on c-span3. of the south, resignation of wartime powers, and transition to peace gave rise to tensions between republican and democratic members of both houses. gregory downs explains how they navigated those challenges, which continued to play out for many years. this is a portion of the 2014 civil war this is about 45 minutes. >> our next speaker is gregory downs who is an associate professor of history at the city college and graduate center of the city university of new york and his first book was "declarations of dependens, the long reconstruction of popular politics in the south, 1861-1908." his next book will be on the ends of the war, fighting the appatomatox. r dd

i am happy to have professor downs join us. >> i am going to talk about something that is overlooked in all kinds of narratives which is the importance of doing nothing. when congress billy hollowak in in december of 1865 -- came back in december of 1865 for many people it looked like they don't find a solution to address reconstruction until march of 1867. despite things like the 14th amendment, this session can seem like and was critiqued at the time as a do-nothing session precisely because it didn't determine the end of the war. that it never established terms for war. but i want to flip that on its head and think about why it was so important for them not to establish terms for the end of the war and why doing nothing turned out to mean so much. i was led to this by contemplating the justly celebrated philosopher jerome allen seinfeld known as jerry who said, doing nothing is not as easy as it looks. you have to be careful because the idea of doing anything

could easily lead to doing something which would cut into your nothing and force you to have to drop everything. when you're doing nothing, people try to find things for you to do. and, in fact, the crucial question for congressional republicans was how to leave and how to leave without promising any terms of peace to the south. if we think about this, if we're able to think about this, why doing nothing meant something, why inaction was action, it helps to open up the period after the confederate surrenders as a period of intensive occupation of the south, an extension of war time and war powers. and the military rule that delivered decisions first by the president and then by congress in taking over war powers, the deliberate decision not to end the war and not to sustain civil law and not to return civil law, something that wouldn't be sustained in many respects until 1868 or some places 1870 or finally in the final stage in 1871. so why is it so important to do

nothing? when they met, when congress meets in december of 1865, something, to understand why it matters so much we have to be able to look backwards and see what they faced as they walked in. what they faced was a united states that rather than as the yth of appatomatox, moving toward a peace pudding had deliberately decided to maintain the powers of war over the defeated confederate states. while we have a myth of lee handing his sword to grant and grant handing it back, something grant said was something like all the stories, nothing but nonsense. something that would be nice if it were true but it wasn't. in fact, continuing after the surrenders and in a long period of absence while congress is in abeyance is not a surrender to the terms of the south but, in fact, a northern and national assertion of power over the south. we see this most explicitly in the surrender that follows after appomotox because there

famously william tecumseh sherman, the scourge of the south and rightly so, what we see is that sherman there offers not surrender but armistice. peace to the confederate states. peace from the potomac to rio grande. goes far beyond anything that grant offered. at this moment sometimes you see in the literature people who say things like all the north cared about was union. if this were true, sherman was delivering that. union and peace. in fact this was not true. we can say the united states government including the most conservative element, president andrew johnson, did not believe union was sufficient because when the terms of sherman's offer and armistice and end to the war, you retain southern state governments in the south, you retain local governments, you retain even the right of rebels to vote and in turn put down their arms and stop fighting the north. when it gets to the united

stes capitol the cabinet rejected it, 8-0 including the most conservative members and an outraged andrew johnson directs grant to go and relieve sherman of command. one of the most shocking turn abouts. it drives lincoln's funeral procession off the front page of major newspapers. of this betrayal of the northern war effort which were not meant to keep southern state governments on the ground. when grant gets there, sherman says to him, but i don't understand. if we don't keep them in charge then who is in charge? here is no government. grant says that is exactly what they intend. for weeks and months in the south there is literal anarchy something sherman can't conceive of. as a legal description, there is no functioning government in large parts of the south. that then in turn creates the momentum for a little understood and often overlooked

dispersion of u.s. troops across the southern countryside. in march and april of 1865 the u.s. army is in about 120 spots in the u.s. south in the rebel states. by the summer it'll be at 650. the total number of places it occupies over the course of the war probably approached somewhere close to a thousand. we'll never know exactly. this makes it one of the most geographically dispersed occupations in world history. in other ways it is milder than other occupations. but it has to be dispersed because of two factors. first, the u.s. government decided it did not need to respect any local officers. no one held that it was the determination of the u.s. government that no one holds an office by virtue of rebel election or appointment. that meant the army had to go to every county seat. it had a range of things it could choose to do -- disperse, appoint new officers, reappoint the existing officers, but assert they are under military command, a range of options available to them.

