Abraham lincoln and his project on confederate general robert e. Lee. Mr. Guelzo spoke about lincolns intellect and emphasized the importance of religion in everyday life during the civil war era. The university of virginias center for Civil War History hosted this event. Allen guelzo is the third professor of Gettysburg College where he serves as civil war curator. He did his undergrad ate at the university of pennsylvania where he focused on the history of religion. He also holds a master of divinity degree. His roster of publications is so long that im not even going to try to read them all to you. Go to allenguelzo. Com and get a full accounting of not only his publications but other salient elements of his biography and doings. What im going to do here is mention five books that i think are especially pertinent to what well be doing this afternoon, and i will just read them. The first is called Abraham Lincoln redeemer president. Caller and lincolns emancipation proclamation, the end of slavery in america published by simon shute offers in 1892 and brought him his second lincoln prize. Lincoln and douglass, also simon shute offers and didnt win the lincoln prize fateful lightning, new history of civil war and recap trucks from the Oxford University press in 2012, and the fifth title ill mention is gettysburg, the last invasion published by knopp in 2013 which brought a third lincoln prize to allen. The first person to win three. Others have won two. Currently working on an autobiography of robert e. Lee also published i knoff and about the era of civil war scuddies more dodly but i want to see the people in our field toll reach a broader audience. Allen has done courses for the teaching company, the great courses company. You have reached a larger audience and i would like your feud with see and what it the yields for our field in terms of disseminating really good scholarship to a browder. Let me thing you for being here and especially to the center here and everyone here, will kurtz, stephanie, everyone who has just made my visit here over the last several days such an exceedingly pleasant one. And youve snuck some in here. Indeed, indeed d. Ive had the manuscripts and what not looking at what the people are writing and thinking and saying in those Tumultuous Times 150 years ago. Im particularly glad to be here on this very significant and special day, it one of the greatest days in American History, and im noticing that people are starting to look at each other like oh, is this the fourth of july . No. No. Its september 22nd. And we did this on purpose. Its the 130th anniversary of the eeproclamation. Writing begun that got me some responses. Got me a death threat. It doesnt often happen for people writing in the wall street journal. Get other kinds of threats, i suppose, but i imagine that i succeeded in injuring someones sensibilities in write willing about the emancipation proclamation, but in a way it testifies to the fact that if you say you thought it was a good thing yes, i did. I did. And that upset someone. That upset someone. What i think is does speak to is there is a large audience among americans for trying to understand our history. Because what after all how do we identify as americans . We dont identify ourselves or shouldnt on the basis of a language, an ethnicity, it an established religion, of race or any of those things and what identifies us as americans. Fundamentally lincoln nailed that in the gettysburg address. What identifies us as americans is a proposition that all men are created equal, and the history of how we have unfolded and lived with that proposition is really the most important aspect of our identity, so when we write about our history, were not doing it into queerianism, were doing a constant year by year, decade by decade reexplanation and sometimes referendum on that proposition. I regard what ive done in the popular press fully as much as the Academic Press as being two sides of one coin. That is how do we explain ourselves to ourselves as americans . And that should draw in more than just an academic audience. That should draw in all of us, because thats what touches all of us, and thats what identifies all of us. So, if im writing, for instance, for the journal of the early republic or for the Civil War History, or if im writing for the wall street journal, or if im writing for the washington post, i really regard those as being part of an overall endeavor. Its our constant reminder of ourselves of who we are and what we are dedicated to. Thats something that involves more than academics. It involves more than just college students. It really is something that embraces all of us. So, i think its important, especially, especially for historians like ourselves to be able to speak to everybody, because were really speaking to our identity as americans. Were not just speaking professionally. Were speaking as citizens. There is one and only one identifier of an american, and that is that you are a citizen. To be a citizen of the American Republic is, in my book, just about the greatest privilege on earth. Were especially well positioned to reach a broader audience because so many issues of the civil war continue to resonate. We can see echoes of them in we can see echoes of them in our daytoday life, including responses from some states to our current president , our preceding president , talking about secession. Texas, when president obama was in office. California with President Trump in office now. You dont have to look very far in current american politics and society to find echoes of the civil war era. Sometimes its even more than echoes. There was an oped in the Sacramento Bee. I think im citing this correctly. There was on oped in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, i think, in which the lead of the oped said that california is a 21st century state, which is mired in a 19th century country and, therefore, it should separate itself, which is a way of saying california is an entirely different culture from the rest of the United States. And i thought, yeah, that is exactly what they were saying in South Carolina in december of 1860. Im trying to ask people if theres really striving to emulate South Carolina in 1860. Is the that your role mod snell. Perhaps short term. I think it didnt turn out so well for South Carolina but it does come back to the fact that so often questions that we think are uniquely current and uniquely modern really have these long roots and sometimes are replicating even the rhetoric of 150 years ago and longer. Yes. Theres almost nothing new. It does seem to be that way. It seems new if you dont know anything. Thats because the fundamental questions that are posed by the american experiment really do not change either. We really are all about the business of debating that fundamental proposition, so in a sense its not a total surprise that the kind of rhetoric and kind of stances that you hear people strike today well find uncanny and sometimes unnerving echoes of those 150 or 155 years ago. For the historian what we have to do is to signal this is what the relationships are. Be careful what you wish for. Whether its the Sacramento Bee or the charleston mercury. When you write do you write specifically with more than one audience in mind . I mean, obviously your books are reviewed in the mainline scholarly journals, but do you have one or the other of those audiences more in mind or do you not even think about thats especially . I cant say that i really think about it. Sometimes im asked, well, you know, what kind of schooling did you have in writing . How do you go about the writing . And to that i i can only shrug my shoulders. I never had a writing class. I never had someone instruct me. This is how you write this. This is how you write that. I have no better explanation than to simply say i want to explain something to people. I want to communicate with people, and i look for ways to do that, and i dont really have a better explanation. You certainly read a lot of good writing. I think i did. I think i did. Thats probably the best. And im probably good at imitating. Its nothing in my mind, at least, its nothing more complicated than that and i cant make it more complicated. I wont try to make you more complicated than that. I have a question that i really want to get to, and that is did you wake up one morning and think poor Abraham Lincoln. He just hasnt gotten enough attention from writers. I think i better write a book about lincoln. What brought you youre trained as a historian and you wrote about Jonathan Edwards in your dissertation and your early work. How do you get from Jonathan Edwards and religion to Abraham Lincoln . Well, its a little unusual, but not more unusual, well, lets say a chess game. Theres a few strange moves that have to get made and processed, but not too many. