Im a senior fellow at the manhattan use it institute. We are pleased to have allen guelzo here to talk about the civil war. When hundred 50 years ago this week Abraham Lincolns funeral was making its way across the United States. The civil war had ended two weeks previously with lee surrendered at appomattox. It was an eventful month. Some asserted that 1865 was the most eventful month and history of the United States. No one knows more about these events then allen guelzo. He is the professor of the civil war era and director of the civil war era studies at gettysburg college. Hes the author of many prizewinning books. Lincolns emancipation proclamation. The end of slavery in america. Lincoln and douglas, the debates that defined america. That one the Lincoln Institute prize. His most recent work is Abraham Lincoln as a man of ideas, a collection of essays. Lincoln, a volume at oxford in 2009. His book on the battle of gettysburg publish in 2013. He spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Possibly the best book written on the battle of gettysburg. His articles and essays have appeared in scholarly journals. Los angeles times, a very long list. Allen guelzo is our most distinguished biographer of Abraham Lincoln, historian of the civil war. We are delighted to welcome him here today. Hes going to talk about the subject of did religion make America Civil War worse . [applause] prof. Guelzo it is a pleasure to be able to speak to you once again, especially when i can come to a venue where the person who introduces me knows how to pronounce my name correctly. I have considered petitioning congress for some kind of recognition of special status protected status. My name in his in a vowel. No one seems to be able to pronounce it properly. I should receive some special recognition. You know when someone who is calling you really doesnt know who you are, because you will answer the phone, hello, they say hello, i am so glad to talk to you allen. They can handle that part but not the other. How nice it is that someone does pronounce it. Someone asked me at one point, this has been asked a number of times, is your name brazilian . I thought no, that is gaucho which is not brazilian. It is argentinian. These permutations you find prepeoples do these numbers and you work so hard, then you wonder, why did my parents do this to me . Why couldnt i have been named pearson . Life has all of these difficulties that we encounter and there should be an act of congress somewhere to help us deal with them. Im posing a question for you today. Did religion make the American Civil War worse . Americans at midpoint of the 19th century were probably as thoroughly christianized a people as they ever had been. Landscapes were dominated by church fires. Most common sound in public was the reigning of church bells. American churches jumped to exponential levels of growth between 1780 and 1820, denominations built 10,000 new churches. By 1860 they got quadrupled that number. Clergyman serving on the boards and faculties. Churches became outposts of refinement from gas lit interiors to pay choirs. Even a man of modest religious visibility as Abraham Lincoln who never belonged to a church, who never professed more than a ds stick d deistic idea of religion protesting that i have never denied the truth of the scriptures. I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general or of any denomination of christians in particular. I do not think i could be brought to support a man for office whom i knew to be an open enemy and scoffer at religion. And in jeffersons words the constitution had erected a wall of church and government, there was no corresponding wall between church and american culture. Closed off from making policy, the churches organized for double bible distribution, the observance of the sabbath, for suppression vice and immorality. They grew. The time the french liberal took his celebrated tour of the United States he was amazed to find while in the United States religion has no influence on the laws were on the details of political opinions, nevertheless it directs the mores, and through the mores it works to regulate the state. The question he did not ask was whether American Religion would always be content with cultural dominance, and might not seize an opportunity if it presented itself to assert a political role. If ever there was a mama where it seemed possible, the American Religion might assume a managing place in public politics, the civil war was it. It was a moment when delegations of concerned clergyman received highprofile interviews with the president. When the National Reform association moved amendment of the constitution to add formal recognition of christianity to the constitutions preamble. When the military chaplaincy was dramatically expanded to become a major component of the u. S. Armed forces. When fully one third of all soldiers in the field were praying men and members of some branch of the Christian Church and religious revivals in the armys converted between five and 10 of men in uniform. There was a moment when christianity allied itself in the most unambiguous and unconditional fashion to the actual waging of a war. The Southern States declared Henry Ward Beecher have organize society around a rotten