[inaudible] >> host: très apologize, let's hear from our guests. >> guest: c-span and the founder brian lamb talks about how stokely carmichael was part of inspiration for c-span. he said carr maaco gave a brilliant speech and lecture and he is in person seeing him and later on on the nightly news he saw snippets of the same same speech he is then added he saw the news took the most incendiary parts this well digested new on speech and that's what they broadcast the most incendiary volatile parts. he really vowed that he wanted to create a media platform where people could speak from beginning to end in their entirety and he would let viewers decide what it is they just experience. so yeah and stokely was interviewed by brian lamb near the end of his life. they always had a special relationship. >> host: in fact if you want

to see that interview a few months before kwame ture stokely carmichael died you can go to the c-span video library available at c-span.org. just type in kwame ture and stokely carmichael and you will be able to watch that. gentlemen we are running out of time. mr. clyburn we have referenced ferguson a couple of times here in this conversation. what's going to happen when congress comes back with regard to the hearings, legislative action especially perhaps a lot of the talk was about the militarization of the police force. do you foresee any legislative action on behalf of congress? >> guest: oh yes i do especially regarding the militarization of the police forces. i think to have police officers decked out in camouflage, sit in the top of these mraps many of

which are made in my district and i know why they are made. they are there for ieds, ieds that were really maiming people. they were made for the city streets. these things were made for war and for you to dress as if you are going to war for you to talk to people as if you had war with them. this is the kind of thing that is absolutely incredible. i think that congress is going to seek a response to that. the president really made it clear that he is looking at doing something about it. and i think he can by executive can by executive order since these things are being given to these police officers by the federal government. they are being legislated by congress. >> host: a little bit from

james clyburn his book "blessed experiences." tufts professor peniel joseph.

you may remember this kind of scenes from the movie. scribbling on a piece of paper with a little watermark, the manufactured watermark known as a foolscap. even as he plays with the spiders that are crawling around the window of the telegraph office. we witness his first reading of the emancipation proclamation to the members of his cabinet who

recognizing that the war was going badly for the union in 1862, and it was going truly badly, urged him to put it away and wait for a moment less desperate to issued its upon the next union victory, whenever that might be. and paradoxically at least and don't we see lincoln greek a delegation of black leaders at the white house with the expressed purpose of encouraging them to begin a migration of the black race out of america and back to africa or panama or someplace in south america for as he told them, you and we are different races. even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed to be placed for a quality raise. it is better for all of us to be separate. we listen to them go even farther when he appears to blame their presence for the very poor which has just cleaned tens -- claimed tens of thousands of lives. but for your race among us there

could be no war. to which frederick douglass, a great black leader said, that was like blaming a horse thief for the -- a horsethief basin the presence of a horse for his crime. we discover lincoln in agnostic most of his life or at least his scientific rationalist and a spiritual crisis where he, a lawyer, begins to doubt the power of reason to affect outcomes and turns instead to a god who works in mysterious and unknowable ways. for god wills of this contest, he writes, and wills that it shall not inject. we watch him tonight a emancipation proclamation the group of clergyman who visit the white house, even as the very doctrine lies in his desk drawer. and then he goes further interesting that emancipation would not only be wrong but a foolish act.

upon seeing the oppression we now see as haley's comet thought it and ill will toward christian people i took a futile gesture issuing an edict condemning it, excommunicating it. with antietam we see lincoln gave his long-awaited victory qualified though it is, and had quite a price. september 17, 1862, today is the anniversary, remains the countries worst day at war with 23,000 casualties and twice as many deaths as were suffered in entire mexican war, four times the american losses in the invasion of normandy and all that in one day. as he promised the cabinet, lincoln final issues the very document is just denied but only as a threat declared he will emancipate the sulleys if the rebel states do not put down their arms and return to the union whereupon he continues to say that if they do put down

their arms they will be granted the opportunity for a gradual compensate days out of slavery with no conditions or time limits, months, years, decades and that of course all efforts will continue to colonize persons of african descent to other lands. we watch them lose support in the midterm elections, fire his southern sympathizing general george mcclellan and discover his replacement is more incompetent than mcclellan was disloyal. he begins to step towards a more brutal less forgiving kind of war, one that attacks the civil society as well as the army issued by his legal advisers that freeing of the slaves can now be legitimately seen as part the very method of battle. in december 1862 in his annual address, like the state of the union address today, he reverses his approach yet again never mentioning the proclamation and

