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History With Matt Walsh S01E03
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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
00:00:16of 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, they 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
00:01:08the greatest 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.
00:01:18But 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.
00:01:27In 1988, Hank Williams Jr. released a top ten hit called, If the South Would Have Won.
00:01:32But during the woke upheavals of the last decade, the story really changed.
00:01:37And the statues and flags 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 everywhere else, is a cartoon
00:02:17caricature.
00:02:18I can't breathe. Robert E. Lee represents 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.
00:02:36But 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.
00:03:11Imagine serving as an infantryman in a battle where your enemy outnumbers your side two to one.
00:03:17And not only that, your enemy is better trained.
00:03:21They're well rested. And to make matters worse, they've caught your regiment and your entire army in a picture.
00:03:28They have a massive number of soldiers behind you and in front of you, perfectly positioned.
00:03:34As an infantryman in this scenario, all you can do is follow orders, march where you're told to march, and
00:03:40shoot when you see the enemy.
00:03:42So, that's what you do.
00:03:45Then imagine that, after a week of the most intense fighting of your life, you realize that your side has
00:03:51somehow emerged victorious.
00:03:53In 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 during the Battle of Chancellorsville, which lasted from
00:04:07April 30th to May 6th, 1863.
00:04:11On May 11th, Myers, who served as a sergeant with the 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiment, wrote a letter to his
00:04:17brother and sister.
00:04:18Quote, The 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, though the Lord spared
00:04:39my life.
00:04:40Although the Confederacy lost more than 13,000 soldiers at Chancellorsville, as 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 and one of the most
00:04:53impressive military victories of all time.
00:04:56The historic victory was the result of the leadership of Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern
00:05:02Virginia.
00:05:03It's widely regarded as one of the most brilliant tactical victories in American military history, often called Lee's Perfect Battle.
00:05:10It's referenced in books like the West Point Atlas of American Wars, and it continues to be studied in military
00:05:15academies today
00:05:16for its demonstration of outmaneuvering 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 war hero Henry
00:05:41Light Horse Harry Lee.
00:05:43From a young age, it was obvious that he was a military genius.
00:05:47He graduated second in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point with zero demerits over four
00:05:53years 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 overseeing critical infrastructure projects for the federal government.
00:06:04He served in the Mexican-American War, where he performed so well under fire that he was promoted to colonel.
00:06:11After the war, he ran West Point and later commanded cavalry units in Texas.
00:06:16A decade later, in 1863, he found himself fighting the very army that he spent three decades serving.
00:06:22Many of the officers he commanded and fought against were students at West Point when he ran it.
00:06:27He needed a victory at Chancellorsville because he needed European support to break the naval blockade.
00:06:33His enemies sought to destroy Lee's army and reunite the country.
00:06:39The odds were in favor of the Union.
00:06:41Lee's men were facing starvation in Fredericksburg and he had just split his forces up, sending General James Longstreet and
00:06:48roughly 20,000 soldiers away to Suffolk to defend Richmond and secure more supplies.
00:06:52As the Union army converged on Chancellorsville, they had a substantial numerical advantage.
00:06:59Union forces began crossing the Rappahannock River in late April, laying pontoon bridges just south of Fredericksburg.
00:07:06At the same time, another Union column was marching east, crossing the Rapidan River.
00:07:11Roughly 70,000 Union soldiers ultimately converged at the Chancellorsville crossroads, moving towards Fredericksburg and the rear of the Confederate
00:07:18Army.
00:07:19Meanwhile, Hooker left a force in front of Lee at Fredericksburg under General John Sedgwick.
00:07:24It was clear that a massive battle was brewing.
00:07:27On the evening of April 29th, Jedediah Hotchkiss, a topographical engineer on Stonewall Jackson's staff, remarked,
00:07:34Tomorrow, tomorrow, death will hold high carnival.
00:07:37Faced with a vastly inferior strategic position, Lee had three options.
00:07:41Option one, he could attack Sedgwick's forces, roughly 40,000 men along with artillery that were directly in front of
00:07:48him at the Rappahannock River.
00:07:50But if the fighting lasted too long, the Union could move from the west and destroy the rear of the
00:07:55Confederate Army.
00:07:56Option two, he could retreat and head south to consolidate his forces.
00:08:01This was the safest maneuver, at least in the short term.
00:08:05Option three, he could split his forces and send Jackson's corps to the west, while leaving some small divisions at
00:08:12the front line, holding Sedgwick at bay.
00:08:16At the time, there were 70,000 Union soldiers over four corps who had moved into the Virginia wilderness, facing
00:08:23east.
00:08:25If Lee divided his army to attack those advancing Union forces in the woods, the main risk was that Sedgwick
00:08:31would advance and crush the small number of troops he left behind.
00:08:36Lee 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.
00:08:45William Calder, a soldier in the 2nd North Carolina Infantry, recorded the movement this way,
00:08:51We had no idea where we were going. A soldier never knows where he's going, nor what he's going to
00:08:55do, until the moment for action comes.
00:08:58They have only to trust in their commanders. On we went, through mud and over stumps, stumbling about in the
00:09:03dark, to the great danger of our heads and our shins.
00:09:07All the while, Union generals were congratulating one another. Bands played upbeat songs as soldiers cheered.
00:09:14But by the morning of May 1st, the mood changed. Jackson's army, advancing to the west, ran into Union brigades
00:09:21from the 5th Corps and 12th Corps, catching Hooker off guard.
00:09:25Although the Union maintained a numerical advantage, Hooker ordered his soldiers to pull back. Union generals couldn't believe Hooker's orders.
00:09:33In fact, Major General Henry Slocum, who was in charge of the 12th Corps, called the orders crazy and threatened
00:09:39to shoot the messenger who delivered the news.
00:09:41But ultimately, the generals obeyed. Hooker was still convinced that he was in the superior strategic position, but Lee was
00:09:48not done yet.
00:09:49Jackson proposed 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, consisting
00:10:03of 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 locals who mapped out a route in the wooded terrain.
