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general who commanded the confederate army in northern virginia. >> host: allen guelzo let's begin with your latest book, robert e lee a life, who was he be >> and that was the famed cavalry commander who served under watch washington and called one —- coined that first in war first in peace the other thing that people would have known robert e-the

was his service in the mexican war and especially on the staff of general winfield scott the fabulous amphibious invasion moving towards mexico city and served in many respects has eyes and ears performing over and over again feeds of reconnaissance so much so that afterwards scott made a confession for all the honors he had one and i great campaign in mexico city almost all credit goes to robert e. lee so those two things he would have been noted for before the civil war which taken together really don't do a whole lot to explain what we know about robert e. lee when it begins. >> but that he was not necessarily a good father?

>> a splendid cavalry commander to carry out the light cavalry raids with arkansas small jobs like that he was good like that but 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 ski resorts in bangladesh. they went to nothing. they bankrupted him. it also shows the wrong politics for virginia it was a virginia thomas thomas jefferson in 1813 he was beaten within an inch of his life by a pro- jeffersonian mob in baltimore and taking

those together he decided other climes were better so he left went to the west indies when robert never saw him again that is actually a major and dramatic moment in the life of driver easy that stays with him for the rest of his days. >> you write that we discovered a sense of shame. >> for many americans who are part of the mexican war, especially the invasion from veracruz to mexico city.

if especially famous civil word generals who reflected back and remembered mexico as a land of enchanted beauty that they ways wanted to revisit and alongside it was the sense of embarrassment that the war had taken place at all for one thing in the 19th century republics are not supposed to make war on republics and in some sense they were not supposed to make war at all maybe fight them the fighting against aggressive imperial ventures from czars and kings with the american public going to war , it was a source of disconnect for many young americans and the longer they served in the war the more it

wait on them and then robert e. lee comes to the conclusion i am ashamed of what we have done and and he isn't the only one curiously enough the same theme developed in ulysses s grant so these two men who in time almost become the and yang of civil war, had a similar experience with their service in mexico that the united states had done the wrong thing in invading mexico it was a longer and stronger power beating up on the smaller weaker one that should have been as a sister republic encouraging instead of making the object of war. >> serving under general winfield scott what is his role in the civil war quick.

>> winfield scott really is too old to take active complaint on —- active command of the united states army at that point and is in no shape at his age to take an active direction he sketched out a large-scale strategic plan sometimes known as the anaconda plan for how were should be conducted. but heto understood he was pass the time when he could take active participation in the field. to that end who he wanted to recommend as a field commander, one is robert e. leet scott never forgot the service during the mexican war and in the years between that and the civil war scott

develops a surrogate father figure. he assist in promoting members of the lee family one of his sons really gets a commission on the u.s. army largely because of scott arranges it so with that close relationship, nothing more cruelly disappointing than when lee came to visit him that april of 1861 to say he was going to turn down the offer of command and would resign the commission in the united states army it was said that winfield scott took to sofa weeping say you never want to hear the name of robert e-the again but it does give you a sense of the relationship between the two

but also the disappointment scott experienced when lee decided not to take up the command but he might want to exercise himself. >> was robert e-the well-known and the general public prior to the civil war? was he in the society pages? was there that back-and-forth in the press regarding his going to the confederates? >> to a minor degree he was not someone that enjoyed the public limelight. he did his level best to stay out of newspapers and the columns of people who are writing social matters. he himself will only venture into public view very very reluctantly. he simply dislikes it has no

taste for them people often remark he struck them as a very aloof and distant figure. there is a famous passage in the diary of mary chestnut of the civil war era. she met lee for the first time before the war and that is wheree the took his wife. mary custis lee was plagued by rheumatoid arthritis and that gave her some relief from the difficulties posed so without introduction said this man on a beautiful horse came to join us and look so distinguished i'm sorry i did not catch his name and then she found out

afterwards this was robert e. lee and she said everything about him was so fine looking. perfection. no-fault could be fan on —- could be found even if you hunted for one. is not that chestnut admire that. she actually liked his older brother betterbe because smith was a great companion and a fine man about town but not robert. she said can anybody say they know his s brother? i doubt he looks so cold and quiet and that was the image that he chose to cultivate he did not like being in the public clear and for that reason any discussion that takes place about the possibilities of his choice tends to occurn only in his immediate environment where he was living in alexandria and

