Transcripts For CSPAN3 African Americans And The Civil War 20150510

Historian Darrell Scott talks about the evolution of how africanamericans viewed the civil war. He describes differences between generations and how the Civil Rights Movement impacted how africanamericans think of the war and its legacy. This hourlong program took place at the hill center at the Old Naval Hospital in washington dc. I would like to welcome you again to the celebration. We have two wonderful scholars here. Serving as our moderator this evening is joni appelbaum. He is a Senior Editor at the atlantic where he oversees the he will moderate this conversation with dr. Darrell scott. Stanford university and apollo Alto California and palo Alto California. He began his teaching career at Columbia University and left their in 2000 to Service Director of africanamerican studies at the university of florida. Since 2003, scott has been the professor and president for the association and study of American History. Served in the board since 2003. It is the oldest black scholarly and international intellectual society in the world. Please welcome my guests. [applause] is great to have on young on audience like this. The inspiration for the event comes from an article a colleague of mine wrote in 2011 at the start of the centennial of the civil war. There was a question posed in the atlantic that owes its inception to the complex of the 1850s, that was a leading exponent of the american idea and thought of as the cause of freedom and gradually to a more expensive view of that through the civil war. One of my favorite covers still hangs on the wall, which we published and put out there in 1863. We have been returning to the topic of the civil war fort 150 years in different ways. At the centennial year we wanted to pose a journey he had taken a left turn well pursuing other topics and delved into the literature and was astounded by things he found. Despite his upbringing and remarkable flow of what culture and scholarship he felt he had not been fully exposed or fully appreciated. He started visiting Civil War Battlefields. Of being there with his son. That gave him pause. He thought about why so few seem to be asking battlefields on why they were increasingly knowledge but largely written out of the narrative that he encountered on these two wars, at these sites. He posted more bluntly than was paraphrased as, why dont blacks study the civil war. We provide headlines that grossly oversimplify the subtle nuances. Yet at the same time, it captured something. There is an element of truth behind the question. So if i can, that is where i will start. Why dont blacks study the civil war and has that always been the case . Dr. Scott i want to step back a little further from that. When we ask who studies the civil war, if we ask it that way, you will come up with an answer that says there are some people who study wars, who study the civil war, and there are a lot of scholars who study the civil war. There are relatively few yankees who study the civil war. There are very few professional historians who study the civil war. So if you put the question differently, the first answer you will come up with this southerners study the civil war. And you might say, well, why . Why no one else . And then when you ask the question about if this is about battlefields, then you say if that is the only way people study or commemorate the civil war. So you get into the question of, well, who goes to battlefields . Then you get back to the people who are most interested in the civil war, to understand battles or to see where they lost a loved one. But it gets you back to where you started, right. They get you back to the question of, wait a minute there were over 200,000 people of african descent who were involved in the civil war, roughly 180,000 people of african ascent who were fighting the ground war. There is roughly 40,000 people of african descent who died in that war. So why dont they go . Why dont their descendents go . So its getting a better understanding of who had, if you will, skin in the game. So the people with skin in the game who dont go, interestingly enough, are winners. The people who won the civil war dont go to the battlefields. Now, how do you know this . One of the ways i know this is you are hardpressed to find a yankee in america today. And i dont mean someone who lives in the north. I mean a self identified yankee. Every year when i worked in new york at columbia, i would ask a question to every class, every class. How many yankees in the room . Columbia, new york city. One or two people out of roughly 100 would raise their hand. Mr. Appelbaum and they were probably baseball fans. [laughter] dr. Scott i would ask who are southerners, and five people would raise their hand. And some of those would be black people. There was just no shortage of southerners when you ask that question. They are everywhere. And they are self identified. And even the black ones in the room will say they are southerners. Even though some of the white southerners will say they are not. Ok . And so we have a sense of memory that is running along the line of who got whipped very bad. And i just have to put it like that. It really gets back to the statement of southerners will relive this event, ok, and its not even over for a lot of them. But i can be exaggerated, too. Mr. Appelbaum we often hear that the history is written by the victors but the historical memory of the civil war is largely continuing to live with the southerners who lived with the legacy, who did not move on to other conflicts, other issues, but continue to have their lives shaped