core, slavery while the north has organize society around a vital heart, liberty. Across that divide, god is calling to the nation. He is telling the american nation in particular that compromise is a most pernicious sham. Southern preachers and southern theologians chimed in with as much fervor. Claiming that god was on their side. A writer for the southern quarterly insisted that since the institution of slavery accords with the injunctions and morality of the bible, then the confederate nation could expect a divine blessing in this great struggle. An episcopal bishop of virginia gave robert e lee his dying blessing. You are engaged in a holy cause. It is because of this intrusion of religious justification into the civil war that i number of commentators have begun to ask whether this interjection far from christianizing the war actually made the war more ferocious. The civil war was certainly ferocious enough on its own terms. Overall, one out of every 10 White American males in 1860 was dead by 1865 from some war related cause. The question is whether this bill which exceeded anything in terms of wartime losses, whether this butchers bill was made bloodier and made more protracted by being transformed into a religious crusade. In a war of nations, and national interests, the levels of involvement and destruction can be calibrated to the levels of those interests. A war that is waged on behalf of good cannot in satisfactorily with anything less than the complete triumph of good. Since the victory of anything short of complete good would allow these measures of evil to survive unpunished. If god has willed a war, no compromise short of total victory is possible. Was it not in this name that Abraham Lincoln advised his colleagues in congress entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do they have us under again, all our labors lost , and sooner or labor must sooner or later must be done. Was it not the same link in 1862 that god wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. And so rebuffed all considered offers to negotiate, unless they agreed to the restoration of the National Authority throughout all the states. Moralize the war, reasonable find no end of difficulty in restraining the war from shedding rivers of blood, or from always demanding unconditional surrender. As harry stowe argues, the civil war would require a war of troops and amended by moral and spiritual arguments that could steal millions of men to the bloody business of killing one another. By thus presenting the union in moral terms, northerners would give themselves permission to dictate a total war for unconditional surrender, and involuntary reconstruction. The only historian who has said this, charles royster, writing a biography of sherman and stonewall jackson, sees in the civil war a model for a peculiarly bloodthirsty instinct for violence deep in the american psyche. Drew faust in this republic of suffering turns her attention to the savage coulter will shock of the civil wars casualties, to the sensibilities of a nation to deeply committed to abstractions to put a stop to the killing. These arguments have a particular residence for our own generation. They make it easy to suggest that americans have bench will lead drink themselves into a stupor and moral americans take pay themselves into the corners of absolute right and absolute wrong. The problem posed by the civil war was not a condition, a collision of absolute. It was rather that the war exposed fissures in the absolutes of both sides and rendered absolutism less and less believable. Northern preachers sounded the trumpet of scripture against slavery. Few came to terms that the bible they preached actually contains no condemnation of slavery. At the same time southerners who wanted to play on that fact as proof that they were standing inside Biblical Authority were whipsawed by the recognition that the slavery spoken of in the bible was neither racebased nor absolute and reducing the slave to chattel property. It was White Supremacy they were defending more than slavery. It may be that moralizing and religion arising religionizing war may be in experience in our times, but there may be questions of the civil war, and whether stout and faust are simply creating a civil war shtick with which to beat our own times. The preachers might see church and state marching to war in 1861, but it did not look that way on the ground. That paragon of martial piety stonewall jackson, had a poor estimate of the influence of southern religion in time of war. Im afraid that our people are looking to the wrong sorts for help, and describing our successes to those for whom they are not do. If we fail to trust in god and give him all the glory, our cause is ruined. Give to our friends at home new warning on this subject. So little provision had been made for Chaplain Services in the army of Northern Virginia that half of the regiment in jacksons core were without one. In the union army, religion seem to have just as meager a grip. Despite those numbers of praying men. It is hard for one to retain his religious sentiments and feelings in the soldiers life admitted one new jersey surgeon. Everything seems to tend in a different direction. There seems to be no thought of god, of souls among the soldiers. One