Welcome to book prints, a new Program Sponsored by ambassadors of American History. Im the president of the institute. We are preventing important books in American History which leaves the 18thcentury volumes behind me our current important books by the major prizewinning historians in our country. Also, william roka works on the health and education program. We present each of these historians and guide questions and answer sessions toward the end. Please go to our website, Gilder Lehrman. Com. Good afternoon. On june 14th, welcome, everyone. Todays guest will be professor elizabeth baron. For you guys who are not familiar with the Gilder Lehrman institute, we are so glad you could join us and to tell you a little bit about the Gilder Lehrman instituted is a Nonprofit Organization dedicated to k12 history, education, our mission is to promote the knowledge and understanding of American History through educational programs. We also provide direct access to unique primary source materials through Gilder Lehrmans amazing collection. If youre interested in finding out anymore about the amazing programs in the collection please go to Gilder Lehrman. Org. My name is william roka and im your host, im usually working on the Hamilton Education program. If you want to find out more about Hamilton Education program go to the website. All right, for you guys out there in our audience, you can notice your screens are off and your microphones are on so that is normal. For you guys. The question, i know we will have a great conversation today and we will generate a lot of Great Questions so if you look at the bottom of your screen you will see this. There are questions there and when you submit your question if you could also just leave a note of where you are from because we like to know where everybody is from. Allison will be gathering questions in a second half of the program. Weve got a big audience of several hundred so please knows we are not going to be able to get to all questions but we will try our best to ask as many questions as possible. All right. Procedure today, professor elizabeth varon, professor of American History at the university of virginia who served on executive council of the john third center of American History. Shes a specialist in the civil war era in 19thcentury south. She has also authored several books before the one were talking about today, some of her previous books include the needs to be counted, white women and politics in antebellum virginia, southern you 80, lee yankee spy, elizabeth than lou, a union agent in the heart of the confederacy and petunia the coming of the American Civil War 17891859. Appomattox, victory, defeat and freedom at the end of the civil war. Today we will speak about her newest book on the civil war. This is an amazing book. Ive had a chance to read it. I want to stop it is great to have you on the program. Thanks so much. The whole history of this for seems an incredibly daunting task. The theme of deliverance as in the title armies of deliverance but this deliverance seems to touch on so many things related to the civil war from the diplomatic to emancipation to military, to tackle a whole narrative history of the civil war and absolutely. I am a historian of american politics and my scholarship is focused on the American South and my home state of virginia. I was commissioned to write a single volume history of the civil war. I knew that involved a learning curve for me and i was eager to answer for myself and my readers some key questions historians have debated. The ones that answered me most, i was interested to learn about the motivation of Union Soldiers, how they sustain their morale and why men and women in nearly days with this short and sweet war and swift victory is not all that tricky but understanding what kept men in the ranks in a combat, these are complex questions and i want to glean insight into those motivations and the question of lincolns leadership and had how he built a coalition to win the civil war. And another rate across a broad political spectrum on who the abolitionist and radical republicans who took aim at slavery on the other end of that spectrum were conservative democrats who were very staunchly antiabolition and the middle of that were figures like abraham lincoln, who were uneasy who talks about abolition. Lincoln had to manage a divided homefront, learning about how he built a coalition and how he sustained a coalition. I was interested in the third major question on the demise of slavery and the emancipation policy and how it took shape and the degree to which emancipation gained political traction and how it gained political traction. Over the course of my research i discovered northerners coalesce around the theme of deliverance, the belief that Union Victory would uplift southern white and black alike by delivering them, they are frozen to delete slaveholding oligarchs under there is some as northerners saw it. Delivered to them the blessings of free society, the way Union Soldiers do that. The purpose is not to conquer the south or subjugate the south, the southern masses from their own. Leaders i argue over the course of the book that this theme of deliverance was so politically powerful it drew followers like a magnet to the union cause and allowed lincoln to forge a coalition and grow the coalition over the course of the war which included republicans of all political stripes, democrats in the opposition party, loyal residents of the slaveholding border states, anticonfederate southerners, deliverance rhetoric is the key to all this and i make the case that deliverance rhetoric proved very persistent over the course of the war. I try to explain how it is unions persisted in believing they could save the southern masses even in the face of massive evidence the confederates did not want to be saved. I also tried