red bud bloom on the spring green of the trees all around this region. we have to try to imagine what that means to them. the confederates, it must have been bittersweet as best maybe horrible. they had broken hearts, broken bodies, they were starving. what did the red bud of spring mean to them? it in t the union soldiers, they were going home with victory.dogwoo they couldds see in the red bud enewal and dogwood to follow the renewal of spring, the renewal of their country the renewal of the spirit life they were beginning to survive, most of st hav them. for the african-american former slaves, they must have seen something only unique to them inve bee the red bud. did n they might not haveot known about redemption yet. they did not know where they knew life was going yet, but they knew they had just experienced tremendous change of their lives.ewal of

so that renewal of spring means a new beginning like no other. in now, in magnificent essay pamphlet, robert, the great southern poet, novelist, historian, said many quotable things in legacy of the civil many gre war, still the best book to start with, ifst you have not read anything about the memory of this event first start with red warren's i legacy of the civil war, 1961, but in it he says the it he civil war, quote draws us as an oracle darkly unriddled and poe pretentious of national as well a asmo personal faith. that's a mouthful, but what did he just say?

soldiers shouting drums beating, and we'll hear that of trump, trump on the track over id war here of their feet, too, but what did warren say? he said this is, for americans, nt it our oracle. in th if he meant it in the greek t is t sense, and i think he did,he he event meant it's the place wear go. it's the events around which we gather to try to ask questions to get wisdom. so if the civil war, and if umbers you're here on this day and these many numbers somehow thiss, is event and this place among many ug others isge probably an oracle for you of some kind. the c i can't suggest what it means to any one of you but if the civil war is our oracle place we go e? to ask, so who are we? what are we?

what were we then? what have we become? where is that oracle for you? it might be this gorgeous dream spring land scape. it might be cemetery ridge at e in gettysberg or monument avenue inight be richmond for some people or st. gardens, most magnificent of all civil war memorials shaw memorial in boston common. magnificent is a work of art. might be the lincoln memorial. perhaps for the most people, over time that lincoln memorial served as a kind of national secular cathedral. a place people go to ask so, mr. lincoln, what did it mean? you can look up on the walls and read the answer. from gettysberg or second

inaugural. our oracle. it is probably why we are here. yes, we come to feel the awe authenticity of what the actors recreate.ppen yes,ed we come to commune with thedeep d places of where this happened, but deep down i hope we are also asking what did it mean? why did they fight it? what were its results? what's the aftermath?ctors. again, think of the reenactors.rd to they try so hard to get inside of the personal experience of th soldiers, right? some of you are doing it. they live it authentically as ousand they can and thousands and thousands of us as historians and our readers try in every way we can to get inside the world of the people of the 1860s, and s. we think we do and we get very close. welose read there's hundreds of f

thousands of letters.m a john just quotedcoup from one. a couple.study we think we know them because we study them so much. we find their voices. think for a moment about what wewhat cannot know. what do you think they would think of us?? how would they know us? if they could arrive right now and walk down the aisle, how would they know us? they would be bewildered by our world, especially the technology, they would not get it. we've all gotmmunur universal p communication in our pockets. they would not get that. they would get industrializations, get cities, our not airplane travel yet, nope.

they get some things about our society. but, you know i can't prove ual, but this, obviously, but if they were to watch or listen to a discuss on television or read the newspaper about the e politics, about the great issues of our time, debate on television among pundits, would they be mystified? would they feel lost and adrift? they might not. they may say, there's a problem about race. they can't stop take talking about it. it's all over the place here. they got all kinds of rights my god, now, and there's, my god there's a black guy president but, god, they got problems withcal race. if they kept listening to tten o

political commentary, more so perhaps, they'd realize we never got over state's rights and federalivesm federalism. they would hear debates all over the radio waves, all over television don't after debate lati after debate about the relationship of states to the federal government. they would say my god, they ederal never got over federalism. seemed like the civil war put that to rest, but by god, it didn't. they might not be surprised if they listened to our politics. john quoted from a couple soldiers' letter and i want to quote from one as well. take us back to one of the people we tried to know back then.ne his name, uriah i love that ' name, that's a 19th century a name, a good biblical name.

uriah was a 21-year-old junior at yale university he could not wait to get into the war. he enlisted in a new york calvary regimen because there was not one ready yet. he dropped out of yale the junior year. he grew up on a farm in connecticut, grown up in -- made him unusual in the yun your an a army, grown up in an during abolitionist family. he wrote to his brother in the war, quote, i'm more an abolitionist than ever now, right up to the handle. if i had money enough to raise a few hundred contrabands, means escaped slaves, and arm them, i would get up an insurrection among the slaves.t." i told the captain i would desert to do it.

