Dr. James iredell robertson junior associate professor of Civil War History at Virginia Tech. He is the author or editor of various books, including shifting grounds, nationalism and the american south, which won the British Association for american studies but prize, the book prize the jefferson , davis award for the museum of the confederacy, and the albert lee sturm award. His work has appeared in journals such as the journal of southern history and the journal of the civil war era. Among his Research Research project are the South Carolina cosman who achieved notoriety by caning senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the senate in 1856. And mapping the fourth of july and the civil war era, a project with colleagues in education, Computer Science and the libraries at Virginia Tech. He serves on the board of the society of civil war historians, the Editorial Board of the journal of Civil War History, the board of the smithfield press foundation and the historians Advisory Board of the American Civil War museum in richmond. Please join me in welcoming our final speaker for today, dr. Paul quigley. [applause] prof. Quigley thank you very much. How was the volume for everyone . Good. It is a privilege to be here and follow such a distinguished program of speakers today. I will pick up on the theme of dissent and subversion, the same as the other speakers. Im going to shift our perspective slightly to the highest reaches of the confederate government, specifically the confederate president Jefferson Davis. You will hear some echoes of the themes of the other speakers. With that new perspective of Jefferson Davis. One of the big points i want to make, Jefferson Davis and the confederate government in general fought not a front a one front war, but a two front war in the American Civil War. One against the union, the external enemy, and then another at home against a number of internal enemies. As we have heard today, to set dissent of various kinds was rife in both the union and confederacy. What i am going to do is try to do three slightly overlapping things. One of them is to give you a general sense of the landscape of dissent in the confederacy. A very broad look. Very specificu a idea of how it looked through the eyes of Jefferson Davis, the specific criticisms he received as confederate president. The specific responses he tried to make to these criticisms and opponents. I will get into Jefferson Davi leadership style, personality and that kind of thing. Long after the war in after the war in 1877, davis gave us an idea of how he felt about criticism during his presidency. In a letter to a friend, he wrote i hope it will never be it may never be your misfortune to conduct a war and a Political Campaign as a joint operation. This idea of both directions simultaneously. You have such an experience, you cannot rightly measure the trials to which the confederate government was subjected and how slender a foundation the structure was made to stand one when powerfully assailed, not only from without, but within by a cabal. He has this sense in 1877, and i think, during the war as well, of being under attack, under siege from various directions. The thing about Jefferson Davis is he is not confronted with one critic or group of critics, it is coming at him from different directions. As i was listening to the last lecture, which i enjoyed i was , trying to rack my brains and think it Jefferson Davis could describe his internal enemies. I dont think there was one. Im sure he did think of them as snakes. I never thought i would bring this up in a Civil War History lecture but the image that came to my mind was the movie snakes on a plane. [laughter] i can imagine Jefferson Davis with this image in his mind, he has all kinds of different enemies, different shapes and sizes. I dont think any of them came out of the toilet like they did in the movie. Definitely that sense of being under attack from many different Jefferson Davis seemed to feel is how during the civil war and after it from that quote from 1877. He has been criticized at the time and ever since by historians. Im sure you have heard much of this before. He has been criticized as being overly ill tempered, overly bureaucratic, a micromanager, a hard worker, i dont think anyone denies that. He never realizes that doing more work and digging even deeper into the minutia of these tasks is not always the best way to lead a Major Organization like a country. In one of the books i read as i was preparing for this lecture, one author compared it to an engineers mindset. He wanted to know exactly what was going on underneath the hood of the confederate government. He wanted to inspect the processes. He wanted to control everything. I cannot get into criticism of engineers. Working at Virginia Tech, that is part of my contract. I have to respect engineers. That gives you an idea of one of the big criticisms, or types of criticism people have launched against Jefferson Davis. He has also come under fire for failing to do one of the key jobs of any president , which is to unify the population. Especially during the time of war. Historians have pointed out the confederate population was not unified. About the divisions and disagreements. Some of them have placed the blame at Jefferson Davis doorstep. Im not sure about that, whether it is reasonable to expect one person to carry the