Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War A Conversation With Historian Allen Guelzo 20171230

Civil war era at gettysburg also serves ashe director for the civil war era studies program. He did his graduate work of history at the university of pennsylvania where he focused on the history of religion. He also holds a master of divinity degree. His roster of publications is so long that i am not going to even try to read them all to you. Nguelzo. Comto alle and get a full accounting of all his publications and his biography and doings. What im going to do is mention five books that i think are especially pertinent to what we will be doing this afternoon. I will read them in order. The first is called abraham. Ncoln, redeemer president lincolns emancipation proclamation the end of slavery in america. Published by Simon Schuster in 2004. Lincoln and douglas, the debates that defined america. Whitening gettysburg, the last invasion. Published in 2013 which brought a third lincoln prize to alan, he is the only person who is 13. Has won 3. He is currently working on a biography of robert e. Lee. He and i are going to talk about his work and about the field of civil war era studies more broadly. I want to begin with a question relating to the opportunities for people in our field to try to reach a broader audience. Allen writes for a National Newspaper and other publications. He has done courses for the teaching company. I would like your thoughts about whether this is something we should strive to, why you do it, how effective you think it is, and what it yields for our field in terms of disseminating really good scholarship to a broader audience. All, let me thank you, gary, for the opportunity to be here. Especially to the now center, to everyone here. To everyone who has made my visit here over the last several days such an exceedingly pleasant one. You have snuck in some research . Indeed. I have been within the reach of many manuscripts, some diaries, and whatnot, stuff like that, looking at what people are writing and thinking and saying in those Tumultuous Times 150 years ago. I am particularly glad to be here on this significant and special day, one of the greatest days in American History. I am noticing that people are starting to look at each other like is this the fourth of july . It is september 22. We did this on purpose. 100 55ththe anniversary of the preliminary emancipation proclamation. Anniversary of the preliminary emancipation proclamation. Writing in the wall street journal got me some interesting responses, i got a death threat. That does not often happen to people writing in the wall street journal. I imagine i did succeed in injuring someones sensibilities in writing about the emancipation proclamation. In a way, it testifies to the fact did you say you thought it was a good thing . I did. I think what it does speak to is the fact that there is a large audience among americans who are trying to understand our history. Americans . Dentify as we dont identify ourselves, or shouldnt, on the basis of a language, an ethnicity, an established religion, a race, any of those things. What identifies us as americans . Lincoln nailed that in the gettysburg address. What identifies us as americans is a proposition that all men are created equal. The history of how we have unfolded and lived with that proposition is the most important aspect of our identity. When we write about our history, we are not just doing antiquarian is him antiquarianism we are doing a reexplanation and referendum on that proposition. I regard what i have done in the and the Academic Press as being two sides of one coin. That is, how do we explain ourselves to ourselves as americans . That should draw in more than just an academic audience, that should draw in all of us. That is what touches all of us and that is what identifies all of us. If i am writing for a journal of the early republic or for Civil War History or if im writing for the wall street journal, if im writing for the washington post, i really regard those as aning an overall being overall endeavor. It is a constant reminder of ourselves, who we are and what we are dedicated to. That involves more than academics and college students, it is something which embraces all of us. I think it is important, for historians like ourselves, to be able to speak to everybody. Speaking to our identity as not just, we are speaking professionally, we are speaking as citizens. There is one and only one identifier of an american, that is that you are a citizen. To be a citizen of the american the greatest privilege on earth. We are expressly wellpositioned to reach a broader audience. So many ideas from the civil war continue to resonate. In oursee echoes of them daytoday lives. Including responses from some states to our current president and our preceding president , talking about secession. When president obama was office, california with President Trump in office. You dont have to look very far in current American Politics Society to echoes of the civil war era. Sometimes it is more than echoes. There was an oped in the sacramento daily, i think i am citing this correctly. There was an article in the Sacramento Bee in which the lead of the off and said that california is a 21st century state which is mired in a 19th century country. Therefore, it should separate itself. Saying, a way of california is an entirely different culture from the rest of the United States. I thought, that is exactly what they were saying in South Carolina in december of 1860. Groep shortterm, longterm it did not turn out well for South Carolina. It does come back to the fact that so often, questions that we think are uniquely current or uniquely modern really have these long replicating the rhetoric of 150 years ago. It is nothing new i think. It does seem to be that way. It seems new if you dont know anything. This because the fundamental this is because the fundamental questions expressed as americans have not changed. In a sense, it is not a total surprise. The current rhetoric, the kind of assumptions and stances you hear people strike today will find uncanny and unnerving ago. S of those 150 years for the historian, what we have to do is signal what the relationships are. Be careful what you wish for. Beeher it is the sacramento or the charleston mercury. You writeu write, do specifically with more than one audience in mind . Obviously your books are reviewed in the mainline scholarly journals, but do you have one or the other of his audiences more in mind or do you not even think about that . I cant say that i think about it. What kindi am asked, of schooling did you have in writing and how do you go about your writing . To that i can only shrugged my shoulders. I never had a writing class. I never had someone instruct me. No better explanation than to reduce say, i want to explain something to you, i want to communicate with people. I would look for ways to do that. I dont really have a better explanation. You certainly read a lot of good writing. I think i did. I am probably good at imitating. Mind, thereg, in my is nothing more complicated than that. We will try to make you more complicated. I have a question i want to get to. Did you wake up one morning and think, poor Abraham Lincoln, he just has not got enough attention from writers. I think id better write a book about lincoln. You are trained as a historian, you wrote about Jonathan Edwards into dissertation and in your early work, how do you get from Jonathan Edwards and religion to Abraham Lincoln . Well, it is a little unusual. Than a chessual game. There are a few strange moves that have to be made, but not too many. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Jonathan Edwards and the problem of determinism and free will in 18thcentury moral philosophy. That is a title made for why public consumption. [laughter] yeah. Is that in its 19th printing now . [applause] [laughter] they actually did do a second edition. The one with Matthew Mcconaughey is the one that really resonates . The one with nick nolte as george whitfield. I wrote the dissertation, which was then published by wesleyan university. The problem with free will and determinism seemed perennial. Not the sort of thing you stay reading about, but still a perennial. I had planned to write a followup volume, Jonathan Edwards 2. 0. Problem of modern philosophy. As i was working on this project, this was in the mid90s. I knew that Abraham Lincoln had some things to say on the subject of free will and fatalism. I thought it would really jazz the book up. Here is a book on philosophy and determinism and other sleepy subjects, to be able to interject Abraham Lincoln into the discussion would put some fizz in it. I thought wouldnt that be clever. I ended up writing a paper on lincoln and determinism, what he called his doctor of mississippi. He told people frankly that he was a fatalist. I read that paper in springfield, illinois at a meeting of Abraham Lincoln association. To my surprise it was wellreceived. A book publisher got in touch with me. What i be interested in writing a religious biography of Abraham Lincoln . I said no. I had seen a number of writers get swallowed up in the swamp on that subject and i thought i dont want to do that. The publisher got back in touch sometime later. Would i do this religious biography of lincoln . I said no. Finally, a friend of the blisher called me and said, look, if you dont do this book they will give it a professor so and so. Someone you knew . The hand hit the forehead. I got back in touch with the editor in chief of this publisher and said i will make a deal with you, i will write the book you want, but let me do it as an intellectual biography, not just as religion. To treat lincoln not just at the political figure, but lincoln in the context of the ideas of the 20th century. Having gotten my hand in the cookie jar so to speak, i really just couldnt get it out. One lincoln book became another lincoln book came another lincoln book, and so on and so forth. You have artie gone down the list. I never have actually gotten back to writing that free will to point out. Free will 2. 0. I can infer the way you are talking, you think there are more elements to lincoln that deserve further study. He has not been exhausted . I think that is entirely true. Lincoln is an extremely complicated and complex individual. Lincolnnderestimate because they think that he is just the 16th president , the civil war president , just a politician, just a lawyer. That misses what people in lincolns own time new and said about him. He was a very reticent shut mouthed man. Another who practiced law with him said that anyone who took a blink and for a simpleminded abe lincoln for a singleminded man simpleminded man would wake up with their back in a ditch. Eager man of very extraordinary intellectual curiosity. He would delve into anything. His secretary, in his diary in 1863, recorded an incident in t, theay said the tycoon which is what he called t and i had athe discussion on zoology for which the t had an unsuspected interest. It is the study of languages. Lincoln had intellectual interests in so many directions. He was not a philosopher, he was not what we would call an intellectual, but he had curiosities and he likes to pursue them. ,e once said in an interview brooks had asked him, what are the most influential books in your life . His reply was peculiar. Analogy. Butlers mini joseph butlers analogy of a singularly important test for natural religion in the 18th century. And John Stuart Mill on liberty. Which today still functions as a major text for people thinking about free speech, about libertarian political philosophy, and then he added and i always wanted to get at will. Nt edwards on so that spoke to you, that third one . Here is a man who does not simply say every the newspapers or i read the funnies, he is a man who has ambitions to penetrate some serious questions. It is part of lincoln that we miss because we are so impressed with the folksy, political politicalng, shrewd wire polar, that is the lincoln we are most familiar with. We dont often see the lincoln that his closest friends had a peek into. How do you explain lincolns facility with language . You have talked about his other attributes, but his ability to deal with complicated issues and render them in very brief texts in language that can soar or make a point with an effectiveness that almost no one else who has been in the white. Ouse has been able to match how do you get to the second inaugural from someone with lincolns background and education. John stuart mill and dont think one thing was certainly which certainly shaped lincoln as a communicator was having to be a lawyer, a trial lawyer. He spends virtually all of his professional life as a lawyer trying courses in county courthouses all across the middle of the state of illinois. He enjoys being in the courtroom , he enjoys being in front of a jury, but he also knows that these journeys yesterday for fate he has to persuade. In these Little County courthouses, a jury would often be summoned from bystanders at the back of the room. You could have almost anyone sitting in the jerry buss ox. Y b you had to the of communicate with everyone and do it fast, because if you did not make yourself clear you would not be a functioning profitable lawyer for long. He is the one how to communicate directly with people. His partner of many years, said lincoln was impassioned with how to make something Crystal Clear to people. He said lincoln would tie himself up in knots, sitting there concentrating, how to get an idea into an easily understood manner. , certainlyood at it on one occasion there was a story of lincoln in just his Opening Statement in a case, the judge interrupting him and saying all right brother lincoln, thank you, now we will hear the other side. He had made the case so clearly that he did not finish his Opening Statement before he had won. Capacity to open up an idea and put it in these clear lapidary terms. A lot of it goes to his experience as a trial lawyer. Some of it comes out of his logical bend. He put himself to the discipline of logical expression. It was once said by someone in their autobiography would listen the Lincoln Douglas debates that if you listen to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for five takees, you would always the side of Stephen Douglas because douglas was always about passion. He was about shaking that huge mane of hair, but if you listen to them for half an hour you would be taken by lincoln. Even though lincoln spoke in tone ofh, reedy voice, nasal nasal tone of voice he set things out with a hook. Once he got that hook in your mouth all he had to do was real that thing in reel that thing again. He would state the case in a way that was logically irresistible. Ent for logic and lining things up. He was not a man of passion. Once said thaton his head and rolled his heart tyrannically. In anld be eloquent extremely reasonable way. When you look at the second , butural, it is eloquent it is eloquent