>> we'll take one last question, you had your hand up in the purple right there. and then we'll continue later. >> okay. for the election experts, the election of 1960 especially for the person that thought that religion didn't have much to do with the election, there's a story that on the election that i heard -- i don't know if it's mythology or fact that on election day 1960 did richard nixon, in fact, take a trip to tijuana and on the way back visit san juan capistrano to be the only one to set foot in the catholic church? is there truth to that? >> it is true that on election day richard nixon became the first, maybe the only candidate to run for president to leave the united states on election day by having lunch in tijuana.

and there may have been some political calculation and the fact that the election was all, but over and we didn't have cable news in those days and in fact, it wasn't known he was in tijuana because he managed to escape from the press was the whole point. he was trying to get away from the media and went to tijuana because nobody would recognize him there in a significant enough way to manage to have a quiet lunch. he did stop off. i don't know that he went into the church. he stopped off at san juan capistrano. he also stopped off at camp pendelton and there were a couple of marine corps guys throwing a football by the side of the road and this was all long before the population that exists in southern california today. so things were much more -- the roads were different.

anyway, he tossed a couple of footballs with the marine corps, but yeah. i often wondered if it was an attempt to get hispanic votes in southern california to make it known that he went to mexico on election day? >> he went with an aide who was catholic and said you're my favorite catholic and this is my favorite catholic place? >> that's one version. they had different versions of it. >> however, he did find when he got to tijuana a whole bunch of reporters doing thin things ot than having lunch. >> please nobody here go to tijuana. we'll end this fine panel. let's give our panelists a hand. this week on "american artifacts" we visit the center for education and leadership across the street from ford's theater where john wilkes booth

shot president lingeron as he enjoyed the play "our american cousin." it is on 10th street in washington where visitors can learn about the life, death and legacy of abraham lincoln. ford's theater societiy is director paul tatrum talks about the center's purpose and goals. >> we are in the center for educational leadership, directly across the street from historic ford's theater on tenth street in washington, d.c. behind me is the tower of books which is a concept that really started about five years ago to visualize and show case the unending quest to learn more about abraham lincoln. and so this tower of books represents, as we all know, that abraham lincoln is the most written about figure in world history next to jesus christ. y believe that ford's theater is

the location in washington, d.c., to learn about lincoln and his legacy. it's one of the things that we do better than anyone else. we are able to marry the concepts and the excellence that we bring to theatrical products to the museum experience. we will teach oratory programs and we will use this facility to do our teacher training and all of those things are jumping off who lincoln was, and such a brilliant leader. this center is what that is all about. >> for more information about the ford's theater education and leadership center visit their website at ford's theater.org. each year "time" magazine selects a person who had the most influence on events during the previous 12 nth mos. if the same question were posed in 1862, who would "time" select as the person of the year?

american history tv will be live next saturday from richmond, virginia, as historians including james macpherson and david blight ponder that question and present their candidates for person of the year 1862. the museum of the confederacy and the library of museum host the all-day forum and during the day we'll open the phone lines and take your tweets so you can question historians about their nominations and propose their nominations. live coverage from 4:30 p.m. eastern on c-span3. each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's clefshlg professors. you can watch the classes here every is the at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern and sundays at 1:00 p.m. old dominion university professor timothy or teaches a course on the civil war and reconstruction. in this lecture he discusses how

confederate forces handled prisoners of war and he takes a look at conditions inside some prison camps. old dominion university is located in norfolk, virginia. this class is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> all right. good morning, everyone, and welcome. to those who are joining us on c-span i'd like to introduce myself and dr. timothy j.orr. i'm a professor of history here at old dominion university and you are joining history 3 51. we've been going all semester talking about related to the coming of the civil war and we'll be finishing up in a few weeks with how it ended and its legacy. today we'll be talking about a rather depressing subject and nevertheless an important one. the story of the prisoners of war. i would like to begin by kind of offering two expregs in latin, use in bella and use ad bellum.

