tv [untitled] July 7, 2012 6:00pm-6:30pm EDT
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school of 600 students. today it's a school that's closer to 3,000 students. it's one of the most racially integrated institutions in the country. >> all weekend, american history tv is featuring jefferson city, missouri, our local content vehicles recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about c-span's local content vehicles at c-span.org/localcontent. next month we'll future louisville, kentucky. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. this week on the civil war, two speakers from the u.s. capital historical hsociety's 2012 symposium. first ferg us bordewitch then
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jenny bourn talks about how the war was financed. this is over an hour and 15 minutes. >> our first speaker tonight is fergus bordewich who is an independent scholar and written a number of books including most recently america's great debate which is of fabulous read on the debate over the compromise of 1850. the moment when henry clay steven douglas, john calhoun, daniel webster, all up there debating the future of america. fergus and i disagree somewhat on the outcome. i believe it should actually be called the apiecement of 1850 rather than the compromise of 1850. and that is what i say in this book that we just published.
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but we can debate that, in any event, fergus is a regular contributor to the smithsonian magazine and a journalist and writes for the a number of newspapers including the wall street journal. even though he reviewed my book in the wall street journal on millard philmore, we're still friends. actually, he gave me a wonderful review and i thank him for that publicly. i'm not sure if that's appropriate but i do it anyways, i'm deleted to have fergus start this conference. >> thank you. good morning, everyone. i assume you can hear me perfectly well. first, let me thank paul and don
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kennen and lauren and historical society for making this possible. not only this conference but the annual conference as each one of which is several of which i've attended -- each fascinating in its own way. we're running a tad late so i am just going to dive in and move quickly. as you realize, sitting here, i'm going to be talking about the joint committee on the conduct of the war. that was a committee whose job -- which created itself to monitor the conduct of the war and how did it come to be, what did it actually do? who was on it and what effect did it have? >> basically that's what i'm going to be addressing. it's a complicated subject. it begins or its antecedent was the battle of bull run, 1861, as
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you all i would guess no. the unimaginable happened after a day's fighting, the federal army collapsed in a mob fled the battle field before the shocked eyes of tourists, society ladies congressman and senators, soldiers fled on mules and on foot. and amongst the onlookers were two particular men who figure in this story. one was ohio senator ben wade, who jumped out of his carriage and with the help of his friend, senator zachariah chandler, they pushed over their carriage to form a barrier and started bell lowing at the soldiers to stop. they couldn't stop the panic. however, what they saw that day would have a lasting impact on the war. it would test constitutional doctrine and strain relations between congress and the president and it would end the careers of a number of prominent
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military officers in the union army and leave a legacy that stretched forward to the civil -- to the second world war. now most northerners and their congressman had expected the union with its immense resources and advantages in manpower to overwhelm the south in a matter of weeks. no one was prepared for defeat, much ples on the scale of bull run. in the months that followed, union and confederate troops faced each other warily across the potomac river. steadily mounted and then on october 21st, on october 21st, three months after bull run, 2,000 federal troops crossed potomac and attacked a confederate camp near leesburg, 30 miles up the potomac. the result was a humiliating debacle. half of the union force was
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killed or wounded or captured and among the dead was edward baker of oregon, a personal friend of abraham lincoln and only sitting u.s. senator ever killed in battle. this additional humiliation outraged the north. the battle had no significance, it was a skirmish when you compare it to what happened in subsequent years. politically its effect was momentous. added to the military passivity of the months past, these two defeats spread widespread fears that the army was infiltrated with traitors and high ranking officers failed to do their duty at the cost of all of these lives. to put this in a larger context, in war time americans and other nations of course hunt for traitors in their own ranks. you only have to think of the harassment of german americans
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during world war 1, japanese americans during world war ii. yankees had more kind of reason for that anxiety. southern sympathizers known as copperheads were numerous, politically powerful, in the midwest and democratic newspapers ranted against the union war effort and encouraged read everies to resist if. hundreds of army ifrs defected to the confederacy. a lot of those remained with the union were southern democrats with family connections. when union generals seem to shy from battle, it stoked northern suspicion, sometimes to the point of paranoia, which persisted through much of the war. december 5th, 1861, chandler, zachariah chandler and i must say unfortunately -- his statue of him, two statues of every
