Away from that, and what we of counterinsurgency typically working with local forces to secure the population is done mainly and we will see over time there is better collaboration between special operations and generalpurpose forces. Together in that what they did could be mutually reenforcing. And, you know, theres a myth in counterinsurgency that you dont actually need to kapturkill capturekill the enmy, and i think thats false. But you had the special operators would do the capturingkilling of the leadership targets while the conventional forces would do more population security, theyd go in and stir up hornets nests and reveal targets. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations] and now were back live in nashville. Up next, authors roger hodge and Daniel Sharfstein discuss westward expansion. [inaudible conversations] welcome, everyone. We are happy to have you at the southern festival of books. My name is andy bennett, im the host for this session. The southern festival of books depends on many sources of funding including individual donations. So please consider any amount that you can, and you can donate by web site, by facebook or at the Festival Headquarters during the weekend. Our authors will be signing their books at the signing tent on the War Memorial Plaza after the session. You can purchase their books at the par par nasa book area, and a portion will benefit the festival. Our first speaker is Daniel Sharfstein, professor of law and history at vanderbilt. He has twice won the law schools outstanding professor award. Hes a graduate of harvard and yale law school. And before law school, he was a journalist. Hes also codirector of the George Barrett social Justice Program at vanderbilt law school. Professor sharfstein . Hi, everybody. You can hear me in the back . Great. Its wonderful to be here again at the southern festival of books, my hometown book festival, and a real honor to be introduced by judge bennett. In the decade plus that ive lived in nashville, ive presented here as an author, ive been a host, and most of all ive been a member of the audience. So i think sharing this panel with roger hodge gives me the best of all worlds. I just love the range of conversations that we have here at the festival, and i look forward to hearing from all of you. Today ill be talking about the nez perce war and how i came to write my book, thunder in the mountains and what their conflict tells us about america after reconstruction and about our current moment. My book centers around a war that the u. S. Fought in the summer of 1877 against a small group of nez perce indians who refused to move from their Traditional Land onto a reservation. The fighting began in the rolling prairies and deep canyons where oregon, washington and idaho meet. But then the nez perce families men, women, children, ultimately about 900 in all fled east through the mountains into montana. They moved along the continental divide. If you look on a map, its kind of the ragged border between idaho and montana. And then they went down into wyoming, across the newlycreated Yellowstone National park where they took some of the first tourists there hostage. And then finally, they turned sharp north across montanas buffalo plains trying to reach sitting bull in canada where he had fled after custers last stand the year before. For three and a half months and over some of the roughest mountain terrain in the country, the northern rockies, the nez perce families outran the army. But then in early october 1877, soldiers trapped them just 40 miles south of the border. The families were starving, they were freezing, and they were devastated by months of vicious battles. It wasnt a big war, but people have been writing about it almost constantly from the moment it happened. Why is that . Because in its aftermath the nez perce leader who surrendered, chief joseph, became a National Celebrity the. He was hailed both as a military genius wrongly, it turned out, because other men were the war chiefs but also a man of extraordinary kindness and feeling. Thousands of people visited him in exile. School children recited his words. People packed his speeches and then adapted them as poetry. Josephs pleas to restore his people to their land inspired generations of activists for civil and human rights. Ive been interested in the nez perce war from the moment i could read words on a page. Finish when i was 6 when i was 6 years old, my mother gave me a childrens biography of chief joseph. It was part of the classic dell yearling biography series where they gave you a bit of everything; abe lincoln, George Washington carver, helen keller. And i just never forgot those books. But what compelled me to write about chief joseph in the first place, to write thunder in the mountains, actually wasnt joseph. It was the general who led the army forces against the nez perce, a man named Oliver Otis Howard. Howard was a maine yankee, west point graduate, someone with a truly terrific, rippling beard. [laughter] actually, one of the challenges of writing this was very quickly you run out of synonyms for bushy. [laughter] and much to the displeasure of his men, he was a teetotaling advantage list. He was evangelist. He was known as the christian general. During the civil war, he had commanded a union army brigade and became an ardent abolitionist who early on knew that he was fighting a war to destroy slavery. In june 1862 he lost his right arm above the elbow, and the nez perce would later call him cut arm. But he quickly recovered, and he wound up as one of William Tecumseh shermans commanders during the march to the sea and during the final push up through the carolinas. As the war was ending, howard was tapped to lead a bold experiment in governing. Congress had created a new agency, the bureau of refugees, freed men and abandoned lands. The agencys job was to redistribute confiscated rebel property and help nearly four Million People navigate the path from slavery to citizenship. The bureau built schools, they