I am a Program Coordinator with the smithsonian associates. I would like to welcome you all to a stimulating program on the myth of the lost cause. It is always a pleasure to welcome ed own cap her back to the smithsonian. Through the years, he has presented many outstanding programs to us on the civil war topics. This is his 10th appearance. He is the book review editor of civile editor. He was an adjunct professor at Muhlenberg College degrees from Old Dominion University and Muhlenberg College as well as a law degree from jail. Theerved as a lawyer with federal government for more than 34 years. As a retired commander in the u. S. Coast guard reserve as well. He is the author of six books on Civil War History including, the myths of the lost cause why the south fought the civil war and why the north won. Which was published last fall and on which tonights program is based. His book will be available in the museum shops outside at the end of tonights program. He will be happy to sign copies were you there. With that said, we have a very packed two hours for you. We want to bring up bed. Please join me we want to bring up ed. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to edward bone temper. Mr. Bonekemper a pleasure to be back here at the smithsonian to talk about the civil war. I really appreciate the great turnout tonight. It certainly shows the lengths to which people will go to avoid president ial town hall. S. [laughter] [applause] confess, i do have to that as you heard, i have two history degrees and a law degree so you will not be hearing and argumentative historian this evening. This is also a good time for me to say that these are my personal comments, based on my personal research. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this is sonja at all. Of the smithsonian at all. Mary and the smithsonian should be off the hook. We are here tonight to discuss a very important topic and that is the myth of the lost cause. I will give you a couple of actions of the myths in and then, and then go on to explain the details of the myth, and the components of it and also then we will take a look at each one. The myth of the lost cause was created by x confederates exconfederates including jubal early, pendleton, and reverend William Jones between 1860 and 1900 who basically to basically justify the civil war. What had happened was that the. Orth fought the war and won northerners went home and resumed their daily lives and the warcare much about until about 100 years later. Southerners on the other hand, had a lot to write about. They had a lot to justify. What had happened is that almost the entire war was fought in the south and the south was an economic ask a case by the end of the war. Northern armies had gone through and destroyed pretty much anything of economic value. In addition, you have to realize majorhe souths institution, slavery had come to an end. There were between 3. 5 million and 4 million slaves with the big question of what was to happen to these africanamericans. Southerners felt compelled to explain why it was that this devastation had occurred and for example, 25 of southern white men between the ages of 2045 were dead. Not just casualties, they were dead as a result of the civil war. There was a lot of explaining to do. That is the origin of the myth of those first 30 years. It had continued. Probably the best example are the seven volumes by freeman in the 1930s and 1940s. In thef all, explaining first four volumes, that lee walked on water and then in the next three volumes, basically explaining any false that lee might have appeared to have had why blaming all of his subordinates. That was called please lieutenants lees lieutenants. The reason i felt compelled to write the book was that as i went around the country talking to members of the vote or roundtables i found that a lot of people who in my view should have known better were greatly affected and bought into a very very many aspects of the myth of the lost cause. That is why i think it is important for all of us to consider what the myth is and how much we want to buy into that myth. A good example of what i am change ofout, a position that occurred among southern leaders. On the threshold of the civil war, as seven Southern States word seceding before lincoln even took office, Jefferson Davis gave a very emotional farewell address to the United States senate in which he said sayonara. He said he explained why he felt compelled to leave the union because the institution of slavery was being threatened either the federal government and northern states. Int was his discussion 18601861. Two decades later in 1881, Jefferson Davis published his twovolume memoirs. Work, Jefferson Davis adopts the traditional myth of cause positiont and said slavery had almost nothing to do with the war. In fact, he states specifically that there would have been a civil war even if no american had owned a slave. Ok. I wont comment on which i think is truth or fiction but note the contrast between the two. This is typical. This is why it is so important to go back and look at the evidence at the time of secession and the time of the formation of the confederacy. People have lot of bought into this over the years. It greatly affected the history of the civil war, whether you were born north, south, east, or west. You absorb some or all of the myth. That is why it is important to understand what the myth this and to examine how valid you think it is based on the evidence. Me statement i have behind and i will try to not rely on the lower left corner because i realize you cannot see it anyway. This is a quote from john keegan. John keegan was an internationally recognized militarys historian with about 20 history books. He lived in england. He did not understand the civil war that well. He wrote a book on it eventually and it was not a very good book. But, in one of his other books on intelligence in war, he made a general statement and this is where historians run into trouble. I do it myself all of the time. You try to make a general statement about something which is tangential to what you are really writing about and what you really know about. Keegan said the southern people were