the men but they had to carry-on. government was not there. these people survived on their own. the connection to family mifflin and -- newfoundland family needs more than anything. that is a great value. the. . . . .

saw a vision of uncle tom being whipped to death. the title to give you a clue. i think he's a very important figure and he has been completely understudied. his role as judge advocate general was extremely significant to link them. his support for lincoln's policies are very important in the story is just an law so i thought it was time somebody brought that story to light. >> we are the maine state library in a public reading room and were going the maine author's collection. in the early 1920s, henry tunick who is the state laboring at the time started collecting books by maine writers trying to get them signed whenever possible and it has grown into this. >> welcome to maine's capital city on booktv. with the help of our time warner cable partners or the next 90

minutes we will explore the literary culture of this area as we visit with local authors and explore special collections that help tell the history of not only this state but the country as well. >> this is the first parish church in brunswick maine and it's significant to the story of uncle tom's cabin. in many plays places stories began here. it is here in this pew, pew number 23 that harriet beecher stowe by her account saw a vision of uncle tom dean clips to death. now uncle tom, as you probably know, is the title, the hero of her 1852 novel, uncle tom's cabin and the story of uncle tom's cabin is that there was a slave, a very very good slave who was sold by his first time owner, mr. shelby, and he sold him in order to pay a debt on

his plantation. through a series of misadventures you might say, he ends up in the hands of a very unruly owner who is so irritated by him and his goodness, that he whips him to death and this is the scene out of which the entire novel in many respects grows. harriet beecher stowe came from a family, a very religious family, the beach or's who are located in ohio where she grew up and they were a highly religious family and they were an antislavery family. she was married to calvin stowe who was a theology professor. a doctor of divinity and her whole understanding of the spiritual world in which she moved and lived was all dictated

by god, by the hand of god and she often said, she said about uncle tom's cabin, that it wasn't her her wrote uncle tom's cabin that the hand of god who wrote this novel eco-she had the specific idea that slavery was wrong and morally wrong, and that it should be abolished regardless of what the laws of the state or the country said at the time. she came to brunswick because her husband, calvin stowe, got a job at the college to be a professor there. he did not come with or however. he stayed in ohio and later moved to and over in order to complete his contract there as a professor. she came without him, with their children and she was also six months pregnant. she moved to brunswick in order to take up lessons here, awaiting the arrival of her husband. from the stories that were told of harriet beecher stowe is that

she was a small, petite woman and she didn't take much care in terms of how she dressed. she was a very intense woman but she was also very much a woman of her time. she was known then really mostly as a housewife. she was totally overwhelmed with the number of children she had. she had seven and she was pregnant, so she was an overworked housewife and mother who came to worship here probably with her children. kathryn beecher who eventually moved in with her and they all came and worshiped here this church. he is not really in a cabin that he is in a slave hut. what is he doing? he is learning to read the bible and it is in the bible or the bible is an inter-test for uncle tom's cabin because what we do, right and wrong, is what this

novel is telling us to do. one thing that irritates people about uncle tom's cabin is how didactic it is. several times the narrator, still, appears in the novel and saying no reader what would you do in this situation? would you do the right thing or the wrong thing? that kind of moral order is what she is re-creating in uncle tom's cabin. she is really kind of writing a new bible, -- >> we are at number six -- 63 central street at the house of harriet beecher stowe where she lived and worked in 1850. it was also known as the house named after the original owner. she rented this house from him. he does live down the road over there and he did most of the repairs on the house when she lived here. she needed new sink and she needed a new stove or go the

house when she moved in, she complained about the state of disrepair. it was drafty, cold but over time she managed to do some renovations herself and she wrote funny letters back to her friends and family about how hard it was to get people to help her with these repairs. she would have to get into long conversations to give anybody to help her out. she paid $125 a month for this house which was much more than they could afford. and she was here for two years. she lived here with her children. kalb and her husband eventually came up but her sister kathryn beecher lived with her too so it was a house just chock full of people. we will go inside. it is a pretty big home that could accommodate a lot of people but maybe not that many

people. so here we are in the house and there is very little of this that would have looked like this when stowe was here. it was completely renovated, the carpet and the staircases have been transformed so there are some original wallpapers underneath but even that does not date back to stowe's times of the house has had many reincarnations. it was where she was able to think and write about her novel, uncle tom's cabin. for me one of the important features of this house is the kitchen, because the kitchen is first though, i housewife herself and her mother, it is really the home and the heart of who she was. in the kitchen and we don't know if this was the original kitchen by any means but it was in the

kitchen that stowe conducted your own classes. she taught her children herself, sort of an old form style of holmes cooling but also invited children from the neighborhood to think and work with her. she did reading, book up her own stuff as she was but also she would read from the bible, the novels of -- the waverley novels friends and so this is really the place where it all happen, happened, where it ought to place, where uncle tom died you might say at the first parish church. she did this in installments so shero chapter by chapter not unlike the way dickens would write. he would write his things occurred to him. she needed time and space to think and work and she didn't have a lot of that said she would have to squeeze in her writing in between you know taking care for children, cooking, cleaning and doing all of these other things at the same time and that was

something -- you know how you squeeze them in the wee hours of the morning or very late at night is probably when she wrote. she had dedication to the class, her writing. if you read her stuff you know, she wrote in such an engaging manner, work that could actually be read by people like her, by her children. uncle tom's cabin is a children's story and that is who she was writing for. she was writing to kind of educate young people on the politics and the social situation of her time. this is middle-class i guess but before the publication of uncle tom's cabin they were living off of calvin salary which really wasn't very much. after the publication of uncle tom's cabin she became a sensation, the most famous author of america and in the world. she did a tour of great britain part no i mean this novel brought her great things and with the came considerable prosperity though there would have been more if she had

negotiated a better contract with her publishers etc., etc. but she continued to write and she wrote prolifically after the publication of uncle tom's cabin. after that she had written sketches for the magazine but this was her first big novel. after that she wrote several and all of them were income generating novels. she was a housewife and didn't have much of an income but she became prosperous and her house, her real house, she might say the house that she built in hartford connecticut is basically a testament to her prosperity that came after the publication of uncle tom's cabin. this is where she lived before which says a lot about what the novel did for her personally, which is -- bowdoin college acquired this house a few years ago and they are in the process of renovating it and making it accessible to

