simple push of a finger. >> up next on american history tv yale university professor talks about effect memory and biases had in shaping the historical account of the civil war. he says the south saw their defeat as a result of the northern industrial machine and superior numbers and southerners eventually believe that despite losing the war, they were ultimately victorious in reconstruction. this one our 15 minute event was part of the symposium hosted by the vermont humanities council. >> good morning, everybody. most of you have been in the front. i hope this becomes a discussion of sorts. i was asked to talk on this

elusive, vast problem of memory and usable past. we have been talking about that for nearly two days already, haven't we? i don't know if lois is still in the room. she is probably speaking down the hall. what an amazing talk that was for it what a beautifully written talk that was. i have to bring lois to yell in april and -- to yale in april into this again. i started last night with james baldwin and i will do it again. baldwin in his most famous publication, his most famous long essay said " to accept one's past, one's history, is not the same thing as drowning in it.

it is learning how to use it. an inventive -- and invented past can never be used. it cracks, crumbles under the pressures of life like play in a season of drought. " when in doubt, you have to quote the poets. learning how to use it. but not drown in it. is that what we do with the past? is that how you view the past? that what it means to have a sense of history? whether that sense of the past and sense of history begins with family which it does for most people. somebody once said all politics is local. all memory is local. it begins at home. it begins and communities, it begins with place. is that what we do with the past? do we learn how to use it?

baldwin goes on to say if we invent it it will crumble. that may or may not be true. think of the invented past which has a long life. and invented past has endured. invented past has won the day. or seemingly won the day. the lost cause -- lois spoke so eloquently about this in various forms weather in monuments or after the civil war, the cluster of notions or ideas rooted in this notion that southerners had to find a narrative, had to find a story, make a story out of a colossal loss. they were subjugated defeated, ruined. and they had to live on.

so they told the story that they had not really been defeated on the battlefield. they were only defeated by superior numbers and resources as robert e lee put it, only defeated by that leviathan of industrialization. if you could create a narrative and a story that says you are not really defeated by the enemies soldiers, their valor was not enough to defeat you but only by these inhuman forces then your own humanity and integrity can survive. then a central cog of the lost cause was that they did not fight for slavery. the war was not really about slavery. they did not really fight for slavery, only for homes.

and their sovereignty and their states rights. and their sense of place. eventually, that became a racial ideology. it became an ideology in search of a past. it was the ideology of white supremacy and the lost cause eventually became a racial idea. even eventually, i wrote about this at length in my book and others have written about it -- the lost cause argument by the 1880's and the turn-of-the-century became really a story not about loss at all. it became a victory story. a story of the victory of the south over reconstruction. they may have lost the war but in their new kind of narrative

they won over reconstruction -- they defeated reconstruction and ended it. is that an invented past? does it crumble like play? - clay? yes, in some ways it did. we can make it crumble like clay but you can't kill it. usable past. i don't want to get to philosophical. there are a thousand things written about memory. basically every philosopher was reading over time and has written about memory area how could they not? ralph waldo emerson wrote about everything as you probably know. he wrote an essay called memory. in it, he argues on other things

. he says there is wisdom in this -- he says we tend -- he's talking about how we remember as individuals but a slippery line into the collective. he says we remember the rings would most love and them things we most hate. in other words, we remember at the extremes. we remember those things that leave those indelible associations. there is a lot of truth in that. what do you think, you don't forget. from wonderful experiences and horrible events, first love, a great love, a mothers love, child's love, the unforgettable episodes of the story of love and the unforgettable episodes of the story of the horrible opposites. emerson was onto something. there was william faulkner.

if there was no slavery in the civil war, there would not have been a william faulkner. without southern defeat, we would not even know william faulkner. what would he have written about? he could've found something i suppose maybe invented an account about something. he might've been a local color rider. -- writer. what would we be nostalgic about western mark i don't thing we would have a faulkner. there is a line in his novel " the hamlet" i forget the character's name. he puts this line in this guy's mouth and says " only thank god men have done learn to forget quick with a are brave enough to try to cure. ."

