"Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" - Michael Vorenberg at Providence

Summary

In a compelling talk, historian Michael Vorenberg delves into the complex process of concluding the American Civil War, focusing on his new book, "Lincoln's Peace." Vorenberg explores how the war's end is symbolically tied to Appomattox, yet officially finalized much later, with legal, social, and political implications extending well beyond the battlefield surrender. His narrative revisits how Lincoln envisioned the peace process, the many forgotten battles, and the extensive reconstruction struggles, stressing that unity was neither immediate nor simple.

Highlights

• Michael Vorenberg outlines Lincoln’s strategy for ending the Civil War and details the various overlooked conflicts post-Appomattox. 🔍
• He emphasizes Lincoln’s approach of 'letting them up easy' towards Confederates, advocating for a peaceful integration after surrender. 🤝
• The narrative digs into how official and societal understandings of the war’s end diverge, including how they evolved post-Appomattox. 🕊️
• Vorenberg discusses the symbolic, yet non-legal, importance of Appomattox and how the official end date was determined later. 📜
• He connects the Civil War’s conclusion to broader themes of civil rights and reconstruction, particularly for African Americans. ✊
• Memorialization, like the sign at Appomattox, reflects ongoing debates about the war’s memory and implications. 🔍

Key Takeaways

• Appomattox is commonly seen as the Civil War's end, but legally it concluded later in 1866. 📜
• Lincoln's vision for post-war peace was rooted in mercy and kindness. 'Let them up easy!' 🤝
• The Confederate warship Shenandoah continued hostilities unaware the war was officially over. 🚢
• Vorenberg highlights overlooked conflicts and surrenders that persisted post-Appomattox, challenging simple narratives of war’s end. 🔍
• The struggle for African American civil rights extended the conflict's core issues, influencing the American societal structure. ✊
• Memorialization and understanding of the war's end continue to evolve, challenging historical rigidity. 🕰️

Overview

Michael Vorenberg's presentation at Providence delved into the intricate details surrounding the end of the American Civil War. While April 9, 1865, at Appomattox is a date often marked as the war's conclusion, Vorenberg illuminated the legal and societal complexities that extended well beyond this symbolic event. His insights challenge the simplistic notion that the war wrapped up neatly with General Lee's surrender.

A critical aspect of Vorenberg's discussion was Lincoln's envisioned road to peace branded by the ethos of 'letting them up easy.' This ideology was meant to foster a compassionate reunification process, minimizing vengeance and fostering reconstruction through kindness—an approach contrasted sharply by his successor's actions after the assassination.

Besides revisiting forgotten conflicts and surrenders, Vorenberg's narrative wove through the broader implications of the Civil War's end, particularly regarding African American rights. He emphasized that although legal battles played out off the battlefield, the struggle for true peace and equality continued, shaping the Reconstruction era's policies and debates, which echo into modern times.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction to the Humanities Forum and Speaker The chapter introduces the Humanities Forum, hosted by Ian Bernhoff, which takes place every Friday. The forum features speakers including scholars, journalists, and professionals who discuss the questions driving their research. This session aims to satisfy the audience's thirst for knowledge.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Introduction of Michael Vorenberg and His Book 'Lincoln's Peace' The chapter introduces Michael Vorenberg and provides an overview of his book, 'Lincoln's Peace'. It sets the stage for a lecture format where the talk lasts about 50 minutes followed by a Q&A session. Emphasis is placed on student engagement during the Q&A, as students are expected to ask the first questions. The chapter encourages a deeper appreciation for the humanities.
• 06:00 - 09:00: The Question of When the Civil War Ended The chapter discusses the nuances surrounding the question of when the Civil War officially ended. It suggests that the event in question is a complex historical issue that likely doesn't have a straightforward answer. While the transcript itself primarily provides instructions for a Q&A session and mentions a reception, it implies that deeper discussions about the Civil War’s conclusion might follow in the event. Specific rules are given for audience interaction, such as asking questions and attending the reception.
• 09:00 - 13:00: Lincoln's Trip to Virginia and Meeting with Generals The chapter titled 'Lincoln's Trip to Virginia and Meeting with Generals' begins with a reminder to the audience to focus and minimize distractions by putting away gadgets. The speaker, referred to as Hen, mentions that a recording of the session will be posted later for those who want to replay it at a slower speed. Following this, Hen introduces Dr. Patrick Breen who takes over the microphone to introduce guest Michael Vorenberg. Vorenberg is noted as a repeat visitor to the humanities forum. The text ends abruptly with a conversation between Hen and another person.
• 13:00 - 18:00: The Surrender of Lee to Grant and Its Limitations The chapter talks about a previous speaker event that happened almost a decade ago, possibly before the COVID-19 pandemic. In this event, a speaker discussed his book titled 'Final Freedom.' The speaker suggests that academic books, including possibly this one, might not be widely read by everyone in attendance, except for maybe an individual named Mario.
• 18:00 - 22:00: The Legal End Date of the Civil War The chapter titled 'The Legal End Date of the Civil War' references the influence of a book on the making of the movie 'Lincoln,' directed by Tony Kushner. The speaker highlights that the book 'Final Freedom' was a crucial resource for Kushner while he was working on the screenplay for 'Lincoln,' a movie known to many audience members. The focus of today's discussion, however, is not on the 13th Amendment or its implications but seems to concern the broader context of the legal end of the Civil War.
• 22:00 - 27:00: Conflicting Accounts of the Last Battle and Surrender The chapter titled 'Conflicting Accounts of the Last Battle and Surrender' discusses the discrepancies and varied narratives surrounding the final battle and subsequent surrender during a historical conflict. The chapter references a new book, 'Lincoln's Peace,' which was recently published by Noff on March 18th. The book is part of a class curriculum, indicating its educational significance. Several students have access to and are reading it, suggesting its relevance and importance in understanding the complexity of historical events and interpretations.
• 27:00 - 32:00: The Importance of Emancipation and the Civil War's Objectives This chapter explores the complex topic of dating the start and end points of the Civil War, focusing on the provocative question: 'When did the Civil War end?' The author challenges the simplistic notion of looking up set dates on platforms like Wikipedia, suggesting the answer is not as straightforward as it seems.
• 32:00 - 35:00: The Persistence of Insurgency and Violence Post-War This chapter explores the topic of insurgency and violence persisting even after the official conclusion of wars. It hints at a discussion led by Michael Vorenberg who aims to clarify the complexity surrounding the official endings of conflicts as often represented confusingly in historical sources such as Wikipedia. Vorenberg is introduced as a knowledgeable figure who will navigate through the misinformation or unclear representations of war timelines to provide a clearer understanding. The setting includes a formal introductory acknowledgment at a Humanities Forum hosted by Providence College.
• 35:00 - 41:00: The Role of Emotion and Memory in Remembering the War's End The chapter titled 'The Role of Emotion and Memory in Remembering the War's End' begins with the speaker acknowledging the beautiful weather outside and expresses gratitude towards the audience for attending the talk instead of enjoying the day outdoors. A humorous remark is made about returning a book, likely authored by the speaker, on Amazon, which is followed by a more sincere appreciation for those who have read it. The chapter appears to be about engaging with the audience and setting the tone for the discussion on the interplay between emotion and memory in the context of historical events such as war endings.
• 41:00 - 55:00: Q&A: Hypothetical Scenario if Lincoln Had Lived This chapter discusses a hypothetical scenario of what might have happened if Abraham Lincoln had survived his assassination. The speaker emphasizes that they will not provide a full summary of their book but instead focus on highlighting specific sections. They aim to explore broader questions tied to the Civil War, its relevance to modern times, and our understanding of wars within their historical context.
