Six battles to talk about how important and significant war has been in our history and who fights our battles. Alternately research to ask the questions when is it worth going to war . Benjamin franklin said there was never a good war or a bad piece he said that in 1783. I am not sure that i agree with that but the trick is when is a good war . Talk about the militia i cowrote to a biography and to you deal with how you could not order militia around the way you could regular shall when dash soldiers. This causes that giant incident where arnold is to announce in the newspapers because youre not supposed to give orders to the militia. This is a narrative that we tend to learn about the schoolbook history of the of revolution they drop their plows. That was true with lexington and concord. George washington feared to rely upon the militia and a broker in staff. So whats the difference is here because i am sure what is an army . But militia were the men who are responsible to their states but the economy had to provide them militia mostly required to defend their home town in the south if there was a specific duty for slave rebellion. And the is militiamen were only enrolled for nine months or three months or six months and this is why in 1776 thomas payne writes a very famous essay called a crisis called the summer soldier he was talking about the militiamen. This summer soldiers would come when we didnt have to harvest crops but then they go back. This is why they needed a professional Standing Army. So there was a real discrepancy between the militia covered by the state and governors and not of farmers terror off but immigrants german and irish even though he resisted and would not in a list of blacks in he first took over the army. But the france joined and so they joined. For those who served and fought and won the revolution from dash heroic minutemen myth created after the war cemetery was great fear of a Standing Army. The people i can see a real hadnt won decennial adams and Thomas Jefferson feared a Standing Army they often ended with a strong man to march into takeover going back to julius caesar. And associated with those who had Nothing Better to you do and the soldiers through the dregs of society it was a negative image and that is important because it is reflected in how they took care of the american soldiers. After monday to close and feed his troops he writes a letter from valley forge to say as the manservant that is slave named william lee was basically naked. Washington did on stage is set for that same discomfort but that is a different story. So fast forward bedded and iris society that shared sacrifice from 04 to another major conflicts that the idea of iraq especially hiring cancer halliburton but it also changes the way of the public use. With this book the Hidden History of america at war i want to write and tell the story over 230 or 2 1 4 years of who had fought our battles so the armies that fought for us to see the u. S. Troops going off but the story that i tell so that was a battle that began that was a grisly and crusoe moment. But two of them were dismembered and hung from a bridge. So what they did not realize was those four men were not soldiers by a private security contractors working for a company that is now much better known in 2004 known as blackwater that name is no longer in existence and it has been sold. So the ideas that these four men to talk about americans being brutalized and blackhawk down, it is a very different situation. To be under equipped is not properly staffed they did not speak to the marines outside of fallujah at that point of course, it is already was in the year after rehab a Mission Accomplished moment. So put that into context it is supposed to be a war in which major combat is over according to the president. And then to go into suppress what is now becoming an insurgency in fallujah. It in the first chapter about yorktown with cold steel or a fixed bayonet in one thing that has not changed that is an irony of sorts but it is a brutal fight and the casualties are mounting going from washington as they complete their mission. And bin to finish the job it is the intersection between of military affairs and Political Affairs so as a president ial race was going on from political history and that is also one of those lessons. Also one of the threats that sometimes the reasons are suspect says the great example of that that set of the spanishamerican war, you give the endorsement a wonderful book how William Randolph hearst and Teddy Roosevelt sent america into the war if they wanted to or not. I read the book and they could not stop thinking about the invasion of iraq and other instances where there is intelligence are some people want to take as pretext at the time is it is not mind that look the battleship for the spanish but now it is thought the problem was they put the ammunition to close to the boilers to read that is what the navy determined maybe 70 years later. A little too late to undo the war. And that is enclosing the barn door. But some people seem to know it because then thomass book to talk about and have girl who took his battleship to create more separation between the munitions he thought maybe that was the cause . Rabil just point out with a lot of different battles this says a chronological sequence and the war of were talking about is one of the most obscure to Many Americans although it seems all of the of wars are faded into a black hole of American History. In this spanishamerican war is a moment in history that we become a global power almost by accident or by design. But just to go back to refresh your recollection there was a war of state held in cuba as well as many other positions around the world of what was the once