devout soldier who found himself in listed the company of german freethinkers was aghast to discover they are the worst men i ever saw, they never think of god or that they have a soul. Or if soldiers did have such thoughts, they rely it will they were blasphemous ones. One cavalryman discussed an old cuss of a preacher, relate the preacher claimed that god has fought our battles and one our victories. This calvary concluded the preacher must surely have lied like dixie since if god had talked their battles and one their victories, why is it not in the papers, and why has he not been promoted . [laughter] if anything, the raw contradiction between northern mines claiming gods favor for the union, and southern divines claiming gods favor for the confederacy created a popular perception that religion had nothing reliable or coherent to say about the greatest American Issue of the 19th century. The great presbyterian theologian had been shifting ground on slavery for 20 years. In the 1840s, any suggestion that slaveholding is a crime was an error fraught with evil consequences. 10 years later, he said that the slavery in the abstract might not be evil, but to practice slavery, in all cases, it leads to practice evil. On that logic, emancipation is not only a duty, but unavoidable. By 1864 he was endorsing a presbyterian General Assembly resolution which branded slavery as an evil and guilt. With so much attacking before the political wind, how were the churches to get any worthwhile bearings to the people . Abraham lincoln was another thinker who tax before those wins. Whatever confidence he felt about gods direction of the war he was much more uncertain about where the direction was pointing. In 1861 when his friend browning asserted mr. Lincoln, we cant hope for the blessing of god on the efforts of our armies until we strike a decisive blow at the institution of slavery, lincoln replied browning, suppose god is against us in our view on the subject of slavery in this country, and our method of dealing with it. The problem bothered lincoln enough that he took it as the central theme of his second inaugural address. Neither party expected for the war. The magnitude or the duration which it has already attained, he observed. What is more, both read the same bible and pray to the same god and each invokes his aid against the other. Lincoln could not easily declare his own side was all about the bible and god. He could not in similar fashion nerve himself morally to throw all the opprobrium on to the other balance. It may seem strange that any men would dare to ask a just gods assistance in bringing their bread from the sweat of other mens brows. He would not allow himself to do more than find the confederate position strange. In the end lincoln opted for a kind of divine agnosticism. Made all the easier for someone of calvinistic upbringing who was accustomed to seeing the will of god cloaked in mysterious ways. He said let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both cannot be answered that of neither has been answered fully. The almighty has his own purposes. He would take no ethical victory lap. Instead, lincoln and joined the nation to behave with malice toward none, with charity for all. Instead of American Religion, corrupting the civil war with absolutism, it is more possible to say the civil war corrupted American Religion with relativism. And iowa sergeant shocked at the carnage at shiloh wondered my god can there be anything the future that compensates for this slaughter . Religious discourse in america would become plagued more and more by questioning, by dk faith, by an increasing appeal to feeling and imagination as over against confessional reason or evangelical conversion. That did not provide much weaponry for an adventure into public forums. Perhaps people always think so in their own day, but it seems to me the there never was a time that all things have shaken loose from their foundations. So many are skeptical, doubtful, so many good people are cutting loose from creed and form. I am sometimes tempted ask whether prayer can make any difference. Far from feeling satisfied, that the north had pursued a righteous crusade to its fulfillment, finney was enraged after 10 years of war, and no public proclamation north or south, is our Great National sin recognized. For southerners, the war laid a heavier burden on religion. Edward Porter Alexander who ended the war as a general in lees army thought that religion had paralyzed the southern armies. More than energize them. I think it was a serious incubus upon us that during the whole war our president and many generals really and actually believed there was this mysterious providence always hovering over the field and ready to interfere on one side or the other, and prayer in piety might win its favor from day to day. By 1864, defeat was looking the confederacy in the eyes. The arms of the pious in the south dropped nervously to their sides. They concluded god was deserting them if not for his opposition to slavery then for his condemnation of southern unbelief. Can we believe in the justice of providence lamented the confederate chief award ands award in andsawardinance. I cannot see how i just god can allow people who have battled so heroically for their rights to