00:10:18In his final dispatch to General Lee, Jackson wrote,
00:10:21The enemy has made a stand at Chancellor's, which is about two miles from Chancellorsville. I hope, as soon as
00:10:27practicable, 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, which were followed by
00:10:42bugle calls.
00:10:43Jackson's corps emerged suddenly from the woods.
00:10:4612,000 soldiers from the Union's 11th Corps were taken completely by surprise.
00:10:51Many of their trenches were 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.
00:11:00But they weren't completely defeated. It was dark, and they were in the woods, which complicated Jackson's efforts to crush
00:11:06them.
00:11:07Jackson decided to push forward anyway, and headed north to cut off the Union retreat.
00:11:11In fact, Jackson himself, along with some other officers, rode out ahead of the Confederate line to get a better
00:11:17sense for what the Union army was doing.
00:11:19Jackson was wounded by friendly fire and died eight days later.
00:11:25Jackson's profound final words were documented by the historian Shelby Foote.
00:11:31And he called the doctor and says,
00:11:33Dr. McGuire, my wife tells me I'm going to die today. Is that true?
00:11:36And the doctor said, yes, it is.
00:11:39And he said, good. Very good.
00:11:45I always wanted to die on a Sunday.
00:11:48Lee appointed Jeb Stewart to replace Jackson, ordering him to press the attack.
00:11:53And as Lee put it, quote, it is necessary that the glorious victory thus far achieved be prosecuted with the
00:11:59utmost vigor and the enemy given no time to rally.
00:12:03As soon, therefore, as it is possible, they must be pressed so that we may unite the two wings of
00:12:08the army.
00:12:09Endeavor, therefore, to dispossess them of Chancellorsville, which will permit the union of the whole army.
00:12:14I shall myself proceed to join you as soon as I can make arrangements on this side, but let nothing
00:12:19delay the completion of the plan of driving the enemy from his rear and from his positions.
00:12:24I shall give orders that every effort be made on this side at daybreak to aid in the junction.
00:12:29On May 3rd, Stewart led brutal frontal assaults on critical positions, including the high ground of Hazel Grove, with the
00:12:36goal of reuniting the Confederate army.
00:12:38The attack was immediately effective in order to prevent another Confederate flanking maneuver.
00:12:43Hooker made the fateful decision to abandon the high ground on Hazel Grove, ordering Sickles to fall back with the
00:12:50rest of the Union forces.
00:12:51It was a pivotal blunter and yet another cautious decision while Lee was pursuing a much more aggressive strategy.
00:12:58It's important to emphasize how important Hazel Grove was as an artillery platform.
00:13:03As Chris Michalski writes in That Furious Struggle, quote,
00:13:07In the 70 square mile sea of trees that made up the wilderness, there were few open plots of ground,
00:13:12making the wilderness a terrible place to deploy artillery.
00:13:15Open ground like Hazel Grove was invaluable.
00:13:18Being on higher ground increases a gun's range while also making the gun harder to hit with counter battery fire.
00:13:25The Confederates immediately rushed dozens of guns onto Hazel Grove and unloaded on the Union lines, forcing them to pull
00:13:32back.
00:13:33The cover fire allowed the Confederate army to reunite, as Lee had ordered.
00:13:37It also had a direct impact on the leadership of the Union army.
00:13:41Hooker was injured when a Confederate cannonball struck the porch where he was standing at his command center, splintering a
00:13:47piece of wood that fell and hit him.
00:13:49Hooker was never removed from command, nor did his subordinates attempt to replace him.
00:13:52But he was clearly dazed at the worst possible moment, right when his forces were divided and the fighting was
00:13:59fiercest.
00:13:59But at the same time, Sedgwick broke through the Confederate battle lines at Fredericksburg, specifically Mary's Heights, posing a direct
00:14:06and unopposed threat to the rear of Lee's lines.
00:14:09When Lee heard the news, he was stoic.
00:14:11In response to a chaplain who was panicking after bringing word of the advancing Union army, Lee said simply,
00:14:17Thank you very much. But both you and your horse are overheated. Take him to that shady tree yonder and
00:14:24rest a little.
00:14:26Lee ultimately decided to split his army for a third time. He sent the Second Corps under Brigadier General Raleigh
00:14:32Colston to strike Hooker,
00:14:34and he ordered McLaw's division to march east to fight Sedgwick.
00:14:38Fighting had broken down in three key areas, Salem Church, Fredericksburg, and the Chancellorsville Crossroads.
00:14:45Eventually, Lee rode out to Salem Church to lead the counterattack on Sedgwick directly.
00:14:50He successfully prevented the Union pincer movement once again by dividing his forces.
00:14:56Outmaneuvered, stunned, and physically injured, Hooker ordered a full retreat on the night of May 4th.
00:15:02Lee, by repeatedly dividing his forces when conventional wisdom called for retreating each time,
00:15:07had managed to defeat a much larger army at a time when both the Union and the Confederacy were eager
00:15:12for a major victory.
00:15:14Lee's tactics are still studied today in military academies.
00:15:17He recognized his opponents' strategic weakness and his opponents' fear, and he exploited them both.
00:15:23When the war broke out, no one thought it would last long.
00:15:26One person who knew it wouldn't be short was Robert E. Lee.
00:15:29In early 1861, while still in the U.S. Army at Fort Mason, Texas, he correctly predicted that if it
00:15:35came to armed conflict,
00:15:36quote, the war will last at least four years.
00:15:40He was right.
00:15:41Lee's foresight in recognizing the Civil War's potential for protracted devastation,
00:15:45unlike the naive optimism of many on both sides, underscored his wisdom and his realism.
00:15:50His perfect battle at Chancellorsville showcased Lee's military prowess.
00:15:55The South didn't have the North's industrial capacity, railroads, wealth, or population,
00:16:00but it had some of the greatest military leadership in human history.
00:16:05In 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.
00:16:18What should the conflict be called?
00:16:21Now, the answer wasn't obvious.
00:16:22On April 15th, President Lincoln issued Proclamation 80, which referred to the attack on Sumter and various state secessions as,
00:16:30quote, combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.
00:16:35In 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.
00:16:48The words were political in nature.
00:16:50The Constitution conferred Lincoln emergency powers if he called it a rebellion.