great is global empire and included the philippines. Certainly when William Mckinley very reluctantly took the nation into war a Civil War Veteran had seen how horrible the civil war was and was provoked that pushed yellow journalism to ramp up in what they did not realize where the philippines were but they were a spanish possession and the Theodore Roosevelt who was in charge because the real secretary was on vacation orders admiral dewey in hong kong to steam for manila bay because he knows the war is coming in this will be the moment that ameritech can seize a crucial piece of territory in the middle of the pacific ocean. S of war. Very often we dont think about this. And mckinley certainly had no plan to make the philippines an american possession, but he later did. And that created a war, a conflict that was larger, actually, than the fighting in cuba over, with spain over cuba, and more protracted. And, actually, the story i tell is set in the philippines of a massacre of a Small Company of men who are getting ready to celebrate or commemorate the death of William Mckinley by assassination which puts Theodore Roosevelt the hero of the spanishamerican war into the white house. Its a fascinating story on so many levels, but Theodore Roosevelt is certainly the central character. And i want to reiterate how important the people are in this. These are stories where were certainly talking about policy and all that, but this is really stories about people whether its the men who were around George Washington at yorktown, the men, young boys who go to the philippines or Theodore Roosevelt as a real force of nature in american poll the ticks. Its politics. Its really the people that are driving these stories. Yeah, ill second that as far as, i mean, the title, the Hidden History, i think, is appropriate because you do mention people who ive never heard of before who were, you know, people who were right there at the, where the battle was happening. I wanted to ask you another thing about this. You also sometimes go to obscure places like in the philippines which is not you know, if you were telling a general history, im not sure thats the first place youd go to if you wanted to explain the spanishamerican war. But its a very smart place that you end up, and you can and everything kind of comes from that. I really like the way the book goes through the specific and then kind of broadens out and tells kind of the big picture but doesnt lose the small picture as well. Well, the point of it was try the point of it was trying to focus on an extraordinary moment, at dramatic moment of usually one that our schoolbooks do weed out but allows us to speak about much larger issues and the question here was the massacre of a group of american soldiers by filipinos which created complete outrage in this country just the way i call them pearl harbor moments. We have had many of them in our history. When something disastrous happens in the nation really comes together. This was a pearl harbor moment in 1901 and the chapter is called the water cure and significance and the reason i call that the water cure and focused on this moment in the spanishamerican war is that this incident really leads to a horrific series of events in which atrocities are committed by american soldiers, gets filipinos and a method called the water cure was used by americans against filipinos, an method on which a prisoner was basically laid down on the floor and water was forced down his stomach and tell he was willing to confess anything they wanted him to confess to. Obviously while i was writing that waterboarding was very much in the news and so the notion that questions of atrocities and torture were being addressed in 1901 in the spanishamerican war was certainly something i was not really familiar with and this wasnt a matter of doing some historical secret documents. This was actually a Senate Hearing was held about these issues. Blame howard taft the future president was a civilian governor of the philippines. He had to testify in congress about the socalled water cure so i think its incredibly instructive to see that this is a story that could have been torn from todays headlines that was happening 100 years ago and thats really the point of studying history in the first place, that we learned something from it but if we dont know the history we simply cant learn from it paid. Thats exactly right and i think the truth telling about there were american atrocities in the philippines and i grew up learning that the United States has liberated philippine nose and given them them therefore to matter world war ii which is true but its not the whole truth. Clearly the americans try to suppress an Independence Movement in the philippines at that time with rhetoric explaining that they couldnt selfgovern themselves and americas goal was to christianize them like to point out was ridiculous considering the spanish had been there for centuries. In many filipinos were very devout Roman Catholics as well but this is an interesting small point that mckinley says he actually had a dream and he tells us to a group of evangelicals it have come to the white house. Evangelicals in the white house in 1900 and he tells them he had a dream truly a divine dream in which he was told to take over the philippines in part to christianize them which must have, as a surprise to the pope. [laughter] there were quite a few Roman Catholic churches spread around the philippines at that point but its also a reflection of the deep anticatholic mood in this country at that time and certainly much older story. Catholics in the 19th century in particular for all the talk that we have about the christian nation where the dreaded feared evil religious minority that is threatening to take