15 guys. they haven't shaved in a month. they are dirtier than dogs. and they come walking out. and they meet with these guys, and they make each one of them an ice cream sundae, with soup to nuts, cherries, marachino cherry on top, nuts. they hand the stuff back. they put it all back, walk back into the dmz and the helicopter takes off. and my clunts again call me and say, sir, what did we just see? and i said i think it was an ice cream social. i really don't know, but all i know is where the order came from. so about five minutes later from his helicopter the ch-46, sudden death 66 calls up, this is the way marines talk on the radio, they call you by your name instead of by your call sign, he said, ken, i wonder what we were doing? >> i said sir, we were curious. >> he said those guys have been in the dmz for a month and i figured they deserved an ice cream sundae, i said, sir, that was an excellent idea. >> but he said, in order to make that happen, i had to have absolute security of that dz. and i said okay, he said, because i was one of the guys in the cook's whites, the only way the third marine amphibious force would allow me to be that close, that much danger, they made me promise i would have absolute security, you're the guys who did it. semper fi. that's all i could say. i told everybody. they said that's one of the best missions we ever had, getting those guys an ice cream sundae. >> watch this and other american history programs on our website where all our video is archived. that c-span.org/history. next, harvard university professor annette gordon reed talks about the legacy of andrew johnson, the nation's 17th president who took office following abraham lincoln's assassination of 1865. she calls him the president of lost opportunities because of his failure to help slaves in the early days of reconstruction. this 45-minute discussion was part of the annual lincoln forum in gettysburg, pennsylvania. it is my pleasure to introduce our second speaker for the morning, annette gordon-reed, professor reed, gordon-reed is the charles warren professor of american legal history at harvard law school. she is also a professor of history in the college of arts and sciences. her first foray into writing produced "lost at sea" which was written when she was 7. so she's an overachiever. since then she has authored or co-authored six historical studies, including the hemmings of montecello, the highly acclaimed book also won 15 additional awards, including the frederick douglass prize. her 2011 study of andrew johnson, the subject of her talk this morning was praised as brilliantly written and fair minded. the book is not available in the bookstore today. you'll have to order it. but i do have her most recent book. and that is co-authored. it is titled "the most blessed of patriarchs: thomas jefferson and the empire of the imagination." she will be available for a few minutes after her presentation to sign autographs, sign books for you. so please help me welcome one of my favorite authors, annette gordon-reed. [ applause ] thank you so much. it's great to be here. last night was just fabulous, the talk about stanton, the army chorus, and the energy of the place. i'm usually in a room full of people who are enthusiastic about or interested in or obsessed about thomas jefferson. and it's strange to be in a room with people who are interested, obsessed with somebody else. there are other people, other subjects, other things. and it was great. and i did a facebook post about it and i said now i know what we must look like to other people. it's great, it's great. and i'm sorry i'm not going to get a chance to be with you -- couldn't be here for the whole thing. i have to leave after this afternoon. and i really wish i could be here tonight to hear ron churnow to talk about grant. and i'm going to talk about andrew johnson, who's in a different category. he's a fascinating -- it's a fascinating topic. and i came to write about him because i was asked to write about him for the american president's series by arthur schlessinger jr. we were both on the papers of thomas jefferson. he got a letter one morning asking me if i would do this. there was a man named paul golub who does the editing for this series. he and i worked together previously on a book vernon jordan's memoires. two people i knew who asked me to do this, two people i liked very much, 40,000 words, and an interesting time period. and so i said yes. once i started doing research -- and i knew about andrew johnson, i understood who he was and his role in history. but i had never spent that much time studying him. and i had studied the civil war and the reconstruction era, which he really more or less belongs to from a distance because in some ways i find it the more heartbreaking part of american history. studying slavery is a serious thing. it can be very, very difficult, very challenging to think about that time, going through the farm book, going through letters about sales of people and so forth. but it seems distant. it seems really, really far away. and you can kind of become detached from that, at least i can. there are moments when it comes up to you and you feel very, very deep emotion or anger, and all these kinds of things, or admiration for the people who managed to make it through that. but reconstruction era seems even more heartbreaking to me because it was a time of promise, when you have higher expectations about things, you think about people who came out of slavery