and very logical ways. If we assume, if we understand, if god is like this, if we see , thewar as the payment drawing of blood through the the unrequitedr 250 years of labor. For every drop of blood drawn by the lash, that his eloquence, but also logic. When you listen to it, you cant resist, because he has you. It is logic, but it is also it is a daring move on his part. Most people int the audience wanted to hear, that they were as culpable as the rebels. He do that. How many he knew that. How many people would be willing to admit that. He is telling people exactly what they dont want to hear. They want to hear that there will be retribution and that god is on their side. They were wrong, we were right. He did not say that at all. The great new york political operator wrote the lincoln afterwards to complement him. Lincoln thanked him for the compliment, but he wrote back and said i dont think that people are eager to have heard what i had to say. Nobody likes to be told that god y a controversi controversy, but i think it is something that needed to be said. Did is a remarkable speech on many levels. It is a remarkable speech on many levels. If you put it aside the emancipation proclamation, you could not have a stronger contrast between this incredibly powerful language in the second inaugural and what some people compare to the emancipation proclamation. They are different documents. Yes i have heard that. [laughter] book about written a the proclamation, the proclamation has been interpreted many different ways. Some say it is meaningless and does not do what it should do and in the end not having that great of an impact, others hang it is everything. What is your shorthand take on the importance and place of the emancipation proclamation in the much broader story of the process of emancipation . I think it is the single most profoundly effective president ial document ever written. I think it is largely because so you think it is important . I would say so, at least moderately. The language of the emancipation proclamation disappoints me, there is no question. That is why there was a famous quip about the emancipation proclamation having the moral grandeur right off the bat, that made my antennae quiver. Lading is not an unimportant document if you are involved in commerce. Whats go with the flow. What is the emancipation proclamation . Is it a rhetorical Statement Like the gettysburg address . No. The gettysburg address is marvelous, beautiful prose. You cant take it into a court of law and do anything with it. When that trooper pulls you over on the interstate, dont try reciting the gettysburg address. The trooper is only interested in the statute. The emancipation proclamation is about the statute. The emancipation proclamation is a legal document, it has to be carefully honed and crafted so that it survives challenge than courts. Lincoln knew this. President s are only president s. Is keenly aware of the fact that as president of the United States he did not have the authority, strictly speaking, to emancipate anybody, at least under normal circumstances. The war change the circumstances. As commander in chief he may have powers that in times of peace he would not have. Lets explore that. In time of war there are war powers. His emancipation one of those powers . We dont know. Who is going to be the arbiter . The federal courts. If lincoln pops off and simply throws up at the window of the executive mansion and yells down pennsylvania avenue the first thing that is going to happen is that slaveowners, especially in border states, are going to flock to county courthouses and ask for injunctions. And they are going to get them. There are going to the appeals, they will go to the courts, and they will wind up with the , andd States Supreme Court to his the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1862 . Roger b connie. He has shown himself to be a friend of emancipation hasnt he . [laughter] lincoln makes one slip up in crafting the emancipation proclamation, that will be tought meet to roger b awney when it went up on his desk. He must craft and emancipation proclamation which treads very carefully about who is free and who is not. This is why there are these exceptions, what the emancipation proclamation does not apply to slaves in kentucky, delaware, maryland, missouri. Why . They are not at war with the United States. Anyplace in the United States for the government was in control. Wherever the courts or military were back in control and due process existed. He is aware that his war powers are no longer functioning, or at least he cant take the chance that if he makes an assertion in those areas that might be the y beatthat roger b tawne the entire emancipation proclamation with. If he gets that stick in his hand, he can disrupt the whole process of emancipation for another political generation, or even longer. Lincoln has to be very careful when he crashed that proclamation, because it has to that crafts proclamation, because it has to work. It is only at the end that he allows himself one small moment, that is when he says at the end believing this to be not only a constitutional exercise of his commanderinchief powers, but an act of justice invoking the favor of almighty god. Then he proceeds it is the only moment he will let himself do that. As aest of it is as dry legal document can possibly be, but that is because it is a legal document and it has worked to do. That work turns out to be extremely effective. There is a political dimension to this as well. Looking at it as a military necessity is the only way he could make it palatable to any democrats. Or to any judge, to any federal judge. People read, this is done as a military necessity and will conclude that his heart really wasnt in it, he wasnt doing it as an act of justice. He was only doing it to find another way to win the war, it is pearson this is him. It is pure cynicism. It is not. The only slender thread by which he has the authority to lay a finger on slavery as president is by military necessity. By the war powers as commander in chief. Which are only useful if there is a war, which is why you have to have he did not know what would happen to it. Someone might ask why he doesnt cut to the chase and get the 13th amendment in 1862. The answer to that is in 1862 do you seriously think you seriously think he wouldve gotten the 13th amendment through congress . Was, the 13th amendment only squeaks by in january of 1865 by a margin of two both. The 13th amendment that was voted on in 1862 what have guaranteed slavery. Six states ratified it. In 1862 there was no more 13th amendment, of an amendment to the constitution abolishing slavery then there was of a grizzly bear dressing up in a tuxedo. It just wasnt going to happen. The political environment changes, it does not change quite as fast as he hoped, because in 1864 when the idea of an abolition amendment is floated in congress it fails then as well. It is not until january of 65, after lincolns reelection when lincoln is able to say in december of 1864 to congress that the people have spoken, we have been reelected, it is time to get with the program, lets get the 13th amendment. It is only then, and after politicalrtially gets how shall we say, gets political, that the 13th a moment finally does pass. Even then by end thereof margin. Even then by a narrow margin. Ofthe election of a november 1864, when he sends his last message to congress he says in a great more like this everybody has to agree on our goal, as union we need he is