Van lew was published by Oxford University in 2003 and 13 prizes including the library of virginias peoples choice awards. She will speak to us about her new book, armies of deliverance which was published earlier this year by oxford. A review in the wall street holzer calledold the book a highly original and sweeping new study. I had the good fortune to hear liz speak on the subject a few weeks ago in hampton roads, virginia and im so glad we could have her here to speak to us. Please join me in welcoming elizabeth varon. [applause] can everyone hear me . Good. In his first time were message to congress delivered july 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln casts secession as the work of a small band of conspirators who had duped and cowed the south into submission. After drugging the public mind of their section for more than 30 years as lincoln put it, relied on coercion to bring many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government. Theres much reason to believe, leggett speculated lincoln speculated, that union men are the majority in many if not everyone of the socalled seceded states. Lincoln imagined that if only the north could break the grip of the slave oligarchs this southern unionism would come to the fore and assert itself. Later, deepo years into the war, speaking at dedication of a the national cemetery, Edward Everett did lincoln one better. He proclaimed i do not believe there has been a day since the election of president lincoln when, if an ordinance of secession could have been submitted after a free discussion to the mass of people in any single southern state, that a majority of ballots would have been given in its favor. Secession was the work of a small band of conspirators but the hour was coming, everett promised, here in gettysburg and the powers of the leaders of the rebellion to dilute and inflame must cease. Ears this rhetoric, the diluted masses theory, sounds strange. Cynical andt, idist at worst. They could be explained as wishful thinking. Lincoln help Union Victories would result in the quick evaporation of sentiment. But Edward Everett knew in 1863 surrounded at gettysburg but the thousands of dead men that the southern masses were in earnest. They were diehard confederates, not the unwilling dupes slaveholding aristocrats. Could lincoln and everett really have believed what they said . I will argue this morning that the answer that is yes. Lincoln and everett were giving voices to a powerful and resilient belief among northerners that they were fighting a war of deliverance. A war waged not to subjugate the south, not to conquer the south, but to save the south. To save the southern people from their own leaders. To deliver to southern whites and blacks alike the blessings of free society. Morning the this deliverance was such a powerful political theme it drew followers like a magnet to the union because. It enabled Abraham Lincoln to forge a Broad Coalition for winning the civil war. I will focus on three themes Union Soldiers and their motivations, the wartime process of emancipation, and lincolns reelection in 1864. Along the way i will try to explain why northerners belief they could save the south persisted even in the face of massive evidence the confederates did not want to be saved. First, let me provide a little prework context. I will build on what gary and joan told us last night. Deliverance rhetoric had roots in a northern critique of the south. A critique that republicans such as lincoln had popularized in the prewar period. According to that critique the institution of slavery had rendered the south undemocratic and backward. Only one in four what southern families owned slaves but slaveholding oligarchs dominated politics and they did so, republicans argued, by depriving the white slaveholding masses of free speech, education, Economic Opportunity and social and technological progress. Unfoldedcession crisis this critique resonated more and more not only with Republican Voters but also with northern democrats who increasingly felt betrayed by the slaveholding of their own party. Northerners primed if you will to believe in the way of lincolns election that a small group of small conspirators had seduced the southern masses into accepting secession. Inthe New York Times put it june 1860 one, the people of the south are regarded as our eluded, betrayed, forced into treason by bold, bad men. Ubiquitous inwas the early days of the war and indeed Union Soldiers marched off to war with such deliverance language literally ringing in their ears. As a local dignitary told one regiment at a flight presentation ceremony in the spring of 1861, sending the boys off to war, there are millions of the white race in the south who daily pray to god for the site of your advancing columns re only hope of salvation. Andn soldiers would process repeat like they had a script to read from their pledge to save the south. I dont dispute one word that peter said. Themetism is a important in the adaptability of soldiers what irtant but a will try to do is that deliverance proves to be exceptionally adaptable and resilient. Take for example the correspondence of Charles W Sherman of the volunteers. He wrote 160 some letters home to his family over the course of nearly three years while deployed in louisiana in the Shenandoah Valley in virginia. Again and again he described the war as a struggle to break the hold that slaveholding oligarchs had over the white southern masses. In the spring of 1862, as new orleans fell to forces, sherman they doof the south, not think for themselves but let their political leaders lead them by the nose wherever they please. He looked forward in the letter to the time when this people would be brought back to the face and love of its youth. Like peter i feel it is important to emphasize the emotional needs of soldiers. That thise in my book language, this political theme of deliverance, filled emotional needs for soldiers like Charles Sherman. Fealtyoldiers shared a to what historians call the