How Political Parties have used the memory of lincoln. Let me introduce our next speaker. Michael kauffman is one of the leading historians of the lincoln assassination. He is author of american brutus John Wilkes Booth and lincoln conspiracies, which was named by the New York Times and the Washington Post as one of the best nonfiction books of 2004. There are copies of the paperback version on the Registration Table that you can purchase after our program is concluded. His other works include in the footsteps of an assassin and a modern edition of memoirs of a lincoln conspirator. His bus tours of the John Wilkes Booth escape route have been popular for many years. He has lectured throughout the country, appeared on Many Television documentaries. Civil war historian william c. Davis, jack davis, once wrote no one has studied booth longer or in more depth than michael w. Kauffman, a wellknown voice of reason in the field of assassination studies. Today, Michael Kauffman will talk to us about the assassination, mourning, and the security of president s. Michael. [applause] kauffman thank you for that. It is indeed an honor to be speaking in this place. Its humbling, and i very much appreciate being invited to speak here. The theme today is the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, how he changed the world, and i thought all along, what a wonderful opportunity to pick up ideas as i go to these commemorative events. All the sesquicentennial ceremonies. The vigil in front of fords theatre. All these events that have taken place over the last four years should certainly give plenty of thought and attention to the way that the war, and specifically the way in which Abraham Lincoln has changed the u. S. And indeed the world, but it is the modern world, of course. And as i stood at the vigil in front of fords theatre on the night of april 14, i took my camera and raised it up above, expecting to get a photograph of a sea of mourners. I was going to talk about morning and mpurning mourning and i wanted some insight. But i brought my camera down and looked at the picture, and what i got instead of a sea of mourners was a sea of cell phones of other people taking pictures. I thought, ok, well, i guess, to some extent, it is largely these days about the show, not so much about the analysis. But thats ok because theres plenty of material to work with, and there is never a shortage of new angles to take on Abraham Lincoln, on his assassination , and on the world that all of this left to us. History tells us that John Wilkes Booth, a southern actor killed Abraham Lincoln as the result of a conspiracy. A plot to capture lincoln that then evolved into a murder plot. He may have been employed by the confederacy, he may have been insane. Nobody will ever satisfy the whole world about any one theory behind it. Because the deeper you go into the story, the more complex it becomes, and its a little bit like anyone who has studied the politics of the war. When you realize that when you really start getting into peoples motivations, you are not only getting into the complexity of the human mind but you are talking about many minds. What motivates each and every one may depend on individual experience, individual taste and whatever sort of things a person might think makes sense at any given time. As i said, John Wilkes Booth was said to be a southerner. And even that, the most basic statement about booth and the conspiracy, is not quite right. Booth came from a place below the mason dixon line, but, actually, in an afternoon, you could walk from his house to the Pennsylvania State line. He was from a border state, and that was far more intense emotionally and politically than the war and the experience was maybe a little bit farther to the south. Take North Carolina for example. In border states, you were surrounded by people who might or might not agree with you on all the political questions of the day. That meant that the intensity of being right around people to fight with that amplified your feelings somewhat. And border states have not gotten a whole lot of attention in the civil war literature, although that is being remedied. But in hindsight, it kind of makes sense that lincoln was targeted by a person from a border state, especially the one that surrounded washington on three sides. Because that is what maryland was. It was the place where Troop Movement at the beginning of the war had been obstructed by marylanders. And because of that, Abraham Lincoln declared martial law first in maryland. And that First Impression stayed with a lot of people, including John Wilkes Booth. Its just the way they thought, the way their minds work. Because of martial law, because troops were sent into southern maryland, they were sort of pseudooccupation troops, thats the way they were thought of there. People started saying that lincoln was somewhat tyrannical. Every so often, the name of caesar came up. For a person with a classical education, as booth had, for a person who knew all about Julius Caesar, as booth did, this had a special resonance. Booth had played in the shakespearean drama of Julius Caesar. It was one of the last plays he had ever performed in. And he had what he thought was a pretty good working memory and understanding of the plot against caesar led by brutus. And as it so happened, booth from a theatrical background was also from a political background. His father was Junius Brutus booth. He was born in london. His uncle was Algernon Sidney booth. When