Hello im fred wade. Im have the honor of introducing jeremi suri this afternoon and thank you for coming. And thank you to our sponsors, the Madison Public Library and Madison Public Library. And the signature sponsor, richard levy. Martin leaving marvin levy. I wrote it down wrong and my notes notes, jeremy is has written a remarkable i will endorse it up front thats all i need to say here he graduated with with his earned his ph. D. At yale a number of years ago came to madison taught here in the History Department for ten years and then im sorry to say was lured away to the university of texas and the lbjs of Public Affairs in austin, texas. The he is authored or. 11 books in all this. So this is the 11th including more recent are shortly a short time ago book called the impossible presidency of liberty. Sure as guardians and a book henry kissinger. Hes a hes written for the New York Times post wall street and a number of hes often quoted or appears is offered an invitation to comment on various news programs and radio and television and. He hosts a podcast called this is democracy. Each week. As i said at the beginning, this is an important book and a book. It makes the point that the civil war did not end with the surrender of lee at appomattox, but was continued in a very real respects, by other means during the ensuing 20 years. It makes the point that frames this is being part of a long and unfinished fight for democracy. Thats the subtitle, the book. And from what seen of the book, its an accurate. And finally he makes the point that the recurring problems around inclusion and exclusion with voting and the meaning of representation who may vote are recurring in our time as a continuation of the same kinds of issues we focused in the period hes writing about and indeed had prior to that time as well. So with that, please welcome jeremi suri. Oh, good afternoon everyone. Its such a joy to be here. I see so many friends in, the audience and so many people who i know will. Difficult questions. I see you, jim kurtz, im so happy to be here. I want to thank fred, who has among many of you a such a longtime friend. And i had great joy of coming out to austin last spring. I often come out our daughter is a sophomore here and fred is part of this group called the bull moose club. And we had a wonderful dinner at the madison club that was just just terrific. And so thank you, fred, for being such a good friend. I do want to acknowledge my wife and my daughter, alice, and walter allison. Allison has a real job. I dont have a real i get to study and teach. Its a hard job. But she has a real job. Shes the mayor pro tem and austin, texas. And yeah, and natalie is a sophomore here at uw. Were so happy that shes back in madison. Im getting some feedback here. Yeah. Okay, so im delighted to have the to talk to all of you. And i want to explain, discuss my journey to book a little bit. And then i want us to talk i want to talk about the book a little bit and then i want there to be plenty of time for q a discussion. And then well leave at about 10 p. M. Tonight. How does that sound . I know how we do it on sound. We okay . Were okay. All right. Good. So as many of you know, im a child of immigrants and i came of age believing as the child immigrants would that, our country was imperfect. I was well aware of that growing up in new york city in the 1980s. But i believed and still believe that our country is what Abraham Lincoln called the last best hope on earth. I still believe that. But the last 6 to 10 years have shaken that belief. I think its shaken the beliefs many of us. How many people have been shaken in the last 6 to 10 years . Everyone, you know, every room i talk to, thats what people do. Every hand goes up, you see, were not divided. We all agree. We agree. These have reoriented me. These 6 to 10 years. Theyve reoriented. I see the world as a historian and as a scholar, as a teacher or as a father, as a citizen. And i worry as i didnt before about the world were leaving to natalie and zachary and others. My new book is an effort to chronicle this issue, to understand where it has come from. Its not an explanation of whats happened the last 6 to 10 years. Its not a polemic. Its not designed to be one more polemical story. We have enough and we have journalists are doing a great job of bringing salacious, sensationalist news to us every moment, the day we dont need more of that. My books and effort to do and my own effort to understand and what the roots of these difficulties are. And as a historian, it wont surprise you that the roots, i think, are very deep. They arent about one election. They arent about one man. They about even our moment. You see, historians can offer us, if we can offer anything, is that there are deep roots in the ground and they dont always bloom in our garden. We dont always see the flowering of those roots, but those roots are still there and at certain moments, if theyre not dug up, they do invade our garden and understand where those roots have come from. To understand what is low below surface that is influencing all of us, to switch metaphors, i might. My book is an effort to diagnose the cancerous tumors that began to grow in our democracy about 100 years ago or so. Cancerous tumors that have metastasized metastasized in recent years because of the conditions of the few years and because of the misbehavior of your certain people over the last few years. But the illness, the disease was already there. It seen you can act healthy ways and still have a disease deep within. I want to diagnose where that disease came from i want us to understand what the sources of this are and thats what my book is about. My book talks about not what we should do, but how we can better the problem to be better prepared to remove the cancers in our system. And thats my plea at