Bear Grease - Ep. 462: Civil War - Part 2: Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

In Part 2 of Bear Grease's Civil War series, host Clay Newcomb examines the rise of Abraham Lincoln, the secession of the Southern states, and the complicated legacy of Robert E. Lee. Alongside historian J.D. Hewitt of The History Underground, Clay explores the ideas, personalities, and decisions that pushed the nation toward its bloodiest conflict, and discovers that history's heroes and villains are often far more complicated than we remember. Fill out our listener survey for a chance to win $500 gift card to the MeatEater Store: themeateater.com/grease Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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No shortcuts. Purpose built, durable. Hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. It supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. I don't think that the people living in 1860 had any framework for understanding what this country was about ready to be plunged into. If you take the number of people who were killed in the Civil War as a proportion of the entire population and then apply that to our population today, you're looking at about 7.6 million people dead at the end of the war. This is part two of our series on the Civil War

and it's about Abraham Lincoln, the secession of the states, and the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. I learned that both of these guys aren't exactly who I thought they were. William Faulkner once famously said, The past is never dead. It's not even past.

And in the last episode, we established that this war was unique in American history, continuing to play a role in society unlike any before or since. We learned the prosperity of the South, fueled by the most valuable commodity on Earth at the time. Cotton was the engine behind this division between the industrial north and the agricultural South. Lastly, the nail put in a coffin for me on the reason for the Civil War, which is what we talked about, and we let the people and the documents of history speak for themselves, and it was about slavery.

I'm just trying to learn for myself what this whole thing is about, with no ideological agendas, and I hope that you'll join me. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And hey, if you could do me, Brent, and Lake of Favor, go take a survey about this Bear Grease podcast feed. It's kind of fun, and it's going to help script. the future of what we're doing here. It's about what kind of episodes you like.

Should we separate this channel and the separate shows and a bit about who you are? So go to themeadeter.com slash grease to fill out that survey. That'll help us out a ton. Thank you so much.

My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Brought to you by Tachovas boots. I'm a cowboy boot man, and I've been wearing Toccovas for years.

They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. So in the 1850s, there arises this man into public consciousness and really out of complete obscurity by the name of Abraham Lincoln. and I found it astonishing that in the 1860s when the presidential election came up, and I'm kind of going to jump ahead, but we're going to go back to early Lincoln. But I just want to set this up in this way. In the presidential election before the Republicans picked their candidate,

it said that Lincoln wasn't necessarily even in the top 10 candidates for president of the United States. I mean, he was an obscure politician from Illinois that no one knew about, and yet he would eventually rise to become president literally at the very beginning of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln would die 12 years before Thomas Edison would invent the phonograph to capture audio recordings, so we can't hear his voice. but of all Americans, a version of his voice rings through history loud and clear. I know the high points about Lincoln's life, like probably you do too. I've seen his iconic image on $5 bills.

But I was surprised at what we're about to learn about him. He's not exactly who I thought he was. This is historian J.D. Hewitt of the History Underground YouTube channel. If you hadn't heard of J.D., you should check out. his channel. And we're diving right in to Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, so I mean, he's, you know, this lawyer as a person, I think Lincoln would have been fun to hang out with. He's, he's hilarious. He's a really good storyteller. He would have been a great guest on a podcast, just telling stories and anecdotes and things like that. A lot of our image of Lincoln is as this kind of a marble man

and the Civil War era. Those are some of the most trying times of his life. But prior to that, he's this country guy. He's also a world-class wrestler. Yeah. Had a record of 299 and 1. He's in the Wrestling Hall of Fame. Abraham Lincoln in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Yeah, yeah. Abraham Lincoln had a thin, wiry, six-foot-four frame. weighing only 185 pounds when he was young. He was known for his toughness from his teenage years. His physicality and rule-free style of wrestling made him a phenom. It's believed that he only had one defeat in 300 matches. That's pretty incredible, but this wasn't modern wrestling, but was truly just rough fighting minus throwing punches.

