it. i will say when it took place back in 1961, i was a sophomore at moore house college in atlanta georgia. i was picketing and going to jail and being tear gassed and busy trying to register a few people to vote without getting everybody killed. so, i don't have any memory of the sesqisen senial, i was trying to carry out the promises provided in the 14th amendment that was passed after the civil war. let me also observe that as we begin the 150th celebration of the american civil war, there is an african-american president of the united states named barack obama who was elected with 66 million votes at a time when there were only 19 million african-americans registered to vote in the united states. and i tell people sometimes, if all 19 million of us lived in chicago and can vote three times the way they do in chicago, mccain still would have beat us.

so, president obama had to reach across the aisle and find an awful lot of other people to vote for him in order for him to get elected president of the united states. he did what harriett tubman did with the underground railroad, what frederick douglas did with the resistance movement, what african-american soldiers did to say that in the a better beginning. i think that right there puts a very important opening on how we begin this in the united states and changed for the better. i think the arc of the universe, the arc is long and bends toward justice. let me just back up and say the african-american civil war museum located in washington, d.c. has 209,451

african-americans who joined president lincoln in the civil war to help him save the nation, keeping united on one flag and end slavery. the monument lists the name of 2,500 hispanic surnames. we -- that's important because there was an all-hispanic regiment in the civil war that came out of new mexico. these names were mixed up with african-american troops. there are also the names of white officers who commanded soldiers. those names are listed among regiments. one is robert shaw that you know from the movie "glory" the neighborhood where the monument exists is named for shaw. there's shaw elementary, and howard university named for general howard, and over there is the will yamd lord garrison school. this whole neighborhood is related to what happened after the civil war. i wanted to point that out to say that this monument now represents more of what the

neighborhood looks like. it's an integrated monument with the names of whites, african-americans, blacks and latinos and looks like theat hp obama get elected president. united states. now, we opened a new exhibit back iuly, which now includes a number of things among them is a bill of sale. has already referred to i. for a woman sold for $1,000 back in 1844. if you put $1,000 times 3.9 million slaves, the country whe civil war started, that's almost $4 billion in 1860 money. slavery is never going to end w. it's just never going to end without a war. now, so -- because it's too important to american economy. one writer said it represented 72% of the economy here in the country that include not just the value of the slaves, but the cotton they pick and the corn and tobacco and they get put finance it, insurance companies that insure them.

the whole economy is tied up with this thing. you get this slavery tied up in the civil war. now, one of the things i brought with me today. i brought the declaration of sessio-e on from south carolina which i like to read. i thought i would read that today because south carolina says this war is about -- they started the war. by the way, if a fight were to break up in this room right now, the police get here and settle everything. first is, who started this? president lincoln didn't start this war. as a matter of fact, president -- president lincoln hadn't even been swornet they just started this war. as a matter of fact, when the war started, when frederick douglas first heard the war started, douglas said, i wish the north had started this war. in other words uction i wish they had cared enough about us and our freedom so they would have started this war. but in case they didn't care

enough to start, thank god for the slave holder. that's right. somebody had to start this. you can't finish what you don't start. somebody had to start this. so he said, somebody had to start this. and harriett tubman said, god ain't going to let president lincoln win until he does the right thing. south carolina start this war and they say the constitution of the united states and fourth article provides as follows -- this is south carolina's article. no person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof escaping to another shall consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from service or labor be discovered upon claim of the party to whom such service/labor may be due. they go on to say that -- they say if that provision -- as a matter of fact, let me finish the next sentence. this stipulation was so material

material to the compact. they're talking about the compact that form this is nation. that without it, that compact would not have been made. the greater number of the contracting party is at the time hell slaves. they previously in missed the events as a stipulation by making a condition in ordinance of government of this territory creeded by virginia which now composed the states north of the ohio river. now, they go on to talk about -- they name these states, by the way, that are violating this -- that are violating the fugitive slave act which will not allow them to go into their territory to collect their slave when slaves run away. pe name these state. maine, new hampshire, rhode island, new york, all these northern states, that are violating that section of the constitution, which they signed onto when they joined the union. they say -- south carolina says, we didn't leave the union. the union left us.

