different ways speaks to children who are learning about it. and you found in these images everything from -- some kids just drew sailing boats, didn't want to deal with it at all. other kids drew, you know, fiery representations of the battle. one was sort of like jackson pollack, just scribbly mess, but the title said "war is messy." [ laughter ] and this one i actually published in the book from a young man named austin du stout who lives here in virginia, just a very, very beautiful simple rendering of the ship where in a sense he really captured ericsson's original idea, which is very, very clean lines, not very complicated, very, very geometric. and the kind of very modern, modern in the capital m sense, in the sense of modernist sense of the ship, which is i think one of the things that made it so striking to people. you would not have been surprised if the monitor was built in the 1920s and not in the 1860s. that's almost how people thought of it.

lastly, i want to talk just a little bit about all the things that have gone on. and there's been a lot of war in the last 20 years, since the first gulf war. and a lot of those same questions that came around the "monitor" were raised. this is of course not from them but from before. this is from world war ii. late world war ii. and it's an advertisement from general electric depicting the air war over europe, which was a pretty brutal and in some ways very monitor-like experience for the crews aboard the b-17s. and you can see the introduction of electronics and electronic technology, the idea is without it everybody's flying all around and it's a big mess and there are these messy people in there. add the electronics and everything's clean and the sun is shining and you have this bright new horizon. very much the idea that john ericsson had about what he called his new system of naval attack. very much the reaction that i'll come to when you i close that nathaniel hawthorne had about the battle.

and here you see it again in its new form in world war ii. and of course in the last ten years the original book, i talked a little bit about unmanned aircraft now in development. but they've of course been used a great deal in the last ten years, particularly really the last 15. this particular one, predator, and then the armed version, which is called reaper. and all the different technologies about it. you see this all the time on the news, and i've had students now do dissertations about it, about what does it mean that these people are fighting in afghanistan and killing our enemies from air-conditioned, darkened trailers in las vegas? and how do they feel about it? and what do they say about it? and what is their reaction to it? one of my students who just finished his dissertation last summer was an air force fighter pilot, and he went in and did an anthropological study of these remote systems. and none of them actually said

what samuel dana green said, but they said very many things that are very, very similar to that. and a few summers ago the air force held a symposium which i was invited to give the keynote for, called the future operator. who are we going to be, they asked themselves. because pilots are no longer the social -- who have always been the social backbone of the air force have suddenly -- they're changing into something and we don't know how our entire social structure will be organized. and this was about 350 -- basically mid-career lieutenants and above. many of them fighter pilots, bomber pilots. missilers. remote pilots. spent three days debating exactly this issue that had been raised in the 1860s surrounding the monitor." and i opened with that talk. so i'll close then with

nathaniel hawthorne's really prophetic response. he actually did visit the "monitor." he came down. his college roommate. hawthorne had two college roommates. one of them was franklin pierce, who became president of the united states. and the other guy was someone named horatio bridge, which with a name like that you have to go into the navy, right? and he was the head paymaster of the navy. so he was keeler's boss. and hawthorne had a rough time just personally during the war, and a friend said why don't you go down and visit the battlefields? that'll make you feel better. and he went to find his friend bridge in washington. the two of them came and visited the "monitor" soon after the battle. and actually, interestingly, neither hawthorne nor keeler mentions the other, but they had so many similar reactions to the ship that i feel like they had a conversation. and this was one of keeler's reactions. "there must come up a race of enginemen and smoke-blackened cannoneers." so a whole different kind of

person emerges from this whole idea of an ironclad warship, fighting inside a machine. "who will hammer at their enemies under the direction of a single pair of eyes. and even heroism so deadly a grip is science laying on our noble possibilities will become a quality of very minor importance when its possessor cannot break through the iron crust and give the world a glimpse of it." and he had other great sayings like "how can an admiral condescend to go to sea in an iron pot?" issues that are very much still with us. i think it's one of the reasons that the "monitor" still appeals quite in the way it does. interestingly enough, if this is not quite the accurate picture, but behind -- this is the picture that people actually operate these remote vehicles in afghanistan. and it occurred to me yesterday as we were flying in, there are vast gymnasium-size rooms of people who just stare at the screens of the data that this comes in to and observe what's happening in villages on the other side of the earth. and one of those, the major one,

is actually about three miles from here at langley air force base. another three miles to hampton road. so it's particularly fitting in a way that this issue is something we're discussing here in this particular place. i'll just leave it at that, say a little bit about for any of those in the room, my nephew sam is here, who's having a great time, and just getting interested in history. one of the things that's so satisfying about it is that it doesn't change. it hasn't all been figured out before. and the "monitor" as we know it is constantly changing and evolving, very much thanks to the efforts of a lot of the people here at the museum and at the marine sanctuary. and again, maybe all graduate students feel this way but 20 years ago i certainly felt like i was the only person in the world interested in the "monitor" and the "merrimack." it felt like such an old story. and now a lot of people have become interested in it and the wreck sort of continues to evolve. so it's great to be here.

