The faculty at brown in 1969. A prolific author, professor wood has won numeral russ awaou. In 1970 his book won the ban cost prize. In 1993, his radicalism of the American Revolution won the pulitzer price for history. The americanzation of Benjamin Franklin was awarded a prize by the Boston Authors Club in 2005. His volume in the oxford history of the United States entitled empire of liberty a history of the early republic was given the association of american publishers award for history and biography in 2009. The American History book prize by the New York Historical society and the society of the cincinnati history prize in 2010. Incidentally, proefessor wood, e heard from someone else from the society last week. He was awarded a medal by president obama. He is a fellow of the American Academy of arts and sciences and the american philosophical society, the countrys oldest learned society. He and his wife louise have three children, two of whom are professors and all of whom are involved in education. So i know hell find a receptive audience here. Please join me in giving a warm Madison Foundation welcome to professor gordon wood. [ applause ] well, thank you, jeff, for that very generous introduction. Well, im delighted to be here to talk to so many teachers. I always my wife was a teacher, english teacher. And i always thought that she did much more to further education than i ever did. You know, professors profess. Teachers have to teach. Theres a big difference. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 on a platform of promoting his preventing the extension of slavery into the west, the Southern States felt their way of life was threatened. And they seceded from the union. Since various states had talked of seceding from the union at various times, explaining it is not a major historical problem. What is more difficult, what is more difficult to explain is why the Northern States cared. Why was the north willing to go to war to preserve the union . It was not because the north was bent on the abolition of slavery, at least not at first. Many northerners, of course, were opposed to slavery. But what they were really especially opposed to was the extension of slavery into the west. Northerners were opposed to the extension of slavery into the west because they knew that slavery would create a society incompatible with the one they wanted for their children and grandchildren who they presumed would settle in the west. But this was not the only reason why the north cared enough for the union to engage in a long and bloody war that most northerners that northerners gave up several hundred thousand lives for. To fully understand why the north cared enough to resist of secession of the Southern States, we have to go back to the revolution and the ideas and the ideals that came out of it. Lincolns words, which have been aptly called his sword, were crucial in sustaining the struggle to maintain the union. With his words, he reached back to the revolution to draw inspiration and understanding of what the civil war meant. It meant for the nation and the world. He knew what the revolution was about and what it implied not just for americans but for all humanity. The United States, he said, was a new republican nation in a world of monarchies, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal. The American People of 1860, said lincoln, deeply felt this moral principle of equality expressed in the declaration of independence. And this moral principle made them one with the founders. In lincolns word, an incredible image, as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that declaration. This emphasis on liberty and equality, he said, was the he shifts metaphors here was the electric cord that links the hearts of patriotic and libertyloving men everywhere, that will link these patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. Now, with words like these, drawing on the meaning of the American Revolution, lincoln expressed what Many Americans felt about themselves and the future of all mankind. Liberty and equality, he said, were prominent not just for the people of this nation, but to the world for all future time. The revolution, he said, gave promise that in due time, the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal chance in the race of life. But if the american experiment in selfgovernment failed, then this hope for the future would be lost. Spreading freedom and democracy around the world had been an explicit goal of the revolution. Its what turned the americans little colonial rebellion into a world historical event. Important for everyone throughout the world. Americans believed that the french revolution of 1789 was a direct consequence of their revolution. And lafayette thought so too, which is why he sent the key to the bastille, that symbol of the ancien regime, to George Washington and it hangs today in mt. Vernon. But all the 19th century efforts in creating democracy in europe had ended in failure. Americans had seen the french revolution spiral into tyranny. All attempts of europeans to create democracies in the revolutions of 1848 had been crushed. By the 1860s, as lincoln pointed out, the United States was a lone beacon of democratic freedom in a world of monarchies. On american shoulders, american shoulders alone, rested the survival of the possibility of selfgovernment. It was indeed the last best hope for the future of democracy. That responsibility was what sustained lincoln throughout the war, a war, assessed in his gettysburg address, that was testing whether this nation, dedicated to liberty, equality, and selfgovernment, could long endure. Whenever we commemorate the civil war, we commemorate the revolution. Indeed, in an important sense, northern success in the civil war was the culmination of the revolution. Now, how did this nation that had been so divided or at least divided enough to defeat the greatest power in the world, fall apart and engage in a long and bloody civil war . The seeds of the civil war were probably seown when the first african slaves were brought to virginia in 1619. But no one, no one sensed then that that consequence was likely. Even in 1776, when americans declared their independence from Great Britain, no one foresaw a war in this newly created United States. To be sure, the 13 separate north american colonies were not very united. That they were able to come together at all in 1776 was something of a miracle. Before the revolution, the british colonies had little sense of connectedness with one another. Most of them had closer ties with london and britain and that had with one another. Until the Continental Congress met in philadelphia in 1774, more of its members had been to london than had been to philadelphia. It was Great Britain and its policies that created the colonists sense of being americans. In fact the british officials were the ones who first defined the colonists as americans. Until the last moment before independence, the colonists thought of themselves as english men. It was british tyranny expressed in the coercive acts of 1774 that made the colonists like Patrick Henry declare that they were not virginians or new englanders or new yorkers but americans. The long and bloody wear with Great Britain in which all parts of