which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> follow us on twitter @cspan history. up next, a portion of the university of virginia conference on the end of the civil war. historians discuss how african-americans remembered and interpreted the civil war. the virginia centennial of the american civil war -- organized this event. >> we are discussing african-american memory of war. i am joined by fitzhugh brundage, barbara gannon, and thavolia glymph and since we have now touched on, a number of times, touched on the united states colored troops or usct, we want to begin there with a discussion of the scope and significance of the service in the u.s. army of african american troops.

barbara, maybe want to get us started. prof. gannon: well, first you have to understand the u.s. colored troops are more than anyone ever imagined. the u.s. colored troops are federal volunteer units, there's over 140 of them of various times. they were a significant military force. it's interesting, at the beginning of the war, none of the white northerners would have ever imagined you would have had black northern soldiers. in fact, they turned many, many patriotic northern free men away. so it's only the process of the war, i.e. the high death count sickness, and the fact that it didn't go well, that prompted people to really think about arming african americans.

the emancipation proclamation was authorized. so you had over 180,000 troops which on one hand, people always say, well, there were 2 million union troops, but they came when they were needed. they were fresh troops at the end of the war. i don't think any other military historian would dispute at the end of a very long, hard-fought war, you had fresh committed troops just handed to you. that that isn't an enormously significant factor. and i think they are very important because making century americans, if they were going to fight and die for freedom of african americans would have expected them to serve in fight and die with them. and they most certainly did that. i have read so many accounts where white unit soldiers are

very aware of black soldiers -- . without seeing a real commitment on african-americans to serve and die in this war. i think they are dramatically significant. >> the story of this is connected to other lines, you mentioned that figure of a black military service, 50,000 of those troops were southerners, 150,000 of those troops were southerners, seven african americans who had fled plantations and farms and made their way to union lines and recruiting stations like camp nelson in kentucky.

it challenges us to think of the civil war as a war of the south versus the south in some sense. we equate the south of the confederacy, we talked about divisions within each society over the course of the day. but here you have a representative of southern unionism, the phenomenon of southern unionism in which some scholars, especially bill freeling, who makes the case of the number of men from slave states that wore blue uniforms gave a decisive edge to the union in the end. he finds 450 thousand men from slave states wore union blue. this is a new framework for thinking about the war. let's talk a little bit about men in the ranks and give some examples to the audience of some of these troops and their stories. prof. gannon: well i mean, i think -- there are so many. one of the things people have no idea is how many medal of honor winners there were among colored troops, there were 14 in one battle. christian fleetwood was one of those medal of honor winners. robert penn, there are so many others.

there were also the african americans in the navy who were also awarded the medal of honor. they were so much more. so many stories. it's incredible about their sacrifice. most people don't realize the men who fought at port hudson were officers, black officers among them. the 54th massachusetts had black officers at the end. one of the better known people was joseph wilson, who became a historian and he was the one who wrote one of the seminal books in 1890 about african-american military service. a very well thought of book that chronicled it. it was very key to people remembering the blacks had served. prof. varon: wilson a great example of someone who is intervening in memory. i recently wrote a book about

appomattox in which i learned something i hadn't known before that's that ct residents were present there and help to block lee's escape route as the confederacy tried to punch through a federal trap that have been laid. the men in those u.s. ct regiments, six altogether, a remarkable microcosm of african-american life in united states. it was southerners who had fled slavery, there were northern free blacks who had never been slaves included in the ranks. there was a man named george washington williams, a brilliant historian. a baptist minister and educator named william j simmons was in the ranks of appomattox. he would go on to be the journalistic mentor to ida wells, the famous antilynching crusader. there are -- the big numbers are important, but so are the individual lives.

any other observations about usct? let's segue to another theme that we touched on as we moved along and that we wanted to return to. that is the 13th amendment has come up in a number of different contexts. let's think a little bit about emancipation as a process. one of the big takeaways of this sesquicentennial is that emancipation is a process that unfolds gradually. why is the 13th amendment necessary, given that lincoln has already promulgated his emancipation proclamation two years earlier? >> well it seems to me, if i could just back up a bit. the importance of the usct was primarily to ensure that the nation understood that the civil war, by 1863, had become more than a war for unions, but a war for freedom as well.