does anyone know what it means? >> it means justice in war and use ad bella is justis of war. if you try to consider the philosophies of just war theory, there are two ing thises you want to examine. is the war fought for quote, unquote just purposes and is it fought with, quote, unquote, just methods and you can examine any american conflict this way. you can sort of mix and match the two ideas. you can fight a just war with unjust methods. you can fight an st methods. in the case of the american civil war, we certainly don't need to consider the question of the justice of war because both sides believed that they were fighting for a just cause, but the question we're looking sat this one, use in velo. did it show justice in term of the way both sides treated each

other's prisoners, and i would say both sides had the advantage of having and understanding the convention of war, the respectability and the respect that needed to be shown both sides because prior to the war they were all one in the same nation with the one history and many of them with the same religions and social conventions about how a concept should proceed, but during the course of a war we will see that questions will arise about the ethical treatment of prisoners, questions that will defy the conventions that both sides had prior to going into the war. so as we examine this question, we can think about it in ters of just war theory. was justice committed to these prisoners? and what ways should justice have been upheld? now, to understand the prisoner of war system, it's very simple because it perceives in three

phases and if you understand these three phases and when they come about you can understand how the civil war proceeds. there's the first phase called patrol and exchange phase. the second phase known as the cartel phase and the last phase, the prisoner of war camp phase and these weren't phases described by the people at the time, but phases that historian his dellen yated since then. now at the beginning of the war with, one of the things that politicians in general did not anticipate were large numbers of prisoners. many thought the war would be over in a short period of time and it would involve little hardship and lingering animosity and whether the nation remained as one or whether it would be split in two during the course of the conflict, neither side initially believed that abusing the other's prisoners would gain them any long-term goals and this is a good example of it. this is a photograph taken after

the first major land battle of the civil war, the battle of bull run in july 1861. these are union prisoners of war. they have been taken to a camp outside of charleston, south carolina and they're awaiting their parole and exchange and that is after they're taken prisoner they're going to go home and surrendering in a civil war is a fairly easy process. there are widespreadcc sid that committing atrocities and executing surrendered prisoners early in the war and that simply does not happen. the prisoner's rights are respected and they're sent to a prisoner of war camp, taken care of and then after a short period of time they're sent back to their army and back into circulation so they can fight again. this is a marvelous image here. what do you see? none other than shelves of liquor and these soldiers have a very easy life and essentially

surrendering early on in the civil war is like being out in a game of tag. you're only out temporarily and you can go back to rejoin your unit once you've been formally exchanged. how does this fa roll and exchange system work? it works under the idea that once a prisoner surrenders, he must sign a formal parole and he must vow not to take up arms against the other nation unless he's been properly exchanged and this is an example of a parole of honor in michigan and it's printed on kind of confederate letterhead here and you can just issue these out to the prisoners that you've taken in battle and says when he signs the parole, makes his mark, but on his honor, he will not bear arms against the states until regularly exchanged and he will not divulge anything relative to

the position or condition to any of the forces of the confederate states. while he's in confederate captivity and if he returns with the union on parole he cannot tell his superiors what he has seen and what he's done. how does this system work? how do you get parolees to put this to this promise? what is the foundation of it, do you think? nicole? that's the number one answer. here at old dominion, we have an honor code where we regulate the academic integ letty of the institution by itselves and it's the same thing for prisoners of war early in the civil war. they haveo system of those who surrender, they have to hold to this parole, hold to this promise that they are not going to divulge any information and some of these individuals take it very seriously. one of the examples i can tell

you, a colonel named moore is taken by the paroled quickly be he's paroled during the maryland campaign and moore is given his parole and he's sent off of this huge proclivity called south mountain. as he's walking down the into t union army who is pursuing the confederate army. now all of a a union prisoner who is only a fe confederate captivity and they were begging moore to divulge some information. they said, colonel moore, good to see you. where are the confederates and he says i can't tell you that. we're up overtain and moore goes, you are? my goodness, be careful and the general who questioned that? and i've said too much. and they're begging moore to

give up information, but he would not. so this system of honor was extremely important and it was the thread that held together this first phase of how prisoners were treated. another aspect of the parole is what happens once you've signed it. if you signed the parole as a prisoner of war he's allowed to go home to sit, to continue to receive army pay until you were properly exchanged and the exchange was done by the respective governments and there were agents in charge of prisoners of war who would negotiate for your release and these exchanges ran on race based on the rank that you helped. so if you were a private soldier in the union army and you had to be exchanged for a private soldier in the confederate army and once that exchange was made legal and you'd receive notification within a period of time and you would be found awol.

