the united states had nothing resembling social security veterans associations. there was no health care. they eventually did have pensions. indeed, federal pensions to union soldiers was a kind of governmental revolution such that by 1890, one third of the entire federal budget of the united states was payments of pensions to union veterans. that story, especially of guys who survived prison camps, who survived multiple years in the army who encountered all kinds of diseases, that story has only recently been researched by historians. it has been waiting to be done. that war left a terrible set of

scars on hundreds of thousands of veterans. it is also true that these veterans organizations were important fraternal organizations. veterans became an important voting block in both the south and north. they were also a political force. host: we are seeing the sights and sounds of soldiers beginning to stack their arms, which would have happened 150 years ago today here at appomattox courthouse. we will go next to eagle point washington. caller: it is eagle point oregon. host: diane, i'm sorry. i had that incorrect. caller: i have a little bit of background and then a question for mr. blight. i was born in oregon, raised in

oregon. i lived in charleston, south carolina and atlanta, georgia for 20 years respectively. i am a person that did not understand the civil war when i was growing up. it was glossed over in our education. it didn't really mean much to me when i lived in georgia and south carolina. i caught the civil war fever terribly. when they raise the hundley, it was just -- i now have a closet full of memorabilia and a collection and maps and pictures of people. the people that i am around now my family and my friends that i've lived with for years, they gloss over it.

they want to hurry by my office. they don't want to talk about it. they don't want to look at the picture. they view me as an oddity. i read so much about it, i started getting into autobiographies by northrop and frederick douglass and mary chestnut. it is a wound that has not healed in the united states. you talk about the park service. we need to do something here out on the west coast. there's not very much. it is like the relative you don't want to talk about. i would like your comments on that. host: thanks, diane. david: i'm dying to ask you -- how do you explain yourself to all the people around you? you don't have to. that's ok. [laughter] the war was and thought out west. however, a couple of years ago

during the sesquicentennial, i did a series of lectures in the northwest, in portland in tacoma washington, and i was stunned how much interest there actually was. a lot of people like you, in other words are out in the northwest region. interestingly enough, part of went -- what went on at these conferences were papers and stories about the towns that were settled out there in the wake of the war in the late 19th century. there were whole towns settled by x confederates in oregon or in washington. i was surprised. why are they having a civil war conference in tacoma? i was given a lesson. sometimes, you don't have to have any more explanation for the friends around you then maybe the one you just gave. for one thing, the civil war -- let's face it -- it causes, the

war itself and its consequences, it's an epic. it is a tremendous epic, if by epic we mean, a great story. it has heroes and villains. it has causes. it has results. tell your friends when they look at you like some weird eccentric. tell them you have one of the few republics in the world, and 80-some years in its history, it tears itself to pieces over the second-largest system of slavery on the planet. it fights the first total war humankind ever fought, a much bigger cost that anybody intended. it ends slavery overnight. 4 million people are liberated. a bloodletting like no other in its history, and then, it has to put itself back together. you might tell your friends

that's a hell of a story. it's an epic. that is why we are drawn to it. its legacies. it's meaning. there are problems still out there laying around everywhere. they are on the newscast every night. they are in the headlines every day. if your friends don't know that, tell them to start watching the news or read a newspaper, or maybe you should recommend a few books for them. host: david blight, maybe because it is opening week, but we have a tweet from john who says -- dr. blight did you run across anecdotes involving civil war baseball, perhaps even at appomattox? david: i don't know of any at appomattox, but yes, i am a big a small fan. maybe this is someone who knows that. baseball was played by civil war soldiers. regiments had teams. units had teams. they played a game that we would probably recognize, but it is

not quite the same game. i don't know of a game played here. there likely could have been. union soldiers might have gone back to one of these fields and said let's have a game of rounders, which is sometimes what they called it. all you needed was something resembling a bat and a ball and something to call basis. baseball had caught on in its early form at the time of the civil war. it wasn't invented by abner doubleday, as he is sometimes given credit for, but a day like today, let's play two. host: we go to brian in fernandina beach, florida. are you on the air? caller: yes, i am. professor blight, i would like to get your impression or opinion on whether you think perhaps the union, beginning at appomattox, was too lenient on the confederacy, particularly

its political leadership, and that impact on the success of reconstruction. david: that is a great question, sir, long examined by monday morning quarterbacks about the moral aspects of the civil war. by any legal measure thousands upon thousands of southerners had committed treason. if you resigned your commission in the u.s. military to take up guard -- take up arms against your government, that is treason. if you resign your seat in congress to join the political movement against your government, that is treason. that is one thing. at the end of the war, it was abraham lincoln's vision, and many other people were with them on this -- he did not want this war to end in enveloping guerrilla warfare that might

