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supporting perspectives. ... war general who commanded the confederate army in northern virginia. >> host: allen guelzo let's begin our conversation with your latest book "robert e. lee: a life." who wasee he before the civil wr and what was his reputation? >> property leave before the civil war was best known for two things. one was the fact that he was the

son of the revolutionary war hero and that was the famed calgary commander life force harry lee the one who served under washington and coined that wonderful encomium of washington, first in war, first in peace and first for his countrymen.ry 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 of general winfield scott. generalur scott's fabulous amphibious invasion beginning at veracruz and moving inland to mexico city. lees served in many respects as scott's eyes and ears performing over and over again feats of recognizance for scott so much so afterwards scott made the confession that for all the honors he had one in that campaign in mexico city almost all the credit would go to

robert e. lee. those two things would have been noted before the civil roar -- war which taken together don't really do a whole lot to explain what we know about robert e. lee once the civil war begins. >> henryo life force harry lee was not necessarily a good father. is that correct? >> he was a splendid calgary commander especially of life force carrying out like calgary raids doing post, doing all kinds of small jobs like that. he was really a very good. as soon as the revolution was over and he moved back into civilian life everything went from bad to worse. he made investments in western virginia land that were the equivalent of buying the ski resorts in bangladesh.

they all went to nothing. they bankrupted him. he also chose the wrong politics in virginia. virginia was the virginia thomas jefferson. harry lee was a federalist and in 1813 he was beaten within an inch of his life by a pro jeffersonian law and taking both of thoselt things together he decided other climes are probably more pernicious for him so he left. and he left when his son robert was six years old and robert never saw him again. i think that's actually a major dramatic moment in the life of robert e. lee that stays with them for the rest of his days. >> the other thing i wanted to mention from your first was you

right e in "robert e. lee: a life." lee discovered a sense of shame at having been part of the mexican-american war. >> yes. for many americans who are part of the mexican war especially that invasion from veracruz to mexico city the experience they had stayed with them all of their lives. you can read many memoirs especially famous for generals and senior officers during that war. reflecting back on it and remembering mexico's enchanting beauty someplace they always wanted to revisit and alongside it with a sense of embarrassment that this war had taken place at all. for one thing in the ethos of the 19th century 19th century republicans were not supposed to make warar on republics pick republican some sense were supposed to make war

at all. they might fight defensively against aggressive imperial ventures from sars and kings and whatnot with the idea of the american public going to war with the mexican republic was a source of disconnect for many of these young americans and the longer they served in this war the more that did disconnect weight on them and robert e. lee would come to that conclusion. i'm ashamed of what we have done that i'm ashamed of this war. we picked on mexico. we deliberately took advantage and he isn't the only one either. curiously enough the same theme developed in ulysses grant's memoirs. these two men who will in time become the gang and gang of the civil war had a similar experience int their service in mexico that was the sense that the united states hadte done the

wrong thing invading mexico that it was a larger stronger power, beating up on a smaller weaker one which should have been as a sister republic encouraging instead of making the object of war. >> he said he served under generally and 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 generall in chief of theta united states army at that point but he is really in no shape at his age to obtain an active direction of the war. he stretched out a o large-scale strategic plan sometimes known as the anaconda plan for how the war should be conducted that he, he understood. he was past the time when he could take active participation in the field.

to that end the person he wanted to recommend is the person that should read the field commander for the armies that would suppress this secessionist rebellion was robert e. lee. scott never forgot the surface of robert e. lee during the mexican war. in the years between that war and the civil war scott develops something of ae surrogate father figure for robert lee. he assists in promoting members of theee lee family and really gets a commission in the u.s. army largely because of general scott. so there's a very close relationship. nothing more cruelly displayed by scott and when we came to visit him in mid-april of 1861 to tell him that he was going to turn down the offer of command

and that he would resign his commission in the united states army treat it was said that winfield scott took to his sofa weeping saying i never want to hear it the name of robert e. lee again. that probably is somewhat -- but he gives you a sense first the relationship between the two. secondly the disappointment that scott experience when e we decid not to take up the command that in other circumstances scott may have wanted himself. >> allen guelzo was robert e. lee well-known in the general public prior to the civil war and the society pages because of his wife and was there will he, want a back and forth in the press regarding his going to the confederate? >> to a minor degree. robert e. lee was not someone

who enjoyed the public limelight. he did his level best to stay out of newspapers and to stay out of columns of people who are writing social matters. he himself will only venture into public view very, very reluctantly. he simply dislikes it. it's something he has no for her. people often remarked about lee that he struck them as a very, a very distant sort of figure. there's a famous passage in the diary of mary chestnut and one of the great diaries of the civil war era. she met lee for the first time before the war in western virginia. she met lee there because that's where they took his wife.

mary lee was plagued by rheumatoid arthritis and the hot springs brought her relief from the difficulties. mary chestnut met lee there without introduction. she said this man on a beautiful horse came to join us and he looks looked so distinguished i was sorry i didn't catch his name and she found out afterwards this was robert e. lee and she said everything about him was so fine and perfection. no fault to be found in the man even if youan hunted for one day this isn't just because chestnut necessarily mired that. she liked lee's older brother sidney smith leave because smith lee was a companionable fine man about town but not robert. chestnut said can anybody say he's warm? i doubt it.

thhe looks so cold and quiet and bland and that is what robert lee chose to cultivate there is live. he did not like being in the public glare and for that reason any discussion that takes place about the possibility of robert e. lee's choice tents to happen only in his immediate environment where he was living in alexandria and arlington make it across the river from washington d.c. and a few other places. it's not a matter of national discussion or national attention and largely because robert e. lee doesn't want the national discussion and attention on himself. >> backk in march you were quotd in the princeton quarterly is saying quote if we wish to imperil the american experiment we can find a few more paths to that peril than by forgetting up scaring or demeaning to who we

were. i bring this up now with all the memorials being removed etc. and a lot of confederate immortals being taken down. was that a mistake in yourri vi? >> while there's no easy answer for that and i have to confess from my own part that this question of statues of robert e. lee, i've seen statues not only of lee that many other people taken down and on the one hand speaking as a pennsylvania person who i'm a from land in the most unlikely of lee biographers and as such i can't fathom why they put up statues for people who committed treason. we don't have any statues the least that i'm aware of on revolutionary war he n rose to

general howe in general cornwallis. in fact in 1776 we tore down a statue of george iii in manhattan so there's a certain sense in which they can't measure y. we do that. people like robert e. lee raised their hand against the nation that they had sworn an oath to uphold. my father was a career united states army officer and he took that oath. my son is an officer in the u.s. army and he took that oath. even when i joined the national council of the humanities back in 2006 i took the zero so it's not something i'm saying likely and it's not helped by the fact that when lee makes his decision to join the confederacy what he is really doing is fighting for

