and you can see her right here on the screen. unfortunately another panelists kerry lane merritt had a family emergency a while ago and and let us know that she would not be to participate today. so just in terms of this panel, i would like to just put forward a few framing remarks on the 1862 moment and then let the speakers go for around 10 minutes each. i deliver their remarks maybe talk amongst each other raise some questions for each other. i'll be happy to facilitate that and then really open it up for q&a with the audience and another reminder do come up to the mic if you have a question. so in most conventional histories of the civil war the year 1863 is often taken as the turning point of the war the euro significant union military victories at gettysburg and vicksburg and most importantly the year president abraham lincoln issued the historic emancipation proclamation. but from the vantage point of indian country in the west 1862 emerges as a crucial market during the war. a precursor to the brutal subjugation of planes indians and the conquest of the west that would follow the civil war. i think this is the reason that the oh this year has convened this two-part roundtable on 1862. as my colleague at yukon nancy shoemaker likes to tell you. you cannot do american history without native american history. now 1862 is the year of the us dakota war when over 300 warriors were condemned to death by the military. lincoln took the time to review the sentences. carefully and commuted most of them. condemning 39 of the 303 dakota warriors to death in the end 38 were hanged and that still constitutes. the largest mass is execution in us history as should we sweet just pointed out in the previous round table. 1862 is also the year of the moral land grant act the pacific union railway railway acts the internal revenue act. the homestead act. all these apps were predicated on the dispossession of native american nations, and it heralded the development of the american state. it is also the year that president lincoln issued his preliminary proclamation giving advanced notice of his intention to issue the emancipation proclamation in 1863. now, of course the process of indian dispossession can be traced back to the settlement of north america by european colonists accelerated mightily by the indian removals and the mexican war in the 19th century. and while there has been much historical scholarship recently some done by our panelists on viewing the civil war reconstruction from the west. we still need to elaborate on how we made develop new historical narratives of the war that would combine both older and relatively new approaches to the war and 1862 in particular. today our speakers will address these issues from varying perspectives the histories of black emancipation and freed people struggles in the west the history of the state and political ideologies in western history and place link in himself squarely within that history. now i would also like to point out that there was a typo in the original description of the 1862 roundtable because they were initially conceived more broadly to cover the entire civil war rather than just the year 1862. i asked for your forbearance on behalf of the organizers and the staff that put the program together in the midst of a pandemic rest assured. we all know that the sand creek massacre of the arapaho and cheyenne peoples took place in 1864 and not in 1862. i would also like to have hank really in barnes who conceived of this of these two roundtables and the 1862 idea as was mentioned earlier. she could not be here, but she is the one who commanded all of us in this panel and the earlier one to address this issue. so without further ado, let me introduce our panelists in the order in which they will. beak each panelist will speak as i said earlier for around 10 minutes, and then we'll open up the discussion here first amongst themselves and then to the audience. and i'll introduce all of them at one go so that they can continue we can continue with the with the order of the program. hillary and green is an associate professor in the department of gender and race studies at the university of alabama. she is the author of educational reconstruction african-american schools in the urban south 1865 to 1890, which was published by fordham university, press in 2016. she's also the author of articles book chapters and other scholarly publications. she is currently at work on a second book manuscript tentatively titled unforgettable sacrifice. this book examines how every day african-americans remembered and commemorated the civil war war from 1863 to the present. mike o'connor who is joining us on zoom right here on the screen is a postdoctoral scholar at the richard civil war era center at penn state university. she received her phd in history at harvard in 2021 her masters in history at harvard in 2014, and her bachelor's in history at columbia university in the city of new york in 2011. the working title of her book manuscript is quote on this bear ground the ordeal of freed people's camps and the making of emancipation the civil war west her work has been supported by the charles warren center for american history at harvard university and the melon sawyer seminar on the politics of kinship at tufts university. and she as i said earlier will be joining us virtually. heather cox richardson is professor of history at boston college and an expert on american political and economic history? she is the author of six books on american politics including most recently how the south won the civil war oligarchy democracy and the continuing fight for the soul of america, which i had the pleasure to review in the nation. she is a leading to a historian explaining the historical background of martin political issues through twitter threads the co-editor of we are history a web magazine of popular history and the author of letters robin american a chronicle of american politics. and she's too modest to add that. she's the woman of the year named by usa today. michael green is an associate professor of history in the university of nevada lost last vegas department of history. he earned his ba and ma at unlv and his phd at columbia university. he's the author of several books of the civil war era most recently lincoln and native americans for the southern illinois university. press series the concise lincoln library. he has also written several books on nevada history. most notably in the textbook nevada a history of the silver state. he is writing a history of organized crime in america for roman and littlefield and a history of the great basin for the university of arizona press. he serves as executive director of the pacific coast branch of the american historical association. so the floor is all yours now hillary. so i want to thank people for coming out today and also. really to explore and act that most people talk about for land grab universities and that's the moral act of 1862 and thinking about the recent attention brought by land grab universities a digital humanities project created through investigative reporting and research and it's this very public and very interactive digital tool which if you haven't looked at it, it's great for not just scholarship and to ask questions but for teaching and getting students to really think about education and institutions a real ways, it has renewed attention to the moral act of 1862 and it's funding of national land grant institutions and other schools. publishing march of 2020 in high country news under its education section. this project has gotten much. raise awards, but also scholarly contemplation indeed native american and indigenous studies a leading journal devoted its spring 2021 issued to critical reflections on the project including its methodology research and future questions. that might be drawn and implications for also why i find telling in what is now critical university studies institutional repair. it is fitting down. we are talking about this at this round table and the act itself passed on july 2nd 1862. if facilitated these creation of the state public colleges and universities through the development and/or sale of federal lands. yes this legislation that we talked about for the dispossession of indigenous lands for the benefit of predominantly african. sorry white americans. and yet this dispossession occurred through treaties agreements and seizure. we notice we know that the federal government prove to be bad actors in negotiate treaty. so are they really treaties and the violence both real and rhetorical was that the court he's federal policies, but it's the beauty of the land grab university project that shows the real consequences of land loss and us imperialism when the moral act of 1862 committed the federal government to grant each state 3000 acres of public land in the issue. of land script certificates for each of its representatives and senators in congress. what is less understood though is how the moral act of 1862 also affected southern black education? and here's where scholars including myself i get into this laziness in doing this work too and non-academics. we talked about the second moral act of 1890 which requires the creation of separate land grant institutions