instead offering out constitutional amendments guaranteeing compensation to the states that agree to imagine -- emancipation, extended the year 1900 if those states take vanished of such an offer should take the money and then we adopt slavery. all they have to do is repay the money they received. who is this man? to be fair, there are considerable obstacles to his authorship of the emancipation proclamation. for one or constitutional issues. could the slaves be freed without a constitutional amendment and if so under what power of congress? they were properly at least in a legal sense, even if lincoln found that notion abhorrent and the constitution protected private property from government taking. if not as an act of congress how was the emancipation to be realized? an executive order was beyond the powers of the president but not, lincoln decided, if such an order were issued as a furtherance of the executives war powers. and that's what he chose.

for lincoln and then the emancipation proclamation was to be written with great care to emphasize this power and this power alone. the ironies were rich. if he freed the slaves as an act of military necessity, its justification was not moral but strategic. none of the usual lincoln poetry but the evils inherent one man owning, some serving as a master to another. none of this at any place in the documents. since military synergies are by definition provisional to be lifted once the mission is completed, emancipation could only be temporary. than as an act of war suffering of the slaves for reasons of military necessity could only be done for the slaves and the confederate south, and the states actually in rebellion since there was no military necessity to free slaves in states that were not rebellion. kentucky, maryland, delaware, or even where the confederacy had already surrendered, those slaves would be left in their

shackles and touched by his proclamation. this meant is that working in a telegraph office, lincoln, and and history admires for his profession of moral absolutes com,was offering a document of astonishing relativity, freedom for a time only, and only for some, not for all. there's more. for lincoln and the idea that somehow after centuries of slavery to black and white races were going to live in a post-civipost-civil war world iy was wishful thinking. he personally was not optimistic. as convinced that he was added into slavery was the right thing to do, he feared it could lead to servile insurrection of the south with slaves turning on their former masters or a masters turning on the former slaves in an act of pure genocide. in that aforementioned meeting where he urges black leaders to lead a mass migration away from america, is because he believes the stain of slavery can never

be erased, that there will always be this bitter history with which blacks and whites have to contend. this was the impulse of his zest for colonization, the feeling that there was no future for a biracial america. finally there are the series issues to consider as to whether the emancipation proclamation was a wise political -- a military move or a wise social move. northern democrats, opposition building towards the 1862 midterm elections, had already sniffed out the dangers inherent in the freeing of the slaves, how they would flee north en masse and take over the jobs of northern white laborers. how with the much contested border states react? their interest what lincoln had in mind and bridges others who pleaded with him to free the slaves, with a respond to the emancipation proclamation join the confederacy providing with renewed enthusiasm for the battle? and what would be the response among the troops? were they ready to fight to end

slavery? would they sit on this award, so to speak? at the thought of fighting for the rights of what most consider still to be an inferior race. as much as the emancipation proclamation was a hinged moment for lincoln and the war, it's also a hinged moment for war fans but up until this time war was the clash of armies. with the emancipation proclamation lincoln was introducing, or as a clash of society. this was not simply soldier i can soldier, but soldier against the entire civil structure of the south since -- institutions and labor. the south cried such forms of fighting, the precursor to the total wars of the 20th century was unchristian, uncivilized, unbecoming of a great people. there were no opinion polls for lincoln to consult. no studies. he had to work from his gut, this menu so good at building a case for both sides of anything.

in fact, this remarkable scene in late august when lincoln spewing over the proclamation invites his friend leonard sweat, an illinois lawyer to come to the white house. he asked him to sit with him while he read some letters she received contain all manner of argument regarding emancipation. lincoln loved to read aloud for as he said when i read aloud i hear what is red and exceeded the thereby catching the idea by 2 cents as it isn't a great? the president responded also allowed each article for and against while sweat and his reactions never even sought by lincoln, nor provided. swett later told a friend of fully committed to giving instance of skating conclusion allowed not that it might convince another or be combated by him but that link in my see for himself how they looked when taken out of the region in the reflection and embodied in words. lincolns approach was so careful

and judicious and so absent of any will to persuade, swett felt his presence was less of lincoln's event as a witness to the president's mental operations. and on and on it went. lincoln debating with himself, and with others, preparing for what would be what only could be a gamble, the greatest gamble of his life, the greatest gamble perhaps of his young nation's life. i'd like to read you two excerpts from the book at the first is from when lincoln issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation. let me explain this big there are three versions of the proclamation but the verses one to lincoln lincoln is working on a telegraph office. he brings it to a cabinet meeting in late july 1862 and reads it aloud. that story is told the best ideas to put in your pocket, ma wait for a moment of union victory and issue it. so we does. he puts in his pocket, starts,