and therefore -- now, i don't know david blight, historians can read this and say the civil war was not about slavery. i don't know what they were reading y'all. if i found it y'all can find it. texas was even more ridiculous. texas says slavery was important to whilt civilization. that's right. mississippi said, we can't pick this cotton. it's too hot. we can't stand the fiber. have you to have black people down here. so, first before we can -- so, the civil war was about slavery. the people that started it said it was about slavery. they formed this secondly, there will come a time when president lincoln realizes he can't win this war without doing something about slavery. he uses the emancipation proclamation, extraordinary powers of the president which the president has when somebody declares war because these states had formed their own

country and they were committing -- they had committed treason against the united states. he issues the emancipation proclamation september 22nd, 1862, to take effect january 1st. having been a council member here in d.c. for some years, i can tell you, i know when you pass a law, have you to give people time to get adjusted so there's new law. you give them time. so from september till january 1st is almost 100 days. and he says to the south, if you put down your arms, come back into the union by january 1st, things will be as they were. what does as they were mean? you can keep your slaves. if you don't do that by january 1, paragraph six says persons of suitable condition will be brought into the union army. no, i was born in georgia and i grew up -- i told you i was the civil rights movement there. and i think this is one of the have so much trouble accepting this. because the state of south carolina, georgia and mississippi have more

african-americans living there than they have slaves -- mean, white people. this emancipation proclamation only applied to those states in rebellion. only applied to those states. what does that paragraph mean? persons of suitable condition brought into the union army. i'm going to arm the slaves. on the wall of the african-american there's 150,000 were slaves when the war started. 150,000, 3 out of 4 of slaves were in the war when the war started. they literally fought their way from slavery to freedom. not only did president lincoln need these people to win the war. robert smalls who starts out -- who's from the great state of virginia -- i mean, of south carolina. he starts out working for the confederacy. he was hired out by his owner to work for -- contract laborerer working for the confederacy. he wasn't being paid. he gets a chance to turn this over to the union army.

you know this story. he becomes a soldier in the union army. he goes back home, ee electriced to state legislature and eventually to the united states congress. as a comeman. so, those people who had this myth about african-americans joining the con fet rat army. they weren't about to arm them because they know what happened to robert smalls, right? he not only shows up at union army, he showsed up with his own weapon, his ship. >> that's right. >> and he becames -- he shows up with his own weapon. he brought his own weapon to the fight. not only did he bring his knowledge but he brought his weapon to the fight. robert small showed it all. they weren't about to arm these people. not only does president lincoln need these african-americans to help him win this war -- by the way, by the time they put richmond under siege during the civil war, the united states general grant assembles the 25th army corps, which is 25,000

african-american soldiers. their part of the siege of richmond. and they are chasing robert e. lee when he leaves richmond on his way to apomapics. they flank him on the southwest side and he's trying to break out and go down to johnson and north carolina. he looks out of the side, he sees 25,000 after can american soldiers. at that point lee had fewer than 20,000 men in his own army. that's right. one writer said, david blight, that general grant pulled soldiers back so robert e. lee wouldn't have to suffer the dignity of surrendering to an african-american regiment. that's the kind of healing. first you win the war, now have you to win the peace. so, you don't want to offend the dignity of the south, number one. well, sometimes we can manipulate history to get it to go the way we want to. and i guess people must have thought we were never going to learn how to read these

documents. let me make one other point. let me make one other point about this. that is, that the -- that -- i said not only did president help him win the war but he also needed them to win the peace. because if you read over further into the south carolina document, each one of these r ates called themselves into h state. they rescinded the articles of confederation in meetings to -- what they call this union, to leave the union. how are you going to get those states back in the union? you got to pass the 15th amendment. the only loyal people to that are going to vote to rejoin union are african-americans. most are been disenfranchised. when you commit treegsen against the united states, you have to be pardoned before you vote again. if you're thinking about that, you better rethink it.

