The Matt Walsh Show - The Real History of the Civil War

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00:00:51.140 866-569-4711 or visit americanfinancing.net slash walsh. Today's real history episode is brought to

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00:01:21.140 On the night of January 2nd, 1864, Confederate General Patrick Claiborne was worried.

00:01:26.340 He warned his fellow Southerners that surrender to the North, quote,

00:01:29.620 means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy,

00:01:33.460 that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers,

00:01:36.500 will learn from northern school books, their version of the war,

00:01:40.340 will be impressed by all the influences of history and education

00:01:43.460 to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision. 0.96

00:01:48.820 Claiborne was only partly right. For most of the following century, non-Southerners were 0.99

00:01:54.680 pretty fair about the war and openly respected the South's leaders, including Lee.

00:01:59.000 Four top Americans of the past. They are Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, and Lee.

00:02:06.520 The South erected statues and monuments to its heroes. Several were erected inside the United

00:02:12.120 States Capitol. Even abroad, people respected the dignity, bravery, and brilliance of Robert E. Lee.

00:02:18.820 Winston Churchill described Lee as one of the noblest Americans who ever lived

00:02:22.640 and one of the greatest captains known to the annals of war.

00:02:27.100 It was almost exactly one century after the war, in the 1960s, when things took a turn.

00:02:32.820 But even then, it wasn't immediate.

00:02:35.120 In 1977, the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd performed in Oakland, California,

00:02:39.540 with the Confederate battle flag as their backdrop.

00:02:42.080 In 1988, Hank Williams Jr. released a top-ten hit called If the South Would Have Won.

00:02:47.260 But during the woke upheavals of the last decade, the story really changed and the

00:02:52.940 statues and flags started coming down. Even conservatives in the South had

00:02:57.900 turned on southern heritage. It's time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.

00:03:05.180 150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come. The retreat opened the

00:03:10.760 floodgates for anti-American radicals who literally desecrated the grave of

00:03:15.420 of Robert E. Lee's horse, melted his statues,

00:03:18.400 and slandered his reputation.

00:03:20.640 The Confederacy, the American Civil War,

00:03:22.760 it was an act of rebellion.

00:03:24.320 It was an act of treason at the time.

00:03:26.420 The current understanding of the Civil War,

00:03:28.280 as it's taught in Hollywood and schools and everywhere else,

00:03:31.660 is a cartoon caricature.

00:03:33.360 I can't breathe.

00:03:35.820 Robert E. Lee represents to me.

00:03:38.520 The last 10 years have been a master class

00:03:40.840 in historical malpractice, so jaw-droppingly stupid

00:03:45.120 that, honestly, most sane people would just change the channel

00:03:49.260 and call it a day.

00:03:50.980 But here we are, obligated to tell the truth,

00:03:54.380 so here it goes.

00:03:55.880 The Civil War is not nearly as black and white

00:03:58.600 as the school marms wish it were.

00:04:00.920 It was one of the most complicated events

00:04:02.720 in American history.

00:04:04.500 Its heroes, who existed on both sides,

00:04:07.700 were complex, multidimensional people.

00:04:10.860 Over the course of this video, we're going to prove it.

00:04:13.960 This is the real history of the Civil War.

00:04:26.760 Imagine serving as an infantryman in a battle

00:04:29.520 where your enemy outnumbers your side two to one.

00:04:32.820 And not only that, your enemy is better trained.

00:04:36.280 They're well rested.

00:04:37.220 And to make matters worse, they've

00:04:39.240 caught your regiment and your entire army in a picture.

00:04:43.560 They have a massive number of soldiers behind you and in front of you, perfectly positioned.

00:04:49.200 As an infantryman in this scenario, all you can do is follow orders, march where you're

00:04:54.420 told to march, and shoot when you see the enemy.

00:04:57.940 So that's what you do.

00:05:00.080 Then imagine that after a week of the most intense fighting of your life, you realize

00:05:04.340 that your side has somehow emerged victorious.

00:05:07.500 In fact, you've won decisively.

00:05:10.800 You don't remotely understand how it happened.

00:05:13.220 thought it was impossible. Well, that was the experience of a Confederate soldier named

00:05:17.380 Dorastus Myers during the Battle of Chancellorsville, which lasted from April 30th to May 6th,

00:05:24.100 1863. On May 11th, Myers, who served as a sergeant with the 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiment,

00:05:31.300 wrote a letter to his brother and sister, quote, the Lord hath crowned our arms with

00:05:35.880 another glorious victory. I think it was one of the hottest contests of the war. The enemy

00:05:41.260 were strongly entrenched. We fought them on the left at Chancellorsville with 40,000 men

00:05:46.220 against 110,000. I never was under such a fire of grape shell canister and musketry in my life,

00:05:53.320 though the Lord spared my life. Although the Confederacy lost more than 13,000 soldiers at

00:05:59.000 Chancellorsville, as well as several key officers, including Stonewall Jackson, the battle is widely

00:06:04.000 considered to be the greatest Confederate victory of the Civil War and one of the most impressive

00:06:08.520 military victories of all time. The historic victory was the result of the leadership of

00:06:14.120 Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. It's widely regarded as one

00:06:19.100 of the most brilliant tactical victories in American military history, often called Lee's

00:06:23.740 perfect battle. It's referenced in books like the West Point Atlas of American Wars, and it

00:06:29.040 continues to be studied in military academies today for its demonstration of outmaneuvering

00:06:33.400 larger forces through audacity and tactical ingenuity. In other words, Robert E. Lee was a

00:06:40.120 genius. So who was this man who, more than 150 years after his death, is still so frequently

00:06:48.520 talked about? Robert E. Lee was born in 1807 into a prominent Virginia family as the son of

00:06:54.440 revolutionary war hero Henry Light Horse Harry Lee. From a young age, it was obvious that he was

00:07:00.300 military genius. He graduated second in his class from the United States Military Academy at West

00:07:05.900 Point with zero demerits over four years and was commissioned into the elite U.S. Army Corps of

00:07:11.260 Engineers. For over two decades he served as an exceptional military engineer overseeing critical

00:07:16.860 infrastructure projects for the federal government. He served in the Mexican-American War where he

00:07:22.060 performed so well under fire that he was promoted to colonel. After the war he ran West Point and

00:07:27.820 and later commanded cavalry units in Texas.

00:07:31.220 A decade later, in 1863, he found himself

00:07:33.740 fighting the very army that he spent three decades serving.

00:07:37.560 Many of the officers he commanded and fought against

00:07:40.540 were students at West Point when he ran it.

00:07:43.320 He needed a victory at Chancellorsville

00:07:44.900 because he needed European support

00:07:46.640 to break the naval blockade.

00:07:48.540 His enemies sought to destroy Lee's army

00:07:50.620 and reunite the country.

00:07:54.140 The odds were in favor of the Union.

00:07:55.980 Lee's men were facing starvation in Fredericksburg

00:07:58.520 and he had just split his forces up,

00:08:00.860 sending General James Longstreet

00:08:02.500 and roughly 20,000 soldiers away to Suffolk

00:08:05.100 to defend Richmond and secure more supplies.

00:08:08.280 As the Union army converged on Chancellorsville,

00:08:10.860 they had a substantial numerical advantage.

00:08:14.260 Union forces began crossing the Rappahannock River

00:08:17.060 in late April, laying pontoon bridges

00:08:19.520 just south of Fredericksburg.

00:08:21.380 At the same time, another Union column was marching east,

00:08:24.300 crossing the Rapidan River.

00:08:26.580 Roughly 70,000 Union soldiers ultimately converged

00:08:29.160 at the Chancellorsville Crossroads,

00:08:30.980 moving towards Fredericksburg

00:08:32.260 and the rear of the Confederate Army.

00:08:34.120 Meanwhile, Hooker left a force in front of Lee

00:08:36.440 at Fredericksburg under General John Sedgwick.

00:08:39.440 It was clear that a massive battle was brewing.

00:08:42.160 On the evening of April 29th, Jedediah Hotchkiss,

00:08:45.200 a topographical engineer on Stonewall Jackson's staff,

00:08:48.140 remarked,

00:08:48.900 Tomorrow, tomorrow, death will hold high carnival.

00:08:52.520 Faced with a vastly inferior strategic position,

00:08:55.240 Lee had three options.

00:08:56.620 Option one, he could attack Sedgwick's forces,

00:08:59.480 roughly 40,000 men along with artillery

00:09:01.780 that were directly in front of him at the Rappahannock River.

00:09:05.240 But if the fighting lasted too long,

00:09:06.640 the Union could move from the west

00:09:08.540 and destroy the rear of the Confederate Army.

00:09:11.720 Option two, he could retreat and head south

00:09:14.900 to consolidate his forces.

00:09:16.140 This was the safest maneuver, at least in the short term.

00:09:20.340 Option three, he could split his forces

00:09:21.920 and send Jackson's Corps to the west

00:09:24.920 while leaving some small divisions at the front line,

00:09:28.640 holding Sedgwick at bay.

00:09:31.580 At the time, there were 70,000 Union soldiers

00:09:33.640 over four corps who had moved

00:09:35.740 into the Virginia wilderness facing east.

