Transcripts For CSPAN2 Eric Foner The Second Founding 20240713

[applause] so good evening, everyone. Welcome to New York Historical society. I name is alex, Deputy Director at New York Historical and a half of our present ceo and Vice President of programs, it is a delight to welcome you to our auditorium. The Nights Program the second founding of the civil war and reconstruction we made the constitution is a part of our shorts distinguish speaker series, part of a Public Programs and is always would like to thank mr. Swartz for all of his support which has enabled us to have such a wide array of wonderful programs so why doto e give him a hand. [applause] and, of course, our board of trustees was been most active and really helpful in bringing this institution to the level it is today, we do have trusty whos us today in the audience and all of our chapmans Council Members with us for the great work and support. To kNights Program is going to last one hour and include q a session. It will be conducted with written questions on note cards and you should have received something from one of our volunteers in the audience who has notecardsds and pencils. I will be going through a sims and him with the introduction of mr. And i will collect cards as well and i will hand out to anyone who did not receive it on the way in. And also tonight, after the onstage talk the speakers will be signing books for us in our history store on the seven cents to each side of the building of the books will be there at them for purchase. So tonight wee are thrilled to welcome back to h our stage eric foner. He is Professor Emeritus of history at Columbia University and a serve as president of three major historical associations, the organization of american historians, the American Historical Association and the society of american historians. Hes also the author of numerous books on the history of Race Relations in america and has been awarded the pulitzer prize, the bancroft prize, and 2015 the American History book prize right here at New York Historical society for his book gateway tori freedom. His newest book which was released a couple of weeks ago is the second founding how the civil war and reconstruction remade the constitution. Our moderators this evening, its great pleasure to welcome back Manisha Sinha, draper chair in American History at the university of connecticut and the slush and your fellow at the ratcliffe institute at harvard university. She is author of numerous books on slavery and Abolitionist Movement including her most recent, the slaves caused, history of abolition which was long listed for the National Book award for nonfiction and winner of the Frederick Douglass prize. She is also written for numerous publications including the New York Times, huffington post, boston globe andg the washington post. Before it began as always i would like to say if you can silence any cell phones you might have to anything that makes a noise, and i also realize i forgot to mention the name of her wonderful trustees in the audits, pat, so again thank you to our trustee for all the wonderful work they do for us. Now please join me in welcoming our guests. [applause] thank you alex for that great, very nice introduction for both of us. Id like to welcome all of you to our Public Program on the second founding how the civil war and reconstruction remade the constitution. Of course our guest is a preeminent american historian and youve already heard all the accolades that he has one. But i thought i would also introduce him today with a contemporary description of the radical republican congressman stevens during reconstruction. I came across it so it strictness or inappropriate. And the observer said, at over 70 years of age he was not attended with any abatement of intellectual by vasily of fire of youth. [laughing] so i thought it was an appropriate introduction. This is, in fact, a historical quote. It can be verified. Let me begin with the question i think most authors get. You have written already what s commonly called the bible of reconstruction. This is his big book on reconstruction. So what motivated you to write thisok book on the reconstructin constitutional amendments . Well, before answering that i should say im very happy to be back here at the historical side and particularly to have Manisha Sinha as the interrogator today. She didnt quite mention it but i supervisor doctoral dissertation of columbia quite a few years ago now, and she did get her phd there. [laughing] and this is her chance to get back at me because [laughing] i was on her orals exam ganesh is a chance to ask me questions. Why did i write this book . Youre right, of course ive written a lot about reconstruction. Im not a law scholar. Im not a legal for storing. Im not a lawyer, although some of my best friends are. [laughing] i often write books because i get slightlyy annoyed about the way scholarship is developing, without going into earlier books, and in this case over the years i became convinced that our Supreme Court doesnt fully understand the 13th, 14th and 15thth amendments, and even and her own time in the late 19th century i they really eviscerated them, but even in our own time they have not use these amendments in the way they were intended to really try to combat Racial Injustice in this society. So you know, why not just tell the Supreme Court they are all wrong and maybe one or two of them will listen. So in that way its sort of a revisionist but also there is a debate among historians about it which i i felt was going in a somewhat interesting direction aboutin well, where these Court Decisions based on racism, federalism, on both . Theres a certain narrowness, without denigrating legal scholarship at all, its very important but theres a vision where the evidence is always come speeches in congress or maybe editorials in the new york tribune or things like that, organizations. But theco sort of vast debate in reconstruction about rights, about citizenship, i