resolute in their determination to pursue to preserve states rights. He bought into what i consider to be the myth that states secession inat the the formation of the confederacy were all about. Springboard off of that and let me tell you what i see as the major components of the myth. The first one i have just stated. That is an absolutely critical one. Slavery was not the primary was thetates rights primary cause of the civil war. I am now talking on the left there. On that slavery was a Benign Institution beneficial to whites and blacks alike. Then all of a sudden, it jumps into, the myth johnson to something that sounds inconsistent to what i just said. It says by the way, the civil war was unnecessary because slavery was going to expire on its own within a reasonable timeframe. We will take a look at that. Further, the argument goes, the south never had a chance to win the war. One would ask if that is so, why did you start the war . [laughter] thus, the south did the best they could with the resources it had. Part of this then is that robert e lee was a great military leader and he was one of the greatest generals who ever lived. You will find, in a lot of books that take the lost cause position they talk about lee in christ like terms talking tha andolga blessing thed children. He is a mini god of the myth of the lost cause. There are a couple of problems with that. Theis that he clearly lost big battle of gettysburg. What to do about that . That became fairly easy to deal with. James long street was made the scapegoat for lee losing gettysburg. One reason for that is because he had the gall to actually take a position in the grant ininistration as a collector your lives. He went over to the republican side and that was death to a political career in the south and made him a sitting target to become the scapegoat of eddies for. Lee ultimately surrendered to grant. If lee is so great, why did he lose to grant . Won myth goes that grant only by being a butcher. Grant was a butcher and he only won by a group. And finally, the newest spin on the myth of the lost cause is that union forces only won by engaging in total war. Beings a phrase that is bandied about fairly loosely these days. We will take a brief look at that. Ok. We will start out with what is the nature of slavery in 1861 . To dealthink we need very long with the issue of was slavery beneficial to whites and blacks. Certainly, certain whites benefited from it and keep in mind, please, when i say slavery, tonight in shorthand, i will be referring to slavery white supremacy. Becauseon i do that is in the south, even if you did not personally or someone in your family did not personally own slaves, you will still you were still the social beneficiary of the existence of slavery. Not can be explained by matter how poor you may be, you always knew that in your society, there were 4 Million People who were inferior to you as a matter of law and of social practice. That said, let us look at slavery itself. The reason i say we dont need to spend much time is that basically we have a long history of rapes and murders of slaves. We have beatings and scars on the back. We have massive movements of slaves from the Northern Tier of Southern States from maryland and virginia primarily down to the deep south. Best estimate is about one million slaves were sold out of the northern south and the the northern or Southern States into the deep south. About one million slaves. If you take that million and adjust and increase for the number of transactions that did not involve such longdistance transfers, i think it is a fair atimate, probably about million slaves over the 200 plus years of slavery were separated from their families. Children taken from parents. Why its taken from husbands. There was no thought really given to trying to keep the family together as except in rare instances. It was a common practice to split the families. I put that in quotes because you have to keep in mind that part of the devastating effect of slavery was that slave marriages were not recognized. Slaves had first names, but not last names. Marriage was not recognized. Ofldren were the property the mothers owner and as far as the owner was concerned, it was his economic decision as to what to do with those slaves. Hold them or sell them. Devastating impact on the africanamerican family legally keptwere from forming family groups as we know them. I dont think we need to say to justifyingbout slavery. Except to remind you that one reason this comes up is because of approaches to the south, the mint julep approach as reflected in the movie and novel gone with the wind. Take a look at a big shaker full of salt. As i said, there was something that seems to me to be inconsistent. In the mess. And that is despite this wonderful benevolent institution, it was going to come to an end within a , definede timeframe loosely as before 1900. Because it was no longer really beneficial economically to the and the reason this argument is made is because then it can be argued that the civil war was unnecessary. The civil war was unnecessary, northerners did not have to fight the war because slavery was going to disappear anyway. If you look at the records, you will see that the value of slaves throughout the states that became the confederacy was on the rise in 1860. They had reached the highest point they had ever reached. Cotton sales were way up. The value of cotton had continued to increase. Keep in mind that slaves were not only used to raise cotton but they were used for tobacco,. Ice, indigo they were used for a lot of farm production. That also by this time, a lot of owners had recognized that some slaves, despite the fact that they were put down as a group, some slaves had real talent as artisans, blacksmiths and carpenters. They were being least out leased out. As the south was being industrialized in the early stages, slaves were being used in industrial arenas. In richmond, virginia, the tobacco plants. Creating cigars and cigarettes. Were almost the exclusive labor to run all of the tobacco factories. Even more interesting come again in richmond, you have the iron works which was a key industrial force in the civil war making virtually