cornerstone speech? that would be a pretty effective anecdote that the civil war was not about slavery. jefferson was wrong -- >> someone in our audience has actually written that. >> the scholars bring to light the documents of our past that are frank and open about the racial idealogy. >> i never got my steak, by the way. i was never issued my steak. >> larry has a couple broken ones. >> that's when you get the steaks. >> the story of the lost cause has been mobilized around a set of political products. this goes without saying, i

guess the premise of all this, it's the political projects that have been pervasive over the last 150 years which find useful material in the story of the lost cause that i think propels it forward and makes scholars sometimes relatively marginal in the conversation, because it's being driven by political projects of huge import. i'm reminded of the film "the birth of a nation." the character, ben cameron, right, ben cameron is a hero of the clansmen. one of the great unknown features of american constitutional history is ben cameron is modelled by a guy named rufus bratton, which is the first case under the 14th amendment to reach the united states supreme court. in early 1872, it gets argued. n in a very, very telling moment,

the supreme court ducks the question entirely, a man who will be a model in "birth of a nation" to avoid saying anything about the 14th amendment. this is unknown because bratton comes alphabetically after avery. but from the very beginning, the political project of telling the story of the lost cause has had this political project around the constitutional amendments. >> this sense of theme of what is the appeal of the lost cause is coming up. i agree with everything that's been said. most of it probably boils down to a sort of code for racism, no question about it. on the other hand, we got some literary folks up here and plenty out there. the stories of losers have an appeal. stories about suffering have an appeal. now, the story of black suffering was repressed and suppressed and kept invisible in our history for a very long time

and is only now beginning -- still has a very long way to go but it will arise at the central place it deserves, but i hope it's getting there. if you think about the history of literature, king lear or willy loman, people like to read stories about losers, and the south has claimed that story. so that has a certain visceral appeal, especially if you don't think about it too much. >> well, i think just picking up on what both gary and andy just said, i think it's also important to think about you're alluding to this. we don't just read about it because we want to read about specific people. we don't want to read about how african-americans suffered post reconstruction. it's one thing to think about what the incentive of the lost cause is and why people want to accept it. i think it's also very important to think about the disincentive for accepting not simply that

the civil war was about slavery, that it actually wasn't about slavery, it was about the expansion of slavery. that's a very depressing notion, i think, for a nation that premises itself on freedom and liberty. i strongly suspected if we accepted the academic story, the entire country, for what the civil war was, the premacy, that it would have effects beyond those that are immediately paer apparent. i think people believe things because they want to and that should never be disregarded. there are very good things for not believing the civil war about slavery. this would take us into all kinds of policy questions about affirmative action. and again, i'm almost ashamed to say this, but as an african-american, i had some sense the civil war was about slavery. i was shocked just how much it was about slavery. it was totally -- again, as an

african-american, completely depressing. david in his lectures has that great quote, and i make use of it all the time. i should start sending you a fee or something. >> that's fine. >> we'll talk. >> we should. because this really, this changed my whole career path, actually, but when you start to consider african-american slaves as property, as you so brilliantly put it, were worth all the property put together in the country. when you start thinking about mississippi and the millionaires who lived there, more per capita than any other country, this is depressing. it will cause you to rearrange how you think about yourself in reference to your country. so if millions of people -- not millions -- hundreds of thousands of people were willing to die for the expansion of slavery and the good guys were only willing to die to not see it expand, it just so happened

by chance that we got emancipation. who are we, then? what are we, then? i think it poses deem questions that are hard to get to. >> you've written a stunning piece. is it you find yourself back in the civil war, it's not a moment of jubilee. it's a country freeing the slaifz, but it's not just a country freeing the slaifz. it's an ugly, terrible, are these moments of pride, but the, sort of, wasn't tragic, but it is. it's a great conversation but you can't look at 600,000 people