across the river from washington dc and a few other places. is not a matter of nationaly discussion or attention he doesn't want national discussion or attention. >> back in march you were quoted if we wish to imperil the american experiment we can find a few more pastor that peril then by forgetting of scaring or demeaning who we were. i bring this up now with robert e. lee being removed those confederate memorials being taken down is that a mistake in your view? >> there is no easy answer for that. but about this question the

statues of robert e. lee. i have scenes not statues not only of him but other people taken down. on the one hand speaking as a pennsylvania person i am a yankee from yankee and i am the most unlikely of the biographers and as such i cannot fathom why you put up statues to people who committed treason. there are none that i am aware of of the revolutionary war battlefields but in 1776 there is a sense we cannot measure why we do that. think of robert e. lee raise

their hand againstn, the nation and sworn an oath to uphold. my father was a career united states army officer and took that out t that my son is an officer and took the oath. even when i joined the national council for the humanities in 2006 i took the oath.ly is not helped by the fact that when lee does make the decision to fight for the confederacy, it is fighting for a cause but also defense of human slavery and trafficking. on the one hand why should i feel anything except a sense of sympathy for the removal

the year we're talking about wholesale defacing of statues across the country including those of ulysses s grant and federal on —- federal.on —- frederick douglass, abraham h lincoln and in my own hometown of philadelphia, someone defaced a statue of a prominent abolitionist figure. what they thought they were doing, i don't know it seems to be a rat —- an act of irrational impulse so when i see the overall picture and the removal of statues this way see how much gets done by irrational impulse that's when they start to have hesitation

and anxiety that we are doing something a little less considerate and logical than wee think we are doing. back in 2017 when the charlottesville riot circled around the statue of robert e. lee so i sat down with the former student who is now a national park service interpretive officer. so we worked up a decision tree. how do you deal. >> that's not true. 1956 hungarian revolutionaries

fighting against the soviets the first day do is tear down the statue of joseph stalin. when american forces i but then for me to say i'm so sorry we don't have a statue of joseph stalin and saddam hussein? know. we are a d better plan it without them but 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 has to be more of a process that i have seen in some of the latest wave of statues removals and so we develop a decision tree that basically said let's ask a series of questions and depending on the answer to the

first we depend on the second and then so on. there is no guarantee in this decision tree and then we look at this logically and come to the conclusion as a result of aa process and not just impulse.f and if at the end of the process we decide this i think it endangers our understanding of history when we respond to these memorials and the monuments. shirley out of a quasi- irrational impulsiveness and that contains the real danger

because is not a big difference between that irrational impulse and the behavior of the mob and that is exactly what democracy and societies strive between and necessarily so. i would rather error on the side of caution and the result the process may be but at least we go through the process and that's what's important. >> the first line in your book about robert e. lee how do you write the biography of someone who commits treason? how do you guard against her own bias? >> because i ask first of all what does the constitution say about treason? on the one hand it is straightforward. treason consist of making and

i have some difficulty in looking at robert e. lee to see exactly those things you made war against the united states in fact it certainly gave aid and comfort to enemies and simply on those terms alone i cannot avoid the conclusion yes robert e. lee committed treason. you are saying that because you are yankee. no. because i amor reading the constitution for what it actually says. i cannot avoid i am not coming to write a biography of robert e. lee either but i do want to

come as frankly and soberly as i can. the most important question is about treason because in some respects it poses a real challenge of writing this type of biography because how do you? in some sense it is easy to write the biography of someone you easily admire washington, lincoln, churchill , but how do you deal with people whose lives are committed that you find reprehensible? but that you can't not to write about them or pretend they are not there. so how do you undertake the writing of difficult biography? it's what i set myself out to do in writing about robert e. lee conscious of the fact that

difficult biography calls for a different set of understandings and a different set of analytical tools then you might have been writing aboutt lincoln but you have to write about it with a different set of understandings. >> the author of 12 books was there an outcry from the public to jail robert e. lee? >> yes. especially after the assassination of abraham lincoln. in the few days that transpired families surrender and lincoln's murder there is a sense the war is coming to its conclusion we can be

openhanded and then comes the lincoln assassination thens it's like this is what we get for being openhandedge and generous so then there was a terrific backlash against jefferson davis who at that point was still on the landman would not be apprehended until may 10 a beds this is directed at leave. and then with the indictment for treason entered by the federal district court in your phone virginia. there by the way that is one of the few places in norfork that the war has just concluded and those ports were operating in most of virginia and the confederate courts but

not federal courts so this indictment comes the core in your full virginia - - norfork virginia but then is indicted by the federal court for treason and the assumption is this will precede a trial but that is where the problem begins to accrue looking initially just in terms of the constitution definition of treason we should have gone to a trial that there were some interesting tripwires one was the fact that ulysses s grant granted to me and the entire armys a parole.