works often on. he gives us some attention. rivalry still a telegraph office presumably and then in september as he nears the end of the month in september during the battle of antietam. right before the battle of antietam that is a kosatka the soldiers home in washington, a small cottage reserve for soldiers in the works on a second draft of the emancipation proclamation. he funded and brings that to the captive after antietam as he gets prepared to issue will will be known as the preliminary emancipation proclamation. who knew of the subtleties lincoln did bake into the preliminary emancipation proclamation. those aimed at reaching all reference to more purpose would be recognized and that the pressure. such careful to get the proclamation and/or of mr. in

disguise as if lincoln was hiding something behind his tightly wound prose which he was a link in what spoke out forcefully against slavery for decades have just authored a proper measure of freedom without mentioning the most forceful reason for doing it which is the it was the right thing to do. just as i did read a proclamation ostensibly removing 4 million people from bondage, let him a disgrace concerns was that he in his own position of power not be seen as acting undemocratically as forcing his will on others, even as there was no denying he was indeed acting undemocratically at this the same men from your youth in 1864 a quarter the declaration of independence not only for its expression of equality of all men but for its expression that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. the whole situation was one of those russian nesting dolls with iron in case with them in another and that inside one

more. wasn't also possible there was for lincoln no irony? if we are to believe the 1862 date, that it would be recently determined that lincoln had become less assured that the more issue was used to argue and that's it reduced his ambitions to a simple recognition that god wills this contest and the wills that it shall not inject. would that be so unusual an interpretation would get you started this day off by saying, as he did to the cabbie, this was not his act but it was an act will by god, but this proclamation that he was only responding to the mystical sign from the almighty that had just been shown to be. by this point to be the argument for the emancipation proclamation was not a moral one at all. it could only be as a war measure, as a way for the contest at god wills for whatever reason he willed it to continue until he willed it to end. whatever was going through lincoln's tortured mind, those

in the room seemed to recognize they were part of no ordinary cabinet meeting. they were witnessing an historic moment that could be opening salvo of the second american revolution. absent the jeffersonian flourish for worse, this proclamation was a brave a gesture as the declaration of independence that inspired it for as with the declaration no one knew what would happen next whether this bold expression might be the saving of the union or lead to its certain destruction, whether it would rental them -- brazen and unwanted use of authority. many in the room thought it unlikely that the proclamation which shortened the war. if anything, it might lincoln at the there was little probability the rebels would accept the terms and seize the rebellion and now more than ever before the north's mission was with some many in the south always thought it secretly was, with some in the north increasingly felt that it likely should be, providing emancipation to the slaves.

no matter the president's public statements, or the density and his legal prose, the war was not down to a central issue. the cabinet meeting ended with lincoln handing the amended proclamation to sue it for its publication and so would in turn pass it off to lincoln's private secretary, then turn that over to an assistant secretary named william stoddard's job was to deny copies by hand one each for the house and the senate. years later stoddard described was going through his mind as he considered the enormity of this simple task. here it is, lincoln's own hand, he wrote, his draft of the emancipation proclamation. read it carefully before you take up your pants and think of what it means for the future of your country, as the future of the bondman who it liberates. you try to but you cannot. you are not nervous but you spoil a sheet or two of paper begin your copy. no wonder, because for you

cannot but think while writing. outside the white house on the evening of the 24th, a group of revelers serenaded lincoln, upon hearing news of the population they gathered at the hotel and move to pennsylvania after keeping time to the music of the marine band and then abruptly stopped before the white columns are the portico of the executive mansion standing lucid and diaphanous like the architecture of a dream. the crowd flowed in and filled every nook and corner of the grand entrance as instantly and quietly as molten metal fills a mold. before lincoln, startled, emerged and reflected their tribute, what i did, he told them i did after a very full deliberation and under very heavy and solemn sense of responsibility. i can only trust in god that i've made no mistake. he then begged off any further dialogue out of respect to the soldiers. i will say no more upon this