don't know really what to do about that problem. well, forget it. we do that, don't we? it's a way to help in some ways. we may all do this every day. i cannot deal with that today, forget it. i will think about that tomorrow, the famous line in open boat gone with the wind." -- in "gone with the wind." i cannot solve that issue. i don't know what to do about the problem. try to forget it. forgetting is part of nature's provisions for us just as much as memory. if you think about it, what would we do without memory? we would be maniacs. there have been these examples of people, by whatever neurological background, become

mnemonic creatures who got remember anything or tend to remember a million details in their order over time and yet have difficulty reasoning in their daily lives. they are sick. an individual can be sick with memory. so can a people. so can a nation. so can groups. let me stop a moment -- i want to feed you some ideas today and hear from you. i hope the microphones are floating around soon. i was asked to talk a little bit about the potential differences between history and memory, how we use these terms. we sometimes use the terms interchangeably, don't we? the history of something or our memory of something as that we may mean the same thing and as part of the parlance of how we talk about the past.

you can get up a fight over this among people who study memory both in the neuroscience community, for sure, and among historians and scholars. there are some differences. this is a way of thinking about it. i'm not saying this is the gospel truth. this is an elusive problem. it's one for -- it's what's fun about it ,too. by the way, before i talked briefly about the differences of history and memory, i should tell this because i get interested in historical memory essentially by accident. i did not wake up one day and think i should start studying collective memory. i don't think we do that really as scholars. it is more organic. in my very first book which was my dissertation, frederick douglass and the meaning of the civil war and his life, i wrote to post work chapters and made

it into a book and found him everywhere after he lived or years after the war. i found them everywhere talking about memory explicitly using the term. he is speaking at one gar post gathering after another, one abolitionist meeting or eulogy after another, all the time trying to preserve and struggle for in times of abolition emancipation, the memory of the civil war against that evolving lost cause ideology. i wrote a chapter at the end of that first book decades ago called douglas in the memory of the civil war. i did not know there was supposed to be a trend out there about -- honest to god, i did not know. when i was about to get the book ready for publication, i thought maybe the last chapter might be the only original thing in the book. maybe i will send this last

chapter to the journal of american history and see if i can get an article published. i was young scholar. i sent this piece on memory to the editor of the journal of american history. the most amazing thing -- you sometimes wait months to hear anything. i got a phone call from him within two weeks. i did not know him. he said fascinating piece you have written. he said what's going on out there with this study of memory question mark i said i have no idea. i did not know there was print he said we have had seven submissions in the past year about historical memory in some form of american history. what's going on out there? i have no idea. i did not know it was a trend. he said would you mind if we published this in a special roundtable collection about memory question mark i said sure. [laughter] happy to be part of a trend.

i did not even know. then i had to start following this thing and i came out the next year and a special issue of the journal of american history on memory in american history. there was a trend, i guess. it was then i decided -- i started to think about what about the whole civil war american memory? how would one do that. ? the year after he published that book, the ken burns film series played on pbs. if you remember the ending of it, the bluegray reunion at gettysburg and all that footage that was part of my inspiration. i said i should go study that and look into that. that's a long story. but memory studies emerged in the 1990's. the word memory started to appear in the subtitle of every other book. i guess i'm part of a trend.

that's when you have to start reading about memory. you realize -- humankind since they have been writing have been writing about memory. you cities -- the cities -- the peloponnesian war, one of the oldest books we have, he has this wonderful line where he says -- and he's writing about the greek civil war -- he says the people made their recollection fit in with their sufferings. you read that and passages and parts. it's not a great read but they've got some gems in there. i remember when i read that, i underlined and put a post it in there and said i have to use

that some day. the people made their recollection fit in with their suffering. that's what we do. that's using the past. that's making the usable past. history and memory -- what do we mean? history can be viewed or perhaps ought to be viewed, as what historians do. it's a reason to reconstruction of the past rooted in research. it tends to be critical, therefore, and skeptical of human motives and actions and is therefore usually more secular than what we might commonly call memory. history can be read by or belong to everyone. everyone can claim to be in a story and and often everyone does.

