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

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

The American Civil War fundamentally transformed our nation. 600,000 American dead. Battle scars that still divide us today. But how much of what you’ve been taught is a lie? In this explosive documentary, Matt Walsh shatters the biggest and most enduring myths about the Civil War. What were they really fighting about? Why weren’t Confederate leaders put on trial? Why did Robert E. Lee become a heroic, unifying figure for decades after the war? And why are so many blue haired freaks tearing down his statues today? Through extensive research, and relying on primary source documents, Walsh confronts the cartoon version of history head on.  Prepare to re-evaluate everything you thought you knew about America's defining war. Real History Ep. 3 - - - Today's Sponsor: Mount Titano Media - Go to https://mounttitanomedia.com to get your copy of "Finding Our Words: Words That Made America" - a collection of the greatest speeches in American history. You can read it or listen to the new audible edition. - - - DailyWire+: Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://dailywire.com/subscribe Becoming a Daily Wire member allows you to see all of our content ad-free. 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. - - - The Real History of Slavery is available on youtube here: https://youtu.be/UivhqdhcHNI The Real History of the American Indians is available on youtube here: https://youtu.be/mxapaXrHr1Y The Real History of Civil Rights Part 1 is available, exclusively on DailyWire+ here: https://dwplus.watch/RealHistoryCivilRightsPt1 The Real History of Civil Rights Part 2 is available, exclusively on DailyWire+ here: https://dwplus.watch/RealHistoryCivilRightsPt2 - - - 📜 Real History with Matt Walsh is available ad-free, exclusively on DailyWire+ https://dwplus.watch/RealHistory 👕 Get your Matt Walsh flannel here: https://dwplus.shop/MattWalshMerch - - - Socials: Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/mattwalshblog Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/mattwalshblog       TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@mattwalsh_                X — https://twitter.com/mattwalshblog - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's real history episode is brought to you by Mount Titano Media, publishers of finding our words, words that made America, a collection of the greatest speeches in American history, featuring the voices and words that built this country. Go to mount Tatanomedia.com to get your copy today. On the night of January 2nd, 1864, Confederate General Patrick Claiborne was worried. He warned his fellow Southerners that, surrendered to the North, quote, means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.

that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers, will learn from northern school books, their version of the war, will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision. Claiborne was only partly right. For most of the following century, non-southerners were pretty fair about the war and openly respected the South's leaders, including Lee.

Fortop Americans in the past. They are Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, and Lee. The South erected statues and monuments to its heroes. Several were erected inside the United States Capitol. Even abroad, people respected the dignity, bravery, and brilliance of Robert E. Lee. Winston Churchill described Lee as one of the noblest Americans who ever lived and one of the greatest captains known to the annals of war. It was almost exactly one century after the war in the 1960s,

when things took a turn. But even then, it wasn't immediate. In 1977, the Southern rock band Leonard Skinner performed in Oakland, California, with the Confederate Battle Flag as their backdrop. In 1988, Hank Williams Jr. released a top 10 hit called If the South would have won. But during the woke upheavals of the last decade,

the story really changed, and the statues and flags started coming down. Even conservatives in the South had turned on Southern Heritage. It's time to move the flag. to move the flag from the Capitol grounds. 150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come. The retreat opened the floodgates for anti-American radicals, who literally desecrated the grave of Robert Lee's horse,

melted his statues and slandered his reputation. The Confederacy, the American Civil War, it was an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason at the time. The current understanding of the Civil War, as it's taught in Hollywood and schools and everywhere else, is a cartoon caricature. You represent me.

The last 10 years have been a master class in historical malpractice so jaw-droppingly stupid that honestly, most sane people would just change the channel and call it a day. But here we are. Obligated to tell the truth, so here it goes. The Civil War is not nearly as black and white

as the school marms wish it were. It was one of the most complicated events in American history. It's heroes who existed on both sides were complex multi-dimensional people. Over the course of this video, we're going to prove it. This is the real history of the Civil War. Imagine serving as an infantryman in a battle where your enemy outnumbers your side two to one. And not only that, your enemy is better trained.

They're well rested, and to make matters worse, They've caught your regiment and your entire army in a pitcher. They have a massive number of soldiers behind you and in front of you, perfectly positioned. As an infantryman in this scenario, all you can do is follow orders, march where you're told to march, and shoot when you see the enemy. So that's what you do. Then imagine that after a week of the most intense fighting of your life,

you realize that your side has somehow emerged victorious. In fact, you've won decisively. You don't remotely understand how it happened. You thought it was impossible. Well, that was the experience of a Confederate soldier named Dorostas Myers during the Battle of Chancellorsville, which lasted from April 30th to May 6th, 1863. On May 11th, Myers, who served as a sergeant with the 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiment, wrote a letter to his brother and sister. Quote, The Lord hath crowned our arms with another glorious victory. I think it was one of the hottest contests of the war.

The enemy were strongly entrenched. We fought them on the left at Chancellorsville with 40,000 men against 110,000. I never was under such a fire of grape shell canister and musketry in my life, though the Lord spared my life. Although the Confederacy lost more than 13,000 soldiers at Chancellorsville, as well as several key officers, including Stonewall Jackson, the battle is widely considered to be the greatest Confederate victory of the Civil War and one of the most impressive military victories of all time. The historic victory was the result of the leadership of Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army

of Northern Virginia. It's widely regarded as one of the most brilliant tactical victories in American military history, often called Lee's Perfect Battle. It's referenced in books like the West Point Atlas of American Wars, and it continues to be studied in military academies today for its demonstration of outmaneuvering larger forces through audacity. and tactical ingenuity. In other words, Robert Lee was a genius. So who was this man who more than 150 years after his death is still so frequently talked about?

Robert Lee was born in 1807 into a prominent Virginia family as the son of revolutionary war hero Henry Light Horse Harry Lee. From a young age, it was obvious that he was a military genius. He graduated second in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point, with zero demerits over four years and was commissioned into the elite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

For over two decades, he served as an exceptional military engineer, overseeing critical infrastructure projects for the federal government. He served in the Mexican-American War, where he performed so well under fire that he was promoted to Colonel. After the war, he ran West Point and later commanded cavalry units in Texas. A decade later in 1863, he found himself fighting the very army that he spent three decades serving.