a cause that wrapped around a the defense of human and human trafficking. on the one hand why should i feel anything except a sense of sympathy for the removal of relics like that that really shouldn't be in any place but a museum. ifer someone wanted to propose erecting a statue of robert e. lee i would tell them as politely as i could to get lost. butt that really hasn't been the whole story, has its? are talking about is not just statues a property leave at wholesale toppling, defacing of statues across the country and this includes statues of ulysses s. grant, statues of frederick douglass, statues of abraham lincoln. here in my own hometown of philadelphia someone actually defaced the statue of a

prominent abolitionist figure. what they thought they were doing i don't know that so much ofi this seem to be an active impulse. and when i see the overall picture of the toppling of statues this way i began to see how much of it is done by impulse and that's where i start to have anxiety that we are doing something a little less considerate and a little less logical. back in 2017 when the charlottesville riots circled around a statue of robert e. lee in charlottesville that was the moment when robert e. lee almost became a hand at that time i sat down with a former studentte of mine who is now a national park

service person and we worked up over a called a decision tree. because how do you deal with monuments and statues and there are moments. on the one hand he simply can't say that this statue is sacrosanct. that's not true. i remember 1956 hungarian revolutionaries fighting against the soviets they tear down the statue of joseph stalin in budapest. in 2003 when american forces arrived in fact had with one of the things that first happened? the tearing down of an enormous statue of saddamno hussein. i'm not going to sit here and say i'm so sorry we don't have a statue of joseph stalin or saddam hussein these days. i think we are better planet without them but how do we arrive at decisions for people who are represented by statues

that haven't and around for 150 years or something like that? i think there has to be something more for process than i've seen in some of the latest waves of statue toppling. we developed the decision tree which basically said let's ask a series of questions. let's ask a series of five questions and depending on the answer too the first question we have moved to the second and depending on its second t week moved to the third. there's no guarantee for this decision tree. there's no guarantee at all. it's not intended to produce a circumstance. what it is intended to produce as we have thought through w th. we have looked at this logic. we have come to this conclusion as a result of a process. and if at the end of that process weth decide yes the stae should come down then fine.

at least we know there was a process that the thing i havee the most concerned about in the thing that's dangerous about understanding history is when we respond purely to these memorials and these monuments purely out of aquatic impulse of this and that i think the real danger because there's not a lot of difference between that kind of impulse and the behavior of a. the behavior of a m is exactly what democratic societies and democracy strive to distance between and necessarily so. i wouldhe rather err on the side of caution this way or at least on the side of a process. the result of process may be yes. at least we would have gone through a process. i think process is what is important.

it the first line in your book about robert e. lee is how you write the biography on someone who commits treason? how do you guard against it? >> because i asked first of all what does the constitution say about trees and? how does the constitution define it? on the one hand it's pretty straightforward but the constitution says that treason consists of making war against the united states and giving aid and comfort to its enemies. and i have some difficulty in looking at robert e. lee and not seeing someone who did exactly those things. he made war against united states in four years of war against the united states and certainly gave aid and comfort to its enemies. simply on t those terms alone i cannot avoid the occlude -- conclusion i guess the robberty lee committed -- and some of say you are saying that because you

are a. i'm saying that because i'd take the constitution for what it actually says and i cannot avoid that conclusion. so i say this in the very beginning because i want people to understand that i'm not coming to write a biography of robert e. lee. either put a halo around his head or knife in his back. i want to come the robberty lee as frankly and soberly as they can in the first and most important question is that question about treason. in some respects that poses the real challenge of writing this kind of biography. how do you write a bike for you if someone who commits treason and? in some sense it's easy to write a biography of someone you can easily rely on mike washington for churchill but how do you deal with people whose lives are

committed to things you find reprehensible? and yet you can't not write about it or you can't simply pretend that they are not there. so how do you undertake the writing of what i call difficult by a? is what i set myself up as a test to do in writing about robert e. lee. conscious of the fact that difficult biographies call for a different set of understandings and a different set of analytical tools than you might ehave in writing about lincoln about whom i've written a great deal but you have to write and you have to come to terms with a different set of understandings. >> allen guelzo is the author o, 12 books. dr. allen guelzo after appomattox was there an outcry from the public to jail robert e. lee?

>> oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes especially after the assassination of lincoln. in the few days that transpired between lee's surrender in the army in northern virginia and lincoln'sre murder there was a sense that oh the war is coming to its conclusion and we can be generous and openhanded and then comes the lincoln assassination and that iss like saying so this is what we get for being openhanded and for being generous. we will deal now with these people the way they are asking us to deal with them. there was a terrific backlash against thee confederate leadership because jefferson davis at that point was still on the lam. he wouldno not be ever handed until later but a lot of this gets particularly difficult in the callss go up for robert e.

lee and especially an indictment for treason entered by the federal district court in norfolk, virginia. it's a norfolk, virginia by the way largely because it's one of the few places in virginia where there actually is a federal court operating at that point. there have been no federal courts operating in most of virginia during the civil war. confederate courts, yes but not federal courts. this indictment comes from the federal court of norfolk. lee along with some 33 or 34 other leaders is indicted by the federal court for treason and the assumption is that this is going to receive some kind of trial. that is course is worth the problems begin to accrue. look back initially just in terms of constitutions definition of treason in which

should have gone to a trial. there were some interesting tripwires in the way. one of them was at appomattox ulysses grant ran into lee is an entire army of northern virginia april. what did this mean? it meant and this is literally how was put, that none of those who surrender to appomattox are going to be troublede or botherd by the federal government provided they go to their homes. it's not entirely a get out of jail free card. if you violate the terms of the parole then all restraints are off but the parole is given by ulysses s. grant and when grant gets wind of the fact that the new president andrew johnson and erhis attorney general are toyig

with the idea of pursuing robert e. lee for treason. grant feels his own word, his own pledge his own army is being called into question and he quite frankly tells andrew johnson. if you persist in this ipe will resign ass army. that's a threat that 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 ulysses grant. so that was one problem which hedged off the idea of a trial. of the problem is the fact that all through the war a lot of questions about dealing with civil liberties have been handled by military tribunals. as a sound familiar? this sounds like guantánamo bay. it should because same logic governs those cases as governor like those at the end of the civil war.

the chief justice of the united states supreme court soman chase could not abide by the idea that there was parallel jurisdictions do if federal civilian jurisdiction in terms of the federal courts. the idea there were military tribunals operating in virginia him.n anathema to if he was to participate in federal trial of property lee while t there were military tribunals operating in virginia chase requires to corporate the trump there's another robot. and there are number of other legal snags which i won't take everybody into the weeds with unless you are a lawyer. at the end that conclusion was this is not going to be worth the political trouble that is going to generate.