for black students or demonstrate that mission was not restricted by race, but the first act actually leads is used by kentucky state alcorn claflin and virginia state, virginia state university class. lists are alcorn is the first 1871. it starts to receive money. claflin and virginia state although other call by other names receive money in 1860 1872 in kentucky state receives its first funds in 1897. and it's under the first act not the second act because it's going to be reported that way so when we look at black education. and these schools we can also see what is biracial reconstruction era constitutions and the negotiation once public schools are created for black children how states use this federal legislation that's still on the books. to find black education rather than to raise other money. and that i think is what it really understands this legislation and more of its implications of land grant university because it shows the limits of reconstructive state's abilities to find black education and how they maximize all federal policies and funding initiatives to do so at the expense of not providing any more money. it's like the state lottery today for education. they raise money, but then the supplement the money earns for education. so you lead to defunding. and so when we look at these states where the first moral act applied to this early hbcus, we see that correlation between the diversity of those reconstruction act conventions the creation of black schools, but also the dispossession of native americans that made it possible. and so i think one of the things that we have to not only use look at that act but more importantly white supremacist governments that overthrow those reconstruction constitutions. they still use these acts so you see first moral acne and use into the 20th century too for these hbcus. so we really see that governments gave the bare minimum for black higher education, but also to systematically underfunding but what does it mean that they're also dispossessing native americans too. so it's black education emancipation, but also so the colonialism going hand in hand. so this is where i think that land grab university project leads to future scholarship and i want to raise an additional directions for understanding the scope of the moral act and the land grab university on its impact on marginalized communities of color writ large in the united states. which community indigenous community specifically funded these initial hbcus? do those hbc use acknowledge this funding and the impact on indigenous communities through either their curriculum or mission policies or later institutional repair done. and are these as these schools were created for emancipated and discriminated individuals a predominantly sudden black population? do these schools like claflin acorn alcorn and others have responsibility and same institutional burden essay, ohio state in other large land grant pwis. and i would argue they don't. but what does instant what is their institutional responsibility at repair look like then? and if white southern legislatures chose federal money to pay for black education instead of using state appropriations. what are the state's responsibilities for both tribal communities who they receive funding from and even the underfunded hbcus that they use the money for in their own institution and states. and i think as we think about this anniversary, i think the field can attend more to the findings of land grant the university project for understanding cellular colonialism emancipation expansion of federal power and the overlap in legacies of american institutions of higher ed for all people of color united states. thank you. like could you unmute yourself and go ahead. thank you so much. i really think the organizers and panelists for their flexibility and for this chance to participate in such an important conversation today. while trying to excuse me organize my thoughts for today. i read the description of part one and i thought i might begin with a line from it that i've been thinking about i wasn't able to see the first panel because i'm here so, i don't know if the panelists in part one discuss this already. but if so, please take my thoughts as an invitation perhaps to carry the subject into our discussion. the the description refers to this significant year as transforming black life while devastating native america. and this way of putting it kind of reminded me of a line from a recent history of the war that the us waged against the dakota people in 1862 and on lincoln it says quote ironically. he was also working on the emancipation proclamation issued january 1st 1863, which granted freedom to slaves in areas under confederate control at the same time that he was forced to deal with those dakota who had lost their own freedom in quote. i should say that this gives the proclamation perhaps too much credit, you know, the words themselves freed. no one but enslaved people had to go out and fight for that their freedom and that gets lost here and we can maybe talk about, you know, congress responding to their actions before lincoln did with the series of legislation. they pass in 1862, but for now, i i want to just focus on how might look at. gaining freedom versus losing freedom or transformation versus devastation and a different way. and i wonder if this framework actually keeps us from understanding both the devastation and the violence of fighting and escaping the confederate project or slaveholding unionists. well at the same time and lighting the history survival work and futurity of the dakota people during and after the wars. i work on the camps and other assemblies of self emancipated people or freed people or refugees in the western and transmission, mississippi theaters the civil war and i i write about free people who weren't devastated not by freedom, but by the violence of the confederate project by slaveholders by khan men by union soldiers or employees by migrants. i wonder then if we can think of overlapping histories then of missionary surveillance of forced marches a family separations of the killings of children. aspects of the atrocities at fort selling at bedote where the union army forced thousands of dakota people and families into a camp surrounded by walls, and we're the military dakota families to violence and neglect. it reminded me of what i studied from the same time atrocities on other banks of the mississippi river and rivers that connect to the mississippi river. it reminded me of the people escaping bondage on the sam gaddy steamer attacked by confederate gorillas and executed by gorillas on the banks, missouri river. it reminded me of the successive expulsions of freed people from places like camp nelson and those deaths. i think of the hundreds of people who died building fort neglia national, tennessee who's remains. i think we're still being found in 2018 i wonder rather than thn terms of devastation for one in transformation for the other or loss and gain i i wonder could the camp or the violent practice of him that represent a possible intersection of these histories. specific typically, can we view encampment or camps? as sites of violence as battlefields in their own right and as sites of being justice of the us government because the camp help us to see both the intersections and the diversions of these history. of these histories and that they needn't be at i because if you look through the or army volumes are you know, the official records of the war of the rebellion like series one volume 13, you'll find calculations made against the dakota people in the same pages as calculations against people escaping slavery. like there'll be a tally of union forces following the attacks on the dakota people on the same page as samuel curtis instructing a brigadier general the -- of loyal men should be encouraged to stay at home and mind their business. so i think if we can change the framework from of one group receiving freedom and another group losing it or one grouping transformed another devastated we could form new questions about the us army and confinement. we could see perhaps removalist aspects of the union's management of the free people in the midwest in the mississippi valley whether that be the effort to clear southern, illinois of escaping free people less the republicans be accused of africanizing, illinois, whether that's the series of relocations of free people on to islands and the mississippi river like island number 10 or presence island, which i'm trying to understand in my work. um even looking east, you know, perhaps bernard cox exploitation of lincoln sort of early approached the free people macau island disaster where you know -- took people from fort monroe and to an island off of coast of hay where they were robbed and pain. maybe there's a repertoire and removalism that can cut through these histories. um on lincoln another thing that 1862 to mind for me. you know if i could save the union without bringing any slaves i would do it and if i could save the union by freeing all the slaves i would do it and if i could save it by frank some and leaving others alone. i would do that. these remarks by linking to horace greeley and august 1862 are commonplace in histories of