corps, i had came originally as a fiver. >> what got you hitch rested in living history to begin with? tyler: i've always been interested in history, material culture, and things from the past. i thought that it looked like fun and it combines my passion for material culture with getting to teach people about history. >> how is this event organized? how do you know what to do and when? with the signing of the letters of surrender their at the mclean house, how do you know where to be? tyler: the simple answer is you either get told or you have some sort of schedule that you need to follow. having an accurate timepiece is really important out here. make sure that your watch is wound and that you know where you are going. >> meaning that your act -- actual watch winds? tyler: yes, it winds by key.

>> bringing it out now, other than the physical things how do you maintain the mental sort of mindset of being in 1865? tyler: especially if i'm answering the questions of people i'm not doing what's called first person. i'm not pretending like i'm in 1865. it's a lot easier to relate to people if you're not attending like -- what is this microphone? it's a lot easier to answer questions. but while were in the field one of the things that keeps you sane is to remember that it was done in the past and if that they could do it, you could do it, too. just camping out and everything, this is why we came out here. if you get rained on, that's just part of the deal. >> what brought you out into doing these kinds of events to begin with? tyler: i wanted to start as a musician. i taught myself how to play fife and i joined the fife and drum

corps. i've come out for about 14 years now, it's on most like a family. we just go everywhere as a group. >> have you been here before? >> i have not been to the park before, no. >> what do you think the takeaway is? what is the lesson of appomattox? tyler: a lot of people focus on what ended here today. that this was the last night or the last day of the confederacy. it is not so much about what is ending as what is beginning. this is a new birth for freedom in the united states. a day of unification. and it really is the true beginning of the civil rights and that leads us all the way to the present day. they made a move today that would change american history forever. and profoundly change the lives of millions in this country.

it is the 150th anniversary of the surrender at appomattox. we are at the appomattox court house national historical park we will talk to the man u may have seen just a few moments ago, david blight, the author of a number of books -- including race and union in the civil war. we are going to obviously give you a chance to join the conversation and offer your comments -- here's how to do that -- if you are in the eastern or central time zones, the numbers 202 -- 798 -- 8900. host: you have written about the end of appomattox as being the beginning of a new calendar of time for freed slaves. what does that mean to them? >> there were actually some

african-american leaders in the wake of the civil war that even suggested 1865 is the beginning of a new calendar. they did not literally invent a new calendar, but it meant that life had begun a new. that a new history had begun. in some cases, actually, they viewed it in biblical terms. that somehow god in the old testament tradition had answered history and torn up jerusalem torn up peoples government. the people's society, destroyed it, it had to be made a new. emancipation was viewed as that kind of turning point. it meant that black folks now at least had an opportunity. they did not know where it was going but they had an opportunity to live in a new history. that is what i meant in the new book. to some people appomattox represented not just a marker in time, but the kind of beginning

of a new historical time itself. host: this covers your recent article entitled "the civil war isn't over." and capsule lies that for us, if you could. dr. blight: the shooting war ended here, the armies surrendered and the war did indeed decisively end slavery and save the union. but the great issues for how you would transform the emancipation of 4 million people into some kind of civil and political liberty -- how you would reunite north and south -- readmit 11 former confederate states back into the union -- how you would form a new union or a new constitution had yet to be determined. we had been living out to broad kinds of legacies ever since.

legacies about race, the quality before law and the legacy of states rights and federalism that are today all over our political culture. both of these are still at the heart and center of what we debate in this country. host: you talk about people wanting the civil war to be done with. what do you mean by that? dr. blight: it is the most divisive and bloody event in our history. it represents the biggest dilemmas in our history. representing the fact that we are the nation that owned slaves . the people and then the nation that owned slaves for two and a half centuries. representing the fact that we had the most violent emancipation in all of the 20 some odd nations and empires that freed the slaves between the late 18th century and 19 century. it's also the largest bloodletting in our history. we have never experienced loss on this scale at any other time. that is all because of a set of

historical nightmares that people would like to put to rest . they would like to see a piece of this landscape that is so beautiful as a way that their history ought to be instead of, you know, industry full of vexing problems that are left over from an event that ended here. host: david blight is the director of the study for slavery resistance and abolition . your calls momentarily, one quick question about reconstruction -- how well do you think it is taught in american high schools and colleges? dr. blight: much better now than when i was in school. i did not learn much at all about it. but it is still that hole in american history. that decade, that decade and a half that most people would just as soon slip past and get through. it's so vexing and conflicted

