on this. i mean, this is a theme that gets picked up over and over and over again, the notion that he can't have a wide readership because if he does, then it's a trope. it's a, you know, um, hero worship and that nietzsche was deeply critical of it. so there are commentators who themselves are very critical of this, h.l. mencken's another example, but often times they're the very people who are popularizing nietzsche. alan bloom's a perfect example of this. the only reason why according to bloom in 1987 that nietzsche could be such a figure if our pop culture is because he's so badly misunderstood. ..

>> he tore down the absolute, tore down those foundations of our beliefs, but he didn't just leave it at that. he said it's our job to come up with the images of the possible, so voice understood if you turn nietzsche into that, you're missing the boat. you are not really fulfilling what nietzsche had called for or what he envisioned. [inaudible] >> wonderful. [inaudible] >> hold on.

national tv wants to get this referenced. >> a top reference for you. in the movie blazing saddles, howard johnso johnson and you so think, nietzsche says and another character says howard, blow it out your -- it's a throwaway line. it assumes that nietzsche is well known. >> that's exactly. it's often now, this is how we can know that nietzsche is so conventional, that he, as i put an article i'd written he's a conventional iconoclast. the quintessential iconoclast in american culture. >> like einstein in a way. people know him or his image but they don't know much about what his ideas actually are. >> sure. there are different kinds of sources. nietzsche throwaway line in

movie, you can't subject the same kind of critical analysis of entire books have been written about him. in the book i try to look at all of those uses. i try to look at all the various registered in which nietzsche props up their life. but i think even the throwaway line, as you put it, the throwaway visuals, the best one i can think of is now, little miss sunshine with a brother, a teenage brother is a nietzsche and. he put it -- i could go back to what he is doing situps or push-ups in his room. do you remember? full attention. he is sort of in that flexing his own will to power. commits the top of -- let me go back. here, there. how do i make it bigger? i'm not sure i can. maybe i will be that like that but otherwise opera some button and it will explain. it's the one in middle weather

is a sheet and it is just nietzsche's profile. i have to tell you when i saw this, i don't know the date of the movie, may 2000, maybe 2005, 2004, i saw this in a miami movie theater with a bunch of people younger than myself, let's put it that way. and s&s is seen popped up they all burst into laughter. that's exactly what the movie was going for, just a visual cue. the incongruity of it, the absurdity of the. i think people in audience at already nietzsche? no. but that queue already suggested the self grande iced teenager, though not in his and again i think it's simply the point of entry for me as a historian to ask why. how is it possible that like in blazing saddles or in conan the barbarian they can have a quote and there's been the residence force. part of what i try to figure out, are examined in the book is because there's a long history

of engagement with nietzsche, that he is just part of our discourse. his terms are our terms. his image is now a standard iconographic image in our visual culture. >> so i'm curious, in the archives do you get any clues into elizabeth's role in what, either in her voice back to these writers, what did she choose to say? i was sitting here thinking, is their hate mail in there or would she have thrown away hate mail? do you get another sight of her reaction? i mean, do you get, in your archival research did you, could you. out how she contributes to fastening what's left for you, or is that -- >> thanks for really talented and hard-working historians,

elizabeth's crucial role in nietzsche's career. when nietzsche has his mental breakdown in 1889, he spends the last 11 years of his life really stark raving mad. it gets worse, but that's when she takes over. and it's already in those years of his mental y. but where she is crafting nietzsche as a profit. she largely, many nietzsche scholars admit, we have elizabeth to thank the prior to his sister, prior to some early folks who discovered him, nietzsche, his name had not yet broken and she was instrumental. the unfortunate part of that story is that she was anti-semitic. she was very nationalistic. and, in fact, she is the one who, over the course of the early '30s, helps to make the

nietzsche archives basically an incident or an institution devoted to the nazis. there's a famous picture where she welcomes hitler and there's a picture next, hitler next to nietzsche's. she plays some unfortunate role in helping to refashion nietzsche as a pro not the and make an serviceable the nazis. how she fits in, ambitious crucial for getting the public, you know, getting the translations out. so she is crucial for just getting nietzsche out there. how did she respond to the letter writers? a problem in the archive is simply responding us of the record they do not have, they were unable to have any kind of record, weather, what degree, how many letters, the letters that are still left reflect. we in some cases have outgoing letters that have been sent back, and some of them seem very gracious and very particular so we can see that out of some of these letters, she formed relationships with some people.