00:09:40.040 If Lee divided his army

00:09:41.560 to attack those advancing Union forces in the woods,

00:09:44.740 the main risk was that Sedgwick would advance

00:09:46.780 and crush the small number of troops he left behind.

00:09:50.420 Lee decided to take that risk.

00:09:53.480 He ordered Jackson to lead the troops to the west,

00:09:56.280 troops who in the dead of night were unsure of what exactly was going on.

00:10:00.280 William Calder, a soldier in the 2nd North Carolina Infantry,

00:10:03.620 recorded the movement this way,

00:10:05.680 We had no idea where we were going.

00:10:07.440 A soldier never knows where he's going, nor what he's going to do,

00:10:10.700 until the moment for action comes.

00:10:12.800 They have only to trust in their commanders.

00:10:14.800 On we went, through mud and over stumps,

00:10:16.760 stumbling about in the dark to the great danger of our heads and our shins.

00:10:22.300 All the while, Union generals were congratulating one another.

00:10:25.200 Bands played upbeat songs as soldiers cheered.

00:10:29.160 But by the morning of May 1st, the mood changed.

00:10:31.740 Jackson's army, advancing to the west,

00:10:34.320 ran into Union brigades from the 5th Corps and 12th Corps,

00:10:38.380 catching Hooker off guard.

00:10:39.700 Although the Union maintained a numerical advantage,

00:10:42.920 Hooker ordered his soldiers to pull back.

00:10:45.440 Union generals couldn't believe Hooker's orders.

00:10:48.100 In fact, Major General Henry Slocum, who was in charge of the 12th Corps,

00:10:52.260 called the orders crazy and threatened to shoot the messenger who delivered the news.

00:10:55.960 But ultimately, the generals obeyed.

00:10:58.840 Hooker was still convinced that he was in the superior strategic position,

00:11:02.080 but Lee was not done yet.

00:11:04.520 Jackson proposed yet another secret flanking maneuver,

00:11:07.100 taking his entire corps and leaving behind only 14,000 men.

00:11:11.800 Around 5 a.m. on May 2nd, Lee authorized Jackson to take the entire 2nd Corps,

00:11:16.780 15 infantry brigades consisting of 30,000 soldiers and more than 100 cannon

00:11:21.300 around the Union's right flank.

00:11:23.960 In the fog of war, Jackson was able to snake around the Union forces undetected

00:11:28.600 with the help of scouts and locals who mapped out a route in the wooded terrain.

00:11:33.860 In his final dispatch to General Lee, Jackson wrote,

00:11:36.960 The enemy has made a stand at Chancellor's, which is about two miles from Chancellorsville.

00:11:41.000 I hope as soon as practicable to attack,

00:11:43.940 I trust that an ever-kind Providence

00:11:45.840 will bless us with great success.

00:11:48.080 Respectfully, T.J. Jackson.

00:11:51.480 At 5.30 p.m., horse artillery,

00:11:53.140 positioned near the turnpike,

00:11:54.480 fired off two signal shots,

00:11:55.980 which were followed by bugle calls.

00:11:58.260 Jackson's Corps emerged suddenly from the woods.

00:12:01.320 12,000 soldiers from the Union's 11th Corps

00:12:04.260 were taken completely by surprise.

00:12:05.620 Many of their trenches were facing the south,

00:12:07.560 not the west,

00:12:08.620 where the Confederate surprise attack was coming from.

00:12:11.500 Very quickly, the Union forces were pushed back

00:12:13.600 about three miles, but they weren't completely defeated.

00:12:16.420 It was dark and they were in the woods,

00:12:18.720 which complicated Jackson's efforts to crush them.

00:12:21.620 Jackson decided to push forward anyway

00:12:23.700 and headed north to cut off Union retreat.

00:12:26.520 In fact, Jackson himself, along with some other officers,

00:12:29.420 rode out ahead of the Confederate line

00:12:31.100 to get a better sense for what the Union army was doing.

00:12:34.660 Jackson was wounded by friendly fire

00:12:37.440 and died eight days later.

00:12:39.940 Jackson's profound final words were documented

00:12:43.020 by the historian Shelby Foote.

00:12:45.560 And he called the doctor and says,

00:12:48.140 Dr. McGuire, my wife tells me I'm going to die today.

00:12:50.660 Is that true?

00:12:51.500 And the doctor said, yes, it is.

00:12:54.740 And he said, good, very good.

00:13:00.060 I always wanted to die on a Sunday.

00:13:03.660 Lee appointed Jeb Stewart to replace Jackson,

00:13:06.580 ordering him to press the attack.

00:13:08.540 And as Lee put it, quote,

00:13:09.780 it is necessary that the glorious victory thus far achieved

00:13:12.580 be prosecuted with the utmost vigor

00:13:15.300 and the enemy given no time to rally.

00:13:18.060 As soon, therefore, as it is possible,

00:13:20.140 they must be pressed so that we may unite

00:13:22.140 the two wings of the army.

00:13:23.680 Endeavor, therefore, to dispossess them of Chancellorsville,

00:13:26.800 which will permit the union of the whole army. 0.65

00:13:29.120 I shall myself proceed to join you as soon as I can,

00:13:32.220 make arrangements on this side,

00:13:33.380 but let nothing delay the completion of the plan

00:13:35.740 of driving the enemy from his rear and from his positions.

00:13:38.960 I shall give orders that every effort be made 0.81

00:13:41.060 on this side at daybreak to aid in the junction."

00:13:44.760 On May 3rd, Stewart led brutal frontal assaults

00:13:47.580 on critical positions, including the high ground

00:13:50.060 of Hazel Grove, with the goal

00:13:51.560 of reuniting the Confederate Army.

00:13:53.760 The attack was immediately effective.

00:13:55.680 In order to prevent another Confederate flanking maneuver,

00:13:58.460 Hooker made the fateful decision to abandon the high ground

00:14:01.700 on Hazel Grove, ordering Sickles to fall back

00:14:04.880 with the rest of the Union forces,

00:14:06.860 was a pivotal blunter and yet another cautious decision

00:14:10.740 while Lee was pursuing a much more aggressive strategy.

00:14:13.780 It's important to emphasize how important Hazel Grove was

00:14:16.860 as an artillery platform.

00:14:19.060 As Chris Michalski writes in That Furious Struggle, quote,

00:14:21.940 in the 70 square mile sea of trees

00:14:23.840 that made up the wilderness,

00:14:25.000 there were few open plots of ground,

00:14:27.380 making the wilderness a terrible place to deploy artillery.

00:14:30.340 Open ground like Hazel Grove was invaluable.

00:14:33.540 Being on higher ground increases a gun's range

00:14:36.040 while also making the gun harder to hit

00:14:37.980 with counter-battery fire.

00:14:40.220 The Confederates immediately rushed dozens of guns

00:14:43.540 onto Hazel Grove and unloaded on the Union lines,

00:14:46.420 forcing them to pull back.

00:14:48.120 The cover fire allowed the Confederate Army to reunite,

00:14:50.960 as Lee had ordered.

00:14:52.180 It also had a direct impact on the leadership

00:14:54.760 of the Union Army.

00:14:56.220 Hooker was injured when a Confederate cannonball

00:14:58.740 struck the porch where he was standing

00:15:00.360 at his command center, splintering a piece of wood

00:15:02.820 that fell and hit him.

00:15:04.020 Hooker was never removed from command,

00:15:05.640 nor did his subordinates attempt to replace him,

00:15:07.580 but he was clearly dazed at the worst possible moment,

00:15:11.160 right when his forces were divided

00:15:13.200 and the fighting was fiercest.

00:15:15.200 But at the same time, Sedgwick broke through

00:15:16.860 the Confederate battle lines at Fredericksburg,

00:15:18.700 specifically Mary's Heights,

00:15:20.140 posing a direct and unopposed threat

00:15:22.040 to the rear of Lee's lines.

00:15:24.560 When Lee heard the news, he was stoic.

00:15:26.660 In response to a chaplain who was panicking

00:15:28.820 after bringing word of the advancing Union army,

00:15:31.860 Lee said simply, thank you very much, but both you and your horse are overheated.

00:15:37.280 Take him to that shady tree yonder and rest a little.

00:15:41.000 Lee ultimately decided to split his army for a third time.

00:15:44.240 He sent the Second Corps under Brigadier General Raleigh Colston to strike Hooker,

00:15:48.940 and he ordered McLaw's division to march east to fight Sedgwick.

00:15:53.080 Fighting had broken down in three key areas, Salem Church, Fredericksburg, and the Chancellorsville Crossroads.

00:15:59.860 Eventually, Lee rode out to Salem Church to lead the counterattack on Sedgwick directly.

00:16:05.160 He successfully prevented the Union pincer movement once again by dividing his forces.

00:16:10.400 Outmaneuvered, stunned, and physically injured, Hooker ordered a full retreat on the night of May 4th.

00:16:16.800 Lee, by repeatedly dividing his forces when conventional wisdom called for retreating each time,

00:16:21.480 had managed to defeat a much larger army at a time when both the Union and the Confederacy were eager for a major victory.

00:16:29.140 Lee's tactics are still studied today in military academies.

00:16:32.400 He recognized his opponent's strategic weakness and his opponent's fear, and he exploited them both.

