WEBVTT 00:01.980 --> 00:03.710 Professor David Blight: So what caused the Civil War? 00:03.710 --> 00:06.790 00:06.790 --> 00:09.850 Somebody said "slavery." 00:09.850 --> 00:14.120 Can I hear a "states' rights?" 00:14.120 --> 00:16.660 Can I hear a "conflicting civilizations?" 00:16.660 --> 00:20.100 Can I hear "unctuous fury?" 00:20.100 --> 00:22.840 Can I hear "fanaticism?" 00:22.840 --> 00:24.950 Can I hear "fear?" 00:24.950 --> 00:28.390 Can I hear "stupidity?" 00:28.390 --> 00:31.880 Can I hear "Goddamn Yankees?" 00:31.880 --> 00:35.130 00:35.130 --> 00:42.600 Or Jefferson Davis may have captured the kind of toxin that 00:42.596 --> 00:48.256 was in the air, around southern secession, 00:48.260 --> 00:54.030 in late 1860 and into this "distracted, sad year," as 00:54.031 --> 00:57.251 Whitman called it, of 1861. 00:57.250 --> 00:59.570 Jefferson Davis, soon to be the first 00:59.565 --> 01:03.035 president--only president--of the Confederate States of 01:03.038 --> 01:06.988 America; senator--former senator--from 01:06.986 --> 01:11.426 Mississippi; former commandant of West Point; 01:11.430 --> 01:13.070 former Secretary of War. 01:13.070 --> 01:18.010 01:18.010 --> 01:20.370 He tried to capture what the South was doing with secession 01:20.365 --> 01:21.985 with a certain dignified reserve here. 01:21.989 --> 01:26.829 This is at the very end of 1860, before Mississippi had 01:26.831 --> 01:29.791 seceded, but it's not far away. 01:29.790 --> 01:34.980 He said, the South now, quote, "is confronted by a 01:34.982 --> 01:37.902 common foe. The South should, 01:37.900 --> 01:41.160 by the instinct of self-preservation, 01:41.162 --> 01:44.662 be united. The recent declarations of the 01:44.661 --> 01:48.841 candidate and leaders of the black Republican Party," 01:48.840 --> 01:52.860 --and southerners made no--missed no opportunity to 01:52.860 --> 01:56.640 rename the Republican Party a thousand times, 01:56.640 --> 02:01.430 "the Black Republican Party." 02:01.430 --> 02:04.200 At any rate, "The recent declaration of the 02:04.201 --> 02:07.831 candidate and leaders of the Black Republican Party must 02:07.831 --> 02:11.331 suffice to convince many who have formerly doubted the 02:11.330 --> 02:14.630 purpose to attack the institution of slavery in the 02:14.629 --> 02:17.969 states. The undying opposition to 02:17.971 --> 02:22.301 slavery in the United States means war upon it, 02:22.299 --> 02:25.779 where it is, not where it is not." 02:25.780 --> 02:30.450 That is, the Republicans did not simply oppose slavery in the 02:30.450 --> 02:34.810 territories, they opposed slavery in the slave states, 02:34.810 --> 02:38.380 and they would not stop until they had obliterated it. 02:38.379 --> 02:43.189 "And the time is at hand when the great battle is to be fought 02:43.189 --> 02:47.679 between the defenders of the constitutional government and 02:47.683 --> 02:54.223 the votaries of mob rule, fanaticism and anarchy." 02:54.220 --> 02:59.790 Yes. Davis seemed to think a little 02:59.794 --> 03:02.824 bit was at stake, for the South, 03:02.817 --> 03:07.147 in 1861. However, after the war, 03:07.151 --> 03:14.241 Jefferson Davis wrote what is probably the longest, 03:14.242 --> 03:19.552 most turgid, belabored, 1200 page defense of 03:19.553 --> 03:25.513 a failed political revolution in the history of language. 03:25.510 --> 03:29.010 03:29.009 --> 03:33.449 1,279 pages is his memoir, entitled The Rise and Fall 03:33.446 --> 03:36.346 of the Confederate Government. 03:36.349 --> 03:40.599 And by the time he wrote that, or published it, 03:40.595 --> 03:44.005 in 1882, he was arguing everywhere, 03:44.009 --> 03:48.199 on storied, famous, legendary tours of the South, 03:48.200 --> 03:52.740 the war had absolutely nothing to do with slavery. 03:52.740 --> 03:59.330 Listen to just one passage of that 1200 page defense of his 03:59.334 --> 04:02.294 Constitutional Movement. 04:02.289 --> 04:07.769 "Slavery," said Jeff Davis, by 1882, "was in no wise the 04:07.768 --> 04:12.248 cause of the conflict but only an incident. 04:12.250 --> 04:16.050 Generally African-American"--excuse 04:16.050 --> 04:22.310 me--"Generally Africans were born the slaves of barbarian 04:22.308 --> 04:26.088 masters, untaught in all the useful arts 04:26.085 --> 04:29.615 and occupations, reared in heathen darkness, 04:29.620 --> 04:32.280 and sold by heathen masters. 04:32.279 --> 04:37.209 They were transferred to shores enlightened by the rays of 04:37.206 --> 04:41.726 Christianity." Now he goes on, and I quote him. 04:41.730 --> 04:45.040 04:45.040 --> 04:47.490 Blacks, said Jeff Davis, had been, quote, 04:47.488 --> 04:50.368 "put to servitude, trained in the gentle arts of 04:50.365 --> 04:52.625 peace and order and civilization. 04:52.629 --> 04:56.679 They increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions 04:56.682 --> 04:59.102 of efficient Christian laborers. 04:59.100 --> 05:03.750 Their servile instincts rendered them contented with 05:03.751 --> 05:09.041 their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their 05:09.040 --> 05:12.050 abode with unmeasured riches. 05:12.050 --> 05:15.110 Their strong local and personal attachments secured faithful 05:15.111 --> 05:18.381 service. Never was there happier 05:18.383 --> 05:24.013 dependents of labor and capital on each other. 05:24.009 --> 05:27.919 The tempter came, like the Serpent of Eden, 05:27.920 --> 05:32.390 and decoyed them with the magic word, freedom. 05:32.389 --> 05:36.889 He put arms in their hands and trained their humble but 05:36.888 --> 05:41.468 emotional natures to deeds of violence and bloodshed, 05:41.470 --> 05:47.390 and sent them out to devastate their benefactors." 05:47.389 --> 05:50.139 Now I could go on and on with this particular, 05:50.144 --> 05:51.434 incredible passage. 05:51.430 --> 05:56.840 What you have there in that 1882 passage is the core, 05:56.839 --> 06:01.519 the life blood of the Lost Cause tradition. 06:01.520 --> 06:06.010 06:06.009 --> 06:09.959 In 1861--and you've read Charles Dew's book on this--in 06:09.956 --> 06:13.956 1861 southern leadership, at least until after Fort 06:13.960 --> 06:18.670 Sumter, argued every day and every way that they were about 06:18.670 --> 06:23.300 the business of preserving a slave society--a civilization 06:23.298 --> 06:28.158 based on slave labor, a racial system ordered by 06:28.161 --> 06:35.041 slavery--now threatened by these anti-slavery black Republicans. 06:35.040 --> 06:40.670 In the wake of the Civil War, however, so much energy will be 06:40.668 --> 06:44.138 exercised, not only by southerners, 06:44.139 --> 06:50.579 over time, to try to convince the American people and the rest 06:50.577 --> 06:56.167 of the world that this event was not about slavery. 