be sure to watch c-span's washington journal beginning at 7:00 eastern on friday morning. join the discussion.

next on american history tv, historians discuss general sherman's march flew georgia. after that, historian dennis fry talks about the impact of john brown's raid in the 1860 goals. the new york historical society hosted this hour long event.

welcome, it's great to be back in the same seats as we always occupy. for those of you who have come to a number of our sessions. we are promised and we are promising each other that we'll do more in the coming seasons. we have a topic today that we think is one of the best that we've come up with, it's a neglected civil war story. because of the focus on sherman's march through georgia. there's a little less attention on sherman's other march, which followed the march through georgia. take a look at this scowling man in a fantastic coat, as we begin talking about him. i'm going to start with john who

as you heard has written two wonderful books about william sherman, and i think we need to know how you can do it in a few minutes his family, his psyche, tell us something about this fellow in the double breasted uniform coat. >> this picture that you see was taken of sherman and he didn't want to have that picture taken 37 he's not a happy camper, this is not the best picture of him. very briefly, sherman has a very difficult childhood. his father dies when he's nine years old. he lives with a neighbor while his mother is living up the street. because she simply can't afford to take care of all the children. and one thing leads to another. throughout his life, he never quite gets over this reliance that he has to place on thomas

ewey, his foster father. he ends up going to west point. he gets too many demare its. the most important thing to remember about sherman before we get into the marches is, he spent most of his precivil war years in the south. and some of his best friends were southerners if you want to understand why destructive war developed. a lot of reasons, obviously, one of the main reasons was sherman did not want to continue the warfare of annihilation he didn't want to keep killing people, because he would be killing his friends. he comes up with the idea from various sources. comes up with the idea to use destructive war. psychological war. convince southerers who he

knows, that they have no chance of winning, by using this destruction. by using the psychology. and that's what he does. there's a lot more to sherman, but i think -- >> that's a good start. i wab the to show another picture. clearly he liked having his picture taken sometime. there's a lot of pictures of william sherman. >> yeah. jim, in 1861, sherman is already a veteran. and yet something happens psychologically. there are headlines that sherman is quote -- tell us what happened there in your medical assessment. >> sherman was a command.

devastating experience for him. he did pretty well, he was put in charge of the union forces in kentucky. he confronted sydney johnston. was building a defensive force. and sherman wasn't ready for that responsibility. and he became very nervous about the confederates he was facing. like mcclellan at that stage of the war, he exaggerated the number of confederates he saw, that he felt that they were going to invade, that he needed a couple hundred thousand troops to confront them. and he made some rather wild statements about that that were not based on fact. the newspapers started claiming he was insane. the burden of the responsibility caused him to have a nervous

breakdown fortunately, general henry halek, who was in command of all of the western union armies at that stage of the war gave sherman another chance to send st. louis to train new troops. sherman went home for a leave of absence for a while. and sherman recovered his stability that fought under grad. that began the partnership between grant and sherman which as many historians have said, the partnership that won the civil war. >> just to add something, the previous picture. sherman on horseback is a famous one. and that allegedly is the sight of where the jimmy carter library is, as you drive in, there's a circle there.

whether it is or not, i've never checked out the story. >> sherman at shiloh, first major battle as grant's lieutenants. tell us about his experience there -- >> this is where i think the relationship between grant and sherman is solidified. what happens as you probably know, the first day the confederates surprised the union troops pushed them back. at the end of the first day, grant and the union troops are hanging on by their finger nails. and the famous story of sherman going to see grant that night. it's pouring down rain. and he's going to ask grant for

the retreat orders. grant is not an impressive looking individual, there was something thatq8[: sherman saw instead of saying what are the retreat plans he says, hellof a day we've had. >> yes, we have had a terrible day, but we'll lick 'em tomorrow. sherman is taken aback. here's a guy that's not going to quit. he's going to keep moving forward. i think you talked about what jim and harold were talking about, the emotional difficulty that sherman had, and i argue that it's because he was fighting his friends and it bothered him, the point is, when the the two of them got together, this began this friendship. each saw something in the other that was going to let them support each other and allowed

grant to allow sherman to do what sherman wanted to do, give very basic orders. >> we're going to jump ahead out of necessity, grant heads east in the spring of 1864 to take kmabd of the entire union army and base himself with the army of the potomac. and sherman is alone and that's the beginning of the atlantic campaign. walk us through the capture of atlanta and the beginning of this storied martha will come after that. >> grant's plan was a coordinated offensive. principally the army of the potomac in virginia. the army of georgia which was now a combination of the old army of the tennessee, cumberland and ohio. three armies are now combined

under sherman and grants orders are to get into the interior of georgia, wreck their war resources and capture atlanta and drive joe johnston, commander of the confederate army of tennessee defending georgia, out of georgia. and so they -- sherman begins that campaign in the second week of may at the same time the armies are fighting in virginia, unlike the campaigns in virginia, which were a series of head on collisions between grant and lee, sherman engages in a series of flanking moves. usually moving to his right under general james mcpherson, no relationship although i'd like to claim we were related. getting into the confederate

rear, forcing them to retreat. this happens over and over again from dalton to rosaka, and from rosaka to cassville and on and on. and at kennesaw mountain sherman does attack and gets a bloody nose. crosses the chattahoochee river and johnston retreats to the defenses of atlanta having not stopped sherman over the course of nearly 100 miles and jefferson davis gives up on johnston and appoints john bell hood a fighter as commander of the army of tennessee. hood repeatedly attacks sherman, trying to drive him back from atlanta and hood gets a series of bloody noses.

finally, sherman undertakes the last of his flanking moments at the end of august cuts the last railroad into atlanta coming in from the south forces hood to evacuate atlanta on september 2nd. and that has a huge political impact in the north, northern people have become wary of the war and the slaughter, especially in virginia, during the summer of 1864, with nothing to show for it. or apparently nothing to show for it. and now comes the message from atlanta, from sherman. atlanta is ours. and fairly won. people in the north go upset at this news. it's one of the major turning points of the war -- the nina turning point toward union

victory is the6f4í fall of atl at the beginning of september 1864, it ensures lincoln's re-election. it ensures the north is going to prosecute this war to ultimate victory. and sherman becomes the leading he hero. >> in terms of politics, we don't have political surveys, but it had been widely assumed lincoln was going down to defeat -- he was desperately thinking what to do at the end of august, demanding to know whether jefferson davis was able to getting other yat. he was desperate right before atlanta and it clearly turned things around. he won 56% of the vote in a couple months. what does sherman do, john. he has atlanta. fairly taken, and then we begin

the famous march east. >> this brings into focus what we were talking about, the relationship between sherman and grant. both grant and lincoln don't think it's a good idea for sherman to take off and march to the sea. and sherman has to convince grant and once grant is convinced, then lincoln is convinced. basically, what sherman is doing, he's cutting off the base of his supplies. he comes to the conclusion that he can't hang on to atlanta. so he makes atlanta a military post he depopulates it. it was already depopulated a great deal. it was about 20,000 when the war began. by the time he leaves, and by the way, the gone with the wind

story is a myth. when sherman leaves atlanta is not leveled to the ground and what is burned has been burned by confederates as they're leaving so the result is, that sherman leaves atlanta behind. cuts off his supply line and marching east. keep in mind one important thing. sherman had a bunch of cattle, a lot of cattle following his army, they had some food. they had their own hamburger stand following behind i guess. they do have that, and each one of the soldiers is given a food to last several days. now, they still live off the countryside, no question about this. and they destroy a great deal. and again, you don't want to believe all the stories that are out there, because the destruction that was done on the

march to the sea was done not only by sherman's army, but also by the confederate army, by joe wheeler and his calvary. remember what beauregard said. he said destroy everything in sherman's path so he will have nothing to live on. in the 1950s, a geographer from the university of georgia did a study of one chunk of the march to the sea. he took one chunk of it and found out what was standing there when sherman came and what was still standing there in the 1950s. guess what? a lot of houses were still standing there that have been there when sherman came through. he didn't burn everything to the

ground. >> john made this argument at the museum of the confederacy. a couple years ago, they have an annual program called man of the year. four or five of us were invited to present. i thought i was going to have a tough time saying lincoln was the man of the year in 1864 because he won re-election. john had the audacity to present sherman with this argument he's created about houses that are standing and this geological record. guess what, john won sherman was elected man of the year, he got national press. the whole country took notice that this rather tenuous argument had taken hold in the southern imagination. i just had to give him credit for that achievement, dubious

achievement. >> along those lines, james resten jr. about 25 years ago did a book called sherman's march in vietnam. he talked to people along the way and he would go into a town. the local guy would tell him, sherman burned everything down. then he would say, but i want to show you some of our antebellum homes. >> that's right. >> how wide. i mean, this is not four people riding a breadth. how wide? >> 60 mile swath. there were four army core in sherman's army, they each travelled on separate roads, the calvary would weave back and forth, they did cut a wide swath through georgia.

>> did they leave. >> they did leave. >> did they cut up railroad lines as this very famous civil war print shows? >> oh, yeah, exactly. >> making sherman's bow ties by melting railroad lines twisting them around trees? >> that's all true. it was one of these great stories, you remember 10, 15 years ago, the mississippi river went down? it was very dry and all. there's a river that goes where sherman also spent some time. at that place in the river where it went down. they found some of sherman's neckties. they would take the rails, bend them around the tree, sometimes they would bend them to form the letters u.s. to make the point. but jim's point is very well taken. i might add, there have been some recent books written by women historians in which they

argue that to really understand the march to the sea, you have to understand it as a gender issue, not a military issue the same way. i'm not quite convinced, but i can see the argument that's being made. certainly sherman didn't see it as a gender issue, he saw it as a military issue to convince the south they have to stop fighting. they can't continue. >> and the psychological toll. >> yes. >> i want to present to the audience one thing we talked about privately before we started, i hadn't realized, i know there are a few physicians in the audience tonight. and you both said to me that sherman's was the healthiest army in the war. just explain that? >> it's because they never stayed in the same place two nights in a row. they didn't follow their own

water supply, they kept on the move in the open air. it was garrison troops in the civil war or winter quarters in the serve el war where you had to high disease mortality. sherman's army was on the move. >> and they ate well? >> they ate well, of course. >> it's a fascinating sidebar. >> let's get him to savannah, we have to make the turn north. he gets to this beautiful city, which he spares. and he writes a wonderful letter to abraham lincoln. i beg to present to you as a christmas gift, the city of savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also 25,000 bails of cotton. this is a fanciful picture by a

german artist at the gates of savann savannah. why does he spare the city? >> i think you need to go back to what we were talking about early, shermen has this feel for the southern people, and he's told them, he says, you can see letters and all sorts of other examples of him saying this, as long as you fight -- as long as you keep this war up, i will do what's necessary to win it, to preserve the union. but once you stop fighting, once you give up then i will become your best friend. and you see that happening, and here in savannah what happens is, the army is on the edge of savannah, hardy has run away, and sherman lets him get away, he doesn't want to continue fighting.