be overthrown. However confident the features and the preachers had been at the beginning of the war that they could read gods righteousness, the war itself proved otherwise. Indeed, for most americans American Religion became one of the civil wars major cultural casualties. In the 1860s, americans went to war singing glory, glory hallelujah. They would never do so again. Contrary to stout the civil war was not prolonged or made more contract goal intractable by religion. Total war as james wintun has written, total war was the result of politics, particularly the movement of government in the 19th century away from monarchy and toward popular democracy. So long as government had been the private preserve of kings war had been the sport of monarchs. They were fought as if they were princely trials by comment combat. A class of people likely to suffer severely by them was the nobility. The scope of war was limited because war was understood to be the prerogative of kings. Once democratic governments began to shoulder the monarch once they became of the people, by the people, for the people, and involve the entire people and not just a handful of aristocrats, then war increasingly became the instrument of entire populations. No solitary monarch could now call them off. No gentlemans agreement could limit their scope. Wars became wars of entire nations against entire nations. Waged for abstract principles, enough to command everyone. Therefore impossible to win short of annihilation. Not just defeat, annihilation of an enemy. It was not religion, but democracy which made war on up usable by anything less than the unremitting destruction of an enemy. In the process, democracy would whittle away at cultural dominance of religion. Since theories about justice in war, and the proportionality with which war can be waged only stood in the path of unconditional victory. From the civil war on word, american protestantism would be locked deeper and deeper in a state of coldrolled imprisonment , and in many cases retreat into a world of private experience or christianity remained of little more significance to public life then bridge parties. The appeal to Divine Authority in the civil war led to deadlock and contradiction. Ever since then, it has been difficult for deeply rooted religious convictions to assert a genuinely shaping influence over American Public life. In exposing the shortcomings of religious absolutism, the civil war made it impossible for religious absolutism to address other problems in American Life especially economic and racial ones where religious absolutism what have done a large measure of good. Martin luther king would be the last prominent american to invoke biblical sanctions for political movement. Even that would be tolerated by the larger sympathetic environment of secular liberalism as a harmless eccentricity which could go in one ear and out the other. Never after word wrote alfred kazen, never afterward would americans feel they had been living scripture. I do not know that we have been the better for it. Thank you. [applause] moderator ok. Thank you. We will have some questions. Let me as a question first. On your thesis, Abraham Lincoln of course believed in something called a civil religion. He wrote and spoke about erecting the constitution and the Founding Fathers and the union as a secular religion to which all americans had to pledge support and fealty. Some of these things come through in his speeches. When he talks about sacrifices on the altar of freedom, for example. In terms of your thesis, do you think that the civil war, it pushed aside religion as a cultural force and perhaps replaced it with a nationalist feeling . Prof. Guelzo i think that is very true for the century that follows the civil war. That what lincoln called a political religion, when he talked about a political religion, what he meant was not taking a single religious organization and making that political. He meant taking a secular political idea, which was the rule of law, and making that a virtual religion, so sacred, so absolute that it would function in the same way and perhaps as replacement for religious forms of authority. Yet lincoln himself is dicey about this. When he becomes president , he has to address a situation that he had not anticipated, that others had dreaded. The division of the country. This was not supposed to happen. He had been a Firm Believer in progress. He was a whig after all. The idea that the country was going to divide on his watch was simply unthinkable. Attributable only to slavery which he says was the one retrograde institution that cursed republic. He expected even with the war it will be a relatively short duration and the principles of right and good would triumph. Which they didnt. Instead the union army stumbled from defeat to defeat and tell by september 1862 he has to sit down and start puzzling this out for himself. That is when he starts talking about the will of god prevails. Not because we are right, the bill of call god prevails because god is god. What would you expect his will to do . If he is god his will will prevail. He is being very geometrical about it. Very logical. God wills this contest to continue. But lincoln is not sure of if god is willing this contest to continue, what is