The Lincoln Forum symposium hosted the event. Good good morning morning my name is, my name Jonathan White and is jonathan im vice chair of white and im vice the lincoln chair of the Lincoln Forum. Our form. Our next next speaker this speaker this morning is morning Elizabeth Elizabeth are farran. She is williams professor of American History and varon. Associate director of the john shes the associate l now the third center for director Civil War History of the museum of civil War University of virginia. History at the University Author of of virginia. Shes the five book books author of five books that probe that probably important important issues from issues of the sectional the american conflict from the revolution to the civil American Revolution to the war. Her masterful civil war. Her masterful biography, biography, southern southern leaning, yankees by the lady yankees spy, true story of a true story of Elizabeth Van lou a union agent a union agent in in the heart of the the heart of the confederacy was confederacy was published published by by Oxford OxfordUniversity University press in press in 2003 and when 2003 and one three prizes three prizes including the including the Library Library of virginias virginias peoples choice award. People choice award today she will. Today she will speak to us speak to us about her about her new book, new book, armies armies of of deliverance deliverance a new, a new History History of the civil war of the civil war which was which was published earlier this published earlier this year by year by oxford. Oxford a. Review in the a review in the wall street wall street journal, journal by some guy named by someone named Harold Holzer, maybe Harold Holzer some of you heard of him, called the called the book book quote, quote, a highly original and a highly original and sweeping new sweeping new study. I had the study. I had the good fortune to good fortune to hear liz speak hear her speak on the subject a few on the subject weeks ago a few weeks ago in and Hampton Roads virginia and im so virginia and im so glad that we can ever glad that i can have hear today at the form you here today to speak to speak to. Us to us. Please join me in welcoming Elizabeth Varon all right. Can anyone everyone hear me . Good all right. In his first wartime message to congress delivered on july 4th 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, secessionists had relied on ingenious sophistry and coercion to mid bring many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government. There is much reason to believe, lincoln speculated at this moment in 1861, that quote union men are the majority in many if not in every one of the socalled succeeded states. Lincoln imagined that if only the north could break the grip of the slave power oligarchy over the southern masses, this latent Southern Unionism loyalty would come to the fore and assert itself. More than two years later, deep into the war, speaking here at gettysburg in november 1863, the famed order Edward Everett did lincoln one better. Everett proclaimed quote, i do not believe there has been a day since the election of president lincoln when, if in ordinance of secession could have been fairly submitted after free discussion to the mass of people of any single southern state, then a majority of ballots would have been given in its favor. Secession, he was saying, was the work of a small band of conspirators. The hour was coming everett promised here in gettysburg, when quote the power of the leaders of the rebellion to delude and inflame must cease. Modern years, this sort of rhetoric, what we would call the diluted masses theory of secession sounds strange. Naive at best. Cynically propaganda this stick at worst. Lincolns early message can perhaps be explained away as wishful thinking. Lincoln hoped that Union Victories would result in the quick evaporation of secession sentiment. But surely Edward Everett new, in 1863, surrounded here in gettysburg by the graves of thousands of dead men that the southern masses were in earnest. They were die hard confederates, not the unwilling dupes of slave holding aristocrats. Could lincoln and everett really believed what they said . I will argue this morning that the answer to this question is yes. Lincoln and everett were giving voice in the speeches that i have quoted 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 instead to save the south. To say the southern people from their own leaders. And to deliver to southern whites and blacks alike, the blessings a free society. I aim to show this morning, that deliverance with such a powerful political theme that it drew followers like a magnet to the union cause. And enabled Abraham Lincoln to forge a Broad Coalition for winning the civil war. I will focus on three themes today. Union soldiers and their motivations, the wartime process of emancipation. And lincolns reelection in 19 1864. Along the way, i will try to explain why northerners belief that they could say the south persisted even in the face of massive evidence that confederates did not want to be saved. So first let me provide a little bit of prewar context. I will build on what gary and joan told us last night. The liberals rhetoric had its roots in the northern critique of the south. A critique that republicans such at 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 southern white families owned slaves. But elite slave holding all the guards dominated southern politics