He probably would have been an incredible MMA fighter in today's world. I wonder what he would think about occasionally. fight on the White House lawn. It's interesting this fighter would be the commander-in-chief in America's bloodiest war. It's believed that he once taunted the crowd after a match saying, I'm the big buck of this lick, and if you want to try it, come on and wet your horns. It's hard to verify the authenticity of these kind of quotes, but Lincoln would be inducted into the Wrestling All of Fame posthumously in 1992. This kind of grit, mental toughness, competitiveness,

and his ability to project his intentions to a crowd would be shaped by years on the frontier and perfected by the time he was in his 50s. But his wrestling isn't really what would surprise me about him. I find it interesting that he becomes this like fulksie character in American history, which you just thought back in 1890s, 50s, everyone would have had this history, but they didn't, and people were still enamored by it,

like Lincoln was born in a log cabin. Yeah. I mean, was not everybody born in a log cabin during that time? Well, if you think, you know, political figures, if they have, you know, some kind of wealthy background, yeah, they're probably not. So there was still this idea of like the folksy common man coming out of the backwoods of America to a place of power was still kind of a new idea. Yeah, yeah.

It was something that people could relate to in a way. I find that fascinating because in previous Bear Greece podcast, we've talked about how David Crockett, Davy Crockett, would become really like one of the first true populist, like backwoods politicians. Like before him, even though we had come from this aristocracy where the rich guys were the ones, in government from this European model and we came here. It was pretty much the way it was for a long time

that the rich guys were still the ones in power. And then Crockett comes from complete poverty. He speaks in folk speech. He is the deemed the man from the cane. He has this identity as this bear hunter with the best bear dogs in the South. And he kind of creates this like folksy politician that today, if Clay Newcomb were running for state representative here at Northwest Arkansas, I would completely tap into. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, like Americans like that idea. Yeah.

I find it interesting that, you know, Lincoln were still, I just thought everybody was born in a log cabin, but they're popularizing that. There was a time when he was running for Illinois, the Senate, that he, they took one of the fence, posts that he split on his farm and brought it and put it in the booth with Lincoln. And it was like, hey, I'm like you, I split this fence post. And I don't know, for some reason that sounds like a stunt that someone would do today. Yeah. Lincoln was born in 1809 in Hodginville, Kentucky, but after some financial troubles,

his family would move to Indiana. At nine years old, his mother died. He had limited schooling, but would learn to read in his teenage years and become a voracious learner. He was a farm kid, twice taking a job on a boat traveling to New Orleans, where it's believed there he first was exposed to slavery, the imagery of it, seeing it. You know how when you're young and you're exposed to something culturally new, it just stands out. You never forget it. Well, this was that for him. At age 21, he would move to Illinois.

Abe Lincoln never went to law school but passed a bar exam in 1836, the year of Crockett's death, and he would become a lawyer. But Lincoln began his political career in 1832 when he lost his first and only election, only one he lost, but won a seat in the Illinois House representatives in 1834, which interestingly, the early 1830s were the peak of Crockett's political career and national fame. even global fame, and there is no doubt that Lincoln took cues from the man from the cane, Crockett, on how to build a brand. Lincoln would be involved in Illinois politics until 1849 when he retired to focus on his law practice. However, that would change in 1854 when like Rambo, after he retired from the military, was called back. Lincoln, with all the hype about these new territories coming in as slave states, or free states, this inflamed him.

That's when he got involved in the Republican Party after he thought he was completely out. But in 1858, the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates would put him on the national stage. He was 49 years old. Here's JD. Where Lincoln is really going to emerge as this political figure, who needs to be looked at and people start kind of turning their heads like, hey, who's this

guy, is in a series of debates with Stephen Douglas, where they're both running in 1858 for the Illinois seat, become known as the Lincoln Douglas debates. During the Lincoln Douglas debates, a big focus is going to be the expansion of slavery into the Western territories and also this idea of popular sovereignty. So the Lincoln-Dougain's debate is just in short. You're looking at seven different debates throughout Illinois, where these two men are going to travel from place to place, and they're going to have different things that they are going to speak on.

It's about a three-hour debate. Wow. Okay, now. They do the same debate everywhere they go? Nope. It changes. Okay. Yeah, it's going to be different as they progress.

If you watch a presidential debate today, you kind of have to hate yourself a little bit in order to set through one of those things. It's like, okay, candidate A, what do you think about this topic? And then they have a minute or two minutes to say something. And then there's some shouting back and forth and things like that. This debate format is completely different. So they take turns and the first candidate will get up on this platform and speak for an hour about a particular topic.