literally but to know that your ethics to b be bothered or molested by the federal government.ef it's not entirely a get out of jail free card because if you violate the terms that all restraints are off that was given by ulysses grant and when he gets wind of the fact that the new president andrew johnson and his attorney general train with the idea to pursue robert e. lee for treason he feels his own word and pledge and honor is called into question and quite frankly tellsre johnson that if you persist i will resign that's what johnson could not

accommodate he had to back down in the face of that because no one stood higher in the estimate at m that moment. so that was one problem that heads off the idea of a trial but also all through the war a lot of questions about dealing with civil liberties handled by military tribunals. does this sound familiar or like guantánamo bay? it should and has govern those from the end of the civil war. the chief justice ofce the united states supreme court could not abide there was a parallel jurisdiction to a civilian jurisdiction in terms of the federal courts. there were military tribunals

and since those were operating and then one refuses to cooperate and then there is another block in the path on trial. and there are a number of other than the sure lawyer want to come with me but at the end the conclusion was it will not be worth the political trouble it will generate. so what we will do is just enter a do not prosecute. in fact in 1860 as andrew johnson is on his way out of the white house he issues a blanket amnesty that billy is

very anxious that this trial may go forward and you could be in serious danger and not until the amnesty comes down that we feel the cloud in large measure has went over his head but he takes it seriously and makes comments like a lot of my old friends don't want to be seen around me because i am just seen as such a drag on then they would be embarrassed to be seen with me. that weighed on him heavily. so the trial doesn't actually happen but nevertheless it could have what the result would have been we don't know. >> did grant and lee have any

relationship after the war? >> not really. so to express a great deal of gratitude. >> that as time goes by any type of relationship forge simply doesn't happen grant invites lead to the white house in 1869 but the interview only last 15 minutes i don't want to say philosophy but certainly but grant was hoping he couldn't list lee and his reputation and support lof reconstruction but he showed no enthusiasm for that so they part and never meet

again and there is a coldness there but i don't think can be described any other way. in fact when people will press lee in 1870 for his opinion her the greatest union general was that he faced during the war, his response is not ulysses s grant but george mcclellan. and if that doesn't surprise you then nothing well. by the way i should say that grant return the favor years later with his around the world tour as a new york journalist to accompany him put a similar question to grant who does he think is the confederate generals that is even more surprising but you almost have a sense he was doing tip for tap.

so what has been an interesting relationship never develops in that way so in 186060 and 1869 he will lend his influence more to people who are challenging ulysses s grant politically than otherwise. >> we could spend the entire two hours talking about property lee and his wife but we want to talk about your other books. prior to robert e. lee, a life. last book 2018. from that book "even the strongest measures taken by the u goveren during both the war and reconstruction

were deployed less with a view toward subjugating and more toward nudging them back into government. the great losers in the process were southern plaques on —- blacks. >> yes. i said that in 2018 and i haven't said anything sense to alter or change that. what we really hope a little too optimistically that the relevant teach lessons that l change political lines. of all the blood and treasure extended would open up the possibility but a reconstitution of the south

itself in the image of the north. and that did not happen. and we didn't know how to do this called reconstruction. there was no book you could go into reconstruction for dummies to give you a step-by-step process on how to do reconstruction. and with that improvisation not all were well thought out. so that is the first thing that you see coming out of reconstruction. we did not know what it was we were doing so it gives an

opportunity for the old southern leadership to seize political dominance of life in the south so they aim to subjugate black southerners toward they enjoyed to reconstitute a form of slavery without actually using that term and this reconstitution leads those southern states to segregation and violent rioting and especially in the 1898 wilmington north carolina riot with black people in the south and we can only look back on that and say why did

we take reconstruction more seriously? grant looked back from this time after the presidency and said the great mistake that we do not impose a military occupation that will last for a sufficiently long time to educate an entirely new political generation we were too optimistic or didn't want to spend thehe time or many because military occupation of the south even at the height of reconstruction those forces used on the south they did not amountnt to more.