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Jonathan Edwards and the problem of determinism and free will in 18th century moral philosophy. Thats a title made for wide public consumption. Yeah. I was is that in the 19th printing now . They actually they actually did do a second edition, but, all right. The one with Matthew Mcconaughey and Jonathan Edwards is the one that really resonates. Yeah, yeah, and the one with nick nolte at lurking. When nick nolte as george whitfield, right, but i i wrote the dissertation which was then published by Wesleyan University press, and the problem with free will and determinism seem to me a real perennial philosophical american problem, maybe not the kind of thing you stay up at night reading about, but still a perennial, and i had planned to write a followup volume, kind of a, you know, Jonathan Edwards 2. 0 or free will 2. 0 and bring things bring the discussion of the problem, fill could have sal problem of modern philosophy, and as i was working on this project, this was in the mid90s, i knew that Abraham Lincoln had some things to say on the subject of free will and fatalism. I had some familiarity with the lincoln corpus, and thought it would really jazz the book up, you know. Heres a book on philosophy and determinism and other sleepy subjects. To be able to interject Abraham Lincoln into that discussion would really put some fizz into it. I thought, well, wouldnt that be clever of me so i ended up writing a paper on lincoln and determination, what he called his doctrine of necessity, because he told people frankly he was a fatalist, and he read that paper in springfield, illinois, at a meeting of the Abraham Lincoln association, and to my surprise it was well received. A book publisher got in touch with me. Would i be interested in writing a religion biography of Abraham Lincoln and i said no, because i had seen a number of writers get swallowed up in the swamp on that subject, and i thought i really dont want to do that. Publisher got back in touch sometime later. Would i do this biography, this religion biography of lincoln and i said no. Finally a friend of the publisher called me and said, look, if you dont do this book, they are going to give it to professor so and so. Someone you knew . Yeah. The hand hit the forehead, and so i i got back in touch with the editorinchief of the of this publisher, and i said to him, look, ill make a deal with you. Ill write the book that you want but let me do it as an intellectual pikify of lincoln but of all the intellectual influences on lincoln, to treat lincoln not just as a political figure but lincoln in the ideas of the 19th century. Thats how he became president and having got my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, i just really couldnt get it out, and up lincoln book became another lincoln book became another lincoln book and so on and so forth and youve already gone down the list and, no, ive never actually gotten back to writing that free will 2. 0. But i cant even from the way youre talking you think there are more elements to lincoln that deserve further study. He hasnt been exhausted . Oh, i think so. I think thats entirely true. Lincoln is an extremely complicated and complex individual, and people underestimate lincoln because they think that he is just the 16th president. Hes just the civil war president. Hes just a politician. Hes just a lawyer, and that misses what people in lincolns own time knew and said about him. Lincoln, first of all, was a very reticent shutmouthed man as one of his Legal Associates said of him. Another who practiced law with him on the eighth judicial circuit for many years said that anyone who took abe lincoln for a simpleminded man would wake up with his back in a ditch, and i think that may be one. Truest things ever said about lincoln. He was a man of very meager education but extraordinary intellectual curiosity. He would delve into anything. John hey, his secretary in his diary in 1863 recorded an incident in which hey said the tea, that was his short hand for the tycoon, thats what he called tycoon. The t and i had a discussion about theology for which the t has an unsuspected interest, and you think, theology. Okay. Lets look that up really quick before anybody noticed. Its the study of languages. Lincoln had intellectual curiosities in so many different directions. He was not a philosopher. He was not what we would call an intellectual but he had curiosities that way and he liked to pursue them. He once said towards the end. His life in an interview that he did with the journalist noah brooks. Brooks had asked him what were the most influential books in your life, and lincolns reply was very peculiar. He said butlers analogy meaning Bishop Joseph butlers analogy of religion from 1735, singularly important text for natural religion in the 18th century, and jon stewart mill on liberty which today still functions as a major text for people thing about free speech, about libertarian political philosophy, and then he added, and i always wanted to get at president edwards on the will, and i thought yes, go, go. So that spoke to you, the third of it did, but the thing is what this supgted ggested is heres who does not Simple Police say i read the newspaper and do the crossword puzzle and read the funnies. Hes a man who has the ability to ask some very serious questions. Its the part of lincoln we miss because were so impressed with the folksy political backslapper, shrewd political wirepuller. Thats the lincoln were most familiar with. We dont often see the lincoln that his closest friends sometimes had a peek into, and that was in some ways a very different lincoln. How do you explain lincolns facility with language . I mean, can you talk about his other attributes. Youve talked about several of them, but his ability to deal with complicated issues and render them in very brief texts, in language that can soar or make a point with an effectiveness that almost no one else who has ever been in the white house anyway has been able to match. How do you get to the second inaugural from someone with lincolns background and lincolns education . Well, one thing john stewart mill i dont think knows how to do that. No. One thing that certainly shaped lincoln as a communicator was having to be a lawyer and in this case a trial lawyer. He spends virtually all of his professional life as a lawyer, trying courses in county courthouses all across the middle of the state of illinois. He enjoys being in the courtroom and he enjoys income front of a jury, but he also knows that these are juries that he has to persuade, and this is in an age when juries