it is a perfect example in which historians, and i respect sincerity and compassion, for what men and women are enduring today, but they are reading into the past, i think, flat-out bad history. i think that the man that you studied prove that culture and ideology can be a buffer to the horror of war. i just read a letter yesterday of a union soldier. he was suffering what we would call battle fatigue. it was a mystery to him. he begged them not to tell anyone. is very next letter -- his very next letter he wrote about the grand spectacle of war. the victorian assumptions of war are very different than ours. let's talk about the war itself.

did the north conduct the war justly? and you are free to a lot of other work here. harry wrote a book called "upon the altar of nation." dr. mcpherson: of the nation. harry stout is a history of american religion and he called his book a moral history of the civil war. he talked about the just war theory going back to saint augustine. and he talked about the way in which, there are two ways to address the question of a just war. one is the reason for going to war in the first place. he came up with the conclusion that the only legitimate reason the only just reason for going

to war was self-defense. a defensive war is a just war. and the other dimension of just war theory is the conduct of the war. he came out with the idea that the confederates were fighting a just war in the sense that they were defending themselves against invasion. my answer to that would be, who started the war? you could define the union motive for going to war as defensive. defending the flag, defending the union. the conduct of the war though, is i think what you are interested in and that is what the book was mostly about. and he indicted the north and abraham lincoln for conducting a war that was disproportionate in its conduct to the goals of the

war. the destruction in the south, vandalism, plunder, the suffering imposed on the self. but -- south. but curiously enough he also said that on the part of the northern soldiers it was the black soldiers that were fighting a just war because they were fighting for freedom. my answer to that would be that all of the soldiers were fighting for freedom. and as far as the destruction of southern resources, which felt condemned as being excessive beyond the requisite of a just war by far the greatest resources was the evolution of slavery. and he said that was the only thing that made it a just war on the part of the north.

well, i see an inconsistency between condemning the destruction of southern plantations and southern factories and southern railroads and southern homes and farms on the one hand but praising the abolition of slavery on the other because it is all of a piece, i think. clearly there were excesses in sherman's march through south carolina. maybe shared in the destruction of shenandoah valley. clearly that goes beyond the adjustments of the war -- the justness of the war. peter carmichael: the deadline of civilians and shoot them. -- did line-up civilians and shoot them. dr. mcpherson: in world war ii if we want to say strategic bombing was part of just war that killed hundreds of thousands of vietnamese civilians.

in the civil war, very few civilians were killed by the actions -- thousands of civilians. in the civil war very few civilians were killed by the actions of soldiers. i am with mark grimsley that this was a hard war and making a hard war was part of the policy of winning the war. while there were excesses, it nevertheless was largely within the balance of a proportionate response to the demands of the war. peter carmichael: why don't we take a few questions from the audience. the cannot hear you, it is not on.

-- they cannot hear you, it is not on. >> given all of the recent work on civil war memories to come out in the past few decades if you were writing the end of "battle cry" today, would you write it differently? dr. mcpherson: i would write some things differently. i would probably give more space to the home front, to the impact of the war on families, on women. this is not totally absent from "battle cry" by any means but much of the scholarship in the last 25 years has focused on these issues, the impact of the war on communities and societies. i would try to incorporate that scholarship if i could in the book beyond what i did. the only problem with that is that it would be 1000 or 1100

pages long. i do not know quite how long i would handle it but that would be my general approach. >> 20 years ago you wrote an essay about the disconnect between academic historians and your public. in your opinion, as the situation changed? dr. mcpherson: within the academic community it has not changed as much as i would like. i think that the academic reward system still goes to so-called cutting-edge scholarship. too much emphasis, more and more detail on less and less. more and more creativity and interpretation and not enough on clarity of presentation. but i think in terms of the

wider net of the historical writing, it has improved over the last 25 years. i regret to say that a lot of the really good work that reaches a broad audience, not only in civil war scholarship but in history generally, is not done by academic historians. it is done by people like david and so on, robert carroll ron. they are reaching out. harold, who was in the audience. they are reaching out to a broad, public audience in a way that i think has made history more and more relevant and more and more important to a broad audience but i regret to say that it is not my academic colleagues that are doing this. peter carmichael: i am going to disagree.

i think some of what comes out of academic press, a good run is 1000 copies. ridiculous. but i think there is a real synergy between academic historians and public historians. i think there is a place for focused, narrow work. i think some of the other scholars were very talented at making ready accessible, they are building upon what scholars are doing in the trenches. i agree with your point much of what we see, especially in scholarly journals, unfortunately does not resonate but i would dedicate a step further, and you are a good example of this, dr. mcpherson. -- take this a step farther, and you are a good example of this dr. mcpherson. your first class, it led to activism in the battle for preservation. you are a classic example. and dr. gary gallagher who was