06:56.170 --> 07:00.490 In a speech in 1878--like many other speeches he gave in the 07:00.493 --> 07:04.013 last third of his life--Frederick Douglass was at 07:04.010 --> 07:08.340 that point, 1878, already fed up with Lost 07:08.335 --> 07:13.815 Cause arguments about what the war had been about. 07:13.819 --> 07:16.799 He was also already, early in the process, 07:16.796 --> 07:20.856 fed up with the ways in which Americans were beginning to 07:20.862 --> 07:25.212 reconcile this bloody, terrible conflict around the 07:25.209 --> 07:30.129 mutual valor of soldiers, and in his view forgetting what 07:30.128 --> 07:34.958 the whole terrible thing might have even been about. 07:34.959 --> 07:39.279 And at the end of a magnificent speech he gave at a veterans 07:39.282 --> 07:42.582 reunion he said this: "The Civil War"--this is 07:42.579 --> 07:46.899 Frederick Douglass--"was not a fight between rapacious birds 07:46.901 --> 07:51.361 and ferocious beasts, a mere display of brute courage 07:51.356 --> 07:54.626 and endurance, it was a war between men of 07:54.631 --> 07:57.161 thought, as well as of action, 07:57.161 --> 08:00.541 and in dead earnest for something beyond the 08:00.541 --> 08:01.801 battlefield." 08:01.800 --> 08:06.010 08:06.009 --> 08:10.699 He went on and on and on then to declare that the war had been 08:10.704 --> 08:15.094 about ideas, and he described the difference between those 08:15.090 --> 08:17.070 ideas, as he put it, 08:17.071 --> 08:21.551 was the difference between, quote, "barbarism and 08:21.545 --> 08:23.125 civilization." 08:23.130 --> 08:27.000 08:27.000 --> 08:30.890 Now, I'm going to spend this lecture just reflecting with you 08:30.889 --> 08:34.969 on, first, secession, because I left you hanging in 08:34.968 --> 08:39.698 the air about the various explanations of secession, 08:39.700 --> 08:43.560 interpretations over time; and I want to re-visit that at 08:43.559 --> 08:46.319 least briefly. And then I want to take you 08:46.316 --> 08:50.856 through a little quick survey of the interpretations of Civil War 08:50.857 --> 08:52.487 causation over time. 08:52.490 --> 08:55.620 It's fascinating to understand how in the past, 08:55.623 --> 08:57.943 now nearly a century and a half, 08:57.940 --> 09:02.740 Americans have gone through this topsy-turvy, 09:02.738 --> 09:07.968 twisting inside out, changing view of what caused 09:07.972 --> 09:11.212 that war. But back to secession. 09:11.210 --> 09:13.760 I left off with saying I was going to offer you five 09:13.759 --> 09:15.009 different explanations. 09:15.009 --> 09:19.419 I don't think they're all equal, necessarily, 09:19.416 --> 09:21.416 but they're there. 09:21.419 --> 09:24.829 In some ways they kind of fold into one another. 09:24.830 --> 09:30.380 And I'd already talked about how the preservation of slavery, 09:30.376 --> 09:34.246 a slave society, a society ordered by slave 09:34.254 --> 09:37.244 labor and so forth, was a principle, 09:37.235 --> 09:40.935 if not the principle, purpose of this secession 09:40.942 --> 09:44.802 movement, at least in the Deep South, where it succeeded. 09:44.799 --> 09:48.389 Remember now, there are still eight slave 09:48.386 --> 09:52.506 states that have not seceded from the Union. 09:52.509 --> 09:56.899 As of March 1861, when Lincoln was to be 09:56.904 --> 10:03.784 inaugurated, the majority of the slave states are still in the 10:03.778 --> 10:07.688 Union, not out; only South Carolina over to 10:07.689 --> 10:10.249 Texas, the whatever-color-that-is of the 10:10.246 --> 10:13.716 Deep South, was the Confederate States of America. 10:13.720 --> 10:18.580 Had it remained only those seven states it's hard to 10:18.575 --> 10:23.615 imagine exactly how the Confederacy would've mounted a 10:23.621 --> 10:27.991 war effort, conducted and created a foreign 10:27.985 --> 10:33.185 policy, and managed if the Lincoln government decides on 10:33.193 --> 10:38.403 war--or coercion as the South will call it--it's hard to 10:38.400 --> 10:43.230 imagine how the Confederacy would've survived, 10:43.230 --> 10:45.310 as long as it did. 10:45.309 --> 10:48.249 The four states that will join it--we'll come to this on 10:48.248 --> 10:50.968 Thursday--do not secede, of course, until after Fort 10:50.972 --> 10:53.462 Sumter. Virginia, North Carolina, 10:53.456 --> 10:57.246 Tennessee, and Arkansas, in their initial secession 10:57.248 --> 11:02.058 legislatures or conventions, either did not--chose not to 11:02.061 --> 11:06.901 vote, or voted secession down, which Virginia decisively 11:06.896 --> 11:09.266 did--before Fort Sumter. 11:09.269 --> 11:14.109 And it's only after the firing on Fort Sumter in April of '61 11:14.113 --> 11:17.023 that Virginia will vote secession; 11:17.019 --> 11:19.609 and it's crucial, of course, given it's--that 11:19.608 --> 11:22.078 it's Virginia, and the size of Virginia, 11:22.080 --> 11:26.280 the significance and symbolism and power of Virginia, 11:26.280 --> 11:30.320 the geographical location of Virginia and so on. 11:30.320 --> 11:34.540 A second explanation of secession though is what I would 11:34.543 --> 11:40.013 call the fear thesis; fear of many kinds. 11:40.009 --> 11:41.479 And now this is, now, of course, 11:41.477 --> 11:44.027 deeply related to the first explanation of preserving a 11:44.034 --> 11:47.164 slave society but in some ways this was a racial fear as well. 11:47.159 --> 11:50.169 If you look into those secession conventions, 11:50.169 --> 11:54.139 and if you look deeply into all those quotations in Charles 11:54.135 --> 11:58.505 Dew's book--and he loads them on you doesn't he?--there's an even 11:58.512 --> 12:01.802 more immediate kind of racial fear among southern 12:01.795 --> 12:05.275 secessionists, that they live on the potential 12:05.283 --> 12:08.363 of a racial powder keg, of the potential of slave 12:08.355 --> 12:14.135 insurrection over time, especially if the South and if 12:14.137 --> 12:20.037 slavery continues to shrink within itself. 12:20.039 --> 12:23.739 There's the phrase they kept returning to in Abraham 12:23.740 --> 12:26.860 Lincoln's House Divided Speech from 1858. 12:26.860 --> 12:30.310 They never let him forget it, that he and the Republican 12:30.310 --> 12:33.320 Party, they said, were going to put slavery on a, 12:33.322 --> 12:36.022 quote, "course of ultimate extinction." 12:36.020 --> 12:37.700 That's fairly clear isn't it? 12:37.700 --> 12:42.400 "We're going to make your system extinct--how do you like 12:42.398 --> 12:46.588 that?" "Oh, not a problem." 12:46.590 --> 12:52.510 Fear of the radicalism, now of John Brown. 