Transcripts For CSPAN3 American History TV 20240622

My wife said, when you get a pulitzer, you can get an armani. [laughter] im hoping to get mostimproved historian james that is a distinguished award too. [laughter] peter thank you for so much that you have done over the years. Thank you. [applause] the civil war airs every saturday at 10 00 eastern time. To watch more programming any time, visit our website cspan. Org history. You are watching American History tv, for weekend, every weekend on cspan3. This weekend, the cspan cities toward travels the country with time warner cable. To mourn to learn more about the life of lexington, kentucky. In the mid1940s, if you had asked who is a bright shining star in american politics on a national scale, someone who is going to be governor, perhaps president. A lot of people wouldve said ed prichard of kentucky. He was one of those people who worked in the white house in his early 20s. He was destined for great things. He came back to kentucky in the mid1940s. He wasnt dieted for stuffing the ballot box and went to prison. He was indicted for stuffing the ballot box. We also visit ashland. The former home of speaker of the house and a secretary of state henry clay. Clays original home has to be torn down and rebuilt. It cannot be saved. He rebuilt on the original foundation. What we have is a home that is essentially a fivepart federal style home, as henry clay had with italian details and architectural elements. And an added layer of aesthetic detail added by henry clays daughter and greatgranddaughter answered on. And so on. See all of our programs from lexington threat the day also on American History tv on cspan3. This sunday, on q a, Molly Crabapple on her use of drawings to tell investigative stories around the world. Gang affiliation might mean reading a book by a black panther or having a tattoo. Around the country, you can land in solitary for what youre reading, your belief, your gender status, or your friends. I draw in a sketchbook, and a lot of times it is not a finished drawing. Very often when you have a big camera it puts a distance between you and the person. You are taking these images and they cant see what they are taking. It is a most vampiric. It is almost vampiric. When you draw, it is a vulnerable thing. If you suck, they can tell you so. Most people havent been drawn before. Most people are reluctant to be drawn. Most times i just draw people because i like to. On cspans q a, sunday night i 8 00 eastern and pacific. Coming up next on American History tv, the Gettysburg College Civil War Institute summer conference holds a Panel Discussion with contributors to the book about exploring iconic photographs about the civil war. Each photographer will write nsa about an essay about the civil war. It is moderated by professor gary gallagher. We are going to display mercy here in this panel at the end of a very long day. What were going to do is go down the table. These are our panelists. Each of us is going to talk 34 minutes about our photograph in this book. Im going to start with matt. I will come back to me for my photograph. This book, lens of war, which just came out a couple months ago, was his idea. Hes going to talk briefly about why he thought it was a good idea and how it turned out. Matt . Matt is it ok if i stay seated . This is a book we did. My job right now is to tell you about the impulse for this book and what the book really is. You notice they are all shrimp shrink wrapped, so you have no idea. I wanted tell you some thing that may shock you, bother you surprising. The idea behind his book emerges over beer. [laughter] we were sitting around, we meeting the board i was on. We were talking about ideas for a book, i said i have another beer and how about this idea for a book . This is a book that really deals from two basic observations about all of us. Not just about us and the 19 other people who are here. In fact, almost. One observation is that we who love talking about the civil war, reading and writing about the civil war we love photographs. We love looking at them, inspecting them, looking at them again, finding things we didnt realize that where there. That were there. Certainly these people love telling stories. The impulse behind it was very simple. Lets invite a bunch of people who are really good at writing within each choose a photograph and write about it. Let them each choose a photograph. What we end up with are 27 short essays, each one distinctive. But these are all of my friends. You can hear the persons voice in a way that is not necessarily part of academic writing. They are very diverse. That is the impulse behind it. Lets get people to write essays. Most of the individual essays were discussed over beer or wine. The other little secret is this book is a hell of a lot better than imagined, in that the press did a phenomenal job with these images. We will show you images that dont give you the full sense. These authors, our friends really all brought their agame. Im reading these essays thinking, oh my god, these are good. I want to go back and rewrite mine. Each person will talk about the