WEBVTT 00:01.690 --> 00:04.080 Professor David Blight: Today we're going to take 00:04.075 --> 00:05.935 up a question that has been for the past, 00:05.940 --> 00:11.360 well, nearly 20 years, probably the most active--to 00:11.358 --> 00:17.858 many the most stimulating aspect of Civil War scholarship. 00:17.860 --> 00:21.590 00:21.590 --> 00:24.900 How did the Civil War affect civilians? 00:24.900 --> 00:30.090 What were the social impacts of such a massive experience? 00:30.090 --> 00:35.560 How could you mobilize societies on this scale without 00:35.558 --> 00:38.548 profoundly changing people? 00:38.550 --> 00:40.700 What did it do to gender relations? 00:40.700 --> 00:43.290 What did it do to the meaning of race? 00:43.290 --> 00:46.860 We've already begun to deal with that question in some 00:46.862 --> 00:50.572 depth, how this war would transform the Constitution, 00:50.570 --> 00:54.270 transform American political culture, transform the lives of 00:54.267 --> 00:57.147 African-Americans--and more on that in time. 00:57.150 --> 00:59.300 But, of course, social history won the 00:59.301 --> 01:01.221 revolution in American history. 01:01.219 --> 01:07.309 Oh, somewhere back in the '70s and '80s everybody wanted to be 01:07.312 --> 01:09.412 a social historian. 01:09.409 --> 01:12.999 When I arrived at Amherst College circa 1989 to teach 01:12.998 --> 01:16.928 there was something in the--what was known as--the Pioneer 01:16.930 --> 01:20.640 Valley, the Five College Consortium--a 01:20.644 --> 01:23.604 Social History Working Group. 01:23.599 --> 01:28.409 And I remember asking, can you give a paper if it's 01:28.409 --> 01:30.429 not social history? 01:30.430 --> 01:35.770 And the answer was "sure." 01:35.769 --> 01:41.809 Social history won a sort of methodological struggle over how 01:41.808 --> 01:45.828 to do history, what is the meaning of the 01:45.834 --> 01:48.634 past? And you all know that by now, 01:48.625 --> 01:51.545 whether you think about it that much or not. 01:51.550 --> 01:55.110 Social history brought us the history of women. 01:55.110 --> 01:59.140 It brought us a revolution and scholarship in the study of 01:59.144 --> 02:00.564 African-Americans. 02:00.560 --> 02:03.300 It brought us a revolution in the study of class. 02:03.299 --> 02:06.769 It taught us how to study social groups in historical 02:06.772 --> 02:10.382 time. It's taught us how to study 02:10.375 --> 02:15.295 ordinary people. But--and then I'll get off this 02:15.303 --> 02:20.353 historiographical high horse--it's remarkable how much 02:20.353 --> 02:24.733 Civil War historians, focused as they were so much on 02:24.729 --> 02:28.099 an event, focused so much as they were so often for 02:28.099 --> 02:30.199 generations, as many put it, 02:30.195 --> 02:33.375 on headquarters, the headquarters of generals 02:33.381 --> 02:37.731 and of thousands of dispatches they wrote--because those were 02:37.725 --> 02:41.775 the sources--or the headquarters of the government, 02:41.780 --> 02:46.630 the president, commander of the armies, 02:46.631 --> 02:52.761 focused so much on an event from headquarters. 02:52.759 --> 02:56.589 A social historian came along in 1989. 02:56.590 --> 02:58.810 He wrote a, well, it was a relatively short 02:58.813 --> 03:01.883 little essay in the Journal of American History that 03:01.883 --> 03:05.163 became the title essay of a book of essays that came out a year 03:05.164 --> 03:07.884 later. It was by Maris Vinovskis, 03:07.878 --> 03:11.708 a numbers crunching, hard-boiled social historian 03:11.714 --> 03:16.754 who used to argue "if you can't count it, it ain't history." 03:16.750 --> 03:20.080 He wrote a little essay, he said, "have social 03:20.084 --> 03:22.534 historians lost the Civil War?" 03:22.530 --> 03:25.290 His answer, of course, was yes, and he showed, 03:25.293 --> 03:28.003 very carefully, by looking at few New England 03:27.995 --> 03:30.495 towns, that old tradition of studying 03:30.501 --> 03:33.911 in microcosm New England towns--which Colonial American 03:33.905 --> 03:37.435 history had been doing for a generation or two--he showed 03:37.436 --> 03:41.026 that there are all these towns all over New England, 03:41.030 --> 03:47.640 small and relatively large, that had lost half of their men 03:47.644 --> 03:53.724 between the age of 18 and 45, in four years of war. 03:53.720 --> 03:58.210 He went to some local records and he discovered some of those 03:58.208 --> 04:01.648 towns had lost 60% of their male population. 04:01.650 --> 04:05.580 04:05.580 --> 04:08.870 He looked a little closer and he saw that the whole idea of 04:08.873 --> 04:11.943 occupations in those towns got completely redefined, 04:11.939 --> 04:15.249 at least during the war years, because the men were all gone. 04:15.250 --> 04:20.220 He started to count widows and count orphans. 04:20.220 --> 04:21.930 And, by God, you could count these things. 04:21.930 --> 04:24.910 You could measure how many widows were there in 04:24.908 --> 04:28.528 Newburyport, Massachusetts, how many widows were there in 04:28.534 --> 04:33.374 Bangor, Maine. You could count it. 04:33.370 --> 04:37.860 It stimulated a small revolution in scholarship, 04:37.857 --> 04:41.197 and it runs unabated as we speak. 04:41.199 --> 04:44.359 And in some ways, the most important kind of 04:44.355 --> 04:46.845 history done on it is two kinds. 04:46.850 --> 04:50.590 It's the kind of new Women's History you're reading in Drew 04:50.588 --> 04:53.358 Faust's book, Mothers of Invention--a 04:53.360 --> 04:56.270 wonderful title. I don't know if any of you 04:56.265 --> 04:59.865 remember the old song by that title but it's worth thinking 04:59.870 --> 05:02.060 about. There's an irony in there 05:02.055 --> 05:03.275 somewhere. At any rate, 05:03.284 --> 05:05.524 you get a book like Drew Faust's, which stands on the 05:05.515 --> 05:07.055 shoulders of other books like it, 05:07.060 --> 05:11.740 but a book that went and read thousands of Southern women's 05:11.743 --> 05:16.353 letters and diaries to try to understand "how did this war 05:16.345 --> 05:19.005 affect Southern white women?" 