the country suffered at one time or another was a searing experience. More americans died in that war, in proportion to population, than in any other war in our history except of course for the civil war, where both sides were americans. No wonder the revolution bred an overwhelming sense of unity. The glorious cause of the revolution united all americans. The revolution and the beliefs and ideals that came out of it, liberty, equality, selfgovernment, created National Bonds that were not easily broken. Indeed, they are the bonds that still hold us together and make us think of ourselves as a single people. Of course americans at the time of the revolution were aware of sectional differences, differences that were essentially based on slavery. Although slavery in 1776 legally existed in all the new republican states, 90 of the nearly 500,000 africanamerican slaves constituting about a fifth of the total population of the country, that that fifth lived in the south, working in the tobacco fields of chesapeake or in the rice swamps of South Carolina and georgia. These Southern States were obviously different from those in the north. In 1776, john adams worried that the south was too aristocratic for the kind of popular government he advocated in his pamphlet, thoughts on government. But he was surprised to learn that the Southern States did more or less adopt the kind of popular mixed government he had suggested. And he expressed relief in seeing the pride of the hardy brought down a little by the revolution. Of course what adams was referring to was a slave Holding Society dominated by planter arh aristocrats that contrasted with the egalitarian small farm societies in the north, especially in new england. But slavery was not inconsequential. As you well know, black slaves made up 7 of the population of new jersey and 14 of the population of new york city. Nearly 12 of Rhode Islands population was composed of slaves. It was not just the southern revolutionary leaders, washington, jefferson, madison, so on, who owned saves. So did many of the northern leaders. Bostons john hancock, new yorks robert livingston, and philadelphias john dickinson, they were all slave holders. On the eve of the revolution, the mayor of philadelphia possessed 31 slaves. Nonetheless, the sectional differences were obvious. Stephen higginson was convinced that in their beliefs, manners, and commercial interests, the southern and Northern States were not only very dissimilar but in many instances, directly opposed to one another. Jefferson i think agreed, and in 1785, he outlined to a french friend his sense of the differences between the people of the two sections, the two societies, which he attributed mostly to differences in climate. The northerners were cool, sober, laborious, persevering, independent, jealous of their own liberties and just to those of others, interested, jefferson and both, most others did not as yet see these sectional differences as endangering national unity. Since we know how the story turned out, it is easy to read back signs of what we know will happen. But it is a mistake to see too many anticipations of the civil war and the revolutionary decade. In the 1780s, leaders from both came to realize that the confederation, the legal states created in 1777 and ratified in 1781 was not working out and would have to be performed or scrapped altogether. Slaveholding state, the slaveholding state of virginia took the lead. The differences that arose in the Constitutional Convention and later in the 1790s were differences i think, essentially of ideology. The delicate deferred over the strength of the National Government vis vis the states. The split in the convention, the Constitutional Convention was essentially between the large states who wanted representation in both houses and the small states that feared being overwhelmed by the more populous state. James madison of virginia and james wilson of sylvania eventually had to surrender. Surrender to the wishes of the small state and accept the so called kinetic compromise that gave equal representation of two senators from every state. The issue did not divide along sectional lines. Though at one point, madison tried to suggest that the real division in the convention was between the slaveholding and then on slaveholdings dates. Everyone knew this was designed by madison to get the convention off the large and small state division in favor of proportional representation to both houses. So fearful was he of the power of the state legislature to judiciary National Authority that each state legislature elected two senators that he regarded the connecticut compromise not as a compromise but is a major defeat. The Party Division that arose in the 1790s was essentially, was not essentially between north and south. The difference between the federalists and the jeffersonian republicans was the nature of the National Government and some oort of the french revolution. Although the leadership and base of the Republican Party was certainly located in the south, the party was not and could not be exclusion only a sectional party. Northern republicans were very imp urgent and an increasingly dynamic part of the party. Jefferson rightly never saw himself as the leader of a sectional party. He was, as he said, the leader of a Popular Democratic government that was something new under the sun and promised essentially to eventually the conditions of mankind over a great portion of the globe. No wonder lincoln paid all honor to jefferson. His vision was essentially jeffersons vision. Still there was slavery. Trend to destroy the democratic republican dream. At the outset, the revolutionary leaders were well aware of this. They knew from the beginning that slavery was incompatible with the ideals of the revolution. Indeed, it was the revolution that made slavery a problem for americans. Before the mid18 century, those for thousands of years largely took slavery for granted. For the colonists, the few had become to criticize the institution of same, slavery. All the revolutionary leaders realized at once that there was something painfully inconsistent between their talk of freedom amongst themselves and the owning of black slaves. If all men were created equal as they were now saying, then what justification could there be for Holding Africans in slavery . That americans were born free as indeed all men are, white or black, it does not follow. It does not follow that it is right to enslave a man because he is black the revolutionary rhetoric made this excruciating for Many Americans both in the north and even in the south. Prominent slaveholding senators like jefferson declared that the evolution of domestic slavery was unhappily introduced in their infant state. Even the mounting the holding of people in bondage, it is not surprising that the first antislave convention in the history of the world was held in philadelphia in 1775. For revolutionary leaders, those founders who were otherwise so farsighted, knew that slavery contradicted everything the revolution was about, why didnt they do more . Why didnt they do more to end the institution that they claimed to a park . I think this is the question many historians and many people in society are asking today. The reason i think they did not act more