Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Mark Zwonitzer The

Produced, directed and or written many programs for pbs. Spanning a rich variety of subjects, mount rushmore, the irish in america, Transcontinental Railroad, robert e. Lee and jesse james. He has received the dupont columbia award, the writersa™ guild award and many others. In 2007, he was a writer for the four hour pbs history of the United States Supreme Court which was awarded the International Documentary associations award for Outstanding Limited series. In 2007, he was a writer for the four hour pbs history of the United States Supreme Court which was awarded the International Documentary associations award for Outstanding Limited series. In 2008 he was nominated for a prime time emmy in the category of Outstanding Achievement in outstanding filmmaking and achievement in writing for his pbs program on walt whitman. Hes also the author of awill you miss me when im gone the Carter Family and their legacy in american music,a which came out in 2002. It was one of New York Times notable books of the year. It was an American Library Association Editors choice and a finalist for the National Book criticaward. This evening, we will delve into his second book, the statesman and the storyteller, and thats what brings us here tonight and id like to thank you very much for being with us and sharing this book on the day of its release to the public. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. [applause] i would like to start by asking you to give the audience how you came to pair these two individuals, john hay and mark twain together, particularly since your work is so wide ranging. How did you strike on these two individuals and the thought of pairing them together in a book. I will you a long threepart answer on this. The idea for this book happened in stages. The first stage was i was working with joe biden on a separate editorial project in senator biden was the Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations committee. Later the chairman of the Foreign Relations. In the three years i was working with him, he was trying to make a better outcome in iraq. This was 2004 he was hemmed in by history. I was talking to him a little bit about when the country got this idea they could have good outcomes anywhere in the world. It led me back to the period around the spanish american war. I wanted a character just tell character to be able to tell that story in the first one i struck on was john hay. John hay had been lincolns to private one of lincolns two private secretaries when he was a young man. He was the ambassador at the court of st. James in london and later secretary of state to both mckinley and roosevelt. He was at the center of events leading up to and just after the spanish morning spanish american war. The research i did on him, sam clemens as he does, keeps popping up. He was always on the other side of the issue, not always, but often and it may be made me realize i could tell the events from a couple different perspectives. I thought the whole had become bigger than the sum of the part. When i really decided to pair them, was actually when i read about a Birthday Party that mark twain had in 1902. Hay was secretary of state and if you know anything about what sam clemens was talking about in those days, he was very much opposed to what they were doing. He was very antiimperialist. I think there are many people in the audience that thought sam clemens might take the hide off john hay that night. He did not. I was curious about why he didnt do that. Why he held back and why he tempered himself. I think his story has a lot to do with the difficulty. The difficulty of dissent in this country. And a war setting. With the difficulty. Thats a long answer to how i ended up with those two guys together. Theyre not intimate Close Friends but they were good friends that had respect and admiration for each other. That held until the end of their lives. You point out in your book, theres an Important Foundation between them, they come from the same region of the country, central and Mississippi River valley. I was wondering if you could take a minute or two to comment on those influence that may have forged that friendship from that common experience, that cultural heritage. They grew up about 50 miles apart on that river so of course they would have never seen or known each other but they had common experiences. By the time they met in the late 1860s, they were both already Fairly Famous young men. Clemens actually, when clemens moved to buffalo after he got married, he asked hay to be his partner in that in the newspaper he bought. Hay demurred. A few years later, when clemens was doing his research for the trip down the mississippi, he asked hayes to come along. So he was unable to do that at that time. So while they werent together, they had very common experiences and when hay wrote his early poems, clemens was the first out to congratulate him on those poems. He was the first to recognize that hey was in the front, these people had written in the in that way before. He was always quick to credit hay ahead of him as the man who popularized the western. He was the western vernacular. He would give him a little nudge anytime he could. So while clemens, we have the civil war and thats going to change everything for both men, clemens heads out west seeking his fortune in mining, but he cultivates a writing career there. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about what takes him out of his home town and eventually they both converge and meet each other in new york city, postcivil war new york city, the Media Capital of the print revolution in america. If you could just flesh out a little bit about those young bachelor journalists enjoying their days together in new york and how that wouldve contributed to their friendship. John hay had the good fortune of reading law and his uncles law office just down the hall from an attorney named Abraham Lincoln and hay ended up in lincolns white house. He was then briefly in europe as a young diplomat. He came back to the states and landed at the new york tribune about the time clemens came to new york. He was very much on the make. He was really out to make a name for himself and out to make some money. The new york city media was full of young men like john hay and sam clemens. They were all around the city, together having as much fun as they had worked. When booth used to hang as they had worked. Edwin booth used to hang out with them, it was almost a nightly round of fun and good cheer and it was like early networking you would say and they became pretty fast friends. That was probably the most time they ever spent together in the early 1860s and 1870s when he would come into new york and try to dustup a little interest in his own self. So clemens has out and takes his tour of europe and hay does some interesting things as well, but that leads us to marriage for both men and from your book, its clear they both married well in a number of ways, but also those marriages were pretty influential in both of their lives and the relationship between the two of them. Could you talk a little bit about that . They both married up as we all know. Libby clemens came from a welloff family but john hay married a woman, clara stone, whose father was spectacularly wealthy. Hes one of the big cleveland industrialist so by the time, hay made his money and the good oldfashioned american way. He married it. He never had to worry about working for money again. Clemens did well for himself but he was always worried about making more money, and he was always working very hard. After hay married and clemens married, they grew apart a little bit. Part of the reason was that mrs. Hay was a little apprehensive of having sam clemens in the house. He was not the easiest guy to have around the house, and mrs. Hay didnt altogether trust him. I i think it could be saidd that john hay possibly used her as being out for himself also, but through the 1870s and 1880s they wrote to one another and kept contact through mutual friends but they were never much in one anothers company. I think the door gets closed when she catches the two of them in their parlor on a sunday cutting up, up. They were yukking it up on the sabbath and that marked the end game for mrs. Hay. She made it clear. Clemens described the scene and it shut them both up. Talk a little bit more about the two personalities of the men. You talk about how clem twain was always on the make, one of the great lines in your book was unlike sam clemens, he john hay never appeared to be selling and if you talk a little bit about their personas, perhaps privately versus publicly, maybe give the audience a sense for the two mens compatibility but as you say also, a friendship that is going to be conducted at arms length. So in some ways the two men were opposites in personality. John hay, as a young boy was plucked out as the special kid in the family. He had an older brother, but it was john hay that was sent to a special school. He was sent to Brown University by his uncle melton. He never really had to do anything but be himself and show himself, and there were people willing to help push him down stream. He wass an incredibly talented and gifted man. He was great with languages and very funny, he was easy to be around and he never seemed to be making any effort. It came effortlessly to john hay. Sam clemens always seem to be thrashing for the next thing. He had to paddle his own canoe and he paddled very hard. They were in that way very different. There were also different in terms of their politics. Hay was a very old line republican in the sense that he believed the best government was well bred, wellrespected, intelligent men of means leading the nation, and clemens was a little bit more of a small d democrat with a little bit more, a good bit more confidence in the general decency of the wider American People. So the other thing that i found really fascinating is how different they were in terms of how they treated the people who worked for them. I didnt write a lot about this in the book, but in reading almost every letter and diary that both those men wrote in this ten year period, i know john hay never once mentioned to the servant staff that worked there for them. Nobody by name. Occasionally it would pop up in a note to his wife. The best we can expect for a butler is another drunk. Whereas clemens, the people who served him they were basically family. Katie leary, they would be in europe and they would say you have to take katie to switzerland, shes never been there. Katie was libbys maid. George griffin, who worked in the house was obviously a great, great friend of sam clemens and he wrote good bit about him and after he died, especially the loss of george was very difficult for him. An africanamerican butler. That was one of the biggest differences i noticed in them and sort of surprising and interesting. As you develop the characters through the book and the maturation process, they seem to share and maybe in their own personal ways, they seem to share the core value of duty and honor toward everything, their public and private conduct. Their sense of duty, selfless duty and honor come through repeatedly in the book. Could you talk a little bit about that. One of the things that fascinated me as a read more about these two people is that they did talk a lot about, and not not just in their personal lives, but in the life of the nation, they spoke about duty and honor and patriotism and they approached it from different perspectives, but they took it very seriously. I think hay operated his entire public career, what he saw as his chief duty from the time he was serving Abraham Lincoln through ambassadorship and years as secretary of state, his goal was to make the burden on the president a little bit easier. He had seen a president operate at the moment of greatest burden in the