• 55:00 - 68:00: Q&A: Legal and Civil Rights Context Post-War The chapter titled 'Q&A: Legal and Civil Rights Context Post-War' deals with recurring questions concerning legal and civil rights that remain pertinent even today. The discourse touches on the Civil War era, highlighting its obvious relevance to such issues since it is a civil war. Moreover, the story of the book and its development is briefly mentioned.
• 68:00 - 77:00: Final Thoughts and Audience Engagement In this final chapter titled 'Final Thoughts and Audience Engagement,' the author reflects on the unexpected journey of writing a book about the end of the Civil War. Initially, the book was not part of their plan, as they were focused on different research. However, a serendipitous moment occurred when the wrong box was delivered to them at the National Archives, leading to a new narrative. This chapter emphasizes the element of surprise in the creative process and the importance of engaging with the audience through these unexpected discoveries.

"Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" - Michael Vorenberg at Providence Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 another edition of the humanities forum. I'm very pleased to see you all today on this. It feels like one of the first days of spring, right? But you're you're still hungry for thirsting for knowledge. Um we will not disappoint. So as you know the forum is my name is Ian Bernhoff. coordinate the forum um which basically every Friday meets here in this room and it gives you a chance to hear from scholars from journalists from professionals from around the world around the country and around the world um who are you know sharing the questions that animate their research um
• 00:30 - 01:00 and basically what encouraging you to deepen your appreciation for the humanities. There's a couple of quick ground rules that I'll lay down before I pass this microphone off to people who have more interesting things to say than me. So one our basic format is we'll hear our the talk will be about 50 minutes long 45 50 minutes after which there's Q&A and the rule in Q&A is the student has to ask the first question. So get those wheels turning now as to what you want to know more about so that you can raise your hand and when that
• 01:00 - 01:30 moment comes I'll bring the mic to you say your name say your question we'll be off from there. We'll wrap up right at 4:45 at which point there's a reception down the hall in the great room. some really nice appetizers, you know, etc. So, it's a good way to start your weekend. You can talk about what you heard and what you're what you're gonna do next. Um, okay. And then, so go to the reception, that's a rule. Ask a question. That's a rule. Not all of you have to ask a question. The other rule is please shut down those
• 01:30 - 02:00 laptops. Put those phones away. Spend a little while being present in the room you're actually in. Uh, you'll be better off for it. And if in case you miss anything, we'll post the recording next week. You can you can play it back in a 0 75 speed. It'll be good. All right. With that, I'm going to pass the microphone over to my colleague, Dr. Patrick Breen, who's going to introduce our guest. Thank you, Hen. It's my pleasure to present today, Michael Vorenberg. Uh Michael Vorenberg is a repeat visitor to the humanities forum. His last visit was I you never answered
• 02:00 - 02:30 the question. Not quite 10 years ago, we think. um but but I think before COVID so it was a while back and we had him talk about his last book um which was Final Freedom. Now, not every book um not every academics book, you know, and I would expect that with the exception of possibly Mario, um no one in this room has read that book because I
• 02:30 - 03:00 haven't assigned it in class recently. Um but it's a book, you know, indirectly. Final freedom was the one that Tony Kushner used at his right hand when he was when he was making the screenplay for Lincoln, a movie I bet many people in the room have seen. How many of you have seen Lincoln? So, a bunch of you have seen the movie that's deeply connected to his his last book. Well, today we're not going to be talking about uh the rise of the 13th
• 03:00 - 03:30 amendment and the history the the history of that. We're going to be talking about something else which is covered in his new book, Lincoln's Peace. And by new book, I mean new book. Uh this book was published by Noff in Mar on March 18th. I happen to know that because I had a class read it between then and now. So, we really had to make sure the publisher had it, but they got it. And uh several of my students here have it in their hands. And so, that's great. This book is an interesting and
• 03:30 - 04:00 important book about how we think about dating and the starting and end points of the Civil War. He's thinking about the questions ending the question animating this book is when did the Civil War end? And once you ask the question, it's one of those questions you don't think to ask, you know, unless you're looking up on Wikipedia. What's the date on Wikipedia, by the way? Never use that. It's a series of dates. It's a series of dates. Okay. Which which so once you ask the question, you go to
• 04:00 - 04:30 Wikipedia and there's a series of dates and you're like, "Hold on, this is confusing. I want to know when it ended." Well, Michael Vorenberg is going to explain that to us now. Thank you. Thank you. Do you Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Ian, very much for the introduction and all the credit. Uh, thank you to the humanities forum in Providence College as well. This the
• 04:30 - 05:00 most beautiful day we've had in many, many days. That you should be inside listening to me doesn't seem quite fair, but I appreciate that. For those of you in in Professor Breen's class who were assigned his book and have read it, um I'll answer your question now that yes, uh Amazon does have a good returns policy. Um and you can look that up. So, no, seriously, I I thank you all for those who've read it already. U for
• 05:00 - 05:30 those who don't know the book and haven't read it, what I'm going to do today is is basically run through certain parts of the book without summarizing the whole thing. Don't worry. And then um but what I'm trying to do here is do more than just raise issues of what is in the book, but to raise bigger questions that relate not only to the Civil War, but to today, to wars in general and how we think about the time and place of war.
• 05:30 - 06:00 These are questions that are almost always with us. um they are with us right now in ways that I may touch on later on today. And of course during the Civil War, that's an obvious issue. It is after all a civil war. the story of this book and how it came to be um has its
• 06:00 - 06:30 own narrative which I'll start with by saying that I didn't know I was going to write a book about how the Civil War ended or when the Civil War ended. It came to me sort of by accident when I was doing research on another book and a box was delivered to me at the National Archives and it was the wrong box. Uh but I while waiting for the right box
• 06:30 - 07:00 went ahead and looked at it and I found um that someone had taken all these notes and written a report back in around 1890. For various reasons they were trying to figure out the legal end date of the American Civil War. And this was someone who works for the war worked for the war department. And when I saw the name of the file, which in big letters said end of the Civil War, I said, "Well, that's kind of stupid. Why would you do a whole big thing on that?" Because everyone knows that the war
• 07:00 - 07:30 ended on April 9, 1865. And I'll say that date again because you're going to hear me say it a lot. April 9, 1865. On that date, the Confederate General Robert El surrendered to Ulissiz Grant. And that moment of surrender was something emlazed in my mind just because there's images of it in many textbooks uh in many other ways in popular culture. Patrick Breen mentioned the
• 07:30 - 08:00 2012 film uh Lincoln by Steven Spielberg. There's a scene in that film towards the end where Lee and Grant are there at Appamatics sort of acknowledging each other. So even in a blockbuster film, you have a scene of Appamatics. So why in the world do we would anyone be researching the end of the war? We know the end of the war. And the person who was doing the research, someone named Lewis Grant, who was an assistant secretary of war, no relation to Ulissiz Grant, he had actually been at Appamatics that day as an officer for
• 08:00 - 08:30 the US Army. So he had seen the end but there was this legal problem he was trying to solve because you actually have to have legal start and end dates for a war for various reasons which may come up later and he discovered that the legal end date was not appamatics was not the surrender of Lee and then he had opened up the whole question of well if it wasn't then when was it and so that then had me going down the same rabbit hole that Lewis Grant did as I tried to
• 08:30 - 09:00 figure this question out too. The cover of the book that you see here is a a painting done in 1868, three years after Appamatics by a painter named George Healey. And it depicts an actual meeting that took place in Virginia on March 28th, 1865. So about 10 days uh before the that appamatic surrender. And I'll come back to this
• 09:00 - 09:30 meeting briefly uh in a brief bit. The meeting is obviously Lincoln. You'll recognize, you may even recognize the man to Lincoln's right. That's Ulissiz Grant. Uh and that is the foot of William Tecumpsa Sherman. And so he's meeting with Grant and Sherman. And then offscreen, if you will, is the Admiral David Dixon Porter. So these are the top generals of the
• 09:30 - 10:00 Union Army under Lincoln. Grant, the biggest general, well, he's the top general, and then Sherman, being the general of the West, as it was called, and then Dixon, the general, if you will, the admiral of the oceans. Uh, and he's meeting them because they know, he knows, Lincoln knows that very soon there could be surreners of the Confederate army and he needs to talk to his top brass about what to do when surrender comes, what terms to set to
