their symbol has far outweighed their numbers, and it was not a viable job. this hour-long talk was part of a symposium hosted by the vermont humanities council. >> this afternoon i am supposed to be talking about why cowboys mattered in the post-war years. they mattered more than anything else. i want to show you some images of reconstruction. i would suggest that probably very few of you could pick these rebels out of the group. william sylvis died very young said there could be a reason why you don't recognize them. red cloud, yes, most of you recognize him. he was the most important indian in america at that time. if you came off a boat, you would have known who red cloud was. he won a war against the u.s. government, and he had largely been written out of american history. and you might have a shot of recognizing susan b. anthony or elizabeth caddy stanton. but you might not. these are not faces that you would know if you think about reconstruction or you think about the reconstruction days. these are people you read about in your textbooks that you don't think about them in popular culture. let's try this. the marlboro man has been recognized in every single country in the world, and i will talk more about the marlboro man in a moment. if you think about reconstruction and the post-civil war years, the image that everybody in america and most people in the world recognize is the american cowboy. the american cowboy operates from 1866-1886, and i won't talk much about the history, i will talk a little bit about it, but it is enormously significant that the cattle industry and the face of the cattle industry coincided with reconstruction after the civil war. that coincidence has been handed down to the present in our political channel and in the way that we understand american politics, and that is why the american cowboy remains such an incredibly potent image today in american society. let's start with that. we all know the civil war was about the north and south, right? wrong, it was not about this north and south sides, it was between the north and south but it was about the west. slavery had coexisted -- the north end south had coexisted with the issue of slavery. it was not a problem until the purchase of the louisiana territory and the treaty of guad alupe in 1848. the question of what to do with those western lands, first the louisiana purchase, which were divided by the missouri compromise, but that comes a new question in 1850. but then an extraordinary addition of the land with the treaty of guadalupe in 1846. the question was whether it was going to be settled on the principles of slavery, which presupposes a government -- or of free labor, which presupposes the government says that every man has a say in his government, and every man has a shot at equality and opportunity. that is the central question that is going to lead to the civil war. and that is not a question that is an academic one. we tend not to think about the west, many of the key battles of the civil war west were fought and i'm not good to talk about that, but many of the things that we don't think about is the fact that both the north and the south try desperately to push west, the south does not do so successfully but the north does. before the civil war, this map is what america looks like after the civil war, this is what america looks like. the north very aggressively during the civil war organized the entire territorial west into patterns that look very much like they do today. the two things they don't do is organize the wyoming territory until 1868 and then they don't divide the territory of dakota into two pieces until 1869. -- 1889. the lincoln administration aggressively spread the concept of free labor and the idea that there will not be slavery in the western territories across the west during the civil war. it does so part for ideological reasons, harper government reasons, and part because the nation is desperate to get to the western minds. during the civil war, they went into the western minds, and lincoln desperately needs money to fight the war. this spread farmers west into the western planes because of the homestead act. this is the very aggressive part of the lincoln administration's plan, to make sure not only that they win in the east, but they get the last. -- get the west. so if that is what is going on in the middle of the 1860's, doesn't that seem cool? nobody ever told me this when i was in college. it is really interesting if you think about it. people don't stop moving west simply because they are fighting each other. but what happened when they started fighting in texas? excuse me, sorry. texas had a big problem during the civil war, in fact it had the comanche war for one thing but it also has the problem that before the civil war, there had been a cattle industry that started in texas in the 1830's primarily, but it is starting to take off by the 1840's. what happens down there is that the cattle industry starts to develop along the texas-mexican border, and the cattle from the industry get moved out of texas into st. louis. from st. louis they get distributed largely a long the mississippi river and largely through the south. what happened of course during the war is that texas gets cut off from the rest of the south. it gets cut off when the u.s. army takes the mississippi river, which isolates texas from the confederacy for the first time. the first time is when the u.s. army and navy take the mississippi river and cut texas off. when that happens, there is no way to move cattle unless you move them by railroad, but as you know, the confederate railroads degraded in enormous we quickly and you can't move cattle out of the confederacy by 1865. by 1855, there are eastern armies starving to death living on parched corn. there is such a problem in texas with cattle that the people who are still trying to ranch and handle cattle in texas, they write to jefferson