me to use so much of what he gave me. thank you for being such a fantastic audience. [applause] >> you are watching american 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on cspan3. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. >> now, a roundtable of public historians and successes of remembering the civil war 150 years later and how it compared to earlier anniversary celebrations. they describe the changes in how parks have interpreted the civil war era over the years and challenges in engaging younger generations and minority groups. the emerging civil war blog hosted this event. it is about an hour and a half.

>> we have a number of speakers to speak about legacies. mean?id the war how do we still remember it? how is it still with us? i'm going to toss out a couple of questions to our panel, let them answer, and then we will start taking questions from you in the audience to feed off some of the comments. let me introduce our panelists tonight. starting on the left of the table, chris white, a former historian with the national battlefield, a licensed battlefield guide at gettysburg. you can probably drop him on any field and he will tell you this regiment was right here and the shoe size of the colonel. [laughter] >> chris is also the emeritus

editor of the emerging civil war book series. , he is the series editor of that. please welcome chris white. him as a man it needs no introduction because i've introduced him was already tonight, the editor of "civil war times" magazine. he has been here 16 years. one of the most fabulous and gracious editors anyone in this business could work with. thank you for agreeing to be on our panel tonight. [applause] >> next to dana is matt atkinson. matt is a little difficult to explain. [laughter] >> that joins us from the gettysburg park where he is an historical interpreter and ranger. he has worked at pittsburgh and petersburg. he is a native of mississippi.

we have asked them to be on the panel tonight because he has the coolest accent of anyone in the room. [laughter] [applause] >> [indiscernible] >> all you have to do is speak. [laughter] next is emmanuel. has an appendix in our latest series book where he talks about events at wilson's wharf. he is a talented young man whose -- who has spent much time bringing attention to the colored troops, the freedmen's theau, and most importantly energy that attraction people to a story that is 150 years old. [applause]

>> rob is the historic site supervisor for prince william county. he is in charge of a number of their various historic sites. he serves on the board of directors for the virginia association of museums, the board of director for the civil to trails, and newly elected the board of the mosby heritage area, a place where as a young man he fell in love with the civil war many years ago. [applause] finally, the foremost authority on cavalry in the civil war. he joins us tonight from columbus, ohio. he has a list of publications as long as your lanyards. many of them are upstairs. please feel free to take a look at eric's books. one of the things that is most impressive about eric's last year he served as our keynote

speaker, and he said he is at a point in his career where he wants to work with younger historians to help mentor them and provide them the same guidance so many people provided him as he has been growing up in his career. we are very pleased to have eric joining us tonight. [applause] i'm going to start us off with a slow, underhanded softball pitch. i will ask chris to stand at the plate to start. the sesquicentennial is behind us, but the civil war is still very much with us as indicated over the last few months. with the sesquicentennial fresh in our minds, what is the takeaway for us? chris: thanks for having me. that is an interesting question posed to a panel last week in new york. we were there for the 154th new

york regiment family reunion where they have come together, assistance -- descendents have come together for the last 30 years to meet. it was an interesting mixture of people. it reminded me of the postwar coming together of the soldiers on the battlefield. it was an eye-opening experience. as we sat up there last week and i answer the same question, what came to mind to me, and i would be very interested to hear what they say to this. i would not have said this a few months ago. sesquicentennial turned out to be more of a failure than it could have been when the shootings in charleston illuminated we failed to reach a certain point of an audience maybe it is because of the confederate flag issue and other underlying issues that people

had not tackled the sesquicentennial to the extent i thought they would have. i volunteered at many events. we would see a lot of enthusiastic folks like yourself. we would go to the next battlefield, the next anniversary, and see the same 400 people that came to the last event. we would see a sprinkle and of new faces -- sprinkling of new faces. it was interesting to see how there was a core group that kept coming out. our blog has reached a new audience. we do see a younger audience coming in. we also see older folks come in and engage with us. i thought that was one takeaway. in may, i would have had a different answer. i was shocked to see the reactions on social media. maybe we failed to reach a portion of the audience. it could be because of lack of funding, it could be the

it could be that people are arguing world war ii has become more of a hot button issue to talk about. that is something i took away from it. maybe we failed to engage a certain part of the community to bring them in and get new blood into it. it was interesting to hear what dana had to say about that. i let some other folks talk and can gladly talk later. matt? matt: it is called the hot potato. i don't know how to compare the 150th because i was not hear 100th orleft for the 50th. i can tell you now that we were having a discussion today about lower visitations at the various battlefield parks. i don't know if the country will

suffer from a hangover from too much civil war. the younger crowd getting into it. social media is going for us. does this translate to people coming into the parks and continued interest going forward? that is what concerns me. in larger civil war parks that you would think would be full, i am not saying they are ghost towns but there has been a dramatic drop off in visitations. the 150th? i don't know. if you think about trying to plan an event for each park or to make everything special and differentiate between each park, how would you do that? how do you make your own site unique? you're if you judge --

going to make me say it --the sesquicentennial by its merits, i think you would have to go park by park. it was a chance, to me, being in a larger civil war park, it was a chance for me to see the ,maller civil war parks shine such as petersburg which does not have the visitation i have. the spotlight in 2014 was upon them or appomattox in 2015. i thought that was the great thing that came out from the sesquicentennial going forward. hate that the 150th was a failure. [laughter]

>> we have pistols. emmanuel: i say that only because i missed the 100th because i wasn't even thought about. 125th, i was around but a little kid more interested in superheroes than being a civil war curator at a national park. mom was a young adult, she was guess, graduating from high school in 1965, a segregated high school in a little county south of petersburg. she had no engagement whatsoever with the civil war, zero. she missed part of the one and two 50th -- 150th.

growing up, i realized i would not become a superhero, so i guess i needed a real job. i ended up at the civil war battlefield. it was my interest that sparked her to read and study and go , no child can me drive. with the 150th, it brought the civil war to a little community in vermont who had a series of articles in their local newspaper. in virginia, many of you are familiar with the history mobile that crossed the state, went out of the state for antietam, gettysburg, north carolina for some little event down there.

