west after the end of the civil war. congressional republicans had an environmental view of citizenship, desiring to turn both freed african-americans and farmers.nto small each group, many white americans believed, would be loyal to the government until the soil -- and till the soil based on a northern agricultural model. adam dean is an assistant professor of history at lynchburg college, specializing in slavery, the american civil war, and reconstruction. he received a ba from the university of california los angeles, ma and phd in 19 century history from the university of virginia under the direction of gary gallagher. herellagher, who will be to speak. adams scholarship focuses on using insights from environmental and social history to answer long-standing questions about the long civil war and its era. "agrarianbook, republic, farming, antislavery politics, and nature parks in the civil war era," was published by the university of north carolina press in february 2015. he's also published articles in civil war history in our own "virginia magazine of history and biography." in 2009, he had an article entitled "who controls the tax controls the future, virginia textbook controversy," won our annual award for the best article that year. he's currently at work on his next project about the study of white southern union's during reconstruction. please join me in a warm vhs welcome to adam dean. [applause] adam: good afternoon. thank you so much for coming to hear me speak today. it's been unusually rainy this may. i would like to begin by thanking all the great folks at the virginia historical society and the dispatch for sponsoring this talk. i really feel that the vhs is a gem i have not seen in any other state that i've been to. after the150 years civil war, virginia prepared for another campaign. the commonwealth called this one civil war 150. understanding our past, embracing our future. 2015, ofnclusion in the various remembrance activities and tourism promotion, a study found that the various sesquicentennial activities brought in more than 290 million tourist dollars to the state, and generated more --n eight point or million $8.4 million in state tax revenue. as an 11 year resident of the commonwealth and as a historian, i cannot help but view this as a success, with one caveat. that is, at the conclusion of 2015,udy in august of there are no new posts on the 150 website, with mary a mention of reconstruction. -- nary a mention of reconstruction. it is my opinion that the outcome of the civil war, that is, union victory, determined only two things. first, that the united states would stay together, and second, that legal slavery would he abolished. that is it. reconstruction would determine other questions. would confederate officers and the leaders of secession be punished for what many northerners viewed as treason? what exactly did freedom mean for the 4 million black southerners who escaped bondage because of the war? be secededms would states rejoin the union? with the social and economic structure of the defeated confederacy change? what would become of the american west? i think we sometimes forget that the question over whether slavery would exist in places even in my home state of utah, new mexico, california, kansas and nebraska, had done much to bring on the war. howthat the union had won, would these new places be governed? so today i went to suggest that understanding reconstruction is just as critical as causes, theg the course, and the outcome of the civil war itself. in many ways, reconstruction did just as much to shape the future of the united states as the war itself. how one should understand reconstruction is the subject of my talk today. the first point that i would like to make about reconstruction is that contrary to what you might have heard, this is a constant struggle for my students to find what is the north, but for the purposes of today, i would like to define the north as the states that simply supported the union during the war. they did not want to industrialize the south. instead -- and this is one of the main contentions of my book -- agriculture characterized the world of northerners. even excluding california and oregon at the time, both overwhelmingly rural, 72% of those who lived in the free rural were rural, had occupations. most were farmers or laborers, lived inrural areas. only in rhode island and massachusetts did less than 50% of the population live in rural areas. these people lived, by and large, on small farms. ac average farm size was 113 res in rural new york and pennsylvania. 