davis, and they say, please, take our cattle, we will give you our cattle because there are so many cattle in texas that we don't go quail hunting because we are going to get killed by these things, so please take them away and jefferson davis writes them back and says i can't, or is no way to get them. so there is so much beef in texas that they don't know what to do with it. these are not bossy -- this isn't some little cow in a stable somewhere. these are longhorn cattle, no these are 20 century pictures, so this is how that we have bred them to be. i don't know if you have ever seen longhorn beef, but these horns are significant horns, the wingspan there is like eight feet, so you don't want to get close to these guys. this is not a cute little cow, these are serious longhorn cattle. and during and after the civil war, they breach the nueces valley, and there are so many of them that texans are afraid to go hunting by 1865, and they are essentially feral cattle. the weather down there is perfect for the development of these cattle, and by the end of the civil war, if you are even going to buy one of these things, because frankly many people are stealing them, you have the mexicans, the comanches, and the americans all stealing from each other by 1865, both horses and cattle, and they are stealing them back and forth. if you are going to bother to buy one as opposed to stealing it, it is going to cost about four dollars, which is completely out of reason in texas. they don't have much money. four dollars is not much money and if you can get it to chicago, which has been growing exponentially since the civil war, you can sell it for $40. it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that you have got to do is get those cattle to the railhead and you can get them to a northern city and whatever cattleman can do that are going to make bank. and this guy here, charles goodnight in 1865, he was a former texas ranger, and he was a confederate and he got measles and lost his hearing so he couldn't even hear a rattlesnake. people who worked with him hated to disturb him and come on him suddenly because they were always terrified that he was going to shoot them. charles goodnight decided that he was going to get his cattle to a railhead or to an army post so he could sell them to the u.s. government for distribution to the indians by a treaty. in 1865 he rounds up a crew to take the cattle either to a railhead or an army post. probably an army post. if you are in texas in 1865, who are you going to look for? you're going to look for guys who can ride a horse, right? and probably who have a gun, and can use them both, but have no money at all, because they have to be pretty desperate to get on a trail with a horse, a gun, almost no money, and head out following a bunch of really nasty cows. so he rounds up these guys and he rounds up the ex-confederates, and who else does he round up? former slaves. one of the things we tend not to focus on is a fact that a third of the cowboys were men of color. they rarely show up. but one of them shows up in an interesting way in popular culture. the reason i have this image appear from "lonesome dove," and if you have nothing "lonesome dove," you should get up right now i walk out, and on watch it, when larry mcmurtry patterned col on charles goodnight and robert duvall on oliver loving. what happens is, when charles pulls his team together and they head out of texas to try and sell these cattle, they get attacked by comanches. the whole thing is dead in the water. charles is an optimist, so in 1866, as he is trailing this herd of cattle out, he runs into a guy called oliver loving. they are both patterned in different ways, that on both charles goodnight and it is a wonderful, wonderful account of trailing cattle out of texas into montana, and if you are interested, you just have to read the book. goodnight and oliver loving head out on the goodnight-loving trail, that is how we did the name. they get the cattle to an army post and sell their cattle at the army post. they bring home at $12,000 in gold. $12,000 in gold in texas in 1865, there are -- 1856, sorry there are places in texas there that don't realize that the civil war is over yet. they have no money at all. they have $12,000 in gold. and here is one of the great lost moments of american history. they put the gold on the mule and somebody loses the mule in the river. the mule is floating down the river with $12,000 on his back and they get him, but can you imagine these guys saying holy expletive, get the expletive mule or else we are going to be in trouble! you wonder what would happen to american history if the mule had kept on going. [laughter] they get the mule back and the cattle rush goes on. i want to show this picture too. i talked about people of color in the cowboy story. this is one of the men who traveled with goodnight and loving. what is fascinating is not only that larry picks him up and uses this very promissory from his gravestone in "lonesome dove,", but he is actually the guy who carries the money on the crew. goodnight figures nobody is going to jump a black man in texas, thinking he has money. one of the guys on the crew is a white ex-confederate who was dismissed from the service for mental instability. you've got to figure this guy is a whacked job. despite that fact, there is no record that there was ever a problem between icard and this confederate soldier. what we get from that is that there are individual southerners who are willing to work hard the average age of the cowboy is 24 years old, and they are willing to work hard and they just want a job, they just want something, and by 1867, you begin to have this image of the west as a place where individuals should go out there and work hard and they have a great time, and they put their shoulder to the wheel, and this is the heart of a young, growing america. by 1867, we have the establishment of abilene