festivals andnut barbecue events and political events. where the civil war may not have happened in the sense of gettysburg with its thousands of people every day of the week, people engaged with the civil war in different ways. maybe they did not come to the battlefield, but they read about it in the newspaper. because we did not have half a million people at each event is not the way to judge whether it was successful or not. rob: you have to figure out how you will quantify success .n

how strong thet civil war trust has gotten in the last five years i see it as a success because of the facts and much land has been preserved. maybe if some people today do not find interest in it, that land is there so the stories can be told. i see it as a land preservation success, which i think public historians are using as a goal for their research and telling stories. >> i have a different perspective because i spent five years as a member of the governor's sesquicentennial commission. we were sent into a fight with both hands tied behind our backs. the museum of ohio appropriated us a grand total of $50,000 for five years. we had $10,000 a year to spend. obviously, we did not get much

done. it was frustrating. it eventually reached the point where i stopped going to the meetings because it was a waste of time. we cannot do anything. it was not a valuable use of my time. i went off and did my own thing, as i often do. i ended up attending a bunch of different sesquicentennial events. about 40e gamut from the day of the commemoration at course it's no that day, that may have had something to do with it, to 30000 and bentonville -- at bentonville this past march. it shocked me how many people were there. i had no expectation of anything close to that big of a crowd at a state park battlefield. they had 30,000 people on one saturday. another 25,000 on sunday. it was spectacular. i ran out of books to sell

midafternoon on saturday. i ended up volunteering at the reenactment to have something to do. it was remarkable to see the size of the crowd that went to watch this reenactment. i think it is hard to say it has been a failure. it is also hard to say it has been a complete success. i think you have to look at things on a case-by-case basis. in ohio, it was a spectacular failer because we got no support from anybody. in other places like bentonville, it was a spectacular success. how do you quantify that? lots of different levels or lack of support. if we are looking at different metrics of success, eric talked about selling out of books, readership, you are plugged into the publishing industry. what do you see as far as readership trends? we did'm sorry to say

not see a massive uptick in subscriptions. i almost want to divorce that from the sesquicentennial because the publishing industry is facing a lot of challenges. i have had to take the philosophical approach. look at the increase in the number of blogs over the past five years, and high-quality blogs getting traffic. i look at them and see comments on them as well. although we did not experience this massive uptick i was hoping which istayed stable good. i was with the magazine at two outreach events, the 150th commemoration at gettysburg and appomattox.

at those events, i was thrilled with the outpouring of the public that came to them. i was at bentonville as well. it was also, as eric said, very well attended. there were some events really well attended. i think for some of us, the feeling of disappointment, i was born during the centennial. i kind of grew up in the afterglow of it. i was not part of that, but i remember reading about it, finding stuff in "life" magazine's and things of that nature and looking at these massive crowds. the allowed reenactments on the national parks at the time. i felt this was not as big as the centennial, but it is a different era. when you parse it down further, the centennial was very simplistic. ay, let'sus gr fight the battle.

i thought the sesquicentennial --i said that pretty well sesquicentennial -- was pretty sophisticated in the programming offered. i found it impressive the depth of presentation offered at state park sites drilling down into the social experience, the united states colored troops experience. adth to ita bre that did not exist during the centennial. maybe if you look at quality over quantity, we can gauge it as a success. purely in dollars and cents , there is a lot more pull for the entertainment dollar now than there was in the 19th excuse. -- 1960's. people have a lot more options to amuse themselves. we could go down the rabbit hole and say, how is high school history treating them people and is a capturing their emotions

and making them want to study history and go to things like this? but i am afraid you would have to have an entire symposium devoted to that. i know we don't want to do that, so i will pass it back over to chris. >> if we agree there are many different ways to look at the success or lack of success with the sesquicentennial, that was still a good excuse to focus on the civil war. now we don't have that excuse. why should we keep looking at the civil war? what has happened recently in the united states, it is an unhealed country. reconstruction was clearly a failure. a lot of us can agree with that. these are deep-seated issues. it is not just the confederate flag. there are a lot of deep-seated issues they go beyond a flag on a flagpole.

there are a lot of people that still feel disenfranchised going back to the roots of the civil war and reconstruction. i think it is very interesting. looking even in the state of pennsylvania a few years ago, we were having problems with what was being perceived as a poll bulliedoters being because voters had to get a 90 card -- and i.d. card of some sort to be registered to vote. you have this show some sort of photographic i.d. a large part of the population in pittsburgh and pennsylvania did not have those identification cards. a form of voter intimidation you would see in the days following the civil war. we definitely still have those issue floating out there. that is one way of looking at it. we can go beyond the battlefield and tackle some of those issues. there is definitely fertile

ground that needs to be killed -- tilled there in academia and public history. when i am not writing history, i am a lawyer. that is how adults get paid. unfortunately, history does not pay the bills. but i digress. one of the things that fascinates me is we are revisiting legal issues that occurred in the century prior to -- a half century prior to the civil war. they are rearing their ugly heads again. nullification. how much discussion do you hear of people who are disgruntled with the fact there is someone in office who does not share their philosophy? they say we don't like that so we will nullify the loss. how did that work out the last time? not real well. yet here we are 150 years later having the same conversations.

george was right when he said those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them. i wanted to piggyback on the law end of that, we get some amendments in the aftermath of the civil war. that is the legacy that continues to pop up in legal cases. in the them dealt with last cycle in the supreme court where you cannot ignore the constitution is dramatically it hadnt by 1875 than all of these when wonderful changes are happening in how we kill each other. there had been no change in how we treated some people. continue, andg to

i do think we are, someone asked me at work one day, you are young, do you think we will ever be done with race in america? no, i just don't. on one level, that is ok. on another level, it is not ok because we seem to continue to kill each other instead of talking about what is exciting about being diverse. these things are going to continue to pop up and swirl around in large part because a classeseople in certain of the economic system live in much more -- a much more diverse world and a lot of other people in this country. we think i know someone who is asian, poor, rich, or better off than i am. i middle-class. i have a car, a job. i have people down the street who have adopted kids of

different cultures and ethnic groups. that is not how most people are living in large pockets of this country. for them, that sort of world that this chris was mentioning is not so far and -- foreign. it is every day since 150 years ago and in the 100 years maybe before that. >> that is pretty heavy to follow. [laughter] rob: when you look at the visitors who come to our site and battlefields, one thing we all have in common is storytelling. if you have an interpreter or guide who tells a good story, you are going to pull in someone who does not fight an interest in the civil war.