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state are permitted. he was -- unceremoniously back to michigan not too long ago and i would think he would be recovered and restored to his place of honor. at any rate, chandler was a former detroit mayor who was a very successful try goods merchant and underground railroad activists and helped finance the underground railroad in the detroit area. at any rate, chandler, you remember him, he's there at bull run trying to stem the tide. he called for the creation of a congressional committee to investigate these two ka tas electrofees, radical republicans such as chandler were defined by their commit mtd to emancipation of slaves and civil rights and hard aggressive war policy. there were a minority in their own party. however with the departure of
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every southern senator and congressman except andrew johnson of tennessee, their leverage sharply increased. republicans controlled the senate by more than 2-1, holding 31 of the 44 occupied seats to the democrat's 13 and there was no doubt that chandler was going to get his committee but the debate was sharp. and the arguments still resonate today. republican senator foster of connecticut opposed any investigation of the army whatsoever. asserting that war was best left to the generals. he protested and i'm quoting now, i believe in letting the military authorities manage the army. if they manage it badly, we shall make a bad matter worse by tampering and interfering. later becoming treasury secretary declared that
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congress's dutdty to the voters required to monday ter how appropriations were spent and investigate the army's failures it was not willing to investigate itself. and there was not then or subsequently much of a very impressive record of the military investigating itself for public consumption, anyway. what are we to do? sit idle during the period that the war is in progress? we're not under the command of the military of this country. they are under ours as a congress. at any rate, chandler's resolution passed. the committee would be composed of five rpz in two democrats, reflecting the balance of power in congress. and it also provided the committee with a very free ranging mandate to examine not just those two battles but pretty much any aspect of the war it wanted. now, normally, the senator who proposed a new committee would chair it but chandler invited
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wade who was a lawyer to chair it instead. wade was as tough and difficult a man as any who ever sat in the senate. he was -- you can't tell from this picture but he was kind of stoudt and square as if he was chiseled from a block of granite. powerful voice and extremely o profane vocabulary and in an age of intense religiousty. his enemies called him a demagogue to political xaf enger and bulgarian. i like him. so at the end of 1861, the capital, there it is, probably -- the picture is from '63, i believe, was much of an army camp as it was the seat of government. rooms hr turned into bararacks
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and hospitals and pantloans seen swinging from ropes that hung from the cornice of the dome and bread was being baked in the basement and aroma was percolating upward and the capital architect plained things are more unplesant here every day, it is alive with lice and makes my head itch to think of it. it is like one grand water closet, that means toilet, friends. every hole and corner is defiled. this is the atmosphere of the capitol. this was the atmosphere in which the joint committee met. it held 272 sessions over three and a half years in is it now room s-124. and constantine, the artist was working on his frescos outside the room as this committee met.
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interesting. 11 different men served on the committee, wade was by far the most active. he, chandler and radical republican congressman george julie of indiana, daniel gooch of massachusetts, were also very effective in driving the committee. it was controversial from the state. and assessment of generally fallen along idealogical lines. in 1863 the republican new york times praised it for its unsparing investigations of military shortcomings. in later years, however, the committee's reputation plummeted in tandem with that of the radical republicans generally. during the jim crow era, for revisionist and jim crow historians it became political meddling and personal vin
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diktiveness and writing in 1939, harry williams condemned the committee for pressuring lincoln to embrace emancipation, terrible. for promoting mass hatred of the confederacy. there was a war on and for deliberately fostering a war sigh koes is in the north. this assessment became more or less the template by which the committee was judged. when harry truman formed his own special committee to investigate the national defense program on the eve of world war ii, he was determined to avoid the negative precedent. truman was a serious student of history and personally read the committee reports which were all online, great reading. good writer, good stuff. truman was also guided in his thinking by the robert e. lee
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biographer who blamed the joint committee for gross interference with the war effort and the work was most unpatriotic. i became familiar with its mistakes and determined to avoid the same errors in the conduct of my own special committee. thank goodness i knew my mystery and wouldn't do it. okay, so here we are in the midst of the civil war, half a century after the enactment of civil rights legislation which restored rights of radical republicans such wade and chandler commanded. so i think it's absolutely the perfect time to reexamine what the committee did and to extract it from the deep shadows in which it was cast by later generations. the results of its efforts were complex and in a few cases unfortunately.
