Aaron is a native of michigan not far from lansing, did his undergraduate work at northwestern before spending time working in washington, d. C. And moved on to the university of virginia where he studied under gary gallagher. Book is entitled why confederates fought family and nation in civil war virginia. His most recent book, published by harvard, titled calculus of violence how americans fought the civil war. Just again published in 2018. Aaron, lsu is a great place for him. Aaron is a self proclaimed foody so has lots of places to select from in new orleans but today well talk about his book, which has received two recent awards including the Jefferson Davis award from formerly the museum of the confederacy, now the American Civil War museum in richmond. Lets welcome aaron sheehandean. [applause] prof. Sheehandean good morning. Thank you all. I will start by saying happy fathers day to everyone in the audience. Its a weird thing to spend sunday morning talking about violence, but that is what we will do. As he said, my book is called the calculus of islands violence, and so we will get right into it. This lecture has a tendency, as a friend said a long time ago, two ba 10 pound weight in a five pounds sack for 45 minutes, and the mic has been walked out so i have to stay on the podium, which is no fun for me because i have a tendency to pace so it will get channeled out hopefully. We know that the civil war was a terribly bloody and violent war. The new estimate now, and i think a reliable one, though its likely to go up, that david hacker gave us, 750,000 dead. He sort of recalculating and doing more demographic work to best this is a book really trying to explore the decisions that people on both sides made about when they could turn lethal violence on, what were the parameters of how the war could be fought . And im going to give you my conclusion up front here, and the conclusion of the book, the main argument of my book, is that the civil war was both bloody and violent, unimaginably violent for most americans coming into it, and at the same time, also restrained and a war that could have been, in fact, two or three times as many dead i would imagine, if certain things happened. So, i hope, right now, that may sound like a wishywashy conclusion, that says a little of this and a little of that but i hope by the end it sounds nuanced and sophisticated. I want to walk you through both sides of that, the ways in which the decisions that people make during the war facilitate in particular unnecessary violence. Obviously, war inherently involved violence and the laws of war ill talk a fair amount of the laws of war determine who that violence can be directed at and that is generally, according to the western laws of war, uniformed combatants. So, im not going to spend a lot of time talking about the technologies of war, although some of those are in the book, discussions of things like mines. But instead, the decisions people make about the boundaries of where thats drawn, how were irregular combatants treated, noncombatants treated, what sorts of pressure can be applied to people outside of regular uniformed combatants . Combatants. So the beginning of my talk will focus on two military elements, who can fight a war, and how do you fight a war. And then a couple of sort of cultural elements to determine whos inside the scope of lethal violence or substantial pressure. Then, ill turn to those elements that diminished or restrained the violence of war and then try to offer some concluding points about what looking at the civil war this way might teach us about military conflict in general and the civil war and American History. I want to start with the first question that americans were confronted with. Oops,y clicker is there it is. I have to go down. Im clicking the wrong way. The first question is over who can fight. And the Lincoln Administration is confronted with this almost immediately, because lincoln doesnt believe that the confederacy that secession is possible. He doesnt regard the confederacy as a real thing. You can sense him talking about the socalled Confederate States and air quotes and bunny ears he would be making. He refuses to acknowledge that secession is possible, that the confederacy exists as an independent state. Thats the game, and if he gives that up, hes lost from the beginning. He has lost the war from the beginning. So, the question happens, as u. S. Forces and these Confederate Forces come into contact, what is the condition of these men claiming to be soldiers of this independent state that lincoln doesnt believe is independent . And, as the New York Times suggests, the difference is substantial. Whats confederates want is to be declared public enemies. This is a journalist writing in the New York Times who described the difference between being a prisoner of war, which involves honorable restraint, and a captured traitor, for which you may be hung. It emerges really on the high seas first, that is there are confederate letters of mark issued by Jefferson Davis to privateers going out doing the work. The confederacy doesnt have much of a navy to start neither does the u. S. At the start of the war. Those men are captured three ships are captured. One goes to new york, one to philadelphia, and the men on those confederate ships, effectively confederate ships go , into regular criminal court. In fact, in new york, the judge says to the jury, you have to decide whether were in a state of war to determine the jurisdiction and outcome of this case, and you can imagine these men, that is the citizens of new york who end up on this case, thinking, i dont think thats my decision. Thats above my pay grade. The decision about whether were at war was taking place presumably at the white house or in some larger sphere. And, Jefferson Davis is observing this and growing more and more concerned, and the men who are held, held in new york at the tombs, the citys notorious jail and Jefferson Davis response to this