00:16:55It also denied legitimacy to the South, implying that they were still part of the country.
00:17:00In 1880, when the War Department released the official records of the war,
00:17:04they titled it The War of the Rebellion, a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.
00:17:11During the war, the South had its own preferred terms, like the War for Southern Independence and the War between
00:17:16the States.
00:17:17After the First Battle of Manassas, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson told his troops,
00:17:22I hope by your future deeds and bearing you'll be handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in this,
00:17:28our Second War of Independence.
00:17:30Farewell.
00:17:31Harris von Bork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General Jeb Stewart, titled his book, Memoirs of the Confederate War for
00:17:38Independence.
00:17:39Now, whether it was a rebellion or a war for independence depends on who you ask, but it certainly was
00:17:45not a civil war.
00:17:46Civil wars are between two sides that want to control the country.
00:17:51The Russian Civil War was between whites and reds over who would control the Russian Empire.
00:17:56The Chinese Civil War was between communists and nationalists over who would control China.
00:18:01The English Civil War is between parliamentary forces and the king over who would have supreme power over England.
00:18:07There's no evidence whatsoever the South had any interest in occupying or controlling Boston or New York or the entire
00:18:14country.
00:18:15They wanted to leave the Union for various reasons, which they believed they had the legal right to do.
00:18:22The matter at hand was whether the United States was a collection of sovereign states or a centralized union of
00:18:29subordinate states.
00:18:30That wasn't really a question in the early years of the Republic.
00:18:33According to Catherine Drinker Bowen's book, Miracle at Philadelphia, when the Constitutional Convention's Committee of Style and Arrangement originally drafted
00:18:41the 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, we the undersigned delegates of the states
00:18:51of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, etc., and so on down the list of the 13.
00:18:57But they scrapped that idea because it was unlikely that they would get all 13 states to ratify the new
00:19:02Constitution.
00:19:03So the real history of how the term we the people was born is that it was a technicality.
00:19:09Back then, you wouldn't have said the United States is a place.
00:19:13You would have said these United States are a place.
00:19:17And that is a very important distinction.
00:19:20In that context, it's not surprising that by 1794, just six years after the Constitution's ratification, two U.S. Senators,
00:19:27Rufus King of New York and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, approached Senator John Taylor of Virginia and informed him they
00:19:35wanted to break up the Union already.
00:19:36They recognized a huge divide between the northern and southern states, and it wasn't just cultural differences between the agrarian
00:19:43south and the urbanized north.
00:19:45They noticed major political and economic differences, too.
00:19:50In 1883, more than two decades after the outbreak of the war, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts acknowledged that everybody
00:19:57involved in the ratification of the Constitution would have assumed states could leave, writing, quote,
00:20:02When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of states at Philadelphia and accepted by the votes of states at
00:20:08popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton
00:20:13on the 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 to
00:20:25withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised.
00:20:28Their historical record proves this point. Between the founding of the country in 1861, northern states threatened to secede at
00:20:36least five times.
00:20:37In 1803, a group of Massachusetts-based Federalists known as the Essex Junto threatened to secede because they feared the
00:20:44Louisiana Purchase would dilute their political power.
00:20:47Aaron Burr, who was Thomas Jefferson's vice president, was their leader.
00:20:51In 1807, they threatened to leave again after Jefferson put an embargo on Great Britain in France.
00:20:56During the War of 1812, New England once again threatened to secede because of the British blockade of their ports.
00:21:03Some states considered independently making peace with the British.
00:21:07Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to place their militias under federal command.
00:21:11They claimed the federal government didn't have the power to do it.
00:21:14In the 1840s, northern politicians published a solemn appeal to the peoples of free states, arguing that the annexation of
00:21:22Texas will be, quote,
00:21:23so injurious to the interests and abhorrent to the feelings of the people of the free states as, in our
00:21:28opinion, not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it.
00:21:34Former President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts signed that document.
00:21:38After the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, New England threatened to nullify the law, and some leaders called
00:21:45for secession again.
00:21:47Before the Civil War, the North issued credible threats to secede at least five separate times.
00:21:53As the great Civil War historian Shelby Foote put it, quote,
00:21:56If the states had known that they couldn't get out, they never would have gotten in.
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.
00:22:22According to historian Alan Guelzo, as the states of the Deep South left the Union,
00:22:27Lee complained that the behavior of the cotton states was wholly beyond any justification,
00:22:32and he was worried that their selfish and dictatorial bearing would make life for Virginia miserable
00:22:38should she determined to coalesce with them.
00:22:41In a letter to one of his cousins, he wrote,
00:22:45He wrote that, quote,
00:22:46Our people will destroy a government inaugurated by the blood and wisdom of our patriot fathers
00:22:51that has given us peace and prosperity at home, power and security abroad,
00:22:55and under which we have acquired a colossal strength unequaled in the history of mankind.
00:23:00According to Guelzo, Lee wished to live under no other government
00:23:04and to have no other flag than the Star Spangled Banner.
00:23:07But if that government was now going to disappear, then the only alternative was to
00:23:10Go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native land.
00:23:15Like so many Americans from this period, Lee was a patriotic American and a war hero.
00:23:21But he saw himself, first and foremost, as a Virginia.
00:23:25On February 6, 1861, David Twiggs, the commander of the U.S. Army's Department of Texas,
00:23:30surrendered his entire command to the Confederates and ordered all federal troops to abandon their posts.
00:23:36Lee refused to leave Fort Mason and pledged to defend his post at all hazards.
00:23:41This is because the legality of secession mattered to him and because his native Virginia hadn't seceded yet.
00:23:48As he left Texas, Lee declared he was returning to Virginia to resign and go to planting corn.
00:23:54And though he would never bear arms against the U.S., he might carry a musket in defense of my
00:23:59native state, Virginia.
00:24:01Lee's attitude tells us a lot about why not one single Confederate leader was ever convicted of treason,
00:24:07because it was commonly understood at the time that it was not treason.
00:24:11The legal case for secession goes back to before the Constitution, when 13 U.S. colonies decided to secede from
00:24:18the British crown.
