welcome to this afternoon.

we have here two very accomplished authors who are known in part their writing about the american south. and they're both from the american south. and the occasion is the publication howell raines new book a silent cavalry, which covers some interesting ideas about how the white southerners have responded more favorably to the civil rights notes to the civil war, to not to the civil war, but where supporters of opponents of succession. that's what i'm trying to say.

how i was born in birmingham and got a master's from birmingham, southern, a master's from the university of alabama. he worked for three southern newspapers, joined the times in 1978. as of correspondent in atlanta. he then white house correspondent and then became deputy washington correspondent bureau chief to became then london bureau chief, then became washington bureau chief. as you can see, he was moving up the ladder. then he was editor of the editorial for eight years and. finally, in 2000, one was named executive editor, which is the top job at the times. in his spare time. he won the pulitzer prize for his writing and he's managed to find way to write five books in the process of this. some of you may have attended the appearance of his son ben raines, who participated in open

book open mind during the pandemic and it was a virtual appearance. we were doing it remotely at that time and he had done a book on his role in the discovery of the last slave ship. go, hilda. so this this is a second appearance for the raines family in conversation with howell as edward ball, who was another southerner born in savannah. he graduated from brown with a bachelor's degree in iowa, which i assume was the iowa writers workshop that it wasn't. but that's a longer story. okay. well, sorry about that. you could spell out the story. he freelanced after graduating from school. he freelanced in new york in the eighties. and since then he's become a writer of history and biography. he's won written seven books and in 1998, he won the national book award for his personal

slaves of the family. his family in south carolina. so please welcome howell raines and edward ball. as you might have gathered, the next hour is going to be a seminar in the deep south. this book of yours, how was a wonderful omnibus? it's about one third family history, about the raines family and the best families of central and northern alabama. in your coming of age. one third civil war history about an alabama unit called the first alabama cavalry 2000 men who fought with the north against the south. and one third diatribe against the myth the lost cause, the romantic story of a gallant old

south, which is a story that covers the history of enslavement behind the civil war. let's start with the memoir part. you were raised in birmingham in the fifties and sixties. the front line or one of the front lines of the civil rights wars. and you came in a prosperous new south household in the steel town of birmingham. but your grandpa, aunts and before them were northern alabama people, close to appalachia in geography and in spirit. you write, we were. hill people come to town. tell us about those hill people in northern alabama. thank you, edward. it was a let me first say how pleased i am to be here with you. i'm a great admirer of edward's book, slaves in the family and. more pointedly, for purpose. he's quoted on page 54 of my

book from his most recent book, life of a klansman so i am so pleased to be here with him. the appalachian mountains were full of small farmers who were not holders and who did not support politically. the idea of secession. in alabama section of the appalachians. there. about 22 to 26 counties that elected secession delegates to alabama convention of 1861. that took alabama out of the union. the fact that so many of them were anti secession reflected fact that even the most pro confederate historians at alabama acknowledge that in

1860, at least half of the white people of alabama opposed secession. that's among the many stories that have been buried in the lost cause inundation of civil war history. getting back to my family, my mother is from a county nine known as the free state of winston because it produced only 100 bales of cotton and had even fewer slaves in the in the last year before the war. and they were only not participants in the slave economy but they were jacksonian democrats not to be confused with stephen douglas, pro-slavery democrat of the 1860 election, jacksonian democrats harkened back to andrew comment in 1842, john c calhoun run the union, sir, must be preserved their core principle.

was that the constitutional union was too sacred a thing to be broken up over the issue of slavery, not to dwell too long on history. but the thing i should about my family. one birmingham did not exist at the time of the civil war and is pretty much devoid of the normal civil war statues and so forth. in addition, i was born into family on both my father and mother side. that was of confederate nostalgia. i never saw in any of our homes in family or extended family, many aunts and uncles, a single of jefferson davis or robert e lee, and it took me many years starting at a very young age, to figure out why was. mm hmm. yeah. so your family were republicans from reconstruction down to nixon, if i'm not mistaken?

yeah. what does it mean? be a republican in the old and not a democrat. well, in. in alabama to be from winston county meant that up. 1953, when i would visit my grandmother grandfather's farm, we went on dirt roads, western county in the village where my grandpa aunts live did not get telephone until i was a freshman in college. so this i saw a what one alabama historian called maroon frontier. they were systematically discriminated against in paving and education expenditures of supporting the union in the civil war. even those those events had been virtually written out of alabama history. but but the punitive attitude toward unionism persisted even into lifetime. and i think the incident edward

in his wonderful book life of a klansman says to write a life story from scattered or thin sources like making a mosaic a little piece tile here, a chip color there, and something from the scrap bin until you have a picture archeologist work a similar process. and i quoted that because it captured an element. my experience. around 1950 when i was six or seven years old. i was sitting in grandmother's garden in birmingham alabama and she doted on me because i was the only one of eight grandchildren named her husband. hiram, how will raines, who died in 1914? i was constantly pestering her for stories about life up in the country. yeah, my parents would tell stories about growing up in the

country and fishing the creeks and finding indian arrowheads in the fields. and i thought this was some sort of pre left syrian paradise rather than the poorest county in alabama. but to a city bound kid, it like i had missed this this rustic with waterfalls wonderful forest this is really hilly in the canyons and and so forth. so my grandmother and i sitting there, she was born years after the end of the civil war. and this incident, as best i can reconstruct it, took place around 1949 or 1950. i wanted know about grandpa raines who'd been dead by that time since 1914. she said, well, one day we were walking down the road near our farm and saw a neighbor coming toward us from the nearby down