Many of the officers he commanded and fought against were students at West Point when he ran it. He needed a victory at Chancellorsville because he needed European support to break the naval blockade. His enemy sought to destroy Lee's army and reunite the country. The odds were in favor of the Union. Lee's men were facing starvation in Fredericksburg and he had just split his forces up,

sending General James Longstreet and roughly 20,000 soldiers away to Suffolk to defend Richmond and secure more supplies. As the Union Army converged on Chancellosville, they had a substantial numerical advantage. Union forces began crossing the Rapahonic River in late April, laying pontoon bridges just south of Fredericksburg. At the same time, another union column was marching east, crossing the Rapidane River. Roughly 70,000 Union soldiers ultimately converged at the Chancellasville crossroads, moving towards Fredericksburg and the rear of the Confederate Army. left a force in front of Lee at Fredericksburg under General John Sedgwick. It was clear that a massive battle was brewing. On the evening of April 29th, Jedediah

Hachkiss, a topographical engineer on Stonewall Jackson's staff, remarked, tomorrow tomorrow, death will hold high carnival. Faced with a vastly inferior strategic position, Lee had three options. Option one, he could attack Sedgwick's forces, roughly 40,000 men along with artillery that were directly in front of him at the the Reppahannock River. But if the fighting lasted too long, the Union could move from the West and destroy the rear of the Confederate Army.

Option two, he could retreat and head south to consolidate his forces. This was the safest maneuver, at least in the short term. Option three, he could split his forces and send Jackson's Corps to the West while leaving some small divisions at the front line holding Sedgwick at bay.

At the time, there were 70,000 Union's soldiers over four corps who had moved into the Virginia wilderness facing east. If Lee divided his army to attack those advancing Union forces in the woods, the main risk was that Sedgwick would advance and crush the small number of troops he left behind. Lee decided to take that risk. He ordered Jackson to lead the troops to the west, troops who in the dead of night were unsure of what exactly was going on. William Calder, a soldier in the second North Carolina Infantry, recorded the movement this way.

We had no idea where we were going. A soldier never knows where he's going, nor what he's going to do, until the moment for action comes. They've only to trust in their commanders. On we went through mud and over stumps, stumbling about in the dark, to the great danger of our heads and our shins. All the while, Union Generals were congratulating one another. Bands played upbeat songs as soldiers cheered. But by the morning of May 1st, the mood changed. Jackson's army advancing to the west ran into Union brigades from the 5th Corps and 12th Corps,

catching Hooker off guard. Although the Union maintained a numerical advantage, Hooker ordered his soldiers to pull back. Union generals couldn't believe Hooker's orders. In fact, Major General Henry Slocum, who was in charge of the 12th Corps, called the orders crazy and threatened to shoot the messenger who delivered the news. But ultimately, the generals obeyed. Hooker was still convinced that he was in the superior strategic position, but Lee was not done yet. Jackson proposed yet another secret flanking maneuver, taking his entire Corps and leaving behind only 14,000 men.

Around 5 a.m. on May 2nd, Lee authorized Jackson to take the entire Second Corps, 15 infantry brigades consisting of 30,000 soldiers and more than 100 cannon around the Union's right flank. In the fog of war, Jackson was able to snake around the Union forces, detected with the help of scouts and locals who mapped out a route in the wooded terrain. In his final dispatch to General Lee, Jackson wrote, The enemy has made a stand at Chancellor's, which is about two miles from Chancellorsville. I hope as soon as practicable to attack, I trust that an ever kind Providence will bless us with great success. Respectfully, T.J. Jackson.

At 5.30 p.m. horse artillery positioned near the turnpike fired off two signal shots, which were followed by a bugle calls. Jackson's Corps emerged suddenly from the woods. 12,000 soldiers from the Union's 11th Corps were taken completely by surprise. Many of their trenches were facing the south, not the west, where the Confederate surprise attack was coming from. Very quickly, the Union forces were pushed back about three miles. But they weren't completely defeated. It was dark and they were in the woods,

which complicated Jackson's efforts to crush them. Jackson decided to push forward anyway and headed north to cut off Union retreat. In fact, Jackson himself, along the Union retreat. In fact, Jackson himself, along with some other officers, rode out ahead of the Confederate line to get a better sense for what the Union Army was doing. Jackson was wounded by friendly fire and died eight days later. Jackson's profound final words were documented by the historian Shelby Foote. And he called the doctor and says, Dr. McGuire, my wife tells me I'm going to die. Is that true?

And the doctor said, yes, he did. He said, good, very good. I always wanted to die on a Sunday. Lee appointed Jeb Stewart to replace Jackson, ordering him to press the attack. And as Lee put it, quote, it is necessary that the glorious victory thus far achieved be prosecuted with the utmost vigor and the enemy given no time to rally. As soon, therefore, as it is possible, they must be pressed

so that we may unite the two wings of the army. endeavor, therefore, to dispossess them of Chancellorsville, which will permit the union of the whole army. I shall myself proceed to join you as soon as I can make arrangements on this side, but let nothing delay the completion of the plan of driving the enemy from his rear and from his positions. I shall give orders that every effort be made on this side a daybreak to aid in the junction. On May 3rd, Stewart led brutal frontal assaults on critical positions, including the high ground of Hazel Grove with the goal of reuniting the Confederate Army. The attack was immediately effective.

In order to prevent another Confederate flanking maneuver, Hooker made the fateful decision to abandon the high ground on Hazel Grove, ordering sickles to fall back with the rest of the Union forces. It was a pivotal blunter, and yet another cautious decision while Lee was pursuing a much more aggressive strategy. It's important to emphasize how important Hazel Grove was as an artillery platform.

As Chris Mikowski writes in that furious struggle, quote, In the 70 square mile sea of trees that made up the wilderness, there were few open plots of ground, making the wilderness a terrible place to deploy artillery. Open ground like Hazel Grove was invaluable. Being on higher ground increases a gun's range while also making the gun harder to hit with counter-battery fire. The Confederates immediately rushed dozens of guns

onto Hazel Grove and unloaded on the Union lines, forcing them to pull back. The cover fire allowed the Confederate Army to reunite, as Lee had ordered, it also had a direct impact on the leadership of the Union Army. Hooker was injured when a Confederate cannonball struck the porch where he was standing at his command center, splintering a piece of wood

that fell and hit him. Hooker was never removed from command, nor did his subordinates attempt to replace him. But it was clearly dazed at the worst possible moment, right when his forces were divided, and the fighting was fiercest. But at the same time, Sedgwick broke through the Confederate battle lines at Fredericksburg,

specifically Mary's Heights, posing a direct an unopposed threat to the rear of Lee's lines. When Lee heard the news, he was stoic. In response to a chaplain who was panicking after bringing word of the advancing Union army, Lee said simply, Thank you very much. But both you and your horse are overheated. Take him to that shady tree yonder and rest a little.

