What REALLY caused the American Civil War?

hi everybody how's everybody doing this morning kind of coming in on two wheels but we're all here now so you know we're talking about one of the great classic questions in American history today and one that historians haven't been able to figure out so we should be able to do it I would think that people keep we keep changing our minds about what caused the Civil War and what it meant I've been thinking about this for a long time I have a new book coming out this fall which I try to explain the other big question how in the world did slavery end as a result of this war because it's not obvious deep into the war that it's going to happen and it's not obvious the exact role that slavery played in the coming of the war which is really what we talk about when we're talking about what caused the Civil War what we're really wrestling with is what role did slavery play with all that so those are all different things were going to talk about I know all of you know each other but could you introduce yourselves to me quickly so I have some idea of how to pander exactly would you start Columbia that's okay yeah I'm from East Tennessee one of the other three stars on our flag there where hi okay okay well I'm the son of a fifth grade teacher for 30 years and so I've know what that looks like from the other side we used to joke that mom wanted to cover everything in clear contact paper because once you've made that bulletin board you know you didn't so we used to joke if we said still too long at home we just would be laminated and all that thank you everybody whose actual participant right so let's just say one thing right off the bat having been the son of a fifth grade teacher and the husband of a teacher of young children I don't pretend to know how to do that okay so we're just going to talk among ourselves and you you guys will know how to translate it how in the world you're supposed to talk about something like slavery in a public school with fourth graders is beyond me okay that it's hard enough in high school college so but we can talk about that what you would say and how you would do it I have something I'll show you a little bit later and tell story about my daughter when she was the age of the people you're teaching that lady saw this so I come to you with a real sense of humility and all that you know anybody can talk among adults about all the stuff but translating it for children who they will remember what happened to fourth grade I'm never forgetting the spelling bee I was sent down to represent my class and forgot how to spell imagined and which is actually pretty hard word in the pretty hard for fourth-grade imagine but mrs. MS Hensley wasn't when to please me when I when I came back and had lost and so I'll try to put out try to put that behind me and and move on so so fourth grade you have Sol s for US history then right and what are the SOL s what do they say for this period we'll start with the most concrete kind of information you need we'll work from there what are the Sol Spore this period if I know it's not a trick question I don't know yes two sides and they cover two or three in the battles that's their same why battles of all the things that we talk about so what do you want to care what do you care about you know but right now from the outset you know when you look when the kids leave your class what do you want them to know why is that important that's eloquent makes it hard for somebody else to say something you know thanks a lot doing all that so that's great well and I think that should be our goal throughout you know so I spend a lot of my time out talking with people all around the country about this and and actually beyond and one thing I say is that whoever I'm talking to I'm going to annoy because if I go to the north I tell them to get over themselves about this is some moral crusade but if I'm in the white South I say come on let's look at the record okay and this sort of stuff of just trying to evade the truth that's right in front of us in the record it got to cut it okay and you know talking with African American friends okay this is not straight forward on that front either and in the West I can just alienate everybody so you do what all that but the fact is it's your right that the record is complicated and people keep one to brush by it to get to some truth that underlies it so you'll hear that there's lots of formulas that people have well it was just economics which is like just economics well why would people say it's just economics and like that explanation why people like that exactly right it means that nobody's a fault right and the more specific version of that which is very common it's what what's the more specific version of it was just economic so how was it economics bless your heart I love when people say what I want you to say I appreciate yeah exactly and that's this formula that we set on in the 1920s and I'm sorry to tell you there's no there's nothing to it but people say it all the time and as if okay now that gets it so maybe should I explain to me how would it be that an industrial nation and an agrarian nation would have to go to a war that kills the equivalent of eight million people today well what's the mechanism but but by which industry and agriculture have a war say by what so why so it's back to about Labor then what are we talking about but these are the answers I was hoping you'd say and you'll see I'm going to whatever you say I will argue with you in a spirit of friendliness okay so it's not it's not that I'm disagreeing with you I'm going to play devil's app getting put into myself what's it why are the Republicans doing that's threatening them yeah this is all very vague it and you're right this is the way we don't have them there's no mechanism to explain it and so but we like it because it's just like economics it's that well it's just one of those things that had to happen and the other thing too is that let's everybody look good okay so if you're industrial well you're the earlier version of us right it's it's this is what the modern world is to them you know the modern world isn't gonna tolerate slavery or if you don't like the modern world you know that the state just gonna get big as they possibly can and tax everybody or but agrarian you know we would just mind our business we were just farmers you know everybody likes farmers you've seen the Pepperidge Farm commercials you know you've seen the Waltons farmer and you know the Little House on the Prairie farmers are good people right and but we latched onto that back in a in a much more in an archaic thing Charles and Mary beard back in the 1920s and we keep teaching our kids that over and over again but there's nothing to it okay so what we'll look at so what we'll look at that as well what's the underlying all the things that we're talking about here what's the real problem yeah don't say slavery that is but even beneath that yeah you're not raise your hand yeah and and that's right and we'll talk about that and that's really good what and what I meant was today why do people seem to care about this so much yeah and people have felt this way you know ever since the war itself and it's like nobody wants to get moral credit or blame for something right right so here's a war that nobody intended that decimated the country wiped out an entire generation destroyed the largest economic interest in the country and yet somehow it's like nobody's fault and you know okay so those are the those are the things that we have to wrestle with and that we generally we've just roped off the dangerous areas of this but a battle that's not okay hey it's a battle it's a game it's the groot blue team and the gray team you know you go long we'll go around the okay it's not that the battles aren't important but I'm just pointing out that they are a safe thing to talk about and this is something that the Park Service had to wrestle with I've been broke when I I just live in Charleston when I came to original in time to participate in the conversation because the Park Service had decreed that people needed to talk about the actual causes of the war at the battlefields and talk about slavery and a gentleman was going around arguing to the contrary and they asked me to come in and to kind of debate it and he just said we dishonor these soldiers to be talking about anything other than the battle itself and I just so we we just honor them by talking about why they'd be willing to give their lives I don't really I don't understand that but that is a common thing that you'll hear is that we should just talk about the battles and I said well how about the letters they wrote from the hospital tents after they'd had their face blown away or their leg cut off and they're writing home and tell why they were willing to do that no that's no that's that's not what we're talking you can see how I feel about that that's obviously not but that's why we that's why we do it and a lot of times when people say they love the Civil War but they really means they love learning about the battles and the battles are interesting I just wrote a bunch of them about a lot of it just now and actually it's fascinating to figure out how something like these things could happen I wrote about the Battle of Piedmont and my wife who I generally pretty sensitive to not making her have the same nerdy interest I do one Sunday afternoon I said I've been writing about this battle and I we've got to go off and see the landscape I've been thinking about how you know they suddenly appear and they're on this Bluff and they're coming down the ship beautiful Shenandoah Valley and there's you know twelve thousand soldiers and we went