forcefully was that many of them thought time was on the side of abolition. As incredible as it may seem to us who know what they could not know, that is, their future, the leaders tended to believe that slavery was on its last legs and was headed for eventual destruction. Doctor Benjamin Rush was convinced that the desire to abolish the institution prevails in our councils and among all ranks in every province. With hostility towards slavery mounting everywhere among the unlike didnt in the atlantic world, rush in 1774 predicted that there will not be a slave in north america in 40 years. Enlightened virginians also assumed that slavery could not long endure. Jefferson told dave wrench corresponded in 1786 that there were in the virginia legislature, men of virtue and talents enough to propose and move toward the gradual emancipation of slaves. To be sure, they saw that the moment of aunts, emancipation has not yet arrived, but, said jefferson, with the spread of light and liberality among slaveholders, that moment was coming. Slavery simply could not stand against the relentless march of liberty and progress. That the philadelphia condition, convention of 1787 was scrupulous in not mentioning slaves, slavery is or in the final draft of the constitution seemed to point to a future without the shameful institution. If the revolutionary of my revolutionary dream that slavery would naturally die away, had been realized, there would never have been a civil war. The solution that slavery would die, they thought that in time, it would simply wither away. But, slavery in the United States was not at all on its last legs. Predictions of its demise could not have been more wrong. Far from being doomed, american slavery, in fact, was on the verge of its greatest expansion. Now how could the revolutionary leaders have been so mistaken . How could they have deceived themselves so completely for a full generation, the nations leaders lived with the illusion that the institution of slavery was declining and on its way to being eliminated. Of all the allusions they had about the future, this i think was the greatest. But the founders self deception and mistaken optimism was understandable. For they wanted to believe the best, and initially there was evidence that slavery was in fact being eliminated and dying out. The Northern States where slavery was not deeply rooted in the economy began immediately to attack the institution and by 1804 every Northern State had provided for the eventual end of slavery. The south where slavery of course was much more deeply entrenched in the economy was slower to act. But even in the south, there were encouraging signs of movement against the institution especially in virginia. Virginia was no ordinary state. It was by far the most populous state, indeed, by itself it made up a fifth of the population of the entire nation. It was as well the largest state in territory and the richest state. It is not surprising that four out of the first five president s were virginians and they working model but for the constitution was the virginia plan. During the first few decades of the new republic, virginia dominated the nation as no state ever has. As virginia went to, so when the nation. There were signs in the 1780s and 1790s that virginia was trying to do something about slavery. If virginia could abolish slavery, then it was assumed the rest of the south would surely follow. In virginia, the harsh black codes of the early 18th century had fallen into neglect. And by the time of the revolution, fraternization between whites and blacks had become more common. Both in sporting events and in religion. The growing of wheat instead of tobacco was changing the nature of slavery in the upper south and many of the planters now calling themselves farmers, began hiring out their slaves suggesting to some that slavery might eventually be replaced by wage labor. Other evidence from the upper south seemed to reinforce the idea that slavery was on its last, on its way to extinction. What could be a more conspicuous endorsement . This is incredible when you think about it. A more conspicuous endorsement of the antislave cause then having the college of william and mary, a state of wealthy slaveholding planters, in 1791, confer an Honorary Degree on the celebrated abolitionist granville sharp. Think about that. There were more antislave societies created in the south than in the north was bound to make people feel that the south was moving in the same direction as a gradual emancipation then the north. In virginia some of these anti slave societies brought freedom suits in the sedate courts that led to some piecemeal emancipation. They may not be very meaningful by our standards, but by the standards of the 18th century they were significant. If the slaves could demonstrate that they had a maternal indian or white ancestor, they could be immediately freed and hearsay evidence was often enough to convince the courts. Whole families recalled one sympathetic observer and were often liberated by a single verdict. The fate of one relative deciding the fate of many. By 1796 nearly 30 freedom suits are pending in virginia courts. By the 1790s the free black population in the upper south had increased to over 30,000. By 1810, the free blacks in the area numbered over 94,000. When even southerners like jefferson or Patrick Henry, Henry Laurens and st. George tucker publicly deplored the institution, the injustice of slavery, from that moment declared the new york physician and abolitionist eh smith in 1798, from that moment the slow but certain death wound was inflicted upon it. Everywhere, even in South Carolina, slaveholders began to feel defensive about slavery and began to sense public pressure against the institution that they had never felt before. In the aftermath of the revolution, whites in charleston South Carolina expressed squeamishness about the evils of slavery especially the public trading and punishment of slaves. In the 1780s, some of the carolina masters expressed a growing reluctance to break up families and even freeing more slaves than had been freed in the previous three decades. What helped to convince many people in the north that slaverys days were numbered was the promised ending of the despicable slave trade in 1808. Almost everywhere in the new world, slavery will seemed dependent on the continual importation of slaves from africa. Although this need for slaves from africa was no longer true of the upper south, South Carolina and georgia were still importing slaves. The fact that the deep south and the rest of the new world, latin america and the caribbean comment needed slave importations to maintain the institution deluded Many Americans into believing that slavery in america was also dependent on the International Slave trade and that ending the slave trade would end slavery in the south. Those who held out that hope were utterly wrong, of course. They simply did not appreciate how demographically different north american slavery was from slavery in south america and the caribbean. They were blind to the fact that in most states in north america, the slaves were approximating the growth of whites nearly doubling in number every 2025 years which of course was twice as fast as the europeans were