winst winston salem, north carolina, to encourage early voting. our coverage starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern. in in evening, a new hampshire debate between kelly ayotte and maggie hass. that's live at 8:00 p.m. eastern from concord, new hampshire, also on thcspan. >> this weekend on american history tv on cspan 3, saturday morning from 9:00 eastern to just afternoon. >> it's the british empire. and it's commonwealth. lasts for a thousand years. men saying, this was their finest hour. >> we're live for the 33rd international churchill conference in washington, d.c., focusing on the former british prime minister's friends and contemporaries. speakers include andrew roberts, author of masters and commanders, how four titans won

the war in the west. 1941 to 1945 and later on saturday 7:00, george p. bush, jose mendez and phil collins talk b about the spanish mission, the alamo, at the 2016 texas tribune festival in auctionen. >> the memories i have, this group of people were going and they knew they were going to die. but they went. or they were there. there was something very noble and romantic. i've learned it wasn't quite black and white. that's one of the things i think would be good in day and age. we put it into context! then sunday evening at 6:00 on american artifacts. >> mcarthur is up front. not wear iing a weapon. he could lead attacks carrying

nothing but that riding crop. you see in his left hand. the men looked at this and realized, hey, if the colonel can take it, well, i can take it, too. >> we visit the mcarthur memorial to learn about his e l early life, who commanded allied forces in the pacific during world war ii. and at 8:00 -- >> the great leaders also serve conscious with with the highest level of integrity. with their moral compass locked on true north so we can always count on them to do the right thing when times get tough or when no one is looking. >> he explains his ten commandments for presidential leadership, what they are and provides examples of presidents who excelled at each one. for our complete tv schedule gork to cspan.org. >> next, arizona state university history professor, brooks simpson, talks about the

political career of grant hosted the conference on reconstruction and the legacy of the civil war. >> many people see 1865 as the high point in the life of grant. after a year of long, hard fighting, against the army north of virginia, on april 9th, he accepted the surrender, which was as we know, was a desisivci step in bringing the american civil war to a conclusion for the union. but what did that victory mean? what are the fruit of union

victory. he would struggle to defend and define that victory for the next 20 years. first as general and chief of the armies of the united states. then as the 18th president of the united states. then in his post presidential career as a speaker and author. after he left the white house. until his death in 1885. during that time, grant worked very hard to try to balance the need for sectional reconciliation between white northerners and white southerners with the need to secure and preserve racial justice and equality for

american. he also thought to success of the party that saved the union, the republican party. he tried to explain and defend his own role in achieving military victory and preserving its fruits. this is understand bable. because grant's place in history depended upon the victory he had won worth winning. it would be wrapped together with what happened to the 20 years after appomattox. we have to bring those years together instead of separating. talking about grand's presidency, his time as general in chief. but there are ways to bring those together to talk about fwrant's effort to preserve the

fruits of victory. this notion of grant in a continuing civil war is not original to me. i've built on it a great deal, fwu fact the historian that wrote b about this, wrote a short essay called president grant and thing civil war, which people by and large overlooked because it was in a volume of limited circulation, but the fact is the current, rather distinguished historian of politics, understood that what he fought to secure had not been secured entirely at appomattox. for the past year or so about when did the civil war end. what is the relationship between the civil war and reconstruction.

well, i have to tell you that grant saw the two as joined together. that reconstruction determined that wha the american civil war achieved. for americans white and black. of that generation. and set in motion that the civil war is always viewed through the filter of how we understand reconstruction. you can't take the two apart to deal in about when the war ended, what did it achieve. let's put it this way, everyone in the room remembers something like this. you remember april 9th. the famous day in american history, right? anmatic day.

no. 2003. the fall of baghdad. if you heard announcers that day as we watched the statue be pulled down in baghdad of sad sad,, which shows the attention span of most news anchors in the united states. as well as the quality of their actual education. after that, president bush landed on an aircraft carrier with a big banner, mission accomplished. i don't think we view that mission as having people

acompished. fall of their capital city. so, if we've learned through that, imagine for example that on april 11th and somebody was smarter than george w. bush, i know this is hard for you to conceive at first, but when abraham lincoln spoke to the country on april 11th, 1865, several days before his untimely passing, he did not celebrate that mission was acompished. lincoln understood that the mission had barely begun, but u the conventional war might be drawing to a close, but the struggle would continue and take forms that people had not anticipated.

of course lincoln would not be afford to observe what happened. in 1864, he would be around to try to secure the peace that union soldiers had done so much to win. only he did so under a new president, andrew johnson, who took office on april 5th, otherwise known as income tax day. you feel-- b grant's role is re important at this time. grant's the most popular man in the united states. sorry robert e. lee fans. he's going to play a major role in piece just as in war.

at the beginning, grant really worked hard to promote reconciliation. you would see that in fact with anmatic appomattox, the generosity he showed robert e. lee. making sure his men could take home their horses. no painting of lee handing over his sword to grant. lee himself was touched by grant's generosity and talk ed about how it would leave a good impression on his soldiers. lee may have forgotten that within 24 hours, but he approved of the general's orders. of peter and others have just

mentioned. but he worked to promote reck sill throughout the remainder of 1865. he became ambivalent about the use of african-american soldiers on occupation duty in the post war south u. this was not by design. it was by happenstance. most of the volunteers meet with the white -- people who could vote in most case, they went back to be discharged leaving unit states color troops the major means through which the united states army could exercise its authority in the post war south. you could that was a challenge, difficulties for all concerned. southern whites always been

petrified by the notion of an african-american with a rifle. i would say most people would be -- black people exercise their second amendment rights. you could understand that african-americans recently freed, testing that freedom, when they met resistance and violence themselves, southern whites would seek protection from their allies in blue unforms. and southern whites resented the idea of black people telling them what to do. much as they would told black people what to do for centuries. grant himself tried to mediate this process. without basically not standing

firmly behind his black soldier, but saying, let's try to work this out because i understand southern sensibility, he was after all, married to the daughter of -- so he had some idea about what people were talking about, so, the 18-year grant was grant of reconciliation. just to see that there's a little more resistance to the idea of reunion and racial equality. wasn't at this point pushing for black suffrage. talk about the equality before the law in terms of basic civil rights would be a reasonable consequence of the war to anticipate. wasn't quite seeing that either. still seeing a chaotic situation.

the biggest recommendation was we need to have a military presence. things haven't been restored. order isn't there. a lot still to go. starting in 1866, grant's priorities started to change. he got many more reports about violence against african-americans, army officers, white outlaws of african-american, became more smur about the need to protect african-americans and their freedom to stop violence. against them. much more upset with resurgent confedera confederate nationalism. now that there was tho confederacy, it was very popular and he began to believe that white southerners were not accepting what people like to call the results of the war. at one poinlt, that prapts the

union armies should be tougher with the southerners. maybe needed to visit a few more neighborhoods and the naeighbor would also hear sherman visited. sherman burned down their house, where do you live, missouri. where was it, alaska. don't play with match, you'll become sherman. but grant in 1866 begins to change. one of the fruits of victory was the destruction of slavery. but the beginning of the establishment of the establishment of freedom, wasn't quite sure what that meant yet,

but he did understand that what he was seeing was not what he had hoped for. and remember, grant recalled that one out of seven of his soldiers of '64, '65, happened to be african-american. we forget that. as close to opposed to one out of seven million was a confederate soldier. one out of seven united states soldiers in 1864 h 1865, was african-american. so he's depending his men as well as african-americans. this also meant -- he began to have serious questions about johnson's motive, his intents.

questioning his racism. this came to a ned head in september of 1866 when the 17th president embarked upon his infamous swing around circle. trying to support the candidates to defeat republican congressional candidates in that election. johnson took grant along with him on the trip which became a comic disaster. grant was no kind of spokesperson, so he would give these speeches that were from newspaper to newspaper. with presidential candidates i wish to you remind you, that andrew johnson compared himself to jesus christ. haven't heard that from certain people. yet. and grant would come out and just fold his arm and the crowds

would start cheering for grant and booing johnson. we know during this trip, grant became so potherred by what johnsens was doing wlen the train was going frbufl low to cleveland, what would dwrou? grant got drunk. but grant later on said that the president was a disgrace and he didn't like being with the man who was making speeches on the way to his own funeral. grant supported the 14th amendment. and when southern states failed to ratify it in the elections of 1866, he consulted with congressional republicans in frame iing with reconstruction s of 1867. acts which put the military in charge.

