book event on book tv.org. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday history tv documents a story and on sunday book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from television companies and more including mediacom. >> the world changes in an instance. we never slowed down. schools and businesses went virtual. mediacom along with television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> next it's book tv's monthly in-depth program with author and historian allen guelzo, books include gettysburg, recently

robert e. lee, life, biography of the civil war general who commanded the confederate army of northern virginia. >> allen guelzo, let's begin with robert e. h lee a life. what was his reputation. >> he was best known for two things, the fact that he was son of a famous revolutionary war hero and that was the famed cavalry commander light horse harry lee, the one who served under washington and coined that wonderful of washington first in war, first in peace, first in the countrymen. that was light horse harry. the other thing that people would have known robert e. lee for would have been his service in the mexican war and especially on the staff general winfield scott, during scott's

invasion, beginning in veracruz and moving inland to mexico city in 1847 and lee served in many respects as scott's eyes and ears performing over and over feats of reconnaissance and so much so scott made the confession for all the honors he had won in that great campaign to mexico city almost all the credit really belong today robert e. lee. .. .. we will get into that in just a minute. willie was not necessarily a good father, is that correct? [laughter] he was a splendid calvary commander.

especially light horse caring out calvary raids during all ykinds of small jobs like that. he was really very good at that. but as soon as the revolution was over any move back into civilian life, everything went from bad to worse. he made investments in western virginia land, that were the equivalent of buying ski resorts in bangladesh. they all went to nothing. it bankrupted him. he also chose the wrong politics of fort virginia. virginia was the virginia of thomas jefferson. center fleet was a federalist. in 1813 he was beaten within an inch of his life by a pro- jefferson mob in baltimore. taking both of those things together, decided other climes

would be better so he left. i went to the west indies. he left when his son robert was six years old and robert never saw himt again. i think that is a major and traumatic moment in the life of robert ailey that stays with him for the rest of his days. >> the other thing i wanted to mention from your first answer, you write an robert ely life that we discovered a sense of shame being part of the mexican war. >> guest: yes. for many americans who were part of the mexican war, especially the invasion from veracruz to mexico city by the experience stay with them for many of their lives. luke can read many memoirs

that starts during that war. they reflected back on it and remembered mexico it's a sense of embarrassment this were to have taken place at all. for one thing they're not supposed to make war on republics. they were not supposed to wear war of all. the idea of the american public going to war and beating up on it was a source of disconnect for many of these young americans. the longer theywe served in the war the more the disconnect read oner them.

robert e lee finally came to the conclusion he was picked on mexico deliberately took advantage. he is not the only one either you can find curious enough the same thing and ... at grants memoirs. these two men and time almost became the yin and yang of civil war had a similar experience in mexico. and that was that the united states had done the wrong thing invading mexico. it was a longer stronger power beating up on the small weaker one which should have been as a sister republic encouraging instead of making the object of war. >> host: you said he served under general winfield scott during that war. what was winfield scott's role in the civil war? >> by the time the civil war breaks out winfield scott is too old to take active command in the field.

he is the general in chief of the united states army at that point. he is really in no shape at his age to obtain an active direction of the war. he sketched out a large-scale strategic plan sometimes known as the anaconda plan for how the war should be conducted. who is paststands the time to take active participation in the field. too that and the person he wanted to recommend as a person who should be a field commanders that would suppress the rebellion was robert ely. scott never fought the service he attended during the war. in the years between that war and the civil war scott was something of a surrogate father for robert ely.

he assists in promoting members of the lee family, one of lee's sons largely nothing more cruelly disappointed. it was i was i going to turn down the offer of command and he would resign as commission in the united states army. it was said winfield scott took to his soul felt weeping so o i never went there the name of robert ely again. that does give you a sense.

>> was a robert ely well known in the general public prior to the civil war? was he in the society pages because of his wife? was there a back-and-forth in the press regarding his going to the federal? >> to a minor degree. robert e lee was not who enjoyed the public limelight. he did his level best to stay out of newspapers. to stay out of the columns of people who are writing socialso matters. he himself will only adventure into public view very, very reluctantly h. he simply dislikes that he has no taste tour. people often remark about lee

that he struck as a very aloof, very distant figure. i was of the great diaries of a civil war era. she met me for the first time before the war. that's where they took his wife. mary custis salih was applied by rheumatoid arthritis. hot springs would give her relief. mentally there. with that introduction she said this man on a beautiful voice came to join us. he looks so distinguishing i'm sorry i did not catch his name but she found after words as was robert ely. she said you know, everything about him was so fine looking,

perfection. no fault could be found in the man even if you hunted for one. this is not because a chest not necessarily admire that. she liked lee's older brother a lot better because smith lee was very companionable, very fine man about town. not robert. chesnutt said can anybody say they know his brother? i doubt it. he looks so cold, quiet, and grants. that is the image robert elite chose to cultivate through his life. and for that reason any discussion that takes place about the possibilities of robert ailey's choice tends to occur only in his immediate environment but it was really in alexander and in arlington in across the river from

washington d.c. and in a few other places. i was not a matter of national discussion or national ad attention. that's because robert lee does not want national attention of himself. >> host: back in march are quoted in the princeton quarterly is saying quote if htothey wish to imperil the american experiment we can find few more sinister path than that peril them by forgetting, obscuring or demeaning who we were. i bring this up now a lot of the confederate memorial's been taken down. was that a mistake in your view? >> is no easy answer for that. i have to confess for my own heart. i am at sixes and sevens about this question of statues of robert elite.

i have seen statues not only of lee but other people taken down. on one hand hand, speaking as a pennsylvania person i am the most unlikely biographer. why you put it statues of people who have trees and we don't have any statures at lease i am aware of we tore down a statue in manhattan. people like robertt e lee raise their hand against the nation they had sworn an oath to

uphold. now, my father was a career united states army officer. he took that in the u.s. army he took the oath. even when i joined united councils for humanities back in 2006 i took the oath. it's not something i'm sick lightly. when lee does make his decision to fight for the confederacy, what he's really doing is fighting for a cause on defense of human slavery and human trafficking. on the one hand, why should i feel anything except a sense of sympathy for removal of relics like of that, that really should not be in any other place but a museum. if someone today wanted to erect a statue of robert elite i would tell them as politely as i could, to get

lost. but that really has notau been the story, has it? were not assignment statues of robert ely but toppling us, defacing of statues across the countryy. statues of ... see grants, statures of douglas, statues of abraham lincoln, here in my own hometown of philadelphia someone defaced a statue of a prominent abolitionist figure. they thought they're doing i do not know. so muchme seems to be an act of irrational impulse. when i see the overall picture of the removal and toppling of statues this way i began to see how much of it gets done by irrational impulse that is when i start to have hesitations. that is when i start to have theti anxiety do something a

little less considerate and a little lesslo illogical. back in 2017 when the charlottesville riot circled around a statue of robert e lee there and charlottesville, that was the moment when robert e lee almost became radioactive. at that time i said now the former student of mine, who is now a national park service officer. we worked up always hold a decision trade. because how do you deal with monuments and statues? there are moments. that is not true. i remember 1956 hungarian revolutionaries biting into the soviets but with the first thing we do?