the civil war and biographies of the president. they're direct in varying repercussions for people and bondage though are perhaps less commonplace. nor do analysis of those repercussions automatically accompany another prominent remark from lincoln about slavery his prediction in july 1862 that slavery in the border states would meet its end by the mere friction and abrasion of war. and as we know lincoln was urging the patriots and statesman of the border states, that would be within their interests to loosen their grip on slavery by accepting a plan for gradual conference stated emancipation. but when lincoln proposed this and when he responded to greeley a month later. he outlined a tremendous life-threatening political compromise from the perspective of the people trying to escape bondage the quiet acceptance of the jeopardization of enslaved people in states like kentucky the largest and last stronghold of slavery in the union in the state of lincoln's birth. his terms friction and abrasion and implied violence pain and injury, but he did not say exactly who would be rubbed raw and ground down and for how long or who would be sacrificed and i think of friction and abrasion is happening at places like nicholasville in kentucky in 1864 to isabel miller and joseph miller losing their children in their own lives after speed smith fry order that free families be driven out into the cold. but for your race among us there cannot be war lincoln totally delegation of black men trying to convince them to be colonizationists. adding many men engaged on either side. do not care for you one way or the other. rather than thinking of lincoln, i guess as a grander freedom and a taker of freedom we could think of lincoln though reasonable and diplomatic compared to his successor as engaging in a politics of sacrifice, especially even especially if he even for a moment thought that the members of the black delegation for instance had an obligation to sacrifice themselves to give up their homes and lives because their presence was the cause of the war that for me is one of the darker meetings of lincoln's friction and abrasion idea and of 1862. so i'll in my comments there. i too want to thank the organizers for inviting me to do this and to say it's a real pleasure to be here with these fine scholars that i know mostly now from social media and it's especially nice to be here with manisha because she was the last person i saw from the profession when the pandemic hit she was literally the last person i remember looking at her and saying do we hug? goodbye. do we wait here? we are. it's my first time really back since then, so it's a real pleasure to be here. i want to start today by saying that i wrote in my last book about how the dehumanization of the native americans during the war provided a new model for racial discrimination during the war to counter veil the the changes in the way that the united states government looked at black americans they had now. a new way to look at racial hierarchies in the west and while that's very important interests me less now because i did a lot of work with that and i wanted to go to new direction today and to talk a little bit about the in 1862 with the counter to the fact that while the congress is doing something that i'm going to talk about. it's worth remembering that going into the year of 1862 the american public lands as they were called, although they were of course indian lands were thought of as a vast piggy bank that could be used to fund the us government and that that was the way they kept the government going because that was something that the large enslavers in the american south really liked that meant that they would not have taxes and it meant that the government would not do very much so with the idea that the public lands as they were known incorrectly at the time had been used for about eight percent of the income of the us government. i want to lay out. what does happen during 1862 and it's a story that i think is really important for the k through 12 teachers that i hope will be watching this at home because this is being broadcast for k through teachers so i want to point out first of all that the last section of the 36th congress reassembled on december 2nd in 1861. it was in the midst of a money crisis that was about to get really really bad the democrats who had been in charge of the government had as i say not wanted to use it for anything. they insisted that it had to be kept small that it couldn't interfere in any way in the economy and the way to make the american economy really boom was to turn over control of it to the very wealthy. well, what happens is that the money crisis means that the republican party which organized with the idea that the government should work for ordinary americans had to figure out in a hurry what exactly that meant. so what happens is on december 30th the banks in new york city suspend specie payments. that is they're not going to hand out gold any longer and the country falls into just a spiral of financial crisis. so the new congress which is going to come into the 37 congress which is going to swear in on march 4th. 1862 has itself it inherits a very large problem now once the banks have suspended species payments congress of course starts to panic and thinks what on earth can we possibly do and what they start to do is they start to talk about the idea of creating a new kind of money a new kind of money. that doesn't depend on the money from capitalists. but instead is based on the american people now for a lot of people you're thinking who cares like she's talking about financial laws and i'm going to spare you samuel. paper from massachusetts, but it's going to really matter because for the next several months congress is going to decide what the government is. who should pay for it and how you were going to enable people to pay for it? so between december 30th and this suspension of species payments and july and into august of 1862. we're going to have a profound transformation of the american government who had answers to who pays for it and what it does. so, let me just go through what they do. and all of these things are being discussed at the same time. so what i did is i put them in the order in which they were signed into law. all of these first of all they're talking about the money and they're very concerned about the money. they're concerned about how you're going to move crops how you're going to get stuff into the ground. well, you can imagine look at russia now without money got yourself a big problem. so they're talking about things but one of the first things that actually gets signed into law is on december 16th congress pat. i'm sorry lincoln signs congress has passed the compensated emancipation activate 1862 which ends human enslavement in washington dc frees about three 3,000 individuals. it reimburses the people who had legally enslaved them and it offered those people money to emigrate then on march. i'm sorry then on the beginning of march they are they start to talk about new kinds of ways to raise money for the government and they introduce an incredibly important bell called hr312 and hr 312 is our first major tax bill in american history that's going to put a 3% tax on manufacturers it is going to create an internal revenue system to collect that tax not through the states but through the federal government and it's going to give us a graduated income tax not just an income tax which they invented in 1861 but a graduated income tax so that people would pay taxes according to their ability. as the senators who came up with that said the income tax is going to be 3% on incomes between $600 and 10,000 and 5% on incomes over $10,000 lincoln's gonna sign that on july 1st at the same time. they're talking about that they begin to talk about tariffs to protect manufacturers in order to get them to pay those three percent manufacturing taxes that they put on on a lot of products the tariff bill is going to cut the free list in half and it's going to set the rates at about 37% that's signed on july 14th. now while these things are being discussed there is the problem of the fact that if you are going to raise that kind of money you're going to get that kind of money out of the american people in order to back this newfangled currency. they're talking about in order to do that. you're also going to have to enable people to to make enough money to pay those income taxes and to pay the manufacturing taxes. so what they do first of all is on may 15th, they sign into law a department of agriculture, which sounds like who cares right the department of agriculture provides seeds to regular guys whose dads don't can't hand them seeds what they're saying is that you don't have to be the son of somebody important to be able to plant things so we get the the department of agriculture, which also gives people information about how to farm a newspaper at the time said this is the first important movement by congress looking directly to the interests of the man who cultivates the soil the balance of the government shifts then on may 15th of 1862 five days later we get the homestead act hr 125 as i said before sales of public lands had made up 8% of the government income at that