Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War Insights From A Civil War Historian 20240713

Longsuffering panelists for bearing with me as i arrived at a workable concept and title. I did have a very clear idea of what i wanted this symposium to be, a blend of wellknown speakers who would discuss what theyve learned about the study of the civil war over decadeslong careers, blended with excellent lesserknown speakers whom you should want well, know well and will want to know well and had them speak about their Exciting New Research and their contributions to civil war scholarship. And i finally stumbled upon a title and a gimmick, using the 2020, 2020 vision, 2020 hindsight, insight, cute idea, i guess. Providing both hindsight and insight into the study of the civil war. With that concept in mind, i want to introduce our new our first speaker, an obvious choice to lead off this conference. Jack davis has been one of the most prominent and accomplished civil war scholars for several generations really. He started as a boy. If i recall correctly, you can correct me if im wrong, his first book he wrote in part as a college student. The book won him the first of four, record four, Jefferson Davis awards. Jack was also the longtime editor of civil war illustrated, the way many of us got to know him and editor of the wildly populated image of war and touch bid fire series, which seems like a lifetime ago. Jacks bread and butter is, of course, the civil war. He has written lively and important works about the other aspects of the American History, pirates of the gulf of mexico, the alamo, texas republic, road republic of west florida and the american frontier. If youre not familiar with those titles, you will want to be. We appreciate jack allowing us to drag him back into the civil war today, to speak on 50 shades of blue and gray, causes and responsibility in a peoples war. Ladies and gentlemen, jack davis. [ applause ] john and i shared the same quandary over titling, apparently. I kind of like the blue and gray bucket list. I thought 50 shades of blue and gray might play on the title of another book and result in a wildly enthusiastic audience, spilling out into the streets of richmond, and youre not even spilling into the center, where he tried to get you to go. Now im going to ask, would you all please move to this row right in the front here . Its delightful to be back here. I always had high regard, indeed, for the American Civil War museum and its predecessor, museum of the confederacy, and for coming here to speak to audiences like this. I also sympathize with john in being apparently sort of third up to host this, since other people werent around and available. He just reminds me of a story i was telling people last night a number of years ago, i got a call from a fellow who was organizing what would be the biggest civil war round table ever to toik place, somewhere up in the northeast and he said on the phone, and i want to get the very best keynote speaker i possibly can. And i was beginning to feel, well, glad you called me. And he said, well, i tried to get ed morris, but he was busy, but i want to get the best civil war speaker i can. My enthusiasm was beginning to wane slightly. Well i tried Jim Mcpherson and he wasnt available either, but i want the very best. And i said no, what you want at the moment is the third best civil war speaker and hes not available either. I will apologize right now for the fact of what a lot of im going to say is in the shape of recommend nivens, but thats what happens when youre asked to look at insights and what you learned from a career. There are those who would maintain i havent learned a damn thing in 50 years, and we call them reviewers. [ laughter ] so ill apologize that a lot of this is rather personal in nature, but maybe ill be able to share a few insights that at least i think ive gleaned. Its kind of sobering, if not slightly depressing, to look back from this year and realize i began my civil war era interests 62 years ago in 1958. I had just shifted from diapers to short pants. I was living in sonoma county, california, on a mountaintop called occidental, famed for three restaurants and nothing else. A summer afternoon at my grandparents place, i was bored, looking for something to read and i stumbled across my grandfathers copy of this h l hallowed ground. I still have that copy of his. It was a magical book to me when i first opened its covers. I knew nothing whatever about the civil war. And the interest really began then. Its interesting to realize now when i was reading that book there were only 48 states in the union. There was still one self proclaimed, though fraudulent, confederate veteran living. My interest evolved into increasingly serious study in the 1960s, trivdriven in large of an interest in my own family heritage, bloody battleground of western missouri and had multiple ancestors who served on both sides, one of whom died here in virginia, two days before those days of my developing interest all seem so long ago now. Lyndon johnson was president. Man had not yet stepped on the moon. Elvis was still alive. So much time has passed since then, but happy memoryies remai. Thanks to a job fresh out of graduate school as a fledgling editor at the magazine civil war times, i was suddenly thrown into close contact with many of the great historians and writers of the time. Alan nevitz, john baklis, robert utley, glenn tucker, Mary Elizabeth massey, john hope franklin, the great kentucky powerhouse, home and hamilton, tom clark and more. But most especially influential on me was the acquaintance formed with the Great Southern historians belle wiley and charles p. Roland. Theyre all gone now. Bud just last november. Charlie roland is a few weeks away from his 102nd birthday. Which means he will have outlived tom clark who died 16 days before. There is something in the water in lexington, kentucky. I have never forgotten the feeling i had then, half a century ago, on meeting and being befriended by these wonderful, generous