12:52.509 --> 12:56.259 John Brown had sort of made this equation, 12:56.260 --> 13:01.840 that had always been there in the southern mind in vague ways, 13:01.840 --> 13:05.550 explicit. If the Republican Party in the 13:05.547 --> 13:10.417 North had succeeded in selling this slogan of a slave-power 13:10.415 --> 13:13.385 conspiracy, well southerners now, 13:13.386 --> 13:16.716 the planter class and the secessionists, 13:16.722 --> 13:21.292 are very successful, especially in the wake of John 13:21.286 --> 13:24.486 Brown's raid, of selling a mutual or a 13:24.489 --> 13:26.999 counter-conspiracy theory. 13:27.000 --> 13:29.850 And that conspiracy simply is "abolition emissaries." 13:29.850 --> 13:33.650 There are lots of labels it goes by but the idea that if the 13:33.649 --> 13:37.059 Republican politicians themselves aren't going to lead 13:37.062 --> 13:39.962 bands into the South to attack the South, 13:39.960 --> 13:46.290 they will end up nevertheless politically stimulating more and 13:46.286 --> 13:51.676 more John Browns to make visitations on the South. 13:51.679 --> 13:57.209 All over the rhetoric of secession you find the language 13:57.214 --> 14:01.344 of--or the word frankly--of submission; 14:01.340 --> 14:04.510 submission, we will not submit and so on. 14:04.509 --> 14:07.319 Let me give you just one example. 14:07.320 --> 14:11.010 14:11.009 --> 14:12.109 In Charleston, South Carolina, 14:12.114 --> 14:14.484 the editor of its most radical newspaper, its most secessionist 14:14.476 --> 14:17.206 newspaper, was a man named Robert Rhett, 14:17.212 --> 14:20.252 the Charleston Courier--I'm sorry, 14:20.250 --> 14:24.810 the Charleston Mercury is what he edited--and he ran a 14:24.806 --> 14:28.296 series of articles under the heading the, 14:28.299 --> 14:33.559 quote, "Terrors of Submission," during the secession winter. 14:33.559 --> 14:37.089 And in one of those pieces Robert Rhett wrote, 14:37.094 --> 14:40.324 and I quote: "If the South once submits to 14:40.315 --> 14:44.945 the rule of abolitionists by the general government there is 14:44.949 --> 14:49.819 probably an end of all peaceful separation of the Union. 14:49.820 --> 14:55.550 We can only escape the ruin they meditate for the South by 14:55.547 --> 14:58.387 war. The ruin of the South by the 14:58.387 --> 15:03.097 emancipation of her slaves is not like the ruin of any other 15:03.101 --> 15:05.841 people. It is not a mere loss of 15:05.844 --> 15:09.574 liberty, but it is a loss of liberty, property, 15:09.570 --> 15:12.810 home, country, everything that makes life 15:12.810 --> 15:14.350 worth living." 15:14.350 --> 15:17.600 15:17.600 --> 15:23.770 Rhett was full of some unctuous fury, without a doubt. 15:23.769 --> 15:27.579 There were southern secessionists who absolutely 15:27.575 --> 15:31.785 believed that even any discussion of slavery's future 15:31.785 --> 15:36.035 in the U.S. Congress should be suppressed, 15:36.040 --> 15:42.120 that they would no longer live in a union that even discussed 15:42.122 --> 15:46.382 what to do about the future of slavery. 15:46.379 --> 15:52.079 And I would say there's not only a kind of racial fear, 15:52.084 --> 15:57.264 a fear of loss of slavery by the planter class, 15:57.259 --> 16:00.759 but there's a certain kind of political fear going on as well, 16:00.762 --> 16:03.922 and that is the fear that southern polls now had--they'd 16:03.919 --> 16:06.749 had this for years, hadn't they? 16:06.750 --> 16:11.860 The fear was the growing, or the growth now for them of a 16:11.858 --> 16:15.698 kind of minority status, that that Republican Party in 16:15.697 --> 16:18.677 the North now had the potential, given the population of the 16:18.684 --> 16:20.024 North, this sectional, 16:20.015 --> 16:22.695 anti-slavery party, had the potential to really 16:22.699 --> 16:25.149 take over the House of Representatives, 16:25.150 --> 16:27.850 in huge numbers. Then you get Lincoln in the 16:27.846 --> 16:29.976 White House for four years--and what if you get him for 16:29.979 --> 16:31.559 eight?--and he appoints the next two, 16:31.559 --> 16:34.369 three, four, five members of the Supreme 16:34.372 --> 16:36.022 Court. And he can control the 16:36.022 --> 16:38.902 diplomatic corps around the world, and even more importantly 16:38.898 --> 16:41.528 he can control patronage of the post office system, 16:41.529 --> 16:43.809 which in those years, believe it or not, 16:43.810 --> 16:47.390 was very powerful; nobody gives a hoot about who 16:47.392 --> 16:51.472 runs the post offices now but boy they did then. 16:51.470 --> 16:54.160 And what was at stake? 16:54.159 --> 16:57.179 And we can see this all over their letters and their diaries, 16:57.183 --> 16:59.303 their speeches in secession conventions, 16:59.299 --> 17:04.279 was a loss ultimately for the slaveholding class of what James 17:04.283 --> 17:08.943 Roark and other scholars have called "planter control." 17:08.940 --> 17:13.940 So to say secession is about slavery is accurate, 17:13.944 --> 17:19.994 but there are layers beneath it, in what I'd call a kind of 17:19.991 --> 17:23.691 fear thesis. A third explanation is what we 17:23.691 --> 17:27.691 might call--or a motivation for southern secession--we might 17:27.686 --> 17:31.846 call southern nationalism, a sense of southern unity, 17:31.854 --> 17:36.184 a dream for some southern secessionists--they were a 17:36.177 --> 17:41.007 minority surely over time and they're even a minority, 17:41.009 --> 17:45.439 I think, in the midst of the secession crisis--but a dream 17:45.443 --> 17:49.613 over time of a southern nation, an independence, 17:49.608 --> 17:54.298 of developing their own boundaries and their own 17:54.303 --> 17:58.403 potential expansionist foreign policy, 17:58.400 --> 18:02.560 where they would no longer ever be dependent on the United 18:02.557 --> 18:06.557 States Federal Government, on one compromise after another 18:06.561 --> 18:07.701 with northerners. 18:07.700 --> 18:11.480 And now to many southern secessionists it would be 18:11.481 --> 18:15.571 compromises with people they couldn't even conceive of 18:15.572 --> 18:18.622 compromising with, these free soil, 18:18.615 --> 18:20.885 anti-slavery, they believed, 18:20.885 --> 18:23.235 abolitionist Republicans. 18:23.240 --> 18:27.010 18:27.009 --> 18:28.779 These southern nationalists were led by people like Edmund 18:28.778 --> 18:31.078 Ruffin of Virginia, William Lowndes Yancey of 18:31.077 --> 18:34.367 Georgia, Robert Rhett of South Carolina, James D.B. 18:34.371 --> 18:37.401 DeBow, who published the DeBow's Review, 18:37.402 --> 18:41.292 a very important southern magazine out of New Orleans. 18:41.289 --> 18:45.279 It was a vision now of an independent southern nation. 