125 in today's upper midwest, and 169 in areas beyond the mississippi. what does that all mean? it means that agrarian values defined northerners. and in particular, the republican party, which was always more popular in rural areas than it was in urban states, which were the strongholds of the democrats. the second point i would like to 1850's,s that by the many northerners adopted the ideal of farming a small plot of land for multiple generations. what was the word for this at the time, agricultural permanence. words, by using techniques that can serve the soil, people can stay on the same tract of land for many years. they did not have a modern environmentalist view that conserving the soil was a good thing for the earth. they thought it was a good thing for society. if you were able to farm the same plot of land for multiple years, you could build a stable yeomannery ideal for lower case r, republican government. when the republican party got established in madison, wisconsin in 1854, the selection of the name republican was intentional. in the early 1800s, thomas jefferson referred to his political coalition as the democratic republicans or republicans for short. when the party got established in the 1850's, they self-consciously embraced jefferson's ideas about agriculture and the importance eomanneryn re- -- y republican government. republicans believe that killing the soil or multiple generations -- tilling the soil for multiple generations on small arms or to use thess, language of time, civilization. they also connected small farming to an idea that historians have long recognized as critical to understanding the civil war, and that is the concept of union. the union meant republican government itself great while they were always quick to advertise their ties to jefferson and political propaganda and speeches, even their namesake, they differed from jefferson in some critical ways. republicans opposed, unlike jefferson, the extension of .lavery westward that was their whole reason for existence. they believed that slave taste agriculture destroyed -- based agriculture destroyed the soil, creating what they called barbarism and constant western movement in search of new land. wrestednce republicans control of reconstruction from andrew johnson, they applied these exact ideas, connecting land use social structure to both the south and the west after the war. soil through hard work, scientific knowledge, and agricultural permanence was one key republicans believed to healing a dviivided nation. they also believed that small landholders, rather than large plantations or planters, would prove to be the most loyal to the union. and, they applied to these ideas in both the south and in the west. republicans argued that forcing indians to become small armors -- farmers would open up more land for whites and help civilize, in their words, resisting tribes. this is exactly what they thought should happen with the south, the big land stations of the south needed to be broken up and redistributed to former -- former slaves and white unionists so that a loyal yeomannery could form in the south. think about this. of academics, this is a pretty significant contention. why historians generally treat land distribution in the south as one of reconstruction's lost moments, where things could have happened differently. this dates back to perhaps one of the most famous historians, the black intellectual w.e.b. dubois. as ifstorians seem to act federal indian policy during reconstruction and afterwards is completely different, unconnected. in my opinion is that the same ideology was at the foundation of both efforts. citizenship for both african-americans and indians -- uponreconstruction their exceptions -- acceptance of anglo-american culture, religion, and land use ideals. let's begin talking about reconstruction itself. reconstruction formally began not after the war, that in december of 1863, during the war , after the u.s. had and control of most of tennessee, arkansas, and louisiana. reconstruction, comes from president lincoln's proclamation of amnesty and , which intion december of 1863 offered a full pardon and restoration of all slaves to anyt confederate who would swear allegiance to the united states and recognize all legislative and executive orders pertaining to slavery. when 10% of the 1860 voting population accepted those terms, that state could establish a government-recognized by the united states. formed inwas mostly wartime contingencies. president lincoln believed a less burdensome reconstruction ,ould end the conflict sooner giving confederates less to thet for, and maintaining loyalty of some slave states that had stayed within the union like kentucky, which were very much opposed to any bigger social change. things changed in november of 1864, an election year. the republican party won stunning and commanding majorities in the house and senate. and lincoln earned a second term . also that time in the war, the outcome seemed to be pointing towards a union victory. and thus, priorities for reconstruction shifted. electionlicans who won identified the slaveholding elites as the cause of war. them, victory meant not only defeating the confederacy on the battlefield, but changing the social structure of the south to ensure that there was not another conflict. the performance of black , anders in the u.s. army the impending destruction of ofvery, raise the question whether black people should be post-war society. or onest indication, indication, of what republicans and lincoln wanted the south to unveiled in the creation of the freedmen's bureau in march 1865. this was the first federal government agency of its kind devoted to promoting education, rebuilding, and poverty relief. but something -- this is really unfortunate, in my opinion, that is often not taught about the freedmen's bureau, is that part quote,job was to lease, confiscated and abandoned lands, end quote, to former slaves. giving them the option to buy 40 acres of such land at the end of three years. the notion tied indirectly to what many