whole responsibility to create National Unity like that. In the case of the confederacy, what often happens is we all know how the story turned out, we know how the confederacy was defeated. That makes us more likely to look for the fractures within the country and to look for people and factors to blame for that because of the confederate defeat. You will see as i go through my talk, i see him doing some stuff that was effective and a sign of good leadership. I do want to get this straight in the beginning. I dont want to come across as a Jefferson Davis fan boy. Thats not the kind of thing im doing. I dont want to say he was a perfect leader by any means. A lot of people have overemphasized his faults. I want to take as balanced of a view as i can. Howhe dealt with criticism, he dealt with dissent and what it all meant for the history of the confederacy. He learned very quickly, as any president or leader does, he immediately had a target on his back. People thought it was fine to write any complaint to the president in the confederacy. Joe citizen would write to him all the time, which im sure they have for all president s, insinuating, we can do a better job. You are doing this tiny thing wrong. You are doing this big thing er and we can do a better job than you. He is constantly under fire from the first weeks of his presidency. What he realized i think, and i think this is one thing he was right about. Part of his job was to define this new undertaking, this new country of the confederacy, to explain to people inside and outside the country what this whole enterprise was about and that is what he endeavored to do. He began with his inaugural address in early 1861, he presented the confederacy as a new nation grounded in the old nation, the united states. He talked about the declaration of independence, the u. S. Constitution, the confederate constitution was mostly modeled after that. He made the case northerners betrayed the initial ideals of the american revolution. We are the real americans following through with these principles. They betrayed the founders. The important thing for me was this was directly in the mainstream of confederate thought. This was the kind of thing that most confederates could agree with. They were connected to it and grounded in it and they were interested in the American Revolutionary tradition. They knew slavery was the thing that changed, the big alteration. But davis tended not to emphasize that. He did so knowing that talking about the constitution and the american inheritance was going to be more appealing to the mainstream of confederate opinion. The other thing he emphasized, especially once the war was underway was how that how bad northerners were. This was another common tactic. Can point to, people on one side will be talking about how terrible and the villain that is what jefferson is the other side are buried that is what Jefferson Davis talks about a lot once the war was underway. This was the perfect position to perfectly positioned to win the support of the confederate people. Most of them anyway. There is no better way to bring a group of people together than to tell them another group of people is out to get them as their enemies. To begin with, Jefferson Davis is relatively popular in 1861. His stock is high and in confederate public opinion. He runs for permanent president of the confederacy in november 1861. Originally he was chosen as the provisional president , so in 1861, only one candidate, Jefferson Davis. That tells you something for the that at least the first few months of his presidency, he was fairly popular. He tried to be inclusive. We all know he was only inclusive to people who happened to have white skin. Like most 19th century leaders, he was more interested in bringing men into the fold than women. Once you get those limits out of the way, i think he did try to bring the confederate population, the people he saw as real confederates, together. To give you one example of this, in august 1861, he dealt with a case of a guy named Thomas Nelson from tennessee. He was a congressman from a the civilm before war. He remained committed to the union. He did not want to join the confederacy. He ended up being arrested by confederate authorities in the summer of 1861. The petitioned for his release. He said candidly he was prepared to accept the decision of them tennessee to secede. I dont like it but i will live by it. And i think i should be released on those terms. That satisfied Jefferson Davis. He released Thomas Nelson, even though he was on record as being a strong proponent of the union. For davis, as long as he was prepared to be loyal and live loyally to the confederacy and the state of tennessee, that was ok, that was enough for Jefferson Davis. Exerciset always clemency like that. I do think the basic approach continued throughout the war. His style was to say lets let political differences of the past live in the past. We may have disagreed before but we are all confederates now. As long as you are not actively working against the confederacy, we will accept you into the fold. He is making an effort to bring people together. It was by no means an easy task. There are lots of lines of Division Within the confederate population. Once you start thinking about the number of people within confederate territory, you dont want it to be confederate territory. The task that