targeting civilians and to be entitled to the rights of the lieber codes you need to be in full uniform and respect the lieber codes. if german was president for a day, would hard war be justified to create soft pieces anywhere where you are because what i see, my bias is showing that we have multiple soft wars. they're going to continue to grow like a virus because we are not doing what sherman did in termez of bringing about the closure. >> i love questions like this. these are the kind of questions that tell me that history is relevant. it's not just something fun to do, but we want to understand what happened in the past because of his relevancy today. this whole area of sherman's career and the counter insurgency and something that's not been explored very well and that's a great question, i wish i knew the answer to that.

you're making me think about this, and i love this. this is the thing you may not te audiences and although what i've said is a compilation of what all of the historians and this is a consensus to a large extent on much of this now, but you may not buy any of it, but what i hope is that you will never look at this man and this march in the same way. before i step away from this podium it's an honor to be here with so many distinguished historians and so many great people, richard murray and you started the day out with the best and you started the day out with bud robertson and you ended it with the least, as far as i'm concerned. so thank you very much. >> donald trump and hillary clinton made the conventions a must-see on tv. this morning we will show you

the featured speeches from cleveland and philadelphia. you will see democratic speeches by michelle obama, bernie sanders, bill clinton, joe biden, michael bloomberg, tim kaine and the acceptance speech by hillary clinton and sunday morning at 10:30 eastern you'll see republican speeches by rudy giuliani, donald and melania trump, and donald trump jr., chris christie, eric trump, peter teal, ivanka trump and the acceptance speech by donald trump and that's this saturday even will at 8:00 eastern and the c-span radio app and c-span.org. >> next, edward bonokemper, the myth of the lost cause, which examines post-war arguments made by former confederates seeking

to justify their split from the union and their defeat and mr. bonokemper argues that slavery and not state's rights was the primary reason for cessation. it disputes the aspects of the lost cause myth, such that the idea that confederate general robert e. lee was a different commander than ulysses s. grant and he defeated lee because of superior numbers and resources. >> good evening, everyone. can everyone hear me well? yes. good. i'm mclaughlin and i welcome you to what promises to be a stimulating program on the myth of the lost cause. it is always a pleasure to welcome ed bonokemper to the smithsonian. through the years he's had programs for us on civil war

topics, in fact, this is his tenth appearance with the smithsonian associates. ed is the book review editor of civil war news which reviews all 250-plus new civil war books each year. he was an adjunct lecturer in military history at mullenberg college for eight years and has history degrees from mullenberg and from old dominion university as well as a law degree from yale. he served as a lawyer with the federal government for more than 34 years and as a retired commander in the u.s. coast guard reserve. he is the author of six books on civil war history, including the myth of the lost cause, why the south fought the civil war and why the north won which was published last fall and his book would be available through smithsonian museum shops outside the entrance to this auditorium at the end of tonight's program

and ed would be happy to sign copies for you then. so with that said we have a very packed two hours in store for you. i know this will be a very engaging program so we want to bring ed up. please join me in giving a very warm welcome to ed bonokemper. >> thank you, mary. it's a pleasure being back here at the smithsonian to talk about the civil war and i really appreciate the great turnout tonight. it certainly shows the length to which people will go to avoid presidential town halls. >> and also, i do have to confess that as you heard, i've got two history degrees and a law degree so you will be hearing an argumentative historian this even coming is a good time for me to say these are my personal comments.

they're based on my personal research. they do not necessarily reflect the views of the smithsonian at all. this is completely bonokemper -- bonokemper talking to you. so mary and the smithsonian should be off the hook. okay. we are here tonight to discuss a very important topic and that is the myth of the lost cause. now i'll give you a couple of examples of the myth in action and then go on and explain what the details are of the myth and what the components are of the myth and also take a look at each one. the myth of the lost cause was taken by ex-confederates and general william nelson pendleton and reverend william jones between 1860 and 1900 to

basically justify the civil war. what had happened was the north fought the war and the north fought the war and northerners went home and resumed their daily lives and really didn't care much about writing about the war until a hundred years after the war. >> southerners on the other hand, had a lot to write about and had a lot to justify. what happened was almost the entire war was in the south and the south was just an economic basket case by the end of the war because northern army his gone through and destroyed pretty much anything of economic value. in addition, you had to realize that the south major institut n institution, social institution, that is slavery had suddenly come to an end and there were 3 1/2 to 4 million slaves with a big question about what happens to these african-americans? and so southerners felt

compelled to explain why it was that this devastation had occurred and that, for example, 25% of southern white men between the ages of 20 and 45 were dead. not just casualties, they were dead as a result of the civil war. so there was a lot of explaining to do and that's the origin of the myth of those first 30 years, but it has continued, and probably the best example of the seven volumes by douglas freeman in the 1930s and 1940s, first of all, explaining in the first four volumes called r.e. lee that lee walked on water and then in the next three volumes, basically explaining any thoughts that lee might appear to have had by blaming all his

subordinates called lee's lieutenants, which could have been called lee's scapegoats and that was a continuation of the myth of the lost cause. the reason i felt compelled to write the book was as i went around the country talking to members of civil war roundtables, i found that a lot of people who, in my view, should have known better were greatly affected and bought into a very many aspects of the myth of the lost cause. so that's why i think it's important for all of us to consider what the myth is and how much we want to buy into the myth, and the change of position that occurred among southern leaders is on the threshold of the civil war as seven other states were seceding before lincoln took office. jefferson davis gave a very

emotional address to the united states senate in which he said sayonara. in that address he explained that he felt compelled to leave and his state felt compelled to leave the union because the institution of slavery was being threatened by the federal government and by northern states and so that was his discussion in 1861. i believe that was december 1860. two decades later in 1881, jefferson davis published his two-volume memoirs and in that work jefferson davis adopts the myth of the lost cause position and says slavery had almost nothing to do with the war. in fact, he states specifically there would have been a civil war even if no american had

owned a slave. i won't comment on which i think is truth or fiction, but just note the contrast between the two and this is very typical and it's why it is so important to go back and look at the evidence at the time of cessation and at the time of the formation of the confederacy. now, as i said, a lot of people have bought into this over the years, and i think it greatly affected the historiography of the civil war and the north, south, east and west you the myth, and that's why it's important to understand what a myth is and to examine how valid you think it is based upon the evidence. the statement i have behind me, and i'll try to not rely upon the upper left corner, this is a

quote from john keegan. john keegan is or was an internationally recognized military historian with about 20 military history books and he lived in england, to be honest and he did not understand the civil war that well and he wrote a book on it, eventually and it was not a very good book, and in one of his other books on intelligence and war, he just made a general statement sort of off-the-cuff and this is where historians run into trouble, and i do it myself all the time, you try to make a general statement about something which is tangential to what you're writing about and what you know about, and keegan said, the southern people were resolute in their determination to preserve state's rights. the legal issue over which they had declared separation. he bought into what i consider to be the myth that state's

