The professor spoke at the opening of the gettysburg civil war institutes annual conference which focused on the end of the war and its aftermath. Peter good afternoon. I am the director of the institute. It is my pleasure to invite aaron sheehandean, the professor of southern studies at lsu. He is professor of southern history as well as civil war and published a number of scholarly works, including a monograph on a book published by the university of virginia. He has done a number of things as well as the editor with myself for civil war america which is published by unc. Aaron came to cwi in 2013. This is your third year at lsu. We will have to note if theres a change in his accent. Do you have a cajun accent now . He is shaking his head no. He will speak on the war in 1865. Welcome aaron sheehandean. [applause] aaron thank you, pete. I have not developed an accent. The giveaway i talk too fast. My students in particular i will do my best to speak slowly. I do cook jambalaya. Native and that regard of the food of baton rouge. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to start things off. It seemed appropriate that we congratulate ourselves on the survival of the sesquintenial. If youre civil war historian or somebody interested, the last couple of years may have seen longer than the actual war itself. Here we are in june trying to route up. My hope was we would finish in april. I am trying to give an overview that is 1865, the narrative of what is going on the last couple of months when participants do not know how the war is going to end. It is exciting for me to tell you how it finishes after the years not knowing. I would like to shift to a slightly more omnipotent perspective and talk about the ways in which participants were trying to make sense of the experience. How did they ascribe meaning to what they just went through . And one level up, how have we over time and i will do this quickly songs about the question of what the civil war means . That category of analysis, thinking about is distinct from why the war ended. This is the question a lot of civil war historians have spent time on, why did he turn off the way they did . In the last couple of decades with the rise of memory studies that historians have thought more about the legacies and outcomes of the civil war. Let me start, if i sound like i was disparaging the why question with my estimation of how we got there. How the war eve out and why the north won or the south lost . And those are separate questions. Central to what we do as historians for you cause and effect is never perfectly clear, to capture the full range of outcomes. Our job is to explain past events. How did the north win . They implemented a strategy of exhaustion that eliminated confederates. Nouns and verbs matter. Even from the titles of books that describe the war. If it is how the north won, it is different from how the south lost. It tells us the things you think are important. The north succeeded not because they had superior resources but they use them effectively. If it was a matter of material the war shouldve ended in 1862. For political and military reasons, it took several years to design a strategy that brought victory. You will notice that i did not say the confederacy lost. I do not think the question of why did the civil war ended the way it did can be explained by the divisions among southerners. Those divisions were certainly real and many loyal confederates despised Jefferson Davis for policies. Resented them all the more important people in the confederacy resented the most of all because they live so close. The same poor people benefited from the redistributing properties and make supplies available, the purpose to give the confederate government the ability to redistribute to equalize the burdens of war. How they fail in social terms. Southern men and women clash over the changes by the war and black southerners provided aid to the union. The confederacy was ripe with internal bus of the north had the same dissent. [indiscernible] only the most obvious examples of these divisions. The democrats debilitating resistance to lincoln and the republicans across the Southern Tier of northern border states like missouri, kentucky, and maryland. Tens of thousand men joined for private guerrilla wars. Even though northern women do not assume such a larger role as their peers in the south the dead, they nonetheless accelerated the conflict about the proper role of women in life. Dissent is prominent in both not determinative of the outcome is the north had won we would blame the new york riots. The other crucial factor beyond military fortune, capacity deployed, the ones that boosted both sides during the war was simple contingency. What do we call it . Fate. Several pivotal moments the civil war couldve ended or shifted direction and unpredictable ways. A short list is Southern Pines and gettysburg in atlanta and lincolns reelection. I know youre spent the past couple of years over these moments of pivots. We can see the last of the surely contingent moments probably passed in 1864 with the union trifecta. Even still the war did not end in 1864 as many hoped. In january 1865, richmond was held by the confederate, grants efforts around petersburg which had been underway since june of the preceding year was progressing but had not produced the result he had hoped for. A very long time for northerners to wait for what they told was imminent victory. The people had turned diehard rebels. Not just committed to victory but convinced of this eminence remained in control of the political and legal apparatus. These diehards mostly but not exclusively belonged to the prewar elite. The planters and their families who had the most to lose from a categorical defeat and they relied on a mixture of rumored to sustain themselves through this hard winter of 1864, 1865. Hutzpah is probably not a term they would have used. I had a student writes on an exam meaning to talk about the gentry of the south as both of them as the gentiles who owned the land. So my margin comment was that they were gentiles though i doubt they would have called themselves