18:45.279 --> 18:49.979 In fact, Edmund Ruffin was so determined to try to gather the 18:49.977 --> 18:54.357 spirit of an independent southern nation that in the wake 18:54.362 --> 18:58.752 of John Brown's raid, he got himself to Harpers Ferry 18:58.748 --> 19:03.368 and managed to collect 15 or 20 of Old John Brown's pikes; 19:03.369 --> 19:05.899 you know, these spear things that John Brown was going to 19:05.899 --> 19:07.569 give to slaves after his rebellion. 19:07.569 --> 19:13.929 And Ruffin sent one of those pikes to the governor of every 19:13.934 --> 19:18.904 southern state. These people were into 19:18.900 --> 19:22.410 symbolism. Now, it's interesting that this 19:22.410 --> 19:25.320 sense of a southern nationalism, if you like, 19:25.319 --> 19:27.669 was born more, I would argue, 19:27.668 --> 19:32.198 of fear of an enemy than it actually was of any kind of 19:32.197 --> 19:35.717 planned vision of an organized nation. 19:35.720 --> 19:38.610 As numerous, brilliant scholars of southern 19:38.613 --> 19:42.823 nationalism, from Drew Faust to John McCardell and others have 19:42.816 --> 19:46.876 argued--and I will come back to this in a couple of weeks--a 19:46.880 --> 19:50.670 southern nation did come out of this confederacy, 19:50.670 --> 19:54.270 but it was born almost overnight, and not by a lot of 19:54.274 --> 19:55.734 long-term planning. 19:55.730 --> 19:59.630 It was born more in resentment and defensiveness of knowing 19:59.627 --> 20:03.787 what they were against and who their enemy might be than it was 20:03.793 --> 20:07.963 actually born of a thought-out plan of what they were for. 20:07.960 --> 20:15.430 20:15.430 --> 20:18.210 And it's also-- there was also a theory at the root of this 20:18.206 --> 20:21.146 kind of southern nationalist, fledgling as it was in the 20:21.145 --> 20:23.715 Secession Crisis, that--and it's right there in 20:23.720 --> 20:25.120 the secession debates. 20:25.119 --> 20:28.169 It's rooted in the shrinking south theory, 20:28.172 --> 20:32.422 it's rooted in the desire to preserve a slave society--but 20:32.417 --> 20:37.027 it's the idea that the South's ultimate welfare would be better 20:37.033 --> 20:43.033 outside of the union than in, requiring a certain thinking 20:43.031 --> 20:47.151 about how to create a new nation. 20:47.150 --> 20:50.830 A fourth possible explanation-- though I wouldn't hang too many 20:50.829 --> 20:53.499 hats on this one because it's rather vague; 20:53.500 --> 20:59.960 it used to have a lot of purchase among historians--is 20:59.958 --> 21:06.058 what we might call agrarianism, the agrarian thesis, 21:06.062 --> 21:10.962 the idea of King Cotton ideology, or King Cotton 21:10.956 --> 21:14.866 diplomacy, or put more deeply, 21:14.873 --> 21:20.273 a kind of Jeffersonian yeoman idealism. 21:20.269 --> 21:26.069 This is the vague theory that secession was to protect an 21:26.065 --> 21:30.925 agrarian, agricultural, planter civilization. 21:30.930 --> 21:35.470 That the South was ultimately--they liked to think 21:35.466 --> 21:39.076 of themselves, even the leadership--as a 21:39.077 --> 21:43.797 people or a republic of farmers, small farmers. 21:43.799 --> 21:46.009 Now the majority of them were small farmers. 21:46.009 --> 21:49.149 The real South, this argument was, 21:49.146 --> 21:54.556 was not in the slave owning master class but in the men of 21:54.564 --> 21:57.854 the soil, protecting a way of life 21:57.847 --> 22:02.367 against all that ignoble, go-getter, money grubbing, 22:02.370 --> 22:05.140 Yankee individualism. 22:05.140 --> 22:06.520 And there's something to this. 22:06.519 --> 22:10.839 You can find these arguments all over the secession debates 22:10.835 --> 22:14.185 as well. "Separate from those New 22:14.185 --> 22:19.065 Yorkers, they're going to take your wallet;" 22:19.069 --> 22:23.959 or as the saying went, you could hit a Yankee, 22:23.962 --> 22:29.292 he wouldn't hit you back, but he would sue you. 22:29.289 --> 22:32.539 This had a real vogue back in--this interpretation--back in 22:32.541 --> 22:36.281 the 1920s, '30s, '40s, even into the 1950s and 22:36.280 --> 22:41.460 beyond, among historians like Frank Owsley and others. 22:41.460 --> 22:43.370 And its spirit, if you like, 22:43.370 --> 22:47.050 is there in the Confederate Anthem--not Dixie, 22:47.049 --> 22:50.659 but the other Confederate Anthem, the Bonnie Blue 22:50.658 --> 22:53.468 Flag. You don't hear that as much, 22:53.470 --> 22:56.850 but there's a verse in Bonnie Blue Flag that the 22:56.845 --> 22:58.715 soldiers sang all the time. 22:58.720 --> 23:04.050 It goes like this, and listen for its ironies: 23:04.049 --> 23:09.499 "We are a band of brothers, native to the soil, 23:09.497 --> 23:16.127 fighting for the property we gained by honest toil." 23:16.130 --> 23:18.190 Whose honest toil? 23:18.190 --> 23:23.850 Property. Well, for a yeoman farmer that 23:23.847 --> 23:26.257 lyric made good sense. 23:26.260 --> 23:30.010 23:30.009 --> 23:33.009 And fifth, you can also argue that secession is deeply rooted 23:33.009 --> 23:37.499 in some--some have argued this; certainly Bertram Wyatt-Brown 23:37.504 --> 23:43.094 has and others--is rooted in this notion of a tradition of 23:43.094 --> 23:46.834 southern honor. The thesis that at the heart of 23:46.825 --> 23:49.415 the southern planter class, in particular, 23:49.424 --> 23:53.404 at the heart of their cohesion, their self-understanding, 23:53.395 --> 23:56.875 and their worldview, was a set of values by which 23:56.881 --> 23:58.851 men, especially planters, 23:58.845 --> 24:02.265 defined themselves, and therefore their society, 24:02.267 --> 24:06.127 and when those values were threatened they circled the 24:06.125 --> 24:07.795 wagons in defense. 24:07.800 --> 24:11.030 24:11.029 --> 24:13.759 And these were the manly virtues, the argument went, 24:13.762 --> 24:16.562 of honesty, trustworthiness, entitlement, 24:16.564 --> 24:20.844 social rank, the willingness to defend one's 24:20.842 --> 24:23.332 honor, blood, lineage, 24:23.329 --> 24:30.499 family, and especially home or homeland, to defend one's 24:30.497 --> 24:37.397 community against not only invasion but also insult or 24:37.404 --> 24:43.254 humiliation; to save face in the presence of 24:43.250 --> 24:46.890 one's critics, one's enemies. 24:46.890 --> 24:53.200 Nothing could be worse, said the honor code, 24:53.196 --> 24:57.006 than public humiliation. 24:57.009 --> 25:02.609 Disputes to the man of southern honor were personal, 25:02.613 --> 25:05.033 not a matter of law. 25:05.029 --> 25:07.099 And there comes a time, the argument went, 25:07.097 --> 25:10.117 when to hell with the Supreme Court, to hell with compromises 25:10.123 --> 25:17.343 in congress; "this is personal," they said. 25:17.339 --> 25:22.079 Now, this one's hard to throw darts at and make it stick. 