rights was what the cessation and the formation of the confederacy were all about. so i'll springboard off of that and let me tell you what i see as the major component of the myth. the first one i just stated and that's an absolutely critical one, slavery was not the primary cause and it was the primary cause of the civil war. i'm now talking on the left there. the myth goes on that it's an institution to whites and blacks alike and all of a sudden the myth jumps into something that sounds inconsistent with what i just said. by the way, the civil war was unnecessary because slavery was going to expire on its own within a fairly reasonable

period period of time, and we'll take a look at that. further, the argument goes and the south never had a chance to win the war and one would ask, if that's so why did you start the war? and thus, the south did the best it could with the resources that it had and part of this then is that robert e. lee was the great military leader and that he was one of the greatest generals who ever lived, and you will find a lot of the books that take the lost cause position. they talk about lee literally in christlike terms and talking about getting gettihsemene. he clearly lost a really big

battle at gettysburg, so what to do about that? that became fairly easy to deal with. james longstreet was made a scapegoat for lee's losing gettysburg and one reason for that is because he had the gall to actually take a position in the grant administration as a collector of tariffs in new orleans. so he went over to the republican side and that was death to the political career in the south and made him a sitting target to become the scapegoat of gettysburg. lee surrendered to grant and if lee is so great why did he lose to grant? so that myth goes that grant won only by being a butcher. grant is a butcher and he only won by brute force, and the myth

of the lost cause is that union forces only won by engaging in total war. total war. that's a phrase that's really, i think being bandied about loosely these days and we will take a brief look at that. okay. we will start out with what was the issue of slavery in 1861. i don't think we really need to deal 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. the reason i do that is if you're in the south and even if you did not personally own a slave you were still the social beneficiary of the existence of

slavery and that can simply be explained by saying that no matter how poor a dirt farmer you were or how little you owned you always knew that if your society there were 4 million people who were inferior to you as a matter of law and of social practice. so, that said, let's look at slavery itself and the reason i say we don't need to spend much time is basically we have a long history of rapes and murders of slaves. we have the beatings and the 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. the best estimate is that about 1 million slaves were sold out of the northern south at the

border states or the northern southern states into the deep south. about 1 million slaves and if you take that million and adjust and actually increase for the number of transactions that did not involve such long distance transfers, i think it is a fair estimate that probably about 1 million slaves over the 200-plus years of slavery were separated from their families. there were children taken from parents and wives taken from husbands, et cetera, was there no thought really given to trying to keep the families together except in rear instances. i'm saying it's a very 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 and the slave his first names and not

last names and marriage not recognized and children were the property of 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, whether to hold them, sell them, et cetera. so there was a devastating impact on the african-american family because they were really legally kept from forming family groups as we know them. i don't think i need to say too much more about justifying slavery except just to remind you, one reason this comes up is because of approaches to the south. i'll call it the mint julep approach as we reflect it with the novel of "gone with the wind qwest ". just take a look at things with a big shaker full of salt.

there was something that seems to me a little bit inconsistent in the myth which is despite this wonderful, benevolent institution which is going to come to an end within a reasonable period of time which was defined loosely before 1900 because it was no longer really beneficial economically to the owners and the reason this argument is made because then it can be argued the civil war was unnecessary. the civil war was unnecessary. northerners didn't 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 were on the rise in 1860. it had reached the highest point they'd ever reached. cotton sales were way up. the value of cotton had

continued to increase and also keep in mind that slaves were not only used to raise cotton. slaves were used for tobacco, rice, indigo. they were used for a lot of crops and a lot of farm production and by this time a lot of owners had recognized, some slaves, despite the fact that they were put down as a group and some slave his talents as artisans, carpenters, et cetera, so they were being leased out and in addition as the south was starting to get industrialized in the very early stages, slaves were being used in industrial arenas. for example, in richmond, virginia the tobacco plants and you're talking about creating cigars or cigarettes, slaves were almost the exclusive labor to run all of the tobacco

factories and even more interesting, in richmond you had the treadinger iron works in the civil war for all of the confederate artillery and armory, they were the iron works which was the iron works and that was almost exclusively manned by black slaves. so the southerners were beginning to figure out from an economic perspective, there are a lot of other usees to which we can put slaves and part of the argument that slavery was going go away is also that the south had run out of land that could be developed for agriculture. i think the simple rebuttal to that is between 1865 and 1925, the amount of land dedicated to agriculture in the south tripled, it tripled. more recent studies really showed that the land was there

to be developed for agriculture and it's just that economically it wasn't being don at the time and in terms of slavery disappearing, the estimate of the southerners themselves is the cessation resolutions is they were defending an institution which had assets in slaves from 4 to $6 billion and that would be hundreds of billions of dollars now if you categorized assets in the united states, that was the biggest, single category of the most valuable single category of assets in the united states was the value of slaves. so i personally see no indication that slavery bfs to go away.

now we get to the $64,000 question and what caused the sez station and the formation of the confederacy. i say that once you had a number of slaves going from seven to 11. seven deep south states seceded in 1860 and his inauguration of 1861. the seven deep south states seceded and they immediately began seizing armory and weapons scattered throughout the south. the only ones that escaped seizure were fort pickens in pensacola and other than that the south was already seizing these weapons and they were -- the states were buying weapons in europe. they were preparing for war and

ultimately, the decision was made personally by jefferson davis authorizing to bombard ford sumpter to bomb 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 and as you will see there were a lot of people trying to avoid a war by dealing with the issue of slavery. okay. the first thing i want to do is look at contemporary evidence, 1860, 1861. i think that's the only or the most valid way to determine the cause of secession and the formation of the confederacy. a lot of people display or wave the confederate battle flag and

my question is basically when they're doing that what does that flag stands for? that's the confederate flag and stands for the con fed rassy and what did the confederacy stand for and we as a society ought to look into that issue and draw our own conclusions about yet confederacy? yet confederacy? now, to me, anything that occurr occurred, anything that is said after about the middle of 1864 when it was pretty clear the south was going down the tubes. anything from that date to the present is second guessing. it's looking back and it's imposing one's own personal views on the situation and god forbid i would impose my personal views on any of this, but my point is that i'm trying to focus on what actually happened in 1860 and 61 and look

at that contemporaneous evidence. i think that is our most valid evidence of why there was a confederacy. i think you have a handout which has this on it. okay. there are a couple of points i want to make from these statistics that i'll put together from a couple of different sources. the first thing is that only slave states seceded from the union. there are about 15 freed states and 15 slave states and the only states that ever seceded were slave states and that might tell you something that there were more than just state's rights at issue. now, among the group of slave states and among the 15 there are three categories. the first category and the early seceders. the seven states that went out

before lincoln was president and then you have four more who went out after ford sumpter and did not want to take up arms against their fellow southern states and had a great deal of interest in slavery, as well and you had four other slave states, specifically delaware, maryland, kentucky and missouri which were known as the border states and those slave states never seceded and let's look at this data and see if there was a correlation between what i'll just summarize initially as the blackness of a state and how likely it was to secede and when it was likely to secede. so the big numbers up here are -- oops. in the first group -- in the first group of seven that went out early, 47% of the population were slaves. 47% of the total population was

