thought would avert the crisis by guaranteeing slavery and perpetuity where it existed. the confederate constitution while it thoroughly embedded slavery into its fabric still there was a theoretically possible mechanism by which a confederate state could emancipate or abolish slavery. as a practical matter, i cannot imagine it ever happening. but nevertheless, the confederate constitution in some ways was more flexible than the united states constitution because it was more easily amended. so you had the theoretical possibility of slavery being better protected in the union than in the confederacy. but only theoretical. >> should anyone wish to test this theory. the original 13th amendment is alive and organic unlike the equal rights amendment which had to be passed by a specific number of years. the 13th amendment, the shadow amendment is still out there if anyone wants to pass it and see what happens.

bring it before the roberts court. it was actually passed by one state. you'll never guess which one. let's see if anyone knows. ohio. out of deference to senator corwin who was the compromiser. yes? question? >> harrisburg, pennsylvania. i think one of the fascinating areas in terms of james buchanan is what in the terms of what he didn't do is the things he didn't do that could've made things far worse for lincoln coming in including recognizing the confederacy. just what was his motivation? was it shear passivity? or did he genuinely have few remaining principles that he was not going to put lincoln in a worse position than he already was?

>> well, you -- is this on? you must keep in mind that he was making his decisions with only several months remaining. and he wanted to get out of town without -- no, seriously. he wanted to e get out of town without having the war started on his watch. he made it very clear that, and he states this that i will do nothing that will incite any kind of a war or conflict. and i think the prime example of this is even though he did send a message to the commissioners from south carolina that he would protect and respond militarily to any kind of attack on a fort or interfere with the carrying out of federal law when

he did send a relief expedition to the west to relieve ft. sumter when it was fired upon as he tried to enter the harbor, he did nothing. and there was no further attempt to send relief. and so, you know, i think he was paralyzed by this internal conflict of his devotion to the union. he stated that secession was illegal and he lost a lot of southern support for that. but on the other hand, he thought, well, this is why is this happening? all because year after year after year of abolitionist agitation. and that his sympathies with the south and his devotion to the

union he had this conflict which he would -- it paralyzed him. >> you mention buchanan's desire to go home. we know abraham lincoln was not interested in such things as the homes of presidents. because when he had the opportunity to visit mt. vernon in 1861, he was on the boat. his wife got off the boat and visited the house and collected mt. vernon and the grave of the washingtons. when abraham lincoln is on his an august ral journey in 1861, he's riding in his presidential car reading his documents and john nick let says, look, we're passing buchanan's home. is it wheatland? is that the name? >> wheatland, yes. >> abraham lincoln never looked up. never looked out the window, stayed focused on the future. next question.

>> i hope this is more a what -- not a what if, but a what would've -- would have the war ended in 1861 had the union crushed the south? >> that's a good question. we can have quick answers to that. would the union have prevailed quickly in 1861 had the outcome been different at manassas? why don't we start with tom and work our way down. >> i don't think so. and i'm not a military historian. i'll turn this over to those on the panel who are. but i don't think so. i don't think so. and i think that's -- yeah. >> i'm inclined to disagree because i don't think either side was prepared to win regardless of how the fight at first manassas came out. i do think it's possible that the war would've ended in 1862 had first manassas been a union

victory because craig heard me say this a few days ago. the union managed to get past that humiliation because it had 80 plus years of history. shared associations, a tradition, pride, sense of nationality that i think helped get it through the humiliation and embarrassment of that defeat. i've often wondered what would have happened if the confederacy lost, having no tradition of anything -- would the people of the seceded states have lost heart? would jefferson davis and his government been able to continue to receive foreign loans to turn out the loans and the contributions in the south to keep funding a military effort if their soldiers had turned and fled in shame at first manassas? and it's a fair question. it's quite possible the confederacy might simply have

withered away had they not. >> especially with virginia occupy -- troops on the ground. john? >> no, i don't think it would have made any difference. >> i'm going to steal a page from something adam started to talk about a little while ago. and i'll elaborate on that a little bit. you have to keep in mind what the objective of each side is. the south begins war, it's already a de facto separate independent society with 750,000 square miles territory and the loss at manassas would not have brought an end to that war that year or maybe even the following year. the union had much the harder job. they better have dominant tradition and three times the number of men and eight times the number of manufactured goods because their job was to invade, occupy, and hold that territory forever. and that's an enormous undertaking. i think it would have taken a number of years under almost any circumstances. so no, i don't think bull run