00:24:19After winning their war for independence, those colonies then formed the Articles of Confederation,
00:24:24which required that any changes to the Union be adopted by the Congress in all the states.
00:24:29But that never happened. And most states just seceded.
00:24:33The background led historian Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who served as a colonel in the Union Army, to say, quote,
00:24:41If Robert E. Lee was a traitor, so also indisputably were George Washington, Oliver Cromwell, John Hamden and William of
00:24:47Orange.
00:24:48Adams goes on, George Washington furnishes a precedent at every point.
00:24:52A Virginian like Lee, he was also a British subject.
00:24:55He had fought under the British flag as Lee had fought under that of the United States.
00:24:59When in 1776 Virginia seceded from the British Empire, he went with his state just as Lee went with it
00:25:0585 years later.
00:25:07Subsequently, Washington commanded armies in the field designated by those opposed to them as rebels
00:25:12and whose descendants now glorified them as the rebels of 76, which as Lee later commanded and at last surrendered.
00:25:19Much larger armies also designated rebels by those they confronted.
00:25:24Except in their outcome, the cases were therefore precisely alike.
00:25:28And logic is logic.
00:25:30So the only difference is that Washington won his war and Lee lost his.
00:25:36The courts basically agreed with that analysis.
00:25:39After the Civil War, many northern newspapers, including the Boston Daily Advertiser and the New York Times,
00:25:44published materials encouraging the government to put Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, on trial for treason.
00:25:51And for their part, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that a trial would, quote,
00:25:54render traitors infamous and have it judicially settled that secession is illegal.
00:26:00We would have learned a lot about the country if they would have done it.
00:26:03According to University of Virginia law professor Cynthia Nicoletti, no one knew for sure whether secession was legal
00:26:10and that any treason prosecution would rise and fall on that question.
00:26:15Indeed, she quotes George Washington Woodward, chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court,
00:26:19who 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.
00:26:30Hitherto, it has been a toy of politicians, and they have dodged everything like a definition.
00:26:35But is secession treason? That's a grand question.
00:26:38If it is not, war in support of it cannot be.
00:26:41If the right to withdraw existed, it must have included the right of defense.
00:26:46So that levying war to defend a Confederacy founded in secession could not be levying war against the government of
00:26:52the U.S.
00:26:53But this is on the assumption that secession is something less than treason, which I neither aver nor deny.
00:26:59Many Northern politicians were certain the government would lose.
00:27:03Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who was most famous for getting caned on the Senate floor, said,
00:27:08The tried Jefferson Davis would be the nay plus ultra of folly.
00:27:12The Supreme Court's chief justice said,
00:27:14If you bring these Confederate leaders to trial, it will condemn the North.
00:27:17For by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion.
00:27:21Nicoletti writes that even Lincoln himself was concerned about the possibility that a trial might backfire, quote,
00:27:26Before his untimely death, President Lincoln had remarked that Davis's flight from Richmond in April was a good thing because
00:27:32it forestalled the political and legal difficulties that might attend a high-profile treason prosecution.
00:27:38I'm bound to oppose the escape of Jeff Davis, Lincoln had reportedly told General William T. Sherman.
00:27:44But if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst like, I guess it wouldn't hurt me much.
00:27:50At a cabinet meeting at the White House on July 18th, there was no consensus at the White House as
00:27:55to how to proceed.
00:27:56President Andrew Johnson, who assumed office after Lincoln's assassination, pressed for a clear answer, but he didn't get one.
00:28:02The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, stated that there was, quote,
00:28:07A great diversity of opinion in the matter as to whether Davis should be tried first for the crime of
00:28:11high treason.
00:28:12Ultimately, Andrew Johnson opted to proceed tentatively with a treason prosecution.
00:28:17For his part, Davis was eager for trial because he believed secession was legal and he wanted vindication in court.
00:28:23Davis, in fact, hoped that he would be arrested in 1861 after his home state of Mississippi seceded so that
00:28:28he 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 States of America.
00:28:36That's why Davis, unlike Robert E. Lee, never requested a presidential pardon.
00:28:40He genuinely thought that he'd be vindicated in court.
00:28:43Jefferson Davis was charged with treason and held for two years at Fort Monroe in Virginia, but never got his
00:28:49day in court.
00:28:49Over time, popular support for prosecution waned and the Johnson administration was far from certain that a Virginia jury would
00:28:56convict Davis,
00:28:56or even that the Supreme Court would definitively rule that secession was illegal.
00:29:00Davis took the surrender as an unequivocal win.
00:29:03Quote, A sovereign state cannot commit treason, he wrote.
00:29:06The government early discovered that if this issue came before the Supreme Court, it would lose its case and I
00:29:12should be acquitted.
00:29:13So none of the indictments were ever tried.
00:29:15Shortly after Davis's case was dropped in April of 1869, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate, unrelated case, Texas
00:29:22v. White, that secession is indeed unconstitutional.
00:29:26As the court put it, the Constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible union composed of indestructible states.
00:29:33But it was a throwaway line in a case about bonds.
00:29:36There wasn't any significant discussion of secession during oral arguments or briefing.
00:29:40And the ruling attracted virtually no media attention because by that point it seemed like a dead issue.
00:29:46In short, the Supreme Court 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.
00:29:58And there still isn't, by the way.
00:30:00The America of the 17th and 18th centuries was very different from the United States we know today.
00:30:04At the time, even many Northerners would have conceded that, at the minimum, the constitutionality of secession was a close
00:30:11call.
00:30:12And that it would be a gross oversimplification, if not an outright falsehood, to 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, quote,
00:30:40The abolitionists convinced themselves, based on their evangelical experiences, that smearing the South's reputation in every possible way would create
00:30:48the anxiety that would lead to a mass conversion of the North to their crusade.
00:30:52The South was portrayed as a province ruled by Satan that would consume the North's soul if her citizens did
00:30:58not vow to expunge the sin of slavery.
00:31:02Meanwhile, in the South, there was an intense fear of slave insurrections and race wars, following the brutal uprising and
00:31:08revolution in present-day Haiti.