country during the civil war, so he understood the enormity of the office and he worked very hard to serve that president. Whatever president he was serving, take a little bit off his plate, but to do it at the same time in a way that was honorable, not only to the administration that he was serving, but to him personally. Thats a pretty tough line to walk. Clemens talked a lot about duty and honor and selflessness, but he was always pretty skeptical that the human being could operate with true selflessness. He always thought theyre working an angle here. I think he used himself as an exhibit a. I recall after his great financial difficulties, that he felt a sense of honor and duty to pay back the debts that he owed, although libby had something to do with that i think, not to accept creditors to discount his debt burden. I think had she not been around , maybe he wouldve accepted that, but thats a theme that, as they explore the later years of each mans life, thats something that weighs on clemens as he is going to want to comment on the issues of the day, the fact that hes trying to dig himself out of a financial hole. That he dug himself. And was determined to do so and i will allude to it and will talk about in a minute about the number of issues of the day held his tongue. Yes, he was in a terrible financial pickle in 1895 when the stories began. They had worked out as they do in bankruptcy court, in his settlement, with about . 50 on the dollar and libby really ught he was on around two he was going to pay back every cent. She pushed him to do that. He sort of made a crusade out of it. He made a public crusade. He said watch me, im going to do it and it turned out to be much more difficult and much more personally costly than he couldve ever expected, but he pushed right through to the end. In a sense, he did end up paying off that debt to the dollar, pretty much. He didnt do it as he wouldve thought, paddling his own canoe and by himself. He had a lot of help from his friend so his idea of being a one bold individual, taking care of himself, that was a hard idea for him to hold onto when he had help clearing those debts. There were many times in the years it took him to clear the debts when he was looking for an easier way out and really wanted an easier way out. He mightve had it, not been in the direct gaze of his wife, libby who throughout their marriage she called him youth, which i found interesting. That was her name for him. He was ungovernable. The subtitle of the book is rise of american imperialism. Its a period in which the United States transitioning from a former colony that establishes its National Identity in a revolution to throw off the control of a colonial overlord and very rapidly after the civil war, becomes the very thing it had revolted against in several instances around the globe, and id like to talk a little bit about that issue because he is on the inside and tween is on the outside in both their sense of duty and honor, compelling them to react to this major transformation in the american character, could you talk a little bit first about hawaii being central to both men for a lot of reasons, but a place that had its own queen, its own government, a strong american presence there for a long time and clemens had been there earlier and that is what establishes a bit of his fame with his lecture, so the annexation of hawaii becomes an early issue of imperialism. Can you talk a little bit about the two men and their thoughts about hawaii and its relationship to the United States. I will actually skip ahead, basically, the u. S. Marines help run a coup and there was a treaty of annexation which they did not get through the senate. It was not until 1898 until the United States was able to grab hawaii. It was only done as a war measure. They never could get the treaty through for the annexation of hawaii. It ended up being a joint resolution, a war measure that because of the philippines, that hawaii was so important to hold the philippines and get to the markets in china, thats really the only reason we ended up with hawaii. So ill jump ahead a little bit to the spanishamerican war, the idea was that we were going to free the cubans and then we were going to free the philippines. John hay was all for it but so was sam clemens. Sam clemens, when the spanishamerican war first happened, he was very excited about this war. It was the war unlike any other. It was a war we were fighting and spending blood and treasure to free another people. At one point, he was so excited about this, he would join up the fight himself if it werent for the danger. That changed over time as it became clear that it wasnt about freeing the cubans and freeing the philippines but we were about controlling those places. Hay was the guy who had to basically execute the plan, clemens was a guy who became angrier and angrier as he saw what happened. The annexation of hawaii and we dont annex cuba, but we establish control with a platt amendment. We will annex the philippine and guam as well. That was the island to be named later. There were proponents in the senate, although the treaty of annexation for hawaii doesnt pass, there were proponents, the rhetoric to justify doing what had been done to us in the revolution might today be recognized in the phrase of american exceptionalism. The notion that there god has bestowed on the United States a duty to christianize and bring civilization to backwards people of the world, could you talk a little bit about john hays thoughts about imperialism as the act of imposing authority on a native people and likewise sam clemens and in particular, that its a charge from god to do it . That rhetoric got hotter and hotter in the aftermath of the spanishamerican war. The idea that this was gods plan, mckinley actually, first he went on a public tour and said he wanted to tap into the wisdom of the American People and after that, he started talking about how this is what god wants. In my observation over