but vinny and louis galambos did it. and those manuscripts that were put into book form are terribly, terribly underutilized. >> question up here? >> i have a comment and question about psycho history. i grow that a lot of the psycho history i've read based on freudian theory is nonsense, but it seems to me that in doing biography you have to do some kind of psychological analysis and i have a question about nixon's psychology. i looked at millions of papers and maybe out thises of papers and it is clear from memoir and oral testimony that he believed in principle of threatening

excessive force otherwise known as the memoirs and it's all over. >> it was both intellectual and emotional. do you guys have any idea what the basis of it was besides some intellectual theory. >>. >> do any of you guys want to do it? >> i actually wrote about psycho history in the chapter, but today i didn't have time. i don't care about the -- i believe it was just a threat. he thought that if they would scare him enough they would take him seriously. >> jeff, i have done a bunch of work on this and it is a basis on eisenhower.

eisenhower also thought of executive force and also preached vaguely obliquely, yes, we're going to use a nuke. no, we're not going use a nuke. yes, mal, you better behave in the taiwan straits or we're going to bomb you. it is part of our arsenal. we can use it. ira talks about this in the apocalypse, but it's a long, involved thing. i think nixon looked upon this coming out of the vice presidency and coming out of his own presidency as part of his training. it was an acceptable thing. here is the general of the army, the 800 pound gorilla who did it through france and wherever he was and with whatever force he needed to use. there's a mir yayed of ways we

can go into this and if you want to talk about it later and go into it further, but i do think that his background comes from the training under eisenhower and the use of military power. >> i proposed that although it had to do with journalives and not scholars also. he told me that he expected to be put under a microscope, that when they used to practice it was going too far, and i think books like abraham, some of the psycho -- >> they weren't se psychobiographies and they had never met and brodie's book from which i say is just the worst case explanation for anything and then accepted. the poignant thing early on is that when he came in from

vietnam, he came in with great hopes of ending the war very soon and when they were with the secret negotiations and when they were dashed he decided and then by then they turned out to be recalcitrant ally, but at the beginning i think his feelings were great of thinking he could end the war in an honorable way to all sides and just end it and when the enemy turned out to be recalcitrant for whatever reasons and/or, figuring that if they could wait help out and figuring it was a close election that if they could wait them out then they might get another deal, but his decision then was in order to still bring him to the table and achieve a piece, he had to let them know that he baunt afraid to escalate which in his assessment was one of the problems with president johnson,

that he had appeared to them, whether he did it or not. this was the idea that he appeared to be vacillating and that nixon was not going to do that and the balance of the mad man theory was while kissinger would be, one talon would be holding, and it was a modified limited manman theory. >> and to add one thing about the psycho history stuff, most of us that they know about, and nixon's psychotherapist, and i have his medical records and doing general exams in '52, '53 and '54, the last time he saw him as a patient was a thank you in june of 1956. he never treated him for psychological and psychiatric problems. it's all jive.

it never happened. he never was a psychiatrist. >> any questions? over there and then down here. this panel ends at 10:30 so these probably will be the last two questions and after that will be a 15-minute break. >> a question for frank gannon. i can't resist asking about the role of formality in mr. nixon's behavior as president. i remember the question of john ehrlich, have you ever seen him without a suit? i spoke to mr. nugson and he said that even when they went to visit his mother he was wearing a suit. what was it about wearing a

formal attire, i think it was generational and it was lots of thicks and it was just what people did. a lot of people did, and i can remember as an undergraduate like 50s and early '60s. everyone wore a jacket and tie so it wasn't that unusual and he did have this infinite degrees within a single color and a palette and there were infinite degrees of formality and informality and it's generational which i don't think is weird about it. he would have smoking jackets that were for relaxation and he would have sports jackets, when he'd go out and golf he'd wear

slacks and a polo shirt. the image was nailed down by the unfortunate walk on the beach in wing 10s, so it can be overdone, and on the weekends, we did work, and i can remember one of my favorite phone calls was frank. i know tomorrow is christmas, but if you're not doing anything, i'll be in the office and we can catch up on a lot of work. we had a lot of work to do on that book, but he would come in on the weekends in a jacket and a polo shirt so he was a formal person, but i think he came out of more formal times. i think he had a mistook, and

the city room was create asked one where he would retire at night ask listen to fireplace and listen to lose are music. this video was his cope of his yellow lights ask it was de gaulle's -- 1930-some, and it was a collection of essays and there had to be a kind of a distance, and i think nixon had a sense of this that the leader wasn't gooded for are for the leader to be one of the people. the people wanted someone to ademir with some distance in the leaders and it factored in, but not in a weird, psycho way. >> okay. >> this gentleman's been waiting. >> thank you. . i'm blake thomas, history

teacher from oxnard, california, and i find using the psychology angle helps the historical figures for our younger students andes of just wondering thinking about smerly formative things about eisenhower and nixon. eis eisenhower started very early and they never got over that, sting and he never pushed on to berlin and the heart ache and how he listened to his mother cob so console his brother hours before he finally passed. i'm not saying nationalize health care, so these things do not happen and then it's the breaks and how do they keep