are significant for two things that we dont often pick up today. One is is that in these Little County courthouses a jury would often be summoned from bystanders at back of the room, so you could have almost anyone sitting in the jury box, and you had to be able to communicate with them and you had to be able to do it fast because if you werent able to make yourself clear and make a clear case of things, then you were not going to be a functioning profitable lawyer for very long, so he has to learn how a to communicate directly with people, and his partner of many years, william herndon, once said that that was lincolns real passion, how to make something Crystal Clear to people. He said that lincoln would tie himself up in knots in the office. He would justsy there concentrating, concentrating, how to get an idea into a small compass of easily understood words, and he was so effective at it that certainly one occasion theres a story about lincoln even in just his Opening Statement in a case, the judge interrupting him and saying all right, brother lincoln, thank you, now we will hear from the other side. He had made the case so clearly that he wasnt even finished his Opening Statement because of seemed like he had won it. He had that wonderful capacity to open up an idea and put it in these wonderfullly clear terms, and i think a lot of that comes out of his experience as a trial lawyer, but it comes out of the maps logical bent. He put himself to the discipline of logical expression, and it was once said by someone in their autobiography who had listened to the Lincoln Douglass debates that if you listened to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass for five men you would always take the side of stephen a. Douglass because douglass was always about passion, about shaking that huge mane of hair, about stamping his feet, but if you listened to them for half an hour, you would be taken by lincoln, because lincoln, even though he spoke in this high, ready, somewhat nasal tone of voice, he always set things out like bait on a hook, and logically speaking once he got that hook in your mouth, all he needed to do afterwards was reel the thing in, and you were his. He would state the case in such a way that it was absolutely logically irresistible. He had that bent for logic, for lining things up right. He was not a man of passion or emotion. Herndon once said that his head ruled his heart tranically. He was not a man of she motional appeal. He could be eloquent, eloquent in an extremely reasonable way. When you look at the second inaugural. Yes, it is eloquent in very logical ways. If we assume, if we understand, if god is like this, if we see this war as the payment. Drawing of blood through the sore to 250 years of labor and for every drop of blood drawn by the lash. Thats etiquette but thats also elegance because at the end you cant resist because hes got you. Its logic, but its also a great at this mean, its a daring move on his part. That is not what most of the people in that audience wanted to hear that day that they were as culpable as the rebels . And he knew that, too. How many people would be willing to do that . I mean, thats that is a remarkable speech on many levels. Thats one of the levels, to me, telling people exactly what they dont want to hear. They want to hear that there will be retribution. God was on our side and will chastise the rebels. They were wrong, we were right. They didnt say that at all. Lincoln was complimented afterwards and lincoln thapgd him for the compliment and he wrote back to say i dont think people are eager to have heard what i had to say. The no one likes to be told that god has a controversy with them, but, lincoln said, it was something that i thought needed to be said, and i is with a the one who had to say it. Thats a remarkable speech on many levels. I thank you, and if you put it alongside the emancipation proclamation you couldnt have i think a stronger constrest between these language, this incredibly powerful language in the second inaugural and what some people have compared to the emancipation proclamation. But they are two different documents. Yes, ive heard that. And what i want you to do is youve written a book about the proclamation. The proclamation has been interpreted many different ways by scholars as essentially meaningless and not doing what it should do and if the end not having that great of impact. What is your short hand tank on the importance and plates. Eprock la mapgs in the much broader story of emancipation. I think its second most profoundly president ial document ever written and i think its largely because you think its important . I would say so, at least moderately. The language of the emancipation proclamation disappoint people, no question. Thats why richard off stader made hits famous quip in 1948 about the emancipation proclamation having all of the moral grandeur of a bill of lading. Will, right off the bat that made my antenna eye quiver. A bill of lading is not an unimportant document if youre involved in commerce, but, all right, lets go with the flow. What is the emancipation proclamation . Is it a rhetorical Statement Like the gettysburg address . No. The gettysburg address is marvelous, beautiful prose, but you cant take it into a court of law and do anything with it, can you . When had the trooper pulls you over on the interset dont recreate the getburg address. That person is only interested in the. The emancipation proclamation is a legal document. It has to be carefully hoped and crafted so that it survives challenges in the court and link on knew this. President s after all are only president s and lincoln he didnt have, verdictly speaking, the authority to appoint anybody. As commanders in theech would have have done more. Thats explore that. During the time of war theres war powers. Is emancipation up of those war powers . We dont know. Lets find out. Who is going tonight arbiter . Well, the federal courts. If lincoln so to speak pops off and just simply. And if youre yelling down pennsylvania avenue free the first thing thats going to happen is slave owners are going to flock to county courthouses and ask for injunctions. What is going to happen is they will give them and wind up with the United States and oh, by the way who was the chief justice of the Supreme Court in 18621234 roger opinion toning. If hoingon makes one slipup in craft considering an emancipation proclamation, that will be raw meat to roger b. Tony when it finally winds up on his desk so lincoln must craft an emancipation proclamation which is clearly based with on his war powers as commander in chief which treads very quickly who who is flow and who is not and thats why theres these exceptions and why the emancipation proclamation does not ainto no are they in a la, virginia, any place that the United States army was in control. Actly. And the United States government was in control . Wherever the courts and military were back in control where a civil process existed, he is aware that his parents were operating. He cant take he might make an assert but that mission the stick that he geets the beak and if tony gets the stick in his and he can disrupt the ole so lincoln has to be very carefully how he steps that proclamation, had happenings to, would. Its only the end he element and thats at the end when he says believing this to be not only a constitutional exercise of his commander in chief powers but an act of justice invoking the favor of almighty good. You know, then he proceeds to i, therefore, et cetera. Thats the only moment hell let himself do that. The rest of it, yes. Its as dry as a legal document can possibly be, and thats because its a legal document and it has work to do and whats more that work turns