growing. Northerners had little or no appreciation that slavery in the south was a healthy, vigorous, and expensive institution. As far as they were concerned, the virginia and maryland planters who had more slaves than they knew what to do with were enthusiastically supporting the end to the International Slave trade is the first major step in eliminating the institution of slavery itself. This confused many northerners about the real intentions of the upper south which in fact was in the business of exporting its surplus of slaves to the lower south. All these developments misled Many Americans and allowed them to postpone dealing with the issue. Like john adams and oliver ellsworth, the third chief justice of the supreme court, they thought that once the importation of slaves was cut off, white laborers would become so numerous that the neve , need for slaves would disappear. Slavery, said ellsworth come in time will not be a speck in our country. In the meantime, the initial differences between the two sections were rapidly and hermetically increasing the coming more severe. During the three or four decades following the revolution, the north and south grew much further apart. Both sections were american and republican, both professed a similar rhetoric of liberty and popular government, but many the surface, they were fast becoming very different places with different cultures, different values, one coming to honor common labor as the supreme human activity, the other continuing to think of manual labor in traditional terms as mean and despicable and fit only for slaves. When on the eve of the civil war, the south complained that it had remained true to the 18th century republic and that it was the north that had changed, it was absolutely right, correct. In the years immediately following the revolution, the north was radically transformed politically, economically, socially, culturally. It was not that the population growth in the two sections was different, although by 1810 new york had surpassed virginia as the largest state. It was the very nature of the growth in the north. The Northern States were building turnpikes and canals creating banks and corporations and greasing the growing internal trade with paper money to an extent not duplicated in the Southern States. Everywhere in the Northern States, farm families were busy buying and selling with each other. The society was still predominantly rural agricultural, but with no Large Manufacturing cities, but in many strict respects, many northern towns, people seemed to be doing nothing else but, doing Everything Else but farming. By 1815, even the tiny town of mount pleasant, ohio, with a population of only 500 persons, had several dozen artisans and manufacturing shops including three settlers, three hatters, four blacksmiths three cabinetmakers, when baker, one apothecary, two tanneries and one wool karting machinist. One wool spinning machine. One flax spinner and one nail factory. Within a six mile radius of this little town, 500 people, there were nine merchant mills, to chris mills, 12 sawmills and one paper mill. One woolen factory. There is nothing like that, nothing like that in the south. Nothing like this little ohio town. The north was becoming the most highly commercialized society in the world. The north was becoming increasingly dominated by hosts of middling people. What we would call the middle class. Commercial farmers, mechanics, clerks, teachers, businessmen, industrious self trained would be professionals who celebrated work in the making of money to a degree unprecedented in the atlantic world. The celebration of labor, especially manual labor, was important. Ever since aristotle, aristocrat s and professional classes had held labor, especially manual labor and the making of money in contempt. Even someone who ran a business, say a printing business with 20 employees, was nonetheless considered to be involved with manual labor and thus contemptible. Such men who worked for a living, aristotle said, could never possess virtue and could never exercise clinical leadership. Nothing came to separate the north and the south more than their contrasting views of labor. The south dominated as it was by slaveholding planters could scarcely conceive of labor as anything but does equal and shameful. Slavery as it had for centuries, going all the way back to the ancient greeks required a culture that held labor in contempt, scorn for work in the holding of slaves were two sides of the same coin. The north developed very differently. In the several decades following the revolution, the middling men of the north launched a wholesale campaign against the aristocrat. They urged them to shed their political apathy and rise against those gentlemen who as one critic said, were not under the necessity of gaining their bread by industry, they call them parasites, living off the labors of honest farmers and mechanics. These a chris, aristocrats who do not labor who do enjoy in luxury the fruits of labor had no right to decide the laws they had in the past. Of course, the american aristocrat, the middling people who attacked, in the eyes of these sorts, these lizard aristocrats were more of what we might call elites. The 1 perhaps, they were the deplorables in the eyes of these elites. They were mostly members of the professions, lawyers, clergymen, government officials, professors. These are the elites that were assaulted by the middling sorts of people. Anyone who is not involved in manual labor in one form or another. In the eyes of these middling sorts, artisans, clerks, businessmen, seem to do increasingly no real work. The celebration of labor inevitably made the south with its own leisure leadership supported by slavery seem increasingly anomalous. In reaction, the southern aristocrats began emphasizing their cavalier status in contrast to the moneygrubbing northern yankees. They began claiming that they were the only true gentleman left in america. It is not just the brutal fact of slavery that mattered, it was what slavery did to society. Slavery in the south began to create a different society, a different economy and culture from the north. While the north was coming to view labor as necessary and fit for all social ranks, much of the white population of the south was becoming more and more contemptuous of work and more and more desirous of leisure that slavery could afford. Indeed, so great was the white cult of indolence that some southerners began to worry about the discrepancy between the industrious north and the lethargic the lazy south. Whether it is slavery, there will be laziness, carelessness and wastefulness. Not so much amongst the slaves as among the white masters. The south grew in population and prospered but its culture and society remained traditional in many ways. During the antebellum decades when the north was commercially exploding, the south remained essentially what it had been in the 18th century. A stable producing slaveHolding Society, cotton producing replaced tobacco and rice is the rentable staple. The society, the economy and much of the politics remained roughly what it had been during the 18th century. Slavery determined the organization of the society. The wealthy slaveholding planters dominated the society to a degree. No group