by the legacy and the fallout of the civil war. Turning back to the other question that i posed, has it always been like this . If the present memory of the civil war is largely dominated by members of the american south, by the aficionados of military history, was there a time when that was not the case . Dr. Scott there was a time, and its interesting how people construct the central event in their history, ok. And for most of African American history, since the civil war the civil war was the central event. It was the central event. And the short answer is it was the central event until the Civil Rights Movement. Ok . So there is this long history of africanamericans being almost upset with the civil war. And almost upset with history. I want to make a general statement that says in america there are two keepers of history. There are southerners and there are people of african descent. And history seems to mean the most to both of these groups. And of course, i dont want to get into how people become southerners. That is related to the Civil Rights Movement. But southerners were pretty much in ethnic identity group, or on the path to being one, because of the civil war. Africans were nonamericans with the civil war began, ok. And we are about to start to have a history that talks about a long civil war, get repaired for this. That it does not end in 1865. That is where we are going to go, and i have been trying to go there for 20 years. Other people are now ready to go there. So this history for us begins as people who were slaves, and emancipation and the destruction of slavery, that is a central event for most of African American history. Immediately after the war, black people start commemorating the war. Memorial day really begins in 1865, when blacks in charleston basically took over a prisoner of war camp and properly buried the dead on may 1, 1865. That is the first celebration of memorial day that we know of. And then three years later, the yankee government in d. C. Start celebrating memorial day. And for most of the time, until the end of world war i, there are separate southern and northern memorial day is. Well, why not . There were separate armies and there is sectional tensions, but africanamerican celebrated that day. Africanamericans also, at this point still africans, started celebrating lincolns birthday. Now, lincoln, of course, is assassinated. And from right in the 1860s, late 1860s, the celebration starts. February 12 becomes a day of celebration. In honor of lincoln. And the grand army of the republic war generally start celebrating lincolns birthday. So africanamericans are celebrating lincolns birthday from 1866 or so, all the way until 1926. And that is when the shift takes place, and its related to my association. Because in 1926, negro history week starts. Negro history week is an effort by woodson to coopt two birthdays, lincolns birthday and Frederick Douglass birthday, because black people also celebrated Frederick Douglass birthday. Everything is centered on the struggle against slavery. So what woodson was trying to do was celebrate a people rather than two individuals. But carter g. Woodson becomes an historian because of the civil war. He becomes a historian because he works in a coal mine in West Virginia with a lot of civil war veterans. And he cuts his teeth on history talking to those veterans, and he learns from them that black people had played a Critical Role in their own emancipation. Mr. Appelbaum let me interrupt you there, because i think that is an interesting point. I never met a civil war veteran, although i understand there are still a couple people in the south drawing Veterans Benefits on the basis of marriage. No, there are a couple of pensions being paid out to widows of war veterans. Dr. Scott wow. Mr. Appelbaum which is kind of astonishing. But nobody ever took me on their knee and told me about their services in the civil war. I can recall a memorial day parade where i pulled over afterwards, a reenactor, he said he was a member of the 54th massachusetts regiment, talking about why he made the choice to do that. And for him, it came in part because his father had served in the first world war. This was an older gentleman, and so this was a way of connecting back to the heritage of american service. Is it partially a generational shift, as this generation of fighters who where the union blue and take up arms for their own emancipation and the emancipation of their people, as that generation passes off the stage, is there an immediacy of memory that is lost . Dr. Scott i would say to some extent that has to be at. Another part relates to what you are saying, you start getting the wars. By the time you get memorial day, really, the united memorial day, you also had the spanishamerican war, right. And once you get that war, you have Something Else to memorialize. Ok . So memorial day itself gets to be convoluted, if you will. It has competing parties involved. Then after world war i, ok, you get the consolidated memorial day, and it really has to do as much with world war i, the great war. And so the great war sucks up a lot of oxygen. The number of civil war veterans in general is declining in numbers. They are still around, so i think there is a little of that, too, but here is the rest of the story. Lincoln Day Celebrations, to this very day, lincoln Day Celebrations still can be found on the internet by local black communities. Ok . They still exist. And along these lines, lincoln Day Celebrations, to show you how important this is, the Negro National anthem is written by James Weldon Johnson and his brother at the turn of the 20th