the goal . What gold is god had in mind . It may be that one side is right, and the other wrong, or vice versa. Both cant be right. Both could be wrong. God may have something entirely different in view in this war than those of us who have begun it. Beyond that, he doesnt want to get more specific. Increasingly, by the time he delivers his second inaugural, he wants talk about the war more in terms of it being a judgment on all americans. He doesnt want to speak of the war as having some baptism of american democracy. He wants to see the war as a punishment for an original sin we committed in the form of slavery. That itself does not point in any enthusiastic direction toward a renaissance of religious and flow of the comforter country. If things of religion as sticky outside of the culture and issuing judgment on it. When you look at lincoln, it is a very untidy role. It is one that is very carefully trying to pick apart the aspects of this war forcing people to come to conclusions. If lincoln had said we won because god was with us, we obviously represented god, and got was on our side, and we beat the confederates. That would have been a different inaugural address. What he does say is something which surprised a lot of people. He anticipated that. He writes a letter to browning what she says i know that people didnt receive that well. Then again, no one likes to be told god has an argument with them. Moderator ok. Michael . Michael myers. An excellent talk. Since god was on each side of the constitution conflict, did any of the confederates conclude, proclaim that god must be dead, or is god temporarily defeated . Prof. Guelzo some do. To some even pray for lincolns death, and therefore when he did die, give them a resurrection of their faith . And on the part of lincoln, he had a prophecy, that premonition of his own death. Is this on lincolns part a message from god or a dictate from god . Prof. Guelzo that is to questions. Let me address them both. How do southerners handle their defeat . Some really do lose their religion. They must be defending the right. Southern preachers assure them of this. So frequently. By the time you get to the end of 1863 in the beginning of 1864 when the cause is clearly failing, that is when they begin scratching their heads and saying this is it what is supposed to be. This must mean that either we were totally wrong about god, in his opinion of slavery, or we were totally wrong about our opinion of gods existence and there is no god, and we are at the mercy of these yankees. That is conclusion a lot people come to in the south. What develops in the south is a mentality called the lost cause. This is an interesting cultural moment. It is a way of turning defeat around. Those who are yankees fans here have never experienced this. [laughter] those of us from philadelphia who root for the phillies, we have had decades of coping with defeat. We have invented psychological mechanisms for dealing. Usually in the form of the boo. The red sox invented a theology. And the cubs. Oh my goodness. The cubs. My students pointed out the last time the cubs won the world series the Ottoman Empire was in existence. How do you cope with that. By inventing the lost cause. Which said the war was not really about slavery. It was about yankee aggression. Especially yankee capitalist aggression. And we only lost the war because of the capitalists have this unfair advantage. They had capital. They had this unfair advantage which they used to beat us down in an unfair fight. We went down swinging but the odds were against us. But we were still the better men. Those are your three elements. They will attach to that a religious resonance. What god was really doing was testing us good southerners. He was either testing us to see if we would remain faithful, or he was testing us to remind us the race does not always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. We should learn humility and confidence that we represent god. The lost cause makes a great deal out of that. What is significant is how little the lost cause relies on that religious aspect. It makes its pitch and builds its case for the south on more secular ground than it does on religion. In fact, during the civil war the confederate government is much more hostile to expressions of public religion than the north is. The leadership of the confederacy, Jefferson Davis does not like to issue lots of public proclamations of fast days and thanksgiving. But that runs entirely against the political culture. For confederates, the lost cause is mostly a secular argument. Meant to indict the yankees for being the perfidious people they are, taking those meant julep cavaliers under their magnolia trees on the back porch. Gone with the wind in other words. Gone what the wind is not have a lot of god in it. That tells us a good deal about the lost cause. Lincolns premonition. Lincoln had lots of premonitions. He had a superstitious streak to him. He came from the backwoods of kentucky and indiana. He has folk religion attaching to him. He believed when his son was bitten by a dog he was going to take care to indiana to a folk practitioner with a mad stone it was supposed to drop poison out of the wound. Sometimes he will display this superstitious importance of dreams that