died. it's bigger than that and there are other questions there, but even for african-americans, you get the riots in memphis afterwards, and you read about people being raped and everything. there's nothing good, at least in the immediate sense. maybe there's a long term, but it will not make you feel good immediately. >> i was going to say that one thing that really strikes me about the way we write about the american civil war when you read a lot about other civil wars is we don't write about the trauma of civil war. this romantic story isn't just out there in the popular version. we as scholars have our own place in the redemptive services of this war, so we can talk about this war that's really difficult to explain, and i think the suffering trauma that goes along with civil war, just

thinking. a war that puts us in a number of other wars where there are a displaced number of people. yes, but they still have to seizure vourvive the war. they're being brutalized by their masters, their mistresses. and there are a million other stories about human trauma. another thing about this as a lost cause is that there is two versions of the love of the lost cause, crudely put, at least two populations for this. one is the people for whom it's an unan assess tractor-trailer history. >> if that were -- if that was the only population for the lost cause, we wouldn't be in this.

that is just using it as a metaphor for conservatism, what they regard as opposition to the federal government, and that's why the lost cause continues to appeal. there is a cast to it which is why people who have no familial connection with the confederacy somehow identify with that cause and the experience of defeat and powerlessness that came afterwards. >> it's a formula that can fit a lot of causes. >> it's not just an ancestral attachment. >> just wanted to comment on one of the difficulties in coming to terms with the civil war, it seems to me.

progressive-minded people, as one that we believe the the first payer of the outcome of the civil war. it was a good war in that sense. but those same people, myself, that is, the idea that there could be a war which evolves into a war with tril. we talk about the mission shift in war, and once you release the gods of war only bad things happen is our general view of modern history. so what do we do with that? i've asked some of my colleagues

of the iraq war because they thought there really were weapons of mass destruction there. and yet retrospectively we're for the civil war. that's a confusion we haven't resolved. >> david, i don't think most of the men who volunteered and put on blue uniforms would have been the war was about the extension of slavery. they would have said it's about preservation of the union. that meant something to them that we have lost. to them it had a very specific meaning. they saw slaveholders as olive gardens. they believed that small deed democracy was at stake. they didn't believe it existed in the south because of the oligarchy rule there. they also looked across the

ocean and said, democracy hasn't worked anywhere. the resolutions of the late 1840s failed everywhere. democracy is in retreat. if it's going to be saved anywhere, it has to be here, and if these ol girks garchs was aristocrats and the monarchs will be able to say we told you. >> we all thought lincoln said it, and then. we capture who is still very widely held among the white loyal citizenry. so i can't even give credit for going to war, most of them, to limit -- the democrats certainly didn't. 45% of the north are democrats.

they're not on board with anything. >> it's that other democratic party in that other century. >> when does it become, though, like a semantic question, because if the thing that's threatening the union is the extension of slavery, you may be for union but the thing that's actually fighting and is excuse. zpz i have decided. those are two different things, with you you fight to save the country examine why you fight to succeed. those really are to my questions. i think an application to the user stories are popular

stories. and this is not a coincidence -- i think it's not strange. i think that in the era of modern industrialized warfare doesn't provide opportunities for heroism. heroism on the battlefield is unavailable after the rise of certain forms of weaponry. so pictures charge. why tu be a triumph of heroism in the face of natural and industrial slaughter. there is a key to that story that he's hoping -- what do you think about black reenactorz. was in 1997, the 100th anniversary of the unveiling of

the show "memorial" the great boston held an extraordinary conference like in. had he, and we gave them papers on this and that and this and that, but the people who stole the show were about 100 black reenact orz. they had a whole panel of. it turned out almost all of them started gloria. >> gloria is a watershed in the popular memory, and you've written about this. after arming. not only did these hundred, a