century, and that was a lincoln Day Celebration song. It was created, it was written for the purpose of the lincoln Day Celebration. So lincoln Day Celebrations remain even when negro history week, so long. There is a rough way of thinking about it. As long as there were people who self identified as negro, the civil war is a big deal. The civil war was always a big deal to negroes. To black people, not so much. So what we are talking about is the great shift in africanamerican culture, a reorientation of black life, a consideration of something to be as important, nay, more important than the civil war and that is the new freedom struggle. The new freedom struggle. Mr. Appelbaum let me interrupt. That is a linguistic shift, to use a favorite academic term construction, deconstruction of identity, the way the community defines itself is muted in the path going forward, and youre getting that through the civil rights era. Dr. Scott exactly. We talk about minorities coming to america in 1914, 1915. There is a cultural watershed that takes place in the early 1960s. You all of a sudden know that you are in a different world ok. My mother was a negro. Im black. My grandfather was a negro, of course. Im black. Ok . And there were things when i was growing up that people would say in protest, they are angry. I was a chicago boy. A guy would come on the radio and say after some outrageous incident of racism in chicago, he would point out on his radio show, he would and his show every day saying, its enough to make a negro turn black. That was lou palmer. But it speaks to this generational shift. And you could even see it in our association. Proud american day is how we had, in 1961, in our associations history. And then there is the picture of lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and woodson on our posters, ok. So the negroes were in charge of our association. And the young folks who were coming in, trying to change that association this was taking place in all kinds of black organizations, with people who were self identified black. And negroes would go slow. Negroes loved lincoln. Now, lerone bennett, a historian, chicago boy, member of our association, i cut my teeth reading his books when i was a kid. He has written some provocative books on lincoln. The first paper i ever wrote in my life, i cribbed it from him and it was entitled, abraham lincoln, white supremacist. And he has become an historian because in the segregated south of mississippi, he was allowed into the bookstore before hours or afterhours and he learned from southerners from some book about lincoln that lincoln was a white supremacist. Ok . And that made him an historian. Because when you learn something that challenges how you see the world, you want to know more. My reading that shook me. I read his version of this and wow, it blew me away. I think i was nine, or tenyearsold. I think its pretty much why im an historian to day. I thought lincoln was a good guy. Lincoln was a white supremacist. Again, i must have plagiarized because my first paper was abraham lincoln, white supremacist. And we were black and lincoln was a white supremacist, and black people saw him that way. We did not hem and haw. Negroes hemmed and hawed about abraham lincoln. Abraham lincoln did the best he could. He was on the path. The on the path argument. When you like them, they are coming around. When you dont like them, they are not coming around. So black folks reinterpreted lincoln, they reinterpreted the civil war, they reinterpreted everything, and that major interpretation was really Something Else. It was about we are going to rediscover black peoples fight for freedom, fight for equality. And protest becomes the central piece of African American history. The theme changes. Mr. Appelbaum so the scene shifts to protests, reflecting what is happening on the ground. There is an understanding of the past, which helps us, gives us the tools to grapple with the present. But you can also go back to the civil war era and find the 55th massachusetts demanding equal pay, equal rights. There is a protest tradition that roots itself. Dr. Scott and thats what well talk about. Mr. Appelbaum excellent. So there is a way to do it, but its not the way its done. And thats an interesting shift because instead of redefining the civil war not just as mr. Lincolns war but as a war of a few hundred thousand black men under arms, marching on White Supremacists in the south, it gets redefined as tangential to the story of black empowerment. How did that happen . Dr. Scott but theres another problem, ok. The same movement that brought you protests brought you the first critique by africanamericans of american society. Which some too quickly would call antiamerican, ok. So negroes loved america. Negroes identified with america. Phyllis wheatley, we love her. Negroes love christopher attics. We love these people. Black people dont love these folks the same way. They dont even love the people who love white people that much. If you get me. So it becomes a new generation of intellectuals, they become, to a large degree, against militarism. Or if they are for militarism, they are for revolution, ok. Four years ago, when we had our first celebration of the sesquicentennial, we took on the theme, africanamericans in the civil war. And this gets us to the divide in the black community between the intellectuals and the rankandfile. Used to be there was not much of a difference between our intellectuals and rankandfile. We talked about this problem existing among white folks. The white intelligentsia had no connection with the rankandfile. There has always been a class divide