-- everyone can claim to be an historian and often everyone does. history is more contingent on all kinds of things like place and chronology and scale and scope. if history is the shared and secular business or proposition memory is often treated as a sacred set of meaning, often considered absolute meaning that are not to be tested, not to be challenged. don't tell me what d-day was like. my grandfather was there and he told me. i know about d-day from my grandfather's memory. don't mess me up with all of the detailed history. memory tends to be treated more as heritage. as the identity of a community

of a family, of a church. memory is often owned, people possess it. history gets interpreted over and over. history can therefore seem sometimes like a sunroom. we just keep interment thing -- interpreting it as opposed to history which is able. . dish which is stable. memory gets passed down through generations. history gets revised. you often hear that term. politicians use it all the time when somebody uses and a past they disagree with and they call it revisionist. it's a horrible at that. every time you hear that word -- you want to shake somebody and say, would you prefer that doctors were not revisionist? would you rather have an alchemist question from the 15th

century? maybe, i don't know. memory often coalesces around objects, sites monuments. it gives it a permanence. history seeks to understand context and all their complexities. that's why history is harder to do. history has searched the authority of some kind of academic training or we think it should usually. canons of evidence, rules, footnotes, memory carries the often more immediate authority of community membership of experience. john lukach who wrote it great length about this problem of memory and history and the nature of the past warned us. he said " the remembered past

much that's a challenge to us. it there is a lot of recorded past and archives and libraries are it up --. the remembered past is in everyone's had. -- head. even if you are not conscious of it, if all you're doing is checking your e-mail on your smartphone which is full of drivel, they have a past in their head that they have learned. it is been laid down in their head by family, by church, by schools, by various kinds of the two shins and. -- kinds of needs. we have learned how to write

history of the memory. the solicitor thing we sometimes call public memory. it's difficult. the sources are not any different than doing other kinds of history. we look at the ways people engage in creating narratives of the past whether it's through stone and bronze or through political rhetoric or textbooks or popular fiction or ritual behavior. all the ways that we create a past and make it usable, we've got to learn how to study those processes. we write histories of memory. by the way other nations and historians were doing this before americans. the french were led by a

historian of from the 1970's who rolled -- wrote french historical memory. his problem was he had the bicentennial of the french revolution coming up and he was worried that the french did not know to their monuments anymore. i am simplifying. he was really worried that the french didn't care about the past. he did this amazing multivolume study places. he had a certain agenda. you instinctively know that. places have a lot to do with how

our historical memories are formed and grow. quickly, we have to stop for a moment. i have no idea if these people are leading a stem the road's path to know where -- nowhere. the field of neuroscience, they get multimillion dollar grants to do this incredible work that they do with imaging and mris and all the rest. there's a whole world of neuroscience being done in human memory and how memory actually functions. we have an elusive problem of how science can locate the way

the brain works. memory is biological. it happens in here. i have been in the couple of conferences where i was one of the token historians. it's great because i can get up and say anything and the neurosciences don't care. they do these amazing power points with a map the brain. it's fascinating. they use imaging about how the memory synapses are fired. it gets picked up by a different level of neuroscience down to social scientist. something triggers are memory. there always has to be a trigger that fires those neurons. it's a biological process and it's amazing to see it put up in front of you.

i've try to read some of them. i need to read more of them. i have been to a couple of these conferences were the neuroscientist do their presentations and at the end of it, i often want to say, this is amazing and fascinating what you are finding. we need this research. how does that explain racism? how does that help any of us understand why the people walking up time on the street believe one story and don't leave the other? how do we transfer from that level of biological understanding into the way we use our past and organize narratives?

i think the two can help each other. we have two sides of the brain. there are some neuroscientist that are bestsellers now. there is another, he uses a language that i think i have accurate. another labeled it system one and system to thinking. are you familiar with this? it's worth knowing about area there is huge literature on it. they do this again with imaging

research. this is the idea. how are they ever going to prove this? when they get this proved, it could get depressing. he talks it great length about system one and system to thinking. all this means is that you and i in our brain have two ways of thinking. system one is essentially what we might call intuition. we just react. we have a fast immediate automatic intuitive response. blinking -- good example.

it's just a natural response. system to thinking is basically reasoning. longer slower rational, analytical. hard. it's much easier just to instinctively react to something. that's why we have arguments. it's an instinct usually and at the end you can't remember what you disagreed on. in his work he says that system to thinking is lazy because it's so hard to do. it is systematic and careful and thoughtful and rational, that's

why we have universities and schools. we have universities to slow down and study something. most human beings are much better equipped -- i have no idea if they are right. he argues that at least 80% of all of our thinking is system one. barely 20% is system towo. most of what we do is natural reaction an instinct, rooted in our instinct and experiences. what if they are right? that's really depressing if you think about it. do you want to change the world and in poverty and stop war and end racism? 80% of our mental process is

still system one don't think about it. it's scary stuff. enough of the nurse scientist. they are out there. if you look at what they are saying if they are in any way right, we only have about 20% of our cognition with all of our persuasion and rationality, we write history because we think. we do social science because we believe somehow in the value of our ultimate stories and conclusions to change little bits of people's minds.