as they move into town, who comes in the opposite direction but the mayor of savannah in a buggy with a white flag. i quit. fine, you quit. the soldiers become great gentlemen. they're paying for their food, doing all sorts of other things. sherman brings food from the north on ships to feed people in savannah. you go to savannah today it is a beautiful city and there are a lot of antebellum houses there that were there and stayed after sherman left. the founder of the girl scouts of america sat on sherman's knee when he visited her mother the wife of a confederate soldier. they put several of their wives in sherman's control or in

sherman's protection it tells you, it's much more complicated than we've sometimes been led to believe. >> now we're at 1865? and why -- i mean, who decides what sherman is going to do next and obviously this is our moment when he's going to move forth tell us who ordered it and what the point was. >> in response to sherman giving savannah to lincoln for christmas, lincoln thanks him and says, well, what next? i suppose i'll leave it to you, and general grant to figure out what to do next. what grant wanted to do was to put sherman's men on ships and bring them up to virginia to help close out lee. sherman objected to that, and gets involved in a long range discussion with grant just as he did before the original march to

georgia, saying no, i'll march through the carolinas, come in on lee's rear that way. it takes a lot of ships to move 60,000 men along with 20,000 animals, artillery, supplies, wagons and so on wrapz sherman, they can move themselves if they march across country again, grant says, well, all right, your first march was successful and you're destroying the resources on which the confederacy is waging this war. he turns them loose. at the beginning of february 1865, sherman moves out from savannah and starts through south carolina if the march through georgia was not as destructive of civilian

property, probably in south carolina it was. >> right. >> it measured up to the myth, because not so much sherman personally, but all of his men, his officers, his soldiers, they had it in for south carolina. they regarded south carolina as responsible for beginning this war. they remember a speech by james henry hammonbeck in 1858. a lot of northern soldiers would have called it the mud sill speech. he justified the social order of the south, slavery, it created a wealthy aristocratic class of the slaves. he taunted the north saying, we have a mud sill of slaves 37 you have a mud sill too. they called themselves free. well, these northern soldiers remembered the fact that south carolinans looked at them as mud

sills when they went through south carolina and they did have it in. >> it's interesting too that when sherman was marching through georgia, there were several letters and diary entries of soldiers who reported that georgian women basically said, we don't like what you're doing to us, but give it to south carolina even more. they're responsible for us being in this mess. that fits in to what was said. >> you really are going to focus on gender studies. >> yeah. >> i want to take one moment to talk about sherman and flynn americans. this is an edwin forbes drawing of stranglers. so i assume that sherman's armies attracted african-americans who were liberated by the army under the terms of the emancipation proclamation. i think we need to talk a little

bit about sherman's attitudes about african-americans. >> he was not an abolitionist. he wasn't anywhere close to being an abolitionist. he supported the emancipation proclamation and the lincoln administration's emancipation policy. he was not a proponent of black troops in the army. and he had no black troops in his army in georgia. he had a contingent of black pioneers, as they were called. that meant labor troops. they played a crucial role, especially in the march through south carolina. >> what happened to these people who attached themselves to the army. >> in the case of georgia, he had thousands of african-american slaves following the army, he tried to discourage that, because they

ate up supplies, several thousand of them made it to savannah, a lot of them dropped out several thousand made it to savannah with him. and sherman after consulting with secretary of war stanton, in january 1865, issued a famous order 15, in which he set aside millions of acres of the low country in georgia and south carolina for occupation by freed slaves. with whatever possessory titles until congress can make good that land. congress never did make good that land. andrew johnson, when he became president returned the land to its owners, that's another story. sherman is not a strong believer in emancipation. it would be fair to call him a racist from our point of view. but he does issue this general

order or special order? >> special order. setting aside thousands and thousands of acres for freed slaves. >> later to be taken away from. >> the pioneers, several thousand black laborers did some of the heavy work bridging rivers, cord roying roads, in sherman's march to virginia. they provided logistical support through the carolinas. >> we have -- probably should have put this up on the screen earlier. >> you see the march from georgia is southeast and sort of winding road up the carolinas, this is helpful. why is the path so -- would you consider that direct in the carolinas?

>> well, i think jim already began talking about this, that period of time, sherman wanted to leave beginning of january, a little later to begin the march to the carolinas, it was the wettest spring that area had had, streams were overflowing, marshes were full. these soldiers had to march -- wade through this kind of water, jim mentioned couroroying. it basically is, you knock down a tree, you lay it down on the ground, put another tree next to it, another tree next to, another log next to it. the problem is, that usually solves the difficulty, but in this case, it was so wet that some of these logs would go down and float up to the surface and the result was that they had to

put several layers, this was incredibly difficult. >> this is one tree? >> it's hard to believe this. >> that's how you made a road through the mud. >> that's right. >> we're building the second avenue subway in new york. it's a much slower process. >> imagine you're a horse or a mule. these things don't stay neatly. they shift and they move. horses broke away. >> he's managing. >> joe johnston says he was not in command at this time. he said, this is the greatest army, sherman has the greatest army since ceasar that they could accomplish what they did, they were making ten miles a day. marching -- you know, doing this cordouroing, and everything else, building bridges, it was a mess. remember, this is winter.

it's cold. it does get cold in the south. believe me. the water's cold and they have to do this and the african-american pioneers have to -- it's a terribly difficult thing. that's why sherman says the march through the carolinas is much more significant than the march to the sea. despite the publicity that the first one gets. >> in the march from atlanta to savannah, you're more or less parallel to major rivers which flow southeast. in the march north from savannah through the carolinas you have to cross one river after another. >> was there ever, as we look at the march toward columbia. why was there -- or was there a discussion about following the

rail line to sharls ston which has enormous significance as the place where the american flag was first fired on at sumpter. >> there's an old book done in the 1930s by lidell hart, he talks about that sherman's great contribution to history of warfare and all is his indirect approach. he made the confederates think he was going toward augusta. he was going to recall charleston and then he went up the middle to columbia. >> is it his decision or? >> yes, yes. >> he has the leeway to not capture, not go after charleston? >> grant gave him complete carte branch. do it the way you want. >> the thing about charleston, once sherman makes it equal distance to charleston, he's cut

it off, charleston falls anyway. despite -- the irony is, union troops have been trying to take charleston for -- >> they started in '63. coming through the sea. sherman just supports it from behind. this drives confederates crazy. he's supposed to go, there's a great story about -- we're going to get into in columbia. who burned columbia, all the rest. sherman was accused of burning columbia in the post war years. his response was, no, i didn't, if i had, i would let you know i did it, i would not deny it, i didn't do it, if you are unhappy with that, i'll be happy to call my soldiers back together and we'll come back and finish the job. >> before we get to columbia jim always manages to bring up

general james mcpherson. one of the stops along the way to columbia, mcphersonville. what do we know about that the burning of mcphersonville. >> alet of towns in south carolina got burn ed, barn well well after known as burnwell. >>. >> a lot of south carolina -- i mean, they did -- >> it was -- here is a sort of romanticized burning of the image of columbia, john gave us an early glimpse of sherman's not assuming responsibility for

the destruction. next is a photograph of what parts of columbia looked like after the -- sherman went through. and, of course, they proudly have kept the bullet hot side of the state capitol, the same state capital that flew the confederate flag all those years. >> sherman did blast away at the state capital. >> we were talking about this. if you want to get a good insight into what went on in columbia, there's a book by a marian b. lucas, i think it's published by the university of south carolina press. >> in any case, this historian,

from south carolina, said there were three reasons south carolina was burned, wind, whiskey and cotton. it was both sides had something to do with this. he was leaving. >> it was wade hampton. >> who was that, a wealthy south carolina planner. one of the largest owners in the south. reputed to be -- there were these cotton bails in the middle of the streets of the middle of the city. and wind came up and started the fire going again. as the soldiers are coming into columbia, somebody has the

bright idea that there is whiskey here, and people from charleston have sent to columbia, because it's going to be safe. they are dolling out liquor in these big ladles. you can imagine what is happening there. but anyway, the point that lucas make makes that columbia burned to the ground. >> atlanta was about 30%. >> it's pretty rough. >> a lot of it was the military aspects. it's not like going with the wind. where -- >> i want to go through some of these slides so we can get

sherman out of the carolinas we do have the use of african-american troops in the carolinas, they're there, they're in charleston. they're maybe not sherman's men, but they are symbolically an important part of the union conquest of the carolinas. and, of course, sherman gets to virginia and has this famous meeting with lincoln. my favorite part of the meeting is sherman's trying to find out what lincoln wants done if he's captured. he tells the story of an irish man who had given up whiskey after years of battling the bug. he asks his friends for lemonade. he said, i'll turn my back, if you add some of whisky unbeknownst to myself, that would be acceptable.

had to be unbeknownst to lincoln. >> mathematics is done. lee is surrendered. lincoln is dead, and sherman finally sits at a table with johnston. before our questions begin we have to deal with this surrender. sherman decides to give away a little too much, tell us what happened here at this first meeting. this is the bennett house? >> yeah, that's exactly it. sherman said, and what he noted about sherman and black troops. once you stop fighting, i will

come your best friend. the treaty includes things that are helpful to the south the soldiers are given authority to keep their weapons and take them back to the state arsenals. no mention of slavery. there is a mention that the confederates will be able to keep their property. it fits to what sherman said he's going to do, he doesn't like african-americans he keeps saying, we'll go back to the good old days before the war started. the good old days before the coming of the warsaw a situation where the south dominated the federal government and slavery

was accepted. is sherman giving away the store? i think he is. i think he makes a big mistake here. >> and what's the reaction back in washington? >> he sends the terms of the surrender with johnson back to washington, the cabinet meets with president johnson and they reject the terms grant's in washington, they tell grant to go down and take control of sherman's army many fire sherman, gives johnston the same terms he's given lee. grant doesn't want to alienate sherman, insult him. he goes down and tells sherman these are unacceptable and give them the same they weres i gave

lee sherman meets with johnston again and does that. he sold sherman a bill of goods in that first one. johnson is in no position to refuse these new terms. in the meantime, secretary of war stanton has released to the press about sherman's original terms. that many sherman is giving away the store, and sherman becomes the subject 6 a great deal of criticism. >> he had seven months of great press. that's pretty amazing.

>> if anyone has questions, please come to the microphone. >> when he met stanton on the revier reviewing stand stanton came up to shake hands with sherman and sherman turned away and refused to shake hands with him in a famous incident. >> i think we need to go to some questions. >> my name is joyce hall. my great grandmother, when i was a small child, talked about the union soldiers coming through canton, north carolina, western north carolina. that's not on your route, do you know anything about that? >> well, i can tell you there's been a wonderful article, and i wish i could think of the

person's name, talking about even before the gender issue of the march to the sea. but in which there is a constant refrain in a lot of folklore that has passed from generation to generation. about the fact that it was the women of the south who stood up to sherman and they would -- it would be something like an old girlfriend of his, so he didn't want to do anything. none of that istry, and even the stories of the women standing up to the soldiers simply didn't happen. north carolina was particularly famous because going through north carolina, the soldiers noticed that the pine trees gave off a lot of resin, so you could light them and you would have these flames chuting up into the

skies. they would take their buddies, grab him out of the bed and stick him to one of these trees that caught on fire. there was a lot of foolishness like this going on. >> how wide was the carolina army? >> i don't completely agree with jim at some places it was 60 miles. in other cases when they came together it was this sort of thing. it wasn't quite as wide because of the weather conditions. >> i want to thank you for making easily understood a very interesting campaign. my question that somebody, one of you referred to as a gender war, somebody i've never heard

before. i know you said you didn't agree it was a gender war, those proponents for calling it that, what was their reasoning? >> the historians? >> basically, what they do, they go through diaries left by women. a lot of good confederate diaries and letters, and they extrapolate eenvents that these people talked about, and they argue that actually, sherman's march was a battle not of military nature, but it was a battle against the role of women in society. and he argues that as a result of sherman's march, the men were looked down on because they couldn't stop this. the women became the heroin's, because they stood up to the soldiers. none of that is particularly -- k34r50e9ly accurate. in some cases it was, most cases it wasn't.

>> area for further study. >> when i look back at american history, and i hear about general sherman, grant, robert e. lee, stonewall jackson and going to mcarthur and patton. the generals, american generals are -- have very rich personalities. but when you bring it today, they don't stand out as conspicuously as they did in history. how do you explain that and how does that affect our military? >> you ought to give that a try, professor. >> tough one. >> i'm not sure i understand the that the generals today don't have the same kind of image and the colorful --

