captured forces. it is a massive blood letting, a huge scale. the federals believed one more big strike and this door broke wide open in the west and everything would be resolved and shiloh disproves that completely. the confederates still had this feeling that one confederate soldier could whip ten yankee hirings as shelby foote used to say and that's washed away in the blood bath of shiloh. shiloh is a wakeup call this was going to play out over an extended period of time and shiloh was going to be the first example of a blood letting, total war now in play and both sides had just entered the first phase of the total war. as we tell people, there is going to be three more aprils of

bloodshed before this war resolves and shiloh points the pathway towards that extended blood letting, but it is just the first in a long list of similar killing days in the civil war. the union army is still here. the confederate army falls back to corinth and both sides are in the same positions they were when the battle began, but grant had not been defeated. buel made the juncture and the railroads lay waiting for the next union strike. >> you can watch this or other american history tv programs on the civil war at any time by visiting our website c-span.org/history. >> as commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the civil war continues, join us every saturday at 6 and 10 p.m. and

sundays at 11 a.m. for programs featuring the civil war. for more information about american history tv on c-span 3 including our complete schedule, go to c-span.org/history. to keep up with us during the we can or send us questions and comments follow us on twitter. we're at twitter.com/cspanhistory. each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday at 8 p.m. and midnight eastern and sundays at 1 p.m. this week former general counsel to the republican national committee david norcross looks at edmond burke and the origins of modern conservatism. mr. norcross is a guest lecturer in charles stone, south carolina n a course called the conservative intellectual tradition in america taught by

mallory factor. this is an hour and a half. >> he is indeed a great friend which i suppose explains the generosity of that introduction. i thank you. this topic is particularly apt today. you hear a lot, particularly in the republican primary about who is a conservative, who is not, what is a conservative, and you can do no better than edmund burke as a template for what conservatism really is. so you might ask somebody whom you wonder whether they are a conservative or not, what do you know about edmond burke? well, clearly not every conservative knows a whole lot

about edmund burke. many have probably not read edmund burke. at that point you can move to some things we're going to talk about today, some things you will hear about today, and talk to them about what they think about these various principles. i think edmund burke and his principles describe the classic conservative. now, somebody's political philosophy, right, left, center, how far right, how far left, is a pretty personal thing, and it is pretty complex. the use of labels is probably not the best of ideas, but in your own mind you probably want to know. mallory mentioned the fact that in new york i had to deal with folks of all stripes, all republicans, left, right, center of the republican party and one of the ways i did that is by not trying to put any of them into a

particular box. burke will give us a yard stick, a box if you will in which to see whether principles or people fit and give you a way to judge how they think. you can't understand burke without an understanding of english history. i think you cannot understand the origins of america and therefore american history unless you understand burke. i guess what i am really saying bottom line is that you can't really understand american history, american political philosophy, american conservatism without an understanding of english history. i have thought for many years that american history really

didn't begin to start in 1776 or even 1750. it started probably in the norman con quest in england is 10 of 6. it helps you understand burke because it is that background and that history that it all happened before edmund burke arrived on the scene in 1729. consider that just 40 years before burke was born, that takes us, what, back to about 1970, a long time ago for many of you and not so long for me. just 40 years before burke was born there was an english revoluti

revolution. it was called the glorious revolution and for the most part bloodless. michael barone is going to talk sometime in this series and michael barone is the author of a book you should all read and whether it ends up on the required reading or not and i almost put it on my list because he talks about the glorious revolution although he calls it our first revolution. that was 1689. the english at that point in essence picked a king and it is interesting to read burke's explanation for how they selected a king but didn't elect the king, and there is nuances in english history that make it clear why he can't say they selected the king and what he did is follow the blood line which was a strong tradition and guideline for the english to

select a person who met the requirements of the blood line and yet would be a king to do what they needed to have done which frankly was to be rid of james ii and his catholicism, to be placed with a protestant who was interested, they thought, in the development of british culture and commerce. you must also understand that during burke's time england was pretty much the america of today. it was a world power, had, i think, without dispute the strongest most powerful navy in the world. navys are obviously still of enormous importance, perhaps beginning to get of more importance and in the period of the 1700s a strong navy was absolutely essential if you were