kansas, which is a place where cowboys and the guys running the trail crews, and you get increasingly these western towns, and i put this in there and i always wondered what abilene was about, but abilene was important because it was the first physically constructed town at a railhead, it's a you could get your cattle shipped back to the city where you could sell them for a decent chunk of change. what is significant about this -- oh, by the way, do you know the name cattle punchers? they punch the cattle in the cattle cars so they don't get crushed when they lie down. they ride in the cattle cars and they try to lie down because they are exhausted, they don't want them to die, so they have to punch them to get them to stand back up. i have lots of good stories. i can tell you why cowboys singh too. so southerners hate two things they hate a lot of things, but the two things that i care that they hate today are when they sell, for example, to the federal agent to the indians they are selling to federal agents who hate them too. they have been fighting a war over the past previous five years, and the confederate like charles goodnight are utterly convinced that federal agents are cheating them and giving them an advantage to people who are unionists during the civil war, and unionists are universally loathed coming out of texas. even though they are doing business with the government they hate the government. they hate the government. they also -- sorry -- they are also not keen on the railroads who are shipping out cattle, whom they think are cheating them. so they are disliking both the government, and the railroads that they need to get to market. so you've got these southerners making up the body of cowboys coming out of texas and moving up the great plains, which is not an accident if you think about today's political map, but that is a story i will get to in a minute. so there we go, cattle industry and we are on. but think about when this is. 1865. 1866. 1867. 1868. something else is happening during these years. reconstruction. it is not an accident that these coincide and become so important in american history. in the south during 1865, the south is devastated. it is devastated. people say, the south lost, the north won, and then we rebuilt. there are literally animal carcasses all over the south. refugees who are trying to get home, and occasionally they will see an arm or a leg hanging out of a grave, and streets are broken, and gangs roam the streets. there is a legend, anyway, in certain southern cities, you could hire somebody to kill somebody else for three dollars. when the confederacy collapsed so did the police force. there are extraordinary levels of crime and alcoholism. they used a call in rifle whiskey. it is a devastated, depressed, angry, traumatized region. and in that region were both white southerners and black southerners and they have lost people that they love, they were suffering from what is now called ptsd, they don't have limbs, they don't have eyes, they don't have family members, and you suddenly have the need to reconstruct a society and the government. and that is going to include for the first time in american history one of my favorite images of reconstruction african-americans, not the african-american men, but african-american women and children. these are the people that you would see along the street sides, because african-american women rarely make it into textbooks when they talk about this, but african-american women very quickly started engaging in street vending, or road vending, or track vending, or path vending, but out there were you could see them, where white people coming home from fighting in the battles were trying to find family members from whom they had been separated, and are seen african-americans taking over public spaces. you also see families, and african-americans who want to stay in the society that they helped to save, because after all, they were the one fighting on the winning side, not the losing side. at the same time they are trying to re-create society, the north is doing extraordinarily well. everyone thought the civil war was going to destroy the economy in the south, but it booms manhattan takes off, industry takes off, andrew carnegie start to make over $100,000 per year people who make uniforms and guns and agriculture all absolutely start taking off after the civil war, and the north is extraordinarily strong, and this is going to be a sore point for white southerners, especially when the american congress says to white southerners, now you need to reconstruct your society in such a way that those african-americans who are were on our side shooting at you get to have a say in their society. what comes from that is, of course, furious anger on the part of white southerners, and this is stuff you all know, but i am trying to put it all together so you can see where it all goes. what happens is that by 1865 you get the idea among white southerners that what really went on during the civil war was not about, and they started saying it was not about slavery, so they changed dramatically in the summer of 1865-1866, they say they never cared about slavery, what they really cared about was states' rights, and this is where you start hearing about that, and white southerners say what is really going on is that congress, the republicans in congress, are creating an empire. they stacked the deck so that what they are going to do is tax us all, because for the first time in our country's history, they have national taxing for the civil war, and they will redistribute wealth to the black people through contracts to rebuild hospitals and roads and all that kind of stuff. they don't want to really rebuild a country, all the want to do is stay in power, and what they are doing is constructing a world in which the government is set up so us poor white guys our tax dollars are going to be sucked dry, and it is all going