the end of the book. Thats my plea to of you today for why this history matters. We cant fix what us if we dont know what it is. If we dont know where the disease comes from, if we dont have an accurate pathology and the history of democracy is the pathology of democracy, those who look at how the body developed over time and thats what my book does. Three pathologies in particular, there are others in the book. But three, i want to talk about today. One is the pathology of war. As many of you know, whereas this body thats been almost continuously war and there are many reasons why thats the case. Fortunately, madison has, a wonderful Veterans Museum and i see dan sharkey, the Veterans Museum here, a Veterans Museum, which i think chronicles at least wisconsin in war decade after decade. And correct me if im wrong, dan, every period covered because every period includes war, right . So war is one of our pathologies. How is war distorted our democracy leadership is another pathology. Why have we had such a mixed group of leaders what has that meant in our society. Fred referred to this already and then of course the distortions of our democracy, ways in which our democracy has developed in ways that dont meet anyones textbook of what a democracy would look like for each of these three areas, for war leadership and democracy. My book takes us to the civil war because i think the civil war is an important moment. The end of the civil war, the two decades thereafter, which are the heart of my book. Understood ending why war becomes so present in our society. Why our leadership struggles and why our democracy distorted. Those are current problems that have historical origins. Those are current problems that go back to that moment and thats why i wrote this book to understand better. And thats how we fix these problems by going back to understand where they came and trying to eliminate the initial conditions or to my gardening metaphor to remove the roots from the ground and not just on what were seeing above the ground all the time. So let me start with war. You cant talk about american without discussing war because its so ever present, though there are still people who to talk about our history without talking about war, then theyre not doing history. The civil war ended in april 1865, as many of you know, with this wonderful. When the two sides come together and youve all seen images of this if we were in a classroom, i put up the powerpoint the lovely paintings of Ulysses Grant and robert e lee at appomattox courthouse, the two men sitting in very stately demeanor. You would think they had just had a graduate seminar, signing, signing what is to be a truce, end the war. And most textbooks say thats the end of the war. In fact, it wasnt. Wars dont end when the paper is signed, wars linger. Its one of the points. Carl von made in the 19th century. War is politics by the means and the politics dont go away simply because the belligerents have left the battlefield. This is something americans forget. We think we can mobilize for war when wars and go home . Its not. It works. Were still in a certain way fighting the vietnam war, arent we . Were still dealing with the iraq war long after leaving iraq, robert e lee says to grant and appomattox and this is in grants memoirs which by the way is still the best memoir written by any president in American History. I encourage you all to read grants memoirs, and one of the reasons its the best memoir. He doesnt talk about the presidency at off. He just talks about his time during the civil war. He recount that lee said to him and these are grants words recounting, lee that quote the south is a very big country and you might have won on the battlefields but if you want to really win this war, you have to march over the south three or four times before the war will entirely end. What lee was saying was that simply because they were laying down their arms. It mean the struggle was over. Lee is often depicted as giving up. Its not true. He sees himself war moving to another phase. Hes no hero. Hes no graduate. Jeff when i say that south of the masondixon line. But im here can say that hes no hero. The soldiers home in some cases in cases they dont, they dont give up. They dont give up. The war didnt end at appomattox. One of the things i did for this book was do research on those who decided not to surrender. And theyre actually a lot of them, 50,000, 50,000 confederates go to mexico more go to brazil. Most people dont know that. One of my good friends who has one of the most popular textbooks said, oh my gosh, now i have to rewrite my textbook because of your book, i was like, yes. These men i chronicle some of them, they dont give up. They see the war moving to a new phase ill give you some of their names. You havent heard of them . Joseph shelby. Joseph shelby was from missouri. He was a commander of famous commander of confederate forces, vicious commander, not well known. The north very well regarded in the south. How do i know this . Because my research relied about about a hundred heroic books about him still written this day and took his forces down to mexico joined the of Emperor Maximilian who was an installed emperor by Louis Napoleon in mexico joined mexico and Emperor Maximilians with the intention the explicit intention of fighting to protect the emperor in mexico. So hes a royalist with the intention of returning to the united with his slaves. Another gentleman, John Bankhead magruder. Anyone named John Bankhead magruder youve got to be worried about right, John Bankhead . Magruder was from texas, though he had spent much of his life in new york. Believe it or not new york had a lot of confederate sympathizers and magruder took his forces as well. He played a major role with shelby. And not only People Living on maximilians army, but settling