Texas Documents, Part 6: Keeping the American Promise

We complete our series on documents that made Texas history by looking a  president who was full of contradictions and still could tell the truth at exactly the right moment. Lyndon B. Johnson’s March 15, 1965 address to Congress, “The American Promise,” delivered in the shadow of Selma and months before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 becomes law.

If you’ve never read “The American Promise,” click the link below to read the text and watch the video. If you enjoy deep dives into Texas history, civil rights history, and the craft of historical interpretation, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave us a review.

LBJ's "The American Promise" at The American Presidency Project: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-the-american-promise#docmedia

Transcript

Welcome And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This podcast is not sponsored by us and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It's only our thoughts and ideas based upon our professional training and study in the past.

LBJ Beyond Vietnam

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it. And of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Freut.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I'm Scott Suspee. Gene, we've been going through these documents for the last few episodes, and we've got another one today, don't we?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah, the final, the final one that we're looking at is a speech from March of 1965. Actually, it's kind of funny because uh it's almost uh 61 years to the date uh that we're recording this, looking at the speech. So it's uh it's uh historical in more than one way. And this is a speech by Texas president. Well, who wasn't president of Texas, but he he was a Texas president. Well, he might have president, right? But he might should have been, yeah. Uh it's called the American Promise.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yes, and it's of course by Lyndon Baines Johnson, uh, who I think I'm not with uh speaking for Gene as much, as I think I can both say. He's uh both of our. We we we count Johnson as a hero. Uh I count him as perhaps my favorite American president. Because you know, I've always said, Gene, and what do you think? I think because of Vietnam and what happened in Vietnam, which certainly we can't say that was none of Johnson's fault, but it wasn't all of Johnson's fault. There was a systemic problem going on with us being in Vietnam that in some sense Johnson got uh you know in a caught between a rock and a hard place. But because of Vietnam, the legacy, if you will, of Lyndon Johnson has been reduced because I think we forget as a country, as a people, how much he did, particularly for civil rights and also for advancing and expansion of a safety net for the working class and the poor in the United States with this great society and civil rights movement.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Well, also, uh, yes, yes to both of those. Also, uh, however, I gotta say our American educational system as we know it is the creation of great society legislation, 60 pieces of legislation relating to education, from elementary and secondary ed act to vocational training to student loans. So much of what we kind of just uh figure is as the uh you know standard operating procedures for American education comes out of the Great Society.

How Johnson Made Government Move

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Exactly. You know, to some extent, uh the Great Society is uh the culmination. Was that the right word? Uh Gene, uh uh culmination of the New Deal promise of this new reshaping of the American welfare state in a certain way. Uh it fulfilled on a lot of promises that we had made during the Depression and right afterwards that we had not followed through with. Johnson, through his, I mean, the man was a master legislator. He understood the legislative process like probably no one we've ever had in the presidency. He's able to get through so many things that other presidents could not do before and since. I mean, he was so instrumental in getting legislation passed.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Well, you know, I was talking about this with uh this group of uh uh uh uh that I'm teaching at uh Lone Star Community College. Um we're going through these documents, and Johnson grew up in a different era of and how people regarded government. People in those days wanted government to do something, right? It still saw government as it had a job to do, it had a role to do. And Johnson grew up. I mean, he I mean, literally grew up his father, and we're gonna go back to the the document we read before, the populists, his father had been elected on a populist ticket as a Texas uh representative in the Texas House uh back in the early 1900s. And so populism politics was in Johnson's blood. And then, you know, you get the New Deal, and a lot of the New Deal legislation and a lot of the New Deal reforms and a lot of the New Deal changes were the embodiments of what the populists had wished for because this is what the farmers and the workers had said this was coming. And for for so for that generation, for that group of people, they they saw that yes, that the everything that we had predicted would happen has happened, and now we need to do something. Government needs to do something to stop it. Now, whether or not you agree with that position or not, that's what they believed.

