Historian who works at the estate. Most recently on health and education. And we will have a questionandanswer session during the end. There other sponsors as well pretty good were website. Now enjoy. Hello and good afternoon everyone and welcome to hear on june 14th pretty welcome everyone. Todays guest will be professor Elizabeth Varon and the book armies of deliverance. For you guys who are not familiar with this institute of American History. First, welcome and we are so glad you can join is prodigious to tell you a little bit about this institute is a Nonprofit Organization dedicated to k12 history and education pretty were also serving the general public. Our mission is to promote the knowledge and understanding of American History through Educational Programs such as this one and other resources. We also provide direct access to unique primary source materials through this amazing collection. And if youre interested in finding out anymore of about that in amazing programs and the collection please go to Gilder Lehrman. Org. What im not hosting, mutually working on the Hamilton Education program. If you want to find out more about Hamilton Education program. No to the website. I also have with me, a tutorial, with the Gilder Lehrman collection. So freeways out there in our audience, you can notice that your screens are off. Microphones are off. So please just know that is normal. There is no video and microphone for you guys. But then you said say how shall i ask a question. We will have a great conversation today and we will going to generate a lot of great questions. So if you look at the 590 screen, you will see a little q a teacher down there. During conversation, please submit the question separated when you submit your question, also leave a little north of where youre from. Because we would like to know where everybody is from here. Allison will be gathering of these questions eventual be asking them here in the second half of the program. We have big guardians of several hundred people. So just please know youre probably not going to be able to get to all questions but really pointed our best. And to ask as many questions as possible. Our speaker today, our speaker today is professor Elizabeth Varon prayed professor of American History at the university of virginia and served on the council of the john civil war history. Shes a specialist in the civil war era. She is also authored several books before the world but will be talking about today. Some of her previous books include, need to be counted. White women in politics. Southern lady, inky spy, the true story of elisabeth, the union agent in the heart of the confederacy. And the coming of the american civil war, 79 8059 and victory defeat and freedom at the end of the civil war. Today will be speaking about her was book, armies of deliverance, new history of the civil war. This is an amazing book on how i had a chance to read it so now, i will stop sign my screen and welcome the professor Elizabeth Varon. Welcome. Elizabeth think is much. James tackling this seems like an incredibly daunting task and you have done it through the theme of deliverance is in the title armies of deliverance. But deliverance seems to touch on so many different topics related to the civil war. Can tell us a little bit about why you decided to tackle the whole narrative history of the civil war. In the little bit more about what is meant by deliverance rated. Elizabeth absolutely. So im a historian of american politics. My focus is mostly on the american path. In my home state of virginia. I was commissioned to write history of the entire civil war. I knew that would involve a learning curve for me. I was eager to answer for myself and for my readers some questions about politics and questions that historians have debated. This questions on the ones that interested me most were followed and i was interested to learn more about the motivation of the Union Soldiers. How they sustain the morale over the course of a long war. Understanding why men and women in the early days of their short and sweet warrants which victory. Not all of that tricky by the nurse and what is happening the race. And what prepare them for combat. In our complex questions and wanted to have insight into those. I was interested in the question of leadership. Now the build a coalition to win the civil war. And i use this term because Northern Society was divided. And they were ready to process broad political spectrum. Whatever they were abolitionist, the radical republicans who are ready to take aim at slavery. On the other far end of that spectrum were dimmer crowds who were very anti. And in the middle of the political spectrum were figures like abraham lincoln. And they were uneasy about slavery and about abolition. As of lincoln had to manage a divided order. And i was interested to learn more about how he built coalition and sustained a coalition. That is also interested in the third major question on slavery. In the emancipation policy and how it took shape in the degree to which emancipation gained political traction. So over the course of my research, i discovered the northerners were around the theme of deliverance. This was the union victories, that would uplift both southern whites and blacks alike. By delivering them from their elite slave holding secessionists who had held them under the thumb. As the northerners saw it rated to deliver to them, the blessings the free society. To put it another way, the soldiers marched off to war in 1961 believing that their purpose is not to conquer the south, but to save it. To save the southern masses from their own leaders. So i argue over the course of the book that this theme of deliverance was such a struggle the drew followers like a magnet to this cause and permitted lincoln not only to afford at the coalition but to grow it over of the war. Included republicans involved in the political strikes