up next on american history tv, a conversation with abraham lincoln scholar harold hose -- harold holzer, author of more than 50 books. he discusses his research and shares his views on current lincoln and the civil war. peter carmichael conducts the interview, which is just over an hour. mr. carmichael: i am very pleased to welcome a good friend, harold holzer to cwi. [applause] harold is the director of hunter college is roosevelt house

public policy institute. you do not have an acronym for that, do you? it does not work, does it? before coming to the roosevelt as seniorold served vice president for public affairs at the metropolitan museum of art. the u.s. abraham lincoln bicentennial commission ordered by president clinton and president bush awarded harold the national humanity metal in 2008. harold has co-authored or edited 52 books. i do not even think i have read 52 books in my life. [laughter] his latest book is "lincoln and the power of the press. opinion."r public

week, it was announced that harold had been a awarded the empire state archives and history award. this a knowledge -- this acknowledges harold's contribution to the profession. this includes doris kearns goodwin and james mcpherson. this will be held at the cooper union in new york city. [applause] are you going to talk about your career, get a good two and a half hours in? cooper union holds 950 people. lincoln cannot fill the hall. what am i going to do? [laughter] who is going to

help you fill the hall? stephen lang is here. mr. carmichael: fresh from making -- mr. holzer: fresh from making avatar 2 and 3. as many problems as i have with the script interpretation, gods and generals is my favorite. mr. carmichael: what about death of a salesman? mr. holzer: i thought we were just doing film. a few good men? he played the nicholson part before nicholson on broadway. mr. carmichael: harold and i have had some email correspondence, but we have a framework. the last email i received from

wrote, nothing taboo. legal counsel at gettysburg college, and that gives me just enough to knock down the door. eal: --michael mr. holzer: i will check with hunter college. mr. carmichael: let's go to queens new york. tell us a little bit about the important assignment you received in fifth grade. mr. holzer: i should say i feel honored and grateful to you to be here. i was here when you introduce this series. i was in this audience when james mcpherson was in the chair. very moving to be occupying that symbolic space. me time to think about my childhood in queens.

i went to a progressive a middley school -- school as we would call it now -- it was offering a sophisticated library. our teacher came in with a hot pieces of paper, each of which contained the name of a famous person, all male, as i figured out when everyone stood in line. i stood in line to pick the name that changed my life. our assignment was choose a name, go up to the middle school book, so i picked lincoln. who was my best friend because his father owned , genghis khan.

he became a rock 'n roll promoter. these accidents can have positivelyr consequential impact. library and the picked "the lincoln nobody knows" as my book. i don't know what i wrote. at that moment, the thing that converged was it was the moment of the civil war centennial. , particularly white male enthralled by battle re-creations. i remember speaking about the unresolved issues we heard about at our conference. i remember when president kennedy did something most people have forgotten.

that the initial was going toleston be headquartered at a segregated hotel. one member of the national commission was african-american. she was told you will not be staying here, we will find you a hotel somewhere else. kennedy put a stop to it. he made everybody go to a naval base nearby. by thater being wowed even as an 11-year-old. then i got out of queens as quickly as i could. mr. carmichael: where did you do your undergrad? mr. holzer: queens. i spent a lot of time in the city. mr. carmichael: did you continue? history major? mr. holzer: i was not a history major. i am not going to say who the professor was. there was a major reconstruction scholar, and i went to him,

there are moments that are positive and negative and can be fatal in terms of sustaining or building interest and destroying it. i along talk with him about my interest, and he was negative. turned my attention to the issue of emancipation and whether it was dictated by foreign policy more than military strategy. i did that as my senior essay for my english class. and aced it. but i stayed away from the history department. mr. carmichael: did you ever see them again when you are a professional? mr. holzer: he faded into deserved obscurity. no. i do not know. [applause] he did fine. he just did not want to be a mentor. youcarmichael: then

graduated, and into the world of politics? mr. holzer: i did not want to go to graduate school. to be afabulous offer reporter on a weekly newspaper in manhattan called "the manhattan tribune." it was published by a white publisher and an african-american publisher. the idea was to cover the west side of manhattan. that is the center of liberal ferment in new york state and the country, and harlem. we covered both areas. black and white and read all over. remember the old joke? that was our slogan. was a false narrative,

