Peter good afternoon. I am the director of the institute. It is my pleasure to invite aaron sheehandean, the professor of southern studies at lsu. He is professor of southern history as well as civil war and published a number of scholarly works, including a monograph on a book published by the university of virginia. He has done a number of things as well as the editor with myself for civil war america which is published by unc. Aaron came to cwi in 2013. This is your third year at lsu. We will have to note if theres a change in his accent. Do you have a cajun accent now . He is shaking his head no. He will speak on the war in 1865. Welcome aaron sheehandean. [applause] aaron thank you, pete. I have not developed an accent. The giveaway is i talk too fast. People know that i am a yankee. My students in particular i will do my best to speak slowly. I do cook jambalaya. Native in that regard of the food of baton rouge. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to start things off. It seemed appropriate that we congratulate ourselves on the survival of the sesquicentennial. If youre civil war historian or somebody interested, the last couple of years may have seen longer than the actual war itself. Here we are in june trying to route up. My hope was we would finish in april. I am trying to give an overview that is 1865, the narrative of what is going on the last couple of months when participants do not know how the war is going to end. It is exciting for me to tell you how it finishes after the years not knowing. I would like to shift to a slightly more omnipotent perspective and talk about the ways in which participants were trying to make sense of the experience. How did they ascribe meaning to what they just went through . And then one level up, how have we over time and i will do this quickly thought about the question of what the civil war means . That category of analysis, thinking about it is distinct from why the war ended. This is the question a lot of civil war historians have spent time on, why did things turn out the way they did . In the last couple of decades with the rise of memory studies that historians have thought more about the legacies and outcomes and meanings of the civil war. So let me start, if i sound like i was disparaging the why question with my explanation of how we got there. How the war evolved and why the north won or the south lost . And those are separate questions. That is central to what we do as historians. Cause and effect is never perfectly clear, to capture the full range of outcomes. Our job is to explain past events. How did the north win . They implemented a strategy of exhaustion that eliminated the ability of confederates to maintain resistance. That is confederates were defeated. The order of nouns and verbs matter. Even from the title of the book that describe the war. If it is how the north won, it is different from how the south lost. It tells us the things you think are important. The north succeeded not because they had superior resources but because they used those resources effectively. If it was a question of materiel, the war shouldve ended in 1862. For political and military reasons, it took several years to design a strategy that brought victory. You will notice that i did not say the confederacy lost. That is, i do not think the question why did the civil war end the way it did . Can be explained by the divisions among southerners. Those divisions were certainly real and many loyal confederates despised Jefferson Davis for the draft, the tax, and other policies. Those places rarely visited by union troops resented them all the more. Important people in the confederacy resented them most of all because they lived so close. The same poor people benefited from the redistributing properties and make supplies available, the purpose to give the confederate government the ability to redistribute goods to equalize the burdens of war. That is in social terms. Southern men and women clash over the changes by the war and black southerners provided aid and support to the union. The confederacy was rife with internal discontent and the north had the same dissent. [indiscernible] only the most obvious examples of these divisions. The democrats marshaled debilitating resistance to lincoln and the republicans across the Southern Tier of northern border states like missouri, kentucky, and maryland. Tens of thousand men joined for confederacy units or joined private guerrilla wars. Even though northern women do not assume such a larger role as their peers in the south the dead, they nonetheless accelerated the conflict about the proper role of women in life. Dissent is prominent in both not sections, but not determinative of the outcome. Otherwise we would be blaming the new york riots. The other crucial factor beyond military fortune, capacity deployed, the ones that boosted the fortunes of both sides during the war was simple contingency. Whether we call it fate or you are a gambler at several pivotal moments the civil war couldve ended or shifted direction and unpredictable ways. A short list is Southern Pines antietam, gettysburg in atlanta and lincolns , reelection. I know youre spent the past couple of years over these moments of pivots. We can see the last of the truly contingent moments probably passed in 1864 with the union to of victories. s trifecta of victories. Even still the war did not end in 1864 as many hoped. In january 1865, richmond was held by the confederate, grants efforts around petersburg which had been underway since june of the preceding year was progressing but had not produced the result he had hoped for. It is a very long time for northerners to wait for what have been told is an imminent victory. The people had turned diehard rebels. These individuals not just committed to victory but convinced of this eminence remained in control of the confederacys military political and legal apparatus. These diehards mostly but not exclusively belonged to the prewar elite of the south. The planters and their families who had the most to lose from a categorical confederate defeat, and they relied on a