>> yes. >> well, the civil war and world war ii, the generals, the two wars that you mentioned the generals were in, were the two biggest wars that this country ever fought. and so they are going to throw to the surface these dominant personalities, but now with brush fire wars and minor wars and nothing anywhere remotely similar to the scale of the civil war or world war ii, you are not going to have these people being thrown to the surface. >> you had iraq that lasted a long time. you had vietnam. >> but iraq, 5,000 or 6,000 american soldiers died in iraq. 750,000 died in the civil war. 500,000 died in world war ii. that's a huge difference and it's going to create a huge difference in image and in the role that these people played in historical -- in a major

historical event. >> let's try to get in one more question. >> question for professor. you mentioned that when sherman proposed to march through the south and leave behind his base of supplies that this got grant and lincoln very nervous. however, isn't it true that when grant executed his vicksburg campaign he was going to cut himself off from his base of supplies when he crossed the river, so why wasn't he more sympathetic to what sherman was trying to do? >> very good question. anybody here? >> yes. you know, that is very accurate because some historians argue that sherman got his idea for breaking away from his supply base, et cetera, from what grant did in vicksburg, when he crossed the river, et cetera. the difficulty with that

interpretation, i think, and i have talked to some people who know a heck of a lot more about the battle of vicksburg than i do, and they argue that actually, grant never cut his supply line and the irony is, it was sherman who kept insisting that he do what had to be done to keep that supply line going. it was a very complicated supply line because it did indeed go across the river and come this way but one of the first things that grant wanted to do and did when he came on to mississippi soil was to make sure that his supply line was indeed there. so grant does, and you can see this in letters where he talks about yeah, i cut myself off from my supplies, et cetera, but i don't think it's to the great degree that sherman did it in the march to the sea. >> sherman's march from atlanta to savannah was 285 miles. from the mississippi river to

jackson is only 40 miles. so it's a huge difference in the logistical situation. >> so i always like to end with a quote from the commander in chief, and so let's conclude with the words of thanks that the president sent to sherman after the surrender of savannah. not quite what next which is a pretty rough thing to say after that kind of triumph but demonstration that he was always willing to share credit for great moments in the war. so this is what lincoln wrote to sherman after getting that extraordinary christmas gift of savannah. when you are -- when you were about leaving atlanta for the atlantic coast, i was anxious if not fearful, but feeling that you were the better judge and remembering that nothing tricked, nothing gained, i did not interfere. now the undertaking being a

success, the honor is all yours. it brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light. magnanimous and evocative. you have helped us see light on a number of programs, especially this campaign. you have enlightened us. it's always wonderful to appear with john and jim and if you keep coming, we will keep coming. thank you. [ applause ] >> harold holtzer, james macpherson, aren't they amazing? we look forward to having you return again and again. if we could, we could just order chinese food and stay for

another session. but we all have to go. they will be here staying for a book signing. you can stay a little while, go to the museum store, chat with them, then go to our cafe for dinner. we look forward to seeing you all again. thank you all so much and thank you three wonderful gentlemen. [ applause ] book tv has 48 hours of non-fiction books and authors every weekend. here are some programs to watch for. this weekend, join us for the 22nd annual virginia festival of the book in charlottesville starting saturday at noon eastern. programs include author bruce hillman, who discusses his book "the man who stalked einstein." how nazi scientist changed the course of history. then saturday evening at 7:00, patricia bell scott, professor of women's studies at the university of georgia, on the fire brand and the first lady,

portrait of a friendship. pauline murray, eleanor roosevelt and the struggle for social justice, exploring the relationship between a civil rights activist, co-founder of the national organization for women and first lady eleanor roosevelt. patricia bell scott speaks with author and historian nell painter at roosevelt house in new york city. sunday at 1:00 p.m. eastern, more from the virginia festival of the book. including kelly carlin, george carlin's daughter who talks about her life growing up with the comedian in "a carlin home companion." sunday night, "after words" with the author of "break through the making of america's first woman president." sthee looks at the advances women are making in the political arena. she is interviewed by the chair and co-founder of cornell's law school avon center for women and justice. >> for a woman to be at the head

of the most powerful country in the world when one of our key allies doesn't allow women to drive and our most significant enemy at this time, isis, is literally executing women and girls simply for being women and girls, i think this sends a powerful message from the bully pulpit about what america stands for. >> go to book tv.org for the complete weekend schedule. i am a history buff. i do enjoy seeing the fabric of our country and how things, just how they work and how they're made. >> i love american history tv. the presidency. american artifacts. they're fantastic shows. >> i had no idea they did history. that's probably something i would really enjoy. >> and with american history tv, it gives you that perspective. >> i'm a c-span fan. >> on lectures in history, emporia state university

professor brian craig miller talks about the experience of confederate veterans during reconstruction. he describes how options for support varied widely between the southern states. he also argues that many southern organizations founded to aid veterans instead put their money toward large monuments and pro-confederate propaganda. his class is about 50 minutes. >> on april the 12th of 1865 was actually the real surrender day of the army, the confederate army itself at. the official documents had been signed. on that day, the confederate soldiers who were left of the army of northern virginia went on this long process of walking up, turning over their regimental flags, stacking their guns, which you can imagine that gun as part of your own identity, that symbol of who you were as a soldier for the last few years of the war, now being

turned over to the victors in the united states army, and then traveling home, going away, going back to where you came from. now, john dooley was one of the soldiers who actually did not surrender. he actually went with the confederate government when jeffers jefferson davis evacuated richmond. but along the way as he escaped into the carolinas he was seeing a lot of signs that the war was coming to its horrific conclusion. he wrote in the gullies and along the fences might be seeing the abandoned muskets of the soldiers, the muzzles were choked with mud and the cat boxes and cartridges lay in sad confusion along the road side. never had my ooigs witnessed a sight like this for here lie unmistakable evidence of a set determination upon the hundreds to fight no more and a shameless indifference as to whether the world knows it or not.

the lecture today is going to examine particularly the transition that confederate veterans are going to go through as they go from soldier back to civilian and we are going to look at a few in particular things. we will look at the hardships they faced in terms of that transition. we will look at the limited assistance they found, particularly as they were dealing with chronic pain and wounds, what sort of help could they get in adjusting to those particular newfound disabilities. and then finally, how they sought to actually remember the war itself. the confederates who turned home -- returned home are dealing with the reality of defeat and it's not an easy reality if you will to come to terms with. they are returning to tables that had empty chairs around them throughout the war and now will be permanently empty, because many thousands of those men will not return back to their families. they are dealing with scenes like this, large-scale property destruction, destroyed by battlefield engagements or by the destruction of military

installations. the march to the sea, this particular image of richmond being destroyed as the union army marched in in a grand victorious manner. the smoldering ruins, if you will, left all across the south. we talked a little bit before about the crisis in faith that southern veterans had, that they had prayed to god in many ways for that speedy and big victory and now are returning home as defeated men, as losers, if you will. there are many ways sort of embodying if you will rem, sitting in the corner losing their religion because god had turned away from them. some came home completely disillusioned, angry, frustrated. one veteran, though, remained somewhat hopeful, though. he said defeat must be the will of god and is therefore right. we must look forward therefore with heart and hope to the future, trusting that god will strengthen us to override all obstacles and triumph all difficulties.

another woman noted this demoralization that we feel is now complete. we are whipped. there is no doubt about it. so when these veterans are g@r(t&háhp &hc% to face mixed reactions as they come off of trains or just walk become into their communities or come off of a horse that they had taken home. in some cities, you saw these veterans return home and communities rushed out to give them big hugs and welcome them home. whitelaw reed is one of these guys in savannah after the civil war and witnessed many of these reunions. he said he saw crowds gather that seemed in no [ inaudible ] from the lack of success in the war. he noticed men were dressed in gray uniforms missing legs and arms and they were getting a little bit of extra attention. he said the compliments would rain upon that veteran until the extra blush -- the blushes would show upon his cheeks and he was convinced that he had taken the most gallant and manly course in the world. now as these veterans return

home, they return back to that dining room table chair that had been empty for so long but some of them now are crippled soldiers, home from wars with only wounds and glory to pay. there was a case of a major john haskill who had lost an arm krg the war. he was actually on the porscporg with some women. as confederate soldiers were walking by on their way back to the community after the war comes to a conclusion, he turns around and showcases the empty sleeve, the sort of waving in the breeze from his coat jacket and all of the soldiers who marched by were impressed. they took off their hats and cheered and greeted him as they went by. each regiment catching inspiration from the one ahead of it according to an eyewitness. but these cheers are short-lived in many ways, particularly because this aura of defeat is now hanging over the confederacy itself. if you are like me and had to

suffer through the philadelphia eagles yesterday losing to miami it sort of creates a stupid loss to miami, it sort of gives you that little bit of internal cloud of defeat and are you like oh, did i really want to watch any more nfl football games today. but then you watch peyton manning look even worse than the philadelphia eagles and it makes you feel a little bit better about yourself, right? and for these particular veterans, where else were they going to go to find that little bit of i think extra oomph, if you will, to feel better. for some veterans it was the fact that they came home with injuries that they didn't need to show to people in their communities. in fact, one confederate veteran noted that he decided he came home with a gunshot wound that was hidden in his chest and he had to deal with the bullet there for the rest of his life but he was happy about it because nobody could tell that he had been wounded. he wasn't going to get that look from somebody in the community saying oh, he must have lost his arm in that war, that war that didn't turn out so well. clement moody noted when the

southern confederacy had been wrapped in her bloody winding sheet and the formerly cherished hope of the south had gone down in darkness and death, the transition now begins for veterans themselves. some come home with empty sleeves, some come hobbling home on one leg, some left both legs on the battlefield, some with sightless eyeballs groping their way home in blindness, in darkness, all came in tatters and rags to look upon the ashes of their ruined homes. he pleaded we needed to recognize these men who had been so physically damaged. you can imagine this to be a little bit of a strange transition, if you will. imagine living that life for three, four years of constant excitement, constant marching, wearing on your body, the elements, the constant fear that you may have going into battle, and all of a sudden, it stops immediately. it just ends. that whole process that you have gotten used to physically, emotionally, mentally, is now

gone and you come home with the memories of it, with the good memories of the war, with the negative memories of the war, and possibly psychological or physical repercussions that the war itself had caused. for historians it's difficult in terms of chronicling these particular stories about veterans and their difficulties after the war, and for a few reasons is because civil war folks were very good at writing everything down in letters and diary entries during the war. they chronicled every bad piece of hard tack they ate, every raindrop that fell, every battle and every moment that they spent on guard duty, but then they come home. they're not chronicling the war in that amount of significant detail as they had previously. and so we are left with only those who kept writing diary entries to actually tell us what all of this means in the grand scope of things. the other thing is that some confederates we can say well, we can go to the pension files, these documents when confederate soldiers will fill out documents

to get money and prospects which we will talk about in a few minutes but those files in many ways are incomplete. they are also hidden from public view. in fact, some states actually still have medical seals on these documents because they contain private details. medical details, about family members that you don't want necessarily to go public. so for the veterans who came home psychologically disturbed, some of them turned to alcohol abuse, some to drug abuse, particularly opium. we also see some contemplate and actually commit suicide. bill hicks is one of these guys. he was described as the pristine man if you will, colossus in form. he lost a leg in the battle of shilo in 1862. he came home to a law practice that seemed promising but wasn't that great overall. every day, hicks thought about that leg that he had lost in the war. it preyed on him until according to one of his friends, he had no choice but to blow out his

brains because he didn't want to live the rest of his life as [ inaudible ]. another veteran who had severely beaten his child to take out some of his frustrations actually stood in front of the mirror and then put a revolver to his temple and fired. charles meninger wrote who had his businesses fail economically with debts and wounds decided to end his life on a drug overdose. these are extreme responses albeit but i think they give us some sense of the level of death and despair that veterans are facing. in fact, i don't think it's a coincidence that historians now are looking at all of these darker issues if you will of the american civil war, this dark turn particularly because of what our own service men and women are facing now as they return home from iraq and afghanistan. i think those of you who like to read a lot about the civil war will see over the next five to ten years quite a bit of literature on those who lost limbs, those who ended up in mental institutions, those who were homeless or abused drugs or

alcohol, because they didn't find ways to adjust back. because it's very easy i think for historians when they write the grand narrative of american history to end the civil war chapter on appomattox, the war comes to conclusion, reconciliation, reunion is beginning and you turn the next page and it's reconstruction. there is no if you will continued stories of those individuals who were in the midst of the war as they tried to transition home. you can imagine if you came home with an injury like these confederate veterans here that you see on the screen. the amount of chronic pain that you are going to have to deal with on a daily basis. southerners weren't supposed to complain. this is part of their sort of southern mantra of what makes them men. they are not supposed to tell all their friends how awful their injuries are, they are not supposed to complain. they are supposed to do it in stoic silence. yet that pain is going to be now a constant part of their life.

wounds that go from time to time to leak a little bit of pus. maybe a stump that wasn't perfectly formed and the bone inside decides one day while you're trying to walk down a set of stairs to poke back through the skin and create constant, constant pain. a ringing in your ears that was caused by all of the artillery shells that exploded next to you during the war that never seemed to subside. constant headaches that blurred vision. others even had the sensation that their limbs were still a part of their body. we call this phantom limb or sensory hallucination disorder today. in fact, i was able to uncover two cases of this. one confederate veteran who awoke crying in a hospital and he said i thought i was sleeping with my little brother at home and my foot, the one that was cut off, itched and i tried to rub it against the other and my foot was not there, just this stump. it seems strange that in terms of the sensory hallucination it was usually in fingers, toes, feet and hands.

