Welcome to our final program. Gary gallagher of the university of virginia. Most of your familiar with his works. He has been prolific, writing about confederate history. He has 100 articles as well as numerous book titles. Some of my personal favorites, confederate war, union war. Many books have had a profound impact on the field. I am a student of dr. Gallaghers. In 1988, i was a historian at spotsylvania. He published earlier a biography who fought the bloody angle. He came out with his dog and we spend an afternoon walking the field and talking about Civil War History in graduate school. One of the best if not one of the best decisions next ameren my wife. I decided to study under him. It was not always easy. It was not always smooth. We had disagreements. I think hes misguided about some things. He doesnt think there has been any good music after 1980. Clearly wrong. [laughter] and also sometimes his use of evidence is somewhat questionable. For some time he has maintained that a book that he let me borrow, i returned it. He claims there is a copy stain on it. A coffee stain on it. He treasures his books and i understand that but the problem with this charge is that i dont drink coffee. [laughter] in the face of evidence, he . Maintains that i damaged his book, a serious crime for dr. Gallagher. The opportunity to be at his seminar was as you can imagine eyeopening. So that he impressed was to master the history, to appreciate the contributions made to the field. I think that we see that in his own work, the body he has built over these years is impressive and it pays homage to the past. It is my pleasure to introduce Gary Gallagher who will be speaking this evening on robert e lee and the army of Northern Virginia, and the reality of defeat. [applause] dr. Gallagher i never told peter it was a coffee stain. I told him it was a liquid ring. Peters use of evidence is for all to see, easily compromised. It is called selective memory. It is why it is important to distinguish between history and memory. That is what i tried to impress upon my students. Something actually happend. That could only be argued by academics. Things do actually happened. Peter and i, much of our relationship has been a kind of ongoing drama about history and memory. We both love the colts, and that is important. Its wonderful to be here tonight. You must be pretty much exhausted. You have been at this all day. We were up early this morning and walked around the battlefield. I know many of you were up early as well. I am not going to keep you forever tonight. Im impressed so many of you are here. I have been coming to the Civil War Institute since the early 1990s. I have many wonderful memories of coming to these gatherings. It is fun to see old friends. It is fun to walk out of the Peach Orchard at 5 30 in the morning. Now im going to talk to you about what peter said. I was going to talk about the grand review. Then i got the final program and i saw that i was talking about this. [laughter] because peter is in charge that is what im going to do. I have two main questions that im going to address tonight. They may seem obvious to you but i hope you will bear with me as i make my way through this my first question is should we view lees surrender as the decisive indicator of southern failure and treated as the effective into the war . Did confederates understand that they had been beaten by United States military forces . I will tip my hand in case some of you are teetering on the edge of your strength. My answer is yes to both of those. There is no more surprising what im doing tonight and you are free to leave. If all you are interested in is the bottom line. If not, here we go. Appomattox is the end of the war. I believe the war did in in the spring of 1865. Perhaps in part because recent military conflicts have lacked beginnings and endings. There is a tendency to ascribe similar characteristics to the american civil war. Within this reframing the war didnt begin at fort sumter didnt end at appomattox that extended through reconstruction or through jim crow, or down to the present. The war never ended. It allows the war to go on and proceed without coming to terms with the war itself. There are plenty in the academic world and Popular Culture look at the cover of time magazine. It features an unfortunate rendering, a bad decision on his times part. And the text that read why we are still fighting the civil war . Constructions of a long civil war should not have obscure the fact that the war in fact did end. It ended with the surrender of Confederate Military forces with the dismantling of the confederate state, the restoration of the union. The distraction of slavery, and the rapid demobilization of a million citizen soldiers wearing United States uniforms. 80 of them were out of uniform by the end of the year and as we move into the postwar years the army quickly reverted to its very, very modest size. The United States move through the 19th century with the United States army that had 30,000 main in a at a time when the Prussian Army had at 600,000 and so did the french army. The idea of moving into the late 19th Century Building on the experience of the civil war is wrong headed. You cant wait not to be a soldier anymore. As soon as you are not a soldier anymore things are back where they should be. These are huge outcomes of the civil war. Steve cushman and i distilled into three words on the side of the monument, the essence of how people at the time would have viewed the importance of the war. Those words are the nation lives. That is all it says on the east facing side of that monument. The political and social conflict that ensued in the postwar era should not be considered an extension of the war by other means. Postwar violence however grotesque at times is not did not approach in scale or fury. The seismic