there and there was the only marker was about the size of a tombstone and there was nothing where to pull off on it you had to find it by a GPS coordinates from website you know and and I was hoping the guy I didn't run over him by his corn plants but there was really no place off the road to do that and to stand there and to think about the things that had happened is powerful so I'm not trying to diminish military history or cause it's a war the war determines everything we'll talk about that today but I would say that often the focus on battle is or is a way to retreat from the harder questions and so so let's go back and see if we can so Kelly's just kind of bring get this a browser there so a clear implication of all this is that you also in the same way I'm hassling you you should have Cilmi about anything I say that you want to know that but but I am a sensitive guy so be nice I would say that but I don't see there's the cursor okay yeah it's always fun trying to type in front of people like I've misspelled Richmond oh that I still misspelled Richmond but maybe I should sit in this chair where I can actually see oh look at that the angle now works all you watch me and say fine to delete over in okay so this is you can see what it is that the digital scholarship lab that you are and I have a bunch of talented young colleagues who make these amazing maps and I'll be honest and say that this one right here was named one that best 15 maps made in the world last year by National Geographic so there's a lot of cool things on here we can talk about I'll show you a number of them but I want to go to the oldest one right now to talk about the bottom line which is what calls it American Civil War people voting Americans calls the American Civil War that's a pretty good line actually I'll have to use that again in future and so let's just look at that if I can see this okay so this is you know this is when you really start having that the two-party system and that we know so this is the Whigs and Democrats do you all see the civil war coming no you don't do man fact what's remarkable yeah is how dispersed across the landscapes the two parties are the Whigs and Democrats let's see what happens you see the silver work I know see the civil war coming just a little bit dark yellow the Free Soil party that's the only abolitionist party that we ever had before the war 1852 do we see the civil war coming this is one of the things I tell my students I don't want to hear you use the word Antebellum because we always live in an antebellum era we're always before the war but we don't know when the worst coming and they didn't either they're not going hey only 12 years to the Civil War right they have no idea that's some one principle I would say to understand the Civil War you have to forget everything you know and and everything and put it back that you're in their shoes and think about the decisions they were actually making right they had no idea of what's coming because what actually happened was impossible the American Civil War was impossible in the end of slavery it was impossible it just happened to have happen okay I think maybe that was a weirder argument for me to make in the 1990s except I could have pointed to the fall of the Berlin wall which people didn't see but then after 9/11 people understand okay and then after the election of 2016 people to see okay stuff that we don't think is gonna happen does right and that's the only pattern I've been able to find in history nobody ever knows what's going on okay and it's humility on our part do not sit in judgment with God like view that we know what's gonna happen and go back and look at all the stupid mistakes they made that's just not a useful thing more useful to think about what were they thinking what what information did they actually have to make the decisions that they make okay so I think that always to approach the everything that we study with a real sense of humility is a part of the lessons we would teach our kids you know it's easier to be morally superior to dead people right and and you gain absolutely nothing no insight from imagining that we're better a lot of people had a lot of information about why slavery was wrong and a lot of the white Southerners yeah but nobody could imagine a way that you would end it right so and in fact it was impossible for it to end it so we'll talk about that a little bit so the 1852 we're still not seeing the civil war coming maybe maybe here okay this is the new brand new Republican Party in 1856 and you see it's in the far north and the Republican versus Republican Party come from that the analogy that I use is that again people who old must remember this is if Ross Perot won the next presidential election after he ran okay okay that's kind of what we have to imagine okay so what the Republicans what platform are they running on in 1856 anti southern is the best way to think about it kind of goes back to what you folks were saying before the South has dominated the United States since its creation okay ever since the three-fifths clause at Montpelier there's a great mute exhibit about the Constitution and Madison and slavery and this is a sort of thing judging from my mom that fourth-grade teachers might know what four presidents before grant had no relationship no personal relationship to slavery well first of all I'll give you a hint there are only four from the beginning of the nation through grant any guesses two of them had the same last name Adams John Adams and John Quincy Adams Franklin Pierce all the rest had some kind of connection just later I don't use the buttons you know and you see so from the northern point of view the south is true they wrote the Constitution that reservation attendance all the founding fathers are Virginians slaveholders but they dominate Congress they dominate the Supreme Court they dominate the presidency so if you're in the north it's like it's that makes sense cause now we are growing faster than the south why is the north growing faster than the south partly because that the slavery actually resists the movement of people who are laborers you can imagine the average farm in the south about twice the size of the average farm in the north because it can be because unlike the Little House on the Prairie we have those little girls out working here you show up with a portable labor force and you can do this okay so the North's look at this and there's no industry up there let's be clear about this at the time of the Civil War 95% of Americans are farmers and here's that a crucial fact the enslaved population of the south if is worth more than all the banks and ruas and factories of the nation combined 80% of all American exports are produced by enslaved labor in 1860 the richest Americans are white Southerners it just turns upside down a usual formulas right yeah you know that the that series Kenneth Davis everything you wanted to know or don't know much about history right now one time at Barnes & Noble I let myself look at what we don't know about the Civil War and his explanation was at the time the Civil War was the North was moving toward the future with railroads banks and factories while the South was stuck in the past it's the same version of the thing we've had for a hundred years now that we keep repeating like a mantra that's not true that it was industrial north literary himself most white northerners our farmers okay and they're prosperous farmers but and who are that who's they the yellow party here can you see that's the American party okay who are the American what's the American party sounds good no that's a good guess they're the know-nothings okay does that mean they're the anti-immigrant party and when you sit in their kind of secret and when you come up to them you say is there a meeting tonight and they become called know-nothings by their enemies and so they adopt it but it's marketing is probably not the best name you ever had but that's who they but look at this you see all they're all across the country anti-immigrant party why is why are the Republicans there and the American parties there why this happen between 1852 and 1856 the only time in American history this has happened a major political party disappears the Whig party disappears okay and it creates a vacuum for a new party so let's go back okay so 1852 yeah these colors are wrong but in 1852 let's look at here 1848 the light yellow all the wigs and they're there in 1848 didn't they disappear and it leaves a great back the vacuum what structure about the Whig parties patterns that prevent its national anybody know that the history the geography of the south enough to tell me what patterns you see about the Whig party in the south here Columbia Tennessee how's it Columbia editing they like the wigs Middle Tennessee bluegrass Kentucky locks the wigs Mississippi Delta locks the wigs black belt of Alabama Georgia blacks the wigs western Virginia in the Eastern Virginia Western North Carolina but allowed to end look at New Orleans a lot of the biggest slave holders are wigs one of the wigs believe in they believe that that government can actually do useful things especially promoting railroads in banks they had the idea even of a National University they believe that regulating the money systems we've been if everybody's a good idea they believe in building post offices and roads so they're kind of like the Democrats of today right they believe that the government can be useful the Democrats are like the Republicans of today who believe that the job of government is to get out of the way to let free enterprise flourish to keep taxes as low as possible and to not do anything so that's been kind of the two poles of American