the on the ground decisions of hundreds of thousands of black people who were enslaved, their decisions to leave slavery that would ultimately be ratified by both the emancipation proclamation, and subsequently ratified by the 13th amendment. of course, lincoln knew that this proclamation had no constitutional foundation, it was just a measure. so he worried about that. not only did he worried, but loss of americans worried. lots of black people worried lots of abolitionists worried. hundreds of thousands of northerners sent petitions to congress. they signed their names and saying we want a constitutional

amendment. and congress did finally come up with an amendment. no one was quite happy with the wording, it was revised several times until we got to the point where we got the one that we do have. but getting that amendment passed was very difficult. but very important. prof. varon: you make an important point, when we look at any of these changes, whether that's the enlistment of african-american troops or the advent of the emancipation proclamation or the 13th amendment, there are actions on the ground in the south, mainly this mass exodus that are driving those big decisions. they are also lobbying from northerners and free blacks in the north for these policies like enlistment. that's another source of pressure moving lincoln. prof. brundage: the ratification of the 13th amendment is part of this drawn-out process of cleaning up the mess, if you will inherited in part by the

civil war, but also the dred scott decision. earlier there was talk about the 14th and 15th amendment. this is all, once you've destroyed slavery, the question of what is to come after slavery for african-americans in american society has to be addressed. and the border states had not left the union, they still have slavery. there were lots of loose ends that had to be tied up. prof. varon: let's talk about freedom and how it was to be defined. there were whites who were able to accept emancipation as a military necessity, but had a narrow definition of emancipation. nothing but the freedom to work for wages. nothing beyond that. not full civil rights and full political rights. african-americans, the freed people had a more expansive idea of their citizenship rights. what does that citizenship rights term connote?

prof. glymph: the whole debate over citizenship points to the fact that until this moment in history, we had no national definition of citizenship. and what enslaved people wanted, formerly slaves wanted was not so different from what all americans want. the right to move, mobility, the right to one's children, the right to marry and have that marriage sanctified by the church and by law. the right to vote, for men. but i think most fundamental to all the civil rights is the right to possess or own one's own body and labor power. so i can sell my labor to you, just as any northern immigrant can. but you can't buy my body.

and so, that fundamental right is central to everything else. layering on top of that basic civil rights. like marriage and the vote and the right to testify. we have to remember that even southerners were willing to grant, even in the really horrible black codes the right to marry, the right to earn a wage, the right to testify as long as you were not testifying against whites. you could testify in a court of law. against other black people. so, the question becomes what beyond those basic rights do black people have? that question is sort of answered, but not accepted. prof. varon: right, and all the rights you mentioned are connected in the sense that the power to sell your labor is meaningful only if you have

mobility and can seek, as our system promises, the best terms, rather than being pressured to work for your former master in a world in which there is the aggressive laws and so on the curtailed mobility. these things work together. prof. glymph: it also means that white people who were former owners of slaves have to learn how to be business owners. how to be employers. how to manage a wage labor force instead of an enslaved one. prof. brundage: and i think this speaks to the complexity of the situation for african-americans. i think african-americans had a range of opinions about what the concept of citizenship should be. but they still, they were close to having a general consensus about what it would be. to translate that into a practical, lived reality of citizenship was an entirely different matter. if you just take the issue of property. african-americans come out of slavery with some property.

sometimes. small amounts of personal property, perhaps. but they don't have the types of property that are the foundation to an independent livelihood. so it's one thing to say now you can own property. but if you start out from the point of having no property whenever, how does one exercise that right in any meaningful way? so all of those questions are on the table in 1865, and have to be resolved not just in the abstract, someday in the future. they needed to be resolved immediately. within the next week, three weeks, month, year. you've got to plant crops, you have to harvest them. the nitty-gritty of freedom and citizenship became of paramount importance, literally immediately. prof. varon: education was on

that list, literacy had been criminalized by antebellum southern law. a yearning for schools is also part of that package of citizenship rights. we haven't talked, maybe we can pivot to the church and religion. it's an important topic in the 19th century. how does -- let me put it this way. for african-americans, both those in the army and civilians, the union victory had a providential cast. we can observe that all the various contending sides of the civil war, the union and confederate each believe that god had blessed their cause and they were fighting a godly war. maybe we can compare and contrast the implications of providence on the part of say whites in the union army confederates and then african-americans. what does that providential view look like? prof. brundage: for white southerners, 1865 was a bitter pill to take.