because it was not read by anybody. it was a great day. it failed miserably. got my girlfriend /fiance/future wife to work with me on it. met with editors, one editor quit, another was fired. only two people working on the paper. we put it out the next two years, just the two of us. i think i got up to about $115 a week. the publisher had been a reporter on a newspaper in new york city, where his wife was the photographer. inquiringe remember photographer's? the two leftl: standing? mr. holzer: we were the last. mr. carmichael: i wanted to talk

about your partner in crime, edith. ,he is a big part of your work in youracknowledgment book -- it is a lovely tribute. she retired at a young age, she retired at 41. i am making that up. she has been able to spend a lot of time with me on the road. mr. carmichael: people are interested in the process of researching. how does it work? mr. holzer: we make a plan about what year or month we are going to cover. we have spent a lot of time in the library of congress. have notently, i asked, i am one of the few to have access to the

original lincoln papers. they do not like to let people look at the lincoln papers because they are on microfilm, they are online. i hate to break this to people who are dependent on online resources. it is not all there. the things that lincoln clipped out, the things people sent him are not included in the transcribed or photographed versions. we found a lot of great things. half hasyear and a been in quest of daniel chester french, the sculptor of the lincoln memorial, trying to breathe life into this what and up -- into this professional artist. you will see the results in a few months. mr. carmichael: let's turn to your early scholarship.

she just mentioned that some of you hadly work co-authors, we have one of them here. you did two books. mr. holzer: two-and-a-half. we were the only people that decided since we're going to revise, we better revise the book ourselves. we did the linkedin image and the confederate image. we spent a lot of -- we did the theoln image and confederate image. we spent a lot of time in gettysburg.

both of them were introduced to the public with expeditions of graphic art at gettysburg college. there was a show of lincoln prints and a confederate image and a terrible heat wave -- in a terrible heat wave where the air conditioner went out. our third collaborator was not happy to see the ripple effect of the humidity. that is one of my memories. we had a great collaboration. can i tell you one story before we do serious stuff? this was the days before computers. author, mark, worked for the lincoln museum. he had an assistant to had a computer. i did not have computers. i had typewriters. i lived in new york, mark lived in fort wayne, indiana, and gabor lived in gettysburg.

we had few personal meetings. we spent most of our time editing our work on the phone. they were marathon sessions. ,ne of the most famous sessions we started on sunday morning, going over two chapters, 9:00, work, 11:00, noon, we through lunch. i am arguing with mark and mark is arguing with me. voice,r a little boy's gabor had put the phone down four hours before, and his son, who is now a tony winning set designer, wanted to make a phone call, and he found these two clowns are doing on the phone. that was one of our adventures. [laughter] mr. carmichael: what the three of you did is something people were not thinking about.

you have turned to visual. we are interested in how you interrogate the kind of evidence. famous painting that is in the confederate book. by william washington. william deheartburn washington. i love his name. people gave of their poverty generously. if you throwl: confederate current see in 1864, that is not much of a donation. mr. holzer: the thing that interested us and set us off on the quest of understanding the commercial nature of some of these tributes, this is an

of lost cause the matron of the newton, i know. this because i worked with a man with the same name. he wrote to me and said thank you for honoring my grandmother. mrs. newton is assuring people that the old order will be sustained even in turmoil. chain theake homestead, the plantation, with the help of eternally loyal slaves. wasother reassuring message that gallant confederate far fromofficer killed home would receive a burial. the kernel is being buried here. it was an act of passion by the

artist here. what we wanted was the print version of it. the painting is now the museum of the confederacy. mine was published in new york many ways, civil war memory was commercialized. white publishers cannot wait for this war to be over so they could reenter a market that had been denied to them and they were without fear of being disloyalty, willing to mass produce images like this so they became a household item in southern homes, the print

made in new york city. in your book,: you do a brilliant job of revealing what that painting meant to individuals at the time. what i am curious about, and what the three of you avoided, is how to these illustrations, they are agents unto themselves. they shape and direct people's beliefs. it is not just a reflection of. mr. holzer: that is what we argue in our box. they shape reputations more than reflect them. are going tol: we use this as a transition to confederate monuments today. message in this

painting that is bringing white southerners together. how do you look at something like that and make that translation to on the ground political action? mr. holzer: what is unique about this image and one of the reasons it indoor for as long as it did, and we found evidence in the research we did in richmond that reproductions of this image of udc people, descendents, through the 1970's and 1980's, when we were investigating. this image is an anomaly for that reason. it is a nonaggressive image. it is not an image of robert e lee at war. it is not an upsetting image of robert e lee surrendering, it is not jefferson davis in hoop skirts. matron white

successfully holding things if this and acting as yankee invasion and threat to is not asof life sanctified as what you see here. those be raging beyond hills, but this woman is able to clergythe role of a woman. the happens are opening and blessing not just heard but the sacred act. margins here.the the audience may have a difficult time seeing it. mr. holzer: on the margins and grateful to be christianized so they can be part of this. happily digging the grave of this officer who died in an effort to keep them subjugated.