political life throughout our history they switch polarities which party beliefs what but that's kind of the two big things right so why would wigs Bobbitt Southern planters be Whigs if the north is all about progress shutting all the South beat Democrats they should be but they're not because a lot of if you are eighty percent of the American economy and you believe that how are you steamboats and railroads how do you know what the prices are from Liverpool Telegraph so the idea that these of the parties that would believe in an active role of government also the Constitution guarantees the right of slavery right you governments not your enemy if you're a slave holder it's your ally which is one reason the Republicans come up because they say not only does the South dominate have an unfair advantage because the three-fifths clause the Constitution it gives men who cannot vote in slate people representation in Congress but and they've dominated all the branches of government but they are growing they're spreading the fascist country and they are influencing a big national party so weird thing is that abolitionists would have long to the Whigs too so you'd have in the same political party the Whigs and the biggest planters they bigoted planners up the progress stability a big money supply do you see how this makes sense right if you're a rich man tied into big international markets so what's all this based on cotton here's the thing but cotton is the single most valuable commodity in the world and the American South has monopoly on it that's why this house is so rich what's the largest slave state throughout this entire period Virginia more enslaved people live here than anywhere else so what's the major crop in Virginia that's a good guess nope that's good these are all good guest wheat wheat Richmond is the largest flour producer in the United States you may have seen the pictures of burned Richmond after the Civil War and it counts like 911 those are big flour mills that are driven by water on the canal okay so Richmond Virginia can't grow cotton because of the climate for the way that cotton could grow then and but it switched over to wheat and tobacco has already peaked and destroy the soil so wheats kind of a low pressure crop on the soil that doesn't need as much labor and so Virginia exports enormous numbers of people let me show you another man so this is the forced migration of enslaved people and United States from 1810 to 1860s and frankly this is by far the most sophisticated math like this you'll ever say so right now we're looking at the 18 teens areas that are varying shades of blue our areas where people have been sold from or where they're leading we call it forced migration because a lot of times especially in Virginia what happens is that you give a slave to your children as a wedding gift especially your daughters guys might get land and a lot of times two families will move from Virginia to Alabama with slaves right so it's forced migration they're not actually selling those slaves but they're taking them but you can see Virginia as early as the 18 team is losing you see the bar chart over on the right hand side oh yeah right there you can see that showing who's leaving that person percentages Virginia has this level of out migration but it still remains the largest so let's go to the next you can see what's happening here is that why are the areas and say Georgia why is that so red in the middle of Alabama and this is why are so many people why so many enslaved people being taken there because that is the land has just been taken from the Cherokee and Choctaw okay so that's another thing to think about is that the Indians are only removed 30 years before the Civil War and they are occupying Oh some of you may be NASCAR fans know about Talladega obviously it's sort of an Indian word there are areas that are the richest areas that are next to rivers because in Africa native people have lived here for 10,000 years and I know where the best soil is and where the best rivers are but then they're all driven away and when they do slavery rushes in so this helps explain why the north is freaking out too right is that the South had millions of acres that were occupied by American Indians inside its own boundaries and then once the Indians are driven away then slavery and cotton rushes in almost instantly so the South has a worldwide monopoly on cotton vast new rich land a labor force that it can take that it can count on so let's let's pause here for a moment to talk about the evolution of slavery anybody have any idea of what percentage of the slaves from Africa are brought to what becomes the United States six only six percent of the people who are brought from Africa to the Western Hemisphere come to United States in 1860 where is the largest enslaved population the United States how's this happened the enslaved population of the United States is the only enslaved population in the Western Hemisphere that biologically reproduces itself another way of saying it's the only place where people don't die faster than they can have children so why it's partly because else what's the main crop that's coming out of the Western Hemisphere through most of these centuries sugar it's by far the most valuable crop and unfortunately it pays literally to work people to death because sugar is worth so much in the Caribbean to do that the United States it does not cotton is very profitable that it is and it's also the disease environment here is not nearly as bad that's in the Caribbean and it's also the case that that slit international slave trade here ends and what year 1808 so there are no more African slaves being brought in after 1808 and so the United States has to move its enslaved population and to protect it since like populations because it's not bringing them except for some smuggling so here's the great story of which the Civil War is an epiphenomena the United States creates the largest and most powerful system of slavery in the modern world it's not an accident it's not a footnote it's not something like left over it's not something that's sort of an anomaly that's what it is okay and so what the civil war is it's a struggle over the future of the largest most powerful system of slavery in the modern world this pause here who has a question just about that these fundamental economic facts my sense is that this is not the way our fourth-grade textbooks talk about it very much and instead we're talking about progress of America and its spread and growth and unfortunately we have this slavery thing that's kind of drag on it but I would say that over the last decade major trend in history is to recognize the slavery is central to everything else it's not it's not left over okay and what we can see that Virginia which now likes to imagines itself is not really the south you know yes matter of fact what's so let's let's keep continue this story so 1830s look at that the cotton belt there's really taken off 1840s even more so I'm gonna turn off you can see Cotton's really growing so to speak and you sell these black dots it says narratives we're seeing narratives here we have the words apart it was like to be a person swept up in this business well it was like that you know people often would say and this is a sort of a different part of the thing about the civil we're not really being about slavery yes that well what follows slavery was just about his bad you hear people say that and goodness knows that there is plenty of injustice and poverty but it's only in slavery that they can sell their children slavery is unique system of oppression and here's the thing a million people a million Americans were moved in the slave trade after the United States was the United States a million three times as many people that were brought here from Africa we're bought and sold in the United States you're buying and selling other Christians you're buying and selling other native speakers of English you're buying selling people who've lived here for maybe five generations what's the center of that slave trade you're sitting in it Richmond was the place where the largest numbers of people were gathered throughout Virginia brought here under Shaco bottom we can throw a rock important big buildings in the way it where big businesses banks insurance companies people who did nothing other than make clothes for people to be sold in operating huge money hundreds of millions of dollars and the way this would work is that people would go into farms small towns all across Virginia and say late prices are really hot now this late prices are never higher than they are on the eve of the Civil War slavery here's another sort of byproduct of this idea that's industrial and agrarian slavery would have faded away slavery had never been stronger than it was in 1860 slavery slaves had never cost as much and they had never produced a crop worth as much there is no indication at all that slavery would have died by its own weight to the contrary it was just getting stronger and stronger it's good question about $2,000 which you need to multiply by about 20 for it to be today's money so about 25 to 30 thousand dollars about the price of a car okay and which it helps explain why the percentage of white Southerners who owned slaves declines over time in 1830 it would have been about a third of white families by 1860 it's about a quarter and you can see why is that if their price is going up people are really priced out of the market you can also say if that some people who owned nothing else included people who live all around us in Richmond would buy a slave rather than any other form of property if you could buy an eighteen year old woman and you all her children