25:22.079 --> 25:26.539 You can see the language in the secession movement--"we must 25:26.540 --> 25:30.170 defend our honor, we must defend our society." 25:30.170 --> 25:33.090 When is the southern secessionist planter speaking 25:33.087 --> 25:36.417 from honor, and when is he speaking from the preservation 25:36.421 --> 25:39.521 of the slave society, and when is he speaking from 25:39.517 --> 25:41.007 his sense of agrarianism? 25:41.009 --> 25:45.559 When is he speaking from a vision of an independent 25:45.555 --> 25:49.315 southern national future, is never easy to know, 25:49.318 --> 25:52.228 but you can hear it in a James Jones, for example, 25:52.232 --> 25:55.152 a leading South Carolina secessionist in the South 25:55.145 --> 25:58.535 Carolina Secession Convention who got up at the end of the 25:58.535 --> 26:02.535 arguments and he said, well folks, quote, 26:02.543 --> 26:09.523 "If we fail we have saved our honor and lost nothing." 26:09.520 --> 26:12.150 Now, think of the logic there. 26:12.150 --> 26:14.980 Of course he doesn't really know precisely yet what they're 26:14.982 --> 26:15.912 going to fail at. 26:15.910 --> 26:20.040 If a whole civilization goes down in ashes, 26:20.043 --> 26:25.363 if a society will be destroyed at its root, you've lost 26:25.358 --> 26:26.538 nothing. 26:26.540 --> 26:33.700 26:33.700 --> 26:38.350 Some of these same guys who were so caught up in defense of 26:38.352 --> 26:41.402 honor, of course, loved Shakespeare. 26:41.400 --> 26:46.800 They especially loved plays like Henry IV, 26:46.804 --> 26:54.014 when Prince Harry is lecturing his soldiers to die with honor, 26:54.009 --> 26:59.249 because if you die with honor you've lost nothing. 26:59.250 --> 27:05.560 Now, in your more modern sensibilities life usually 27:05.556 --> 27:09.336 doesn't equate with nothing. 27:09.339 --> 27:15.079 But mix all those explanations up together and fold in a little 27:15.083 --> 27:19.903 ambiguity, and you can begin to explain secession. 27:19.900 --> 27:24.830 A final parting word though, did the South have the right to 27:24.828 --> 27:25.578 secede? 27:25.580 --> 27:29.730 27:29.730 --> 27:33.140 Let's just have a show of hands, just to show, 27:33.141 --> 27:36.171 just a poll, did the southern states have 27:36.174 --> 27:38.604 the right to secede in 1861? 27:38.600 --> 27:44.670 Yes? All right. 27:44.670 --> 27:49.310 No? Bunch of Yankees. 27:49.310 --> 27:52.890 [Laughter] Not sure? 27:52.890 --> 28:00.020 You people are honest because this is a constitutional theory 28:00.021 --> 28:04.301 that is very old and never ending. 28:04.299 --> 28:06.539 But not sure, down here in the front--a 28:06.542 --> 28:08.492 teaching assistant is not sure. 28:08.490 --> 28:12.040 So, and he's remaining not sure. 28:12.039 --> 28:17.859 David Huyssen is a prophet of ambiguity. 28:17.859 --> 28:20.309 You got to watch him, he burns question marks on your 28:20.312 --> 28:22.012 front porch if you're not careful. 28:22.009 --> 28:27.329 [Laughter] I usually save that joke for 28:27.334 --> 28:32.944 Unitarians, but I--anyway, never mind. 28:32.940 --> 28:38.010 Okay, sorry, sorry. 28:38.009 --> 28:41.799 [Laughter] Very quickly though, 28:41.804 --> 28:47.124 in 1861, of course, people had to make huge 28:47.116 --> 28:51.826 decisions here, not the least of which was 28:51.831 --> 28:56.011 Lincoln and his circle of Republican advisors. 28:56.009 --> 29:00.339 But Lincoln was very clear on this. 29:00.339 --> 29:05.159 We're going to come back on Thursday to this whole question 29:05.164 --> 29:09.994 of what Lincoln's policy was there in April 1861 and why he 29:09.989 --> 29:13.649 moved with some force against the South. 29:13.650 --> 29:15.730 But first of all, Lincoln's view, 29:15.728 --> 29:18.718 and the nationalist unionist view of secession, 29:18.716 --> 29:20.336 was essentially this. 29:20.339 --> 29:26.119 And you can read this closely in your Lincoln Reader, 29:26.120 --> 29:29.660 in many places. But it was basically that the 29:29.661 --> 29:32.391 Union of the United States, so the argument went, 29:32.394 --> 29:34.904 was created by the people not the states. 29:34.900 --> 29:38.320 Now I know this gets a little bit like constitutional 29:38.316 --> 29:40.936 hairsplitting, but a lot of hairs were at 29:40.944 --> 29:43.604 stake here. So you had to split some of 29:43.599 --> 29:45.159 them. The Union was created, 29:45.159 --> 29:46.939 said this argument, by the people, 29:46.944 --> 29:48.084 not by the states. 29:48.079 --> 29:53.689 The Union was therefore older than those states that agreed to 29:53.693 --> 29:58.303 join it, in the American Revolution and in the U.S. 29:58.295 --> 30:02.125 Constitution. "We the people in order to form 30:02.130 --> 30:05.350 a more perfect union," some unionists argued, 30:05.353 --> 30:08.433 meant secession really is not possible. 30:08.430 --> 30:12.350 There was the practical argument against secession. 30:12.349 --> 30:15.699 A Union cannot survive, the argument went, 30:15.696 --> 30:20.426 if it can be broken at will whenever someone gets upset. 30:20.430 --> 30:23.410 I don't like this law and that law; 30:23.410 --> 30:25.500 well I like these but I don't like those; 30:25.500 --> 30:29.150 I will nullify those and not participate. 30:29.150 --> 30:35.140 Hum, the argument is, that's not a good practical way 30:35.137 --> 30:37.437 to run a republic. 30:37.440 --> 30:41.100 And some unionists--and Lincoln was of course brilliant at this, 30:41.103 --> 30:44.233 eventually, as you read his speeches--would 30:44.230 --> 30:48.280 argue against secession from a position--sort of civil 30:48.282 --> 30:52.772 religion, of almost mysticism. 30:52.769 --> 30:56.119 What did Lincoln refer to at the end of that first inaugural? 30:56.119 --> 31:01.539 That magnificent phrase about the "mystic chords of memory, 31:01.542 --> 31:05.282 from every battlefield and patriot grave, 31:05.282 --> 31:09.492 would yet swell the chorus of the Union." 31:09.490 --> 31:17.420 That's about music and memory, not about the Constitution. 31:17.420 --> 31:21.390 Unionists would invoke the fathers, just like the 31:21.385 --> 31:24.025 secessionists will, of course, 31:24.029 --> 31:27.459 and those fathers of the Constitution and the American 31:27.462 --> 31:32.292 Republic, they would argue, were nationalist. 31:32.289 --> 31:35.009 They wanted a more perfect Union, out of a Union that 31:35.006 --> 31:36.256 wasn't at all perfect. 