he has. He dreams cc a funeral in the white house, being on the deck of a ship headed toward a distant shore. It is unusual that he missed reads the dreams. The dream that he has of a funeral in the white house, his dream self goes downstairs and ask somebody what is the funeral about. It is the president. He is assassinated. Lincolns bodyguard was very upset about this. Just take more protection. It was the other guy. My dream self was asking the question. Not me lying there they took of assassination. He dismisses it. When he has on the day that he is assassinated he relates to his cabinet he had the stream about standing on the deck of a ship moving towards a distant shore, he explains it as that means we are going to be getting good news soon from general sherman in north carolina. I had this dream before the battle of stones river. General grant is sitting there and says i recollect stones river is not a victory. That doesnt bother lincoln. He is convinced this is about to be good news that happens. Dont sign him up as a good reader of premonitions. He had them but on on those occasions they didnt do want we might wish they had. It is a case like the jokes about lincoln and ford said theater. One is to the effect that mary is badgering lincoln. I want to go to the theater tonight. He get so fed up and says ok. So shoot me. I know. It is ghoulish. You have to be on the inside of the Lincoln Fraternity to think that is funny. That is the joke lincoln people tell to each other when we get together. What is your view of Victor Davis Hansons argument of the american way of war given what you have said this afternoon . Prof. Guelzo i dont know. I havent read the book. That may be a terrible oversight. I can only plead ignorance on the grounds that there is so many other books about lincoln and the civil war to read. I have to catch up with them. Victor davis hanson would very kindly send me a copy. I suspect people could put that good word in his era. I have met him before. I have to admit i have not read that. I have not read i dont want to admit how many books i ought to have read. Every you every year i do an account of how may new civil war books come out. I posted on my program website. On average, in the last 10 years, there have been 220 titles published every year about the civil war. I wish i could tell you that i have read them all. I have not. I will not tell you which ones i havent read because the authors may have me assassinated. I just cant catch up. I have to draw the line there. One of the striking differences between the north and south today are the religiosity of the south and the secularist of the north. Do you trace it to that, or how do you understand it . Prof. Guelzo the denominational splits, like the baptists, and then also the methodists and the presbyterians all occur 30 years before the civil war. He was in the civil war that was responsible that way. That was already opening up. In some cases the churchs divided over the issue of slavery. Another cases, like the presbyterian issue, it was a peripheral issue. Slavery was not at the center. Im not sure that it is possible to easily map northern secularism versus southern religiosity. I can drive from the east coast to the west coast and never be out of range religious broadcasting on the radio. No matter where i go it is there. Im not sure that a census of religious bodies, institutions, buildings is going to reveal to us any kind of region more religious than others. There may be religions with lots of people but not much fervor. There may be regions with few people but a lot of forever. Fervor. I have met a lot of secular softeners. I have also met a lot of very religious northerners from new hampshire, vermont, and maine. Im not sure that it falls quite so easily. All of this is in flux. Given the Constant Movement of people on the american scene. It may be a simple application to regionalized it. It may have been a single occasion even then. Thank you. It is a pleasure to hear you speak in person. Had the civil war rebellion ended earlier, what impact do you think that would have had to the 13th amendment or restoring the union . Prof. Guelzo we would not have had a 13th amendment if the war had ended earlier than it did. It could only have done so because the union agreed to come and enter in negotiations with the confederacy. The confederacy was not going to give up until it was prostrate. The proof is in the pudding. Lincoln was not going to give up until the union had been restored. The factor that has to work here is either some kind of dramatic victory 1863, or lincoln loses the president ial election in 1864. Remove lincoln, and put into his place George Mcclellan mcclellan and the Democratic Party were committed just on their platform to negotiations with the confederacy. If they are taken place there would have been a ceasefire. They would not have gone back to war. You would not have gotten the soldiers back to it. The sheer inertia would have operated in the confederacys favor. They would have demanded and got recognition as an independent slaver public. Slavery would have continued. The northern states may have abolished slavery for themselves but the northern states as a piece of the republic would have been about as irrelevant to World Affairs