Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20130803

For a complete schedule, visit booktv. Org. Youre watching booktv. Next, Peter Carlson recalls the capture of journalists Albert Richardson and Junius Browne by Confederate Forces at the battle of vicksburg. The reporters were sent to multiple confederate prisons over 20 months until they escaped and made their way across the appalachians with the assistance of Union Sympathizers. This is about 50 minutes. [applause] thank you, david. Im thrilled to be here at the national archives. To be back here, i should say. Ive written three books, and i have researched all of them at the national archives. A place with buried treasures all over it. Theyve got a lot of boxes here, boxes filled with little folders filled with papers, and there are a lot of stories hidden b in those papers. In fact, if you get really quiet and you listen really closely, you just might hear somebody take a piece of paper out of a box upstairs and read it and go, holy cow. You dont have those holy cow experiences all that often, but when they come, it really, its really a thrill for a researcher, and its what keeps researchers going. So this book exists today because i gave in to one of those deep, dark desires that lurks in the depths of the human soul. I refer to the desire to prove that your boss is full of bologna. This happened in 2010. I was hired as a editor at American History magazine, and i immediately made a suggest to the honcho of the place who had just hired me. I said the 150th anniversary of the civil wars coming up, why dont we take a couple pages in each issue and run a newspaper story about some event in the civil war that happened 150 years ago. I thought it was a pretty good idea. Apparently, he didnt. He said, well, that would be a good idea, but civil war journalism was really lousy. And i thought to myself, you know, i used to be a reporter, and i couldnt imagine that all the reporters covering the civil war had somehow missed the biggest story in American History. And i thought to myself, this guys full of baloney. But i didnt know. I wasnt sure, so i checked it out. I went to the library, and i took out a couple books on civil war journalism. And i found out that a lot of civil war journalism was really lousy. And some was really great. And some was, most was mediocre. Sort of like todays journalism. But more importantly, i came across a synopsis of what seemed like a really great story about two reporters for the new york tribune who covered the civil war. Their named were Junius Browne and Albert Richardson. And one night in may of 1863 they were desperately trying to catch up to general grants army which was outside vicksburg ready to attack vicksburg. These two reporters, junius and albert, got on a barge that was going down the mississippi filled with bales of hay for grants horses. The barge set out at night, so the confederates wouldnt see it. But, unfortunately, it was a night with a full moon, and it was really quite visible, and the confederates fired cannons at it. One of the shells hit the barge, exploded, killed about a dozen Union Soldiers, set the hay on fire, and junius and albert jumped into the river and attempted to float away. But the confederates sut boats and captu th and imprisoned them in various prisons for the next 20 months. And then they escaped from a prison in salisbury, North Carolina, and with the help of slaves and prounion bush whackers walked 300 miles over the appalachians to the union lines. So i read this, which was only about as long as what ive just said, and i thought to myself, wow, that would make a great movie. Unfortunately, i dont make movies. But occasionally i do write books. So i thought, well, should i write a book about these guys . I suppose if i was a novelist, that little synopsis would have been enough, and i just could have made up the rest. But i write history, not fiction, so i had to do what nonfiction writers do in such circumstances which is do some research and find out if there are enough facts available to tell the story. So i did a Little Research and learned that, yes, indeed, fortunately for me there were such facts. There were memoirs and letters and diaries and newspaper stories. Some of them written by junius and albert, and some written by others who shared part of their story. All i had to do was dig them out of various archives in various places in america, including right here at the national archives. And that was great because that enabled me to have that great holy cow experience as i picked papers out of boxes. So i wrote this book. Its called junius and alberts adventures in the confederacy because its an adventure story. Its the kind of straightforward adventure story that keeps you awake late at night wondering whats going to happen next. Are these guys going to make it home, or are they going to get shot or hung or otherwise detained on the way . But its also a work of history, and i think it illuminates parts of the civil war that most people dont know about; the culture of reporters in the civil war, what it was like in confederate prisons, and most importantly, the guerrilla war that was fought by prounion folks in the mountains of North Carolina and tennessee and virginia. So the story has many colorful characters. But, of course, the main characters are Junius Browne and Albert Richardson. They were boast 27 years old when the both 27 years old when the war began, they were best friends, but they were very different. Albert richardson was a big, strapping, handsome