Contagion. Struggle against epidemics is a global one. Sunday, at 4 00 p. M. On real america, the 1948 film the eternal fight. From a disease infected zone, the traveler became unwittingly a carrier of deadly germs. The germs stayed and spread. Sunday, at 6 00 p. M. John hancock created a committee as a whole to gather amongst ourselves an individual caucuses and decide how we should proceed. Do we really want independentsy and then he committed a committee of five men. From the tour of monticello and bill barker you know i served 40 years in Public Service and yet i have often thought if heaven had given me a position to migrate it would have been on a small spot of ground, well watered and near a good market for the produce. Gardening is one of my greatest delights. This weekend on cspan3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is and raise your hand if you ever heard of the jean harris murder trial before this class . The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was in the transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. So well talk about both of the sides of the story here, right, the tools, the techniques of slave owner power and well talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv and lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Next a discussion about the u. S. Constitution and secession. Well hear about the 67 constitutional amendments considered by congress that sought to address the secession issue. This was hosted by the grant Historic Site in st. Louis. So to introduce dr. Dwight pitcaithley, he earned his ph. D. From Texas Tech University and he worked for the National Park service for 30 years. For the last ten years of his career, he was the chief historian of the entire National Park service. So hes kind of a rock star for us. People who love history and the park service. So since he retired, dr. Pitcaithley teaches at new mexico state history and he teaches Civil War History and he had a book that came out this week. The u. S. Constitution and secession. So it is my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce you to dr. Dwight pitcaithley. Nick promised that he wasnt going to include the rock star part. But best laid plans. Thank you for coming tonight. Thanks to nick for that wonderful introduction. Thanks to the grant site for hosting this event. Im going to talk for about 25 or 30 minutes and then ill turn it over to you so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about and we hope that during my time i have been provocative enough that we can have a conversation that goes on for another 30 or 45 minutes. Robert penn warren who many of you know threetime Pulitzer Prize winner wrote that the centennial of the war that the civil war is the only felt history. History lives in the imagination. Thats true if your ancestry goes back that far or not and mine does not. Thanks to ken burns, its a part of us, its a part of our dna. We think about it a lot. Every year when i teach the civil war course, i ask my students in a word or a phrase tell me what caused the civil war, what caused the secession. Everybody has an answer. Its not the same answer, but they all have an answer. Its states rights, no, its slavery, no, its the tariff. No, general economic issues. I think its cultural differences between north and south. Somebody else will say, well, i think it was really the ultimate clash between an agricultural south and an industrial north. Everybodys got an answer. If youre like me, when i started this research about ten years ago i had read a lot of the secondary work but most about the war itself, not about that period that we call secession winter from lincolns election to the firing on fort sumter. There are sort dots along the way. South carolina secedes in december, followed by six other deep south states. Lincoln is nationed on 4th. Ft. Sumter is fired on in april. And lincoln calls out 75,000 troops and four more states secede and the war is on. Well, theres bless you. Theres a lot going on in there that those sort of dots dont connect. So i took it upon myself when i retired, Everybody Needs a project in retirement to satisfy myself. I didnt have a book in mind, but i wanted to satisfy myself which caused secession, what was this all about . I wanted to dig as deep as i can into the records and it turns out much to my surprise the period of secession winter is incredibly well documented, incredibly well documented. And my research because i wanted to keep it to the elected officials. What did they say . What were they arguing . Other historians have used newspaper editorials. They have used sermons that by ministers that were published over secession winter. Other people take different tacks, internal workings of the parties and i wanted to find out what the elected officials were saying because they had their finger on the trigger. They were the ones to whom the various states delegated the responsibility to solve the problem. The problem being of course lincolns election as president , the first republican elected. And it turns out that as i said theres no shortage. Congress met over that period, the second session of the 36th congress. Met from december 3rd of 1860 about a month after lincolns election to march 4th Inauguration Day. Published in resulting about 2,000 pages of day by day, line by line arguments from these men. Its online thanks to your tax dollars and congress has the proceedings of all the first 100 years. It was called the congressional globe, you go in day by day and fine out what they were arguing. A word of warning. These are facsimile pages, three columns per page. About 10point type. So bring your reading glasses when you so thats congress. Those the elected officials in washington. Second large gathering was the proceedings of the Secession Conventions. 