away in 2016, including nancy reagan and antonin scalia. on friday at 8:00, our in memoriam program continues with shimon peres, mohammed ali, and john glenn. >> author william blair talks about how the 14th amendment was used after the civil war to punish former rebels for secession. he describes how different parts applied to voting laws, and representation in congress, and exclusion from public office. all of which he argues. this was presented by pamplin historical park. it is just under an hour. >> speaking of our speakers, we are very privileged to have bill blair with us today. he is a professor of middle american history at penn state university, which has one of the

best faculties in the country dealing with the civil war era. there are a number of his colleagues that are well known, and bill is right at the top of that list as a teacher at penn state. he received all of his degrees, his bachelor, master, and phd at penn state university. i first met him 28 years ago when he was not an academic. he was a newspaper editor, i believe. after having a career in the newspapers and journalism he decided he wanted to devote his life to studying and teaching history. we are all the better for it. he is the author of many, many books. i just want to mention a couple. "with malice toward some," his in 2014.ok published "virginia's private war," a wonderful book. "cities of the dead," published by the university of north carolina press. and he was the founding editor of one of the best journals that

deal with our period of history, the journal of the civil war era. that is also published by the university of north carolina press. bill's topic is punishment for the rebels, a new twist on the 14th amendment. please welcome bill blair. [applause] mr. blair: thank you. thank you for that very kind and generous introduction. this is my first time here. i have been wowed already. by the hospitality and passion i see around the room. i promise you, as i told my table mates i did drink some coffee so i could stay awake. hopefully i will fulfill that promise. but i want to take you back right now, trying to go back 150 years.

one of the hardest things i try to do as a historian is take people back into the context of a particular time. this time is when the victors held the defeated south in a very hard grasp. it was a moment when even former confederates feared the worst cute the worst in that case was that some of them could be charged with treason and executed. the view of many northerners, they had after all waged war against united states, the -- fulfilling even the narrow definition of the crime in the constitution. readderates, they could newspapers and hear what was going on in the north. there was a lot of indication that northerners were mad as hell and looking to make the rebels pay. and to do it in such a way that would make secession never, ever a choice again.

then came the revelations about the conditions of prisoners in andersonville, which sparked congressional debate, especially in january and february of 1865 over whether there should be retribution visited upon the confederates. top this off with the first assassination of a president in u.s. history by a sympathizer, john wilkes booth. put all of these things together, 700,000 dead into the mix, and you have the possibility of a perfect storm of vengeance. more than a few northerners at the time appeared to be ready to overlook lincoln's counsel in his second inaugural, and instead, actively pursue malice toward some. but it did not happen, did it? no one hanged for treason, although there are more indictments than you actually

know of. the commander and commandant of andersonville prison was tried by a military commission and did hang for war crimes. this is right before he was having, henry wirtz. that was war crimes, not treason. and then there was the hanging of the lincoln conspirators. the one with the dress, the first woman hanged by the federal government in history. yet the country backed away from more extensive bloodletting, raising the question in our minds, did the confederates get off scott free? well they really did not. , they did receive some punishment. and a good portion of the remedy came in a place we might actually not suspect. most legal scholars have missed the 14th amendment of the u.s. constitution. but before i go further i want

to put you back in the place of these men and women who had lost spouses, children, parents, friends. pretend you are one of those northerners who were mad about the situation. i guess i want to ask you, what would you want to do to the rebels? what choices do you have for punishing? personally, we do not have to guess because there are lots of letters to andrew johnson in the national archives. while many people are saying, do not hang, there were people who were actually saying quite the reverse. obviously, execution is something you could ask for, that is pretty obvious. but how would you do it? hanging was a method of choice, but a simple hanging might not be enough. wouldn't you like to

send a statement and make a spectacle of it? make an example, so secession does not happen again? would you make a medical doctor hang with the rope that was used on john brown? god help me. i do not know how you would find that rope, but it was a suggestion that was made. or would you like the six people pa, thataster county, sent andrew johnson a petition to recommend they be hanged at , 92 feet high? any guesses? so he could hang in higher than the evil biblical figure in the book of esther. we are not even getting to the good stuff yet. what else could you do? how about banish some of the leaders, why not? at least charles sumner the , senator from massachusetts believed that they should. maybe 500, he reckoned. how he would determine who goes and who stays, i do not know,

and i never got that far. what else could you do? we're not even near the end of the list. how about confiscate their property? how about that? yes, starting with slaves. and make sure they do not receive reimbursement for their , in confederate bonds, or have their currency honored. what else could you do? how about deny them political power and influence? you could prevent them from voting, or from holding certain elected offices, absolutely. and now for the last one that i will share with you, this is kind of my favorite, not because i wanted it to happen, but because i think it is creative how about shame them? before i get further, i have to give you context. this is a northern commentary on jefferson davis, captured may 10 in georgia.