Lee ultimately decided to split his army for a third time. He sent the second corps under Brigadier General Raleigh Colston to strike hooker, and he ordered McLaw's division to march east to fight Sedgwick. Fighting had broken out in three key areas, Salem Church, Fredericksburg, and the Chancellorsville Crossroads. Eventually, Lee rode out to Salem Church to lead the counterattack on Sedgwick directly. He successfully prevented the Union Pinser movement once again by dividing his forces. Outmaneuvered, stunned, and physically injured,

Hooker ordered a full retreat on the night of May 4th. Lee, by repeatedly dividing his forces when conventional wisdom called for retreating each time, had managed to defeat a much larger army at a time when both the Union and the Confederacy were eager for a major victory. Lee's tactics are still studied today in military academies. He recognized his opponent's strategic weakness and his opponent's fear, and he exploited them both. When the war broke out, no one thought it would last long. One person who knew it wouldn't be short was Robert E. Lee. In early 1861, while still in the U.S. Army at Fort Mason, Texas, he correctly predicted that if it came to armed conflict, quote,

the war will last at least four years. He was right. Lee's foresight in recognizing the Civil War's potential for protracted devastation, unlike the naive optimism of many on both sides, underscored his wisdom and his realism. His perfect battle at Chancellorsville showcased Lee's military prowess. The South didn't have the North's industrial capacity, railroads, wealth, or poverty. population, but it had some of the greatest military leadership in human history. In other words, Lee and the South, well, they were no losers. When the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861, an immediate question arose.

What should the conflict be called? Now, the answer wasn't obvious. On April 15, President Lincoln issued Proclamation 80, which referred to the attack on Sumter and various state secessions as, quote, combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings. In a July 4th message to Congress, Lincoln referred to the war as, quote, a case of rebellion. He continued to use the term rebellion throughout the war, including in the emancipation proclamation, where he mentioned the rebellion against the United States. The words were political in nature. The Constitution conferred Lincoln emergency powers if he called it a rebellion.

It also denied legitimacy to the South, implying that they were still part of the country. In 1880, when the War Department released the official records of the war, they titled it The War of the Rebellion, a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. During the War of the South had its own preferred terms, like the War for Southern Independence and the War between the States. After the First Battle of Manassas, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, told his troops, I hope by your future deeds and bearing you'll be handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in this Our Second War of Independence.

Farewell. Harris von Bork, Chief of Staff to Confederate General Jeb Stewart, titled his book, Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence. Now, whether it was a rebellion or a war for independence depends on who you ask, but it certainly was not a civil war. Civil wars are between two sides that want to control the country. The Russian Civil War was between whites and reds over who would control the Russian Empire. The Chinese Civil War was between communists and nationalists over who would control China. English civil wars between parliamentary forces and the king over who would have supreme power over England. There's no evidence whatsoever that South had any interest in occupying or controlling

Boston or New York or the entire country. They wanted to leave the union for various reasons, which they believe they had the legal right to do. The matter at hand was whether the United States was a collection of sovereign states or a centralized union of subordinate states. That wasn't really a really a question in the early years of the Republic. According to Catherine Drinker-Bowens' book Miracle at Philadelphia, when the Constitutional Convention's Committee of Style and Arrangement originally drafted the preamble, it had no reference to we the people of the United States. In fact, what the articles drafted by the convention had said was, quote,

we the undersigned delegates of the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, etc. And so on down the list of the 13. But they scrapped that idea because it was unlikely that they would get all 13 states to ratify the new Constitution. So the real history of how the term we, the people, was born, is that it was a technicality. Back then, you wouldn't have said the United States is a place. You would have said, these United States are a place. And that is a very important distinction. In that context, it's not surprising that by 1794, just six years after the Constitution's ratification, two U.S. senators, Rufus King of New York and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut,

approached Senator John Taylor of Virginia and informed him they wanted to break up the union already. They recognized a huge divide between the northern and southern states, and it wasn't just cultural differences between the agrarian south and the urbanized north. They noticed major political and economic differences too. In 1883, more than two decades after the outbreak of the war, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts acknowledged that everybody involved in the ratification of the Constitution would have assumed states could leave, writing, quote, when the Constitution was adopted by the votes of states at Philadelphia

and accepted by the votes of states in popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country from Washington and Hamilton on the one side to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered upon by the states and from which each and every state had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised. Their historical record proves this point. Between the founding of the country in 1861,

Northern states threatened to secede at least five times. In 1803, a group of Massachusetts-based federalists known as the Essex Junto threatened to secede because they feared the Louisiana Purchase would dilute their political power. Aaron Burr, who was Thomas Jefferson's vice president, was their leader. In 1807, they threatened to leave again after Jefferson put an embargo on Great Burton in France.

during the War of 1812, New England once again threatened to secede because of the British blockade of their ports. Some states considered independently making peace with the British. Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to place their militias under federal command. They claimed the federal government didn't have the power to do it. In the 1840s, northern politicians published a solemn appeal to the peoples of free states, arguing that the annexation of Texas will be, quote, so injurious to the interests and abhorrent to the feelings of the people of the free states, as, in our opinion, not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the union, but fully to justify it.

Former President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts signed that document. After the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, New England threatened to nullify the law, and some leaders called for secession again. Before the Civil War, the North issued credible threats to secede at least five separate times. As the great Civil War historian Shelby Foot put it, quote, if the states had known that they couldn't get out, they never would have gotten in. You've seen how history gets rewritten, we're not the only ones fixing the historical record. Mount Titano Media is setting the record straight with finding our words,

words that made America, a collection of the greatest speeches in American history, many of them nearly forgotten from the people who actually built this country. It includes speeches from Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, two of the greatest orators America has ever produced, whose words inspired generations and are almost never taught in schools anymore. In a moment when everyone's debating what this country is supposed to be, these words matter more than ever.

Read it or listen to the new Audible edition, featuring voices you'll recognize. Michael Knowles, Andrew Clavin, Spencer Clavin, U.S. Army generals and leaders in classical education. Every speech comes with an essay by journalist Tracy Lee Simmons giving you the full historical context. This is the history worth knowing. Go find it.

