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00:00:06On the night of January 2nd, 1864, Confederate General Patrick Claiborne was worried.
00:00:11He warned his fellow Southerners that surrender to the North, quote, means that the history
00:00:15of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy, that our youth will be trained
00:00:20by Northern school teachers, will learn from Northern school books, their version of the
00:00:25war, will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant
00:00:29dead as traitors, our maimed veterans, as fit subjects for derision.
00:00:35Claiborne was only partly right.
00:00:37For most of the following century, non-Southerners were pretty fair about the war and openly respected
00:00:42the South's leaders, including Lee.
00:00:44Four top Americans of the past.
00:00:47They are Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, and Lee.
00:00:51The South erected statues and monuments to its heroes.
00:00:55Several were erected inside the United States Capitol.
00:00:59Even abroad, people respected the dignity, bravery, and brilliance of Robert E. Lee.
00:01:03Winston Churchill described Lee as one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the
00:01:08greatest captains known to the annals of war.
00:01:12It was almost exactly one century after the war, in the 1960s, when things took a turn.
00:01:17But even then, it wasn't immediate.
00:01:20In 1977, the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd performed in Oakland, California with the Confederate
00:01:25battle flag as their backdrop.
00:01:26In 1988, Hank Williams Jr. released a top ten hit called, If the South Would Have Won.
00:01:33But during the woke upheavals of the last decade, the story really changed and the statues and
00:01:39flags started coming down.
00:01:41Even conservatives in the South had turned on Southern heritage.
00:01:44It's time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.
00:01:51150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come.
00:01:55The retreat opened the floodgates for anti-American radicals who literally desecrated the grave of
00:02:00Robert E. Lee's horse, melted his statues, and slandered his reputation.
00:02:05The Confederacy, the American Civil War, it was an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason at the
00:02:11time.
00:02:11The current understanding of the Civil War, as it's taught in Hollywood and schools and
00:02:15everywhere else, is a cartoon caricature.
00:02:18I can't breathe. Robert E. Lee represented me.
00:02:23The last ten years have been a master class in historical malpractice.
00:02:28So jaw-droppingly stupid that, honestly, most sane people would just change the channel and call it a day.
00:02:35But here we are, obligated to tell the truth, so here it goes.
00:02:40The Civil War is not nearly as black and white as the school marms wish it were.
00:02:46It was one of the most complicated events in American history.
00:02:49Its heroes, who existed on both sides, were complex, multi-dimensional people.
00:02:55Over the course of this video, we're going to prove it.
00:02:59This is the real history of the Civil War.
00:03:17This is the real history of the Civil War.
00:03:35In this scenario, all you can do is follow orders, march where you're told to march,
00:03:40and shoot when you see the enemy.
00:03:43So, that's what you do.
00:03:45Then imagine that, after a week of the most intense fighting of your life,
00:03:49you realize that your side has somehow emerged victorious.
00:03:52In fact, you've won decisively.
00:03:55You don't remotely understand how it happened.
00:03:58You thought it was impossible.
00:03:59Well, that was the experience of a Confederate soldier named Dorostas Myers,
00:04:04during the Battle of Chancellorsville, which lasted from April 30th to May 6th, 1863.
00:04:11On May 11th, Myers, who served as a sergeant with the 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiment,
00:04:16wrote a letter to his brother and sister.
00:04:18Quote,
00:04:19The Lord hath crowned our arms with another glorious victory.
00:04:23I think it was one of the hottest contests of the war.
00:04:26The enemy were strongly entrenched.
00:04:28We fought them on the left at Chancellorsville with 40,000 men against 110,000.
00:04:33I never was under such a fire of grape shell canister and musketry in my life,
00:04:38though the Lord spared my life.
00:04:40Although the Confederacy lost more than 13,000 soldiers at Chancellorsville,
00:04:45as well as several key officers, including Stonewall Jackson,
00:04:48the battle is widely considered to be the greatest Confederate victory of the Civil War
00:04:52and one of the most impressive military victories of all time.
00:04:56The historic victory was the result of the leadership of Robert E. Lee,
00:05:00the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.
00:05:03It's widely regarded as one of the most brilliant tactical victories in American military history,
00:05:08often called Lee's perfect battle.
00:05:10It's referenced in books like the West Point Atlas of American Wars,
00:05:13and it continues to be studied in military academies today for its demonstration of
00:05:17outmaneuvering larger forces through audacity and tactical ingenuity.
00:05:22In other words, Robert E. Lee was a genius.
00:05:27So who was this man who, more than 150 years after his death, is still so frequently talked about?
00:05:35Robert E. Lee was born in 1807 into a prominent Virginia family as the son of revolutionary
00:05:40war hero Henry Light Horse Harry Lee.
00:05:43From a young age, it was obvious that he was a military genius.
00:05:46He graduated second in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point,
00:05:51with zero demerits over four years, and was commissioned into the elite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
00:05:57For over two decades, he served as an exceptional military engineer,
00:06:01overseeing critical infrastructure projects for the federal government.
00:06:05He served in the Mexican-American War, where he performed so well under fire,
00:06:09that he was promoted to colonel. After the war, he ran West Point, and later commanded cavalry units
00:06:14in Texas. A decade later, in 1863, he found himself fighting the very army that he spent three
00:06:21decades serving. Many of the officers he commanded and fought against were students at West Point when
00:06:27he ran it. He needed a victory at Chancellorsville because he needed European support to break the naval
00:06:32blockade. His enemies sought to destroy Lee's army and reunite the country.
00:06:39The odds were in favor of the Union. Lee's men were facing starvation in Fredericksburg,
00:06:44and he had just split his forces up, sending General James Longstreet and roughly 20,000 soldiers
00:06:49away to Suffolk to defend Richmond and secure more supplies. As the Union army converged on Chancellorsville,
00:06:55they had a substantial numerical advantage. Union forces began crossing the Rappahannock River
00:07:02in late April, laying pontoon bridges just south of Fredericksburg. At the same time,
00:07:07another Union column was marching east, crossing the Rappahann River. Roughly 70,000 Union soldiers
00:07:13ultimately converged at the Chancellorsville crossroads. Moving towards Fredericksburg and
00:07:17the rear of the Confederate army, meanwhile Hooker left a force in front of Lee at Fredericksburg
00:07:22under General John Sedgwick. It was clear that a massive battle was brewing. On the evening of
00:07:28April 29th, Jedediah Hotchkiss, a topographical engineer on Stonewall Jackson's staff, remarked,
00:07:34Tomorrow, tomorrow, death will hold high carnival. Faced with a vastly inferior strategic position,
00:07:40Lee had three options. Option one, he could attack Sedgwick's forces, roughly 40,000 men along with
00:07:46artillery that were directly in front of him at the Rappahannock River. But if the fighting lasted too
00:07:51long, the Union could move from the west and destroy the rear of the Confederate army. Option two,
00:07:58he could retreat and head south to consolidate his forces. This was the safest maneuver,
00:08:03at least in the short term. Option three, he could split his forces and send Jackson's corps
00:08:08to the west while leaving some small divisions at the front line, holding Sedgwick at bay. At the time,
00:08:17there were 70,000 Union soldiers over four corps who had moved into the Virginia wilderness facing east.
