she will give you a much more sophisticated answer. i think we are nearing the -- i think we have come to the end of the q and a. i will be around. [applause] thank you very much. >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming every begin on c-span three. follow us on twitter at c-span history. collects -- >> boston history professor, heather cox richardson, talks about cowboys in the post-civil war years. she explains how cowboy individualism was used as a

counterbalance to the reconstruction dominance of the republican government. she also says that they are lasting symbolism for american culture, and far outweighs the actual numbers. this hour-long talk was part of a symposium hosted by the vermont humanities council. >> this afternoon, i'm supposed to talk about why cowboys mattered in the postwar years. they mattered more than perhaps anything else. as an example.com i want to show you some images of reconstruction and ask you how many you know. i would suggest that probably very few of you could take rebels out of a group. shortly after the civil war, he died, so you may not know one. how many of you would know red cloud? there you go.

he was so important after civil war. he was the most important indian at the time. if you came off of boat from europe, within two weeks, you would know who red cloud was, however he has largely been written out of american history. you may have a shot at recommending to the b anthony but you may not. these were not faces that you would know when you think of reconstruction or think about reconstruction days. these are people you read about not people that made it into popular culture. let's try this. the marble man has been recognized in every sale country in the world. i will talk more about the marble man in a minute. if you think about reconstruction and the post civil war years, the image that people most recognize is the american cowboy. the american cowboy -- i won't

talk a huge amount about his history, but he is ignore anonymously significant. the cattle industry coincided with reconstruction after the civil war. that coincidence has been handed down in the ways we think about politics. and it is why it the cowboy remains as a potent image in our society. let's start with this. we all know the civil war was fought from north to south. wrong. the civil war was between the north and south about the west. slavery had coexisted. the north and south had coexisted with the issue of slavery since the beginning of the american nation. it was not a problem until the p purchase of the louisiana territory.

the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo. and the question of what to do with those western lands. first it was the louisiana purchase. then the extraordinary addition of the land with the treaty of waterloo bay -- waterloo bay. will western land be settled on the principles of slavery, which presupposes a government controlled by a small, wealthy minority, or whether it will be settled on the premise of free labor, presupposing a government in which they distribute resources equally enough that every man has a shot at equality of opportunity. that is the central question that will lead to the civil war. that is not a question that is an academic one.

we tend not to think about the west. many of the key battles are fought in the west. many of the things we don't think about is the fact that both the north and the south tried desperately to push west. the south does not do so successfully. before the civil war, this map is what america looks like. after the civil war, this is what america looks like. the north very aggressively organizes the entire territorial west into patters -- patterns that look like they do today. they don't organize wyoming territory until 1868 and they don't divide dakota until 1889. the point is the lincoln administration extraordinarily aggressively spreads the concept of free labor. there will not be slavery in the

western territories during the civil war. it does so in part for ideological reasons and part because the nation is absolutely desperate to get to the western minds that we tend not to talk about because we forget people need money. during the civil war, lincoln logs that because he desperate he needs money. they talked this morning about spreading farmers west. this is a very aggressive parts of the plan, to make sure not only that they win in the east but that they get the west. if that is what is going on in the middle of the 1860's, isn't that cool? nobody ever told me this when i was in college and it is really interesting. people don't stop moving west just because they are fighting each other.

what happens down here in texas, texas has a problem during the civil war. there is a comanche war. before the civil war, there has been a cattle industry that starts in texas in the 1830's primarily. it is starting to take off by the 1840's. what happens is the cattle industry starts to develop along the texas-mexico border. the cattle from the industry get moved out of texas in two -- into st. louis. from st. louis they get , distributed largely a long the mississippi river and largely through the south. what happened of course during the war is that texas gets cut off from the rest of the south. the mississippi river isolate s texas from the confederacy for the first time with sherman and have it isolated again during the second march to the sea.

