If you thought that the idea of another Civil War was dominating the political conversation five years ago when I first brought you this video, try taking a look at social media now. It seems like every week, a new headline or pundit asks, is the United States headed for another civil war? Is Civil War imminent? What comes next? The Civil War? Spoiler alert: it s the Civil War.
00:00:03.000If you thought that the idea of another Civil War was dominating the political conversation five years ago when I first brought you this video, try taking a look at social media now.
00:00:15.000Seems like every week there's a new headline or some new pundit asking, is the United States headed for another Civil War?
00:00:28.000Heck, Alex Garland even took a creative risk and wrote a whole film about the idea, titled Civil War.
00:00:38.000So if repeating history is to be avoided, then as it relates to the Civil War in the United States, it's important to know how, but more important to know why.
00:00:50.000Only the person who can answer the why of history Can't even hope to avoid the doom of repeating it.
00:01:22.000The point is, the Civil War is more interesting.
00:01:24.000We have David Barton of Wall Builders here, and we'll be doing an installment today on the Civil War and maybe some of the most common misconceptions.
00:02:21.000Well, I kind of like to let the documents speak for themselves.
00:02:25.000And so when you look at the Civil War, you had 11 states that seceded to become the Confederate States of America.
00:02:31.000And so these 11 states, when they left the United States, they all wrote a document of secession on why they left.
00:02:38.000And by the way, all of their congressmen from those states gave farewell addresses on the floor of the House and Senate that are public record.
00:02:52.000So, if you take the secession documents of the 11 states telling the world why we did what we did, every one of them says it's because of slavery.
00:03:39.000And so we think that it was all about states' rights, which is interesting that in the Confederate Constitution, to be a member of the Confederate States of America, you are not allowed to end slavery.
00:03:48.000You had to maintain slavery as part of the Constitution.
00:03:51.000So if it's all about states' rights, what are you doing joining a group that won't let you have the right to decide what to do with that issue?
00:03:56.000So, it really was about slavery, and that's maybe their constitution, their vice president.
00:04:45.000Well, see, the whole argument all the way up to that point... By the way, he looks a lot more ethnic than you usually think of Abraham Lincoln when you look at that.
00:04:51.000I mean, he could be Native American, he could be, I don't know, he could be Ukrainian?
00:05:02.000So, with Lincoln, leading up to all those years before the Civil War, with the abolition debates, there was no clear consensus that the Constitution prohibited slavery.
00:06:49.000So what happened was... Was it Jefferson who, or was it Washington who freed them at the time of his death?
00:06:54.000Washington freed them at the time of his death.
00:06:56.000There was a loophole in the law that was added in 1782 to Virginia law that said, okay, We want people to be free, so when you die, you can free.
00:07:04.000But even with that, even when you die, you can free your slaves.
00:07:07.000They never allowed you to free what were called dowry slaves.
00:07:10.000And dowry slaves were the slaves that came through the wife.
00:07:13.000So Martha's slaves, George Washington, you can't free Martha's slaves.
00:07:26.000He didn't even have that loophole at the time of his death.
00:07:29.000So, what happened was Jefferson wrote this anti-slavery piece in the Declaration, and he wrote, because the Declaration says, the unanimous Declaration, they all agreed that the only thing we'll put in the Declaration is what all 13 states agree on.
00:07:43.000Jefferson said South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia would not agree that slavery was a big issue, and so we had to take that clause out.
00:07:51.000So the Civil War was a long time brewing.
00:07:52.000It didn't just come out of nowhere like a lot of people think.
00:07:54.000But those three states thought that if you give us 20 years we can be away from slavery, and they probably would have been, because slavery is economically unprofitable.
00:09:45.000John Clem, for bravery at the Battle of Chickamauga, a newspaper reported that for what he did in that battle, his bravery was so great, that Lieutenant Rosecrans saw his bravery on the
00:09:56.000battlefield and promoted him on the spot from being a private to being a sergeant.
00:10:01.000And then General Thomas came in and said, no, no, no, I need you on my staff and made
00:10:06.000him a lieutenant and put him on his staff, on the general staff.
00:12:21.000He says he preached 19 times in a revival meeting.
00:12:24.000There were 34 editions, and he baptized 31 by immersion.
00:12:28.000So here you've got a guy who is a guy we know as a president who was a revival preacher?
00:12:34.000I mean, we don't think about faith with these guys, and that was a really big part of their life.
00:12:38.000Let me see, how do you juxtapose when people talk about Abraham Lincoln and the belief that a black man was worth three-fifths that of a white man?
00:12:52.000Because Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, he made it to Boston, he started speaking first in New York for the New York Abolitionist Society, then Boston wanted to hire him full-time.
00:13:02.000And he was trained at the feet of what are called radical abolitionists, Garrett and Smith and some of those guys.