Go to Mount Titano Media.com to get your copy of finding our words, words that made America. Again, that's Mount Tatano Media.com. Robert Lee witnessed the 1860 election results from a U.S. Army post in San Antonio, Texas. As the fervor over secession began to boil over, Lee wrote his father in law, quote, If the union is dissolved, which God and his mercy forbid, I shall return to you. According to historian Alan Guelso, 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

determined to coalesce with them. In a letter to one of his cousins, he wrote, Secession is revolution. He wrote that, quote, But our people will destroy a government inaugurated by the blood and wisdom of our patriot fathers, that has given us peace and prosperity at home, power and security abroad, and under which we have acquired a colossal strength unequaled in the history of mankind. According to Guelso, Lee wished to live under no other government and to have no other flag than the Star-Spangled banner. But if that government was now going to disappear, and the only alternative was to go back

and sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native land. so many Americans from this period, Lee was a patriotic American and a war hero, but he saw himself first and foremost as a Virginia. On February 6, 1861, David Twiggs, the commander of the U.S. Army's Department of Texas, surrendered his entire command to be Confederates and ordered all federal troops to abandon their posts. Lee refused to leave Fort Mason and pledged to defend his post at all hazards. This is because the legality of secession mattered to him, and because his native Virginia hadn't seceded yet. As he left Texas, Lee declared he was returning to Virginia to resign and go to planting corn, and though he would never bear arms against the U.S.,

he might carry a musket in defense of my native state, Virginia. Lee's attitude tells us a lot about why not one single Confederate leader was ever convicted of treason, because it was commonly understood at the time that it was not treason. The legal case for secession goes back to before the Constitution when 13 U.S. colonies decided to secede from the British Crown. After winning their war for independence, those colonies then formed the Articles of Confederation, which required that any changes to the Union be adopted by the Congress in all the states. But that never happened, and most states just seceded. The background-led historian Charles Francis Adams Jr., who served as a colonel in the Union Army, say, quote, if Robert Lee was a traitor, so also indisputably

were George Washington, Oliver Cromwell, John Hamden, and William of Orange. Adams goes on, George Washington furnishes a precedent at every point. A Virginia like Lee, he was also a British subject. He had fought under the British flag as Lee had fought under that of the United States. When in 1776, Virginia seceded from the British Empire, he went with his state, just as Lee went with it 85 years later. Subsequently, Washington commanded armies in the field designated by those opposed to them as rebels, and whose descendants now glorified them as the rebels of 76, which as Lee later commanded and at last surrendered,

much larger armies also designated rebels by those they confronted. Except in their outcome, the cases were therefore precisely alike, and logic is logic. So the only difference is that Washington won his war, and Lee lost his. The courts basically agreed with that analysis. After the Civil War, many northern newspapers, including the Boston Daily Advertiser and the New York Times published materials encouraging the government to put Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, on trial for treason.

And for their part, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that a trial would, quote, render traders infamous and have it judicially settled that secession is illegal. We would have learned a lot about the country if they would have done it. According to University of Virginia law professor Cynthia Nicoletti, no one knew for sure whether secession was legal and that any treaty, reason prosecution would rise and fall on that question. Indeed, she quotes George Washington Woodward, Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who wrote in a letter to a lawyer representing a Confederate senator, quote,

The doctrine of state rights will have a severe test and may find a strange vindication in that trial. Secession has yet to be defined. Hitherto, it has been a toy of politicians, and they have dodged everything like a definition. But is secession treason? That's a grand question. If it is not, war in support of it cannot be. If the right to withdraw existed, must have included the right of defense,

so that levying war to defend a Confederacy founded in secession could not be levying war against the government of the U.S., but this is on the assumption that secession is something less than treason, which I neither aver nor deny. Many northern politicians were certain the government would lose.

Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who was most famous for getting caned on the Senate floor, said the tri- Jefferson Davis would be the nay-plus ultra of folly. The Supreme Court's Chief Justice said, if you bring these Confederate leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution's

secession is not rebellion. Nicoletti writes that even Lincoln himself was concerned about the possibility that a trial might backfire. Quote, Before his untimely death, President Lincoln had remarked that Davis's flight from Richmond in April was a good thing because it forestalled the political and legal difficulties

that might attend a high-profile treason prosecution. I'm bound to oppose the escape of Jeff David, Lincoln had reportedly told General William T. Sherman, but if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst, like, I guess it wouldn't hurt me much. At a cabinet meeting at the White House on July 18th, there was no consensus at the White House as to how to proceed.

President Andrew Johnson, who assumed office after Lincoln's assassination, pressed for a clear answer, but he didn't get one. The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, stated that there was, quote, a great diversity of opinion in the matter as to whether Davis should be tried, for the crime of high treason. Ultimately, Andrew Johnson opted to proceed tentatively with a treason prosecution. For his part, Davis was eager for trial

because he believed secession was legal and he wanted vindication in court. Davis, in fact, hoped that he would be arrested in 1861 after his home state of Mississippi seceded so that he could demonstrate the legality of secession. But no one arrested him, and he instead was chosen to be president of the new Confederate states of America.

That's why Davis, unlike Robert E. Lee, never requested a presidential pardon. he genuinely thought that he'd be vindicated in court. Jefferson Davis was charged with treason and held for two years at Fort Monroe in Virginia, but never got his day in court. Over time, popular support for prosecution waned, and the Johnson administration was far from certain that a Virginia jury would convict Davis, or even that the Supreme Court would definitively rule that secession was illegal.

Davis took the surrender as an unequivocal win. Quote, a sovereign state cannot commit treason, he wrote. The government early discovered that if this issue came before the Supreme Court, it would lose its case, and I should be acquitted, so none of the indictments were ever tried. Shortly after Davis's case was dropped in April of 1869, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate, unrelated case, Texas v. White, that secession is indeed unconstitutional. As the court put it, the Constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible union composed of indestructible states. But it was a throwaway line in a case about bombs. There wasn't any significant discussion of secession during oral arguments or

briefing. And the ruling attracted virtually no media attention because by that point it seemed like a dead issue. In short, the Supreme Court snuck in a ruling about the unconstitutionality of secession. Years after the lengthy public debate over Davis's trial made clear that in fact there was no consensus on that point in the country. And there still isn't, by the way. The America of the 17th and 18th centuries was very different from the United States we know today. At the time, even many northerners would have conceded that at the minimum, the constitutionality of society, was a close call and that it would be a gross oversimplification, if not an outright falsehood, to call these men traitors.