start him attach a statue of stone in budapest. where the first thing that happens is the tearing down of an enormous statue of saddam hussein. i am not by any means going to say i'm so sorry that we don't have a statue of joseph stalin saddam hussein these days we are a better planet without them. how do you arrive at decisions for people who are represented by statues who have not been around for 150 years or 200 years or something like that? i think there has to be something more of a process then i have seen in some of the latest wave of statue toppling. so we developed the decision tree. let's ask a series of five questions. the answer the first question move to the second when the answer the second we moved to the third and so forth through

the fifth. now, there is no guarantee in this decision tree of a result. is not intended to produce a certain result. what it is intended to produce is we have fought through this. we havee looked at this illogically. we have come to this conclusion as a result of a process and not just impulse. at the end of the process we decide this statue should be removed that's fine at least have done it with the process per the thing i'm most concerned about anything that endangers the understanding of history these memorials and monuments surely of a quasi- irrational impulsiveness. and that contains within it the real danger. it is not at all a difference between that kind of irrational impulse and the

danger of a mob the behavior of a mob is exactly what democracies strive to distance between and necessarily so. i would rather err on the side of caution this way. at least on process the result of process may be statues but at least we would've gone through ae process. the process is what is important. >> the first line inn your book about robert e lee has how do you write the biography of someone who commits treason? how do you guard against your own bias? >> because i asked first of allho what does the constitution say about treason? how does the constitution define it? one hand it's straightforward treason consists by making war against the united states and givingth aid and comfort to its enemies.

and i have some difficulty of looking at robert ely and not seeing someone who did those exact same things. he made war against the united states gave aid and comfort to its enemies. simply on those terms alone i cannot avoid the. conclusion, robert ailey committed treason. you're saying that because you are a yankee. no, i'm saying that because i am reading the constitution for what it actually says. and i cannot awarded that conclusion. so i sayo this to the very beginning because i want people to understand i'm not coming to write a biography of robert e o lee. either to put a halo around his head or to put a knife in his back. i want to come to robert elite as a frankly and soberly as i

can for the first and most important question is that question about treason. in some respects it poses the real challenge of writing this kind biography. not just about lee but how do you write the biography of someone who commits treason? it is in some sense easy to write the biography of someone you can easily admire, washington, lincoln, churchill. how do you deal with people's lives are committed to things you find reprehensible? and yet you can't not write about them. you can't pretend they are simply not there. how do you undertake the writing of what i call a difficult biography? i set myself out as tasked to do in writing about robert ely. conscious of the fact that difficult biography calls for

a different set of understandings in a different set of analytical tools then you might have in writing about lincoln. about home i have written a great deal. but you have to write a different set of understandings because his life is very different. >> host: allen is the author of 12 books. after appomattox, was there an outcry from the public to jail robert e lee? >> oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes. and especially after the assassination. in the few days that transpired between lee's surrender of the army in northern virginia and lincoln's murder, there was a sense it's now coming down to its conclusion. we can be generous, we can be openhanded and then comes the lincoln assassination.

and then it's like saying this is what we get for me openhanded. this is what we get for being a generous. we will deal now with these people where they are asking us to deal with them. there is a terrific backlash against a jefferson davis who at that point was still on the lamb would not be apprehended until may 10. a lot of this gets particularly directed atlee. calls go up for something to be done about robert e ely. and especially takes the form of an indictment for treason that's entered by the federal district court in norfolk, virginia predeceased norfolk, b virginia largely because it's one of the few places in virginia where there actually is a federal court operating at that point. the war has just concluded is a federal court operating most of virginia during the civil war confederate courts yes but not federal courts.

so this indictment comes in the federal court in norfolk. and lead, along with some 33 or 34 other confederate leaders is indicted by a federal court for treason. the assumption is this is going to proceed to some kind of trial. that ofs course is where the problems began to accrue. looked at initially just in terms of the definition of treason we should've gone to trial. but there were some interesting tripwires in the way. one was the fact at appomattox , ... grant granted to lee and his entire army of northern virginiaar paper roll up right now parole what did this mean? and that meant and this is literally house book, that none of those who surrendered o appomattox are going to be

troubled, bothered or molested by the federal government perked they go to their home and obey the laws peacefully. it's not entirely get out of jail free card if you do violate the terms of control that there off. but the parole had been given by ulysses s grant. i'm in print gets wind of the fact the new president, andrew johnson and the attorney general are toying with the idea of pursuing robert lee for treason grant h feels his own word, zone pledge comes on honor was been called into question. and quite frankly tells andrew johnson that if you persist in this i will resign as chairman of the army. that is a threat andrew johnson could not accommodate. he had to back down in the face of that because no one stood higher in the estimate

of the north at that moment than ... grants. that was one problem heads off with the trial. the other was all through the war, a lot of questions about dealing with civil liberties had been handled by military tribunals doesn't sound familiar? doesn't sound sound like guantanamo bay? it should the same logic with those cases has governed a lot of those at the end of the civil war. the chief justice of the supreme court could not abide the idea there was a parallel jurisdiction to a several hundred to a civilian in terms of the federal courts. the idea of the military tribunal in virginia. he made it clear he would refuse to participate late federal trial of robert elite where there is still up military tribunals operating and since they were operating

selma chase refuses to cooperate with the trial. there islo another roadblock in the path of putting lee on trial. there are in fact a number of other legal snagsic this way which i won't take anybody into the weeds with a auteur lawyer want to go with me. at the ends, the conclusion was this is not going to be worth the political trouble that it is going to generate. what we would do is enter in other words do not prosecute. and in fact, in 1868 is andrew johnson is his way out of the white house he issues a blanket amnesty that finally dispels the threat of a treason trial. typically speaking it was a real question and elite treats it seriously.

lee is a very that this child may go forward. if it goes forward he could be in serious danger. it is not until that amnesty that comes down, lee begins to feel the cloud has in large measure passed over his head. but he takes it seriously and it worries him. and even makes comments a lot of my old friends don't want to be seen around me because i am just seen as such a drag on them. they would be embarrassed to be seen with me. that weighed on him and it weighed on him heavily. so, the trial does not actually happen. nevertheless it could have. with the result of it would have been, we don't know. >> did grant and lee have any relationship after the war? >> not really. in the immediate after flow of

the appomattox surrender when expressed a great deal ofkn gratitude to grant for granting the parole dealing with lee's army. at this time goes by any kind of relationships that might have been forged simply does not happen. grant invites lee to the white house in 1869 when grant has become president. the interview only lasts about 15 minutes. it is very polite. i do not want to quite cite frosty but is not that well meant. grant was hoping he could enlist lee and leigh's reputation in support of some of his initiatives and reconstruction. lee showed no enthusiasm for that. and so they part, they never meet again. and there is a coldness there. i don't think it can really be

described in any other way. in fact, people will presley in 1874 his opinion for the greatest union general was that he faced during the war. lee's response is not ulysses s grant. his response is george mcclellan. and if that doesn't surprise at the nothing about the civil war will surprise you. by the way that grants after a fashion return the favor later when he was doing around the world tour the new york journalist john russell young accompanied him with the similar question to grant who did he think was the greatest of the confederate generals? grants response was joseph e johnson which was actually even worse, surprising. you almost have a sense grant was doing a little tit for tat. you're going to disrespect me fight i will disrespect you.