subject. in my position i have difficulties. yet they are scarcely so great as the difficulties of those who are upon the battlefield, purchasing with the blood and there lies the future happiness and prosperity of this country. but this never forget them. the crowd dispersed and made its way to the secretary of the treasury chase's three-story townhouse at the corner of sixth and e. they are the ohio one and the abolitionist crusader cassius clay so long a critic of lincoln for not going emancipation earlier, appeared before them. someone called for a gaslight, all the light was new would be back emanating from this great act of the president. the proclamation was the dawn of a new era, one baptized by blodgett grounded in justice and humanity. clay added a few words of his own and then the men joined by secretary k. and if you of the

diplomats, although these was the term for the group, retired inside was enjoyed wine and conversation. if the slaveholders had stayed any in the might of kept the life of the institution for many years to come, he speculated to the group it sounded like a man who's already enjoying victory. they all seem to feel a sort of new and exhilarated life. the president's proclamation has freed them as well as the slaves. they called each other themselves abolitionists and seemed to enjoy the novel accusation of creating that once horrible name. that's just a wonderful description i think of the scene. can you imagine? and yet they didn't know what would happen next. lincoln had issued at a plenary emancipation proclamation and it was september, the south had until january 1. some accused him of why preliminary? why not a proclamation right

away? some argue to provisions for a gradual and compensated emancipation plan that could have admitted the southern states back into the union was itself a dodge of the emancipation question to lincoln separate for into the emancipation. by the time he gets his annual message in december he was not mentioning at all and many abolitionists are worried he is not going to fulfill the task. he's not going to do the final act. but here he is on december 31, 1862. along with making the final edits on the proclamation, lincoln spent new year's day you've occupied with other executive business, and there was plenty. he signed a bill admitted 48 counties of western virginia into the union as west virginia. as part of the agreement the new state had to adopt a plan for gradual emancipation.

lincoln prepared to meet with his top general knowing he would have to tell him he lost confidence in him, that junior officers had come to complain. lincoln came to an agreement with entrepreneur bernard coke of the resettlement of 5000 former slaves on the coast of haiti, no matter what you do by morning, lincoln had not given up on colonization but he also met with an old lady of gentile apparent. with my been evicted from her home and had no place to go. lincoln dashed off a note to secretary stanton asking them to look into the matter, then as night fell on the streets of washington, lincoln went to a study and paste. robert lincoln, his son, later told a friend that his father stayed up the entire night. why the younger lincoln waited decades to reveal that tantalizing fact is unknown, but if true, what a cinematic scene

it suggests. a special from the vantage point of 150 years of history. there is lincoln, our lincoln, whoever that may really be, alone in this cold dark study, what was likely the first time in a long time when you could permit himself the luxury of concentration to while we do not know for certain about this particular night, had use of those it in his father study individual lincoln would pick up the boy and carry him to bed. but once lincoln was alone and settled in silence, what went through his mind? robert lincoln said his mother before retiring repeat her opposition to the proclamation but even then lincoln replied had not revealed his intentions. he simply paste, possibly in well to read a few favorite verses from the bible and to gauge the white house window at the night sky. the six months preceding this had been transformative for him. he built a career on reason and argument on the powers of human

agency to effect change. his entire life was an example of the enlightenment creed, a self educated backwoods of questionable birth whose literary oratorical and political labors brought into the greatest of heights. yet they also were an exasperating task of ending slavery had reawakened in him a humbling respect for the unreasonable for what he did not know him for what he could not know. it wa was uncanny, since it personal if it had occurred around all the challenges in his life. he trusted the war committed upon the movements of troops and artillery with slide rules and diagrams, yet they have failed. and now in the light of the failure he leaned toward a more muscular, less cerebral war, when the permitted any act deemed to be a military necessity any act that further intended ends of the war. he had believed in a gradual peaceful and compensated path to extinctioextinctio n of slavery from limited to get the interest of both slaveholders and slaves

that rejected the riskiness of sudden a bit edition with its and potential for violence. yet here he was hours from freeing the slaves not by the construction of some delivered and the measured plan added by e legislative process, but by presidential fiat announced from the barrel of a gun. ironically for some accused of such a bald-faced grab for power, lincoln privately moved increase for torture submission to the will of something greater than himself. lincoln may describe this force as the almighty god and attended his references to provinces and it is referenced to the divine being as the conditions in the war and this presidency got worse. it was the same god he contemplated in september meditation of the divine will. god is a force of inevitability, of cause and effect, and the working out of the process only. god of faith. lincoln's velocity wrote his law partner was the source of his legendary grace and humility.

for if men are quote mere tools in the hands of fate, made as they are by conditions, and to praise them or blame them was pure folly. this philosophy stressed to quality your ironically the president upon him so many great man's theories of american history depends, saw himself as no different from anyone else. no one was less or more responsible for the conditions of the next person because all were helpless to change events as they were directed from above. when mary robert arrived in lincoln study in the morning, asking what he decided, the president looked up at him and answered, i am a man under orders. i cannot do otherwise. take you very much. [applause] >> i'll take questions from anybody.