called Elizabeth Cady stanton in the book saying that was a moment in her memoirs with all these issues were debated up and down the societyl in the courts, in the pulpits at every fireside, every fireside. You have to bring ordinary americans into this debate, particularly africanamericans whose voice is almost never heard in the Supreme Court rulings are a lot of the literature. I just felt there was a sort of gap out there that i would try to fill, i guess. In the book you talk about the reconstruction amendments as quote the Lasting Legacy of reconstruction. We note of course reconstruction was the time after the war when attempt was made to establish an interracial democracy in this country, and it was overthrown with accommodation racial tariffs, legal and political apathy and reaction. I was just wondering how you solve this, this concept that this was a Lasting Legacy when that period itself proved to be relatively shortlived . Yes. Well, we often say with certainly a good argument, reconstruction failed. And theres perfectly good evidence to say that. But if we start with that premise and then worked backward, what happens is historians work back, why did it fail . What was the problem maybe they should have been on land or messed up on this think if we dont see they didnt all fail, and the fact that these amendments were added too the cause of duchenne and remained in the constitution until today, they are still there even though President Trump has indicated he would like to get rid of at least the first sentence of the 14th amendment, is a sign that that impose your interracial democracy didnt totally fail. Many other things. Reconstruction is about many things other than constitutional issues, although most of those get discussed in constitutional terms at one point or another. Many other things, establishment of black educational institutions, they survive. They didnt all fail. We still have black colleges veday which were found in reconstruction. The black Church Becomes a really Major Institution in reconstruction at the center of thoseer communities. As wb the boys said years ago, the very idea w. E. B. Du bois, the very idea of an interracial democracy survive even though the limitation of it didnt to inspire subsequent struggles. Thats why the Civil Rights Era was sometimes called the second reconstruction, because the issues on the agenda right after the civil war kind of came back. I think the constitution amendments are important even though they were nullified inhe many ways around the turn of that century. The fact that they were there and usable was really determine the legal strategy of the civil rights revolution. I agree. I dont like that i i was likeo say reconstruction was overthrown because a there was a Real Campaign to overthrow it of course. Er so you also visualize this time as the second founding. Thats the title of the book. That has to do with these constitutional amendments and the ways in which black citizenship is actually azeto touchstone of this new founding moment. Im going to go back and look at those three specific amendments that you discussed in the book of course. I was wondering if you want to talk about something that has garnered a lot of attention recently, that is criminal exception in the 13th amendment. Right. Can you tell us a little bit about how this exception became part oftt the amendment and its tragic if unforeseen consequences . Let me just take out my constitution here. [laughing]g] and 13th amendment. Just what is she talking up a neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime shall exist in the United States. Involuntary servitude can continue for people convicted of a crime. Where did that come from . I wondered about that. The first thing thats interesting is theres a lot of literature on the 13th amendment. This. Has written about this book on the 13th amendment that dont even mention it in the slightest but thats not surprising. Wasnt mentioned in congress hardly. Charles sumner said one of two things, that was about it. The press debate about the 13th minute said virtually nothing about the dangers involved in allowing servitude for those with being convictedos of a crime. So where did it come from . The language as was widely declared came from the northwest ordinance written by Thomas Jefferson and have migrated therefrom jeffersons Land Ordinance of 1784 which was enacted that would have barred slavery and all u. S. Territories at that time. Where did jefferson, why did jefferson put it in . I called up a couple of my good friends who were jefferson scholars, peter you know the way to graduate school with me and alan taylor, and i said why did jefferson put that in . They both gave the same answer. I havent the slightest idea. [laughing] and we dont actually know, but the real point is it has become a kind of boilerplate language that people neverad mention is every Northern State that barred slavery included that phrase. They took it, so it was familiar language that will not proviso banning slavery in territories acquired from mexico in the mexican war, included that criminal exception. This has become, get a lot of attention because there was this documentary, 13th, a few years ago. That at a slightly conspiratorial edge that this was put in there and order to anticipate mass incarceration. There were no, hardly any prisons back in. There were hardly any prisoners. This is not supposed to be the basis of a giant system, but it did create this unfortunate loophole which later after the end of reconstruction, Southen States created this giant convict labor system as you know where people come mostly black, not all but mostly black were convicted of stealing a chicken and they are sentenced to eight years in the penitentiary and then they are leased out to work on a plantation or a railroad or a mine, o and he became a horrifying system. One of the books about this is called worse than slavery, because the conditions were so horrible. The court always