Dwight pitcaithley. [applause] ms. Drake dr. Pitcaithley nick promised he was not going to include the rockstar part. Thanks to nick for that wonderful introduction. Thank you that we can have a conversation that goes on for another 30 or 45 minutes. Robert and moran, who, many of you know, was a Pulitzer Prize civil war is our only felt history. History lived in the national imagination. I think thats true whether your ancestry goes back that far or not. My mostly does not. But the civil war affects ken burns, maybe its part of the dna. We think about it a lot. Every year when i teach the civil war course, the first day i give my students an exam and i ask them, in a word or phrase tell me what caused the civil war, what caused secession . Without secession there is no civil war. Everybody has an answer. Its not the same answer. But they all have an answer. Its states rights no, no, no. Its labored. No, its the tariff. General economic issues. I think its cultural differences to train the north and south. Somebody else would say, it was really the ultimate clash between an agricultural south and in industrial north. Got an answer. If you are like me when i started this research about 10 years ago i had read a lot of the secondary work, but most of it about the war itself. Dots along the way. In november,ected South Carolina secedes in december but by several other states in the deep south, lincoln is inaugurated, fort sumter is fired on april, lincoln calls out troops, former state secede, and the war is on. Bless you. Theres a lot going on that those dots dont connect. Everybodyupon myself, needs a project in retirement to set aside myself i did not have a book in mind, but i went to satisfy myself, what caused secession . I wanted to dig as deep as i could into the records and it surprise, much to my secession winter is incredibly well documented. Incredibly documented. I wanted to keep it to the elected officials. What did they say. What would they argue . Other historians have used newspaper editorials. They have used editorials. Ks,y have taken different tac internal organs of the parties. I wanted to hear what the elected officials were saying. Theyare the ones to whom delegated the responsibility to solve the problem, the problem, being lincolns election. And it turns out there is no shortage. Theress met over that time, congress met about a month after lincoln as election to the march 4 inauguration day. It resulted in about 2000 pages of data by day, hour by hour, line by line arguments from these men. If youre interested, its online thanks to your tax dollars and the library of congress. This happens to be the congressional globe. You can go in day by day. A word of warning. There were three columns per page. 10point type. Bring your reading glasses. The second large gathering would be the proceedings of the Secession Conventions. They met, they argued. Alluld publish this of this was published in 1862. Texas waited until 1912. Virginia they claim in the introduction that they did not have enough money until 1912 the publisher. I do argue with that. Longest deliberated the we have deliberations. A third range of information is from the state legislatures in tennessee and kentucky. Tennessee did ultimately secede. This is from the state legislature. Kentucky never thought about calling the Secession Convention. Theres a lot of discussion between the governor and the house of representatives and the senate and they left their printed version almost immediately. Finally, there is the record of the washington peace convention. In early january, the legislature called for a National Convention to find out had to do now that lincoln been elected president. 21 states and representatives, 131 men. There. El is still i think the room that they gathered in is not there. Millard hotel is there. Its where lincoln spent the night before they moved into the white house. Or about a week before they moved into the white house. Thoseou aggregate all of pages, all of the information you end up with about 8000 pages of printed, published. Nformation over secession within that information this is all new to me. I had no idea i would enter this world. I got sucked into it and the more i got into it the more i wanted to get into it because i did not have to deal with handwriting. Historians often have to deal with handwriting. Some people have good dementia and some dont and it can make you crazy. Ive done research on that site as well. This has all been published. , therethose 8000 pages are three subsets of information that are directly on what the south was thinking when it was thinking about secession and the and thee the letters speeches of the commissioners. They appointed commissioners to go from that state to the other slave states to convince them to secede as well. Goods a thin and very book i think he gathered about 40 speeches to the elected officials in those states. Another is zeroing in are the declarations of secession when theyided to secede decided this is important enough we need to create a committee that creates a justification or an in those the people states and to the rest of the country and really, to the world because the world was watching about why the state secede. So theres an introductory paragraph or two. Its an introductory and then theres a list of grievances. This is why im leaving. This is what is wrong and we are leaving. Web. , you can find on the this is the second or third chapter in this book. Category of sort of the newest and most revealing in many ways if you remember your High School History you might remember senator john crittenden, a senator from kentucky. He offered the crittenden resolutions on december 18 of 1860 as a means of solving the problem. It is in the form of a constitutional amendment. Parts. Six six subsets. Six articles. The first to propose constitutional amendment was james buchanan. Until march 4 of 1861 and in his last address to , gives a long speech and at the end of it, offers this constitutional