as he was running away, they were surprised in the morning by federal troops. either he or his wife through on an overcoat, so he was caught with a piece of her clothing on him. the north made 80's with this. -- he was not dressed like this, not long after the event, they show him cowering in petticoats. it shows him with a bonnet and a hatbox. it kept getting picked up, and this is one of my favorites. frank leslie, he looks kind of attractive, doesn't it? [laughter] mr. blair: the dress has gotten more feminine, he is a little more effeminate. of course what the commentary was to say the confederate asculine, leds unm

by people who were effete and not very manly. you have to understand that when elijah far him said he wanted to take jefferson davis "in his crinoline and boots and cage him up and travel through the whole country," and he underlined this part "entertain as a show. i, as poor as i am, i would say i saw a would-be president in my life. and this way, the national debt could be paid." [laughter] mr. blair: what do you think? rob the rebels noses in their sin and balance the budget. as i am maintaining, and frankly we will get to at the end of the conversation we will find the , best articulation of how the united states punished the rebels in the 14th amendment,

which is little understood. howitt channeled the cries for vengeance and met the rituals of a democratic legal culture. confederates lost property, that was not caused by the 14th amendment, but slaves were not returned to masters. the loss amounted to 3 billion dollars of assessed wealth in 1860. and-a-half times the total investment in railroads in the country at that time. another untold amount of money went down the drain and confiscated goods under the banner of military necessities. much of the goods that were seized during the war were lost by the confederates. that was not coming back, nor were the investments in the states or the confederate effort. and, in this amendment, there were attempts to curb the political power of former rebels. all of it was sanctioned in the 14th amendment of the u.s. constitution. so for the first part of this talk, what i would like to do is

try to understand why the rebels did not hang for treason and why we went to the 14th amendment for punishment. some may say lincoln stopped at killing with his cry for mercy in his second inaugural. others might point to the parole. parole was given out to soldiers in the army that they were not to be harmed or prosecuted as long as they obey the law of the united states. still others might say mercy is a hallmark of a republican government. i think these undoubtedly have some impact, but i do believe two other ingredients are necessary to understand the country came to a decision and did decide not to conduct trials and executions. one of these reasons was the lack of a coherent and persistent political will to press long enough and hard enough to do it. and the other of course may be

found in the rituals and particularly air days of our own legal system, which shows you how profoundly important was the rule of law to 19th century americans. in this particular case, reason trumpedemotions -- emotions. go back 150 years, fighting at stop the momentum was moving toward trying the rebels. not everybody was as merciful as lincoln. they were ignoring some of lincoln's cries, with malice towards none. treason indictments surged in 1865 and 1866. east tennessee was particularly a strike-torn region. in this moment they have 2000 cases on the docket for treason. in maryland, military authorities in general want to prosecute anyone who had left the state to join the rebel army. they hoped to do treason against

the state of maryland, not the nation. which was something totally appropriate at the time. john brown was the first person hang of the constitution was passed for treason, but it was treason against the state of virginia. it was not against the national government. we can talk about that if you like in the q&a. more than 4000 names of marylanders were submitted, but it quickly became apparent that president johnson's national pardons of former confederates had muddied the waters, and they were not sure about the jurisdiction and the power to move forward with trials. but the greatest attention came in mid june of 1865, a few months after appomattox. and in norfolk, virginia they down 37nia handed former public officials and military officers tried for

treason. and you know many of the people on the list. it included robert e lee, two of his sons, and a nephew of his. lee greeted the news with judged byion, just -- his very quick decision to file for a pardon with the government. some say it was lost or stolen, the secretary of state ended up with it as a souvenir and gave it to a friend. it was not found until the 20th century in the archives. lee did not receive his pardon until 1975. by themselves, the paroles created very little obstacles for trying these men for treason. this was a big surprise to me, a shock in fact. legal experts easily set it aside. the attorney general said so in an opinion he gave to the president.

