WEBVTT 00:02.070 --> 00:05.170 Professor David Blight: I'm going to talk for a few 00:05.174 --> 00:07.194 minutes about this memory question. 00:07.190 --> 00:12.010 There's an article assigned at the very end of the reading 00:12.008 --> 00:16.318 packet that you perhaps have read by now, I hope. 00:16.320 --> 00:21.160 A piece I wrote some years ago which gives you kind of a breezy 00:21.162 --> 00:25.542 take on some of the complexities of how the Civil War and 00:25.535 --> 00:30.295 Reconstruction have been remembered in the United States. 00:30.300 --> 00:38.570 It is arguably the most vexing piece of our past for our larger 00:38.568 --> 00:43.768 political, public culture to process. 00:43.770 --> 00:46.720 You can simply do it this way, though. 00:46.720 --> 00:49.720 This is one of the people that Tony Horwitz interviewed in his 00:49.719 --> 00:52.029 wonderful book Confederates in the Attic, 00:52.030 --> 00:53.800 which some of you may have read. 00:53.800 --> 00:57.280 A quite popular book; it came out about five years 00:57.284 --> 00:59.724 ago. Horwitz, a great journalist, 00:59.716 --> 01:04.196 did a travel book all over the South and tried to come to some 01:04.195 --> 01:07.275 grips and understanding of many things, 01:07.280 --> 01:11.430 but particularly of Civil War buffs and Civil War 01:11.426 --> 01:16.516 enthusiasm--of why this event endures so much in our popular 01:16.523 --> 01:20.233 culture. Among the people he interviewed 01:20.229 --> 01:24.619 was this guy who said, quote: "I think there's a lot 01:24.622 --> 01:29.452 of people like me who want to get back to a simpler time: 01:29.445 --> 01:32.875 sandlot baseball, Cowboys and Indians, 01:32.879 --> 01:34.419 and the Civil War." 01:34.420 --> 01:37.560 01:37.560 --> 01:39.830 Just take me away. 01:39.830 --> 01:43.650 Wherever my present is, whatever my life is, 01:43.646 --> 01:47.816 just transport me, to the morning of July 3^(rd) 01:47.818 --> 01:51.278 at Gettysburg, or some other place. 01:51.280 --> 01:55.330 01:55.330 --> 01:59.140 There was a musician interviewed on NPR yesterday 01:59.135 --> 02:03.415 morning who's been through a horrible life of drugs and 02:03.415 --> 02:05.155 alcohol addiction. 02:05.159 --> 02:10.199 At the end of it he was asked to give the biggest influences 02:10.200 --> 02:13.190 on his recovery and his survival, 02:13.189 --> 02:17.379 and he said, "Well, certain artists, 02:17.381 --> 02:22.651 certain people, but mostly the Civil War." 02:22.650 --> 02:25.220 And that's where the interview ended. 02:25.220 --> 02:29.240 I was dying to find out what the hell did that mean? 02:29.240 --> 02:33.220 Good God Almighty. 02:33.220 --> 02:34.880 But God bless him. 02:34.880 --> 02:36.730 All right, legacies. 02:36.729 --> 02:38.799 Everything in history has a legacy. 02:38.800 --> 02:41.250 We use the term all the time, the legacies of this; 02:41.250 --> 02:43.400 the legacies of that; the legacies of that event; 02:43.400 --> 02:45.600 what are the legacies of World War Two? 02:45.599 --> 02:47.449 What are the legacies of the Civil Rights Movement? 02:47.450 --> 02:50.260 But what is a legacy? 02:50.260 --> 02:52.400 Stop for just a second with me. 02:52.400 --> 02:56.180 Let me attempt a definition, some attempt. 02:56.180 --> 03:00.160 It can be simply another word for historical memory, 03:00.162 --> 03:04.382 of how we remember things, and then how we use them. 03:04.379 --> 03:09.329 It always carries some current, present, and often political 03:09.330 --> 03:13.660 meaning. If you use the term legacy for 03:13.655 --> 03:19.925 something, it probably has a current political stake. 03:19.930 --> 03:22.190 Reconstruction, in our history, 03:22.185 --> 03:26.315 was an ongoing referendum on the meaning and legacies of 03:26.319 --> 03:28.499 slavery in the Civil War. 03:28.500 --> 03:32.360 And so much of our racial history, our constitutional 03:32.360 --> 03:36.710 history, our political history, ever since Reconstruction, 03:36.708 --> 03:40.288 has been a referendum on the meaning and memory of 03:40.285 --> 03:43.845 Reconstruction. Was there a reconciliation in 03:43.853 --> 03:46.733 the wake of these events, of sections, 03:46.729 --> 03:49.149 of states, of soldiers, 03:49.151 --> 03:54.801 of the political class, or of masters and slaves, 03:54.799 --> 03:57.269 blacks and whites? 03:57.270 --> 04:03.450 Who got reconciled and who didn't? 04:03.449 --> 04:07.969 Legacies, I'd suggest, can be emotional. 04:07.969 --> 04:12.679 Test this with your parents or your grandparents. 04:12.680 --> 04:16.430 Legacies can be emotional, they can be intellectual, 04:16.434 --> 04:19.824 they can be physical, they can be financial, 04:19.819 --> 04:23.969 they can be about habits, they surely can be political, 04:23.966 --> 04:26.726 and they can be sacred or secular. 04:26.730 --> 04:29.360 My parents were the Great Depression and World War Two 04:29.356 --> 04:31.236 generation and it was all over them. 04:31.240 --> 04:35.340 04:35.339 --> 04:39.289 My father always feared insurance. 04:39.290 --> 04:41.870 He always wanted to know exact--he had no money but he 04:41.869 --> 04:44.399 always wanted to know exactly where his money was. 04:44.399 --> 04:45.829 He almost kept it under a pillow. 04:45.829 --> 04:47.409 It was stupid, it was crazy, 04:47.407 --> 04:50.847 but after the Depression and five farm foreclosures that his 04:50.853 --> 04:53.263 family had, he couldn't stand letting 04:53.263 --> 04:56.273 anyone else have his couple of thousand dollars. 04:56.269 --> 04:57.929 That's a legacy of the Great Depression. 04:57.930 --> 05:00.300 It's a habit, it's a point of view and it's a 05:00.299 --> 05:01.429 set of assumptions. 05:01.430 --> 05:06.610 05:06.610 --> 05:11.670 This event had so many legacies that frankly we just keep adding 05:11.672 --> 05:13.282 to them with time. 05:13.280 --> 05:16.770 They just don't really go away. 05:16.769 --> 05:21.549 Sometimes a legacy is perhaps what is simply left over, 05:21.545 --> 05:24.835 out in public memory, in our behavior, 05:24.841 --> 05:28.391 in our policies, after historians have written 05:28.391 --> 05:31.941 all their books, museums have mounted all their 05:31.944 --> 05:35.304 exhibitions, teachers have taught their classes, 05:35.300 --> 05:40.300 elders have tried to instruct the young, at the grassroots 05:40.303 --> 05:42.413 level and in families. 05:42.410 --> 05:48.220 The legacy is that which endures all of our filterings, 05:48.220 --> 05:52.960 all of our debates, all of our struggles over 05:52.955 --> 05:57.685 controlling the story we say we live in. 05:57.690 --> 06:03.930 It is where the past and the present meet. 06:03.930 --> 06:08.310 And there's no event in American history that's caused 06:08.309 --> 06:13.099 more of these struggles--there are others that compare--but 06:13.101 --> 06:18.311 there's no others that's caused more struggles over just how the 06:18.306 --> 06:22.186 past and present meet than our Civil War. 06:22.189 --> 06:26.799 Just take some of these ideas as physical legacies, 06:26.802 --> 06:28.742 emotional legacies. 