out to be extremely effective. There is a political dimension to this as well. Casting this as a military necessity is the only way that he could make it palatable to any democrats. Sure. It needs republicans or republicans to submit the sometimes people believe this was done as a medical necessity and then people conclude his heart wasnt in it, wasnt doing it as an act of justice. He was only doing it as a way to win the war. Its pure sintism. No, its not. No, its not. He is once again being the lawyer par excellence, so the only slender thread by which he has the authority to lay a fipger is by military necessity, by the war powers and by the commander in chief. Ry is only useful if youre at. Now someone might ask wellant he just cut to the chase and the answer to that is 1862 do you really think you would have gotten a 13th amendment through congress. As it was, the 13th amendment only squeaks by in 186 a 5 by a margin of two votes. The 13th amendment voted are on in 1862 would have conkfed slavery. Six states ratifieded it. In. In 1862 there was a amendment to if as it was grizzly bears dressing up. It didnt going to happen. The political environments doesnt change, not as fast as he hoped it would chain. It fails then and its not al after 1865 and lincolns election when lincoln is able to say in 1864, look, i think the people have been, time to get on about the program prmpt. Its then and only until lincoln that it finally does get passed and even by the narrowest of margins. Even when he passes it in the leet colleague. In a great as trex like that. We note even then hes trying to bring in the greatest number of possible supporters. He has to. He notes all those vote, but once he gets them hes able to say this is kings cure for the evil, because the 13th amendment on viates any attempt to the if the courts. The eblock prock had amation. Though hut it was prove he have sim but he had to. Once the shooting sthops, i cant guarantee it. Would ghmp. Thats what we really whale, thats what, thats from thats what the spielburg movie was all been. But any any touch. In the. I have the laugh biblify of gettysburg which is now then years ole. That is the poibl okayify. I bet you didnt wake up and say i better write about gettysburg. Its not that youre at Gettysburg College. What brought you to gettysburg as a topic . Why did mallory climb mt. Everest . Was there a book about gettysburg up there. I dont know. The one book that he heard from and never found it. Because its there. Oh, okay. Why write why add to this this enormous corpus. Much of whats write written about gettysburg is, shall we say, forgettable . And i wont try to identify what parts are. Were not going to know. One thing then one thing that i thought was going to be important about talking about gettysburg was what i would call the new military history beginning with john keegan, patty griffith, british wripters who imported a good deal of what we might call social history rather than social history. Paying to things in military history, not to the kinds of things that have been done over and over which is to say rectangles moving around on maps. Thats been done ad nauseum, thats true. What keegan and richard and Patricia Holmes is to say what is the experience of battle . What is the face of battle . What does that look like . Keegan did a farlous job in taking three different battles and in them he didnt different questions, what is the different brigade and why did they go there . Rather, what is the experience of being there . What does it smell like, sound like, feel like . How did people behave in those circumstances . How were they organized, disciplined . How did they respond to their co, to their commissioned officers a there was a a lot of which had never penetrated military writing and a lot of writings about gettysburg in particular. I wanted to take those kinds of writings and explore gettysburg with them and that in large measure is what the book is about. There are large numbers of rectangles moving around on the map but at the same time what i really wanted to motion war things like the sound of the battle. The weird harm nick made by bullet eats striking fixed bayonets or the china or bullets striking teeth, the weird sound made on the rose farm on july 2nd by the farm bell on the rose farm being repeatedly struck by bullets on both side. Dipping, ding, ding, this in the middle of an environment where people are fighting for their lives. Those were the kinds of experiences of the soldiers on the ground that keegan had described and which i wanted to explore because i greatly admired how keegan and griffin and holmes had done their work. Thats one thing. The second thing was the politics n. Effect what i wanted to write was a political hit try of the battle of gettysburg because this was a political war, and the people who were involved in it took their politics into the war with them. When we think about politics in the war, we generally think almost exclusively about George Mcclellan and his spate with lincoln, but mcclellan is only one face in a crowd of politically motivated generals and other and over again, you know, in the battle of gettysburg people are ostensibly maki making decisions on what are political motivationed and i wanted to explore that intersection of politics in what is simply being treated as a straightforward story. The army is is it still to a certain degree mcclellans army in 1863, his imprint on it. He created the culture in the army and the culture was popular. You could plot the political identities and allegiances of the infantry corps and the army in the potomac on the way to gettysburg along a spectrum, a spectrum that would run from the matter ardently abolitionist. Howard. Howard and the 11th corps, no questions and also also you would get dan cycles in the third corps because dan cycles because whatever else he lacked in military acumen, and he lacked a lot of military acumen, he was a political general. He was in fact the worst dream of george mclellan, a turncoat democrat because he was a war democrat and a ferocious supporter of lincoln calling for abolition. So whatever else dan cycles did wrong he got that right. Thats one end. At the other end you have the second corps of the army of the potomac commanded by Winfield Scott hancock which is one of the most ardent mclellanites, hardened democrat and sedgwick comes in barely a second so sedgwick in the sixth corps and george sykes in the fifth corps and the sixth core was George Meades fifth corps. Somewhere in the middle u might have John Reynolds and the first corps. Reynolds is a pennsylvania democrat, but he has a number of onlitionists and division command, Jon Cleveland robinson, abner doubleday, james wadsworth, so you you plot the politics of the of those seven army cox and that tells you a good deal about the kind of decisions that are being made on the battlefield. Do you see a real difference between the army of the potomac and the army of Northern Virginia in the degree to which they were politicized . Well, they are both highly police sized, although the issues are different. In the army of north virginia the real questions swim around, a, virginia and the dominance of virginians in high command in the army and, b, whether youre sufficiently ardent about secession. This is why North Carolina units, for instance, always had a hard pull of it in the army of Northern Virginia because they were widely suspected of being half hearts on the subject of secession. After all, North Carolina was the it was the tail end of secession, 20th of may, 1861. A lot of people in the army of Northern Virginia strongly exofsuspected that the north carolinians couldnt be trusted, and then theres the virginia problem, that so many