northerners thought the postwar south should look like. it should be an agricultural society of small farmers. charles sumner of massachusetts explained, quote, the freedmen, for weary generations, have her lies these lands with their -- fertilized these lands with their sweat. the time has come that they should enjoy the results of their labor for at least a few months. end quote. manyse confidence of politicians, a female author and abolitionist named lydia maria child, wrote too many politicians expressing the intense of the law. , the oldd, quote satanic fire will long remain in the ashes of the rebellion. if those tyrannical oligarchs have their lands monopoly restored, they will trample on the blacks in the poor whites as of old. those mammoth plantations on to be divided into small farms and an allotted number of acres given to soldiers, white and black, end quote. the fact that abraham lincoln supported and side this will to insight into how his ideas about reconstruction changed, though he was always famously cryptic on what exactly he wanted, and on april 11, 1865, lincoln gives the final speech of his administration. in it he openly endorsed black person inading one ,he audience, john wilkes booth to assassinate him three days 1865, putting 14, vice president andrew johnson in the white house. hallon's reconstruction was different. the issue two proclamations on may 29, 1865. first, restored property rights with some exemptions to those who pledged loyalty to the union, and act we essence and emancipation, and the second outlined a reconstruction plan for north airliner. the thinking being it starts in north carolina, would go to other states after that's. here johnson appointed a aovisional governor to create new government and enrolled voters to create a new constitution. critically, the voters included people who were on the list only 1861, the date of secession. and who agreed to a loyalty oath. are there any black people on the south, on the voting rolls prior to may 20, 1861? possibly. basically none in the state california. this was confining suffrage writ large to white men in the south. northern visitors to the south in the months after these proclamations were often deeply critical of the president's a broadernd suggested reconstruction that remade the south in the image of the small farming communities of the north. these visitors associated large landholdings with the lease tossed to the union and sparing the slaveholding expansion that brought on the war. they believed that the soil itself, the southern economy, and southern society would and loyale productive if tended by small farmers. share with you a few telling observations, though there's any more in my book. visiting virginia, he argued that slavery had a disastrous impact on the land. in richmond, he wrote that he had quote, past the same desolate scene which i had everywhere observed since i set foot upon the soil of virginia. gold fields and under groups, with signs of human life so feeble and so few that one began to wonder where the country population of the old dominion was to be found,". he reported getting amazed that quote, the petty and shiftless system of farming witnessed around the city, end quote. trowbridge quoted a native white southerner as a way of offering a solution. the man said, the way it generally is, a few own too much and the rest own nothing. i know hundreds of thousands of .cres of land put to no use which, if it were cut up into little farms, would make the country look touristy, end q uote. the prescribed solutions went down to specific crops. quote, i found the land worn out, night -- like nearly all the land in the country. the way virginia folks have spoiled their form. first there was timber, they burnt it off and put a good coat of ashes on the soil. tobacco threeed or four years, then corn, till the soil ran out and they could not raise anything. like giving rum to an exhausted man. sydney andrews, a newspaper reporter from illinois, displayed similar ideas about proper land-use. i find it quote, very suggestive. he visited western north carolina, which was unionist during the war, and he seemed to connect that loyalty to the union with the land-use in that part of the state. quote, western north carolina is suggestive of pennsylvania. it abounds in small arms rather , andlarge plantations corn, not cosan, is the principal product. there are apple orchards and many peach trees, some fences, and occasionally a comfortably situated farmhouse. end quote. i like how he had to add occasionally. graduateld harvard law john richard did a was equally evocative. many men in virginia, he said, quote, owned 5000 and 6000 acres of land. tracks these half their could be broken up into small arms, the soil would yield a product fourfold greater than now. the next sentence is even more telling. intelligenceand and industrious yeomanry composed of colored virginians could become the new leaders. ". northern visitors to the west, , wouldame -- same time have similar suggestions. some background information is necessary. during the civil war itself, in the events occurred west that pointed towards the necessity for change in indian policy after the war. the first of which was that there was a war within a war, that the tutor -- the dakota sioux went to war with the u.s. government