00:08:25If Lee divided his army to attack those advancing Union forces in the woods, the main risk was that
00:08:31Sedgwick would advance and crush the small number of troops he left behind. Lee decided to take that risk.
00:08:38He ordered Jackson to lead the troops to the west, troops who in the dead of night were unsure of
00:08:43what exactly was going on. William Calder, a soldier in the 2nd North Carolina Infantry, recorded the
00:08:49movement this way. We had no idea where we were going. A soldier never knows where he's going,
00:08:54nor what he's going to do, until the moment for action comes. They have only to trust in their commanders.
00:09:00On we went, through mud and over stumps, stumbling about in the dark, to the great danger of our heads
00:09:05and our shins.
00:09:07All the while, Union generals were congratulating one another. Bands played upbeat songs as soldiers
00:09:13cheered. But by the morning of May 1st, the mood changed. Jackson's army, advancing to the west,
00:09:19ran into Union brigades from the 5th Corps and 12th Corps, catching Hooker off guard. Although the
00:09:26Union maintained a numerical advantage, Hooker ordered his soldiers to pull back. Union generals
00:09:31couldn't believe Hooker's orders. In fact, Major General Henry Slocum, who was in charge of the 12th Corps,
00:09:37called the orders crazy and threatened to shoot the messenger who delivered the news. But ultimately, the
00:09:42generals obeyed.
00:09:43Hooker was still convinced that he was in the superior strategic position, but Lee was not done yet. Jackson
00:09:50proposed yet another secret flanking maneuver, taking his entire Corps and leaving behind only 14,000 men.
00:09:57Around 5 a.m. on May 2nd, Lee authorized Jackson to take the entire 2nd Corps, 15 infantry brigades,
00:10:03consisting of 30,000 soldiers and more than 100 cannon, around the Union's right flank.
00:10:08In the fog of war, Jackson was able to snake around the Union forces undetected with the help of scouts
00:10:15and
00:10:15locals who mapped out a route in the wooded terrain. In his final dispatch to General Lee, Jackson wrote,
00:10:22The enemy has made a stand at Chancellor's, which is about two miles from Chancellorsville. I hope as soon
00:10:27as practicable to attack. I trust that an ever-kind Providence will bless us with great success.
00:10:33Respectfully, T.J. Jackson.
00:10:36At 5.30 p.m., horse artillery, positioned near the turnpike, fired off two signal shots,
00:10:41which were followed by bugle calls. Jackson's Corps emerged suddenly from the woods.
00:10:4612,000 soldiers from the Union's 11th Corps were taken completely by surprise. Many of their trenches
00:10:51were facing the south, not the west, where the Confederate surprise attack was coming from.
00:10:56Very quickly, the Union forces were pushed back about three miles, but they weren't completely defeated.
00:11:01It was dark, and they were in the woods, which complicated Jackson's efforts to crush them.
00:11:06Jackson decided to push forward anyway and headed north to cut off Union retreat.
00:11:11In fact, Jackson himself, along with some other officers, rode out ahead of the Confederate line
00:11:16to get a better sense for what the Union army was doing. Jackson was wounded by friendly fire
00:11:22and died eight days later. Jackson's profound final words were documented by the historian Shelby Foote.
00:11:30And he called the doctor and says, Dr. McGuire, my wife tells me I'm going to die today. Is that
00:11:36true?
00:11:36And the doctor said, yes, it is. He said, good, very good. I always wanted to die on a Sunday.
00:11:48Lee appointed Jeb Stewart to replace Jackson, ordering him to press the attack. And as Lee put it,
00:11:54quote, it is necessary that the glorious victory thus far achieved be prosecuted with the utmost
00:11:59vigor and the enemy given no time to rally. As soon, therefore, as it is possible, they must be
00:12:05pressed so that we may unite the two wings of the army. Endeavor, therefore, to dispossess them of
00:12:11Chancellorsville, which will permit the union of the whole army. I shall myself proceed to join you as
00:12:16soon as I can make arrangements on this side, but let nothing delay the completion of the plan of
00:12:21driving the enemy from his rear and from his positions. I shall give orders that every effort
00:12:25be made on this side at daybreak to aid in the junction. On May 3rd, Stewart led brutal frontal
00:12:32assaults on critical positions, including the high ground of Hazel Grove with the goal of reuniting the
00:12:37Confederate army. The attack was immediately effective. In order to prevent another Confederate
00:12:42flanking maneuver, Hooker made the fateful decision to abandon the high ground on Hazel Grove,
00:12:48ordering Sickles to fall back with the rest of the Union forces. It was a pivotal blunter and yet
00:12:53another cautious decision while Lee was pursuing a much more aggressive strategy. It's important to
00:12:59emphasize how important Hazel Grove was as an artillery platform. As Chris Michalski writes in that
00:13:05furious struggle, quote, in the 70 square mile sea of trees that made up the wilderness, there were few
00:13:10open plots of ground, making the wilderness a terrible place to deploy artillery. Open ground
00:13:16like Hazel Grove was invaluable. Being on higher ground increases a gun's range while also making
00:13:22the gun harder to hit with counter-battery fire. The Confederates immediately rushed dozens of guns
00:13:28onto Hazel Grove and unloaded on the Union lines, forcing them to pull back. The cover fire allowed the
00:13:34Confederate army to reunite as Lee had ordered. It also had a direct impact on the leadership
00:13:39of the Union army. Hooker was injured when a Confederate cannonball struck the porch where he
00:13:45was standing at his command center, splintering a piece of wood that fell and hit him. Hooker was
00:13:49never removed from command, nor did his subordinates attempt to replace him, but he was clearly dazed at the
00:13:54worst possible moment, right when his forces were divided and the fighting was fiercest. But at the same
00:14:00time, Sedgwick broke through the Confederate battle lines at Fredericksburg, specifically Mary's Heights,
00:14:05posing a direct and unopposed threat to the rear of Lee's lines. When Lee heard the news,
00:14:10he was stoic. In response to a chaplain who was panicking after bringing word of the advancing Union
00:14:16army, Lee said simply, thank you very much, but both you and your horse are overheated. Take him to that
00:14:23shady tree yonder and rest a little. Lee ultimately decided to split his army for a third time. He sent
00:14:30the
00:14:30Second Corps under Brigadier General Raleigh Colston to strike Hooker, and he ordered McLaw's division
00:14:35to march east to fight Sedgwick. The fighting had broken down in three key areas, Salem Church,
00:14:42Fredericksburg, and the Chancellorsville Crossroads. Eventually, Lee rode out to Salem Church to lead
00:14:48the counterattack on Sedgwick directly. He successfully prevented the Union pincer movement once again by
00:14:53dividing his forces. Outmaneuvered, stunned, and physically injured, Hooker ordered a full retreat on the
00:15:00night of May 4th. Lee, by repeatedly dividing his forces when conventional wisdom called for retreating each
00:15:06time, had managed to defeat a much larger army at a time when both the Union and the Confederacy were
00:15:12eager for a
00:15:13major victory. Lee's tactics are still studied today in military academies. He recognized his opponent's strategic
00:15:19weakness and his opponent's fear, and he exploited them both. When the war broke out, no one thought
00:15:25it would last long. One person who knew it wouldn't be short was Robert E. Lee. In early 1861, while
00:15:31still
00:15:32in the U.S. Army at Fort Mason, Texas, he correctly predicted that if it came to armed conflict, quote,
00:15:37the war will last at least four years. He was right. Lee's foresight in recognizing the Civil War's potential for
00:15:44protracted devastation, unlike the naive optimism of many on both sides, underscored his wisdom and his
00:15:50realism. His perfect battle at Chancellorsville showcased Lee's military prowess. The South didn't
00:15:56have the North's industrial capacity, railroads, wealth, or population, but it had some of the greatest
00:16:02military leadership in human history. In other words, Lee and the South, well, they were no losers.