point and there were a lot of people in the north who did not want to give that land away including some really crucial figures in the republican party and that's another longer. story, but horace greeley insists from the new york tribune insisted that this would be a good move. he said every smoke rising from a new opening in the wilderness marks the foundation of a new feeder to commerce and the revenue lincoln sunset into law on may 20th. and greeley says young men poor men widows resolved to have a home of your own and william pitt fezendin a senator from maine. he was famous for being tighter than the bark on a tree said i cannot say that the wiser course was not to make the most of our time. for no one knows how soon this country may again fall into a democratic slew. recognizing that the democrats would never let him do something like this. july 1st 1862 we get the land grant college act again funded as dr. green said by 3,000 acres of land according to phi state according to the number of senators and representatives you get 30,000 acres for each senate and representative which are then sold and put into a fund to fund the the colleges that again was an attempt to get education into the hands of people who otherwise would not have the ability to get it because their fathers didn't have the kind of money that the large and slavers did july 16th. we get the second confiscation act the second confiscation act explicitly says that all of the enslaved people covered by the second emancip a second concept sophistication act would be permanently freed and it forbade the military from returning escaped enslaved people, even if they came from states that still had legal slavery that of course set the stage for the a patient proclamation which lincoln is going to issue the preliminary emancipation proclamation on september 22nd of 1862. that is the groundwork for that is laid on july 16th. and when the democrats in the north go bonkers over the idea of freedom for enslaved people the cincinnati daily gazette, which is from which is from a state that is at that point running democratic says every laborer in the community adds to the aggregate wealth. this state needs every labor that has that has come into it or is likely to come because as it said every laboring man is worth more than his weight in gold to the country. so the 37 congress is going to be done with most of its business by july and of course we're going to get the preliminary emancipation proclamation in september and then in december in his annual first annual message lincoln is going to push further on the the legal tender act which set this whole thing up when he asks for national bank notes. so what i'm gonna argue here is that 1862 is crucially important because it sets up the on the grounds pressure between the old idea of an oligarchy in charge the country that does not an active government that works only for itself and on the other hand the new fledgling republican party, which has set all kinds of highfalutin things about how the government should work for ordinary people but now because of the financial crisis and the war it's got to do it and in the space of about seven months it creates our first active government that is designed to work for the american people in 1862 on lovejoy a republican representative at the time said that he had lived through a revolution in government and what he said is that they had decided that what is beneficial to the people cannot be detrimental to the government for in this country the interests of both our identical with us. the government is simply an agency through which the people act for their own benefit, so i want to take that then as a given and do a little slight of hand here and suggest then that perhaps buried within the publican project of equality is not only the problem of the racial inequalities that we've been talking about that were baked into it, but rather that within that very economic expansionist program that looked so good on paper. that within it itself is buried a dependence on both racial and economic hierarchies. thank you. i'd like to thank those who organize the panel the organization of american historians, especially my fellow panelists, and i'm reminded at this moment of an old country entertainer who used to say lord. i feel so unnecessary. but i'll try to say something useful. we have heard today and we know that 1862 marked a turning point on a number of issues. it was also a turning point in that it became clearer than ever before that the north and the south had gone to war over who would win the west. particularly the far west it also became clearer that abraham lincoln and his party intended to transform that area and the historians who loved to make comparisons or sympathize. yeah synthesize deceptively different. stories or study contradictions have a lot to work with. we've heard about the dakota uprising in minnesota which then was the west a reminder that regional spaces moved through time. multiple treaties had reduced the dakotas land as part of a decade's long policy of indian removal and mistreatment. bureau of indian affairs officials had failed in their treaty obligation to provide food to the dakota partly because of the civil war diverting resources mainly because of these officials corruption. eventually the dakota took matters into their own hands and fought battles against the union army there when the army triumphed it held brief trials, which despite their brevity were an improvement over the usual approach of having no trials at all. and sentence 303 dakota sue to die lincoln ordered the commander general john pope a radical republican favorite who was eager to get executions going to wait and to send the case files to washington where he assigned three interior department attorneys to examine them. he said to limit the executions to those who committed rape or killed women and children the army ended up hanging 38 dakota sioux the day after christmas 1862 thus as mentioned the largest mass execution in american history. but lincoln also ordered the largest mass commutation of death sentences in american history in the same action. as for the public reaction lincoln later mentioned to a congressman for minnesota and that his 1864 majority in the state was smaller than it had been in 1860 imagine that they're counting votes. the congressman replied that if he had executed all of them, he would have gotten more votes. lincoln responded i could not afford to hang men for votes. this is not the happiest part of the lincoln story by any means. it's a reminder of how unhappy the entire story was. the situation in minnesota exemplified much that was wrong with federal relations with native americans, but so did other events lincoln's administration largely abandoned indian territory modern-day, oklahoma in 1861 leaving cherokee leader, john ross no choice, but to cast cast his lot with the confederacy. he met with lincoln an effort to gain support in 1862, but lincoln and his advisors proved largely unsympathetic. in the same year lincoln agreed to enroll native american troops in the area. well before the historically more famous debate about african-american troops. he also had to resolve disputes there between military commanders a problem with which lincoln was intimately familiar in the war's eastern and western theaters and with which most scholars of the war intimately familiar as well, but perhaps not so much with farther west. indeed farther west in 1862 the battle of glorietta pass settled whether the confederacy would be able to keep moving west. the army the pacific had other things to do too including stopping native american raids on travelers, which resulted mainly from the lack of food provided by the bia. to help the utes the army gave them food on orders of general james carlton. who also responded to complaints from residents of western new mexico territory present-day, arizona that the apache endangered their mining industry. he told his lieutenant kit carson all indian men of that tribe are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them. carson subdued them and from there it was a short step for carlton to concentrate the danae at bosque redondo shortly. thereafter that became known as the long walk of the navajo again moving human beings to where the government thought. they could best be controlled like the trail of tears like the dakota like discussions of colonization of african americans. the same kind of response to perceived indigenous threats to prosperity and the desire for settler colonialism would play out at bear river in southern, idaho in colorado at sand creek and for most of the rest of the 19th century. but 1862 marked a culmination in other ways related to the civil war federal relations with the indigenous population and the west generally the union party is republicans at reconstituted themselves to attract pro-union democrats. had a partisans dream come true many of their opponents had left congress. they had room to maneuver and did they ever maneuver? and these acts have been mentioned already and all of these acts homestead moral land grant college pacific railroad creation of the agricultural bureau that later became the department of agriculture all shaped or