built hospitals, orphanages, asylums, they set up entire court systems. This was the first big federal social Welfare Agency in American History. Truly a radical test of what a government could and should do for its people. And as head of the freedmens bureau, howard was a crucial player in giving concrete meaning to the concepts of liberty and equality. These are concepts that the emancipation proclamation and the 13th and 14th amendments boldly proclaimed to be the twin pillars of our reborn American Republic. When congress, in 1867, chartered a new university for africanamericans in washington, d. C. , it was a given that it would be named for howard, howard university. In southern history Oliver Otis Howard is a hero. A flawed hero, to be sure. Someone who embodied the limitations of the federal governments efforts to remake the rebel south. But still, a dedicated and true warrior for black equality. Then as reconstruction was collapsing, howard was sent to oregon in 1874 to command army forces in the pacific northwest. So hes a hero in southern history, in africanAmerican History, but in western history, in native American History general howard is a villain. You know, his decisions all but sparked the nez perce war. Men following his orders wound up massacring women and children. So the nez perce war is not just the story of one civil rights hero, chief joseph. Rather, its the story of how howard himself a civil rights champion made vicious war on another civil rights champion and, in a way, its a quintessential story of america after reconstruction. The decades between the end of the civil war and 1900 are a story of an extraordinary pivot in american values. In 1865 the u. S. Was a beacon of liberty and equality to the world. But by 1900 all that political and policymaking energy was being redirected to a vast project of sifting and sorting. Jim crow was the rule of the south, and really much of the rest of the country. Every two or three days an africanamerican was lynched. At the border chinese imi immigrants were banned. 1900, the nation had become an imperial power with territories stretching from san juan to manila. A person with dark skin was as likely to be a colonial subject as a citizen. So from 1865 to 1900, from emancipation to empire, this is a quick and stunning turn in our sense of america and the purpose of our government. And its a crucial moment for america. You know, its when the foundation was laid for battles that were still fighting over the contours of liberty and equality, the relationship between race and citizenship and over the proper size, scope and role of government. The story of this turn from emancipation to empire goes through the west. The last decades of the 19th century involved a massive exercise of government power to take land and wealth from one group and give it to another. The west was the staging ground for empire. It was where the logic and the politics, the division of what our government existed to do were worked out. And whats amazing is that so many of the people who had fought for emancipation wound up playing key roles in building the new regime. You know, i wanted to explore how real people saw and experienced this ethical transformation. Oliver otis howard went west, 1874, nearly a broken man. He had been a lightning rod for years for opposition to reconstruction, constantly investigated for corruption, turned into a national joke. And as he traveled along the transcontinental railroad, he hoped that his time in the west would be his great second chance. You know, a big part of his job would involve forcing native americans onto reservations. For howard, reservation policies enacted kind of fantasy of reconstruction. You know, during reconstruction he really hadnt been able to give away 40 acres and a mule to africanamericans even though he tried. But in the west, he could give away small plots of land, and he thought that this would be a pathway to full citizenship. You know, he had convinced himself that this was an extension and not a betrayal of reconstructions values. You know, it was for him an enlightened way to protect indians from genocidal wars. But then he encountered joseph. Now joseph, by the time he met howard in the spring of 1875 two years before the war joseph was a seasoned add slow candidate for his people advocate for his people. He was a young man in his early 30s, outranked by many other leaders who had long experience hunting buffalo and fighting rival nations to the east, you know, black feet, crow, lakota. But then ranchers started encroaching on josephs ancestral land in oregon. They told joseph rightly that under an 1863 treaty the valley had been put into the public domain, and it had already been divided up into homesteads. But no one in the valley had been represented at the 1863 treaty council. Leaders of other totally separate nez perce bands 100 miles away had ceded the land for them. So that presented jost joseph with a real challenge. And its a story for our time. You know, when so many people today are wondering if theres anything they can do to change our nations direction. So joseph had to figure out how to move the federal government, how to find and connect with american power, how to change official policy and convince people that the 1863 treaty didnt apply to his band. And thats a tall order especially when we consider that hes native american, and native americans really did not get much respect for claims that they made to land. And whats more, he was in an incredibly isolated Mountain Valley surround by towering peaks and canyons deeper than the grand canyon, really hard to get in or out. And he didnt speak english. He did his talking in nez perce and in chinook jargon, regional trade language. So what did joseph do . How did he get his words to swim upstream . Joseph decided to plead his case to every federal official he could find; local indian agent, regional supervisor for indian affairs, a congressman home from recess. And he pressed his claim until those officials reported