>> thank you to the rabbi for that remarkable introduction. i have to say, that the subject of my lecture, it actually put my academic career in jeopardy. in 1982, i was a young faculty member at the hebrew union college jewish institute of religion in cincinnati, ohio, and i was invited to deliver a talk before the institutions board of overseers. ..

>> grant's order was the most notorious official act of anti-semitism in american history. it is really the only time that jews as a class had been expelled from anywhere in the united states, and around 1982 new information concerning that order had become available from the association that published ulysses s. grant's papers. and so it was that i began to prepare my remarks, and on the appointed day i put on a new

suit, and my talk seemed to be going well until i broached the subject of smuggling. now, ulysses s. grant was deeply concerned about smuggling between the north and the south, and since some of the smugglers that his troops caught were jews, he concluded that all jews were smugglers. i pointed out that we now know that smuggling was rampant throughout grant's territory, it was by no means a jewish monopoly. in fact, i enthusiastically continued, grant's own father, jesse grant, was with engaged in a clandestine scheme to move southern cotton northward. his partners were the jewish

clothing manufacturers harmon, henry and simon -- march monohenry and simon mac. well, no sooner were those words out of my mouth, than a few chairs began to shift uneasily in the room, and my mentor or, the pioneering american jewish historian jacob marcus buried his face in his hands. i knew i was in big trouble really. i'd said something terribly wrong. but i studied the archives, i didn't know what the problem was. so fearing for the security of my position, i hobbled to the end of the lecture and invited questions. an old man in the front row sitting just about where you are rose to his feet. my name is mac, he memorably

began, and looking me straight in the eye he announced that was my great grandfather you were talking about! and, he continued after a long and rather dramatic pause, it's all true! [laughter] at that point the room relaxed, and dr. marcus looked up, and everybody smiled, and my academic career was saved. [laughter] ah, it took me about 30 years to get over that experience, but when general grant expelled the jews, i have returned to those notes concerning general orders number 11 and its aftermath and the story, i hope, remains full

of interest. now, general grant's order number 11 dated december the 17th, 1862, read as follows: the jews as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the treasury department and also department orders are hereby expelled from the department within 24 hours from the receipt of this order. we might have expected in the face of an order like this that thousands of jews would have been evicted from grant's territory, a huge area stretching from northern mississippi to caro, illinois, and from the mississippi river to the tennessee river.

memphis be -- memphis alone at that time was one of the largest jewish communities in the south. but surprisingly very few jews were actually expelled. some from the area around holly springs, mississippi, and others as we shall see from pa duke ca, kentucky. most jews, notwithstanding the order, remained unaffected for a long time. i wondered why. the answer lie buried in the 130 massive volumes known as the official record of the war of the rebellion, the title hints at which side produced that official record. [laughter] there we learn that less than 73

73 -- 72 hours after issuing general orders number 11, grant's forces at holly springs were surprised by 3500 confederate raiders led by major general earl van dohrn. grant himself was far from the scene when the raid happened, and the commanding officer -- a man named robert c. murphy -- was, according to the official record, quote, out at some entertainment which made him a trifle overbold. that's a nice way of saying that he was stone drunk. [laughter] the results proved devastating. holly springs veppedders, a million rations burned, hundreds of bills of cotton -- bales of cotton destroyed, hundreds of troops were captured, and there

were simultaneous raids that tore up 50 miles of railroad track as well as telegraph lines. and that is the key to the mystery; communications between grant's headquarters and the military command were disrupted for weeks by these surprise attacks. and as a result, news of grant's order expelling the jews spread slowly and did not reach headquarters in a timely fashion. sparing many jews who might otherwise have been banished. a copy of general orders number 11 finally reached paducah, kentucky, which had been occupied much earlier by grant's forces 11 days after the order was issued.

about 30 jews lived at that time in if paducah, most of them merchants, and they were divided into loyalties much like the rest of the population. the south supported the confederacy, some the u initiation s. owing to the war, corruption ran rampant in paducah, it was a hotbed of smuggling and recriminations abounded. not for the first time in such situations, suspicion fell particularly upon the jews. long-stereotyped as being financially unscrupulous. even though few in number, they actually played an outsized role in business and trade in paducah, and as immigrants they were easily marked by their european accents and foreign ways.