going to be a world power. so 1679 they pick a king. 1649, just another 40 years back, they executed a king, and they chose another leader, cromwell led the commonwealth. then in 1660 they chose another king, so we have in the course of, what, 100 years we have three chief executives selected by the english people without an election, but a very decided shift in control and who is in control. you would think that in the period between the time they

executed charles i and the time they put william and mary in power that the country would have been in turmoil, but it really wasn't. it really wasn't. the country continued to be a commercial, military, success. it continued to grow. it grew without any serious disruption at home in terms of commerce or the day-to-day life of individuals. i should add that also in 1714 just before burke was born they picked a whole new line. william and mary died childless and had no children, so they came to another roadblock. they picked a house of haniber and found a germany electricor,

and they selected him, and we have four changes in the course of 100 years and england soldiered on. the merchants in england continued to be successful. they continued to grow. english commerce grew. commerce among themselves grew. there was in that period of time the country thrived. in that period of extreme you would think turmoil, possibility for turmoil, there was little disruption. this is the world into which burke was born, the world in which he became a politician, spent many, many years in parliament, was in leadership only a very short period of time, was in opposition much of

that time, but burke, burke's philosophy, i think, was shaped by those extremely important potentially disruptive events which england survived and not only survived but thrived. through that whole period parliament gained strength in part because it was the vehicle for selecting the new kings. parliament actually when they restored charles ii to the tloen, typically actually there was no parliament, but parliament came together, created the restoration, restored the crown to charles the ii and passed an act

legitimizing itself. in essence, they said, well, we weren't really parliament when we chose the king but now that he has chosen and he is here and we're in place, we're going to say we were parliament. fairly smooth transition. we've had transitions in this country from president to president not as smooth as that was. so one of the burke tenants is that government is necessary and there is a divergence on this point between burke and payne. as a matter of fact, burke, much like blackstone, said any government is better than no government and clearly that 100 years before burke was born and

when he was becoming active in politics a smoothly functioning government was essential and was essential to the continuation of people's comfort and people's commercial development. you can't understand u.s. history without understanding that of time and the growth of the power of people to select their leaders by means that were not revolutionary even if the glorious revolution was called a revolution. one of the things about burke and i want to throw this in now, one of his biographers, utley, points out that burke's development in no small measure was because of his prolonged and undisciplined reading.

think about that. prolonged and undisciplined reading. immersed in history and that appreciation for history and that appreciation for how the country continued to develop through what could have been a bumpy time is the basis for burke's philosophy. at all times through all of those potential upheavals, the preservation of existing freedoms was foremost in the english psyche. that's how it became part of our psyche. burke saw that, understand like nobody else in his time, i believe, and that might be unfair to blackstone, but like nobody else in his time did that

preservation of existing freedoms was essential to progress and the goodness of human life that is the fullness of the life that you get to lead. understanding all the while throughout this every time there was a bump in the road parliament came up with a little more power. if you think about it, from the rigid side of charles the 1st to where the british are now and to where we are now, in terms of the power of the people, and of legislative bodies, you will understand it is that development that shaped burke and has shaped the britain of today and the united states of today. so when somebody asks you as i ask my son many times when he

was very young, what are you reading now, you can tell them i am doing prolonged and undisciplined reading and if it was good enough for edmund burke, it has to be good enough for me and you, too, dad. that undisciplined reading, i suspect, had a lot to do with history and he certainly had a history that was full of lessons and full of potential pit falls to deal with as he came into his own as a politician. as i said, always in opposition with the exception of a very, very brief period of time. also, he was of the period of the enlightenenment, the age of reason, and they were at that time they were just beginning to roll over into romantic ism. burke is not really a man of

either of those philosophies which makes him all the more interesting. he was pretty much a man of his own philosophy, his own thought and his own undisciplined reading. he had his debates with russo who was very much more a believer of the goodness of man. burke was not incidentally. burke realized that man, woman, left to their own devices without government wouldn't lead very happy lives, wouldn't understand much progress and wouldn't progress. so for him the romantic notion that you can create government