to go to this giant government that is not going to listen to us at all and it is just going to help black people and minorities. that is the way that southern white people construct, southern democrats, i should say, because there were a few southern white republicans, construct what is happening when the congress tried to put in place legislation that tries to rebuild that devastated south. and that comes up most dramatically in the summer of 1865-1866. the freedmen's bureau is an organization was set up in march of 1865 and rechartered in 1866 to try and give african-americans a shot. that is according to most southern states, african-americans can't testify in court, and a different law gives them the right to own property, but with the freedmen's bureau very deliberately, southern white democrats say, we told you, we told you all along. the republicans are not trying to create this fair world. they are deliberately taking tax dollars from hard-working white people like us and they're using it to hire bureaucrats who are only going to be republicans because public office was only held by political parties, they are going to take those tax dollars, create this big government and put their own people in it, and they are basically going to create this party that is never going to go away. they're going to suck it all out of us so they can keep themselves in power. are you good with that? do you see where i'm going with that? ok. so this is the set up in 1865-1866. the same people who were saying this, the strength of the federal government that is going to be forcing tax dollars out of people's pockets and into african-americans, the same time, people are starting to talk about those cowboys. the same newspapers are writing about those cowboys, the same guys that don't want anything from the government, they just want to work hard. and in the books and the newspaper articles when they start to talk about cowboys, they don't talk about men of color, the only talk about white cowboys. so what happens is that this really believes -- bleeds into american society with our friend and buddy andrew johnson who we talked about this morning who very deliberate retakes this argument nationally. he says, you know what? the real problem in america right now is not the white southerners, it is the northern republicans, because the republicans have created an empire and they call it an empire, they call it an oligarchy, they call it, i can't think of the word, but the idea that they are creating an empire, the republicans are creating an empire that is destroying individualism in american society, individuals no longer have a shot. now let's keep this in perspective here. taxes are extraordinarily low, and the government does very little, but he creates this image that the real problem is that republicans have a stranglehold on power, they are increasing the size of the government, they are keeping the republicans in government, democrats will never get a shot, basically if you are a white democrat you are out of luck you're not going to have a say in the society again. that only gets worse after 1868 -- 1867, with the passage of the military restructuring act and the 15th amendment when african-americans start to vote. what democrats say, white democrats in the south and the north say is that now, because we knew they didn't like this, they created their own constituency. these people are always going to vote for republicans because the republicans are going to give them stuff, hospitals, roads schools, and all that. the idea is not that they want to be fair to them, the republicans simply want to stay in power. they created this constituency that is only voting to get whatever they can get out of the government. because that is what they want. it puts money in their pockets. that should sound familiar. [laughter] because this is exactly where it comes from. that critical moment of reconstruction. while this is going on in 1867 1868, 1869, we've got the cowboy. he doesn't want anything. he's just out there working hard. again, the reality of cowboy life is that it depends on the government. they are selling the cattle to the government, the army is the one who is protecting the cattle and the trail herds against the indians, because we are at war with three or four indian tribes, including red cloud, to which the army loses. we are at war with the comanches and the apaches and the cheyenne, and the life of the cowboy is not any great shape. it is hard work. these guys died. ok, the reason they sing is so they know where each other are so if there is a stampede, they can turn the herd away from the other cowboys, because if they turn the herds away, they will trample these other cowboys until they are flat. that is why cowboys sing. it is not a great life at all. but that is not the way it is portrayed in the newspapers and magazines. in the magazines this is a great, fun way to live. they make bank -- it is not true. in fact, the life of a cowboy is very similar to the life of any industrial worker. that is not the way it is portrayed. the way it is portrayed is, this is the heart of what is best about america. hard-working guys working their way up, they are going places and they don't want anything from the government. ok, there aren't that many cowboys, and this isn't a long-lived industry at all, it is over by the winter of 1866-1867, and that was the year of a terrible winter where trail riding came to an end and ranches became the thing, that was the year that laura ingalls wilder described the terrible winter, and it was a terrible winter, and there was a drought right before, so the cattle go into winter terribly weekend. the images from that are just horrible. it is clear that you can no longer trail cattle and the boom years have been way too big. so the actual cowboys only last for about 20 years and they might have been a flash in the pan, except for this. while reconstruction is