there was an elaborate system that both side his to agree to to make those exchanges. if you wanted to exchange a captain you had to have six privates to make thatxcnge. the generals ran in the vicinity of 40 privates, colonels 15, lieutenant colonel, 10, majors 8, and on down to one non-commissioned officer equaled two prief theas and of course, making all of this work because each side is a different number of prisoners in their possession earlier in the war makes it difficult and you signed one of these paroles, probably you could expect to sit on your bottom for a long period of time until the government got around to exchanging you because the negotiations could run for weeks even months. so we discussed the things that this system ran upon, that it relied upon a mutual agreement

on both parties that the system was in existence and the other thing it relied on the honor of parolees. now, certainly abuses and problems occurred and what kind of abuses and problems do you think pervaded this system early on? >> the fact that maybe people didn't honor the parole, just went out and -- >> right. because one of the things about this -- this system is there's no police agency to enforce the parole system. so anyone could easily just simply go back and fight. which of the two sides do you think violated this parole system more often? >> well, because we had a lot of southern pride and they wanted to fight the war and become independent and they were free now so let's get back to the fight. >> okay.

and it's interesting that you talk about southern pride and things because when we think of the stereo typical old south, we think of southern honor. if you're suggesting that the confederates were the first to violate this parole of honor it flips the image of confederacy on its head, does it not? what are the first reasons that they would be the first to violate these pa roles. >> they felt they needed intelligence to be more on par with the union amount of men! one of the issues is they cannot afford to keep willing men on the home front sitting and waiting out their paroles before they go back into service. any other reasons? on let's talk about the situation the south has to face. it is part of stonewall

jackson's arm ney 1852. she's captured at the battle of town in march and goes back home to win chester and two months later, what happens with the union army marches into that city. she is a paroled prisoner of war and she's basically obligated to stay out of the action and there are union soldiers in her town and how do you think they treat her? soldiers should treat this prisoner with respect, but they know what she's going to do. she'll go back and join stonewall jackson's army. so is she going sit there and endure the union soldiers jeering at her and probably stealing all of her personal possessions and her chickens and cows and what have you? no. she'll not sit there and take it. she will eagerly await them to rejoin her army and take it.

since the union army can do nothing to check to see if she's adhering to her parole she'll do it. think about this, if she violates her parole and she's captured a few years later in the battles of the shenandoah valley and the union soldiers captures her, what's she going do if she surrenders? and do they have another way of checking their identity? >> this is the 19th century. we have no driver's license. we have no internet, no social security, no i.d. number, no way to check a person's identity and consider for the sake of argument that, you ow concerned suspects that katie might be a parole violator, does he have a big list in his his pocket of pe on parole from the confederacy?

no way the union army can disseminate that information. so quite frankly, she's free to do whatever she wants. the only possibility that she might have is the rare instance that she's captured twice by the exact same captor. right? i mean, what are the chances of that? >> i would think -- how would they exchange -- >> the prisoner? >> yeah. >> you would be informed by the government. ng, you have suchotice and say and such a time to report pack to your unit. officer capturing me again, how would he know if i was exchanged or not? >> he wouldn't. >> so i could fight tha>> tre a operation. by the second year of the war they're already starting to shred. both union and confederate soldiers and this leads to the second phase of the prisoner of

war system nope as the cartel phase. and negotiations began in the early part of 1862 when generals from both sides argue that something needs to be done to rectify this situation. it happens right after the first large-scale surrender of an army. that is when a confederate army surrenders at ft. donaldson in january and by july 1862 after the failed peninsula campaign, the system goes into effect. it will last for about a year. it's known as the dix hill cartel because it's known for the two generals who created it. and what this system does is it modifies the parole system. that now soldiers themselves are not allowed to sign paroles. only the two generals or any of their respective agents can sign paroles and conduct the exchanges. so what this means is that if

you surrender as a soldier whether you're in the you knowior on the confederacy you will be taken to a prisoner of war camp, held there for a few weeks and then you'll be sent to an exchange location. in the eastern theater here in virginia it was aikens landing on the james river. and in the western theater it was on the mississippi river. there the physical exchange of prisoners would take place, but the official exchange would take place later when the two cartels had negotiated the release. so where do these union and confederate prisoners go until they're formally exchanged? they'll go to what is called parole camps. this is an image of the largest parole camp in the eastern theater known as camp parole in annapolis, maryland. this is for union soldiers, but their guards are their own men. they're guarded by union sentries. so it was essentially each side