effective theory of union. S in affection. They found it to be consensual rather than coercive. Bound together not by force but by mutual affection. The affection of its citizens. These bonds of affection northerners reckoned was what made the south representative government. Soldiers like Charles Sherman felt they had to do more than vanquish confederates on the battlefield. They had to teach the southern rebels to love the union again. Deliverance rhetoric with emphasis on guilt and the punishment of the secessionists but also the redemption of the southern masses helped northerners maintain this hope of restoring a union that would be held together by heartstrings not force. Soldiers for northern the deliverance of the south meant reclaiming the southern landscape as well as the population. As they marched through the confederacy Union Soldiers commented extensively on the southern terrain and they did not see the south simply as enemy country, as forbidding and hostile. Instead they saw the south as part of their own national history, their own patrimony. On metof faded glory and potential that slavery had degraded and a free labor system would regenerate. Brewster of the 10th massachusetts road, this country is a wonder to all yankees. There is no reason why they should not be a settled and thriving as any country in the face of the globe. Everything grows here that we could wish. It would be a magnificent region but for the curse of slavery which is blighted it. Men like brewster believed that as the federal army moved to the south it would bring progress and prosperity in its wake. Deliverance rhetoric served for Union Soldiers as a counterweight to feelings of bitterness and vengeance. Northerners year and to establish the justice of their war. Imagining themselves as liberators, not conquerors, helped northern soldiers defended the escalating brutality of the war. The use of tactics like confiscation, sieges, bombardments which targeted the home front. None other than a sherman william, the premier purveyor of hard work, the symbol of hard work, sherman imagined himself as a deliverer of southern whites. He aimed to prove to the confederate people that their leaders could not protect them and thus to expose the empty promises, the false political doctrine in which the secession rested. So, sherman instructed his soldiers, as they met out destruction on the famous march to the sea, they should discriminate between the rich who are usual hostile and the poor who are usually neutral or friendly. This is a targeted severity. Predicted that as the union army exacted its toll on the rebel elite the masses would discover the error of their ways and repent of their hasty action and bless those who have maintained a Constitutional GovernmentStrong Enough to protect its citizens. All of this begs the question, and it is a doozy of a question, how much latent unionism was there among whites in the confederacy . We historians have the benefit of hindsight. Is clear, and hindsight that lincoln and his allies overestimated and exaggerated the extent of unionism among whites in the seceded states. To be sure, there were pockets of unionism in the mountains south but when we get into the plantation districts white southern unionists are hard to come by. The Confederate Military authorities aggressively fostered a culture of fear to snuff out potential dissent, suspected unionists were subject to arrest and imprisonment spir . Unionists willing to suffer were few and far between in the seceded states while confederates were numerous. And resilient southern nationalism in the seceded states reflected themes that gallagher told us about last night. Of slaveryvestment as economic profit and racial control. Nationalismsouthern also reflected the power of confederate propaganda. Lester and said that for a moment. Us turn to that for a moment. The argument of the desire for republicans to make inroads in the south and confederates were determined to preempt and discredit into silence any yankee appeals to the southern masses. War, from the start of the to its finish even before the first shots were fired confederate propaganda insisted that the north ways ruthless, remorseless war and that northerners saw the brutal conquest not liberation of the south. To quote from the richmond daily blood, thunder, fire, smoke, and entire subjugation of the favorite terms of the north men who are bent upon violence and extermination. The dispatch added again in typical formula should that lincoln was mustering a mercenary army of cutthroats, and thisand vagabonds was the confederate image of the army. It was a far cry from the federal troops self image. Over the course of the war, the rising tide of death and destruction intensified the confederates,ard predisposed by their own ideology to believe they yankees would not fight fair, confederates circulated endless tales of the invaders alleged atrocities. They accused northerners of seeking the extermination, violation, pollution, degradation of the south. These were the keywords of southern propaganda. As the union army took aim at slavery, confederates reviled the emancipation proclamation as the common itching proof that any reunion between the north and south was utterly impossible. Well forhis boded white southern loyalist in the south and as i suggested unionists never materialized in the seceded states in the numbers northerners hoped for. Unionint is this soldiers remained committed to southern deliverance because their commitment was ideological. Soldiers fit the facts to conform to their belief systems. A system that emphasized mans capacity to reform and repent. Northerners went to war determined to change southern hearts and minds and that determination never wavered. Address one more crucial facet of the battlefront before turning to the politics of the home front. Unionmposition of the army changed dramatically during the war. Midway through the work as africanamerican war were permitted to join the ranks. The more than 200,000 africanamerican men who