Booktv. Org for the full weekend schedule. Now we kick off with clay risens story of the rough riders led by Theodore Roosevelt. [inaudible conversations] good evening. Good evening and welcome to green light bookstore. Were excited tonight to have clay risen presenting his book, the crowded hour. Hell be talking to dr. Amanda foreman. Before i turn things over to them, a couple of housekeeping things. First, turn off or silence cell phones or electronic devices. Second, book withs are for sale at the register. If you want to see whats happening the rest of the summer here at greenlight, fliers are available at the desk. And tonights program is being recorded by cspan. Amanda forman is author of awardwinning best sellers and of the forthcoming the world made by women a history of women from the apple to the pill. Her documentary work includes wellingtons women, the georgians and the bbc networks [inaudible] her next project is the exhibition fit for a queen inside victorias palace, for the 2019 summer opening of buckingham palace. Clay risen is the author of a nation on fire, the bill of the century, as well as the best selling american whiskey, bourbon and rye a guide to the nations favorite spirits. Hes appeared on the greenlight stage many times to talk about both history and whiskey, so were glad to have him here with us again. His new book, the crowded hour, dives deep into the life of thee deer Roosevelt Theodore roosevelt, illustrating not just the spanishamerican war, but americas standing in the world thereafter. The book has been praised by fellow authors and historians including jon meacham and douglas brinkley. Scrupulously researched and dramatically narrated, the crowded hour showcases Theodore Roosevelt in all of his rough rider glory. Clay risen brings the spanishamerican war and the gilded age back to life. All of roosevelts undaunted hubris, derringdo and political genius are captured in the epic. So youre in for Something Special tonight. Clay will be reading from the book, then amanda will join him in conversation, and youll have a chance to ask your questions after. That please join me in welcoming to stage clay risen. [applause] i did not come prepared. [laughter] all right. So, first of all, i just want to thank greenlight so much for hosting me for this event. It is just a single pleasure of my life to have a bookstore like in this right down the street and know that, you know, from the very beginning, my children right here from the very beginning of moving into this neighborhood with little kids, this was not just a bookstore, but truly a part of our community, part of our Friends Network and a source of knowledge and fun and just ton it is of surprises. So thrilled to be here to talk about my book. Its a true honor x. Also to have so many friends, neighbors, cocoworkers, people ive encountered through my life here. This is just really sweet. So hopefully, well have fun tonight. I will read a little bit from the book, and then amanda and i will chat. The book, as it should be readily evident, is about Theodore Roosevelt. Oh, sorry about that. See, this is where im really not prepared. I didnt even have my mic on. [laughter] all right. Thats better. So its about Theodore Roosevelt and the rough riders. Just for some context, the 30second version for people who maybe are new to story. In 1898, america declared war on spain primarily over cuba and cuban war for independence. America was, this is our first humanitarian intervention. The problem was we didnt have an army. America had, by law, congressional law, a mandated cap of 28,000 soldiers and officers. So right away there was a need for just people to go and fight the war. So roosevelt, who at the time was working in washington for the navy department, proposed the idea of getting together not just volunteers, but people who could very quickly go into war because they had certain, lets say certain skills. I describe it as sort of like that liam neeson movie, he has certain skills. Sort of like dirty dozen but a thousand. See, rachel laughed. [laughter] so he recruited a thousand college athletes, cowboys, police officers, people from all walks of life. The number one and the number two the tennis players in the country quit tennis to join the rough riders. And in short order, they went to texas to train, to florida to join the rest of the army that was shipping out and then to cuba to actually fight the spanish. So the section that ill read tonight is just a small, small bit at the beginning of what proved to be the climactic ballot but not the end of the battle, but not the end of the war and certainly not the end of the rough riders story. But this is certainly, when people think about the spanishamerican war, the battle of San Juan Heights. At about 4 a. M. On july 1st, the nearly 17,000 men who comprised the 59 corps crawled 5th corps crawled from under their blankets. There had been no bugle so as not to warn the spanish. Instead, the sergeant went from man to man shaking them awake. More than 10,000 soldiers were encamped. The rest were already a few miles north preparing for the assault on another town or they need to attack in order to protect their flank. As the men climbed the slopes of a little hill looking out over santiago, which theyre trying to attack, they could see the go of central santiago seven miles away framing san p juan hill like a halo. Where they had time and inclination, they set small fires to boil coffee or fry some bacon. No one spoke. Few had any illusion about what the day had in store for them. That night the night before, word had passed down, that morning they were going to take the hike. On paper the battle that unfolded that day hailed in every way the major engagements of the civil war, gettysburg, of course, but also fights that had receded from common memory. And it was nothing like the weekslong battles that would follow it in the 20th century like iwo jima. It was a oneday assault on the outer defenses of a provincial capital in the caribbean with