military violence of the civil war years. The former confederates who perpetrated much of the postwar violence have scaled back their goals from establishment of an overtly slaveholding republic to regaining political power and maintaining white supremacy. They are not equivalent struggles. They are very different in intent and very, very different in scope. Reunion played out as a torturous process that lasted longer than the war. It was marked by an effort by x exconfederates unable to reinstitute slavery, settled for a watereddown version of what the confederacy provided, namely the social structure within why people exerted economic, legal and social control over millions of black people. The jim crow south, a reality by the late 19th century, lasted for many decades, the most obvious expression of the confederate generations response to defeat and emancipation. To describe postwar events as violent continuation of what happened during 18611865 robs the war of much of the singularity and meaning. If you want to make a quick comparison, add all of the violence in reconstruction and place them alongside on any today this of sustained combat in the civil war and you will get a sense of the relative level of violence. The war did end. I also believe that any exploration of confederate defeat must take into account the unique position of lee and his army. Trying to understand how it really sank in for the confederate people that this was over. This was over. To understand how that worked, to understand how people can came to terms with that, you have to understand the position lee held. That the confederates were waging. Appomattox for most people in the United States and the confederacy as well as policymakers in london and paris, lee and the army of Northern Virginia had become synonymous with the confederate nation. So long as he remained in the field Union Victory was the supremacy of lee and his army invoked national imagination, unmistakable in wartime evidence. It is everywhere. You cannot escape it. Im going to give you a few pieces of testimony. I know there has been recent literature that argues confederates love Stonewall Jackson even more than they loved r. E. Lee. Jackson is a great hero to the confederate people. He is a martyred icon of the confederacy in terms of how important he is to the confederacy of the war it is important to keep in mind that he is dead after may of 1863 and is a corpse underneath the sought in lexington. And there unable to affect what is going on as the war reached its last year and several additional months. Lee was alive. In command of the most Confederate Army and the fact that he was there and doing the things that he did prompt people in the United States, in the confederacy and in europe to reach judgments about him such as these. I will start with republican politicians. Charles sumner from massachusetts, revealed attitudes about northern politicians when he wrote that secretary of war stantons thought piece can be had only when lees army is dispersed. Sumner himself have been saying that when lees army is out of the way the whole rebellion will disappear. So long as we commanded his army, there is still hope for the rebels and the unionists of the south are afraid to show themselves. A couple of foreign opinions. A fullpage illustration of lee on its cover in june 1864. It said that lee was trusted by his government at the heart of his soldiers, and possessed the confidence of the country. All confederates relied on his patriotism and genius, opponents owned his superiority to all the success of generals of the federal army. Not since the duke of wellington and napoleon had struggled their skills on the marshall stage of had the world witnessed in high perfection the poke your your combination of moral and intellectual qualities which fits a man for military command. In 1865, and lee is the idol of his soldiers and the hope of his country. Depressed each which surrounds his person and the fanatical belief in his judgment and capacity is the one idea of an entire people. Confederate testimony, i will quote john h. Clayburn. He writes from his office of senior surgeon in virginia, he captured the depth of feeling that most confederates held relief. No man on this continent or any other felt so large or important a place for so many people. I barely believe under god our cause is in his hands and if he goes down the hope of the nation is extinct. If there be genius elsewhere there is no confidence that people in the government unite on him only. I have to quote kate edmonton. Kate is one of my civil war girlfriends. She has the best published diary of anyone. It is absolutely riveting. Wonderful quotations about all kinds of things. Kate edmonson watched early in the war. She wrote on june 11 what a position does he occupy, the idol, the point of trust of thousands. Then she shifted to a comparison between lee and officers who had failed another theaters. God grant that he may long be spared us. Youre supposed to chuckle at that because it is so perceptive and captures so much about the incapable in so many words for Jefferson Davis says something similar to that in his famous letter to his brother when he said what we need in a great war like this is a number of. We need a half a dozen great generals. What a spectacular success chancellors had built. People knew the odds were toone. They knew in the confederacy. Davis talked about it and then told his brother we need half a dozen of them. Such a general in the full affectation of the word comes along only once in a generation. The import of his comment is clear. We have lee and we dont have anybody else. That is one of the problems of the confederacy. They only found one person who could command and army. They had more than one army. That is the problem. It is a problem they overcame. Many called for