Gary Gallagher - "Was Reconstruction a Lost Moment?"
Рет қаралды 48,903
Күн бұрын"Was Reconstruction a Lost Moment? Understanding the Connection Between Union War Aims and Postwar Realities"
Gary Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia and the Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. He is one of the very best of the many excellent historians who specialize in the Civil War period. He is the author of many books, including The Union War (2011), The Confederate War (1997), Lee and His Army in Confederate History (1998), and Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (2008). With UCLA’s Joan Waugh, Gallagher organizes the excellent periodic conferences on the Civil War at the Huntington Museum. Among his many awards and honors, he served as the president of the Civil War Society of Historians from 2000-2004.
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This lecture was sponsored by CLAFI, the UCLA Center for Liberal Arts and Free Institutions. CLAFI’s purpose is to study great literary, artistic, and cultural achievements, with particular emphasis on the foundations of free institutions. Through undergraduate course offerings and public events, CLAFI serves UCLA students and faculty as well as the general public.
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Thanks for listening.
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
Gary Gallagher is 1 of our greatest american educators. A joy to listen to every time.
@jeffmilroy9345 8 ай бұрын
I have yet to meet a truly great american educator.
@matt67524 4 жыл бұрын
Damn this was a good presentation. One of the best I have ever heard on the subject. WOW
@TheGazaMethodChannel 2 жыл бұрын
Professor Gallagher needs to start the Society Against Ignorance as he makes History science and science is sorely needed these days
@giovannidepetris6335 4 жыл бұрын
Thank you professor Gallagher. Always a great education in history of the civil war
@margiehenson2440 4 жыл бұрын
I think.YOU ARE GREAT!!!!!! I. HAVE LEARNED. SO MUCH. FROM. JUST(YOU)!!!!!!!! I HAVE MANY TIMES TRIED TO UNDER STAND. THAT WAR!!!!! THANK. Y OU. SIR......THANK YOU!!!!!!😘
@jeffmilroy9345 8 ай бұрын
It would equate to a loss of about 7,000,000 souls today. Would you vote up and reelect a president who caused the loss of 7,000,000 Americans? No one can explain that war.@@margiehenson2440
@swdierks Жыл бұрын
Thanks for staying out of current politics. Many historians can't help themselves and make snarky remarks regarding current political figures and parties, as if they are so much wiser than anyone else because they know civil war history.
@terryp3034 3 жыл бұрын
Wish I could give this a hundred likes. It was that good. Should be required viewing for all students of American history.
@jonathanbaggs4275 6 ай бұрын
Interesting. It seems if the South really wanted to keep slavery they would just stay in the union where it was already protected under law rather than risk losing it by possible failure of secession, which is what happened. "Ive led a soldiers life, Devin, but i never seen anything as clear as this ... odd. Very odd."
@sandratucker8636 3 жыл бұрын
Only 7 icons?? This gentleman is the best. May I also suggest Dr.David Blithe ,a professor from Yale University?!!! A great lecturer and Great voice. You wont be disappointed. It's about time we are told the truth How slavery is horrible.. Also Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed. A attorney and professor of history And law from Harvard. She wrote the book on Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson. The book followed Their relationship Before DNA. It was later confirmed by DNA that she was 100% correct. Good reading...if you love history you will not be disappointed.. Thank you for reading my comment. Sandra Westbrook- Tucker.. from Las Vegas Nv... A history and civil war bluff.
@Pandaemoni 3 жыл бұрын
Professor David Blight has a whole course on the Civil War on KZfaq (the YaleCourses channel), if you ever wanted to hear Professor Indiana Jones teach a history course, close your eyes, listen to Blight, and enjoy. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h76Io5STrcqal30.html
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
💯
@TM-vq1bf 11 ай бұрын
Blight is good but there’s something about him I don’t like
@nowthisnamestaken 3 жыл бұрын
This was a very good lecture. I just discovered this man. I've often wondered why African Americans in the 1800's either on their own or sponsored by local or outside entities, why didn't they in large numbers together, migrate westward where there was obviously more diversity in races and a chance to settle in new communities without so much pushback from old neighbors? Or if they did, to what extent did they?
@Eris123451 2 жыл бұрын
Well John R. Lynch he first African-American Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives; was the first black man (considered so) to hold this position in the country. During Reconstruction after the American Civil War, he was among the first generation of African Americans from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1873 to 1877 and again in the 1880s. Faced with increasing restrictions in Mississippi, Lynch studied law, passed the bar, and returned to Washington, DC to set up a practice. His book The truth about reconstruction is well worth reading and according to him anyone who could get out pretty much did and his account of the growing and increasingly blatant and naked hostility to successful blacks but particularly to mixed race couples still horrifies and sickens me.