so if any of you are thinking of joining that candidate who's talking about -- texas succeeeding from the union. you don't do that. you lose your citizenship. you so, i just wanted to share that story with you because what we have to do is get the story straight how this happened. the congress passes 13th, 14th, 15th mdmentes to the constitution. 13th ends slavery. 14 lt makes african americans citizens of the skates. you have the dred scott decision. we get following that in 1896, a ferguson decision that says that plessy versus ferguson that says you can have equality -- you have have freedom and citizenship where you have what

they call absolute equality among citizens in a separate but equal society. i was born in that separate and equal society but it was that separate and equal society that i was fighting in in 1961 when they had the centennial of the emancipation -- of the the civil war. i'm happy to be able to sit here today as we start to discuss the sesqui centennial -- 150 years of civil war at a time when there is an african american president of the united states. it proves not only that this war was important and he ended slavery and african-americans played a pivotal role in that it was also important in keeping this country united under one flag. i'm glad to know we live in a country where you can have robust discussion about the direction this country is going in and we're all now at a point where we can all vote for -- and by vote, by voting, express our opinion about the direction that

this america ought to go in, this land that we love. so i'm pleased to be able to join in this discussion because i think it is a great step -- leap forward to what we have seen here in america over the last 100 years. this is a road we're all traveling on. i think it's really -- it can't be turned back. we've gone too far to turn it back. not only is america a country that we can be proud of here on these shores but people all over the world now look up to this country. for leadership and for dedication and directi sy that have worked out our differences here enough so that now we have a chance, at least we feel like we have as much of a chance as anybody else, at making this country the country it would be. >> thank you very much. i look forward to your questions. >> thank you.

>> brief response to the brilliance of these presentation. it's not easy. this panel of five people, includes people who were born in the states of virginia, georgia, ohio and massachusetts. i think my memory of their background is correct on that point. you're in michigan. >> yes, sir. >> that's even worse. the fact that we're talking about these things is very important. even more important is the fact that we identify to some real extent with the places of our upbringing. that is especially a characteristic of southerners, so-called provincial mind. as i think about historians who have brought this meeting together, though, i feel that i would like to recommend that more of us americans read their

works in such a way as to let our public rhetoric match better the historical conclusions of those works. i have some suggestions of some issues or parameters along which we ought to talk better in this society about the civil war. the first has already been covered pretty well. namely, respect for the cost of the war to both sides. i sometimes have to remember that of the 620,000 men who lost their lives in the civil war, on the battlefield or afterwards, some 60% of them were northerners. north paid the costs in a way a lot of southerners don't acknowledge. this came home to me not so long ago. well, just before i came to new york city to live in a talk i

gave to a sunday school class, i said in talking to prayer, christians like to pray, forgive us our dents. maybe is it time for atlanta to forgive the sins of general sherman against the city of atlanta? and i think you would not believe how strong a unanimous chorus of no came forward from that sunday school class. atlantans remember their city was destroyed. not only in the northern memory is that destruction acknowledged very much. i can assure you that southerners remember that. and as all of us remember those things in our past that were most hurtful, not quite so understood, especially in the southern memory, are some of the statistics that have been enunciated in this panel.

if 70% of america's wealth was invested in slaves and in cotton plantations, when both plantations and the slave status were destroyed, a lot of wealth went down the drain. to say that it was well lost is what very few of us in the south have been trained to say. and it's high time we did say it. and in that respect, there's a second thing i'd like to think we need more respect for. that is, the benefits of northern victory in the war. one of my favorite people is that veteran of the confederate armies in gaston county, north carolina, who in 1940 died and it was said in his obituary that he had often been known to remark that he was glad the north won the war because it saved our union.

now, that's a kind of a far western north carolina view because there were a lot of republicans out there during the civil war. out there during the civil war. but to be glad for defeat is not easy. some have said that learning what defeat is, is really a kind of a southern specialty, a specialty that i think has a lot of pertinence to this country's wrestle with the vietnam war. at any rate, to be glad that your opponent won the war is not an easy thing to come by. the problem with this memory for some of us in the south is we're not glad enough for others who won the war in a different dimension. and that is these four million slaves. i have to say as a native virginian, i was disappointed in the government of my native state who last spring, i believe, declared that it was

time to have a month of honor to the confederate armies. do remember that there was anything in his declaration which suggested how glad virginians ought to be that the victory of the north and the wa athings, has put black legislatulare now for the first time in history. the ultimate output was along that line. i look forward that when -- to the time in which a governor of virginia on january 1, 2013, will celebrate the emancipation proclamation on behalf of all virginia that it seems to me would be a way of respecting the real benefits of the outcome of the civil war. prident ayers has said about the city of

