A Word on Words; 2818; William Polk

remember oh i am dancing in the once again welcome to word on words the book is called pope folly the author is william polk a historian of note distinguished author ten or eleven books now mr marchel room service for money or walk on the word on words thank you so much it's great to have you talk about books falling and this book is and is a story in a real sense the story of a family in a larger sense it's a history in this country and in some ways in some aspects that touches on some foreign countries through but specifically the pope family on is a remarkable for a phenomenal for your wall bears include a president's aides the governors of maryland delaware and the terror attack and active acting sectors state under woodrow wilson

soldiers' medical doctor lori uses the treasurer genesee you would paint entry for embezzlement died before he could go what was convicted feel that with a black sheep a tube in the family to work it's amazing to me how you have woven this history beginning with one in the cargo and ten sixty six and brought it all the way to the present and i know let your grandmother and radio to do it we might just begin with how and why this book became your eleventh writer will my grandmother was a marvelous woman she was born here in tennessee you just a few years before the civil war and when i was a little boy she was living with my family and she was in her eighties and i'm sure that i was an obnoxious difficult little boy

and to keep it quiet she told me stories and it turned out that her grandfather who she had had a similar relationship with had been born during the revolutionary war so that in just two memories we had the whole history of the united states laid out in very personal very vivid delightful terms that of course captivated little boy and in a sense that's what i tried to do in the book too care carry that same spirit in that same interest over as though our writing it for my children and my grandchildren to he must've been a wonderful storyteller as well and their american stores the edges jump up above from the page and grab that use the reader and pull you put you in an unlikely to adjust explore solo to allowing votes because lady in the first place they touch on elements that relate to our

total art war history let's begin with folks falling i mean that's the title of the book and pope follows the lake region that but the first pope to come over and got in maine and maryland folks fall and poked law one of the vehicles were not very much more than solar and then you have to think that is is grandchildren and great grandchildren would one would go a white house another would have been several other great mentioned all across the south male not many miles from where we sit around and sound the only mention he never would've imagined youngsters would go or what

they would have to i've certainly true i think there are two things in that that are fascinating about our history one of them is that every time americans got into trouble they went west they went to the frontier and that we the history in effect of this family each generation grappling with the problems at home and moving always toward a new life that it could create for itself i think that goes on even today and not only my family wouldn't really all american families but the second thing is an army that is very impressive to me about the very rough beginning is that robert pope left northern ireland to come here he was an imam with virtually price on his head and a republican who'd served cromwell had won the monarchy was restored he was a man who was in grave danger of losing his life but he didn't realize how what great danger of losing his life use anbar crossing the atlantic and coming to the new world that also is of course a story virtually all americans but the

death rate of crossing the atlantic on a little tiny wooden ships of that time was about this time is on slave ships he was absolutely appalling the disease the hunger the danger piracy the various other things that they'll face and then when they came to the new world they were extremely ill equipped to cope with the first wave of people who would come and fifty years before had taken the best land and what was left was a marginal land and poked fall it was a wretched little piece of land to anonymous could've are living on in fact today it is a wild bird sanctuary it is probably marginally better than that very little other and everyone lived another time below what we think of today is the party level but you say look at the songs of the aristocracy i think all scott's ha ha ha ha ha ha ah area the

contemporary just a joke that if you saw an absolutely wretchedly poor man dressed in rags or anything else he really thought that he was apprentice of the reasons got smarter well i went through the bee you deal with religion in an out the bad moments where religion is a compelling interest of members of the family and other times i had sold less interest than there is that mama story about during well as periods where it was not really on the minds of all the people no one thought i was as though it's an anti christians around here he said he said no and they mention the members' families to almost pure just armstead some something they didn't even know the word that and there are and there are

moments in which folks play such a dramatic role in the life of god said soldiers in all of it all the wars there is one of the fascinating story about the poker was an indian fighter who was the son of an indian freighter married to delilah and delilah tragedy struggle allah and he barely escaped alive that's right the interesting thing really was how complicated relations war between the settlers and indian people there were horrible but we recall that they search and destroy operations in which the state militias won out and just killed everybody all among the indians they could find that he was the cousin was charred hers are very ordinary

in the front the others who are partners family tree in iowa i went back i referred to repeatedly yet be very careful about those shovel people said but you didn't mention and says so i'm very selective in it but i'm charles and then off on the raid against an indian village and there was a little fork just a few miles north of here and delilah and her children were in the forties when the indians counterattack ryan obviously trying to defend their land and so forth and the drive that wipes out and she was taken captive and she was marched on what amounted to a death march to the ohio river one of her friends was killed on the march and butter chilled an extremely well taken care of and to her astonishment the indians were very kind of her her feet were bloody and torn from a walking and they very gently cut off the moccasins she was wearing