that and i suspect that went over his head like the gentry problem who knows for the jewish confederates out there. Jefferson davis and robert e. Lee knew more was needed to sustain the army both physically and in terms of our row. Their most revolutionary policy and brought to legislative fruition in 1865 was a plan to enlist and enslave man into confederate ranks. If successful they hoped it would have the potential to alleviate the manpower in balance between north and south. The Confederate Congress could not bring itself to offer emancipation to those slaves who might serve in the army. It says nothing about their status as slaves or free men. For some like general cobb, a question of consistency. If slaves would make good if slaves would make good soldiers, cobb admitted, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong. This interrogatory phrasing made a scene that cobb did not know the answer and did not want to know the is. Maybe slave men were men after all. Confederates shot down surrendering black soldiers on battlefields across the south about their own views of black men in uniform quite clear. They wouldve been baffled to identify black confederates that populate the internet. Approval of the act, davis added a proviso, that promised emancipation for black men and their families who served in the csa. As it went into effect, the order not only for enlistment but emancipation. A handful of these men never served in any serious capacity in the waning days of the war. For me at least, it erases from an academic perspective, one of the only ways it may have been beneficial for the civil war to go longer is the find out what happens in the experiment if more black men had fought in rebel gray but they did not. As a result, the order may have hurt more than held the confederate cause. An insightful diarist was a diehard rebel. She sees every scrap of good news and rumors that passed through her home. Her ineffective for yankees was only mask the bottles or for those confederates willing to compromise the principles that brought them into the conflict considering that the enlisting of black men into the confederate she wrote to sell the birthright of the south for only the as a confederates grasped, the Union Project a posture. Unexhausted and as we believe in exhaustible. This sounds arrogant but it was true in 1864. The tone, lincoln is intending to dispirit the confederacy. Republicans had won overwhelmingly in the fall elections. Republicans win enormously gaining many of the seas they had lost. Even though the members would not take their seats, the momentum behind lincoln and his war measures was unmistakable. Those are the men that are going to be seated at the beginning a reconstruction. Part of the reconstruction and empowered by Union Victory and comment in late 1864. Thats momentum behind lincolns administration could be seen in the carolinas which proceeded with seemingly unstoppable force. The joke told among the confederates revealed the truth. One says to the other, we caved in a tunnel to carry troops forward. I heard he carries a spare tunnel with him. This sense of throwing up your hands in the face of juggernaut is an understandable one. Shermans passing through South Carolina was more destructive and vindictive than georgia. Than the ones in South Carolina, strangely understated. Though his soldiers did not start the fires that destroyed columbia and neither did they work to extinguish them. A young resident of the city described the fire as open will a nightmare that still oppresses. The state houston flame and imagine night turned to noon day with a scorching glare that was horrible, a copper color sky. Sparks and flying embers, where all around us with showers of burning flakes. The palpitating blaze with solid masses of flame as far as the eye could reach filling the air. By the morning when the true son came up, most of downtown columbia had been destroyed but not before soldiers entered and held a mock session. This play acting provided a welcome chance for soldiers to condemn those they blamed for the war. Here is where treason began, one of shermans boys wrote and by god, here is where it will end. The military was more static. Lee knew it would not stay that way. Desertion increased in february and march with over 100 men leaving per night. They let for the abundance of the union. Others turned toward home. I would argue this flight is differ from traditional desertion during the war. It seems to be more political recognition by the soldiers the war was over and the obligation to remain in the army. Luther mills admitted as much to his brother. Mills state in the ranks and told his brother the men things desertion no crime and is never shoot a deserter when he goes over. Mills require that men going out and night carry 10 cartridges and said they always shoot but never hit. Nine months of trench warfare with the doing to link supplies reduced soldiers to deprivation. Rancid pork and poor health. The Living Conditions in the trenches around petersburg. This experience, these 10 months in trench warfare in the virginia mud and increasingly severe deprivations rations, the soldiers from their lives and loved ones they left behind. On april 2, grant ordered an attack along the petersburg line hoping to trap lee. The confederates fought well but petersburgs loss was the fall of richmond. The city was evacuated. Much to the dismay of all of us, records were destroyed. Much of the city destroyed by the fire. What was left was a frightened population nearly destitute. Sally putnam reported, richmond was ruled by the mob. The principal business section they surged from store to store, breaking and robbing and in some instances [indiscernible] this desperation revealed one of the logistical wars, the impact on civilians. A strategy of exhaustion is applied. It falls evenly on soldiers and civilians. Lincoln arrived in richmond two days later to inspect the city and his presence arriving at the war greeted by thousands of africanamericans cheering for him as White Richmonders huddled inside sent a very public signal the war was ending. The president