are yours it's one of the best and you could even if you can't use her in your own house because you don't have a farm you rent her out to the tobacco company you get her salary and you get her offspring so that's how you would find that slavery is not fading away in cities which also fits into this idea that urban life and agrarian no slavery made it and Richmond is the best example in the United States of how slavery adapted to the modern economy all around us so I can get chills I've still talked about this all the time and I did just think about all around us you would have seen enslaved people working in tourism as we think about it in hotels and restaurants who've been working in the most advanced factories who would have been down at roediger helping build the most advanced technology in the country about locomotive thinking building a locomotive heart is that right and enslave men working alongside immigrants okay so that's one reason these prices keep going up there are so many things that you can do this life it's not just for cotton you know the question that's a great question no I'm just trying to give you just baseline for all this right we'll talk about anything else you want to talk about we have time so I just thought that these are if we start the middle of the store we don't know what we're talking about okay and this helps explain why this would freak out the Republicans because there's no indication that slavery is gonna get any weaker or that the south is gonna get any weaker let's think about American foreign policy in the 1840s and 1850s would Republicans have any reason to be worried about the power of the south in that regard war with Mexico is seen as a war to expand slavery and it is you know it's not just that but look at look at Texas see how red it is and maybe people have moved in into Texas in the 1850s and slaveholders okay that you see but you can also see interesting that how blue some parts of up country South Carolina are it doesn't mean that slavery is declining it means you have slaves to sell it means that the population is growing so that you have an ever renewable source of income okay so that's how Virginia can have still have half million people in slavery in 1860 it's not the highest percentage its the highest number okay house percentage is gonna be Mississippi you look at Mississippi Delta or Arkansas right Louisiana and here's something else out of this though I like to say people talk about the old South now you've looked at this how old this is a Mississippi Delta at the time that civil war about as old as the suburbs in Henrico and Chesterfield County today not quite 30 30 years old is as long as much of Mississippi has been settled by plantation agriculture Virginia by this point has had slavery for 250 years a hundred years farther than we are today from the Civil War slavery had existed in Virginia okay so it gives you some sense of that the Old Dominion and all that Virginia is the mother of most southerners the migration at Tennessee Kentucky are sort of children at Virginia and settled in there okay so that's that's kind of what's happening on the ground in terms of the economy let's go back to politics it helps explain why the wigs are there the historians have argued a lot about why the wigs disappear we won't bother with it today here's the big thing we had to explain this is what caused the Civil War okay this is the election of 1860 you think our politics are scrambled look at that right why do we got there so you see the Republicans the red party have spread kind of seeping to the south a little bit you see that blue are the northern Democrats Stephen Douglas you see the purple our Southern Democrats John C Breckenridge and yella here is the constitutional Union Party and their argument is and what strikes you about the constitutional Union Party don't think commission don't get me too good an answer which is what strikes you about looking at it yeah it's in the middle but it is the upper south loves the constitutional Union Party okay Maryland Virginia Kentucky Tennessee North Carolina like it but you also see it ironically there's a lot of the same before the Mississippi Delta where we just saw slavery is growing at its fastest therefore so yeah Mississippi Delta Mississippi Delta because they say hey I'm good the Constitution protects slavery and even this unknown of political candidate for the Republicans Abraham Lincoln admits that there is nothing that they can do to touch slavery where it exists there is nothing they can do and so that's why states that either might say hey if there's a war let's guess where it's going to be or who are firmly entrenched in slavery but not seeing its rapid growth let's be calm in Virginia they win Virginia and they win other places but the bottom line is can you see up there on your left what percentage of the got my fat head in the way I'm sorry what percentage of the vote does Abraham Lincoln win 39.8 okay so Lincoln went so what's the clear implication of this is that the Democrats were by far the largest party they gave away the presidency by dividing between themselves Douglas and Breckinridge divided if the Democrats hadn't broken apart at their constitution at their convention in Charleston in which the southerners walked out if the northern Democrats wouldn't respect the rise of slavery more explicitly Abraham Lincoln wouldn't have won this goes back to my drum I'm beaten today it's not that the industrial north rose up and elected Abraham Lincoln is that the Democrats crashed and burned because they had a conflict and inside their own party about southern rights and Stephen Douglas the same guys I'm telling you don't do this and they go ahead and do it anyway and the constitutional Union Party who are a lot of old Whigs right who are the parties of moderation a progress of working things out of the Constitution they say look we just need one thing is a new amendment to the Constitution a thirteenth amendment of the Constitution that draws a line across the United States all the way to California had everything below that line slavery is legal and everything about it it's not give us and that it can never be changed give us that we're good that was seriously debated and Lincoln didn't oppose it as a way out of this logjam okay so Lincoln and this is again not in like the 2016 election you'll see the interaction between the popular vote and the electoral vote our textbooks always just so the electoral vote in which case you just have big blobs or red and blue but look at this if you actually turn up the magnification you recognize that it's not just red and blue and the electoral vote does what it's supposed to do is it turns this narrow plurality into a mandate which is what we just seen with President Trump it turns actually a minority of voters that into a mandate a majority in the electoral college okay and so Lincoln is president but with 60% of white American men opposing you that's what we need to understand this is going to be a theme throughout this whole thing okay so what did the Republicans believe a that the South had to be checked this is a kind of question that might be at the end of the textbook what big event happens between 1856 and 1863 publicans what's it that's that's a perfectly correct answer but not the one I had in mind what what else you got Dred Scott okay so the Dred Scott decision says by Roger tawny man talk about the complexity of slavery he's a slave older but he's freed his own slave he's Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from Maryland and he says that there are no rights that black people have that white people are bound to respect and that the Missouri Compromise 1820 is unconstitutional and that slavery may expand wherever it will Stephen Douglas opinion was that's fine because slavery is not going to expand into Kansas and Nebraska okay we just let's just let the natural workings of nature and the economy do its work and slavery won't expand but look at Missouri y'all see right here and that in the Missouri Compromise they allowed slavery to come in Missouri and slavery well we haven't met let's see what it looks like yeah look at look at northern Missouri you see how far north it is but you see how slavery is growing there in the 1850s and you see it's even farther north than parts of Virginia why would slavery grow and then these like a real bonus question why would slavery grow more in northern Missouri than in southern Missouri because that's where the Missouri River is and the richest soil and this to the Republicans becomes this is what's gonna happen if we let slavery go wherever it wants to go if you show up with a labor force of ten and you're gonna clear your land you're gonna have a big advantage over just a family farmer which is the great majority of the North right so they say Stephen Douglas says natural laws will keep slavery out which against something that people believe that people that slavery wasn't could only go so far with slaves be good in gold and silver mining which slaves be good in building a railroad the things that they end up doing economic development in slave labor would have been great at right so the Republicans say this Dred Scott decision it's cut and I in all these things I'm not being flippant or I'm not being partisan about others just using examples that we have it's like the Obamacare of that time in the sense is that this is the thing that we're going to run against Abraham Lincoln says the Dred Scott decision is a corrupt decision made by collusion from the Supreme Court and President James Buchanan there's some evidence for that that has about the same moral weight as any ten men in a bar room in Washington DC we have to stop