you start naming your children after political heroes all of a certain stripe, you know there is something going on there. Not just like every child in london was named algernon sydney something. It was odd. This is the way the family was. And they, with their classical education, they had read all of milton who said that if you kill somebody, thats murder, but if the person you killed was a tyrant, thats not murder. And booths father had performed in a play called killing no murder that came from the titus oates letter to the same effect. Well, John Wilkes Booth sees all of this, and this is part of what would later be called evidence of insanity. But he knew things that other people did not know about the past and about all the cases in antiquity where people had dealt with extraordinary powers of centralized government. He saw modern day as a parallel, and he started to plot. Now some people believe that he was plotting to capture Abraham Lincoln. I personally i cannot read his mind, but i have a feeling that all along, it was going to be murder. What booth did was he consciously imitated the earlier case. He ritualized. He planned meticulously. He tried to gather people around him because it had to be a conspiracy. If he is doing it all alone, thats the one lone nut theory, as we call it today. He had to appear to have plenty of support. And the more time he spent in maryland, particularly in baltimore violence in baltimore it just keeps coming up, doesnt it . By the way, if you are interested, theres a wonderful book called hanging henry gambrill, which describes in detail the Political Violence in baltimore in the 1850s, and it was incredible. In researching american brutus i found something that i had never read before, that even such a benign character as James Buchanan coming down from pennsylvania just across the state line through baltimore on his way to become president of the United States he was beaten up by mobs in baltimore. Well, i guess that was just the way they welcomed people in those days. I must confess, im not too eager to go back up there any time in the near future. But when John Wilkes Booth, who well, i guess that was just the had grown up in this culture because he spent much of his time in baltimore they had a house right over near the shot tower, where the shot tower is now he saw a good deal of this violence, and im sure he took it in as being just kind of what politics is all about. He believed somewhat in fate. And he wanted to head off the fate that was in store for himself as he started to plot against lincoln. As he looked back, he knew that Marcus Brutus said, we need to make this clean. We need to make it public. We need to do it on a stage. We need to make sure that Everybody Knows this is above board. It is a ritual killing. We are doing it in a ceremonial way. We are letting everybody know who is doing this and why, and we cannot let anybody think of it as plain, old, coldblooded murder for selfish reasons. Theres nothing in it for us. Its for love of country. And so when booth planned out and by the way, of course, this is a different lecture, but he used a lot of shakespearean tricks to manipulate people into getting into this conspiracy and to keep them quiet and so forth, and that is a fascinating tale in and of itself. But it was brutus downfall that he let mark antony live. Mark antony stepped up and gave this famous oration over the corpse of Julius Caesar. In a few short minutes had taken the crowd shakespeare knows that crowds are very difficult. You can see it in any number of plays. They are all ready to kill very fickele. You can see it in any number of plays. They are all ready to kill candidate a, and in a few minutes, you can have them ready to praise candidate a and kill candidate b with the power of words. The power of words was very potent. Booth knew that. And he thought nevertheless, there was probably someone out there who probably would serve the same function that mark antony served for caesar. I think that will be william seward. Seward and lincoln had been somewhat in political lockstep throughout the war, and seward of course, agreed in all major points with Abraham Lincoln. He was his righthand man. And if you are going to kill lincoln and leave seward standing, so to speak he was in his sick bed but he could step right into that vacuum. And so booth said, ok, we will take care of seward, too because im not going to make the mistake that was made in the past. Well, it did not work out that way. Booth lost control of this from the very beginning. He had assigned a man named Lewis Thornton powell to assassinate seward. Powell botched the job and ended up brutally hacking five people in the seward household. It was unbelievably gory. And for all of booths effort and planning to make this whole thing seem like a sanitary ritual regime change, to do as brutus had said, this is a sacrifice. This is not carrion for the hounds. But lewis powell messed up. In looking at the carnage from that night, washingtonians were absolutely terrified. This was an act of terror, and everybody wondered what is next . We had two attacks at the same time. We all lived through 9 11. We all know the first plane goes into the tower, we think, what a terrible accident. Im not sure how that happened. But the second plane goes into the other tower, and right away, we all know. And so it was on the night of april 14 that everybody knew. Because there was not only the shooting of Abraham Lincoln, but there was the