• 10:00 - 10:30 negotiate with those who surrender. And so there's a meeting held on March 28th there. And first I want to set the scene a little bit more because as I said Lincoln is in Virginia. He's at Grant's headquarters. This is unusual. It's unusual for a president during this period to leave the White House. This meeting was part of Lincoln's trip. That was the longest trip by far that he would ever leave the
• 10:30 - 11:00 White House. He had left on a a couple other occasions. He went and visited Granted headquarters, but usually only for a night. He went to Pennsylvania to deliver an address at a town called Gettysburg. But again, these were short trips. When he leaves Washington DC a couple days before the meeting depicted here, he leaves with the intention not to come back until he has seen the end of the Civil War and until, I argue he's basically orchestrated what the end will
• 11:00 - 11:30 look like, what the peace will look like after the war. That's therefore why you get the title Lincoln's peace. He believes that he's going to witness and help orchestrate that end. And certainly on this day of March 28th painted where the painter has depicted the scene, that is his belief. A little bit of geography for us. If you look at the top of the map,
• 11:30 - 12:00 you'll see Washington DC. And so you follow the blue arrows and this is how he's getting to the headquarters. He's going to come up James River to City Point which is here. City Point is the headquarters of Grant. And he'll arrive there on March 27th. And if you can see this, the Appamatics River flows downward and meets the James here. That river will
• 12:00 - 12:30 become important in this story. But also notice City Point. Now go due north of City Point, right? And you come to Richmond, capital of the Confederacy and the capital of Virginia. Again, if you don't know anything about the Civil War, that's fine. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, Washington DC, the capital of the Union. Strikingly close, right? That here he is. Here's Lincoln not very far from the capital of the Confederacy. And the war is absolutely going on when he comes into City Point.
• 12:30 - 13:00 City Point, the headquarters of Grant's Army, is a bustling community. You get a sense of that. Lots of tents. There are railroads coming in and out of this community and of course ships. Lincoln has taken a paddlehe boat um sidewheer down. And this boat, it's not exactly the one you see there, but it looks like it called the River Queen. This is where Lincoln sleeps. This is where he meets with people. and it's docked on the warf
• 13:00 - 13:30 at City Point. This is effectively his office, if you will, where he's going to meet with a lot of people during his time in Virginia, which will last two weeks. Now, I come to that meeting on March 28th, and now you see the full cast of characters I mentioned. There are uh two things from this meeting that I'll just bring up that we know about that are relevant
• 13:30 - 14:00 here. One is that uh Lincoln is quite shocked to see Sherman present. Uh why? So Sherman is to visit Grant, but he's not supposed to be in Virginia. Sherman is supposed to be in the interior of North Carolina. Why?
• 14:00 - 14:30 Because Sherman commands an army that's bigger uh than the army that Grant commands in Virginia that's currently in North Carolina. Why? Because there is a Confederate army in North Carolina under a general named Joe Johnston and that Confederate army is bigger than the army commanded by Robert E. Lee in Virginia. When Lincoln sees Sherman, he's shocked and says, "What are you doing here?" You know, you're he's worried like, "Who's in charge of the
• 14:30 - 15:00 army back in North Carolina?" With asurances from Grant and Sherman, Lincoln says, "Okay, it's all right. nothing. There's no fighting going on in North Carolina. I bring that up because it's important for us to remember again, we're so focused on Virginia and Appamatics, which is in Virginia, and I'm as guilty of this as anyone, that it's easy to forget that at this moment across the South, there are Confederate troops. There's a big army in North
• 15:00 - 15:30 Carolina. West of the Mississippi, there are 50,000 you Confederate soldiers. And I haven't even begun to touch on the fact that there are still Confederates operating gunboats on rivers. There's a Confederate ship that's operational on the oceans. So, there's a lot of troops spread out over a vast space here when this conversation is going on. The second thing to mention is what is it that Lincoln says in terms of what are the terms of the surrender? And what Lincoln says, the phrase that
• 15:30 - 16:00 he uses when he says to his commanders what attitude to take to the surrendering Confederates when that time comes is let them up easy. Let them up easy. What Lincoln is doing in that phrase is he's referring to a wrestling metaphor and it comes from his own personal time as a young man on the Illinois
• 16:00 - 16:30 frontier where he had was a fairly young man and new to the society and was trying to get in good with the community. And he did this through giving a lot of talks, oratory, convincing people he was a great speaker, which he was, but also through wrestling. There was a group of guys, the Clearary Boys as they were known, and and so he would challenge them to wrestling matches and he would win. But it wasn't the winning that mattered. What mattered was that when he had the the guy down who he beaten and it was
• 16:30 - 17:00 clear that Lincoln had the upper hand, right? Then you stand up, you let the other guy up, you let him up easy. You don't smack him. You don't taunt. You don't rub it in his face. You let him up easy. The person who stands up, you shake hands. And now honor has been created between the defeated and the victor. And in so doing, not only have you showed yourself a proficient fighter and wrestler, but you've now created a
• 17:00 - 17:30 bond with the defeated that will serve you well going forward, which is exactly what happens on the frontier in this town of New Salem in Illinois. And this is what Lincoln has in mind when he uses this metaphor from wrestling. Let him up easy. This is the theme that Lincoln has been stressing for some time. The theme of mercy and kindness to those who are defeated. Earlier in March, Lincoln delivered his second his second inaugural address. And in that address comes the last line, the most famous
• 17:30 - 18:00 line of that inaugural address. With malice toward none. With malice toward none. this idea that the war will come to an end at some point and when that happens it's really important that he expected the North to win of course that the North not show malice toward the defeated to be kind to be benev to be benevolent because he understood that reconstruction lay ahead this is a message that I'll come
• 18:00 - 18:30 back to this idea of let him up easy said in this moment obviously a painter can't capture dialogue I mean, they could have put little thought bubbles or speaking bubbles, but no. So, the way the painter captures this message is if you look over Lincoln's left shoulder in the window, there's a rainbow. And the idea of the rainbow is that there's a piece coming, right? They're talking and pieces in the offing. It's nearby. And so, this was the notion. Now, the painter, of course, knows what's coming. That is within 10 days
• 18:30 - 19:00 there's going to be this great surrender. So now if you go um back up the Appamatics River, what happens is that meeting happens on March 28th. A few days later, the capital of the Confederacy falls, Richmond. Petersburg, the railroad hub of Virginia, and really the Confederacy falls at the same day. They are now occupied these cities by US troops. On April 4th, 1865, 160
• 19:00 - 19:30 years ago today, Lincoln travels to the Confederate Capitol, Richmond, and he visits the capital. Jefferson Davis, who has been inhabiting the capital, is not there. He left the capital the day before. He escaped with his whole cabinet on a rail car. the rail car headed towards uh the interior of Virginia to get away, worried that they would be captured. And
• 19:30 - 20:00 Davis is now running the Confederacy from a railroad car. And I'm not making this up. He calls it the cabinet car in the railroad and another car. There's some gold and silver. This is the Confederate Treasury. And Davis gives speeches along the way saying that the Confederacy is most certainly not dead. It is alive. uh and it's never been stronger. And we can say, how can this possibly be? And his army, his his argument is that the armies that have been defending Richmond
• 20:00 - 20:30 and Petersburg no longer have to defend readers Petersburg and Richmond. They're free now to join with other armies and and to uh wage war against the Union Army. So that's why Davis is not in Richmond when Lincoln goes to Richmond on on the 4th on April 9th. Then we get the most memorable moment. I think so many of us have seen versions of this or maybe even this particular version. It certainly is fixed in my head. This idea of Lee
• 20:30 - 21:00 surrendering to Grant at this moment at Appamatics. The town is called Appamatics Courthouse at the time. Even though the surren it's not a courthouse. This is a private home of Wilmer Mlan. It's the parlor where Lee surrenders to Grant. And you see all the people around them on April 9th. Uh most of them are Grant's attendees. Lee also had a couple people with him watching the surrender and dictating terms or getting the terms
• 21:00 - 21:30 down in paper, I should say, to be signed. And the terms, which I won't go into too much detail here, but you may have questions about them, are lenient. This is now back to the theme of let them up easy. They are lenient. The idea was Lincoln could have arrested all of Lee's men and put them in prison. He could have tried all of the men or certainly the officers for treason. There were members of Lincoln's administration who did want to try the high officers and certainly Jefferson Davis whenever he got captured for
• 21:30 - 22:00 treason, maybe even execute them. But Lincoln didn't do this. The terms of the surrender were such that yes, everyone had to stack their armyisssued rifles. all the Confederates did. But then they get to go home. Uh they're given what are called paroles. Parrolls are slips of paper that give them safe passage home and they are not to be arrested or bothered and they can go home because as Grant said to Lee, "We want the men to go back and to help plant their crops because it was time to plant crops."