to address the issue of the rhetoric and to note that while it was instrumental in Union Victories by serving coalition building, deliverance rhetoric ultimately failed to persuade to accept black freedom on the norths terms and deliverance also ways to resolve debate among northerners about what victory would mean in the shape freedom would take. One additional point about my aim and purpose, thinking of the teacher as i wrote this book in the sense that it would appeal to a broad readership scholars in general readers but also be suitable for use as a textbook in College Classrooms and high school. I had to deal with that, students to take away two important themes from this book and learn and understand two things americans sometimes struggle with. Racism was an american problem, not only a southern problem. It was suffused in the Nineteenth Century in the north and the south and this meant the americans were waging the freedom struggle on two friends. A literal war about the horrors of slavery in the south and White Supremacy but also a battle in the north, persistent discrimination in the north where they were free but relegated to a secondclass status. I emphasize that to understand the consequences and causes of the civil war you have to grapple with the depth and breadth of american racism but i want my student readers to understand something else, that the union and the confederacy were starkly different political systems representing starkly different ideologies, starkly different destinies for america and it was these differences that Frederick Douglass had in mind when he said in 1878 there is a right side and wrong side, the war was as douglas described in a war of ideas between the old and the new. Between slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization, the illusion of Northern Society was perfect, he was a guard of a movement to reform Northern Society. That was new, that Union Ideology with its emphasis on free labor as opposed to slave labor, with its emphasis on moral reform. Union ideology created a framework in which change and progress were possible. Not inevitable, not easy, not even likely but possible and activists like douglas pushed open the door in the face of great adversity, pushed open the door to change. Douglas also knew that confederates were the about enemies of change and progress intent on pulling the door shut and locking it. It is important to understand all this because i want to be mindful to guard against falling into false equivalency between the union and the confederacy. We are reminded all the time by events in charlottesville and their aftermath. Looking in some way that the incredible challenge the confiscated coalition in the norse from democrats, radical republicans, abolitionists dealing with the slaveholding states that remained in the union. Talk about them and their views on emancipation, the confiscation act to the emancipation of washington dc, and how that played into the political dynamic going on in the north. The standard way that we account for emergence of that, on the northern side is to emphasize lincolns pragmatism as a politician. There was this unwieldy political entity concerning the slaveholding border states. The Union Soldiers since the war identify themselves as abolitionists, they were committed to the project of saving the union but not to end slavery. We know that lincoln experiments with various policies and emancipation to lure slaveholders back into the union with the promise that if they voluntarily free their slaves he will compensate them for their losses. The freed people make a series of appeals, considered part of a long tradition of antislavery gradualism and the standard narrative is one in which lincoln comes around when he comes around most especially against slavery by the enslaved, the exodus the war itself and this activism and resistance by the enslaved is eroding the institution, taken upon solutions that are being rebuffed and comes around driven by a certain pragmatic belief that the right move for saving abolition, abolition means the end of saving the union and he makes arguments again pragmatic, is it a military necessity to bring along hesitancy and resistant northerners and as a means to a end littered by pragmatism because emancipation is a military necessity to take resources from our enemies. And the value of that particular narrative, i emphasize lincolns idealism as he comes around as it were, and evolution in lincolns thinking and change but when he comes to embrace emancipation he and his allies in the context of the times you, emancipation will benefit all americans and it will benefit southerners and white southerners by opening the way to begin the blessings of free society, education, freespeech, flowing into Southern Society, removing contention between the north and south, displace the belief that has dominated Southern Society and to benefit southern whites and people from all the slaveholding border states and even a few with southerners from Confederate States are willing to support him. Emancipation will have broad benefits and giving freedom to the slaves and we as a freedom to the others. To recognize that lincoln is making this argument, northerners and southerners, white and black, is in a sense disappointing because one of the things it signals is the argument for a mental patient, benefits to whites which simply they should have focused on a portion of this. Their right to freedom and citizenship. It is white centered in lincolns version of that. In the context of what had come before the argument that emancipation will have broad aspect is quite radical because it is a refutation of a 0sum game about Race Relations and arguing defenders of slavery had made since colonial period with gains for africanamericans who come at the expense of whites in lincoln and his allies rejected