00:16:38.700 When the war broke out, no one thought it would last long.

00:16:41.320 One person who knew it wouldn't be short was Robert E. Lee.

00:16:44.640 In early 1861, while still in the U.S. Army at Fort Mason, Texas,

00:16:48.420 he correctly predicted that if it came to armed conflict, quote,

00:16:52.080 the war will last at least four years. 0.99

00:16:54.960 He was right.

00:16:55.460 Lee's foresight in recognizing the Civil War's potential for protracted devastation,

00:17:00.460 unlike the naive optimism of many on both sides, underscored his wisdom and his realism.

00:17:05.460 His perfect battle at Chancellorsville showcased Lee's military prowess.

00:17:09.460 The South didn't have the North's industrial capacity, railroads, wealth, or population,

00:17:15.460 but it had some of the greatest military leadership in human history.

00:17:19.460 In other words, Lee and the South, they were no losers.

00:17:25.460 When the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861, an immediate question arose,

00:17:33.240 what should the conflict be called? Now, the answer wasn't obvious. On April 15th,

00:17:38.120 President Lincoln issued Proclamation 80, which referred to the attack on Sumter and

00:17:42.580 various state secessions as, quote, combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary

00:17:47.800 course of judicial proceedings. In a July 4th message to Congress, Lincoln referred to the

00:17:53.220 war as, quote, a case of rebellion. He continued to use the term rebellion throughout the war,

00:17:58.060 including in the Emancipation Proclamation, where he mentioned the rebellion against the United

00:18:02.120 States. The words were political in nature. The Constitution conferred Lincoln emergency powers

00:18:08.180 if he called it a rebellion. It also denied legitimacy to the South, implying that they

00:18:13.000 were still part of the country. In 1880, when the War Department released the official records of

00:18:18.780 the war. They titled it the War of the Rebellion, a compilation of the official records of the Union

00:18:24.320 and Confederate armies. During the War of the South had its own preferred terms, like the War

00:18:28.660 for Southern Independence and the War Between the States. After the First Battle of Manassas,

00:18:33.820 Confederate General Stonewall Jackson told his troops, I hope by your future deeds and bearing

00:18:39.120 you'll be handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in this, our Second War of Independence.

00:18:44.860 Farewell.

00:18:46.340 Harris von Bork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General Jeb Stewart,

00:18:50.640 titled his book, Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence.

00:18:54.840 Now, whether it was a rebellion or a war for independence depends on who you ask,

00:18:58.440 but it certainly was not a civil war.

00:19:01.660 Civil wars are between two sides that want to control the country.

00:19:06.240 The Russian Civil War was between whites and reds over who would control the Russian Empire.

00:19:11.360 The Chinese Civil War was between communists and nationalists over who would control China.

00:19:16.200 The English Civil War was between parliamentary forces and the king over who would have supreme power over England.

00:19:22.560 There's no evidence whatsoever the South had any interest in occupying or controlling Boston or New York or the entire country.

00:19:29.920 They wanted to leave the Union for various reasons, which they believed they had the legal right to do.

00:19:35.360 the matter at hand was whether the united states was a collection of sovereign states

00:19:41.680 or a centralized union of subordinate states that wasn't really a question in the early years

00:19:47.580 of the republic according to katherine drinker bowen's book miracle at philadelphia when the

00:19:52.620 constitutional convention's committee of style and arrangement originally drafted the preamble

00:19:57.100 it had no reference to we the people of the united states in fact what the articles drafted by the

00:20:02.340 convention had said was, quote, we the undersigned delegates of the states of New Hampshire,

00:20:07.080 Massachusetts Bay, etc. And so on down the list of the 13. But they scrapped that idea because it

00:20:13.460 was unlikely that they would get all 13 states to ratify the new constitution. So the real history

00:20:19.400 of how the term we the people was born is that it was a technicality. Back then, you wouldn't have

00:20:25.720 said the United States is a place, you would have said these United States are a place. And that is

00:20:33.320 a very important distinction. In that context, it's not surprising that by 1794, just six years

00:20:39.220 after the Constitution's ratification, two U.S. senators, Rufus King of New York and Oliver

00:20:44.140 Ellsworth of Connecticut, approached Senator John Taylor of Virginia and informed him they wanted

00:20:49.960 to break up the union already. They recognized a huge divide between the northern and southern

00:20:54.820 states, and it wasn't just cultural differences between the agrarian south and the urbanized

00:20:59.780 north. They noticed major political and economic differences too. In 1883, more than two decades

00:21:07.080 after the outbreak of the war, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts acknowledged that everybody

00:21:11.760 involved in the ratification of the Constitution would have assumed states could leave, writing

00:21:16.640 quote, when the Constitution was adopted by the votes of states at Philadelphia and accepted by

00:21:21.980 votes of states and popular conventions it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country

00:21:26.940 from washington and hamilton on the one side to george clinton and george mason on the other

00:21:31.020 who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered upon by the states and from

00:21:36.700 which each and every state had the right peaceably to withdraw a right which was very likely to be

00:21:42.380 exercised their historical record proves this point between the founding of the country in 1861

00:21:48.540 northern states threatened to secede at least five times. In 1803 a group of

00:21:53.780 Massachusetts-based Federalists known as the Essex Junto threatened to secede

00:21:57.940 because they feared the Louisiana Purchase would dilute their political

00:22:01.160 power. Aaron Burr, who was Thomas Jefferson's vice president, was their

00:22:04.780 leader. In 1807 they threatened to leave again after Jefferson put an embargo on

00:22:10.140 Great Britain in France. During the War of 1812 New England once again threatened

00:22:14.820 secede because of the British blockade of their ports. Some states considered independently

00:22:19.700 making peace with the British. Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to place their militias

00:22:24.560 under federal command. They claimed the federal government didn't have the power to do it.

00:22:29.660 In the 1840s, northern politicians published a solemn appeal to the peoples of free states,

00:22:35.500 arguing that the annexation of Texas will be, quote, so injurious to the interests and abhorrent

00:22:40.120 to the feelings of the people of the free states as, in our opinion, not only inevitably to result

00:22:45.300 in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it. Former President John Quincy Adams

00:22:50.660 of Massachusetts signed that document. After the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act,

00:22:56.540 New England threatened to nullify the law, and some leaders called for secession again.

00:23:02.400 Before the Civil War, the North issued credible threats to secede at least five separate times.

00:23:07.760 As the great Civil War historian Shelby Foote put it,

00:23:10.120 If the states had known that they couldn't get out, they never would have gotten in.

00:23:14.940 You've seen how history gets rewritten.

00:23:16.980 We're not the only ones fixing the historical record.

00:23:20.280 Mount Titano Media is setting the record straight with Finding Our Words, Words That Made America,

00:23:25.820 a collection of the greatest speeches in American history,

00:23:28.400 many of them nearly forgotten from the people who actually built this country.

00:23:31.880 It includes speeches from Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington,

00:23:35.700 two of the greatest orators America has ever produced,

00:23:38.360 whose words inspired generations

00:23:40.080 and are almost never taught in schools anymore.

00:23:42.440 In a moment when everyone's debating

00:23:43.960 what this country is supposed to be,

00:23:45.620 these words matter more than ever.

00:23:47.860 Read it or listen to the new Audible edition

00:23:49.700 featuring voices you'll recognize.

00:23:51.440 Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Spencer Klavan,

00:23:53.640 U.S. Army generals and leaders in classical education.

00:23:56.760 Every speech comes with an essay

00:23:58.140 by journalist Tracy Lee Simmons

00:23:59.980 giving you the full historical context.

00:24:03.000 This is the history worth knowing.

00:24:04.900 Go find it.

00:24:06.000 Go to mounttatnomedia.com

00:24:08.220 to get your copy of Finding Our Words, Words That Made America.

00:24:12.240 Again, that's mounttatanomedia.com.

00:24:20.680 Robert E. Lee witnessed the 1860 election results from a U.S. Army post in San Antonio, Texas.

00:24:27.700 As the fervor over secession began to boil over, Lee wrote his father-in-law, quote,

00:24:33.040 If the union is dissolved, which God in his mercy forbid, I shall return to you. 0.62

00:24:36.900 According to historian Alan Guelzo, as the states of the Deep South left the Union, Lee complained that the behavior of the cotton states was wholly beyond any justification, and he was worried that their selfish and dictatorial bearing would make life for Virginia miserable should she determine to coalesce with them. 0.98

00:24:56.480 In a letter to one of his cousins, he wrote,

00:24:59.080 Secession is revolution.

00:25:01.520 He wrote that, quote,

00:25:02.160 According to Guelzo, Lee wished to live under no other government

00:25:19.320 and to have no other flag than the Star-Spangled Banner.

00:25:22.480 But if that government was now going to disappear,

00:25:24.200 and the only alternative was to go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native

00:25:30.200 land. Like so many Americans from this period, Lee was a patriotic American and a war hero,

00:25:36.240 but he saw himself first and foremost as a Virginia. On February 6th, 1861, David Twiggs,

00:25:43.500 the commander of the U.S. Army's Department of Texas, surrendered his entire command to

00:25:47.760 the Confederates and ordered all federal troops to abandon their posts. Lee refused to leave

00:25:52.920 Fort Mason and pledged to defend his post at all hazards.

