> a historian edward bone temper discusses his book, "the myths of the lost cause: why the south fought the civil war and why the ." it examines postwar argument made by former confederate seeking to justify their split from the union and their defeat. he argues that slavery and not ts was the primary reason for secession. he also disputes other reasons for the lost cause myth. defeated lee only because of superior troop numbers and resources. the smithsonian associates hosted this two our event. hour event. >> good evening everyone. can everyone hear me well?

i am a program coordinator with the smithsonian associates. i would like to welcome you all to a stimulating program on the myth of the lost cause. it is always a pleasure to welcome ed own cap her back to the smithsonian. through the years, he has presented many outstanding programs to us on the civil war topics. this is his 10th appearance. he is the book review editor of -- "civile editor." he was an adjunct professor at muhlenberg college degrees from old dominion university and muhlenberg college as well as a law degree from jail. theerved as a lawyer with federal government for more than 34 years. as a retired commander in the u.s. coast guard reserve as

well. he is the author of six books on civil war history including, "the myths of the lost cause: why the south fought the civil war and why the north won." which was published last fall and on which tonight's program is based. his book will be available in the museum shops outside at the end of tonight's program. he will be happy to sign copies were you there. with that said, we have a very packed two hours for you. we want to bring up bed. please join me -- we want to bring up ed. please join me in giving a warm welcome to edward bone temper. mr. bonekemper: a pleasure to be back here at the smithsonian to talk about the civil war. i really appreciate the great turnout tonight. it certainly shows the lengths to which people will go to avoid presidential town hall.

s. [laughter] [applause] confess, i do have to that as you heard, i have two history degrees and a law degree so you will not be hearing and argumentative historian this evening. this is also a good time for me to say that these are my personal comments, based on my personal research. they do not necessarily reflect the views of this is sonja at all. -- of the smithsonian at all. mary and the smithsonian should be off the hook. we are here tonight to discuss a very important topic and that is the myth of the lost cause. i will give you a couple of actions of the myths in and then, and then go on to explain the details of the myth, and the components of it and

also then we will take a look at each one. the myth of the lost cause was created by x confederates -- exconfederates including jubal early, pendleton, and reverend william jones between 1860 and 1900 who basically -- to basically justify the civil war. what had happened was that the .orth fought the war and won northerners went home and resumed their daily lives and the warcare much about until about 100 years later. southerners on the other hand, had a lot to write about. they had a lot to justify. what had happened is that almost the entire war was fought in the south and the south was an economic ask a case by the end of the war. northern armies had gone through and destroyed pretty much

anything of economic value. in addition, you have to realize majorhe south's institution, slavery had come to an end. there were between 3.5 million and 4 million slaves with the big question of what was to happen to these african-americans. southerners felt compelled to explain why it was that this devastation had occurred and for example, 25% of southern white men between the ages of 20-45 were dead. not just casualties, they were dead as a result of the civil war. there was a lot of explaining to do. that is the origin of the myth of those first 30 years. it had continued. probably the best example are the seven volumes by freeman in the 1930's and 1940's. in thef all, explaining

first four volumes, that lee walked on water and then in the next three volumes, basically explaining any false that lee might have appeared to have had why blaming all of his subordinates. that was called "please lieutenants -- lee's lieutenants. the reason i felt compelled to write the book was that as i went around the country talking to members of the vote or roundtables i found that a lot of people who in my view should have known better were greatly affected and bought into a very -- very many aspects of the myth of the lost cause. that is why i think it is important for all of us to consider what the myth is and how much we want to buy into that myth.

a good example of what i am change ofout, a position that occurred among southern leaders. on the threshold of the civil war, as seven southern states word seceding before lincoln even took office, jefferson davis gave a very emotional farewell address to the united states senate in which he said sayonara. he said he explained why he felt compelled to leave the union because the institution of slavery was being threatened either the federal government and northern states. int was his discussion 1860-1861. two decades later in 1881, jefferson davis published his two-volume memoirs.

work, jefferson davis adopts the traditional myth of cause positiont and said slavery had almost nothing to do with the war. in fact, he states specifically that there would have been a civil war even if no american had owned a slave. ok. i won't comment on which i think is truth or fiction but note the contrast between the two. this is typical. this is why it is so important to go back and look at the evidence at the time of secession and the time of the formation of the confederacy. people have lot of bought into this over the years. it greatly affected the history of the civil war, whether you were born north, south, east, or west. you absorb some or all of the

myth. that is why it is important to understand what the myth this and to examine how valid you think it is based on the evidence. me statement i have behind -- and i will try to not rely on the lower left corner because i realize you cannot see it anyway. this is a quote from john keegan. john keegan was an internationally recognized military's historian with about 20 history books. he lived in england. he did not understand the civil war that well. he wrote a book on it eventually and it was not a very good book. but, in one of his other books on intelligence in war, he made a general statement and this is where historians run into trouble. i do it myself all of the time. you try to make a general statement about something which

is tangential to what you are really writing about and what you really know about. keegan said the southern people were resolute in their determination to pursue -- to preserve states' rights. he bought into what i consider to be the myth that states' secession inat the the formation of the confederacy were all about. springboard off of that and let me tell you what i see as the major components of the myth. the first one i have just stated. that is an absolutely critical one. slavery was not the primary was thetates' rights primary cause of the civil war. i am now talking on the left there. on that slavery

was a benign institution beneficial to whites and blacks alike. then all of a sudden, it jumps into, the myth johnson to something that sounds inconsistent to what i just said. it says -- by the way, the civil war was unnecessary because slavery was going to expire on its own within a reasonable timeframe. we will take a look at that. further, the argument goes, the south never had a chance to win the war. one would ask -- if that is so, why did you start the war? [laughter] thus, the south did the best they could with the resources it had. part of this then is that robert e lee was a great military leader and he was one of the greatest generals who ever lived. you will find, in a lot of books that take the lost cause position -- they talk about lee

in christ like terms talking tha andolga blessing thed children. he is a mini god of the myth of the lost cause. there are a couple of problems with that. theis that he clearly lost big battle of gettysburg. what to do about that? that became fairly easy to deal with. james long street was made the scapegoat for lee losing gettysburg. one reason for that is because he had the gall to actually take a position in the grant ininistration as a collector your lives. he went over to the republican side and that was death to a political career in the south and made him a sitting target to become the scapegoat of eddie's

for. lee ultimately surrendered to grant. if lee is so great, why did he lose to grant? won myth goes -- that grant only by being a butcher. grant was a butcher and he only won by a group. and finally, the newest spin on the myth of the lost cause is that union forces only won by engaging in total war. beings a phrase that is bandied about fairly loosely these days. we will take a brief look at that. ok. we will start out with what is the nature of slavery in 1861? to dealthink we need very long with the issue of was slavery beneficial to whites and blacks. certainly, certain whites benefited from it and keep in mind, please, when i say

slavery, tonight in shorthand, i will be referring to slavery/white supremacy. becauseon i do that is in the south, even if you did not personally or someone in your family did not personally own slaves, you will still -- you were still the social beneficiary of the existence of slavery. not can be explained by matter how poor you may be, you always knew that in your society, there were 4 million people who were inferior to you as a matter of law and of social practice. that said, let us look at slavery itself. the reason i say we don't need to spend much time is that basically we have a long history of rapes and murders of slaves.