Then the second candidate gets up, and they get to respond to that for an hour and a half. So you get time and a half respond. Yes. And then the first candidate gets a half hour to speak to anything that was said during that middle portion. Completely foreign to us today as far as a debate format. But we really saw this in the last election cycle. It wasn't really as much of a debate so much.

Some people were calling it the podcast election because candidates were going on podcast. And here you have this long form conversation where you don't get the sound bite where the candidate says, oh, well, I think that we should do this and this and this and this is a bad idea. and then your time is cut. These guys get a lot of time to really flesh out these ideas and to really respond to one another. And it's where Lincoln is able to effectively articulate the views of the Republican Party.

It was in these debates that Lincoln would articulate a view on slavery that would shape the national narrative. He would become both a hero and a villain. He'd be the acts that split the stave post. of this country in two. Douglas would also articulate some of the ugliest, darkest political positions in American history.

It was truly a slug fest, bringing to the surface all sides of the argument around slavery. Lincoln would champion this argument that slavery was morally wrong and incompatible with the Declaration of Independence. They would discuss the Dred Scott decision,

which said that slaves were not citizens and that the federal government could not prohibit slavery and new territories. But at the heart of the discussions was one idea, should black people have equal rights to white people? And even deeper than that, where blacks equal as humans. These debates really get into the nitty-gritty,

stuff that's really even hard to read and say out loud at times. I mean, they are, they are also, they're talking about politics of like should this nation expand slavery. They're also essentially talking about are black people equal to white people? Yeah. I mean, like Douglas. So here's a couple of quotes for him. The signers of the Declaration had no reference to the Negro or any other inferior or degraded race when they spoke of the

quality of men. And he questions. Did Thomas Jefferson intend to say that in the declaration that his Negro slaves, which he had and held and treated his property, were created his equals by divine law and that he was violating the law of God every day of his life by holding them as slaves? And Douglas says, no, he was not. I mean, like, they are getting down, down and dirty. and then Lincoln's able to respond to those things. And essentially, Lincoln says that, yes, he was talking about Negro slaves when he wrote the Declaration. I mean, that's essentially what he says. In these debates, Lincoln would make his most famous metaphor saying,

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. But it's here that I learned about a side of Lincoln that I didn't know about. In one of his most famous responses to Douglas about the equality of blacks to whites, he said, In the right to eat bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, He is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man.

End of quote. That's good. But what's wild is what he said before this, what he qualified his statement of equality with. This is what he said. Quote, I agree with Judge Douglas. He is not my equal in many respects. Talking about blacks. Certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or even.

intellectual endowment. End of quote. Hit the tables or join the action live. With Bet Victor, tons of casino games await. Plus the excitement of the live casino. All in one convenient app for when you choose to play. For timeless classics, the newest releases, and instant withdrawals. Download the Bet Victor app.

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Oh, you can find lots of quotes about Lincoln that just make you scratch your head, because he literally is advocating for no expansion of slavery and that, you're these slaves should have the same rights as a white person. So here's a quote from Lincoln. I'm reading from our book here. Lincoln admitted that he believed that black people, quote, were entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But Lincoln says, quote, I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily have her for a wife. I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. This is perplexing. So he says that they are supposed to have equal rights. But then he says, I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.

I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to enter marry with white people. I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. End of quote from Abe Lincoln, who was advocating for what he said was that they're entitled to all natural rights

enumerated in the Declaration of Independent, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but essentially not equality with the white race. Abraham Lincoln said that. Yeah. That's wild to me. Yeah.

I almost didn't include this section just because I didn't want to bring this stuff back up. And I hope it's clear that my interest in all this is the deep irony of it all and how our heroes almost always seem to be flawed by the blinders of time, yet still managed to advance truth. In this, I think we see that the heart of man is really what moves society. Abe Lincoln didn't have all the details correct, but ultimately for his time, he was on the cutting edge

and willing to put his name and life on the line for the slaves. History, and I believe God, measures the intent of the heart of man, and that is ultimately what America will remember of Abe Lincoln. Yeah, complex. Surprise, humans are complex and are filled with all kinds of contradictions. Now, with that being said, a lot of people will take this, and say, well, Lincoln this or Lincoln that, I do think that there is an evolution in Lincoln's thoughts. So we have to kind of look at that in context, you know, with his whole life. But yeah, it's definitely interesting to go back and, as I said, towards the beginning, let these people from history speak for themselves.