the spread not a slavery because it's a moral wall here we're getting into the key issue but because it will ruin the country for white people if we allow these powerful slaveholders to be able to take slavery into California and there's a Silver's discovered in Colorado in 1857 we let this happen we've lost the country so the Republicans position is we need to stop the spread of slavery and Lincoln says if we stop the spread of slavery it'll be gone in about five generations 1965 slavery will die of its own weight they believe that slavery is inefficient that slavery is cannot compete with the north and that therefore if you just contain it that it will die that's what the Republicans run on so you can say this is where we this ambiguity that we're still struggling with comes from is the civil war about slavery well it's about stopping the expansion of slavery was it done in moral outrage against slaveholding about two to four percent of white northerners would have identified themselves as abolitionists two to four percent and they did not like the Republicans who they thought were co-opting decades have worked by the abolitionists to talk about the evil of the south but to put it to the purposes of white people rather than to think about the the safety security and happiness of enslaved people so this there's a brand new book called Lincoln and the abolitionists has gotten reviewed in the post The Times Wall Street Journal and we're still arguing about was Lincoln really an abolitionist no he was not was he anti-slavery yes he was was was Lincoln by our own standards of today racist yes in the sense that he believed that black people and white people Bobby could not be together did was he a lot was he a head of the great majority of other white northerners yes he was but in 1860 the issue is not the moral justice of slavery it's the right of slaveholders to take their property anywhere in the United States so the argument there is if I'm a slave holder the Constitution guarantees the right of slavery its property I should have the right to take my property wherever I want the Republican point of view is the founders clearly intended for slavery to fade away Thomas Jefferson creates the Northwest Ordinance 1787 that prohibits the spread of slavery in the north they expected slavery to fade away because at the time the Constitution there was nothing profitable with slavery to grow and seemed to be in decline and so clearly we are claiming the real spirit of the Declaration of Independence and then the southerners say no we're claiming their little spirit of Independence the statue of George Washington at the Capitol just put up in 1857 the symbol of the Confederacy in many places is George Washington said that we are the ones upholding the spirit of the original Constitution and of the the founding of the country and the great greatest Americans were slaveholders you can't tell me that you are morally superior to those people and so this is what it comes in so I will I will pause there okay this is how we can do it can be about slavery and not be about the slavery at the same time and it's that slippage between the two of us kind of just refusing to pull the pieces apart and look at it that we can keep having this argument because if people white defenders of the white South want to say it's not about slavery they are right to point to the words the Republicans who did not didn't who do not call for the immediate end of slavery why don't they call for the immediate end of slavery because it could not be done it's worth about a trillion dollars in today's the entire economy is based on it New York's economy is based on the products produced by slave labor the mills of Massachusetts are based on the products of slave labor nobody could imagine any way that you could get rid of slavery the abolitionists have peaked back in 1830s and their idea was that we would persuade persuade slaveholders to give up sleep and didn't work and in fact slaveholders came to believe evermore over time that slavery was not only justified by the Constitution but it was sanctioned by God you would not they say show me anywhere in the Bible where it says slavery is wrong and there's nowhere except the fundamental precepts of Christianity treat other people you would be treated other than that there's no pronouncement against slavery so the whites house says we have the Constitution on our side and we have the Bible on our side we have a Supreme Court on our side these Republicans now come up and want to challenge these things they're going to say that they are somehow more moral than we are even though we are ministering to the enslaved people that we've inherited right here on Broad Street the largest church in the city is the African Baptist Church presided over by a man have received me as president of the University of Richmond because there had to be a white pastor of a black church but he brought this great memoir later he says I knew that they didn't really want to hear me talk it was illegal for black people to preach but there were some very long prayers that I've allowed some of the Deacons to make so they would stand up and give a prayer that would go for 10 minutes that would actually be a sermon okay so white South would say what are you abolition is actually doing for enslaved people nothing whereas we are living with them and taking care of them because they enslave people of course to say who's taking care of who I seem to be providing everything on which you live okay so people imagine that slavery was simple that's just white people bossing black people around I don't think there's any society as complicated as a slave society in which people are having children together living together in the same houses buying and selling each other it's remarkably complicated right but through all of this the white South says we did not feel guilty and the clearest argument they wouldn't make would be this if God didn't want the Africans to be here why are they if God did not intend for them to be brought here for us to Christianize them then why are they here and they saw all the abolitionists as being hypocrites who would do nothing for the few black people among whom they live but instead attacking people a thousand miles away for their injustice so Republican Party does tap into the anti southern element of abolitionism slavery okay you might have a question about all that okay yes that's right yeah I mean you know Lincoln opposes the war and is sent home from Congress during his one-term right the Whigs opposed it because they see it as a sort of a perversion of American policy exactly right all the generals of Civil War trained in it and of course neither members of course they're all Americans they're all what else subjects the United States they're ruff Waldo Emerson says that was why it's only 90 miles from Florida so white nor just look at this and say the white South can expand indefinitely and they want to you know so they big nicaragua and things like that right so it's Mexican wars pivotal now the other thing to remember 5,000 bonus points who can tell me what other kind of technological changes they're going on right now that do make the civil war more likely okay I'll give you a hint that's a good guess but no pin it in the Shenandoah Valley and then developed in Chicago I'll give you one more hint it's a greater importance than the Internet in the change that it marks from what had come before Telegraph okay with the Telegraph for the first time information can travel more rapidly than people can write before the information could only travel as fast as you could sail a boat or ride a horse but now you give a speech as a wig in Massachusetts and the next day or at least the next week people reading about what you said so all kinds of deals that you cut in Washington things don't make it anymore internet and Telegraph's invented about the mid 1840s really takes off in the 1850s so suddenly imagine some people are talking what we need to have is a confederation of the slave states even though Virginia and Texas are far apart but now they're in connection with this Telegraph you kind of start imagining that okay yeah big big thing of course is the railroad which is really beans in their forties and fifties and the other thing tied to both of those are the newspapers back then every newspaper is an official organ of a political party now today people talk about fake news and bias one way to another the back then it just said here's a democratic paper right here's a Republican paper and people only read this is a resonance for today things that they already agreed with and so even though Abraham Lincoln's not an abolitionist the democratic papers said he was okay and even though the white South is actually doing very well Republican papers want to talk about how slavery is collapsing and it's backward the origins of the thing that we have about industrial agrarian in many ways is a byproduct of the election of 1860 what the Republicans said okay now now we still have a start at the Civil War but the guys the time I'm going to do it so let's show you how it starts now here Kant parently I can't talk and I can't show a picture but okay so Virginia does not vote for the strong southern rights Democrat as soon as Lincoln is elected the six Deep South states secede in November and December in January before he takes office because two terrible things might happen after he takes off one he might do something or two he might not and if you're trying to get the South to throw its weight around you don't want yeah Lincoln a chance to show that he's in fact moderate a former wig Sidney you guy said that the wigs are now right so he's a wig he's all