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good morning, everyone. i'm harold hoelzer, vice chairman of the lincoln forum. i want to welcome you to this year's historians panel and the topic why didn't the civil war end in 1861. in a sense, that may seem like a strange question to anchor our discussion today. but think about it -- in the spring of 1861 the north held tremendous advantages over the south. its manufacturing base was infinitely greater and far more sophisticated. its financial institutions were sounder. its population was larger. its economic system based on free labor and growth through opportunity was more modern and more progressive. and its political system anchored on the subject of

freedom and forescore years of tradition had just produced a president born in heart scrabble poverty whose assent to the white house did nothing less than confirm the viability of the american dream. moreover, union represented the established order. a fully mature nation recognized by the international community while the newly formed confederate states of america represented nothing more than a rebellious insurgency whose constitution, not ens dentley, enshrined the idea of slavery. with all of these odds in its favor, it's not unreasonable to think that the union should have ended the war in 1861 and not 1865. clearly, all of its advantages notwithstanding, it did not. today we're going to mark the 150th anniversary of what

should, in a way, have been the end not the beginning of the civil war by probing this largely unanswered question of why. what went so wrong for the north and at first what went so right for the south? we have a distinguished panel of expert historians to explore this mystery and, of course, after we do some questions from the front, we will encourage you all to step to the microphone and ask your questions. this is a nice, long session. and i think we'll have time for lots of participation by the audience, which of course we encourage. so, from my left, across this panel, we have tom harks, associate librarian for collections for the hoeten library at harvard university and author of a forthcoming biography of president james buchanan. >> give it up, ladies and gentlemen.

>> james buchanan, after all of these years still represents one of the guaranteed punch and laugh lines of the era. tom is going to really correct that, we know. william c. jack davis of virginia tech is the author of more books than we can count. among them, on the presidency of jefferson davis and the creation of the confederate nation. john, executive director of the you liss s. granted association and professor of history at mississippi state university is an expert on generals grant and sherman and military culture of the u.s. military academy. craig sigh mondamons, u.s. nava academy, recently retired, recently unretired, taught at annapolis and the country's leading expert on civil war at

sea. adam goodhart author of the aclaimed book "1861: civil war awakening" and a stranger to all of you, franc williams, who is our beloved chairman, all one of the country's leading experts on the law of war. he pronounces it somewhat differently. and the constitutionality of executive powers during rebellion. gentlemen, all welcome. let's start with top. i think i'll pitch certain questions to one or another of you and just give me an indication that you would like to respond or disagree or attack, whatever. tom, you obviously get failure number one. and i mean your subject, president james buchanan. he thought ses session was illegal but he thought the federal government had no power

to prevent it. what might he have done between january and march 1861 to make sure the rebellion die, maybe even 1860, but perhaps in the first two months and one week of the new year? >> i must preface my remarks whenever i tell people at social events, cocktail parties that i'm working on the biography of james buchanan i get a blank stare. inevitably the question arises, what would james buchanan do? and it's a very simple answer. nothing. obviously, we know he like his predecessor franklin price and mill ard were doe faces, northerners with great sympathy for the south. buchanan was greatly conflicted with this whole crisis.

he was devoted to the union at the same time he had great great emotional attachment to the south. he was a man who had few friends and those friends were southerners. what i could have done is he could have reached out to those faxes who he demisal. republicans, he didn't -- he couldn't tell the difference between those who were against the extension of slavery and those who were for the abolition of slavery. to him, all republicans were radical crazies. douglas democrats. he never had a close relationship with douglas. of course, they broke over the compton constitution that

buchanan supported and douglas, of course, considering it against his concept and the democratic party's concept of popular sovereignty, they split. and then as a result, buchanan basically tried to purge the democratic party of douglas supporters. so, in a sense, what he does, he paints himself into a corner. in a sense, he has very few of those he's really in contact with. and as a result he's not -- while he's calling for compromise, he's not reaching out to part of the democratic party, the followers of douglas. and he's not reaching out to the republicans to try to come up with a compromise that would, i think, be acceptable to all parties. now, he may have -- very well may have failed in this. i don't think he was a traitor.