and rob somebody moment the edge and took care of or unfounded turner with a british this was during the revolutionary war i want the things that struck me very much know was how many of the whites who were taken off as captive by indians wanted to stay if you've read and benjamin franklin's writing for example he comments that very often they had the sand with the soldiers who are going to bring the white bike again change in handcuffs so what's would run off and go back to the indian good and so the relationships were not old terrible there were read that all the time but there were many things about the two ships audition or mango and the law was a very good example i think of that strange faster than early american history here a close call erik estrada mr them though total there is a story that he ran the little i think about her uncle martin boatwright here's an uncle martin and a miracle of

callers oh yes he was a rather grand gentleman i gather and it was a custom in the old south to invite in passers by because there were no hotels or injure anything and he invited to end a man on a very rainy night who nobody knew and the man introduced himself as mr smith and they'll take care of them and the next morning when i got up wondering exactly who it was but nobody was and polite enough to ask he had left and quite a time went by and one time lawyer martin was on sailing down the permit to build and of the ship was overtaken by pirates and eight according to my grandmother they were making everyone walked the plank and word came that men drowned offer you look like in the water probably be eaten by sharks so he was tapped on the shoulder taken that the captain's cabin and the captain said don't you know who i

am and he said now i don't think i've ever seen it before and he said remember very well that rainy night when you took me and you saved my life and because i was running from the police i'm john moffitt the pirate and he said now i'm going to save your life they put in the show are and sometime after that a plague of silver and china was delivered to their house that obviously been taking the hardest and one of the plates still survives in the founders of the remarkable just a remarkable family i'm in one of your own and one of your ancestors shop if you're from the right all of us might very rich who shot the zero now i know well in those days the sheriff did not have quite your best position in the law that they have today and sheriffs tended to also have sighed occupations because their salaries are very high as well known that if you got in trouble

with sheriff if you had any money he was out to really view their money and then you were very upset died trying to escape by lead poisoning so grandfather had dawned on the radio which even but texas standards and regarded as a very unhealthy town because just across the river was no oil right on mexico's to if you got in trouble on one side you waded across or you're free on the other when he went into the bar and found that the people who scuttled he was trying to buy the take back to fort worth for he had a cattle business they'd arrived so we have a lot of money with him and he ordered a whiskey and in those days of whiskey was rather like this plus here for a nickel and he ordered a whiskey and of the indifference of course would be the most would recognize in today's results was if the data but he fished around in his pack of those little pouch of gold coins so i found a nickel

then four and everybody in the bar in my grandmother's story fell silent because i knew this man would never live to see the light of day and he asked if he could get a room and at that point everybody thought he was absolutely insane it was like saying pretty crawl down the nearest rival psycho he went up to the bar but in his room messed up the bucket on a little cotton sell over the corridors bustle over his knee and pretty soon the door opened and then came a man with a pistol in his hand and grandfathers shannon and everybody came running with lanterns and there was a share deserves when i was a delegate let's talk about the president on a human and an adviser to presidents and presidents kennedy and in johnson and you had a great interest and foreign policy and when james k polk was president the foreign policy was at least

as important as this day goes we still couldn't get it right with a british man only two years before that there'd been the great conflict in this country the federalist so one side and the file republican francophile so when madison adams adams and others talk a little bit about an impossible to think of what it's like to be the air of a president for a wartime president hu very difficult almost traumatic administration firm distinction is and admired for president signs for that was known for his courage and he's flawless and mia to be recognized as human i think he was in many ways quite a remarkable man whose first

of all the regional for a workaholic ed sullivan he used to work in his office every day from about seven in the morning to nearly midnight and it took i think five days off during his four years in the white house he had no staff to speak only when i was in the government the entire executive officer government was about three hundred people it later became several thousand today but in his time that was one person whose nephew and that the custom in that time was that the president couldn't close the door to his office and nobody really do rely on he had no privacy to do anything and heave during the mexican war they knew so little about mexico that whenever they would hear that somebody was coming through washington who never been to mexico they would immediately invite him into the president's office the whole cabinet would and saddam and

grill him on what he knew about mexico the army was on buying widens to use in the mexican war and at one point in his writing james said i don't think they're any roads mexico and the army people said no that's right there are heroes issue and why are you buying wine and willie said army's always at work and that wind speed but he found that inability rely on the staff of any kind of an inability to have any of any privacy overwhelming the big problem with the mexican war and his terms was that britain was trying very hard to keep taxes and dependent and not through any love of texas but because they were trying to have an alternate source of cheap cotton and they wanted to be able to play off texas against the rest of the southern part of him onstage and britain was also involved and dumping cheap not affect your goods and the american industrial market