the u.s. army and navy take the mississippi river and cut texas off. when that happens there is no , way to move cattle unless by railroad, but as you know, the confederate railroads degraded in normal sleep -- enormously quickly and you can't move cattle out of the confederacy by 1865. there are eastern armies starving to death living on parched corn. there is such a problem in texas with cattle that the people who are still trying to ranch and handle cattle in texas, they write to jefferson davis, and they say, please, take our cattle, we will give you our cattle because there are so many cattle in texas that we don't go quail hunting because we are going to get killed by these things, so please take them away and jefferson davis writes them back and says i can't, or is no way to get them. so there is so much beef in texas that they don't know what to do with it. this is not some little cow in a

stable somewhere. these are longhorn cattle, now these are 20 century pictures, so this is how that we have -- they are heavier than they used to be. but these horns are significant horns, the wingspan there is like eight feet, so you don't want to get close to these guys. this is not a cute little cow, these are serious longhorn cattle. and during and after the civil war, they breach the nueces valley, and there are so many of them that texans are afraid to go hunting by 1855, and they are -- 1865 because of the fact there are kurds of -- herds of essentially feral cattle. the weather down there is perfect for the development of

these cattle, and by the end of the civil war, if you are even going to buy one of these things, because frankly many people are stealing them, you have the mexicans, the comanches, and the americans all stealing from each other by 1865, and they are stealing them back and forth, if you are going to bother to buy one as opposed to stealing it, it is going to cost about four bucks. it is not much money, and if you can get it to chicago, which has been growing exponentially since the civil war, you can sell it for $40. it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that you can get those cattle to the railhead and you can then get them to a northern city. whoever can do that is going to make bank. and this guy here, charles

goodnight in 1865, he was a confederate and he got measles and so he could not even here -- hear anything, he could not hear a rattlesnake. people who worked with him hated to disturb him and come on him suddenly because they were always terrified that he was going to shoot them. charles goodnight decided that he was going to get his cattle to a railhead or two and army post so he could sell them to the u.s. government for distribution to the indians by a treaty. i 1865 he rounds up a crew to take the cattle either to a railhead or an army post. if you are in texas in 1865, who are you going to look for? you're going to look for guys who can ride a horse, right? and probably who have a gun, and can use them both, but have no money at all, because they have to be pretty desperate to get on a trail with a horse, a gun,

almost no money, and head out following a bunch of really nasty cows. so he rounds of these guys and he rounds up ex-confederates, and who else does he round up? former slaves. so he gets men of color, and they rarely show up, but the reason i have this image appear from "lonesome dove," and if you know the film, and if you don't, you should get up right now i walk out, and on watch it, larry mcmurtry patterned col on charles good night and gus

robert duvall on oliver loving. they head out of texas to try to sell these cattle. they get attacked by comanches. the whole thing is dead in the water. charles good night is an optimist. he does the whole thing again in 1866, as he is trailing this herd of cattle out, he runs into a guy called oliver loving. he becomes the pattern for gus. they are both patterned in different ways, but on both charles goodnight and it is a wonderful, wonderful account of trailing cattle out of texas into montana, and if you are interested, you just have to read the book. good night and oliver loving head out on the goodnight-loving trail, that is how we did the name.

they bring home at $12,000 in gold. $12,000 in gold in texas in 1865 1866, sorry, there are places in texas there that don't realize that the civil war is over yet. they have $12,000 in gold permit -- gold. here is one of the great lost moments of american history. they put the gold on the mule and somebody loses the mule in the river. the mule is floating down the river with $12,000 on his back and they catch him and bring him back. you sit there and you think can , you imagine these guys saying holy expletive, get the expletive mule or else we are going to be in trouble! you wonder what would happen to american history if the mule just kept on going. [laughter] they get the mule back and the cattle rush goes on. i want to show this picture too. there were people of color in

the cowboy story. one of the men travels with good night and loving. what is fascinating is not only that larry mcmurtry picks him up and uses the commentary for his gravestone, but also icard is on the crew and he is the guy that carries money on the crew, because goodnight figures no one is going to jump a black man in texas for money. there was an ex-confederate who was dismissed for mental instability, so this guy is a whack job, that there was never any problem between icard and this confederate soldier.

