anderson, okay. but here's lincoln's problem, he doesn't want to start this thing. he's hoping that everybody's going to kind of -- if you get wrapped up in the middle of a speech, all right, you're at some sort of gathering, and there's like the electricity to the crowd and there's this amazing speech and everybody's all excited. yeah. all right. you're ready to go do it. let's go do this, man. and you wake up the next morning. you're like, let's just talk about it, okay. you know, just a little crazy, guys. i want kis kind of in the spiri there but let's just chill out. a lot of the states were looking around, like, we only got seven. what happened? we got seven. that's not a lot. all right. we got seven out of 33 states. we were hoping for more. so what they're going to have to do is try and figure out do we keep going, do we back up? i don't want to back up. i mean, that's just embarrassing. all right. and i really do believe in what we said but i don't know if

maybe we should have gone with a different option. so what lincoln's hoping is enough confederate leaders are going to start to say, look, let's see if we can't come up with a compromise. he does not want to give them a crisis to rally behind. all right. when you're trying to talk a guy down from a fight, all right, ya'll are going to go to parties this weekend, all right, and it will happen. if it doesn't happen this weekend, it happened last weeke weekend. all right. two guys are going to want to get in a fight. hopefully some of you are going to be like, guy, come on, back down. the way to stop the fight is not to sucker punch one of the guys in the face. lincoln's saying, don't do anything, everybody just chill out, okay. but he's got to provide some sort of support to major anderson. so april 6th, april 6th, 1861, lincoln's going to send a message to the governor of south carolina. say, look, his last name's pickens, by the way, if you're curious. governor of south carolina.

lincoln's going to send him a message, say, look, we're sending a relief ship down. all right. this is not an act of aggression. got fresh food. fresh water. medical supplies. we might put a couple guys in the fort. take a couple sick guys out. this is just a relief expedition. we're not reinforcing the fort. not an act of aggression. the governor's look at the situation. basically decides, i don't know, i'm going to pass this up the chain. see what everybody else says. they send the message to davis and his advisers. jefferson davis and his advisers talk about this on two days later, on the 8th of april, 1861. and they're debating it. some of them think, look, let the relief expedition in because we do not want to fire the first shot. the confederacy's whole argument is we're not starting this thing. we don't even want a war. with ju we just want to go. we just want to breakaway. if they start this thing by firing on a federal installation, that weakens their

whole position, okay. the problem is, you've got a u.s. fort inside confederate territory as far as they're concerned. you can't let that situation continue. so you're going to have to come up with some sort of a solution. and they don't want to let the fort get resupplied. they do not want to let that relief expedition through. okay. so on the 10th of april, two days later, on the 10th of april, the confederate government tells beauregard, say no, we're going to have to demand a surrender. beauregard, who is he. pier pier pierre gustov beauregard. pgt beauregard. making life easier for history students everywhere. all you have to remember is pgt beauregard. the confederate commander on the ground in commarl stone. confederate government is going to tend him, look, you're going to have to contact that fort out

in the harbor and tell them forget about it. you're going to have to surrender. here's the really weird situation. remember the guy i told you in the fort, the commander of the fort, major anderson. he was the artillery instructor at west point when beauregard was the student. my students always love this at the end of the semester. now the student is demanding the professor surrounder. look, you're going to have to surrender the fort, okay. beauregard had been one of anderson es an favorite students. they know each other well. look, sorry, bud, but i've got orders. and you're in the wrong. as far as beauregard's concerned. you're going to have to surrender the fort. anderson sends a message immediately back. he says, look, i can't, i'm under orders to hold the fort at all costs. i will hold the fort at all costs. but i can't hold out much longer anyway. we are really low on food. we are really low on water. we're going to have to leave here soon anyway. maybe we can come up with some