The American Promise And Selma

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Absolutely. Yeah, the New Deal, if that was this culmination of populism progressivism, which I think it was, just like you said. What Johnson adds on is direct action, of course, that happens, but of course, it's his movement on civil rights, which is the core of this speech that he gives here in March of 1965. I guess we should, you know, a little background to it is of course, the Civil Rights Act is passed in 1964, uh, that is the foundation for civil rights, but there's still the problem of voting and things like this. And so you have the march on Selma that happens trying to get the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act has not been passed yet at the time this speech is given, because it's passed in August of 1965. This speech is given in March 15, 1965. And but this is Johnson basically saying, we haven't gone far enough. We need to keep going further. The Voting Rights Act is the number one thing we need to do. That it but it's also Johnson, I think, and this is one thing about this speech as we get into it that I love. This is Johnson when he gives this speech, he's talking to, of course, everybody in the United States, but he's talking to members of Congress at that time. And he's essentially telling to the Southern members of Congress that we're doing this because it's morally right. This is what our foundation is about civil rights, is because it's a moral issue. And it's time for us to actually live up to our promises of a people, our promises as a nation to everyone. He's calling out the Southerners uh in this speech when he does this. I mean, he lets it be known he's a Southerner. He talks about how his Southern roots are deep in the Southern soil in this speech, and he is, but he's basically saying also, I recognize the injustice that's gone on. And I always do love, I absolutely love the way, and we can, if we want to go to the end of this at the beginning, I've always loved the way Johnson ends this speech. It's even more powerful when you watch it, and you can uh listeners go online and call this up and listen to this speech. When Johnson talks about his experiences in Cotula and teaching those poor Mexican-American kids at Catula School and how these poor kids who have been denied all their rights as Americans still thirsted for education, even though they lived in poverty. And he ends it, he says, I never thought then in 1928 that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country. And then he looks in the camera, folks, and he looks out at those congressmen and he says, But I do now have that chance, and I'll let you in on a secret. I mean to use it, and I hope that you will use it with me. It's both a promise and a threat. And if you watch it, it's even more powerful when you do that. I'll uh that's to me, it's the most powerful thing Johnson's ever delivered.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah, I mean at heart, Johnson Johnson was a speech teacher. You know, he he went to school in San Marcos um to to teach speech. And I mean, he was a president, he didn't write this speech by himself. I don't know how much of it he wrote, but he certainly influenced it. And certainly the presidents um exercise a a lot of creative control, I'm sure they still do, right? Over their speeches and what what comes out of their mouth, what they say. And and the way this is written, and you know, this is we're just gonna read a couple of excerpts from it, but not the whole thing, but yeah, it's a speech worth watching because it is powerful, as you said, and the so let me just you know, a lot of people call Johnson uh Uncle Corn Pone, right? Because the Boston elite said, you know, this guy's just some rube from Texas, and Johnson just played into that. But listen to this speech. I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors from every section of this country to join me in that cause. At times, history and fate meet in a single time, in a single place, to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord, so it was a century ago at Atomatics, so it was last week in Selma, Alabama. I mean, Scott, that is written so moving.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

It is moving.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I mean it's just it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

It is. Um, the primary speechwriter of this was Richard Goodwin, uh, who wrote many of Johnson's speeches. But Goodwin said in an interview one time, I recall, that this was the most personal speech that Johnson ever got involved in uh in doing this. So so your point is is precisely taken. While maybe Johnson didn't write all the pros of this, this is core Johnson and core what he wanted to do in his most personal speech of all. And that's the thing about it when you read it and you come into it. I love also when he gets and he gets to the point of the matter in this, when he's essentially, again, taking the moral high road, telling us that this is moral, this is our cause. He says in the speech there, there is no Negro problem, there is no southern problem, there is no northern problem, there is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans. We are met here as Americans to solve that problem. He's putting it on the whole nation. He's saying listen, somebody needs to give that speech today. Somebody needs to stand up and say that today, because we're not like that anymore. We're not being called to come together as America. Johnson's saying we got to come together and solve this problem as a nation, not as a region or anything else. And it's just, you know, it's just he says later, as a man whose roots go deeply into southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. That's when he goes on to tell us after that the Cotula story. So he's basically saying, if you I when I read this, saying, You need to get over being bigots, you need to get over being racist. I understand you were raised that way, and that's how we were taught it was supposed to be, but the time has come for us to put those things aside. This is one reason why it's so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Let's go back a couple of episodes when we talked about the John H. Reagan speech. John H. Reagan sitting in Boston, uh outside of Boston at Fort Warren Prison. And what was it that he told Southerners that they were gonna need the Texans that they were gonna need to do after the Civil War in order to get back their political voting rights and to move forward and he said we're gonna have to get past racism up front, yep, right? It's the same thing, same thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