going on, across the nation but primarily in the east, there is a problem here in missouri. missouri is one of those great states. there is missouri, north carolina, texas, and maine. no matter what else is going on in the country, you can guarantee that missouri, north carolina, texas, and maine are doing something nuts. they are great fun to teach, except nobody lives in them so nobody cares except me. missouri is the linchpin of where everything is going to explode. missouri is, just for the record, i went to write a book on missouri, and my agent said yeah, you and three other people are going to read it, don't bother, but i really wish i could, because missouri is the linchpin. missouri is the one slave state north of the missouri compromise line. what happened to missouri during the civil war was that it got absolutely torn apart. it is a civil war like nowhere else. at one point the army goes through regions of missouri, knocks on doors, and evacuates the people. you are done, go. women, children, old people, get out of here. they are trying to stop the guerrilla warfare that is happening in missouri. there is a guerrilla campaign. you may have heard the name. this showed up in "lonesome dove 2," by the way. the raiders were a group of pro-southern confederates who would ride into a village in missouri on horseback with guns in each hand. they would shoot from both sides and they would ride out of town before anybody could shoot back. the unionists in missouri hated these guys like poison, because it was not fair. if you are going to engage in war, engage in war, but don't come into town and shoot the place up, kill whoever happens to be on the street, and ride out again. that is just not fair. this is one of the reasons why the army in missouri cleans out a couple of places in missouri and they want to stop this. but the other thing that is interesting about missouri during the war is that there is such tension between the unionists in missouri -- and missouri is a union estate -- missouri rewrites its constitution during the civil war. when it does so with this extraordinary war going on, it rewrites the constitution called the drake restitution. the drake constitution was known as the truck owning and -- dracvonian constitution by his opponent, and it was written by pro-unionist republicans, and it is so strong a document that under the drake constitution, is basically anyone who has ever supported the confederacy in any way, even down to delivering a letter to the confederacy or feeding a brother breakfast if he was a confederate soldier anyone in support of the confederacy in any way will no longer have a civic presence cannot vote, cannot be a lawyer, cannot be a preacher, cannot be a teacher, and that indicates how strong that document is. the only people boating are republicans. even republicans are like, this may be a bit much. what happens when the drake constitution does pass, if you live in missouri and you support the confederacy in any way, you no longer have a civic presence. the government can do anything. the drake machine which runs missouri operates strongly in the way that it stays in power with the help of african-american votes. missouri begins to look like a microcosm of what democrats are saying about the government at large. why does this matter? in 1868, congress passes the omnibus bill, and a number of other bills with it, that returns almost all southern states the full representation in the u.s. government. so that means that people in mississippi, people in louisiana, people in atlanta people in south carolina, can now vote in their government again. people in missouri are living under the drake constitution and that is a union state, so that omnibus bill does not apply to missouri. so if you live in missouri, you still have no right. you can't vote, can't hold office can't be a lawyer, can't be a minister. ministers challenge this and their testimony is very interesting. but by 1868, people are completely fed up with this. what happens is that -- in 1868 there is going to be an open senate seat. drake wants to declare who can go into them as a receipt in congress. a bunch of republicans say no. we are done, we want that seat we want to get rid of you because you are a jerk among other things, and he was, and we are going to change the way missouri does business. what they do is first of all they put into office this guy up here in the corner, he becomes senator in 1869. i showed this this morning, i just love these things. do think this guy likes that guy up there? do you think he combed his hair to liberally to look like him? the ideas that i am expounding now, that everyone should have a say in their government and the you are going to challenge the idea of one political party taking over, these are going to be disseminated throughout american history from now until at least the end of the century. you can tell that joseph pulitzer liked him. he gets in to congress and one of the first things he does is challenge of the republican administration by saying, you guys are just creating a behemoth, you're creating an empire, you will let individuals, you are sucking tax dollars out of the people, and you are extremely powerful, and he does this for his own personal reasons, but that is an extremely powerful thing from a person from missouri to say. when he takes on the drake people, he actually manages to put his own guy over here to the governor's chair in missouri, and you will never hear about this guy again, he is really not important at all, that i just want to show his picture because, aren't the ears great? [laughter] seriously, though they all is like the same guy? don't they all have the same beard, the same coat? look at his ears. for the rest of your life, if you are in jeopardy, you will know him. anyway, they put him into office. by 1872, they intend to destroy grant, they are desperate to get grant out of office for their own