pictures 34 minutes. They are arranged in the order in which they appear in the book, which is more or less not quite random. Youre up. And i thought i was going to be last. I was not consulted over beer or wine. [laughter] gary sent me an email, just an email. When i called him up to discuss it he said it just read the email. Its not as friendly as matt makes it out to be. [laughter] so i have four minutes tops why lincoln should be obvious to anybody that knows me. Why this picture . I remove this as a cover of the first book i ever cared deeply about. A picture story of lincolns life. I got it when i was 13 years old. It was the cover of the revised edition, which cannot when i was a little older. It made a huge impact for one reason. If you guys have pads or hand you can hold up put your hand over the picture vertically on one side, on the right side. On the right side you have a man who is sort of smiling, and his eye wanders up vacantly. Now look at the left side. Hes frowning. The eye is steady. Its the most bizarre photograph. The reason can be explained physically lincoln had endured a lot. As a young man he was kicked in the head by a horse. He had a condition called roving eye. The other thing that grips me early. A, it is a closeup of a much larger photograph from the waist up. It is safe very familiar it is a very familiar photograph to us. What sensory organ . What century are we win . The 21st century. This is right before gettysburg. This is alexander gardner, the great portrait photographer of lincoln. November 1863. Why was it not in circulation when it is such a fantastic portrait of Abraham Lincoln . That was the riddle that gripped me until, the answer is rather obvious. Its clue is in john hoeven john hayes diary. That diary is one of them. He writes that went to the gardeners stay with mrs. Ames. Met the president , had ourselves immortalized with the president. Who is mrs. Ames . She turned out to be sarah fisher ames, a sculpture rest sculpturist it was commissioned to do a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Look it up online. Not as good as this picture. She had an opportunity to portray lincoln from life, weather in oil or clay, she had problems to begin still and engaged. Keeping him still in engaged. They almost all resorted to the crotch of the photograph. I can show you several photographs that resulted from this exchange between media, and artist meeting and model. Sarah fisher ames goes with Abraham Lincoln to gartner gallery. She gets to poses gets two poses. This great full frontal lincoln i think that is what i call it it in the book. I am almost done, but now that you have given me another minute i will go on. [laughter] the reason it was not in circulation is that she took it. She got the prince. She took it, she made her mediocre bust of lincoln. Its in the u. S. Capitol outside the senate majority, excuse me, minority whips office. This photograph was not released until about 1909 for the lincoln centennial. No one who read about gettysburg that this photograph existed. I submit its one of the greatest photographs of Abraham Lincoln. John chose an obscure figure. I disagree with harold and agree with matt. This was a fun project over mine. But like so many things conceived in wine, the next morning i wasnt feeling regretful at all. [laughter] i kept asking matt again and again, are you sure we can have fun with this . Are you sure we can write from our hearts and not footnote everything will sentence . And he said, yes. So i decided to trust him. And im glad i did. This picture was one that fascinated me. It was taking june 11 or 12th. Supposedly near cold harbor. The evidence shows that is where it was located. When i started my project on ulysses s. Grant, i was fascinated, simply because for many years before this project i have seen innumerable photographs of stiffly posed middleclass and upperclass people. I have never seen anything like this. To me, if you will excuse me, it seemed cool. Cool and just hanging out. Just something very informal and modern about it. As i came to study grant deeply and understood where he was and what he was faced with when this picture was taken on june 11 or 12th, 1864 after cold harbor, imf marveled i am marveled at the fact that he can convey these qualities when he must have been under immense pressure. If you can imagine the fact that he had engendered such huge casualties in his campaign. It really fascinated me. The qualities i associated with him in my scholarship and as he was known to the people than in the north, someone who could be counted on, to be resolute, to win the war, to be confident about it no matter what happened. To be that person, that tower of strength that was so needed. Those were the qualities i saw in him. Those of the qualities i try to convey in this essay. It just so happened that at the same time i was asked to write this, i was reading a book about an early american photographer edmund curtis. A terrific biography of him. Curtis was somebody who had given himself the task of recording the last remnants of the native american population, as he thought, in every part