For the next hour we looks for the history and literary culture of this historic city. Also known as the Horse Capital of the world. What people dont realize is kentucky nearly lost the horses at the highest levels at one time and this was after the civil war for generation when it went out east. It was a case of there have always been forces here. In fact thoroughbreds and kentucky bred breds the highest number but the one big money went up north to new york and new jersey after the civil war because thats where the finance and the stock market was. It was a crazy and are one people were making fortunes. There was no income tax and they were getting rich and they were displaying their wealth with racing stables. Coming up we will travel with author carl rays as he highlights historic landmarks and shares a history of maysville road a u. S. Highway that played an Important Role in kentuckys economic development. That first author Tracy Campbell talks about the rise and fall of one of the countrys most promising political figures edward f. Prichard junior. The title is short of the glory the fall and redemption of edward pitch pictured junior. If you had asked to as a bright shining star in american politics on a National Scale a lot of people cap turned graham and Arthur Schlessinger would have said Edward Prichard from kentucky. He was one of those people that worked in the white house when he was in his early 20s. He seemed destined for great things and then came back to kentucky in the 1940s, was indicted for stuffing the ballot box and went to prison and so that incredible promise just flamed out so he the rest of his life trying to rebuild out of the shadows and out of the tragedy of that scandal. Prichard seem to create one of two very distinct reactions in people. Either they were just taken by his intelligence, his photographic memory his wet his ability to mimic people. On the other hand a lot of people saw him as arrogant and too big for his britches. He would say things that parties that would filter throughout washington the next day and that also filtered out in kentucky where people had two very distinct feelings about him as to whether he was an up and coming political genius or someone who is just too arrogant and too much of a no it all for his own good. Pritchard never ran for anything when he was in high school so when he went to princeton im going to princeton newspaper and theres this headline that hes going to run for the debate team team which can you imagine running for debate team having people elect to you so i thought wow here he is putting himself up or an election so i scrolled ahead ballot stuffing debate Team Election and no one quite knew what it happened that they had throughout the results and so even in running for the debate team there were questions about pritchards methods in getting where he needed to be. He was born in 1915 so when he goes to washington and Franklin Roosevelt is president. He didnt work closely with Franklin Roosevelt that but he had enough interaction. At one point the story goes roosevelt was angry with his staffer leaking stories so he called them all in and really took the paint off the walls about what would happen the next time someone leaked a story before the president had a chance to announce it and then he realized he had gone a little too far so he said well sometimes it helps to get the story out there early and he said theres a story coming out about social security, maybe you could leak it to drew pearson and he said mr. President ira have. That was the kind of interaction he had with roosevelt. He was at the close of either but enough so that he would write speeches for him. But pritchard worked under the political scene. We mostly remember the november election of 1948 for truman versus dewey the famous image of Truman Holding up a newspaper. In kentucky there was a senate race between democrat and republican and in Bergen County when the sheriff went to open up the vault to get the ballot boxes ready that morning he could hear something at the bottom of the box. And took a pen knife to extract the fact that there were some ballots that had already been marked all of them for the democratic candidate chapman so someone had stuffed someone had stopped the ballots into these particular boxes. Altogether 254. So there was an investigation investigation and its interesting early on in the fbi they had no interest in pursuing a case of 254 marked ballots in a kentucky county. It was only after pritchards name appeared and some of the memoranda going back to washington that j. Edgar hoover wrote about this vigorously and thoroughly. I had already known that there was a sevenyear relationship that was not a warm one between Jaeger Hoover and pritchard so when hoovers opening pritchard is a possible suspect thats when everything changed. But like most greek tragedies it wasnt the fact that pritchard was framed or people werent out to get him. He did it to himself. He later admitted he stuffed the ballot boxes but it was something more. The sunday after the election he went to see an old friend an old friend from his childhood judge william artery a presiding judge in Bergen County kentucky and said he apparently confessed to it and hes confessing what he had done to a judge calling a grand jury the next day. If we take it on down to when the indictments are handed down the thing that really seals the Pritchard Spaeth is the fact that they have to, the prosecutors call a sitting judge to the stand who says what richard told him of the crime and they cant really cross examine him. The jury says we felt like we had no other option but to convict and so pritchard is convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud. He is given a twoyear sentence and a federal prison. A few years after having worked in the white house and after having being mentioned as a possible congressional candidate to Princeton Alumni weekly said oneday pritchard will probably be the democratic nominee for president. I imagine having your alumni newspaper saying that about you and here he is now going to federal prison. He was devastated. He could not return to the things that he loved. He couldnt return to politics. No one could have him in their campaign without the notion of the is there a jailbird working for you in any capacity. I think he got there he deeply depressed depressed. Friends tried to help him out. I interviewed mrs. Katharine graham in washington about him and in her papers she had a chat look that was eventually collected by her husband and what he would have people come in and read the new yorker, the economist the New York Times to him so its a tough story from the 1950s on. There was a rumor that he did it for an election debt, that there was a bet the wiki before that chapman would win so much of their percentage in Bergen County and to hedge his bets he wanted to help himself out so thats why 200 ballots in the statewide election might make a difference. Then there are others who save pritchard had not paid his dues and that he needed to show that he was still one of the local courthouse gang, that washington had made him too much of an elitist that he still understood the ways of local politics and it was something very common pritchard said. His father had done it a lot of people in Bergen County and southern contactors is kentucky to pay his dues maybe thats why he did it. He never really explained it odd later in 1976 he admitted that he did it and said it was a moral blind spot that he had no explanation for. And never tried to come up with an excuse for it but that it was simply something that he regretted for the rest of his life. I wish people would see that clinical biographies are fascinating but they are not just fascinating about people who are elected to win office. Sometimes people who run for nothing or maybe lose an office can have an impact in ways that you cant imagine. Robert k. Rove show this about robert moses who was unsuccessful in electoral politics but knew how to work the system in new york to create something behind the scenes and also to see American History is rife with tragic figures whose lives we can celebrate and shake our heads at the same time because thats who we are. Thats the human condition and like i said when we started Historical Research you never know when to ask that first question where are you going to be taken and pritchards life took me on it was like a river i was swept up in and i couldnt believe that i was that lucky to have a chance to write about a figure that was so complex, so dynamic, so flawed and so gifted gifted. While in lexington we met with Mark Wahlgren summers about his book a dangerous stir. I have been chasing reconstruction for many years and a lot of the racks. Ive been facing down corruption in the way newspapers got the wrong story but for the book about a dangerous stir about paranoia i was dealing with america coming out of the most devastating situation. Eric guessed right now is three quarters of a million americans died which is an incalculable number. Its more than virtually all of our other wars up until the 21st century put together. I was looking at the way people respond to how you put the country back together again. For many historians the idea is why couldnt the two sides come together . Why wasnt there a kind of compromise between those that wanted to do was to do was little reconstructing as possible and those who wanted to do things in a radical way . Why wasnt there reasonable alternative . For a reasonable alternative you need reasonable people. What happens just about everybody out there has wild paranoid fantasies that people are out to undermine the republic. What if they really think that the people they are dealing with are people that are not disagreeing with him about political positions but a conspiracy conspiracy to destroy American Freedom and what if they begin to have evidence that this is the case of . Wars dont just cause tremendous physical havoc and harm to human beings. They do. They dont just destroyed towns. They can destroy peoples sense of rationality things that you believe impossible suddenly become very possible and then you see them anywhere. You imagine whats happening if you were a White Conservative southerner and you know christmas comes theres going to be an uprising of former slaves and they are going to kill everybody so they can get ahold of their land, that they are going to butcher men women and children. You imagine really believing that and ask what you would do in terms of policy. One of the things you do is you start reading all the former slaves cabins. You take their guns in their arms and you get rid of their rights to bear arms. You clamp down on them. You do a little judicious killing. Nothing remotely like that was absolutely invented out there. Was there any reality to the fear that people set free after the end of the war were going to go raping their masters or their masters wives or children and butcher them . Was there a bloodbath in the south . Of course not. The only bloodbath there was in the south were white folks killing folks because while they were slaves they were property. They had value. They had respect for property but now they are not property. They are fair game. Imagine louisiana where in the course of say 10 or 20 years to get 2500 people being