00:16:13When the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861, an immediate question arose. What
00:16:19should the conflict be called? Now, the answer wasn't obvious. On April 15th, President Lincoln
00:16:24issued Proclamation 80, which referred to the attack on Sumter and various state secessions as, quote,
00:16:30combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.
00:16:34In a July 4th message to Congress, Lincoln referred to the war as, quote, a case of rebellion.
00:16:40He continued to use the term rebellion throughout the war, including in the Emancipation Proclamation,
00:16:45where he mentioned the rebellion against the United States. The words were political in nature.
00:16:50The Constitution conferred Lincoln emergency powers if he called it a rebellion. It also denied
00:16:56legitimacy to the South, implying that they were still part of the country. In 1880, when the War
00:17:02Department released the official records of the war, they titled it the War of the Rebellion, a compilation
00:17:07of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. During the war, the South had its own
00:17:12preferred terms, like the War for Southern Independence and the War between the States. After the first
00:17:18Battle of Manassas, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson told his troops, I hope by your future deeds
00:17:24and bearing you'll be handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in this, our Second War of Independence.
00:17:30Farewell. Harris von Bork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General Jeb Stewart, titled his book,
00:17:37Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence. Now, whether it was a rebellion or a war for independence
00:17:42depends on who you ask, but it certainly was not a civil war. Civil wars are between two sides that
00:17:49want to control the country. The Russian Civil War was between whites and reds over who would control
00:17:55the Russian Empire. The Chinese Civil War was between communists and nationalists over who would
00:18:00control China. The English Civil War is between parliamentary forces and the king over who would
00:18:05have supreme power over England. There's no evidence whatsoever the South had any interest in
00:18:10occupying or controlling Boston or New York or the entire country. They wanted to leave the Union for
00:18:17various reasons, which they believed they had the legal right to do. The matter at hand was whether
00:18:23the United States was a collection of sovereign states or a centralized union of subordinate states.
00:18:30That wasn't really a question in the early years of the Republic. According to Catherine Drinker
00:18:35Bowen's book, Miracle at Philadelphia, when the Constitutional Convention's Committee of Style
00:18:40and Arrangement originally drafted the preamble, it had no reference to we the people of the United States.
00:18:45In fact, what the articles drafted by the convention had said was, quote,
00:18:49we the undersigned delegates of the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, etc.
00:18:54And so on down the list of the 13. But they scrapped that idea because it was unlikely that they
00:18:59would get all 13 states to ratify the new constitution. So the real history of how the term
00:19:05we the people was born is that it was a technicality. Back then, you wouldn't have said,
00:19:11the United States is a place, you would have said, these United States are a place. And that is a
00:19:18very important distinction. In that context, it's not surprising that by 1794, just six years after the
00:19:24Constitution's ratification, two U.S. senators, Rufus King of New York and Oliver Ellsworth of
00:19:30Connecticut, approached Senator John Taylor of Virginia and informed him they wanted to break up
00:19:35the Union already. They recognized a huge divide between the northern and southern states. And it
00:19:40wasn't just cultural differences between the agrarian south and the urbanized north. They
00:19:46noticed major political and economic differences, too. In 1883, more than two decades after the outbreak
00:19:53of the war, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts acknowledged that everybody involved in the ratification
00:19:58of the Constitution would have assumed states could leave, writing, quote, when the Constitution was
00:20:03adopted by the votes of states at Philadelphia and accepted by the votes of states and popular
00:20:08conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton on
00:20:13the one side to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything
00:20:18but an experiment entered upon by the states and from which each and every state had the right peaceably
00:20:24to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised. Their historical record proves this
00:20:30point. Between the founding of the country in 1861, northern states threatened to secede at least five
00:20:37times. In 1803, a group of Massachusetts-based Federalists known as the Essex Junto threatened to
00:20:42secede because they feared the Louisiana Purchase would dilute their political power. Aaron Burr,
00:20:48who was Thomas Jefferson's vice president, was their leader. In 1807, they threatened to leave again
00:20:53after Jefferson put an embargo on Great Britain in France. During the War of 1812, New England
00:20:59once again threatened to secede because of the British blockade of their ports. Some states
00:21:04considered independently making peace with the British. Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to
00:21:09place their militias under federal command. They claimed the federal government didn't have the power
00:21:13to do it. In the 1840s, northern politicians published a solemn appeal to the peoples of free states,
00:21:20arguing that the annexation of Texas will be, quote, so injurious to the interests and abhorrent to the
00:21:25feelings of the people of the free states as, in our opinion, not only inevitably to result in a
00:21:31dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it. Former President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts
00:21:36signed that document. After the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, New England threatened to
00:21:42nullify the law, and some leaders called for secession again. Before the Civil War, the North
00:21:49issued credible threats to secede at least five separate times. As the great Civil War historian
00:21:54Shelby Foote put it, quote, if the states had known that they couldn't get out, they never would have gotten
00:21:59in.
00:22:05Robert E. Lee witnessed the 1860 election results from a U.S. Army post in San Antonio, Texas.