reshaped the west they also fit into a longer pattern. two generations ago david potter put it well in the title of his chapter in the impending crisis on the kansas-nebraska act a railroad promotion and its sequel. eight years in considerable bloodshed later construction on that road began, but with each of these measures the union government proposed to change the character of western lands and settlement to import into the west broadly defined here as the land west of the mississippi river homesteaders more capable farmers institutions of higher education and a railroad. doing so required moving concentrating and/or controlling the native american population. historians correctly see that as an expansion of the federal government's scope and power just as the civil war and reconstruction proved to be but it also continued those early policies of movement concentration and control it also reflected lincoln's past present and possible future. he was a westerner. who lived west of the census designated center of the country his entire life until he left springfield for washington, dc? he was born. raised and lived in the west as a wagon as a republican. he looked to the west. on his last day. obviously, he didn't know it would be his last day even if steven spielberg did he talked of the west with mary lincoln. he talked to the west with skyler colfax the speaker of the house who was about to go west. he was indeed thinking of the west not in the way. he should have but perhaps in the only way he could have at the time. we all a lot to elliott west for his article the greater reconstruction to heather for west from appomattox. there's a growing list of wonderful scholarship on the west that i'll mention here partly for the benefit of k-12 teachers kevin waites west of slavery glenna matthews the golden state and the civil war meghan kate nelson's the three cornered war which was a finalist for the pulitzer. stephen canterwitz's pending work on ho-chunk citizenship a lot of people are now studying the west in the civil war era. and those who teach and study history can learn a lot from comparison what happened involving native americans in the west in 1862 takes into account attitudes about race government the westward movement and so much more that we see through a different lens when we compare it with the federal response to southern insurrection and enslavement and with what ensued the civil war and reconstruction reshaped the nation and the west and the west helped reshape the nation as it helped shape the civil war and reconstruction. thank you. so i really want to thank all our panelists for their remarks today, which i wasn't privy to earlier and i'm trying to think of a way in which i could pose the first question for discussion amongst them on very different topics. and the thing that struck me that sort of is a maybe a unifying thread not so much unifying but maybe a similar thread of all the presentations is that we are looking at histories of the civil war and reconstruction that are far more complex and nuance than what we have. being made to to digest for so far so long, right? we are going away from very simple narratives of the war and reconstruction just as we have done for american history as a whole and the i think the danger is to replace one simple narrative with another counter simple narrative that might actually allied certain emancipatory possibilities of the war activism at the grassroots to reshape the nation or even as heather mentioned certain ideas about state formation and democracy that were born in this period so that we can look at something like the legal tender act is not just a blunt instrument of finance capitalism, but also one that made credit widely available to to ordinary people. there's a reason why the labor party was the greenback labor. right at this point. so i think that is something that i would really like are participants here to talk about hillary with her notion of how to think about the more land grant act for what it does for hb usage but until today hbcus, sorry and also think about you know the ways in which we can the ways in which we can think about the enormous land robbery that it entails for native americans and future repair similarly with micah's comments. i was really struck by how much it reminded me a little bit of amy merle taylor's embattled freedom where she really does try to balance emancipatory narratives of these slave refugee camps with the more, you know, the the everyday histories of disease and death and having to combat all kinds of abuse including confederate invasions that could just destroy and kill people. so i'm and then again of course with link with michael green's remarks on lincoln, you know, did lincoln have a plan for the west what was his view of of the so-called indian question? you know, that is something that we need to to unpack as well even as we understand lincoln's role in emancipation as part of a very broad process that included enslaved people included congress radicals abolitionists and others and the union army. so so could you just talk about that a little bit especially, you know, we have the facts before us, but can we think of a way of telling more complex and nuanced histories without throwing the proverbial baby with the bath water? anyone grandma wants to go first. micah i have yeah, no. no. yeah she is on under i cannot michael. yeah. sorry. they're two greens that there's micah there's michael i it's important question. i mean i i tend to think. of the camps at least for in my work as sort of almost more destructive and generative and that's why i guess why the theme of the problem of trying to control populations of people is is something that i think we can use to if not connect histories that are different and maybe even use it as a lens for bringing into relief how his how histories can be are different and i think that i i suppose that would be sort of one one answered one way that would answer that question. i i yeah, i i tend to find that the camps is sort of more destructive than generative as as not i think if we can get a rid of or not get rid of but through a controversial sort of look past and through and beyond the jubilee. i think that we can see a lot of more. we can see more echoes. i guess between the destructiveness of the war for other groups of people and the fundamental destructiveness of what free people were subjected to during this period i think maybe the and it's and i'm not a i'm not someone who's against. emphasizing the important discontinuities of this period i do think that maybe there's something kind of. about the like jubilee nature of of the ordeal for free people that that keeps scholars and other interested people from seeing. the really punitive aspects of the camps and and i don't i don't think of. um, the violence happened within them something that sort of accidental or tragic but as you know in many cases part of you know certain and i and i refer to speed smith ryan particular, but you know there intentions the kind of pedagogical violence of you know, the cruelty is the point getting people to or sending messages to people to get them not to come by brutalizing them. so i'm sort of getting away from the central question, but i think that maybe we shouldn't shy away from those kinds of you know complexities? but it can be challenging because you don't want to lose sight of certain triumphs and discontinuities, but you know. i at least for my case. that's something that i try not to lose sight of myself. i probably follow up on that is one of the things i think about with this is the overlapping nature of how these policies affect that people of color. and it's not always neat or simple and one of the things i think about too these institutions still exist. and we like to talk about the civil war as bracketed and reconstruction and bracket as certain things as if those people okay lincoln said this is that this is here, but these institutions of high red so are here. and so we're still dealing with the ripple effects of these larger issues and those questions that never get are never resolved and for me one of the things think about with lincoln and his movement of the west and also the question about the public lands and the piggy bank of the heather talks about here. it's the piggyback of public lands that allows for some southern states to find black people's education instead of funding themselves through taxes. and they knew where that land came from they knew here. so the question becomes to me that as someone who worked at hbcu and i know there's some that are trying to grapple with that legacy. there is a lot to grapple with when you know that and land grab a university really put in there, but also went back to some of the stereotypants like oh, it's only the large white schools. it's only this it's only that and it was an erasure in many ways of native americans as victims, but also to oh, there's no african american involvement here. and i'm like, well, we have some hbcus here. so to remind people and not just to go back to these simple tropes of the simple narrative and i think sometimes nuanced here, but we're still dealing with that messiness and i think we can ask new questions of the past. well keeping the old