so what can we put into the task of reconstruction? 20000 we would've had to do something much more serious along the lineses of world war ii and with the occupation of imperial japan and we did not do that in 1865 through 1877 and as a country and we learn the lesson in 1945 and the subsequent efforts of reconstruction have not shown the learning of that is entirely permanent and to take

military or diplomatic actions and have them produce a quick response and then we wash your hands and walk away. perhaps we should of thought before we got involved that what would be required was more intensive and expensive and requiring a great deal more from our society than we were willing to give. the problem posed by reconstruction offers us an interesting lesson in what is called nationbuilding. and with reconstruction we did a pretty poor job of it in many people, especially black people suffered as a result. >> how broke it was the south

in 1865 quick. >> the impact was worse than the great depression. there were big sways of destruction in various parts of the south. especially in this case of georgia by general sherman and his army was pretty grossly exaggerated they read the memoirs or gone with the wind get the notion that william tecumseh sherman took a torch to everything that stood in the state of georgia georgia that's not really the case. but if the armies were traipsing back and forth across them in one place they did was virginia. the south suffers economically by the loss of the capital invested in slavery and

invested in farm and humans and animals and mounted to those estimates that i seen $13 billion and yet the south could have recovered much more quickly than if it had committed itself to try to re-create that semi feudalism of the slave system. in a sense a great punishment and that is self and ministry deciding what it really wants to do is to walk away from industrial cannibalism in the 1h century trans-atlantic

economy that was a semi- futile agrarian state. and that will take another 80 years to c change? so the south became its own worst enemy in reconstruction. >> as you mentioned you were born in japan to an army officer then you get a masters in divinity and finally with the history aspect come at what point in your life do you find yourself fascinated by this era? >> i o was always fascinated by it i remember badgering my mother to buy a comic book

version of the red badge of courage of course that introduces a storyry about the civil war in that particular comic book had a 16 page insert asom a quick comic book history of theom civil war. i say comic book thinking of superman and that is a serious piece of work. and it fascinated me. so my grandmother at the turn of those have witnessed on decoration day.

with a little blue jackets in the little blue caps would come to the schools and now is a real meaning of the civil war.oh and not what they are trying to teach you it was about the end of slavery and the preservation and that was the understanding of the war that you may say that i grew up with. i never grew up with property lee. and then to write as southerners but i grew up understanding the loss cause

to be that but the real story belonged to the lincoln emancipation the preservation of thehe union. but i acquire that interest very early on and as you can see them still>> talking about it. >> wet will show that in a moment that welcome to in-depth for january history and a war historian is our guest we want to hear from you as well you can talk with him and make comments.

go ahead and start making the comments we will get to your calls in just a few minutes. but then also writing several lincoln books.

and then redeeming the great emancipator in 2016 with reconstruction and from a different point of view robert e. lee let's go to the year of 1863 which kicked off with the emancipation proclamation a tumultuous year in ourat nations history that redeeming the great emancipator, the emancipation proclamation delivered january 1st 1863 is surely the unhappiest of all of abraham lincoln's greatt presidential papers. word unhappiest is what you focused on?

>> that's what jumped out to me. [laughter] >> that was a deliberate and provocative strategy on my part. and i say unhappiest basically because while we love the gettysburg address people still memorize it after all it is only 272 words, and we adore the second inaugural especially with that eloquent conclusion of malice toward none and charity for all who can disagree with that but then with the emancipation proclamation the first word puts us off because the first word is whereas. who ever thought a great state

document with the word whereas it sounds so legalistic. it is. so that is one of the problems people have with the emancipation proclamation that the language of it is very legal. no one less than carl marx made the observation but it reads like a summons sent by one county courthouse lawyer to another and it does read that way. and now to scratch their heads and say why? may be the single greatest deed. and then to suddenly drop back

and that has led a number of people to drawco the conclusion their heart really was not in it but then could have produced something equally eloquent. and this is what led richard to make them memorable comment, probably the comment most memorably attached that it had all the moral grandeur of the bill of lading and in truth it did. so there is a reason why people stumble with the emancipation proclamation because it is legalistic the great eloquence what does that mean? another reason people are