Is it unfair to take a quote like that from Lincoln? Because, I mean, of the millions of other things I could have picked out, I picked out this one. And I think it's because his reputation in our country and the way he's seen and what he represents, obviously, is a man who was a righteous man that saw the institution of slavery as something that needed to go. And he was advocating for these people. And that's a righteous and noble thing. I mean, is it unfair for me to read that quote? No.

No, not at all. I think what we are looking at is a man who was a master politician and could take the temperature of the country at the time and then choose what he maybe needed to say in order to keep this country from fracturing. So you think it's possible he really didn't believe that? No, I think it's possible that he did believe it. But the charges that the South was leveling against the North is that these crazy people from the North, they think that blacks and whites are equal in every way. And this is the abolition party. They want to eliminate slavery. They want to completely tear down our economic system. They want to ruin our lives.

And Lincoln is saying, oh, hold up. what we're saying is we don't think that slavery should be expanded into the new territories. Yeah. That's our position. He was trying to take more of a middle ground. Yeah, I think he's trying to try and encounter that and moderate it a little bit. But at the same time, like on this same tour, he gives his famous house divided speech. Right.

Where he, this is what kicks off this phase of his political career where he says a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. So Douglas is going to look at that and he's going to say, look at this radical right here. Because that sounds kind of abolitionist right there. So this is a debate between two senators. This is not a presidential debate. Correct. Yeah.

But for the seat of Senate, yeah. That's right. But Lincoln essentially is formulating the political doctrines that would later get him elected as president. And so this House-Divided idea was just this kind of folksy biblical metaphor that really carried him. But Lincoln says this over and over and over, even through the start of the war, he says that I have no purpose directly or indirect. to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I mean, he couldn't have said that more clearly. And again, it goes back to this idea.

He was a politician. He had, for the greater good, could he have compromised what he said and maybe what he believed? Yeah, he probably could have. But I think it's, you got to take him at his word, let him speak for himself. And he said he never had intention of abolishing slavery and what he would go on to say. He says, I do not mean that it will end in a day nor in a year, nor in two years. I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way, ultimate extinction would occur in less than a hundred years at the least. But that will occur in the best way for both races in God's good time.

I have no doubt. he's talking about the end of slavery. So Lincoln in the 1850s predicts that slavery will last another hundred years. Yeah, which is kind of wild thinking about slavery existing into the 1950s. And again, I keep going back to this and this thing. He was a master politician. He knew he was trying to advocate peace. He didn't want these people to secede.

He wanted to keep the same together. Like maybe if you would have been with it, him at the barbecue, he would have been like, definitely in 25 years this thing's going to be done. I said 100. I was just kind of padden the answer. Yeah. But I don't think, I know, we know, I mean, history has pretty much said that these guys had no idea that this war was going to do what it did.

Absolutely not. I mean, they felt like this was going to be just a little political jab and fistfight, probably no bloodshed. Then it turns into like one of the most dead, well, the most deadly war in American history. Yeah. Yeah. And that's going to come about triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. So with his race against Stephen Douglas, he loses that battle, but politically he's going to win the war in the election of 1860 by becoming president. and that is going to be the tipping point for the South, where they say, that's enough. Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election on November 6, 1860.

The peak of the whitetail chase phase in the American Midwest, might I add. But he won less than 40% of the popular vote, the lowest of any president in history, but carried the electoral college. The election had over 80% voter turnout. highest at that time. And true to tradition of the time, Lincoln didn't campaign for himself. He simply let others speak for him. Literally, he didn't campaign. He was at his home in Springfield, Illinois throughout the entire presidential campaign season. Mudsling and cartoons showed Lincoln dancing with black women. One ad in the South claimed Lincoln would force interracial marriage.

And even though Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot of any southern state, yep, that's true, he still won because of the electoral college. Abe was 51 years old. His election would set into motion the real start of the war, the secession of the southern states and the formation of the Confederate states of America. Things are about to escalate quickly. I'd like to read a quote from the book Battle Cry of Freedom that I think is going to set up where we're at in the Civil War. The Second Continental Congress had deliberated 14 months before declaring American independence in 1776.