because they been telling themselves that this was a slave holders republic and a providential mission. white southerners pivoted, particularly of certain denominations, episcopalians and presbyterians went all in on this. they pivoted and concluded that somehow they were god's chosen people. and god was chastening them, was punishing them for their hubris. their punishment still meant that he loved them beyond all others.

that was their way of making sense what had happened. if you were devoted to your faith, the only solution i can imagine you would come up with. white northerners could see this as vindication. lincoln described vindication in a way. for the one group in particular for home the providential interpretation was unambiguous was african-americans. the way in which black ministers made sense of this was that god had intervened in human affairs in 1861's. god had chosen abraham lincoln to do his work in 1862. that god's will was to transform the status of african-americans because they were his chosen people. now god had released them from bondage at there were great they hings in their future. we talk about the grim days of reconstruction and the grimmer days of the jim crow south. there is an optimism that god can't be doing this to us if he will put us back in a situation like slavery. there has to be a forward-looking progress to this and that is essential as to how african-americans are interpreting what happened after the civil war. prof. varon: that is the

investment in the idea that they are a redeemer race that will redeem america from the sin of slavery, but also a deep investment in the union victory in the moment where they had proven irrevocably that they had earned citizenship and that providence favored the righteous in the war. prof. brundage: to pick up on something ed said about the global implications, you could carry this one step further in the idea that african-americans have this providential role to play. it was not just america. it was world history. now, african-americans were going to lift up their brothers of color in africa and outside the united states. a kind of missionary impulse that we know about. you think about the white missionary impulse of the late 19th century to china and elsewhere. african-americans start going to africa, especially south africa, and have a very important

influence with this providential, civilizing mission that they are going to bring the most modern christian values to people of color around the world. prof. glymph: i would like to mention as a counterpoint that the same time there was a very important -- religion and its import in terms of the war and emancipation, african-americans were intent on thinking about the secular component of what all this meant. if it meant to going to africa to help christianize the africans, on the other it meant taking hold in america of their political rights. unlike religion during slavery when all you could do was to pray to god and hope something

happens, now you can pray and do something to make something happen. i think that was a very important distinction between slavery and freedom. prof. varon: we have talked in the context of the lost cause in commemorization and memorialization, the construction of historical memory. let's turn to that topic for african-americans and particularly about commemorative traditions and how what the scholars called an emancipationist memory of the war taking shape. the lost cause does not go uncontested. african-americans dispute everyone of those five tenets that kerry cheney outlined for us. how do they dispute them? through what means and vehicles did african-americans offer counter argument to that lost cause mythology and to the reconciliation of impulses itself? prof. gannon: i will speak about

what i studied, the grand army of the republic being the largest veterans organization. one of the most important things i found was the role of the african-american host. just like african-american post. i found meeting minutes of an african-american post where they wrote exactly that that was their purpose, to remind people of what has happened in the civil war. they were very direct about it. what they did is they would participate in memorial day. july 4, large parades, any kind of event possible. they would name their posts after great heroes, whether they were white like robert shaw or a lesser-known person like joel bend. they would have lectures. they saw themselves as living reminders that they had fought in a war for their own freedom.

it was a twofold thing. what i found surprising was that they were the center of the community idea. they had women's groups associated with them or part of a larger organization called women's relief corps and ladies of the grand army republic. these were organizations with white and black members and they were very key to these commemorations, whether they be memorial day or emancipation day. whether they be black or interracial. they were key players. they worked with the churches and they would have memorial day celebrations there, where the ministers would give sermons about the african-american civil war experience, which is not only about slavery, but their own actions. so african-americans are really very active. in contesting the lost cause.

prof. varon: let's talk about that concept -- go ahead. prof. glymph: i want to say that it is not only that you have congregations and member there were black women in arkansas who would go three miles into the wood to hold meetings. black woman all of the south were decorating union graves. it is also the content of the administration. -- of the commemorations. there is a case to be made for the african-american cause. to think about it in terms of a cause linked to the union cause and how african-americans postwar remembered the cause and what was the content of that remembrance. it does not consist of just gathering to have a party, but

gathering where speeches are made that say explicitly, we helped to win the war. speeches that say explicitly the struggle is connected to struggles elsewhere, for example, in haiti. i think that was really central. we give a lot of credit to northerners like dubois and douglass in terms of perpetuating african civil war memory. i think the credit rightly belongs to former slaves, that they were the chief witnesses to the war and also the chief witnesses to commemoration. and also the chief witnesses to commemoration. prof. varon: you mentioned emancipation day. emancipation day was not exclusively january 1. there were many emancipation

days celebrated across the south, signifying that it was a process and not a moment. april might was an emancipation -- april 9 was an emancipation day. there were a variety of emancipation days that served as occasions for printers and politicians and leaders to get up and remind people of that integral role in victory. prof. brundage: picking up on the performative tradition of african-american memory, one big difference that we can still see in the landscape of the present day is that african-americans were at an extreme disadvantage to ground their memory on the physical landscape for a variety of reasons. african-americans had many, many calls upon their pocketbooks, to fund churches, schools, etc.