we also see the culmination of the transformation of the army's vision of freedom. because one of the things we quickly see emerging up in these interactions on these hundreds of outposts in highly rural south where the way to reach free people is not going to be in cities but by reaching out into the countryside, there we see the emergence in this interaction between freed people and soldiers, a notion that will pop up to congress of practical freedom. then what practical freedom means cannot be parchment guarantees. over and over they say you may issue as many proclamations as you want. they will not free a single person. if you mean to free someone it must be by force. then the emergence within this interaction of freed people in the army and it starts to emerge even among very mod ert republicans, a belief in the necessity of force. this threatens some of the ways we like to think about united states history and a celebration of constitutionalism, a celebration of the supreme court. we can talk about the ways that this, you know, this plays out

in other moments in american history. it's a sense that we can understand by reading laws and rulings. instead, a growing number of freed people, soldiers, moderate republican congressmen say, in fact, the only law that we can rely upon in the south is force. and the only way we can retain force is by retaining the power of war. this was something not that we have to impose backwards. we think now a lot about the extension of war time but that we can see at the time in their own words. it had meaning for republicans in congress for a simple reason. that they were a particular type of republican revolutionary, which is they wanted to disrupt fundamentally the national political system. they wanted fundamentally to disrupt the south. but they also wanted to find an end point. and sustaining war time allowed them to imagine revolutionary change without threatening the ultimate nature of constitutional government.

so when congress arrived in december, 1865, eight months after, no one whispered about confederate troops on the horizon as they had in other sessions. no one burst onto the floor with news from the battle field. no one waited for telegraph news of the day's victory or deaths and so for the first time in four and a half years if you picture congress marching in here in december, 1865, you might think they were at peace. but inside, on the chambers, in fact, it was very clear that most republicans believed they continued at war. it was not mere semantics. most of the major struggles of this session and of the next one would turn on whether extra constitutional war powers continued and if so who controlled them -- congress or the president. congressional republicans united openly and almost immediately upon the idea they said the country remained in a time of war and democrats fought vigorously against this calling it radically and wickedly wrong. the simple fact of peace cannot be controverted, relying on our common sense definition of peace being based upon soldiers

in uniform. to take another seinfeld joke if you root for a baseball team even its players believe it means you're voting for laundry. instead they defined, and democrats in both this definition, we know war must mean soldiers fighting soldiers in uniform. in the face of the absence of this fighting they said you may as well try and controvert the fact in noon day when the heavens are cloudless that the sun is shining. in fact, over and over republicans asserted just exactly this fact. that the war did continue. their reasons for it go to the things that peter just talked about including the necessity, war passing civil rights act of the 14th amendment, and of the multiple efforts i'll come to about the freedmen's bureau. they also focused on something we lost track of as well which was the importance of something they emphasized over and over which was the importance of time. that the policy and plan of the

congressional republicans became a plan of delay. and that the goal of extending the war was a way of giving the white southern rebel the chance to show how they would respond but also not doing anything that would let loose of the government's power. now, thinking about delay and inaction con found all our sense of politics. nothing is more certain to evoke a negative response in a newspaper article than congress's failure to pass something or failure, something died from the filibuster. a lot of times that's justified. in fact, in this case it was not the basis of a failure or an inaction but instead of a deliberately formulated plan. it began on the first day, that when the house of representatives session began with the clerk reading the names of representatives who presented qualifications, most people, including president andrew johnson, believed that the clerk would call upon the names of the southern representatives who were there. johnson also believed that in