what could have been an interesting relationship between these two former opponents never ever develops in that way. in 1868 and 1869 he actually will lend his influence more to people who are challenging ulysses s grant than otherwise. >> i spent the entire two hours talking about robert e lee and his life and all that goes into that. you want to talk about some of your other books prior to robert e lee your previous book was reconstruction that came out in 2018. from the book, even the strongest measures taken by the u.s. government during both the war and reconstruction less subjugating the state s

authorized authority more towards nudging them back into an federal government. the great losers in this process were southern blacks. as i said that in the real optimistic way the world would teach a lesson you change your political mind. and all the blood had been extended. and the eradication of slavery would open up the p possibility not only for reunification of north and south is one nation, but a reconstitution of the south itself in the image. and that did not happen. and it did not happen i think

in large measure because aa, they simply did not know about how to do this thing called reconstruction. there was no book you could go into in a bookstore entitled reconstruction for dummies. that would give you a step-by-step process on how to do this thing called reconstruction. and what you see instead, it is really a series of improvisation. : : inspired by hope and a lot of : with fumbling. the second thing that emerges from this is that in the humbling, it gives an opportunity for the old soul readership cadres to once again

sees political dominance of life in the south. and as they do that, they are willing to subjugate black southerners to somebody of the same status where they enjoyed before the civil war, to reconstitute the form of slavery without actually using the term. and this kind of reconstitution is what southern states lead to jim crow, to segregation, to violent rioting that a think especially of the 1898 wilmington, north carolina, right yet which was violent subjugation of black people in the south. and we can all look back on that and say, why didn't we take reconstruction more m seriously?

grant looked back from his time after the presidency. grant looked back and said the great mistake of reconstruction was that we did not oppose a military occupation and impose a military occupation that would last for a sufficiently long time to raise up and educate an entirely new political generation of the south. we were too fast. in some cases we were too optimistic. in a lot of cases we just didn't want to spend the time or the money. because look, military occupation of the south, even at the height of reconstruction, the united states military forces that were used onru reconstruction duties on the south, many amounted no more than 20,000 troops. 20,000 troops, we deployed 3 million union million union soldiers during the civil war but what can we put into the task of reconstruction? 20,000. then evenn that number diminishs

over time. we would've had to do something much more serious, something much more along the lines of what we did after world war ii with then marshall plan in europe, where as the occupation of imperial japan where we basically reconstructed societies from the bottom up in a democratic image. we did not do that in 18 n psaki five-1877. and i think as a country we paid and continue to pay a serious, serious price for that. we learned our lesson in 1945 and yett subsequent efforts at reconstructions have not shown that the learning of that was entirelyma permanent. we still suffer from wanting to take military actions or diplomatic actions and have them

produce a quick response and then we wash our hands and walk away from them and say we will not pay any more bills. more in, much more expensive and requiring a great deal more from our society than we have been willing to give. that is something that we have to bear in mind. the problem posed by reconstruction offers us an interesting lesson in what is sometimes called nation building and in reconstruction we did a pretty poor job of it and many, many people especially black people suffered as a result. >> allen guezo, how broken was

it? >> in the case of georgia, although the destruction in georgia by general sherman and his army has been pretty grossly exaggerated. people who either read sherman's memoirs or gone with the wind get this motion that somehow williams succumbs to sherman and everything that stood in the state of georgia, that's not really the case. but places which did pay a high penalty if the armies were tracing back and forth across them and one place certainly was virginia. the south loses by the capital in slavery and farm animals. probably the south's losses

mounted to as high as in some estimates that i've seen $13 billion. that's $1,865. -- that's 1865 dollars and trying to create the slave system in a sense that the great punishment, the south suffers in reconstruction is not union occupation, union occupation by contrast was minimal. the real punishment the south suffers in reconstruction is self-administered. the south decides what it really wants is to walk away from industrial, 19th century transatlantic economy and to return to what it had been before the war which was a state

and that will take another 80 years in the life of the south to change, so in a sense, the south became its own worst enemy in reconstruction. >> host: allen guelzo, you mentioned were you born in yokahama, japan to army officer and then master's and then history aspect, at what point in your life were -- do you find yourself fascinated by this era? >> oh. [laughter] >> i think i was always fascinated by it or at least fascinated as one can be and be conscious. i can remember when i was probably not more than 5 year's old badgering my mother to buy a comic book version of the red badge of courage in the old classic illustrator series and,

of course, introduces to a story about the civil war and that particular comic book happened a 16-page insert as a quick comic book history of the civil war and i say comic book, we are thinking of superman and all kinds of silly stuff, the classic illustrator series was a serious piece of work and this badge of courage was a serious piece of work and it fascinated me. it sent me to my grandmother who as a young girl at the turn to have last century and schools in philadelphia had written on decoration day which is what they call memorial day then and written old veterans of the grand army of the republic, old union veterans, little blue jackets and blue caps and they would come to the schools like my grandmother's school, the

george clymer school and they would talk to the children about the real meaning of the civil war and for them the real meaning of a civil war was not what those johnny reds are trying to teach you. it was about the end of slavery, it was about the preservation of new england and that was the understanding of the war that you might say i got at my grandmother's knee and that i grew up with. so in my case, i never grew up with robert e. lee having an ara around his head. many other writers of lee wrote as southerners i think particularly here, they wrote about lee as promoting the myth of the lost cause and i grew up understanding the lost cause and the real story of the civil war really belonged to lincoln and

emancipation and the preservation of the union but i acquired early on and it has stayed with me and, well, as you can see i'm still talking about it. >> and we will show our viewers some of your lincoln books here in just a minute but wanted to welcome you to our in-depth program for january, allen guelzo, historian, civil war historian is our guest. we want to hear from you as well. you have a chance to talk to him, make questions, ask questions, here is how you do so, numbers 748, 8200 in east and central time zones, 748-8201 in mountain and pacific time zones and you can send a text this number, text messages onlies, (202)748-8903. please include first name and your city if you would if you do send a text question. and you can also contact us via

social media. just remember@booktv is our handle for twitter, facebook, et cetera. you can start making comments, start dialing in. we will get to your calls for allen guelzo in just a few minutes. his first book came out in 1989, theological debate for the union of evangelical christiandome came out in 1984, abraham lincoln redeemer president and lincoln emancipation proclamation and abraham lincoln, man of ideas, 2009, lincoln a short introduction, 2009 as well. then a look at the civil war and reconstruction in fateful lighting followed by gettysburg, the last invasion is how allen guelzo looks at the book in