share relationship with h.l. mencken picture relationship actually with hanukkah, early on. she had a relationship with northwestern philosopher with hatfield, and import laws are in the early 20 center, and even sent nietzsche's collective voice to him so he could have it at northwestern. but it's very spotty, what she wrote back. so, neither, what i don't have is how much these letters reflect the full, you know, how many letters came in and we can't quite see the extent to which she wrote back. i can see kind of funny things, it's actually nietzsche writes a follow-up letter saying oh, dear, i understand you cannot send an autograph of nietzsche. you need to keep his body of autographs impact. so i respect that. what? i have records of other people say thank you for the autocratic something she might have been very choosy and very selective

and very savvy about who she was going to foster a relationship with. >> is the american response to nietzsche any different than other nationalities the? that's a wonderful question. and it's a question that, you know, i can answer with varying degrees of precision. but here's where i think the clearest distinction, if you will. so one way to answer the question is no. i mean, there's some things which we see trafficked in all of the reception. of course, nietzsche is a worldwide phenomenon and there's been works on nietzsche in germany, and france, in scandinavia, in spain come in italy, in japan. and to what i can say to some of

the things that we're seeing in america are happening elsewhere. what i think is particular to the american reading is that i have very few nietzsche interpreters who are reading nietzsche as a political thinker. and by that, politics with a capital p. they are reading nietzsche, if he's a critic of democracy, he is a cultural critic of democracy. that is to say, he's a critic of the kinds of human types of democracy fosters. does that make sense? so they are reading nietzsche not a some great visionary as a new kind of politics, which we, of course, see in russia, in italy, with fascism and mussolini, and, of course, with the nazis. we don't see that in america. that is to say, there may be conservatives every nietzsche,

or liberals every nietzsche, and we see both of those, but they are reading and more as a cultural critic of the human types of democracy fosters. i think that's very different. and i think that is very particular. it's again a nietzsche about american culture, or a nietzsche about american individually. a nietzsche on american souls. but not necessary on our political system as such. the other thing of which is signal, and danny was kind enough to reference it in his intro, i think, and less i am misremembering, was that as i mentioned also in the talk that nietzsche was an avid reader of emerson. in fact, emerson was the first philosopher that nietzsche read. nietzsche read emerson already as a teenager. i discussed this in the prologue. and so, one of the things i try to examine in the bow, or at least touch on, when nietzsche

first when his ideas first come ideas first come to america in the late 19th, early 20 centuries, occasionally thinkers would say, that's kind of americana sound a little bit like our emerson. but then it often usually do this as a way of distinction. i that nietzsche is genius and emerson is kind of victorian and too much a goody goody, or that emerson is safe for democracy, his wholesome, he is well. he doesn't have a breakdown and that nietzsche is a madman. so for those are but on who hear the emersonian timber and nietzsche's voice are often trying to draw a distinction. but what's interesting is this connection carries on in the american readings. and in the last chapter i discussed in particular three authors, the philosopher, the literary critic, and also a philosopher, harvard philosopher, all, each in their own way use nietzsche as a way

to get back to emerson. so do we read and rediscover innocent for an american audience. and so i think what might be distinct about american, or what we might be able to say is somehow colors this perception is that in nietzsche, americans are hearing as bloomberg, their own into order, their hearing emerson. so i think that there's something in particular that way. and one more hand. >> i'm an indigenous person. i'm a tribal person of this continent, and we see nietzsche as very different from most americans i think.