in the party some democrats the opposition party. Some residents of the slaveHolding Border states anti confederate southerners. Deliverance rhetoric was key to all the makes pretty animate the case that deliverance rhetoric proved persistent over the course of the war. Tonight tried to explain how is it that they persisted in believing that they could save the southern masses from southern leaders even in the face of massive evidence the federalists did not want to be saved. I would also try to address the issue with the impact of this deliverance and rhetoric into notes that while it was instrumental in Union Victory for being a sort of a total coalition, deliverance rhetoric also ultimately failed to persuade confederates to accept victory or to accept black freedom on the north term. I was think ago if the teacher when i wrote this book in the sense is was commissioned to write a book that would appeal to general readership and we suitable for use as a textbook in College Classrooms and high school. Head the aims in mind, i wanted students to take away two important things from this book. And to learn and understand two things that americans sometimes struggle to put in the same frame and those are, first, that racism was an american problem, not only a southern problem, American Society wassive fused with racist in the 19th century and the north and south and africanamericans were waging a freedom struggle on two fronts. The literal war of the horrors slavery in south and White Supremacy, and i battle in the north for political rights, there was persistent discrimination in the north where they were free but relegated to a second class status. I empathize that to understand the consequences and the course and the causes of the civil war you have to grapple with the depth and breath or american racism and i want my student readers of the book to come away understanding Something Else and that is that the union and the confederate si were startly different mission cal skims. Representing starkly different ideologies, representing starkly different destinies for america and it was these differences that Frederick Douglass had in meaned when he said in 1878 speech, a right side and the wrong side in the war. The was was as douglass described it a war of ideas between the old and knew, between slavery and freedom, between, to quote him, barbarism and civilization, and douglass war under no illusion that Northern Society was perfect he was in van guard of the movement to reform Northern Society bus douglass now that Union Ideology with it emphasis on free labor as opposed to enslaved labor and he emphasis on majority rule and moral reform, Union Ideology created a framework in which change and progress were possible. Not inevitable, innovate by any means easy, not even likely, but possible, and activists like douglass pushed open the door against great odds in the face of great adversity, pushed open the doctor change and progress. And douglass new that decreeds crested were the avowed enemy of change and explosion they were intent on pulling the door shut and locking ill chaining it shut and throwing away the key. Its important to understand all this because i want students to be mindful forks guard against falling into the trap of a false equivalency between the union and the confederatey. We know and were remind he all the time, by event thursday charlottesville and their aftermath that the trap of false equivalency is a very dangerous trap indeed. Looking tet the encriminal challenge lincoln had ahead of hem when he was elect, keeping this gigantic complicated situation in the north with abolitionists and dealing with the Slave Holdings states that remained in the union. Can you talk about then how his views of emancipation evolved going from the con tis situation act to the emancipation of washington to the emancipation proclamation and how that played into the political dynamic going on in the north. Absolutely. So, the standard way we account for the emergence of emancipation as a core war aim on the northern side is to emphasize lincolns pragmatism as a politician. He knew that he had to keep this unwieldy political entity dont, especially concerned to keep the slave Holding Border states in the union no, tot alien alienate and moderates andcrests and knew that most Union Soldiers when the bar begins wouldnt identify themselves as abolitionists, they were committed to proproject of saving the union but not to award to end slavery. We that lincoln experiments with various policies. He offers gradual compensated emans addition to try to lure slaveholders back the union with the promise if they voluntarily flee the slaves hell compensate for the losses and colonialize. The freed people, he makes series of appeals that we consider part of a long tradition of antislavery gradualism and the standard narratives one in which lincoln comes around when he observes that events on the ground, most especially the massive resistance against slavery by the enslaved, their flight, their exodus from farms and plantations to union lines, when he sees that this the war itself and this activism and resistance by the enslaved eroding the institution, that his offers are for to take him up on the gradual solutions are being rebuffed and he comes around, driven by a sort of pragmatic belief that the right move for saving the union is abolition, abolition is a means to the end end of saving the union and then makes arguments on behalf of emancipation that are, again, pragmatic, arguments based on military necessity to bring along doubtful, hesitant, resistant northerners by saying we emaps pate as a means to an end, driven by practicing pragmatism because emancipation is a military necessity to take resources away from the enemy. I recognize the value of that particular narrative but i emphasize in my book, lynns idealism as he comes around as it were to be sure theres an