we have beatings and scars on the back. we have massive movements of slaves from the northern tier of southern states from maryland and virginia primarily down to the deep south. best estimate is about one million slaves were sold out of the northern south and the the northern or southern states into the deep south. about one million slaves. if you take that million and adjust and increase for the number of transactions that did not involve such long-distance transfers, i think it is a fair atimate, probably about million slaves over the 200 plus years of slavery were separated from their families. children taken from parents. why it's taken from husbands. there was no thought really given to trying to keep the family together as -- except in

rare instances. it was a common practice to split the families. i put that in quotes because you have to keep in mind that part of the devastating effect of slavery was that slave marriages were not recognized. slaves had first names, but not last names. marriage was not recognized. ofldren were the property the mother's owner and as far as the owner was concerned, it was his economic decision as to what to do with those slaves. hold them or sell them. devastating impact on the african-american family legally keptwere from forming family groups as we know them. i don't think we need to say to justifyingbout slavery.

except to remind you that one reason this comes up is because of approaches to the south, the mint julep approach as reflected in the movie and novel "gone with the wind." take a look at a big shaker full of salt. as i said, there was something that seems to me to be inconsistent. in the mess. and that is despite this wonderful benevolent institution, it was going to come to an end within a , definede timeframe loosely as before 1900. because it was no longer really beneficial economically to the and the reason this argument is made is because then it can be argued that the civil war was unnecessary. the civil war was unnecessary, northerners did not have to

fight the war because slavery was going to disappear anyway. if you look at the records, you will see that the value of slaves throughout the states that became the confederacy was on the rise in 1860. they had reached the highest point they had ever reached. cotton sales were way up. the value of cotton had continued to increase. keep in mind that slaves were not only used to raise cotton but they were used for tobacco, .ice, indigo they were used for a lot of farm production. that also by this time, a lot of owners had recognized that some slaves, despite the fact that they were put down as a group, some slaves had real talent as artisans, blacksmiths and carpenters. they were being least out -- leased out. as the south was being

industrialized in the early stages, slaves were being used in industrial arenas. in richmond, virginia, the tobacco plants. creating cigars and cigarettes. were almost the exclusive labor to run all of the tobacco factories. even more interesting come again in richmond, you have the iron works which was a key industrial force in the civil war making virtually all of the confederate artillery and armory. they were the iron works for the confederacy. it was almost exclusively manned by black slaves. the southerners were beginning to figure out from an economic perspective, there are a lot of other uses to which we can put slaves. part of the argument that slavery was going to go away was also that the south had run out of land that could be developed

for agriculture. i think the simple rebuttal to and is that between 1865 1925, the amount of land dedicated to agriculture in the south tripled. it tripled. more recent studies really show that the land was there to be developed for agriculture, it is just that economically it was not being done at the time. also, in terms of slavery estimate of -- the the southerners themselves in their secession resolutions was that they were depending -- defending an institution which $4 assets in slaves of billion-$6 billion. assets in theized united states, that was the , thest single category

most valuable single category of assets in the united states. the value of slaves. i personally see no indication that slavery was about to go away. now, we get to the $64,000 question. that is what caused secession and what caused the formation of the confederacy? i say that once you had a number seceding, starting with seven and going to 11. let us start with the seven. deep south states. they seceded between lincoln's election and his inauguration in march of 1861. the seven deep south states seceded. seizingediately began the union for its, armories, and

weapons gathered in the south. the only ones that escaped was pensacola and fort sumter in trust them. other than that, the south was already seizing weapons. states were buying weapons in europe and preparing for war. a deliberate decision was made personally by jefferson davis authorizing beauregard to bomb fort sumter to start the war. given the reasons for the south seceding and forming the confederacy, it should not be a surprise that once those things were in place, there was going to be a war. as we will see, there were a lot of people who were trying to avoid a war by dealing with the issue of slavery. the first thing i want to do is

look at contemporary evidence. 1860-1861. i think that is the only, or the most valid way to determine the cause of the secession and the formation of the confederacy asch is relevant today people display the confederate battle flag. my question is -- when they are doing that, what does the flag stand for? it stands for the confederacy. what did the confederacy stand for? we as a society should look into that issue and draw our own conclusions as to why the confederacy. occurred,thing that thehing that is said after middle of 1864 when it was pretty clear that the south was going down the tubes. from that date to the

present is second-guessing. imposing one's own personal views on the situation. want tobid that i would impose any of my personal views on this but -- [laughter] i am trying to focus on what actually happened in 1860 and 1861 and look at that contemporaneous evidence. i think that is our most valid evidence as to why there was a confederacy. handout whichve a has this on it. there are a couple of points i want to make from these statistics which i put together from a couple of different sources. onlyirst thing is that slave states seceded from the union. free states.ut 16

15 slave states. those that seceded were all slave states. that might tell you something that it is more than just states'rights at issue. among the slave states, there are three categories. the first category are the early seceders. the seven that went out before lincoln was president. thathen you have four more went out after fort sumter. they didn't want to take up arms against their fellow states. and then, you have four other slave states, delaware, maryland, kentucky, and missouri. those slave states never seceded. let us look at the data and see if there is a correlation , i will summarize initially that the blackness of the state and how likely it was to secede and when it was likely

to secede. the big numbers appear are in the firstgroup, in group of seven that went out the populationof were slaves. and, and here is the number that may shock some of you, 37% of the families in those states owned slaves. i say it may shock you because the promulgate or's of the lost --se like to say things like did you know that only 1% of americans owned slaves in 1860? slavery could not have been a cause of the war. that includes everybody, north and south including men, women, and children. let us focus on certain states and then not look at individuals. let me move on.