One of the great myths of the Civil War is that the South was somehow uniquely evil. Indeed, at the time, abolitionists aggressively pushed propaganda with exactly that message, as Thomas Fleming writes, and a disease in the public mind, a new understanding of why we fought the Civil War. Quote, the abolitionists convinced themselves based on their evangelical experiences that smearing the South's reputation in every possible way would create the anxiety that would lead to a mass conversion of the North to their crusade. The South was portrayed as a province ruled by Satan that would consume the North's soul if her citizens did not vow to expunge the sin of slavery. Meanwhile in the South, there was an intense fear of slave insurrections and race wars,

following the brutal uprising and revolution in present-day Haiti. Therefore, the Civil War, Fleming argues, best understood as a product of a psychological disease that afflicted both the North and the South in different ways, which made rational dialogue impossible. Sound familiar? That mutual disease, he argues, is why only the U.S., unlike Great Britain and Brazil, fought a brutal war over slavery. And yet long after the war, some of these over-the-top descriptions of the South as simply evil survived today. The cartoon version of history holds that Abraham Lincoln invaded the South because it had slaves, but just just how peculiar was the South's peculiar institution, as it was called. Well, not very, as it turns out.

The North had slaves too. According to the book, It Wasn't About Slavery by Samuel Mitcham Jr. In 1703, more than 42% of New York City households own slaves. A ratio only surpassed by Charleston, South Carolina. In Connecticut, Mitcham says one half of all ministered lawyers and public officials owns slaves. By 1783, one quarter of Connecticut families own slaves and one out of every four 14 people in Rhode Island was a slave. Many prominent northerners, including founding fathers,

owned slaves. This includes the first signer of the Declaration of Independence and future Massachusetts governor, John Hancock, who had two or three household slaves. Other notable slaveholders from Massachusetts include Cotton Mather, who learned about inoculation from one of his slaves. Slavery of the North was awful. Massachusetts and Connecticut set curfews for black people. According to the book Black Bondage in the North in the 1700s, Connecticut required blacks to be off the streets by nine at night and to remain within the towns to which they belonged. Slaves who broke curfew in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were flogged. In New Hampshire, the penalty was ten lashes. In New York, it was a misdemeanor for slaves to gather in groups larger than four.

And in Long Island, they could not travel more than a mile from home without a pass. Similar laws existed in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. By the time Abraham Lincoln was elected, slavery had been banned in most, but not all, Union states. It's important to point out that while radical abolitionists in the 1850s were calling for the South to immediately free all of their slaves, the northern states didn't end slavery that way. For the most part, the manumission of slaves in the North was a gradual process. The law is emancipated people born in the future and were designed so northern slaveholders didn't lose money. In many cases, northern slaveholders just sold their slaves to the law. the South. One overlooked fact is that early attempts to curb the slave trade had southern support.

In his 1806 state of the Union, President Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia, and a slave owner, called on Congress to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights, which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa. The next year, the United States Congress voted to abolish the slave trade. The bill passed the House with 96% of representatives, yes, including massive support from southern members of Congress. There are two reasons why southern members of Congress voted this way. First, at the time, many people in the South wanted to end slavery.

By 1827, more than 100 anti-slavery groups existed in the South, mostly under the banner of colonization societies, which advocated for sending freed slaves back to Africa. Second and more importantly, profits from the slave trade weren't going to the South. The slave trade was a northern business, and Jefferson's bill was ineffective at stopping it. According to the book Black Cargos by Daniel Mannix, an English captain reported that the port of Lemieux in the slave market of Zanzibar was packed with quote,

enterprising Americans whose star-spangled banner may be seen streaming in the wind where other nations would not deign to traffic. By 1858, as Abraham Lincoln was running for Senate in Illinois, there were 24 American ships in the Zanzibar harbor as against three British. There are two reasons, the British Navy, which at the time was trying to end the slave.

trade couldn't stop American slavers. First, American ships were extremely fast and maneuverable, and second, President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts forbade the British from boarding any American flagged ships. The result was huge profits for Massachusetts-based slave traders. Mannix writes that, quote, so many of the ships hailed from Salem, Massachusetts that the Zanzibarians thought all white men came from this one New England town. English officers discovered to their indignation that Great Britain was considered to be be a suburb of Salem. The Americans traded for slaves and ivory with a cheap Caligo turned out in vast quantities by the New England cotton mills. Even today, cotton is called Americani and Zanzibar.

Moving slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and Brazil was big money for northerners. This part of the slave trade was its own version of the famous triangle trade. Cheap southern cotton was shipped north to textile mills, which northerners turned into manufactured textile goods. Northern slave traders traded those textiles for slaves in Zanzibar, who were then trafficked to the Caribbean, for huge profits. The North was profiting for slavery on all three corners of the triangle. This continued for decades. W.E.B. De Bois wrote that by the 1850s, quote, the fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States and centered at New York City. In 1862, literally during the Civil War, the New York Journal of Commerce reported that New York

was quote, the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce, although the cities of Portland, Maine, and Boston are second to her in that distinction. As New England was making money off the global slave trade, other northern states were passing racist legislation. In Lincoln's home state of Illinois, black people couldn't attend public schools, couldn't testify against white people in court, or bear arms. If three or more of them gathered to dance, they were fined and lashed.

The purpose of these laws, which were known as the Illinois Black Codes, was to discourage black people from moving to the state. In 1853, Illinois made things more explicit with a black exclusion law that, quote, prohibited blacks from coming into the state with the intention of living there. Punishment proved especially harsh in that violators were subject to penalties that amounted to forced labor, essentially slavery. Illinois law was so extreme that it was a crime for blacks to settle in that state without a certificate of freedom, which cost $1,000, the equivalent of about $40,000 today.

The black codes were so harsh that, even some southern newspapers objected. The New Orleans Bee called the Illinois Black Codes an act of special and savage ruthlessness. One of the key figures in passing the Black Codes was a state representative named John A. Logan. Logan was an enthusiastic enforcer of the Fugitive Slave Act and an open racist.