slaves and here's a number that may shock some of you. 37% of the families in these states owned slave, and i say it may shock you because the promulgators of the lost cause like to say things like, did you know that only 1% of americans owned slaves in 1860 so slavery could not have been a cause of the war. well, that, of course, includes everyone north and south, man, women and children. and let's just look at certain states and not look at individuals because under that -- and let me move on. there's another related rationale which is that you know that only about 5% of southerners owned slaves. so therefore the war could not have been about slavery and what that does is if you have a family and you have a father who owns x number of slaves and he's

married to his wife and he's got eight kids, that's really ten people who benefit from having one or more slaves in the family and so i think it is rational to look at how many families directly own slaves? and this doesn't even get us into what goes beyond that which is the whole social structure and how we'll call lower class whites having 4 million people by law subservient to them and let's look at this now and 37% of the families in the first seceding states owned slaves and after ford sumpter, we had 29%. 29% of the population was slaves and 29% of the families owned

slaves and finally in the four border states coming up right here and the last ones on your handout, only 14% of the population consisted of slaves and only 16% of the families owned slaves. so just on a demographic basis it appears to me that 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 the numbers were higher. okay. 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, in the words of the seceders themselves

and that is mind-boggling about why they seceded and you don't find mention of the word tariff of a red herring that's thrown out there and you actually don't see state's rights either. what you see is a long list of slavery-related issues and now the -- i've got some of these here, i think. we will just take a look at two of them. let me first back off and say that of the seven first seceding states they left statements about why they were seceding and actual documents in the cessation resolutions ore c companion documents saying here's why we did this and only louisiana was silent and we have

other ways of looking at louisiana, as well. right now we're just exloring here's what people said about why they were seceding and why they were forming a confederacy. first of all, the first one out, of course, south carolina, and so they issued a declaration of the immediate causes for seceding from the union and northern states and government failure to return slaves in accordance with the constitution and federal law. quote, but an increasing hostility on the part of the nonslave holding states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard to their obligations and the laws of the general government has ceased to effect the objects of the constitution. south carolina complained and northern state his condemned slavery as sinful. northerners had elected as president a man who had said

government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free. they criticized the fact some northern say thes had the audacity to allow free blacks to vote. so my conclusion is far from respecting other state's rights to cast liberty laws, for example or extend several freedoms or rights to african-american african-americans south carolinians were opposed to these states being able to choose for 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 the federal law. you should be aware that believe it or not, the u.s. constitution

has originally adopted had a specific provision that required runaway slaves to be returned back from the states from which they had fled. this is not just a matter of federal law and 1792 congress put this in law and as you well know in 1850, that statute was strengthened quite a bit and this is typical, the southern complaint and fugitive slavery is a big, big source of aggravation and complaint by the southern states. it is a complaint that the federal government isn't doing enough. it doesn't sound like they're really concerned primarily with states' rights, vis-a-vis the federal government and what they want the federal government to do which is to preserve slavery. mississippi was right in there behind south carolina, and their governor urged the convening of

aes a cessation convention and the united states is now up for a final settlement. the legislature called for a cessation convention and they had a long list of grievances. so the mess miss legislature convening a cessation convention. they complained that the north had defined the constitution's fugitive slave provision and enticed slaves to free and agitated against slavery and oppose said the mission of more slave states. moreover, abolitionists sought to amend the constitution to prohibit slavery and to punish slave holders. they had encouraged john brown's raid and had elected a president and vice president who were hostile to the south and its system of labor and so the

legislature left no doubt why they were convening a cessation convention and the convention basically used the same kind of language and be on i havesly seceded very very quickly. the convention said in their declaration of the causes of cessation, they said this, our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. these products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions and by an imperrious law of nature none, but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. these products have become necessities of the world and a blow at slavery is a blow at

civil yaization and commerce. that blow was at the point of reaching its cons nation. there was no choice left to us, but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dison disillusion, that's not a summary by me, that's verbatim what the mississippi convention said.that's not a summary by me that's verbatim what the mississippi convention said. they had a long list of grievances, 16 slavery grievances. the point being in all these douchls in which the states explained why they were seceding and one word that runs through it all and the word is slavery. slavery, slavery, slavery, and really, no other reasons given and most of these documents are

readily available and you can google them and find them in the official records of the civil war and a civil warren cyclopedia called heidler and heidler. these are around, if you want to checkup on me, be my guest because reading these things will be an eye-opening experien experience. okay. simultaneous with cessation, you had other things that were occurring which tells us a lot about why they were cessation. first of all, there were settlement 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 extension of slavery into the territories or not with the candidates having

different positions on that issue, but it was that issue which people were voting on almost exclusively. so when lincoln comes in and gets elected on the basis of no slavery into the territories, that sets off fire bells in the south and they are very, very concerned about that issue. as i said, people were not dumb, and there was a great realization that all of this could lead to war and so there were certain leaders in the federal governments and in some of the states who were to try to avoid war and so if we take a look at what kinds of compromises they wanted to work out to avoid war, we get real good contemporaneous insight as to what was in people's minds and what was thought to be the

cause of secession and if we could deal with issues how could we avoid a civil war? well, the first major development was in december of 1860 and january 1861 when the senate and the house put together a massive committee, 33 members and one from each state and they came up with proposed constitutional amendments and these are called the krit cride and he comes from a slavery state, but that state never did secede. he was trying to make a good faith effort to avoid war, but the key point is what was the focus of the package? what were the compromises?

what were the condition stushl amendments that were recommended in the same months where south carolina seceded and other states started to follow suit? well, here are what the crittendon amendments would have done for the constitution and extend the free line to the pacific ocean? recognize and protect slavery in existing slave states and all present and future territories and then prohibit congress from interfering from the interstate trade from abolishing slavery in d.c. unless certain conditions were met. freeing slaves brought to d.c. they didn't want them to become free byy virtue of showing up in the district. proroberting the transport of

slaves and they would be prohibited from the constitution from doing and then here is the beauty and here is my favorite, congress would be prohibited from passing any future constitutional amendments allowing any of the above or authorizing congressional and interference or abolishment of slavery. okay. so in other words, we not only are going to address the slave issues all in accordance with the wishes of the seceding states, but we also want to say in the constitution, and by the way, this can never be changed. this can never be changed. for our purposes, the point again is that every one of these points dealt with slavery. they're all addressing slavery issues. there's nothing in here about tariffs and there's nothing in here about states' rights. it is about slavery.