and thought now we have a chance to make a new world for ourselves, we're going to go forward, we will have allegiance to the union, after all african-american soldiers fought in the union army to preserve the union and to end slavery. it was a new beginning. we read about people crowding into the freedmen bureau schools to learn how to read and write, to get married, to finally have fair families recognized by law, a time of hope. and then later on those hopes were dashed. and the person that i'm going to talk about today was a person who sort of began the process of dashing them in ways. andrew johnson was the successor to abraham lincoln under tragic circumstances. and it's hard to imagine two more different type of people in terms of their stature, what abraham lincoln means to the country, versus what andrew johnson means to the country. before i wrote this book, i'm always often asked to participate in presidential surveys, the best president, the worst president. and johnson is usually in the bottom five. the year my book was published, he actually made it to being the worst. i sort of went out on the tour and i could say i've written about the worst, the worst president in history, vying with buchanan and other people. but he was worst -- well, aside from the fact that he was impeached, but not convicted and was not removed from office, but to me the most infamous part about him was the role that he played in the recalcitrants at the notion of trying to bring african-americans into full citizenship, into society in america after slavery. the title of my talk is "the presidency of lost opportunities." counterfactual history is fun, and it does tell you some things about the time period. et a it gets you to ask questions about it. you think about what would have happened if he had been a different kind of person, if he had -- people say what would have happened in lincoln had lived? would things have been different? how would the country have changed, been in a different position without this man? and i had an opportunity when i was writing about this book, that that was going to be my take on it. i had an opportunity to try to investigate that question through telling his story and ask questions about what do you think about what this person is doing here? how would things have been different if he had not taken this kind of stance? now, i began the book with a quote from frederick douglass thing is very, very important. i don't typically do this in talks. i'm going to actually read a quote. on this inauguration day he's talking about the first time he met andrew johnson. he's there and this is what he sees." on this inauguration day, while waiting for the opening of the ceremonies, i made a discovery in regard to vice president andrew johnson. there are moments in the lives of most men when the doors of their soul are open, and unconsciously to themselves their true characters may be read by the observant eye. it was at such an instant i caught a glimpse of the real nature of this man, which all subsequent developments proved true. i was standing in the crowd by the side of mrs. thomas j. dorsey when mr. lincoln touched mr. johnson and pointed me out to him. the first expression which came to his face, and which i think was the true index of his heart was one of bitter contempt and aversion. seeing that i observed him, he tried to assume a more friendly appearance. but it was too late. it was useless to close the door when all within had been seen. his first glance was the frown of the man, the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue. i turned to mrs. dorsey and said, whatever andrew johnson may be, he certainly is no friend of our race." now, this turned out to be true in to the inth degree, he was probably understating the claim. johnson was a person who actually despised african-american people. and you think about the -- it's hard to say the problem with, the tragedy that at the moment when the fates of african-american people in the united states were being decided, he was at the helm of the government. johnson had been a person who did not care for slavery, but he did not like slavery because he thought that it was bad for the poor white class from which he had sprung. andrew johnson, it's interesting you have to try to find something to admire about people, or to -- something good to say about people when you're writing a whole book at them. you don't want to be condemning people, try to be as fair as possible. to his great credit he came from nowhere. and he made something of himself. he started out in a poor family, i'm sure many of you may know he did not really learn to read until he was a late teenager. his wife, eliza mccartel taught him how to write after they got married. he had been apprenticed to a tailor when he and his brother were small boys. and he actually ran away from the tailor's shop. and there are ads, a runaway ad, you think about a person who was the president of the united states, that there was a runaway ad for them in the newspaper. not unlike the runaway ads for enslaved people. and i think, to some degree, you're always psychoanalyzing people, but you wonder what it must have been like to be just above the bottom of the rung, and to have people below you. and people that you did not want to see raised because you might think then you would be at the bottom too. so this age-old problem in the south of poor whites who really have more in common economically and socially with african-americans