sort of compromise. let's not get a whole bunch of guys killed over nothing. beauregard gets the message. like, i wasn't expecting that. soon. how soon is soon? you're going to have to leave soon. all right. he send as a message back out t anderson. if i'm not relieved by noon on april 15th, i'll have to leave the fort. what beauregard knows is the relief expedition is going to get there before then. anderson is going to get relieved and we're going to be stuck in the same old situation. did you get the chain of events? lincoln sends a message to south carolina on the 6th. this is just supplies. we need water, fresh food, some medical supplies. basically that's all it is. governor pickens sends the message on to davis and the confederate cabinet. says, look, what do you want me to do about this? confederate government says, we can't have a relief ex- ppediti

coming on. pgt beaurd ra, the confederate commander, to demand to s surrender the fort. beauregard contacts his old friend. anderson says no, i can't, i'm under strict orders to hold out at all costs. don't start shooting at us over nothing. i'm going to have to leave soon anyway. but i can't just surrender when you ask me to right now. all right. beauregard writes back and says, you know how i always imagined, who are the guys running the messages back and forth? rowing out with the message. anyway. beauregard sends the message back. soon, how soon are you going to have to leave the fort? anderson says, look, noon on the 15th. i'm going to have to leave anyway. beauregard knows, huh-uh, that federal ship is going to be there and resupplying the fort. which means we're just going to be right back in this kind of purgatory they've been living in for months.

so beauregard sends a message back. saying that's not going to work. you're going to have to surrender the fort. anderson sends the message back saying i can't. as long as i can hold out, i am under orders to hold out. and so at 4:30 in the morning on the 12th of april, 1861, confederate forces inside charleston open fire on federal forces in fort sumter. that is the shot that starts the american civil war. okay. in four years, you're going to have 620,000 americans dead. that doesn't include wounded. okay. that's just dead. 620,000. in four years. north and south. and, again, remember, but we know that. nobody else knows that now. all right. what a lot of sides are hoping, there's worries this might be longer they think it will be. a lot of folks are hoping this

will be over quick. we'll have one big fight. southerners are convinced the north, the north is just a bunch of these guys, these clerks that work in factories. what do they know? they don't hunt. they don't fish. that's what southern men are all about. we're going to punch them in the face. they'll run home. it will be done. northerners are looking at the southerners, like, yeah, great, you guys got drunk and went gambling one more time. this time, you decided to break up the country. way to go, geniuses. both sides are figuring it's going to take one fight, we're going to settle this thing once and for all. okay. now, when confederate forces in charleston open fire on fort sumter, that convinces lincoln, okay, i need to do something. you need to understand, lincoln has been under a heck of a lot of pressure, all right. a lot of northerners who want this war who are saying, look, we have tried compromise, we have tried everything. a lot of them are -- there's a great line in one of the

northern newspapers. says lincoln stands like an ass between two barrels of hay wondering what to do. he's under all sorts of pressure. come on, do something, man. we didn't elect you just to sit there and stare. the last couple presidents did that. all right. but he's desperately trying to find some sort of a peaceful solution. once confederates open fire on fort sumter, u.s. military troops, u.s. military installation, that's not going to work. lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers. three days later on the 15th of april. war starts on the 12th. 15th of april, three days later, lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers. he says, look, we need you guys to help put down this rebellion. now, the way itworks, every state that's still part of the union is going to have to give a portion of that 75,000. okay. if you're teeny state, not a huge population, say, vermont's

not going to have to come up with as guys as new york or virginia. everybody's going to have to put a portion into that 75,000. and therein lies the rub. virginia's going to have to help give to that 75,000 and go invade south carolina. tennessee is going to have to contribute to that 75,000 and go invade mississippi. right across the border. and you've got a lot of family and you've got a lot of shared experiences. and what's going to happen is four more states are going to say i can't invade and attack fellow southerners. we can't do it. it's not in us. the federal government is overstepping their bounds when they try and force us to do this. okay. and so what's going to happen -- this one again. see these gray states here, what's going to happen is those gray states are those upper south states. the last four that will join the confederacy. arkansas, tennessee, north carolina and virginia. they leave in response to that call for 75,000.