i don't think that he could have prevented the war. i don't think that -- i think, though, he could have acted differently. and i think that if he had attempted to reach out to all of the faxes, both democrats and republicans, i think, though he may have failed, i think at least he could have tried. and i think history would have -- he would have been thought differently in term of the historical record that he is now, which is he's considered one of the worst presidents if not the worst president, that we've ever had. >> not to pile on, but does anyone want to add anything about uncle jimmy or should we move on? i'll take that as a noninstantaneous reaction as a sign we have exhausted 1860. we're in 1861. one more backward glance.

john and craig, you've taught at or written about the nation's military academies. just talk for a minute each about the officers army and navy who in a sense, some of them betrayed their public educations and headed south in defense of their states. there's no question that lincoln regarded them as traitors. he called them treacherous. how did these defections contribute to this longer rebellion than 1861? why don't we start with west point. >> i think what happened with the fact some people who went to west point -- by the way, i don't have the figures handy, but most west point graduates actually stayed with the union. we think of robert e. lee and some others who went with the confederacy but most west pointers did go with the union. unfortunately, a lot of them were not well known. so, it didn't make that much of a difference. but consider the fact that the

greatest military man in the united states at this time, west pointer -- not a west pointer, actually, winfield scott. winfield scott was a virginiaen when he stayed with the union. there was great adulation because he was the great military mind. look what he had done in previous wars. but the people who all went to west point got to know each other and when the war began, some one one way, some went the other way, the problem was that they did know each other and they were all the same training. they had the same ideas, many, many of them. so, as a result, when the war began, they all thought in terms of fighting about the same way. and consequently, when you fight the same way and you know what the other guy is going to do

theoretically, it's difficult not to react -- pardon me. it's difficult to react in an appropriate way. and west pointers were all prepared in the same particular sort of way. and what happened in west point, and, of course, this fact that some people left meant that west point bore the stigma of traitorism, before and after the war for a long time. that had an enormous impact and development on military policy. >> that's an interesting concept. everybody fighting the same kind of war inspires sort of a draw or -- >> exactly. >> craig, on the naval side. >> yeah. there are two differents in the way annapolis graduates and west point graduates reacted to this war. john is correct in saying most west point graduates stayed with the union. all of the northern west point graduates stayed with the union and some, a few of the southern

did, but most of the southern-born west point graduates ended up going with their states. now, there are obvious exceptions. john mentioned a couple. and george henry thomas is famous among virginians who stayed with the union. but ko contrast that to annapolis, most of the annapolis southern-born annapolis graduates stayed with the union. of course, i can make comparisons about how loyalty is perceived to the two institutions. >> right, right. >> i won't do that. i'm merely suggest i think service in the overseas united states navy serving under national flag on foreign shores created, i think, a concept that they were serving a national government rather than serving a particular state. that may have had something to do with it. if you're cynical, another explanation may be the southern navy was so small, there were very few jobs for senior naval officers -- >> very few ships i think, too.

>> very few ships. the difference is age of institutions. west point founded in 18 on 02, around a long time, many graduates had reached senior, colonel field grade ranks where the naval academy, founded in 1845, it's graduates were relatively junior. those in senior command positions when the war broke out were not annapolis graduates. i'll contrast, the particular example is david glasgow fair gut, someone who learned on the job as a midshipman the way it was done early. virginia born, tennessee born, living in virginia, married to a virginia woman when virginia ses seeded from the union said i will not stay one more day. i will leave for new york. dear wife, you may come with me, if you choose. no pacing around the upstairs floor for him. he knew right away what he was going to do.

>> jack, you're next up here. you've written extensively about confederate nationalism and formation of new government and confederate government in montgomery. was it so brilliantly organized around its constitution and its leadership, so infused with patriotic spirit, did it so quickly emerge as a genuine political force and alternative force that, perhaps, the north underestimated it from the beginning? talk a little about that formation. >> sure. now, back up, i'll sort of echo what tom said when he began, when people ask me what i'm working on currently, i'll tell them this or that. the response is, thank god you're not doing a biography of buchanan. >> that's okay. that's okay.

