the new haven clock company, the capitalization because of the machinery and number of workers have risen so much unlike the workshop mode where it is easy to open up a shop. the capitalization in 1837 means that he loses everything. and so again entry into these which has a lower barrier early on really increases. it becomes much harder and the whole clock industry consolidates. in bristle where there were 35 clock shops it dwindles down to two or three. and chauncey ends up in cincinnati in the 1850s where he has gone back to standing in an artisan apron working in a clock factory. he is no longer an entrepreneur or making clocks.

now he is back to working on the bench. just as many who make it are displaced. why i set this up. it's a generational story of people coming of age during the revolutionary era whose careers come to the mid 19th century. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. history bookshelf features popular american history writers of the past decade and airs on american history tv every saturday at noon eastern. this week victor davis hanson

talks about his book "ripples of battle: how wars of the past still determine how we fight, how we live, and how we think." mr. hanson reviews the battles of shiloh in 1862 and okinawa in 1945 and others. this program lasts an hour 15 minutes. it is a pleasure to welcome you all to the capitola book cafe this evening. as a reminder to our audience. a list of our saw or series events can be found in our monthly newsletter and at our internet site capitola jk bookcafe.com. our speaker is victor davis hanson to talk about his book, "ripples of battle: how wars of the past still determine how we fight, how we live, and how we think" published by doubleday.

he began his higher education right here in santa cruz and moved on to stanford. he is a professional service of classical studies at california state university fresno and is a senior member of the hoover substitute in war, revolution and peace focusing on politics, economics and international affairs. he has written over 107 articles and book reviews that focus on classical studies, agricultural issues, military history and contemporary culture. he appears in the new york city times, the "wall street journal" and the national review. he is the author of 13 books including carnage and culture and more recently mexifornia in which he personally explores the rising concerns of america's fluid borders and immigration's

effect on american and mexican states and individuals. now he has penned "ripples of battle" looking at three battles in three distinct wars. it combines gifted story telling with a search for the deeper effects of con neglect. the human, military and cultural effects of devastating losses on the battleground will resonate for centuries to come manifested in a family's loss of a husband or a son such as mr. hanson's own uncle or in the altered direction of philosophy. >> we are in the throes of a battle's ripple effect. with his expertise on current

policies and a leading mill day historian. he weighs in on how the past may be shaping our future. please welcome victor david ha . >> that was very kind of you. i like to come back to santa cruz where i spent my under graduate days. ripples of battle i have spent most of my adult life to reclaim the value of military history and i -- trying to resonate with an audience that the greek's idea of history is not just a recording of things in the past. that seems to be what histories are evolving too a history of the sitcom or the footnote or a

pencil or the bra. but recording or memory of things that were preeminent in the past. in the greek sense no matter who we look at it's wars and politics. i wanted to write about war in a different ways. most look at the strategic consequences of conflict or the operational level. i was interested in how battles effect all of us for centuries. there is something strange about battle if you think about it. you put males, young males in a confined space and you give them for a few hours a license to kill. those who survive if they live on, that becomes one of the most moe men us to periods in their lives. time seems to accelerate. the stakes, after all, are for one's life. if they are wounded they are

wounded for the rest of their lives. if they are killed as if my name sake where for 60 years the family would have gone on. and battles seem to compress time and all events in the past are not equal. and i think it would bemove us to look at the past and look at it in a different way. let me just read. i could summarize that from the first chapter when i said it's you see men not gods are deliberately responsible for the dead of battle. in the conscious effort to slay other humans and not through mere carelessness or errors in judgment. in time we can accept the death of loved ones if they die of infections less so if they were torn apart angry humans.