To produce the United States Constitution and put the new government into operation required nearly two years. In contrast, the Confederate states of the United States of the United States of the United States of the United States of the Constitution. In contrast, the Confederate States of America organized itself, drafted a constitution and set up shop in Montgomery, Alabama within three months of Lincoln's election. So we have a new government that has now been formed because of this division that just could not be overcome. And what happens from there? So initially you have this secession crisis that is triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln. The first state to secede is going to be South Carolina.

South Carolina is kind of viewed as a hotbed of secessionism. You can maybe include Mississippi in that. They're really kind of leaning towards this well before the election of Lincoln and then the election of Lincoln is is going to kick it off. I want to read a quote about South Carolina from the book. This was written in the London Times and it says there is nothing in all the dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians profess for the Yankees. The state of South Carolina was, I am told, founded by gentlemen. This is a quote, nothing on earth shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the brutal,

bigoted black guards of the New England states. I mean, the animosity between the north and the south was very real. Very much. Very real. I mean, it was just like two different ways of view in the world that were coming together. There was even talk of how the genealogy of the, the South came from a different place than the genealogy of the North. And I mean, we're talking about people of European descent. And I mean, some of this, I guess, in some ways would be true.

But the narrative was that the people from the South were different and they were conquerors. And they just look for every possible way to draw lines of difference between these two places. Sure. They're laying that foundation and reinforcing the point that we are not. not the same. Yeah. We are we are not one country. And we and we need we need a new country. And we we need to redraw the lines to reflect the reality of the situation from from their their point of view. Yeah. Lincoln is is approaching it from the complete opposite. He's of course trying to hold this country together and and he he tells them, hey, this is this is in your hands right now. You don't.

have to leave. He says, if I could preserve the union with slavery, I would do it. If I could preserve the union with no slavery and free all the slaves, I would do that. If I could preserve it by freeing some and not others, I would do that. His chief objective is to preserve the union. But at this point, we're not talking to each other anymore. We're talking at each other. And maybe even creating characters that aren't completely reflective of reality in order to justify these moves they're about to be made. So when this new government's formed, they basically appoint a precedent.

and is Jefferson Davis. Yep. Who had been Secretary of War for the U.S. government. For the U.S. government, yes. Yeah, it was a veteran of the Mexican-American War. And so he was from Mississippi. Yes.

On February 16th, 1861, he delivers speech. And he says, this is just one quote, he says, the time for compromise has now passed. The South is determined to maintain her position and make all who oppose her smell southern power

and feel southern steel. I mean, basically, they were dead set on war. But what I find interesting is that nobody really thought this war was going to be that big. There was another quote of a man from South Carolina that said, a lady's thimble will hold all the blood that will be shed in this war. Like, they really didn't think that it was going to be that big of a deal. No. What did they think? I mean, why was it such a miscalculation? I don't think that the people living in 1860 had any framework for understanding what this country was about ready to be plunged into.

So we'll kind of, we'll jump to the end of the Civil War here. This is going to end with between 6 and 700,000 people killed in this country. If you look at World War I, this country loses about 116, 117,000 men. World War II, one of the most cataclysmic conflicts in world history. The U.S. loses just over 400,000 men in that conflict. If you take the number of people who were killed in the Civil War as a proportion of the entire population, and then apply that to our population today, you're looking at about 7.6 million people dead at the end of the war. Wow.

Now, you and I, if we're getting ready to go into a conflict, you and I don't have any framework in our history for understanding how many people that really is. We go into a conflict, and if you were to say, oh, yeah, this is going to kill 7.6 million people. We'd be like, whoa, they just have no idea. There's nothing in their history that even comes close. There's nothing in their history before or since that compares to what's about to happen.

Engaging in conflict is sometimes necessary, but always risky. This is why wisdom says avoid a fight rather than get into one. You can never fully predict what will happen. That's why this modern war in Iran is so tricky and sticky. We just don't know what's going to happen. But here's a couple of interesting things about the Confederate government that I've picked up. Number one, the government was formed around states' rights, but their federal government had a real increase of power by mandating drafts before the union, seizing supplies from citizens for the army.