so what we'll do is we will just enter a per sec way in other words do not prosecute and in fact in 1868 as sandra johnson is on his way out of the white house he issues a blanket amnesty that dispels the threat of a treason trial. technically speaking it was a real question and lee treats it seriously. he's very anxious that this trial may go forward and if it goes forward he could be in serious danger and it's not until that amnesty comes down that lee begins to feel the cloud has in large measure passed over his head. but he takes it seriously and he will makee comments like a lot f my old friends don't want to be seen around me because i am seen

as such a drag on them. they would be embarrassed to be seen with me. that weighed on him and a weighed on him heavily. so the trial doesn't actually happen. nevertheless it could have and what the result of that would have been we don't know. >> big grant and lee have any relationship after the war? >> not really. in the immediate after flow of the appomattox surrender lee would express a great deal of gratitude to grant for granting the parole for his latitude in dealing with it as time goes by any kind of relationship with might have been forced between the two simply doesn't happen. grant invites lee to the white house in 1869 when grant becomes

president. the interview only lasts about 15 minutes and it's very polite. i don't want to say frosty. grant was hoping he could enlist lee in support of some of his initiatives in reconstruction that. lee showed no enthusiasm for that. so they part and they never meet again and there's a coldness there. i don't think it can really be described in any other way. in fact people will press lee in 1870 for his opinion as to who the greatest union general was that he faced during the war. lee's response is not ulysses grant. lee's response is george mcclelland and if that doesn't surprise you that nothing about the civil war will surprise you. by the way i should say grant returned the favor years later

when he was doing his world tour the new york journalist john russell young accompanied him with a similar question to grant who did he think was the greatest of the confederate generals and grants response was to joseph e. johnson which is actually even. he almost had the sense that grant was doing it tit-for-tat. if youou are going to disrespect me, fine i will disrespect you. whatst could been in a just a relationship between these two former friends never ever develops in that way and in 1868 in 1869 lee goal and his frequent more to people who would challenge ulysses grant been otherwise. >> we go. >> his entire two hours talking about robert e. lee and his life

and off they machinations of mike what about that we want to talk about your other books and prior to robert e. lee -- "robert e. lee: a life" was reconstruction. from that hook quote even the strongest measures taken by the u.s. t gernment during both the ronstruction were deployed less with a view towards subjugating centralized authority and more towards nudging them back to the federal government. the great in this process where thegr southern. >> yes, said that in 2018 and i haven't said it since but it inclines me to alter or changeav that. wend really hoped more than a little too often that the war

would teach lessons that it would change political minds and all the blood and treasure that was extended and eradication of slavery would open up the possibility not only for reunification of the north and the south is one nation. a reconstitution of the south itself in the image of it and that did not happen. and it did not happen in large measure because we simply didn't know how to go about doing every construction and there was no rookie could go to the bookstore entitled reconstruction for so it's a step-by-step process on how to do this. and what you see instead is a series of improvisations not all of them terribly well thought

out and some of them inspired by code and a lot of them inspired budgetary on the part of congress. so that's the first thing you see coming out every construction. we did not know what it was we were doing. the second thing that emerges from this in the fumbling he gets an opportunity for the old southern leadership to once again sees political dominance of life in the south and as they do that they aimed to subjugate southerners to something of the same steps that they enjoyed before the civil war in other words to reconstitute the form of slavery without using the term and this kind of

reconstitution is what leads southerners in southern states to jim crow to segregation, to violent fighting and especially of the 1898 wilmington north carolina riots which garnered subjugation of people in the south. and we can only look back on that and say why didn't we take reconstruction more 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 impose a military -- and impose a military occupation that would last for a sufficiently long time to raise up and educate an entirely new political generation. we were too fast and in some cases we just didn't want to

spend the time and the money. military occupation in the south even at the height of reconstruction the united states military forces used on reconstruction in the south never amounted to more than 20,000,0 troops. wewe deployed 3 million soldiers during the civil war. and what did we put into the task of reconstruction? 20,000 even that diminishes over time. we would have to do something more serious along the lines of uswhat we did after world war ii with the marshall plan in europe with the occupation out of imperial japan where we basically reconstructed society from the bottomes up in the democratic way. we do not domo that. in 1865 to 1877 and we paid a

serious price for that. we learned our lesson in 1945 and yet subsequent efforts at reconstruction have not shown the learningly of that was done. we still suffer from wanting to take military actions or diplomatic actions and have them with a quick response and then we wash our hands andd walk away from them and we don't pay any more bills. perhaps we should have thought before he got involved about some of those things what would be required whether something much more intense of much more expensive and required a great deal more from our society than they be willing to give. that is something we have to bear in mind. the problem posed by

reconstruction offers us an interesting lesson. sometimes called nation-building and reconstruction we did a pretty poor job of it and many people have suffered as a result. >> allen guelzo how broken was the south economically and socially? >> publicly the impact of the war was than the great depression. there had been big swaths of military destruction in various parts of the south. one thinks especially in the case of georgia although destruction in georgia by general sherman and his army han beenee exaggerated. people who read sherman's memoirs get this notion that somehow william tecumseh sherman took a torch to everything that

stood in the state of georgia and that's not really the case. but there were places that paid a high penalty where the armies were constantly traipsing back and forth in one place was certainly virginia. the south suffers economically by the loss of the capitol invested since labored by the loss of the capitol invested in farm implements and farm animals. probably the south losses amounted to as high as in some estimates that i've seen $13 billion. that's in $1865 in yet the south could have recovered much for quickly if they had committed itself to trying to re-create the semi feudalism of the system.sy in a sense the great punishment

the south suffers and reconstruction is not union occupation. union occupation by contrast was minimal. the real punishment in reconstruction is self administered. as the south decides whatut it really wants is to walk away from industrial capitalism, to walk away from the 19th century transatlantic economy and to return to what it had been before the war which was a semi feudal agrarian 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 enemy and reconstruction >> lee -- allen guelzo you were born in yokohama japan as an army officer and a masters in

divinity and the history aspect. at what point in your life did you find yourselff fascinated by this eric? >> i think i was always fascinated by it or as fascinated as one can be and be conscious. i can remember when i was probably not more than five years old badgering my mother to buy the iconic book version of the red badge of courage in the illustrated series. the red badge of courage introduces the store the civil war and that happened to have in the back a 16 page insert is a quick comment look history of the civil war. dwhen i say, it looked they thik of superman and all kinds of stuff. the illustrated series was a serious piece of work and this

red badge of courage was a serious piece of work in a fascinated me. it sent t me to my grandmother o has as a young girl at the turn of last century in schools in philadelphia had witnessed on decoration day which is what day than sheorial witnessed old veterans of the grand army of the republic old union veterans with jackets and their blue caps they come a to e schools like my grandmother school and they would talk to the schoolchildren about the real meaning of the civil war and for them the real meaning of the civil war was not with those johnny reds are trying to teach you. itut was about the end of slavey and the preservation of life and that was the understanding of the war that you might say i got at my grandmother's knee who i grew up with. so in my case i never grew up

with robert e. lee having an aura around his head. many other writers about lee for the southerners and particularly freeman. they wrote about lee is promoting the myth of a lost cause and i grew up understanding the lost cause to be a myth and the real story of the war really belonged to lincoln, to emancipation as preservation of the union. i acquired that interest very earlier on and it has stayed with me and as you can see i'm still talking about it. >> we will show our viewers some of your lincoln books in just a minute but i wanted to welcome you to our "in depth" program for january. allen guelzo civil war historian is ouran guest. we want to hear from you as well and you can talk with him a comments and ask questions.