31:36.259 --> 31:41.469 And sometimes they would even directly invoke Chief Justice 31:41.473 --> 31:44.263 John Marshall, the Virginian, 31:44.259 --> 31:46.479 the first great Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for 31:46.478 --> 31:49.598 twenty-five, thirty years, and the forging of that 31:49.600 --> 31:54.860 institution of the Supreme Court into a national institution of 31:54.856 --> 31:57.566 cohesion and a certain power. 31:57.570 --> 32:02.480 32:02.480 --> 32:06.830 Now, the states' rightists, the secessionists, 32:06.826 --> 32:10.106 of course, will argue, "no; no." 32:10.109 --> 32:12.429 They will say, constitutionally, 32:12.427 --> 32:16.087 the Union, they will argue, is a federal union; 32:16.089 --> 32:19.509 federal in the sense that it was a compact, 32:19.513 --> 32:23.833 a contract between its founders, and the founders were 32:23.833 --> 32:26.853 the states that chose to join it. 32:26.849 --> 32:31.049 And they will argue that states voted. 32:31.049 --> 32:35.599 In the Continental Congress states voted on the Articles of 32:35.603 --> 32:38.823 Confederation, states voted to approve the 32:38.823 --> 32:41.103 U.S. Constitution or not. 32:41.099 --> 32:46.799 States voted to ratify the Constitution and so on. 32:46.799 --> 32:49.299 Then they will go to the Reserve Clause of the 32:49.299 --> 32:52.579 Constitution--all powers not given to the Federal Government 32:52.576 --> 32:55.246 in the Constitution, in Congress, 32:55.248 --> 32:59.598 are, quote, "reserved for the states." 32:59.599 --> 33:04.209 That beautiful, wonderful, tortured and 33:04.211 --> 33:08.821 ambiguous, but, in some ways brilliant, 33:08.823 --> 33:12.953 provision of the Constitution. 33:12.950 --> 33:18.040 They will go to the language of experiment in republicanism. 33:18.039 --> 33:19.779 They will say the American Republic has been an experiment; 33:19.779 --> 33:23.329 it's been a fascinating, wonderful, world historical 33:23.326 --> 33:25.456 experiment. But you know what they'll say? 33:25.460 --> 33:29.280 It's just failed, and let us show you the reasons 33:29.284 --> 33:32.634 why and the way, and let us go in peace; 33:32.630 --> 33:39.390 it is our right. They will argue for the right 33:39.387 --> 33:42.947 of secession, based on essentially the notion 33:42.950 --> 33:46.270 of a contractual theory of government, 33:46.269 --> 33:53.319 and that a contract in this sense, they will argue, 33:53.315 --> 33:58.495 can be broken. Now as Allan Nevins once said, 33:58.503 --> 34:02.903 secession though, after all the constitutional 34:02.904 --> 34:07.994 historians and the lawyers have worked it though, 34:07.990 --> 34:15.800 is a matter of power, and as Nevins said, 34:15.796 --> 34:20.476 who has the most guns. 34:20.480 --> 34:21.770 I'll leave that hanging for a moment. 34:21.769 --> 34:24.309 We'll come back to secession in the wake of Fort Sumter and the 34:24.307 --> 34:25.737 beginning of the war on Thursday. 34:25.739 --> 34:30.389 But let me take you through a quick survey of what historians 34:30.393 --> 34:33.343 have done with this story over time. 34:33.340 --> 34:38.520 I love this kind of stuff, the historiographical debates 34:38.520 --> 34:44.170 of historians is probably why some of use become historians-- 34:44.171 --> 34:46.621 we like the arguments. 34:46.619 --> 34:49.599 Before I leave states' rights though, it's of course a theory 34:49.603 --> 34:52.093 that's not going to at all die in the Civil War. 34:52.090 --> 34:57.340 Secession may have died; well maybe, never say never, 34:57.338 --> 35:02.568 who knows? Kosovo just seceded from Serbia 35:02.573 --> 35:08.013 and Russia is making a big stink over it. 35:08.010 --> 35:11.700 And I was listening to a Canadian radio station last 35:11.699 --> 35:16.109 night--don't ask me why but it's what comes on right after NPR 35:16.112 --> 35:20.242 goes off [laughter]--and the Quebecois in Quebec are using 35:20.235 --> 35:24.495 the Kosovo model now to rev up once again the possibility of 35:24.503 --> 35:27.183 Quebec secession from Canada. 35:27.180 --> 35:30.320 So watch out; got to follow this. 35:30.320 --> 35:35.140 And there's always threats after some of our elections, 35:35.135 --> 35:38.875 somebody's deciding they want to secede, 35:38.880 --> 35:41.160 which usually means they just want to move to New Zealand; 35:41.159 --> 35:43.809 but New Zealand has strong immigration laws, 35:43.809 --> 35:45.349 so don't even think it. 35:45.349 --> 35:48.859 [Laughter] States' rights is a theory, 35:48.864 --> 35:52.764 I'm going to argue, a theory of the proper 35:52.760 --> 35:56.750 relations of the levels of government, 35:56.750 --> 36:00.170 how power is distributed between those levels of 36:00.173 --> 36:06.183 government. It is a theory of the nature of 36:06.180 --> 36:09.710 federalism. But--and I think this is the 36:09.705 --> 36:13.335 crucial point and you can argue this, we can argue this forever, 36:13.340 --> 36:17.900 and we probably will if we're Americans--but I would argue 36:17.900 --> 36:22.940 that the significance of states' rights is always and everywhere 36:22.940 --> 36:26.220 in the cause to which it is employed. 36:26.220 --> 36:29.000 States' rights for what? 36:29.000 --> 36:32.690 A state's right to do what? 36:32.690 --> 36:36.020 In the interest of what? 36:36.019 --> 36:39.439 Now throughout our history some things have happened first in 36:39.437 --> 36:42.477 states. Women's suffrage happened in 36:42.477 --> 36:46.177 states first, and then grew over time into 36:46.178 --> 36:50.238 finally a federal right to vote for women. 36:50.240 --> 36:52.810 There are many other cases. 36:52.809 --> 36:56.919 States' rights is not always a conservative or reactionary 36:56.924 --> 37:00.154 idea. It is sometimes a progressive 37:00.147 --> 37:02.907 idea. One might believe in more local 37:02.914 --> 37:06.334 state control--but to what end, for what purpose, 37:06.327 --> 37:09.737 to advance what issue, cause, what principle? 37:09.740 --> 37:12.760 Just make your list of issues. 37:12.760 --> 37:20.040 And where would you start first, for stem cell research, 37:20.044 --> 37:24.684 for gay marriage, for or against? 37:24.680 --> 37:28.440 Where did the right begin? 37:28.440 --> 37:32.430 School curriculums, the right to vote, 37:32.426 --> 37:37.266 women's economic rights, reproductive freedom, 37:37.273 --> 37:41.263 collective bargaining for unions; 37:41.260 --> 37:44.000 and on and on and on. 37:44.000 --> 37:48.680 Old-age pensions began first in some states in the progressive 37:48.676 --> 37:52.736 era, before we ever had a national Social Security. 37:52.739 --> 37:57.849 The Civil War didn't eliminate states' rights. 37:57.849 --> 38:03.039 It has this sloganeering power to it that never gets much 38:03.040 --> 38:06.010 analysis. Well all right. 