2013, are redeeming the great emancipator in 2016, reconstruction of concise history came out in 2018 and his most recent from a different point of view robert e. lee, a life. if we could allen guelzo, let's go to the year of 1863 which kicked off with the emancipation proclamation very tumultuous year in the nation's history but i want to quote from your book redeeming the great emancipator, quote, the emancipation proclamation which was delivered on january 1st, 1863 is surely the unhappiest of all of abraham lincoln's great presidential papers. that was the one that jumped out to me. [laughter] >> that was a deliberate and

provocative strategy on my part. and i say unhappiest basically because while we learned the gettysburg, people memorize the gettysburg address which is 272 words and we add ore the second inaugural especially the eloquent conclusion, charity for all, who can disagree with the beauty of that. then we come to emancipation proclamation, the first word of the emancipation proclamation just puts us off because the first word is whereas. whoever thought of beginning a great document, a great state document with the word whereas because it sounds so legalistic,

well, yeah, it is legalistic. in fact, that is one of the problems that people have with the emancipation proclamation that it is -- the language of it is -- is very legal and no one less than carl marks made the observation that the emancipation proclamation reads like a summons sent by one county courthouse lawyer to another and, indeed, it is that way. it is very technical. it is very legal in its atmosphere and people look at this and scratch their heads and say why. here is the man capable of writing the gettysburg address and perhaps the greatest deed of his administration maybe the single greatest deed of any american president, suddenly dropped back into professional legal listening and then led a number of people to draw the

conclusion because he didn't really mean it. his heart really wasn't in it. if his heart had been in emancipation, he could have produced something equally eloquent as the gettysburg address or the second inaugural. and this is what led in 1948 to make memorial comment, probably the comment most and what was the absence of eloquence and another reason that people are unhappy with the emancipation prochannellation that it's dated

january 1st, 1863. why department as soon as the civil war as soon as the civil war began. want a man like you to pick up his pen and write an emancipation proclamation. what was he waiting for? why did we go from 1861-1863, nothing happens and 63, nothing happens and suddenly 1863 he decides he's going to issued the emancipation proclamation? proclamation. he was trying to evoke more response from the north in support of the war. the emancipation proclamation isn't really a noble gesture at all, it's a work of political strategy. and then the others critique the proclamation because they don't believe he goes far enough.

reservations and exclusions, the proclamation will free slaves in the states and then lincoln goes onto explain, border states, missouri, delaware, kentucky and also won't touch slaves in places in virginia that are occupied by military -- union military forces or in louisiana occupied by military force. these are exceptions. what's going on here? is he going to free the slaves, just free the slaves but instead you get this bill of exceptions. again, people scratch their heads and say, this can't be for real. this can't represent this kindness moral gesture on the part of abraham lincoln and this is a criticism of that sort, have multiplied over the years to a point where, yes, this is

why i say that lincoln's emancipation proclamation is unhappiest document because so many people scratched their heads and can't figure out what's going on and in many cases draw the worst possible conclusion. well, let me dispel some of that as quickly as i can. first of all, yes, the emancipation proclamation is legalistic. legalistic in ways the gettysburg address is not, you know why? because the gettysburg address is simply the dedication remarks that lincoln composed for dedicating a cemetery at gettysburg. you can't take the gettysburg address and do anything with it. the state trooper pulls you over on the turnpike for exceeding the speed limit, you cannot quote the gettysburg address to him. this emancipation proclamation is different. changes the legal status of approximately 3 million human

beings and it sounds legalistic because it has legal work to do. this is a document that can be taken to court and had effect. so, yes, is it legalistic, very legalistic, why, it has legal heavy lifting to do. why and this is connected to it, why then at the same time is the emancipation proclamation full of exceptions? well, largely because lincoln issues emancipation proclamation and says right at the beginning of the proclamation, on the strength of role as commander in chief of the armed forces of the united states. in other words, he's exercising his war powers. you can't exercise war powers against the border states which were loyal to the union. they were not at war with the united states. they had remained within the union. they were states, four states that still legalized slavery but

they were not at war with the union. his war powers did not extend there. if lincoln had attempt today emancipate slaves say in kentucky or maryland on the strength of the emancipation proclaimation, you can be sure that at 9:00 o'clock the next morning, slave owners would have been besieging federal courthouses demanding injunctions which they would have done, those injunctions would have gone to appeals and appeals would have eventually wound up with the united states supreme court and who is the chief justice of the united states supreme court at the moment, robert brook, the author of the scott decision. he would have made emancipation proclamation as lincoln's war powers. lincoln could not afford that happen, he could not afford that kind of challenge going into the

federal court system. those british states and occupied areas of virginia and louisiana. what is he trying to do? is he trying to cheat on emancipation? no, he's trying to protect emancipation from a legal challenge that it's not difficult to imagine emerging from chief justice so, yes, the emancipation proclamation has this reputation, this unhappy reputation but there are serious reasons why it is what it is and when you understand the reasons you begin to understand that abraham lincoln's thinking in composing the emancipation proclamation, the substantially more shrewd than he's given credit for just at first reading. is the emancipation proclamation bill of waiting, it's a bill of

cargo of freedom headed toward the port of emancipation. >> host: well, we will come back to the year of 1863 but our phone lines are lit up and we want to hear from our viewers as well allen guelzo. let's begin with jonathan out in los angeles, jonathan, good morning. >> caller: governor, professor guelzo, his books are fascinating and just tells you that rams will play baltimore in ten minutes and we are watching professor 11:00 o'clock our time. i wanted to ask him one review of his book said that he had written a revisionist history and i'm curious to have him explain what is really meant by revisionist history and in some sense every time a historian

writes something, it's revisionist and i would love to hear his thoughts on that, thank you so much for the program. >> jonathan, do you remember what book that was, was it lighting, a new history of the civil war? >> caller: no, review of dr. guelzo's book on general lee. >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: well, i think in a sense jonathan has already provided the answer that i most likely to give and that is every time a historian sits down and writes history you are doing revision. no historian simply duplicates what has been said before. every historian comes with new ways of looking at things, new questions that you ask. in my case, for instance, when i'm coming at robert e. lee, i am -- i am interested obviously in lee as the great general of

the civil war, the great commander of the confederate armies in virginia. one could not be interested in the civil war and not pay some attention to that. and yet i will be the first to admit that that is not what draws me to lee. what draws me to lee is a variety of other considerations. for instance, robert e. lee was for years, almost 30 years of his career an army engineer. he was an officer in the corps of engineers and much of his career in the army was devoted to engineering projects. his first project out of west point was to lay the foundations his first project out of west point was to lay the foundations for what is today in savannah, so he was at the very beginning of that. he was assignedne from their to the construction of what was originally known as fort calhoun

in the main ship channel of hampton roads. from there he was assigned to st. louis and spent four years in st. louis working on rebuilding the st. louis waterfront. from there he goes to fort hamilton in new york, and there he is the chief engineer at that post on the tip of long island where today the bridge crosses over to long island. then from there w he goes to the mexican war. then after the mexican war it's back to construction. he's building fort carroll in the harbor and he becomes the superintendent of west point which was very much engineering school when he was the superintendent. he spends a lot of his life as an engineer. i had to give myself something of a crash course in engineering in order to begin to understand this, and especially the particular kind of engineering

that lee spent most of his time doing, which is coastal engineering, and that the subspecialty within civil engineering itself. i wanted to understand lee as someone more than just four years as a confederate general. i wanted to understand 30 years that he spent as a civil engineer. what drives me to that? fundamentally, because i'm trained as an intellectual historian. in other words, a historian of ideas, a historian of the way people think. i took my phd at the university of pennsylvania under two great intellectual historians, alan kors and bruce -- [inaudible] and i approached lee with exactly that way of trying to understand him. i want to understand how the man's mind works and to do the actors in his profession, which was that of an engineer. that's a a revisionist way of

