between battles and wars and things throughout history that kind of galvanizes us together today? and what go you see beyond that? how do we as people go farther beyond that to try to eliminate these things in the future? what have we studied? what do we have in the future. >> maybe running the risk of being run out by all of you into the parking lot, i believe that human nature is constant. it's like water, it doesn't change. the pump changes, the delivery system changes, but there's always going to be evil in the world and what creates deterrence and allows innocent people not to end up like the people in the balkans and rwanda and the hutus. it's not the utopian idea that

you can eliminate war. but you have to have militaries to prevent killers from killing the innocent. so most of what i saw through 9/11, wars are ubiquitous. we're not at war against terror, no more than we were at war against the fa-- throughout history who have employed terror, and there's time honored methods to counter act it that involve the people who fund it and the people who allow sanctuary and the people who benefitted by it. i wish i could say that war is the worst of all human experiences, but unfortunately in the 20th century, combined mao and stalin and hitler killed people off the battlefield than on. more people were killed in iraq and after iraq than the three weeks of so-called war.

the war is a-moral. what's it waged for, what are the ultimate ramifications so there are such things as we say in latin, a just war, but i'm afraid that every time somebody talks about ending war, or turning a war over to a world peacekeeper or a world policeman, people in the balkans or in africa get killed in process. talk talk, die die. thank you. >> my question is also on sherman, because in your other book you also give an excellent analysis of his work. and his success doesn't translate into later military training. i mean it seems like we and have these same types of world war i of these terrible example. it can't be learned, we're doomed to learn these military successes over and over.

>> well, for example, if you -- he would say it makes no sense in the world to bomb peasants in the south. forget what your position was on the war, forget what your position was on come in addition versus the cold war, just forget all of that, just say this is force a and this is force b, if you wanted to win that war, sherman would say that you march into hanoi and kill the people that were responsible for sending people to kill the poor uneducated people of the south. but what we did is we bombed more than we did in world war ii and we killed innocent citizens because we were afraid to draw in russia and killing the cadre that fueled it. but in a liberal consensus society, with pretenses to the everyone lightenment, it's very hard to -- if you mention the

word sherman today, people get furious. he's a terrorist. he's a barn burner. you look at grant, that was butchery. when he mentioned sherman, it's too nuanced, it's too hard to communicate that it's a moral act to attack the people who are fueling a war and to save the innocent lives of people who have to fight it. i have spent most of the last five years when i speak defending widefen defending william sherman. and i learned from my own grandmother she said whould take -- it's a hard mels saj to get across, that it's not an amoral thing to attack the plantation to somebody who fuels succession. it's a much more moral thing

than to kill an 18-year-old kid who doesn't own any slaves. >> people talk about winning the war of ideas. >> yes. >> in addition to destroys the enemy with war, you see anything in history that shows you strategies for winning the war of ideas that have been effective? >> yes. >> well, yes, i do. i mean people said that reconstruction would never work and that we would never be united. but i think there were people in the north, reasonable people lincoln was the best example, that realize that the south really didn't have a deep racial hatred, but it had been hijacked by a succession class, which is the -- they had polluted the entire culture and that that could be dealt with rather than just condemning a whole society collectively, so there was an effort to reach out and it took

a century. the same thing with germany, we didn't believe americans, although we talked about it. we didn't believe that the society was evil. we believe it had been hijacked. 's what we're trying to do in iraq. we don't believe that all of the iraqis wanted to go into iran or kuwait and rape and pillage as they did. we believe they were hijacked. all of us in various periods of our history can go collectively mad. and the sad part of it is that you have to have the order right. you can't convince a society that they have gone down the wrong path without first defeating them and being put in the parking lot humiliating them. you can't go in and rehabilitate japan until you know that -- you can't go into germany and rebuild democracy until people really believe that naziism gave them this misery. and in post modern warfare, on

