Welcome to our new Program Sponsored by the Institute American history. Im president of the institute were going to presenting important books in American History which involves important books i some of the major pestilence in the country. Our host will be william roka who works at the institute. William represent each of the asteroids and then guide is question and answer session toward the end. If you think you might like of the Program Sponsored by Gilder Lehrman please go to our website Gilder Lehrman. Org. Now enjoy book breaks. Hello and good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the Gilder Lehrman book breaks here on june 14. Welcome everyone. Todays guest will be professor Elizabeth Varon and a book armies of deliverance. For you guys who are not familiar with the Gilder Lehrman institute of American History, first come welcome. Were so glad you could join us. Just a little bit about Gilder Lehrman, the guild of them institute is a Nonprofit Organization dedicated to k12 history, education while also serving the general public. Our mission is to promote the knowledge and understanding of American History through Educational Programs such as book breaks and other resources. We also provide direct access to unique primary source materials through our amazing collection. And if youre interested in finding out anymore about Gilder Lehrman amazing programs and the collection, please go to gilderlehrman. Org. My name is william roka and i am your host here on book breaks, and what im not hosting book breaks unusual working on a Hamilton Education program. If you want to find out more about the Hamilton Education program, i can go to the website. I have with me allison kraft, an assistant from the Gilder Lehrman collection. For you guys out there in her audience you can notice that your screens off and your microphones off. So please just know that that is normal. Theres no video and microphone for you guys. But did you say how shall it ask a question . I know we will a great conversation today and generate a lot of great questions. If you look at the bottom of your screen you see the little q a feature, entering the conversation please submit the questions there, and when you swing your question if you can also just leave us a little note of where youre from you guys would like to know what everybody is from here on book breaks. Allison will be gathering of these questions and then shell be asking them here in the second half of the program. Weve got a big audience of several hundred people, such as please note we are probably not going to be able to get to all question but we really going to try our best to ask as many questions as possible. Our rights. Our speaker today, our speaker today is professor Elizabeth Varon, professor of American History at the university of virginia answers on the executive council of the john center for civil war history. Shes a specialist in the civil war era and 19th century south. Shes also authored several books before the war will be talk about today. Some of her previous books include we mean to be counted, white women and politics in antebellum virginia. Southern lady, yankees five, the true story of elizabeth bandler, a union agent in the heart of the confederacy. And the coming of the american civil war, 17891859. And appomattox, victory, defet and freedom at the end of the civil war. Today we will be speaking about her newest book, armies of deliverance a new history of the civil war and this is an amazing book that i have had a chance to read it so now i want to stop sharing my screen and welcome professor varon. Its great to have you on the program. Thanks so much. So tackling a whole history of the civil war seems like an incredibly daunting task, and you have done it through the esteem of deliverance as in the title armies of deliverance but this deliverance seems to touch on so many different topics related to the civil war from the diplomatic emancipation, to military. Can you tell us a little bit why you decided to tackle the whole narrative history of the civil war and then more about what is meant by deliverance . Absolutely. My scholarship has focused mostly on the American South and on my home state of virginia. I was commissioned by Oxford University press to write a superfund history of the entire civil war and he knew that would involve a learning curve for me and i was eager to answer for myself and for my readers some key questions about questions that historians have debated. Those questions, the ones that interested me most, i was interested to learn more about the motivation of Union Soldiers, have sustained their morale over the course of a long war, understand why men enlist in the early days when hopes of a short and sweet war and swift victory is not all that tricky but understanding kept me in ranks, what nerved him for combat the these are complex questions and i wanted to bring insight into those. I was interested in the question of lincolns leadership and how we built a coalition to win the civil war. I use the term coalition because Northern Society with fractions and divided across a broad political spectrum on where that spectrum were volitions, radical republicans were ready to take aim at slavery, on the of the far of the spectrum were conservative northern democrats would very staunchly and abolitionists and in the middle of that political spectrum were figures like Abraham Lincoln who selfstyled modernist it were an easy both about slavery and that abolition. Lincoln had to manage a divided northern homefront and is interested children more and more about how he built a coalition, how he sustained a coalition. I was also interested in the third major question on the demise of slavery and unions emancipation policy and out took shape, and the degree to which emancipation gained political traction and how it gained political attraction. Over the