05:19.009 --> 05:23.359 And she has many answers to that, including the somewhat 05:23.361 --> 05:27.951 bold argument at the end of that book that it was women, 05:27.949 --> 05:32.019 in part--an argument that has been tested by other scholars 05:32.017 --> 05:36.147 and even backed off from a bit by Drew herself--but she ends 05:36.154 --> 05:40.084 the book at least with a suggestion that the sheer weight 05:40.082 --> 05:43.942 of the burden of the war on Southern white women and the 05:43.939 --> 05:47.869 thousands upon thousands of letters in which they express 05:47.866 --> 05:50.986 that to their mates, their husbands, 05:50.991 --> 05:53.651 their brothers, their sons at the front, 05:53.646 --> 05:55.276 that it was, in part, 05:55.279 --> 06:01.019 Southern white women that made the South give up the war. 06:01.019 --> 06:05.299 And the other part of that Social History revolution has 06:05.300 --> 06:09.500 been of course among military historians themselves who 06:09.503 --> 06:13.553 discovered ways--the ways had always been there, 06:13.550 --> 06:18.060 and there were pioneering works on this as early as the 1950s by 06:18.064 --> 06:22.154 a scholar named Bell Wiley who wrote two thick volumes, 06:22.149 --> 06:25.469 one in 1954 or '55, one entitled Billy Yank 06:25.473 --> 06:28.393 and the other entitled Johnny Reb. 06:28.389 --> 06:31.019 And lo and behold what that was, was the beginning of a 06:31.017 --> 06:33.107 tradition of studying the common soldier, 06:33.110 --> 06:35.910 his experiences, his terrors, 06:35.906 --> 06:39.196 his horrors, his stomach problems, 06:39.202 --> 06:43.752 his dysentery, his disease, his death. 06:43.750 --> 06:48.410 And above all, influenced greatly by the field 06:48.411 --> 06:54.321 of Psychology and influenced greatly by the rise of gender 06:54.316 --> 06:57.716 history, male military historians went 06:57.720 --> 07:02.040 to those common soldiers and began to study their values, 07:02.040 --> 07:05.300 their ideas, their sense of manhood, 07:05.298 --> 07:10.598 their sense of the idea of courage, what that meant in the 07:10.604 --> 07:16.194 1860s in a mid-Victorian society like the United States. 07:16.189 --> 07:19.739 And when the set of values by which men, young and old, 07:19.741 --> 07:23.421 defined themselves as men collided with modern total war, 07:23.424 --> 07:25.204 what did it do to them? 07:25.199 --> 07:29.209 And of course 'they', being the male military 07:29.206 --> 07:34.306 historians of the 1980s and '90s, were themselves greatly 07:34.306 --> 07:38.856 affected by the experience of the Vietnam War. 07:38.860 --> 07:44.400 Now, with that little bit in mind, let me suggest something 07:44.400 --> 07:50.040 that is timeless about this question of the social impact of 07:50.035 --> 07:52.695 war, and then I'll get on to the 07:52.696 --> 07:56.346 substance of how the war affected southern society, 07:56.350 --> 08:03.910 northern society, and the like. 08:03.910 --> 08:10.690 These are excerpts from letters from a soldier in Iraq. 08:10.690 --> 08:12.950 His name is Juan Compos. 08:12.950 --> 08:14.680 They're actually emails. 08:14.680 --> 08:16.800 Juan was twenty-seven years old. 08:16.800 --> 08:22.360 He wrote this to his wife on December 12,2006. 08:22.360 --> 08:26.000 "Hey beautiful, well we were on blackout again. 08:26.000 --> 08:28.240 We lost yet some more soldiers. 08:28.240 --> 08:32.710 I can't wait to get out of this place and return to you where I 08:32.710 --> 08:35.370 belong. I don't know how much more of 08:35.367 --> 08:36.957 this place I can take. 08:36.960 --> 08:41.050 I try to be hard and brave for my guys but I don't know how 08:41.049 --> 08:42.529 long I can keep up. 08:42.530 --> 08:48.870 You know? It's like every time we go out, 08:48.868 --> 08:52.488 any time, a bump or sounds freak me out. 08:52.490 --> 08:54.460 Maybe I'm just stressing. 08:54.460 --> 08:58.040 Oh hopefully it'll get over. 08:58.039 --> 09:02.939 You know, you never think that anything is or can happen to 09:02.942 --> 09:05.712 you. At first you feel invincible 09:05.706 --> 09:10.216 and then little by little things start to wear on you." 09:10.220 --> 09:15.880 That letter goes on and on, ends of course with tell his 09:15.883 --> 09:18.873 eight year old son "hello." 09:18.870 --> 09:22.660 Tuesday, October 3,2006: "Mood, gloomy. 09:22.659 --> 09:25.839 The life of an infantryman is never safe. 09:25.840 --> 09:28.900 How do I know? I live it every day. 09:28.899 --> 09:32.899 I lost a good friend of mine just two days ago to an enemy 09:32.898 --> 09:35.658 sniper. The worst feeling in the world 09:35.664 --> 09:39.724 is having lost one of your own and not being able to fight 09:39.720 --> 09:42.400 back. The more I go on patrol the 09:42.396 --> 09:45.436 more alert I tend to be, but regardless, 09:45.440 --> 09:49.810 the situation here in Iraq is that we are never safe. 09:49.809 --> 09:54.279 No matter the counter-measures we take to prevent any attacks, 09:54.275 --> 09:57.125 they seem to seep through the cracks. 09:57.129 --> 10:00.879 Every day a soldier is lost or wounded by enemy attacks. 10:00.879 --> 10:06.339 I, for one, would like to make it home to my family one day. 10:06.340 --> 10:10.320 Pray for us, keep us in your thoughts, 10:10.322 --> 10:14.952 for an infantryman's life is never safe." 10:14.950 --> 10:20.440 December 15,2006: "My only goals are to make it 10:20.441 --> 10:26.891 out of this place alive, to return to you guys and make 10:26.887 --> 10:30.107 you as happy as I can." 10:30.110 --> 10:39.300 Sergeant Compos was killed in the spring of 2007 by an IUD. 10:39.299 --> 10:48.049 This is a letter from the front by Charles Brewster, 10:48.049 --> 10:51.479 dated May 15,1864. 10:51.480 --> 10:56.110 There's a timelessness to what soldiers write from war and 10:56.106 --> 10:59.836 there's a timelessness to its social impact. 10:59.840 --> 11:02.700 Brewster, as you may remember me telling you, 11:02.700 --> 11:05.170 was that soldier from Massachusetts, 11:05.169 --> 11:08.129 lonely and confused, feeling worthless, 11:08.133 --> 11:12.113 joined the Union Army, the 10^(th) Massachusetts, 11:12.110 --> 11:15.960 in April of 1861 and served out the entire war, 11:15.959 --> 11:20.399 and managed to survive, and wrote 260 quite incredible 11:20.395 --> 11:23.485 letters. This is the middle of the 11:23.486 --> 11:27.576 Spotsylvania campaign, arguably the worst constant 11:27.577 --> 11:30.997 daily trench warfare of the Civil War. 11:31.000 --> 11:34.790 He's the adjutant of his regiment and therefore he has to 11:34.791 --> 11:39.161 record all of the casualties, just like Sergeant Compos 11:39.158 --> 11:43.058 describing, in his war, sort of one a day. 11:43.060 --> 11:46.100 11:46.100 --> 11:49.370 But this was war that was killing people by the dozens. 11:49.370 --> 11:51.080 He sends his latest report. 11:51.080 --> 11:54.980 11:54.980 --> 11:58.200 "Our regiment suffered terribly in the fight the other day 11:58.199 --> 12:01.079 losing six officers wounded and eight men killed, 12:01.080 --> 12:04.220 plus thirty-four wounded that we know of, besides probably a 12:04.218 --> 12:06.078 good many that we do not know of, 12:06.080 --> 12:09.180 and from twelve to twenty taken prisoners. 12:09.179 --> 12:12.399 This makes a grand total of thirteen officers killed and 12:12.396 --> 12:14.556 wounded and twenty-four men killed, 12:14.559 --> 12:19.249 135 wounded and forty-six missing, making 218 officers and 12:19.251 --> 12:20.981 men in twelve days. 12:20.980 --> 12:26.350 The regiment is reduced to 150 muskets and at this rate there 12:26.346 --> 12:30.636 will be none of us left to ever see Richmond." 