Abraham Lincoln later made him a Union General. After the war, Logan reinvented himself as a radical Republican senator, but it's hard to imagine that Johnny Logan held contemporary woke views on black people. Many northern or free states enacted black laws or exclusionary codes similar to Illinois. Indiana and Oregon banned black settlement in their state constitutions. According to Eugene Berwinger's book, The Frontier Against Slavery,

quote, The exact extent of racial prejudice as a factor encouraging limitation of slavery is indeterminable. The average man in all ages does not record his thoughts for posterity and is even less likely to do so on such thorny problems as race relations. Yet, if 79.5% of the people in Illinois, Indiana, Oregon, and Kansas voted to exclude the free Negroes simply because of their prejudice, surely this antipathy influenced their decision to support the non-extension of slavery. As Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, put it, quote, The motive of those who protested against the extension of slavery had always been concerned for the welfare of the white man and not an unnatural sympathy for the Negro. In other words, many northern and western voters opposed the experience.

of slavery into their states and territories, not primarily out of moral opposition to slavery itself, but because they didn't want black neighbors. Generally speaking, in the first half of the 1800s, many Southerners supported emancipation and the relocation of slaves. In many cases, because they thought the black populations of their states were getting too big.

After Nat Turner's violent slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, thousands of Virginians petition their government to end slavery. Charles County Quakers issued a petition calling for a new law declaring that all persons born in the state after some period to be fixed by law shall be free. Virginia's governor at the time wrote in his diary that before I leave this government will have contrived to have a law passed gradually abolishing slavery in this state. The Richmond inquire at the time called slavery the greatest evil which can scourge our land. The Virginia House of Delegates failed to end slavery then, but it wasn't by an overwhelming vote. Many

Many people didn't realize that the windowed end slavery through the legal process likely peaked right at the beginning of the country and into the early 1800s. In 1794, the incentives radically changed after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. That invention, more than anything else, dramatically increased the demand for slave labor in the South because it made cotton cultivation vastly more profitable. As the Civil War approached, the hundreds of anti-slavery groups that had formed in the mid-1820s had mostly gone away, and so had any possibility that southern legislatures would end slavery on their own. The debate after Nat Turner's rebellion was the last major attempt to do so.

And so slavery persisted for decades, though many Virginians knew it was wrong. One of them was Robert Lee himself. According to historian Alan Guelso, Lee, quote, regarded slavery as a moral and political evil, which, however, he was content to leave in the hands of God to resolve. Lee's slaves were inherited, one slave family from his mother, and 197 others from his father-in-law, G.W. P. Custis. In 1862 during the war, Lee, quote, completed the emancipation of the Custis slaves, which he was obligated to do by his father-in-law's will, and then freed his own, which he was not. The war was not exclusively about slavery. That is just a fact. It could not have been. Right up through the shelling of Fort Sumter, the north was profiting massively from the slave trade.

four union states had legal slavery. But if the war was not about slavery, then what was it about? Well, the answer depends on who you ask. Though interestingly, President's Lincoln and Davis seemed to agree. Confederate President Jefferson Davis said, quote, we are not fighting for slavery.

We are fighting for independence. And that or extermination we will have. Lincoln himself told newspaper editor Horace Greeley, quote, my paramount object in this struggle is to save the union and is not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.

And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. In other words, according to both presidents, the war was fundamentally about the question of keeping or ending the union. The key argument against the idea that civil war was solely about slavery is that at the time of secession in late 1860 and early 1861, neither the incoming Republican administration nor mainstream northern opinion advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery where it already existed in southern states. The Republican Party platform of 1860 opposed the extension of slavery to the territories, but didn't call for abolition of slavery in the South. But even if it had and stood a reasonable chance of happening, which it didn't, at least in the short run, most Southerners would not have been affected anyway.

Only about one-third of Southerners were from households that had slaves. The idea that 360,000 white men were going to line up and die for the sake of rescuing Black people in the South is just absurd and ahistoric. and a historical. In the words of the great Civil War historian Shelby Foot, quote, No soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves. The soldiers' diaries support this. Haros von Vork,

chief of staff to Confederate General Jim Stewart, wrote a 558-page history of his experiences in the war. His memoirs contain no references to slavery at all, and only one to a slave, in which he passed a large plantation, which, I was told, belonged to a free Negro, one of the richest men of the county, who was himself the owner of numerous slaves.

The historian James McPherson went through the diaries of more than a thousand soldiers from both sides for his book, For Cause and Comrades. He found that, quote, for Union and Confederate Volunteers alike, abstract symbols or concepts such as country, flag, constitution, liberty, and legacy of the revolution figured prominently in their explanations of why they enlisted. For Confederate soldiers, a more concrete, visceral, or perhaps more powerful, powerful motive also came into play. Defense of home and hearth against an invading enemy. They signed up to fight out of duty, a concept that was a lot stronger 150 years ago than it is today. Many union soldiers echoed Lincoln's calls for preserving the union. McPherson found a union soldier from Philadelphia who wrote that this contest is not the north against the south, it is government

against anarchy, law against disorder. Another from Michigan joined against the wishes of his family because he wanted to join, quote, all true patriots to sustain her government. Another from Michigan wrote that, if the union is split up, the government is destroyed, and we will be a ruined nation. Do not borrow any trouble about me. If I die in the battlefield, I do so with pleasure.

And he did die in battle the next year. McPherson found immigrants lamenting that secession would make the country, quote, as bad as the deeply divided German states and native-born Americans who said, quote, Our fathers made this country, we their children are to save it. McPherson notes that relatively few union volunteers mentioned the slavery issue when they enlisted. The same is true for southern soldiers. McPherson estimates that just 20% of Confederate soldiers even considered slavery a cause worth fighting for in the first place.

Most were focused on repelling an invasion. Quote, defense of the homeland was one of the strongest of combat motivations. Even among soldiers from slaveholding families, only one third explicitly voiced pros. slavery convictions. McPherson writes that many Virginians shared Robert E. Lee's view that they wouldn't fight unless it be in defense of Virginia. Another Virginia wrote, I would give all I have got just to be in the front rank of the first brigade that marches against the invading foe who now pollute the sacred soil of my native state with their unholy tread. When Abraham Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, he did it as a wartime measure to suppress the rebellion. It's just as

notable for what it did not do as what it did do. It did not free the slaves. No, slavery continued in areas under federal control, which included Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and parts of Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee. In practice, it only freed about 100,000 people out of a pool of millions. Lincoln did it because he wanted to prevent European powers from forming an alliance with Confederacy, which seemed likely at the time and would have dramatically changed the South's fortunes. So the proclamation was a brilliant political maneuver that undercut the Confederacy's diplomatic efforts to court Europe because it made intervention politically untenable for European leaders who almost all opposed slavery. Now, wait a second here.