we know that happens. there was a lot of change in the last 50 years of the way americans see their past. we are behind to begin with. we are behind in the way of the biology. you could say nonsense to all of those neuroscientist. you would feel better about it. i do know if they know what they are doing or not hearing i have talked to some people who are actually in that field. i don't know if they are. it's worth worrying about. a few other thoughts about memory and the past and how usable he can become. it's worth remembering how important this capacity is for us.

i said last night that emery is what makes us human. we are the species that can write its past. we can organize our past and recorded -- record it. we are self-aware. i can know my past and i can write my story but of the gnu can write your story. let's have added. we are the only species that does that. one of my favorite stories about memory is one of the oldest i seen augustine. -- saint augustine. he has a 4250 page section about the nature of memory. it's amazing. it's there because it's the

confession of saint augustine. he is worried that god knows his memories. if you are a sinner and you really believe that god knows your memories and god has a plan for you, that's troublesome. he reflects on memory and how it functions. he is anticipating a lot of modern psychology. he calls the memory many things. he calls it are treasury of the mind. he calls our chamber of the mind. then he says that no one has ever found the bottom thereof. our memory is potentially limitless. we don't know what its limits are. we know it has terrible limits about where and i find my keys?

on the other hand, there is an infinity of personal memory and now we live in the world of google. most of you are old enough to remember pre-google. pre-search engine. talk about a vast treasury. we don't have to remember anymore, just google it. it's so true. we all do it. if i can't find it then i am angry. why doesn't google have that? have you ever been one of the great libraries where they create google? i was in a fellowship of the new york public library in 2006.

it is shangri-la for scholars and writers. at that point there were only five or six libraries in the world that google used to create everything on google. human beings have not to begin this process. underneath the rate new york public library the palace in new york, my favorite building in new york, if you go six stories underneath, you can never go there. it's not open to the staff. it took us on a tour. in a whole section of one of the levels, they were creating google. they were all sitting at laptops and they were taking it all in.

it was behind glass. you could not talk to them. you have this realization that this is where they actually created this. then you go back to your office and google something. it was in the new york public library. it was in the british library. there was another one in the united states. we now live in a world where technology seems to make thinking even lazier. all of these organizations that help you with your memory and practice your memory and so forth. that's always a good idea i'm sure. augustine said great is the power of memory. it is a fearful thing.

a deep and boundless manifold and this thing is the mind. this am i myself. to be his way of saying i am my memory. it speaks to me. it pushes me. it directs me. i find it. i resisted. i avoid. i use it. i don't want to use it. it is what i am. it's scary at the same time it's magnificent. just like the past, anyone's past. i think i just want to throw one other -- sorry for some of the quotations -- i want to open it up to your thoughts about the

usable past and memory and what are we to do with it. an israeli philosopher wrote a wonderful book called "the ethics of memory." there are so many books on memory that one can sample. whenever i do a seminar i always assign it. it's fairly short. it's philosophy really written for lehman. in many arguments that he has he is writing as an israeli it's rooted in the post memory of the holocaust. among the things he says in that book, he says even the project

of remembering the gloomiest of memories is a hopeful project. probing the genuine tragedy of the past those stories that fit no progressive narrative and crash into dead ends, that rejects the pessimists thought that all will be forgotten. why ought humanity remember moral nightmares? rather than moments of human trial, moments in which humans behave nobly? because the issue for us to sort out is what humanity ought to remember rather than what it is good for humanity to remember. what should we remember?

we ought to remember not what just makes us feel good. that is a tough challenge, isn't it? who wants to live with a narrative that seems to be full of moral nightmares? that's what i took from her amazing lecture earlier. there are some aspects of the civil war story. we don't want to go there. this is what we ought to remember, not just what is good for us to remember. it's a tough challenge. it's a tough challenge in a culture like ours, a country like ours. i'm going to generalize. americans don't like to see their past as tragic.

as laden with terrible beginnings and ends and struggles. we don't like to see our past is essentially tragic we like to see it as a progressive narrative and triumphant. we've done it with the civil war over and over. we fashion it into a unity narrative. sometimes it's at the expense of a lot of other narratives. you have to keep asking yourself as an american why do americans have such a sunny sense of your history?