people and others of their generation. It gave me a profound sense of wanting one day to be one of them. The hope that one day i could stand with them as one of their peers. The degree to which i did or didnt realize that youthful ambition is for others to say but do not listen to anything Gary Gallagher may say on that subject. But what cant be denied is that i had a rare, almost unique opportunity to learn from all of them. I may not have been able to pursue doctoral studies at a distinguished university. One of the stars of civil war studies, but ive always felt through shared chance i got to go that one better. As i came to know them, my working with them, as their editor, and becoming their friend, those scholars and more all became my teachers. I got to learn in the light of a constellation of giants. An experience perhaps not unique to me but surely one with which few who ares have been blessed. That exposure to their wideranging backgrounds and their interests and theirities feeling about the consequences about the bushwhacker called those lively times. Looking back with the advantage of today, what immediately leaps to mind is how simpler the whole thing seemed to me then, and i think to a great proportion of students of the war era in the 1960s. And an even greater share of the always vast audience of people yearning to learn about it. In 1963, at the midpoint of the centennial, richard armor in his little book it all started with columbus. Some of you may have run across this. The subtitle said it all. Abridged and extremely unlikely history of the United States. According to armor, quote, the greatest general of the north was u. S. Grant, who is not to be confused with u. S. Mail or u. S. Steel. Grnts greatest subordinate was sherman, known for his famous march but, in fact, it actually lasted march through december. The greatest Southern Commander was robert e. Lee and his, quote, most able general was stonewall jackson. When jackson died, it is said lee lost his right arm, which made it very difficult for him to hold his horses reins. You begin to get the idea. This is not highbrow comment, humor. In confederacy, most of the generals were named johnston. And with grant and lee behaved so gentlemanly toward each other, it was decided to call the conflict the civil war. Armors was not very sophisticated wit. But behind the sometimes juvenile plays on words, he did make a point or two about how naively americans would want to approach their civil war. Pung waited by that, he advised anyone who read one book on the civil war could thereafter classify themselves as an expert. As i expect the other speakers today would attest from their own experience, the woods are still full of onebook experts today. They frequently ask you a question after youve given a lecture in which the question goes on longer than your damned lecture. To say that over simplification was a problem over half a century ago is not entirely an overstatement. Several reasons suggest themselves. Much of the more popular literature, and i dont use the term popular as being in any way perjorative or critical. It is written by amateurs, not to say it was badly done but only it wasnt be written by professionally trained and experienced historians. The civil war, being the greatest accumulation of stirring stories in our National Past naturally attracted our greatest story tellers, and they were usually not academics, with the exception of all of your speakers today. Journalists, like bruce kasem, glenn tucker, burt davis, poets like shelby foot, Robert Penn Warren were naturally drawn by their instincts for drama to take on the task of writing civil war history. Much of their work is still riveting, but they didnt often compromise suspense and drama by delving too deeply into tee baits over the validity of one source over another. They told a great story and, to some extent, they all over simplified to make it less challenging for readers. Neither bruce kasem nor shelby foot ever claimed to be historians. They both called themselves storytellers. Probably the first and most important lesson i learned from the 60s onward was how incredibly complexed and nuanced and entangled is the story of the coming of the war and the deeper one looks into it, the deeper the search has to go. To this day, i suspect no one still has definitively explained it and definitive explanation may be impossible as are so many things when human beings are at the helm. I had no idea in 1969 how inextricably interwoven it was, even in the free states in that era, nor how important it was to remain far beyond the cotton fields and the count houses. As appeared over the past several decades illuminated its effects in southern culture society, the arts, literature and more, in ways that were only being thought of 50 years ago. Still, i doubt that anyone has truly encompassed it all. I think i had learned through research and thought and even self examination to balk at easy assignments. At one time i would have stated the south had born the burden of blame for the war. After all, it attempted to secede, which seems like an explicit rejection of the rule by majority thats fundamental to our democracy. Then it compounded that blame by firing the first shots,ly aband search for peaceful resolution. The seceded states and ultimately Jefferson Davis do bear responsibility for opening outright hostilities that seemingly closed the door for peaceful reconciliation, but i no longer confuse responsibility with blame. A word that carries with it the unescapable implication of bad faith and willful wrong doing. And thats because years of study had revealed to me a region whose chosen cadre of leaders were caught in a box because of circumstances not entirely of their own making. Threat to expansion of slavery and the creation of new slave states quite rightly seemed to southerners to imperil the security of the existing slave states and a threat to them put a hazard every aspect of southern political, social, cultural and economic life. Faced with that, what were southern