uni-ness and confederate -- unionists and confederates alike doubted their loyalties. so it was that caesar catskill, a staunch union supporter as well as all the other known jews in the city were handed papers ordering them to leave the city of paducah, kentucky, within 24 hours. women and children were expelled too, and in the confusion so it was recalled years later, one baby was almost forgotten, and two dying women had to be left behind in the care of neighbors. historian johnny l. robertson of paducah preserves a somewhat dubious local tradition that citizens of his city hid some jews to prevent their being

cement away. their being sent away. one soldier, he reports, is said to have knocked on the door of a jew and demanded, what are you? the resident of the house answered truthfully, tailor, to which the not-too-bright soldier replied, oh, sorry to bother you, mr. taylor. i'm looking for jews. as they prepared to leave their homes, caesar catskill and several other jews sent a telegram to president abraham lincoln describing their plight and pronouncing themselves greatly insulted and outraged by this inhuman order, the carrying out of which would be the grossest violation of the constitution, and our rights as good citizens under it.

they were echoing what uriah pleby whom rabbi angel talked about. lincoln, in all likelihood, never saw that telegram. he was busy preparing the emancipation problem proclamati. the irony of his freeing the slaves while grant was expelling the jews was not lost on some contemporaries. the "memphis daily bulletin" published the two documents, one above the other. the juxtaposition of these events also shaped the responses of jewish leaders to grant's order. some of them feared that blacks, that jews would replace blacks as the nation's stigmatized

minority. so caesar catskill wasted no time. on my way to washington in order to get this most outrageous and inhuman order of major general grant countermanded, he announced. and like a latter day paul revere, he rode down to washington spreading the news of general orders number 11 wherever he went. arriving in the nation's capital just as the jewish sabbath was concluding on january the 3rd, he called at once upon cincinnati's outgoing republican congressman john addison girly who enjoyed ready access to the white house. the congressman with catskill in tow sought an immediate audience with the president, and according to the likely

embellished account published many years later, lincoln sent word that he was always glad to see his friends and shortly made his appearance. abraham lincoln turned out to have no knowledge whatsoever of general orders number 11 because it had not reached washington. the telegraph lines were down. according to an oft-quoted report, lincoln resorted to biblical imagery in his interview with catskill, a reminder of how many 19th century americans linked jews to ancient israel and america to the promised land. and so, lincoln is said to have drawled, the children of israel were driven from the happy land

of canaan. yes, catskill replied, and that is why we have come unto father abraham's bosom. asking protection. and this protection, lincoln declared, they shall have at once. now, even if conversation didn't exactly go that way -- [laughter] lincoln did instantly instruct the general-in-chief of the army, henry hallic, to counterhand general orders number 11. hall ec seemed to have had his doubts concerning the authenticity of the original order even though catskill had shown him a copy. so in writing to grant he chose his words carefully. if such an order has been issued, his telegram read, it will be immediately revoked.

two days later several urgent telegrams went out from grant's headquarters in obedience to that demand, by direction of the general-in-chief of the army of washington, they read, the general order from these headquarters expelling jews from are the department is hereby revoked. in a follow-up meeting with jewish leaders, lincoln reaffirmed that he knew no distinction between jew and gentile. to condemn a class, he emphatically declared -- thereby turning grant's order practically on its head -- to condemn a class is to say the least the wrong the good with the bad. i do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account

of a few sinners. the revocation of general orders number 11 by no means ended the controversy surrounding its issuance. democrats in congress sought unsuccessfully to censure grant, newspapers debated the issue. in retrospect we know the jews were by no means the only victims of human rights violations during the civil war, there were many. but jews were the only religious minority expelled, quote, as a class from a large war zone. anti-jewish prejudices were heightened during the civil war by the prominence of several jews, notably jefferson davis'

right-hand man and cabinet secretary judah p. benjamin, in the ranks of the confederacy. senator benjamin wade called benjamin -- it's a wonderful line -- he called him an israelite with egyptian principles. [laughter] but the jewish confederates were by no means the only cause of prejudice. smuggling, speculating, price gouging, swindling, producing shoddy merchandise for the military, all were similarly laid at the doorstep of the jews. indeed, jews during the civil war came to personify wartime capitalism's ills. they bore disproportionate blame

for badly-produced uniforms, poorly-firing weapons, inedible foodstuffs and other substandard merchandise that corrupt contractors supplied to the war effort and smugglers marketed to unsuspecting troops. in the eyes of many americans, including some in the military, all traitors and smugglers and sucklers and wartime profiteers were smug-nosed jews where they were actually jewish or not. the implication echoing a perennial anti-semitic canard was that jews preferred to benefit from war rather than fight in it. now, there is no doubt that some jews did illegally enrich themselves during the war.