what about lynching? slavery? sometimes you get back on your heels and you want to say what about james madison and that genius in that restitution? lincoln was great, wasn't he? i've done that. i found my self feel defensive. then i come back here. i've always felt like my job right or wrong is to teach against the grain of triumphalism. i need to teach against not by inventing anything. we do invent when we write. we don't invent sources. our responsibility is to teach

against our worse instincts. that is to believe that our history is ipso facto somehow special. , above the great problems and tragedies of history. every time we seem to feel that it is, something happens. it's possible in the post-9/11 era, this prolonged war on terror. what are we even calling it now? we may develop a new historical. in america, we reinvent.

we reprint -- reinvent progressive triumphal stories. treasury in the mind. do you remember with your instinct or with your reasoning? we all want to say it's our reasoning, of course. your great use. -- you are great readers. that is just some food for thought. i welcome your ideas and questions. let's have a discussion of this problem of the use of the past and memory phone floating around. we've got a lot of hands.

i wanted to thank you for your presentation last night and today. forgive me if i conflate them the eye he is you have breast -- -- ideas you have presented. i have a lot of half formed ideas. i wanted to ask you building off your final thought about bucking against the grain and trying to challenge these things. i'm a teacher of undergraduates. by the time they get to me, those memories are firmly fixed in its frustrating for somebody to try to attack those and it's frustrating for them. i've wrestled with myself over the years about even bothering. how do i do this? sometimes i will throw up my

hands and say i'm never going to reach them. they are so firmly entrenched in --. david w blight: what would be an example? >> when i teach civil war, we talk about soldier motivation and i say soldiers fought on both sides for a variety of reasons. you can't pin it down to one. you can say slavery or states rights. they are writing down notes and stop. i had a student raise their hand and say what did most of them fight for? he wanted me to reduce it down to 51% for him. david w blight: that's what they would do on cnn. i do know what their new sources are? >>

they want the simple soundbite answer. trying to reduce these grand ideas that you have been presenting to us, i don't know how to do that and i don't really want to do that. for the undergraduate mind, had i go about doing that? david w blight: i'm not supposed to stand here and say i don't really know. you have to try. sometimes it means a side door to get their attention. i think you health as a historian. i would suggest and i welcome other thoughts on this by telling them american history is full of tragedy just like everywhere else. you have to show it to them in a narrative area you have to show

it to them in a story. that's kind of what ellis was doing. you have to show them the counter narrative it shows a soldiers motive and other soldier motives. his motives were as noble as the next guy in his own mind and his own time. try to relate to their own lives. they do things every day out of a complexity of motives. they not believe that, but they do. -- may not believe that, but they do. i always try to start within and it don't or face -- with an anecdote. you don't look to overwhelm them. for example, the sand creek massacre as a small example.

there's a terrific new book out. i forget the number, 300 indians are just massacred. over time, it's been difficult to commemorate that site. the national park service has a site there. if you were teaching anything about the civil war in the west or western history, you could develop that story of the sand creek massacre and how it came about and why the troops were sent there. out of it came a horrible massacre. that is american history. so is the day that lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. you just have to keep beating on the drum that history is a

street of mean and a street of lean. it has it's great moments where it --. frederick atlas thrilled that they had lived to see this day. it was a biblical day. to tell that story, you can't tell it without celebrating. i had to rewrite it again in the biography. but there is still a year and a half of that war to go. this horrible war yet to come. more casualties happened after the emancipation proclamation than before. i guess it's about equal. if you only got that far, they come to realize history is full

of these great advances and retreats. all revolutions have counterrevolution. the human imagination and human behavior is capable of great and horrible evil and great and tremendous good. the details may not matter. they want not even knowing that. they are somehow prepared. that is why i argued this in books, maybe all of my life without knowing it. that a genuine sense of tragedy or have serious engagement with history and literature, is what makes real hope possible. a genuine sense of tragedy prepares us. it helps us understand that loss is going to come. terrible stuff is going to happen. but you might survive it to

dust. you perhaps will survive it. you may have to use some other words than tragedy. americans don't like that word. we need other euphemisms for setbacks. there were tragedy gets so misused. every car accident is a tragedy. a plane crash is a tragedy. it gets so overused. that it doesn't even have meeting -- meaning sometimes. i'm sorry, i didn't really give you the answer to take into your classroom on monday. i don't think there is one either. except to keep trying a new story. story. a story that just shows that the sheer complexity of human behavior. again, to take lincoln and emancipation. we want that to be a great moral

story. we want america to be the country that freedom flies and by god, we get there. on again off again political processes, how i can about, how much is related to the war, it's a complicated story. it just is. and so is mr. lincoln. but he grew. he grew. he signed that thing. against the odds. if you think two years before. anybody got easier questions? [laughter] >> as a local historian, i'm more into the micro of what happened than the macro of memory. richard: that's ok.

