too. check out our upcoming programs at our website, c-span.org/history. we'll like to tell you about this of our other american history tv programs. join us every saturday at :p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern for a special look at the civil war. we'll bring you to the battlefields. we'll let you hear from scholars and re-enactors. that's programs on the civil war every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. oliver wendell holm, jr., l 61 to 1864 -- 1861 to 1864 and was wounded three times in battle. abz future of the supreme court justice including how his time as a soldier shaped his law

career. the supreme court historical society hosted this hour-long discussion. good evening, everyone, and welcome to the supreme court. it's great to see so many people here for the supreme court historical society second lecture of the 2014 leon the society was formed in 1974 by chief justice warren burger with the notion of promoting public understanding of the history of the court. it does that in many ways, through lectures like thesiç through the publication three times of year of the journal of supreme court history, and through the acquisition of portraits of the justices for display in the supreme courtqsf building. i'd also like to especially for its efforts to address myhekñ predecessor and curator's office

all prior clerks of the court which have been obtained from the court. and on behalf of all the officers of the court, i'd like officers of the ñy of i'd like the efforts that they give to all of us. this evening, we're joined by three distinguished scholars for discussion of the civil war and its impact on justice oliver wendell holmes. the moderator of the program will be professor brad snyder. professor snyder is an aassistant professor of law at the university of wisconsin law school. he's the author of "weld paid slave: kurt flood's fight for free agency in professional sports." and he's currently at work on "the house of truth," about felix frankfurter, walter l other progressives who lived in a back to you ponte circle row -- in a dupont circle row house in the 19 teens. he's written in law reviews about justice holmes. tonight's panelists are james mcpherson and g. edward white.

professor mcpherson is the george henry davis 8 professor emeritus of united states history at princeton university. he's a noted and award-winning civil war historian. ñbook, "the str equality," was awarded the anisfield wolf award in 1965. and "battle cry of freedom" received the pulitzer prize in 1988. he was -- he's twice received the lincoln prize. the first time in 1998 for his and again in 2009 for "tried by war: abraham lincoln as commander in chief." professor white is the david and mary harrison distinguished professor of law at my alma mater, the university of virginia law school. he's the author of 16 books including "the oliver wendell holmes sage of supreme court," "law and american history volume one: from the colonial years through the civil war," and "the

marshall court and cultural change 1815 to 1835. chief justice earl warren. i, heap more accolades upon all of the panelists tonight, but that would just cut into our time for a discussion of justice holmes. with that, professor, snyder, i turn the floor over to you. >> thank you very much. thank you very much for having us here. i'm delighted to have two master historians here, and i'm going to try to get out of the way and let them be the stars of the show that they r. oliver wendell holm is holmes is a fascinating figure to historian of the civil war and supreme court. a huge impact is:vi:÷ juris prudence and more. we'll have professor white speak abofabñ civil war and then juste hoeps. the floor is yours.

[ applause ] >> good evening, everybody. i'm looking forward to this discussion. everyone who knows some being oliver wendell holm jr. is familiar with the famous passage from his memorial day day address in keene, new hampshire, ñ at great good fortune, said holmes on thatr'veñ occasin our youth our hearts were touched with fire. it was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. we have seen with our own eyes the snowy heights of honor. and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. the fire that touched holmes' heart was, of course, his th decades before he delivered the

speech. at the age as of 20 in 1861, holmes had been commissioned a first lieutenant in the 20th massachusetts volunteer infantry. he rose to captain in this regime regiment, one of the best in the army of the potomac, and one that suffered the fourth highest number of combat deaths in theó entire army.'bf'y hoeps twice ca holmes twice came close to being numbered by those dead. in october, 1861, at antietum in september, 1862.q[c9ñ his third wound, a piece of shr>bur in his heel in may, 1863, appeared less serious at the first but requireded the longest period of convalescence before he could return to his regiment -- actually to the sixth court in march, 1864. by then, he had transferred to

