WEBVTT

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- You cannot control what
a great military event

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can set loose. More battle
casualties than US forces had

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suffered in every war combined
down to that point happened in two

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days. Two and a half months after
that, George B. McClellan's army

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engaged with Lee's army in what came to be
called the Seven Days Battles at Richmond,

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36,000 casualties.
So those two together just

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showed that this was gonna
be on a totally different

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scale. He added
a psychological twist. What,

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what Grant envisioned his doing, and
Sheridan actually did it in the Shenandoah

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Valley before Sherman did
it in Georgia, is go into an

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agriculturally productive area,
burn the mills, kill the livestock,

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destroy the crops, lay waste to it so that
it can't be a logistical support of the

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Confederacy anymore. Sheridan did it
in the Shenandoah Valley, and then Sherman

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did it in Georgia. But Sherman said,
"But I'm also going to break them

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psychologically. I'm gonna show them that
my army can go wherever it wants to go

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whenever it wants to go, and there's
nothing Jefferson Davis can do about it."

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The great forces are all that matters
and individuals don't really matter notion

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of history I think is ridiculous.
Individuals really matter. For the

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United States, Lincoln and Grant
matter beyond calculation-

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... in this war.
And on the Confederate side,

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if you take Lee out of the picture, the

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war doesn't last nearly as long as it
does. In terms of causation, if you take

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slavery out of the picture,
there is no Civil War, period.

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- The following is a conversation
with Gary Gallagher, a

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historian of the American Civil War.

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This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To
support it, please check out our sponsors

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in the description where you can
also find links to contact me,

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ask questions, give feedback,
and so on. And now, dear

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friends, here's Gary Gallagher.
The American Civil War broke out in 1861.

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What were the causes of the Civil War?
Could it have been

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avoided, or was it inevitable?

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- I don't know if anything is inevitable
in history, but it's certainly safe to say

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that the conditions were
in place to make it possible-

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... by the winter of 1860, '61,
and the conditions that made it possible

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were all related to the
institution of slavery and

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its effects both in the states where
slavery was allowed and the states

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where it was not allowed.
And there had been a series of tensions

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that grew in the decade
preceding the 1850s.

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It's not that one side wants to get
rid of slavery and the other side

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wants to protect slavery. I'm talking
about the white people in the United

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States now who would be
making the political decisions.

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It's a question of whether slavery was
going to be able to expand into federal

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territories. That is what really created

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the starkest difference
between the two sections in the

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1850s, even in the late 1840s.
The issues that came to most, uh,

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perilous a point in the view of many
people then had to do with whether slavery

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would be allowed only where it already
existed, or would it be allowed to

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expand. If it could expand,
then it seemed that it might

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be conceivable at some point
even that the slaveholding states

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could end up with a majority.
They were in a minority by 1860,

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'61 and feeling beleaguered,
feeling threatened. They'd long since lost

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the population race to the free states.

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Early in the nation, the most powerful
states were slaveholding states.

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Virginia was by far the most
important state. Four of the first five

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presidents were from Virginia,
all slaveholders, all prominent

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members of the slaveholding class. Those
days were long gone by the late 1850s.

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- So that's an important thing to say.
It wasn't before the Civil

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War a discussion about abolishing
slavery. It's about whether

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slavery, the institution
of slavery should be expanded.

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- Allowed to expand into federal
territories. There, there is a portion

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of the white population
that is adamantly in favor of

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getting rid of slavery immediately.
The abolitionists, they...

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There was even a political party

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called the Liberty Party, that ran
a candidate in 1840 and they got a handful

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of thousand votes. They reached
their high point in 1844. They got about

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two and a half percent of the vote.

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The abolitionists are a tiny minority
among the— even in the North, tiny

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minority among the white people
of the United States. The African

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American population, nearly
four million of them by 1860, of

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course, would have embraced it
instantly and yearned for it. But in

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the white population,
the abolitionists are a tiny minority.

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They are much despised

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even across much of the North
because they were seen as agitators

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who roiled the Union
and deepened rifts that might

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bring a significant political break.

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- So how did this escalate
to a civil war, this

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almost policy discussion about
the institution of slavery? How did it

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actually escalate?

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- It escalated into a civil war
because in the presidential election of

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1860... There'd been two party
systems in the United States. The first

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party system, the Republicans,
the Jeffersonian Republicans versus

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the Federalists.

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After that, there was, the two
parties were the Whig Party against the

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Democratic Party. The Democratic Party
grew out of the Jeffersonian Republican

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Party. It's the same party.

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The Whig Party foundered to a significant
degree on the issue of slavery.

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How do you maintain a national
party that has a wing in the Southern

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states and has a wing

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in the Northern free states that
can handle the issue of slavery?

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The Democrats managed to do that.
The Whigs could not do it, and so the Whig

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Party ran their last candidate
in 1852, presidential candidate,

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significant candidate.
And the Republican Party emerged in the

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mid-1850s, took most of the old
Whigs into the Republican

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ranks and one of the Republican,
the key Republican platform plank

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was no expansion of slavery
into the territories.

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Not abolish slavery, no expansion.
That was the key in

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1856 when they ran their first
candidate. In 1860, that

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is again the key plank in the Republican
platform. The Republican platform in

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1860 says where slavery exists it will
continue, but it cannot expand into the

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territories. When white Southerners
saw that, that meant that

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they were doomed to become an increasingly

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minority section in the nation,
and you would have a federal

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government increasingly dominated by the
free states that could then do the one

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thing that the white South could
not countenance, and that is

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tamper with the institution
of slavery in the South.

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The presidential election of 1860
brought the destruction of the

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last national party, which
was the Democrats. They couldn't even

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settle on a candidate, so you end up with
a Northern Democratic candidate running,

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Stephen A. Douglas,
and a Southern candidate running. The

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convention fractured and John C.
Breckinridge ran on the, on the Southern

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Democrat platform. You had
a Unionist candidate running who just

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didn't wanna talk about slavery, let's
talk about the Union, and you had Lincoln

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running as a Republican. When Lincoln
won, the white South looked at Lincoln

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winning. Here's a guy who
has said that he doesn't

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think slavery would expand,
but he'd said more than that. He

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scared the white South more because
in 1858, both Lincoln and William

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Henry Seward, these are two
prominent, prominent Republicans,

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had said basically in separate
speeches, the House Divided Speech

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on Lincoln's part, the Irrepressible
Conflict Speech on Seward's part,

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that the nation could not continue
in the long term half slave and half free.

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And everybody in the South knew
which way they wanted it to be. They

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would want it to be no slavery.
And so Lincoln's election

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scared the white South
enough so that seven of the 15

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slave-holding states seceded
in response to Lincoln's election.

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They seceded between December 20th,
when South Carolina went out,

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and the end of February.
You had the deep South went out.

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- What was the general view amongst
the populace towards slavery? Let's

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kind of lay it out. Let's you know,
for the audience looking back,

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let's put ourselves
in the mind space of how people

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saw the world, how people saw slavery,
how people saw African Americans.

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- Well, the baseline among
the white Americans, there were about

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31, shade more than 31 million
Americans in 1860 for the census of 1860.

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About four million of them
were African Americans,

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three and a half million of those
enslaved in the South. Anyway,

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among the white population,

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the average attitude toward
Black people is what we would call

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profoundly prejudiced.
Doesn't matter whether you...

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A lot of people think this is a

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Southern white thing.
They're the only ones who were prejudiced.

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By our standards, the overwhelming
majority of people in the free states

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were also deeply prejudiced.
It's important to

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keep in mind that attitudes towards
slavery and attitudes toward race

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do not, they're not necessarily the same.
I mean, you could be against

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slavery and still be prejudiced against
Black people. By our standards, many

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abolitionists were prejudiced
against Black people. They...

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But the overwhelming
majority of the white North,

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in the North, often had a hard time
getting my students to understand

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the demographics in 1860. The free
states in 1860 were more than 98% white.

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98% white. African Americans are a tiny

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minority in the free states.
Black people lived in the 15 slaveholding

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states in 1860.
Most of the white North, by our

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standards, was very prejudiced.
They were against the expansion of

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slavery into the territories because
they thought that would circumscribe

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white opportunities to make an economic
life in these federal territories,

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and they didn't want that to happen.
About 45% of the people who lived

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in the free states were Democrats.
Most Democrats had no problem with

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slavery. I mean, absolutely no
problem with the institution of

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slavery. There would be more
problems among Republicans,

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especially with extension of slavery,
although many Democrats, white

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Democrats in the North
were against that as well.

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The white South was overwhelmingly
in favor of slavery. You

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often read the argument, the kind
of neo-Confederate argument that

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they'll talk about how most Confederate
soldiers didn't own slaves. That's true.

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The a large majority of families
in the South did not own a single slave.

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But all white Southerners had a stake
in slavery. They had a stake in

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it as a form of labor control,

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but more important than that, they
had a stake in it as a means of social

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control. They knew, no matter what
they said later in the Jim Crow era of

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how happy Black people were
in the institution of slavery,

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they knew that Black people,

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of course, did not want to be enslaved,
and they were afraid of what would happen

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if they weren't enslaved anymore. They had
in the backs of their minds Haiti. Is that

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what's gonna... If you live in one of the
coastal districts of South Carolina where

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90% of the residents are enslaved
and you're a white person, you

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probably don't sleep all that soundly
at night if you think there's any

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chance that the Black people are not
gonna remain under the control of the

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white people. So all white people
in the South had a stake in slavery,

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not just some. All of them did,
and there were all kinds of ways that

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it would go back and forth.
If you were a modest

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farmer and grew a little bit of cotton,
you didn't have your own cotton gin,

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you... but your more wealthy neighbor had
a gin, could gin your cotton there, and

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then you would take your turn on the slave
patrol, the slave patrols. So there's a

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reciprocity in that regard.

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- This is perhaps a bit outside
the scope of what we'll talk about today,

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but just to lay out the context
on slavery in general in human

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history, we should say that slavery was

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ubiquitous. It existed
in virtually every major

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civilization in the history of humans.

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Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, China, the Islamic

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world, Africa, the Americas,
North and South America.

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We should also say something that,
as I was looking into this,

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another big topic, which is the Atlantic
slave trade. And it was surprising to me,

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the stat I wasn't aware of, I would
venture to say most Americans probably

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don't know, that only 4% of African
slaves were brought to North America,

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to the United States.
- Brazil is the main destination.

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- Brazil, the Caribbean
was over 90%, 4.9 million in

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Brazil, 4 million in the Caribbean,

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and it was also the last of the Americas
to abolish the slave trade. So

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only 4% of the Atlantic slave trade
went to the United States. So there's--

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the story of human slavery
is one that reaches deep

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into our history
and geographically is much

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larger than we often study
in the context of the United States.

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- One thing the war, the Civil War, which
I'll just call the war for the rest of

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our discussion, I mean,
one thing it did was end slavery

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in four years in the United States.

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Whereas in the absence of that war,
it might have gone on for decades.

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I think the

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United States would have had the
ignominious distinction of being the last

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place to get rid of slavery,
would have been after Brazil,

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would have been after Spanish

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Cuba, because it was thriving
in the United States in 1860. It was

00:13:38.360 --> 00:13:42.300
making the transition
from cash crop agriculture-

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... to other, to industrial
applications and other applications

00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:53.480
growing of non-- not growing, growing
just cotton and rice and sugar. It was--

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There was a time in the literature
when people argued that the war

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was needless, the Civil War was needless
because slavery was on its way out.

00:14:01.614 --> 00:14:02.257
That's absolutely

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wrong. It was not on its way out. It
was thriving. Lincoln said at one point he

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thought it might have lasted another
fifty years, and I don't know how many

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years it would have lasted, but I think
it would have lasted longer than it did

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in either Cuba or Brazil if it hadn't,
if the war hadn't taken place.

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- So slavery was flourishing in the
United States from- - Flourishing.

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-... from an economics
perspective-... especially.

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- The wealthiest part...
The 1860 census is our

00:14:28.040 --> 00:14:31.877
friend, and it tells us that
the people who controlled the

00:14:31.960 --> 00:14:35.937
most wealth in the United States were
slaveholders, and their property in

00:14:36.020 --> 00:14:39.690
slaves alone, not their other
holdings, not their land holdings,

00:14:39.820 --> 00:14:45.620
just property in slaves were valued
at about three billion dollars. The value

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of all industries, all railroads,
all of that put together,

00:14:50.500 --> 00:14:54.417
fewer than two point five billion dollars.
So the people who controlled the most

00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:58.000
wealth, by far,
were the slaveholding class.

00:14:58.720 --> 00:15:02.540
- So it was the most valuable
industry in the United States,

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and perhaps it is the reason,

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Again, a bit out of scope,
but maybe it helps lay out the land.

00:15:10.740 --> 00:15:13.160
Let's look at the nineteenth century. So

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most slave-owning societies
of the era were able to abolish slavery

00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:21.860
without people dying at the mass
scale that we'll discuss. So

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Britain freed eight hundred
thousand slaves in 1833-

00:15:26.360 --> 00:15:32.977
... By buying their freedom. Russia freed
twenty-three million serfs in 1861 with

00:15:33.060 --> 00:15:36.600
a decree, so legally. Brazil, which

00:15:36.700 --> 00:15:40.430
imported more than ten times as many
enslaved Africans as the United

00:15:40.540 --> 00:15:45.740
States, abolished slavery in 1888
through basic ordinary legislation.

00:15:46.700 --> 00:15:50.257
No violence.
Why did the US have a civil war

00:15:50.340 --> 00:15:54.057
with an estimated seven hundred
and fifty thousand people dead in

00:15:54.140 --> 00:15:55.390
order to abolish slavery?

00:15:55.620 --> 00:15:59.019
- Yes. That's-- Let's talk just for a
second about the seven hundred and fifty

00:15:59.103 --> 00:15:59.936
thousand

00:16:00.140 --> 00:16:03.917
dead soldiers we're talking about.
The number for years was six

00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:08.500
hundred and eighteen thousand,
and that's been revised lately.

00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:11.989
I think we're probably certainly
more than seven hundred thousand.

00:16:12.072 --> 00:16:13.237
By far the bloodiest war in,

00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:17.240
in our history as a percentage
of the population off the charts,

00:16:17.340 --> 00:16:21.157
by far the bloodiest. I think
there's a big difference between Great

00:16:21.240 --> 00:16:25.057
Britain doing it and the United States
doing it, is Great Britain did it in other

00:16:25.140 --> 00:16:30.760
places. There weren't millions of enslaved
people in Great Britain at the time.

00:16:31.460 --> 00:16:35.257
It's-- I think, for them, it might
have been a little bit easier to free

00:16:35.340 --> 00:16:39.177
enslaved people who don't live among
you than it... In the United States,

00:16:39.260 --> 00:16:42.493
the ante is up for the Confederacy because
they, the enslaved people lived here,

00:16:42.577 --> 00:16:43.217
and I think they

00:16:43.300 --> 00:16:46.957
were, a lot of them were afraid of them
and what would happen if they weren't

00:16:47.040 --> 00:16:50.957
enslaved anymore. The war goes
from... It doesn't begin as a

00:16:51.040 --> 00:16:54.020
war to end slavery.
There's a major shift in the war,

00:16:54.660 --> 00:16:58.497
begins in the summer of 1862,
where you add to the

00:16:58.580 --> 00:17:02.117
war. The war aim for the United
States initially is to suppress the

00:17:02.200 --> 00:17:06.057
rebellion, which is what they
called this. They didn't call

00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:10.190
it the Civil War for the most part during
the war. It's the War of the Rebellion.

00:17:10.890 --> 00:17:14.817
That's the goal initially.
As the war goes on and becomes costlier

00:17:14.900 --> 00:17:18.737
and more all-encompassing, they decide
that they're not gonna be able to suppress

00:17:18.820 --> 00:17:21.857
the rebellion unless they
also strike at slavery, because

00:17:21.940 --> 00:17:25.850
slavery underpins the Confederate
war-making capacity.

00:17:26.540 --> 00:17:30.387
You have enslaved labor that keeps the
economy going and allows the Confederacy

00:17:30.470 --> 00:17:34.237
to mobilize between eighty-five
and ninety percent of all their white

00:17:34.320 --> 00:17:37.537
military-aged males. It's
an astonishing mobilization. It's only

00:17:37.620 --> 00:17:41.197
possible because enslaved labor keeps
the economy going. If you take that

00:17:41.280 --> 00:17:46.116
enslaved labor away, it deals
a significant blow to the Confederate

00:17:46.199 --> 00:17:50.800
economy and, and by extension, to its
ability to wage a nineteenth century war.

00:17:51.320 --> 00:17:56.380
- So the Emancipation Proclamation
was in part a military strategy.

00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.640
- Abraham Lincoln based it entirely

00:18:00.520 --> 00:18:04.277
on his war-making power
as commander-in-chief in a time of open

00:18:04.360 --> 00:18:08.177
rebellion. His inclination,
there's no-- He's often been criticized

00:18:08.260 --> 00:18:11.577
for not including the soaring
language he was capable of in the

00:18:11.660 --> 00:18:15.277
Emancipation Proclamation.
One historian likened it to a bill of

00:18:15.360 --> 00:18:19.257
lading. It had all the soaring
language of a bill of lading. He

00:18:19.340 --> 00:18:23.040
did that on purpose. He did it because he,

00:18:23.580 --> 00:18:27.277
he doesn't have the power to strike
at slavery in the absence of a war. The

00:18:27.360 --> 00:18:28.640
president doesn't. And

00:18:29.660 --> 00:18:33.017
he did it because he knows
that he can't win the war with only

00:18:33.100 --> 00:18:36.657
Republicans in the army. He needs to keep
Democrats on board with the war as well.

00:18:36.740 --> 00:18:40.600
They're not in favor of emancipation.
The one way that they might accept it

00:18:41.240 --> 00:18:45.157
is as a tool to help achieve union, and

00:18:45.240 --> 00:18:49.077
to do that we've got to strike
at the rebels this way, strike at

00:18:49.160 --> 00:18:52.180
slavery. That will hurt their war effort,
and it will also punish the people who

00:18:52.263 --> 00:18:56.780
brought on the war, and that would make...
So Lincoln hoped that by basing it

00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:00.600
strictly on his war power,
it might be more widely accepted

00:19:01.420 --> 00:19:05.297
across all parts of the
loyal states and not as

00:19:05.380 --> 00:19:09.340
controversial as it was. It was still
intensely controversial. It alienated

00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:13.317
many Democrats when he issued it,
who said, "You're changing what this

00:19:13.400 --> 00:19:17.197
war is about. We're willing to shed
our blood and maybe risk our lives to

00:19:17.280 --> 00:19:21.177
restore the union of the founders.
I'm not gonna risk my life to

00:19:21.260 --> 00:19:25.580
free a Black person." That's a very,
very common attitude among Democrats.

00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:29.860
- So what did the Emancipation
Proclamation actually do? It

00:19:30.020 --> 00:19:35.260
emphasized the freeing
of slaves in the South.

00:19:35.820 --> 00:19:39.637
- It's even more complicated than that.
The only place that Lincoln said he had

00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:45.217
the power as the war leader
to strike at slavery is where the

00:19:45.300 --> 00:19:49.000
rebels were actually still
in rebellion and in control. So

00:19:49.180 --> 00:19:53.080
any place where the US Army was in
control, any place-- He said that

00:19:53.180 --> 00:19:56.937
it is in essence United States
territory now. I can't free them there

00:19:57.020 --> 00:20:00.860
because I don't have the power. I can
only free them where we don't have the

00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:04.837
power. So he exempted parts
of states and areas in the South

00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:08.860
that it didn't apply to as of the
moment he signed it. Going forward,

00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:14.477
any place that the United States Army
went where it hadn't been on January 1st,

00:20:14.560 --> 00:20:20.437
1863, the Emancipation Proclamation
applied and enslaved people would be

00:20:20.520 --> 00:20:24.217
freed by it. At the, literally
at the time he signed it, he didn't free

00:20:24.300 --> 00:20:27.542
anybody because he's only saying, "I
can free them where we're not in control.

00:20:27.626 --> 00:20:31.476
We have to be in control for this to have
effect and for this to have power."

00:20:31.720 --> 00:20:38.720
- So in part, this is why the army was the
boundary which the freeing was happening.

00:20:39.260 --> 00:20:41.166
- It's, it's,
it's absolutely the boundary,

00:20:41.249 --> 00:20:43.057
and Congress had already passed what was

00:20:43.140 --> 00:20:47.700
called the Second Confiscation Act.
It passed this in July of 1862

00:20:48.520 --> 00:20:52.287
that announced that all
enslaved people belonging

00:20:52.370 --> 00:20:55.977
to rebels were free. It didn't apply

00:20:56.060 --> 00:20:59.657
to people who could prove they were
unionists living in the South and owned

00:20:59.740 --> 00:21:02.616
slaves. Lincoln didn't make
that distinction in the Emancipation

00:21:02.699 --> 00:21:07.140
Proclamation. His proclamation is broader
than the Second Confiscation Act was.

00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:11.800
- Okay. There's so many tangents we
can take, but let's zoom out once again.

00:21:12.580 --> 00:21:16.557
There's a difference between cause, as
you've talked about, cause and motivation.

00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:21.100
- Absolutely. - Quite a large number
of people volunteered to fight.

00:21:21.620 --> 00:21:24.917
- In fact, a majority of all
the soldiers who fought on both

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:28.920
sides were volunteers during
the Civil War. About 3 million

00:21:29.040 --> 00:21:34.320
served, 2.2 million in the United States,
800, 900,000 in the Confederacy.

00:21:36.100 --> 00:21:39.049
It's, again, I talk about things that are
hard to get students to understand.

00:21:39.132 --> 00:21:39.897
This is one of them.

00:21:39.980 --> 00:21:43.897
They have to separate...
The causation and motivation are

00:21:43.980 --> 00:21:47.937
often conflated, and not just by students
but also by lots of talking heads on

00:21:48.020 --> 00:21:51.837
newscasts in the United States who
don't know anything about United States

00:21:51.920 --> 00:21:55.817
history-... but know what they know.
In terms of causation, if

00:21:55.900 --> 00:21:59.380
you take slavery out of the picture,
there is no Civil War, period.

00:21:59.700 --> 00:22:03.057
That's not a long conversation you need.
You ask the question. That's the answer.

00:22:03.140 --> 00:22:04.477
Let's go to the next question.

00:22:04.560 --> 00:22:07.940
The next question is, okay,
so were most white people

00:22:08.280 --> 00:22:12.000
motivated to put on blue uniforms
because they wanted to kill

00:22:12.100 --> 00:22:15.997
slavery? The answer to that is no,
they were not. They were motivated

00:22:16.080 --> 00:22:19.180
to put on blue uniforms
to salvage the Union,

00:22:19.920 --> 00:22:23.477
which they saw as a unique gift that the

00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:27.377
founding generation, based on the
bloodshed in the American Revolution,

00:22:27.460 --> 00:22:31.280
had bequeathed the successive generations.
And the two key parts of what the

00:22:31.380 --> 00:22:33.780
Union meant for them was, number one,

00:22:35.420 --> 00:22:39.167
you had a voice in your own government,
and someone will always say now to me,

00:22:39.250 --> 00:22:41.550
"Well, but women couldn't vote."
That's right.

00:22:42.540 --> 00:22:46.387
The people who could vote by our
standards were limited in the 19th

00:22:46.470 --> 00:22:49.917
century, but within the context
of the Western world in

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:53.457
1860, the United States had
by far the broadest franchise, by

00:22:53.540 --> 00:22:57.477
far. And so they argued that's one
thing the Union gives us, and it

00:22:57.560 --> 00:22:59.886
also gives us the chance
to rise economically.

00:22:59.969 --> 00:23:01.527
Doesn't guarantee that you can

00:23:01.610 --> 00:23:05.660
succeed, but it means you're not
doomed to be what your father was.

00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:09.937
And those are worth fighting for.
And so I will put on a uniform so the

00:23:10.020 --> 00:23:13.497
slave-holding aristocrats and oligarchs,
which is what they called

00:23:13.580 --> 00:23:15.357
them, of the South,
they said they're not...

00:23:15.441 --> 00:23:17.077
They don't really believe in democracy.

00:23:17.160 --> 00:23:20.860
It's an oligarchy-... in the South.
It's a slavery-based oligarchy,

00:23:21.760 --> 00:23:25.377
and we know which way Europe's going,
they said. The revolutions of the

00:23:25.460 --> 00:23:29.337
1840s failed in Europe. Europe's going
the wrong way. They're going toward

00:23:29.420 --> 00:23:31.940
more aristocracy, more oligarchy, more...

00:23:33.040 --> 00:23:36.937
And we are the last hope.
When Lincoln spoke of

00:23:37.020 --> 00:23:40.797
the last best hope of Earth,
which he did in one of his most

00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:43.100
memorable phrases, he's meaning

00:23:43.960 --> 00:23:47.777
that the United States is a beacon
of small D democracy in a

00:23:47.860 --> 00:23:51.640
Western world that seems to be turning
the other way. And those soldiers,

00:23:52.040 --> 00:23:56.170
it meant, it meant it was that important
to them. They are citizens in a republic

00:23:57.060 --> 00:24:00.917
that people shed blood to establish,
and we can't let it

00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.900
go. Part of the compact is I'm
a citizen. I derive these

00:24:05.040 --> 00:24:07.280
benefits from this republic,
from the Union.

00:24:08.480 --> 00:24:12.480
I can have a voice in government. I can
rise economically or have the chance to.

00:24:12.800 --> 00:24:16.717
I owe my service to that republic.
That's what most of them would've

00:24:16.800 --> 00:24:18.741
said if you'd pressed them
on why they're doing it.

00:24:18.825 --> 00:24:20.737
Doesn't mean everybody
was on fire with ideology

00:24:20.820 --> 00:24:24.577
that way. Some guys would say, "Well, you
know what? I'm broke, and I'm gonna get

00:24:24.660 --> 00:24:30.777
fed and clothed in the army." But this
sense of exceptionalism, exceptionalism's

00:24:30.860 --> 00:24:34.737
unpopular now in the United
States, but Americans had a

00:24:34.820 --> 00:24:38.357
sense of themselves as a truly
exceptionalist society within the

00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:43.030
context of the Western world.
- And as a small aside terminology-wise,

00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:47.270
blue is the Union or what we
think of as the United States,

00:24:48.040 --> 00:24:49.530
and red is the Confederacy.

00:24:49.880 --> 00:24:53.760
- Yes. On the maps, the Confederate
units are red blocks. And the United

00:24:53.860 --> 00:24:56.010
States units are blue
blocks. That's right.

00:24:56.800 --> 00:24:58.577
- And, uh - That is correct.

00:24:58.660 --> 00:25:03.200
- And the North and the South is another
way we'll refer to it just to clarify.

00:25:03.420 --> 00:25:06.680
- And let me have a very
brief rant on North and South.

00:25:06.860 --> 00:25:12.040
I prefer to see this as a war between
two mid-19th-century republics,

00:25:12.320 --> 00:25:16.237
One of which didn't last very long
and spent its whole life in the midst

00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:20.300
of a great war. There were 15
slaveholding states in 1860.

00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:23.537
Only 11 of them seceded
from the United States.

00:25:23.620 --> 00:25:25.717
- Even though there's 13 stars.
We'll talk about that.

00:25:25.800 --> 00:25:29.697
- We'll talk about that demented notion
of things in just a minute, but only 11

00:25:29.780 --> 00:25:33.657
leave. So there are four slaveholding
states in the United States: Kentucky, and

00:25:33.740 --> 00:25:37.537
Missouri, and Maryland, and Delaware
remain in the United States. So

00:25:37.620 --> 00:25:41.437
it's not just North versus South.
Those states are all part of the

00:25:41.520 --> 00:25:44.137
South. It's the United
States versus the Confederacy.

00:25:44.220 --> 00:25:47.320
- But see how you referred to it
as the United States. So the

00:25:47.420 --> 00:25:52.137
Union is also referred to as the United
States - That's correct. Yes, yes

00:25:52.220 --> 00:25:55.977
- But the Confederacy was,
as you write about, a set of

00:25:56.060 --> 00:25:59.240
people who also had a sense
of nationalism, pride

00:25:59.740 --> 00:26:03.657
- Well, and took their founding document.
I mean, it took the whole summer of

00:26:03.740 --> 00:26:07.637
1787 in Philadelphia, that hot,
steamy, humid summer of

00:26:07.720 --> 00:26:11.357
1787 to come up with the Constitution.
The Confederates did it

00:26:11.440 --> 00:26:15.277
quickly 'cause they basically had the US
Constitution here, a blank piece of

00:26:15.360 --> 00:26:18.609
paper over here ... copied most
of the Constitution over here,

00:26:18.692 --> 00:26:20.437
just changed the parts that they needed

00:26:20.520 --> 00:26:24.277
to make sure slavery was protected,
and you didn't have the wrong

00:26:24.360 --> 00:26:27.837
kind of tariffs and so forth. That's one
reason they could do it so quickly. It's

00:26:27.920 --> 00:26:29.660
absolutely based on

00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:32.495
the government they've
been thriving under,

00:26:32.579 --> 00:26:34.677
which is under the United
States Constitution.

00:26:34.760 --> 00:26:38.066
Both sides claimed they were the true
inheritors of the revolutionary

00:26:38.150 --> 00:26:42.477
generation. That was one of their...
They all... Jefferson Davis loved the

00:26:42.560 --> 00:26:46.157
Declaration of Independence. The
Declaration is Abraham Lincoln's favorite

00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:48.590
document. They just liked
different parts of it

00:26:48.740 --> 00:26:52.060
- So we should think
of this as two republics

00:26:52.520 --> 00:26:55.300
- I argue that.
That makes many people very angry

00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:57.540
- I will make many people angry today

00:26:57.800 --> 00:27:01.717
- They say that I am conferring
legitimacy on the Confederacy that they

00:27:01.800 --> 00:27:02.633
don't deserve,

00:27:03.280 --> 00:27:06.837
and my response to that is they have
a national government. They have a

00:27:06.920 --> 00:27:10.497
Senate. They have a Congress. They have
an army. They have a navy. They have

00:27:10.580 --> 00:27:14.317
departments. They... It's...
It walks like a duck. It

00:27:14.400 --> 00:27:18.095
quacks like a duck. In the end, it's
a slaughtered duck faster than it would've

00:27:18.179 --> 00:27:21.029
been because the United States
military forces crushed it

00:27:21.640 --> 00:27:25.982
- We should say that you
are respected, admired,

00:27:26.065 --> 00:27:29.200
loved by most people on both sides

00:27:29.840 --> 00:27:33.557
in, from a perspective sense. You're

00:27:33.640 --> 00:27:37.337
deeply respected by historians
of Civil War and just historians of

00:27:37.420 --> 00:27:40.877
American history.
But of course, when you do your job

00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:45.030
well on a controversial topic in a
controversial period of human history-

00:27:45.860 --> 00:27:51.777
... you're going to get, hopefully
an equal amount of critics on both

00:27:51.860 --> 00:27:56.360
sides. And that's when you do
your job well. So sometimes when we

00:27:56.460 --> 00:28:00.277
speak today, some of the
controversial, quote-unquote,

00:28:00.360 --> 00:28:04.117
controversial things that you express
are controversial from that small

00:28:04.200 --> 00:28:06.900
minority of folks on both
sides for different reasons

00:28:07.120 --> 00:28:10.980
- Yes. I won't be... One of my favorite
pieces of hate mail I got was an

00:28:11.080 --> 00:28:14.497
email where this guy, I had...
He was upset that I referred to the

00:28:14.580 --> 00:28:18.240
Confederacy as a slave-holding
republic that was... And he said that he

00:28:18.340 --> 00:28:24.917
hoped I would develop virulent pancreatic
cancer and die a horrible death. Not

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:28.817
just regular pancreatic cancer.
He wanted virulent pancreatic cancer

00:28:28.900 --> 00:28:33.100
And then he signed his name and said he'd
be happy to talk to me anytime I wanted to

00:28:33.220 --> 00:28:36.597
- Yeah. I'm sure that would
be a wonderful conversation

00:28:36.680 --> 00:28:40.510
But there's also really
strong senses throughout,

00:28:40.700 --> 00:28:45.040
throughout the United States,
the United States, of the,

00:28:46.040 --> 00:28:52.687
this diversity of opinion of what
is the United States - Of course. Yes

00:28:52.770 --> 00:28:55.560
- And that's where
the passion is really rooted

00:28:56.020 --> 00:28:59.690
- Both sides claim...
In the election of 1860,

00:29:00.900 --> 00:29:04.757
Douglas talked about how much he loved the
Union. Lincoln talked about how much he

00:29:04.840 --> 00:29:08.737
loved the Union. Breckinridge talked
about how much he loved the Union.

00:29:08.820 --> 00:29:12.717
They're all... And John Bell, who's
the Unionist, the Constitutional Union-

00:29:12.800 --> 00:29:17.650
That's all he talked about. They just had
different versions of what the Union was

00:29:18.260 --> 00:29:21.519
- And that's why I love this country. I
think it's the greatest country on Earth,

00:29:21.602 --> 00:29:25.480
and it has a bunch of people that very
strongly disagree with each other.

00:29:26.200 --> 00:29:29.717
Of course, hopefully never again

00:29:29.800 --> 00:29:33.540
escalating to the degree that it
did during this period of time.

00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:37.720
So we talked about the blue people
on the map and the red people on the map.

00:29:38.700 --> 00:29:43.530
It may be a silly thing to ask,
but sticking with the motivation,

00:29:45.060 --> 00:29:52.060
why would, let's say, a farm boy
in Ohio-... want to die for the Union?

00:29:53.260 --> 00:29:57.117
- That is the most important, and I didn't
even ask you to ask that question. That's

00:29:57.200 --> 00:29:58.437
the, that's the hardest thing-

00:29:58.520 --> 00:30:00.537
- Let's be honest. You paid me a lot
of money to ask that question, yeah.

00:30:00.620 --> 00:30:02.220
- I didn't think it was so much.

00:30:03.060 --> 00:30:04.427
- Okay. I'm sorry.
Go ahead. I won't distract.

00:30:04.510 --> 00:30:07.321
- No. The, I tell my students at the
beginning of my Civil War class that if

00:30:07.405 --> 00:30:12.478
they couldn't explain, I didn't use Ohio.
I said, "If you can't explain why a farmer

00:30:12.562 --> 00:30:13.347
from Vermont-

00:30:13.430 --> 00:30:17.180
... would put on a blue uniform and pick
up a musket to make South Carolina

00:30:17.700 --> 00:30:20.732
come back in, why didn't he just say,
'Great. South Carolina's gone.

00:30:20.815 --> 00:30:24.715
I never liked them anyway. This is a
better union.' If you can't explain that,

00:30:25.460 --> 00:30:28.246
then you can't understand the Civil War."
And the key to that,

00:30:28.329 --> 00:30:29.477
I'll come back to it, is

00:30:29.560 --> 00:30:32.810
union because he would've said,
"If we allow South Carolina to go

00:30:33.660 --> 00:30:37.577
That means that other places
could go and you could dismantle.

00:30:37.660 --> 00:30:40.798
And the only reason they're going is
because they didn't like who was elected

00:30:40.882 --> 00:30:41.597
president.

00:30:41.680 --> 00:30:44.585
They didn't say that Lincoln was corrupt.
They didn't say Republicans bought

00:30:44.669 --> 00:30:45.137
the election.

00:30:45.220 --> 00:30:48.997
They just didn't like who won
the election. And so if the republic is

00:30:49.080 --> 00:30:52.817
so fragile that it can't have
an election without having the

00:30:52.900 --> 00:30:56.747
people who didn't like who won leave,
then the founders had wasted

00:30:56.830 --> 00:31:00.657
their time, the revolution was for
nothing, all that bloodshed meant

00:31:00.740 --> 00:31:07.740
nothing. You had to step up and save this
precious republic that had put in place

00:31:08.680 --> 00:31:12.517
by the revolutionary generation
and gave its citizens the benefits

00:31:12.600 --> 00:31:16.537
that I've already talked about. That's why
they would put on a uniform and risk their

00:31:16.620 --> 00:31:20.900
life, because they believed a citizen...
These are citizen soldiers.

00:31:22.580 --> 00:31:24.680
We don't know what that means so much now.

00:31:25.300 --> 00:31:29.060
because we have a professional
military establishment now. Not--

00:31:29.600 --> 00:31:34.720
I mean, even when I was younger, there was
still a draft, and but that's gone now.

00:31:35.660 --> 00:31:39.497
And so we don't understand what the
concept of citizen soldier was, that you

00:31:39.580 --> 00:31:43.537
owe something back to the republic
that has conveyed these things

00:31:43.620 --> 00:31:47.740
to you, and that's why the guy
from Vermont or New Hampshire or Ohio

00:31:48.940 --> 00:31:51.800
would put on a uniform
and go into military service.

00:31:52.140 --> 00:31:55.900
- Is it possible for us to understand
that level of love of nation

00:31:56.680 --> 00:32:02.480
and believe in nation? Is this, is this
very distant from what America is today?

00:32:02.740 --> 00:32:05.457
- I actually think many people
probably still feel that way,

00:32:05.540 --> 00:32:07.887
but they're not the ones
who are on television-

00:32:07.970 --> 00:32:11.760
... most of the time. Republicans
in the midst of the war commented

00:32:11.860 --> 00:32:15.650
about the fact that even
with this gigantic conflict going

00:32:15.780 --> 00:32:19.677
on, immigration continued
at a high level. People

00:32:19.760 --> 00:32:23.500
coming into a nation that
was in the middle of a great

00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:27.140
war. And they said, "This
is a testament to the promise

00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:31.040
of the United States."
And I think that promise

00:32:31.160 --> 00:32:34.997
continues. I mean, we've argued about...
As with so many things, Americans have

00:32:35.080 --> 00:32:38.077
no sense of history. They believe we've
never argued about immigration before.

00:32:38.160 --> 00:32:41.321
We've always argued about immigration,
with some people always saying,

00:32:41.405 --> 00:32:44.606
"Shut the door. They're ruining us.
The Italians are ruining us.

00:32:44.689 --> 00:32:46.457
The Irish are Catholics. They're ruining

00:32:46.540 --> 00:32:51.700
us. God, the Southern Europeans are
even worse than, than the Irish were."

00:32:52.520 --> 00:32:56.417
It's-- The people change,
the arguments stay very much the

00:32:56.500 --> 00:33:00.437
same, and I think it's really telling
that in the midst of the war, people

00:33:00.520 --> 00:33:04.297
would say, "Look at our republic.
It is-- It offers so much to people

00:33:04.380 --> 00:33:07.577
that even in the midst of this
great war, they're still coming-

00:33:07.660 --> 00:33:12.880
... to the United States." - And like
you said, both sides, both these republics

00:33:13.420 --> 00:33:16.057
claimed, for example, George Washington.

00:33:16.140 --> 00:33:19.157
- Yes. They both claim... I'll leave it at
that. They both claim George Washington.

00:33:19.240 --> 00:33:20.390
They wanted to be right

00:33:21.500 --> 00:33:25.380
with the man, which is what George
Washington was. He's the indispensable

00:33:25.480 --> 00:33:29.297
man, no question. Both sides
wanted him on their side. They

00:33:29.380 --> 00:33:33.257
both quoted Thomas Jefferson,
although Confederates were a

00:33:33.340 --> 00:33:36.897
little more leery of Jefferson
'cause he's too complicated for them

00:33:36.980 --> 00:33:40.877
sometimes. But no, they wanted to be
right with the founders and claimed to

00:33:40.960 --> 00:33:43.544
be right with the founders.
The Confederates would say,

00:33:43.628 --> 00:33:44.797
"The Constitution allowed

00:33:44.880 --> 00:33:48.025
slavery. What are you talking about
we're out of step with the Constitution?

00:33:48.108 --> 00:33:48.717
We're in step

00:33:48.800 --> 00:33:51.697
with the Con- You're the ones who are
out of step with the Constitution."

00:33:51.780 --> 00:33:54.487
- What about the topic of states'
rights? At the very least-

00:33:54.570 --> 00:33:58.457
- I love state rights. State rights...
I mean, I love the way people use

00:33:58.540 --> 00:34:02.597
it with the Civil War. They associate
it solely with Southern states-

00:34:02.680 --> 00:34:06.577
... of course. State rights is always
available in United States history for

00:34:06.660 --> 00:34:09.917
somebody who's not happy with what
the federal government is doing.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.007
During the War of 1812, it was New
England that most often talked-

00:34:14.090 --> 00:34:17.057
... about resorting to state rights.
They had a convention where they sort

00:34:17.140 --> 00:34:20.740
of wandered over towards secession
territory in the Hartford Convention.

00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:25.300
We think of it as state rights
because as you lead up to the Civil

00:34:25.400 --> 00:34:29.157
War, you hear con- white
Southerners talking about it all the

00:34:29.240 --> 00:34:32.940
time. "We need our state rights."
I always love to ask

00:34:33.520 --> 00:34:35.753
people who say that,
"What are all the state rights?

00:34:35.836 --> 00:34:38.877
Give me-- List the state rights
that the white South is concerned."

00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:41.692
You know, "Give me the top three.
No, really, just give me the top two."

00:34:41.775 --> 00:34:42.625
There's only one.

00:34:43.060 --> 00:34:46.797
The state right that they're worried
about is the right of their state to

00:34:46.880 --> 00:34:50.464
interpose its power between a federal
government that might try to interfere

00:34:50.547 --> 00:34:53.404
with slavery and a state government
that wants to maintain it.

00:34:53.488 --> 00:34:54.817
That's the state right that

00:34:54.900 --> 00:35:00.300
matters then. Northern states also
resorted to state rights during this, the

00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:04.277
ramp-up to the Civil War, with what
were called personal liberty laws. They

00:35:04.360 --> 00:35:08.137
tried to interpose their state power
in between a federal government that would

00:35:08.220 --> 00:35:13.370
use its power to to force escaped,
enslaved people back into slavery.

00:35:14.770 --> 00:35:18.677
It's whoever's unhappy with the federal
government, the concept of state rights is

00:35:18.760 --> 00:35:21.050
available, and both sides used it.

