tv American History TV CSPAN October 18, 2014 10:30am-11:54am EDT
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better. i have anecdotal evidence, people i talk to. i see it as more of a spiritual thing with these inmates. it is very difficult to measure the kind of spiritual effects of feeling valued. >> watch all of our events from green bay today at noon eastern on book tv, and sunday on american history tv. >> september 2014 marked the 200th anniversary of the battle of lake champlain. british forces attempted to invade new york, but were defeated by the newly established american naval fleet. coming up next on american history tv, the cofounder of the lake champlain maritime museum. he tells the story of the battle and explores how underwater archaeology reveals more about the events. crown point state historic site in new york hosted this event. it's an hour and 15 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this historic site.
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the battle of lake champlain was important. in my opinion, arthur cohn is the best person to explain why that is so. you know him from his career at the lake champlain maritime museum. i am most pleased he accepted an invitation to speak to us on the exact 200th anniversary of the battle. and to include the battle's shipwreck legacy as part of the program. i understand that art will take a few audience questions after his presentation. let's welcome art. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. good evening. i am delighted and really honored to be here to talk about the battle for lake champlain in 1814.
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been thinking about for several years as i have seen the bicentennial coming. i have not been a student of the war of 1812 my whole life. i connected with it through the shipwrecks through lake champlain. i knew it mostly through this place. over the last several years, we have been traveling with our outreach program and interpreting the war of 1812, knowing that in 1814, we were going to have an opportunity to talk about the things that happened here, which we think are really very important and very special. it's also important to acknowledge that september 11 is a powerful date in history. i spoke to my elderly mom today in new york city, and she told me she was watching tv where they were reciting the names of all the folks who lost their
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lives back then. my brother, my cousin, my dad, and so on, all of those losses that happened. i feel for that. in fact, in the aftermath of 9/11, i was traumatized enough to join the fire department. it was my way of dealing with some of that. but it's also fair as we look 200 years back on september 11, to realize that there were a lot of people killed and wounded in that war whose lives were changed, obviously, whose families were changed. this is a book that was published relatively recently of the names of those who died. on the american side only and mostly in this theater. -- this northern theater. so, i think it is appropriate and fair to have this discussion of history, to see what we can learn by it, to not so much celebrate war as commemorate the war.
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we like to say we commemorate the war, but celebrate the peace that came after it. of the that is part message we have tried to bring around to communities. so i will go through a historical overview. it is not detailed. it's not in great depth. but i'll certainly be willing to answer questions. when it is over, i will see if there are any things i can clear up. then i'm going to talk about the archaeological legacy, because where history happens, people leave their stuff behind. if there is something there long enough, it becomes archaeologically interesting. certainly in terms of this world event, it took place throughout great lakes, and on lake champlain, the st. lawrence, and on waterways everywhere. at the maritime museum, our emphasis is on the waterways. i will be looking at that.
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i do want to say before i forget to do it, that i stand here today a representative of a really large team of people. extraordinary people. divers, historians, archaeologists, mariners who have helped assemble this material. done the studies. so i share this information with you on all of their behalfs. so, with that by way of introduction, i'm going to start by saying that to me it is all about the waterways. 200 years ago, the waterways were not just beautiful. they were not just interesting. they were not just commercially viable with great potential. they were strategically important. armies and navies moved in ships on the waterways. that was true on the ocean and true on an inland environment. it pains to begin the discussion with the outbreak of the war of 1812.
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many of you know i love talking about benedict arnold. that will be for another day. today, it is all about the final war on lake champlain, at least from a military point of view. the war of 1812. in the war of 1812, if you look at it, as i did as a student, the war of 1812 was not about lake champlain. it was not about even really north america. it was about europe and dominance in europe, and it was about napoleon and his expansion protocol that the british found very threatening and very alarming and felt they needed to stop. so great britain went to war with france and their allies. and the key from the british point of view was their naval strength. they could control the waterways. they could blockade ports.
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they could keep the french off balance, and at a disadvantage so they can maintain that naval superiority. -- to do that, you need big ships and men. so they were in a bind, in a constant effort to make those ships, capture ships, and to maintain a core to keep those ships going in blockade or offense or what have you. that led to a phenomenon known as impressment. because the british were having trouble filling their ranks, said, you know what? we have the national right, even if they're neutral, to stop a ship at sea. we can search their guys, line them up. we can look for people who we think are british. if we think they are british we
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, can take them off that ship, put them onto our ship and make them work for us indefinitely. no letters home. no phone calls. won't be home for dinner tonight, honey. they're gone. this happened not just hundreds of times, but thousands of times. and the united states, recently an independent country, only 30 years earlier, having fought the british said, hey, wait a second. we are a real sovereign power. you can't stop our ship. you can't take our people. this became the underlying cause -- national honor, sailors' rights, free trade. those are the origins of the war of 1812. the war of 1812 was a badly conceived war, as many of them are. the united states had no business declaring war on june
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18, 1812. they were not ready. they did not have an army. they did not have a navy or military leaders. they had a lot of expectations. thomas jefferson said it would be a matter of merely marching into canada. and it will be ours. and he was proven very wrong about that very early on. so in 1812. remember now, the war is about the waterways. the war is going to break out all along the great lakes, st. lawrence and lake champlain. control of those waterways is going to be a big part of the game. and so early on, the americans have huge setbacks at detroit. they surrender an army without a fight. in the niagara peninsula, they get defeated by a smaller british force. they are having setbacks all along the border. really surprised by that. the army is really just trying to get its feet under itself.