you wouldn't necessarily feel that your whole leg was there, but you would still feel those toes or that foot maybe itching and trying to scratch it and it didn't exist. then all of a sudden, you have this horrific visualization, this realization that that limb is not coming back. another case of a guy in a hospital bed, he would always sort of quick flip over on his body and constantly, and the patient next to him asked, got up the gumption to ask him why are you always rolling so quickly in the middle of the night. he said that he always had this scratch on one side of his back and he would flip over so his arm could scratch it except the arm wasn't there any longer. it had been removed from the war. a constant reminder he had to deal with that he was going to be an amputee. these confederate veterans, particularly those who are disabled, become in many ways living symbols of what that defeat meant for the confederacy itself. they are the constant reminders both them themselves and for society at large, who is going to look at them on a daily

basis. you can imagine for southerners who have these proscribed notions of what southern manhood is and southern womanhood and how are they going to deal with these dilapidated bodies, altered forms of manhood who also went off to war to prove themselves as true honorable men but come home defeated and now have symbols of that defeat. southerners in some ways remain in flux over how to deal with their veterans. in macon, georgia shortly after the end of the civil war, the newspaper reported that one night, a gentleman got drunk and passed out on the streets of macon, georgia and two kids ages 9 and 11 saw him on the street, picked up a rusty saw and sawed off his leg. well, actually what they did was they sawed off his prosthetic leg, his wooden leg he had attached which seems like a really strange phenomenon but the newspapers in macon pointed out that these children had depicted and been part of one of

the great depravties of the age, if you will, that they had done this to this particular confederate veteran who had served in the war but then done something that had gone against the constructs of how southerners were expected to behave in society. you should be able to control your liquor. you are not going to go out and get drunk in a bar and pass out drunk on the streets and so some ways this was the children sort of reminding this gentleman look, this is not how a real southern man behaves, but at the same time, it is these children not understanding that he was a veteran, that he had given a part of his body in the cause of the war itself. so for these who are coming home disheveled and distraught, they have to find some sort of economic opportunity to move forward. most veterans worked, confederate soldiers who went off to war were doing manual labor jobs, farming was the largest occupation of most confederate soldiers. they are going to come home and go back to the fields that their wives or other family members tended while they were away at war but if you were physically

disabled, can you keep doing that same level of manual labor? there's a case in georgia, a confederate veteran who had lost a leg and his wife would literally just take him out to the plow and tie him to it so he could actually just steer the plow itself but would have to rely on the animals to move the plow forward. another worker who ended up in a tobacco warehouse could only work a few hours a day because he could barely stand on the one leg that he had. it was just too painful. other educational opportunities would spring up, in fact, a few southern states, virginia, georgia and mississippi, will offer free classes for wounded veterans to allow you to get an education and even become a teacher. but not everyone's cut out for being educators. james frazier is one of these men who lost a limb during the war. in fact, he was described that he did not have a very enviable life after the civil war. he came home and decided to take up teaching but he routinely

lashed out at his students because they were always texting on their phones or playing candy crush or candy crush soda now with the little gummy bears you have to get to float to the top. maybe that's why he lashed at them. no, it was the reality that he could not bear to deal with this chronic pain that he constantly had and this reminder of failure. so then frazier ended up meeting a woman and they fell in love and they got married, but then she shortly died and then he actually ends up in court because he was accused of beating her children, his now stepchildren, because in many ways, he just couldn't handle his new reality of dealing with failure in the aftermath of the american civil war. of course, i think one of the best places maybe, if you are an amputee and looking for a potential job, is to run for political office. in fact, you can use that to garner sympathy. there are cases throughout the post-war period of veterans running, missing arms, missing legs, this is always noted in

sort of their campaign bios that you would see appearing in the newspapers and they would emphasize that over and over again. one of these guys is francis ni nichols who is a double amputee that we see on the screen. because so much of him had been physically damaged during the war, some reporters actually questioned whether the constituents in louisiana should be willing to vote for a man in this physical condition to be governor of their state. and nichols thought about it and he said well, i guess they can just vote for whatever's left of me to hold the governorship of louisiana. which they will do twice. he will actually serve two terms as governor in louisiana. but large veterans -- large numbers of veterans, though, are not going to have those political opportunities, those educational opportunities or able to transition back into manual labor. they are going to have to beg for work and find signs everywhere that say no main

confederate need apply. one veteran in louisiana noted a man with one arm cannot be expected to ever make as much as two. when that becomes your financial reality, when you cannot find a job, you end up begging on the streets for money. this is one particular confederate veteran who was -- became a fixture on the capitol steps of austin, texas in the post-war years. every day as legislators would sort of come into their offices to debate the bills for the legislature in the state of texas, he would be out front as you can see selling pencils, hoping to elicit a little bit of sympathy from those legislators who would buy some pencils and then allow him to survive. as you can see, he is missing a leg, he has just sort of this wooden sort of device, peg leg that's attached for a place to hold the stump in, but it's not going to be very comfortable, it's certainly not one of these advanced prosthetic limbs. it's a strange irony that this man is sort of here on these

steps begging legislators for money, because in many ways, the legislators had not done him any service. texas was a state that did not give their confederate veterans any prosthetic limbs and waited several decades to actually extend pension benefits. he is in this particular case, if you will, this part of life, because the legislators had not done anything to assist him, to help him transition back into society. a doctor who saw this veteran on numerous occasions on the capitol steps wrote this about him. poor old confed, despised old rebel. they told you a wound would be an honor and you a hero. cruel mockery, bitter deception, your life blood shed, your youth wasted all in vain. these groups of beggers started popping up all over the streets of southern cities. confederate veterans begging for money just so they could survive. the city of new orleans in particular had decided to crack down on this large number of beggers in the streets of the

french quarter, particularly because the wealthy members of new orleans society did not want to interact with these men on a daily basis. so in 1883, the city of new orleans holds an event known as the corraling of the cripples as it was announced in the newspapers, where city officials went through the streets rounded up all those beggers, the wounded veterans, and put them in the shakes spears alms house. when they put them away, they realized many of them were confederate veterans who had no other options to survive in society other than to beg for money. so these cities started to actually transition the laws a little bit where they would say no begging allowed on the streets unless you are a confederate veteran. that was the loophole. so how do you prove yourself a confederate veteran when somebody comes by and says do you have the right to beg for money here? do you show them your confederate i.d. card that you got during the war? well, they didn't have them. you show your uniform. that's your clearest marker of your identity. but what we find is cases of men

who stole uniforms, who bought uniforms from confederate men who had been injured and disabled through other means and then now putting on that uniform, sitting on a street corner and pretending to be a confederate veteran. identity theft going on in the post civil war period, if you will. why these men have to beg is because the 14th amendment that was added on the constitution in 1868 had a clear provision, section four prohibits the united states government from paying any financial obligations that tied directly to the aid of those who participated in the rebellion against the united states. so the 14th amendment bars confederate veterans from getting any limbs, prosthetic limbs that the union government was -- had been processing and giving to union amputees, it bars them from collecting a pension from the united states government, which becomes huge in the post-war period. in fact, 40% of the united

states' budget in the 1890s is going to pay pensions for union veterans. so confederates themselves are left to the wills of the states themselves. so the first area that we see in terms of assistance for these men, particularly those who are disabled and injured, is in the form of giving them prosthetic limbs. but as you can see, not every southern state will actually participate. north carolina will be the first, georgia, mississippi, south carolina, virginia, alabama and louisiana will come on board by 1880. now, in order to get a prosthetic limb, you had to fill out an extensive application for this limb. where you had to give your details about who you are, but you also had to prove that first, you lost your limb in the american civil war. it wasn't that you lost your limb before or after. it had to be a direct result of your military participation. you had to prove that by having a doctor or if you could find your regimental surgeon from the war, a lot of these guys came

from the same communities, so you could go find him and say hey, can you be my eyewitness, can you sign off that i actually lost my limb during the war. the second thing you had to prove is that you left the war in an honorable state. what we mean by that is you didn't quick run away. you didn't flee your post. you actually surrendered when you were forced to surrender, when the union armies made the confederacy capitulate, if you will. that you went through this honorable discharge, you didn't run away, you didn't escape. you had to prove that you honorably left the war. so those who maybe fled after their injuries or didn't have the proper paperwork would have a hard time getting a prosthetic limb. so in order to figure out well, how many limbs do you actually need. like state governments who decide okay, we are going to do a prosthetic limb program, they would actually send out census takers to go to communities all across the south, that particular state, and count how many amputees so they could come back and give the state governments a financial figure

so they would know how much money they would need to buy these prosthetic limbs. limbs can be expensive, particularly legs, it can go anywhere from $75 to $150 at the time. prosthetic arms, $50 to $75 usually in that range. we see the legs coming first, particularly because of a mobility issue. if you give somebody a prosthetic leg, it helps them move a little bit. but then some begin to write into their state government saying wouldn't it be nice to have a prosthetic arm in many ways to help hide that injury, just to create some more comfort, whether emotionally or physically so they will be added a little bit later. so how do you get your limb? well, you end up going to usually a major city, one -- a lot of times it was the state capital where one of these prosthetic limb manufacturers had been set up. and you would ride the train there, they would usually pay your train fare to go. you would ge go into the offices. they would measure your stump, then they would craft a prosthetic limb on the spot for you and then put it on, see how it fit, make sure it was a

little bit -- that it was comfortable for you, then send you on your way back home. it was a pretty big ordeal for you to actually go and participate in getting one of these prosthetic devices. i think in some ways when we think of prosthetic limbs, particularly in the 19th century we are thinking of peg legs. actually this post-war period is one of these renaissances if you will in prosthetic limb manufacturing. there are dozens of patents, we have like the clements patent leg right here where you can see joints are being created at the knee that actually allow flexibility of an artificial knee joint and they are even starting to do them in the ankles as well, to create an artificial achilles so you actually will be able to have that much motion in your prosthetic leg. you can imagine if you have seen prosthetic devices that are available today, like oscar pistorius, the blade runner and the cheetah blades that allow men and women to move at rapid paces on prosthetic limbs, a lot of that technology got started right here in the aftermath of

the civil war. to the point where we can see in this before and after picture it's really hard to tell this is what this guy actually looks like in real life. then you put on his two prosthetic legs that fit perfectly, cover it with your pants legs and he can go off into society without any major difficulties. lots of veterans liked their prosthetic legs a lot. they wore them out. some complained about them. they said well, one veteran said his wife could always hear him coming. she always knew where he was in the house, because of the noise that it made. if you were trying to maybe hide from your wife when she has something for you to do, that's probably not the best course of action to move forward. but if you didn't want the prosthetic limb, you could always take a one-time cash payment. so imagine being that confederate veteran who lost a leg or an arm, and you're left with that choice. do i want this for my mobility, for my comfort, maybe to help me in my job prospects, maybe just so people don't always look at me funny because i'm missing a limb, or would you take the cash

payment to help your family immediately or at least for the next few months. this becomes one of these great debates that many internally have to deal with. governors in some states, we saw that there were only seven southern states so that leaves the rest of the bunch that was not interested in supporting confederate disability. one governor particularly in arkansas said honoring the enemies of the united states by conferring rewards for them for services rendered as soldiers when fighting against the government and the armies of the union is certainly not supporting the constitution of the united states or the constitution of the state acting in harmony therewith. so you have states actively debating should we actually give prosthetic limbs to men who were traitors, particularly as unionist sentiment in some of these states boils up in the debates in the state legislators. so there's a second mode of assistance and that is the

construction of veterans' homes. that will appear both north and south. today's lecture mostly focuses on the confederacy but we will see a lot of these same things going on all across the united states in the post-war period. a lot of the homes were initially set up by private donors so you would have fund-raising efforts in communities to raise the money to construct the house and then actually staff the house and fill it with the furnishings and the items you would need, where veterans could ge and spend out their post-war years. the texas veteran home was in austin. virginia had one and they named it after robert e. lee. andrew jackson's home, the her mittage was actually turned into a veterans home for a period of time. if you were in new orleans on the east side of the french quarter, on esplanade avenue, there was the big home in new orleans for confederate veterans. kentucky's home was in the pee-wee valley in this beautiful area out of louisville that gave veterans a great place to relax, take in the fresh air and live a life, if you will, with some medical ease, if you will.