i will pick on my wife because she is not here. when we go places, she can pick up a good storyteller. if a person on the civil war tour can capture her, that is a good interpreter. i think americans in general love to hear good stories. it is entertainment. the first professor day of school said, why do we study history? he said we study history to entertain people and tell good stories of what happened. the other deeper meanings come from that. i think the interest in the civil war will always be there because it is here. you can visit these places. world war ii is interesting and but it can be hard for us to pay for the plane ticket to fly to france or germany. you can see the stories and where they happened here. dana is right about education. we could take a couple of days to talk about why high schools do not teach american history.

that is something good teachers are working on. if the site still good stories, people will come because they will want to hear the stories. >> matt? matt: i get the final word, fantastic. warn't know why the civil still has meaning. coming from mississippi, i think theresay with certainty never been a republican elected locally since reconstructed. they are elected nationally but not locally. you're wasting your time to run republican. in pennsylvania, you might as well not run democratic because you're wasting your time doing that. that is the legacy of the civil war that directly comes out of that. i think part of the mentality -- i don't see it so much with the north. gettysburg has more people

from all over the country. in the south, the mississippi, -- in mississippi, it is kind of static. it is obviously more conservative. it goes back to those roots. you can still see in some pockets like when we were driving down here today, you can still see despite the traffic some of old virginia stuck in between these highways. you can see what it was 50 years ago or something like that. in mississippi, people are not sitting around worrying about the civil war. ohio,re the same as indiana, or anywhere else in the country. they don't sit around all day and get their paycheck and go down to the bar and say i hate the yankees. [laughter] >> they might hate the baseball team. [laughter]

matt: but when they do focus upon it, i was at vicksburg one time. i don't mean to overplay this. but the unique thing about it to me was that when people got focused on the civil war, mostly southerners and locals, they would drive three or four hours to come to vicksburg. during that time in that car ride, they have figured out somebody had mistreated their ancestors. by the time they got to vicksburg, that somebody would be the federal government. [laughter] despite myself having plenty of confederate ancestors, i became the representative of that. so they would tee off on me about the transgressions of 150 years ago, 140 years ago. it was quite unique to see it. one of the kids down in the deep hats, these are civil war

and that we sold 10 to one confederate to union caps. up in the north i bet it's completely reversed. and that's a legacy of the civil waffer, because people come to these historic sites and they are basing their interception on their ancestry. like you were walking -- talking about fredericksburg 6r789 you were proud of that. the further we get away it from, it's going to be harder and harder to stay in touch with it, but on the other hand, it is still alive and it will always be with us, because there's always going to be questions that are just not going to be answered. there's never going to be that definitive answer to just pick your choice right there. >> talk about angry letters, i've heard you talk about angry

visitors, things that are said. as someone who's worked the battle fields myself, i've had people who are still living the war in some way, even if they're not going down to the bar on friday night. what's been your experience, what do you do with people who might be carrying the war with them in some way? >> i'll take care of that. i had some guy leave a review of one of my books on amazon, gave it one star and absolutely blasted it. why? because i didn't portray the confederacy and its soldiers as being evil nazi-like creeps who were out to be nothing but evil and do evil. and that just floored me. the historian's job isn't to pass judgment. the historian's job is to

.ntercept d pass judgments. i didn't paint the confederates as these evil nazi-like reaches just staggered me and made me say what in the world is wrong with this guy in a much more colorful language. >> if you run a million people through a building, you're going to get some angry people. it might not even be about the civil war. sometimes you get some couples in there been in the car too long, just see it coming right there. you know, you just never know what you're going to get. i had a european one time walk up to the desk and he meant well. he had the american flag draped

around him like a cape, like superman and he walked away from the desk and i turned to my co-worker and i said he'll never make it out of the front door dressed like that. on sure enough, somebody complained about that, because they didn't feel he should be wearing the flag. that's another story. when i first started, i would engage. i guess i've gotten punch drunk to it over time. when i hear angry -- and i -- you know, from lincoln being the greatest president of all time to a tyrant to robert e. lee to a traitor arched the greatest thing of the south. once you hear all the spectrum or the broad range of opinions, you eventually get like muhammad ali, you remember when he was older what his strategy is. it was called the rope-a-dope. what do you do? you just let them punch themselves out. once they tire themselves out,

maybe then you can communicate with them. most of the time otherwise, they've their point to make an you've just got to let them go. because why? he customer is still king. >> anybody have any -- gentlemen? >> ok. i'm going to start my question basically as a statement, because i was involved with spotsylvania county for four years or so on the tourism and special events commission. and the county, as the sesqui-centennial arrived took great pride in being the first county in the commonwealth to have a sesqui-centennial commission and it was also, unfortunately, i think one of the first to drop it due to

so-called budgetary constraints. but just saying that, and going through the 35st four -- past four years of what spotsylvania ounty did to celebrate the sesqui-centennial is hold fireworks displays, as far as they're concerned, big bang for the buck. they passed on a lot of the history. but the one thing they did do was to assist the commemoration of the first black regiment to fire on the army of northern virginia, the 23rd usct's. they helped facilitate a commemorative march where they proceeded from the march to ross' calvary. with that in mind, that's the most important i think has come

out of the sess centennial. number one, the african-american community which was completely dismissed during the previous event 50 years ago, the centennial, was more engaged and having heard for years that african-americans don't visit battle fields, i was very pleasantly pleased that over the years i have seen an increase, not only here in spotsylvania but manassas and gettysburg. i think the african-american community has had an engagement now with the legacy of the civil war and they're embracing it, knowing primarily the fact that the individuals who i put together with the 23rd usct were locals who had noed idea that this was what occurred with