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what they do is they assign , as command and control generals a lot of elderly guys who had been to war in the revolution. not for the last 30-odd years. so these guys are pulled out of mothballs, given commissions, put in charge, and it is not going to go well for the americans on land and on the water in 1812, except, when you get to lake champlain. lake champlain is a little smaller, over here. nobody is really looking at it closely. the british are to the north of it. we have got a bunch of sloops. we have got a gunboat on the lake already. and by the middle of first year of the war, the navy says, you know, we probably ought to have
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a little more presence on that lake. we are going to send a navy person up there. they choose out of their ranks a guy, a 29 year old lieutenant, thomas mcdonough. time will prove that this was a very good choice. mcdonough goes, whoa. i have got a gun boat that is half sunk. i have a couple of guys who will be here. they are just starting to build fortifications in burlington. we have to get some order here. he buys and commandeers a bunch of commercial sloops. starts to convert them into military craft that can carry cannon on their deck. he begins to give some semblance of order to the nvaval establishment supporting the army, but also being very conscious of wanting to be able to control the lake. we are going to keep the british up in canada. we are going to have enough presence. we're going to have an ear to what is going on over there. we're going to try to stop the
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rampant smuggling that the vermonters and new yorkers are doing to supply the british. my god, what is going on here? it turns out that all of the trade prior to the war was going north to canada. the declaration of war did not change that. it turns out that 1812 had one bright spot from the american point of view, and that was that we are having unexpected, really surprising success on the high seas. our large frigades. we did have a few large frigates. the constitution in boston today is the best example. a heavy frigate going into ship to ship action with comparable british frigates. the oddsmakers would have said, forget it. americans do not have a chance. this is the royal navy. we kept coming out on top. it was very much surprising to
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the british. demoralizing to them. and helped the american morale bounce back a little bit from the setbacks they were having everywhere else. so 1812 ends, and it is like, what have we done? we have gone to war. we are not ready. we have got to do something about that. now we realize that the lakes, these strategic waterways are going to be so important. we had better start to think about how we're going to fortify both with land positions and naval forces, those lakes to keep control or gain control. so there is a whole effort now based on lake ontario -- that is where the american naval establishment is headquartered. they bring up a senior navy captain to direct that. he brings up a new york city
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shipwright right -- tothe name of henry eckford be his guide to figure out everything as it relates to building warships. he's brilliant, creative, hard worker. he knows his business. and so, as 1813 unfolds, he's building warships larger than they have ever seen on the inland waters on lake ontario. ,he knows he needs a fleet of erie to lake yeary -- contest what the british are doing. he is smart enough to bring up new york city shipwrights, adam and noah brown. maybe the two most talented guys on the planet at the time. he says, i have to have you guys
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go up to lake erie in the middle of nowhere. there are no supplies, no roads. you can grab a bunch of the best technicians you find, caulkers, blacksmiths, and you can make your way up to erie and start building ships. there will be somebody up there to talk to. we are not sure who that is going to be yet. turned out to be a guy named perry who was assigned by the navy also just barely 30 to do that. out goes noah brown with a bunch of guys. 8 days later he is there in the middle of winter. he goes, my god, there is like nothing here. what am i going to do? i need to build all those boats. where are the barracks, the block houses, the blacksmith shop? there's nothing. he has to build it all. he does. he starts building it. while he's building all of those fortifications and finding all the iron, burning ships to get iron. the only thing he has got is
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trees. this is the middle of the woods. there is plenty of trees. everything else has to be brought in. the guns, the iron. the caulking. the ropes for the rigging. the ropes for the anchors. and noah brown with his brother adam in new york superintending a lot of the shipping of stuff. he starts building a fleet of schooners, gunboats, and two big war brigs. 20-gun brigs. to try to counterbalance what he knows the british are building on the other side of lake erie. and those guys meet in battle on september 10, 1813. and again, the odds makers might not have called this very favorable for the americans
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based on the numbers, the experience and so on. yet oliver perry is given huge credit for having his first flag ship, the brig lawrence, shot out from under him. then in a small boat, rowing across to his undamaged ship niagara, and carrying on the fight and winning the day. at the end of this battle, lake erie is an american lake. it is very important, very strategic. i will call it important. with control of the lake, the americans start to go, ok, we have got lake erie. let's move on the british. they are fighting napoleon. there are tens of thousands of guys fighting napoleon. there is only the guys that were
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here when the war broke out. .obody expected it they are playing a smart game, a shell game, moving troops, using their militia. name -- using natives. they made alliances with the native people and using them very well. so now, the british realize we lost our fleet on lake erie. we are going to have to pull back. this is not going to work. we have to pull back. well, the native allies did not want to do that. big argument goes on. the british prevailed. they pull back along the northern edge of lake erie trying to concentrate their , forces on lake ontario. william henry harrison, general of one of the forces in the northwest, realizes the vulnerability of these guys as they retreat. reinforcements -- they are all motivated from lots of bad outcomes from the previous year.
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so they give chase. they find them in the thames valley in ontario. ,n the battle of the thames that british army is defeated. perhaps more significantly, in that battle, the battle of the thames, tecumseh, the single most important war chief to the natives, the single most important leader and politician -- he was advocating for unit a unified native confederacy. we work together and maybe we can have a homeland. he was killed in that battle. and native affairs never bounce back from that, in my opinion. now with the americans thinking they have got themselves on a little bit of a roll, they got confidence. they have two big armies. one is it sackett's harbor, one on lake champlain.