there is another related rationale which is that you know that only about 5% of southerners owned slaves. 5% of southerners owned slaves and therefore the work not be about slavery. what that does is say that if you have a family, and you'll have a father that owns a certain number of slaves and he is married to his wife and he has eight kids. that is 10 people who benefit from having one or more slaves in the family. i think it is rational to look at how many families directly owned slaves. this does not even get us into what goes beyond that which is the whole social structure and the lower-class whites felt about having 4 million people by law subservient to them. let us look at this now and 37% of the families in the first

seceding states owned slaves. the second batch, the ones after 29% of the, we had population was slaves and 25% of the families owned slaves. finally, in the four border states, on the upper right here. the last ones on your handout. only 14% of the population consisted of slaves and only 60% of the families owned slaves. of theonly 16 percent families owned slaves. just on a demographic basis, there is a significant relationship between slave population and family ownership of slaves and the willingness to leave the union and the earlier

the better in cases where those numbers were higher. ok. enough about that. the best evidence, the best evidence of why there was a confederacy is as you would expect, in the words of the seceders themselves. and that is mind-boggling because you can study the documents issued either state about why they seceded. and you do not find mention of the word terrorist which is a red herring -- you don't find tariff.of the word which is a red herring. let me first back off and say

that of the seven first seceding states, six of them left clear statements aboutseceding. actual documents in their secession resolutions or companion documents saying here is why we did this. silent.isiana was we have other ways of looking at louisiana. we are just exploring here is what people said about why they were seceding, why they were forming a confederacy. first of all, south carolina. they issued a declaration of immediate causes for seceding from the union and the complaints were northern states and federal government failure to return fugitive slaves in accordance with the constitution and federal law. "but an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of

slavery has led to the disregard of the obligations and the laws of the general government have ceased to affect the objects of the constitution." self -- south carolina complaints norther states had condemned slavery as sinful. they had elected as president a man who said government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. they even criticized the fact that some northern states had the audacity to allow free blacks to vote. my conclusion on south carolina is far from respecting other states' rights to do liberty laws overextend a certain freedoms or rights to they wereericans, opposed to the states being able to choose themselves what they would do or not do. but in addition we have them

complaining that the federal government is not doing enough. the federal government is not in their view aggressively enforcing the fugitive slave provisions of the constitution and of federal law. believe it or not the u.s. constitution as originally adopted had a specific provision that required runaway slaves to be returned back to the states from which they had fled. this is not just a matter of federal law. about 1792 congress put that in law. in 1850 that statute was strengthened quite a bit. this is typical southern complaint, and fugitive slavery is a big source of aggravation and complaint by the southern states. a complaint that the federal government is not doing enough.

it doesn't sound like they are really concerned primarily with states rights vis-a-vis the federal government. they want the federal government to do with the -- what they want the federal government to do which is reserved slavery. mississippi was right behind south carolina. their governor urged the convening of a secession convention and he said the existence for the evolution of african slavery in the southern states is not up for a final settlement. the legislature called for a secession convention and they had a long list of grievances. the mississippi legislature convening a secession convention. they complained the north had defied the constitution's fugitive slave -- enticed slave to freedom, agitation against slavery, sought to exclude slavery from the territories and

oppose the admission of more slave states. moreover abolitionists sought to amend the constitution to prohibit slavery and to punish slaveholders. they encouraged john brown's raid and had elected as president and vice president who were hostile to the south in a system of labor. doubtgislature left no whatever convening a secession convention, and the convention basically used the same kind of language and obviously seceded very quickly. the convention said in their declaration of the causes of secession, they said this. "our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. the greatest material interest of the world. it's labor supplies product with -- which constitutes the largest and most into that important commerce on the earth.

these products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature none but the black race can their exposure to the tropical sun. these products have become necessities of the world and it loads a slavery is a lowest civilization and commerce. that low has long been aimed at the institution and was appointed reaching with -- it's confirmation. there is no choice but submission to the mandates of evolution or dissolution of the union's principal has been subverted to work out our ruin." that is not some summary by me. that is verbatim what the mississippi secession convention said. they had a long list of grievances. 16 slavery grievances. the point being i wanted to give

you a couple of examples. the point being in all these documents in which the states explained why they wanted to secede and why they were forming a confederacy, one word fronts through it all. the word is "slavery." no other reason given. most of these documents are readily available. you can google them and find them in the official records of the civil war encyclopedia. these are around if you just want to check up on me. be my guest. i think reading these things will be an eye-opening experience. ok. the secession,th other things were occurring which tells us a lot about why there was secession. all the resettlement efforts being made to try to

avoid war. the country was not stupid. the whole election of 1860, the four-way presidential election in which lincoln emerged the winner was all about one issue. that issue was expansion of slavery into the territories or not, with the candidates having different positions on the issue. it was that issue that people were voting on almost exclusively. that was the issue. when lincoln comes in and gets elected on the basis of no slavery into the territories, that sets off fire bills in the south and they are very concerned about the issue. people were not down. -- dumb. there was a great realization that all this could be the war. there were certain leaders in the federal government and in some of the states who wanted to

try to avoid war. at whatke a little look kinds of compromises they wanted to work out to avoid war, we get some real good contemporary us -- contemporaneous insights into what was in people's minds. what was thought to be the cause of secession and if we could deal with certain issues, how can we avoid a civil war? the first major development was in december of 1860. january of 1861 when the senate and the house put together a committee, 33 members, one from each state. the pros up with constitutional amendments. these are generally called the crittenden a minutes after john crittenden of kentucky it was the leader in this compromise. he comes from a slavery state.

but that state never did secede. crittenden was making a good-faith effort to try to avoid war, as were most of the other people who put this package together. is, what wasoint the focus of the package? over the compromises? over the constitutional amendments that were recommended in the same months when south carolina seceded and other states started to follow suit? well, here are what the crittenden amendments would have done to the constitution. extend the missouri compromise slave-freelance the pacific ocean, recognize and protect slavery in existing slave states and all present and future territories, and then prohibit congress from interfering with the interstate trade from

abolishing slavery in d.c. unless certain conditions are met, freeing the slaves of federal officials one conversation with her own slaves. they did not want them to become slave -- free by showing up in the district. prohibiting or interfering with interstate transport of slaves -- these are all things congress would be prohibited by the constitution from doing. and then here is the beauty, my favorite. congress would be prohibited from passing any future constitutional amendments allowing any of the above or authorizing congressional interference with four abolishment of slavery. -- for the abolishment of slavery. we are not only going to address this variety of slate issues all in accordance with the wishes of the seceding states, but we are going to say in the constitution -- and this can never be

changed, this can never be changed. that everygain is one of these points dealt with slavery. they are all addressing slavery issues. there is nothing in here about tariffs or states rights. it is about slavery. the crittenden amendments went nowhere. they were considered in congress. lincoln sent word to the republican leadership which now controlled congress, especially since southern democrats were bailing out which made it easier. lincoln sent the word to the republican party leaders that they were not to go along with any amendments along these lines because doing so would be totally inconsistent with why the republican party was formed in 1854. the principles that the republican party stood for. and with the election results of

1860 when the plurality of americans voted not to extend slavery into the territories by supporting republicans. lincoln thought this would be a total sellout of everything he and his party stood for. he passed the word no. that guaranteed the amendment for going nowhere. for our purposes the important thing to note is that major effort made to avoid war by addressing what issues, slavery issues. continuing that trend, the next month in february 1862 -- 86 he there was a61, major peace conference in washington dc. for intuitively -- fortuitously there is a brand-new book out on that called "the piece that almost was." mark tooley.