trying to bring in the greatest possible number of supporters. He needs all those votes. Once he gets them, he is able to say this is the kings cure for the evil. The 13th amendment obviates any attempt from the federal courts to turn back abolition. The emancipation proclamation, he thought the courts would approve. He thought it would prove constitutional, he was convinced it was constitutional. He had to admit, i am not sure what will happen once the shooting stops. I cant guarantee that. What could guarantee it was an amendment to the constitution. Thats what he really wants, thats what he gets in january of 1865. That latertalk about if we have enough time. Pickedto move on, you lincoln not because you didnt think there hadnt been enough written about him, but about gettysburg. I have the last bibliography of gettysburg, which is 13 years old. Listed in this bibliography. I can imagine you didnt wake up and think no one has written about gettysburg, i better write about it. Its not enough that you are at gettysburg college, what brought you to it is bert . To gettysburg . Why did mallory want to climb Mount Everest . Was there a book about gettysburg up there . I dont know. [laughter] about. Book hed heard because it is there. Enormous corpus. Most of what has been written is for gettable. I want try to identify it. I thought was going to be important about talking about gettysburg was what i would call the new military industry. Beginning with john keegan, patty griffith, british writers who imported a good deal of what we might call social history into the writing of military history. Paying attention in military history, not to kind of things that have been done over again, which is to say rectangles moving around on maps. That has been done at nausea him, thats true. What keegan and griffith, and richard holmes, and people in school wanted to do was what is the experience. In the title of keegans book what is the face of battle . He did a marvelous job in the face of battle by taking three different battle scenarios, separated by the centuries. Waterloo, agincourt, and the snow. In them, he asked a different set of questions. Not what general commanded this brigade to go and do that, it was what was the experience of being there . What did it some like, what did it smell like him at what did it feel like . Did people behave in those circumstances. How are they organized, disciplined, how do they respond to the ncos, to the commissioned officers. There were a galaxy of questions about the experience of battle, which had never penetrated a lot of American Military writing, especially writing about civil war battles and gettysburg. I wanted to take those kinds of insights and explore gettysburg. That is what the book is about. There are a lot of rectangles moving around on the map, but what i really wanted to explore was things like the sounds of battle. The weird, harmonic made by bullets stranding six bayonets. Sound likeliar broken china of bullets striking teeth. The weird sound made on the rose billon july 2 by the farm and it being repaired to be struck by bullets on both sides. This in the middle of an environment where people are fighting for their lives. Those are the kind of experiences of soldiers on the ground that keegan had described, and which i wanted to explore. I greatly admired how they worked. The second thing was politics. To write ai wanted political history of the battle of gettysburg. This was a political war. The people involved took their politics into the war with them. When we think about politics in the war, we think exclusively about George Mcclellan and his state with lincoln. Mcclellan is only one face in a crowd of politically motivated generals. Over and over again in gettysburg, people were making military decisions. They were really political motivations. I wanted to explore the intersection of politics with what is ordinarily treated as being military story. The army is still mcclellans army. His imprint on it, he created the culture in the army, it was powerful. You could plot the political identities and allegiances of the seven inch or free car seventh infantry corps, along a spectrum that would run from the most ardently abolitionist, howard and the 11th cord. Also, you give dancing goals in the third quarter. Dan sickles, whatever he lacked in term of military in human, he was a political general. He was, in fact, the worst dream of George Mcclellan. He was a war democrat and a for aas supporter ferocious supporter of lincoln calling for abolition. Whatever else he did wrong, he did that right. The other hand, you have a second core of the army commanded by the field sky was one of the most ardent mcclellan ites, hardcore democrats. He comes in barely a second. And george sykes on the fifth middle youere in the might have John Reynolds and the first core. Reynolds is a pennsylvania democrat, but has a number of abolitionists and division command. James walked worth james wadsworth. Of theted the politics seventh army corps. That tells you a good deal of the kinds of decisions being made on the battlefield. Do you see a difference between the army of the potomac and the army of Northern Virginia in which they were politicized . They were both highly politicized, but the issues are different. The real questions swim around a, virginia, and the dominance of virginians in high command there. And b, whether you are sufficiently, or being suspected of being sufficient. This is why North Carolina always had a hard pull in the army of Northern Virginia. They were widely suspected of being half parts on the subject of secession. It was the tail and of secession, a lot of people in the army of Northern Virginia suspected the north carolinians couldnt be trusted. Then theres the virginia problem, that so many of the people populating the upper echelons of command are virginians. Thats especially true in atl score. The odd man out are the people in long streets corps. It goes one nonvirginian officer, nonvirginian brigades, a lot of georgians, south carolinians mississippians,. But always feeling as though they are secondclass confederates in this army dominated by virginians. They dont always deal with that terribly gracefully. Nor do the virginians, they are not shy about letting other people in the army of Northern Virginia feel that they are somehow along for the ride and the heavy lifting is being done by them. Did you find any real surprises in working on this book . Constantly. Give us a couple of examples. The story that most people are familiar with about gettysburg is the one that comes from the movie, Joshua Lawrence chamberlain and. Stay with saving america. He is an academic. Thats what my twelvestep process is about. [laughter] people are familiar with that because of the movie and because of the novel. He loved him. Chamberlain,joshua he did the right thing. What i thought was important to put some attention on was how chamberlains story gets regulated replicated so often and in many different places. In a sense, he is only one example of how when the command structures of third court and the fifth court are going to people junior officers, just a couple of months out of clerking in their fathers law office, take charge of a situation and instinctively make all of the right calls and keep saving the day time and again. Its not just chamberlain on the south face of little round top, its how do you work showing up at the last splitsecond with 140th new york to smack into the text again and pushed them down the hill . Its William