00:31:10Therefore, the Civil War, Fleming argues, is best understood as a product of a psychological disease that afflicted both the
00:31:16North and the South in different ways, which made rational dialogue impossible.
00:31:20Sound familiar?
00:31:22That mutual disease, he argues, is why only the US, unlike Great Britain and Brazil, fought a brutal war over
00:31:29slavery.
00:31:30And yet, long after the war, some of these over-the-top descriptions of the South, as simply evil, survive
00:31:35today.
00:31:36The cartoon version of history holds that Abraham Lincoln invaded the South because it had slaves.
00:31:42But just how peculiar was the South's peculiar institution, as it was called?
00:31:47Well, not very, as it turns out. The North had slaves, too.
00:31:52According to the book, It Wasn't About Slavery by Samuel Mitchum Jr.,
00:31:55in 1703, more than 42% of New York City households owned slaves, a ratio only surpassed by Charleston, South
00:32:02Carolina.
00:32:03In Connecticut, Mitchum says, one-half of all ministers, lawyers, and public officials owned slaves.
00:32:08By 1783, one-quarter of Connecticut families owned slaves, and one out of every 14 people in Rhode Island was
00:32:15a slave.
00:32:15Many prominent Northerners, including Founding Fathers, owned slaves.
00:32:19This includes the first signer of the Declaration of Independence and future Massachusetts Governor John Hancock, who had two or
00:32:25three household slaves.
00:32:26Other notable slaveholders from Massachusetts include Cotton Mather, who learned about inoculation from one of his slaves.
00:32:34Slavery in the North was awful. Massachusetts and Connecticut set curfews for black people.
00:32:39According to the book, Black Bondage in the North, in the 1700s, Connecticut required blacks to be off the streets
00:32:45by nine at night and to remain within the towns to which they belonged.
00:32:49Slaves who broke curfew in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were flogged.
00:32:54In New Hampshire, the penalty was ten lashes. In New York, it was a misdemeanor for slaves to gather in
00:32:59groups larger than four.
00:33:01And in Long Island, they could not travel more than a mile from home without a pass.
00:33:05Similar laws existed in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey.
00:33:07By the time Abraham 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 South to immediately free
00:33:19all 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.
00:33:28The laws emancipated people 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, called on Congress to
00:33:50withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been
00:33:56so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa.
00:33:59The 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 of Congress.
00:34:10There are two reasons why Southern members of Congress voted this way.
00:34:13First, at the time, many people in the South wanted to end slavery.
00:34:16By 1827, more than 100 anti-slavery groups existed in the South, mostly under the banner of colonization societies which
00:34:23advocated for sending freed slaves back to Africa.
00:34:27Second, 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.
00:34:37According to the book Black Cargoes by Daniel Mannix, an English captain reported that the port of Lemieux in the
00:34:43slave market of Zanzibar was packed with, quote,
00:34:46enterprising Americans whose star-spangled banner may be seen streaming in the wind where other nations would not deign to
00:34:53traffic.
00:34:54By 1858, as Abraham Lincoln was running for Senate in Illinois, there were 24 American ships in the Zanzibar Harbor
00:35:00as against three British.
00:35:02There are two reasons the British Navy, which at the time was trying to end the slave trade, couldn't stop
00:35:08American slavers.
00:35:09First, American ships were extremely fast and maneuverable.
00:35:13And second, President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts forbade the British from boarding any American flagged ships.
00:35:19The result was huge profits for Massachusetts-based slave traders.
00:35:22Mannix writes that, quote,
00:35:24So many of the ships hailed from Salem, Massachusetts, that the Zanzibarians thought all white men came from this one
00:35:31New England town.
00:35:32English officers discovered to their indignation that Great Britain was considered to be a suburb of Salem.
00:35:38The Americans traded for slaves in ivory with a cheap caligo turned out in vast quantities by the New England
00:35:44cotton mills.
00:35:45And even today, cotton is called Americani in Zanzibar.
00:35:49Moving slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and Brazil was big money for northerners.
00:35:55This part of the slave trade was its own version of the famous triangle trade.
00:35:59Cheap southern cotton was shipped north to textile mills, which northerners turned into manufactured textile goods.
00:36:06Northern slave traders traded those textiles for slaves in Zanzibar, who were then trafficked to the Caribbean for huge profits.
00:36:13The North was profiting from slavery on all three corners of the triangle.
00:36:16This continued for decades. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that by the 1850s, quote,
00:36:22The fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States and centered at New York City.
00:36:28In 1862, literally during the Civil War, the New York Journal of Commerce reported that New York was, quote,
00:36:34The principal port of the world for this infamous commerce, although the cities of Portland, Maine and Boston are second
00:36:41to her in that distinction.
00:36:43As New England was making money off the global slave trade, other northern states were passing racist legislation.
00:36:49In Lincoln's home state of Illinois, black people couldn't attend public schools, couldn't testify against white people in court or
00:36:55bear arms.
00:36:55If three or more of them gathered to dance, they were fined and lashed.
00:37:00The purpose of these laws, which were known as the Illinois Black Codes, was to discourage black people from moving
00:37:05to the state.
00:37:06In 1853, Illinois made things more explicit with a black exclusion law that, quote,
00:37:12Prohibited blacks from coming into the state with the intention of living there.
00:37:15Punishment proved especially harsh in that violators were subject to penalties that amounted to forced labor, essentially slavery.
00:37:22Illinois law was so extreme that it was a crime for blacks to settle in that state without a certificate
00:37:27of freedom,
00:37:28which cost $1,000, the equivalent of about $40,000 today.
00:37:32The Black Codes were so harsh that even some southern newspapers objected.
00:37:36The New Orleans Bee called the Illinois Black Codes an act of special and savage ruthlessness.
00:37:42One of the key figures in passing the Black Codes was a state representative named John A. Logan.
00:37:46Logan was an enthusiastic enforcer of the Fugitive Slave Act and an open racist.
00:37:50Abraham Lincoln later made him a union general.
00:37:54After the war, Logan reinvented himself as a radical Republican senator.
00:37:58But it's hard to imagine that Johnny Logan held contemporary woke views on black people.