Jefferson Davis set for himself seemed formidable. I am going to spend a few minutes telling you about the key groups of southern unionists, not directed toward Jefferson Davis, just the general picture of southern unionism. Most of us, only talk about southern unionism, we tend to be thinking about white opponents of the confederacy. When you think about it, it makes more sense to start with black southerners who lived in the Confederate States. That is about 40 of the confederate population. They have every reason to oppose the confederate war effort, especially after lincolns emancipation proclamation. They did that and the they did oppose the confederate war effort in various ways. They joined the Union Military. I figure we are familiar with around 200,000 africanamericans that fought for the union in the civil war. Of those about 150,000 were from , the Confederate States. Confederate within territory, you have a huge group of people who leave and run away from slavery and go and join the union. We know about the impacts they had on the capability of the Union Military forces, and the result of the civil war. If you want to talk about Jefferson Davis internal adversaries, those 150,000 black Union Soldiers from within the confederacy are the best place to start. I think more than that. We all know this already. In addition to the black southerners who donned the uniform, there are hundreds of thousands of others who fled slavery, trying to get to freedom, the union army camps. They took their labor, which was claimed by confederates in one way or another, and gave it to the union. In addition to those hundreds of thousands who actively left confederate territory, ran away from slavery, there were countless others who worked against slavery from within, challenging the authority of their masters in all kinds of different ways, working against slavery. Africanamericans are the most direct and consequential adversaries that Jefferson Davis faced in the confederate space. States. It is ironic that he did not seem to recognize that as well as he did recognize the white opponents within the confederacy. Those are the adversaries he talked about. I will turn to white southern unionists now. There were some people who opposed Jefferson Davis in the confederate administration. In the most direct way imaginable by signing up for the Union Military. There are around 100,000 white from within the Confederate States who fought for the union. There are another roughly 200,000 from the border slaveholding states. They didnt join the confederacy, but they are quite internal confederate enemies, but are well worth thinking about. There were lots of other white southerners who did not leave home and join the Union Military but still were not happy with the confederacy or secession and would prefer to go back to the union. There are all kinds of different motivations that the sending interests had southern unionists had. Some of them were northern born, so their loyalties were to the northern states. Some of them were former wakes. Whigs. Er coming out of the politics of the 1840s and 50s, they saw the democrats as enemies, and they were responsible for secession. Some were nonslaveholding farmers who resented what they came to csa rich mans war and a poor mans fight. Some were conservatives, who simply believed their property, including their slave property would be more secure within the in the confederacy. They were right. There is no way slavery what dashwood have come to an end so would have come to an end so quickly without secession and the confederacy and the civil war. A lot of reasons for southern unionists. Some were proslavery and some are antislavery. Lots of different motivations. Dissent was concentrated in certain areas of the south. It was sprinkled everywhere you could point to in small quantities but it was especially pronounced in certain mountainous areas of the south, low slaveholding areas, places like east tennessee, Western North carolina, northern alabama, jones county, mississippi, im sure some of you have seen that great film the free state of jones. Or maybe read the book or both. There are these pockets of concentrated southern dissent. Through the confederacy. There are all kinds of examples through up sprinkled through other parts of the country. I want to emphasize a point jonathan made earlier, he was making the point in the shenandoah valley. Unionists were by no means only men. Then were very often at center of these networks. Mountainous areas, they often brought food to deserters, maybe male relatives, they encouraged them to desert in some cases. There are women like elizabeth in richmond, the union spy, in the confederate capital. She led a biracial network of unionists in richmond who worked against the confederacy within its capital city. Even within the confederate white house. With mary who was say black woman who was a slave to one of her relatives and was subsequently freed. During the war, she was working for wages in the confederate white house. She fed elizabeth and her allies information from within the confederate white house. I have no idea whether Jefferson Davis suspected any of this. Dissent was all around him and very close in some cases. There were the bread riots. You have heard about this. Olanta, macon, salisbury. Richmond, most directly connected to Jefferson Davis and in april 1863. Here, women