leaders to do . In a specter surely driven by fear and panic, as well as reasoned expectation, their ultimate alternatives appeared to them, to them to be gradual marginalization in the expanding union until free states numbered enough to eradicate slavery, to forestall that, their alternative was to attempt to leave the union peacefully, if possible, or by violence, if necessary. What other door was open to them . I have yet to hear convincingly proposed any course of action that promised a reasonable chance of success between those two extremes. Extinction or secession. But that leads to another question after decades of being at this. What if parlor games can be moussing, theyre ultimately pointless, yet theyre so incredibly popular. Almost without exception, theyre conceived to change the battle of gettysburg in particular or the war itself, always in favor of the confederacy. Some of these apparently come out of what former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher referred to as cloud cuckoo land. I was once asked, i am not joking i was once asked if i thought lee could have won the war . Apparently there are no other generals or armys out there, except all those guys named johnston. I was once asked if i thought lee could have won the war if he had been equipped with the atomic bomb. Its true. Im not joking. Im not joking. [ laughter ] as luck would have it, i knew the answer to the question. Which i will now vouch safe to you. The answer is no. Even if he had the bomb, lee had no b29 to deliver it. [ laughter ] i picture in my mind lee calling y jeb stewart saying okay, beauty, take this gizmo, ride like hell to yankee lines, light the fuse and well, you wont be coming back. [ laughter ] but i want you to know, ive written a very nice letter to mrs. Stewart, complimenting you on how bravely you were vaporized. But yet theres still a lesson to be learned from these strained and sometimes just ridiculous rationalizations to retroactively change the wars outcome. They make it clear to me that the war era and its people, and especially its conclusion and after effects have such a deep hold on our consciousness and imagination that we will strain both beyond reason in the attempt to recast the story in a state that makes sense to us, or one that allows us to come away from the war feeling somehow better about it. Theres no other episode in our history that americans have taken such pains to try to change retroactively as they have with the civil war. That says to me a great deal about the psychological hold, the emotional hold, the spiritual hold that it still has on all americans today. Presented with the question of what north and south could do in a situation that seemed to admit no acceptable compromise, my dear friend, the late dr. Richard summers, more than 30 years ago, said to me with a straight face that such situations were, as he put it, an argument for the east offic efficacy of war. It sounded absurd at the time. The point of view that warfare may just be politics carried on by a different means, dick may have had a point. War may not solve overarching problems but, right or wrong, at least for the moment, war will produce a solution. I have learned to feel empathy for the southern leaders, even if i dont sympathize with the course they chose. Inde indeed, it seems probable to me now that slavery and geography doomed them, no matter what action they chose. Of course, its important to remember that they did not see it that way themselves at the time. This was no cause born of a death wish. They thought they had a strong constitutional case for the legitimacy of secession, as multiple failed separatist movements since, right up till today, have shown. The idea of secession is still alive. Most recently Jerry Falwell and john justice of West Virginia have been encouraging them to leave the mother state and go join them. Why the hell would anybody want to do that . Its long enough just writing out blacksburn, virginia, now i have to write out blacksburn, West Virginia, and soon theyll join with californians and ill be home again. [ laughter ] the idea may seem ludicrous but the idea of secession is not always ludicrous to everybody. Southern leaders believed they could defend themselves militarily if necessary. A giant miscalculation, as it turned out. But there was no evident basis in 1861 for them to know that. After all, for more than a generation, they had listened to northern spokesmen insult and condemn them. So they could naturally ask themselves, why would the yankees fight to keep us in the union when they dislike us so . Furthermore, the disparity between voluntary enlistments in the recent war with mexico between north and south suggested that gunshy yankee shop keepers and, you know, wooden nutmeg peddlers wouldnt risk their lives or spend their precious gold to fight for anything. 50 years ago, i regarded the outcome of the war as virtually inevitable victory for the resources and the overwhelming manpower of the north. Its only over the years that i came to appreciate the myriad other factors off the battlefield that determined or could determine the outcome. I still believe that there was never a moment when the confederacy proactively could have done something to win its independence, but i certainly appreciate now that at any moment during those four years of war, the north could proactively decide to lose it. And we had seen conflicts in our own lifetimes that have ended in what apparently is precisely that fashion. Remove abraham lincolns iron will, to preserve the union. Take away the bond that he managed to forge with the northern people and soldiering that made him willing to continue the sacrifice through four bloody years. And whos to say whether sheer industrial and manpower superiority would have been enough to outlast a remarkable moral that kept confederates willing to keep making their own sacrifices after it should have been evident that they were beaten. One of the underlying reasons, for what i see as a spread of broader understanding