but its greatest effect, i think, was the way it prompted the development of a massive welfare program by the states, that in allocating false fund and food stuff to the release of soldiers' wives and children, dwarfed anything undertaken in the north. this is a broadside that comes from the, a year later when there was another series of riots. as showing that the confederate government, which is, this confederate military, which is essentially controlled the food supply of the confederacy at that pound was being forced to give food back to the counties to tree lerelief agents to give women and children. in the hard of confederate national territory, the mass of white southern women had emerged as formidable adversaries against the government in its long struggle. by insisting the state live up to its promises to support them, even taking up arms to do so, these poor white women who had never participated in politics

before, stepped decisively into the making of history. well, what are we to make of this? their politics are not easily read through our usual way of understanding women's concerns. these were not feminists. they didn't belong to any organization. they didn't belong to a women's rights organization. and in fact they didn't speak a language of rights of women's rights or citizens rights at all. so, while it is tempting to cast this history of confederate women, as an episode in the history of citizenship in the united states, i think there is reason to entertain, a less predictable view of the women's politics. for the mobilization of poor, mostly, rural women in the confederate south during the civil war, bears resemblance, not so much to the process of gradual extension of, citizenship, around which most american political history is framed. liberalism framework. but far more to the way, politics was practiced, by poor,

rural, urban people in many parts of the modern world. what one historian his called the politics of the governed in most of the word. if the new political assertiveness of southern women didn't bring down the confederacy, and i am not arguinging that it did, it did represent a powerful challenge to the confederate vision of the people and the republic and it showed the limits of their pro slavery and anti-democratic nationalism. any government -- that took their men, would ultimately have to answer to them. the reckoning was slaves politics. well that was even more direct and consequential. at the birth of the american republic, thomas jefferson had warned that slavery destroyed slaves love of country. it made them allies of any foreign power that sanctioned their emancipation. slavery, he predicted, turns slaved into enemies and nurtured

traders at the american breast. clearly he was thinking about dunmore's proclamation and the american revolution. but secessionists faced the same problem. and they seemed hooeedless of t dangers. gave no thought to what slaves would do. discounted entirely the matter of slaves' allegiance. but moving decisively to grasp the opening history offered in their own long war against the slave holders. slaves made their loyalty and allegiance count. and created a significant problem of treason in the confederacy. the problem was evident to masters on plantations who as early as january 1861, found evidence of what nwas powder, ad plots of network, slave communication, providing valuable intelligence to the enemy. indeed the plantation emerged as a critical site of civil war politics because the it was the ground of a struggle that

radiated up and out through the various levels of government in the confederacy. slaves moved tactically and by stages, men and women both, equal and active participants in the whole array of insurrectionary activities calculated to destroy the institution of slavery, their masters' power and the prospects of the confederacy as a pro slavery nation. excluded from political life, as a matter of foundational principle, slaves' politics registered profoundly nonetheless, not just in union policy where we have been fraund to look, but in confederate poll seep as well. a state and federal officials, attempted to make slaves labor count for the cause. slaves' activities had crucial consequences not just for owners but for the confederate government and military. confederate politicians had begun the war, boasting of slaves as an element of strength. but when they demanded the labor of slave, male slaves to support

the war effort, a policy called impressment, working on fortification as here for example the government and military soon found themselves in a losing conflict with slave owners unwilling to surrender openly rebellious prompt. even as the government attempted to draw on slave property to wage the war -- slave owners attempted to draw on the army to protect slave prompt from the war. indeed many saw the army as nothing less than a giant slave patrol. and complained bitterly when military plans exposed their property to the enemy. its not the protection of property one of the dulties of the army in the field, a virginia slave holder wrote his congressman, demanding that the army position itself, so as to staunch the flow of slaves to union lines in his area near newport news, virginia. of course, slaves were streaming into union lines whenever they had the the opportunity.