tennessee had ratified it in 1866. during 1867 and 1868, grant gave instructions to generals, the royal generals, the generals who wanted to floel his policies like phillip sheridan and a general who followed superior's orders, daniel sickles actual followed orders. it could happen. maybe he learned from july 2nd. did not support what he wanted to do. notable would be winfield scott hancock. but he was the person in charge of trying tell people, this is what i advise you to do andly protect you from the president

and from other critics as you try to do your duty as outlined in congressal legislation. the rift between johnson and grant grew. and at the same time, grant began to consider something he really had no interest in beforehand. and that was the decision to run for president of the united states. hunger for the presidency. for one thing, he was getting all kind of great stuff. as general. so, people, they read, right? people from philly, nice, domestic place. they helped finance a house. gave it to him in new jersey. then as we know, everything is legal in new jersey. ask the governor.

but new yorkers being the intelligent people they are, just gave him money. i'd say the laws are somewhat different and the understanding of ethics is different. but he's a young man and guess what, being general in chief was the longest term job he had. there's a guy in 1860, a clerk in the general store. but grant felt a duty and obl xwags to run for president. when he becomes president by the way the youngest man to assume the office of the presidency at that time. 46 years old. but he tells his friend, sherman, he said he hated politicians. even as he tried to become one in weirder oways than the norma office running, that to leave the presidency, what he called mere trading politicians as he put it, would losetous largely the results of the costly war

which we have gone through. so, grant ran for president to save the fruits of victory from continued political turmoil in the agreement which had reached its climax in 1868 with the impeachment of johnson. grant didn't need a speech writer when he issued a four word statement in accepting the statement, let us have peace. magnificently malleable statement. let us have peace between whites an blacks, between north and south. enough of the turmoil, go make some money. great stuff though. let us u have peace. the words today engraved at the entrance to his tomb. and grant drew enough votes including hundreds of thousands

of african-americans casting their first ballot in a presidential election. to secure the presidency in november 1868. those people who voted for him voted for him to bring reconstruction to an end. they'd had enough. four years out from an mat mattics. if only it had been that simple. as president, grant moved quickly to support the ratification of the 15th amendment and when it was ratified, in march 1870, grant commemorated the occasion with a special presidential proclamation in which he said it -- the dread scott decision. presidents tended not to issue, but to grant, this was a special

occasion. so now, you can't use race, color, to deny an american citizen the right to vote. during his first year in office, he assisted security forces in virginia in gaining that state's full readmission to the union. although more skeptical of trying to do the same in texas or mississippi. mississippi tried real hard. actually ran grant aes brother-in-law for governor. youfr my brother-in-law, but you're not my governor. and in the case of georgia where violence had been rampant in 1868 in part because the secret clans man, john b. gordon, they never mention about doing plaques and revisiting plaques on the battle feed. they never say let's go to the knoll there and redo that plaque to remind everybody that john

brown gordon was quite a clans man. secure d the state for presiden in the fall election, but we don't want the talk about that. despite grant's best efforts, violence increased. grant urged congress to pass forceful in a series of enforcement acts to allow the federal government to right to vote, the so-called cue clux act. clear marshall law and send federal troops protect black rights and terrorist groups. that's homeland security for you.

in the fall, he uses that power to send troops to south carolina, piedmont country, including where i used to teach, wofford college, spartanburg and would often credit the intervention with breaking the back of the ku klux klan to the extend that some historians like jeffrey bray, say nothing about what happened during grant's second term b about reconstruction. i won't make that mistake. because although grant may have broken the ku klux klan, he did not break white supremacists. that continued in different forms and with somewhat different objectives. grant experimented in different ways trying to look for other solutions to the problem of how do you get white southerners to respect african-americans including by the way, the controversial proposal so the dominican republic.

parts of grant's urging that the united states annex the dominican republic. sounded like imperialism, but the one difference was grant said we will take the dominican republic, make it part of the united states, and then we'll see if african-american workers in the south where labor is precious although treated badly, those african-americans can threaten to leave to go to the dominican republic. where there's lots of room and opportunity for them. and maybe watch -- keep that workforce might finally respect their rights. some historians dismiss this as a cockamamy proposal, but

frederick douglas endorsed it and he was not a cockamamy man. oppos opposed colonization. in fact, the man who opposed annexation was massachusetts senator, charles sum network friend of black man, assisted by missouri senator and former 11th core division commander, carl shirts. gettysburg reconstruction connections. at most, grant could stop some of the violence, but he couldn't stop the eventual collapse of several republican regimes, even when he won overwhelming re-election in 1872.

but grant's second term saw the collapse of his reconstruction policy. in very violent, nauseating fashion. i think i think that's important to understand. we see, you know, grant as a hero, in this case, he's going to be a hero of a different lost cause and not the hero, but in fact someone who has to deal with very difficult questions because what grant learns during his second term that while white southerners may not have had the united will, they certainly had the united will to fight for the preservation of white supremacy. and white northerners, while they may have united to preserve the union, do not have quite the heart when it came to preserving black equality and freedom. and so a couple of instances in second term i think illustrate

his frustration of what was going on. april 13th, 1873. talking to you today on the one year anniversary, the murder of nine people in charleston, south carolina. we're all horrified by that. april 13th, 1873, approximately 100 african-americans were shot down in cold blood in colfax, louisiana because they supported the republican party. a few of the people who propagated -- who perpetrated what was known as the colfax massacre were brought to trial, but they were acquitted because of a rather narrow interpretation of republican enforcement legislation, protect black civil rights. it was addressed in a special

message to the united states senate in january 1875, in which he complained that every one of the colfax goes unwhipped of justice and no way can be found in this boasted land of civilization and christianity to punish the perpetrators of this bloody and monestrous crime. in that system uss grant was calling out the american people, especially the american white people, how can you say that you're a christian people? how can you say you're a civilized people and we allow this to go on? president noted, disheartened, the spirit of hatred and violence is stronger than law. why do people tell me that

ulyses grant was not a el quanti -- el quantity man. grant began to understand that the people who had supported him were not so enthusiastic about supporting federal intervention to protect black rights. later that year, the governor of mississippi, another commander in the 11 corps, by the way, beseeched the president for federal assistance to try to find off white supremacist in mississippi. this so-called mississippi plan, peaceably, if we can, forcibly, if we must. everyone knew what "forcibly" meant.

responding to the plea from governor aims, grant attorney general, the whole public are tired out with these annual out breaks in the south, there had been so much lying and misrepresentation in the popular press and among politicians, as grant put it, the great majority of americans are now ready to condemn any interference on the part of the government. people didn't have the stomach to protect black rights any more, at least white people didn't. so construction re -- we talk about the compromise of 1877 and the election, but reconstruction really starts crumbling for good in 1875. and grant, a man who hated retreat, had to conduct a fighting withdrawal. following year, 1876 in south

carolina on the wait of july 4th celebration gone wrong, african-americans were gunned down on july 8th. grant writes back, the scene is cruel, unprovoked and uncalled for, as it was, it's only a repetition of the course which has been pursued in other southern states within the last few years. terrorist violence had become a way of life for white supremacist. and african-americans were its victims. and grant went on, a government that cannot give protection to life, property, and all guaranteed civil rights, including an untramled ballot is a failure. too long denial of guaranteed rights is sure to lead to

revolution, suffering must fall on the innocent as well as the guilty. grant left the presidency in 1877, therefore seeing that while reunion had been achieved, justice for african-americans had not been. he still couldn't quite forget what had happened. after his presidency goes, a trip around the world. and among the people he meets is auto vaughn bismark, another great statesman of national reunification or unification. the two men talk. think of this conversation ulysess. grant and auto vaughn bismark. he goes your situation, you have to unite your country by blood

and iron, through war. and grant says, but that wasn't all, it was also about slavery. we could not be a truly united people until we destroyed slavery. slavery is still on his mind. so is the attitude -- it's seen that president haze had no problem calling out federal troops to put down labor strikes an inquire, why were americans willing and some cases enthusiastic to use military force when it came to labor unrest but showed enthusiasm using the same kind of federal force when it came to protecting the rights of african-americans and something was wrong here.

that's a pretty sharp indictment that the restoration civil governments had been a mistake, too hasty. that would only -- that would be the only way that african-americans would have had their rights protected at the point of bayonet, since they were being denied by a hood in a noose. perhaps this was the wrong way of going about things and made clear that since we've given the vote, we have to honor that pledge, but may have been better just not to allow anyone to vote, just manage the areas under federal supervision. he says the mind of the american people is against that.