11 states called conventions, elected delegates to the conventions. They met, they argued, they kept careful records, proposed solutions which ill talk about later and except for texas, published those almost immediately. Except for texas, all of these proceedings were published in 1861, or 1862. Texas waited until 1912. Virginia they claim in the introduction of their 1912 version they didnt have enough money until 1912 to publish it. I dont argue with that. Virginia deliberated the longest and produced in today the way its packaged for the centennial four volumes. 3,000 pages of virginias deliberations, that started in january and didnt end until after ft. Sumter. A third range of information is from the state legislatures tennessee and kentucky. Tennessee did ultimately succeed. It led the state legislate it let the state legislature decide that weighty measure and kentucky never thought of calling a Secession Convention. There was a lot of discussion between the governor and the house of representatives and the senate in kentucky and they left their printed version almost immediately. Finally, theres the record of the washington peace convention. In early january, virginia, the legislature, called for a National Convention to find out what to do now that lincoln had been elected president. 21 states had representatives, they met at the Willard Hotel if youre familiar with washington. I think the room they or the hall that they gathered in is not there, but Willard Hotel is there. Its where lincoln spent the night before he moved into the white house. Or about the week before he moved into the white house. When you aggregate all those pages, all that information, you end up with about 8,000 pages of printed, published information over secession winter. Within that information this was all new to me. I had no idea that i was going to enter this world. Sort of again, its satisfying myself but i sort of got sucked into it. The more i got into it, the more i wanted to get into because i didnt have to deal with handwriting. Historians often to do with handwriting. Some people have good penmanship and some dont. It can make you crazy. I have done research on that side as well, this was all published. All i had to do was read the printed word. Within the 8,000 pages there are three sort of subsets of information that bear directly on why what the south was thinking when it was thinking of secession and the first is the speeches of the secession commissioners. When the first tier of states they authorized or commissioned appointed commissioners to go from that state to the other slave states to convince them to secede as well. Charles dew has written a thing and very powerful book on the secession commissioners. There were about 56 of them. I think he gathered found about 40 speeches and letters to the elected officials in those states that he captured in apostles of disunion. University of virginia press. Another zeroing in part of this are the four declarations of secession, when South Carolina, texas, kentucky decided to secede they thought we need to create a committee that specifically develops a justification or an explanation to the people of those states and to the rest of the country and really to the world because the world was watching, about why those states seceded. Modeled on the declaration of independence. Theres an introduction paragraph or two. In South Carolinas case it goes on a page or two. But an introduction and then a list of grievances. This is why were leaving. This is what youre wrong and were leaving. Those you can find on the web, graciously published as i think the second or the third chapter in this book, four of them verbatim. The third category of information is sort of the newest and the most revealing in many ways. If you remember your high school history, you might remember a man named john crittenton. Senator from kentucky. He offered the kentucky the crittenton resolutions on december 18th of 1860 in the senate as a means of solving the problems. Its in the form of a constitutional amendment. Would have been the first 13th amendment and it had six parts. Six subsets, six articles within it. The first person, however, to propose a constitutional amendment to solve the problem was president James Buchanan who was in the cat bird seat for the four years. Didnt leave the white house of course until march 4th of 1861. And in his last address to congress which was on december 3rd, the opening of the second session of the 36th congress and at the end of it offers a constitutional amendment to solve it. Many people at that point mostly southern democrats believe the constitution was broken. You couldnt solve the problem with a law by congress, you had to amend the constitution. And James Buchanans address and proposal opened the floodgates. As i went through this material, this is all in hindsight, right, very clear looking back when i was moving into it the first time i didnt know what id get into but i kept running into constitutional amendments, proposed constitutional amendments to solve the problem. It turns out i found 67 of these. All designed to solve the problem. They were proposed in congress. They some were proposed in Secession Conventions. The washington piece conference proposed six by different people and an early draft of the collected works and finally a final draft of that. President buchanan as i said proposed one. Jefferson davis proposed one. William seward proposed one. And Andrew Johnson and Stephen Douglas proposed one. Three governors chimed in. Governors, congress, Secession Conventions and the washington peace convention. My book is built around these amendments because as i learned no one else had gathered them or analyzed them. What do they mean . I mentioned that James Buchanans had three subsets. Crittentons had six. Most had more than one. Very few were one paragraph long. Jefferson davis was