cease responsibility to ensure that their own men would not violate their paroles. and the confederacy had several parole camps as well. if you're from the annapolis region and you have driven through it, it is called parole, named after this particular camp. these parole camps had some problems. they're not fun places. the union soldiers disliked the fact that they would be treated as prisoners within their own state. they were guarded by their own men. they were guarded by what were known as the invalid corps, wounded soldiers on light duty. those parolees could not leave. they could ask permission to go into the city and visit annapolis. but passports were issued at a limited rate. they were fed. they were not abused. and they had some freedoms until they were formally exchanged but this freedom was limited. now, imagine again this position. you're a union soldier and you

have been taken to camp parole. how are you feeling about this? you want out. and do you think the guards are going to let you out? >> they might. >> they might. under what conditions might they let you out? >> bribery. >> bribery. these aren't confederate guards we're talking about. these are your own men. what are some conditions you could use to get out of prison? >> if there's a battle or something, they don't have enough soldiers to fight maybe. they need an extra general would say send them to me. >> exactly. now this phase occurs during one of the darkest times for the union army. when in 1863, consider you're a union prisoner and you have been taken at chancellorville you're taking to annapolis and you learn that the confederate army is invading pennsylvania. things look really dire. you can go to the guard and say,

hey, i want to rejoin my unit, let me out of here. is that guard going to say no? if he's sympathetic to the union cause he's probably not. he's going to let you slip out. so the guards themselves violate this second phase. the cartel phase. generals as well also violate it. one of the biggest abusers was robert e. lee. lee hated taking care of union prisoners. this was especially clear during the gettysburg campaign. when his army invaded pennsylvania, he was defeated and then he had to retreat back to virginia with nearly 5,000 prisoners. and what did lee think of the 5,000 prisoners? did he want them as part of his army? not if he is trying to get back to virginia. they are a detriment to his campaign. and immediately after he takes them prisoner, on july 6, 1863, he offers them the opportunity to sign a parole and if you're a

union prisoner you're in lee's possession. you can keep to your official duty, march 200 miles back to virginia, go into a prisoner of war camp and wait to be physically handed back to your authorities. or you can immediately sign this parole, go back and rejoin your friends who are coming to get you, probably only a few miles away. but you of course violate your obligation as a union soldier. which of those two are you going to do? >> go back to the army. >> you'd like to go back to the army. right. so you'd like to rejoin your comrades. would some of them have qualms about this? yeah. if honor is important to you, you're going to tell lee he's got to go away and he has to honor this system that's in place. and the troublesome thing for the union soldiers was there was

a union general who was captured along with them. they were debating among themselves about whether they should sign the parole. a lot wanted to go back home immediately but the general, named general graham said you can't do that men. you are union soldiers. it essentially created a riot among the union prisoners while lee is trying to take them back down to virginia because they didn't know which of those decisions they should adhere to. and it was easy for the general, general graham, he'll be exchanged right quick. but if you're a private you can expect of course to be in confederate captivity for some time. now, another important issue involving the cartel phase was the question of african-american prisoners. because they would never be exchanged under confederate opinion. in late 1862, southern commanders vowed to return all black prisoners taken in battle to a state of slavery. whether they had been free before the civil war or not.

and confederate generals even vowed to execute white officers who commanded united states colored troop regimens under criminal law. many southern states had laws that said leading a slave rebellion was punishable by death. to them, being a white commander in a black regimen was akin to leading a slave rebellion. in may of 1863, the confederate congress upheld this popular opinion by passing a joint resolution calling for the execution of white officers in the immediate enslavement of black soldiers. now, the u.s. war department when it heard this announcement decided what it would do was issue an order of retaliation. that is it would execute captured confederate officers. one for each white u.s. colored troop officer execute and enslave one white confederate prisoner, one for each black usc

t soldier. and in july of '63 was a first test month. a captured soldier was executed by confederate authorities and a regimental commander, the commander of the soldier who was executed decided he was going to put to death one confederate soldier which he did. after the execution of this confederate soldier, jefferson davis called off the execution order issued by the confederate congress. and he urged local commanders not to execute or enslave u.s. ct soldiers. so there was the hint there might be an eye for an eye warfare because of the capture of black soldiers. but although it looked like there would be both sides showed restraint. now, these problems eventually bring the