>> So, OK, that is the dominant
view of the civil war
as of the end of World War II.
But again just
as World War I had lead
to a revulsion against war,
World War II was the good war,
right?
World War II was a
justifiable war.
And this is in the aftermath
of the fight
against Nazi Germany
particularly
and with the beginnings
of this modern civil rights
movement which begins
in World War II
but then is given a boost
in 1948, 1947
by Truman's integration
of the Army 48,
the civil rights becomes
for the first time
in 80 years a major national
issue in the
presidential election.
Historians respond to that.
One of the more influential
responses was an article
by the historian Arthur
Schlesinger Jr.,
a leading spokesman
of postwar liberalism
and my point is he--
you see liberalism is now
becoming associated
with civil rights
which it hadn't been before.
In the 1930s,
you could be an absolute
down the road new dealer
and still be
completely segregationist.
Many southerners were strong
supporters, white southerners--
were the strong supporters
of Roosevelt and
yet total racists.
After World War II,
it's hard to do that.
Liberalism links itself
up with the cause
of civil rights
and that reflects back
on the civil war.
Basically, what Schlesinger
says, if it was worth a war
to destroy Nazism,
it was worth a war
to destroy slavery.
Slavery, just like Nazi Germany,
was an entrenched system
of evil.
The south showed no sign,
no intent of reforming itself.
They became hysterical
in self-defense, many
criticism was raised,
they drove out free discussion.
A society closed in defense
of evil, he says,
cannot be appeased.
See, just World War II, right?
Those who say there should have
been a compromise are
just appeasers.
You have to destroy
such a society
and that's what history shows.
Evils like this do not end
by themselves.
Some outside force must come
in and do it.
And now the abolitionists,
a reputation is beginning
to rise rather than fanatics
who cause the war.
Now, the abolitionists begin
to emerge as heroic precursors
of the modern civil
rights revolution.
Now, you might say Schlesinger
goes completely
to the opposite pole of Beard.
For Beard, all there are is
economic interest and morality
and rhetoric doesn't
mean anything.
For Schlesinger, all there is,
is moral sentiment
and economic self-interest never
plays-- of the north, never,
you know, enters
as a factor here.
But this view,
especially as the civil rights
movement accelerates,
this view becomes more
and more dominant in the north--
or in-- yeah,
and mostly in the north.
But as the--
By the 1960s to '70s,
you begin to get a little bit
of a reversion to revisionism
for two reasons.
One, a bit of a disillusionment
with the civil rights,
with the gains
of the civil rights movement.
The feeling
that racism remains despite the
gains of the civil rights
movement and a new focus
on racism in the north before
the war.
Schlesinger's view of the north
as morally united
against slavery begins
to seem a little less plausible
when people,
like for example Leon Litwack
published books
about the inequality
of free blacks in the north,
just portraying the north
as going to war
out of moral sentiment toward
blacks doesn't seem
to be totally persuasive.
The Vietnam War also produced
briefly a new revisionism
as if just as most academics
were opposed to the Vietnam War.
It produced some articles,
didn't get very far,
challenging the civil war
in retrospect
but in a different way,
a new way.
Up to this point, nobody,
even southerners,
had not questioned
that the preservation
of the nation was a good thing.
Now, in the wake
of the Vietnam War,
some people began to say, well,
maybe it would have been better
if the United States was
broken up.
Maybe it would have been better
for the world.
We wouldn't be rampaging all
around the world invading places
and that kind of thing,
you know, and dropping bombs all
over and then are--
inoffensive people,
et cetera, et cetera.
That-- So--
But that died out pretty fast.
Historians are just as much sort
of products of the nation
as anybody else.
And to say no,
it would be better for the world
if there weren't an American
nation, is a--
is not a winning argument I
don't think for anybody.
But it's picked up--
This notion is picked up
and then brought forward but--
and it has roots
of course earlier by a group
of what you might call southern
libertarians who say the--
what the civil war did was
to create the Leviathan state.
Lincoln is a tyrant.
After all, he interfered
with civil liberties,
consolidated national power.
The civil war trampled
on individual liberty
and created the modern national
state which is the opposite
of true liberty.
It even produced the dreaded
income tax, you know,
how low can you get.
So-- And that idea is still
around, that notion is
still around.
I don't know if you saw it,
where-- here it is.
The other day, Sunday,
the "New York Times" had a
really interesting article
about Senator Rand Paul
and his kind of intellectual
and political formation,
where he came from,
and what was interesting
to me is, you know,
was the connection
of this libertarian,
extreme libertarians
with pro-confederate outlook.
In fact, one of the economist
who influenced Paul,
a guy in the University of Alabama.
He says while faulting slavery
because it was involuntary,
I mean that's a pretty mild way
of putting it, right?
Faulting slavery
because it was involuntary said
in an interview
that the daily life
of the slave was not so bad.
You pick cotton and sing songs.
This is 2000.
What year are we in, 2014.
They are picking cotton
and singing songs.
Now, what I find interesting is
there was no logical reason.
There was no logical connection
between libertarianism
and the defense of slavery.
In fact, you'd think they were
completely opposite.
Libertarianism emphasizes the
free individual
against all outside coercion.
Truly, slavery is
about as extreme,
a violation
of individual liberty
as you can imagine and
yet this is the weight
of history.
This is why history
is important.
The weight of history is
that in the United States,
the defense of local autonomy,
states rights, et cetera,
has so often, not always
but so often been linked
to the defense of racism
and slavery whether it was
before the war
or during the civil
rights revolution.
And so that it seems
to be impossible to sever
that link even though
intellectually there was no
logical reason
to have that link.
I'm sure that, you know, Hayek,
the central European economist
who's so important
in the formation-- it--
he didn't defend slavery
because in central Europe
that wasn’t an issue
for libertarians,
but it seems embedded
in one corner
of that world now and, you know,
as I say, it's still around.
[ Silence ]