12:30.639 --> 12:34.589 That regiment would, by the way, within about a week 12:34.592 --> 12:38.242 and a half of that, be mustered out because they 12:38.235 --> 12:40.865 had insufficient men to serve. 12:40.870 --> 12:44.910 But he ends this letter with what he describes as the most 12:44.913 --> 12:46.973 terrible sight he ever saw. 12:46.970 --> 12:50.260 "We're encamped on a splendid plantation and the corn and the 12:50.257 --> 12:52.997 wheat is growing finely, or rather it was before we 12:52.996 --> 12:55.546 came. But I am afraid the crops will 12:55.553 --> 12:57.963 be very small this year down here. 12:57.960 --> 13:03.020 We have not seen our wagons since we started and I'm getting 13:03.023 --> 13:04.743 sadly dilapidated. 13:04.740 --> 13:07.680 My rear is entirely unprotected. 13:07.679 --> 13:13.109 I have worn the seat of my pants and drawers entirely off. 13:13.110 --> 13:17.460 The most terrible sight I ever saw was the Rebel side of the 13:17.456 --> 13:20.546 breastwork we fought over the other day. 13:20.549 --> 13:24.689 There was one point on the ridge where the storm of bullets 13:24.689 --> 13:28.969 never ceased for twenty-four hours and the dead were piled in 13:28.972 --> 13:33.252 heaps upon heaps and the wounded men were intermixed with the 13:33.254 --> 13:36.024 dead, held fast by their dead 13:36.023 --> 13:40.773 companions who fell upon them, continually adding to the 13:40.766 --> 13:42.746 ghastly pile of men. 13:42.750 --> 13:47.020 The breastworks were on the edge of a heavy oak woods and 13:47.020 --> 13:50.910 large trees, eighteen inches or more in diameter, 13:50.909 --> 13:55.189 were worn and cut completely off by the storm of bullets and 13:55.188 --> 13:58.088 fell upon the dead and wounded Rebels. 13:58.090 --> 14:02.930 Those that lay upon our side in the night when the trees fell 14:02.934 --> 14:07.864 said that their howlings were awful when these trees came down 14:07.859 --> 14:11.099 upon them. When I looked over in the 14:11.098 --> 14:15.898 morning there was one Rebel, sat up, praying at the top of 14:15.904 --> 14:20.294 his lungs, and others were gibbering in insanity. 14:20.289 --> 14:24.469 Others were groaning and whining at the greatest rate, 14:24.467 --> 14:29.277 while during the whole of it I did not hear one of our wounded 14:29.275 --> 14:34.705 men make any fuss, other than once in awhile one 14:34.714 --> 14:39.444 would sing out 'oh' when he was hit. 14:39.440 --> 14:43.490 But it is a terrible, terrible, terrible"--three 14:43.488 --> 14:47.708 terribles--"business to make the best of this." 14:47.710 --> 14:52.090 14:52.090 --> 14:58.810 Oh, it doesn't really matter what war you're talking about. 14:58.809 --> 15:04.469 Charlie Brewster's descriptions could have been along the Somme 15:04.474 --> 15:07.904 in World War One, they could've been somewhere in 15:07.895 --> 15:10.555 the Battle of the Bulge of the Second World War, 15:10.559 --> 15:14.949 they could've have come from Da Nang, and they could've come 15:14.954 --> 15:19.074 from the north of Baghdad, as it always says, 15:19.070 --> 15:22.680 or near Basra or outside Mosul. 15:22.680 --> 15:26.460 So what is tragedy? 15:26.460 --> 15:29.750 What is tragedy in relation to war? 15:29.750 --> 15:35.060 How do we understand tragedy through this prism of the social 15:35.063 --> 15:38.203 impact of war? I think you only ultimately 15:38.195 --> 15:41.305 really do understand it by leaving headquarters, 15:41.309 --> 15:44.779 by leaving the generals' dispatches, by leaving even 15:44.779 --> 15:48.519 Abraham Lincoln's magnificent prose and trying to see it 15:48.521 --> 15:54.461 through ordinary eyes, ordinary women, ordinary men. 15:54.460 --> 15:59.110 Tragedy is one of those words that we, especially Americans, 15:59.110 --> 16:01.160 tend to use haphazardly. 16:01.159 --> 16:05.069 It's a pet peeve of mine, but it's probably just my 16:05.068 --> 16:08.388 problem. Every plane crash is a tragedy, 16:08.388 --> 16:13.218 a car accident is a tragedy, we stub our toes and we call it 16:13.221 --> 16:16.461 tragic. A tragedy is something we ought 16:16.461 --> 16:20.911 to see through the Book of Job, we ought to see it through 16:20.913 --> 16:23.103 Shakespeare's characters. 16:23.100 --> 16:26.270 We ought to see it--we ought to go back at least as far as 16:26.273 --> 16:28.113 Euripides and the Trojan women. 16:28.110 --> 16:32.640 What does Hekuba do in the Trojan women but sit in a 16:32.636 --> 16:36.626 ghastly scene of an utterly destroyed city? 16:36.629 --> 16:40.449 All of her men are dead and she sits wailing to the sky, 16:40.445 --> 16:43.215 on a stone, crying, "How can this be?" 16:43.220 --> 16:44.530 That's tragedy. 16:44.530 --> 16:47.900 16:47.899 --> 16:53.799 We should see tragedy through Hekuba, or all those women in 16:53.804 --> 16:55.844 Drew Faust's book. 16:55.840 --> 17:00.160 Tragedy can be raw, it can be pointless, 17:00.163 --> 17:06.483 it can be utterly unbearable, it can be a dead-end with no 17:06.482 --> 17:12.122 exit. Sometimes it is just seemingly 17:12.116 --> 17:16.366 faded horror. But sometimes tragedy, 17:16.369 --> 17:21.499 throughout its literary history, and then therefore how 17:21.500 --> 17:25.020 we tend to use it, tragedy can also be 17:25.015 --> 17:30.095 affirmative. It can even be cathartic, 17:30.095 --> 17:37.575 and we sometimes can find ways to make it redemptive. 17:37.579 --> 17:42.589 It should never be treated with triumphalism. 17:42.590 --> 17:47.220 It requires a certain mood. 17:47.220 --> 17:54.050 Rebecca Harding Davis, a wonderful American writer who 17:54.054 --> 17:59.994 experienced the war, left us this quite amazing 17:59.985 --> 18:07.455 little description of what I would call a simple picture of 18:07.464 --> 18:12.514 tragedy. She was in a tiny Pennsylvania 18:12.509 --> 18:16.939 town, doesn't even name it, and it's 1864, 18:16.935 --> 18:23.625 and she describes a scene she witnessed at a train station. 18:23.630 --> 18:28.650 I quote her. "Nobody was in sight but a 18:28.650 --> 18:35.160 poor, thin country girl in a faded calico gown and sunbonnet. 18:35.160 --> 18:37.550 She stood alone on the platform waiting. 18:37.550 --> 18:40.540 A child was playing beside her. 18:40.539 --> 18:45.859 When we stopped the men took out from a freight car"--Davis 18:45.857 --> 18:50.577 was on the train, forgive me--"the men took out 18:50.583 --> 18:56.453 from a freight car a rough, unplanned pine box and laid it 18:56.447 --> 19:00.467 down, baring their heads for a moment. 19:00.470 --> 19:04.100 Then the train steamed away. 19:04.099 --> 19:09.259 She sat down on the ground, put her arms around the box, 19:09.262 --> 19:11.892 and leaned her head on it. 19:11.890 --> 19:14.740 The child went on playing." 