the famous jewish eternal organization admitted as much in a secret communication to its members. i'll read it, but don't tell anyone i told you. [laughter] information has been received here, doubtless authentic, proving the fact of certain of our co-religionists being engaged in an illegal traffic and other acts of disloyalty with those who are in rebellion against the government. what if cause of grant's order was that he identified a widespread practice, meaning smuggling, with a visible group and then blamed jews as a class for what was, in fact, an inevitable by-product of wartime

shortages exploited by jews and non-jews, civilians and military men alike? the occasion of the order, december the 17th, 1862, has long remained somewhat mysterious. why? the mystery is compounded by the fact that just eight days earlier grant had actually counterhanded an -- countermanded an horde from one of his colonels, john van dusen duboise expelling all jews and other vagrants from the much more limited area around holly springs, mississippi. and the answer to that mystery brings us back to my opening story. we now know that in mid december of 1862 ulysses s. grant

received a visit from his 68-year-old father, jesse r. grant, accompanied by members of the mack family of cincinnati, a significant jewish clothing manufacturer. any mack descendants in the audience? is. [laughter] herman henry and simon mack as part of an ingenious scheme had formed a secret partnership with the entrepreneurial, somewhat shady elder grant, and in return for jesse grant getting 25% of the profits, he agreed to accompany them to his son's mississippi headquarters, act as their agent to procure a permit for them to purchase cotton and help them to secure the means to transport that cotton to new

york. now, the macks certainly didn't know how troubled the relationship was between ulysses s. grant and his father. ulysses, like many a child who sets off on his own path, craved his father's approval but winced at many of the old man's shortcomings. in this case according to an eyewitness, the younger grant waxed indig in a minute at his father's -- indignant at his father's crass and illegal attempt to profit from his son's military status, and he raged at the jewish traitors who had trapped his old father into such an unworthy undertaking. he refused to provide the permit, sent the macks homeward on the first train to the north, and in high dungeon immediately

issued the order expelling jews as a class from his territory. in a classic act of displacement, the general expelled the jews rather than his father. [laughter] now, ulysses s. grant never made public mention of his father's corrupt scheme with the macks. he never defended himself at all, not even in his long and justly-celebrated personal memoirs written just prior to his death. that was a matter long past and best not referred to, grant's son frederick who helped him with the memoirs quoted his father as saying just as the memoirs passed over in silence

other embarrassing episodes from the war, most notably the general's bouts of drunkenness. so, too, did they ignore his orders expelling jews as a class. julia dent grant, ulysses' high-spirited wife, proved far less circumspect. you know what husbands seek to forget, sometimes their wives like to remember, and vice versa. it's still true. in her memoirs which, actually, were only published in the 19 1970s, she went out of her way to mention general orders number 11, characterizing it as nothing less than on obnoxious. the general, she recalled, felt that the severe reprimand he received for the order was deserved, for he had no right to

make an order against any special sect. now, had ulysses s. grant expressed such sentiments back in 1863, the subsequent course of his relationship with the jewish community might have been altogether different. but as it was, he found himself compared in some jewish circles to historic enemies of the jewish people, a long and ignoble list. the most common comparison was to the wicked hayman, the czar of persia, villain of the biblical book of esther which, as some remember, was read by jews -- is read by jews to this day on the holiday of -- [inaudible]

and precisely this comparison came back to haunt ulysses s. grant when he ran for president in 1868. thanks to his democratic opponents who used general orders number 11 to curry favor with the jews, the order became an important election-time issue. for the very first time in american history, a jewish issue stood front and center in a presidential contest, and jewish politics -- meaning politics focused upon jews as a group -- moved to the fore front of a presidential campaign. the problem for many jews was that they choked at the thought of voting for ulysses s. grant,

but they strongly supported his republican party's domestic policies concerning reconstruction. the democrats, after all, were eager to reverse reconstruction laws and to disenfranchise all black voters. so jews who supported republican policies faced a very difficult conundrum; should they vote for a party they considered bad for the country -- the democrats -- just to avoid voting for a man who had been bad to the jews? great. two of america's most distinguished reformed rabbis debated how jews should vote in