full of skulduggery and corruption. it is especially full of racial violence. the most widespread use of terror and political violence in our history. it is the time where the united states lurched ahead with a tremendous experiment in racial democracy. but that experiment in the 13, 14th, 15th amendment, was in effect if heeded by the rising democratic party in the south and what the south came to call southern redemption. reconstruction was overthrown and in some ways actually defeated. it is not a heroic time. it is not as attractive if what you want from history is the story of your triumph. and your pleasure. it is a story full of a kind of political animosity and conflict almost like no other time we have ever had.

host: we have several calls waiting period phil, good afternoon. caller: i was going to ask you -- i know that lee declined the command of the union army or getting out of the war. did he ever express regret over that? maybe save himself a lot of carnage? suffering? did lee and grant have a relationship before the war? dr. blight: they had vague memories of meeting during the mexican war, but they were of different ranks and ages, as you probably know. did lee ever experience regret over taking command of the confederate forces? not that i know of, although i am not a lee biographer. there are those out there who

would know those details. to my knowledge, no, he did not. i think that what you did have was a man who when he made that choice but you had was a fierce confederate nationalists. he fought to the bitter end. he made the important decision not to before these troops. that is important. caller: hello, professor. thank you for dedicating your career to this wonderful topic. i know that you have looked at the african-american experience before and after the civil war.

basically at the end of the civil war and the experiences that african-americans have had up through today what of the biggest factors? dr. blight: that is viewed question. the 14th amendment is where you have to start, that magnificent clause about equality before the law. first of all, you would not have it under which all of us live. that is the irrelevant holds us together, legally. you would not have that without the emancipation of 4 million slaves? 10,000 definitions from 10,000 different interests. it is a long story with many stops along the way.

the second greatest of the civil rights movement 100 years later. the dream metaphor in the martin luther king speech does not come until the last three minutes. the first 14 minutes are all about the centennial of emancipation and the civil war. he repeated over and over repeats the refrain, in fact that the negro is not free. and they were not. segregation meant that people were not free. now, we change the constitution again fundamentally. it reshaped our relationship to rights movements, leaving aside

the collection of police violence. the voting rights act is once again back on the table and under attack and the key provision of that voting rights act was stricken out in a 54 vote two years ago, meaning that the federal justice department does not have authority over judging what those former segregated state do with voting rights. all the unique to know about why we are in this dilemma at the moment is to look at what many states did, not just in the south, but what many states did in the state legislatures controlled by republican majorities right after the supreme court brought down that decision. they immediately passed some kind of voter id laws which ultimately are designed in one way or another to suppress the votes of black people, brown

people, older people, younger people, the people who tend not to vote for the same persuasion as those who pass those laws. so history is never over. every time we think we have turned a great corner in race and race relations, which we did in the reelection of barack obama and president obama every time there is a revolution there is a counterrevolution and the resistive to president obama for better or worse in whatever side of that issue people might the on -- is a kind of counterrevolution. it's a push back against his conception of government, him personally his conception of how to use federal power. it never ends. it's never over. host: i will take this opportunity to remind our

american history tv viewers that are coverage of selma and those events are available at c-span.org/history letting you know about the coverage coming up this week. a lot of coverage of the suspects and tenure of the assassination of abraham lincoln. let's go to the site of the lee mansion in arlington -- virginia. larry, thanks for waiting. go ahead. caller: thank you to the national park service and everyone who is being lecturers for this. my question for mr. blight is -- how did the confederate army and union armies differ in the way that they treated the colored troops that were in their care?

how are they treated after the war that may have been influenced by everybody coming back together? thank you. dr. blight: i think you asked how african troops were treated by both armies. well, the fundamental difference was that the black troops in the union army, whether they were state units or most of them were colored troops unit, they were part of the union army. 5000 were here with grant's army. part of that surrender there were here today. were they always treat? absolutely not. especially in the first year of the recruitment, in 1864 and well into 1863 they were never

allowed commissioned officers status. jefferson davis announced that they would be enslaved. somewhere, not a not -- soldiers captured were at risk of execution. under the law against insurrection they were risking being re-and slaved. it was not just black soldiers that face this. when his army invaded pennsylvania in the gettysburg campaign they sent back several score people into virginia trying to re-enslave them into the labor force of virginia.