We are not saying the war had nothing to do with slavery, because that would also be ridiculous. It's just as much a cartoon caricature as what your idiot teachers taught you in school. No, slavery was a factor that led to war, and it was a major factor. South Carolina's declaration of causes for secession references slavery six times. After seceding, South Carolina immediately made an appeal to other slaveholding states to secede and in its appeal referenced slavery no less than 32 times. The South Carolina legislatures literally wrote, quote, slaveholding states cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding states.

When General Claiborne suggested freeing the slaves to fight for the Confederacy, his fellow officers were shocked and appalled. slavery was a factor in the war, probably a significant one, but it was not the only factor. The South left for three other reasons, too. First, there was the balance of political power. In the Republic's first 72 years, slave-holding Southerners occupied the White House approximately two-thirds of the time, or 49 years out of 72. Some of the biggest figures of American politics were from the South, including Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and John C. Calhoun. To the extent that there were northern presidents, many were sympathetic to the South, like Pennsylvania's James Buchanan.

But demographics is destiny as the northern states surged in population, driven by higher birth rates and massive waves of European immigration. The South's longstanding political dominance collapsed. The South's share of the House of Representatives dropped from roughly 48 percent at the founding to 38 percent by 1860. For decades, Congress maintained balance in the Senate by adding slave and free states at the same time, but after the country's massive territorial expansion, as a result of the Mexican-American War, that balance was doomed. There was no need for slave labor in places like Arizona or New Mexico, and so the South's relative power declined quickly. California was admitted as a free state in 1850, free Oregon entered in 1859.

Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, coupled with the rapid rise of the Republican Party, which was a purely sectional northern organization at the time, signaled the end of southern dominance. in national politics. Second, the South had a financial motive. At the outbreak of the war, the American South produced roughly three quarters of the world's cotton. From 1830 to 1860, cotton was by far

the country's top export. It comprised literally half or more of all U.S. exports. 90% of exports to Great Britain came only from the South. And by the 1830s, more than 80% of the cotton grown in the South was being exported.

At the time, the biggest source of revenue for the U.S. government was the tariff. This was great policy for northern states since their tariffs protected their manufacturers from foreign competition. But it was terrible for the export dependent South because retaliatory tariffs restricted their access to the foreign markets,

and because their economy was built around agricultural exports, they had higher demand for foreign manufactured goods. So how much of a factor was money in the decision to secede? On Christmas Day, 1860, the South Carolina legislature issued an address to the other slaveholding states, calling on them to leave the union.

One of their major grievances was, quote, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue, to promote by prohibitions northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufacturers. The role that economics played in secession was obvious,

to outsiders. Carl Marx complained at the time that London's biggest newspapers, including the Times, the Economist, the Examiner, the Saturday Review, were arguing that, quote, the war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on northern lust for sovereignty. A third reason was the massive cultural divide between the regions. The South was rural and agricultural. The North was urban, industrial, and had huge numbers of European immigrants. Increasingly, they hated each other, something that became obvious on one cool Virginia morning in October 1859.

Robert Lee was harvesting the rye crop in his fields in Arlington when a mounted soldier showed up and handed him a letter from the Secretary of War. The night before, around 1.30 in the morning, the Federal Armory and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia had been taken by a group of armed men. A train passing through it sent telegrams on to Washington, warning of 150 armed abolitionists who have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards, and to arm poor whites who are similarly aggrieved with the slave system. They were led by a radical abolitionist and insurrectionist named John Brown, who wanted to provoke a massive slave uprising across the south.

It was Lee's job to take back Harpers Ferry, with a company of 90 Marines, two howitzers and a few local citizen militias from Maryland and Virginia. He had such little time to prepare that he wore civilian clothing and a top hat, and he commandeered a Baltimore and Ohio engine car to get there, riding with just one other officer, the conductor, and the train's fireman. When Lee arrived, Brown's revolution had failed to materialize. The raiders were trapped in an engine house. The Marines waited until morning and then stormed the building. John Brown and four of his men were taken alive and later tried and executed.

The South responded to the news with total heart. The Richmond Inquirer wrote, quote, The Southern people have heretofore disregarded the ravings of Northern fanatics because they believe such madness to be merely a pecuniary speculation, but the attack at Harper's Ferry shows that the Northern people mean more than words. Virginia's legislature awarded Leah Sourd for his gallant conduct at Harper's Ferry. The North was euphoric. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that John Brown was an idealist who put his ideas into action.

David Thoreau compared Brown's execution to the crucifixion of Christ. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips, also of Massachusetts, called Harper's Ferry the Lexington of today, comparing it to the opening shots of the Revolutionary War and said Brown was the brave, frank, and sublime truster in God's right and absolute justice. Northerners raise money to pay for Brown's legal defense. Many of Brown's conspirators were protected by Republican governors in northern states. The northern response shook the South to its core. South Carolina's declaration of causes for secession specifically mentioned northern states providing safe harbor

for John Rounds accomplices. Other states complained of northern aggression and hostility. The attack on Harbors Ferry proved to them that the cultural bond it once shared with the North no longer existed. For as long as political scientists and historians have been polled on the best presidents, Abraham Lincoln has topped the charts

in every category. Modern presidents can't help but compare themselves to him. But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. That is why I'm in this race, not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation. In school, kids are taught that Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator, a champion of equality, a defender of democracy. To his contemporaries, he was the ape baboon. of the prairie, a coarse vulgar joker, a simple Susan, and the craftiest and most dishonest politician that ever disgraced the White House. Now in reality, he was none of these things. Although he may have been a coarse and vulgar joker, it's hard to know for

sure. The greatest event in Lincoln's life, what turned him from man to myth, was his assassination. In the words of historian Michael Burlingame, quote, canonization began almost immediately. Within days of his death, his life was being compared to Jesus Christ. He was shot on Good Friday, and by Easter Sunday, a prominent American pastor said, heaven rejoices this Easter morning in the resurrection of our lost leader, referring not to Jesus, but to Abraham Lincoln. At the 1909 Lincoln Centennial, Illinois schoolchildren recited verses calling him a peasant prince, a masterpiece of God. His oversized statue keeps watch over the national mall in Washington, D.C. today.