of the people populated in the upper everyone lops of command are virginians, and thats especially true in a. P. Hills corps and in richard uhls corps. The odd men out are the people in longstreets corps, because if you start with longstreet who is not a virginia yap and go down the command list there, its one nonvirginian officer after another, nonvirginia brigades, lots of georgians. Deep southern. And mississipians. And many ardent fire eaters among the core. But were always feeling as though they are somehow second class confederates in this army dominated by virginians, and they dont always deal well that terribly gracefully nor do the virginia yaps. The virginians are not shy about letting other people in the army of Northern Virginia feel that they are somehow along for the ride and the real heavy lifting is being done which virginians. Did you find any real surprises in working on that book . Oh, constantly. Constantly. Give us a xaum of examples. The story that most people are familiar with with about the battle of gettysburg is the run, of course, that comes from maxwells movie. Saved the republic. Yes. I think much of the western europe world, dont you think . Thats a little too far. I am it is too far. Lets just lets just no, lets you hate joshua berlin, dont you . Hes an academic, for god sake. Thats what my 12step process is about. No, both are upset with that because both of the novi and sglorm because they source. He did the right thing at the right moment. When i did was to put the focus on how claim lanes story gets and this is just up example of how when the command structures in the fifth corps and the first core are really going to pieces, Junior Office odds, people who are a couple of months of clerking out of their fathers law office take charge of a situation and somehow instinctively make all the right calls and keep saving the day time and time and time again. Its not just chamberlain on the south face of little round top. Its paddy orourke showing up at the last split second with 140th new york to smack into the texas brigade and push them back down the hill. Its william colleville and the first minnesota. Its samuel sprig carroll sprinting across Cemetery Hill to smack right into earlys people just as they are about to overup the gun emplacements on just as theyre about to overrun the gun replacements. Or david ire and doing what the 20th main did, only far more rebels. But my favorite story is actually about the 19th main, which was the second corps unit. Which hancock had posted to cover one or two of the artillery batteries that were trying to cover the disintegration of the third corps. Out of the smoke and the melee that prevailed on the Late Afternoon on july 2nd, coming up out of is humphries. His division has gone to pieces. It has been ripped from the abdomen to the sternum. And humphries hes a philadelphian. Hes a very talented engineer, but on this afternoon he is out his mind with panic, grief and fear. He stalks up to the 19th main and he tells them to fix their bayonets and use them on his retreating division, the people from the soldiers, the unorganized mass that was fleeing all around them. Turn their weapons on these fleeing soldiers of his own division. He is stalking right down the line and telling fix the bayonet, use them on the cowards. Behind humphries is the commander of the 19th main, illuminates the difference between citizen soldiers which he was and Andrew Atkinson humphries who was a regular soldier and took a different view of things like that. The time is slipping by very quickly. I want to get to your current project and then i was other things to get to as well. But i want to make sure that we talk about lee a little bit. I dont know how long ago you chose lee as your subject, but events of the past several months have certainly cast lee in a different light in the minds of many people. Im just wondering ill make it a twopart question, why did you select lee as the topic and h has have you changed your approach to him at all in terms of what you think you need to do in light of recent events . Not just here in charlottesville. But many other places as well. Well, i came to the lee project because of a vision that i had. It was in the middle of the night and general lee came to me and said, not enough has been written about me. And too much about lincoln. Actually you must atone. No, actually. It was too much about longstreet. No, seriously, i im a yankee from yankee land. Youre from philadelphia. Thats right. Youre yet, your story about which regiment you selected. Yeah. We talked about this over dinner on facebook a friend had posed a question, if you could be a member of a civil war which one would you choose and many people said, well, id be part of the 26th North Carolina or be part of the 24th michigan or the 20th maine. And i responded and put down, 45th United States color troops. Because im a yankee from yankee land and it sometimes baffles me to try to understand what the other side of this great controversy was fighting for. And what it was doing. And especially robert e. Lee. Who had been a serving office of the United States army for all of his career, had distinguished himself in the war in mexico. He had been superintendent of west point, he was handed a colonels commission in 1861. To take command of the second im sorry, the first cavalry and resigned and went became robert e. Lee and then the general and chief of the confederacy. And my father was a career army officer, my son is a career army officer. I have taken the oath three general three generations of my family have taken the oath. Same oath that lee took and what really puzzled me, the burr under my saddle was how do i understand this . How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason . And im conscious of the fact that sitting here in charlottesville its not an easy thing to say and yet, i dont think that anyone honestly can slice it or dice it another way. I mean, he was never i mean, he was indicted but never convicted in the court of law, i know that, and yet de facto he raised his hand against the flag my family has always served. And which i as a citizen expect to be protected by. How do i understand how he made that decision and then did the things that he did . I could very easily simply dismiss him as a monster. And there have been some there have been some traitors in the past who really have been, some scoundrels like aaron burr, grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Yes. Were back to Jonathan Edwards. But gary, but gary, literally, i what i knew of lee, you know, lee was not definitely not aaron burr. Lee was not the whiskey rebels in western pennsylvania. Hes not. Lees father is a major factor his idol is George Washington. Yes. So how do you parse, how do you understand what lee did in his life, what he did in his career and then what he did at the very end of his service as a general and in the five years remaining to him when he was the president of Washington College. Thats that is not an easy portrait to assemble. The different pieces of that mosaic dont fit into an easily comprehensible puzzle. On the one hand, i cannot get around and i dont think anyone can honestly get and the fact that lee consciously made the decision to fight against his country. Now, there are reasons you can line out and lee lined them out in specious detail. Still does not get away from when he became an ardent confederate i know. He was an ardent confederate nationalist after the war. Well, he was pretty ardent during the war. If there was a question about they need x and the confederacy needs y, he would say i need, x. He doesnt see how theyll win the war, at an poe ox he said i knew it would come to this. This is not an easy