00:22:12As the fervor over secession began to boil over, Lee wrote his father-in-law, quote,
00:22:17if the Union is dissolved, which God in his mercy forbid, I shall return to you. According to historian
00:22:23Alan Gwelzo, as the states of the Deep South left the Union, Lee complained that the behavior of the
00:22:29cotton states was wholly beyond any justification, and he was worried that their selfish and
00:22:35dictatorial bearing would make life for Virginia miserable should she determine to coalesce with
00:22:41them. In a letter to one of his cousins, he wrote, secession is revolution. He wrote that, quote,
00:22:46our people will destroy a government inaugurated by the blood and wisdom of our patriot fathers that
00:22:51has given us peace and prosperity at home, power and security abroad, and under which we have
00:22:55acquired a colossal strength unequaled in the history of mankind. According to Gwelzo, Lee wished to live
00:23:02under no other government and to have no other flag than the star-spangled banner, but if that government
00:23:07was now going to disappear, then the only alternative was to go back in sorrow to my people and share
00:23:13the
00:23:13misery of my native land. Like so many Americans from this period, Lee was a patriotic American and a war
00:23:20hero, but he saw himself first and foremost as a Virginia. On February 6, 1861, David Twiggs, the
00:23:28commander of the U.S. Army's Department of Texas, surrendered his entire command to the Confederates
00:23:33and ordered all federal troops to abandon their posts. Lee refused to leave Fort Mason and pledged
00:23:39to defend his post at all hazards. This is because the legality of secession mattered to him and because
00:23:45his native Virginia hadn't seceded yet. As he left Texas, Lee declared he was returning to Virginia to
00:23:51resign and go to planting corn, and though he would never bear arms against the U.S., he might carry
00:23:57a
00:23:57musket in defense of my native state Virginia. Lee's attitude tells us a lot about why not one single
00:24:05Confederate leader was ever convicted of treason, because it was commonly understood at the time
00:24:09that it was not treason. The legal case for secession goes back to before the Constitution,
00:24:15when 13 U.S. colonies decided to secede from the British crown. After winning their war for
00:24:20independence, those colonies then formed the Articles of Confederation, which required that any
00:24:25changes to the Union be adopted by the Congress in all the states. But that never happened, and most
00:24:31states just seceded. The background-led historian Charles Francis Adams Jr., who served as a colonel in the
00:24:39Union Army, would say, quote, if Robert E. Lee was a traitor, so also indisputably were George
00:24:44Washington, Oliver Cromwell, John Hamden, and William of Orange. Adams goes on, George Washington furnishes
00:24:50a precedent at every point. A Virginian like Lee, he was also a British subject. He had fought under the
00:24:56British flag, as Lee had fought under that of the United States. When in 1776 Virginia seceded from the
00:25:02British Empire, he went with his state, just as Lee went with it 85 years later. Subsequently,
00:25:07Washington commanded armies in the field designated by those opposed to them as rebels, and whose
00:25:13descendants now glorified them as the rebels of 76, which as Lee later commanded and at last surrendered,
00:25:20much larger armies also designated rebels by those they confronted. Except in their outcome, the cases
00:25:26were therefore precisely alike, and logic is logic. So the only difference is that Washington won his war,
00:25:33and Lee lost his. The courts basically agreed with that analysis. After the Civil War, many northern
00:25:41newspapers, including the Boston Daily Advertiser and the New York Times, published materials encouraging
00:25:45the government to put Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, on trial for treason. And for their
00:25:51part, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that a trial would, quote, render traitors infamous and have it
00:25:56judicially settled that secession is illegal. We would have learned a lot about the country
00:26:01if they would have done it. According to University of Virginia law professor Cynthia Nicoletti,
00:26:07no one knew for sure whether secession was legal and that any treason prosecution would rise and fall
00:26:13on that question. Indeed, she quotes George Washington Woodward, chief justice of the Pennsylvania
00:26:18Supreme Court, who wrote in a letter to a lawyer representing a Confederate senator, quote,
00:26:22The doctrine of state rights will have a severe test and may find a strange vindication in that trial.
00:26:29Secession has yet to be defined. Hitherto, it has been a toy of politicians, and they have dodged
00:26:34everything like a definition. But is secession treason? That's a grand question. If it is not,
00:26:39war in support of it cannot be. If the right to withdraw existed, it must have included the right of
00:26:45defense, so that levying war to defend a Confederacy founded in secession could not be
00:26:50levying war against the government of the U.S. But this is on the assumption that secession is
00:26:54something less than treason, which I neither aver nor deny. Many northern politicians were certain
00:27:01the government would lose. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who was most famous for getting
00:27:06caned on the Senate floor, said, The tried Jefferson Davis would be the nay plus ultra of folly.
00:27:11The Supreme Court's chief justice said, If you bring these Confederate leaders to trial,
00:27:15it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion.
00:27:21Nicoletti writes that even Lincoln himself was concerned about the possibility that a trial might
00:27:25backfire. Quote, Before his untimely death, President Lincoln had remarked that Davis's
00:27:30flight from Richmond in April was a good thing because it forestalled the political and legal
00:27:34difficulties that might attend a high-profile treason prosecution. I'm bound to oppose the escape of
00:27:40Jeff Davis, Lincoln had reportedly told General William T. Sherman. But if you could manage to
00:27:45have him slip out unbeknownst, like, I guess it wouldn't hurt me much. At a cabinet meeting at the
00:27:51White House on July 18th, there was no consensus at the White House as to how to proceed. President
00:27:56Andrew Johnson, who assumed office after Lincoln's assassination, pressed for a clear answer, but he
00:28:01didn't get one. The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, stated that there was, quote,
00:28:06A great diversity of opinion in the matter as to whether Davis should be tried first for the
00:28:11crime of high treason. Ultimately, Andrew Johnson opted to proceed tentatively with a treason
00:28:16prosecution. For his part, Davis was eager for trial because he believed secession was legal
00:28:20and he wanted vindication in court. Davis, in fact, hoped that he would be arrested in 1861
00:28:26after his home state of Mississippi seceded so that he could demonstrate the legality of secession.
00:28:31But no one arrested him, and he instead was chosen to be president of the new Confederate
00:28:35states of America. That's why Davis, unlike Robert E. Lee, never requested a presidential
00:28:40pardon. He genuinely thought that he'd be vindicated in court. Jefferson Davis was charged
00:28:44with treason and held for two years at Fort Monroe in Virginia, but never got his day in court.
00:28:49Over time, popular support for prosecution waned, and the Johnson administration was far from certain
00:28:54that a Virginia jury would convict Davis, or even that the Supreme Court would definitively
00:28:58rule that secession was illegal. Davis took the surrender as an unequivocal win. Quote,
00:29:03a sovereign state cannot commit treason, he wrote. The government early discovered that if this
00:29:08issue came before the Supreme Court, it would lose its case, and I should be acquitted. So none of the
00:29:14indictments were ever tried. Shortly after Davis's case was dropped in April of 1869, the Supreme Court
00:29:19ruled in a separate, unrelated case, Texas v. White, that secession is indeed unconstitutional. As the
00:29:26court put it, the Constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible union composed of
00:29:31indestructible states. But it was a throwaway line in a case about bonds. There wasn't any
00:29:37significant discussion of secession during oral arguments or briefing. And the ruling attracted
00:29:42virtually no media attention because by that point it seemed like a dead issue. In short, the Supreme
00:29:47Court snuck in a ruling about the unconstitutionality of secession years after the lengthy public debate
00:29:53over Davis's trial made clear that in fact there was no consensus on that point in the country. And there
00:30:00of the 17th and 18th centuries was very different from the United States we know today. At the time,
00:30:05even many Northerners would have conceded that, at the minimum, the constitutionality of secession was
00:30:10a close call and that it would be a gross oversimplification, if not an outright falsehood,
00:30:16to call these men traitors.
00:30:22One of the great myths of the Civil War is that the South was somehow uniquely evil.
00:30:29Indeed, at the time, abolitionists aggressively pushed propaganda with exactly that message.