and thanks for your attention. [ applause ] happy to take questions. >> you mentioned that john ericsson's design was to avoid consideration. i wonder what you think it might have been if he this had incorporated some ergonomics or some concern for the human. >> okay. well, that's a good question. i mean, we probably shouldn't say it was entirely devoid. because he did appoint the ward rooms very nicely and he had this notion that the officers would be so comfortable beneath the waves. i guess there were two points that i think he really missed. one was the details of the construction. he was right that his design was quite radical. but that design could really only hold together if it was --

and we saw a quote from the contract in the previous talk. "perfectly engineered" or "perfectly constructed." and any new technology has a lot of bugs. he was not that interested in working through those bugs. the major change he made with the second class of monitors was to put pilot house on top of the turret. but there were a lot of other changes about ventilation and habitability and so, you know, the blowers -- the belts on the blowers were a single-point failure. if the blowers failed, the crew died. and they did fail from time to time. and the crew almost died. the "monitor" was hopelessly vulnerable to boarding. and the crew were terrified about that eventuality. all the crew of the "virginia" would have to do would be to jump on board and stuff up the ventilator holes and the story would have been over. so there were a lot of things that could have been prevented that way. gustavus fox and gideon wells and many others constantly pleaded with ericsson to pay

more attention to the question of habitability. and jeffers basically said, we had to pull off -- we had to end the battle at drury's bluff because half the crew were prostrate with heat exhaustion. same thing happened in the attacks on charleston harbor with the later "monitors." so improving the ventilation, improving the reliability of the ventilation, those were big ones. paying a little more attention -- again, we saw this in the earlier talk -- to the visibility that the captain would have had and that the crew would have had. communications internally aboard the ship. there were any number of things. not rocket science in a certain way. not maybe the kind of geometric genius that he conceived of. but he is remarkable in his correspondence for how unwilling he is to acknowledge. and he says, you know -- he basically derides them and says, you know, the days of comfortable sailing ships are gone, get with the program, we're in a new world. and you know, these very professional active naval officers say i can't fight if my crew is sick, you know.

and that comes up again and again. yeah. >> in the years after the battle prior to his suicide did warden ever come out speaking in defense of green? >> yeah, that's actually a really good question. he did. in the 1870s he finally wrote -- and warden actually never wrote a formal report about the battle. nor did he make public statements about green or anything. and this upset green a great deal. and in the 1870s warden did write a letter where he said it's come to my attention that people are questioning green's heroism and basically he said i have to say he served heroically the whole time. because green said, "i didn't pursue the "merrimack," and i laid back to defend the "minnesota" because warden told me to do that when he was injured. what else could i -- he was 21 years old. and then people criticized him for that. again, you have to remember the crew were convinced they were

going to go out the next day and have a rematch. and the next day and the next day. and all right up until the "virginia's" destruction the crew is convinced they're going to fight it again. so the fact it was left as a draw didn't seem at the time to be a problem. when they find out that the virginia has been blown up in norfolk, they're not excited. they're terribly disappointed because they're dying for the chance to go out and prove themselves, that they really could beat it. and now they realize, literally this is a quote, "that day will never come." warden did defend green, but it may have been too little too late. and then a few years later -- and ericsson, there's a whole little episode where in about 1875 gideon wells begins to raise some questions. and catesby jones from the "virginia" has a few questions. so gideon wells writes to

ericsson and says what do you think of all this? i'm just trying to collect some data. and ericsson is literally -- you can't read his handwriting, he's so angry. and he says, we closed all these issues ten years ago, why are you talking about this? we all know -- and then he says, that the miserable lieutenant failed to win the battle because he was a coward and didn't pursue the "virginia." so. >> green never got it. >> he was commander of the "monitor" for a day or two. keeler served with him on the florida the rest of the war and they became good friends. but that wouldn't have been unusual i think for someone at that stage, because when the war ended there wasn't a lot of opportunity. i don't remember what he did careerwise after that. he was a naval academy graduate, which was rare at the time. yes. my friend sam.