and james was very violently opposed to british policy at the time and of course almost got a civil war with mexico but you have to remember too that it wasn't very long before that that the british burned washington and awarding twelve when the mouse and those abroad let me ask you about another story arcs around you say that it's family legend that rattle and snap a property that by thousands of acres was so it was won by but george polk ideas about what wilco will coconut and crabbing less of that visit a legendary is a fact you want the truth nobody knows ah ha moments that was the name of the

only hope we should probably enjoyed built that they built a house on a quarter of it and call the problems i suspect it is true for two reasons one is of land was very cheap in those days they bought land people living on the seacoast here in the interior where just a few cents an acre so that was it was a lot of money for a corrupt and that it wasn't catastrophic and the other thing was of these people were members of their own gamble what their lives are going end of indian territory and sticking out their activities and wilco particularly had fought for five and a half years no religion or war i was a partner of andrew jackson show was very much involved in this mindset that the future is all right there in front of them so that everybody was prepared to gamble the president against a future with very little of anything being potentially disastrous for them and he's a device at the end of monday's sons detroit

george build ravel and surround the ash who did as you recall by leonidas leonidas is across the way moshe devotional or one day is wills is is so as wolves lone wolf world there were foreigners unemployed struggling jamaican police yes that's right well just though rattle and snapped his real one that still swam the truck been beautifully restored all it's a wonderful place to visit and normal family now it's owned by a marvelous man who has done a very good job of putting it back together again from the role of disrepair and i hope that ultimately will become part of the national trust that has objected well you know

and what happened to susan she was the all of those involved follows their own many years and the you know the place across the way early on in his place and barring years in germany last century in arab power and another century burned in the nineteenth century you know i think at age seventy three and it was run an absolutely beautiful place to invest my knowledge there's only one photograph of survival class owen looked marvelous thing the book his first war sentiment that family tree in the front and then there are then there is the other two photo albums they are and beyond that there are other illustrations of really bring to life the story let me fast forward tissue and roach with you a subject that i know it's painful arm i said that

there were a president and governors and doctors and lawyers and diplomats and even a state treasurer who went home country i am most fascinated professionally with your brother george can distinguish a member of mr o'steen martin and greece nineteen forty eight it's one of the great mysteries of american journalism american foreign policy and i was fascinated i was afraid you wouldn't open it up i suppose there isn't all on in broadcast journalism more distinguished than the one that bears his name but you know it is painful we do you would you give me your sense of what happened and we'll ministry ever will be still limits are going to wage i think the mystery will be solved i think to be you what you

have to think of recent that time being a very much more familiar story or severe harm this was the first time after world war two of america launched itself into a very complicated and very sort of political situation and was trying in its own way to counter what it perceived to be the russian threat to the western world is under thirty just it was prepared to put up of almost anything and georgia's position was very staunchly opposed to he felt it america stood for democracy and freedom and that's what he'd fought for a number of badly wounded trying to do in world war two been decorated for gallantry shovel challenge and he found what we were fair due to allow in greece was something was just out of the record your principles and that if we went on with the policy we would lose the moral stance that we came out of the war with and he was bitterly attacked by the greek government at that time they tried to have him recalled that put pressure on the american state department and on the

ocean or cvs to get him out of greece and the car he discovered one of the senior politicians was stealing american aid money and threatened or explosion killed a reporter as i mentioned to you before we began this i am now getting around to writing a book on his life and times and i think in many ways to me an even more gripping story than this book he had done yet he had to gain insight into the facts many alarm gautreaux liberties and made from the british but that the british or colonial masters and not democrats law in foreign policy and i guess he's sort of story it seemed to him that

perhaps we were about to get into that sign i think that was rejected i think also he would very clearly understood that as james k polk had that there was a sharp difference between england and what for though you've taught history at harvard and generously chicago your life and a wonderful career let me ask you as a historian i'm bothered by the phenomenon called bach a drug that seems to me that that we are distorting and in some ways revising history by fictionalize in the head or television drama that's one aspect of it but what was your sense of the

president's standing of historians in and they're so important and sending the past as this book makes so clear but what's your sense of well i think there were caught in the middle of two the evils of the doctor dramas emotional one son fiction was in history is is i think a very dangerous thing because pretty soon nobody knows what happened or what hasn't happened and on the other hand the way history is taught to most people in schools absolutely destroys an interest that they might have in history i have very often tortured and universities not from that students were true your eyes glaze over when you mentioned history and i i don't think that needs to be the case one of the reviewers of this book come under that this was a perfect antidote to the boredom most people don't think about history history is fascinating but you have to think of history i believe as a series of contemporary events that contemporary a different times and i've tried in the us to

think about how people