from the point of view of slave holders it wuchtz the confederate army's job to pref vent this. taken as a class, slave holders proved spectacularly unwilling to sacrifice property for nation. quote, the planter is more ready to contrub oibute his sons and slaves to war you. cheerfully yield your children to your country, how refuse your servants another broadside blasted. and perhaps there is nothing surprising about this. in a country founded explicitly for the protection of property and slaves. given the protections written into the confederate constitution there was only so much the government could be, could do to compel compliance. planters co-lelue colluded with slaves, they attacked military commanders who did not make a priority of their interest in setting military strategy, they demanded that state and local

politicians represent their interest against the demand of the war department. for some slave holders, any state would do. union, confederate, brazilian, as long as it protected their property and slaves. like their counterparts in other slave societies, confederate slave holders often proved to be more concerned with property than nation. do historians robust assertions of the strength endurance of nationalism take that into account? how else are we to explain the actions of a group reckless enough to take a region and people into a perilous war but not patriotic enough to do what it took to fight it? but if slave holders could prove a weak link in the confederacy, bigger resistance came from the slaves themselves. enslaved men, resisted, and it force aid sep ration from their families, withdrew their labor from their support, and exposed them to significant threat of disease. but military men knew they reap

cyst ford political reasons too. one engineer in charge of building defensive works in northern virginia said bluntly that slaves, quote, refuse to do labor that will thwart the fed ralz they look upon as fighting for their freedom. in choosing, in seizing every chance to run away from the works, often straight to the enemy, the property insisted on acting as persons. persons who saw the war, as a critical moment in their own political history. and the long war against slavery. the mix of compromise the state sovereignty and slaves' rye cyst ans created intractable problem for confederate and military men. they knew that slaves pose aid danger to their operations and they couldn't pursue them as the they would other persons, caught providing aid and comfort to the enemy. it is surely revealing that the best descriptions of slaves anti-confederate activities come from military men who paid the price of their disloyalty and

heedless of the complications, bluntly called them traitors and enemies who pose aid threat to the very existence of the confederate republic. the dilemma came to an official head early on, in pensacola harbor in march 1862 when a confederate officer fed up, with runaway slaves carrying intelligence to the enemy across the bay, initiated a court-martial of six slave men caught escaping to the enemy at fort pickens. the charges, quote, attempt to violate the 57th article of war, holding correspondence with, or giving intelligence to the enemy. who ever heard of a negro slave being arraigned before a court-martial for a violation of the articles of war, their incredulous master railed. who indeed. in charging slaves with treason the officer posed profound questions about their political status and membership.

did slaves owe allegiance to the state? could they be traitors? were they subject to military law? these questions reverberated up the chain of command to the office of the secretary of war and they were never resolved. indeed what resolution was possible? confederate commanders had to be able to recognize slaves as traitors, if only to contain the damage they posed to the military. but how could that be adopted as official policy without profound damage to their status as prompt, whose only allegiance was to their masters. if slaves were traitors, clearly they were no longer just slaves. and this its what the masters said, he said they're run aways, give them back to me. i will deal with them as if it was 1840. and they had just run away. and the confederate officer was fed up. and he, he opened -- pandora's box. but the kind of transformations the pensacola officer had

acknowledged were irreversible. and they had profound ramifications in the confederacy as the need to harness slaves' labor relentlessly pressed recognition of the only terms on which slaves would be willing to offer it. it's now a very familiar part of the narrative of the american civil war. how slaves actions transformed a war for union into a war for emancipation. but less well known is how 4 million slaves resistance to the pro slavery agenda of the confederate government pushed it down its own reluctant path to slave enlistment. recap it recapitulating a struggle. none of the plans adopted in the confederacy ever reached the scale of the one proposed by major general patrick claiborne of the army of tennessee, who in december, 1863, made clear the stern logic of events, in a slave regime at war.