fact congress would reject most of those but crucially he believed they would accept some. and in accepting some, especially tennessee's horace maynard a loyalist, they would begin to edge toward the return of peace. instead, on that first day the clerk at the instruction of the republican majority did not call upon any southerners. then congress began its efforts to act as they said gradually. they did this by creating a joint commission on reconstruction, committee on reconstruction. if there is anything that congressional history teaches us, it is that if you want to kill time, create a committee. in fact, this committee would take months and months and months to reach a conclusion that was in many ways ordained at the start of the session. this was the pet project of someone who has been mentioned in several of these. tommy lee jones. thaddaeus stevens. but stevens was by no means a cing his maneuvers through weak or enfeebled congress.

instead, over and over stevens is able to sustain a majority of republicans, in fact, usually a unanimous front of republicans behind them. not because they're scared of him but because he is articulating things they have come to believe. and when the joint committee passes, johnson is shocked. while people still do talk about the potential for working together, johnson and johnson's newspaper say the peace we have struggled for, hoped for, we have so finely dreamed of, has now faded away. as early as that moment, they understood that what was at stake was congress's determination not to return to peace. beyond the joint committee, though, it took time especially in december for policies to cohere. you see an interesting paradox, which is that you see in these early moments contradictions where senators will say we're in a time of peace. just as grant after appomattox would say the war is over and then the next day take the

train to washington, d.c. to plan out the remainder of the war. at once people thought the war is over and the war endures. they understood that sense of war between uniforms and they also had a sense of war as a series of powers they did not mean to let go of. early in the session william pitt who is going to be getting more publicity in this session than he has since he passed away in the u.s. senate because of his featuring in peter's talk, illustrated some of these contradictions. early on, he said, during the war it became necessary to do things for which no warrant will be found. in time of peace when we live under a written constitution, it's our duty to come back as fast as possible, to forget if necessary any precedent we set. so war was extra constitutional time. time when you violated the constitution. peace -- he could not vote knowingly to violate the constitution. very careful lawyer. but in fact by january 11, within weeks, he dismissed

congressmen who tried to say they were in a time of peace, something he had said weeks before. he said these are so very near war times that the same doctrines are held to apply. by february, he and thaddaeus stevens would guide the joint committee in this strange, moderate, radical alliance to prevent the re-admission of states and continue war time. by april he would pledge not to yield the fruits of war. in a fascinating footnote i won't go into he would continue to push to extend the powers of war long after many of his more allegedly radical colleagues had tired of it. so what did they do to protect this war? the first thing they did was aim to protect the occupation itself. on january 8th, congressman thomas williams of pennsylvania introduced a resolution stating military force should not be withdrawn from the south. they had heard johnson was planning to meet with generals to withdraw the army from the south. they passed a resolution saying that no troops should be withdrawn. democrats denounced this as a republican takeover of the

president's authority over the army, but it immediately changes policy when stanton receives it, secretary of war edwin stanton he resinds his orders to withdraw troops from florida and georgia and four days later general ulysses s. grant issues his famous orders number three which directed military command inners the former rebel states to shield officers, soldiers, and loyal citizens from predatory prosecution or lawsuits but also crucially having established a set of powers to protect soldiers on the ground through an occupation extended those same powers to protect colored people from prosecutions where whites were not punished in the same manner or degree. so the occupation first in january had been saved. next congress attempted to address the extension of war through the freedmens bureau. this first version of the bill that emerges and is finally passed in january, we see interaction of on-the-ground and top down history. because what we see is the way