he and other legal experts -- this is his reasoning, not mine -- grant and other generals had acted as military officers. the terms encompassed on the -- only military action and did not secure the parolees from civil prosecution. military actions they argued , lasted only during the war. once that ceased -- that ceased once hostility ceased. the attorney general observed, and this is compelling, only a president could issue a pardon. pardon power cannot be delegated. after all, where is the paper trail that says what lincoln believed and thought should happen in this case? the answer is it does not exist, , there is none. the door was wide open to ignore the paroles and take manlike lead to court. except to grant stepped in.

indirectly --n written in directly to ask if they would be upheld. grant confronted johnson over the issue. johnson, i was surprised to find out, wanted to push for prosecution. for reasons i was not so sure about, he was fighting his general over this particular matter. grant finally looked at him and this, if you do not honor the paroles, i resign. you just cannot have the top nation tohero of the resign just like that. johnson, understandably, caved. perhaps you can say that gesture by grant ended the trying of key military figures, but that does not leave politicians off the hook. grant also was not squeamish about prosecuting political figures, and wanted to have harder treatment there. after appomattox, he presided over the arrest of key

politicians, including the former governors of virginia and north carolina. the latter of which spend 47 days in prison without facing any charges. to grant, politicians that were brought on and conducted the war, they were fair game. why did no politicians swing from the gallows, either at the standard or the biblical height? by the way, i do not think there is a standard height. i never found one. this brings me to the lack of political will, and what seems obvious but often appears issecondary in accounts, that union or more precisely reunion served as a goal of the war from the people in the loyal states. because of this, once you have reunion, you take away most of the democrats from the list of people wanting vengeance. they may have harbored grudges against the former enemy, but they needed them to win

elections. that much was clear from the results of the 1864 election. a good deal of the republican party actually shared the sentiment. you have to remember that the republican party was about 10 years old. it was a very young party holding together a strange conglomeration of people from wall street financiers to social revolutionaries known as abolitionists. the one thing holding this together was abolition, or more precisely, restricting slavery from going into the territories. that goal had been achieved, slavery was gone. what is going to hold this party together? a lot of people started to worry about, do we need to reach out to the south, the southern whites, and see if there is some political rapprochement that can be achieved here? the two groups that surprised me

the most when i did research for my book, i expected vengeance to be the strongest among radicals, republicans, and african-americans. so.in't for african, it is incredibly hard to find expressions of vengeance and articles, newspapers, or the scant private correspondences that survive. once in a while, such as in a july 4 celebration in pennsylvania in 1865, one could find a black soldier shouting his desire to see jefferson davis dangle at the end of a rope. but in this account "the other colored troops instantly knocked the orator down." i think black people did not mind the former confederates and did not mind a victory by the union. and, like the individual who is quickly hushed by his compatriots, more than a few

would probably not have worked all that hard to stop the hanging of a few former planters. but outspoken hatred of former rebels? that just did not take black people where they needed to go. it risked giving white people on both sides of the sectional divide just one more thing around which to unite. more surprising to me was the one group i expected to mount an effort to extract the highest level of punishment against the rebels, and those are the radical republican. you can see i put two categories up, people that wanted to punish them, and the ones that wanted to reconcile. it was always a shock to me. there were republicans like john julian on the left and jacob howard of michigan, these guys were rabid punishers.

they wanted to see the rebels hanged, or at least they advocated for a time and time again. on the other side, henry ward beecher and gerrit smith. henry ward beecher was the billy graham of his era, probably the most famous churchman. he also ran guns to kansas, known as beecher's bibles. he was running guns to kansas during the antebellum. period and nowum , he is preaching and his pulpit, mercy for the rebels, forgiveness, and pardon. the other guy is gerrit smith. all garrett smith did was provide some of the funding for a guy named john brown. he is one of the financiers. it turns out -- and they are not alone there is a whole group of , them that argued for mercy --

many of the abolitionists supported efforts to improve society, including the battle to end capital punishment, which en than ituccessful tha is today. beecher's of the death penalty existed for only two reasons, to prisoner and the turn to crime. he said hanging never reforms anyone. and he said, take a step of moderation in the direction of humanity because it will be understood to the advantage of free governments all over the world. that example, that example of america, the sense that america was an example for republican governance that factored into his thinking. european powers and writers were flooding the state department with loads and loads of letters saying, do not kill them. show the republican governments are better than monarchies.