richmond, where three years of my graduate education took place at that other union theological seminary. richmond is a city which is on the way toward acknowledging its history with the help of some people who are in this room. perhaps the best symbol of that that i know of is statue of arthur ash on monument avenue which was put up after a great political local discussion he's on that monument avenue as sort of the last statue in a long line of confederate generals who are standing up there on their horses too. it was not those confederate generals that liberated the ancestors of arthur ash. it was ulysses s. grant and company that liberated those ancestors. that statue now stands there is altogether fitting, especially

for underlining the ambiknewitgf a great deal of our memories of the war as southerners. that's where i wish we could get more into our public rhetoric, and that is honest ambivalence and willing to be ambiguous about those loyalties that shaped this country from its past. another one of my favorite southerners was that nameless soldier whom shelby foot identifies as being a part of long street's army, marching along, and the soldier was tagging along at the end of the column. and as he trudged there, longstreet came up on his horse and with some compassion said, do you think you'll make it, sir? and he said, yes, sir, i think i'll make it. but i hopes to god i'll never love another country. well, i must tell you that there

are times in my own life as an american citizen where i have -- i wonder about that. i wonder about that in my basic infantry training in fort mclellan, alabama, named after a general that most alabamans may not know too well, but may if they knew his history might like him pretty well because he directi dragged his feet really also when it came to making war on richmond. at any rate, that we have some reasons for ambivalence is for me a very important part of learning from history. learning from historians like the ones on this panel. i have to say that i have to admire what general grant said at appomattox as right after he had signed that end of the war with generally. in his journal, he said, i felt sad and depressed at the

downfall of this foe who had fought so long and so valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause that was, i believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought. now, most northerners have no problem believing that it was one of the worst causes that was ever fought for. not a whole lot of northerners have that same kind of compassion for the people who gave their lives and much of their wealth to a cause that was not worth sacrificing all that much for. again, i think american history has enough defeats in it so that learning that you can have compassion for the people who fought against you, but you may have to decide that the fight was not worth fighting for. along the same line, it seems to me we need in our public rhetoric a great deal more

appreciation of the mood of irony. it is irony that arthur ash is standing there tall with his tennis racket on monument avenue. it's also an irony that we are in this meeting here in a city, washington, d.c., which was the subject of what joseph ellis calls the most important dinner party in the history of the united states, the party in which james madison, thomas jefferson, and alexander hamilton met around jefferson's dinner table to see if they could decide in 1790 whether or not the federal government should be charged or permitted to assume the war debts of the revolution. and that was feared especially by virginia politicians because they didn't want the federal government to be that centrally involved in the economics of their new nation. as a compromise, or as a way of making it possible to yield to alexander hamilton's favoring of

this proposal, jefferson and madison urged that the new national capital be located where it is now on the banks of the potomac. and if you look at that right now, that's full of irony. joseph ellis said, by selecting the potomac location, the congress had implicitly decided to separate the political and financial capitals of the united states, washington and new york. the exciting synergy of institutional life in the metropolis new york was deemed less important than the dangerous corruptions likely to afflict nexus of politicians and financiers. if you don't feel the irony about that one in the year 2011, you haven't been reading the newspapers or believing them. these are those -- that kind of

agreement, of course, jefferson thought would be a way whereby as ellis puts it that they would not abandon the new government of the united states, but they would capture it, like the new capital, it would become an extension of virginia. which was virginia -- both virginia and massachusetts' ambitions for the beginning of this country. well, irony may not be the most popular mood for a political rhetoric, but it seems to me we will find a lot of it in history if we believe it. next to last, it seems to me we need a lot more respect in this country for compromise. and especially the difference between the compromisable and the uncompromisable. i think you can write a great deal of political history of this country on the themes of the conflict and the connections of liberty, justice, and peace.

very often, when some kind of conflict happens in the rhetoric and in the legislation of this country, it's the justice versus the partisans of liberty. my teacher at the yale list on pope used to say that when you look at the history of the supreme court, you wonder if the national bird ought to have been t eagle. he said the better bird might have been the duck, because the supreme court has always waddled between liberty and justice. and somehow you've got to put those two together. you can hardly do it without some ambiguity or without some compromise. i like very much -- the word "compromise" is in bad repute now in the rhetoric of american politicians, and those of us in religion have some blame to share for making that a bad word.