00:30:34As Thomas Fleming writes in A Disease in the Public Mind, A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil
00:30:39War,
00:30:40quote,
00:30:40The abolitionists convinced themselves, based on their evangelical experiences, that smearing the South's
00:30:46reputation in every possible way would create the anxiety that would lead to a mass conversion of the
00:30:51North to their crusade. The South was portrayed as a province ruled by Satan that would consume the North's
00:30:57soul if her citizens did not vow to expunge the sin of slavery. Meanwhile in the South, there was an
00:31:03intense fear of slave insurrections and race wars following the brutal uprising and revolution in
00:31:09present-day Haiti. Therefore, the Civil War, Fleming argues, is best understood as a product of a psychological disease
00:31:15that afflicted both the North and the South in different ways, which made rational dialogue
00:31:19impossible. Sound familiar? That mutual disease, he argues, is why only the US, unlike Great Britain
00:31:26and Brazil, fought a brutal war over slavery. And yet, long after the war, some of these over-the-top
00:31:32descriptions of the South as simply evil survive today. The cartoon version of history holds that
00:31:39Abraham Lincoln invaded the South because it had slaves. But just how peculiar was the South's
00:31:45peculiar institution, as it was called? Well, not very, as it turns out. The North had slaves too.
00:31:51According to the book, It Wasn't About Slavery by Samuel Mitchum Jr., in 1703, more than 42 percent of
00:31:58New York City households owned slaves, a ratio only surpassed by Charleston, South Carolina. In Connecticut,
00:32:04Mitchum says one-half of all ministers, lawyers, and public officials owned slaves. By 1783, one-quarter
00:32:10of Connecticut families owned slaves, and one out of every 14 people in Rhode Island was a slave.
00:32:15Many prominent Northerners, including Founding Fathers, owned slaves. This includes the first signer
00:32:20of the Declaration of Independence and future Massachusetts Governor John Hancock, who had two
00:32:25or three household slaves. Other notable slaveholders from Massachusetts include Cotton Mather,
00:32:30who learned about inoculation from one of his slaves. Slavery in the North was awful. Massachusetts
00:32:36and Connecticut set curfews for black people. According to the book, Black Bondage in the North,
00:32:41in the 1700s, Connecticut required blacks to be off the streets by nine at night and to remain within the
00:32:47towns to which they belonged. Slaves who broke curfew in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island
00:32:53were flogged. In New Hampshire, the penalty was ten lashes. In New York, it was a misdemeanor for slaves to
00:32:58gather in groups larger than four. And in Long Island, they could not travel more than a mile
00:33:03from home without a pass. Similar laws existed in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. By the time
00:33:09Abraham Lincoln was elected, slavery had been banned in most, but not all, Union states.
00:33:14It's important to point out that while radical abolitionists in the 1850s were calling for the
00:33:18South to immediately free all of their slaves, the Northern states didn't end slavery that way.
00:33:23For the most part, the manumission of slaves in the North was a gradual process. The laws emancipated
00:33:30people born in the future and were designed so Northern slaveholders didn't lose money.
00:33:34In many cases, Northern slaveholders just sold their slaves to the South.
00:33:39One overlooked fact is that early attempts to curb the slave trade had Southern support.
00:33:44In his 1806 State of the Union, President Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian and a slave owner,
00:33:49called on Congress to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation
00:33:53in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending
00:33:58inhabitants of Africa. The next year, the United States Congress voted to abolish the slave trade.
00:34:03The bill passed the House with 96% of representatives yes, including massive support from Southern members
00:34:08of Congress. There are two reasons why Southern members of Congress voted this way. First, at the time,
00:34:14many people in the South wanted to end slavery. By 1827, more than 100 anti-slavery groups existed in
00:34:19the South, mostly under the banner of colonization societies which advocated for sending freed slaves
00:34:25back to Africa. Second, and more importantly, profits from the slave trade weren't going to the South.
00:34:31The slave trade was a Northern business and Jefferson's bill was ineffective at stopping it.
00:34:36According to the book Black Cargoes by Daniel Mannix, an English captain reported that the port of Lamu,
00:34:42in the slave market of Zanzibar, was packed with, quote, enterprising Americans whose star-spangled
00:34:48banner may be seen streaming in the wind where other nations would not deign to traffic.
00:34:54By 1858, as Abraham Lincoln was running for Senate in Illinois, there were 24 American ships in the
00:34:59Zanzibar Harbor as against three British. There are two reasons the British Navy, which at the time was
00:35:06trying to end the slave trade, couldn't stop American slavers. First, American ships were extremely fast and
00:35:11maneuverable. And second, President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts forbade the British from
00:35:16boarding any American flagged ships. The result was huge profits for Massachusetts-based slave traders.
00:35:23Mannix writes that, quote, so many of the ships hailed from Salem, Massachusetts, that the Zanzibarians
00:35:28thought all white men came from this one New England town. English officers discovered to their
00:35:34indignation that Great Britain was considered to be a suburb of Salem. The Americans traded for slaves in
00:35:40ivory with a cheap caligo turned out in vast quantities by the New England cotton mills.
00:35:45Even today, cotton is called Americani in Zanzibar. Moving slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and Brazil
00:35:52was big money for northerners. This part of the slave trade was its own version of the famous triangle
00:35:58trade. Cheap southern cotton was shipped north to textile mills, which northerners turned into
00:36:03manufactured textile goods. Northern slave traders traded those textiles for slaves in Zanzibar,
00:36:09who were then trafficked to the Caribbean for huge profits. The North was profiting from slavery on
00:36:14all three corners of the triangle. This continued for decades. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that by the
00:36:211850s, quote, the fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States and
00:36:26centered at New York City. In 1862, literally during the Civil War, the New York Journal of Commerce
00:36:32reported that New York was, quote, the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce,
00:36:37although the cities of Portland, Maine, and Boston are second to her in that distinction.
00:36:43As New England was making money off the global slave trade, other northern states were passing
00:36:47racist legislation. In Lincoln's home state of Illinois, black people couldn't attend public
00:36:52schools, couldn't testify against white people in court, or bear arms. If three or more of them
00:36:57gathered to dance, they were fined and lashed. The purpose of these laws, which were known as the
00:37:02Illinois Black Codes, was to discourage black people from moving to the state. In 1853, Illinois
00:37:08made things more explicit with a black exclusion law that, quote, prohibited blacks from coming into
00:37:13the state with the intention of living there. Punishment proved especially harsh in that violators
00:37:18were subject to penalties that amounted to forced labor, essentially slavery. Illinois law was so extreme
00:37:24that it was a crime for blacks to settle in that state without a certificate of freedom, which cost
00:37:28a thousand dollars, the equivalent of about forty thousand dollars today. The Black Codes were so
00:37:33harsh that even some southern newspapers objected. The New Orleans Bee called the Illinois Black Codes
00:37:38an act of special and savage ruthlessness. One of the key figures in passing the Black Codes was a
00:37:44state representative named John A. Logan. Logan was an enthusiastic enforcer of the Fugitive Slave Act
00:37:49and an open racist. Abraham Lincoln later made him a Union General. After the war, Logan reinvented himself
00:37:56as a radical Republican senator, but it's hard to imagine that Johnny Logan held contemporary woke views
00:38:02on black people. Many northern or free states enacted black laws or exclusionary codes similar to Illinois.