mixture of hutzpah and rumor to sustain themselves through this hard winter of 1864, 1865. Hutzpah is probably not a term they would have used. [laughter] though i did have a student writes on an exam meaning to talk about the gentry of the south, he referred to them as the gentiles who owned the land. So my margin comment was that they were gentiles though i doubt they would have called themselves that and i suspect that went over his head like the gentlegentry problem. Who knows for the jewish confederates out there. Jefferson davis and robert e. Lee knew more was needed to sustain the army both physically and in terms of morale. Their most revolutionary policy and brought to legislative fruition in 1865 was a plan to enlist enslaved men into confederate ranks. If successful, they hope that have the potential to alleviate the manpower imbalanced imbalance between north and south. The Confederate Congress could not bring itself to offer emancipation to those slaves who might serve in the army. It says nothing about their status as slaves or free men. For some like general cobb, a question of consistency. If slaves would make good soldiers, cobb admitted, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong. Is interrogatory phrasing made a suggests he did not know the answer to the question and did not want to find out. Maybe slave men were men after all. Confederates shot down surrendering black soldiers on battlefields across the south, making their own views on black men in uniform quite clear. They wouldve been baffled to observe the current mania to identify black confederates that populate the internet. Approval of the act, davis added a proviso, that promised emancipation for black men and their families who served in the csa. As it went into effect, the order allowed not just for enlistment but for emancipation. A handful of these men never served in any serious capacity in the waning days of the war. For me at least, it raises, from an academic perspective, one of the only reasons to think it might have been beneficial for the civil war to go longer is the find out what happens in the experiment if more black men had fought in rebel gray, but they did not. As a result, the order may have harmed more than helped the confederate cause. Catherine edmonston an insightful diarist was a diehard rebel. She sees every scrap of good news and rumors that passed through her home. Her ineffective for yankees was matched only by the scorn she reserved for those confederates willing to compromise the principles that brought them into the conflict. Considering this idea of enlisting of black men into the Confederate Army she wrote, to sell the birthright of the south for only the lincoln announced that the National Resources are unexhausted and as we believe inexhaustible. This sounds arrogant but it was true in 1864. The tone and substance are deliberate. Lincoln is intending to dispirit the resources dry confederacy. Republicans had won overwhelmingly in the fall elections that preceding year. And late republicans win 1864, enormously across the north, regaining many of the seats they had lost. Even though the members would not take their seats until the momentum behind november, lincoln and his war measures was unmistakable. Those are the men that are going to be seated at the beginning a reconstruction. They are in charge of reconstruction. They are empowered by Union Victory in late 1864. Thats momentum behind lincolns administration could be seen in the carolinas which proceeded with seemingly unstoppable force. The joke told among the confederate private supposed to him revealed the truth. One says to the other, we caved sherman will have to slow down because we just caved in a tunnel to carry troops forward. Another soldier said, i heard he carries a spare tunnel with him. This sense of throwing up your hands in the face of juggernaut is an understandable one. Shermans passage through South Carolina was more destructive and vindictive than georgia. Sorry to you georgians in the room. The myths of destruction are overstated and the ones in South Carolina, strangely understated. Overstated. Though his soldiers did not start the fires that destroyed columbia and neither did they work to extinguish them. A young resident of the city described the fire as a nightmare that still oppresses. She joined her family and neighbors at 4 00 in the morning as the statehouse took flame. Imagine night turned to noon day , she wrote with a scorching , glare that was horrible, a copper color sky. Sparks and flying embers, where while all around us were burning with flakes. The palpitating blaze with solid masses of flame as far as the i could reach, filling the air with its horrible war. Roar. By the morning when the true son came up, most of downtown columbia had been destroyed but not before soldiers entered and held a mock session. This play acting provided a welcome chance for soldiers to condemn those they blamed for the war. Here is where treason began, one of shermans boys wrote and by god, here is where it will end. The military situation in the east was more static. Lee knew it would not stay that way. Desertion from his army increased in february and march with up to 100 men leaving per night. Some of them fled for the abundance and security of the union. Others turned toward home. I would argue this flight is different from traditional desertion during the war. It seems to be more political recognition by the soldiers the war was over and the obligation to remain in the army. Luther mills admitted as much to his brother. Mills stayed in the ranks and told his brother the men things desertion no crime and thus never shoot a deserter when he goes over. Mills require that men going out and night carry 10 cartridges and says they always shoot but never hit. Nine months of trench warfare with steadily dwindling supplies reduced soldiers to deprivation. Rancid pork, mealy corn insured poor health. The Living Conditions in the trenches around petersburg. This experience, these 10 months in trench warfare in the virginia mud and increasingly severe private nations in terms of