and they did so, republicans argued, by depriving the white slave Holding Masses of free speech. Of education. Of Economic Opportunity and of social and technological progress. As the secession crisis unfolded, this critique resonated more and more. Not only with Republican Voters but also with northern democrats who increasingly felt betrayed by the slave holding wing of their own party. So the critique primed northerners if you will in the wake of lincolns election that a small group of cutting secessionist leaders had seduced and terrorized the southern masses into accepting secession. As the New York Times put it in june of 1861, quote the people of the south are regarded as our brethren. Diluted, deceived, betrayed, plundered of their freedom of inquiry ofs speech and action, forced into treason by bold bad men. The secessionists. Such rhetoric was ubiquitous in the early days of the war. And indeed, Union Soldiers marched off with such deliverance language, literally ringing in their ears. As a local dignitary told when mess situ sits regiment that a flag presentation ceremony in the spring of 61 sending the boys off towards quote, there are millions of the white race in the south who daily pray to god for the site of your advancing columns its their only hope of salvation from a bondage worth worse than death. Over the course of the war Union Soldiers would profess and repeat like a mantra, so they had been handed a script to read from when they wrote their diaries and letters their pledge to save the south and i dont dispute one word that peter said i think the pragmatism is a very important theme of the adaptability of the Union Soldiers is an important theme but i will try to persuade you have todays the concept of deliverance proves exceptionally adaptable and. Resilient take for example the correspondents of private george w. Sherman of the volunteers. He wrote 160 something letters home to, his family over the course of three years while he was deployed louisiana at, and again and again he described the war as a struggle to break the hold that sleep holding all the guards had over what white southern masses in the spring of 1862 for example, sherman observed of the souths common whites quote, they do nothing for themselves but let their political leaders lead them by the nose wherever they please. Sherman looked forward in this letter to the time when this quote diluted people unquote, wed be brought back to the faith and love of its youth. Not like peter, i feel it is very important to emphasize the emotional needs and worlds of soldiers. I emphasize in my book that this language, this political theme of deliverance filled emotional needs for soldiers like Charles Sherman. Union soldiers shared a fealty to what historians have called the affective theory of union, as an affection. This was the idea that the union was designed by the founders to be consensual rather than coercive, found together not by force, but by mutual affection, the mutual affection of its citizens. These bonds of perfection reckon what made the Union Exceptional in the world, the shining beacon of representative government. Thus, to achieve victory, Union Soldiers like Charles Sherman felt that 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 its emphasis on the guilt and punishment of the elite, but also the emphasis on the potential retention deduction of the southern masses, helped northerners maintain this hope of restoring a union that would be held together by heartstrings, not by force. Moreover, for northern soldiers, the deliverance of the south meant reclaiming the southern landscape as well as population. As they march through the confederacy, Union Soldiers of course 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 as a land of faded glory and unmet potential that slavery had degraded and that a free labor system would regenerate. As a Charles Brewster of the tenth massachusetts wrote in april 1860 to, quote this country is a wonder to all yankees. There is no reason why this should not be as thickly settled and thriving as any country on the globe. The soil is good, the climate to. Everything grows here as we could wish and it would be a magnificent region but for the curse of slavery slavery which has plighted it. A man like booster believed in other words, that as the federal army moved through the south they would bring progress, prosperity, regeneration in its wake. Deliverance rhetoric served for Union Soldiers as a counter weight the feelings of bitterness and dungeons. They earned to establish the justice of their war. Imagining themselves as liberators, not conquerors, helped northern soldiers defend the escalating brutality of the war. The use of tactics like confiscation seizures bombarded the southern home front. None other than a much better known shown and williams comes to sharon in the premiere purveyor of hard war, sherman imagined himself as a liberator, all deliverer of southern whites. He aimed to prove to the confederate people he professed the leaders cannot protect them, and thus to expose the empty promises the false political doctrine on which the suggestion rested. So sherman instructed his soldiers as they need it up destruction on their famous march to the sea, that they should quote discriminate between the rich who are usually hostile and the poor and industrious usually neutral or friendly. This is a targeted severity. Sherman predicted that adds the union army exacted its toll on the