it's hostile to military government. just like pointed out this afternoon, it's hostile. we don't want that we want a restoration of the union and civil government, even if that civil government ends up not protecting the rights of its citizens. returning to the united states in 1879 following year grant became a candidate for a third term lost republican nomination after many, many ballots 1880 republican convention was a marathon that resulted in a nomination of james garfield.

grant's last year not only was he writing memoirs, but the whole nation watched and slowly felt victim to throat cancer. you can see a series of balancing acts that grant undertook during that time, in making his death mean something as well as having his memoirs say something. the memoirs reassert the centrality of slavery. grant says there would not have been a civil war had there not been slavery. he honored the courage of confederate soldiers while bemoaning their cause as one of the worst for which anyone had ever fought. that honoring the courage, which reflected the dedication of the memoirs which was to the american soldier, in fact, noted and said don't you mean the

union one, he said, no, leave it as the american soldier. and yet grant still expressed regret in his memoirs that more had not been done for african-americans, nation still did not seem up to securing the promise of freedom and equality that glimpsed in the wake of emancipation. general worked very hard on defending his own record, staff officers had done that before. adam had written a three volume of grant's citizenship, that study which grant would start to read the chapter and including comments. he's a valuable political ally now. they did two things, if you look at them grant refights in terms of fighting federal generals. he does not speak that highly of

robert elie. he had enough of the lee worship. even some scores with other generals who are blue in such an artful way, in fact, that a lot of people take memoirs at face value instead of a text, a narrative presenting an argument and interpretation that emphasizes some things doesn't discuss other things.

>> he talked about the need for harmony and peace former confederates even though he reminded people that justice had to be done to the black man several of those former confederates acted as pallbearers at his funeral at -- he understand that you could not define the american civil wars ending, that that was one stage in a much longer struggle and that much longer struggle, although there had been achievements and successes there had also been shortcomings and

failur failures. grant would say, the work remained unfinished in his time. p and i will say, it remains unfished in ours. thank you very much. i believe we have time for some questions, i will try to deflect these comments with trustee stanley cup. yes.

did the threat to grant peace policy in the west have any impact on enforcement of reconstruction in the south drawing troops away or anything? how generally did they have peace methods. >> these are two major blows coming within 48 hours. there's not a major distraction, we heard it this afternoon from, again, professor lang that one thing we have to emphasize is how the military would rather see service out west, that's where the glory was. another gettisburg guy. it didn't have much of an effect on grant's policy during second term was the after effect and the resulting economic depression, which made many people think about their own interest rather than the interest of others. >> you mentioned a in his

general grants memoirs that he didn't really mention general lee to a certain degree. >> he mentions "lee," but not with the overwhelming positive praise that others had. >> i would curious if they did have a history before the war, possibly, in the mexican-american war, then why would he not give due respect to him like he did in his memoirs. >> you can expect lee in a moment of retreat without lying to the notion there was a fourth member of the trinity and that was robert e. lee. grant thought people had exalted lee's ability beyond measure. the wilderness the end of the second day of combat, may 6 where someone comes in and says we're being attacked and grant turns around, throws down a cigar and if grant threw down cigar, this is bad news. and said you people think that he's going to do a double summer salt and turn on flank and rear

at the same time. i thought it was an excellent description of chancellor'sville. go back and think about what you're going to do, that part of the problem that he saw was this over awing venn ration of lee. in terms of them meeting before the war, lee wasn't even sure he remembered it very well. it was this young staff -- you know, grant is a lieutenant and he walks in to headquarters and give something there to lee. they weren't buddies of any sort. and lee was not a man of great humor, the last time they meet, lee comes lobbying for a railroad firm. robert e lee? lobbyist, they really didn't talk about that, did he? now, but there's a book. you want a dissertation, robert lee is obvious. and grant looks and says you and i, general, have had more to do with destroying railroads and

rebuilding them. lee doesn't laugh. they've could have gone out and lee would have been a straight man. yes. >> do you think that grant's memorial depicts his vision of how he wanted to be remembered after his death or do you think he would make any changes to how his memorial was developed? >> i think grant understood that he was crafting how people would remember him, but i think grant was also able to admit mistakes, for example, his memoirs admits that they final assault at cold harbour, as well as the final assault at may 22nd at vicksburg were mistakes. he may not admit the mistakes that other people want him to admit. i think it's intentionally human grant that comes out in those memoirs, not perfect, one of the things i think it's human grant, it's a man who wants to even old

scores and wounds and scores that still hurt. >> yes. >> i was just wondering, grant is really like one of the first presidents to really expand, i was wondering how do you think he really changed the role. >> how did he change it. >> and how did he -- >> grant understood that for one thing that the president actually had to work with congress, a skill which andrew johnson was notably lacking, but grant also understood that perhaps his cabinet far from a team of rivals should be people who should support the administration? grant, also, when democrats were in control of the house of representatives was not reluctant to use the executive veto, most notably in 1874 to reject an inflation bill, so, actually, you've seen more presidential assertiveness during grant's administrations usually associated with presidents down the road, grant, himself, in fact was the first

united states president to advocate the line item veto. so there are things that grant does that try to rebuild presidential power, the man who had brought presidential power was, in fact, andrew johnson. >> when you just comment sharon massachusetts, will you comment a little bit on how grant's relationship with the jewish community ended up? >> well, it didn't start off well. what we're talking about is a general order that grant issues in december 1862 during a series of setbacks of the vicksburg campaign in which recognizing the smuggling that's going on behind his lines, he decides to strike out the people he thinks to be most responsible for that smuggling, jewish folk. now, by the way, people in washington said if he just said jewish peddlers or traitors, they would have been okay.

but, instead, the orders were to exile out all jewish people, all people of jewish faith from his command, which can also be interpreted by the way, to be his own soldiers. word of this order got to washington, lincoln told him you're going to rescind it. grant rescinds it. it's the only charge that grant responds to during the 1868 campaign. he said, you're right, that was a mistake in order. that was a dumb idea. there was a recent book who talks about, for the rest of his life, grant actually did things that jus supported. but this was a damaging thing and he knew it and he blown it. he disavowed it and said it was wrong. i mean, grant had the ability to say he was wrong, so there are presidents who can say they are wrong or candidates who say they can't and his wife said it was a horrific order, so there was no

defending the order whatsoever. some biographers have tried to explain it gently, but the fact that denounced his own act. >> thank you, very much. [ applause ]

. we're goecing to look at inside the refugee camp of inside the civil war. that in fact, we construction started in 1861. it started in these refugee camps. i'm going to start with two

stories. it's the story of how it got hand ds down. it happened in fort monroe, virginia. it's may 23rd, 1861, frank touz send, james baker and shep pard malorie get a boat under the cover of darkness and row into fortress monroe, where the union just arrived in fact these three general man had been building fortifications for their master. they knew they were about to go down to north carolina to build it there for the confederacy and they would be leaving their families, so they decided to chance it and they came into union lines. the next morning, a confederate soldier comes under flag of truce and says, please return the slaves that came to you last night, butler hesitated.

were rebels really entitled to the benefits of the fugitive slave law, weren't they a foreign country? that's exactly what he said, he said you're a foreign country, so i guess the u.s. laws don't apply to you. and so, he said, i'm confiscating these three men as contraband property of war. they were used in service of the confederacy, so now they are union property. he even gave the confederate soldier a receipt. so what is a contraband. this actually spreads incredibly quickly through newspapers throughout the north, all of a sudden you see shows of contrabands, contrabands, plural, it becomes a noun, it becomes part of common parlance, it's something of a legal trick.