19:14.740 --> 19:20.730 19:20.730 --> 19:24.800 We don't know her name. 19:24.800 --> 19:25.730 We don't even know what town. 19:25.730 --> 19:38.670 19:38.670 --> 19:44.860 Between 1862 and 1863 life insurance policies in America 19:44.856 --> 19:51.826 doubled, or the purchase of life insurance policies doubled. 19:51.829 --> 19:57.729 Between 1861 and 1865 only two books were published in the 19:57.726 --> 20:02.996 United States on anything resembling the idea of the 20:03.001 --> 20:06.071 afterlife. During the war, 20:06.068 --> 20:11.468 as utterly consumed as Americans became with death, 20:11.465 --> 20:15.885 they weren't writing yet about heaven. 20:15.890 --> 20:21.870 But between 1865 and 1876 no less than eighty books were 20:21.871 --> 20:27.311 published on the idea of afterlife, of a heaven. 20:27.309 --> 20:32.799 Americans, as never before, were trying to invent a heaven. 20:32.799 --> 20:38.179 And the best selling book in the United States in 1868--and 20:38.178 --> 20:42.998 it was for a few years after--was a book by Elizabeth 20:43.000 --> 20:46.710 Phelps called The Gates Ajar. 20:46.710 --> 20:50.540 It's a bizarre but fascinating book about what heaven actually 20:50.541 --> 20:54.251 is and what it looks like and what you do when you get there 20:54.247 --> 20:58.137 and the compartments it has and the rooms it has and who you'll 20:58.141 --> 21:00.651 see, especially all those dead 21:00.648 --> 21:02.798 soldiers. The Gates Ajar was a 21:02.799 --> 21:04.919 massive bestseller, rivaled Uncle Tom's 21:04.923 --> 21:07.103 Cabin, at least for the first year. 21:07.100 --> 21:11.740 21:11.740 --> 21:14.090 All right, I'm going to leave you there for the moment. 21:14.090 --> 21:17.550 21:17.549 --> 21:19.919 And one should never use The New York Times, 21:19.916 --> 21:22.186 a first draft of history, as a historical source, 21:22.188 --> 21:23.228 but I just did it. 21:23.230 --> 21:26.680 So anyway. Gosh. 21:26.680 --> 21:31.180 21:31.180 --> 21:36.740 Now, the Civil War as social history. 21:36.740 --> 21:40.350 Well, the people who really, really started this, 21:40.348 --> 21:44.708 of course, were Charles and Mary Beard, writing back in the 21:44.708 --> 21:47.128 1920s. It was Charles and Mary Beard 21:47.133 --> 21:50.713 in their economic interpretation of--or in their famous book, 21:50.710 --> 21:52.680 their big book, The Rise of American 21:52.683 --> 21:54.453 Civilization, who said this; 21:54.450 --> 21:58.390 and this is the challenge in some ways to all those who would 21:58.392 --> 22:02.332 refocus from the event itself onto the social process or onto 22:02.334 --> 22:05.164 ordinary people experiencing the event. 22:05.160 --> 22:07.570 The Civil War, the Beards wrote, 22:07.573 --> 22:11.703 I quote, "was a social war, ending in the unquestioned 22:11.699 --> 22:15.669 establishment of a new power in the government, 22:15.670 --> 22:18.840 making vast changes in the arrangement of classes, 22:18.839 --> 22:22.009 in the accumulation and distribution of wealth, 22:22.009 --> 22:24.809 in the course of industrial development. 22:24.809 --> 22:30.399 The war was a social cataclysm in which the capitalist laborers 22:30.396 --> 22:35.436 and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the 22:35.443 --> 22:41.123 national government the planting aristocracy of the South." 22:41.119 --> 22:45.659 Now that's a fairly clear interpretation, 22:45.660 --> 22:49.250 or judgment. The Beards went on then, 22:49.251 --> 22:53.671 in the next paragraph, actually, to call it the Second 22:53.671 --> 22:57.141 American Revolution; and I quote Beard, 22:57.138 --> 23:01.698 "in a strict sense," he/they said, "the First American 23:01.699 --> 23:05.909 Revolution." The Beard's revolution in the 23:05.905 --> 23:10.325 Civil War was a social economic revolution. 23:10.329 --> 23:14.779 And they made an elaborate argument for how this war 23:14.780 --> 23:19.300 transformed the economy, transformed the nature of the 23:19.296 --> 23:23.396 government and transformed forever the relationship of 23:23.403 --> 23:25.033 labor and capital. 23:25.029 --> 23:29.129 But was the Civil War ultimately a victory for big 23:29.125 --> 23:32.045 business over the agrarian South? 23:32.049 --> 23:35.589 It's been a question we've debated over and over and over 23:35.585 --> 23:37.995 and over. We stopped debating it for 23:38.004 --> 23:39.534 quite awhile, frankly; 23:39.529 --> 23:42.179 that debate seemed like an old fossil. 23:42.180 --> 23:45.420 When I was in graduate school, nobody wanted to be a Beardian 23:45.420 --> 23:47.410 anymore. We were all going to be 23:47.412 --> 23:49.182 cultural social historians. 23:49.180 --> 23:54.120 But it's very interesting how the debate has come back. 23:54.119 --> 23:58.619 Was the Civil War largely a clash of economic forces, 23:58.619 --> 24:03.119 destined to over--was one force, either free labor or 24:03.119 --> 24:07.099 slave labor, going to overwhelm the other? 24:07.099 --> 24:10.649 The Beards in The Rise of American Civilization, 24:10.651 --> 24:13.941 in its 500-odd pages, almost never mention the word 24:13.940 --> 24:15.900 slavery. To the Beards, 24:15.903 --> 24:20.603 economic forces were these inanimate forces in the world, 24:20.595 --> 24:23.775 they kind of operated on their own; 24:23.779 --> 24:28.209 there wasn't that much human agency. 24:28.210 --> 24:33.010 Did the Civil War explode industrial growth or did it 24:33.014 --> 24:34.774 actually slow it? 24:34.769 --> 24:37.489 You can get arguments on both sides. 24:37.490 --> 24:42.020 The best research now shows us that the war itself was not 24:42.017 --> 24:46.467 necessarily the single most important engine of America's 24:46.466 --> 24:50.756 great industrial expansion or the birth of the American 24:50.755 --> 24:52.975 Industrial Revolution. 24:52.980 --> 24:56.460 There's plenty of scholarship now that shows us that that 24:56.455 --> 24:59.305 revolution is much older than the Civil War, 24:59.309 --> 25:03.239 that the real launching pad of American industrialization, 25:03.240 --> 25:05.860 or the launching period if you want, 25:05.859 --> 25:10.049 to find it you got to go back at least to the 1830s and 25:10.050 --> 25:11.680 probably the 1820s. 25:11.680 --> 25:17.270 You can begin to measure this. 25:17.269 --> 25:21.259 GNP in the United States--which I guess we call GDP now, 25:21.262 --> 25:23.152 don't we, is that right? 25:23.150 --> 25:25.430 It used to be GN; is it GDP now? 25:25.430 --> 25:31.940 Gross domestic product--was about 1.62 billion in 1840, 25:31.940 --> 25:36.160 it was about 2.4 billion in 1850, 25:36.160 --> 25:40.320 and on the eve of the Civil War in 1860 it was about 4.1 25:40.323 --> 25:45.783 billion. So GDP had more than tripled 25:45.780 --> 25:48.970 from 1840 to 1860. 