evolution in lincolns thinking and change. But once he comes to embrace emancipation, he and his allies make what in the context of the time was a quite idealistic, ament that emancipation would benefit all americans and that ill will benefit southerners and white southerners. It will benefit them by opening the way for all of them to get the blessings of free society, free speech, economic prosperity, to flow into Southern Society and will remove the source of contention between the north and south. It will displace that slaveholding belief that had tom nateed Southern Society. And benefit southern whites and intended to enlist various allies from the slaveHolding Border states and a few southerners from Confederate States willing to support him. He tries to sign them on in making this case that emancipation will have broad benefits and giving free tom to she slave we assure freedom to the free as he famously said. To recognize lincoln is making an argument about the broad benefits to seat of emancipation is a little bit sobering andtive appointing because one thing that it signals the arguments for emancipation remain more white centered, on benefits to whites than we would have liked, than hey should have. The focus should have been on the suffering of slaves and on their rights to free tom and to citizenship, but northern antislavery politics remaintain quite white centered in lincolns version of them. Another way to think but this, is that in the context of what had come before, this argument that emancipation will have broad benefits for all meshes i devoce radical because it is a rev rev futuration re futuration of what had been centuries of zero sum think can but history life slavery and you could not have black freedom because any gain for africanamericans would come at the expense of whites, and lincoln and his allies expect this is the, and it is a big break with the past to reject this kind of thinking. And it has to be noted and emphasized that lincoln here is in a sense following the lead of the true antislavery vanguard and that is to the enslaved people who have taken matters into their own hands and risen up against slavery to with draw from ill, flee from it and join the union army, and also very much in debt to intellectually figure advertise fred domestic douglass who had been building a case for abolition, one lincolns when he didnt break that he embraced it in this way that was i think quite a big break from what had come before. An emancipation seemed to play not just a role domestically but internationally as well because also the concept of deliverance you talk about, that lincoln had to keep an eye across the atlantic because cotton was part of a Global Economy and the British Empire was dependent on cotton from the south and then also this trying to prevent the south from being recognized as a nation seeking selfdetermination. Can you talk a little bit more pout the International Aspect of delivering an emancipation . Yes, deliverance rhetoric is important. Really the emphasis in deliverance rhetoric for someone like lincoln and a central premise of it was what we might call the dill lewd dill lewdded mallses theory of southern politics and a very widespread popular belief on the part of northerners that the white southern masses most of whom did not own slaves had been seduced, duped, cajoled, dill lewdded, pressured, terrorized interest outing secessionist leader and if the union to break the spell the secessionists cast over the southern masses the southern masses would welcome deliverance at the hand of the union army and lincoln was referred to the war as a rebellion and insurrection and secession was the work of a small group, secessionist conspirators and was not a legitimate movement that rejected that reflected the true will of the southern masses we can talk about, again, how it is northerners could believe that in the face of so much evidence of confederate support but this all had impreliminary indications as you said in terms of geopolitics and diplomacy, the decreeds were making a bid to persuade european power, particularly the british, they were a legitimate state and should we recognize as such and lincoln was trying to make the case and deliverrans resident ring was helpful to say this is not a legitimate exercise in nation building by people of have been the victim odd tyranny, this is a conspiracy by a small number of slaveholder who are riding roughshod over the rights of the southern masses and to have to be toppled in order to restore the union. And of course confederate hopes of foreign recognition are ated and lincolns embase of emancipation, the preliminary proclamation and the Union Victory in identified the union at war with the emancipation politics. For the confederacy how did they react to the what was their ideology against the north so to speak . So, heres an important thing to note that is at the heart of these ideological battles and propaganda wars. We tend to imagine that what happens in wars is that people demonize each other, one side demonizes the other and we do see demonization in the civil bar but the premise of the union war was that southerners would once again be the countrymen of northerners; that the union would be restored and unionists tended, as i say the book to describe southerners metaphorically as eric and his prodigal sons, pupils who needed teaching and drunksard monday he needed to sober up and mad men who should come to their centers and sinners who should re spent and so on, and bringing them into the national fold. Confederate leaders were attuned to this deliverance rhetoric and wanted at all costs to discredit it. So, from the very start of the war, i indeed before the first shots were fire the focus of confederate ideology is on making the case to white southerners that the union is intent on a war of extermination, and so if deliverance is a key word for unionists, on the con