here as well. these are academics who have gone outside of the classroom on a number of levels including the battle for preservation. this illustrates how public historians and academic historians have really come together. and people who say that the response i do not know what they are expecting. i do not know what the bar is because i can tell you this, the content of the 150 -- not the centennial, not close to the centennial. there is a growing alliance amongst all of us because we are energized by the comments and responses and we learn from audiences and public historians. i am bullish and i think the 150 demonstrates that. and those who criticize the 150 are not looking at the hard

facts. we did not review the centennial. >> -- repeat the centennial. >> what is the direction of scholarship? dr. mcpherson: can you repeat that? >> what is the new direction of scholarship? dr. mcpherson: it is a much greater emphasis on social history, on the activities of ordinary people and how large historical events impinge and impact of them. clearly in reconstruction we are going to learn as we had over the last 30 or 40 years of reconstructing history but even more so over the next 10 years the way in which the experience impacted race relations impacted the black community the black church, like education in the south -- lack education in the south. -- black education

in the south. gender relations. that will be the direction of the next 10 years as it has been for the most part over the last 10 or 20 years as well. peter carmichael: we have a good number of high school students. some of them are going to go to college and presumably be interested in history. we have a good number of college students who are majors in history. what type of advice would you give to somebody, 18 years old or so, who was interested in being a history major? dr. mcpherson: study. [laughter] dr. mcpherson: work. abraham lincoln was once asked our young person who wanted to become a lawyer could become a lawyer and he said you have got to study, you have got to work. work is the answer.

and i think that is the answer for somebody who wants to become a historian too. it is a great profession teaching is a great profession, research and writing is i think a very rewarding process, but it is also very hard work. and you have to understand and appreciate the degree to which it is going to involve sometimes very lonely work, especially research. peter carmichael: do you have a routine everyday? you get up and you do this and this? dr. mcpherson: i am not very well disciplined and that -- in that. i proceed on an ad hoc basis. as deadlines approach i work harder. [laughter] peter carmichael: you sound just like me. >> in "battle cry of freedom," you wrote that you thought the south had a chance to win independence and you cite four

periods of contingency that went against the south. you still have the same opinion -- who you still have the same opinion and would you add or subtract the four? dr. mcpherson: i have not changed my mind about that. my arguments about that still are successful. actually the first of the four turning points was in favor of the confederacy. it looked in the spring of 1862 like the north was about to win the war. they had one a secession of important battles -- won a succession of important battles. mcclellan looked like he was closing in on richmond. the confederacy of jefferson davis was depressed. they had loaded the archives and

confederate gold on trains to take it out of richmond because it looked like richmond was about to fall. and the war might have been over in the spring of 1862 but as everybody knows, jackson and lee and the confederate counteroffensive change that. that was the first turning point. the second is antietam. the third one was gettysburg and vicksburg and then the last one was sherman's capture of atlanta and union victories in the fall of 1864 and lincoln's reelection. each of those blunted confederate momentum. it looked like it might be moving towards some kind of victory but turned it around. and the final one turned it around permanently. i would stick with that basic approach even today. 27, 28 years later.

>> we are coming out of a commemorative period of the civil war as mr. carmichael has noted. what do you think the great challenges are in the way in which we remember the civil war? dr. mcpherson: well, i guess we challenge is to continue to try to understand its impact: it's continuing impact -- impact, it's continuing impact on america today the discussion we started out with about what happened in charleston. quickly, the civil war was the most important event in our history in shaping the world in which we live. not only by preserving the united states as one nation,

matter that of course was deeply contested until 1865, not only from 1861 to 1865 but earlier as well. abolishing slavery, the issue that have made a mockery of american professions of being a "liberty to oppressed people from around the world. -- beacon of liberty to oppressed people from around the world. those issues are important to the identity of what kind of a society we are. the civil war in another respect to modern america -- shaped modern america. until 1865 there were two ideas about what kind of a country that should be. whether it should be a society based on a kind of democratic capitalism scenario, democratic

capitalism, urbanizing and industrializing society, or one based on a kind of seniority on -- seniorial agricultural society based on forced labor. to us today it seems inevitable that the democratic, entrepreneurial capitalist model of what kind of a society the united states ought to be would prevail but that was not so clear to people in the 1850's by any means at all. and the civil war really determined what kind of a society, for better or for worse, and not entirely for the better. in many ways it might be for the worse but at least we can understand the way in which the civil war helped put america on the path that we have been on in the past 150 years. and i think that is what is really important about studying

the civil war. >> to ask another question about changes in historiography, given all of the work that has been done on civil war memory recently, would you change the place you chose to end "battle cry of freedom?" would you change the ending in anyway as you reflect upon it -- in any way as you reflect upon it today? dr. mcpherson: i am not sure i understand the import. for one, this was a volume in a series and i was told i was writing in the period so i ended in 1965. [laughter] dr. mcpherson: if i was writing a book entirely shaped by my own concept of what the book to be, i think the reconstruction period is an internal part of

the story of the civil war and clearly as we are having now into the sesquicentennial -- having now into the system can the old -- sesquicentennial that is one of the questions about reconstruction books or books about reconstruction will take. to see it as part of the larger story of the civil war. because you are quite right, the question is quite right to suggest that the story is unfinished in 1865. the three great constitutional amendments that grew out of the civil war, only one of them has been ratified in 1865. and so the story of the civil war is also the story of the 14th and 13th amendments and the way in which those amendments which are the basis i think of

more jurisprudence than almost any other part of the constitution even today, the way in which those two amendments are part of the larger story of the war. and clearly i think that is one of the directions that scholarship is going to go in the next decade or two. peter carmichael: time for one more. >> what type of nation do you think would have emerged if the south had won the war? dr. mcpherson: well, we would have been two nations. and i think the confederacy would have persisted for a good many years, maybe a good many decades, as a slave society.

