Publication of James Mcphersons the war that forged a nation, and louis masurs lincolns last speech. As i said before i really wanted to do this event because over the years i have been educated and stimulated by reading these two historians. And i also got an extra bonus on baseball from louis masurs book on the first world series in 1903. But as when you actually spent time lobbying the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 65 and all the Voting Rights acts after that this book, these books in the work of these authors this isnt their only work as you know. Helps us to understand why the civil war, its causes, its aftermath and matters affecting raise, regional conflicts within our borders the boundaries between state and national authority, Nation Authority was a word that lincoln used, and with the the significance of the game change a, the postcivil war amendments, and how long it took, to have a way of making them real. So we are often a people who have trouble with memory. David blight reminded of that when he was here a few years ago, and the work of these historians help those with memory and how we apply it to our present situation. Theres no permanent victories. I set in the Supreme Court today a Shelby County case was argued and came out the press and its why we also have to take note of anniversaries. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights act. In four days there will be an anniversary of brown v. Board of education your 250 anniversary of lincolns assassination, and we will hear why that was significant. So rather than do the traditional thing of having to him historians each talk at us they are going to have a conversation with each other and then we are going to have a chance to ask questions. And because cspan is here there is only one mic so you have to use the mic near the column year. And let us now welcome James Mcpherson and louis masur to politics and prose. [applause] this is not mr. Mcphersons first time and it would not have been louis masurs first time if not for family situations. So welcome. Thank you. Its a wonderful certainly to be here. And everybody here okay . Jim and i just spent four hours in ain the car coming out from new jersey so hopefully we havent finished speaking about all the issues last night that concerns in the world but one of the things that occur to me ma jim is the subtitle of your book why the civil war Still Matters. We just finished the sesquicentennial civil war celebration. Its a good question to start with. Why does the civil war still matter . I think maybe i try to answer that question with the main title of the book the war that forged a nation. Usually subtitles are added to a title in order to explain what the book is about. Because the main title usually doesnt do that come or doesnt message to do that. But in this case i think its the main title that helps to explain the subtitle. The civil war really forged the United States as a nation, and it also forged the nation, the beginnings of the process that turned us into the nation we are today. In order to understand how we got to be the nation we are today, i think we need to look very seriously at the civil war at its causes at its consequences. The north went to work to preserve the union. It was much more common to refer to the United States as the union during the first 70 75 years of our history. But the civil war turned the United States into a nation. For the first 75 years of our existence as a country there were many debates about whether this was a federation of sovereign states that had yielded some of their sovereignty to a National Government but have retained the essential sovereignty, of whether the constitution that formed the United States was a compact between the people of all the states of a nation, if you will, and its government. That remained very much in contest during the antebellum years. But i think that contest was settled by the civil war. It recognized national supremacy. It turned the United States into a nation consisting of all of its people more than a series of semiautonomous states. Of course, the civil war abolished slavery which had been a bone of contention that had divided the country from the very beginning and, of course brought on the war. It not only resolved the issue of slavery by abolishing the institution but with the 13th 14th and 15th amendments the civil war reconstruction amendments, it defined the entire basis of Race Relations and ethnic relations in this country over the past 150 years and continues to define those relationships. Another thing that helped to explain why the civil war Still Matters today is that before 1861, there were two philosophies on what kind of a people, what kind of a country what kind of a nation if you will, this should be. There was one vision south of the masondixon line and the ohio river that focused on an Agricultural Society a Plantation Society based on slave labor a kind of aristocracy of Land Ownership and wealth that resisted some of the forces of the 19th century towards democratization towards urbanization, towards industrialization. And north of the potomac the changes are rapidly happening in the first half of the 19th century that moved the north in the direction of an entrepreneurial, capitalistic democratic society. The civil war was a contest between those two visions of what sort of country this ought to be and the triumph of the north in the civil war set the country on the course of becoming an industrialized capitalist democratic nation. So for all of those reasons i think the civil war continues to matter as a way of trying to understand what kind of a country we are today. And because Abraham Lincoln played such a crucial role in this process, id like to ask lou what sort of part lincoln did play in forging a nation that helps to explain why the civil war Still Matters. You mentioned nation and you mentioned