siding with the upper classes starts with him. he made a lot of noises once he became a politician against the planter class. in fact, many people were frightened of him. many white southerners were frightened of him because he was a staunch union person and he was going around saying these are traitors, treason must be made odious, treason must be punished, people thought he was going to be an avenger, once he ascended to the presidency. but it turns out that once he saw the program that the men who were called the radical republicans, who were always in a minority, but they had enough support for moderate republicans, once he saw they were not just going to end slavery, which he conceded would be a good thing because, as i said, he thought that this would actually help poor whites, once he saw that they were going to do more than that, to try to transform the south and make it not just a place for -- transform the south and make it not just a place for the elites in society, but to make blacks voting members of society, enacting land reform, because he understood -- he actually introduced the homestead bill because he understood that land ownership was incredibly important. but he thought it was important mainly for poor whites, land brought independents, land meant if you could have your own farm and you could work you were not going to be dependent upon other people. that's what he wanted for poor whites. that's what put him in opposition with jefferson davis who said what are you goiving this land away to these people, why don't they work for it like everybody else or have a famous family where you could sort of grab land? he was in all measures an understanding person about the nature of poverty. and the nature of class in america. he just could not get past the racial question. he believed in the inferiority of blacks, he believed that -- and because of that, that they should either -- well, basically said i don't care where they go. they can be emancipated, but they're not going to have rights, the same kinds of rights that white men would have. he figured and said, very openly, that the united states should be a white man's government. this was not an unusual thing. he was a jacksonian, he began his career as a young man, a great worshipper of jackson. so it doesn't surprise or it should not surprise that when the time came when there was secession, that he decided to stand with the union. if you'll remember, jackson was a slave holder, but jackson was also a committed unionist. and when he got into his -- i almost said tiff, but it was bigger than that, with calhoun about this, and he made this speech, the union forever, you know, the union was his thing, so it's not surprising that johnson, who worshipped andrew jackson, would take that stance when secession came about and that he would remain loyal to the union. from tennessee. but that's all he wanted. the union restored, slavery over, and blacks living maybe in some condition like surfs, perhaps, who would not have any kind of rights, that they would be -- you bring things back to slavery, as near to slavery as possible. and, in fact, when the radical republicans began to institute policies, he vetoed every kind of measure or opposed every measure that they put in place to try to aid the freedmen, to try to transform southern society. and the president is not all powerful, obviously, but the president is the leader of the country, is a symbol of the country, the president, whenever he is almost said he or she, whenever he is in office, so far, whenever he is in office, he sends a message about the nature of the society, the society's aspirations. and what did it mean at this particular moment to have a person who was actively opposed to transforming american society at the helm of society, the message that he was sending, not just to african-american people, but to other whites, people think about race primarily affecting black people or people of color, but it affects whites as well. it sends messages to whites. and the message he set is that things were not going to change that much. for as much as he hated the planter class, he hated black people more. and once he saw that the radical republicans were going to change the south, take those people out of power, the people whom he said he always hated, part of his -- you know, he made people come to him, some of the grandis come to him to ask for pardons. it was a humiliation ritual. that part of him that felt looked down upon by the planter class asserted itself at first. but once he began to look at the lay of the land and see where things were headed, he decided to put those people back in place as quickly as possible. so when you're reading these things, there are all kinds of constitutional arguments, arguments about the balance of power between the president and congress, all those kinds of things, those are -- that's the process. but the main overarching theme for him was white supremacy and how he accomplished that, tried to accomplish that by being as pugnacious as his real biographer hans trafus describes him the pugnacious president was in service of this idea of keeping the status quo. what message did this send? there are letters from southerners who said things like -- i remember one in particular, he says, well, we would have accepted whatever terms were offered to us at the beginning. and lincoln's assassination, people talk about people being happy about it, but a lot of people in the south were upset