match. stood on the stage and kept doing an about face for an hour and a half although efls on the monument. it was kind of a street theatre unlike anything else i've ever seen. he got a standing ovation. he got a greater ovation than karen powell got, by the way. i've done shows in the south, charleston, south carolina, where we dedicated a monument to the first memorial day and a group of black reenactment actors. these guys are serious. i no longer crack jokes because of this experience. but it also says something about my own attitudes, doesn't it? black reenactors are the good war. all the federal reenactors are

gone. some of them are out just to find the past because they don't like living in the present. there are a lot of reasons people do this, but black reenacting -- i think we can all -- >> is it on the rise, do you think? >> i think we reached a moment in the '90s when doing this was available for african-americans in ways it hadn't been before. people discovered black soldiers. >> i was in gettysburg on november 19 last year. and reenactors march in gettysburg, lots of them. they get reaction from the crowd when they went by. >> they've become really cool in

reenactment circles. i wanted to talk to john about liberty and the common good. but i want to allow one more question. this came up in my undergraduate seminar two days ago at great length. what do you think the internet is doing, will continue to do, the sheer u bibiquity to the internet, not only historical memory, historical consciousness, historical memory generally. >> i don't want to get in trouble here. i saw excerpts in this piece gary wrote. >> i wasn't going to say about you blogging. >> i would love to see it. there are two aspects.

the first it has really created a widespread audience for the kind of lost causes we've heard denounced up here. that's the bad thing. there you go. it's all over. i think it's gotten a kind of legitimacy on the internet that it might not have otherwise. i'll talk about it from my experience, and that is this. i was always someone who considered themselves somewhat of a history buff. even though i dropped out of college, i kept history as a primary interest of mine. it was what most of my reading was about. i took a break around 2008 after my first book came out, and i was greatly looking forward to this moment where i could begin reading again as a fan and not someone who was writing a book. i was so happy about that. >> god, i can't even remember that. >> i didn't know until you were going to lose that that it would

be all about your work. i went back and read an autobiography about ida b. wells. i read another book about reconstruction. the civil war started to loom a little bit larger. at that point i was blogging. one of the things i do on the blog is i always talk about what i'm reading. so there would be these kind of faint references to the civil war and one day someone said, you should really check out -- this was just an anonymous comment -- you should really check out dave master son's battle cry of freedom. i can't even give words to what happened after that. in short, i'm here largely because of the internet, and it's a weird thing because for most of my career i was a print journalist. but the internet offers a kind of, obviously, interactivity. if it's a properly curated

conversation, the crowd is much smaller than you think it is if you clear the way. people can tell you what you're wrong about, what you're right about, and they will be intelligent. i came to most of your works through the internet. some guy e-mailed necessame and should read this guy david blight. it was on the internet. it blew me away. we have a very different relationship. i don't have to presume to be right. they can be right, they can be directing me, i could be taking a seminar from them. so i think this sort of democracy of it another is extremely, extremely, extremely exciting. it's not the usual position that a writer finds himself in. you don't usually get the opportunity to go somewhere and say, hey, i don't know anything about this, why doept you tell -- don't you tell me. but you can do that on the

internet. that's been intentionally lib rati rating for me. >> any points you want to make or do you want to pass? >> can i just say i hope all of you guys blog? i really, really do, because i just to want add this really quick. one of the big, big problems and one of the my great frustrations is the wall, like j store. i have some access to j store and that really, really helps, but most people do not, and there are so many exciting things. >> we need to get you a library card. >> there are so many exciting things you guys are doing, and a lot of it isn't even that hard to read. but getting it out to -- because that's the story, right? the rap is so hard to read, but it's actually not that hard to read. but getting historians to the public, that's really been something that i've really, really enjoyed so i hope you guys take up the cause yourself. >> if the firewall comes down,