course of my research i discovered that northerners coalesced around this theme of deliverance, and this was the belief that Union Victory would uplift both southern whites and blacks alike by delivering them from their holding from slaveholding oligarchs secessionists secessionist would help them under their thumb as the northerners saw it, to deliver to them the blessings of free society. To put it another way, Union Soldiers marched off to war in 1861 be leaving that the purpose is not to conquer the south, not to subjugate the south, but to save it comes to save the southern masses from their own, from their own leaders. So it argued over the course of the book that this theme of deliverance was so politically powerful that it true followers like a like a magnet to the union cause and it permitted lincoln not only to forge a coalition like to go that coalition over the course of the war. A coalition that include republicans of all political stripes and his party, some democrats in the opposition party, some loyal residents of the slaveHolding Border states, anticonfederate softeners in the conceited states. Deliverance was key to all this. I make the case that deliverance rhetoric proved very persistent over the course of the war and i tried to explain how it is that genius persisted in believing they could say the southern masses from southern leaders even in the face of massive evidence that southerners did not want to be saved. I also tried to address the issue of the sort of longterm impact of this deliverance rhetoric, and to note that while this was instrumental in Union Victory by being a sort of true Coalition Building come deliverance rhetoric ultimately failed to persuade confederates to accept Union Victory or to accept black freedom on the north terms, and deliverance rhetoric also failed in any longterm way to resolve debates among northerners about what victory would mean and shake freedom, freedom would take. One additional point about my aim and purpose is because i know there are a lot of teachers on the line. Thinking of the teachers as he wrote this book and a sense i was commissioned to write about that would appeal to a broad readership scholars and gentle readers, it also be suitable for use as a textbook in College Classrooms and potentially in high school, too. I had a pedagogy to aim in mind. I wanted students to take away to make important things from this book and children and understand two things that americans sometimes struggled to put in the same frame. Those two things are first that racism was an american problem not only a southern problem. American society was confused with racism in the 19 century in the north and in the south. This meant africanamericans were waging a freedom struggle on two fronts, and little war against the horrors of slavery in the south and the horse of white supremacist ideology, but also about in the north for Political Rights of discrimination in the north where they were free but relegated to a kind of second class status. I emphasized in this book that you understand the consequences and the causes of the civil war you have to grapple with the depth and breadth of american racism. I also want my student readers of the book two, we understand something else, and that is that the union and the confederacy were starkly different political systems. Representing starkly different ideologies representing starkly different destinies for america. It was these differences that Frederick Douglass had in mind when he very famously said in 1878 speech it was a right site and wrong side in the late war. The war was as he described it a war of ideas between the old and the new, between slavery and freedom, between barbarism and civilization. Douglas the course was under no illusion that Northern Society was perfect. He was in the Vanguard Movement to reform Northern Society but douglas knew that Union Ideology with its emphasis on free labor as opposed to in slave labor with an emphasis on majority rule, emphasis on moral reform. Union ideology created a framework in which change and progress were possible, not inevitable, not by any means easy, not even likely but possible. Activists like douglass pushed open the door and gave great in the face of great diversity, pushed open the door to change and progress. Douglass also new that confederates would be the about enemies the change and progress, that they were intent on polling the door shut and locking it, change it shut and throwing away the key. And so its important to understand all this because i want students to be mindful to guard against falling into the trap of a we reminded, powerful reminded by events in charlottesville and their aftermath that that trap of false equivalence is a very dangerous trap indeed. In looking at in some ways the incredible challenge that lincoln had ahead of him when he got elected trying to keep this gigantic, complicated coalition in the north from democrats, radical republicans, abolitionists dealing with the slaveholding states that remain in the union. Can you talk a little bit then how his views on emancipation evolved going from the confiscation act to emancipation of washington, d. C. , to the emancipation proclamation and how that played into the lyrical dynamic going on in the north . Absolutely. The standard way we account for the emergence of emancipation as a core war aid on the northern side is to emphasize lincolns dogmatism as a politician. He knew as you just said he had to keep this on wielding political entity together. He knew that most Union Soldiers began to i didnt buy themselves as abolitionist. They were committed to saving the union but not to award to end slavery. We know that lincoln experiments with various policies. He offers gradual, said emancipation to sort of a lower slaveholders back into the union with the promise that if they voluntarily free the slaves he will