00:38:09Indiana and Oregon banned black settlement in their state constitutions. According to Eugene Berwanger's book,
00:38:16The Frontier Against Slavery, quote, The exact extent of racial prejudice as a factor encouraging
00:38:22limitation of slavery is indeterminable. The average man in all ages does not record his thoughts for
00:38:28posterity and is even less likely to do so on such thorny problems as race relations. Yet, if 79.5
00:38:34percent
00:38:35of the people in Illinois, Indiana, Oregon and Kansas voted to exclude the free Negroes simply because of
00:38:40their prejudice, surely this antipathy influenced their decision to support the non-extension of slavery.
00:38:47As Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, put it, quote, The motive of those who
00:38:52protested against the extension of slavery had always been concern for the welfare of the white man and
00:38:57not an unnatural sympathy for the Negro. In other words, many northern and western voters opposed the
00:39:03expansion of slavery into their states and territories, not primarily out of moral opposition to slavery itself,
00:39:09but because they didn't want black neighbors. Generally speaking, in the first half of the 1800s,
00:39:15many southerners supported emancipation and the relocation of slaves, in many cases because they
00:39:20thought the black populations of their states were getting too big. After Nat Turner's violent
00:39:24slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, thousands of Virginians petitioned their government to end slavery.
00:39:31Charles County Quakers issued a petition calling for a new law declaring that all persons born in the
00:39:36state after some period to be fixed by law shall be free. Virginia's governor at the time wrote in his
00:39:42diary that before I leave this government, I will have contrived to have a law pass gradually abolishing
00:39:49slavery in this state. The Richmond Enquirer at the time called slavery the greatest evil which can
00:39:54scourge our land. The Virginia House of Delegates failed to end slavery then, but it wasn't by an
00:40:00overwhelming vote. Many people didn't realize that the windowed-end slavery through the legal process
00:40:05likely peaked right at the beginning of the country and into the early 1800s. In 1794, the incentives
00:40:12radically changed after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. That invention, more than anything else,
00:40:17dramatically increased the demand for slave labor in the south because it made cotton cultivation vastly
00:40:22more profitable. As the Civil War approached, the hundreds of anti-slavery groups that had formed in
00:40:28the mid-1820s had mostly gone away and so had any possibility that southern legislatures would end
00:40:34slavery on their own. The debate after Nat Turner's rebellion was the last major attempt to do so.
00:40:41And so slavery persisted for decades, though many Virginians knew it was wrong. One of them was Robert E. Lee
00:40:47himself. According to historian Alan Guelzo, Lee, quote, regarded slavery as a moral and political evil,
00:40:53which, however, he was content to leave in the hands of God to resolve. Lee's slaves were inherited,
00:40:59one slave family from his mother and 197 others from his father-in-law, G. W. P. Custis. In 1862,
00:41:08during the war, Lee, quote, completed the emancipation of the Custis slaves, which he was obligated to do
00:41:12by his father-in-law's will, and then freed his own, which he was not.
00:41:22The war was not exclusively about slavery. That is just a fact. It could not have been. Right up
00:41:28through the shelling of Fort Sumter, the North was profiting massively from the slave trade.
00:41:33Four Union states had legal slavery. But if the war was not about slavery, then what was it about?
00:41:39Well, the answer depends on who you ask. Though interestingly, Presidents Lincoln and Davis
00:41:43seemed to agree. Confederate President Jefferson Davis said, quote, we are not fighting for slavery.
00:41:47We are fighting for independence and that or extermination we will have. Lincoln himself
00:41:51told newspaper editor Horace Greeley, quote, my paramount object in this struggle is to save
00:41:56the Union and is not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing
00:42:01any slave, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do
00:42:05it. And if I
00:42:06could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. In other words,
00:42:11according to both presidents, the war was fundamentally about the question of keeping
00:42:15or ending the Union. The key argument against the idea that the Civil War was solely about
00:42:20slavery is that at the time of secession in late 1860 and early 1861, neither the incoming
00:42:25Republican administration nor mainstream Northern opinion advocated for the immediate abolition of
00:42:30slavery where it already existed in Southern states. The Republican Party platform of 1860
00:42:35opposed the extension of slavery to the territories, but didn't call for abolition of slavery in the
00:42:40South. But even if it had and stood a reasonable chance of happening, which it didn't, at least
00:42:45in the short run, most Southerners would not have been affected anyway. Only about one third of
00:42:50Southerners were from households that had slaves. The idea that 360,000 white men were going to line
00:42:56up and die for the sake of rescuing black people in the South is just absurd and ahistorical.
00:43:03In the words of the great Civil War historian Shelby Foote, quote,
00:43:06no soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves. The soldiers' diaries support this.
00:43:12Haros von Bork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General Jim Stewart, wrote a 558-page history of his
00:43:20experiences in the war. His memoirs contained no references to slavery at all and only one to a
00:43:25slave in which he passed a large plantation which, I was told, belonged to a free Negro, one of the
00:43:30richest
00:43:30men of the county who was himself the owner of numerous slaves. The historian James McPherson
00:43:36went through the diaries of more than a thousand soldiers from both sides for his book For Cause
00:43:41and Comrades. He found that, quote, for Union and Confederate volunteers alike, abstract symbols
00:43:47or concepts such as country, flag, constitution, liberty, and legacy of the revolution figured
00:43:53prominently in their explanations of why they enlisted. For Confederate soldiers, a more concrete,
00:43:59visceral, and perhaps more powerful motive, also came into play. The defense of home and
00:44:04hearth against an invading enemy. They signed up to fight out of duty, a concept that was
00:44:11a lot stronger 150 years ago than it is today. Many Union soldiers echoed Lincoln's calls for
00:44:18preserving the Union. McPherson found a Union soldier from Philadelphia who wrote that,
00:44:22This contest is not the North against the South. It is government against anarchy, law against
00:44:28disorder. Another from Michigan joined against the wishes of his family because he wanted to join,
00:44:33quote, all true patriots to sustain her government. Another from Michigan wrote that,
00:44:38If the Union is split up, the government is destroyed and we will be a ruined nation. Do not borrow
00:44:43any
00:44:44trouble about me. If I die in the battlefield, I do so with pleasure. And he did die in battle
00:44:49the next
00:44:50year. McPherson found immigrants lamenting that secession would make the country, quote,
00:44:55as bad as the deeply divided German states and native-born Americans who said, quote,
00:45:00Our fathers made this country. We their children are to save it. McPherson notes that relatively few
00:45:06Union volunteers mentioned the slavery issue when they enlisted. The same is true for Southern soldiers.