histohistory -- horatio post. one that proved more exhausting and dangerous3i+ñ than he had anticipated. on one occasion, he was almost captured. at the end of his three years yh enlistment, holmes mustered out in july, 1864, and "5qenrolled harvard law school. holmes' youth was, therefore, certainly touched with fire. and his experience in the war did indeed teach him that life was a profound and passionate the thing that could come to an end at any moment. as it happened, however, he lived another 72 years after the third of his civil war wounds. during those 72 years, he alluded to his war experiences f,f

conversations with friends but rarely in public. in fact, his memorial day address in 1884 was his first public reference to theshortly mustered out 20 years earlier. thousands of books appeared about the civil war during holmes's7dv@v lifetime, but he almost none of them. he did not join any veterans' organizations like the grand army of the republic or loyal legion of the united states or the 20th massachusetts veterans organization. many reunions of soldiers who wore the blue that took place during the post-war decades. he showed little passion or activism toward the issues of nationalism and freedom that had motivated his enlistment in 1861 and for which he had perilled his life for three yearser. during his time asx

harvard college from 1857 to 18 1861, holmes had been an abolitionist. he was a distant cousin of wendell phillips, one of the most militant of boston holmes' best friend in college federal reservest abolition forest a philadelphiad< representative. he took part in the riots in the winter of 1860/1861. they enlisted together in the 20th massachusetts after graduating from harvard. convictions trumped his quaker pacifism. in february, 1863, halliwell accepted a commission as lieutenant colonel in the new 54th massachusetts infantry. the first black regiment

officially organized in the north. he tried to persuade holmes to take a commission as a major in this regiment where together they could help advance the cause of abolition and equal rights. holmes was not interested. halliwell went on to fight in the 54th, to command another blank regiment, to work on behalf of black rights, and to help foundru)q the naacp 54 yea after the end of the civil war. any interest in this cause, holmes and halliwell drifted apart over the years, and holmes' circle of close friends during those years included few civil war veterans. if holmes' heart was touched with fire in the early 1860s, the fire appeared to havexw/

flickered and gone out in later years. or maybe not. perhaps the flame of commitment to a cause with a capital "c" had been transmuted into a commitment to a cluster of c words as duty, honor, professionalism. holmes hinted at such a transmutation in his next public reference to the civil war 11 years after his memorial day address when he spoke about the soldiers' faith at a ceremony at harvard to award him an happenorary degree. "i do not know what is true," he said on that occasion. "i do not know the meaning of the universe. but in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing i do not doubt, and that is that the faith is true

andphqt rable which leads a soldier to throw away his life -- obedience to a blainely accepted duty in. in a cause which he little which he has no notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use. now the point is not whether holmes was rightq$o about the soldiers's lack of understanding. soldiers did understand the cause for which they fought and had some understanding of the point is that holm now admired the soldiers' faith not in an ideological cause but in duty and honor. by 1863, holmes' closest friend in the army, his true model if you will, was no longer pen

halliwell but henry abbott, who was actually a year younger than holmes. abbot's ideological convictions were 180 degrees contrary to those of halliwell, and initially to those of:$5x himself. abbott was a democrat. almost a copperhead who was contemptuous o'jvoh abolitionis blacks, republicans, and abraham lincoln. yet, holmes struck up a turned into admiration for abbott's extraordinary courage and cool professionalism under fire. abbott of a superb soldier, the best one in an outstandp:ó regiment whose death commanding the regiment at the age of 22 in the battle of the wilderness profoundly7y]uxd according to louis menand -- and i think he's right -- the example of abbott convinced

holmes that nobodility of character consists in doing one's job with indifference to ends. and to rate the professionalism of a soldier higher than the merits of any particular cause or to return to holmes' own words, "the highest value is that which leads a soldier to throw away his life inobeid diee to blindly accepted duty." the it's beyond my competence to evaluateiate holmes' judicial philosophy or direct any direct relationship between his civil war experience and his decisions as a justice on the massachusetts and then on the united states supreme court. but i think i can see a connection between the evolution of his mindset as avf88át)q) frm idealism to pragmatism, a 8b7mous sentence, first senten

in his book, "the commanlaw." "the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience. many of his decisions and reflected this pragmatism. reflected a willingness to allow state legislatures or congress to experiment with;h)$ó legisla that might or might not accomplish its purpose, but should not be declared unconstitutional just because it may have violated some principle or precedent.,- as a justice, he could not conveniently be categorized as a liberal or a conservative. he did not really believe in the efficacy of many reform efforts by the progressives, but he did the effort. he was skeptical of some aspects of the new deal but convinced of the necessity ton.!4u do someth.