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but they also helped to guide the u.nion war effort and helpe to turn the war into a rarcial revolution. they held views about human rights that were progressive far ahead of their time and remarkably strong willed men who were determined to shape a war effort which well into 1862 was at best indifferent enslaved african-americans and frankly hostile to them. they also understood long before lincoln did what kind of war would have to be fought to ensure final victory and what kind of generals needed to fight it. mainly taking testimony from union officers and viewed all of the principle officers active on the union side and many, many lesser known ones. none of its hearings were public, however, they leaked a great deal. none of the committees original
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members had a military background, which is typically cited as one of its fatal shortcomings. i'll come back to that later and address that point, whether it really was as much of a shortcoming as it was said to have been. they produced 2,000 pages of reports and often remarkable detail, exhaustive detail, the conduct of union defeats from first bull run to the petersburg crater of 1864. the management of the army of the potomac in particular, as well as other armies and competence and loyalty of senior officers and not surprisingly, this committee irritated military men by asking often embarrassing questions about their tactics and strategy, logistical problems and motivations and their failures. the committee also considered confederate atrocities, abuse of union prisoners, dishonest
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krrtikrrt contracted for the armed forces and development of iron clad ships and manufacturer of cannons and the slaughter of friend friendly cheyenne indians, and the enrollment of black troops into the union army, an initiative that conservative officers stoudtly resisted for years. almost from its inception the committee in the words of bruce tap who wrote a history of the committee's work entitled looking over lincoln's shoulder, it's a good history. i disagree with some of his conclusions but it's well worth reading and pretty well written. a anyway, the committee is nudge, prodding, provoking and occasionally insulting the president. the committee was particularly inpatient with lincoln's
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conciliatory turn to the south and gradual approach to equality for blacks. while lincoln's speeches hinted reconciliati reconciliation, wade declared the war must be carried on until, and i'm quoting, the absolute unqualified andrebel a total war until there is no source from which they can derive venue, day after year, year after year, as long as the war shall continue, thus reducing them to poverty and want. so at any rate, every american war has brought a struggle between congress and the executive over war powers. the constitution is somewhat annoyingly ambiguous on the
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point, declaring the president commander in chief but empow empowering congress to declare war and raise and support armies. even harry truman who disliked the joint committee, still roiszed the importance of congressional oversight and said, i'm quoting truman, this is especially true in war time when the congress must dell gate many of its powers, only by investigation can it review the exercise of them and ascertain how and to what extent they should be modified. so despite the inher ent stresses here, the committee generally man takened amicable relations with lincoln and his cabinet. they frequently met. now, today we're accustomed to a dominant executive, imperial presidency as it typically called. 19th century americans were not. lincoln was a product of era of legislative dominance. he never complained of any infringement on the office of
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the president, as much as the committee sometimes irritated him. and he never refused to cooperate with it. lincoln's reluctance to challenge generals, particularly george mcclellan certainly encouraged the committee to pursue aggressively for more forceful action. an odor of political partisanship colored the later writing about the committee's work and has to be addressed. now it's true enough that the officers that the committee challenged most severely were usually democrats. and those it favored were usually republicans. in a speech indicative of radical sentiments that committee member george julian dlif delivered to the house in 1863, he declared frat flatly that the
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democrats stood for slavery. not only is it that rebels are democrats, but so are rebel sympathizer, whether in the nornl or south. loyalty and republicanism go hand in hand throughout the union as perfectly as traeson and slavery. strong words pretty much reflect the feelings of radical members of the committee. the committee issued its first report in april of 1863, a few weeks before the battle of chancello chancellorsville. the investigation of the bull's bluff debacle, in particular the targeting of general charles stone, gave rise to persistent accusations of witch hunting fanaticism that dogged the work ever after and largely unjustified. not entirely unjustified but largely unjustified. stone was a career army officer
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and democrat in the first weeks of the war he was lionized for su as a division commander he ordered the crossing of the potomac at bull's bluff. the investigation revealed really shocking inept tud and miscommunication among senior officers including stone and also found that only three leaky boats were on hand too transport the 2000 federal troops across the river, which virtually guaranteed they were going to be trapped and butchered under confederate guns on the bluffs. be that as it may, a parade of witnesses from various union regiments told the committee for weeks before the battle, stone had sent packages and letters across the river personally visited with rebel officers and fort fictions and returned fugitive slaves to masters and cultivated the friends on the maryland side of the river. much of this was rumor.