00:35:21.520 --> 00:35:23.880
- And of course, the beautiful, dark,

00:35:25.100 --> 00:35:31.277
ironic hypocrisy was illustrated by the
Confederacy when they were the first to

00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:34.090
pass a national draft in American history.

00:35:34.680 --> 00:35:41.560
- Like, irony is wonderful-... in history.
Another thing that I love to teach

00:35:42.540 --> 00:35:46.317
is that the most intrusive
central government in American

00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:50.317
history, by far, until deep
into the 20th century, was the

00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:53.957
Confederate central government, because
it had to do things to keep the war

00:35:54.040 --> 00:35:57.867
going that it couldn't have done unless
the central government stepped in,

00:35:57.950 --> 00:36:01.937
such as passing the first national
conscription law in American history. The

00:36:02.020 --> 00:36:05.757
government, the US government never forced
people into uniform before the Civil War.

00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:09.757
The Confederates did it first. They did
it in the spring of 1862. They passed a

00:36:09.840 --> 00:36:13.737
national graduated income tax.
And when taxing didn't work,

00:36:13.820 --> 00:36:17.657
when their money became so devalued, they
then passed what they called the tax in

00:36:17.740 --> 00:36:21.697
kind. They would take a percentage of
your crop. They allowed the government to

00:36:21.780 --> 00:36:25.580
impress horses and mules
and enslaved labor to work

00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:29.200
on All of these were intrusions
from the central government that

00:36:29.340 --> 00:36:32.960
drove true state rights people
crazy in the Confederacy.

00:36:33.640 --> 00:36:37.231
Confederates didn't have political parties
because they said the founders didn't want

00:36:37.314 --> 00:36:41.317
them, so we won't have them.
But what they did have was a sort of

00:36:41.400 --> 00:36:44.523
nationalist, "We're gonna let the central
government do whatever it needs to do."

00:36:44.607 --> 00:36:45.177
That's Jefferson

00:36:45.260 --> 00:36:49.157
Davis' wing, and Robert E. Lee's over
there, too. And the people like the

00:36:49.240 --> 00:36:52.717
vice president, Alexander Stephens,
who said, "You can't do all this stuff

00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:54.950
because the states
should have more power."

00:36:55.620 --> 00:36:59.013
The only reason the war lasted as long as
it did is because the central government

00:36:59.096 --> 00:37:03.537
did things no one ever would have believed
they would do. He also got rid of habeas

00:37:03.620 --> 00:37:06.800
corpus just like Abraham Lincoln
did in selected situations.

00:37:07.230 --> 00:37:10.643
- And of course, we should really
emphasize that on both sides,

00:37:10.726 --> 00:37:11.670
those volunteers,

00:37:12.640 --> 00:37:16.340
the on the Confederacy,
there's a very large number of people

00:37:16.440 --> 00:37:20.257
percentage-wise that volunteered
to fight. And then I

00:37:20.340 --> 00:37:24.197
believe the volunteer
period was one year, and

00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:28.117
then there's all kind of funky stuff that
the that the government started doing to

00:37:28.200 --> 00:37:32.180
trap those people into then serving
and- - Here's what the Confederacy did.

00:37:34.300 --> 00:37:36.727
They... Nobody thinks the war's
gonna last a long time-

00:37:36.810 --> 00:37:39.727
... in the spring of 1861.
So if you enlist for a year-

00:37:39.810 --> 00:37:42.644
... that's probably plenty
of time to finish this war. Well,

00:37:42.728 --> 00:37:43.637
a year goes by and a

00:37:43.720 --> 00:37:47.617
significant percentage of the Confederate
men under arms are due to get out. So what

00:37:47.700 --> 00:37:50.280
the Confederate Congress
did was pass conscription.

00:37:50.640 --> 00:37:53.990
We're gonna put every- make everybody
liable to three-year service.

00:37:54.500 --> 00:37:58.277
And in the midst of doing that,
all you guys who volunteered for

00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:00.600
one year are now in for two more years.

00:38:01.220 --> 00:38:04.717
Well, that outraged... I mean, "That's,
you're breaking faith with us," they said.

00:38:04.800 --> 00:38:05.950
They didn't stop there.

00:38:07.120 --> 00:38:10.661
Later they revised it when the war kept
going on and then the three years guys

00:38:10.744 --> 00:38:13.079
were gonna get out,
then the Congress stepped in and said,

00:38:13.163 --> 00:38:14.797
"You're in for the duration." The bottom

00:38:14.880 --> 00:38:18.660
line is, the Confederacy ever
gets you in uniform, you don't

00:38:18.780 --> 00:38:22.737
get out because they keep
changing the rules on you. And that

00:38:22.820 --> 00:38:26.680
was considered, national conscription
was considered a fundamental

00:38:26.800 --> 00:38:28.741
abridgment of individual
rights by many people.

00:38:28.825 --> 00:38:30.677
That's something
the government should never

00:38:30.760 --> 00:38:34.560
force a citizen into uniform.
A citizen should volunteer their service.

00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:38.980
The US government waited a year,
then it did it in the spring of 1863,

00:38:39.100 --> 00:38:42.770
although it always respected
original terms of enlistment.

00:38:44.090 --> 00:38:47.440
Never made it the war for the duration
the way the Confederacy did.

00:38:48.420 --> 00:38:50.820
- Quick pause for a bathroom
break if it's okay.

00:38:51.620 --> 00:38:55.470
Quick 10-second shout-out to our sponsors.
Check them out in the description.

00:38:55.600 --> 00:38:58.417
It really is the best way
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lexfridman.com/sponsors.
And now, dear friends,

00:39:03.120 --> 00:39:05.700
back to my conversation
with Gary Gallagher.

00:39:07.080 --> 00:39:10.780
All right, we're back. There's so many
different directions we can go, but

00:39:11.160 --> 00:39:14.238
I am somebody who believes that
individuals can steer the direction

00:39:14.321 --> 00:39:18.550
of history.
So one angle to look at here is,

00:39:18.660 --> 00:39:22.660
some of the legendary historical
figures from this time.

00:39:24.560 --> 00:39:28.437
Let's talk about some of the key figures
of the Civil War. We have Abraham Lincoln,

00:39:28.520 --> 00:39:31.629
of course, the President of the United
States who held the Union together

00:39:31.713 --> 00:39:36.177
and turned the war into a fight for a new
birth of freedom. Jefferson Davis, who you

00:39:36.260 --> 00:39:39.997
mentioned, President
of the Confederacy. Ulysses S.

00:39:40.080 --> 00:39:43.797
Grant, somebody we'll talk
about quite a bit, General in

00:39:43.880 --> 00:39:47.777
Chief of the Union armies.
Robert E. Lee on

00:39:47.860 --> 00:39:51.840
the other side, the commander
of the Army of Northern Virginia,

00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:55.777
somebody who you have studied
for decades now. We'll talk a lot

00:39:55.860 --> 00:39:59.617
about him. There's Sherman,
there's Stonewall Jackson,

00:39:59.700 --> 00:40:01.620
there's Frederick Douglass,

00:40:02.520 --> 00:40:07.980
there is McClellan, there is John
Brown, a militant abolitionist.

00:40:08.860 --> 00:40:11.120
Many more figures, but let's look at three

00:40:12.600 --> 00:40:18.860
at first. Let's look at Lincoln,
Grant, and Lee. Lincoln first. So

00:40:20.500 --> 00:40:24.197
Abraham Lincoln, we have
this backwoods lawyer with a

00:40:24.280 --> 00:40:27.817
single year of schooling
who somehow outgrew every

00:40:27.900 --> 00:40:31.837
polished man around him and became one
of the most consequential leaders in

00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:35.797
human history. So what do we
need to understand? What can we

00:40:35.880 --> 00:40:38.510
possibly understand
at a 10,000-foot level,

00:40:39.520 --> 00:40:43.410
About Lincoln that made it
all possible? What was it

00:40:43.500 --> 00:40:47.060
about Lincoln's mind that made
this man do what he did?

00:40:48.050 --> 00:40:51.957
- Almost nobody continues to go up
in my estimation as I get older and

00:40:52.040 --> 00:40:55.940
older, but Lincoln is one of the people
who does. And Lincoln is quite frankly

00:40:57.420 --> 00:41:01.337
a mystery to me. I don't see how you
get Abraham Lincoln out of someone who

00:41:01.420 --> 00:41:05.337
came from his very poor background. You

00:41:05.420 --> 00:41:08.155
said he had a year of schooling.
You're being very generous to him there.

00:41:08.239 --> 00:41:09.297
He didn't even really have a

00:41:09.380 --> 00:41:12.820
year of formal schooling.
And you end up with a person

00:41:14.480 --> 00:41:18.160
who is the most eloquent president
we've ever had by a very wide margin

00:41:18.440 --> 00:41:20.980
and I think even more
eloquent than Jefferson,

00:41:21.800 --> 00:41:25.737
and who is able to distill
into the fewest possible

00:41:25.820 --> 00:41:32.480
words the most complex ideas
and topics imaginable and just have them

00:41:33.660 --> 00:41:37.190
ring in a way that almost no one
is able to do. He is someone...

00:41:37.860 --> 00:41:41.757
He had an ego, but I think one
of his real gifts was the ability to

00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:48.720
put his ego aside and keep his eye
on the goal. He was able to really focus,

00:41:48.900 --> 00:41:51.200
and he focused relentlessly on,
number one,

00:41:53.060 --> 00:41:55.660
suppressing the rebellion
and restoring the Union,

00:41:56.600 --> 00:42:00.077
but also getting... He hated
the institution of slavery. He's not an

00:42:00.160 --> 00:42:04.077
abolitionist, but he hated the institution
of slavery and he was very happy to

00:42:04.160 --> 00:42:07.797
see that slavery was added
to the roster of what the United

00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:11.600
States would insist
on at the end of the war.

00:42:12.520 --> 00:42:16.337
He's able to let all the other
things go. He can pay attention to

00:42:16.420 --> 00:42:19.957
many things, but he never loses his...
his principal focus was, "How do I

00:42:20.040 --> 00:42:24.010
maintain this great war?"
And it's an all en- it's

00:42:24.120 --> 00:42:27.140
really hard to get people
to understand the scope

00:42:28.150 --> 00:42:31.467
of the Civil War. There are 31
million people in the United States

00:42:31.550 --> 00:42:35.387
then. About a shade more than 3
million put on uniforms. It would

00:42:35.470 --> 00:42:41.107
be as if we had 35 to 40 million people
under arms now. For the Confederates,

00:42:41.190 --> 00:42:42.840
it would be like having more like

00:42:42.930 --> 00:42:46.990
55 million people-... under arms
as a percentage of the population.

00:42:47.930 --> 00:42:51.727
The dead would be between 6
million and 7.5 million, depending

00:42:51.810 --> 00:42:55.770
on how you count it. The scope
is just... During the Gulf Wars,

00:42:55.950 --> 00:42:59.667
The New York Times put a picture of every
United States service person who was

00:42:59.750 --> 00:43:01.450
killed, put a picture in the paper

00:43:02.630 --> 00:43:06.590
over the scope of those wars,
and that is about as many people

00:43:06.790 --> 00:43:10.587
as were shot in a few hours at Antietam.
It's just very different to

00:43:10.670 --> 00:43:14.247
get students now to understand
the different scale, and that's what

00:43:14.330 --> 00:43:18.290
Lincoln's dealing with.
How do I keep the focus on a war

00:43:19.050 --> 00:43:22.730
that is becoming far more
costly than anyone imagined,

00:43:25.330 --> 00:43:29.237
and eating up our young manpower at a
rate that no one... There's never been

00:43:29.320 --> 00:43:32.907
anything in our history to prepare
the United States for this. The

00:43:32.990 --> 00:43:36.887
Winfield Scott captured Mexico City
with an army of fewer than 15,000

00:43:36.970 --> 00:43:38.870
during the war with Mexico.

00:43:40.640 --> 00:43:44.487
U.S. Grant has 120,000. I mean, the whole
scale is just so different that it's

00:43:44.570 --> 00:43:45.727
hard to come to terms with it.

00:43:45.810 --> 00:43:48.710
And that's what Lincoln
was dealing with. I think the fact

00:43:49.530 --> 00:43:52.330
that he was willing to surround
himself with really able

00:43:53.010 --> 00:43:56.767
counselors is important. Who does
he put in his cabinet? He puts his

00:43:56.850 --> 00:44:00.727
main rivals in the cabinet.
He put William Henry Seward in his

00:44:00.810 --> 00:44:04.727
cabinet, who's the most famous Republican
in the country. He puts Salmon P. Chase,

00:44:04.810 --> 00:44:10.347
who's a very smart and effective
and ambitious person from Ohio, in his

00:44:10.430 --> 00:44:17.430
cabinet. He surrounds himself with
people who are capable and energetic

00:44:17.690 --> 00:44:20.134
and have their own ambitions,
he's not afraid to do that,

00:44:20.217 --> 00:44:21.327
all of whom had far better

00:44:21.410 --> 00:44:25.347
educations than he had and didn't have
a rural backwoods accent like he did.

00:44:25.430 --> 00:44:27.261
It's also a measure
of how confident he was.

00:44:27.345 --> 00:44:29.347
He didn't pretend to talk
a way he, uh, to talk

00:44:29.430 --> 00:44:31.587
in a fashion that he-...
didn't actually talk.

00:44:31.670 --> 00:44:35.547
He would've pronounced words in ways that
anybody who went to Harvard would just

00:44:35.630 --> 00:44:38.930
sneer at. He didn't, and he knew
they sneered, and he didn't care.

00:44:39.650 --> 00:44:43.327
Because eventually, all of them,
except the ones with only a 20-watt

00:44:43.410 --> 00:44:47.067
bulb, figured out that Lincoln
was actually probably

00:44:47.150 --> 00:44:50.987
smarter than they were and had a better
grasp of things than they did and

00:44:51.070 --> 00:44:55.020
brought them around. He really brought
Seward around, which is very impressive.

00:44:56.130 --> 00:44:59.867
- Yeah, there's so many fascinating
things about Lincoln. So backwoods of

00:44:59.950 --> 00:45:04.370
Kentucky, and Kentucky is a very
important state in this story. And

00:45:06.190 --> 00:45:08.190
the right words, the right speeches,

00:45:09.110 --> 00:45:14.400
the right debates at this moment
in history. It really does make me wonder,

00:45:15.970 --> 00:45:22.970
you know, if Lincoln didn't exist,
if certain humans in history didn't exist,

00:45:24.090 --> 00:45:26.840
that everything could have
turned out very differently.

00:45:27.330 --> 00:45:30.917
- The great forces are all that matters
and individuals don't really matter notion

00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:34.710
of history I think is ridiculous.
Individuals really matter.

00:45:35.350 --> 00:45:40.007
For the United States, Lincoln
and Grant matter beyond calculation--

00:45:40.090 --> 00:45:42.283
... in this, in this war.
And on the Confederate side,

00:45:42.366 --> 00:45:43.967
if you take Lee out of the picture, the

00:45:44.050 --> 00:45:47.907
war doesn't last nearly as long
as it does. In fact, we'll talk about

00:45:47.990 --> 00:45:51.927
this later probably, I think it could
have ended early in the summer of 1862

00:45:52.010 --> 00:45:55.650
with slavery still intact.
I mean, in a perverse way,

00:45:56.370 --> 00:45:59.880
Lee furthers the cause
of emancipation because he--

00:46:00.290 --> 00:46:04.220
extends the war long enough that the
United States says, "We have to do this.

00:46:04.310 --> 00:46:07.160
We've gotta get rid of slavery
to defeat the rebels."

00:46:08.210 --> 00:46:12.130
- So, and also on the psychological
side, Lincoln is a,

00:46:12.330 --> 00:46:16.590
this is a fascinating study because he,
he carried deep depression all his life.

00:46:16.710 --> 00:46:20.070
- He had black, black moods
in his life, yes, he did.

00:46:20.350 --> 00:46:24.570
- And so for somebody that has to go
through an all-encompassing war,

00:46:26.230 --> 00:46:31.030
to be able to sort of survive
through that, to think through that,

00:46:31.850 --> 00:46:37.630
without an education,
without any acquired skill

00:46:37.730 --> 00:46:42.010
that enables him to be
a commander-in-chief during a time of war.

00:46:43.090 --> 00:46:46.587
He's got nothing in the toolbox,
and yet he steps up.

00:46:46.670 --> 00:46:50.997
- If you looked at his
resume and Jefferson Davis's--

00:46:51.080 --> 00:46:54.387
... in 1860 and said, "Okay, here are the
two guys who are gonna be your respective

00:46:54.470 --> 00:46:57.347
commanders-in-chief.
Who do you want on your team?"

00:46:57.430 --> 00:47:01.167
Lincoln had no administrative
experience beyond running a little

00:47:01.250 --> 00:47:05.107
law office. He had one
two-year term in the House of

00:47:05.190 --> 00:47:09.027
Representatives in terms
of national government. He had no

00:47:09.110 --> 00:47:12.867
military service to speak of,
a little while in the Black Hawk

00:47:12.950 --> 00:47:15.930
War as a junior officer
in the Black Hawk War.

00:47:17.110 --> 00:47:19.412
Didn't check any of the
education boxes, as you said.

00:47:19.495 --> 00:47:20.927
Jefferson Davis was a graduate of

00:47:21.010 --> 00:47:24.847
West Point. He'd commanded more
men in the war with Mexico than

00:47:24.930 --> 00:47:28.667
most of the men who commanded armies
during the Civil War. He'd chaired the

00:47:28.750 --> 00:47:32.687
Senate Committee on Military Affairs.
He'd been Secretary of

00:47:32.770 --> 00:47:35.195
War, a lot of administrative
experience. He checked every box.

00:47:35.278 --> 00:47:39.987
Lincoln checked none of the boxes,
and yet you got Lincoln as a

00:47:40.070 --> 00:47:43.850
commander-in-chief. It's really quite
remarkable. He could listen to people

00:47:43.950 --> 00:47:47.847
that he thought knew more about
something than he did. That's a

00:47:47.930 --> 00:47:51.667
quality that all of our presidents,
to put it mildly, have not

00:47:51.750 --> 00:47:55.640
had. Lincoln did have that. He could
listen. He could admit when he was wrong

00:47:56.530 --> 00:48:00.267
and change his mind about
things, and he could put up

00:48:00.350 --> 00:48:04.227
with obnoxious behavior
on the part of people that

00:48:04.310 --> 00:48:08.207
he thought might deliver the goods.
And a perfect example of this

00:48:08.290 --> 00:48:11.947
is George Brinton McClellan, whom we'll
talk about later, his young... who was

00:48:12.030 --> 00:48:15.230
general-in-chief for a while,
commanded the Army of the Potomac.

00:48:15.470 --> 00:48:19.330
In 1861, Lincoln and his
Secretary of State, William Henry

00:48:19.430 --> 00:48:23.247
Seward, went to McClellan's house
to talk to McClellan. Went to McClellan's

00:48:23.330 --> 00:48:27.127
house. The commander-in-chief goes to
McClellan's house. McClellan wasn't there.

00:48:27.210 --> 00:48:30.937
The butler or somebody put them
in a side room. McClellan came home, was

00:48:31.020 --> 00:48:34.397
told Lincoln was there.
He went upstairs and then

00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:37.853
told the person who worked for him to go
tell the president that he'd be happy

00:48:37.937 --> 00:48:42.237
to talk to him some other time.
And so Lincoln just left. He never went

00:48:42.320 --> 00:48:46.157
back to see McClellan again,
didn't pitch a fit, filed

00:48:46.240 --> 00:48:49.957
that away. Okay, McClellan's an ass, but I
think he might win the war. I mean, he

00:48:50.040 --> 00:48:53.980
had that ability to do that,
to put aside that kind of

00:48:55.220 --> 00:48:58.520
behavior on the part of someone
if he thought they would deliver.

00:48:59.780 --> 00:49:03.557
He just has a number of qualities,
I think, that are very unusual to

00:49:03.640 --> 00:49:07.477
find in someone. And as you say,
he did have depressive moments, and

00:49:07.560 --> 00:49:11.500
he-- we talk about how,
what bad days presidents have. Now,

00:49:11.640 --> 00:49:15.330
Lincoln would have said, I'll take
that president's worst day every

00:49:15.440 --> 00:49:19.137
day rather than the days that I get,
for the most part. I mean, he--

00:49:19.220 --> 00:49:21.670
it's hard to imagine
the burdens that he carried.

00:49:22.180 --> 00:49:26.060
- And at the right time
was just a handful of words

00:49:27.120 --> 00:49:30.717
expressed something that no
military could possibly do.

00:49:30.800 --> 00:49:32.450
- Explain what the war was about,

00:49:33.400 --> 00:49:37.070
why it was worth fighting, what it
meant, his second inaugural address.

00:49:37.470 --> 00:49:41.077
I mean, people went-- when people went
to hear the president give his second

00:49:41.160 --> 00:49:44.577
inaugural address on that cold day in

00:49:44.660 --> 00:49:48.157
1865, what they wanted to hear,
they finally beat the rebel

00:49:48.240 --> 00:49:50.743
scum from their point of view.
Let's have some retribution here.

00:49:50.827 --> 00:49:52.117
What are we going to do to them?

00:49:52.200 --> 00:49:55.400
How are we going to make these
people who brought this great war

00:49:56.020 --> 00:49:59.380
pay for this? And what does
Lincoln tell them? He tells them

00:49:59.680 --> 00:50:03.450
slavery caused it. Everybody knows
that somehow that's the truth, and we're

00:50:03.560 --> 00:50:07.437
all implicated in it. I mean,
he didn't tell them anything that

00:50:07.520 --> 00:50:11.457
they wanted to hear that day.
And it was-- and it

00:50:11.540 --> 00:50:15.137
took great courage, I think,
to do that at that moment, to tell an

00:50:15.220 --> 00:50:18.757
audience what they didn't want to hear.
And he did it in the most eloquent

00:50:18.840 --> 00:50:22.201
language that any president's-- that's
the greatest speech in American history,

00:50:22.284 --> 00:50:24.100
the second inaugural, in my view.

00:50:25.200 --> 00:50:28.880
- With malice toward none,
with charity for all, with firmness

00:50:29.460 --> 00:50:33.160
in the right as God gives
us to see the right, let us

00:50:33.260 --> 00:50:37.017
strive on to finish
the work we are in, to bind

00:50:37.100 --> 00:50:40.510
up the nation's wounds,
to care for him who shall

00:50:40.620 --> 00:50:45.701
have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan,

00:50:45.785 --> 00:50:48.297
to do all which may achieve

00:50:48.380 --> 00:50:53.960
and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations.

00:50:54.480 --> 00:50:57.977
- And we're all complicit
in this because we all

00:50:58.060 --> 00:51:01.940
countenanced slavery. I mean, that's
all in that one speech. And it's a short

00:51:02.080 --> 00:51:07.300
speech. The whole speech probably only
lasted eight or nine minutes. And he

00:51:07.400 --> 00:51:10.917
also pays tribute to the citizen soldiers
at the beginning of it because he says

00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:11.317
that the

00:51:11.400 --> 00:51:15.457
war is going well and we all know that
everything depends on what our soldiers

00:51:15.541 --> 00:51:16.374
do.

00:51:16.740 --> 00:51:20.560
And by that he meant saving
the union, killing slavery, it

00:51:20.660 --> 00:51:23.962
all depends on them. And then he comes
back and finishes with his tribute to

00:51:24.045 --> 00:51:27.720
the soldiers at the end. - And I
have to say the Gettysburg Address.

00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:29.090
- Oh, no, it's you can't.

00:51:30.720 --> 00:51:37.720
- If I may, it's only maybe 200 words.
Four score and seven years ago,

00:51:38.550 --> 00:51:42.740
our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation,

00:51:43.580 --> 00:51:47.500
conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men

00:51:47.620 --> 00:51:51.297
are created equal. Now we are engaged in a

00:51:51.380 --> 00:51:55.277
great civil war,
testing whether that nation or

00:51:55.360 --> 00:52:02.097
any nation so conceived and so dedicated
can long endure. We are met on a great

00:52:02.180 --> 00:52:08.977
battlefield of that war. We have come
to dedicate a portion of that field as

00:52:09.060 --> 00:52:12.637
a final resting place
for those who here gave their

00:52:12.720 --> 00:52:15.020
lives that that nation might live.

00:52:15.960 --> 00:52:19.300
It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.

00:52:20.540 --> 00:52:24.477
But in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we

00:52:24.560 --> 00:52:28.260
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men

00:52:28.500 --> 00:52:32.040
living and dead who struggled
here have consecrated it

00:52:32.140 --> 00:52:35.460
far above our poor
power to add or detract.

00:52:36.030 --> 00:52:39.797
The world will little
note nor long remember what

00:52:39.880 --> 00:52:43.637
we say here, but it can
never forget what they did

00:52:43.720 --> 00:52:47.637
here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated

00:52:47.720 --> 00:52:51.457
here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have

00:52:51.540 --> 00:52:55.340
thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be

00:52:55.440 --> 00:52:58.997
here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us, that

00:52:59.080 --> 00:53:02.397
from these honored dead we take increased

00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:06.377
devotion to that cause
for which they here gave the

00:53:06.460 --> 00:53:10.217
last full measure of devotion,
that we here highly

00:53:10.300 --> 00:53:14.160
resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain,

00:53:14.580 --> 00:53:19.060
that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom,

00:53:19.900 --> 00:53:23.477
and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people shall

00:53:23.560 --> 00:53:25.980
not perish from the earth.

00:53:27.260 --> 00:53:31.177
That's a big statement about what
this country is about. It's about freedom.

00:53:31.260 --> 00:53:37.360
- And he comes back to, when most people
read that, the very last part of it, they

00:53:37.500 --> 00:53:44.500
emphasize the prepositions of the people,
by the people, for the people.

00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:51.360
Lincoln, it's not about the prepositions.
It's about the people. He

00:53:51.520 --> 00:53:54.720
earlier in the war referred
to this as a people's contest.

00:53:55.420 --> 00:53:58.937
It's the people that are the key,
the people who make up the republic, the

00:53:59.020 --> 00:54:02.497
people who will derive the freedoms and

00:54:02.580 --> 00:54:05.900
liberties that the-- I mean,
it's an amazing-- and it

00:54:06.380 --> 00:54:10.177
probably took you two minutes to read
that. He was finished before most people

00:54:10.260 --> 00:54:14.017
knew he had started at Gettysburg.
Almost nobody heard him say that. The one

00:54:14.100 --> 00:54:17.573
thing wrong about it is when he said no
one would remember very long what he said

00:54:17.657 --> 00:54:19.897
there. It's been remembered pretty well.

00:54:19.980 --> 00:54:23.100
- And let's talk about the two other
figures which we'll return to time

00:54:23.183 --> 00:54:28.920
and time again. Ulysses S.
Grant and Robert E. Lee. So who was Grant?

00:54:29.800 --> 00:54:33.830
So this is a man who failed
at farming. Failed at business,

00:54:34.870 --> 00:54:41.870
failed at his role in the peacetime army.
Then when the war came, the war revealed a

00:54:42.350 --> 00:54:47.287
genius. - So he'd known a lot of failure,
he'd known a lot of setbacks, and

00:54:47.370 --> 00:54:51.620
his wartime record shows that he'd learned
to deal with those things. He had a great,

00:54:51.810 --> 00:54:55.487
tremendous relationship with his wife,
a very strong family life, a family he

00:54:55.570 --> 00:54:59.447
loved. I think that was the rock for him.
But during the war, what he exhibited

00:54:59.530 --> 00:55:03.310
was an absolute
willingness to break rules,

00:55:04.330 --> 00:55:08.107
to take risks, to take
responsibility for what he was doing,

00:55:08.190 --> 00:55:11.867
whether it was a success
or a failure, and not to be cast

00:55:11.950 --> 00:55:14.439
down by things that didn't work.
If something didn't work, he'd say,

00:55:14.522 --> 00:55:15.722
"Okay, that didn't work.

00:55:16.130 --> 00:55:18.947
Now let's do this."
He very famously, when he got to

00:55:19.030 --> 00:55:22.887
Virginia in 1864 and took
over the Army of the Potomac,

00:55:22.970 --> 00:55:24.841
he had all these subordinates
who were saying, "Well,

00:55:24.924 --> 00:55:26.027
what if General Lee does this?

00:55:26.110 --> 00:55:28.254
What if General Lee does that?"
He finally said,

00:55:28.337 --> 00:55:30.167
"Why don't we start worrying-- let's--

00:55:30.250 --> 00:55:33.707
not worrying about what General Lee is
gonna do and let General Lee worry about

00:55:33.791 --> 00:55:37.960
what we're going to do?" I mean,
he just had... He was unflappable

00:55:39.250 --> 00:55:43.150
under stress.
He was the perfect person to end up

00:55:43.370 --> 00:55:47.020
heading the Union armies, and he
and Lincoln-- And Lincoln realized that,

00:55:47.990 --> 00:55:51.827
and he proved indispensable. But he has

00:55:51.910 --> 00:55:53.962
this reputation as a butcher,
Grant the Butcher.

00:55:54.046 --> 00:55:55.827
That's something that former Confederates

00:55:55.910 --> 00:55:59.347
and some Democrats in the
North fastened on him. His

00:55:59.430 --> 00:56:02.987
preferred way of fighting wasn't
just kind of slug it out. It's really

00:56:03.070 --> 00:56:06.867
interesting to compare
his record in the war

00:56:06.950 --> 00:56:10.807
and Lee's record in the war before
they wound up opposing each other

00:56:10.890 --> 00:56:14.247
in Virginia in a really bloody
overland campaign. Grant's total

00:56:14.330 --> 00:56:18.140
casualties in all his great
battles before they met were 37,000.

00:56:18.350 --> 00:56:20.467
Lee's were over 98,000--

00:56:20.550 --> 00:56:24.407
... in the same period. The bloodiest
general in US history by far in terms of

00:56:24.490 --> 00:56:27.887
how many of his men get
shot is Robert E. Lee.

00:56:27.970 --> 00:56:31.870
The most careful demographic
study of any Civil War army is

00:56:31.990 --> 00:56:35.790
one done of Lee's army by a scholar
named Joe Glatthaar, and Joe figured out

00:56:36.210 --> 00:56:40.107
that if you were a soldier in Robert E.
Lee's army, you had a 73%

00:56:40.190 --> 00:56:46.327
chance of becoming a casualty. 73%.
Grant's casualties get high when he

00:56:46.410 --> 00:56:50.207
runs into Robert E. Lee, just like
everybody else. So the butcher tag is

00:56:50.290 --> 00:56:54.030
completely unfair about Grant.
He's also known as a drunk,

00:56:54.270 --> 00:56:57.907
and people have gone back and forth
on that, whether he just had a

00:56:57.990 --> 00:57:02.910
weakness, couldn't hold
his alcohol very well or

00:57:03.830 --> 00:57:07.533
was okay as long as his wife was around
and he had a key staff officer to help

00:57:07.616 --> 00:57:11.767
him. The point is, alcohol never got in
the way of anything Grant did during the

00:57:11.850 --> 00:57:14.000
war, and he had

00:57:15.010 --> 00:57:18.561
a superlative record of delivering
victories when the United States needed

00:57:18.644 --> 00:57:22.690
them, and Lincoln figured
that out. And the absolute

00:57:22.870 --> 00:57:26.767
proof of his stature because
of this is that in the March

00:57:26.850 --> 00:57:30.587
of 1864, Congress decided to dust

00:57:30.670 --> 00:57:34.647
off the rank of three-star general,
lieutenant general, and give it to

00:57:34.730 --> 00:57:38.230
Grant. The only person who'd ever
had that rank was George Washington,

00:57:38.910 --> 00:57:42.767
the man, Jorge. I mean,
he is the man. And so they

00:57:42.850 --> 00:57:46.767
are saying, "Okay, Grant,
you get the rank the man had," and that

00:57:46.850 --> 00:57:49.916
shows there's never been anyone
else who got it. You're the first.

00:57:49.999 --> 00:57:50.807
And then he would

00:57:50.890 --> 00:57:54.730
also be the first to get a four-star
rank in the United States Army. That...

00:57:54.870 --> 00:57:58.767
There couldn't be
a better indication of his

00:57:58.850 --> 00:58:03.290
stature than that he got Washington's
rank. Winfield Scott had had it by brevet.

00:58:04.790 --> 00:58:08.410
Grant got the actual rank.
- So in part, the Grant the Butcher

00:58:09.310 --> 00:58:11.507
label was from the Overland
Campaign that we'll talk about-

00:58:11.590 --> 00:58:14.807
- It is from the Overland Campaign -...
as the military decisions made there.

00:58:14.890 --> 00:58:18.940
- Yep. - Uh, many would argue that those
are critically important for the success

00:58:19.870 --> 00:58:22.890
of the war. - Yes.
He and Lee are often compared,

00:58:24.550 --> 00:58:28.407
but for the last year of the war,
they're operating on it's not

00:58:28.490 --> 00:58:32.327
apples to apples because Grant
is general in chief and is managing

00:58:32.410 --> 00:58:36.307
the entire war effort. He's managing what
Sherman's doing and what Sheridan's doing

00:58:36.390 --> 00:58:39.290
and what Nathaniel Bank...
Lee is an army commander.

00:58:39.770 --> 00:58:41.614
He can recommend things
to Jefferson Davis,

00:58:41.697 --> 00:58:43.627
but he never commands more than an army,

00:58:43.710 --> 00:58:47.567
and so he never operates at the level
that Grant did. Very late in the war, he

00:58:47.650 --> 00:58:51.050
was made general in chief when it
was so late that it didn't matter.

00:58:51.450 --> 00:58:58.180
- So who was Robert E. Lee? In April 1861,
Lee was offered command of the Union Army-

00:58:58.550 --> 00:59:01.490
- He was -... and chose Virginia instead.

00:59:01.630 --> 00:59:02.207
- He did.

00:59:02.290 --> 00:59:06.247
- What was he actually choosing in that
decision? Was he choosing home? Was he

00:59:06.330 --> 00:59:09.890
choosing honor?
Was he choosing slavery? And maybe just

00:59:10.010 --> 00:59:13.927
zooming out, what do we need to understand
in the early steps about Robert

00:59:14.010 --> 00:59:15.630
E. Lee? Who was the man?

00:59:16.060 --> 00:59:19.727
- Well, Lee is sort of the antithesis
of Grant in some ways. Lee is from an

00:59:19.810 --> 00:59:23.667
aristocratic family. Grant was from
a solidly middle-class family. Lee's

00:59:23.750 --> 00:59:25.940
from an aristocratic
family at the very top

00:59:26.910 --> 00:59:30.787
of the Virginia aristocracy.
The Lees are all... He has uncles who

00:59:30.870 --> 00:59:34.607
were prominent, two signed
the Declaration of Independence. His

00:59:34.690 --> 00:59:38.650
father was a famous commander under George
Washington. His father's the one who

00:59:38.830 --> 00:59:41.059
said that Washington was first
in war, first in peace,

00:59:41.143 --> 00:59:42.727
first in the hearts of his countrymen.

00:59:42.810 --> 00:59:46.360
That's Lee's father, who was later
a prominent Virginia politician.

00:59:46.870 --> 00:59:50.347
Lee's idol is George
Washington. He patterns

00:59:50.430 --> 00:59:54.347
himself on Washington.
He differs from him in some ways, but

00:59:54.430 --> 00:59:58.167
he patterns himself on Washington.
He considered Washington the

00:59:58.250 --> 01:00:02.027
most admirable person in United States
history. And then, of course, he almost

01:00:02.110 --> 01:00:05.827
undoes the work that George Washington
put in place during the American

01:00:05.910 --> 01:00:07.470
Revolution. He chose

01:00:08.590 --> 01:00:12.223
Virginia. He didn't leave... He didn't
resign his commission in the United States

01:00:12.306 --> 01:00:12.447
Army

01:00:12.530 --> 01:00:15.859
to go with the Confederacy. He resigned
his commission in the United States Army

01:00:15.942 --> 01:00:20.550
to, to go to Virginia, which wasn't in the
Confederacy yet, become the head of state

01:00:20.670 --> 01:00:24.227
forces in Virginia.
But then when Virginia went into the

01:00:24.310 --> 01:00:28.770
Confederacy, he took his Confederate
commission and ended up as the

01:00:30.150 --> 01:00:32.995
third-ranking officer
in Confederate service,

01:00:33.078 --> 01:00:35.290
and he makes an easy transition to

01:00:36.240 --> 01:00:40.020
A Confederate loyalty.
I think it's his loyalty to Virginia

01:00:40.180 --> 01:00:43.617
and what that means. That means his
family, and of course that means slavery.

01:00:43.700 --> 01:00:47.477
That's part of what that loyalty is.
He's devoted to the slave-holding

01:00:47.560 --> 01:00:51.437
South as well as to Virginia.
Virginia's a subset of that. All of

01:00:51.520 --> 01:00:55.340
that is in one bundle with Lee.
It's all... But

01:00:55.620 --> 01:00:59.217
th- he also had been
an ardent US nationalist

01:00:59.300 --> 01:01:02.400
earlier in his career,
and a very successful military officer.

01:01:02.940 --> 01:01:05.986
Winfield Scott thought he was the greatest
soldier in the army, and Scott,

01:01:06.069 --> 01:01:06.797
he probably really

01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:10.717
thought, "Except for me." But Scott
is a great soldier that people don't

01:01:10.800 --> 01:01:14.344
remember that way because he became
a kinda Jabba the Hutt figure by the time

01:01:14.427 --> 01:01:14.697
of the

01:01:14.780 --> 01:01:18.680
Civil War. He's enormous, weighs 350
pounds, has to be winched onto his horse.

01:01:19.780 --> 01:01:23.697
But he was a very smart guy
and he thought very highly

01:01:23.780 --> 01:01:27.980
of Lee. Lee was a superb soldier,
as he would show during the war,

01:01:28.940 --> 01:01:30.290
but he's on the wrong side.

01:01:30.780 --> 01:01:33.680
- Maybe just to throw in a few
more characters, I do think

01:01:34.640 --> 01:01:36.520
the folks on both sides that are the,

01:01:37.360 --> 01:01:41.237
of the more radical persuasion are quite
interesting. Somebody you spoke about,

01:01:41.320 --> 01:01:44.817
I'm not sure where, think it might've
been in your lecture series about Thaddeus

01:01:44.900 --> 01:01:45.733
Stevens.

01:01:47.030 --> 01:01:48.430
- Yes, the Thaddeus Stevens.

01:01:48.660 --> 01:01:51.717
Thaddeus Stevens was one of the most
radical of the radical Republicans.

01:01:51.800 --> 01:01:54.010
He's a congressman from Pennsylvania

01:01:54.860 --> 01:01:58.697
who... People think people say harsh
things now in Congress. Thaddeus Stevens

01:01:58.780 --> 01:02:04.137
just eviscerated people. And he
was way out... I mean, he was an ardent

01:02:04.220 --> 01:02:08.040
abolitionist and for equal
rights for women in many ways and,

01:02:08.180 --> 01:02:10.980
and he picked up a number
of causes and championed them.

01:02:11.080 --> 01:02:15.892
- I think in your lecture you
mentioned this thing which I just love,

01:02:15.976 --> 01:02:21.070
the slime line. - He had a-- This is his
kind of line. He's sitting in the House of

01:02:21.160 --> 01:02:24.107
Representatives and one of his opponents-

01:02:24.190 --> 01:02:27.688
... and he's speaking, and one of his
opponents starts to come down to the floor

01:02:27.771 --> 01:02:31.897
and he says, and this is a paraphrase,
"I'm gonna pause while my colleague,"

01:02:31.980 --> 01:02:35.797
from wherever he was from, "slinks
across the floor of this House and

01:02:35.880 --> 01:02:38.277
adheres to his seat by his own slime."

01:02:38.360 --> 01:02:41.520
- Yeah. Beautiful.
- That's a great line. Impromptu.

01:02:41.760 --> 01:02:45.430
He had a... Women used to ask
for locks of hair as, from

01:02:45.540 --> 01:02:49.437
famous people, and he was completely
bald and wore a full wig. He had

01:02:49.520 --> 01:02:53.397
a woman stop him on the steps
to the Capitol and ask for a lock of his

01:02:53.480 --> 01:02:57.220
hair, took his whole wig off and said,
"Madam, have them all." And c-

01:02:57.480 --> 01:02:59.580
- Which is brilliant - no, it's very good.

01:02:59.760 --> 01:03:01.580
- But of the radical persuasion.

01:03:01.760 --> 01:03:05.840
- Oh, absolutely. Yes, he defined it.
He is the character in Birth of a Nation

01:03:06.740 --> 01:03:10.577
Stoneman, the character of Stoneman,
the evil radical Republican

01:03:10.660 --> 01:03:13.580
named Stoneman,
is patterned on Thaddeus Stevens.

01:03:14.040 --> 01:03:18.440
- All right. If we can, let's
talk about the buildup to the war.

01:03:18.980 --> 01:03:23.500
- All right. - What were the key
states on both sides that were debating?

01:03:23.740 --> 01:03:27.337
What are the ones that were
certainly going to be

01:03:27.420 --> 01:03:31.357
firmly on one side or the other?
And maybe what are the ones that

01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:33.440
were critical at the, at the borderline?

01:03:33.900 --> 01:03:37.305
- The states that were in the forefront of
the secession movement were the Deep South

01:03:37.389 --> 01:03:41.717
states, and South Carolina was kind
of ground central for what was going

01:03:41.800 --> 01:03:45.617
on there. It just so happened
that the Democrats had their national

01:03:45.700 --> 01:03:49.517
convention in Charleston in 1860,
which is the worst place in the

01:03:49.600 --> 01:03:56.320
world they could've had it if they wanted
a quiet, rational discussion of anything.

01:03:56.520 --> 01:03:59.853
South Carolina is the first state
to secede, and then is quickly followed.