when president franklin d. roosevelt spoke with holmes &háhp &hc% v1933, he asked if there was advice in dealingk with the crisis of the country. "you were in a war, mr. 3'7iç president," holmes is quoted as replaying. "i was in a war, too. and in a war, there seasonal one rule -- form youri!+ battalionsd fight." >> well, it's nice for me to be here, as well, and look forward m$÷ i think jim mcpherson has done an excellent summary of holmes'

civil war experiences, and i'm i do want to, however, suggest that the cumulative experience of the war for holm left him with considerable ambivalence. first of all, heeudp mustered o when his initial term of enlistment expired. and he did that afterx:hñóomnt considerable soul searching. indeed, as late as a month before he made the decision, he had written a letter to charles elliot norton talking about how he had been inspired by an account norton had given about the crusaders and likened the participation in the war to a crusade on the whole civilized world. and ended the letter bay saying

he planned to re-up. it will not do to leave palestine yet.mñ(y(t&háhp &hc% but at the time he write the letter, he was to face the last of a series of harrowing experiences. the chancellorsville and wilderness campaigns where the -- as he ped it one time in a reminiscence, the bodies of men lay six-feet deep piled up, and corporates, as he rode his bike on a walk, as he put it, he put it through a blue line.eáz finally he comes to the go back because, among other things, if he does go back, he's not going to be able to go back as an aide. and a position that kept him largely lly out of the line ofa but backy7ñp into his infantry .

and as he says to his mother, the unwaving promotion and i'm re-. the sufficient reason is that i ñ the horrors of the line. and he óu3pzsaid, i know i can a thing coolly when it's my dutyòç but more demoralizes me as it would any nervous man. so he left, and he left with a  abbots the had died, and he had survive survived. and he had left before the war

end ended. so i think one of the reasons that he doesn't participate in any of the ceremonies, any of the veterans' ceremonies, any of the occasions making a form al remembrance of the war is that and i also think that that's the y romanticit he lends to his remiv÷tcences f the war where he represents that this of a crusade where he remembers the splendid carelessness that a soldier has in throwing his life away for a cause that he doesn't understand. at the samelntime, there's a gd deal of private pride that holmes takes in having been inr the j!

he goes on to the court and after about the first decade of service when he realizes he can do the work in a comparatively short period of time, and yet it's a collegial body so he has to"tsd÷ wait for his colleagues catch one him, holmes would -- court conferenced on saturdays when holmes -- during holmes' continue euro, basically b5

so not being able to do the full mont that was desired, he tuñgtb to literature and writing, correspondence. ez correspond weapons some of his intimate friends, he will note the anniversaries of his or particular battles. >h"ied and the contents of his house wererivo survey ed, items turned up. one was in a bedside table. and it was a little tiny case containing two bullets.wsfq and there was a little cramped in saying, "these are bullets which were taken from me in the civil war." the in the closet in hisckv bedm

and two-óer of the uniforms wit pins. "the these were the uniforms i wore in the civil war. this is my blood spattered on them." so there's a kind of secret pride in participating.&÷8x but there's also an awkward memory which i think explains accounts of theqyo]ñ civil war soldierly ethos that professor l mcpherson has alludedovesh to. this is why he ad miertsmires a. f1 o is why he ad miertsmires a. on some other side of self-loathing. he recognizes in the war that he's -- and he writes about this. he says, "one of the things i learned in the war was that just because i was more educate than

some people, and s@ intelligent than some people, i wasn't necessarily a better. soldier in some respect. i think sszit's hazard us to dr much -- hazardous to draw much from his initial experiences. li life. and to be sure,