it's neither slave nor free. you're at war with the government. you're at peace with property like, smuggled goods but you're a person and your labor is useful. by -- but whatever the ambiguities, it was a lik to emancipation. we could see fort monroe is the birthplace of emancipation because this contraband decision is one of two things, fourth it makes congress recognize slaves are going to come into union lines, we have to do something, so congress sanctions butler's decision and then fort monroe

was a fitting place for this to happen. it was in 1619 that they right on that spot dropped 20 africans in a sail to the english economy. the first africans we know, this happens they touch it here at the exact place that contraband decision is enacted, that emancipation sees its first fruits. . that's the first story. this is -- this actually gets very popular, harper's image

that gets repeated again and again, these are the three gentlemen appealing to butler. now, this marry armstrong. this is mary in 1937. she's 91 years old. i want you to go back with me to 1863 when she is 17 years old. as mary tells it, it was 63 when mr. will set us free. the way i go in to find my motto, now, she gets her free papers, pack of food, pack of clothes, and just a little money and then she gets a ticket to texas. now, on this map, this is 1863, these stars are battles. mary was a 17-year-old black

girl with free papers hidden in her boozism and she was traveling through a war zone. now mary takes the river boat from st. louis and she gets on another boat to galveston texas, she gets another boat to buffalo bayou, houston, then she gets a stagecoach to austin. now, in austin this is when a man stalks her, she says, austin, we have trouble, where are you going, the man asks her, and then he puts her on an auction block. she gets sold, but, now, when the highest bidder comes to claim his prize, right then in front of everyone, she pulls out

her free papers and holds them up high that he can't see them, let me see them, he says to her, mary says, you just look at it up here. there she meets other slaves, and she learns there's a refugee camp in texas. now mary tells her interviewer in 1937, i go, i find my mama and war ton county, talk about crying and singing and crying some more, we sure done it. now, mary armstrong is not pushing lincoln's arm into the

emancipation proclamation, in texas no means birthplace in texas. there's an active slave trade going on, that's what made her move such a risk. and it crystallizes what's important to her, how she thinks of what she's going to do with her freedom. mary armstrong spread the power. she took her free self into the deep south during a war over slavery. the camp she had was not like other refugee camps in union lines, but it was a gathering place, a place of exchanging information. it was a place of making, of building. it's a place where people found their family. so mary armstrong put morton,

texas on the map. so this is a map of the refugee camps of the american civil war. this is something i've created with a database and some geo coding and gis software. i've mapped 244 camps. if you were to include the least plantations, it would be about 562. you're looking at somewhere between 800,000 to a million slaves on the move coming in to these camps. some of these camps are union run, some of these freed slaves built themselves. so let's look and see if i can get this to work. yeah, there we go.

so we have camps all down the eastern seaboard. we have a cluster of camps in the dc area, they're in the chesapeake bay area, along the coast, new burn, hatteras, the south carolina and georgia sea islands. a few places in florida and even key west. and then you have another collection really high concentration along the mississippi river. new orleans, of course, union occupied by april 1862 so you have contraband colonies there. you have the census of 1860 has 770,000 of slaves along here, you see that represented in the camps. they're very crowded. they are -- the place where chaplain john eaton keeps

meticulous records. so, really, this is just an incredibly rich source of materia materials. what you have here in the south, southern louisiana is you have plantations and wig planters who often comply with the union and keep their slaves only in a wage labor agreement, but you still see a lot of migrating, a lot of movement, a lot of movement between camps and a kind of newer ra of information between refugees and these camps. so there's not just individual men who came, so let's look at the coming into the camps because this is a different kind of coming. after enlistment, it's going to

be majority female, majority child and the affirm in these camps. there's a lot of building going on, nevertheless. they came as families. there was no precedent in american history for this kind of exodus of enslaved people. before the war you had the typical run away as an individual male, but now they packed wagons with babies and property. they thought of their -- they thought of as their own. they packed up blind, people who had been on the plantation all their lives. they packed up all these things. they didn't just look like fugitives, often they looked like pioneers. they looked like homesteaders, that's what they were thinking. one chaplain said, they're coming like the on coming of cities. they move like a black cloud of

virginia observer said. he had just witnessed a whole wagon train where all of the women breast feeding were in the front and wagons and then a whole caravan of walkers were behind them. now, by entering the union in this way refugees were imagining something different from what army strategists had in mind for them, they were just interested in black male labor. . it was highly profitable. it was a good move militarily.

that was the military policy they were advising. but refugees did not let this happen by coming as families, they were imagining permanent freedom and that could only be possible if they came as families. and even individuals came with families in mind, they were learning how to read and to write so they could write information wanted ads, so they could write letters to someone who might know where their kin folk might be. they sought to create hains where they could reconstitute slavery. so let's look then what happens inside the camps when they get there. there are some familiar scenes. there's the labor. this is -- i mean, photography during this area, as you know, is striking.

what you see and this is the very much the homesteader, you know, the wagon, they're aforwarding the river with all these possessions in tow. possessions they claim as they own, the government really reimburses for them for objects that the union confiscated, but, at the time, all the thing that they bring in, go into a general contraband fund. so, labor in these camps, you know, this is the site where famous rehearsal for reconstruction they look at the south carolina sea island. you see lots of free labor experiments happening, how fast can we grow and how profitable can we be, not with slave labor, but with wage labor, of course there's lots of who does what, over whether the women will work, over whether they'll work in families or in gangs, slaves

prefer to work with their families. they preferred to work on the task system, especially if they were in rice culture. so you have a lot of dissension even -- refugees also want to plant food. they want gardens. they want something that will sustain union agents want profit, they want commercial-staple crops. but there are also labor shortages, so there's private companies paying $25 a month, sometimes. and this is where men often want to be labors who can live near their families and enlistment becomes something of an em bif

lent enterprise because their military contract will take them elsewhere, usually off to texas, usually down river far away to where their families are. >> now, this is a picture of steve, they're unloading and unloading on the docks, a lot are hack drivers, taxi driver or teamsters. 19th century ups. and you also have this question about women's labor, they do make four dollars a month as cooks for the army. but a lot of them are in school, a lot of them are learning how to read, as they also sew mending bags for the army. here we can see a town built, it's called slab town. it's been on the ashes of hampton right near fortress monroe. women, a lot of women are doing

this work. they are chopping the wood. they're taking on a sort of household head ship. they become the backbone of the agriculture labor force and they're interested in growing things for themselves. so, we can see how they're imagining land. how they're imagining, even how they're deciding among themselves, who lives where, you get one acre plot, you get eight acre plot, they're making these decisions among themselves. the army is not mediating this. now, the redistribution of land would become ver contentious.

nevertheless, they still make a way for themselves, in fact, a man in the 1970s said you could barter for a long time until air conditioning came along and hilton head and all the resorters. but yo have, in someways, many people who are making a community that lasts. but, let's look at another example of land, one that you may or may not know about where -- what arlington cemetery use to be, robert e. lee's estate becomes one of the most successful refugee camps of the civil war. while robert e. lee and jefferson davis are out trying to win a war, there are three

people on their plantations and they're making communities there -- it becomes a model community. it's a blueprint. it's made by a black drrks the hospital in washington, d.c. there's an industrial school there, a church, it becomes so successful, but the government, when it wants to expand arlington national cemetery can't get anyone to leave and has to buy them out. . the u.s. government agrees to pay $7,000 to buy out the family who is live there. each family gets approximately $350 and that would be about $950 in today's money. local farmers, mostly black, took all of these residents in. and today those sites are a knock in washington, d.c. we

also have the familiar churches and schools and the societies that go into these camps that are interested in creating a public education system. we have integrated schools where local whites go along with the local friedman. black preachers of southern heritage, like methodist preacher, henry mcneil turner, garland white baptist, the union subsidizes their trips through the south. they're coming into these camps. they're bolstering black religious networks. but they're also scenes that aren't as familiar. these are the scenes i want to explore, so i want to push past what we see as the familiar sites of self emancipation.

i want to see the midwifery that is happening in the camps, what's really shocking is that it's not just families coming in, but pregnant women because if they make it across the line so that they're getting birth not in slavery but in freedom, then their child will be free. kind of the bedrock, the cornerstone of the slave system is that the slave status will pass through the mother, so an expected mother makes the journey, even if it was arduous into these camps so she could give birth out of slavery. we know that midwives come with them, healers of many different stripes because a doctor makes a

report. he says their own, this is the term grannies, sometimes anti's is used for midwives or healers, their own grannies, who are generally youngish or middle aged, are well-skilled and most simple and many of the scientific medical agents of our art. these families found not unfrequently, i would suggest that the government secure their services these camps and these different chaotic congested places of the sifl war become incubators for disease, but it's in these spaces that you see healers many of them female step lg up using herbs and their knowledge, rabbit tobacco for a toothache, for skin irritation,

watermelon seeds for constipation. i've learned a lot, really, reading through these records. and what you also see with watermelons water is a constant source of frustration, if you can't plant -- you have the ability to hydrate young children are the majority demographic in many of these camps. it's really striking, on one census this is june 1864 in mississippi valley. 390 men, 2,138 women. that's 57% children. . unlike most wars in this case, refugees were running toward the

line and it was often ugly against fence posts, women finding whatever they could to cut cords, you saw them there, they stick to their customs, they need to bury the placenta so they're looking for places to do that. they're determined to do that, even if they're in a place of depravation. so this is point of view of midwives of invention. this was ingeneral knewty in the face of great crisis. and actually this photograph here is a midwifery school that is at pen school in -- where refugee camp, a very successful one is.