the public. so it is still undergoing commerce asian and her remains in process but we hope that something will, the house to make it accessible for people in maine and those who are curious about the novel and the woman who wrote it. the community of brunswick really welcomed stowe with welcome arms. not only was she a -- but in her own right there was something about her that appeal to the neighbors and i think she might've been something of an eccentric. there are stories of her being harriett looking, not really calmed her hair because she was doing so many things at the same time that there was something quite lovely about her and she formed friendships with people in the neighborhood in brunswick but that is only part of the legacy of stowe in -- the third and last stop on our

brunswick tour, our still are tour of brunswick and we are here in special collections with richard lindemann. we are just going to look at some of the documents to see how the novel evolved first as a serial and published out of washington d.c.. as i said before, this is how she sent in, chapter by chapter and it became increasingly popular. it has no intention of becoming a full-fledged novel and it was just going to the material published in the newspaper but because it was so popular it transformed into a full-fledged novel. in the first year, 1852 and this is a first edition when it was first published, in the first week it sold 10,000 copies and by the end of the year i think it was 300,000 copies. >> it has never gone out of print sense. the national area had around 15,000 subscribers but families

awaited the national air when it came. it could be read as a group and they could follow along on the serial page. these are serial editions. they were cheap paperbacks if you will. they were sold in book markets in urban centers which allowed an increasingly literate british public to read popular novels and two by them affordably and if you think about them as serious soap operas they tended to be that kind of fiction. >> domestic fiction was the most popular form of fiction in the 19th century. >> hawthorne considered her a second rate hack and no one appreciated his first great literature and as we passed the time went -- [inaudible]

there was a greater success rate among women writers in the late 19th century. spat think this is probably one of the most influential works of literary fiction in american history. as we said before not just in 1862. the popularity as richard was saying was something that had come her to the present in the 1890s during the jim crow era. uncle tom's cabin again became a very important novel for african-americans. is exerted enormous influence not just on the writing but leading political figures and social activists. the novel was written very much to model during the reconstruction era f. drunk with tom's cabin.

james baldwin famously in 1955 you know, publishes a screed against uncle tom's cabin that for him too in the 1950's he says no novel has ever exerted influence over him like the power of uncle tom's cabin and it's really the sentimental power of this novel that lasts very much to the present day. >> it augusta maine was first established by english settlers from the plymouth colony in 1629 and was settled as a town in 1754. the city is now the capitol of maine. booktv as it did the city with the help of our partner time warner cable to explore the local literary and historical atmosphere. >> people in maine like to read a friday and i think because of people like steven king people who enjoy reading his books, and you have people that like reading about small-town maine but i think maine likes fiction,

stories about their state and i think you know they want to read stories about states that are landlocked. i think if i would say anything, there are people who want a good story. you often see people in maine that may be wealthy but they were where flannel shirts and they don't show off their wealth. i think people, if i could say anything about the stories, they want people that are true, not flashy or surely so i can see them relating to this story about a simple people who go about their lives. i think the writers in maine, they take them what they know. i think writers will write about memoirs, families, historical things that have happened in maine whether it's more about the sea and our connection to

maine is a great fishing tradition as well so i think mainers are like canadian, they love their sees tories so i think those real stories about our past, joshua chamberlain you know who was courageous during the civil war. i think mainers like most states are very proud of their history and they want to learn about leaders who have inspired people of maine over the years. senator susan collins and snowe, people enjoyed knowing more about their history and their past. >> next booktv travel just outside a gusset to hear from colby college professor and local author, larissa taylor. ms. taylor talks about her book, "the virgin warrior" the life and death of joan of arc. >> well i wasn't interested in joan of arc at the beginning at all. she seemed to be too much of an anomaly, teenage girl who went off to fight and change the 100

years war and then i saw some films in 1999, some bad ones and some good ones but the portrayal made me think this girl could be more interesting than i thought. so from that i realized looking in the library that there were more original sources from the period period about joan of arc than almost any medieval figure including kings and queens. the typical portrayal of her as someone who is just a force of god or a force of the saints and when i started reading the talk them is because we not only have her own voice at trial but we have the villagers, the soldier she fought with the testified 25 years after her death about her and these are voices that are completely silent in the historical record. they talked about her and for example the villagers in particular would say things like oh well she didn't want to dance with us. we made fun of her a lot and that struck me as odd because she got the town a tax exemption after all.

and so my students were able to bring to that the idea that maybe she was a little bit bullied as a girl and we do know from sources that around the age of 16 when she left home for the first time, her family household had become very regressive. her brothers were tattling on her about the fact that she was going off and talking to people in other towns and her father threatened to drown her if she went off to war. so, they try to marry her off and joan actually went on her own and fought a marriage contract and one. she was not the fun-loving girl. she was more of an average pious. she would go on little pilgrimages to places and again was a little bit odd according to the local people but she got her way. she went on two separate missions if you will, to see the captain to try to get him to center to the heir to the king of france and was only after the

third interview with with the duke of lauren and at that point he gave the go-ahead for her. they had a very mixed kind of vendor view because he wanted things that she didn't want to give like healing him and so forth and she said get rid of your concubine. one of the things i feel as the historian is i have to feel the pulse is that i study so i try to trace all of joan's footsteps, on horseback but you are going to all the places she went, staying in them and trying to get a sense of the kind of journey she made. she went 11 days their enemy territory controlled by englander burgundy just to get to the future king and so the fact that she was willing to do that as a 17-year-old girl is astonishing to me. one she was given the seal of approval after the many examinations for both theological and gynecological to make sure we have she was pure and good catholic she was finally fitted with armor which by the way i tried on versions of that it myself and it's

astonishing that a 17-year-old girl could wear armor and said on a horse, have a standard and so forth. i think that is all they wanted her to do, that she would fight the english that way because they had been besieging for six months at that time. so when they finally got john ready to go, she looks the part. she already had been very outspoken and even sassy and her responses to them and so they finally sent her. and so it was about february of 1429 when they decided to outfit her for war, april 29 they sent her to arnelle. she had been chomping at the bit in people who saw her said she was like a woman in labor waiting to have a baby. she wanted to get to war and i think that is one of the dominant characteristics of joan, she loved warfare. she is not this crying st.. she's a woman who is full of action, full of self-confidence