We're we're we're almost a hundred years, we are a hundred years after Reagan's uh uh writing, and we still got that problem at this speech. And Gene, we are now 60 years past this speech. We still got some of the same problems. I think we've forgotten what was what was said and everything before. In fact, it I hate to be a downer, it may be worse now. Because you know, one thing about one thing is I make it sound like I'm condoning it, and I'm not. One thing about the Southerners of the Jim Crow era, they made no bones about who they were. They made no bones about the fact that I mean they didn't they didn't try to justify, they didn't try to explain away their racism. As they say today, they owned it. They admitted they were racist, and for reason why. Today, we don't have people that want to admit, in fact, they'll try to say they're not, and then yeah, you know how you know when somebody's a racist these days, mostly they go, Now I'm no racist, and then they proceed to tell you why they are a racist after that. We hear it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah. You know, it's it's funny. Um, one one one other thing that I want to go back to something you had mentioned a second ago is uh you know in the speech, is Johnson says, Look, we're not Democrats, we're not Republicans, we're not northerners, we're not southerners, we're not black, we're not white, we're Americans. Um that was the time that he lived in. Now, Johnson grew up with this, right? Johnson was a politician of his day, right? And he was a political animal of his time, and partially of his own making, because he he was there when some of those rules, some of those procedures that they were using in Congress in those days were made. And it wasn't unusual for Republicans and Democrats to fight on the floor of their respective houses and then go have drinks, play cards, go golfing on the weekends.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Right? They they they they worked across the aisle, you know, and and Johnson, if you read any biographies on Johnson, uh, folks, um, it talks about how Johnson would go up to um various, you know, Eb Dirksen or other leaders from the other side and say, Look, I want you to support my bill. Now I know you got to tell your constituents this. And he would tell them what they needed to say and why they were gonna support that bill. Or he would play, look, I'll support you on this bill, you support me on this bill. It was, uh, I don't want to call it a game, but it certainly was they knew how to um how to leverage.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Give and take. They leverage, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Right. And and that is, I don't know that that exists anymore.

Voting Rights And Power Struggles

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I don't think it does. I don't think it exists at all anymore. And that's one thing that we've lost. We've also lost the fact, I think another thing he brings out in this speech, and when he talks about it, is he essentially, you know, he says our uh essentially our obligation to honor our promise, and that's why it's called the American promise, of equal rights for all. He's really talking about voting here more than anything else, uh, when he gives this speech. This is a human right. He ties the Civil Rights Act, he ties the Voting Rights Act, all this stuff to this is what we should do as human beings, because it's the right thing for human beings too. To some extent, he's telling also some of these uh it's in more coded speech, but he's telling these some of these very racist southerners and some of these very racist uh people of that ilk, this is a morally religious thing to do. This is what Jesus would do. Yeah, he doesn't say that, but there's an implied thing there, a very strong religious undertone to it.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