farm boy from massachusetts. He grew up on a farm, but he hated farming. He was a romantic young fellow who wanted to be an explorer of the american west. So as a teenager, he headed west. And when he got to cincinnati, he took a job as a newspaper reporter. As it happened, he was a great natural reporter. He had the reporters ability to attract people to him and make them want to talk to him. Want to tell him things. During the war he managed to hobnob with ordinary soldiers and escaped slaves and generals and even president lincoln. He also attracted women, and when he was in cincinnati, he started dating a young bookstore clerk named mary lou pease. She soon got pregnant, so they got married, and when albert was captured, he was married with three children, and his wife was pregnant with a fourth. June yous was junius was very different. Junius was kind of a scrawny, gawky, prematurely bald guy with jug ears. He was a rich kid, son of a cincinnati banker. He was sent to st. Xavier college in cincinnati which was a very rigorous Jesuit School where he learned to speak ancient greek, latin and french. He thought of himself as an intellectual and a philosopher. In fact, one of his favorite pastimes was to read works of philosophy in ancient greek or french or latin. His friend al a bert used to kid albert used to kid him about that practice. Junius was not a particularly good natural reporter. He was too shy, and he would basically stand off, stand aside from things and watch them and then sit down and write these kind of flowery literary essays about what he had seen complete with a lot of quotes from ancient writers. And that was, and, actually, that was a pretty common practice in those days in journalism. It was much more flowery and purposing prose than we have now purple prose than we have now. So these two guys covered the war for the tribune. Sometimes they traveled together, sometimes they traveled apart with different armies. They were always looking for an army which was about to go into battle, which was hard to predict. Albert was better at figuring that out. Between them, they covered the battles of fort henry and fort donaldson, shiloh, fredericksburg and many of the naval battles along the mississippi. The first battle they covered was the battle of fort henry. They were in cairo, illinois, and hitched a ride with general grant as he put his army on a bunch of ships sailing down the Tennessee River to attack fort henry and fort donaldson. So i thought id read a little passage about that. Browne and richardson went ashore with grants troops, slogging through swampy, flooded woods. Browne accompanied the soldiers on their march while richardson climbed a tall oak tree on the river bank for a better view of the artillery battle. For an hour the ships and the fort pounded each other with shells until the air was so full of smoke that richardson could no longer see the gunships. When the confederates ran up a white flag of surrender, albert shinnied down the tree and joined the Union Soldiers as they warmed into fort henry. Quote our shots had made great havoc, he reported in the tribune, in the fort the magazines were torn open, the guns completely shattered, and the ground stained with blood, brains and fragments of flesh. Under gray blankets were six corpses, one with the head torn off and the trunk complete hi blackened with powder, others with legs severed and breasts opened in ghastly wounds, unquote. Richardson watched as Union Soldiers delivered the highestranking captive, confederate general lloyd tillman, to the conquerors of the fort, general grant and Commodore Andrew foote, commander of the federal gun boats. How could you fight against the old flag, foote asked. It was hard, tillman replied, but i had to go with my people. A chicago reporter interrupted to ask every journalists most prosaic but necessary question how do you spell your name, general . [laughter] sir, tillman replied, if general grant wishes to use my name in his official dispatches, i have no objections. But, sir, i do not wish to appear at all in this manner in any newspaper account. I merely asked it, the reporter said, for the list of prisoners captured. You will oblige me, sir, tillman replied, by not giving my name in any newspaper connections whatsoever. Of course, richardson included tillmans name in his story as well as that absurd dialogue. He wrote his article aboard a union ship heading back toward cairo where he dispatched it to the tribune. So, okay, albert heads back to file his story, and junius stays with the union army which then marched across 12 miles of swampy land in a snowstorm to attack fort donaldson. And they besieged the fort for four days, fought for four days and finally the confederate garrison at fort donaldson surrendered, and the union army took that fort and 12,000 prisoners. It was the first big victory for the union. Junius filed a long feature story about it which is really good, but what he became most famous for among his colleagues was an incident that occurred during the battle. On the last day of the battle, junius and a reporter for the New York Times were with a group of snipers, Union Snipers, who have who were trying to pick off the guys in a confederate artillery battery, and the confederates were behind walls made of logs, and they would sort of load the gun and then pop up and fire it. And the Union Snipers would try to shoot them when they popped up. Of course, the confederates tried the keep their head down. So the snipers were very frustrated, and