between august and december 1862 in minnesota over treaty violations and the failure of the government to provide -- this resulted in a defeat of the sioux and a mass hanging of 38 liters of the sioux. event occurred in november of 1864, known as the sand units of the firs colorado cavalry attacked a group of aceful 1450euian -- shyian indians in november of 1864. how do we know they were peaceful? they were camped outside a fort raising an american flag and a hite flag. the mass murder that resulted was indicktive that some whites in the united states were willing to resort to genocide. one newspaper reported, unborn babes were torn from the wooms of dying mothers and scalpped. children of the most tender ages were butchrd, soldiers adorned their hats with the portions of the bodies of those males and females. so once the war ended, and news of the events filt dangered eastward, there was a massive debate in washington, d.c. about indian policy. while the indians themselves were rarely consulted, the debate seemed to be between western politicians who advocated for what can only be called genocide, and easterners who wanted to reshape the west in similar ways to the american south. western travelers argued that land use was one of the primary influences on society. small farms practicing improved agriculture would allow indians to build communities and become in their words civilized. in other words, indians needed to become small farmers and act like white people in culture and religion to have a future in the united states. let me again share some telling quotes. albert richardson of the new york tribune believed in 18ut67 at indians were "cruel blood thirsty and treacherous by nature. because he added they never tilled the soil. but richardson, after observing chalk taw farming in oklahoma wrote that one indian was -- again i find that interesting, one indian, intelligent 57bd agreeable, nearly as white as myself and with no betrayal of indian origin in speech or features. acres -- f over 100 of 100 acres was all enclosed and under high cultivation. so as long as indians acted and looked like white people it seemed like things were going to be ok. the tremendous influential editor of the springfield republican in close confident of coal fax who was first speaker of the house of representatives and then vice in ident under grant, wrote stark terms. indians hebled needed to either mive to reservations and start to farming small plants of land or be wholly exterminated. as i was reading this i thought small farms in the west don't work because it's dry and arid. but the people of the times had an answer. albert richardson was an advocate of the theory called rain follows the plow which is kind 06 variation of that kevin costner film, if you build it they will come. if you build a farm, rain will ome. he said thousands upon thousands of miles of sage rush and wood cactus, from british columbia to northern mexico, and from western kansas to sierra nevt's will yield barly, oak, and fruit. so these observers wrote directly back to federal policy makers. you can see their letters going back to very powerful ongressmen and senators. this led to new reconstruction policy for both the south and the west. in february of 1866, congress passed a bill extending the life of the freedman's bureau and setting aside 3 million acres of public lands for blacks home steds. another telling law first addressed in february of 1866 and passed in june of that year over johnson's veto was the outhern homestead act. this law extended the home 12ed act of 18672, which i hope you're all -- 1862 which i hope you're all familiar with, for the west, over the five public lants takes that had been part of the conif he hadrysy. arkansas, -- conif he hadsy. arkansas, louisiana, mississippi. george washington julian, the author, spoke expressively about the connections he saw between land use and loyalty to the union. the system of entail adopted by the southern states of our union favors the policy of great estates. and the ruinous system of landlordism and slavery, which finally laid waste to the fair oast and most fertile section of the republic, and ended. while in the new england states -- and listen to this. in a -- adopting a different system, referring to land use, laid the foundations of their prosperity in the soil itself. for the west, the national congress expressly rejected the type of mass murder seen at and creek. wisks senator doolittle established -- wisconsin senator came up with a new set of indian policies. doolittle noted that because the cherokees, creek, seminols, and chalk taws owned and farmed land in oklahoma, that they had advanced to a degree that they were capable of self-government. in june of 1862, long past when johnson was still relevant as president, congress created the u.s.