that is bravado i suspect. he did not lead any mutiny that o we know of. -- organizers of a contraband to kept have an insurrection but letters kept flowing. and in 1861 and 1862 he denounces lincoln and the lincoln administration. he's impatient. he's angry that the war is not es officially a war to free the slaves. he does not get it. the thinks the war is caused by slavery, why not fight to free the slaves? he writes home in early 1862 i'm quoting him the president's contest will indeed settle the wheth questioner as to whether union or secession shall triumph but slavery will not be reached. he's impatient. he's angry. by late spring 1862, he writes

to his brother wishing, he had the said he had the miranda rule courage to dessert that the union army has not begun to fight against slavery? he did not desert. about a year later in march of 1863, obviously in the wake of the emancipation proclamation and official declaration in the war against slavery, he transformed. he refused a furlough. not many soldiers did that either, to stay in place. he writes home i quote, i do not intend to shrink now that there is really something to fight for. i mean, freedom. this is thest first of january, it's become more and more evident to my mind that the war is hence force to be conducted are no on a different basis.

those who profess to love the union are not anxious to -- preserve slavery and those who an end acknowledge the war and ul its actions that the continuous putsand in an end to the cursive system so i'm willing to remain and endure whatever may fall to my share. he was decorated for bravery three times and promoted by his commanding officers.hat. he joined a connecticut calvary unit shortly after that. after the lifting of the siege of petersberg, the unit his connecticut unit was actually egion. coming south right down through this region. they condition at harper's ferry in february, stopped north of that

s us, complains in a diary entry that some of his men had been wreckless and overdone it in the burning of a bridge and some houses. they kept marching kept going. he complains that another point in his diary that one of his buddyies lost his copy of shakespeare. then he talked about reading . every day, meditations on the essence of christianity. on march 2, he rejoiced over victory at waynesburough. march 3 and 4, he records passing by jefferson's home. on march 4, he acknowledges in the diary this iscond the day of lincoln's second inauguration,

and he remembers back four years earlier reading the first inaugural address among his college mates at yale. there was about three and a half. weeks of no diary entry because a they were constantly on the march across virginia to get to beetersberg. they never got there.e they didn't need to. after the siege was lifted they at 54 encountered the confederate forces. the last entry in the diary was march 30th and it reads, going to camp, inspection of my company, very wet.to i clean off my horse and go to water with him. i went out alone. intellectual clearness. what might a man do with this state of mind habitually?

two days later, he was killed invalry a calvary charge in a battle. at the eight days before the surrender here. his name is enshrined in yale at yale's war memorial. every day on the way to class i walk through there. it's on the way to everywhere, and i ru b his name. i start every course at yale by en the telling that story, and i urge students when they walk through to do the same. why do we come here?became a why? as you all know, became a watch word. it became a markerit in time. it became a flashbulb memory. it maim a 9/11 or pearl harbor,

a kennedy assassination. it became the news you never forgot where you were w when you heard about it.il the word appomattox as any other place, name in the civil war getty certainly as much as at least asurning p gettysberg or vicksburg or other major turning points in the war. this meant the beginning of one g new world anhad end of another. something was over. something new begun. now, on november 5th 2008,

president obama elected election president, on the morning after that election, he wrote a columndr called unfinished business drawing lincoln from lincoln's address there, but the opening sentence of freedman's column of course, what they do they stay up all night to write a topic instance, and the rest takes care of itself, but the sentence was basically it said last night grant park, chicago illinois, united states of america, the american civil war ended. then he went on to use the fact sylvan thatia pennsylvania had been the state that had put lincoln over the top in the electoral that as college, and he misused all of that as he went on with the s friedm column, but what was he doing

this? understandably, what was doing?was tr i think what he wasyi trying to represent was this urge that we l have in the countrywar to get that civil war over with. to find the time a place, a moment to declare it ended. dope. he probably thought i've never had this moment. a black man just elected there president. there was wadisbelief. there was also shock. and probably hatred. 52% of americans were crying for one reason and 48 % were cry frg another reason. i don't know. i didn't do, i but that poll.representing there is this 150-year-old dilemma now to wish that war ended, get it over with. get done with it.

we do come to appomatox to feel that, don't we? we want appomattox to stop us, make us solemn, and this place oadway does. i noticed all of us lining the roadway here during the stackingwe a of llarms, and we all go stone silent.ng of just as bruce said in the stone in the ending of the great book, he said, appomattox became the ements fight thousands of a soldiers with their weapons and cases on it became a place of enormous silence. that's what we want the civil war to be. we want it to be done with.s but those of us with an eye open and those of us aware of our political debate if we sat with the people from 1865 who might

join us today, watch the , we television debate with us about something. we might be having to explain something to them.g all whyof are we having deals about have muc federalism? now. i don't have much time left. but what i want to leave you with is basically this. jameis baldwin, one of my favorite writers, the great ovelist, essayist novelist, civil right, the voice of the civil rights least t movement, written voice of the civil rights movement was always writing about the legacies in slavery and always writing about the legacies of this war.fran he wrotekl a line in 1962 which is frankly very poignant. he said, the problem with the way americans use words about