took the lead in protesting the Economic Conditions of the confederacy. They also protested the policies of the government and maybe more so, the fact that speculators, this was an awful word to women in the confederacy. Speculators, merchants who were profiteering and taking advantage of wartime situations to make money and make it difficult for ordinary men and women to buy enough food. I wont go into detail there. That is a quick survey of some of different places where the where dissent was taking place. There was a great deal of opposition to the confederacy within the confederacy. I do want to distinguish and i think its an important distinction between general southern unionism on the one hand, which is what i talked about so far, and specific opposition to davis and his government, which is what i want to move on to. Very different motivations. Both kinds of opposition represent huge problems for Jefferson Davis that are motivated by different things. Lets take a look at some of the more personal and direct forms of opposition to Jefferson Davis. Im sure everyone in the room has heard at least some of the stories of Jefferson Davis interpersonal relationships, many of which were not successful. There were some of his key generals, men like beauregard who did not like davis. , he did not like them. Neither side respect to the respected the decisions or policies of the other. Davis and beauregard fought publicly after first manassas about why the confederates could not be able to pursue them to end the war. Joseph johnston got himself into a tizzy that same summer in 1850 1861 by davis decision to rank the top confederate generals according to his personal whims rather than the rule everyone else thought he should follow. These two and other generals fought nonstop with davis throughout the war. The ins and outs, the details, not really where i want to spend time, but just to make the point, the Jefferson Davis was one of those people, we probably all know at least one person like that, when he got into a dispute with someone, he was never going to step back. He was going to continue it and keep it going. He was going to provoke them. He was not going to forget them. When he got into that kind of dispute with another person like that, it was never going to end. It was a never ending cycle. Confederate secretary of navy Stephen Mallory, once said of davis few men could be more chillingly freezingly cold. Davis himself, often the was davis was so committed to the confederacy, he things i would not sacrifice for the confederacy are my wife and children. Everything else is fair game. He is so committed, if the he senses Anyone Around him is ambivalent, weaken their in their weak devotion to the confederacy he , is going to freeze them out as Stephen Mallory said. In may 1862, he wrote to his wife the great temporal object is to secure our independence. They who engage in strife for personal or party aggrandizement deserve contemptuous forgetfulness. If you prioritize personal gain or politics, over the course of the confederacy, then in Jefferson Daviss eyes, you are basically dead to him. Other Jefferson Davis opponents, especially in South Carolina, who had been campaigning for secession for years before the war saw this as their , revolution, they finally succeeded in 1861. We have the states out of the union and have a new confederate confederacy in existence. They think it is their revolution. They are not happy to see the leading politician, the president of this country, a moderate who had not been gung ho about secession before the war. He had been committed to southern rights, but in the 1850s, as secretary of war and a senator, he had always been one of the southern politicians who wanted to keep the south within the union and protect the regions rights within the union. To people like robert who had devoted their lives to achieving this outcome, davis was not the right leader. Another example is lawrence kit, a South Carolina congressman in 1862. He wrote, davis supreme imbecility has there is robert coombs, a contender for the confederacy himself, he consistently attacks davis from his position in the Confederate Congress. He referred to davis as an stupid, malignant, wretch. These are the snakes on Jefferson Davis plane. He is hearing this thing regularly from all sides. Even his Vice President turned against him. Very publicly by the closing stages of the war. Lots of personal antipathy directed toward Jefferson Davis. What are the contributing factors here is the fact that there are no formal Political Parties in the confederacy. That is a deliberate decision. When they formed the government, they believed one of the big problems in u. S. Politics has been partisanship. Maybe some people today may sympathize with that position. The confederate Founding Fathers made a deliberate effort, we are not going to have Political Parties. We will just talk about principles and policies. That is the way our politics will work. Even though they had downsized they had downsized downsides Political Parties, Political Parties have the advantage of organizing political conflicts and making sure chaos does not outright erupt. But also, channeling disagreements into these organized forum. When you dont have them, the politics of personality sometimes predominate. That is what happened in the confederacy. One of the ways that people talk