as scandinavia. The confederacy on the other hand always had within it, before the war imperialistic ambitions on the caribbean basin. It is difficult to believe that they would not in fact have carried out those ambitions as a way of extending the influence of slavery. That might have turned the tide about the receiving of slavery. It may have put new wind back into the sales of slavery. It would have reinforced the present in commitment to slavery. If that had been the case, then most of the western hemisphere what had been converted in to some form of slave economy. What that may have meant longterm in the 20th century there would not have been a United States to intervene in world war i, world war ii, the cold war. What europe would look like at that point is difficult to imagine that whatever you imagine, it will not be pretty. The consequences that flow from that one initial question are enormous. Enormous for us even today, and enough to make the blood run cold when you think about them hard enough. Professor there was one notable omission in your excellent talk. That was the role of abolition john brown, the religious movement out of new england prior to the war. I must ask, how did the Abolition Movement percolate through the war . They raised the colored regiments, and worked hard in the war effort. How did abolition per click through the war as a religious movement . Prof. Guelzo the reason i didnt delve deeply is because of him. He told me, 20 to 30 minutes. [laughter] how do you like that for shifting blame. Let me take the 15 or 20 minutes no, seriously. Abolition always has to be understood as being a very small minority position. I contrast that with antislavery. Antislavery is a large position. Antislavery is a spectrum. It runs all the way from this small number of outright abolitionists, two people who just dont like slavery. They are not going to do anything about it but they dont like it. Trying to galvanize that spectrum as part of the war effort is one of the chief problems lincoln has to face. Curiously enough the confederates do it for him. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, the confederate government begins to conscript on a large basis black slaves as laborers. Some people say they were black soldiers. No there werent. If you can show them mustering in papers i will be persuaded. The black people who end up working for the confederacy are doing it under duress because they are slaves. The confederacy will draft conscript slave labor to build fortifications, to do all the logistical palling hauling in caring. Northerners see this, and they see that this is actually a system in the confederate army. It is prolonging the war. It is getting their sons killed. Northerners who were not abolitionists, but who were runofthemill antislavery and didnt get excited about it, now they had a reason to see emancipation happen. If the slaves were emancipated they would cease to be an asset to the confederate armies. This in fact is what happens through 1862. People are not so much persuaded by the morality of the abolitionists who remain a narrow strand on the spectrum. But they are persuaded off is we have to get rid of slavery because slavery is what is helping the confederacy drag this war out. That makes people willing to sign on to emancipation. Even then there remains a large portion of the northern electorate which is a very hostile to emancipation. This is why lincoln in august 1862 has to dangle the bait of colonization. Colonization promises once you emancipated slaves they will be deported someplace else. This is the sugarcoating that has to be put on this to persuade northern whites to embrace emancipation. Was lincoln ever serious about colonization . Not on those terms. But he was, like many colonization is, willing to use it as a way of getting people northern to say yes to emancipation. Ironically, the most persuasive case which was made before northern opinion, in favor of emancipation, it is not the case made by the abolitionists who continue to be looked upon as fuzzy haired new england radicals. Rather the cases made by the confederates themselves that this war is not going to be brought to an end until slavery is eliminated. Thank you very much. That is all we have time for. [applause] the civil war he errors every saturday airs every saturday. Youre watching American History tv every weekend. Sunday night, the veteran canadian astronaut has produced many videos of his activities on the International Space station and chairs the scientific and personal aspect of life in space. The own time i felt a shiver of fear was on the dark side of the earth looking at the one side of eastern australia and watching a shooting star come in between me and the earth. First i had the standard reaction of wishing upon a star. That i had the sobering realization that that was a huge dumb rock going 20 miles per second that missed us and made it down to the atmosphere. If it had hit us, it was big enough, we would have been dead in an instant. Sunday night on cspans q a. Coming up next, author peter Hansen Michael talks about john hansen who served as a member of congress from 1781 to 1782. His book is titled remembering john hanson. This program was hosted by the treaty of paris center in annapolis, mar