about progress in that country tying it together Lincoln does not want the Civil War in so South Carolina Georgia and Mississippi Oliver secede who does not secede Virginia North Carolina Tennessee Arkansas in Virginia they say we hate South Carolina for precipitating this what has those states leaving the United States done to the upper south states it's left them without it's hollowed out their representation in Congress so now and which is why they left they're basically forcing the other slave states to join them by seceding and Virginia says listen we're the mother of presidents we're not just gonna have guys who had to be hanging around the courthouse in Colombia or Milledgeville decide the future of our state our Commonwealth we're gonna do this right we're gonna have delegates from every County come to Richmond and debate what we should do and so they have those elections in February and the every County sends delegates and the majority are sent here to save the United States I call it the secession convention here in this thing we built that that's actually a bad name that's not what they would have called it they would have called it the convention and they came here to figure out a way not only to keep Virginia United States but to save the United States because Virginia is a pivotal state the biggest slave state with the most glorious history with industrial cities and they think that maybe they can talk some sense into both sides they talk for week after week after week after week again right here where we are that's a capital local reporters come down and write down all that they say in 1965 the Library of Virginia gathers all that into three thousand pages four volumes of the book when the anniversary of this was coming up I went to my friends with library and said what you mama took a razor blade to those books and slice the pages out of them and digitize them so that people can actually see what people actually said at this turning point in American history and they said fine so that's what we did we made this and you can search you can see all these different way so let's just do a quick test so the mechanism that many people would say that it was industrial agrarian was taxes that the North wanted high tariffs again it's not unlike today make America great run tough deals with our trading partners right the South wants to not have high tariffs because they don't want to be punished when they're selling their cotton in England and France and Germany okay so let's see if they talk about that in the 3,000 pages and weeks and weeks of debate and I should say while they do debate this young men are burning bonfires in the streets of Richmond yelling at these delegates for being old grannies come on be real men let's go whip the Yankees but these are the delegates are often older men who had been a part of the Whig Party and so forth and they say boys you don't know what you're saying they talk about the tariff okay tariff is mentioned 81 times you'll recognize Virginia looked a little different then a little bit bigger so there's the tariff and they talked about it and so 81 times so let's just see if they actually talk about slavery yeah it's only mention 1430 two times so this idea that grew up after the war that this had nothing to do with slavery it's just not true and the people who voted it was so why else would we think about leaving the united states it has to be over some big thing they would say why are we doing it because it's our right to be able to take our property in the United where it so it is in the language of Rights right but it is all based on the right of this fundamental matter property but also our entire social order is based on this okay so they vote and you can say they're talking to West Virginia central Virginia and Eastern Virginia about all of this they vote over and over again not to leave the United States Fort Sumter they still refuse to vote to Leeds United States what then happens yes 10,000 here's what he says there has been I'm gonna translate to current language there's been a terrorist attack on the United States in Charleston Harbor I need all American men to put down this treasonous attack on the United States and Virginia then has no choice which is one reason there's a firing on Fort Sumter to force Virginia's hand we have the records that basically they're lobbyists to come up to Virginia's that Virginia is not gonna do anything till we force her to and so South Carolina forces her to decide are you going to raise your men to come down and put down another as they call a sister slave state and they say no we're not and then with some of the delegates crying they vote to leave the United States and even then it's not everybody there's a pretty good chunk of say even with this we cannot why not they say several things it again it's in the same way that big slaveholders voted for the Whigs the Constitution Union Party it's not the big slaveholders to say yeehaw let's secede they're saying the only way that slavery could be destroyed is if we leave the United States the Constitution for Texas the Fugitive Slave Law means that people in the North are by the federal law obligated to help return our runaway slaves to us here in Virginia we're going to be right on the edge of an alien nation what's gonna happen to our enslaved population when they're not obligated to return them and what happens if there's some kind of war now in South Carolina they're saying there's not gonna be any war marry chestnuts husband says I will gladly drink all the blood that shed as a result of this vote it's important to remember nobody's imagining the Civil War nobody's imagining for years a massive suffering both sides imagined that the other sent because they've been reading these papers only from their own side that the other side is gonna fold maybe after one battle and probably not even that that here's the argument for Virginia join us and then North Carolina and Tennessee come along the joke is a Kentucky joins the Confederacy after the Civil War that that we will be so strong that the north will accede it won't be a war at all okay if you'll join us and we'll be so strong then we'll call the Yankees Bluff and they will pass this but they will move away from any effort to constrain us but both sides miscalculate Lincoln believes and not insanely that the three-fourths of white Southerners who don't own slaves and who have voted for the Whigs and a constitutional Union Party believe the United States more than they do this new secessionist movement and when push comes to shove there'll be loyal Americans but what he did not take into account is that here's a phrase that I use Oh white southerner men who go to war for the Confederacy do not go to war to protect slavery they go to war to protect a nation based on slavery you can see the difference they're not saying yeehaw I'm going to sacrifice my 19 year old life to defend a property I don't possess I'm going to defend this constitutional right to create our own nation in the spirit of George Washington that is based on the rights we have always had to own slaves to direct our own future why do I believe in I believe in mom I believe in my girl I believe in my right to have it okay so there's all these different layers but the fact is that the Confederacy only exists in order to protect the rights of slavery that's this makes sense to you right you can see so this is how people like to imagine well it couldn't have been about slavery my family didn't even own slaves you can see how many that's not untrue but it means that all soldiers are not fighting for the immediate thing in front of them they're fighting because they love their country and the miracle of the Confederacy is that they're able to persuade people to love a country that's been born before their eyes and how do they do it through their state you're fighting for Virginia the Confederacy is just a vehicle to protect the rights of Virginia and that's how robert e lee can explain to himself after agonizing debate that he's going to force where his loyalty to the united states in which he has served his entire life to join this new to defend not the Confederacy but his native state so nobody's lying but it's not as if they're making this stuff up and they're trying to obscure what they're really thinking we've got to respect the people the past and the words they say they say in their debates that it's about slavery respect that but when they ride home and they're not saying slavery respect what they're saying that I'm fighting for my home and you'd set it to way of life and it is a way of life that you can see it's a way of life that's based on unsavoury that had been there for 250 years okay so at this point the war is not a war to end slavery okay wouldn't way to think about this it's an unbalanced equation the North does not go to war to end slavery because that was impossible but the South does go to war to defend it just make sense to you not necessarily to defend its existence at the beginning the defend the rights of slavery to be expanded and to be perpetuated without the attacks the moral attacks by the north that's what drove the white South so crazy is that the self-righteousness of the North because the north is deeply implicated in slavery the north is has its hands red in slavery up until just not long before this war about it okay that the Puritans were not opposed to slavery the Puritans who live in the Caribbean were big slaveholders so it's not built in that the Yankees were always morally superior they're just not ok but the fact is is they they were saying that it is illegal to leave the United States to destroy the United States it's not clear that it was in all