counterfeit money, i think that would have been fine with him. most of the republican party was strongly opposed to the idea of fiat money, greenback money, to begin with. chase and lincoln were really driven to the wall by the fact that they had no alternative way of funding the war. it's literally mind boggling to me at least when i see what happened to the federal budget from 1860 to the end of 1862. the entire federal budget of 1860 was $80 million. in 1862, they were spending roughly $50 million per week. another way to put this

explosive growth of the federal government into terms that we can understand, the presidential staff, i'm not talking about the residential white house staff, the buckler, the cooks and so forth. the president's executive staff when lincoln arrived in washington in 1861, was one. his budgeted staff was one secretary. that had been good enough for all the previous presidents. why wouldn't it be good enough for him. john nicolai had a place on his federal budget. his colleague had to be put on the interior department budget until lincoln could persuade the congress that he needed another person on his staff. eventually he got a third secretary by hiding him at the

patent office. so while the issue you're raising is real and the devaluation of money was a huge problem for the north through the war, although infinitely larger problem for the south where inflation by 1863 was running at vimar republic rates, it was an issue that just didn't rise to the top of their agenda that i can determine. the other story i like about the money is chase did not want to go to fiat money. he tried everything he could not to.

but when he finally did, he never got over the fact that the republican party had made such a terrible mistake in 1860 in chicago by nominating abraham lincoln instead of himself to be president. and as doris kerns goodwin has said in team of rivals so nicely, a lot of people in the cabinet felt that way, but most of them got over it. chase never got over it and he was running for president constantly even as he was treasury secretary. so it donned on him in january after the currency law had been passed that there were going to be millions and millions of pieces of paper circulating across the united states into every wallet, symbols of prosperity and the future of the country and there ought to be a picture on there.

so every denomination, every greenback printed during the civil war had chase's picture on it until he left as treasury secretary. so any other questions? >> one quick question. i'm very encouraged by the 37th congress' accomplishments, but i'm also troubled by the prescription for their success and i was curious if there was anything that we could do other than asking our good friends from south of the mason dixon to kind of leave the session, which governor perry has indicated some desire to do, if there's any other success for relieving gridlock today. >> yes, that's an excellent question. hopefully we will not have such an extreme solution, but i think in the second of my points where i it talked about a compelling

agenda this is where i tend to see a way forward. i would argue that part of the fact that we are at such a 50/50 in our country right now, election after election being decided by a handful of votes, and even the nearly unprecedented example in 2000 of the loser winning it in the popular vote, that one of the explanations for this is that neither of the parties really has a vision of the american future for the 21st century that a majority of americans find

compelling. and so they work on wedge issues, they turn up the volume on this, turn down the heat on that, they're very personal campaigns, so on and so forth, because net of them will look at what's going on in the republican party right now. they don't even have an agenda that they are galvanized around themselves. the democrats have arguably clearer agenda, but frequently they find that it doesn't speak to the middle of the country. so where i think the gridlock is ultimately going to be broken is when one of the two parties becomes a majority party. and if you look at the republican party, certainly not a majority party in 1860, you know, abraham lincoln received a

smaller percentage of the vote in 1860 than any president in american history. he used to say when people asked him why he hadn't fired george mcclellan, he'd say i'm a minority president and he's a majority general. but by the end of that war, the republican party was definitely a majority party and was for the next 30 years because in large part they had articulated an agenda that americans were ready to get behind. >> you raised spectrum of corruption. it was legal to bribe congressmen until 1853, after which time it was legal to pay them consulting fees to do things. which is interesting.

so i wondered in relation to the money you were talking about, was it consulting fees some i know it's stocks. you mentioned that. if you could comment a bit more. >> a huge amount -- question if anyone could not hear is what was the legal status of the money the lp&w was throwing around in congress. a huge amount of what they were doing is offering land which they had not yet fully stolen from the indians but were going to and that land was of questionable value, but if it had the transcontinental value going through it, it would be of great value.

it was certainly scandalous. the reason we know so much about the september of their bribery is that in 1876, 134 years later, the whole thing blew open, how did this get done in the first place. the biggest washington scandal of the late 19th century. went all the way up to the speaker of the house, the aforementioned james blaine, ewing's cousin who lied his way through the process by saying that he didn't get any money. but the lp&w had been kind enough to future historians to keep detailed records of all the bribing they had done because they were throwing so much money

around that they were losing track of who they had bribed, who they still had to bribe, how much they had promised here and there. since this is a room full of scholars and historians, i will say it got cut from my book, but i did find the smoking gun in the course of my research for this book, there is actually a letter from james blaine to thomas using in the using family papers written just after congress adjourned in which he said, oh, by the way, at the last minute i had to promise this guy at the navy department who is a friend of william thesenden some money so he would keep his mouth shut. a complicated deal. but he then says so i'll pay him out of my share unless you want me to -- unless you're willing to do it.