the series of complaints from freed people, press on to agents and officers up to the commissioner who brings it to senators and congressmen, starts to reinforce this notion that the crucial question is not a parchment freedom but a practical freedom. a sense that freedom was not going to be defined by proclamation but had to be defined and defended with force. senator trumble drew up a bill after consultation with the freedmans commissioner that codified and protected the occupation grant had just extended in his january orders, working hand in hand the new bureau bill extended the agency indefinitely and granted military protection and jurisdiction over cases of discrimination and also authorized the president to set aside unauthorized public lands to rent to loyal refugees and freedmen. under the terms of the bill the army could retain its war time hold over southern state courts and land even after peace time. in defense of this, senator trumble, a pretty careful constitutionalist, said can it

be that the moment the rebel armies are dispersed the military authority ceases and they are to be turned loose to arm and and organize for another conflict against the union? that idea he said was preposterous. he also said in one of the interesting intersections that occupation leads us to that what congress was doing was simply taking over the powers johnson himself put in place in the south. that all congress aimed to do was utilize president johnson's war powers over the south but now that it was in session to assert control over them. when a democrat asked incredulously whether he assumed the war is not over republican congressmen emphatically said i do. i assume exactly that. the war is not over. against this broad definition of war time democrats sought to narrow war to the abnormal, convulsive condition of society, the culmination of human passions, which snatches the accepter from the hand of civil power and substitutes for a time the laws of force for those of reason and choice. gentlemen must not undertake in this country to perpetuate a

war upon paper. but, in fact, that is exactly what republicans aimed to do. they did expect because they were picking up and continuing president johnson's war powers in the bureau bill, they expected him to sign it but, in fact, he famously vetoed it quickly. in his veto message, he dismissed the idea that the country remains in a time of war even though it was his own orders that extended war time. but he faced that problem immediately upon saying this. because he wrote, the country has returned or is returning to a state of peace and industry. and the rebellion is in fact at an end. in that elusiveness, johnson has returned or is returning. peace has returned or peace is returned? we see why johnson, himself, even as he denounced congress's takeover of control of war, couldn't let go of the war himself. and the reason was he, himself, relied upon war powers over the south.

that what he feared on a most basic level was that if he returned peace time you would see a repeat across the rebel states of what was happening in kentucky in which thousands of u.s. officers were indicted and hauled into court by local judges. and that he could not permit. even johnson could not permit it. in response, republicans why outraged. though they failed to overturn this veto. and they were outraged exactly on the grounds they believed that johnson was lying to them and to the american people. i do not hold the consequences of the war are over trumble told the senate. i do not unthat peace is restored. william fessendon said if johnson had the right to do it could we not? if he imposed conditions do we not have the same power? in the face of this, the joint committee that is considering what everyone knew would be the first test date of return to congress which would mean the return of peace and civil law in that state, johnson's home state of tennessee where a

loyal government had eliminated slavery. the joint committee on reconstruction at first rewrites the tennessee version of a return to tennessee and then sidelines it. and fessendon who said in december i will make no promss that i will not return a state in february pushes through a statement that the joint committee does not intend to act. they intend to hold the states in abeyance. with that, the battle is launched. the next fight was over the civil rights law which in certain interesting ways was also a bill about war. it was introduced at the same time as the freedmens bureau bill but took another month to get through congress. in certain ways it aimed to do something even more ambitious. it aimed to extend war time. the civil rights bill and a precursor to some of the things republicans would try to do throughout the late 1960's and 1870's, to see if they could embed certain war powers in a

time of peace, established rights that adhered to a newly defined national citizenry, including all people born in the u.s. except indians not taxed. these rights were the basis for freedom to make contracts, testify in court, buy and sell property, be treated equally under the law. made it a misdemeanor to deprive anyone of these rights on account of race or color and gave federal courts jurisdiction but it also empowered federal court commissioners to call upon the . litary while it was modeled on the slave law ironically in practice it was an extension of the military arrest powers in the occupied south. if we can do this in war congressman james wilson said, cannot this protection be rendered in peace? if not, a perpetual state of constructive war would be a great blessing to every american citizen. democrats were appalled, calling his fellow congressmen these military gentlemen, a senator complained they think they have a right to command