-indian peace commission aiming to settle all tribes on reservations with the goal of becoming farmers. they should be introduced as rapidly as possible. schools teach the children english, other institutions of government, farmers and mechanics sent to instruct the indians and missionary and benevolent societies invited. of course, there was a catch to all of this. while it was called the peace commission, if indians did not wanted to become yowmen farmers and adopt angelo american culture, the army would force them to do so. and grant, when he became president, or took office in march of 1869 announced that this would be his policy. he called it his peace policy. all of this suggests to me that for many republicans the west and the south had different land use problems but the same solutions. in the west, republicans believed that native americans had a ignored farmle possibilities by relying ong hunting and gathering and were consequently living what they called a barbaric lifestyle. in the south, slave plantations monopolized and exhausted the soil permitting the rise of olegarks threatening to the union. the solution, though, was the same. both regions needed to become ands of small farms. oliver otis howard, more commonly referred to as o.o. howard, a u.s. general during and after the civil war, makes these links clear. howard was the first head of the freedman's bureau in 1865. and he aggressively promoted land distribution. sometimes to the chagrine of his commander in chief. and he openly campaigned against johnson sending letters to senators calling for more redistribution. now, when such efforts failed in the south, howard continued in the west. he served as the main general in the war of 1877. one of the last big indian conflicts in the 19th century. in negotiations, he constantly demanded that they give up their culture and lands and resort to small farming. in a recorded negotiations, he lost his patience, saying, 20 times over i hear that the earth is your mother. i want to hear it no more. so what was the outcome of all these ideas and policies? in my opinion, the vision remains prominent in the west despite some individuals like general william sherman who argued that it is better that the indian race be oblit rated. while it failed in the south. by 1874, the u.s. government was indeed moving away from the full promise of reconstruction in the south while stepping up efforts in the west. the failures of reconstruction re worgs ten lectures of their own accord but i wanted to cover one of the failures of the specific law i mentioned. the southern homestead act. intended to create a black yeomanry, a law failed. why? 06947 million acres of the public lands in the south, yellow pine and cyprus covered much of the land making it unsuitable to farm unless you had the capital to take all the trees out, drain it, and former e it, which most slaves did not have. in other cases where there was ideal land direct violence and intimidation prevented families from registering for homesteads. for the west, though, the vision couple nailted in the -- culminated in the act of 1887 which authorized the president to break up indian reservations and distribute 160 acres of land to the heads of each indian family. the rest of the reservation lands would be open to white homesteaders. so the question is, why was it successful in the west but not in the south? one irony here is that in the south the people that the olicy affected were actually supportive. what do i mean by that? that is african americans in he south wanted small farms, wanted lands that they would worked on as slaves. in alabama, one such man, albert griffin, headed up a black political organization called the loyal league and the legal league called for large plantations to be broken up into small farms where anything but cotton was being tilled. the result griffin articulated was that a laboring self-reliance and intelligent population will multiply all over the country. in the west, however, indians were by and large not supportive of becoming white people and small farmers. i know i'm going to mispronounce this so i apologize. hupertho, in negotiating, said that any negotiation that would surrender homelands and lead to farming cutting into and profaning the earth mother asn't true law at all. the answer, which wraps up my talk today, is that the opposition of southern whites and the apathy of the white north blocked land redistribution efforts in the south. yet since forcing indians to adopt farming aligned with the views of western life, who stood to gain lands when the federal government compelled indians to live on small plots of land, reconstruction continued in the west while it ended in the south. thank you. [applause] >> yes. i guess we're still learning if you break it, you own it. you spoke of the roll of the united states army and indal policy. could you tell us a little bit about the role of the united states army in reconstruction, southern reconstruction? >> i would be happy to. that's an area where there needs to be a lot more research done to be honest. the u.s. army presence in the south was actually quite limited. after -- during reconstruction. the volunteer army demobilized very quickly and soldiers wanted to go back home. space the army in many of the defeated conif he had rassy was only present in bigger cities in town. it was not as present in the country. and the army would play a critical role in the conflict between president johnson and congress. most famously, when johnson -- this has been interpreted in a number of different ways -- sent a rather cryptic letter to grant who was commander of the army,, saying grant maybe you should bring the army to washington, d.c.. some historians think the implication was to intimidate congress. and that certainly was grant's interpretation. and