said this isus allowable because the 13th amendment asset criminal exception. One of the points where think about is original meaning,in original intent, conservative view of how to interpret the constitution. But here you have an unintended consequence. Nobody anticipated whatte would happen that has really undermined some of the purpose is really of the 13th amendment. Really important and valuable contributions of this book to look at this as something that was customary that no one thought about and there was no conspiracy to undermine black freedom but the southern politicians saw that pole and worked it. He wanted to get back to the history we live in a time where conspiracy theories are right. Its probably good to have facts straight on that. So if you of course argue in this book i have argued earlier to that the 14th amendment is the most consequential. I would like you to talk more about that. Especially given the fact that you mentioned earlier some others want to revoke its provision of national birthrights. At one point i want to make to start with is that professor cinda in her book a great book on the Abolitionist Movement to quote you what she says abolitionist hitch their star to black citizenship all that was a crucial question, not the civil war. Slaves were not citizens, what about free africanamericans. The white people born in the country were deemed to be citizens of the civil war. It was little question about that. What their rights of citizens were unclear. What about free african and African Americans and citizens of the state. Many states they said citizenship is for what will, no black person can be a citizen of the United States. It was a law of the land when the civil war took place. With the freeing of 4 million slaves to Service Black soldiers in the civil war that question is on the agenda in the first sentence of the 14th amendment says anybody born in the United States is a citizen. And with no racial qualification whatsoever. No qualification to any religion or race or background and relevant today it has nothing to do with the status of your parents. An undocumented immigrant woman who gives birth to a child in the United States with the status of that show is clearly a boy the fact that their mother may have committed a crime is irrelevant. The mother could be a bank robber. That would mean the child can be a citizen. The 14th moment goes beyond that its the longest amendment added to the constitution. It has all sorts of convoluted provisions. Some of it has no particular relevance today like the confederate debt cant be repaid. We talk about reparations they put in the 14th amendment is never to be any payment to the owners. No ones going to get paid for the loss of their properties. In other provisions but the first section is the key which first creates this birthright citizenship. And then the states came out cannot deprive any citizen of the privileges or immunities of citizens whatever those are it doesnt tell you. And then that no person, more than a citizen, thats anybody, not just citizens, noncitizens have to be afforded equal protection of the law. That is the pivot of the 14th amendment. Equal protection. The notion of equality is so deeply ingrained in the United States at least in our ideology that women we may not realize theres no such thing as in the civil war. The word equal is not in the original constitution except for talking about what happens if two candidates get an equal number of electoral votes. This notion of equal protection and its not racial and this applies to everybody. And the fact that the language is nonracial has allowed in the 20th century the expansion of equality to all sorts of groups and most recently famously gay marriage. Thats 1 14 amendment decision. Equal protection. That is why i called the second founding. You have a new constitution after these three amendments. Another reason i wrote this book is even those are so important. Most people dont know much about them. If you ask your man or woman in the street one of the key documents of American History, they will say the bill of rights or the emancipation proclamation. They will not mention the 13th 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. The people who wrote them, john bingham is hardly a household name, right . , there was no recognition. He was more responsible than almost anyone for rewriting the constitution of the United States. Absolutely. He has a one that gave bill of rights. We should know this guy. You are right. I think this legacy and the ways in which it has been used is for a lot of people. This is kind of a Sleeping Giant in the constitution. The irony is, it has enormously expanded the right of every american. When it comes to racially quality, since nixon began with conservatives and adopting the strategy, the court has whittled away at the use of the 14th amendment. They are more attuned to what they call reverse discrimination white people somehow protection. A vast expansion. Narrowing at the same time when it comes to what was on the same mind of the people debating this in congress. Just a followup, there is a villain in this history of the reconstruction amendment. The Supreme Court. There are a lot of villains in the reconstruction story. More about the Supreme Court. We reconstructing. Another thing i wanted to do with this book was, in a way, allude to the president. The right to vote, right to vote, terrorism, these are issues, not just just 150 years old. I am alluding to the present, i am not writing a commentary on today, but what happens to your rights when you have a conservative Supreme Court. What happens to these amendments really starting reconstruction with the slaughterhouse decision. Going all the way into the 20th century as a warning. Not self enforcing. If you have a hostile Supreme Court, they can do tremendous damage to the expansion of liberty. Why did the Supreme Court do that . Public opinion in the north was shifting away. The reconstruction