have gone into the hills and mountains to the west of us for months. that would have been the worst possible kind of ending. that is a clean ending they are reenacting. another matter to ask, what about the political leadership? should members of the confederate cabinet congress perhaps the generals -- how would that have been defined? it's anyone's guess. should they have been arrested? should there have been some kind of trials? whether you called it treason or not, how about a trial for rebellion or insurrection against the government? that language is right in the constitution. yes, one way of thinking about it is, had even a half-dozen of

the top leaders of the confederacy been swiftly tried and at least imprisoned it might have had a somewhat different impact on the politics of reconstruction. we will never know that. the problem in part is that the lincoln assassination came only 48 hours after. this final stacking of the arms, just two days later in washington -- there were trials of conspirators, and they were hanged very publicly. after those hangings, in some ways, the spirit for retribution against confederate leadership may have dissipated to some degree, although as you know jefferson davis was arrested, and he was imprisoned for two years in virginia on the coast.

the problem with that case was they never formally indicted him. they never brought a formal indictment against jefferson davis. while in prison, he became an early folk hero of the lost cause. finally, he was released in the spring of 1867 because they had not brought any formal indictments, and they couldn't hold him any longer. his bail was purchased by welding northerners, horace greeley. once you release jefferson davis from jail in the spring of 1867, there is nowhere else to go. alexander stephens, the vice president, was also arrested and imprisoned for a short time in charlestown, massachusetts. he was released by the end of the summer of 1865. we will never know. most civil war's have ended in a

much bloodier way. if a side loses as profoundly as the confederacy did, they're usually have been retributions and even executions. that we did not do that sets up to a certain extent some elements of the lost cause tradition. these leaders live to write about it. host: we are seeing the muskets and rifles stacked, and the confederate flag, the banners are being unfurled. the use of the confederate flag on a license plate -- why can't the country get a handle on the meaning of the confederate flag? david: the confederate flag is the second most ubiquitous symbol of its kind in america, the first being the united states flag. the confederate flag can be found all over the world

meaning whatever people have to choose -- choose it to mean. people have a right to bring it here. they have a right to display it. some of us might wish it is folded and put in museums as an historical relic, as a representation of another time. the problem with it is is that it has always carried a politics with it. it has always carried a racial politics. i know there are thousands of people who will say, all that flag represents is the honoring and respect of their ancestors. that's entirely true in their own minds. the trouble is, that flag represents -- not just because it was part of the confederacy which was a slave holders republic fighting to preserve human slavery, but the confederate flag was revived in

the 1950's and 1960's to resist the civil rights movement. as long as we have a politics of race, we will have a politics about that flag. it is a human right to waive any flag you want, but you should only waive it knowing that there are consequences and there are meanings to other people that you may be insulting. host: we go to our bird -- arthur in greensburg pennsylvania. caller: i once heard a southern historians say that the north may have won the war, but the south won reconstruction. it pains me so often to hear african-americans are deliberately ignored particularly in that civil war

period. the emancipation proclamation, in my opinion, was passed -- thousands of blacks were constricted or brought into the union army as soldiers. they died by the thousands in the front lines. not once do you see throughout history one black soldier lying dead on that battlefield. what is your opinion on that? david: i didn't quite catch the last part of your question. not once do you see a black soldier lying dead on the battlefield. i'm not sure that's true. if by that you mean photographers and photographs maybe that's the case. i don't know. i'm not sure i heard all of your question. i would say that there is no question now that african-americans in the army, in the union army, fighting for the federal government have not

only been given their due. we have a number of great books on this. we have huge documents. one of the greatest documentary projects ever done are the many volumes done at the university of maryland. this is an extremely well-documented story of the participation of blacks in the war and the participation of blacks in the vast story of their own emancipation. later on, this question of who wins the piece over who wins the war, that is a different matter. if by that you mean the ways in which it's a lost cause tradition, its claimant never fought for slavery and so forth, the way in which the lost cause tradition took hold in the national culture by the turn of the 20th century and into the 20th century has profound

implications, and it is true if you grew up in this country and went to school from 1900 to 1950, you would be hard-pressed -- for that matter, 1960 and 1970 -- you would be hard-pressed to know anything about how emancipation happened or the fact that black people participated in the union army. there were thousands of americans who learn for the first time blacks were in the union army when they saw the movie "glory" in 1990. that is because the history standard school histories -- not all of them, but many of them -- had all but obliterated this part of the story on a set of assumptions that said, it wasn't central. it wasn't at the heart. it wasn't primary to what the war had been about. host: david blight has his phd from the university of wisconsin madison.