unhappy with the emancipation proclamation is that it's dated january 1st, 1863. why didn't as soon as the civilco war began did lincoln not pick up the pen? what was he waiting for why do we go from 1861 through 1863 now suddenly he decides he will issue the emancipation proclamation? so people say he really does have another agenda. he was trying to enlist of the sympathy of the european nations. he was trying to evoke more response from the north and respond to sponsor the war. it isn't a noble gesture at all but they also believe it

doesn't go far enough. so the emancipation proclamation will free slaves of the l students rebellion will include the border states for the slave states that remain loyal to the union missouri, delaware kentucky and maryland. and won't touch slaves and places in virginia by military forces are louisiana occupied by military forces. what is going h on? but instead you have a bill of exception and people scratch their head and say this cannot be for real or represent a gesture on the part of abraham

lincoln. and then to multiply over the years to the point that this i say the emancipation proclamation is the unhappiness document people cannot figure out what's going on and in many cases draw the worst possible conclusion. let me dispel some of that as quickly as i can. first of all, yes emancipation proclamation is legalistic in ways the gettysburg address is not because the gettysburg address is the dedication remarks lincoln compose for dedicating a cemetery at gettysburg. you cannot take the gettysburg address into a court of law and do anything about it. and we cannot quote that the emancipation proclamation is

different it changes the legal status of approximately 3 million human beings if it sounds legalistic that can be taken into court is legalistic? very because it has legal heavy lifting to do. so why at the same time is emancipation proclamation full of exceptions? and at theng very beginning of the proclamation as a role as commander of chief idea forces of the united states. exercising his war powers. you cannot exercise were powers against the w border states the states that still

legalize slavery. but those were powers do not extend their and then to emancipate slaves on the strength of the emancipation proclamation you can be sure at 9:00 o'clock the next morning slaveowners would have been at the federal courthouse demanding injunctions and those that have added about the supply on —- united states supreme court and he was the chief justice at that moment? the author of the infamous dread scott decision. he would have made mincemeat of the emancipation proclamation and of lincoln's

were powers. he cannot afford to have that happen. is he trying to cheat? know he is trying to protect emancipation that is emerging from the chief justice. it has the unhappy reputation and there are serious reasons it is what it is. but if the emancipation proclamation reads like a bill

of lading then yes it is a bill of lading for a cargo of freedom headed to the port of emancipation. >> coming back to the of 1863 but the phone lines are led up we want to hear from our viewers. jonathan from los angeles. good morning. >>caller: good morning. the professors books are hialways fascinating and it just tells you the rams are playing baltimore but we are watching this at 11:00 o'clock. [laughter] so i went to ask one review of the book said he wrote a revisionist history. and i am curious to have him

explain what is meant by revisionist history it seems like anytime a historian rights something it is revisionist and i would like to hear his thoughts. thank you for the program. host: do remember which book that was? >>caller: it was a review of his book on generally one —- general lee. >> i think he already provided the answer that every time a historian sat down and rates history, you are doing a revision. no historian simply duplicates what has been said before. every historian comes with new ways of looking at things and questions that you ask. in my case coming at robert

e-lee, i am interested as a great general of the o civil war and the commander of the confederate armies. one could not be interested in the civil war and not pay some attention to that. now be the first to admit what draws me to the is other considerations. robert e. lee for almost 30 years ofr his career was an army engineer and an officer of the court on —- corps of engineers and much of his career was devoted to engineering projects his first project out of west point was to lay the foundation what of today is in the savannah estuary.

he was w assigned from there to the construction in the main ship channel and assigned to st. louis spending four years working on rebuilding the st. louis waterfront. from there he goes to fort hamilton in new york and the chief engineer at that post on the tip of long island where today crosses over to long island and there from there goes to the mexican war and then back to construction and from there to become superintendent of west point which is still in engineering school and he is a superintendent there he spends his life as an engineer. giving myself a crash course in engineering in order to begin to understand and

especially the particular kind of engineering that we spent most of his time doing which is coastal engineering as subspecialty within itself. so i want to understand lee as someone more than just four years as a confederate general but to understand the 30 years he spent as a civil engineer. what drives me to that? because i am trained as an intellectual historian. ideas and the way people think. i took my phd at the university of pennsylvania under two great intellectual historians. virginia. i approached lee with exactly that way with trying to understand him. i want to understand how the man's mind works and to do that i have to understand his profession which was that of an

engineer. that's an interesting way of coming at robert e. lee because not many of biographies of robert e. lee spend a whole lot of time talk about career before the army during the civil war. those 30 years don't even take up the first volume. another famous biography of lee that was written by one of freeman's accolades,he first 30 years to lee in 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 revisionist

and i confess to the deed but i confess to the deed that every historian who does this kind of work seriously is going to be a revisionist. .. .. the collective works of lincoln. or if you want to write about grant, you have the 27 of the papers of ulysses s grant.