we need you badly. >> two points. while the loss college -- cause legend is fighting the evil soldiers, southern veterans didn't. there is an instance in one of the many books on rangers, two boys are playing yankees against confederates. they have an argument. they go to the grandfather of one of the. who fought with most these rangers. grandpa, isn't it true when confederates can detain yankees? grandpa shift his head and said son, anybody who says that never fought the illinois cavalry. number two you need to go to richmond sometime and say that publicly. [laughter]

number two. i look around the room and i see a lot of people about my age. that probably went to school in the 50's. and what did we learn about the civil war? it was the great war that freed the slaves. that is the northern counterpart, the legend of the lost cause. as historians we read the letters, we know better, it was more about the union and there were very few abolitionists. particularly at the start of the war. but that is our legend. richard: yes. on your point about northern valor and southern valor, you are absolutely right. the record is full of that.

ask the surviving confederate officers. but the legends you may have grown up with, that's curious. i think back to my high school history, which was the 60's, i had a terrific high school american history teacher named mildred hodges. i think she was terrific. she had gone to columbia university and had a masters degree and studied with richard hofstadter. we were impressed. she had this method. i had two great history teachers in high school. they left their impact on me. i learned absolutely nothing from mildred about slavery or race. i don't think i have any recollection of learning anything in high school about slavery. anything. only when i went to college.

but what mildred did do is teach about causes and consequences. every war in american history, everything turning point americans do these diagrams. causes, events, consequences. effects. it was a method to the madness. she was trying to tell us, things have causes and consequences. it did not just happen. once i look back on it and became a historian, i thought that is what you are doing. i had another history teacher -- i don't know how this happened for you. he taught western civ. he never smiled in his life. we had him all year long. we went from ancient mesopotamia to wherever we ended in the middle ages. but he had a method.

he called it concepts. he had this long list of concepts that he put on a huge poster in front of the room. you had to choose your concept. 40 or 50 of them. law migration, all kinds. you had to follow your concept through the entire year and write little things about it. i chose war and peace. i was already -- i chose war and peace. i can still remember writing something about ancient nineveh and the warrior class in mesopotamia. what he was trying to convey to us was ideas matter in history. concepts, ideas matter. i did not know it at the time. i didn't know it at the time. i will never forget it because

my brother and i were brought back to our high school 10 years ago or so but they brought us back to give us -- put our names on the wall team in the library and got six. -- for god sakes. and now the building is being torn down. and standing in the room with my older brother who is also an historian, and we are trying to talk to these kids in a struggling industrial city of flint circa 2000. i talked about my teacher and a list of concepts. one of the teachers came back with the actual poster five minutes later. i was like, i broke down. for one thing i can prove that it wasn't lying. [laughter] but there they were. ideas matter.

so sometimes the actual content we teach it matters, i wish mildred had taught me something about slavery. i did not learning about it, but she was teaching me something about causation. and the other taught me about ideas. so that is good. i came of age with all kinds of legends and whatever as well. we can unlearn at the same time we learn. maybe that's what we always do. the online something every day probably. -- unlearn something every day probably. or do we? is hard to do that once we own it or possessive. -- present -- possessed it. once we link it to a belief. it may be locked in. a lot of hands here. a lot of teachers here today. this is great.