and really wants to do what all of the king's men had not been able to do before this and that was, they were so chivalrous. they were giving gifts to the english and so forth. joan wanted to be english and i think she had a vision that was very far ahead of its time in the sense that she imagined a fence that wasn't just factions fighting amongst themselves but there was one france so it doesn't happen in her lifetime but i think she starts creating that idea. so she phot basij eau gallie on was lifted in the week after she arrived. men started massing to the king's army because they were following joan. they won several more victories with john insisting on being a warrior and a leader making major decisions that could've could have gotten her in trouble. i just -- first went to where she was born and it was a frontier town in her own day. it has 160 inhabitants but it

was larger because it was on a trade route with burgundy. it's a very small failing and you get the sense when you are there that joan was the big fish in a little pond and again, her actions later on both in warfare and also and just speaking to nme jesses -- judges were theologians shows that she really wasn't afraid of anything including her own family. i think she wanted to get out so she went about eight miles to the north. she lied by the way to get there and many times in her lifetime, her short lifetime, she lied to get what she wanted because she had a greater mission. finally she got the approval from -- where i also went and from there and went to the war valley and basically retraced her route as much as i could going to the towns on the way. saint kathryn and that is where she said that her famous sword would be found.

the only problem is she had stayed there and heard mass several times so when she set foot the futurecast -- king asked her if she knew was there and she said no. those are one of many examples of her fabricating the truth a little bit she was anxious to get away from home. to me i don't use the word easily because my students do but that is all. even if she was helped by the court could do the things that she did, she really did fight. she had for nature injuries, and narrow and arrow wound to the shoulder and went to the hip. she stepped on a spike track and fell off the ladder when -- and she made major leadership decisions so how could a 17 or 19-year-old girl do that? it couldn't happen today to the same degree so i think she became much more than the court planned her to be but at the same time john was very much junso when they told her to shut up and go along with with the

troops are self-confidence really comes through and again where she got that from i don't know. but she showed that throughout and when i talk to one of the officers who portrays her, she said since i was her age when i played the part, i think it was just the confidence of youth, as someone my age. i would be very scared to get on a ski trail or something like that and go down it for the first time but john at 17 was not to be afraid of anything. i think she thought she was invincible and that communicated itself to people around her. she did not try and drag them to church all the time even though she suggested they go to mass before fighting but it's a very different picture than you get from a lot of fiction and a lot of the films film set of popular as her story and even her sainthood which i think it's made her into a don't mess with john kind of figure which i found out a lot. people were not necessarily happy with my interpretation because i wanted to situate her firmly as a girl growing up in

the 15th century and having this extraordinary thing happened to her because of her. in the process to change the course of the 100 years war and change the idea of france, think the larger theme is the theme of women in history because i think students come in and a lot of historians and non-historians repeat the idea that history is always progressive. it started out with women with no rights and suddenly we have all the rights and we know that is not true but i think one of the things that it tells me is that history is a zigzag that at times in history there was definitely a place for very strong women and in this case a teenaged girl, to operate and have a really strong effect on historical events. i think it's a good corrective to what we tend to assume about especially the middle ages. >> coverage of our recent visit to augusta maine continues here on booktv.

>> my name is richard lindemann and i'm director of the mitchell department of special collections and archives have bowdoin college. what i have chosen free today for you today are some selections from our oliver otis howard collection and it's one of the largest collections we have in the apartment and it is the most heavily used. the reason that is so is that howard's career documents so many periods of american history that you can have people who are interested in the indian wars in the west or the history of the civil war interested in race relations all coming to bowdoin to look at these papers and the only thing they have in common is that oliver howard -- howard is a first and foremost a bowdoin alumnus class of 1850, born in maine, went on to the rank of general during the civil war and then became head of the friedmans bureau, was

superintendent at west point for a time, was in charge of the indian wars in the west for a while, founded howard university in wishing to d.c. as well as lincoln memorial university in tennessee, and throughout his life was engaged in those institutions that he had such a large part in forming. at voted for and since he was on the board of trustees for years and years. he served as president of both howard and lincoln memorial university at different times in his life. he was awarded the medal of honor for service in the civil war, really had a distinguished career in lots of different ways. what i pulled your images of him overtime, early on. he is a general by then but still with with the young countenance and then some older ones including an interesting book had rendition of him that reduces him to simple elements but provides for a grand

portrait at the same time. a photograph here of him with chief joseph who was the chief of the tribe in the northwest, where he was involved in indian wars and the relocation of those tribe members to the reservation. a rather imperious howard. noticed that his right arm is gone. he had amputated during the civil war and then sort of a pop a howard showing one of his sons and two of his grandsons all of whom have followed him into the military service. this is very late in life for him. and then finally and ultimately a group shot that shows howard sitting right there along with all of the great white men who at the time formed the visiting board for bowdoin college.

.. >> this one gives a motion of late 19th century social life in a small town in maine. this is a letter that howard is writing to his son, guy, on christmas morning in 1861. howard, at the time, is in camp california, just outside of

washington, d.c., and it's a great -- his son a probably three or four, maybe five years old at the time, and it's a great letter showing a civil war officer trying to be a father. the toin is very paternal, but not in a patronizing way. lots of pictures, lots of explanation about how things are, and in that sense, it also provides great documentation for camp life so scholars figuring out the social history, what camp life was like, what they were doing when not shooting at each other, the letters to home are great resources in that regard. this one shows a tent, but with a chimney on it. people don't associate chimenies and tents necessarily together, but they happen all the time. the back of the letter is more

camp scenery together with portraits of how how -- howard's family, including guy, whom he's writing the letter, and then there's the general himself, and then the other children in the family, and then who's this? this, of course, is mama. there is an 1861 -- and then in 1862 in june, he's at fair oaks, and he gets shot a bullet, i don't know what, something penetrates his right elbow, and he has to have the arm amputated, and so this is a set of letters and documents that document that event. one of them is a letter written to him from his brother, in maine at the time, william howard saying, bow, i wish i would be with you.