et cetera. One of the things that surprised me is i dont think that that is really true. Many of these decisions were renounced by Republican Leaders by the republican press. We historians have a tendency that we like people will like us you get a lot of quotes from the chicago tribune. The new york tribune. Washing the hands of reconstruction. They did not like any of these measures. They thought that the court was doing the right thing. If you if you go to mainstream Republican Newspapers which may not have been educated by college people, they were all aghast by some of these decisions. I do not think you can let the Supreme Court off the hook by saying public opinion. You have to look at who they are. Most of the Supreme Court justices are, you know, know, railroad attorneys. People that come up very few of them have any contact with the movement or any contact with black americans. The most radical died early reconstruction. John marshall harland, the only one who ever owned a slave becomes a great dissenter on these things. Most of them, you know, these are not issues of great importance to them. Theyre much more interested in the rights of corporations. Using the 14th amendment. Theyre much more interested in the balance of the states and the federal system. I just think they are going down the wrong path. Another point, very important, there was other jurisprudence being proposed at that very time. It is not like the Supreme Court chose the only available path. Black and white. Putting forward very strong critiques of Supreme Court jurisprudence. Those ideas are still out there. If we get a better Supreme Court one of these days, what i would like to see them do, what i would like to see them do is have the, you know, gumption to say we have been pretty much wrong for the last 75 years. Lets start again. They dont tend to do that. Right. [laughter] this whole question of Legal Precedents in jurisprudence. A formal parameter of. They adhere to president until they dont like president and then they dont adhere. Many of the Supreme Courts decisions lately have had nothing to do with precedent. They sort of eviscerated the Voting Rights act of 1965. You know, i dont believe when they say we just have to go with precedent. If we dont, they find other ways to get around it. Leading up to the historic rule. What is really interesting, and you mention this, designed to protect the right to free people to protect railroad creation from government regulations. Roscoe comp ling, one of our new york, you know, major new york politicians, u. S. Senator, he was on the joint committee on reconstruction which drafted the 14th amendment. In a railroad case in the 1880s. This had to do whether counties have a right to tax railroads. Where the corporate person. We have the same rights under due process. Et cetera. I have got the, ive got the journal of the joint committee right here. If you read this journal, you will see that corporations were intended to be protected by the 14th amendment. That is pretty good evidence. Roscoe dies, actually, he died because he fell into a snowdrift in the pleasure of 1888. Later on, the journal is published in 1914. There is not a word about corporations and it. We have seen political leaders mixing this up all the time. This is a Great American tradition. [laughter] i guess this is where we get that corporations are people. Obviously a long history and law. The constitutional isolation of that which has tilt even more lately with the citizens united, now they have freedom of speech. The idea that corporations have the same basic Civil Liberties as normal human beings is certainly not what was intended by the people that put the amendment together. No. Definitely not. It introduces the word into the u. S. Constitution. Black men and this leads to the Womens Movement with some supporting the 14th and 15th amendment and others opposing it you have this moment of progressed constitutional as is him where rights expand and sometimes theyre constricted for others. I wonder if that would make you revaluate this sort of constitutional moment. It is very important that the rights of women were given no consideration. The 13th amendment has no gender distinction, obviously. In the 14th amendment section two, you have a gender distinction put into the constitution for the first time. The original constitution does not say freedom of speech is only for men or anything like that. And that is in this convoluted clause of which is a compromise about what happens if the Southern States dont give black in the right to vote. The bottom line is, if they dont, they will lose some of their congressman as a result. Mississippi 50 50 black, 50 white. If they did not give the right to vote they would lose 50 of their congress. If they denied any group of men or male citizens the right to vote, in other words, they can deny women the right to vote with no political penalty. No state allowed women to vote at that moment. They were quite outraged at that. It seemed to put in the constitution the notion of political inferiority of women. The 15th amendment, as you, as you say, lead to even more debates splitting the Womens Movement. Some of them said, no. A step forward. Black men now getting the right black men are not getting the right to vote, now we have to fight for an amendment giving women the righten to vote. But others refuse to support it on the grounds that it was creating another barrier. The 15th amendment says that no citizen of the United States can be denied the right to vote because of race. It doesnt say anything about women or men because of race. Africanamerican people can no longer be denied the right to vote. But other limitations are not barred including of course sex. States can continue to deny women the right to vote as they did without any penalty or without the 15th amendment having any application to that. Now, that language, they did debate this very strongly in the general consensus of republicans was we will