one but pushing the questions that people didn't have access to this materials. and i think we can make arguments and more nuance. it doesn't mean it's completely radically changed, but now we have more data. we have more tools. we have more visualization, but we can then talk about other questions and the other thing i think about with this too, especially as institutions are going in and looking at their past with slavery instead of colonialism in the like institutions who are affected by this act are still they're still having those conversations those real conversations on those campuses. so i think it's for us to also provide the framing, but also the material to help them work through these issues and as historians and teachers who teach at these places. we have a role, too. and so i think this is where the more nuance but to think about overlapping oppressions overlapping things getting away from those simple. devastation advanced forgiveness and freedom and things like that and i think the more nuanced we can do the better. hillary what i was trying to do was to broaden what you were saying and suggest that americans really loved a government that worked for them. so long as people of color paid for it. yeah, pretty much. well, and i'll i'll echo all of that. i'll also say just sort of for teaching purposes. so i teach in las vegas and if you drive to southern california, there's a spot where they supposedly check for fruit. it goes back to let's say the mediterranean fruit fly and all the things that were worried about and i will ask students when you cross the border. do you suddenly stop being a nevada? do you suddenly check your ideas at the border? and of course you don't? and we can also look at the nuance in the overlap. we can also drill down a little more i think into what is going on in individual places. we think of that ayers work for example, which is incredible. and i think of a book by a western historian who wandered into the civil war and influenced me -- adelain who did a book on oregon country, oregon. yeah, oregon country politics. in the civil war and it's the joke was they called it the tribe of abraham? because he sent so many patronage appointees out there. and what did they do? but if we look at that state oregon as an example? they are in a big fight over land and taking it from native americans which they do. they also managed to supply by way of south carolina. originally john breckenrich's running mate in the 1860 election. the what is going on in that place in my place, nevada and trivia fans las vegas was never part of nevada territory. i can win money in a trivia contest on that one. the territorial governor was a william seward apparachic who called on this territorial legislature to allow african americans to testify in trials and serve in malicious and when the territorial legislature refused he attacked them. he was critical of them. this speaks well for him no question about that. but what is going on? what are the influences back and forth? so the nuance in the overlap? that my fellow green mentioned is indeed a big part of this story and i think we can find local ways to tell the story that also will help with the national and even transnational understanding of what's going on. that's great, you know thinking about how this this westward turn began virtually. i am thinking of stacey smith's book on california, which is just amazing and and the more recent book by benjamin radley on the other genocide of california native americans, and so you can see getting into the into that those local spaces into the west oregon is a bizarre place. it's so bloody pro slavery before the civil war. that is the wonder. it doesn't succeed enjoying the confederacy, but on that note, i'm going to just sort of open up the floor. i think all our panelists here have given us really an excellent answers and a lot to chew on and it would be wonderful if you would come up to the mic just to remind you that we are being filmed for a program on c-span, so it would be great if you ask your questions there any takeas. well, they've been so brilliant that they've silenced everyone so i would ask them. do you have questions of each other? maybe can i be a jerk here? yeah, am i allowed to talk about reconstruction? yes you are you are. oh look look niches like no. she's really not adalia you are. i mean, i wonder if when we talk about 1862 in the civil war a lot of the things that we're laying out are wartime issues. and the war ended and there was a moment and maybe a fairly long moment when those issues could have been addressed and instead and it was the man here to my left because i don't know my right for my left who really hammered home to me. the degree to which the same people in the west who were were saying all sorts of the right things back east we're saying, oh the 14th amendment doesn't apply to to mexicans. it doesn't apply to chinese. it doesn't apply to indigenous americans. and so i wonder to what degree the issues that we're identifying here in the in the war. are i'm so sorry reconstruction issues. but i mean you could say reconstruction begins in in 1860. so when they when they succeed that attempts to try to to at least that's the argued i would have been good and i would argue. um, so i traveled to anchorage alaska for the time this summer. and why are things i was reminded about was that the first we just we purchased alaska who's the first troops out there to settle that landis and protect us african american soldiers. they're coming from georgia. they're coming from alabama. they're coming from mississippi and one of the things in the very clever and grateful museum exhibit there about black lives matter in alaska from 1867 to the person. is that indigenous people preferred black soldiers as they actually listen to them they negotiated with them and they also mind is everything else like there. so if we're going west we also want to go that west but also too and looking at sewer and what he's doing and i think i liked what michael green said about lincoln's vision for the west. how much is some of these policies of 62 onward then get enacted during reconstruction. and that vision of the west side he had get in play. that's another thing i think is in there too. very interesting and i didn't think about lincoln in the west because i'm usually more east and more southern but it's something to think about and those reconstruction issues in there. well, i am suddenly feeling vindicated because in my oral exams for my doctor i was asked when reconstruction actually began. and i said, well really the war is an act of reconstruction. i got a really dirty look. but that said again, we can see the connections of southern west we can see. these people who? are reacting to events. are they proactive or reactive? and i'll be local one of the great stories about this the classic example the 15th amendment and heather referred to the 14th and does it apply to mexicans chinese other people of color in the west. the 15th amendments floor manager was a senator from nevada. william morris stewart who may have been the most corrupt senator in american history that's going away. and when it passed he wired the nevada legislature and said we were behind this we should pass this 15th amendment. and the response he got was does this mean the chinese can vote? no, don't worry. we're not gonna let them vote. oh, okay, then we'll pass it. well the next census showed about 2,000 chinese people in nevada and about 125 african americans. the issues may be similar, but the people involved can be different according to the area. and just hearing the other day that the hispanic population of boston where we are is now about 30% someone said and it may be less than that or maybe a little more but we are seeing this diversity today and maybe we can think of the diversity today. a little differently if we look at the diversity of yesterday and the unfortunate responses to some of that diversity. no, i think that's a really interesting point because there's a reason california refuses to ratify the food amendment right? and if you look at the congressional globe and you look at the debates, it's really interesting these republican senators from the west how democratic they sound and i would get confused. i had to actually look up sometimes there their party affiliations because i was like, does this person belong to the republican party because they're so adamant again certain parts of the republican agenda precisely for the reasons that you have mentioned, but have a question here. so go ahead. i think it's on you could just okay, it looks like a ton. hi. thank you for a wonderful round table. this is kind of a follow-up question to what you all are just discussing about the west and the 14th amendment. i want to bring us back maybe to the question of frameworks for teaching. i'm not just this moment in the civil war but teaching us history more broadly and i've heard some great ones about devastation and campment land grab. i think one of the huge challenges in teaching a narrative of us history is this question of frameworks that can bring in settler colonialism with the racism that african-americans have experienced and i find that it's so easy and crucial to use