38:06.010 --> 38:12.550 Now, somewhere on this outline I listed--Well, 38:12.552 --> 38:19.072 in the wake of the Civil War, of course, and for that 38:19.073 --> 38:24.503 generation, there were unionist and confederate blame laying, 38:24.500 --> 38:26.090 interpretations of the war. 38:26.090 --> 38:29.770 It's a fascinating collection of writing, there's a lot of it. 38:29.769 --> 38:34.959 Much of it is score settling, of course, it's vindication on 38:34.961 --> 38:38.481 the part of southerners, it's the forging of this Lost 38:38.483 --> 38:40.993 Cause tradition--and I'll speak a lot more about that at the 38:40.993 --> 38:44.763 very end of the course, because the lost cause became 38:44.763 --> 38:50.553 an elaborate ideology over time, especially a racial ideology. 38:50.550 --> 38:54.230 A lot of the debate among the generation that fought the war 38:54.233 --> 38:57.733 over what had caused it got all caught up in labeling. 38:57.730 --> 39:01.490 Was the war "The War of the Rebellion," which was the 39:01.493 --> 39:05.113 official, northern, federal definition and label of 39:05.111 --> 39:07.031 the war? This was not called the 39:07.026 --> 39:09.026 American Civil War by the Federal Government, 39:09.028 --> 39:10.938 it was called the War of the Rebellion. 39:10.940 --> 39:14.340 If you go out and look at Civil War monuments on battlefields, 39:14.341 --> 39:18.281 put up in the 1880s and '90s, it's called the War of the 39:18.282 --> 39:21.432 Rebellion, if it's a Union monument. 39:21.429 --> 39:24.189 In the south, it was early called "The War 39:24.189 --> 39:25.669 Between the States." 39:25.670 --> 39:28.970 It was sometimes called "The War for Southern Independence." 39:28.969 --> 39:32.519 It was sometimes called "The War of Northern Aggression;" 39:32.519 --> 39:35.749 that sometimes is used now as a euphemism. 39:35.750 --> 39:38.670 My favorite label, and it wasn't just southern, 39:38.672 --> 39:42.292 but by the 1890s and turn of the twentieth century a label 39:42.292 --> 39:45.912 that got into the press and people loved it as a throwaway 39:45.913 --> 39:48.843 joke line, was, quote, "the late 39:48.836 --> 39:51.166 unpleasantness." [Laughter] 39:51.174 --> 39:55.464 You want to start dissolving conflict--we had some late 39:55.462 --> 39:59.592 unpleasantness here and slaughtered all these people, 39:59.591 --> 40:03.601 but never mind. Now, I'll pass on examples of 40:03.603 --> 40:08.703 this unionist and confederate tradition and perhaps we'll just 40:08.700 --> 40:12.210 re-visit this at the end of the course, 40:12.210 --> 40:14.980 because that's perhaps where it belongs anyway. 40:14.980 --> 40:18.700 But by the late nineteenth century, the 1890s to be exact, 40:18.696 --> 40:21.236 and into the early twentieth century, 40:21.239 --> 40:24.729 one historian, named James Ford Rhodes, 40:24.730 --> 40:30.150 and this kind of nationalist tradition in which he wrote, 40:30.150 --> 40:35.170 had a tremendous impact on the way the vast majority of 40:35.165 --> 40:40.455 Americans would come to understand Civil War causation. 40:40.460 --> 40:48.040 Rhodes was a gifted amateur, a gentlemen scholar. 40:48.039 --> 40:51.579 He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1848. 40:51.579 --> 40:54.429 So he was a boy and a teenager during the Civil War, 40:54.428 --> 40:56.158 but too young to have fought. 40:56.159 --> 41:01.399 But he grew up helplessly fascinated with this event that 41:01.404 --> 41:04.124 forged his life, his world. 41:04.120 --> 41:05.520 He was very wealthy. 41:05.519 --> 41:10.139 He retired to Beacon Hill in Boston, and between 1893 and 41:10.141 --> 41:14.991 1907, a fourteen-year period, he published his seven volumes, 41:14.986 --> 41:19.036 a series called History of the United States from the 41:19.042 --> 41:20.962 Compromise of 1850. 41:20.960 --> 41:23.830 They didn't worry about boring titles in the nineteenth 41:23.828 --> 41:25.418 century. That title would never fly 41:25.421 --> 41:27.751 though a publisher today, but that's what it was called. 41:27.750 --> 41:31.370 Seven volumes Rhodes wrote. 41:31.369 --> 41:34.809 Now, on the one hand Rhodes said the Civil War was 41:34.807 --> 41:37.747 caused--he developed the sole cause theory, 41:37.753 --> 41:40.703 and he said the sole cause is slavery; 41:40.700 --> 41:42.720 make no mistake, it's slavery. 41:42.719 --> 41:46.549 But it's what Rhodes did with this that is really important, 41:46.548 --> 41:50.308 and it is still alive and well in our culture and you can't 41:50.311 --> 41:53.381 kill it. He said the war was caused by 41:53.378 --> 41:58.028 slavery, it was an irrepressible conflict, but he focused on 41:58.034 --> 42:02.464 slavery as a system, on cotton and the cotton gin, 42:02.457 --> 42:07.487 not upon any moral element to the story of slavery and/or 42:07.491 --> 42:10.871 abolition. Slavery was a national curse, 42:10.867 --> 42:13.757 he called it, never a national crime. 42:13.760 --> 42:18.770 Slavery was a broad force, almost like climate, 42:18.769 --> 42:25.409 it was almost like bad weather, and no one is to blame for bad 42:25.413 --> 42:28.343 weather. Southerners deserved, 42:28.340 --> 42:31.660 in Rhodes' view, sympathy and not censure. 42:31.659 --> 42:35.079 Slaveholders, he argued, should be absolved 42:35.078 --> 42:39.798 because they were themselves the victims of this system and 42:39.799 --> 42:43.949 therefore the victims of history--a tragic lot, 42:43.949 --> 42:49.609 destined to try to preserve a civilization that the world was 42:49.610 --> 42:51.780 beginning to pass by. 42:51.780 --> 42:55.540 He greatly admired antebellum southern society and 42:55.535 --> 42:58.905 civilization, and there's a certain nostalgia 42:58.907 --> 43:02.277 in Rhodes' work for my God what we lost, 43:02.280 --> 43:05.190 in the great planters world. 43:05.190 --> 43:07.050 He rose Robert E. 43:07.053 --> 43:11.003 Lee to the status of national hero; 43:11.000 --> 43:14.540 he didn't do it alone, there were a lot of people 43:14.541 --> 43:17.941 helping him with that by 1900--that's Robert E. 43:17.935 --> 43:21.695 Lee who led the Confederate armies to national hero, 43:21.698 --> 43:24.648 I just thought I'd point that out. 43:24.650 --> 43:28.590 I was in Richmond two weeks ago giving a lecture. 