he's the author of "race and reunion," joining us here live at appomattox. just under 20 minutes or so with david blight. let's go to mapleton maine and hear from william. caller: good afternoon, dr. blight. i want to thank you for taking my call. i was flipping through the channels and happened to catch this on c-span. i find it to be quite interesting. my question is, do you believe the outcome of the civil war weakened or strengthened states rights, and if so, how? i will leave you with that. david: that is a great question. i have to answer quickly. at first initially, it greatly weakened states rights. there is no question about that. the civil war brought about a huge strengthening of the federal government.

a centralization of federal power in all sorts of ways. just look at the first lincoln administration. they not only freed slaves liberating $3.5 billion worth of property, but they created transcontinental railroads with federal power. they created the first income tax with federal power. they created a vast quartermaster corps, which was a huge agency with 100,000 federal employees by 1864, engineering contracts with private enterprise to win the war. the mobilization of the civil war and the necessity of emancipation brought about a huge strengthening of federal power over states rights. the confederacy is born in state sovereignty and states rights. there is no question about that. you should always ask, states rights for what?

they were asking for states rights to preserve a slaveholding society. for a while, states rights were put on the run. it is going to revive, as it always does, and it revived during reconstruction. heart of the resistance to reconstruction, so-called southern redemption -- the southern democratic party really revived in the south -- they are resisting not only the new racial regime and the right to vote for blacks, but they were trying to resist federal power. in the short term, they succeeded. go ahead another 80 years, and you get the dixiecrat party of 1948. what is that but a break off a break off in the south of a party that existed for states rights explicitly? then i would say, the civil war not only did not kill states rights. in fact, nothing really can. our system is set up in some

kind of balance between federal power and state-level power, but as i tried to say earlier, we are living in the midst of a wrinkled revival of states rights doctrine, taking part in state legislatures, the controvert -- the congress, the supreme court. this is the most states rights supreme court we have had in two generations, and it is going to take place in the next presidential election. we have people running for president, and there will be many more announcing, who are advocates, activists for states rights. you need only listen to any speech or look up the website of a ted cruz, and you will find all sorts of state sovereignty doctrine about keeping power local. one of the things i like to ask of people, however who like to tout their states rights credibility -- i would like to ask them whether they would have preferred to lose the civil war. host: let's go to glenn in

wilbur, new jersey. caller: thank you c-span and both of you for today's program. do see quick questions for professor blight. what are his thoughts about the comparison between the centennial and sesquicentennial in terms of attendance and interest in the civil war? a more general question about his thoughts on american history being taught in our elementary and high schools across america the status, and not only general history but american history and specifically the civil war. david: i will take the second question first. actually, the teaching of american history has improved tremendously from when i was in school and even from when i was a high school teacher. i was a high school teacher in the 1970's. we were working with curricula materials and books that are nothing like what exists today. what is available to teachers

today, if they want it, what is available the school systems textbooks and other documents is tremendous in terms of the expansion, the inclusiveness of an american story. on that point, i would say we are embroiled again in a debate that is a political debate, and that debate is over the college board, the advanced placement system, which has become a new target of the american political right. they don't like the new framework system put out by the advanced placement system, which is hundreds of thousands of students in classrooms every year. they want a more triumphal america. they want a more exceptional list america. they are getting it. they just don't seem to know it. as far as the centennial and sesquicentennial, i will be brief, but the key point -- i wrote about this and a book called "american oracle" -- the

centennial was a national affair. there was a national civil rights centennial funded by the federal government. there were state-level commissions. the trouble was, the planning of that centennial celebration tended to be all about the story of the glory of the blue and the gray and the reuniting and reconciliation of north and south. it had nothing to do officially with the story of either black participation in that war or this fundamental result of the end of slavery. quite explicitly, the civil war centennial commission tried to avoid questions of race and emancipation as long as they could. eventually, they couldn't. the problem with the centennial operiod, the country was having

a civil rights revolution. those two big events, the civil rights movement and the centennial, were like planets orbiting separate sons -- suns. they were never allowed into the same orbit. it was if -- as if we had a segregated history. we did. we had a segregated society. we had a segregated commemoration of the civil war. the sesquicentennial has been a different affair. no national commission at all partly because it happened during the great recession. the great recession hit just as the sesquicentennial was about to blossom. very few states had commissions. for gina, the most active by far. -- virginia, the most active by far. the park service has done a lot of what they do on shoestring. i hope congressmen realize that.