it's a letter that gives an indication of how quickly news could travel. this is within days of howard being injuredded, and, already, he's getting letters from home expressing concern. this is the transcription of the telegraph that was acceptability -- that was sent to inform the howard family in maine that he had been injured or had been wounded, and then within a day, a letter from howard back home, written, of course, with his left hand so you get a sense that, oh, something's happenedded here, that he's well enough to want to write, but that he also makes the good old college try writing left-handed because he doesn't have any choices other than that. later, he was awarded the medal of honor for service at fair oaks. about a year later, we have another letter from him, again to guy, and so you can see he's

sort of figured out how to write with the left hand, at least it's a legible letter now, and this is a great letter for a couple reasons. one of them is that he talks -- he's in an encampment outside of chattanooga at this point in anticipation of the march to georgia writing about how guy should be working really hard at school, doing well at school because all the kids around here, that is in southern tennessee, they don't know how to write. they have to write with an x mark, and he shows an example of how an illiterate in tennessee would be signing his name, just with an x and having somebody else write the name because he was unable to do so. there's examples of more drawings, what the topography looked like, what he tent looked like, and the reason that this also has some interest is that

he's talking about the illiterates of tennessee, and later in his career, in the 1890 #s, he's fundamental in establishing lincoln memorial university established for two reasons. one because there's a need for education in tepees, and the other is there's a need for a memorial to lincoln in the south. he put those sentiments together and served as president in 1890s. this an odd ball piece because it's signed by jefferson davis, whom howard theoretically, if not actually, would be shooting against in a few year's time, he was the secretary of war before the civil war, and commissioned second lieutenant. after graduating from bodoin, he went to west point. jefferson davis, oddly enough, was an honorary degree

recipient. after the civil war, howard was appointed commissioner of the friedman's bureau. here's a letter from mary shad carrey, who is a black woman, who is writing to howard while howard is at this time president of howard university. he held both positions in the late 60s, early 1870s, and he had been a founding father of howard university. he and a group of others in a congregation church in washington, d.c. set about after the civil war determining how to provide help, particularly to blacks and a variety of disadvantaged in the dc area. nay initially established what was a seminary, and that very quickly morphed into a university so howard university was founded. in indian affairs, he's not considered progressive. put him on the reservation would be okay with him, but in terms

of his treatment of blacks and his involvement with blacks, he would have been. he's also called the christian general because depending on your perspective, he was either pious or righteous. he expected his troops to comport themselves in the highest christian matter, but there are also suggestions he was really preaching and maybe not the easiest guy to live with if what you want to do is smoke a cigarette and have a drink. that righteousness or piety, depends how you look at it, carries with him throughout life, and he makes no apologies for it, but he's also singled out because of it, certainly in the biographies published since. he was superintendent at west point, and while at the friedman's bureau, the first blacks were matriculated at west point or admitted.

here's a letter from frederick douglass writing to howard in 1880 that he appreciates howard's sentiment and support for having blacks go to west point, but later in the letter, he digresses into a very bitter set of paragraphs talking about christians aren't necessarily the best people in the world to be criticizing anybody else for how well they treat their brothers. later in life, he settles into writing speeches, writing articles, writing addresses, and as an example of that, i pulled out one that we have here, which is a text of an essay on the influence of women in the great conflict. later in life, he's rem -- remembering about what the role

of the woman was in the civil war, staying home, caring for the children, nursing the wounded, or providing letters that would build morale. he also occasionally references people who -- women who went to the front lines when their husband's were injured and taking care of them there, gives the antedote of a wife who, when the pickets are established on both sides of an upcoming conflict, comes down the middle and shoes away people stuck in the middle, innocence. there's also a good antedote story with howard losing his arm of being visited by another general who had lost his left arm, and the joke, of course, is, well we can go clothes shopping together. that's some humor in it, but it's a tough time really. >> the capital of maine, home to

bodoin college, kobe college, and we explored the area's literary culture on a recent visit with the help of our partner, time warner cable. >> the book is lincoln's forgotten ally, judge advocate general joseph holtz, and the author, lincoln prize winner, a elizabeth leonard. elizabeth, tell our audience who the man is. >> judge holtz is a kentucky native who came to washington in 1857 after a career as a lawyer and an orator and became a member of james buchanan's cabinet and served there until the end of buchanan's administration. the last post in the administration was to serve as the secretary of war so he was the secretary of war during the succession winter. he then, in 1862, after lincoln

was president, a year and a half into the war, was lincoln's judge advocate general, head of military justice overseeing the court marshalls and military commissions and so on that the war department had to conduct. >> why a book on this gentleman? >> well, the title showed give you a clue. he's a very important figure, and he has been completely understudied. he's not entirely forgotten. that might be a slightly misleading aspect of the title, but he's remembered for one aspect of his service in the government which is he was the prosecutor of the assassins of lincoln, johns wilkesbooth ox team. he served from 1857 until 1875. he was important in the civil war. his role was extremely significant to lincoln. his support for lincoln's policies was very important, and his story has just been lost. it was time somebody brought the story to light. >> what did you learn about him?

i mean, obviously, there was an interest in him going in, but through the process, what did you learn about him that most interested you? >> well, i knew from very early on in my acquaintance with judge holt as a historical figure that he was a complicated person. in fact, any initial introduction to him was in connection with the first book where i was studying women's involvement in the civil war, and he appeared as someone who issued a legal brief from the administration that made sure that one of the women i was studying was not allowed to continue working for the federal government as a doctor, and i was very angry at him, and i knew that he was a very complicated and powerful figure. the more i studied him, the more i found that he was even more complicated than i had realized, a very interesting, wise,

thoughtful, prickly, difficult, challenging figure who was both powerfully loved and powerfully hated, and even i came to forgive him for his -- the reasons that i was initially so angry at him, but i'm very aware of the complexity of his character, and that's the thing i found most interesting and that was most striking to me as i did my research, just the deep complexity of this person, and the profound ways in which his choices affected his life. >> can you expand upon that? >> well, most significantly, in terms of his choices, he was a kentuckian, grew up in a slave holding family, his entire family with the confederacy with the exception of one aunt, his lovely aunt marryann, a loyal unionist, and so by making the choice to serve the union,

initially as james buchanan's secretary of war and not support succession, and then by making the choice to work as lincoln's judge advocate general, and even before that to serve very faithfully as lincoln's agent to keep kentucky from seceding, he made choices that damaged his relationships with almost everybody he knew and everybody he loved for the first half of his life. that was very interesting to me. >> i read reviews after you won the lincoln prize and one states how great the book is, but they say you really exposed his strengths and weaknesses. >> right. >> what were his strengths? what were those weaknesses? >> well, among his strengths i would include his enormous intelligence. he was very learned. he was very bright.