day two of the war when we were worried about killing the iraqi baathists who were murderers. it's almost as if history teaches us that the ease of reconstruction is in direct proportion to the amount of damage to inflict on the enemy. you said the problem in iraq, the fourth mechanized gigs did not barrel into turkey and obliterate those baathists, it would have been easier. >> i have a question about terrorism, for instance, tin nepal, don't you think they're doing the same thing, they're

destroying the infrastructure as they are killing like teachers, sri lanka, where basically they're doing what sherman was thinking, he probably was the only one, that was quite an insight when they read that part in your book. but we see that, don't we, in some of these other situations? >> i do, but i can see your point, you got to remember that sherman -- southern observers of this march said there were three rapes, i know there were bummers and people who burned and destroyed plantations, but we don't have a lot of evidence that the union army, these were mostly four regiment -- corps from indiana, michigan, illinois and iowa who were homestead farmers, we didn't have this information that they went around and killed and raped and plundered so i don't think -- sherman would have probably

objected investme eed vehementl. if a civilian is in a house in tokyo and he's helping building a propeller, then he's the enemy that's responsible for the killing in china and the philippines, we're not only going to beat him, we're going to beat him so badly that the cinders are going to glow. i think sherman would say that's too indiscriminate. he might be but the night next door might not be. he wanted to create dissension that some people were paying for their sins and others were not. you make a good point that in the south the economy was based on plantation cotton growing and that suffered enormously. but i don't think that was the intent necessarily of sherman.

>> you s-- i have a question fo you, had our leader ship read your book pryor to us going into iraq, what do you think they would have done different? because it's turnings out to be a mess. >> the question is what would be different. i guess i'm a historian that looks long and i try not to read the ebb and flow of the day. and what i look at is this, if i had woken up on september 11. forget what your politics are, whether it was wrong or right to go into iraq. let's just say militarily. if i had woken up on september 12 and i had said in the next 24 months, the united states military is going to remove the taliban and saddam hussein and try to implant essential

governments and 50 million people will be free of that fasistic country. and osama bin laden is going to be in a cave, and al qaeda is going to be on the run and we're going to lose 300 american soldiers, as tragic as that is, i wouldn't have believed it. so i'm trying to look at the long-term. if you look at 1946 in germany, this is a hot topic now. but people forget that there was absolute killing and plundering by poles coming into germany and germans that were being ethnically cleansed, it was an ungodly mess. this was a year after the reconstruction in a european country. but the u.n. went into the balkans in 1991 and said they were going to solve that, 250,000 people. what i'm worried about, i'm worried about death, but i was more worried about the nonfighting that resulted in a quarter million dead in the balkans. when people talk about utopian

pacifism. i would say it's a more dangerous thing to be in france in august than it is in the sunni triangle because one of the results of a whole society that believes it's the state's responsibility either to provide air conditioning or to watch out for elderly people while you're at the beach. but the mass deaths was never when it gets up to 110 in fresno and the state tries to have alerts and there's fans and air conditionings at home depot and we don't do that, yet we're considered a much more violent people. >> one more question. >> yes, hi. i think you're a fascinating historian and i find arguments about sherman, you know, really, really interesting and compelling. but i wonder, i mean listening to you talk about 9/11, i wonder

if you're so close to and thinking about war so much that you accept it and the only alternatives you see is someone who's going overboard like grant compared to someone who's trying to be moderate and deal, you know, less violently like sherman in a way. because i mean to talk about us being asleep at the wheel on 9/11 in sort of buys into all our government's, you know, bush's excuses which he doesn't want analyzed in any way and won't allow investigation into. it's like do you take into account things like the project for a new american century in which they were just like waiting to come to power and they talked about another pearl harbor like it would be a good thing that would allow them to li like basically march across the world. >> i know people for the next 50 years are not going to stop arguing about that.