jurisprudence and his civil war experience. one has to bear in mind that when holm left the army of the potomac july, 1864, he was 23 years old. to law school, be accepted to the massachusetts bar, begin with a law ñh4ly become an editor and contributor of the "american law review," edit the commentaries, and write a series articles in the american li review between the early 187 0s and 1 80 on a -- 1880 on a variety of subjects. write the letters that became the common law. be appointed to the harvard law hañ one year. believing so su=6/áñ that the

harvard law, his colleagues on the harvard law faculty ìáhp &hc% him in law practice and helped him raise money for a chair for holm to take when he joined t eed zffa confronted none.áf6nf them. they were thunderstruck and hvmx outraged. and it took over 15 years before harvardo>y granted holmes any official recognition even though by that time he'd gallon to become a visible socio-judge and then chief20! judge between when he leaves the army and the time when he first steps on to the bench.

and it's all law. it's a sampling of nearly every professional role that the legaz professional [÷presents. and an immersion in it that was so extensive that on onev? m occasion holmes was dining with henry and william james' family. he brought with him to the dinner table one of these green bags in is a bag(x,ñ containing manuscript that students used to use at the time. he's not a student at this point. he's working at -- practicing law and doing academic work and editing commentaries. he's got in the bag the manuscript of his editing. and henry william james'a mother says, do you bring that bag with you all the time? >> he says, yes, yes, i do.;=xd

she then describes himeç as a powerful grooves!$ out a self-beneficial groove through life. a powerful machine, i should say, carved to/ño narrow out a self-beneficialqb9ñu( -- he's as friends and colleagues note his intensity. so this is not a trivial pursuit the law is very important for him. whether he would want to do it as a law student initially and finally concludes that it's, as he puts it, worthy of an intelligent man. sol4vaç,b i think the -- whatr mcpherson described as his dik÷ pragmatism, i wouldn't -- would find it harder to trace that back to theácivil war

experience. and with respect to his e:fìáhp% there's a consideration transformation of holmes' attitudes while5r÷ he in service. and as professor mcpherson points out, it's a way away from abolitionism. he says later on that his heroes in the war were more on the he admired their bzpçcourage, t season soldierly abilities. when he turns down the offer to join a regiment that would be composed of african-american nssxnox÷

he said, "i'm glad you didn't warship at the shrine of the great [ bleep ]." his record is notl%+ v zem laex. he's probably in an era in which the courts' support for civil the uukm best, rt for civil holmes is even less grudging so if there was an initial enthusiasm for))e abolitionism dissipated in the war. i think the greatest impact of judge and a scholar comes in this sort of double éñg@:qt crusade for admiration of the

ethos of the soldiers' faith. then it takes yet another turn. when holm begies begins to do p scholarship and be a judge, he begins to liken enterprise to something like a solitary hazardous journey. he begins to wrap himself in a cult which is later called jobbism. the idea that you just to your job as bestñ1;÷ you can, and le f the that. the 50th anniversary of the which he says to an audience -- incidentally, something like ju% of that class fought in the war.

he's talking about the class and talking about the war. regiment and the classñrhkñ to r out as solid and compact piece of work as one could. to try to make it first rate, and to leave it 5at

instructed by the powers that be. but what i'm reallyt#,o interes in is holmes as a justice was considered a philosopher king. people have sort of had a field day with hisépo different philosophies. the -- during the war, he made a tr00wynsition from abolitionism something else. and i think there's disagreement about what that something else is. right? so professor mcpherson said it was pragmatism. louis menand i think would say skepticism of all dbvó÷ideas.zbñ resisting the idea, i think toward the end, that it was j jobism, that that was constructed later on. not what the war taught him at all. in his book, professor white said that -- he says it was an unadvertised professional craftsmanship is what the war taught him. was that it? i guess what i'm wondering, are

these competing narratives about holmes' world view, his philosophy? are they mutually exclusive? are sdhant, are thconsistent, añ narrative do you buy most about his thinking? >> i see no consistency between the idea of holmes as a pragmatist and holmes as -- his notf ead jobbishness. i think he admired a right. getting28yt thing right. not exactly professionalism, but whatever works. and that, it seemsñvuz me, the essence of hóyppragmatism. one of his friends, close friends during much of his life, was william james. it was the architect of the fill

oss fills fil fills on ffill -- philosophy of pragmatism. i think the professionalismjnaf abbott, the courage, thew devotion to duty and two honor really replaced the idea of devotion to a cause because of holmes' civil war experience. and that, i@ñk, evolves into what i call pragmatism. i don't see it as being at all consistent with what professor ñ >> i think we're(ach talking ab two related but different things. i entirely agree that the cultd of jobbism is a translation of the ethatos of soldiering. i think holmes gets it from that.