about confederate political divisions is to talk about proJefferson Davis and antiJefferson Davis. No Political Parties means that there is even more focus on Jefferson Davis as an individual. You wont be surprised to hear certain segments of the press, even within the confederacy love to hate Jefferson Davis. Notably the charleston mercury, the richmond examiner. Much more important than personality, much more important than the media, where the Jefferson Davis administration worthy were the Jefferson Davis administration policies. That is what really got large numbers of confederates in arms up in arms and opposing the administration. Specifically, the key framework here was centralization. The centralization of power in the National Government in richmond was a trend throughout the history of the confederacy. Because of the crisis and atmosphere of war, it wasnt necessarily that people wanted to centralize power in the confederate government, it was just that it seemed necessary, justifiable, maybe even essential to winning the war to centralize in various types of ways. Another framework for confederate politics was the division between people who wanted to achieve National Unity and a centralization of power in richmond on the one hand. On the other hand, people wanted to protect liberty. Sometimes framed as individual liberty, sometimes framed as the liberty of states. Liberty versus unity and centralization are the two poles of confederate politics if you want to think about it that way. At the centerpiece of this framework of centralization was conscription. It came about in the confederacy significantly before it came about in the union. In the first few months of the war, the confederacy had no shortage of volunteers. Lots of enthusiasm. During the winter of 1861 and 62, it became apparent that it was becoming difficult to raise enough troops. The war was going to be a long one. Jefferson davis recognized that maybe National Prescription was the right thing to do. He began talking about that and pushing in february and march of 1862. He talked about the necessity of getting more men and confederate into the confederate armies. He talked about how the Current System of recruitment was generating conflict between national and state governments. For him, National Conscription and National Draft was the way to go. This was the first National Draft in the history of the place. There was no draft in the revolution or this was in april 1812. 1862 in the confederacy. The details changed over the next years. It began that all men between 1835 were liable with certain exceptions. Exemptions. The details changed the age , range expanded over the years of course. The basic dispute over conscription policy continued throughout the civil war. The issue was people on one side said the National Government in richmond does not have the authority to compel people in the states to fight for the confederate armies. There were lots of complaints about the draft being fermented implemented unfairly. People getting out of the draft for health reasons, substitutions, all of this kind of thing. Particularly, these kinds of complaints became much more vociferous after 1862. That is when they confederate the Confederate Congress passed a new element of the construction law, which became wn as the 20 need grow law exemptedlaw, which from the National Draft one white man for every 20 enslaved africanamericans. The idea is that we need security on the home front. If all of the white men are off fighting in the confederate army, it will make slave insurrection a real possibility. That is the logic behind it. It did not seem like a good idea too many white nonslaveholding men who saw in this policy, and , an unfair rule that would be abused by wealthy, White Planters and often their sons, who would use this as an excuse to use their wealth, the fact that he owned at slaves, to and they owned so many slaves to avoid Confederate Service. This is one of the big things that gave rise to calls of a rich mans war and a poor mans fight. This anger at the idea that secession, the confederacy was all the work of slaveholders, from this perspective, and now, the wealthy slaveholders were not ready to do their fair share of the fighting. Conscription was more than anything else, what provoked opposition against the Davis Administration. Centralization more generally, and especially economic centralization also played an Important Role in addition to conscription, also took control the Davis Administration also took control of the National Economy in a number of different ways. They dictated railroad schedules and help fund railroads, took over certain key industries. We all know the past new desk they passed taxation and impressment measures. By the closing stages of the war, the confederate government claimed the right to control what confederate citizens could produce and consume, what they could transport, how much of what they produced, they got to keep. To a lot of confederate citizens, this was overreach on the part of the National Government. The historian emory thomas judged this to be in his words the nearest thing to state , socialism to appear in the 19th century. This is the level of control the confederate government is trying to claim over the confederate economy. The nearest thing to state socialism to appear in the 19th century. Its does not much sound like the