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they are being led by the wrong guys. they are being led by the guys from the previous war who do not like or trust each other. who perhaps drink a little bit too much. so they drag these two armies. they are going to bring these two armies, 10,000 guys, together and take montreal. if they do that, the war is going to end. it is a great strategy on paper. they implement it in the most inept way possible. they snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. it's a terrible thing to read about for the guys. the guys who are paying the price for their blunders and their lack of foresight and lack of cooperation with each other. so the army that is coming along the st. lawrence is defeated at chrysler's farm.
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the army coming up from lake champlain and cutting over meets a small but determined and very well-led canadian group. led by a colonel. they defeat this much larger army. it is an embarrassment as well as the military setback. and then of course, 1813, as i read the history, ends in a terrible way, with the americans deciding, we are going to leave the niagara peninsula, but before we do, why don't we burn a town? it's winter. there are only women and children here. why don't we burn the town, so that the reinforcements, the men that might come the fighters , that might come will have no
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place to stay? a bad, stupid, inhumane idea, and it is paid back in kind by the british in several places, including the burning of buffalo on new year's eve as the year is changing. so now, the war has been on for two years, and we are about to enter 2014. in the winter of 2014, my reading of the history says the most important variable that happened was that napoleon was defeated on the field. you think about that. they had been fighting for over a decade. there is tens of thousands of troops fighting there. and napoleon is now defeated. britain is still having some kind of a war with us. that they have not really concentrated on very much because they needed all their assets to fight napoleon. now somebody says, with napoleon handled, we can apply a bit of
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asset management to taking care of the war in north america. so let's start collecting -- selecting some armies, not bring them home, but put them on convoys. send them over to north america. that will surprise those upstart americans. that is what they do. they actually send three large armies. one in new orleans, one on the coast, and one that ends up in the st. lawrence. where do they go? we do not know yet. if you think about it, if you are an american military planner, oh, my gosh. how do i deal with that? where do i move my forces? how do i checkmate this new
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variable? playing the game on the british side is governor general of canada. he has been fighting this war from the very beginning. he's been doing it really with just a few thousand regular troops. a few thousand militia. several thousand native fighters. he's been moving from place to place like a shell game. he's actually kind of holding his own. it's kind of an amazing thing. now he gets told by his leaders in england, we are going to send you all these guys. and let me tell you, these guys have been fighting in europe the last 10 years. they are the toughest guys on the planet, and they are ready to fight. we are going to send them over there. you're going to get 10,000 here, 10,000 here, and 10,000 here. you figure out how you want to deal with them.
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he goes, what happened? so one of the things they do -- you know about this, right? they burned washington. that was payback. that strategically didn't have a thing to do with the outcome of the war. it just in barest us. embarrassed us. then they went and they laid siege to baltimore. to our credit, we held them off, and they had to withdraw from there. that was a real american victory. we have got a great song out of it. but as it turns out, and the thesis of my talk, is the real actions are going to happen up here. i'm not making that up. that is history as i see it. what happens is 10,000 plus reinforcements come into the st. lawrence and drop in our community, north of our community. he's going, ok, i have got to
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pick a place to use these guys. where am i going to invade? am i going to invade at sackett's harbor, like i have tried a couple of times? through oswego? an end run out west? he decides that his best shot at moving his military lines forward and helping to end the war in their favor is to invade through lake champlain. and that becomes a strategy. he sends some guys west to create a feint that we take and go, they are going out to second -- to sackett's harbor. this is where the action is going to be. to his great credit, lieutenant
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mcdonough, who is now a commodore, because he controls a fleet, has gotten very mature in those couple of years. gotten married. he realizes from his intelligence, if i'm going to cross the border, that the british are gearing up to build gunboats. and they are building a large brig to carry somewhere around 20 guns that is bigger than anything else even close on the lake. he knows he's outclassed. he writes to the secretary of the navy at fort smith. -- of the navy. reports in. says, here is what is happening. i got to have some warships. and the secretary of the navy agrees. you can't lose control of the lake. we must keep control of the lake. it is decisive to the outcome of the war. i'm going to send you some shipwrights. he sends him the best guys he can send. he commissioned adam and noah brown, the same guys who built
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perry's fleet one year earlier, to come up to lake champlain and build what he tells you to build. they outlined that it would be a ship and a bunch of gunboats to counteract their brig. noah brown comes up with gangs of carpenters. he brings his own guys. working with addison county farmers and militia to harvest -- and an ironworks. he picks vermont to establish his shipyard. this is a wonderful contemporary image of that. the only place i've ever seen a shipyard annotated. we still don't know exactly where that was. or exactly what it looked like. we commissioned marine artist ernie haase. he's using every original source we can find to try to give us a picture of what it might have looked like. this is his extraordinary, extraordinary painting. i think the bulk of the shipyard
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was where the job corps is now. behind those historic buildings. there was also a steamboat already in construction when mcdonough moved his headquarters there. that was to be the second steamboat on lake champlain. mcdonough and noah brown decided to take that hull over and finish it as a war schooner. they laid the keel for the big ship, the flagship, the saratoga. six gunboats. they launch them in ridiculously short amounts of time. it is not just building these big ships. it's building these big ships in such a compressed amount of time. i want to stop for one second and read for you a quote from noah brown. this says it all to me.