now, there was some debates particularly about these homes if the states should actually support them and then what kind of men would be allowed in one of these homes. again, you had to fill out the paperwork, talk about that your injury came from the war itself and again, that honorable departure from the war itself. in fact, some of these homes even had a debate about some men who asked that their wife be allowed to come along and live with them at the home. some said is that appropriate, should she actually live with you at the home. these are the questions that in many ways gummed up the assistance that many of these veterans needed in transitioning back to life. land grants become the third area of assistance but they are limited. only two states will really take on large plots of land that veterans could be eligible to take. the first was louisiana, which provided 160 acres of land to injured veterans. texas offered 1,280 acre land

plots to injured or disabled veterans who could prove that they could not support their families. so it's not just the normal process of i got injured in the war, i was a good soldier, i honorably discharged, but you also had to prove that you were economically not in a position where you needed that plot of land to survive. so imagine being an amputee or severely injured man who is now going to get 1,280 acres in west texas, a lot of these were designed to move settlement populations, so texas, a lot of the population was concentrated in one particular region. this is to move people to western texas to central texas, to get them out of the coastal areas and some of the communities where they had been settled for large periods of time. would you want 1,280 acres of land? what are you going to do with that plot of land, particularly if you're by yourself or if your kid aren't interested in helping you farm? it's really difficult to actually turn that plot of land

into something sustainable. we will still see dozens of people fill out these applications and go through the process and get these land grants but they still are not in terms of as effective as prosthetic limb programs or going to a veterans home. but the big area is the pension application. the payment of cash offered four times a year, quarterly payments for the rest of your life. just because you had served in the military. again, the same sort of process, where each state will create a pension program and then confederate veterans had to again fill out the application, talk about their honorable military service, the nature and condition of their injuries. a lot of time you had to be very very specific so you literally had to relive your injury. well, i was at this particular battle and i got shot in the right leg and this doctor cut it off at the field hospital. you had to relive that

particular injury and you had to prove it in as much specific detail as possible with your eyewitnesss there on board to say yes, he got injured in the war, he is an honorable man, he deserves to have this pension for the rest of his -- of your life. you also had to prove that pensions bawere part of an economic discussion so you had to prove you didn't have enough property, you had a low amount of money, you had no means of survival so you could now become a ward of the state. for southerners, you being dependent on state government for assistance was considered the absolute opposite of what every southern man was supposed to be. it wasn't wide-scale assistance in this form before the american civil war because as men, southern men, you are the breadwinner of the family. you take care of your wife and children in order to master them and be an honorable gentleman. now you are relying on the state government and you have to beg them for money? so at least for the state government's point of view, they had to make sure these men were

at least being as honorable as possible in order to now collect this money. but these debates are pretty ferocious in the state legislatures and particularly when you have gorn governors or legislators who don't believe confederate veterans should get anything at all. the government of florida called a pension program simply evil because of the traitors who had been involved in this process. tennessee would do nothing then until 1883 and their first pension program was only for people who were blinded by the civil war and not just blinded, you had to lose both of your eyes. so not just blind in one eye but two eyes is where their pension programs began. arkansas didn't do anything until 1891. texas, 1899. kentucky was the last southern state that sent confederates off to the war to do a pension program and they did theirs in 1912. we are talking 50 years after the civil war.

i'm not a math major. those of you watching at home will have to count on your hands. but those are decades after these men have come home where they literally have spent years without any financial assistance or at least recognition from the state government that they had gone through such difficulties. yes? we have a question? >> not really a question. more like an observation. where it seems that a lot of those state governments, especially in the south, i can get how yeah, you went to war, you lost a limb, that's honorable. the whole pension thing probably due to how i was raised, i find that it's a lot more honorable to admit that you need help than it's such a dishonor, oh, wow, you need help. such a blemish of honor to your family and yourself. i find it more honorable to admit that hey, you actually do

need help. you are admitting that you need help. you're the bigger man. >> right. you can see, in particular, the process that you have to go through not just to admit it to yourself and put on it paper that somebody's going to read in a government office, but you have to get those eyewitnesses to say the same sorts of things here to sort of solidify that in many ways. yeah. leroy? you have a question? >> so the people that are in the state houses in the south obviously didn't fight in the war in any capacity if they're thinking these confederate veterans are not worthy. so who are they? are they northern implants? >> well, what will help these debates along is when you have those who are amputated individuals or injured veterans who actually get into state office roles. one of the reasons kentucky's pension program actually gets passed in 1912 is because they have a disabled vet, confederate veteran elected governor who makes this his sort of calling card and is going to actually sign that particular pension

program. but particularly in this sort of flux years in the immediate aftermath of the civil war you have some republicans who are being elected to state legislatures as they go through this process of republicans sort of filling state houses during reconstruction, where they are not interested in extending confederate aid. it's going to take until the years after the democratic legislatures come back into office, but then you have places like texas where the democrats have been in power, but then there's questions of fraud. what if people pretend to be confederate soldiers and forge those documents that we saw in the previous screen? should the state government be willing to give that much money out with the potential for fraud? then you have others who are sort of wondering the same thing about is it constitutional for our state to even give money to confederate veterans? does our state constitution, if you are a strict constructionist can you do something like here in georgia which determined the amount of money you would be paid per year in the pension

program based on your injuries. so both eyes are worth $150 a year or $30 for one eye, your hearing loss, $30, entire foot or leg, $100, entire hand or arm, both hands and arms so double amputees will get $150 in various gings combinations as you can see the legislature made sure all bases were covered. if you have a limb that doesn't work, that's just functionally just there but it doesn't have any functionality, that will be worth $50. every finger or toe, $5. any other injury, this is sort of the umbrella category here that prevented manual applications of life, were worth $50. again, you had to provide the documentation. you had to prove it and then the state pension board who was reviewing these documents then had to give you clearance. yes, bethney? >> so was it just physical ailments that they got pensions for? was it like psychological? i guess you would call it shell-shock? >> or ptsd.

no. there was no sort of diagnosis of that at the time period. so these were just physical injuries themselves. later, you will see some confederate veterans apply for pensions because they will claim their experience in the war created this new disability. they had marched and marched and their feet hurt during the war. the war had created this nagging physical condition. it was only physical, nothing emotional. even though we clearly have evidence of signs of this stress there was no financial reward, no counseling available to these particular veterans. this is some dark stuff. this is clearly people suffering. and it doesn't match in many ways our societal perceptions of the south post-civil war. particularly if you drive around the south today. you see very very different images of southern veterans from the war themselves. in fact, when i was a kid we drove around these battlefields and we went to places and every southern town that we went in to

go to arby's, we loved arby's for our family food on our vacations, we would drive by the confederate monument or we would go to manassas and see stonewall jackson looking like he participated in a home run derby with his horse looking at muscular as well. these are southern men looking very strong, very proud. you have no sense of suffering coming from these monuments themselves that are scattered all over the southern landscape. this is actually one of my favorite monuments that has been constructed probably on any battlefield. this one is at shilo. it's sort of the lost cause monument if you will of what happened in the battle of shilo. this is sort of the southern interpretation. this sits right at the location of where the hornet's nest was defended, the pivotal part of the first day's action. you can see the focus of the monument which is pretty long length-wise is the center figure itself. in the middle, we actually have the embodiment of defeat.

and she is in the middle there, and she is standing on both sides by darkness on one side and death, death ois the right with his head down, darkness is sort of looking like a jedi, when he was turning into darth vader, "star wars" in theaters in less than a month. maybe this is a "star wars" monument. talk about lost causes. anyway, she is handing the wreath from darkness to defeat because in many ways, when the battle of shilo ends, and johnson has been killed, his image is right below the monument, when he turns over command to beauregard, who is very confident at the end of the first day they are going to win a major victory here and the next morning, as light rises from the darkness, grant's armies, the reinforcements have come in and sweep the

confederates off the field. the confederate soldiers are embodied on both sides of the monument themselves representing the southern soldiers who participated in the battle, but what's interesting is there's 11 on one side and one less on the other side showing the amount of casualties that have been inflicted by the battle itself. then we also have embodiments of soldiers on both sides, on the left side we have an infantry man holding a confederate flag and defiant artillery man next to his side. on the right side we have the head bowed of one particular soldier -- officer into submission because he wasn't able to secure the battle for the confederacy and a cavalry man who looks very frustrated because he hadn't been involved in the war. these things, these monuments, these embodiments of confederate soldiers and officers and the interpretation of the war itself become the main focal point for southerners in the post-war period. they are not as interested in

particularly granting immediate medical support and care for their veterans. instead, they want to make sure that their side of the story ends up being the dominant narrative moving forward here. this is the lost cause. one of my favorite stories about the lost cause is a guy by the name of james elizar who grew up in the south, hearing tales from his grandfather, a civil war veteran. his grandfather told him so many great details about the war. but when he turned 12, he had this moment of horror that made him cry, because it all of a sudden dawned on him that the civil war went beyond the battle of chancellorsville. his grandfather had painted this grand narrative of the confederates winning battle after battle after battle and ended the war at chancellorsville. it was one of the saddest awakens i ever had. i listened to grandpa tell of whipping the lard out of the yankees on a dozen battlefields, the matchless jackson cutting

the enemy ranks to pieces. it watts when i got to the point in our history book, gettysburg, that i discovered the bewildering fact that the south had lost the war. this discovery made me depressed for days. the term lost cause was coined by edward pallor, a writer in 1866, in his piece the lost cause, a new southern history. this becomes sort of the dominant intellectual narrative that will drive southerners in their remembrance of the american civil war in the post-war years. here's some of the things that they are going to emphasize. they are going to do this by writing textbooks about the civil war, so when you get to that chapter on the civil war, you are going to read these sorts of things about the american civil war, not what you would be reading in northern textbooks during the war. you would also see this embodied in monuments like we saw at shilo. shilo, remember, according to that monument, the south lost

the battle because albert sidney johnson died and it got dark. those were the reasons. it wasn't anything else embodied by that particular monument. it was those elements itself. so you as a goer to the battlefield would see that and be able to understand that particular interpretation. slavery is not the cause of the american civil war and the lost cause. this is states' rights, this is tariff issues. african-americans were faithful slaves. they supported the confederate cause. they were not prepared for freedom. they may not have even wanted to be free individuals. so our embodiments that we see with lost cause cinema in popular culture of mammy and uncle tom embodied in those sentiments. the south only lost the war because they were defeated by superior numbers and resources in the united states. forget all those disaster battles where confederate officers screwed up royally. no, it's superior numbers, industrial might that the union had that is the reason for

failure. southern women remained loyal to the cause. there is no disillusionment, that richmond bread riot's not getting a major section here. the women writing to their husbands come home, the war is over, you're not going to see that document emphasized in the southern textbooks. and they did not give up their honor when they failed to win the war. so just because you lose the war it doesn't demasculinize you if you will. you are still an honorable good solid gentleman and to prove that, we are going to give you the embodiment of robert e. lee and stonewall jackson who are going to appear on all of these monuments and we are not going to necessarily celebrate those other confederate generals who didn't do quite as well. so you're not going to see a lot of accolades of oh, let's put john bell hood and braxton bragg on great big monuments. you are not going to see those efforts. instead it's going to emphasize the honorable, noble lee and

jackson. jackson, who died in the war, giving a limb for the cause, and robert e. lee, who was overwhelmed by superior numbers. it makes them in many ways larger than life. dominant figures that dominate the post-war period. and this becomes the cause, if you will. veterans groups like the united confederate veterans which will form about the late 1880s, early 1890s, will be all about the textbook battles. they will get very angry at the yankee publishers and what their side of the story written so southern children learn the true side of the war. other organizations are going to honor the graves of the dead or give long tactical speeches on figuring out why the south lost the war and they are usually going to blame not robert e. lee, not stonewall jackson, but james longstreet, lee's honorable -- well, not so honorable in the lost cause, core commander at gettysburg and throughout the war. longstreet, it will be his fault

that gettysburg didn't turn out the way it was. after all, longstreet was in charge of the men, he's the next guy on the totem pole, like the ceo deciding he's not going to resign but blaming the vice president and throw him under the bus. it also hurt poor james longstreet that he was a republican and he actually got a position during the grant administration so he may not have been politically aligned with many individuals who were thinking about the lost cause. i think this in many ways becomes the struggle for historians going forward in that the lost cause doesn't have a lot of room for injured veterans, for distraught widows, for orphaned children. when you would have these organizations sort of spring up, they would put in their mission statements like the united confederate veterans that they were all about raising money to take care of that generation that had been destroyed by the war, but then they would use all that money then to go build a monument on a battlefield, to go construct gigantic monuments or

even to go in battle to hire authors to write textbooks after the war. for others, these organizations, because they are not representing their own personal pain and damage, they don't want to spend the money. they don't want to go and attend yearly reunions to have to relive these injuries on a daily basis. and this is an important i think juxtaposition moment in that sort of post-war history, that we have an entire group of veterans who are struggling and they don't fit these nicely pat, neat narratives. notice that the lost cause in many ways, it's hard to argue around it in terms of if you're wanting to nit-pick particular elements, you just have to actually argue the exact opposite. so it becomes a pretty sort of standard set of talking points as the post-war history is constructed. and this, plus state governments who are lacks da days:lacks dayd

those who aren't interested in supporting their veterans makes this very difficult. thank you all so much for your attention today and for participating. american history tv on c-span 3. this weekend on saturday afternoon at 2:00 eastern, jeffrey rosen talks about the influence of former chief justice john marshall. >> adams famously said my gift of john marshall to the people of the united states was the proudest act of my life. and marshall has been widely praised for transforming the supreme court into what his by grapher john edward smith calls a dominant force in american life. >> at 10:00 on real america -- >> roger. >> the roll will put the shuttle on its precise heading toward an imaginary target in space. >> the 1981 nasa documentary space shuttle, a remarkable flying machine, on the two-day

maiden voyage of the space shuttle "columbia." on road to the white house rewind, the 1968 campaign film for republican presidential candidate richard nixon. >> i have decided that i will test my ability to win and my ability to cope with the issues in the fires of the primaries. and not just in the smoke-filled room of miami. >> and at 1:00, a panel of authors on their recent books chronicling mexican american civil rights from the 1930s to the 1970s. >> this coalition of labor unions, mexican american civil rights leaders and religious authorities came together to protest the exploitation of the program and in fact, accelerated congress's decision to terminate it the next year in 1964. and i think this was a moment of blossoming for the movement.