@JPW3 3 ай бұрын
Foner's "Reconstruction" answers these questions.
@pauljeffery4074 4 ай бұрын
If you have never met a great American educator then you have never received an education. Everyone who has been educated will always explain that it was because they had great educators. Gallagher makes learning the history of the Civil War a wonderful experience. He opens the students mind to think about what was going on at the time.
@M_Lopez_3D_Artist 3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, love this guy! Seen a lot of videos of him he awesome, hope he still alive
@RichardJones-py1gr 2 жыл бұрын
I add these comments a son who was raised in the South during the 50's and 60's. This lecture is as all comments on Civil contests a view of the winner. I do not wish to praise slavery nor the Lost Cause, but to reflect on a beaten nation. The war is lost , but the Reconstruction would last through the next 125 years.
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
To your point, I was 10 when world War 2 ended, but old enough to remember my great-grand mother who as a child had suffered through the siege of Vicksburg, She was in her senility, but could tell how it felt to live in the caves beneath a city under Uniion bombardment,. Eighty years later she remembered pangs of real hunger and general deprivement, Now that I am her age, I realize fully how short actually is a human lifetime. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1864, there were still alive others like her, both black and white.
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
@@JRobbyShso true & here generations later we have the descendants of the confederates & those who share their ideology that feel giddy at thoughts of another civil war with no shame openly talk of it. Had they been around your grandma they might pipe down & humble out .
@kamilziemian995 5 ай бұрын
Interesting lecture.
@scottamichie 3 жыл бұрын
Brilliant lecture. Clearly explains how Lincoln deftly maintained political control of his fragile Rep-Dem coalition heading into his 1864 reelection while also working to end slavery.
@marshaprice8226 8 ай бұрын
This lecture was an education about what really happened after the Civil War. I had never heard this information before and only had a vague idea of the “Gone With the Wind” version of Reconstruction. (I am not a fan of either the book or the movie.) I am really glad to have learned what really happened. It makes sense of the history behind the civil rights movement.
@JPW3 3 ай бұрын
Allen Guelzo's short 2018 "Reconstruction" is worth looking at. As Professor Gallagher said, Eric Foner's "Reconstruction" is very good.
@stephenyoung8069 4 жыл бұрын
He is the best historian to explain the Civil War. Has plenty to throw at Lost Cause and modern Liberal view of history.
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
The 19th century saw some of the the greatest advances in human history. This included that in human liberty, including a commitment to free labour unknown by the past. But the liberal view seems to be that this was all bad because it was the work of white Europeans and European settlers overseas.
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
@@JRobbySh👈this man read liberal & couldn’t help himself but reply. He aint even on topic nobody knows wtf hes saying😂
@ameliasmith6554 2 жыл бұрын
top!
@gregroos9397 2 жыл бұрын
Wouldn't it have been good if the demobalization of the army could have happened after WWII or maybe the end of the Cold War as the Constitution requires like after every other American war.
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
Amen
@rafaelespinoza6530 11 ай бұрын
ok ted Cruz mix my marbriv bro what is blk 😂🤣🚦😈🚥😈🚦🤍😈
@swisscheese1344 3 жыл бұрын
Learned a few new things/perspectives on a very complicated subject. Was dying to hear him expound on something called the Freedmens Bureau which I believe was expressly put in place by radical republican congress to help transition slaves to a free life. This was apparently plagued by inept leadership, corruption & continually diminished funding to the point where I don't think it survived Reconstruction; but WAS what was needed [imo] and would've liked to have heard Gary's views on their success & failures. He gives them a mention in the Q&A session, but not even enough to qualify as a teaser :(
@JPW3 2 жыл бұрын
Check out Foner's "Reconstruction" and DuBois' "Black Reconstruction" for more on the Freedmen's Bureau.
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
He does talk about it more in another lecture with similar title. You’re generally correct from my knowledge. Perhaps had Lincoln survived a 2 nd term & andrew johnson hadnt allowed the confederates to return to congress there wouldve been political will and funding to carry out the goals of the bureau. 1 of the most radical goals was redistributing the acerage of large plantations among the freed slaves and southern refugees with no land holdings.
@TerryMcKennaFineArt 11 ай бұрын
Of course Gallagher is right. But in fact Reconstruction was still a lost moment. Meaning that the nation did not make any adjustment to that mistreatment of former slaves. And when Congress did make an effort with civil rights legislation, the Supreme Court ultimately nixed these efforts - and also let the segregationists win re separate but equal. So while Gallagher is right mostly, he does not account for the virtual slavery that was re-established.