freedom. Think again about the gettysburg address. Linking use of the word nation five times in that incredibly brief address. It speaks to jims point about how to invent a nation, the idea of a nation how do you create initial really the idea of states, local is a triumph for so long. In the gettysburg address lincoln spoke of a new birth of freedom, that that address comes in november 10 months after general lee the emancipation proclamation but lincoln doesnt stop there. He continued to defend the emancipation proclamation which provided the enlistment of black troops. He continues to move forward in a variety of different ways, including endorsing the 13th amendment. One and the issues that intrigue me that led me to write lincolns last speech, the incredible thing about the speech is it comes several days after todays after appomattox, and the American People are expecting a victory speech. The war is over. After four years 700,000 deaths and lincoln waits two days comes out to the white house and since i cant talk i cant talk he defers come he delays, he waits. One point theres a band outside why does the piece is why dont you strike up a song . Why dont you play dixie . Ive always liked that song and now we can say we have recaptured it. He was really offering a conciliatory gesture that would characterize his last speech. What did he talk about books he talked about the problem of reconstruction. Now that the war is over how are we going to rebuild this nation . What are the terms of which were going to rebuild this nation . And again striking in terms of lincolns growth, develop, change over time, very common to talk about that but to focus on that and see it like in that last speech where lincoln defends readmitting louisiana to the union that he comes out and he publicly endorses black suffrage for the first time. An incredible moment speaking about the meaning of the war and continuing issues today. John wilkes booth was among those standing in the crowd. He hears lincoln endorsed limited black suffrage. He says thats the last speech youll ever make and three days later he acts upon history. The extent to which lincoln is a martyr for civil rights. He is killed after directly directing the votes to block. The issue becomes what is going to be the postwar settlement . Not only the triumph of the Northern Industrial capitalist state but how were the three men going to live and be sort of adjusted into this new world of freedom. Speak you mentioned the word reconstruction. Thats the word that is fraught with contested meaning. One level of mean is we are going to reconstruct the United States after his four years of war. But how much change is going to happen . One meaning is that you rebuild after a fire, after damage from a storm. In the same way that your house was before. Another meaning of reconstruction issue completely rebuilt on a new foundation. That contest between these two meanings of the reconstruction and all sorts of other sort of manifestations grew out of these contested meanings was at the core i think not only the hope for years after 1865 but the war itself. Thats exactly right. Restoration reunion, different applications. That is there from the beginning to wonder the things that lincoln is he understood from the very start he had this vision of when the war ends, he says in his first inaugural, at some point the fighting will stop and then what . What will this nation look like . His ideas about that go through a lot of changes and faces a lot of turmoil. Part of the problem of reconstruction is how far can you go to reconstruct those states if your assumption is theyve never left the union could get your assumption is that secession is unconstitutional, that its illegal that they never left the union, therefore theyre entitled to all the rights of citizens even though they say they are gone that creates a very different set of possibilities. If youre one of the radical republicans Charles Sumner who says or Thaddeus Stevens to talk in terms of a conquered territory. But lincoln had no use whatsoever for the. He referred to all the theories about the status of the state as a pernicious abstraction. Thats what he calls them in his last speech. For him it was clear and practical that the states merely had to be re admitted to the proper practical relation to the union. All that is welcomed by the what is it going to mean particularly for this to 4 million freedmen have to make this transmission from slavery to freedom. That becomes the nexus of the debate for reconstruction. What other things that struck me about the civil war is the ironing of confederate success in the early stages of the war. The greater the confederate success the greater the ultimate failure of the confederacy. At the north had managed to win the war, if mcclellan had managed to capture richmond in 1862 coming on top of other Union Victories in the early months of 1862 the war may well have been over and reconstruction would have been the union as it was. But robert e. Lee and Stonewall Jackson success in 1862 pushed lincoln, pushed the north to a conviction that in order to win this war and reconstruct the union, they were going to have to adopt a much harder policy. A policy that would strike against slavery, strike against the resources that the south was using to wage war. So the greatest confederate success in the early years of the war, the more disastrous and destructive their ultimate failure. That is a paradox. So too is company speaking of after the war once the war was over lincolns general sense of mercy of wanting a just and righteous peace but also a fair piece came into play. This is the man who six weeks before his last speech spoke with charity come with mouthful con, charity for all. The radical republicans didnt like it. They thought he was too soft. They thought they didnt have what it would take to put his fist down and make the