personal reasons, that they argue exactly what the democrats have been arguing, that republicans are creating a monster. they're using tax dollars, they are letting african-americans vote, they're using people's tax dollars to create legislation that is going to redistribute wealth to those of very same voters. this is not a good american system, there is no room for white men whose money is being sucked out of their pockets who can no longer rise because they are being enslaved to this huge government diffusing all of their money to help black people. this is not ok. and they take this campaign national in 1872. they begin to convince republicans as well as democrats that their real enemy was not the white southerners keeping african-americans down, the kkk and things like that, that is all a rumor. the real problem is this giant government that is sucking tax dollars and squishing the individual. and thanks to that, we get the nationalization of the image of the cowboy. this southerner out there in the great west who doesn't want anything, he just wants to work hard and not have everything taken by the government. and this is why jesse james was so important. he is from missouri, he is in fact in terrible trouble. his first major robbery was in 1869, and let me be clear, he is a robber, he is not just a burglar, he is a robber and a murderer. this is not challenged. this guy is a criminal. he is not some robin hood, he is a criminal. his first robbery was in 1869, and they can't get him, so the first governor of missouri sets a reward for jesse james, and the government just set a price on an individual man's head. when that happened, an ex-confederate begins to say wait a minute, james is not a criminal, james is in angel of light, james is an individual being persecuted by this behemoth government, who is not only going to take his tax dollars, it is going to take his life. and james started writing to the newspapers, but then his stories also get picked up in tennessee and by "the new york times," where he says he is not a criminal, he is a nice guy, but he says he cannot turn himself in because no confederate can be a lawyer, a minister, a judge, i cannot get a fair trial. i'm being persecuted by this behemoth government here in missouri. i am the symbol of a government run amok. he increasingly ties his own story, and jesse james is a nearly illiterate, but when he commits a robbery, he actually wears -- he and his men where kkk robes, which is a reconstruction fight. and what they attack our railroads, the symbol of the government and the express services that carry money. both republican institutions and republican owners. by 1974-1875, the pinkerton's go after him and bomb his home. this creates even more sympathy. here is a poor guy -- first of all, the republican industry has gone after him with the pinkerton's but when the pinkerton's bomb his house, they actually kill his little brother and blow off his stepmother's arm, which plays really well in the newspapers. and when he is shot in the back in 1882 by robert ford, that dirty little coward that shot him in the back, there was a little song written by him and bruce springsteen some years ago, so he shoots him in the back, so when that happens, it becomes at this great american symbol of an individual guy who is literally hunted down and killed by his government. because robert ford had a deal with the government of missouri at the time or he could just get rid of jesse james, he could get a pardon, and the that is what happened. that is why we care about jesse james. isn't that cool? so what happens? i just killed jesse james in 1882, but that is not the only image that is going on at the time. you have jesse james, who takes the cowboy off in a criminal direction, you also have the rise of buffalo bill cody, who is -- really becomes a public figure in late 1860's and late 1870's. he begins to appear in plays about himself as a western hero, as the individual out there in the west who is colorful, and fighting hard for america although he takes nothing from the government. of course that is not true, he was a government scout, i have a really interesting story that i don't have time for but i am going to tell you anyway. he gets awarded the medal of honor for his work as an indian scout, and it is taken away from him in the early 20th century along with the only other medal of honor given to a woman during the civil war, and it were stripped from them during the early 20th century, and both of those were returned in the 1970's and the 1980's, so he actually gets a medal of honor for his work as an indian scout. but the point is, there is this image the traveled east, that goes into plays and books, and a playwright who drinks makes a fortune on buffalo bill and the drinks and away, and they create this image of the western hero who is out there doing his own thing. buffalo bill, as you know, by 1883, turns this into big money. he turned into u2 by the 1880's. he creates buffalo bill's wild west show. this takes the idea of the cowboy, who is fighting the indians as well, not only because of red cloud's war, but because of the 1876 battle of little bighorn and the campaign that follows it. but that is a little bit out of my kin right now. he takes this story national, and even international. what you have is this individual without the federal government without stacking the government by catering to a special interest of minorities who are taking tax dollars because they don't want to work hard. we have westerners working hard because that is what americans do. with his buffalo bill's wild west show, by the 1890's, buffalo bill had buffalo bill's wild west show and the congress of rough riders of the world not an accident. the congress of the rough riders of the world, the rough riders are hard-working individual men from all nations and all backgrounds, and buffalo bill's set up of it, and it is not how he played it