control everywhere. the military power is now rampant and triumphant and all we have to do is bow our heads. despite these fights republicans once again expected johnson to sign it and johnson when he vetoed it once again responded by drawing sharp lines between war time and peace time. he said, it turns judges into mere ministerial officers and bureau agents into a sort of police and therefore seems to imply a permanent military force that is always to be at hand and whose only business is to be the enforcement of a measure over the vast region where it is intended to operate. at this point johnson took an action that for many people, including at times the supreme court, would in fact define the end of the war and end of war powers. it's a conflict over the definition of war time. could the president change the definition of war time? in april he issued a proclamation of peace and tried to declare the war over and dare congress to thwart him. on a surprise announcement on april 2nd he issued a

proclamation that seemed to but in fact did not end the war. he said there now exists no armed, organized armed resistance outside of texas and he repeated his earlier injunctions against standing armies, military occupation, martial law, military tribunal, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in time of peace. despite those strong words, johnson didn't mean it himself. because when he was asked immediately afterwards by freedmens bureau commissioners and by generals whether this in fact restored civil law and the writ of habeas corpus johnson said it did not. the supreme court justice, no conservative came to him and said, you forgot to say the piece this of where you restored civil law. i've written it up to you. here is a helpful little end of the war. you didn't understand the legalities. i'm mr. chief justice. i'll give you the legalities. johnson never signs it. it was a rhetorical move but not a legal one. the bureau of the army informed

officers martial law was not over. it did not restore habeas corpus even in kentucky which had never been at war with the united states. the veto cemented the republicans' determination to leave without ending the war or even setting terms to end the war. fessendon pledged to hold on to what the war had accomplished at least until the november mid-term election when they would take the issue to the country. with the newly increased majority for the first time they overwrote a significant act of legislation, veto of a significant act of legislation and johnson's civil rights bill then passed a habeas corpus bill to protect soldiers in the south from being indicted in local courts. then they moved finally on to the 14th amendment. this reflected a crisis they did in fact feel because they understood and the republican press said, johnson's april proclamation might not be wise but it establishes a term of peace and republicans have to

respond. the emphasis of that response of their terms would center around the 14th amendment. as you'll see, the 14th amendment was in no respect an offer of peace. it did not emphatically include peace terms. democrats, though, used the proclamation to say the republicans were a revolutionary party. they wanted to create radical and permanent changes and a constant state of insurrection. so, therefore, they faced the dilemmas. they moved to the 14th amendment and faced the dilemmas peter so abley recounted. but as they developed different versions of the 14th amendment, and thaddaeus stevens on the joint committee considered all kinds of different ones including some that included amnesty and an extension of enfranchisement of all black men in 1876 along with others, stevens consistently rejected resolutions that would promise a return to peace. they could have an amendment but they wouldn't have a promise that the amendment would mean that peace was restored and that states that passed the amendment would be

ceded. when the 14th amendment finally emerged of course it did not nclude african-american en franchisement at all. it falls short of my wishes but it full fills my hope. but he did not promise that the amendment would restore rebel states. in fact, he introduced a general resolution saying they would admit at the earliest day consistent with the future peace and safety of the union states once they ratified the amendment and modified their laws and satisfied congress that it was in keeping with the future peace of the united states. had johnson acted here though and encouraged southern states to pass the 14th amendment it may well be that the republican commitment to delay could have been shattered. but, instead, johnson encouraged southern states to reject the amendment. as the amendment went through the senate the senate struck out a clause that was deer to

thaddaeus stevens disenfranchising rebel officers and replaced it with one barring them from holding office and at that point stevens committed himself to making sure whatever else they did they left with the war intact. this explains stevens' strange, angry, but rueful acceptance of the 14th amendment that didn't do any of the things he wanted it to do. he wanted an amendment that empowered african-americans and disempowered rebels. he got an amendment that didn't do either. when asked why he would accept so imperfect a proposition he answered because i live among men and not angels. while that is a great line i think it is much clearer the reason he accepted it is because he understood he had eviscerated the key question of the 14th amendment of would it end the war. in may his partner, strange partner, moderate, conservative fessendon wrote you need feel no alarm about congress. we will stand firm until the end. congress extended the war over