>> did ericsson picture in his head the bottom of the ship which was underwater, or did he just imagine the part that was on top? >> very good question. he designed it to be what he called a submarine battery. so the whole conception of the ship was that most of it would be underwater, which allowed the most destructive waves to just sort of flow over the deck and not damage the ship. also, because the turret was there, there wasn't much to shoot at if you were the enemy. so most of the crew he felt were well protected below the water line. nothing about that is necessarily a bad idea. but again, it depends on, you know, the seals between the two decks. there were -- if you look at this classic cross-section of

the ship, it's really two hulls. there's this upper hull which is described as a raft which is wood clad by iron and this lower iron hull which hangs underneath it. and this was really one of the great weak points of this particular "monitor." and probably what happened when it sank was either on the beam or forward that split and let in an awful lot of water. that joint and that union just required a lot, a lot of thought and a lot of great deal of precision. in the later "monitors" it was a smoother transition and didn't have that sharp corner. but so it's possible to build a submarine. there's nothing inherently wrong with that idea. but it depended on the details of the construction. and ericsson wasn't that interested in managing that part. he just felt that if they didn't do it absolutely right they're not following my directions. but it was so novel and it was so hurried that it was difficult to get all that really right. good question.

>> you have talked a lot about the ship itself. but how about some of the systems inside the ship that would have advanced our technological understanding from the 1860s? >> good question. there were a lot of very state-of-the-art systems from the toilets to the anchors to the, as we just heard, the pumps. and again, ericsson really imagined this mechanical environment. it was a kind of fully automated -- it's again -- to the modern mind it's not that foreign. when you think about -- i mean, every time you go into a subway or into an airplane, you're living in that kind of environment. it was quite radical for the time. and you know, there's a myth

that people say oh, there were 15 -- there were 50 patentable inventions on the ship. nobody actually went through and counted them. but isaac newton once came on board and said, wow, there must be 50 patentable inventions here. and that number has always kind of come down as the classic number. but there were a lot of very interesting modern pieces. some of them worked better than others. and again, it's possible that the rudder -- sorry, the anchor compartment, the hass hole in the rudder may have been one of the things that contributed to the flooding and the sinking. and we just heard also there was a new pump installed in the yard period. so there were a lot of new contrivances as they called it at the time. although the question of the speaking tube came earlier. every crew member's account said there was a speaking tube between the pilot house and turret but it was out of commission during the battle. nobody's really clear on what

that actually means and how a speaking tube can be out of commission. but again, the communications part, the internal part for how the crew was going to learn what was new, and to expect the crew to fight the ship without any training. they had no training on the ship the first day. the exigencies of war forced them there. but you would have thought they'd have thought that through a little bit more. time for more or are we getting pulled off? okay. great. thanks so much. [ applause ] as commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the civil war continues, join us every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. and sundays at 11:00 a.m. for programs featuring the civil war. for more information about american history tv on c-span 3 including our complete schedule

go to c-span.org/history. and to keep up with us during the week or to scene us your questions and comments follow us on twitter. we're at twitter.com/cspanhistory. >> here we are at the marble house, the summer home of william and alba vanderbilt. this was the first real mansion on bellview avenue in new port, island. it was built by richard hunt, the same architect who built the breakers several years later. he was the most well recognized well-respected architect really in the world. he had studied in paris, the first american to do so and he was much sought after. this house was built really by

alba vanderbilt with richard hunt. it was a 39th birthday present from her husband william to her and alba was a great rancofile. she lived in paris right during the civil war. she came from mobile, alabama. and living in paris she became quite well informed about french art and architecture. so she had a very strong hand in what this building was going to look like and how it was is going to be decorated and it's very much in the french style, designed to look like a facsimile and we'll see in a minute that many of these remembrances of her paris experience comes into play as alba designs and built this house. we are in the gold room of

marble house. this is the room for entertaining. this was the ballroom, if you will. everything is gilded. the most important part of this room recently is the major, major restoration effort that the preservation society under took to replace the yup olstrey and replace these curtains and the interesting story about this fabric is it is made in leon, france, and on the same loom with the same design that initially was used to create the first textiles, so it is an extraordinary stroke of luck that we were able to use exactly the same weaving techniques to create what had been here in the 1890s when the room was first pulled together by abba