their ancestors and, you know, these are former slaves from fredericksburg and surrounding counties, actually came to this county and fired the first shots against the south. i think this is encouraging. unfortunately, we have the incident in charleston by a little coward who kind of diminished theavering we had gained. we had just got through 150 and i think we were about to hang our hat up with some pride on this. but upon that, the engagement of the african-american community, hand it to you all. what do you think of that? that is the most important thing, i believe. >> i'll start off real quick with that. >> i've definitely seen more

book signings, more round tables, definite larger engagement. when i was at the parks service, the first week of training, they came in to do one of our training sessions and said you'll be able to count on one hand how many african-americans come through the door. i think one of the important things is getting out and gauging that community and the longest time it was figure out just how to do it. and i've seen some very good shots at it and i've seen some very, very, very poor shots at it just down the road here at the cell phone wall jackson shrine. i can think of an incidents involving one of my colleagues. we can see it through our blog and facebook pages along those lines. not sure how that translated out on to the battlefield so i'll pass it down this way. >> i can't really speak to the battle field because that's not my work environment where i spend a lot of my time, although

i've made notes to my colleagues, in the past few years when i've been out of attle fields, chive do quite frequently, i've seen more african-american presence than i've seen in the previous sesqui-centennial. and i do find that heartening. i can't remember exactly the darktse but i think about three or four years ago we ran a cover the ivil war times" with united states troops on the cover. i was told not to do that because it wouldn't sell twell. and it didn't sell well, unfortunately. a few years later we tried it again. and someone will have to help me because i'm drawing a lank on -- blank on the names. the famous picture of the african-american holding the beau wriy knife with the -- >> chandler. >> the chandler image.

e ran the chandler cover and didn't include andruw. that ran very well. it was a story about black troops, saves in the confederate army. i apologize. i'm again drawing a blank. this sometimes happens, but we ran most recently a cover image of the african-american slave, the arlington woman that they found -- >> selena gray. >> selena gray, thank you. they found her image in england. and i was told, do you really want to do this? it's female, which is a risk. it is, to some extent, and an african-american. we went ahead and ran it and that cover was a strong seller. sold quite well. not even a military topic. ok. so from my yard stick, my

ability to measure what john was talking about african-american engagement, i just threw what -- through what i can view -- i'm not saying all african-americans are buying those but the interest in that story is definitely increasing and i've seen, i know, tangible evidence through my work and intangible when i'm out just observing. so i think it's a positive thing. matt: that's my girl, saline -- >> that's my girl, selena gray. yeah. there's definitely been a change , a pleasant change in the interest -- in the experience of black people during the civil sonchese to slaves to

free blacks. in some ways, i guess i'm going to say -- i disagreed earlier but i somewhat agree now. one-50th missed the free black experience in this country. it was slaves and soldiers and we missed this group of people which i care about because my family were free blacks, most of them, during the civil war. but, anyway, where we did engage, whatever status people had, free, enlaved, in between, contraband status, and the soldier or naval experiences, there has certainly within more interest. i just gave a tour last weekend in petersburg about the experiences of free blacks and slaves before and during the civil war, had a good turnout. i stuck around another 30 minutes after the tour ended answering questions.

arranging for other dates people could have me come talk to their church and their school and their family and blah, blah, blah. in that way we certainly have moved beyond where we were 50 years ago when black people were struggling to vote and eat at a lunch counter and walk through and ront door of a store purchase something. we had a -- when i say we, i didn't experience it. but we this nation had a set of different priorities 50 years ago than maybe we thought we did through 15, perhaps now we've realized we have not crossed into the world of the so-called post racial america. and to get to that point i think now we've -- the n.p.s. has started to move beyond just black and white.

this country is composed of many different people. if you don't know, public ished a book about hispanics during the civil war, one about asians during the civil war, so -- and one on american indians during the civil war and it was great for me. i got to work on some of those publications and i'm getting stories, can you comment on this asian soldier at your battle field? i'm like, wait a minute, there's an asian soldier in here? and it's -- and it's like there wasn't just one. there was this one and this one. so it's making those of us who -- worked many this while world for a while are reanalyzing what we think we know. >> real quick. i think and we've talked about this a lot. 's not just a civil war site

issue. it's a museum issue. a lot of surveys have been done. a lot of it's about distrust about what the story the museums are telling. i actually think civil war museums tell a better story than others. when you start telling the stories of free blacks and slaves, then we'll vf -- who have an interest are going to start coming out and learning their histories. you're right, we did miss a lot of stories but i think it was better than the. but it's a problem that all museums are having. i operate many historic sites and it's a problem we have trying to get the african-american community out o our sites and a lot of it is dialoguing, but it does work, especially civil war sites.

i think we do a better job than other museums do. >> giving a different perspective on this, but as the member of the state of ohio's sesqui-centennial commission, three were african-american, one of whom was an african-american woman. we went out of our way to make sure that there was a significant presence on the commission to represent the viewpoint. and we also really went out of our way to make sure that the little bit of programming that we were able to afford to do included things like focusing on ohio's role as a major waypoint in the underground railroad and focusing on the fact that african-americans play a major role in the union winning the war and looking at these issues. so while wed ha no budget to work with, which was a shame, we

at least had the resource available to do the best we could with it. and we made a conscious decision to be as inclusive of that segment of the community as we could for the simple reason that it hadn't been represented reviously and it needed to be. >> one of the questions i get is you can't understand modern race relations in america unless you've looked at the civil war and the aftermath of the civil war. it seems like race rebhains the great unspoken conversation in america. and for better or worse, one of the strongest legacies of the war. what do you guides think about that? are we able to talk about race as a country? are we having conversations that we need to? >> let me follow up on the last question a little bit. you jumped the gun on me. just looking at what dana and

emanuel and eric were saying, our readership, we can always see what our top posts are. we have analytics, we can see this. i always found it interesting. we can post getties wurg and that's always well read. peck boast something that's at nurses ms roles out in virginia is always in our top five almost on a daily basis. as well as another article done by stewart henderson which is simply about african-americans in the american civil war. we don't -- we can't tell if this is school kids using this maybe for a project. we can't tell if it's someone who's just trying to get interested in the african-american experience. it was always interesting to those of us who every year when we look at our top 10 are usually within the top five, if not one or two. they go back and fwort that.