finally one of them got so frustrated that he handed his rifle to junius and said, here, why dont you try it . So i suspected junius had fired a rifle before at some time in his life, but he was not a soldier, and he was not a marksman, and he certainly wasnt a sniper. But he figured, what the hell, and he crouched down, he aimed the rifle, and he waited until he saw somebody pop up, and he fired, and the confederate battery went silent. And the union sniper turned to him and said, well, i think you got him. And junius said, well, i wouldnt be surprised [laughter] although, of course, he was completely surprised. But he did have the presence of mind to sort of walk gallantly away before anyone could give him another rifle and expect him to do it again. That story kind of illustrates how journalistic ethics have changed over the years. I cant help suspecting that my old boss at the post, len downey, would not be happy to hear that one of his correspondents in afghanistan had put down his notebook and picked up an m16 and fired away at the taliban. But journalistic ethics didnt even exist at the time. I think if you had used the phrase in those days, people would have laughed. They would have figured it was an oxymoron. The next story i have illustrates just that. A couple weeks after the battle of fort donaldson, junius was in st. Louis, and he heard that a union army had left southern missouri to invade arkansas and attack a con fed be rate army there Confederate Army there. So he and a reporter of the new york world hopped on a train and tried to catch up with the union army to watch this invasion. And ill read now what happened next. Browne and coburn realized okay, they get to the town in missouri, and they learn that the battle has been fought. The union army has defeated the Confederate Army in what is now known as the battle of pea ridge. Browne and coburn realize that thomas knox of the New York Herald would scoop them in a rival new york newspaper. Frustrated, they devised a simple solution, they would wing it. Simply concoct accounts of the battle based on the brief reports and wispy rumors that had reached them. It was unethical, of course, but hardly unprecedented. Journalists in the is theth century 19th century were not finicky about facts. Newspapers routinely enlivened their meager amount of facts by garnishing them with political rants, vicious invective and the kind of prose that escaped the gravitational pull of truth and soared off into fancy. During the civil war, reporters routinely made soldiers dying words sound as lofty and eloquent as a shakespearean soliloquy. The dead soldiers never complained, nor did their kin. All these habits contributed to a slang insult that became popular during the war, he lies like a newspaper. But even by the lax standards of the day, what browne and coburn did was outrageous. They wrote long, vivid eyewitness accounts of a battle that occurred 200 miles beyond their eyesight. The pieces were so ludicrously overblown that perhaps the two men were competing to outdo each other in the art of fiction. It seems quite possible that alcohol was involved. Laugh will have [laughter] coburns story reeds like a parity of the style of first person journalism that stars the relater as the main character the reporter as the main character. And now, he began, the sound of booming cannon and the crack of rifle ring in my ear while visions of carnage and the flame of battle hover before my sight. Three days of constant watching without food and sleep and the excitement of the struggle have quite unstrung my nerves. That was hard to top. But browne topped it with a heartpounding you are there style of prose that reads like fiction. Which, of course, it was. Junius had learned that the union won its victory with a dramatic charge led by general franz siegel, so he cast siegel as the here eau of hero of his yarn. Never was better fighting done, bayonet, musket, sword and cannon all did their bloody work, and the earth was stained and slippery with human gore. Every soldier kept his eye for exampled on his fearless leader fixed on his fearless leader. They knew all was safe, that there was hope victory while he survived. Strange that siegel was not killed. He was well known to the rebels, and a hundredifles sought in vain to end hisarr. The balls wheeled about his head but none touched him. Though one carried away his spectacles, and a second pierced his cap. And on and on he went. The story filled the whole page in the tribune, and Horace Greeley wrote an editorial suggesting that the union army reprint it and give it to every union soldier. Of course, nowadays reporters would be fired for doing that, but in those days the other reporters thought it was a hilarious stunt, and it became even more hilarious when the times of london announced that it was the best story of the war. [laughter] so about a year later albert and junius were captured outside vicksburg, and they werent really that worried about it at the time because reporters were captured by both sides fairly often and were usually quickly released or traded for reporters or other prisoners. So they figured they would be quickly released. In fact, they were given their parole papers. But the confederates hated the new york tribune because it was greeleys abolitionist paper and because it, at the start of the war it had run a banner headline above each page saying on to rich monday. And somehow the confederate officials in richmond didnt can really like that. So the guy in charge of Prisoner Exchange said point