it was as blunt an assessment of the damage slaves were wreaking on the confederate military as one will ever read. we are waging war with the enemy in the front, and an insur respecti insurrection in the rear. and do what he had to do to earn their loyalty for the confederacy. his most shocking contention was not that the confederacy use slave men as soldiers to replenish its armies, but that such a move could be accomplished only by recognizing slaves own political desires and objectives in the war under way. we must bind him to our cause, by no doubtful bonds he advised. and the only bond sa firnt is hope of freedom. it would be preposterous to expect him to fight against it with any degree of enthusiasm. when we make soldiers of them, which we must, we must make free men of them beyond all question.

thuls did slave emancipation arise in confederate history as in so many other cases, as a military imperative. the critical pattern of war in emancipation has been radically underspecified in historical literature. by a long, circuitous route, president davis and robert e. lee were eventually forcinged to contend as clay born had with the humanity and politics of the slaves whose status as property they had seceded to secure. by 1864 and '65, officials in the highest reaches of the confederate government were forced to try to win slaves over off to the confederate cause. a little hard to digest. but there you have it. forced to try to one slaves over to the confederate causeperatelr military service. as incredible as it might seem they wanted to enlist slaves as

soldiers. then with national survival at stake, very few were prepared to entertain emancipation as the the terms of that service, as claiborne, had insist they'd must. in a tightly controlled, this 'tis, a union cartoon of what would happen if the confederacy did it. they said they would make it to union lines within two minutes of being mustered into the confederate army. in a tightly controlled, top down way, that included the public solicitation of general robert e. lee's support. president davis, secretary of state benjamin, and virginia governor, william smith, struggled but mostly failed to gain the support of the public and congress, for a policy of, enlisting slaftz ining slaves confederate army. the confederate congress did eventually pass a law allowing the use of slavemen in the army in march 1865. but that law explicitly stated that it quote did nothing to

authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves bear towards their owners. keep in mind that they were prohibited from doing that. they couldn't make a change. the constitution prohibited them from doing that. the congress in other words pro posed to enlist still enslaved men as soldiers in the confederate army. and they refused even to, at the 11th hour to write an emancipation clause. the war department did write orders, requiring that slave men would be allowed to serve quote only by their own consent. that's the end of slavery right there. by their own consent. and with free papers from their masters. but by late march, debt pretty for men to hold the lines outside of richmond, even davis dispensed with that requirement of consent and called on the governor of virginia to draft all black men, slave and free, between the ages of 18 and 45 for service as soldiers. in the last desperate days of the war, two companies of black

soldiers were raised and drilled on the streets of richmond. and dispatched to fight on the fortifications in front of petersberg, days before the end. little remains by which to ascertain their status. the confederate congress and the virginia legislature refused to the bitter end to condone the emancipation of any slave men who served. the story of arming slaves and how confed ralts arrived at that juncture is surely the most dramatic kind of reckoning white southerners had brought on themselves with war. it is also one potent measure of the political incoherence that national project had come to by the end of the war. and it is also, a potent statement, of the significance of the politics of the, of the unfranchised, and of the home front, in the war. davis and his cabinet had been forced to do the unthinkable. undermine owners paramount claim to their slaves and move off to

enlist slave men to save the slave holders republic. that episode hardly suggests that confederates chose independence over slavery, as so many people continue erroneously to insist. it is rather a profound indication of the structural problems the confederacy faced as a slave regime at war. and it is the ultimate measure of what slaves themselves had wrought unconfederate public life. the confederate states of america was transformed by war and the confederate political project was undone by the very people who had been taken in it. military defeat was coupled with political failure. given the pro-slavery, anti-democratic aspirations of the confederacy, there was a certain justin in that. by april, 1865, the confederacy was in ruins. a nation founded in a risky bid to render slavery and the power of american slave holders

permanent had failed spectacularly bringing down the most powerful slave regime in the western world. to say it changed the course of history is not i thin tubing say too much. thank you. -- history is not i think to say too much. thank you. [ applause ] i would be happy to take questions.