so blaine, who claimed not to have been involved at all was up to his hips. and it was hugely scandalous, but problem for grant at the end of his second term. >> i was wondering what convinced the europeans to stop moving it for negotiated settlement. >> the europeans were right at the door and ultimately, i would say it was three fold, their decision to stay out. number one, france very much wanted to interview because the emperor of france was trying to re-establish a french empire in

north america. he had troops it in mexico. he was about to install a puppet ruler of mexico. and the confederacy was promising we could do a lot of nice things together. we can make beautiful music together here in the southern half of north america. but he didn't want to get in unless the british were going to get in, too, and make take joint project. you probably know what the prospects historically have been for successful joint operations by france and england. that one was kind of starting out under a doomed ill fated start. so those tensions first. and the idea of an even larger pan european intervention was

being knocked down primarily by russia. russia saw the united states as its best friend in the world. they were the two rising new powers. they had europe bracketed on each side and russia very much wanted to see the power of the united states sustained. then there was an arc of the war and 1862 kind of runs like this. it starts at a very low point. lincoln on january 2nd actually talks to his friend, john dahlgren, about what dahlgren talks about the bare possibility of our being two nations. first time lincoln had ever entertained the possibility that he might not be able to save the union.

that's his mood on the first day. in february, the store clerk from illinois, ulysses grant, with 12,000 men, goes into tennessee and strikes the fastest most efficient, most dramatic blow against the south of the entire war. he captures the cumberland and tennessee rivers in the space of a week and the entire western line of the confederate army is shattered. so the mood goes clear up here. and by the end of april, they've captured new orleans which was according to the great winfield scott, that was the key to winning the war was to capture new orleans. and at that point, lincoln is

having william seward write letters proposing the exact opposite kind of solution, where the europeans withdraw their recognition of belligerent rights from the south because they're about to lose anyway and that will get the cotton moving. so they're up at this height. and then, bam, right back into the depths symbolized by the second battle at manassas where the union military leadership actually turns on each other to lose a battle within ear shot of the white house and the confederates invade kentucky and maryland and at that point both in paris and in england the leaders of both countries are talking about this is the time to intervene. fortunately europeans love their summer vacations. this is a key point of american

history. they all went on vacation and said we'll deal with this when we get back in october. by october, the united states had won the battle of antietam and the confederates had been pushed out of kentucky and maryland, lincoln had issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation and the whole face of the war changed. the anti-slavery movement in england was an important political force and as long as lincoln seemed to be shilly-shallowing about slavery, the pro confederate forces could say slavery's not an issue here, but now lincoln had put it front and center and england would be intervening on behalf of the slave power against freedom and that was unsustainable. so that political calculation

second. and then the third one which was more important than some of the histories suggest is that palmerston was a very old man by this time and he loved to fight wars. he had sent the british navy all around the world intervening all over the place. he was happy to intervene in little wars. but he had learned some things about war and when he saw what had happened first at shiloh where in two days more americans were killed than in all the battles ever fought in north america try prior to that weekend, in one battle, and then what happened at malvern hill, at gains mill, and the

incredible slaughter at antietam, the bloodiest single day in american history. he basically said those people are crazy. and he walked into the cabinet. his exact words were the 30 years war in germany was a joke compared to this. and if we think we're going to sail over there and break them up, we're nuts. and lincoln and his secretary of state, william seward, were very keen to this. right at that time, seward sent a letter to the ambassador in london. he said you let them know they're looking at a war of the world, he called it. not a world war. that hadn't been coined. but this is one of the earliest uses of this phrase, a war of the world if they try to get in the middle of this. and so those were the three factors i'd say.

>> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> as you know, these folks know, you don't, we have a little memento. see, you can tell. they lost all respect for this. anyway, a little memento of your being here. we hope you'll come back. >> awesome. thank you. >> thank you. next, a look at our recent visit to oklahoma city, oklahoma to learn about the city's rich history in literary culture. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. >> political commercial archive at the university of oklahoma in

norman. and my name is terri jordan, the archivist here at the archive and welcome to our space. previously, the ads were on analog tape. those are stored here in this room. and you'll note it's a little chi chilly. we keep the temperature down for preservation of the analog materials. >> how far back does your collection date? >> we have audio material dating back to 1930s. for radio advertisements and the 1950s for television advertisements. some of the earliest are are commercials from the eisenhower campaign.