topsy-turvy image, but it was subtle, and that is one of the reasons it in dirt. -- one of the reasons it endured. mr. carmichael: let's take a look at this and your thoughts. this is the lee monument in new orleans. they have dismantled re lee. i'm curious about your take. mr. holzer: i do not think this is an easy one. i take a more global view of this. city in which a famous statue of king george the third was taken down in november of one year and melted into ammunition to fight the

british during the revolution. statute fromgreat the engravings we have seen. i am also a person who worked for 23 years for an art museum. we lived through the destruction -- by birmingham b the taliban. more recently the destruction at isis.ll -- at mosul by i sit -- art is supposed to be disturbing. manifestposed to public opinion at a moment when such things are expensive. i am not sure the right thing to do is to remove them. on the other hand, the monument in new orleans that celebrated the destruction of an integrated government by violence seems so

it deservedd that to be taken down. is great art, whatever the to render ite want to oblivion? we are going to be looking at that in a few years in richmond. there is awfully good sculpture there. arthur ashe, a remedial work of art, is the least effective as a work of art. here is link and that is an unsettling one. in the 1870's, the african-american communities contributed money to build and -- to build a monument to

lincoln as an emancipator. the sculpture is in a park in washington, it was unveiled by ulysses s grant and dedicated by 1876, thedouglass in 11th anniversary of lincoln's death, probably one of the greatest speeches ever given about abraham lincoln, a brilliant summary of lincoln's vision and his limitations that anyone has ever rendered. this is a statue of lincoln lifting a half naked person of color with chains broken around him. is it a rising slave or is it a slave.g that is something the african-american community grapples with. the statue is in the symbolic shadow of frederick douglass's

home. there are many demands floating about to do something with that piece. when lincoln was inaugurated and talked about the sin of slavery, his second inauguration, he looked at a statue of george washington that was in the plaza of the u.s. capital for both of his inaugurations, even that was taken away. people thought it was ludicrous because washington was bare chested. in thelled it georgie bath. it is in the national museum of american history in some corner. that used to be in the plaza. these things do change. i do not like destruction, i like context. -- to a monument in santa fe, a monument to a white victory over a native american tribe. it sits in the plaza where

american indian merchants, and sell their wares. it had a phrase, this is the place where the noble white settlers defeated the savage indians. response was to take out the word savage, they just scratched it out. context means a lot. there is a way to contextualize works of art that people may find disturbing word -- that people may find disturbing. mr. carmichael: it is about more than works of art. it is nott people -- a monument to the civil war, it is a monument to jim crow and segregation. that, how toove get people to understand the arc ? how to they understand slavery to the war to

segregation to civil rights when we start removing these pieces? i can understand why somebody would be deeper it -- would be deeply offended by a monument of robert e. lee. that is not reason enough to remove these from the landscape. in the end, i worry it will reach a point where no one will ,now this was a war for union it was a war for emancipation, but against what? why not instead of remove it, put wayside's that speak to the era of jim crow, that speak to the connections. i'm not sure anyone would listen to us anyway. these pieces are slipping away from us, and they are slipping away without a serious conversation.

how people for store size the past. that is deeply -- how people historicize the past. just because someone is offended, i respect why they would want that removed from their removed from their community, but there is a bigger issue here, i think. mr. holzer: that is what i thought contextualization is an option. pedestals say a lot about where you are raising a hero to be. but i am not an iconoclast by nature. the metropolitan museum is filled with these gargoyles, a spectacular collection of french gargoyles. i once asked my director how we came upon, you know, because we didn't say where the met got these things? how did france let them go? an iconoclast chopped off the

heads at notre dame and they were recovered later and sold to museums. desecratory, in a way. so i take the art point, i take the historical point. i do not think we should erase the past. i think we should preserve really good works of art area . even lenin did not take down the statues of the czar's in st. petersburg, although he did a lot. they never did. mr. carmichael: shift gears abruptly. mr. holzer: good. this is a tough discussion. i think we are going to be engaged in this discussion for a long time. we haven't even spoken about the more obvious choice for de-heroization. mr. carmichael: let's talk about your work as a public intellectual.