his family recognized his intelligence early on in life and positioned him the member of the family or his generation to go forth and bring glory upon the family. he was very committed. once he made a decision, he stuck with that decision. he was very loyal, and he was very determined. those are the kinds of strengths he had, or among his strengths. his weaknesses are sometimes related to his strengths. certainly, what people remember most of him is the prosecution of the lincoln assassins, and he was determined to punish them. he was sure that the people that were before the bar in washington were guilty, and he was determined to punish them, and in order to do that, he pursueded some very bad leads, and he made decisions about witnesses that were not very smart, but that reflected his determination to avenge

lincoln's death. as much as he was strong and determined and committed, he sometimes could go too far and i would say one of his greatest weaknesses is that he really had a hard time forgiving, even those people who were close to him at one point when he felt they had made the wrong decision. for example, the family members with the confederacy. it was very hard for him to forgive them and move forward. that was difficult. he was a very, very sensitive perp. >> for people who saw the conspirator -- >> right. >> seen his depiction in that, would you compare that depiction with what you learned? >> well, i think the acting is great. i think -- i think the actor did a wonderful job portraying a character. it is not the joseph holt that i know from my research.

i'm delighted, of course, that joseph holt's name has become known and he's hit the silver screen, but the character in "the conspirator" is much less law-abiding and much more manipulative and vicious than the joseph holt than you know -- and underhanded. i think one of the film tries to suggest is that the federal government largely in the person of edwin stanton and the person of joseph holt basically railroaded poor mary surrot to her death, and without any interest in what the truth was. they determined she should hang regardless, and they went after her, poor mary, and this is not the way the assassination trial played out. there was no deal between stanton and holt to ensure she was convicted and so on.

that made him out to be a vengeful two dimensional character who didn't reflect him and who he is as i know him. >> being the advocate in the lincoln administration and afterwards had to be an incredibly difficult job. could you sort of expand upon what that job was maybe before the war and then the job that he ended up in? >> well, the job before the war was basically there was one person who had a small office who kept track of whatever sorts of military offenses occurred in an army that was 16,000 people strong. you know, right up prior to the war. that's how big the u.s. army was. during the civil war, the army expanded to, you know, 3 million people, two and a half million or so in the north, and this meant that the amount of case work that he had to oversee was extraordinary, and he also was given responsibility for pursuing civilians who were

engaged in disloyal acts, treasonnist behavior and so on. although, he didn't pursue every case or serve on every case himself, obviously, a lot of court marshalls on the field and so on, it was his responsibility to make sure as much as he could justice was prevailing in the cases and that punishment was meeted out as it should be and people's rights were protected. it is a massive assignment way past the end of the war. he stayed in that position until 1875 so-dramatically expanded position, and he also had the role in that position of making law, so much law about war didn't even exist because this was a war of the likes which the united states had never seen. to many, many policies around how the war should be conducted and so it needed to be created, and he was influential there, and he also was responsible to a

great extend for making sure that the president's policies were supported and, you know, that people followed his policies, not least of which was emancipation. he had an e -- enormous responsible job and worked constantly. >> the passages in the book show the relationship with lincoln. >> right. >> would you talk about the relationship? how often they met? what was the relationship like? >> myceps of the relationship was it must have been extremely cordgil and people asked me over the years did he meet lincoln at all? what contact did they have? they met often and for many hours at a time. any capital case had to be disci'sed with the president, and the -- discuss with the president, and the president had to sign off on it. therethere were a lot of those s

across holt's deaf. -- desk. sometimes they went hours after a time discussing cases and cases and making decisions. lincoln hand picked him. people would have recommended him, but people chose him and appointed him to be the judge advocate general so lincoln knew of him beforehand. i know he did and republicked him and knew he was the right -- respected him and knew he was the right man for the job. all i'll add to that is i think you could argue that their dynamic was a good cop, bad cop dynamic, and invariably holt was the bad cop or tough cop. lincoln was much more inclined to parton, if he could, and holtfuls tougher, but lincoln often agreed. they agreed something like 80% of the time, but if there was a

choice, it was most likely lincoln saying let's pardon this fellow. >> well, obviously, he supported the president -- >> and he loved him. >> okay. that was my question. what his thoughts were on longes as -- leng as a person. >> i think he thought lincoln was a little soft, you know, on some things related to military law. i think that he probably, like stanton, wished lincoln was more self-protective. he was famous for going out without protection, and holt, one. one of the things he did at the end of the assignment as buchanan's secretary of war was ensure lincoln got into washington and was inaugurated safely, and he carried the pride of having overseen that throughout the war, and having spent many hours and days and weeks trying to find where the traitors were in the north who

might -- the northerners knew the south was at odds with them, but where were the south's allies in the north? how could they be uncovered and plots stopped and so on, and holts was committed to that, devoted to lincoln, and when lincoln was assassinated, i can't imagine how devastating that would have been for him, especially looking back four years and knowing that he, himself, had been so instrumental in making sure lincoln was safe at the start of his presidency. >> do you think that personal relationship and his feelings towards lincoln potentially could have clouded at all the prosecution of the conspirators? >> i think it factors into why he became so obsessed, certainly, but i think there are signs of his determination to punish the leadership of the confederacy throughout the war so before the assassination you

can find him talking about the way traitors should be handled. he never blamed the common people in the south. he never blamed the people who were misled by these terrible leaders who were seeking their own power and so forth, but he was quite angry at all of the leadership. people like jefferson davis and so on who he had known when he was in buchanan's administration, and davis was a senator, and, you know, his own brother-in-law, david yuley, the senator from florida, who had left, you know, congress in the early part of the 1860s, and so he already was enrage, but i think his devotion to lincoln and his affection for him certainly would have contributed to him making bad judgment calls through the trial, although people said that he conducted an

extremely fair trial during the time that the trial was underway, and after the fact, i think there was a lot of shock that mary was executed, although prior to her execution, there were clamorings for her execution in the press, but when it happened, it was shocking to a lot of people, and it was at that point that the condemnation of holt's conduct of the trial really begins to be heard. >> after 9/11, there was a huge debate in the country with the patriot act and, you know, how that impacted civil liberties. >> right. >> i've got to think in reading some of the book that that was a huge, huge area, even during that time. >> oh, absolutely, and, in fact, george w. bush, president bush, made that connection explicitly, connected himself, made the parallel with lincoln and the need to suppress civil liberties in order to protect the nation.