in the north could match it. They managed the overseas marketing of the staple crop for the small planters which reinforced the unequal relationship between patrons and clients. More important, their patriarchal rule system of slavery sustained a hierarchal society that was very different from that of the Northern States. The commercial institutions springing up in the north had few counterparts in the Southern States. The south do not have the numbers of turnpikes, canals, banks, corporations and issues of paper money that the north had. Bring any interference with their institution, planters dominated the legislatures and kept government to a minimum. They taxed their citizens much less heavily than the northerners and spent much less on education and social services and of the northern legislatures. On the most southern farmers were not slave holders, and many of the plain folk of the south shirley worked with pride as any ambitious northern artisan, these ordinary southern folk could never give the same kind of enterprising middling tone to Southern Society that existed in the north. There were fewer middling institutions in the south. Fewer towns, fewer schools, fewer newspapers, fewer businesses, fewer manufacturing firms and fewer shops and there were fewer middling people in the south. Fewer teachers, fewer clerks, fewer publishers, fewer engineers, fewer inventors. The antebellum south never became a middling, martial minded society like that of the north. Is patriarch order of large slaveholders continued to dominate the culture and politics of the south as James Madison privately admitted, in proportion as slavery prevails in a state, the government however democratic in name, must be aristocratic in fact. Each section began expressing increasing frustration with the other. Aggravating differences that had been present from the beginning of the revolution. Northerners, especially, began to complain about what they now saw as unjustified southern domination of the federal government. They focused on the 3 5 clause of the constitution that counted slaves as 3 5 of a person for assessing representation in the house of representatives and the electoral college. The federalists charged that the 3 5 caused gave an unfair advantage to the republicans and was responsible for jeffersons election in 1800. Thus was born the idea of the slave power that was unfairly usurping control of the National Government from the free states. Even more unsettling to some northerners was the gradual realization that slavery was not dying in the south after all. The earlier enthusiasm of the upper south to liberalize its slave system again to dissipate especially following the news of the rebellion in the french colony of sand dooming which of course became haiti. This further destroy the hope of many that virginia was gradually eliminating slavery. The earlier leniency in judging freedom suits in virginia ended and Many Missions in the state rapidly declined. Northerners now began reversing , or southerners now began reversing their earlier examples of racial mingling. Evangelical process the church is ended their practice of mixed congregations. After 1800, the Southern States began enacting new sets of black codes that resembled later jim crow laws. Tightening up the institution of slavery and restricting the behavior of free blacks. Indeed, because free blacks seemed to threaten the state, slave system, they were compelled by law now, to leave the Southern States. The final blow to all the illusions the founders had lived with came with the missouri crisis of 1819. The attempt by the new york congressman James Talmage who, in the house of representatives, to attach a prohibition of slavery to the bill admitting missouri to the union precipitated a sectional crisis more severe than anything felt before. Jefferson told john adams from the battle of bunkers hill to the treaty of paris, we never had so ominous a question. I think god that i shall not live to witness its issue. The missouri crisis caused the scales to fall from the eyes of both northerners and others, and southerners. The north came to realize clearly that the south was not going to abolish slavery but that it was aiming to carry the institution into the west. The south, for its part, him to realize more clearly than ever before that the north really cared about abolishing slavery and would numbers, never, never stop trying to end it and it certainly did not want, those northerners did not want the institution to spread to the west. From that moment, americans clearly saw signs of a storm on the horizon. At first, no bigger than a mans hand him a but signs of a storm that would grow larger and more ominous every year. From that moment, i believe, the civil war became inevitable. Thank you. Thank you very much. I would be happy to take questions. In speaking of the conflicts that were happening at that time, today we are mired in big conflicts over heritage, how would you advise governments to deal with statues, plaques, the legacy of what you describe . I am a historian. I believe that the past is part of our culture. I am very uneasy about these efforts to remove statues and so on. It is not different from what the television is doing in the middle east. And we condemn the because they had objections to the temples that were there. I think these things need to be explained that they are part of our past and we must confront that past. But we dont have, i understand the objections that young black students would have to a statue of a confederate general that was and who was a slaveholder and led the confederacy and was one of the leaders of the confederacy. But somehow that has to be explained. Now maybe the statues have to be removed at least temporarily to museums and maintain. That it is explained and so on. But i think it is a very dangerous thing to start a race thing. That is what ideologues do when they come into power. We dont want to be that kind of people. I dont think. I think we know our history is a mixed bag, of course. But, i think there are other elements in it that redeem us, i hope. I know what is being taught in the universities now, the tale of American History is a tale of oppression and woe. I think that is unfortunate. There are facts that are being emphasized. The extent of slaveholding, at the same time, there are other facts that also need to be emphasized. We need a balanced picture of our past. Otherwise, i think we leave ourselves unequipped to deal with the world. To be in the world. We are not a terrible nation and we need to have some balanced view of our past. It is a very complicated issue. Very tricky. I do not have any easy answers for this dilemma. Thank you so much. Your lecture was very informative. I have two questions. I will present one. I have taught that eli whitneys invention was probably as powerful as the cultural standards in the south because it was the mechanism, the tool, that allowed for the importation of more slaves. And also the mexicanamerican war in the new territories. Would you give them equal weights . I think that whitney got credit for the invention, he is an engineer. But there is a lot of money to be made to come up with a machine that did what that did. That was in the cards. It was going to happen. That year