rations, the soldiers from were distanced from their lives and loved ones they left behind. On april 2, grant ordered an attack along the petersburg line hoping to trap lee. The confederates fought well but petersburgs loss was the fall of richmond. The confederate government evacuated the city, setting fire to military material and much to the dismay of all of us, records were destroyed. Much of the city destroyed by the fire. What was left was a frightened population nearly as destitute as the soldiers. Sally putnam reported, richmond was ruled by the mob. Itsin the principal business section of the city they surged from store to store, breaking and robbing and in some instances [indiscernible] this desperation revealed one of the results of the logistical wars, the impact on civilians. The strategy of exhaustion is applied to the south. That falls evenly on soldiers and civilians. Lincoln arrived in richmond two days later to inspect the city and his presence arriving at the , war greeted by thousands of africanamericans cheering for him as White Richmonders huddled inside their homes with shutters drawn sent a very public signal the war was ending. The president of the United States to stand in the capital of the soontobe erstwhile confederacy. The capital of the confederacy was theirs. From new york, one said that it the government of the United States has become nomadic. It probably in a dirty, damaged railroad car in a seat of government on the saddle which jeff davis b strides. He was not far wrong. Lincoln sorry, lee retreated westward with the hope of reaching rations by rail. He plan to join joseph johnston. The better fed and clothed kept pace. They paralleled lees movement to the west and captured by told supplies that lee hoped to find at the courthouse. Grand strategy of exhaustion was embodied in the erosion of the army as it marched toward affymetrix, thousands of soldiers collapsed not having eaten or slept for the several preceding days. On april 9, lee asked great for terms and the army stopped fighting. By the time of the ceremonial finish, most people heard rumors if not bona fide news reports of lees capitulation. All though joe johnsons army wriggled for the next three weeks surrendering to shermans army further north laid down. The war ended in early april. Grant later remembered he was sad and depressed and what you call the downfall of a foe that has suffer so much for a cause though it was one of the worst for which a people ever fought. We will explore the surrender in more detail tomorrow morning so i would like to shift my focus to the broader perspective i mentioned earlier. Among americans anticipating the wars end, they all wonder what the postwar world would look for most white northerners, most importantly the United States would be hold. Whole. Significant today often overlooked. We assume the inevitability of a unified americas direction stretching from the atlantic to the pacific. From the stars of the conflict Abraham Lincoln described as a contest over the viability of selfgovernment which understood to be the core of democratic republic. By abandoning the political process in the wake of an unsatisfactory election, the rights of minorities could be protected under the constitution and gave up on selfgovernment. The acts of secession cast in doubt the Global Future of democracy. One expressed this sentiment in his messages to a newspaper he writes back to. He wrote the north fought to preserve the faith and of the world and intelligence and virtue of the Common People and their ability to govern themselves and maintain National Unity without being asunder by rent asunder by internal strife and discord. Lincoln said it was distinctly and believes northern victory would approve among freemen there can be no successful appeal for the battle of the bullet. Whatever shape the postwar world assumed, it would not include slavery. January 31, 1865 the house of representatives passed the 13th commitment and sent it to the states and it was ratified and took effect in late 1865. The end of slavery and full liberation of 4 million slaves africanamericans overturn to an a half centuriestwo and a half centuries of slaveholding and forcing the reshaping of relations across the nation and within the south in particular. Emancipation proclamation begun the process. That document as lincoln well knew was contingent upon a Republican Administration that would enforce it and the Union Victory to see it through. His reelection in late 1864 reestablished it, and perhaps appomattox, but to bring a permanent end to slavery in the United States comes slavery have has to be abolished. A proclamation of emancipation which applies individuals in the process of abolition which ends the institution of slavery which is why we deny get a slavery abolition. These are different processes during the war. George julian, a leading abolitionist, felt blessed to sign his name and describe the moment and reported the cheering in the hall and the densely packed gallery. Galleries exceeded anything i had sought before. Some embraced one another and others wept like children. Black southerners seize control of the two things denied to them under slavery, their families and livelihood. The first instinct was to find and protect their loved ones retracing the movements of slaves, spouses, children, and parents sought to omalley to reconstitute the families. In addition to reconstructing their families, ask slaves built churches, schools to anchor their communities. Africanamericans sought full autonomous citizenship knowing it meant not only the right to vote, but also a right to an education and opportunity to move work, and own land. During reconstruction, they engage in politics by voting and join the republican party. They relentlessly pursued literacy. Why Southern Resistance would eventually deny the promises of citizenship and implicit in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Emancipation was not a failed experiment. Africanamericans efforts can be seen in the communities through the bleak decades around the turn of the century. The Foundation Laid by