if the book -- it is a book. -- it is an excellent book. title is overly optimistic. was."eace that almost it was not going to happen. sevenappened is that states were already out. , theemaining slave states 87 starts -- 87 states that had not seceded all came. and most of the northern states can do this month-long conference in washington dc. at the conference lo and behold whether they do? they propose constitutional amendments to avoid war.

that is what they were all about. what does this set of constitutional amendments say? reinstate the missouri compromise boundaries between free and slave territories, require a majority of slate state senators to approve new territories, prohibit congress from interfering with existing slavery, affirming the fugitive slave laws, banned the importation of slaves, and require the unanimous approval -- my favorite -- require unanimous approval by the states to revoke any of these constitutional amendments. in other words these are going to be locked in as well. one month after the crittenden amendments were shot down the peace conference recommendations were also going nowhere at all. in fact it's kind of ironic.

ex-president john tyler of virginia, which had not yet seceded, chaired the conference. ex-president, big-name. he was a big push her to try to get proslavery constitutional amendments as part of their agenda. he got what he wanted. he stated in the final day of the conference it was now his obligation to present the congress -- these do congress to try to get them past. he sent them pro forma to the senate, never to the house. the next day he showed up in richmond as a member of the virginia secession convention and attacked all the proposals as ridiculous. again, those are all very interesting but the point is trying to avoid war this group came up with -- and even

political leaders from the states, not congress -- they came over their proposals. they were virtually identical to the crittenden once. -- ones. they all got was slavery -- they all dealt with slavery. you can look at southern leaders' statements early in the war before the war as to what this was all about. davis had made his statement in his farewell address to congress when he went home. his vice president, alexander stevens of georgia, gave us a real helping hand in trying to understand what was going on. he delivered in savannah, georgia and about february of 1861 and address called the cornerstone address. it's called the cornerstone

address because in his talk stevens said, " the cornerstone of the confederacy is slavery." frankly i had known that from general reading before. when i pulled this entire speech out and read it through, and is widely available, i was stevensd to the extent went into detail. he said the founding fathers, thomas jefferson and those other guys, made a very serious mistake because they said that all men are created equal. confederacy,in the it stands for the principle that all white men are created equal and black men are here to serve us. he was very specific about this. immediately after the civil war he started the usual backing down. his back down excuse was that he

was misquoted. [laughter] one of the longest misquotes in world history, and the problem for him is that not only to the savanna papers carried a story about this speech in savanna, the atlanta papers carried the same story about the speech he gave in atlanta and which he made the same quote. leadersederate contemporaneously with the formation of the confederacy told us what their views were at that time. now we have yet stevens bailing out. davis bailed out later and said there would have been a war even if nobody owned slaves at all. say if we are really looking at why the confederacy -- you got to go back and look to the beginning and forget about everyone else's rationale later, and i don't care what sites -- side's

rationale was on, it's nice to know but irrelevant. let's go back to the primary original evidence. the confederacy's constitution adopted at the same time. i am thinking very early april 1861. six states and texas came in. they would have started doing and then theyry adopted a preliminary one and the final one. if you look at the confederate constitution, you would think that would tell you something about why is there a confederacy. -- and with the confederate leaders did whether constitution was pretty much copy the u.s. constitution except they built in a lot of extra protections for slavery and pretty much said you cannot tamper with those down the road.

perhaps because i am a lawyer i focused on one provision in the confederate constitution, which i think tells us a lot. that is there is a supremacy clause in the federal -- and the confederate constitution there is similar to the federal one. it says the supreme law and the confederacy is this constitution, confederate treaties, confederate law. and it says state judges are bound by that supreme law regardless of what state law says. hmmm. it sounds to me like the southern states switched masters. and not that each state was going to stand alone and be its own government. they were basically looking for a more compatible and

understanding superior government and not doing this. the on the principle of states rights. throwse clause basically states right out the window and puts the power and the confederacy just as the supremacy clause of the u.s. constitution in general puts the power in the united states government when push comes to shove and there is any conflict over the issues. let's see where we are here. this is the rest of already in your outline so i exactly worry about what is on the board at any given time. [laughter] especially since a quarter of you can't see it anyway. sticking to the outline, the

leaderson of the four seceding states is pretty much documented as being slavery related. the leaders talked about it. the secession conventions talked about it. it's all select a replay of the earlier seceding states, but things have not reached a crisis stage because they were seceding in time of warfare. a lot of them simply did not want to take up arms against their sister states and they wanted to defend slavery. border statesour almost went too. that was one of lincoln's big concerns throw the war. i have given you a lot of withnce, contemporaneous the formation of the confederacy about with the confederacy was about. now i want to go beyond that and look at the confederate

government's behavior during the civil war, which would shed additional light on their purpose. what i submit to you as my personal view is that the behavior of the confederacy in several key areas demonstrates that the confederate leaders were more concerned about preserving slavery than they were, unbelievably, then winning the war. winning the war preserving the independence. it was all about slavery. what are the kinds of things i am talking about? the first is fairly controversial area. the rejection of using slaves as soldiers. wait a minute? . i heard that there were some slaves fighting for the south. look just in 2010. the commonwealth of virginia, well known for the accuracy of

its school textbooks -- [laughter] saidshed the book that 2000 blacks fought under the command of stonewall jackson. the challenged on it, department person who came up with this addition to the text said, oh, that was on the internet. [laughter] it sounds like a good source. they could've at least that it was wikipedia. it was on the internet. that was the source of that. admitwill be the first to that there are probably several thousand blacks who went with her masters to war because the masters were not used to pressing their close, doing their laundry, and all those wonderful little things that slaves could do. a lot of officers in the confederacy took one slave with them to the battlefield.

there were instances with a master is killed or wounded in the slate picks up a gun and fires it or takes care of the master and gets them home with a master's body home. appearance of in slate participation. in addition there is no doubt that tens of thousands of slaves were used as slaves to build fortifications and to do monday things which are part -- mundane things which are part of military life but do not include actually engaging in combat. another favorite example of those who say that blacks participated on behalf of the confederacy is the louisiana guards. there was a unit of about 2000 cece people -- mixed-ra people. they were people there who were

free and had mixed blood. a lot of people were characterized as black even though they were very next race -- mixed race. they signed up at the beginning of the war and said we want to fight with our neighbors. we want to do whatever our neighbors want to do. this may have low have been to preserve their status in society. we don't know. the reasons probably differed from man-to-man. what is interesting -- the argument goes that there were 2000 blacks lining themselves up of the confederacy. the what happened to them? they were not part of the confederate army. they were part of the louisiana militia. they were never provided with arms by either the federal government or the state government. louisianaly 1862 the legislature figured out this did