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"he actually said, when he is talking about what he's going to build. i have to admit this was the "plain work is all that is wanted. the ships are only needed for one battle. if we win, that is all that is wanted of them. if we lose, it will be good enough to be captured. they are not fancy. they are not finish off well. and the british decide let's do a preemptive strike. as soon as the lake is open we
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will bring our ships down now this we have the brig lennet we can go down with the gunboats and if we can get in otter creek we can burn them where they are. if we can't get in we will bring ships to the mouth and sink them so they can't get out. that was just a total failure. this was what they call the aactivities and fort casaan in may. lieutenant casaan who is going to go on to command the ticonderoga has seven cannons mounted in an earth work at the end of otter creek. now today nope as fort casaan in his honor and between his battery and the gunboats that macdono ugh they can't land. they say not only were we kept back by the heavy fire.
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behind every tree was a onthat than. a slang not so complimentary word for an american militia guy. so macdonougeh gets to bring the fleet out. he sails north to champlain at the northern end of the lake to say to the british look at me. come on down if you want, but if you come down i'm going to make you pay for it. he feels he has got naval superiority. he feels he can cope keep the british naval force block kadeed in the richelieu river. and then he hears that the british are building another
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warship, a super supership where their navy base is. they laid the keel for the biggest ship of them all. a 37-gun frigate that changes the entire balance of power. if they put that on the lake all of a sudden macdonough's large ship and his schooner is overpowered. he writes to the secretary of any i have and says william jones i'm the guy up in lake champlain. you authorized mow authorized me to build the fleet. i'm feeling good about life and then i hear about the super ship. i have to have another ship. the secretary of navy says no, i don't think so. you know, we have already spent
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so much money, the government is essentially bankrupt, we just can't do it. can't you just make to? aren't you maybe exaggerating a little bit and he goes whoa, buddy, you are going to lose it all. the balance of power is gone. if these guys come out with this boat, i can't answer for the consequences. and for the only time that he was secretary of of the navy, william jones gets overruled by president madison. madison, aware of this debate says hey, we got so much on the line on lake champlain and macdonough seems like he knows when is talking about, give him the ship. they immediately say okay, okay, we're going to do that. so they send a communique to the brown brothers, now back in new york building more ships for more people, and they say hey,
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big time emergency. super ship being built in the richelieu river. he needs a brig of 20 guns and needs it like yesterday. the day after he gets the communique,ed, dam adam brown, noah's brother is physically on his way with 200 of the best ship carpenters in the world. they get there, they re-establish the shipyard, they see what is available and they know what else they need and they lay the keel for a 20-gun brig that is launched 19 days later. and that brig joins macdonough's fleet five days before the battle. i'm not making that up. so, what is happening with the army? that is another story.
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you have to realize the battle for lake champlain which most people look at as a naval battle macdonough's victory is a any val battle and water battle. land battle and water battle. so the army has been on the ground training, building a con tonements, gun emplacements all summer. and izzard is a confident guy. he is the new general. they have had enough of the old general. he is the new general. he has some skills. he has some experience and he is ready to do his duty. and then he gets a message from the high command in washington saying hey, listen, the invasion is going to come in the west. we need you to quickly gather your guys, he has 5,000 regulars
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under his command, you need to get your guys and you need to march west as fest as you -- as fast as you can go. meanwhile, izzard is looking across the border listening to the drumbeats and there are just thousands of guys on the other side of the line. these hardened guys just brought over from europe, a bunch of them over there stationed stationed and he says listen, i think you got a wrong. it is a wrong time to send me out of the champlain valley and west and they write back and say don't you tell us what to do, we are the high command. and we want you out west and we want you out west with no delay. so reluctantly he leaves. this is at the end of august
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1814. the regular troops that are here leave. now, they did leave 15 regulars behind, who do you leave behind when you are going to war? they leave 1,500 guys behind and those guys are going to be under the command of alexander macomb who had been the second in command of the army and now he is left to be the supreme commander. he is awesome. he is a leader. he is a westpoint graduate in the first-class. he is an engineer. he is a leader of people. he is the right guy at the right time, as history now tells us. he has got these 1,500 guys left to him and 800 new york militia. and he is looking across the border and he is going i now am seeing like 10,000 troops over there.
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this is really potentially going to go very badly for me if i don't figure something out. so he starts by fortifying his positions on the south side of the river in plattsburgh. the british are there. they crossed the border. george izzard is 60 miles away and unaware and off come the british across the border in force ready to have this invasion. it is going to be a coordinated invasion of land and naval forces.
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this is all george prevost's design. and he is pressing his naval commanders to get their butts in gear. you got that big new super ship, get it done. the season is getting late. we have got these guys on their heels. there is only a few thousand of them there. let's go. i'm not going to attack until you guys come here and dust off those pesky american navy guys because how tough can they be? and so it is all preconceived in his mind what is supposed to happen. and then the day arrives. it is september 11, 1814. 200 years ago today, when the british navy to some extent bullied into coming down a little faster than they wanted to, they are still working on their super ship which now i will name for you. the confiance.
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37 guns. the biggest warship on the lake and the carpenters are still working on it as they round cumberland head. this is where the carpenters are sent finally ashore in boats. the boat is arguably from my view of history, it is not ready. the commander has only been on board for perhaps two weeks. it is not a cohesive fighting force yet. i'm giving you the excuses because it is not going to do very well in the outcome. they come around to face macdonough who was preselected his line of battle. he has lined up his stress st. louisvesselsattachingervessels atanchor in a particular way to the british have to sail by them and then he has a strategy. that is exactly what happens.