i think greater sustained political pressure may not have overcome the real obstacles within our civil legal system for punishing treason. recognition of that fact came in 1865 when the senate demanded answers about why a civil trial of jefferson davis was not moving forward. attorney general james speed -- by the way, i missed a slide. i thought this was funny, horace greeley, the editor of the new york tribune, a famous north, thet in the guy who pushed lincoln and said lincoln was too slow on abolition, he is one of the first people that stepped up and contributed to the bail bonds of jefferson davis. this became a very famous cartoon, showing horace greeley holding open the door to davis'

cell. davis still does not look too manly, does he? but why is he hanging on the neck of greeley? the clue is this. jefferson davis hung from a sour apple tree. that line comes from john brown's body. that is what this is a reference to. the legal system itself was almost conspiring against allowing treason cases to move forward because the country had made a decision. after the hangings of the lincoln conspirators, those were done with military permissions. , lot of people in the country a lot of attorneys and even good thinking americans, were repulsed by that. not because they were hanged, but because it was a military trial. and people thought that is not what we should be doing, the war is over, we should let civil

courts operate at this time. at this point the attorney general and cabinet believed we needed to have a civil trial, not a military one. military trials would have probably put davis away. you could pick the venue you wanted to be in. you can pick the jurors. you had much more freedom and lower standards of evidence. jefferson davis probably could have been hanging by military commission. the attorney general of the united states says, where do you hold a trial in civil court when you have a crime? where the crime is committed, right? so the jury of peers comes from where? richmond, virginia in this case. and that was the ruling by the attorney general, that we have to create a jury of his peers. if not just richmond proper, but within the state of virginia. what is your guess?

emple at the time knew that aneling a jury would be a problem. judge john c. underwood, who is the man who presided over the overly was asked to testify. he told the congress there was -- lee orthat we or davis would be convicted in a court trial held in virginia. he added this, unless you can pack the jury. when he asked him if he could do such a thing, he said it might be difficult, but it could be done. "i could pack a jury to convict him. i know very honest, ardent union men in virginia. and here are some of those ardent men." it is a panel assembled from

which you would then choose the jury of 12. he was starting to assemble this jury. do you notice anything? out of the 24, half were african-american. i could pack a jury he said, a congressional committee. just think about that. here is a city federal court judge under oath testifying to a congressional committee that he could tamper with the legal system and disobey the law and get a conviction. you cannot make this up, can you? ultimately, the government backed away from prosecuting davis and any of his compatriots, securing a conviction seemed too risky area -- two risky. -- too risky. in early 1869, the government dropped the case and walked away. and that basically ended the matter. how were the rebels really punished? this is a good time to return to the 14th amendment.

these resolutions -- the 14th amendment has five sections to it. i will show you some of them. four of them, not all five. five just says you have the power to do it. these were adopted by congress in june 18, 1866. 1866 they put out the 14th amendment. but some of it, because of the way things were stalled over the prosecution of rebels and punishment of former confederate. then matters got worse because 10 of the former confederate states rejected the 14th amendment and did not let it pass. sooner or later, the federal government finally said, no, we will occupy the south militarily. part of your bargain for coming back to the union will be to pass and enact the 14th amendment. it is the most famous amendment in our constitution, the most litigated for personal rights

and liberties. if jim mcpherson were here he could tell you, this is a major shift in constitutional powers, going from negative liberty, saying government do not do something, to now positive liberty, saying, government protect us. do something. the second is most famous, i will not spend as much time here. this one should be somewhat known to the people in the room. basically this sets up the notion of birthright citizenship. we have not heard anything about that, have we? [laughter] mr. blair: basically it says if you were born in the country, you are a citizen. why do you need this? first of all, go back and really read the constitution. although it says how you can become a citizen, if you are not in the united states you can become a naturalized citizen. there is nothing that says what it takes to become one and there