all of the confederate artillery and armory. They were the iron works for the confederacy. It was almost exclusively manned by black slaves. The southerners were beginning to figure out from an economic perspective, there are a lot of other uses to which we can put slaves. Part of the argument that slavery was going to go away was also that the south had run out of land that could be developed for agriculture. I think the simple rebuttal to and is that between 1865 1925, the amount of land dedicated to agriculture in the south tripled. It tripled. More recent studies really show that the land was there to be developed for agriculture, it is just that economically it was not being done at the time. Also, in terms of slavery estimate of the the southerners themselves in their secession resolutions was that they were depending defending an institution which 4 assets in slaves of billion 6 billion. Assets in theized United States, that was the , thest single category most valuable single category of assets in the United States. The value of slaves. I personally see no indication that slavery was about to go away. Now, we get to the 64,000 question. That is what caused secession and what caused the formation of the confederacy . I say that once you had a number seceding, starting with seven and going to 11. Let us start with the seven. Deep south states. They seceded between lincolns election and his inauguration in march of 1861. The seven deep south states seceded. Seizingediately began the union for its, armories, and weapons gathered in the south. The only ones that escaped was pensacola and fort sumter in trust them. Other than that, the south was already seizing weapons. States were buying weapons in europe and preparing for war. A deliberate decision was made personally by Jefferson Davis authorizing beauregard to bomb fort sumter to start the war. Given the reasons for the south seceding and forming the confederacy, it should not be a surprise that once those things were in place, there was going to be a war. As we will see, there were a lot of people who were trying to avoid a war by dealing with the issue of slavery. The first thing i want to do is look at contemporary evidence. 18601861. I think that is the only, or the most valid way to determine the cause of the secession and the formation of the confederacy asch is relevant today people display the confederate battle flag. My question is when they are doing that, what does the flag stand for . It stands for the confederacy. What did the confederacy stand for . We as a society should look into that issue and draw our own conclusions as to why the confederacy. Occurred,thing that thehing that is said after middle of 1864 when it was pretty clear that the south was going down the tubes. From that date to the present is secondguessing. Imposing ones own personal views on the situation. Want tobid that i would impose any of my personal views on this but [laughter] i am trying to focus on what actually happened in 1860 and 1861 and look at that contemporaneous evidence. I think that is our most valid evidence as to why there was a confederacy. Handout whichve a has this on it. There are a couple of points i want to make from these statistics which i put together from a couple of different sources. Onlyirst thing is that slave states seceded from the union. Free states. Ut 16 15 slave states. Those that seceded were all slave states. That might tell you something that it is more than just statesrights at issue. Among the slave states, there are three categories. The first category are the early seceders. The seven that went out before lincoln was president. Thathen you have four more went out after fort sumter. They didnt want to take up arms against their fellow states. And then, you have four other slave states, delaware, maryland, kentucky, and missouri. Those slave states never seceded. Let us look at the data and see if there is a correlation , i will summarize initially that the blackness of the state and how likely it was to secede and when it was likely to secede. The big numbers appear are in the firstgroup, in group of seven that went out the populationof were slaves. And, and here is the number that may shock some of you, 37 of the families in those states owned slaves. I say it may shock you because the promulgate ors of the lost se like to say things like did you know that only 1 of americans owned slaves in 1860 . Slavery could not have been a cause of the war. That includes everybody, north and south including men, women, and children. Let us focus on certain states and then not look at individuals. Let me move on. There is another related rationale which is that you know that only about 5 of southerners owned slaves. 5 of southerners owned slaves and therefore the work not be about slavery. What that does is say that if you have a family, and youll have a father that owns a certain number of slaves and he is married to his wife and he has eight kids. That is 10 people who benefit from having one or more slaves in the family. I think it is rational to look at how many families directly owned slaves. This does not even get us into what goes beyond that which is the whole social structure and the lowerclass whites felt about having 4 Million People by law subservient to them. Let us look at this now and 37 of the families in the first seceding states owned slaves. The second batch, the ones after 29 of the, we had population was slaves and 25 of the families owned slaves. Finally, in the four border states, on the upper right here. The last ones on your handout. Only 14 of the population consisted of slaves and only 60 of the families owned slaves. Of theonly 16 percent families owned slaves. Just on a demographic basis, there is a significant relationship between slave population and family ownership of slaves and the willingness to leave the union and the earlier the better in cases where those numbers were higher. Ok. Enough about that. The best evidence, the best evidence of why there was a confederacy is as you would expect, in the words of the seceders themselves. And that is mindboggling because you can study the documents issued either state about why they seceded. And you do not find m