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the wind that was supposed to take downey's fleet past macdonough to round his bows never happened. the wind conspired. these are all wind driven vessels to hold them in broadside to broadside action. they fight for two hours. naval battles of that time period are the most horrificsome manies of the terrible -- examples of the terrible things we do to one another in the war maybe with the exception of poison bass or something in -- poison gas or something in modern time. a horrific slaughter of human beings and the destruction of vessels and that is what happens for two hours. broadside to broadside hammering away as fast as they can load their guns. guns are getting disabled that is what happens. men getting killed, wounded, brought below, thrown over the side. it is really in doubt what is
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going to be the outcome of this engagement until macdonough uses a strategy he has preselected which is to put out his anchors with spring lines in such a way that if he determined he needed to do it because the broadside facing his enemy got disabled enough that he would now if he started with 10 guns and now two hours later and only fighting with one or two, that is a disadvantage. so he warps his boats around so that the fresh undamaged broadside is now facing the enemy and he begins to pour on a terribly destructive fire to them. the british realizing what is happening attempt to do the same thing. but they can't because they didn't set up for it, and many
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of their anchors were shot off before that maneuver. so they actually instead of being turned all the way around they only turn halfway around which is the worst thing that can happen. now their guns don't bear and the american guns are ranging the full-length of their ship and destroying all kinds of people. and so minutes after that reality hits, the confiance strikes its colors, surrenders. the americans are still firing away now at their next largest vessel, the british brig lennet. macdonough is in the middle of the action. gets knocked down twice. he gets hit by a severed head of one of his men and knocked unconscious and comes back up and begins the fight again. these are stories documented unfortunately, all too true.
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the lenet surrenders and strikes its colors. it is clear that the engagement is waning. what is happening on land? well, on land, macomb has the 1,500 left behind regulars, the 00 new york militia and is has put out an urgent call to the governor of vermont to say send me your militia, this is what is happening, i need them here yesterday. the but says governor says i would love to help you but i'm not constitutionally allowed to send militia out of the sit of vermont. i meal your pain but i will tell my militia guys if they want to go as volunteers that is fine with me. and so in towns up and down the
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state of vermont they are reading proclamations, beating to quarters, organizing and they are going and he asks a guy from virgennes, samuel strong, if he wouldn't mind, could he maybe be the general in charge of the volunteers going over and, of course, he agrees. and so now you have on the day of battle 2,500 vermont volunteers that have made it over to the saranac to join with the regulars and the new yorkers to form a defensive line that turns back the british advance. the british advance on land gets to the river, tries to find a place to cross, the americans, of course, had disabled all of the bridges, so they find the ford and they actually cross the ford until the militia
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reenforced by vermonters rallies and advances and pushes them back. new yorkers, vermonters working together to accomplish something great. when the smoke clears and the firing stops, everybody is keenly aware that there is two things going on here and prevost is just witting for the smoke to -- waiting for the smoke to clear so he can see that his navy has been victorious to double his effort. when the smoke clears and it is obvious that his boats have sur ren territoried theysurrun deroned they are demoralized and traumatized. those proud veteran guy from europe don't believe it and they turn around and they leave and they almost immediately loave on the road they came to back to canada, leaving supplies, leaving wounded to the mercy of
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americans. they cross the border. the invasion of the united states is over. when word of this gets to the negotiating table in gent europe in belgium, the intensity of the defeat of the british, the positive value of the victory of the americans allows the negotiators to bring this war to a close. and that was a great thing. so let me tell you how it was presented by a particular historian who i will name when i'm done. this is from a british point of view. in september, under george prevost, they moved on plattsburgh and prepared to dispute the command of lake champlain.
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they were forced by a mere 1,500 american regulars supported by a few thousand militia, all depended on the engagement of the british and american flotillas. as at lake erie, the americans built better ships for freshwater fighting. and they gained the victory, this rippled the british advance and was the most decisive engagement of the war. winston churchill. unfortunately, the army that was contesting new orleans did not hear about the peace negotiations or the fact that peace was signed on christmas eve 1814.
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battle of the war. and o on july 8 -- excuse me, january 8, 1815 at the battle of new orleans you had more casualties in one engagement than any other battle of the war. it was just an insult to injury to a war that should have never been fought. the word of peace did not get back to the lakes either and so on lake ontario where they had been having this massive ship building contest the british in kingston, the americans at sackett's harbor, they said let's just trump what the british are doing we are going to build two first-rate ships of the line. triple deckers. 120 heavy guns. and we are going going to build them and we are going to take this lake and show those guys once and for all and they got half done sand then they heard about the peace.