what we get from that is that there are individual southerners who are willing to work hard the average age of the cowboy is 24 years old, and they are willing to work hard and they just want a job, they just want something, and by 1867, you begin to have this image of the west as a place where individuals should go out there and work hard and they have a great time, and they put their shoulder to the wheel, and this is the heart of a young, growing america. by 1867, we have the establishment of abilene kansas, which is a place where cowboys and the guys running the trails can -- running the credit -- the trail crews, and you get increasingly these western towns, and i put this in there

and i always wondered what abilene was about, but abilene was important because it was the first deliberately constructed town at a railhead. get your cattle there and get your cattle shipped back to the city where you could sell them for a decent chunk of change. what is significant about this -- oh, by the way, do you know the name cattle punchers? they punch the cattle in the cattle cars so they don't get crushed. so they stand up. they need to be forced to stand up. they ride in the cattle cars and they try to lie down because they are exhausted, they don't want them to die, so they have to punch them to get them to stand back up. i have lots of good stories. i know about whistling cowboys .

these are southerners. southerners hate two things, they hate a lot of things, but the two things that i care that they hate today are when they sell, for example, to the federal agent to the indians they are selling to federal agents who hate them too. they have been fighting a war over the past previous five years, and the confederate like charles goodnight are utterly convinced that federal agents are cheating them and giving them an advantage to people who are unionists during the civil war, and unionists are universally loathed coming out of texas. they hate the government. they also -- sorry -- they are also not keen on the railroads who are shipping other cattle, whom they think are cheating them. so they are disliking both the government, and the railroads that they need to get to market. you have the southerners making

up the body of cowboys coming out of texas and moving up the great plains, which is not an accident if you think about today's political map, but that is a story i will get to in a minute. so there we go, cattle industry and we are done. but think about when this is. 1865. 1856. -- 1866. 1867. 1868. something else is happening during these years. it is called reconstruction. it is not an accident that these coincide and become so important in american history. in the south during 1865, the south is devastated. it is devastated. people say the north won and then they rebuilt, but there are literally animal carcasses all over the south. refugees who are trying to get home, and occasionally they will see an arm or a leg hanging out of a grave, and streets are

broken, and gangs roam the streets. there is a legend, anyway, in certain southern cities, you could hire somebody to kill somebody else for three dollars. when the confederacy collapsed so did the police force. there are extraordinary levels of crime and alcoholism. they used to call it rifle whiskey because it would kill at 200 paces. it is a devastated, depressed, angry, traumatized region. and in that region were both white southerners and black southerners have lost people that they love, they were suffering from what is now called ptsd, they don't have limbs, they don't have eyes, they don't have family members, and you suddenly have the need

to reconstruct a society and the government. and that is going to include for the first time in american history one of my favorite images of reconstruction african-americans, not the african-american men, but african-american women and children. these are the people that you would see along the street sides, because african-american women rarely make it into textbooks when they talk about this, but african-american women very quickly started engaging in street vending, or road vending, or track vending, or path vending, but out there were you -- where you could see them, where white people coming home from fighting in the battles were trying to find family members from whom they had been separated, and are seeing african-americans taking over public spaces. you also see families, and african-americans who want to stay in the society that they helped to save, because after all, they were the one fighting on the winning side, not the losing side.

at the same time they are trying to re-create society, the north is doing extraordinarily well. everyone thought the civil war was going to destroy the economy in the south, but it booms manhattan takes off, industry takes off, andrew carnegie start to make over $100,000 per year people who make uniforms and guns and agriculture all absolutely start taking off after the civil war, and the north is extraordinarily strong and this is going to be a sore point for white southerners, especially when the american congress says to white southerners, now you need to reconstruct your society in such a way that those african-americans who are, were on our side shooting at you get to have a say in their society.

what comes from that is, of course, furious anger on the part of white southerners, and this is stuff you all know, but i am trying to put it all together so you can see where it all goes. what happens is that by 1865 you get the idea among white southerners that what really went on during the civil war was not about, and they started saying it was not about slavery, before they said it was about slavery, but they changed that dramatically in the summer of 1865-1866, they say they never cared about slavery, what they really cared about was states' rights, and this is where you start hearing about that, and the way that white southerners start talking about the government in the northern congress is they say that what is really going on is that congress, the republicans in