of the myriad causes and influences that produce the war is the fact that since i got started in this arena, historians lay and professional, have use of or rejection of sources. Todays postmodernist and deconstructionist academic dogma maintain theres no such thing as an authoritative source and therefore all sources of all kinds and all narratives are of equal value. This is, of course, as any sane person knows, complete crap. But ironically, almost exactly the same approach to sources prevailed generations ago, but then it was just called carelessless, when writers didnt think to ask questions about their sources, but used them indiscriminately, as if one was just as authentic as any other. It would be simplistic to say that half a century ago, the customary attitude to a source was if it was in print, it could be used. But thats not all that far off the mark for much of what appeared as civil war history, particularly during the centennial years. I somewhat shame facedly confess that in my very first book, which i finished writing at age 24, some 49 years ago, it does seem a day too long i used sources that today i wouldnt use. I took at face value any number of accounts from memoirs, reminis reminisces. I had not yet learned any better. But that learning came fast. Ill never forget a rule of his own. Confederate soldier letters and diaries, still landmark books, billy yank. Jack, he said to me, never trust a diary. Think about this yourselves. Any of you who keep diaries though thats a lost art now. Anyone who writes a diary does it in the full expectation that some day, somebody else is going to read it. And, as a result, the diaryist will unconsciously and sometimes consciously present him or herself as they wish to be seen by others. Memoirs and reminiscents, self justification after the fact and subject to the influences of later events which may what is acceptable to believe or have done years before. His injunction served me well, i think. I framed a subsection of it that i modestly refer to as davis first law of history. Briefly stated, it is that the accuracy of a diary or memoir is inversely proportional to the importance of the position held by the write r. I think that sounds very scientific. Kept by a common soldier in the field, the diary may yield useful material if employed judiciously. If the diary is that of a leading general or, worse, a politician or, worst of all, a president , its next to useless, except for comments on the weather and the diaryists regularity, which every diarists wrote about. Otherwise, half of them aint true and the rest is lies. Gradually, a growing awareness of the failability of many an oldtime source wider than ever before, tremendously enhanced by advances in Computer Technology that were barely thought of in the 1960s when i was getting started. The first efforts were stumbling and controversial. Some of you may remember them. Socalled cleometrics. Essentially the application of punch card Data Processing to formulate conclusions had a brief fad as things often have brief fads in the academic world. But it produced endless charts and statistics, which do not make for riveting reading. Things that virtually drove every bit of interest and drama out of any story and where they appeared. Yet other capabilities of Computer Technology, as yet unthought of, held vast promise. In those early days, historians were using newspapers, but as a rule, only limited volume. And you can imagine why. The contents were only to be found by leafing through the actual bound and unbound papers and archives, or else by blowing out your eyesight for weeks upon weeks of microfilm and microfich ereaders. I still recall in the library here at the museum of the confederacy, i spent days going through that until i was cross eyed by the time i left at the end of the day. Those days, library and archive budgets were so low, there wasnt very good light. So it was a considerable encouragement to blindness. But what happens happened now . Ill bet all of you are aware of this. Probably most of you are using it. Newspapers are all too often ignored because of the difficulty of using them, yet im convinced it is in the press that the temperature of a population is to be felt more than anywhere else, and that is where Public Opinion was most influenced in that era. And now this relatively recent explosion of optical character recognition programs applied to digitized newspaper images is revolutionizing research and opening an incalculable mass of research to researchers, who can work at home, in their own chairs and own pcs. Growing mountain of manu scripts and rare books being put on websites in Library Archives here and abroad as well. It is a brave new world, and it really is brave. Im not ashamed to say that every book i wrote, prior to the year 2000, would have been better and more authoritative had this technology been available then. Its a useful and, i think, a humbling reminder that no matter how much you may think you have found, there will always be much that you miss. Indeed, one primary lesson i think ive learned over the years is that the historian ought to carry on his shoulders the knowledge that any narrative produced, chances are that no more than half of the actual story is there. The rest is yet to be discovered. Hence, davis second law of history is that within sadly from personal experience, within about 30 minutes after your book or article comes off press, you will stumble on to a host of fantastic sources you didnt know about before you wrote the book. Its always going to happen. No one ever finds everything. Another Lesson Learned is that historians of earlier generation, and many of todays owe a great apology to that vast army of amateur historians that people at the natural archives 50 years ago used to refer to derisiveely as genies. You know who they are. Where all the microfilms were, room 203 or Something Like that. It was always a punishment when somebody from the archives had to go and man room 203 for the afternoon, because it was people actually had