Various aspects of this conflicts. Right from the beginning i alerted you one of the themes in this class was going to be the tension between history and memory. We talked about it on the first day of class, have reiterated it as weve gone along. Here we are finally at the end where were going to focus on memory for our last class. Theres no better event in United States history to talk about how powerful testimony pending memories of what happened in the past can be. Theres nothing remotely equal to it in the civil war. Passions get up quickly when people remember civil war. Been watching that in charlottesville in the last year and a half in the debates over equestrian statue of r. E. Lee downtown. Ill talk when i get to the war today about some of the residences of the war in our current american situation. The ways in which the different streams of memory put in place by wartime generation either do or do not remain with us. My real focus is going to be on how the wartime generation remembered the war. Im going to focus on four great interpretive traditions that came out of the wartime generation, thrived for many decades thereafter and in different degrees continue right down to 2017. The loyal white citizenry and africanamericans and former confederates have very different takes on the war as they went forward after appeomattox. Served them come canning out of the war thinking good bow about themselves and suited their purpose as they dealt with social and political issues that came up in the decades after the war. Their actions remind us that theres almost never one history of an important event. We talked about that. If theres a history of the civil war you dont need people like me. You just go buy the civil war book and read the civil war book and know about the war. Instead of Something Else you can buy whatever else book you wanted. We exist, and theres a bunch of us in this room, who are already doing it for a living or will be doing it for a living. If there were only one passed we would be doing something really useful in life instead of what we do, something that contributed to the common good instead of just sort of adorning it, which is what we mainly do. The fact we disagree puts us right in line with what the generation that actually experienced the war did. They had very vibrant, sort of a soft word, to describe how they contested their version. Were going to start with the winning side. Well start with the union cause and the emancipation cause. The two winning memories of the war. Then well go onto the lost cause, which is the most common term used to get at the former confederates memory of the war. Then well get to reconciliation, which is another stream of coming to terms with the war that i think historians have vastly exaggerated. They have exaggerated to the degree people said oh were all american, too bad we slaughtered each other. Lets be pals again. We all love one another. Thats sort of comforting but lets say not exactly accurate. Then ill finish with thoughts about the war today. Why people are still interested in the war and what they try to find by going back and examining the war. There are very Different Reasons for people to look back toward the war. Ill talk about some of those. But i want to start with the memory of the war that was held by far the most people who were alive during the conflict. That is the union cause memory of the war. I would guess if we were going to parse numbers, of course we cant do this but ill plow ahead. 31 million americans plus or minus in cause memory of the war is the most important. And it is, it gets at the meaning of union that weve talked a lot in here. Ill say parenthetically, this is of our four great traditions here, the one that has been lost almost entirely in modern america is the union cause version of the war. Most americans couldnt begin to tell you what union meant in the mid 19th century, theyre absolutely innocent of that. In my story about the union in pasadena tells us how far we were. Somebody says that probably doesnt get what was going on in the 19th century. Luckily we know how Important Union was. We can go out and be sort of proselytizers if you want to remind people union is the most fraught word in the middle of the 19th century. But the union cause celebrated the restoration of the republic and the care carrying forward the we have defeated the slave holding ol gauks. We got rid of slavery. They would have been happy that slavery was gone, people who embraced the union cause, not for the reasons we would want them to be happy. Theyre happy because now these issues related to slavery are not lurking and waiting to burst into the kind of inflammatory action that brought on the cessation crisis of 1860, 61, get rid of slavery, you get rid of the only internal factor that could sundayer of the union. Its good emancipation came in the course of the war, but the reason its a good thing is that its made the union safe. Were going to come out of the war with the republic in tact, small d democracy, lincolns notion of the last best hope of earth, that is now firmly in place. Where as its eroding in europe as americans believed, and they were right, in the wake of the failed revolutions in the 1840s. Thats what this did, made the nation safe. Ill read some representative, three quick quotations that get at this. And get at the fact that the other thing celebrated by the union cause is the union was saved by whom . By citizen soldiers who put on uniforms and picked up muskets because thats what you do if something is threatening a political system that gives you a voice in your government and a Economic Opportunity to rise. Weve read lincoln. He is the poster boy for this meaning of union. He gets at the economic and the were in control of our own government elements of that. That is what theyre celebrating. Lets pick our friend sherman. Heres in his congratulatory order to the men of his armies in may 1865. Three armies came