them favoring union. matt: we can picture them favoring emancipation as well as union. in 1868, reconstruction is we can of it as foreign policy. do we really want to be spending our money on alabama? especially free blacks in alabama. it's no longer a union question it's a very different kind of ideological question for these folks. gary: i want to move to something else here. and that is how did proponents of what we will call the union memory of the war, the war that did this and did that, how did that play out the rest of the 19th century? while the wartime generation lived? everyone knows about lost cause monuments in the former confederacy. we have four of them in silence filled -- in charlottesville.

we have a confederate statue in the university library in the university cemetery -- not in the library. joan: just in your office. [laughter] gary: i will be sending my resume around beginning on monday. [laughter] gary: in the cemetery. john: i think you succeeded more jokes. gary: they talked about the decoration day, confederate memorial day and so forth. what is going on in the way of commemorating the union cause while the wartime generation still lives? what are some of the things that went on? joan: most of what i know is from reading john neff. [laughter] gary: one of you please say something.

joan: i'm going to throw it to you. then that is the idea that somehow exists today, and was present in the discussion of the lost causes is that is the most powerful cause, and it sprang full-blown in 1865, it's simply not true. all you have to do is go to national battlefield parks, see monuments to the citizen soldier of the army, the generals, the fact that the union cause preserving the republic, bringing emancipation, destroying the oligarchy that threatened the sanctity of the american union was gone forever was something that was of concern to millions of northerners come a they put just as much effort into writing textbooks and building monuments and holding memorial day

celebrations commemorations as did the south. john has a brilliant phrase for it, the cause victorious. matt: talk about the handling of the union dead after the war. john: if you were to go to the list of things that happen right away, one of the things is concern about the northern dead. gary: where were they buried, how with a buried throughout the war? john: buried in seven states, tended to be buried ad hoc, just by comrades. sometimes the comrades had to leave too quickly, so burial crews came in behind them. no one likes these burials, they seem fragile, the scene immensely susceptible to loss of identity. so very early after the war, in andersonville, the summer of 65, regularizing the cemetery at andersonville, trying to bring

order to that chaos. by 67, congress has passed the national cemetery laws which create 722 national -- 72 national cemeteries. they were created with much the same kind of motive, which is to protect the loyal soldiers beginning of united states from the enemy. from the depredations of the minute -- the enemy in mexico and the south. postwar, this is still a moment where the soldiers themselves are being singled out as being worthy of protection. at the same time that that process is going on in the jr, the -- the gsar is formed. they are pushing for not only making sure the national cemeteries don't turn into government potters fields, but are intended -- instead

protected. at the same time they are pushing for pensions. what about the living soldiers and veterans that went and sacrificed arms and legs, and no longer are employable in some fundamental way. they pushed for pensions eventually they will enlarge the pension demand to include women who served, nurses. much of what we think of in terms of veterans benefits and the obligations that the nation knows to its citizen soldiers, even today, all had their birth is government actions post-civil war. gary: what about public ceremonies in commemorations? joan: we can talk with the most splendid one, the grand review that was held at the end of the war in washington, d.c. my favorite banner in that review that featured one day the western army under sherman, wendy the eastern armies passing in review, the president and

grant and others, the great banner was the only debt we could never repay is the one we owe to the veterans. i think that brings out sacrifice that had to be honored, had to be remembered and commemorated. that is just a small example of the passion that fueled people in the north it in their desire. matt can talk about the commemorations and the growth of memorials. gary: articulate that question more. joan: memorial day. matt: which began as decoration day. john: theg -- the gar will go to local cemeteries and honor their dead.

matt: a key component of all of that is they are not just soldiers, their citizen soldiers. the monuments make that clear. these are citizen soldiers, not just soldiers. john: echoing off the lost cause panel, william lambert who gives a rather stirring memorial address in philadelphia in 1879 has some interesting ideas. he says you have to look at what the nation is after the war. to see what is it that you can't see. there isn't a victorious arch or monuments to union success of the national capitals. it is said of being behind bars, southern leaders are now making the nation's laws. they are not in the nation's presence, they are making the nation's laws. they're not been, he said, this massive executions and concerns for treason committed during the war. on and on, he goes on for a long time in that vein.