not look too good. they changed the law that said to be in the louisiana militia you must be all white. outink that example turns to turn back on itself and demonstrates once again the south had a great deal of reluctance to use black soldiers. let's get to what is really iletty clear, and that is ount five weeks before appomattox the confederate government never officially allowed the use of slaves. that tells us something right there. this was an issue raised periodically throughout the war. 1865 thish of practice was not authorized, even when it had strings on it. 1862, 1863, 1864, and

more than two months of 1865 the confederate congress did not authorize slaves to be used in the confederate army. argue that the confederacy did this one as a matter of fact the law prohibited in the confederacy. further evidence of a we are talking about is that on january 2, 8064, -- 1864, patrick one of theirish born, best confederate generals saw what was going on concerning manpower. the confederacy started the war of whiteed 3.5 to one

men of fighting age. they were outnumbered. they had a desperate need for manpower. not movedat, they had towards using the slaves. by the end of 1863 following gettysburg and chickamauga, chattanooga, and many other bloodbaths, the confederacy was really down to the bottom. thenwere drafting boys and from the ages of 15 to 45 and still do not have enough manpower. cleburne spoke up. a produced an issue paper, well thought paper on the subject in which he said we have been decimated. president davis has done all he could to drum up voluntarily or

involuntarily whites all over the south. we have dragged people kicking and screaming about appalachians to fight for the confederacy. but we still do not have nearly enough. we are going to be beaten a mostly find a way to address the manpower issue. in his issue paper he recommended that slaves be utilized as confederate soldiers, and that consistent with historical use of slaves in warfare that slaves who fought wood at the end of the thought, would at the end of the war gather with their families and be freed. use was basically saying black as confederate soldiers, and you should emancipate a large number of them. he first of all that 13 of his largenerals within his

division to sign off on this. a prettyght it was good idea, they wouldn't disagree with the boss. they went him with a paper signed by himself and 13 others, presented it to the commander in the tennessee georgia area at the time, this was before the atlantic campaign started. he presented this proposal and argued for it. johnston had called a federal meeting. otheron had all of his division commanders and deputy commanders. just a whole slew of military herers in the western get data western theater attending this meeting. one person spoke up in support of clay burn's proposal.

he had actually written an anonymous letter -- anonymous letter pushing the same idea. everybody else opposed this. they violently opposed it. things,d among other and this came up again and again , they said we fought this war, we are fighting this war over the issue of slavery. slaves are not capable of being soldiers if we admit there being soldiers. we undermine the whole argument that supports the rationale for slavery. but we cannot do this. johnston sat on the proposal. labor and heads -- clay burn had wanted to send it to richmond. one of the other generals at the meeting who violently opposed it snuck a copy directly to devon

-- directly to president davis. davis along with his secretary of war and his chief military promotedwho had been on the double peter principle to davis's military advisor. of them started using words like treason, watch these men. and we are back to johnston. destroy all copies of the proposal and no one will ever discuss this again. he almost succeeded in destroying the records because the only copy that ever appeared was found 20 years later when confederate records were being assembled to produce the official records of the war rebellion.

recordsin the official if you choose to read his very thoughtful proposal, which got nowhere. over the next 10 months before at franklind tennessee in november of that were three times that core commander position became open in that army, the army of tennessee. that meant there were three possibilities to be promoted from two stars to three stars. his idea was rejected. the same timeout he was killed, all of a sudden

jefferson davis and robert e lee come around. top of the the pyramid and they see what is going on on a nationwide basis. competitorse from a -- from a confederate manpower perspective because of the tremendous losses the confederacy suffered in virginia. although they suffered numerically less than grant did. at the same time sherman had a very successful campaign in georgia and by this time had captured atlanta georgia. confederates continue to take heavy casualties and the situation was something that could not be ignored. lee began a -- began

to authorize the use of black soldiers. andifically freed slaves then emancipate them and their families as well. they continue to make this push. what you have to do is look at the politicians statements, the , and the statements southern press. ofin we have this rejection a concept, because it is inconsistent with what we are fighting for. undercut the rationale for slavery. nowhere, untilt 1865,march 8 or nine of

9-8confederate senate from and a confederate house finally approved, using some black slaves as soldiers in the confederate army. one was the master of the slave had to agree. the state from which the slave came had to agree. there was no emancipation promised as part of the deal. that is what past. basically it became something of a fiasco. there were more than to organized into two companies. they were paraded and drilled.

they never played any role in the waning days of the confederacy as richmond fell. the confederacy consistently rejected that approach until the last desperate hour. you know the confederate congress authorized the use of slaves. did, one month before the war was over and they did it in such a manner that nothing ever came of it. other things the confederacy did during the civil war, which gives you an indication of how important slavery was, vis-a-vis winning the war.

we get back to manpower, critical needs of the south. the north engaged with them. they were essentially one-for-one. you essentially had a 1-1 trade-off between the confederacy and the union in the first half of the war. beginning in mid-1863. black soldiers on the losing side were able to shot down if they were able to surrender. slaves, asreated as property, and not as prisoners of war.

lincoln, that is too bad. the exchanges were stopped until almost the end of the war. they refused to trade prisoners of the north. the north then reciprocated by not trading at all. it is pretty clear lincoln and grant were not acting solely out of consideration to capture blacks. we knew the fallout would be that the confederacy was no longer benefiting from these prisoner of war exchanges. it is a classic example of

slavery. even though the actions taken on fromry were inconsistent what the confederates needed to win the war. international is diplomacy. and the pope will end slavery. if you want some real good two years agohat, called our man in charleston. the british consul was there from 1854 through 1864. aristocracy made some

assumptions about his political views, obviously being proslavery, saying they were way to frank for their own good. they are not going to back off of slavery. be -- was not going to they acted out their parole. that triggered one other issue. if i may retreat for just a second and say just one other piece of evidence, this is contemporaneous evidence about why secession occurred. five of those states appointed 51 delegates to go to other

slave states. they went to other slave states, trying to convince them to leave the union and join the confederacy. and i don't need to tell you what the arguments were because they are the same arguments i told you about all night. if you want to look into that, there is a small book a few years old called apostles of this union. it talks about these missionaries for the southern cause. that takes care of the three books i wanted to mention. did the south have a chance to win the war? they say the south never had a chance to win the civil war.

i would beg to differ. southern leaders were pretty much unanimous in thinking they would win. there was a great precedent in which the outgunned less therful party won columnists ended up doing things very intelligently. washington took a few punches in the nose before he realized he had to do this. but he avoided major conflicts and acted very defensively. ultimately the british population gave up on the war. and in addition the columnists play their cards correctly and got the kind of european assistance to confederacy did not get. early stage of the war you had military experts, london

times, military correspondent. you had sudden -- had southern leaders. one confederate soldier was the equivalent of three northern soldiers. was a belief the confederacy would win the war. there are some very sound reasons for thinking that would happen. after the second batch of southern states, you had 11 states with this massive land area. which had to be conquered by the north. all the south needed was a stalemate. the north needed and affirmative victory. ended up not being satisfied with a tie or a stalemate, whether it didn't seem dramatic enough, whether personal convictions about what

it was trying to do. it went on the attack. strategically we have the guinness berg campaigns into the north. i will talk about these. the south did not play its cards well at all. there were all kinds of reasons they stayed on to the offensive -- on the defensive .trategically and tactically there was no reason to believe the south could not have won the war. difficult to conquer. especially with the weapons that had occurred during the mexican and civil war.