to sign up for limited periods of time on the microfilm readers because there were so many there and thats the only place you could get your hands on the early censuses. Most of them were genealogists, and every one of them expected the archivist not only to know everything about whats in that room but the archivist really ought to know something about their ancestors in particular, and if the archivist didnt know that, they would proceed to bore the living hell out of them by telling them. The stereotype was always of a sweet, powdered face, bluehaired lady in a paestel i see a pink sweater right next to you, al. Her name isnt genie, is it . Trying to prove her qualifications to join the daughters of the American Republic or mayflower society. And meanwhile these poor archivists listening endlessly to all the stuff coming out of this person, just wishing they could pull their brain out through their nose and put an end to it. Many historians disdained the genies, failing to take into account the ingenuity and the industry that they applied to scanning sources that, in that day, conventional historians often ignored or didnt even know about. How many of us then would have imagined the appearance of Something Like ancestry. Com . Its virtually going to on the verge of becoming an empire of sorts and lesser online resources that engage tens of millions of us around the globe on a daily basis, making instantly and cheaply available to us online resources that once required costly and timeconsuming travel to consult. The civil war historian, any historian, but certainly the civil war historian today, who ignores the techniques and sources common to the geneologist does so at fool hearty peril. Explosion of newly available material are social, cultural and even the highly intimate personal stories of the men and women of the civil war era. Moreover, all across the spectrum of studies, the last half century has forced us to confront the ever deepening subtlies and the facts behind the narratives we compose. I learned early on that you cant take the historian out of the history. However much we may try, our conclusions and our judgments on people and affairs of the past will inevitably be tinted by our own perceptions, our preferences, our prejudices and our personalities. We are forgiving to those past persons whose actions and characters we find appealing. For a century and a half, robert e. Lee got almost a free ride from historians of all shades because of the universal respect felt for his demeanor and conduct in trying times. Even though there were some aspects of his personality that might have come in for some criticism, if they appeared in the lives of his contemporaries. Similarly, Jefferson Davis aloof nature and predictiickly personality made it easy for them to overlook admirable traits and praiseworthy aspirations on his part. Historians exaggerate their strengths, minimize their frailties. Ive done it in the past. Virtually all biographers will at one time or another and inadvertently distort the portrait they seem to present. We must ever guard against this in ourselves, but will never be rid of it entirely. And the same is true of the reverse. There are some people whose lives have important lessons to offer, despite the fact that they were, themselves, unlikable, even odious. I found that i was able to feel empathy and some respect for Jefferson Davis in the course of writing a big, long biography of him, yet im confident that his personality would have made it difficult if not impossible for us to be friends. I spent two years on a biography of robert bannerwell, South Carolinas self proclaimed father of secession. Even when i strained, i could not find positive things to say about him. He was humorless, a blatant hypocrite, bigot, a colossal liar, almost certainly a physical coward and a man whose only consistent loyalty was to himself and his own ambitions. I have never dealt with such an unpleasant and dislikable character. I have known gary for 30 years. [ laughter ] but setting that aside, yet he was a man of significance. Not gary, red. In his time. I will never forget, im not joking, i remember the day in my study at mechanicsburg, pennsylvania, when i hit the last key on the then typewriter. He was dead. I had him buried and gone and when i finished that final chapter i said to myself, by god, im glad that son of a bitch is dead. I just loathed the man. Thats not a very unbiased or historianlike attitude, i confess. I still think i was fair to him, maybe even fairer than he deserved. But because of my own visceral reaction to him, i can never be certain. History is an art, after all, not a science. And even the sons of bitches are a necessary part of the picture. Sat satire oversimplifies it to be sure. Richard armor had seen enough of the centennial to put his finger on something. No one but some scholars were very much interested in looking behind the stereotypes. No one was paying much attention to the scholars, many of whom themselves were still high bound by 19th century assumptions and regional cultures. The stories still remain basically what it had been for quite a long time. Then came vietnam, and suddenly we began to get some kind of idea about how it could be possible for americans to come to blows with each other on american streets. One of the problems, i suspect, with being a peacetime historian is that its skrust not possible to feel and convey the primal emotions felt by people in such times of consuming national and cultural crisis. Hence, we tend to intellectualize and rationalize explanations as substitutes for true understanding of the reasons people act. Maybe the civil war was an efficacy in 1861, where the problems were so myriad and complex that no Congress Hall could settle them, where the influence and the impact and poisonous residue of slavery had so infected the whole country, not just the south, that there was no way to deal peacefully with something that momentous. One of the truisms that historians half a century ago often repeated is the war