compensate them for the losses and colonize. The free people, he makes a series of appeals that we consider part of a long tradition of antislavery gradualism. The standard narrative is one in which lincoln comes around when he observes that events on the ground, most especially the massive resistance that gave slavery by the enslaved, the exodus from find some limitations to union lines, when he sees that the war itself and this activism and resistance by the enslaved is eroding destitution, that is offers to take them up on solutions are being rebuffed, and he comes around driven by a sort of pragmatic belief that the right move for saving the union is abolition. Abolition is a means to saving the union and he then makes arguments on behalf of emancipation that are again pragmatic or based on military necessity, resistant northerners by saying we emancipate as a means to an end driven by pragmatism because emancipation is a military necessity to take resources away from our enemies. I recognize the value of that particular narrative but i emphasized in my book lincolns idealism as he comes around as it were. To be sure theres an evolution in lincolns thinking and change. But once he comes to embrace emancipation, he and his allies make what in the context of the time was a quite idealistic argument that emancipation will benefit all americans and that it will benefit southerners and will benefit white southerners. It will benefit them by opening the way for all to begin the blessing of free society, education, free speech, Economic Prosperity to flow into Southern Society and move the contention between the north and the south. It will displace that slaveholding belief that have dominated Southern Society. And benefit southern whites. He attempts to enlist various allies, people from slaveHolding Border states and even a few southerners from Confederate States were willing to support him. He tried to sign them on in making this case that emancipation will have broad benefits and giving freedom to the slaves will give freedom to the free as he said. To recognize that lincoln is making this argument about the broad benefits to american society, northerners and southerners, white and black, of emancipation is in a sense a little bit sobering and disappointing because one of the things that signals, the argument for emancipation remain more white centered, centered on benefits to whites than we would apply, then they should have. The focus should of been on the suffering of slaves and on the rights to freedom and to citizenship. But northern antislavery politics remained quite white centered in lincolns version of them. But another way to think about this again is in the context of what had come before, this argument that emancipation will have broad benefits for all americans is quite radical. Because it is a reputation of what had been centuries of zerosum game thinking about race relations, and argument that the figures the slave had made in the closing period that you could not have black freedom because any gains for African Americans comes at expense of whites. Lincoln and his allies rejected this, and its a big break with the past to reject this kind of thinking. It has to be noted and emphasize that lincoln here is in a sense following the lead of the true antislavery vanguard, and and that is not only those enslaved people with take matters into their own hands and risen up against slavery to flee from it, eventually to join the union army. Hes also very much in debt to the intellectually those figures like Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists who had been building this case for abolition. One lincoln was slow to embrace but when he did embrace it he embraced it in a in a way whics quite a big break from what had come before. And then an emancipation also seemed to play not just a role domestically but internationally as well because, also the concept of deliverance that you talk about, that lincoln also to keep an eye across the atlantic because cotton was part of a global economy, and the British Empire was dependent on cotton from the south. There was also this trying to prevent the south from being recognized as a nation seeking selfdetermination. And you talk a little bit more about the International Aspects of deliverance and emancipation . Deliverance of rhetoric is really important. Again, really the emphasis in deliverance rhetoric for someone like lincoln and a central premise of it was my call the deluded masses very of Southern Society in politics. This was a very widespread popular belief on the part of northerners at the white southern masses, most of whom did not own slaves, had been seduced, cajoled, deluded, pressured, terrorized into supporting the secessionist leaders and the somehow if the union to break the spell that secessionists had over the southern masses, those southern masses would welcome deliverance at the hands of the union army. Lincoln was referred to in the rebellion and insurrection he believed very, very staunchly that secession was essentially the work of a small group of again secessionist conspirators, and that it was not a legitimate movement that rejected, that reflected the true will of the southern masses. We can talk about again how northerners could believe that t in the face so much evidence of confederate support or confederate ideology. This had implications as you sit in terms of geopolitics and diplomacy. The confederates were making a a bid to persuade european powers particularly the british, that they were a legitimate state and should be recognized as such. Lincoln was trying to make the case that deliverance but it was helpful in this way to say this is not a legitimate exercise in nationbuilding by people who been the victims of tyranny. This is a conspiracy by small number of slaveholders who are riding roughshod over the ranks of the seven masses and who have