one of them as my former student but i don't want to embarrass him. >> hello. first i would like to answer your question. i'm a high school history teacher. i have to deal with this all the time especially with new technology. you just have to keep it interesting and start off with a concept or idea or picture whatever to get them thinking about history. thinking about what you want them to learn. i was sitting here thinking about memory and how i teach and where i teach. i have a lot of autonomy on what i can teach. but there are a lot of places that don't have that autonomy. i was thinking about colorado. the school board decision to minimize certain aspects of american history. richard: that is the big controversial placements. >> i was wondering what are your thoughts about why they would want to minimize this history that is so engaging to students,

and go back to the patriotism and the positive things about american history? the things that got me involved are these conflicts. these immense issues that needs to be solved like the massacre that is very uncomfortable to talk about and teach. the kids love it in a way that it is tragic. richard: turn her in, she's teaching them to love the massacre. [laughter] >> it goes back to what you are talking about it, that it was interesting and engaging. but why do you think school boards are so hesitant to talk about issues and want to the backwards that of forwards? -- instead of forwards? richard: do you really need me to answer that? why do you think they are? what is at stake in that struggle, whether it is colorado or texas. by the way, the head of the ap

he is engaging a bunch of historians now to tape videos for thousands of ap teachers. i'm going to do one. i'm supposed to tape something for 20 minutes that the whole civil war era. i'm not sure this will actually be very valuable. they have people doing different eras and problems. to just excite teachers i guess. help them out. he told me on the phone everywhere they go now with ap, koch brothers funded staff of people show up to denounce them. why? why? well, it turns out the right wing -- answer for yourselves.

the right wing in america apparently believes history matters. hurray. but they believe that what is at stake is somehow the moral character of american young people. their sense of their belief in america. their sense of a triumphant country. it is more than bothersome. it's depressing. it is debilitating, demoralizing as a teacher. when you know you can turn kids on. with real stories. some have triumphant endings and some don't. you know how you got turned on. a quick story, i remember for five years ago. the annual meeting in new york, a fantastic organization that sponsors teachers. they brought about 100 teachers

to the annual meeting and paid their way, high school teachers to this historians gathering and ask them to address. we got to talk, they were all undergoing the pressure of testing. and i got up and full of good stuff, and i said why don't you just engage in civil disobedience and not give the test? a guy got up in the back and said sir, you have tenure and academic freedom. we don't. i have to keep my job. i said, oh dear. shut me up. the politics of history is fascinating. but it is also a problem when you have to face it head-on. ap reaches hundreds of thousands of students. thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of students.

is viewed as the system. the ap test is viewed as a system that gives you access to universities. colleges and power. but it is the same struggles we have gone through at any age over the years. when lynne cheney was the head of the any age -- neh and even when she wasn't, and her hand-picked successor was the assistant secretary, you had to be very careful account of applications you made. they wanted a triumphant american history. lynn cheney is easy to complain about but my favorite story. probably 15 years ago. the program they sat about two people shouting at each other for a half-hour. they saw those. eric's owner, great historian

they got to arguing. the word revisionist cap getting thrown around. she kept accusing him of being revisionist. what a horrible sin. the next day eric tells a story he got a call from a reporter and the woman asked him when do you suppose this revisionism began? and he said, probably with herodotus. the reporter said, do you have his phone number? [laughter] sometimes we are up against sheer stupidity and absurdity. sometimes we are up against political venality. on the other hand, give them their due. a pink history should be for young people at least. they think history should be if not a pleasurable story than uplifting.

they are not new to that. nations and groups of people have always used the past to do this. we all do this in a way. to be uplifted. who wants their fifth-grader to learn nothing but the ugly tragedies of the past? what did you learn at school today? another massacre mom. and at what age? i don't know. i remember being a substitute teacher for fifth grade for a week. i thought it was the end of my life. [laughter] i was a total mess. i had no idea what to do with fifth-graders. i was just trying to make a buck. at what age can the child learned the holocaust? at what age do we engage slavery?

at what age do we show them what a slave ship was? there is a lot of research on that. probably earlier than we might think. i mean, why? there are a lot of political stakes in these of that. there always has been. but you have to fight back. nobody owns the past. certainly not ivy league professors. the national park service reaches more people than professors ever did. filmmakers reach more people than anyone. for better or worse. anyway, yes sir upfront. in other words, the short answer is sorry about that. > i have another political

question. richard: oh no. >> it has to do with collecting the usable past. i'm thinking of the attitude of the supreme court that the constitution is infallible and original meaning is all that is required. i'm also thinking of the fact that those are the same thing for that same people who do find negro as 3/5 of a person. we talk about redefinition and the change that has taken place in how we interpret our past. especially with the civil war in the 60's. as a historian, how do you view those attitudes, the choice that

there are sanctified documents that are in viable that we can refer to without question? richard: i think you may have answered your own question. original is him about the constitution is an old tradition. it has its proponents in many law schools. some are on the supreme court. on one level, i am not a legal scholar by any means. i'm one level it is of course important because of the textual part of legal history. what does the constitution say? the amendment? the problem is it can be interpreted so many ways. what does equal protection of the law mean? there is a legal, textual reason to go back to an original sanctified document. there is something that should remain sanctified about the