amendments to solve it. Many people, at that point democrats,hern believed to be constitution was broken. You could not solve the problem with the law by congress. You had to amend the constitution. And James Buchanans address and proposal opened the floodgates and as i went through this material, its very clear looking back i did not know what i was going to get into, but i kept running into constitutional amendments. Proposed constitutional amendments to solve the problem. It turns out i found 67 of these. All designed to solve the problem. They were proposed in congress. Some were proposed in Secession Conventions. The washington peace conference proposed six by different people. An early draft of the collected works and a final draft. President cannon proposed one. William seward prison proposed one. Andrew johnson and stephen proposed at least one. Three governors chimed in. They came from state legislatures, governors, congress, Secession Conventions, and the washington peace convention. My book is built around these amendments. Because as i learned, no one else had gathered them or analyze them. What do they mean . James buchanan had three subsets. Crittendens had six. Most had more than one. Very few were one paragraph long. Jefferson daviss was one paragraph. Subsets. E sets when you add those up, theres about 350 different topics that are embodied in the 67 amendments. One of the first things i had to , listingtegorize them , the proposals down the left side and if you had 1850stensively in the from the compromise of 1850 two its ther itt number of articles dealt with slavery in the territories. Not surprising, because that is the election. That is the election around election turned her what do we do . Are southerners allowed to take their slaves there and have them there as long as they want. Should the federal government prohibit slavery . The Republican Party did not until 1856. Ing they could not decide on what the policy should be. He said, let the people in those territories, let them decide what to do. Shouldid the governor protect and slavery is property. So, slavery in the territories was the first or highest number of issues in the 67 amendments. Fugitive slave was, not surprisingly the secondmost popular. The south was very passionate. Popular was the articles protecting slavery in district of columbia, for obvious reasons. Southern senators and representatives went to want toon and would take slaves with them to take care of them while they were there. They wanted to make sure that no one prevented them from doing that. The fourth category dealt with the transit of slaves. Protect the right of slave owners to take their slaves. These are runaway slaves these are not runaway slaves, but to take their slaves into northern territories on a sojourning basis. Southerners, plantations, big plantation owners often went to philadelphia and new york to do business and when they traveled there, they would take their slaves with them. , after allowing a riod, that slaveowners could, in the state for nine months and if they left before the nine months was over, theres no problem. The legislature decided, if we are a free state, we are a free state. We should prohibit slaves. And in 1852 family from virginia went to new york city, did not fully understand the law. Their slaves were taken from them. The slaves went to canada. Virginia sued. And they went through the new York Supreme Court where virginia lost both times, which is exactly what the governor of. Irginia wanted to happen theyre pretty sure that if the slave case had gone to roger donny he would have voted in favor of virginia and slaveowners wouldve been able slaves into free states as long as they wanted to call them sojourners. Create ahey would process for secession. As you know, the United States constitution does not provide for secession. Theres no back door. If you are in, you are in. Five of these amendments proposed a process for getting out. Reopeningave proposed the executive branch to give southern interests a better chance of succeeding. One of those provided a triumvirate executive department. A northern president , a southern president and a western president. All in the oval office at the same time. Here is the ticker. Each one armed with veto power. You can imagine how well that would have worked. It did not go anywhere, but nevertheless, that was the proposal. Two, were purposely designed to prohibit protective tariffs. The tariff issue was really big in the 1930s and 1940s, not so much the 1950s and 1960s, but two virginians proposed articles in their amendments against the effective tariffs. Two articles around three and 50. And so i think we can save the tariff had nothing to do, or very little to do, next to nothing to do with secession interests. Importantly, when you look at all of these, 90 , 90 of 67 amendments were carefully and purposely designed to protect slavery in various ways around the country in the federal constitution. And interesting subset is 10 or 11 proposed nationalizing slavery. At this time it was protected under state law. No one really argued that. If she wantedd slavery, you could do that. If you wanted to opt out, you could do that as well. But this subset said we should nationalize slavery. Slavery should be protected at the National Level and the poster child for that was not other than mississippi senator Jefferson Davis, who two days before christmas of 1860 ,roposed an amendment that said by amendment of the thatitution, recognized the states of the union shells stand on the same footing as any other species of property, so recognized. Jefferson davis was willing to fore state authority federal protection of slave holding. We dont know about these, because no them pass, right . Thats not true. One did pass. The socalled core when a minute. Thomas corwin was the chair of the Ad Hoc House Committee set up to solve the problem. It had been earlier proposed by members of congress, Secession Conventions, 26 proposals, that would have