congress, are creating an empire. they stacked the deck so that what they are going to do is tax us all, because for the first time in our country's history, we have national taxing for the civil war, and they will redistribute wealth to the black people through contracts to rebuild hospitals and roads and all that kind of stuff. don't want to really rebuild a country, all they want to do is stay in power, and what they are doing is constructing a world in which the government is set up so us poor white guys, our tax dollars are going to be sucked dry, and it is all going to go to this giant government that is not going to listen to us at all and it is just going to help black people and minorities. that is the way that southern white people construct, southern democrats, i should say, because there were a few southern white republicans, construct what was happening when the congress

tried to put in place legislation that tries to rebuild that devastated south. and that comes up most dramatically in the summer of 1865-1866. and an organization was set up in march of 1865 and three in -- 1865 and rechartered in 1866 to try and give african-americans a shot. in most states, they cannot testify in court and they can't stand on juries, and with the freedman's bureau, all of the southern white democrats say, we told you, we told you all along. they are deliberately taking tax

dollars from hard-working white people like us and they're using it to hire bureaucrats who are only going to be republicans because republican -- public office was only held by white people, there are going to take that text dollar and create this big government and put their own people in it, and they are basically going to create this party that is never going to go away. they're going to suck it all out of us so they can keep themselves in power. are you good with that? do you see where i'm going with that? ok. so this is the set up in 1865 and 1866. these people that are supposedly forcing tax dollars are the same

kind of people talking about cowboys, the same newspapers are writing about those cowboys, the same guys that don't want anything from the government they just want to go out and work hard, and in the books and the newspaper articles when they start to talk about cowboys, they don't talk about men of color, they only talk about white cowboys. so what happens is that this really leads into american society with our friend and buddy andrew johnson who we talked about this morning who deliberately takes this argument nationally. he says, you know what? the real problem in america right now is not the white southerners, it is the northern republicans, because the republicans have created an empire and they call it an empire, they call it an oligarchy, we call it -- they call it, i can't think of the

word, but the idea that they are creating an empire, the republicans are creating an empire that is destroying individualism in american society, individual is -- individuals no longer have a shot. now keep in mind that taxes are extraordinarily low, and the government does very little, but he creates this image that the real problem is that republicans have a stranglehold on power, they are increasing the size of the government, they are keeping the republicans in government, democrats will never get a shot, basically if you are a white democrat you are out of luck, you're not going to have a say in the society again. this happens again with the passage of the military reconstruction act and the 15th amendment passage when african-americans start to vote, and what white democrats say in the south but also in the north is that they created their own constituency, and these people

are always going to vote for republicans because the republicans are going to give them stuff, they are going to give them roads and courts and all of that, and the idea is not that they want to be fair to them, the republicans want to stay in power, so they created this special interest constituency so they can only get whatever they want to get out of the government. not because it is good for the country but because that is what they want, it puts money in their pockets, it redistribute wealth to them. that should sound familiar. [laughter] because this is exactly where it comes from. that critical moment of reconstruction. while this is going on in 1867 1868, 1869, we've got the

cowboy. they are selling the cattle to the government, the army is the one who is protecting the cattle of the trail herds against the indians because we are at war at that point with three or four indian tribes including red cloud to which the army loses, we are at war with the comanches and the apaches and the cheyenne, and the life of the cowboy is any great shape, it is -- not any great shape, it's terribly hard work, these guys die. the reason they sing is because they know where each other are, so if there is a stampede, they can turn the herd away from the other cowboys, because if they don't turn the herds away, they will trample these other cowboys until they are flat. that is why cowboys saying.

-- sing. it is not a great life at all. but the way it is portrayed is this is the heart of what is best about america, hard-working guys working their way up, they are going places and they don't want anything from the government. ok, there aren't that many cowboys, and this isn't a long-lived industry at all, it is over by the winter of 1866-1867, and that was the year of a terrible winter where trail riding came to an end and ranches became the thing, that was the year that laura ingalls wilder described the terrible winter and they live on three

beans all winter. it was a terrible winter, and there was a drought right before, so the cattle go into -- weakened and the winter kills them off. it is clear that you can no longer trail cattle and the boom years have been way too big. so the actual cowboys only last for about 20 years, and he might -- they might have been a flash in the pan except for this. while reconstruction is going on, but primarily in the east, there is a problem here in missouri. missouri is one of those great states. there is missouri, north carolina, texas, and maine. no matter what else is going on in the country, you can guarantee that missouri, north carolina, texas, and maine are doing something else. missouri is the lynchpin of where everything is going to explode. missouri is, just for the record, i wanted to write a book

