Transcripts For CSPAN2 Elizabeth Cobbs The Tubman Command 20

CSPAN2 Elizabeth Cobbs The Tubman Command July 14, 2024

Just a few quick details before introduce myself. First, please take a moment to silent your mobile devices. Second, you will notice we have cspan recording tonight program. For information regarding todays broadcast please check out the replay section of our website. Also the first time ada missoni and program we extend a warm welcome. For any members, we thank you for your ongoing support. Without you the programs would not be possible. Tonight we are very pleased to welcome elizabeth kopp. Elizabeth is an Award Winning novelist and documented filmmaker, author of eight books including nonfiction and americas first lemon soldiers in the New York Times bestselling historical novel the hamilton affair. Her newest novel the command is available for sale after the program outside of the lecture hall. With that said, i know were alla in for a fascinating talk, without further ado i would like to please join me in welcoming elizabeth cox. [applause] thank you so much. I really honored to be here, i cannot think of any better place to launch a novel like this, here in washington, d. C. And at the smithsonian. Thank you so much for being a part of my first audience to talk about. Tubman. I am very honored. We began with a mystery. We all love mysteries. [laughter] we begin with a mystery on jun june 1, 1863 to u. S. Gunships craft upper river, Blackwater River and South Carolina towards confederate rifles in a river that studded with underwater mines in infested with alligators. The river leads deep into that part of america that is known as Enemy Territory. Aboard the 300 men holding their breath, 300 uniformed american men and a handful of white officers who were led by a colonel who once rode with john brown. They are creeping c upper river and these men have agreed to risk their lives and perhaps die for our country, half of which is a struggling to keep them entertained and half of which is struggling to make them free. The question in the mystery, why did they pick this target. Why did they go this night, why did they go this route . Why were 300 brandnew soldiers able to triumph over confederate stronghold that had 2000 soldiers 10 miles away. They go 25 miles upper river in 2000 soldiers, veterans stationed are close by. So the question is, who was guiding them. It may have been Harriet Tubman. The former conductor on the underground railroad who many historians believe without the scene even though nowhere in the military record does it say that Harriet Tubman walked at the right hand of colonel James Montgomery. The man leading these troops and ridden with john brown. One historian has raised legitimate questions which is if you have no record, how do we know. Harriet tubman mightve stuck out like a sore thumb. How could she have infiltrated behind lines a woman from maryland down in South Carolina place she did not know well in most insight people spoke of a dialect which he would not haveh understood practically a separate language. So areod we seeing evidence that we have, im speaking as a historian not a novelist, we will get into that. Are we seeing what we want to see . Which is thegl single most heroc female patriot in American History. Who was Harriet Tubman in the civil war . Was she able nurse and a washer woman . For Union Soldiers or was she aa scout, spy and ultimately a veteran . So today i want to sketch the scenetio until you what you fort about the civil war and get this off on dry ground which is a good metaphor in this case and i want to ask you after i sketch at the scene and laid out the evidence, i want you to draw your own conclusions. About the Company River raid of 1863, by the way, be as they say in South Carolina which is how i started out when i started this research, not knowing the train myself. I am hoping what this will do and in the nove novel to bring o light the story that is mostly forgotten and help us all understand from the experience of what is our greatest fema patriot Harriet Tubman. First i want to say a few words of why it applied the techniques of fiction to a story which could be told as nonfiction quite naturally. I think it is become essentially its a curious problem in a problem we have when writing about women in history. Theres two problems but in a way Harriet Thomas is not that unusual its about most women in history, most people but especially women at first their lives are only documented, people did not go around writing things they did note was important and what to do that would be important. So the evidence is often scanty and as a result we think i did not read that in a book so it must not have happened. So we tend to believe the evidence. Theree is also the second problm which we tend to disbelieve, and all advanced my slides, this is a ship very similar to the kind we are using at the raid. And you see the American Flag flying. So the other problem is not only do we have not a lot of evidence but the evidence we have we tend to disbelieve. This is because of what psychologists call selective attention. That is a process in which our brains are trying to focus all the time and focus on a problem at hand. We tend to ignore stop that does not fit with our assumption of what is important in peripheral to our brain, assumptions about reality. By the way we be applying this to Harriet Tillman no see this twice, its a very famous photographph recently found. Tubman about the age or little bit older than she was at the American Civil War when she was a tiny flip of a thing. 