is nothing that says what are your rights if you are one. the bill of rights does some of that, but this is starting to specify how you become a citizen in this country you become because of your birthright, you are born here. why do you need that also? because in 1857 there was a very famous court case, dred scott decision. it was a slave who had been taken to free territory. it was well-established in international law from 1770's case in england called the somerset case that if you took a slave to live in free territory, that slave was free. abolitionists thought they would win. they made it a test case and they lost. the supreme court justice was a former slave owner, roger b tommy. he came up with a famous decision that said anyone who is

a south sahara african descendent is not a citizen. not a citizen. this is helping clear up a few things. if you look at the last sentence in particular, it is really famous because it talks about how there is equality of the law. you were supposed to be equal before the law and the federal government will have the right to make sure you are equal. whether they use it or not is a different story. it does put up the production. this is the interesting one to me. this is the one we spend a lot -- a little bit more time on. it is a wonderful example of power politics at work. i am curious, has anyone in the room ever read this? you historians put your hands down. the ringers back there. this is turgid, tough to unpack and i will not read it word for word. first of all, i think you can read. secondly, it just is not

necessary but i can summarize. by the second sentence it says that in any election, and they are specifying which elections, federal and they also get the state, judicial offices of state or members of the legislature. they are saying and a federal, state, if there is a male inhabitant that is 21 and a citizen, and by the way, who is a citizen? anyone born here. african-american? yes. if you are a citizen of the over and aes 21 and male, and you cannot vote, what we are going to do, white south, is reduce representation in congress to correspond with every person you deny that vote. you get the picture? they have already said who is a citizen of the number one. section two, they get to this. but it is really incredible how this is working. let me try to get you a sense of it.

if you do this thing -- and frankly, why did they do this? section two was the very first thing on the minds of people when they created the 14th amendment because this is how you will try to keep power ortioned in thepp country. and what happened was people woke up after appomattox and realized there was a court with the 3/5 compromise. you can count slaves as 3/5 of a person for representation. what happens when slavery ends? how do you count that person? like everybody else, a full person. what does that do for southern representation? it is going up, absolutely. white southerners can now count on black people as a whole person for representation, but if the south did not do this and invoked,lause were they would see their representation in congress go

from 83 to 47. 83 to 47. significant, right? let's look at this further. why does the language specify the whole number of persons? in the second line, counting the whole number of persons in each state. why doesn't that say citizens there, or voters there? i use this with my students because language matters, and how it is put together does matter. if you use the term "voters," you will reduce the number of representatives in new england. in new england only male voters voted, but they were losing migration from the northeast to the west in droves, and there was a female majority in new england. they were going to lose seats if they count citizens -- excuse me, voters.

why not citizens? is there anybody who comes into the country who might not be a citizen? who you would like to count if you are the north? we are talking about it all the time today. how about immigrant? they are not citizens, right? but if you are the north, you sure would not my counting them for your representation mainly because about 80% of them are going into the north, not into the south. that is where more manufacturing jobs were, and more opportunity. yeah, thaddeus stevens said we will call them not citizens, but persons. that is why you see some of them hurting. here is the result of all of this. the potential impact of section 2. stevens, it is remarkable, you can read it in the congressional

globe and you can watch these guys calculate this, figuring it out, trying to debate what we can do, what will be the effectively use this word verses -- versus the word. if you start with the fact that, ok, there is no black suffrage in the south, you will lose 36 seats. we are going to count immigrants because we get more immigrants. hence, we will gain 15 to 20 seats. total impact, 50 to 55 seats go to the north. out of a congress that has a total of 238 seats. i am not good at math but that is a good percentage. as i say to my students, that is power politics, isn't it? that would've been the impact of section 2 if suddenly in 1868 the north did not force black suffrage by other means upon the south.

here is section three. this was the one that was the most detested by many in the south. they figured from section 2 -- they didn't like it but they thought the north is doing its thing, flexing its muscles, we will fight back. we kind of expect that. they did not expect this and were actually apoplectic about it. this is what caused virginia to vote against the 14th amendment. no person -- you cannot be a senator, representative, president, vice president, virtually hold any public office . if you were a officeholder constitutionld the before the war, and then fought against it. you fought against it after taking an oath to protect it. and only congress, trying to limit what the president could

do, because they are in open warfare with president johnson, only the congress made by a vote of two thirds remove this. all right. this really struck many in the south hard. the richmond dispatch strongly objected to excluding an entire class of southern men from civic life as one of the reasons not to ratify the 14th amendment the first time around. in that paper said, "we should not like to be the men to go for the people and asked that the old soldiers to vote to disqualify their old commanders, or to ask the civilians to disqualify our old judges and justices." section 4.