they do not leave because of lincoln specifically. okay. virginia met and voted. okay. vv leaders voted on whether or not they wanted to succeed. earlier in the secession crisis. they said no, we stay. after lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers, they vote to leave. that's why the upper south goes. we will not march on fellow southerners. we will not forcibly keep fellow southerners in the union. we were going to stay and try to work within the democratic process. but you cannot force virginians to invade and march on south carolinians. as much as north carolinians with south carolinians, they still say they won't march. that's classic material. it's classic material to include in the essay. the other thing i want you to remember, what about those what is that green, teal, whatever color that is. all right, those are slave

states that stay in the union. missouri, kentucky, maryland, delaware. slave states that stay in the union. okay. everybody has kind of in the back of their heads, all right, the slave states go to the confederacy. no, you have those border states lincoln has to deal with. his whole presidency, he has to worry about more states going into the confederacy. any position he takes against slavery, he has to worry about losing those slave states and potentially more. all right. so this is going to be a constant thing he's going to have to think about. the other thing i want you thinking about, okay, look at these areas for secession and against secession. look at mississippi. there are pockets in mississippi, particularly in poor areas, particularly along the river systems where they fear they're going to be right along the route of invasion. where they're not so sure about this whole confederate experience. jones county, county to the north, is not going to be pro union but they're not sure about

the confederacy. there are boths all over the confederacy where you're going to have these sections that, again, are not necessarily pro lincoln. they're not abolitionists. they're not so sure they're confederates. a lot of them are going to decide they absolutely are not. even as the confederacy is formed. even as more states are joining the confederacy, jefferson davis is also going to have to balance the fact you're going to have these divisions. he's going to be constantly worried about governing sections of his own country. okay. now, last but not least, okay, lincoln, what did i tell you, 15th of april, lincoln calls for the 75,000. 19th of april, lincoln calls for the federal navy to blockade all southern ports. that is when he kind of de facto recognizes the union. my future lawyer in the class. you can't blockade your own country, right? so by doing that, he actually recogni recogni recognizes the existence of those southern states as a foreign country.

he was actually furious about that one. that his advisers didn't correct him before he did that. but all right 19th of april 1861 lincoln says the u.s. navy is going to blockade all those southern ports. nothing goes in. nothing comes out. any of that money from cotton, any of that money from trade, we're not going to let southern states benefit. not going to let southern states get support from foreign country, weapon, money, anything. the idea is we're going to cut the south off. that's when you're going to see more and more of these divisions. when that upper south will not contribute to the 75,000. and where a lot of people are going to have to decide who they're going to side with. okay. robert e. lee, the guy in the bottom left hand corner of the slide. hopefully most of ya'll recognize him. okay. he's got a big decision. he's one of the most well respected commanders in the entire u.s. army. he's a graduate of west point. he's been superintendent of west point. he's a hero of the mexican war. okay. you guys know arlington national cemetery? that was his wife's family's

home. all right. she is tied by family to martha washington. robert e. lee's father rode under george washington during the american revolution. huge ties in his family to the founders of the country. okay. and lee's kind of split. there's this very famous quote that i wanted ya'll to see where he talks about how i cannot raise my hand against my home, my children. a lot of folks have argued that lee by nature was a virginian. all right. more than anything else, americans during this time period tend to identify themselves more as mississippians, more as new yorkers, more as virginians, than they did as americans. they defined themselves by their state first, then by their nation. okay. lee, once virginia goes, okay, yes, he has a national view, particularly as a man who served in the army, stationed out in texas. he has not spend his whole life out in virginia. all right. but he says, you know, when it comes down to it, lee very much viewed himself as the virginian. part of it has to do too though that lee is a slave holder.