06:28.740 --> 06:35.250 If you took the number of dead in the American Civil War and 06:35.247 --> 06:39.767 you moved it to the present per capita, 06:39.769 --> 06:43.549 thirteen million Americans would die in a war today. 06:43.550 --> 06:49.170 06:49.170 --> 06:57.270 Slavery was gone, anger at its loss had no end. 06:57.269 --> 07:00.239 In the South, the economy and the physical 07:00.235 --> 07:02.255 landscape was in collapse. 07:02.259 --> 07:07.469 Two-thirds of Southern wealth of the ex-Confederate states was 07:07.473 --> 07:11.753 destroyed, in four years, and a lot of that wealth, 07:11.747 --> 07:16.397 of course, was slaves; three-and-a-half billion 07:16.400 --> 07:19.220 dollars worth. Forty percent of all Southern 07:19.220 --> 07:21.150 livestock were dead at the end of the war. 07:21.149 --> 07:24.519 Fifty percent of all farm machinery destroyed. 07:24.519 --> 07:29.609 There was an enormous refugee problem. 07:29.610 --> 07:32.220 Mobilization had occurred unmatched; 07:32.220 --> 07:34.300 it will be unmatched until World War Two. 07:34.300 --> 07:40.240 07:40.240 --> 07:42.750 And in the South, in particular, 07:42.750 --> 07:46.150 the war had killed approximately--killed or 07:46.152 --> 07:50.622 incapacitated, excuse me--one of every four 07:50.617 --> 07:55.447 males from the age of sixteen to forty-five. 07:55.449 --> 08:00.939 How do you process that kind of loss and destruction and 08:00.935 --> 08:06.715 violence in a society that must find a way to reconcile? 08:06.720 --> 08:12.400 You can't send the defeated part somewhere else; 08:12.399 --> 08:16.189 well could've tried but Brazil wouldn't take them all, 08:16.191 --> 08:19.551 certainly Britain wouldn't take them all, Mexico 08:19.554 --> 08:21.204 couldn't--wouldn't. 08:21.200 --> 08:24.320 08:24.319 --> 08:29.699 How would this reconciliation actually come? 08:29.699 --> 08:35.769 I was doing research at Huntington Library a couple of 08:35.774 --> 08:38.524 years ago. I was actually there to give a 08:38.515 --> 08:41.065 lecture and I had two days to kill and I was just playing 08:41.065 --> 08:42.745 around in the Allan Nevins Papers; 08:42.750 --> 08:44.550 Allan Nevins was a great Civil War historian, 08:44.552 --> 08:45.702 back in the '50s and '60s. 08:45.700 --> 08:48.160 I grew up reading his works. 08:48.159 --> 08:50.879 And I was actually giving a lecture named for Allan Nevins, 08:50.876 --> 08:53.826 so I thought I'd spend a couple of days in the Nevins Papers and 08:53.826 --> 08:54.806 just lose myself. 08:54.809 --> 08:59.829 There's nothing better in the world, other than teaching this 08:59.827 --> 09:04.757 class, than losing yourself in a great library for two days, 09:04.761 --> 09:08.271 with no agenda. And I'm thumbing through the 09:08.271 --> 09:10.811 Nevins Papers, it's a huge collection, 09:10.809 --> 09:14.169 and I just bump into an essay, in manuscript form, 09:14.171 --> 09:16.231 by my hero, Bruce Catton. 09:16.230 --> 09:17.720 I've mentioned him before. 09:17.720 --> 09:20.710 I grew up reading his books, Stillness at Appomattox, 09:20.706 --> 09:24.436 and so many others; the great popular historian of 09:24.435 --> 09:27.895 the Civil War in the '50s, '60s, '70s. 09:27.899 --> 09:33.219 And here was this little essay, by Catton, entitled "The End of 09:33.220 --> 09:35.280 the Centennial, 1965." 09:35.279 --> 09:39.329 Note the date, the centennial of the U.S. 09:39.326 --> 09:42.006 Civil War. Catton and Nevins had been 09:42.014 --> 09:44.344 themselves directors, executive-directors, 09:44.339 --> 09:47.569 presidents and vice-presidents, whatever they were called, 09:47.572 --> 09:50.602 of the U.S. Centennial Commission for the 09:50.600 --> 09:55.130 Civil War, a commission that was in many ways a debacle because 09:55.133 --> 09:59.373 it was all occurring--again, think of the dates--at the time 09:59.366 --> 10:01.266 of the Civil Rights Movement. 10:01.269 --> 10:04.679 Anyway, I had just published a book on Civil War memory, 10:04.684 --> 10:07.234 this long tome, and here comes this little 10:07.229 --> 10:09.179 essay, and I was thinking, 10:09.177 --> 10:12.527 oh, Bruce Catton, I'm sure he'll agree with me. 10:12.530 --> 10:16.340 Huh. Now in this essay, 10:16.339 --> 10:20.589 which was later published I discovered--and Catton wrote it 10:20.589 --> 10:24.839 in 1965--he muses about memory, and he used the actual word 10:24.840 --> 10:27.460 memory. That was reassuring because I 10:27.458 --> 10:30.818 was writing about memory in a world of academics who were 10:30.815 --> 10:34.405 always--were very suspicious about what the hell this idea of 10:34.411 --> 10:36.391 memory was supposed to mean. 10:36.389 --> 10:40.699 He marveled in this piece at how Americans had healed--that 10:40.703 --> 10:44.573 was his word--from their Civil War, from this kind of 10:44.571 --> 10:47.881 blood-letting; how a nation over a hundred 10:47.875 --> 10:49.835 years had healed, he said. 10:49.840 --> 10:54.080 And that a nation could actually commemorate a civil 10:54.075 --> 10:57.475 war, so openly, all over the landscape, 10:57.480 --> 11:02.400 he said was truly remarkable, if not unprecedented in modern 11:02.396 --> 11:05.336 history. The war, he said, 11:05.336 --> 11:09.546 was--his word--a source of unity. 11:09.549 --> 11:13.859 "The memory of our civil war"--and I'm quoting Bruce 11:13.856 --> 11:19.256 Catton, 1965--"has not been a divisive force in this country." 11:19.260 --> 11:23.200 11:23.200 --> 11:26.910 And I had one of those moments where I said, 11:26.905 --> 11:29.745 oh God, Bruce, say it ain't so; 11:29.750 --> 11:32.310 you didn't say that. 11:32.309 --> 11:36.319 Reminded me of the time I ran into my greatest baseball hero 11:36.316 --> 11:40.116 ever, in an airport--you probably don't even know him, 11:40.120 --> 11:43.140 Al Kaline, the right fielder for the Detroit Tigers, 11:43.141 --> 11:46.211 the one and only Al Kaline; only Roberto Clemente could 11:46.213 --> 11:48.523 even come close to Kaline as a right-fielder. 11:48.519 --> 11:53.039 I ran him into an airport once, end of his career--and I was 11:53.043 --> 11:56.343 about 28--and he was smoking a cigarette. 11:56.340 --> 12:02.200 Damn. Don't meet your heroes. 12:02.200 --> 12:04.300 How could Bruce have written that sentence? 12:04.299 --> 12:09.409 I'd just written a 500-page book that argued exactly the 12:09.408 --> 12:12.188 opposite. For forging all this unity--I 12:12.194 --> 12:15.544 read on in the essay--for forging all this unity he gave 12:15.539 --> 12:19.369 most of the credit to Grant and Lee at Appomattox and the nature 12:19.371 --> 12:23.971 of the surrender; the compassionate character of 12:23.965 --> 12:27.215 that surrender at Appomattox. 12:27.220 --> 12:28.550 But then he went on. 12:28.549 --> 12:32.699 He said primarily he gave credit to what he called the 12:32.703 --> 12:36.543 Confederate legend, which he described as--and I'm 12:36.543 --> 12:41.633 quoting him: "a mighty, omnipresent force in the land. 12:41.629 --> 12:46.439 In all seriousness"--still quoting Catton--"the legend of 12:46.444 --> 12:51.434 the Lost Cause has been an asset to the entire country." 