national crisis. we have a national economic crisis, which is only going to get tougher. we have a national health crisis which is bankrupting of the and has sandy proved all too clear a few weeks ago, global is affecting us. the less of it we have less -- the more we can become an urban society, the more we can do to solve these problems that are at the center of our challenges as a nation. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> now on booktv, for the next african bruce levine examines the effect the civil war had on the south political, economic, and social structures. >> thank you. i hope you'll all be patient while i set up my regalia here.

thank you all for coming out this evening. and without further ado let me get right into this. decades after the civil war ended, katherine stone, then you see on the screen, published her memoirs of which she called the gate, busy life that she and her wealthy slaveowning family had fled on their 1200-acre plantation in prewar louisiana. the members of her family, she recalled, these are her words, there was always something going on, formal dining, spend a day, evening parties, fox hunts, and

to assist with these and other diversions, katherine added, her family had come again her words, quite a core of serpents to keep us well waited on since naturally no one expected to wait on himself. each of katherine stone's younger brothers, also again her words, own a little darkie in the quarter who eventually would become his body servant. and to generate the wealth that sustained the stones family life of, again her words, luxurious these. some 150 enslaved human beings toiled in the plantations cotton and cane fields six days a week, week after week, month after month, year after year. the civil war's outbreak in april 1861 signaled the

beginning of the end of the stone families accustomed well then cover. katherine was soon confiding to her diary, the fighting between north and south infected slaves with the hope of radical change in the condition. they were, therefore, she said, becoming lazy and disobedient. and they were giving a lot of trouble. her words again. one evening, as katherine and her relatives sat on the veranda of their plantation home, someone whom she described as a runaway negroes darted past them to katherine's brothers left in pursuit of the desperate fugitive commit good of his escape the stone and the neighbors began to worry that they were, in her words, living on a landmine.

seeking refuge from these insiders, katherine turned, she said, to the fictional works of the then popular 19th century southern author, edgar allan poe. but with her nerves already frayed she decided that she is going to avoid his most fearsome pieces, as she puts it. and perhaps, we don't know, but perhaps she chose the fall of the house of usher. well, it's not a particularly grizzley story. it's not filled as are some other of the poe stories with grim supernatural horrors, which might if they distort -- short story -- from and selling events around them. that's where begins community recall, poe as narrator is paying a visit to a friend. and man in robert usher who is the heir of an old wealthy and

venerable family, and he's the current master of its imposing usher mansion. and the first glance, this mansion's massive evidence, says a narrator, gave little token of instability. but it's seeming solidity he goes on to say can see old a barely perceptible fishery that ran down through it from its roof to its foundation. pose a narrator, after spending some time sitting with usher, suddenly hears the mansions hidden structural fault begin to announce itself. first in a muted trimmer, then in a powerful shutter, and then a mounting roar. and, finallyroar. and, finally, as been a raider watches in shock and horror, the mansion walls began to tremble.

it's barely discernible fissure gives way open. the walls tumble. the august mansion collapsed burying its owner in the rubble. and the waters of the lake that's around the mansion then close, poe says, solemnly and silently over the fragments of the house of usher. katherine stone chose this book to relieve her of her anxiety. one imagines that about of offering a relatively little comfort. resided in an imposing and outwardly sturdy structure, the house of dixie, the slavery days the site of the american south, and hers, too, was already beginning to display the deep fissures that ran through it.

and that's a civil war continued, those fissures were going to widen until the whole structure eventually collapse. some of the fish that went to the house of dixie, and that the civil war greatly widened, divided white southerners from one another. by demanding too much of it. it demanded too much of some slaveowners, especially those in the hills and mountains, where resentment grew that the ever heaviest burdens of fighting this war to preserve slavery were failing to accomplish their goal, and meanwhile, were falling disproportionately on those with less of a stake in that war. but the war effort also was the man in the eyes of many members of the southern elite, who seem

to be too concerned with safeguarding their individual wealth and privileges to corporate fully with the confederate government, struggling to protect the interest of slaveholders as a whole. and those are aspects of the book that i'm discussing with you today. but this evening i'd like to talk about the most important fissure that ran through the house of dixie, slavery. and the three ways that slavery figured in the origin and the progress of the civil war. first of all, as the worst central cause. secondly, as a crucial source of military power deployed during that war. and third, slavery's erosion during the war and its destruction, both of those things, as an eventual union goal. the destruction of slavery as an