constitution. we have a written constitution. that is fairly unusual in the world. england does not have a written in constitution. israel does not have a written constitution. they have a set of practices that have evolved over time and as i understand it, have been judged and supported or not supported by its supreme court. the whole body of law that is developed under the israeli constitutional prospect. they don't have a written one. although they do have tremendous reverence for their founding. we have a written constitution. john used the term yesterday flaw or fatal flaw, or medium flow. that we have this particular federalism between federal and state power. the 10th amendment. all power is not even to the federal government reserved to the states. that is a bold statement.

the 10thers as they are called now, our activists of that. without the sanctified document, where with we beat? without the possibility of amending it. amending it is so hard to do. but again tell your students. if you want constitutional amendments, look into the past. what kind of huge events had to happen before you could get a 13th or 14th and 15th amendment which was basically rewrote. women's suffrage took decades before it was done at the federal level. having said all that, originalism is in some ways absurd. history happened. the constitution has a history. life changes.

we still live with the electoral college. it's ridiculous. defendant. somebody defend the electoral college. it's a patently ridiculous institution. go about and get asked that question. what about your electoral college? that's weird. you hold your entire presidential in six states. that's weird. why? or the senate. think about it. should every state had two senators? i know, i know. i'm in vermont. forget it. i didn't they that. [laughter] strike that.

i know. tiny numbers of people can block what the vast bulk of the population wants or desires. it is bizarre institution especially when it becomes so dysfunctional as it is now. we don't have anybody who can strike a compromise that anything. just to keep the water flowing would probably be a dispute in the mentoring in the u.s. senate cared -- in the men's room in the u.s. senate. regionalism -original-ism is ridiculous in so many cases. the dred scott case. any number of thousands of cases about time changing. industrialization changed the nature of life and the relationship of human beings to the government forever. postindustrial a station is

doing the same. so is technology. aspects that are sanctified in the constitution, aspects of the bill of rights. even the bill of rights is mostly debatable. that speech linking gave, there was -- lincoln gate, there was a fair he went to in philadelphia. the few times he left washington. i never remember the exact language. a beautiful passage. he says, we all declare human rights. we all did play for liberty. but what is liberty to one person is bondage together. one person believes liberty is to own another person. another person believes he's a is to not be owned by another person. liberty is the most ubiquitous word in our politics now. everything is liberty. guns are liberty.

speed limits are limitary -- liberty. coal burning plants are liberty. everything is liberty. it probably is. but that's why we have to fight it out under the constitution that history changes. it makes originalism on its surface absurd. antonin scalia, a brilliant man you go convince him of that. anyway, i'm sorry. that is not a very good answer. you answered your own question. it will always be with us. always. as long as we had that almost fatal flaw in the constitution. [laughter] anyway we are standing between lunch and everything. thank you. [applause]

>> she was considered modern for time, called mrs. president by her detractors, and without about her -- and was outspoken about slavery and women's rights. she provides a unique window into colonial america and her personal life. i built it and -- abigail adams on c-span's original series, first ladies, image. women who filled the position of first ladies. from martha washington 10 michelle obama. sundays at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. as a complement to the series, the new book is available. 45 iconic american women. providing lively stories of

fascinating women creating inspiring read. is available as hardcover or e-book through your favorite bookstore or online seller. here are a few of the book festivals we will cover this spring on c-span twos book tv. this weekend and maryland's state capital for the annapolis book festival here it --. new york times reporter james reston. in the middle of may we revisit maryland for live coverage of the gaithersburg look festival. then we close out me at book expo america in new york city with the publishing industry showcases upcoming books. in june, live the chicago tribune literary fest.

that is this spring on c-span's 2's book tv. >> each week, "american artifacts" takes viewers inside museums to learn what artifacts have to reveal. 150 years ago, actor john wilkes booth shot president lincoln at ford theater in washington dc. for the first time since that night, a collection of objects connected to the assassination are reunited in an exhibit titled silent witnesses. first, we begin at the national museum of american history to see the carriage that transported president and mrs. lincoln to ford's theatre on april 14, 1865. >> behind me is the carriage that abraham lincoln road to ford's theatre then as if his assassination.