on missouri, and my agent said yeah, you and three other people are going to read it, don't bother, but i really wish i could, because missouri is the linchpin of the 19th century. it is the one slave state north of the missouri compromise line. that means missouri during the civil war was that it got absolutely torn apart. it was like nowhere else. the u.s. army went through missouri and knocked on people's doors and told people to get out of there, because they are trying to stop the guerrilla warfare. this showed up in "lonesome dove 2," by the way. only sort of in passing. this group of raiders were pro-southern confederates who

would ride into a village in missouri on horseback with a gun in each hand, and they would shoot from both sides, and then they would ride out of town before anyone could shoot back. the unionists in missouri hated these guys like poison, because it was not fair. if you are going to engage in war, engage in war, but don't come into town and shoot the place up, kill whoever happens to be on the street, and ride out again. that is just not fair. this is one of the reasons why the army in missouri cleans out a couple of places in missouri and they want to stop this. but the other thing that is interesting about missouri during the war is that there is such tension, while it is considered a union state, it

does end up on the confederate flag, but missouri rewrites the constitution called the drake constitution. the drake constitution was known as the draconian constitution by his opponent, and it was written by pro-unionist republicans, and it is so strong a document that under the drake constitution, is basically anyone who has ever supported the confederacy in any way, even down to delivering a letter to the confederacy or feeding your brother breakfast if he was a confederate soldier, anyone in support of the confederacy in any way will no longer have a civic presence cannot vote, cannot be a lawyer, cannot be a preacher, cannot be a teacher, and that indicates how strong that document is. republicans even thought that it

might be a bit much. but the drake constitution does pass, but what happens is that if you live in missouri and you support the confederacy in any way, you know longer have a civic presence, and the government can do anything it wants to you. the drake machine which runs missouri operates strongly in the way that it stays in power with the help of african-american votes in missouri. so missouri begins to look like a microcosm of what exactly southern democrats are saying about the federal government at large. so why does this matter? it matters because in 1868, the congress passes the omnibus bill to return almost all southern states to full representation in the u.s. government. so that means that people in mississippi, people in louisiana, people in atlanta

people in south carolina, 10 now -- can now vote and have a say in their government again. people in missouri are living under the drake constitution and that is a union state, so that omnibus bill does not apply to missouri. so if you live in missouri and you support the confederacy, you still have no rights. you can't vote. you can't be a lawyer. you can't be a minister. ministers who challenged this, and their testimony is very interesting, so google it if anyone is interested, but by 1868, people in missouri are completely fed up with this. what happens is that people who -- there will be an open senate seat. drake wants to declare who can go in to that seat in congress. he runs missouri. a bunch of republicans say no. we are done, we want that seat we want to get rid of you because you are a jerk among other things, and he was, and we are going to change the way

missouri does business. what they do is first of all they put into office this guy up here in the corner, he becomes senator in 1869. i showed this this morning, i just love these things. do think this guy likes that guy up there? do you think he combed his hair to liberally to look like him? the ideas that i am expounding now that he picks up, everyone should have a say in their government and the you are going to challenge the idea of one political party taking over, these are going to be disseminated throughout american history from now until 1868 through at least the end of the century. you can tell that joseph pulitzer liked him. he gets in to congress and one of the first things he does is challenge of the republican administration by saying, you guys are just creating a

behemoth, you're creating an empire, you won't let individuals, you are sucking tax dollars out of the people, and you are extremely powerful, and he does this for his own personal reasons, but that is an extremely powerful thing from a person from missouri to say. when he takes on the drake people, he actually manages to put his own guy over here to the governor's chair in missouri, and you will never hear about this guy again, he is really not important at all, that i just want to show his picture because, isn't his beard great? [laughter] seriously, though they all is like the same guy? don't they all have the same beard, the same coat? look at his ears. i found this at 3:00 in the morning.