lee being in complete power in the confederacy. One of peters favorites put it this way. He should certainly have entire control of all military operations throughout the confederate states. I should like to see him as king or dictator. He is one of the few great men who ever lived to could be trusted. And the behind the line seen in richmond, he noted the same phenomenon in richmond in several entries. People saying that we should have all the power. We can trust him. They viewed him as the colonial population struggling against Great Britain had trusted george washington. You can trust almost no one with power but you can trust him. Lee and the army of Northern Virginia function very much as washington the Continental Army had. They are the point to which people look to see whether there is a chance to achieve their goal in nationbuilding. General henry, there has been no country for a year or more. You are the country. To these men, they have fought for you. Even though significant Confederate Forces remained under arms in several places in mid april 1865 the surrender of lees army brought the reality of defeat home graphically and immediately to the confederacy. It brought the same sense of victory to people in the United States. Appomattox did signal the practical end of the war, never mind subsequent negotiations and surrenders. Without lees army in the field none of those other forces could inspire the type of confidence necessary to maintain the Confederate Military resistance. I dont think many people woke up in the morning anywhere in the confederacy and said i wonder what Joseph Johnston is doing this morning. If only johnston were dictator or king, we could trust him to retreat. [laughter] i loved the woman who wrote in her diary that johnston seems to be intent on retreating out of virginia. In the whole world is open to him. He can retreat almost anywhere. The secretary of the navy, writing in his diary on april 10 1865 joins most other loyal citizens and celebrating news from appomattox. This surrender of the great rebel captain and the most formidable and reliable army of the secessionists terminates the rebellion. We have never had a good edition of Gideon Welles diary. It is one of the Great American diaries. One wretched awful three volume version was published and eight difficult to use one was published in 1960. There is a spectacularly good edition of his civil war diary. It doesnt do the reconstruction but it does the civil war part. If you dont have it and want a foundational primary account on the civil war get this new version of Gideon Welles diary the end of that commercial. I get no money for that. Confederates agreed with Gideon Welles. Let me quote three women on this. I will stop quoting in a minute, but i want to make this point. How can i write it, asked the north carolinian, to describe what has fallen us. General lee has surrendered. On who hung the hopes of the whole country. It seems to dreadful to realize. A young georgia woman 1865, no one seems to doubt it. Everybody feels ready to give up hope. It is useless to struggle longer, and the wanted men go seems to be the common cry and the four wounded men go hobbling about the streets with despair on their faces. From florida, another young woman reacted with which we were all dead. It is as if the earth has crumbled beneath our feet. In North Carolina in spoke for many soldiers and civilians in a single sustained statement. The life of the confederacy is gone when generally and his army surrendered. The impact of appomattox sheds light on another debate among civil war enthusiasts and relates to this notion of why people sought as the end of the war. That debate is on the importance of events in the western theater versus the eastern theater. The east was more important. That is my bottom line. Many dont agree. You are confused. [laughter] historians debated this endlessly. They make complaints, there is too much attention on virginia and gettysburg. Too much attention on r. E. Lee. For a while in the 70s they blame that on freeman. Too many people read his books about lee and the army of Northern Virginia and that was a trend print you commit a good case for the importance of the west. The geographic scale is impressive. The west arts in kentucky and ends up in North Carolina. That is where it ended up. Logistical damage was profound. Central georgia takes a big hit as we know in 1864. The loss of the Mississippi River hurt the confederacy. It did not hurt it as much as people often pretend. There is no doubt that within the context of the civil war the than gettysburg. Vicksburg was far more important than gettysburg. More important in the United States, more important in the confederacy. More damaging to confederates, more uplifting to people in the United States. I dont think it makes much difference at all. The war goes on for two years. The confederates have lost control of the Mississippi River in april 1862. It is not a confederate river after new orleans falls. The confederates hold a pieceo of the middle of the river, so what . What does matter coming out of vicksburg is that it helped elevate u. S. Grant. That is the most important thing for the west position grant to be called to the east. Where he could do with the real problem. Which was lee. Why did grant come east . Why did he accompany the army . Why did he abandoned his indirect strategy to defeat the confederacy for a direct confrontation with lee . He did so because understood politics, he understood the civilian population of the United States demanded that their best general finally take the field to defeat this bogeyman who had been the devil in the United States and the civilian population for so long in the eastern theater. He believed the west was more important but he understood that perception, perception is more important than rea