01:03:59.937 --> 01:04:04.120
You can just go the tier across Alabama,
Mississippi, Florida, Georgia,

01:04:04.420 --> 01:04:07.930
Texas. That's the... It's seven
states. The Deep South states go

01:04:08.100 --> 01:04:11.917
out in that initial...
But there's a long period then,

01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:15.317
and they gather in Montgomery, Alabama,
to establish a new government with

01:04:15.400 --> 01:04:17.950
Montgomery as the capital
of the Confederacy.

01:04:18.660 --> 01:04:22.537
Delegates from those states do.
And they set up a provisional government

01:04:22.620 --> 01:04:25.857
that's gonna last a year and call
for the first national elections in

01:04:25.940 --> 01:04:29.897
1861. There are only seven states
there, and really only six for a

01:04:29.980 --> 01:04:33.537
lot of it 'cause Texas got there late.
It was the last of the first seven to

01:04:33.620 --> 01:04:37.517
secede. But the states that haven't
seceded yet are the ones with

01:04:37.600 --> 01:04:40.837
the most people. Virginia,
which is the most populous, North

01:04:40.920 --> 01:04:44.760
Carolina, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Missouri. Eight

01:04:44.900 --> 01:04:48.335
states have not gone out. Eight
slaveholding states have not gone out.

01:04:48.418 --> 01:04:50.987
The most important one
is Virginia among those that-

01:04:51.070 --> 01:04:54.030
... that have not gone out.
The question is,

01:04:55.360 --> 01:04:59.097
can they find some resolution
to all of this, or is it gonna get

01:04:59.180 --> 01:05:02.917
more serious, and are those states gonna
go? And it came to focus, once again, on

01:05:03.000 --> 01:05:04.360
Charleston, South Carolina,

01:05:05.230 --> 01:05:08.280
and a federal installation
in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter.

01:05:09.440 --> 01:05:13.000
Much United States property and illic- and

01:05:13.160 --> 01:05:16.780
installations had been just
given over to the Confederates.

01:05:17.680 --> 01:05:21.420
And the question is, can we do it
with this one as well? This is a very

01:05:21.540 --> 01:05:25.397
difficult decision to make,
and it comes down to what's gonna

01:05:25.480 --> 01:05:29.347
happen in Charleston Harbor. And in the
end, I mean, Jefferson Davis believed

01:05:29.430 --> 01:05:33.277
that he couldn't allow it to remain a
federal installation 'cause it's actually

01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:37.277
in the Confederacy from their point
of view. And Lincoln, who's not

01:05:37.360 --> 01:05:41.257
conceding the right of states to secede.
They're, they're temporarily out

01:05:41.340 --> 01:05:45.257
of our power, but we have to maintain...
He decided in the end to maintain

01:05:45.340 --> 01:05:50.720
power there, not to reinforce it,
but to resupply it, needed supplies.

01:05:51.800 --> 01:05:55.447
And that's what triggers it. Then,
then the ball's in Jefferson Davis' court.

01:05:55.530 --> 01:05:59.457
"Okay, they're gonna resupply it. What
do we do?" And they decided we need to

01:05:59.540 --> 01:06:03.397
insist that it surrender, and if it won't
surrender, we need to fire on it. And

01:06:03.480 --> 01:06:06.072
the Confederates fired the first shots.
They would've said,

01:06:06.156 --> 01:06:07.377
"We were forced to fire the

01:06:07.460 --> 01:06:11.217
first shots by what Lincoln did." Nobody
wanted to be the ones who fired the first

01:06:11.300 --> 01:06:14.980
shots. But in the end, it's the
Confederates who fired the first shots.

01:06:15.160 --> 01:06:19.117
And once that is fired,
the key thing, the key

01:06:19.200 --> 01:06:21.740
thing is not the firing
on Sumter in the end,

01:06:22.760 --> 01:06:25.510
but that sets up the key thing,
which is Lincoln's call

01:06:26.380 --> 01:06:30.000
for volunteers to suppress the rebellion,
and he is gonna ask each

01:06:30.120 --> 01:06:31.540
state to supply people.

01:06:32.360 --> 01:06:36.317
And the Upper South states, most of them
have said, "We're not gonna secede, but

01:06:36.400 --> 01:06:40.137
you can't... But, but the states
that are gone had the right to secede-

01:06:40.220 --> 01:06:44.157
... and you can't do anything to make
them come back." Lincoln is seeming to

01:06:44.240 --> 01:06:49.150
make them do things to come back.
And so four more states went out.

01:06:49.550 --> 01:06:53.290
Virginia went out. Arkansas
went out. Tennessee went out.

01:06:53.730 --> 01:06:57.687
Then North Carolina went out.
And now you have an 11-state Confederacy

01:06:57.770 --> 01:07:01.110
rather than seven. But more
than that, you have Virginia.

01:07:02.080 --> 01:07:05.827
The city of Richmond has 40% of all
the industrial capacity in the entire

01:07:05.910 --> 01:07:09.767
Confederacy, what became the Confederacy.
Virginia is the most populous state, has

01:07:09.850 --> 01:07:13.150
the largest slave population,
the largest white population.

01:07:13.750 --> 01:07:17.487
It supplies the most important
military leaders. And the

01:07:17.570 --> 01:07:20.910
capital ends up in Richmond.
They move from Montgomery to Richmond

01:07:22.070 --> 01:07:25.807
in acknowledgment of how important
Richmond is, that this is the key

01:07:25.890 --> 01:07:29.370
state. The key states that didn't
go out were Maryland, Kentucky,

01:07:30.030 --> 01:07:32.221
and Missouri. Delaware
didn't either, but who cares?

01:07:32.304 --> 01:07:33.967
The other three didn't go out, and that

01:07:34.050 --> 01:07:37.790
really mattered because they were
more populous. But 11 are gone.

01:07:38.690 --> 01:07:39.940
Four remain in the Union.

01:07:40.630 --> 01:07:43.680
- And to lay out some more context,
going to Perplexity here,

01:07:44.670 --> 01:07:48.610
by total enslaved population
on the eve of the Civil War,

01:07:49.190 --> 01:07:52.670
we have looking at the top
five states, Virginia,

01:07:53.490 --> 01:07:57.410
as you said, with the most
number of slaves, 490,000.

01:07:57.570 --> 01:08:03.770
Then Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South
Carolina, all with over 400,000 slaves.

01:08:04.170 --> 01:08:07.867
- Yes. And Mississippi and South
Carolina have the highest proportion of

01:08:07.950 --> 01:08:11.607
enslaved people of any
of the states. And this is an

01:08:11.690 --> 01:08:13.507
interesting little fact
from the 1860 census.

01:08:13.590 --> 01:08:15.467
When you're talking
about white people in the

01:08:15.550 --> 01:08:18.833
United States, those are the two
wealthiest states per capita in the United

01:08:18.916 --> 01:08:23.487
States, are South Carolina
and Mississippi in 1860.

01:08:23.570 --> 01:08:26.750
- Boy, the complicated history
of this great nation of ours.

01:08:27.210 --> 01:08:30.890
- It's hard to overstate the resources.
The states that sent the most men

01:08:31.070 --> 01:08:33.330
into the Confederate Army are Virginia,

01:08:34.230 --> 01:08:37.920
Tennessee, North Carolina,
and Georgia. Three of those

01:08:38.130 --> 01:08:41.907
come in this second wave of secessions.
Three of them, three of the four. Only

01:08:41.990 --> 01:08:44.652
Georgia among the original ones
was in those top four states.

01:08:44.735 --> 01:08:50.027
And so you would have had a much,
much smaller pool of manpower for that

01:08:50.110 --> 01:08:54.087
earlier version of the Confederacy. It's
inconceivable to me that you would have

01:08:54.170 --> 01:08:56.270
had the war we had with just that version.

01:08:56.710 --> 01:08:58.950
- So it does feel, just to linger on it,

01:08:59.970 --> 01:09:03.870
like there was a lot on the
balance here. Like there was a

01:09:03.990 --> 01:09:07.020
lot of different decisions
that could have been made,

01:09:08.310 --> 01:09:12.160
even on the political side,
that could have turned the tides.

01:09:12.490 --> 01:09:16.070
- For example, there's
a secession convention in Virginia.

01:09:16.710 --> 01:09:20.110
It goes in... It votes
twice against secession.

01:09:20.690 --> 01:09:24.570
Twice. It's only after Sumter
that they come back for another vote.

01:09:24.770 --> 01:09:28.290
I mean, it's a Unionist vote
in that convention in Virginia.

01:09:29.270 --> 01:09:31.770
And it's only after Fort Sumter.

01:09:32.050 --> 01:09:35.610
- Wow. - And then it's still so
divided that a big chunk of Virginia

01:09:36.190 --> 01:09:39.647
decide that's how you get West Virginia.
West Virginia essentially

01:09:39.730 --> 01:09:42.807
secedes from Virginia-...
in the course of the Civil War.

01:09:42.890 --> 01:09:45.670
- And given the industrial capacity
of Virginia, that was a critical state.

01:09:45.754 --> 01:09:46.954
So it could have been...

01:09:47.390 --> 01:09:51.870
Virginia could have changed. We could have
avoided the Civil War with Virginia alone.

01:09:52.010 --> 01:09:56.070
- It would have really changed. I mean,
Virginia is the key. Virginia is the key

01:09:56.910 --> 01:10:00.410
because of the manpower, the industrial
capacity, the food production,

01:10:00.550 --> 01:10:04.147
and Virginia gives you Lee, Jackson, Jeb

01:10:04.230 --> 01:10:07.607
Stuart. I mean, it, and the most
soldiers of any state in the

01:10:07.690 --> 01:10:11.530
Confederacy. It's just, it's a real game

01:10:11.630 --> 01:10:15.450
changer to get Virginia.
Plus, it also gives you these

01:10:15.550 --> 01:10:19.487
unbelievable ties to the revolutionary
generation. Hey, it's George's

01:10:19.570 --> 01:10:23.507
home state. It is now in the
Confederacy with his big statue

01:10:23.590 --> 01:10:26.246
on the Capitol grounds of George
Washington. I mean, gives you,

01:10:26.330 --> 01:10:27.327
you get Washington, the

01:10:27.410 --> 01:10:31.410
ties to Jefferson, the ties to Madison.
All of this comes in with Virginia.

01:10:32.110 --> 01:10:36.370
- So I think a lot of historians have
said that the Civil War was inevitable.

01:10:37.350 --> 01:10:41.350
It... You're really painting a picture
here where it perhaps was not inevitable.

01:10:41.970 --> 01:10:45.847
- I don't think it's inevitable.
Things happen in a sequence. I was at a

01:10:45.930 --> 01:10:49.582
conf- academic conference once when they
were trying to decide what important dates

01:10:49.665 --> 01:10:53.567
were, and one... And they concluded
that no dates are, dates are an

01:10:53.650 --> 01:10:57.287
artificial construction.
No date is more important than any other.

01:10:57.370 --> 01:11:00.947
That is so obviously preposterous.
I mean, things

01:11:01.030 --> 01:11:04.630
happen in a sequence. They don't just
sort of happen. Lincoln's elected,

01:11:04.830 --> 01:11:08.487
then South Carolina secedes, then other
states secede, then... I mean, things

01:11:08.570 --> 01:11:12.147
happen as a consequence of what happened
before, and you have these various

01:11:12.230 --> 01:11:16.047
things that have to happen
before the next thing does. And

01:11:16.130 --> 01:11:18.880
then we end up with a war
that seems to be inevitable,

01:11:19.690 --> 01:11:23.527
but it's not... It's just the way things
played out. All of these factors are in

01:11:23.610 --> 01:11:26.638
motion, and you end up with the sequence
that gets you to where people start

01:11:26.721 --> 01:11:27.721
shooting each other.

01:11:28.130 --> 01:11:31.027
- Yeah. When you read history
and look back, it seems inevitable.

01:11:31.110 --> 01:11:31.847
But if we were to

01:11:31.930 --> 01:11:35.554
place ourselves in that moment of time,
do you think there's decisions that could

01:11:35.637 --> 01:11:36.470
have been made?

01:11:36.950 --> 01:11:40.807
- The decision to not let
Fort Sumter, I mean, that's a

01:11:40.890 --> 01:11:43.433
big decision to make. If they had
just, if Lincoln had just said,

01:11:43.517 --> 01:11:45.117
"Go ahead and take Fort Sumter,"

01:11:45.870 --> 01:11:49.570
okay, then maybe... Then what
would it have taken to trigger

01:11:49.850 --> 01:11:51.681
the departure of those upper South states?

01:11:51.764 --> 01:11:53.964
That would have changed
that whole equation.

01:11:54.190 --> 01:11:57.070
But Lincoln decided you
just can't keep giving them

01:11:57.730 --> 01:12:00.879
everything that they want if you don't
concede that they have the right to do

01:12:00.962 --> 01:12:05.510
what they did. - Yeah, there would
be a continued heated political

01:12:06.430 --> 01:12:10.267
debates, intense political debates
about the expansion of slavery, but it

01:12:10.350 --> 01:12:15.670
would not cause rebellion to then
escalate into a full-on hot war.

01:12:16.290 --> 01:12:20.190
- I think that's conceivable. I don't
think the war was inevitable. I think it

01:12:20.330 --> 01:12:24.290
But I think the conditions were
present for it to happen, obviously.

01:12:24.410 --> 01:12:28.127
I mean, that's stating...
'Cause it did happen. But I think it's

01:12:28.210 --> 01:12:32.067
very tricky to just say that it
was inevitable. That's kind

01:12:32.150 --> 01:12:34.093
of starting at the end
of the story and just saying,

01:12:34.176 --> 01:12:35.947
"Let's look at the factors
that got us here.

01:12:36.030 --> 01:12:39.667
We know it was gonna happen, and these are
the things that pointed this direction."

01:12:39.750 --> 01:12:43.337
- Can we just actually linger
on this, on the nature of war?

01:12:43.421 --> 01:12:44.950
Over 700,000 people dead.

01:12:45.950 --> 01:12:51.610
How do we make sense of our capacity as,
in that context, Americans?

01:12:52.880 --> 01:12:57.417
To kill sometimes literally our brothers
- Yes, sometimes literally our brothers

01:12:57.500 --> 01:12:58.717
- How is that even possible?

01:12:58.800 --> 01:13:02.267
- Well, one thing, it tells me things are
pretty important to people on both sides

01:13:02.350 --> 01:13:06.617
if you're gonna continue for a war that
long. I mean, there was a period in the

01:13:06.700 --> 01:13:08.650
literature, in the scholarly literature

01:13:09.280 --> 01:13:12.957
in the 1980s and into the 1990s
where they argued that the Confederacy

01:13:13.040 --> 01:13:16.183
wasn't a nation, and the proof was that
they didn't try very hard, that they...

01:13:16.267 --> 01:13:16.877
If they'd really

01:13:16.960 --> 01:13:20.617
thought of themselves as a nation, they
would have tried harder and fought longer.

01:13:20.700 --> 01:13:24.377
Well, they lost between four and a half
and five and a half percent of their

01:13:24.460 --> 01:13:30.460
entire population, which is more
than Great Britain, France, Germany,

01:13:31.280 --> 01:13:35.177
or Russia during World War I.
They had a higher percentage loss than any

01:13:35.260 --> 01:13:39.910
of the powers in World War I. The US lost
about 1.8% of its population from the war.

01:13:40.960 --> 01:13:44.820
US, in World War II, three-tenths
of 1% of its population... That seems...

01:13:44.980 --> 01:13:48.260
They lost more than 30%
of their entire white military-age

01:13:48.360 --> 01:13:52.037
males in the war. It'd be the equivalent
of about 18 million Americans being killed

01:13:52.120 --> 01:13:57.735
now in a war. That seems to me that
they're pretty serious about something

01:13:57.818 --> 01:14:02.220
there. - It means that's one
of the largest percentages of loss.

01:14:02.850 --> 01:14:04.977
That's... If that's
a measure of dedication-

01:14:05.060 --> 01:14:08.957
- If that's your measure of dedication,
yes, and it seems to me that it should be

01:14:09.040 --> 01:14:12.897
one of the metrics that you bring
to play that, that it's... They just keep

01:14:12.980 --> 01:14:15.140
at it. They didn't give up easily.

01:14:15.600 --> 01:14:20.260
- What can we say about the motivation?
On the psychological side, did the

01:14:21.360 --> 01:14:25.157
members of the Confederacy
hate the members of the Union?

01:14:25.240 --> 01:14:27.671
- Well, that escalated
on both sides during the war.

01:14:27.754 --> 01:14:29.077
As more and more loss came,

01:14:29.160 --> 01:14:33.097
you... They did. There was more hatred
directed toward the enemy more and more.

01:14:33.180 --> 01:14:37.280
This notion that it's they're all brothers
and not really mad at each other and...

01:14:37.460 --> 01:14:39.260
That just doesn't hold up. There are

01:14:39.940 --> 01:14:43.677
places where the soldiers fraternized
with one another and traded tobacco for

01:14:43.760 --> 01:14:46.410
coffee and that kind of stuff,
but no, the bitterness

01:14:46.840 --> 01:14:50.617
as the war went on, and there was greater
loss on the home front, and as the

01:14:50.700 --> 01:14:54.680
war became more all-encompassing
and really went after the entire,

01:14:55.280 --> 01:14:59.237
The civilian side of the Confederacy
was not shielded from it, the

01:14:59.320 --> 01:15:03.097
bitterness increased and increased
and increased. And there's a

01:15:03.180 --> 01:15:06.590
lot of unhappiness with the war
behind the lines in the Confederacy,

01:15:06.760 --> 01:15:11.190
absolutely, unhappiness with the
government. There's desertion.

01:15:12.620 --> 01:15:15.150
About 15% of Confederate
soldiers deserted.

01:15:16.160 --> 01:15:19.717
About 12% of United States
soldiers deserted. So there's

01:15:19.800 --> 01:15:22.400
desertion on both sides.
There's war-weariness,

01:15:23.220 --> 01:15:27.177
but the war goes on because I think
if you had been able to poll most white

01:15:27.260 --> 01:15:30.810
Southerners even late in the war and say,
"Okay, here are your choices.

01:15:32.780 --> 01:15:35.637
You either have Jefferson Davis
in the government and the war goes on,

01:15:35.720 --> 01:15:36.537
or you're going back

01:15:36.620 --> 01:15:40.110
into the United States and the Lincoln
government will be in charge and you won't

01:15:40.194 --> 01:15:40.317
have

01:15:40.400 --> 01:15:44.337
slavery. Which one do you pick?" They're
gonna pick the first one, and that's why

01:15:44.420 --> 01:15:46.120
the war went on as long as it did.

01:15:46.280 --> 01:15:49.520
- But at the same time, to fast-forward,

01:15:50.740 --> 01:15:55.520
and that maybe teaches you something about
the nature of war, but after the war,

01:15:56.900 --> 01:16:00.457
maybe some of the decisions
that Grant made, people were able to

01:16:00.540 --> 01:16:03.777
rediscover the brotherhood. - You mean
at Appomattox you're talking about-

01:16:03.860 --> 01:16:05.097
- Appomattox -... the terms at Appomattox.

01:16:05.180 --> 01:16:08.030
- Yes. - Yes, the...
And those were... And he didn't just

01:16:08.820 --> 01:16:11.353
reach up in the air and say,
"I've got some terms." The...

01:16:11.437 --> 01:16:12.697
Lincoln very specifically...

01:16:12.780 --> 01:16:16.320
He met with Lincoln shortly before
Appomattox. Sherman was there.

01:16:16.860 --> 01:16:20.737
One top naval officer was there, Grant
and Lincoln, and Lincoln said, "This is

01:16:20.820 --> 01:16:22.397
what I want.
This is the kind of peace I want."

01:16:22.480 --> 01:16:26.420
"The whole point of this war is to put
the nation back together, and a good

01:16:26.560 --> 01:16:27.620
start on that is..."

01:16:28.500 --> 01:16:32.457
I mean, if it's just a rebellion,
what do you do with traitors and rebels?

01:16:32.540 --> 01:16:36.356
You hang them. You don't bring them back.
You don't treat them as prisoners of war,

01:16:36.440 --> 01:16:37.437
which the United States

01:16:37.520 --> 01:16:40.896
did during this. You, he... But the goal
is to put the nation back together,

01:16:40.979 --> 01:16:46.040
and Lincoln said, "This is a good start.
Make them sign a parole. Make them accept

01:16:47.060 --> 01:16:49.637
the end of slavery and the fact
that they're back in the Union.

01:16:49.721 --> 01:16:50.957
If they do that, they get to go

01:16:51.040 --> 01:16:54.817
home and resume their lives." Hadn't
been decided yet whether they'll get to

01:16:54.900 --> 01:16:58.837
vote, but let them go home.
Don't imprison them. Don't execute

01:16:58.920 --> 01:17:01.937
them. Don't execute their leaders.
That's the decision.

01:17:02.020 --> 01:17:04.440
- From the perspective of the Union,
what do you think about that kind

01:17:04.524 --> 01:17:05.357
of forgiveness?

01:17:05.800 --> 01:17:09.397
- Well, I think that it was sort
of a nod toward the direction of

01:17:09.480 --> 01:17:13.207
forgiveness, but I don't think the real...
I don't think real forgiveness was there.

01:17:13.290 --> 01:17:16.937
It was still extremely hard
feelings on both sides, and Lincoln's

01:17:17.020 --> 01:17:20.850
assassination upped the ante
on that, especially for a while,

01:17:21.640 --> 01:17:24.710
in the United States.
The, the forgiveness...

01:17:27.700 --> 01:17:31.577
Two things in terms of the aftermath
of the war, two words that often come into

01:17:31.660 --> 01:17:35.300
play are reunion and reconciliation.

01:17:35.840 --> 01:17:39.657
Those are two other things that are
often conflated. Reunion is literally

01:17:39.740 --> 01:17:43.297
putting the nation back together.
That happened. Reconcile, true

01:17:43.380 --> 01:17:47.317
reconciliation, that's much,
much, much tougher, and that didn't

01:17:47.400 --> 01:17:51.440
come anytime soon on the part of millions
of people on both sides, I think.

01:17:51.940 --> 01:17:57.957
- And we'll probably maybe talk about
in multiple ways how maybe that is

01:17:58.040 --> 01:17:59.377
something that's still going on.

01:17:59.460 --> 01:18:02.083
- Oh, there are echoes of the
Civil War all over the place.

01:18:02.166 --> 01:18:03.566
It's not still being fought,

01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:07.417
but you can see resonances
of the Civil War because it's such a

01:18:07.500 --> 01:18:11.337
profoundly disruptive
event that gets right

01:18:11.420 --> 01:18:15.257
at the heart of what the republic means.
I mean, and so it's... There's nothing

01:18:15.340 --> 01:18:19.560
else like it in US history,
and it's a great moment of truth,

01:18:20.540 --> 01:18:24.037
the residual aftermath
and effects of which lingered for

01:18:24.120 --> 01:18:26.720
decades and are still
present in some ways, I think.

01:18:27.500 --> 01:18:33.540
- So in 1859, most Americans
were just living their life.

01:18:34.900 --> 01:18:38.380
Did they have a sense
what was on the horizon?

01:18:39.140 --> 01:18:41.390
- It's what I like to call
the Appomattox Syndrome,

01:18:41.473 --> 01:18:43.273
which starts at the end of the story

01:18:44.160 --> 01:18:47.255
And says, "Of course there was gonna
be a war because the war was inevitable,

01:18:47.338 --> 01:18:50.872
and of course the United States was gonna
win and slavery was gonna be destroyed,"

01:18:50.956 --> 01:18:53.906
because they were. So let's
find out how we got right here.

01:18:54.100 --> 01:18:58.017
But no, most people didn't
wake up in Iowa in 1857

01:18:58.100 --> 01:19:00.367
and their first thought was,
"Boy, I hate the South."

01:19:00.450 --> 01:19:03.817
"Those slaveholders, they're really..."
No. People got on with their

01:19:03.900 --> 01:19:07.817
quotidian lives and they got to the farm
or they went to their business and

01:19:07.900 --> 01:19:11.700
they did... They weren't...
Nobody knew that they were living in the

01:19:11.800 --> 01:19:16.546
antebellum era, and that those great
antebellum years were about to come to

01:19:16.629 --> 01:19:21.100
an end. They... That is something
that it's hard to get people not...

01:19:21.560 --> 01:19:24.648
To just put it out of your mind that
that's all anybody is thinking about.

01:19:24.731 --> 01:19:27.631
They're thinking, "There's
a lot of other stuff going on."

01:19:28.680 --> 01:19:32.117
There's a big gold rush in Colorado.
More people go to Colorado than went to

01:19:32.200 --> 01:19:35.990
California for a while.
There is... And you have

01:19:36.080 --> 01:19:40.010
these tremendous changes coming about,

01:19:40.860 --> 01:19:44.817
technological changes of the 1850s
where you have the real expansion of

01:19:44.900 --> 01:19:48.777
railroads, the real expansion of the
telegraph. There's a shrinking of time and

01:19:48.860 --> 01:19:52.697
space that's remarkable for people
at the time. It seemed dizzying

01:19:52.780 --> 01:19:56.346
to them at the time. There are a lot of
things to think about other than how much

01:19:56.430 --> 01:20:00.184
I hate Yankees if I'm in South Carolina,
or I hate slaveholders if I live in New

01:20:00.267 --> 01:20:01.100
Hampshire.

01:20:02.000 --> 01:20:05.520
But periodically, there are
these events that pop up that

01:20:05.740 --> 01:20:09.320
refocus on the differences
between the sections.

01:20:09.580 --> 01:20:13.417
And you have the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
You have Dred

01:20:13.500 --> 01:20:17.860
Scott. You have the caning of Charles
Sumner on the floor of the Senate.

01:20:18.760 --> 01:20:22.470
You have Uncle Tom's Cabin earlier
in the decade in 18-- and what...

01:20:22.570 --> 01:20:26.317
And the impact that that had on attitudes
towards slavery. Doesn't create a bunch of

01:20:26.400 --> 01:20:30.277
abolitionists, but it creates
a bunch of people who rethink their

01:20:30.360 --> 01:20:31.510
thoughts about slavery.

01:20:32.420 --> 01:20:36.860
- Sorry to ask the big
question about history. But,

01:20:38.360 --> 01:20:40.660
you know, we're living today, 2026,

01:20:43.140 --> 01:20:46.070
and there's the sense
that every day you wake up,

01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:50.280
the possibilities before us are endless,

01:20:51.200 --> 01:20:55.160
for the good, for the bad,
for the truly destructive. There's a

01:20:55.320 --> 01:20:59.560
an eerie sense that the possibility
of a world war in different kinds of ways,

01:21:00.420 --> 01:21:07.420
whether it's sparked in the Middle East
or sparked in China and Taiwan, or sparked

01:21:08.040 --> 01:21:09.100
in Ukraine-Russia,

01:21:10.060 --> 01:21:13.797
or elsewhere totally surprising
in the world, may be related to nuclear

01:21:13.880 --> 01:21:17.260
weapons or not. There's a sense
that everything is possible.

01:21:17.880 --> 01:21:20.980
And of course, when history
is written about the 21st century,

01:21:21.760 --> 01:21:25.460
it will all be obvious. - It's always
obvious in retrospect. That's right.

01:21:25.600 --> 01:21:32.600
- What can we learn about... from the
Civil War about how history unfolds

01:21:33.040 --> 01:21:35.420
itself, I suppose, for the modern day?

01:21:35.720 --> 01:21:38.020
- Well, I think that
the potential threats now

01:21:38.680 --> 01:21:41.525
are different from the potential
threats in the mid-19th century.

01:21:41.609 --> 01:21:46.590
The nuclear dimension,
some kind of really brutal use of

01:21:46.990 --> 01:21:50.777
pathogens. I mean, there are lots of
things that could happen now that couldn't

01:21:50.860 --> 01:21:57.360
happen then, at least not because humans
were making them happen. But I mean, to,

01:21:58.180 --> 01:22:02.900
to me, one of the things to take away from
the Civil War is really the resiliency

01:22:03.980 --> 01:22:07.917
of this republic, which I
still think it's a resilient

01:22:08.000 --> 01:22:10.600
republic. We're living
in a sort of wacky time.

01:22:10.760 --> 01:22:14.620
Uh, but I believe that the...
I think that...

01:22:14.720 --> 01:22:18.577
I have a great faith in the
resiliency of the nation, I really

01:22:18.660 --> 01:22:21.909
do, of the United States. I think it's
been through much tougher times than we're

01:22:21.992 --> 01:22:22.825
in now,

01:22:23.060 --> 01:22:26.937
and I think that we will
weather this, although everybody

01:22:27.020 --> 01:22:30.917
will have some scar tissue.
There might even come a

01:22:31.000 --> 01:22:34.577
time when our leadership class
actually leads, and which would be

01:22:34.660 --> 01:22:38.500
interesting. And I'm saying,
you know, I'm talking about both

01:22:38.700 --> 01:22:42.580
sides of the fence here.
But it is... That, to me,

01:22:43.460 --> 01:22:47.317
this is, this is the supreme test
of a republic that had been put in

01:22:47.400 --> 01:22:50.697
place in the late 18th century.
Can that late 18th century republic

01:22:50.780 --> 01:22:54.357
adjust, including adjusting
to deal with the profoundly

01:22:54.440 --> 01:22:58.337
disruptive issue of slavery,
in a way that allows it

01:22:58.420 --> 01:23:02.197
to go forward? And the answer
is yes. In a war that brings

01:23:02.280 --> 01:23:06.240
slaughter on an unimaginable scale
and brings social disruption in the former

01:23:06.380 --> 01:23:10.337
slave-holding states on an unimaginable...
It just couldn't be more profoundly

01:23:10.420 --> 01:23:14.197
disruptive if you're a Confederate.
There's not slavery

01:23:14.280 --> 01:23:18.057
anymore, and we lost the war, and a third
of our military-age white men are dead.

01:23:18.140 --> 01:23:21.997
Wow, that's a bad four years
for our team. What's gonna

01:23:22.080 --> 01:23:25.877
happen here? The Republic emerged from
that and worked it out, and I think it

01:23:25.960 --> 01:23:28.860
is... It goes back to, to me,

01:23:29.760 --> 01:23:33.047
the intelligence of the founding
generation that put in place documents

01:23:33.130 --> 01:23:36.550
that actually allowed the Republic
to deal with something like this.

01:23:36.700 --> 01:23:39.400
And it's sort of a miracle to me

01:23:40.340 --> 01:23:43.777
that from a nation that
was as prejudiced, racially

01:23:43.860 --> 01:23:47.737
prejudiced as the United
States was, you get the 13th,

01:23:47.820 --> 01:23:51.720
14th, and 15th Amendments
out of this. It's just kind of

01:23:53.880 --> 01:23:55.700
mind-boggling that that happens.

01:23:56.860 --> 01:24:00.660
- Yeah, I think resilience and

01:24:01.580 --> 01:24:05.237
adaptive innovation often
looks like chaos in the moment.

01:24:05.320 --> 01:24:09.237
- It absolutely does. It absolutely does.
But then when you really get

01:24:09.320 --> 01:24:13.057
to the end of that story, you look,
and there you are, and oh, it's okay, the

01:24:13.140 --> 01:24:18.449
nation is still intact.
And the 13th Amendment is in place. Wow,

01:24:18.532 --> 01:24:22.680
we didn't think- ...
that was gonna happen in 1861-

01:24:22.880 --> 01:24:26.757
... when secession started. I mean, it
really... One, another lesson is that you

01:24:26.840 --> 01:24:32.147
cannot control what a great
military event can set loose.

01:24:32.230 --> 01:24:37.097
I mean, no, things that nobody imagined
would happen, including expansion of

01:24:37.180 --> 01:24:38.013
central power

01:24:38.920 --> 01:24:41.791
in ways that no one would have imagined.
You don't get to ratchet that back

01:24:41.874 --> 01:24:44.828
and say, "Well, that'll never happen
again." No, you know what? It happened,

01:24:44.911 --> 01:24:46.657
and maybe it will happen
again because we've

01:24:46.740 --> 01:24:50.377
seen it happen. Nobody imagined that.
The federal budget in

01:24:50.460 --> 01:24:54.340
1860 was $63 million.
That was the entire federal budget.

01:24:55.220 --> 01:24:59.197
The federal budget in 1865
was $1.2 billion, and

01:24:59.280 --> 01:25:02.505
if you throw in the Confederate side
of that, it gets you over $2 billion,

01:25:02.588 --> 01:25:03.037
which means

01:25:03.120 --> 01:25:10.120
federal expenditures in 1860 would've
lasted about 11 days in 1865. Nobody

01:25:10.540 --> 01:25:14.200
foresaw that. Absolutely
nobody foresaw that. And

01:25:16.140 --> 01:25:19.537
education legislation that would
create the great land grant colleges and

01:25:19.620 --> 01:25:25.320
universities and no- it's...
The war brought a lot

01:25:26.220 --> 01:25:31.357
- And I think most of the things that have
happened through the hard periods of our

01:25:31.440 --> 01:25:33.910
country's history,
nobody could have really f-

01:25:34.380 --> 01:25:38.960
foreseen, and then we somehow figure
it out, and that gives me a lot of hope.

01:25:39.120 --> 01:25:45.380
- We- - That this kinda like extreme
division, the arguments, the people

01:25:45.540 --> 01:25:49.040
basically speaking in the harshest
of ways against each other,

01:25:50.820 --> 01:25:53.720
that is like the engine of,

01:25:54.540 --> 01:26:01.540
brainstorming and figuring problems out
that in the long arc of history create

01:26:02.120 --> 01:26:06.060
progress. But in the short term,
it feels like a dumpster fire.

01:26:06.600 --> 01:26:11.940
- It does. And to me,
the arc of US history

01:26:13.480 --> 01:26:17.277
has been, and Lincoln talked about this
too, it's an expansion of freedoms and

01:26:17.360 --> 01:26:19.560
liberties. That's the,
that's the long arc,

01:26:20.380 --> 01:26:23.880
with very problematical
places along the way. But

01:26:25.000 --> 01:26:28.917
again, the documents allow
for that, and the process allows

01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:32.260
for that, and I think that's one
of the remarkable things about

01:26:33.700 --> 01:26:38.312
Philadelphia in the summer
of 1787. I mean, those guys,

01:26:38.396 --> 01:26:40.530
a lot of whom own slaves,

01:26:41.780 --> 01:26:45.597
put together something that's proved to be
resilient and adaptable and changeable,

01:26:45.680 --> 01:26:49.497
and it has evolved in a way that is in
the right direction, although there are

01:26:49.580 --> 01:26:51.320
always problems.

01:26:52.200 --> 01:26:55.977
- I love this country.
I will never stop saying how

01:26:56.060 --> 01:26:58.860
much I love this country.
It's an incredible experiment.

01:26:59.740 --> 01:27:06.740
I'm... we're this year celebrating its
250th birthday. I can't wait for the next

01:27:07.000 --> 01:27:12.780
250 years. This is such a fascinating
study of human civilization.

01:27:12.880 --> 01:27:19.880
- And it is complicated. What we want now
is a sort of cartoon version of what we

01:27:20.240 --> 01:27:23.737
Americans, as you watch
popular culture, we want a

01:27:23.820 --> 01:27:27.020
30-second view of whatever. Well,
who should I like? Who are the good guys?

01:27:27.103 --> 01:27:31.080
Who are the bad guys? I want a 30-second
version of the Civil War. What do I...

01:27:31.720 --> 01:27:34.840
History is not that way.
I've spent my whole life

01:27:35.660 --> 01:27:39.717
studying history, and the maybe the main
thing I've learned is however complicated

01:27:39.800 --> 01:27:42.410
I thought something was when
I really started to explore it,

01:27:42.493 --> 01:27:43.657
it's more complicated than

01:27:43.740 --> 01:27:48.250
I thought it was. People aren't simple.
They're complicated. And you have to

01:27:50.360 --> 01:27:51.193
at least

01:27:52.260 --> 01:27:54.495
appreciate, you don't have
to embrace the complexity.

01:27:54.578 --> 01:27:56.177
I guess you can't make people do that,

01:27:56.260 --> 01:27:59.334
but you have to at least concede
that things are... they're just...

01:27:59.417 --> 01:28:00.097
There's not a

01:28:00.180 --> 01:28:04.010
20-second version of anything in the past.
The past is complicated,

01:28:04.240 --> 01:28:06.937
because humanoids are involved in it.
They're complicated.

01:28:07.020 --> 01:28:10.897
- Yeah, the... when you look at the system
as a whole. But as individual humans, we

01:28:10.980 --> 01:28:14.147
like to do the black and white
thing where- - Of course.

01:28:14.230 --> 01:28:16.107
-... we just see the good, everything
as good and evil, and then we bicker.

01:28:16.190 --> 01:28:17.197
- 'Cause it's easier.

01:28:17.280 --> 01:28:20.293
- And then we get together at Thanksgiving
dinner, and we yell at each other,

01:28:20.376 --> 01:28:21.117
and then people lose

01:28:21.200 --> 01:28:25.060
their shit, and they stop talking
to each other for a year, and then they,

01:28:25.160 --> 01:28:28.717
they make up and all this 'cause this is
just how humans interact with each other.

01:28:28.800 --> 01:28:32.437
And, but as a system, especially
with the increasing levels of

01:28:32.520 --> 01:28:36.120
freedom, with the freedoms
of speech and be able to speak out

01:28:36.700 --> 01:28:40.457
about your feelings, even when they're
intense feelings, that somehow works as a

01:28:40.540 --> 01:28:42.040
system. - And it's very messy.

01:28:42.520 --> 01:28:46.197
- Yeah, yeah. - The more freedom, the
messier it is. Really, the messier it is.

01:28:46.280 --> 01:28:47.850
- And your job as a historian

01:28:49.050 --> 01:28:52.920
is a difficult job, and as you said,
because the more you learn,

01:28:53.300 --> 01:28:56.757
the more you come to understand,
the more complicated the picture appears.

01:28:56.840 --> 01:29:00.338
- Yep, and the more you learn, the more
you learn that you don't know as much

01:29:00.421 --> 01:29:01.571
as you thought you did.

01:29:02.020 --> 01:29:05.060
- So some humility will
take you a long way.

01:29:06.380 --> 01:29:07.880
- Yes, you want more of Grant,

01:29:08.720 --> 01:29:12.557
than McClellan in that,
on that humility score. Grant would

01:29:12.640 --> 01:29:14.340
score high on humility. McClellan,

01:29:15.200 --> 01:29:18.400
every day, every day the first
thought was, "What about me?"

01:29:19.890 --> 01:29:23.797
"Who is gonna not appreciate how wonderful
I am today?" thought George B. McClellan.

01:29:23.880 --> 01:29:27.880
That's the thought that nagged at him.
"Somebody might not know how great I am."

01:29:28.290 --> 01:29:31.660
That's an aside. - Reminds
me of somebody. But anyway.

01:29:32.900 --> 01:29:34.861
Quick ten-second
shout-out to our sponsors.

01:29:34.944 --> 01:29:36.644
Check them out in the description.

01:29:36.900 --> 01:29:39.697
It really is the best way
to support this podcast. Go to

01:29:39.780 --> 01:29:43.337
lexfridman.com/sponsors. And now, dear

01:29:43.420 --> 01:29:46.940
friends, back to my conversation
with Gary Gallagher.

01:29:48.380 --> 01:29:54.320
Okay, let's at the start, first shots
fired at Fort Sumter, as you mentioned,

01:29:55.500 --> 01:30:00.370
and this thing starts brewing
and escalating towards a full-on war.

01:30:01.920 --> 01:30:06.640
What are the different advantages
of each side from a military perspective?

01:30:07.040 --> 01:30:09.779
- Here is one of the great
misconceptions about the Civil War.

01:30:09.862 --> 01:30:10.957
Among the people who know

01:30:11.040 --> 01:30:14.140
anything about it, which in the US
is a very small percentage,

01:30:14.680 --> 01:30:19.047
but if they know anything, they know
United States' victory was inevitable.

01:30:19.130 --> 01:30:22.697
Because the United States
had 22 million people.

01:30:22.780 --> 01:30:25.507
The Confederacy had five
and a half million white people-

01:30:25.590 --> 01:30:28.617
... and three and a half million
enslaved people. The United States'

01:30:28.700 --> 01:30:32.417
economy was infinitely
more powerful than the

01:30:32.500 --> 01:30:36.317
Confederate economy. The United States
had the United States Army. The United

01:30:36.400 --> 01:30:38.520
States had the United States Navy.

01:30:39.140 --> 01:30:42.897
Really, who's gonna win this war?
The US, it's inevitable, next

01:30:42.980 --> 01:30:46.757
question. It's not true at all.
The US did have those advantages, but the

01:30:46.840 --> 01:30:50.777
Confederacy had
compensating advantages. And

01:30:50.860 --> 01:30:54.037
one of those advantages
was it had a much lower bar to

01:30:54.120 --> 01:30:57.850
cross for success. It didn't
have to invade the United States,

01:30:58.080 --> 01:31:02.017
didn't have to capture Washington.
It didn't have to project its military

01:31:02.100 --> 01:31:06.090
power into New England.
All it had to do was convince a majority

01:31:06.700 --> 01:31:10.097
of the civilian population
of the loyal states that it

01:31:10.180 --> 01:31:14.077
wasn't worth the cost to make
these rebel states come back into

01:31:14.160 --> 01:31:18.017
the Union. These are two
democratic republics at war, and in

01:31:18.100 --> 01:31:21.880
the end, the civilian sector
decides. Somebody my age

01:31:22.400 --> 01:31:26.217
can... We have the perfect example,
Vietnam. The United States was

01:31:26.300 --> 01:31:29.437
not defeated militarily in Vietnam,
and it didn't matter.

01:31:29.520 --> 01:31:32.392
'Cause when the people said, "We're
not gonna support this war anymore,"

01:31:32.476 --> 01:31:33.377
the war's gonna come to

01:31:33.460 --> 01:31:37.217
an end. The smart people in the
Confederacy understood this. They

01:31:37.300 --> 01:31:41.100
understood it at the time. Lee understood
it. Jefferson Davis understood it.