12:51.430 --> 12:54.610 Now that just blew me away. 12:54.610 --> 13:00.350 Oh Bruce, please tell me you didn't write that. 13:00.350 --> 13:04.750 Catton's portrayal of the Lost Cause in this essay was that of 13:04.753 --> 13:08.463 a benign, innocent, romantic cluster of legends 13:08.460 --> 13:12.110 about the Old South, driven by the assumption, 13:12.111 --> 13:14.421 as he put it, that, quote: 13:14.422 --> 13:18.392 "no hint of enmity should ever be kept alive." 13:18.390 --> 13:21.680 13:21.679 --> 13:25.119 His Lost Cause, in the brevity of one essay, 13:25.115 --> 13:28.785 was a story of noble sacrifice by the South, 13:28.789 --> 13:32.409 and heroism, of a nostalgia for an older 13:32.409 --> 13:37.419 civilization that had been some kind of bulwark against 13:37.420 --> 13:40.150 modernism. And in the end, 13:40.151 --> 13:43.971 as Catton put it, the Confederate legend, 13:43.969 --> 13:46.829 the Lost Cause, he said, quote, 13:46.832 --> 13:50.852 "saved us." I couldn't really take it 13:50.845 --> 13:54.635 anymore. At the very end of the essay 13:54.644 --> 13:57.864 Catton redeemed himself a bit. 13:57.860 --> 14:02.730 He acknowledged that in 1965 the war had left, 14:02.727 --> 14:08.347 he said, the unfinished business of black equality as 14:08.352 --> 14:12.422 its deepest legacy, and that, quote, 14:12.420 --> 14:17.260 "the Negro was what the war was about, somehow." 14:17.260 --> 14:20.970 14:20.970 --> 14:25.700 Now that was probably--given how closely Catton knew Lincoln, 14:25.704 --> 14:30.044 loved Lincoln--that was probably a riff on Lincoln's use 14:30.044 --> 14:33.994 of the word 'somehow' in the Second Inaugural, 14:33.990 --> 14:37.730 where Lincoln says, "somehow, all knew the war was 14:37.731 --> 14:40.961 about slavery." And we've been trying to 14:40.963 --> 14:45.153 explain that somehow in our 65 to 70,000 books on the 14:45.153 --> 14:48.783 Civil--well some of them have--ever since. 14:48.779 --> 14:53.749 Now, I remember rising up from that thinking well I just lost 14:53.748 --> 14:56.368 another hero. How could Bruce Catton have 14:56.372 --> 14:58.912 said all this? Well for one thing he never did 14:58.906 --> 15:00.726 any research on the Lost Cause. 15:00.730 --> 15:01.880 He didn't know the Lost Cause. 15:01.879 --> 15:05.659 He didn't know that the Lost Cause became essentially a 15:05.659 --> 15:08.669 racial ideology, that it became a cluster of 15:08.669 --> 15:10.489 legends, as he put it, 15:10.494 --> 15:14.894 but a cluster of legends in the service of white supremacy, 15:14.887 --> 15:18.217 a few assumptions in search of a history, 15:18.220 --> 15:23.640 and an ideology that came to be the buttressing, 15:23.643 --> 15:27.223 the base of Jim Crow America. 15:27.220 --> 15:30.970 But then I started thinking more and more, 15:30.969 --> 15:36.089 and I began to realize, don't be emotional about this, 15:36.090 --> 15:40.670 Bruce Catton was actually in 1965 capturing, 15:40.670 --> 15:45.360 absolutely capturing, the mainstream American 15:45.357 --> 15:51.427 conception of the Lost Cause and of Civil War memory. 15:51.429 --> 15:56.939 That the South's heroism, that the Confederacy's effort 15:56.937 --> 16:01.527 to stake all on the line for its independence, 16:01.528 --> 16:05.398 that the glorious figure of a Robert E. 16:05.403 --> 16:09.793 Lee, the steadfastness of a Jefferson Davis, 16:09.789 --> 16:14.379 had indeed become national phenomena. 16:14.379 --> 16:20.389 Catton was just summing up the mainstream of American thought 16:23.777 --> 16:26.967 that you've heard, perhaps before many times, 16:26.972 --> 16:30.532 that the South lost the war but won the peace, 16:30.529 --> 16:34.349 or the South lost the war but won the debate over the memory, 16:34.351 --> 16:37.091 was basically what Catton was summing up. 16:37.090 --> 16:40.590 I think Catton believed this too. 16:40.590 --> 16:41.550 But I let him off the hook. 16:41.550 --> 16:45.380 16:45.379 --> 16:48.929 Because by circa 1965 the understanding of the American 16:48.927 --> 16:52.277 Civil War in the broad mainstream culture--not among 16:52.278 --> 16:55.958 most African-Americans--and now a new young generation of 16:55.957 --> 16:59.767 historians who came of age in the wake of World War Two and 16:59.767 --> 17:03.447 were deeply interested in the problem of race in American 17:03.446 --> 17:07.666 history as never before, and deeply inspired by an 17:07.665 --> 17:09.965 anthropological, sociological, 17:09.968 --> 17:13.858 psychological revolution in the study of race, 17:13.859 --> 17:15.549 were beginning to write about it differently. 17:15.550 --> 17:19.240 17:19.240 --> 17:21.800 The great Southern poet, who lived much of his life, 17:21.801 --> 17:23.711 much of the second half of his life, 17:23.710 --> 17:28.470 right here, and whose papers are right there, 17:28.465 --> 17:32.135 at Beinecke, Robert Penn Warren, 17:32.140 --> 17:35.220 wrote brilliantly about this in a little book, 17:35.224 --> 17:39.414 a little essay--actually a big essay in a little book--that he 17:39.406 --> 17:43.516 wrote in 1961 called The Legacy of the Civil War. 17:43.519 --> 17:44.989 He wrote it for Life magazine. 17:44.990 --> 17:47.420 It was later published as a book. 17:47.420 --> 17:49.760 In that book, trying to capture what the 17:49.763 --> 17:53.193 meaning of the Civil War was in American culture 100 years 17:53.189 --> 17:55.609 after, Penn Warren said that 17:55.609 --> 18:00.719 "somewhere in their bones"--and I quote him--"most Americans 18:00.723 --> 18:05.753 have a storehouse of lessons drawn from the Civil War." 18:05.750 --> 18:09.450 Now exactly what those lessons should be has been, 18:09.451 --> 18:13.911 I think, the most contested question in America's historical 18:13.908 --> 18:17.008 memory, over and over again, 18:17.007 --> 18:22.447 at least since 1865 and probably even since 1863, 18:22.448 --> 18:26.868 when the war underwent a revolution. 18:26.869 --> 18:30.259 "Among all the possible lessons of our Civil War," wrote Robert 18:30.255 --> 18:33.075 Penn Warren, "is the realization"--his 18:33.079 --> 18:37.939 words--"that slavery looms up mountainously in the story and 18:37.938 --> 18:40.078 cannot be talked away." 18:40.079 --> 18:44.039 Our culture has spent nearly now a century and a half, 18:44.044 --> 18:48.524 and it is still at it, of talking away the place of 18:48.523 --> 18:53.703 slavery in this event and its place in the aftermath. 18:53.700 --> 18:57.520 "When one is happy in forgetfulness," said Penn 18:57.515 --> 19:00.165 Warren, "facts get forgotten." 19:00.170 --> 19:03.900 Or as William Dean Howells put in 1900--and I think I quote 19:03.896 --> 19:07.366 this in the essay you've read--what the American people 19:07.366 --> 19:10.086 always like is a tragedy, as long as they can give it a 19:10.093 --> 19:10.513 happy ending. 