00:45:12McPherson estimates that just 20 percent of Confederate soldiers even considered slavery
00:45:16a cause worth fighting for in the first place. Most were focused on repelling an invasion, quote,
00:45:21Defense of the homeland was one of the strongest of combat motivations. Even among soldiers from
00:45:27slave-holding families, only one-third explicitly voiced pro-slavery convictions. McPherson writes that
00:45:32many Virginians shared Robert E. Lee's view that they wouldn't fight unless it be in defense of
00:45:37Virginia. Another Virginian wrote, I would give all I've got just to be in the front rank of the first
00:45:43brigade that marches against the invading foe who now pollute the sacred soil of my native state with
00:45:48their unholy tread. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he did it as a wartime
00:45:54measure to suppress the rebellion. It's just as notable for what it did not do as what it did do.
00:46:01It did
00:46:01not free the slaves. No, slavery continued in areas under federal control, which included Delaware,
00:46:07Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and parts of Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee. In practice,
00:46:12it only freed about 100,000 people out of a pool of millions. Lincoln did it because he wanted to
00:46:16prevent European powers from forming an alliance with Confederacy, which seemed likely at the time
00:46:21and would have dramatically changed the South's fortunes. So the Proclamation was a brilliant political
00:46:27maneuver that undercut the Confederacy's diplomatic efforts to court Europe because it made intervention
00:46:32politically untenable for European leaders who almost all opposed slavery. Now, wait a second here.
00:46:38We are not saying the war had nothing to do with slavery because that would also be ridiculous. It's
00:46:44just as much a cartoon caricature as what your idiot teachers taught you in school. No, slavery was a
00:46:50factor that led to war and it was a major factor. South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for
00:46:56Secession references slavery six times. After seceding, South Carolina immediately made an
00:47:02appeal to other slaveholding states to secede and in its appeal referenced slavery no less than 32 times.
00:47:08The South Carolina legislatures literally wrote, quote, slaveholding states cannot be safe in
00:47:13subjection to non-slaveholding states. When General Claiborne suggested freeing the slaves to fight for the
00:47:19Confederacy, his fellow officers were shocked and appalled. Slavery was a factor in the war and probably a
00:47:26significant one, but it was not the only factor. The South left for three other reasons too. First,
00:47:32there was the balance of political power. In the Republic's first 72 years, slaveholding Southerners
00:47:38occupied the White House approximately two-thirds of the time, or 49 years out of 72. Some of the biggest
00:47:44figures in American politics were from the South, including Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and John C.
00:47:49Calhoun. To the extent that there were Northern presidents, many were sympathetic to the South,
00:47:54like Pennsylvania's James Buchanan. But demographics is destiny. As the Northern states surged in
00:47:59population, driven by higher birth rates and massive waves of European immigration, the South's
00:48:05longstanding political dominance collapsed. The South's share of the House of Representatives dropped
00:48:10from roughly 48 percent at the founding to 38 percent by 1860. For decades, Congress maintained balance
00:48:16in the Senate by adding slave and free states at the same time. But after the country's massive
00:48:21territorial expansion as a result of the Mexican-American War, that balance was doomed. There
00:48:26was no need for slave labor in places like Arizona and New Mexico, and so the South's relative power
00:48:31declined quickly. California was admitted as a free state in 1850. Free Oregon entered in 1859.
00:48:38Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, coupled with the rapid rise of the Republican Party, which was a purely
00:48:45sectional Northern organization at the time signaled the end of Southern dominance in national politics.
00:48:51Second, the South had a financial motive. At the outbreak of the war, the American South produced
00:48:56roughly three-quarters of the world's cotton. From 1830 to 1860, cotton was by far the country's top
00:49:03export. It comprised literally half or more of all U.S. exports. Ninety percent of exports to Great Britain
00:49:09came only from the South. And by the 1830s, more than 80 percent of the cotton grown in the South
00:49:14was being exported. At the time, the biggest source of revenue for the U.S. government was the tariff.
00:49:20This was great policy for Northern states, since their tariffs protected their manufacturers from
00:49:25foreign competition. But it was terrible for the export-dependent South because retaliatory tariffs
00:49:30restricted their access to the foreign markets, and because their economy was built around agricultural
00:49:35exports, they had higher demand for foreign manufactured goods. So how much of a factor
00:49:40was money in the decision to secede? On Christmas Day 1860, the South Carolina legislature issued an
00:49:47address to the other slave-holding states calling on them to leave the Union. One of their major
00:49:52grievances was, quote, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of
00:49:57subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports,
00:50:04not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue, to promote, by prohibitions,
00:50:10Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufacturers. The role that economics played
00:50:16in secession was obvious to outsiders. Karl Marx complained at the time that London's biggest newspapers,
00:50:23including The Times, The Economist, The Examiner, The Saturday Review, were arguing that, quote,
00:50:28The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is further not for any principle,
00:50:33does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact, turns on Northern lust for sovereignty.
00:50:39A third reason was the massive cultural divide between the regions. The South was rural and agricultural,
00:50:46the North was urban, industrial, and had huge numbers of European immigrants. Increasingly,
00:50:51they hated each other, something that became obvious on one cool Virginia morning in October 1859.
00:50:59Robert E. Lee was harvesting the rye crop in his fields in Arlington when a mounted soldier showed
00:51:04up and handed him a letter from the Secretary of War. The night before, around 1.30 in the morning,
00:51:09the Federal Armory and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, had been taken by a group of armed men.
00:51:14A train passing through it sent telegrams on to Washington warning of 150 armed abolitionists
00:51:20who have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards, and to arm poor whites
00:51:25who are
00:51:25similarly aggrieved with the slave system. They were led by a radical abolitionist and insurrectionist
00:51:31named John Brown, who wanted to provoke a massive slave uprising across the South. It was Lee's job to
00:51:36take back Harper's Ferry with a company of 90 Marines, two howitzers, and a few local citizen
00:51:42militias from Maryland and Virginia. He had such little time to prepare that he wore civilian
00:51:47clothing and a top hat, and he commandeered a Baltimore and Ohio engine car to get there,
00:51:52riding with just one other officer, the conductor, and the train's fireman. When Lee arrived,
00:51:58Brown's revolution had failed to materialize. The raiders were trapped in an engine house. The
00:52:03Marines waited until morning and then stormed the building. John Brown and four of his men were
00:52:07taken alive and later tried and executed. The South responded to the news with total heart.
00:52:13The Richmond Enquirer wrote, quote, The Southern people have heretofore disregarded the ravings of
00:52:19Northern fanatics because they believe such madness to be merely a pecuniary speculation. But the attack
00:52:24at Harper's Ferry shows that the Northern people mean more than words. Virginia's legislature awarded
00:52:31Lee a sword for his gallant conduct at Harper's Ferry. The North was euphoric. Ralph Waldo Emerson
00:52:38wrote that John Brown was an idealist who put his ideas into action. Henry David Thoreau compared
00:52:44Brown's execution to the crucifixion of Christ. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips, also of Massachusetts,
00:52:51called Harper's Ferry the Lexington of today, comparing it to the opening shots of the Revolutionary
00:52:56War and said Brown was the brave, frank, and sublime truster in God's right and absolute justice.
00:53:03Northerners raised money to pay for Brown's legal defense. Many of Brown's conspirators were protected
00:53:08by Republican governors in Northern states. The Northern response shook the South to its core.