i think one of the things that stands out, your writing is very accessible. you have always been a public speaker who is very engaging, but you push people to think. one realm you entered as a public intellectual was your role with the movie, "lincoln." and you tell us how you got into the process, and i would like to know about your final thoughts? mr. holzer: it was a very happy accident. my association with the movie. doris kearns goodwin, whose book the movie was in part based, organized a meeting of lincoln historians with steven spielberg and tony kishner, the playwright of "angels in america," who had been assigned the screenplay. and we were to meet and have a script conference. i thought we were going to hollywood. it turned out we were going 20

blocks south of my office. [laughter] so it was not as exciting for me as it was for others to meet at central park south. we had a wonderful meeting. and tony was fascinating to watch because he takes out an inkwell, and uses an old-fashioned fountain pen. it sucks up the ink from the inkwell and he was spilling things all over the place. it was charming. spielberg was wearing his baseball hat. so i was asked if i would be the script consultant. this was years later. they went through script after script, actor after actor, liam neeson, holly hunter. i got to do a couple of stage readings with them as they were warming up the play lincoln and mary. so i had a great time. they were not thrilled with the outcome. but anyway. [laughter] i was asked, will i be the script consultant and actually read the script?

tony liked me. we do not live far from each other in town. we had meetings and i got an early copy of the script. each page was stamped with my name on it so i could not xerox it. very tight security. no leaks. [laughter] no leaks. so i bank, we had a series of meetings and we discussed issues and concerns that i had. you know, but anyone who has ever done this, and i have heard from other historians who have been historical consultants, it is not a really rewarding project unless you like to meet movie stars and playwrights, which i happen to like very much. [laughter] mr. holzer: but if you want the gratification that comes along with their recognizing your brilliant suggestions, that is the wrong business to be in. [laughter] mr. holzer: some obvious things,

like wilmington, delaware should be wilmington, north carolina. long before the shooting. my big issue, and i am not supposed to say this out of school, not that i was paid for this, by the way -- in fact, i will tell you the other story. i was -- my contract was that while i would not be paid, i would be brought to richmond, get a suite at the jefferson hotel, and be on set for several days. so keep that in mind. so my big suggestion -- and i am saying this because tony has spoken publicly about this, it was in a column in the "new york times" -- i said the real problem with the script, and unfortunately it is i climactic moment, is you have the u.s. congress voting in delegations. i think you have confused congress with national political conventions. people do not sit in state delegations. are you sure, he said.

i said, i worked for the first one called. she is actually the second. lincoln was a one term freshman. he sat all the way by the back window. he did not sit with the illinois delegation. so you do not say, how does connecticut vote, how does delaware vote -- you do a roll call. he literally sunk out of my leather couch and onto the floor. that was how dramatically he took the news of this problem. so, weeks go by. i got two pieces of information. one is that daniel day-lewis did not want me on the set or anyone on the set. he did not like visitors. he is the star, he is the boss. i mean he is a wonderful guy, i , met him later, he just doesn't like people on the set. even spielberg couldn't wear his baseball hat and had to wear a tie, because daniel likes to be in the moment. mr. carmichael: in the moment. yeah. mr. holzer: that moment happened

to be 1865. the second thing is i got a call from tony krishner in whispered tones. stephen doesn't like your idea. [laughter] mr. holzer: i said what idea? he said your idea about the voting and the congress. i said, it wasn't my idea, it was the way it actually happened. [laughter] i did not think of it. the founding fathers thought of this idea. he doesn't like it. he said, it's not cinematic. i said, you will live and die by the consequences. threateningly. and it happened, he said how , does connecticut vote 2-1? this congressman from connecticut made a big deal about it, went on the "today show," demanded every print be confiscated, that no connecticut accept the free dvds that spielberg offered every school in america, because of this calumny against the state of connecticut.