(202)748-8200 in eastern and central timezones 748 -- 11 mountainnt and pacific timezone you can send a text to this number for text messages only. (202)748-8903 and include your first name and the city if you would. if you send a text question. you can also a contact us by social media. just remember @booktv with her handle for twitter and instagram facebook etc.. you can go ahead and start making those comments and start dialing in and we will geto to your calls for allen guelzo in just a few minutes. his first book came out in 1989 the century of american theological debate. evangelical them came out in

a -- and abraham lincoln redeemer present "lincoln's emancipation proclamation" in 2004 lincoln and douglas the debate that defined in america and lincoln, short introduction 2009 as well and then a look at the civil war and reconstruction in "gettysburg" the last invasion is how allen guelzo looks about book and in 2013 "redeeming the great emancipator" in 2016 and reconstruction in history came out in 2010 this most recent from a different point of view "robert e. lee: a life." if we could allen guelzo let's go to the year 1863 which kicked off with the emancipation proclamation very tumultuous

year in our nations history but want to quote from your book "redeeming the great emancipator" quote the emancipation proclamation which was delivered on january 1, 1863 to surely the unhappiness for all of abraham lincoln's great presidential capers. >> the word unhappy is the one you focus on, right? that was the one that jumped out at me. >> that was a deliberate and provocative strategy on myst pa. and i say unhappiest basically because while the log the gettysburg address people memorize the gettysburg address. it is after all only 272 words. and we adore the second and not grow especially with its eloquent conclusion with malice

toward none and charity for all. who can disagree with the beauty off that? then we come to the emancipation proclamation. the first word of the emancipation proclamation just puts a soft acus at first word is whereas. whoever thought of beginning a great state document with the word whereas because it sounds a legalistic. it is legalistic and in fact that is one of the problems that people have e with the emancipation proclamation that it is the language of it is very legal and no one less than karl marx made the observation that the emancipation proclamation reads like a summons sent by one county courthouse lawyer to another and it deeded does read

that way but it's very technical. it's very legal in its atmosphere and people look at this and scratch their heads. here's a man capable of writing gettysburg address the second and not grow and why it comes to be the greatest deed of his administration may bebe the sine greatest deed of any of. as he dropped back into professional legalese and that has led a number of people to draw the conclusion that he didn't really mean it. his heart really wasn't in it. if his heart had been in emancipation he couldon have something equally eloquent as the gettysburg address for the second and r. this is what led to the member -- marvel iconic probably the comment most memorably attached to the emancipation proclamation that

the proclamation had all the moral grandeur of a bill and in truth it did. so there is one reason why people -- it seems a legalistic. what is the absence of that evidence mean? another reason people aren't happy with the mets up proclamation is that it's dated january 1, 1863. why didn't as soon as the civil war began why didn't they pick up this and write the emancipation proclamation in 1861? we will is the rating for? why is it that nothing happens in 1863 he decides is going to issue the emancipation proclamation. people look at that and say a hot he had another agenda than

emancipation. he was trying to enlist the sympathies of european nations. he was trying to evoke more response from the north in support of the war. in other words the emancipation proclamation isn't really a noble gesture at all. it's a work of political strategy. and then there authors who don't believe it goes far enough. there's a whole section in the emancipation proclamation of reservations and exclusions. the emancipation proclamation will free in states in rebellion and lincoln goes on to explain that includes the border states before the states that remained loyal like missouri delaware kentucky and maryland and it also won't touch slaves and places in virginia occupied the

union military forces are in louisiana occupied by the military forces. you'd look at this and say what's going on here? if you're going to free the slaves and free the slaves. instead to give these exceptions and again he would say this can't be for real. this can't represent some moral gesture on the part of abraham lincoln and voices of criticism of that sort have multiplied over the years to the point where yes this is why i say lincoln's emancipation proclamation is this unhappiness document because so many people scratch their heads and can't figure out what's going on and in many cases draw the worst possible conclusion. let me just dispel some of that as quickly as i can. first of all yes the emancipation proclamation is legalistic. legalisticic in ways that the regettysburg address is not indd

a why? is simplyburg address the dedication that lincoln composed for dedicating the cemetery at gettysburg. you can't take the gettysburg address into court of law and do anything. the state trooper pulls you over on the turnpike for exceeding the speed limit you cannot quote the gettysburg address to him. the emancipation proclamation changes the legal status of approximately 3 million human beings and if it sounds legalistic this is document that can be taken into court. so is that legalistic? very legalistic? why? it has legal heavy lifting to do. and this is connected to it wide then at the same time as the emancipation proclamation full of exceptions? well largely because lincoln

issues this emancipation proclamation and he says that the regaining of the proclamation on the strength of his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the united states. another bridge is exercising his war powers. you can't exercise war powers against the border stage which were loyal to the union. they were not at war with the united states. they had been made. then again into they were states that still legalized slavery but they were not at war with the union. his war powers did not extend to that. if lincoln emancipated slaves let's sing kentucky or maryland on the strength of the emancipation proclamation you can be sure at 9:00 the next morning would have been besieging federal courthouses demanding entrance which they

would have gotten two dozen junctions would have gone into appeals and appeals would eventually wind up with unitedav states supreme court and who is the chief justice of the united states supreme court at that moment? roger rapattoni the author of the infamous dred scott decision. he would have lincoln could not afford to have that happen. he could not afford to have that kindnd of challenge going to the federal court system so we rule off the four border states and those occupied areas of virginia louisiana. is he trying to cheat on emancipation? know he's trying to protect emancipation from a legal challenge that it is not to imagine emerging from chief justice tawny. so yes the emancipation proclamation has this reputation, this unhappy

reputation but there are serious reasons why it is what it is and when youea understand the reasos you begin to understand abraham lincoln's thinking in concluding the emancipation proclamation is substantially more shrewd than he's given credit for at first reading. if the emancipation proclamation reads like a bill of ladon it's a bill of ladon for karger freedom had to the court of emancipation. that kind of bill we can rejoice in. >> we will come back to the year 1863. our phone lines are lit up and we will hear from our viewers as well. allen guelzo let's begin with jonathan in los angeles. jonathan good morning. >> caller: good morning. professor allen guelzo's books

are fascinating. we are watching professor allen guelzo's show until 11:00. one review of his book said that he has written a revisionist history and i'm curious to have him explain what is meant byby revisionist history and every time is during write somethinge it's revisionist and that like to get your thoughts on that. thanks so much for the program. >> was it fateful lightening a new history of the civil war? >> caller: it was a review of dr. guelzo's look on general