like this. But we are talking about an intellectual divide now. So the people in the academy they were not so hot over that theme. They tolerated that theme. Some people, however, who were academics do not even come to the conference because of the militarism suggested. You cannot suit up for the civil war . And some people told me, no, ok. Some people would run the hard argument that was still the army of White Supremacists. I hear those arguments. So black people, black people can get freedom out of this and they are still fighting for what supremacy . There are some hardliners and will say that is what they were fighting for. I say, really . But thats how some people see it. I have never im from fairly humble roots, a lot of these people are, too, but where i come from, and im a vet, too but in general most africanamericans i know see that as a good war. They may not know as much about that war, but if you tell them you got your freedom from that one, they like that war. So even when people are largely ignorant about the civil war its not hard to get them involved. Now, our members by and large are not ignorant of history. They know a lot about history, whether they are academics or not. They came to that meeting in droves. They came in larger numbers than academics that year. So the rankandfile black community sees a lot more in the civil war than the intellectuals, and particularly this scholars, do, and this accounts for the relative dearth of books in africanAmerican History on the war itself is that we are not great students of war. We had the centennial of world war i. I only know two scholars writing major books or have recently written a major book on world war i. So we have this were problem of, ok, and if you say to people well, war, they will say negroes wrote books that say that it changed black society, and progressives know better. Now, of course, that is the beginning of a good historical debate. There is no problem with that. But as a generation of scholars, the folks since the rise of black scholars as black scholars as opposed to negro scholars dont write about wars. Africanamericans had a black historians, and virtually all africanamericans were slaves. That makes us a very interesting people, right. That we thought our struggle, we always thought our struggle to be of some importance, and we always thought our history to be important. So we produced historians. So i do the civil war comes George Washington williams, who writes the history of the black participation in the war. Then there is joseph wilson, who writes about the war. And then you have more historians, with the historians because of the war. So of that generation, at this point, no collegeeducated people excuse me, phds writing books about the civil war, and benjamin quarrel comes much later. But those people who write about that war, they will write about the American Revolution in the negroes part, but you dont have the black historians doing that. It really talks about the watershed that takes place with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and, more broadly, the black Freedom Movement which would include black power. And perhaps the most telling part of this is the black Power Movement. Mr. Appelbaum there are two things intersecting one is historians of all stripes looking at more social and cultural approaches interested in stressing various kinds of social movement, and in that way, the africanamericans working on this come to resemble the broader academy. Dr. Scott i knew you were going there, and perhaps you should, even though a lot of people i know would not necessarily like that formulation, but we are recruited by somebody. We are recruited into the academy of black scholars at predominately white institutions, and so surprise, surprise, no matter how different we see ourselves, we have a lot more in common with the people who recruited us than we sometimes care to admit right . The truly radical scholar who is not in the academy will say finally someone admits it. I will admit this kind of thing. What we see in the academy in the last years is the rise of scholars in general who have less use for the study of war as and the kind of there is a decided effort not to appear as to a be the handmaiden of american nationalism. Mr. Appelbaum and there is another part of it because it only extends so far. Theres also a shift within the Africanamerican Community starting to talk about the black Power Movement and how that intersects with it. How does it intersect . The black Power Movement comes along. We move through the Civil Rights Movement away from emancipation being the founding moment, more toward establishing the roots of protest, continuing the struggle, and now we have arrived in the 1970s. Dr. Scott it changes since the 1970s, but here is Something Else it is something afoot with the mainstream. Even though we have a generation of scholars, who left or right will tend to downplay war, tend to be critical and see themselves as having a mission of critiquing it, we have also had that same generation producing a group of people who studied the president s and great people, and they have not been as critical as one might have thought. People dont write very critical in the mainstream academies very critical biographies of lincoln. They dont. Some people who you know personally and extraordinarily well become great defenders of lincoln. Theres a way in which there has been a telling of the civil war and reconstruction from a kind of postcold war perspective that is finally getting there. Im saying the cold war era, finally, we are getting past it. What this has meant in southern history