25:48.970 --> 25:52.340 That shows us that there's an industrial revolution already 25:52.342 --> 25:54.892 happening. There were 9000 railroad miles 25:54.894 --> 25:56.754 in 1850 in the United States. 25:56.750 --> 25:58.710 There were 21,000 in 1860. 25:58.710 --> 26:05.800 The 1850s is a great launching decade of industrialization. 26:05.799 --> 26:08.559 Now I'm going to give you a counter-argument to that in just 26:08.564 --> 26:11.684 a minute. There are two economists named 26:11.682 --> 26:15.932 Claudia Golden and Frank Lewis who have estimated, 26:15.932 --> 26:20.792 estimated the actual price of the American Civil War; 26:20.790 --> 26:22.910 they put a price tag on it. 26:22.910 --> 26:25.670 The cost of lives lost, and of wounds, 26:25.666 --> 26:28.716 that reduced productivity--these are their 26:28.721 --> 26:33.271 variables and their factors--the cost of lives lost and wounds 26:33.265 --> 26:37.965 that reduced productivity, as well as property destroyed, 26:37.969 --> 26:42.529 and factoring in government expenditures to fight the war, 26:42.529 --> 26:46.709 which were humongous--and I'll state some of them in a 26:46.711 --> 26:51.051 moment--Golden and Lewis concluded that the overall cost 26:51.050 --> 26:56.100 of war was about six and a half billion dollars to fight it. 26:56.099 --> 27:02.069 In today's dollars that would be about 145 to 150 billion 27:02.065 --> 27:06.855 dollars, today, to fight the four years of the 27:06.858 --> 27:11.118 Civil War. This amount would've allowed 27:11.118 --> 27:16.358 the--this is Golden and Lewis's argument by the way; 27:16.359 --> 27:19.699 this is what economists can do with history if they so 27:19.701 --> 27:22.541 wish--this amount would've allowed the Federal 27:22.539 --> 27:26.259 Government--that 145 to 150 billion--it would've allowed the 27:26.259 --> 27:30.169 Federal Government to purchase and free all four million slaves 27:30.169 --> 27:34.529 in 1860 at market prices, give each family 40 acres and a 27:34.534 --> 27:39.184 mule, and still they'd have had three and a half billion dollars 27:39.176 --> 27:42.636 left over for reparations for former slaves. 27:42.640 --> 27:46.870 That's Golden and Lewis's argument. 27:46.869 --> 27:51.119 I notice it didn't get much of a rise out of you. 27:51.119 --> 27:55.309 But it's an interesting set of numbers. 27:55.310 --> 27:58.500 History, of course, intruded. 27:58.500 --> 28:02.460 During the war years, the war retarded economic 28:02.458 --> 28:06.328 growth in some sectors but in the long run, 28:06.329 --> 28:10.559 especially in northern cities and towns, and especially with 28:10.564 --> 28:14.154 the mass mobilization now stimulated by the Federal 28:14.153 --> 28:17.673 Government, the war expanded the economy 28:17.670 --> 28:21.070 like nothing ever had before, so fast. 28:21.069 --> 28:23.299 It just depended on where you lived. 28:23.299 --> 28:28.409 But stop for just a moment now with all these measures or 28:28.410 --> 28:33.550 numbers in your head, if you can, and just ask for a 28:33.552 --> 28:39.332 moment what can social history measure and what can it not 28:39.334 --> 28:41.914 measure? It can measure very important 28:41.909 --> 28:44.679 things, and I'm going to give you some more numbers in a 28:44.676 --> 28:48.406 minute. Social history can measure 28:48.407 --> 28:50.887 demographic change. 28:50.890 --> 28:53.870 It can measure death, disease and casualty rates. 28:53.869 --> 28:56.419 It can measure industrial production. 28:56.420 --> 29:00.100 It can measure loss of civilian pursuits. 29:00.099 --> 29:05.239 It can measure the number of women who enter the workforce. 29:05.240 --> 29:09.010 It can measure government expenditures. 29:09.010 --> 29:10.050 It can measure budgets. 29:10.050 --> 29:13.630 29:13.630 --> 29:19.660 It can even measure the basic social impact on a town, 29:19.661 --> 29:22.621 a locality, a community. 29:22.619 --> 29:26.209 And we now have a number of these wonderful micro histories 29:26.212 --> 29:28.262 of southern towns, northern towns, 29:28.256 --> 29:30.606 Midwest and so on, during the war. 29:30.609 --> 29:34.399 But how do you measure other social factors? 29:34.400 --> 29:39.150 And this is one of those questions that makes history 29:39.152 --> 29:42.812 endlessly necessary, useful, interesting, 29:42.808 --> 29:48.108 and attracts some of us fools to live with it forever. 29:48.110 --> 29:50.280 How do you measure despair? 29:50.280 --> 29:52.450 How do you measure loneliness? 29:52.450 --> 29:55.930 How do you measure the dislocation and fear of widows? 29:55.930 --> 29:59.210 How do you measure the suffering of soldiers from 29:59.213 --> 30:00.653 wounds and disease? 30:00.650 --> 30:05.390 How do you measure the loss of a sense of home, 30:05.390 --> 30:07.760 of dislocated worlds? 30:07.759 --> 30:13.549 How do you measure nationalism, patriotism? 30:13.549 --> 30:17.559 Sometimes we can find some measures of that, 30:17.556 --> 30:19.416 in morale studies. 30:19.420 --> 30:22.970 How do you measure the psychological damage of combat 30:22.968 --> 30:24.468 on the human psyche? 30:24.470 --> 30:27.720 How do you measure the fracturing of marriages and 30:27.716 --> 30:29.236 relationships by war? 30:29.240 --> 30:33.980 How do you measure home front worry? 30:33.980 --> 30:38.600 How do you measure the ways war tests and changes values, 30:38.604 --> 30:41.334 sentiments and morality itself? 30:41.329 --> 30:45.379 How do you measure the social and moral consequences of 30:45.376 --> 30:51.866 killing people? How do you measure femininity, 30:51.867 --> 30:55.517 manhood, patriarchy? 30:55.519 --> 30:58.999 How do you measure what it meant to become free? 30:59.000 --> 31:05.060 You don't, but you do study it. 31:05.059 --> 31:10.439 Now, let me give you one other example, or maybe two. 31:10.440 --> 31:13.600 31:13.600 --> 31:17.650 Social impact. Let's go to one of those 31:17.652 --> 31:19.882 Southern women. She gets some mention in 31:19.883 --> 31:23.563 Faust's book because she wrote one of the great diaries and 31:23.564 --> 31:26.044 later memoirs that she then revised. 31:26.039 --> 31:29.289 This is not Mary Chesnut now, the one so often quoted in the 31:29.292 --> 31:30.452 Burns' film series. 31:30.450 --> 31:32.680 This woman's name was Kate Stone. 31:32.680 --> 31:37.390 She wrote a great--well she kept a diary that eventually was 31:37.394 --> 31:41.314 published as a book entitled Brokenburn, 31:41.309 --> 31:46.309 which was the name of her Louisiana cotton and sugar 31:46.306 --> 31:49.586 plantation. It's an amazing book because 31:49.586 --> 31:53.736 you can sort of follow the impact of this war on her psyche 31:53.744 --> 31:57.974 by following her through the years and then after the war as 31:57.973 --> 32:00.853 well. I'll pick her up right at the 32:00.847 --> 32:05.287 end. The war's all but over and she 32:05.292 --> 32:09.232 records this in April, 1865. 