• 22:00 - 22:30 They also got to cut keep the officers and those who had them sidearms, that is pistols, even though they had to stack their armyisssued rifles. That's interesting, too, for those who of you are interested in the history of firearms and firearms law that they let these men who had just recently been at war with them go home armed, the officers at least. So those are some of the surrender terms, but there are others. And so this date, April 9, 1865, becomes
• 22:30 - 23:00 in our minds the end date, even if we don't know the actual date of the war. And again, uh I'm fine using it as the end date of the war. I teach the Civil War class at Brown University and I've taught it for many time many years and I can't help myself from using phrases like after appamatics which is a way of saying after the civil war or this is a postappamatics event meaning after
• 23:00 - 23:30 appamatics. And yet even at this moment, the principles involved understood very well that this wasn't a simple single moment where on one side there is war and on the other side there is peace. That this would take a process to bring the war out of a state of war and into a state of peace. The day after this very famous meeting
• 23:30 - 24:00 between Lee and Grant, the two generals will meet again in a meeting that almost never is discussed or spoken of. Grant in the morning of April 10th will ride out to meet with Lee between the lines under a flag of truce. The two men will meet sitting on horseback and they will talk to one another and no one is with an earshot. So unlike the day before, we don't have hard proof as to what is said. Grant years later would write would write his
• 24:00 - 24:30 memoirs and he would explain what was said and that is I think a trustworthy source. Grant wrote out and Lee wrote out and then Grant asked Lee if he would contact Davis wherever Davis was. on the run and ask Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy to surrender because you needed this the president of the Confederacy to surrender for the whole Confederacy to surrender. And this would then put a true end to the war because at that
• 24:30 - 25:00 point all armed confederates should follow the president and surrender. And Robert Lee heard this request and said no, he would not do this. He refused to write such a message to his superior Jefferson Davis. He said that as his inferior officer, he would not overstep his bounds and take on this kind of duty. Now, the other thing is that Robert E. Lee knew that Jefferson Davis would never surrender. And he wouldn't.
• 25:00 - 25:30 Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10th, but he never surrendered. Even after being imprisoned in Virginia, he never surrendered. And that was something he was very proud of and other Confederates after the war are very proud of. So Lee says no. And then there's a pause. Awkward pause. And then Lee says to Grant, "You know, I wonder if it may take you and your army three or four times marching
• 25:30 - 26:00 back and forth across the continent before you've really put this rebellion completely down." That's a statement. of how much insurgency lies ahead potentially, how much war lies ahead and how long Grant's army is really going to have to work. And Grant in response says doesn't say no. He simply says, I just hope that it's not without too much
• 26:00 - 26:30 bloodshed. That's a better predictor of what is to come than what happened the day before. Because war continues for some time and a state of war, a state of war, a legal state of war continues even beyond that. When then does the civil war end. So let me jump now to the end point and give you a different ending, a different answer and ending which is the legal end.
• 26:30 - 27:00 And I'll keep on coming back to that theme of legal that wars actually have legal end points in addition to what we might think of as a political endpoint or a cultural point or more most likely a military endpoint. The military endpoint being when you say well one side is clearly one militarily. The legal endpoint of the civil war comes 16 months after the surrender of appamatics on August 20th 1866.
• 27:00 - 27:30 On August 20th, 1866, the president at that time, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor after Lincoln's assassinated, will issue a proclamation saying that the insurrection is at an end. Johnson does this effectively to announce that a state of war no longer exists in the United States. And this is very important because it's Johnson's way to signal that because war is over,
• 27:30 - 28:00 he's now going to pull the remaining US troops that are in the south out of the south. And so now the country will move ahead without armed forces in the south. That's going to be really important for reconstruction because if that happens, then the process of reconstruction going forward is going to be greatly hindered. if there's no application of US force in the form of the US Army to make it happen. That's what John Johnson is up
• 28:00 - 28:30 to when he issues this proclamation 16 months after the war. So I was surprised to discover not the proclamation which I knew something about but I was I was surprised to discover some years back that this is actually the official legal end date which is to say it gets uh affirmed by the US Supreme Court within a year of this proclamation. The US Supreme Court affirms that this is indeed the legal end point of the war and yet it's so
• 28:30 - 29:00 easily missed. Right? And so if we think about a timeline, then we really have a 16-month end of the war. Although I would argue that it keeps on going beyond August uh that's is that's a typo. It says August 2nd, should say August 20th. Um we have a big timeline here which begins at Appamatics, if you will, and and ends 16 months later. How then do we say that the war ends? When does a war end?