19:10.510 --> 19:16.050 19:16.049 --> 19:20.859 We have a tragic sensibility as a culture, as long as we can see 19:20.864 --> 19:24.164 an exit from it. All right, let me just give you 19:24.157 --> 19:27.987 three hooks to hang your hat on, in terms of how Americans have 19:27.993 --> 19:29.543 processed this memory. 19:29.539 --> 19:32.439 I've labeled them reconciliationist, 19:32.436 --> 19:35.496 white supremacist and emancipationist, 19:35.497 --> 19:37.977 and they simply mean this. 19:37.980 --> 19:41.740 There are some other ways of thinking about how Civil War 19:41.735 --> 19:45.215 memory was processed, but most of them can come under 19:45.221 --> 19:46.631 these categories. 19:46.630 --> 19:50.350 A reconciliationist vision of this war took root in the midst 19:50.353 --> 19:55.263 of the war. It took root especially in 19:55.256 --> 19:59.506 dealing with all the dead. 19:59.509 --> 20:02.929 And Drew Faust's new book on this, called Republic of 20:02.931 --> 20:04.741 Suffering, is a must-read, 20:04.735 --> 20:07.405 if you stay interested in this subject. 20:07.410 --> 20:10.730 I'm conducting an interview with her tomorrow night in New 20:10.730 --> 20:12.070 York about that book. 20:12.069 --> 20:16.379 I've talked to so many people who keep telling me they can't 20:16.378 --> 20:20.028 read past page fifty because it's so depressing. 20:20.029 --> 20:23.909 And I usually say something stupid like, "It's good for you. 20:23.910 --> 20:24.600 Take your pill." 20:24.600 --> 20:28.950 20:28.950 --> 20:32.230 The reconciliationist vision of this war, somehow putting 20:32.234 --> 20:35.484 ourselves back together, is rooted right there in 20:35.475 --> 20:40.045 putting bodies back together and in putting hundreds of thousands 20:40.050 --> 20:41.980 of bodies in the ground. 20:41.980 --> 20:44.220 In Faust's book, as never before, 20:44.220 --> 20:47.230 we are taken literally into those graves. 20:47.230 --> 20:50.970 She has found tremendous evidence of what soldiers 20:50.968 --> 20:55.238 themselves did on battlefields to bury their own dead, 20:55.240 --> 20:59.800 and sometimes even bury the enemy, to give people decent, 20:59.797 --> 21:04.107 human burials after they'd been half eaten by dogs. 21:04.109 --> 21:08.579 Nothing like burying a dead man without a coffin, 21:08.578 --> 21:13.888 on a battlefield that you've known, will make you pray and 21:13.885 --> 21:17.605 beg to be reconciled with something. 21:17.609 --> 21:22.789 But a second kind of Civil War memory, if we can call it that, 21:22.788 --> 21:25.758 was the white supremacist memory, 21:25.759 --> 21:29.279 which took many forms early, including, of course, 21:29.283 --> 21:33.673 the terror and violence of the Klan and its many imitators, 21:33.670 --> 21:35.680 in Reconstruction, and then locked arms 21:35.679 --> 21:38.589 eventually, in the later nineteenth century and into the 21:38.586 --> 21:42.386 twentieth century, with reconciliationists of all 21:42.386 --> 21:46.596 kinds in our culture, and delivered the country a 21:46.603 --> 21:52.833 racially segregated memory, a racially segregated story of 21:52.826 --> 21:56.766 this experience, at least by 1900, 21:56.771 --> 21:59.881 and really even before. 21:59.880 --> 22:03.920 A third kind of memory, always competing with these, 22:03.921 --> 22:07.251 we might call an emancipationist memory, 22:07.250 --> 22:11.960 embodied in African-Americans, complex--and they had no single 22:11.956 --> 22:15.766 memory of slavery, the war, emancipation and 22:15.767 --> 22:20.757 Reconstruction--in their own complex remembrance of what 22:20.756 --> 22:25.016 slavery and their freedom had meant to them. 22:25.019 --> 22:28.489 But an emancipationist vision of the Civil War was also rooted 22:28.494 --> 22:31.004 in the politics of Radical Reconstruction, 22:31.000 --> 22:33.750 also rooted in the three Constitutional amendments, 22:33.752 --> 22:37.222 and conceptions of the war as a re-invention of the Republic, 22:37.220 --> 22:42.280 and the liberation of blacks to citizenship--blacks and 22:42.275 --> 22:46.765 eventually others--to Constitutional equality. 22:46.769 --> 22:52.329 In the end what you have here is the story eventually of how 22:52.332 --> 22:57.992 the forces of reconciliation overwhelmed that emancipationist 22:57.990 --> 23:04.680 vision in the national culture, and how an inexorable drive for 23:04.677 --> 23:11.007 reunion of North and South, both used race and then trumped 23:11.014 --> 23:14.714 it. But the story doesn't just 23:14.714 --> 23:21.274 dead-end in this white supremacy victory, this Lost Cause 23:21.271 --> 23:24.441 victory, because eventually the Lost 23:24.437 --> 23:27.147 Cause wasn't about causes lost at all. 23:27.150 --> 23:31.260 The Lost Cause ideology of the South became a victory 23:31.257 --> 23:34.337 narrative, and the victory, they argued, 23:34.337 --> 23:38.047 was a national victory over Reconstruction. 23:38.049 --> 23:42.349 If you want to ask what was the biggest success in the long 23:42.345 --> 23:47.225 struggle over Civil War memory, it was the success of the Lost 23:47.232 --> 23:51.632 Cause ideology in selling themselves to northerners who 23:51.628 --> 23:54.878 bought in and said, "yes, the nation has finally 23:54.879 --> 23:57.329 triumphed over the mistake of Reconstruction." 23:57.330 --> 24:00.790 24:00.789 --> 24:03.619 But there was a fledgling neo-abolitionist tradition, 24:03.618 --> 24:06.658 that emancipationist vision of the Civil War never died a 24:06.664 --> 24:08.844 permanent death in American culture, 24:08.839 --> 24:12.449 by any means, kept alive by blacks, 24:12.445 --> 24:16.365 black leadership, and white allies. 24:16.369 --> 24:20.329 There is a persistence of that memory that, frankly folks, 24:20.327 --> 24:24.837 made possible the Civil Rights Revolution of the '50s and '60s, 24:24.839 --> 24:26.129 and it was happening even before the '50s. 24:26.130 --> 24:32.990 24:32.990 --> 24:37.870 But if one thing in particular happened to the memory of the 24:37.873 --> 24:42.263 Civil War, it found it its way eventually into a broad 24:42.261 --> 24:45.211 consensus, in the broader national 24:45.207 --> 24:49.397 culture--this was never unanimous of course--but in the 24:49.403 --> 24:52.593 broader national culture that somehow, 24:52.589 --> 24:55.459 in this war, in this Armageddon, 24:55.455 --> 25:00.075 in this blood-letting, everybody had been right and 25:00.076 --> 25:02.476 nobody had been wrong. 25:02.480 --> 25:05.160 You want to reconcile a country that's had a horrifying civil 25:05.158 --> 25:06.228 war, how do you do it? 25:06.230 --> 25:09.650 25:09.650 --> 25:13.470 Well, you start building thousands upon thousands of 25:13.470 --> 25:15.940 monuments. You start having soldier 25:15.944 --> 25:17.474 reunions. You've read about the 25:17.466 --> 25:19.196 Gettysburg Reunion in this essay of mine; 25:19.200 --> 25:21.830 I won't even go into that, the biggest of all the 25:21.831 --> 25:24.241 Blue-Grey Reunions, which became the Jim Crow 25:24.243 --> 25:27.373 Reunion by 1913. And Ken Burns did not tell you 25:27.369 --> 25:30.479 that in his film, and played a very interesting 25:30.480 --> 25:34.610 trick on you with that editing button by showing you black and 25:34.607 --> 25:38.057 white veterans at the 1913 Reunion shaking hands--an 25:38.057 --> 25:41.807 irresistible, beautiful, emotional moment. 