battle again so unlike nature brings with it bothersome and nagging ideas of preventability, coupleibilty, causation and responsibility all married to the lingering notions of what if and who's fault and he not it did this. anger passion, revenge always erupt from the battle. enflames nations in a way that the farer greater losses from polio, hurricane carla or the anchorage earthquake cannot. battle is a leveller of human aspiration. stray bullets kill great men and miss cowards. they tear open doctors to be, pulverizing flesh and passing by when the fate of nations is at stake. and that has a tendency to rob us of the talented, inflate the

mediocre and ruin or improve the survivors but making young men who survive not forget what they've been through. i can't talk this evening about all of the three battle that i discuss in the book. i selected those that we know less about. i didn't want to go look at normandy beach or the battle of marathon or gettysburg. but i look it at okinawa and deal yum in 424 and shiloh. it's shiloh i'd like to speak about in a few minutes. but to give you an example of the other two. okinawa we don't think about much. if you look at the oxford military encyclopedia. it doesn't deserve an industry. [ inaudible ] okinawa actually 100,000 japanese soldiers died. 100,000 okinawa civilians were

casualties wounded missing or killed. 50,000 american casualties. 12,000 dead all of this three months before the end of world war ii. why don't we think about it? there were a series of ripples that clouded our memory. franklin delano roosevelt died in the middle of campaign. the war was ended in europe in the middle of the campaign. and there was something about that didn't make sense. we took this big island and dropped the bomb two months after as if we think that was unnecessary. but people from okinawa were angry we didn't drop it before. why were 300,000 people die when this weapon could have stopped it. it's a strange battle to look at. and when i tried to interview survivors or talk about the literature came out of it. william manchester good-bye darkness, w.b. sledge with the

old reed. and two things are important for us in the present period. if you want to learn how americans or the west react to people who get them in planes and fill them full of explosives you would do no better than to go back to okinawa that act of suicide murdering has a profound effect on the west. when people want to kill so badly they are willing to sacrifice their life in the process it brings back a response out of westerners. if you want to know where in the united states or in our military practice we came up with the idea of body counts and not territory go back to okinawa. after the americans scour the island and declare it safe they went back again. there were 8,000 japanese they had skipped. they went into holes and pulled them out and 8,000 people. that is where the idea of body counts arose.

asian warriors were deemed by westerners to be fanatic, go back to okinawa. it's the laboratory of suicide and military conflict. there were people who were suicide pilots. people who were suicide submariners and suicide cruise boaters. suicide human rockets in a human rocket. there were people who were suicide infantrymen. suicide everywhere and the americans devised a method to deal with it. the western people are willing to lose losses they have the ability, the discipline and the fire power and the technology to make life so awful for the people who would choose to die to kill them that they came up with a menu. if you want to know why we were talking about daze where cutters or bunk per u.s.ers it's the image of a suicide murderer. the other battle was deal yum 424.

who ever heard of it? it's a border skirmish between the boeotians and the athinnians. people fled to the acropolis. it was a trauma in the memory that they fled in the borders. they were allowed to be putrid and rot for 17 days. out of that herbal experience a lot of strange things happen. our present play is about in some ways the battle. he resurrected the myth to castigate the thieves and

letting the bodies rot under the sun. that is the locus classicus. without it we wouldn't have had that play without that battle. he was brave in his career and his career took off, a 26-year-old cavalryman with unfortunate results. he learned capital at that battle and led a city into disaster. socrates was 46old. it is mentioned three times in plato's works. plato resonates in the laws and the republic about the battle and delium. plato was only three or four years old at the time. and plato said he was looking at career in politics or poetry. and there was the tactical birth

of what i would call articulation or battle was not two phalanxes colliding but reserves the use of cavalry the precursor to alexander the great took place in this battle. if you look at a battle not as what did dot to effect the outcome of a war or how many people fought and how many people. but try to see individuals and see how that experience changed art and literature you get a different impression of military history which brings us to the third and the one i want to talk about for a few minutes. that is the battle of shiloh. we don't hear nearly as much as shiloh. we hear cold harbor, antietam and gettysburg. but shiloh was a critical battle. i will just give you a brief idea that on april 6 and 7, 1862 for maybe the one and only time