then, and by the way, the crittendon amendments went nowhere. lincoln sent word to the republican leadership which now controlled the congress especially since southern democrats were bailing out which made it easier, lingeron sent the word to 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 was formed in 1854 with the principles of the republican stood for and with the election results of 1860 when the plurality of americans voted not to extend slavery into the territories by supporting the republicans. so lincoln thought this would be a total sellout of everything that he and his party stood for so he passed the word no and so that guaranteed that these

amendments were going nowhere, but again, for our purposes and the important thing to note is that major effort made to avoid war by addressing what issues? slavery issues. okay. continuing that trend, the next month in february 1862 or 1861, was there a major peace conference in washington, d.c. and fortuitously, there is a brand new book out on that called the peace that almost was and the peace that almost was by mark tooly, t-o-o-l-e-y and it's an excellent book. i think there is a disconnect between the publisher's title and the contents of the book which i have experienced myself between the publisher's title and the contents of the book which i have experienced myself, but the title is overly optimistic and the peace that

almost was it wasn't going to happen. and what happened is that seven states were already out so the remaining slave states, the eight southern states that had not seceded pretty much came, they all came and most of the northern states came to this month-long conference in washington, d.c. and at that conference, lo and behold, what did they do? they developed proposed constitutional amendments to avoid war. that was what they were all about. so what did this set of constitutional amendments say? it said reinstitute the boundaries of free and slave states, to approve new

territories. prohibit congress, affirming the fugitive slave laws, ban the importation of slaves and require unanimous approval is my favorite on this collection, require unanimous approval by the states to revoke any of these constitutional amendments. so in other words, these are going to be locked in forever, as well. so one month after the crittendon 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, and ex-president, big name and so he was a big pusher to get pro-slavery constitutional amendments as part of their

agenda. he got what he wanted, and he stated on the final day of the conference that it was now his obligation to present these to congress to try to see about getting them passed. so he basically sent them pro forma to the senate and never sent them to the house and the next day he showed up in richmond as a member of the virginia cessation convention and attacked all of the proposals as ridiculous, but again, those are all very interesting, but again, the point is trying to avoid war. this group trying to avoid war and they're political leaders from the state, not from congress, political leaders from the states were virtually identical to the crittendon ones and what they shared in common was they all dealt with slavery. we now also can take a look at

southern lead eers' statements early in the war or before the war as to what this was all about. as i said before, davis had made his statement in his farewell address to congress when he went home, and and the vice president of georgia gave us a helping hand in trying to understand what was going on. he delivered in savannah, george a in about february of 1861 an address which is called the cornerstone address and it's called the cornerstone address because in his talk, stephens said the cornerstone of the confederacy is slavery. the cornerstone of the confederacy is slavery. quite frankly, i had known that from general reading before, but when i pulled the entire speech out and read it through and it's widely available, too, i was

astounded to the extent that stephens went into detail and what he did was he said, you know, the founding fathers, thomas jefferson and those the extent that he went into detail and he said the founding fathers, thomas jefferson and those other guys made a very serious mistake because they had all men are created equal. well, we know that in the cof cofederacy that. he was very specific about this. now, immediately after the civil war he started the usual backing down and his back down excuse was that he was misquoted. it's one of the longest misquotes in world history and the problem for him is that not only did the savannah paper carry the story about this speech in is savannah, the atla papers carried a story about a

speech in which he made the same points. so the confederate leaders told us what their views were at that time and so now we've got stephens bailing and davis bailed out later and said there would have been a war even if nobody owned any slaves at all. so that's why i say if we're really looking at why the cofederacy, you have to forget about rationals later and i don't care what side the rational was on, that's nice to know but it's irrelevant, laet' go back to primary original evidence. okay. the confederacy's constitution adopted at the same time, i'm

thinking early april 1861, six states and texas came in and so they would have started doing this in february and then they adopted a preliminary one and a final one. if you look at the confederate constitution you would think that would tell you something about why is there a confederacy so what the confederate leaders did in the u.s. constitution was copy the u.s. constitution except they built in a lot of extra protections for slavery and pretty much said you couldn't tamper with those down the road, but perhaps because i'm a lawyer i focussed on one provision in the confederate constitution which i think tells us a lot and that is that there is a supremacy clause in the confederate constitution very similar to the federal one to

the u.s. constitution. the clause says the supreme law in the confederacy and this constitution and federal law and it says state judges are bound by that supreme law regardless of what state law says. okay. it sounds to me like the southern states had switched maste masters. not that each state was going to stand alone and be its own government but they were basically looking for a more compatible and understanding superior government and not doing this purely on the principal of states' rights because that one clause basically throws states' rights out the window and puts the power in the confederacy just as

the supremacy clause in the u.s. constitution in general puts the power in the united states government when push comes to shove and there's any conflict over the issues. a lot of the rest of this is already in your outline so i'm not going to worry about exactly what's on the board at any given time. ok ok okay. so sticking to the outline, the motivation of the four later succeeding states is again pretty much documented as being sl slavery related. the leaders talked about it and the conventions talked about it and it's almost like a replay of the earlier succeeding states

but things had now reached a crisis stage because they were succeeding in time of warfare and a lot of them simply did not want to take up arms against their sister states and they wanted to defend slavery. in fact, the four boarder states almost went too and that was one of lincoln's big concerns throughout the war. okay. i've given you a lot of evidence con temp anus with formation of the con fed rasy and now i want to look at the government's behavior during the civil war which would shed additional light on their purpose and what i submit to you as my personal view is that the behavior of the confederacy in several key areas

demonstrates that confederate leaders were more concerned about preserving slavery than they were in winning the war and preserving their independence, it was all about slavery. and so what are the kinds of things i'm talking about. well, the first is a fairly controversial area, the rejection of using slaves as soldiers. you might say, wait a minute, wait a minute, i've heard that there were some slaves fighting for the south. i mean, look just in 2010 the commonwealth of virginia well known for the accuracy of its school textbooks published a book that said 2,000 blacks fought under the command of stonewall jackson and so when challenged on it the department person who had come up with this edition to the text said, oh,

that was on the internet. it sounds like a good source. could have at least said it was wikipedia. it was on the internet and that was the source of that. now i will be the first to admit that there were probably several thousand blacks who went with their masters to war because the masters weren't used to pressing their clothes, doing their laundry and all those wonderful little things that slaves can do and so a lot of officers took one slave with them to the battlefield and there would have been instances where the master gets killed or wounded and the slave picks up a gun and fires it or takes care of the master and gets the master home or the master's body home so there would be an appearance of slave participation and in addition there's no doubt that tens of thousands of slaves were used as

slaves to build fort frkss and do mundane things that are part of military life but do not sloo in actually engaging in combat. another favorite saying that blacks participated on behalf of the confederacy is the louisiana guards. that was a unit of about 2,000 mixed race people. louisiana already was a great blending place, blending of the races, so there were people there who were free and had mixed blood so a lot of people would characterize them as black even though they were a very mixed race and they signed up at the beginning of the war. they said okay we have a company that's called the louisiana guards and we want to fight with our neighbors. we want to do whatever our

neighbors want to do. this may very well have been to preserve their status in society. we don't know. the reasons probably differed from man to man. so the argument goes here you had 2,000 blacks lining themselves up with the confederacy, but what happened to them. wh what happened to them is they were not part of the louisiana army. they were never provided with arms by either the federal or state government and by early 1826 the louisiana legislator figured out this really didn't look too good and so they changed the law and said to be in the louisiana malitia you must be all white. so i think that example turns out to turn back on itself and to demonstrate once again that the south had a great deal of