one paragraph. Most had subsets. When you add up the articles, there are about 350 different topics that are embodied in those 67 amendments. So one of the first things i had to do was to sort of categorize them and i created a chart, lifting the proposers down the left side and if you have read extensively in the decade of the 1850s from the compromise of 1850 to the civil war, these amendments track the difficulties that the country was trying to deal with. The largest number of articles within these amendments dealt with slavery in the territories. Not surprising because that was the election around which the election of 1860 turned. What do we do with slavery . There were slaves there and have them there as long as they want. Should the federal government to which the republican was in position. Remember the Republican Party didnt come into being until 1856 after the kansas nebraska act. In opposition to the core purpose was to the end of the territories and opposition to slavery around there was a southern wing and a northern wing. They couldnt decide on what the policy should be. Stephen douglas was the leader of the northern faction. He said let the people decide. Let the people of those territories, popular sovereignty. Let them decide what to do. Southerners said that the government should protect the slavery because its federal land and slavery is property and property is protected until the fifth amendment. They should be protected there as throughout the territorial period. So slavery in the territories was the first or the highest number of issues in the 67 amendments. Fugitive slaves was not surprisingly the second most popular. There werent many fugitive slaves but it was a passion natural issue. The south was very passionate about having the yankees return the slaves to them when they escaped northward. The third most popular was articles protecting slavery in the district of columbia. For obvious reasons. Southern senators and representatives went to washington for the session. They would take slaves with them to take care of them while they were there. They wanted to make sure that no one prevented them from doing that. The fourth category dealt with the transit of of slave owners to take their slaves, these are not runaway slaves, but take the slaves into northern or free states and territories on a temporary basis. Southerners, plantation owners often went to philadelphia and new york to do business. And when they traveled there, they would take the slaves with them. New york, in 1841, after deciding to allow a leeway period up to 1841, that slave owners could come into the state with their slaves for a period of nine months. And then if they left before the ninemonth period, then slavery is not a problem in 1841, the legislature decided. If were a free state, were a free state. We should prohibit slaves from coming into our state at all. Ten years later in 1852, a family from virginia went to new york city, didnt fully understand the law. The slaves were taken from them. The slaves immediately went to canada. Virginia appealed the case and went through the new York Supreme Court and the court of appeals where virginia lost both times, which is exactly what henry wise, the governor of virginia wanted to happen so he could send it to the supreme court. Where roger b. Taney sat on the dred scott case. And historians now are pretty certain if the lemon slave case had gone to roger b. Taney, he would have voted favor of virginia against new york and slave owners could take their slaves into free states for as long as they wanted as long as they could call themselves sojourning. Five of these, interestingly enough, would have created a process for secession. As you know, the United States constitution then and now doesnt provide for secession. There is no back door. If youre in, youre in. There is no way of getting out. Five of these amendments proposed a logical process for getting out. Two would or two proposed reorganizing the executive branch to give southern interests a better chance of seceding. One of those was an executive department. That is there would be a northern president and southern president and a western president. All in the oval office at the same time. Theres the kicker. Each one armed with veto power. So you can imagine how well that would have worked. It didnt go anywhere. Nevertheless, that was a proposal by landingham, if you know that name. Two were purposefully designed to prohibit protective tariffs. As you know, the tariff issue is really big in the 30s and 40s. Not so much in the 50s and 60s. But two virginians proposed in their amendments against the protective tariffs. Two articles out of around 350. So i think we can say that tariff had nothing to do or very little to do, next to nothing to do with the secession interests. Importantly, when you look at all of these, 90 , 90 of the 67 amendments were very carefully and purposefully designed to protect slavery in various ways around the country in the federal constitution. And the other 10 had to do with secession issues yeah, secession issues and reorganizing the oval office. An interesting subset is about 10 or 11 that proposed nationalizing slavery. Up to this time, slavery was protected under state law. Nobody really argued that. There are some minor arguments. Everyone assumed that if a state wanted slavery, it could do that. If they wanted to opt out, abolish slavery, they could do that as well. But this subset of ten said, we should nationalize slavery. Slavery should be protected at the national level. And the poster child for that was none other than mississippi senator Jefferson Davis who, two days before christmas 1860, proposed an amendment that said, it shall be declared by amendment of the constitution that property and slaves recognized as such by the local laws of any of the states of the union shall