is to take an equal number of u. S. Officers the highest ranking men who have been captured thus far, puts them in hard labor in richmond and says if the men captured on these privateers are executed, i will do the same to the men i have captured, issuing a retaliatory threat. I will talk about retaliation as it works within the laws of war later. Lincoln blinks in this instance. Lincoln recognizes, and this is an important restraint, though the larger question of who can fight exacerbates the problems of the war. But, lincoln recognizes that he has to effectively agree that the confederacy is an independent state, that in terms of how he treats those soldiers, that they will be recognized as public enemies and housed in prisons and given medical care if required. Thats a decision that hes forced into by the exigencies of war, and one place where we see real tension between how lincoln believes how the war should be fought not that he wants unrestrained war, but does not want to acknowledge the confederacy, but in this instance, he is forced to. We know how the story plays out, tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands of confederate prisoners and Union Prisoners of war held in confederate camps over the course of the war. And, after 1863 and the introduction of black soldiers and the collapse of the cartel that determines how to exchange prisoners, more and more prisoners subject to worse and worse conditions, and eventually, tens of thousands of unnecessary tests in union and confederate p. O. W. Camps as a result partly of this question over how you resolve and recognize who has the legitimate authority to fight a war like this in the 19th century. The confederates face this, as well, and they face this in the question of black soldiers. Black men are recruited into the u. S. Military. Some of these are free men of color, and some are enslaved men from places like where i am right now, the Lower Mississippi valley area, in the coastal South Carolina and florida. And then out in kansas, in late 1862, we know this story of enlistment. And, after the emancipation proclamation, the u. S. Army officially creates the usct, and those men are put in uniform as regular soldiers, according to the Lincoln Administration, and they are confronted by confederates who are reluctant to regard them as legitimate combatants. They say they cannot legitimately fight a war. So we dont have to accord them the status of public enemy. Jefferson davis first instincts is to encourage his armies to treat black soldiers captured as slaves in the act of insurrection, and to be turned over to state authorities and punished under slave rebellion. We heard patrick breens discussion of what happens to those people in his discussion of the nat turner rebellion. The laws in every Southern State are death for slave insurrection, so davis knows hes sending these men to their death. The Confederate Congress endorses a variety of measures on this front, and the confederacy begins this process although theyre almost confronted immediately by the fact that many of the men fighting in union blue are free men of color, had never been slaves, and the confederacy is reluctant, from the laws of war effective, to change the status of those men and put them into a position where they might be executed. And, davis, i think, recognizes whats coming, which is in july of 1863, Abraham Lincoln issues a public proclamation declaring that if the Confederate State Army executes u. S. Soldiers, and he doesnt distinguish between white and black, but he says if they execute or subject to hard labor u. S. Soldiers, then the u. S. Army will do the same thing in response for the captured confederates, and by this point, both sides have tens of thousands of captured p. O. W. s so the violence there has the real potential to spin out of control. And it doesnt, again, because davis respects this threat. Now, that isnt to say that black men experience a just war because they do not. The confederate policy shifts to that shifts to, in some respects, reflect the u. S. Position. The u. S. Position is there are no enslaved men in u. S. Armies. If there are men who had previously held the classification under law of enslaved, they have, by this point, escaped from their masters, they have come into a u. S. Refugee camp of the sort that amy taylor described yesterday, and then they have enlisted in the u. S. Army as regular men, so they are no different from white soldiers in that capacity. Once theyre in the union army, there are no slaves in the union army, so the confederacy has to recognize that. That being said, the confederate army, like the u. S. Army, is enormously decentralized, and in many interactions with black soldiers across the south, atrocities are committed and black men are refused the opportunity to surrender, and this happens famously at fort pillow. I have a fort pillow image coming up later. Sorry. It happens at fort pillow, poison spring, it happens at plymouth in north carolina. It happens in saltville in virginia, at the crater. We heard a little bit about this yesterday, about the battle that transpired at the crater. Those encounters certainly leave black men suffering an unjust war. That is, black men in uniform where confederates refused to allow them to surrender, where they dont offer quarter, they dont offer medical treatment to Wounded Soldiers and that happens over and over again. So, hundreds of black men die unjustly, unnecessarily, at confederate hands, over the course of the war. That total might have been much higher if the confederate state hadnt changed that policy to a slight agree, but that issue of who can fight is central. The other central issue here is over how you can fight and what legitimate war looks like. And the north here insists on regular, uniformed soldiers that if wars happen between states, they happen then with regular armies of chains of command, clear chains of command, men on in uniform on battlefields armed and