00:25:57.040 This is because the legality of secession mattered to him

00:26:00.200 and because his native Virginia hadn't seceded yet.

00:26:03.720 As he left Texas, Lee declared he was returning to Virginia

00:26:06.960 to resign and go to planting corn.

00:26:09.720 And though he would never bear arms against the US,

00:26:12.300 he might carry a musket in defense

00:26:13.980 of my native state, Virginia.

00:26:17.220 Lee's attitude tells us a lot about why not

00:26:19.560 one single Confederate leader was ever convicted of treason because it was commonly understood at

00:26:24.360 the time that it was not treason. The legal case for secession goes back to before the Constitution

00:26:30.200 when 13 U.S. colonies decided to secede from the British crown. After winning their war for

00:26:36.020 independence, those colonies then formed the Articles of Confederation, which required that

00:26:40.340 any changes to the Union be adopted by the Congress in all the states. But that never happened,

00:26:45.740 And most states just seceded.

00:26:49.180 The background led historian Charles Francis Adams Jr., who served as a colonel in the Union Army, to say, quote,

00:26:56.420 If Robert E. Lee was a traitor, so also indisputably were George Washington, Oliver Cromwell, John Hamden, and William of Orange.

00:27:03.840 Adams goes on, George Washington furnishes a precedent at every point.

00:27:07.540 A Virginian like Lee, he was also a British subject.

00:27:10.640 He had fought under the British flag, as Lee had fought under that of the United States.

00:27:14.840 When, in 1776, Virginia seceded from the British Empire, he went with his state, just as Lee went with it 85 years later.

00:27:22.620 Subsequently, Washington commanded armies in the field designated by those opposed to them as rebels and whose descendants now glorify them as the rebels of 76.

00:27:32.540 Much as Lee later commanded and at last surrendered, much larger armies also designated rebels by those they confronted.

00:27:39.460 Except in their outcome, the cases were therefore precisely alike.

00:27:44.360 And logic is logic.

00:27:46.360 So the only difference is that Washington won his war and Lee lost his.

00:27:51.340 The courts basically agreed with that analysis.

00:27:54.700 After the Civil War, many northern newspapers, including the Boston Daily Advertiser and the New York Times,

00:27:59.720 published materials encouraging the government to put Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, on trial for treason.

00:28:06.660 And for their part, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that a trial would, quote,

00:28:10.120 render traitors infamous and have it judicially settled that secession is illegal.

00:28:15.520 We would have learned a lot about the country if they would have done it.

00:28:18.580 According to University of Virginia law professor Cynthia Nicoletti,

00:28:22.780 no one knew for sure whether secession was legal

00:28:24.900 and that any treason prosecution would rise and fall on that question.

00:28:30.520 Indeed, she quotes George Washington Woodward,

00:28:32.820 Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court,

00:28:34.380 who wrote in a letter to a lawyer representing a Confederate senator, quote,

00:28:38.260 The doctrine of state rights will have a severe test and may find a strange vindication in that trial.

00:28:44.440 Secession has yet to be defined. Hitherto, it has been a toy of politicians,

00:28:48.500 and they have dodged everything like a definition.

00:28:51.140 But is secession treason? That's a grand question.

00:28:54.080 If it is not, war in support of it cannot be.

00:28:57.420 If the right to withdraw existed, it must have included the right of defense,

00:29:01.240 so that levying war to defend a confederacy founded in secession

00:29:05.020 could not be levying war against the government of the U.S.

00:29:08.600 But this is on the assumption that secession is something less than treason,

00:29:11.860 which I neither aver nor deny.

00:29:14.760 Many northern politicians were certain the government would lose.

00:29:18.280 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner,

00:29:20.460 who was most famous for getting caned on the Senate floor,

00:29:23.220 said to try Jefferson Davis would be the nay plus ultra of folly.

00:29:27.460 The Supreme Court's Chief Justice said,

00:29:29.060 If you bring these Confederate leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion.

00:29:36.380 Nicoletti writes that even Lincoln himself was concerned about the possibility that a trial might backfire.

00:29:41.320 Quote,

00:29:41.980 Before his untimely death, President Lincoln had remarked that Davis' flight from Richmond in April was a good thing

00:29:47.740 because it forestalled the political and legal difficulties that might attend a high-profile treason prosecution.

00:29:53.640 I'm bound to oppose the escape of Jeff Davis, Lincoln had reportedly told General William T. Sherman.

00:29:59.060 But if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst, like, I guess it wouldn't hurt me much.

00:30:05.520 At a cabinet meeting at the White House on July 18th, there was no consensus at the White House as to how to proceed.

00:30:11.900 President Andrew Johnson, who assumed office after Lincoln's assassination, pressed for a clear answer, but he didn't get one.

00:30:18.100 The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, stated that there was, quote,

00:30:21.940 a great diversity of opinion in the matter as to whether Davis should be tried first for the crime of high treason.

00:30:27.520 Ultimately Andrew Johnson opted to proceed tentatively with a treason

00:30:31.480 prosecution. For his part Davis was eager for trial because he believed

00:30:34.840 secession was legal and he wanted vindication in court. Davis in fact

00:30:39.040 hoped that he would be arrested in 1861 after his home state of Mississippi

00:30:42.880 seceded so he could demonstrate the legality of secession. But no one

00:30:47.000 arrested him and he instead was chosen to be president of the new Confederate

00:30:50.620 States of America. That's why Davis unlike Robert E. Lee never requested a

00:30:54.820 presidential pardon. He genuinely thought that he'd be vindicated in court. Jefferson Davis was

00:30:59.700 charged with treason and held for two years at Fort Monroe in Virginia, but never got his day

00:31:04.320 in court. Over time, popular support for prosecution waned, and the Johnson administration

00:31:08.800 was far from certain that a Virginia jury would convict Davis, or even that the Supreme Court

00:31:13.240 would definitively rule that secession was illegal. Davis took the surrender as an unequivocal win.

00:31:18.540 A sovereign state cannot commit treason, he wrote. The government early discovered that if this issue

00:31:24.320 came before the Supreme Court, it would lose its case, and I should be acquitted. So none of the

00:31:29.580 indictments were ever tried. Shortly after Davis's case was dropped in April of 1869, the Supreme

00:31:35.060 Court ruled in a separate, unrelated case, Texas v. White, that secession is indeed unconstitutional.

00:31:41.340 As the court put it, the Constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible union

00:31:46.060 composed of indestructible states. But it was a throwaway line in a case about bonds. There wasn't

00:31:52.420 any significant discussion of secession

00:31:54.380 during oral arguments or briefing.

00:31:56.460 And the ruling attracted virtually no media attention

00:31:59.120 because by that point, it seemed like a dead issue.

00:32:02.020 In short, the Supreme Court snuck in a ruling

00:32:04.480 about the unconstitutionality of secession

00:32:06.540 years after the lengthy public debate

00:32:08.560 over Davis' trial made clear that in fact,

00:32:10.900 there was no consensus on that point in the country.

00:32:14.000 And there still isn't, by the way.

00:32:15.640 The America of the 17th and 18th centuries

00:32:17.880 was very different from the United States we know today. 0.79

00:32:20.160 At the time, even many Northerners

00:32:21.860 would have conceded that, at the minimum,

00:32:24.360 the constitutionality of secession was a close call,

00:32:27.620 and that it would be a gross oversimplification,

00:32:30.360 if not an outright falsehood, to call these men traitors.

00:32:38.600 One of the great myths of the Civil War

00:32:40.480 is that the South was somehow uniquely evil.

00:32:45.080 Indeed, at the time, abolitionists aggressively

00:32:47.600 pushed propaganda with exactly that message.

00:32:50.060 As Thomas Fleming writes in A Disease in the Public Mind,

00:32:53.360 A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, quote,

00:32:56.140 the abolitionists convinced themselves

00:32:57.740 based on their evangelical experiences

00:32:59.960 that smearing the South's reputation in every possible way

00:33:03.320 would create the anxiety that would lead to a mass conversion

00:33:06.320 of the North to their crusade.

00:33:08.240 The South was portrayed as a province ruled by Satan

00:33:11.420 that would consume the North's soul

00:33:13.160 if her citizens did not vow to expunge the sin of slavery.

00:33:17.900 Meanwhile, in the South, there was an intense fear

00:33:19.840 of slave insurrections and race wars,

00:33:22.220 following the brutal uprising and revolution

00:33:24.180 in present-day Haiti.

00:33:25.700 Therefore, the Civil War, Fleming argues,

00:33:28.200 is best understood as a product of a psychological disease

00:33:30.660 that afflicted both the North and the South

00:33:32.320 in different ways, which made rational dialogue impossible.

00:33:35.820 Sound familiar? 0.94

00:33:38.200 That mutual disease, he argues, is why only the US,

00:33:41.300 unlike Great Britain and Brazil,

00:33:42.840 fought a brutal war over slavery.

00:33:45.720 And yet, long after the war,

00:33:46.880 some of these over-the-top descriptions of the South

00:33:49.040 as simply evil survive today.

00:33:52.360 The cartoon version of history holds that Abraham Lincoln

00:33:55.200 invaded the South because it had slaves.