of the country. He ultimately published 20 volumes. It was a huge effort in the late 20th century. He encountered some difficulty among the Indian Tribes as he tried to document their lives. They believed that a photo steals the soul, it doesnt reveal anything. Sometimes modern scholars would talk about the distortion of the photograph. I like what this photograph told me about the men the man spoke to the truth. I came across a quote by Matthew Brady i would like to read to you. He thought his documentation of the civil war provided a great and truthful media of history. Thats the way i look at this. I saw this picture for the first time when i was either 1011. In the American Heritage picture he history of the civil war. I looked at this on the farm in colorado where i grew up. It struck me that i never saw anybody like this in my life. There were other people in the book that i could imagine in 1960. John singleton mosby was clean shaven, i could imagine him. He looked very much like my fifth grade children fifth grade teacher. She wouldnt have appreciated not appreciated that. [laughter] but he honest to god looked like her. But he incontrovertibly seems to be anchored in another place in another time. The plume in his hat. He seems to be from another place. I was absolutely captivated by this image. That book is responsible for me being a civil war historian. This picture sent me to my parents when volume encyclopedia, which had a section on jeb stuart. I then got those books and read them. I read all the available books on jeb stuart, the biographies available in the 1960s. I read each beat mcclellans memoir about stuart. H. B. Mcclellan. I got a massive dose of the lost cause interpretation of the war because most of those books were written that way. I did know that was what was happening. I knew that stewart was a very compelling figure. As i read those books in image would come back to me again and again. A man that even many of them said was an and i can. And i mechanism. An anachronism. This photograph had a tremendous impact on me and got me started on a long road. I blame this to a significant degree. We dont even know who took it. I think he was taken in the wake of his first ride around them. The news ran a crude woodcut of stuart that appeared to be this picture from the waist up. I think it is early in the war when his fame was catching on. These are taken from the prepublication version. They do different backgrounds. I waited a long time to choose my picture, because it is like being the host at a party. Do people recognize this picture . Do you know the context . I will spare you a few minutes on antietam. I am an amateur historian of photography. This picture brings together all sorts of things which i really liked. It is a picture that is not unique, but distinctive in that it is a picture that captures this wonderful moment. We all know after the battle of antietam, he saved the union. Lincolns thinking has been hopelessly disappointing. Lincoln goes to see him midsummer. We know that mcclellan thinks of lincoln as the guerrilla. In this picture, we have and unusual picture in that the photographer is standing on the outside facing in, which doesnt happen very often. Two figures of guys who dont like each other very much, looking at each other, not the camera. I would claim without any proof to support it, two of the most photographed men in the world at this point. The number of portraits they had taken is massive. Meanwhile, there is a third guy in this picture, that is alexander gardner. He is the scotsman who did all of those great shots of antietam. He is now shooting off on his own. I write about this moment when these three guys come together. Its really Gardner Lincoln and mcclellan. I like this as an image of a meeting. If you step back, it is a postimage. It is a posed image. It looks like a snapshot. Oh lincolns discussing why he pissed off mcclellan, let me grab this shot. But no, you stand here and you stand herthere. That is not apparent until you investigate. This fascinating moment where these guys sat to pose for this picture. The first portion of the book is called leaders. Were moving on to other topics now. This is the cover page picture. This is a very fun project but like harold, i didnt get many of the spirits. This side of the table needs a night out. [laughter] i chose this image because ive written a lot about common soldiers. Although its kind of a cheap trick that the photographer uses it becomes for us a very inviting picture. It puts us in the position of those common soldiers. There are not many portraits, at least at the quality that we have seen as leaders. Of this image is a striking because we are allowed to sit with them and observe. Part of the reason i was intrigued by this project is because i previously helped create an atlas. In the process of doing that, i made a couple maps which were not attractive at all. I hope they were marginally useful. It occurred to me how difficult it is for those of us trained to work with words to start working with images. All of our graduate training is around structuring words. The words are all