In Richmond, Virginia, the capital, would become one of the most militarized capital cities in the world. Number two, because of England and France's dependence on southern cotton, the Confederacy hoped these countries would come to their aid, but they would both remain neutral as cotton began to be produced in other places. Lastly, this is kind of interesting to me. The Confederacy went through three flags during the war, but the rebel flag, this modern flag that we sometimes now see, the stars and bars, was not one of them. That flag was the flag of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

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So Fort Sumter is going to end up being a little bit of a standoff between the union and this newly formed Confederacy. The U.S. is not willing to just turn over federal property to these states that are trying to break away and form their own country. The South views that as, hey, this is South Carolina. This is actually our ground. So Robert Anderson is holding out here with this small garrison. And Lincoln is sending a ship down to keep them afloat.

And the Confederates know that, okay, if this ship makes it to Fort Sumter, like these guys could hold out indefinitely. So what they end up doing on April the 12th of 1861, we're going to see the first shots of the Civil War fired. Under the command of a guy named PGT Beauregard, the first shots of the Civil War are going to be hurled at Fort Sumter. And they're going to hold out for about 34 hours. Who shot the first round? Confederates. Confederates.

Confederates are going to fire the first shot of the Civil War. They hold out for about 34 hours and then finally are forced to surrender. They say that Lincoln's, one of his first genius moves was the way he handled the resupplying of Fort Sumter. Because they knew that it was like this hot, bad spot. It's in South Carolina. This group has seceded. And they knew that it was going to be a problem. And Lincoln was always trying to find a way to ultimately to make peace,

but he also didn't want to start the war. Right. Like he didn't want to be blamed for starting the war. And so by him resupplying just with food, he didn't send munitions in. Is that the way you understood it? Yeah, yeah. Like he didn't, he could have been more aggressive. He could have started the war there on purpose.

But he was like, no, we're just going to send supplies. to these men. Like it's not a hostile move. It's just they got to eat. We're going to send supplies, but he knew what historians say, heads I win, tells you lose with Jefferson Davis. And at this point, Lincoln calls up for 75,000 volunteers to be sent down into the South to put down this insurrection. This is where you have four other states who are going to, to, to, to, to put down this insurrection. This is where you have four other states who are, who are going to, join in the fight and round out what we know as the Confederacy. What was the order of secession for the states? So prior to Fort Sumter, South Carolina is our first state to secede.

Mississippi is going to be the second. Those are the states that had the highest populations of slaves. And then you're going to have Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas. So those are the initial seven. after Fort Sumter, Lincoln calls for these volunteers to go and put down this insurrection. And that's going to be the tipping point for four more slave states to secede and join the Confederacy. The first one is going to be Virginia. They're going to secede within a week of Fort Sumter.

And then you're going to have Arkansas right after that. And then North Carolina. The last state to secede is going to be Tennessee. Tennessee is a little bit of a weird one. There's part of the state that is pro secession, but there's also some pro-union sentiment that you have in Tennessee. But they end up being the 11th state. And then you have four states who are slave states that remain loyal to the union. That's going to be Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland.

I find it really interesting, the places where they were very pro-slavery and very anti-slavery all had to do with, self-interest of the economics of that region. Like where there's heavy, heavy agriculture, like Mississippi Delta, you have high populations of slaves. And like they were the second to secede South Carolina's very agricultural area. Not just agricultural, but specifically cotton. Cotton. Cotton is going to be a big one. Well, and then you brought up something really interesting is that there's, even in these slave states that seceded, there were sections of the states that were kind of opposed and had some union allegiance. And in Arkansas, I know that that was in the Ozarks

and the Highland region of the Ozarks, which, I mean, just goes back to, it wasn't necessarily a higher moral compass. It was they just weren't a lot of slaves here because it was Highland ground. And it's the same way in Tennessee, East Tennessee, like Smoky Mountains, there was a concentration of kind of union,

sentiment there. And I mean, basically, these people didn't have big agriculture. They didn't have slaves. So they're like, hey, it's not in my best interest to be in this war. And so I just find it interesting that the Highland South had more union sentiment. But that could easily be turned into a narrative of like, oh, these were these were the Christian people of the South. And that's just not, that's just not the truth. No. The Bible is going to be, leveraged equally on both sides of the conflict. The war has started with the first shots fired at Fort Sumter. I now want to talk about a controversial figure in American history,

one that if you said his name in public, you might whisper it. This man in many ways is viewed as the antithesis of Abraham Lincoln. A very influential man that everyone, probably everyone in this country today, would probably rank this name that I'm about to say, at least in the top five, if not the top three names of the Civil War. Okay. And that name is Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee was 54 years old in 1861.