@fastballflakes5385 2 жыл бұрын
1:29:13 After the audience member feels it necessary to tell the room he writes history textbooks, did he thump his chest and say what a brave question it was? All criticism of audience humblebrags aside, Shelby Foote couldnt shine Dr. Gallagher's shoes.
@ericbrumley9026 Жыл бұрын
Shelby never considered himself a historian. He called himself a novelist and took great pride in being a novelist. Professor Gallaghers dislike and willingness to speak out about Shelby sounds like jealousy and is beneath him. There should be no comparison of the two.
@jeffmilroy9345 8 ай бұрын
Shelby Foote did not pretend to have a better explanation why inner city crime still exists to the extent it does. Gallagher blows a lot of hot air and has no explanation for why a sacrifice of 2% of the US population was a better idea than actually solving the slavery question intelligently. For those of us who are not doctors of anything - that would be akin to a loss of 7,000,000 souls today. Are you up for that? Would you send a family member to fight that war?
@kallekonttinen1738 3 жыл бұрын
A good presentation, but I don't agree that you can not call reconstruction "a lost momentum" because political will of the north was not behind full reconstruction. It was lost momentum, because there was no political will in the north.
@jaydiddat2127 2 жыл бұрын
Precisely
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
His point is was that there never was a widespread desire in the north for extending full citizenship to black Americans. Frederick Douglass found little enthusiasm even among long-time abolitionists for black civil and political rights. Indeed, there was relativelty little enthusiasm to uplift the white working class in the industrial cities or American farmers. Poor the black remained but they were greatly outnumbered by poor whites. What ought to receive much more notice is how far blacks and whites alike were able to improve their standard of living as America became by 1929 the richest country in the world.
@kallekonttinen1738 2 жыл бұрын
@@JRobbySh it was lost momentum still.
@kevinnewby1491 2 жыл бұрын
✌🏽🧡💙💛💚💜🖤💔🤍🖤🇺🇳🖤✊🏿🇬🇧✊🏿😠🇺🇸😠Confiscation Acts of former slave/territory/apartments go through the same domestic terrorists tactics now like that in Texas.
@janehastie3464 4 ай бұрын
An excellent, factual presentation on the Reconstruction Period. There shoulld have been a permanent peacekeeping military force whose members would have,enforced a major land reformation program, in which white farmers and newly emancipated African Americans would be given 20 acres of land that would transform them into middle class people. Major fundamental changes should havee been enacted in the Constitution, such as outlawing the two party system and allowing multiple socialist and communist parties to have seats in the Congress. The Democrat Party should have been declared illegal because of their long involvement in the brutality, expansion, and continuation of slavery and gross violations of humsn rights.
@jeffmilroy9345 8 ай бұрын
Gallagher is pedantic and hard to understand. Is he saying Lincoln is one of our poorest examples of a president because he sacrificed about 600,000 souls for nothing? Or does he honestly expect southern folks who just lost everything to federal overreach to welcome former slaves with open arms? Maybe everybody links arms and sing Kumbaya? He should just boil down his opinion and deliver it straight up.
@u.sgrant7526 Ай бұрын
No one at the time, including Lincoln, would have envisioned the scale of the slaughter that the war would bring about, but it proved to be the price of preserving the Union. It also put emancipation on the table and Union victory ultimately saved the Union and destroyed slavery. Most people who are/were pro-Union or anti-slavery would probably see it as a worthwhile sacrifice. I don't think Gary Gallagher expects anything or says anything about what the South SHOULD have been done. The KKK, Jim Crowe, fervent resistance to extending liberties to African-Americans after the war are just a a fact of history. From a modern point of view, we may have liked the South to be different from what it was and for the North's enthusiasm and efforts to be more honorable as it pertains to securing rights for freed slaves, but as is often the case, the characters of history serve to dissapoint us. The bottom line is simply that Reconstruction wasn't a lost moment, because the vast majority of the loyal citizenry felt that the war had served its purpose. The Union was restored and the abolishment of slavery had both rid the nation of a source of future conflict and had punished the secessionists.
@Eris123451 2 жыл бұрын
I'm tending not agree with much of this guy's analysis, largely because reading accounts written at the time by Black Republicans like John R. Lynch people who were gradually forced out of politics by the Southern Democrats and their positions of influence there really was a a moment when everything seemed, (at least to them,) to be up for grabs. I've always had a certain sense that Lincoln had he lived, was intending to make suitable provision to ensure that emancipated Southern Slaves were granted the resources to put them on an equal footing with the whites, (maybe not quite 40 acres and mule, but something along those lines,) but of course Andrew Johnson wasn't remotely interested in any of that stuff and never had been.