citizenship right as one of the frameworks, but then that is and huge tension with set alert colonialism. and so i wondered if maybe you could talk a little bit about. that or how you think about that in teaching? because this discussion right here to me is like you kind of see that tension at work. can i take a shot at that? yeah, that's exactly how i teach this period as citizenship who's in and who's out and it's really important to remember that in the west. what they do is they rely on the old slave codes of the early 1800s to say that unless you're free and white you can't be a citizen so that knocks out in their minds the chinese of course and they basically wiggle around indigenous americans and all sorts of people as well. so well that issue of who's welcome and who's not and of course that's going to take you into the 1870s and the minor be happy set decision the question of whether or not women are citizens and in 197 1875. the supreme court says that women are of course citizens, but citizenship doesn't necessarily mean the right to vote which means everybody is screwed. i'm allowed to say that because now you it doesn't make you know, you you everyone's you all you have to do is you have poll taxes and the eight box law and all those sorts of things. but but the reason i grab microphone is because i think one of the things that is so important about the 14th that we miss is and the 14th amendment is like i feel like i walk up to people in the grocery store and say let's talk about the 14th amendment because what the 14th amendment does the 13th and the 14th and the 15th the course of the first ones in the in the constitution that increased rather than decrease the power of the federal government and the 14th amendment is the one that says the federal government has a responsibility to make sure that everybody has the equal protection of the laws and the and the due process of the laws which we all kind of throw out like a good production. yeah, but what that means is that you can't have the kkk you can have states deciding how the people within them are going to live without us having basic rules of the quality before the law and equality of access to the judicial system and the in terms of teaching that becomes the key to everything we do because of course that's ignored until until the 1840s. i'm sorry wrong sentry 1940s, but once the supreme court starts to say that we're going to apply the first ten amendments of the constitution to the states the bill of rights to the states by using the 14th amendment. that's how we get our entire system of the americans of america the civil rights protections the the right gideon vain right the right to to be represented in court business regulation labor laws, all of that comes from the federal government saying no, you can't screw around the citizens in the states and and people don't understand that nowadays. they're like, oh well, let the states do whatever they want. and and this is why i stopped people in the grocery store to talk about the 14th amendment. have all that in that i do a course where the theme is freedom. and the questions are free to and freedom from and that's a framework i think for looking at a lot of different things. i think it's also interesting john marshall tried to incorporate. the bill of rights as early as the 1830s. and couldn't pull it off. so these are debates that have gone on. from the beginning and yeah, we're still having them obviously and that's why. people run from me in the grocery store. i'll use citizenship. really? i'm using look at marginalized. community to belong in because people couldn't be belong to a area but not seen a citizen of the state. so but their notions will be logging and feeling attached to a place and leads to activism to include had the state include them. so i usually try to do that but usually citizenship belong in and i always my students read enough constitutional amendments and also supreme court decisions more so that our classes in here too because i think those are also flash points are understanding how these debates were never fixed and that idea that's that constant negotiation back and forth, but it allows for some communities who really are not citizens. by the law and other things to still advocate instance because they believe themselves to belong and to be of the nation of the state and their sense of belonging affects their attitudes and beliefs and what they do rather than just the top down. so trying to get that other sense, especially when you're dispossessed from the state. i think that's a great point hilary because there is a you know that we've had a previous discussion here between citizenship and sovereignty for native americans, but i think that might be also a simple dichotomy because native americans negotiating citizenship and belonging, you know since the founding of the nation in in various ways, but micah i was wondering to you do you want to jump in here or should we go into the other question? yes. no. yeah. i think i'm sorry. i had some trouble hearing some of the other points if i'm repeating anything. i'm apologize. there are a number of ways. i think you could shake up this or citizenship versus cellar colonies bionary. i think if you maybe teach with i don't know questions of materiality or labor and power in mind that might shake some things up. i think if you send her the i mean one thing i i found to be really in teaching is trying to tell or illustrate demands problems and struggles through individual stories. i use and really rely on the freedmen and southern society project the lambs for instance. there are letters from people who were imprisoned and fort snelling that have been published as well. and i think if you know, maybe if if you're looking for maybe a like an overarching framework or something and if you might not have one, i think that even just teaching things side by side and encouraging your students to try and forge maybe their own connections between first person accounts i found that to be really sort of proofful in my own experience. so i think that that would be sort of one tactic. i used just trying to shake up. the binaries that we tend to fall in. yeah, that's a great point because citizenship can be enacted in so many ways beyond the law and beyond politics, right? yeah, so we have two questions here and i think we have enough time to take you. so please go ahead. hi. i'm ray arceneaux and university of south, florida. and this discussion has been fascinating and it reminded me experience i had over 20 years running a graduate program called florida studies. really, of course a program on regionalism. we had to figure out what on earth florida studies were we got a grant to do it and then we were worked it out 20 years, but i would do the introductory graduate course on regionalism and i think originally i set it up with a lot of c-van woodward and burden of southern history and i had a petition nelson limericks legacy of conquests. and i think initially i i thought of it as well. i'm going to show how different the south and the west are to these students and of course in a sense, it's sort of backfired it became clear early on the students figured it out. i think maybe before i did that what we were really talking about in all this discussion on the modern west was the burden of western history. that it's and and over the years. we sort of explored that notion. of course, florida being kind of a frontier state for much of its history kind of bridges the two two traditions, but i i just think i learned a lot in trying to apply that notion of the burden of course patty limerick actually had gotten that from woodward she mentions in her introduction briefly about the burden of western history, so it's not original by my students or by me, but but i think it was really really informative enlightening to try to do that and to get the sense that in some ways the the burden of western history is almost more fundamental than the burden of southern. a sense that may not have the same historical consciousness in the parts of whites in the west and his whites in the south but a lot of the same things are going on. i just kept thinking that when you were when you were talking. degree, but i think heather has something to say about the unholy alliance between the south and the west. well, actually, i'd like to say something different about that and that one of the things that really impresses me about about economic studies right now is the people are playing around with the they're playing around more with the economic and political importance of it. i cared more about the social when i was starting to look into it both the south and the west are shaped by extractive economies. and so if you look at that, and of course, that's where the studies of capitalism came out of but if you look at that and at the studies right now that are coming out of the russian economy and what happens when you start to pull pieces out of it like a jango like a jenga system fiona hills fabulous on this. i think there's a lot of work to be done on figuring out how economic systems create sort of tornadoes around themselves that reproduce historically because of the the social patterns the economic patterns and the political