00:33:58.200 But just how peculiar was the South's

00:34:00.360 peculiar institution, as it was called?

00:34:03.360 Well, not very, as it turns out.

00:34:05.440 The North had slaves, too.

00:34:07.220 According to the book It Wasn't About Slavery

00:34:09.220 by Samuel Mitchum Jr., in 1703,

00:34:12.480 more than 42% of New York City households owned slaves.

00:34:15.840 a ratio only surpassed by Charleston, South Carolina.

00:34:19.140 In Connecticut, Mitchum says,

00:34:20.500 one half of all ministers, lawyers,

00:34:22.120 and public officials owned slaves.

00:34:23.920 By 1783, one quarter of Connecticut families owned slaves

00:34:27.220 and one out of every 14 people in Rhode Island was a slave.

00:34:31.200 Many prominent Northerners,

00:34:32.280 including founding fathers, owned slaves. 1.00

00:34:34.620 This includes the first signer

00:34:36.060 of the Declaration of Independence

00:34:37.360 and future Massachusetts governor, John Hancock,

00:34:39.720 who had two or three household slaves.

00:34:42.580 Other notable slaveholders from Massachusetts

00:34:44.620 include Cotton Mather, who learned about inoculation

00:34:47.560 from one of his slaves.

00:34:49.500 Slavery in the North was awful.

00:34:51.180 Massachusetts and Connecticut set curfews for black people.

00:34:54.360 According to the book Black Bondage in the North,

00:34:57.200 in the 1700s, Connecticut required blacks

00:34:59.820 to be off the streets by nine at night

00:35:02.120 and to remain within the towns to which they belonged.

00:35:05.200 Slaves who broke curfew in Connecticut, Massachusetts,

00:35:07.820 and Rhode Island were flogged.

00:35:10.120 In New Hampshire, the penalty was 10 lashes.

00:35:12.400 In New York, it was a misdemeanor for slaves

00:35:14.140 gather in groups larger than four. And in Long Island, they could not travel more than a mile

00:35:18.700 from home without a pass. Similar laws existed in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. By the time

00:35:24.380 Abraham Lincoln was elected, slavery had been banned in most but not all Union states. It's 0.52

00:35:29.660 important to point out that while radical abolitionists in the 1850s were calling for

00:35:33.340 the South to immediately free all of their slaves, the Northern states didn't end slavery that way.

00:35:38.700 for the most part the manumission of slaves in the north was a gradual process the laws

00:35:44.780 emancipated people born in the future and were designed so northern slaveholders didn't lose

00:35:49.500 money in many cases northern slaveholders just sold their slaves to the south one overlooked

00:35:55.900 fact is that early attempts to curb the slave trade had southern support in his 1806 state of

00:36:01.500 the union president thomas jefferson a virginian and a slave owner called on congress to withdraw

00:36:06.140 the citizens of the united states from all further participation in those violations of human rights 0.62

00:36:11.020 which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of africa the next year the united

00:36:16.140 states congress voted to abolish the slave trade the bill passed the house with 96 percent of

00:36:20.620 representatives yes including massive support from southern members of congress there are two

00:36:26.220 reasons why southern members of congress voted this way first at the time many people in the

00:36:30.460 south wanted to end slavery by 1827 more than 100 anti-slavery groups existed in the south

00:36:35.660 mostly under the banner of colonization societies which advocated for sending freed slaves back to

00:36:41.020 africa second and more importantly profits from the slave trade weren't going to the south the

00:36:46.860 slave trade was a northern business and jefferson's bill was ineffective at stopping it according to

00:36:52.620 the book black cargos by daniel manix an english captain reported that the port of lamu in the

00:36:58.460 slave market of zanzibar was packed with quote enterprising americans whose star-spangled banner

00:37:04.460 may be seen streaming in the wind

00:37:06.080 where other nations would not deign to traffic.

00:37:09.660 By 1858, as Abraham Lincoln was running for Senate in Illinois,

00:37:13.280 there were 24 American ships in the Zanzibar Harbor

00:37:16.020 as against three British.

00:37:18.280 There are two reasons the British Navy,

00:37:20.620 which at the time was trying to end the slave trade,

00:37:23.340 couldn't stop American slavers.

00:37:24.820 First, American ships were extremely fast and maneuverable.

00:37:28.160 And second, President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts

00:37:30.640 forbade the British from boarding any American flagged ships.

00:37:34.460 The result was huge profits for Massachusetts-based slave traders.

00:37:38.800 Mannix writes that, quote,

00:37:39.740 So many of the ships hailed from Salem, Massachusetts, that the Zanzibarians thought all white men came from this one New England town.

00:37:48.340 English officers discovered to their indignation that Great Britain was considered to be a suburb of Salem.

00:37:54.340 The Americans traded for slaves in ivory with a cheap caligo turned out in vast quantities by the New England cotton mills.

00:38:01.240 Even today, cotton is called Americani in Zanzibar.

00:38:05.020 Moving slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and Brazil was big money for northerners. This part 0.90

00:38:10.460 of the slave trade was its own version of the famous triangle trade. Cheap southern cotton was 0.77

00:38:15.660 shipped north to textile mills, which northerners turned into manufactured textile goods. Northern

00:38:21.420 slave traders traded those textiles for slaves in Zanzibar who were then trafficked to the Caribbean

00:38:26.940 for huge profits. The north was profiting from slavery on all three corners of the triangle. 0.62

00:38:32.300 This continued for decades. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that by the 1850s, quote,

00:38:37.560 the fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States and centered at New York City.

00:38:43.600 In 1862, literally during the Civil War, the New York Journal of Commerce reported that New York was, quote,

00:38:49.620 the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce,

00:38:53.540 although the cities of Portland, Maine, and Boston are second to her in that distinction.

00:38:58.720 As New England was making money off the global slave trade, other northern states were passing 0.99

00:39:03.120 racist legislation. In Lincoln's home state of Illinois, black people couldn't attend public

00:39:07.520 schools, couldn't testify against white people in court, or bear arms. If three or more of them

00:39:12.560 gathered to dance, they were fined and lashed. The purpose of these laws, which were known as

00:39:17.680 the Illinois Black Codes, was to discourage black people from moving to the state. In 1853, Illinois

00:39:23.600 made things more explicit with a black exclusion law that, quote, prohibited blacks from coming

00:39:28.720 into the state with the intention of living there. Punishment proved especially harsh in that

00:39:33.420 violators were subject to penalties that amounted to forced labor, essentially slavery. Illinois law

00:39:38.760 was so extreme that it was a crime for blacks to settle in that state without a certificate of

00:39:43.260 freedom, which cost $1,000, the equivalent of about $40,000 today. The black codes were so 0.99

00:39:48.460 harsh that even some Southern newspapers objected.

00:39:51.660 The New Orleans Bee called the Illinois Black Codes

00:39:54.420 an act of special and savage ruthlessness. 1.00

00:39:57.660 One of the key figures in passing the Black Codes 0.78

00:39:59.440 was a state representative named John A. Logan. 0.99

00:40:01.900 Logan was an enthusiastic enforcer

00:40:03.840 of the Fugitive Slave Act and an open racist.

00:40:06.780 Abraham Lincoln later made him a union general.

00:40:09.520 After the war, Logan reinvented himself

00:40:11.700 as a radical Republican senator,

00:40:13.980 but it's hard to imagine that John A. Logan

00:40:15.900 contemporary woke views on black people many northern or free states enacted black laws or

00:40:22.780 exclusionary codes similar to illinois indiana and oregon banned black settlement in their

00:40:27.740 state constitutions according to eugene berwanger's book the frontier against slavery quote

00:40:34.060 the exact extent of racial prejudice as a factor encouraging limitation of slavery is indeterminable

00:40:39.900 the average man in all ages does not record his thoughts for posterity and is even less likely to

00:40:45.100 to do so on such thorny problems as race relations.

00:40:48.520 Yet, if 79.5% of the people in Illinois, Indiana,

00:40:52.280 Oregon, and Kansas voted to exclude the free Negro

00:40:55.400 simply because of their prejudice,

00:40:57.260 surely this antipathy influenced their decision

00:40:59.640 to support the non-extension of slavery.

00:41:03.140 As Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State,

00:41:04.820 William Seward, put it, quote,

00:41:06.540 the motive of those who protested

00:41:08.160 against the extension of slavery

00:41:09.660 had always been concern for the welfare of the white man

00:41:12.340 and not an unnatural sympathy for the Negro.

00:41:15.060 In other words, many Northern and Western voters

00:41:17.860 opposed the expansion of slavery

00:41:19.440 into their states and territories,

00:41:20.980 not primarily out of moral opposition to slavery itself, 1.00

00:41:25.380 but because they didn't want black neighbors.

00:41:28.040 Generally speaking, in the first half of the 1800s,

00:41:30.360 many Southerners supported emancipation

00:41:32.240 and the relocation of slaves.

00:41:34.120 In many cases, it's because they thought

00:41:35.760 the black populations of their states were getting too big.

00:41:38.840 After Nat Turner's violent slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, 0.99

00:41:42.580 thousands of Virginians petitioned their government

00:41:44.640 to end slavery.