he doesn't explicitly)]f>v acknowledge?5+eñ connection. but he feels as if that's what -- he's trying to do his job the best way he could in the same manner that abbott was trying to do his job the best way he could.ú[i butvók7q pragmatism -- scholars been temperatured to describe him as a -m&5- tempted to desc him as a pragmatist. i think first they have to get over the notion of from when james published a book on pragmatism. william and james had been close in the 1860s. these were the days in which they were both participants in the metaphysical club, and james went abroad to study medicine and came back. and in fact, he and holm organioregoholmes;emjy organized the club. correspondence about philosophy. holmes is very interested in philosophy. áhat's onerm- of the concerns he has about whether

he'll ever catch on to law school becausesw] it may not be that interesting as philosophical issues are. but once holmes goes to law school and gets immersed in things, he begins to separate fli himself from the ]=vcñjameses a college friends generally. and he and william jamesb,úz do have much contact after& ñ that. that letter, it's not a favorable oa>÷review. it's an expression of holmes' skepticism about whether the magnag3ñ7 prahmatism does anything as a ossie. make holmes into brandeis. brandeis was all for experimentation at the state level -- at least if it suited

his particular agenda. so you could probably say in someca("ç respects brand ice mi have -- brandeis might have there's not a single line that i've found in his papers and explicitly with a pragmatic approach. and i don't think it's consistent with his emptemperam. i don't think holmes is a mr. s: fix-guy. i don't think shoholmes is a facilitator. i think he's largely aloof. he's largely detached, independent. he certainly wasn't muchm/& player as that sterm used on the supreme court -- term was used on the supreme court. he was disposedc his fellow justices. but there's little sense that he's acting like justice brennan or somebody enjoying the

politics of the institution and trying to persuade people to do -- take positions that homeland would endorse. holmes goat --?ñrá holmes would holmes goes his own way. i realized that i'm in a minor9"qn15=9ráátáh @r(t&háhp &% g the holmes scholars but i resist the pragmatic label. >> so, i want to go back to the civil war a little bit. there's been a recent book, which i know you're aware of. it's called "harvard civil war" about the massachusetts regiment by a historian named richard f. miller. what he shows in that book about the 20th regiment is that it was really divided along both ideological lines and along class lines. so, you had most of the officers being these sort of harvard gentlemen. you had german troops in the unit, and then you had these nantucket whalers. >> and some irish. >> and some irish in the unit. and then there was the other

division among class of abolitionis abolitionists, which holmes was at the beginning and not at the en, and the nonabolitionists led by henry abbott. i was just sort of wondering, did that change holmes' ideas about class and difference and, you know, because here's someone who really befriended a lot of people who boston brahmans wouldn't accept. i just wanted to know if you thought that had any influence on sort of his acceptance of lots of different types of people. >> well, i think his experience in that regiment certainly democrat tiesed his attitude in many ways different ways. i think he came to enjoy courage and all these different groups, the whaling people from nantucket, the german-americans

from boston, the irish, demonstrated courage because this was a tough regiment. at the same time, i think the harvard cast of the officers, the brahman cast to some degree, not all were harvard men, but many came from the upper class of boss tone ytonians. they forged a relationship of class, indeference. the officers represented the men and the men respected the officers partly because the officers demonstrated their skill and leadership and i think that's what forged the regiment into such an outstanding regiment, even though one would not originally see this as a promising mix. but it turned out to work very well. and i think that probably had something to do with holmes' sense of, you know, professionalism.