>> where did judge holt fall on that? >> places where civil liberties need to be suppressed, but in doing so, it tends to be easier for people to look at holt and say what a wicked man he was, and forget that these were lincoln's own policies, and he was pursuing lincoln's policies. lincoln named him judge advocate general april 3rd, 1862 and extended the writ of habeas corpus that same month, and so it was just two to three weeks after lincoln appointed holt that he extended the writ of habeas corpus and the preliminary emancipation proke clay mages. he wouldn't have put him in that position if he didn't expect him to follow through on the policies and support them. holt was doing lincoln's work. >> was it an hsh --

an issue in that time like now? >> oh, yes. it was a big issue. the sus presentation of civil liberties, there were many complaints, and even, you know, lincoln had a famous dispute with the chief justice of the supreme court about the sus presentation of civil liberties, but lincoln's response was should i protect one law in order to watch the entire nation collapse? you know, if you protect the civil liberties of people to rebel to that extent that they destroy the nation, then what, you know, what have you done, really? better to save the nation. >> you mentioned he's from kentucky -- >> uh-huh. >> when he was young, his family, a slave owning family? >> yes, in a very, very tiny town on the ohio river. >> how did he make that transition and his family not make that transition and how did that impact him permly? >> that is a really good question, and, in fact, as i

think about where i'd like to go in my future research, that's one of the things that i really would love to understand better. he came from a family that had a certain set of values. he loved his family. he was very close to his family, but he was lifted up out of his family and sent to get an education of a sort that no one else in the family got. he had a brother who became a doctor, but he didn't have anybody else who went as far as he did in terms of his education, and then going out into the world in the way that he did. he was lifted up to become an important figure, and he traveled around the world. he took two extended trips to europe and the middle east. these were very inflew enissue -- influential for him.

he saw the importance or he understood the importance of the american republic system in a way that he might not have had he not traveled and so on, but there are many questions, particularly, i think, about his transition to becoming such an adamant emancipationist that i think are still somewhat mysterious. i think we can explain the support for the union based on his having traveled more, having gone outside of the union, having had the education that his family members didn't have, having the experience that he had, where that anti-slavery colonel started in him, that's a mystery to me, and that does -- that can be tracedded back to his teens actually. there's a -- i cite a speech that he gave in -- when he was about 17, where he spoke very harshly about slavery, and i

don't quite understand where that came from. later in his life, while he was still a young man and still living in kentucky and part of the time in mississippi, there were letters from his uncles while he, himself, still was committed to slavery, letters from his uncles that nevertheless suggested that they suspected that he would someday become an abolitionist, and they hoped he wouldn't, but they suspected that someday he'd move to a northern state, and they hoped he wouldn't and begged him not to betray his roots. yet, he did. how he made that transition is a mystery. up fortunatelily, so much of the material we have on holt, although it's abun adapt, the vast majority is material that is stuff that people, correspondence that people sent to holt, and we have to try to discern what he was thinking based on things that people say to him and guess what he wrote in response or what he wrote

that provoked them to say things. we need his letters -- if there was a diary where he wrote thoughts, but we don't have those things or an autobiography. that would be an interesting question to be able to answer. >> there's so many interesting books on lincoln and the civil war. how do you go about writing a book like this? what's your process? >> well, for me, it -- the beginning is just -- once i have a sense of something that's interesting to me, burying myself in the archives, really, and i spent years in, you know, smaller chunks of times at the national arian vives and the library -- archives and the library of congress and the libraries in kentucky pursuing the primary sources, and i also, in the case of this book, had the amazing good fortune of meeting descendants of one of his brothers, and those people

became significant contributors to my understanding of him based on the lore that came down through their family about him and the material they still had that was related to him, and they actually had some of the letters that the had written to a niece and a nephew and so op so it's really the -- for me, it's the primary source of just immersing myself in those, and then beginning to try to sort through it and create some kind of narrative, but historians are always in the business of putting puzzles together; right? making sense out of chaos, and, you know, i hope i've done him justice, but it is -- it's a very complicated process, and i know i've been asked whether i would be interested in doing a biography of benjamin butler because here's a colby graduate, a very important civil war general, and a very complicated figure as well, and i thought

about it, but i'm not sure how many biographies a person can do in their lifetime. it takes a lot of getting to know somebody. i lived with joseph holt in my head for a long time. >> for some writers going to a place where something happened, and, you know, connecting back is important. did you go to the places where -- >> absolutely. because i came to holt -- well, i was first introduced to him early on in the research on women in the civil war, but later, i focused on the assassination and aftermalt, and at that point, i went to all kinds of places around washington and so on and stayed in a hotel next to mary's house, and so i went to a lot of places that were relevant to the assassination, and then studying his life fully, i went to kentucky, see the old family mansion, and where he went to school, and some of which --

there's remnants there, and i've been to places where he lived, but there's nothing left. he had a beautiful mansion in louisville that was gone, he had a mansion in washington that's completely gone too, but i've been to the places, and i've been in stevens port where his grave is and visited this broke p down old mansion that's still there, but i also visited his grave, and it is an interesting thing about holt, i think, that as much as he left kentucky and left his family and left his family's values behind, when he died, he wanted to go back, and he did go back. there was some recop silluation after the war -- reconciliation after the war with one small branch of the family which happens to be the branch who, you know, the contemporary people i know, and somehow that brought him back to kentucky, and he's buried next to where his parents used to live and where he was raised. >> in your book, you write about him being dispatched to the

rest, and in a review of the book, says one of the new things you find out is the perspectives of emancipation in kentucky. >> right. >> what is there that's new on that topic? >> well, i guess, actually, the border states in general have been pretty much neglected. that is new ground. we keep going over the same old ground in civil war history a lot, but there is always new ground. if you look -- and the border states have been very much neglected, and the complexity is being examined a lot. there are many people, i think, who traditionally would have assumed that because kentucky stayed in the union, it must have been a pro-emancipation state, but, of course, kentucky didn't stay in the yiewn yes or no for the sake -- union for the sake of emancipation, but for the sake of the union. the emancipation created

conflict in kentucky between those who wanted to keep the union who it was, and those, like holt, who believed the union had to be preserved, and nothing, not even slavery should be allowed to destroy it, and so slavery had to be abandoned, and so there was a tremendous amount of conflict in kentucky, and he was at the front end of the people who wanted to prereceiver the union and dump slavery. he was more actively in favor of emancipating the slaves at that point, not just a succession to the union, but there was anti-emancipationists, and people said kentucky is a post-war confederate state. you know, kentucky did not ratify the 13th amendment to the constitution until 1975. 1975. it didn't have to because the law of the land is, you know, after two-thirds of the state ratify, it's the law, but kentucky held out until the 20th