they are there and easily available and beautifully edited. there is no standard edition of these letters in these papers. that is a problem because lee was a compulsive letter writer. haywood wrote i would estimate somewhere between 6,008,000 letters in his life. only there are a lot of them but they are scattered all over the place. little petty packets of lee papers here little penny packet salih papers there. 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 process of this. sometimes in your making interesting new discoveries, you are going to revise the conclusions people come to earlier that makes you a revisionist. of its tools or sources down to work in a serious way is really performing visual is in. is it what's done sloppy and careless fashion? with consideration aforethought. i would like to believe i am in the second category. cracks judy in new jersey you are on with historian.

cracks yes, thank you very much. i like to bring us back to the last call on the origin of the last call. i'm in the middle of the american minds the failure of the genteel elites. and it mentions books by charles francis and hillary adams. the potential origin and i was one if you could speak more to that. thank you very much. cracks judy, the lost cause could be said to have strong april 9, he 65 the appomattox courthouse. this is when lee issues 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 i enjoyed your can revealed in life, we can and intimate portrait book.k. i'm reading a 36 page bibliography and 82 pages of notes. the acknowledgment section includes the mention of use of four by six card. is that how you assembled and crafted the 434 pages of text? [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 >> you sent okay, we are there and i can't pair myself to mississippi river spreads out the cards and puts them in piles, here's the subject and the sorting process is the beginning of writing and when i

write, i am taking the cards and moving through them in the order i created them. a little old-fashioned, i suppose that's allowed me accumulate tremendous amount of resources and i can go back to these cards over and over again. why not three by five? i can't get enough on a three by five. i need four by six so it's become my standard procedure and four by sixes i record what i regard as important material as i work through it. >> how many cards and where they stored right now he works to.

>> there are three boxes stored in back room, you can't see it but they are there marked robert e lee with five boxes of four by six cards in gettysburg and three boxes on blinken's emancipation proclamation. as a lot of boxes of four by six cards. >> jim, go ahead with your question. the issue of reparations especially because you are an expert on reconstruction and what is the medallion on your suit? >> the little pen is the james madison program's logo because i'm james madison at princeton university. it's one of the hats that i wear

there. yes, all right. that's the pin, now -- >> that's at princeton university? >> the initiative and james madison program itself are part of princeton. >> thank you. >> now, focusing on that, you are going to have to remind me your first question. >> reparations. >> reparations, thank you. the question of reparations 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 israeli government. i think of our dealings with those who were unjustly assigned to near concentration camps in world war ii, japanese americans, the reparations agreement there. reparations are in a sense part of justice system, so what about reparations as it is promoted by

nicole hannah jones, by coats and by a number of others running back over many years. first of all, i think they have to work with the definition of what we are talking about. are we talking about reparations for slavery or are we talking about reparations for subsequent segregation and discrimination because those are too 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 it's an entirely different tort. the first question is what are we talking about, most talks are reparations for slavery and here

is where we start to run into difficulties. reparations for slavery looks like the plank, 10 feet wide over a casm and the plank is 10 feet long and you put weight on it and things start to fall down. the first thing that you want to ask is, well, who should be paying reparations? here is where the question starts to get difficult, should it be the united states government? well, why because the united states did not hold slaves? the united states did not pass slavery or enslavement legislation. the united states government had law and it was the state that is had enslavement statutes. slavery was a state-base matter, not a federal government matter.

so should the federal government be paying slavery reparations? here is a major question. how can it because it didn't own any slaves. let's single out alabama and the state of alabama should pay reparations. let's also remember that there were other states that we don't think of as slave states. alabama legalized slavery from the time that it was a territory until the civil war. so we are talking 50, 60 years. my own home state, common wealth of pennsylvania legalized slavery from the time it was founded all the way up to 19th

century. so if the state has responsibility, the state comes away, much more responsibility for paying reparations for slavery than alabama which simply does not seem to make a whole lot of common sense. in pennsylvania, in fact, fight to end slavery in alabama. pennsylvania on its own merits move to emancipate and eliminate slavery, yes, it date. how can you evade the fact that pennsylvania has more guilt over time than alabama and yet the oddity of that would jar many people. then you had a question of, well, if you can't easily settle who is going to, what entity is

going to pay reparations, does it come down to individuals? what about the descendants of slave owners, should they pay reparations? well, one of the difficulties is that many slave owners, many descendants of slave owners are not in the same economic position. to whom do you pay reparations? obviously, you think the answer should be the descendants of slaves? yeah, well, that will eliminate, for instance, some important segments of black america today who are not descendants of slaves i think someone i think someone like colin powell, not a descendent of slaves.