honesty the Constitution is ambiguous about whether secession was legal or not okay but the point being is that the war is only intelligible if we understand that it's about the effort to constrain the spread of slavery and the right to expand slavery you translate it to fourth-graders yeah so I'll tell you this story about that so I made this thing started back in the early 1990s called the valley of the shadow that is every piece of evidence about every person who lived in the northern community and a southern community from John Brown's raid through reconstruction it's fundamentally insane but we didn't know it was insane in 1991 when we didn't know what this is six months of the creation of the web but it still works I just wrote wrote two books using nothing other than this telling the story in the Shenandoah Valley I I write about it's interesting like it's time to download it at Augusta County Virginia Stanton and Chambersburg Pennsylvania so my daughter who was in the fourth grade at the time came in and said so daddy what are you working on now and I said well I'm this thing we were putting all this information about people in the past in ways that other people can explore and my hope is that you know people at other colleges and high schools would use it and she said well daddy are there any other girls named Hannah there and I said well I don't know let's just look and see and let's just let's see and it turns out there are all the Hannah's and they're a bunch of them and some of the white some of them are black and so she said are there any other who are 11 and we'd look for that and their work and then a couple does it she walked in with her textbook with her finger in it she said daddy what caused the Civil War and I said well if you have to have one word it's slavery but just be suspicious of anything that has a one worth answer and the analogy I use if we're trying to explain a car wreck well it was dark and it was raining and the stop sign was turning kind of sideways and maybe there been some drinking but what caused the Civil War economics states rights slavery right so I think go back to your very eloquent statement at the beginning what we're trying to teach our kids is that you got it understand that everything happens in time and a decision from one time leads to a consequence that you can't anticipate what Americans have voted to have the Civil War knowing what it did know okay and so and then we go into the war itself that you all be talking about later but once the civil war begins it takes on this momentum of its own and here's the thing when does it become a war about actually ending slavery not in his first year okay I wasn't hit one thing I say just cause it's fun is that who ended slavery in the United States Stonewall Jackson Robert Ely now why would I say that as you know this city came under attack from the largest army ever organized in North America by George McClellan in 1862 if Richmond had fallen then and Lee's army had fallen in and Jackson army had fallen then the civil war might have ended and slavery would not have slavery had not been declared the abolition of slavery had not been declared as the purpose of the war the North discovers several things in that battle on the peninsula one that there are live and slave people who want to be free here's the thing to remember three weeks I have another map to show you that's pretty cool about that if your thing I've told you is true it's like well guys okay but how to slavery come to it in right you see there's two different questions what caused the Civil War and if to summarize what causes of war a political conflict fed by the new Telegraph and this new partisan press over the rights of the north and the south over the expansion of slavery okay and the emergence of a new political party you'll notice Lincoln's party is regional and the white South says this is a new thing in American history we've always had a party that was national now you're creating a regional party this is a violation of the spirit of America right so that's another way they could do it they just say you're trying to - we had no hand in electing you and now you're going to tell us what to do I don't think so we're gonna leave okay so what we've had here as you'll see all these red dots and I think right now that's in very early 1861 you can see the united states army forming there those of you who are Civil War nerds will recognize that this is actually a digitized version of the official records of the world the rebellion 126 volumes that document all the records and we turn this into a map that actually moves and one thing that you're seeing here is that wherever the United States Army goes african-american people try to use that as a way to become free in that process after 250 years begins three weeks after Virginia declares the secession in April of 1862 in May of 1861 you will notice that the United States fort at Fort Monroe does not fall to the Confederacy like Fort Sumter did and that is one reason that Richmond isn't invaded in 1862 is that the United States has this incredible military base at the end of the peninsula right and three black men go to Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe instantly and say we're on your side we want to help the United States little-known trivia fact the lawyer who represents the slave owners who was sent them to talk to Benjamin Butler and say give us our property back yes Edward Cary of Cary Street in Cary County here right and he goes in there right and this is when Butler comes up the concept of contraband you are your property of war we are liberating you as our property because your property being used to wage war against the United States so that happens almost instantly but then as McClellan's army and you can say what what a complex thing minutes a patient is not Abraham Lincoln signing a piece of paper okay it's something that unfolds over an area the size of continental Europe and that involves four million people and occurs across the entire war okay so that's the important thing to understand what emancipation is freedom and every one of those requires black people themselves to do something I'd like to imagine you're an eighteen year old woman with a new baby and you hear the Yankees are five miles away maybe you're here in Richmond and you can hear the guns and you know that their bars are down do you risk your life what are you risking to go to the Yankees well this is students that you are that did all this and one of the things that we did we had them come up with these Emancipation event types see if I can break this here are all different things that can happen to you if you are an enslaved person tries to do this the very first thing is abuse of African Americans who's going to abuse you the Confederates but also maybe the Union Army you know the amount of sexual assault and all of this we bottle our minds if we had any idea of what it actually look like right but you could also go there you have no idea if the Yankees at first like you've done maybe not laid eyes on them you don't know they may be friendly to you or they may not they may say yeah come in here be our cooker we'll pay you bring your child or they may not okay so this is all highly risky but in 1862 reports come back that the enslaved people want to be free they're risking their lives to become free that they are capable and that the Confederates are using enslaved people to dig all the entrenchments that are protecting Richmond we've got young white boys from across the North dying against the dirt that the Confederates have slaves putting up we are not going to be able to defeat the Confederacy if we don't destroy their ability to use the enslaved population against us and that is when that begins to feed into it and it's also so by January 1863 as you know so by September of 1862 after the failed attempt to take Richmond I think it has the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation you can look at that and say that's really that's amazingly fast for a war that was not about abolishing slavery to abolishing slavery or you could say that long delay and that only comes after defeat shows that the northern heart was not really in the welfare of black people but really just about defeating the Confederacy and both those statements would be true ok yeah so I'll pause on that so I think the way historians understand this now is that what happens is that the war steadily becomes a war to end slavery as the white North understands that it has to in order to put the united states back together ok does that mean that that is a morally bankrupt position by the north no does it mean that they were abolitionists No ok so I'll pause there so I'm just trying to boil things down to the very essence and then you guys can turn this back into whatever stories you want to tell your kids right but I'm just trying to give it the ligaments that are holding all this together so I will pause and see if you have a question or comment or a challenge to all that cuz we're not gonna end the story yet don't you wonder how it turns out ok you might see the central vent in the American Civil War who wants to see that yeah all right that's a central event in the American Civil War that's the election of 1864 now why do I say that all the battles that matter enormous ly and that in fact this election would have turned out differently without the battles so I'm not one of these social cultural historians who doesn't wanna do military history military history is really hard I've learned enough of it to be able to ride it but I'm not an expert in it but here's the fact the constitution of the Confederate States differs from that of the United States very