never get a women suffrage amendmentil ratified. We have this opening to give black men the right to vote but if we try, if we add sex you cannot deny a person a right to vote because of race or sex, e amendment will never be passed. Probably that was true. On the other hand, the radicals brand name was standing up for principle. Even wendell phillips, you know this, wrote a letter to matters of card is saying for the first time in my life i urge you to be politicians, not idealists but if he is not an idealist, what is his job . This is what he was supposed to, thats his entire life. Suddenly im no longer an idealist, im going for what is practical. They never wouldve gotten anything accomplished if that is been their attitude. Its a complicated thing. The best epitaph on this was my lucy stone where she said both are right. Both are right and, unfortunately, that doesnt give us an answer to what ought to be done. And other cause you mentioned earlier about restricting reputation in congress if you deny the right, that clause was never triggered. Never enforced. In fact, in my book theress a cartoon which shows early 20th h century which Shows Congress asleep and the second clause and whatnd is congress once africanamerican did lose the right to vote in the south, Southern States should have lost a lot of their congressional it supposed to be automatic but it didnt happen. Because they have some of this Voter Suppression laws that have limited the number of people but voting and they have a lot of congressmen, 30 or something, so all you need to do is get up to 3 denied the right to vote and they should lose about 30 congressmen, so lets get bernie on the case here. Wishing him a speedy recovery a lot of these tenths amendment people believe [inaudible] if you deny the right to vote someone you will suffer it should be enforced, absolutelysh. There are very good historians some of whom are professors, dare i say, who argue that had it succeeded through a long military operation and marshall on the south. This argument i think is against the argument you are making about evaluating this expansion and rights and in the constitution. What do you make of it . Its not 100 different from what i argue, i mean, im arguing these rights have to be enforced by someone. All three of those amendments say Congress Shall have the power they didnt actually expect the Supreme Court to do a lot with these amendments. They thought it was congresses job and they did pass the ku klux klan act of 1861 and the civil rights act, but there needed to be enforcement and as this wave of terrorism, ku klux klan and similar groups sweep over the south that first president grant sent troops into South Carolina and crushed the clan c. You can do that if youre willing to use harsh measures, but as time goes on that becomes less and less politically viable , so im not that interested in, you know, imaginary scenarios. By the way, georgia julian said with reconstruction lets reduce them to military rule for about 30 years and then we can really remake the society. Well, they werent ready for 30 years of military occupation in the south, but a scenario of what wouldve happened if more troops were sent, i dont know, but it is certainly the way the courts operated in way the fact that the Democratic Party comes back and becomes you know powerful nationally means that federal enforcement becomes harder and harder. Once the democrats win control of the house of representatives in 1874, you have a period of like 25 years almost up to 1896 were almost no Party Controls both the presidency and two houses of congress at the same time except for a brief period of time and so its like today. A divided government and its impossible to get anything accomplished, so one can say yeah, there should have been more enforcement. Sh i agree, but another way the non legalist say there should have been land distribution. Thats what stevens said, take the land of the planter classst and distribute it into 40acre plots to re former slave and then you create Economic Foundation for these rights, so theres a lot off what ifs, but we have enough trouble figuring out what did happen. Exactly. To work out a scenario of what didnt happen. That is one of those counterfactuals of American History people argue about. Maybe we should talk about that and talk about what happened. In your sort of really long and productive academic career, many books, the one thing i have noticed his that you have always unearthed some new piece of evidence. I mean, its never just the same story, and in this book you have discovered this fascinating black lawyers in baltimore, the brotherhood of liberty in the book they published in 1889, justice and jurisprudence. Tell us about how you found the book and why you chose to end your book with a discussion of this group and they are jurisprudence . Well, i found i heard about it in the way you and i and others do research. I was reading someone a professor at howard years ago published an article about them and i happened to stumble upon it. I dont claim any great insight, but i got very fascinated and then i try to find that the book the book is actually in the club area claudia law library and in fact paperback edition was put out 20 years ago, but why am i interested in it . Because theres kind of an argument that people like me who say the Supreme Court should be thinking about these amendments in other ways. We are imposing modern views on the past, you know. Its the same thing they say about you know like jefferson freed his slaves. Well, you cant take modern views and put it at factor even though a lot of people did free their slaves when jefferson was around. It was a unusual idea, but their view of the 14th and 15th and a 13th amendment as bahrain like discrimination the labor market, bahrain opening up all kinds of public accommodations to africanamericans that the rights of citizens are really asked expansive and robust and should be enforced. Thats 1880s, not