32:09.230 --> 32:12.050 She has now moved over to Tyler, Texas. 32:12.049 --> 32:15.599 She has refugeed her slaves, as the phrase went. 32:15.599 --> 32:18.569 She's abandoned her plantation because the Union armies took it 32:18.569 --> 32:19.909 in the Red River Campaign. 32:19.910 --> 32:22.320 She's lost half of her slaves. 32:22.319 --> 32:27.609 She's lost two brothers in the war and a third one has come 32:27.607 --> 32:30.977 home stone silent, he never speaks; 32:30.980 --> 32:35.030 battle fatigue, shellshock, post-traumatic 32:35.032 --> 32:37.012 stress, who knows? 32:37.009 --> 32:38.979 They didn't have a name for it then. 32:38.980 --> 32:40.230 But he never spoke. 32:40.230 --> 32:42.910 Her silent brother was around. 32:42.910 --> 32:44.980 Two of them are dead. 32:44.980 --> 32:47.480 "All are fearfully depressed," she writes. 32:47.480 --> 32:49.310 This is April '65. 32:49.309 --> 32:52.109 "I cannot bear to hear them talk of defeat. 32:52.109 --> 32:55.659 It seems a reproach to our gallant dead." 32:55.660 --> 32:59.160 And then there's some sort of last gasp bravado, 32:59.160 --> 33:01.470 and she hoped that, she said, 33:01.470 --> 33:05.700 "the thousands of grass grown mounds heaped on mountainside 33:05.697 --> 33:09.707 and in every valley of our country would still rally the 33:09.706 --> 33:11.816 South to be free or die." 33:11.820 --> 33:15.780 What bravado in a diary. 33:15.779 --> 33:19.569 And then a month later, mid-May 1865, 33:19.566 --> 33:24.506 she opened a journal entry with a definition, 33:24.509 --> 33:28.539 and it doesn't get any better than this, of the South's 33:28.541 --> 33:31.601 immediate fate, and especially the fate of 33:31.603 --> 33:35.013 women, living in this kind of now 33:35.007 --> 33:39.297 physical hardship and personal isolation. 33:39.299 --> 33:43.219 She opened the entry with three underlined words. 33:43.220 --> 33:48.370 "Conquered, submission, subjugation are the words that 33:48.372 --> 33:52.752 burn into my heart, and yet I feel that we are 33:52.746 --> 33:57.506 doomed to know them in all their bitterness." 33:57.509 --> 34:02.369 She looked ahead, she began to reflect about her 34:02.368 --> 34:07.018 class and her race, and then she said they, 34:07.019 --> 34:11.259 the white plantar class of the South, would now become what she 34:11.264 --> 34:13.334 called slaves. Quote, "Yes, 34:13.327 --> 34:16.067 slaves of the Yankee government." 34:16.070 --> 34:24.120 She feared the quite specific what she called unendurable fate 34:24.116 --> 34:27.806 of blacks ruling over her. 34:27.809 --> 34:32.079 "Submission to the Union," she went on, "how we hate that word. 34:32.079 --> 34:35.099 Confiscation, Negro equality, 34:35.095 --> 34:41.445 or a bloody unequal struggle, lest we know not how long." 34:41.449 --> 34:46.259 And then in July of '65, rocking a baby in a chair in 34:46.263 --> 34:51.543 her arms, and singing all the songs she could remember, 34:51.539 --> 34:57.049 she found she said, quote, "The war songs sicken 34:57.053 --> 34:59.223 me. The sound is like touching a 34:59.219 --> 35:02.689 new wound. I cannot bear to think of it 35:02.690 --> 35:07.630 all. I forget whenever I can." 35:07.630 --> 35:12.430 Well it's fascinating to follow Kate Stone through time, 35:12.425 --> 35:15.675 though. She did all right. 35:15.679 --> 35:20.519 There weren't many men around but she finally met one. 35:20.519 --> 35:23.779 There's an incredible entry where she says she started going 35:23.780 --> 35:27.210 to social events and at one of them people were dancing and she 35:27.207 --> 35:30.487 couldn't bear to dance, it just didn't seem right. 35:30.490 --> 35:32.420 But she finally did. 35:32.420 --> 35:37.460 She met a surviving Confederate officer, married him in 1869, 35:37.455 --> 35:40.105 lived out a life, had four kids, 35:40.111 --> 35:44.281 and became the local head of the United Daughters of the 35:44.280 --> 35:47.010 Confederacy in her town in Texas, 35:47.010 --> 35:50.150 and lived until 1907. 35:50.150 --> 35:54.110 35:54.110 --> 35:57.250 Kate Stone did better than most. 35:57.250 --> 36:02.650 But Southern society went to war and paid an enormous price, 36:02.651 --> 36:08.031 of course. Civilians. 36:08.030 --> 36:10.460 Civilians were ultimately, in some ways, 36:10.462 --> 36:12.522 the strength behind the armies. 36:12.519 --> 36:14.639 This war was, to some extent, 36:14.640 --> 36:18.730 lost on the home front, for the South in particular. 36:18.730 --> 36:21.160 Having said that, you can say on the other side 36:21.159 --> 36:24.169 in some ways it was won on the home front in the North, 36:24.170 --> 36:27.520 because of industrial production, because of sheer 36:27.519 --> 36:29.159 numbers and resources. 36:29.159 --> 36:33.849 But it's worth remembering here that the Civil War happened to 36:33.849 --> 36:37.769 Southerners more than it happened to Northerners. 36:37.769 --> 36:41.919 Only a small portion of this war was actually fought on 36:41.920 --> 36:44.840 northern soil. The Confederacy failed 36:44.835 --> 36:48.815 ultimately to solve the problems of the home front. 36:48.820 --> 36:50.280 Just think of a list. 36:50.280 --> 36:54.370 And this is not to condemn them, this was their challenge, 36:54.367 --> 36:58.307 this is the risk they took, this is what they risked was 36:58.312 --> 36:59.892 secession in 1861. 36:59.889 --> 37:03.359 The problems of the home front they could not ultimately solve 37:03.357 --> 37:08.227 in the midst of this massive, enveloping thousand mile front 37:08.231 --> 37:13.521 war, surrounded by a naval blockade: money supply; 37:13.520 --> 37:16.840 transportation; agriculture, 37:16.840 --> 37:21.970 agricultural production; developing small industry; 37:21.969 --> 37:27.409 creating a national bureaucracy that could be efficient; 37:27.409 --> 37:31.259 maddening shortages of foodstuffs, clothing and about 37:31.263 --> 37:35.343 everything else it takes to keep armies in the field; 37:35.340 --> 37:40.020 class frictions; social disintegration; 37:40.019 --> 37:43.799 and last but not least slavery, what to do about slavery, 37:43.796 --> 37:47.636 particularly once it comes under pressure in 1862 and then 37:47.639 --> 37:51.279 after the Emancipation Proclamation which announces the 37:51.281 --> 37:54.721 purpose of the war now is to destroy slavery. 37:54.720 --> 37:56.370 What does the Confederacy do? 37:56.369 --> 38:01.449 We will come back to that, directly, in terms of the 38:01.448 --> 38:07.518 Confederate Government's policy on a kind of emancipation late 38:07.523 --> 38:10.613 in the war, in '64 and '65. 38:10.610 --> 38:14.760 The South did undergo some rapid economic expansion, 38:14.757 --> 38:17.357 remarkable economic expansion. 