to this day, tony thinks he lost the oscar for best screenplay because they made such a big waso about the error that so easily, maybe not so easily, but it was avoidable. when tony krishner told me about the civil war roundtable, he said, thank you for not giving this to "argo." [laughter] an oscar.: which won which was also historically inaccurate. do you remember the movie "argo"? there was no chase down the runway in the real story. no one cares. but they cared about the lincoln details. [laughter] mr. holzer: but i love the movie. i did not answer the original question. i thought daniel day-lewis was astonishing. brilliant. mr. carmichael: my fear is that when people think of lincoln now , they will think about daniel day-lewis. when you think of patton, you think of the actor. george c scott.

but lincoln would probably be happy. daniel day-lewis is a great-looking guy. that is an uptick in the image making process. mr. carmichael: i don't know. mr. holzer: we were going to talk about some of that image as lincoln as a towering guy. mr. carmichael: we will talk about that in a moment. one of the things i thought was brilliant about the movie is it showed lincoln and how he was at his best in the bareknuckle political fights. especially, i think -- typical americans don't like to see lincoln in that light. they see him as a statesman. see --zer: they do not they don't like to see the making of the sausage. they only want to see the results. mr. carmichael: that's right. so i thought this book -- we see a man in lincoln who seduces the press in some ways that i , would like you to talk to the audience about. in light of the fact that you are an avowed lincoln man, and this is an area where lincoln does not look so good all of the

time. right? mr. holzer: well, he looks more complicated than we had thought. there was a 1951 book told "lincoln and the press." i would have loved to use that title, but i thought it was a bit much. we have all heard about the cases during the civil war that were the signature cases, the big ones. but i found about 300 cases -- and i didn't really do a complete inventory or audit as i could have if i spent another five years doing this -- 300 cases that i found of the military or the state department or post office department closing down newspapers, confiscating printing presses, arresting newspaper editors, reporters, publishers, detaining

imprisoning charge, them without trial. not just "the chicago times," world," baltimore, a lot of border state activity. francis scott key's grandson in about johnyou hear mars and ulysses s. grant they , closed down the missouri newspaper. he said he was bringing back the printing press. he was very excited about it. this is how you kept -- so how is this defensible? lincoln's defense was very simple and elemental, he believed the constitution gave him the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and maintain order in cases of rebellion. and he said, i now declare this to be called the war power. guess who has got it? i do. and i can close down newspapers.

in one of his great similes, you would never kill a patient -- this is actually sort of a very poignant thing to do in the civil war when amputations were so rampant -- you would never kill a patient to save a leg, but you would kill a leg to save patient. he was taking the leg of freedom of expression and redefining the thin line between dissent and treason. in order to save the body. that was his argument. he was willing to live and died by it. people always turn to andrew jackson. he turned to andrew jackson as an example. andrew jackson closed down newspapers in new orleans, and then reopened them. you may think it is excessive authority, but i will resume it when the normal relations between the southern states and the federal government is restored.

so i do not see any great -- i am still a lincoln man. i think he was tough. in other ways, it is eerie to , for example, how he was a pretty good purveyor of fake news when he wanted to be. [laughter] mr. holzer: he had that emancipation proclamation written, awaiting a military victory for its announcement. a personal vow with god to issue the proclamation. as soon as he was free to do so by union battlefield success, what looked like the last shriek on the retreat. but he repeatedly told people that it wasn't the case. he told horace greeley in a letter -- even though he hinted at what he was going to do -- if i could free some and leave others alone i would do that for the union. mr. carmichael: i quoted that. the line never gets quoted to greeley.

he says, "i shall adopt new views so fast that they shall appear to be true views." there is a pragmatism there. in today's world we would see a hypocrisy. that is pure pragmatism. mr. holzer: that was in august. probably hisst, worst moment as president was the freeectures african-americans in washington and says, go somewhere else because you are the cause of the war. frederick douglass chastises him and says, slavery is the cause of the war. but he is doing it to set up a straw man that i feel no missionary zeal for the african american. he is so worried about acceptance of the proclamation. the one that nobody ever talks about is the delegation of religious leaders from chicago