to be toppled in order to restore the union. And, of course, confederate hopes of foreign recognition are dashed and lincolns embrace of emancipation, his preliminary proclamation undermine the confederate bid for foreign recognition by clearly identifying the union war with the emancipation policy. And then for the confederacy, how did they react to these notions of deliverance and the newspapers in the words that were printed in the newspapers in the north . What was their kind of ideology against the north, so to speak . So heres an important thing to note, that is at the heart of these ideological battles and propaganda wars between the two sides. We tend to imagine that what happens in wars is that people demonize each other. One side demonizes the other, and we do see demonization in the civil war, but the premise of the union war was that southerners would once again be the countryman of northerners, that the union would be restored. So unionists tended as a say in the book to describe southerners metaphorically as protestant sense, pupils and needed teaching and drunkards who needed to sober up and madmen who should come to their senses and sanitation repent and so what are the emphasis of bring them some about international hold. Confederate leaders were attuned to this deliverance rhetoric and the water at all costs to discredit it. So from the very start of the war, indeed before the first shots have been fired the focus of confederate ideology is on making the case to white softeners that the union is intent on a war of extermination, and so its deliverance is the key word for unionists. On the confederate side the keywords are things like degradation, pollution, extermination, in a sense of ideology is meant to her yet and discredit the seven masses i suggesting that northerners are intent on subjugation of the south. And the other point i want to emphasize to people while its a bit of a shorthand to equate the south and the confederacy, we shouldnt do so because there were africanamericans who were anticon federal, who served in the union army nearly 80 were southerners. So this comes back to your question, the ideology there was a south of confederate nationalists of diverted slaves, loyal slaves and so on and so on and what we had was a divided south and lincoln was able to capitalize on some of those divisions. And then taking a look at these two different ideologies and like you summarized the confederate viewpoint, they called it northern barbarity and southern victimization and the north on one hand is trying to use deliverance to bring the south back into the fold, their wayward brothers, so to speak. What was the impact at the end of the war with the start of reconstruction . And what are some of the legacies then in some ways that the Southern View almost negates or takes advantage of the northern view of trying it bring th to bring them back in the fold in a peaceful way and make them brothers once again . Yeah, i found as i researched this book although i hadnt started with a provisional thesis in mind, i came to realize that what i was finding in the sources was, in a sense, the back story to a tale i told in my previous book. I wrote the surrender of grant to apotmax. But as a means of reflecting their repen tis, he saw their repentance and that there was a right side and a wrong side to the war and he sought with contrition and his leniency would be a way of changing hearts and finds. And what i describe in this box book is the sources on grants part. And its easy to ask was grant delusional . Why would northern think they could change southern hearts and minds . And part of what i argue in this book is northerners looked around the landscape of the war and saw places where they thought deliverance was working and whenever they saw evidence of desertion in the south, they saw that as a potential sort of sign that deliverance was working and wherever they saw dissent in the south, potential sign that deliverance was working. The fact that the slave Holding Border states stayed in the union and antislavery parties got traction in missouri and maryland they saw that it was working. And the separate union and state, they saw as evidence that deliverance was working. So there was a powerful yearning of northerners to believe this. Grant clung to the idea that he could change southern hearts and minds well into the first phases of reconstruction. Part of what i tried to convey is that the appeals of this deliverance rhetoric, that you can punish the guilty elite and redeem the masses, this was an emotional residence. Northerners knew even if they wanted to, they couldnt have subjugated the region and they failed to do that and turned out that confederates were not about to repudiate their fallen leaders or lost cause. You see defiance in the postwar south and the rejection of the premise of the union war. We see two things that are very telling when the war ends. Collation came together to win the war, once that goal achieved falls apart as arguments began about the meaning of victory, the meaning of freedom. To what extent were prick fri and on what way were the africanamericans going to have inclusion in society and we see the part of the coalition so much by Andrew Johnson and his successor. Chosen to run in 1864 when lincoln was trying to win reelection precisely because he was a southerner who had seen the light, so it seemed. He supported the union and emancipation as a military necessity during the war. Well, at the end of the war johnson essentially reveals that his notion of black freedom is a very narrow one, the freedom defined narrowly only the right to work for wages, but not the right for a political voice, and it comes to light that he is seeking to build a new coalition of his own, that includes former planters and that he abuses lincolns amnesty policy. I think a key thing to all of this that i