eventual conscious, deliberate union goal. so let's start with cause. as you may know any recent national survey, hal have all te people, have all those americans who were polled denied that slavery was the main cause of the u.s. civil war. and that view is apparently gaining ground, not losing ground because among younger people polled, those below 30 years of age, fully three out of five tonight slavery centrality to the wars origin. but in 1860-61, leaders of both the union and confederacy knew and said that slavery and escalating national dispute over slavery's future was precisely what was leading most of the southern states to break from and breakup the united states. thereby initiating the costliest war in the country's history.

abraham lincoln noted in his first inaugural address that quote, one section of the country believes slavery is right and not to be extended, while the other place it is wrong and ought to be extended -- sarco and ought not to be extended, and this is the only substantial dispute. carried, closed quote. the president of the confederate states of america, jefferson davis, reminded his congress in 1861, these are his words, the labor of african slaves was and is indispensable to our prosperity. so that with interest of such overwhelming magnitude, by the election of the presidency of the antislavery man like abraham lincoln he meant, the people of the southern states he said were driven to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. and that course of action of

course was leaving the federal union. davis was not overstating mistakes for him and his fellow slaveowners. the more than 12 million sold who reside in the southern states in 1860s, really one out of three of those people was insulated, was owned outright by other people. and on the markets of the day, those 4 million human beings were worth something like $3 billion. that was an immense sum at the time. it was a sum greater than the value of all the farmland in all the states of the south. it was a sum three times as great as the cost of constructing all the railroads that then ran throughout all the united states. to give you some idea of just what those human bodies were

worth. but even more important to southern wealth than the sale price of the human bodies, was a very profitable group of crops that the slaves produced for their masters, and that made up the core of the southern economy. and only slave labor, only the labor of people who are owned outright by their owners, by the landowners, who had no right to effect much less to refuse the conditions under which they were compelled to work, only slave labor would cultivate those crops intense of late and cheaply enough to yield the tremendous profits that they did. but slavery's importance to the southern elite was not simply a matter of dollars and cents. too many masters, as slaveowners like to be called, slavery figured to be an extension, even

an irreplaceable fixture of society. it was inseparable from everything that they knew and loved. it was inseparable from all aspects of what they referred to as their way of life. of course, economically but also socially and culturally. slavery was a unique basis of a particular outlook, the norms to which thorms, the habits, the relationships to which these masters had become deeply and reflexively attach. it defines their privileges. it shape the culture that shaped their religious but but even shape their individual personalities. so slavery was essential to southern life. but slavery was also an institution, a form of property that contain the problem. a problem for the masters. this valuable form of property was capable of thinking the capable of yearning for freedom.

and capable of acting upon that yearning. this man, a kentucky slave owner, who was a friend of abraham lincoln, put it this way. slave property is unlike any other. it is the only property in the world that has locomotion with a mind to control it. and went on to say that that is why the owners of such property are so sensitive about any outside interference with it. slave property was valuable, but control over it seemed tenuous, and the masters hear about that fact, let's didn't convinced that their labors could be controlled and work profitably only if they were kept uneducated, uninformed, isolated from dangerous influences, closely watched, intimidated,

and convinced that their status as slaves permanent and unchangeable. to accomplish that, southern communities and state legislators made it a crime to teach slaves to read, severely limited slave movement, author on his property, created slave control to enforce those limits to its severely restricted the freedom of the small community of free blacks who lived in the slave states, and they made it ever more difficult, even for whatever masters might choose to do so to voluntary, to voluntarily free even their own slaves. ..