, and say mr. president, we are , begging you to do something to free the slaves when you have the power and the moment. this is even closer to lee's invasion of maryland. lincoln says, what good would a proclamation do? it would be like the pope against the comet. i think some of you may have heard that line. , i actually decided to find out what he meant by that. he had issued a people order comment -- comet was not to appear on the day the astronomers told. it appears the pope's been disobeyed. they write an article summarizing lincoln's lecture, that he is impotent and has no authority. he is not a leader of public opinion. and guess what date the article appears? september 23, which is the same day the proclamation was printed

in the papers. he has made total fools of them. they should have gotten their news out. mr. carmichael: let's talk a bit about political satire. and -- mr. holzer: this is tough stuff. mr. carmichael: this is tough stuff. if there has ever been a president treated more unfairly by the press than abraham lincoln. [laughter] mr. holzer: lincoln could take it, though, right? he could take it. he never tweeted about anything. [laughter] right? he manned up. this was the only issue that got him riled up. mr. carmichael: can you tell everyone? mr. holzer: this is -- by the way, all political cartoons that are separate sheet meant for display -- not caricatures in

the press, that is a different bird -- but these things meant for display are all commercial enterprises, so big firms like would print these. it is about finding constituents. the same democratic newspaper that lincoln had shut down in 1864, the same newspaper whose editor he had almost sent to fort lafayette, but the general thought he was so crazy, he did not let him go. the same newspaper ordered this print made, along with other prints. lincoln counseling -- what is the word, soliciting the soldiers? but it is about like the rumor, the charge that lincoln had asked someone to sing comic songs while charging the battle. which was littered with corpses.

with mcclellan offering aid to the soldiers. and it is supposed to be him, looking like mcclellan backwards, shuddering at this hideous request. it was a big thing in the campaign. it was repeated by democratic newspapers. lincoln is boorish, bulger, tasteless. he insulted the troops. lincoln had written a letter to the editor protesting the image in this story and saying i never visited -- first of all i never asked for a comic song to be sung anywhere near there, and second, i never walked on a foot of that battlefield on which graves had already been rained on more than once. or something like that. sign thisd, you letter, and then lincoln didn't send it. one of the famous expressions of

anger he wrote and didn't send, which was another interesting aspect of his leadership. mr. carmichael: so we will skip over the next image. mr. holzer: that is the one i was talking about. mr. carmichael: that one right there. courierer: that was the and i am showing him as a conspirer. and lincoln killing davis. and mcclellan, it could be. mr. carmichael: there is a fantastic podcast called back story. so i got this idea from back story. it is about the physicality of being the president. and that presence that some presidents exude and others do not. of course. others exert power. we have lbj. mr. holzer: with a man he later put on the supreme court. mr. carmichael: they called that the treatment. mr. holzer: lbj would spit on

people while lording over them. [laughter] mr. carmichael: and more recently, we have president trump pushing to the front at nato. when we go to get the ice cream, i will be pushing my way to the front as well. [laughter] mr. holzer: let me warn you that the president of montenegro is on to you. he will not let that happen again. once burned. mr. carmichael: that sets us up for your interpretation of the physicality of the president. -- holzer: this is such a you know, alexander gardner on the scene is probably more like harpers ferry then antigua. i always had trouble with that designation. here is the army of the potomac. lincoln has this wonderful auto -- and battlefield conference with mcclellan, who sets up the first set of photographs in his tent with an american flag , draped over the table. mcclellan is -- fascinating, his forehead is white and his cheeks are ruddy. he has been wearing a cap.

and even though they have been out in the sun in the september sunshine, he has the white brow. they are looking face to face. mcclellan should have said, i have done with the press, clear the room. but gardner convinced everyone to take this picture as well. see, lincoln is monumental. he makes little mac looked like a very little napoleon. that is the tent where they had their initial meeting. he said mcclellan has a , perfectly good headquarters there. do you see the house in the background? which is not really noticed in most pictures. they could have easily had their conference indoors, but it was not as photogenic. and here is lincoln slouching. you can see him ending at the -- of bending at the knee. he is a totem, and mcclellan is forced to lift his eyes upward at his leader, like it or not. and this picture was influential in a way. mr. carmichael: we have time

really quickly for a little more. mr. holzer: again, the body of lincoln, as was successfully argued a few years ago, this is lincoln putting himself in danger, in the surrendered city of richmond in 1865, being greeted people -- african-american people whose freedom was actually commenced when the union army entered the city, because this was before the 13th amendment became official. but by terms of the emancipation, when the troops occupied confederate territory, they were liberated. here is lincoln with his son clinging to his side, on his son's birthday. there is no emancipation moment in lincoln iconography. we wrote about this. because aishment, statue that was not dedicated until the centennial year of the