00:38:04Many northern or free states enacted black laws or exclusionary codes similar to Illinois.
00:38:10Indiana and Oregon banned black settlement in their state constitutions.
00:38:13According to Eugene Berwanger's book, The Frontier Against Slavery, quote,
00:38:18The exact extent of racial prejudice as a factor encouraging limitation of slavery is indeterminable.
00:38:24The average man in all ages does not record his thoughts for posterity and is even less likely to do
00:38:30so on such thorny problems as race relations.
00:38:33Yet, if 79.5% of the people in Illinois, Indiana, Oregon, and Kansas voted to exclude the free Negroes
00:38:40simply because of their prejudice,
00:38:42surely 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,
00:38:51The motive of those who protested against the extension of slavery had always been concern for the welfare of the
00:38:56white man and not an unnatural sympathy for the Negro.
00:38:59In other words, many northern and western voters opposed the expansion of slavery into their states and territories,
00:39:05not primarily out of moral opposition to slavery itself, but because they didn't want black neighbors.
00:39:12Generally speaking, in the first half of the 1800s, many southerners supported emancipation and the relocation of slaves.
00:39:18In many cases, it's because they thought the black populations of their states were getting too big.
00:39:23After Nat Turner's violent slave 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 state after
00:39:37some period to be fixed by law shall be free.
00:39:40Virginia's governor at the time wrote in his diary that,
00:39:43Before I leave this government, I will have contrived to have a law pass gradually abolishing slavery in this state.
00:39:50The Richmond Enquirer at the time called slavery the greatest evil which can scourge our land.
00:39:56The Virginia House of Delegates failed to end slavery then, but it wasn't by an overwhelming vote.
00:40:01Many people didn't realize that the windowed end slavery through the legal process likely peaked right at the beginning of
00:40:07the country and into the early 1800s.
00:40:10In 1794, the incentives radically changed after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.
00:40:15That invention, more than anything else, dramatically increased the demand for slave labor in the South because it made cotton
00:40:21cultivation vastly more profitable.
00:40:23As the Civil War approached, the hundreds of anti-slavery groups that had formed in the mid-1820s had mostly
00:40:30gone away,
00:40:31and so had any possibility that Southern legislatures would end slavery on their own.
00:40:35The 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.
00:40:46One of them was Robert E. Lee himself.
00:40:48According to historian Alan Guelzo, Lee, quote,
00:40:51"...regarded slavery as a moral and political evil, which, however, he was content to leave in the hands of God
00:40:56to resolve."
00:40:58Lee's slaves were inherited, one slave family from his mother and 197 others from his father-in-law, G. W.
00:41:05P. Custis.
00:41:07In 1862, during the war, Lee, quote,
00:41:09"...completed the emancipation of the Custis slaves, which he was obligated to do by his father-in-law's will,
00:41:14and 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.
00:41:28Right up through the shelling of Fort Sumter, the North was profiting massively from the slave trade.
00:41:33Four Union states had legal slavery.
00:41:35But if the war was not about slavery, then what was it about?
00:41:39Well, the answer depends on who you ask.
00:41:41Though interestingly, Presidents Lincoln and Davis seemed to agree.
00:41:44Confederate President Jefferson Davis said, quote,
00:41:46"...we are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence. And that, or extermination, we will have."
00:41:51Lincoln himself told newspaper editor Horace Greeley, quote,
00:41:54"...my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to either save or destroy slavery.
00:41:59If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.
00:42:03And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.
00:42:06And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
00:42:11In other words, according to both Presidents, the war was fundamentally about the question of keeping or ending the Union.
00:42:17The key argument against the idea that the Civil War was solely about slavery is that,
00:42:21at the time of secession in late 1860 and early 1861,
00:42:24neither the incoming Republican administration nor mainstream Northern opinion advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery where it already existed
00:42:32in Southern states.
00:42:33The Republican Party platform of 1860 opposed the extension of slavery to the territories, but didn't call for abolition of
00:42:40slavery in the South.
00:42:41But even if it had and stood a reasonable chance of happening, which it didn't, at least in the short
00:42:45run,
00:42:46most Southerners would not have been affected anyway.
00:42:49Only about one third of Southerners were from households that had slaves.
00:42:52The idea that 360,000 white men were going to line up and die for the sake of rescuing black
00:42:59people 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.
00:43:10The soldiers' diaries support this.
00:43:13Heros von Vork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General Jim Stewart, wrote a 558-page history of his experiences in
00:43:20the war.
00:43:21His memoirs contained no references to slavery at all and only one to a slave,
00:43:25in which he passed a large plantation which, I was told, belonged to a free Negro, one of the richest
00:43:30men of the county,
00:43:31who was himself the owner of numerous slaves.
00:43:34The historian James McPherson went through the diaries of more than a thousand soldiers from both sides for his book,
00:43:41For Cause and Comrades.
00:43:43He found that, quote,
00:43:44For Union and Confederate volunteers alike, abstract symbols or concepts such as country, flag, constitution, liberty, and legacy of the
00:43:52revolution
00:43:53figured prominently in their explanations of why they enlisted.
00:43:56For Confederate soldiers, a more concrete, visceral, and perhaps more powerful motive also came into play.
00:44:03The defense of home and hearth against an invading enemy.
00:44:07They signed up to fight out of duty, a concept that was a lot stronger 150 years ago than it
00:44:14is today.
00:44:15Many Union soldiers echoed Lincoln's calls for preserving the Union.
00:44:19McPherson found a Union soldier from Philadelphia who wrote that,
00:44:23This contest is not the North against the South, it is government against anarchy, law against disorder.
00:44:29Another from Michigan joined against the wishes of his family because he wanted to join, quote,
00:44:34All true patriots to sustain her government.
00:44:36Another from Michigan wrote that,
00:44:38If the Union is split up, the government is destroyed, and we will be a ruined nation.
00:44:42Do not borrow any trouble about me.
00:44:45If I die in the battlefield, I do so with pleasure.
00:44:48And he did die in battle the next year.
00:44:51McPherson found immigrants lamenting that secession would make the country, quote,
00:44:55As bad as the deeply divided German states.