various newspaper columns. adler, the rabbi of chicago's oldest synagogue up known by its initials, kam -- by the way, today it is exactly opposite president obama's house in chicago, not then -- rabbi adler argued against voting on the basis of jewish interests and in favor of what he considered broad american interests. proud as he was of being a jew, he explained, it is different when i take a ballot in order to exercise my rights as a citizen. then i am not a jew, but i feel and act as a citizen of the republic. and he continued, if that party in whose hands i believe the welfare of the country was the

safest were to place a hayman at the helm of state, and if the opposite party whose nonexistence i believe would be better for humanity and my country were to place messiah at their head, make moses the chief justice and call the patriarchs to the cabinet, i should say press for under hayman, my father land, and here you have my vote each if all the jew in me mourns. ..

>> when the votes were finally tallied, he emerged by more than 134 electoral votes here in new york. we lost in new york by 10,000 votes.

historians think that that is a little too precise as to why it is true. voter fraud has long been suspected, but whatever the case, the jewish vote besides the pundits, now greatly exaggerated, the jewish vote could scarcely have made much of a difference. actually, as john hope franklin, the great historian pointed out years ago, more than half a million americans who were able to vote in 1868, especially those who voted in the south, likely voted for grants. they made much more of a difference in grants favors. a fitting epilogue to the tumultuous battle for the jewish vote appeared in newspapers across the country.

with the boat behind him, ulysses s. grant released an unprecedented letter, telling jews just what they wanted to hear from the president-elect. well, i have no prejudice against sex or race, but each individual should be judged by his own merit. order number 11 does not sustain that the statement, i admit, that order would never have been issued if it would not have been telegraphed without reflection. now, during his eight-year presidency, grant actually went out of his way to prove that apology genuinely.

he appointed more and jews to public office than previous presidents combined. the government of washington, the superintendent of indian affairs, a jewish adviser to attend the synagogue and more and more coming have to read the book. [laughter] in retrospect, the years of grant's presidency represented something of a golden age for american jews. during the all too brief period, jews achieved heightened status. judy is a recognition from grant is a coequal.

anti-jewish behavior decline, and jews looked optimistically characterized by sensitivity to human rights and interreligious cooperation. the logic of reconstruction. what one historian calls americans second coming. it shaped the golden age. the same post- civil war policies and values that opened up new opportunities, which opened up the same opportunities for blacks, it opened up new opportunities for jews. this is a reminder that there are two microphones. i will be taking questions in a moment or two. if you'd like to ask a question, approach one of those two microphones. remember when you do, i have not

finished yet, but tell us your name and out of respect for others, just one question please. now, let me tell you about what happened following his presidency. following grant's presidency, and he traveled around the world, including to the land of israel. in fact, he is very first president to travel there. on several occasions, he publicly reinforced his support for jews. in 1885 here in new york, the very same week as the greatest jew in the world at that time, moses matsuri of england, amazingly, the two men were linked together in the american jewish line as pure heroes and

humanitarians. and they were recognized in many synagogues. what a change from two decades earlier. subsequently, of course, reputation set as a stone. twentieth 20th century historians, some of them critical of benevolent policies towards blacks, criticized him, they blamed him for any number of things come at a rink in close the bottom of all-american presidents at one point. only warren g. harding ranked lower. you can't get much lower than that. [laughter] jews joined in the outpouring of criticism and standard jewish history, still general order number 11, and forget everything

that happened later, the new edition of the encyclopedia to confirmed, it has been linked here abruptly with anti-jewish sentiments. a re-examination of grant's career makes clear that he deserved better. this transformation from enemy to friend, from heymann unction heymann on 10 to a president who embrace jews as individuals, reminds us that even great figures in history can learn from their mistakes.

in america, hatred can be overcome. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> first i want to thank you for the most magnificent picture of this event. my question is this. the department that general grant was in charge of was not a small geographic area. i wonder whether you feel that his order was an emotional peak, rather than something to be implemented. for that regard, i ask you, did he have any sort of method of implementation of enforcing the order, or he got angry? >> well, we do know that the

compass of the order were sent a telegram in various directions. i actually reproduced one of those telegrams in the book. while i am sure that he got angry, i do think that efforts were made to send out in all directions copies of the order with the expectation that his order would be carried out. my suspicion is, which i cannot prove, was that many more jews would've been expelled. >> i am from yonkers. this has nothing to do with grant, per se, but i just want to find out under which president was the first jewish zion appointed to the cabinet?