about it because they thought we're fighting, you though this, i'm telling you this, this is your person, they were frightened about it because they thought that they would enact retribution for the killing of the martyr. this was not something that was un alloyed joy. they were concerned about johnson because of all of the tough and hard things he was saying about the southern grandis. they were surprised when he took this mellow approach to them, when he was more conciliatory, when he sort of stood up to the people in congress who wanted to try to transform the south. and one person said, as i was saying, we would have taken any terms that they offered. but he held out hopes for a white man's government. so that's the real question here. i mean, you're reading about these conflicts and the problems with congress and so forth. it's slowly dawned on the people in congress that he was trying to put the people who had led them into war back into power, and to accept the union, but keep things exactly the way they were with black people as near to slavery. another letter said we wanted to get them back as near to slavery as possible. so if there's any question about what was going on with all of this, if you actually read people's letters and what they're talking about, how they're describing what it is that they want, it's pretty clear that they were -- many people in the south were very much wedded to slavery as an s institution. even more important they were wedded as johnson was to the idea of white supremacy and the laws that were put in place for the slave codes, going to the black codes, and then eventually the redemption governments come along and enact jim crow. all of those things were designed to try to bring southern society back to where it was without the mechanism of legalized slavery. that is what they wanted and that is what andrew johnson gave them hopes that they could have. so the president is in office. he's being recalcitrant as i said, everything he can to thwart the efforts of transforming society and they try to push back by enacting a law that said he could not remove people without people being appointed without advise and consent of the senate could not remove them without permission from the approval of the senate. and it's the tenure of office act, an act that was probably unwise. but at the moment they were desperate because everything they were doing, they were passing legislation, he was vetoing it, overriding it, and he was doing things administratively to thwart it instead of taking care of the laws, taking care that the laws were faithfully executed. he was not doing that. he was pushing back in all the -- asking people to drag their feet on these kinds of things. this is what they came up with. he violates the law by tiring edwin stanton. we get foot stamps last night, the wonderful talk last night on the difference between these two people, stanton, the champion of african-american rights, a person who wanted to see things changed. you can see how they would not get along. i think it's really a shame that we don't talk more about people like that, people who had those kinds of ideas. there's sort of a notion, when i say the word radical republicans, people don't know who they are. it was amazing that there were people at the time who actually wanted a different story for america. they were, you could say, ahead of their time, but were willing to be fair. we never -- don't know about those people's names aren't known, as well-known. we talk about the people who are negative or people who have attitudes that are opposed to ours. but there was always a possibility. that's the main thing about history that you -- and i'm sure you know, obviously, that's the exciting thing about it. in some ways the tragic thing about it, that the contingencies of it. things don't have to happen the way they happened. there could be a different way. and there could have been a different way during this time period. johnson is not the man to bring this about. he fires stanton. they -- this is their attempt to -- they then attempt to get -- remove him from office. he doesn't -- siri just popped on here. they impeach him, but it fails in the senate. it was not terribly popular among people. this is a momentous thing, the impeachment powers, removing somebody from office is a big deal, undoing the will of people. here he's not elected, but he was brought along with abraham lincoln. this was an amazing and a tough thing to do. he survives. but doesn't really survive as a president very much. he sort of a non-entity after that. makes a return to government after he leaves office as a senator. and then is there for a while and then dies. but his legacy is one that left us with something really terrible. i mean, in the baki case, thurgood marshall, the great case about affirmative action, speculates and wonders what would have happened if things had been different? the reason we're in this position now is because steps were not taken in the past nofrd to bring people forward. now, one of the things we got, one of the -- we got from andrew johnson's recalls trance was the 14th amendment. we might thank him for that. but that is about political rights, and that's something that everybody has benefitted from, not just black people. but what would have happened if he had gone along with the program of the freedmen's bureau, and given the power of the presidency to move that forward, the support of the presidency, land reform, if