01:31:41.520 --> 01:31:45.137
You had key people at the time
saying, "There's no way that a

01:31:45.220 --> 01:31:49.057
nation as large as ours and a population

01:31:49.140 --> 01:31:52.140
as large as ours has ever been
subjected in a war like this.

01:31:53.220 --> 01:31:57.017
A tie is as good as a win for the
Confederacy." And they came very close to

01:31:57.100 --> 01:32:00.997
that in the summer of 1864.
The other thing is the sheer size

01:32:01.080 --> 01:32:04.997
of the Confederacy is a huge
advantage to them. It's huge, with

01:32:05.080 --> 01:32:08.337
a very poor transportation and

01:32:08.420 --> 01:32:12.380
communication infrastructure in many ways.
And to move a large army

01:32:12.500 --> 01:32:16.217
deep into the Confederacy
is a huge logistical problem.

01:32:16.300 --> 01:32:19.260
The same thing had happened to the British
both during the American Revolution

01:32:19.344 --> 01:32:24.940
and the War of 1812. They confront this...
The Confederacy's as big as all of Western

01:32:25.024 --> 01:32:25.857
Europe.

01:32:27.300 --> 01:32:30.837
That's a problem. It's also a problem
that the Confederates are fighting,

01:32:30.920 --> 01:32:34.070
literally fighting to defend
their homes. That's always, almost

01:32:34.160 --> 01:32:37.997
always a stronger factor
than trying to impose your

01:32:38.080 --> 01:32:41.730
will on somebody else.
All of these factors help the Confederacy.

01:32:42.590 --> 01:32:46.357
The US did have an army.
The army had 15,000 men in it in

01:32:46.440 --> 01:32:51.020
1860, 15,000. The Navy
had fewer than 50 vessels,

01:32:52.180 --> 01:32:55.557
most of them on overseas stations.
There were exactly

01:32:55.640 --> 01:32:59.577
three vessels available to blockade
the Confederacy at the beginning

01:32:59.660 --> 01:33:03.457
of the war. The Confederate coastline's
3,600 miles long. Probably not gonna be

01:33:03.540 --> 01:33:08.400
able to shut down a lot there.
So the point is that there are

01:33:09.600 --> 01:33:13.440
factors that help both sides. To me, the

01:33:13.740 --> 01:33:16.377
conditions for victory are the most
important factor that favors

01:33:16.460 --> 01:33:21.740
the Confederacy. We just have to make
it painful enough to the United States

01:33:22.840 --> 01:33:26.777
that they're gonna say, "Let them go.
We never liked South Carolina anyway. Just

01:33:26.860 --> 01:33:28.592
let them go. We're not...
It's not worth it.

01:33:28.676 --> 01:33:30.737
It's killing too many of our boys.
It's costing too

01:33:30.820 --> 01:33:33.646
much money, and we don't have to worry
about slavery in the territories if

01:33:33.729 --> 01:33:38.260
they're gone, 'cause they'll be gone. And
our territories will be free of slavery."

01:33:38.780 --> 01:33:41.757
- So again, the Union
is the invading force.

01:33:41.840 --> 01:33:44.237
- Yes. - Geography comes
into play, as you mentioned.

01:33:44.320 --> 01:33:48.677
- Immediately, yes. - Vast land.
And so in some sense, it's a miracle

01:33:48.760 --> 01:33:54.290
that the war lasted as long as it did,
and then there was as much motivation-

01:33:54.480 --> 01:33:55.677
- Yes, that they stuck to it

01:33:55.760 --> 01:33:59.200
-... because again, victory
for the Confederacy was stop the war.

01:33:59.440 --> 01:34:02.777
- Stop the war. Neither side
has an advantage in terms of its

01:34:02.860 --> 01:34:06.520
leadership. The generals
all come... You often

01:34:06.700 --> 01:34:10.650
used to read frequently Confederates
had better generals than the... And, but

01:34:11.440 --> 01:34:14.997
this is the first war where West-- where
West Pointers are in charge. They were

01:34:15.080 --> 01:34:20.606
subalterns in Mexico. The West Point is
the United States Military Academy where

01:34:20.690 --> 01:34:22.985
the professional officer
corps gets its training.

01:34:23.069 --> 01:34:24.717
It was established under Jefferson.

01:34:24.800 --> 01:34:28.457
It's the premier engineering school
in the United States. And I mean, West

01:34:28.540 --> 01:34:32.270
Point-trained engineers are very,
very prominent when they get out of the

01:34:32.360 --> 01:34:36.040
army and even when they're in the army.
But by the time of the Civil

01:34:36.160 --> 01:34:39.700
War, it is West Pointers
who were lieutenants and

01:34:39.860 --> 01:34:43.577
captains in the war with Mexico
are now gonna be the people in

01:34:43.660 --> 01:34:47.557
charge. Almost every army commander,
almost every corps commander, which

01:34:47.640 --> 01:34:48.930
is the next level,

01:34:49.820 --> 01:34:53.557
are West Point graduates.
They took the same classes from the same

01:34:53.640 --> 01:34:57.437
professors, read the same textbooks,
served under either Winfield

01:34:57.520 --> 01:35:01.417
Scott or Zachary Taylor in Mexico.
They bring the same background

01:35:01.500 --> 01:35:04.020
and body of doctrine
and training to the table.

01:35:05.240 --> 01:35:09.020
It would've been weird if one
side or the other had an inherent

01:35:09.120 --> 01:35:12.937
advantage in leadership.
The one place where the US ends up with an

01:35:13.020 --> 01:35:16.897
advantage is that over the course
of the war, it found, in my

01:35:16.980 --> 01:35:20.797
view, four men who could command
armies effectively: Grant,

01:35:20.880 --> 01:35:24.657
Sherman, Philip Henry Sheridan,
and George H. Thomas. The Confederacy

01:35:24.740 --> 01:35:28.700
only ever found one, and that's Lee.
And they had more than one

01:35:28.800 --> 01:35:31.976
army, so that's a problem. If you have
more than one army but only one really

01:35:32.059 --> 01:35:34.840
good army commander,
that puts you at a disadvantage.

01:35:35.400 --> 01:35:38.820
- In what ways were the two
sides balanced militarily,

01:35:40.020 --> 01:35:43.970
Equal militarily? So the,
the passion, like we mentioned,

01:35:44.060 --> 01:35:49.120
of the fighting force, the soldiers,
the dedication to the fighting.

01:35:49.700 --> 01:35:53.517
- Both brought the same notions of how
to fight a war to the table because the

01:35:53.600 --> 01:35:57.517
officer corps had been, on both
sides, had been trained in the

01:35:57.600 --> 01:36:01.020
same way. Neither side has
a real advantage in terms

01:36:01.240 --> 01:36:04.917
of technology.
Both sides use the railroad. Both

01:36:05.000 --> 01:36:08.777
sides use the telegraph. The United States
could have used repeating weapons but

01:36:08.860 --> 01:36:12.637
decided not to. The Confederacy
didn't have the industrial capacity to

01:36:12.720 --> 01:36:16.500
produce. So the war is fought
by infantrymen, for the most part,

01:36:16.720 --> 01:36:20.350
carrying muzzle-loading
single-shot muskets, rifle muskets.

01:36:20.520 --> 01:36:25.067
That's the weapon that inflicts
85 to 90% of the casualties-

01:36:25.150 --> 01:36:28.897
... in the Civil War, and they both
have exactly the same thing. And they

01:36:28.980 --> 01:36:32.550
have the same kinds of artillery
pieces. The United States

01:36:32.640 --> 01:36:36.480
Navy's much bigger, but it's...
And the Navy is important,

01:36:37.020 --> 01:36:40.460
but armies really decide the war,
and the armies are... They're

01:36:40.740 --> 01:36:42.490
organized exactly the same way.

01:36:43.420 --> 01:36:47.597
They are-- They get officers
the same way. They're very similar.

01:36:47.680 --> 01:36:51.597
- So what was the actual fighting like?
Like you mentioned, most of it was with

01:36:51.680 --> 01:36:54.080
muskets. What was the
experience of it like?

01:36:54.420 --> 01:36:58.217
- It's linear formations,
shoulder-to-shoulder kinds of formations

01:36:58.300 --> 01:37:01.937
that would allow you
to maintain unit integrity on a

01:37:02.020 --> 01:37:05.740
battlefield, which is one reason
casualties were high. They'd line up and

01:37:06.040 --> 01:37:07.000
fight each other.

01:37:07.190 --> 01:37:11.057
As the war went on, they resorted
more and more. One of the developments

01:37:11.140 --> 01:37:14.377
was the field entrenchments
became very common by

01:37:14.460 --> 01:37:18.277
1864. And both armies, if they would
stop for the night, they would entrench.

01:37:18.360 --> 01:37:19.810
They'd throw up field works--

01:37:20.180 --> 01:37:24.077
... which gave the defenders
a much greater power vis-a-vis

01:37:24.160 --> 01:37:27.657
the attacking force. They came
to decide that you needed about a

01:37:27.740 --> 01:37:31.237
three-to-one advantage in numbers
to have a successful attack once field

01:37:31.320 --> 01:37:36.900
entrenchments were in place.
But it is... It's an infantryman's war

01:37:37.620 --> 01:37:41.852
overwhelmingly, and the infantryman's
experience on both sides.

01:37:41.936 --> 01:37:46.937
The United States side was a little better
supplied. Union soldiers ate a little

01:37:47.020 --> 01:37:50.857
better for the most part.
They got regular issues

01:37:50.940 --> 01:37:53.454
of clothing a little more
regularly than the Confederates did.

01:37:53.537 --> 01:37:54.857
Their uniforms all kind of looked

01:37:54.940 --> 01:37:57.990
the same. The Confederates would
have had a more motley look.

01:37:58.760 --> 01:38:02.457
But the Confederates didn't lose any
battles because they didn't have enough

01:38:02.540 --> 01:38:05.831
shoes, and they didn't lose any battles
'cause they didn't have enough powder.

01:38:05.914 --> 01:38:10.317
They never had a problem with that.
So it's a war where each side looks

01:38:10.400 --> 01:38:14.087
like the other side in terms of what
the armies actually... If we had wandered

01:38:14.170 --> 01:38:17.820
through the armies and, or watched
them in battle, they would have looked

01:38:18.360 --> 01:38:19.193
the same to us.

01:38:19.380 --> 01:38:23.037
- But it wasn't just about bullets.
There was also dysentery and disease.

01:38:23.120 --> 01:38:26.760
- Two out of every three soldiers
who died, died of disease.

01:38:27.860 --> 01:38:31.093
It depends on what unit you're in.
If you're in the Irish Brigade, ah,

01:38:31.177 --> 01:38:32.010
God love them.

01:38:32.600 --> 01:38:35.977
You know, just point us towards
something and let us indulge in

01:38:36.060 --> 01:38:39.757
self-immolation, for God's sake.
The Irish Brigade had the

01:38:39.840 --> 01:38:43.577
reverse. They had two men who died
from battle wounds for every man who

01:38:43.660 --> 01:38:49.050
died from disease. But overall,
it's one man died from battle wounds

01:38:49.720 --> 01:38:54.290
and two died from disease.
Overall casualties, killed, wounded,

01:38:55.160 --> 01:38:59.260
prisoners of war, about a million and
a half--... casualties in the Civil War.

01:38:59.700 --> 01:39:03.577
- There-- You know, there's this idea that
a big part of the American spirit is the

01:39:03.660 --> 01:39:08.357
Scots-Irish spirit, the fighting spirit.
You think there's some truth to that?

01:39:08.440 --> 01:39:12.017
- Well, the songs are Irish songs
that both sides sing with different words,

01:39:12.100 --> 01:39:16.060
and I mean, there are a lot
of Irish soldiers in the Union Army.

01:39:17.020 --> 01:39:20.937
But in the entire military-age
white population of

01:39:21.020 --> 01:39:24.520
the loyal states in 1860,
just about a third

01:39:25.120 --> 01:39:27.570
were born somewhere other
than the United States.

01:39:27.880 --> 01:39:31.777
And they made up about a quarter
of all the soldiers. So they're actually

01:39:31.860 --> 01:39:35.817
underrepresented in the United States
Army. Far lower percentage of foreign-born

01:39:35.900 --> 01:39:38.777
soldiers in the Confederate Army,
but there they're a little bit

01:39:38.860 --> 01:39:39.693
overrepresented.

01:39:40.320 --> 01:39:43.917
So there are lots of foreign-born
soldiers in the army. The

01:39:44.000 --> 01:39:46.397
largest group are not Irish.
They're the second largest group.

01:39:46.480 --> 01:39:47.980
The largest group are Germans,

01:39:48.200 --> 01:39:52.037
On the US side. The Irish are second,
and then you'd go way down the

01:39:52.120 --> 01:39:53.120
line for yet others.

01:39:53.260 --> 01:39:57.160
- So we talked pretty thoroughly about
slavery. Can we talk about immigration?

01:39:57.720 --> 01:40:02.780
What was the view
at the time of immigrants?

01:40:03.740 --> 01:40:04.573
- Well,

01:40:04.780 --> 01:40:08.617
I think you know the answer to that. We
need to have all that stuff done, but we

01:40:08.700 --> 01:40:13.390
don't especially like the people doing it.
That's basically the... Well,

01:40:14.300 --> 01:40:15.377
I mean, the-- - Oh, America

01:40:15.460 --> 01:40:19.340
-...the anti-Irish, and a lot
of it is bound up with anti-Catholic

01:40:19.500 --> 01:40:23.357
sentiment. The-- 'Cause the Irish are
changing the nature of the country.

01:40:23.440 --> 01:40:24.790
The country's a Protestant,

01:40:25.750 --> 01:40:29.597
British country, and here come all
these Irishmen. And especially in

01:40:29.680 --> 01:40:33.050
the '40s and '50s, the--
My Gallaghers came in the late '50s.

01:40:33.820 --> 01:40:37.717
They are changing the nature, and they
take over. Look at them. They don't know

01:40:37.800 --> 01:40:40.672
their place. They're-- ...
pretty soon they're taking over cities,

01:40:40.755 --> 01:40:42.817
and they all cheat when
they vote. We know that.

01:40:42.900 --> 01:40:44.877
You can buy an Irish vote for one drink.

01:40:44.960 --> 01:40:46.660
- This all sounds familiar, right?

01:40:47.040 --> 01:40:50.917
- The cartoons were brutal on depicting
African American characters, but they also

01:40:51.000 --> 01:40:54.577
depicted the Irish as sort of simian
characters, often with a jug of

01:40:54.660 --> 01:40:58.477
whiskey in one hand. I mean, it's very...
There's profound prejudice. And

01:40:58.560 --> 01:41:02.460
prejudice against the Germans,
whom they called the Dutch. That was what

01:41:02.700 --> 01:41:06.660
the soldiers would call the German
regiments, Dutch regiments. And

01:41:07.560 --> 01:41:09.580
yeah, there's a lot of ethnic prejudice.

01:41:09.880 --> 01:41:13.617
- So to mention, you mentioned
Protestants, so both sides were

01:41:13.700 --> 01:41:15.940
primarily Protestant Christians.

01:41:16.120 --> 01:41:19.880
- Overwhelmingly. - At that time,
it was a very religious country.

01:41:20.520 --> 01:41:22.937
- Yes, yes. - So the religious
sentiment was pretty strong.

01:41:23.020 --> 01:41:26.730
- Units had chaplains,
and there were Catholic priests with

01:41:26.820 --> 01:41:28.900
Catholic units. Yes, a very big presence.

01:41:29.240 --> 01:41:33.480
- Was Christianity used to justify-- -
Of course it was. Both sides used it, yes.

01:41:34.320 --> 01:41:36.677
I don't mean to jump on your
question, but yes, they did.

01:41:36.760 --> 01:41:41.420
- I mean, how was it used
to justify fighting for a nation?

01:41:42.080 --> 01:41:44.161
- Yeah, there's a lot
of fighting in the Bible,

01:41:44.244 --> 01:41:45.977
a lot of people killing other people in

01:41:46.060 --> 01:41:48.517
the Bible-- As long as you're doing
it for the right reasons-- - Right.

01:41:48.600 --> 01:41:52.417
-...you can... And you could use it
different ways. I mean, you can deal with

01:41:52.500 --> 01:41:56.397
setbacks by saying, "Well, God tests us.
We're being tested." What do you

01:41:56.480 --> 01:41:58.912
do when God tests you?
You don't give up when God tests you.

01:41:58.995 --> 01:42:00.695
You try harder when God tests you.

01:42:01.220 --> 01:42:04.910
The very top leaders...
This is interesting. The top leaders

01:42:05.140 --> 01:42:11.180
on the Confederate side, the most famous
ones, Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart,

01:42:12.320 --> 01:42:16.197
they were much more overtly
religious than people like

01:42:16.280 --> 01:42:21.140
Grant, Sherman, Philip Sheridan.
I mean, much, much more. Lee,

01:42:22.320 --> 01:42:25.639
was an Episcopalian.
Jackson was a Presbyterian.

01:42:25.723 --> 01:42:27.920
But they talked-- I mean, their

01:42:28.240 --> 01:42:32.137
official reports, their correspondence,
it's filled with allusions to

01:42:32.220 --> 01:42:35.120
religion much more than
Grant's or Sherman's.

01:42:35.540 --> 01:42:38.260
- What about African
Americans in the army?

01:42:38.940 --> 01:42:42.420
- African Americans made up...
There were about 200,000 Black men

01:42:42.760 --> 01:42:46.510
served in what were called United
States Colored Troops units, USCT.

01:42:46.780 --> 01:42:51.817
- It was on the Union side. - On the U-
Yes. Okay, let's just dispense with the

01:42:51.900 --> 01:42:55.757
hallucination that there were a lot
of Black men in the Confederate Army.

01:42:55.840 --> 01:43:00.737
That is such total- Ridiculous nonsense-

01:43:00.820 --> 01:43:05.490
... utterly unsupported by any evidence
that anyone would consider credible.

01:43:06.650 --> 01:43:10.270
This whole notion of... I mean,
it's just, it's preposterous.

01:43:10.570 --> 01:43:16.207
It's ridic- and I'm really
managing my language right here.

01:43:16.290 --> 01:43:20.167
I'm not saying what I really
think it is. So, so just... I've

01:43:20.250 --> 01:43:24.387
seen estimates of as high as 100,000
Black men in the Confederate Army.

01:43:24.470 --> 01:43:26.627
- Not true. - Really, really, no.

01:43:26.710 --> 01:43:29.527
No. Were there Black men
with the Confederate armies? Yes.

01:43:29.610 --> 01:43:30.447
There are enslaved

01:43:30.530 --> 01:43:34.210
Black men who are doing all kinds
of non-military things in the army

01:43:34.830 --> 01:43:38.367
to free more white men to shoulder
muskets and shoot at Yankees.

01:43:38.450 --> 01:43:42.287
That's what's going on in the Confederate
Army. There are a lot of Black men around

01:43:42.370 --> 01:43:47.190
Union armies before they became
soldiers as well. But there are these...

01:43:48.710 --> 01:43:51.113
200,000 Black men join
the military service during the war.

01:43:51.196 --> 01:43:52.487
They're in the Navy and in the

01:43:52.570 --> 01:43:56.417
Army. They'd always been in the Navy.
The US Navy... And they're

01:43:56.500 --> 01:43:59.675
not segregated in the Navy in the,
in the way that they can be in the Army.

01:43:59.758 --> 01:44:02.277
They're just in Bl- you
have integrated crews-

01:44:02.360 --> 01:44:04.973
... on naval vessels, although
they're separated in some ways,

01:44:05.056 --> 01:44:10.047
but there've always been Black sailors
in the Navy. The Army, no. That was

01:44:10.130 --> 01:44:13.987
a big, it's a big thing to put
Black men in uniform. And

01:44:14.070 --> 01:44:17.907
for a Confederate, it's bad enough if
you announce emancipation, but you, then

01:44:17.990 --> 01:44:21.270
you start arming Black men.
That, to Confederates,

01:44:21.530 --> 01:44:27.330
is urging a widespread
slave rebellion, basically.

01:44:27.750 --> 01:44:32.370
- Black regiments on the Union side
was enraging the Confederate side.

01:44:32.590 --> 01:44:36.447
- Yes. And they have white officers
overwhelmingly. There are a few

01:44:36.530 --> 01:44:42.550
Black officers, but overwhelmingly
the USCT units have white officers leading

01:44:42.634 --> 01:44:45.297
them. - But symbolically,
that is a really powerful thing, right?

01:44:45.380 --> 01:44:49.610
- Oh, it's hard for modern
Americans to understand just how

01:44:50.690 --> 01:44:54.507
jarring that would be to a Confederate,
that not only would you have enslaved

01:44:54.590 --> 01:45:01.030
people no longer enslaved, but you would
have the men in uniforms carrying muskets.

01:45:01.650 --> 01:45:05.176
- So you as a historian,
you've looked at every layer of this,

01:45:05.259 --> 01:45:11.427
including diaries and- - What, what
was motivating? What was going through the

01:45:11.510 --> 01:45:15.150
minds of African Americans who
were fighting for the Union side?

01:45:15.670 --> 01:45:17.358
I think what you would
expect is going... I mean,

01:45:17.442 --> 01:45:19.387
they would talk about Union
occasionally, but what that

01:45:19.470 --> 01:45:23.447
means to them, it's a union without
slavery. They have the most... Of

01:45:23.530 --> 01:45:26.110
all the people who can have a direct

01:45:27.690 --> 01:45:31.268
impact on what's going on versus slavery,
there's nothing more direct than picking

01:45:31.351 --> 01:45:35.067
up a musket and firing at the people
who are defending a slavery-based

01:45:35.150 --> 01:45:39.000
society. It doesn't get... And at the
same time, you are not only doing that,

01:45:39.450 --> 01:45:43.247
you are also establishing
an unimpeachable claim to citizenship. The

01:45:43.330 --> 01:45:47.207
whole point of a citizen soldier
is that you do your bit for the

01:45:47.290 --> 01:45:51.207
nation that's helping you,
and the nation does these things for you.

01:45:51.290 --> 01:45:54.416
Well, okay, if I'm picking up and risking
my life with a musket in my hand,

01:45:54.500 --> 01:45:55.227
are you gonna tell

01:45:55.310 --> 01:45:58.967
me I can't vote after I do? I thought
that's the whole point of this, when I'm

01:45:59.050 --> 01:46:02.970
protecting the right to vote by doing
my citizen's role as a soldier.

01:46:03.390 --> 01:46:05.287
And that was a big debate in Congress.

01:46:05.370 --> 01:46:09.027
That really changed the equation of that
debate as well. How are you gonna treat

01:46:09.110 --> 01:46:12.640
people after they've served
in United States units?

01:46:13.090 --> 01:46:16.027
Can you tell them they can't vote?
You're not gonna give the vote to them?

01:46:16.110 --> 01:46:20.067
- How many people in the Black regiments,
but also, you know, folks like Frederick

01:46:20.150 --> 01:46:25.230
Douglass, saw that Black Americans and
white Americans should have equal rights?

01:46:25.450 --> 01:46:29.347
- Well, Douglass saw that, of course. But
even within their context, their notion

01:46:29.430 --> 01:46:32.370
of equal rights is that that doesn't
mean that Black women are gonna vote,

01:46:32.454 --> 01:46:33.187
just like for white

01:46:33.270 --> 01:46:37.007
people, it didn't mean white women would
vote. But in terms of the context of the

01:46:37.090 --> 01:46:37.923
time, yes,

01:46:38.650 --> 01:46:41.779
equal rights should come out of this.
Abolishing slavery is the first step

01:46:41.863 --> 01:46:46.010
of this. It's not the end game. The end
game is equal rights for everybody.

01:46:46.110 --> 01:46:47.247
- Did many people see that?

01:46:47.330 --> 01:46:51.207
- No. A tiny percentage of people
saw that. There's a notion

01:46:51.290 --> 01:46:55.047
that's very common that somehow
the white North turned its back

01:46:55.130 --> 01:46:58.273
on Black people after the war,
and it should've tried harder during

01:46:58.356 --> 01:47:02.890
Reconstruction to force the white South to
convey full equal rights to Black people.

01:47:03.870 --> 01:47:07.547
The assumption there is simply flawed.
Most white people in the

01:47:07.630 --> 01:47:11.170
North didn't believe that... They believed

01:47:11.650 --> 01:47:15.587
first save the Union, and yes, we'll need
to kill slavery as well. Those are the two

01:47:15.670 --> 01:47:17.858
things on the list. Check,
check, we've done those.

01:47:17.942 --> 01:47:19.587
Full equal rights for Black people is

01:47:19.670 --> 01:47:22.732
not on their list. That... And they
were not willing to do the things that it

01:47:22.816 --> 01:47:27.247
would've taken to do that, including
the white soldiers in uniforms who

01:47:27.330 --> 01:47:30.446
wanted out of the army after
the Confederates surrendered and said,

01:47:30.529 --> 01:47:31.107
"Well, now we

01:47:31.190 --> 01:47:35.087
need the army to make the white South do
the right thing vis-à-vis Black people."

01:47:35.170 --> 01:47:37.247
They would've said,
"What are you talking about?"

01:47:37.330 --> 01:47:41.290
"I signed on to do this.
We did it. Send us home right now."

01:47:41.930 --> 01:47:44.957
- I think that's one of the lessons
you learn from human history across

01:47:45.040 --> 01:47:47.650
the different places where
slavery was abolished,

01:47:48.550 --> 01:47:52.677
is abolishing slavery is not the end of a
journey. It's the beginning of a journey.

01:47:52.760 --> 01:47:53.507
- It's the beginning.

01:47:53.590 --> 01:47:57.250
- And it sometimes takes,
quite often takes at least 100 years

01:47:57.810 --> 01:48:01.590
to go from that to something you
would identify as equal rights.

01:48:02.290 --> 01:48:05.730
And then maybe even beyond that,
there's a complicated story about

01:48:06.730 --> 01:48:09.387
even outside of rights, just how
society sees the different people.

01:48:09.470 --> 01:48:13.407
- There's a difference between passing...
I mean, the Great Society passed most of

01:48:13.490 --> 01:48:15.889
the... I mean, you got the Civil
Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act,

01:48:15.972 --> 01:48:16.707
the Fair Housing Act.

01:48:16.790 --> 01:48:20.707
You got all of this legislation that does
a lot of the legal stuff, but it's what's

01:48:20.790 --> 01:48:27.510
in people's heads-... that takes longer
and is a, is a more frustrating process.

01:48:27.970 --> 01:48:33.890
- Remains, as has appeared
in human history, potential fuel

01:48:34.030 --> 01:48:36.230
for the division to rise up again.

01:48:36.330 --> 01:48:40.127
- Of course. And then people can
exploit that. It's, it's waiting to be

01:48:40.210 --> 01:48:42.450
exploited, and people exploit it.

01:48:43.050 --> 01:48:46.587
- This is something we do as humans.
We like to otherize certain groups.

01:48:46.670 --> 01:48:47.687
- Good to have an enemy.

01:48:47.770 --> 01:48:51.390
- And the Civil War for our country
is a story of this. It's...

01:48:51.730 --> 01:48:55.567
So understanding the Civil War
is in part extremely important

01:48:55.650 --> 01:49:02.650
for understanding the, the division,
maybe the dormant division that's there.

01:49:03.370 --> 01:49:06.070
- Yes. And there, and even
before the war, there were-

01:49:07.680 --> 01:49:11.360
There were notions about
the other side that sort-- for,

01:49:11.500 --> 01:49:15.357
for a lot of people in the free states
looking South, they said white Southerners

01:49:15.440 --> 01:49:18.977
are because of they're lazy, they're

01:49:19.060 --> 01:49:22.997
violent, they, they don't wanna
talk out a problem. They'll do

01:49:23.080 --> 01:49:26.757
what Preston Brooks did to Charles Sumner.
They'll beat him over the head with a

01:49:26.840 --> 01:49:30.417
cane, and they're used to this because
they have slavery, and they're used to

01:49:30.500 --> 01:49:34.237
brutalizing Black people. That's just
how they approach things. And the white

01:49:34.320 --> 01:49:36.960
South would look North and say they
don't care anything about family.

01:49:37.043 --> 01:49:37.977
They're all just lusting

01:49:38.060 --> 01:49:41.997
after money. All they care about
is material things. They don't have any

01:49:42.080 --> 01:49:45.500
sense of kinship or family.
They're... That's what Yankees

01:49:45.600 --> 01:49:49.400
are. It doesn't even matter whether
any of that is true, of course.

01:49:49.560 --> 01:49:53.277
There was a sense perceptions are
more important than reality with human

01:49:53.360 --> 01:49:56.977
beings, and the perceptions on the eve
of the Civil War were that the other

01:49:57.060 --> 01:50:00.897
side was different in a lot of ways.
They also had profoundly

01:50:00.980 --> 01:50:04.397
profound commonalities.
They had a common language, a common

01:50:04.480 --> 01:50:08.160
religion, a common history,
these founding documents. All of

01:50:08.260 --> 01:50:11.500
that would pull things,
pull people together.

01:50:11.840 --> 01:50:15.737
But they found ways to see
differences and divided

01:50:15.820 --> 01:50:19.370
some of the churches. I mean,
Protestant churches divided over slavery.

01:50:19.540 --> 01:50:23.417
- And many of these themes
continue to today. Let's

01:50:23.500 --> 01:50:25.348
talk about the different
theaters of the war,

01:50:25.431 --> 01:50:27.317
the Eastern Theater
and the Western Theater.

01:50:27.400 --> 01:50:30.558
You mentioned the navies, the geography.
How does geography come into play?

01:50:30.641 --> 01:50:32.341
What are the different parts here?

01:50:32.580 --> 01:50:36.467
- There's three main theaters of the war.
The Eastern Theater is the theater

01:50:36.550 --> 01:50:39.690
that features Washington and Richmond.

01:50:39.880 --> 01:50:41.829
Plays out in Virginia,
a little bit of Maryland,

01:50:41.913 --> 01:50:43.377
and a little bit of Pennsylvania.

01:50:43.460 --> 01:50:46.688
That's-- it's where the Army of Northern
Virginia and the Army of the Potomac fight

01:50:46.771 --> 01:50:49.167
for the most part.
That's the Eastern Theater.

01:50:49.250 --> 01:50:54.317
- And that's the theater that maybe
is most glorified and mythologized.

01:50:54.400 --> 01:50:56.457
- It's by far the most
famous of the theaters.

01:50:56.540 --> 01:50:59.130
There are famous battles in the other
theaters, but that's the one,

01:50:59.213 --> 01:51:02.463
and it's mainly because of the
presence of Lee and then of Grant.

01:51:03.040 --> 01:51:06.897
The Western Theater is a much larger one.
It goes from the Appalachian Mountains

01:51:06.980 --> 01:51:10.460
to the Mississippi River,
east to west, and would go

01:51:10.620 --> 01:51:17.620
from the Gulf to the Ohio River, so it's
huge and involves Tennessee and, and then

01:51:18.540 --> 01:51:22.237
beyond the Mississippi River
is the descriptively named

01:51:22.320 --> 01:51:27.344
Trans-Mississippi River,
part of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas,

01:51:27.427 --> 01:51:29.300
and so forth. In terms

01:51:29.480 --> 01:51:33.160
of commitment of resources
and effect on the outcome of the war,

01:51:33.320 --> 01:51:37.120
it's by far the least important. Some
people get very upset when I say that,

01:51:37.220 --> 01:51:40.302
say that, that the Trans-- you know, it's
basically who cares about what's going

01:51:40.386 --> 01:51:41.219
on out there.

01:51:41.860 --> 01:51:45.580
But that's the third theater, the
Trans-Mississippi, the Western Theater,

01:51:46.080 --> 01:51:47.280
and the Eastern Theater.

01:51:47.500 --> 01:51:50.502
- But I think you've argued that the
Western Theater is really important

01:51:50.586 --> 01:51:55.197
for the war. - Very important,
and it's where we get Grant. The

01:51:55.280 --> 01:51:57.840
soldiers who won the war
for the United States

01:51:58.580 --> 01:52:02.020
all come out of the Western
Theater. Grant, he brings

01:52:02.240 --> 01:52:06.800
Sherman, Philip Sheridan, George Thomas.
Those are all in the Western Theater.

01:52:07.640 --> 01:52:14.397
- So at the very beginning, the first
real battle, at the First Manassas in July

01:52:14.480 --> 01:52:17.440
1861, I think one
interesting aspect of that,

01:52:18.340 --> 01:52:21.307
as you've talked about,
is that people gathered for a picnic.

01:52:21.390 --> 01:52:25.040
- They came out to watch from Washington.
They brought the carriages out,

01:52:25.420 --> 01:52:28.800
set up on a little ridge that let
them look down over the battle.

01:52:29.120 --> 01:52:30.870
- So that kind of gives you a sense

01:52:31.600 --> 01:52:35.497
that people of the time, first of all,
didn't think this would-- this is going

01:52:35.580 --> 01:52:39.220
to scale to the size that it
did or last as long as it did,

01:52:39.620 --> 01:52:43.580
but also not understand
the seriousness of the situation.

01:52:44.000 --> 01:52:47.657
- They're clueless about what's actually
going on. To even think that you should go

01:52:47.740 --> 01:52:51.667
observe a battle like that
is ridiculous, but they did.

01:52:51.750 --> 01:52:55.637
And there was a strong belief,
and Lincoln was part of

01:52:55.720 --> 01:52:57.640
this at the beginning, that there's
probably gonna be one battle.

01:52:57.724 --> 01:52:58.297
It's not gonna last.

01:52:58.380 --> 01:53:05.380
He asked for 90-day volunteers to suppress
the rebellion right after Fort Sumter.

01:53:05.920 --> 01:53:09.737
William Tecumseh Sherman reacted to that
by saying that you might as well try to

01:53:09.820 --> 01:53:13.597
put out a fire with a squirt gun. I mean,
it's ridiculous. They're not thinking

01:53:13.680 --> 01:53:19.097
about what this war could easily be.
Take years, take hundreds of

01:53:19.180 --> 01:53:21.860
thousands of men maybe, not one battle.

01:53:22.180 --> 01:53:27.360
- When did it, the dark cloud,
the reality of the war, come in?

01:53:28.240 --> 01:53:31.817
- Well, First Bull Run
and Star or Manassas, th- each

01:53:31.900 --> 01:53:35.777
side, many battles have two names,
one that the United States soldiers used

01:53:35.860 --> 01:53:40.080
and one... And usually the Confederates
would pick the nearest town,

01:53:40.900 --> 01:53:44.797
and the United States often picked
terrain features, so you get Bull

01:53:44.880 --> 01:53:48.217
Run, which is a creek or stream.
That's what the Union soldiers called it.

01:53:48.300 --> 01:53:51.900
Manassas is what the Confederates
called it. Antietam,

01:53:52.860 --> 01:53:56.617
a creek in Maryland, is what the Union.
Sharpsburg is what Confederates called

01:53:56.700 --> 01:53:58.650
it. Anyway, there are several of those.

01:53:59.220 --> 01:54:02.957
That brought a little sense
of reality to people in the

01:54:03.040 --> 01:54:05.317
United States especially.
They'd expected it to be over,

01:54:05.400 --> 01:54:06.917
and it didn't go the way they thought

01:54:07.000 --> 01:54:10.427
it would go, and so it's gonna
take more men. The summer of

01:54:10.510 --> 01:54:14.037
'61 was spent, hundreds of thousands
of men went into uniform in the summer of

01:54:14.120 --> 01:54:19.480
'61. The whole supply situation
became more evidently imperative,

01:54:20.880 --> 01:54:22.140
but not much happened

01:54:23.240 --> 01:54:26.408
in the, for the rest of the war. There's
a pretty big battle called the Battle

01:54:26.491 --> 01:54:27.157
of Wilson's Creek

01:54:27.240 --> 01:54:31.097
that takes place in Missouri,
but the rest of 1861 doesn't have... The

01:54:31.180 --> 01:54:33.290
real fighting begins in the spring of '62,

01:54:34.320 --> 01:54:37.837
and what really brought
home in a way that no one had

01:54:37.920 --> 01:54:41.837
imagined what could be in store was one
battle in the East and one battle in the

01:54:41.920 --> 01:54:45.270
West. The one in the West is Shiloh,
which happened in early April.

01:54:45.880 --> 01:54:49.657
U.S. Grant on the, on the United
States side and a General Albert

01:54:49.740 --> 01:54:53.530
Sidney Johnston on the Confederate side.
But at Shiloh in two days,

01:54:54.260 --> 01:54:58.000
there were upwards of 25,000
casualties, and that's more,

01:54:58.460 --> 01:55:02.077
more battle casualties than U.S.
forces had suffered in every

01:55:02.160 --> 01:55:05.270
war combined down to that
point happened in two days.

01:55:07.360 --> 01:55:10.650
Two and a half months after
that—George B. McClellan's army

01:55:11.230 --> 01:55:15.247
engaged with Lee's army in what came to be
called the Seven Days Battles at Richmond,

01:55:15.330 --> 01:55:19.087
36,000 casualties.
So those two together just

01:55:19.170 --> 01:55:22.790
showed that this was gonna be
on a totally different scale,

01:55:23.910 --> 01:55:27.307
and it was gonna involve
sacrifices and allocation of

01:55:27.390 --> 01:55:30.287
resources that no one had imagined before.

01:55:30.370 --> 01:55:33.523
- Since you mentioned Missouri, you've
talked about how that was the most brutal

01:55:33.606 --> 01:55:35.590
guerrilla warfare of the conflict.

01:55:35.990 --> 01:55:39.100
And maybe can you speak to what
do you mean by guerrilla warfare?

01:55:39.184 --> 01:55:43.490
What kind of war was that?
And then contrast with the structure,

01:55:44.170 --> 01:55:48.290
the dynamics of battles
elsewhere in the war.

01:55:48.410 --> 01:55:52.027
- Yes. Guerrilla war is more of what
I think most Americans can sort of

01:55:52.110 --> 01:55:55.387
imagine what guerrilla war is.
It involves much, much smaller

01:55:55.470 --> 01:55:59.187
numbers of actors, obviously, on

01:55:59.270 --> 01:56:03.207
both sides. Guerrilla bands might have
a few dozen members. They might have

01:56:03.290 --> 01:56:07.270
a few hundred at different times.
There are no real battles,

01:56:07.810 --> 01:56:11.567
battles between guerrillas.
There is a lot of

01:56:11.650 --> 01:56:15.535
bushwhacking, which is what
they called it, ambushing people,

01:56:15.619 --> 01:56:17.050
terrorizing civilians,

01:56:18.030 --> 01:56:23.627
killing livestock, killing some civilians,
killing prisoners after you've

01:56:23.710 --> 01:56:27.540
captured them, hanging some people.
There are a few semi-large

01:56:27.630 --> 01:56:31.537
scale ones. There's a Confederate
guerrilla named Quantrill led a raid

01:56:31.620 --> 01:56:35.280
against Lawrence, Kansas,
where they burned parts of the town,

01:56:35.490 --> 01:56:38.870
executed more than 150 men in the town,
and terrorized the place.

01:56:39.870 --> 01:56:43.630
That is going on in the... There's a

01:56:44.110 --> 01:56:47.987
relationship in many places between
elevation and guerrilla activity. The

01:56:48.070 --> 01:56:51.372
more mountainous or hilly, the more
likely there'll be guerrillas operating.

01:56:51.455 --> 01:56:51.947
They operate

01:56:52.030 --> 01:56:57.210
in the mountains, East Tennessee, western
North Carolina, southwestern Virginia,

01:56:58.290 --> 01:57:02.127
Central... There's even some activity
in parts of Texas, but Missouri and

01:57:02.210 --> 01:57:06.110
Kentucky have the worst guerrilla warfare.
It's present through the whole war,

01:57:06.490 --> 01:57:09.750
probably involves maybe
50,000 men out of the

01:57:10.510 --> 01:57:12.710
3 million who were
in action during the war,

01:57:13.470 --> 01:57:20.470
and was very nasty, no rules.
One reason that rules of war were codified

01:57:21.310 --> 01:57:25.247
was because Henry Halleck, who was a
Union general in Missouri, was dealing

01:57:25.330 --> 01:57:28.488
with this guerrilla activity and he said,
"We need to get some rules about who's

01:57:28.571 --> 01:57:29.267
a civilian, who's

01:57:29.350 --> 01:57:33.190
not a civilian. How do you deal
with this kind of situation and that

01:57:33.290 --> 01:57:34.270
kind of situation?"

01:57:34.670 --> 01:57:37.970
- What should we take away from
the fact that most of the fighting

01:57:38.730 --> 01:57:42.120
had the rules of war behind it?
So it was more structured, it was-

01:57:42.210 --> 01:57:44.060
- I think what we take away from that

01:57:44.830 --> 01:57:48.147
supports my argument that
this is a war between two

01:57:48.230 --> 01:57:52.087
mid-19th century nation states
that have a sense of how you fight a

01:57:52.170 --> 01:57:56.027
war. You fight a war with
national armies who are led by

01:57:56.110 --> 01:57:59.827
professional soldiers and who understand
that there are limits to what you

01:57:59.910 --> 01:58:03.750
do in a war, and all the war,
the war's limits expand as it goes on,

01:58:04.450 --> 01:58:08.098
but it doesn't reach the point where you
have indiscriminate killing of civilians

01:58:08.182 --> 01:58:11.143
and so forth. You just don't... I mean,
there's an argument about whether it's

01:58:11.227 --> 01:58:14.087
a total war or not. It all depends
on how you define total war.

01:58:14.170 --> 01:58:17.987
- As you've mentioned, in terms
of how encompassing it was, as total a

01:58:18.070 --> 01:58:23.507
war as it gets because the, the entirety
of the society was involved in it.

01:58:23.590 --> 01:58:27.547
- When there's wide-scale targeting
of the economic infrastructure

01:58:27.630 --> 01:58:30.317
of your opponent that can be
used to support the war effort,

01:58:30.400 --> 01:58:31.327
which is what you get

01:58:31.410 --> 01:58:34.867
increasingly as the war goes on and
officially when Grant is in charge as

01:58:34.950 --> 01:58:41.030
general-in-chief, then certainly that's
a total... If you're the farmer who

01:58:41.690 --> 01:58:45.507
experiences an army coming
by and they, they take

01:58:45.590 --> 01:58:49.527
all, take or kill all your livestock
and destroy your crops, and that's,

01:58:49.610 --> 01:58:52.930
that's pretty much like a total war,
even if they don't kill you.