years passed keeping just this slavery didn't seem to be enough. they also had to curb their rights and political power that lived in the north and that became an even bigger problem. because by the time the american revolution, the north had her

day path of economic and social development that differed markedly and increasingly from that of the south. the combination of small farms, lively internal commerce, are pretty manufacturing or seem less compatible with slavery, more compatible with self-employment and the hiring of legally free wage laborers. and in the north, just as the south, the particular form economic and social development to also strongly influenced people's values. values of all time, philosophical, religious, political. more they came to view personal autonomy for all men and above all the ownership of one's own body as the building block of any good society and the outright ownership of one's human being by another and contrast came to seem more and more to those northerners

economically backward, but also they morally repelled and politically dangerous to the republic. southern leaders felt threatened by northerners with the most strongly and openly critically of slavery and believed the words and deeds of such northerners might one way or another directly or indirect plea encourage slaves to target their bonds. so the masters and allies therefore set out to meet the voice of those troubled northerners. by purging antislavery literature from the united state mills and for as long as possible they banish antislavery petitions and antislavery speeches from the floor of the house of representatives. in 1850, they demanded and got a new law that compelled more

cities than to join posses that were hunting people accused of being a runaway slaves who had allegedly escaped into the free states. most of all, the champions of slavery sought ways to detain a control diet almost continuously exercised over the federal government since the american revolution and to prevent above all, prevent others from using the federal government in ways that might have the slaveowner sensuous. in doing this, by the way, they were really aided by a cause of the constitution, the so-called three fifths clause that gave southern whites have your representation in the house of representatives and the room numbers otherwise would have warranted. southerners also saw it this

representation in congress and a steadily increasing the number of slave states in the union. soil moisture in the 1840s the davises hursley demanded and lustily cheered both the annexation of texas and war with mexico. which incidentally removed and transferred to the united states only behalf of the national terrain of mexico. southerners cheered this war in hopes that the lamps are required with a come slave work plan. then in 1854, they pressure congress into allowing slavery to take root in territory congress had explicitly close to slavery 30 years later. the kansas and nebraska territory acquired during the

louisiana purchase. then, during the years that followed, northerners watched in horror as the slavery for assisting ken this employed impressive was an extralegal violence to surpass the local opponent and critics. in 1857, a supreme court dominated by southerners and processed democrat ruled in the same restraint on a case that federal territories were automatically and permanently and irreversibly open to slavery and its expansion into this territories. this is a massive, rather single-minded and pretty successful campaign to shore up slavery in the decade before the civil war. but this campaign failed to smother the sectional conflict. on the contrary, it escalated.

it eventually convinced most northerners for southern powers met northern weakness and southern control of the national government meant infringement on northern interest in northern liberties. and therefore, only a political party dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery and containing and rolling back clinical domination of the federal government by the slave owners and their allies could protect rights of the people of the north. that is what the republican party came into existence to you. its platform specifically promised to exclude slavery from our federal tories terry says he well may know and republican officeholders make clear that if elected, they return that promise into government policy. it's important to emphasize at this point, i think, that this issue of slavery in the

territories was not in significance to this territories. on the contrary in the eyes of slavery supporters and its opponents, slavery's expansion was intimately taped to the future of slavery bernardi existed because both sides of the controversy firmly believed both economic and political reasons this slavery needed to expand in order to survive. as much as a shark is said to keep moving to keep reading. leading republicans frankly about blake, for example, hoped containing slavery geographically would eventually kill it within the states where it already existed toward an effect choke at to death by preventing slavery from expanding to territories, abraham lincoln repeatedly stated in his debates with frederick douglass and stephen

douglas and other occasions in late 1850s by containing it remained, he said to put it in the course of its ultimate extinction. and by the way come one leg and ran for president pizza that and made the essential part of this literature. on november 6, 1860, more than 1.8 million voters, nearly all of the northerners elected this man, lincoln, president of the united states. to most whites in the deep south, the fact that the northern population is big enough to pay such a man and his party in control of the executive branch of the federal government, that fact the final proof that slavery was no longer safe within the united states.

during the late 1860 in early 1861 for that reason, and the seven states at the deep south colored on the map in dirt blue all declared themselves out of the union and they made no bones about why they were leaving. one after another specifically identify the north's hostility to slavery as a source of the creeping men depart and no one put stakes more bluntly than the rich mississippi planter, richard thompson archer. it is time for all good southerners to stand united in defense of the god-given right to own the african, end quote. the official secession documents put the same sentiments and more plate leto language.