00:53:13South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Secession specifically mentioned Northern states providing
00:53:18safe harbor for John Brown's accomplices. Other states complained of Northern aggression and hostility.
00:53:24The attack on Harpers Ferry proved to them that the cultural bond it once shared with the North
00:53:31no longer existed.
00:53:37For as long as political scientists and historians have been polled on the best presidents,
00:53:42Abraham Lincoln has topped the charts in every category. Modern presidents can't help but compare
00:53:47themselves to him. But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a
00:53:54different future is possible. That is why I'm in this race. Not just to hold an office, but to gather
00:54:01with you to transform a nation. In school, kids are taught that Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator,
00:54:07a champion of equality, a defender of democracy. To his contemporaries, he was the ape baboon of the
00:54:14prairie, a coarse, vulgar joker, a simple Susan, and the craftiest and most dishonest politician
00:54:21that ever disgraced the White House. Now, in reality, he was none of these things. Although he may
00:54:27have been a coarse and vulgar joker, it's hard to know for sure. The greatest event in Lincoln's life,
00:54:33what turned him from man to myth, was his assassination. In the words of historian Michael Burlingame,
00:54:38quote, canonization began almost immediately. Within days of his death, his life was being
00:54:44compared to Jesus Christ. He was shot on Good Friday, and by Easter Sunday, a prominent American
00:54:49pastor said, Heaven rejoices this Easter morning in the resurrection of our lost leader. Referring not
00:54:54to Jesus, but to Abraham Lincoln. At the 1909 Lincoln centennial, Illinois school children recited
00:55:01verses calling him a peasant prince, a masterpiece of God. His oversized statue keeps watch over the
00:55:08National Mall in Washington, D.C. today. But in 1863, no one in America would have recognized
00:55:14the Lincoln we know today. Back then, it wasn't even clear if he was going to win re-election.
00:55:18He was, in the words of Michael Burlingame, the most activist president in history, who transformed
00:55:24the presidency and the country. When he, quote, expanded the army and navy, spent two million dollars
00:55:29without congressional appropriation, blockaded southern ports, closed post offices to treasonable
00:55:34correspondences, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in several locations, ordered the arrest
00:55:39and military detention of suspected traitors, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New
00:55:44Year's Day, 1863. To do all these things, Lincoln broke an assortment of laws and ignored one
00:55:49constitutional provision after another. He was hated by southerners, but also loathed by many northerners.
00:55:55The abolitionist Wendell Phillips called Lincoln, a huckster in politics, a first-rate,
00:56:00second-rate man. So Lincoln was, in a word at the time, controversial. He was also a human,
00:56:08and a flawed one, like us all. He held contemporary views on race. He believed blacks were inferior to
00:56:15whites. In one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he said, quote, I will say then that I am not,
00:56:20nor ever have I been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the
00:56:26white and black races. That I am not, nor have I ever been, in favor of making voters or jurors
00:56:32of
00:56:32Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say,
00:56:38in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races,
00:56:41which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political
00:56:46equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live while they do remain together, there must be the position
00:56:52of superior and inferior, and I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position
00:56:58assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion, I do not perceive that because the white man is
00:57:03to
00:57:03have the superior position, the Negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not
00:57:09want a Negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. The crowd laughed at that
00:57:16answer.
00:57:16It's really hard to know what Abraham Lincoln really thought, because he was an incredible politician.
00:57:21Every word he said, every action he took, he did so knowing who his audience was and
00:57:26what their response would be. This is very important and often overlooked. Historians in 100 years might
00:57:32look back at Barack Obama in 2008, and based on his words, think he did oppose gay marriage because
00:57:38he said he did. But of course, he was pandering to an audience. He was a politician. Lincoln and Obama
00:57:46might have more in common than just being tall, gangly, self-made lawyers from Illinois.
00:57:50But we do know that in the end, Lincoln did not free the slaves. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation
00:57:56Proclamation, he still believed that, quote, the only long-term solution to slavery was voluntary
00:58:01colonization. On March 6th, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sent a special message to Congress urging the
00:58:08adoption of a joint resolution that would offer federal financial support to any state voluntarily
00:58:13adopting the gradual abolishment of slavery, with pecuniary aid provided to compensate owners
00:58:19for the inconvenience public and private caused by the change. In total, Abraham Lincoln believed
00:58:25that slavery was a moral and political evil. He believed it should end gradually rather than
00:58:31immediately. And he supported the idea of colonization or sending freed black people to Africa or elsewhere
00:58:38as part of the solution. In other words, Abraham Lincoln had the exact same views on slavery as Robert E.
00:58:44Lee.
00:58:45After the war, Robert E. Lee received a presidential pardon and returned to Virginia, where he took
00:58:50up the presidency of what is now Washington and Lee University, a role many historians regard as the
00:58:54happiest period of his life, far removed from the burdens of command. At the moment of surrender at
00:59:00Appomattox, Lee could have urged his devoted soldiers to scatter into the Appalachians, waging a guerrilla
00:59:06war that might have dragged on for decades, sapping northern resources and claiming countless more lives.
00:59:11Instead, true to his character, he chose the path of honor and, remarkably, reconciliation with the Union.
00:59:18He urged his men to lay down arms, return home, and rebuild as loyal citizens.
00:59:24Today, efforts to erase Lee from history often stem from sheer historical illiteracy, but a deeper motive lurks.
00:59:32Resentment towards a man who embodies virtues increasingly rare in modern America.
00:59:37They hate him, not for his flaws, but because he represents unattainable ideals.
00:59:44A tactical genius, a man of unyielding duty, honor and dignity. A Southerner whose leadership at
00:59:51Chancellorsville still echoes in military academies worldwide. They know they'll never measure up.
00:59:57No statues will rise for fleeting figures like Mark Milley or anyone else, but Lee's legacy endures,
01:00:05outlasting the vandals who would topple his monuments or even disturb his faithful horse Traveler's grave.
01:00:12In the end, Robert E. Lee is a reflection of the Civil War itself, far more nuanced and multifaceted
01:00:18than the simplistic tales spun in high school classrooms or viral videos. A full reckoning with
01:00:24the real history, such as Shelby Foote's epic 1.2 million word trilogy spanning 3,000 pages,
01:00:31demands depths that no textbook or hour-long internet video can capture. The mainstream narrative is a
01:00:37cartoon. The war was never a straightforward crusade against Southern evil. Secession was not
01:00:42categorically treason. Abraham Lincoln was not a messianic figure. The story most Americans have
01:00:49heard is a fairy tale, but one thing is true. Wars have consequences, and victors shape the story.
01:00:57That is the enduring lesson of the Civil War.
01:01:13Married to make it to the USSR.
01:01:14I will cue the story to the USSR.
01:01:14The Civil War
01:01:14The Civil War
01:01:14The Civil War
01:01:14A
01:01:14The Civil War
01:01:14Sixty
01:01:14The Civil War
01:01:15The Civil War
01:01:15A
01:01:15A
01:01:15The Civil War
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