african-american people had been able to have land? not to work as sharecroppers, but ownership. we know what land ownership means to people. and their families. and wealth building. the gap between african-americans and whites in terms of income in some ways is shrinking. but the wealth gap of actual ownership of property and wealth is getting wider. and it takes generations for people to get on their feet for families to get on their feet and to build wealth. if this had started in the 1860s and the 1870s who knows where we may be now? we don't have a specific answer to it. we do know that the measures that were taken actually retarded and prevented african-american growth over the decades. this is a person who's -- this is a part of his legacy. on one hand we have an admirable story about a person who started from nothing and worked his way to the top. but on the other hand we have a person who was the wrong person at the time. you know, we get that abraham lincoln was the right person at the right time for the country, the person who could lead the country through the calamity of war and then we had johnson who was not up to the task of leading people through the hope of the peace, the kind of peace and the time when there could have been a different story about race in america. so it's a president of lost opportunities. he's the president of lost opportunities. because he had a chance, but he didn't take it because of his character, the way he was raised, because of his determination to live by the precepts of white supremacy. that's what makes it all so tragic. i enjoyed doing the book ultimately. ultimately i enjoyed doing it. it really did -- it forced me to into a conclusion. i mean, everybody -- i don't have to make a claim for why jefferson is important. right? it's sort of easy to do that one. but it's difficult, and sometimes hard to see people who do things that are every bit as important, or i could say have effects that are every bit as large, but you don't actually know that much about the person. so what i had to convince people of, and i think it's an easy thing for me, that he may have been one of the worst presidents in the country, but he's certainly one of the most influential. we're sort of living under the world of johnson, the attitudes of johnson in ways that we might not be living through all of the attitudes of other more ill lust reious and well-known presidents who had an aspirational understanding of what the country was supposed to be. he represents the real face of the country at that particular moment, and a it's a face we've been trying to change in the decades since his death. we've had some success. but he's certainly somebody who i think's life is very much worth studying. as an interim between lincoln and grant, he's there. and he's a reminder of what not to do, ways not to be. sometimes those can be incredibly valuable lessons. with that, i'd like to take your questions. [ applause ] >> thank you. did johnson ever realize that by saying the blacks should go back to their oppressed state, that he was actually also oppressing his own people, the working class whites? >> no. that's a good question. he was tremendously clever, had tremendous drive, but not a lot of foresight. i mean, he was -- he was against railroads. he started out being against railroads. what will happen to inns if people are able to get to where they're supposed to be going so quickly? not thinking that, well, there will be more places to go, inns will, you know, crop up along the railroad line or whatever. he eventually understood the folly of that when the war came, military governor, got to move people different places. he understood. there's not a lot of foresight there. and he's not alone in this. i mean, why haven't other people understood that the south remained behind because all people were not educated? so no, he didn't -- he didn't see that. >> thank you. >> actually that makes a very good segue. i think you're absolutely right about the white supremacy, what also played into johnson as a president because, of course, he was chosen as vice president, partially because of his democratic on t democratic -- he was very much a fiscal conservative and a small government democrat. i don't know if you want to speak to how that hamstrung him as a president in addition to the white supremacy of being the wrong person at the wrong time in an expansive era. >> his vision of government was limited, you're right. i mean, this was certainly war and industry, all those kinds of things had implications for the nationalization of the country. he just really was not prepared for that. he wanted -- the homestead act, the vision of people with their farms and independence, he thought that that would be enough. you know, if you gave people that, then things would go forward. you really didn't have to make massive changes. yeah, his -- the vision was limited in lots of ways. and he was attractive to people because of his, as you said, antecedents, the jackson, and because he remained loyal to the union, this was lincoln's way of saying, well, we're all really together. he didn't want to make it seem as if he was sticking with one side. so this was his being expansive. he picked a person -- obviously could not have known what was going to happen, but it was a mistake. >> i was thinking about frederick douglass's oration, we've had lincoln president and now johnson as president as well and he spends a lot of time talking about lincoln was a white man's