Colville and the first minnesota. Its Samuel Sprague carols sprinting across Cemetery Hill to smack right into the people just as they are about to overrun the gun emplacements. David ireland doing exactly what the 20th maine did. My favorite story is actually about the 19th main, which was a second core unit in which hancock had posted to cover one of the artillery batteries trying to cover the disintegration of the third corp s. Prevailed confusion, in the late afternoon, early evening of july 2. Coming out of that is angela atkinson, commander of one of sickles decision divisions. It has been ripped from the abdomens to the sternum out on emmitsburg road. , aphrey is a philadelphian talented engineer. Panicked,noon, he is grief, and fearing. He tells the 19th main to fix their bandits, and use them on his retreating division, the soldiers, the unorganized mass that was fleeing all around them, turn their weapons on these fleeing soldiers. Hes stocking down the line and telling them to fix their bandits and use them on the cowards. Behind him is the commander of the 19th main, Lieutenant Colonel francis heath. He is exactly one of the people who had just come from his fathers law office in maine a few months before. He had not come to gettysburg to shoot down or bayonet his own colleagues, his own fellow soldiers. Hes walking behind humphreys while he is raving like a madman , and he is saying dont listen to him. Dont pay any attention to him. I think that was one of the bravest deeds on the field that day. Its a great story, it eliminates the difference between citizen soldiers, which he was, and humphreys, who was a regular soldier and to give you a things like that. Your to your current project. I want to make sure we talked about lee a little bit. I dont know how long ago you chose only as your subject. Events of the past several months have certainly casted a different light in the minds of the people. Why did you select lee as the topic . Have you changed your approach to him at all in terms of what you think you need to do in light of recent events . He has been at the center in charlottesville, that other places, as well. I came to the project because of a vision i had. It was in the middle of the night, and generally came to me and said not enough is written about me. [laughter] and too much about lincoln. [laughter] there was too much about long street. Im a yankee from yankee land. Your from philadelphia. Your story about which regiment you sold to. We were talking about this, a friend had posed the question if you could be a member of a civil war regiment, which one would you choose . A lot of people responded and said things like the 26th North Carolina, the 24th michigan, the 20th maine. I responded and put down 45th United States colored troops. Im a yankee from yankee land. Me to tryes baffles to understand what the other side of this great controversy was fighting for and what it was doing. Especially robert e. Lee, who had been a serving officer of the United States army for all of his career, he distinguished himself in the war in mexico, had been superintendent of west point, was handed a kernels commission in 1861 to command the second the first calvary. Becameresigned and general robert e lee, eventually the general in chief of the confederacy. My father was career army officer, my son is a career army officer. I have taken the oath three generations in my family have taken it. The same oath he took. What really puzzled me, what burned under my saddle was how do i understand this . Of do you write a biography someone who commits treason . Fact thatous of the sitting here in charlottesville, that not an easy thing to say. I dont think anyone honestly can put it in another way. He was never convicted in a he raised his hand against the flag my family has always served. Citizen expect to be protected by it. How he madeerstand that decision and then did the things that he did . I could simply dismiss him as a monster. There have been some. Traitors in the past who have been, some scoundrels like ehrenberg, grandson of Jonathan Edwards. [laughter] lee, he wasew of not definitely ehrenberg. Not the whiskey rebels, hes not anything like that. Hes white horse harry lee. How do you understand what lee did in his life . When he did in his career, and then what he did at the very end of his service as general . In the five years remaining to him when he was the president of washington college. Portrait toan easy assemble. The different pieces of the mosaic dont fit into an easily comprehensible puzzle. On the one hand, i cannot get around, and i dont think anyone honestly can get around the fact, that lee consciously made the decision to fight against his country. There are reasons you can line out, he lined them up in spacious detail. Still doesnt get away from the fundamentals. He became an ardent confederate nationalist. He actually became more of an on firtash ardent confederate nationalists after the war. He was pretty ardent during the war. He would say why . Every time. Yet here is someone who also is telling people he does not really see how the confederacy is going to win the war. After maddux. What he said to William Nelson hambleton. I knew it was going to come to this. Tos is not an easy person get into an algorithm. Either to make him into a saint or make him into a demon, he doesnt yield to either. On the one hand, he does at the very bottom of my abolitionist sold that i find deeply reprehensible. At the same time, i also know save the he did was to country from a nightmare infinitely more unspeakable. Made theer alexander offer to him, lets break up, lets head for the hills, all lee had to say was one word. All he had to say was yes. Not only the army of Northern Virginia, every other confederate force would have fallen suit. If we think that during reconstruction the ku klux klan and the knights of the way camellia, the richards, if we think they were a problem, they would have been a sunday School Picnic compared to what would have happened if the confederate armies had taken to the mountains same way john brown wanted to go. If they had waged a guerrilla warfare that could have lasted for decades, maybe jumped the generations. We could still be fighting it. Missouri,happened in look what happened in tennessee during the war. It was the war of all against all. Missouri had dissented into a hobbesian nightmare. Take missouri, lay it out for two generations across the southern rim of the north american continent. Thats what would have followed downstream from lee saying that one word. Because he was easily the most important person in the confederacy and had been. He was the confederacy. Its true. Henry wise sat there and said you are the confederacy to everybody. Not write a whole lot, but even a broken clock is right to times a day. That was henry rise. Henry wise. All he had to have done was to fight him. Withuld have been living we would be living with a nightmare that could have extended as far as the most reprehensible reprehensible racial genocide. Look at the coast of hours, look at serbs, that took International Intervention to terminate. What were those people talking about . They were talking about controversies, battles, massacres over 400 years. Calledeeves in a book in praise of forgetting, which i wish could be mandatory reading for a lot of historians, he talked about his experience as a journalist in minced of the it midst of the yugo lot yugoslav up easels in the 90s. Afterwards, some of the pressed a piece of paper into his