coming at robert e. lee. because not many other biographies of robert e. lee spending a lot of time talking about his careerho in the army before the civil war. in the form -- four volumes of robert e. lee, those 30 years to even take up the first volume. another famous biography of lee that was written by one of freemans acolytes actually in 500 pages took up no more than 30 pages of lead before 1861. so purely by the fact that i am historian of something other than military affairs, i am certainly going to come at lee with a very different set of expectations and understandings, and that makes me a revisionist. and ian confess to the deed. but i confess to the deed

knowing that every historian who does this kind of work seriously is going to be a revisionist, a revisionist sometimes because you have a different concept, a different set of interpretive tools. sometimes because you did with new materials. one of the challenges with writing about robert e. lee is that unlike lincoln or unlike grant, lee is a civil war figure whose papers and letters are not easily available in a printed, edited edition. if you want to write about abraham lincoln you got the famous eight volumes edited, the collected works of lincoln. or if you want to write about grant, as ron chernow recently has, you have the 27 volumes of the papers of ulysses s. grant. they are there and easily available and beautifully edited. robert e. lee is different. there is no standard edition of

his letters and papers. that's a problem because lee was a compulsive letter writer. he wrote i would estimate some of between 6000-8000 letters in his life. but not only are there a lot of them but you are scattered all over the place. .. . i'm access to archives there were all the way from the morgan library in new york city to liber in san marino and california. and at various points in between. even more is how muchly material surfaces on ebay and auction sites. there are a lot of lee letters and material still in private hands. there is no single edition of lee's works that makes life easier for a biographer.

on the other hand are going to make some very interesting discoveries, which i did in the p and sometimes when you're making interesting new discoveries, well, you're going to revise the conclusions that people have come to earlier and that makes you a revisionist. whether it's new tools or resources, every historian sits down to work in a serious way is really performing revisionism. is it revisionism done in a careless fashion or is it revisionism which is done with care and with -- with consideration or forethought. i would like to believe that i think i would like to but that's my revisionism. >> judy, you're on with historian allen guelzo. >> yes, thank you very much. i would like to bring us back to the lost cause and origins of

the lost cause. i'm in the middle of your american mind, the failure of the elite and you mentioned books written by charles francis adams and henry adams and the potential origin to have lost cause. i was wonder if you could speak more to that. >> sure. judy, the lost cause could be said to have sprung on april 9th, 1865 his last general order is sometimes known as general orders number nine. and in that order the army of northern virginia is told he fought a noble and honorable

war. but greater union numbers have overcome that nobility and prepared us to surrender. we've managed to do with honor with conducted ourselves with honor so now we can all go home and believe what we did was honorable. that becomes the root of this thing called the lost cause. the lost cause will sprout from their to acquire a number of facets. one principal tenant of the lost cause is at the southern confederacy of the secession of the southern states is not about slavery. that really what drove the confederates to succeed from the union was a concern about states rights or a concern about tariffs or concern about the northern economy and potential dictation bite

northern capitalism so forth and so on things like that anything but slavery. we find in the writings of former confederates here is his memoir destruction and reconstruction. slavery had nothing to do with the confederacy with a simply a story cooked up by the abolitionists. that becomes the first tenant of the lost cause. another tenant of the lost cause is that they confederacy did not really lose the war. the confederacy was a ground down by the superior weight of yankee capitalism. that attrition, not military skill or military genius simple raw barbarous attrition. that is what destroyed the south. they fought until there is no one left standing to fight. at superior numbers and that

accounts for why the confederacy loses the war doesn't really lose the war, the war was unfair from the start. almost as if you would say one team field 11 players the other team only fields three, because who's going to win in that game. and then the lost cause rests on the assumption that always behave themselves with honor and nobility. when that yankees invade the south, they behave like vandals. they behave like attila the hun. they rob, they destroy, they rape, they kill. when lee's army lunges across the potomac into the north it behaves itself. all of those are as phony as a 3-dollar bill. and just to give you some illustrations of this

southerners always behave honorably when they invaded the north one the south does not invade the north all that much. but when the army of northern virginia comes into pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 every record on the ground shows the confederate army basically help themselves to anything that was not nailed down. they behave just like the yankees did. which is to say they behave like most 19th century armies did. what gave this a particular edge was the confederates wound it up something like 500 that shackled them and sent them down to the richmond slave markets to be sold into slavery. that was a different kind of repossessions always say. that caused a serious adult

the whole question like we behaved honorably. there is not a whole lot of honor in capturing defenseless and innocent people and enslaving them. but let me take this back to the whole question of general orders number nine and leaves and involvement in it. lee himself is not actually drafted general orders number nine. it is really composed by police and secretary charles marshall. lee might have been a great letter writer when it came to personal correspondence but he detested official paperwork. and for most of the civil war he will allow marshall to draft his documents he will make some corrections and lean over her shoulders. only it makes a couple of questions strikes out a few

things when lee does sit down to write a document this way, which is his final report to jefferson davis, he tells a very different story. the story he tells and as a final report to jefferson davis is about how the army of northern virginia seem to have lost all sense of discipline and cohesion. how it straggled, how it failed, how everything that held the army together seem to come apart. the army did not seem to be fighting anymore. he's putting a lot of blame on the behavior of his own soldiers. that is very different from the myth of the lost cause. but general orders number nine that promoters of the loss caused would prefer to not the trial report of leaves. why then did they find

northerners like charles francis adams and henry adams appearing to support the lost cause? the adams brothers, the post war turned out to be a very different world than the one they thought they were going to inhabit. was a very different world than any previous adams. this is one of the first families of the united states. they believed as elites they deserve a certain measure of respect. the postwar society with its energetic embrace of expansion, of industrialism, showed no particular inclination to pay respect to great families from the past. and the adams is turned to the lost cause almost as a way of criticizing what they believe northern society has become. the lost cause becomes a

weapon for saying see how noble those southerners were in defeat? see how terrible weight northerners are in victory. theirs was the complaint of an elite family that did not feel, like rodney dangerfield, they feel they had gotten no respect. and so they use the lost cause to try to buttress their own claims to that kind of respect. not that they succeeded, not that they got it. that was part of their strategy is wi-fi the adams brothers embracing the lost cause. not because they love the lost cause. charles francis adams fought against it in a massachusetts regiment. but because it became a handy stick to beat their fellow disrespectful northerners with. >> steve, thank you for holding your own with historian alan.