really try to underscore in my book is that while we focus very rightly on emancipation lincolns signature policy. He has a second signature policy, defeated confederates, taking up future allegiance and your rights of what will be restored, it was like a bid again, to peel disaffected southerners. And johnson abuses that amnesty with massive pardons to the elite who northerners fought to finish and defang and the result is the first face of reconstruction in which the white south imposes all kinds of forms of subordination that are meant to be as close to slavery as possible without defi defining the 13th amendment. I mean, i could talk with you the whole day, but this has to be my last question so we can get to the audience questions, but my last question then is, because the audience has a lot of teachers viewing right now, can you talk a little bit how teachers can help their students understand this incredibly complex subject of the civil war, the politics, the diplomacy, the warfare, emancipation and also, what were some of your favorite sources and in doing research, leak where did you turn to to hear the voices from the people of that time . Those are wonderful questions and first of all, i feel that biography is a wonderful way at getting at tricky and difficult political questions and that therefore, you know, id rather have students read very deeply in the order of someone like Frederick Douglas and contacted everything for historians and giving students representative lives with the complexity of the thought of these key figures is very, very important. In terms of sources, i mean, for me, ultimately, i found soldiers letters so moving, letters by Union Soldiers. I read very widely in letters by Union Soldiers. Africanamerican soldiers. White soldiers. New englanders, people from the, you know, border states and someone. And the often times the sophistication of their own thinking surprised me, sometimes quite profound thoughts appear in a language, grammar, spellings and so on, that you know, seem less than polished. But the sentiments nonetheless, reveal, you know, provide for us a great insight, so tuning in those voices is so important and the key thing, always, in these sorts of projects is that we have to strike a balance between the in the moment sources and the post facto sources. For me the letters and diaries. We have a wonderful collection at uva of newly acquired soldiers letters and diaries that weve gotten through now and those in the moment sources are so important because theyre a bit of a kind of a control group that sort of enables you to see arguments that are being made in speeches, in sermons by politicians and editors landing and resounding in peoples daily lives. And its ab tract and clearer. If i only found the deliverance letter that i described in speeches, sermons and in editorials, i would have wondered how much it really mattered and meant. What i found was that Union Soldiers diaries and letters, those in the moment sources written as the smoke was clearing off battle fields, literally. I found Union Soldiers professing and repeating a mantra as if theyd been given a script from which to read, save the south from southern leaders. And again, one is looking for that broad spectrum. Certainly not all the Union Soldiers signed yont onto that. And soldiers in particular making this is the case a battle on two fronts against discrimination against slavery and unless america is delivered from slavery and from sin, racism itself. And black soldiers make a second distinction less hopeful about any kind of quick conversion on the part of former confederates and much more focused on the southern system of racism. But we see in the soldiers letters and diaries this spectrum and it gives us a chance to see how ideology, again, lands, shapes, affects lived experience and i should mention, too, by training of american women and southern history, the voices of women, women as warriors in the cases of Elizabeth Van lou and Harriet Tubman and harriet jacobs, to the medical apparatus, suzie king taylor. Women as political commentators. Women are integral to the story. One of the things i try to do in the book rather than women set aside in their own chapters and section, is leave the voices of women throughout. Absolutely. Its been really great speaking with you and this is an incredible book. Thank you so much for writing it and i want to hand it over to allison for questions from the audience. Thank you, ill be delighted to answer them. Hi, allison. Thank you professor so much for being with us here today. We have almost 100 questions in the q a, so it was quite difficult to pick only a small handful. For sure. I believe these will fulfill the most burning questions people have. So our first question is from isaac and isaac is a teacher at an International School in germany. Isaac would like to know if if the north was so intent on delivering the south, why did so many northerners fall for a southern lost cause view in the reconstruction years. How did the southern narrative gain such traction . Thats a very, very important question and historians have offered up a, you know, series of answers that emphasizes a few i think so this. To be sure that that lost cause ideology does gain traction and it is a the best way for lost cause ideology with the confederacy is a massive Misinformation Campaign and northerners proof susceptible to that Misinformation Campaign again because of the persistence of racism in the north. They proved sort of a receptive to that Misinformation Campaign because in a very cynical way, white southerners caused chaos through violence and propaganda in the south and then suggest that the only answer to the chaos is to go back to the way things were before. So, its a sort of selffulfilling prophesy, the white propaganda is meant to wear northerners out and it does. It suggests to them they can