attack on william seward. And this made it an entirely different thing. Well, booth miscalculated. Just a monstrous miscalculation on so many levels. He chose the wrong people to be with him. He was absolutely wrong about the way the nation was going to take all of this. They had been told again and again, these are temporary war measures. Martial law is temporary. When the war is over, it will all go back. He says, sure, thats what we heard in the case of caesar, and they start offering him crowns. And, you know, those are trial balloons. Every time, he gets a little more reluctant, and nobody seemed to be doubting that some day, caesar would make himself permanent dictator, and that is when they struck caesar. So before lincoln can make himself permanent dictator, i think we should get him now. But the timing was everything. Booth had planned to do everything that would recall the earlier case, including attacking lincoln on the 13th of april. That was the day general grant came into town after appomattox, and everybody was going to celebrate the grand illumination. It would take place that night and grant would travel around town with the lincolns. Only, lincoln did not show up. First of all, he had a lot more work to do. The war was not really over yet. Secondly, he had a headache, so he stayed home that night. Booth was kind of counting on making the attack on that night because in the ancient roman calendar, the 13th in april was the ides. And there you get that other parallel. But no worries. We are still in town. He will get the next opportunity, as it turned out, the following day. And timing is everything because the next day happened to be good friday. It did not make lincoln look like caesar. In the minds of some, in the outpouring of grief and mourning that came after, lincoln looks like christ. There was some kind of deification in the mourning period. There was some sort of, i would say, secular sainthood mentioned. And certainly, one of the dominant themes throughout the north was lincolns martyrdom. But the truth is reactions to the assassination were incredibly varied. And even in the north, it did not always depend on how one had sided during the war, how one had felt politically about lincoln. It was a lot more complicated than that. In the north, in the south, in the border states. And John Wilkes Booth found out himself as he was escaping first through southern maryland, his home state and the most rabidly prosouthern part of the state. He found people willing to help him out. Even people who knew what he had done. They claimed, some of those people claimed at first that they approved of the assassination, but, you know, on second thought, later on, they sort of cooled to the idea and started to realize what so many people south of the masondixon line had also realized. Now, weve got Andrew Johnson. By comparison, Abraham Lincoln was our best friend. We should not be gloating or happy about this at all. It was ill considered, illconceived, just a bad idea. Well, as booth escaped through maryland, you know, he had planned out this whole Julius Caesar reenactment thing, but all anybody could think about was not shakespeares Julius Caesar. It was shakespeares macbeth, the bloodiest, goriest, darkest play written by shakespeare. The play about regime change. The play in which the whole plan goes completely awry. You know, its all about guilt and torment. The play in which the word assassination appears in writing the very first time. As booths escaping into virginia, he was in for a real shock because virginia was not maryland, was not his home state, and they did not feel the same way at all as the people of maryland did. The first person he encounters over there tells him to get lost. And the next person, get lost. And the next person, get lost. And one of the people he encountered, dr. Richard stewart, had said to him, what were you thinking . The war was over. Everybody is going to blame us for this. The the wrath is going to come down on us. Nobody elected you to change president s. Thats a smart person thinking. That is reason. That is not the emotional burst the first night. That is nine days later on the president s birthday and coming from a man who was a direct descendent of a person for whom macbeth was written. Not that anybody brought it up but when booth wrote a nasty note that man, a page in his diary, note to that man, a page in his diary, he was complaining about the hospitality that was grudgingly received. He quotes macbeth. He keeps coming up with macbeth. And he wanted this to be Julius Caesar. The protagonist in macbeth is not a hero to anybody. He is just a coldblooded murderer. And as booth lay dying in the searing glow of a burning tobacco barn 12 days after the shooting, i cannot help but think he had in mind those very nihilistic words near the end of macbeth when he has discovered that his wife has died and nothing has gone as he had planned. He regretted his reliance on the past for guidance, and he realized that there would be no glory, that he would not get any monuments or statues or cities named after him, and that most people would come to say John Wilkes Booth had gotten what he deserved. And he had come to accept this with the utmost sense of depression, and he may have thought of those lines tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. You cant get any more depressing than that. And as i said, some people thought, well, thats appropriate. Look what he did. Now booth did have his mourners, but