out there. We just reorganize them and put them in new covers. When it comes to paragraphs and sentences and commas, we know what to do. But when it comes to using images to convey story. I found myself at a real loss. How do i do that not using words . On a map, you use symbols and scale letters. You create symbols to represent different things. This image too tells a very, located story. Very complicated story. It conveys the might of the union army. There are, and cant photographs that simply there are common camp photographs that simply show the scale. I wonder what these men are thinking as they are pausing in the midst of this. This afternoon i was following the six wisconsin. They described their experience fighting in 1862 through antietam. If you survive that and have a quiet moment in camp, you can imagine all the horrible things yet instore. These men might be thinking about all the power it conveys or maybe their imminent death just around the corner. We dont see any of them. That is part of the mystery of this photograph. We are left wondering all of the anxieties and insurgencies that these soldiers experience nearly every day for four years. Anxieties and the technical quality is astonishing to me. We blow it up for a cover. Now we have one of my favorite pictures. Apparently we are going on record to the social aspect of how we were invited. I was invited in a bar in elections in hotel by matt. Those two needed drinks apparently imd good. [laughter] this image instantly came to mind when i was asked to the project. Ive used in most of the classes that i teach for my womens history course to the civil war course to the survey of u. S. History. Ive always been drawn to this picture, i think, because of the many things going on here. When i started looking into it two things happened. I didnt realize there was a second photograph. The first photograph is not as staged also included in the book as well. I find myself doing what i had done when i worked at the Shenandoah Park service. When we worked on exhibits before photographs could be digitized, i would sit for hours with a magnifying glass, trying to identify images. When in particular, one in particular, we were trying to find out what they were having at a certain dinner. I was taking apart the bits and pieces and looking at the ceramic pictures. You can see when you put the two pictures sidebyside, it is a staged photograph. This is not just a carefree shot of someone walking through the camp. I think this project came at a very important time for me. I have a twomonthold son when i started writing. I was so struck by what it must have been like to be a mother in camp. I could not imagine what it must have been like to be a young mother. Three children and perhaps a family dog. Both professionally and personally, this project was profound for me. And i was proud that as a mother i could write something related to this brief to this story. Each author could choose one picture. But one of the beauties was that you could work for yourself. I thought two pictures were wonderful, so we use them both. The next writer was lured by cigars and not drink. [laughter] as we have gone through the portraits of the living, it is down to just bill and me. I saw this photograph early and looked through the Looking Glass and have not been the same since. To me, this is a photograph of the flipside of the coin. Uclas magnificent portraits of the you see all of these magnificent portraits but this is always the bottom line. Is a taking in the southern part of the field. It was not only one of the first images i have seen of death. But it was also an image of something much more than that, which is decomposition. What happens when the dead are not buried in a timely way. What happened when it nature goes to work on us. That is when i saw as a child. When i now think of this photograph as an adult, it makes me hate all the more the hackneyed platitude one picture is worth a thousand words. I think it matters whose words and whose pictures. Yourself he is not worth a thousand words. Your selfie is not worth a thousand words. Im sorry. [laughter] this is the truth in many ways. A gardener in the photographic sketchbook of the work, he calls these confederates. He walks around 180 degrees and called them union. So much for the history and veracity of the talking. Of fauxtography. Photography. When the market downturn came in 2008, this is what i thought i was going to be able to afford for retirement. [laughter] actually i was in graduate school during the time. I was with dr. Gallagher. There at the same time as Peter Carmichael at penn state. When he said for the record i was doing in a safe port of the campaign students. I was doing and nsa. ; i was doing n essay. The internet only really came alive in 1991. Thsi is kind of new for me, even though i knew this image was around earlier. I thought this could have been any village in france during the campaign to liberate that country. I was struck by that. It was part of a war i didnt know well. We are trying to put some muscle into what we call home front studies. Math was one of the pioneers in