i was saying the south could militarily have won the war. there was a separate line of thought that casts some validity to it. in 1860 three and 1864, the correspondence of confederate the election of 1864. they recognize how important that election was. abraham lincoln was the steel backbone of the civil war. lincoln was the steel backbone of the press and the congress. lincoln was solid. if we can defeat to lincoln in

1864, we will get a lot of what we want. george wanted nothing to do with ending slavery. willing a truce, a pause, a cease-fire. the first thing is superficially we heard it was a landslide. electoral votes with something through 21. if you dig into the numbers, there were 4 million voters.

if less than 1% had changed their votes and selected northern states, he wins by one electoral vote. there were a lot of close states. we are talking less than 1% voter shift, which i find in light of the fact that the 10 weeks leading up to all kinds of military developments had gone in favor of the union. you had the fall of atlanta. there should have been no reason to give up on the war, no reason other than to support lincoln and let's bring this to an end, based on what positive developments were going on. despite all that, the election was very close, a lot closer

than what is commonly understood. that is enough of my opinions. not at all inevitable that the north would win and the south would lose. you have to examine the possibilities of southern victory. and part of this ties into robert ely. lee was, according to the legend, one of the greatest generals that had ever lived. several years ago my late father-in-law and i got to reading a whole slew of books on the civil war. he came to the startling collusion -- startling conclusion that each one of these authors had something negative to say about lee, but always apologize for it. -- lee didristics

that. and the authors were not all pointing to the same thing. they were pointing to a variety of issues. to my father-in-law i said i'm going to write a book on how robert e lee lost the civil war. i learn -- i lived in virginia at the time, i now live in pennsylvania. so i have some criticisms. first of all, lee was a virginian first and a confederate second. before the civil war a lot of people identify themselves with their state. no one ever said the united states is, the united states are. with lee in particular, she was

really into -- wherever virginia went he was going to go. declinedwhen he command of all the federal armies at the beginning of the war, he said i will lift my sword only in defense of not the confederacy, the old dominion. from the beginning, he was very open. people had to realize this guys interested in virginia and maybe not much else. that is the way it played out. favorite example is that in 1862, lee, on his own, shortly after -- decided to cross the potomac and invade pennsylvania. he got bogged down with the maryland campaign. by the way we are crossing the potomac on enemy territory.

it gave him some political advice, i think this will have a great impact on europe. said since i am leaving i recommendovered you bring his troops and from tennessee to protect richmond. at the time in east tennessee was outnumbered 3-1 by union opponents. conclude -- i to will generally conclude that he did not know nor care what was outside in any theater of his own precious virginia theater. the only time reinforcements went elsewhere is when the

student was finally allowed to go down to -- lee delayed that movement by .hree weeks union soldiers captured in blocking annnessee, easy route to get to the chattanooga area. they took an eight to 10 day trip, using eight to 10 railroads. long street showed up in the middle of a two day battle. of his artillery, none of his horses and mules. due to some good luck with the confederates, they were in a strong position to pretty much destroyed rosecrans's armie.

general thomas has become known as -- by defending the high ground horseshoe ridge. before he made an orderly retreat to join the rest of rosecrans's fleeing army. i think the outcome could have the different if they had force, including all of artillery. including blasting thomas off the high ground. after longdays lee was ordered by davis to send long street down. leave wrote to davis and said, among many other things, he said i have an idea about long street. he fights the major battle that -- what you be done

with long street, he should be moved up to northeastern , where heto knoxville can chase out the union forces there. then he can come back into my army. sound like a joke or a funny little proposal. but this had fatal consequences. battle, the confederates on scene got into a contestger-pointing with all subordinates pointing the finger at bragg as to who left rose -- who let rosecrans's armie at escape. they were blaming each other.

down tont personally settle the dispute. they settled it in typical either in which davis loved or hated you, and bragg was one of his buddies. been one of have the most intriguing conferences of the war, his subordinates sat there in the presence of bragg and all recommended he be removed from command. and what happens? in thisstained bragg position and removed most of the subordinates. that long problem was street was a subordinates on loan. and there is little doubt wall street went out that theater if bragg screws up i can get my own independent command and not just be working

for bobby lee. realized, well, there goes that plan. and then on the other hand, what had known longstreet did get a -- did. thinks, i had this wonderful suggestion from robert e lee about what to do, and that is send long street off to knoxville. suggests that to both bragg and long street. longstreet. longstreet is sent up to knoxville. this is when the confederates circle chattanooga. the union rack -- the union

realized the critical importance a chattanooga, and also defensive area, protecting against the confederate invasion into the heart of the northern mid-land, into the midwest. union brought in grant, said we want you to take care of this, we want you to save the army that is trapped there and ruin the confederates that live in that area. around two entire course, 20,000 troops went by rail to the virginia theater, to the midwest all the way down to alabama and then into chattanooga. sherman was marched from the mississippi valley all the way across the length of tennessee. while the union is building its forces in chattanooga to 75 to 80,000 troops, lee's wonderful

suggestion has resulted in the content -- in the confederates were spreadederates thin. you have the article breakthrough. the confederates have no reserve. there line starts being rolled up from the middle, and the entire army leads back into georgia, setting the stage for sherman's atlanta campaign of the next year. this is a good example of the kinds of impact that lee had on other theaters other than the virginia theater. threat number one, virginia first and confederate reckoned. the another major problem with lee, given all of the relevant circumstances, he was way too aggressive, way to offenses. he fought as though he were a union general with unlimited

resources and the strategic necessity to go on the attack areas rather than, as i explained before, my fear he is that the south only needed a tie or a still mate. bated -- stalemate. they needed the union to capture southern armies, captured southern territory, and to repel the union, attack at the least of expense of making it so morale,hat the northern the northern people, would give up on the war. that came very close to happening in the middle of 1864. that, leed of doing for whatever reason went on the strategic offensive, the antietam campaign and the gettysburg campaign. between two of those he lost 75,000 casualties. in virginiaion

the seven days battle, the first major battle and , it was a his army one series of attacks by lee on another army. he didn't strategically -- he did in the strategically bite going away from mcclellan, mcclellan certain fleeing the instantly and attacking. -- lee started attacking. the end of one day, and by the end of two days, lead you from reports by jeb stuart that this was the case. reports by jebm stuart that this was the case. he took 20,000 casualties in this campaign to mcclellan's 16,000. they were soft areas they included missing.