One of the other things, um Scott, that I when I was taking Southern history classes from all when Barr attends, one of the things that uh Barr said that uh you know, as a as a student, I was kind of blown away by this. That the issue of voting rights in the southern mentality was their weakest, weakest uh pillar of the of the of the southern racist position because they believed as Americans, right, as as as heirs of the American Revolution, that people had a right to vote. Even if they wanted to discriminate against them in other ways, they still had a right to vote. And so, you know, and throughout the Southern history, a lot of the a lot of the issue was on restricting the right to vote, but they knew it was a right. And so when he attacks, when Johnson attacks uh eliminating the franchise and prohibiting uh Southern blacks from voting, southern white political structure knew that was their weakness, that was their soft underbelly. And they knew they should allow people to vote, even if they didn't agree with them.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah, I think you're exactly, you know, like so many things we could try, all in part's barely been wrong about anything. Uh, and he's exactly right. Because, and as you say, that's the thing the Southerners worked the hardest on. That's the thing that they tried to get make sure that they could put as many barriers up as possible because they knew they knew that that was where their soft underbelly was. It's the same thing today, Gene. When we try to put up, we're putting once again, we've got a party that's deciding that they want to put up voting barriers uh of all kinds. And they know that that's a weak link for them to do to accomplish their goals. And so that's why they're working at it so hard. That's why, I mean, if you just look at now this uh various legislation being introduced today, there's very, very vehement rhetoric about it going on. And it's if if you look back to the parallels in history, this is some of the same rhetoric that was going on during this time when Johnson, what was it at that point? Because it, you know, somewhat the things are reversed, because at this, you know, at this point in time we have a national government trying to restrict some things, but at that time we had state governments trying to restrict this. And what was the Southerners' number one argument about the Voting Rights Act? Did they argue that there was an inherent right for only whites to vote? Did they argue that certain groups should be denied the vote? Did they argue that it is right to have things like the poll tax have been eliminated by the inbut literacy tests or whatever else? They didn't argue that. What did they argue? Vote elections are state rights. States run elections. We should get to run our election how we want to run it. That is because they knew that was the only thing they could fall back on. And they didn't want national legislation that would even come close to uh making that happen.

What We Lost In Politics

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah, that's you know, our our our our whole history of voting rights in the United States is um is really interesting and complicated. It has always been a matter of letting the states decide who could vote. And now, I mean, it certainly in the 1950s and 1960s, and even before then, uh there were problems with that, right? So uh here you are essentially arguing in the 1960s of the Voting Rights Act to have some national control in order to allow more people to vote. Now it seems like the the tables have pivoted. Now we want national control to restrict the rights of states to govern their own elections. So it it's it's you know, for those of us that study American history or any history, we see these swings and these changes. Um and it's it's kind of interesting if it'd be probably more interesting if if it didn't affect us, right? Um but yeah, you know, we see we see these changes and these um Attitudes that have evolved over time. One of the other things I I think we've got to say about Johnson um look, he grew up, and one of the things he always said, my daddy, who was a populist, my daddy talked the clan in the 20s. And we've got to remember that Johnson grew up uh in this populist household, in this populist region of Texas, central Texas, where uh the populace, one of the things the populists did, although they were not successful, was they did try to bridge the racial gap uh in their politics. That was their big failure, right? They couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Some of them, some of them did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Some of them did some of them. No, some of them didn't, right? And some of them, you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

That was why they never were actually successful, because some of them were I like to say to them when I saw my classes, some of them were just too southern to get that done.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

But there was the promise, right? There was the hope that they could uh overcome that, and they just couldn't in the 1890s and early 1900s. So Johnson comes along. One of the things Johnson does is that, you know, uh his wife is from Marshall, Texas, deep east, northeast Texas. And um they had in her family, they were wealthy and they had servants, and they kept some of these servants, these domestic servants. Some of them were African American, they kept them all the way through the White House. Uh, and they brought them to Washington, D.C. And it was not unusual for Johnson to invite these African American, although domestic servants or employees, to come to parties and to come to other things. Um, and that shocked a lot of the Southern, other Southern representatives in Congress, which also did this, and probably as a way of putting it in their face as he did.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I think he did on purpose. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