25:41.809 --> 25:46.289 The trouble is those veterans were shaking hands 25 years 25:46.289 --> 25:49.569 later, in 1938, at the New Deal Reunion at 25:49.569 --> 25:53.049 Gettysburg. They weren't there in 1913, 25:53.048 --> 25:57.518 but in the film that's certainly what it looks like. 25:57.520 --> 26:01.420 The power of filmmaking. 26:01.420 --> 26:05.380 There was a popular novel published in 1912--there were a 26:05.380 --> 26:09.270 zillion popular novels published about the Civil War. 26:09.269 --> 26:11.869 But this one was by a Southern woman writer, 26:11.872 --> 26:15.082 a very interesting writer we don't read much today, 26:15.079 --> 26:17.739 if anybody reads her, although she was important in 26:17.735 --> 26:22.085 her time. Her name was Mary Johnston. 26:22.089 --> 26:26.509 She was a Virginian, born to the upper crust of 26:26.510 --> 26:31.220 Virginia planter life, born just after the war. 26:31.220 --> 26:34.110 She was imbued with the Lost Cause tradition, 26:34.114 --> 26:37.604 but grew up wanting to interrogate it a little bit. 26:37.599 --> 26:41.609 She was a Lost Causer but she asked questions about it. 26:41.610 --> 26:43.600 She became a suffragist. 26:43.599 --> 26:46.459 A progressive woman in so many ways. 26:46.460 --> 26:49.600 She wrote a trilogy of Civil War books. 26:49.599 --> 26:52.339 Her most famous book, and it was a huge bestseller, 26:52.344 --> 26:54.544 was called To Have and to Hold. 26:54.539 --> 26:58.129 But one of her trilogy is a novel called Cease 26:58.127 --> 27:01.637 Firing, which also was a near bestseller. 27:01.640 --> 27:05.630 And in Cease Firing, on the last page of the book, 27:05.633 --> 27:08.703 she has Lee's Army retreating from Richmond, 27:08.700 --> 27:11.910 out toward their surrender at Appomattox. 27:11.910 --> 27:15.250 And she's a good writer. 27:15.250 --> 27:17.520 And literally, on the last two pages, 27:17.516 --> 27:20.476 she has two Confederate soldiers, in their rags, 27:20.476 --> 27:22.676 half- starved, in conversation. 27:22.680 --> 27:26.080 27:26.079 --> 27:31.029 And one of these old veterans asks the other what he thinks it 27:31.030 --> 27:34.520 all means--"what's it all about brother?" 27:34.519 --> 27:38.849 And the other answers and says, "I think that we were both 27:38.854 --> 27:42.654 right, and both wrong, and that in the beginning each 27:42.653 --> 27:45.813 side might've been more patient and much wiser. 27:45.809 --> 27:48.239 Life and history, and right and wrong, 27:48.240 --> 27:51.460 in the minds of men, look out of more windows than 27:51.460 --> 27:52.840 we used to think. 27:52.839 --> 27:55.849 Did you never hear of the shield that had two sides and 27:55.846 --> 27:57.846 both were made of precious metal?" 27:57.850 --> 28:01.640 28:01.640 --> 28:04.870 Why didn't we just get along? 28:04.870 --> 28:07.250 We were both right. 28:07.250 --> 28:11.340 Now, that's an honest sentiment she puts in the mouths of a 28:11.341 --> 28:15.721 half-starved Confederate veteran who's lucky to be alive and is 28:15.715 --> 28:20.085 now either about to desert or surrender to the Union Army, 28:20.089 --> 28:24.769 neither option of which he ever hoped to live to have to face. 28:24.769 --> 28:28.629 And she also captures in that moment a very honest sentiment 28:28.630 --> 28:31.510 that had set in all over American culture, 28:31.509 --> 28:34.199 especially in veterans' culture, at all those Blue-Grey 28:34.196 --> 28:37.076 Reunions--and the Gettysburg Blue-Grey Reunion was about to 28:37.082 --> 28:39.972 occur the following year after this book was published--and 28:39.967 --> 28:42.597 that is this sense of the mutuality of sacrifice among 28:42.604 --> 28:43.454 soldiers. 28:43.450 --> 28:47.360 28:47.359 --> 28:56.329 Cure the hatreds of war by bringing the warriors together, 28:56.325 --> 29:03.555 because they have a mutuality of experience. 29:03.559 --> 29:08.739 And there was, of course, no lack of honor at 29:08.743 --> 29:12.163 Appomattox, on either side. 29:12.160 --> 29:16.150 But outside of all that pathos, that understanding, 29:16.146 --> 29:21.246 that sentiment that Americans had bought into by the millions, 29:21.250 --> 29:25.480 there was, of course, another whole story going on, 29:25.477 --> 29:29.617 out in American culture and in national memory. 29:29.619 --> 29:34.229 In 1912, the NAACP counted seventy-two lynchings, 29:34.231 --> 29:36.921 in America; about ninety percent of whom 29:36.917 --> 29:38.147 were African-Americans. 29:38.150 --> 29:41.910 By 1912, when that book was published, the entire Jim Crow 29:41.912 --> 29:45.942 legal system and all of its absurdities was fully in place, 29:45.940 --> 29:49.020 roughly by about 1910, across the South and in some of 29:49.024 --> 29:51.824 the border states, and to some extent even in the 29:51.818 --> 29:52.398 North. 29:52.400 --> 29:58.060 29:58.059 --> 30:05.619 An erasure of cultural, historical, mnemonic erasure, 30:05.619 --> 30:12.399 had been going on for three, four and five decades, 30:12.395 --> 30:17.445 of emancipation, from the national narrative of 30:17.447 --> 30:22.057 what this war had even ever been about. 30:22.059 --> 30:25.269 That process led the great black scholar, 30:25.266 --> 30:27.266 W.E.B. Du Bois--same year, 30:27.270 --> 30:32.240 1912--in the Crisis magazine, the journal of NAACP, 30:32.240 --> 30:35.360 to conclude, as he put it, 30:35.363 --> 30:42.363 "This country has had its appetite for facts on the Civil 30:42.358 --> 30:48.478 War and the Negro problem spoiled by sweets." 30:48.480 --> 30:51.430 They'd eaten too much candy. 30:51.430 --> 30:54.860 Let me give you one other example, from one of these other 30:54.857 --> 30:56.117 Blue-Grey Reunions. 30:56.119 --> 30:59.509 By the 1890s--these weren't easy to do, these Blue-Grey 30:59.508 --> 31:02.828 Reunions, bringing back Confederate and Union veterans 31:02.833 --> 31:06.413 to old battlefields or sites and cities and so forth, 31:06.410 --> 31:07.880 these weren't easy to do. 31:07.880 --> 31:10.720 They first attempted doing it in the 1870s. 31:10.720 --> 31:12.760 Confederates didn't want to come to these things. 31:12.760 --> 31:16.130 1880s even it wasn't easy to do. 31:16.130 --> 31:18.620 They had one at Gettysburg on the twentieth anniversary and on 31:18.623 --> 31:21.983 the twenty-fifth anniversary, but it was hard especially to 31:21.983 --> 31:25.953 get Confederates to go to Gettysburg, the scene of their 31:25.954 --> 31:28.964 worst defeat. But by the 1890s, 31:28.962 --> 31:34.092 twenty-five years out now, and thirty years out, 31:34.086 --> 31:37.586 from the war, with the transmission--and we 31:37.589 --> 31:41.289 know this about so many events and the way generations learned 31:41.289 --> 31:44.809 from one another and the way memory gets passed on--as soon 31:44.807 --> 31:47.777 as there is truly a generational transition, 31:47.779 --> 31:51.719 the old veterans, as they get older, 31:51.722 --> 31:54.202 are willing to come. 31:54.200 --> 31:57.880 The 1900 Blue-Grey Reunion was held in Atlanta. 