a new area of mexico called carlotta, named for the emperors wife, carlotta. It wont surprise had plantations that looked, like virginia and they brought their slaves. There was no slavery in mexico. So magruder came up with this great idea. We will give them 20 year labor contracts, africanamericans and they can get paid at the end of the 20 years. Im technically not slavery technically not. Matthew fontaine, maury is someone you should have heard of. You havent. He had a statue on richmonds way three years ago. Matthew Fontaine Maury was one of those prominent girard refers. Anyone studying geography at uw in the mid19th century 1848 would have known him would have known who he was. He was a confederate ambassador to england. He never came back initially after the war, he straight to mexico. He was the chief and recruiter for american citizens to come to mexico after the war. After that, he came back to the United States and founded tech university, was offered the presidency of. The university of virginia didnt take it. And he, by the way, he wanted to live close to robert e lee intentionally. Thats Virginia Tech is where Virginia Tech is. Robert e lee was at Washington Lee University at that or i guess it was Washington University later named washington and Lee University the final figure, the one i want to spend a little more time on. Alexander watkins, terrell judge in houston becomes general, joins Emperor Maximilian, becomes a spy, spying on grant and sherman and sheridan for mexican government. That is the definition of treason, not secession, but to spy for a foreign army is the definition of treason. After maximilian is defeated by benito juarez, the republicans who were supported by lincoln before death, after maximilian, is defeated. And in the book we have that famous photo from goya of the assassination, the killing of maximilian. After that. Tyrrell and morey and magruder and, shelby and almost all 50,000 of these horrible people who refuse to surrender. Ladies and gentlemen, came back to the United States and they ran for office and got elected to office. There was a statue for magruder in until a few years ago. Maury was at the center of way Alexander Watkins, who i mentioned, came back to, was elected to the state legislature, became the leader of the Democratic Party in texas. He wrote the legislation to create the university of texas. My employer. He also wrote the voting laws in texas who do you think didnt get a vote . He wrote those laws. He wrote those laws. They were called the terrell laws until the Voting Rights act of 1965. He created the first primary in texas, which, if you know texas history, called the white primary because was the Democratic Partys primary governor for senators, etc. And the Democratic Party was the only party in texas. And the democratic did not allow nonwhites to vote in this primary. That only changed. In 1944. That only changed in 1944, with the Supreme Court decision. Smith versus all right. Until that period until that period there was no voting for in primaries in. Can you believe that beto orourke and Governor Abbott recently a debate and this actually came up in directly there abbott said weve always allowed for free voting in this state and better looked at him and said, where do i begin to you . You are wrong. What worries me is many people watching that debate know this history. Why is it important to teach history . Ladies . Gentlemen, because it becomes significant to our politics day. Its not just these bad actors who leave the country become exiles. Theres a continued throughout the country the creation of the ku klux klan the red shirts were a version that in South Carolina i talk in the book, it was very hard to write about this, about riots in memphis, tennessee. Were not only in memphis and colfax and elsewhere, not only hundreds of homes burned, thousands of people injured, but in these riots often led white sheriffs and white businesses. In these riots quite often women are multiple, multiple times raped, public. In fact, a symbol of white power. One congressional investigating which the congress is committees dont that committees dont matter investigate matter because they provide us with a historical record. If nothing else, the Congressional Committee investigations reported that it seemed as if rape was being used as a flagrant mechanism for intimidating all africanamericans and any of their supporters in this region, this is the world after the civil war. Now, while this is happening the winners, the good guys continue to push as well, its not a one sided story. I write in the book about the extraordinary activism of africanamerican soldiers and many white and nonafrican supporters. Those who helped to start businesses. Those who helped to try to change politics in the south, to create schools, to the ame church, to create opportunities for people that didnt before liberty leagues self protect shin militias and new alliances. Actually, quite extraordinary. Thousands of slaves who did not have any freedom in their lives and could not read or write become literate leaders of their communities because of their Army Education and participation. Then, as in war two, as in many of our periods, the army, which has deep nonetheless is probably institution. Thats usually the spearhead for integrating and educating new elements of our society. And thats certainly true for africanamericans coming out of the war. That is exactly what made change so difficult, though i remind people that what motivated John Wilkes Booth more than anything else was seeing africanamerican soldiers Holding White of war in washington, d. C. , and to think about what a shift in that is, the war might have ended on the battlefield fields, but these tensions, this violence actually spread through American Society. We dont appreciate how violen