>> it was a very difficult thing to bring off the confederacy, that at the same time was easy since there was no other choice. it's not -- i think, still generally appreciated that there was virtually no preorganization, no preplanning these states act independently of themselves. when south carolina talked about cessation, as it talked about off and on for 40 years prior to the time it finally did it, south carolina became very agitated if somebody from georgia or mississippi set foot in south carolina to try to promote cessation. this is our business. they could regard fellow cessationists as outside agitators. there is no coordination. there is this meeting in january 1861 when several southern senators meet. i've mentioned this in my talk

for those who were awake, about -- to suggest it's time for our states to cessede. and frame a new government. even then, there was no unanimity in what those deleg e delegates who went to montgomery were charged with doing. the delegation from florida, three people, specifically was instructed by its convention not to enter into any new confederation. the delegation from south carolina, led primarily by the fire eaters, they believed their mandate was simply to go and to talk and then to come back and report. to the supercross supercross convention on what had been discussed and then perhaps debate smr on what we should do. no one is going there except, perhaps, a few georgias led by alexander h. stevens committed to the idea, we cannot wait around. we have to do something now. indeed, i think the fact there was a confederate states of

america formed in the first week of february 1861 is due more to stevens than anyone else, who was -- he's the real little giant of american politics at the time. he was only 4'8", weighs 80 pounds, calls himself a half-finished man. but his intellect is towering. and he realized, we have what nathan bedford forest called the bulge on lincoln. lincoln takes office march 4th. we can preemptively act, take the high ground. we can't wait around, can't debate, can't wait, we have to form a new government. a few others from georgia who pushed through the georgia plan, that is, we must take power, that it is to say, we must conduct a revolution within a revolution because we have no power to do what we're going to do. to frame a new government, form a congress, elect a president, choose all the executive departments, essentially be ready to go to war and take this

back to our home states and say, here it is, take it or leave it. and that is how it came together. it left a lot of people stunned, the south koreaupercross south carolinaens were not happy about it. they're worried about ma what kind of surrender of sovereignty is this new union going to require? and the people of their states, of course, had no referendum in this. whatever. other than being allowed to vote to elect delegates to state conventions who had sent these fellows to montgomery. when they framed a permanent constitution and adjourned in march 1861, they went back to their respective states to try to sell the constitution and the new government. the georgians, for one, said this cannot be put to a public referendum because it will be voted down. that's how tenuous it was.

there is no tradition. there's a southern -- there's an incipient southern nationalism but no tradition of unanimity and togetherness except on the defensive. except in response to what they perceive as attacks on their institutions from the north. so, it was -- a long way around to getting to your question. it was a very precarious thing all along. i think the big problem that's going to face confederacy for the rest of 1861 is, can they keep that inertia going to stay alive? >> one more background question and then we'll get deeply into '61. adam, talk for a minute about how the events of these first months of 1861 struck the people that you've been researching so heavily. not necessarily the icon i guic figures, but ordinary americans from california to ohio back to new york state who are suddenly given these choices and make

them generally. >> i think the answer to the question this panel poses is obvious. the reason the war didn't end in 1861 was to keep so many historians in business today. so, thank you to the civil war for not ending in 1861. i do think this was a moment of incredible crisis and decision for so many people. i'll share one story for you of relative obscure, as you say, person. my book actually began when my students and i from washington college, on the eastern shore of maryland, were exploring an old plantation house near our campus, chestertown, maryland. how many of you have been to the eastern shore of maryland before? so you know it's this sort of land that time forgot. it's a land of little sleepy colonial villages and

plantations. and i always take my students out exploring for my history glasses. one particular plantation we always go to. it's been in the same family since 1669, which is a long time, even by the standards of the eastern shore of maryland. although the house is relatively modern be it was built in the 1720s. anyway, i was there with my students a few years ago and we were digging through papers in the attic. all of these peach baskets and bushles and boxes stuffed with family papers. about 30,000 of family papers that would eventually turn out. and one of my student became very interested in a particular member of this family. we've been told by descendants through oral history there was a man in the family who in 1861 had to face a very difficult choice over which side he was going to go with, as many marylanders did.

