Cspan2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Hello. My name is nneoma amadiobi, and on behalf of our staff and the store owners, Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine i like to argue all to politics and prose. Just want to let you know when we add, which it is eventually get any noisemaking devices, or cell phones, just take a moment and turned them off. To be clear, at the end of the event we ask you to fold up your chairs and bring them against something. We do have an event might after this, you could please leave your chairs with our we would appreciate that. So with that out of the way we can get to our talk today. Winchester and arthur became president in september 1881 after the assassination of james garfield, most americans expected at best a lackluster leader. Scott greenberger book is one of our least beloved president from idealist to politician and back. As he states in the book, it is, hes a good man, he discovered h
One that i find the most absolutely fascinating and interesting is the one were going to discuss tonight. James garfield. For quite a number of reasons. First of all, garfield is one of the most intelligent president s we have ever had. I mean he is up there in the top half dozen, and when we go through his life by the end of it or the middle of it, youre going to start laughing because youre just going to say no, that cant be. He cant be that good in that field. Its just not possible. And then well find something else, and youre going to say no. He is just incredibly bright, and the hope for his presidency was enormous. And so were going to discuss an absolutely brilliant human being. I was chatting with a friend before, and he asked me if i thought garfield was the most intelligent. I dont know how you test Something Like that. I mean, its not as if you give president s iq tests. Its a lot easier with things that are easy to measure. Tall and short i mean, we all know that madison wa
The postwar era to today. This is about one hour and 15 minutes. Prof. Gallagher here we are for the last class this semester. Were going to move into the aftermath of the war, as you know. We spent all semester looking at various aspects of this conflict. Right from the beginning, i alerted you one of the themes in this class was going to be the tension between history and memory. We talked about it on the first day of class. Have reiterated as weve gone along. Here we are finally at the end where were going to focus on memory for our last class. Theres no better event in the United States history to talk about how powerful contending memories of something that happened in the past can be. Theres simply nothing remotely equal to it, i think, than the civil war. Passions get up quickly when people remember the civil war. Been watching that in charlottesville over the last year and a half in the debates over the statue of robert e lee downtown. Ill talk at the end, when i get to the war
Were now in the billiard room which is one of the rooms that was built as part of the addition that the blaines made to the house in 1872. This is also a room which has been a place to hang photographs and in some cases the christmas cards of the previous first families. The first family was the millikens, and this is a large family, Carl Milliken and his wife are shown in the photograph along with their large family. There have been 21 families who have called the blaine house their home from the millikins in 1920 to currently Governor Paul Lepage and his wife first Lady Ann Lepage beginning in 2011. Today when we think of james g. Blaine in maine, i think we think primarily of the blaine house. It really is a symbol of both the maine governorship. Thus the equating of the name blaine with the Governors Mansion really keeps his name alive and in the public today. The cspan radio app makes it easy to continue to follow the 2016 election wherever you are. Its free to download from the A
Harriet blaine beal donated the house and grounds to the state of maine for the purpose of a governors home. Sadly Harriet Blaine beal had lost her son, Walker Blaine beal, in world war i and he had actually owned the house and then upon his death the house reverted back to her and she, recognizing it probably wasnt going to go on in the family and negotiation that recognizing the need that maine had and the close proximity of the blaine house to our statehouse across the street she donated the house for the purpose of the governors home. This is the state reception room. When the house was built in 1833 this was two rooms and then when the blaines acquired the house in 1862, in 69 and again in 1872 they made some major changes to the house which included opening up both these two rooms into one big reception room. This really reflects the fact that in the blaine period of ownership from 1862 into the early 1900s that there was a lot of entertaining that went on in the house related to