it. Matt was one of the pioneers in it. Thinking about what war does ti huoo human beings. You all know the bigger story. They needed pontoon bridges to get across the rappahannock river. They were under fire by snipers in the town. That meant with artillery fire from the union army. But then what happened was disgraceful. The union army went into that cap, into that town stacked arms. If you could rape a town, that is what happened. They put graffiti everywhere, they defecated on the carpets. They put on womens garments and parasols and paraded. That wasnt just a crossdress that was to send a real message to the confederates. You cannot protect your women. This picture has always conjured this image with me. You should know that in civil war studies, this picture is indicative about how to think about the war. It was a very destructive war. The carnage was not worth it in some respects. It was tragic. My colleague argues for a limited war constraint within standard military practices. I dont know how that is going to all turn out. I know that it is helpful at least for me, to remember the hard hand of war. A guy named robert e lee did. Was at a different part of this battlefield at this time, not necessarily looking at this house, but watching the carnage visited upon by the union army. Not his men, the union army. Said that he said, its well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it. A quick run down the table. Something that struck matt and me when all of the essays came in was the wonderful variety of ways people had come to the war. Some very young. That is reflected on this panel. Harold was and i was. Others came to the work at a much more mature stage of development as historians. Yet we all ended up in the same place. The book reflects that. It reflects many different avenues to becoming a serious student of the civil war. You get both a wonderful array of these images that means so much to us, then a wonderful way that historians used to study images. It works in ways that we didnt anticipate. These 8 images, all of which i love. There are some topics that are under shown. We did very little in terms of nudging people towards topics. If three people wanted to do the same three images, we would have said something. But we pretty much ran with it. If theres a question or two we have time. When were finished though go back and assigned books in the back of the room. And sign books from the back of the room. I wonder if you guys have considered how powerful all these images are because they are black and white, had the same image been done in color. Let me do a slightly different take on that. I think they are powerful because images werent as pervasive as they are now. Black and white simply reflects an aspect of technology, but people beheld them as wonders of the technology. To see grant lounging on a tree. To see antietam, which caused a sensation. They were marvels. They were shocking, they were priced. Were prized. People kept images of a stewart or lincoln in their family album. These images were not promiscuous. They were rare, precious, and wonderful. The black and white aspect they didnt even imagine color technology. They thought these were extraordinary and prized possessions. We have all seen colorized versions of civil war photographs. There is a great site online is that has been. I have mixed feelings about this. They are fascinating. To see george custard with a blue uniform on rolling on the ground. It also seems like ted turners colorized films. Some things should not be in color, it should be in black and white. In my civil war class, we debated whether colorized photographs were good or bad. Many said they felt that it made it more real, that black and white photographs were suspended in time. Maybe there is a generational change going on there. They really seem compelled by the color photographs. Mining is Mike Mccormick and i am from mexico. I came in from a long way. Quick question what was the average length of each of the collective group of essays . They are 45 pages long for the most part. They did it in essentially 10,000 words. Matt was a minor in math. [laughter] it felt like 10,000 words sometimes. 45 double column pages. When you sent me email saying you not invited to drinks, but here are the instructions, you said 2500 words. [laughter] thank you. I come at this from a medical perspective. There is one photo i want to mention. The photo of lincoln and mcclellan at antietam that you should is a photo i have in my office. There is a photo of officers lined up. Here you have president lincoln the only image i know of lincoln right next to Jonathan Letterman , who is my hero. The antietam picture gardner basically follows lincoln out from d. C. Two in the tent, and the couple with all the guys lined up. One with lincoln looking tall and mcclellan looking short. The camera shows the reality. Lincoln said, clearly the ones outside are the best. To me, the ones in the tent are far superior. One of the images of custer is a must in shadow, like a ghost image, which i think is pretty cool. Since photography was relatively new during this time, how