century. the late 20th century, emancipating or supporting that amendment. that's impressive for a state that stayed in the union, and it was lincoln's home state too, of course. >> that's right. with that as a backdrop, why do you say "lincoln's forgotten ally"? >> i think because of the nature of the kentucky's post war history. if he was a union man and the state was really somewhat angry at the direction the union policy took, then there's not much to celebrate about holt; right? he was, in many ways, lincoln's hammer, and if you really didn't like emancipation and so on, and so kentucky wouldn't be inclined to celebrate him other than maybe the unionists in the state. he was also an intensely private person. someone who never sought elected

officings and so he didn't do a whole lot to promote himself, although he lived a long life into the late 1800s, 1894 he died, but he retreated in the last 20 years of life into pretty much a private world and didn't promote himself. i also think that soon after the war was over, very soon after the war was over, much of the nation was guided by or inspired by a desire for reconciliation among whites, too bad for anybody else, and holt did not represent that point of view. he was very distressed at the repeated way the nation was unifieded and the former slaves' welfare was banded, and so he was a contrarian, and, again,

didn't have a place in that narrative that was being created after the war, or a place for being celebrated in the way that the narrative was being developed after the war so he retreated, and he -- he was bitter, actually, at the end, but he sort of retreated to his private world, and he tried to reconstruct some relationships with family members, descendants of his own generation, nephew and niece in particular, and he clung to his very good friends of the his life, but he didn't do anything to sort of keep himself in the public eye. >> host: you won the lincoln prize. >> guest: so slighted. >> host: in 2012, the most recent one. has that changed anything for you? >> guest: well, it's -- it's certainly a source of enormous pride, and there is a sense in which you can feel very good and

proud of your own work and confident in its value without getting outside accolade, but it doesn't hurt to get them, and it's very reassuring. i feel that -- although i feel i had respect in my profession, in, you know, not just the school, but larger world of civil war history, i think it has given people a reason to take me more seriously -- not that i felt they didn't take me seriously before, but it's -- it's a little bounce in your step. >> host: for folks watching this who have not read the book yet, learned a fair amount about the book here, what do you want to leave them with? what's to entice them to read the book? >> guest: i think it is a great human story so if you just

want to read a biography of a fascinating human being, if you like biography, it's a great human story. if you want to -- if you like to study the civil war, but you're eager to learn something really that you didn't know, i can assure you this is the great place to go because there's very few people who know much about joseph holt, more than before, but he's an important figure to know, and i think that opens up all kinds of areas of study, just knowing more about him so i think it's a great story. i think he's a very compelling figure, and for a civil war enthusiast, why not learn something new? >> host: elizabeth leonard, thank you very much for spending the time with us. >> guest: thank you. booktv spoke with pulitzer prize winning author barbara

walsh talking about her book "august gail". >> one storm is about a hurricane that roared up the coast in 1935 heading straight for newfoundland where my ancestors lived in a fishing village, and during that time period, the men failed and 15 # foot sconers, they had no warning of the devil, as they called it, as it came up the coast, and this fishing village where my grandfather was born, 300 people on the south side of marystown, lost, 42 chirp in the community that lost their fathers. it was devastating to them. the other part of the storm is my grandfather. he moved to stan ten island and later abandoned by father, nana, and uncle twice. growing up, i never knew anything about him because my father refused to talk about them. it alternates between the real

storm in 1935, and my grandfather who created his own storms. i wrote this book because after i saw the movie "the perfect storm," i sat in the theater, and that movie resinated with me. i'm irish. i'm connected to the water. i just sat there after being a journalist for 30 years, i said, i can do that, and two years later, when i talked to my father, and i said, dad, i want to write books. he said what kind? i said like "the perfect storm," and he was like you have a story like that in the family. he tells me about the august gail that killed several of our ancestors in the tiny newfoundland village, and all he knew was potentially captain patty, great uncle lashed to the wheel, and many of them died and just, like, wow, what a great story. he tells me another piece about my grandfather, the man i never knew who, at the time immigrated to stanten island, and a few

days after the gale, a newspaper swirls at his feet, and he reads "40 new fond land fisherman killed," and he knew his family was in the storm, and he loses it, becomes his tear kl. my father tells me these two pieces and says maybe we can get in touch with family, and i'm thinking, family? ambrose's family? i didn't know about him because my dad refused to talk about him. that night, in my home of maine, i dreamt of waves and a grandfather i never met. that began our research into the august gale, and i spent nine years off and on because i worked full time, researching, my dad, sister and i traveled to newfoundland to interview survivors, people who remembered the gale and what it did to the

community. it was -- the research was incred baling. it was, you know, the priest who remembered -- the priest going door to door to tell all of the families you lost a son. you lost a husband. you lost three sons and one husband. it was just an event in their lives that was sort of like their 9/11. it was a natural disaster that took all of their fathers away. the other piece during that trip is learning about my grandfather. i mean, i never saw a picture of him, and my father was very ambivalent about going to new newfoundland, but i wanted to research the storm, and as we approached the rock, newfoundland, a glacier scraped island, and i looked out, overwhelmed of the emotion coming to the island where my ancestors lived and my grandfather was born, and i turned to dad, and i said did you ever think you'd go here?

he said, not in a million years. i was terrified because i thought what is this trip going to be like for him? will it be really emotional? it was, in part. we met people that kept saying, you know, your father was a great man, and my dad would say, well, he deserted us. it was a mixture of emotion, but the good piece, we interviewed so many of these marystown men and women who remembered that storm and remembered the night it came and many of them saw spirits. i mean, they saw spirits, all very irish, the newfoundlanders, coming from ireland. they are superstitious. the night of the gale, many of them saw their fathers who returned to their homes so it was -- it was very interesting story to interview them, and interviewed the fishermen out in the gale, and as these waves rose from 40 to 60 and 80 feet, they were tied to the rigging

and just praying, you know, let us get home, and a few of them did. many of them did not. it was just a story that resinated, like i say, because of my irish background, but the families were so grateful because no one had told this story for them. now this book has brought me together with my newfoundland family that i never knew existed, and often, many of these people are -- they are all cousins, all related, but it was fascinating to learn about captain patty, who was my great uncle. he was a legendary fishermen, and he had never lost a man in 25 years. he was fearless. many of the irish catholic ferbermen p went to see with their crosses, their holy water, and if the waves would rise, they would throw this in the sea. captain patty climbed to the top

of the rigging to shot to god in the middle of a storm, i'm not afraid of you so the catholic fishermen were, like, get down. we're all going to die. he was known for bringing home the most cod so in this storm, people could not believe that patty did not make it home, and during the storm, they all feared the august hurricanes because it was the start of the hurricane season, and the night before patty set sail, his wife said, please, patty, don't go because not only was patty going to sea, he was taking his 12-year-old son, frank, his 14-year-old son jerome, and patty's eldest son, james, was on another schooner. during the storm, patty is out to sea with his three sons, and there's a scene in the book, and this is all true, you know, researched. patty was last seen as the waves are rising, and another skipper says, what are you doing, patty?