lee. >> jonathan has provided the answer is that every time mr. insists on a rights history you do a revision. no historian simply duplicates what has been said before. everyew historian comes with new ways of looking at things and questions that you ask in my wcase for instance i am interested obviously in lee as the great general the civil war and the great commander of the confederate armies. one could not interested in the civil war and not pay attention toe that. and yet i'll be the first to admitt that is not what draws me to lee what draws me is other considerations for instance robert e. lee was for 30 years almost 30 years of his career

and army engineer. he was an officer in the corps of engineers and much of his career in the army was devoted to engineering products. his first project out of west point was to lay the foundations for what is today fort paul askey in the savannah estuary. he was assigned from their to theno construction of a was originally known as fort calhoun and the main ship channel of hampton roads. from there he was assigned to st. louis and four years in st. louis working on rebuilding the st. louis water drop. from there he goes to fort hamilton in new york and there she is the chief engineer at that post on the tip of long island where today the narrows bridge crosses over to long

island and from there he goes to the mexican war and after the mexican words t ' construction e building of fort carol in baltimore harbor and from there he is becomes the superintendent of west point which was still very much to engineering school when he was superintendent there. he a lot of his life as an engineer and i gave myself something of a crash course in engineering enabled to especiallythis and in that particular kind of engineering that lee most of his time during which was coastal engineering and that's a subspecialty within civil engineering itself that i wanted to understand lee as someone more than just four years as a confederate general and i wanted to w understand the 30 years he as a civil engineer. what drives me to that? i'm trained as an intellectual

historian. in other words a historian of ideas and a historian of the way people think. it took my ph.d. at thee university of pennsylvania under two great intellectual historians allen coors improves coup flick. i approached lee with that way of trying to understand him. i wanted to understand how the man's mind works and to do that i had to understand his profession. that is in it. not many other biographies of robert e. lee a whole lot of time talking about lee's career in the army before the civil war. in the four volumes that douglas devotes to the life of robert e. lee is 30 years don't take up the first volume. another famous biography of lee was written by one of freeman's

acolytes. in 500 pages it goes to the first 30 pages. purely by the fact that i am an historian of something other than military affairs. i'm certainly going to come at lee with a different set of expectations. that makes me a revisionist. i confess to the deed. i confess to the deed knowing every historian does this work seriously is going to be a revisionist, a revisionist sometimes because you have a different concept and set of interpretive tools. sometimes because you are dealing with new materials and one of the challenges with writing about robert e. lee is that unlike lincoln or a mic grant -- mike grant lee is a historian whose papers and

letters are not easily available in a edited edition. if you want to write about abraham lincoln you have the famous eight volumes by roy bassler or if you want to write about grant as ron chernow recently did you have that 27 volumes of the papers of ulysses s. grant. robert e. lee is different. the lee was a compulsive letter writer. he wrote i would estimate somewhere between 6,008,000 letters in his life. not only are there a lot of them but they are spread all over the place. little packets of lee papers here little packets of lee papers there.

i have access to archives from the pierpont morgan library to the huntington library in san marino california and various points in between. and even more maddening is so muchly material surfaces on e-bay and auction sites. there's a lot of lee material still in private hands so there's no single edition of lee'ss works that makes life eay for a biographer. on the other hand it means you are liable to make interesting discoveries which i did in the process. sometimes when you make interesting news discoveries you are going to revise the conclusion that people come to earlier and that makes your vision is. so whether it's new sources every historian who sits down to work is performing revisionist.

the only crispin's what kind of revision? is at revisionism which is done in a and way or is at revisionism with consideration of war. i'd like to think i'd like to believe i'm of the second category. >> from sparta much -- sparta new jersey judy you are on with allen guelzo. >> thank you very much and i'd like to bring us back to the lost cause and the origins of a lost cause.gi i'm in the middle of your american minds, the failure of the gentile elite. he mentioned bugs written by charles adams and henry adams and their potential origin of the lost cause. and i was wondering if he could speak more to that. thank you very much. stay with a lost cause could be

said to have sprung on april 9, 1865. at appomattox courthouse. this is when lee issues his last general orders to the army which is sometimes known as general orders number nine. and in that order the army of northern virginia he fought a snoble and honorable war for greater union numbers have overcome that nobility and helped us to surrender. we managed to do it with honor and we have conducted ourselves with honor so now we can allo go home and believe that what we did was honorable. that becomes the root of this thing called a a lost cause and the lost cause will struggle from their to acquire a number

of facets. one principle tenet of the lost cause is the southern confederacy and the southern states was not about slavery. what drove the confederates to seed from the union was concerned about states rights for the concern about or concerned about the northern economy and potential dictation by northern capitalism and so on and so forth. anything but slavery. so you find in the writings of former confederates like richard taylor his memoir destruction and reconstruction. that's simply historic cooked up by they abolitionists. that becomes his first tenet of the lost cause in another tenet of the lost cause is that the confederacy didn't really lose

the war. the confederacy was simply ground down by the superior yankee capitalism that attrition not military skill or military genius, simple raw to attrition was what destroyed the self. this was five until there was no one left standing. that accounts for why the confederacy of lost a warrant is really lose the war. the war was unfair from the start almost as ifif he'd say oe team fields 11 players and the other team only fields three. guess who's going to win in that game?? and the lost cause rests on the assumption that the confederates always behave themselves with honor and nobility. when the yankees invade the south they behave like vandals.

they behave like a toll of the hon. they rob and they destroy in a rape and they kill but when lee's army lunges across the potomac into the north it behaves itself. all threeha of those as draconin as a 3-dollar bill. and to give you some of thehe stray should the southerners behaved honorably when they invaded the north as opposed to the north and the south but for one thing the south doesn't invade that much. but when the army of northern virginia comes to virginia in the summer of 1863 every record on the ground shows the ndconfederate army help themsels to anything that wasn't nailed

down. they behave like the yankees did which is to say they behave like 19th century armies did. what gave it a particular edge was confederates wound up -- rounded up something like 500 free pennsylvania blacks and shackled them and sent them to the richmond slave markets to be sold into slavery. that was a different kind of repossession shall we say. and that i think caused serious doubts of his whole questions like we behaved honorably. there's not a whole lot of honor in capturing defenseless and innocent people and inflating them. let me take this back to the whole question of lee's involvement. lee himself does not actually draft it. it's really composed by leaves

military secretary charles marshall. lee may 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 make some corrections and he does that in number 92. martial draft system we know this because marshall says so. lee strikes out if you curious enough that marshall said lee was antagonized of northerners. when lee sits down to write document this way which is his final reporter: jefferson davis he tells a very different story. he tells is of jefferson davis of how an army of northern virginia seem to have lost all sense of

discipline. how it struggled and failed and how everything that held the army together seem to come apart the army didn't seem to be interested in fighting anymore and putting a lot of blame on the behavior of his own soldiers. that is very different from a lost cause. general orders number nine promotes the civil lost cause referring to that final reporter: police. why did we find northerners like charles francis adams and henry adams appeared to support the lost cause? as for adams both of the adams brothers the post-war north turned out to be a different war

than the onesth they thought thy would have. it's a different world then -- these were adams one of the first families of the united states. they believed that they deserved a certain measure of respect in the post-war 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 wayrt of criticizing what they believe northern society has begun. lost causes becomes a weapon for saying see how noble those southerners were in defeat and see how we northerners are in the victory.

