constitution, roe v. wade is about moral and political judgments concerning defeatists and the autonomy of women. and by the way, i'm not necessarily saying that the supreme court should go out of the business of making those judgments. there is something to be said for an elite institution that's somewhat removed from ordinary politics making judgments about political morality that maybe hold us to some higher standard of political morality, something like that. of course, there's something to be said against it also. i'm, for these purposes at least, agnostic about that. but if we have such a body, what i would really want to insist on is that the justices start telling us the truth instead of pretending that decisions like roe rest on the constitution of the united states. and if they started telling us the truth, then american people

could make an informed judgment about whether they want such an institution or not. >> host: and we have been talking on booktv with georgetown law professor louis mike l seidman -- michael seidman about his book, "on constitutional disobedience." and you are watching booktv on c-span2. >> you're watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. during booktv's recent trip to chattanooga, tennessee, we took a tour of the civil war papers of john t. wilder, a native northerner who relocated to the south after he attacked a union officer during the civil war. >> collections of the university of tennessee of chattanooga. the john q. oliver papers that we have here at the university, a collection that we acquired around 1960 from one of general

wilder's daughters who was till alive at the time -- the still alive at the time, she donated a collection of military documents and letters that her father wrote to their mother in indiana during the war. wilder, after the war, did what a lot of union officers did, he moved to chattanooga from indiana or from the midwest. and he became a prominent businessman and an industrialist throughout the south. he opened a series of mines throughout tennessee, into north carolina. he was an entrepreneur, he opened up several hotels. he was always working, new adventures in money-making opportunities and would get them rolling and stay with them more two or three years, and then he would sell and start something else. he was also the mayor of chattanooga in 1870 and the postmaster of the city as well. so he was sort of a prominent citizen of the late 1800s for chattanooga. so i think it's appropriate that we get this collection of

letters that he had during the war that he wrote to his wife. one thing i find very interesting is a lot of the letters start off like letters that we used to write always started off, by asking the person why haven't you written more. he'll start off with those letters to his wife, i haven't received a letter there you, sort of complaining about that. but i think back during the civil war they weren't as particular about people writing troop movement details in the their letters. i know during world war ii, soldiers' letters had to be censored by their superiors. these give a lot of information about the foraging missions that his troops went on, the skirmishes, the battles. i find one very interesting that he wrote. his division missed out on the battle of shiloh by a day. they got there a day late. but he writes home on april 16,

1862, from the battlefield, and he's writing to his wife what he sees as he rides onto the battlefield of shiloh just the day after the battle. and he says i will not attempt to tell you of the awful destruction on the battleground which covered a space of about 25 square miles. the dead lay on every acre of it. when we came here, there was just about two rebels for each one of ours, probably about 3,000 this all dead. hundreds of trees slivered to splinters, gun carriages torn obits, dead horses by droves, heads, arms, legs and mangled bodies is strewn around all combined to make up a picture of horrors if that it would be well for our infernal political leader to look on. he was one of the first officers on either side of the war to equip his soldiers with a spencer repeating rifle, and that gave his troops a real big advantage over the single shot

rifles that most of the soldiers used. the spencers could fire seven shots without reloading versus the shoot and reload, shoot and reload. so he really gained an upper and on confederate troops during the war. because of the, them getting the spencer repeating rifles, they were just a lethal division to be, to encounter. and it was because of that they became known as the lightning brigade. prior to that they'd actually been known as the hatchet bedivide because all his men carried hatchets not for warrer if a, but for -- warfare, but for camp necessities. he also was essential in the battle across the border of georgia, one of the last union troops to leave the battlefield, and he helped protect general george thomas who later became known as the rock. he protected his troops later at the last part of the war. after after that battle in the

late summer of 1863, he was pretty much done with the war. he went home. he was, he was pretty sick, and he went home for the remainder of the year. when he rejoined his outfit in early 1864, it was a very reduced capacity. and be i believe by halfway through the war, through 1864, he was pretty much done. and then he did receive a promotion to the rank of brigadier general at that time. but most of what he accomplished during the war he did as a colonel. this letter he writes from kentucky on january 18, 1862, and he writes: my dear wife, i have not written you for some time as i have been quite sick with pneumonia. was taken new year's day and not yet quite able for duty. expect to be able by monday to resume work. we are lying still here and no prospect for an advance on the enemy. ..