00:44:57And native-born Americans who said, quote,
00:45:00Our fathers made this country, we their children are to save it.
00:45:04McPherson notes that relatively few Union volunteers mentioned the slavery issue when they enlisted.
00:45:10The same is true for Southern soldiers.
00:45:12McPherson estimates that just 20% of Confederate soldiers even considered slavery a cause worth fighting for in the first
00:45:18place.
00:45:18Most were focused on repelling an invasion, quote,
00:45:21Defense of the homeland was one of the strongest of combat motivations.
00:45:25Even among soldiers from slave-holding families, only one-third explicitly voiced pro-slavery convictions.
00:45:31McPherson writes that many Virginians shared Robert E. Lee's view that they wouldn't fight unless it be in defense of
00:45:37Virginia.
00:45:38Another Virginian wrote,
00:45:39I would give all I have got just to be in the front rank of the first brigade that marches
00:45:44against the invading foe
00:45:45who now pollute the sacred soil of my native state with their unholy tread.
00:45:50When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he did it as a wartime measure to suppress the rebellion.
00:45:57It's just as notable for what it did not do as what it did do.
00:46:01It did not free the slaves.
00:46:02No, slavery continued in areas under federal control,
00:46:06which included Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and parts of Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee.
00:46:11In practice, it only freed about 100,000 people out of a pool of millions.
00:46:15Lincoln did it because he wanted to prevent European powers from forming an alliance with Confederacy,
00:46:19which seemed likely at the time and would have dramatically changed the South's fortunes.
00:46:24So the Proclamation was a brilliant political maneuver that undercut the Confederacy's diplomatic efforts to court Europe
00:46:31because it made intervention politically untenable for European leaders who almost all opposed slavery.
00:46:36Now, wait a second here.
00:46:38We are not saying the war had nothing to do with slavery because that would also be ridiculous.
00:46:44It's just as much a cartoon caricature as what your idiot teachers taught you in school.
00:46:48No, slavery was a factor that led to war, and it was a major factor.
00:46:54South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Secession references slavery six times.
00:46:59After seceding, South Carolina immediately made an appeal to other slaveholding states to secede,
00:47:04and in its appeal referenced slavery no less than 32 times.
00:47:08The South Carolina legislatures literally wrote, quote,
00:47:11Slaveholding states cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding states.
00:47:16When General Claiborne suggested freeing the slaves to fight for the Confederacy, his fellow officers were shocked and appalled.
00:47:22Slavery was a factor in the war, and probably a significant one, but it was not the only factor.
00:47:28The South left for three other reasons, too.
00:47:32First, there was the balance of political power.
00:47:34In the Republic's first 72 years, slaveholding Southerners occupied the White House approximately two-thirds of the time, or 49
00:47:42years out of 72.
00:47:43Some of the biggest figures in American politics were from the South, including Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and John
00:47:49C. Calhoun.
00:47:50To the extent that there were Northern presidents, many were sympathetic to the South, like Pennsylvania's James Buchanan.
00:47:55But demographics is destiny. As the Northern states surged in population, driven by higher birth rates and massive waves of
00:48:03European immigration, the South's longstanding political dominance collapsed.
00:48:06The South's share of the House of Representatives dropped from roughly 48% at the founding to 38% by
00:48:131860.
00:48:14For decades, Congress maintained balance in the Senate by adding slave and free states at the same time.
00:48:19But after the country's massive territorial expansion as a result of the Mexican-American War, that balance was doomed.
00:48:26There was no need for slave labor in places like Arizona or New Mexico, and so the South's relative power
00:48:31declined quickly.
00:48:33California 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 sectional Northern
00:48:46organization 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 roughly three quarters
00:48:58of the world's cotton.
00:48:59From 1830 to 1860, cotton was by far the country's top export. It comprised literally half or more of all
00:49:06U.S. exports.
00:49:07Ninety percent of exports to Great Britain came only from the South. And by the 1830s, more than 80%
00:49:13of the cotton grown in the South was being exported.
00:49:16At the time, the biggest source of revenue for the U.S. government was the tariff. This was great policy
00:49:21for Northern states since their tariffs protected their manufacturers from foreign competition.
00:49:26But it was terrible for the export-dependent South because retaliatory tariffs restricted their access to the foreign markets.
00:49:32And because their economy was built around agricultural exports, they had higher demand for foreign manufactured goods.
00:49:39So how much of a factor was money in the decision to secede?
00:49:43On Christmas Day, 1860, the South Carolina legislature issued an address to the other slave-holding states calling on them
00:49:50to leave the Union.
00:49:51One of their major grievances was, quote,
00:49:54The taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests
00:49:58of the North.
00:49:59The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent
00:50:07with revenue,
00:50:08to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufacturers.
00:50:14The role that economics played in secession was obvious to outsiders.
00:50:18Karl Marx complained at the time that London's biggest newspapers, including The Times, The Economist, The Examiner, The Saturday Review,
00:50:27were arguing that, quote,
00:50:28The war between the North and South is a tariff war.
00:50:31The war is further not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact, turns on
00:50:37Northern lust for sovereignty.
00:50:39A third reason was the massive cultural divide between the regions.
00:50:43The South was rural and agricultural.
00:50:46The North was urban, industrial, and had huge numbers of European immigrants.
00:50:51Increasingly, they 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 up and
00:51:04handed him a letter from the Secretary of War.
00:51:06The night before, around 1.30 in the morning, the Federal Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, had been
00:51:12taken by a group of armed men.
00:51:14A train passing through it sent telegrams on to Washington, warning of 150 armed abolitionists who have come to free
00:51:21the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards,
00:51:23and to arm poor whites who are similarly aggrieved with the slave system.
00:51:28They were led by a radical abolitionist and insurrectionist named John Brown, who wanted to provoke a massive slave uprising
00:51:34across the South.
00:51:35It was Lee's job to take back Harpers Ferry with a company of 90 Marines, two howitzers, and a few
00:51:42local citizen militias from Maryland and Virginia.