patterns that are laid down by them. so i don't think it's in it's i don't think it's an error that the west and the south looks so much alike in the in the 1890s and that and right through the and perhaps the present. yeah, that was calhoun's dream. right ally the south of the west and then we'll defeat the north. right? go ahead. i'm laura burnett, and i'm an independent scholar and i'm not texting. i was really intrigued by micah's invocation of the idea of camps and something heather said about the 14th amendment and those things clicked together in my mind through a reminder of the lyrics to the battle hymn of the republic where the second verse i think says i have seen him god in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps talking about, you know, kind of the righteous mission of the incampment of civil war soldiers, but i wondered if maybe micah and heather. could speak to from different sides the encampment as a space of people who are excluded by virtue, you know you either you're either in the camp which we often use as a term a slang term to me and you're one of us, but in this case to be in an encampment as mike was using is to be removed from the larger society and we have this long history of encampments from from if you know forced relocation to reservations to the encampments of the newly self-emancipated to japanese internment camps. to perhaps you could even think of migrant labor camps. as places where people are physically removed in a way maybe just symbolically from the jurisdiction of the state as citizens because the 14th amendment guarantees, you know citizenship to you know, the the same rights. that you have as a us citizen you have in a state where you reside and the states must protect the rights of anyone under their jurisdiction. how does an encampment? of people outside maybe not the jurisdiction, but the sensit belonging to a state. i wondered if you could address that. no, thanks so much for that question and it reflects so much of what? the challenges i've been sort of facing in writing about this and trying to think about camps more expansively. even you know, what this history can maybe tell us or about you know, the other examples you mentioned in terms of you know, japanese internment and other things i i still think of it kind of narrowly in terms of own work, but i i think that's that's kind of the you know being removed from this. being removed from i was trying to you said being removed from the state versus. um, it's the person still there. i'm sorry. i wanted to ask. que paso she still you can see no. oh, yeah. okay. so no. i only i only see it, but i guess i can sort of god i'm talking about, you know, but the camps especially in this kind of like, mississippi river world in this westward region and especially in the sort of islands in the mississippi river case like lately. i've been trying to think about how they served such a tremendous obstacle for free women in particular for instance to in in this period where migrating into memphis for instance and being targeted by yeah figures who are you know, they're to eat them. so to speak like johnny, but who you know our riding about them and sort of this the possibility of their begin this demoralizing force for union soldiers and you know all of the implications about sex work or sexual assault that are sort of couched in that kind of polite. they have putting it. there were projects in. that have moving and getting i think the words that he's in the letter. i'm thinking never, you know, getting getting all of them out of town and if even though this figure of eaten it is someone who's there to aid them you sort of see how his vision or his expectations of you know converting the freed people into these neatly-dressed self-sacrificing tillers of soil are colliding with freedom women's own goals and objectives of for instance coming into the city's living memphis and working on. and working according to their own terms. and so i see the thing. that's kind of challenging about the camps and you know should return to the question of citizenship is that the camps have, you know previously kind of been written about as places where free people worked for citizenship and i think that when we think about the camps, especially in the context of the role they played in the lower valley in terms of free people strategies of not being sort of booted from them and tied down to you know, the plantations and the sort of, you know, infamous leasing system. i think that. you know there there's free people strategies of to go back to the who's out who's in question. it we need we mustn't lose sight of the demands and different definitions and articulations of freedom. that people are trying to defend within these very volatile and violent, especially in the western trans, mississippi theater camp contacts. and i don't know if that you know answers. it's kind of strange because it's both. it's the the camps are both functioning it depending on where you look as ways to. not to move people out of the way so to speak but also as a as a sort of mechanism or technology for gaining information about them trying to you know, understand, you know if they would work or if you look at the american freedom of angry commission papers and the survey questions that we're going out about free people and sort of weird fascination with a lot of people there's a kind of knowledge production element that some of these places have it's it's a true challenge right amount because of how rapidly they change and the different purposes that and they serve depending on what region you're looking at. so there's both a pulling away and a an attempt to pull in and look at that. i'm still trying to um clarify in my work. i think the question that remains to be answered is really what were if it can even be really understood or articulated, what were the major legacies of? what people endured in these at least crucibles? he's really concentrated sites of? violence and destruction yeah, thanks margaret that you want to have the last word here. sorry. if anyone at hillary, go ahead. no one of the things i was thinking about when you talk about encampments and exclusion those hpc use are sites are exclusion. they're not being educate within the regular population. they are put out somewhere and when you think about where they're located at the edge of towns at the edge of there, so it's also another policy of exclusion. so, how do you talk about these sites as insights of empowerment and without the surveillance, but at the same time a sense that they don't also belong in terms of education and as you need the second moral act and make sure they're black students are getting included. so i think there's a lot of things in there about who belongs around questions about whiteness. and morris and and who's there but black people and people of color not include in that calculus. so it's still another exclusionary practice. i'll just say it quick. and then defer there were at least three japanese american relocation centers in world war two located on native american reservations. and you think about exclusion it sort of a double exclusion. right there. go ahead. i was just gonna respond to something that dr. connor said and that is there was a really important word there and was freed women. and i would just like to suggest that since i know you're interested in the intellectual idea behind the camps and what georg howe was doing with you know, i have seen them in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps. they have builded him an altar in the evening do's and damps it's it's a call to mythology and there's a huge difference between those. military encampments of men who are supposed to go out and be heroic and and protect the women folk? and the camps that are made up of communities that include women folk who mythologically should not be in camps. so even though they're both camps and they're both exclusionary and they're both outside and there's all the things going on in the chaos. i think the gendered component of that actually really matters at least. mythologically. they're supposed to be home not being supervised by the state and instead they are themselves in the camps. so i'm afraid, you know, we could continue this conversation for a very long time, but we have in fact run out of time and i like the fact that we ended on the on this note because if you think of, you know migrant detention centers today refugees and migrant peoples and that that's an ongoing, you know an issue for us to address so and notions of national citizenship and who belongs there does not so i like the fact that at least moved from talking about contraband camps as slave refugee camps, but but maybe you know in the future we are going to have more work done on this that'll really connect the past to the present. so, thank you so much for for being with us today. and thank you a round of applause to all our wonderful panelists who who really really thoughtful and megan kate nelsoa writer and historian living in lincoln, massachusetts. she has written about civil war us western history and american culture for the new york times the washington post smithsonian magazine preservation magazine and civil war monitor nelson earned her va