>> caller: thank you so much but i so appreciate your appearances on c-span. you always have words of wisdom. you are the voice of reason. the question i have is recently you are on c-span discussing your biography of late you discuss potential implications and potentially leading to a settlement with the north of the united states. i know there's always a risk for historians to play the what if game, you had when i thought very brilliant observations about the political impact that would have had with respect to world war ii. i thought it would be very helpful for me and the audience to hear your review and perhaps expand on that again. i think it has profound implications for many of the discussions we are having today. >> thank you steve.

steve, thanks for that. i start off by asking a particular question of people. what kind of world would we be looking at or if lincoln had not been reelected in 1864, if the confederacy had achieved its independence. and as much as i dislike what if questions, i have encountered people who've made there are so many contingent factors that go into the making of historical events. asking what if almost becomes a fantasy. people have fantasy leagues for football, baseball and sometimes i think their people have fantasy leagues for history. on the other hand, there is at

least some limited consideration for the what if question. if only because it let's us see the possible alternatives are not necessarily good ones. sometimes people ask me, what do you think the turning point of the civil war was? was the most important moment of the civil war? what was the moment that won the civil war what was the hinge of the civil war? and i surprise them when i tell them appomattox courthouse. what they're expecting me too see as antietam, gettysburg or something like that. no appomattox courthouse. and they think wait a minute and i put my finger at that partly as a rhetorical gesture but also partly to illustrate

the fact it could have been differently especially through abraham lincoln. if for instance lincoln had not been that seems to me at least there is no question about that if not mcclellan himself and certainly his party and if this negotiation had begun no one is going to back to shooting war they'd been too much bloodshed. there is too much awareness of tumescent exhaustion. people in the north would not have elected mcclellan they

anticipate an extended work beyond that. so had mcclellan been elected there would have been negotiations. it would have ended and no other way than with confederate independence. if confederate independence had occurred, there are a number of really unpleasant things that i think were very likely resulted. one is the united states would have continued to dissolved in secessions. once you have a successful succession there's no reason you should not have more. and it would not be difficult the pacific coast hiding off the northwestern states the great lakes era the great lakes area. hiding off itself into its own independent republic.

leaving what would say pennsylvania, new york and new england as the united states. to become a useless tiny republic was no longer with united states business antic free trade zone for their meat trade wars. and if there had been that kind of what would've been that results when it came to world war i and world war ii? for there been a united states to intervene? no. and the result of that that's only one possibility. another possible result confederate independence as a wrinkle result is the rendition of fugitive slaves.

during the course of the civil war we estimate somewhere between 200 and maybe the upward 500,000 flood slavery in either found some kind of home in the north or contraband camps as they were called. or founded in union uniform. found some kind of refuge that way. at the end of negotiations they confederacy almost certainly would have required rendition of the fugitives. it was genuinely horrible thought. so horrible we think we could not imagine that, oh really? if the price of a piece, if the price of bringing home your father, your brother, your son, was the rendition of those fugitives, i wonder how many white northerners would have walked on that?

my guess is not many. after all we demanded rendition at the end of the revolution. i see no reason why there would not of been a similar demand. they would not of been entirely successful but there's not an entirely successful revolution. that would not mean the man had not been named in some cases met. so there is another unhappy product of a confederate victory. and then there would be the confederacy itself. the confederacy would have seen its future at lying and expansion the creation of a slave empire. not just in the confederate states themselves. but imperialistic expansion to the caribbean, to cuba, to the other islands of the west indies. to central america. in the decade before the civil

war there been a variety of filibustering these are basically mercenary expeditions funded by americans to topple local governments and nicaragua, panama places like that. there almost led and financed. in a postwar environment where the confederacy was independent that kind of filibustering would have become foreign policy. he would have seen aggressive expansion of a confederate slave empire. these are the conclusions you can look at with any kind of ease or calm. and yet i think they are the answers it would to a what if question. veteran of the union army

lieutenant seriously wounded sat on the united states supreme court. so one of the famous injustices of the supreme court. sitting on the bench with him briefly served in the confederate army. white's response, my god, if we had one. and i think in that same stricken tone of voice is what we have to see is the answer to that what if. >> had a long association with gettysburg college, you live in the area had intimate

knowledge of the area. can you get a good sense of the battle by walking the battlefield up there? >> all the time, all the time. battles feel that gettysburg is such a wonderful place to walk, to visit, to meander, to analyze, to think about. sometimes of course the temptation to second-guess, that always comes you wander around that marvelous battlefield and you come, in my mind anyway to the central location smashed against the union defenses. and you think of this small plot of ground may be the most hallowed of hallowed ground. in the north american continent. it is a marvelous and magical place to be in, to walk around it.

i have never lost an interest i've never lost a thirst and walking on the battlefield of gettysburg. >> bob, nashville, tennessee. good afternoon you are on with historian of book tv. >> good afternoon. i teach history at tennessee state university in nashville. and i teach survey courses. i have seen and shown in class and many times films that you are in and i point out to the students this guy looks and sounds exactly like fraser crane. kelsey grammar were doing a history professor he would use you as a model. like you, i had a grandmother i was born in 1952 she was 70 when i was born.

she was born in 1883. she used to tell me the stories of how the yankees came and that brings up something that you see from gone with the wind to the boy about the looting of the south. it makes it look like their organized criminals taking everything out is a third of everything they need but stealing silver items or whatever, gold, whatever the plantation owners owned. and i never really seen anything written about that. i was wondering if you have any knowledge about the scale of that sort of thing?

>> armies are armies. the days of nebuchadnezzar, armies descend upon the areas they are invading like locusts. and that simply eat up, take up, steel. that's what armies do. when an army comes into your neighborhood, all law was set aside. this is one of the horrors of war. and i use the word horrors deliberately i'm a son of an army officer the father of another army officer. i want to tell you frankly, i have in my lifetime known many officers the arno officers who are most dedicated, the most serious about their calling are also the ones whom i can call the most sincere and

dedicated pacifist. they are really the ones who understand or cost. the also understand work cannot be entered into but reluctantly. won't happen in the environment of war is never anything to be enjoyed. and when i see or become a species of entertainment, that is when i had the uncomfortable feeling there is such a thing as war pornography. so while i have written a great deal about the american civil war and about war itself , i am not a military historian. and i approach the subject of war with a certain degree of hesitation and caution. knowing that the costs and imposes on people are simply

beyond definition. it has been said or is one of the four of the apocalypse along with famine, plague, yes it is on that same level. so 19th century army and our civil war misbehave they are in some sense not doing anything different and even have done in our own time. while we are reluctant sometimes to admit it even our own forces have in modern warfare misbehaved. that is on the sad eventualities of war. that does not move her hands together and say nothing we can do about it.

we must simply always understand war is a great calamity. and that even when the result of war is a victory the price to be paid for is always a great and terrible price. >> i'm sorry doctor go-ahead records of just going to add, so this is the way i think we approach even our own civil war. remembering these sacrifices. remembering all that was lost "in the cauldron" of war. and all that it cost. because the cost across are more serious than almost any other. >> 202 is area code 748-8200 for eastern time zones and have a question or comment for historian allen (202)748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you cannot get through on

the phone lines you can try text message (202)748-8903. that is for text messages only. please include your first name and your city. rich in orange, california text into you, i really enjoyed your link and reveal on the coffee table life lincoln intimate portrait book. i am currently reading lee with the 36 page bibliography and 82 pages of notes. the acknowledgment section includes a mention of your use of four by six cards. is that how you assembled and crafted the 434 pages of text? >> easy answer to that, yes. [laughter] i in fact have right beside me here a box of four by six cards with the next project i'm working on.