was the moment when the north might have won. >> well, we all know how the south rallied around the con fed rattle victory at bull run. it might as well have rallied around a confederate defeat at bull run. one thing that motivated a lot to join on with the confederate cause about which there'd been a great degree of skepticism all during the secession process was the sense that the south was being innovated. i think that might have reenforced that feeling. >> what i think might have happened, i agree with jack davis and craig symonds that a union victory at mahmoud nas sas would not have brought an end to the war in 1861. maybe not in 1862. because it would have had to require follow-up victories. and the north was ill-prepared

to do that after manassas. even if they -- even if mcdowell had prevailed. i also think that there would have been unintended or to us what would have been unintended consequences of a prolonged war even with a union victory at manassas, and just think about what craig said. the objective of the union of the federal government was reunion. and it might have -- it might have caused renegotiation or political dialogue with the confederate states which lincoln would not recognize anyway. and it clearly would have obviated emancipation, if the goal was to bring back into the union those states that had seceded. i think it would have even complicated the political -- the political protocol that developed, if you want to call it that.

as it did during the conflict. >> i think we've broken some new ground here actually. yes, sir? >> canonsburg, pennsylvania. tom in his introductory remarks talked about buchanan possibly coming up with a compromise. my question would be what kind of compromise would be acceptable to both sides? lincoln would never give up the idea of preventing slavery from expanding, and the slave states would never accept that. so what kind of compromise would be available that would be -- would make both sides happy? >> let's do this very briefly so we can move on and get everybody included. >> that would be a good -- that's a good question. obviously the extension of slavery issue would have to have been addressed. you're right. it's -- there was no -- there would have been no guarantee that even if you brought both

sides together, as i had said, that they could have come up with a compromise. but the thing was there was really no effort on his behalf to do so. he base -- as i said, he was dealing and communicating with a very small portion of the political players. just part of the democratic party and, of course, he would not at all think about trying to bring in the republicans. so, you know, it's a good question, i don't know. lincoln was one issue he would not give up on and that is the extension allowing the extension of slavery. so whether or not buchanan and compromised measures could've brought in enough republicans remains to be seen and probably not. but i think at least he probably could've tried. >> jack?

>> i'll just add, i agree entirely with what thomas said. after february 18th, 1861, when jefferson davis arrives in montgomery, alabama, to be sworn in as president, there was no further possibility of compromise at all. because davis was committed to confederate independence. lincoln committed to reuniting the union. there is no basis for compromising between the two. >> i would think that any compromise -- and you could imagine what would really only be temporary, would only delay, i think, the issue of simply -- maybe again simplistic, but simply because the slavery issue was such a moral issue to both sides. it wasn't simply political, it was moral. and sooner or later, it was going to have to be dealt with. so any compromise would be temporary. >> i'm going to take my turn down the line before i hand off to craig. just remember that lincoln in a sense does define compromise

he's willing to live with, which is basically the language of this shadow amendment, which is that slavery be perpetuated, not extended, but perpetuated. enforcement of the fugitive slave act which he declares at the first inaugural. you can say that lincoln is politically very clever because he knows it's not enough. but he's also in a sense tinkering with politically with some very -- as john says, moral issues. and he makes some statements and some concessions in that period that actually detract from -- from some of his union saving and pro-liberty reputation. craig? >> i can't add to anything you've said, i agree. >> i think there was already so much momentum and enthusiasm for southern nationhood among the southern political elite, perhaps not the southern common

folk, be the political elite that it would have been very, very difficult to get them to stand down from this enterprise that they were very excited about. >> frank? >> well, i'm going to throw something out here that i -- i've been thinking about as a lawyer and a judge. and i think this inability to compromise really began with the inherent conflict in our constitution in 1787 following our declaration of independence, which says that all men are created equal, which lincoln loved more or as much and more than the constitution. and that it was only a matter of time for that to break despite the compromises of 1820 with the missouri compromise and the compromise of 1850. it was over. >> as much as lincoln used that cumbersome metaphor that you