terms for readmission reunion reconstruction more harsh individual. In fact, one radical republican after lincolns assassination writes in his diary that lincolns assassination is a godsend cohesive to its a godsend. This is shocking to think about but they thought ironically that Andrew Johnson was the guide who was going to stand up to these principles. He was the one who said during the war that treason must be made odious. Of course, between april and december of 1865 johnson would do this complete current around. That says that lincoln simply didnt have what the radical republicans thought was needed to put those sort of put down and keep the confederate dead, turned out to be critical to the early years of reconstruction. Lincoln said with malice toward none and charity for all, ive always wondered about were charity and all. Charity charity to all can ever think of different meanings. Usually do construction is forgiveness for the former confederate to let them off easy as he once said. But charity for all can also mean include black population get and i think that may well have been what lincoln meant. Justice and charity for the south by the south consists of onethird of its population, twofifths of the former confederate population were black, former slaves. And so the charity for all and the radical republicans may have missed the significance of that phrase. No, thats right. The complexity of course is lincoln understood, has the embrace of black suffrage. Be interested in as big a path towards new set of relationships between white and black. No one really knew what that path was. He wrote a letter in which he said whites and blacks must lift themselves into a new relationship with such an interesting phrase. This was a society where the Freedmens Bureau which he signed in march of 65 the idea the National Government, the federal government would play a role in helping people make this transition was in and of itself a radical idea. It was unclear just how they negotiation was going to take place, by which whites and blacks were going to live themselves into new relationship. At the same time talk about forgiveness. And the second inaugural, lincoln quote the new testament, judge not that we judge. Drove the radicals crazy . What do you mean, judge not . Should do not pay a price for what they have done . All of these issues and dilemmas are there. There is a question that had lincoln lived this is one of great counterfactual is that there would have been that kind of charity for all support for africanamericans for me just made that transition from slavery to freedom a more successful one. I think we also need i remember the civil war went on for four years and what applies as a generalization in 1861 1862 may no longer apply as a general station in 18641865. Theres a dynamic. As good as the abolition barilla almost the category of revolutionary change during the course of the civil war. So that lincolns policy in 1861, 1862 was to try to bring together the states and the people in the union that it was before 1861. Of 1863 at the time at the gettysburg address hes talking about a new birth of freedom, that country that was launched as a great experiment, four score and seven years earlier is now a changed country and the clock can never be turned back. So in 18611862 was a kind of attempt to turn the clock back. By the latter half of the war even sooner theres no going back. Its going to be a radically different country as a consequence of the experience of war from the experience of the destruction and intuitive or a phrase from economic history, maybe creative destruction. I mention counterfactual before. Would often forget how pivotal election of 1864 was. Could lincoln have lost that election was he thought he was going to lose. What if they had . That the other point, everybody just yet is democracy. Nation liberty, democracy. Because part of what socalled lincoln was succession was it seemed to be the overturning of an election by the people, that there were democratic means by which to adjust the election of somebody who didnt like being elected lincoln succession was onea one of them. And yet four years later he very well might lose that election. How close was he to losing . If the election had been held on september 1 instead of november 8 im convinced he wouldve lost the election. He was convinced. Every political operative republican and democrat, was convinced lincoln was going to lose because lincoln was a commander in chief of, a losing war. Award that appeared to be penniless without any chance of winning it, sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of men for no good cause. Because during the stalemate of the military situation in the summer of 1864 it looked like this war might go on for ever and ever settle anything. But the capture of atlanta by sherman on september 2 episodes of series of victories by shared in in the Shenandoah Valley turned the thing around 180. It clear he demonstrated the old aphorism that nothing succeeds like success. In this case the military success led to political success. But if it had not happened military failure i think in lincolns case of course he would be another about stops within. Not only as president as commanderinchief. He wouldve lost. Talk about democracy. Soldiers voted into election. He was concerned about the soldier vote. His opponent with George Mcclellan who did something that some soldiers might like the they kept him out of war for much of the early part of the battle which is why he got cashiered. Theres a store that i tell in the book where lincoln was expressing his anxiety about the soldier vote and the journalist said dont worry they will vote as they shoot. Ensured a the numbers were overwhelming and sure enough the numbers were overwhelming. That was a radical experiment by the way, letting soldiers about on a referendum basically on the war. It had ne