i also think that the president -- precedent of a successful secession might have caused further secessions, greater movements for disunion. the populace in the 1890's for billing against the eastern banks -- rebelling against the eastern banks, and either would have been a populist republic in the midwest -- maybe there would have been a populist republic in the midwest or far west, who knows. maybe the united states would have broken up into several countries. clearly that was one of the fears are one of the reasons that the northern people and the lincoln administration refused to accept the legitimacy of the secession. the question of the fatal precedent that would end the

united states as one nation indivisible. nobody can say for for what is likely to have happened but clearly for a few decades that would have been no united states in the same way that it existed before 1860. peter carmichael: so i am going to put you on the battlefield. we have something of an obsession about gettysburg. you are in front of the monument . we have the lee monument dedicated in 1913 without the statue and it is added later. dr. mcpherson: 1917 on the statue. peter carmichael: the 1913 reunion on the killing ground. the killing ground, 50% casualties. on the other side we have the high water mark monument.

with your students, you have the july event and you have all of these layers of history. i am curious how you deal with that and how you deal with the issue of reconciliation and the war for emancipation. there is a lot embedded in my question but i am curious. on the ground, how do you engage students? talk to them about these complex things? dr. mcpherson: well, i was involved in the planning for the new visitor center here at gettysburg. and i am a member of the board of the gettysburg foundation and i worked with john latcher

and the others that planned the visitor center. along with other historians, scott hardwig, the others. we strongly supported the idea that the main concept of understanding the importance of gettysburg is not the high water mark of the confederacy, but it is the new birth of freedom that lincoln mentioned in the gettysburg address. and i think, that is what i tried to deal with when we are talking about the high water mark, the meaning of gettysburg. clearly it was a high water mark for the confederacy. that is still an important part of understanding the battle especially its military dimensions. but gettysburg i think in a deeper and more important sense

it was lincoln who defined the real meaning of gettysburg. and the key concept varies the new birth of freedom. -- there is the new birth of freedom. peter carmichael: i am going to take the new birth of freedom and lead into my final question. a work by the former president of the university of richmond, a southern historian who has dabbled in civil war history. his work is worth reading. this is from a piece. it is an article about the civil war. i am going to give an exerpt. "folks who place emancipation along union. anti-slavery, progress war and national identity intertwined at the same time of the civil war so that each element became inseparable from the other.

the story has become common sense to americans. emancipation, war, nation, and progress all seem part of one story, the same story. oh -- story." i would add to this that this is the new birth of freedom you mentioned. how do you feel about this as a criticism of your work? dr. mcpherson: it is a description of my work. he has nailed it. i see the civil war because all of these things intertwined. i do not make -- as all of these things intertwined. i do not make any apologies. peter carmichael: i am struck when i go back and look at this piece, and i have great admiration. dr. mcpherson: i he is my friend. peter carmichael: the uses the word contingency.

he calls for a deep contingency. i said that this is not different than what you are suggesting an "outcry over freedom." -- in "battle cry of freedom." i have not read your book in a long time. when i was preparing the conference i was seduced by his criticisms especially those suggesting that civil war historiography is taking a new term a new historiography which they call a dark turn. icy elements in the dark turn already in --i i elements of thes dark turn already in "battle cry of freedomee." dr. mcpherson: i will agree with that. [laughter] peter carmichael: what about

your former students? he is the editor of the journal a very fine piece from one of your students. what do you believe about the dark turn? dr. mcpherson: i am not sure what you mean. peter carmichael: i can read your quote. "the civil war emerges in the dark turn as just another messy ghastly conflict between two parties who were bolster some degree in the wrong -- both to some degree in the wrong. latest files to creditors under even the most uplifting moments. few winners and fewer winners and little glory and scant justice." dr. mcpherson: ok, the idea that the civil war really was it is a kind of deal revisionism -- neo-revisionism.

it was useless because it did not accomplish anything. peter carmichael: 700,000 casualties. was it worth the freedom for african-americans in slavery? dr. mcpherson: it comes out of the skepticism about whether the civil war did accomplish a new birth of freedom. but i think that if one goes back and takes a look at what the slaves themselves thought about the freedom in 1865, or even at the nadir, as one black historian called it, in the early 1900s, that is clearly better than slavery. and clearly i mean, there is no, in my opinion, the civil war accomplished a huge amount in terms of changing the direction of the country and changing it