do you think this photo taken during the war changed peopless perspectives or had an impact on the public seeing the photos . That the great question. The most obvious way that they changed perspectives, they showed americans for the first time what the human debris of the battlefield looks like. Many americans found them shocking and lined up to see them. It was a cultural phenomenon. I used to be in journalism so i know that production. At this point they were not able to do black and white photos. What they were able to do is line art. They would take these photographs and run exhibitions. They made a whale of an impact. Renumber when they ran the cadaver exhibits . It really riveted people. I think it had the same visceral impact. The New York Times said, now the war was brought home to them. I have to remark that one of the things that impressed me the most about studying photography in the civil war was that it also brought a sense of nationalism and even celebrity status to leaders of the country that simply hadnt been there before. Photographs of grant sherman of lee of all of the heroes, union heroes, confederate heroes. People did keep them in during and after the war. They put them in scrapbooks. They are in thousands of scrapbooks of 19th century people as if they were family members. I thought that was a very interesting thing. When i began my research, i noticed this whole nich of Research Niche of research, people having celebrities in their homes. Nurturing then and cherishing them. Lincoln manages to get insulted gallery remarkably often. Manages to get himself to the gallery remarkably often. He is recording for the people his own deterioration, as if he is suffering for the nationss insins. He wants his image out there. Although he doesnt go to the photographers and says, lets get some publicity pictures made, he was invited often. They are shown at exhibitions. They are kept in albums. They are sold at newsstands. They are sold through the mail. They become a political pieces at a time when residential candidates dont campaign. They are ubiquitous but also treasured at the same time. Soldiers pose for tin types and sent them back to their parents or wives back home. There is a Remarkable Exchange of photographs going on. People like brady and gartner are taking a chance by doing these photographs. They dont know the market. Is not the first war that has been photographed. There are some from crimea and mexico. But this was the first nationally photographed war. I will add a slightly dissenting note here. It certainly true that in technological terms photographs for most americans are shocking. They displayed a realism of the experience in a way americans hadnt enabled to access before. When the antietam photographs were unveiled in new york, people are shocking horror. That changed their perspective maybe we need to fight a different war. Instead, they assimilate the immediacy with these photographs and pursue the conflict all the more vigorously. I dont know if you can look at these and say they changed how the course of the war happened. They changed how people are thinking about it. We have a remarkably adaptable way of incorporating technology quickly with story. The day i lectured on antietam, i had these images to talk about the media and war. Talking about the beginning of the u. S. Invasion of iraq. We had wifi in the room. Instead of looking at bradys images of antietam, we watched the beginning of the war in iraq. People brought this into their frame of reference despite the novelty. Its important to renumber photographers consider themselves arts remember artists. They change things around. They composed photographs. They are both artists and what we would call documentary photographers. I remember being told a few years ago that its soon as mcclellan gets to antietam battlefield, he selects house for his headquarters. As soon as lincoln shows up, suddenly there is a tent set up for him. That is where you would expect to find a commanding general on a battlefield. We go from what his actual headquarters were to this photoop tent. Did anyone pick up on that . Im not sure the fry would be a mansion. It was definitely a substantial house for that part of maryland. That is an photo op. And a Confederate Flag on the ground. If you look at pictures of leaders lined up facing each other, you can see the house in. You can see the house in the background. Its not wear his headquarters were during the battle. He had moved on from that house. I had been there. He went there to visit wounded soldiers. He actually met with wounded confederate as well as union soldier. You have been wonderfully resolute atendees today. We thank you for your attention all day long. [applause] ive just been told the book signings are going to happen right here. This weekend, the cspan city tour travels the country with time warner cable. To learn more about the lit erary life of lexington kentucky. In the mid1940s, if you had asked who is a bright shining star in american politics on a national scale, someone who was going to be governor, perhaps hesitant perhaps president. He was one of those