by 1872, they intend to destroy grant, they are desperate to get grant out of office for their own personal reasons, that they argue exactly what the democrats have been arguing, that republicans are creating a monster. they're using tax dollars, they are letting african-americans vote, they're using people's tax dollars to create legislation that is going to redistribute wealth to those of very same voters. this is not a good american system, there is no room for white men whose money is being sucked out of their pockets who can no longer rise because they are being enslaved to this huge government diffusing all of their money to help black people. this is not ok. and they take this campaign national in 1872. they begin to convince

republicans as well as democrats that their real enemy was not the kkk, that was all a rumor, the real problem is this giant government that is sucking tax dollars and squishing the individual. and from that we get the national elevation of the image of the cowboy. that southerner out there in the great west, he does not want to have anything, he just wants to work hard and not have anything taken by the government. and this is why jesse james was so important. he is from missouri, he is in fact in terrible trouble. his first major robbery was in 1869, and let me be clear, he is a robber, he is not just a burglar, he is a robber and a murderer. this is not challenged. this guy is a criminal.

he is not some robin hood, he is a criminal. his first robbery was in 1869, and they can't get him, so the governor of missouri sets a reward for jesse james, and the government just set a price for a man's head. when that happened, and next confederate -- an ex-confederate named john newman edwards begins to say, wait a minute, james is not a criminal, james is in angel of light, james is an individual being persecuted by this behemoth government, who is not only going to take his tax dollars, it is going to take his life. and james started writing to the newspapers, but then his stories also get picked up in tennessee and by "the new york times," where he says he is not a

criminal, he is a nice guy, but he says i cannot turn myself in because no confederate can be a lawyer, be a judge, no confederate can be the preacher, i can't get a fair trial. i'm being persecuted by this behemoth government here in missouri, i am a symbol of a government run amok. he increasingly ties his own story, and jesse james is a nearly illiterate, but when he commits a robbery, he actually wears a kkk robe, which is a reflection of this reconstruction site, and when they attacked the railroads, which is a symbol of the republican government at that point, and the express services that carry money, with republican institutions and run by republican owners. by 1874-1875, the pinkerton's go after them and bomb his home.

this creates even more sympathy. so here is this poor guy where the government is going after him with the pinkertons, but when the pinkertons bomb his house, they kill his little brother, and blow off his stepmom's arm, which really plays well in the newspapers. when he is shot in the back by robert ford, that dirty little coward that shot him in the back, there was a little song written by bruce springsteen a few years ago, he was -- he was hiding under the name of howard. the gang was falling apart by then.

shoots him in the back. when that happens, it becomes at -- becomes this great american symbol of an individual guy who is literally hunted down and killed by his government. because robert ford had a deal with the governor of missouri at the time, he could just get rid of jesse james, he could get a pardon, which is exactly what happened. that is why we care about jesse james. isn't that cool? so what happens? i just killed jesse james in 1882, but that is not the only image that is going on at the time. you have jesse james, who takes the cowboy off in a criminal direction, you also have the rise of buffalo bill cody, who really becomes a public figure in late 1860's and late 1870's. -- early 1870's. he begins to play himself as a great western hero who is

colorful and fighting hard for america, although he takes nothing from the government, of course that is not true, he was a government scout, i have a really interesting story that i don't have time for but i am going to tell you anyway. he gets awarded the medal of honor for work in his scout in -- for his work as a scout in 1870, and it was taken away from him, along with the only other medal of honor given to a woman during the civil war, and it -- they were stripped from them during the 1920's, and both of those were returned in the 1970's and the 1980's, so he actually gets a medal of honor for his work with indian scouts. but the point is, there is this image that traveled east, that goes into plays and books, and a playwright who drinks makes a fortune on buffalo bill and the

n drinks it away, and they create this image of the western hero who is out there doing his own thing. buffalo bill, as you know, by 1883, turns this into big money. he turned into the u2 of 19th century, into theater. he creates buffalo bill's wild west show, and by the 1880's he is fighting the indians as well , not only because of the red cloud fights, but because of the 1886 battle of little bighorn and then the campaign that follows it. later, they will do horrible things with wounded knee, but that is a little bit out of my cken right now. what you have is idea is that this individual without the federal government, without stacking the government by

catering to a special interest of minorities, who are taking tax dollars, we have westerners working hard because that is what americans do. with his buffalo bill's wild west show, by the 1890's, buffalo bill had buffalo bill's wild west show and the rough riders of the world. that is not an accident. the congress of the rough riders of the world, the rough riders are hard-working individual men from all nations and all backgrounds, in buffalo bill's setup of it, and it is not how he played it out at all, but americans wanted to believe that this should have happened even when the government is working quite actively at this point by the 1890's for the very wealthy. this image of the congress of rough riders of people who want nothing but an evenhanded government is of course going to be huge in american history.