could have both the declaration and the constitution as an apple of gold in a frame of silver. not a good metaphor in the bible and doesn't work -- >> what psychological importance did lincoln attach to the firing of the first shot? and we know he -- we know what he said in his first inaugural. and if he did attach importance to that, did you perceive any maneuvering on his part to bring about the -- what finally did happen at sumter? >> well, let's start with craig on that one because he's written about it recently. >> yeah, that's a -- what was the joke this morning? that's a great question. the two issues we're dealing with here is the extent to which lincoln and this machiavellian

vein that we mentioned earlier, in the best sense of that term, planned what happened to happen. jim mcpherson has argued that this is a heads i win, tails you lose option. lincoln created the circumstances where they either had to accept the firing the first shot or allow an undermining of federal sovereignty or nationalism by allowing supplies and so forth to be put back into ft. sumter. so lincoln crafted this careful, well-plotted strategy to throw the ball into the court of jefferson davis and compel him to make the first move. i think there's a lot to be said for that, but i want to also harken back to what some of us said earlier. how lincoln was picking his way through a political mine field in the first several months in the presidency. and that is that lincoln wasn't sure how any of this was going to turn out yet. he harbored the hope that there was latened nationalism. certainly in the rest of the south that could be brought

around given time for tempers to cool so that you could postpone and delay the confrontation, you might, in fact, convince some of those states to recant secession and come back into the union peacefully. if that didn't happen or confrontation was necessary then, yes, i'll create the circumstances where you bear the responsibility. but i kind of suspect that he hoped that the relief expedition would be allowed to go into ft. sumter. that that would prolong the period of uncertainty, keep eight instead of four border states in the union, undermine the sovereignty and the pretensions of the confederate government. if that didn't work, if instead they open fire, well, then we know where we are and you have started the war and we will react to it. so i think to a certain extent he had two possible outcomes in mind. either one of which he would be willing to deal with and wasn't sure until that shot was fired which of those would eventuate.

>> adam, you wanted to add something. >> yeah. i wanted to add that i don't think lincoln at all welcomed war, but i do think he thought if there was going to be a war, he didn't want to fire the first shots. and you know, that also played itself out in how the reaction to sumter happened. one of the brilliant things about lincoln, i think, is that as eloquent as he was, he was never a demagogue. he was never someone who tried to whip up popular sentiment with what he said. and when those shots are fired on ft. sumter, there's an incredible description of what was going on in the white house that day and they say it was a completely routine day. lincoln just sort of sat there signing various federal appointments and some virginia congressman came to -- i'm

sorry, northern congressmen came in to ask the president, well, what do you think of this incredible dastardly deed that the confederates have taken at charleston? and lincoln said, i do not like it. then he went back to work. and what he did was he let the war fever whip itself up around him instead of whipping it up himself. i think that was brilliant. >> john? >> i may be orn ri, but i'm not so sure that there was a situation here where the confederates were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. let's say they said, okay, you're there at ft. sumter, we're not going to fire on it. so you can stay there if you want to. and by the way, you know, ft. sumter's really not that important, and we -- we can get stuff into charleston anyway. maybe i'm being influenced by modern politics, but you can spin anything. and i think it's possible --

more than possible that confederacy could've spun it this way, not fired on ft. sumter and certainly gone on maybe even more successfully. in organizing themselves. >> all right. i hope we can get all three of you in.right. i hope we can get all three of you in. i'm watching the clock, so you're next. >> howard sears, hackensack, new jersey. this is primarily directed at john. i just wanted to talk about west point at the time, which is really an engineering school masquerading as military academy. you had hardy writing on tactics, but outside of that, there wasn't much in the art of war going on at west point, and these men that left west point to command the armies of the north and south, no one had ever maneuvered armies of this size. it was really on-the-job training as lincoln had to learn the job of commander in chief. and that's basically what i'd

like to comment. >> i think in all fairness to west point, and i'll let craig disagree with me, i think the one thing that everybody agreed that west point did teach is they did teach organization and administration. and so the one thing that a cadet came out of west point was with the ability to administer a group of people. it's true, they really didn't get much tactics, they didn't get much strategy and all, but they did get that. and that wasn't such a bad bit of knowledge and ability to do. >> well, john -- if i can ask john a question. remember, lincoln, who had very little military experience except for three months in the black hawk war in