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and some of it -- those it was accurate it was miscon trued. after the debacle stone was tagged as a likely traitor as well as an incompetent. i'm going to skip quotes i have here from various officers and union soldiers who testified in terms that are fairly shocking. but are fundamentally hearsay. stone was arrested and spent six months in a federal prison in new york and military prison rather. the charges were later dropped and restored to active service in 1864 but the organization never recovered. if he was guilty of anything, aside from snobry, it was a degree of professional inept tud that was shared by most officers. in today's standards, the abuse of his civil rights was flagrant. hearsay evidence was accepted and wade made it clear he did
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not determine the fifth amendment valid when it came to testimony before any congressional committee. stoep was never allowed to face his accusers nor see their testimony until 1863. bluffed him into a scapegoat and stone was made to order. by the time the committee's report came out, the bluff had been far eclipsed by the slaughter, bull run, fredericksburg and a lot of other battle fields. the committee's primary and far better justified target in its first report was judge mcclellan who led the army of the potomac to november of 1962. wealthy arrogant, west point trained, mcclellan was tapped to take charge of the army following two tiny victories that he -- one in western virginia, won more or less by
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subordinate commanders mcclellan claimed credit for them. newspapers dubbed him the young napoleon. he massed trips around washington and built forts and dug trenches and marched and drilled more. he always demanded more time, more troops, always asserting he was faced by overwhelming numbers of the enemy when in fact the forces were a fraction of his own. now apart from his undeniable talents as a drill master, he provided it. he was around alba tros for the union war effort. no matter how hard they pushed him, he refused to move through the autumn of 61, winter of '62. radicals on committee began to wonder if he was afraid to fight or if he was guilty of something worse. george julian wrote, it seemed like a betrayal of the country
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itself to allow him to hold our grand armies for weeks and months in unexplained idleness on the naked assumption of his superior wisdom. finally he struck at richmond via the peninsula between the james and happen hanknock rivers and waged an ig that min yus campaign which moved glashally slowly, to throw back pieces of mcclellan's army, piecemeal. and collectively it became another embarrassing defeat. mcclellan reem backed his troops and sailed back to washington, complaining all the way, he had been outnumbered by an army that was half its size. at any rate, the committee
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throughout 1862 carried out detailed investigations of the activities of the army of the potomac. laying mcclellan open to often xaj being criticism by many of his subordinate officers, to quote one, joseph hooker, whose name will come back in a minute, joe hooker, a favorite of the radicals who commanded a front line division in the campaign and later superseded mcclellan and commander army of the potomac. hooker was asked to what do you attribute the failure of the peninsula campaign? he replied, i do not hesitate to say it is to be attributed to the want of generalship on the part of our commander. there was much testimony of this type and on the part of a s subordinate officers and therefore a -- provides an example of what the committee was later criticized for which
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was inviting criticism of serving officers by their subordinates. although hooker was self-interested because he was ambitious, he was pretty much right. the committee's 1863 report blamed mcclellan for things failing to advance into virginia, winter of 1861, fumbling the peninsula campaign and exaggerating enemies numbers, failing to reinforce general john pope in the summer of '62, contributing to the bull run and failing to crush lee's army at the battle of antietam. and in september of 1862, and then for allowing lee to escape across the potomac after the battle. in the words of the pittsburgh daily gazette, a republican newspaper, the report utterly pulverized
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