theirs was the complaint of an elite family that didn't feel like rodney dangerfield that got no respect. so they would use the lost cause to try to address their own claims to that kind of respect not that they succeeded in not that they got it but that was part of their strategy which is why you find the adams brothers embracing the lost cause not because they particularly love the lost cause. charles francis adams had voted against it in the massachusetts. because he became a handy stick to beat their fellow disrespectful -- with. >> stephen california thing things rolling. you are on with historian allen guelzo. >> thank you so much. i so appreciate your appearances on c-span. youen always have words of wisdm and you are the voice of reason. the question i have is recently

you were on c-span discussing your biography of lee and you discussed potential implications had pickets charge defeated and potentially leading to a settlement with the north in the balkanization ofy north america or the united states and they know there's always a risk for historians to play the what-if game. because i saw brilliant observations about the geopolitical impact that had particularly with respect to world war i and world war ii, and i thought it would be helpful for me in the audience to hear you review and perhaps stand on that again. i think of that profound implication for many of the discussions we are having today. check thank you. >> steve thankswh for that. i start off by asking the particular question the people what kind of world, what kind of world would we be looking at if pickets charge had succeeded or

if lincoln had not been reelected in 1864 and if the confederacy have -- had achieved what it wanted in as much as i dislike what is questions i've encountered people who sometimes make a small career out of doing what his history and i think there are so many, we have so many continuing factors that go into making of historical events and asking what-if almost becomes a fantasy. people have fantasy leagues for football and for baseball and sometimes i think they are people who have fantasy leagues in history. on the other hand there is at least some limited consideration for the value of the what-if question. if only because it is to see the

possible la turner did say what they might bend. in the possible alternatives are not necessarily good ones. sometimes people ask me what do youu think the turning point of the civil war was and what was the most important moment of the civil war? what was theat moment that won e civil war and what was the end to the civil war? and i surprise them when i tell them appomattox courthouse. what they are expecting me to say as antietam or gettysburg or something like that. and i think wait a minute that's where the war ended. yeah and i put my finger on that as a rhetorical gesture but also to illustrate the fact that the american civil war could have ended very differently through much of its generation and

especially right up to the re-election of abraham lincoln. if george mcclellan had been elected as the 17th president of the united states seemed to me at least there's no question about that if not mcclellan himself certainly as party would have moved as quickly as possible to open negotiations and if those negotiationsss had begun by 1864 nobody is going to go back to shooting war. they were just up and too much bloodshed in and too much awareness and too much exhaustion paper -- people in the north would have elected mcclellan because they anticipate an extended war beyond that. had mcclellan been elected negotiations would have ended in no other way than with

confederacyou and confederate independence had occurred than a number of really unpleasant things what i think very like he have resulted. one is that the united states would have continued to dissolve because once you have the successful secession there's no reason why there should be one it would not be difficult to see the pacific coast going into its own west coast republic. the northwestern states in the great lakes era in the great lakes area dividing itself into its own independent -- leaving let's say pennsylvania new york

and new england as united states to become a kind of and balkanized republic. what would have been consider would have been trade wars and no longer with united states because it was a free trade zone. they would have been trade wars. the result would have been balkanization. and if there had been balkanization what would have been the result? what the unitedbe states has intervened in either of those and the result of that, the result is that is not pleasant to come -- contemplate. another possible result of confederate independence as a result of negotiations would have been a rendition of

fugitive slaves. during the course of the civil war we estimate somewhere between 200 maybe upward of maybe 500,000 southern slaves fled slavery in either found some kind of home the north wearing contraband camps as they were called or founded in union uniform and found some sort of refuge that way. at the end of negotiations the confederacy i think almost certainly would have required rendition of those fugitives. which is a generally poor both are so we almost think we can imagine that. oh really? if the price of peace, if the price of being -- bringing home

your father your father or brother your son was a rendition of those fugitives i wonder how many would have balked. my guess is not many. after all we demanded rendition at the end of the end of the war of 1812 and i see no reason to would have been a similar demand. it probably would have been entirely successful but it wasn't entirely successful with their revolution. they were financed by southerners. in the post-war environment where the confederacy was independent that kind of filibustering would become

foreign-policy and he would have seen aggressive expansion of the confederate slave empire in large parts of the western hemisphere. these are not conclusions we can look at with any kind of ease or calm. and yet i think they are the answers that would come to the what-if question. in the years after the civil war a veteran of the union army oliver wendell holmes was seriously wounded at antietam and sat on the united states supreme court is one of the most famous justices of the supreme court. sitting on the bench with them was the louisiana and had served in the confederate army edward.

every year on the anniversary of the battle of antietam he would present him with a red rose. white's response, my if we had one. in that same stricken tone of voice is what we have to say is the answer to that what-if? >> host: allen guelzo he had a gettysburgation with college and have an intimate knowledge of the area. can you get a good sense of the battle by walking the battlefield there? >> all the time. the battlefield is such a wonderful place to walk, to visit to meander to analyze to think about and sometimes of course the temptation to second-guess.

you wander around that marvelous place and you come to that central location and that charge smashed against the union defenseses and you think this small plot of ground may be the most hollow wood of how it would ground in the north american continent. it's a marvelous and magical place to be and to walk around. i have never lost interest in walking around the battlefield of gettysburg. >> bopper nashville tennessee, good afternoon you were on with the story and allen guelzo. >> thank you a good afternoon. i teach history at tennessee university here in nashville and i teach survey courses and i've

seen and shown in class many times films that you are in and which you are commenting. i've point out to the students that this guy looks and sounds exactly like frasier crane. kelsey grammer if he were a history professor he would use you as a model. like you i had a grandmother, i was born in 1953 and she was 70 when i was born. she was born in 1883 and she's to tell me the stories that she heard as a child how the yankees came and buried things so the yankees wouldn't steal it and that brings up something you see as a theme in movies from "gone with the wind" about the looting

of the south. it makes it look their like they areer organized crime akel -- organized criminals and not taking just what they need. of course stealing silver items are gold whatever that plantation owners owned. i've never seen anything written about that. i was wondering if you had any knowledge about the scale of that sort of thing? >> armies are armies and since the days of the babylonians armies descend upon the areas they are invading like locusts and they simply eat up and take

up andhe steal. it is what armies do. when an army comes into your neighborhood all law is set aside. this is one of the horrors of war. i use the word horror deliberately putar on the sun of an army officer in the father. army officer who want to tell you frankly i have in my lifetime known many officers in the army officers who are the most dedicated in the most serious about their calling are also the ones who are the most sincere and dedicated pacifist because they are the ones who