>> well, it is interesting. one of the things i revealed here is that grant wanted to point joseph to the secretary of the treasury. joseph turned the job down. his family, and what he was needed in the bank, and there were other reasons. so the first jewish cabinet member is from here in new york. he is oscar strauss. he was appointed by theodore roosevelt in the 20th century. >> i once read that about 7000 jews were in the civil war. i assume the number were in grant's own army. how did this general order effect jews in the army, and was there backlash among officers?

>> is a wonderful question. the question is how did it affect people in grant's own army. we know that one of the reasons given later for revoking the order was jewish soldiers. i do reproduce in the volume a letter by a jewish soldier from cincinnati who resigned from the army, claiming that in the wake of general orders number 11, he finds that he can no longer serve. clearly, his position is made very uncomfortable by his fellow troops. clearly, there were in implications. the highest ranking jew, there was a man named marcus spiegel. that is the same spiegel who

founded the spiegel catalog. he unfortunately did not survive the war, but he did leave letters. he makes no reference to general order number 11 at all. i don't know why. whether letters were missing, whether he didn't choose to say it or it was too painful. i don't know. but it is mentioned, and the people who were affected are the jewish settlers. there are several telegrams asking grant, did you mean to expel the jewish settlers? if there is nobody to sell things to the troops, that is going to be very bad. the settlers, of course, were not expelled. lincoln overturned the order. >> my question deals with the

relationship of henry hewitt and grants. in 1862, it was very poor. in fact, grant had removed him from command. our use of specific grant would've done something as provocative as general order number 11 without him even knowing about it, in spite of the fact that the communications were down? >> well, first of all, it is wonderful that people really know their civil war history. it is great. i can't imagine. grant had no way of knowing when he issued the order that the telegraph lines would be cut. i am sure that grant assumed that copies of the order would be immediately telegraphed to washington, which was supposed to happen.

and then he would've seen it at once. at least, my understanding. otherwise, the whole story is unintelligible, it is that no one knew about it before this. precisely because the telegraph lines were down. now, what he would've done on his own, had he seen the orders, especially given his feelings towards grant, that it's hard to know. this is a particularly bad time. remember, we are talking prior to pittsburgh. grant has not yet proven himself, but again, it puts us in the realm of the if -- apparently, hell it didn't pay any attention and it was really by lincoln that the order was revoked. he was only the one to send out a letter, but making very clear

that it was lincoln that issued the order. >> thank you. >> you mentioned benjamin. i was wondering if you had a view of him was the confederacy more open towards the jews, were there more jews in leadership, or were they actually been serving? >> it is, of course, a good question, and there is no doubt. no jew was as high in the union as judah benjamin was in the confederacy. judah benjamin was secretary of state. like henry kissinger, somebody with that kind of power. but, we have to be a little careful before we make too much of the possession of jews in the south. remember, in many areas of the

south, whites were a minority. whenever you have a white man in charleston, whenever you have a white minority, jews are going to be excepted because the white minority is interested in taking every paleface to their side. in a sense, the lines are racial rather than religious, and so long as jews don't rock the boat and go along with the values of the minority groups, they can gain acceptance. while i think it is true that in areas of the south, jews did win more exceptions than they did in the north, it is rather important to remember the context under which that happened, which is not altogether pretty, and that makes the story looks a little

bit different. but it is worth remembering that the vast majority of jews were in the north, probably -- there are 150,000 jews at that time, 120,000 or so minorities -- only about 30,000 in the south. >> in the introduction of utah, it seemed to say that general order number 11 came out due to religious freedom in america. it was really that surprising since there was no guarantee of religion on the state level. in many of their lifetimes, jews would've received citizen content citizenship rights. >> it was not in 1776, the jews were poorly integrated and accepted on federal level. >> what you are pointing out, importantly, is that the first

amendment makes no -- it is only going to be in the 20th century that the sprinklers going to interpret the 14th amendment is applying all of the first of the states. most of the states, and certainly all of the states in which jews actually lived, had granted jews full equality by 1826 and the last was maryland. it is easy at any point to find discrimination and prejudice against jews, when you rip