their history is they use the words to u cover up the sleeper, but never to wake him up.od night we sometimes want our history to make us get a good night's . sleep. to not give us nightmares to cover us up.ood. give me a history that makes me feel good. give me aor history that makes me comfortable. give me a history want w to live in. give me a history where i know myself in it. don't give me a history that challenges me and shocks me. if you look around you will find the legacies of the civil war, the legacies of the verdicts of appomattox. -- an if there were verdicts, and there were, someone really lost

this war here, l and someone really won this war. that t affair of honor honor to soldie honor as it wasrs called among these soldiers was just that. and it should have been. that was a soldier's surrender. this was a military surrender. it was not a political treaty. what they proposed in terms was not a political treaty.n. that had to come later in something call reconstruction. the verdicts of appomattox said ad to the united states just won a civil war, it had to somehow now put that union back together without a blueprint to do it. they just freed 4 million slavesical t fromim bondage overnight in and historical times to something called freedom and something called some kind of civil and

political liberty. how to do that? and every day on our front pages today, on our news kmemcommentary program, on our blogs, gadgets, all around us just open the gadgets, and you'll find a debate about racial legacies of the verdicts, and you'll find a debate about federalism.today the action in american politics today is not really in the u.s. congress. it's in the state. it's in the states legislature. it's not state legislatures where we are experiencing a r royaling evrevival.on f it's been going on for three decades, of state's rights doctrine. and we have people running for president now who are addvocates of state rights doctrine. they advocate doctrines and

procedures and meanings of constitution that some people who won here at appommattox had reason to believe were buried in the slaughter of the civil war, but were not and the reason we still are having royaling debates about race and about federalism is because they probably are eternal questions of the american condition. human equality. it's a permanent dilemma of the human condition.years ag we've come light years since 150 years ago on that question. our friends from 1865 wouldn't really get that. vote we still have a long way to go a long to protect the rights of both. we still have a long way to go for all kinds of other forms of

equality. and we h are having as never n the before at least in the last 50 - years never before a vigorous e debate about the relationship of the state the federal power and just what that federal government that was saved here, preserved here, was given rebirth here has the power to do. the legacies of appomattox regular sis of the civil war are alive as the red buds. they are often not as beautiful but they are even more important because they are permanent. i'll end with my friend who said it is easy to declare men free before god.

it is always much harder to declare them free and equal before other men. thank you. [ applause ] >> tell us your name.ohn >> i'm paul from atlanta georgia. >> looks like you've been doing this stuff, living history sorts events for a long time, john. >> yes i've been doing living history within the park services as a volunteer since 19 7 2. >> what makes this 150 th event so special to you? >> well, i had the privilege of being in several of the parks services 150th events in the felt lik southeast, and i felt like that i wanted to close without by y and being in here at appomattox in t yo the time andu day it took place. >> tells about the unit you're

with today and character you've been playing over the last >> couple days? >> i'm representing a confederate artillery men lee's army surrendered their guns and parked them and that's what i'mo you here doing representing a prepa member. >> how do you prepare for the events? >> research. do your research. read about what took place.yourse and allow yourself to become comfortable, and you try to o betr portray someone from the past as accurately as you can because we -- living historians, our goal is to speak for those who longer can speak for themselves. >> in doing research in particular, is there one or two that stands out?john: >> well i'm my open park, the national battlefield park as we on portray alabama battery, the esaw m battery on top of the mountain who first opened fire on the union forces from on top the to ap

mountain. >> when it got there confederates were in rough shape. in particular, what was the artillery like at that point? >> it had been greatly reduced in numbers. it was short on horses and battery wagons and such as that, so it was not as up to full strength at all. batteries reduced down from four guns, shorter than the union's six gun battery down to two or one.ral >> what was the sentiment in the unit you were involved with? >> well, the -- what we thought about most and talk about most was what these men were experiencing that night. whether both sides, there had to be trepidation on the bly a confederate side, certainly, and there was probably a sense of relief as well as a sense of dispair, and those soldiers ic surrendered, the 25000 that that

could stick it out you wonder o if they knew if they had a home to go to or what type of situation they would find returning home. >> looking at 150 years later what's the lesson?is >> the lesson is that this is really the turning point in american history where we go bei from being these individual states to truly the united think states. and i think evenint a bigger point is if we don't remember our t. history, we may be prone to repeat it. >> we started this by talking , about living history, your part of living history.i it's easier, i guess, when there's 150 years to remember. beyond this day, beyond the closing of the civil war effectively, how do you continuer genera that tradition with other john: generations? >> well we hope to find young people that come along to do ing living history along with us. we use history clubs, that sort of thing, to recruit young

people. i do a tremendous number of school programs, the field trips where they come out and the goal is to get children, young este adults interested in the history. they may not get interested in civil war history, but as long as they are interested in a form ofd history, wehie feelin hwh good about what we do.ou >> john, thank you for joining us on american history tv.or hav >> thank you for having me. my pleasure.nd whe >> tell usre your name and where you are from.omas >> thomas downs from cleveland, ohio. >> thomas tell us about the re pla soldier you're playing today and. the unit he would have been with.who >> what's the specialness to you as a person who participates in these events? >> well, it was the beginning of the end of the civil war. everyone thinks when lee