• 29:00 - 29:30 So if we just step back and ask that question that way, when does a war end? Well, one answer would be right, the last battle. Okay, that's good. So let's go find the last battle of the American Civil War. Right away, we've got a problem. There are two different sites in the United States that claim to be the site of the last battle of the Civil
• 29:30 - 30:00 War and they come a month apart. You probably can't see that, but don't worry. One is in April 16th, so that's a week after Appamatics in Western Georgia in the town of Columbus, Georgia. Battle of Columbus. I'm not going to talk about these battles unless you want me to later. The other one comes a month later uh at Palmito Ranch, which is in southern Texas, right on the
• 30:00 - 30:30 border of uh Mexico on the Rio Grand. A set of skirmishes over two days, separated by a month. Both claim to be the last battle. Go to either site. I'm just going to show you them. So Columbus is there. Here's Pomeo Ranch. Go to either site today and you'll find a plaque announcing the last battle of the Civil War. This despite the fact that they are a thousand miles apart. Now, the people of Columbus, you
• 30:30 - 31:00 see, wrote the last important land battle. So, that was their way of saying, "Yeah, we came a month before, but we're the important last battle." Pomeo Ranch, not such a battle. Um, Pomeo Ranch, there was fighting, there was there were casualties, somebody died. And in the official records of the War of the Rebellion, which in itself is a massive project that was created in the 1890s, uh, the people who created that 100
• 31:00 - 31:30 volume set wrote under after the battle of Pomido Ranch, this was the last battle. So, who knows? But this is the kind of thing I kept on running into over and over again. You you ask us what seems like a simple question, what is the last battle? And you run into problems and I take us through this in the book, which is why a lot of people are going to be frustrated in reading this book because I want you to share my frustration uh and suffering as I went looking for
• 31:30 - 32:00 the end and kept on running into these roadblocks. All right, forget battles. What about the last surrender? The last enemy to surrender seems like a reasonable way to think of an end of the war. Good. So Lee was not the last to surrender. Joe Johnston is in North Carolina, as I mentioned. He surrenders at the end of April. That's good. That's the last big army. But no, no, no, because I said there are 50,000 men west
• 32:00 - 32:30 of the Mississippi. They're under the command of a Confederate general named Edmund Kirby Smith. Kirby Smith arranges a surrender to play to take place on June 2nd, 1865. It's going to happen on a boat in the port off of Galveastston, Texas. But Kirby and so but Kirby Smith doesn't show up because he's worried he's going to be arrested and hanged. So he leaves and heads for Mexico, joining with another Confederate
• 32:30 - 33:00 general named Joe Shelby with his own men. Those guys are going to cross into Mexico with plans to make an alliance with uh the Mexican with Mexican troops there. They're actually not Mexican troops. They're French under Napoleon. Long story there, but that's in the book, too, because they expect to create a new army come storming back over the Rio Grand and keep the keep the war alive. So, that doesn't work as a surrender. The last Confederate general to surrender. The last Confederate general. That happens. Now, we're into June 16th. And I'll skip the timeline here
• 33:00 - 33:30 and go right to um here. The last Confederate general to surrender on is Stan Waiti or Watti as some pronounce it. So Wayi is is surrendering in what is today Oklahoma then was called Indian territory. This is a territory in Oklahoma today where there are the so-called civilized tribes. These are tribes that each had sovereignty. They were sovereign tribes. as sovereign tribes, they could join legally with
• 33:30 - 34:00 either side in the rebellion. And the uh and the all of them, all but one, join with the Confederate side. And that includes the Cherokee tribe. The Cherokee and Stani is a Cherokee chief. Cherokee have actually split long before the Civil War. The Cherokee actually are factionalized. And Stan Wayi has claimed himself to be the only chief of the Cherokee. Although actually there's
• 34:00 - 34:30 another Cherokee chief named John Ross who is acknowledged by the US to be the only chief. Anyway, here's Stanway T. He's a Cherokee chief, but he's also a Confederate general. And he has his own army that's fighting for the Confederacy and has been fighting for years for the Confederacy. And on June 23rd, he surrenders in Doville uh in in Indian territory so-called. And that surrender is depicted by a modern artist. Uh this painting hangs in the Oklahoma State Capitol. And the artist Dennis Parker was kind enough to let me
• 34:30 - 35:00 uh use this painting, reprint it in my book. And then to tell me things I didn't know about the surrender that are pretty interesting. The surrender takes place not in Cherokee territory, but Creek territory. There's other details like that. Part of the fun of writing this book was learning as I went uh certain things from people I didn't even know I would be learning from like someone who decided he was going to do this painting and therefore did his own research about this and then was willing to share what he had learned with me. So this is how I
• 35:00 - 35:30 sort of come to know things through standard methods but also talking to people who've done this kind of work except this is not the last surrender again. Why isn't it? In 1864, a year before the war is over, the Confederacy launched a really clever mission. It effectively bought a huge ship called the
• 35:30 - 36:00 Shannondoa, from the English, from an English private citizen, and it turned the ship into a warship. and it's and it uh put on the ship Confederate naval officers and their mission was the following to sail from England where they bought the ship. They were to sail east around Africa to Australia to dock in Australia and resupply and then sail to the North Pacific for and be there for the spring
• 36:00 - 36:30 summer of 1865. Why? Because the northern Pacific are the hunting grounds for whales at that time. And this is where the New England whaling fleet operates. And this is where uh the richest source of whale oil is at the time. The idea of war is not just to destroy armies, but to destroy economic resources. And the Shannondoa's task was that fire to the whaling fleet or sink them. And in so doing to do as much
• 36:30 - 37:00 economic destruction as it could to the New England whaling fleet. And so it is for this reason that in midsummer 1865, months after the surrendered appamatics, the Shannondoa comes upon the New England whailing fleet, destroys basically all of it, and in so doing in one week does more economic destruction in one week to the Union side than is done in any other week of the Civil War.
• 37:00 - 37:30 This after the war is supposedly over. It is a story that is similar to other times that we think about war where sometimes some force in an army doesn't get the memo and doesn't get the knowledge that the war is over. How could they possibly know sailing in the northern Pacific that Richmond has fallen, that Lee has surrendered. After the destruction, they begin to run into other ships that say Richmond has
• 37:30 - 38:00 fallen. Lee has surrendered. And they refuse to believe it. Lee would never surrender. No way Richmond could fall. And so they keep on sailing south. As they approach San Francisco, they get their guns ready. They want to shell San Francisco on the way out of the Pacific just for the hell of it. And then they run into a ship that has newspapers with headlines that say Lee has surrendered and Richmond has fallen. and they realize, oh no, because these newspapers
• 38:00 - 38:30 and those headlines are dated back in April and they caused their destruction in June and July, which means they were doing all this destruction when the war was over, which means they are pirates. They are unauthorized. As pirates, they can be hanged by any country. That's the law of nations. And so there there's a great discussion on board of where are we going to go now? because wherever we go, we could be hanged. And so they end up sailing all the way around South
• 38:30 - 39:00 America back across the Atlantic and surrendering. Um, let me get this back right. Uh, surrendering in the River Mercy, Liverpool, England, November 6th, 1865. last surrender in England by a Confederate ship that most of us have never heard of. Is that the last surrender? Yeah, I
• 39:00 - 39:30 I'd say yes. I'll just point out that they could have been hanged. They weren't. There were uh officials of the US government there who said, "We want them. We want all those sailors back in the US. We want to try them and we want to hang them." But there was a diplomatic arrangement made with the British that this uh would not happen because actually many of the people on board were British. And so that didn't happen. These people, if you will, were
• 39:30 - 40:00 led up easy in a Lincoln kind of way. Weren't uh they were not hanged. Now, my timeline has gotten so packed it's unreadable. And that's fine. But the point is to show you that when you go looking for the end of the war, you find not one but a series of incidents. In his kind introduction, Patrick uh Breen asked about when does
• 40:00 - 40:30 Wikipedia say? So that actually is something I did early on. I went on to Wikipedia and say conclusion of the civil war and not one but many dates show up. And you know if Wikipedia can't come up with a simple answer then probably it's not a simple answer. And yet for all that, for all that searching and for all those different dates and all those interesting stories, I've really haven't
• 40:30 - 41:00 even told the half of it. Why the Civil War by 1865 from the northern perspective, from the perspective of the federal government, from the perspective of the Union soldiers, and most certainly from the perspective of the black soldiers fighting from the Union and for the enslaved more than four million people in the South was a war about the destruction of slavery. The war maybe did not begin that way. There were all sorts of
• 41:00 - 41:30 protestations at the start of the war from the north that this was the war to preserve the Union, to reconstruct the Union, and not a war to destroy slavery. But this argument simply could not gain traction in 1865 because the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed in 1863. In January of 1865, the 13th Amendment had passed through Congress and was being ratified by the states. Lincoln had supported it. In the second inaugural that Lincoln gives in March,
• 41:30 - 42:00 the one that says with malice toward none, the paragraph before that, Lincoln says that the war is about slavery. He says it explicitly and that the war must go on. The war must go on until slavery is destroyed, until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be drawn with the sword. Such shall be the judgment of God.