how do we deal with large numbers of black people excluded fromlu reparations? is that there? that leads into the related problem, in many cases that is so many slaves were themselves the offspring of the slaveholders.ho among the many crying injustices of slavery was the fact that slavery was under sexual oppression and slaveowners raped and misused female slaves and the offspring were like racial, biracial. if you are the descendent of a slave, the irony is you may be the descendent of a slaveholder. studies i've seen estimate that

on average, and this is on average, genetically speaking, black americans are anywhere between 20 -- 25% white by descendent and that surprising shocking statistic is itself a testimony to the widespread exploitation occurring under slavery. if you are a descendent of both the slave and a slaveholder, to whom are paying what? is a serious critical problem there, how do you make that determination? i think the final problem that has toil be confronted by reparations is what about the civil war? is estimated that the civil war

cost 6150 -- 850,000 lives. a meme has been established around the figure of 7,150,000 but that's only him. statistically there are variations in that period of the civil war related deaths something on the order of 330 to 350,000 lives were lost in the union. these are people fighting and dying to end slavery and their lives were a price paid which is when he talked about the price of the war and how the war was a judgment inflicted on both north and south for its complicity in slavery and he said every drop

of blood drawn by the lash is being paid for by a drop of blood drawn by the sword. what is the value of those lives? how do we compute value of those lives including the life of abraham lincoln himself? how do we compute the values of those lives and reckoned it against reparations? the house but also i know you can't not take that reckoning into your decision-making about reparations. if all reparations is getting a check in my concern is we've forgotten about the civil war itself. i have heard people say i was at a reparations conference number of years ago someone said all i

want to know is who's going to write you the check? if that is the only consideration in we've forgotten about the civil war and lives, black-and-white, that were lost in that war to eliminate slavery so i ask, what is the reckoning for that? these are questions that do not ghave easy answers but these ae the questions i think which have to be asked if we eventually come up with honest answers. >> we are talking with alan here tv. david in mechanicsville virginia, you are on. >> thank you and good afternoon, professor. i'm a native pennsylvanian, born and raised in chambersburg, a graduate from military institute. i happened to marry a young lady whose great-grandfather was in the army who burned my hometown

down so you can imagine i have mixed feelings about the rebellion. however, there questions bothering me over the years and i'll share them with you. my first one was a homosexual, a murderer with secretary stanton, a necrophilia. i'm not asking you to answer that but i do have a question i would like you to address related to the election of 1864. did we can run as a third-party candidate? if not, was andrew johnson a true third-party president? >> my answer to that is going to be a classic. yes and no.

[laughter] the reason i'll put it that way is in 1864, lincoln is facing reelection which has serious odds against him. the war has been going on for three years and especially the summer of 1863 -- 64, what does he have to show for? the confederacy is still fighting, we still defending richmond. sherman has not taken atlanta, blockade runners are still getting through the federal navy blockade. for many people looked like three years of war had been just about enough and got us next to nothing. that meant the leaders of the republic and party came to lincoln and said they're going to have to do work. lincoln is very eager to draw as many democratic votes as he possibly can s to the side of hs

republicans. he'spu not sure if they run on e strength of republican votes that they will win because there are many people so dissatisfied the course of things that they will shift the votes so how do you appeal to the democratic voter who doesn't particularly like republicans or republican policy but nevertheless want to see the war brought to a successful conclusion? what you do is rename the republican party so when the party comes together for convention baltimore in the early summer of 1864, it is a new title that calls itself national union party. while they renominate abraham lincoln, recovered and nominee as their presidential nominee, they also select a democrat in

this case, seven democrat, andrew johnson to run as vice president. in 1860 the republican party had already done something like that. they nominate lincoln for the presidency but his vice president hamlin of maine who'd been a long time democrat and only just come over into the republican ranks because of opposition to slavery. so you have a certain foreshadowing but in 1864, it's explicit. lincoln is nominated as president on this national union ticket in his vice president will be andrew johnson, the only senator from confederate state who refused to go south, stayed the senate, a lifelong democrat and what's always been a democratic statement.