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and who are the guys building that on lake ontario? adam and noah brown with 1,500 guys they assembled around them to make this happen. in fact, noah brown said in a memoir if i had would have had six more weeks i could have launched both those vessels and showed those guys something. back on lake champlain the victorious american vessels and captured british prizes get brought down to whitehall as much to protect them from a raid that was still imminent and potential and worried about because peace was not known for months later. so the float gets mothballed down in whitehall. in the aftermath of the war as peace is declared the united states and great britain are still sparring with each other and still thinking that this peace is more of a to us and theytruce andthey will be at war
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again. one of the thing that interestingly emerges from the close of the war of of 1812 is the building of american and canadian canals as homeland in part security projects. so that if we go and when we go to war again with the british we can supply our lakes in a much more efficient manner not like we had to do this year sending heavy cannon over mud where roads and all that trouble. 100 years after the war of 1812 was over, people decided hey, let's revisit that war. let's commemorate it and or celebrate it and on lake erie where the battle of lake erie was so profound in public memory they went and found the remnants of the brig niagara, the second flagship and they raised it and
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got it floating and towed it all around lake erie as an icon of celebration. we are going to celebrate what happened here by raising this ship and today that ship still sails on the great lakes. granted, with a very small percentage of the original wood, but still considered the brig niagara. and on lake champlain, not to be outdone, in 1914 at the centennial of macdonough's great feat and the shipyard is going to celebrate. there is going to be marching bands and floats and every kind of thing and if lake erie can have a warship so can we. ours is a little smaller and is towed down the street. this is a mockup of macdonough's
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flagship the saratoga. also as a legacy of the war of 1812 and the war fleet you remember there was a steam boat hull that was converted and finished as the war schooner tie conschooner carried men into battle. had a dozen wounded. in 1958 the community of whitehall wanted to celebrate its buy bicentennial history. how do you do that? i'm a shipwreck management advocate. back then people weren't talking like that. they were just trying to get lows toclose to their history. in whitehall they knew there were sunken ships from where the war of 1812 fleet stuff got kind of parked out of the channel. why don't we get one of them and raise it and be close to our history and we can celebrate it
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and they did it for all of the right reasons but it was a terrible outcome because they cut the boat in thirds and dynamited it to get it out of the bottom to break the suction and put it on exhibit not knowing that a sub merged object that has been under water for that length of time now in the air is going to suffer. and so this boat today i was with it yesterday. we traveled through whitehall on our sailing journey yesterday. i stood by this boat and examined it and this boat is not doing well. this boat which fought in macdonough's fleet, is suffering for exposure to air, moisture, and the general condition. it is not a good outcome for a shipwreck. and of the rest of those vessels from the american and british
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fleet in the early 1980's i was part of a team that went down to southern lake champlain and using historical sources and local information we went and looked on the bottom in a zero visibility environment to see what of those original vessels might still be there. and i'm pleased to tell you we found three of the warships still sub merged on the bottom of lake champlain. one at low water exposed itself. this is the british brig the lenet captured at the battle now lying in shallow water in the southern end of lake champlain. part of it was cut off in the 1940's and recovered and unfortunately has rotted. but the material that is still in and under the water is in relatively good shape.
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we also found a 75-foot long gunboat, one of the six built by noah brown. the prize was this boat. we didn't know what it was when we found it and this is what it looks like, if i can get you oriented. this boat has fallen over on to its portside in the channel of the river. and therefore the portside is in probably 15 feet of water, not subject to ice, not out of the wherewater where people were coming along and cutting pieces off for firewood. but a complete half of a vessel. we studtied this vessel for two years in the water with a team of dozens of divers, hundreds of hours, meticulously measuring, taking wood samples trying to analyze when we had and we now know that this vessel is the united states brig eagle.
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the last warship built, the one built in 19 days that carried 20 heavy cannon in battle built by adam brown and his men supported by the community. this is what it would look like. this is a wonderful example of the archaeological drafting of the kevin christman who is one of our principal investigators in the project. and this boat is still on the bottom of lake champlain. an interesting project more about shipwreck management, public policy and outcomes. in 1996, two divers were swimming on the bottom of plattsburgh bay looking for stuff. remember, where history happens,
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people leave their stuff. if the stuff is there long enough it is archaeologically interesting. they were out where they thought the battlefield might have been looking for stuff and hen they ran across an anchor. they told someone who had a barge and a crane and he recovered that for them. that proved to be a bad outcome. here is the anchor which has this big wooden stock on it, sitting in front of this business establishment drying out in the sun. and fortunately they called us up and asked us what they might do because they were a little concerned about maybe getting into some difficulty with the authorities so we sent some archaeologists over and looked at this thing and said, you know, this is like a really important object. this object probably is one of the anchors that came off the
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british flagship confiance during the battle, thereby not being able to be deployed, thereby maybe leading to the loss of them at this battle. this is really important. plus, it has got some really interesting and important surfaces on it. so we convinced them to put the anchor back in the water until a recovery plan management plan exhibit plan funding plan all that good stuff could get put in place and agreed to by all of the people involved. and at the end, so think about it, it is the divers who are signing off, the city of plattsburgh signing off, the clinton county museum signing off, new york state that is
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signing off, it is the united states navy signing off, when a vessel surrenders and strikes its colors it becomes a prize of the country it surrenders to. the confiance became an american boat immediately upon surrender. but this anchor went to the bottom presumably before the stroking ofstriking of colors and went to the bottom as british property. so we asked the british to participate in the signing off of the project which they did. and so this anchor got rerecoverred and brought to the maritime museum. some of you may have seen this there when it was undergoing conservation. it is not just an anchor, it as document. on the end of the anchor you see the british broad arrow which is the military stamp, the date of manufacturer and the manufacturing foundry in england
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that produced it. and most remarkably on one of the flukes you could still see in white paint in script the word "quebec" which we think is a shipping label and has never been seen before. so this really turned out to be a very important anchor. we did the conservation as per the agreement for two years. we brought it back to plattsburgh and installed it in city hall. we built an exhibit around it where the public can see this anchor any day that the city hall is open. this anchor is communicating its history in the place the history was made. we think that is a good outcome. so, most of you i recognize you are friends of the maritime museum and know what we do there. we preserve and share the history and archaeology of the
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region, this is our mission. so we as attempt to look for creative ways to do that, some of you know we took a boat that we had found underwater, two ship wrecks actually in burlington harbor and we built an exact clone. and now we use that clone called the lois mcclure to carry, not cargo, but history to communities all over the region. and so in the last three years we have made our focus the war of 1812. and so the first year commemorating the war and celebrating the peace we traveled to all those places in the u.s. and canada to begin to tell this story. and in the second year we continued the story to all of these places in the u.s. and canada talking about the battle of lake erie and the events of 1813. and then this year aim very happy to say we have been -- i'm very happy to say we have been
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able to continue this process by bringing the final year the battle for lake champlain to communities around the region. we have just come back from new york city where we have acknowledged the role of the new york city shipwrights who same to lake champlain, lake erie and lake ontario and built the fleets that rolely made the difference. -- that really made the difference. we are calling them the unsung heros of the war of 1812 and we are about to head off, heading north to plattsburgh and then rouse's point and lower quebec where we are bring the story to the canadian canals to tell their part of the shared history ha we all hold together now. and i'm also very pleased and proud to tell you that a lot of the archaeology that i have mentioned on lake champlain and the archaeology of the warships
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of the other great lakes has just been released in a new book edited by kevin christman out of texasiala and m and it is a landmark in the studty of these extraordinary objects and helps share them and preserve them for future generations. so i think i am done. i have no idea how long i went. i do understand we will be able to do some questions and try to do it accommodate these guys so if you have a question please raise your hand. we will get the mike over to you and then i will do my best to answer them. thank you so much. [applause] >> yes, sir? >> hang on. hang on.