out of reason which i believe is essentially where the french were after the french revolution and before, they destroyed the model. burke never thought that that was an alternative. he never separated human reason from historical experience. remember particularly two words from that sentence, one history, two experience, they are two along with tradition which is the third keys to who burke was and was burke thought. when i suggest to you that you might say to somebody you think you're a conservative, what do you think about burke, and they say i don't think anything about burke and did he play third base for the cincinnati reds or what, and then you can ask him what

they think about history, what they think about tradition, what they think about experience, as a foundation for society and for a political philosophy. if you think about it and you look back on all that i have talked about that happened in the 100 years before burke was born and immediately preceding burke's birth, experience, that is the experience of people with the situation with which they were confronted was something that if you considered you saw how to get from point a to point b with minimum disruption. experience. you look at history. what is it that we are trying to preserve? what is it about our way of life that is most important to us?

to russo u it was probably man's ability to figure out how to make everything better. to burke it was to figure out how do i keep progress coming? not fast, not abrupt, but keep it coming. i talked a minute ago about the progress of parliament from regicide to the choosing of the hanivs in the 1700s. parliament was always there. the day-to-day life of englishmen didn't change all that much, and they focused on history, daily experience, past

experience, and tradition and. and tradition isn't dry at all. tradition is the every day life of today looked at 40 years hence and one of the concerns of today is that we may be abdomen abdomening traditions and years of experience which have kept us progressing. that's a thought about burke that applies to today. you need to ask yourself whether when candidates talk in terms of the america as we had known it

what burke's position would have been and more importantly is our position going to be as we have choices to make going forward. burke, tradition, history, experience, survival in times of potential upheaval, i think describes why great britain today and the united states today are so very different than virtually any other model of government in the world. yes, they have a king and we have a president that we elect every four years, but have you ever asked yourself why, why are there such difficulties in other

parts of the world with what we assume is second nature? well, it is because it is second nature, and it is second nature because we have respected history and tradition and experience. that has produced two pretty good countries in which to live. you see how i am getting from executing king charles to 2012. there is a continuum of development in the united states, a continuum that burke not only would have understood but i suspect would have expected. did he -- one of the notions of

conserve tichl is that it is a rejection of change, and i think you will hear that as a simplistic explanation from most any liberal that you get into a serious conversation with. that's not really true. it isn't a resistance to change. it is a resistance to the rejection of history, tradition and experience. what people are saying today regardless of how you feel about the health care plan, i think you must concede that it is a significant change in a tradition that involves a very large part of american economic

society, so i am not here to say i have my views and you can probably guess what they are, but i am not here to say that we shouldn't change no more than burke would say you shouldn't change. i am here to say how you do the change matters. and the fact that the glirk and then the americans after all for the most part english when we started this experiment how they viewed progress and change. think about -- it is an interesting sideline, but you know when the american revolution was over, there were folks who offered the crown to george washington.

if you think about burkiae philosophy and you think about americans that knew about burke, you can certainly understand why somebody said, well, hey, this is not william and mary, and it is not george the iii, but this looks like the way to move forward without radical change. the secret to to our success and to our foundation is that we got past that with a pretty radical change do you ever wonder what would have happened if george washington said, hey, okay, not a bad idea? might have worked, might have worked, but i think at that

point we had understood that we could make the change, we could keep the traditions, we could embrace the progress without going back to a king. anyway. what would burke say about that? i guess burke was alive when washington was offered the crown. i am not seen in the readings anywhere what he said, but maybe that's what i want to do. maybe if i get the one question of an historical figure maybe want i want to ask burke what if we had crowned george, our george, sort of their george anyway as well? can't separate human nature from human experience. the french did. the french revolution.

they threw it all out. they threw out the church. they threw out the king. they threw out the nobility, killed most of them. they did a do over. the do over didn't work. unsurprisingly and in fact predictably, burke said it wasn't going to work. thomas jefferson, you may know, observation may be close to b s blasphemy in my home state, thought highly of the french revolution, had some significant little dust ups with folks here about it, and burke had serious, serious combat over his position on the french revolution.