>> for the complete weekend schedule, go to c-span.org.

by their victory this evening, and we have a further surprise in the form of tonight's speaker. a person who many of you know probably quite well. dennis e. frye is the chief historian of the harper's ferry national historic park. indeed, this is a homecoming of sorts for dennis because he graduated from shepherd with a b.a. in history. one of the most outstanding students the university has had. we are extremely excite tod have him back here this evening.

he has had a very long, varied and prestigious career. indeed if i were to kind of recite his entire cv i think we would be here until 7:00 or 8:00 this evening. i will just give you a shortened version of all his accomplishments over the past several decades. dennis is a writer, a lecturer, a guide and a preservationist. he is indeed a prominent civil war historian. dennis has had numerous appearances on pbs, the history channel, the discovery channel, and a&e as a guest historian. and he helped produce emmy award winning fell vision programs such as the battle of ant knee yum. he's also remarkably one of the nation's leading civil war battlefield preservationists. hi is co-founder and first

president of the save historic foundation and he is co-founder and former president of today's civil war trust. from whom he received the trust's high es honor. dennis has also earned the prestigious nevins freeman award for his lifetime achievements in the civil war community. dennis is a tour guide in great demand, leading tourists in organizations such as the smithsonian, national geographic, numerous colleges and universities and civil war round tables. tennis is also a well known author. he has published remarkably 95 articles and nine books. harper's ferry under fire we have received the national book award from the association of partners of public lands and september suspension, lincoln's union in barrel was awarded the

2012 laney book prize for distinguished scholarship in writing on the military and political history of the war. dennis has rin for civil war magazines such as civil wartimes illustrated, america's civil war, blue and gray magazine, north and south magazine and hallowed ground. he's also served as a guest contributor to "the washington post." dennis resides nearby at the battlefield where he and his wife sylvia have restored the home used by general andrew burnside as his post ante tum headquarters. it gives me great pleasure to welcome this evening dennis frye. can you welcome -- join me in welcoming dennis. >> thank you. appreciate it. it's a great pleasure to return here to shepherd. when he's talking about decades, plural, i wasn't even finished

in my second decade when i started here. i was a 17-year-old actually. and it was 40 years ago, 1975, 40 years ago that i began here in shepherd when i was in if college. and, in fact, i was reminiscing a little earlier this afternoon as i was sitting here at the school. we had a great football team then. we didn't go undefeated, but we had a great football team. we had an excellent basketball team under bob stark key. one year, i think we went 33-337 one of the best college records in the united states. and we had great academic professors here at the time. i'm a home grown boy as most of you know. lived just across the river here in washington county. grew up only a few miles from the antietam battlefield.

eshepherd as always been special to me. it's great to return here this evening to be here in the bird center. i knew senator bird well. i did quite a number of tours and programs for him at harper's ferry national park when he would come and visit. and he became a big ally in helping preserve civil war battlefields. a really great honor to be here at shepherd, my home school. i'm so thankful that 40 years ago i was taking finals and i haven't had to take finals in 36 years. and it's really good to be back in this prestigious bird center

sharing with you this evening one story that happened right here. did john brown elect abraham linco lincoln? i want you to think about that for a moment. did john brown elect abraham lincoln? the first thing that came to mind is how can that be? brown is dead. he can't vote, so how could he possibly have anything to do with the election of 1860. >> before we're finished this evening, i think we'll see that john brown, the ghost of john brown, the memory of brown was very influential in what happened in that election, that watershed election in american history that ultimately gave us

america's greatest president. a few days ago, december 2, three days ago, 15 years ago, here in jefferson county, something very important happened. a hanging, an execution. you here in shepherd's town would have known about the execution. everybody knew about it. because john brown was climbing the scaffold. to be executed in charlestown,less than ten miles down the road in your country seat. it was not a if you believe execution. you would not be invited. in fact, you would not be invited because you're under

martima marshamar martial law. yes, you live here, yes, it's your home, but right now, jefferson county is occupied by more than 2000 soldiers. which is more than the population of your town. what was it, jim, in 1860 roughly? 1,200. you've got 2,000 people here in uniform in the county who literally are here to protect you, to defend you. because from your perspective, you have just experienced abattack, an assault on the people of jefferson county, the people of shepherdstown, the people of charlestown. the event happened in harp es ear ferry. but it goes beyond the boundaries of jefferson county. this assault, this attack, or

the word you're using over and again is greater an attack or assault. the word the people in jefferson county is using and the word being used throughout skra va and the rest of the south, you have been invaded. this was an invasion. it was not a simple assault or attack. it was an invasion. over the last several months, you have been here in this community in a constant state of fe fear, fearful to go out at night. fearful to walk down the street. fearful to leave the community you're familiar with. you're totally afraid of any stranger, anybody that you don't know is here for dubious reasons

and is here to harm you. this community has been gripped by paranoia. and you have every reason to fear this fear. because your neighbors, the militia here from shepherdstown, most of them have been gone now for almost six weeks. you haven't seen them. those who would be your neighbors, those young men serving as a militia unit to protect you and defend you have been here in jefferson county along the border between maryland and virginia, have been in harper's ferry, have been in charlestown, they have been witness to the actual execution, which occurred a few days ago. but you know what's interest interesting is that even with that execution and now brown

dead, you do not feel any safety. you do not feel any more secure. you discovered you are on the border of what appears to be a war. what appears to be a war that's been launched against you with you as the target. and what's interesting about this war is that the outsiders are americans. they are us. they are who we are. yes, you have been attacked by fellow americans. 150 years ago. now, what i want to do this evening is something i almost

never do. i almost never use notes. we have friends here from c-span this evening, and as we were getting set up, i asked them if it would be okay if i move around a little bit because i don't like lecturns, i don't like to stand behind a lecturn. that's not my style. most of you who know me know that's not how i leak to give a presentati presentation. but what's important about tonight is i want you to hear not my words and not my voice, but their records. what were they saying? what they are saying is much more powerful, more meaningful, more dramatic and traumatic than anything i could say. so to understand what their words would be, think about your own words, silently consider your own words, what would

describe how you feel about our current situation in 2015 and the events which happen to us here in our country by other americans only a few days ago. i think it was december 2. now what's coming to mind are words. but you know what's really coming to mind are not words but emotions. what's coming to mind is what you're feeling. what are we feeling. and that's what i want to share with you this evening is what were they feeling? i can't tell you what they're feeling because i wasn't there. none of us can go to 1859 and say, this is what they felt.

feeling must be experienced. you must be part of it. it cannot be informed, it cannot be told. you must be a participant to feel. i would to share with you what they left behind for us that is their feeling. i think it's appropriate to begin with the president of the united states. a former president one who you probably would have voted for if you could as a male citizen owning property here in virginia and white. in the 1840s, john tyler of tide water, virginia. tyler had been keeping close watch on what was happening here in harper's ferry.

and had been imprisoned in charlestown, was about to go on trial. it's possible that within of your neighbors would have been in the courtroom on the jury that's going to be trying john brown. tyler had this to say about the situation. these words are feeling. they also have relevance to what you may be feeling in 2015. former president tyler. virginia -- e's referring to you as virginians and the state. virginia is arming to the teeth more than 50,000 stands, alarms already distributed and the demand for more weapons daily increasing.

secessionist voices, as you might expect, delighted in john brown's attack at harper's ferry. the leading voice of secession, charlestown, south carolina, the newspaper had this to say with respect to brown and the cause of this union. there is no more peace for the south in this union. and the richmond inquirer, which would be a newspaper that would have circulated in these parts noted less joyfully that brown's raid at harpers ferry swelled the ranks of secessionists by tenfold. and as might be expected, a fellow virginian of yours, who you would be very familiar with edmund ruffin rejoiced in

brown's, what he referred to as outrageous since they might, i and i quote, stir the sluggish blood of the south. now this next quote comes from an elected official, not from jefferson county. but jefferson county elected officials would have known this man well. when the virginia delegation would come together in richmond and meet in the building there in richmond, the capital building that thomas jefferson had designed, they would all hear this speech. you would read, you wouldn't hear it. but you would read it. these are some of the most famous words that describe the attitude of virginians in the immediate aftermath of the assault on you and jefferson county and harper's ferry. i'm dwoeng to share these words with some passion, because i think if you share them -- you

can't say them without. these are words of anger. these are words that represent violation. these are words that are defensive and these are words of auction. you're not going to stand for this. you're not. these words describe how most of you would feel coming from an elected official. you're going to recognize the game because a few years later he would become a very famous confederate general. these words would echo off the walls of the rotunda in the virginia capitol. virginia will stand forth as one man and say with fanaticism that whenever you advance a hostile foot upon our soil, we will welcome you with bloody hands

and hospitable graves. james l. kipper, confederate brigadier in charge july 1863. those are words not to be heard but to be felt. and none of you should be surprised by this southern outpouring of outrage. the petersburg, virginia, newspaper called the express would refer to brown and his men as, quote, the fruit of satanic doctrine, inculcated by the rabid and unprincipled teachers of the garrison, greeley and

seward schools. all of whom who were top ranked republicans at the time. john tyler, former president, fellow virginian summed up well the response to john brown when he would state but one sentiment pervades the country -- security. to the whole union, or separation. let's move from south of the potomac to the north. you might expect a certain reaction in the north because we've been taught this is where brown hails from. this is where his support was from and certainly that's where his fellow abolitionists reside. however, the initial reaction to john brown was not pleasant and was not supportive. we view the actions of brown and his associates as none other than as bloody murderers writes the new york herald, the

"chicago tribune," out in the midwest, lincoln country, would write that brown and his men were a band of fanatics, guilty of the most incomprehensible stupidity. fol folly. unpardonable criminality. and then the "tribune" to con cluld would write this stark mad enterprise was the spark of idle drowns. and another chicago newspaper concerned about brown on the fledgling republican party and the reputation of the republicans had this to say, the old idiot. the quicker they hang him and get him out of the way the better. now that might surprise you, this is not what we would expect from the north. this is what you may expect the northern reaction to be. let's start with ralph waldo emerson. from his home in concord,

massachusetts, just west of boston. emerson now brown personally. emerson had deaned with brown, hosted brown, had brown stay with him. emerson did not see brown in the same way that the new york lerld and chicago tib yuan did. emerson would write that john brown is, and i quote, a pure idealist of artless goodness. louisa may also cot, his neighbor also knew john brown. shen and her father had dined with him, stayed with him, communed with him. louisa may would write john brown is, quote, st. john the just. william lloyd garrison, the quintessential abolitionist, william lloyd garrison compared brown's effort at revolution at

harper's ferry with that of the fight for independence, american independence from the british. garrison would proclaim was john brown justified in his attempt? yes, by god, if washington wasn't his. and wendell phillips, an outspoken menster in boston also alluded to the revolution of '76 when he preached that, and i quote, harper's ferry is the lexington of today. perhaps henry david thoreau summarized yet new england intellectual thought on john brown when he would state john brown was the best news america has ever heard.

what's going on here? all these people are americans. but they don't see john brown in the same way. they don't react to brown in the same manner. they have attitudes, thoughts, that are extreme, where there seems to be no compromise. what's happening to us? as a nation? as a people? what's going on here? in 1859? i'm not going to dwell on brown and biography. i think it's only important to know that he's a life long

abolitionist, he's 59 years old, he's moved from place to place. he'd been involved in many different businesses. he has not really succeeded as a businessman, but he has succeeded as a fighter. he has succeeded as a warrior. and he has as his foundation a belief that godsn:0x has chosen john brown, that his purpose, that his destiny has been determined by god, and that he is an eninstrument of god placed here in our country, our nation for the purpose of ridding this land of what he considers its greatest evil -- slavery. and brown is tired of talk.