the best they could ever do for him was to say that he must have been insane. Insane people are not really responsible. Who, but a lunatic, would underestimate so drastically the effect his act would have on the nation . Who would miscalculate so badly the whole political situation . And again, if he had killed lincoln at any other time, booths place in history might have been different, but timing is everything. Just like the difference between the ides and good friday. He happened to kill lincoln right after lincoln had made this statement about his plans for reconstruction, what he felt should happen a gradual move toward racial equality was implied in that last little speech that lincoln gave. And then lincoln said, i will tell you a little bit more. I dont want to just dribble it all out right here. So we have that but we did not have not much else when it came to lincolns ideas. And after the shock, the initial stun of the assassination, and things started to settle down, people in the north started thinking, how is this going to play out in future . People in the south are probably thinking the same thing and they are dreading it, and they want to lie low and act contrite because they now have a president who has quite famously been saying that treason must be made odious and traitors must be punished. And they think he is going to be a hardliner. Well, it did not work out quite that way. Dr. Medford said intriguingly, Andrew Johnson started feeling its kind of interesting rubbing elbows with these people. He has always hated the plantar classes. Slave power. He hates them from the very bottom of his soul, and i think because they had always looked down on him, that very poor, semiliterate tailor from the mountains of eastern tennessee and now he has got them where he wants them. They have to beg him for forgiveness. And in some respects, that was probably enough for him. He got what he wanted. He was a southerner. He shared their feelings of racial superiority over people of color. And frankly, he looked at Abraham Lincoln and, like almost all politicians of his day, he starts analyzing, ok, what am i going to do to take over this mourning, this feeling of grief, this very, very powerful emotion . Take this wave and ride it and say that i am doing what lincoln would have done. You can invoke his name, you can use it politically and its hard to contradict you if in fact lincoln has not been all that clear up to that point about what he was going to do. Well, as it happened, Andrew Johnson decided to go with leniency. He surprised a lot of people. Now, people in the south had perfectly legitimate fears. They were terrified that johnson would prove to live up to his reputation. But think about almost 4 Million People who had been slaves. Think about what they must have been feeling at that point, the sense of betrayal, the sense of fear for their future. And as we heard, they expected some of this land that sherman and others had given them and said, here, take it, its abandoned. And now it is being taken away. What else . Are we going to go back to slavery . And their sense of grief for lincoln because after all, he was their protector, the face of emancipation, the person who led the drive. And talk all you want about the 13th amendment, which had not been passed yet was not quite law yet at least, talk all you want about the other committees and the people who had been involved, but for the rank and file all over the u. S. , north and south, that was Abraham Lincolns baby, and now lincoln was gone, replaced by people who, quite frankly, were not anywhere near as interested in the plight of africanamericans as lincoln probably would have been. Andrew johnson was a southerner and he showed little interest over time, comparatively little, over the welfare of blacks. He said basically he hoped that Southern States would do right by them. That will just have to do for now. There were institutions forming, the Freedmens Bureau and the sort of pseudooccupation of 20,000 troops in Southern States protecting them, but there was very little protection, and all of those signals coming out of washington in the months after the assassination, there was very little in any of this to give hope to people who had once lived in bondage. Because so many things still needed some urgent attention in april of 1865. The war had yet to be won, really, and there was a serious though largely forgotten debate about whether we were seeking peace or military victory. If you have not thought about that, its an enormous difference between the two. Peace means lets just stop it all right now, pull the troops out of the south, and get on with our lives. That seems to be what Andrew Johnson wanted. And now, those troops, who had protected the former slaves are they going to be gone . Because there is not anybody down there. You cannot change their hearts overnight down there. And it was the congress applying pressure that said, no lets keep them down there. All of this played into the mourning and the grief that came out of Abraham Lincolns death and the fact that it came at that moment when it did when people could still say, lincoln would have done this or lincoln would have done that, it could have gone either way. And everyone was using his character as a stepping stone for their own political ends. Ironically, it the was democrats who played up his saintly qualities. They were the ones who said he was so forgiving, conciliatory. He used the pardon quite liberally. And i