blank, these are the most ab noxious obnoxious prisoners we have. So they moved them from one prison to another for 20 months. So before i did my research i thought, oh, 20 months in prison, people would get bored at that. Itll be just one grim thing after another. But that turned out not to be true. Actually, the prison stuff is really interesting. There are a lot of strange, weird incidents in the prison, and junius and albert met a lot of fascinating characters. First, for five months they were in cattle [inaudible] castle thunder prison in richmond. The warden had long black hair, a long black period, he wore a black shirt, black pants, black belt with two big recovers on it and a black revolvers on it and he set it off with a big red sash, and he would saunter around the prison with his 180pound black russian wolfhound dog who scared the hell out of the prisoners. Captain alexander looked like a pirate and, in fact, he had been a pirate, a confederate pirate who had seized boats on the, early in the war on the Chesapeake Bay and sailed them to richmond. He got caught doing this in 1861, was locked into fort mchenry, but he escaped, jumped off a pair pet of the parapet of the fort into the bay, swam to shore and somehow made his way back to richmond. When he got there, the confederate authorities, i guess, figured, well, be this guy knows how if this guy knows how to escape from a prison, well put him in charge of a prison. So they put him in charge of castle thunder. Now, in addition to being a warden and a pirate, captain alexander was also a poet and a playwright and a song writer. And be he wrote a musical comedy, a truly awful musical comedy that was performed in richmond during the war at the time he was warden. And he would leave the prison after a workday and go to the playhouse where he had written himself a great scene where at the climax of the play he would ride across the stage on his big black horse with his Big Black Dog and his black outfit, and everyone would stand up and cheer. Be this really happened. You cant make this stuff up. [laughter] so he was one other thing about captain alexander, he was crooked as a pretzel. He ran this prison which was in an old tobacco warehouse with well over a thousand prisoners in it, most of them living in squalor in these huge rooms with no beds, they slept on the floor, and they ate two meals a day of this rancid soup, usually speckled with maggots. But he set up a Little Country club prison inside castle thunder with one room called the citizens room with room for a about 50 people. It had windows that you could open and close, it had beds, it had a wooden stove so you could heat the place in the winter, and he picked out prisoners who were either rich there werent too many of them or who were connected and could get shipments from the north of money and food. If you could get money and food from the north or from the south, you could stay in the citizens room provided that you shared your shipments of money and food with captain alexander and his cronies. So the prisoners in the citizens room lived pretty well. And two of them were albert and junius. They got money and food from their buddies at home on the tribune, they shared it with captain alexander, and they lived pretty well in castle thunder. But in february of 1864, they were transferred to a prison in salisbury, North Carolina. And that wasnt too bad. There were a couple hundred prisoners, maybe a few hundred, and they were living indoors in old cotton mill buildings, but there was a yard outside so they could stroll the grounds, and they could play baseball. So they amused themselves playing baseball. A lot of the prisoners in this prison were political prisoners. They were guys who had either dodged the confederate draft or deserted from the Confederate Army or just generally made it known that they werent really down with the confederate cause. Most of them were from the mountain areas of North Carolina, virginia and tennessee. The mountains were filled with prounion people. There was plenty of proconfederate people, but there were a lot of prounion people because there werent this wasnt a lot of slavery up there. It was mostly small farms, family farms, poor farmers eking out a subsis tense living. They couldnt afford slaves, and they really werent all that excited about risking their lives fighterring for this con fighting for this confederacy established by the slaveowning, plantationowning rich people from the lowlands who had never really treated the mountain areas all that well. So junius and albert met a lot of these diss dents from the mountain in the prison and, in fact be, they were initiated into a secret prounion Organization Called the heroes of america which had Something Like 10,000 members in North Carolina, tennessee and virginia, mostly in the mountain areas. And they learned all these secret handshakes and secret signs and passwords that the members of the heroes of america used to identify themselves to each other. These were things that would come in handy later when they escaped. So life in salisbury wasnt too bad until the fall of 1864 when the union army is encircling richmond. Grant is, you know, threatening richmond, so the confederates sent their prisoners south, the union prisoners, most of them to andersonville, the infamous prison in georgia. But about 9,000 Union Soldiers were sent to salisbury. So instantaneously in the fall of 1864 instead of like 800 guys living indoors in salisbury, you now had about 10,000 guys with 9,000 of them living out