a lot has gone on at the local level, at the museum level, at the level of artistic production , at the level of drama, and what c-span has done. it has been a much more vernacular, much more local process commemorating the 150th and i would say, this time, all over the country, as we have seen, the story of emancipation has come to the heart of the story and has come to the center of this epic about what the civil war has been about. there are still people who don't want it to be there, but they are now, i think, on the defensive. we may have that point of view finally on the run to some extent. host: 10 more minutes or so with our guest david blight. a question via twitter -- harold baker tweets -- why are black

abolitionists not as widely known as douglas? david: great question. this person may know that i'm writing a new biography on douglas. i have also written about these other people. they are not as well-known as douglas first of all because douglas was the greatest writer among them and the greatest orator among them. he wrote 1200 pages of autobiography. he gave hundreds of speeches, many of which survived in their recorded and textual forms. it doesn't mean the rest of these people, the delaneys, james mccune smiths -- he was the most educated african-american of the 19th century. he was probably frederick douglass's closest the black male friend. most of these other men who were mentioned here did not edit their own newspapers for 16

years, did not develop the same kind of international reputation as a voice in the ways that douglass did, and did not end up in a kind of role of almost official spokesman of african-americans. that has to do with a lot of rivalries between them. it has a lot to do with douglass's shear skill and talent, which is not to diminish the talent of any of these other people who were mentioned. some of them were ministers like garnet who was basically a pastor. he was church-based. douglas was ubiquitous. he was everywhere. he would travel everywhere and did so throughout his life. that is principally why. douglass left more for us to investigate, to read, and to understand than the rest of those black letters -- leaders. host: do we know what fragrant

douglas'-- frederick douglass's immediate reaction to appomattox was? david: we do. from the fall of 1864 right on the through the spring of 1865, as the war was winding down, after lincoln was reelected, and especially after this surrender douglass was everywhere in the north, speaking often in black churches, and he would often employed old testament metaphors to try to explain how fundamental this moment was or other moments leading up to it. he would often employ noah's ark, believe it or not. he would start a speech by going to genesis. he knew his audiences knew the old testament. he would remind them of the

famous saying when noah sends a dove out the art, and the first time the dove comes back with an olive branch in its teeth. it meant that may be something out there was growing. he sends the dove out again, and the dove doesn't come back. it means the landscape has gone green. noah takes the hood off the ark. that is what douglass says was the end of the civil war. he gave it to that kind of significance, the end of the great flood and the possibility of new life. douglass interpreted this as indeed a new beginning of a new history that he couldn't wait to be a part of. host: let's see if we can get a couple more calls. diane, you are with david blight. i'm sorry, it's also oklahoma

-- it's tulsa, oklahoma. caller: did general lee and general grant get to be friends after the civil war? did they communicate with each other after it was all over with, or did they go their separate ways and get on with their own lives? david: no, grant and lee did not become friends. they did communicate. there is no question they communicated. within a year -- lee only lived to 1870. grant of course will live until 1882. they had very different -- in fact fundamentally different interpretations as to what this actually meant. the terms of surrender they signed had different meanings to the two men. lee interpreted appomattox as a

surrender among soldiers and he thought a kind of a promise from grant, and therefore the federal government, that the south would be let alone. soldiers were to be sent home. go home. plant your crops. be farmers again. don't make war. don't raise your arms against the government. you will be left alone. that is the way lee interpreted it. that is not the way the country will interpret it. grant himself is saying, black suffrage in the south, the right to vote for black men is going to be necessary. he reacted vehemently to actions of mob violence across the south. grant supports the

reconstruction regimes put in place by the radical republicans . he and lee ultimately had very different conceptions of the long-term meaning of this surrender. lee thought the united states could just now reunite, go back to its old traditions. it would be the union as it was and the constitution as it is. no rewriting of the constitution. lee was opposed to the 14th and 15th amendments. then he's gone by 1870. he floats into myth. there he is, the dead lee. he was available as a great symbol, a great myth. grant lived and became president . he lived through a time of some very divided and corrupt politics, which isn't as

tarnished to some degree as his political reputation or legacy. they never became in any way buzz am-friends who would meet for drinks after the war, rest assured. host: let's hear from jim in lake wales, florida. caller: how far do states rights go to actually bring down the confederacy? abraham lincoln had power over the states. jefferson davis was quoted as saying he wished he had that power. how far do states rights go to bring down the confederacy, and how far are we going to go in this modern age towards the same thing? david: that first question is a great question. somebody once said they should put an epitaph on the tomb of the confederacy -- i forget who said it -- the epitaph should be