a few hundred deaths on both sides. The spanish defenses were formidable, but the landscape could not compare with the imposing escarpments the Union Soldiers faced in 1863 or that army rangers climbed on dday. And yet the battle of San Juan Heights remains among the most important, celebrated and contests engagements in american history. Numbers and topography tell us little about why the soldiers that morning felt in their bones the extraordinary significance of what they were about to undertake. For many, it was to be their First Experience of combat, and for most, their last. They were right to be afraid. By the end of the day, one out of every six of them would be dead or wounded. But there was Something Else, something collective and energizing, and in a way, much more daunting than the prospect of being shot by a spanish bullet. If they carried the day, they would dechair to the day that the United States declare to world that the United States army could beat any power. They were not just any army, barelytrained volunteers, a force that most europeans would dismiss as hardly an enemy at all. Few americans paused to think that spain had long ceased being a first rate empire or the soldiers arrayed against them had been physically weakened and emotionally demoralized by three years of counterinsurgency warfare. Few of the men in the invasion force considered the numbers were in their favor since the general in charge of the spanish defenses had deployed too many of his men on the citys northern and western sides, far away from the americans, resulting in a 10 to 1 ratio in their favor along the eastern alliance. Nor, for that matter, how many mistakes had been made and how those mistakes would come close to erasing whatever advantage the americans held at the outset. No one understood what would come next if they won or how they would recover if they lost. Outside schachters inner circle, it is unlikely that anyone realized that in either instance there was no plan; no plan for victory, no plan for defeat. One thing was sure though, with dozens of correspondents and foreign attaches watching, news of their fight would spread around the world in nearly an instant thanks to the telegraph and the presence of William Randolph hurst in person watching the battle unfold from a nearby hill. That morning around the campfires as the mist rose and the San Juan River below them, there was only this; this valley, this hill, this fight. Okay. [applause] [inaudible conversations] i have to say, you know, its so rare to read a really well written history book. I mean, there are lots of history books out there, but what makes clays book, i think, so special is that its a genuine pageturner. And that doesnt happen very often. So its been such a pleasure to read. And it left me with a lot of questions. The first one, of course, has to be why this topic. You have so many interesting wars, of course, so what made you a make this choice . You know, the easy answer is when i was a kid, my Boy Scout Troop was the rough riders [laughter] true story. No one would claim that if it wasnt true, right . No, it was the rough riders, and so that story always stuck with me as not something i didnt know a lot about, but was, you know, in the outlines that i knew an engaging story. What actually happened was i had been piecing through, id been going through obituaries. Sort of, i dont know, just as its not a hobby, but [laughter] its a great way to get sources for materials because you come across obituaries from, say, the 1930s, the New York Times obituaries which are pretty robust and well reported plug for the New York Times [laughter] but its a great way to find stories about people who at one point were thought significant and today have maybe faded from memory but also still have a story to find. And i found a lot of people who, you know, it might make a good magazine article, a book idea, but i came across the obituary for a rough rider, a member of this regiment. And it wasnt someone famous, it wasnt a significant you know, someone who went on to do Something Else and this was a trust yall point in their, this was what made them famous, their claim to fame, that they fought with roosevelt. And so it is struck me that this was a story, as far as i knew, had always been kind of a little footnote, kind of an interesting story in roosevelts biography. But then to read this persons biography, this perps to bitch ware and to say obituary and to say there is a significance to group that the totality of the regiment was famous and important in the American Mind at one point because of roosevelt but also, arguably, separate from roosevelt. And so it struck me that, a, i could big into that and tell a more, you know, a fuller story than just this note roosevelts life, although it is that, but also that to try to capture the significance at the time. Why was this regiment and what was it about this war that made them significant in the american mentality. What was it that they captured at that moment, and can i put that into book form. Interesting. When you say what is it about this war, my first question then would be can you separate for us the difference between, say, the filibusters several decades earlier and this war . What makes them different . So the filibusters, right, these were individual private citizens who, in the cuban case, went to cuba often against the exmissit directions of the u. S explicit directions of the u. S. Government, went to cuba to try to help the cuban revolutionaries. And there had been two phases of cuban war for independence. Theres a tenyear war and then more or less a peace, and then in 1895 another war, and thats what the u. S. Was responding to. But in both those periods you had hundreds of americans, some of them cubanamericans, but many of them anglos who were simply energized by this story going, going off to help in a time when the u. S. Government said, well, wed rather not be involved. And i think what that story, what that back history illustrates is