in that yard where they used the play baseball. It was now filled with these makeshift shacks and just holes in the ground that the guys were living in. It was a are cold a very cold, wet fall and winter, and it rained a lot. It snowed some. These guys didnt get much food. And they were exposed to the elements. So by the time december came, they were dying at the rate of about two dozen a day. Of dysentery, of starvation, of exposure. So in the end of november, the prisoners staged an insurrection. They amassed and attacked the gate hoping to break out. But the guards on the stockades above fired down at them with cannons and guns and beat back the escape attempt killing 16 and wounding 60. About three weeks later, albert and junius and a couple of their friends managed to escape from the prison with the help of a guard who was a member of the heroes of america. So they set out on a rainy, cold december night heading for the nearest union lines in knoxville about 200 miles away across the appalachians. They had only the barest of clothes, they had no food. Albert smuggled a little bit of tea out of prison, but that was it. And they headed for knoxville 200 miles away. The only way they could make it was to get help from the kind of people who might be sympathetic to escaped yankee prisoners in North Carolina. Who would that be . Well, slaves. So they would walk all night heading north, they hoped, and walk all night, and when dawn was coming, they would look around for a slave cabin. So let me read a little bit about that. Realized he lost his hat but there was no time to look for it. They needed to set out in search of someone who might feed them. Ten minutes later they came upon another slave cabin. When the old man who lived there heard there were yankees he said he would be happy to feed them. He invited them into the cabin and introduced them to his wife and daughter. Then he went outside and killed two chickens. He stayed outside on guard while the women cooked of birds in yankees settled near the fire there wet clothes steaming. Looking around at the little cabin richardson realized it was the first private house he had entered in 20 months. It was crude and cramped but had a dinner table with fleets plates and utensils and beds with sheets, civilized amenities that made him long for his own home and family. When the yankees devoured the chicken and hot cornbread richardson took out the back of tea had smuggled out of prison. The women had never seen tee before so he showed them how to brew it and the slaves and escaped prisoners sat down to and odd little tea party. Revived by the food and the td yankees thank their hosts and hostesses and got up to leave. May god bless you, the old woman said with tears in her eyes. Her husband noticed brown browne had no had to wear so he pulled off his own hat and handed it to the reporter. The hatch was humble, an ancient shapeless sweat showed ruined stock but the gesture was grand. Here was a man who owned almost nothing, he did not even own himself but he was willing to give his hat to a stranger he would probably never see again. Browne sanctum, pull the hat on and the fugitives headed off into the night. For the first few days, when junius and albert wynn in the lowlands they look for slave cabin and the slaves would take care of them. They never felt, never let them down. Junius wrote later god bless the negros, the tremendous down. And they got into the mountains and there werent any slave cabins anymore because the farmers were smaller. A could no longer tell friends and foes by the color of their skin. They knew there were a lot of pro Union Sympathizers in the mountains but couldnt tell confederates by looking at them. When the mountains were teeming with armed men there were confederate cavalry and confederate home guard and there were bands of pro Union Guerrillas made up of draft dodgers and guys who deserted conthe derate armies taking their rifles and heading to the mountains to form groups, living out in the woods staging the occasional battles with the other home guard, so there they were, for junius and albert trying to figure out who might help them and who might shoot them. Where are we . So they are in the mountains and there is a lot of warfare going on. If you have read the book Cold Mountain or seen the movie, it takes pretty well the situation in the mountains with these bushwhackers and guerrilla war so a third of my book takes place with their attempt to get through the mountains and i would like to read one scene from that part of the book. At at point junius and albert have joined up with the union bushwhacker named dan ellis who is another of the great colorful characters in the book, ellis was famous in that time and place for leading groups of pro union people across the mountains to the union lines. He also had a long black hair and long black beard, very thin mountain guide, looked kind of like he could stand in as a base plate fyer for the band z z top he had almost been killed so many times he concluded god was protecting him from confederate bullets so this caused him to take a lot of chances which scared the people he was leading. He financed his trips by stealing horses from rich confederate sympathizers and kicking them across the mountains and selling them to the union army when they got to knoxville. His modus operandi was to go as fast as possible through the roughest terrain possible. As a joke he called the people stampeded is because they were stampeding across the mountains. Let me read a little piece of