he is tired of no action by politicians. he is tired of policy. he is tired of a supreme court that in 1857 in the dread scott decision determines that a slave is a slave is a slave and is property forever anywhere. regardless of law passed otherwise. brown believes that hi nation has failed him, that the nation has not been true to the principles of the declaration of endependence, and that it has violated the constitution of the united states of the people. brown feels frustration, desperation, hopelessness. but what makes him most different from any other abolitionist is that john brown is willing to use violence.

to bring about an industry. not persuasion, that hasn't seemed to work. not patience, that hasn't worked. and his violence is justified in his heart and in his soul because he has a special connection and special direction from god. i think we can best summarize john brown with just a few words. and these are words again of passion. these are words that are included in his provisional constitution, a provisional constitution of the united states created by brown and

others. in the preamble, it's very simply stated what john brown is and what his mission is. in this provisional constitution, it skas, whereas slavery throughout its entire existence in the united states is none other than the most barbarous unprovoked, unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion. the only conditions of which, are perpetual imprisonment. hopeless servitude and absolute extermination. in utter disregard of the external -- pardon me, the eternal and evident self-truths set forth in the declaration of independence. therefore, we citizens of the the united states and the opressed people who, by a decision of the supreme court, are declared to have no rights which the white man is bound to

respect, and then he continues to say, we create this constitution and ordinances to better protect our persons, property, lives and liberties and to govern our actions. that is the john brown who was inspired to come here. ewe know why he came. you know why he chose jefferson county. it happens to be the home of a national defense installation. there's a united states armory here. a united states arsenal here. only two hours from here, via travel time in 1859. you would think as a national defense installation, it would be well guarded. there were no guards. brown seizes the armory and

arsenal with no casualties, seizes the weapons, holds the installation. unfortunately for him, brown word will get out quickly that harper's ferry has been taken. militia will be called into action, including the guard from shepherd'stown, and the militia will begin to swarm towards harper's ferry. jefferson county militia, principally from charlestown, being the first to arrive on the scene. less than 12 hours after brown's raid, brown's war to end slavery commences. john brown is completely surrounded at harper's ferry by your neighbors. he discovers united states marines in the washington navy yard who were immediately sent

to baltimore. they marched to harper's ferry where they meet lieutenant colonel robert e. lee. you know the story, placed on trial. less than two weeks after his capture in the middle of the 2nd of november, john brown is found guilty. two weeks, by a jury of peers, your peers, not his. found guilty of murder. all of which are potential death penalty crimes. brown has failed, he failed.

he came to harper's ferry to commence a war. people in the town were killed, others were killed, people were wounded. brown's army was decimated. it is an abject failure. brown himself believes it is. but i think the interesting thing is that brown did not die at harper's ferry. the sword blade that the marine thrust at hmm did not penetrate the body but bounced off. lieutenant green said it wasn't designed to wound him or put him out of commission for a bit. it was designed to kill him. but when the blade came forward, it apparently struck a breast

plate or a belt buckle he was wearing and bounced off his boz di. -- body. john brown would tell you, that was the hand of god. in the courtroom, virginia treated brown well h well. virginia wanted the world to know that virginians were not barbarians, but brown was. brown used this to his advantage. he saw now, stripped of the sword, the magic and power of the word. and brown used those weeks between his sentencing and his execution, four weeks exactly, november 2 to december 2, to preach to the people of the united states and to the world

against the evils of slavery. he became a very confident man. as a prisoner. in fact, he would write a letter to his wife, and i quote, i have been whipped as the saying is, but i am sure i can recover all the lost capital occasioned by my disaster. of hanging for a few minutes by my neck. virginians were warned by some not to execute brown. you might say well, why not? certainly here in jefferson county, it didn't take you, the peers, long to determine that he was guilty. but why would you not execute him for three capital offenses? murder, treason, and inciting

rebellion. well, the new york journal of commerce, the predecessor of today's wall street journal had this to say and was asking virginians to consider this. i quote, to hang a fanatic is to make a martyr of him. better to put these creatures into the penitentiary and so make of them miserable fellows. and in a very graphic warning to the south, the editor of the new york journal of commerce had this simple sentence. monsters are hydroheaded and decapitulation of the monster only quickens its vitality and its powers of reproduction.

>> they determine the best thing for john brown is the noose. brown will be given a decision and will be asked if he has anything to say to the court. he was not prepared to do so. he was still suffering from his wounds. he has sent his entire trial reclining on a cot in pain with bandages. but he did get enough strength to stand with some assistance and address the court. it was one of the most famous extemporaneous presentations in american history. i'm not going to give you five minutes of it. i'm going to give you a couple of minutes that will give you

the tenor and the tone of what john brown had to say. keep in mind that at this time in that courtroom, which is packed, not by people like you, you're not allowed to be there, but there are reporters, journal isstists from newspapers all across the nation, north, south, west, midwest, who are recording live the words of brown. to their hometown papers. so these words go national. for all americans to read. in his address to the court, brown would say, i never did intend murder or treason or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slave rebellion

or to make insurrection. had i so interfered on behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or on behalf of any of their friends, it would have been all right. i have always freely admitted i have done on behalf of his despised pore is no wrong but right. as one northerner wrote, john brown had become the conquering prisoner of charlestown's jail.

december 2, 1869 was a day like today. cool, comfortable, no breeze, sunshine, heavy frost in the morning. almost identical to today. at 11:30 a.m. on december 2 is when the execution is scheduled to occur. just before that, the jailor will place the hood of over brown's head. he will be brought to the scaffo scaffold. the rope will be adjusted and the ax will sever the rope and brown will fall through the trap door. it's quiet. you hear nothing.

there are 2,000 virginians soldiers in a square formation surrounding that scaffold with their rifles loaded and artillery holding every road, every avenue entering charlestown. but soon as brown falls through the trap door there would be one voice that would rise that morning over the shenandoah valley of jtl preston, who is the president of the virginia military institute. and this is what you would hear if you were a guard there that morning, the only voice upon john brown's execution. these words, you would hear. enemies of the union all such foes of the

human race. john brown was dead, but he did not die. just a few responses in the aftermath of the execution. our friend thoreau, who was a friend of brown's, would write this. these men in teaching us how to die at the same time have taught us how to live. emerson would declare brown the saint whose death is made, and i quote, the gallows glorious like the cross. thoreau boldly claimed that john brown was no longer old brown anymore but now an angel of light.

intellectuals were in agreement with this statement, and i quote, as christ had died to make men holy, john brown had died to make men free. in the south, the response could be summarized with an editorial that appeared in the newspaper in savannah, georgia. the "savannah daily morning news." this is how it defined brown's execution. the notorious horse thief, murderer, insurrectionist, traitor has expiated his guilty. there are mf deserving of john brown's hip pin tie as john

brown himself. others viewed the northern sympathy for brown as justification for secession. let's go to one of those great voices, jefferson davis. the governor of mississippi who upon brown's execution would go on the floor of the senate and give a speech. it's not long, it's not rambling. it's direct. these are not words to be heard. these are words that you feel. have we know right to allege that to secure our rights and to protect our honor that we will

sever the ties that bind us together, even if it rushes us into a sea of blood. charleston mercury would announce, and i quote, the day of compromise has passed. the south must control her own destiny or perish. and returning to the richmond inquir inquirer, it would note, and i quote, the harper's ferry invasion has advanced the cause of this union more than any oh event. so in conclusion, what is the legacy. i haven't mentioned abraham lincoln at all. what is the legacy of john brown?

do you feel what these people feel? america in 1859 in the winter of 1859, 1860 is not a nation of thoughtful people. we are a nation of people who are reacting to our feelings. we are responding to john brown. we are responding to an attack on us but for a reason, some would think, and a reason that's justified, some would think. and here's where i ask the question, what is brown? not who is he? what is he? what words come to mind.

that's one opinion, anyone have other opinions? >> freedom fighter. >> we have two people from the same community who have two very different opinions that are on far reaches of the planet with those words. terrorist, freedom fighter. the word there is agitator. america certainly was agitated. the legacy of brown went from the battlefield and harper's ferry and went from the courtroom of charlestown into the newspapers of the united states. and the newspapers of the united states were c-span. they were cnn. they were fox news.

they were msnbc. that was the only form of mass communication in this country in 1859 and 1860 were the newspapers. and unlike today's newspapers who like to claim neutrality with respect to politics, many of them, or even our various cable stations that sometimes to say we're really neutral about this, newspapers didn't make any pretense about neutrality were the voices of political parties and everybody knew it. you knew when you read a certain newspaper that political bent, what that political party was that it was representing. and so the newspapers go to war with each other because of the war that john brown had launched.

they were just as loud and fierce and ferocious as voices we sometimes hear today. there was no agreement. americans were polarized by john brown. there was no single opinion shared unless you want to think of opinion as sectional. there were not people in the south who supported brown. for people in the north, there were a lot who would support brown. on the day of his execution, church bells would ring in his honor. sermons were given in his memory. newspaper editorials praised him. we're all american.

brown had so much influence on the body flick that when it came time for the party to nominate their candidates something important happens. the party in 1860 is a new party. it's only been on a national ballot once. this is the second time in a presidential election that the republican party is on the ballot. you know the nominee, he was not the first choice, but on the third ballot through the convention lincoln becomes the nominee. the republicans dominated a conservative abraham lincoln, a conservative. he was not seward. he was not sumner.

he was not ever bates. these people were much, much more progressive than lincoln who was a conservative republican. but it didn't make any difference. the very idea that the republicans are a national party is a threat to the south. it was all unified as democrat ic, but the democrats became disunited principally over the issue of union, secession, protection, property and how do we ensure no more abolitionist invasions.

the first convention, they could not decide on a single candidate. the one whose turn it was to become their presidential candidate, steven douglas got no support from the south, being from illinois, being totally distrusted, disliked, the father of kansas, nebraska which was complete failure. a horrible disaster. douglas got no support from the southern democrats. so there will be another convention in baltimore in june of 1860 where southerners would nominate their own democrat. the current vice president of the united states john c. breakenridge would become the democratic candidate. in the 1860 election, we were so divided that there would be four candidates and four parties running for president.

lincoln and the republicans, douglas and the northern democrats, breakenridge and the southern democrats. and then an independent party, middle of the road party that would today appeal to what we refer to as independents, which would be a constitutional union party, led by a man from tennessee named john bell. for candidates. and there was no independent candidate would lincoln have been elected. abraham received in that election 39% of the popular vote. the other candidate received almost 60% of the popular vote. did john brown elect abraham

lincoln. i want to finish with a few wor words. first the words of brown, his final words and these become a legacy. before his execution he will write a note and tuck it away. and at some point this note to the jail. it's not open, they're busy. they have a hanging to conduct. after the execution, the jailor remembers, he gave me this. and he pulls it out of his frock

coat and reads brown's final words. and this is what it said. i john brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be perched away but will blood. prophesy. you people here in shepherdstown know that prophesy better than anyone. your graveyard was small in 1859. it won't be soon very small. five miles from brown's headquarters antietam happened.