of this young at that time young civil war the south really had a chance to defeat the north. somehow these disparate jennings who were squabbling from different states had assembled 40,000 men under generals bragg and beauregard. my hero william sherman my maternal grandmother claimed ancestry to albert sydney johnston. i grew up hearing in the morning that william sherman was a monster and johnston was a saint. it has always been in my mind as well as the death oft victor hanson in okinawa. i had a personal relationship with these battles. when the battle was over two and

a half days later the world took note. this was the first mass battle with rifled musketry. there were more casualties than all the bat unless the history of the american republic up to that time put together. 24,000 casualties and at least almost 2,000 killed. this is child's play compared to the wilderness or antietam or gettysburg. but at this period it was shocking. what the south tried to do with this army was to go up the tennessee river, reclaim the border states and go into southern ohio and threaten cincinnati. they almost did it. sunday morning they got this army. no one thought they could do it. johnston brought it within a few hundred yards of the union line and no one knew it was there. they attacked at dawn. they almost broke immediately the right side of the union army.

what i'd like to do at this point is not talk about the tactics but how this battle affected four people who were there in a way that i think affects all of us in this room right now. i should say before we start, there was a lot of famous people here. two future presidents, ulysses s. grant and james garfield fought there. henry morton stanley, the african explorer and john wesley powell who found or recorded the colorado river exploration. but one of them was william sherman. when the battle started at 5:30 in the morning sherman was all through. he was one of the most brilliant military mind in the history of american military operations but not at shiloh that morning because he'd had a checkered career. he had resigned a few years earlier from the military. he had gone out to california in

the gold rush. it revealed his natural brilliance and he failed at everything. he failed as a banker and as farmer and a shopkeeper. he went down to the louisiana and had an academy the future lsu. it was working and the war broke out. he had to leave. his wife was connected to a prominent legal family. he was given a command at bull run. he did pretty well and was given after that command of the western theater, specifically to watch out for kentucky and tennessee. and he said something in fall of 1861 that ruined his career. he said i think this war is going to take 200,000 men. at that time people were talking about one great battle that would end it. he said we can't win the war without 200,000. people thought he was crazy. he said i'm depressed. he resigned his commission.

he had what the modern physician would have called a mental break down. he was all through and didn't do anything for two months. through the effort of friends he was given a raw ohio division. he was a brigadier general. one of many at the battle of shiloh. it was just fate that before the battle he thought offal suicide but didn't want to embarrass his family and when albertsiny johnston and bragg decided to sherman on the right side of the line. he had about 7,000 men and faced with 20,000 people pushing him at once and something happened. all of that experience that had been accumulated in his life came to focus right there. he became emboldened. he rushed to the front and organized battalions and had batteries of cannon placed

strategically. he lost one horse and 15 minutes later a second horse and an hour later a third horse. a bullet went through his hand and through the leather strap on his chest. bullets riddled his hat. everybody saw sherman trying to galvanize the right flank of the army. and they did not crack but they bent but did not break. grant met him and said i never had to worry about sherman. when sherman woke up two days later. he fought at the first seconds of shiloh and at the last seconds. he was a famous american. the break down the loss of command, the resignation was forgotten. sherman was the man of the hour. and two things happened. grant was discredited wrongly i think but people thought he was asleep or drunk and didn't know

that this massive army had reached his own forces and he was temporarily relieved of command. and sherman said they thought i was crazy once and you give me a chance to come back. and this partnership was forged. unfortunately for the south out of that crucible of shiloh grant and sherman work like a team and had great trust in the army of the potomac and the army of the west worked in tandem and they created this strategy of holding the southern army of northern virginia fast between richmond and washington while sherman destroyed the material resources of the south. that was a ripple that took place at shiloh. the other thing is sherman had a very different reaction to shiloh than grant did. grant was not in the heat of battle. that battle was won on the second day. grant had 27,000 union troops within a 15 mile radius of the