hand. After he looked at it, it had one thing written on it. 1453. Whenher words, the day islam conquered constantinople. ,hese people have been at this their memories are going back to and uncovering the scab of 400 years. We have done something of the same. Im afraid we could have. The only thing that stood between that and living today as we do is the one word. Am i exaggerating . No, i dont think i am. That one word he could have spoken. Asking and answering your own question, im going to sit here. I think you might be exaggerating a little bit. Im a pessimist. They are incredibly important. It would have been hard to pursue that kind of warfare if he said no, were not going to do that. Lets put it this way. Lets say maybe it wouldnt have been that bad. Shall we take a chance . I think you are giving him he should that, as be. Are you envisioning is this going to be a full biography . Are you going to take us through his campaigns and through mexico . Yes. And the presidency of washington college. Which i think are the happiest five years of his life. When he goes to lexington, he leaves behind the virginia he once known that he had once known. It now to him is dead. Itgoes to the valley, where is more Stonewall Jackson than robert e. Lee. Therefore the first time in his life, he as a free hand to do what he wants to do. Its not leaving superintendent of west point, where the chief of the corps of engineers was always looking over his shoulder. Be the kind of person he wants to be. He is extraordinary successful as a college president. He is a very Progressive College president. He is getting rid of all of the old curricula, bringing in studies of journalism, engineering, law, he is doing the kinds of things in the valley that Charles Norman elliott is doing at harvard. He is cutting edge in terms of it. He is extremely successful as a fundraiser. Think robert e. Lee, the glad hammer. Especially with while the northerners was the northerners. All of these people contribute huge amounts of money to washington college. He is very successful at it. I think it really provides him with some of the greatest satisfaction he has ever had in his life. Im going to change the spotlight to something it is maybe mainly of interest to me. I will doa ways it anyways. I think one of the greatest deficiencies in the literature on the civil war is relative inattention to religion. I think the really important books on religion in a literature that runs 80,000 volumes wouldnt take up much more space from one side of that table to this site. Deals withterature the population in the United States and the confederacy that talked about religion a great deal. Historians seem to filter that out and say they dont really mean it, theyre just writing that. Im guilty, religion is too complicated, i dont even want to think about coming to terms with all of these various ideas. I think a lot of historians just shy away from this because it is easier not to deal with it. I want to know whether you think it is relatively underappreciated. Second, why you think that . I think it is underappreciated. There are several salient good books on the subject, two in particular come to mind. One is almost 40 years old. American apocalypse, another is the theological interpretation of the civil war, which is extremely astute. Yet it is very clear and straightforward in its exposition. Of religion ine the civil war has been neglected because i think it requires a lot of investment of time to try to understand the various streams of American Religion in the 19th century. Way, for manyin a secular academics, it is simply not a subject they really want to touch. They regard it as being somehow radioactive. I remember as a graduate student, that good man who was the chair of the graduate program when i was a regular student said this earnestly. He said you have to understand that even so much as a whiff of religion on your resume is the kiss of death. That was telling that too late after writing the dissertation, but it was true. Problem been a constant that i have had to deal with. People will say, they said earlier on, you are a religious historian. The early one was you must be one of those kooks. Sometimes they want discrete about communicating that. I almost wanted to say hold on a moment, im going to get my snake so you can watch me hold it. Sometimes i think they would have deserved it if i had gotten a snake. When you are dealing with lee, you will have to deal with it. People try to write about the civil war era, about the American Experience in the 19th century, they somehow believe they can subtract religion from the formula. They are going to windand the re religion, especially protestant christianity, formed the cultural matrix in which people lived and breathed. When the American Republic was founded, it was founded by men of the enlightenment. ,eople like Thomas Jefferson who really believes the American Republic was going to be an exercise in secular enlightenment. Even those who had religious affiliation had a very modest i mean, washington is an example. But what happens in American Culture is very surprising. Despite jeffersons prediction in the 1820s that no young man now living today will die without having become a unitarian, it turned out to be entirely different. Have gottens attention all out of proportion to their actual importance. Allen probably because there were so many at harvard and they wrote so much. Just but they did. Century, the 19th there is this extraordinary eruption which we sometimes called the second great awakening which was a series of eruptions all the way from the 1810s through the 1850s. When you look at the kinds of numbers that, for instance, john butler talked about in his book about religion in the civil war, awash in the sea of faith, the numbers are extraordinary. Churches founded by the four principal protestant denominations grew at a rate of approximately 300 times greater than the increase of the american population. The influence of American Religion at every level of Popular Culture is extraordinary. You go from college to college in the 1840s and 1850s and almost all of them are being run clergygyman, staffed by and professors in what they are teaching is a religion eyes naturalized version of law and natural rights. It is the matrix in which americans of the civil war era relationr bearings in to each other. When you read being normas volume of soldier diaries, you are the enormous volume of letters, soldier diaries, you are overwhelmed by the religious reflection. Many chapters of these soldiers lives allen that is because they are looking for what they think is the really exciting stuff which is cholera, bed birds, passing by they are religion. Thats a deliberate choice. Thats a deliberate choice professionally, and i think it is a mistake. Something else we see is not just the context that religion reposes for the war, what does. He war do for religion i think the civil war has an impact onnegative that culture. I think people who go through that war have a lot of hasmptions that religion equipped them with ripped out of their hands. A sense of the regularity of the universe a sense of its , predictability. James garfield once made a comment to William Dean Howells that after his first sight of the battlefield, the sight of men killed by other men, garfield said that something went out of him and never came back again. Some sense of the sanctity of life and its divine origins. And garfield had been raised in the disciples of christ, he was a lay preacher. The