here is a picture of refugees in the rainwater, water, water, water, shoes and water. these are not familiar scenes in the same way we see the thomas nasc mass cartoons. you can't get through a page without seeing another plea, another action motivated by need for shoes and water. the engeneral knewty that comes with finding these or making these, so shoes are desirable are passage over the rocky terrain to mike the migration into the camps and of course in urban areas, shoes give you status and it means that you may not be you may not be owned, you can walk more freely without suspicion. with shoes, you can so small

shoes were especially hard to come by, the aid workers are in earnst, just send shoes, they write to all the bostonians in new york and pennsylvania who are sending goods their way. we know shoes are especially important because slave masters during this time lock them up at night. the clothing boots and shoes of all negros are locked up in many cases to prevent them from going off. master blame their slaves departures then on their ability to procure shoes. the two any grows begged of him and got five dollars to buy shoes just to run away in. but this was not just mobility,

it was mobility they could control. refug refugee. once she got the shoes, she left the camp and she went to d.c. to search for her daughter, a black soldier said he len listed so he could send it to the woman i call my lady so they could get some shoes. that's what he spent all his money on. now, water was a paramount importance, because a downpour like this meant you've got to shower. his group found some of those mud holes it would be plum bloody, but we would drink that water like it was the best water in the world, rain could mean floods and it could compromise shelters, but it was hygiene, too. now waterways were passages.

and this was easy transportation if you had something that could keep you afloat and confederates were notorious for destroying anything that could be a flotation device, but slaves were incredibly ingenuous strapping together different sweet grass, using whaeelbarrow. access to fresh drinkable water was important and this was why the south carolina sea islands refugees do so well. and that's why they stayed and built. now mississippi rir is full of islands they would become strategic redoubts, island member ten. these are the location of contraband camps, these are places of protection and then

they become places unto themselves, most of these islands are all women an children and they learn how to do for themselves, they learn how to exchange and they build lasting connections, even if the communities themselves don't last. there's a store that all gravitate to -- that even the rio grand, in fact, during this time as there's great migrations of free slaves, you see mexicans setting up great forms right in the middle of ree joe grand. if you can swim to that platform without drowning, you can get your freedom in mexico. they're not just going north, they're going south, too.

now, the other the other scene i wanted to bring to your attention was revival. i argue that the emancipation is a religious event. . it gets marked religiously by freed people in these camps. you'll see it again and again and it's not there's conversions, but it's not the same and that to be in direct conversation with god. so here you see in this slide, a watch night. this is on december 31st, 1862, to make emancipation on january 1st, as promise to come these

watch night meetings last all through the night and a lot of them are female led. new england captures his feelings. this is outside of new orns. and then a single voice coming from a dark corner of the room began a loan chant in which the whole joined by degrees his voice was at first low and then it gained impulse. as he went on, he soon burst out

with a oh, good dear lord we pray for the colored people that know well enough what we've been there, do, do, do oh, do give us free. then the audience swayed back and forth in their seats and then one or two began a wild mournful chorus. in an instant all joined in and the sounds swelled upwards and downwards like the waves of the sea. the ritual he described as weird and overwhelming. this is how strangers met and forged a language common way of knowing. this is just outside new

orleans, a month of emancipation procla mags. they had come from to meet in a church and voice their chant for permanent freedom. funerals become the bane of existence because there's a lot of death in these camps they insist on having all night funeral for every fallen person. it starts at midnight with a torched procession, the coffin is very important, free people fight hard for coffins. so many protests over bearing too many people in a hole. the refugee funerals lasted all

night, sometimes into the morning. in fact, congress even passes a law in 1864, they want chaplains to give monthly reports, saying how these funerals are going on they show us where they were places of and possibility. they produce a technology for a round loss. suffering is destructive, but in which suffering had been such a part of every day life for slaves it can also be redemp tif. just first african-american regimen of south carolina volunteers. i learned to think that we ab

abolitionist, we did not know how the religious temperament how they had they shared loss, and loss became one's strategy then, suffering could be redemptive. the purpose of many of these meetings were to bring about a permanent emancipation. that's what is different. when butler gave him a receipt, he's also saying you can come back for your slaves, as soon as you pledge loyalty, as soon as this is over, thing also go back. what people were pushing for was a permanent freedom. they need to make contraband into free, and they did that

with family formation, and if they didn't find their family, they made their family. this was the climax of a folk religion seeking to unite spiritual freedom with temporal freedom. in the void, because there often weren't reunions, came religious means of conceiving new kin. so let's look at how it changed the landscape, what happens to these camps? they get shut down on paper, but of course, the people in them go some place. so let's take this case in point. we have court monroe as a rendezvous point.

they interview former slaves and they're talking about port monroe even then. so here are the numbers of the people that come into port monroe. the three on they 23rd, 1861, and then 67 in the next week. then by summer there's 800. 500 of which are women and children. by early 1862, 1500. june, 5,000. by 1864, port monroe and the satellite camps around it, they had to find all these other camps. well, it becomes home to 39,110 freed people. so this is where we can see, if you look at census maps, look at

that tall bar in the middle. that's the increase in norfolk county. that's what you see. that's the legacy of the contraband camps in fort monroe. you also have the grand contraband camp built on ashes that -- of a confederates coming in, in guerrilla warfare burning down the village that was there. they build it again and it becomes the place where hampton university, historically back university, gets founded, becoming the linchpin for the black middle class. alexandria, washington, d.c., if we look at that as a case in point. multiple contraband camps here that forever change the character of the nation's capital. the black population of alexandria increases from 2800

to 7300. it's april 16th, 1862, d.c. declares emancipation, so everybody from maryland and virginia is coming into their borders. in 1863, the black population of d.c. was just over 14,000. by 1870, it was over 43,000. memphis, tennessee is called new africa, because there are five or six refugee camps there. they actually outnumber the white population in memphis. and the population quadruples between 1860 and 1870. but let's turn back to mary, and her migration into the confederate interior in 1863.

that's why it's usually considered a place of disappearance. it's off the map. but here was the meeting grounds and a site of reunion realized. this crystallizes something so important to me. you usually think as urban spaces as a place of freedom, this was under union control. she could earn wages, but instead she went to texas where slade trade was active, looking for her mother. more than a security of a wage or making certain of equality, more than living actual legal freedom, mary went to texas because freedom's function was a claim to her kin. freedom didn't mean anything if she wasn't with her mom, and she

just needed to know she existed, know her location. even when free people find out their next of kin is dead, they want the body sent back. and the union often obliges. a place after possibility opened up for union in this world, instead of the next. which had been the core of black religions for all of slavery times. it was a possibility to remedy that prayer that was so oft recited, i'll meet you on the other side, i'll meet you in heaven. but now, maybe it could be i'll meet you at fort renault. here in these camps, slaves

innovated new families. there's adoption. a woman with eight children finds another lost in a corn field on the way and adopts her. the coming together of the camps played out the choreography of reunions. it was in these cramped, communal spaces that they turned strangers into kin, with a song, a late-night meeting, an all-night funeral. and in this way, refugee camps set up the blue prints for community reconstruction. thank you so much. [ applause ] >> anybody want to ask questions?