reluctance to use black soldiers. now, let's get to what's really pretty clear and that is that until five weeks before appimatics the confederate government never officially allowed the use of slaves so that tells us something right there that this was an issue raised periodically throughout the war and that until march of 1865 this practice was not authorized. even then it had strings on it. so what that tells us is 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 and more than two months into 1865 the confederate congress did not authorize slaves to be used in the confederate army. and so it's hard to argue that well the confederacy did this

and thousands fought for them et cetera when as a matter of fact the law prohibited in the confederacy. now, further evidence of what we're talking about here is that on january 2nd, 1864, patrick clayborne, one of the best, maybe the best confederate generals, saw what was going on concerning manpower. the confederacy started the war outnumbered three to four of white men of fighting age. 3 1/2 to one that they were out numbered and they had a desperate need for manpower and they had not moved toward using their slaves. by the end of 1863, this is

following many bloodbaths, the confederacy was down to the bottom. they were not only recruiting but drafting boys and men from 18 to 65 and still didn't have enough manpower. so clayborne stepped up and produced an issue paper on which he said we have been decimated. president davis has done all he could to drum up voluntarily or involuntarily support from whites in the south and we've gone out and grabbed people kicking and screaming but we still don't have nearly enough and we are going to be beaten unless we find a way to address the manpower issue. so in his issue paper then he recommended that slaves be

utilized as confederate soldiers and that consistent with historical use of slaves in warfare that slaves who fought would at the end of the war, together with their families, be freed. so this is a lot to swallow for a lot of people. this was basically saying use blacks as confederate soldiers and by the way you should emans pat a large number of them. now he first of all got about 13 of his own generals within his large division to sign off on this. they thought it was a pretty good idea. at least they weren't going to disagree with the boss. so he went in with this paper signed by himself and 13 others, presented it to joseph johnston who was the commander in the tennessee/georgia area at the time.

this was before the atlanta campaign started, early '64. he present this proposal and he argued for it and johnston had called a general meeting in response to a request from clayborne so johnston had all of his other division commanders and deputy commanders, just a whole slew of military leaders in the quote western theater attending this meeting and johnston remained silent after the presentation was made and one person spoke up in support of clayborne's proposal and that was his former law partner out of arkansas and that was general hinman and he had written a letter to the newspaper a month or two before pushing for the same idea, but other than that everybody else opposed. they not only opposed it, they violently opposed.

they said among other things and this came up again and again on the question of using blacks as soldiers they said look, we are fighting this war over the issue of slavery. our contention is slaves are not capable of being soldiers. if we admit they are soldiers or they're successful of being soldiers we undermine the argument for the rational for sl slavery so we cannot do this. johnston sat on the proposal. clayborne wanted him to send it to richmond. one of the other leaders saw it to davis and davis saw it and exploded. so davis, along with his secretary of war and his chief military advisor braxton bragg who had been promoted to davis's

military adviser at that point the three of them started using words like treason, take names, keep a list, watch these men and davis finally had the secretary of war send the word back to johnston, destroy all copies of the proposal and no one shall ever discuss this again. and he almost succeeded in destroying the records because the only copy that ever appeared was found 20 years later when confederate records were being asemabled to produce the official records of the war of rebellon and there it was. so that's in the official records if you choose to read clayborne's thoughtful and thought provoking proposal which at that time got nowhere. one clear effect it had is it stopped his career advancement because over the next ten months before he was killed in general

hood's suicidal attack in franklin, tennessee in november of that year there were three times that core commander positions became open in that army, the army of tennessee, and that meant also that there were three possibilities to be promoted from two stars to three stars. clayborne got nothing even though he has a brilliant record in the war. so his idea was rejected. now ironically, about the same time that he was killed, all of a sudden jefferson davis and robert e. lee come around because they're at the top of the pyramid and they see what's going on on a nationwide basis which is that 1863 was bad but 1864 is even worse from a confederate manpower perspective because of the tremendous losses

the confederacy suffered in grant's overland campaign in virginia, although they suffered numbericly less than grant did. the percentage of casualties were higher and they were ir replaceable. and the same time sherman had had a very successful campaign in georgia and by this time had captured atlanta, georgia. so the confederates continued to take heavy casualties. the manpower situation was now something that could not be ignored. so davis and lee then began an effort to convince the confederate congress that they should authorize the use of black soldiers, specifically free slaves and use them as soldiers and then emans pat them and maybe their families as well. so november, december of 1864 and then on into early 1865 they

continued to make this push, but if you want evidence about what the confederacy is all about what you have to do is look at the politicians' statements, senators' statements, the public's statement and the press, the southern press, and again we have this rejection of a concept because it's inconsistent with what we are fighting for and if we did this it would just undercut our whole rational for slavery. so because of the strong opposition, the proposal got nowhere until finally about march the 8th or 9th of 1865, one month before appamatics, the confederate senate by nine to eight and the confederate house by a narrow vote finally approved using black slaves as soldiers in the confederate army. there were three catches.

one was the master of the slave had to agree. number two, the state from which the slave came had to agree. and number three, there was no emancipation promised as part of the deal. so that is what passed. that is what passed. and basically it became something of a fiasco. there were about 200 black coreman taking out of richmond hospitals organized into two companies and they were paraded and drilled in richmond. in fact, they performed the manual at arms. they weren't given any arm but they performed the manual at arms and they never played any role in any fighting in the waning days of the confederacy as richmond fell and then the courthouse followed shortly thereafter. so despite the fact that they absolutely had to have more manpower in order to win the war, the confederacy

consistently rejected that approach until the last desperate hour. by the way, the defenders of the lost cause will always throw this out and say well you know the confederate congress authorized the use of slaves. yeah, they did, one month before the war was over and they did it in such a manner that nothing ever came of it. now, other things the confederacy during the civil war which give you an indication of how important slavery was vis-a-vis winning the war, prisoner of war exchange. again, we go back to manpower, critical need for the south, so they benefitted greatly the first half of the war because the north engaged with them in prison of war exchanges. they were essentially one for one. now you might have some refined rules like one colonel equals ten privates and that kind of thing but you essentially had

one for one trade offs between the confederacy and the union for the first half of the war but then comes the emancipation prok mash and northern recruitment and training and use of black soldiers beginning in mid 1863. so what happened there is that black soldiers who were on the losing side were often shot down as they tried to surrender and if they were lucky enough to survive they were treated as slaves, as property and so they refused to exchange them. grant and lincoln said that's too bad because we're going to stop prison of war exchanges so the exchanges were stopped until almost the end of the war until davis and lee changed their view but for a critical year and a half of the war when the south

needed every man it could get it refused to trade prisoners with the north so -- well, it refused to trade blacks and the north reciprocated by not trading at all. you would have to say it's pretty clear that lincoln and grant weren't acting solely out of consideration for the captured blacks. let's be honest, they also knew that the fallout would be that the confederacy was no longer benefitting from these prison of war exchanges but i think it's a classic example of slavery driving the issue and even though the actions taken on slavery were inconsistent with what the confederates needed to win the war. and the final area i'd point to is international diplomacy. suffice it to say the south was very reluctant to guarantee