>> you talked about women's part in the war. i read many, many years ago that a maryland woman wrote the tennessee plan which was actually the plan that -- that sherman started in -- in tennessee and went all the way to savannah. and in all of your -- well -- have you heard anything about that? >> no, i have not. it is actually a confederate woman who was sick and tired of the war. >> and she was handing sherman a plan? >> well she gave it to the government, to the war department. >> no, i have never -- never -- >> in any of your research you

haven't? >> i have not. there are many claims about, and some verifiable about -- confederate women spies. passing significant military intelligence. in particular, campaigns, but that particular particular campaigns. no, i have never heard. have you? sounds like better fiction than history. you made reference to the movie cold mountain. i thought there might have been scenes that were over the top. such as torturing the woman to the fence. are you saying it was accurate? >> the person who is going to speak tomorrow is the woman who first wrote about these documents and there are almost liter literal transcriptions and this

is the kind of situation where there was so much torture. they were so desperate to round up these gorillas and sends out troops with orders and they were claiming they were acting on the governor's authority. and they into the women knew where the men were laying out. there were investigations afterwards. and maybe because he was a descent guy and there were long report that is showed up in the north carolina, they were written to the governor and they describe what charles frazier said. in one case a woman with an infant child was put on the

snowy ground and the child was put, they said if she didn't reveal the where abouts of her husbands and sons the baby would stay there. they put women's thumbs under fence posts and whipped them and ha hanged them. it was regarded as a real war against the women. and some of the soldiers were disturbed by it. others defended it as necessary in the war against gorillas. and yeah, these are literal. they are transcriptions. he never says anything in the front of that book about the documents, but they are archival documents in every case. >> have you found evidence that the confederacy based the milt strategy that the slaves liked being slaves?

>> that is an interesting question. the thing that i can never get my mind around is that they would inaugurate this movement including early military plans would no thought about what the slaves would do. the people were saying, are you crazy? you think it is bad enough that you can't, you know use the fugitive slave law to get the slaves returned? what is going to happen and they make it to the union army and they predicted what would happen. >> they were not willing to say there is going to be a terrible war. so, they were kind of in denial and even when the war began, there seemed -- what is really stunning is all of this talk and you can never tell what people believe from what they are saying. this is all a political campaign. they are saying slaves are an

element of strength in war. that our population is smaller but we can put the white men in the military. you know robert e. lee would say most military service is digging and labor. and that is why impressment is so important. officers and communitiers were so significant. this quickly collapsed. one of the things that i learned is that the military men other than planters who got -- learned the truth quickly and first when the war started about what

slaves started were the military. the most radical plans came from military men. i think it is kind of the opposite. i think there was in a sense military plans in a general sense plans that were laterally on with very deeply pro slavery assumptions about slaves, persons, beliefs and positions but they gave way quickly in the face of slave's actions. and military men have to, they have to make plans in realtime and they have to work. so they adjusted and they started to counter the actions of slaves.

do you think we will ever know how many slaves were executed? this pensacola case was inter t interesting because this guy tried them for treason. i don't think we will ever know the full story there. okay, so, based on this question, they may have been entirely wrong in that assumption, when you see that the union doesn't really capitalize on what the slaves are doing for a year and a half in the war. i'm curious what you see given

the research you have been doing on the impact of the emancipation proclamation from the confederate side. >> it depends on what you mean. january 1, 1863 things are already pretty far advanced. i think the original number is 700,000 or something. and you know, they reached that and there are no more people to get.

immigrants who they are fast tracking to citizenship and we have no more sources. so that is why the radical ideas are coming from there. i think it changes the calculation of slave men. i think it is a critical moment, i did see some really amazing sources in the shenandoah valley where the reversals are constant turning over 70 something times in one case. two sets of slaves and you can

see her slaves don't leave. and then it retreats and some slaves leave with them and not hers. and then a union officer comes and demands a right to take away her children. and the slave man had escaped to the union army and sent back a white officer to collect his wife and children. and the mistress says by what right and he waves the paper and says by the right of the president of the united states of america. and there i