rebel elite, the masses would, quote discover the error of their ways, and repent of their hasty actions and bless those who had maintained the Constitutional GovernmentStrong Enough to protect its citizens sherman as deliver. All of the specs the question, and it is a doozy of a question. How much suppressed and latent unionism was there among whites in the confederacy . We historians of course have the benefit of hind sight and it is clear in hindsight that lincoln and his allies over estimated an exaggerated, grossly estimated an exaggerated the extent of unionism among whites to be sure. There were pockets of unionism in the mountains south, that when we get to the plantation districts, white Southern Unionists are hard to come by. Confederate military authorities aggressively fostered a culture of fear to snuff outs potential dissent, suspected unionist were subject to arrest and imprisonment, confiscation, the degradations of guerrilla bands. Unionists willing to suffer such abuse were few and far between in the states while confederate eager to meet it out were numerous. The robust and resilient southern nationalism and the succeeded states, reflected themes that gallagher and what told us about last night, a deep investment, the broad swath of southern rights and slavery. As a system of economic profit and racial control, but that robust southern nationalism also reflected the power of confederate propaganda. Confederates were well aware of this argument that desired republicans to make inroads in the south. And the confederates were determined to preempt and to discredit and to silence any yank he appeals to the southern masses, thus from the start of the war to its finish and indeed even before the first shots were fired, confederate propaganda insisted that the north waged ruthless, remorseless war, and sought the brutal conquest not the deliberation of the south. In early may of 1861 and a typical formulation quote, blood thunder fire smoke and entire subjugation, are now the favorite terms of the north men who are bent upon violence and extermination. The dispatch added again and a typical formulation that lincoln was mustering a mercenary army of quote, cut throats outlaws and vagabonds, motivated by green and bloodlust. This was the confederate image of the yankees army and it was needless to, say a far cry from the self image as liberators. Over the course of the war, the rising tide of death and destruction intensified the fervor of die hard confederates. Predisposed by their own ideology to believe that the head of the yankees would not fight fair, confederate circulated endless tails of the invaders legit atrocities and accused northerners of seeking the extermination, the violation, the pollution, the degradation of the south. These are the key words of southern propaganda. Extermination, pollution, degradation, violation. As the union army took aim at slavery, confederates reviled the emancipation proclamation as the culminating proof that any reunion between the north and south was utterly impossible. None of this voted well for white southern loyalism in the south. Unionists never materialized in the seeded states in the numbers northerners hoped for. Mike point is this. Union soldiers remained to southern deliverance because they their commitment was ideological. Soldiers fit the facts to conform to their belief system. A belief system that emphasized mans capacity to reform and repent. Northerners went to war in other words determined to change southern hearts and minds. That determination never wavered. Now i will address one more crucial facet of the battlefront before turning to the politics of the home front. The composition of the union army changed direct dramatically during the war of course. Midway through the war as African American men were finally permitted to join its ranks. The more than 200,000 represented fighting power that proved critical to the unions ultimate victory. Black soldiers have left us letters and diaries whose meetings we can plum. They too wrote and spoke of the war as a war of deliberation and deliverance. They heralded the potential of free labor to remake the south. But black soldiers defined deliverance more broadly than white ones did. African americans understood themselves to be fighting a war on two fronts. A war against the horrors of southern slavery and racism. But also a campaign against persistent Racial Discrimination in the north where African Americans were free but relegated to a second class citizenship. Four black troops, deliverance can noted more than freedom from bondage, it can noted full citizenship, full inclusion in American Society. I will turn out to the crucial war of deliberates rhetoric in the story of emancipation. As we all know in this room, lincoln faced the challenges of managing a divided Northern Home front. His critics on the right, northern democrats, sternly warned him not to take radical steps against slavery. His critics to the left, abolitionists and radical republicans, urged him to move more quickly towards abolition. How then did lincolns emancipation policy take shape . The conventional explanation is that lincoln initially avoided drastic action against slavery for fear of alienating moderates and conservatives in the north. Gradually came to embrace emancipation when he saw that events on the ground, most notably the mass exodus of slaves from plantations to union lines, events of grounds were eroding the institution. Li