president, dedicated to the welfare of white men. i'm thinking about did frederick douglass say anything else after what you have told us once johnson was president about how he felt about johnson, and where he was going the direction he was going? >> only other critical things, you know, not -- there was no reassessment of him. i mean, douglass, as you know, was off and on on lincoln. he basically said at the end he was the only person who treated me like a human being, even if he was impatient with some of his tactics. but then he wasn't in office. it was very difficult. it's people like us, we're on the outside agitating for things. you don't -- you're not the person who has to make the decisions. it's sometimes tough to understand what people are doing. he did not change his assessment of andrew johnson. >> dr. john willen from washington, d.c., and i say that because i'm going to ask you a washington-related question. >> washington the city? >> yes. as you know, he survived impeachment by one vote from edmund ross. >> uh-huh, of kansas. >> in your research were you able to determine if ross really voted his conscience, or if he was bought off, or came under the influence of his former commander shermans foster brother tom youing? were you able to determine if he was a profile in courage? >> no, i wasn't. and i didn't -- you know, i talk a little bit in the book about the charges that there were, in fact, instances where people were bought off. but were influenced. but no, i wasn't able to find anything definitively about that. people were afraid of ben wade. i mean, people were afraid -- ben, if he had not -- if he'd been removed his successor was somebody a lot of people were scarred of. that probably played it into just as much. the devil you know -- they knew ben wade too, who was radical and who, again, was somebody who championed black rights and so forth. the specter of that may have been more frightening than anything. >> i'm a 26 year veteran of the cleveland civil war round table. we have a debate once a year, the debate last year was lincoln's biggest mistake. by a wide margin, it was his selection for vice president in '64. i live 15 miles from johnson's house, so i have been there several times. and if he hadn't been president, i would have never gone. but i'd like to jump to another subject, which frank touched upon in the beginning today and that's the fact we have 47 new members. i talked to a couple of them. i was trying to find out, as frank was, you know, where they found out about us and why they joined. two of them had a question for me i'd like you to deal with. why are there so few black members here? now, i belong to other civil war, like i say, i belong to cleveland civil war round table for 26 years, i'm a founding member of the grant association, and we just don't have african-american members. now, how can we encourage these people? this is a significant part of their history, and yet they don't seem to want to join us. why? >> well, it's a good question. i asked the same question about the early american republic. i think it's a very painful subject for african-americans. i cannot speak for all african-americans, but i am assuming that it is painful. and i do know that most -- there's a tremendous amount of interest in the civil rights era, the second civil rights era, the 20th century, the point at which people began to have action and move. although people are moving during this time as well. i just think it's a painful thing to go and talk about or to discuss matters that are in your family, the subject of painful memories and so forth. i think it's necessary for people to be involved in history and in this period as well. but i just think it's really tough. i don't want to say too soon, is it too soon? >> 150 years. >> you remember the little joke about -- i hope this story is true, when they asked joe lie what he thought about the french revolution, he said it's too soon to tell. china. 5,000 years of history. 150 years is not, in terms of history, is not a long time, that's the blink of an eye. i think a lot of it -- and worry about how they're going to be received. you know, i mean, i was coming from -- well, this may be a tangent. i was leaving charlottesville one day, and i looked over and i saw a bunch of people in gray uniforms and hoop skirts, and i was terrified for a second. now, i know that this was in the 2000s. you know, this is not the civil war. they're not real confederates. but that whole era is -- >> yeah, but i don't have a gray uniform. >> i know, you're not scary, you're not scary, you know, you're not scary. but you just don't know how you're going to be received. we're new at this. this is not -- you know, when i went to the movies when i was a little girl, we had to sit in the balcony. when i went to the doctor, there was an office for us and a an office for white people. we're just beginning the process of any kind of reconciliation, any kind of understanding. so i would just say be patient, that it's not -- >> i won't be around in another 150 years. >> thank you, thank you for asking. >> during the period of reconstruction, you see the rise of racially motivated violence towards african-americans and voter suppression, and voter intimidation. in any of your research did you find any evidence that president johnson, or anybody in his administration encouraged that intimidation or violence towards african-americans, or pro-civil rights republicans. >> no, i did not find any evidence