>> one of the ways to get ads has been if if ad agencies are going digital and wish to get rid of their old analog copies, we're starting to see a lot more denations because they don't want to throw away a lifetime worth of analog tapes. that's been a fantastic way we've gotten donations recently as well. >> what type of political advertisements do you have in this collection? >> just about every type. we have ads from positive imagery and negative imagery of candidates to ads discussing the issues at hand. issues that have changed over the course of many decades, but

still concerned with quote unquote flip-flops positions, establishing a candidate's values and so forth. everything from local races to presidential. we have some foreign spots as well. but the bulk of the 95,000 plus commercials in our collection are united states political commercials. this is our equipment storage room and the refrigerator where we keep our film canisters. >> what type of commercials would be on these film? >> these are primarily our older presidential campaign commercials.

a lot of this is from the 1850s. he had been volunteering for the stevenson campaign and made a lot of political contacts as well as contacts that are television work and he realized that a lot of these old advertisements and reels were getting thrown out, so he convinced his contacts to give them to him and began the collection in the 50s and when it was purchased by the university of oklahoma, it contained about 25,000 commercials and has grown today to about 95 thourk. >> you had mentioned negative campaigning. when did that become more prevalent? >> that has been the case in almost every campaign. some of the earliest material that we have is negative campaigning.

we have the famous daisy girl ad. it's easy in the medium of a short ad to connect things with powerful imagery. >> ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. these are the states to make a world in which all of god's children with live or to go into the dark. we must either love each other or we must die. >> vote for president johnson on november 3rd. >> you also see patterns of flip-flopping. we have several commercials from the famous john kerry wind surfing ad. the carter cartoon, that has a caricature of president carter flip-flopping. >> he promised to create more jobs and now, there are 8

million americans out of work. he promised to balance the budget, but he gave was was a $61 billion deficit. he promised not to raise taxes, but taxes have risen more than 70%. the time is now for strong leadership. reagan for president. you see in the changes of political advertisements over time, not just changes in political approaches, which actually have pretty continuous patterns, but you see changes in the culture used to kind of capture people's attention. i like ike jingle, one that features a lounge singer singing a song. they are kind of long and wouldn't get people's attention today, but were popular at the time. ♪ have a man that knows what to do when he gets to be the

president ♪ ♪ he is the guy that brings the dab of peace and joy ♪ ♪ when in illinois the gop double crossed ♪ ♪ he is the one who told all the crooks get lost ♪ ♪ ♪ cause listen to what he had to say i know that i like the way we're going to choose the guy that we love ♪ ♪ he is the guy that nobody can shove we'll make the guy the president of the u.s.a. ♪

>> if you see the ads, you'll get a pop-up video style ad in the nature of vh1, so one see way it's promoting variety candidates. youtube and various sites have been incremental in the way of changing how we capture ads. before, we were kind of dependent on the what people would donate, so we night not get a complete run. for example, one might donate the materials in a year and the other wouldn't. now, we can get a more complete set of videos because we can go out and capture that material ourselves rather than being dependent on donations from campaigns or television stations when they're done with the material. that being said, we would still like to get donations of material from the original source because it's generally

higher quality. i think the value of the collection and one or two political ads anyone can get those these days off the internet or record them off of your tv if you've still got the older recording devices, but when you have a number of ads like this, 95,000 together, you really get a sense of the depth and breadth of information that's being presented by the candidates and i think that i like visitors to get an appreciation for our collection in that sense. >> find out where cspan's local content vehicles are going next online at cspan.org/localcontent. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend, on cspan 3. >> i think this is one of those markets where people don't vote

for the party. the city of wichita votes for the candidate. i think you're seeing a lot more of that. even though this is heavily republican midwest, which is dynamic and great, but i think you're seeing more of that in the recent years here in the midwest. they are voting for more what the person stands for. >> book tv and american history tv explore the heritage and literary culture of wichita, kansas. >> the first place i want to show you is munger house. the only remaining original structure from the 1865 to 1870 time. it was a very important building in our history in that it is a residence, but it's also the headquarters of the wichita town and land company that came down here to create shall we say the city of wichita. >> watch for book tv and american history tv in wichita on june 2nd and 3rd on cspan 2 and 3. from the milwaukee meeting of t