out at all, but americans wanted to believe that this should have happened even when the government is working quite actively at this point by the 1890's for the very wealthy. this image of the congress of rough riders of people who want nothing but an evenhanded government is of course going to be huge in american history. i couldn't resist, who came but teddy roosevelt? he called his men in the spanish-american war the rough riders, and he called his men at the rough riders deliberately after the buffalo bill's congress of rough riders, and he says repeatedly, i am for any man who is going to work his way up without the help of the government, that is what america is all about. i am not about a government that redistributes wealth to minorities, or the very wealthy, in teddy roosevelt's case. and i love this image of teddy roosevelt, because there is this wonderful image of him that i don't have permission to reproduce now, but teddy roosevelt is not a hugely good horseman, and he is not a good westerner either. when he goes to his dakota ranch, the guys that he hires are from maine. he ships them out there. there is this wonderful line where he hears them one day, and they are cutting down trees, and one guy says i cut down 30, and one guy said he cut down 27, and one guy said, he beavered down a few. i couldn't resist this image here. here is a trivia piece for you. this is an image of the rough riders at san juan when they stormed san juan hill and contribute to the fall of the spanish empire in the americas in the spanish-american war, but they did not have horses, that if you see images from the time, they took courses with them, but the horses were so weak, so when they push them off the boat when they got to the shore, they were so weak that they sank. so the rough riders did not have horses on san juan hill. when you see images of the rough riders on horses, when they came back to america, teddy roosevelt made sure that they got horses and then they held rodeos, so there were pictures of the rough riders on horseback, but in fact, they crawled through the grass in cuba. it did not matter to roosevelt. you know, he said, these were a splendid set of men, they were tall, they were sinewy, they were men who were evenhanded. he helps to push this idea that a true government is one in which individuals do not have any special rights, that everybody is evenhanded. it is a theme that runs through american history starting back in reconstruction. what is interesting in this is that teddy roosevelt had deliberate cultivation of the cowboy, and when william mckinley was assassinated in 1901, and mckinley was a real big business republican, and when teddy roosevelt takes the helm, he said he told mckinley that it was a mistake to nominate that wild man in philadelphia, and now look, that wild cowboy is the president of the united states, and teddy roosevelt very deliberately took that image. think of all the images you have of cowboys in the early 20th century. the western image in the early 20th century is of a terribly hard life. there is a terrible drought in the ot 90's -- the 1890's. we have mount rushmore because they are so desperate to get anybody to go to south dakota, they figure if they put up a statue, somebody will go there. the image of a cowboy really died, but it comes back dramatically. it comes back dramatically in 1954 after a series of images in "life" magazine. the interesting thing about this marlboro man is not that he just died of cancer, but he was originally on the goodnight trail. he is from that ranch. that image, which was published in 1949, started a campaign that begins in 1954. why did they start this campaign? what else happens in 1954? a little thing called brown v. board. the idea that the government is once again helping a minority using tax dollars. brown v. board was most are -- most dramatically there. those are places that are deliberately spun in right-wing media as times when tax dollars are being deliberately used taken away from hard-working white people, to help a grasping minority. it is no accident, then, that the image of the american cowboy comes along again in the 1950's and absolutely takes off. this is when in the 1960's and the 1970's levi's take off. they were on james dean, and then they were everywhere. the confederate flag comes out of the attic. nobody cared about the confederate flag in the beginning of the 20th century. people start wearing cowboy hats again. people start talking about their cowboy heritage. cowboy movies are all over cowboy shows are all over, "bonanza," all of those tv shows from the 1960's and the 1970's. these western individuals taking on problems on their own that are often caused by government. you can see that, you can see how that comes nowadays with "interstellar," for example, that you can see that impacting politics, especially after the 1980's, when this becomes extraordinarily effective when you put on a cowboy hat, especially if you are a good horseman, like ronald reagan who actually rides in the british style, and his handlers say, which the britches, get yourself a cowboy hat, or george w. bush who is from connecticut and who went to yale, but when he went to do his presidential run, that is when he bought the crawford ranch. so that image that somehow the heart of america is this individual from whom the government does nothing comes from this magical reconstruction moment when the cattle industry happened to coincide with the federal government trying to protect an ex-slave population. and we have live with that ever since. thank you very much. [applause] and i very cleverly answered all -- used all the time for questions. do you want me to take a few? i can take two? i'm sorry about that, but cowboys are cool. [laughter] there is one back there, yes. >> i feel like you skipped over a period of popular cowboys, but i thought that period was more anti-mormon than antiliberal. -- anti-federal. when