with the race relations as you're asking, clearly it's a hot button issue with everything that's going on with facebook. i've seen a lot more civil war stories than are out there than i ever expected. a lot more experts than i found out -- i've learned a lot about the civil war. really, i need to go get my money back from my two colleges, because i've learned a lot more in the last two weeks -- >> and they're lawyers, too, right? >> that's right. they're all lawyers. >> they all think they're lawyers. >> billable hours. but i think there's a lot that can be said with the race relations. i think that's a topic that doesn't get talked a lot about on battle fields, obviously you're looking at a context. you have a feature in front of you. you have a battle field. the battle of fredericksburg took place in the city and the city actually went through a number of union occupations, and

to see the reactions of the confederates and the union people at the time, the confederate people here interacting with the union folks hollywood come down and seeing the slaves actually self- man's pathe themselves and going across the river is all about respecting. we have people complaining about these yankees coming down here nd talking about their villainy, where at the same time there's a diary that talks about this is my freedom and i can get away from here. so race relations, i think, especially nouhadays, it's all about the context. the things on facebook by the mobs, i don't think is getting us anymore. you want to insult one another from your computer, that's perfectly fine. i don't think it's instructive in any way, shape, or form.

it needs to go into other areas, if it be taking down a confederate flag, if that's what that state wants to do, i think you need to have a debate about what's going on in the country, not screaming matches and people who know nothing acting like no-it-alls, going out and attacking each other. >> well, yeah, but the question is race relations in the civil war? i don't know. i think the recent -- i know the recent vandalism of confederate municipalities hurt me very deeply. i don't know how else to put it. i didn't think that was necessary by any stretch of the imagination. i think i have my come-to moment encounter when i was in -- north of atlanta and i was with a group that was looking at civil war fortifications, and we were

looking at these various forts. they were -- never even involved in exad. they were called chupades named after general chupe. i couldn't even take you there today. but they took us to the backside of a neighborhood and in the back of it there was the remains of this little fort. it's like the only remaining five of -- this fort in the front of it was trash. i mean bags. i'm not talking about something sitting down there drinking cold beer. i'm talking about somebody dumping bag loads of trash in there. i turned to the tour leader and said why do people do this? do they not know the history? this is the only thing on this side of the river. and we looked at me and he said this is not their history.

so i think that moment to me and going back to -- i don't know if it applies to race relations. i guess it does to a certain extent. but going forward, i think how do you make history relevant to people who it is not quote unquote, their history. when you come to gettysburg you have 160,000 white guys and it's going to be very hard to change that fact right there. how do you make it relevant to the rest of the nation? that's the challenge, i think, going forward as we become more diverse. >> i talk about race every time that i'm working with visitors at my battle field in petersburg because we, one, the city in 1816, 3,200 free blacton, enslaved people, and a little over 9,000 white people, so the city is almost half black.

and then during the war years, especially once the military events of june 1864 to april 1865 are happening, they're the largest concentrated use of black soldiers in any civil war campaign. so most of our visitors know us. if they know us, they know us from the battle of the crater, an event that has direct your attention use, not in the sense of numbers. it's 4,300 u.s. colored troops in the battlefield, but the level of anger that they have against the confederate soldiers, the confederate soldiers have against then and the union groups realized to get out of this, we better start taking out some of these black oldiers, in an effort that was

admitted to, the focus of -- i'm not going to say in the present nirm, -- anymore, but our military parks were focused on at 9:00 a.m. who shot who. at 9:05, who left and marched two miles. two hours later, so and so -- we've been plathe at a very macro level and we're just now in the last, say, 30 years oving toward a micro level historically, you know, books being published. maybe only in the last 15 years or so they've made that same move. and so we don't know enough too often about the larger context beyond the battlefield.

why are black troops fighting in the civil war? for a variety of reasons, but one may be that they're not even considered citizens and that there was no pathway, not to get into a modern political conversation, but there's no pathway to citizenship according to the supreme court in 1857. if you don't know about dread scott, you can't understand the civil war. you can't understand why some black people not that i'm advocating this. i've in fact made it very clear online don't support -- tagging monuments, but there has been a long history of black people feeling they're not positioned for power. when you don't feel that way, you will find some power, maybe not in the most productive way. >> one of the things that i find particularly concerning is the rise of neocon fed rat sentiment.

one of the corner stones of neocon fed rat sentiment is slavely wasn't so bad, and the war wasn't about slavery. all of which is intended to cast the abomination of human bondage in a much more favorable light so that the confederacy is viewed as a wonderful thing. and that in turn leads to the deification of people like nathan bedford forest. my thoughts on him are well known and i won't bore you with it. but what concerns me most about forest is this guy was the grand wizard of the ku klux klan. yet he is viewed at this neocon idol. -- neocon fed rat but this whole group that's trying to paint slavery as

benign is something that concerns me more than i can say. and i don't know how we combat that other than to continue to try and educate people, but it is a very scary and very concerning trend. and as this anger at the government among a certain portion of society seems to spread and this type of rhetoric preads, it really worries me because i'm seeing a lot of things being said that were said in the 1 50's. >> we have another question over here. >> i want to look at the sesqui-centennial in terms of the public history perspective. we're coming up on two very important nivers that are going

to generate lots of national conversations. vietnam.anniversary of where i am at the mcarthur memorial, question i would have -- by the way, that touches petersburg and gettysburg both. the question that i would have, looking back through the civil war, looking ahead to these two commemorations that are starting, is there any advice you'd give people who are engaged in this, any bivers practices that can be carried forward or any other sort of perspective, you know, kind of best lessons learned out of the civil war sesqui-centennial that can let us discuss these very mportant nivers coming up? >> [inaudible] funding. sorry. that was just an easy answer.