38:17.360 --> 38:19.550 In fact, if you read the sections on this in Jim 38:19.547 --> 38:22.197 McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom as background, 38:22.199 --> 38:26.189 he has some glowing things to say about just how effective the 38:26.187 --> 38:28.997 South was in producing cannon, for example, 38:29.000 --> 38:31.400 at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. 38:31.400 --> 38:36.250 They had 3000 slaves working in the largest industrial plant 38:36.254 --> 38:40.374 anywhere in the southern states by 1863, producing, 38:40.368 --> 38:43.328 by and large, their own weapons. 38:43.329 --> 38:48.729 The naval blockade of the Union Navy was not very effective at 38:48.728 --> 38:54.038 first, but it was ultimately crippling, by the latter part of 38:54.038 --> 38:57.248 the war. The estimate is that about five 38:57.253 --> 39:00.803 out of six blockade runners, these ships running the 39:00.796 --> 39:05.606 blockade, got through between 1861 and 39:05.612 --> 39:14.292 '62, but by 1864 and '65 only about one of every two attempted 39:14.287 --> 39:19.547 blockade runners ever got through. 39:19.550 --> 39:23.020 There was widespread devastation of staple crop 39:23.019 --> 39:27.619 agriculture in those parts of the South where the Union armies 39:27.619 --> 39:30.469 moved in. Charlie Brewster just described 39:30.473 --> 39:32.773 those cornfields of Central Virginia. 39:32.769 --> 39:37.399 A Union Army near Southern crops meant the crops were gone 39:37.401 --> 39:39.271 in twenty-four hours. 39:39.269 --> 39:43.779 In one of the world's greatest agricultural economies, 39:43.775 --> 39:48.275 people began to go hungry by late '63 and into '64, 39:48.280 --> 39:51.420 bringing about major bread riots in cities like Richmond, 39:51.422 --> 39:55.522 Charleston, South Carolina, and other places. 39:55.519 --> 40:00.179 With more than a half a million white men leaving agriculture 40:00.183 --> 40:03.893 across the South, it seriously reduced 40:03.886 --> 40:08.446 productivity, and then as slavery began to 40:08.449 --> 40:14.629 dissolve, slowly but surely, this of course disrupted 40:14.627 --> 40:20.417 production, at least in about a third of the South's 40:20.423 --> 40:22.813 agricultural land. 40:22.809 --> 40:26.469 The occupation of Louisiana, for example, 40:26.467 --> 40:29.757 early in the war, as early as '62, 40:29.760 --> 40:34.160 brought the sugar industry to the edge of extinction, 40:34.158 --> 40:39.318 and by the war's end only about fifteen percent of Louisiana's 40:39.318 --> 40:43.208 1,300 sugar estates were operating at all. 40:43.210 --> 40:47.450 The great sugar plantations of Louisiana were in almost utter 40:47.453 --> 40:51.483 ruin by the end of the war, especially after the Red River 40:51.484 --> 40:52.974 Campaign of 1864. 40:52.969 --> 40:56.129 Tobacco was in shambles as the Union armies moved through 40:56.129 --> 40:59.469 Kentucky and Tennessee, quite early in the war, 40:59.469 --> 41:04.419 and rice along the coast of South Carolina was devastated by 41:04.418 --> 41:08.108 Union occupation as early as '62 and '63. 41:08.110 --> 41:12.300 And then there was the South's decision, Jefferson Davis's 41:12.295 --> 41:15.375 decision, to engage in a cotton embargo; 41:15.380 --> 41:19.240 that is, they took cotton off the world market--and we'll say 41:19.244 --> 41:22.924 more about this when we deal with questions of Confederate 41:22.915 --> 41:25.745 defeat in terms of their foreign policy. 41:25.750 --> 41:30.570 But the policy by 1863 of the Confederate Government was to 41:30.573 --> 41:35.483 take cotton off the world market--trying to pull an OPEC, 41:35.480 --> 41:39.100 trying to do with cotton what the OPEC countries in our 41:39.100 --> 41:42.520 lifetime have tried to do with oil--pull it back, 41:42.519 --> 41:46.949 make the world demand it, and maybe make the Brits come 41:46.945 --> 41:50.995 in on your side. It totally backfired and it was 41:50.999 --> 41:54.409 a total economic disaster for the South. 41:54.409 --> 41:59.449 The production of cotton in the Confederate states went from 41:59.454 --> 42:04.844 about five million bales in 1860 to about one-quarter million in 42:04.840 --> 42:05.610 1865. 42:05.610 --> 42:09.000 42:09.000 --> 42:13.100 Now, Confederate fiscal policy was also a disaster. 42:13.099 --> 42:18.259 Not until 1863 did the Richmond government enact any kind of 42:18.260 --> 42:20.360 comprehensive tax law. 42:20.360 --> 42:24.710 Taxing was not very consistent, from the federal level, 42:24.712 --> 42:28.502 with the way the Confederacy was itself born. 42:28.500 --> 42:33.340 Even then when they tried to pass a comprehensive tax law, 42:33.337 --> 42:38.507 the Confederacy derived in the end only about seven percent of 42:38.514 --> 42:41.744 its revenues from actual taxation. 42:41.739 --> 42:44.549 The rest came from borrowing money from abroad, 42:44.547 --> 42:47.047 sale of bonds, which was about twenty-five 42:47.050 --> 42:50.700 percent of their budget, impressment of provisions from 42:50.700 --> 42:53.870 Southerners themselves, about seventeen percent, 42:53.869 --> 43:00.409 and in the end about fifty percent of all money in the 43:00.407 --> 43:07.317 Confederacy and its foyers of existence was printed paper 43:07.315 --> 43:13.105 money which became inflated at ridiculous rates, 43:13.113 --> 43:17.373 rapidly. Now, so much more could be said 43:17.367 --> 43:21.607 here, especially about this dissolving institution of 43:21.607 --> 43:24.947 slavery and how it affected the South. 43:24.949 --> 43:28.419 But let me spend the last five minutes on the North, 43:28.423 --> 43:30.743 which is a very different story. 43:30.739 --> 43:34.219 It's a more successful story, it's a more progressive story 43:34.219 --> 43:37.169 in the literal sense, and it is rooted in a 43:37.167 --> 43:41.267 particular kind of political vision that that Republican 43:41.271 --> 43:44.481 Party brought to the Federal Government. 43:44.480 --> 43:48.640 Before the Civil War, the Federal Government did 43:48.640 --> 43:53.950 little more than deliver the mail, by and large--that's about 43:53.952 --> 43:57.772 all it did. It collected modest tariffs and 43:57.765 --> 44:01.945 it conducted foreign policy; but by the surrender at 44:01.951 --> 44:06.161 Appomattox, a great deal had changed in four years. 44:06.159 --> 44:10.429 Thousands were poised to spread across the continent with the 44:10.434 --> 44:12.434 Transcontinental Railroad. 44:12.429 --> 44:17.609 Businesses had begun to operate on a national scale with massive 44:17.611 --> 44:21.971 new marketing plans and full-time marketing people. 44:21.969 --> 44:27.109 Higher tariffs would bolster domestic manufacturing. 