[laughter] not in some ways i suppose is an old fashion way of collecting one's research. it is one i pitched into very early and have stayed with. i often say i read when i'm in the middle of a project i read, i read, i read a note, i note, i note that i accumulate boxes and boxes of four by six cards. it's finally like water building up behind a damn. there comes a moment where you just sense okay, they are there. : : :

amounts of resource this is way and i can go back to these cards over and over again. perhaps the question is also why 4 by 6 and why not 3 by 5. i can't enough on a 3 by 5 card. i need the 4 by 6. >> the 4 by 6 has become my standard procedure and is 4 by 6 that i record all of what i regard as the important material that i've been countering. >> how many 4 by 6 cards for robert e. lee and where are they stored right now, where are the finished one stored? >> there are 3 boxes of them and are stored in the back room behind me. you can't see it but they are

there. all marked robert e. lee. they are there with the 5 boxes of 4 by 6 cards and another six boxes on lincoln's emancipation proclamation. i think you get thel idea. >> jim in caliente, california, go ahead with question and comment. >> thank you for taking my call. professor, thank you for a wonderful discussion. a thought on issue of reparations especially you're an expert on reconstruction and what is the medallion on your suit? [laughter] >> the little pen is the james madison program's logo because i'm madison program at princeton university, one of the hats that i wear there. i do the initiative on politics and statesmanship for the james madison program.

but, yes, all right. that's the pen, now -- >> that's based at princeton university, correct? >> yeah, the initiative and the james madison program itself are all part of princeton university especially the department of politics at princeton university. >> thank you. >> now focusing on that, you are going to have to remind me your first question. >> reparations. >> reparations, thank you usually comes up, i can almost -- most recently it came up an article written by nicole hannah jones in the wake of the 1619 project and just before that by coats and both of these were passionate arguments on behalf of reparations, passionate though they are, i have some questions and hesitations here

because on the one hand the payment of reparations is something which seems to be normal. we have, in fact, engaged in reparations payments for a number of groups which have suffered harms and wrongs at the hands of governments. particularly here the german government dealing with the is i think of our dealings with those who were unjustly assigned to year of concentration camps during world war ii, the japanese americans, there was reparations agreement there. reparations are in a sense part of the whole justice system of equity juris prudence, so what about the reparations by nicole

hannah jones, tom coats and number of others running back over many years? first, i think we have to work with the definition of what ngreparations is about. reparations for slavery or reparations for subsequent segregation and discrimination because those are two separate categories and sometimes i think that coats in particular wants to phase them together and talk about them as one and i don't think that's quite so easy if only because the harm it is done, the tort, for instance. if i can use legal language is an entirely different tort. the first question i ask, what are we talking about? reparations for segregation or are we talking reparations for slavery? most often the discussion is reparations for slavery and here is where we start to run into some difficulties.

the first thing that you want to ask, well, who should be paying reparations? here is where the question start to get difficult? should it be the united states government? well, why because the united states government did not hold slaves. the united states government, in fact, did not pass slavery or enslavement. the united states had a fugitive slave law but that was not the same thing as enslavement statutes. we sometimes forget, slavery was ea state-based matter not a federal governmenten matter.

so should the federal government pay reparations, how can it since it was never involved in the owning of slaves, all right, what about the states, maybe you should single out the slave-owning states. that's single out, alabama, for instance, as slave-owning state and the state of alabama should pay reparations. okay, but let's also remember that there were a number of other state that is we don't think of as slave states which actually legalized states far longer than alabama. alabama legalized slavery from the time that it was a territory until the civil of war, 50, 60 years. my own home state legalized from the time it was founded all the way up to 19th century. so if the state bears

responsibility, then the state morennsylvania should bear responsibility for paying reparations than alabama which simply does not seem to make a whole lot of common sense. did pennsylvania move to emancipate and eliminate slavery, yes, it did. if we are just talking about the state bases for reparations then how can you evade the fact that pennsylvania actually has more guilt over time than alabama and the audity of that would jar many people. if you can't settle the entity, does it come down to individuals, what about the

descendants of sleigh owners, should they pay reparations? well, one of the difficulties is that many slave owners, descendant of many slave owners today are simply not in the same economic position that the slave owning forbearers, they may be truck drivers, are they going to pay reparations in any meaningful way, should they? the other thing that's connected with that, to whom do you pay reparations? well, obviously you think the answer should be descendants of slaves, yeah, well, that will eliminate important segments of black americans today who are not descendants of slaves. someone like colin powell, colin powell was not descendant of slaves. how do we deal with large numbers of black people who would be excluded from

reparations? that then leads into a related problem and that is in many cases so many slaves were themselves the offspring of the slave holders. among the many crying injustices and slave owners raped and misused their female slaves and the offspring of it were multiracial or biracial. well, if you are the descendant of a slave, the irony is you may also be the descendant of a slave holder.er in fact, studies that i've seen estimate that on average, this is -- this is on average figure,

genetically speaking black americans are anywhere between 20 and 25% white by descendant and that surprising and shocking statistic is itself a testimony to the widespread sexual exploitation that occurred under slavery. if you are a descendant of slave holder to whom are you paying and a mean has been established

more or less around the figure of 750,000 but that's a mean and statistically there are variations in that. of those civil war related deaths, something in the order of 330 and 350,000 lives were lost in the union cause. these were people who were fighting and dying to end slavery and their lives are a price that would pay to end it whichha is something that lincon captured in his second inaugural when he talked about the price of the war and how this war was a judgment that was inflicted on both north and south for its complicity in slavery and he said that if we drop a blood drawn by the lash was being paid forai by a drop blood drawn by e

sword what is the value of those lives. how do we compute the value of those lives included the life of abraham lincoln itself, how do we compute the value of those lives and reckon it with the reparations bill, i don't know how to do that? also know that you cannot reckoning into the -- your decision making about reparations, if all that reparations was about getting a check, then my concern is that we have forgotten about the civil war itself and i have heard people say i was at a reparation's conference in colombiaco years ago and someone frankly stood up and said, all i want to know who is going to write me the check. that is the only consideration, then we had

forgotten about the civil war and the lives black and white that were lost in that war to eliminate slavery, so i ask, what is the reckoning for that as well. these are questions which do not have easy answers but these are the questions, i think, would have to be asked if what we are going to eventually come up with are honest answers. >> we are talking with allen geuzlo on book tv, david in virginia, you're on. >> thank you, good afternoon, professor. i'm a native pennsylvanian. i was born and raised in chambersburg, i happened to marry a young lady whose great grandfather was in mcarthur's army who burned my hometown down, so as you can well imagine, i have some mixed feelings about the -- about the

rebellion, however, there are some questions that had been bothering me over the years and i will just share them with you. my first one was was jay buchanana a homosexual, stevens a martyr and i'm not asking you to answer those questions but i do have a question that i would like for you to address and that's related to the election of 1864, did lincoln run as a third-party candidate and if not, was andrew johnson a true third-party president? >> yes and no and the reason i will put it that way is in 1864lingon is facing a real

election which has some serious odds against it and the war has been going on for 3 years and by the summer of 1863, '64, what do they have to show for and the confederacy is still fighting and lee is still defending richmond, sherman has not taken atlanta, blockade runners are still getting through the federal navy black aid, for many people it looked like 3 years of war had been just about enough and had gotten us next to nothing. that meant that the leaders of the republican came and said we will have to do something desperate. lincoln is very, very eager to draw as many democratic votes as he possibly can to the side of his republicans, he's not sure if they run just on the strength of the republican vote that they are going to win because many

people who are to dissatisfied. how do they appeal to the democratic voter who doesn't particularly like republicans or republican policies but nevertheless who wants to see the war brought to a successful conclusion. ywell, what you do is rename te republican party, so when the republican party comes together for its convention in baltimore, in the early summer of 1864, it is a n new title. calls itself the national union party and while they renominate abraham lincoln, republican a nominee from 1860 asic presidential nominee, they also select a democrat in this case a serving democrat, andrew johnson to run as vice president.