00:41:46.580 Charles County Quakers issued a petition

00:41:48.360 calling for a new law,

00:41:49.860 declaring that all persons born in the state

00:41:51.980 after some period to be fixed by law shall be free.

00:41:56.280 Virginia's governor at the time wrote in his diary that,

00:41:59.080 before I leave this government,

00:42:01.020 I will have contrived to have a law

00:42:02.860 pass gradually abolishing slavery in this state.

00:42:06.240 The Richmond Enquirer at the time called slavery,

00:42:08.540 the greatest evil which can scourge our land.

00:42:11.940 The Virginia House of Delegates failed to end slavery

00:42:14.540 then, but it wasn't by an overwhelming vote. Many people didn't realize that the windowed end

00:42:19.000 slavery through the legal process likely peaked right at the beginning of the country and into

00:42:23.860 the early 1800s. In 1794, the incentives radically changed after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

00:42:31.000 That invention, more than anything else, dramatically increased the demand for slave

00:42:34.480 labor in the South because it made cotton cultivation vastly more profitable. As the

00:42:39.820 Civil War approached, the hundreds of anti-slavery groups that had formed in the mid-1820s had mostly

00:42:45.800 gone away, and so had any possibility that Southern legislatures would end slavery on their own.

00:42:51.520 The debate, after Nat Turner's rebellion, was the last major attempt to do so. And so slavery

00:42:57.880 persisted for decades, though many Virginians knew it was wrong. One of them was Robert E. Lee

00:43:02.740 himself. According to historian Alan Guelzo, Lee, quote, regarded slavery as a moral and political

00:43:08.580 evil, which, however, he was content to leave in the hands of God to resolve. Lee's slaves were

00:43:14.160 inherited, one slave family from his mother, and 197 others from his father-in-law, G.W.P. Custis.

00:43:22.180 In 1862, during the war, Lee, quote, completed the emancipation of the Custis slaves, which he

00:43:27.180 was obligated to do by his father-in-law's will, and then freed his own, which he was not.

00:43:31.500 the war was not exclusively about slavery that is just a fact it could not have been

00:43:43.080 right up through the shelling of fort sumter the north was profiting massively from the slave trade

00:43:47.760 four union states had legal slavery but if the war was not about slavery then what was it about

00:43:54.120 well the answer depends on who you ask though interestingly presidents lincoln and davis

00:43:58.520 seem to agree. Confederate President Jefferson Davis said, quote, we are not fighting for slavery.

00:44:02.620 We are fighting for independence and that or extermination we will have. Lincoln himself told

00:44:07.440 newspaper editor Horace Greeley, quote, my paramount object in the struggle is to save the union and is

00:44:12.080 not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would

00:44:17.740 do it. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by

00:44:22.380 freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. In other words, according to both

00:44:27.880 presidents, the war was fundamentally about the question of keeping or ending the Union.

00:44:32.800 The key argument against the idea that Civil War was solely about slavery is that at the time of

00:44:37.160 secession in late 1860 and early 1861, neither the incoming Republican administration nor

00:44:42.400 mainstream Northern opinion advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery where it already

00:44:47.360 existed in Southern states. The Republican Party platform of 1860 opposed the extension of slavery

00:44:52.680 to the territories, but didn't call for abolition of slavery in the South. But even if it had,

00:44:57.880 and stood a reasonable chance of happening,

00:44:59.660 which it didn't, at least in the short run,

00:45:01.900 most Southerners would not have been affected anyway.

00:45:04.540 Only about one third of Southerners

00:45:05.960 were from households that had slaves.

00:45:08.120 The idea that 360,000 white men were gonna line up

00:45:11.700 and die for the sake of rescuing black people in the South

00:45:16.700 is just absurd and ahistorical.

00:45:19.300 In the words of the great Civil War historian Shelby Foote,

00:45:22.000 no soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves.

00:45:26.380 The soldiers' diaries support this.

00:45:28.180 Heros von Bork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General

00:45:31.940 Jim Stewart, wrote a 558-page history

00:45:35.040 of his experiences in the war.

00:45:36.780 His memoirs contained no references to slavery at all,

00:45:39.420 and only one to a slave, in which he passed

00:45:41.620 a large plantation which, I was told,

00:45:44.060 belonged to a free Negro, one of the richest men

00:45:46.160 of the county, who was himself the owner of numerous slaves.

00:45:50.200 The historian James McPherson went through the diaries

00:45:53.140 of more than 1,000 soldiers from both sides

00:45:55.560 for his book, For Cause and Comrades,

00:45:58.860 he found that, quote,

00:45:59.860 for Union and Confederate volunteers alike,

00:46:01.840 abstract symbols or concepts such as country, flag,

00:46:05.680 constitution, liberty, and legacy of the revolution

00:46:08.740 figured prominently in their explanations

00:46:11.000 of why they enlisted.

00:46:12.640 For Confederate soldiers, a more concrete, visceral,

00:46:15.620 or perhaps more powerful motive also came into play,

00:46:18.940 defense of home and hearth against an invading enemy.

00:46:22.680 They signed up to fight out of duty,

00:46:25.480 a concept that was a lot stronger 150 years ago than it is today.

00:46:30.860 Many Union soldiers echoed Lincoln's calls for preserving the Union.

00:46:34.880 McPherson found a Union soldier from Philadelphia who wrote that,

00:46:38.820 This contest is not the North against the South.

00:46:41.000 It is government against anarchy, law against disorder.

00:46:44.860 Another from Michigan joined against the wishes of his family

00:46:47.500 because he wanted to join, quote, all true patriots to sustain her government.

00:46:52.100 Another from Michigan wrote that,

00:46:53.140 If the union is split up, the government is destroyed, and we will be a ruined nation.

00:46:58.580 Do not borrow any trouble about me.

00:47:00.660 If I die in the battlefield, I do so with pleasure.

00:47:03.700 And he did die in battle the next year.

00:47:06.620 McPherson found immigrants lamenting that secession would make the country, quote,

00:47:10.220 as bad as the deeply divided German states and native-born Americans who said, quote,

00:47:15.540 Our fathers made this country. We, their children, are to save it.

00:47:19.680 McPherson notes that relatively few Union volunteers mentioned the slavery issue when they enlisted.

00:47:25.240 The same is true for Southern soldiers.

00:47:27.960 McPherson estimates that just 20% of Confederate soldiers even considered slavery a cause worth fighting for in the first place.

00:47:34.240 Most were focused on repelling an invasion.

00:47:36.060 Quote,

00:47:37.300 Even among soldiers from slave-holding families, only one-third explicitly voiced pro-slavery convictions.

00:47:47.200 McPherson writes that many Virginians shared Robert E. Lee's view that they wouldn't fight unless it be in defense of Virginia.

00:47:53.900 Another Virginian wrote,

00:47:55.320 I would give all I have got just to be in the front rank of the first brigade that marches against the invading foe

00:48:00.620 who now pollute the sacred soil of my native state with their unholy tread.

00:48:05.720 When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he did it as a wartime measure to suppress the rebellion.

00:48:12.280 It's just as notable for what it did not do as what it did do.

00:48:16.540 It did not free the slaves.

00:48:18.300 No, slavery continued in areas under federal control,

00:48:21.180 which included Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri,

00:48:24.380 and parts of Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee.

00:48:26.940 In practice, it only freed about 100,000 people out of a pool of millions.

00:48:30.760 Lincoln did it because he wanted to prevent European powers

00:48:33.200 from forming an alliance with the Confederacy,

00:48:35.100 which seemed likely at the time

00:48:36.860 and would have dramatically changed the South's fortunes.

00:48:40.120 So the proclamation was a brilliant political maneuver

00:48:43.080 that undercut the Confederacy's diplomatic efforts to court Europe

00:48:46.520 because it made intervention politically untenable

00:48:48.840 for European leaders who almost all opposed slavery.

00:48:52.320 Now, wait a second here.

00:48:53.780 We are not saying the war had nothing to do with slavery

00:48:57.480 because that would also be ridiculous.

00:48:59.680 It's just as much a cartoon caricature

00:49:01.420 as what your idiot teachers taught you in school.

00:49:04.540 No, slavery was a factor that led to war

00:49:07.720 and it was a major factor.

00:49:10.040 South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Secession

00:49:12.380 references slavery six times.

00:49:14.800 After seceding, South Carolina immediately made an appeal to other slave-holding states to secede,

00:49:20.360 and in its appeal referenced slavery no less than 32 times.

00:49:24.000 The South Carolina legislatures literally wrote, quote,

00:49:26.540 Slave-holding states cannot be safe in subjection to non-slave-holding states.

00:49:31.620 When General Claiborne suggested freeing the slaves to fight for the Confederacy,

00:49:35.520 his fellow officers were shocked and appalled.

00:49:38.140 Slavery was a factor in the war, and probably a significant one, but it was not the only factor.