only have peace by abandoning the hope of deliverance. And we can see this again, the cynicism of it is quite telling, but just to give one angle, way of thinking about this, northerners dont sort of whats the way to put this. Dont get into lost cause ideology easily. Theyre always counter narratives. A one cause ideology that emphasizes that the union cause was righteous, that only one of the two parties should be able to occupy the moral high ground here and that is northerners. A reconciliationist ideology that seeks to sort of, the southern defiance and bitterness by focusing on reconciliation. The message of lost cause ideology is that southerners, only accept reconciliation on the moral high ground. And people say if northerners wanted to win hearts and mind, why want there a mar tial plan . There was, it gave more to poor southern americans than as a sort of, you know, agency of subjugation and tyranny. There was no lengths lost cause types that wouldnt go to to distort history and part of their distortion was sweeping under the rug the evidence of dissent into the south. Sweeping under the rug southern unionism. Sweeping under the rug the contributions of southern blacks to Union Victory and their opposition to slavery and so on, in order to create a fiction. And again, northerners and others, who had hopes and change to come in the face of a Massive Campaign of propaganda and violence. Ive been thinking about this a lot in part because im writing a biography of james longstreet, a confederate general almost alone among confederate generals accepted grants terms in the spirit that grant offered them and came to the conclusion that defeated confederate did have to yield to the victorious union and longstreet will go on to support the Republican Party and black voting and to be cast out of southern white Southern Society as a pariah for having made this surprising and almost singular sort of switch. So, you know, with grant and others who gave extended leniency and clemency hoped for as to change southern hearts and minds and at the end of the day the long streets were few and far between and former confederates closed ranks, again, to discredit and preempt appeal to the masses. Thank you. Our next question comes from lois. Lois is a children from grants pass, oregon and lois wants to know if you can address what kind of Agency Formerly enslaved persons had before president grant took office . So, we see we estimate the very, very importantdy continuation the post war pre construction, between the first phase while johnson is president and the second phase, reconstruction. And a wealth of wonderful recent and historical work has shown former slaves in the wake of confederate deceit, and lets keep in mind it was confederate deceit that was true dawn of freedom, the potential drawn of freedom, lincoln emancipation proclamation, but as long as there were confederate armies in the field, slavery was protected by them, the deceit of southern armies raises the hopes of real freedom among africanamericans and they design that freedom very bro broad broadly. Not only to work for wages as johnson would have it, but political voice, Legal Protections and the decision to deny them citizenship. The right to marriage, equal opportunity and so on. So they begin instantly to move forward and demand those rights to try and secure them and they are met from the very beginning of this president ial phase of reconstruction with white southern recalcitrants stoked by Andrew Johnson who gives former confederates, and restore power. And laws are passed in the south upped the johnsonion regime as one scholar put it the post slavery ideology in a World Without slavery. These are socalled black coats that are meant to subordinate status on the free people. And when we have congressional reconstruction, we see real change for the first time because africanamericans become voters and Office Holders and they acquire in that window of congressional reconstruction the some of those key rights, rights to selfprotection, minimal rights of selfprotection which had been denied them. They require a political voice and as i explained, tragically, that experiment in interracial democracy in the south and congressional reconstruction is undersiege from the moment it begins and indeed, even before it begins, if you will, in that confederate ideology and democratic party, southern democratic ideology was meant to revive the zero sum game thinking and to propose and enshrine the idea any game our next question comes from christopher from illinois. Christopher wants to know does the philosophy of grant play a role in the lost cause, in terms of south that they did not need saving . So a few things to say there and i think your questioner has sort of alluded to these things. On the one hand, philosophy of deliverance was problematic because many southerners found it to be confederates found it to be condescending. If you say theyre going to save them from themselves, you have a risk of angering them. And many felt that this was part of a representative of a kind of northern condescension. Now, it must be said that northerners felt that southern slave holding was condescending to them and it ran in both directions. We can see, again, the problems with deliverance ideology. Deliverance ideology kept white suffering at the heart of politics. And they were concerned about southern refugees and so on and the victimization at the center of politics and they could come along and way, johnson said in effect. The white southern masses which suffered under the domination, are now suffering under republicans and johnson claimed he would fight this that as much. And this was an ideology that had many potential uses and johnson put it to a retrograde and reactionary use, so, you know, its a very good question and all of this is meant to score how president ial leadership matters, and