and over again in a revived freedmens bureau bill, when congressional republicans revised the older bill instead of a retreat it was a commitment to asserting congressional control over war time. because they extended war time for two years after the proclamation of peace, asserting congress could set the time. at the same time and in a contradiction i'll be glad to get to in questions, they also struggled with something that continues to plague many other occupying nations including our own now, which is that as they passed a series of bills meant to build an extensive occupation of the south, they also struggled to pass a bill to sustain the army. and in a classic occupier's dilemma, they had the will to occupy but not necessarily the foresight to see the forces that would be required for occupation or the willingness to pay the money. after four months of scrambling, they actually returned the army bill that gave fewer officers than president andrew johnson originally asked. 54,000 men put in the regular

army through their bill would be three times the size of the 1860 army. and in late june, having delayed successfully from december to june, and with the end of the session glimmering in sight, the joint committee finally produced a report that justified congress's power and their delay in using it. crucially, despite a great deal of fascinating talk in the literature about the theories of the status of the old states, the joint committee report dismissed those questions as a profitless distraction. instead, it focused upon the crucial power of war and congress's authority over it. in these final weeks congress turned at last to the final question. would it offer a road map to restore the states? many republicans believed they would break all the pieces over it but, instead, they did not. in a crucial set of maneuvers around tennessee, which did by virtue of its own use of force to arrest and bring back

legislators, tennessee legislature passed the 14th amendment. when they arrived, when their congressmen arrived to congress, the republicans decided they would admit tennessee but would not say they were admitting them solely because they passed the 14th amendment. they struck out promss that any future state to count on passing the amendment in order to gain readmission and the "new york times" editor, who congressman henry raymond said this made republicans on a par with cromwell's england revolutionary. they had lost the commitment to civil law. in fact, democrats said as republicans passed a long preamble saying all the reasons why tennessee deserved to be readmitted, peace, tranquility, many of which weren't true of tennessee, democrats said i spit on the preamble. and tried to introduce measures that would promise to restore the promise they restored tennessee because it passed the 14th amendment and republicans overwhelmingly defeated it. in the session's final days republicans race today

adjournment to try to evade one last effort to force them to create a plan of restoration. when one congressman introduced a bill to promise terms of peace to restore the states congress voted 101-45 to dismiss it. on the final day having successfully continued the war stevens offered a symbolic amendment stating that southern governments were provisional and under military surveillance until new constitutional conventions were elected by black and white male suffrage. this would become one basis of the plan of 1866 to 1867. it was a way of saying good-bye to that session of congress. leaving without a plan for peace was victory enough. republicans protected the most crucial thing of all to them which was time. sustaining war time they also kept hold of the extra constitutional powers the war time brought them. they held open the possibility of more significant change if they won the november mid-term election and entered a revolutionary phase. they had particular types of

revolutionaries. they didn't look for guillotines and they remained at certain moments constitutional and liberal democrats but they felt consciously and explicitly shed their constitutional scruples to build the kind of liberal democracy they coveted. this baffled many people then. chicago tribune publisher, a republican power broker couldn't believe his eyes. he wrote johnson has offered a plan. how could we not offer a plan? surely congress doesn't inted to journ without giving the country some term of restoration. congress has not given a plan. he did not recognize that for congressional republicans a commitment to extend the war was a plan, was the plan they were offering. they had gaveled out and would extend the military powers over the south and see if the public would defend them in the november election. in a sequel i won't go into,

when they returned, in december of 1866, they once again struggled over whether they should give any terms of peace at all or whether they should now extend terms that would depend upon african-american enfranchisement. even after that the question of ending the war and letting it continue to endure continued through 1868 and 1869 and even 1870 and 1871 as war powers and something that echoes throughout american and other nations' histories once found to be useful proved to be extremely difficult to let go of. but those are stories for another time. i'll be glad to go into in questions. thank you very much. applause] >> greg, that's a terrific paper. it makes me think of, you can tie an ex parte, justice miller