you could not call a southerner a White Nationalist because that is like calling them a nazi, and no one is going to let them let you go there in southern history, and ive been there because im writing about White Nationalism in the south. Southern scholars did not to hear that after they came out of world war ii, all the way through korea. You have this tendency of northern scholars to do a certain thing with reconstruction in which they would tell the history of reconstruction as good guy bad guy stories, and they identify too much with the state. Even though they are good, solid leftists, suddenly the reconstruction state is the good state, so they will accept the terms of discussion as it comes out of congress. They will accept lincoln as a hero. As one southern white progressive activist told me lincoln is the biggest nationalist america has ever seen, but you would not know this by reading the new left historians who write about lincoln. There is a tendency in the mainstream that when it comes to writing about the civil war and reconstruction, that reconstruction had a hole in it, and black people in general ignored it. Im getting the sense lately that theres a new generation that is post all that, coming along who are willing to go the full distance and say theres a lot will say the south is fundamentally different. The south is not liberal at all, no stretch of the imagination. The attempt to make it liberal failed, and that was called reconstruction. I think this is going to have an impact on black history. Mr. Appelbaum we think about the civil war as a topic. When not just going from sumter to appomattox, but what youre describing is a displacement of the civil war. Theres a foundational narrative that says black history in this country starts at appomattox and moves forward, displaced by a narrative thats more inclined to look towards selma, less inclined to look towards the Freedmens Bureau dr. Scott its even worse than that. The antinationalism the antiamerican nationalism in the academy runs so deep at this point that there are people who want to if they had their druthers, there would be no such thing as national history. Nothing called an american story, a United States story ok . Some of these people would talk about diasporas of different sorts, right . And this is what comes into black studies. They want to bring haiti in. They will bring the haitian revolution in. Mr. Appelbaum whenever you bring to it of historians together, they end up talking about what other historians are doing. I want to talk about the broader, popular understanding. There is clearly something gained from redefining a communitys identity in a struggle for civil rights, in a protest movement, in a movement led by black leaders that achieves remarkable gains. What is lost as the focus moves away from the civil war, if there is something lost . Dr. Scott theres a whole lot lost. One of the problems we all have in American History as time goes by is that everything gets condensed. My best example is there are a lot of textbooks now that do not even explain what sharecropping was. I have met professors of history who could not define sharecroppers to save their careers because that is how much you can condense history, ok . You get a tendency when everything becomes protests, when everything becomes a usable path, there comes this tendency to make everything fit the needs of the moment. So then slavery never ends. People find this very attractive to say, you get a new slavery that follows slavery. Convict lease follows that. The convict lease system, which ensnares several thousand black people at one time 9 million black people gets seen as a major institution. So major that you can talk about black people being unfree as a consequence. That plus sharecropping, without an understanding that sharecropping and we know this. This is the problem we know that sharecropping may be a system that cheats people back into slavery, but they can move. In other words, they have geographical mobility, and they can get away from where they are in one season to the next, and this geographical mobility would suggest that this whole notion is not as real as the argument suggests. The sheer movement of people and we know it. You make everything slavery. In other words, when you make everything slavery, and youll obliterate the north and south of it all to get your protest motif going, and you have no north, you have no south, you obliterate time, what do you have . You have a big void of slavery until you get to the Civil Rights Movement. As you know, this is exaggeration. Mr. Appelbaum what you are to do is frame a struggle. If you focus on emancipation you focus on the gains as opposed to the distance that has yet to be traveled, and to the extent that you flatten it out and move the continuing injustices to waste the system replicates itself dr. Scott we are still slaves. Mr. Appelbaum and the utility of this as a protest. Thats the utility. Whats lost dr. Scott oh, my god, whats lost . As i posted on this book today i know my grandmother because of emancipation. I knew her because of emancipation. No one will ever talk me out of the existence of emancipation. You cannot talk me out of it. I know what chattel slavery was. Therefore, i know what emancipation meant. I go the distance with it when i tell you that segregation did not destroy families. Slavery chattel slavery did, ok . Convict lease did not destroy my family. It might have killed me, but it did not destroy my family, and i really mean it that way. The number of people who got into convict lease was such that you stood a high probability of not getting out of