5 feet tall, as you see probably couldve been blown away in the wind. Very slender. I found this problem not just applicable to harriet, my last one was the first woman in soldiers in the United States and they had an odd situation which was as you see them pictured here, they were recruited by the American Army to go in france and they served and connected 26 million telephone calls from the trenches to headquarters in world war i and stood on the front lines at muster calls at the end of the war that we now have video footage which was released by archives showing women in fron front rows. The army forgot when they got home that they had been there. They said they were not actually veterans despite the dogtags that they were and it took them 60 years to get military recognition. A it is a problem that we tend to have which is we sort of forget about people that we think were not important at the time and assumed they were not. The problem with Harriet Tubman, i was lucky with the hello girls because i find personal files. D we found this new film footage and have photographic evidence of the slide is showing you with Harriet Tubman, there are no personnel records for voluntee volunteers, there is no footage of the American Civil War, there is very precious few photographs and what we have to do is accept the evidence it will never be complete. We will have to reason t our way through the evidence that we have and we will come up with our best guest weighing the evidence which calls to mind president trumans request for one arm economist. In hishi advisors asked why do u want an economist. And that was tell me on the one hand and on the other hand. [laughter] so it is frustrating. So im going to tell you on the one hand and the other hand the evidence that we have but i will encourage you to read my historical novel and this is why i applied fiction Harriet Tubman because fiction lights the dark corners of evidence. And it helps us to work through and by using knowable and known facts, it allows us to imagine how the unimaginable might possibly have occurred. How would puny 5foot tall illiterate black woman with a bounty on her head infiltrated Enemy Territory in South Carolina multiple times, gathered intelligence at the risk of her life, this is a group of highly educated white men to takeey her advice and guided the first Major Mission of black troops in america to victory. So as a promise, im going to set the scene because i have to remind myself of the details in the war first breaks out in South Carolina, and breaks out the this shows you for sumter South Carolina and bombarded by confederate troops. When the federal government refused to evacuate the confederate troops began t. This wasnt surprising that fort sumner was in charleston because South Carolina was classically the session when i became an historian i study at Stanford University when i got my phd emigre professor who wrote on the subject in the hotbed of succession and sometimes i have to get onto the hpf. [laughter] the hotbed of secession. Anyway, they were made in south kelowna in South Carolina became the first state to succeed from the union. Following the 1860 election of abraham lincoln. In this is what initiated the battle but the warco went on foa long time and it went on for four years and the first two years it seemed not particularly likely that the union would prevail, the north so to speak would win and hundreds of thousands would die before there was any indication of who would win. Part of the reason is the south is a big place. The 11 states of the confederact are bigger than all of europe. So how is the union going to keep a place bigger than all of europe. And the europeans did not think that was going to happen. In fact we are visibly supplying both sites, and taking a position especially since the north had not taken a position of what the real issue was and wasnt about slavery or pride or Something Else they cannot understand. So this made one of his decisions very important and this was the decision to block the coastline of the south. To keep the south from being supplied by the rest of the world and by runners, i know some of you remember rhetti butler, it was mostly british and french and other people are running the blockade. They came up with a anaconda plan which this map shows you that basically try to barricade 3000 miles of coastline. To blockade 3000 miles you need a navy which the union did have but you also need a place to water your ships, repair your ships a place to launch outward in a place for ships to be protected as they go on various errands on various attacks. So the navy rather decided upond trying to get some peace of the islands of South Carolina south of the coastline near charleston and you can see charleston at the top and down here is the sea islands. They are so close to the shore that honestly dont tell anyone. All well, when i first went i did not know i was on an island, i thought it was but to be on an island by now. Their short bridges and you dont feel like you crossover much. So what that meant, these become the base of launching expedition and hopefully to retake sumner and simply have a safe place for the squadron. Earlier in the work in 1860 when the Navy Launches an attack on Port Royal Island and is the main town of beaufort in this slide depicts that which was undertaken, and by the way they got it in a day. They quickly overtook the island, they ran ashore with the American Flag and then they found themselves marooned for the next four years. [laughter] of course they could get out i see but it would be another four years before charleston could be successfully taken by union troops. So they were there for quite a long time. By the way often i said north versus south they sided with the south and southerners who sided with the