war had an enormous impact on people. It shook them loose from those religious moorings. The war was not about predictability or an orderly and regular universe presided over by an allpowerful but all wise being. What the war seemed to be was about contingency, chance, luck, unpredictability, and americans were often not prepared to deal with those things. They came out of the war not only physically and psychologically mauled by it, but they come out of it culturally mauled. The assumptions that religion had equipped them with were among the casualties of battle. Gary we have a list of questions that have come in from all of you. I am going to begin with one that is on point with your discussion of lee and treason. Lee often said that going to virginia was the only decision he couldve made. Freeman in his biography had a chapter with that title. About 30 of the virginians who were in the United States army in 1861 remained in the United States army. This question, compare George Thomas to robert e. Lee in 1861. Why did lee resign his commission and thomas stay in the army . I dont how much you know about George Thomas, but take a crack at that. Allen George Thomas was strongly tempted to go to the confederacy. He almost did. Gary his whole family did. They wrote him out of the family. Allen one thing that held him back was he had a northern born wife. That was one restraint. Another restraint was simply the oath. At the end of the day, he cannot bring himself to go back on the oath. That he believed he had sworn and he believed, as lincoln said, it was registered in heaven. So thomas stays with the union, but it was not an easy decision. Why does lee make a different decision . Lee justifies it in terms of virginia. Ive not been entirely satisfied with that as an answer, if only because lee spent so little of his time in virginia. Most of lees career is spent in other places. It is spent in georgia, in new york. It is spent in texas. St. Louis. He actually spends a fairly small amount of his life in virginia. Even growing up in alexandria, the years he grew up in alexandria, alexandria was not part of virginia. It was part of the district of columbia and people were very conscious of being part of the district. Gary pretty deep virginia roots. Allen no question. Gary but partisan roots go deep. Allen but look at the kinds of roots. Look at his father. Here is someone who gary you cant lead the state gary you cant leave the state if youre in debtors prison. Allen he is a federalist mobbed within an inch of his life. He is in a state where the jeffersonians are only too happy to keep him from any Political Office once he leaves the governorship. In fact, harry acquires a lot of unpopularity to suppress the whiskey rebellion in pennsylvania. That is a political mistake that virginians never forgive him for. What was it about virginia that exercised a hold on robert e. Lee . I think it comes down to something more concrete. At this point this is still a theory, but my theory is this. Lee does not own arlington. Gary he doesnt own much of anything. His whole life he does not own a house. Allen the arlington property along with the other custis properties, these all come from his inlaws, and they actually go to his oldest son by the old mans will. George washington custis lee. And mary has a life interest, but that is it. Lee himself does not have any property at arlington, he does not own anything. But he does have to be worried about what is going to happen to the arlington property. Imagine these scenarios. Let us suppose that virginia secedes from the union, he decides to stay with the United States army. What will happen to arlington . He has to worry it will be confiscated. All right, lets suppose that he decides to go with virginia. And there is secession. Maybe there will not be a war. In fact, Winfield Scott has been busy assuring people that this is not going to be a war, that there will be unpleasantness for four or five months, then maybe some reconciliation, or at worst there will be three or four different confederacies, but not a war. This is what scott has been saying to people, and when scott said something that is gospel for robert e. Lee. So lee has to think, all right, if i go with virginia, there will not be a war and i will be able to secure the arlington property for my children, and that can be passed on. I think he has a very concrete idea of what is at stake, and a lot of it is bound up with what is going to happen to those properties and how we can secure them. So he makes the decision that i think is in very large measure conditioned by what is the future of the family going to be. He is thinking of his family here. He is not thinking of himself, he will not profit off of this. Gary he mentioned his family continuously. Allen when he talks about, i cannot raise my hand against my family, he is not talking metaphorically. It is not a piece of rhetoric. I think he has something material in view. How can i keep from having happen to my family what happened to my father at what happened to my father and stratford . Gary we will continue with our treason theme. This is, if Jefferson Davis treason trial had been pressed, do you think it would been appealed to the Supreme Court . Jefferson davis spent about two years in custody after the war and the United States considered putting him on trial. He wanted to be on trail, he he wanted to be put on trial. He thought he would be vindicated, he had a very good lawyer, an irishman from new york city who had other thoughts on how to handle it. In the end, the United States government did not bring him to trial. And did not bring them to trial because they were not sure they would get a conviction. He would have to be tried where this crime took place, in richmond. They somehow have the idea that it might be possible that one juror out of 12 would not vote to convict a Jefferson Davis. Allen do you think that might have happened . Gary no. The question is, how do you think this would have been settled had it worked its way through the courts . Because as we all know, the constitution neither says you may or may not secede. Allen the difficulty here lies in the fact that all of this has occurred before the 14th amendment. Gary every bit of it. Allen the 14th amendment is what clearly, categorically, unambiguously defines as american citizenship and the priority of american citizenship. Put that along with texas versus white, where the justice denies a right to secession, and you have a strong case against anyone, for instance, in texas or california today, who wants to have daydreams after secession, but that was after the civil war. And we dont have ex post facto convictions in american law. So it was entirely possible for davis, and in fact lee makes exactly this argument, that under the laws and constitution as they existed in 1861, his citizenship as a virginian took priority over citizenship in the United States. And therefore, and this is what he says in front of the joint committee on reconstruction in 1866. He is very clear in saying i was doing constitutionally what i was supposed to do, and that was to regard my state citizenship as having the priority. It would have been extremely difficult for a federal court to look at that, either in the case of davis or lee and to say, oh no, we are going to hold you to account. You should have known better. All the jurisprudence had gone the other way. Baron versus baltimore. Everything that had happened in terms of jurisprudence up to that point gave some color to that