these things in where this is the place where society should step in and instead it was the bootstraps world, and i'm not sure which person reflect on that, but thank you for answering my question. >> you know, both you and professor kimball be absolutely right in the sense that looking at these people from a psychological value is good, serious stuff. i really think it should be done. the problem is so much of the basis of how people do this is not the quantity, but how they want the story to come out. birdie's book says i am going to prove to you of how nixon lied from the time he was in the womb until the book came out. it said more about birdie which

the book was studied posthumously so i'm not sure of how much she wrote, but izy and harold and of the other brother and the nature of how these people were affected by death is certainly fair game for any book, scholar or journalist and anybody look at because, sure it affects and it's fair game to talk about this stuff. the only thing is to do it within a context of stuff you know about. dr. arenas got 3600 oral histories. how many people other than he and joe have read all of them? how many people have read all of harry jeff's oral histories and by the way the papers are posted in drew university in madison,

new jersey. there's a cassette in 1960 with richard nixon. this is the stuff that historians, just love to see, but for whatever reason, many of my colleagues don't do the work and they've got to do the work. if they're going to be credible and if they're going to be acce acceptable, then the entire panorama has got to be what's examined and let the chips fall where they may. >> i know others of you have questions. this session is ending and i invite you to bring those questions to the panelists and we'll be circulating. and you have a session on politics. >> please thank the panelists. [ applause ] .

. >> good job, thank you. thank you so much. good job you were both fabulous. thank you so much. >> please, please. please, please. >> you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of people and events that help document the american story, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. hosted by our time warner cable partner, american history tv recently visited beaumont, texas to explore the history and lit rary culture where texas got its start. for more information on the tour of six south central cities this year visit c-span.org/local content. >> gladys city as we refer to it here locally was built in 1976 for the bicentennial and it is a

recreation of the boomtown that was built when spindle top came in on january 10, 1901. by 1976 there was nothing left of what was the original gladys city which was just across the highway from us about a half mile and for the project of the bicentennial, this up groo of people came together to try to preserve the history and memory of gladys city. gladys city is named for a young lady that was in the sunday school class of attila higgins. i call him one of our main characters, although he probably wouldn't like this, we call him our dreamer. he's the one that came up with a lot of theed whys for gladys city and her name was gladys bingham and she was in his sunday school class and he was very fond of her and kind of bestowed an honor on her by naming a city for her.

when it was originally -- when petillo originally envisioned the city, it was really what he called -- or what could be called an industrial utopia. by the time spindle top came in in 1901 i reich to say there was no more time to be perfect and his other dreams really focused on this manufacturing part. i think that's probably what some people wouldn't realize is even they didn't realize how much oil was under the ground out there. it surprised everybody when it came in. beaumont at that time was rough-and-tumble. so he wanted something that was pristine and clean and that's not what he got in the end, but that's the way it works times. the gas and manufacturing company was the first oil company incorporated in texas and they are still in operation today. they still have interests out in

spindletop field and they really put the engine behind trying to search for this oil and we'll go in and take a look at a couple of things. what petilla higgins' vision was for gladys city. they blotted out this city and you could see that there was much, much given to gladys city oil gas and manufacturing company. there were places for homes and schools and then what he believed would be the oilfields and manufacturing areas. if you look up here at the top you'll see this is a picture of gladys as a child, gladys bingham and right next to it, you can see that the vision was more about manufacturing in an industrial area than it was about oil production. >> i would say after the lucas gusher came in, their letterhead

would have the oil barracks because the purpose changed very quickly when the well came in. >> why would this vision never come to fruition? when everybody wanted to make their dollar on this huge event that was coming in. and just a few months prior to the galveston hurricane. there were a lot of people that came from galveston when they heard about this because they were still trying to recover from that hurricane and so this was a chance for people to come and set up businesses and -- or work in the field and try to make some money. >> it doesn't, as i said, it didn't turn out that way to be the perfect city. this is a drawing that represents from a photograph that was done, and you'll see

that it -- those buildings went up very quickly and looks very much like what we have here today. >> is it a safe place to be? >> gladys city, i understand, was fairly safe. there were people trying to make their money. there were honest people and there were dishonest people here. so you did have to watch out for card sharks and confidence men and things like that that would try to get money. a lot of these men that came here probably came off of farms and so they hadn't been in a city the size of beaumont. where you were in the middle of the oil fold. it could probably get very rough. there are stories that it could get rowdy and people did lose their lives a couple of times because just through fights and

that kind of thing. it was more the wild section and gladys city was off away from -- from the actual oilfield. beaumont had its own beaumont had its own oil exchange or stock exchange at the time. so this building represents that stock exchange. there were over 600 oil companies that were incorporated after the big boom. and when the gusher came in. and so the trading floor -- the actual building was probably a little -- much larger than this to accommodate the trading floor. this picture up here gives you some idea of what the original looked like. so they would be trading stock in the front. in the back of the building, you had a print shop that was printing stock just as quickly as they could. for all of these oil companies. and, you know, some of that stock was good and some was not