battle. after the losses of the first day he saw that the way to defeat the south was to bring in reserves and more manpower and material. and grant's idea of fighting was then that this was waging a war between two societies and the union army would always win because it had superior manpower. sherman who was in the heat of battle and saw this first horrific result of the musket came up with a different reaction. he wrote this again and again that there had to be an alternative to sending young men head on in the age of accurate weaponry. out of that idea he started to form late a new morality of war. i think he is one of the most misunderstood people in american history. he thought it was not moral for a white slave owning class and they were not participating in

the war but sending young nonslave owning people under the guise they were protecting the soil of the south. except for one occasion later in his career he never engaged in pitched battle again but he forged this idea and he said it was a reaction to the bloodshed of shiloh of going down to the south and you know the march from atlanta to savannah in 186 and into the carolinas in which he lost only 100 men. he only killed 600 southerners in the georgia march but devastated the infrastructure of the south. $100 million of damage at state arsenals and the plantations of the wealthy. so much so when people in georgia saw him coming they said the people of carolina started it. we're tired of this war which is a result of his thinking that

originated out of shiloh. put sherman dead on that first minute and the south probably would have won that battle. put him out of the battle and there would not have been a march through georgia and without watching people blown apart and there would not be this genesis of this new way of making war. another key person one of my favorites. he doesn't really warrant praise as a general and that was albert sydney johnson. 6'2", 200 pounds the ranking military officer of the united states army when the war broke out. he was the commander of all western forces. he fought against the mormons. he had a series of financial reversals never a hint he had broke the law or was dishonest. he had not done well at fort henry. but he had never been in a pitched battle.

even though he was the commander of all confederate forces before the rise of robert e. lee. and contemptries said he looked and talked like a general. men tonight we will water our horses in the tennessee river, or enough of talking it's time to fight. it's don juan where he said the time for talking is over and the time for fighting is now. he had a wonderful education and quoted latin a lot. he was the architect of this. and once the southern army was pounding at sherman on the right side they were making some progress. but they came up to a center of resistance and this was now famous. it's like seminary ridge. it's called the hornet's nest. rather than bypass it. a piece of ground becomesem symbolic of a will of a people. braks the bragg and a series of

generals threw people at it in frontal assaults. this hornet's nest was surrounded. it started to bend but did not break and the key thing to remember is that the day was getting late and the southerners were evenly matched 40,000 against 40,000. they had surprise and momentum but they had to press the army into the tennessee river because they had 20,000 and walls had 7. they lost a three to six hours there. and albert sydney johnson came over there at 2:00 and said you need the bayonet. and he got on his magnificent horse, fire eater, he charged the hornet's nest and went right through and he came back. and he fell out of the saddle. people thought he fainted. he just dismissed his doctor to

help union prisoners and he fell off his horse. nobody knew what was wrong and he died in 15 minutes. his femoral artery had been hit. and it had a very magnetic effect on people. most people at shiloh were being blown apart with disfiguring wounds. albert sydney johnson went to sleep. nobody could see the wound. there was no blood. he drifted off to sleep and people were shocked. this was 2:00 in the afternoon. they didn't know what to do. they said that colonel jackson had been killed. but for about two hours there was a stasis or a pause. and out of this, this is what is fascinating the southerners created this myth forget the fact that the hornet's nest should have been bypassed in the

first hours of the battle and forget the fact the south was going to be outnumbered the next day any way and the mediocrity of command in the southern mind everything good as long as albert sydney johnson was alive everything bad when he died. and if you look at the battle of shiloh today there is a monument of victory handed over tonight and to death. and albert sydney johnson died. this was the creation of this mythology in the south of the lost opportunity. we didn't lose because we didn't have industrial capacity. we didn't lose because we didn't have enough manpower. we didn't lose because we had the worst cause. we lost because of fluke. we were more courageous man to man and it was a powerful feeling in the south. and i just want to read you a couple of