• 42:00 - 42:30 If the end of a war, any war, is about the attainment of the objective of the victor, then the end of the civil war must be the attainment of emancipation, the end of racialized slavery in the United States. under this logic. And yet nothing I've said so far and and last battle, last surrender, the
• 42:30 - 43:00 stuff that Lincoln is on the ship talking to his guys about, you'll notice I never mentioned slavery. I never mentioned emancipation. And that's not me being tricky. It's the fact that you can study all this stuff and easily miss slavery. You can miss the fact that when Lee surrenders to Grant in the parlor of the MLAN house at Appamatics, they are surrounded by Union troops, including regiments of black
• 43:00 - 43:30 soldiers who absolutely believe this surrender means emancipation. And yet slavery and emancipation is not discussed in the room where it happened, if you will, uh, of Lee and Grant. Lee's army consists of hundreds of impressed black people, men and women, who are enslaved. They were impressed by private slave owners to work as laborers for the
• 43:30 - 44:00 Confederate army. Furthermore, Confederate officers have servants so-called with them. These are enslaved people uh that have gone to ar to to war with them. There are hundreds of enslaved black people surrounding that meeting in Appamatics. Those people end up going home, many of them. Some actually break free and end up in Richmond. It was very hard for me to track them and I didn't get to track many of them. But of course, the whole point is they're not in the picture. They're not in the scene
• 44:00 - 44:30 and they weren't part of the discussion. Where exactly is emancipation in all of this story? And if we create below our timeline other sorts of stories beyond the military and the legal, right? What else do you get? Now, I'm leaving out a whole bunch of stuff here which is faded and in orange, which is a big part of the book which has to do with Native Americans. I mentioned Stani or Wati of the Cherokee,
• 44:30 - 45:00 but he's just one Native American. There are many tribes not only in Oklahoma but on the great plains and in the southwest where fighting continues between US troops and native peoples well beyond appamatics. That's in the book but I'm just going to leave that be for the moment and focus on what's in purple which is emancipation which is also a timeline here. Right. So if we think about the key dates of emancipation May one that's an important date because it will become Memorial Day
• 45:00 - 45:30 but that's a longer story. um African-Americans in in South Carolina in Charleston will actually decorate the graves um there of of many people and that becomes that will evolve into Memorial Day but that's an important black holiday but even more important and better known to us is Junth June 1965 this is now as of a few years ago a federal holiday and on June 19th 1865 Union soldiers occupy Galveastston Texas
• 45:30 - 46:00 and the commander of the uh of the Union force that occupies Galveastston stands in Galveastston reads the Emancipation Proclamation as well as a proclamation that he has written that declares black and white in a state of absolute equality. Absolute equality is the phrase. Unfortunately, in Texas, that yearning or the desire or proclamation for
• 46:00 - 46:30 absolute equality does not come to fruition very fast at all. Nonetheless, black people of Texas never forget that phrase absolute equality. And a year afterwards on June 19th, 1866, they gather in Houston, in Galveastston, in Dallas, in all the big cities of Texas and they have parades and celebrations to remind the Union Army of the promise of absolute equality. So that's Junth and I can say more about that if you have questions.
• 46:30 - 47:00 It takes a long time before what is a Texas local holiday becomes national and then federal. That is an approved official holiday. But I haven't mentioned the 13th amendment which is not ratified until December of 1865 and then becomes part of the constitution. I could go on and on with the major acts of reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment 1868, the 15th Amendment granting black men the vote 1870.
• 47:00 - 47:30 All of these things are crucial dates in a timeline that we usually think of as a timeline that runs from black um slavery to black freedom or if you will reconstruction. We don't put that in the same timeline as the Civil War. They're separated out. And yet, how could we do that? How can we possibly do that again if the wartime objective is black freedom?
• 47:30 - 48:00 Then of course, black freedom must be part of the timeline of the end of the civil war. What does it mean that a country honors as the end of the civil war a moment or moments where slavery and emancipation is left out? I'll just put that question out there and let us think about what it means. When you enter Appamatics County today, every entrance to the county has this exact
• 48:00 - 48:30 sign. Where our nation reunited, a message of unity coming together. Lee Grant, honorable men signing surrender. Notice arms that are stacked. An end of violence. A true peace. But we know better. Certainly, you should know better now after hearing me say all these things that this was not a moment of perfect reuniting. I'm
• 48:30 - 49:00 not even sure the full reuniting has occurred and I certainly know that the arms were not stacked at Appamatics. The shooting continued. go down to Galveastston, the site that would become the important site of Junth. And a mural was started there a few years back by an artist named Reginald Adams and a team of artists. And it's called absolute equality because of that phrase that
• 49:00 - 49:30 shows up in that proclamation from June 19th, 1865. And this is the end of the war as painted. if you will, by a team of artists. You'll see the black soldiers up there and here the blows black men looking over the white man's. That's General Granger who's signing the order. The order that says absolute equality. This gets kind of fun. Reginald Adams,
• 49:30 - 50:00 I'm very grateful to him that he let me use this image in my book. So, Adams and the other four major artists who did the mural, they put themselves in the painting. That's them in Union uniform right there. Um, it's also cool about a mural is that you can paint over it. So, this is the painting as it was a couple years ago. That's Harriet Tubman on the left. She's still there. Lincoln's there. Granger and the troops are still there. This stuff is gone. There was
• 50:00 - 50:30 that's a black astronaut. There's new stuff there. This is how memorials work in other countries. An understanding that memory shifts over time. The meaning of an event changes over time. And as it changes, you might want to actually change the thing that honors that moment. It is not the way Americans tend to work where we tend to look for simplicity and fixity in our history and our memory. Another reason why I prefer this particular image to this
• 50:30 - 51:00 one. How will the end of the Civil War be remembered 160 years from today as we think about it 160 years later? I do not know. But I do hope that maybe these signs on Appamatics County's borders will be revised, maybe changed a bit, and have an element about them that perhaps is drawn from or looks a little
• 51:00 - 51:30 bit more like this, but I don't know. That's a future that I can't foresee. I'm just about the past, I guess. Uh, but I'd hope that you'll all think about that and maybe someday you too will get involved in the process of memorializing uh the end of the American Civil War. Thank you for today.