anybody want -- >> no. go ahead. >> practically, do not prepare mayon aze food in an event in uly when it's 105 degrees. at a site in northern virginia. so vietnam, that is a tough issue. i don't know. i feel like we were talking about this earlier in the second world war, there's still lots of veit nam war, but a lot of people who experienced that event. i think that the takeaway from what this country did not do is we need to make effort every -- every effort that we can to interview people who experienced the vietnam era. i think to make the mistake we're doing is only interviewing

soldiers or sailors or marines or whatever. we need to interview family members and people who didn't have anyone to go. people who were at tests. he support, the nya. we all know that we missed a lot from the civil war, because we didn't interview these people and parties are hard to interview when you don't have a recording device. en by the time we got around to that side of it, most of those folks were gone. so i think this is time to make good use of our oral history skills if you don't have them, find someone who does and certainly the first world war is to find ways like ron was saying earlier, it's hard to go to france and see the battlefields, but to find a way that we can

connect what happened during that war to where we were. side note, we're working on it at petersburg. >> just quickly to concur with what he was saying, particularly with the vietnam war. there is tremendous opportunity to interview veterans and nvolve them in the anniversary commemoration. so that's something, of course, couldn't be done with the civil can't i realize you draw exact parallels, and reading and looking back, when there were civil war veterans around, the commemorations were remarkably several, and there's a lot of debate about the addition of african-americans at that time, but i think that because of the controversy when a lot of vietnam veterans came

home -- and i do remember that. i was too young to serve but i remember seeing the war on tv. it's just stunning to me that we're approaching this anniversary. i'm actually interested in that, and it would be a great mistake in the history of the world not to take advantage of that. i don't really know, there's some great stories you could tell related to world war i but it's not something -- i'd have to think about that a little bit, to be honest. >> any questions? yes. job [inaudible] take on popular culture on the sesqui-centennial. i was talking -- i run a staff of about 60 employees. he day-to-day conversations is -- "12 years a slave" won the best picture. i never saw an article about

this, but my super bowl is the academy awards. the 75th anniversary of the wizard of oz and there was a big production number on the wizard of oz and gone with the wind was never even mentioned the whole time. we've got copperhead coming out at the same time. there seems to be different statements being made to the general public in popular culture regarding the buying against the federal government in copper head involving the younger generations fight and the two massive emancipation movies. what's your take on popular culture's impact on sesqui-centennial? >> that's a greatuestion. >> yeah. >> that's a question that people would not have asked in 1939 about the impact of movies, gone

with the wind, on people connecting with the civil war. some of i mean, i saw those films. i can't say working at a site , at lincoln, the real guy twice during the 9 and a half month campaign and spent the last part of his life in and around that area, i can't say we saw a massive uptick in visit tion due to the movie. but there definitely was, obviously, a connection in the ways that steven spielberg made a lot more money than any of our civil war parts did. people did help when

came to the part to kind of connect people to some -- oh, erhaps away from some of the tropes of the civil war or people of the civil war, and particularly on the lincoln issue about mary lincoln, she is often been this, you know, sort f flittering moron who was dependent, who couldn't do anything worth while and should be more or less ignored except by a few famous people, historians, famous, you know them, i guess. maybe they're not famous. holiday walk of fame. and sallyk that movie field, in her portrayal in "help" i have visitors come in and ask about mrs. lincoln about

how people see her as a person, not a buff afternoon. today we may provide some counseling to, but it's not that she was actively trying to be that way. and to touch on what eric was getting at a minute ago. 12 years a slave in the first five minutes of the movie where there is no talking at all and you're just moving through the river there in the deep south, and i just felt hot and sweaty and i don't want to be in this field picking any crop at all, and nothing needed to be said. it was just the way in which the scene was film. then, of course, as the actors came on and the interaction began, people started to see slavery very differently than mammy and prissy in gone with the wind. and i think that helped to

change conversations on my site -- i also intercept a plantation at my civil war site. was it the same, was it different. how do we know this information? were free blacton routinely stolen and brought into slavery? many of our visitors had never thought about this until the films came along. >> we debate this a lot in the history field when a movie comes out and you get a view visitors nd they go where's buster mc mcgilvera yembings? if you get a visitor from their house on to a historic site, even though i may be upset with the fact that it's not historically accurate, they're

there. and if it takes a movie to get them there, that's great. i was in high school when ken burns just came out. the anniversary of ken burns' civil war is coming up and he's redoing it in high def. i can't wait until it comes out. that's probably the best example, at least of my time of the pop culture, naysayers of the navy killing out that drove a lot of people to visit civil war sites. i'm always happy when i see something in pop culture talk about civil war. it's my job to say, well, mary todd lincoln wasn't like that. she's like this. >> look at the events the last few weeks, with the release of harper lee's "go set a watchman." at cuss finch, of course, is the most quintessential american ever written, ever filmed, but the release of this book shows

that atticus finch was a real human being and that he wasn't necessarily perfect, because he belonged to an organization in the new book that discriminated against african-americans. and the human cry that's gone occupy, because it's sullying the image of atticus finch. i think it's a necessary thing because i think anything that helps focus attention on these issues that lead to some dialogue about the role of race and racial relations in this country is a good thing, and even though a lot of people say the book shouldn't have been published because it's not very good -- and i haven't finished it yet. i'm actually in the middle of finishing "to kill a mockingbird" as a prey lewd to it. but the fact that it's created such a firestorm of controversy demonstrates very clearly that this is a topic that's still

very near the surface and it's something that needs to be addressed. >> it's hard to believe it's been that years since the ken burns movie came out. when that came on, it was like a slack jawed idiot staring at the screen. i couldn't pull away. it inspired debates about the buys he put in it, the misuse of photographs, some of that stuff. but like rob, i said, listen, this is firing up interest all over the country in this period of history, and i think it's going to be interesting to see when this comes out in the fall and pbs rereleased launches its civil war series called "mercy street," which is upposed to be a "downton abby"

series about nurses in a hospital, if matt is going to see an up tick in attendance. sometimes when we have programming, the popular culture is what really is going to reach the greatest audience whether we like it or not. and i think that the media that those stories are going to be presented, you know, you could sit there on your couch. you don't have to put the energy in driving to an nps program or lying about it. they've got the market that's going to bring it to you. i'm excited because hopefully it will bring more to the magazine in history, culture in general. i think the timing is per with the controversy we've been facing this summer over the battle flag in charleston and sort of reintroducing an objective look at least with burns, in my opinion, about the conflict. so that's mine general opinion.