he has been for a long time. he did emancipate a large number of slaves. he emancipates more slaves that he inherits from his family. remember what i'm always talking to ya'll about. don't try and make people 21st century people. view them within their times. lee was very much a man of his times. okay. he very much believed in white supremacy. remember that old paternalistic argument. very much argued about the role and the responsibility of southern white male leaders within the community. the basic social and racial organization of the south was how it should be. okay. remember winfield scott? we talked about the mexican war. the landing of veracruz. remember that? winfield scott calls robert e. lee to washington. says, look, i want you to take command of the forces we're organizing. the u.s. forces. lee thinks about them. but then he writes and says, i cannot march on fellow southerners. he goes home. he resigns his commission in the

u.s. army. and he will later rise to the leadership of the army northern virginia and eventually the leadership of all confederate forces. okay. that's the situation by the time we're in late. really once you have the secession of all the upper south, by the time we're in late may, june, 1865. when ya'll get back on monday is when we'll pick up with the start of the war. now, do you want to go ahead, we can open up the mic if ya'll want to be able to record any of the questions. you're like, don't make me talk on television. all right. but do you have any questions? about lee? go for it. >> fort sumter was held by the north. >> it's a u.s. military installation. it would be like i don't know ft. hood and texas. if texas suddenly secedes and you have a u.s. fort in the middle of the country. yeah. >> so they were on the -- >> well, it's all the united states, right. i mean, the question is, all

right, fort sumter is in south carolina but it's the north. what's going on here? just wait till all the questions are done. all right. sorry, don't mean to yell at you. you're fine. everybody sees south carolina on the map. okay. do you not see south carolina on the map? here's south carolina. okay. so we've got a u.s. fort in south carolina. it's all part of the united states. south carolina secedes. you've got a u.s. military installation there. what do you do with it? if you're the north, you're like, no way, we're not letting go. you're not allowed to go. okay, south carolina's saying we're not part of the united states anymore. you might as well have a u.s. military installation in mexico, all right, it's just not going to happen. you're not allowed to do that without our permission. what's happening is the guys in the u.s. army who are stationed at fort sumter are saying no, we stay. in some cases, you're going to get forts like in texas where

they basically everybody kind of es north. you can go home to the north. if you're in the south, you stay here. a whole bunch of weapons in the fort we'll confiscate and texas is going to use, thank you very much. it comes to a head in certain spots though. florida, it came to a head. and it really comes to a head in charleston harbor at fort sum r sumter. that becomes the sticking point. that becomes that crisis point of who's going to go where. does that answer it? okay. any other questions? yeah? >> why did they fire on it? did they -- >> all you have to do is keep the ship. what if you don't keep the ship away, number one. theoretically, you're going to starve them out. what if you fail? if the ship resupplies them, okay, they're going to be here and we're just going to be stuck in this purgatory. all right. number two, are you an independent nation or not? i mean, at some point they're saying, look, we're not saying we're going to go invade washington city and try to overthrow the u.s. government. but i am saying that you can't have a fort inside my country. and you're going to have to see

expect that. just like there were northerners putting pressure on lincoln, are were going to war or what, there were southerners pressure on davis, are you going to do something about this or what? y'all need to leave. so you've got a chance for it to come to a head. and there's all sorts of pressure on davis that we're going to have to take a stand at some point -- we said we wouldn't start this thing, but maybe if we do, it will consolidate some of that support, some of those folks who aren't sure that was the smartest thing to do, maybe it will consolidate that support and we can keep them. does that get it? okay. >> in alabama, why was there such a large, concentrated area of. [ inaudible ] against the -- >> you get a lot of these areas -- what you're going to see, any border between these states is when you get a lot of trade back and forth. if you have a lot of trade across river systems, it's also often going to be your more

impoverished areas where you have people who feel like they don't necessarily have a whole lot of say in this and they're not so sure they trust these wealthy planners and what they're trying to do. the way the secession process worked, there was an upper tier of wealthy planners who were like, whoa, everybody just chill out. but there was these guys who were new wealth, breaking out of that middle class, up into the wealthier areas that were saying, no, we need to do this. if we do this, this is when i'm going to really rise to the top. then you have a whole lot of poor whites saying, great, you guys are going to do this and you're going to stay home and make a whole lot of money and i'm going to go out and die. i'm not so sure about that. now, you have a huge portion of the white male south that overwhelmingly supports this war, absolutely. but you have pockets -- very isolated rural pockets is usually what it was or they were on the borders and had ties to folks who hadn't seceded and said, no, no, i'm not going to do this.