and its outcome made us one nation again. This time indivisible. Its hard to imagine that americans would again be so divided to go to war with each other. That just happens in other places, in other continents. We are ruled by habits of peace and compromise, or at least if we do come to blows, it wont be in great numbers. I dont know that im entirely certain of that any longer. The experience of vietnam and how violently it polarized segments of our community provides a disturbing number of echoes of similar tides of fortune in the generation leading up to 1860. Thankfully, the memory of vietnam is one confined now largely to remnants of generations for whom the Midnight Chimes may not be far distant, but still the phenomena that produced that memory is all too alive and flourishing. The issues at hand may be different, but the evil specter of irrational polarization is much the same. Theres something about human beings. We have an orwellian populous rhetoric rather than challenge ourselves with serious int introspec introspection. America being engaged in what he called a cold civil war. The issues have changed. Theyre different now. Abortion. Capital punishment. Statues. Gun control. A pipeline in virginia. But what they all have in common is that no one is listening. Violence is lurking on the perimeter. The broader argument is the same as it was in 1860, however. What is my identity . What will i allow to define me . Where do my loyalties lie . To whom or to what do i owe allegiance . In this tense and seemingly critical hour can i afford to give reason a chance over irrational emotion . All the ingredients are different. The content of the arguments today and in 1860 is different, but the conduct of the argument is increasingly the same. I dont mean to suggest that were going to have another civil war. But this affection is right. Contrary to popular mythology, edmond burke never wrote that anything that is necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing. That was invented by one of his biographers years after his death. He did say in two years after the close of the civil war that bad men need nothing to compass nothing more to compass their ends but that good men should look on and do nothing. Ultimately, i think i have come to understand and appreciate that the leaders of the seven states who attempted to depart the union were no more bad people, the son of the bitch red to the contrary. To the north were petty, self sacrificing, venal, cheerful, valiant and, like most mammals, when driven into packs by fear and excitement, they revealed they were capable of doing things in groups that they never would have done as individuals. Ancient cliches notwithstanding, history rarely repeats itself. Human beings, however, rarely fail to repeat themselves. Lessons may be learned from what came before, but they are all too soon forgotten. Its part of the essence of human nature today just as it was in that generation rushing ft. Sumtner. From half a century or more of a career that i have been so extraordinarily fortunate to be able to enjoy. I no longer look to the past to explain the present. I look to the present to understand the past. If you want to know how that works for me, ask me 50 years from now. Thank you all very much. [ applause ] we have time for questions with the stipulation well bring the microphone to you. Please wait for the microphone. Raise your hand. We have two people, one on each side, to bring the microphone to yo you. Jack, i call on you as an educate of note. Thats your first mistake. Comment on, if you will, the continued draw of this catastrophe of 150plus years ago among todays College Students at places like virginia tech, places like uva, the one semester elective course in civil war leadership is always full at the university of virginia. What draws these young people to their exploration of this event . You know, people will talk every, oh, couple dozen years or so, about the sudden surge of interest in the civil war. But, in fact, the sudden surge began during the war and simply has never gone away. It just has maybe some peaks and valleys. But there is always some theres always been a draw to it. Its our story. Its not we against them. Its us against us. Its made its influence by things like film, popular literature, popular drama. People are flounced by their speaking as a parent, i cant believe that im saying this, but people are often influenced by their parents. My two werent, but thats another matter. Late bud robertson conducted two of the only civil war courses in the country. And by the time he retired he was teaching to grandchildren who had been in his class in the 1960s. Pashts will simply say, whatever else you do, take this class. The difficulty in all too many campuses today is being able to take even the one semester course, because the civil war, while its been very popular amongst the general population always, it hasnt always been very popular within the Academic Community for a host of reasons that say more about the Academic Community than they do about the civil war. The late e. B. Pete long, great friend of bruce kasems and author of the civil war, used to maintain the two lowest people on the totem pole in any History Department in the country were the western history professor and the civil war professor. And davis third law of history, which im codifying for you now, so write about this in your diary, right after you write about your regularity [ laughter ] is that the place on the totem pole where the western history or civil war historian stands is disproportionately proportional to how much his books sell than the other members of that department. Theres a great deal of academic jealousy. Theres been a tendency to look down on civil war historians. And it also applies to military historians as these are silly Little People who play little battlefield board games, probably pull the wings off butterflies and other stuff and dont get them riled up and they wont cause trouble. Thats just an academic conceit. Thats universal, not