>> the one thing, though, that i think the civil war does lack is a movie that portrays combat. you know, you've got world war ii with "saving private ryan"." omebody help me out." platoon" "full metal jacket." i could quote that drill sergeant all day long. >> please don't. >> we're on c-span. but we don't -- we don't have a movie that portrays what that was like. civil war soldiers out of 365 days may have fought 14, maybe 10, 10 days outs of 365. i mean, can you imagine what they did in tweeng right there? and then to have that shock. i mean, if your best friend if i'm planning along with him --

od plug for your magazine -- marching along shoulder to shoulder with. we've been chums since boyhood and all of a sudden, you know, he's dead, you can -- i don't know who's going to bring that forward. but ken burns, i thought, was the catalyst. going back to what rob said about movies bringing visitors to your park. obviously "gettysburg" was huge. and i was the guy in the mid 1990's who went to the 20th main monument and looked for buster. i admit it readily. i thought so much of that movie. but still it being captured, as bad as it really was. >> this very quick comment of the zhrapet you're calling for has been written in "the red badge of courage." if anybody could do that book justice on the screen, that

tells the story that you are -- that is lacking. >> that's very true. >> just a quick thing is that we shouldn't lose this opportunity with charleston. it's certainly a tragedy. it's sad. but this is a moment to rally around the larger conversation that we've been sort of talking about now for the last 15, 20 minutes, to what is the founding documents? what do they actually say? not as they've been revised but at the time, what the did they say at this time and how did they change at this time and how did that happen and then at this time and who made that happen, because we have -- i won't say what i was going to say, but we certainly have some pageantry in politics lately and we got to get people engaged with the systems, and they -- we have an

opportunity at our civil war battle fields to say, you know, perhaps -- it's been a way, this particular war, to make some changes to the american political landscape and to change people's lives. unfortunately, some people had to die and lots of them. but in the long run, we've had greater good come out of the changed nation as a result of the war. we don't know -- we haven't fully gotten to all of the stories yet. >> do you want to answer that question? to get y walked up to her book signed last weeng. >> wow. >> it's interesting. that may or may not impact you. i like what rob and emanuel have

said on this question, actually, and another question. we have friends who work with the park service when ken burns came out. it was like the greatest time. we got 900 visitors when we normally see 200 visitors. they talked about this big boom of visitors because of ken burns. 's great that got a lot of attention. they pooh-pooh'd this other movie. to me, they were losing a gelleden opportunity. the person may not have come here, yes, without watching a poor movie but now it's your turn as the intercepter to make an impact and a positive impact on that person. maybe it won't change their views on stone wall jackson or the movie itself, but at least you have them through the door and you have an opportunity to expose them to what you have to say, what the movie has to say

and the resources you have. it's like saving private ryan, i see all the time oh, lot of things wrong with the first 10 minutes of that movie. well, it got people like stephen spielberg and tom hanks to back those veterans and back veterans organizations and then go back to what emanuel said. they went out and did world histories. now, they did it simply with the soldiers themselves but at least they were getting their stories down like steven ambrose did. these are the ways in which it impacted pop culture. this is a whole different generation than it was during the centennial. seebest way we can sometime is how many youtube or facebook likes you have. those are the ways we may be

able to see an impact on pop culture and, of course, with the shootings in charleston, obviously, it's right in our face. >> did a research project that looked at attendance and how that correlated to various pop culture events and certainly attendance at national parks spiked when ken burns came out. we saw it with john adams when the book came out. everything related with john adams saw upticks in their attendance. core p ticks because of a larry source. it becomes the historian's job to set the story straight, if necessary. >> versus the titanic movie. >> very good example. the book, very good, so despite the --

>> how do we -- >> just a couple more questions here. everybody holding up ok? everybody doing all right? >> i've heard almost every single person up here and certainly the gentleman over there talk about children, and yet you haven't focused on children. i've heard you say, well, when i was 10 years old this happened to me, my mother, i wasn't able to drive the car, this happened to me. an 11-year-old brought his mother from australia, this happened to me. and then when the question was asked what can we do about world war i, what can we do about world war ii, what can we do about vietnam? you can not forget what happened to you to make you care about history. we need better books. we need versions of a cross five aprils, we need all of those kinds of things that make a kid

interested in what's going on, that spark their interest, that something hink about beyond themselves. i thought about war horse. i'm a seventh grade math teacher. but when war horse came out, we talked about that in my classroom. because it came from a broadway play and they had horses made out ofletters and things like that, very mathematical horses that created movement like a horse. but then they all talked about warhorse. suddenly it flew out the window, math, and we started talking about world war i. i talked about the books my dad gave me about the dogs that ran across no-man's land, taking notes, and carrier pigeons and all those kinds of things.

that made me care about world war i. if you want to know how to fill up your parks, you teach those children. because that's where it started for each one of you. i heard you say it. >> absolutely. >> completely agree, the focus and media and everything else. i need we take it a step backwards. it doesn't start with the park. it starts with the parent. the park can't get the kid there. the parent has to get the kid there. i don't know what camera is on. but unless you get them into it, you know, we're not magicians. >> mps, we know because we work n that world, -- the n.p.s., we've done junior ranger, activity books, you know, one of our sort of joyce is having kids

come up and -- joys is having kids come up and they've done 50 junior ranger books, you're the 51st. give me a pencil and they run off and they're doing it, but those are the kids that are already there. we were talking about we aren't quite getting all the kids. not even getting them exposed to the parks and the n.p.s. has done all sort of studies about, well, what kinds of kids aren't being exposed and typically it's minority children who can't afford the admission fee to your museum, historic site, national park, state park, whatever. they don't have transportation to the location, and there's nobody else in their network that can get them there and we