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thank you. >> hang on. there you go. >> where did the iron ore come >> where did the iron ore come from to create these armaments? >> the ironworks provided all of the fastenings which if you think about it that is like a huge big teal. brown would have traded one of his arms in lake erie before to have access to that kind of custom i need this, this and this. and i need a thousand them. you know, and so they were produced, the fastenings were produced by the monktown iron works. the round shot was produced by the monktown iron works. the cannons had to be sent in from new york city and the hudson river. the iron for the monktown iron works not surprisingly, initially came from monktown,
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bog iron, surface mined. when that was deemed to be not adequate they then went to the chiever down in port henry and started bringing iron from there as well as from across the lake which i think was on the split rock mountain range that later became an actual mine. and so they brought that ore to virgennes. they had all of the things they needed and that is where the iron was manufactured. who else? don't let me off the hook this easy, guys. yes? >> i can imagine hearing about the way you bring the materials from so many different
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disciplines and breathe life into it. i have never seen anything quite like that before, and the details which are sometimes very difficult for people to understand of the arrangement of the boats and how he engineered bringing them up so that they weren't lined up with the wind determining how they were oriented but with the right angles, that was really the key to it, wasn't it? >> it was. this is interesting because every time i read or reread this material i see something else. so i'm on one hand embarrassed to say that i have just made this really interesting connection that i should have made 0 years ago but -- made 10 years ago.
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macdonough gets a lot of credit for the way he arranged his vessels in plattsburgh bay. macdonough had great difficulty in getting the personnel for his fleet, especially after he decided to build the new brig. he was short of men, people didn't want to come up here. it wasn't considered great service. not a lot of opportunity for prizes. so he was constantly kind of begging for naval personnel and in the meantime was going to the army and borrowing, you know, army folks to fill out his ranks. in fact, the eagle it just so happens that remember, they got there five days before the battle. they were still undermanned. one of the lieutenants went to the army and said what if i -- they said i'm not giving you
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anymore men. he said but you got, what about all those prisoners? could we take some of those? he said you can can take all of those guys you want. so 40 prisoners were recruited into service on the eagle. but one of the army guys that joined macdonough's effort was a guy who had not only naval experience, he had naval experience on lake champlain. he was a mariner on lake champlain. and when macdonough got to, you know, talk to this guy and see what he knew and see what his background was, he made him his pilot. and as his pilot in one of the accounts i read, they give him credit along with macdonough for arranging, knowing which way the wind was likely to blow and where to position the boats to get best advantage. he participated in that.
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he was the acting sailing master. and in the battle of lake champlain, in the naval battle, he was severely wounded and died days later. and he was from farrisburg, vermont. so i really want to acknowledge him. his name is joseph barenjs jr. i intend to learn more about him. we can read long lists of names or focus on the loss of a single person. the loss is real and it is why we really need to understand why we go to war and how we can do a lot less of it. yes, questions? right here? thank you for asking your questions. i appreciate it. >> wouldn't you say that macdonough's strategy was very similar to benedict arnold's
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strategy at balcor island? >> no. >> what is the difference. >> benedict arnold gets huge credit for anchoring his fleet behind the island because he knew that the british was going to sail around and go too far and they would have to beat up into the wind and i absolutely don't think that was the case. i don't think he had that thought. i think he went behind valcor island to escape the fall wind. he did not expect the british to come down. he did not expect them to be ready. he thought he would sit it out there in a protected place where he could go north or south around that big point and be protected with his 15 boats without motors and be able to just survive while he waited for the season to end. he wrote to gates the day before the battle, i don't think the british are coming. i can't wait to come back to ticonderoga and have a beer to you. that is not what he said, but words to that effect. i think historians have given him credit for something that
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was pure logistical circumstance in my opinion. >> is there any truth to the story about macdonough's lucky shot knocking out the tiller of the confiance early in the battle? i read something to this effect, but i could be -- >> well, there is a couple of lucky shots that are presented in his historical readings. one of them apparently is true on the saratoga they had gamebirds, gamecocks. they used to do cock fighting. and in one of the first -- and the first broadside that the confiance let loose of the saratoga one of the gamecocks cages gets blasted apart but the
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bird is okay. the guys look at that and go there is an omen we are going to do really well today. there is actually a whole legend that has flowed from that to this present day. will is a thing i just got, i don't claim to know what this is all about, but the descendant of plucky the rooster supposedly still lives and is still treated with great reverence in some place. so that is just something to look into. but the shot that was probably it was lucky on one hand, you could say, but absolutely tragic on the other, was the shot that took out captain downie. george downie was the commander of of -- he was the commodore of the british fleet. he was assigned to that duty just two weeks. he was on lake ontario and they felt we need a more senior guy than the people throughout.