>> hi, i'm curious about mary's trip down the mississippi in 1863. [ inaudible ] sorry. about mary's trip down the mississippi in 1863, there wasn't any real regular passenger service. how did that work? and until vicksburg fell in the middle of 1863, it would have been virtually impossible. how did she get down to new orleans, do you know? >> yes. well, so what she says -- the way she tells it -- and i'm very much -- this is mary's own words. so i'm going to give it to you from not the -- what was a train schedule but the way she describes what the boat was, because it was a very scary

experience for her. she had been in st. louis all her life. but she said she got on a boat with a big wheel on it, a big wheel on the back, and she had to stay crouched down near the wheel. don't make any fuss, don't let anybody -- it wasn't about hiding. she could be there, she had a ticket. her master who freed her help e her get a ticket. so it's possible there's a kind of cargo piece of it. but whatever it was, she stayed near the big wheel, don't look at anybody in the eye and don't show your papers. so that's the story she tells. so she'sible to get to new orleans on the mississippi river. >> let's shift it. >> dave sullivan, new market, new hampshire. my question is, did mary find her family at all?

and where did her life go, in a positive direction? did mary find her family and what was the outcome of her life after the camp? >> yes. okay. sure, okay. so i'm going to repeat the question. so he asked, did mary find her family, and then what happened next, where did she go afterwards? so what happens is she -- so she finds her mother, and she's the only mother -- her father was sold away when she was about 4 years old, and her master legally had her mother on loan. and so she was determined to find her, but she was the only kin she knew. she did get married to george armstrong shortly after the war,

1866. and they moved, settled in houston. she lived, her mother and george armstrong, and she actually becomes a nurse and is very active and even gets special attention from the city of houston for helping with the yellow fever epidemic. so you can see her even posing here. she's very much -- you can see that she's proud of her story and she's proud of that experience. >> excellent, thank you. >> does that work? can you hear me? yes? okay. well, my question is about a more sensitive topic. with freed african-american women being frequent targets of sexual assault and victims particularly at the hands of

white soldiers, i was just wondering if you had any information about this occurring in these refugee camps and what, if any, the response was from the community. >> thank you. that's an excellent question, and yes, i do have an answer to that. because as you can imagine, a core piece of reconstruction is about women's sexuality. what's interesting, you actually had women -- you get to hear the tales of rape. it's never been legally construed as such.

[ audio difficulties ] [ inaudible ] [ audio difficulties ] [ indiscernible ] >> there is a lot of different discussions about how -- the rivals at first are really exciting -- [ indiscernible ]

[ indiscernible ] thank you. >> thank you. >> hi. so my question at the same time that all these african-americans are fleeing to union lines, i think there's also southern white unionists that are also going to union lines to escape. can you talk about how they relate to each other, how the government relates to them. >> absolutely. refugees -- it's interesting, because -- [ audio difficulties ]

[ indiscernible ] [ indiscernible ] [ indiscernible ]

-- she has five children, and she loses one and she's so depressed. another woman says, you've got to get it together, you've got four other children. [ indiscernible ] >> h.g. smith. i'm thinking about the black people in the north and recently freed people in the south and the extend to which the people in the north could reach out and do something. they did send a lot of soldiers down there, of course. but could you speak to that? >> i would be happy to. freed black communities in the north, are they -- what are they doing in the south?

[ audio difficulties ] [ indiscernible ] [ indiscernible ] [ indiscernible ]

-- a lot of free people are interested in home setting. one man said yeah, i'll wait until the union is done. wait until i get my ax, then i'll be a man. [ indiscernible ] thank you.

>> i'm from los angeles, california. how did one go about establishing a refugee camp? was there land set aside by the government? how did they get supplies and that kind of thing? >> i will let you know that this -- they're so diverse. the map is a work in progress. but it's so different for each one. i'll give you an overview. [ inaudible ]

so what you see are -- sometimes they are self-made. sometimes they are union made. what's interesting about the union made camp is that they still -- within neglect, there are places of autonomy. the flip side of that is that you have health crises, you have death. but you have -- sometimes it takes just a few allies. so there's a place called union town in suffolk. what happens is they basically get an ally to get them, you know, 20 kegs of nails, a few boards, and they build a community that is so successful, that they start making a profit in turpentine.

you find gypsy communities moving around and more people come in. all of a sudden you have a town that wasn't on the census in 1860. all of a sudden you'll find these places that were completely created by people on the move. in the mississippi valley camps have the best records. so john eaton is an abolitionist chaplain -- >> just to follow up -- [ inaudible ] >> yes. so this is where -- this is the birth of different bureaucracies. the superintendent of contraband, that's not a military role, but chaplains, they often gave this role to

chaplains. so they become the assistant superintendent. what you have kind of among -- they choose different people and become teachers. this is how you have the first teachers. this is why you have so many women. even if you read the home wars of different politicians, their fives were helping them read the paper, because they got this education in these camps. and that's where you start seeing the kind of improvised leadership structure among those female missionaries and also the superintendents. >> david rosen from alexandria, virginia. i was struck by your comment about the penchant of refugees to have their own land and homestead. is there anything to be said

about what happened subsequently between the former refugees and the possibility of homesteading, was there any? >> thank you for that question. so i will tell you in this regard, kansas is actually has the best outcome. in 1879, where african-americans in the south who had been harassed go to kansas. well, that had a precedent. you have astounding land ownership in leavenworth, kansas. these are people coming, they're moving arkansas camps. so the big devastation, they are building with the intention of having these lands for themselves. and if they think they're going to get it, there's a few that

get in, in time to keep their land. the court had already ruled. but most -- what happens with andrew johnson, basically revokes sherman's order. so head of the grievance bureau has to bring the bad news. but there's not significant land ownership, but there are possibilities. you even have people going best. you have people going up to illinois. it's the southern most on the mississippi. you see people taking that passage and finding land. even nebraska to michigan to wisconsin. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> well, that's perfect timing,

because it's 2:03 according to my watch, but thank you for your participation and the conversation. hope to see you at some more events. [ applause ] as the nation elects a new president in november, will america have its first foreign born first lady since luisa adams or a former president as first gentleman? learn more about the influence of presidential spouses from c-span's first ladies, now available in paperback, giving a look into the personal lives and impact of every first lady in american history, and features interviews with each first lady's historians.

"first ladies" in paperback, published by public affairs, is available at your favorite book seller and also as an e-book. >> next, history professor andrew slapp talks about the industry, civil rights and politics in the north during the reconstruction era. the civil war institute in pennsylvania hosted a conference on reconstruction and the legacy of the civil war in june. >> it is my pleasure this afternoon to introduce andrew slapp, professor of history at east tennessee state university, teaching a wide range of subjects, to civil war reconstruction to appalachia history.

he earned his ph.d. in 2002. there he started with dr. gallagher, who then moved on to the university of virginia. and andrew finished up with the noted scholar mark neely. his dissertation became his first book titled "the doom of reconstruction, the liberal republicans in the civil war era." in this book, he examines the unintended consequences of a divided republican party during the election of 1872, and how the split altered the course of reconstruction. and he is a very busy scholar. we worked together on a teach american history grant for a number of years, so he has a real commitment to public history and to reaching out beyond the academy. he's a very lively speaker, as well. and also a very active scholar. he does a number of things, including the editorship of a

series with fordham press that focuses on the northern experience during the civil war. this afternoon, he will speak to us about the north and reconstruction. i said to him, could you give me some insights, maybe a little bit of your argument. and he said no, top secret. so we're all on the top of our seats, as i introduce to you andy slapp. [ applause ] >> i would like to thank pete for that nice, kind introduction and i would like to start with a story about pete many years ago. back when i was a graduate student and pete was a professor, he comes up to me in a book room and says andy, it's really great you're doing this work on reconstruction, because

it's such an important period. then he slaps me on the back and says it's so unfortunate that reconstruction is so boring and walks off. i'm sure he doesn't remember that. he did not say that, but it struck a chord with a vulnerable graduate student. i hope in the next 45 minutes to an hour, we'll see reconstruction can also be interesting, not just in the southern context that most people think of it as and study, but reconstruction in the north, what was going on in the north during this period, had a profound effect of what was happening in the south and the nation as a whole. first, before we get into this part of this surprise, what is reconstruction? all of you traveled for many hundreds or thousands of miles to attend an institute on reconstruction, and maybe some

of you have an exact idea what it. this is something being debated by historians, even now. how it should be studied and even taught. now, i want to show you some of the recent book titles in the last 10, 20 years about reconstruction. these are all excellent works of scholarship, and here you can see leeann white's book about gender during the civil war era. here's a book about reconstruction that doesn't even have the title in the name. they want to look at the war the world made, even though reconstruction has much of the

assigned volume. another book, "reconstruction of american liberalism," all the way from the civil war into the early 20th century. another example, heather cox richardson has written many books expanding the scope of reconstruction. this is certainly the trend in the last generation, to look at reconstruction not confined to the south or even the north. but looking at it in context and deep into the 19th century. some people argue that reconstruction is still going on today. as