or next year, somebody else was going to do it. He doesnt get all the credit or blame for that, but that device was going to be invented by somebody. Now the mexican war, we were, maybe we were and maybe we still are, but we were a very expansionist nation. It was demographic imperialism. We had people moving at tremendous rates and we took a huge chunk of territory from mexico. Some mexican citizens, but not huge numbers. We were not going into fully inhabited land, but we wanted that territory, there was no doubt. And of course, the number of mexican immigrants come to the United States, they might say we would like to get that back. I think if the immigrants become americanized they would probably say well, were not going to go back to mexico, but there is a major part of our country, texas, new mexico and southern california, all belonged to mexico. And, we took it in a war. But words have consequences. The same would be true of the indians. We fought almost a century, will more than a century, against the indians and essentially destroyed them. But wars have consequences. We have seen that. The germans have lost huge amounts of territory as the consequences of world war ii. People were moved, hundreds of thousands of people were moved after world war ii. I dont hear a lot of complaints. Maybe some german citizens 100 years from now its a, we used to have kvnigsberg. That is where cant was born. Why cant we have it back . We were involved in certain major demographic changes and geographic changes that are part of history. For good or for ill, it was part of the dynamic character of this nation. Thank you for being here today. My question is, and this is obviously counterfactual, but looking back, are there steps that could have been taken that might have alleviated the concerns of southern slaveholders and alleviated the concerns of northerners that might have staved off or prevented the civil war from happening in your opinion . I do not think so. I think the institution was to deeply entrenched in the southern economy and society. The numbers were too great. 40 percent of this state, virginia, or the state of virginia. The state of virginia was made up of black slaves. 60 of South Carolina. Those proportions are so high, it is difficult for me to see how the problem could have been solved. The best, they thought things were going the right way, but they really did not know the reality. We live with allusions, too, we just dont know what they are. Historians will look back and say how could they be thinking that . You have to understand that we dont know our future. They did not know their future any more than we know arispe we have all kinds of addictions about what will be. And we are in better shape to make those predictions, but we really cant be sure what it is going to be like at the end of the 21st century. They did the best they could. I think given the circumstances. Know it looks easy when you look back and say, why couldnt we have done that . It just was not going to happen. I do not think there was anything that could have been done to solve the problem. Once you get going, as i say, the by the time you get to the missouri crisis, that is it. The war is inevitable. There is just no way to stop the sections from clashing. All those compromises were just postponing the inevitable. And the war came, as lincoln said. I found it super interesting that you say that the moment of no return is compromise and i hadnt thought about that before. I was thinking about the Northwest Territory and how we go from the northwest ordinance which outlives slavery very early and it is reconfirmed over and over again as these states join the union. How do we go from the Northwest Territory which puts a value on no slavery and on Public Education to the missouri compromise in basically a generation . Of course, the northwest is settled by new englanders. They were really sending hordes of people out west. New englands economy was unable to sustain the population. Sons and daughters left by the tens of thousands. And so the northwest, if it had been settled by southerners and in some parts, indiana was a very, very divided state and illinois, too. They had fights in the state. Demographic fights. If we had more slaveholders, the state might have gone slave. Fortunately, i think both of those states, the northern anti slave people had the numbers. But, there were slaveholders and slavery was existing despite the northwest ordinance, there. But, the states, when the territories became states, they just took action and forced the slaveholders either to give them up or to move out. Demography and the movement of people is more determinant of events than any laws. I mean think about the law and the constitution that prohibits the states from printing paper money. If that had been in force, that was a principal reason why the convention was held. Madison and the other leaders hated for many. But paper money was the source of the commercial dynamism of the north. They needed that paper many. Of course, the states got around that prohibition by chartering banks which then issued paper many. You know horses will find a way around the technical or legal prohibition. The people who were slaveholders simply stayed away from the northwest and went into the southwest work so, it was settled mostly by new england. Hello, i had a question about your interpretation of the revolutionary founders and their ideology regarding slavery. You said they believed that it was on its way out and that is why they do not take steps to abolish it. I was thinking about connections to Abraham Lincoln and how lincoln, many times, made unpopular choices under the idea of compromising. Frederick douglass would have liked lincoln to be a little bit more forceful. Do you think perhaps it could be the fact that they had so many Different Things to think about and they were willing to compromise with the Southern States, for example in order to get the constitution ratified, or similar to lincoln being willing to compromise . Sure, lincoln was a politician. But of a very high order when you think about it. He was not a, he was a democratic politician. He had to face realities that unlike many of our present day politicians, he transcended that reality in his rhetoric and his language. They were so extraordinary. He was a man of prudence which is a principal quality needed by politicians. He was willing to compromise. You know he said on the eve of the civil war, look, im not out to destroy sent slavery in the existing states, i will guarantee the existence of slavery in the existing dates. It is the west. That became the crucial issue. Of course lincoln felt that if slavery could not expand, it would die. By taking that stand,. He was willing to compromise. So, the ability to compromise, it helps you get along with your opponents. It is one of the problems we are having, as you know. If partisanship gets overwhelming and compromise becomes impossible, then you have great difficulties, as we know. But they leave behind their willingness to compromise. It was the sense that slavery was going to die away. If they did not have that, i think they might have taken a stronger stand. The virginians were ready in 1787 to make a lot of concessions to northern opinion. It is South