there's a devil coming, and patty says, i know, but we've got a stray dory. patty was looking for his son, jeromo, and he knows frank is on board terrified, and james is captaining a schooner for the first time. incredible scenes, and the research, i was fortunate that many people had memories and witnessed certain parts of the storm and could help me recreate, you know, having seen patty or, you know, having seen the priest who had a knock on all of these doors and let the families know, you know, your father's not coming home. it was incredible piece of history for me because as a journalist, i've interviewed many different people for stories, but this was my family. this was probably the hardest story i've ever written about because i was relateed to everyone, not just those who died in the storm, but my

grandfather and one of the toughest pieces i did not want to tell the story of my grandfather. i wanted to tell the story about the storm because that was compelling and, you know, my grandfather was digging up too much pain in my father's childhood so i said i was in the telling that story, but my grandfather kept pushing his way in, and i said, dad, i have to tell his story too, and he says, okay, i trust you. it's funny because a lot of the people that read it, they say, well, ambrose was a bastard. i said, no, he made bad choices. he was not a bad man. it's interesting after i won the pulitzer, my newspaper won, he knew about that, my nanmy used to write him saying i wonder if my journalist granddaughter will find me. i did, only years later after he

died. i feel like i got to know my grandfather, and he -- there were good things about him. you know, he never deserted the second family. he was a hard worker in the war. he worked in brooklyn, helping repair the victory ships, and so he was, you know, hard worker many times, and he loved his children. he kept the picture of my father and his uncle when they were young in his wallet. he had paintings of them in the closet, and when the second family said who are those boys, he could never talk about it. they were the secret boys that, you know, later in life, they learned about, but i think he always regretted what he did. >> why did he leave? why did he run? >> well, he met another woman, got her pregnant, and in the middle of the night in brooklyn, he packed up this baby. he snuck out of the house, and he left my father, who was, at the time, 11, my unclefuls about

a year, and any nana closed the door, stole my aunt's car and a thousand dollars from a paint job he would never do, and drove away with his mistress and baby just born, and then made his way to san fransisco, and then decided, oh, i miss my family, and he calls them out again, only to leave them again, get the mistress pregnant again, and my nana had a nervous break down there. that was the part my father could not forgive. you abandoned us once, but why call us out to san fransisco? my father, you know, i think the book, too, it's been healing for my father. he would -- if they said his name, he left the room. he would not talk about him. this book suddenly, you know, my father's story is out there, and i think it's been good for him. i think this story of forgiveness, this story of the

sea, of realizing, you know, when they were fighting this storm at sea, the courage of the -- you know, it's a time gone by. there's still fishermen that go out, but the people, the historical piece, it was a very difficult time. they barely survived when they came home with cod, and they were so hard working, never gave up. the women, you know, would raise their children in a simpler way. they had gardens and so i think for me it's the courage and integrity of the people that we can all learn from. i mean, they worked very hard to survive, and a lot of times the women lost their men, and they still had to carry on, and the government wasn't there to help them, and today, a lot of people says the government helps too much. these people, you know, they survived on their own. they are hard working. i think, too, with family, that connection to family.

newfound landers, family means more than anything to them, and that's such a great value. growing up, my father, despite being abandoned, he said to us, there's nothing more important than family. that's because he knew his father abandoned him, and newfoundlanders, if you are their cousin, they can't do enough for you so for me, the piece, as well, there's nothing more important than family, and i learned that through this book in many ways. >> now we explore some lesser known history on booktv. we travel just outside of agus that to waterville maine sitting down with raffael scheck describing those massacred by the germman military in 1940. >> this book is about massacres

of black french soldiers. these were soldiers who had been drafted by the french army in africa, mostly subsahar africa and that region, and they were brought to france in 1939 and 1940, and they fought against the german army. when the german army captured these soldiers and made them prisoner, many officers ordered that they be executed, massacred right upon capture, and i estimate that around 3,000 of them were killed right after capture. many more killed on the way to p.o.w. camps. they were treated in a quite abhorrent way. the motivation for this was racism, and what is important in this context is that the german campaign in france is so often portrayed as campaign as not yet

called massive racism that played out on eastern front towards the russians, towards poles already earlier on, and my book wanted to show that the nazi regime was indoctrinating the german people and the german army in a campaign with a strong racist sense that led to the massacre of the black soldiers. ♪ before the massacres happened, there was a massive press campaign in the german media, and this campaign was ordered by hitler, personally, because he felt that after the first successors, and in that campaign, the british were beaten and were getting -- leaving europe, and hitler felt that the german soldiers did not hate the french enough so how do

you get the german soldier to hate the french more? he thought -- agreed with this propaganda minister on this, make a lot of noise about the african soldiers and the french army depict them as men eating savages and mutilating savages, and propaganda worked at this time. they immediately gave the orders, and the next day, articles kept appearing about african soldiers who were cut into pieces, german prisoners in fraps, and there was german propaganda teams, camera teams, who went into the camps and had instructions, and they found instructions in the archives, go and look for an malice tick scenes. film soldiers or prisoners doing things that animals do, and so

these camera team zoomed in, for example, on soldiers who were eating raw meat because they were starving in these camps. the supply situation was terrible. they -- the camera teams filmed prisoners, black prisoners, and sometimes north african prisoners tearing apart raw cows or raw sheep and eating the meat. other propaganda teams, they did this for many months afterwards, also when some of the prisoners were first brought to germany, before everybody got hitler's order they were to be kept in fraps, there were propaganda teams who went into the p.o.w. camps in germany and filmed dances of the soldiers, and often they told them dance like you are used to, and many of these african soldiers came from very different regions in africa, and, well, you