now, since we are at a history institute, i want to turn to a historical figure, abraham lincoln. he said we all agree that the succeeded states, the sole object of the government, civil and military with regard to the states, is to again get them into that proper, practical relation. for lincoln, for the majority of northerners at the end of the civil war, the purpose of reconstruction, what reconstruction meant was reconstructing the southern states and reconstructing the union. issues about labor, economics, gender, these were all important, but part of a longer reconstruction that does stretch much longer and does have more porous boundaries, but not the way many contemporaries understood reconstruction. for today, i'm going to be an

old fogey on a more typical type of reconstruction, the way lincoln envisioned it. the question is, when you're rebuilding the union, what kind of union are you rebuilding. this shows the reconstruction of the union -- i'm sorry, it's too small to see all the wonderful details, but at the base of that pavilion, the foundations are at stake. you can see that some have been taken down and taken away and shea are putting new foundations among the southern states. so it's clearly an idea thatout're thatou you are going to have a nation without slavery. so what kind of republic will you have? now, slavery raised issues both in the south and the north,

before, during and after the civil war. the civil war had a transformative effect on northern opinion about slavery and about race. emily the document you see there is a certificate of freedom that african-americans -- free african-americans in illinois had to have to prove they were free. if you were from another state, even if you were free, you could only stay ten days without being typed. these were repealed just month bfrs the end of the civil war. george almost curtis, a reformer throughout the civil war era, rejoiced in harpers weekly, if intelligence is to be the

condition -- it is a test which everybody can understand. but to make it dependent upon complexion -- but he was not the only one. throughout the north in the first years of reconstruction, you have individual cities and states taking means to try to des des desegregate. cleveland and chicago actually integrate their schools in the first years after the civil war.

there's no telling how much further northerners would have gone in race relations, because andrew johnson and white southerners resisted almost any attempts at reconstruction in the south, forcing northerners and republicans to push further, i would argue, than they ever intended to. reconstruction could have probably been over in '65, maybe 1866, if white southerners had accepted that they had lost, accepted that the 13th amendment had to be ratified. but this did not happen. you have andrew johnson vetoing legislation, white resistance with the klu klux klan. so you have a series of bills starting with the civil rights bill. this is lymon trumble who tries

the civil rights bill. he will reappear later as we talk. and then also from the crowning achievements of reconstruction. if you look at the 14th and 15th amendments, providing national citizenship, national civil rights, and political rights for african-american men. i just talked about the civil rights bills, they're often the sf focus on reconstruction. many northerner were focused on other things. and many of these things had seeds that were planted during the course of the civil war. i don't want to spend much time talking about things that happened during the civil war, that then, similar to the book title i have there, planneded

the doom of reconstruction. led the north to not continue on, actively intervening in the south, to remake southern society or protect african-americans. this is a long process for people like lymon trumble, but gradually moved away during the course of the civil war, particularly during the first half of reconstruction. some of the things that happened, you have during the civil war an acceleration of economic growth, particularly industry and large corporations. economically, this is a major change going on in the north through reconstruction. at the same time, businesses and corporations are changing and you also have, no surprise, a huge increase in the federal budget and federal debt. obviously some of this is because of the war. if you look closely there, even by 1871, the federal budget is

still vastly bigger than it had been in 1860. if we look at said fall rate after the civil war, it declines but not nearly as steeply as after world war i or world war ii. the civil war has made a major change in the size and role of government and corporations. and how those two interact concerned many northerners, who had been in favor supporting emancipation and civil rights for african-americans. some of this is simply an idea of there's government construction. certainly charles francis adams jr. argued --

some of this i'll just say regular corruption. part of this is also because you have a lot of the idealogical leaders dying. thaydeus stevens, charles sumner who was a one-issue person to a large degree. they're dying and replaced by a new breed, where you have the chairman of the national republican committee. at one point while he's chairman, he's on the payroll for four different railroads. here you have the speaker of the house, james g. blaine. while blaine is speaker of the house, cook buys his mortgage. he owns the mortgage for blaine's house.

so these are things we probably say okay, this is not quite right. but that's just at one level. there's another level where there was economic changes made. during the course of the civil war to help the north wind, arguably without these changes, the north could not have won a civil war. but they met resistance by some of the people who favored emancipation and civil rights. the united states goes off the gold standard, prints money and has a national currency for the first time. horace white, in 1862, saying teach the american people a double lesson that they cannot make money out of paper, it will be cheap at any price. so he's comparing green backs

and slavery. keep in mind, this is not just your average republican. during the 1850s, he's chairman of the committee, secretly supplying rifles to kansas free state settlers. he's certainly a radical republican and opposed to this government intervention. many think it's unconstitutional and that it could lead to, how shall we say? corruption. of course, if you know anything about jay gould, you know corruption is probably coming soon. after grant is elected president, gould and his partner start trying to bribe some of grant's cabinet and they do successfully bribe grant's brother-in-law to help to try to influence governmental policy. the government has now with the legal tender act and fights in

congress with what to do with the money system. much more temptation for mischief. they try hoarding gold, are nearly successful and hoarding a great deal of gold, they're find out. here's a contemporary cartoon showing gould trying to cause havoc in the gold room. there's actually something called the gold room on wall street in new york city where people traded gold. the federal government told gold to undercut gold to stop his scheme. but a lot of damage was already done. thousands of investors lost everything. lots of farmers who weren't even involved in this, saw the price of drops drop by 50% because of the fluctuation in turneries that were going on. this is an example of the

federal government doing something to help win the war, but many liberals see problems with that, having the government that involved in the economy. there's a matter of the spoil system. this was a democratic idea. that you don't want a processional class of civil servants that are going to rule everything. that you want to have constant changeover and they should be responsible to the politicians. people have argued this is a problem, like mark summers spoke last night. this could be a problem even in the antebellum period. then you have almost a tripling of the civil service. so the question of influence becomes much greater.

there's a cartoon from the time, 1873, showing a congressman meeting his constituents as they come to ask for jobs and he asks for money.

-- there's also the tariff of 1862, something republicans had been ftrying to pass for years. they were able to help grow industry in the north. you can see in this chart, to the left there, that big "v" that's when the moral tariff is introduced. you can see how rates shoot up and stay high for decades. there are many liberals in the north who detested the tariff. they thought it was government playing favorites, picking an industry. we don't care for that industry, we're not going to care for

them. in the nation, here in 1867, we consider -- in a country as rich as is, it's a constant temp ration it holds out to legislative corruption. now, the tariff wasn't bad enough, "the nation" said not even a tariff led to so many corrupt influences. they thought the railroads were one of the most dangerous thinging, even though they're helping the north win the civil war and fuel the economy. you can see in this chart, the huge growth of railroads. starting from the end of the civil war, accelerating in the

decades afterwards. a lot of this is from legislation passed during the midst of the civil war in 1862 and 1864. the union pacific railroad acts. you can see down there in the corner, even though he was on retainer from a railroad company while he was a united states senator, he actually argued against the union pacific act. his argument was they infringed on state's rights. the federal government had no constitutional authority to go into states and build internal improvement. but here is a senator, a republican who wrote the civil rights bill, arguing about states rights in the midst of the civil war. now, the fears of corruption certainly came to pass. the railroads got huge grants of land on either side of their tracks, a huge amount of bonds

to help fund the railroad building. just to give you an idea of the size of the railroads, of what they were getting, because of the pacific railway acts, they're given 130 million acres of land. that's estimated to believe 9% of the entire public domain of the united states in the 1860s, plus close to $65 million. that's $65 million in the 1860s. so how people thought about this, charles francis adams junior again, son and grandson of a president, and he called the railroad corporation, the railroad power in 1869. i'm sure some of you know what that means, what he's alluding to. what was the power that people were afraid of just ten years

earlier? it was the slave power. him and his friends and colleagues were evokes the slave power, threatening the liberties of others. it was a threat to the government. and now they're saying these big railroad corporations have grown up during the course of the civil war, are the equivalent of the slave power. he was not wrong entirely. the union pacific railroad created a subsidiary to do the construction. i'm not going to go into the details, but they were making huge profits through this fraud. to protect themselves, they gave shares and stock to many republican congressman and senators. there's a cartoon showing the damage done. republican congressman and

senators caught up in this scandal. that they had been receiving railroad stock to look the other way. particularly damaging were two of the most prominent ones. this comes out in 1872 in the midst of grant's re-election campaign. skylar colefax there and henry wilson, who is on the ticket to being a vice president his second term. both of them had been involved with this. this scheme stretched back to 1864. numbers of republicans, for eight years, being involved with this. and this, along with the others, the gold scandals and the other corruptions who thought that government was too big, too active, working too closely with these corporations, that you have large centers of power and money, no accountability.