31:57.880 --> 31:59.600 And by the way, Southern cities started to 31:59.596 --> 32:01.646 compete for these things just like Northern cites, 32:01.647 --> 32:03.277 because they were huge moneymakers. 32:03.279 --> 32:05.319 Thousands and thousands of veterans would come with their 32:05.319 --> 32:07.359 families and spend thousands and thousands of dollars. 32:07.359 --> 32:11.389 Anyway, in 1900 the Blue-Grey was in Atlanta, 32:11.391 --> 32:16.981 and during the major speeches at that reunion the Commander of 32:16.980 --> 32:19.830 the GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic, 32:19.833 --> 32:22.043 the big Northern veterans' organization, 32:22.038 --> 32:24.468 was a guy named Shaw from Massachusetts; 32:24.470 --> 32:29.440 no relation to Robert Gould Shaw of the famous 54^(th) Mass. 32:29.440 --> 32:33.840 And in his speech he lectured the Confederate veterans--this 32:33.838 --> 32:38.308 guy had a lot of New England chutzpah--he lectured them about 32:38.310 --> 32:41.740 their efforts to control school textbooks; 32:41.740 --> 32:44.390 which by the way all veterans' organizations were absolutely 32:44.390 --> 32:46.610 doing. Every Confederate veterans' 32:46.608 --> 32:50.328 organization had its textbook committee, and many Union 32:50.326 --> 32:53.836 veterans' posts and organizations had their textbook 32:53.837 --> 32:56.447 committee. They were competing with one 32:56.452 --> 32:59.902 another to control the story in America's textbooks and trying 32:59.901 --> 33:01.881 to lobby and control publishers. 33:01.880 --> 33:04.850 Anyway, Commander Shaw was a little exercised about this, 33:04.854 --> 33:06.664 and he said, among other things, 33:06.660 --> 33:10.470 quote--and you can almost see a sort of schoolmarmish 33:10.465 --> 33:12.875 finger-wagging in what he says. 33:12.880 --> 33:15.960 He said, quote, "Keeping alive sectional 33:15.959 --> 33:20.459 teachings as to the justice and rights of the cause of the 33:20.460 --> 33:23.840 South, in the hearts of your children, 33:23.837 --> 33:25.587 is all out of order. 33:25.590 --> 33:29.480 It is unwise and unjust." 33:29.480 --> 33:33.200 Uh huh. The Commander of the United 33:33.200 --> 33:36.320 Confederate Veterans was none other than John B. 33:36.316 --> 33:37.246 Gordon. John B. 33:37.250 --> 33:38.760 Gordon had been a Confederate General. 33:38.759 --> 33:40.639 John B. Gordon was the Confederate 33:40.637 --> 33:43.597 General in charge of the stacking of the arms and the 33:43.596 --> 33:45.186 surrender at Appomattox. 33:45.190 --> 33:46.890 John B. Gordon then went on to get 33:46.893 --> 33:49.583 elected Governor and then Senator from Georgia during 33:49.578 --> 33:52.188 Reconstruction. He was also one of the founders 33:52.194 --> 33:55.304 of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, although he lied through his 33:55.304 --> 33:57.734 teeth in the KKK Hearings of 1871 about it. 33:57.730 --> 33:59.570 But John B. Gordon, by the 1890s, 33:59.574 --> 34:02.114 became one of the most ubiquitous and popular 34:02.109 --> 34:04.299 Confederate Memorial Day speakers. 34:04.300 --> 34:05.840 And he was good at it. 34:05.839 --> 34:11.189 He got up to respond to Commander Shaw--and this is a 34:11.188 --> 34:14.478 final passage in what he said. 34:14.480 --> 34:16.100 John B. Gordon, 1900, 34:16.103 --> 34:19.923 head of the UCV, United Confederate Veterans. 34:19.920 --> 34:23.260 "When he tells me and my Southern comrades that teaching 34:23.255 --> 34:27.075 our children that the cause for which we fought and our comrades 34:27.075 --> 34:30.885 died is all wrong, I must earnestly protest. 34:30.889 --> 34:34.059 In the name of the future manhood of the South I protest. 34:34.060 --> 34:35.740 What are we to teach them? 34:35.739 --> 34:38.399 If we cannot teach them that their fathers were right, 34:38.398 --> 34:41.308 it follows that these Southern children must be taught that 34:41.306 --> 34:44.436 they were wrong. I never will be ready to have 34:44.439 --> 34:48.919 my children taught that I was ever wrong, or that the cause of 34:48.919 --> 34:51.489 my people was unjust and unholy. 34:51.489 --> 34:53.369 Oh my friends, you were right, 34:53.369 --> 34:54.989 but we were right too." 34:54.990 --> 34:58.290 34:58.289 --> 35:01.589 Everybody was right, nobody was wrong, 35:01.594 --> 35:06.514 in a war that killed 620,000 people and maimed about 1.2 35:06.507 --> 35:10.167 million, and transformed the society. 35:10.170 --> 35:10.810 But no one was wrong. 35:10.810 --> 35:19.970 35:19.969 --> 35:23.839 In fact, by the 1890s, as it is still today, 35:23.835 --> 35:28.595 it became very popular to be a Confederate veteran. 35:28.599 --> 35:31.129 If you've read Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the 35:31.131 --> 35:33.961 Attic, he showed how so many Civil War re-enactors, 35:33.960 --> 35:38.190 it appears still today, prefer to re-enact Confederates 35:38.194 --> 35:41.764 than to re-enact Unionist, although there are lots of 35:41.759 --> 35:44.159 Union re-enactors; and there are now lots of black 35:44.155 --> 35:46.675 re-enactors. Which raises a fascinating 35:46.683 --> 35:50.653 intellectual question, which we don't have to dwell on 35:50.646 --> 35:52.726 now, and that is why is defeat 35:52.730 --> 35:55.290 sometimes more interesting than victory? 35:55.290 --> 35:58.710 Ask yourselves that. 35:58.710 --> 36:02.650 Why do those Nazis never disappear from the bookstore 36:02.653 --> 36:05.083 shelves, often right up front? 36:05.079 --> 36:06.809 Nazis, dogs, and the Civil War, 36:06.809 --> 36:09.979 as the publishers sometimes tell you, if you write about 36:09.979 --> 36:12.169 those we'll buy it, we'll sell it. 36:12.170 --> 36:13.340 Hate being in that category. 36:13.340 --> 36:17.680 36:17.679 --> 36:21.519 And then there are those who will say things like Nazis' 36:21.521 --> 36:24.941 Holocaust memoirs, dogs, and the Civil War--horses 36:24.944 --> 36:27.044 too, big deal, the horses. 36:27.039 --> 36:29.409 Anyway, the Confederate Veteran magazine, 36:29.407 --> 36:32.377 which became a very popular magazine in the 1890s and lasted 36:32.379 --> 36:35.099 like thirty-five years into the twentieth century, 36:35.100 --> 36:40.640 ran this little story in 1894. 36:40.639 --> 36:42.519 It reported a story of a Southern woman, 36:42.517 --> 36:43.767 a white woman, and her son, 36:43.769 --> 36:46.499 attending a production, a theater production in 36:46.504 --> 36:49.504 Brooklyn, New York, of the play called Held by 36:49.499 --> 36:50.559 the Enemy. 36:50.559 --> 36:54.699 And theater productions, plays, about the Civil War, 36:54.701 --> 36:58.921 especially with some kind of reconciliationist theme, 36:58.923 --> 37:02.093 became wildly popular by the 1890s. 37:02.090 --> 37:06.740 The boy, sitting there with his mother, according to the 37:06.736 --> 37:09.606 anonymous author, asked his mother, 37:09.608 --> 37:13.408 "What did the Yankees fight for, Mother?" 