that there was this strong you are general city in the urgency in the population to do something. Maybe not always in the majority of the public, but certainly there were people who, out of a desire for adventure, a desire to help the cubans, a sense that they could just do something important with their lives, that they, that this was something that they were, that they wanted to go risk their lives to do. And i think its an important predicate to what ends up happening with the spanishamerican war, because so much the story we get was that we were essentially tricked into the war. It was William Randolph herself and some jingos who essentially created a false premise for us to go to war. And it is true there were people whod had their own reasons, but it leaves aside and, i think, excuses the fact that so Many Americans over the years had been building toward this point of moral certainty that we had to do something. And, you know, and whether it was they themselves who were going to get on boats and go help the cubans or finally just pressure the government to do something about it, something was going to happen. I mean, a great deal of history, military history seems to have been motivated by a moral certainty. You know, the war of 1812 onwards. Even the mexicanamerican war, the moral certainty that is driving these conflicts much more so than europe where very often its just a war for territory, you know, a war for trade. Later on, for example, the cry mean war begins to crimean war, this need to have a moral narrative to go with it. How much do you think that that tradition was driving public sentiment . Oh, it e 100 . And, you know, one of the things thats really important about the spanishamerican war is that it comes at the very end of the civil war generation as a body of leaders. So mckinley was the last president to serve in the civil war. Every president between grant and mckinley had served in the civil war, and many of the people in leadership positions both in government and business, were marked by this experience. But i think that in a way that is, you know, maybe youd say its an outlier of a period. So we dont think back on it necessarily this way, but it was a point where america became very antimilitary and really embraced both the civil warsh the reaction against the civil war, believed militaries get us into that, so we need a small military, we need to be isolationist at least in military terms, right . We dont want a military that will take us abroad to fight. We want to reembrace, you know, John Quincy Adams admonition we dont go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, we are just a wellwisher for the world. But you hit on an important point, which is the perception that europe that way, we need to be the opposite was very much in the minds of americans in the late 19th century. It was, you know, you had people looking at europe and saying, well, france has a huge army, russia has a huge army, germany has a huge army, we are not going to be those countries because they get into wars, they will get into more wars, they get into colonial occupations. And yet at the same taunt, the n economy was growing, the population was growing, technology was in the same way we sort of generically talk about it today, technology was bringing us closer together, people were copps of this conscious of this. Our time was running out as far as being able to isolate ourself. There was the sense that, okay, america has to reconceive its role in the world and start to embrace the idea what it means to be a world power because whether we like it or not, were going to be that way. So how do we do that in a way that is not what europe does. And, to me, the spanishamerican war offered an answer to that, an answer that a lot of people could embrace. It was, if you say, well, the spanishamerican war had a moral purpose to it, then that allows people who maybe dont want a europeanstyle military or a europeanstyle Foreign Policy at least in, you know, the stereotype to embrace Something Else. Say, okay, well, thats not what we do. What we do is we have a big military or we have an active Foreign Policy, but its to help the world, right . Its not for territory. And this is propaganda, its whatever you want to call it, but thats what people believed. At the same time, people who were very aggressively promoting an expansionist Foreign Policy, who wanted to see the u. S. Go out into the world and sometimes for base reasons saw this as a great way to win over a public consensus, right . Suddenly you could say, well, look, we need to go occupy cuba, or we need to bring stations around the pacific, but its for good reasons. We needed to do this for good reasons. And what was so striking when i was researching this was how many articles, articles in north American Review and harpers and these sort of longer form journals that were very popular at the time were the arguments that were being put forward for an activist Foreign Policy, for intervening in cuba, for having a larger military were the exact same thing that you heard in, you know, the runup to world war ii, in the early stages of vietnam, to in e months before the iraq war. The exact same rhetoric and the exact same, you know, moralist justification for going out into the world and starting a war. The exact same thing. And it was to point where its kind of generic to hear today or sort of cliche, but at the time it was wholly new. Well, one side of the coin is the genesis of kind of american exceptionalism. The other side is that fundamental sense of are we going to have a hamiltonian concept of what the American Military looks like or a jacksonian. Yeah. You mentioned in the book, if you wanted to touch on that, because i think its really fascinating that it can help to steal the kind of [inaudible] yeah. I mean, through the the 19th century was marked by this tension between what i call the hamiltonians and the jacksonians. The jacksonians had this belief that america was, you know, were the country o