44:27.110 --> 44:31.780 Individuals experienced the nation state and gave it their 44:31.782 --> 44:34.162 allegiance as never before. 44:34.159 --> 44:38.009 An array of new national taxes were passed. 44:38.010 --> 44:40.730 The currency was nationalized. 44:40.730 --> 44:44.650 The Federal Government distributed public lands, 44:44.653 --> 44:49.163 chartered corporations, and would enforce black freedom 44:49.161 --> 44:52.251 with state or national authority; 44:52.250 --> 44:57.580 and States' Rights, at least for the time being, 44:57.578 --> 45:02.678 was dealt nearly a death blow, temporarily. 45:02.679 --> 45:06.909 War enabled the Republicans to pass sweeping visionary 45:06.914 --> 45:10.354 legislation borne of a certain worldview, 45:10.349 --> 45:15.019 and that worldview basically is captured in what the economists 45:15.024 --> 45:17.974 of the time, political economists of the 45:17.972 --> 45:21.762 time, like Matthew Carey and others, called "harmony of 45:21.758 --> 45:24.688 interest." This is the idea that in a 45:24.694 --> 45:29.054 capitalist economy you could bring labor and capital into 45:29.053 --> 45:33.803 harmony if you kept labor free and the economy free all at the 45:33.802 --> 45:36.722 same time. It was the belief that labor 45:36.722 --> 45:38.602 and capital could be friends. 45:38.600 --> 45:41.830 45:41.829 --> 45:44.889 It also depended on an activist interventionist federal 45:44.885 --> 45:48.445 government, and that is exactly what the Republicans created, 45:48.449 --> 45:51.699 in part out of necessity of the war and in part out of the fact 45:51.701 --> 45:53.591 that they actually believed in it. 45:53.590 --> 45:57.780 And it's going to bring about a great deal of constitutional 45:57.778 --> 46:00.758 innovation and economic experimentation. 46:00.760 --> 46:04.820 Here's what they did. 46:04.820 --> 46:09.330 In finance, in agriculture, in taxes, in building 46:09.334 --> 46:13.574 railroads, and in emancipation--at least those 46:13.566 --> 46:19.016 five major categories--the Republican Party transformed the 46:19.021 --> 46:22.691 United States Federal Government. 46:22.690 --> 46:25.740 They began by first selling war bonds. 46:25.739 --> 46:29.879 The Treasury needed money to fight the war. 46:29.880 --> 46:34.150 The cost of the American Civil War to fight it, 46:34.147 --> 46:39.247 just for the Union Government, by 1863 was approximately 46:39.250 --> 46:43.240 two-and-a-half million dollars per day. 46:43.239 --> 46:49.979 That's more than the Federal Government had spent in some 46:49.979 --> 46:53.709 decades before the Civil War. 46:53.710 --> 46:57.710 Now that's a financial revolution. 46:57.710 --> 46:59.340 How are you going to do it? 46:59.340 --> 47:01.600 How are you going to produce all this money? 47:01.599 --> 47:06.069 They began selling bonds to banks and financiers. 47:06.070 --> 47:10.270 In 1862, about 500 million dollars in bonds were sold at 47:10.272 --> 47:13.102 six percent, payable in five years. 47:13.100 --> 47:17.360 Buy a bond, support the war. 47:17.360 --> 47:21.690 The government then chose, hired, invited, 47:21.685 --> 47:27.065 from the private sector, the Philadelphia banker Jay 47:27.065 --> 47:31.005 Cooke, enlisted him to lead this 47:31.011 --> 47:36.911 federal bonds financing program, and he did lead it, 47:36.909 --> 47:40.329 aggressively. The whole idea here was 47:40.325 --> 47:43.655 economic nationalism, to invest the citizen in the 47:43.660 --> 47:46.860 fate of the Union by making them pay for it. 47:46.860 --> 47:51.690 And it was in 1862 that the Federal Government for the first 47:51.685 --> 47:54.625 time created the Greenback Dollar, 47:54.630 --> 47:58.540 the paper dollar, which actually revolutionalized 47:58.540 --> 48:00.170 American currency. 48:00.170 --> 48:03.530 Financial markets went up and down during the war, 48:03.527 --> 48:06.677 depending on battlefield success or failure. 48:06.679 --> 48:10.019 But by 1863, they were financing a war, 48:10.015 --> 48:15.365 companies were making profits and the Federal Government could 48:15.369 --> 48:18.329 pay its bills. It worked. 48:18.329 --> 48:24.259 The total national debt of an annual two-and-a-half billion 48:24.258 --> 48:28.448 was absorbed by the general population, 48:28.449 --> 48:33.719 and it was celebrated as what the Republican Party called a 48:33.715 --> 48:35.435 people's triumph. 48:35.440 --> 48:43.810 Now, I'm running into that wall of time, God help me. 48:43.809 --> 48:46.569 Let me leave you here, with this. 48:46.570 --> 48:50.080 Now, the North has enormous advantages, of course, 48:50.077 --> 48:54.297 in resources and population and industry and transportation, 48:54.300 --> 48:56.090 and on and on and on. 48:56.090 --> 49:00.750 And it had those New York bankers, once they could 49:00.749 --> 49:05.979 convince them to stop being anti-union and pro-union. 49:05.980 --> 49:10.420 But what came out of this was a revolutionary set of legislation 49:10.423 --> 49:13.883 that only wartime could probably have produced; 49:13.880 --> 49:18.950 the Homestead Act in the West, the Transcontinental Railroad, 49:18.952 --> 49:22.382 the Morrill Act of 1862, which was the Land Grant 49:22.380 --> 49:25.360 College Act, which created agricultural colleges across the 49:25.355 --> 49:28.395 country, by federal money. 49:28.400 --> 49:31.650 In fact last week I gave a lecture at my alma mater--at 49:31.649 --> 49:35.019 Michigan State--and just outside the lecture hall where I 49:35.018 --> 49:38.268 lectured was a copy of the original handwritten Morrill 49:38.268 --> 49:41.338 Act. I know you don't care but I did 49:41.339 --> 49:44.449 [laughter] because Michigan Agricultural 49:44.445 --> 49:47.945 College was the first land grant college, 49:47.949 --> 49:50.569 and they always reminded us of that every time--every year at 49:50.574 --> 49:51.584 Freshman orientation. 49:51.580 --> 49:55.270 49:55.269 --> 49:59.159 And really, frankly to understand--and I'll leave you 49:59.158 --> 50:01.998 here--to understand how Northerners, 50:02.000 --> 50:04.970 the Republican Party, Lincoln himself and at least 50:04.965 --> 50:07.925 the majority of those Union troops came to support 50:07.931 --> 50:10.731 emancipation, the freeing of black people, 50:10.728 --> 50:13.628 by federal authority, you need to see it in the 50:13.633 --> 50:17.113 context of all else that this Republican Party was doing 50:17.106 --> 50:19.376 through the Federal Government. 50:19.380 --> 50:25.900 They were using government now as the engine of great social 50:25.903 --> 50:32.063 experimentation and change; granted, so much of it out of 50:32.059 --> 50:35.619 necessity, some of it out of will. 50:35.619 --> 50:40.509 I'm going to return to this story a little bit on Thursday 50:40.509 --> 50:45.999 as we move toward the question of why the North wins this war.