16 miles from where brown was executed, antietam happened. i john brown am certainly the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. another legacy was many of these men who put on that militia

uniform in october, november of 1869 and on through january, february and march of 1860, when all the finals were completed of other brown men, these men would put the uniform on again, wouldn't they? they would soon become part of company b second infranty, which would soon become part of the first virginia brigade, which would soon become famous as the stonewall brigade. the war supposedly lasted 90 days, according to the political leaders. many of those boys, your sons, your brothers, your fathers, your cousins your nephews, they didn't come home. ever.

that's what john brown did to us. or did we do something else to us and john brown was simply do. when brown was executed, a poem was written, very short, very powerful by one of america's great writers of the 19th century. herman melville, and he put a simple title on this poem, but it's a title that is very foreboding, very dark called the portent, the portent. and as i share these very short versus with you, i would like for you to visualize the poetry,

the words of the poem. not me. maybe even close your eyes as you listen to these words, because then you can see it with your eyes closed. the portent by herman melville. hanging from the bean slowly swaying slowly swaying such the wall gaunt the shadow on your green shenandoah. the cut is on the ground, lo john brown, and the stabs shall heal no more. hidden in the cap is the angu h anguished anguish none can drawl. so your future veils its face, shenandoah.

but the streaming beard is shown weir john brown. the meteor of the war. the meteor of the war. and in conclusion, what legacy has brown left us with today? well, it's obvious we still have feelings about john brown. it's pretty apparent we still get emotional when his name is mention mentioned. in fact, brown has continued to live in the american consciousness, the american psyc psyche, the american soul, the american mind. for a century and a half. and i'm not sure the passion has diminish

diminished. the cause certainly ended in a war that did end slavery. so brown ultimately was the victor. but i don't know that john brown has left any of us. perhaps john brown is still part of every american. all 310 million of us. i do know this, that 100 years after, one century later on the front page of one of the most distributed weekly magazines in the world is john brown. in 1959. and isn't it interesting that

some of the highest-paid people that used to work in this field, these journalists, were not the people who wrote the articles but the people who wrote the headlines. because the headlines sold the magazi magazine. somebody, some editor selected john brown, superimposed over a gallows. and isn't it interest iing thatn bright yellow it says "space missiles: must we always be second best?" referring of course to our contest with the russians and the cold war and possible nuclear annihilation. but at the bottom in 1959, 100 years later, it says, "john brown's raid: the spark still smolders."

that is legacy. you come to harper's ferry and you walk into the john brown museum, which i as a historian there had a great pleasure of researching and conceiving many of the exhibits that are there and wrote, helped to write many of those exhibits. when you walk into the john brown museum at harper's ferry, first thing that you see is an image of brown. and then you see these words. and this is a fitting introduction to john brown and also an apt conclusion to brown. these are words written by steven vincent benet in his famous epic poem "john brown's body." i read these words when i was 18 years old as a freshman here at

sheppard. i read them when i was in a civil war class as a freshman here at sheppard. dr. miller bashong's civil war class. i read this couplet, never forgot it. it's been a significant influence on my life. when you walk into the john brown museum, these are the first words that you see. as a challenge to you. to any visitor. it was a challenge to me. benet would write, playing off the song john brown's body lies a moldering in the grave. he would write, you, talking to us, "you can weigh john brown's body well enough. but how and in what balance

weigh john brown yes. you can weigh john brown's body well enough. but how? what balance do you weigh john brown? it's been a great pleasure. thank you all very much. i was asked by c-span if anybody has any questions, which we're willing to entertain. all they ask is that you actually come here and speak into the microphone because they want to record your question. and if you do wish to ask a question, please make it a question, not a lecture. so -- because i'd like to be able to respond to your question. does anybody have a question? don't be bashful. don't pay any attention to the camera. now, i've never done one of

these programs on john brown without a question. we're not leaving till somebody comes and asks a question. you are all my hostages. so i need a question. you do, jim. come on. come on up here. >> i don't know if anyone's supposed to know the vote tallies of the election. but i was thinking of the significance of just above the mason-dixon line how much of that vote did lincoln get vis-a-vis maybe steven douglas and the others? >> i anticipated your question, mr. sircamp. did a little research in preparation for that question. it's a very good question. dealing with what in the world were the counts, what did they come up with. well, let's start you here. actually in jefferson county. you all voted for -- let me just make sure i have this right

here. here in jefferson county we voted for john bell, constitutional union party. so you went right down the middle. you would represent the independent voter who doesn't want to be on one extreme or the other extreme. right down the middle. what a great title for a party. constitutional union party. so that's john bell. here in jefferson county. your neighboring county, berkeley county, also voted for john bell. loudoun county voted for john bell. we do have one outlier out there. that's clark county. they voted for breckenridge as their principal candidate. but overall the state of virginia voted for john bell. voted for the fourth party candida candidate. virginia went for bell. kentucky went for bell. didn't even go for its own man, breckenridge, who was from kentucky.

went for bell. tennessee, of course, which was where bell was from. went for bell. john bell had a good showing. the moderate in the middle, let's have moderation here, let's tamper down, tamper down all this extremism from both sides. but bell didn't win the election. here in washington county right across the river, john bell. but maryland did not vote bell. as all you have know, maryland's a slave state. breckenridge, the southern democrat, was the candidate from maryland. now, as you might expect, where did lincoln get his votes? he didn't get any votes around here. in fact, in jefferson county the vote tally for abraham lincoln is zero.

zero. so where did lincoln get his votes? well, obviously, new england. the mid-atlantic states, pennsylvania, new york, new jersey actually voted for dougl douglas. douglas won in new jersey. then we moved to the west. ohio went lincoln. illinois went lincoln. indiana went lincoln. the upper midwest went lincoln. he ran the gamut. so you know how today on the television screen we like to share red and blue, and we see these blocks. we see a solid block in the south and a solid block in the northeast. that's about right. they were very solid blocks. for lincoln, against lincoln. and the south went principally breckenridge. but virginia, which was the leading electoral state -- of course, what you actually do to get elected, you have to have an electoral college. virginia went bell, not

breckenridge. it hurt breckenridge dramatically that he did not win in virginia. however, the popular vote, as i mentioned, was about 60-40. lincoln got 39% and the other candidates got a total of 61% the popular vote. the electoral vote, which as we know is really what determines an election by our constitution, abraham lincoln had 180 electoral votes. there were a total of 303 available. so you needed 152 to win. lincoln had 180. 180 electoral votes. it wasn't a landslide, but it was a pretty massive victory. for lincoln with that many electoral college votes. one reason for that is the most populous states of course would provide the highest number of electoral votes are in the north. new york had this massive number of electoral votes.

the electoral college coming out of new york, 35 electoral votes, pennsylvania second, which was the second most populous state in the country, 27 electoral votes. ohio 23. ohio was number 3 in the census in 1860. 23 electoral votes. massachusetts 13 electoral. illinois 13. pardon me, indiana 13. illinois 11. the highest number of votes in the electoral college in the south, the biggest state, the most populous state in the south electoral college, get this, new york was 35. virginia, 15 electoral votes. 15 electoral votes. the southern population smaller. of course there's a large slave population. it doesn't count in the same way as the free white population in the north. it was over. there was no dramatic shift that had occurred in the political formula. and as a result of regionalism,

sectionalism now, as far as the south could see into the future, the republican party was going to be the dominant party. the democratic party was not going to win another election. hence one reason for such fierce, fierce interest in secession. because the south knew they had lost the white house probably for a generation. so good question that i was ready for. yes, sir. come on up. thank you. >> i was wondering if you'd comment again on how unique john brown was. and i ask that because in our nation the number of firsts, first trabz atlantic flight, things like, that was followed very quickly by the second. like that was two weeks later. darwin, his book was published because he was under pressure because somebody else was going to publish that. if it wasn't john brown would it have been bill smith a month

later? >> no. absolutely not. and i'll tell you why. brown was very unique in that brown was not unique as an abolitionist. there were thousands of abolitionists. but where brown stood apart, and everybody knew it, john brown was willing to go to war. start a war. kill people if necessary to bring an end to slavery. brown believed that the real killers, murderers were those people that not literally were taking people's lives but taking people's freedom. so those were people that were killing the soul, killing the mind, killing freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom of movement. that was -- slavery for brown was like death, living death.

true shackle. where you could not move. you had no freedom whatsoever. so for brown violence -- he in his mind justified violence because he felt that every slave, every day endured violence through the very institution of slavery. but others were not willing to go there. not go there at all. frederick douglass, the leading african-american voice, a former slave himself. certainly the best-known african-american in the united states. north and south. brown met with him in august of 1859. he was already gathering weapons. he'd already come to the kennedy farm in washington county, had established that as his front. his forward position for his invasion into virginia. and so brown met with douglas i!

chambersburg in franklin county, pennsylvania at a quarry and asked douglas to join him. douglass said no. douglass would later write that he didn't join brown because he thought that brown was walking into what douglass referred to as a perfect steel trap. but that was written with years of reflection. we don't know what douglass thought in 1859. we haven't discovered that yet. it may be out there. it was a secret meeting and douglass said i will not join you. so brown was committed. he was fervent. and he believed god -- this was a moment. he truly believed this was the moment that brought the opportunity for best success and john brown was absolutely

committed to his firm belief that god was calling him, directing him, supporting him and would lead him wherever. so he was very unique in comparison to other abolitionists because he was willing to use violence and he already had to use violence. violence had been utilized in kansas. kansas is a very violent place. many of us like to think of kansas as where the civil war really starts. and brown went out there to ensure that slaves and slaveholders were not brought into that territory. and he engaged in battle, was willing to use violence to get his -- to stress his point. and he was an experienced veteran fighter. and most of the men who came

with him to harper's ferry were experienced veteran fighters. anybody else with a question? yes, sir. jim. thank you. >> you started to hinlt at this but if you could further elaborate on what exactly -- how brown started to craft his own legacy between the time his capture at harper's ferry and his death in early december. he writes a great deal to people and ginsz to think, start shaping portrayals and portraits of events. again, if you could just elaborate on what exactly his campaign was, how he's trying to actively craft a model and mode of memory and i guess invest more meaning in the event. what did he himself do? >> he did several things. he granted interviews to newspapers. newspaper writers. and virginia allowed this. they permitted this. again, the virginians wanted to show that they were the people

who maintained the law and brown was the violator of the law. they didn't want to shoeld him. they didn't want to keep him separate and apart. they didn't want him to not be heard. they thought that every word brown said strengthened their positi position. and so he used newspaper editors and journalists, letters that he would write. he was able to write letters without censorship. the courtroom oration, which was widely spread throughout newspapers north and south. in the immediate interview that was done after a capture he specifically said the real criminals were not him but people like the governor of virginia, senator mason of virginia, congressman faulkner of virginia and virginians who

permitted slavery to exist. you were the criminals. not himself. that gets reported. that's within 24 hours after his capture. that's being reported. and so each one of these becomes a step in the direction of making brown something other than a violent, crazed person. for those who did not want to accept him as a violent, crazed person. so again, for those in the south every word that brown said reinforced what they thought of him in a very negative way. in the north brown gained allies. he gained friends. and much of this was a result of the southern reaction to john brown, which northerners found outrageous. and so brown did a good job of

really carving a canyon of opinion a grand canyon of opinion between north and south. and there was no bridge that was ever going to span that canyon that he had just carved. did john brown want civil war? i will simply say that there were two sentences in his last note he wrote. the first one you already heard. the second sentence was this. "and now i vainly flatter myself that without very much bloodshed it might have been done." it's been a real pleasure. thank you very much. thank you. [ applause ] book tv has 48 hours of non-fiction books and authors

every weekend. here are some programs to watch for. this weekend join us for the 22nd annual virginia festival of the book in charlottesville. starting saturday at noon eastern. programs include author bruce hillman, who discusses his book "the man who stalked einstein: how nazi scientist phillipo leonard changed the course of history." then saturday morning at 7:00, patricia bell-scott, professor emerita of women's studies at university of gra ga ga on port raitt of a friendship, eleanor roosevelt and the struggle for social justice. the book explores the relationship between civil rights activist paulie murray co-founder of the national organization for women and first ladies eleanor roosevelt. patricia bell scott speaks with author and historian knell irwin painter at roosevelt house in new york city. on sunday beginning at 1:00 p.m. eastern more from the virginia festival of the book. including kelly carlin, george carlin's daughter, who talks

about her life growing up with the comedian in her book "a carlin home companion." then sunday night at 9:00 afterwards with historian nancy cohen, author of "breakthrough: the making of america's first woman president." miss cohen looks at woman political leaders and the advances they are making in the political arena. she's interviewed by kim azarelli, chairman and co-founder of cornel law school's avon center for women and justice. >> for a woman to be at the head of the most powerful country in the world when one of our key allies doesn't allow women to drive and our most significant enemy at this time, isis, is literally executie ining women girls simply for being women and girls, i think that sends a powerful message from the bully pulpit about what america stands for. >> go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule.

the need for horses on the farm began to decline radically in the 1930s. it was not until the 1930s that they figured out how to make a rubber tire big enough to fit on a tractor. and starting in the 1930s, 1940s, you had almost a complete replacement of horses as the work animal on farms. i do believe in one of my books on horses i read that in the decade after world war ii we had something like a horse holocaust, that the horses were no longer needed. and we didn't get rid of them in a very pretty way. >> sunday night on "q & a," robert gordon, professor of economics at northwestern university, discusses his book "the rise and fall of american growth," which looks at the growths of the american standard of living between 1870 and 1970 and questions its future. >> one thing that often

interests people is the impact of superstorm sandy on the east coast back in 2012. that wiped out the 20th century for many people. the elevators no longer worked in new york. the electricity stopped. you couldn't charge your cell phones. you couldn't pump gas into your car. because it required electricity to pump the gas. the power of electricity in the internal combustion engine to

..

captioning performed by vitac >> -- three years as a counselor at the french embassy in tehran. where he focused on iran's nuclear and regional policies. then our third speaker, eric rosan, the state department's loss is our gain. he recently left the state department, where he had served as counselor to the undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, and previously he was a senior official in the state department's bureau of counterterrorism, where he spear-headed