understand what war costs and they understand war is never entered into. reluctantly. there's never anything to be enjoyed and when i see warbeck, species of entertainment that's when i began to have been comfortable feeling that there is such a thing as war. while i've written a great deal about the american civil war and about war similarly i'm not a military historian. i approach the subject of war with a a certain degree of hesitation and caution knowing the costs it imposes are simply beyond definition. it's been said that the war is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse famine the plague and

yes it is on that same level. the 19th century armies in our civil war misbehave they are in some sense not doing anything different than armies had done in our own time. though we are reluctant sometimes to admit it even our own forces have been modern warfare misbehaved. that is one of the sad eventualities of war. that does not mean we put our hands together pd and say nothig we can do about it. simplyly means let us always understand that war is a great calamity and even when the

result of war is a victory of to be paid is said great price. i'm going to add this is the way i think we approach even our own civil war. let us do it remembering the sacrifices, remembering all that was lost in the cauldron of war and all but it costs because the costs are more serious than any kind of human event. (202)748-8200 in the central timezones if you have a question or comment for historian allen

guelzo. if you can't get through on the phone mind to try text message 2-027-488-9034 text messages only. please include your first name in your city. .. . [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, boxes and boxes finally it's like building up behind a dan it. there comes a moment you just

sense, okay we are there. that is the moment i compare myself to a mississippi river gambler who spreads out all of the cards and starts putting them into piles. here's the subject hears this subject hears this subject. and they sort them out that way and in some respects the sorting process itself is the beginning of writing. when i sit down and write what i'm really doing is taking all the appropriately sorted cards and moving through them in the order that i have created. that is my technique. a little old-fashioned i suppose. but that has allowed me too accumulate tremendous amounts of resources that way. and i can go back to these cards over and over again. perhaps the question is also why four by six and not three by five? i cannot get enough on a three

by five card to pick i need the four by six. so the four by six has become my standard procedure is on the four by sixes that i record all of what i regard as the important material i've been encountering as i look through it. >> host: how many four by six cards for robert e lee and where are they stored right now? >> there are three boxes of them that are stored in the back room you can't see it, but they are there all marked robert e lee. they are there at the five boxes of four by six cards on gettysburg. another three boxes on lincoln's a emancipation. there's a lot of four by six cards back there. >> jim is in california please go to your question or comment. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. and professor thank you for a

wonderful discussion. just your thoughts please on the issue of reparation. especially since you are an expert on reconstruction. and what is the little medallion on your suit? >> the little pin is james mattis programs logo. because i am part of the james medicine program at princeton university it's one ofiv the has i wear there. i do the initiative on politics and statesmanship for the james mattis program. but, yes. that is the pin. >> host: that's based at princeton university, correct? speak to correct. the initiative in the james mattis program itself are all part of princeton university especially politics at princeton university. usfocusing on that if you're gog to have to remind me of your first question will affect. >> caller: reparations. >> guest: reparation thank you.

the question of reparations i could almost quaff this for it usually comes up about every 15 years. and most recently it came up in an article written by nicole hamilton jones in the wake of the project. just before that, both of these were passionate arguments onof behalf of i have some questions and it is something which seems to be normal. we have in fact engaged in reparations payments for a number of groups who have suffered harms and wrongs of the hands of government spread particular german government dealing with the israelif

government. our dealings with those who were unjustly assigned to near concentration camps during world war ii. there is a reparations unit there. reparations are part of the whole justice system of equity jurisprudence. what about reparations as it is promoted by a number of others. first of i think we have to work with what reparations were talking about. subsequent segregation and discrimination? those are two separate categories.

sometimes i think once a phase them together i don't think it's quite so easier because of t the tort i can use legal language is an tidily different tort. the first question i ask is what are we talking about? most of his about reparations for slavery. and here's were run into different reparations for slavery it looks like the .10 feet wide over a chasm 10 feet wide by 10 feet long. looks like they start to fall down. the first thing you want to ask is who should be paying reparations? here's where the question starts to get difficult. should be thed united states

government? because united states government in the united states government had a fugitive slave law but those on the same thing as enslavement statute. it wasn'tt these states that hae enslavement statutes. we sometimes forget it was a state based of matter. so should the federal government be paying slavery reparations. how can it because it is never involved in the area of slaves. what about the states? maybe we should single out those states with which were slave owning states. let's single out alabama as a slaveowning state.

the number of other states we don't think about slave states. that legalist leverett bartlett longer than alabama. alabama legalize slavery from the time it was a territory until the civil war. we are talking 50 or 60 years. my own home state of the common state of pennsylvania since it was founded in 1863 all the way up into the 19th century. though if the state bears responsibility, and the state of pennsylvania should bear much more responsibility compare reparations for slavery than alabama. which is soon as i've said it simply does not make a whole lot of common sense. we did in pennsylvania fight to end slavery in alabama. did it in pennsylvania on their own merits move to emancipate

and eliminate slavery? yes it did. but if we are just talking about the state basis of for reparations, then how can you evade the fact pennsylvania actually has more overtime than alabama? i get the oddity of that would jar many people. then you have a question of if you can't easily settle what entity is going to pay reparations as it come down to individuals? what about the descendents of slave owners? should they pay reparations? well, one of the difficulties is that many slave owners are not in the same economic position that there slaveowning forebears might've been. they may be truck drivers. are they going to build up eight reparations in any meaningful way? should they? then the other thing that is

connected with that is to whom do you pay reparations? obviously think the answer should be the descendents of slaves. that will eliminate for instance some important segments of america today. who are not the descendents of slaves i think of someone like colin powell. colin powell is not a descendent of slaves. how then do we deal with large numbers of black people who would be excluded from reparation settlement is that r?fair? that then leads into a related problem and that is in many cases so many slaves were themselves the offspring of the slaveholders. among the many crying injustices of slavery was the fact slavery was a system of sexualon pressu.

slave owners raped and misused their female slaves in the offspring of it were multiracial or biracial. well, if you are the descendent of o a slave, the irony is may also be the descendent of a slaveholder. in fact studies i've seen estimated that on average on this is f an on average figure, genetically speaking black americans are anywhere between 20 and 25% white descendent. that surprising and shocking statistic is itself a testimony to the widespread sexual exploitation that occurred under slavery. well, if you are a descendent about the slave and a

slaveholder, to whom are you paying what? there is a serious and critical problem there. how do you make that determination? i think the final problem has been confronted by reformations is what about the civil war? it is estimated the civil war cost somewhere between 608 and 50000. a mean has been established more or less from the figure of 750,000. that is a mean. statistically there are variations of the civil war related deaths, something on the order of 333 and 50000 lives were lost in the union cause. these were people who were fighting and dying to end

slavery. in their lives are price to pay to end it which is something lincoln captured. talks about the price of a war. and how this war was a judgment that was inflicted on both north and south for its complicity and slavery. and it said every drop of bloody drawn by the lash was being paid for by a block of while drop of blood by the sword. what is the value of those lives clean the life of abraham lincoln himself. how do we compute the value of those lives and against the reparations bill? i don't how to do that.