person to get into the algorithm. Either to make him into the saint or the demon. He doesnt yield easily to either of those on. On the one hand, yes, he does something at the very bottom of my abolitionist soul i find deeply reprehensible. Yet, at the same time, i also know that what he did at appomatox is to save the country by rejecting exactly. When Porter Alexander made that offer to him, lets break up, lets head for hills, if lee all had to say was one word, and not only the army of Northern Virginia, but the other army i mean, the ku klux klan and the red shirts if we think they were a problem, they would have a sunday School Picnic compared to what would have happened if the confederate armies had taken to the mountains. The same way john brown wanted to go. If they had taken to the mountains and raged a guerrilla warfare that could have lasted for decades and maybe jumped the generations, we could still be fighting it. Look what happened in missouri, look what happened in tennessee during the war. It was the war of all against all. Missouri had descended into a nightmare. Play it out for one or two generations all across the southern rim of the north american continent. From lee saying that one word. Because lee was the most important person in the confederacy and he had been for a long time. He was the confederacy. He was. He was the confederacy. Some people dont agree with that. Henry wise said youre the confederacy to everybody. Henry wise wasnt right a whole lot but even a broken clock is right two days a time and that was henry wise, governor broken clock. So all that lee had to have done was high tailed it and we would be living with wed be living with a nightmare that could have extended as far as the most reprehensible racial genocide. Look at yugoslavia. Look at the coe sew a veries, look at the croats that took international determination to and they were talking about controversies, battles, massacres over 400 years. David reef in a wonderful little book called in praise of forgetting which i wish was mandatory reading for a lot of historians, he talked about the midst of the yugoslavia war and he had a meeting with a serbian general and someone pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand. Afterwards he looked at it. It had one thing written on it, 1453. In other words, the day when islam conquered constantinople. Youre thinking their memories are going back to and uncovering the scab of 400 years. Could we have done something of the same . Im afraid we could have. And the only thing that stood between that and living today as we do is the one word. Am i exaggerating, no. I dont think i am. That one word that lee could have spoken. Well, youre asking and answering your own questions so im just going to sit here. I think you might be exaggerating just a little bit but i think that im a pessimist, all right . Incredible important and it would have been hard to pursue that kind of warfare if he said, no, were not going to do that and he did say no. Lets put it this way. All right, maybe it wouldnt have been that bad. Shall we take a chance . I dont know. I think i think that youre giving lee credit for that is you should give him credit for that. Are you envisioning is this going to be a full biography, take him through all of the campaigns and through mexico, the whole prewar and everything . Yes. And the presidency of Washington College . Which i think are the five happen years of his life. I think when he goes to lexington first of all, he leaves behind all of virginia that he had once known and which now for him is dead. And he goes to the valley where the social milieu is more Stonewall Jackson than robert e. Lee but he has a free hand to do what he wants to do its not like being superintendent of west point where the chief corps of engineers was always looking over his shoulder. Hes free to be the kind of person he wants to be. And he is extraordinarily successful as a college president. Hes very Progressive College president. Hes getting rid of all of the old curricula. Hes bringing in studies in journalism, engineering, in law. Hes doing the kinds of things in the valley that Charles Norton elliott is doing at harvard. He is cutting edge in terms of petagogy. Think of lee the glad hander. Especially with the wealthy especially with the wealthy ones. He gets all the people to contribute huge amounts of money to Washington College. He is very successful at it. I think it really provides him with some of the greatest satisfaction that hes ever had in his life. I want to get to im going to change our spotlight to something that this its maybe mainly of interest to me and its of interest to me and that is that i think one of the greatest deficiencies in the literature on the civil war is the relative inattention to religion as a factor. I think the really important books on religion that runs to 60 or 70 or 80,000 volumes wouldnt take up much space from that one side of the table to this side. The vast literature deals with the population in the United States and both in the confederacy that talked about religion a great deal. Historians seem to filter that out and say its boiler plate, they dont really mean it. Theyre just writing that. Im guilty because religion is too complicated. I dont want to think about trying to come to terms with all of the various liz is smiling, she agrees. If we both agree, we must be right. I think a lot of the historians just shy away from this because its easier not to deal with it. I want to know, first of all, if you think its relatively underappreciated in the literature. And second, why you think thats the case. I think it is underappreciated. I think there are several salient good books on the subject. Two of them in particular come to mind. One which is now more than 30, almost 40 years old, as james morehead, american apocalypse. The other is mark noels little book on the theological interpretation on the civil war and is clearly straight forward. The larger issue on religion on the civil war has been neglected because i think for one thing it requires a lot of investment of time to try to understand the various streams and rivulets of American Religion in the 19th century. Also, because in a way for many secular academics its simply not a subject they really want to touch. They regard it as it being somehow radioactive. I remember as a graduate student that good man who was the chair of the graduate program when i was a graduate student who said to me and he said this very earnestly, he said you have to understand that even so much as the whiff of religion on your resume is the kiss of death. That was telling me that a little too late after i had written that dissertation, but it was true. And that has been a constant problem that i have had to deal with. People will say or at least they said earlier on in my career oh, well, youre religious historian. They meant you must be one of those kooks and they werent all that discreet. I wanted to say, hold on a moment, let me get my snake so you can watch me hold it. Sometimes i think they would have deserved it if they had gotten the snake but not for me to hold it. But you have to deal with this is the thing. People who try to write about the civil war hero, about the American Experience in the 19thture and somehow believe they can subtract religion from the formula are going to wind up with no fish on the line. And the reason is because religion especially protestant christianity formed the cultural matrix in which people lived and breathed and had the being. When the American Republic was founded, it was founded by men of the enlightenment, people like Thomas Jefferson who really believed that the American Republic was going to be an exercise in secular enlightenment. Even