Carolina and georgia that were really resistant. Was a new yorker. They said lets abolish slavery. Georgia and South Carolina said they would walk out of the convention. So that would have really affected the union. It would have collapsed. So there were people willing to compromise on the issue. Now in retrospect it looks like, why did they do that . But at that point they thought union was more important than slavery because slavery was on its way out anyhow. If you dont believe that, and of course that is not reality, but that is what they lived with. Disillusion that it was dying. And they sincerely believed that they would find this. We dont know what our illusions are, as they say. Yes maam. , yes or. [ laughter ] thanks for coming. You began your lecture by saying that it was unsurprising that the south would lead to secession. So, what is the factor that leads lincoln not to compromise. You see lincoln is talking in the aftermath of the revolution of 1848. We cant appreciate those revolutions, but a whole view, all of a sudden you have a whole series. In every country except england which has its own smaller disturbances. But democracy is basically, they are all having a peoples. It is much more pervasive than saying, we got so excited about the arab spring. This was the european spring. It was really, really exciting for many people in america. And for example, the hungarians came here to raise money. We were enthusiastic supporters of that. The hungarian minister came, complained to Daniel Webster saying mr. Secretary, your country is supporting these revolutions abroad. Normal diplomatics, the secretary of state would probably have gobbled it up and played it down. But his reply is extraordinary. Yes we are the source of all those rebellions that are occurring. We are responsible for it. He goes on this tirade attacking the austrian hungarian minister saying and taking full responsibility, which of course we were not, but thats how we thought about revolutions that were republican. He ends the message by saying besides, the austrianhungarian empire has been a speck on the earths surface compared to the great United States. Now they all fail. So lincoln, when he says this is it, we are the last best hope, if we fail, then the dream fails. The democracy fails. We might never have it again because if this nation falls apart, this dream that had just been destroyed in europe will never be revived. It will look like democracy does not work. I think it is in that culture you have to understand the gettysburg address and his rhetoric. He really believed that and it was true. This is the only major democracy left. All these rebellions which seemed so full of hope have all just been dissipated. They all failed. In france you have napoleon the third. He looked so promising at the outset and hands up being the second emperor. It seemed like monarchy was here forever. So i think it is sincere when he says, this United States is important in his mind just, not just for his fellow americans, but for the history of the world. A history of worldwide context. He had the same vision that jefferson did. The whole world would eventually follow our leadership and become democrats. He said if we fail, the dream is gone. When you are making your point out, the different ideals regarding waiver, i was wondering how you fit that jackson democracy into that. Was he the champion of the common man who once equal opportunity for all or his he the person protecting slavery and detecting rights to own slaves. Is he just an enigma . Jackson just took a slaveholding for granted. I dont inc. Thats what his administration was about. He is a very trump like figure. And probably the president closest to, in the past, who had the same kind of reputation to some extent that trump has. Hated by northern elites. John quincy adams refused to go to his inauguration and was appalled that his dear harvard would give jackson an Honorary Degree because he was a vulgar man without education. But jackson stood for Common People. He voiced this democratic rhetoric. He was a union man. He stood up. But, he was a slaveholder, too, but i dont think thats what he was about. I dont think thats what he thought he was about. He was defending against threats from the south. Calhoun and breaking up the union. And he was defending the common man. His rhetoric, he is scarcely understood. He is not a a learned man. He understood the nature of his following, but he does represent democracy. That was the moment when authority of all sorts was being questioned in america. In that respect, it is very similar to the present. A system logical down. What is true . This is the era of et barnum. Pt barnum worked on this. He was a genius because he would say look, i have this woman who was a mermaid. She has a fishtail. It is in my museum. But, he would plant a story in the newspaper. Who could believe that . How could that be true . Of course, people would flock to go because they said well, i can only trust my own eyes. I dont believe what elites tell me. They would say mold has green cheese on it and the elites would say of course the moon does not have green cheese. But barnum would raise the question, how do they know . How can you know anything . You only know what you see and feel. Of course, as Herman Melville said, that is what Common People think. That they have to trust their own eyes and ears and senses. That learned people have reason and they can transcend their senses. That was the crisis in that period. That is why you have all the hoaxes. They flourished more so, we have the same kind of problem because we have this internet with social media. Any old crank can get himself heard. The same thing was happening in the 20s and 30s with people questioning elites and authority. How can you trust them . We have the same mistrust for elites now. Therefore, all kinds of rumors spread. Fascinations, all kinds of things spread because nobody trust authority anymore. That is a real crisis. The only period in our history that is comparable in my mind is the jacksonian period when you had an epistemological crisis. Thats why you had hucksters and barnum really cannot be explained. The success of barnum, he is a genius because he understands what the public is dealing with and he really exploited that mistrust of authority. I have one quick question for you. When you begin to talk about differences in culture, north and south, and commenting behind the religious background behind each of the developing systems, the calvinist, church of england, they seem to be very strong in both of those areas. Of course there were baptist in the north and baptists in the south and until they came to the eve of the civil war, they were baptists but then they broke. The episcopal church, of course, was the conservative. As far as i know, a minor church in the north in terms of numbers in the south. But the religions broke. There was no religion that was combined as far as i know to the south and to the north. There were activists baptists. Southern and northern. But that comes late. It is the 1840s and 50s they begin to break apart. Oh, the puritans . Thats a little misleading because the puritan work ethic is often associated with capitalism. The puritans certainly did emphasize that because they