you did not know you'd be doing this much work tonight, did you? [laughter] mr. blair: here we go, this one you would think would have absolutely no problem. it is common sense. but basically in this clause it says we will not -- first of all, you will recognize the validity of the public debt of the united states. ok. what is the big deal? think of if you are the south. you are going to be paying taxes to pay off the war debt that you -- you get it. it was a debt amassed fighting you. now you are going to be taxed to recognize that. there were a lot of people in the south that did not want to pay this anymore. there were northern democrats that were not sure they wanted to pay the debt. they said to heck with the debt. the voluminous war debt, why don't we just abolish it, not

even honor it? there was huge debate at the time. the amendment says, no, we will recognize the public debt. neither the united states or any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred -- in other words, we will not pay for what you did to fight us. we are not going to do that. we are not going to allow you to cash in your bonds. we are not going to allow you to recover your currency. and we recognize that, will tax you for that. see what i mean by punishment? yet here the rebels did put up a fight. president johnson, who was on board with this section, made it clear that the u.s. would not recognize confederate war debt. georgia balked, and they knuckled down only after receiving a strongly worded telegram from the president. nonetheless, mississippi refused to repudiate its war debt. south carolina's legislature met in september 1865 and adjourned

without complying. north carolina's legislature took a similar course until johnson finally felt obliged to commit another intervention. in other words, there was great resistance to this particular approach by the federal government. tried to make the case there is a lot in this amendment. much of it a dead letter by 1868, frankly. we remember the first section, but the next three sections , there is a lot of punishment for the rebels in these particular sections. i do have an ulterior motive for taking us through this exercise. i think we tend to think of the civil war tied into a nice, neat bow that ends at appomattox. yes, i think the war ended with

the surrenders of the confederate armies. no question to me, but that is not resolving all the questions that were opened by this war. reconstruction, i would say, remains an enigma to most americans. it does for my students. it is a hard thing to teach and commemorate. we just spent how many years celebrating the 150th anniversary of the civil war and all of a sudden we have fallen off a ledge. there are historians trying to get commemorations for the national park service. but it is a tougher sell. i mean that quite literally. the washington post ended its blogging by experts, and all of a sudden we woke up and said we're not going to do this anymore. they said it is because we could not get sponsors to back an expiration of the problems that face america after the conflict.

that is a shame. the civil war certainly saved the nation, the reconstruction made the nation. treason may not have been made as odious as some northerners wanted, but the leaders did suffer economic and clinical consequences, even if they escape the hangman's noose. the punishment left its footprints all over the cornerstone amendments of the constitution of the united states. thank you. [applause] mr. blair: yes, sir? >> it talks about no claim for losses. i think it was 1863 or 1864 when the slaves are emancipated in the military district of columbia. how did they legally deal with that?

the fact that they paid out millions of dollars. [indiscernible] but legally, how can they deal with that? mr. blair: the question is basically, how, you can compensate for slaves emancipated by washington, d.c. in 1862, but not going to do it after the war? the answer is it is after the war. meaning, lincoln was dangling the carrot during the war. he was using it as part of the inducement to come back. if you come back now, you can still keep your slaves. for a while. it was 1863 with the emancipation proclamation that he finally ended that and put that aside. up until the summer of 1862 he is even giving similar offers to

the border states to see if there could be federal compensation if you start to give up slavery. that was 1862. 1863, you are in a different political universe. the that mean legally there is some inconsistency? as advocate, maybe not. washington, d.c. is under complete control of the congress and they are the ones that did that legislation. it is treated differently than , say, the individual states. does that make it legally right? maybe not. yes, sir. >> a couple of comments. the 3/5 business, that was just a raw compromise. the north wanted the slaves not to be counted, the south wanted

them to be counted. the compromise was to give the constitution and they came across 3/5. it was a compromise politically. the second thing, i notice you did not address the term in section 1, subject to the jurisdiction of. someone born in the united states and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. that is a big phrase they put in there. this was directed definitely at the slaves. -- it was not directed at because they are subject to jurisdiction. we have got some things going on like birth tourism. people coming over to have a baby in this country because they are starting to open up. that has been interpreted, like much of the constitution has a much more liberal "interpretation" over the years. i was wondering, you did not really address the key phrase. mr. blair: that key phrase --