this from that. At this point confederate cavalry were chasing him and ellis guy dies, there were several dozen of them. The guys on horseback went one way and the stamp cheaters were on foot going another way. Albert is on horseback, he goes with junius on foot, the first time they have been separated since they were captured 20 months earlier. The writing was rough. They regularly had to dismount and what their horses. In the bitter cold, a frost colored mud on the trails was so deep that the horses saying to their fetlocks. Worried that the rebels would catch up ellis pushed the tired men and their exhausted animals so hard that several horses died or came so close to death that they were simply abandoned. They proceeded on foot or doubled up on healthier animals. During the ride elliss men encountered an old man perched on offline force. One of the stampede is now without a horse saw an opportunity . I use southern port union . Holding his rifle menacingly. He looked very nervous, i kept out of the war, i did not help either side. That will never do said the stampede. You dont take me for a full, never could have lived in this country without being one fin or the other. Are you union or secession . The poor old man had to guess immediately to these strangers might be. He could see they were scraggly and dirty wedding slept in close. And the uniforms of both armies. They looked like rebels. I voted for secession he said. Tell the entire truth, is interrogator insisted. I have two sons in johnsons party. I was an original secessionist and am as good a southern man as you confined in a state of tennessee. That statement delighted the horseless stampede rolled in a rifle. All right, my old friend, just fly on down. What do you mean . I mean you are just the man i have been looking for in walking 100 miles, a good southerner with a good course. I am a yankee, we are all yankees so slide down and be quick about it. The old man had no choice but to obey. He dismounted and watched as the man with a rifle rode into his saddle and rode off on his force. They were riding away chased by a confederate cavalry. Junius a few miles away on another trail faced by confederate cavalry, heading for knoxville. Do they make it or do they get captured or shot or hong . I am not going to tell you. You are just going to have to read the book to find out. If anybody has any questions feel free to ask. [applause] obviously these two were prisoners after the incidents of africanamerican union troops. Gm ever, and on seeing africanamerican prisoners, or does what we hear about take no prisoners from the confederates carry the day . There were black prisoners in salisbury and obviously as you suggested there were incidents in which black prisoners were simply executed but there were black prisoners at solve very and one incident after the revolt i mentioned, after that prison revolt, for sport which shoot dead prisoners at random when they got bored, in one incident they fired the stockade fence and killed the union guy and one of the confederate doctors at the prison when to find out what happened and he was informed by the confederate guard they had watched and they saw a three black prisoners standing together and fought they would never get a chance to shoot somebody as that presented themselves though they fired at them but ironically the guy they hit was a white prisoner who was standing nearby. To answer your question there were black prisoners there. Tell us the story about the young girl, the angel of the mountain. Venus stevens. As i mentioned they were being led through the mountains by dan ellis, he knew the Union Sympathizers in the mountains, they would go at night when they bedded down and ask them what they heard about where confederate people were. One night they told of the confederate cavalry were there and army troops were further away so they split up and the lists men rode away and the other guys walked on a different trail. Heould stay away and the other guys could sneak away and seen and there was only one place to cross so first they went over and the next day the walkers went over so on both occasions they needed somebody to go over the bridge and make sure the rebels were not hiding waiting to shoot them as they crossed. And there was this young teenage girl named mel the next evens and a confederate cavalry and young and beautiful. And my father was pro union to figure out where the confederate cavalry were. And the horse riders and walkers the next day. Junius when he wrote his book, they both wrote books about this, and this unknown angel. And identified her by name as did a less. She became famous after award, union folks to safety, on the internet now. Talk a little bit about the tribune and the events they are recovering. The new york papers, there were a lot of them at the time, editorial policies. The tribune was very pro lincoln, and very eccentric and sometimes came out with statements. And founders got lincoln the nomination. The New York Times was pro union, the New York Herald was a democratic paper which was grudgingly probe work and vicious toward lincoln. And you couldnt really be against the war and not be considered a traitor but it also slammed lincoln. And that guy coburn made up the story. And the confederates didnt hate the world so you have all these papers and they had their editorial, and filing of a copy did not necessarily agree with the editorials junius and albert were abolitionists, and worked for this democratic paper. I dont think the world interfered with coburns