confederacy people often to about the confederacy and states rights together, but as it turned out, because of the crisis of war, the leaders of no matter what the leaders of the confederacy wanted, going into this conflict, just because of the exigencies of the conflict, they also most had to they almost had to centralize power. They had to allow the federal government new control over the economy. Just because it seemed necessary, and i think, to most of us today, it is logical that, for the Davis Administration, from that perspective, it was necessary. That certainly did not stop critics of davis and his administration from making their opposition very clear back in the 1860s. We talked about Civil Liberties in reference to Abraham Lincoln. This is another thing that davis came under attack for. He suspended habeas corpus, like lincoln did. He came under exactly the same kind of criticism for it. They just in thing to me is that davis was much more moderate than lincoln and his suspension in his suspension of habeas corpus. He did it for a total of 17 months. Over the course of the war. Unlike lincoln, davis always sought the permission of the Confederate Congress before he did this. Compared to lincoln, he hasnt was not going as far as curtailing the Civil Liberties of his citizens, but that did not make much of a difference to critics of what he was doing. They talked about davis as a despot, a tyrant, they compared him to emperors, all of this thing. They also sometimes used the language of enslavement to describe what davis and his administration were doing for the confederate public. I think they do not see the irony of complaining about this government enslaving us. And ruling over us given the connection of the confederacy of to racial slavery to white confederates, they looked at what the davis of attrition was doing and they saw Davis Administration was doing and they saw disposition of them, not only just of africanamericans. Among the critics of Jefferson Davis, probably the most conspicuous were several state governors. This debate was often framed in terms of state rights versus Confederate National authority. Among the state governors, the most conspicuous of all was the georgia governor joseph brown, who is one of those characters, just like i said about johnston and beauregard before, he was one who once he got in a conflict, he will never step back from it. He and davis, and a sense for in a sense worthy Perfect Match for each other. Brown accused davis of trying to become an emperor. He complained that davis was even more tyrannical than a man the man he turned king, lincoln. That was a bad thing to say in the confederacy in the middle of the civil war. Brown was an obstructionist from the getgo. In the beginning stages trying to preserve his authority as state governor over the troops. Over the weapons that come out of his states. State. He doesnt want them to be used in Confederate Service without his sayso or weapons to go with them. Brown and other governors complained a lot about men from their states, not being allowed to choose their own offices, the officers, the idea that they have their own offices. For davis, his position was always, we are in this together. We need to group our resources together and do what is necessary to win against the union. All military resources and personnel should be under the control of the confederate government, and Jefferson Davis, as commanderinchief, and of course the states did not like that. When it seemed to hurt them. One of the issues that popped up again is that when the territory of a particular state came under , thek by union forces state governors, they would complain why are our boys from georgia, why are they fighting in virginia around west wherever they were when they should be, our coastline is under attack. Why cant we use our own men to defend their territory. In february of 1862 after the fall of Roanoke Island in North Carolina. Davis tried to explain to North Carolina leaders, it was just not going to be possible. It would be impossible to protect every mile of confederate coastline. There was about 3500 miles of confederate coastline. That is without taking into account the internal borders. Davis kept saying, we cannot protect it all. We have to think about the big picture. We have to send the troops and resources where they will be most valuable to the cause as a whole. In 1863, along similar lines, he march wrote to the arkansas congressional delegation, our safety, our very existence depends on the complete blending of the military strength of all of the states into one united body to be used anywhere and everywhere at the exigencies of the contest may require for the good of the whole. He is constantly trying to prioritize the entire confederacy over the individual interests of the particular states. That did not really help the state governors who did not buy his argument. For them it was often the case that their particular needs was more important. Also objected to construct conscription like members of the public. Joseph brown went through a lengthy correspondence with Jefferson Davis over conscription. Brown wrote that it was a bold and dangerous move by congress of the reserve rights of the states and is strive towards military despotism. It seems to brown that what is happening in the confederacy is worse than what is happening in the union. The