and the slaughter house cases, and a lot of other matters and tennessee's radical militia which bends severance as reconstructed and defended. i can see now why tennessee was eagerly accepted because parson brownlo had that radical militia to enforce his decisions. but what about the argument to create a true republican form of government, that this -- what they're really saying, this radical congress, is that the republican form of government that it was established in 1787 was rather false because of the slavery compromise. and this time they're going to get it right. what would you say to that? >> that is a very interesting question. because they wrestled with, democrats all the time said, this is the end exactly the question that you raised. did this betray a belief that constitutional democracy was impossible? if all you could rely upon was the power of war, did that prove that the republican experiment had failed? in fact, some republicans were open to the idea that the experiment as framed in the

constitution had failed. others, saying this is where you see this sort of interesting fracture believed that it was possible to build in forms by making the the change to the constitution through the amendment. it created these weird bifurcations where people like fessen don seen as a conservative and matt carpenter who argues this in the supreme court and goes to the senate they both say no amendment will protect freed people. if you want to protect freed people it is going to take force and it is a lie northerners are telling themselves that even these amendments, it is a lie northerners are telling themselves to believe this will be sufficient. there are other people like bingham who i think truly does believe in civil law though he is willing to go along with extreme actions in other cases. but there is a series of pragmatic, moderate-to- conservative republicans who become convinced that the only way, only tool they can rely upon is force.

-- the proposal is not just to continue the war in the four states but actually force all of the other states back into a state of war. that is not coming from sumner and the radical wing. that is coming from some of these moderate conservative republicans who have become worried about the problem of could you have civil rights and civil law? many were not at all convinced in the 19th century you could have both. maybe a product of the 20th century that could have both but hard to look back and say their historical judgment was rong in the basis of time. if you look at the 1870's or for that matter the 1950's it always strikes me we look upon

the supreme court decision and the local organizing to get the supreme court decision in brown but are not very in love with the broad picture of what you see in little rock. the narrow picture of the girl being led by the hand. what you see around her are armed men in uniform. that they have no confidence the supreme court's orders would be obeyed even in this condition like that without the backing of force. it may well be that even in times, even in the post world war 2 20th century that rights would as of all people sumner said every fight is defended by a maze. it is a fiction of law to obscure that from us. but they were wrestling with that. i don't think there is a right answer to that. i do think there is -- i give them credit for wrestling with the dilemma that they couldn't understand what tools they had that were forceful enough to accomplish what they wanted. can you go into great deer tail of how kentucky became --

greater detail of how kentucky became a confederate state after the war? >> glad to. other people have done more research on this and i'll pull from them. a group of terrific history of kentucky coming out of confederate kentucky. and the dean of kentucky tudies said kentucky waited to secede until after appomattox. cultural affiliation with the south. the terms of that and the oddty that a state where more people fought for the united states than for the confederacy only elected confederate officers to statewide office in elections of the 1860's and 1870's and in many ways until the end of the century is something that puzzled people for a long time. there are all kinds of different ways of connecting it especially to the problem, the association of emancipation with the northern war aim. kentuckyians were hemmed in. that is partly why lincoln waits to do the proclamation to

make sure kentucky won't be in a position to create problems. and it is too late to fight for the confederacy. i think many people their sympathies start to shift to the confederacy. luke harlow has written a really interesting book just out which is about the role of religion in this and that oddty that along with these cultural affiliations of politics and cultural and political affiliations there is a shift of religious affiliations which is that when northern and southern -- u.s. churches break into northern and southern branches, by and large kentucky troops stay with the northern branches. but some of them leave after the end of the civil war and join in with the southern one and they leave over the particular question of whether slavery had been a sin or whether slavery was theologically justified. slavery is gone but when northern branches start passing resolutions saying slavery had not been justified in god's eyes, even though slavery is gone kentucky evangelical churches move and affiliate with southern churches. there is a lot that goes into it. but it is one of the fascinating oddities.