and then he suddenly stops and says, however, we can never forget that our cause was right and their cause was wrong. he invokes this image that we see a lot. we see still a lot of the flags battle flag on one flagpole american flag on the other, they are always shown coordinate. he says as if these were warring powers now at peace. and his point is, one of those flags no longer has an issue. -- that no longer has a nation. it is a symbol of something that is no longer around because of the war. the only one of those two flags that has any legitimacy being flown as the american flag. gary: we are almost at a time. i want to bring this down and talk about birth of a nation and "gone with the wind." this morning, do filmgoers or have film goers over the last

several decades been able to get a sense of what union meant in the centrality of union during the war from films? take any films. matt: i don't think so. we talked about spielberg's most recent union -- most recent movie, but the takeaway is about african american soldiers. that's a movie that also is about union. i don't think there is a comparable -- gangs of new york is a movie that is only set there during the civil war very but it really happens in the 1840's. john: you get a very confederate version of the union in gangs of new york because of the wonderful shot in new york where the immigrants are coming off the boat and they are being hustled over and put in uniform and put back on a boat from which they are taking union soldier coffins. it's a very lost cause. matt: those are literally

soldiers you don't know what they are fighting for over there going. joan: i think once reconciliation became the dominant way of interpreting civil war from the earliest 20th century through maybe the 1960's, the union cause was demolished, diminished vanquished. it really is not cinematic as well. lincoln is the only i think constant in portraying the union cause in a number of remarkably horrible movies from the 1930's and 1940's and 1950's. until steven spielberg's lincoln, which is wonderful. that film i think more emphasizes emancipation. matt: is it that the word and term union loses its meaning after the wartime generation? gary: if united states, is not

unit anymore. john: the south in the north have a postwar myth. the north's is the one that came true. you search in of unity, the assertion of the nation, the assertion of a more diverse policy, a commitment to the 14th amendment was just come true in the nascent century. someone argued as an completely come true, but we're working on it. because of that, doesn't fade into the background, it becomes the background. it becomes the context in which everything else is operated. i don't think the union causes disappeared, it has just become ubiquitous. in a way that would make it cinematic, wouldn't make it worthy or interesting to see in the film. joan: it's the norm. matt: i was in the best movie about the civil war is "little women. " it's an articulation of people living in the midst of wartime

and sacrificing, and missing their loved ones and all that but keeping on keeping on. and incorporating the war effort into their daily lives. but living a life that is largely untouched by war. they are not scarlett o'hara. but the best articulation of the north. gary: some of the mn l going to the army, they go to harvard. -- some of the young men don't go to the army, they go to harvard. the civil war was not a war the college men avoided. the memorial hall at harvard in front of the rotunda of a show that. uva incredibly shut down in 1861, there was hardly anyone left here. no more thoughts about popular culture, current popular culture? let's go to the sesquicentennial , i left an entire minute for us to talk about that here.

[laughter] joan: this is great. john: i think we in the nerve center of it. i think virginia and here. matt: i'm from florida, we didn't get the memo. [laughter] joan: california didn't either. vicksburg wasn't even commemorated on the day of the actual surrender, july 4, 1863. for those of you don't know or don't care. matt: black people who lived in vicksburg did commemorate. john:gary: what about california? has there been a big sesquicentennial push? joan: by me. gary: she has her own logo. i have been asked to remind you again that you still have time

to put your questions in if you like, blue sheets out in front. those of you who are watching on c-span, you have the two ways i mention this morning, e-mailing and tweeting that you get a question to us. we will now adjourn for 15 minutes and then reconvene. [applause] civil war getting back underway here. this goes till about 4:30 this afternoon. our live coverage on c-span3 continues. >> we are discussing african-american memory of four.