protected slavery in and it was approved by the senate the morning of inauguration day. It simply said that congress has to abolish slavery in the states. If youre familiar with lincolns first inaugural, he mentions that. He says the constitutional amendment passed the senate. I have not seen it. I know of its. I would not mind if it were made perpetual. As anh in 1860 14 lincoln abolitionist in 1861 for lincoln as an abolitionist. He was willing to protect slavery in the states where it existed. The war rolled over him and of course, we had another 13th amendment that does the opposite. It abolishes slavery throughout the United States. Let me conclude. Make some concluding remarks here. And then we can talk about what you want to talk about. Three conclusions after going through these 8000 pages. Many of the pages two or three or four times, because some of the verbiage was fairly collocated. I think it is very easy to say fairly copyedit. I think its very easy to say that the self failed to protect self failed to protect slavery. It is as clear as it can get. Slavery was undergirded by the notion of White Supremacy. Black people were inferior. Slavery is good for them. Its good for us. We are balancing things. I think you can elaborate that a little more to say the south seceded to protect the institution of slavery and the andon of White Supremacy the amount of verbiage i found documents both of those. The second one is one i had to hunt down a little bit. I wanted to find out who is the antagonist . Who is the bad guy . In the declaration of independence, its king george. Who were the Southern States railing against . They were not railing against congress. They were railing against the federal government as james the federal government has not done anything to you. The bad guy, the antagonist was the north. The northern people. The Northern State. Abolitionist in general as they wound up, and eventually lincoln. They believed that the north was filled with abolitionists. They believed it. In any popular discussion, they are taking away with they are taking away states rights. ,n looking at these amendments it turns out that southerners were perfectly willing and stateed trading protection and authority for slavery for federal authority slavery. The issue is not about states rights. It was about property rights. I think the amendments in the book make that very clear. I have a couple other points, but i think i can weave them into my answers. Stop. M going to ranger dave has the microphone. Selecting the questioners. All i have to do is think about some answer. Thank you for your service. I had not read that for 30 years. Fell madly in love with the scott. Ents of dred storiesective is caring andt how they were vilified having to spend 90 years in conclusion in seclusion. I think she died. The desecration threats against where fred was very and having gravemoved in an unmarked they finally did a marker shes the great granddaughter and then the desecration was, thatsedly about the fact the civil war was dred scotts fault. When youre in your opening remarks, i noticed dr. Pitcaithley new mexico state. Dredey didnt mention scott or Harriet Beecher stowe dr. Pitcaithley lincoln. Yes. Thats right. Thats right. The little lady who started this great war. I was just curious. I think athley couple answers to that. To place blame, i encourage my students not to place blame. Its sort of a useless exercise. I am not sure that roger b. Tawney cares what i think about his decision at this point. The chief person, if you want to blame somebody, you might blame eli whitney. Right . People were making money before that, that just exploded it. I think my students, if i were teaching at texas tech, maybe a texas school, one of the seceded states, although it is west texas and lubbock was not around until has anybody been to lubbock . [laughter] it might get a different answer if i was teaching in hattiesburg, mississippi there , might be a different answer. After i had my students to that list of what caused secession, then i had them vote. One student, one vote. I wrote all of their topics on the boards. States rights wins 9 times out of 10. Very powerful that lost cause , interpretation of the war. Whether we understand it or not. Because we are talking about protecting states rights is easier than talking about protecting slavery. If you have an ancestor in it, you really want that guy to have to have fought for Something Like states rights and not bondage. Incidentally, states rights is not recognized in the constitution. States dont have rights. People have rights. States have power. The federal government has power. The way the decision is written. Although that argument has been, the phrase has been used from the beginning, certainly John C Calhoun popularized it in the 1830s. Thats a side note. Thank you for that question. Thank you. Id like to know your thoughts about whether its profitability and economics, or White Supremacy, or both that are at the core of those 90 amendments , proposed amendments that focus on slavery, which is a cause, but since the crux of saying that its slavery stems from is it economics and profitability, or is it White Supremacy . Dr. Pitcaithley all of the above. Youd be perfect if you asked, what the civil war is about and you said economics, you would be absolutely right. But its economics and slavery. It is the 4 billion that were invested in slaves. Not a product, slaves themselves. 4 million slaves, 4 billion. The figures move a little bit billion to 4. 5 billion. That is an investment. You cannot discount that. At the same time, woven in here, is, and certainly in these arguments and in some of the healthy amendments is the issue of White Supremacy. In the Northern States there are in 1860, there are 18 Northern States. Free blacks could vote without restriction in five of them. They can vote with restrictions in another three. Which means that in 10 states, Northern States, free states, they couldnt vote at all. So i th