43:28.590 --> 43:32.160 A woman came up afterward from New York or Boston, 43:32.159 --> 43:36.089 born and raised in the North, and she has just moved to 43:36.093 --> 43:38.803 Richmond. Oh, she's just full of 43:42.559 --> 43:46.879 director or something for the city of Richmond now. 43:46.880 --> 43:49.510 And I was speaking at this new museum about the Civil War and 43:49.505 --> 43:52.165 she came up to me and she said, "I want to know what you think 43:52.173 --> 43:54.713 of my idea. I think the first thing we need 43:54.711 --> 43:58.111 to do in Richmond is just tear down all those Confederate 43:58.110 --> 44:00.960 monuments." I said, "Oh." 44:00.960 --> 44:04.790 Oh dear. [Laughter] Oh dear. 44:04.789 --> 44:06.859 I didn't even know what to tell her. 44:06.860 --> 44:08.990 She said, "If they can just take down that Robert E. 44:08.988 --> 44:11.198 Lee statue and then that Stonewall Jackson statute. 44:11.200 --> 44:12.020 Just take them down. 44:12.019 --> 44:14.639 Wouldn't everything be all right?" 44:14.639 --> 44:17.029 I went over in the bookstore, I got her a copy of Race and 44:17.034 --> 44:19.074 Reunion, this book I did on Civil War memory, 44:19.070 --> 44:22.150 and I said, "Here ma'am, just start here." 44:22.150 --> 44:27.490 [Laughter] According to James Ford Rhodes 44:27.488 --> 44:35.228 both sides had fought nobly, both sides had fought well. 44:35.230 --> 44:42.210 There was to be no blame, in this historical verdict of 44:42.212 --> 44:48.942 seven volumes and something like 3000-and-some pages, 44:48.936 --> 44:51.906 in Rhodes' history. 44:51.909 --> 44:56.469 Now, this put in place--and I'll leave it there--a kind of 44:56.469 --> 45:00.889 nationalist, reconciliationist, quasi-scholarly, 45:00.888 --> 45:06.668 popular historical tradition through which most other 45:06.668 --> 45:13.778 interpretations of the Civil War causation would now have to pass 45:13.782 --> 45:16.452 or breathe or move. 45:16.449 --> 45:21.409 And then came Charles Beard and Mary Beard, by the 45:21.413 --> 45:24.253 1930s--early--in the '20s. 45:24.250 --> 45:27.010 How to sum up Beard. 45:27.010 --> 45:29.210 Charles Beard, the great progressive 45:29.211 --> 45:32.481 historian, so-called--and by that label we mean those 45:32.481 --> 45:36.131 historians who came of age around the turn of the twentieth 45:36.129 --> 45:38.499 century, first decade or two of the 45:38.501 --> 45:41.311 twentieth century, and were still writing into the 45:41.313 --> 45:44.253 1950s; some of them even into the '60s. 45:44.250 --> 45:49.170 They tended to see the world--especially by the 45:49.169 --> 45:55.259 1930s--they tended to see the world through a frame of the 45:55.264 --> 45:57.514 Great Depression. 45:57.510 --> 46:01.990 Well the frame of World War One and then a frame of the Crash of 46:01.989 --> 46:05.829 '29, and the worldwide Great Depression of the '30s. 46:05.829 --> 46:11.019 They tended to see history as essentially a story of 46:11.017 --> 46:16.507 economics, essentially a story of capital and labor, 46:16.510 --> 46:21.810 of wealth as an engine, or the pursuit of it as an 46:21.807 --> 46:23.967 engine of history. 46:23.969 --> 46:27.359 Charles Beard wrote a great book, in many ways--we now can 46:27.364 --> 46:30.764 look at it and see all kinds of holes in it--a book called 46:30.759 --> 46:34.629 The Economic Interpretation of the American Civil War. 46:34.630 --> 46:39.740 He saw the South and the North as essentially two 46:39.741 --> 46:44.641 economies--two civilizations, two economies. 46:44.639 --> 46:48.249 There are rarely any people in Charles Beard's work, 46:48.252 --> 46:50.942 there are economies, there are systems, 46:50.944 --> 46:55.214 there are economic forces; there's cotton and free labor, 46:55.211 --> 46:58.571 and there's shipping and merchants in the North, 46:58.566 --> 47:01.346 and there are planters in the South. 47:01.349 --> 47:04.259 There's the telegraph spreading across the North. 47:04.260 --> 47:08.460 There are canals and there are railroads. 47:08.460 --> 47:15.740 And in his interpretation the South rebelled to try to 47:15.737 --> 47:20.677 preserve its economic way of life. 47:20.679 --> 47:24.619 And ultimately the Civil War, in Beard's view, 47:24.621 --> 47:29.441 wasn't really about any particular ideology--that is, 47:29.440 --> 47:33.520 any racial ideology or any pre-slavery or anti-slavery 47:33.523 --> 47:38.073 ideology--it was two economic systems living together in the 47:38.070 --> 47:40.780 same society, the same nation, 47:40.781 --> 47:46.211 and coming into conflict with one another in insolvable ways; 47:46.210 --> 47:52.580 forces meeting at a crossroads and they had to clash. 47:52.579 --> 47:56.159 Beard is laden with inevitability, 47:56.156 --> 48:01.246 as any great economic determinist usually is. 48:01.250 --> 48:04.980 He called the American Civil War, famously, 48:04.975 --> 48:08.075 the "Second American Revolution." 48:08.079 --> 48:13.069 But by that he didn't mean what Bruce Levine and Eric Foner and 48:13.067 --> 48:17.647 other, many other historians of well my generation and the 48:17.653 --> 48:20.633 generation before have called it, 48:20.630 --> 48:22.760 when we've called it a second American Revolution. 48:22.760 --> 48:28.200 What Beard meant by that is a kind of great dividing line 48:28.204 --> 48:33.264 between an agricultural era and an industrial era. 48:33.260 --> 48:36.900 48:36.900 --> 48:39.980 All right, my clock says I'm running out of time. 48:39.980 --> 48:45.590 I'm going to leave you hanging on this limb of wondering what 48:45.585 --> 48:49.505 the "needless war school" people argued. 48:49.510 --> 48:53.490 They thought it was needless, actually. 48:53.489 --> 49:01.129 But I want to end with this, as a lead-in to Thursday. 49:01.130 --> 49:05.240 Walt Whitman wrote a poem about this year. 49:05.240 --> 49:07.890 He called it "1861." 49:07.889 --> 49:11.699 And here are just a few lines of it, to give you a sense--I 49:11.696 --> 49:14.186 think Whitman, as no one else could, 49:14.190 --> 49:21.080 captured what was in the heads of northerners and southerners. 49:21.079 --> 49:25.889 "Arm'd year--year of the struggle, No dainty rhymes or 49:25.885 --> 49:30.595 sentimental love verses for you, oh terrible year. 49:30.599 --> 49:35.859 Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping 49:35.862 --> 49:39.882 cadenzas piano. But as a strong man erect, 49:39.884 --> 49:44.734 clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on 49:44.733 --> 49:48.223 your shoulder, With well-gristled body and 49:48.218 --> 49:51.918 sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in the belt at 49:51.917 --> 49:55.217 your side. As I heard you shouting loud, 49:55.216 --> 49:59.356 your sonorous voice, ringing across the continent. 49:59.360 --> 50:04.920 Year, that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd 50:04.921 --> 50:07.781 cannon. I repeat you, 50:07.782 --> 50:13.122 hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted, 50:13.119 --> 50:17.999 year." See you Thursday.