00:13:08.000And they said, you know, we have a real problem in America.
00:13:21.000He said, but when I was hired full-time by the Massachusetts Abolitionist Society to speak full-time, he said, I decided I better read it for myself.
00:13:30.000He said, when I read the Constitution, he said, I saw that in it there was not a single pro-slavery clause.
00:13:38.000Well, then what do you do with three-fifths?
00:13:40.000Three-fifths, if you go back to the debates in 1787, three-fifths, the Southern states said, we want to count every black And the northern states said, count them, but free them first.
00:13:49.000They need to be free, because you're not representing them, you're using them.
00:13:52.000And so what happened was, they arrived at this compromise and said, okay, every black you count, you get more pro-slavery representation in Congress.
00:14:00.000So they went back and forth and said, okay, here's the deal, we'll let you count three-fifths of your blacks.
00:14:05.000And so that cut pro-slavery representation by 40% in Congress.
00:14:09.000It was nothing about the worth of the individuals.
00:14:11.000It was about the representation from them.
00:14:13.000And so when people hear the Constitution says blacks are only worth three-fifths, Frederick Douglass said, I checked it, that's not true.
00:14:20.000That was an anti-slavery provision to limit that.
00:14:38.000And it was interesting that when they did that, I mean, back in the founding era, it was the anti-slavery founding fathers who came up with the Three-Fifths Clause to put less pro-slavery people in Congress.
00:14:49.000And does that come with being so close to taxation without representation?
00:14:52.000as well there because basically you weren't representing them.
00:14:54.000You were counting them but not representing them.
00:14:57.000And that's what the North said, and by the way this was a fun debate, they said, you
00:15:01.000know you guys in the South, you say that blacks are your property and you're counting your
00:15:05.000property to get more pro-slavery reps.
00:15:08.000So we're going to count our horses and our cows and our chairs and our brooms and everything.
00:15:13.000And right now someone's going to get mad and say, you're comparing black slaves to horses
00:15:18.000You know, for example, you see this sometimes where when you are fighting really bad enemies abroad with foreign policy, sometimes you have to partner or form coalitions with the lesser of evils.
00:15:28.000Sometimes the historical context is, well, why do we have a relationship with Saudi Arabia?
00:17:55.000Do you think maybe it started with one guy bit the bullet to show how tough he was, and then no one else thought, I can bite the leather belt.
00:18:00.000They're like, well, Dennis bit the bullet, so now I gotta do it.
00:18:04.000Otherwise, I'm never gonna hear the end of it from the guys that are gonna do a movie about them with glory.
00:18:29.000A lot of Southern guys, they weren't fighting for slavery.
00:18:31.000They're fighting because the North invaded.
00:18:33.000That's an important delineation because I think a lot of people where they say well we see the confederate flag as a symbol of heritage and we don't see it the way you see it.
00:18:40.000I think a lot of people from the south don't see it that way but like you said the leadership when they had the opportunity to clarify their position they made it very clear that they wanted to leave because of slavery.
00:20:42.000All right, Strom Thurmond was a Democrat, no question.
00:20:45.000He ran against Harry Truman because Harry Truman did some really good civil rights stuff, helped desegregate the military.
00:20:51.000He would not kowtow to the Democrats in his party that were racist, so they ran a Democrat against him, Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat Party.
00:20:58.000So Strom Thurmond runs as a Southern Democrat against, and, you know, Harry Truman, I mean, he is from a Southern state, a border state.
00:21:07.000He was raised in a racist atmosphere, but he did the right thing with helping civil rights.
00:21:17.000He became a Republican because he changed his philosophy, because he became the first Senate Republican from the South to hire blacks onto his staff as major positions.
00:21:25.000And so it's not Democrats that did that, it was a Republican who did that.
00:21:29.000He left the Democrat party because of their positions.
00:21:32.000So when they point to Strom Thurmond, you've also got to look at the fact that he also
00:21:35.000changed his policy positions and he was no longer a Republican.
00:23:06.000That's the original Republican platform, and I'll bet you most Republicans have no clue what it is.
00:23:10.000This is the second Republican platform in 1860, 17 planks.
00:23:15.000This is the third Republican platform, compares the Democrats and the Republicans side by side.
00:23:21.000This is the first platform to call for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
00:23:26.000So I would say most Republicans today don't know what Lincoln believed, although the platforms tell us what he believed.
00:23:33.000But, no question that Lincoln was anti-slavery.
00:23:38.000Okay, I was going to ask you what you believe the most common misconceived notion of the Civil War was, but I think that we've addressed it in full.
00:23:44.000It seems to be that a lot of people don't think it was actually about slavery.
00:23:48.000And, of course, we have more segments, so you can just hit subscribe or notifications on YouTube.