think anybody who wants to be on lincolns level would pardon us, too. You can see how that works right . And the radicals would have none of that. They cited lincolns kindness too, but they said, ok, his gentle nature, his essential goodness served him well for a time, but he was just too good and it got him killed. His work as the great emancipator and savior of the nation was done. It was gods will that he go to his reward and leave to us the task remaining before us. We know how to hand out justice. We are not going to be soft, as lincoln would have been. And so this is the dynamic that comes out of using Abraham Lincoln. Again, it sort of flips the world upside down. It is his own party is saying its a good thing hes gone in kind of a gentle way, but this is what they are doing. And of course, there was a bit of a disagreement. Between the president. You may have heard of the impeachment controversy. All of the, all of the political haggling and things that came through the Andrew Johnson administration. There is almost nothing else that anybody remembers about johnson these days. But johnson thought that he was following in the steps of his predecessor. Theres just one thing, though he was in such a hurry to declare peace and not victory. In time of peace, you know nothing further could be done to impose the federal will on a defeated south. Abraham lincoln would not have thought that way. Abraham lincoln considered emancipation one of his great achievements, and that was a large number of people affected by that. He would never have declared victory without taking steps to guarantee the permanence of the strides made for civil rights. He would never let slavery return under a different name. For johnson and for an appalling number of people, north and south, they just did not seem to care as i think lincoln would have cared. They had had enough of war and strife. The danger had passed and with the danger passing, the emergency passed. All those emergency measures were no longer necessary. One of those emergency measures, as everyone kept saying, was emancipation, and the fruits of that, whats going to happen there, was a very important question. You would be surprised looking back. You would love to say that Abraham Lincoln changed the world in all ways, but he died too soon to have made those changes permanent. What he really did was he planted the seed. He made sure that these people were now free. You have already let that out, you cannot take it back. Not as a practical matter, and people certainly tried, but it would be another 100 years before africanamericans would get Something Like legal equality, some meaningful protection from the federal government. 100 years. That would not have happened if booth had killed lincoln after the next speech, after the next political measure, after the congress came into session in december. Who knows when, but after everybody would know exactly where lincoln stood on these matters. And in all of the criticisms that came out about lincoln and all of the kind of weird upside down statements made about lincoln, he was roundly criticized for neglecting his own personal safety. Well, its impossible for us to imagine today, but after lincoln came through baltimore to become president in 1861, he had taken the advice of certain people to come through the city ahead of schedule because there was supposedly a plan to kill him, and the critics were merciless. They portrayed him in this ridiculous disguise, sneaking like a coward through baltimore in the middle of the night. You have all seen the adelberg picture with the cat. He did not want to look that way again. No president had been protected before, and lincoln had decided, no matter whats going on we may be surrounded by the enemy but its still going to be business as usual to whatever extent possible. And people accepted that. Nobody forced any guards on him. The idea of keeping the president away from the people was unthinkable. And by the way, the white house was a public building, and its owners, the citizens, had every right to visit it whenever they wanted. Shut those people out . That was unthinkable. Its impossible to imagine now. In a capital surrounded by enemies where Death Threats were voiced openly, ordinary people could walk right into the white house and visit the president in his office, in the cabinet room, in his bedroom, and ask him for favors, for some kind of legal redress. Probably more commonly to ask him for an autograph. Thats what i would have done. Lincoln enjoyed none of the privacy that an ordinary person would expect in his own home because his home was not really his own. It belonged to everybody, and he respected that. The government toward the end of the war finally provided police protection. They assigned four Police Officers to protect the white house, not the president. You see, souvenir hunters were in there, carving up the drapes and carpet and running away with silverware. Theres a long trail of correspondence about that. And benjamin french, the commissioner of public buildings, had had enough. He could not keep up with the added expense of replenishing these things and fixing these things, and he persuaded the Police Department to give him at his own expense out of his own budget four men who would then become white house guards. As we all know, years after the war, decades after the war, when everybody wanted to say, i was lincolns best friend. I knew lincoln so well. Some of these people started saying, nobody knew