served in the units and navy represented an infusion of fighting, courage and morale that proved critical to the unions ultimate victory. Black Soldiers Left letters and diaries whose meanings we can plumb and they too wrote and spoke of the war is what Union Counterparts did as a war of liberation or deliverance. They cursed the slave power conspiracy and heralded the potential of free labor to remake the south. Black soldiers defined deliverance more broadly than whites did. Africanamericans understood themselves to be fighting a war on two fronts. Horrors ofst the slavery and racism but also a persistentainst purse racism in the north where they were relegated to a secondclass citizenship. Fullerance connoted citizenship, full inclusion in american society. I will turn out to the crucial role of deliverance rhetoric in the story of emancipation. As we all know, lincoln faced the challenges of managing a divided Northern Home front. His critics on the right northern democrats strongly warning him not to take radical steps against slavery. His critics to the left abolitionist and radical republicans to move more quickly toward abolition. How do the emancipation policy take shape . Explanation isl that lincoln additionally avoided drastic action for fear of alienating moderates and conservatives in the north and ame to embrace events on thehen ground were eroding the institution. And he justified emancipation once he had settled on it. He justified it for a skeptical northern electorate. Groundsy on expedient as a military necessity, a way of punishing the confederacy by depriving it of resources. The prevailing image of lincoln on this question emphasizes his pragmatism. Would like to emphasize his idealism. The case that he and his allies made the black freedom would have broad benefits for all americans, including the souths , and whites they commit themselves to building such a case. Reasoned, wasln the root of southern despotism. It was the primary obstacle to national reunion. And giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike and what we give and preserve. These were words from lincolns famous annual message to congress. Lincoln is arguing black freedom will enhance white freedom. Lincoln was echoed by many of the most influential public figures in the north. Harriet beecher stowe, wrote the emancipation proclamation promise not only the liberation of slaves, the liberation of white southerners two. It would deliver our misguided brethren from the wages of sin as she put it and make it possible the very confederates that killed Union Soldiers, their descendents would grow up in liberty and justice. Partylly lincoln and his enlisted slave state whites some slave state whites and making the case that emancipation would have good things for america. Keeping the states in the union was a major priority for lincoln and men from the border states who were willing to endorse emancipation such as kentucky republicans became valuable allies for lincoln. Important was a tiny statistic, of white governors from Confederate States who are willing to stand by the union and defend lincolns emancipation policy. The most influential of these unionists, Andrew Johnson of tennessee. We will come back to him. Andrew jackson hamilton of texas, edward gantt of arkansas, and a few others cast the emancipation proclamation for southern audiences as a seeming punishment that, in time, would do momentous good. For example, hamilton, in a january 1864 address to texans, promised that their sins would be pardoned if like the prodigal son, they repent and ask to be forgiven. Emancipation, he said, would deliver whites from their present bondage and put texas on a new career of prosperity predicated upon industry and intelligence, emancipations broad benefits. Heres the key point. As hamiltons reference to the prodigal son suggests, loyal americans turned to metaphors to conjure how the union would save the south. Confederates were, in these metaphors, pupils who needed teaching. Patients who needed curing. Children who needed parenting. Heathens who needed converting. Drunkards who should sober up. Madmen who needed to come to their senses. Errant brethren who should return to the path of righteousness. Prodigal sons who should return home. And in an era in the history of medicine when it was thought you were not healing if you were not in pain, oftentimes these metaphors invoked the redemptive nature of suffering itself. Dr. Elizabeth blackwell of the womens Loyal National league used a medical analogy in which the south was a wounded limb. She said, we have no idea of lopping off the offending member. Let us bear with it and heal its infirmities, even if we are forced to apply the severest remedies and to suffer cruelly ourselves from the sympathetic agonies. These kind of medical metaphors were ubiquitous. Religious images of purification, being saved by fire, as it were, also abounded. Here is a just striking example. Describing the union war as a holy war, the prominent unitarian minister and Sanitary Commission head henry bellows, a very influential fellow, intoned from his new york city pulpit, we smite to heal and resist to bless and kill to make alive. Pain will bring redemption. Africanamerican abolitionists, who had long been in the vanguard of the antislavery movement, made their own distinct contributions to deliverance discourse. Their focus was on how black freedom and citizenship could redeem america, not only from slavery, but also from the sin and the burden of racism. The Old Testament story of israels exodus from egyptian bondage was central to antislavery politics. Had been, as were other biblical texts, such as the story of jubilee from the book of leviticus and the biblical proverb ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to god. Providential images of gods will abounded in africanamerican commentary on the emanicpation proclamation. The year of jubilee has come, a january 1, 1863 editorial in the black newspaper the pacific appeal proclaimed. The deep lamen