i couldn't resist, who came but teddy roosevelt? he called his men in the spanish-american war the rough riders, and he called his men at -- his men the rough riders deliberately after the buffalo bill's congress of rough riders and he says repeatedly, i am for any man who is going to work his way up without the help of the government, that is what america is all about. i am not about a government that redistributes wealth to minorities, or the very wealthy, in teddy roosevelt's case. and i love this image of teddy roosevelt, because there is this wonderful image of him that i don't have permission to reproduce now, but teddy roosevelt is not a hugely good horseman, and he is not a good westerner either. when he talks about dakota

branch, the guys he hires are from maine. he ships them out there. there is this wonderful line where he hears them one day, and they are cutting down trees, and one guy says i cut down 30, and one guy said he cut down 27, and one guy said, he beavered down a few. i love the idea of him gnawing to get it down. this is the image of the rough riders at san juan when they stormed san juan hill and contribute to the fall of the spanish empire in the americas in the spanish-american war, but they did not have horses, that if you see images from the time, they took horses with them, but the horses were so weak, so when they push them off the boat when they got to the shore, they were so weak that they sank.

so when you see images of the rough riders on horses, when they came back to america, teddy roosevelt made sure that they got horses and then they held rodeos, so there were pictures of the rough riders on horseback, but in fact, they crawled through the grass in cuba. it did not matter to roosevelt. you know, he said, these were a splendid set of men, they were tall, they were sinewey, they were resolute, look a man straight in the face without flinching. this is a government in one -- in which one individual does not have special rights. this is a theme running from american history and going back through reconstruction. what is interesting in this is that teddy roosevelt had deliberate cultivation of the cowboy image. william mckinley was assassinated in 1901, and

mark hanna was a real big business republican, and when roosevelt takes the helm, he said he told mckinley that it was a mistake to nominate that wild man in philadelphia, and no -- now look, that wild cowboy is the president of the united states, and teddy roosevelt took that image. in the early 20th century, think of the images you have of the cowboys of the 20th century, you don't have any, because the western image of the early 20th century is of okies, it is of a terribly hard life, people pour out of the plane, the whole reason we have mount rushmore is because they are so desperate to get anybody to go to south dakota they figure that maybe if they put up a statue on a mountain, somebody will go there.

the image of the cowboy died, but it comes back dramatically in 1954 after a series of images appear in "life" magazine, and this man is clarence haley long, and the interesting thing about him is that he worked on charles good night -- goodnight's ranch. j-a- ranch. he is from that ranch. that image starts a campaign that begins in 1954. why did they start the campaign? what else happens in 1954? the idea that the government is helping a minority using tax dollars. brown the board -- v. board

most dramatically there, these are places that are deliberately spun in right wing media where tax dollars are being deliberately used and being taken away from hard-working white people to help a grasping minority. it is no accident, then, that the image of the american cowboy comes along again in the 1950's and absolutely takes off. this is when in the 1960's and the 1970's levi's take off. previously, james dean and dogs. -- thugs. the confederate flag comes out of the attic. nobody cared about it in the beginning of the century. people start wearing cowboy hats again. people start talking about their cowboy heritage. cowboy movies are all over "bonanza," all of those tv shows

from the 1960's and the 1970's. great western individuals taking on problems on their own that are often caused by government. you can see that, you can see how that comes nowadays with "interstellar," for example, but you can see that impacting politics, especially after the 1980's, when this becomes extraordinarily effective when you put on a cowboy hat, especially if you are a good horseman, like ronald reagan who actually rides in the british style, and his handlers say, ditch the britches, and get a cowboy hat, or george w. bush who is from connecticut and who went to yale, but when he went and was leading up to his presidential run, that is when he bought the crawford ranch. he talks so much about his ranch

in crawford. so that image that somehow the heart of america is this individual for whom the government does nothing comes from this magical reconstruction moment when the cattle industry happened to coincide with the use of the federal government trying to protect an ex-slave population. and we have lived with that legacy ever since. thank you very much. [applause] and i very cleverly answered all -- used up all the time for questions. am i allowed to take a few? i can take two? i am sorry about that. cowboys are cool. questions? that is easy. wait. there is one back there, yes.