responding to proper authority, so when a flag of truce is issued, men respond and stop fighting as theyre supposed to. The problems in the confederate response to that develop very quickly. And, this is thomas heinemans famous band of 10 order issued in arkansas in 1862 after the early 1862 battles against the union army, confederate army, mostly abandons arkansas and the confederate citizens of arkansas take it upon themselves, taking direction from thomas heineman, to organize themselves as he says in independent companies of 10 men, led by an elected captain to conduct guerrilla warfare without waiting for special instructions, and for the north, this violates one of the central tenets of just war doctrine and laws of war. The theory of just war, the philosophical enterprise begins arguably with st. Augustine and extends really through catholic europe, through the centuries as theologians debate the ways in which military force can be conducted within a christian framework. Those laws are then sort of put together by hugo groshuous, the dutch jurist, in the 17th century, but not yet codified. They will be in the lieber code, a formalization of the ideas of just war. The central part of that just war relies on soldiers being able to discriminate among those people on whom they would subject violence, and the discrimination here is, i will only subject to lethal violence those enemies in uniform and armed against me. Noncombatants, citizens, other people outside that scope, and uniformed enemies who have been wounded, who have laid down their arms, cannot be subjected to lethal violence. Guerrillas obscure all of this, and thats the central problem and the problem that lieber marks out in the lieber code. When guerrillas are organized independently, and they arent wearing uniforms and dont have a chain of command, captain is in bunny quotes, but even heineman knows this. This generates from the union what we would call today a Counter Insurgency strategy. Right . The union is going to fight a regular war on most of the battlefields, like gettysburg, and also they are going to have to combat an irregular war, what we would call in the 20th century, an insurgency. They didnt use that language, and they didnt call antiguerrilla operations Counter Insurgency, but for those familiar with the ways we have been fighting wars against irregular enemies in the last decade or dozen years, the union effectively mounts a Counter Insurgency. That Counter Insurgency comes under various headings. Mark grimsley gave us a way to think about this years ago, which is a hard war, a war that is increasingly destructive of resources in response to the irregularity of guerrillas, there is an effort to destroy the resources upon which those guerrillas withstand. William tecumseh sherman, who im happy to say is with the president of the institution i represent. Sherman had basically no visible presence in the commemoration wars of late. Were mostly talking about taking things down. Our commemoration wars are trying to get something named to william sherman. This is my pitch to the board at l. S. U. And they will not respond. [laughter] prof. Shennhandean sherman has within very nice oil painting in the mens room and on the third stall. [laughter] prof. Shennhandean thats really the best he gets at l. S. U. And so in sort of popular memory, his raids in georgia and South Carolina are the kind of pinnacle of a hard war approach that is the destruction of logistical resources necessary to sustain an army. And ill talk more about sherman a little bit later. Sherman gets credit for this. You know, georgia gets sympathy and South Carolina doesnt, even though theres more destruction in South Carolina. But, the hard war policy, actually, i think, has sharper edges to it in other places and i wanted to start with something from the Shenandoah Valley and the problem that Union Officers confront, in terms of how to punish and how to discourage and ultimately deter guerrilla warfare. And this is john pope, part of the famous orders he issued that to call him in his bluish language, a miscreant. This is part of the campaign as pope is heading out into virginia, and he says to the people of the Shenandoah Valley that, when there are operations that happen against lines of travel, the railroad or telegraph, they will be held responsible. The they here these are underlined by him, not by me they will be held responsible. Citizens will be held responsible, ordinary citizens, for the violence committed by guerrillas. Union officers confront this up and down the mississippi river, along both sides of the arkansas and mississippi side, into louisiana. Guerrillas, as heineman encouraged them to do, heinemans call probably brings out in arkansas 5,000 men who flood the banks. They snipe at union transports coming down the mississippi, and he actually says that. He says to shoot to kill pilots of transport and other vehicles. That is unarmed men. Many bringing supply personnel not in a state of war, not a legitimate target under the regular laws of war, but instead, theyre sniped at from the bushes, and its enormously hard for union forces to track these men down. They have to get a ship over to the bank, offload those men, and go off into a scouting party, by which point the guerrillas are gone by 45 minutes and are never recoverable. So, the response from the u. S. Is to increase the pressure, not lethal violence. He doesnt say were going to begin arresting and executing civilians who happen to live near where guerrilla events happen. But what he does say is the pressure of our Counter Insurgency will fall on the communities that sanction and support guerrillas. Guerrillas depend upon what historians today call a domestic supply line the material, the horses, fodder, food, and intelligence that guerrillas use to operate comes from regular civilians, and those regular civilians present a peaceful face as the guerrillas themselves do to the Union Officers in one moment, and the othe