now, eight other slave state who had closer ties with the union remained within the union and those are the states colored on the map in front of you and gray and light blue. before those states, the once and gray, arkansas, tennessee, virginia and north carolina threatened to follow the states of the lower south out the door unless the newly elected president specifically abandoned the platform on which he had just been elected. lincoln must guarantee that slavery could in the future expand into all or part of the federal territories and by the way, not only those territories currently held, but also territories yet to be acquired and that demand was made with an eye on eventually acquiring cuba, parts of central america

and other parts of the caribbean, which were due to be turned into slaveholding territories in slaveholding eventually states. if lincoln did not agree to do this, they would very likely move to join the confederacy as well. well, lincoln and his party refused to accede to these extortionate demands and in april of 1861 the confederacy bombardment and seizure up for some during charleston harbor sparked an all-out war, these four upper south state to choose sides. they concluded this war between a slave labor confederacy, free labor union is going to eventually and inevitably involve into a war over slavery itself. and anywhere like that, the leader of these for slave states

decided they would stand at their sister slave states in defense of what they like to call their peculiar institution. and so by aesthetic conflict over slavery expanded into the slavery of the territorial integrity of the nation itself. lincoln, his government considered the extent to break up the federal union to be illegal, treasonous admit that the weakening and perhaps eventually dissolving the u.s. as a whole, utterly inaccessible. on that particular question in the preservation the union to defend the state that the united states from an armed attempt to destroy it as a nation, the vast majority of those people who lived in the free states, republicans are not public and the like agreed wholeheartedly with lincoln and his party. he and his government thereby and therefore raised an army to compile succeeding states to

present their proper places within the union, as you know. but the next question was exactly how to fight that war. the republican government will need to remember, embarked upon the lord, not intending to use the word cells to transform the south. the purpose of the war effort in the eyes of this republican government was simply to keep the slave states within the union, a union in which republicans could then proceed with their plan to slowly, gradually, peacefully and with confrontation and do away with slavery. how definitely slavery came to an end, that would've sent people to remain in slavery down through the end of the 19th century or even later. that's a gradual emancipation were in the 19 century.

lincoln reaffirmed his commitment to the socially conservative war program in december 1861 in his annual message to congress, saying sec on the on the screen, in considering policies to be adopted, suppressing insurrection, i've been anxious and careful that the conflict shall not descend into a violent and remorseless revolutionary structure. the union must be preserved, he continued, but we should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures are indispensable to preserve. this approach was the ticket and one can find by two assumptions. first, lincoln assumed the national government must at all costs retains support of the for slave states within the union, does invite blue. the so-called border states,

missouri, maryland and especially chunky. the republicans must not antagonize those politically powerful slaveowners, antagonize them by interfering with slavery and the succeeding states, at least not interfering any more than is absolutely necessary. lincoln was sure if he did otherwise the slaveholders of the state would leave as well. only a small minority in the succeeding states really supported secession. he and other republicans believe the great majority of white southerners in the confederacy, non-slaveholders and slaveholders alike were basically loyal, law-abiding city seems to have been tricked around the new bird by a minority of extremists. leaving slavery allowed but

hopefully win them back into the youth. that's the expectation. after a full year of four and despite lincoln staffers to spare their property and feelings, few slaveowners were displayed any active sympathy with union policies. this lack of support from supposedly prounion slaveowners with all the more worrisome in the light of the bad moves around that time, and from virginia battlefield in the middle of 1862. meanwhile, it was painfully clear that confederate armies were everywhere benefiting greatly from the forced labor performed for them by slaves. building fortifications and placing artillery as you see in

this sketch, carrying weapons, it tending horses, driving wagons, cooking and cleaning, raising the crops that that the population and that the army. more and more republican leaders now therefore concluded that attempting to fight the war with understanding the enemy was impossible. included on the contrary that union armies must become more aggressive, must become more ruthless stories that confederate leadership and his supporters and in particular, concluded union armies best free slave systematically and in large numbers ms takes place away from the confederacy and use them to strength in the union war effort. slaves like these working on fortifications in savanna.