>> how do you think lincoln would be viewed in today's legal spectrum, yeah, liberal, conservative, democrat, republican? >> wow, that's a loaded question. well, certainly you know, people describe the civil war as a turning point for american history with respect that before the civil war the united states is a plural noun, afterwards it was a singular noun. meaning the federal government obtained a certain level of supremacy with the civil war that didn't have before the civil war. you could argue that the fights that we see going on day in and day out even today about the supremacy of the federal government versus the power of the states, and the movement

towards the federal government derives from the point in american history. he was asserting that the moral and governmental supremacy of the federal government over the entire country as a single unit -- remember his arguments about the session id to this because he believed secession was unconstitutional. denying in some respects you could imagine some element of democracy because of course if the state of north carolina wants to secede and it has a majority wishes to secede, he says that's unconstitutional, unacceptable, and that's what he was fighting for was to protect and defend the constitution of the united states. so with respect to these arguments over the supremacy of the federal government, i think a clue would have come out on the side i guess would associate with the democratic party. of course he was a member of the republican party. i hesitate to apply modern issues more deeply than that to

lincoln center because i think it's unfair to him probably and unfair to us to what we should be making our own sense of what we have in front of us rather than seeking the euros we have from the past that attach them one way or another. one of the interesting things about what happened in the scholarship with lincoln immediate after his very tragic death was that everyone started grabbing onto association with him. so there were biographies written that he was a devout christian, which was not. and he was a man of god in some respects, but he was a questioning man. he could not be labeled as it is usual christian i don't think. his law partner wrote a very controversial biography in which he talked about lincoln being an agnostic. some point out herndon himself

was an agnostic cement that's how he decided how to write his biography. much less important biographies, times and tons of people want to claim him as a number of their party truly or another party truly. and so you had this sort of grab going on for lincoln's legacy. associate with everything under creation. scholarship has not done a service by this including lincoln's image was not done service to this. more questions. >> i had heard some time ago that part of the reason for the emancipation proclamation was to keep england out of the war your. >> yes. well, i didn't touch on the impact of the foreign relations on this. secretary stewart was very keen on making this point to the

president. more about the recognition that great britain recognizing the confederate states was illegitimate nation, with recognition of course the confederacy would gain a new stature that lincoln did not want it to a. which raises a very key element, another constitutional question for lincoln, which was, and they vary from a question. i will come back in a second because while i looked, attach them to one party or another, the issues that were present in a lot of what was going on in lincoln's time our present it as well. not only the competition between the federal government and the states, but think of this. lincoln trying hard to define whether it was a war or not. what have we been talking about the past few weeks publicly? what is a war, right? we been talking since 9/11 with respect to the treatment of the detainees in guantánamo because they deserve -- is it a crime or is it an act of war?

lincoln was gay with the same thing. as generals would say, refer to the south as then, he would say it's not them, it's us. they are part, don't refer to the south as something separate from what we are. they are states in rebellion, but we are not at war with them in the traditional sense of a foreign war. this created problems for him because taking of personal property, which he justified as an act of war, had always been applied to foreign wars, not to a civil war. so we actually needed a decision by the green card which didn't come until 1863 which allowed him to conduct the civil war occurring to the same terms that a foreign war might be conducted. so the definition of what is a war and what is in rebellion, what is crime and what is an act of war, this is very much part

of the conversation in the 1860s, just as it was a part of the conversation as to what was supreme, the federal government or the power of the states. >> one of the things i thought about is blockade -- [inaudible] that kind of was an act of war. >> great britain, you mean. they could have, sure. they could have declared war on us but, of course, they didn't. >> you spoke about the states that were not included in that declaration or proclamation, delaware, kentucky and maryland i believe it was. how did they then deal with the freedom of slaves? because they were not included.