vanderbilt, and the thing that i think is extraordinary about these curtains is the stone work along the edges, the not real diamonds but look like diamonds. this is velvet on velvet and burned into place, and beautiful, beautiful, very big effort on the part of the preservation society to undertake this restoration project. i am telling you this because we are an organization that is designed to create an atmosphere that gives you the visitor a chance to understand what life was like in the 1890s in gilded age america. our job also includes that of restoring our buildings, taking care of them, preserving them, and then restoring the collections within the

buildings, so we're trying to bring back all of the newport houses to their former glory so that americans and visitors from around the world really get a sense of what this era of american history, very important part of our country and its changes, what it was all about. we're in the gothic room of marble house, and there are lots of interesting stories about this particular room. the first is that alva vanderbilt's daughter was c consuelo and she went on to be engaged and married to the duke of marlboro, and it is said that the duke of marlboro proposed in this room. it was a dollar bride wedding if

you will. consuelo vanderbilt brought to the table a great amount of wealth so the duke of marlboro could use the money brought to the wedding to restore his property in england, blenem castle. in the same turn consuelo gained a title and she and the duke were married for a good long period of time, but in the end their marriage was anulled even after children. she did a very good job as the duchess. however, it was never meant to be. consuelo vanderbilt desperately wanted to marry another young man, warren rutherford. her mother, however, want the her daughtering to married into royalty and so through a lot of mac machine nations make during the duke and her daughter would be matched up. alva vanderbilt was a very

interesting character. as i mentioned before she grew up in the south and during the civil war her family moved to france to get away from the warfare in the south so grew up with a lot of sentiment for friends. she then married william vanderbilt. he was one of the richest men in the world, so she did very well for herself. she forces her daughter to marry the duke of marlboro, and later when the divorce proceedings were going forward, it was alva vanderbilt who stepped forward and said i am responsible for the marriage of my daughter. please, judge, please, let this marriage come to an end. alva vanderbilt divorced william vanderbilt soon after finishing this house actually and went on to become one of the country's

foremost suffragets and fought for the right for them to vote and on the lawn of marble house she would gather thousands of women together and there would be speeches and speechifying and she spent a lot of her money on the cause working with her women to great the right for women to vote. women got the right to vote in 1920, and we celebrated the 90th anniversary of that just last year. very interesting characters. alva herself and consuelo, i mentioned that alva was an experienced, thoughtful, architect as well as collector. this particular room she working with decorators was able to bring in hundreds of pieces of objects which unfortunately for the preservation society were sold to john and mable ringling and renaissance in gothic of

nature thus the gothic room. the america cup races are coming up and the trials next summer in other capitols around the world and sad for newporters and the united states. the americas cup was lost in 1983 and the cup was handed from the american team to the australians right here, so next summer in june the trials will come back to newport. it will not first time in 20 plus years. we're very excited that perhaps a newport will regain its reputation as being the best site for sailing anywhere in the world, and one of the people that made that reputation occur was harold vanderbilt having been a skipper of an american

cup yacht and won over the years and he is the son of alva and william k. vanderbilt. this is consuel o's bedroom and here is a young woman crazy about another man, not the duke of marlboro, and her mother has just what many believe has faked a heart attack. her mother's friend has said consuelo, you need to do something to help get your mother back in good health, of course the only thing that's going to get her back into good health is consuelo agreeing to marry the duke of marlboro. her friends cannot get in to see her. there are all of her letters that she writes to friends outside are want getting delivered. her father is traveling, so she has no one to talk to. her brothers are really too

young to really appreciate or understand what it is like to be forced into a marriage, and so i think that this bedroom must have been a place where she did a lot of soul searching and a lot of misery keeping if you will, trying to reconcile in her mind what her mother wanted for her and for the family and what she wanted. asses we know from history, she agreed that the duke of marlboro would be a good husband and so she went on to accept his marriage proposal but very, very interesting life she led and part of it was lived out in this room. this was the site of all of those women suffraget rallies that alva herself organized, so can you imagine this with thousands and thousands of women

chanting votes for women and alva made it part of her custom to handout pieces of china that had written on it votes for women, and we actually sell tea cups and dinner plates with votes of women on them. it is one of our more popular items in our museum stores. she really believed in this cause and attracted thousands of people to this lawn overlooking the atlantic, the chinese tea house which we'll go to in a moment was built as a folly by alva just for fun for entertaining purposes. she actually hired two architects who went on a tour of china for a year and came back with this design. we'll see that in a minute. alva vanderbilt not the chinese tea house as a folly in 1914 and hid