once again, no parallels in history. also other things going on in the country, not in the north, not with the railroads, that were also having an effect. i'm sure you heard today about the klu klux klan. i think that's the one thing almost every historian can agree on, if you talk about reconstruction, you have to talk about the klan. the answer for this, grant and the republicans pass the klu klux klan act of 1871. this was the third of three measures that gave the federal government the power to try to stamp out the klan. they declared martial law in several counties in south carolina, sent in military troops, arrested hundreds of suspected klan members, held trials. to a large degree, stamped out the klan. but there was resistance, not just from white southerners.

people referred to this as going too far. that yes, let's give african-americans civil rights, but do we want them to be declaring martial law six years after the end of the civil war? you can see the headline, i think it's pretty direct. lymon trumble is the author of the 1866 civil rights bill. he resisted the klu klux klan act. -- he's arguing for a very restrictive interpretation of the 14th amendment, which is largely based on the civil

rights bill that he had authored. he continues, i believe the rights of the people, the liberties of the people, the rights of the individual are safest among the people themselves, and not in a central government extending over a vast region of the country. some worried that they fought the civil war to protect the republic, eventually to end slavely, but they did not want a sprawling central government or an activist central government, which the civil war in many ways had spawned. a lot of this came home to roost in trumble's native state of illinois. when you have the great fire of 1871. at the same time, you have declarations and martial law in south carolina. you have a huge fire destroying 17,000 buildings in chicago,

killing hundreds of people. to give you an idea what it looked like, this is about what a third of chicago looked like after the fire. small public services, very few firefighters and police, and this massive disaster. special police are created to help police the ruins, to watch out for looters and disorder. and soldiers are brought in. chicago is the headquarters for general phillip sheridan. and he was besieged by the mayor to have soldiers protect law and order in the city, and he sent soldiers in. he was, according to the constitution, he can't do that. the mayor doesn't have the constitutional right to ask a military commander to use

soldiers to enforce civil order. a general can't decide on his own. that has to come at least from the state legislature or the governor. unfortunately for sheridan, the governor of illinois at the time, governor palmer, the two of them were enemies. they served on the same side in the civil war but fought politically. so many wanted to have sheridan arrested. they certainly want to have him investigated for having military government. not in the south, but in the north. and here's from the speaker of the house at illinois. he says evidence is irresistible. we have come to the conclusion that there was military occupation in the city of chicago.

we became slaves to tyrants by fitting our own necks for the yoke. they received hundreds of letters from people around the country, many identifying themselves as republicans in the letter. arguing that this is a danger sign. that the united states government is trying to go too far. they're starting to have a military government not just in the south but the north. i want to share a few excerpts so you get the flavor what private individual citizens in the north are thinking. you can see the reconstruction governments and military governments in the south. an assistant saying it is imminent to do away with the people's government by the powers of the military. one from indiana --

>> these are pretty calm compared to a couple of others, which go along with the statue. so it was the centralization of augustus that lost rome their liberty. so comparing what grant is doing in washington, d.c. to what augustus had done in rome, in crushing the republic and instituting an empire. in even more graphic terms, someone from vermont -- >> these are people who are fearing, not just politicians but average citizens that what's going on in the united states for reconstruction, coming out of the civil war, the power of

the government has gained, it's starting to be a danger, just as dangerous as the slave power was, this also threatens liberty and freedom. that they see this not just necessarily as the subjugation of the south but as an unconstitutional government. most of the people who i have quoted here, henry adams, you can see carl shirts on the far right, one of the more distinguishable characters in the cartoons. along with henry adams, charles francis adams, george williams curtis, many of these joined a movement between 1871 and 1872. the republican movement, to oppose what grant was doing. not necessarily grant. they want to focus on civil

service reform. they wanted to focus on tariffs. they thought what was going on down in the south was secondary. they were much more concerned about what the federal government and corporations were doing in the north. the problem here in the convention hall in cincinnati is that many of these people were bad politicians. i mean, they weren't competent politicians. they could not get nominated who they wanted. it ended up being horace greeley, the famous editor of the new york tribune, had always had political aspirations. and was certainly an abolitionist before the war. but he was already pro tariff. in many regards he was the opposite of what many liberals wanted. some left. the others or many of them stayed quiet.

carl shirts, who had been instrumental in this, goes home to a friend's home he's staying with, sits down at a piano and without saying anything plays chopan's funeral march, which is probably everything of what he thinks of greeley's nomination. it means the election starts turning, not on issues of currency or tariff or civil service or things like this, but starts turning on reconstruct n reconstruction. it shifts the focus of the country and the campaign to reconstruction, the republicans go on to nominate grant and the democrats nominate horace greeley as the democratic

candidate. now, this is our good friend jay cook here. i like this photograph but i like the quote better. he's a wealthy banker. the republican part officials are trying to get money for him to help in the campaign of 1872. he writes back a complaint, new hampshire isn't bigger than one of our wards. i know we can carry a ward for $10,000. fairly explicit. the result is rather predictable. greeley gets crushed. he actually dies shortly after the election. his wife had died before the election. but the effects of this election are important. because it shifts the topic of

splintered republican part yet to reconstruction. it also continues dissolving parts of the party to save the union. and grant and the stalwart republicans take issues, like passing a mild civil service bill and doing things like that. to come back to our good friend jay cook here, something else that goes on during reconstruction after the election of 1872, railroad building. you've had huge influxes of currency. you've had industry booming because of the protective tariff. as we've seen in the past, like in the 1920s, you have these

economic booms that keep on going even when they outstrip the fundamental. jay cook >> just to give you an idea with some smarts here. you can take a look at unemployment, going from 4% to 8% in four years. back in 2008, you start having economic problems that refocuses people's attention greatly and very quickly. and here it is, looking long-term that you see the panic of 1873 causing a long-term economic problems for the nation. and redirecting northern attention even further away from the south and what's happening from african-americans.

because of the scandals and grant's administration, even though he wanted to run for a third term, or at least talked about it, he was dissuaded. to the far left, you can see carl shirts again. he pops up all over these cartoons. you can even see modern illusions that no grant party, opposed to the no trump party. so you have an 1876 new people running for president, for the republicans. so we all know, if we're talking more about the south, i talk about the election violence that occurs in 1876, that cars the results from south carolina and a couple of other states. and throws it into a contested election. rather than another civil war, they form a commission.

the end result, simplifying it greatly, is that white southe southerners and democrats agree they will accept hayes, republican nominee for president. that he will be the president, the republican also run the national government and the republicans will end reconstruction and let democrats and white southerners run the south. here's the image from the time show thing idea of republicans and white northerners abandoning african-americans in the south. the one that has stuck with historians in the last few generations, here i get in more trouble with my fellow historians. here's some of the classics. retreat from reconstruction. this is what the north is retreating from what it set out

to do. the definitive volume on reconstruction for the last 20, 30 years. reconstruction, america's unfinished revolution. it didn't set out what it was supposed to do. or michael fitzgerald, the splendid failure, saying that reconstruction was a failure. let me ask in the last couple of minutes, to return to lincoln, we saw at the very beginning, what's going on with the north and he said we all agree that the ceded states are out of their practical relation with the union and the sole object of the government is to again get them into their proper practical relation. for many northerners, in 1864,

1865, even 1866, this was the overriding desire of reconstruction. after many years of war, they wanted to focus on other things. we're trying to deal with an expanding economy, expanding government, we're fighting over what northern society is going to look like. and in many ways, you can argue by the northern terms of what lincoln sets out of what the goals of reconstruction are, hopefully it's not the goals we would have. looking back, we say we hope they could have accomplished more. but the question is, can you do that? can you have from their perspective, could you have a republic while you continue policing the south and having a military protecting african-americans down there? by the end, many northerners said no, that they weren't willing to go that far. they could not continue.

that the government they wanted was smaller, less activist. they were tired of years of war. and so reconstruction ends in 1877. so just to put this in one last perspective, something that has stuck with me for 15 years now. i was teaching in penn state as a graduate student, and this was in the fall of 2001. i got to reconstruction toward the end of the fall semester and asked my class, what is the attention span of the average american? what is the attention span of the american population? i had a young marine nco who was in a program to become an officer in my class. he raises my hand and says, i'm in the marines.

in a year or two, i'm going to be in iraq. he said, i don't follow the news. think about how long the north had been involved. even if you start with fort sumpter.