england in particular, and also france and the pope, that they would end slavery and make sure that the international slave trade was completely stopped. if you want some real good insight into that, there's a book that came out probably about two years ago called "our man in charleston" by christopher dickey. the british consult in charleston, south carolina was there from about 1954 to 1864 and overly bviously he was a whn and they made certain assumptions about his political views being proslavery and they were way too frank with him for their own good so he kept feeding this information to britain and made it clear that don't trust them, they are not going to back off of slavery and obviously britain was not going

to intervene on the side of a state that was actively promoting slavery. so once again they acted at their pearl. okay. i have one other book to mention to you and that triggered one other issue. so if i may retreat for just a second and say that one other piece of evidence about this evidence as which succession occurred is is as the first states went out five of those stas appointed delegates to go to the slave states to try to convince them to leave the union and join the confederacy. i don't need to tell you what the arguments were because they were all the same arguments i've already told you about all night, but what i want -- i do want to tell you if you want to look into that, there's a small

book a few years old called "apostles of disunion" by charles dew and it talks about these mission aers for the southern cause talking to the other southern states and every argument they made was slavery related, every argument made. that takes care of the three books that i wanted to make sure that i mentioned. okay. moving on, did the south have a chance to win the war? no, the south never had a chance to win the civil war and i would beg to differ. at the beginning of the war southern leaders were anonymous thinking they would win. the less powerful party won. in the revolution the colonists ended up doing things very

intelligently. washington took two punches in the nose before he realized he had to do this but he avoided major conflicts and acted very defensively and frustrated the british and ultimately the british population gave up on the war. and in addition the colonistis played their cards international and got the assistance that the confederacy did not get. at that early stage of the war then you had military experts for example the london times military correspondent, you had southern leaders almost anonymously because of course one confederate soeldier was th equivalent of three northern soldiers so there was a great belief that the confederacy would win the war. there are very sound reasons for thinking that was likely to

happen because after the second batch of southern states succeeded you had 11 states forming this massive land area about two-thirds the size of western europe, which had to be conquered by the north. all the south needed was a tie or stalemate but the north needed a victory and the south however ended up not being satisfied with a tie or stalemate, whether it didn't seem dramatic enough, whether lee's personal convictions about what was the right thing to do, the south under lee in particular, went on the attack, on the strategically we have the campaigns in the north and i'll talk about these when i talk about lee in a few minutes but the south did not play its cards

well at all and there were all kinds of reasons why it should have stayed on the defensive strategically and tactically and it did not do so and there's no reason to believe the south could not have won the war militarily on that basis alone. huge area, difficult to conquer and especially with the weapons developments that had occurred between the mexican war and the civil war. so i was saying that the south could militarily have won the war. in addition, there's a whole separate line of thought that i've developed over time with i i think has some validity to it which is the south had a chance for winning the war politically. this is not ex post rational.

in 1863 and 1864 the diaries of leaders said they were looking forward to the election of 1864. they realized how important that election was because abraham lincoln was the steel backbone of the civil war. his election had nearly brought it about by bringing the slavery issue to the fore and lincoln was the steel backbone. lincoln was solid. the confederates realized this so they were looking forward to this and said if we can defeat lincoln in 1864 we'll get a lot of what we want. and especially as it turned out because george mccullough was running against him and george wanted nothing do with ending slavery and george was willing to have some kind of truce, pause, cease fire to talk things over. i think once that happened.

that was pretty much the end of it. how could the election have gone in favor of mccullen. we've heard the election of 1864 was a landslide, that there was 55% to 45% and electoral votes were something like 212 to 21. it sounds like he had no prayer but if you dig into the numbers there were 4 million voters and if less than 1%, if something like 29,000 of those voters had changed their votes in selected northern states he wins by one electoral one. there were a lot of close states and it would not have taken much of a shift. so we're talking less than 1%

voter shift would have given him the election. i find it astounding that in light of the fact that the ten weeks leading up to the election all kind of military developments had gone in favor of the union. he had the fall of mobile harbor and the fall of atlanta and sher dawn cleaning out the shenandoah valley so there should have been no reason to give up on the war and no reason to do anything other than support lincoln and let's bring this to an end based on what positive developments were going on but despite that the election is very very close, a lot closer than is commonly understood. so that's enough of my opinions about it was not -- if was was not at all inevitable that the north would win or the south would lose. you had to examine deeply the possibilities of southern

victory. part of this ties into robert e. lee. now we'll move into lee. lee was according to the legend one of the greatest generals that ever lived and he was made the mini god of the myth of a lost cause. several years ago my late father-in-law and i, after reading a whole slew of books on the civil war, came to the startling conclusion that each one of these authors had had something negative to say about lee but always apologized for it. it was uncharacteristically lee did that and the authors were not all pointing to the same thing, they were pointing to a variety of issues. so at that point i said to my father-in-law, i said i'm going to write a book on how robert e. lee lost the civil war and that was my back number one.

i lived in virginia at the time. i now live in pennsylvania. anyway, so i have some criticisms of lee's generalship. first of all, lee was a virginian first and a confederate second. no big surprise there. before the civil war a lot of people identified themselves with their states and no one ever said the united states is -- they said the united states are. but in the case of virginians and in lee in particular, he was really in to almost a religious faith in his state. wherever virginia went, he was going to go. and actually when he declined command of all federal armys at the beginning of the war, he said i will lift my sword only in defense of not the confederacy, the old dominion. so from the beginning he was

very open, above board and people had to realize this guy's interested in virginia and maybe in not much else and that is the way it played out. my favorite example of that is that in 1862 lee on his own without approval from anybody in richmond shortly after decided to cross the potomic and invade pennsylvania. when he wrote to davis he said we're crossing the potomic going into enemy territory. i think it's a long shot but i think it's worth it, i think this will have a great impact on europe if we can have a victory. lee said in the letter to davis, by the way, since i am leaving richmond uncovered by taking his whole army into enemy territory, he said i recommend that you bring braxton bragg and his

troops in from tennessee to protect richmond. at the time that lee made his recommendation braxton bragg was outnumbered which leads me to conclude that lee either did not know or did not care what was going on in any theater outside of his own precious virginia theater. the only time that reinforcements went from lee's army elsewhere was when they were allowed to go to alcoholica wagona. lee delayed that movement by three weeks. during those three weeks union soldiers captured knoxville, tennessee blocking the easy route to get down to chatta nuga and that forced long street to take an eight to ten day trip

using eight to ten small railroads to get through the carolina's and georgia to get to the battlefield. then he showed up in the middle of two-day battle and had roughly one-half of his troops, had none of his arrow till area and his horses and mulz he had one arm tied behind his back. due to good luck for the confederates longstreet was in a position to destroy rose's army but he became known as the rock of alcoholica mul gau by defending the high ground for the whole afternoon and into the evening before he made an orderly retreat to join the rest of rose kranz's fleeing army back in chatta nooga. i think the outkocome could hav