that he encouraged it, but he definitely did nothing about it. people told him what was going on. and that didn't concern him. i think that's a principled difference. when people say, well, you know, lincoln had a conciliatory policy towards the confederates as well. this is during wartime. he's trying to bring them back into the fold. he's doing conciliatory things. i don't think -- if lincoln was lincoln, i don't believe that he would have acquiesced to the torrent of violence that was visited upon african-americans after that. i mean, eric phoner, you know his work, coming into texas and seeing bodies, you know, floating down the river, coming into a town with, i think, 27 or 28 people hanging from trees, men, women and children, just carnage. if lincoln had heard those kinds of things, i think if he was lincoln, the people that you are here, because you're interested in, he would have done something. johnson didn't, but i don't know that he actually encouraged people to go do that. we'll take all the questions here. i'll make my answers short. >> i don't always agree with him. but in an interview recently, i heard george will say that he thought that lincoln was jefferson's greatest student. what is your observation about that? that lincoln was jefferson's greatest student. well, he obviously said all honor to jefferson. he understood that you had to use the declaration, america's creed, to get this thing back together again and say now we have a new birth of freedom and so forth. so i think, yes, in that sense i think he was because of the way he used jefferson's words to write a new script for america. and you couldn't have a better lesson and a more important lesson than that one. >> thank you. my name is fred martin, i'm the author of the lincoln book, "abraham lincoln's path to reelection in 1864, our greatest victory." in the course of reading kekley's comments to mary lincoln, and she quotes mary lincoln as warning abe lincoln not to trust andrew johnson, that he's a danger. and when -- and then lincoln issues his terms for the southerners to return and gain their forgiveness, if you will. and then the booth operation, which was a highly organized operation into which the confederacy poured a great deal of money through their intelligence operation, quarterbacked by jefferson davis, and robert e lee. do you think that had that operation, as efficient as it was, intended to kill andrew johnson, that he would have survived? >> i talk a little bit about this in the book. i don't know. i mean, it's too far often -- i don't know enough about that to make a claim about the notion that -- the suggestion is that johnson may have been in on this and that he was supposed -- he was targeted, but he really wasn't targeted. i don't know. >> okay. johnson lost being impeached or convicted by one vote, and they tried to convict him as i understand it because they passed that law saying that the senate could have a say in who his cabinet was. and wasn't that considered unconstitutional? >> later it was, but it was a while. but it was the law at the time. >> but it didn't have anything to do with his loss by -- his acquittal by one vote? >> no. >> thank you. >> thank you. only in the sense that people thought it was a bad idea later on. >> i'm not sure that i want to say this. >> oh, go ahead. >> i want to respond to the question of the united states color troops. i'm a reenactor, have been doing it for years. i have relatives who fought in the civil war. don't ask me their names and all that. but that's part of the -- of what happened in my family. one of the things that i've seen is that between the colored reenactors and the white reenactors, a lot of times there's a lot of animosity. and it's an animosity based upon the way in which leadership is structured in those reenactors. we know, for example, that in the civil war that the officers were white officers. >> yeah. >> and when we go to some of these reenactors, reenactments, rather, then the re-enactments, the generals and colonels and all young officers and a lot of the black actors get tired of that. >> they basically re-enact what was going on. >> and that's a real issue, and i think that when we talk about why african-americans re-enactors, don't want to participate in some of the units, i think we need to look at that from both perspectives, and the question or the thought of white supremacy, it's still a subtle message within the whole re-enactment, you know, organizations so that's a quick response to that. >> i'm glad you said that, because it never would have occurred to me that that would be a problem, but that's -- you sort of basically say this is 1846 so we're going to act like it. >> yeah. >> and there's a lot that goes along with it it's not very pleasant, so i could see why that would be a problem. >> and i really liked your presentation. >> thank you, thank you. [ applause ] >> american history tv is on c-span 3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archival films and programs on the presidency. the civil war and more. here's a clip from a recent program. >> i started a petition movement to have the mayor elected, not selected by the majority of the council members in a ceremonial role but to be the authoritarian leader of the city, to be elected by the people at large, all of the people, and as has been pointed out, and thank you for that fine introduction the, and i know john mesa spoke about it as

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