today, so when i say that it is the waste the Supreme Court ought to think, im drawing on what people at the time were saying, not just throwing my current abuse back 100 some odd years to say how come they werent thinking like i am today, no. There were people there with what i think much better understanding of thesest amendments in the Supreme Court actually had. It just happens they didnt have the power. Of the question of interpretation is fundamentally one of power. Who has the power to determine what that language means . Unfortunately, people like the brotherhood of liberty put forward a long book, but they didnt have the power to see its enforced, but its still out there. It can be rediscovered and maybe one of these days it will be. I think my time here is up, it seems. We have a number of questions both by our audience in the first one is actually quite interesting. Ll for better or worse, do you foresee [inaudible] well, the reverend William Barber who is fighting a very good battle in north carolinaai against a completely retrograde State Government there except the governor now, but in general has recently published a book called the third reconstruction. We need a third reconstruction. The third what this site was after civil war it, but more focused on economic inequality than constitutional rights. You know, whats in justine is that civil rights revolution did not i need or require or implemt any significant change in the constitution. Unlike in south africahe when apartheid ended they had to write a whole new constitution. They checked it out. We didnt check out our constitution. It was there we finally got it enforced to some degree as a result of many people in the streets demanding that, so do we need a new recounting of the constitution or do we need a more vigorous robust understanding of what is latent in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, which people like them or brotherhood of liberty or John Marshall harlan put forward back then. You might call that a third founding if we completely reinterpret what these things mean, but i think we should do more with what we have gotten worry about a new founding. Absolutely, i mean, at the very least its a force of reconstruction amendments. I would say its about time. Heres another interesting question. You have written multiple books and devoted your career to the study of reconstruction. How has your understanding and analysis of reconstruction change or evolved or york over your distinguished career from the first to present book . Well, sadly even after i published my book in 1988 or something scholars kept finding new things about reconstruction. No book of history is the final wordf. We know that and the fate of all historians is to be superseded eventually. I think what interests me in the work of younger scholars such as the professor and many others is the way in which sort of a cast of characters reconstruction has expanded, women, gender and what was the impact of the end of slavery on women white and black i didnt do much with that, admittedly in my book the literature on that was pretty thin when i was writing. Professors modest to mention this but shes writing a book now called the greater reconstruction or at least thats the theme, i dont know if thats the title of people have expanded the parameters of reconstruction including the west, native americans, chinese, if you think of it interracial democracy obviously the fate of the former slaves is crucial but there were many other groups whose citizenship status was debated at the same time. Thats a very fruitful addition. Some people are even expanding reconstruction in time forward to did it really end in 1877 . Thats when my book ends, but you know some that i should go to 1890 or 1900 or some other date. Because these issues didnt go away and never history never just and that one momentec, so theres been a lot of new work which i think is a good. I would say maybe im patting myself on the back too much. My book as i say is not the last word, but its still the latest word for those who want t a narrative history of the whole period. In other words, people up east together new elements or new insights, but they havent merged to them into a covariant new vision of what happened altogether in reconstructionre,o someone will do that soon, im sure. The overall conceptualization basically, i think still holds even though theres been a lot of work on very specific elements of reconstruction. I dont think there is an alternative synthesis to that book. Heres another interesting question. Given that economic disparities that exist between northern and Southern States, is it fair to say reconstruction never really ended . I do say reconstruction never ended somewhere in my book and that the issues of reconstruction are still dividing our society, citizenship, Voting Rights and things like that. Are not sure if the questioner is talking about economic disparities today are generally historically, but certainly sadly if you look at its correct, if you look at the indices of social and economic progress whether itss healthcae , you know, or education levels or life expectancy, the former slave states are still at the bottom of the list and that is true in many countries, actually. Thats true throughout the western hemisphere. Slavery cafe very long shadow onto the presence and somehow it worked the societies in ways thatit they still cant fully escape from and, i mean, i remember when i taught w as a visiting professor at the university of South Carolina. They used to say well South Carolina has problems, but thank god for mississippi. [laughter] we are number 49 on all of these things, but yeah so in a way if reconstruction, the element of reconstruction that meant to reuniting the nation once the civil war was over, that has never quite happened either at least on a basis of regionally quality so its an interesting question. Impact the subtitle of your book was unfinished unfinished revolution. Do you