just here. No matter what your field is, its probably looked down on by somebody else. Stop and think of it yourself. If you spent 15 years of your life writing your dissertation on the study of the circulatory system of celery and the only person who buys a copy is your mother, and shell never read the damn thing, how do you feel about somebody who knocks off the 1,000th book about the battle of gettysburg . And it sells 5,000 copies . You wouldnt be human if you didnt feel jealousy. Its almost born into us. You cant travel the eastern half of the country, east of the mississippi, without running into it everywhere. Its on roads and highways. Its in the statutory. Those may be moved or taken down. But nobody is going to eradicate these battlefields that people run across from time to time. Its almost impossible for us to escape it. Im sorry. I went on too long on that. Anybody else . Excuse me. I have a little difficulty getting up. Im older than you are. You cant be. Oh, absolutely. Im reminded of that every first of all, thank you for being here. Secondly, i want to congratulate you on having the strength of character and the good sense to be associated with virginia tech. Cant let that go unsaid. No indifference to dr. Gallagher. But i remember in graduate school, i had bud robertson. And he was one of my advisers. And bud was known for a lot of things, but bud had a way with history, and he talked to me, and some other students at one point, about the war in particular. Being like an continually peel. He was very insightful about that. He said one thing about that onion, the more you peel it, the bigger it know, never finish pe that onion. If you do your due diligence. And as i get older and the more i read, the more i find out how ignore antia igno igno igno ignore ignorant i am. Fortunately, you i found out that wasnt correct. My question for you is this. As we peel this onion and its disturbing to me as i get older how narrowminded some people are about the subject of the civil war. Its such an intriguing subject as most people here will attest to. But one thing that is concerning to me is how do we as historians, as individuals encourage people to do more indepth studies of the black experience in the civil war . And im not talking about just in the north, but in the south. And the blacks in the southern states, their involvement in the confederacy and what their contributions were and how do we pull people more into that and get away from this singular view or dimension of the black experience and the participation and their role in that conflict . And that part of American History . What can we do . What can scholars do do, historians do to encourage people to want to know more whether it is uncomfortable or not . Yeah. Very short answer as short as i can keep it, fortunately, more and more of that is going on all the time. And i think the moral of the story is opened up by the xlorz scholars all the time. They may present challenge and interest to potential scholars in the future who may want to write on this or learn about it. I have always found regardless of the subject matter in history that if you can interest a student in the idea of discovery, you know, research is about as close as we can come to getting the feeling of Christopher Columbus if were trest ral. If were astronauts, thats another matter. But everybody can feel that thrill of discovery. When you look for something and you actually find it. Now 50 other people may have seen brit before you. But they were not looking for it because it wasnt important to them. But if its important to you i dont know how to else to describe it except eureka moments. Ive been lucky to have dozens of them over the years. I went looking for something and lo and behold something i never expected was there was even better. You know, its the going, not the getting there that is good in a way. The search or the quest can be very exciting. And black studies universally has certainly been open up widely. Its still a field that remains wide open. One example ill give you. Something ive been tempted to get at. You heard of the underground railroad. It was also something you didnt have a name. I call it the underground telegraph. How did news get from plantation to plantation. How is it that the enslaved in mississippi in time learned what was happening with the enslaved in alabama or georgia . Somehow word got around even as restrictive as the plantation system was. There is a mystery. And in mystery there is intrigue and curiosity and a host of other ingredients i think that can make people want to look. And if you make them want to look, they may not find everything theyre after. But it will open up not only things for them but for the rest of us who want to know more and give up much more comprehensive picture than we already have. Of the black experience north and south, east and west throughout the war. Thats a you would get 100 different answers to that question from 100 different people. I dont know that anyone would be any more correct than the other. But mine, of course, is the correct one. I have two comments id like to make and see your reaction. First, my belief is its unfair for people to analyze and criticize the confederacy. As a whole, i think it should be that it should be divided in regions and separate states. Because each state may have had its own reason for succeeding. You know, the hot heads in South Carolina, georgia, mississippi, alabama, there are articles of succession specifically said it was to preserve slavery. Virginia was very reluctant to succeed and i do not believe that their purpose or main purpose was preserving slavery. But they are put in with the rest of the confederacy when people analyze it. My second thing is im of the belief that the biggest mistake in the whole war was lincolns decision to march troops through virginia. He had started against the ones that had aggression against the United States, i dont think virginia would have ever come into the war. He could have finished it with the guilty parties