1876, is an emancipation moment. lincoln is not writing a document as he is in a famous painting by francis carpenter. he is lifting the representative enslaved person from his knees, liberating thereby an entire race symbolically. obviously, no such moment happened. it was tough to enforce the emancipation, as we all know. but this was a reality. this happened, how it happened we are still not sure. i think, going back -- i say so in my book, it was a journalist on the scene who went up to the people of color working on the docks and said, do you know who that is? how would they know? they were denied the opportunity to read newspapers, see pictures. the people for whom they worked did not have pictures of lincoln in their homes. they knew about lincoln, though. that is, that is your moses, that is mr. lincoln. and the word spread and lincoln was surrounded by hundreds of people. by the time he had finished,

thousands of people. and it was -- i would like to think that he realized this may have been the most important day of his life. the day that he understood the destruction of the war, the end of the war, and the changed relationship that african-americans would emerge from the war with. mr. carmichael: a true revolution. thenbrown's raid, suppressing the rebellion to the side of the slaveholders, and this no one could've possibly foreseen. thank you so much. you have been a dear friend to me over the years, and let me say to edith, you have been wonderful to me and my wife, and we are so thankful not just for your friendship, but you are a fantastic scholar. you have always been successful, engaging to people. we are so appreciative of all you have done. thank you so much, harold. [applause]

mr. carmichael: this is my fault, we are going longer than i imagined. but if you have questions for harold or books for harold to sign, i am sure he will do both. at the same time, harold will be off to the left, and the rest of you, go out those doors right there. jill, which doors are they going out? >> they will go on the main entrance. mr. carmichael: go out the main entrance and then turn left. again, my apologies for going all little long this evening. harold will be around a little tomorrow as well if you have questions. thank you so much, we will see you over at the ice cream social. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: c-span's cities tour is in spokane, washington with our cable partners as we explore that city's rich history and literary scene. today at 7:30 p.m., book tv features the history and economic development of the city with the author of "spokane, our early history." >> it was built from the money from the goal district, they had the gold rush in 1883 and it led to a sober strike. it was one of the largest producing silver areas in the united states. a lot of the mansions and big buildings were built from that

money. announcer: the life of one of the nation's most significant governmental leaders, local about the walkng to the gulf. >> john was one of the most in the picket environmental thinkers and leaders. the protagonist for the national park system. announcer: on sunday, american history tv features the story of expo '74, one of the first environmentally themed world affairs. >> spokane was the smallest city in the world to host a world's fair. it was the first one to use the environment as a theme. it followed close on, i believe 1972 was earth day, the very first earth day. there was a consciousness around the world about environmentalism. it became the theme, arguably

the obsession of expo '74. >> we will also visit the childhood home of bing crosby. announcer: today at 7:30 p.m. on c-span's 2 book tv. and on c-span 3. working with cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. lectures: tonight on in history, virginia, what university professor emily raymond teaches a class on the 1973 film, soiling green -- soylent green. here is a preview. window intos us a what was happening in the 1970's. it was easy for audiences to relate to what was happening because they had

seen similar images, or had dealt with similar problems in their daily life. albeit in tamer fashion, but for example, the shortages. here is a scene from the movie where people are waiting in line to get their water canisters filled. you have to wait in line and hope they still have some by the time you get there. and same thing with the gas stations all across the country. where there were shortages, gas was divvied out in small rations, or you might be able to go to the gas station if you had an even license plate on one day, but then if you have an odd lessons but you go on another day. they were fistfights at the gas stations, people would be waiting for hours. and they would get there and they would be out.

there.see the signs and in fact, these are some of the most iconic images of the 1970's. the problems at gas stations. citiese way with the where there was not enough power to light the city. there would be dark nights where everybody would have to turn their power off, or their power would be running at half last. -- blast. as extreme as the movie seems, it was not that far away from reality. the entirewatch program at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern tonight on lectures in history. american history tv, only on c-span3. president jimmy carter signed the panama canal treaty 40 years ago in 1977. it gave the nation of panama

eventual control of the panama now. -- canal. -- clymberclimber talks about his book, "drawing the line at the big ditch, the panama canal treaties and the rise of the right." he argues that america's decision to cede control came under intense criticism by the conservatives and was used as a platform in ronald reagan's bid for the presidency. this was recorded at the presidential library in 2008. it is just under 45 minutes. adam: it's honor to be here at the jimmy carter library, because it was jimmy carter who took on an issue that his predecessors had feared. now, presidents johnson, nixon, and ford, all concluded that if the status quo of the united state