think is cool, libraries other institutions have a responsibility to remove or change dedications to confederate leaders . For example sports teams etc. Yeah, well, this is a big debate. Before i came here tonight i stopped over at the museum of where as some of you know they had that controversial statute statue, not a confederate. Then instead of taking it down they set up a hoping indoors where people can, and they have a range of comments and i wanted to see how that worked. Yeah, i need i think we have never quite reckoned with the reality of the old confederacy. Of this was despite what many people still think this was a rebellion in the name of creating a slave owning republic thats what it was. Thats what they said it was, i mean, they werent trying to beat around the bush. They were saying we are trying to protect slavery here, folksr. Thats why we are going to war. Im so pathetic to people who dont like you know in mississippi where they have johnny reb, mascot the guy who leadspi cheers is no longer johy reb in a confederate uniform and i think hes a brown bear or something now. Yeah, certainly you know im not saying take down every single statue of a confederate everywhere peer thats an important part of history of these regions, but right now the presentation of history is totally onedimensional pure where are the statues of the black leaders of reconstruction. They are part of southern history. Again, if interpretation is a matter of power also is deciding who gets a statue and this is a statement of power, not just of history. Why are there no statues of white southerners who supported the union . There were plenty of them, also. James long street, Major General could not get a statue at gettysburg until recently. Why . Not because of bad generalship, butau because after the civil wr he supported black rights. Hed joined the republicaner pay we dont want to have a statue of him even though he was the right hand man that gettysburg, so i think there needs to be a reckoning. Are not saying we should punish anyone, i mean, theres no one alive today who owned a slave back then, but we never went through what south africa dead, truth and Reconciliation Commission where people actually confronted headon the reality of o the history of this era, so debating about statues and mascots and team names and all of that would be salutary, i think the. There is installation by wiley right here in the city, a new monuments. Oh, i just saw that today. I went to times square with a very impressive i recommend 47th street, times square, the young black guy on horseback which is sort of a commentary on all of those statues in Richmond Virginia on monument avenue, all of the confederate generals. Eventually it will be moved. It will be moved to richmond. Heres another question. I think we do have time. Simultaneous to reconstruction efforts, the Us Government was actively pursuing westward expansion of the country and resettling people and were directing resources to territories west of the mississippi. Did this plot reconstruction [inaudible] i dont know if they blended the potential. Its true a lot of investment money, if you want to look at it that way that may have gone into rebuild the south actually went into the west end mining and lumbering another railroad construction. You know they dont want to invest in a place where the government is insecure where people are writing a mound massacring other people and in the west we talk about the wild west it was not nearly as wild as some aspects of reconstruction given the terrorism going on. Some people say there should have been a Marshall Plan if you really want to boost up the south, black and white, but northerners paid a lot of money for the civil war and they were not that interested in digging into their pockets to pour more money into the south so westward expansion is going on. Thats part of the greater reconstruction and it is diverting resources maybe that might have been directed to the south, but after reconstruction you didnt get a giant flow of money into the south and what you did was just buying up southern railroads until the south became what C Van Woodward said, the colonial economy. The south was absorbed into the National Economy as a second rate region and that lasted a long time. In the 30s Franklin D Roosevelt said the south is the number one economic problem and africanamericans at the bottom of the poorest part of the nation suffer the mostre from this, but a lot of white people also suffered economic where as the welltodo plantation merchant, elite which had helped to overthrow reconstruction did pretty well for themselves, but most southerners didnt. They were colonial but for the ones to make the south widely enjoyed with power at home. To really develop the south you would have had to crack the jim crow system and allow africanamericans real Economic Opportunities s. They did want to pay the bill. For actual modernization of their society. Heres a question drawn from yesterdays headlines. Er yesterdays New York Times editorial had white trump seated white from tweeted about civil war. I do compare the nations Political Climate as compared to todays Political Climate . Well, first of all let me say that i do not follow the tweets of the president. In fact, im not even on twitter i have no interest in what the president says, actually. Really, its also ridiculous. I dont spend all my time agonizing over it, but to invoke the civil war i think the president is throwing things at the wall to see what will stick cousin a precarious position. Is it treason, whatever other, is a coup detat by the deep state, lets just throw out all these accusations and see if any game popular support. We are not on the eve of a civil war. We have a deeply divided political system but we have had that many times in our history. Go back to the 1790s and look what they said about George Washington. Hes about as outstanding as you can get in his opponents condemned him as a british agent and