particularly, in use a lot of americans admire nietzsche as rebellious. but we see them as someone without a conscious. for instance, this book beyond good and evil, and so we seem is very much like americans, and we actually consider ourselves to be, it's not really a matter of culture or philosophy. i say philosophy. i studied at northwestern. but we see ourselves different. we see ourselves as being bound to a conception of right and wrong, of what should and what should not become and that cannot cannot change, depending upon what we read or what kind of education we had. just to let you know, i blog about this on the internet as --

>> thank you. well, that's -- that's a very big question, but let me try to give you a simple answer. and hoping not a simplistic one, but i mean i think, nietzsche certainly is called into question all absolutes. nietzsche calls into question all foundations for human belief. whether it be god or science, whether it is truth. so nietzsche's entire philosophical project, he does a lot of things as a writer, but one clear through line of this writing, and certainly the one that has the biggest impact here, is that nietzsche challenged universal truth. [inaudible] >> that's as a problem.

he doesn't think that anything is subjective, that -- >> right. >> that is exotic and what was the as the problem. he thinks there are no facts. vicious hypotheses. there's no objective reality. >> that's a very good reading of nietzsche, and it's one that many americans have, share with you. and it's for this very reason that something he is remarkable and timely and needed to get rid of the artifacts of, you know what is going to blink, christianity, whether it is the artifacts of sexism or racism. whether it is artifacts of a dysfunctional democracy. and others see this as a terrible destructive set of ideas, that puts everything into question that has no reference, that gives us no point of moral

orientation. and for a country, a pluralist country trying to find its unity, this is not the kind of philosopher we need here. and so you're not alone in that reading of nietzsche. and all i would say to you then as a historian is that there are many people who, thoughtful, really intelligent, really interesting readers did very different things than with the consequences of that. so you are on, you're right. anand a question for readers wa, what can come out on the other in? can we get a better america, a more humane america, a better democracy? or is this, will this terribly everything that we hold near and dear, and we will be stuck, you know, destroyed a nihilistic age. so the stakes are very high in nietzsche and i think most of his readers understood that. and just how they came to terms with it, how they came to terms with their america is the subject of the book and the reason why it's the subject of

the book is because it's a huge part of our intellectual history. and so today the letter writers are just a tiny little sampling of a much larger set of conversation, worried ones, angry ones. on me, today i showed you that there are people who've dedicated their careers to taking nietzsche down. they are important, too, and they are discussed in the book as well. but what hope is to make unmistakable is we want to understand these moral reckonings in 20th century american life. we can't do it without understanding how nietzsche often figured into this conversation. so thank you. [inaudible] >> there was a comment in which he was compared to other einstein. [inaudible] >> that there are no absolutes. so my people don't admire him

either. >> yeah, i'm a, but that's nietzsche. or that already, actually let me change that, one could quibble with that philosophically. richard, a reader of nietzsche quibbles with the notion of relativity as itself that in the same kind of absolutes as objectivity but that gets a little high flying for us tonight at 7:30 p.m. but the notion he is tearing away moral absolutes is absolutely true. and your concern about the consequences for that, and also that brushes up against what you hold dear is -- >> in the united states, i was called an indigenous tribes person. and our people are being used for medical excrement nation right now. there's a genocide against us, and nobody cares because it doesn't affect them. this is moral relativity, if our

morality was based on a physiology and there was absolute right and wrong, this could not be happening. >> that's, i mean, that's, i would just try to bring to you of when it's that very many readers who think that nietzsche's philosophy would be as outraged as your. he which is used different arguments your why it's outrageous. so anyway, thank you. thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> booktv to her to shreveport, louisiana, recently to get a feel for the local literary culture. in coordination with comcast cable, our local cable partner. we interviewed several local

authors and tour the archives and special collections of louisiana state university shreveport. the city originally founded in 1836 has a population of over 200,000 is the third largest city in louisiana. next front our time in shreveport an interview with gary joiner, the author of "one damn blunder from beginning to end: the red river campaign of 1864". >> the red river campaign was the only campaign in a pivotal year of 1864 that the union lost. and they didn't want to write about. it was an embarrassment. and the south was in no position to brag because they were in the process of losing the war. so it sat for about a century. only the locals appreciate it, and then research really started picking up with the centennial of the war.