what was the process and how did they get around it? >> of course this all leads up to the 13th eminence so eventually the slaves are freed by the 13th eminence. the store that i tell there is the precursor to the story of the steel bird film. -- he does not believe that the emancipation proclamation, it will be durable enough to have the freedom of the slave's and hear past the war. you raise a question that is consistent raised by the emancipation proclamation which is if there was nothing slave and the territory the federal government control, then how would you free anyone? in fact it didn't read anyone immediately. at the union army then became an army of liberation. wherever the army went, it could liberate slaves. one of the key differences between, i just refer to the three different versions of the

emancipation proclamation, the key difference, of course seward, britain and working carefully with lincoln, changing the language trying to make it stronger, better, not on a recognize the freedom of the slaves but maintained it. in other words, defend it with the september proclamation. he does that. and then the genuine proclamation, the one that becomes law, he says, kerchief enlistment of the freed the slaves in the union army. so 180,000 to 200,000 black soldiers emerge in union army the last years of the war, very significant to the conduct of the war. host of them are freed slaves who left the south, donned blue uniforms and returned. very, very key. >> did they not get the freedom and till the 13th and then it passed? >> yes, that's right. until the 13th amendment passed. >> did you notice in your

research if lincoln thought about, or anybody, when the slaves were free, they didn't have education. they had a certain lifestyle which was horrible. now they're free. how are they going to come up to speed with the rest of the population? was there education process of? people could always write stories they couldn't read, they weren't allowed to read. is or something like that on a more personal thing, that person, that man or woman or child? >> i don't detect anything in lincoln's mind about it, but, of course, it's hard to not list off the horrors of slavery, which there was a multitude of them. but yes, the slaves were illiterate. nonetheless, illiterate meaning very little in terms of information about the lives of the slaves because there was very little information.

nonetheless the message about the emancipation spread very quickly into the south, to the slave community but in some cases they received word of it before their slaveholders actually learned of it because the message was so great is being passed by word of mouth throughout the south. if you look after the civil war, there are someone who books about this. the history of the next if the-75 years within the black community isn't arguing over how to do precisely the thing jordan. how do we establish education, jobs, a kind of foundation of the committee. argument between booker t. washington and the boys to get more favors from them and to repay them for the abuse that have happened or whether to separate one's self out and create another society that bloomed on his own and has its own foundation to respect. every argument over the next 50,

it's going on today even. still going on. partial answer to johnson's question maybe you can speak a little bit to lincoln's own mind come with coal dust and we look in the black population, recolonize and into africa. in effect i was surprised to learn in your book that the three decades prior to the civil war, there were committees and most politicians, henry clay include, who were 100% behind this concept of relocating for what you said, the ability to integrate these folks back into the population which seemed impossible spent and the feeling at the return to a place where they could start off on a greater footing, that they would have a better chance of gaining a respectable life. this movement for colonization went back several decades before lincoln was introducing it into

the argument in 1862. and it was a benevolent argument as well as, as a sinister one. from lincoln, you know, i've reference the part where lincoln says but for the slaves there would be no war. frederick douglass takes this as you are blaming us for the war. i'm sure he heard it that way. a lot of people heard it that way but, in fact, what lincoln meant, the context of the complete quote, but for this terrible situation that started with the importation of slaves and the slave system has been going on for centuries here, but for that we would not have white men slitting the throats of other whitening. he used that image. now, it's slightly better said that way i think and how it was heard, but slightly more benevolent towards black race in terms of saying, well, we messed this up and we ought to start all over again.

but that was i think the feeling he had. in the back. >> yes. there are about 2 million men who served in the union armies and i think about 300 or so died in the war, most of them died after the emancipation proclamation was signed. prior to the war, or beginning of the war, they were fighting for the preservation of the union. did not the emancipation proclamation clarify for them that they were fighting for the abolition or for change of slavery? >> i think, so the question is whether the fighting men had the mission of the war clarified. is that what you're asking, by the emancipation proclamation? or a shift of it, yet. again to sure how brilliant kent's question was one more time, again, the mission of a war is so critical to its

success, and we know that from our experience with recent wars, that experience with the vietnam war. a well articulated mission is critical to the success of the fighting men in the battle theater. if he, she knows what they're fighting for, it becomes much, the mission becomes much more direct and can be completed. lincoln established the nation as the restoration of the union to him the two were linked finally i believe. and so even though he was emancipating the slaves, if you look at this language of the document, every version of, the first version in july, second version in september, third version in january, the mission of the war is the restoration of the union. and then makes the freedom of the slaves subservient to that mission. but i believe, i think, the