You know, he's an enigmatic character, uh, uh a deep study. And actually, when I was an undergraduate, I um uh working and working on my master's degree, I did a lot of Johnson studies, and uh there were deep books. You know, Robert Carroll was coming out with his books on Johnson, and uh uh Robert Dalek, of course, had started writing some stuff on Johnson at that time. So it was it was a it was a lot of Johnson studies, um, and I kind of cut my teeth on as a young uh undergraduate and graduate, beginning graduate history student. So he's always been an area of fascination for me um because he wanted to teach and I wanted to teach. He he liked speech, I like speech. He went to San Marcus, I went to San Marcus, and so um, you know, it I just find him interesting as that.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Well, I I think that's one thing we could say about him. You know, we love as historians we love our subjects to be complex because it allows us to be complex. Uh and do this. I don't know whether there was a more you called it in a enigmatic, and I think that's true. I like to say, you know, complex or even almost contradictory figure than Lyndon Johnson to some extent, because Johnson I think was somewhat battling inner demons his entire life to some extent, um, because he could be an extremely vitriolic, almost amoral person at times, in personal character, uh, and also in dealings with people, but at the same time, crusade for very moral, very upright issues as well. But I think what government and this is what people I think forget about Johnson, and what I find admiring about it more than anything else, Johnson, every decision Lyndon Johnson made was not the correct decision. In fact, he made a number of very poor decisions in his life. But you know what? In every decision he made, he thought he was making the right decision. And he was always doing it for what he thought was the right reasons. Uh, and he did have an extremely large sense of service. When he went into government, when he went ran for office, he did it, which I don't know if anybody does this anymore. He did it because of the things he could possibly do for other people. It was, did Johnson profit off of being in office? Hell yes, he profited off of being in office. But that wasn't why he ran for office. That was the sideline of being in office. He ran for office and he served in office because he truly wanted to serve the American people and to advance their progress and to advance the nation and to advance the nation's promise, as he said in here. And that's why it's called the American promise. He basically calls out this is what you promised, it's time to fulfill it.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, and certainly as far as civil rights education, um, American space race, he brought America into uh really set the stage for the 21st century, right? He he he never saw it, but he uh he set the stage for it. And one of the other things, and you know, kind of going back to your allusion to the you know his uh his religious and moral uh urgings is Johnson was one of a group of presidents, and I'm gonna say it started uh with John Kennedy and ended with Ronald Reagan, who talked about the greatness of the United States and what it could become, what it could be, uh and challenged us and and challenged us to to live up to the to what America said it was, and it is, right? That we are a nation of and whether or not we agree on this, whether or not we we buy into this, but a nation of morals, and that that we had a certain set of morals, and what is the American character and who do Americans say they are? And I think Reagan, and and maybe we had a few after that, but oh we'd say Obama, Obama probably.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Maybe Obama.

unknown 28:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, I I I think you're right. But you you just I think it's something that's gone away. Even even Bush, the Bushes did, you know, so yeah, maybe even a little bit further on. Um but um that this idea of who what America is and what it can be, and it's one thing to just say we're great, and you know, I I don't know that I would disagree with that. Uh, I certainly like I certainly like living here. Um but um to to challenge us to to go to the next level. Uh that doesn't seem like that is what many politicians uh of all sorts and all levels are doing anymore.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