those who had some kind of religious affiliation had a modest one. Washington is an example that way. But what happens in American Culture is very surprising because despite jeffersons prediction in the 1820s that no young man now living today will die without becoming a unitarian, it turned out to be entirely different. There was unitarians have gotten attention all out of proportion to their actual importance. Partly because there are so many at harvard and they wrote so much. And the longest context is to see what happened in the American Culture in the 19th century is this extraordinary eruptship that we call the second grade eruption which was earthquakes from the 1810s up threw the 1850s. When you look at the kinds of numbers that for instance john butler talked about in his book on American Religion before the civil war, awash in a sea of faith, the numbers are extraordinary. Churches founded by the four principal denominations, protestant denominations, grew at a rate approximately 300 times greater than the increase of the american population. The influence of American Religion at every level of popular culture, elite culture is extraordinary. Go from college to college in the 1840s and the 1850s and they are almost all of them being run by clergymen, staffed by clergy as professors and what theyre teaching is a religionized version of natural law and rights. It is the matrix in which americans of the civil war era find their bearings and in their relationships to each other. And when you read the enormous volume of soldier letters, soldier diaries, you are simply overwhelmed by the degree to which religion was the inflection but many soldier studies do little with religion and they have parts on the other parts of the soldiers lives and attitudes. Because theyre looking for what is the really exciting stuff and that is cholera, the bedbugs, bullets. Theyre passing by the religion as though they didnt hear it. But thats a deliberate choice. Thats a deliberate choice professionally. I think its a mistake. Now, Something Else that has to be seen here though is not just the context that religion poses for the war. What does the war do to religion . That is yet again an important story. Because i think that the civil war has an extremely negative impact on that religious culture. I think that people who go through the war have a lot of the assumptions that religion had equipped them with, ripped out of their hands. A sense of the regularity of the universe, a sense of its predictability. James garfield once made the comment to William Dean Howells that after his first sight of the battlefield, a sight of men killed by other men, garfield said that something went out of him and never came back again. Some sense of the sanctity of life and its Divine Origins and garfield was a man who had been raised in the disciples, he was a lay preacher in the disciples christ. The war had this enormous impact on people that shook them loose from a lot of those religious moorings because what the war was about was not about predictability. It was not about an orderly and regular universe, presided over by an allpowerful but all wise being. But what the war seemed to be was about contingency, chance, luck, unpredictability. And americans were often not prepared to deal with those things. They come out of the war not only physically and psychologically mauled by it. But they come out of it culturally mauled. Because the assumptions that religion had equipped them with are among the casualties of battle. We have a list of questions here that have come in from all of you and im going to begin with one that is on point with your discussion of lee and treason. Lee often said that going to virginia was the only decision he could have made and friedman in his biography said about 30 of the virginians in the United States remained in the United States army. But compare George Thomas who remained loyal to the United States to lee in 1861. Why did lee resign his commission and thomas stay in the army . I dont know how much you know about George Thomas, but take a crack at that. Well, thomas was strongly tempted to go for the confederacy. He almost did. His whole family did. I mean yeah. And they rode him out of the family. One thing that held him back was he had a northern born wife. He could not bring himself to to go back on the oath. That he believed he had sworn in which he believed as lincoln said was registered in heaven. So thomas stays with the union. But it was not an easy decision for him to make. Why does lee make a different decision . He justifies it in terms of virginia. I never have been entirely satisfied with that as an answer. If only because lee spent so little time in his life in virginia. Most of lees career is spent in other places. Its spent in georgia. Its spent in new york. Its spent in texas. St. Louis. St. Louis. He actually spends a fairly small amount of his life in virginia. Even growing up in alexandria, well, the years he grew up in alexandria was it was not part of virginia, it was part of district of columbia. Pretty deep virginia roots. Oh, no question. Lees look at the kind of roots. Look at his father. Those are real roots that will bind you to virginia. Cant leave the state if youre in debtors prison. But he is a hes a federalist who is mobbed within an inch of his life. Hes in a state where the jeffersonians are only happy to keep him from the government once he leaves the governorship. And harry gets unpopularly for going out to pennsylvania to take charge of the troops and thats a mistake that they never forgive him for. What was it about virginia that exercised the hold on robert e. Lee . I think it comes down to something more concrete. Now, this is at this point, this is still a theory. But my theory is this. Lee does not own arlington. Both of lee he doesnt own much of anything. He doesnt own a house. The arlington property along with the other custard property and smiths island, these all come from his in laws. George washington, and they go to his oldest son but old man custus as well and they go to George Washington custus lee and mary custus lee has a Life Interest in arlington but thats it. Lee doesnt have any property in arlington. He doesnt own anything. But he does have to be worried about what is going to happen to the arlington property. Now imagine these scenarios. Lets suppose that virginia secedes from the union. But he decides to stay with the United States army. What will happen to arlington . He has to worry that its going to be confiscated. All right. Lets suppose that he decides to go with virginia. And there is secession. Maybe there wont be a war. In fact, Winfield Scott has been busy assuring people that this is not going to be a war. That theres going to be an unpleasantness for four or five months and then maybe a reconciliation or at worst three or four different confederacies but there wont be a war. This is what scott has been saying to people. And scott of course when scott says something thats gospel for robert e. Lee. Very tall so lee has to think, all right, if i go with virginia, then there wont be a war and i will be able to secure the arlington property for my children. And that can be passed on. I think he has a very concrete idea of what is at stake and a lot of it is bound up with what is going to happen to those properties. And how he can secure them. So he makes the decision that is i think in very large measure conditioned by what is the future of his family going to be . Hes thinking of his family here. Not thinking of his himself, because hes not nothing to profit from this. He mentioned his family continuously. When he talks about i cant raise my hand against the family, its not a piece of rhetoric. I think hes got