In 1863, no one in America would have recognized the Lincoln we know today. Back then, it wasn't even clear if he was going to win re-election. 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. To do all these things, Lincoln broke an assortment of laws and ignored one constitutional provision after another. He was hated by Southerners, but also loathed by many northerners. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips called Lincoln a huckster in politics a first-rate, second-rate man. So Lincoln was, in a word at the time, controversial. He was also a human.

and a flawed one, like a Saul. He held contemporary views on race. He believed blacks were inferior to whites. 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, nor to intermarry with white people.

And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. And I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position, the Negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.

The crowd laughed at that answer. It's really hard to know what Abraham Lincoln really thought because he was an incredible politician. Every word he said, every action he took, he did so knowing who his audience was and what their response would be. This is very important and often overlooked. Historians in 100 years might look back at Barack Obama in 2000, And based on his words, I think he did oppose gay marriage because he said he did.

But of course, he was pandering to an audience. He was a politician. Lincoln and Obama might have more in common than just being tall, gangly, self-made lawyers from Illinois. But we do know that in the end, Lincoln did not free the slaves. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he still believed that, quote, the only long-term solution to slavery was voluntary colonization. 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. In total, Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery was a moral and political evil.

He believed it should end gradually rather than immediately, and he supported the idea of colonization or sending freed black people to Africa or elsewhere as part of the solution. In other words, Abraham Lincoln had the exact same views on slavery as Robert E. Lee. After the war, Robert E. Lee received a presidential pardon and returned to Virginia,

where he took up the presidency of what is now Washington and Lee University, a role many historians regard as the happiest period of his life, far removed from the burdens of command. At the moment of surrender at Appomattox, Lee could have urged his devoted soldiers to scatter into the Appalachians, waging a guerrilla war that might have dragged on for decades, sapping northern resources and claiming countless more lives. Instead, true to his character, he chose the path of honor and remarkably reconciliation with the Union. He urged his men to lay down arms, return home, and rebuild as loyal citizens. Today, efforts to erase Lee from history often stem from sheer history.

historical illiteracy, but a deeper motive lurks. Resentment towards a man who embodies virtues increasingly rare in modern America. They hate him not for his flaws, but because he represents unattainable ideals. Tactical genius, a man of unyielding duty, honor and dignity, a southerner whose leadership of Chancellorsville still echoes in military academies worldwide. They know they'll never measure up. No statues will rise for fleeting figures like Mark Millie or anyone else, but Lee's legacy indoors, outlasting the vandals who would topple his monuments or even disturb his faithful

horse traveler's grave. In the end, Robert Lee is a reflection of the Civil War itself, far more nuanced and multifaceted than the simplistic tale spun in high school classrooms or viral videos. A full reckoning with the real history, such as Shelby Foote's epic one-point, one-point point two million word trilogy spanning 3,000 pages, demands depths that no textbook or hour-long internet video can capture. The mainstream narrative is a cartoon. The war was never a straightforward crusade against southern evil. Secession was not categorically treason. Abraham Lincoln was not a messianic figure. The story most Americans have heard is a fairy tale. But one thing is true.

Wars have consequences. And victors shaped the story. That is the enduring lesson of the Civil War. If you ask American teenagers basic questions about American history, you'll quickly discover that they don't know much about it. One Gallup poll found that most American teens are unaware that Columbus arrived in 1492, more than two-thirds don't know that states' rights were an issue in the Civil War, and three-quarters are unaware that the United States gained independence

in 1776. More interesting is what they do know. In May 2008, two college professors gave 2,000 American high school juniors and seniors a simple prompt. Starting from Columbus to the present day, jot down the names of the most famous Americans in history. The only ground rule is that they cannot be president. The top three answers were all black. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and in first place, of course, Martin Luther King Jr., who was named by two-thirds of the students. Benjamin Franklin, by comparison, was named by just 29%.

Thomas Edison made the top 10 but was outranked by Oprah Winfrey. A similar survey of college students between 1975 and 1988 had radically different answers. Their top choices, Betsy Ross and Paul Revere, didn't even make the top 10 by the mid 2000s. This is because sometime between 1988 and 1995, things radically changed. National heroes like George Washington and Ben Franklin

were replaced. placed with a new class of central figures in American history. As the authors of the study put it by the mid-1990s, quote, African Americans and women had moved to the center of American history. Ask any American who went to public schools between 1995 and today, they'll tell you the central feature of their social studies classes,

as history became known, were the histories of slavery and the civil rights movement. They likely remember watching videos like this one in school. We wanted to show you a clip of Martin Luther King Jr.'s, I Have a Dream speech there, but it turns out we couldn't. That's because King's family owns the audio from the speech, and they wouldn't let us use it. You might think that's weird. This is America.

Surely you can use a short soundbite of an extremely famous speech in an educational video. And in most cases, you'd be right. But according to our lawyers, we can. In fact, you can't show quotes or read on air any portions of speeches owned by King's estate. It turns out his family has done all sorts of things to stop people like us, including amazingly, releasing the speech as an album so they could secure special music rights. They published his life's work as a book to secure additional rights and recently blocked OpenAI from allowing users to recreate King's likeness. These gimmicks gave them total control over how King is portrayed in media today.

Why would they rig our legal system like that? Well, money is one reason. When CBS broadcast portions of the I Have a Dream speech on air, the family sued and the company settled. King's family has made a lot of money, suing media outlets. But another reason is that they want to silence critics like us. They need to protect his legacy to keep making money on it. What they're doing makes it very difficult to honestly reevaluate Martin Luther King Jr. And you're about to see why they don't want people to do that.

It turns out, the king you've heard of is a carefully curated creation. His estate's efforts perfectly illustrate what the civil rights movement has become. And as we'll show in this episode, what it always was. A gigantic lie. Over the course of this video, we are going to judge Martin Luther King Jr. Not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. What you will see will shock you. Some of it isn't suitable for young children.

We'll also confront the movement that he spearheaded, where his true aims a colorblind society or, something far more radical, who bankrolled him, what did other civil rights leaders think of him? What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful? And most importantly, is America today stronger, more unified, and racially equal than before kings' rise? These questions demand answers, and as Americans we are entitled to a full accounting of the civilized. rights movement and its consequences, King's Movement fundamentally transformed our country

and our system of government. That's why we're tackling the topic in two parts. First, the hidden history of the civil rights movement, its key figures, agendas, funding, and scandals. And second, the profound lasting changes to our society and their consequences. This is the real history of the civil rights movement, part one, a new constitution. Thank you.