and this student of mine, a guy named jim, became very interested in this story. jim is a marine interested in military history and said he wanted to get to the bottom of this dilemma faced in 1861. he said he wanted to write his term paper using papers up in the attic of this house. i said, gosh, jim, you know, there are 13 generations of papers. there is no guarantee you'll find anything from 1861 about this guy, but he persisted. we went back. we started looking for the papers. one of the first things i pulled out of a box was a bundle of documents tied up in a ribbon that hadn't been undone since the 1800s and said on the outside, william h. emery's letters regarding resignation from the army 1861. i blinked a few times and i handed it to my student. i said, jim, one thing you should know, it's not always this easy. so, to get back, harold, to your

question, what was in there was the story of one of these ordinary americans trying to grapple with what was going on around him. and what struck me, and this doesn't often get covered in the history books, is the way it wasn't just an ideological decision, a moral decision, discussion about slavery, but emery was out in indian territory. many are probably familiar with his name. he became a rather successful commander in the war. but what emery was wrestling with, as became clear in the letters back to his wife and his brother in maryland, was not just these big questions but questions of individual loyalties. he was very close friends with jefferson davis. his son was actually living with the davis family at the time while he attended medical school. and he was thinking about family ties. he was thinking about his brother living on a plantation worked by slaves back in maryland and what a civil war over slavery and union would mean to the family fortunes.

he also, you know, you mentioned the question of jobs for officers in the nay navy. people were thinking about those careerist questions very much, too. and he was discussing this with his wife in sort of a careerist way. his wife was in philadelphia. she wasn't just philadelphiaen, she was great granddaughter of benjamin franklin. you don't get many more philadelphiaen than that. you might think she would try to persuade him to stay with the union. she basically said, well, you know, honey, i'm ready to support whatever career choice you make. if it's a good idea to go with this new outfit of the confederacy, i'll be with you on that. all of these human factors it were coming into play i think we often forget. >> we have very interesting answers about how we lead up to the beginning of 1861, contingency and circumstances we

might not have thought of before. franc, i'd like you to take us to maryland during the cessation crisis. abraham lincoln took a stand, some say an extra constitutional stand, to prevent the cessation of maryland. so if if you would, would you describe those actions? think of one thing i would like for to you add, something i've wondered about, should he have done the same thing in virginia, if he could, prevent the cessation convention? just across the river and down the road. >> it's an interesting question. what the president did is to take certain acts to keep maryland as a border state, slave state, in the union. he was certainly hoping that the old dominion, common wealth of virginia would not vote to cessede and yet they did.

i think they were tilting more towards cesseding than maryland at the time of the firing on ft. sumpter in april. with congress not in session, lincoln was in the sense that he feared for the safety of the capitol as well as the union. and took extraordinary measures. some believe they were extra constitutional. i don't think they were in civil war. seven states had already cessade did when he took the oath on march 4th. it's interesting to note what the oath of office says. despite the current chief justice roberts forgetting it when he administered it to our current president. all laws be faithfully executed and preserve and protect the constitution. of course, lincoln believed the

constitution did not permit cessation. and he was also faced with other states about to leave, four other states. and the immediate war was getting troops to the capital to protect it. the six massachusetts was the first to arrive through, as was pointed out, through the mobs of baltimore with casualties both military and civilian. and lincoln worried about other troops who had answered his call for 75,000 men after the firing on ft. sumpter. he certainly had the right to call out the state militias still under the control of the state governors under a 1790's act, militia act, but did he have the right to suspend that precious writ of habeas corpus by which someone detained could

have that detention checked my a magistrate? he authorized general winfield scott to success spent the writ on the rail lines running from washington to philadelphia to help ensure the travel of troops from north to the nation's capital. he declares a blockacde, which in itself is an act of war. congress is not in session. that's supposed to be their responsibility. he appropriates money for the purchase of arms and munitions. and doesn't have congress come into session until july 4 to ratify, he hopes, the acts that he took. . in the process, ft. mchenry and baltimore harbor is used as a prison to hold marylanders who the military believe are