good. but i was talking to a printer the other day and, you know, that's not the printer's job to decide. so they were churning it out as quickly as they could. so while all of these buildings are replicas they do represent actual businesses operating at the time in gladys city. for instance, this is gibson's dry goods store. this is where you would come to get clothing or your sewing needs. that kind of thing. now, many women still made their own clothes at that time. they would purchase their undergarments and that kind of thing, but you could purchase -- most men at this time would come in and purchase their shirts and you could actually buy jeans. denim jeans to wear to work. and the women would have probably had, you know, a day dress. maybe one sunday dress.

and then same thing for men. they would have had their work clothes and then probably one nice white starched shirt for church and then of course they would have had to get their starched collars to go with that shirt. now, if you had a little more money, you'd have a derby hat or a top hat to wear to church or to nicer functions. i think people would be surprised about how much some of these pieces actually cost back then. for instance, you know, on a cold day in january, you would have had to have your union suit which is like a tighter fitting pair of what we now call long johns. but for $2 or $3 women or men could get their union suits. this is a copy of the sears and roebuck catalog from fall of

1900. just before the boom. so these -- this is what people would have been ordering from, either through the dry goods store. people could order just about everything from the sears and roebuck. if it was farm equipment or that, you'd go to the general store and have it shipped in on the train. everything i have read about patillo higgins and what motivated him was to be somebody. i think he had a real need to find his place in history and to do big things and to do great things. and sometimes he made it. even in later in life, he continued to wild cat for oil. going out to all over texas, to find new well sites. many of them are still producing today that he found and spent most of his life trying to convince people in different parts of texas that for sure there was oil. so he was -- i would almost call

it a personal crusade, to be believed, to be taken seriously about his ideas and to be respected. so while most of our collection fits within, you know, the late 1800s, early 1900s, we do dip a bit into the 1920s and '30s with two really special pieces. for instance, this is a 31 -- 1931 model-a ford that belonged to patillo higgins. he drove it for nearly 25 years after he drove his model-t for over 25 years. he drove this car all over texas as he continued to search for oil and wild cat different wells all throughout the state. i believe it's not on there anymore, but he actually had the steering wheel modified, you

know, because patillo only had one arm. he actually lost an arm in a fight with a sheriff's deputy. you know, we talk about patillo being the big dreamer. but in his younger day, he was a little bit of what would have been called a rounder. he liked to get into fights. he liked to carry guns and shoot guns. one night, he got into quite a scrape with a deputy sheriff. shot and actually killed the sheriff and in the process was shot in the arm and lost his arm. he did go on trial for -- but was acquitted of the murder. and not soon after, he did begin to turn his life around. the story goes that one of the tent revivals was in town, and after going to the revival he converted and actually became a sunday schoolteacher and then

went on to become the -- kind of the patillo that we know. he came back up in beaumont probably right around 1951 for the 50th anniversary. and by that time, i believe he was 81 -- in his early 80s. he was about 88 i think when he passed away. so he got to see the full stretch of all the different things that happened at spindle top over his lifetime. the spindletop field began to play out after three or four years, the production started dropping. so gladys city kind of remained out there. people still began to build housing, especially here in south beaumont. then by the late 1920s we had the second boom. what's called the yount lee boom. they came and drilled on the perimeter of the salt dome which is what spindletop, the hill was at one time. so that caused a second boom

that brought new life to glad iss city and -- gladys city and to beaumont. then by -- then that kind of waned and by the 1950s, companies were mining sulfur out at the spindle top. after that, that's when it kind of dwindled away and there was no major production out there. the booms were over. people began moving away, moving into beaumont proper. and gladys city just and i can of deteriorated. by the 1960s, there were some efforts to create a museum and make sure things were being preserved. then by the mid '70s when they decided to build the replica of gladys city. you've watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. for more information, follow us on twitter at c-span history.

an air of mystery has surrounded this bronze likeness of alexander hamilton. so claims author james m. good in his definitive book on the outdoor sculpture of washington, d.c. in dedicating the ten foot tall figure, the great visitors president warren harding talked about an anonymous donor. could it have been andrew mellon who liked to describe as the greatest secretary of the treasury since hamilton himself. sculpted by james earl fraser, the protege of augusta st. gardens, hamilton wears a slightly quizzical look. perhaps he is trying to recognize his surroundings. after all, it was his famous deal with congressional supporters of thomas jefferson that led to the assumption of

the states debts to an entirely new city or the built on the banks of the potomac. the pedestal on which he stands makes no reference to hamilton's real estate transactions. it pays tribute instead to his financial genius. he smoked the rock of the natural resources that reads an abundant streams of revenue gusts forth. this is c-span 3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every weekend american history tv, 48 hours of people and events telling the american story. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. and join in the conversation on the social media sites. brown university history professor gordon wood