37:13.409 --> 37:19.469 And as the orchestra strikes up "Marching Through Georgia," the 37:19.472 --> 37:22.312 woman answers, "For the Union, 37:22.308 --> 37:24.928 darling." Painful memories, 37:24.929 --> 37:29.539 we're told, bring sadness to the mother's face as she hears 37:29.535 --> 37:31.675 the Yankee victory song. 37:31.679 --> 37:37.119 And then earnestly the boy asks, "What did the Confederates 37:37.120 --> 37:39.090 fight for, Mother?" 37:39.090 --> 37:43.020 And before the mother can answer, the music changes to 37:43.021 --> 37:46.361 "Home Sweet Home," which fills the theater, 37:46.360 --> 37:51.340 says the author, with its depth of untold melody 37:51.342 --> 37:55.082 and pathos. The mother whispers her answer 37:55.077 --> 37:58.097 to her son. "Do you hear what they are 37:58.099 --> 38:00.729 playing? That is what Confederates 38:00.733 --> 38:02.343 fought for darling." 38:02.340 --> 38:07.050 And the boy counters, "Did they fight for their 38:07.048 --> 38:09.498 homes?" And with the parent's 38:09.501 --> 38:13.951 assurance, the boy bursts into tears, and with what the author 38:13.950 --> 38:18.700 calls "the intuition of right," he hugs his mother and 38:18.698 --> 38:23.748 announces, "Oh Mother, I will be a Confederate." 38:23.750 --> 38:28.210 38:28.210 --> 38:33.600 They just fought for their homes, that's all you needed to 38:33.598 --> 38:36.468 know. Now it may be all a mother 38:36.472 --> 38:39.452 would want her little boy to know. 38:39.449 --> 38:43.989 But all over American culture there were millions who didn't 38:43.992 --> 38:46.382 really want to know any more. 38:46.380 --> 38:51.090 38:51.090 --> 38:56.080 Everybody was right, nobody was wrong. 38:56.079 --> 38:59.249 There are a hundred ways to plant this story, 38:59.245 --> 39:02.405 or examples through which to tell this story, 39:02.411 --> 39:06.441 and I don't want to take really any more time on it. 39:06.440 --> 39:09.450 You can read a book called Race and Reunion, 39:09.453 --> 39:11.023 if it ever so moves you. 39:11.020 --> 39:14.750 I want to get to our review; yes I am getting to our review. 39:14.750 --> 39:18.270 But I do want to leave you with this thought; 39:18.270 --> 39:26.030 two images, if I can; three images actually. 39:26.030 --> 39:30.770 39:30.770 --> 39:34.610 Or two metaphors; one I guess isn't quite a 39:34.605 --> 39:37.265 metaphor. In the second chapter of Du 39:37.270 --> 39:39.650 Bois' The Souls of Black Folk--okay, 39:39.652 --> 39:42.722 I'm going to test you, how many of you have read 39:42.723 --> 39:44.843 The Souls of Black Folk? 39:44.840 --> 39:47.600 Oh, we got work to do at Yale. 39:47.599 --> 39:49.739 No one should have a degree from Yale without reading The 39:49.744 --> 39:50.694 Souls of Black Folk. 39:50.690 --> 39:51.520 No one should have U.S. 39:51.518 --> 39:53.678 citizenship without reading The Souls of Black Folk. 39:53.679 --> 39:58.059 But since I don't rule the world, who cares? 39:58.059 --> 40:01.889 Chapter 2 of Du Bois' masterpiece is an essay he 40:01.886 --> 40:04.406 called "The Dawn of Freedom." 40:04.409 --> 40:07.479 It starts out ostensibly as an essay on, kind of a little 40:07.483 --> 40:10.343 history of The Freedmen's Bureau and a little take on 40:10.337 --> 40:12.997 Reconstruction, but he turns it into much, more. 40:13.000 --> 40:16.770 He turns it into a meditation--not unlike Penn 40:16.774 --> 40:21.554 Warren will do in 1961--but a mediation on the meaning and 40:21.554 --> 40:23.974 memory of slavery, the Civil War and 40:23.971 --> 40:24.511 Reconstruction. 40:24.510 --> 40:28.020 40:28.019 --> 40:31.369 And he goes into a discussion, as only Du Bois could, 40:31.367 --> 40:35.227 because Du Bois was really a poet-historian or a historian as 40:35.230 --> 40:38.460 poet. He begins to discuss how bleak 40:38.457 --> 40:42.337 life actually is on the ground, in the South, 40:42.341 --> 40:46.051 not just for the freedmen as sharecroppers, 40:46.048 --> 40:50.718 but for whites as well; that poverty is a black and 40:50.718 --> 40:52.508 white thing, he says. 40:52.510 --> 40:55.740 He's got another chapter to come in the book called "The 40:55.736 --> 40:59.136 Black Belt," where he shows that, that poverty is something 40:59.139 --> 41:01.309 Southerners share, if they would. 41:01.310 --> 41:04.510 41:04.510 --> 41:08.790 And then he stops and he says, in effect, see this picture 41:08.793 --> 41:12.103 with me through what he calls two figures. 41:12.100 --> 41:16.130 41:16.130 --> 41:20.400 He says they're two figures, in his view, 41:20.396 --> 41:26.686 that typify the post-war era and the power of its legacy. 41:26.690 --> 41:28.380 Here's the passage. 41:28.380 --> 41:32.120 "Two figures," says Du Bois, quote, "the one a grey-haired 41:32.115 --> 41:35.715 gentleman whose fathers had quit themselves like men, 41:35.719 --> 41:39.299 whose sons lay in nameless graves, who bowed to the evil of 41:39.302 --> 41:43.072 slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill to all; 41:43.070 --> 41:47.190 who stood at last, in the evening of life, 41:47.190 --> 41:51.210 a ruined form, with hate in his eyes." 41:51.210 --> 41:56.810 Your first figure is an old white man, probably a former 41:56.809 --> 42:00.169 planter, who's lost everything. 42:00.170 --> 42:04.790 He's bitter, he's really bitter. 42:04.789 --> 42:09.919 He feels a burden of Southern history. 42:09.920 --> 42:12.970 And then Du Bois says, "And the other, 42:12.967 --> 42:16.177 a form hovering dark and mother-like, 42:16.179 --> 42:19.469 her awful face black with the mists of centuries, 42:19.474 --> 42:23.254 had aforetime quailed at that white master's command, 42:23.250 --> 42:26.020 had bent in love over the cradles of his sons and 42:26.019 --> 42:29.539 daughters, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife; 42:29.539 --> 42:33.889 and ay too, at his behest, had laid herself low to his 42:33.890 --> 42:37.830 lust and borne a tawny man child to the world, 42:37.829 --> 42:43.209 only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the winds by 42:43.211 --> 42:48.121 midnight marauders riding after 'Damned Niggers.'" 42:48.119 --> 42:53.909 The second image, an old black woman, 42:53.909 --> 42:59.699 former slave, mammy, but also broken, 42:59.698 --> 43:03.898 no future, doesn't even know where that 43:03.898 --> 43:06.958 son might be, and the son is probably dead. 43:06.960 --> 43:09.970 But Du Bois presses the issue. 43:09.969 --> 43:13.499 Du Bois had a genuine sense of tragedy and he didn't care 43:13.498 --> 43:16.458 sometimes whether he gave you a happy ending. 43:16.460 --> 43:17.590 He pressed the issue. 43:17.590 --> 43:20.580 He says then, "These were the saddest 43:20.582 --> 43:24.242 sights"--I'm quoting--"of that woeful day, 43:24.239 --> 43:29.359 and no man clasped the hands of these passing figures of the 43:29.358 --> 43:33.878 present-past"--legacy, where past and present meet. 43:33.880 --> 43:37.640 "No man clasped the hands of these passing figures of the 43:37.642 --> 43:41.552 present-past; but hating they went to their 43:41.550 --> 43:47.650 long home, and hating their children's children live today." 