people say that eisenhower relaxed the military so that -- >> it wasn't the war happening. this pearl harbor, if they were complicit or allowed it, the war began there. whereas with world war ii it was going and roosevelt wanted to get in. >> i would beg to differ, because i would suggest to you before iraq, if you look at the precursors of war in history, lexington or concord, or the sinking of the lusitania ore pearl harbor, they didn't total 3,000 people murdered and that was not on the soil of the united states. we can argue whether there were al qaedaists up in kurdistan, abu abbas, all these terrorists you can argue about, what were

the precursors. myself i never made the argument on wmd, i made the argument on one thing, we had been at war in iraq in 1991 and we had an arm stay with us. after an armistice, you do not have 20 years of occupying a sovereign nation's air space. we have flown 50,000 sortes. by any classical definitions we were at war with iraq. and after 9/11 whether you agree or disagree, you had no margin of error and that we needed to finish it and right or wrong, we will see and other historians will have to sort it out. it will turn out to be a landmark event, i think we didn't go in there for oil, just like we didn't go in for oil in haiti, we didn't go in for oil in mall lows vich.

when i was a student at u.c. santa cruz, the dream was les support national realism. i look at what we have done. we got rid of noriega, a fasist, we got rid of the taliban and za saddam hussein and i can't shed any tears about any of them. >> next week on history bookshelf, toni morrison talks about her book "remember" for younger readers depicts school segregation. history bookshelf airs on american history tv every saturday at noon eastern. in may of 2011, historian richard norton smith led a

ten-day bus tour from north carolina to austin, texas. the group stopped at several historic sites along the route. one of the stops was the 6th floor museum at deally plaza in dallas, texas. the museum is located in what was once the texas schoolbook depository. from the sixth floor, lee harvey oswald shot president john f. kennedy on november 22, 1963. >> what we set out to do was to basically tell what happened, and not draw any of our own conclusions about what it means, but to present what history has told us. and there's been several investigations and various developments over the years and most people according to the public opinion surveys have never been satisfied that it was just lee harvey oswald, but none of these other theories have

been proven. and as far as any of these others are concerned, they have been dismissed. the official explanation is that three shots were fired all from that six floor window. the rifle that oswald supposedly used, it was traced to him and to his post office box. it was left behind in the building on the sixth floor. the warren commission had a reconstruction done and one of the exhibits upstairs is a scale model of deally plaza that helped them study what happened. ultimately the fbi and the warren commission determined that the first shot came when the car came out from under a tree. the tree is still there and it's much taller now. from that moment to hen that fatal shot was fired was about six seconds. then they had the problem of

could that rifle be fired that fast. and the faster you try to fire a rifle, the harder it tends to be. but then the second ---ive you have eight or nine seconds to fire, then you can do it. the rifle had a scope, but that di doesn't mean he would have had to use the scope. you would normally, and i have talked to a couple of dallas police officers who fired test shots from that window in 1978 from the second investigation. they said these are easy shots, no one would miss, it's the timing that makes it difficult. but if you have 7, 8, 9 seconds, you can do it if you have used that weapon before. there's no hard evidence in the medical evidence that kennedy was hit from any other direction other than from behind and above. whether there was another

shooter who didn't shoot or did fire a shot and missed, that's a question that some people are still not comfortable with answering, because they just don't know, they're not satisfied with not knowing. let me give you an example. in a criminal investigation, there's always -- there are always loose ends. every investigator will tell u you that. when the shots were fired, within 30 seconds, one of the dallas police officers doing traffic control at the intersection started running down the side street here and he ran back to the area that's now known has the grassy noll in the parking lot. he encountered a man in a coat and tie. and he had his gun drawn. he went up to the man and asked him for identification and he flashed secret service credentia

credentials. the warren commission was told about this and they asked the secret service, well, who did you have -- who of your agents were located on the ground? none. those of us who studied the assassination would then look to see what happened as a result of getting this information. you would think there would be some sort of investigation, who is this guy? why has he not come forward, why has his supervise not come forward and said, hey, that's ralph. there was no follow-up whatsoever. i don't know what the total is, but there are enough of those questions that make enough people scratch their heads and say what's going on here? is there more to it? is there just a guy who did not or could not come forward at the time? we don't know. most people are just not satisfied with the kennedy assassination and how it ended,

leaving some questions up in the air and leaving no motive for lee harvey oswald, perhaps one of the reasons or two of the reasons that people come here. we have had members of the kennedy family here. we don't identify them by name, but the kennedy family is quite happy with what we do and how we go about it. >> for more information about the sixth floor museum at deally plaza, visit their website at jfk.org and to learn more about tours with historian and author richard norton smith, go to friends and patriots.com. you're watching american history tv this weekend and every weekend on cspan 3. you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of people an events that help document the american story. all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3.