and frankly the attitude carried forward until the 1960s. You know, they were hot heads. They should never have been allowed into the United States in the first place. South carolina is responsible for a lot. Theres no question. But anyway, i just dont think there would have been a civil war as it is now had they not invaded virginia. Virginia is like knocking down the hornets nest. 75 of the war took place in virginia. If you forgive me, i wont address the second one. That is a qwhat if and we could argue that for hours and neither of us will know anything definitive because it didnt actually happen. There never was a solid south. As you were quite right. Each state had its own motives. And they all stated one motive when really there was probably Something Else under it. But virginia has reasons for succeeding are related to but certainly not identical to South Carolinas. Tennessees are not are related to but not the same as georgias. North carolina which, of course, does everything that virginia does first, they have somewhat the same reasons as virginia. But youre right. They shouldnt be treated as a whole. They may have all have had like a series of circles. They may have had overlap in which the same issues were driving all of them. They had the separate motives. Thats why you have the border states particularly kentucky and missouri which had many of the same causes in infect within their own boundaries but they chose not to succeed. Because certain things werent as important to them as they were to South Carolina and georgia. In the course of somebody having a chat about the civil war and the course of maybe a 40 minute lecture by somebody about the war, they probably will deal with the south as a unified block simply for the sake of time its easier to do it that way. But as i said, there never was a solid south. There isnt a solid south it to day so youre quite right. Thank you very much. You know, i was really impressed when you talked about peoples emotional reaction to the war and as this field of study called emotional studies which im learning about. One of the frustrations when i talk to people about the war is they underestimate the impact of emotion in driving peoples actions. They think that they can look at policies or look at numbers and they feel like they understand why people are motivated. Like, for example, there were tariffs. And we know that people didnt like tariffs. And so they might have been a reason why there was a war but it seems to me like nothing motivated southerners with emotion than slavery which was bring up emotions of fear, pain, anger, disgust and one thing that i tell people is if you want to understand why people did things, dont just look at numbers. Look at what moved them emotionally. The question is, do we do enough in terms of the way we teach the war to emphasize emotion as a factor in peoples behaviors as opposed to just saying, you know, there were a bunch of slaves so thats why people in the south wanted to fight for them. Maybe it wasnt slaves but all the emotional things that were involved in relating to slaves and losing slaves. Maybe slavery itself wasnt the problem but the emotions about it. Same thing for the north. Maybe it wasnt just preserving the union. Maybe they were angry that they felt like southerners were traitors who needed to be punished. You know . So in other words there is anger driving their reaction that just cant be accounted for by pure logic if you could comment. Sure. You know, i mentioned how intertwined, i love those two words together. Slavery wasnt every facet of life within the slave states but also outside as well. Especially within the slave states to the point that slavery itself was part of the makeup of a southerners sense of him or herself. Even if they didnt own a slave themselves. Because theyre part of an economy and society and culture that cannot escape the influence of slavery on it. If you want to you know, when you turned 16, you had arrived if, what . You got a car. If you are a young man coming of age in the south, how have you arrived . Not by owning 10 or 20 acres of land by owning a slave. Its a sign of status. It says something to you about yourself. It says to your peers and your community what you want them to think about you. Deeply wrapped up in their sense of themselves and values. And perhaps history classes dealing with the civil war ought to involve social psychologies and others in those disciplines to help explain it. Because when it comes down to it is values. Ultimately comes down to values. And people will not compromise on values. If you say its sunny outside and i say its not, we can step outside and well acleahieve consensus and we wont argue about it. But if you say abortion is a good thing and i say abortion is a bad thing, i can guarantee you well never agree because that gets into our bedrock values as human beings. And our values is where our emotions come from. They reinforce them. Youre absolutely right. I think i even commented in my talk, one of the problems with being a peacetime historian is we cant personally viscerally understand or feel the emotions that are driving people with their values in a time of crisis like that. Thats just another great example of how much scope there still is out there for younger people and, of course, to me everybodys younger people now except gallagher. To pursue the new avenues and to explore and to have the thrill of discovery and all the while illuminating ever more this incredible picture. I think thats enough. Thank you all very much. Congress is in we are ses, were showing programs all week, next, a look at the civil war and misconceptions americans have about the war. Then the experiences of newly freed africanamericans, particularly women in the washington, d. C. Area. Following the emancipation act. And the history of confederate general John Bell Hood of texas and the success of the unit during the war. Next, on the civil war, historian Gary Gallagher addresses the misconceptions americans have about the civil war and outne