they were under u.s. dominion and trying to prevent some of the things you are saying. people would just slide in and in and try to have babies here and so on. it was not really the major thing on their minds at the time. i can't pretend it was. the other part of that sentence that is more interesting is how it ends. in the state wherein they reside. that is the part we always neglect. we don't think of state sovereignty. what that's that particular clause when you get to the slaughterhouse cases later, that will be used by a federal judge to say the amendment says there is dual citizenship. the u.s. citizen of your state and the nation. that is one thing they were throwing into that particular clause as well. i don't know how you want to do

this. >> after reconstruction i know there are several ex-confederate officers that became governor's, representatives, or even senators. how are they able to overcome section three of the 14th amendment? mr. blair: virtually all of that went away on christmas day of 1868. johnson made his favorite christmas pardons. the way they waved a wand and said, i pardon everybody. they did not even make it an issue after that point. congressatter fact, continued disabilities up to 1898, to the spanish-american war. some people were still covered. i might add jefferson davis was definitely still covered when an attempt was made to make a blanket amnesty in 1876, the one

exception of jefferson davis is the whole thing that essentially killed the deal completely. i caution another thing, the two thirds thing, even before the 14th amendment became the law of the land congress was putting through bills, removing the disabilities from shall we say cooperative confederates like former confederate governor joe brown who joined the republican party. it was also kind of a carrot being used from the very first. mr. blair: thank you. >> section 2 says that it indicated immigrants, former slaves, black people living in the country. why does it exclude indians? mr. blair: indians were never --

the question is why are indians excluded? the answer is, even at that time indians were not recognized as citizens of the united states. they were considered a separate category of people. just the way they thought about it at the time. you could become a citizen if you were an indian, usually if you adopted civilized dress and did other things that would leave your native look behind. there were people in wisconsin that became adept at using that. but for the u.s. government, the u.s. government did not recognize indians who kept their native ways as citizens. it is just the way they were. >> [indiscernible] engaged in insurrection or rebellion, what does that mean?

how was that defined? was, inr: the question the third line from the bottom, shall have engaged in the direction against the same. they are trying to make it consistent with what the language of treason is in the u.s. constitution. treason is the only crime defined by the constitution. not here but earlier. it basically says you cannot be considered to commit treason until you actually wage war against the united states. --other words, you cannot plotting is not enough. i can't even get to the point, theoretically, or i'm even talking about putting troops in the field or trying to get people together to join me. until i wage that war, until i started doing something you don't have treason.

>> selling something to the confederate army? mr. blair: that would count. selling something to the confederate army would count. that is aiding and abetting. pretty broad. you had to have two witnesses according to the constitution. you could not do it by hearsay. you had to have two people see it, know it and corroborate it. it was done deliberately because of british traditions and how easy it was to have treason convictions. very broad. it was actually more limited than the british tradition, but what is aiding and abetting? and engaged in would typically mean to be engaged in some way to fight and supplying would be doing that. >> aiding and abetting during the war, stanton and lincoln loved to use that to incarcerate people in various prisons. giving aid was discouraging and list meant and things like stment and things

like that. it was a pretty broad thing. i could see -- and all it took in terms of having witnesses was a couple of the enemies that are your next her neighbors. they took that is capable witnesses. mr. blair: in 1861 -- she made me laugh. i cannot remember. it was a guy who wanted to sell butter and he got arrested for treason. they walked away from it you can imagine getting hanged for selling butter. >> they arrested and of disco ball minister -- arrested and episcopal minister in alexandria, virginia and hauled him out what his feet because he would not say prayer for president lincoln. he did not refuse, he just did not. mr. blair: thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> >> you are watching american

history tv. 48 hours of american history every weekend on c-span. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> providence college history professor patrick breen discusses nat turner's life and the 1831 slave rebellion he led, and compares it to historical portrayals in literature. he describes the confusion and uncertainty between but the black and white populations in virginia after the revolt. the virginia historical society. this is about an hour. mr. breen: on august 21, 1831, seven men launched what would become known as the nat turner revolt. the rebels swept tgh