01:58:53.230 --> 01:58:55.150
- So the war escalates.

01:58:55.690 --> 01:58:59.610
- Yes, the war does escalate.
'62, it takes a quantum leap.

01:58:59.750 --> 01:59:02.260
In the spring and early summer of 1862,

01:59:03.230 --> 01:59:06.930
the signals are clear this is something
that we had not counted on before.

01:59:07.250 --> 01:59:09.217
And the armies are much,
they're gonna be much bigger.

01:59:09.301 --> 01:59:10.587
The Army of the Potomac's more than

01:59:10.670 --> 01:59:13.631
100,000 men. There's never been
an army like that in US history,

01:59:13.714 --> 01:59:14.614
nothing like that.

01:59:15.450 --> 01:59:20.830
- What do we understand from
the diaries of soldiers coming,

01:59:21.750 --> 01:59:25.547
For the first time face to face
with this scale of war? We're talking

01:59:25.630 --> 01:59:29.067
about a year. They've been volunteering
for a year, like you mentioned,

01:59:29.150 --> 01:59:32.200
you know, in the summer,
in the spring and the summer of '62.

01:59:32.490 --> 01:59:36.470
- There's so many themes in soldier
letters, and it's an incredible gift

01:59:37.330 --> 01:59:41.227
to people such as myself who
study this, is that almost, that

01:59:41.310 --> 01:59:44.650
a very large majority of the men
on both sides were literate.

01:59:45.290 --> 01:59:49.410
And so we have this mass of testimony.
And they, and they, they sent

01:59:50.610 --> 01:59:54.470
millions of letters from the armies
home and, and back to the armies, the,

01:59:54.710 --> 01:59:58.220
the on both sides. So we have this,

01:59:58.590 --> 02:00:02.387
this trove of first-hand
evidence and diaries too, many,

02:00:02.470 --> 02:00:06.400
many, many, many, many diaries.
But so you can see in real

02:00:06.550 --> 02:00:10.127
time how attitudes are changing,
hardening. You can see the

02:00:10.210 --> 02:00:13.923
hardening process in soldiers who they
don't have any idea what being a soldier

02:00:14.006 --> 02:00:16.998
is, then they do, and they don't like
lots of things about it. They don't...

02:00:17.081 --> 02:00:18.431
They talk a lot about food,

02:00:18.650 --> 02:00:21.467
talk a lot about clothing,
talk a lot about officers they don't

02:00:21.550 --> 02:00:25.267
like. They don't talk,
what one thing, it's really

02:00:25.350 --> 02:00:29.027
fascinating, the thing they
don't try to do is explain to

02:00:29.110 --> 02:00:32.967
people behind the lines exactly what
it's like to be in a battle because they

02:00:33.050 --> 02:00:36.581
understand the people back home won't
understand what they're talking about.

02:00:36.665 --> 02:00:40.887
And so they'll say things like, "It was
awful," and, "Words just can't convey what

02:00:40.970 --> 02:00:44.387
it was," and then maybe tell
more about their individual

02:00:44.470 --> 02:00:46.870
experience. But there's a real sense

02:00:47.910 --> 02:00:51.667
that what a veteran knows about
being in the military and what the

02:00:51.750 --> 02:00:53.963
people back home will understand
are two different things,

02:00:54.046 --> 02:00:55.946
and you just can't explain it to them.

02:00:56.220 --> 02:01:00.410
- And so that takes us into
the fall of the Battle of Antietam.

02:01:01.230 --> 02:01:05.350
Can you walk me through what happened
at the battle and why it mattered?

02:01:05.850 --> 02:01:09.199
- George B. McClellan, whom I've
already referred to dismissively a couple

02:01:09.283 --> 02:01:10.116
of times-

02:01:11.250 --> 02:01:12.107
He was-

02:01:12.190 --> 02:01:16.107
... he was in charge of the Army of the
Potomac by this point. He'd been general

02:01:16.190 --> 02:01:19.450
in chief for a brief time
and commanding the Army of the Potomac.

02:01:20.210 --> 02:01:23.987
And he finally approached Richmond.
He got within, literally within

02:01:24.070 --> 02:01:27.870
five miles of Richmond. He was opposing
an officer named Joseph E. Johnston,

02:01:28.790 --> 02:01:31.619
who just, his first thought every
day was, "What a great day to retreat.

02:01:31.702 --> 02:01:34.147
Where could I go? I could go
that way, or I could go that way."

02:01:34.230 --> 02:01:35.947
He and McClellan were
a match made in heaven.

02:01:36.030 --> 02:01:39.787
McClellan didn't wanna go anywhere,
and Johnston only wanted to

02:01:39.870 --> 02:01:42.430
retreat. Anyway,
they finally ended up at Richmond.

02:01:44.590 --> 02:01:48.447
Johnston got wounded,
got hit by a shell fragment outside

02:01:48.530 --> 02:01:52.230
Richmond in the Battle of Seven Pines,
and he's replaced by Robert E. Lee.

02:01:52.460 --> 02:01:56.327
And McClellan, in his usual perceptive
way, observed that this was great because

02:01:56.410 --> 02:02:00.087
he knew that Lee was too timid to ever be
an effective presence on the battlefield.

02:02:00.170 --> 02:02:02.207
So he read him just exactly the way-

02:02:02.290 --> 02:02:06.950
... that McClellan would.
He ends up fighting Lee, and he,

02:02:07.790 --> 02:02:10.730
in the Seven Days' Battles,
McClellan is pushed away from Richmond.

02:02:10.813 --> 02:02:15.590
He shouldn't have been, but he was.
That was considered a great victory.

02:02:15.710 --> 02:02:19.647
Lee's reputation goes
up after that. Then Lee

02:02:19.730 --> 02:02:23.067
follows that up with the campaign
of Second Bull Run, which

02:02:23.150 --> 02:02:27.007
reorients the war
from Richmond to Manassas,

02:02:27.090 --> 02:02:30.987
the old First Manassas battlefield in
northern Virginia. Stonewall Jackson plays

02:02:31.070 --> 02:02:34.927
a key role in it. He wins the Battle
of Second Bull Run in late August

02:02:35.010 --> 02:02:38.770
1862, and then invades the loyal

02:02:38.870 --> 02:02:42.370
states for the first time. He crosses
into Maryland in early September

02:02:43.070 --> 02:02:46.730
with an army that is broken
down in terms of supply.

02:02:47.510 --> 02:02:51.490
He has tremendous straggling problems
and desertion problems, Lee did,

02:02:51.730 --> 02:02:55.347
in... He moved across the army
with about 50,000 men. When they

02:02:55.430 --> 02:02:59.227
finally came to battle at Antietam,
which is in western

02:02:59.310 --> 02:03:03.107
Maryland, he only had about 35,000
soldiers on the field. McClellan had

02:03:03.190 --> 02:03:05.070
about 80,000 on the other side.

02:03:05.870 --> 02:03:09.787
And McClellan had captured a copy
of Lee's entire orders for the

02:03:09.870 --> 02:03:13.747
whole campaign, Special Orders
Number 191. They had gone

02:03:13.830 --> 02:03:18.627
through an old Confederate camp-...
and found a copy of Lee's orders.

02:03:18.710 --> 02:03:22.610
And still McClellan didn't move quickly.
I won't bash McClellan. They fight.

02:03:22.990 --> 02:03:26.310
The bloodiest single day in US
history is Antietam, the battle of

02:03:26.590 --> 02:03:30.407
23,000 casualties in one
day there. Very close

02:03:30.490 --> 02:03:33.580
thing. Lee hangs on by just
the narrowest margin,

02:03:34.830 --> 02:03:37.850
sits on the battlefield for another
whole day, which he shouldn't have done.

02:03:37.933 --> 02:03:38.687
He was being way too

02:03:38.770 --> 02:03:42.070
bold there, and then retreated,
got back across the Potomac River.

02:03:42.230 --> 02:03:44.180
Confederates looked at this whole thing

02:03:44.830 --> 02:03:48.667
as a drama in three acts:
save Richmond, reorient the

02:03:48.750 --> 02:03:52.640
war to northern Virginia, cross into
the United States, and they saw it as

02:03:52.770 --> 02:03:54.920
a success. Richmond's
no longer threatened.

02:03:55.330 --> 02:04:00.376
Lee's reputation has gone way up.
McClellan has frustrated Lincoln

02:04:00.460 --> 02:04:01.470
immeasurably,

02:04:02.290 --> 02:04:06.247
and as a result, Lincoln removes
McClellan from command. He waits

02:04:06.330 --> 02:04:09.787
till the day after the elections in
November 'cause McClellan's popular among

02:04:09.870 --> 02:04:13.510
Democrats, and Lincoln is an adept
politician. He fires him the day

02:04:13.610 --> 02:04:17.750
after the elections and replaces him
with a guy named Ambrose Burnside.

02:04:18.550 --> 02:04:21.878
- So what can you say about what makes
a great general and what makes a poor

02:04:21.961 --> 02:04:27.030
general in all of this? - Well,
McClellan is a very smart guy,

02:04:27.130 --> 02:04:30.907
and he was on Winfield
Scott's staff in Mexico, as

02:04:30.990 --> 02:04:34.947
was Lee, which is a sign that
you're a pretty bright officer.

02:04:35.030 --> 02:04:38.687
He built the Army of the Potomac. He did
a brilliant job building the Army of the

02:04:38.770 --> 02:04:42.647
Potomac. The troops loved him.
There was never a bond with any other

02:04:42.730 --> 02:04:45.767
commander the way they had with
McClellan. But what he couldn't

02:04:45.850 --> 02:04:49.807
do when the moment came.
When the moment came, he

02:04:49.890 --> 02:04:54.910
couldn't risk things. He was risk-averse.
He had a chance to capture Richmond

02:04:55.910 --> 02:04:59.747
against Lee. He should have,
and he didn't. He withdrew. He had a

02:04:59.830 --> 02:05:03.547
chance... You almost never had a chance
to destroy another army in the Civil War.

02:05:03.630 --> 02:05:07.427
He had a chance to destroy Lee's
army at Antietam, and he didn't. He

02:05:07.510 --> 02:05:11.407
pulled back. He didn't even
use 20,000 of his men. They

02:05:11.490 --> 02:05:15.207
never fired their muskets at Antietam.
If you're in Lee's army, you're gonna

02:05:15.290 --> 02:05:19.127
fire your musket. If you're in McClellan's
army, maybe, maybe not. He didn't

02:05:19.210 --> 02:05:23.180
at Antietam. He let Lee get away.
It frustrated Lincoln immensely,

02:05:23.350 --> 02:05:27.210
and Lincoln finally fired him
because of that. It was a flaw. He

02:05:27.310 --> 02:05:31.010
lacked what they would've called
in the mid-19th century the moral courage

02:05:31.210 --> 02:05:38.130
to risk everything. Grant had it.
Lee had it. McClellan didn't have it.

02:05:38.330 --> 02:05:42.180
- One of the components of a great
general is the willingness to risk it all,

02:05:42.470 --> 02:05:46.740
Obviously with, with good advice,
with intelligence, but--

02:05:47.410 --> 02:05:49.110
- Which he had. -... risk failure.

02:05:49.350 --> 02:05:53.287
- The whole war changed in this arc
between the Seven Days and Antietam,

02:05:53.370 --> 02:05:57.227
and it changed in this way.
McClellan's defeat at

02:05:57.310 --> 02:06:01.117
the Seven Days.
This is in late June and the, and

02:06:01.200 --> 02:06:05.090
early July '62, convinced both Congress

02:06:05.650 --> 02:06:09.367
and Lincoln that slavery was gonna
have to be put on the table. The

02:06:09.450 --> 02:06:14.167
war's gonna be moral and con-- McClellan
could've won the war with slavery intact.

02:06:14.250 --> 02:06:18.110
He didn't, so Congress passed
the Second Confiscation Act in late

02:06:18.230 --> 02:06:21.130
July, which I mentioned earlier,
which strikes at slavery.

02:06:22.050 --> 02:06:26.027
And then Lincoln decided,
he told his cabinet toward the end

02:06:26.110 --> 02:06:29.260
of July that he was gonna issue
a proclamation of emancipation,

02:06:29.990 --> 02:06:33.242
and he was persuaded that he couldn't
just do it then in the wake of a defeat.

02:06:33.325 --> 02:06:37.807
He should wait until he had a victory.
He got another defeat at Second Bull Run.

02:06:37.890 --> 02:06:41.747
He finally got a victory at Antietam
because Lee retreated, and then that's

02:06:41.830 --> 02:06:45.247
when he announced the preliminary
proclamation. The key battle here isn't

02:06:45.330 --> 02:06:49.047
Antietam. The key battle is the Seven
Days and McClellan's defeat that

02:06:49.130 --> 02:06:52.987
persuades Lincoln to do this.
Antietam gives him the occasion to do

02:06:53.070 --> 02:06:55.370
it, and he issued his
preliminary proclamation

02:06:56.210 --> 02:06:59.630
five days after the battle
on September 22nd, 1862.

02:06:59.930 --> 02:07:03.827
- Can you elaborate why it became
obvious that the slavery has to be

02:07:03.910 --> 02:07:07.657
on the table as, as the motivation,
as the driving motivation-

02:07:07.740 --> 02:07:08.447
... for the war at that time?

02:07:08.530 --> 02:07:12.147
- Because people believed the...
And they were right. The war was

02:07:12.230 --> 02:07:15.987
almost over at the end
of May 1862. It had been a

02:07:16.070 --> 02:07:19.870
catastrophe for the Confederacy
in the Western Theater.

02:07:20.600 --> 02:07:24.057
They had lost New Orleans. New Orleans
was surrender- the biggest city in the

02:07:24.140 --> 02:07:28.017
Confederacy by far, 160,000 people,
four times bigger than the

02:07:28.100 --> 02:07:31.817
next biggest con- the most
important port. The key to the

02:07:31.900 --> 02:07:35.577
Mississippi River Valley as a,
as an economic artery. If you don't

02:07:35.660 --> 02:07:39.517
control New Orleans,
the Mississippi isn't an economic river

02:07:39.600 --> 02:07:41.550
for you. New Orleans was gone in April.

02:07:42.260 --> 02:07:45.820
Nashville was gone, the key
city and capital of Tennessee.

02:07:45.980 --> 02:07:49.837
Memphis was gone in June.
The whole state of Tennessee, except

02:07:49.920 --> 02:07:53.618
the mountainous East Tennessee, was
basically not a Confederate state anymore

02:07:53.702 --> 02:07:55.510
by May 1862.

02:07:56.420 --> 02:08:02.440
There was a Union army of 100,000
in northern Mississippi by the end of May.

02:08:03.560 --> 02:08:09.077
Catastrophic. And George B.
McClellan's army was in five miles of

02:08:09.160 --> 02:08:10.900
the national capital in Richmond.

02:08:11.740 --> 02:08:15.637
I don't think the Confederacy could
have absorbed the loss of Richmond at

02:08:15.720 --> 02:08:19.440
that point. I think it would've
been over, and emancipation

02:08:20.440 --> 02:08:24.780
was not on the table yet in an official
way. The fact that Richmond didn't fall

02:08:25.700 --> 02:08:29.477
convinced people in the North that
the war was gonna have to last a lot

02:08:29.560 --> 02:08:31.913
longer. The Confederates
were gonna be harder to beat,

02:08:31.997 --> 02:08:33.217
convinced Europe of the same

02:08:33.300 --> 02:08:36.517
thing. By Europe, I mean
France and England. That's what

02:08:36.600 --> 02:08:40.367
mattered. And so they decided
that they were gonna have to take more

02:08:40.450 --> 02:08:44.337
extreme measures, and then the key,
more extreme measure is strike at

02:08:44.420 --> 02:08:47.160
slavery. Strike at it
as a war measure directly.

02:08:47.840 --> 02:08:51.637
- And as a war measure, it what?
Attacks at the economic

02:08:51.720 --> 02:08:53.800
infrastructure of the Confederacy.

02:08:54.120 --> 02:08:57.167
- It attacks the, the economic
infrastructure that enables

02:08:57.250 --> 02:09:01.140
the Confederacy to maintain
the largest possible army in the war.

02:09:01.230 --> 02:09:05.967
- So this is not about the, the ethics,
the morality of slavery. It's the-

02:09:06.050 --> 02:09:09.399
- It is for the abolitionists who see it,
and Frederick Douglass realized that

02:09:09.482 --> 02:09:13.217
this is good. The abolitionists
realized early on, even in

02:09:13.300 --> 02:09:17.200
1861, some of them,
Charles Sumner, for example, saw

02:09:17.480 --> 02:09:21.357
the Union defeat at First Bull Run.
"Yes, it's bad that we

02:09:21.440 --> 02:09:25.337
lost, but the longer the war
goes, the more likely that

02:09:25.420 --> 02:09:28.303
we can get slavery on the table,
get emancipation on the table."

02:09:28.386 --> 02:09:30.536
Frederick Douglass
believed the same thing.

02:09:31.220 --> 02:09:34.937
A longer war made that more likely,
and McClellan handed them

02:09:35.020 --> 02:09:40.497
that gift by not being as aggressive
as he should've been at Richmond in 1862.

02:09:40.580 --> 02:09:45.770
- But we should say, and correct me
if I'm wrong, that only a tiny minority

02:09:46.380 --> 02:09:49.417
of Americans were
abolitionists at that time.

02:09:49.500 --> 02:09:52.577
- We'll never know exactly. I would
say if you... I think if you guessed

02:09:52.660 --> 02:09:56.597
3% were- I mean,
really abolitionists, destroy

02:09:56.680 --> 02:09:59.830
it now, destroy it completely,
no compensation for rebel owners

02:10:00.540 --> 02:10:03.657
or any owners, kill it in Kentucky,
kill it in Missouri, kill it in

02:10:03.740 --> 02:10:08.517
Maryland. Yes, I think 3%
would be about the ballpark.

02:10:08.600 --> 02:10:12.437
- So of course, now we
venerate those folks, and

02:10:12.520 --> 02:10:16.377
we mythologize them,
and so they become bigger in our

02:10:16.460 --> 02:10:21.080
minds. But we should remember
that they're a tiny percentage.

02:10:21.220 --> 02:10:25.117
- They're a tiny percentage, and there are
other factors that are pushing forward the

02:10:25.200 --> 02:10:27.617
process that leads to the 13th Amendment.

02:10:27.700 --> 02:10:31.607
It's not just people who hate slavery so
much that they'll do anything to kill it.

02:10:31.690 --> 02:10:34.790
The... in fact, most of them aren't.
That's not what they are.

02:10:35.200 --> 02:10:38.760
We wish they were, but they're not.
And Lincoln is in a tough position.

02:10:39.280 --> 02:10:42.940
Lincoln hates slavery personally,
but he's president trying to win a war,

02:10:43.420 --> 02:10:45.588
and he can't win the war
with just Republicans.

02:10:45.671 --> 02:10:47.257
He has to try to keep Democrats on

02:10:47.340 --> 02:10:52.360
board, so he has to... I mean,
and the Constitution protects slavery.

02:10:52.460 --> 02:10:56.177
In Kentucky and Missouri and Maryland
and Delaware. They're still in the

02:10:56.260 --> 02:11:00.137
nation. The Constitution still applies.
Congress, by the time, by

02:11:00.220 --> 02:11:03.697
the end of June, had already gotten rid
of slavery in the only two places where it

02:11:03.780 --> 02:11:07.830
could. And that is in the federal
territories and the District of Columbia.

02:11:08.680 --> 02:11:11.992
No compensation in the territories,
but there were hardly any enslaved people

02:11:12.075 --> 02:11:16.080
there, and there was some compensation
in the District of Columbia.

02:11:17.100 --> 02:11:22.930
- You said that Lincoln hates slavery.
Can we just take that tangent and

02:11:24.160 --> 02:11:27.800
from a perspective of some,
there's a hypocrisy there

02:11:28.720 --> 02:11:32.317
in pushing for a policy of colonization.

02:11:32.400 --> 02:11:35.617
- Colonization. Yes,
colonization. In the summer of

02:11:35.700 --> 02:11:39.460
1862, Lincoln met with a group
of Black leaders and tried to convince

02:11:39.600 --> 02:11:43.257
them to support colonization,
which colonization

02:11:43.340 --> 02:11:47.217
meant if you freed enslaved people,
then they would go somewhere else. They'd

02:11:47.300 --> 02:11:52.390
go out of the United States.
It's why Liberia exists. And Lincoln,

02:11:52.740 --> 02:11:56.170
that is probably the least
attractive element of his total

02:11:56.340 --> 02:12:00.037
thinking on... He genuinely didn't
believe that white people would

02:12:00.120 --> 02:12:03.192
ever accept Black people as equals.
He told the leaders that when he met

02:12:03.275 --> 02:12:03.997
with them, and he

02:12:04.080 --> 02:12:08.017
said, "You wouldn't want it that way. I
wouldn't either. It's the way it is. It's

02:12:08.100 --> 02:12:12.440
a reality." - Do we know he believed that,
or is this a pragmatic politician

02:12:13.020 --> 02:12:14.557
understanding the lay of the land?

02:12:14.640 --> 02:12:18.297
- I think for someone who
was born in Kentucky and reared in

02:12:18.380 --> 02:12:21.757
Southern Indiana and Southern
Illinois, he was never around

02:12:21.840 --> 02:12:25.780
anything but a level of intensity
on race that he probably

02:12:26.260 --> 02:12:29.997
didn't ever see, wasn't ever
around white people who he could see

02:12:30.080 --> 02:12:34.220
accepting Black people as fully equal.
That's-... I do believe that.

02:12:35.080 --> 02:12:38.937
- And still, it is a country
that where the words

02:12:39.020 --> 02:12:40.887
"All men are created
equal" is on the page.

02:12:40.970 --> 02:12:44.957
- They're right there on the page,
waiting for that to be made good

02:12:45.040 --> 02:12:49.617
on. Yes, that's correct. Well, it's true.

02:12:49.700 --> 02:12:53.740
And Lincoln-- I mean,
Lincoln also was capable of growth.

02:12:54.200 --> 02:13:00.720
- Well, he seemed to have evolved
quite a lot in the years of the war.

02:13:01.030 --> 02:13:06.120
- He did. No, he did. He did.
- And it's very, very possible were he not

02:13:06.600 --> 02:13:09.800
assassinated, he would've arrived
at a very different worldview.

02:13:10.140 --> 02:13:13.860
- We'll never know,
but we do know that he was a lot

02:13:13.960 --> 02:13:17.257
smarter and a lot more adaptable
and a lot more politically

02:13:17.340 --> 02:13:20.650
adept than Andrew Johnson,
and so it certainly would've looked

02:13:20.920 --> 02:13:23.757
different. Well, it's true.
- No, I just- - Yes, it is true.

02:13:23.840 --> 02:13:26.867
-... I think I vaguely remember
you saying somewhere that Andrew

02:13:26.950 --> 02:13:32.467
Johnson is the second worst
president in America's history.

02:13:32.550 --> 02:13:36.440
- Yeah, he's right. He has...
the glory of being above James Buchanan.

02:13:36.610 --> 02:13:37.827
I said that a few years ago, yes.

02:13:37.910 --> 02:13:40.170
- I think you said
something about Buchanan.

02:13:41.210 --> 02:13:44.477
is... There's like a basement, there's
like a basement below basement. I think-

02:13:44.560 --> 02:13:45.827
- Sub-basement. He's in the sub-basement.

02:13:45.910 --> 02:13:50.557
-... He's in the sub-basement. And this I
put that in the category of the slime, uh-

02:13:50.640 --> 02:13:51.267
... poetic commentary. Uh-

02:13:51.350 --> 02:13:54.608
- He's in a little corner of the
sub-basement all by himself with one

02:13:54.691 --> 02:13:55.524
candle.

02:13:55.630 --> 02:13:59.487
- So can we take that tiny tangent
of why they were terrible pr- uh, tangent

02:13:59.570 --> 02:14:02.344
on a tangent, why was Andrew
Johnson such a terrible president,

02:14:02.428 --> 02:14:06.570
and Buchanan as well? - I think he
was a terrible president because he was,

02:14:07.970 --> 02:14:11.690
he was extremely prejudiced.
He had all kinds of grievances

02:14:11.870 --> 02:14:15.667
stacked up. He had the poor white
man's grievance from being in a

02:14:15.750 --> 02:14:18.828
slavehold. He hates... His slaveholders
were part of his enemies when he

02:14:18.911 --> 02:14:21.927
was growing up, then he
embraced them after the war.

02:14:22.010 --> 02:14:29.010
He was... He couldn't get beyond his most
profound lifelong prejudices. He was not

02:14:30.070 --> 02:14:33.947
malleable in any way. He thought what
he thought, and that's what he was always

02:14:34.030 --> 02:14:37.630
gonna think. And he just was not
the right be- person to be in place.

02:14:38.010 --> 02:14:41.460
- Well, why is Buchanan the worst
president-... in America's history?

02:14:41.790 --> 02:14:44.363
- If you had a dictionary
that had the word hack in it,

02:14:44.446 --> 02:14:49.840
it should have a picture of James Buchanan
by it. He was an absolute political hack-

02:14:50.150 --> 02:14:54.047
... who made his way up by staying alive
and doing everything that you should

02:14:54.130 --> 02:14:57.247
do as a party hack as you went along.
And then, oh, I ended up as

02:14:57.330 --> 02:15:01.267
president in 1856 because there's a...
The person I'm running

02:15:01.350 --> 02:15:05.167
against is from a party, this is the first
time they're running a candidate. His

02:15:05.250 --> 02:15:09.127
way of dealing with the secession crisis
was basically hiding under his desk and

02:15:09.210 --> 02:15:12.666
hoping the roof didn't fall in before
he got out of Washington. He's just,

02:15:12.750 --> 02:15:13.700
he's just horrible.

02:15:14.690 --> 02:15:18.012
- I think from that I get a sense
that what you admire in a leader and

02:15:18.095 --> 02:15:21.090
a president is a,
is a kind of backbone, uh-

02:15:21.390 --> 02:15:25.147
... to be able to, again,
take risks and to stand behind

02:15:25.230 --> 02:15:29.030
political savvy, yes, but also
a backbone behind that savvy.

02:15:29.190 --> 02:15:32.960
- Yes, and to actually change
a position if you're persuaded-

02:15:33.370 --> 02:15:37.147
... by both events and good counsel
that you had the wrong position before. Go

02:15:37.230 --> 02:15:38.007
ahead and do that.

02:15:38.090 --> 02:15:43.610
- So some kind of balance of,
of a backbone behind principles and

02:15:43.790 --> 02:15:48.560
malleability based on the information,
knowledge, and wisdom that you gain-

02:15:48.850 --> 02:15:51.887
... versus for convenience or out of fear.

02:15:51.970 --> 02:15:55.071
- There's an apocryphal story about
Lincoln that I think gets at his

02:15:55.154 --> 02:15:57.496
willingness to row against
the tide if he needed to. He's...

02:15:57.579 --> 02:15:59.727
They're discussing something
in a cabinet meeting, and he

02:15:59.810 --> 02:16:01.914
says, "Well, let's, let's vote.
Let me get your sense."

02:16:01.997 --> 02:16:06.850
And they went around the table, and every
cabinet member voted no. And, and

02:16:07.770 --> 02:16:10.920
Lincoln said, "Well,
that's six nos and one yes. Mine,

02:16:11.710 --> 02:16:15.570
the ayes have it." I mean, he's...
So he listened to them, and in that

02:16:15.670 --> 02:16:19.567
case, he's willing to do something
that's unpopular and knows that he's

02:16:19.650 --> 02:16:21.931
gonna get... But he'll do
it because... And that's,

02:16:22.014 --> 02:16:24.114
that's a quality not everybody has either.

02:16:24.430 --> 02:16:27.827
- Who's the greatest president in the
history of the United- - In my view?

02:16:27.910 --> 02:16:30.439
In my view, it's neck and neck
with Washington and Lincoln.

02:16:30.522 --> 02:16:31.847
Without Washington, there's no

02:16:31.930 --> 02:16:35.570
United States, so it's sort
of hard to go against him.

02:16:36.050 --> 02:16:38.950
He set all kinds of precedents
that were really important.

02:16:39.330 --> 02:16:40.647
- Just giving away power.

02:16:40.730 --> 02:16:44.547
- Twice. He did it twice. The Europeans
couldn't wrap their minds around that. He

02:16:44.630 --> 02:16:48.440
gave it away after the revolution.
In other words, his message

02:16:48.530 --> 02:16:52.187
is, "I'm not Caesar.
I'm not Cromwell. I'm not

02:16:52.270 --> 02:16:55.820
Napoleon." There hadn't been a Napoleon
yet, but anyway, he wasn't one.

02:16:56.170 --> 02:16:58.600
"I had power, and I gave it back."
And then he stepped down.

02:16:58.683 --> 02:16:59.907
He would've been president for

02:16:59.990 --> 02:17:04.970
life if he wanted to be. He did two terms.
That's enough. Let somebody else do it.

02:17:07.130 --> 02:17:14.130
Who does that? But he embodies the notion
of what... This is what a citizen soldier

02:17:14.690 --> 02:17:18.547
does. He comes forward
at a time of crisis, he does

02:17:18.630 --> 02:17:22.610
his duty, and when the crisis
is over, he is Cincinnatus.

02:17:22.990 --> 02:17:26.687
He goes back to his farm when
this is over with, because the

02:17:26.770 --> 02:17:30.430
point is, he'd done what republic...
small R republican

02:17:30.550 --> 02:17:33.420
virtue dictated, and then he went back.

02:17:34.630 --> 02:17:38.590
And, and that image
was invoked over and over and

02:17:38.710 --> 02:17:42.327
over again. The small R repub- This has
nothing to do with the Republican Party.

02:17:42.410 --> 02:17:46.327
Small R republican virtue
of disinterested service

02:17:46.410 --> 02:17:49.750
to your republic. It's...
And Washington embodied that.

02:17:50.530 --> 02:17:54.447
He's crucial. What's always been
fascinating to me, Lex, is you have

02:17:54.530 --> 02:17:57.787
this guy, he's surrounded
by this freakishly

02:17:57.870 --> 02:18:01.187
talented group of people
in this little nation. You have

02:18:01.270 --> 02:18:05.127
Madison and Hamilton and Jefferson
and Franklin, all these people

02:18:05.210 --> 02:18:08.507
who are probably smarter than Washington.
They've certainly read more Greek and

02:18:08.590 --> 02:18:14.320
Latin than Washington, and yet
nobody's concerned about who the man is.

02:18:14.430 --> 02:18:17.990
It's Washington.
He's the guy. We're smarter.

02:18:18.750 --> 02:18:22.070
It's like what Sherman
said about Grant one time.

02:18:23.010 --> 02:18:25.371
Sherman's smarter than Grant,
probably. Sherman said,

02:18:25.454 --> 02:18:26.907
"I know more about strategy than

02:18:26.990 --> 02:18:30.747
Grant. I know more about tactics. I
know more about supply. I know more about

02:18:30.830 --> 02:18:34.787
everything than U.S. Grant does.
But where he beats me and where

02:18:34.870 --> 02:18:38.800
he beats the world is he don't
give a damn what the enemy is doing

02:18:38.890 --> 02:18:43.810
out of his sight, and that scares me like
hell." In other words, Grant could just

02:18:45.190 --> 02:18:49.047
let the background noise go
away, focus on his thing, and

02:18:49.130 --> 02:18:52.550
do what he was gonna do,
and Sherman couldn't do that. Grant

02:18:52.650 --> 02:18:56.330
liberated Sherman to become a great
general because he had Grant over him

02:18:56.450 --> 02:18:58.070
taking responsibility.

02:18:58.290 --> 02:19:03.907
It's really fascinating. And Washington,
whatever faults he had, he could take

02:19:03.990 --> 02:19:07.307
responsibility,
and was aware that he was setting

02:19:07.390 --> 02:19:11.187
precedents as the first president
of this new republic almost

02:19:11.270 --> 02:19:14.890
every time he did something.
It's a precedent. What did Washington do?

02:19:15.900 --> 02:19:19.100
Well, he gave up his uniform,
and then he gave up the presidency

02:19:19.440 --> 02:19:23.257
- Yeah, just from studying history,
understanding how difficult it

02:19:23.340 --> 02:19:25.755
is to give away power
in the way that Washington did,

02:19:25.839 --> 02:19:27.639
I have to put him as the number one.

02:19:27.780 --> 02:19:29.837
- Yeah, because without him,
the rest doesn't happen.

02:19:29.920 --> 02:19:32.997
I mean, that's my bottom line on it,
and I really do believe that. Without him,

02:19:33.080 --> 02:19:33.677
the rest doesn't

02:19:33.760 --> 02:19:37.432
happen. I don't know what... If they
hadn't had Washington to persuade people

02:19:37.515 --> 02:19:41.637
that a stronger central government might
be possible because Washington's gonna

02:19:41.720 --> 02:19:45.397
be president, who else would they
agree could be trusted? There's

02:19:45.480 --> 02:19:47.537
Washington, and then
there's everybody else.

02:19:47.620 --> 02:19:50.840
- And I think America's a truly
positive force in human history.

02:19:51.680 --> 02:19:55.157
So the fact that whatever ideas
that were created at that time, and that

02:19:55.240 --> 02:20:02.080
Washington was the foundation of that,
is a great gift to humanity.

02:20:02.540 --> 02:20:04.336
- Lucky to have him,
lucky to have Lincoln.

02:20:04.419 --> 02:20:06.057
We've been lucky in our leaders, Indy.

02:20:06.140 --> 02:20:09.157
We're lucky to have FDR in World War II.
I mean, we've been lucky to have-

02:20:09.240 --> 02:20:12.280
... people at moments of real crisis.

02:20:12.860 --> 02:20:17.060
- But we need the basement, too.
We need, we need the full variety.

02:20:17.320 --> 02:20:18.470
- Well, we've got them.

02:20:19.600 --> 02:20:23.590
And you never know when we might
need a new sub-basement. So it's just

02:20:23.700 --> 02:20:25.867
complicated and an ongoing story.

02:20:25.950 --> 02:20:29.840
- Man, it is a beautiful theater,
a beautiful drama, and

02:20:30.100 --> 02:20:34.037
I, like you, have faith
in the resilience of the people to

02:20:34.120 --> 02:20:37.197
deal with the full mess of it.
Quick bathroom break if it's okay.

02:20:37.280 --> 02:20:38.017
- Yeah.

02:20:38.100 --> 02:20:43.250
- I wanted to mention to you just
as a plug, but also as a big thank you

02:20:44.340 --> 02:20:48.037
that I don't know how many hours,
it must be maybe over 50

02:20:48.120 --> 02:20:55.120
hours I've enjoyed listening to your Great
Courses. So you have two on the American

02:20:55.620 --> 02:20:57.720
Civil War and on Robert E. Lee.

02:20:58.020 --> 02:20:58.497
- Right.

02:20:58.580 --> 02:21:01.997
- And so I just wanted to mention this
thing that I've been using. It's called

02:21:02.080 --> 02:21:05.660
Plaud. So what I do
is I run along the river,

02:21:06.040 --> 02:21:09.860
and then I'll use this Plaud thing
where you just press the button,

02:21:10.500 --> 02:21:13.857
and then you leave a note, like what
I'm saying now is being recorded.

02:21:13.940 --> 02:21:14.697
- Right.

02:21:14.780 --> 02:21:17.867
- And then it's transcribed.
Those notes are then transferred.

02:21:17.950 --> 02:21:21.184
- God, technology. Geez. - Yeah, this
thing is great. So it's great for just...

02:21:21.268 --> 02:21:22.937
It's been running this
whole time, too, so it's

02:21:23.020 --> 02:21:24.977
transcribing automatically.
It's using AI to transcribe-

02:21:25.060 --> 02:21:27.177
- Oh, so it's doing every word,
everything that we say?

02:21:27.260 --> 02:21:29.550
- Yeah. You know,
transcribing it into text.

02:21:29.740 --> 02:21:30.497
- Right. Right.

02:21:30.580 --> 02:21:34.257
- And then it can summarize it for you,
and then I organize and study the notes

02:21:34.340 --> 02:21:38.057
afterwards. This thing is great.
Highly recommend it. It's called Plaud.

02:21:38.140 --> 02:21:40.480
- Plaud. - Plaud. It's a clip.

02:21:41.060 --> 02:21:44.937
- I used to run around Town Lake or what
was, I guess it's Lady Bird Johnson

02:21:45.020 --> 02:21:50.440
Lake now. Is that what they call it?
We used to run six miles a day at noon

02:21:51.260 --> 02:21:53.499
for years when I worked
at the LBJ Library.

02:21:53.582 --> 02:21:55.580
We had a little group of us who went.

02:21:55.980 --> 02:22:02.560
- Just run? - Just ran. We'd do it in...
We would do six miles in 38 minutes.

02:22:02.960 --> 02:22:07.680
- It's actually a really hard problem
to solve, of how to not take memory.

02:22:08.600 --> 02:22:15.040
I'm just really happy this exists. Okay.
'Cause my smartphone was being a pain

02:22:15.140 --> 02:22:17.034
in the ass, like writing
it down. It's been,

02:22:17.117 --> 02:22:19.167
it's been a hard problem for me to solve.

02:22:20.280 --> 02:22:22.517
You listen to audiobooks
or no? Or you just read?

02:22:22.600 --> 02:22:23.617
- All the time on my w-

02:22:23.700 --> 02:22:27.680
I walk... I don't run anymore,
but I walk six or seven miles a day, and

02:22:27.780 --> 02:22:33.580
I listen to Audible all the time.
That's what I do. I love Audible.

02:22:34.180 --> 02:22:36.900
- Well, just out of curiosity,
just take that tangent.

02:22:37.700 --> 02:22:41.450
Do you listen to, like, history books?
Like what... Or do you wanna escape?

02:22:41.580 --> 02:22:45.500
- I listen to a mixture.
I listen to some history books,

02:22:46.860 --> 02:22:50.497
but I also listen to some mysteries
and some- - So fiction is also-

02:22:50.580 --> 02:22:54.437
- Oh, fiction, oh yeah. Yeah,
and some books that I think I should

02:22:54.520 --> 02:22:58.357
listen to and haven't ever gotten around
to reading. I did Moby Dick that way.

02:22:58.440 --> 02:23:00.260
- Mm-hmm. So the classics also?

02:23:00.360 --> 02:23:04.197
- Oh, yeah. But I've never
read War and Peace, and I

02:23:04.280 --> 02:23:08.280
don't think I ever will. I think... I
would've done it by now if I was going to.

02:23:08.440 --> 02:23:12.357
- We're making a statement today. I like a

02:23:12.440 --> 02:23:15.090
person who's not, not always,
but I like short books.

02:23:15.240 --> 02:23:19.077
- I do too. I write short books.
A lot of long books

02:23:19.160 --> 02:23:22.682
would make good short books, and a lot
of short books would make good essays,

02:23:22.765 --> 02:23:23.477
I think.

02:23:23.560 --> 02:23:26.557
- Yeah, can you... Ugh, I'm sorry to be
taking so many tangents 'cause you've

02:23:26.640 --> 02:23:29.319
written so many excellent books.
How much of it is editing?

02:23:29.402 --> 02:23:34.417
Like how-- or what does it take to write
a good history book? What's the process?

02:23:34.500 --> 02:23:36.020
- Well, for me, it's having

02:23:36.920 --> 02:23:40.577
either a question that you wanna
answer or having some strain in the

02:23:40.660 --> 02:23:44.457
literature that you think is wrong,
and you need to... For me, the

02:23:44.540 --> 02:23:47.869
Union War was trying to rescue something
that I thought people just don't

02:23:47.953 --> 02:23:52.117
understand anymore, is what union
meant to that generation. It makes more

02:23:52.200 --> 02:23:55.977
sense... A war fought
to end slavery makes sense to

02:23:56.060 --> 02:23:59.857
us now. That's, of course, it's
a monstrous institution, fight a war...

02:23:59.940 --> 02:24:03.817
but that's not what it was about
for most of the people. And to

02:24:03.900 --> 02:24:10.517
get at what it was about is a harder
pull, and explaining what union then

02:24:10.600 --> 02:24:16.107
meant to an era where it doesn't
mean anything. I mean, union as they

02:24:16.190 --> 02:24:20.077
understood it does-- it's not
in our vocabulary anymore. It has

02:24:20.160 --> 02:24:22.017
to do with labor relations now.
But to say,

02:24:22.100 --> 02:24:26.570
"What is-- but what does the concept
of union mean?" Get crickets.

02:24:27.060 --> 02:24:31.825
- Is it basically a strong sense
of nation? So, like, what...

02:24:31.909 --> 02:24:33.260
Can we just kinda

02:24:34.160 --> 02:24:38.300
pull that apart?
So there's different states, and

02:24:39.960 --> 02:24:43.810
uh, Americans have always had a sense of,
like, "I'm from this state" pride--

02:24:44.400 --> 02:24:45.127
- Absolutely. -... being from the state.

02:24:45.210 --> 02:24:49.037
- You have different loyalties.
You have a state pride and

02:24:49.120 --> 02:24:53.017
and a and maybe even a regional pride.
I think... I wrote

02:24:53.100 --> 02:24:56.977
a little book where I talked about Robert
E. Lee in that regard as part of it, where

02:24:57.060 --> 02:25:00.957
he has a sense of loyalty
to the nation, to the state, to

02:25:01.040 --> 02:25:04.580
the slaveholding South,
and so forth. But union,

02:25:05.400 --> 02:25:09.157
I mean, it's composed of individual
states which engender loyalties

02:25:09.240 --> 02:25:12.637
among the people who live in them,
but the parts make a greater whole,

02:25:12.720 --> 02:25:16.910
and that's what the union is,
and you have to have the whole--

02:25:18.160 --> 02:25:19.637
To get all the benefits.