lincolns view of deliverance is very different from the view of johnson. This question is from amelia, who comes from new york city. And amelia asks, how does the deliverance rhetoric differ between the units and white units . Thats a great question. Some of the differences, i think i found that it was ubiquitous among all of those soldiers, but with some important variations. Officers for officers, the deliverance rhetoric tended to be more sort of affected by class associations and so on. The image of poor southern whites in the eyes of northerners was an image of people who were, you know, uneducated, ignorant, living in primitive circumstances and so on who needed to be not only brought around to an embrace of free labor ideology and uplifted socially so this notion of a sort of project of social uplift you see a little more explicitly among the more educated and wealthy officers. Again, the point i tried to make before, africanamericans believed in the power of free labor to regenerate the south. They hoped that some of the truly anticonfederate southern whites, the small number of truly anticonfederate whites, like Elizabeth Van lou, might be allies in the veem freedom struggle, but africanamerican soldiers that that meant the end of slavery in the south, but the end of racism and they felt very, very strongly that you would not have National Security and peace unless you rewarded the truest of the south, unionists, that is to say africanamericans themselves with the vote because without that tool, that vulnerability to exploitation would persist. So, you do see some variation, if you think about the very social groups. And our next question comes from sherry. Sherry would like to know, did africanamericans serve voluntarily in the Confederate Army . No, africanamericans did not serve in the Confederate Army. This is one of those myths that was, you know, generated by lost cause types to enshrine an idea of a faithful slave in a solid south africanamericans were forced to do hard labor by confederate soldiers, maybe that was done to serve the interest of southern slave holders and southern whites so they were forced to clear roads, to build fortifications, to grow crops and so on. But they were not welcomed into the confederate military. There was a debate about the potential enlistment of black soldiers as the white confederates in the last stages of the war and some terrific work by people like kevin loven and bruce levine shows very, very clearly, that was to look at no potential for quality or citizenship. To rescue slavery for the rest of Southern Society, that that debate, you know, that it went nowhere, but the slave holders, it turned out, were not willing to give their slaves over to the army in that capacity to be used in that way. So its very, very important to put that myth of black confederates once and for all. They were enlisted in the union army and not the confederate. Jennifer from washington d. C. Can you identify a turning point or something that triggered lincoln from stopping the extension of slavery to ending it . So, i would say that there in a sense the, you know, traditional story has it right. Lincoln says famously at one point that he is offering again gradual compensation emancipation to slave holders and they never accept the friction and abrasion of war, he puts it, are ending slavery and mass exodus to the union army. He can see the writing on the wall. He theres a combination of seeing a war erode slavery and seeing that those slave Holding Border states are not going to abandon the union, but also not going to accept his offer of gradual compensated emancipation, a series of converging factors. Hes also someone in this ultimately, you know, so important to remember, as we think about avoiding false equivalencesy. The union Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest president s, a man of moral striving, and changes his views, adapts and admits when hes wrong as he famously did to grant after vicksburg and stories of travels, a journey. Scholars often think about this saying there was a private lincoln. We have evidence that that private lincoln always loathed slavery on some level. Theres a pragmatic lincoln about keeping his coalition together. And on the eve of his assassination, and converging of private and public lincoln and the key thing is once he knows the north is going to win the war, he can and having learned what hes learned, he can speak in a truly antislavery cadences that evoke the abolitionism of people like david walker and douglasson and garrison. And the performance of africanamerican troops is a factor in lincoln, you know, coming to defend emancipation the way that he does in moral terms. Our next question comes from joseph and joseph would like to know how do you address those who continue to fight a lost cause and states rights about the cause of the war as opposed to the economics and political power of slavery . So this is something that, you know, it is we as educators about the civil war deal with all the time and we observe, for example, about states rights, that states rights was not separate to the issue of slavery, that thats a false dichotomy, that the states right most wanted to protect, and they were unabashed about that. And steeped in the lost cause sort of notions, we ask them to go and read the primary sources. The successionists were absolutely unabashed in telling why they were seceded. They seceded to protect slavery and they tell us so in the documents they explain to the world and ordinances of succession and read the ordinance of succession in georgia or South Carolina. And its not theyre not subtle about it, they tell us in no Uncertain Terms what succession was about. Now, the question raises exists in another level. Theres no dispute, no serious modern historian denies, it was a bid to protect and extend slavery and they know that most white