00:51:45He had such little time to prepare that he wore civilian clothing and a top hat, and he commandeered a
00:51:50Baltimore and Ohio engine car to get there,
00:51:52riding with just one other officer, the conductor, and the train's fireman.
00:51:57When Lee arrived, Brown's revolution had failed to materialize.
00:52:00The raiders were trapped in an engine house. The Marines waited until morning and then stormed the building.
00:52:06John Brown and four of his men were taken alive and later tried and executed.
00:52:11The South responded to the news with total heart. The Richmond Enquirer wrote, quote,
00:52:16The Southern people have heretofore disregarded the ravings of Northern fanatics because they believe such madness to be merely a
00:52:22pecuniary speculation.
00:52:23But the attack at Harpers Ferry shows that the Northern people mean more than words.
00:52:29Virginia's legislature awarded Lee a sword for his gallant conduct at Harpers Ferry.
00:52:35The North was euphoric. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that,
00:52:39John Brown was an idealist who put his ideas into action.
00:52:43Henry David Thoreau compared Brown's execution to the crucifixion of Christ.
00:52:47The abolitionist Wendell Phillips, also of Massachusetts, called Harpers Ferry the Lexington of today, comparing it to the opening shots
00:52:55of the Revolutionary War,
00:52:56and 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.
00:53:06Many of Brown's conspirators were protected by Republican governors in Northern states.
00:53:11The Northern response shook the South to its core.
00:53:13South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Secession specifically mentioned Northern states providing safe harbor for John Brown's accomplices.
00:53:21Other 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 no longer
00:53:31existed.
00:53:37For as long as political scientists and historians have been polled on the best presidents, Abraham Lincoln has topped the
00:53:43charts in every category.
00:53:45Modern presidents can't help but compare themselves to him.
00:53:49But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible.
00:53:57That is why I'm in this race. Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform
00:54:03a nation.
00:54:04In school, kids are taught that Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator, a champion of equality, a defender of democracy.
00:54:11To his contemporaries, he was the ape baboon of the prairie, a coarse, vulgar joker, a simple Susan, and the
00:54:19craftiest and most dishonest politician that ever disgraced the White House.
00:54:24Now, in reality, he was none of these things.
00:54:27Although he may have been a coarse and vulgar joker, it's hard to know for sure.
00:54:31The greatest event in Lincoln's life, what turned him from man to myth, was his assassination.
00:54:36In the words of historian Michael Burlingame,
00:54:56At the 1909 Lincoln Centennial, Illinois school children recited verses calling him a peasant prince, a masterpiece of God.
00:55:05His oversized statue keeps watch over the National Mall in Washington, D.C. today.
00:55:10But in 1863, no one in America would have recognized the Lincoln we know today.
00:55:16Back 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 the presidency and the
00:55:25country.
00:55:26When he, quote,
00:55:51He 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, second-rate man.
00:56:02So Lincoln was, in a word at the time, controversial.
00:56:07He was also a human, and a flawed one, like us all.
00:56:10He held contemporary views on race.
00:56:13He believed blacks were inferior to whites.
00:56:15In one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he said, quote,
00:56:18I will say then that I am not, nor ever have I been, in favor of bringing about in any
00:56:23way the social and political equality of the white and black races.
00:56:28That I am not, nor have I ever been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of
00:56:33qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
00:56:36And I will say, in 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 equality.
00:56:47And inasmuch as they cannot live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior.
00:56:53And I am, as much as any other man, in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white
00:56:59race.
00:57:00I say upon this occasion, I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position,
00:57:04the Negro should be denied everything.
00:57:07I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want
00:57:12her for a wife.
00:57:14The crowd laughed at that answer.
00:57:17It is 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 what their response
00:57:27would be.
00:57:28This is very important and often overlooked.
00:57:30Historians in a hundred years might look back at Barack Obama in 2008 and based on his words, think he
00:57:37did oppose gay marriage because he said he did.
00:57:40But of course, he was pandering to an audience. He was a politician.
00:57:45Lincoln and Obama might 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.
00:57:54When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he still believed that, quote, the only long term solution to slavery was voluntary
00:58:01colonization.
00:58:02On March 6th, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sent a special message to Congress urging the adoption of a joint resolution
00:58:10that would offer federal financial support to any state voluntarily adopting the gradual abolishment of slavery with pecuniary aid provided
00:58:18to compensate owners for the inconvenience public and private caused by the change.
00:58:23In total, Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery was a moral and political evil.
00:58:28He believed it should end gradually rather than immediately.
00:58:32And he supported the idea of colonization or sending freed black people to Africa or elsewhere as part of the
00:58:39solution.
00:58:39In other words, Abraham Lincoln had the exact same views on slavery as Robert E. Lee.
00:58:45After the war, Robert E. Lee received a presidential pardon and returned to Virginia, where he took up the presidency
00:58:50of what is now Washington and Lee University, a role many historians regard as the happiest period of his life,
00:58:56far removed from the burdens of command.
00:58:58At the moment of surrender at Appomattox, Lee could have urged his devoted soldiers to scatter into the Appalachians, waging
00:59:06a guerrilla war 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.
00:59:31Resentment towards a man who embodies virtues increasingly rare in modern America.
00:59:38They hate him not for his flaws, but because he represents unattainable ideals.
00:59:44Tactical genius, a man of unyielding duty, honor and dignity.
00:59:49A southerner whose leadership at Chancellorsville still echoes in military academies worldwide.
00:59:55They 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, outlasting the vandals
01:00:07who 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 than
01:00:18the simplistic tales spun in high school classrooms or viral videos.
01:00:23A full reckoning with the real history, such as Shelby Foote's epic 1.2 million word trilogy spanning 3,000
01:00:30pages, demands depths that no textbook or hour long internet video can capture.
01:00:35The mainstream narrative is a cartoon.
01:00:37The war was never a straightforward crusade against Southern evil.
01:00:41Secession was not categorically treason.
01:00:44Abraham Lincoln was not a messianic figure.
01:00:47The story most Americans have heard is a fairy tale.
01:00:51But one thing is true.
01:00:53Wars have consequences.
01:00:55And victors shape the story.
01:00:57That is the enduring lesson of the Civil War.
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