the postcivil war generation enable the efforts of the 20th century activists to claim full autonomy. Americas north and south had confronted the central questions related to emancipation where would black people live and what would they do . These were the key issues. This is a topic that greg downs will take up later, i think sunday morning, the transition between wartime reconstruction and the reconstruction that we think if in the dozen years after the war. The test cases for land redistribution happened along carolina and georgia. The sea islands had been captured by the union navy in 1861. The planters fled inland. The navy found thousands of xrays and x exslaves and tens of thousands of acres of cotton. The wartime experiment around the data did not yield what planters wanted. The government retained control of the land and it is important in january of 1865 as William Shermans army reaches savanna. He presents to lincoln the city of savannah. Sherman turns to the problem of the thousands of enslaved people who he moved across georgia alleges army and want to basically moving to South Carolina without taking this mobile refugee camp with him. He meets with local black leaders in savanna to assess what should be happening. In particular, he wants to understand their attitudes toward emancipation. It is a very revealing interview. These men who attended were prepared. Sherman asked the leaders spokesperson how he understood the freedom granted by the emancipation proclamation. Frasers response the proclamation is taking us from under the yoke of bondage and placing is where we can reap the benefit of our labor and take care of ourselves and this is assist the government in maintaining our freedom with a designed to please nor the republicans. Some measure of social autonomy and during the war not yet over national loyalty. Whether in response to this meaning or to light his burdens, lighten his own burdens sherman , issued special field order number 15. This would designate ac islands acres from the coast inland as a 400,000 territory for the settlement of the 18,000 families who had refugees with d with his army to the coast. This inaugurated with the most surprising and revolutionary land redistribution schemes in American History. These families began planting crops in 1865 understand from shermans order that this is now their land. The story has an unfortunate ending. Andrew johnson pardoned the planters in this region and let them reclaim their land. It certainly reflects the influx of the waning days the efforts on the union to fumble to what a strategy of thinking what the postwar south will look like and the question land and economical autonomy for free people is paramount. Alongside land and work, the other crucial elements sought by black americans was the vote. Black leaders begin working during the war to ensure that any new nation formed would include black men on the basis of full political and civil equality with whites. The test case transpired in louisiana where educated and wealthy black and mixedrace elite had pressed to make black Voting Rights a key issue for the readmission of the state to the union. In 1864, louisiana reentered the union under the auspices of lincolns reconstruction plan called 10 plan, where 10 of the voters who voted in 1860 take over the loyalty and it could be a member of the u. S. With full privileges. They were in the process of revising their state constitution, that was one of the requirements for readmission. Lincoln, who had just received a petition from a large group of these leading new orleans africanamericans, sent a note to the new governor encouraging , him to an franchise and select group of black men bank the very intelligent and those who have fought gallantly in our own ranks. The new constitution did not grant blacks the vote but the black elite kept pressing the issue at the state and National Level for the rest of the war. The issue could rarely on lincolns mind as well. In the last speech he delivered on april 14 right before he had headed to fords theatre he announced his support for a limited version of lack suffrage. Frederick douglasss wartime observations seems to be coming true, the black man let them get an ego and fill his pockets and no power on earth or under the earth which can deny he is has earned the right to citizenship in the United States. Alongside these persistent policy and political issues, people struggled to make sense of the wars end. Soldiers coming even if greatly desired. A new englander explained why he were as did in music tones to lees surrender. We never realized he surrendered admitted wells. I had an impression we shall fight them all our lives. He was like a ghost to children, something that hunted us for so long that we could not realize his army was out of existence for us. It will take me some months to be conscious of this fact. That sense of shock that wells conveyed could be seen in the behavior of confederate soldiers, regrettably those who stopped to write letters home. There is a terrible gap in that correspondence beginning about april 2. Not so much for the union who ran out of time to write. Confederate soldiers had to find in their own way home. Some rode, some walked and some moved alone, others in groups. All of them were weary frustrated, hungry, and armed. North carolina experienced a riot of their own as confederate veterans from lees army brother to warehouses and pillaged for food. Active confederate soldiers arrived and eventually opened fire, killing one of those men who have fought and survived for four years only to die at the hand the johnston. The experience of those who saw their protectors of predators as dimmed as more and more wounded and damaged men dragged themselves home. None were diagnosed with ptsd but the signs were visible with a spike in drug abuse usually opiate given in the war for pain, alcoholism and Domestic Abuse marked the return home. When jacksonville, florida build its confederate veterans home, miles outside of town on the banks of the st. Johns river much more of an asylum or warehouse than anything respectable for