convict lease system alive. The only reason it is not that important for this purpose im making is it is just not the numbers. The 9 million africanamericans most of them in the south only a dozen thousand or so at one time. The point im making is that its not a big enough institution to destroy families, ok . Even if it is true, even if it is widespread, its not destroying families. Mr. Appelbaum you lose sight of the enormity of slavery. Dr. Scott you lose sight of the destructive nature of black life, and we do not have to go to the arguments appropriate family session you lose sight. Just the mere fact that if you will born a slave, if you come up in slavery, the chances that you are going to have your family intact where you will know your grandmother are slim. They are very slim. To know your greatgrandmother there are all kind of problems with that date but for all kind of reasons, but the idea that they will be intergenerational that these things did exist, but so many times, people would not know their family. This is what roots was all about. Roots comes in the 1970s, and it starts this well, the genealogy Movement Starts before this, but africanamericans take up genealogy and family reunions like wildfire, and they are going to find their family trees. This is the thing about the dna test. How do i find out who i am . This is something that you can trace this once you get to freedom. Tracing it before emancipation is the problem, ok . There is the most fundamental thing that comes with emancipation. Of course, i need not say the right of mobility, the way Frederick Douglass would talk about it, is that the right to locomotion, to come and go as you please. If debt peonage is right, you have lost your ability to come and go, but we know better. We have very good studies that no one has ever refuted that africanamericans could from season to season leave from one plantation to another, on one county to another, and of course, if nothing else, we know we have major migrations that take place, including what we call the socalled great movement. So we lose that. Mr. Appelbaum this is what is lost in the Africanamerican Community by flattening out the past. We started off by saying here we are in the fiscal year. You can start with observations of the civil war anniversaries. You can attend these events, but i dont think theres any question that the sesquicentennial has not been the kind of public, National Civic commemoration the centennial was, much less the 50th anniversary. Part of that is just the passage of time, that the 50th, you find civil war veterans back on the battlefield. At the hundredth, you find people who grew up at the knees of civil war veterans, marking a new struggle for civil rights, a reinvention of the past. Here we are at the sesquicentennial. Its not just, as you pointed out at the beginning, the Africanamerican Community that no longer pays quite the same degree of attention to the civil war. There are americans who remain deeply engaged in civil war history, as i think all of you demonstrate by giving up your evening to spend with us. And yet, theres probably something lost for americans more broadly in the move of our attention off of the civil war. So what have we as a nation missed out on these last four years . What could we have been paying attention to, and how can we define ourselves in relation to the civil war . Dr. Scott some would argue that we missed the civil war by not commemorating national eb civil war. As you probably know, the centennial of the civil war did not go that well. When the United States congress put together a centennial, a National Centennial committee to celebrate the civil war and they had a full slate of events the problem is that it ran right smack into the most divisive regional problem that there was in 100 years, and that was called the Civil Rights Movement, ok . The Civil Rights Movement basically derailed the centennial, ok . A professor at the university of richmond has written an article in which he talks about the early events with drop 35 thousand participants, but by the time they got to the last event, there were only about 5000 participants at those events. This is a consequence of the fact that you have the citizens in the early 1960s, and you go all the way to selma, so somewhat takes place right in the middle of all of this. When you come to the sesquicentennial, you know, im sure enough the first person to say this, but southerners some of them see this as a new black reconstruction, ok . So this sesquicentennial coincides with what some might say is a new form of black rule. Youve got a black person in the white house, and this has caused all kinds of problems. Some people might want to dodge it. History will not let them dodge it as something as easily as some people are judging and on television today, but we know that the arguments that question citizenship of the president come out primarily of the south. That is the kind of core of that argument. It certainly does not necessarily represent all of the south the way it might have 100 years ago or even 50 years ago but it represents a significant element, and so the sesquicentennial comes at a time when there is a black president , and who, after all, really wants to talk about the civil war right now . Because its a war that did what . It ended slavery. Its a war that resulted in black folks controlling white people, what they call black supremacy. There are folks who if they knew enough history would say this is black supremacy moving black man in the white house. Mr. Appelbaum this was spread by copperheads, showing abraham lincoln, the worst deranged