that. It is a big break with the past to reject this. It has to be noted and emphasized that lincoln has in a sense been following the lead of the true antislavery vanguard, and those enslaved people who have taken matters into their own hands, to flee from slavery and eventually joined the union. Also very much in depth to figures like Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists who were building a case for abolition. If he didnt embrace it he embraced it in a way that was quite a thing from what had come before. Emancipation also seem to play domestically and internationally and the concept of deliverance you are talking about that lincoln had to keep an eye across the atlantic because cotton was part of that and the British Empire was dependent on cotton from the south and there was trying to prevent the south from presenting itself as a nation seeking selfdetermined donations, then there is the International Aspect of delivering the sentiment. s the emphasis in deliverance rhetoric for someone like lincoln, a central premise of it was the diluted mass theory this was a very widespread popular belief on the part of northerners the white southern masses had been seduced, duped, cajoled and limited pressures into supporting. And somehow with the union could break the spell secessionists cast over the southern masses they would welcome deliverance at the hands of the union army. Lincoln referred to the war as a rebellion and insurrection, he believed staunchly that secession was the work of a small group of secessionist conspirators and that it was not a legitimate movement that reflected the true will of the southern masses. We can talk about how they believe that in the face of so much evidence of confederate ideology. This all had implications in terms of geopolitics and diplomacy. Confederates were making a bid to persuade european powers that they were a legitimate state that should be recognized as such. Lincoln was trying to say that this is not a legitimate exercise in nationbuilding, this is a conspiracy by a small number of slaveholders riding roughshod over the rights of southern masses and have to restore this. Confederate hopes of foreign recognition i dashed in lincolns embrace of emancipation, his preliminary proclamation in antietam undermined the confederate bid for foreign acquisition by clearly identifying the union war with the emancipation policy. And then how did they react to these notions of deliverance, the words that were printed in the newspapers in the north what was there kind of ideology so to speak . At the heart of these ideological battles, we tend to imagine that people demonize each other, one side demonizes the other. Beyond the civil war, the premise of the union war was southerners in the accompaniment of northerners, the union would be restored and unionists tended to talk about brethren, prodigal sons, pupils who needed teaching and needed to sober up and madmen who should come to their senses and sinners who should repent, bringing them into the national fold. Confederate leaders were very attuned to this deliverance rhetoric and wanted at all costs to discredit it. From the start of the war, the focus of confederate ideology, the union is intent on a war deliverance is a keyword for unionists. On the confederate side the keywords are degradation, pollution, extermination. In the sense that confederate ideology is meant to preempt and discredit the southern masses that northerners are intent on subjugation of the south. This place is a corollary issue that is how much dissent white southern unit is him was there in the south and that is a tricky question to answer, but confederate propaganda was powerful and effective in unionism never materialized where lincoln others hoped it would, the true blue unionists were africanamericans from flight to smallscale resistance to enlistment in the army is absolutely decisive in Union Victory and with other points, it is a bit of a shorthand in the confederacy. With 200,000 africanamericans who serve in the union army nearly 80 were southerners so this comes back to the question, confederate ideology was a bid to argue about nationalism and debate and so on but was we had in reality was a divided south and lincoln was able to capitalize on some of those divisions. Looking at these different ideologies, you summarized the confederate viewpoint as they called it northern barbarity and sudden victimization. The north on the one hand trying to use deliverance as a way to eventually bring the south back into the fold, their wayward brothers so to speak, what is the impact at the end of the war with the start of reconstruction and what are some of the ways the Southern View almost negates or takes advantage of the north, trying to bring them back into the fold in a peaceful way and make them brothers once again . As i researched this book i hadnt started with a thesis in mind, i came to realize that what i was finding was in a sense the back story to a tale i told in my previous book, when lee surrendered to grant in appomattox, i made a case in that book. It was magnanimous to the defeated southerners, not to exonerate them but as a means of affecting reforms, there was a right side and wrong side in the war and southerners would respond to that immediacy with contrition and his leniency would change hearts and minds so in a sense what i described in this book is the sources of assumptions on grants parts. It is easy to ask was grant delusional . Why would he think he would get this repentance . Why would northerners believe they could change southern hearts and minds . Looking around the landscape they thought deliverance was working. Whatever they saw, evidence of desertion they saw as potential sign, there was dissent in the south and they saw a potential sign deliverance was working and the slaveholding border stat