over the country and this wasnt a small group of people. This was being preached from many of the most both in the country. There was a belief that catholics were coming to america in large numbers specifically Irish Catholics to take over the country and turn it over to the pope and build a new vatican in cincinnati at all places. [laughter] i never quite figure out why cincinnati was this catholics new vatican targets own. When al smith ran for president there was Campaign Literature against the building of the subway in new york and they said there was going to be a slow boil then although it had vatican. We laugh at it now but it was truly a part of the political dna of america at the time. The Famous Campaign slogan against al smith who was a Roman Catholic himself was rome, romanism and ruined. The rome that he was opposed to prohibition and catholicism was ruined because he would obviously do things like raise taxes. Bad elements of anticatholicism is certainly a big piece of the story and the spanishamerican war and partly untold story, part of the Hidden History as i like to call it and the wonderful part of all of this i think is that when you hear these stories some of them can obviously make us angry. Some of them can make a cynical but there are so much more interesting than the path that we are told is very young children. I really enjoyed what he wrote about the africanamerican soldiers in various battles and one of the things that is really interesting was most of the time they were discriminated against and were not given to there was an attempt to diminish their bravery but they were sent down to cuba for the spanishamerican war and they were called indians. They were considered immune because of course youre going to be immune to all tropical diseases just because they were from africa. Thats right and that was actually a belief. These were the famous Buffalo Soldiers that i described in their transition from the u. S. Troops the uscto the civil war and they are featured in the Second Chapter the book which is about the siege of petersburg in which the u. S. Troops performed valiantly and after the war many of those troops were sent to the southwest to fight the indians and it was there that the native americans partly out of respect for their ferocity of the africanamerican soldier cavalrymen in the southwest called them Buffalo Soldiers certainly because of their hair appearing like buffalo skin but also the fact that the buffalo was sacred to them and they felt a kinship of sorts with these african soldiers because of their bravery. They have enormous respect for them but when the spanishamerican war begins at the turnofthecentury bear brought specifically to fighting cuba because they were thought to be immune from tropical diseases as slaves were much earlier in American History because they came from africa. The presumption was that they would be immune or less likely to catch tropical diseases and of course utter nonsense. To this theme of africanamericans in this military history it begins certainly with the first chapter because as i mentioned one soldier in Washingtons Army was a black man and not depicted routinely in the patriotic paintings we see but more to the point this is the one im sure they didnt tell you in school, the first thing washington did was after the battle was over and it was written into the surrender document was make sure he recovered the property being held at the british garrison and everyone understood that property meant about 5000 escaped africanamerican slaves who had joined the british in hopes of winning their freedom. I know they didnt tell me that one when i was in school but this included 17 people from washingtons own plantation who left six months before with the british captain who sail to mt. Vernon and said come to with me if they want to be free and they didnt they included yorktown. Washington made sure all of them were returned to slavery and this is of course the great contradiction of the American Revolution and one of the threats in this book is how important slavery and the Race Relations were not only in the military but all of American History and we certainly have to understand that today if we would want to understand some of the very serious issues we are facing every week it seems around the country. A kind of drives me crazy when you hear people say the Founding Fathers worked really hard to free the slaves went four for the 51st president on slaves. Indeed they did, five of the first seven, 10 of the first 15 so not what we talk about. You also quote another fine story by tom clements. I was talking to him about this and he dismisses that is what he calls presentism with this idea that you shouldnt judge people people from the past on presentday standards but i do think that there is something to judging people on the basic human standards. Slavery was just plain wrong and there were plenty of people alive than he knew it to. Of course in washington himself knew it and as men thate chapters named for were probably, theyre all in their mid 20s. They were very, very close friends. They had been with washington through all of the defeats and disasters and disappointments. But these three were probably the most outspoken proponents of putting black soldiers in uniform. Jack Lawrence John lawrence was a lieutenant colonel. Hes there in yorktown that night. Hes fixed his bayonet. He was the son of Henry Lawrence, the president of congress. And Henry Lawrence had made his fortune trading slaves, shipping slaves to america, as many as 8,000 is the estimate ive read. Lawr lawrence was sent to england and europe as a young man to be educated, not completely caught up with the ideals of enlightenment and came back a complete abolitionist righ