02:25:19.720 --> 02:25:23.457
Because... And that is what people
thought then, and they tied it to the

02:25:23.540 --> 02:25:26.215
revolution, of course,
and tied it to earlier sacrifice,

02:25:26.298 --> 02:25:27.457
and tie- They had an eye

02:25:27.540 --> 02:25:31.437
on what's going on in Europe.
I mean, the Western world is, was

02:25:31.520 --> 02:25:34.136
their world. They didn't care
that much about the rest of the world.

02:25:34.219 --> 02:25:35.317
But the Western world, what's

02:25:35.400 --> 02:25:40.917
going on there, and I think they believed
things were going the wrong way in much of

02:25:41.000 --> 02:25:44.337
Europe, that the revolu-- the all the

02:25:44.420 --> 02:25:51.090
revolutionary fervor of the 1840s
had seemed to run into a cliff of o-

02:25:51.360 --> 02:25:54.420
oligarchy and aristocracy
and monarchy, and,

02:25:56.320 --> 02:26:00.660
and they saw the US as a bulwark
against that for small D democracy.

02:26:01.220 --> 02:26:03.820
- I think having a faith in nation

02:26:05.360 --> 02:26:09.417
is a beautiful thing.
It's a narrative that unites a people.

02:26:09.500 --> 02:26:13.377
And I think that in itself has power.
It's not... You can make an economic

02:26:13.460 --> 02:26:17.177
argument, you can make a freedom
argument, all these arguments you can

02:26:17.260 --> 02:26:21.197
make, but I think what
makes a nation is a bunch of

02:26:21.280 --> 02:26:25.157
people believing in a narrative. It's
like what makes a great company. There's

02:26:25.240 --> 02:26:29.110
a mission. The power of humans
when you together believe in a

02:26:29.240 --> 02:26:33.150
thing is, is remarkable. And so that
belief in itself is really powerful.

02:26:33.580 --> 02:26:34.830
- That clearly was there,

02:26:35.610 --> 02:26:38.391
Among many, many, many, many.
Not everybody, of course,

02:26:38.474 --> 02:26:39.620
but it was widespread.

02:26:40.660 --> 02:26:45.050
And Lincoln articulated it-...
perfectly, and he did it again and again,

02:26:45.900 --> 02:26:49.637
talking about give, give the...
You wanna give a person a chance to

02:26:49.720 --> 02:26:53.477
rise, a person... And talking
about the last best hope of

02:26:53.560 --> 02:26:57.260
Earth, and talking... I mean,
he got it, and he distilled it, and he

02:26:57.380 --> 02:26:58.420
conveyed it. And

02:26:59.280 --> 02:27:02.817
it's not as if he's telling people
things they don't already know, but he's

02:27:02.900 --> 02:27:08.400
reaffirming things in ways
that are eloquent and memorable.

02:27:08.520 --> 02:27:10.621
- Quick ten-second thank
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dear friends, back to the conversation.

02:27:23.520 --> 02:27:26.227
All right. So we were talking
about, uh- - Where are we?

02:27:26.310 --> 02:27:32.167
-... Antietam. - Okay. - And how that was,
uh, the moment when The Union realized-

02:27:32.250 --> 02:27:33.550
- Preliminary Proclamation

02:27:34.220 --> 02:27:38.057
-... Preliminary Proclamation, where
it's like, okay, slavery has to be a thing

02:27:38.140 --> 02:27:42.640
as a central part-... of the Civil War.
And so where does that take us? Also

02:27:43.160 --> 02:27:45.928
very bloody battle.
The generals, McClellan,

02:27:46.011 --> 02:27:48.150
the end of the McClellan chapter,

02:27:49.280 --> 02:27:53.137
and that takes us to Fredericksburg.
So what happened at Fredericksburg?

02:27:53.220 --> 02:27:54.660
- Fredericksburg was a

02:27:55.780 --> 02:27:59.697
... It's another victory for Lee. It's an
easy victory for Lee. He has a very strong

02:27:59.780 --> 02:28:03.657
position on high ground across
the Rappahannock River from the Union

02:28:03.740 --> 02:28:07.517
forces, who are opposite Fredericksburg.
His opponent is a guy named Ambrose

02:28:07.600 --> 02:28:11.397
Everett Burnside, who's a very
affable guy, kind of a nice guy, who

02:28:11.480 --> 02:28:15.397
gave us the word sideburns.
He wore his whiskers that came

02:28:15.480 --> 02:28:17.677
down and came up and made, and- - Nice

02:28:17.760 --> 02:28:21.357
-... it wasn't a beard, and they
were called burnsides at the time.

02:28:21.440 --> 02:28:24.760
The burnside cut, which
was transposed into sideburns.

02:28:25.840 --> 02:28:27.590
Everybody liked him. He just wasn't

02:28:28.100 --> 02:28:31.957
very bright in some ways.
He's a politician after the war, so he

02:28:32.040 --> 02:28:38.670
went into the right field, but His idea
at Fredericksburg-... was to, in the end,

02:28:39.620 --> 02:28:43.162
it wasn't his original plan, but he ended
up launching frontal assaults one brigade

02:28:43.245 --> 02:28:47.145
at a time against very strongly entrenched
Confederates, and it was a butchery

02:28:47.900 --> 02:28:51.050
for... And another horrible
defeat for the Army of the Potomac.

02:28:51.640 --> 02:28:55.497
Lincoln was really cast
down by it, and it just

02:28:55.580 --> 02:28:59.417
seemed that in this Eastern theater, he

02:28:59.500 --> 02:29:03.317
could not get any good news. He's
getting good news from the West. He's not

02:29:03.400 --> 02:29:07.017
getting any good news here, and he
has this revolving door of commanders.

02:29:07.100 --> 02:29:10.857
Burnside tried another
march in late January

02:29:10.940 --> 02:29:14.680
1863. He was gonna get around Lee's
flank, but he had horrible weather.

02:29:15.100 --> 02:29:18.040
His army literally got
stuck in the mud. Then it was

02:29:18.380 --> 02:29:22.290
lampooned as the Mud March,
and he removed him from

02:29:22.380 --> 02:29:26.317
command. So now he has another commander
in the Army of the Potomac. So you've had

02:29:26.400 --> 02:29:30.120
McClellan and Burnside,
and now a guy named Joseph Hooker.

02:29:31.480 --> 02:29:35.317
You have no continuity at the top in
that army. You have complete continuity at

02:29:35.400 --> 02:29:38.670
the top in the Army of Northern Virginia,
which is a huge advantage to the Army

02:29:38.753 --> 02:29:40.180
of Northern Virginia.

02:29:40.280 --> 02:29:44.167
- So this is where the, the famous
words of Robert E. Lee were...

02:29:44.250 --> 02:29:45.967
He was watching the slaughter.

02:29:46.050 --> 02:29:49.432
He said that "It is well
that war is so terrible,

02:29:49.515 --> 02:29:51.877
or we should grow too fond of it."

02:29:51.960 --> 02:29:53.210
What did he mean by that?

02:29:53.660 --> 02:29:58.260
- He was getting... I mean,
he was watching his soldiers butcher

02:29:59.080 --> 02:30:03.730
Union soldiers and, I guess,
kind of enjoying it. Uh,

02:30:04.780 --> 02:30:08.377
he's in a really strong position with
really guard artillery supporting his

02:30:08.460 --> 02:30:13.757
infantry, and the Union troops are
just attacking them and not having

02:30:13.840 --> 02:30:20.737
any success. And so there he is. He's
up there with James Longstreet and other

02:30:20.820 --> 02:30:27.820
people and watching it. And he,
unlike McClellan, was willing to risk,

02:30:28.520 --> 02:30:30.608
obviously, piling up
casualties in every battle.

02:30:30.691 --> 02:30:32.437
Didn't have that many at Fredericksburg.

02:30:32.520 --> 02:30:36.517
There were about 12 and a half thousand
US casualties at Fredericksburg and about

02:30:36.600 --> 02:30:40.137
5,500 Confederate casualties
because they were so

02:30:40.220 --> 02:30:42.420
well-protected in their defensive lines.

02:30:43.300 --> 02:30:49.820
- So you are working on a
manuscript on Chancellorsville.

02:30:50.200 --> 02:30:57.200
It's a legendary battle for many reasons.
Can you break down some of the military,

02:30:58.280 --> 02:31:02.197
details of what made up that
battle to give us a sense of,

02:31:02.280 --> 02:31:04.660
in general, what battles were like?

02:31:04.960 --> 02:31:08.697
- This is often described
as Lee's most successful

02:31:08.780 --> 02:31:12.520
battle. It's him against Joseph
Hooker. It's the last battle

02:31:12.760 --> 02:31:16.457
that Lee and Jackson fought as a team,
Lee and Stonewall Jackson, with Stonewall

02:31:16.540 --> 02:31:20.250
Jackson as his principal subordinate.
Hooker had replaced Burnside.

02:31:20.770 --> 02:31:24.607
Hooker had maneuvered to get
rid of Burnside. He wanted

02:31:24.690 --> 02:31:28.577
to be in command of the army. He, he had
made a statement that he said what the

02:31:28.660 --> 02:31:32.507
nation needed was a dictator to make
sure it won. And Lincoln, one of

02:31:32.590 --> 02:31:36.387
the best letters a president
ever wrote to a military

02:31:36.470 --> 02:31:39.370
commander, Lincoln wrote to Hooker,
and he said basically,

02:31:40.340 --> 02:31:43.407
"I know everything you're saying. You're
talking about all the things you're gonna

02:31:43.490 --> 02:31:47.327
do." And he said that, "The only
way you get to be a dictator is if

02:31:47.410 --> 02:31:51.410
you have victories, and I'm willing to
risk a dictatorship to get victories. And

02:31:51.510 --> 02:31:55.050
so I know I've got you figured out,
Joe," he's saying, and he did.

02:31:55.970 --> 02:31:59.810
Hooker made a lot of blustery talk.
He got a... He had a great start.

02:31:59.910 --> 02:32:03.827
He built the army into what he called
the greatest army on the planet, about

02:32:03.910 --> 02:32:10.390
135,000 men, beautifully supplied,
reorganized the medical service in it.

02:32:11.410 --> 02:32:16.910
He, he did everything that you
should do to get an army in shape,

02:32:18.050 --> 02:32:21.807
and then he started a campaign.
His plan, Lee was still at

02:32:21.890 --> 02:32:25.767
Fredericksburg. He was gonna get
around Lee's left flank, come in behind

02:32:25.850 --> 02:32:28.957
him, force Lee to either retreat
to Richmond or fight him on unfavorable

02:32:29.040 --> 02:32:32.527
ground. Everything went well
with Hooker. He got going in late

02:32:32.610 --> 02:32:36.287
April until the moment of truth came.
The moment of truth came on May

02:32:36.370 --> 02:32:39.330
1st, 1863, when Lee,
instead of retreating,

02:32:40.970 --> 02:32:44.847
left part of his army to watch one part
of Hooker's and turned around to meet

02:32:44.930 --> 02:32:48.420
Hooker head-on near a crossroads
called Chancellorsville

02:32:49.430 --> 02:32:53.407
a few miles west of Fredericksburg.
And as soon as the fighting

02:32:53.490 --> 02:32:55.800
started, McClellan lost his nerve-

02:32:55.930 --> 02:32:58.730
... pulled into a defensive
position. And the upshot was

02:32:59.870 --> 02:33:03.400
after Lee and Jackson carried off
a very successful flank attack,

02:33:04.110 --> 02:33:07.867
although it left Hooker still in a very
strong position, Hooker in the end

02:33:07.950 --> 02:33:11.907
retreated, and it was another victory for

02:33:11.990 --> 02:33:15.867
Lee in a battle he never, ever should
have won. He was outnumbered two to one,

02:33:15.950 --> 02:33:18.630
135,000 to about 64,000.

02:33:19.490 --> 02:33:23.267
And when the moment of truth came, Joseph
Hooker just lost his nerve. I mean, I

02:33:23.350 --> 02:33:26.600
really do believe that.
I had fun working on this book. I wrote a

02:33:27.270 --> 02:33:29.741
... A lot of books on campaigns
are very long and detailed.

02:33:29.825 --> 02:33:31.187
I wanted a short book that would

02:33:31.270 --> 02:33:36.470
introduce interested readers who didn't
really know that much perhaps to...

02:33:37.470 --> 02:33:41.075
There's one of the maps. - So there are
different, there's different positions,

02:33:41.158 --> 02:33:42.507
the different troops' positions.

02:33:42.590 --> 02:33:47.280
There's Hooker. - Yes. That is the...
The battle played out on May 1st, 2nd, and

02:33:47.490 --> 02:33:50.947
3rd. There's the opening
of the campaign. See the

02:33:51.030 --> 02:33:52.780
Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg.

02:33:53.390 --> 02:33:57.290
The armies are facing each other there.
Hooker's plan was to leave

02:33:57.450 --> 02:34:01.170
part of his army to hold Lee's
attention and move the rest up the river,

02:34:01.390 --> 02:34:05.307
up the Rappahannock, cross the
Rappahannock and then the Rapidan, and get

02:34:05.390 --> 02:34:08.887
behind Lee so that Lee
would be caught in a vise.

02:34:08.970 --> 02:34:12.707
He'd have Hooker in his rear
and the anvil of other Union troops at

02:34:12.790 --> 02:34:16.186
Fredericksburg, and he thought that that
would force Lee to retreat toward Richmond

02:34:16.269 --> 02:34:16.687
and that he

02:34:16.770 --> 02:34:21.527
could then harass him. They get around,
they get behind Lee. They do exactly what

02:34:21.610 --> 02:34:28.050
Hooker wanted to do. He got
to Chancellorsville. He had more than

02:34:28.290 --> 02:34:32.227
70,000 men at Chancellorsville,
and Lee doesn't find out till the

02:34:32.310 --> 02:34:36.010
very end of April what's going on,
and then he decides to divide his army,

02:34:36.710 --> 02:34:40.567
leave 10,000 men to watch 40,000
Federals at Fredericksburg, and he

02:34:40.650 --> 02:34:44.387
and Stonewall Jackson head
back toward Chancellorsville to

02:34:44.470 --> 02:34:48.347
meet Hooker. And they
meet on May the 1st. The

02:34:48.430 --> 02:34:52.027
fighting starts on May the 1st.
Everybody's upbeat in the Army of the

02:34:52.110 --> 02:34:53.700
Potomac. They've gotten
around Lee's flank.

02:34:53.783 --> 02:34:55.647
They know they're behind him.
Everything seems to

02:34:55.730 --> 02:34:59.647
go very well. Hooker said,
"This is it. We've done

02:34:59.730 --> 02:35:01.407
it. We've done exactly
what I wanted to do."

02:35:01.490 --> 02:35:04.140
And then the fighting starts
the next day on May 1st.

02:35:04.630 --> 02:35:07.490
They march toward that place called
Zoan Church. You can see there,

02:35:07.573 --> 02:35:08.467
it's just a little bit

02:35:08.550 --> 02:35:12.327
east of Chancellorsville.
And the fighting, they collide about

02:35:12.410 --> 02:35:16.260
11:00 in the morning. 2:00 that afternoon,
Hooker orders a retreat.

02:35:17.030 --> 02:35:20.141
Everybody retreats back
into this wilderness.

02:35:20.224 --> 02:35:22.850
It's a kind of cut-over, woodsy area,

02:35:23.790 --> 02:35:27.467
that it has very few roads,
and he just hunkers down around

02:35:27.550 --> 02:35:30.950
Chancellorsville,
hands the initiative to Lee.

02:35:31.800 --> 02:35:35.407
The next day, Jackson
and Lee decide to send

02:35:35.490 --> 02:35:39.287
Jackson all the way around
the right flank, and you see the

02:35:39.370 --> 02:35:43.267
flank march there. They come,
they strike a Union corps

02:35:43.350 --> 02:35:47.287
that's exposed, commanded by a man named
Oliver Otis Howard. Howard University

02:35:47.370 --> 02:35:51.510
is named after him. He headed
the Freedmen's Bureau later in the war.

02:35:52.630 --> 02:35:56.447
They strike, they crush the 11th
Corps, which has a very high

02:35:56.530 --> 02:35:59.908
German element in it, and there's a lot
of ethnic prejudice that comes into play

02:35:59.991 --> 02:36:00.467
there by the

02:36:00.550 --> 02:36:06.010
other soldiers. But it ends up,
the day ends up with Lee actually in worse

02:36:06.410 --> 02:36:09.947
shape than he was before. He's got two
divisions over here under Anderson and

02:36:10.030 --> 02:36:13.727
McLaws on the lower right.
He's not even in touch with

02:36:13.810 --> 02:36:17.530
Jackson's corps. Jackson was wounded
that night by his own men,

02:36:17.770 --> 02:36:20.270
carried from the field.
He'd die a few days later.

02:36:21.110 --> 02:36:24.793
And Hooker still, although Hooker is in
between these two parts of Lee's army,

02:36:24.877 --> 02:36:29.027
he's in an ideal position. He's still just
thinking about the defense even. Where on

02:36:29.110 --> 02:36:30.290
the morning of May 3rd,

02:36:31.130 --> 02:36:35.177
the two parts of Lee's army fight their
way together around the Chancellorsville-

02:36:35.260 --> 02:36:38.927
... clearing, and Hooker then retreats
toward the north. You have this

02:36:39.010 --> 02:36:42.947
amazing moment on May the 3rd
where Hooker, who's been stunned

02:36:43.030 --> 02:36:48.287
by an artillery round that hit a pillar he
was leaning against at Chancellorsville-

02:36:48.370 --> 02:36:52.580
... he had a concussion.
He was vomiting. He retreated to the rear.

02:36:53.610 --> 02:36:57.447
And as the Union troops retreated
from that clearing near Chancellorsville,

02:36:57.530 --> 02:36:58.930
Lee's army

02:36:59.830 --> 02:37:03.001
had fought itself together, and Lee
rode into the middle of his troops.

02:37:03.084 --> 02:37:06.910
And there was this amazing
moment when this spontaneous

02:37:07.010 --> 02:37:10.430
outpouring of emotion on the part
of the Confederates, that's

02:37:10.810 --> 02:37:14.467
the moment when Lee and his men finished
this period of bonding this year that

02:37:14.550 --> 02:37:18.223
was unmatched in the Civil War.
See, there's no way Lee should've won

02:37:18.307 --> 02:37:18.947
this battle.

02:37:19.030 --> 02:37:22.910
There's one more day of action
a little farther to the east. But in the

02:37:23.010 --> 02:37:26.527
end, Hooker retreats. He never should've
retreated. He was in an impregnable

02:37:26.610 --> 02:37:28.570
position, but he did retreat.

02:37:29.440 --> 02:37:33.420
And Lincoln was absolutely
beside himself after this. He

02:37:33.620 --> 02:37:35.703
just couldn't... Everybody
knew what the numbers were.

02:37:35.786 --> 02:37:37.107
The newspapers had talked about it-

02:37:37.190 --> 02:37:40.277
... that Lee had only half
as many men as Hooker, and once

02:37:40.360 --> 02:37:44.237
again, the Army of the Potomac,
the largest and most important army of

02:37:44.320 --> 02:37:49.160
the Republic, has been defeated
by this smaller army. It,

02:37:50.000 --> 02:37:53.840
Lee's sort of legend in the
North grew and in the South.

02:37:54.160 --> 02:37:57.717
He became, by this point, he and his
army were the most important national

02:37:57.800 --> 02:38:01.637
institution in the Confederacy. People
looked to them to see whether indep- It's

02:38:01.720 --> 02:38:04.435
like Washington and the Continental
Army during the Revolution.

02:38:04.518 --> 02:38:08.470
If they're still in the field,
there's still a chance for victory. This

02:38:09.040 --> 02:38:12.517
cemented that position
for Lee, this victory at

02:38:12.600 --> 02:38:16.357
Chancellorsville did, in the minds
of Confederates, and made him a kind of

02:38:16.440 --> 02:38:18.740
bugaboo to people in the North.
They were just

02:38:19.170 --> 02:38:22.280
thirsty for someone to defeat
Lee and capture Richmond.

02:38:22.640 --> 02:38:25.857
- So this, in some sense,
created the legend of Robert E. Lee.

02:38:25.940 --> 02:38:29.300
- It certainly helped solidi- Yes,
it did. It went a long way

02:38:29.660 --> 02:38:31.840
toward doing it. A long way.

02:38:31.980 --> 02:38:35.177
- So you write about, you know,
the difference between sort of reality and

02:38:35.260 --> 02:38:41.897
memory. How does the North remember
this battle, and how does the South

02:38:41.980 --> 02:38:43.030
remember this battle?

02:38:43.180 --> 02:38:46.839
- It's really fascinating. The North
remembers this battle by not remembering

02:38:46.923 --> 02:38:47.617
it very much. - Yeah, ignoring it.

02:38:47.700 --> 02:38:52.280
- They sort of airbrush it out of their
memory of the war. The Confederates,

02:38:53.580 --> 02:38:57.277
in the iconography of the
Lost Cause, this... Lee and

02:38:57.360 --> 02:39:01.337
Jackson had their last meeting ever here
just before the fighting on May 2nd got

02:39:01.420 --> 02:39:05.357
going, and there was a famous painting
of that done by an artist named

02:39:05.440 --> 02:39:12.440
Julio that was then reprinted as a
lithograph that hung in innumerable homes

02:39:13.300 --> 02:39:16.900
and offices and courthouses
in the South. It's Lee and Jackson

02:39:17.520 --> 02:39:20.980
at high tide, kind of.
Gettysburg hasn't happened, never mind

02:39:21.080 --> 02:39:24.615
Appomattox. These are the two greatest
Confederate soldiers at their greatest

02:39:24.698 --> 02:39:28.980
moment of success. It became
hugely important in the Lost Cause

02:39:29.820 --> 02:39:33.517
telling of the war.
On the Union side, they didn't

02:39:33.600 --> 02:39:35.689
wanna talk about Joseph
Hooker that much. They had...

02:39:35.772 --> 02:39:37.672
They'd rather talk about other things.

02:39:38.010 --> 02:39:40.606
- Yeah, it's probably one of the most
humiliating battles of the war from

02:39:40.689 --> 02:39:44.070
the Union side. - It,
I think it's, it's really,

02:39:45.860 --> 02:39:48.573
it's just a, it's amazing that Hooker
lost this. It's just amazing.

02:39:48.657 --> 02:39:49.777
And it shows the complete

02:39:49.860 --> 02:39:53.900
dominance of one personality over
another personality, in my view.

02:39:54.720 --> 02:39:56.857
- So Stonewall Jackson was shot, killed.

02:39:56.940 --> 02:40:00.757
- Shot by his own men, out trying
to reconnoiter and keep the battle going

02:40:00.840 --> 02:40:04.457
and exploit his successes,
carried back to the rear, and he

02:40:04.540 --> 02:40:07.740
died on May 10th, died eight days later.

02:40:08.200 --> 02:40:13.020
- So what impact did that have
of Stonewall Jackson's death?

02:40:13.540 --> 02:40:17.417
- Well, that had a hu-- That,
there was unbelievable mourning

02:40:17.500 --> 02:40:19.420
across the Confederacy about that,

02:40:20.520 --> 02:40:24.477
and even since, really interesting,
even some positive comments in the North

02:40:24.560 --> 02:40:26.573
about how he'd been
a sor-- He was misguided,

02:40:26.656 --> 02:40:28.477
but a very religious guy and all of this

02:40:28.560 --> 02:40:32.160
stuff, but they're quietly very, "That's
really good news for the United States

02:40:32.243 --> 02:40:36.330
that Stonewall Jackson is dead,
and really bad news for the Confederacy."

02:40:37.200 --> 02:40:43.040
- Outside the myth, did it actually
have a practical impact on, on the war?

02:40:43.720 --> 02:40:46.661
- I don't think so, and the people who
love Stonewall Jackson would disagree

02:40:46.745 --> 02:40:47.717
with me, but I don't see

02:40:47.800 --> 02:40:51.557
where he would've... He was a very
good soldier at what he did, and Lee

02:40:51.640 --> 02:40:55.380
used him very well, and they were
a good partnership, but I don't

02:40:55.480 --> 02:40:59.340
see how he would've changed the larger
contours of the war. I don't.

02:40:59.940 --> 02:41:01.728
- If we zoom out
and look at Robert E. Lee,

02:41:01.812 --> 02:41:04.840
somebody you've written about
quite a bit, studied a lot,

02:41:05.820 --> 02:41:09.757
do you think we can use this battle to try
to understand the military genius of

02:41:09.840 --> 02:41:11.960
the man and, in general, who he was?

02:41:12.440 --> 02:41:15.737
- I do, and it shows both
why he was successful and

02:41:15.820 --> 02:41:19.577
why some of the reasons he
was successful opened the way for

02:41:19.660 --> 02:41:23.160
what should've been big defeats
but didn't. I mean, Lee's personality

02:41:23.260 --> 02:41:28.520
was, at heart, aggressive.
His first impulse was always to take the

02:41:29.340 --> 02:41:33.117
war to the opponent. He said, "They
outnumber us. If we just sit and wait

02:41:33.200 --> 02:41:36.877
for them to come to us, they're gonna
have all the advantages. We need to try to

02:41:36.960 --> 02:41:38.997
disrupt them and look for openings."

02:41:39.080 --> 02:41:42.270
What this campaign showed
was his audacity. He divided his

02:41:42.360 --> 02:41:46.217
army three times in the
course of this campaign in

02:41:46.300 --> 02:41:50.300
the face of a much more powerful
opponent, which showed his audacity.

02:41:51.270 --> 02:41:54.690
It also highlighted the overall

02:41:54.860 --> 02:41:57.667
culture that he created in his
army, which was a culture of

02:41:57.750 --> 02:42:01.697
risk-taking, of seeking to inflict
the greatest possible harm on your

02:42:01.780 --> 02:42:05.577
opponent. It's the antithesis of the
culture that McClellan created in the

02:42:05.660 --> 02:42:09.380
Army of the Potomac, which is a culture
of caution, of not taking risks,

02:42:09.880 --> 02:42:12.800
of not doing anything until
everything is just right.

02:42:13.120 --> 02:42:15.115
Any adult knows everything
is never just right,

02:42:15.198 --> 02:42:17.027
so if you're waiting
for that, you'll never

02:42:17.110 --> 02:42:20.937
do anything. It's the,
two cultures are absolutely

02:42:21.020 --> 02:42:24.580
antithetical to one another,
and in the end, it shows

02:42:24.680 --> 02:42:28.900
Lee and how what he had accomplished,
he had created an army

02:42:30.720 --> 02:42:35.137
that was willing to absorb casualties
because it won all the time.

02:42:35.220 --> 02:42:38.957
And they realized that that was,
they believed, making it more

02:42:39.040 --> 02:42:42.977
likely that their whole war effort
would be successful. There are only a few

02:42:43.060 --> 02:42:45.421
times during the war where you get
a scene like you got on May 3rd,

02:42:45.504 --> 02:42:46.554
where this whole army

02:42:47.080 --> 02:42:50.817
sees the old man ride into their midst,
basically, and just has this... I

02:42:50.900 --> 02:42:54.337
think they decided
at that point, the soldiers,

02:42:54.420 --> 02:42:58.237
that he was always gonna win, and Lee
looked at them and thought, "They can do

02:42:58.320 --> 02:43:02.157
whatever I ask them to do." I think if you
wanna understand Gettysburg, if you wanna

02:43:02.240 --> 02:43:03.640
understand Pickett's Charge,

02:43:04.480 --> 02:43:06.810
you need to look back to May
3rd at Chancellorsville,

02:43:06.894 --> 02:43:10.844
when Lee just decided that his infantry
could do anything he wanted them to do.

02:43:11.140 --> 02:43:14.157
- But also from the infantry
perspective, they believed in the-

02:43:14.240 --> 02:43:18.177
- You asked me earlier about what did the
soldiers' letters say. The letters from

02:43:18.260 --> 02:43:21.620
Lee's army, they absolutely didn't even

02:43:21.720 --> 02:43:25.620
contemplate losing to the Army of the
Potomac. I mean, they just didn't think-

02:43:26.000 --> 02:43:27.857
They didn't think they would lose to it

02:43:27.940 --> 02:43:31.417
- What do you attribute that to?
Is that, does it, Robert E. Lee, to him?

02:43:31.500 --> 02:43:34.443
- It's to Lee and the fact that they
won these victories under Lee,

02:43:34.527 --> 02:43:35.267
and that they took

02:43:35.350 --> 02:43:38.271
these chances, and everybody tried.
And they always knew that they were

02:43:38.354 --> 02:43:39.157
outnumbered, and yet

02:43:39.240 --> 02:43:42.657
they were still winning. The closest
the numbers had ever been at the seven

02:43:42.740 --> 02:43:46.617
days when the armies were about the same
size, but after that, Lee is always at

02:43:46.700 --> 02:43:52.840
a significant disadvantage in numbers,
and yet he seems to be victorious.

02:43:53.240 --> 02:43:57.031
- So Lee's aggressiveness,
like you've mentioned,

02:43:57.114 --> 02:43:59.960
produced also staggering casualties.

02:44:00.240 --> 02:44:03.977
- Staggering casualties.
He lost 13,000 men here, and Hooker about

02:44:04.060 --> 02:44:07.997
17,500. A much higher proportion

02:44:08.080 --> 02:44:11.977
of Lee's army than Hooker lost
in his army. But this should've been

02:44:12.060 --> 02:44:15.360
a disaster for Lee.
Hooker should have crushed Lee here.

02:44:16.260 --> 02:44:18.537
Absolutely should have
crushed Lee, but he didn't.

02:44:18.620 --> 02:44:22.297
- So there's two cases:
Lee's audacity being the

02:44:22.380 --> 02:44:26.337
South's best hope
of winning the war, but the

02:44:26.420 --> 02:44:29.580
other case is he was actually
bleeding the South dry.

02:44:29.920 --> 02:44:33.417
- Yes, and historians have criticized
him for not just being on the

02:44:33.500 --> 02:44:38.434
defensive all the time. I think Lee
understood better than many of his critics

02:44:38.517 --> 02:44:42.117
now understand that the key
was Northern civilian opinion.

02:44:42.200 --> 02:44:46.160
He said it more than once, "If we win
victories, it will depress their morale.

02:44:46.500 --> 02:44:49.156
If their morale is depressed,
the Democrats will do better.

02:44:49.239 --> 02:44:52.710
If the Democrats get into office,
it's good for the Confederacy."

02:44:53.880 --> 02:44:57.817
And he also knew that he was... It's
a race between, "Am I gonna run out of men

02:44:57.900 --> 02:44:59.437
before they run out of morale

02:44:59.520 --> 02:45:03.377
... in the United States?"
I think he understood that, and I think

02:45:03.460 --> 02:45:07.377
that was the best chance for the
Confederacy to win. And in the end, I'm

02:45:07.460 --> 02:45:10.980
very happy to report,
the Confederacy ran out of men

02:45:11.140 --> 02:45:15.027
before the Union ran out of morale.
And so the war went

02:45:15.110 --> 02:45:18.697
the way it did. But I think Lee
was very perceptive in that regard. He

02:45:18.780 --> 02:45:25.037
understood how important politically
what happened militarily was.

02:45:25.120 --> 02:45:28.957
Much better understanding of that than a
lot of people had at the time, and better

02:45:29.040 --> 02:45:31.828
understanding, I think,
than a lot of historians have now.

02:45:31.911 --> 02:45:33.011
And this is a horrible

02:45:33.800 --> 02:45:36.020
time for the US because

02:45:36.980 --> 02:45:40.857
behind the lines, people are
in ra- Democrats are unhappy with

02:45:40.940 --> 02:45:42.480
the Emancipation Proclamation.

02:45:43.500 --> 02:45:47.437
Just two months before this,
Congress passed the Conscription Act.

02:45:47.520 --> 02:45:51.037
Democrats are very unhappy about that.
They're saying that Lincoln is a tyrant.

02:45:51.120 --> 02:45:55.020
He's forcing people into a war that's
not the war they wanted to fight anyway.

02:45:55.560 --> 02:45:57.500
Union morale is very fragile.

02:45:58.460 --> 02:46:02.420
Morale, civilian morale at this point,
and this makes it much, much

02:46:02.800 --> 02:46:05.480
worse. The draft riots in New York City,

02:46:06.600 --> 02:46:10.397
the first draft numbers were pulled
in New York City in July. The draft riots

02:46:10.480 --> 02:46:13.797
come right after Gettysburg,
but that is symptomatic of what

02:46:13.880 --> 02:46:17.417
morale... Desertions went up in the Army
of the Potomac after the Emancipation

02:46:17.500 --> 02:46:18.460
Proclamation.

02:46:18.580 --> 02:46:22.967
- So at this point, the Confederacy
is arguably very close to winning the war.

02:46:23.050 --> 02:46:26.420
- I think this is one
of the more optimistic points

02:46:27.160 --> 02:46:32.900
for the Confederacy, is in the late spring
and early summer of 1863. Yes, I do.

02:46:33.300 --> 02:46:37.257
- If Robert E. Lee is correct, in that
it's all about morale, which seems like a,

02:46:37.340 --> 02:46:42.877
a valid argument, then this feels, like,
very close to breaking the morale of the

02:46:42.960 --> 02:46:43.617
Union.

02:46:43.700 --> 02:46:47.497
- In the Eastern Theater, I think it is,
but in the Western Theater we have our

02:46:47.580 --> 02:46:50.983
boy Grant... who's operating
against Vicksburg at this point.

02:46:51.067 --> 02:46:52.177
So there are two big

02:46:52.260 --> 02:46:55.880
campaigns kind of going on at this time,
and Vicksburg is the other one.

02:46:56.700 --> 02:46:59.357
- Can you speak to Vicksburg? This is '63.

02:46:59.440 --> 02:47:03.220
- Yeah, this is '63,
and Vicksburg is the last major

02:47:03.360 --> 02:47:06.937
Confederate citadel on the Mississippi
River. They've already lost New

02:47:07.020 --> 02:47:08.953
Orleans. They've lost...
So they've lost the river.

02:47:09.037 --> 02:47:10.887
It's not a Confederate river anymore.

02:47:11.000 --> 02:47:12.826
But they still have
a strong point at Vicksburg,

02:47:12.909 --> 02:47:14.537
and another one at Port Hudson in Northern

02:47:14.620 --> 02:47:19.267
Louisiana. Grant has been operating
against Vicksburg since the winter of

02:47:19.350 --> 02:47:22.900
'62, and he's finally, through
a series of trial and errors and

02:47:23.020 --> 02:47:26.857
failures, he's finally found a way
that he thinks he can get to the

02:47:26.940 --> 02:47:30.777
city. He takes great risks.
He crosses the Mississippi

02:47:30.860 --> 02:47:34.680
River after having the Union
Navy run past all the batteries,

02:47:34.780 --> 02:47:36.956
the artillery batteries
there at Vicksburg,

02:47:37.039 --> 02:47:42.677
and he invests the city from the east.
He's laying siege to Vicksburg while he's

02:47:42.760 --> 02:47:46.082
just getting his campaign to do
that started when Hooker is

02:47:46.166 --> 02:47:47.320
at Chancellorsville.

02:47:48.640 --> 02:47:52.507
In May, he invests the city
and begins a siege that

02:47:52.590 --> 02:47:56.457
will end just as the Battle
of Gettysburg ends, and it's, it's one

02:47:56.540 --> 02:48:00.377
of the most impressive campaigns in US
military history, Grant's campaign

02:48:00.460 --> 02:48:04.297
against Vicksburg. Cuts loose from his
supply lines. Nobody understands

02:48:04.380 --> 02:48:06.548
what he's doing.
Sherman doesn't get what he's doing.

02:48:06.631 --> 02:48:08.431
Lincoln doesn't get what he's doing.

02:48:08.740 --> 02:48:12.600
And in the end they go, "Oh, that's
what you were doing." And it worked.

02:48:12.960 --> 02:48:18.840
And in the end, he captures Vicksburg,
which surrenders on July 4th, 1863.

02:48:19.680 --> 02:48:23.597
And if you don't think that a
kind of religious people didn't

02:48:23.680 --> 02:48:27.457
read divine intervention into
catching, having that happen on

02:48:27.540 --> 02:48:31.380
July 4th, 1863, you would be incorrect.

02:48:32.010 --> 02:48:35.060
That's the same day that Lee
retreated from Gettysburg. What?

02:48:35.990 --> 02:48:39.877
Really? God's not putting a thumb
on the scales here? Huge victories in

02:48:39.960 --> 02:48:43.377
the West, huge victory in the
East on the anniversary of the

02:48:43.460 --> 02:48:46.940
Declaration of Independence.
- Well, that takes us to Gettysburg.

02:48:47.080 --> 02:48:48.857
- Here we are at Gettysburg. - Here we go.

02:48:48.940 --> 02:48:52.880
- Which everybody knows, Lex,
is the turning point of the Civil War.

02:48:53.400 --> 02:48:54.550
- Or is it? Okay. - No.

02:48:55.620 --> 02:48:56.337
- All right. - Short answer.

02:48:56.420 --> 02:49:00.317
- Well, that's first...
Before we before we analyze

02:49:00.400 --> 02:49:03.447
the, its role as a turning
point or not- - Yes, yes.

02:49:03.530 --> 02:49:05.757
-... what is Gettysburg? July 1863.

02:49:05.840 --> 02:49:08.590
- Okay. - Walk me through
the three days of Gettysburg.

02:49:08.840 --> 02:49:12.517
- So Joe Hooker retreats across the
Rappahannock. Lee is frustrated because he

02:49:12.600 --> 02:49:16.337
hasn't dealt more damage
to Hooker, and this is what he

02:49:16.420 --> 02:49:19.817
decides to do. He decides to move
north for a second time. His

02:49:19.900 --> 02:49:23.837
army is strengthened.
He builds it up to 75,000. This is

02:49:23.920 --> 02:49:27.360
his army at its absolute apogee
as he gets ready to go north.

02:49:27.860 --> 02:49:31.737
It's confident.
It's well-supplied, well-led. And so

02:49:31.820 --> 02:49:35.737
they head north second week in June,
and here's what his goal is. He has two

02:49:35.820 --> 02:49:39.400
main goals. He wants to take
the war out of Virginia so that the

02:49:39.500 --> 02:49:43.317
agricultural sector isn't subject
to the presence of the army, so to

02:49:43.400 --> 02:49:47.237
let agriculture recover a little,
and he wants to provision his army off

02:49:47.320 --> 02:49:51.060
the rich Cumberland Valley
in Pennsylvania, siphon fodder and

02:49:51.160 --> 02:49:55.017
food and animals while he's
north of the Potomac, and he

02:49:55.100 --> 02:49:58.042
wants to stay up there for a long
time to keep the war out of Virginia.

02:49:58.125 --> 02:49:58.977
He doesn't wanna-- He

02:49:59.060 --> 02:50:02.977
has no... The movie Gettysburg,
he says he wants to capture Washington.

02:50:03.060 --> 02:50:06.897
No, he doesn't wanna capture Washington.
He knows it's too strong. He

02:50:06.980 --> 02:50:10.373
has no idea of doing that, but he knows
he'll pull the Union Army after him

02:50:10.456 --> 02:50:14.997
and simply reorient the war, and he knows
it'll be bad politically for Lincoln-

02:50:15.080 --> 02:50:17.376
... if he's actually
operating in the United States.

02:50:17.459 --> 02:50:18.859
So off he goes to the north.

02:50:19.180 --> 02:50:22.937
He gets north of the river.
His cavalry under Jeb Stuart is not

02:50:23.020 --> 02:50:24.800
doing its job because poor Jeb,

02:50:25.780 --> 02:50:29.240
who is a very good cavalryman
but has a sort of adolescent streak

02:50:29.780 --> 02:50:33.717
where he has to be praised all
the time, he fights a, the biggest

02:50:33.800 --> 02:50:37.520
cavalry battle of the war near
Culpeper, Virginia, Battle of Brandy

02:50:37.620 --> 02:50:40.140
Station on June the 9th,
and he almost loses,

02:50:41.240 --> 02:50:45.077
and it hurts his little feelings. And so
he decides that he needs to do something

02:50:45.160 --> 02:50:47.867
dramatic so the newspapers
will love him again.

02:50:47.950 --> 02:50:51.737
And he decides to ride all the way around
the Army of the Potomac, which he did when

02:50:51.820 --> 02:50:55.066
McClellan was in command. It's easier to
do it when McClellan's in command 'cause

02:50:55.149 --> 02:50:58.720
he's never moving.
He decides he'll do it again here.

02:51:00.070 --> 02:51:03.957
And just as he gets east
of the Army of the Potomac, the

02:51:04.040 --> 02:51:07.777
Army of the Potomac starts to move
north, and so Stuart is trapped

02:51:07.860 --> 02:51:09.652
with... and he can't communicate with Lee.

02:51:09.736 --> 02:51:11.737
So Lee doesn't know
what's going on 'cause his

02:51:11.820 --> 02:51:15.157
cavalry isn't doing its job.
He spreads his army across southern

02:51:15.240 --> 02:51:19.320
Pennsylvania and then finds
out from a sort of civilian spy,

02:51:20.220 --> 02:51:24.000
guy named Harrison, that the Army
of the Potomac is actually following him

02:51:24.300 --> 02:51:28.197
and is much closer, and Lee
at the end of June orders his army to

02:51:28.280 --> 02:51:32.880
concentrate near Gettysburg
and not to bring on a battle,

02:51:32.964 --> 02:51:36.140
and they concentrate.
Most of them come together.

02:51:36.940 --> 02:51:40.457
There's a little clash on June
the 30th, but on July the 1st, the

02:51:40.540 --> 02:51:44.417
armies make contact
to the west of Gettysburg in

02:51:44.500 --> 02:51:48.397
a meeting engagement and more troops
coming on each side. It builds into what

02:51:48.480 --> 02:51:52.337
turns into the three-day biggest
battle of the Civil War. It's not

02:51:52.420 --> 02:51:53.720
something Lee had planned,

02:51:54.400 --> 02:51:57.493
And it wouldn't have happened if
his cavalry had been doing its job,

02:51:57.576 --> 02:51:58.426
but they weren't,

02:51:59.000 --> 02:52:02.440
and so here they come and there's
a battle that goes for three days.