him better than i did. I was his bodyguard. Oh, i remember little tad when i broke the news to him about his fathers death. All of these stories embellished beyond reason became part of the folklore, and hardly a word of it is supported in any contemporary records. Lincoln himself disdained the whole idea of becoming the first chief magistrate to take on the regal trappings of a security detachment. It had never been done before, and even in the most outrageous national emergency, it was not done then, either, and i think everybody who has talked about lincoln and his greatness and his accomplishments i think i have always said this i think they are cheating him. When you ignore these things because you make it look easy. You make it look safe. Abraham lincoln knew every day of his life, everything that he wrote, every letter to a widow could have been his death sentence. When we talk about his greatness, we must add to that his physical courage because he always sensed that his time was coming. He just did not know from which direction. Well, the idea of president ial security did not change after lincolns death. The president was still not protected, not even in the impeachment controversy. I remember reading an august of 1865 front page somebody in the washington star said, i cannot believe what i just saw yesterday. I was out in the woods northeast of the capital, and a man came toward me on a horse all alone and it was general grant. You would think he would have somebody around to protect him but no, he was like lincoln, a nononsense guy. That was how people work. They thought with martial law and everything else, that the danger was temporary and was now past and that booth, being the crazy man, was an aberration. You know what . Old ways die hard. Localism was back in full force after the war. Civil rights nah, not interested. Most of us fail to appreciate how conservatice, how conservative, how fundamentally conservative and resistant to change the public was in those days. There was a whole lot still left to do in the spring of 1865. Lincolns death took from us the only leader who appreciated what lincoln had done, and he was not going to give that up. He had made forward progress momentum. He was looking to the future. Not everybody was doing that. Because it was hard to see the future, and it was easy to see the distant past when everything by comparison seemed so peaceful. Thats what we want. Lets go back to that happy place. That was the easy way out, and that was what so many politicians wanted to do in the postwar years. Well, lincolns legacy was enormous, but in many ways, it lay dormant for a full century almost exactly. While the cult of lincoln grew it was based mostly on his personality. Just like today, all of these commemorations tend to be more about the show. There is something that is not really as deep as it ought to be. But if we really want to appreciate the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, what we really need to do is to go back and compare him and his skills and his accomplishments with those of all the people who followed. Thank you. [applause] the cspan cities tour is partnering with cable affiliates as we travel across the United States. Join us and Talk Communications this weekend as they learn about the history of omaha, nebraska, where the club was one of the first advocacy groups fighting for racial equality. A while had a reputation in the Africanamerican Community in omaha and the United States that if you came in and you were black you needed to keep your head down and be aware you would not be served at restaurants. When the club began operations the idea, the term civil rights was not they used several justice. The social justice. Civil rights was so far removed from the idea of the Greater Community of omaha that they were operating in a vacuum. They were operating without a net, there were not the support groups or the prior experiences of other groups to challenge Racial Discrimination and segregation. We look back at the Union Pacific and how the construction of Union Station help omahas economy. Union pacific is one of the premier companies in omaha founded in 1862 with the act signed by Abraham Lincoln. It combines several companies to make Union Pacific. They were charged with building the transcontinental railroad. So they started here with moving west and Central Pacific started on the west coast and was moving east and then met up at utah. That is really what propels us even farther. We become that point of moving west, one of the gateways to the west. See all of our programs from omaha today at 2 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] each week, American History tvs reel america brings archival films that help tell the story of the 20th century. The next to last section of the United Nations conference, lord halifax presiding. He pays tribute to the head of americas delegation and the organizer of the meeting. He has now been named United States representative to the new International Organization, and is presented with a scroll in recognition of his efforts. [applause] and a history making moment as lord halifax calls for a standing quote on International Organization and the heads of the 50 United Nations delegations rise to be common. Counted. The vote is unanimous. As the source and session adjourns, delegates burst in to applause. The charger of the new world is charter of the new world is born. Arriving in San Francisco is president harry s. Trueman. Hes met with the u. S. Delegates and the chiefs of the 49 other delegations. Among them, south africa and the Prime Minister of canada, mr. Mckenzie king. President truman leaves for a brief tour through San Francisco. The first visit by a chief executive in seven years. Half of a million citizens turn out to hail the motorcade. [cheering] as mr. Freeman arrives, 60 truman arrives, 63 days are climaxed by the signing of the United Nations charter. First is china, the first nation that suffered aggression. The delegation of the soviet union, the ambassador signs for russia. Great britain is represented by her delegation chairman halifax. The republic of france acting delegation chairman joseph. 