southerners did not own slaves and again, types like lincoln, as they thought about Southern Society, emergency those nonslave holders must recent slave holders who had, you know, kept for themselves the preponderance of wealth and power in the south. Northerners failed to reckon to the degree to which slave holder ideology had sunk its hooks into Southern Society and coursed through the bloodstream of that society. Its true only with unin four white southern families owned slaves, but if we also count the number of white southerners to hoped to own slaves, to worked with or for slave owners who had slaves in their families and so on, we see that a broad majority of white southerners in the ceded states believed they had a profit and control. And the white successionist propaganda that led them to believe that the north was a threat to their wellbeing and control was tragically very, very effective. We have time for one more question, but you mentioned the South Carolina succession and more about those and what they say. Ours are quite large, but very interesting to look at. Our final question today comes from kelly and kelly wants to know how many confederate soldiers affected or switched sides to fight for the north . So, thats a good question. I dont have a figure, you know, at the that i can quote right now. There are some books on socalled galvanized yankees, and people who fought on the union side. I do emphasize in my book that there were well, lets put it this way. One of the things that is emphasized on a wonderful book william freeland, the south is the south and the title tells you a good idea about the thesis this have book. He observes that, that 450,000 men in slave states fought for the union army, the blue uniform. 150,000 of those 450,000 were africanamericans who fought in the union army, but 300,000 were border states who cheeose the union army and others were Confederate States who chose the union army. And there are divisions that should have us think about equating the south with the c confedera confederacy. And those that joined with the union army or that those, you know, endorsed the unions, the unions war, those kinds of southerners were symbolically important to lincoln and i can give you one example. A confederate edward gantz from arkansas who came to embrace the Republican Party and the Lincoln Administration and emancipation and was held up as a sign and symbol that this was possible. The last thing ill say on this as is follows, lincoln proposed planned amnesty, the 10 plan and the reason this, lincoln was hoping by offering amnesty to confederate, he could get 10 to peel away from the c confederacy and that those might be a vanguard that would lead those states back in the union. The fact that he chose the number 10 tells you something about the absence of support for the union in those Confederate States and the fact that he had to adjust his expectations about the potential of people switching sides. There were pockets of unionism in the south and particularly in the mountain south, but in the sort of plantation areas of the ceded states and they were few and far between. And somewhat beleaguered and yearning for deliverance for sure and having to pate wait a long time for it. Professor varon, thank you for this fascinating conversation and allison for those questions. I want to share my screen one more time so i can share with you folks out there a whole bunch of important links. And also going into the fact feature, thats are not clickable, but go to the chat window to click on any of these listed here. Let me also say, friends, with a hundred odd questions and a chance to answer only a few of them and leaving people with unable to answer those, and ill be delighted to answer questions by email. Fantastic, thank you. Thank you. Now, if youre interested in buying professor varons book armies of deliverance, please go to this link, bookshop. Org, this is the gill gilda lehrman. And once we end this, you will be send to a link for a twominute survey. Please fill out the survey we like to know how were doing and how we can improve. If youre interested learning more about book break go to gildalehr man. Org bookbreaks. If youre interested in finding anything else about our programs and the collection, please go to gildalehrman. Org. We are going to shut out our screen and sound and you can copy down the links, but they will be in an email tomorrow. And a recording on the book breaks website by the end of the week. Again, thank you professor varon for the great conversation and thank you allison and thank you to our audience out there and hope to see you again next week. Have a great afternoon. Everyone. Week nights this month. Were featuring book tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight starting at 8 p. M. Eastern, we look at books about President Trump and the upcoming president ial election. Beginning with kt mcfarland and her book revolution. And author and Award Winning historian, Doris Kearnes goodwin, starting with her book, no ordinary time, on cspan2, the president s available in paper book, hard cover and ebook, from public affairs. The presents biographies of every president and inspired by conversation was noted historians about the leadership skills that makes for a successful presidency. In this president ial Election Year as americans decide who should lead our country, this collection offers perspectives into the lives and events that forged each president s leadership style. To learn more about all of our president s and the books featured historian visit cspan. Org the president s, available in paper book, hard cover and ebooks, wherever books are sold. And now a conversation with Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson who discusses ideologies in the south and the American West after the civil war. War. Welcome to this Virtual Event with historian heather