as being one of the highest values. >> there's no question when holmes enlists, he thinks this is a class contribution. that he thinks it's a kind of no blesoblege on the part of him and his porclian classmates at harvard to go out and fight for this cause. that's why the term civil chiva comes up. this is the knights of the round table in holmes' consciousness. i agree the experience in the regiment, it's -- it sticks in my craw a little bit to use the word demom ra tiesing in connection with holmes. it's hard too think think of h

democrat. he is the author of a letter that says, i loathe the thick-fingered clowns who are the people. so, i -- but as i said earlier, he recognizes that there are people in this regiment from different backgrounds from his, from less, quote, distinguished backgrounds, that are better soldiers. that are dealing better with the stresses of war than he is. so i think that's important. now, with respect to holmes' -- again, this is a label that people have associated with him. tolerance. with respect to holmes' tolerance, it's often cited that he had close friendships with people who were jewish or who were chinese. i have a couple things to say about that.

first, he clearly has -- he has a love/hate relationship with his own sort in boston. which he goes on the court of massachusetts, he writes opinions that are not regarded from the point of viewk

how is the senior senator from massachusetts going to say no to that? senator hoar writes a letter saying, i think there are a lot of solid oak timber in the massachusetts bar. and i wonder whether carving a judge out of ornamental ivory would be better. there's a sense -- then there's the famous colloquy between addison, the philanthropist -- capitalist turned philanthropist after the soldiers faith. and holmes runs into addison and addison says, i read your speech. i don't like it. it's bad morals and bad politics. there is this sense captured in

a letter holmes writes to frederick pollock after he's captured the court, there is this sense that citizens of boston don't think he's reliable, too intellectual, too ornamental. he resents this. and he doesn't -- with the exception of john chipman gray, he doesn't have intimate friends drawn from the braman group. but his intimate friends fall into two categories. one group is women where he just enjoys and maybe there's been some flirtations earlier in their lives, but now they're just friends and he has long correspondences with women. john chipman grays wife and

several others. the others are people that he has intellectual engagement with, intellectual affinity with. holmes doesn't really care who you are. if you write him and you show evidence that you paid attention to issues that holmes is interested in and whether you're john h.woo or lewis einstein or willis frankfurter or howard laski or sir frederick pollock from a different background, holmes is happy to talk to you. he's interested to engage with you anything that interests him. but this is a different kind of intimacy. this is a very structured intimacy. it's the intimacy of the correspondence relationship. there's this story about lasky. lasky is many years younger than

holmes. lasky is 40 years younger than holmes. holmes has taken to lasky and he sends him books and they exchange -- there's more letters to lasky than any one k correspondent. five or six years into the correspondence, lasky proposes they call each other by their first names. they've been writing these, my dear holmes, my dear lasky. holmes writes back, my dear lasky. that's all i'd say. >> we would be remiss if we didn't talk about ft. stevens if we talked about holmes and the civil war. i want to get your thoughts on was holmes at ft. stevens with president lincoln when confederate troops were approaching washington, d.c.? are his quotes about telling

lincoln, get down you damn fool, apocrafil. i wanted your thoughts on that. >> what we know for sure is president lincoln was at ft. stevens on july 11th. he was peering over the paraput while the bullets were flying and some soldier told him to get down. he may have said, get down you fool. he may have said get down you damn fool, but we know someone did because lincoln told john hey about it that evening that some soldier had roughly told him to get down and hay recorded in his diary. we don't know whether holmes was there on the 11th. we do know that holmes was there on the 12th, the next day, and lincoln was there. and on this occasion general wright told lincoln to get down.

i would like to believe that it was holmes on the 11th who told lincoln to get down. but we don't know that for sure. and and i don't know, ted, what you think about this. i suspect probably it was somebody else, but i wish it was holmes. >> i have reason to doubt it was holmes for two reasons. holmes talked to his close friends about particular experiences he had in the civil war. he talked to his law clerks about them. his law clerks remembered several conversations. and he -- when he would remember the days of wounds, he would sometimes make other aleutians -- illusions to things. and he did write a letter, as jim has said, that he was at ft.