of the United States to stand in the capital of the soontobe erstwhile confederacy. The capital of the confederacy was theirs. From new york, one said that it is nomadic. Is probably in a dirty, damaged railroad car in a seat of government on the saddle which jeff davis. He was not far wrong. Lincoln sorry, lee were retreated to reach a rations by rail. He joined johnson. The better fed and clothed kept pace. But to their south and captured the vital supplies that lee hoped to find at the courthouse. Grants strategy was embodied in the erosion of the army as it marched toward appomattox, not having eaten or slept for the several preceding days. April 9, lee asked great for terms and the army stopped fighting. By the end of the ceremonial finish, most people heard rumors if not bona fide news reports lees capitulation. Surrendering to shermans army further north laid down. The war ended in early april. Grant later remembered he was sad and depressed and what you call the downfall of a foe that has suffer so much for a cause though it was one of the worst for which a people ever fought. Going to explore the surrender in more detail tomorrow morning so i would like to shift my focus to the broader perspective i mentioned earlier. Among americas anticipating the wars end, they all wonder what the postwar world would look like. From was white northerners, most importantly is the United States would behold. Significant today often overlooked. We assume the inevitability of a unified americas direction stretching from the atlantic to the pacific. At the time, they are repudiating from the stars of the conflict Abraham Lincoln described as a contest over the viability of selfgovernment which understood to be the core of democratic republic. By abandoning the political process in the wake of unsatisfactory election, the rights of minorities could be protected under the constitution and gave up on selfgovernment. The acts of secession cast in doubt the Global Future of democracy. One expressed this sentiment in his messages to a newspaper he writes. He wrote the north fought to preserve the faith and intelligence and virtue of the Common People and their ability to govern themselves and maintain National Unity without being asunder by internal strife and discord. Lincoln said it was distinctly and believes northern victory would approve among freemen that it be no successful appeal for the battle of the bullet. Whatever shape the postwar world assumed would not include slavery. January 31, 1865 the house of representatives casts the 13th amendment as senate to the states and it was ratified and took effect in late 1865. The end of slavery and liberation all 4 million slaves africanamericans overturned 2 centuries of slaveholding and forcing the reshaping of relations across the nation and within the south in particular. Emancipation proclamation begun the process. That document as lincoln well knew was contingent upon a Republican Administration that would enforce a Union Victory. Perhaps to a permanent end to slavery in the United States comes slavery have to be abolished. A proclamation of emancipation which applies individuals in the process of abolition which ends the institution of slavery which is why we deny get a slavery abolition. These are different processes during the war. George julian, elite abolitionist, felt blessed to sign his name and describe the moment and reported the cheering in the halls of a densely packed gallery. Members joined in the shouting. Some embrace one another in others wept like children. Black southerners seize control of the two things denied to them under slavery, their families and livelihood. The first instinct was to find and protect their loved ones retracing the moves of slaves, spouses, children, and parents to reconstitute the families. In addition to reconstructing their families, ask slaves built churches, schools to anchor their communities. Africanamericans sought full autonomous citizenship knowing it meant not only the right to vote but to an education and opportunity to move, work, and on land. During reconstruction, they engage in politics by voting and join the Republican Party area they pursue literacy. Why Southern Resistance would eventually deny the promises of citizenship and implicit in the 13th, 14th, if 15 amendments. Emancipation was not a failed experiment. Africanamericans efforts can be seen in the communities through the decades around the turn of the century. The Foundation Laid by the postcivil war generation enable the 20th century activists for full autonomy. Americas north and south had confronted the central questions related to emancipation where would black people live and what would they do . These were the key issues. A topic that greg will take up later, i think sunday morning to talk about the transition of reconstruction we thing as the period after the civil war. Land redistribution along carolina and georgia, the sea islands captured by the union navy in 1861. The planters fled inland. The navy found thousands of exslaves and cotton. The wartime experiment around the data did not yield what planters wanted. The government retained control of the land and it is important in january of 1865 as William Shermans army reaches savanna. He presents to lincoln the city of savannah. Sherman terms to the problem of the thousands of enslaved people who he moved across georgia alleges army and want to basically moving to South Carolina without taking this mobile refugee camp with him. He meets with local black leaders and savanna to assess what should be happening. He was understand their attitudes toward emancipation. A revealing interview. These men who attended were prepared. Sherman asked the leaders spokesperson how he understood of freedom. Frasers response the proclamation is taking us from under bondage and place and is where we can reap the benefit of our labor and take care of ourselves and this is government in maintaining our freedom with a designed to please nor the republicans. Some measure of social autonomy and during the war not yet over national loyalty. Whether in response to this meaning or to light his