don't know if that kid'sous there -- out there and they don't know maybe that we're out there. so that, i'm not sure how we get to, though we're always trying. there's always a youth initiative in the n.p.s. to attract more people, more young people. the latest is the president announced that all fourth graders would have a one-year free pass to get them and their families into a national park service sites, cultural, historical, natural, whatever. so the passes that we just got ours in my park, have started to be issued to the parks and we'll start to get them out to the kids. >> the prarntse the people who get the kids through the door. it's interesting what you see walk through a door of a national park service visitor center. especially working adjacent --

with jay -- adjacent to 95, people come in and say i have 15 minutes to kill, what can i see? if the parents come in with that attitude, it's going to be tough to reach out to the kid. on the other hand, i've seen kids mimic exactly what the father, the mother, others have said. i had a child stand in the middle of the sunken road of -- screaming if it would have turned down, a couple of expletives, we could have killed more yankees. he did it so much that the field trip leader had to pull him off the field trip and he told me this is what they experience with the parents. getting them through the door is the key. there are some people who never come to a national park. it's not that they don't want to. they aren't exposed to certain

museums around the country that may have fantastic children's programs but unfortunately children don't have are drivers license and it's hard to get them through the door. it's hard to reach out and touch them. i think that's a great way to try to get them in the park in some way, but you also have to reach out to the parents because you have you have to engage them to get them to a park. sometimes the kids will annoy them enough, if they get into it. i have a great kid in one of my public outreach programs i do, he's fantastic. he's always asking me questions about visiting places. and his dad is embracing the love he has for it. he had no interest in the civil war but he took him around. my dad was the same way. we ended up in gettysburg because it was close by a major car show. i fell in love with the battlefield. therefore, he fell in love with it, too. we have to get them in there.

just figure out how. >> i think we need more rob's. you've visited national parks an taken his son to many of them. >> the pictures are on facebook. >> and named the kid. >> it's interesting. you mentioned that about -- it's interesting you mentioned that about kids, because i consciously put stuff in the magazine like artifacts, thrill shells, plus kets, uniforms, because -- artillery shells, plus kets, uniforms. i didn't start getting that when i was 10. i looked at the pictures. for what it's worth, whether it has an impact or not, i think about that when we put every magazine together. recently one of the editors at my office was at some show and he had a mile of magazines. we publish more than just the

civil war title. he gave them to this family. he gave it to a kid and he said i love the civil war. so i got a picture and stuck it in a magazine, hoping other kids see it. i bet -- i have a strong guess everybody at this table is very conscious of that, because we want to see this history continue to be explored. >> i'm going to ask the same question as i ambushed dana with. but as you send people out tonight, what do you want people to leave with looking back at the civil war, the sesqui-centennial. what's the takeaway? >> i think personally the american civil war shows two things. i gave this answer last week. i'm sort of cheating. i think it is one of the greatest failures of the american experiment. i think it's also the

second-greatest example of the american experiment overcoming some of the hardest issues, yet we still haven't yet overcome those issues. i think the greatest thing of the american experiment was the creation of this country. but the recreation of the united states after the civil war, we were able to get you have put it back together but we didn't do it perfectly. you need to understand that there are issues that have been festering since the 20's, 30's, 40's. even though there was a war and thousands of lives lost, it still impacts us today. it still impacts people who live in the inner city or folks who live in the countryside. it's impacting a larger amount of people because of social media. it's being thrown in their face. the 2-hour news cycle. it's being -- 24-hour news cycle, it's being thrown in their story. there's a lot more to the civil war than blood, guts, things

like that. there are social issues that need to be explored and embraced and debated to this day. >> i will hand it over to matt. i thought i had a few more minutes. [laughter] >> sorry. a couple things coming out of -- and this could be history in general. you always have to go against judging people by the modern standards. you have to judge them by the time they lived in, whether it be the revolution or civil war. pick a time period. the other thing i would caution you about is the bias which i see on both sides going forward. if i ever had to present a controversial topic, which i don't like to do because i like

to be polite -- [laughter] >> i try to avoid that but i think i have done my job if i have made you angry at me at one point and happy at one point. like you were saying earlier, what does that tell you? it probably means you are right down the middle of the road if you are ticking off both sides. >> i would just say go for it and do history. talk about history. last year, 100 50 years, 400 years, we are all in situations. people in this room, out there the american landscape has some sort of interest in american history. make it a part of your daily conversations with people, your friends, coworkers.

something useful in those conversations will emerge either to study or to at least think about. >> two things. not was sayingat about judging people. keep in mind who you study, love, who union your kids after, no one is perfect. you study people in history and no one is perfect. you have to look at it without a bias. no one in this room is perfect and no one who lived during the civil war was perfect. i work where we have a significant hispanic population to get more of that population to visit our sites and they always ask me, it's amazing how this country fought a war for four years and here we are sitting in this room together. where they come from countries that have been fighting a civil

war for 50, 60, 75 years. it says a lot about this country. we have a lot of problems and issues but i think this country can hang its hat on the fact there are a lot of nations led not gotten over their civil war and are still fighting. ouruch as we like to think visitors are still fighting, for the most part, americans are not. >> this fundamental issue in the issue of the u.s. with the conflict between states rights and federal rights. it goes back to be very earliest days of this republic and the debates over the constitution. you want to see an embodiment of it, look at the falling out between john adams and thomas jefferson. come ita trial by fire took the american civil war to resolve that issue. americanre to say the

civil war is the defining moment in american history because it once and for all resolved that fundamental question -- are regarded to be a loose thatderation and states are state centric and not much in the way of the federal government or are we going to be one country with a strong federal government and it took make ital by fire to happen. people don't understand that. take that away with you when you leave. remember that when you think about where we are today as a country, this would not have been possible but for the resolution of that issue. it's the defining moment in american history. >> i will leave you tonight by inviting you to think about where you are literally at this moment. we have gathered on this particular battlefield where men have fought and suffered and sacrificed and died. as we spend the next couple days

thinking about their stories and the legacies they have left for us, consider where able to be here because of what they did for us. let's always keep that in the back of our mind as we continue with our conversation this weekend. thank you so much for being with us tonight. [applause] >> the civil war heirs here every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern time. to watch more, visit our website. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> each week, american history tv brings you archiv f