• 51:30 - 52:00 So remember when the microphone gets to you name and question. Uh my name is Aiden Nolan and uh the question I wanted to ask and it's somewhat speculative but I just wanted to ask uh in your opinion if Lincoln were to have not been assassinated and he was to handle the process of um reconstruction rather than Andrew
• 52:00 - 52:30 Johnson. Uh do you think that or rather how do you think that would have played out differently? Obviously given that we know Andrew Johnson's actions did not really help the process of reconstruction. So thank you for the question and the question is um you know how might things have looked different had Lincoln not been assassinated. He was shot on April 14th and died on April 15th. This is one of the most asked questions and um and
• 52:30 - 53:00 even if it's not asked it hangs over everything, doesn't it? So, if you haven't seen the Spielberg movie, and even if you have and don't remember it, there it hangs over the film because we see Lincoln um marching off to the theater and then of course he's assassinated and but you don't see the assassination. But a big part of the movie is Lincoln dealing with radical Republicans. These are people who want
• 53:00 - 53:30 immediate equal rights for uh black Americans. People like Thaddius Stevens who's in the a big part in the film played by Tommy Lee Jones. So hanging over the film is a notion that when Lincoln dies, the radicals now are going to have this great power and the moderate voice Lincoln won't be around to somehow moderate extremism. That notion of reconstruction is very
• 53:30 - 54:00 old and it's actually a problematic way of thinking about reconstruction. So I'll just point that up first. I have a real problem with that particular way of thinking about things. Had Lincoln lived, he would have added moderation to the radicals. But I think more important, he worked better politically with all parties, radical, conservative, the opposing party, which was the Democratic Party at the time. When Andrew Johnson comes into
• 54:00 - 54:30 office as vice president, he's actually welcomed as people think he's going to be a great president. The radicals are very happy to have Andrew Johnson because Johnson has been speaking a line that the South should be punished. Former Confederate should be punished. This is not a line of let him up easy. This is a a serious line of punishment. It turns out that within a few months, Johnson has completely switched and forms alliances with the leading former Confederates. He'll turn completely
• 54:30 - 55:00 against uh African-American rights. He'll veto uh all the key measures uh for black equality and then those vetos will be overridden in Congress by the radical Republicans. So, how would Lincoln have handled all this differently is the great question. Um, and Lincoln, I don't know, except he would have been much better than Andrew Johnson, much better at Johnson in dealing with Congress. But saying that a president is better than Andrew Johnson, is setting the bar too low. Uh, this is
• 55:00 - 55:30 not a good president, uh, and one of our worst. When when when historians are asked to rank presidents, Johnson's usually at the bottom or close to. So, that's good. But I think he would have done a great job. I think he would have pushed in a way that would have been more moderate and a lot of the things that needed to happen in terms of legal rights for African-Americans would have happened without allical fuss and struggle. I really do believe that. Except I do think and here's where
• 55:30 - 56:00 you know I I will probably come in for criticism in the book. Lincoln was not perfect. um when he died, and I think this might have changed had he lived, but when he died, it was Lincoln's belief, as it had been from the beginning of the war, that if you think about all southern whites involved in the Confederate enterprise, fighting for the Confederacy, the way Lincoln thought about them was as an upper crust of
• 56:00 - 56:30 Confederate leaders, slave owners, superw wealthy, radical secessionists who had dragged along with them the mass of ordinary white people. What Lincoln said at that meeting on board the River Queen, it's on the cover of my book, is that we must separate out the deluded the deluded ordinary white men of the South from the
• 56:30 - 57:00 leaders. In other words, he believed that the the ordinary white men were duped. That they all they needed was to realize that they had been duped. Scales would come from their eyes and they would then join happily with the Union cause. Here, I think Lincoln was naive. I don't think he realized how deeply embedded in ordinary southern whites hearts and minds was the idea of a confederate nation, of a white supremacist society, of an anti-
• 57:00 - 57:30 government ideology. All these things that would show themselves to be completely tenacious during the period of 1865,66,67 going forward during reconstruction and maybe even in some ways today. Had Lincoln lived, a point would have come when he would have had to confront something he never had to confront in his lifetime. that his faith in the ordinary white people and in
• 57:30 - 58:00 their loyalty to the Union was misplaced perhaps and that the people who were the much obvious and better bet to be loyal to the Union were black people. And that that being the case, what you do in terms of running a government is that you empower black people with political rights and you disempower your
• 58:00 - 58:30 enemies. Lincoln hadn't come to that point where he had to confront that reality of that's the best way forward. When that point came, what would he have done? I don't know. But we know it now, and a lot of people knew it then, that black people in the South were much more trustworthy than whites to be truly loyal to the Union cause. Lincoln hadn't yet gotten there by the time of his death. Next question.
• 58:30 - 59:00 Uh, hi there, Andrew Horn. would you just say some more about the issues in the Supreme Court case that you mentioned about Johnson's um uh declaration? Yeah, it's not a big court case. It's a minor case. Um so there's all this stuff that happens that are I'm going to say relatively trivial but have to be resolved around end of war. Okay. So what do I mean in the case uh that
• 59:00 - 59:30 leads my my the Lewis Grant thing to go forward? It's a pension application and a guy is looking for a war pension. And so the problem is he joined up in early 1866 and everyone says you don't get a war pension. The war was over. He says no it wasn't. The war was going on. So all this has to be resolved. Right? Here's another thing. um somebody's property is confiscated and it's confiscated by uh the Union government
• 59:30 - 60:00 and it's confiscated because the person in question is uh regarded to be disloyal and so his land is prop his property is confiscated absolutely something that you can do in wartime and Congress had passed laws allowing for confiscation but if the war was over then confiscation shouldn't be happening anymore. Now we have our case. Someone whose property is confiscated says, "You
• 60:00 - 60:30 shouldn't have confiscated my property in this point because the war was over." Government says, "Yeah, we can. The war wasn't over. Now it's going to make its way through the courts and now finally the Supreme Court has to decide when did the war actually end." And so they come back and they find the Johnson Proclamation of August 20th, 1866. And they find another key little nugget of information that I haven't mentioned.
• 60:30 - 61:00 Congress by mistake, entirely by mistake, the Republicans in Congress uh in passing an appropriation bill in late 1866 which had to do with something entirely different entirely. uh it had to do with uh payment of people who've improved in rank. Anyway, they happen to mention uh this proclamation by Johnson as the date at which um you're going to use as the end of war. No one realizes it at the time, but
• 61:00 - 61:30 the Supreme Court researches the congressional debates, finds it, and says, "Oh, Congress approved that as the end date, too." And so, the Supreme Court affirms that. The Supreme Court affirms it. Let me go back to Congress because Congress then when they realize their mistake, they say, "Oh, we take it back. The war is not over." Congress says in reaction to Johnson, "The war is not over until every state that has secceeded, we have allowed their
• 61:30 - 62:00 senators and representatives back into Congress." That's when the war is over. So, they try to rectify their mistake, but it's too late. But they do say that. And so that's why in 1871, six years after Appamatics, when the final representatives from the final seceded state were admitted back to Congress, a couple Republicans stand up in Congress and say, "Finally, the war is over. Congress defines the end of the war in a way that is all about Congress,
• 62:00 - 62:30 right?" And so that's a different ending. So that's why the Supreme Court how it could get away with affirming that particular end of of the war. Other other questions? Oh, I had one. Um, I had like a quote from the book that I thought was interesting, but it was after official after the official abolition, James A. Holly, a white chaplain of a black regiment stationed in Vixsburg, Mississippi, recorded a
• 62:30 - 63:00 litany of abuses that his regiment had witnessed in the early summer. These included no whipping of freed people, cutting off their ears, and even shooting them. And I think I just thought like I wanted to ask given that um you think the the fight for post for civil rights post emancipation was a continuation of the Civil War or a separate battle that didn't get enough attention at the time? It's it's a great question. Thank you for reading a quote from my book, which of course is uh