dispatches in that. Sorry about laughing in the middle of your talk. I like laughing. I was wondering, this rich edson guy had a wife. Was there any way to write letters home for these 20,000 camps you were in . They did ride home and some of the letters that he rode home exist. I found them at the archives in one of those holy cow moment. The rich edson papers are in the massachusetts historical society. Some of the letters he wrote home where there. And lost according to history. The letters that junius and albert wrote to their managing editor, were found by sidneys grandchildren and a family stable on Staten Island and gave them to columbia university, and most of them are quite legible. And they were covering the war and when they were in prison too. That was a godsend to me and i dont think i could have written a book without them. Yes, sir . Thanks for your presentation, very interesting. Thank you, the book is even better. I think you mentioned that some point along the way that either or both junius and albert had contact to some extent with lincoln and grant. Could you expand on that a bit if that is the case . I am glad you asked that because it relates to the reporter. In late 1860s to shortly after the battle of fredericksburg there was a battle near vicksburg in which general sherman send his eyes against confederate positions for of like pittsburgh and they got mowed down and so it was an incredibly horrible defeat for the union and a reporter named thomas knox for the herald was there as were some other reporters, not albert and junius. Junius kept missing battles. Kind of funny in his ineptitude. And just put it in the mail bag with the union army boats and general sherman who hated reporters, thought they were akin to spies had his take the reporters letters out of the mail bag and opened the mop and sherman read the man got really mad at knocks and had him courtmartial as a spy and he was convicted and was not shot but he could have been but sent out of the army and forbidden ever to enter the army again. Richardson really had a talent for moving and shaking all long powerful people. After frederiksberg he went back to washington, heard about this so he got a petition reporters and politicians and others sign it and took it to see lincoln along with a guy named when shall from the new their rap and lincoln met them basically said i agree loyal reporters should be allowed to cover this. I will write to general grant telling him he should let knocks come back to the union lines. He wrote that and robert was thrilled that he goes the generals are more important than reporters july dont want to do that so i will add this. Box should be allowed to come back to the union line unless general grant decided doesnt want to come back to the union whines. As an upshot knocks ultimately did get back into the war but it took awhile so albert met lincoln on that occasion and when he was covering leading kansas before the war for the boston journal when lincoln had a speaking engagement in kansas in 1858 or 1859 lincoln remembered him from that and remembered him from the interview i just described and when they were captured lincoln instructed the Union Official in charge of Prisoner Exchange to get brown and richardson back from the confederates and that is when the confederate in charge of Prisoner Exchange wrote a letter saying i am not sending these guys back, the tribune reporters, said Something Like they cause more trouble for us than even your armies so i am not letting them go. Anyone else . Okay. [applause] thank you very much. See you upstairs in a couple minutes for the book signing. [inaudible conversations] for more information visit the authors whig site Peter Carlsonauthor. Com. Senator ben cohen, what is on your reading list . A book by my former colleague john willis. He wrote the book march, an incredible person served with that his story is inspirational to wall and i am looking forward to reading about his life and becoming more involved in making sure people know be john lewis story. Let us know what you are reading this summer, tweet us at booktv. Post it on our Facebook Page or send us an email at booktv cspan. Org. You are watching booktv on cspan2. Here is our prime time lineup for tonight. Starting at 7 15 eastern and interview from booktvs recent visit to london. We sit down with virginia nicholson to talk about her research on women in wartime and her famous family. At 8 00 p. M. A panel on the protection of Civil Liberties and the United States since 9 11. At 10 00 Susan Crawford joins book see the on afterwards in and if interview with wire magazine she talks about her book captive audience the Telecom Industry and monopoly power in the new gilded age. We wrap up tonights primetime programming at 11 00 eastern with Brendan Kerner reports on the hijacking of western bylines Airlines Flight 701 in 1972. Visit booktv. Org for this weekends tv schedule. Joining us on booktv is michael cader, founder of a group called publishers lunch. Start by telling us what that is. Lots of things, email newsletter tells everyone in the Publishing Business what is going on every day. We have a web site at publishersmarketplace. Com with databases and fools all the people use to find out the information they need, and get business done. What is your background . Lunchtime is where people in the Publishing Business Exchange Information with each other. When the internet came along the invented this business and try to find the right metaphor for information and exchange in the digital environment, this stuck out. It was taken already. I came up with publishers lunch and people automatically knew what they were getting in the business before they saw what was in the newsletter. I have been in the Book Business my whole life so i ran a small Publishing Company for 15 years, worked for workman publishing in the 80s when i was a baby. Is a great industry and im happy to be part of it even as times change and the media changes and people change. The year 201213, how has that been for the book industry . Surprisingly positive. Since 2012 there were a couple hits. One was hundred games for younger readers and crossover readers which carried over into young adult literature. 