together from different hills with separate histories but bound by one common cause, the union of our country and the perpetuation of the government of our inheritance. Sherman said that the men, had done all men can do. And he added that they could join in the universal joy that fills our land because the war is over and our government stands vindicated before the world. He touches all the key points there, the citizen soldiers, saving the government. Ross conklin of new york whos just a congressman at this point, became a very powerful and some whispered corrupt senator after the wore. He grated a new york regiment that was on its way home from the war. A veteran regiment. And he said that they had come together with a common purpose in hoping, quote, peace with the government and the constitution of our fathers established has been the object of the war and the prayer of over patriot and every soldier. And finally ill quote one Union Soldier here, a ohio soldier, he celebrated, quo, the citizen soldier of the army of the republic. The great experiment has been settled for all people of all countries. Recognized as a outgrowth of american destiny. This is the absolutely purest form of the notion of american exceptionalism that this soldier puts forward. Theres no place like this, it was worth fighting for, we have salvaged it and we are going to go forward. So the loyal citizenry, the loyal white citizenry, we talked before about how overwhelmingly white the free states were, almost 99 . They would have said okay weve done it, we saved the union. They followed up on some of the wartime business in the aftermath of the war. When former confederates behaved as if they hadnt lost the war in the summer of 1865, the loyal white citizenry of the United States decided more was necessary, but it was only in response to what the former confederates were doing. You come up with the three great cartime amendments, 13th in december of 1865, and then the 14th which sought to guarantee equal Legal Protection for formerly enslaved people and the 15 this which gave the vote to the africanamerican men. Republicans, those who believed in the union cause used it politically as you might imagine, and tried to cast democrats as disloyal, as only luke warm if even that, in pursuit of saving the union. They talked about how tree sawnous the former democrats were, and they engaged in what became waving the bloody shirt, some republican speaker literally waving the shirt of a bloody shirt of a soldier. Oo speaker from maine who may not have always been exactly on the straight and narrow he urged in 1876 northern veterans to quote vote as you shot during the war. In other words, vote for the republicans against the democrats and the former rebel fiends who were in the Democratic Party in the south. This is how he put it with his very light touch. Every prison guard who tortured union princers at andersonville you know was a democrat, the man who shot abe raw lamb lincoln was a draft, any man to tried the old flag was a democrat, every man who tried to destroy the nation was a democrat. Soldiers every scar you have on your bodies was given to you by a democrat. Now this is sort of indirect, but approximate we really Pay Attention we can figure out the message. The message is vote republican, the republicans saved the union. We can see whats not mentioned, no mention of emancipation, getting rid of slavery, its a mention of saving the nation. They were very effective at waving the bloody shirt, running soldiers who put on Union Uniforms for president. Not only the man, we get u. S. Grant twice, 1868 and 1872. But then we also get rutherford b. Hayes and james a. Garfield and benjamin harrison. All Union Generals who were elected president. Then William Mckinley who was a Company Great officer, but nonetheless a Union Veteran. Every republican who held the presidency for the rest of the 19th century had been directly involved in saving the union. The democrats, we know who they ran successfully twice, Grover Cleveland who hired the poor polish guy to vote for him. Theres a disconnection between whos getting elected as a republican and a democrat to the presidency. The republicans would say of course the democrats are running a draft dodger. We run generals, they run draft dodgers. The democrat ran one former general for president , hancock in 1880. And he did okay. But he did not win. It is a plus to have Union Veteran on your resume if youre running for office after the civil war. And the democrats struggle with this notion that they were not really fully on board with this struggle to save the union. They came back, once the former Confederate States were back, the democrats regained control of the house of representatives. Didnt take a decade. But the republicans used the union cause very, very effectively. They also, the loyal citizenry, did a number of things to commemorate the union cause. They established what they called decoration day, what we call memorial day now which was a day to go specifically and remember the union man who herself given their lives to save the nation. You would go and decorate the gafs, hence decoration day, put a flag, hear a speech related to the war, watch some veterans parade in their uniforms during decoration day. The government as weve talked about, established National Cemeteries specifically because they needed a place to put more than onethird dead United States soldiers, only United States soldiers, so confederate soldiers, at least not deliberately in these cemeteries. Theres a handful of exceptions. So you would go off and combine those two things, a decoration ceremony in a national cemetery. So youre not just talking about the men who gave their lives for the union, youre surrounded by them as you hear a speech about the value of union. They erected memorials and monuments in courthouse squares. The most ago any sent one of all is in indianapolis. Its a incredible monument. If youre headed to a colts