f 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