50 shades of gray brought readers who dont read very much into bookstores into online bookstores. Digital books have become popular for a segment of people and given them access to books they might not have had previously so statistically speaking the industry grew last hoing eady so far this year in comparison to what was a good year for people. Long form reading appears to be alive and well. We are at bookexpo america. I am holding here a book that essentially doesnt exist. Buzz books 2013 put together by publishers once. What is this . Is a big factor sampler. It is free publication excerpts of 40 interesting highly touted books coming out this fall and winter. It is meant to be something for readers everywhere that replicates the experience of what is going on here for trade insiders. People a hearing pitches about new books and picking up free copies of new books that are not available to regular readers because they are not really out yet so we surveyed publishers and collect excerpts from a lot of books that we think are the most interesting and everyone can get the convention experience and see the books people are talking about months from now on the market. Where is it available right now . It is available in ebook form on every major platform, whenever bookstore you like to read in they have a copy that we can download for free from any platform. I want to ask about a couple books, 2013. Count down by the lebron . I read that one this morning, he was over generally the best selling author of the book called the World Without as which speculated what would happen if humans went away, how quickly would the plan a return to its national state, a followup countdown is the world with us, what happens in a world in which we have so many people competing for resources, how is that going to work interpersonally, can the planet hold its . The excerpt is set in israel and looks at those issues through the lens of israeli families and palestinian families who like to have big families and have Different Reasons for having big families and competing for what it is is really the desert so he traveled around the world, went to 20 Different Countries and talked to people and found out how these issues play out and all kinds of different places. Valerie has a fiction book. She turned into a thriller writer, this is the first of the series so needless to say she brings to bear her Life Experience but is free from being surveyed by the people she used to work for because it is all in fictional context. One other book, James Swanson under the adult category the president has been shot. That was a lot of fun. People remember him for the book manhunt about the search for the killers of Abraham Lincoln after his death. What is happening this time is the sassination of jfk and simultaneously publishing an adult version but also young adult version from scholastic and what we have is a sample of the young adult version. Fall, winter, what are you excited about . I keep dipping in and finding things that i like. We have got all kinds of different stuff. We have people in love, a new novel from Elizabeth Gilbert and hearty lamb who has a huge sign up, great debut section last year, of the first people to tell people about the yellow birds which went on to be one of the best recognized for the year. And regular fiction, debut fiction, young adult works and nonfiction we have discovered. One thing that might be fun for television viewers, Johnny Carsons llawyer and confidante who was in the shadows literally for decades but carson called him his best friend which challenged him in this book but he as stories and insights into a man everybody knew so well but doesnt know it all. Michael caders book is called publishers lunch. The web site is publishers market place. This is booktv on cspan2. Mark twain was a very young man when he was here in carson city. Born in 1835. He arrived in 1861 going on 26 years old. Of very formative period in his life and the experience he has here, all the things he does, then the things he writes and the notoriety he gets in San Francisco and new york city just laid the foundation for the man who would be one of the greatest writers in American History. I would argue without the carson city experience, the nevada territory experience, could never have been mark twain. More about Samuel Clemens as booktv and American History tv look at the history of literary life of carson city, nev. And sunday at 5 00 on cspan2. Up next, jeffrey sachs, director of the institute at columbia in a recipe recount president kennedys pursuit of a reduction of nuclear arms and greater relationship with the soviet Union Following the cuban missile crisis. This program is 90 minutes. [applause] thank you so much that kind introduction and thank you for joining us today for this discussion with professor geoffrey sax on his important