@mustbtrouble Жыл бұрын
Yup. Cant ever have nice things . Four more of Lincoln couldve moved the country forward a 100 yrs.
@stephenpowstinger733 3 жыл бұрын
He is wrong on one point. Shortly after the one hour mark he said we were the last major country to abolish slavery. He even mention Brazil. But the fact is Brazil did not do that until 1888. Few people will read this but the amazing things about the southerners in 1860 was they were virtually guaranteed survival of their precious slavery for the foreseeable future yet they still bolted. I was a history major in 1966 but, due to circumstances, I was soon ordered (by the Selective Service) to live history rather than study it - in Vietnam. A generation of great historians will soon be passing.
@jeremydyar7566 3 жыл бұрын
He said without the war we would have been one of the last countries to abolish slavery
@scottamichie 3 жыл бұрын
The southern slaveholding states were most certainly NOT guaranteed survival of slavery in 1860. Yes, it was constitutionally protected, but Gallagher makes the point that only through EXPANSION of slavery can the Deep South Democratic party oligarchy continue to exercise power in Washington DC, because the new Western states were entering the Union as free states. The Civil War came when deep South oligarchs saw that they could no longer control Washington, that they had run out of political cards to play, and that they were reduced to war for expansion of slavery.
@stephenpowstinger733 3 жыл бұрын
I do not mean to defend slavery but just point out the legal and political developments. The institution was protection legally - under the Constitution. The expansion was not and you might say the Civil War began in 1820 with the Missouri Compromise. Opening up territories for voting on the issue unwittingly set up warfare in the territories. It was the days before fertilizer was invented and the soil of the Deep South was being depleted - they needed new soil. Lincoln made clear when he campaigned that expansion would stop and that he was not compromising. This was too much for the Southern leaders who revolted. A majority The populace of most slave states went along with the “fire-eaters” as they identified with their States in those days not the federals, although there were many pockets of southerners who were Unionists. The Confederates suppressed their dissenters just as the North did theirs. A remarkable transformation of the northern states occurred in 1861 as they geared themselves for first launching an army of occupation and before long a war of increasing severity and ruthlessness. Lincoln deliberately delayed convening the Congress in order to prepare for war. Lincoln found it necessary to suspend Constitutional rights, notably free speech. War is hell on freedoms. The Europeans should have learned what happens when an industrial societies go to war in 1914.
@stephenpowstinger733 2 жыл бұрын
Please excuse our rude and ignorant commenter. See Thomas Sowell for an elucidating commentary on slavery.
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
You should know from looking at the present state of affairs that emotion dominates reason. We see men thinking they can become women just by taking thought. :)
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
He uses a term for government in the former confederacy that I have seldom seen used in history books and that is HOME RULE. Radicals especially and even ordinary liberals seem incapable of understand how much it meant to a people who had suffered crushing defeat to have regained this high degree of independence , and why they treated blacks or white liberals for that matter as threats to that quasi-independence. If blacks had been free to vote, the Republican votes in the House and a few in the senate would always have gone to the Republicans.
@youtubezcy 2 жыл бұрын
The radicals in America are the QAnon birthers my friend.
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
How could he fail to mention that the Southerners elected to Congress were apt to be Democrats and lessen Republican control over Congress.?Joined with Johnson, they might control the legislative agenda of Congress and limit the importance of northern interests.
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
Wrote too soon, but he fails to explain why Republican interests were better for white southerners than the interests supported by a newly unified Democratic Party.
@carywest9256 3 жыл бұрын
I stopped this video at the 12:36 mark. He mentions Texas not having occupying troops. That's a lie in itself,for Gen. Gordon Granger came ashore on Galveston Island and had all the blacks gathered to read the worthless document that had no validity when written before 1863. Anyway, Gen. Granger read the document stating that the blacks were free. This happened on June 19th,1865. Hence, the Texas holiday known as Juneteenth. He and his troops didn't row back to the ship, they were the first to occupy Texas at War's end. At the 18:40 minute mark he lied again about the War's aim. At 24:15 this person is caustic with the remark of calling people stupid. I am ventily opposed to violating a person's First Amendment rights. I don't have to agree,but I sure as hell won't trample on their right to speak their minds. So I am done with this video,and never will watch anything else with he in it. Later Tater...
@JRobbySh 2 жыл бұрын
That document had lots of validity because it was read by a general of a victorious Federal; Army. General Lee certainly accepted that slavery was over.
@joeblow9657 10 ай бұрын
Hell any biography of General Custer of Little Big Horn infamy covers his time occupying Texas
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