casualties, all killed and wounded. not a good start, not auspicious beginning because the south could not afford a fight in the war in that way. one may -- one man you may not have heard of was in the offensive and took very heavy losses in the back. and then gettysburg, on days two did nothing but assault strong federal positions on high ground against long 'sreets of ice -- long street advice. he took a severe beating. again and again during the war, the record is replete with strategic and tactical aggressive behavior by lee which was inappropriate for the south because of the fact that north had the burden of winning the

war and the south was so badly outnumbered could not afford to squander manpower. in addition to this, another factor, trajectory had changed since the mexican war, and so during the course of the civil war, talking about widespread use of rifles instead of muskets. artillery, breech loaders instead of mobile loaders, use of mini ball. it was much more accurate. and as the war progressed to, even further, the use of repeaters. what did all these things do? they moved to power from the offensive to the defensive. the defensive had the power in the civil war. they did not want to attack unless they had to. lee did not have to, but he did. and some demonstration of my point is that about 80% of the

battlefield in the civil war, about 80% the tactical winner was the defender. this could not be budged from where the defendant was. you really did not want to attack unless you had to, and lee attacked again and again. those are some of my reasons, some of my reasons for lee not being the great general we have heard of. longstreet, he was blamed for gettysburg, the scapegoat. here is the bottom line on that. they sortedthday, celebration the year after he 1872, famous to speeches were given. ofy created a story out this, they said that lee had ordered longstreet to attack the enemy on days three of the

gettysburg battle. .hey had nothing to supported that has been well proven over time. about 100 years were people and came look into it to the conclusion that was not so at all. so what we think now is that lee ordered longstreet to it tax at 10:00 -- to attack at 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. they saw troops coming up the road. lee would have ordered an attack at dawn, especially because he always sent out scouting parties at dawn. the whole thing was a lie. it was to tar a reputation of a wall street and take -- longstreet and take lee off the hook. the highlights of the end of day one, the union armies were in retreat through the town of gettysburg, toward the high ground, total disarray, lee came

on scene, give the worst order of the civil war to general said takele, he the high ground if practical. if practical. every effort would have been made to capture that. there is an ongoing debate about whether this, if they had not capture the high ground. hadas the best chance lee to capture the high ground the entire time he was in gettysburg , and he basically did not take it. weakve a weak general a quarter, so nothing came of it. so nothing came of it. that is the story in a nutshell. lee on days two and three in gettysburg, lost continuous hedies of attacks -- launc

continuous series of attacks on the high ground. there was never contemporaneous attacks on uni union forces. finally 24 hours late, richard the north, that attack peters out. then they think of the south, and then the middle. and it is oversimplified, but 2/3 of lee's army watch the other 1/3 carrying out attacks. it was abominable, and military historians are in agreement that it was lee's worst and it was devastatingly bad. i move this on to ulysses grant. butcher, andled a it was said he only wanted through brute force. we don't have time to go through his brilliant vicksburg campaign

in which he was outnumbered in the theater, in enemy territory, 15 battles -- won five battles in 18 days. he used deception, speed, concentration of force. with that number in the theater until he began the siege of vicksburg, yet by fooling the ,nemy, each of the five battles the enemy did not know where he was. they did not know where they should be. it was a brilliant campaign. again and again, grant has a record during the war. he is the first major union victory. they capture vicksburg, the most important campaign in the civil war. he was brought in to save chattanooga within a month. the union army was trapped to there. it was because of this was

promoted to general in chief and three stars and asked to win the war, which he did in 11 months. the record is pretty clear about grant's success. ,et me till with the casualties which i have studied 28 fairly -- fairly well. grant's casualties, and i don't know if we have a total. no. ok, we do. up the top of the right-hand side. here is the story on casualties. comparing grant and lee. not just against each other but against all of their foes in the course of the war. it is my favorite synopsis. grant commanded five armies, three theaters, was the winner everywhere he went, and did all

that he did, including capturing three enemy armies, at a cost of one of 54,000 casualties. he imposed -- 154,000 casualties. killed, wounded, missing, captured. grant did all of you did in three theaters with a total of 154,000 casualties. lee commanded one army and one theater, which he lost and did so at the cost of 200-9000 as oldies 55,000 casualties more than grant. -- 200-9000 casualties. we have been sold a bill of goods about how great lee was and how bad grant was. frankly, the majority of civil war historians now believe that

grant was the greatest general in the civil war, even if the general public does not. that is the divergence. the general public has been saturated with this story for a hundred 50 years. of thes a lost cause most successful propaganda campaign in american history. so i leave you to be the final judges on that, and thank you for listening to my biased opinions. [applause] thank you, thank you. ok, there are microphones in each child, and we have just 15 minutes to deal with any questions anyone would like to ask. sharp,will stop at 8:45

because you need to go home. does anybody have any questions? sir? there is a microphone back there. you can go back to the mike. >> how far along did efforts come to the north to purchase the freedom of the slaves to stop the civil from happening, and if they were considered, what was the total cost of that compared to the cost of the civil war eventually? edward bonekemper: that is a real good question. i asked him everyone heard it. -- assume everyone heard it. abraham lincoln explored the and lincoln at first when he explored this was willing to consider migrating, sending those slaves to africa or to settlements in central

america or the caribbean. but he explored the concept of buying the freedom of slaves. he had done the kind of calculations that you talked about, and he uses delaware, which had a small number of slaves, no more than 2000, as a good example. he did some calculations that for the cost of one day of work, you could free 1000 slaves and go on from there. so he tried to sell this to the border states, ones that still members of the union. they had not gone out. and they just would not go home with it. ,e had meetings with delaware the four border sticker presented. . no one representatives bought it, no one at all. even in the border states, there was such a firm belief in slavery that they were not willing to consider selling their slaves in order to avoid the war. which again tells us something this slaveryybe

thing was not just economics but plusmics plus social politics. yes, sir. >> thank you very much for your presentation. i was wondering [indiscernible] fordd bonekemper: shelby was a dyed in the wool southerner who was very entertaining comments are in the can burn's series on the civil war. burns series on the civil war. go read his trilogy. it doesn't have any dates or footnotes. it is very readable. it is a novel. he did a lot of research. he put his heart into it. he tells a great story. i found it very useful because i read 30 books on the civil war at least, and i just had all

these pieces. i felt that shelby put altogether. he was sadly say, here is what was happening in virginia, and meanwhile down in mississippi -- so he sort of made it possible for me, anyway, to visualize the entity. total and i find it very useful in that regard. it is very colorful. readpeople just want to his books with lots of footnotes and everything, they might find this colorful approach to be good. i would say, i would not do that --il you are familiar familiarize yourself with a lot of other books. do not use it as a casebook. i made that mistake and used it as a course book in a college course. it was just way too beyond the students, particularly because it had no source citations.