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we will send him, an experienced man and he has the credentials. he comes out so where am i now, lake champlain? what is that all about? has to learn the physical layout. has to learn his enemy. has to learn his officers and men and he has this ship that is absolutely not ready for battle. he tells prevost look, you know, i want to help, i want to go, i really do want to fight, but you know, this is going to take me at least two weeks to get -- and prevost says no man, come on, we are waiting for you. everybody is just waiting on you. and so there was a lot of pressure put on this guy to come down and engage before he was ready. and early in the engagement he is fighting behind a large cannon on the confiance and that cannon gets hit in the muzzle and the fun is dislodged and -- this gun is dislodged and comes
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back on top of him and kills him. and he is gone and so now the british are fighting a battle with, you know, the next levels of guys in a boat that has not trained together. you know, so it is sort of easy to see how the fortunes of war, you know, go from side to side. in this case, you know, macdonough had more -- a lot more time to prepare, a lot more time to drill his guys. i moan he did all of -- i mean did he all of the right things, it is not like he was unfair. in hindsight you can see how the royal navy met their defeat. yes? >> why did you need the spring in the anchorline? >> the spring line is a line that they attach to an anchor so you have an anchor line that attaches to the boat but the springline is attached to the base of the anchor and brought, say, from
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the bow anchor to the stern and there is another one going the other way so you can warp literally by pulling on the springs. you can change the direction of your boat. and without going under sail you can maneuver this very large craft with enough men and windlessness to turn the boat around and that is what macdonough did. >> how can you use it without the spring? >> when i talk about a spring i'm talking about a heavy rope. an anchor line. >> oh, i'm sorry. you thought a literal spring. no, they called it a spring line when it comes back in that direction, not to the -- not as an anchor position. i will show you. i have been traveling for the last two months.
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i was a little uncertain of how i might present here tonight so thank you, for that nice thought. and we use springlines all the time to keep our boats fromming if where we don't want them to go or to move them in places we do. it is a term, not a material. yes? >> how large in number of vessels was the navy on lake champlain? from gun boats to briggs to frigates? >> there are statistics. i know that in the end a lot of what they do is add up numbers of guns and weight of metal. how much metal could each side fire if it fired all of its guns at once. that is one of the ways they calculate advantage. and really to my mind, the sides were a little bit about even. i would actually have almost given the advantage to the british because they had more long heavy guns that fired a
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long distance. the americans had a lot of heavy guns that fired a shorter distance like a shotgun. powerful but got to get close to me. if the british had stood back, many naval historians feel if the british had used that advantage and not come in they mitt havemight have well been able to found macdonough to pieces where he sat and that is an interesting, you know, way to look at the possibilities. macdonough's ship was about 160 feet long. 750-tons. the british ship confiance was about the same length, wider and about a 1200-ton displacement vessel. on lake champlain those are like the equivalent of the bigger steam boats that were on lake champlain. what they built on lake ontario, lake erie had about similar sized large vessels.
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on lake ontario they went nuts because they really felt, you know, if they are building a 24-gun ship, we have to build a 40-gun ship. well, if they are building a 40-gun ship -- and they were aloued to continue this right up to the end of the war to where both sides were building first-rate ships of the line carrying over 100 cannons. i mean it was -- it was ridiculous. these were the biggest ships that would have ever appeared on the seas let alone the inland seas. so those -- that fleet never faced itself in decisive action. in fact, historians think -- you know, so much rested on the outcome of that this each side was reluctant to risk that adventure until they were sure they had some edge. so it never happened.
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yes? >> [inaudible] >> thank you. there is a whole pretty standard technique for a freshwater object like that. we put tanic acid on the metal parts. you might also notice the metal was in very different condition if it was above the mudline subject to oxy expectation oxy dation and a certain amount of corrosion. when you saw the writing that looked like it was perfect, it was perfect. the stuff that was beneath the mudline never aged. that is why the written piece of "quebec" was still there. the stuff above the mudline was far more degraded but still in freshwater not badly.
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and then, of course, the wooden stock got treated completely differently. we had to take it off and treat it with polyethylene glycol and we monitor it on a regular basis to see how it is doing and i'm happy to say after 10 years it is doing very well and if you want to see it, you can go to plattsburgh tomorrow or over the weekend. a big weekend in plattsburgh and you can see the anchor in city hall and imagine back to the moments on this day where these two fleets fought and really we can't forget to remember that hundreds of men died and hundreds of minutes lives were changed by the wounds and traumas, emotional traumas that we now know you receive in that kind of engagement. thank you so much. [applause]
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>> this weekend, a town hall meeting on the coverage in ferguson it, missouri. q&a,y evening on it richard norton smith on his recent biography of nelson rockefeller. of author and commentary jake the practices of the collection industry. tonight at 8:00 on american the life and legacy of booker t. washington. 4:00, afternoon at
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