00:49:44.100 the south left for three other reasons too first there was the balance of political power

00:49:50.340 in the republic's first 72 years slave-holding southerners occupied the white house approximately

00:49:55.140 two-thirds of the time or 49 years out of 72. some of the biggest figures in american politics

00:50:01.060 were from the south including andrew jackson james k polk and john c calhoun to the extent

00:50:06.260 that there were northern presidents many were sympathetic to the south like pennsylvania's

00:50:10.100 James Buchanan. But demographics is destiny. As the northern states surged in population,

00:50:15.820 driven by higher birth rates and massive waves of European immigration, the South's long-standing

00:50:20.940 political dominance collapsed. The South's share of the House of Representatives dropped from

00:50:25.560 roughly 48% at the founding to 38% by 1860. For decades, Congress maintained balance in the Senate

00:50:32.100 by adding slave and free states at the same time. But after the country's massive territorial

00:50:37.340 expansion as a result of the Mexican-American War, that balance was doomed. There was no need

00:50:42.380 for slave labor in places like Arizona or New Mexico, and so the South's relative power declined

00:50:47.580 quickly. California was admitted as a free state in 1850. Free Oregon entered in 1859. Abraham

00:50:54.540 Lincoln's election in 1860, coupled with the rapid rise of the Republican Party, which was a purely

00:51:00.340 sectional northern organization at the time, signaled the end of Southern dominance in national

00:51:05.820 politics. Second, the South had a financial motive. At the outbreak of the war, the American

00:51:11.460 South produced roughly three quarters of the world's cotton. From 1830 to 1860, cotton was by

00:51:17.100 far the country's top export. It comprised literally half or more of all U.S. exports.

00:51:22.720 90% of exports to Great Britain came only from the South. And by the 1830s, more than 80% of the

00:51:29.000 cotton grown in the South was being exported. At the time, the biggest source of revenue for the

00:51:34.380 U.S. government was the tariff. This was great policy for northern states since their tariffs

00:51:39.440 protected their manufacturers from foreign competition, but it was terrible for the

00:51:43.080 export-dependent South because retaliatory tariffs restricted their access to the foreign markets,

00:51:48.000 and because their economy was built around agricultural exports, they had higher demand

00:51:52.840 for foreign manufactured goods. So how much of a factor was money in the decision to secede?

00:51:58.900 On Christmas Day, 1860, the South Carolina legislature issued an address to the other slave-holding states calling on them to leave the Union.

00:52:07.400 One of their major grievances was, quote,

00:52:09.000 The taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North.

00:52:15.640 The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue,

00:52:20.360 but for an object inconsistent with revenue, to promote, by prohibitions, northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.

00:52:30.420 The role that economics played in secession was obvious to outsiders.

00:52:34.680 Karl Marx complained at the time that London's biggest newspapers, including The Times, The Economist, The Examiner, The Saturday Review,

00:52:42.740 were arguing that, quote,

00:52:43.700 The war between the North and South is a tariff war.

00:52:46.660 The war is further not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery,

00:52:51.140 and in fact turns on Northern lust for sovereignty.

00:52:55.100 A third reason was the massive cultural divide between the regions.

00:52:59.140 The South was rural and agricultural.

00:53:01.940 The North was urban, industrial, and had huge numbers of European immigrants. 0.99

00:53:06.500 Increasingly, they hated each other, 0.70

00:53:08.000 something that became obvious on one cool Virginia morning in October 1859.

00:53:14.580 Robert E. Lee was harvesting the rye crop in his fields in Arlington when a mounted soldier showed

00:53:19.460 up and handed him a letter from the Secretary of War. The night before, around 1 30 in the morning,

00:53:24.260 the Federal Armory and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, had been taken by a group of armed men.

00:53:30.100 A train passing through it sent telegrams on to Washington warning of 150 armed abolitionists

00:53:35.860 who have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards and to arm poor whites who

00:53:40.580 who were similarly aggrieved with the slave system.

00:53:43.640 They were led by a radical abolitionist

00:53:45.440 and insurrectionist named John Brown,

00:53:47.580 who wanted to provoke a massive slave uprising

00:53:49.880 across the South.

00:53:51.260 It was Lee's job to take back Harpers Ferry 0.69

00:53:53.420 with a company of 90 Marines, two howitzers,

00:53:56.600 and a few local citizen militias

00:53:58.720 from Maryland and Virginia.

00:54:00.700 He had such little time to prepare

00:54:01.940 that he wore civilian clothing and a top hat,

00:54:04.060 and he commandeered a Baltimore and Ohio engine car

00:54:07.280 to get there, riding with just one other officer,

00:54:09.980 the conductor, and the train's fireman. 0.85

00:54:12.680 When Lee arrived, Brown's revolution

00:54:14.480 had failed to materialize.

00:54:16.020 The raiders were trapped in an engine house.

00:54:18.360 The Marines waited until morning

00:54:19.720 and then stormed the building.

00:54:21.400 John Brown and four of his men were taken alive

00:54:24.120 and later tried and executed.

00:54:26.780 The South responded to the news with total heart.

00:54:29.580 The Richmond Enquirer wrote, quote,

00:54:31.680 the Southern people have heretofore disregarded

00:54:33.680 the ravings of Northern fanatics

00:54:35.460 because they believe such madness

00:54:37.040 to be merely a pecuniary speculation,

00:54:39.520 but the attack at Harpers Ferry shows that

00:54:41.700 the Northern people mean more than words.

00:54:45.060 Virginia's legislature awarded Lee a sword

00:54:47.560 for his gallant conduct at Harpers Ferry. 0.99

00:54:50.980 The North was euphoric.

00:54:52.520 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that John Brown was an idealist

00:54:56.660 who put his ideas into action.

00:54:58.680 Henry David Thoreau compared Brown's execution

00:55:01.300 to the crucifixion of Christ.

00:55:03.400 The abolitionist Wendell Phillips, also of Massachusetts,

00:55:07.000 called Harpers Ferry the Lexington of today,

00:55:09.360 comparing it to the opening shots of the Revolutionary War,

00:55:12.160 and said Brown was the brave, frank, and sublime

00:55:15.320 truster in God's right and absolute justice.

00:55:18.780 Northerners raised money to pay for Brown's legal defense.

00:55:22.220 Many of Brown's conspirators were protected

00:55:24.220 by Republican governors in northern states.

00:55:26.620 The northern response shook the South to its core.

00:55:29.100 South Carolina's Declaration of Causes for Secession

00:55:31.700 specifically mentioned northern states providing safe harbor

00:55:34.680 for John Brown's accomplices.

00:55:36.740 Other states complained of northern aggression

00:55:39.040 and hostility.

00:55:40.360 The attack on Harpers Ferry proved to them

00:55:43.160 that the cultural bond it once shared with the North

00:55:46.520 no longer existed.

00:55:53.240 For as long as political scientists and historians

00:55:55.520 have been polled on the best presidents,

00:55:58.040 Abraham Lincoln has topped the charts in every category.

00:56:00.640 Modern presidents can't help but compare themselves to him.

00:56:04.520 But the life of a tall, gangly,

00:56:06.720 self-made Springfield lawyer,

00:56:09.080 tells us that a different future is possible.

00:56:13.120 That is why I'm in this race.

00:56:14.880 Not just to hold an office,

00:56:16.420 but to gather with you to transform a nation.

00:56:19.660 In school, kids are taught that Abraham Lincoln

00:56:21.540 was the great emancipator, a champion of equality,

00:56:24.820 a defender of democracy. 0.97

00:56:26.880 To his contemporaries, he was the ape baboon of the prairie, 1.00

00:56:30.900 a coarse, vulgar joker, a simple Susan, 0.99

00:56:34.480 and the craftiest and most dishonest politician 0.57

00:56:37.100 that ever disgraced the White House.

00:56:39.780 Now in reality, he was none of these things.

00:56:42.540 Although he may have been a coarse and vulgar joker,

00:56:44.980 it's hard to know for sure.

00:56:47.160 The greatest event in Lincoln's life,

00:56:48.620 what turned him from man to myth, was his assassination.

00:56:52.300 In the words of historian Michael Burlingame,

00:56:54.620 quote, canonization began almost immediately.

00:56:57.280 Within days of his death,

00:56:58.520 his life was being compared to Jesus Christ.

00:57:01.680 He was shot on Good Friday and by Easter Sunday,

00:57:03.800 a prominent American pastor, said,

00:57:05.700 Heaven rejoices this Easter morning in the resurrection of our lost leader,

00:57:09.760 referring not to Jesus, but to Abraham Lincoln.

00:57:12.560 At the 1909 Lincoln centennial,

00:57:15.080 Illinois schoolchildren recited verses calling him a peasant prince,

00:57:19.060 a masterpiece of God.

00:57:21.260 His oversized statue keeps watch over the National Mall in Washington, D.C. today.

00:57:25.680 But in 1863, no one in America would have recognized the Lincoln we know today.

00:57:31.460 Back then, it wasn't even clear if he was going to win re-election.

00:57:33.800 He was, in the words of Michael Burlingame, the most activist president in history who transformed the presidency and the country when he, quote, expanded the Army and Navy, spent $2 million without congressional appropriation, blockaded southern ports, closed post offices to treasonable correspondences, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in several locations, ordered the arrest and military detention of suspected traitors, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863.

00:58:01.060 To do all these things, Lincoln broke an assortment of laws and ignored one constitutional provision after another.

00:58:07.720 He was hated by Southerners, but also loathed by many Northerners.

00:58:11.100 The abolitionist Wendell Phillips called Lincoln a huckster in politics, a first-rate, second-rate man.