02:52:03.120 --> 02:52:06.897
Lee has the-- He takes the tactical
aggressive every day. He

02:52:06.980 --> 02:52:10.940
does the attacking. The Federals
do the defending. Lee's army's

02:52:11.180 --> 02:52:15.240
75,000. The other army's
about 85,000, 88,000.

02:52:16.480 --> 02:52:20.317
And famous terrain, Little Round
Top, Round Top, Devil's Den, the

02:52:20.400 --> 02:52:24.277
Peach Orchard, all these famous places,
and it ends on the third day. Lee

02:52:24.360 --> 02:52:27.897
comes close on the second day, a huge
victory for the Confederates on the first

02:52:27.980 --> 02:52:31.460
day. Third day, Lee's frustrated

02:52:32.040 --> 02:52:35.957
and he just decides to let his
infantry take care of it for him and the

02:52:36.040 --> 02:52:39.977
result is what most people
call Pickett's Charge. Pickett

02:52:40.060 --> 02:52:41.560
was just a part of the charge.

02:52:42.540 --> 02:52:46.117
12 and a half thousand infantry
in a direct assault and it fails

02:52:46.200 --> 02:52:51.820
completely and he retreats the next day. I
think you can draw a straight line between

02:52:52.740 --> 02:52:56.597
May the 3rd at Chancellorsville
when his infantry fought

02:52:56.680 --> 02:53:00.497
their way together and July the 3rd
at Gettysburg. He admits it too as he

02:53:00.580 --> 02:53:03.049
writes letters to both his
wife and Jefferson Davis saying,

02:53:03.132 --> 02:53:04.782
"I asked too much of my infantry.

02:53:05.200 --> 02:53:08.000
No fault is on them.
All the fault is on me."

02:53:09.260 --> 02:53:12.777
And he was right. All the fault was on
him. He and Grant are alike that way.

02:53:12.860 --> 02:53:16.097
They accept responsibility,
not like McClellan. His first reaction is,

02:53:16.181 --> 02:53:17.181
"It's not my fault,"

02:53:17.780 --> 02:53:20.333
to pick a general at random who
did this. "It's not my fault.

02:53:20.416 --> 02:53:23.500
It must be somebody else's fault."
Lee took responsibility.

02:53:24.860 --> 02:53:28.577
He expected too much from his infantry.
His subordinates had not been

02:53:28.660 --> 02:53:32.560
doing that good a job and they
lost the biggest battle of the war.

02:53:33.020 --> 02:53:36.737
- What was the military mistake there?
What could Robert E. Lee have done

02:53:36.820 --> 02:53:37.537
differently?

02:53:37.620 --> 02:53:41.034
- I think what he could have done, the
most perceptive Confederate soldier who

02:53:41.117 --> 02:53:44.940
wrote about the war was a guy named Edward
Porter Alexander who was the most gifted

02:53:45.023 --> 02:53:47.840
artillerist. He's in Lee's army.
He wrote after the war,

02:53:49.140 --> 02:53:52.890
Lee won a great victory on July
1st at Gettysburg, smashed two

02:53:53.060 --> 02:53:56.817
Union infantry corps, had a very
strong position. He should've just

02:53:56.900 --> 02:54:00.600
hunkered down and said, "Okay,
attack me. See what you can do."

02:54:01.920 --> 02:54:05.677
He didn't do that. He almost certainly
would've won the battle if he had done

02:54:05.760 --> 02:54:09.177
that, but he, his, this is where
his aggressiveness gets him in

02:54:09.260 --> 02:54:12.797
trouble. He was pushing
for a more aggressive, more

02:54:12.880 --> 02:54:18.400
decisive outcome right then
and he ended up costing... He lost

02:54:19.800 --> 02:54:23.560
probably 25,000 men at Gettysburg,
at least a third of his army.

02:54:24.140 --> 02:54:27.640
More than that, he went across the river,
went across the Potomac with

02:54:27.820 --> 02:54:29.840
52 generals in his army.

02:54:31.040 --> 02:54:34.777
17 of them became casualties.
He lost a third of his entire

02:54:34.860 --> 02:54:38.421
corps of generals killed, wounded,
or captured in the Gettysburg Campaign.

02:54:38.504 --> 02:54:42.757
It's a really bloody, costly campaign
for him and he ends up retreating

02:54:42.840 --> 02:54:48.300
back into Virginia. It comes to it, and
Lincoln is at first very happy about it.

02:54:49.700 --> 02:54:53.377
There's another, yet another general in
command on the Union side. Hooker's gone.

02:54:53.460 --> 02:54:56.950
A guy named George Meade
is in and Meade does what

02:54:57.500 --> 02:55:01.057
McClellan did after Antietam.
He lets Lee get away, doesn't really

02:55:01.140 --> 02:55:05.057
harass him, and Lincoln is beside
himself with disappointment. He

02:55:05.140 --> 02:55:09.037
writes a letter to Meade, thanks him for

02:55:09.120 --> 02:55:12.897
his great victory and then says,
"You've let him get away. The war is

02:55:12.980 --> 02:55:16.817
gonna continue indefinitely,"
says Lincoln. Then he doesn't

02:55:16.900 --> 02:55:20.237
send the letter to...
He writes it but doesn't send it to

02:55:20.320 --> 02:55:24.447
Meade, but he gets another guy
to tell Meade what's in it, so he-

02:55:24.530 --> 02:55:27.780
... a guy named Halleck who's
the general in chief at that point.

02:55:28.720 --> 02:55:31.777
Lincoln certainly did not think Gettysburg
was the great turning point of the war.

02:55:31.860 --> 02:55:33.960
He, he probably thought it should've been,

02:55:34.620 --> 02:55:40.420
but it wasn't because Lee got away with
his army intact. And after the battle, Lee

02:55:41.370 --> 02:55:45.510
said, "Well, you'll see." He said, "They
lost a lot too, and they're gonna be...

02:55:46.630 --> 02:55:47.887
There's not gonna be another big battle."

02:55:47.970 --> 02:55:52.080
He said, "They'll be as quiet
as a sucking dove-... for six months."

02:55:52.490 --> 02:55:55.417
And in fact, it's 10 months before
there's another big battle in-

02:55:55.500 --> 02:55:57.850
... the Eastern Theater,
till Grant gets there.

02:55:58.090 --> 02:56:01.626
- Yeah, so how does Grant come from the,
to change the theater from the Western

02:56:01.709 --> 02:56:02.959
Theater into the Eastern?

02:56:03.050 --> 02:56:06.167
- So Gettysburg's a really important
victory for the United States.

02:56:06.250 --> 02:56:07.587
- Yeah, but it's not the turning point.

02:56:07.670 --> 02:56:10.675
- No, and it's not as important
as Vicksburg, because Lee gets away.

02:56:10.758 --> 02:56:11.487
Grant captured an

02:56:11.570 --> 02:56:15.460
entire rebel army at Vicksburg.
Pemberton's whole army surrendered,

02:56:16.590 --> 02:56:19.588
and that's the second time Grant
had forced an army to surrender.

02:56:19.671 --> 02:56:23.330
He forced one at Fort Donelson
back in February of 1862.

02:56:24.430 --> 02:56:28.327
His victory is...
There are no equivocations about

02:56:28.410 --> 02:56:32.347
it. It's a victory. The Mississippi
is now all controlled by the United

02:56:32.430 --> 02:56:36.347
States Navy, but Lee got away,
so that puts a little cloud

02:56:36.430 --> 02:56:37.970
over Gettysburg at the time.

02:56:38.910 --> 02:56:42.447
Grant wins one more victory in the West
after this. He wins the Battle of

02:56:42.530 --> 02:56:49.530
Chattanooga in late 1863. And that then
puts him in position for Lincoln to

02:56:50.510 --> 02:56:53.636
decide that he not only should be
in charge of everything in the West,

02:56:53.720 --> 02:56:54.247
he should be

02:56:54.330 --> 02:56:58.247
general-in-chief, and that's what
brings Grant to the fore. And in March

02:56:58.330 --> 02:57:02.047
'64, he's now general-in-chief
with the new rank of

02:57:02.130 --> 02:57:06.047
lieutenant general on his...
He's got three stars on his shoulders

02:57:06.130 --> 02:57:11.187
now instead of two. - And then that where
does that take us? That takes us to

02:57:11.270 --> 02:57:16.010
'64 with the Overland Campaign.
That story plus Atlanta, Sherman's March.

02:57:16.450 --> 02:57:20.630
- That sets up... Grant is now planning
for how the whole war is gonna go.

02:57:20.800 --> 02:57:24.727
And he envisions five components.
The two most important are he's

02:57:24.810 --> 02:57:28.747
gonna move against Lee, and his
plan is lock up with Lee, inflict

02:57:28.830 --> 02:57:32.427
the greatest possible damage
on Lee, prevent Lee from sending

02:57:32.510 --> 02:57:35.528
reinforcements anywhere else,
and if all goes well, Richmond would fall.

02:57:35.612 --> 02:57:39.227
But he's not mainly interested in
Richmond. He's interested in Lee's army,

02:57:39.310 --> 02:57:43.160
which is what Lincoln has been trying
to get his generals to be interested in

02:57:43.570 --> 02:57:46.820
the whole time. Destroy Lee's army,
and of course Richmond falls.

02:57:47.050 --> 02:57:50.400
- So how is he thinking about
the clash with Lee? Grant versus Lee.

02:57:50.750 --> 02:57:53.910
- Grant versus Lee is just confront him.

02:57:54.340 --> 02:57:56.368
And they're still near
Fredericksburg, where they,

02:57:56.452 --> 02:57:57.927
on the Rappahannock River frontier,

02:57:58.010 --> 02:58:01.190
engaged with him and what
they ended up with

02:58:02.130 --> 02:58:05.407
was a period of six weeks
of continuous combat that

02:58:05.490 --> 02:58:08.390
began with the Battle of the
Wilderness on May the 5th and

02:58:08.650 --> 02:58:12.590
6th. The old pattern in the Civil
War, Lex, was you fight a battle,

02:58:12.690 --> 02:58:16.540
one side retreats. It might be weeks,
might be months before you fight again.

02:58:16.730 --> 02:58:20.547
What happened here is Lee and Grant fought
the Battle of the Wilderness. 12,000

02:58:20.630 --> 02:58:24.487
Confederate casualties, 18,000
Union 30,000 casualties at the

02:58:24.570 --> 02:58:28.490
Wilderness. They march for one day.
They start another battle, Spotsylvania

02:58:28.590 --> 02:58:33.440
Courthouse. 12,000 More Confederate
casualties, 18,000 more Union casualties,

02:58:33.550 --> 02:58:37.187
so now you've had 60,000
casualties in two battles with no

02:58:37.270 --> 02:58:41.247
interval. That continues through May. Cold

02:58:41.330 --> 02:58:44.630
Harbor, they end up near Richmond
at Cold Harbor in early June.

02:58:44.950 --> 02:58:48.710
Grant launches frontal assaults there.
They come to nothing. His men

02:58:48.830 --> 02:58:52.627
are, many of them are butchered.
The bottom line is that in the

02:58:52.710 --> 02:58:56.670
six-week campaign, Grant
suffers 65,000 casualties,

02:58:56.790 --> 02:58:59.887
which is as big as Lee's whole
army had been. Lee suffers

02:58:59.970 --> 02:59:03.887
35,000, which is a higher percentage
of his army than Grant lost in, or

02:59:03.970 --> 02:59:07.867
about the same percentage,
actually. But it is a kind of

02:59:07.950 --> 02:59:11.850
continuous campaign no one had seen
before, and it shatters both armies.

02:59:12.030 --> 02:59:15.687
It eviscerates the officer
corps in both armies.

02:59:15.770 --> 02:59:18.270
armies. A lot of soldiers just break down.

02:59:19.190 --> 02:59:23.147
We would talk about PTSD now probably.
They just hadn't been used to something

02:59:23.230 --> 02:59:23.547
like this.

02:59:23.630 --> 02:59:28.570
- And this kind of continuous warfare,
that's... We can attribute that to Grant.

02:59:28.970 --> 02:59:33.047
- Yes, this is... And this is where
the Grant the Butcher image comes in.

02:59:33.130 --> 02:59:36.972
- But also probably,
as hard as it is to say,

02:59:37.055 --> 02:59:40.347
it's an act of military genius, right?

02:59:40.430 --> 02:59:44.327
- Well, it's... He's doing what he
wanted to do. He's bleeding Lee's army and

02:59:44.410 --> 02:59:48.930
at the same time pushing it back
toward Richmond, and what it ends up in

02:59:49.850 --> 02:59:53.157
is the siege at Petersburg, Virginia,
which is just south of Richmond

02:59:53.240 --> 02:59:53.787
and controls

02:59:53.870 --> 02:59:57.527
the communications into Richmond, and
it's a siege of actually Petersburg and

02:59:57.610 --> 03:00:01.230
Richmond, and that is the thing that

03:00:01.370 --> 03:00:04.960
Lee feared the most, and Grant had
put him in exactly that position.

03:00:05.330 --> 03:00:10.660
But the perception behind the lines in
the United States is endless casualties.

03:00:11.630 --> 03:00:15.447
Who's winning? We can't even tell
who's winning. We have these casualties,

03:00:15.530 --> 03:00:17.700
and so Union morale drops

03:00:18.590 --> 03:00:22.527
to its lowest point of the entire
war in July and August 1864. Because

03:00:22.610 --> 03:00:25.207
while this is going on,
Sherman is moving against

03:00:25.290 --> 03:00:29.087
Atlanta, and he is taking
his time, not fighting these

03:00:29.170 --> 03:00:31.382
big battles, but he's not
capturing Atlanta either.

03:00:31.465 --> 03:00:32.907
The whole summer goes by. Atlanta

03:00:32.990 --> 03:00:36.799
hasn't fallen. Richmond hasn't fallen.
There's an election coming up in the fall

03:00:36.883 --> 03:00:40.787
in the United States,
and Lincoln decides... The morale

03:00:40.870 --> 03:00:44.790
gets so bad he calls his
cabinet together in late August

03:00:45.990 --> 03:00:49.527
and makes them sign what's been called
the Blind Memorandum, and what the

03:00:49.610 --> 03:00:52.650
memorandum said is,
"We're not gonna be reelected,

03:00:54.050 --> 03:00:56.356
and we're gonna have to win the war
before the Democrats come in,

03:00:56.440 --> 03:00:57.887
because we know they won't win the war."

03:00:57.970 --> 03:01:01.657
Lincoln did not think they would win.
That's in August. And so I think

03:01:01.740 --> 03:01:05.547
that United States civilian morale,
the lowest point of the war for the

03:01:05.630 --> 03:01:09.487
United States is in July
and August 1864. And

03:01:09.570 --> 03:01:12.857
if we'd been able to stick our microphones
in people's faces and said, "Well,

03:01:12.940 --> 03:01:15.769
but what about Gettysburg?
That was the turning point of the war,"

03:01:15.853 --> 03:01:17.267
they would've said, "What are you

03:01:17.350 --> 03:01:22.527
talking about?" "That was a year ago.
This is now, and we're not winning, and

03:01:22.610 --> 03:01:26.227
it's not worth it, and we're
just about ready." McClellan,

03:01:26.310 --> 03:01:29.004
incidentally, was the Democratic
nominee for president that year,

03:01:29.087 --> 03:01:30.687
so he's running against Lincoln.

03:01:30.820 --> 03:01:33.570
- So first of all, if Lincoln
didn't win, do you think-

03:01:34.010 --> 03:01:37.243
- Well, we know it would've been good for
the Confederates if Lincoln didn't win,

03:01:37.326 --> 03:01:41.790
but just, uh... McClellan still... It's
interesting. McClellan was running kind of

03:01:41.930 --> 03:01:45.367
against the Democratic platform.
What the Democratic platform called for

03:01:45.450 --> 03:01:48.127
was basically negotiations,
an armistice and then

03:01:48.210 --> 03:01:52.117
negotiations. And many people
believed if they ever stop fighting,

03:01:52.200 --> 03:01:56.047
they're not gonna start fighting again.
And so some negotiated end to the war

03:01:56.130 --> 03:01:59.447
that might even yield a confederacy.

03:01:59.530 --> 03:02:03.207
McClellan, to his credit, and I hate
to give him credit, at least said that he

03:02:03.290 --> 03:02:06.143
wasn't up for that. He said,
"We need to win the war,

03:02:06.226 --> 03:02:08.047
and then we'll have negotiations."

03:02:08.130 --> 03:02:10.011
But what's clear is...
And it would've been,

03:02:10.094 --> 03:02:11.907
would've been the end of emancipation.

03:02:11.990 --> 03:02:18.100
The, 'cause emancipation, what became
the 13th Amendment had passed through the

03:02:18.190 --> 03:02:21.290
Senate in April of '64,
but the House voted against it.

03:02:21.590 --> 03:02:24.980
That doesn't, isn't gonna
happen till early '65.

03:02:25.750 --> 03:02:30.790
- How close was it that Lincoln won/lost?

03:02:31.230 --> 03:02:34.550
- Well, Lincoln won.
Grant didn't reelect Lincoln, 'cause he,

03:02:35.210 --> 03:02:38.219
Grant against Lee would not
reelect Lincoln. But other Grants,

03:02:38.302 --> 03:02:43.063
other things that Grant, part of his
overall plan as general-in-chief,

03:02:43.147 --> 03:02:44.987
Sherman captured Atlanta-

03:02:45.070 --> 03:02:48.770
... in early September.
And that just changed everything.

03:02:48.930 --> 03:02:49.967
- That was the real turning point.

03:02:50.050 --> 03:02:53.987
- That was a huge military turning point,
and then on the heels of that, Philip

03:02:54.070 --> 03:02:57.610
Sheridan won a series of crushing
victories in the Shenandoah Valley,

03:02:58.230 --> 03:03:02.087
the last of which came just before
the election, and it was Sherman, and to a

03:03:02.170 --> 03:03:05.967
lesser degree Sheridan,
that reelected Lincoln, and not just

03:03:06.050 --> 03:03:08.347
Lincoln, but huge Republican majorities-

03:03:08.430 --> 03:03:10.950
... in both the House
and the Senate in 1864.

03:03:11.560 --> 03:03:15.420
- And then the thing that broke
the back of Confederacies, Sherman's

03:03:15.510 --> 03:03:20.747
March, 60,000 men across Georgia
to the sea, burning the infrastructure.

03:03:20.830 --> 03:03:24.970
- Yes, as he said, "I'm gonna go across
and make Georgia howl," is how he put it.

03:03:25.890 --> 03:03:29.687
He added a psychological twist. What Grant

03:03:29.770 --> 03:03:33.335
envisioned his doing, and Sheridan
actually did it in the Shenandoah Valley

03:03:33.418 --> 03:03:37.227
before Sherman did it in Georgia,
is go into an agriculturally

03:03:37.310 --> 03:03:41.840
productive area, burn the mills,
kill the livestock, destroy the crops,

03:03:42.690 --> 03:03:46.207
lay waste to it so that it can't
be a logistical support of the

03:03:46.290 --> 03:03:50.227
Confederacy anymore. Sheridan did it
in the Shenandoah Valley, and then Sherman

03:03:50.310 --> 03:03:53.867
did it in Georgia. But Sherman said,
"But I'm also going to break them

03:03:53.950 --> 03:03:57.707
psychologically." That's what he said,
that, "I'm gonna show them that my

03:03:57.790 --> 03:04:00.497
army can go wherever it wants
to go, whenever it wants to go,

03:04:00.581 --> 03:04:01.427
and there's nothing

03:04:01.510 --> 03:04:05.710
Jefferson Davis can do about it." He said,
"When they decide that, they'll give up."

03:04:05.910 --> 03:04:09.347
Didn't exactly work that way, but that's
what he-- so he marched first to

03:04:09.430 --> 03:04:13.187
Savannah, and then the final campaign for

03:04:13.270 --> 03:04:17.047
Sherman was up through the Carolinas.
He went up through South Carolina and into

03:04:17.130 --> 03:04:21.510
North Carolina. And Grant laid siege to

03:04:22.570 --> 03:04:26.450
Lee, and the siege lasted nine months,
the Siege of Petersburg in Richmond,

03:04:27.210 --> 03:04:34.210
and finally Grant broke Lee's lines
on April 1st, 1865. Lee started a retreat.

03:04:35.950 --> 03:04:39.767
Grant just gave him no
pause, and he ran him to

03:04:39.850 --> 03:04:43.860
ground at Appomattox after about
a week, and Lee surrendered.

03:04:44.600 --> 03:04:47.267
- What do we know about
the relationship between the two men?

03:04:47.350 --> 03:04:49.587
- Grant and Lee? - Yeah.

03:04:49.670 --> 03:04:53.069
- Well, it's really interesting.
I mean, they basically operated in totally

03:04:53.152 --> 03:04:55.952
different worlds. They were
both in the war with Mexico,

03:04:56.530 --> 03:05:00.320
but they weren't with each
other in Mexico, and

03:05:00.790 --> 03:05:04.647
they had some awkward kinda small
talk at Appomattox before they got down

03:05:04.730 --> 03:05:06.516
to business. One said he
remembered the other one,

03:05:06.599 --> 03:05:10.080
the other one said he didn't remember
him at all, and it's so... And

03:05:10.890 --> 03:05:15.930
it... But Grant was very generous.
He gave 25,000 rations to Lee's army,

03:05:17.170 --> 03:05:20.907
and to survive. Lee began
the retreat with about 60,000

03:05:20.990 --> 03:05:24.807
men, only fewer than 30,000.
His army disintegrated in a week. He only

03:05:24.890 --> 03:05:30.910
surrendered 28,000 at Appomattox. They
were allowed to sign a parole and go home.

03:05:31.490 --> 03:05:35.470
- But at the peak of their,
you know Grant versus Lee,

03:05:36.070 --> 03:05:37.967
surely they were
thinking about each other.

03:05:38.050 --> 03:05:41.767
- They were, and I've always found
this interesting. They tended to be very

03:05:41.850 --> 03:05:44.660
generous toward other opponents.

03:05:44.950 --> 03:05:50.280
But Grant pretended that Lee wasn't
the best opponent he ever faced.

03:05:50.630 --> 03:05:54.327
And Lee pretended that Grant
wasn't the best opponent he

03:05:54.410 --> 03:05:57.257
ever faced, and it's ludicrous that
they would've actually thought that.

03:05:57.340 --> 03:05:59.787
They clearly found out
that that wasn't true.

03:05:59.870 --> 03:06:03.067
- It's interesting when people,
when people do that. I sometimes,

03:06:03.150 --> 03:06:05.790
like, wonder, how is it possible,

03:06:07.410 --> 03:06:10.870
um... There's just a million
examples of this. For example,

03:06:10.990 --> 03:06:15.167
Hitler just completely dismissed
America as a military force.

03:06:15.250 --> 03:06:17.611
- Oh, it's noth- they're a bunch of...
Yes, they're soft.

03:06:17.695 --> 03:06:18.867
They'll never do anything.

03:06:18.950 --> 03:06:22.007
- I have to say, it's probably
some silly psychological

03:06:22.090 --> 03:06:26.007
things. You s- you make up
your mind for some stupid reason.

03:06:26.090 --> 03:06:26.967
- And then you stick to it.

03:06:27.050 --> 03:06:30.907
- And you stick to it, and you almost,
like, against... I mean, with a lot

03:06:30.990 --> 03:06:35.740
of great generals and leaders, you
have to be stubborn in the face of facts

03:06:36.870 --> 03:06:37.703
sometimes-

03:06:38.030 --> 03:06:41.320
- You do, yeah -... because, like,
all the rational people will tell you,

03:06:41.403 --> 03:06:42.753
you get this with Napoleon,

03:06:43.110 --> 03:06:47.047
like, "What are you doing?" Like, the
generals, the wise, smart people around

03:06:47.130 --> 03:06:48.267
you will say, "Don't do this."

03:06:48.350 --> 03:06:51.670
- Grant's a perfect example of that,
Lex, at Vicksburg, where he,

03:06:52.790 --> 03:06:55.470
he, his problem was to get his army
on the same side of the river as

03:06:55.553 --> 03:06:56.547
the Confederates, where he

03:06:56.630 --> 03:07:00.387
could come against Vicksburg, and the
only way to do it was have the Union

03:07:00.470 --> 03:07:03.829
Navy run p- and he said to do it.
"No, don't do it," said the Navy. "No,

03:07:03.912 --> 03:07:04.617
don't. No.

03:07:04.700 --> 03:07:10.327
Sherman, no. Don't..." Everybody said no,
and Grant said, "Do it." And it worked.

03:07:10.410 --> 03:07:14.267
- I mean, it has to do with the,
with I guess you've criticized once or

03:07:14.350 --> 03:07:16.150
twice M- this guy named McClellan.

03:07:16.370 --> 03:07:17.520
- I did, once or twice.

03:07:18.490 --> 03:07:22.517
- That you know, you do have to take risk.
You have to take risk in order-

03:07:22.600 --> 03:07:23.367
... to win battles.

03:07:23.450 --> 03:07:27.267
- And I'll finish w- I can't resist
getting one more shot. Lee is often

03:07:27.350 --> 03:07:31.147
quoted as saying that McClellan was
the most talented general he ever faced.

03:07:31.230 --> 03:07:32.070
- Really? Hmm.

03:07:32.160 --> 03:07:35.787
- Yeah, but that's, but what he actually
said, and the quote started with his

03:07:35.870 --> 03:07:39.687
nephew, Fitzhugh Lee, who wrote it
in a book after the war. Lee called

03:07:39.770 --> 03:07:43.587
McClellan the most intellectual
General he ever faced.

03:07:43.670 --> 03:07:47.517
And I think that is not a compliment.
I think Lee is saying, "Yeah, he's

03:07:47.600 --> 03:07:51.717
an intellectual. He thinks about this, he
thinks about... He never does anything."

03:07:51.800 --> 03:07:55.757
"He thinks about things." So I think it's
actually a slight, not a compliment to

03:07:55.840 --> 03:07:57.180
McL- I really do.

03:07:57.380 --> 03:08:01.330
Because he couldn't have possibly thought
he was the most talented one that he,

03:08:01.480 --> 03:08:04.980
that he faced. - I think it's
a polite wink and nod to criticize.

03:08:05.200 --> 03:08:06.300
- It's a wink and nod.

03:08:07.100 --> 03:08:10.957
- Uh, all right. How does
the war end? So clearly there's

03:08:11.040 --> 03:08:14.000
the turning point with Atlanta
and Sherman's March.

03:08:14.240 --> 03:08:17.860
- And the election of '64 is the
that drives the dagger into... I mean,

03:08:18.140 --> 03:08:19.090
there's no question

03:08:19.800 --> 03:08:23.677
but that the war will be pushed to the end
because Lincoln and Grant are in charge

03:08:23.760 --> 03:08:25.827
and they are not gonna
take their foot off the-

03:08:25.910 --> 03:08:29.757
... the pedal. They're gonna push it.
So it's a question of time. It drags

03:08:29.840 --> 03:08:31.740
on, still drags on another six months.

03:08:33.000 --> 03:08:37.440
Lee surrenders on April 9th.
They lay down their arms on April 12th.

03:08:38.400 --> 03:08:42.277
There are still tens of thousands
of Confederate soldiers under arms

03:08:42.360 --> 03:08:45.997
in different places, but it's
a measure of how important Lee and his

03:08:46.080 --> 03:08:50.600
army were that for everybody, virtually
on both sides, that's the end of the war.

03:08:50.880 --> 03:08:53.564
Lee surrendered. There's no
reason to push this any farther,

03:08:53.647 --> 03:08:54.737
and other surrenders came

03:08:54.820 --> 03:08:58.717
pretty quickly. Jefferson Davis was one
of the few people who didn't figure

03:08:58.800 --> 03:09:01.373
that out. He thought something
was still possible, but it wasn't.

03:09:01.456 --> 03:09:02.577
That was the end of the war.

03:09:02.660 --> 03:09:06.577
The final surrenders are over in June,
and that's it, and everybody gets

03:09:06.660 --> 03:09:10.617
the same terms that Grant offered to Lee.
His friend Sherman tried to do

03:09:10.700 --> 03:09:14.180
more, and they had to reign Sherman
in and say, "You can't... No.

03:09:14.700 --> 03:09:17.450
You're a general, not a politician.
You can't do this."

03:09:17.860 --> 03:09:21.777
- So can we talk about April 9th? I mean,
this is a really important moment of

03:09:21.860 --> 03:09:27.340
what Grant did in terms of how
he treated the opposing army.

03:09:27.780 --> 03:09:31.557
- As I said earlier, he treated him
the way that he knew that Lincoln

03:09:31.640 --> 03:09:35.630
wanted them treated and, and it may
be that Grant thought exactly the same

03:09:35.740 --> 03:09:39.300
thing. But I think this is
a measure of how Grant was a

03:09:39.480 --> 03:09:43.117
very... He's a soldier who
knew his place. He has civilian

03:09:43.200 --> 03:09:46.917
superiors. Other generals
didn't act that way. I know I'm

03:09:47.000 --> 03:09:51.037
beating up on McClellan. He's one. Joseph
Johnston on the Confederate side is one.

03:09:51.120 --> 03:09:54.470
They didn't really defer to their
civilian superiors. US Grant did,

03:09:55.200 --> 03:09:59.120
and he... And this is one of those cases.
He sent the rations. He,

03:09:59.340 --> 03:10:02.917
he didn't know that Confederates
supplied their own horses. If you're a

03:10:03.000 --> 03:10:06.877
Confederate cavalryman, the government
didn't buy a horse for you. You had to

03:10:06.960 --> 03:10:10.890
supply your horse, and if a horse
got killed, you had to buy another one

03:10:11.420 --> 03:10:15.280
or they'd make you an infantryman.
When Grant found that out, he let them

03:10:15.380 --> 03:10:19.357
take their horses home with them. He said
they'll need them for the planting and so

03:10:19.440 --> 03:10:20.980
forth. He did everything

03:10:21.960 --> 03:10:25.437
in a generous way that you could
reasonably think might happen in a

03:10:25.520 --> 03:10:27.982
situation like... It's still
an unconditional surrender.

03:10:28.065 --> 03:10:32.090
You are surrendering. You're going home.
You're not an army anymore. But

03:10:32.920 --> 03:10:34.920
nobody's going to prisoner of war camps.

03:10:35.740 --> 03:10:38.720
Nobody's doing those things. You lay
your arms down, you lay your flags down,

03:10:38.803 --> 03:10:41.620
and you lay your ammunition
down, but that's it.

03:10:41.880 --> 03:10:45.023
- Yeah, but there's certain symbolic
actions like this that can lay

03:10:45.106 --> 03:10:47.220
the groundwork for long-term peace.

03:10:47.640 --> 03:10:51.557
- Yes. He didn't demand that Lee give
him his sword. He didn't do that, none

03:10:51.640 --> 03:10:54.140
of those kinds of things
that you could have done.

03:10:54.310 --> 03:10:57.977
- Sorry to linger on it, but there's
certain elements of humiliation that

03:10:58.060 --> 03:11:01.690
prevent long-term peace.
I have to go back to Hitler

03:11:02.740 --> 03:11:05.600
and what Germany experienced
at the end of World War I.

03:11:05.840 --> 03:11:08.817
- You mean Versailles, the terms
from Versailles. No question about it.

03:11:08.900 --> 03:11:12.817
- And some of it is economic,
some of it is geopolitics, but some of it

03:11:12.900 --> 03:11:15.917
is just on a basic
human level humiliation.

03:11:16.000 --> 03:11:19.797
And people are just not good
with humiliation. They remember.

03:11:19.880 --> 03:11:23.157
- No, and they can turn that around
into something you don't want it to

03:11:23.240 --> 03:11:27.117
be to get back national pride.
But Lincoln's

03:11:27.200 --> 03:11:31.100
bottom line was the point
is to put the nation back together

03:11:31.260 --> 03:11:34.857
and you... The good way to start that is
not by imprisoning tens of thousands of

03:11:34.940 --> 03:11:37.750
Confederate soldiers. That's not
the way to do it. Send them home.

03:11:37.833 --> 03:11:42.297
Make them accept the terms, but then
send them home and leave them alone. The

03:11:42.380 --> 03:11:46.120
president wanted to go after Lincoln's
death. Andrew Johnson wanted to go

03:11:46.240 --> 03:11:50.000
after Lee, and Grant said,
"I'll resign if you do..." 'Cause I

03:11:50.820 --> 03:11:54.077
... His term... We extended the terms.
He's abiding by the terms.

03:11:54.160 --> 03:11:55.760
You can't change the rules here.

03:11:55.880 --> 03:11:59.134
- But by the way, like it should be
said, is that that's not easy to do.

03:11:59.217 --> 03:12:02.540
You have just fought an extremely
bloody battle. There's hatred.

03:12:02.760 --> 03:12:06.557
- There were lots of people who wanted
Davis to swing and Lee to swing. "Kill

03:12:06.640 --> 03:12:10.317
them. Execute the rebels. They're rebels
and traitors who almost destroyed the

03:12:10.400 --> 03:12:13.820
nation. Why are you
being so easy on them?"

03:12:13.980 --> 03:12:17.777
Thaddeus Stevens was on board that train.
Lots of radical Republicans

03:12:17.860 --> 03:12:20.425
were. "You need to punish them for what...
You haven't punished them enough.

03:12:20.509 --> 03:12:22.459
You're not punished them. Yes, you took

03:12:23.340 --> 03:12:25.295
slavery away from them,
but that's not enough.

03:12:25.379 --> 03:12:27.197
They should be punished more for what they

03:12:27.280 --> 03:12:31.900
did." "Confiscate their lands.
Take their wealth away from them."

03:12:32.880 --> 03:12:35.900
- So what happened next
in terms of reconciliation?

03:12:36.160 --> 03:12:39.560
- Well, Lincoln got assassinated
just a few days after-

03:12:39.760 --> 03:12:41.417
... Lee's troops laid down their arms.

03:12:41.500 --> 03:12:45.906
- Can you talk to the assassination?
He was shot five days after the surrender,

03:12:45.989 --> 03:12:50.220
right? - Yes, he was. - So who was Booth?
Who was John Wilkes Booth?

03:12:51.240 --> 03:12:54.800
Why did he assassinate Lincoln,
and what impact did that have?

03:12:54.890 --> 03:12:56.720
- Well, he was the youngest

03:12:57.540 --> 03:13:01.440
of the most famous acting family
in the United States. Junius Brutus

03:13:01.620 --> 03:13:05.250
Booth and Edwin Booth, his father
and older brother, were very famous

03:13:05.400 --> 03:13:08.624
actors, and he was a very successful
actor, too, John Wilkes Booth was.

03:13:08.708 --> 03:13:12.400
He was good at jumping around
the stage, and he was very athletic.

03:13:12.980 --> 03:13:17.017
Um, and an ardent pro-Confederate.

03:13:17.100 --> 03:13:21.680
- That's the more important-... aspect -
Not ardent, not ardent enough to put on a

03:13:21.780 --> 03:13:26.030
uniform for the Confederacy,
but ardent enough to, you know-

03:13:26.140 --> 03:13:30.120
... argue for the Confederacy.
He claims... I mean, not claims. He,

03:13:30.280 --> 03:13:34.180
he heard Lincoln make a statement about
maybe Black soldiers getting the vote,

03:13:34.480 --> 03:13:38.430
and he said that was it for him, he...
that somebody needed to kill the tyrant.

03:13:39.000 --> 03:13:41.477
This is very...
This is after Lee had surrendered.

03:13:41.560 --> 03:13:44.440
- So he was on the Union side.

03:13:44.580 --> 03:13:48.760
- Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, he- -
But Lincoln was a tyrant in his eyes.

03:13:48.960 --> 03:13:52.617
- Lincoln was a tyrant because of his
sta- because of his treatment of the white

03:13:52.700 --> 03:13:57.757
South. And he had plotted earlier
to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for

03:13:57.840 --> 03:14:01.737
ransom, and that didn't work out.
So then he got this little group of

03:14:01.820 --> 03:14:05.550
losers around him to help.
I mean, real misfits. Their,

03:14:05.660 --> 03:14:09.580
their plan was to kill Seward,
Andrew Johnson. They were gonna

03:14:10.000 --> 03:14:12.780
cut off the top leadership
of the United States.

03:14:12.900 --> 03:14:15.386
- Yep. - Kill the vice, kill
the president, kill the vice president,

03:14:15.469 --> 03:14:18.097
kill the secretary of state.
That's what they wanted to do.

03:14:18.180 --> 03:14:20.497
- On the Johnson side, they chickened out.

03:14:20.580 --> 03:14:23.964
- That guy chickened out. A guy named
Lewis Powell was sent to kill Seward.

03:14:24.048 --> 03:14:27.580
Seward had been in an accident
and had his neck in a big brace,

03:14:28.520 --> 03:14:32.330
and he slashed at Seward,
huge scars on the side of his face,

03:14:32.420 --> 03:14:36.237
but the knife hit the brace and didn't
kill Seward. So Seward was disfigured. His

03:14:36.320 --> 03:14:37.153
son was wounded.

03:14:38.110 --> 03:14:42.360
The guy who was supposed to kill Johnson
chickened out, and Booth killed Lincoln.

03:14:42.720 --> 03:14:46.517
And there was a manhunt for Lincoln,
or for Booth. It took a while, and he

03:14:46.600 --> 03:14:50.120
was shot in a barn rather
than captured and put on trial.

03:14:51.060 --> 03:14:54.877
But four of the conspirators were
put on trial, including one woman, a

03:14:54.960 --> 03:14:58.071
woman named Mary Surratt, who ran a
boarding house where some of them stayed,

03:14:58.155 --> 03:15:04.580
and they were all hanged at Old Capitol
Prison. And the combination of th-

03:15:04.700 --> 03:15:08.377
that hanging, they were tried
by a military commission and

03:15:08.460 --> 03:15:12.437
hanged, but they also put on trial
and hanged the commandant of

03:15:12.520 --> 03:15:16.377
Andersonville Prison, which was the most
infamous of the Confederate prison of war

03:15:16.460 --> 03:15:20.217
camps. They hanged him as well.
And it seemed that

03:15:20.300 --> 03:15:24.157
those hangings sort of took
the edge, the sort of we

03:15:24.240 --> 03:15:28.117
need some retribution edge off
attitudes in the North. I think

03:15:28.200 --> 03:15:32.810
those things helped offset Lincoln's
assassination in a sort of odd way

03:15:33.700 --> 03:15:37.480
because the temperature
went down after that.

03:15:37.960 --> 03:15:40.490
- You talk about,
as maybe a bit of an aside,

03:15:42.080 --> 03:15:47.657
But that we Americans like to spin up
conspiracy theories about assassinations-

03:15:47.740 --> 03:15:51.803
- We do -... of our presidents.
So that's certainly very true,

03:15:51.887 --> 03:15:55.020
maybe truer than most about
Lincoln's assassination.

03:15:55.700 --> 03:15:59.497
- There was a long literature actually.
It began with a chemist named

03:15:59.580 --> 03:16:05.097
Otto Eisenschiml many, many decades ago
that implicated Secretary of War Stanton-

03:16:05.180 --> 03:16:08.840
... and blamed the radicals were
unhappy with Lincoln for not being

03:16:09.000 --> 03:16:12.860
harsher on the former Confederates,
and what they wanted to do was

03:16:13.120 --> 03:16:16.653
get him out of the way. They thought they
could manipulate Andrew Johnson if they

03:16:16.736 --> 03:16:20.800
got Andrew Johnson in charge. So they,

03:16:21.040 --> 03:16:24.300
then they would pose these questions.
How come no one was guarding Lincoln

03:16:24.383 --> 03:16:24.837
that night?

03:16:24.920 --> 03:16:28.537
How come the only bridge over the Potomac
that wasn't guarded is the one that Booth

03:16:28.620 --> 03:16:30.540
escaped across? All of these.

03:16:31.720 --> 03:16:35.617
How come Grant didn't go to the play
with Lincoln? The Lincolns asked them.

03:16:35.700 --> 03:16:38.306
Well, they didn't 'cause Mrs.
Lincoln didn't like... I mean, the, Mrs.

03:16:38.389 --> 03:16:39.597
Grant didn't like Mrs. Lincoln.

03:16:39.680 --> 03:16:41.900
I mean, you, there are
answers to all the questions.

03:16:41.983 --> 03:16:43.497
But they put all these together,

03:16:43.580 --> 03:16:47.330
added two and two and got
five, and said that it was,

03:16:47.620 --> 03:16:51.437
it was a plot on the part of the radical
wing of the Republican Party to get rid of

03:16:51.520 --> 03:16:54.770
Lincoln 'cause Lincoln didn't
wanna be harsh enough on the South.

03:16:55.560 --> 03:16:58.980
- Yeah, it's difficult
to believe that dramatic,

03:16:59.660 --> 03:17:01.990
sometimes catastrophic things happen for

03:17:02.120 --> 03:17:06.620
seemingly... That, that like
the random, as you said, loser

03:17:07.520 --> 03:17:11.417
- It's not satisfying. You want a more
satisfying, and that is a big conspiracy

03:17:11.500 --> 03:17:15.357
is better. There are all these forces at
work to get rid of Lincoln, not just that

03:17:15.440 --> 03:17:18.997
the one guy assigned to guard
Lincoln, there's no Secret Service

03:17:19.080 --> 03:17:22.640
then, went across
the street to get a drink.

03:17:22.780 --> 03:17:26.597
And Booth had played in that theater many
times. He knew exactly the layout. He'd

03:17:26.680 --> 03:17:30.237
come in earlier. He'd arrange... I mean,
it, it just, that's the way it worked out.

03:17:30.320 --> 03:17:33.162
- And I have to say, it,
it's kinda interesting.