>> i feel like you skipped over a period of popular cowboys but in some ways, that imagery was more anti-mormon than antiliberal. it was a complex narrative about who was the enemy of freedom. >> did you say anti-mormon in that? >> yes, i am thinking portrayals of womanhood and literature in "the virginian" in the early 1900s. >> i will give you zane gray over mormonism. i read it very differently. if you think about the plot of

"the virginian," by the way, why can't they make a good movie out of that, it is a northern woman and a southern man, he is a confederate whose nickname is jeff, it is a nickname for jefferson davis because he is southern, and they make their way west where jeff, the virginian, works his way up to a position of extraordinary power through his own hard work. and he has that wonderful exchange with shorty, who is that guy who is always looking for a handout, and he says you have to work your way up. you are basically going to be killed. which he is. oh, nevermind. well, he is not an important character anyway. it reinforces this government image. people think there is something else going on, and there is that mormon thing going on out there,

and the other thing i wanted to talk about is where women fit in, and women tend to be good wives or prostitutes in the west, which is in itself very interesting, and i think the person that handles this best is louis l'amour in "flint." to me, it is one of the great american novels. it is a very good book. mormonism is definitely something worth taking on. >> you have very well pointed out the importance of symbols and the cycle that you have talked about, both this morning and this afternoon. if you work, imagine yourself as a consultant to the democratic party going forward in the next two years. what symbol would you pick to

lead the country, maybe in a different direction? >> so this is actually fun. and the most important word is i guess, middle-class. you know, you can't win elections without using the word middle-class a lot, and hammering home the idea that the government should not privilege anybody, the rich as well as the poor. that is the hinge right there. interestingly enough, not a week ago, even, hillary did something very clever, and that is that they published a campaign document, eisenhower's 1956 political platform, the hillary campaign did. she is running. that was very smart. what they are doing is reclaiming republican political language.

if i were doing it and god knows i wish i were doing it. i could think of nothing i would love more than to write speeches. i would talk about the middle class. the government should not privilege anybody. it should privilege the middle class. all of us hard-working people who need education, health care, good roads, schools, clean energy, not the rich people who want a handout or poor people who are lazy. that is a winning formula. every time it has been tried it is the winning formula. thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook.

>> the c-span cities to her takes book tv and american history tv on the road, traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life. this weekend we partnered with time warner cable for a visit to greensboro, north carolina. >> host of the seats were empty when i got there, except for college students. most everybody else, you know, was like, i'm not going down there. anything might happen. there are these empty seats. it is quiet. we go and sit down and wait. you know? to see what is going to happen. a waitress came by with a tray of knives. she was so nervous, they were rattling. i was so nervous, i did not know what she might be doing with those knives. she was as scared as i was.

we sat there with our textbooks trying to study. i remember her saying, we can't serve y'all, or, we don't serv e colored. going to have to ask y'all to leave. we had this instruction, just don't say anything. keep sitting. if they ask you what you would like, answer, cup of coffee. they never asked us what we wanted. >> watch all of our events throughout the day on c-span2's booktuv. also, sunday afternoon at 2:00 on c-span3. >> in february of 1865 president lincoln met and

negotiated to end the civil war. mr. conroy is the author of "our one common country -- abraham lincoln and the hampton roads peace conference. " this includes many photographs that have been recently colorized, the museum of the confederacy in richmond virginia hosted this 90 minute event. >> i really appreciate this honor, to be invited to speak here at this facility, particularly as a connecticut yankee. i apologize for bringing connecticut yankee weather with me. me, but we have to make due with what we have. i think that most of you will have seen the steven spielberg movie, "lincoln," and if you do, if you have, perhaps you