it is also fascinating the intensity of the government's response to kentucky all of which, you know, after the end of, you know, including johnson's, none of which seems to me is general thomas there said seems strictly legal. kentucky had not been in a state of war against the united states. the united states, you know, maintains martial law and suspends the writ of habeas corpus in kentucky long after it enlisted the rest of the north. in one of these oddities of american history, custard, general george custard, his second to last stand is actually in central kentucky cavalry is to put down moonshiners but it is nowhere near the moonshine belt. their move is to kentucky to put down the ku klux klan in elizabethtown, kentucky. here is an enormous, a testing ground of racial violence and what powers the government can use in peace time.

>> hi. i wonder how much the element of just pure fear of the south plays into this removing soldiers. i mean, the war was devastating. he south fought really hard. maybe on some level they were just afraid of removing the grip for fear of who knows what? >> yes. well, i think there is no question that there is a belief, you know, as jason phillips has written in "die hard rebels" and confederates who came home from fighting still fighting. southern nse that the countryside is in a royaling state of insurgency from very early on in 1865 and this desperate effort among northern policy makers to figure out how to put that down which turns out to be an extraordinarily tricky question. so i think that's clearly a piece of it. that they fear the southern -- you know, they fear the development of what in fact

happens as developing coherent southern insurgency. but not coincidentally it starts on the first day they restored the peace in tennessee with the ku klux klan though other insurgencyies started elsewhere and moves outward rom there. >> you should tell people you are from elizabethtown, kentucky. you really should. i spent my high school and college years in kentucky and i have a kentucky grandmother. but kentucky eliminates these issues so well because actually when they reject the 13th amendment in 1864 they join the confederacy and the governor as a general starts handing passes to the slaves to free them because the slave owners refused lincoln's offer of emancipation. don't you think that lincoln probably would have followed a policy -- here is what i forgot. now i know what i wanted to ask. what about the ex-confederates

like james longstreet, george pickett, and john mossby and also a former democrat, former racist democrat like john logan. they feel this dilemma keenly, too, don't they, greg, about men keeping the war going on? >> right. and, yeah. what lincoln would have done i think, you know, eric tells the story of a student who sends home a national enquirer and the headline says lincoln's corpse revives for eight seconds and then dies again. and the student wrote at the bottom i hope they asked what his plans were for reconstruction. which is to say the national enquirer knows as much about it as the rest of us. now i'm skeptical. certainly in the time period that peter mentioned, that by the fall of 1866 there is no question that things would be operating highly differently between lincoln and congress but one of the things that strikes me is the degree to which in the early, first months, even almost up until february of 1866, it is quite hard to distinguish what

johnson does as distinct from what lincoln would have done except that johnson in some ways is more, goes further than lincoln by exempting land owners who own over $20,000 of property from the amnesty proclamation. in this sense i think this is to me, you know, matt talked very abley about some of those problems of the lincoln movie. but to me the real crime of the lincoln movie is that it suggests what i think is a truly pernicious view that lincoln would have, you know, embraced the south and would have embraced them as equal partners. instead we got all this bad period because the united states didn't do that. that i find to be an extremely pernicious view. in fact, i think lincoln's policy to the south might well have been different but i think that is a misreading of the malice toward none statement. in fact, i think that the reason that the end of the civil war, the resolution was so bloody, was not because the united states was acting harshly toward the south but because southern soldiers came

home from fighting still fighting. [ applause] >> this weekend on the c-span networks, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a town hall meeting on the media's coverage of event in ferguson, missouri at harriet stowe university in st. louis. and historian richard norton smith on his recent biography of nelson rockefeller. tonight at 10:00 on book tv's afterwards author and commentator jake halpern on collection practices of the industry. and the southern festival of books. tonight at 8:00 on american history tv on c-span 3, the life and legacy of booker t. washington. sunday afternoon at 4:00, from 1964, a joint armed forces readiness operation between the