and a few historians have touched -- i spent a lot of time on it just trying to figure out the nuances of it. and it's a campaign that needs to be studied. i was writing this book and i kept on coming up with things that would work but i wasn't really happy. and then i found this wonderful quote from general william tecumseh sherman who wanted to lead this campaign for the union. he had another assignment that sending toward atlanta. and a reporter, he didn't get along with reporters will. not at all. but a reporter asked him, jenna, what do you think about that red river campaign that is completed? he said one damn blunder from beginning to the end, and i knew that that was it. the red river campaign of 1864 was one of the major union trust

to try to end the war. and unlike all of the others, which were heading from the core of the mississippi valley, either northeast over southeast, this one was going in the wrong direction, it was going to the northwest. and everything on paper shows that this campaign should not have occurred. there are some specific goals that they try to achieve, none of which happened. it was designed to take out an existing confederate army operating in northwest louisiana, and in eastern texas, an army of western louisiana. it was decide to take the confederate capital of louisiana, which was shreveport it had a naval base.

it had the military headquarters. it had the legislature for louisiana. all good reasons to take his place. but when the thrust of the war is moving across the heartland from the east and have an army going in harm's way to the northwest, it doesn't really make much sense. so why did they do it? political pressure. an absolute political need. the economic pressure in both of these trumped military imperative. the political need was because president lee wanted to, and believed on receiving a lot of intelligence information, that he could repatriate to bring back in the union louisiana, and maybe even texas without a lot of problems.

they had great success in the orders. they had great success in baton rouge. very minimal effort, loss of life was very small. and they thought that perhaps shreveport would be the same way. it didn't work out that way. members of president lincoln's cabinet were telling him that if they could just get an army into texas, that the german immigrants would then do a counterrevolution and take the state back into the union. president lincoln really wanted this. he's looking forward to the fall election of 1864. he needed friendly faces in congress. he's got some problems with certain segments of the republican party. that's number one. the second thing is that in new england there are hundreds of

thousands of spindles in the textile factories that are not working. balloons are not making cloth. there's lots and lots of people, particularly in massachusetts that are out of work because they cannot get the cotton fiber to make cloth and that's what they did. so president lincoln is looking at a way to increase, again, in anticipating the fall elections. the general that he has put as the head of the department, the gold in new orleans, is nathaniel prentiss banks who is from both the massachusetts. long, long history of working in cotton mills, textile mills, working with bankers. he's very popular in the northeast. arguably in that segment, more popular than president lincoln.

and he wants to run for the presidency. for, at least for the republican nomination. for that fall election. for him, it is do or die. he has had a pretty good political career. three term governor of massachusetts. he was former speaker of the u.s. house of representatives, and it would make sense for them to want the president. and he certainly wants. banks has had a problem securing the military victory. every time he tries, something happens. he's a political general. he is not a good field man. he had some good people under him and on paper, this whole campaign looks like it is guaranteed to win. if you don't understand the geography, if you don't understand what he's up against, if you simply look at his plans,

the red river campaign should be, as he said, three bound. one bound, the red river. the second bound to alexandria. and the third bound to shreveport with no opposition. it doesn't work. so, how did it happen? beginning in late 1863, banks has made several attempts to try to get to texas and they have all had problems. banks is getting pressure from washington from the chief of staff, major general henry halleck. egg know the red river. do something. the president wants it. and so he does. planned this wonderfully intricate thing. he doesn't have full command of all his forces. washington does not allow him to have that.

he is a department commend it is got to bring people from other commands. he has an overall command that he doesn't have specific commend. he cannot order certain segments of his force to go from point a to point b. there's going to be people coming down from arkansas. there's going to be others coming down the river with navy and then coming up, and then he has his own folks. he will have 42500 men under his overall command. they are not all in the same place. they will be in three separate legs. second thing is that the navy, u.s. navy, is going to bring in the vast bulk of his brown water, or england, which is the mississippi squadron