did not celebrate europe as a source of productivity but more as a way of keeping is he so they dont get into trouble. It would be an interesting question, what is the celebration of work come from . It is the United States, if it celebrates work in the antebellum period an experience not duplicated elsewhere in the world, one of the things that when he comes here in the 1830s is the extent to which the people are celebrating work. Even manual labor. He says in the making of money. Which elsewhere, amongst aristocrats or the elite, it is held in contempt. He says frenchmen love money, too, but they dont ever say they like it. They always hide that fact. He is really surprised. Is is you went into albany . You have a whole list of offices from the mayor, they all list their salaries. He says this is unprecedented. He is overwhelmed by the celebration of labor, of work. People want to know, one of the big social logical questions is, how come we never had a labor party . People in the north, work was so celebrated that even the professionals like Edward Everett has to say he wants to run for office. He wants to say i have a law office and i work just as hard as you do. He has to celebrate what he does as labor. And somehow if the whole society is laboring, then where is the labour party . It is only because in england you had a proletariat. The aristocracy was celebrated. The celebration of leisure is an aristocratic element. You have seen downton abbey. [ laughter ] your member maggie smith . This is into the 20th century and she is still living in the 19th century and she does not understand why her new grandson in law, who has inherited the estate, wants to keep his job. He cant do that. He has to run the estate. Thats what aristocrats do. They dont work. That should emphasize the scriptwriter was very insightful and knew his history. He has her say, what is a weekend . She does not understand. Aristocrats do not labor. They do not work for money. Their income comes without exertion. This goes back to the constitution. One of the reasons why we dont have a lot of unlike england. How did aristocrats live . They lived by lending money out and living off the interest from the loans. They had money, but they didnt have land. The could not be landlords. People are not going to put up with tenants. So what the elites are doing, and this is northern elites, as well, they are lending money out and getting the interest back. The reason they are so upset with paper money is because paper money is inflating the currency and these debtors are paying back to their creditors, that is the elites, a fraction. They are paying back in paper but not in gold and silver. They are really upset by that because they are destroying not just the problem of money, but destroying the capacity be of these leaders to be aristocrats. That is part of the obsession with money that goes to the convention. One of the things he wanted to get rid of were all these unjust laws and the issuing of paper many. He does not get his veto because it is so impractical. Wiser heads prevailed and they had article 1 section 10 within the constitution prohibiting the states from doing certain things. They cant pass tariffs and cannot print many. That is probably a good thing today. But the antebellum, as i say, they would never have succeeded except by getting around this prohibition and issuing, creating banks and chartering banks which then issued the paper many. They had millions of dollars of paper many flying around. It was incredibly complicated. But not nonetheless, they succeeded. You get a note, we are in virginia here, you get a note from i dont know, albany, 100. A bank in albany would pay you 100 for gold and silver. You dont want to go to albany. That is the kind of business you had to deal with. They had merchants who had books they would open up and say albany, they do not have a good reputation. Im going to discount or i will not take it. It was very difficult business. But the planters in the south do not have that problem. They are dealing with england. No english merchant is going to accept any paper. He is going to have gold and silver or a bill of credit. He has to have something more substantial. But, for internal trade, trade between new york among pennsylvania and philadelphia, paper many was perfect. It really fed the economy. Anyway that is getting beyond. I want to express my thanks to you for coming. I wanted to go off the idea that the epistemological crisis and i was wondering your theory or theories on the source of the , of that crisis . What crisis is this . The civil war crisis . The epistemological crisis. Will how do you know anything. Your epistemology is a series of knowledge. How do you trust what you know . If someone in some position, somebody you trust, they say vaccinations are good. If you come to doubt this authority, you do not believe it, then you have an epistemological crisis. You are not sure what is true and what is not true. How do you test things . That is what was happening in the 1830s. Is happening to us today. Not to the same extent, we are much, i mean we still have a lot of authorities we respect, most people do. But, there are pockets and you know the internet is flooded with this stuff and it creates doubts everywhere. So, many ordinary people are really mistrustful of the world that most of us accept. You cant trust the politicians, you cant trust people in authority. It is very, very difficult, right . This is a world where you lose trust. You cant verify everything. You have to trust somebody. I mean someone tells you that, i dont know, Mount Everest is 29,000 feet you cant go and count and go up there and measure it, you take their word for it. We have a whole host of things where we take peoples words. If we come to doubt their words, then you have a real crisis. We are in a crisis with authority in this country. It is not just politicians, but everybody. Physicians, bankers, corporate leaders. You get politicians attacking your leaders and saying, they are essentially saying they are a bunch of liars, then your mistrust goes. People are playing with fire. It is a tricky issue but the 1830s were far worse. Of course they did not have the media, they had newspapers but they had nothing comparable to social media. No one crackpot good have his voice heard, usually. That is what i meant by a, an epistemological crisis. How do you know what is true or not true . The antielite argument arguments are so forceful, elites were on their heels in that period. They simply never knew. The rising up of ordinary people, the celebration of labor to an extent unprecedented in the history of the western world which is essentially the world, and the people did not trust, elites were having a very hard time justifying themselves. To some extent, that is one of the problems we have today. In that sense some in congress are calling trump followers to the jacksonian. It is similar because he is obviously a genius with social media. He has tapped into something, people are going to write about that work the way they write about pt barnum. That is some kind of success to the culture that is puzzling to many of us. It is incredible what is happening. But i think the jacksonian period is a comfortable period. Thank you. [ applause ]