fear of military despotism goes back to the american revolution, when it is one of the things revolutionaries feared from the british empire. These two guys, Jefferson Davis and joe brown, just kept at it, particularly on the subject of conscription. Jefferson davis, even as he went engaged in this with the state governors, he always recognized the value of state pride and the power of state pride. We say in the 19th century, especially before the civil war, people identified with their state much more than the country. Davis certainly recognized that. He often made the effort to show people they could think about state identity and confederate identity in one integrated, seamless goal. He tried to send a message to people that you should love your state. He made no secret of his mississippi pride. Because that state as part of the confederacy, you can love them both at the same time. He tried to make a case for unity throughout the war. One of the last things i want to talk about is that there are even though there are lots of examples, of davis and his and administration trying to bring dissenters back into the fold. There are also lots of examples where davis and his government and his soldiers responded to with repression. You may have heard about the incident in north caroline a in in 1863, when confederate troops killed 13 local unionists. That is one example where dissent leads to repression. And violence instead of welcoming them into the fold. Closer to where i live in blacksburg, southwest virginians in the later stages of the war, more of them began to question their allegiance to the confederacy. The confederate government got so worried that in 1864, they sent undercover agents to southwest virginia, even a regiment of reserve troops, from who, from the confederate perspective, would have been better employed fighting against the union. They sent these troops into southwest virginia to put a stop to the dissent that was taking place. The secret unionist society, called the heroes of america, which had spread into southwest virginia from North Carolina was very active. Clearly the confederate government saw this as a threat to its existence. It is war of another kind. The homefront instead of the battlefront. There are also deserters in southwest virginia, floyd county became a haven for deserters in the final years of the civil war. This is a big problem for the Davis Administration. Deserters, by definition, were rejecting the authority of the National Government, rejecting the authority of the Davis Administration. It is not that they were always motivated by unionism. Its knowledge they were completely against the confederacy, but far more frequent was the simple desire to return home and provide for their families, to get out of the terrible conditions they may be experiencing. Regardless of the intent, desertion by its nature functioned on some level as a challenge to the Governments Authority and a challenge to Jefferson Daviss authority and the confederate government often responded with force to the kind of thing as well. These are the kinds of situations i mean with the title i chose today, fire in the rear, which is sometimes here in reference to lincoln area it seems lincoln. It seems to be appropriate for the confederacy and the situation Jefferson Davis you faced as well. There were challenges and divisions. A number of different levels. Some of the key ones of talk ybout include the patch personality complex. The media, the criticism. And the fact that so many other people within confederate territory did not want to accept the authority of the confederate government and would rather have called Abraham Lincoln president then Jefferson Davis. In terms of Jefferson Daviss response to all of this, i think it is a mixed bag. As i said the beginning, i think criticisms of daviss readership leadership have been effectively with some of these challenges for , example, making the case for white southern yunis, that the southern unionists that the confederacy actually represented a better version of the union then the one they wanted to go back to. And again from the slaveholder , perspective, the confederacy was the perfect combination of american ideals from the revolution, the constitution, but married to slaveholding in a more explicit way then had been the case in the united states. In some sense, davis is doing the right things to achieve what he wants to. He was much worse than that when it came to those interpersonal conflicts i think every executive faces. He made those situations far worse by his style, provoking, antagonizing his critics, rather than ignoring them or moving on or trying to engage with them and change their minds. Ironically, when it comes to what i think, and i hope you agree, when i think is the most significant internal challenge of them all, which is the 3. 