you can imagine that building a monument would be comparatively lower on the list of activities and many small communities. in addition to that, there were african-americans of the time that said let's not held monuments. let our churches and schools be our monuments. what's this -- what this means is that the african-american tradition tends to be celebration with kerry -- which carry great meaning in the community. a lot of people paid attention to these, particularly in texas but they did not leave, at least a century later they did not leave anything on the landscape and say that is where the african-american community held emancipation day for 34 years. of course, we have the monuments in front of the courthouse is which are physical testaments to that lost cause memory.

the point being that there is a contest and conversation between white and black memory in the south, but they are taking place in different forms almost necessarily. prof. varon: we see these commemorations in the north. there is evidence of african-americans sobered april 9, lee's surrender as emancipation day into the 20th century. we can maybe come back to reasons for that. i wanted to come back to veterans to the point about african-american veterans and their commemorations. what about white union veterans? did they turn their back on african-american veterans? to what degree, and where were the limits of that alliance? prof. gannon: it is interesting. the limits are interesting, but some ways understandable given everything we have said.

one of the things that if you want to atr meeting and there were african-americans there you would say they are our color comrades. a comrade is a special thing and they were comrades. they were colored comrades. in some ways, that is a mark of distinction, but i think it sets a limit. the grand army of the republic was the union army veterans organization. it was an honestly powerful and large and a great honor to belong to. indy gar african-american -- in the gar, africa and americans join. when i did my research, i found that black americans also belonged to posts with white americans, which is really -- i won't even say unusual. i would say unprecedented in the 19th century, particularly in such an honored organization. so i found instances where it was in the gar they are

comrades and the comrade is a central piece of their relationship. you and i suffered in the same union army. even if we did not fight in the same organization. you know how we emphasize that. veterans understood they marched, they were cold, they were sickened, the entire experience was pretty bad. so they embrace them as part of it because they were in the group. within their organization, the commander of the massachusetts grand army of the republic for african-americans, i mentioned robert pimm was commander of his integrated post. that is not unusual. this is not unusual. i just said within the organization. to some extent, union veterans remember the war was about

slavery very clearly. they remember that former slaves fought for their side.they remember they won the war in 1865 where the disconnect comes is that people expect that in 1895, to go outside of their organization and change things and civil rights, or to continue to fight to realize full civil and political rights. that does not happen. they are very clear on freeing the slaves. they are very clear on this special status of the comrades. that does not extend to civil rights. prof. varon: all the observations about the centrality of the african-americans in the union victory, that they should be joining forces with them in the call for citizens rights and disenfranchisements and all of those of elements? prof. gannon: the word

emancipation means you ended slavery. if they had a checklist, check and of slavery. that is what they thought. we have been talking about religion lately. what i found is they tied to emancipation very central because in their minds they had redeemed the nation from the sin of slavery with their own blood. they had that redemption ideal. it was central because they were trying to deal with the fact they had lost so much in the civil war. they remembered freeing the slaves. in fact, they even said particularly in the army of the potomac, we are losing the war until the war became about freedom. god looked on our cause favorably only when we did that. they are aware of this. there is, we would like to see some connection, particularly in 1895. within the organization, they

are comrades. this is what they might say. we are not going to boston unless they let our color comrades stay in the hotel. they are fully aware that african-americans are kicked out of the hotel. the only people there going to force in our their comrades. they will not make you stand against that area is very -- up against that. this is very complicated. prof. varon: let's talk about frederick douglass. i think douglass is the person we hold up who has done the most to defend and defined the emancipationist memory of the war. what is his role n.y.c. say there was a right side -- why does he say there was a right side that we ought not to forget someone was on the moral high