north. One of the ships i showed you was this man captain and he was one of the captains from charleston. He was from charleston South Carolina captaining a union chip on shore was his brother general thomas who is in charge of the confederateis defenses. I think of hardly any more classic a examples as the war turned out to be. Now i know, youre thinking what happened with Harriet Tubman. She enters in to the scene very soon after this because what happens when the union takes them the victory accidentally liberates 10000 contraband, these people pictured here. Contraband is a term that is used in naval exercises in a time of war where you can seize your enemies property if theyre going to use the property to make war against you. They had no laws against anybody against slavery the way that they took the property to declare them contraband. There were many, 10000 people on the island that were liberated in that way. Theres many photographs you can look up of the port royal experience, whats involved in tran2 free people and how do you make them take that c transitio. The man in charge of the expedition that project was named david hunter, general hunter was the head of the department of the south. It was his job to figure out what to do with these people, how to secure the island which is so close to the mainland, i swear you could throw a baseball if you had a better arm than me. You can hit someone on the other side. What he wanted to do, he wanted to liberate these people but he also wanted to put some of them into uniform. Why . To protect the island. You have to keep the island and it can be easily overrun and theres many threatened moments when it looked like the confederacy would take back the island. The problems, he was on both sites. In trying to do this. He was signed by the fact that lincoln was r reluctant. In fact congress positively approached the idea of putting black men into uniform and giving them guns. So that was the first problem to be solved in the second problem was the reluctance to be coerced into joining the army. These people spend their whole lives being cohearst and also altogether clear that they were free just because they were contraband. And in fact, there was the 13th amendment and it was not passed until the end of the war and before that was innocent patient a proclamation which went into effect under the emancipation on generally first 1863 and you see black men in uniforms and this is when the proclamation is being read out. Even that is not a very clear guarantee because first of all it only applies tos the states so Harriet Tubman is from maryland which is a loyal state and this means that her family remnants were still there are still not free. So there was a challenge to some extent in recruiting them for what became known as the first and second South Carolina volunteers however, men did join and this is the photograph that is very dear to me i wish we could get closer, obviously they had to get everybody in the picture but this is the first South Carolina volunteers which was the first regiment of the United States government of africanamerican men formally enslaved people. They were the first because he got special permission from lincoln and set obviously you have to hold the island see can form regiments that begin in the process of 1862. So thison is where we again come to the story of Harriet Tubman. Because a large civilian population in addition to the men on this island and you saw the photograph and the large civilian population in many not just from the island but refugees from other parts and other islands and people finding their ways from the shores onto port royal and the refugees so one of the things that this brings about is t an influx of missionaries. Missionaries and abolitionist whond go south and feel impelled to go south and help figure out how can we help people who spent their whole life been enslaved and how can we make this experiment t succeed. Harriet tolman was one of the earliest to arrive and this was the engraving from the book in which she later described what went on in this is a woodcut that she wouldve seen in her lifetime and that was made with her wearing the coat of the Union Soldier and her rifle was in the background of the first or second South Carolina volunteers. An interesting thing to know about. Tolman and how she gets her is that shes representative remanded. John andrew recommends to be sent by government expense into right hes a very valuableha woman. It doesnt seem likely that the governor wouldve had her scent at the expense of the government or that he wouldve singled her out in particular. No one recommended me as a valuableg. Woman. So it takes something for a governor to write a general and send Harriet Tolman down. So what is she going to do that. So that is one clue, that is a clue not a fact. We know he wrote this letter, we dont know what it meant really. But another thing to couple paid, why shehe even went. Not just Frederick Douglass, he is about three years older they knew one another and they were from the same part of the Eastern Shore of maryland both from Dorchester County but he did send two of his sons and this is a picture of one of his sons who served as the 54 regiment and had a very famous expedition after the raid. Even so you think about how she had done enough. Had she done enough between 1849 liberated herself which itself was quite an achievement. This is the runaway notice that was put up. Which is taken out by the plantar you might notice every first to 27 years of age. She went by mitzi and later took name harriet as she got to be an adult. Because you want people to spot them in a

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