stevens when lincoln was there. and he actually mentions the fact that lincoln was there. but he says nothing about any incident involving people -- someone telling lincoln to get down, you fool. and that is a little curious. holmes was very far from being someone who wanted to embellish his participation in things. so, i think if he had on that occasion said, get down, you fool, to lincoln and he would have simply said it to someone at that point. he wouldn't have advertised prominently but he would have mentioned it to an intimate at some point in his life and he never did. the other thing is the source of

the story was harold lasky. and lasky was a notorious embellisher. and so -- and there's no other account of -- there's no other source for this story. so i'm inclined to put this in the same category as when daniel webster made his plea in the john marshall, there were tears in his eyes. it's a good story and somebody tells it at some point in the history of writing up these incidents and it's too good for people not to repeat. that isn't to say it didn't happen. >> so, before we go, i wanted to talk about holmes' views about lincoln. because it seems like that not only was holmes after his

wartime experience ambivalent about the war, but he was also ambivalent about lincoln. when people asked him about lincoln later on, he didn't really put lik con even in the great man category. i was curious as to why you thought that. >> i don't really know the answer to that question. i've been curious about it, too. i find it puzzling. he did vote for lincoln in 1864. there's no doubt about that. he didn't in 1860 because he couldn't get vote in 1860. but you're quite right that he never really expressed the kind of reverence for lincoln and admiration for lincoln and profound respect for lincoln's leadership and what lincoln stood for that one might have thought that, i think, his father, oliver wendell holmes sr., did. and it may have something to do with the kind of skepticism with

which he emerged from the war with -- about so much. of everything. but it still does puzzle me. i don't have a good answer to that question. >> well, he comes out of the war, remember, with a very strong sense of what a mess the campaigns were. and the experience at potomac would have confirmed that. for long periods of holmes' service he's wading through swamps trying to get from the virginia northern neck area to richmond in two different aborttive efforts to invade richmond. he sees people randomly shot. he gets randomly shot. he sees people run to their deaths because somebody gives him a wrong order. he never has any sense of what the general plan of the war is. so, he may have associated

lincoln with the strategists of the war and thought that it was pretty much of a cockup and partly blamed lincoln for that. and then, of course, he comes out of the war and he's not an abolitionist. he has a richer attitude toward confederat confederates, the returning confederates. no reason to lionize lincoln. lionization wasn't holmes' style. there -- he wrote a lot of affecti affectionate tributes to people on their deaths and remembering them and said some nice things about them. but fulsome praise was not his meteir. so, i can imagine him having an attitude of lincoln of decreasing attachment over the

years. >> dr. holmes came up -- i think one thing we haven't discussed today is holmes himself was the son of a very famous father at the time. and his father capitalized on his wounds at antetim wrote a famous story. know can you make too much of this sort of struggle to escape his father's father and i don't mean to be that reductivist but do you think this sort of created at least an es strangement between holmes and his father or at least put a distance between him ska that his father who was an ar dent abolitionist before and after the war and holmes who wasn't an ar dent abolitionist caused strain in their relationship? >> could be. ted referred to holmes' love/hate relationship with b

bramin class in boston. i think love/hate is too strong to discuss his relationship with his father but he had an ambivalent relationship with his father. it was a close relationship but on the other hand an ambitious young man is trying to escape from the shadow of a prominent father especially since he's moving into a different kind of profession. >> i know you've written a lot about this but i want to get your take on this because you can't really talk about holmes during the war without talking about his relationship with his father. >> first of all, the generation of holmes' parents, holmes' father, they were not -- holmes' father was not an abolitionist at the time the war broke out. in some way holmes' group is making a statement by enlisting. but i think holmes resented the "my captain article."

if you can understand his circumstances, he's in his second wound, returning from the battle. his father comes down meet him and writes an article in which the thrust of the article is i, oliver wendell sr., who's a household word at the time, writing about my son. so, just don't forget even though he's a returning civil war veteran, that he's my son. and and i think holmes did not appreciate that. holmes jr. did not appreciate that. going into law is a way of distancing himself from his father. no question about it. >> on that note, i promised i'd end at 7:00. i thank you all for coming. this has been a remarkable panel with two remarkable people. please give them a round of applause. >> you've been watching c-span's

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