something very material in view. How can i keep from having happen to my family what happened to my father at stratford . All right. Well continue with our treason theme. This is if davis treason trial had been press by the north, by the United States, do you think it would have appealed to the Supreme Court. Im sure you know, Jefferson Davis spent two years in federal custody after the war and the United States considered putting him on trial. He wanted to be put on trial. He thought he would be vindicated. He had a very good lawyer, an irishman from new york city who had other thoughts about how to handle this and in the end the United States government did not bring him to trial. So lets assume they didnt bring him to trial because he would have tried where the crime took place, in richmond and they had the idea it might be possible that one juror out of 12 in richmond would vote not to convict davis. Do you think that would have happened . No. So the question is how do you think this would have settled had it worked its way through the court. Because the constitution say you may or may not secede. The big difficulty here lies in the fact that all of this has occurred before the 14th amendment. Every bit of it. The 14th amendment is what clearly categorically, unambiguously defines as american citizenship. And the priority of american citizenship. Put that along with texas versus white which denies a right to secession and you have a very strong case against anyone for instance in texas or california today who wants to have daydr m daydreams about secession. But that was after the civil war. And we dont have expost facto convictions in civil war. Lee makes exactly this argument that under the laws and under the constitution as they existed in 1861, his citizenship as a virginian took priority over citizenship in the United States. And therefore, this is what he says in front of the joint committee on reconstruction in 1866. Hes very very clear in saying i was doing constitutionally what i was supposed to do and that was to regard my state citizenship as having the priority. It would have been extremely difficult for a federal court to look at that either in the case of davis or lee and to say, oh, no no. Were going to hold you to account. You should have known better. I mean, all the jurisprudence had gone the other way. Everything that had happened in terms of jurisprudence gave some color. On the face of it its difficult, but still the technicalities were there. Would a jury even in philadelphia have convicted lee or davis . I dont think that could have been predicted very clearly. In 1866 when lee 65, rather, when lee is indicted for treason because he is indicted is that the federal courts may not cooperate and the federal courts meaning chief justice shakes. The direct courts and the Circuit Court that included virginia were traditionally part of the chief justices is circuit. That meant that chase had jurisdiction as a circuit judge over virginia. Chase deeply objected to the existence of military tribunals and military arrests. He had made that year and would make it clear in lamdon im sorry, expart milligan. Chase makes it clear to president johnson that he will not participate in trials in virginia where there are military tribunals still functioning because he regards those as an unconstitutional challenge to the authority of the federal courts. So you have got, first of all, a constitutional legal question in the way. Secondly you have a procedural question being posed by the chief justice of the United States. Could any of this have happened . The odds start to get very, very long. I think thats what the potential prosecutors concluded as well. Well continue with where this is a seamless transition. States being supreme in some ways the way that some people vie viewed the situation. We associate state rights with the north. Did you ever hear of ableman versus booth . The short answer is yes, underline it, yes, they did care and they had invoked them with personal liberty laws in the 1850s and in many other ways. States rights becomes a wax that people north and south regularly invoke and then ignore as the situation demanded. When it came to owning slaves suddenly you heard a lot about states rights. When it came to recapturing fugitive slaves who had escaped to the north, suddenly you heard about the importance of the federal government and centralized authority. And states rights be damned. Reverse the scenario and you have as in ableman versus booth a case where personal liberty laws are invoked to protect a fugitive slave. The wisconsin nine northern states. Exactly. The wisconsin courts plead states rights. Which then puts the federal government in the unusual position of being the chief enforcer of states rights. So it really did depend on whose ox was being gored. I was saying to one of your graduate students earlier today, that when you look at lincolns relations with the northern war governors, they are much more collegial, much more cooperative. Much more lets meet together, lets talk this over, lets form you late policy. For davis, i will decide the policies. Governors of Southern States are not much more than ciphers and i expect cooperate. If you wanted to give the palm for state rights respect to either lincoln or davis, you would really have no option but to give it to Abraham Lincoln. No one of those neither of those two had greater functional respect for the rights of the states than lincoln, whereas by contrast Jefferson Davis is the great centralizer, the Great Authority figure at a National Capitol imposing his will on the governments. Its the most intrusive government in history until deep on the 20th century. This allegedly states right society put up with things that would have been incomprehensible. It does depend on the issue and it does depend on who would like to reach for the states right argument first. Lincoln could not have waged the war he needed the governors and he leaned on them, and they functioned with Great Authority during the war. We have about three minutes left. Thats not much im trying to find an answer here we can a question we can answer in three minutes. Maybe you can say one or two things. Are there any other civil war is there any other civil war subject that has been exhausted or is there always room to Say Something more . I dont think that anyone should be writing any more books about gettysburg, the emancipation proclamation no i dont think thats an end in sight because it involves so Many Americans at one flash point in our history. Just four years worth. When you look at civil wars that have been waged in other countries they go on for years and years and decades and decades and spread out like the delta of a river. For us, the civil war is actually a comparatively short war in terms of the context of civil warfare. It is like a flashbulb going off and it touches so many people, so many quickly, so violently and in ways that are recorded in such depth and in such detail. That such great issues at stake. With such great issues. I dont really see a bottom of the barrel here. I think anyone who wants to write about the civil war, yes, even if you want to write about the battle of gettysburg, you have got plenty of untouched material ahead of you. And you have plenty of opportunities and plenty of new things to say. I think that the ammunition in that drum it will be a long time before it starts to click on empty. And i think i will let that be the last word. Thank you all very much for coming this afternoon. Thank you. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv. Airing weekdays. Tonight beginning at 8 00 p. M. Its a look at africanamericans and world war i. 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