argument. On the face of it, is a little difficult, but still, the technicalities were there. Would a jury, even in philadelphia, would a jury have convicted lee or davis . I dont think it couldve been predicted very clearly. Another complication, especially in 1865 when lee is indicted for treason, because lee is indicted, is that the federal courts may not cooperate. And the federal court in this case, meaning chief justice chase. The District Court and Circuit Court that included virginia were traditionally part of the chief justices circuit. That meant chase had jurisdiction over virginia. As a circuit judge. Chase deeply objected to the existence of military tribunals and military arrests. He had made that clear and would make it clear. Chase makes it clear to president johnson that he will not participate in trials in virginia where there are military tribunals still functioning, because he regards those as an unconstitutional challenge to the authority of the federal courts. So you have got, first of all, a constitutional legal question in the way. Secondly, you have a procedural question being posed by the chief justice of the United States. Could any of this have happened . The odds start to get very long. Gary i think thats what the potential prosecutors concluded as well. We will continue where this is a seamless transition. States being supreme in some ways, the way some people viewed the situation. The question here is we associate state rights with the south. Did northerners care about state rights or state allegiance . That is a slow ball down the middle. Allen did you ever hear of ableman versus booth . Gary the short answer is, yes. Yes, they did care, and in fact they evoke personal liberty laws. Allen states rights become a wax nose that people north and south regularly invoke and then ignore as the situation demanded. When it came to owning slaves, you heard about states rights. When it came to recapturing fugitive slaves who had escaped to the north, suddenly you heard about the importance of the federal government and a centralized authority and states rights be damned. Reverse the scenario, you have a case where personal liberty laws are invoked to protect a fugitive slave. Gary against nine northern states. Allen exactly. The wisconsin courts pleads states rights. That puts the court in the unusual position of being the enforcer of states rights. It really did depend on whose ox was being gored. You even see this during the war itself. I was saying this to one of your graduate students earlier today that when you look at lincolns relationship with the northern war governors, they are much more collegial, cooperative, much more lets meet together and talk this over, lets formulate policy jointly, than davis. Jefferson davis is very topdown. For davis, it was i will decide policies, governors are not more than ciphers and i expect cooperation. If you wanted to give states rights respect to either lincoln or davis, you would have to give it to Abraham Lincoln. Neither of those two had greater functional respect for the rights of the states than Abraham Lincoln, whereas by contrast, Jefferson Davis is the great centralizer imposing his will on state governments. Gary the confederate Central Government is the most powerful and intrusive Central Government in American History until deep into the 20th century on the u. S. Side. This allegedly states Rights Society put up with things that would have been incomprehensible. Allen it really depends on the issue and who would like to reach for the states rights argument first. Gary lincoln needed the governors. He needed the states, leaned on them. He depended on them and they functioned with Great Authority during the war. We have about three minutes left. Im trying to find a question we can answer in three minutes, which is not our strongest suit. Lets just have a brief answers. You can say one or two things. Are there any civil war, is there any civil war subject that has been exhausted, or is there always room to Say Something more . Allen i dont think people should write books about gettysburg, the emancipation proclamation. Im sorry. [laughter] allen i dont think there is an end in sight because the subject involves so Many Americans at one flash point in our history, just four years worth. When you look at civil wars in other countries, they go on for years, decades. They are spread out like the delta of a river. For us, the civil war is actually a comparatively short war in terms of the context of civil warfare. It is like a flashbulb going off and it touches so many people so quickly, so violently, and in ways that are recorded in such depth and such detail that gary there were great issues at stake. Allen with great issues at stake. I dont see a bottom in the barrel. Anyone who wants to write about the civil war. Yes, even if you want to write about the battle of gettysburg, you have got plenty of untouched material and plenty of opportunities and plenty of new things to say. I think the ammunition in that drum, there will be a long time before it starts to click on empty. Gary i think i will let that be the last word. Thank you all very much for coming this afternoon. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] this weekend on American History tv on cspan3, tonight at 8 p. M. Eastern on lectures in history, we visit Iowa State University and a class on food during the great depression. In a lot of families there was selective starvation of adults, meaning adults would choose not to eat in favor of letting their children eat. There were families that stayed in bed all day and reduced their sols to two meals a day everybody would conserve as much energy as possible and not get as hungry. They also relied on the kindness of friends and strangers. America, on reel a look at family life in the 20th century. Splitsecond lunches. Disposable dishes, all part of the instant society out tomorrow. At 4 30 p. M. Eastern, historian james oakes talks about runaway slaves and the consequences of fugitive slave laws. With of the least appreciated means of slaves being returned was the deliberate refusal to enforce the law in many northern communities. Particularly black communities. At 8 p. M. We will tour the national word will world war i museum in kansas city. To be anned out extraordinarily dramatic memorial. American history tv this weekend. Only on cspan3. This week, washington authors ofatures books featured this year. Join our conversation with authors about their popular books. Coming up sunday, Chris Whipple with the gatekeepers, how the white house chiefs of staff defined each presidency. The authors series, sunday at 8 a. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan. Org, and cspan radio app. Vietnam is often remembered as the First Television war. American history tv, journalists discussed the challenges they faced, their work conditions, tv network competition, and their relationships with military officers and soldiers they covered. Among the speakers were former abc news nightline anchor ted koppel and yasutsune hirashiki, author of on the frontlines of the Television War a legendary war cameraman in vietnam. This event at the National Archives in washington is about 90 minutes. Now it is time to introduce our moderator terribly irving terry irving. He went into a career in television news, spending for decades covering wartime and political disasters throughout the United States. E has one and number of awards ladies and gentlemen, please welcome terrier thing in our distinguishedel