and because it had no dates. and then, and meanwhile, etc. etc. but it reads beautifully, and it has its place. but shelby does have a lot of tendency of the supporters of .he myth of the lost cause you are welcome. yes, sir. >> gary gallagher of the university of virginia. [indiscernible] gatesid lee went into the campaign, 77,000 troops. but also they took with them about 10,000 slaves. not only personal service for laundry, they also were teamsters, cooks. they may not have been firing artillery, but they were driving the horses. is this a fair assumption? edward bonekemper: i think it is

a fair assumption. i don't know about 10,000, it is certainly possible. i believe in pennsylvania, lee needed a lot of transportation, a lot of teamsters. a lot of people to do loading work for the grains that were taken out of the state. the cumberland valley was stripped. there was a huge market basket for lee, and the best thing out of the gettysburg campaign was a success in moving cattle and horses annual and huge quantities of materials back. having black slaves to do it would free up white soldiers. but what that does not get around is the fact, these people were slaves. they were slaves. they were not subject to the uniform code of military justice. they did not get promotions. they did not get any kind of military pay. they were assets, they were slaves.

and they would have gotten no respect. but they were resources. we mention them earlier. they were used to build fortifications and that sort of thing. they were something less than a full soldier that they were allowed to do. that makes it very difficult to study that issue of were slaves used or not. what did congress officially authorized? they did not authorize slaves to be used. sir. >> the book was wonderful, but something you touched on in the book and didn't have as much time for it tonight, the idea of general sherman. i have read two biographies of him. put a question to you, do you think he is unfairly treated as a casualty of the myth? he is an extreme accountant general, but he gets swept up in the hatred to sympathize with the south. edward bonekemper: you are

right. that is my last point, had to deal with the allegations that the north won only by total war. that allegation is primarily that sherman in georgia and the carolinas and sherman in the shenandoah valley is a classic example of the north using total war. which i say is [indiscernible] there is a difference between total war and hard war. total war is genghis khan, tamerlane, the 30 years war in germany, what the westerns and germans and japanese did in world war ii. of --ve master race mass rapes and destruction of the cit civilization. you use every weapon at your disposal and obliterate the enemy. north did was

exercise hard war. it is much more accurate to describe what happened. they went in and did a lot of damage. they burned barns and crops and killed animals. they basically imposed severe critical economic damage on the south, but that is not total war. that is not total war. books continue to be written. what sherman did to us. and things like that. basically i say, sherman gave you a break. he did not go around killing people. very few deaths involved in his march. the same thing is true of sherman. minorwere sprinklings of skirmishes, but basically what we are talking about is win and destroy the enemy infrastructure , and that is called a hard war. the morality south plummeted

because of what sherman was doing and many of the tens of thousands of deserters from lee's army who in good faith went home because they felt a greater responsibility to their wives and children than they did to what was left of the confederate cause in 1864 and 1865. serve. way.want to follow-up in a the morale issue is something germane. depicted very well the reasons are the myth, all very reasonable. when you get into this notion of morality and mindset and the other factors that did exist in the south that helps propagate the myth, i mean, they lost. they were ravaged. not just by the war but reconstruction.

property this endemic -- poverty. the romantic ideal to begin with that existed there, and the war really deflated that. so i think, yes, it is reasonable to look at the data and say, this myth is bogus. but that doesn't mean it is , especially inth southern people who so strongly hold onto it. so you didn't get into that issue of the mindset that helps propagate the myth. i wondered if you had a comment on that. edward bonekemper: when you look at the minds behind the secession resolutions, the confederate constitution, the etc.ach to other states,

that were occurring at that time , which we can put our fingers on and say these were all about slavery. now if you back off and say, what about the people and the morale? then you get into an installable dilemma about -- insoluble dilemma about individual people, different ways about the work. so it is very hard to pin that down. i always think that the kinds of evidence that i am looking at are not just data. these are the words that the participants used. everyone says nothing but slavery. passing,oned, in reconstruction. that is a whole other book and a you haveer field that to look at very subjective like everything else i have been saying. reconstruction would not have

haveso bad if southerners responded appropriately to what the war was about, and that was, in good faith, and in slavery -- avery, truly ended slavery, and allowed blacks in politics, to vote, and to have representatives in government, which was only allowed for a short time while the north was there to enforce it. the story is about all of the economic ravages on the south. it wasn't much left to ravage. when the south was really , southerners as a rule work concerned that blacks are being given rights, and this was not something they could tolerate. since we have stopped it, you have jim crow laws, and you did not have legitimate black rights

until at least the mid-1960's. so, i think that there are a lot of aspects of the myth that carried over into recent discussion. i am not an expert on reconstruction, but i would approach the traditional view of reconstruction with a great deal of skepticism. yes sir, last question. had been executed as a traitor, what would that have had on the lost cause? edward bonekemper: executing lee as a traitor would have been inexcusable with what lincoln wanted to do and what have served no real purpose. no real have served purpose, and it might have had aggravated the south so that the myth would even be worse, that is it.

step.ould be an extreme lincoln would not have wanted to do that. ok, thank you very much again, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] committee the church 40 years later beginning next "eek on "american history tv. we will show extended segments of the fbi investigation. yearsurch committee, 40 later. next weekend, saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern time only on "american history tv." on c-span3. this weekend on american

artifacts, we torture the national portrait gallery exhibit featuring dolores huerta. here is a preview. tiana caragol: we wanted to commemorate the anniversary of the farmers strike in 1965. we did that through an exhibition on dolores huerta who the co-architect of the farmworkers movement. dolores was really unyielding in asking for respect and fair treatment for farmworkers. she required [indiscernible] among the growers. they were afraid of her. a woman who is five feet told but incredibly -- she is a force of nature, she is very powerful. and the present. growers would beg virginia to send anyone else, but her for

the contract. however she was at the forefront of that effort for a reason because she was the best. by the time she started the national farmworkers association , she had seven children and another one on the way. she had 11 children in total. she really lived on a very small salary, five dollars a week. and had to maintain all of her children with that salary. she relied a lot on donations of food and clothing from the union. her by what was given to the supporters of the union. she had the [indiscernible] whenever she had to do public speaking, she worried. .- she wore it this is the sweater, it belonged to dolores huerta herself, and she lent it to the exhibition.

announcer: you can learn more huerta onres sunday at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on lectures in history, chapman university history professor jennifer keene looks at myths about america's involvement in world war i, including misconceptions the u.s. was not involved in europe prior to entering the war, or that world war i failed to have lasting impacts on american society. this class is about an hour and 20 minutes. jennifer keene: all right, so today we are going to talk about america during the first world war. i called this lecture americans at war, the myth busters addition. i did that kind of intentionally because we think a