03:17:33.246 --> 03:17:35.440
I have to be honest with my own mind

03:17:36.400 --> 03:17:39.100
that, like, I love a good
conspiracy. My brain does.

03:17:39.520 --> 03:17:40.777
- Every, almost everybody does.

03:17:40.860 --> 03:17:44.840
- I think it's, what is it?
It, it's maybe depressing or

03:17:44.940 --> 03:17:50.111
heartbreaking to know that so much
destruction can be caused by random

03:17:50.195 --> 03:17:51.028
events.

03:17:52.120 --> 03:17:55.800
You want there to be a larger

03:17:58.240 --> 03:18:05.057
system at play that it makes
you feel like there's a meaning

03:18:05.140 --> 03:18:11.150
to this whole thing as opposed to the
tides of history can turn on a stupid

03:18:11.234 --> 03:18:16.087
actor shooting one of the greatest, if
not the greatest president in the history

03:18:16.170 --> 03:18:19.297
- That's correct.
Killing him, jumping out of

03:18:19.380 --> 03:18:23.240
the presidential box, breaking
his leg when he hit the stage,

03:18:23.440 --> 03:18:25.900
limping off, and getting away. Yep.

03:18:26.060 --> 03:18:29.960
- Over 700,000 people dead, these epic

03:18:30.080 --> 03:18:34.920
battles, all of that. Lincoln
survives all of it, and then there's

03:18:36.180 --> 03:18:38.318
- When they had the grand
review in Washington,

03:18:38.401 --> 03:18:40.097
when Sherman's armies and the Army of

03:18:40.180 --> 03:18:43.557
the Potomac marched over
two days, this amazing

03:18:43.640 --> 03:18:46.980
display of the troops that had won
the war, and troops who had run the war,

03:18:47.064 --> 03:18:51.457
one of the most common comments was,
"Lincoln's not here. Of all people who

03:18:51.540 --> 03:18:53.441
should've been here,
Lincoln should've been here,

03:18:53.524 --> 03:18:54.837
and he doesn't get to watch this.

03:18:54.920 --> 03:18:57.320
He's not in the presidential
box watching this."

03:18:58.180 --> 03:19:00.030
And the soldiers talked about it too.

03:19:00.880 --> 03:19:04.780
- It's heartbreaking, really, especially
I would've loved to see his evolution

03:19:05.160 --> 03:19:12.160
as a leader, as a human being, and the
words he may have, he may have found

03:19:14.280 --> 03:19:18.400
to direct us as a country, you know,
in the, in the Reconstruction.

03:19:18.620 --> 03:19:22.077
- Yep. Would've been different.
We can't tell how different.

03:19:22.160 --> 03:19:26.440
But it would've been different, and I
think it would've worked more smoothly.

03:19:27.220 --> 03:19:31.500
- What was Reconstruction?
How rocky was it?

03:19:32.240 --> 03:19:36.117
- The white South liked to talk about the
occupation of the South and how they were

03:19:36.200 --> 03:19:39.497
under the boot heel. There
was never an occupation of the former

03:19:39.580 --> 03:19:43.357
Confederacy 'cause there never were
enough troops available to do it. The

03:19:43.440 --> 03:19:45.690
most that were ever
in the former Confederacy

03:19:46.610 --> 03:19:50.230
Which is three quarters of a
million square miles in size, was

03:19:50.410 --> 03:19:53.567
30,000 men, and that was
for a very short period. By

03:19:53.650 --> 03:19:57.527
1870, there were only about
10,000 men left. And the reason

03:19:57.610 --> 03:20:01.307
there wasn't an occupation is because
the Northern population wasn't

03:20:01.390 --> 03:20:05.207
willing to either pay for it
or keep men in uniform long

03:20:05.290 --> 03:20:08.422
enough to make the White South do
something that they didn't really care

03:20:08.505 --> 03:20:11.410
about, which was give full equal rights

03:20:12.250 --> 03:20:15.967
to formerly enslaved Black people.
The White North just wasn't, they weren't

03:20:16.050 --> 03:20:18.810
willing to do that. They were willing,

03:20:20.010 --> 03:20:22.950
largely because of Andrew
Johnson's intransigence

03:20:23.770 --> 03:20:28.270
in the summer of 1865 when he started to
act like the South hadn't even quite lost,

03:20:29.250 --> 03:20:32.827
they were willing to push far enough
to get the 14th Amendment and the

03:20:32.910 --> 03:20:36.730
15th Amendment, and that to me is sort
of miraculous considering what the

03:20:36.830 --> 03:20:40.767
attitudes among white people were in the
United States. You got the vote given to

03:20:40.850 --> 03:20:44.530
African American men, and you
got the 14th Amendment. So it's,

03:20:44.650 --> 03:20:48.517
that's kind of amazing.
And those don't go away. They're

03:20:48.600 --> 03:20:52.207
still there on the books to be
interpreted correctly down the line

03:20:52.290 --> 03:20:55.907
somewhere, even though
Jim Crow is a long and ugly

03:20:55.990 --> 03:20:59.467
episode of what comes.
I mean the Confederates just, they weren't

03:20:59.550 --> 03:21:03.307
confused about being defeated.
They were crushed, and

03:21:03.390 --> 03:21:06.907
so they vastly scaled back what
they wanted. They had wanted a

03:21:06.990 --> 03:21:10.867
slave-holding republic.
They scaled back for just having white

03:21:10.950 --> 03:21:14.827
supremacy and the North,
and that's what happened. You

03:21:14.910 --> 03:21:18.560
ended up with white supremacy
and Jim Crow intact--

03:21:18.690 --> 03:21:21.690
... which is a lot different
than keeping slavery intact.

03:21:22.070 --> 03:21:27.893
- And that set off the whole process
of the Civil Rights Movement that lasted

03:21:27.976 --> 03:21:28.810
decades.

03:21:29.250 --> 03:21:33.910
- I mean, Jim Crow is the clearest
expression of the White South's

03:21:34.650 --> 03:21:38.570
reaction to defeat at Appomattox.
"Okay, what can

03:21:38.690 --> 03:21:41.330
we get out of this?
We can't get what we wanted.

03:21:42.170 --> 03:21:46.070
This is the next best thing, and that's
what we'll get. We'll get Jim Crow."

03:21:47.350 --> 03:21:51.050
- You know, when you walk the ground
of some of these battles, Gettysburg,

03:21:51.470 --> 03:21:54.520
is there something you can only
experience when you're there?

03:21:54.970 --> 03:21:58.587
- In my experience, you cannot replicate
in a classroom what you can do at a

03:21:58.670 --> 03:22:00.990
historic site, I mean
a really historic site.

03:22:01.790 --> 03:22:05.547
You can... You get people to a place
like that, I've given untold

03:22:05.630 --> 03:22:08.350
tours on battlefields
and other historic places.

03:22:09.230 --> 03:22:13.147
You can talk about so much more than
just what you can s- First of all, you can

03:22:13.230 --> 03:22:16.415
you can understand what happened on the
battlefield better than reading about it

03:22:16.499 --> 03:22:19.499
or looking at maps 'cause
the terrain makes it much clearer.

03:22:19.720 --> 03:22:23.647
But you can also talk about, okay,
what are the men like in the armies who

03:22:23.730 --> 03:22:27.060
are here? Why are they in the ser- A lot
of the things we've talked about today,

03:22:27.143 --> 03:22:31.250
what's the status of the war now? What are
the political situations behind the lines?

03:22:31.333 --> 03:22:35.150
What difference will this battle make?
What will happen if the

03:22:35.290 --> 03:22:38.967
Federals prevail or if
the Confederates prevail? Or you can

03:22:39.050 --> 03:22:42.607
use, at a place like Gettysburg,
the memorial landscape as a

03:22:42.690 --> 03:22:46.327
wonderful way to talk about memory from
the war. Look at the inscriptions on the

03:22:46.410 --> 03:22:48.746
monuments. What was important
when they put these up?

03:22:48.829 --> 03:22:50.429
And the later monuments, it's...

03:22:51.370 --> 03:22:58.050
The opportunities for a teacher on one
of these sites are just almost unlimited.

03:22:58.570 --> 03:23:02.147
- And I don't want to be too woo-woo,
but I also believe from some of the

03:23:02.230 --> 03:23:06.547
experience I've had that the land has
a kind of memory. I don't know what it is.

03:23:06.630 --> 03:23:10.147
- They have a speech in the
cemetery at Gettysburg on the

03:23:10.230 --> 03:23:14.167
anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address every year, and I was asked to do

03:23:14.250 --> 03:23:18.080
that a few years ago,
and it was just... It was amazing

03:23:18.310 --> 03:23:21.260
to me. I mean, there have been
very few things in my career

03:23:21.910 --> 03:23:25.847
that are like that, and we want...
We talked, we stopped in

03:23:25.930 --> 03:23:29.347
different parts of the cem- There were a
thousand people there. It was an extremely

03:23:29.430 --> 03:23:35.987
cold, windy November 19th, and it
was just... Talk about feeling the ghosts

03:23:36.070 --> 03:23:39.947
of the past. It was really something
that I've only felt a few times

03:23:40.030 --> 03:23:43.070
in my life. It was really
interesting, really interesting.

03:23:44.010 --> 03:23:47.967
- You've mentioned the Lost Cause a few
times. What was the Lost Cause? Who

03:23:48.050 --> 03:23:49.787
created it, and what did it claim?

03:23:49.870 --> 03:23:53.767
- The Lost Cause is the
Confederate memory stream of

03:23:53.850 --> 03:23:57.667
the war, and let me just say very,
very briefly, I think there are four main

03:23:57.750 --> 03:24:01.407
ways the generation that experienced
the war remembered it. The one

03:24:01.490 --> 03:24:05.467
remembered by the most people would be
the majority of white Northerners is what

03:24:05.550 --> 03:24:08.592
I call the Union Cause and that the
greatest outcome of the war was putting

03:24:08.675 --> 03:24:09.227
the nation back

03:24:09.310 --> 03:24:13.247
together. It's also good that slavery
was killed. That's important, but

03:24:13.330 --> 03:24:17.247
the most important thing was putting
the nation back together. The Emancipation

03:24:17.330 --> 03:24:20.891
Cause memory of the war is, yes, it's
a good thing that the Union was saved,

03:24:20.974 --> 03:24:24.947
but the most important thing is you killed
slavery. You got rid of this monstrous

03:24:25.030 --> 03:24:27.767
institution that had mocked
that language in the founding

03:24:27.850 --> 03:24:32.010
documents. So those are both
the winners' versions of the war.

03:24:32.970 --> 03:24:35.641
The Confederate version,
the Confederates are in a tough spot.

03:24:35.724 --> 03:24:36.924
How do we make something

03:24:37.190 --> 03:24:42.510
palatable out of this catastrophic
decision we made in 1861?

03:24:43.390 --> 03:24:46.406
We'll do this to save slavery,
and four years later, slavery's dead,

03:24:46.490 --> 03:24:47.267
and a third of all

03:24:47.350 --> 03:24:52.130
our white military-age boys are dead.
So here's what we're gonna do.

03:24:53.070 --> 03:24:56.247
First of all, it wasn't about slavery.
Let's pretend it wasn't about slavery.

03:24:56.330 --> 03:24:59.427
It was about high constitutional
principles. It was about states' rights-

03:24:59.510 --> 03:25:02.427
- States' rights -... as opposed
to central authority oppressing people.

03:25:02.510 --> 03:25:03.567
- Right, right, right.

03:25:03.650 --> 03:25:07.407
- And second, we never could have won.
It was a hopeless fight

03:25:07.490 --> 03:25:10.730
against long odds, and so
it was a gallant effort in,

03:25:11.970 --> 03:25:15.887
in pursuit of constitutional rights.
Okay, that gets us off the

03:25:15.970 --> 03:25:19.747
hook there. And who are we gonna look to?
Should we talk about Jefferson Davis?

03:25:19.830 --> 03:25:22.641
No, we didn't even like him during
the war. I know who we'll talk about.

03:25:22.725 --> 03:25:23.767
Let's talk about Robert E.

03:25:23.850 --> 03:25:27.767
Lee. He won victories against
the odds. So these are kind

03:25:27.850 --> 03:25:31.587
of the main tenets of the Lost Cause. It
wasn't about slavery. We never could have

03:25:31.670 --> 03:25:35.587
won. There's no loss of honor in losing a
battle you never could have won, but that

03:25:35.670 --> 03:25:37.598
you waged for high
constitutional principle.

03:25:37.681 --> 03:25:39.467
And let's talk about Lee 'cause we don't

03:25:39.550 --> 03:25:42.777
wanna talk about Jefferson Davis, and
there's almost no one else to talk about

03:25:42.861 --> 03:25:43.347
except maybe

03:25:43.430 --> 03:25:47.130
Stonewall Jackson. Those will be
our two boys that we talk about the most.

03:25:47.410 --> 03:25:48.790
And that is basically

03:25:49.650 --> 03:25:52.904
The short form of the Lost Cause.
The fourth way that people remembered,

03:25:52.987 --> 03:25:56.737
and this came a little bit later,
was the reconciliation cause where you...

03:25:57.170 --> 03:26:00.270
This is kind of white Northerners
and white Southerners agreeing not to talk

03:26:00.354 --> 03:26:00.907
about slavery.

03:26:00.990 --> 03:26:04.730
Don't talk about emancipation. Let's
talk about shared American virtues of

03:26:04.830 --> 03:26:06.670
courage and so forth.

03:26:07.350 --> 03:26:11.107
- So some of that still persists
with us today. We look at the

03:26:11.190 --> 03:26:16.630
Confederate flag. So some historians argue
for the long, quote, "long Civil War."

03:26:16.730 --> 03:26:20.380
- Sure, and it's really long. It's
the Civil War that never ends kind of,

03:26:20.770 --> 03:26:24.607
and I certainly think that there
are ramifications from the Civil

03:26:24.690 --> 03:26:27.108
War that have never ended.
But I think the Civil War ended,

03:26:27.191 --> 03:26:28.587
and I think it ended in the early

03:26:28.670 --> 03:26:32.490
summer of 1865 with the destruction
of the Confederate government,

03:26:33.090 --> 03:26:36.850
the absolute dissolution of all
the Confederate military forces.

03:26:37.370 --> 03:26:40.792
I think that is the end of the Civil War.
People at the time thought it was,

03:26:40.875 --> 03:26:45.330
too. What comes afterward, the long
coda, Reconstruction is a 12-year

03:26:45.430 --> 03:26:49.227
coda to a four-year war that works
out some of the difficulties of

03:26:49.310 --> 03:26:51.560
how you put the nation back together.

03:26:52.790 --> 03:26:56.327
And then beyond that, you have these
different memory streams that have

03:26:56.410 --> 03:26:59.747
been contending with one another
that still... Some of which still

03:26:59.830 --> 03:27:03.407
reverberate today, and including
what are you gonna do with the

03:27:03.490 --> 03:27:06.594
Confederate flag, which most of...
There are a lot of nitwits around.

03:27:06.677 --> 03:27:10.207
They don't even know what
the Confederate flag was. They fly a

03:27:10.290 --> 03:27:13.970
rectangular version of the St.
Andrew's cross.

03:27:14.290 --> 03:27:18.107
That is not the Confederate flag.
They call it the Confederate flag.

03:27:18.190 --> 03:27:21.319
The Confederate flag that had a St.
Andrew's cross wasn't a rectangle,

03:27:21.403 --> 03:27:25.610
it was a square, and the actual
Confederate flag had three big

03:27:25.750 --> 03:27:29.810
bars and then stars up in... It looks
kind of like the United States flag.

03:27:30.750 --> 03:27:34.627
They don't even know that, and they
go around flying it everywhere. It's a

03:27:34.710 --> 03:27:38.347
symbol and pretend that it
represents all kinds of things. The

03:27:38.430 --> 03:27:42.290
Confederate flag cannot be divorced
from all the times, that version of it,

03:27:42.390 --> 03:27:45.707
the St. Andrew's cross version.
Every Ku Klux Klan group flew it.

03:27:45.790 --> 03:27:48.470
Every... It's...
You just can't sanitize it. And

03:27:49.370 --> 03:27:52.687
I mean, I saw Confederate flags in Britain

03:27:52.770 --> 03:27:58.107
and Ireland. I mean, it's become a sort
of up yours symbol I think in some places-

03:27:58.190 --> 03:28:01.807
... of just sort of rebellion,
not necessarily-... tethered specifically-

03:28:01.890 --> 03:28:05.357
- Rebellion against inst- institutions
-... against authority and institutions-

03:28:05.440 --> 03:28:09.347
... and the ruling class and the... But
that's... But here it has a very specific

03:28:09.430 --> 03:28:13.180
meaning, and you just can't separate it.
It's... People should quit trying.

03:28:13.690 --> 03:28:19.370
- So you taught at UVA and lived
through Charlottesville in 2017.

03:28:20.330 --> 03:28:24.250
Can you tell me what Charlottesville was?
What did it mean?

03:28:25.230 --> 03:28:30.890
- It's really interesting because
the day just before that, I did a long

03:28:31.830 --> 03:28:35.510
interview with Katie Couric,
who was working on a s-

03:28:35.970 --> 03:28:38.497
on a documentary about
Confederate monuments.

03:28:38.580 --> 03:28:42.407
And she and I spent two hours
talking, walking around the

03:28:42.490 --> 03:28:46.187
UVA campus, talking about the Confederate
monuments were there. She was a

03:28:46.270 --> 03:28:49.862
student at UVA. She said, "I didn't even
know these were here." I said, "Well,

03:28:49.946 --> 03:28:51.267
most people don't know they're here.

03:28:51.350 --> 03:28:55.147
They're not aware of this,
of this part of the landscape." We had

03:28:55.230 --> 03:28:59.027
no idea. Her film crew went out
the next day and filmed what was

03:28:59.110 --> 03:29:02.830
going on when they actually
had the violence and the

03:29:02.930 --> 03:29:05.626
crowd at the Lee statue,
which was downtown.

03:29:05.710 --> 03:29:08.110
I didn't go down to watch any of that.

03:29:08.810 --> 03:29:13.911
- What's your view on Confederate
monuments? You know,

03:29:13.994 --> 03:29:19.930
the monuments that capture these periods,
these complicated periods of our history.

03:29:20.470 --> 03:29:24.327
- Well, I have complicated views,
but my main vi- But my, my

03:29:24.410 --> 03:29:26.960
first reaction to that is they're
not all the same. They've all...

03:29:27.043 --> 03:29:32.150
They're treated as if they're all exactly
the same, and they're not. There's some...

03:29:32.490 --> 03:29:36.330
There are the Silent
Sam mo- which was on the

03:29:36.850 --> 03:29:40.687
campus at UNC for years.
It had... Some of the rhetoric

03:29:40.770 --> 03:29:44.310
when they dedicated that is
really horrific. It's horrible

03:29:44.430 --> 03:29:46.962
rhetoric, and I can understand why
that needed to go. There's the...

03:29:47.045 --> 03:29:48.187
what was called the Battle of

03:29:48.270 --> 03:29:53.587
Liberty Place monument in New
Orleans that was a white supremacist

03:29:53.670 --> 03:29:56.130
monument very definitely that.

03:29:57.210 --> 03:30:01.067
I think that local places
should decide these. Wherever the

03:30:01.150 --> 03:30:03.519
monument is, I think that's who
should decide, if the local...

03:30:03.603 --> 03:30:08.407
And I think there should be a process
how they decide it. Let people have a

03:30:08.490 --> 03:30:10.961
public hearing. But they did
that in Charlottesville actually,

03:30:11.045 --> 03:30:11.947
had a public hearing.

03:30:12.030 --> 03:30:15.930
I went and talked at it. Lots of other
scholars and local people talked at it,

03:30:16.830 --> 03:30:20.380
and then they had a commission that
they had set up, and the commission

03:30:20.870 --> 03:30:27.567
voted to keep the monuments in place
but re-examine them with text that put

03:30:27.650 --> 03:30:31.327
them in context and then put
up monuments, new monuments to

03:30:31.410 --> 03:30:33.530
previously ignored groups.

03:30:35.790 --> 03:30:39.667
The city council then came in and overrode
that and decided they took them all down

03:30:39.750 --> 03:30:42.693
in Charlottesville. They also took
down the Lewis & Clark monument,

03:30:42.777 --> 03:30:47.427
and there's a Geo- They took down all the
monuments that had been put up. I think

03:30:47.510 --> 03:30:52.013
many of the Confederate monuments, the
kind of ones on courthouse lawns and so

03:30:52.096 --> 03:30:52.929
forth

03:30:53.910 --> 03:30:57.407
that were put up by the Confederate
generation, that is the veterans

03:30:57.490 --> 03:31:00.890
themselves and the women who were
alive during the war, tend to be

03:31:01.030 --> 03:31:04.947
monuments to the common soldiers,
that just kind of lost generation

03:31:05.030 --> 03:31:11.140
of young men. The later
wave of monuments that came

03:31:11.930 --> 03:31:13.953
are... were put up by other
groups that were not...

03:31:14.037 --> 03:31:15.727
They're not really Confederate monuments.

03:31:15.810 --> 03:31:18.691
They're put up by... The ones
that were put up in the '20s and '30s.

03:31:18.774 --> 03:31:19.667
A third wave were put

03:31:19.750 --> 03:31:23.287
up in reaction to the civil rights
activities in the '50s and early

03:31:23.370 --> 03:31:26.947
'60s, and then a fourth
wave went up after the movie

03:31:27.030 --> 03:31:30.847
Gettysburg and Ken Burns' series.
But they're complicated, and I see them

03:31:30.930 --> 03:31:31.840
as historical...

03:31:33.130 --> 03:31:34.837
And I understand
the arguments on both sides.

03:31:34.920 --> 03:31:36.827
I understand people who
just say they're hateful.

03:31:36.910 --> 03:31:39.634
They bring up hateful remembrances.
We should get rid of all of them,

03:31:39.718 --> 03:31:40.618
every one of them.

03:31:41.040 --> 03:31:44.607
I used them as teaching tools in
Charlottesville for years with groups of

03:31:44.690 --> 03:31:48.090
teachers and students. There were
five monuments in Charlottesville,

03:31:49.010 --> 03:31:52.627
Two that were put up
by veterans—two that were put up by

03:31:52.710 --> 03:31:57.230
groups later, the Lee and Jackson statues
were those, and then there were two

03:31:58.080 --> 03:32:01.657
bronze plates on the side
of the rotunda that just listed

03:32:01.740 --> 03:32:05.577
UVA graduates who died in Confederate
service. Had about 500 names on them.

03:32:05.660 --> 03:32:09.237
Those were all of the Confederate
statues there, and it— I used

03:32:09.320 --> 03:32:13.177
them to talk about different
strains of memory and used

03:32:13.260 --> 03:32:17.097
recon- They're— The Lee, the main
tenor of the Lee statue when it

03:32:17.180 --> 03:32:21.140
went up was this reconciliationist Lee.
He, Lee

03:32:21.240 --> 03:32:24.246
wanted the nation back together.
Lee at Appomattox, that kind of stuff.

03:32:24.330 --> 03:32:25.157
Didn't have anything

03:32:25.240 --> 03:32:28.252
to do with Jim Crow or white supremacy,
although all the people who put them up

03:32:28.336 --> 03:32:29.286
probably would've--

03:32:29.600 --> 03:32:33.500
Clearly, we would consider them racist.
They were in favor of white supremacy.

03:32:34.360 --> 03:32:37.820
But you don't need statues
in the post-war South

03:32:38.220 --> 03:32:42.160
and the Jim Crow South.
You have the police force, state law,

03:32:42.300 --> 03:32:46.197
local law, state troopers.
That's what enforces white supremacy,

03:32:46.280 --> 03:32:49.240
not statues. The historian in me

03:32:50.480 --> 03:32:54.200
likes to use them as part
of the historical record,

03:32:54.780 --> 03:32:58.250
interpret them, use them to explain
different parts of U.S. history.

03:32:59.400 --> 03:33:03.120
That's how I used them.
Having said all that, I did, I do,

03:33:03.260 --> 03:33:05.594
did, and still do believe
that it should be a local issue.

03:33:05.678 --> 03:33:07.157
If a locality decides they don't want

03:33:07.240 --> 03:33:09.690
them up anymore,
then don't have them up anymore.

03:33:09.880 --> 03:33:13.677
- I think if we ignore history, we're
gonna be doomed to repeat it. I think

03:33:13.760 --> 03:33:17.500
that's... We should never
censor books. We should

03:33:17.600 --> 03:33:20.300
read books. We should read
Mein Kampf. We should read,

03:33:21.400 --> 03:33:25.117
Books that capture a certain moment
in history, even if it's a hateful

03:33:25.200 --> 03:33:28.637
moment in history, even if it's a
destructive moment in history. We need to

03:33:28.720 --> 03:33:29.553
understand-

03:33:29.780 --> 03:33:35.157
- Or have them read texts written
at the time that have language that we

03:33:35.240 --> 03:33:39.080
wouldn't use now. It helps you
understand the ti- It's, it's-

03:33:39.460 --> 03:33:43.197
There are a lot of hard edges in the past.
There are a lot of nice

03:33:43.280 --> 03:33:46.122
edges too that make you feel good,
but there are a lot of really hard edges

03:33:46.206 --> 03:33:47.157
in the past, and if you're

03:33:47.240 --> 03:33:51.217
gonna be serious about coming to terms
with history, you need to accept

03:33:51.300 --> 03:33:55.117
that and deal with them and talk
about them and not just try

03:33:55.200 --> 03:33:59.077
to erase them, I think.
There are a lot of books that people won't

03:33:59.160 --> 03:34:01.940
read now. I taught a graduate
seminar at one point

03:34:02.900 --> 03:34:06.820
on foundational 19th century
texts, and one of the texts

03:34:07.000 --> 03:34:10.880
I was gonna— that I assigned
in the class was Huckleberry Finn.

03:34:12.400 --> 03:34:15.392
And a lot of the students said they
wouldn't read Huckleberry Finn because

03:34:15.475 --> 03:34:16.097
they knew it had

03:34:16.180 --> 03:34:18.757
language in it that they...
And they didn't wanna see those words.

03:34:18.840 --> 03:34:23.600
- Even just reading about slavery,
American and otherwise, is hard.

03:34:24.600 --> 03:34:28.220
It's really difficult. But,
like, we're capable of that. We

03:34:28.360 --> 03:34:32.060
humans are capable of that.
And this doesn't somehow go

03:34:32.200 --> 03:34:36.097
away because we agree for it to

03:34:36.180 --> 03:34:40.060
go away. We can always return
back to that, maybe in other forms,

03:34:40.580 --> 03:34:44.550
in other ways. We can do evil
things unto each other. And I,

03:34:44.860 --> 03:34:48.457
I personally believe all of us are
capable of doing evil things unto each

03:34:48.540 --> 03:34:54.500
other. And the dark
reality of that is we too

03:34:54.960 --> 03:34:57.740
readily convince ourselves
that we're doing good.

03:34:58.360 --> 03:35:00.907
- Yeah, because if you're
doing good, you can do anything-

03:35:00.990 --> 03:35:05.537
... and it's justified if it's,
if it's good. If the end is good-

03:35:05.620 --> 03:35:08.317
... all bets are off.
You can do anything that you wanna do.

03:35:08.400 --> 03:35:14.457
- And reading history to realize that,
uh, we need to think deeper and more

03:35:14.540 --> 03:35:18.510
critically about our actions and,

03:35:18.840 --> 03:35:23.030
and also that history is complicated,
and there's a bunch of different forces,

03:35:24.220 --> 03:35:29.137
Is really important.
And also to realize that

03:35:29.220 --> 03:35:35.180
individuals can, can turn
the tides of history, can like,

03:35:36.180 --> 03:35:39.917
can lead to progress,
can stop evil doing when it's

03:35:40.000 --> 03:35:43.850
happening. All of those things. Like,
the power of the individual is immense.

03:35:44.300 --> 03:35:47.850
- Yes. I mean, coming back to the
monuments for a minute, it, it's also

03:35:48.120 --> 03:35:51.757
worth talking about that even at the time
there were people who... A lot of Union

03:35:51.840 --> 03:35:54.557
veterans were against putting
up Confederate monuments.

03:35:54.640 --> 03:35:55.737
Frederick Douglass had

03:35:55.820 --> 03:35:59.637
a problem with the Emancipation
Monument that was in Emancipation Park

03:35:59.720 --> 03:36:03.065
on Capitol Hill and talked about
the reasons why he had a pro- "Why is this

03:36:03.149 --> 03:36:07.457
the image that you chose for that
monument?" Union veterans, they had a

03:36:07.540 --> 03:36:10.030
hard time with Confederate monuments, and

03:36:11.000 --> 03:36:14.820
I just think that it is...
Almost everything can be a teaching tool,

03:36:14.960 --> 03:36:21.960
un- but it bothers me that certain books
would be proscribed because they have some

03:36:22.540 --> 03:36:26.520
language that might bother somebody.
And, and, and it... You need to...

03:36:28.120 --> 03:36:30.320
I mean, the language
should bother you. So-

03:36:31.180 --> 03:36:36.760
- I think, I think history
truly should bother you.

03:36:38.200 --> 03:36:40.977
It, it, the, it should be difficult.

03:36:41.060 --> 03:36:44.060
It should be a painful
process to study human history

03:36:44.860 --> 03:36:48.697
because if it's not painful,
you're not really understanding

03:36:48.780 --> 03:36:51.960
the full range of what
we're capable of. But anyway,

03:36:54.340 --> 03:36:58.217
you know, people in the modern day,
I have to ask you about this, kinda

03:36:58.300 --> 03:37:02.700
casually talk about the new
Civil War in America.

03:37:03.200 --> 03:37:06.577
As somebody who studied the Civil
War, do you think our country

03:37:06.660 --> 03:37:10.537
today is divided to a degree
that's on the verge

03:37:10.620 --> 03:37:14.500
of something like the Civil
War of the 19th century?

03:37:14.600 --> 03:37:18.337
- No, I really don't. And I'm not
pr- And I don't mean to play down the

03:37:18.420 --> 03:37:23.617
degree to which... that we are divided.
We are divided. We, we do resemble the

03:37:23.700 --> 03:37:27.537
1850s now in that I
think the first impulse on

03:37:27.620 --> 03:37:31.117
the part of people on either side
of the political spectrum is to

03:37:31.200 --> 03:37:34.957
attribute the worst to the
other side and to, and to not

03:37:35.040 --> 03:37:38.480
acknowledge any, any good on the
other side, to attribute the worst

03:37:38.580 --> 03:37:41.050
possible characteristics
to the other side,

03:37:42.160 --> 03:37:45.977
and to have inflammatory
rhetoric coming from

03:37:46.060 --> 03:37:50.017
various directions that,
that really seeks to sort of stir

03:37:50.100 --> 03:37:53.697
up as much unhappiness and controversy
as possible. I think we're like the

03:37:53.780 --> 03:37:57.677
1850s in that way. But I-- But in terms of

03:37:57.760 --> 03:38:01.557
whether we're really at the point
where the kind of actions that I've

03:38:01.640 --> 03:38:04.140
dealt with in my study of the Civil War

03:38:05.680 --> 03:38:09.537
I, I don't think we're anywhere near that.
And I mean, I really don't. If

03:38:09.620 --> 03:38:13.620
we get there, that will be heartbreaking,
but I just don't, I just don't see it.

03:38:14.100 --> 03:38:17.897
I don't see physical assaults
against members of Congress on the

03:38:17.980 --> 03:38:24.960
floor of the Congress. I don't see...
It's, States talk about seceding if things

03:38:25.060 --> 03:38:28.917
don't go... Texas talked about seceding
when Obama was elected. California

03:38:29.000 --> 03:38:31.393
talked about seceding when Trump
was elected. But you know what?

03:38:31.477 --> 03:38:32.537
Neither one of them called a

03:38:32.620 --> 03:38:36.517
secession convention and had
delegates go to it. When Lincoln was

03:38:36.600 --> 03:38:40.380
elected, they called conventions,
they voted to secede, and they left the

03:38:40.540 --> 03:38:44.337
they left the nation.
So that's different to me than talking

03:38:44.420 --> 03:38:48.960
about it and threatening it
and posing different scenarios.

03:38:49.700 --> 03:38:53.460
- Are there genuine structural
parallels between that time and now,

03:38:53.820 --> 03:38:55.097
if you can linger on that?

03:38:55.180 --> 03:38:59.037
- Well, I mean, the states
structurally, a state can call a

03:38:59.120 --> 03:39:00.560
convention if it wants to,

03:39:01.840 --> 03:39:05.797
and to talk about whatever it
wants to talk about. So I suppose

03:39:05.880 --> 03:39:08.140
that structure is still in place,

03:39:09.060 --> 03:39:14.540
but I haven't seen any serious movement
toward doing something like that.

03:39:15.580 --> 03:39:20.780
- Yeah. And I think there's a real
cohesion and resilience to the Union,

03:39:21.700 --> 03:39:25.517
as we've talked about. I think people are,

03:39:25.600 --> 03:39:31.600
despite the discourse
and the bickering, there's a real

03:39:32.600 --> 03:39:39.520
love of nation that maybe is not
often expressed-... explicitly. But

03:39:40.660 --> 03:39:43.410
there is a sense that we're
all in this kinda together,

03:39:44.200 --> 03:39:47.091
and that we're yelling at each other.
Kinda like you have a family Thanksgiving

03:39:47.174 --> 03:39:48.007
dinner

03:39:48.580 --> 03:39:51.120
where there's very passionate

03:39:52.440 --> 03:39:56.420
yelling and arguing, but there's a kinda
assumption that we're still a family.

03:39:57.140 --> 03:39:58.390
At least that's the hope.

03:39:59.920 --> 03:40:05.580
You know, one of the questions that
the Civil War asked is, What is America?

03:40:07.640 --> 03:40:11.297
So I have to ask you from over 50 years of

03:40:11.380 --> 03:40:16.550
studying the Civil War-... like what,
what do you think? What is this country?

03:40:17.720 --> 03:40:23.840
What is this union?
What is the core that makes us who we are?

03:40:24.840 --> 03:40:28.637
- Well, I think in a lot of ways
it's much of what it was in the

03:40:28.720 --> 03:40:32.660
mid-19th century. I still think it's
a magnet for... I mean, we're in an--

03:40:32.760 --> 03:40:36.360
we're far more diverse now as a people
than we were during the Civil War

03:40:37.000 --> 03:40:40.680
because we continue
to act in the same way as

03:40:40.960 --> 03:40:44.460
it did in the Civil War, only they're not
Germans and people come from everywhere

03:40:44.543 --> 03:40:47.693
here now. I mean, they literally
come from everywhere here now.

03:40:48.340 --> 03:40:52.277
And everybody doesn't find a nice
easy road here by any means,

03:40:52.360 --> 03:40:54.060
and there are lots of things wrong

03:40:54.720 --> 03:41:00.900
with the United States. But I still
think the United States acts... Has a

03:41:01.720 --> 03:41:05.587
role in the world that's unlike,
I won't say any other place, but I can't

03:41:05.670 --> 03:41:08.978
think of a place that's quite like it,
that has so many people coming from so

03:41:09.061 --> 03:41:14.117
many places, who somehow manage to fit
into this mosaic. And then I think

03:41:14.200 --> 03:41:18.017
most people do have a way to fit into
the mosaic, and then they become part of

03:41:18.100 --> 03:41:21.897
the old mosaic when the next
group of people who are not like

03:41:21.980 --> 03:41:25.430
them come in, and those are the ones
who are the new ones fitting in.

03:41:25.540 --> 03:41:28.910
- Yeah, sometimes I think about,
I'm sorry to romanticize it,

03:41:29.180 --> 03:41:34.200
but because I do think that Barack
Obama was one of the great speech makers

03:41:35.120 --> 03:41:42.060
of my lifetime. And I sometimes
imagine what Lincoln would have thought

03:41:42.860 --> 03:41:48.857
if he could attend an Obama speech.
If he saw that Obama became

03:41:48.940 --> 03:41:52.897
president, that an African American
became President of the United States of

03:41:52.980 --> 03:41:57.260
America. It's, it seems like
such a trivial thing to say,

03:41:58.460 --> 03:42:02.417
But I think it's not trivial at

03:42:02.500 --> 03:42:04.797
all. It's one of the great
accomplishments of our country.

03:42:04.880 --> 03:42:11.340
- I think one of Lincoln's great
attributes was his humanity comes through

03:42:12.220 --> 03:42:15.957
so many things that he wrote.
His real appreciation for

03:42:16.040 --> 03:42:19.957
people who faced long odds,
worked against the odds, didn't

03:42:20.040 --> 03:42:23.360
begin with advantages
in their favor, and so forth.

03:42:23.580 --> 03:42:27.560
I think he and his ability to grow, I
think he would have handled that actually

03:42:27.660 --> 03:42:31.040
pretty well. Much better than
many other people I can think of

03:42:31.640 --> 03:42:37.330
from the mid-19th century.
I think he had genuine humanity. I think,

03:42:37.420 --> 03:42:41.197
I don't think you can read all
the things he wrote and not come to

03:42:41.280 --> 03:42:44.937
that conclusion. He also...
But, so does, does he check all our

03:42:45.020 --> 03:42:48.957
boxes now? Of course he doesn't. Was he
prejudiced by our standards in some ways?

03:42:49.040 --> 03:42:52.817
Of course he was. But I think that he,
I think he would have handled that

03:42:52.900 --> 03:42:54.700
pretty well, and he would have been,

03:42:55.040 --> 03:42:57.476
still been really tall.
Even in our time-...

03:42:57.559 --> 03:42:59.620
he'd be way taller than most people.

03:43:01.200 --> 03:43:05.500
- Yeah. What you know, 250th birthday,

03:43:07.240 --> 03:43:10.340
What gives you hope about
the future of America?

03:43:10.900 --> 03:43:14.880
- What gives me hope? I'm, and I'm,
and I'm a grouchy, not optimistic

03:43:15.000 --> 03:43:16.077
person in a lot of ways. - Are you?

03:43:16.160 --> 03:43:19.940
- Yeah, I am. I am. - You had
some moments of optimism today.

03:43:20.240 --> 03:43:24.220
- I was just gonna say, but for, I do
have moments of optimism, and one of them

03:43:24.340 --> 03:43:30.468
I have is in the resiliency
of this republic. I really do have...

03:43:30.551 --> 03:43:32.037
And it's genuine

03:43:32.120 --> 03:43:35.262
optimism. I'm not just... And I know a lot
of people will think that it's naive,

03:43:35.345 --> 03:43:38.997
but I really... Because I'm, see what
it's been through, and it's emerged-

03:43:39.080 --> 03:43:42.820
... and it's gone forward. And the
trajectory, and this is something O-

03:43:43.060 --> 03:43:46.837
that Obama has commented on, and as have
many others, the trajectory is in the

03:43:46.920 --> 03:43:51.023
right direction. With lots
of things you wish were different,

03:43:51.106 --> 03:43:52.997
but the overall trajectory is in the right

03:43:53.080 --> 03:43:56.060
direction. I really do
believe that, and that's why

03:43:57.160 --> 03:44:00.260
I tend to be, in that regard, optimistic.

03:44:01.000 --> 03:44:02.520
- I think there's a few folks

03:44:03.340 --> 03:44:07.230
on the interwebs that talk about
the decline of the American empire,

03:44:07.920 --> 03:44:10.770
even using the word empire.
I'm one of the f-

03:44:12.140 --> 03:44:15.997
One of the folks who thinks
that America's flourishing. It's, it

03:44:16.080 --> 03:44:18.580
is a beacon of hope
and freedom in the world,

03:44:19.420 --> 03:44:21.770
and there's a lot to criticize,
the militarism,

03:44:22.660 --> 03:44:26.990
And a lot of different
aspects that are hypocritical,

03:44:28.580 --> 03:44:34.297
and is not always living up
to the great ideals that it

03:44:34.380 --> 03:44:38.080
supposedly represents,
but at least is striving towards that.

03:44:38.980 --> 03:44:42.797
And it is still a home
for the great diversity

03:44:42.880 --> 03:44:46.777
of humans, as you've mentioned.
That, I think, is one of the great,

03:44:46.860 --> 03:44:50.520
beautiful aspects about this country.
And the full mess of it, the drama,

03:44:50.680 --> 03:44:54.317
the arguments, the heated passion, the

03:44:54.400 --> 03:44:57.900
chaos, the thing that feels
like chaos but I think

03:44:58.000 --> 03:45:01.817
ultimately will lead to progress.
I love all of it. I think it

03:45:01.900 --> 03:45:04.360
is the greatest nation
on Earth. So on this

03:45:05.240 --> 03:45:09.480
250th birthday, I hope
there's 250 years more, and

03:45:10.360 --> 03:45:14.040
I'm truly grateful that
there's somebody like you

03:45:14.160 --> 03:45:18.525
studying our great history, and I'm
grateful for this wonderful conversation

03:45:18.609 --> 03:45:21.037
today. - I appreciate
the invitation. It's been fun.

03:45:21.120 --> 03:45:22.020
- Thank you, Gary.

03:45:22.760 --> 03:45:25.553
Thank you for listening to this
conversation with Gary Gallagher.

03:45:25.636 --> 03:45:26.277
To support this

03:45:26.360 --> 03:45:30.237
podcast, please check out our sponsors
in the description, where you can

03:45:30.320 --> 03:45:34.160
also find links to contact me,
ask questions, give feedback, and so

03:45:34.280 --> 03:45:37.820
on. And now, let me leave you
with some words from William Tecumseh

03:45:37.940 --> 03:45:41.160
Sherman, a United States
Army general in the Union

03:45:41.280 --> 03:45:45.380
Army during the Civil War.
"I am tired and sick of war.

03:45:46.360 --> 03:45:50.117
Its glory is all moonshine.
It is only those who have

03:45:50.200 --> 03:45:54.080
neither fired a shot nor heard
the shrieks and groans of the wounded

03:45:54.620 --> 03:45:58.760
who cry aloud for blood,
for vengeance, for desolation.

03:45:59.880 --> 03:46:06.800
War is hell." Thank you for listening,
and hope to see you next time.