And I'd like to read from the book, Battle of Crime of Freedom, about a paragraph about Robert Lee. Lee was 54 years old in 1861, the son of a revolutionary war hero, Sion of the first families of Virginia, a gentleman in every sense of the word, without discernible fault unless a restraint that rarely allowed emotion to break through the crust of dignity is counted as a fault. This is some flowery language by our author here. He had spent his entire career in the U.S. Army since graduating second in his West Point class. of 1829. Lee's outstanding record in the Mexican war, his experience as an engineer officer,

as a cavalry officer, and as a superintendent of West Point had earned him a promotion to the full colonel on March 16, 1861. General and Chief Winfield Scott considered Lee the best officer in the Army. And granted, this is the U.S. Army. Yes. Not the Confederate Army. This is what we're talking about right here. In April, Scott urged Lincoln to offer Lee field command of the newly levied Union Army. As a fellow Virginia and Scott hoped that Lee, like himself, would remain loyal to the service which he had devoted his life. Lee had made clear his dislike of slavery, which he described in 1856 as a, quote, a moral and political evil. Until the day Virginia left the union, he had spoken against secession.

Quote, the framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance and its formation, he wrote in January 1861, if it was intended to be broken up by every member of the union at will, it is idle to talk of secession.

I continue on. But with Virginia's decision, everything changed. Lee says, I must side either with or against my section, Lee told a northern friend, his choice was foreordained by birth and blood. I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, and my children.

On the very day he learned of Virginia's succession, April 18th, Lee also received the offer of Union Command. And he told his friend General Scott regretfully that he must not only decline, but he must also resign from the army, save in defense of my native state. Basically, Lee resigns from the U.S. Army and joins the Confederacy. If there had been a pop quiz with the true and false question asking if Robert E. Lee opposed slavery both morally and economically and was officially opposed secession, I would have said that was false and I would have been wrong.

And my intent is not to be here a Confederate apologist, but rather to highlight the irony and point out the different. in these simple narratives. We've seen a Lincoln that may not have been the saint we thought he was, but we also see a Robert E. Lee that might personally not have been the villain some portray him as. Robert E. Lee did own slaves after the death of his mother in 1829. He inherited him. She owned 35. And Robert E. Lee's wife owned a bunch of slaves. I would like to read a portion of a private letter that Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife in 1856, five years before the war. The language can kind of be hard to follow. These guys had a really unique command of the English language, unlike we do today. But I find it wildly interesting. So if you can stay with me, he's going to address almost everything we've been talking about. The man himself, Robert E. Lee, and I'd like to let him speak for himself. I might

a few of my thoughts inside of his text. But he writes in a private letter, quote, In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race.

And while my feelings are strongly interested, in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by a wise and merciful providence. He's saying it's ordered by God. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influence of Christianity

than the storms and temptists of fiery controversy. This influence, though, is slow and sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Savior have required nearly 2,000 years to convert but a small part of the human race and even Christian nations. What gross errors still exist? While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, and we giveeth the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in the hands who sees the end,

who chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom 2,000 years are but a single day. Although the abolitionists must know this, and must see that he is neither the right or power of us. operating except by moral means ensuasion. And if he means well to the slave, he must not create angry feelings in the master, that although he may not approve the mode by which it pleases providence, God, to accomplish its purposes, the result will nevertheless be the same, that the reason he gives for interference in what he has no concern holds good for every

kind of interference with our neighbors when we disapprove their conduct. Still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. Is it not strange that the descendants of those pilgrims' fathers who cross the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion have always proved themselves intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others? End of quote. What stands out to me with Lee's letter is his emphatic claim that slavery is morally and politically evil, that the institution is toxic to both slave and owner. And he seems to be rooting for its end in America. I didn't know these things about Robert E. Lee. However, it's also in these statements that we find the greatest irony and hypocrisy. Like Jefferson, who penned the ideas of equality of all men but had slaves,