fantasy of the copperheads has now become in him poetic sense a presentday reality. There is an odd symmetry. Dr. Scott black republicanism today would be black democracy. Mr. Appelbaum but the civil war has always been an odd thing to commemorate as a people. You can walk on the Civil War Battlefield and find people there of all backgrounds from different parts of the country coming there in common cause to commemorate the moment in which americans walked on the battlefield and slaughtered each other by the tens of thousands. If you step back and think about it, its slightly odd. Not every nation commemorates its most divisive internacene war faring in quite the way that we do. Part of it is that the memory of the civil war has always been wrapped up in valor, encourage and he thought about the battle and maneuvering and the placement of troops and the elevation of the artillery and the leveling of the swords in the charging across the battlefield. We are moving historians are moving i think the public is moving toward a broader understanding of the civil war and what it was as a struggle. An understanding that does not neglect or ignore the generals and common foot soldiers, but which also embraces a broader view of its origins, its legacy, a war not confined to the open military conflict, one that extends to a military occupation of the american south, to the end of that military occupation and an active resistance and what can only be described as guerrilla warfare, the terrorization. If we think about the civil war as a founding moment, not just for the Africanamerican Community, but with a nation, is it possible to knit together a narrative that americans of all regions and all backgrounds can point to and embrace . Can we have a common civil war if we allow ourselves to look past the thing we can all celebrate 100 years ago, which was lots of people far very valorous leak, lets not Pay Attention to the causes for which they fought lots of people fought very valorously . Is there a way to have a common, shared narrative of the civil war that americans can embrace collectively . Dr. Scott its difficult, and yet, im one of the most im a committed person for that cause, as difficult as that cause is. Im a Firm Believer that the problem in america is that americans dont know their history and that if you dont know your history, you are miseducated, and if you are miseducated, you stand to lose your democracy. I am a whitsonite, and thats what whitson believed. I know thats a strange argument to come from someone who studied black history. People tend to think of us as trying to be subverting the american narrative. I am here to say that if we cannot construct or work at constructing narratives that honor the historical record, even if they are not the same narrative, but honor the facts debate them, no doubt, but honor evidence if we cannot do that and construct competing narratives, we are going to have a country that loses itself because we are moving away from even the study of history in our schools, ok . This has become what i am more committed to than anything else, which is the struggle to make sure that americans do not lose a sense of who they are, and this is against my colleagues who are postnational in their thinking. This is against what i think of the corporate types who do not care what we learn, but they want to make money teaching us whatever it is, ok . This is against those people who want to teach myths and therefore miseducate students . Outright. When you open up the story, the only people you do not have to worry about insulting or hurting anymore are the yankees. They are gone. One of the reasons reconstruction history downplayed military occupation because the yankees were the military occupiers. They were the occupiers of the south. You did not to play that up in your narrative of American History. By the way, the people who argue for american exceptionalism, the new conservative position, was originally the liberal consensus position of the 1950s. The liberals constructed this notion that america was always different and always different from europe and always different from other societies. I actually believe america was always different from other societies and that we basically had two traditions that live together. We had a tradition that is not compatible with a modern liberal society. The south was not liberal by any stretch of the imagination. It was a slaveholder society. It was not founded on any notion of equality. It was founded on notions on . . Race, on class. It is part of capitalism, no doubt, but to my mind, its not the same. When you start looking at the north and start seeing that there is an occupying force, but they start off on a liberal path, and they even go further there is american exceptionalism, but its only part of the country. When you start being honest about this, when you say that the civil war puts us down a path of a modern society, i think you are saying more than what most people really want to come to grips with. I think you are getting rid of american exceptionalism as an american construct. Theres a whole united dates, 13 colonies, all the way through civil war, and you have to come to grips with the fact that you did not have a national citizenship, the citizenships came from the state theres a whole United States. You can no longer pretend that free blacks in the south were citizens. They were not. You even have got to come to accept something that i read White Nationalists in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s, and some of them became members of the Republican Party, and they say they were fools. They did not