i am joined by fitzhugh brundage barbara gannon and thavolia glymph . we want to begin with a discussion of the scope and significance of the service in the u.s. army of african american troops. barbara, maybe want to get us started. matt: the --prof. gannon: u.s. colored troops are more than anyone ever imagined. the u.s. colored troops are federal volunteer units, there's over 140 of them of various times. they were a significant military force. it's interesting, at the beginning of the war, none of the white northerners would have ever imagined you would have had black northern soldiers. in fact, they turned many, many patriotic northern free men

away. it's only the process of the war, the high discounts sickness, and the fact that it didn't go well, that prompted people to really think about harming african americans. -- armin african americans. the emancipation proclamation was authorized. you had over 180,000 troops which on one hand, people always say there were 2 million union troops, but they came when they were needed. they were fresh troops at the end of the war. i don't think any other military historian would dispute at the end of a very long, hard-fought war, you had fresh committed troops just handed to you. that isn't an enormously significant factor. and i think they are very important because making century americans, if they were going to fight and die for freedom of african americans would have expected them to serve in fight

and die with them. and they most certainly did that. i have read xoma accounts were wet unit soldiers are very aware of black soldiers -- so many accounts where white american soldiers are very aware of black soldiers. without seeing a real commitment on african-americans to serve and die in this war. i think they are dramatically significant. >> story of this is connected to other lines, you mentioned that figure of a black military service, 50,000 of those troops were southerners, seven african americans who had fled plantations and farms and made their way to union lines and recording stations like cap nelson in kentucky. -- camp nelson in kentucky.

it challenges us to think of the civil war as a war of the south versus the south in some sense. we equate the south of the confederacy, we talked about divisions within each society over the course of the day. but here you have a representative of southern unionism, the phenomenon of seven's in which some scholars, especially bill freeling, who makes the case of the number of men from slave states that wore blue uniforms gave a decisive edge to the union in the end. he finds 450 thousand men from slave states were union blue. this is a new framework for thinking about the war. let's talk a little bit about men in the ranks and give some examples to the audience of some of these troops and their stories. prof. gannon: there are so many.

one of the things people have no idea is how many medal of honor winners there were among colored troops there were 14 in one battle. christian fleetwood was one of those medal of honor winners. robert penn, there are so many others. there were also the african americans in the navy who were also awarded the medal of honor. they were so much more. so many stories. it's incredible about their sacrifice. most people don't realize the men who fought at port hudson were officers, black officers among them. the 54th massachusetts had black officers at the end. one of the better known people was joseph wilson, who became historian and he was the one who wrote one of the seminal books in 1890 about african-american military service. a very well thought of book that chronicled it. it was keyed to people

remembering the blacks had served. prof. varon: wilson a great example of someone who is intervening in memory. i recently wrote a book about appomattox which i learned something i hadn't known before, that's that ct residents were present there and help to block lee's escape route as the confederacy tried to punch through a federal trap that have been laid. the men in those u.s. cg regiments, six altogether, a remarkable microcosm of african-american life in united states. it was southerners who had fled slavery, there were northern free blacks included in the ranks. there was a man named george washington williams, a brilliant historian. a baptist minister and educator named william j simmons was in the ranks of appomattox. he would go on to be the journalistic manner -- mentor to an antilynching crusader.

there are -- the big numbers are important, but so are the individual lives. any other observations? let's segue to another theme that we touched on as we moved along and that we wanted to return to. that is the 13th amendment has come up in a number of different contexts. this think a little bit about emancipation is a process. one of the big takeaways of this sesquicentennial is that emancipation is a process that unfolds gradually. why is the 13th amendment necessary, given that lincoln has already promulgated his emancipation proclamation two years earlier? >> it seems to me, if i could just back up a bit. the importance was primarily to

ensure the nation understood that the civil war, by 1863, had become more than a war for unions, but a war for freedom as well. it was the on the ground decisions of hundreds of thousands of black people who were enslaved, their decisions to leave slavery that would ultimately be ratified by both the emancipation proclamation, and subsequently ratified by the 13th amendment. of course, lincoln knew that this proclamation had no constitutional foundation, it was just a measure. so he worried about that. not only did he worried, but