gase, you can touch base with the union boys and then watch the colts who wish they had a line that could defended the best quarterback. They put these monuments up every where in villages and small towns to really grand monuments. You have cant walk around washington, d. C. Without running into generals on horse back. Theres even one of George Clinton mccullen. But the grandest is of grant right in front of the capitol, of course, looking straight down the mall toward the lincoln memorial. You have memorial day. If you read the inscriptions on the monuments theyre very important. We dont have a good book. This is something that something bright graduate student should take on a series look at the inscriptions on civil War Memorials both union and confederate. The dom instant motif are union, union, union, nation, and on some, put a really small percentage of all of them, you also will get some mention of emancipation, often in terms of lincolns, theyll mention lincolns emancipation prok location when you mention union. The memorial landscape underscores powerfully the fact that union was the dominant memory of the war among the loyal citizenry of the United States. They also wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. The civil war generation picked up pens and just outpoured the accounts, regiment al histories, memoirs, published sets of letters. When you read those, you get a strong sense of just how dominant this notion of a war for union was. Its a war for union. And its a war that ended with this grand success that ratified the work of the founders. How do you compete with the founders . Thats one of the problems. All they did was establish the country in a bloody war against scummy great britain, then they are responsible for the constitution. Okay. Check. Check. And what have we done late . How do you complete with that memory . Thats tough. How about saving the work of the founding generation. Thats not bad. Lets put that on our resume and that makes us look pretty good. That doesnt leave anything for later generations to do. Who cares. Were taken care of. Its a baby boomer set of life. What about im more important, i want wall of you to take care of me. And my generation lives for ever. We are going to be around. You are going to have us as a giant anvil on your backs for almost all of your lives and you cant do anything about us, so dont even try. You dont have a chance. Here this gives the civil war generation something that they can stand, they often created images of washington, lincoln and grant together, put them literally side by side. Ive talked before about how at the end of the war, lincoln is the great figure for us, at the end of the civil war grant and lincoln were equivalent figures. Tying the work of the founding generation to the generation that served the union. The union cause memory hugely important. One of the winning memories of the war. The other winning memory of the war was the emancipation cause. This would have been embraced by the overwhelming majority of African Americans in the United States both formerly enslaved and the small minority that lived in the free states. This would have been their principles understanding of the war, along with white abolitionists. I think radical republicans would have said the same thing. They would have said of course its a good thing the union was preserved. If the union wasnt preserved, slavery would have lived. So, yes, its a good thing the union was preserved. But its only worth per serving if its a improvement. And the improvement is a union without slavery. Its a institution of slavery mocking that high language in the declaration of independence and other high documents. The union being saved is good but the most important thing that came out of the war is the destruction of frederick called the held black system of slavery. Did the abolitionists think they were promoting the work of the Founding Fathers. They thought they were improving the work of the Founding Fathers. And they thought the Founding Fathers work lets take a random thing. How about the constitution . The constitution is fine but it has a profound flaw at its center, it accepts slavery. So many abolitionists before the war, they call the constitution a rag that allows slavery to exist in the United States. So the founders were on to some things, but their work was far from perfect. It will only will really only realize the purpose of the founders if they get rid of slavery. That would have been their attitude toward that. One reason many people in the antebellum years saw them as a problem because the abolitionists would attack the constitution. And that was considered unacceptable by u. S. Citizens in the late 19th century. So the emancipation is a winners cause. I would say five if were going to put a number on it, we cant but am, i would say about 5 Million People would have said this is the most important thing. And African Americans and others established their own traditions in remembering the war. They had their own day, one day that they would pick during the year. And they often called it emancipation day. And it was on different days in different states. In texas its juld june teenth. It refers to when word of emancipation came to places in texas. Here in virginia it was often april 9th, appotomatax day. The people that got in front of the usct units were the ones that got in front of lees army as it went west. Virginia april 9th often became a the one day of the year where you would have your major celebration in the black community youd have parades, speeches, the same thing with the main stream declaration memorial Day Celebrations smt United States, but you would have them on different days and you would have them with a specific focus on this outcome of the war, the end of slavery. For africanamerican veterans, that on their resume was just as useful as it was for white veterans who ran for office or whatever. But in numbers disproportionate to