hosted by our time-warner cable partner, american history tv recently visited beaumont texas to explore the history and literary culture where the city and the oil industry in texas got its start. for more information on our tour of six southwest city this is year, go to cspan.org/localcontent. >> we're in courtroom number one which was the courtroom in which judge lamar cecil presided i think 1954 through '58. in this courtroom he made two decisions with respect to desegregation in beaumont. there was the famous case brown versus the board of education which ordered the desegregation of public schools ruled that separate but equal was not constitutional. so based on that, there were people around the united states challenging the jim crow

segregation system. like americans were barred from hotels and restaurants and cafes, libraries and golf courses. and in beaumont, texas, black golfers were barred from playing at the terrell park public golf course in beaumont, it was a municipal golf course. black workers could work there and they could caddy there, and they could play there when the place was closed, but because of their color, because of jim crow's segregation, they were not able to play there when the course was open. there were six black golfers who put together a challenge to that segregation of booker face, joe give, and bill narsis, johnny parker, johnny ware and earl white, those six black golfers, wanted to challenge that segregation system at terrell park and they joined with three

black lawyers, two young lawyers from beaumont, theo johns and elmo willard who had just graduated from howard university in washington and then a black lawyer from dallas, u. simpson tate who was the ncaacp lawyer for texas. and they put together a lieutenant against the city of beaumont. that was in the summer of '55. and in order to set up the case, several of them went out to the golf shop at the terrell, offered to pay their money, they were refused, and so they got the case set up like that. and then after they set up the case, then johns and willard and tate filed the suit papers in beaumont, challenging the fact that they were not permitted to play the terrell because of their color.

and the new judge, he had just been appointed recently, was lamar cecil. and so judge cecil had to handle this new case that was coming in. johns and willard and tate argued this case in the courtroom here. they brought the plaintiffs and the defendants together and judge see sicecil presided at h bench. and they argued that brown versus board of education also applied to golf courses. he ruled in favor of the black plaintiffs. he said that brown versus the board of education does apply to this golf course and he ordered the desegregation of the terrell golf course. that was one small step that was taken here in beaumont to begin the desegregation.

booker and joe got to enjoy the golf course. it was a good ending for the black golfers and a first step in the desegregation of facilities in beaumont. the next summer, the same three black lawyers went after a bigger prize. they went after the desegregation of lamar university here in university, a state university four-year college. lamar university was by charter for white students only. though there were some black students applied for admission there, they were refused. and so the three black lawyers joined with three black plaintiffs. one 16-year-old woman who had attended high school and two that attended texas southern and a james anthony cromier who had

just graduated from the high school here in beaumont. it was a fairly simple case for judge cecil and the lawyers, again brown versus the board of education, was about the public schools, but there had been other state colleges already desegregated in texas. so the precedents were there for judge cecil, and when it was all said and done, judge cecisececi ordered the admission of those black students. there was some trouble on the lamar campus, there were pickets, there were white people who protested this desegregation, who were opposed to admission of black students to lamar college, there was a threat of violence against the mayor of beaumont, jimmy

coconos, but the desegregation did go forward and it was accomplished without any serious violence. so as we know later in other parts of the american south, there were serious -- very serious problems and violence on some of the campuses, but at lamar university, it was accomplished and it was accomplished with these black lawyers and the white federal judge, judge lamar cecil. working the rule of law, a rule of law that presumes the equality of all persons.