slightly one things it does say is that the president will be elected every six years so Jefferson Davis does not run for re-election during the war Abraham Lincoln does matter of fact there's an election almost every year during the Civil War throughout the north and in 1862 the Democrats win across the north because they don't approve of the way the Richmond didn't fall we give you all these soldiers and all this stuff and you can't even take Richmond a hundred miles from Washington you know and these other battles yeah and so the Democrats say we may be coming back so everybody knows that in two more years kind of like we are now people kind of looking ahead to 18 for the off season votes and then to 20 for the next presidential election people recognizing if a war doesn't start going better we will not relent Abraham Lincoln and the war does not go better now people know about Gettysburg and Gettysburg here's the thing to remember as many people died after Gettysburg has died before okay Gettysburg is not the turning point in the Civil War it could have been if the Confederacy won but it wasn't because the North won and held it off right and so then Vicksburg divides the south east to west enormous Lee important but the Confederacy doesn't quit why Confederacy's holding out for this election so if we can help and one reason Lincoln I mean Lee invades Gettysburg invades Pennsylvania is - and he says this to his wife is to show the enemy that the current administration cannot protect them it's done for political reasons and also to be able to feed his men who need to get out of Virginia when the crops are coming in horses are starving to death Pennsylvania stay as long as we can they are hoping it's been longer in two weeks so after Gettysburg gage burger dress which we like to imagine so turning point it's not it's happened to be since the war turned out that it did but otherwise it wasn't everything depends on the battles of 1864 because of the elections coming up this is when the greatest bloodbath of the war occurs when grant tries to take Richmond again but from the north the Overland campaign and he's going to finally defeat Lee and destroy the Confederate capital and everybody is ready from do because now we've got a great general we've got grant and we've got Sherman moving against Atlanta down south and so all we need really to do is to and we've already divided this the Confederacy east to west there's a couple of problems one the Shenandoah Valley is still in the hands of the Confederates in the Shenandoah Valley is an avenue for invasion that Lee has followed it's also an avenue invasion of Washington DC it's also the way that Lee is able to keep that army right around here and keep them fed because you have rail lines that are coming from so-called breadbasket the Confederacy through the longest railroad tunnel in the world between Charlottesville and Stanton again showing how backward the South was it had dug the largest railroad tunnel in the world the train coming in bringing food to Lee's army from the soon so grants idea is I'll go overland will will take Richmond who lost us in ships up to James and at a Christian from the east and we'll also take the Shenandoah Valley so that we will have to divide his men and will not be able to supply so that was the plan in 1864 by the time of the election you guys have heard Cold Harbor mmm Gaines mill just terrible losses and you may have heard the stories of do new soldiers pinning their names to their coats so that when they're killed they'll be able to identify them because the losses are just enormous first general that Brandt since the Shenandoah Valley fails the second general he sends to the Shenandoah Valley fails after he fails and this is an amazing thing he escapes from Lynchburg through West Virginia to the Ohio River the retreat here's an idea let's walk across West Virginia okay to shoot into a valley then after all of that is empty and Jubal Early goes right up to the doors of Washington and goes up and burns Chambersburg Pennsylvania in July of 1864 so grants failed to take Richmond the Shenandoah Valley has not only failed that now the Confederate reusing it to threaten Washington DC and as a result grant Lee Lincoln's advisors tell him in August sir we do not think the prospects of you being reelected August of 1864 Abraham Lincoln does not think he's going to be really the Democrats sweet here we go let's make George McClellan who took the fall for not being able to take Richmond it wasn't his fault and strangely still serves in the army under the command of Lincoln but he's going to run for president against him but he has a lot of loyalty in the army and we're gonna run a campaign of ending this war in the fall of 1864 after all the battles we're talking about and they have a big convention in Chicago and they talk about this and they there's no talk of ending slavery okay and as they're heading back home from Chicago after nominating McClellan word comes that Atlanta has fallen and then a few weeks later Sheridan if grant has put in charge in the valley drives Jubal Early out and the Shenandoah Valley has fallen because it's a central feature of my book I believe it's a profound importance and it is the third most popular painting of the Civil War is of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley after the monitor Merrimac and that's the other one what would you guess oh my colleagues here listen was popular subject Gettysburg probably Pickett's yep last me was a good patriotic answer to get haircut yeah but and there's a famous poem that's written that's recited all across the north about Sheridan's right he thunders in on his steed all five foot five and and saves his army then Lincoln wins with the same percentage of the boat that hit one in 1860 Lincoln persuades almost no white northern Democrat to support Abraham Lincoln after all of that I believe the number is 0.3% people switch their vote from the Democrats the Republicans you see all the blue area those are all the people who voted against Abraham freakin Lincoln in the fall of 1864 which means that Lincoln wins again the electoral map it's all red and our stories are a seed the North was morally superior they supported Abraham Lincoln or another way of putting this is 48% of white northern men this deepened the civil war in this moment of great crisis would not vote for Abraham Lincoln in that amazing right this helps explain why reconstruction struggles because these people never believed in so if you think about it if these people don't support abolition and white Southerners don't support abolition three-fourths of white Americans never support the end of slavery but slavery ends as a result of the war that's the way of thinking about this which helps explain the course of reconstruction which is what the second half outlook is about but I don't get to click on that it's like that on you today but this is kinda like an x-ray of the war I'm trying to offer you okay and that you can kind of understand okay I have to explain to the fourth graders you know it's things are not although some people plan and sometimes okay history can't gets out of people's control and sometimes terrible things happen like the equivalent of eight million people being killed today sometimes remarked fully good things happen like the end of the largest most powerful system slavery in the modern world right that that end of slavery was not for ordained at any point till almost the very end of the war think about Neogene you've seen the Lincoln with the I know that went blank it's just perfect timing we saw the Lincoln movie which is a little bit weird to think about when which you place the best movie ever made about that's Civil War Abraham Lee it's after he's been reelected but he's what's he trying to do pass the Thirteenth Amendment what's the big deal he recognizes that if the war ends the only foundation for the end of slavery are presidential proclamations so there's a race and that's why I put things about bribing the Democrats and so forth to get them to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment he knows that if the war ends before slavery does a Supreme Court decision or another presidential election could invalidate even what was won in the war so hey hey that's what the race is it gets his 13th amendment passed before the war actually ends so that's it and that's in January of 1865 so all this makes the Civil War more interesting and more important and makes the battles matter more when we see how all these things black and white northern and southern Republican and Democrat military and social are all part of the same story and no part of it can be understood without the other parts and it also shows us how fortunate this nation was that things turned out this way because they were not for ordained to be that way I think a less skilled politician would not have been able to done what Lincoln did because need to remember he's fighting not only against the south that against nearly half the white northern population okay you guys are very patient you've made the mistake of being the first people I'm talking to today it's a mouth fired up but I thought the most useful thing I do is kind of give you a coherent overview and in which all the other things you're talking about you can test and just see how much of it was completely nonsense over the course of the rest of your time here but does he may have a final question or anything great thank you so much [Applause] you

Channel: The American Civil War Museum

Views: 43,855

Keywords: Civil War, American Civil War, Museum, American Civil War Museum

Id: nGIjxttVCfw

Length: 104min 25sec (6265 seconds)

Published: Tue May 01 2018