by and large, black folk in uniform or not were treated as part of the enslaved population by the confederate army. by the very end of the war as many out there will know, in desperation the confederacy in the congress of to president davis decided that perhaps they would try to recruit some former slaves into the confederate army and they did indeed recruit one small unit in richmond by late march in 1865. the idea was to do what many societies had done without -- throughout history, which was to arms slaves and put them in the army. which would have violated the very reason of the confederacy to exist. vast numbers of white southerners oppose that. but it actually was enacted by the confederate congress and adopted by jefferson davis. had this war gone on to the

summer of 1865 we would have probably seen some, at least small black units in the confederate army. those men, the way the law existed, were going to be given their freedom if they served in the confederate forces. basically a measure of how desperate the confederate army had become. host: david blight is with us live here on "american history tv." caller: hello, i wish i could be there myself. thank you for being there today. i have been watching these events on c-span for the past four years. i have noticed that the majority of the participants and the attendees are middle-aged to elderly like google. i can say that because i am one.

i wondered, with the makeup of the country changing and supposedly the white race becoming a minority in the country by 50 years from now will these events, do you think that these well read bird -- will be well -- as well remembered then as they are now? dr. blight: you raise a very interesting problem. why don't african-americans come to civil war sites? first of all, last night there were hundreds, if not 1000 or more african-americans out here. an extraordinary performance here on the main stage behind me. they held a mock symbolic burial of a former slave woman named hannah reynolds who was killed here on the morning of april 9. no one ever knew where she was buried. they do her name and who her master was, her owner and the

african-american community of appomattox county got together with the national parks service and planned for months this amazing performance that was a living history burial, a funeral for hannah reynolds. the choirs were terrific. they same -- they sang spirituals. without any accompaniment. i was surprised stunned, and please define hundreds and hundreds of black folks. i have never seen that many of the civil war site. today there are almost none. that is a very very old saga. historic. it goes back to the years when civil war sites -- and this is changing by the national parks service, they have begun to make great strides -- but it used to be seen as essentially a place where you saw the story of the blue in the grade. you saw the story of an. a site-specific story of battle

and combat that you did not encounter anything about the war being what it is about. for the last 20 years at least the national parks service in conjunction with the organization of american historians and other groups have been working together to brought in interpretive programs and change the films that are shown at interpretation centers, to change the programming. last night, as i said in my former -- formal speech, it was one of the most remarkable things i have ever witnessed at a national parks site. these should be places that people come to understand why the civil war happened and what the short and long-term consequences were. the challenge, now, is to get people of all backgrounds to come. one other thing if you look at

historical tourism in this country, african-americans go intros to civil rights sites across the south. civil rights museums and crossroads. civil rights two hours are all over the place. that is a triumphal story that black people led. the civil war is still not quite seen that the civil war is not quite seen that way. black leadership was pivotal in bringing about emancipation in the midst of the war. the civil war is a great and pivotal story of african-american history. it can't quite get the same traction as the more recent civil rights movement gets because that is a much more recent memory. host: our c-span cameras have been covering a number of events . we did not cover that event last night. it is perhaps something you will be able to look for on the

appomattox website. they may have some photos if not video of last night's program. live coverage on american history tv, as we see soldiers beginning to walk by on the richmond-lynchburg road. what was the long-term physical and mental and societal a fact of the injuries, mental and physical, by soldiers? what was the impact will be on the civil war? david: the impact on soldiers was absolutely profound and on a scale of almost no other war we experienced. there were hundreds of thousands of civil war veterans on both sides. thousands came out of this war with what today we would call posttraumatic stress, combat fatigue. there are recent books out on that. what a my former students brian jordan has a book called "marching home," which is a

withering story of union veterans and what they experienced in terms of sickness and disease and alcoholism and the inability to get jobs. the estimate is, in the union army alone, among union veterans alone, there were 30,000 amputees that lived out their lives in one way or another. these men could not get jobs. this was in the 19 century. 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.