swallow the enlightenment until they joined the Republican Party, and they are right. The Republican Party in the south is what brought american exceptionalism to the south, but yet, the more you engage with the struggle called American History, the more you get away from that last generation or tin of generations of scholars, the more you are on a new terrain, and you dont know what will come out of it. You really dont. And yet, if you do not go down that road, if you do not come to an understanding how all of americans got a right to vote, if you do not finally come to understand that poor whites got the right to vote one way through jacksonian america. Women got the right to vote another way. That whites in the south lost their right to vote when black people lost it poor whites lost their right to vote. If you do not understand that history is a struggle in which you gain and lose rights, if you do not understand how workers got their rights, if you do not understand how the presidency took its modern shape, you stand to lose all these things. What im saying is that we have a vested interest in that he and ourselves because we have a democracy, and it is now imperiled in a way that it has not in in 50 or 60 years that it has not been in 50 or 60 years. I dare say 100 years. I know im going on a tear, but we do not know what were going to get if we honestly study history in the upcoming generation, and we have to do this, and its against all odds that we do this because its going to be a rocky road, and we have to find a new america out of all of it. We are divided, and we know we are divided. President obama came into office saying hes going to end this division. He doesnt. We are worse off in our sense of unity now than we were before he came. I dont think its his fault, but if we keep seeing divided, we will lose our sense of ourselves as a nation, and i think the wars weve been fighting show we do not really know who we are as a nation, that we kind of have lost, and we need to study how we got here. Mr. Appelbaum these are the stakes, then. If we have an understanding of the civil war that goes beyond the divide, the stretches through reconstruction, goes into the new south, into the erection of jim crow, and then the tearing down of jim crow, if we understand the civil war, not as a discrete event that is walled off and we are done with the sesquicentennial, and we can forget about it, but it is a continuing, unfolding process of change. Theres a way in which the civil war is not over because it set a chain of a series of conflict that remain part of American Social dr. Scott this is the strangest thing for a person like me to say. David wright is most known as a historian for talking about how the reunion was made at the turn of the 20th century, ok . That bargain that was struck between north and south led to the creation of what i call it status white supremacy, the segregation system we talk about. Do you know if they had not buried the hatchet, idle think this country would have dealt with the problems of modernity at all. They solve the civil war enough at the turn of the 20th century that they could tackle the new problem called modernity. We have not been able to address the question of globalization and what it means to us, ok . As americans. Because we have been caught up in every other issue. We have not been able to address the problem of globalization or climate change. We have not been able to address any of the big problems. We are at a moment in history that is probably as important at the turn of the 20th century and we, as a country, are in no shape to address the problems of our time. Mr. Appelbaum thats actually not a bad place to end. One looks back not to bury conflicts, not to cover them up, not to ignore them, but we look at to the past to understand how we got to where we are so we know how to move forward. I have not actually spoken to the hill center about this yet. I would like to say that a fully intend to be back here to mark the bicentennial of the close of the civil war, and i hope that all of you are able to join us if you will have us all back. Sharita thompson absolutely. Please thank our speakers. [applause] the civil war airs every saturday at 6 p. M. And 10 00 p. M. Youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. She did save the portrait of washington which is one of the things that endeared her to the entire nation. Whoever could find out where she was staying, what she was doing, what she looks like, who she was seeing that would help sell papers. She takes over a Radio Station and starts running at. Have you do that . And she did it. She would move a mountain to make sure that her husband was protected. First ladies, now a book. Looking inside the personal lives of every first lady in American History. Learn about their lives. Ambitions. Families and unique partnerships with their president ial spouses. Filled with lively stories of fascinating women who survived the scrutiny of the white house. Sometimes at a great personal cost. Often changing history. It is an illuminating, entertaining and inspiring read. Now available through your favorite bookstore or online bookseller. Next, a look at the role of the u. S. Supreme court during reconstruction. Michael ross lectures on the tensions between president erin johnson and the republican dominated congress, the shortlived period of southern black legislatures and how hate groups used the 14th amendment to promote white supremacy. The speech is one of a series of four posted by the historical society. Introduced by Supreme Court Justice Anthony kennedy. This is just under one hour. [applause]