you had pro-union blocs in texas -- they're not convinced about the confederacy. and that's where you're going to see some breaks. sometimes it's your very wealthy white southerners, the guys who went constitutional union who were like, all this war is going to bring is a whole bunch of destruction. sam houston gets kicked out of his leadership in texas. they flat-out tell him to go home because he was pro-union the whole time. he was like, look, guys, i've been part of a country that's small and brand new. he was a classic 19th century expansionist. he was like, you build more. go get cuba and mexico and somebody up there go take canada. he was like, are you guys nuts? so you had those unionists for a variety of reasons. there's a great book called "the free state of jones" that looks at what jones county does during this war. again, not necessarily pro-union

as much as they have anti-confederate and anti-the confederate government. now, if there are any more questions, i want to let the folks who have 12:00 classes go and let the next class in. but if you have any more questions, come on down. thank you and we will see you monday. every weekend, c-span3 turns to american history tv. for 48 hours, we feature people and event that is help document the story of our nation. join us each saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern, and sundays at 1:00 p.m. for classroom lectures from across the country on different topics and eras of american history. next weekend, a look at north

viatnamese strategy during the vietnam war with donald stoker, a professor at the naval war college in monterey, california. for more information about american history tv, including our complete schedule, visit our weps, at cspan.org/history. all weekend long, american history tv joins our comcast cable partners in shreveport, louisiana, to showcase its shreveport, founded in 1836, has a population of about 200,000 people and is located about too miles northwest of baton rouge. you're watching american history tv on c-span3. >> we are standing in oakland cemetery, which was the original city cemetery that dates back to 1847. and it was the primary city cemetery until about 1895 or so.

one of the reasons that 1873 is so important to this region and to this city is that the great yellow fever epidemic decimated the city and really changed the course of the history of north louisiana and this city in particular. within two weeks, we lost a quarter of the population of the city inside the city limits, 800 to 1,000 people are in this cemetery. if you pan over and you look at the top of that hill, that's the yellow fever mound, a common trench with 824 people confirmed in it. and then there are other folks who died and were either moved or put in here. it killed almost all the doctors, all the nurses. it killed many, many prominent people in this city. and it was devastating.

the city was quarantined by railroad and by river. nothing was allowed to come in and go out. and money was raised, large amounts from new york, washington, from new orleans, from chicago. and it was a national event. now, national ly, reconstructio is going to last for another four years. but in shreveport and in northwest louisiana, shreveport is lucky in a way because of this, because reconstruction ends, the army leaves to save itself. and so redemption, as it was called, begins here. in this state. and local rule returns at that time. on the negative side, shreveport

was thought ton ab be an unheal place. and its growth was stunted for many, many decades. it ends up returning but it's going to take a while. this is the monument and grave of the united states army corps of engineers' first lieutenant, eugene augustus woodruff. went to west point, graduated near the top of his class, allowed by their rules to become an engineer. he is sent here with a deta detachment during reconstruction in 1872 to clear the great logjam, the great raft. and his brother was his second in command. he had a very good detachment. he completed the work that henry shreve began. they had to do some herculean

work to get rid of it. and they did. they used nirt glis nitroglycer first time it was used. and in 1893, while they're blowing it up, tearing it up, yellow fever broke out in shreveport. and the army order this had detachment out. and eugene wrote his mother -- he was a mamma's boy. wrote his mother, these people need help, i'm sending my men, i'm saving my brother, george. i'm going to stay and help. so eugene stayed and he and five catholic priests acted as doctors because most of the doctors were dead. and eugene faithfully served. thought that he was going to be okay. felt okay.

stayed with the same folks who were in this plot, the elsners. and he comes down with it very quickly, very quickly. september 28th, he gets it. by september 29th at 9:00 p.m., he's dead. city of shreveport wrote his mother and said, we'd like to send his body home. and the telegraph lines are up. and she says, no, that's where he wanted to stay. so the elsners allow him to be in this lot. and eugene is one of the true heroes, not only in reconstruction, but in the city of shreveport and in the south as well. all weekend long, american history tv is featuring shreveport, louisiana. learn more about shreveport and find out where c-span's local content vehicles are going next online at cspan.org/localcontent.