veterans. Confederate soldiers were not of the only white southerners who struggled to assimilate the meaning a defeat. The defeat by the yankee was wholly incompatible with southern honor or pride. A young diarist that i quoted earlier looked on the union with revulsion and contempt. When shermans troops raised the flag above the South Carolina carolina statehouse she described it as a horrid site, hateful symbol. The failure a white men to protect their families and harsh as a war directly contradicted the egos of paternalism on which the social order rested. More difficult for white southerners was recognizing emancipation. The day that mary chestnut learned of lees surrender of , which she pronounced was the unhappiest day of her life. Poor james, her husband. Scrutinize her slaves. These negroes unchanged does not show a ripple of change. Chestnut was smart enough to know but neither the mask, black southerners had their own desires and hopes for the postwar world. Sung and told and whispered probably for his long as its late people have lived in north america. Jubilee, the concept heralded a new world. Two years earlier, and south in port royal, South Carolina, black Union Soldiers celebrated a passage of the emancipation proclamation. As colonel higgins waived the regimental colors, the black men and women gathered and broken to into the national anthem. I never saw anything so electric, he wrote. It made all worsen cheap, the choked voice. Strategic expression after the war when charlestonians celebrated the first memorial day. Hundred of soldiers have been transferred among the prison camps in the deep south ended up in charleston, where many of them died. It was here that free people gathered to commemorate the Fallen Soldiers and in doing so assert their loyalty to the United States in a place where they had few friends. Like the northerners appreciated and understood the gesture. Morning there own men lost to strange southern places, few were willing to forgive or forget. Signs of that attitude were everywhere. In Herman Melville dedicated his 1866, collection of war poems to quote the memory of the 300,000 in the war for the main is other maintenance of the union fell under the flag of their fathers. No brothers, he would been puzzled by our 650,000 dead. For many northerners, it was 300,000 who died. The euphoria that greeted was quelled with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and an event that ended third the north in made the north bitter and blamed it on Jefferson Davis and encouraged a hard reconstruction. Walt whitman, came to find his injured brother used to observe lincoln and his melancholy walks but never interacted but whitman saw him. His poem captured the intimate sorrow that northerners felt after the assassination, more than losing just a politician. My captain does not answer and his lips are pale and my father does not feel my arms. The ship is anchored. Exalt, but i with mournful dread. My captain lies fallen, cold and dead. These competing attempts to make sense of the war drew on the perspective that people had maintained during it. Northerners about the virtues a reunion in the mobility of emancipation. Southerners regretted their defeat and cast about for scapegoats. It was rare to find a critical or honest assessment of the war. One show the few, i always understood we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the north about. I never heard of any other cause than slavery. While his peers cannot reconcile, mostly said men fight for sentiment and they invent some fanciful theory on which an they imagine that they fought. They were essential in the wars waning days as lincoln sought to rebuild the nation. Scholars have accused lincoln of taking peoples intellectual pockets, where he supposedly redefines the relationship to freedom and equality under the constitution. In the second inaugural, he did something equally audacious. This sleightofhand substituted the celebratory tone that characterized most victors acted at their moment of conquest for a conciliatory one. I beseech my students not to write with the passive voice because it obscures the actors and without subjects we have people with out history, no history at all. Lincoln used a passive voice strategically in his second inaugural address in march. As the war came. As lincoln knew, wars do not , people make them. Use this phrase to obscure the wars origin and use it as a critique on the north and south together as those civil for the bloodshed. If god wills, lincoln wrote, until all the wealth compiled by the bondsman shall be sunk and every drop of blood drawn will be paid by another with the sword still it must be said the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether. The blood came from north and south alike. For lincoln the judgment was clear. This decision to draw the adjure the equivalent of trash talking in favor of forgiven signaled his desire to a net reunions, not just military victories. For the last few minutes, i would like to pull back from this analysis just to conclude. I would like to take advantage of hindsight. Something we warn our students to be careful of and look at the legacy from a birds eye view. Northern victory sanctioned free labor, the model of a spouse by of political economy of espoused by the republican party. Northerners, the value of autonomy encephalitis and restraint catalyzed working men prove their worth by ensuring victory. This conception of the war was tautological perfectly circular but nonetheless compelling for , northerners. The system of free labor appeal to exslaves. On the other hand white southerners predicted slaves with no native intelligence or spirit would drag the economy down. This was proved false entering into contracts with employers and demonstrating that they understood incentives and capitalism as well as whites. A former slave from tennessee responded to his exmasters request to return to his Old Plantation and work for wages with a request that his master should send him the 11,000 he and his wife were entitled to. He generously subtracted the cost of clothing and health care , three doctors visit and pulling a tooth for mandy but asked the former master include interest. [laughter] here, i draw my wages he is in southern ohio, a lot of the kentucky slaves in ohio here i draw my wages every saturday night but intense the never know , pay day for negroes. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire. It is a further consolidation of political authority. Critics of lincoln accused him centralizing authority in the federal government citing his suspension of habeas corpus. Both of these actions did little to alter the dimensions of federal power after the war. Jefferson davis enacted the same measures and neither sorters nor southerners nor northerners imagine they will last past the war. Of lasting consequence in terms of federal authority where the , were the institutional changes that facilitate a Union Victory improved in the postwar years that facilitate Economic Growth. The federal government seized a great control especially the organization of economic information. The government acquired more reliable knowledge of everything from train schedules to the composition of the labor force. And in postwar years, this information proved invaluable as republicans in congress and the white house encouraged the industrialization of a nation. As Northern Investors organizing began to organize themselves they were also confronted with the demands of an impoverished south. One of the radical effects of emancipation and the war itself was its economic impact. By freedom to the slaves emancipation nullified at the Capital Value of these people under the southern law. At least 3 billion in wealth held by southern white people vanished from their households. In 1860, the bodies of enslaved people are the single largest investment of any kind in the United States. From the perspectives of slaves liberation day on the profits of , their labor. The structural effect on the south of eliminated the main source of capital, enormously hindered postwar business growth. The inability of Southern States to make good on their wartime bonds, the war can be said to a have devastated the southern economy. The southern agriculture infrastructure was hit hard. Northern alabama in Central Georgia where both armies consumed or destroyed equipment and animals and mills. The implementation of hard war ensured the deliberate destruction of millions of southern cows and pigs and demolition of transportation and communication networks. The average total wealth of southern farmers in 1860 was the war reduced it to 3000. 22,000. A seven fold decline, much of it in the value of slaves. It would be naive to argue the civil war alone was responsible from the souths economic problems but just as surely it , must be recognized the war seriously retarded southern Economic Growth for decades if not longer. In contrast the war promoted the diversification and growth of the northern economy. Overall the war allowed northern corporations to build on the strengths they had been developing during the antebellum. Period. Those industries that produce were related goods benefited but a steady demand and shored up and low unemployment. Meatpackers in chicago formed the First Assembly line techniques to supply northern soldiers with fresh meat. Confusing today with the usda at what fresh means and that started a long time ago. They created the foundation for postwar expansion as a result of contracts. They built that out of the experience with the workforce and technology and supply system to make themselves powerhouses in the 1870s and 1880s. Shipbuilders, weapons manufacturers jewel on contracts to devise postwar growth. In economic terms the war , widened the breach between north and south in the levels of industrialization and Technological Development and access to capital. Hardest to assess, yet perhaps the most important worthy cultural changes brought by the war. Most prominent among these was the hardening of animosities. The south of 1861 was fragile and unlikely coalition. But the experience of suffering loss called the democracy of welded together the south by 1865. Nobody had to ask who was the south, the people just defeated. Kentucky secedes later and rejoins. Fear and anger over the uncertainty upheld many southerners to overlook the visible seams of their ad hoc war nation in overtime most can to regard the south as the natural place of his own. It was partly a consequence of southern men in the separation of defeat. That rubbing the wound you cant resist. In the aftermath of the civil war, southerners joint the population that as some point had lost a war. This split in the historical experience between the north and south and would only disappear with the u. S. Defeat in the vietnam war. This historic diversions of experience only exacerbated the cultural alienation that each side perceived. Southerners who now return home to devastated fields and fractured communities harbored little goodwill toward their enemies. They believe the war enacted by the north show the barbarism of the yankee character. And the destruction of the citys proved their baseness and instability. Alluding that sometimes the army is revealed to be greedy and that characterize most northerners. Tireless spoke in new york and referred to William Sherman as kind of a careless man about fire. One of the very few southerners who could even discuss this topic with anything but gritted teeth. Very few confederate veterans wouldve made that joke. It was a projection of anxiety generated by the conflict. The civil war forced massive and unwanted changes on the south , especially southern men. The efforts had been the protection that white men offered to their dependents including women, children, and slaves. Confederate defeat in the war and the occupation of the south and emancipation revealed the hollowness of that commitment. The war created a profound crisis in southern masculinity. Desperate a recommitment to an earlier, more hierarchical gender relations by men and women in the wake of defeat. Southern women left exposed of two invading armies were forced to assimilate new responsibilities