killed. Imagine one year you have over 500 racially motivated assaults and killings out their white against. Thats what you got. Thats the reality out there. You have been around and you know what iraq was like in 2003 and 2004. Iraq in 2004 was louisiana in 1868. Its bloody and ugly and terrifying and this is going on. Its a scary time. You couldnt imagine once the war was over. The president of the United States would be killed by an assassin who might decapitate the governments of the confederacy could rise again. You would imagine that anybody as an assassin with a lead that Abraham Lincoln intended to make himself Abraham Lincoln was a threat to the republic and he was like a brutus killing caesar but thats the reality of john wilkesbooth and after that you can believe anything. You can believe that maybe Andrew Johnson was part of the conspiracy to try to finish off his successor so he could get to the top. You can believe that the conspiracy was part of a longstanding conspiracy by the Democratic Party to kill any president who welcomed a democrat and you may say thats crazy you say that sends the Democratic Party was founded under Andrew Jackson who were the president s of the opposite party . The first one was henry blame harrison and he died in office. They said it was pneumonia and the next one was Zachary Taylor and oh he had gotten in the way of the south and they said it was how convenient that was. Then it was Abraham Lincoln and quite a pattern. If you have prominent democrats that are saying you should elect democrats because you know you can guarantee they wont die in office what kind of message does that send . You are beginning to sense that there might be a wider broader conspiracy out there. People believed it. They thought it was there are. They wrote books about it yet its all part of the mindset. If you have a president of the United States who believes members of the congress are out to kill him, who compare themselves to christ who think that members of the Congress Plan to kill kill eight million americans in the south we are talking a level of irrationality that is incredible. Supposing the president of the United States state said today well you want me to say who are the traders from the United States . I say mitch mcconnell. I say speaker boehner. I say the heads of fox news and all of their kind are traitors of the United States. Your world with a plan of the United States congress is to kill at least 8 million americans . The congress of United States the supposed that congress, the body that claims itself to be the congress of the United States. Supposing the president of the United States said that . What would you say . This guy needs to be carried off the cookie factory, right . This guy clearly belongs in a rubber room. You say this is a serious nutcase. What im doing is Andrew Johnson in 1866 president of the United States president of the United States in these doing exactly that. Thats exactly what hes doing. You may think this is rational. I dont think this is rational. I think this is very dangerous and that guy that thinks that way you are beginning to ask if hes calling it the alleged congress or a body hanging off the beds of government that declares itself to be of congress you might ask what is he going to do about it lacks is he going to use the army to toss it out and put in the congress he wants . Is possible, dont you think . It could happen, dont you think and thats when you begin to really get into a cold sweat. Thats america in 1866. Andrew johnson was a brave patriotic abled talented tennessee slaveholding politician who stood by the American Flag when others went after the stars and bars. Became a military governor during the war and became when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated treated democratic president elect did on a simply republican ticket to balance it off in 1864. Andrew got johnsons courage come his principles and his belief in the constitution buying the government and is not expansive. Hes contempt for people is also very real and very sincere. Andrew johnson wants to bring the country together as fast as possible as a way of making sure that the editors of the war would not contend. And so in 1865 he used his president ial authority to start the process going with State Government run by white southern conservatives would dominate the south and where in fact even if johnson didnt want something as close to slavery as possible would be imposed upon free people. When the congress tried to adjust and change this, not to give blacks the vote but to give them essential basic rights to hold property, to marry and to sue and be sued, to testify in court they thought johnson was on their side. In fact johnson vetoed the civil rights bill. It became very clear that he was not only not on their side but was even making arguments suggesting that this congress had no right to passage of bill because the Southern States were not yet represented in it and it therefore might not even be a legal congress. This is a man another were to again and again rejects compromise in the most violent terms. In february of 1866 he will make a speech in which he will declare that the Congress Plans to kill a million white southerners. He will declare that theres a conspiracy, treasonous conspiracy against his life that leading members of the congress art traitors to the United States and he will charge that the congress may not be a legal congress. The result is that members of congress increasingly see him as a person you cant negotiate. You cant deal with him and a person who may have designs to overthrow the republic himself. In the meantime johnson really believes tha