writing is clear that he linked that to the two men the american idea started not with the constitution, which was slavery protecting of course, but with the declaration of independence. now, that's an argument. we can have that argument today. declaration is not a legal document. it was a rebellious attract. it was a statement of revolution. but he and many of his legal advisers believe that the origin pointed the nation was the declaration of independence, not the constitution it interesting for someone to argue as aware because you might say that constitution being a legal document formally established the country, the union. however, to him if you went back to the origin point and to the phrase from jefferson spent of all men are created equal, then you would attach the end of slavery as an aspect of the

national idea. and you all know that we are unique in world history in that we built our identity so much around a national idea. now, at the same time the people and the confederacy would have argued that all men are created equal does not mean the way we might think of it today. what they meant was all men, white men and only men are created equal. and that that was their understanding and was driven, alexander stephens, vice president dick of the confederacy, ma was driven by a new kind of scientific understanding that the races were on a hierarchy where the white race was at the top and that the founders, if they knew that, they would've understood that all men are created equal could only mean that all white men are created equal. but for lincoln, the end of slavery with the preservation of the union was not a hard thing

to do. and i believe he felt that the two were linked. just a little deeper into your question, it's a subject that historians have gone over and over and over what to do men think they were fighting for. and this goes through every war. what are they fighting for? often at the cliché is they're fighting for the guy next to them. they lose contact with anything having to do with the nation. many, many good books been written about this. some of them articulate that the shift to the ending of slavery was a powerful motivating force for the fighting and. other say it was not. i believe there's surely a justification that the mission of fighting for preservation of the union after two years have lost some of its luster anyone they thought was going to be over quickly. and that the, in an adjacent

ever to the application of the end of slavery did for many people in the fighting force give them new energy and commitment. so this is a subject worth study. i think that's how i can reflect on it. other questions? yes. >> you mentioned that until the proclamation it was army against army, and that the emancipation proclamation changed the calculus so that it became total war, released a precursor. do you think from your work that that registered on lincoln, that the applications of what he was doing in terms of the future potentially registered in his mind? >> it's hard to say whether -- i don't know whethe what he was tg about the future of bottle, but let's back it up to a lot of

territory around your question and maybe we can hit at it. lincoln arrives in office with no military experience. he makes fun that he had a short stint in the black hawk war where he is mostly fought mosquitoes, which he says. with a war in front of him, jefferson davis was a west point along. he was secretary of war. therefore, was much more qualified in making strategic decisions about warfare. however, lincoln becomes i believe are most hands-on warrior president in the history of the country. he first of all spends a lot of time studying war theory. we don't know exactly what he read. there's a book by a gentlemen named henry halleck who was one of the old brains at west point. that was his neck name. that lincoln took out of the

library of congress and didn't return it for two years but as i said in a book on it is that he was so committed to studying it or as people in labor, he may have put it someplace where he couldn't find it again. [laughter] the big, and i'm going to over simplify this, because it's the only way i know how to explain it, not being a war theory scholar, but the war theorist that was taught at west point in the middle of the 19th century was -- french, inspired french theories, all this idea about the war of science. he's replaced very crudely than when you think of the history -- famous for his line, politics by other means, i think that's right.

he had not been translated to english yet, so we know that lincoln probably did not read him. there's a wonderful passage though in the novel, lincoln, which there's an exchange between lincoln and seward and references it and he says war is politics by other means. and being a very brilliant writer, inserted that the fact that john hay, the secretary to lincoln, did read german and maybe he whispered it to lincoln what he had read in the original form. now, i think it happened but i was a broader more happened organically. they saw the application of the european theories in america not working, and he combined with the fact that as lincoln described mcclellan as having what he called a case of the slows because he would not move. he could train an army really well but could not execute as a

fighting force. lincolnlincoln's frustration buh a vacuous not getting results. a lot of people believe that india and lincoln became quite a sophisticated war strategist, and that he did form the basis, we know this from grant and sherman, for a march to the 20th century in what we now refer to as total war, and more brutal war. is a faceting book called the lieber code that came out a couple years ago about the start of francis lieber was a political scientist and an aide to lincoln who was very much a proponent of this hard war theory. he believed if you didn't stamp out the opponent, stamp them out to the point, that like a fire, and in burwood ketchikan and the rebellion would return. he was very see as