he ordered all of his generals to stand down and ignore the president and sent the message he had gotten from johnson to congress. and that's actually one of the underlying reasons behind impeachment. and then generals were either apt to enforce some of the freedman's provisions, some of the reconstruction acts of 1867 , phillip sheridan was notoriously famous for taking a very aggressive role in defending black rights and going after the clan in new orleans while other generals were more sympathetic to congress. -- i mean, to the president. excuse me. >> i have two questions. could you go over the extent of homesteading in florida after the law which i believed had involved public lands which were available. >> that's actually a fantastic question. i'm really glad you brought that up. because that was one of the limited areas where the southern homestead act was successful. so i think it's in my book but it's over 400 black families did actually get homestead in florida. and there was a community of former slaves with homestead at a place with a somewhat inace pishes title, mosquito lagoon. >> that town is still there. >> ok. >> my next question is, it's my belief that the bulk of the land was not enhanced of plants -- the great plains. the bulk of the lands was in the hands of modest landholder. and i will give you an example. my father-in-law, his grandfather was born in the far northest tip of georgia in the north carolina line. and there were large chunks of territory like that. how did the people who wanted to redistribute the land propose to get the land? >> there's a couple of answers to that question. the first of which is that i do believe there was in fact pressure from the cotton areas, sugar areas of south from these large landholders. that was actually driving that forward. that's why andrew johnson and his earlier life had actually moved to tennessee. nd that's why large numbers of poorer white southerners had actually moved to the upper midwest in surt of the war. so, yes, that i do believe that there was a phenomenon in existence. and the second part of your question is that the observers did notice those regions that were small farms. so, of course the gentleman from illinois went to northwestern north carolina and he said yeah this is pretty much how it should be. but what they wanted to do was break the political power of the landholders and redistribute that to not only former slaves but to white unionists as well. as to whether that would have -- there would have been enough land, i don't think one could nswer that question. that -- [inaudible] >> that's actually my next book project about and there was a very fassnailting convention in philadelphia -- fascinating convention in philadelphia in september of 1866 of southern unionists -- why southern unionists. and every single state sends representatives except for south carolina which sends no one. >> right here in the middle. >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> since virginia's government seems to be taken over again by yankees -- [applause] -- can you flesh out the notion of carpet baggers and what role did that play in virginia's government? >> let me think for a second bout that one. each state was a bit different in its reconstruction. so virginia was indeed subject to the military reconstruction act of 1867. but it -- government, which was a coalition of freed slaves, loyalist whites like john minor boggs, and a few northerners who had moved to the state, was really only in power for a couple of years. and so i don't think there was any wanted as partly why reconstruction turned out the way it did is there was not a powerful republican party in the south in the late 18 50s and 1870s. >> can you talk about carpet baggers, that -- >> well, that was a political slogan by the opponents of reconstruction. so if you didn't want -- if you didn't like what reconstruction was doing in trying to change the economy of the south and bring in railroads and have public education and have civic equality, political equality for black people, you labeled it as an outside alien force, hence, carpet baggers. >> if memory serves me correctly, in 1856 the republican soil was free soil, free slaves and freemont. >> no free slaves. free soil, free label, free men. that's an important actually -- >> thank you. >> go ahead. >> i read too much irving stone apparently. the part that i'm wondering about is what was meant by free soil and did that understanding play out in the reconstruction era? >> that's a good question. i would like to think my book helps put the soil back into that famous republican slogan, free soil, free labor, freemen, freemont. and that if you read chapter 2 of my book, it really touches on that. free soil meant no slavery in the west. and the image of the slave plantation is this monopolistic entity that would prevent free white people of the north from having land in the west and that the farming practices were poor on the plantation, which is a pretty key component ot republican message of the 1850s. but most directly free soil eant no slavery in the west. > time for one more. if not. >> [applause] >> you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend c-span-3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. 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