ground and we are forgetting it. let's talk about that. prof. brundage: i will take an initial step. i think there are two sides. we should understand that douglass was one of the great orators of the 19th century steeped in oratory of the 19th century and one of the great vehicles for the oratory in the 19th century was to scold your audience and tell them all the things they did not do right. if they started doing things right, they could save themselves in the future would be wonderful. and i'm not trying to in any way diminish the magnitude of what douglass did. that was just the style of speech that he was particularly prone to give. he wanted to scold his audiences. you are not remembering hard enough. i think this goes back to something gary mentioned in

the lost cause. white southerners at the turn of the 20th century are starting to crack the whip and say you young whippersnappers are not paying enough attention to our sacrifice. he was acutely aware of not only what was happening with the so-called retreat from reconstruction in the late 1870's, but also the general cultural power that started to be evident of the so-called lost cause. there were so many different ways that he could have seen that beginning to emerge and certainly one of them was in the emergence of not only changing attitudes towards robert e lee but also changing attitudes towards jefferson davis. it is both how he chose to cast americans generally, but also changes on the landscape. prof. varon: do we give douglass

too much centrality or does he deserve the centrality that he has as the premier spokesman for the emancipation memory? prof. glymph: i don't think we give him too much. i think he deserves credit for working really hard to first the runaway slaves, to tell a story, and during the war working hard to convince the government, then working hard to help recruit them, then working hard to convince lincoln that colorization was not the way to go. and then working hard after the war to say there were some people, not only black people, but white people who said that treason had been committed, and it is not a word that we like to talk about in the context of the civil war. i agree with you that douglass did see on the ground in the

1870's evidence that this nation was reuniting on the basis of not treason or loyalty but as a hero. he foresaw that when he made his famous to her, he said we are all american and we were all heroes. history books said that the most important thing is to remember that union soldiers were heroes and confederate soldiers were heroes. the story of heroism comes to occupy the central narrative as opposed to loyalty or disloyalty . it was massive when it came and

it was embraced by southerners and northerners. there is nothing black people could do even if they had the resources to mount monuments. they did not have control over public space. they did not have the right to vote anymore. african-american memory is the most displaced memory. you can talk about union memory but the most fabled memory is the african-american memory. prof. varon: is the african-american press able to play in important role in this? i would argue that it is. what is that role? prof. brundage: one further observation of frederick douglass. one thing for us to remember about douglass, but just periodically remind ourselves he occupied such a unique place. here was a man that was born a slave, runaway slave, who

transformed himself into one of the great writers of the 19th century and certainly one of the great orators of the 19th century. it is not just the up from slavery story that is so remarkable about him, but that he had mastered the craft. oratory in the 19th century. that was one of the most prestigious expressions of citizenship and of power that he mastered that and could talk to the white man in the white man's only which made him truly remarkable. -- white man's own language which made him truly remarkable. there was a profound sense that he was uniquely positioned to talk about these issues. there was no one else who could have done it the way he could. about black newspapers, black newspapers are essential, along with and we come back to black

churches because they provided the spaces for black commemoration often. a safe space that african-americans controlled and in which they could talk about this robin mitchell interpretation of history appropriately. -- providential interpretation of history, appropriately. african-american newspapers could make it public not just for the african-american community, but for some white newspaper editors who would get copies of the black newspaper and pay attention. they were intermediaries between these two memory communities. prof. varon: important newspapers, sometimes there is a direct connection between the important people and newspapers. one in philadelphia was very important. you mentioned the new york age/. prof. gannon: it was interesting because it was just new york, but they had subscribers all

over the east coast. they would pick up stories and have correspondent letters. that view eb dubois -- w.e.b. dubois deliver that. they were players in civil war memory and the most remarkable one was the 1913 gettysburg reading. they have a totally different view. prof. varon: tell us about that reading and then about the take. prof. gannon: you have the 1913 reading. president wilson was a southerner. everyone talks about he gives the speech and it seemed to be some key moment of reunion reconciliation. prof. varon: describing the heroes. prof. gannon: the blue union boys were all heroes. people said things like there were not any african-americans there and there was a tale of what the 1913 reunion was like. the newspaper covers it that

way. they're all american heroes. they were all americans because that is the way americans are. they are heroes. they were trying to merge the confederates and u.s. military tradition together to prove that we are all americans, all heroes, and sort of embrace it. they were americans. that is the way we are. that was the thought process. they had this reunion. there is sort of this party line . i read a lot of newspapers that covered it. the great heroes of this union were pickett's charge. not broke americans -- heroic americans in central pennsylvania. the new york age tried the central reunion to the current situation of african-americans jim crow and disenfranchisement.