5 million enslaved africanamericans who lived within confederate orders at the start of the civil war, in relation to that, Jefferson Davis never really seemed able to fully recognize the problem, never nine respond to it. Thank you. [applause] prof. Quigley thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for your patience. It looks like we have about 10 minutes for questions. There is a microphone right here. Would you care to comment on the turnover in the cabinet in the confederacy . Prof. Quigley there was a reasonable amount of turnover in the confederate cabinet. Some of it was due a whole combination of reasons. Some of it was due to the personality conflicts davis tended to get into. Some of it was due to the fact that he always wanted a geographical distribution in the cabinet of politicians in various states. From various states. He deliberately tried in his first cabinet and tried to keep that going as he was going along. I think the turnover in his cabinet was not exceptional, given the crisis situation, given the fact that they were figuring this out as they went along and given the fact that davis wanted to respect those different states and see them represented in this government. I have always wondered why people compare him to lincoln. I think he should be compared to washington himself. He is starting a country in from scratch, has no Standing Army or navy. Infrastructure is terrible to say the least. He has 11 governors going their own ways. You mentioned that after being appointed to president , he then ran for election unopposed. Is that not saying that he was thought of as the only one who could bring this mess together, and if so, who could have done a better job in your estimation . Prof. Quigley those are some good points. It sounds as though you may have read the essay about him thinking of david potter in 1960, in which he compared Jefferson Davis to Abraham Lincoln and arrived at the provocative conclusion that if the two sides had switched, maybe the result of the civil war would have been different. That is just one example of people comparing davis to lincoln. I think you are absolutely right. It is instructive to compare him with washington. He was seen, especially in the early stages of the war, as a second washington. Robert e lee took on that mantle once he achieved prominence after the first year. To begin with davis was seen in , those terms. He seemed like the right man for the job. There was the famous comment at his inauguration, the man of the hour is met. Some of the prewar radicals certainly did not believe he was the right man for the job. I believe mainstream confederate opinion was he was the right man for the job. As to who else could have done it differently, there were not a lot of possibilities, partly because this was such a new undertaking for everyone, and partly due to the tension between the radicals who brought work, noion and the one trusted them to actually lead the revolution once it came real. Davis was chosen specifically because he was a moderates. He served in Franklin Pierce of us this cabinet in the 1850s, served with distinction as a senator from mississippi. He neighbor he never came across as being one of the really hotheaded southern leaders. I do not think there were too many people around who could have done a better job. Sir, how would you characterize Jefferson Daviss personal environments personal involvement in International Recognition of the confederacy . Prof. Quigley thats a good question. Maybe you can think of this is a third front of the confederate war effort, the desire for International Recognition. He certainly recognized the importance of achieving this. People have often criticized him for his choice of diplomats to go and do that, especially his william yancey, who was one of the radicals. People have had the question, if you knew that this was importance, why did you send a guy like yancey who had already proved he did not have good diplomatic skills . That,th the exception of i would say most of what i had seen from davis was he saw the influence of it and did a good job instructing his different secretaries of state and diplomats about how to go about that. At themple, he told them beginning of the war, stress the cotton. Argument, king a lot of confederates thought otherould he what swayed countries into recognizing the confederacy. Davis recognized that. He also recognized, i think, is too late, that europeans were only going to be confused by this talk of secession and constitutionality and the legal grounds they pointed to of states rights and that kind of thing. Sent diplomats to europe he gave them solid instructions that were well placed to achieve what they wanted to achieve. It did not work, but i really do not think that was Jefferson Daviss fault. You tell me the two people from South Carolina you mentioned a lot of names. I was trying to write them all down. Prof. Quigley yes. That is where powerpoint sometimes comes in handy to have the names of their but the two well re roberts bomb and kett. T rhett had the charleston newspaper. He wrote a memoir after the war, which one of my predecessors at Virginia Tech edited for publication. And in that memoir, one of the main things he does is complain about davis and say this guy did a terrible job. If we would have had anyone else thelace, maybe me, confederacy could have won instead of losing. So, he is, i would say, a great example of a davis critic. Thanks for the question. Thank you all for being such a great audience. Next on lectures in history American University professor ibram kendi teaches a class about malcolm xs views on africa. Kendi argues that through the 1960s, africa had been associated with a lack of civilization and describes how malcom x advocated for African Americans to have a more positive view of africa in order to develop better selfesteem and combat racism. Today, we areo, going to be, of cours