• 63:00 - 63:30 always nice. Although I'm actually in that, right, you're you're quoting someone I'm quoting. So it's it's someone on the scene. It's not me making this up, right? It's it's someone on the scene, an abolition an abolitionist leaning chaplain months after the Appamatic surrender, seeing an incredible amount of violence, I believe in Kentucky, which was the site of extraordinary violence, um as were many other states. the fight for civil rights, which we if
• 63:30 - 64:00 we think about that as a fight that of course will extend into the 20th century and maybe is still ongoing. I I have to say that I would not put that into wartime uh necessarily because then you get into questions which is are we still at war? Were we still at war in 20th century? It is the case that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of April 1866, which is often forgotten about even though pieces of it remain on the books, that was passed at a time of war. It's easy to
• 64:00 - 64:30 forget that, but I'll so sometimes some yes on the civil rights legislation, but I don't know how far I want to go there. But what unquestionably is part of the war is the violence being done by um insurgent white supremacist groups against black people. Wars don't end neatly. They almost always are followed by some degree of insurgency. I'm using insurgency deliberately because it's a term that we would hear all the time in the early 20 21st century, especially when we think
• 64:30 - 65:00 about the US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. At a time when people are saying the war is close to over and nearly over or maybe with one more surge it'll be over. Well, what's going on? Well, there's insurgencies on the ground. insurgency after insurgency. And what's going on with the insurgencies? They're attacking, the insurgents are attacking either US troops or uh civilians who are loyal to the US um cause, which is
• 65:00 - 65:30 exactly what's going on in 1865 on the ground in Kentucky and other places. These are former Confederates or Confederate sympathizers who are attacking sometimes US soldiers, but more often black civilians. And I I say attacking as your quote talks about. They're doing all the things that were done under slavery. They're whipping. They're doing some things that are even worse. They're in Kentucky, cutting off of ears. Um that became a thing in the summer of 1865 if you find black people and you can um isolate them. There's a
• 65:30 - 66:00 chapter in my book that talks directly about this issue of the violence in Kentucky. And I but I you also find it in Texas and other places. To keep that violence from happening, you need force. You need US troops in place. In reconstruction, we talk about the Freriedman's Bureau. The Freedman's Bureau we think of as a peaceime group of operators whose job it is to help transition black people from a state of
• 66:00 - 66:30 slavery to a state of freedom. The Freedman's Bureau was actually located in the War Department. It is a war effort. These are US officers whose who are taking on legalistic duties about transitioning people from enslavement to freedom. But they are also US soldiers and they are in command or their commanders are in command of actually armed troops who are going and going to strike down insurgencies. The Civil
• 66:30 - 67:00 Rights Act of 1866 is not only a civil rights act, it is a wartime act. It empowers uh it empowers the army to act proactively against insurgents. It says that if armed officers in the south hear about a potential conspiracy of white people to attack black people, they need not wait for that attack to happen. They can hunt out the white conspirators, arrest them,
• 67:00 - 67:30 imprison them, and disarm them. And this happens. Looking forward a bit to the famous Ku Klux Clan trials of South Carolina 1870. A lot of talk about the clan. Oh my god, the clan is they were so successful. That is true. The clan was ultimately successful especially after the withdrawal of US troops. But not right away. When Grant is president, Ulissiz Grant under his authority, the army acting again proactively strikes at the clan before
• 67:30 - 68:00 the clan can strike in South Carolina. brings them to trial. And these South Carolina trials are all the news nationally. Without an army and without a president and a government committed to use force against white insurgency, you don't get progress. That's an ugly truth that violence sometimes is needed, especially in this situation, to make reconstruction happen. And that on the ground, to answer your question, looks a
• 68:00 - 68:30 hell of a lot like war to me. And it certainly looked that way to the black people who reported on this violence to people like the clergymen you mentioned. One last question over here on the Thanks for the an excellent talk. Um I want to go back to the appamatics um sign that you take such exception to because I'm not clear exactly what the
• 68:30 - 69:00 problem is. Um it seems pretty obvious that the people are proud if they're from that county. I don't know why they wouldn't be that the peace treaty was signed there. It certainly I would think maybe not maybe your opinion is different that it's not the decisive moment but it strikes me that you could make a decent argument that it is the decisive moment and all the moments after that are looked at in light of that. Um so I don't know I'm not quite
• 69:00 - 69:30 sure what I get you said at the end you hope they change it and I was I was just curious what it says reunited. Is that the problem? There's uh yeah because it gives a message that unity was solid and universal. You just and I'll give an example maybe this was just a and I don't mean to take you to task on this right but you mentioned that a peace
• 69:30 - 70:00 treaty was signed there. Most certainly a peace treaty was not signed there. The Confederacy was never recognized as a nation by the United States. Therefore, you could not sign a peace treaty with it because it was an insurrectionary force as an insurrection as a rebellion, right? It had to be put down and the US would have been absolutely within its rights to try these people as insurrections. It did in fact try uh the commonant of Andersonville as for war for what we
• 70:00 - 70:30 would call today war crimes and it hanged him Henry Wartz and there's a chapter on the book on that and that happened in November well after appamatics and the trial was a sensational trial and it was all about how the war continued and how we were still in a time of war because he was tried by a wartime tribunal. He was not tried by a civilian group. He was hanged on the site where now stands the US Supreme Court
• 70:30 - 71:00 building. Why else do I have problems with this? Three weeks after the surrender in Appamatics County, one man sold to another man a bunch of slaves for a couple bushels of corn and some tobacco. That to me I've got trouble with. Not the sale. I mean, I guess sales of slaves happen all the time. But the idea that a group of people could take heart that this was the end and that somehow all is well and normal when
• 71:00 - 71:30 that kind of thing could happen. Yeah, I got problems with that. I've got problems with an image of arms stacked. There is a clear message there that the fighting is over. And yet during reconstruction, you have incredibly well-armed people. You have race massacres in Memphis in May of 1866, in New Orleans in July. They were called riots as a way to blame black people. But these are
• 71:30 - 72:00 massacres, and they were massacres by armed men against civilians, well over a year after Appamatics. If you know these facts, it is a little hard then, at least for me, to stomach the idea that we are supposed to look at a sign like this and say the nation was reunited the day after appamatics on April 10th. Absolutely. The country in the north celebrates the end of war. And
• 72:00 - 72:30 you're absolutely right that in the moment and still today, it'll be acknowledged as the end. And as I said, I too will take part in this. I too will talk about appamatics as an endpoint. But I will also talk about the ways it was not an endpoint. We must as human beings be able to have two competing thoughts in our heads at once because history is not simple and very few things are. On the day after appamatics in Boston, the city turns out
• 72:30 - 73:00 to celebrate Lee's surrender and all these great speakers give speeches about how peace is here and then stands up Richard Henry Dana who is probably the most central figure in my book. Dana was very famous for a book he a travalogue he had done as a young man. But by the time of the civil war, Daniel was better known as a lawyer and the best one of the best international lawyers in the country and he's a Bostononian and wellknown and he stands up and all these
• 73:00 - 73:30 people are saying what a great thing it is that Lee surrendered and the peace is now here and Dana stands up and says you all celebrate but yesterday peace was not made. Peace was not made yesterday. All that happened is a general surrendered. Peace must come, said Richard Henry Dana. In the first section of my book, I title it, peace was not made after Dana. Later that summer, Dana would give a much more famous speech in which he said
• 73:30 - 74:00 that the enemy must be held in a grasp of war. He uses a different wrestling metaphor. Lincoln says, "Let him up easy." Richard Henry Dana says, "Hold your enemy in a grasp of war until you get from your enemy full security that they will never rebel again." And that security for Dana meant black suffrage among other things for black men and other securities as well. So when I think about Richard Dana looking at that sign Appamatics County where our nation
• 74:00 - 74:30 reunited and I think about Dana saying peace was not made. That's where I come from on in reaction to that sign. We hope you'll adjourn down the hall to the great room for the reception and please give a thunderous applause to Dr. Bourne. Thank you all.