their view was about the national syndicate. they were talking about newspapers and business. they wanted business between the sections. that is why they wanted reunion. they were the ones for african-americans actions being there and the african-american veterans say a lot of the white veterans were not pleased with things like the rebel yell and the way confederates behaved. they were at the reunion, but they really weren't on board with the idea that it was a lovefest. really, they were very -- they gave a totally different story. you would get none of this if you had read, as i read, "the washington post." "the new york age" had a different take. prof. varon: as powerful as the reconciliationist narrative was and lost cause narrative was there is a counter argument present and we shouldn't imagine

it get swept away because it is never entirely swept away. we alluded to be divisions among african-americans and i'm picking up on the seams of david's book. we have been indebted to his paradigm as we talked about this. douglass is passed as the premier exponent of the expansion is married and dubois as this -- has this relationship with booker t. washington. maybe what you would call an african-american version of reconciliationism. i know you have worked on booker t. washington. tell us how that rivalry shed light on this question of memory. prof. brundage: well, that's -- thank you for that question. [laughter] prof. varon: do you mean that sincerely? prof. brundage: yes and no.

i almost don't know where to begin with that, except to say that dubois grew up in a different place, literally and metaphorically then did booker t. washington. dubois'l life as a marvelous line where he says booker t. washington had known the crack of the whip and dubois had not. this is a fundamental difference between the two men. i think the most important thing to keep in mind is this goes back to something that gary mentioned earlier. really until the 1930's, the overwhelming majority of african-americans in the 1930's lived in the south. when booker t. washington was head of the testing he -- tusk eegee institute, he had to

take into account the reality of alabama. he was running a state institution, although he had privatized it. he had to navigate in a different context then did dubois, who was for the most part an obscure academic -- i say obscure for most americans -- until he became affiliated with the crisis and the naacp after 1909. they occupy very different positions. i think for washington, his story was one about what african-americans had done with their freedom. he wanted to emphasize african-american capacity. he did not want to emphasize obstacles or inefficiency to that. we can criticize all we want about those choices. if dubois had a phd, he had the

finest education one could have had at that time. he had a much larger vision of the obstacles that he thought african-americans were facing. i really do think it is a case that they are speaking to different audiences and speaking pass each other in some ways. i'm confident that if booker t. washington had lived as long as the view eb dubois -- debbie eb to boy -- w.e.b. dubois, maybe they would have said you are right. there was more common ground than either recognize that the time. prof. varon: that is an important point and we should think of and emancipationist and reconciliationist memory should not be thought of as opposite rate economy. washington williams tried to

fuse those things and try to trumpet the important of the u.s. et but also to see that moment of union victory could a uger racial conciliation and they look at responses to embrace those magnanimous terms. they understood that that counterargument to a long-standing anti-abolitionists argument. that was the argument you could not have emancipation because if you did, you would have been just an race war and social chaos. abolitionists have been saying for decades that you would have your first chance of harmony because slavery, not, is the source of vision. diffuse emancipation memories with peace and harmony, those are not necessarily agendas that

are at odds. prof. brundage: let me offer one anecdote. i was thinking in savannah, there were a group of so-called -- african-american men meeting. in their circle, many of them affiliated with booker t. washington. many were also founders of the local chapter of the naacp when a chapter was opened in many of them were also supporters of marquise barbie's organization, the pan africanist of the late late 19th century. we would see that as being a blue state-red state divide. these men were members sometimes of all three simultaneously. prof. varon: let's talk a little bit about, and it came up in the

earlier panels, about this sesquicentennial as compared to the centennial celebrations as term as where things stand as far as our collective memory and the place of the emancipationist memory in the national consciousness. do we feel we have made a great deal of progress? do we feel there is a long way to go? if so, what do we need to know more about and learn more about and teach more about? prof. glymph: i'm here and nobody has walked out. [laughter] [applause] none of my colleagues [inaudible] we have come quite a way since