Lee's actions would stand in opposition to these things that he was expressing to his wife. And he also said some other wild stuff in there that I'm sure that you heard, but the whole thing did surprise me. But an interesting thing to look into might be in what Robert E. Lee did with his own slaves. But that has an elusive answer. Some claim there are records of Robert E. Lee whippen slaves. I couldn't verify that. But a man who interviewed Lee after the war claimed that Lee freed his slaves before the war. Later, Lee's son would corroborate this, but there is no paper trail of what he did with his slaves, so it's hard to say. He seems to be kind of in this same pot as Thomas Jefferson, saying they opposed it, but still owning slaves.

On another note, Robert E. Lee, after the war, discouraged people from displaying Confederate flags. He would go on to be the president of Washington College after the war. Let's get back to J.D., where we ended our conversation a bit ago, where Robert E. Lee had declined the position to lead the U.S. military. He had resigned from the U.S. military, and he had declared his allegiance to the consulate. Confederacy. Here's J.D. So I've stood in the room where he received that message and declined. If you go to Arlington National Cemetery today, that's where Robert E. Lee was living. So he is quite literally, his house and his property where he lives is quite literally on the front line.

And just across the Potomac River is the White House. and Congress. So he could have walked out on his front porch and looked and seen the place where, pretty much where he was sending this message. Wow. Yeah. Now, was he initially appointed as the primary general, the Confederate Army? No, no.

That's not going to come for a little while. Initially, after Fort Sumter, you're going to have the mobilization. of these armies, they're going to be raised. Everybody thinks this is going to be like a 90-day war, like this is going to be a short affair. And on July 21st of 1861, we're going to have the first battle of Bull Run, or the, they call it, different sides called it different things.

So Manassas or Bull Run. The Confederate commander in that battle is going to be PGT Boer regard. So he's going to come up from Fort Sumter. And right off the bat, though, it's going to go poorly for the Union, the first major battle of the war. And that ends up being really significant in the whole war, is that the first big battle of the Civil War, Manassas and Bull Run, same war, same battle. Yeah. The Confederates win big time. Yeah.

It was like a decisive Confederate victory. that confirms what the Confederacy thought that the Yankees were cowards and couldn't fight and we are the superior people here and this war is not going to be very long and we're going to have our independence. And it confirmed what they thought. But what did it end up doing?

Well, yeah, like you said, this is going to shatter any illusions of a short war. people were coming out from D.C. Like with having a picnic. They're going to watch the fight. And whoever wins, I guess that's going to decide the war. Ends up being this bloody engagement and people are shocked at the losses. Just to give you an idea, we mentioned earlier how people have no idea what this country is getting into.

That takes place on July 21st. At the same time that all of this is happening, out in Missouri, Missouri is chaos everywhere. It's a slave state that remains loyal to the union, but there's no, there's like pockets of slavery here and there. It's not like the north is anti-slavery and the south part of Missouri is pro-slavery. The second major battle of the Civil War is going to be the battle of Wilson's Creek. So here at the beginning of the Civil War, your first two major battles, the Union has chalked up a loss in both of them. In both of those battles, those become the two bloodiest battles in American history up to that point. By the end of the Civil War, neither one are even going to be in the top 25.

Wow. Yeah. So people think that it's bad. but they have no idea that it's about to get exponentially worse. Things are just going to get worse and worse. A Civil War series is just so intimidating. There's just so much information. We could have done full episodes on Abe Lincoln and Robert E. Lee and all these different battles,

but I'm just targeting these things that I just find interesting. On the next episode, in part three of the Bear Grease, Civil War series, I'm going to learn about my family's involvement in the war, and it's going to get wild. I can't thank you all enough for listening. Please share this series with your friends, families, and coworkers, and leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify. A lot of you have been leaving reviews on Spotify. And lastly, don't forget the survey at the meat eater.com slash Greece about this podcast feed that will immensely help us. We thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease,

Brent's this country life, Lakes Backwoods University. And as always, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. See you next time. If you do off-season work, you know what beats up gear. Scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days, first light fieldware is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose built durable.

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