been quite difference if he had his complete force and his arrow till area in so far trying to blast thomas off the high ground. but it gets worse. within two days after he was finally -- lee was ordered by davis -- very unusual, lee was ordered by davis to send longstreet down. two days later lee wrote to davis and said i've got an idea about longstreet. after he gets down there and he fights the major battle, who should be done with longstreet he should be moved from the chatanooga area to knoxville where he can chase out the union forces that are there and then -- this is lee -- and then he can come quickly back to my army. the only army that really

counted, the army of northern virginia. this may sound like a joke or proposal, an aside or whatever, but this had fatal consequences because what happened is after the battle the confederates on scene got into a huge finger pointing contest with basically bragg pointing the finger at his subordinates and his subordinates pointing the finger at bragg at who let's them escape. so they were blaming each other and davis went personally down to try to settle the dispute. he settled it in typical davis fashion in which davis you have to recall either loved you or hated you and bragg was one of his buddies. so in what would have been an

interesting conference bragg sat there and all recommended that bragg be removed from command, subordinates telling the president to remove this commander and what happens, davis basically sustained bragg in his position and removed most of the subordinates. now one little problem was that longstreet was sort of a subordinate on loan and there's little doubt that longstreet went out to that theater with the idea of if bragg screws up maybe i can get that command and have my own independent command and not be working for lee. and so then longstreet realized and what davis did longstreet realized there goes that plan and then on the other hand bragg knew what longstreet tried do, that he stirred up this dissent among the subordinates and it didn't need much stirring up but

longstreet did stir it up. so davis then thinks i had this wonderful suggestion from robert e. lee about what to do and that is to send longstreet off to knoxville and leave bragg with the rest of his army in the area. so he suggests that to both bragg and longstreet so for separate reasons they both agreed. so longstreet is sent away with 15 anonymo 15,000 troops to knoxville. this is when troops circled chatta nooga. they recognized the importance of the area as a gateway into atlanta and into the heart of the northern mid land. so the union at the same time they brought in grant and said we want you to take care of this, we want you to save the army that's trapped there, get

rid of the confederates in that area and they sent around two cors, 20,000 troops went down through alabama and into chatta nuga. sherman was marched across tennessee to get in the fray as well. what happens on a numbers basis is that while the union is building its forces in chatta nooga to 75 to 80,000 troops, lee's wonderful suggestion has resulted in the confederates going from 50,000 to 35,000. so confederates were spread thin, they had no reserve, so when you had the miracle break through at mission aer ridge,

confederates have no reserve, their lines start rolling up from the middle and they flee back to georgia setting the stage for the atlanta campaign next year. so this is a good example of the kinds of impacts that lee had on other theaters other than the virginia theater. so that's number one. virginia first and a confederate second. the other major problem with lee is given everything, given all the relevant circumstances, he was way, way too aggressive, way too offensive. he fought as though he -- as though he were a union general with unlimited resources and the strategic necessity to go on the attack. as claimed before my theory is that the south only needed to tie or stalemate, they needed to make it difficult for the union to capture southern armies, to

capture southern territory and repel the union to the extend of making it so bloody that the northern moral would decline and northern people would give up on the war. believe me, that came very close to happening in the middle of 1864, but instead of doing that, lee, for whatever reasons, went on the strategic offensive. between the two campaigns he lost about 75,000 casualties and in addition within virginia alone tactically the seven days battle, the first major battle after lee took command of his army, was a one-week series of attacks by lee on mcclennan's army and lee did achieve strategy success by driving him

away from richmond. he started fleeing the instant lee started attacking but the point is lee had achieved his strategic goal of getting the army to retreat away from richmond the end of one day and by the end of two days lee knew from reports from jeb stewart that this was the case. but he kept attacking for the rest of the week and so in that campaign lee took 20,000 casualties to mcclennan 15,000. lee casualties were killed or wounded. that was not a good start because the south could not afford to fight the war in that way. now, one i may not have heard is the back end of the battle of chancell chancellorsville, lee was on the

offensive and took heavy losses there and then the one you definitely know about is get easeberg where on days two and three lee did nothing but assault strong federal positions on high ground against longstreet's advice and took just a severe, severe beating. so 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 the north had the burden of winning the war and that the south was so badly outnumbered could not afford to squander its manpower. in addition one other factor is this. the weaponry had changed significantly since the mexican war and so during the course of the civil war you're talking about widespread use of rifles instead of muskets, use of the

mini ball, form of the bullet if you will which was much more accurate and as the war progressed even further the use of repeaters. what did all these things do? they moved the power from the offensive, which it had been in the mexican war, to the defensive. the defense had the power in the civil war. you did not want to attack unless you had to. lee did not have to, but he did. and some demonstration of my point is that about 80% of the battles of the civil war, in about 80% the tactical winner was the defender, just could not be budged from where the defender was. so you did not want to attack unless you had to and lee attacked again and again. so those are some of my reasons for -- some of my reasons for

lee not being the great general that we've heard of. now, one second on longstreet. he's blamed for gets easeberg, escape goa scape goat. so 1871 to 1872, on lee's birthday famous speeches were given given. they created this story out of whole cloth and they said that lee had ordered longstreet to attack the enemy at dawn on day two of the three-day battle. suffice it to say it was a total lie, had nothing to support it. that's been well proven over time, although it took about 100 years for people to seriously look into it and come to the clo conclusion that was not so at all.

so what we think is lee ordered longstreet to attack at 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning so it was unlikely lee would have ordered an attack at dawn since lee sent out scouting parties at dawn. the whole thing was a lie but it was to tar the reputation of james longstreet and take lee off the hook. lee committed a slew of errors, the highlights being number one at the end of day one when the union armies were in retreat through the town back toward the high ground, total disarray, lee came on scene, gave the worst order of the civil war in which he said that commander he said take the high ground if practical. now if he had commanded that core every effort would have been made to capture it.

there's an ongoing debate if the confederates had done it if they would have captured the high ground, the only thing i'll say is that was the best chance lee had to capture the high ground the entire time he was there and he basically did not take it. he gave a weak general a weak order and so nothing came of it. so that's the longstreet story in a nutshell. also i need to point out that lee on days two and three launched a series of attacks on the high ground and he never did so at the same time. there was never a contemporaneous attack on the union forces. he had longstreet on the south and then finally 24 hours later richard attacks on the north and

then picker goes up the middle. two-thirds of lee's army watched the other one-third carrying out these attacks. it was a horrible campaign and military historians are in pretty anonymous agreement about it was lee's worst and it was devastatingly bad. okay. that moves us on to grant. grant was called a butcher and it was said that he only won through brute force. we don't have time to go through his brilliant campaign in which he was outnumbered in the theater in enemy territory and won five battles in 18 days because he used force and deception and speed and concentration of force. he was outnumbered in the theater until he began a siege

when he won these five battles yet by fooling the enemy each of the five battles grant had more than the enemy did because the enemy didn't know where he was, they didn't know where they should be. so it was an absolutely brilliant campaign and again and again grant has a record during the war, he captured a fort. it was the first major union victory. he captured vicksberg and rescued a union army and then he was promoted to general in chief and three stars and asked to win the war which he did within 11 months. i think the record is pretty clear about grant's success. now, let me deal one minute with the casualty statistics that

have i studied fairly well. i've got some here. okay. these are grant's casualties. i don't know if we have a total. no. okay. we do. up at the top of the right hand side, here's the story on cash nu y casualties when comparing grant and lee. here is my favorite synopsis. grant commanded five armies in three theaters and was a winner every he went and did all he did, including capturing three enemy armies at a cost of 154,000 casualties. casualties are killed, wounded, missing and captured. grant did all that he did in three theaters with a total of