we'll have a test of that and we can't afford that test. >> right, right. >> i was just going to say, i know it's sort of a very, very predictable whining, but i'm curious about your perspective on this and those of you who spent more time blogging and things. when you do a piece for like the "new york times" website. i did one on the federation, for example. they had this cool idea that they should have a manuscript copy of the confederate constitution, and there is a fiction that it's a copy of the u.s. constitution, which it is not. so i wrote an introduction and these little hyperlinks explaining what the dimps was in each place where they significantly changed the constitution. you can scroll over the document and these links pop up and i get to explain what words they changed and what difference it made. that was a really, really cool thing to do. but the conversation that went on after it was one of the most polarized conversations i've ever seen in my life, and it

wasn't encouraging, it was really kind of disturbing and it didn't seem to make anybody think anything except they were right to start with, that all the academics are left wing more ons and elitists, and the confederacy, there really was a fine -- this was a fine constitution for a fine country that we're making it up about slavery. even though you're going through the thing, the word slavery appears in the confederate constitution, it does not appear in the u.s. constitution. they write a clause saying their own congress can never, ever write a law limiting the right of property and slaves which comes to bite them when they want to enlist men in the army. they can't free them. they've tied their own hands, which is why they have to go begging to the states. they do not have a clause that says the states have a right of cessation. these are interesting things. but the conversation that ensued was really, really vitriolic and

polarized. there was no middle ground there at all. >> it's free. i just got called about a piece i did on slate.com, just another geriatric professor, which i take issue with. >> the problem is -- and this is not you guys' fault. the problem is we've taken the notion of democracy a little too far, and it has not gotten into people's heads on the internet yet that you really should curate your comments. it's not just an open space for people to spout off. >> keep telling them that. >> i have a blog, i'm hosting a space. i would not let you come into my house and insult one of my guests. i would ask you to leave. that's what would happen in my space. if you want the space to be elevated, you have to treat it that way. that's our fault. we haven't quite gotten it through our heads that we should commit resources for it. i'm sorry that happened. it happens 99% of the time. >> there are a hundred other

legacies we could take up here, but let's take another question. there are two mikes. you can stand at the mike or tom or melissa will -- right into the mike, sir, if you would. tom, turn it on, if you would. >> i really wonder and i do feel with the diminution of interest in public schools in particular downgrading history. history is not taught except for 45 minutes one day in a month after lunch or something. i have 12 grandchildren. they don't know their history. and they're not expected to because it's been woven into a thing called social studies. and that's it.

so the crock of people to replace you are coming from the highest academic quadrant and they haven't had this learning experience going back. >> austin is there, though. >> that's different. even the idea of the black history month, that doesn't tie to the civil war because they don't want to upset the little darlings. i think there should be something coming out in higher academics to tell the school administrator, superintendents, mayors or whoever makes these decisions that history is important. >> we try. >> we're not in charge of school administrators. >> sir, this is a good news/bad news story. >> i've heard a lot of people say on the panel today about how many books they've written and how many things they've

written -- >> i said how many books i've written. it's all my fault. >> i'm sorry if i disrupted you. >> no, this is a good news/bad news story. the good news is andy, gary, steph, we all -- every summer we teach teacher institutes all over this country, hundreds of them. we reach thousands of teachers. this never happened until about 15 years ago. the gilroy minister is responsible for much of it. on the other hand, the impact we're having is a hard thing to measure. it's a hard thing to measure. often we hear from those teachers the very complaint you just made. andy? >> i should say one thing to confirm my reputation as a jeremiah seeing these things going downhill. unfortunately, i think the gentleman is more than right, and i would add to that that the percentage of students majoring -- statistics can be a little misleading, but the percentage of students majoring

in some discipline which in my mind includes history, at elite universities, including this one, is rapidly declining, so we should be worried. >> one of the best ways to get our world and the world of second grade schools and middle schools together was the grant program, which was defunded. >> it's about to die. >> it's about to die. it was not very much money, but congress is not going to renew that. >> no, it's not. next question. the man in the yale shirt who is now a high schoolteacher in texas. >> i teach tenth grade world history to tenth grade students. >> what are you doing here? >> escaping. >> escaping is a polite way of saying it. i have two parts. first, look baing back on thata