jefferson well, they were right about that, but whatever. They had a lot of things to say about jefferson also. We are not in a civil war, but we are in a divisive moment and of course its being encouraged rapidly from the powers that be, but i tend to be an optimist and i feel you know, the one law of all history, the one thing that is true at all times in historyl is this too will pass. Absolutely. At how i maintain my optimism at the moment. Does trump remind you of Andrew Johnson . I used to think Andrew Johnson was the worst president we have had, but hes getting a run for his money right now. Obviously Andrew Johnson was the first president to be impeached by the house. The senate fell one vote short of convicting him. Thats a bit misleading because basically his lawyers the Republican Party controlled the senate and they could have easily removed him and they were fed up with Andrew Johnson for thousand good reasons, but they were nervous about the impeachment process and basically his lawyer, another important new yorker, promised that if you dont convict him he will behave himself from now on. He will not try to obstruct reconstruction, he wont violate the law or encourage violence. He only has about eight more months in office anywayhe. By the way, thats what happened he kind of shot up after he was acquitted and reconstruction went forward without his obstructionism which had been very acute up until that point. They could have removed him and if he had started re obstructing reconstruction they wouldve impeached him again. Its not like today and whether impeachment is a good idea is a political question, which people can debate, but you know my only fear is that it makes it impossible to get anything else accomplished, not that much was. Eing accomplished anyway there are rather pressing issues facing this country and if everyone is talking impeachment all the time we wont somehow be thinking about these other things. I think im getting a signal here that our time is up. One more question. Im so glad because its a good question. The union paid so dearly for the civil war. Why did they allow it to be undone by the redemption . Thats a good question. 750,000 deaths, most of them Union Although confederacy also large number of deaths. Many many other disastrous things. You know, i think there are two things one is a certain exhaustion sets in after a while , a desire for normalcy. Once the wars over you dont want the crisis to continue. You may almost say the white south outlasted the north in terms of being willing to resist, resist and resist and northerners eventually many lost of the will to oppose that. Also, a civil war is a little different than other wars because the purpose of a civil war is to bring the country back together, so whatever the reconstruction policy and whatever the specifics of the constitutional amendment the longterm aim was to have the south back in as a functioning equal part of the society. They tried to put fences around what the south could do. They put it in the constitution. They passed laws like for example theres a case in mississippi now. When mississippi was readmitted they passed a law saying mississippi can never produce the educational system they just established in reconstructionca. People are ceiling in mississippi today saying thats being violated that they are violating the law requiring an adequate education for everyone but its difficult to enforce now so they tried to make sure that these governments would act properly, but in the end the absolutelyfor ensuring it were difficult. You couldnt really have a longterm military occupation in the south. Its not in concert with the notion of a democratic society. They ratified the 13th amendment abolishing slavery in 1995. They finally got around to it and the reason they did not ratify it 1865, the Legislature Said was because they were afraid that congress would quote legislate on the negro question to save abolition of slavery give congress the power to protect the rights of these people, which it did and they did legislate on the negro question quickly, but they were already thinking about how will we maintain control here even though slaverys been abolished and they didnt want to open the door to we are well not ratify this amendment unless congress as they will never do anything against us again which they were willing to quite sayai. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. [applause]. Thank you for the questions. Tremendous thank you to the professor. Such a pleasure to have you both on our stage and we welcome back again. Thank you for having all of you here with us and we hope you join us for the book signing taking place in our museum street store. Thank you for joining us this evening. Take care. Youre watching the tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. This Holiday Weekend on sunday we are live with jason riley the author in wall street journal columnist will join us for a monthly con program to discuss liberal politics in america and you can join the conversation by sending us your questions. Also this Weekend University of virginia history professor sarah myla explores the political history of tobacco in america. Its a next helping a book tv this thanksgiving as you hear from former Us Ambassador to the Un Nikki Haley she discusses her time in the Trump Administration former House Speaker Newt Gingrich weighs in on whether china is a written america. For a complete schedule the star website im about to beat. [applause]. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the George Washington university. Hi im pleased to welcome you to tonights eventt presented in partnership with politics and prose bookstoreol and at the thd in the George Washington University President ial distinguishednd event series. We launched this series last semester to give our students the opportunity to hear from renowned leaders, the individuals who bring illuminating dialoguee, insight and inspiration to our campus