how did the union come to this understanding of the significance of slavery as a military factor? the courageous initiative of slaves themselves helped immeasurably to bring the union to this basic change of policy. at enormous risk an enormous sacrifice to themselves and their families, more and more escape from their masters as union members approach entity that had to invade and enrage owners, ran for slave patrols and confederate armies and those who succeeded presented themselves before union soldiers, offering to perform tasks of all kind like this young woman identified in the photograph you see before you,

only if the washer woman who worked for the union army in virginia at, all kinds of the union war effort in terms of the exchange for sanctuaries from the owners. union desk cam to recognize this reality and change course. as you know, he had his emancipation proclamation in september 1862 in the final on january 1st 1863 declaring all slaves in the confederacy to be legally free. lincoln's attitude towards black men serving in uniform changed under the same pressure. during the first phase of the war, his government categorically repassed all attempts by black men to join the fight, to join union armies. but on this question, too, the need for more soldiers to fight the war ultimately prove decisive. under the pressure of this

necessity have a union policy evolved from adamantly excluding vioxx in 1861 and 18622 then recruiting them as soldiers in 1863. by the end of the war, some 200,000 lakh soldiers and sailors had served in the union cause. policy towards the soldiers and sailors changed, too because at first they were combined almost solely, speaking of the soldiers, to noncombat tasks. but their courageous conduct whenever they came under fire nonetheless eventually let the into welcome black troops into combat duty. here we have a drawing of lakh troops played a crucial role in liberating slaves in north carolina, a common scene and the last heir of the war.

as lincoln then repeatedly knowledge, these black soldiers proved crucial to the eventual union victory, freeing and recruiting them, lincoln explained tirelessly wise, he said, the only policy that camera could save the union. any substantial departure from this policy he said ensures the success of the rebellion. without the color force, lincoln emphasized, we would be powerless to save the union. most right northerners probably in christ were 10 emancipation because it undermined a foe that is out to destroy their precious union. but many others came to the slavery destruction as a worthy goal in its own right. over the course of the work, and many white northerners who had never been abolitionists and

particularly troubled in their consciousness by slavery also came to embrace emancipation for more than merely pragmatic reasons. in the ranks of people like this stood from northern democrats and union soldiers of various political backgrounds. one of these resurgent electric unit of minnesota, who explained to relatives of early 1863 that while he had quote ever been in favor of the abolition of slavery, his experience in this war has determined me in the conviction that it is the reader said that our government is able to stand and now i go in for a war of emancipation and i'm ready and willing to do my share of the work. abraham lincoln posed the slavery, including moral grounds spoke for more and more union supporters when he stressed the

transcendent meaning of emancipation and his second inaugural address. there he suggested that this terrible civil war was god's way of punishing the country as a whole for having indulged in the sin of slavery and later nodded, if heaven now will set the fighting and destruction should continue until all the wealth piled up at the bondsman 250 years of him required toyo shall be song and every job of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, and then sit lincoln, one could only bow the head and agree with biblical somberness that the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether. thank you for your attention. [applause]

>> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country:

>> political strategists, bay buchanan has written a vote, they enter boys. tell us about it. >> it is my story of being a single mom for 23 years. i became a single mom is pregnant with my third son. there is rough days and good days and what i did this throughout that time i never heard a positive message from

the right or left of encouraging words or instruction may be a help us get along because the odds are against kids who have only one mom or one parent in the home. so i broke the book as they can do both. is out eight, positive message, not only for single moms, the parents. we all relate to some extent. and say those covers my heart and soul. >> people who know your career know you as a republican. is this book free of? >> this book is apolitical. i don't care how you came a single mom. this book is about helping you be successful in making certain as kids have a chance to be as successful as any other child independent of what their circumstances are. so that is why ski is so much is out there and so much makes you feel as a single mom to you somehow failed or that odds are

against you or that it's too much work and it's time for single moms, and most of them do i must admit, but to realize it doesn't matter how tough it is, it's got to do this. i have to make certain they have a chance at air and i've got to show them the way. is what i learned along the way and it has the eight lessons of single parenting. there's a lot of great stories so i'll parents can relate our nature nervous about what is going to tomorrow because of circumstances in your home. that is a great lead an enjoyable read for all. >> you have three boys that are now three men. what do they do? >> my three boys would make great decisions. i set the past. the oldest just graduated from

law school and he's doing a clerkship and he's married with two kids and one on the way. my second son is married with two children in and he is out there what they started in california doing quite well. my youngest is still in college, but is looking at medicine, look at medical school. i couldn't be prouder of the decisions they've made, the lives they've chosen and the grandchildren they produce. the >> bay buchanan, author of the new book, they enter boys: unexpected lessons i learned as a single mom.