during the war. Defeat left them seeking stability and gender relations. The northern experience is a stark contrast. Rather than repudiation, the war confirmed the superiority of southern masculine values of protection and authority. Northern female reformers having played a key role in the abolition of slavery used that to launch a recall as well. In terms of gender divide as well. If it gender relations, it soured race relations. The efforts of enslaved people to aid the union is seen their free been destroyed the old fantasy of the loyal slave. Southern whites saw the actions of southern black southerners as a betrayal and treated them like enemies. Southern blacks or perhaps not surprised by the reluctance of southern whites to accept them into society. This did not slow their efforts to achieve a real and lasting freedom. The result was increasingly violent by whites to the africanamericans which culminated as you know in the legal system as jim crow disenfranchisement and the rise of lynching at the turnofthecentury. The conflict in the postwar decades played a role in shaping race relations. The civil war itself created these conditions for suspicion anger, and violence in the decades that followed. This somewhat dour conclusion suggests that the civil war do not, was very much and i do not , want to leave that impression. To the contrary i would argue the civil war changed almost everything. It took old problems in American Life slavery, states Rights National identity and transformed them into the modern problems we wrestle with. Racism, federalism and a truly the contested ideal of a truly national culture. Participants it may have believed that perhaps briefly the civil war would solve these issues forever. But even the civil war is a part of history not a conclusion. People and their problems continue, which means that probably our grandchildren will be here in 50 years for the civil war bicentennial still , debating and learning about the past that made their world. Thank you. [applause] aaron we have times for questions. You need to come up. Theres a microphone in each aisle. I can hear you. I can always repeat the question. I need an opinion, one of the reasons why lee brought the army of Northern Virginia north and fought of gettysburg was with the idea of achieving a decisive defeat of the army of the potomac, believing that if he could do this decisive defeat of the union army, it would end is the war, that the support of the war, but now he believed that if he could put a killer blow on the army of the potomac that the north would give up. Is that so . Was lincoln not lincoln was lee in error of that . Aaron i do not think so. Unlikely that the battle of gettsyburg goes against the North Lincoln would resort and initiate peace terms. There is a strong peace party in the north and popular will that wouldve pushed in that direction and forced some kind of resolution. Lincoln is committed to avoiding that. At what point does he the end or respond to popular demand . Lee is smart in reading northern newspapers and taking the tenor of the north accurately. A decisive defeat is hard to accomplish with civil war armies. This is always the goal of every commander even though they know , what happen, i will destroy utterly the enemys army. They are almost too big to suffer that catastrophic defeat. Battles like nashville do not happen very often. It was very unlikely it would have happened. Politically the north at its most vulnerable in july of 1863. A significant defeat would turn might have turned things in an unpredictable direction. Lee was thinking right . Aaron he was taking a big risk which people knew. The army said we are not an invading force, we are intended to be an army of defense and we are changing the character of the war in important ways. Lee is taking a measure of risk that is understandable from my perspective. Thank you very much. William t sherman was notoriously known as avirulent racist a zero race is, yet a huge shock for that to come out of him specifically. You did touch on two factors that could of impacted that, getting rid of the burden of his army and a meeting with a free people. I would add the reaction of getting stanton off of his back. What do you think about his personal contact with africanamericans along the march . Henry hitchcock wrote about sherman having conversations about africanamericans along the march and giving them a reward for supporting the union. What you think about those as factors impinging on his issuing of special orders 15 . Aaron like every union command commander he is grateful to africanamerican soldiers for giving the army the intelligence as they need you about the location of the confederates. Maybe in some sense he is recognizing, offering thanks. I do not necessarily view special field order 15, not necessarily a magnanimous gesture. In some sense, its the equivalent of an indian reservation. There is a lot a debate within and among the union command about the future of africanamericans in the United States. The important question is where are they going to be . Northern democrats have been doing their best to with whip hysteria up about the Movement North that black men will come and take our jobs and critical reservation that ensures black southerners are staying put where they are. It is not necessarily a generous, but an astute and political one strategic even given the dynamics of the north. Certainly sherman and members of his army demonstrated this. Their attitudes about africanamericans as people change because of the march. Sherman is mostly a man of his time. I will not regard them as fundamentally different. He says the more. Worse than you hear from other people. I do think that within his army there is a growing respect and appreciation for africanamericans as human beings which is essential to , them thinking of the postwar world. Regardless of what the political position is going to be. Many of its soldiers from the western states had very little interaction with africanamericans. That is a very important experience. Thank you. I am from portland, maine. My fathers family is