you think about that period of popular literature, it was a very complex narrative about who was the enemy of freedom. >> did you say anti-mormon in that? >> yes, i am thinking portrayals of womanhood and literature in the early 1900s. >> i will give you zane gray over mormonism. [indiscernible] if you think about the plot of "the virginian," it is a northern woman and a southern man, he is a confederate whose nickname is jeff, it is a nickname for jefferson davis because he is southern. and they make their way west where jeff, the virginian, works his way up to a position of extraordinary power through his own hard work. and he has that wonderful exchange with shorty who is that guy who is always looking for a handout, and he says you have to work your way up. and then he is killed. oh, nevermind. well, he is not an important character anyway. in that case, the virginian is actually reinforcing this government image. people think there is something else going on, and there is that mormon thing going on out there, and the other thing i wanted to talk about is where women fit in, and women tend to be good wives or prostitutes in the west, which is in itself very interesting, and i think the person that handles this best is louis l'amour in "flint." one of the great american novels and nobody has heard of it because they think it is stupid. but it is not, it is a very good book. but mormonism is something worth taking up. >> you have very well pointed out the importance of symbols and the cycle that you have talked about, both this morning and this afternoon. if you work, imagine yourself as a consultant to the democratic party going forward in the next two years. what symbol would you pick to lead the country, maybe in a different direction? >> so this is actually fun. and the most important word is i guess, middle-class. you know, you can't win elections without using the middle-class a lot, and hammering home the idea that the government should not privilege anybody, the rich as well as the poor. interestingly enough, not a week ago, even, hillary did somethinginterestingly, when with hillary did something very clever, and that is they published a campaign document i 1956 political platform. the hillary campaign did. that was very smart. what they are doing is they are reclaiming the republican political language. if i were doing it -- and i wish i were -- i would talk about the middle class and exactly what i said here. the government should not privileged anybody. it should privilege the middle class. all of us hard-working people who need education, health care, good roads clean energy. not the rich people who want a handout or the poor people who are lazy. that is the winning formula. good enough? thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] >> the civil war airs here every saturday at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern time. to watch more civil war programming, visit our website www.c-span.org/history. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. >> each week american history tv's american artifacts takes you to historic places. the amelia are hurt -- ehrhardt collection at purdue university houses the world's largest assemblage of papers related to the pioneer. she shows us selected items of the collection including poems and letters she wrote to her family, as well as a letter she wrote to her husband on their wedding day. she worked at lafayette for the last two years of her life as she prepared for an around the world flight funded by purdue. it was during this flight she disappeared in 1937. >> “from an airplane, even the watchful purple hills could not see so well as i the stain of evening." creeping from its heart, nor the round, yellow eyes of the hamlet growing filming with missts. she would have been 23 whenever she was writing these. but you can see that she has a romanticized view of the height, being able to see nature below her. when she became an aviation editor for "cosmopolitan" she would write about the beauty of flying and how she loved things like seeing the clouds up there and the serenity of being on her own and being able to look at the beauty below. amelia earhart was an early woman pilot at a time when many women did not have careers outside of the home. she is most well remembered for having disappeared. it is still a mystery what happened to her. but i think she is also remembered because she was such a pioneer for women's rights and women's education and careers. equality of the sexes was very important to her as well as promoting aviation as a legitimate travel option. many people were afraid to fly at that time. but it was not until around 1920 when she started really thinking seriously about taking flying lessons. she had to convince her family because not only was it dangerous, it was expensive and they did not have the money to allow her to do that. she started taking jobs so she could pay for her own lessons. one of the requirements her father had was that she take lessons from a woman pilot. it took her longer to locate a woman pilot to give her instruction. eventually she found nita. she was the first to take her up in planes and start to teach her. what is interesting is if you read things from nita's perspective, amelia was horrible because she would daydream in the air, she was loving the beauty and the height and the excitement and was not paying attention to the technical things she needed to know should something go wrong with the plane. >> sunday afternoon at 4:00 eastern, join us for "reel america." this film features the conditions of japanese-americans living in internment camps during world war ii. that is tomorrow at 4:00 eastern. >> coming up next on american history tv, a discussion on new york pioneers and the judiciary. posted at the new york city are association. this is about 40 minutes. >> ok, so now we are going to try to have a conversation. hopefully this will the