00:58:17.760 So Lincoln was, in a word at the time, controversial.

00:58:22.640 He was also a human, and a flawed one, like us all.

00:58:25.680 He held contemporary views on race.

00:58:28.680 He believed blacks were inferior to whites.

00:58:31.060 In one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he said, quote, I will say then that I am not nor ever have I been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races that I am not nor have I ever been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office or to intermarry with white people.

00:58:52.640 And I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races,

00:58:56.900 which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. 1.00

00:59:02.900 And inasmuch as they cannot live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. 0.98

00:59:08.940 And I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. 0.91

00:59:15.260 I say upon this occasion, I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position,

00:59:20.400 The Negro should be denied everything. 0.97

00:59:23.020 I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave, 1.00

00:59:26.660 I must necessarily want her for a wife. 0.67

00:59:29.660 The crowd laughed at that answer.

00:59:32.360 It's really hard to know what Abraham Lincoln really thought

00:59:34.840 because he was an incredible politician.

00:59:37.020 Every word he said, every action he took,

00:59:39.280 he did so knowing who his audience was and what their response would be.

00:59:43.400 This is very important and often overlooked.

00:59:46.160 Historians in 100 years might look back at Barack Obama in 2008

00:59:50.060 and, based on his words, think he did oppose gay marriage because he said he did.

00:59:55.840 But, of course, he was pandering to an audience.

00:59:58.640 He was a politician.

01:00:00.300 Lincoln and Obama might have more in common than just being tall, gangly, self-made lawyers from Illinois.

01:00:06.320 But we do know that, in the end, Lincoln did not free the slaves.

01:00:09.880 When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation,

01:00:12.600 he still believed that, quote,

01:00:13.600 The only long-term solution to slavery was voluntary colonization.

01:00:17.600 On March 6, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sent a special message to Congress urging the adoption of a joint resolution that would offer federal financial support to any state voluntarily adopting the gradual abolishment of slavery with pecuniary aid provided to compensate owners for the inconvenience public and private caused by the change.

01:00:39.020 In total, Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery was a moral and political evil.

01:00:44.420 He believed it should end gradually rather than immediately.

01:00:48.080 And he supported the idea of colonization or sending freed black people to Africa or elsewhere as part of the solution.

01:00:55.040 In other words, Abraham Lincoln had the exact same views on slavery as Robert E. Lee.

01:01:01.000 After the war, Robert E. Lee received a presidential pardon and returned to Virginia,

01:01:05.200 where he took up the presidency of what is now Washington and Lee University.

01:01:08.300 a role many historians regard as the happiest period of his life far removed from the burdens

01:01:13.340 of command at the moment of surrender at appomattox lee could have urged his devoted

01:01:17.980 soldiers to scatter into the appalachians waging a guerrilla war that might have dragged on for

01:01:23.340 decades sapping northern resources and claiming countless more lives instead true to his character

01:01:29.100 he chose the path of honor and remarkably reconciliation with the union he urged his

01:01:33.980 men to lay down arms, return home, and rebuild as loyal citizens. Today, efforts to erase Lee

01:01:41.580 from history often stem from sheer historical illiteracy, but a deeper motive lurks. Resentment

01:01:48.220 towards a man who embodies virtues increasingly rare in modern America. They hate him not for his

01:01:55.500 flaws, but because he represents unattainable ideals. A tactical genius, a man of unyielding

01:02:02.300 duty honor and dignity a southerner whose leadership at chancellorsville still echoes

01:02:08.300 in military academies worldwide they know they'll never measure up no statues will rise for fleeting

01:02:15.820 figures like mark milley or anyone else but lee's legacy endures outlasting the vandals who would

01:02:22.780 topple his monuments or even disturb his faithful horse travelers grave in the end robert e lee is

01:02:29.980 a reflection of the civil war itself far more nuanced and multifaceted than the simplistic

01:02:34.860 tales spun in high school classrooms or viral videos a full reckoning with the real history

01:02:41.340 such as shelby foot's epic 1.2 million word trilogy spanning 3 000 pages demands depths that

01:02:47.900 no textbook or hour-long internet video can capture the mainstream narrative is a cartoon

01:02:53.260 the war was never a straightforward crusade against southern evil secession was not categorically

01:02:58.940 treason. Abraham Lincoln was not a messianic figure. The story most Americans have heard

01:03:04.960 is a fairy tale. But one thing is true. Wars have consequences. And victors shape the story. 0.70

01:03:12.560 That is the enduring lesson of the Civil War.

01:03:28.940 If you ask American teenagers basic questions about American history, you'll quickly discover

01:03:35.720 that they don't know much about it. One Gallup poll found that most American teens are unaware

01:03:40.840 that Columbus arrived in 1492, more than two-thirds don't know that states' rights were an issue in

01:03:46.660 the Civil War, and three-quarters are unaware that the United States gained independence

01:03:50.980 in 1776. More interesting is what they do know. In May 2008, two college professors gave two

01:03:58.880 thousand American high school juniors and seniors a simple prompt. Starting from Columbus to the

01:04:05.440 present day, jot down the names of the most famous Americans in history. The only ground rule is that

01:04:11.920 they cannot be president. The top three answers were all black. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and 1.00

01:04:18.240 in first place, of course, Martin Luther King Jr., who was named by two-thirds of the students.

01:04:24.400 Benjamin Franklin, by comparison, was named by just 29 percent. Thomas Edison made the top 10

01:04:30.560 but was outranked by Oprah Winfrey. A similar survey of college students between 1975 and 1988

01:04:37.920 had radically different answers. Their top choices, Betsy Ross and Paul Revere,

01:04:43.840 didn't even make the top 10 by the mid-2000s. This is because sometime between 1988 and 1995,

01:04:50.480 things radically changed national heroes like george washington and ben franklin were replaced

01:04:57.040 with a new class of central figures in american history as the authors of the study put it by the

01:05:02.560 mid-1990s quote african americans and women had moved to the center of american history

01:05:08.720 ask any american who went to public schools between 1995 and today they'll tell you the

01:05:13.440 central feature of their social studies classes as history became known were the histories of

01:05:19.360 slavery and the civil rights movement they likely remember watching videos like this one in school

01:05:30.000 we wanted to show you a clip of martin luther king jr's i have a dream speech there but it

01:05:34.800 turns out we couldn't that's because king's family owns the audio from the speech and they

01:05:40.080 wouldn't let us use it you might think that's weird this is america surely you can use a

01:05:44.800 short sound bite of an extremely famous speech in an educational video and in most cases you'd be

01:05:50.240 right but according to our lawyers we can in fact we can't show quotes or read on air any portions

01:05:56.720 of speeches owned by king's estate it turns out his family has done all sorts of things to stop

01:06:02.080 people like us including amazingly releasing the speech as an album so they could secure special

01:06:07.760 music rights they published his life's work as a book to secure additional rights and recently

01:06:13.600 blocked open ai from allowing users to recreate king's likeness these gimmicks gave them total

01:06:19.200 control over how king is portrayed in media today why would they rig our legal system like that

01:06:24.800 well money is one reason when cbs broadcast portions of the i have a dream speech on air

01:06:30.400 the family sued and the company settled king's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets

01:06:35.920 but another reason is that they want to silence critics like us they need to protect his legacy

01:06:41.120 keep making money off of it.

01:06:44.480 What they're doing makes it very difficult to honestly re-evaluate Martin Luther King Jr.,

01:06:48.480 and you're about to see why they don't want people to do that.

01:06:52.400 It turns out the King you've heard of is a carefully curated creation.

01:06:57.200 His estate's efforts perfectly illustrate what the civil rights movement has become, 0.58

01:07:02.080 and as we'll show in this episode, what it always was, a gigantic lie.

01:07:07.360 Over the course of this video, we are going to judge Martin Luther King Jr. not by the color

01:07:12.480 of his skin, but by the content of his character. What you will see will shock you. Some of it

01:07:19.280 isn't suitable for young children. We'll also confront the movement that he spearheaded.

01:07:24.000 Were his true aims a colorblind society or something far more radical? Who bankrolled him?

01:07:31.120 What did other civil rights leaders think of him? What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham

01:07:36.320 Alabama in 1963? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful? And most importantly,

01:07:44.640 is America today stronger, more unified, and racially equal than before King's rise?

01:07:52.640 These questions demand answers, and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the civil

01:07:57.360 rights movement and its consequences. King's movement fundamentally transformed our country

01:08:02.560 and our system of government.

01:08:04.400 That's why we're tackling the topic in two parts.

01:08:07.360 First, the hidden history of the Civil Rights Movement,

01:08:09.940 its key figures, agendas, funding, and scandals.

01:08:13.900 And second, the profound, lasting changes to our society

01:08:17.740 and their consequences.

01:08:20.540 This is the real history of the Civil Rights Movement,

01:08:24.040 Part One, A New Constitution.

01:08:32.560 We'll be right back.

01:09:02.560 That's code DAILYWIRE for $50 off, but you can also get free meat with every order on top of the $50 off if you decide to start a plan today.

01:09:10.980 GoodRanchers.com. American meat delivered.

The Matt Walsh Show - June 29, 2026

The Real History of the Civil War

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