from louisiana. My cousin is a graduate of lsu. Go, tigers. Without invading your privacy, overstepping my question, what are the challenges you face teaching the civil war in the south . Aaron that is a good question. Well i have been lucky. As a civil war historian, i am in a place where people care passionately about the conflict and the past. My first semester teaching i was discussing the battle at fort port hudson and afterwards a student came up and said, the battlefield has got it wrong. The surrender actually happened off of there is a state park. That is my grandfathers land. If you ever want to see it, we can go up and see where the surrender happen. Those things, its hard to do that in maine. If you are teaching the civil war. It means that students come with baggage sometimes. This is a cultural stereotype, but southern students are polite and observe hierarchy. It is actually unusual for them to challenge professors in a hostile sort of way. Even if they hold strikingly different opinions. I will say that i think this is something that change within my lifetime the first school i taught at in jacksonville. One of my colleagues right when it opened described his first day as he got his degree at north dakota. Fresh off the boat and lands in jacksonville and the campus , mostly swamp. And he goes in with the civil war as his first class and barely got into hello students and a woman stood up and slams her book and said ive been waiting to take this class and im not take it from a blankityblank yankee and stormed out. He was petrified. He was brandnew. He told me after id been there what a great teaching moment to try to unpack that experience. She was not coming there to hear a critical story about the civil war. She wanted a reassuring and comforting story. For southern students in particular that i think are interested in learning and interested in challenging what they have heard i find it a very , rewarding a valuable place to teach. One more over here. Paul slidell from cleveland, ohio. North america has several examples of what can happen to an army in enemy territory, like braddocks retreat from pittsburgh. And saratoga. These behemoth armies groping through the woods, being hit picked off by hostile population. What prevented that from happening in the carolinas . Aaron the simple answer is there is no men left. South carolina had lost a High Percentage of its men. I know virginia better, but i think South Carolina is close to 90 . I think 85 of men of military age or already in military forces. 15 left. By 1865, most of those men are in girly units are in guerrilla units or somewhere else and are predisposed not to participate. There is also an enormous amount of fatigue. Shermans army is a particularly powerful force moving across the landscape. Lori and foot at texas amm nm, she is working on it book about confederate pows. In the process of moving them from andersonville to florida, hundreds of them escape. They moved, as she said, like a plague of locusts across the South Carolina countryside. You do get in the spring of 1865, not a guerrilla war, but communities banding together to capture, run down, these runaway Union Soldiers and black southerners hiding them. So there is fighting going on. I think the traditional confederate south White Carolinians are overwhelmed at that point. There is too much going on in their state to engage in the sniping that happens in other places. Sean murphy from alexandria virginia, which some would say was the First Southern city captured by the Union Soldiers. And perhaps more importantly was robert e. Lees boyhood home. His familys property was seized during the war and became what is now arlington cemetery. Talking about lee, what affect what affect, if any, his actions after the war may have had to reconciliation . Aaron the common argument is that lee promoted reconciliation. That is the historiographical trend. That he does not adopt an adversarial tone. It is true that he does those things. I would say that there have been some good work on lees management of the college and what happens in lexington. It is a pretty unpleasant story. Particularly, the treatment of africanamericans in and around lexington by wnl students. W l students. There is a great article about the harassment and acts of violence perpetrated against black lexingtonians. By washington and lee students. I think in that aspect he looks , like any other white southerner. He is thinking strategically about how to exert authority but is not bucking for higher office. I suppose going quietly was a good idea. He certainly is not somebody like mosby, who becomes a republican and tries to work actively with the new governing coalition. So i would say that his contribution is sort of neutral. Thank you. Aaron thank you. [applause] youre watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan 3. Follow us on twitter for information on our upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. Tonight on q a, Molly Crabapple on her use of jottings to tell investigative stories from around the world. Gang affiliation may mean reading a book by a blank dust by a black cancer, drawing aztec patterns, or having a tattoo. Around the country, you can land in solitary through your arts, leaf, sexual orientation, or your friends. I draw. A lot of times that is not to show the finished drawing. Is to build it is to build a rapport with people. When you have a camera, it puts a difference a distance between you and the person. You are taking these images they cannot see. It is almost vampiric, even though youre producing beautiful things later. When you draw, it is vulnerable. Vacancy weight are doing. If you suck, they can tell you so. Most people have not been drawn before and most are delighted to be drawn. I like drawing people and talking to them when they do it. On q a at 8 00 eastern and pacific tonight. Next, Flagler College professor steve voguit talks about the factors that led to the Great Depression and the actions president roosevelt took to help the American People and the economy during his terms in office. His classes about 45 minutes