you cannot take that reckoning into your decision-making about reformations. if it's about getting a check then that my concern is that we have forgotten about the civil war itself. and i have heardon people say, i was at a conference at columbia university a number of years ago someone frankly stood up and said all i want to know is who is going to write me the check? that is the only consideration.l emily and forgotten about the civil war. in the lives black and white that were lost in that war. to eliminate slavery. so i asked what is the reckoning for that as w well? these are questions that do not have easy answers. but these are the questions which have to be asked if we are going to eventually come up with our honest answers. stewart were talking with alan

guelzo on book tv. david you are on. >> caller: thank you britt good afternoon professor. i am a native pennsylvanian. i am born and raised in cambridge graduate virginia military institute. i happen to marry a young lady whose great-grandfather was inhu the army and burned my hometown down. so as you can well imagine i have some mixed feelings about the rebellion. however, there are some questions that have been bothering me over the years. and i want to share them with you. my first was james buchanan a homosexual? was thaddeus stevens a martyr? with secretary stanton and necrophilia? i'm not asking you to answer those questions. but i do have a question i would like you to address.

and that is related to the election of 1864. it lincoln run as a third-party candidate? and if not was andrew johnson a true third-party president? thank you. >> might answer to that is going to be as, classic, yes and no. [laughter] and the reason i will put it that way is an 1864 lincoln is facing a reelection which has some serious odds against him. the war's been going on for three years. and especially by the summer of 1864 what is he got to show for? the confederacy is still fighting. lee is still defending richmond, sherman is not taken atlanta. a blockade runner's are still

getting through the federal navy blockade, for many people it looks like three years of war had been just about enough and it gotten us next to nothing. that meant the leaders of the republican party came to lincoln and said we are going to have to do something desperate. lincoln is a very, very eager to draw as many democratic votes as he possibly can to the side of his republicans but he is not sure they run just on the strength of republican votes are going to win. there are many people who are so dissatisfied they will shift those about to printer how do you appeal to the democratic voter who does not particularly like republicans republican policies but nevertheless wants to see w the war brought to a successful conclusion. well, what you do is read in the republican party.

so the republican party comes together for its convention in baltimore in the early summer of 1864 it adopts a new title. it calls itself the national union party. and while they renominate abraham lincoln, the republican nominee from 1860 as their presidential nominee they also select a democrat. andrew johnson to run as vice president. in 1860 the republican party have already done something like that. they nominate lincoln for the presidency. but they nominee his vice president annable hamlin of maine who had been a long time democrat. and just come over to the republican ranks because of his opposition to slavery. so you have certain foreshadowing. in 1854 becomes explicit.

lincoln is nominated as president on this national union ticket. his vice president is andrew johnson. the only senator from a confederate state that refused to go south in state in the south a lifelong democrat. in one whosat represents what it always been a democratic state. tennessee was the state of andrew jackson. on the other hand, during the war lincoln had appointed johnson to be military governor. johnson had done a reasonably good job. it wasn't perfect but he done a reasonably good job of it certainly better than some ofth the others he'd made for occupied areas of the south. in fact johnson himself had seaddressed delegations of black tennesseans and promising them i will be more moses i will literature the land off freedom. republicans heard that instead of what we are trying to

construct a say ticket that's going to appeal to democrats enter johnson is our man. so he gets a vice president jill nomination on the posters go up. i have a copy of one of them. union ticket you seeon abraham lincoln and for all practical purposes the leadership of this national union effort. [laughter] it is still the republican party who is getting them. but it is representing this very aggressive pr effort on the part ofof republicans to make a bipartisan appeal to democrats. so they run as the national union party. is it really a third party? no, it is really the republicans are carrying sign with a it.erent name on national union ticket. that is johnson a third-party

candidate? will no one would have thought that at that point because johnson despite his long career as a democrat seem to be uttering all the appropriate noises. though it goes forward way.ns lincoln is reelected and johnson is elected as his vice president. and at that point a whole national union thing disappears because they got what they wanted they got reelected and that is the last we hear of. it. so is it a third party? yes but only by the sense of using a different name for pr purposes. is it a third party no not really it's not a different party then it was before. it is simply a strategy for recruiting democratic votes. stewart four minutes left with our guest alan guelzo. f every in-depth guest were currently reading here are the swers. harry miller, jonathan edwards, john gardner's on fiction, bruce

catton just hollowed ground, danielalr howe out the culture of the american whigs harry jaffa crisis of the house divided. james boswell lef johnson. cuently reading the forex prophecy in the vaxe of black classical music. xena hits lsnd the hidden pleasures of an intellectual li i suzanne mettler and robert lieberman's wish for a time to discuss some of those i with a couple minutes left and went to get james in here. >> good afternoon. i hope you can hear me clearly. of course i have my tv muted. professor guelzo a first of all i want to associate myself with an early comment of steve from about 50 minutes ago.

you are as a retired teacher myself let me say you are like the very model of analysis and what used to c be called above l contextualizing. and i know some people probably get on you for lengthy answers. but context isry everything. i have been to gettysburg three times would have your book on my table with a few others even though i was a science teacher. but gettysburg is a magical place and it will hook you if you go once you will to go back i think. and your counterfactual dominoes you did about what would have happened if it had succeeded, i think another thing that popped into my head i had of lot of thoughts like your four by six card stack of comic canada and mexico might've gotten a little piece of the united states if it had been balkanized as you suggested. another book i am reading the

coldest winter on the korean or. he sits 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. >> host: james you got ten seconds of the only have 30 seconds and doctor guelzo. relate was a big miscalculation the part of the southern leadership that went to the civil war? so what and truly doctor guelzo you have 30 or 40 seconds. speak to the answers very direct, yes. they miscalculated they had the resources to carry out a war. they miscalculated that the north would respond by refusing to admit to the rebellion. and making it war. and they miscalculated by assuming foreign nations would come to the rescue and

intervene. but every moment they miscalculated. no one criticized more than that then robert e lee. and even on his way to the ceremony set appomattox he pointed this out. he said this is how i do. this is how i always knew that this wouldul end. >> host: you mention your four by six cards at your side for your current project which is what? >> it is another book about abraham lincoln. so i am returning to some original turf. so what were going to close with this text from al in newburgh, new york. who plays the bass that in the background? >> idea. i was a music major my first year in college. a composition major actually. i discovered what you sometimes painfully discover your first year in college. you just do not have enought talent. so i've had to do something else. that is what i've been doing

right up until this moment. but i still play it. when 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. oco c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of washington live and on demand. keep up with that biggest event with live streams hearings are from u.s. congress, white house events, the court, campaigns and more from the world of politics. all at your fingertips. you can also stay current latest episodes of "washington journal" and find scheduling information for c-span tv network and c-span radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play downloaded for free today. c-span now your front row seat to washington any time anywhere.

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