1963. liz and uii and several other people here today, and i'm sure you have too but we have been invited to the programs, more civil war programs and i can count on my hands in the last five years. what i have noticed, while i can't compare the two because i was not there in 1963 in person, but i do think there is a generosity of spirit. by that, i mean on all sides. more people are willing to listen and to hear facts that they can agree with an facts they can recall from, but

you can recall some facts and be willing to consider it. i see an america that lincoln would have been thinking, that is when i talk about the core of memories. you are getting there. you're not quite there yet heard what i don't see -- quite there yet. what i don't see as we go around the country, i have not seen any significant increase in the number of black people attending these events and i don't know why that is. i think it is something to think about. maybe it shows that still black people don't claim the war because what they could legitimately claim has been pushed back so far. that is my short answer to a very important question. prof. gannon: it's kind of like

the centennial was so white. it was like the story of the one lakh representative who could not -- one black representative who could not stay in the hotel. you are going to have the civil rights act passed, but memory at that time was so dominated by the cold war, so dominated by the 20th century and our constant wars and the fact that america constructed this civil war memory of her works or the -- of wrote southerners and northerners for no other purpose than part of this whole idea of what american history was. we always had american soldiers that were wrote, even when they fight each other -- that were heroic, even when they fight each other. we had wars in 20th century and you wanted a consensus. prof. glymph: if we wanted that,

and we didn't want consensus and we were concerned about the international arena and the cold war, it seems to me that the better option would have been to include black people. one of the criticisms that america got when black soldiers went to europe in world war ii and they came back, what are we coming back to? enemies communist nation, they said you have no right to say anything on the national front. look at your nation. we would have been in 1963 in a much better position to embrace you know, embrace black people in the celebration. i have heard the cold war argument. prof. gannon: i'm not saying you're not right. you would not have been wrong. we have created an all-white

male space of shared heroism of the civil war and that has been built up over many decades of textbooks and historical scholarships and movies that he would take time to break. prof. varon: you are getting into a related issue, which is how we define history and civil war history. we have a much more expansive definition goes beyond generals and politicians and rank and file soldiers, the way we have taken on the challenge of studying the home front and understanding the blurred lines between home front and battlefront is part of the story we tell about progress, wouldn't you think? prof. gannon: yeah. one of the things i think would be a way forward, what i have been struck by and it is not really my specialty, but what struck me is in the 20th

century, there have been african-american civil war monuments that were a couple built. women were central to that. african-american women. i think we need to -- and i like to focus on the foot soldiers of civil war memory. i think that there was even into the 20th century a lot of people working on that. i think sometimes we have a triumphant narrative for the lost cause that ignores -- they got their movie "gone with the wind," so they must have won. what were people thinking about? prof. varon: when you get back to things like emancipation day and putting statutes up, scholars have written about why that member to tradition fades. parts of the civil war could be a test case as to whether black citizens will get full rights.

there is a sense that putting up statues and holding celebrations like emancipation day is quaint and old-fashioned. there are broader cultural shifts that factor into this. prof. brundage: i want to offer one, picking up on something. one measure of the difference between the centennial in the sesquicentennial -- some of you may have encountered edmund wilson's patriotic war. wilson was the leading military scholar of the 20th century and he put a series of articles in "the new yorker" and they gathered together during the centennial as patriotic war. if you have a copy, look through it. who was the hero of patriotic or? -- patriotic war? we have heard a lot about asked in bragg -- braxton bragg.

it is not him. it is alexander stevens, the vice president of the confederacy. why does edmund wilson? hold him up? because wilson saw him as one of the great spokespeople for an anti-leviathan worldview. someone was shouting against big government and bureaucracy. edmund wilson rights is truly glowing portrait of alexander stevens. at no point does he print the fact that alexander stevens said that slavery was the cornerstone of the confederacy. if you look at the sesquicentennial at no point could you have gone through most of the major events associated with the sesquicentennial, certainly none in virginia as part of this commission, and not been reminded the centrality of slavery for the civil war and the centrality of experience for

african-americans. that is a measure of enormous transformation in the way that we make sense of the civil war of african-americans' participation in it. i have not heard of anyone in recent years who has held up alexander stevens as someone was answers to contemporary problems. prof. varon: people wrote about the construction of the archive. we can think about an archive or library as it to go find the truth. archives have historically have agendas and limitations and they had been constructed hundreds of years ago to make great historians sometimes kept out by segregation. one thing that has changed is we have reconstructed archives in this world of digital history.

that only what we consider the stuff of history, but the access to it that will help us painted more inclusive picture have gone up exponentially. we have only a few seconds left. any closing comments? in that case, i think you all and invite you to submit questions, please, because we will convene back your shortly for a last round of q and a. thank you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] scree >> here on c-span three, we surely the most relevant congressional hearings and public affairs events.

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