1832, initially trusted, with great credibility, the west point educated generals until he learned that they were as inept as some of the political generals, or many were as inept. don't you think, though, john, that their education was deficient, including their own experience in the mexican war when it came to fighting this -- this civil war, at least in a general sense? >> yeah, there's no question about the fact that they could not officially move an army on the battlefield. but if you think of the one thing that they were able to do, if you look at mcclellan and you look at hooker, just to mention two, they knew how to deal with feeding people. they knew how to deal with working on morale,

taking care of their soldiers, so you're right. i think the problem was, they had no experience -- had no experience with actually leading people on the battlefield, and consequently, when they were forced to deal with an army -- imagine, an army of 60,000 men. you noi know, we throw that off. ah, it's only an army of 20,000 men. my town of sparkle, mississippi is only about 24,000 people. that would mean we would have to organize everybody in town to get an army of less than 30,000. and i'm going to be the general, with my four years of west point experience, a little bit of experience in the mexican war, and i'm going to organize this force to lead an assault on mississippi state university just two miles down the road? i don't think so. and i think what it does come down to is, nobody's ready for this war. nobody is prepared, and i think what frank says is right. lincoln came to understand this.

these guys really don't know as much as they think they know, and in lincoln reading their books, reading the book of my hero henry halak, came to understand, hey, i can figure this out just as well as they can. maybe better. how come they haven't considered this and this and this? maybe this lawyer's mind in this one instance, at least, played an important role, frank. >> you mean lincoln. >> i'm from baltimore, maryland. and this is something that i've been thinking of for two days, since i heard jack davis' presentation, and it's been reiterated today. so lee, the reluctant traitor, as you called him, agonizes about his loyalty to virginia versus his loyalty to the united states.

i imagine that was true for a lot of officers and the like. during the course of the war, this is foreshadowing, the south always had problems coming up with a viable national strategy, where they always came up with a viable national strategy with the north. to what extent were the southerners dealing with emotional blinkers, that, you know, lee was focused on virginia, on saving virginia, on defending virginia, and was less concerned about what happened in vicksburg and the far west and chattanooga and all these other places -- >> okay, we've got it. >> anybody can answer it. >> very quickly, because lee is often charged with being virginia-centric in his view, and i think that's true. and he probably should have been. if you put yourself in lee's position, he'll spend year after year watching the confederate command west of the appalachians essentially disintegrate and shoot itself in the foot. a great army miserably led most of the time during the war. and lee has to ask himself, what good could he do if he acceded

to jefferson davis' wishes in late 1863 and went out into that poison command center? could he have done any better? whereas he knew what he could have achieved with the army of virginia. i think lee is certainly aware of what was going on west of the age operations and towards the end of the war the general in chief. he'll exert minor influence in affairs outside virginia. but he knew where he was best used, and jefferson davis had enough wisdom to know not to disagree with lee. >> our final question. >> the panel already pretty well dealt with the question i came up here to ask while i was standing here. of course, the role of the outcome of bull run and its impact and then in '61. i thought in closing, though, tom, if you're having trouble coming up with good material on buchanan, i took the tour of buchanan's home, even though lincoln didn't raise his head to look at it, and if you listen to

the guides and dossients that take you around over there, i walked out of there saying, wow. did we have it all wrong? that buchanan sounds like a candidate for president? >> if you see me afterwards, i'm starting a james buchanan forum. [ laughter ] >> with only two people. >> volunteers could meet in the closet in the back. [ laughter ] >> well, at the end of 1861, what turned out to be but the first year of the civil war, abraham lincoln sent his first annual message to congress. he ended it by saying, the struggle for today is not altogether for today, but it is for a vast future also. he meant, of course, that american democracy preserve could yet, as he put it earlier,

light the world, but he also knew a vast future of death and destruction might be necessary to achieve that goal. to do less than defend the country, he believed, would guarantee, as he put it, that all of liberty shall be lost. to lincoln and to jefferson davis and the populations they led, it was a war worth extending for years to come. all dreaded it. lincoln remembered of the day he began his presidency. all sought to avert it, by which he meant war. both parties depricated war, and one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. and the war came. and as we learned today in our panel about 1861, and the war continued.

thanks to tom and jack and john and craig and adam and mr. chairman. thank you all, too. history book shelf features popular american history writers of the past decade and airs on american tv every saturday at noon eastern. this weekend on history book shelf, nelson lankford discusses his book richmond burning, the last days of the confederate capital. contending the fire sd