to washington that joseph was right. In the process joseph was discovering how the American Republic worked after the civil war. It had many faces, many competing authorities. You know, power was split, and it remains split in countless ways. You know, among federal, state and local governments, among legislative, executive, judicial branches and among all kinds of overlapping agencies. What joseph found was a fluid core of american power. You know, nothing is ever quite resolved once and for all. Its never over. Theres always someone else to turn to. And often per since in this process persistence in thises process could be leveraged into rights. You just have to keep fighting. And joseph saw this. He figured it out. And he had remarkable success in getting his peoples land claims reopened again and again both before and after the war. In the course of his advocacy, joseph developed a set of arguments about liberty and equality that howard would have immediately recognized as, you know, ones that he had made about the freed people during reconstruction. But howard refused to be, to see joseph as someone who was participating in a new american process. Instead he saw joseph as someone showing disrespect for his authority, you know, someone who could only be governed by brute force. In his drive for redemption, howard was single minded as he pursued the nez perce families through the northern rockies. But military victory didnt mean redemption for howard, and almost immediately he recognized this. You know, at the moment of josephs surrender, it was josephs surrender, it was almost as if howard realized that he was no longer the hero of his own story. Thats a tough thing to recognize. Ultimately, howard wound with up playing a key role in making a place for joseph in american culture. In the days and weeks that followed the war, howard and his aidedecamp publicized josephs surrender statement. And in the decades to come, howard just couldnt stop writing about joseph. You know, in the end it was joseph and not general howard who would be remembered as a great civil rights figure. And josephs rhetoric is so poignant, so moving that its easy to overlook that he wasnt simply making a plea for a full package of rights as an american, you know, what we might call citizenship. You know, more specifically he was trying to define citizenship for an age of big government. He was claiming the right to participate in the contentious struggles that are just baked into our modern way of governing. Its the right to speak to the state and to be heard. He represents a set of ideas, but just as importantly a set of methods that we need more than ever. Im going to finish, i think, by just reading a little bit of, from the book and really in the book i tried to foreground the words and experiences of joseph and many other native american nez perce survivor ises of the war. Survivors of the war. So its josephs surrender speech that made him a celebrity. First, i thought id read his surrender speech and then a little bit of a speech he gave in washington, d. C. A year and a half after the war. So heres the surrender statement. Its like the first thing that ever went viral. [laughter] tell general howard i know his heart. What he told me before, i have in my heart. Im tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed, Looking Glass is dead [inaudible] is dead, the old men are all dead. Its the young men who say yes or no. He who leads the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food, no one knows where they are. Maybe freezing to death. I want time to look for my children and see how many of them i can find. Maybe i shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs, i am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, i will fight no more forever. But the thing is we have to remember joseph never stopped fighting. So here he is a year and a half later in washington d. C. More than 800 people bought tickets to see joseph, the Main Attraction alongside visiting choctaw, chickasaw, cherokee and creek chiefs. Joseph spoke for more than an hour. To make his argument was to tell the history of his people among the whites. Much of his talk hed given countless times before the war. His tribes long friendship with the United States, the injustice of of the treaty, the pledge he made his father never to abandon the valley. But it was the most recent chapters of his story that transformed him and his audience. According to one reporter, as his account of the war unfolded, his voice developed its flexibility, and joseph began gesturing and miming which for grace and appropriateness would have done credit to a frenchman. Listeners gasped as he remembered the war, laughed when he described the raid on the army mule train in the meadows, wept as he told of the broken promises of the surrender. The audience then heard a message that had fallen out of favor with the end of reconstruction. An appeal for a new commitment to the basic values of liberty and equality. If the white man wants to live in peace with the indian, he can live in peace, joseph said. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. He called for an equal citizenship defined by broad fundamental liberties. Let me be a free man, he said. Free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where i choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself, and i will obey every law or submit to the penalty. When he finished with the simple declaration, this is my story and here i am, the theater roared with emotion. Thank you very much. [applause] roger hodge is a Deputy Editor for the intercept which is an internet news source. Hes former editor of the oxford american and harpers magazine, and his writings are so numerous, i dont think ill try and list any of them here. Hes written a book that is, i think, part memoir, part reporting and part history. And so heres mr. Hodge to talk about his book, texas blood. Thank you. Its really an honor to be up here with dan, and he is a real historian. I am a journ