No, I don't think that's I think you're exactly correct, Gina. I don't see it, and it's kind of disheartening to do this. Maybe we need another Lyndon Johnson, is what we need right now. So, you know, I've always thought this about Johnson, and I'll build on your thoughts before because I think they're important. But one thing and uh Mitch tell me you talked about how much he came. Johnson was a man in a hurry. Don't you think Johnson knew he wasn't, you know, Johnson was just 63 when he died, which to us is a little scary. Uh don't think. Yeah, that's mighty young. Yeah. Don't you think he was a man in a hurry because he knew he wasn't gonna live very long? You know, I always you know his father was young when he died. Uh and he Johnson men died early, and he knew that he wasn't gonna live very long. So he's in a hurry to make this happen on this. But even, and that's something, and when you talk about Johnson and even the even the consternation he had on civil rights and getting his fellow Southerners to go along, but he was very good about working across the aisle with the Republicans. He and Everett Dirksen had a fine relationship when they were serving as majority and minority leaders in the Senate. Uh, and then later when he's president and uh Dirksen is the leading Republican in the Senate. But it was because, and this is something else we talk about, things we we've lost, and I think we've lost this. It's we used to at least have the same vision as a country for the for the nation, no matter which political side was. We had the the same place where we all wanted to get. We just had different ways of getting there that we said together. I don't know that we have that anymore. I don't know if we we see the same vision anymore. I think we're on completely opposite paths that are broadening even more out from each other of what we see as a nation. And that's why we need something to come together. We need to get us back to we have a vision for what we're going to become and someone that can get us there. We truly need someone, maybe a Lyndon Johnson, who will stand up and give a speech like The American Promise, in which he not only articulates this is where we want to go, he tells us how we can get there, and he calls out those that are going to keep us from getting there. Maybe that's what we need today.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Yeah, it's almost like at one point many of our politicians, you know, um, whether certainly that they they represented their party, um, and uh we're trying to advance along, as you're saying, the party's vision, the party lines of getting to the same goal, which was uh the betterment, right? We always want to make make our state, our city, our county, our our government better uh than it than it had been in the past. Um and I yeah, I I don't know that that's the goal anymore. I don't know that there are goals anymore. Uh and that's that's kind of sad. Um because uh if if if we're not looking for something to do to to make ourselves better, to be reflective of those opportunities that we have, then what are we doing? Uh are we not spinning our wheels? Are we not wandering aimlessly? And you know, it's almost like it's almost a prophetic vision uh in some of our presidents, in some of our leaders, our political leaders, is that they even if we didn't like what they were doing, right? Even if we didn't, well, I don't think that's the right decision. I don't think is that you could respect their vision. Um and that they, you know, their job was to explain to you, well, I know, I know my constituents didn't didn't get behind this, but let me tell you why we're gonna be better because of it, right? Because uh a rising sea raises all ships or something, whatever, whatever they're gonna say. But we just you're right. I don't see that in American politics and American statesmanship. I I don't even know that I'd call it statesmanship anymore.

Read The Speech And Keep Learning

SPEAKER_00 33:02

I don't know if we have any statesmanship anymore. So and for the and that as we come to our end today, and uh on this, I would first highly, highly encourage anybody, all tens of you that are listening to this today, uh to go online, you get online and and and read. It's short, folks, it's not very long. Read the American promise. Read those words that Johnson said and then think about and think about what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

I'll put a link in the description.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah, and think about what was going on at that time, and think about how forceful these words would be. And then I want you to think to yourself, I wish somebody would come on and deliver a message like that today. Someone would stand up and be the the the speech is both it is both bold but also uplifting. It's call a call to arms, but also, as we said, a vision to a better place. Johnson is saying this is where we can get there. And you know, this is what and we've as we've done this document series, I would also say, this is what historians do, folks. This is how we interpret things as we read these primary documents, and this is how we get the breadth of how we interpret history. Uh, this is how the profession is practiced. Uh, and we're not we're not seers, we don't have special skills. Everybody can do that. Just read these things. Read them all, these documents we talked about, and see what you think about them. Go and go and read these things. And as we move on to episodes, we're going to talk about books. And the same thing with books. We're going to talk about some very, very book uh prominent books that go along with these documents that we want people to read uh and how they should do. This is deal. If you get if you get on these things, you read these things, I think you'll understand more of why we're talking about some of the things that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Well, Scott, I think this has been a fantastic little uh five-episode series. This we'll go through.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

I like doing this, and I I like I I miss having guests, and people are there's probably out there that like list just going, when are these people gonna get somebody besides them on or title? Listen to the case.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

When are they gonna shut up?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah. But I think we've done some good here, G.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Well, I I I hope so. Unless you know, as you say, is you know, it gives some people some insight on how historians, even if it's just the two of us, uh do look at documents, how we think about uh how we think about the history and how we put together stories of the past. And as you say, how people can start to do that on their own. You don't have to agree with us. We may, I'm not saying we're we're right in all of our interpretations. And that's the beauty, because that's how history grows. As we sit around and we convene and we talk and we hash it out, and and then we come to a consensus, maybe, or agree to disagree, and that's the beauty of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

That's right. That's great. And quite often, preferably with a few adult beverages thrown in at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Absolutely. Maybe even some cigars.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

There you go. Well, Gene, it's been another great episode.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Absolutely. I loved it. We'll have to do more. Uh next time we'll talk about books. All right, Ryan.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Thank you. Have a good night.