"died of states rights." the doctrine was founded that a state had a right to secede from the union, leave the federal union if their interests were being violated. they believed they were just exercising that sovereign right. a highly contested notion, of course. deeply contested by the lincoln administration and ultimately by the voters of the north. states rights did terra part the confederacy from within. they had to become a centralized government. they had to tax their own citizens. they had to communicate. they had to make their railroads run on time. they had to get production done in north carolina that would be shared with for junior. they had to get troops out of georgia to use them in virginia. sometimes, governors would resist that.

they died of states rights, to a degree. it's an irony, their own tragic, achilles' heel. how far is our current politics of states rights going to go? i have no idea. i would not know what to predict. i would suggest it's going to be here for a long time. it has great traction. it has tremendous media power. it has tremendous financial backing. it has tremendous backing among voters, and it has called -- it has all kinds of articulate spokesman, some of whom are going to run for the president of the united states. the problem is that it is a historical. it tries to live in our own time as if the constitution has no history. the people who hearken back to the original constitution as some kind of justification

whether it's for the second amendment or the 10th amendment or to resist the environmental protection agency or to resist national health insurance, they are forgetting that we have had 200-some years of history modern history, industrialized history that have changed the fundamental relationship of citizens to their government. this states rights revival is here to stay for a long time unless a movement against it gets similar traction in the political arena. host: yellow university's david blightconversations with the fife and drum corps. tell us your names. >> i am ranger tim are tell from fort mchenry, baltimore, maryland. >> i am a volunteer at fort mchenry. host: both of you are obviously here as musicians.

what would be the role of music in the civil war? >> primarily duty music. they would play calls from sun up to sun down, reveille to tattoo. that is why we made a dollar more a month. as well as marching tunes and patriotic heirs. we were functional from sun up to sun down. reveille in the mornings. this morning, we played a 6:00 reveille. we had the joy of waking up all of the soldiers. host: i wonder if you guys could give us a quick demonstration of anything you want to, reveille or whatever. what are we going to hear? >> we can give you the three camps. it is the first piece of about six pieces of music. it is very fast. the second piece is very slow. by the end of reveille, they all fall in for roll call. the soldiers know when the last piece ends. host: take it away. >> here we go.

[drum rolls] ♪ ♪ host: outstanding. you are the drummer. wasn't it one of the more dangerous positions to be a drummer in the union or confederate army? >> not really. on the battlefield in the movies, you see five's and drums advancing with the line. that never really happened. what they would do, they would drop their instruments and assist the surgeons and act as

stretcher bearers. host: what got you interested in participating in events like this? >> i was friends with his nephew, and in 2007, i decided to join before four mchenry guard. i started off doing war of 1812 events, and i gradually did war of 1812 and civil war events. host: you are the musical coordinator for the national park service. you are in the fort mchenry group. how different was the martial music from 1812 to 1865? >> very different. it is very stately and marshall and slow in the war of 1812. they were doing a direct step. by the civil, that pace picks up very quick. we demonstrate that at fort mchenry and throughout the bicentennial. we would play "yankee doodle" from the war of 1812 and the civil war to demonstrate those differences. host: there obviously are not

recordings available. how do we know what music sounded like? >> there are manuals. we resourced several manuals from both eras that showed the drum beatings and the music. they are very distinctive. you could play "the girl i left behind me" and the word 1812. very few notes. in the civil war, it gets fancier. we have the manual. it is all at our disposal. we are national park service. we have to uphold those standards and play it right. we don't make it up. what we present is the real deal. we want to play it just as it sounded, so you are getting the right sound from a b-flat fife. this is a tension snare drum. a lot of breast bands have

plastic -- brass bands have plastic heads. host: i'm not going to say little drummer boy, but you are a younger guy, but very proficient on the drums. are you a drummer and doing other kinds of music? >> i drummed in middle school, but this is such a big commitment, being in the fort mchenry guard. there are a vends every weekend. sometimes, you get off school. i don't have time to be in the high school band. this is a lot more fun. host: as you perform for people what do you take away from their reaction to your music? >> i think it is always really nice when people come up and say, you did awesome. most people have never heard a live fight syndrome before -- fife and drum before. it is a really good experience. host: can you give us one more

demonstration? >> would you like to hear the 1812 "yankee doodle" and the civil war? we will play that for you. [drum rolling] [playing "yankee doodle"] ♪

♪ host: thanks so much.

screeria -- nigeria. -