There are livingductions of the war, people involved in combat who are still alive. In 1912, state of pennsylvania issued an invitation of honorably discharged veterans of the civil war to come to gettysburg for a reunion of sorts. And you probably have already seen pictures of this or read about it in David Wrights book. I want to spend a little time talking about that. That marked something of the high water mark. It was kind of the peak of their aspirations. They invaded the north. The defeat of gettysburg was in many ways the beginning of the end. It proved at least on the battles there was no way for the confederacy to take the war to the end. So here we have some pictures. This is actually a picture of new york veterans having a meal at gettysburg. If you were to look at the public narrative, the narrative you would find in newspapers and commemorative pamphlets in public pronouncements, the sentiments expressed during this period were very much part of what david white called th
Here we are at the end of the semester and it strikes me as a Good Opportunity maybe to compare the reconstruction period that we started off talking about in this course with what some have called the second reconstruction, which is the time of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. Let me tell you, first, what i mean by the first reconstruction and the second reconstruction. By the first, i mean in not only postcivil war reconstruction, im including also the civil war itself and all that took place during the war up through the end of radical reconstruction. The second reconstruction will be simply enough, the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. I wont carry my remarks any farther than that, i think. Now, in talking about the two reconstructions, im going to have to use some broad generalizations of a type im not entirely comfortable with, for example ill talk occasionally about the white south or the north or Something Like that and that covers up all kinds of complexit
Us. This clearly could not. This is challenging all those notions of class politics, redistribution. Rose. I was going to say its just like this movement challenging so many aspects of the government, people could misconstrue especially if they didnt understand it, they could be easily swayed by the media giving wrong information and not the full picture. They did focus a lot on problems. It was like a big group not a group but like a handful of problems they were all striving for. It was a lot of challenge to the government and they saw that as a threat. Polls showed majority opposed the movement. As king said easier to integrate lunch counters that eradicate slums. It didnt cost anything to integrate lurch counters. Now were talking about something that will cost billions and billions of dollars, redistribution of economic power. We dont have time to look at torey and hamilton and black power perspective but i want to point you to, again, their notion of the ghetto as a colony. In th
Written several books and several articles, and ive heard him talk on the treason in the civil war about merriman. In fact, last night i watched him on cspan going over with his class this topic. It was really fun. It was neat to see how he interacted with the students and brought out in them a different opinion of what they had when they first came in, how they learned something from the discussion. And it was fun. And in particular, one of the questions one of the girls asked, with all the interests in merrimans rights, what about the gross treason of the whole situation . It seems like were looking at a little tiny speck, and the whole civil war was treason. So how he dealt with that was pretty good. And he has another book out thats this book. And he has another book out, the one hes going to be talking about today, and im looking forward to hearing about it. The first book is treason, Abraham Lincoln and treason in the civil war. Its about the merriman trial, and about what he did
War, which was of course 1911 to 1915. I found this quote. Ill tell you where it comes from in a little bit, but it seems to me to encapsulate the feeling of the early 20th century. The days of the civil war now belong to the historians, the poets, the writer of romance, and the fromtist. Now i think you would add the reenactor there, probably. But of course, this is a period at which the civil war is still very much a part of living memory. Right . There are livingductions of the war, people involved in combat who are still alive. In 1912, state of pennsylvania issued an invitation of honorably discharged veterans of the civil war to come to gettysburg for a reunion of sorts. And you probably have already seen pictures of this or read about it in David Wrights book. I want to spend a little time talking about that. That marked something of the high water mark. It was kind of the peak of their aspirations. They invaded the north. The defeat of gettysburg was in many ways the beginning