in 1860 the republican party had done something like that. in 1860 they nominate lincoln for the presidency but nominate as vice president hamlin of maine who had beene a democrat and only come to the republican ranks because of opposition to slavery. so you have certain foreshadowing of that in 1860 but 1864 becomes explicit and becomes on national union ticket and his vice president will be andrew johnson, the only senator from a confederate state who refused to go south who stayed in the senate, lifelong democrat and one who represents what had always been a democratic state, tennessee was the state of andrew jackson. on the other hand, during the war, lincoln had appointed johnson to beoh military governr of tennessee and johnson had

done a reasonably good job of it. wasn't perfect but reasonably good job but certainly far better than experiments that lincoln had made in appointing military governors for occupied areas of the south. in fact, johnson himself had addressed delegations of black tennesseans promising them i will be your moses, i will lead you to the land of freedom. republicans heard that and what we are trying to construct is a ticket that's going toto appealo democrats andrew johnson is our man.ur johnson gets the vice presidential nomination and the posters get up, national union ticket and you see abraham lincoln and andrew johnson. for all practical purposes the leadership of this national leadership effort is -- it's still the republican party. who was kidding who? but it is representing this very

aggressive pr effort on the part of republicans to make a bipartisan appeal to democrats, so they run as the national union party. is it really a third party? no. it's really the republicans carrying a sign with a different name on it national union ticket. nobody would have thought that l at that point because johnson despite long career as a democrat seemed to be uttering all of the republican noises. so it goes forward that way, lincoln is reelected and johnson is elected as his vice president and at that point the whole national union thing disappears because they got reelected. and that's the last we hear of it. so is the thirdty party, yeah, only in the sense of using a different name for pr purposes.

is it a third party, no, not really because it's not a different party than it was before. it's simply a strategy for recruiting democratic votes. >> four minutes leftt with our guest allen guelzo. favorite books, jonathan edwards, john gardner's on world fiction, this hallowed ground, the political culture of the american wigs, harry jaffa, crisis of the house divided and james boswell life of johnson. currently reading, the black classical music, lost and thought, the hidden pleasures of intellectual life and susan, the

recurring crisis of american democracy. i wish we had h time to discuss some of those but then we have a mcouple of minutes left and we want to get james from ohio in here. >> well, good afternoon, i hope that you can hear me clearly. i have my tv muted. professor guelzo, first of all, i want to associate with an early comment of steve from 50 minutes ago you are -- as a retired teacher myself, you are like the very model of thoughtful analysis and what used to be called ratio summation and contextualizing and i know probably some people get on you for lengthy answers and context is everything. i've been to gettysburg three times and i have your book on my table with a few others but it's a manager call place and it will hook you, if you go once, you'll want to go back, i think.

and you did of what would have happened if they had succeeded and another thing that popped into my head. i had a lot of thoughts of 4 by 6, canada and mexico might have gotten a piece of the united states if it had been bulkanized as you have stated. he says at the beginning of a chapter perhaps all wars are in some way or another the product of miscalculations and i guess maybe a good way to wind this up unless you want to talk about the instrument -- >> you gotten seconds and then we only get 30 seconds from dr. guelzo, finish up. >> miscalculation on the part of the southern leadership that led to a civil war.

>> truly dr. guelzo, you do have 30, 40 seconds. >> the answer to that is very direct.. they miscalculated utterly. l this is is how i knew, this is how i always knew that this would end. >> you mentioned your 4 by 6 cards at your side for your current project which is what? >> it is another book about abraham lincoln. so i'm returning to original turf. >> we will close with this

temperature from al in newburg, new york, who play it is base in the back end? >> i do. i was a music major my first year a college, composition major actually, i discover what had you sometimes painfully discover in your first year in college, you just don't have enough talent so i had to do something else and that's what i've been doing right up to this moment but i still play it. >> professor allen guelzo has been our guest for the past two hours talking about the civil war era and some of his 12 books, we very much appreciate your time. this program will reair in just a few minutes in case you missed any of it. but harvard biologist passed. if you ever saw eo wilson

talking to and audience or talking about his work, he was very accessible, very enthusiastic. well, we asked him about -- our viewer asked him ant in the kitchen. his response. >> please tell us about what to do with the ants in the kitchen. >> okay. watch where you step, be careful of little lives. i recommend feeding them bits of peanut butter and tuna and drops of honey which i particularly enjoy. get yourself a magnifying glass, be willing tog get down on your hands and knees and watch what they are doing as they recruit, feed and comed out and everything. behavior of creatures, social creatures as i mentioned earlier in this exchange as we will ever

get to what might exist on another planet. >> harvard biologist eo wilson died at the age of 92. he appeared on book tv's viewer call-in program in-depth and you can watch the 3-hour discussion with eo wilson or many other book events on our website booktv.org. weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. documents a story and on sunday book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from the television companies and more including spot life. >> it's a place that you call home and it's our home too and we are all facing the greatest challenge that's why they are working around the clock to keep you connected. we are doing our part so it's a

little easier to do yours. >> spark light along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. >> former secretary of state hillary clinton and author discuss novel, secretary of state dealing with the world with human leadership has been absent. here is a preview. >> just watching her work being part of that creation that she is capable of, you know, pulling out of herself, her heart and her head and then giving it to the world was a totally extraordinary experience for me personally. you know, i used to read how authors of fiction would be asked, well, you know, did you know where the story would end and a couple would say, oh, yeah, i have it plot it out but

often people would say, not until i start writing, not until i meet the characters and i would think to myself as a reader what do you mean, you're creating the characters and then all of a sudden through this process and watching last at work and talking with her, okay, what would the secretary of state do and what would her best friend and counselor do and what would the young foreign officer do, sometimes we would be talking and just this burst of creativity would come from her like, well, what if we did this or maybe we could have her or him say that. i found that -- such a great gift for me to watch my friend create this incredible scenario and help to come up with the people who would be in the center of it. it was an amazing experience.

like nothing i ever had before. >> not like anything i've ever had before. never having collaborated. it's impossible now really to part who did what because of what you said, you said something, why do we have this happen and then you say, we trusted each other. we trusted that we could throw ideas without it being diminished, without it being dismissed but we could be as creative and crazy as -- as we wanted to be and out of that, out of that drawn we could find the gems and it's so interesting that one of the things through the book, i'm not sure one we started but one of the ones that we developed is the ongoing which is trust and i think in this collaboration we learned

that we could trust each other at a much more profound level than we ever would have otherwise. >> visit booktv.org to watch the rest of this conversation. use the searching box at the topof the page using hillary clinton. >> good afternoon, almost evening. i'm the social director of public for researching and black culture. ..re ..