compare the american situation to some utopian ideal, but what is going on elsewhere in the world, even in england where jews could not serve in government, or in germany, or in eastern europe, where the majority of jews, when you look that way ,-com,-com ma the american experiment is a great experiment. there is no parallel to the great document that america has. the documents are ideal, admittedly. had america not appear differently, most jews would not have crossed over there. it was mighty dangerous crossing

the ocean. they came to america believing that america was indeed different. and i think european jews took a great interest in the american experiment. yes, i do think that america come even before then, the new world, it opened up possibilities that did not exist in the old world. people looked in wonder. >> thanks. >> last question. >> i am fascinated by the idea which seems very compelling to me that grant's intemperate response was triggered by the fact that his father was complicit in the smuggling scheme. i have heard and read a little bit that lincoln's own sister and mom was also involved in smuggling.

and so it was pretty rampant. lincoln, in his own way, could be intemperate about that. his own frustration levels, which would indicate that this was really a matter of principle for him. he had a pretty short fuse when it came to smuggling as well. i wondered if that had come up in your research. >> i certainly don't know that his relatives were in cahoots with jews, i haven't discovered that. i think the point is there was a vast amount of smuggling, and from the point of view of the generals, this was the worst kind of un-american activity that could have been engaged in, because grant and chairman deeply believed that you can't trade with a country and also wage war with a country at one

and the same time. if in fact there had been a full scale blockade of the south, then the war would've ended much more quickly. and that is probably true. but we now know that the possibility of making money by crossing the blockade was enormous. you could make easily 400% on your money. that is more than i did in my bank account nowadays. [laughter] and that temptation was too great for people to withstand. of course, even in their own day, and maybe that is why we read history, efforts to blockade various countries, to get them to behave, they don't succeed as well as we would've liked. because people don't uphold the blockade the way we would wish. in that sense, we read about the

19th century, but we see parallels to our own day. thank you again. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. >> thanks. [applause] [applause] >> over the past four years, pulitzer prize-winning author david maraniss has been researching barack obama's ancestry. he also toured the family homes intends to find the origins of his mother's family. barack obama the story comes out in bookstores on june 19. book tv will give you an early look with exclusive pictures and videos, including our trip to kenya as we traveled with the author in january of 2010. join us on sunday, june 17, at 6:00 p.m. eastern.

later, at 7:30 p.m., viewer phone calls, e-mails and tweets for david maraniss on c-span 2's booktv. >> what i found again and again and again while i was researching this book is that not only was garfield's like a great presidency full of stories, but the people who surrounded him were unbelievable. you just couldn't make them up. butell was a dangerous man and hardly had to return it. if you read any other account, butell is described as a disgruntled baathist speaker. but that does not cover the smallest part of it.

he was uniquely american. there was no one to really understand what he was up to. butell was a self-made madman. he was smart and scrappy, he was a clever opportunist. and he would probably have been very successful if he hadn't been insane. he had tried everything, she and he had failed at everything. he had failed at evangelism and even at eight commune. the women at the commune nicknamed him charles get out. he survived on sheer audacity. he never bought a ticket for a

drink. train. he lived from boarding house to boarding house. even when he worked as a bill collector, he would keep whatever he managed to collect. after republican convention, butell became obsessed with garfield and immediately after the election, he began to stock the president. he went to the white house every day. at one point, he walked into the president's office while the president was in it. he even attended a reception and introduced him to garfield's wife. he shook her hand, gave her his card, and pronounced his name so that she would not forget him. it was like a hitchcock movie. it is incredibly creepy and absolutely terrifying. finally, butell had what he believed was a divine inspiration. god wanted him to kill the president. it was nothing personal, simply

god's will. a strange and fascinating and nearly as dangerous as butell, was chester arthur. he was a pain, preening, brutally powerful machine politician who appointed himself bartels and me. he wore canary yellow waistcoats. he recoiled at the slight of touch. his vanity was so outsized that he was famously ridiculed by another commerce and on the floor of congress. but he was no joke. he was dangerously powerful. as a senior senator from new

york, he controlled the new york customs house, which was the largest federal office in the united states and controlled 70% of the countries customs revenue. he had tightly controlled patronage within his state. he expected unwavering loyalty. he was enraged when his candidate, former president grant did not get the nomination. but he was eclectic and he could not control garfield. he looked at his ticket back into power. >> could watch this and other programs at booktv.org. coming up next, book tv prevents "after words." an hour-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview others. this week, steve coll's latest release, private