154,000 casualties. lee on the other land commanded one army in one theater which he lost and did so at the cost of 209,000 casualties, 59,000 casualties more than grant. so you can understand based on that analysis anyway where i have to say we've been sold something of a bill of goods about how great lee was and about how bad grant was. quite frankly the majority of the civil war historians now believe grant was the great leader of the civil war even if the general public does not. the general public has been saturated with this story for 150 years so i regard the myth of the lost cause as the most

successful propaganda campaign in american history. and so i'll leave you to the final judges on that and thank you for listening. thank you. thank you. there are microphones in each aisle and we have just 15 minutes to deal with any questions anyone would like to ask. and we will stop at 8:45 sharp. so you can get out of here and go home if you like. does anybody have any questions? sir? there's a mike back there. you can go back to the mike. go ahead. >> how far along did efforts come for the north to purchase the freedom of the slaves to stop this from happening and if

they considered what was the total cost of that compared to the cost of the civil war eventually? >> that's a real good question. i assume everyone heard it. abraham lincoln explored the purchase of slaves, compensated emancipation is the term general used, and lincoln at first when he explored this was willing to consider migrating, sending those slaves to africa or to central america or the car been but lincoln explored the concept of buying the freedom of slaves and he did the calculation that you talked about and he used delaware awawhich had a small number of slaves so he had calculations that for the cost of one day of war you could free

1,000 slaves and go on from there but so he tried to sell this to the boarder states. these are ones that are members of the union. and they just wouldn't -- he held meetings with delegates, held meetings with the four boarder state representatives. no one bought into it, no one at all. so even in the boarder states there was such a firm belief in slavery that they were not willing to consider selling their slaves in order to avoid war which again tells us something about maybe the slavery thing was not just economics, but it was economics plus politics. >> i was wondering whether you consider the shelby on civil war. >> a lot of the shelby foot was

a governor. he was entertaining in the war. and i would say don't read into it early. the try olg doesn't have any dates or footnotes and it's very readable. he put his heart into it and he tells a great story. i found it very useful. i had read 30 books on the civil war at least and i had all these pieces and i felt that it put it all together. meanwhile down in mississippi so he sort of it made it possible for me anyway to be able to visualize the war as a total

entity and i find it very useful in that regard. it's very colorful. some people might not want to just read historians books with lots of footnotes and everything would find his approach to be good but i wouldn't do that until you familiarize yourself with other books and do not use it as a case book. i made that mistake and used it as a course book in a college course and 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 et cetera et cetera. but it reads beautifully and it has its place, but shelby does have a lot of tendencies of the supporters of the myth of the lost cause. >> thank you. >> you're welcome.

yes, sir. >> according to gary gal ger at the university of university concerning black troops, let's say black support, he saidlet's support -- that lee went into the campaign i believe with 77,000 troops. but also they took with them about 10,000 slaves that not only were personal servants and laundry, they also were teamsters, they were cooks and they may not have been firing artillery but they may have been driving the horses on the thing. is this a fair assumption? >> i think that's a fair assumption. i don't know about the number of 10,000. it certainly is possible because when lee invaded pennsylvania he needed a lot of transportation. he needed a lot of steamsteteam. he needed a lot of people to do a lot grunge work loading all grains that were taken out of the state. the cumberland valley was stripped.

it was a huge market basket for lee and maybe the best thing that came out of the gettysburg campaign was the success in moving cattle and horses and mules and huge quantities of materials back. and having black slaves to do it would free up white soldiers. what that doesn't get around is the fact that 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 really got no respect. but they were resources. i think i mentioned them earlier. they were used to build fortifications and that kind of thing. so there were subsidiary jobs, something less than a full soldier th soldier, that they were allowed to do. i think that makes it very difficult to study that issue of were slaved used or not.

you have to get into, what did congress officially authorize? they did not authorize slaves to be used. sir. >> i thank you. the book was wonderful. but something that you touched on in the book and you didn't have as much time for it tonight though, touched on the idea of general sherman. i've read two biographies of him, so i want to put as a question to you. do you think he's unfairly treated as a casualty of the myth and that he was actually an extremely effective general, but he gets swept up in this hatred in the myth and a reason to sympathize with the south. >> you are right. i didn't reach that point. that's sort of my last point had to do with the allegations that the north won only by total war. allegation is primarily that sherman in georgia and the carolinas and sheridan in the shenandoah valley are the classic examples of the north using total war.

there is a difference between total war and hard war. total war is ghengis khan, what the russians and germans and japanese did in world wars i and ii. you go in and have mass rapes and mass murders of civilians, intentional, deliberate destruction of civilian population. because total to me means unfettered. you use every weapon at your disposal and you just obliterate the enemy. what the north did to ultimately win the war was exercise hard war. hard war. that term is used a lot, too. i think it is much more accurate the north went in and did a lot of damage. they burned barns, they burned crops, they killed animals. they basically imposed severe critical economic damage on the south. but that's not a total war.

that's not total war. and of course, books continue to be written. what sherman did to us. and things like that. and basically, i said, well, sherman gave you a break, because he didn't go around killing people. i mean very few deaths involved in his march. and the same thing was true of sheridan. so there were sprinklings of minor skirmishes. but basically we're talking about go in and destroy the enemy infrastructure and that's called hard war. the morale of the south plummeted as a result of what sherman was doing and many of the tens of thousands of desserters from lee's army were people 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.

>> i want to follow up in a way. i think the morale issue is something germane. you depicted i think very well reasons for the myth. it was all very reasonable. but when you get into this notion of morale and mindset and the other factors that did exist in the south that helped propagate the myth, i mean, they lost. they were ravaged, not just by the war, be but by reconstruction. there was this endemic poverty. there was a romantic ideal to begin with that existed there, and then the war really deflated that. so i think, yes, it's reasonable to look at the data and say, yeah, this is -- this myth is

bogus. but that doesn't mean that it's easily dealt with, especially in the minds of the southern people who so strongly hold on to it. and so you didn't get into that issue of the mindset that helps propagate the myth. i'm wondering if you have any comment on that. >> okay. well, i think that when you look at the minds behind the succession resolutions, the confederate constitution, the outreach to other states, et cetera, that were occurring at that time, which we can put our fingers on and say, it was -- these were all about slavery. now if you back off and say, well, what about the people and their morale, then you get into an almost insoluble dilemma about individual soldiers fought for different reasons. individual peopl