loss of americans worried. lots of black people worried lots of abolitionists worried. hundreds of thousands of northerners sent petitions to congress. they signed their names and saying we want a constitutional amendments. and congress did finally come up with an amendment. no one was quite happy with the wording, it was revised several times until we got to the point where we got the one that we do have. the getting that amendment passed was very difficult. but very important. prof. varon: you make an important point, when we look at any of these changes, whether that's the enlistment of african-american troops or the 13th amendment, there are actions on the ground in the south, mainly this mass exodus that are driving those big decisions. they are also lobbying from northerners and free blacks in the north for these policies like enlistment. that's another source of

pressure moving lincoln. prof. brundage: the ratification of the 13th amendment is part of this drawnout process of cleaning up the mess, if you will inherited in part by the civil war, but also the dred scott decision. earlier there was talk about the 14th and 15th amendment. this is all, once you've destroyed slavery, the question of what is to come after slavery for african-americans in american society has to be addressed. the border states had not left the union, they still have slavery. there were lots of loose ends that had to be tied up. prof. varon: let's talk about freedom and how it was to be defined. there were whites who were able to accept emancipation as a military necessity, but had a narrow definition of emancipation. nothing but the freedom to work for wages. nothing beyond that. not full civil rights and full political rights. african-americans, the three

people -- the freed people had a more expansion i -- expansive idea of their citizenship rights. what does that citizenship rights term connote? prof. glymph: the whole debate over citizenship points that until this moment in history, we had no national definition of citizenship. and what enslaved people wanted formerly slaves wanted was not so different from what all americans want. the right to move, mobility, the right to one's children, the right to marry and have that marriage sanctified by the church and by law. the right to vote, for men.

i think most fundamental to all the civil rights is the right to possess or own one's own body and labor power. i can sell my labor to you, just as any northern immigrant can. but you can't buy my body. that is a fundamental right, settled everything else. layering on top of that basic civil rights. like marriage and the vote and the right to testify. we have to remember that even southerners were willing to grant, even in the really horrible black codes the right to marry, the right to earn a wage, the right to testify as long as you are not testifying against whites. you could testify in a court of law. against other black people. the question becomes what beyond those basic rights to black people have?

that question is sort of answered, but not accepted. prof. varon: all the rights you mentioned are connected in the sense that the power to sell your labor is meaningful only if you have mobility and can seek the best terms, rather than being pressured to work for your former master in a world in which there is the aggressive laws and so on the coattail mobility. -- curtailed mobility. these things work together. prof. glymph: it also means that white people who were former owners of slaves have to learn how to be business owners. how to be employers. how to manage a wage labor force instead of an enslaved one. prof. brundage: this speaks to the complexity of the situation for african-americans. i think african-americans had a range of opinions about what the concept of citizenship should be.

but they still, they were close to having a general consensus about what it would be. to translate that into a practical, lived reality of citizenship was an entirely different matter. if you just take the issue of property. african-americans come out of slavery with some property. sometimes. small amounts of personal property, perhaps. they don't have the types of property that are the foundation to an independent livelihood. it's one thing to say now you can own property. but if you start out for the point of having no property whenever, how does one exercise that right in any meaningful way? all of those questions are on the table in 1865, and have to be resolved not just in the abstract someday in the future. they knew to be resolved immediately. within the next week, three weeks, month, year. if to plant crops, you have to harvest them. the nitty-gritty of freedom and citizenship became of paramount

importance, literally immediately. prof. varon: one thing we did not mention was literacy had been criminalized by antebellum southern law. that is also part of that package of citizenship rights. maybe we can talk -- we have not talked much about religion over the course, but it is an important topic in the 19th century. let me put it this way. for african-americans, both those in the army and civilians the union victory had a providential cast. all the contending sides on the civil war, unions and confederates, both believed god bless their cause and they were fighting a godly war. we can compare and contrast that on the part of whites in the

union army, confederates, and then african-american. prof. brundage: for white southerners, 1865 was a bitter pill to take because they had been telling themselves this was a slaveholder's republic that had a providential mission. white southerners pivoted particularly certain denominations. at this compel you said presbyterians went all in. -- up to aliens -- episcopalians and presbyterian when all in. they believed god was punishing them for their hubris. that was their way of making sense what had happened. if you were devoted to your faith, the only solution i can imagine you would come up with. white northerners could see this as vindi