appointed johnson to the military governor and had done a recentlyb, good job. occupiedt, areas of the south ad johnson himself addressed delegations of black tennesseans promising i will be your moses, i will lead you. republicans heard that and thought if what we are trying to construct a ticket to build democrat, andrew johnson is our man. he gives the vice presidential nomination and posters go up, i have a copy of one, national union ticket, abraham lincoln andd andrew johnson. the leadership of this union effort is still the republican

party. who was getting who? it is representing this very aggressive pr effort on the part of republicans to make a bipartisan appeal to r democrats so they run as the national union party. is it really a third-party? no, it's the publicans carrying a sign with a different name on it, national union ticket. as johnson a third-party candidate, no one would have thought that at the time because johnson, despite his long career as democrat seems to be uttering the appropriate republican. [background noises] so it goes forward that way, lincoln is reelected and johnson is elected as vice president. at that time the national union think disappears because they thought reelected and it's the lastut we hear of it.

>> so is it the third-party? only in the sense of using a different name for pr purposes. is it a third-party? not really because it's not a different party than it was before, a strategy for recruiting democrats. >> every in-depth guest we asked for their favorite books and their currently reading in here areis answers. jonathan edwards, john gardner's on moral fiction, bruce, is hallowed ground, daniel walker howe, political culture of the american legs. crisis of a house divided and jas boswell, life of jns. currently reading joseph horwitz theorax prophecy and the fate of black bicycle music.

lost in thought, hidden pleasures of intellectual life and suzanne miller and robert fourth, the recurring crisis of american democracy. i f wish we had time to discuss some of those but we've only got a couple of minutes. >> i hope you can hear me, and got my tv muted. professor, i want to associate myself with an early comment from about 50 minutes ago. as a retired teacher myself, you are the model of thoughtful analysis and what used to be called -- above all, contextualizing and i know some people probably get on you for answers but context is everything. i've been to gettysburg three times, i have your book on cable

with a few others, gettysburg is a magical place and will hook youk. if you go once, you will want to go back i think. your counterfactual dominoes about what would happen it had succeeded, i think another thing that popped in my head, i've got a lot of thought like your four by six cars stuck up, canada and mexico might have gotten a piece of the united states if it was balkanized as you suggested, another book i am reading is the coldest winter on the korean war he says at the beginning of the chapter perhaps all war is in some way or another the product of miscalculations. i guess maybe a good way to wind this up unless you want to talk about the instrument -- >> you got ten seconds and then we only have 30 seconds doctor

kelso. >> was there a big miscalculation on the part of the southern leadership that led to the civil war? >> truly, you do have about 30, 40 seconds. >> the answer is very direct, yes, they miscalculated utterly. they had resources to carry on a war, miscalculated the northwood respond by refusing to admit the rebellion and making it work and miscalculated by assuming foreign nations would come to their rescue and intervene. every moment they miscalculated and no one criticized them more than that and robert e lee and even on his way to the ceremony he pointed this out and said is how i knew, how i always knew this would and. >> you mentioned your four by six card tigers had for your current project which is what?

>> on is a book about abraham lincoln. i am returning to some original turf. >> we will close with this text orfrom al in newburgh, new york. who plays the base in the background? >> i do. i was a music major my first year in college, composition major actually. i discovered what you sometimes discover your first year in college, he just don't have enough talent. [laughter] so i had to do something else and that's what i've been doing right up until this moment but i still play. >> professor alan kelso has been our guest for the past two hours talking about the civil war era and some of his 12 books. we appreciate your time. >> 's american history to be saturdays on c-span2 exploring the people and events to tell the american story 8:00 p.m.

eastern on lectures in history, a college professor talking about women's rights and changing political power during the american revolution in the early years of republican. 9:30 p.m. eastern of the presidency for 13 days in october of 1962, the u.s. faces the threat of nuclear war for the stupid union the cuban missile crisis using tapes of president kennedy deliberating options, marked detailing players and negotiations. exploring the american story, watch american history to be saturdays on c-span2 invite a full schedule on your program guide watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. ♪♪ >> middle and high school students, your time to shine. participate in this year's c-span got documentary repetition in light of