43:47.650 --> 43:51.720 Now, unmistakably, Du Bois is using that language 43:51.724 --> 43:56.084 of clasping hands for a purpose, because it's by far the most 43:56.082 --> 43:58.872 ubiquitous image used in all the Blue-Grey Reunions, 43:58.870 --> 44:01.940 by the '90s. He first wrote this essay in 44:01.938 --> 44:05.088 1897 and revised the Souls of Black Folk in 1903. 44:05.090 --> 44:09.910 But the most ubiquitous image in all the Blue-Grey reunions 44:09.911 --> 44:14.321 was--in fact the slogan was--clasping hands across the 44:14.316 --> 44:17.336 bloody chasm. And the shaking of hands, 44:17.336 --> 44:20.546 of the Blue and the Grey, the old Confederate vets, 44:20.549 --> 44:23.569 the old Union vets, was always the photo op; 44:23.570 --> 44:26.310 and it's all over the ending of Burns' film. 44:26.310 --> 44:28.790 And how can you resist it? 44:28.789 --> 44:31.959 In some ways, what can be more beautiful than 44:31.961 --> 44:34.481 old, old men, chests full of medals, 44:34.484 --> 44:38.744 shaking hands across the walls they tried to kill each other 44:38.737 --> 44:41.357 over? There's something human about 44:41.357 --> 44:43.497 that, that we can't quite resist. 44:43.500 --> 44:44.830 But Du Bois says, you know what? 44:44.829 --> 44:47.019 There are two other kinds of veterans of the Civil War, 44:47.019 --> 44:48.599 and no one's ever clasped their hand. 44:48.600 --> 44:57.800 44:57.800 --> 45:02.330 And now I will just ask you to think--I'm not doing this for 45:02.332 --> 45:07.252 any political partisan reason--I don't know if you've read it but 45:07.248 --> 45:11.088 at the very end of Barack Obama's race speech. 45:11.090 --> 45:14.710 I'm talking about Obama now as a historian, not as a candidate. 45:14.710 --> 45:19.430 He's got enough problems with... 45:19.426 --> 45:25.356 [Laughter] Reverend Wright right now. 45:25.360 --> 45:28.040 But this is Obama the writer. 45:28.039 --> 45:32.189 And I don't know if he read Chapter 2 of Souls before 45:32.191 --> 45:35.851 he wrote that speech, in Philadelphia a month ago; 45:35.849 --> 45:37.799 it doesn't really matter if he did. 45:37.800 --> 45:40.020 And I don't remember, if you read to the end of it, 45:40.023 --> 45:41.893 if you've read it, or if you heard it--I've 45:41.890 --> 45:43.980 actually never heard it, I've only read it. 45:43.980 --> 45:48.040 But the way he ends that speech is the way a lot of politicians 45:48.039 --> 45:50.069 get up on the stump and talk. 45:50.070 --> 45:52.060 And at first you're ready to dismiss it, it's another one of 45:52.064 --> 45:54.114 those stories of "well, you know, I met somebody on the 45:54.110 --> 45:55.930 campaign trail and here's what she said to me, 45:55.929 --> 45:57.469 and she had this terrible story to tell; 45:57.469 --> 46:00.489 let me tell you her terrible story." 46:00.489 --> 46:04.629 And you start tuning out like "oh God, here comes another 46:04.631 --> 46:08.251 story of Old Aunt Something-or-other on welfare or 46:08.254 --> 46:11.364 whatever." But no, it's the story of a 46:11.363 --> 46:15.743 young twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia, 46:15.739 --> 46:20.269 who is his campaign manager in Florence, South Carolina. 46:20.269 --> 46:23.339 And he remembered the story of when he, during the South 46:23.337 --> 46:25.617 Carolina primary, he was doing an event in 46:25.624 --> 46:27.154 Florence, South Carolina, 46:27.147 --> 46:29.907 and he meets Ashley and Ashley tells him her story. 46:29.909 --> 46:34.259 And that story is, in brief, that she grew up with 46:34.264 --> 46:38.354 a single mother, poor, a poor white girl in the 46:38.351 --> 46:40.891 South. At age about ten her mother got 46:40.889 --> 46:42.059 cancer, lost her job. 46:42.059 --> 46:45.459 The family went bankrupt, etcetera, etcetera. 46:45.460 --> 46:48.550 In order to help out her mother--she told the story of 46:48.552 --> 46:52.112 eating nothing but mustard and relish sandwiches for a year or 46:52.112 --> 46:55.552 a year and half. Apparently her mother survived 46:55.550 --> 46:59.410 but they never really--survived with a bankruptcy. 46:59.409 --> 47:03.889 But somehow as she got older she got interested in politics. 47:03.889 --> 47:06.869 Now that's a white, lower working-class, 47:06.870 --> 47:11.300 poor, southern girl who had every right to be in that group 47:11.304 --> 47:15.874 Obama had described earlier, who are the whites in America 47:15.874 --> 47:20.494 with a lot of resentment of all the racial changes in America. 47:20.489 --> 47:22.189 Instead she becomes his campaign manager, 47:22.194 --> 47:24.584 and she put together this whole gathering in Florence, 47:24.579 --> 47:26.529 in some, I don't know, church hall or wherever they 47:26.533 --> 47:28.853 were meeting; mostly black folk. 47:28.849 --> 47:32.649 And then Obama describes how everybody in the room had to go 47:32.651 --> 47:36.391 around and say why they were there, or what issue they were 47:36.388 --> 47:38.098 there for. And he says, 47:38.095 --> 47:41.915 with quite some directness, that most people did what most 47:41.921 --> 47:44.541 people do, they name a single issue; 47:44.539 --> 47:47.399 it's about them, it's about us, 47:47.397 --> 47:50.797 right? It's not about the common good, 47:50.801 --> 47:52.971 it's about us. I want a better job, 47:52.967 --> 47:54.297 I want healthcare, I want this, 47:54.299 --> 47:55.499 I want that, I want, I want, 47:55.497 --> 47:58.187 I want. Okay, fair enough. 47:58.190 --> 48:01.850 And they finally come around to an old back man who's sitting 48:01.854 --> 48:05.154 there, kind of at the end of the aisle, and he's asked, 48:05.152 --> 48:06.742 "So why are you here?" 48:06.740 --> 48:09.450 Obama doesn't even name him. 48:09.449 --> 48:12.909 He says, "I'm just here because Ashley brought me here. 48:12.909 --> 48:17.129 I'm only here because of Ashley." 48:17.130 --> 48:21.900 Now Obama says--in effect, he develops at the end of the 48:21.903 --> 48:26.073 speech a refrain about not this time, he says; 48:26.070 --> 48:29.280 not this time, we're not going to let race 48:29.284 --> 48:31.014 divide us this time. 48:31.010 --> 48:35.130 Like Du Bois' two figures, hating, till their death; 48:35.130 --> 48:39.850 and hating, their children's children live today. 48:39.850 --> 48:41.480 Well, here are two children. 48:41.480 --> 48:43.470 But note what he's reversed. 48:43.469 --> 48:47.699 We got a young white woman who should've been in the resentful 48:47.695 --> 48:51.575 white working-class, and an old black man who no 48:51.578 --> 48:56.648 doubt grew up in Jim Crow and probably has told story after 48:56.645 --> 49:01.625 story of the denigration or destruction of his dignity for 49:01.625 --> 49:04.765 the first 45 years of his life. 49:04.769 --> 49:05.469 But he's there because of Ashley. 49:05.470 --> 49:13.880 49:13.880 --> 49:15.000 Thank you.