38th of 50 nations to sign is the United States. Secretary of state. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, we are all aware that this is an extremely historic occasion. The charger for world peace charter for world peace has been completed. But this is not the end, it is only the beginning. The great task lies before us, and it is our solemn and sacred duty to see to it the United Nations comes into being and fulfills its promise. With faith in our cause and goodwill in our hearts and determination to work unceasingly towards this end, i am confident that with gods help we shall reach our goal. [applause] senator Donnelly Connelly is next to sign for the United States. Senator arthur vandinburg. [applause] commander harold, former governor of minnesota. A vital and a difficult job well done. Appearing before the last formal session of United Nations conference, president truman congratulates the 280 delegates and expresses the worlds hopes for the new International Organization. Conference, president truman the charter of the United Nations which you are now signing is a solid structure upon which we can build. For a better world. History will honor you for it. Between the victory in europe and the final victory in japan in this most destructive of our wars you have won a victory against war itself. For a better world. If we had had this charter a few years ago and above all the will to use it, millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it millions now living will surely die. Theres a time for making plans. And theres a time for action. The time for action is here now. [applause] let us therefore each in his own nation and according to its own way, seek immediate approval of this charter and make it a living thing. By this charter you have moved towards the goal for which that gallant leader in this second world struggle worked and fought and gave his life, franklin d. Roosevelt. [applause] president truman this new structure of peace is rising upon strong foundation. Let us not fail to grasp this supreme chance to establish a world wide rule of reason, to create an enduring peace under the guidance of god. [applause] on a note of enthusiasm unequaled among nations in all history, the San Francisco conference is adjourned. In the United States congress and among free people everywhere, the efforts of the chief architect of the United Nations are remembered. Remembered too are the words he spoke shortly before he died on World Organization expressing his congress. Expressing his confidence that president Roosevelt Congress and the American People will accept the results of this conference and from the beginning of our structure of peace. From which we begin to build on billed under god build under god that better world and grand children, yours and mine children and grand children of the whole world must live and can live. Three men and the women believed to be members of the puerto rican nationalist gang that attended the assassination of president truman opened fire on the house of representatives. Five congressmen were hit. Ben jensen of iowa, Kenneth Roberts of alabama george, and albert from michigan who was seriously injured. Begun wielders and accomplish to the gun wielders goes the distinction of a criminal outrage almost unique in history. It was one of the most violent acts in the chamber and there were debates afterwards that we cannot let this happen again. What we need to do is to wall off the voters gallery with bulletproof gas visitors gallery with bulletproof glass. The more the members thought about it is that it was a bad idea. This is the peoples house and the people cannot be walled off from what is going on. The Capital Building is a symbol that makes it a target. They mentioned the british building, there was a bombing during world war i by a professor opposed to american support for the allies. The shooting in 1954. What happened in 1971 was a bomb set up by the Weather Underground opposed to the vietnam war. In 1983 there was another bombing on the senate side by a Group Opposed to president reagans foreignpolicy. There have been those instances and yet the capital has remained an open building. Senate historians on the history of the house and senate on its leaders, characters and prominent events. Tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Like many of us, first families take vacation time. And like president s and first ladies, a good read can be the perfect companion for summer journeys. What better book than one that appears into the lives of first ladies. Inspiring stories of fascinating women who survived the scrutiny of the white house. A great summertime read. Available as a hardcover or ebook. Three favorite bookstore or online bookseller. The battle of gettysburg in 1863 was a turning point in the am