the dirt road. and your grandfather said, oh, --. here comes one of those -- democrats democrats. that was the first profanity that i ever heard in my life. and and kind of a buzz. okay. is oh. they've got cut off because they cut the elk. okay. can you can i can i continue with one of these. okay let's just. yeah. oh, just put it close to your face. okay. all right. i was hoping to avoid that. i thank you for not stepping on the punch line. circle and how reserved for people who step on the punch

line. so, as i know, it may have been the only two profane words that she ever uttered, but she wanted to communicate to me at this tender age that our family was not precious slavery pro confederate democrat, that we were lincoln republican. and indeed another of my great great grandfather was almost hanged in that area with the accused and that he was a -- old lincolnite. so this gives you the the buried unionist history of those counties in north alabama. alabama is divided into. the mountainous north and the flat producing south and. that's a regional division that continues to this day. so your predecessors were northern alabama. hill people, but you yourself were raised in birmingham lace

curtain, new car and, the garage, black housekeepers, prosperous. a different kind of culture without dwelling on it. did it feel like the new south was a different south? far from the troubles of the poor, white, rural south in the north. it felt like a gritty northern and dusty old city dropped into the south. birmingham didn't exist until 1870. it was an economic colony. the united steel company. so we this odd hybridization, we were taught most of the steel executive came down from pittsburgh and shipped all the

money they made in birmingham back to pittsburgh. tell anyone when you go in the frick museum and see those wonderful old masters, they were bought by money from birmingham. there are no frick. there are no a few financed old masters in the birmingham museum. let me get back on track here. it was an odd mix of northern and southern mores. i think it's accurate to say we were to recite the gettysburg address and to sing glory, glory, hallelujah in in elementary school. i remember very distinctly. i also remember thinking very distinctly when we were told that robert lee had decided to support native state than the united states. i don't remember thinking that's

idiotic. alabama and any other state is a piddling compared to the nation that just won war two. so there was odd hybridization that. segregation was the most brutally enforced in birmingham of any southern city. that's why? martin luther king called it the johannesburg of the of america. that's why he brought the crusade there. in 1963. a pivotal event in my life. chapter three of this book is called the centrality of gladys dean williams hutchinson. this was when was seven years old. this year old black came to be the housekeeper for my parents, both of my siblings, old who were older, had gone away to college. i was very lonely and we bonded. i followed her around, peppering

her with questions. and from her, she told me the that young white children segregated birmingham were not supposed know about how the cops shot kids possessing how the birmingham police carried knives that they would throw down to get next to the victim they had shot on a more humorous side how one of her high school classroom rates had dumped willie mays because he had no future. at 16 she was going to, sneaking in the nightclubs and hearing great artists like bobby blue bland. so she introduced me to a world that was hidden from almost all the white kids in birmingham. i had this unusual background of coming from a family that had no

confederate nostalgia being allowed. my parents to form this association with this very lively, smart young black person and to my parents, unusual another way. they did not allow the n-word. our home and we members of a. a source a church that was a source of great embarrassment for me because it was called the church of god and. i hated having to write church of god rather than methodist or baptist on my grade school card. but this church of god was not pentecostal. they had come out of the lutheran tradition into the pennsylvania dutch country and, the methodist pious pius -- movement of the upper midwest. they were somber believers in one universal church that was that was colorblind in the years

immediately after the after reconstruction they held the first integrated meetings in alabama. and even in my childhood at the annual camp meetings, this odd little sect, members of the black churches of god in birmingham came to open air meetings that in direct defiance of bull connor's laws and practices. and i can think the only reason that they got away with it is we were considered too insignificant to bother with. but i had this unusual upbringing not being indoctrinated at the dinner table or in my church with this crippling racism infected tens of thousands of white people my age in the south, and from which many of them have never recovered. so your immediate family were

so-called republicans in late stage. there were moderate arts in the racial. divisions of that place and time, but they were not among the 1% of whites who were marching the student nonviolent coordinating. they were not fans of medgar evers. i gather bring it in, fight. in fact, civil rights was kind of out of bounds. now, my own memory, living in the deep in georgia, in the in the early sixties and late sixties. i remember when martin king was shot and my who was a moderate republican, also said he had it coming to him. oh, he was asking for it. that's what he said. he was as a term of art. so that era there a small space.

your family were not progressive. i'm getting at they were somewhere in a neutral that was they were not out of danger. yeah. they were not activist i think is what we're getting it. but they regarded overt expressions of racism in, language and behavior as a sign of ignorance. and they were new southerners, the sense that they had come to town from country. they had become prosperous enough to have a beach house, to drive cadillacs. and they did not want to be identified with the with the ignorance of frank of wallace, alabama was on the rise at that time. my parents, in the days when being nominated as a democrat for the governor of alabama, was

tantamount election. they always supported the least racist available of democrat because they were all racists and all segregationist. but they would go for the most of this. so it's a very nuanced world that influence to me. and another great event happened to me when i discovered book called star swell in alabama when i was a freshman in college. but i don't want to get of your. all right. i would wonder if you could read a 300 word or 200 word bit about. birmingham 1964. an excerpt from your book. sure. about the first job that you got in journalism by the early sixties. thanks to star spell on alabama and birmingham college, i became a chronic of questions about

alabama. then, a few weeks after of the 1964 public accommodations, i became a professional one when i was hired at 21 by the birmingham post herald. the old racial pattern still persisted in alabama politics and some newspapers, despite the new civil rights law. that's the. there's a little glitch there, but i'll get get past it anyway. i'm at this. the new civil rights law has just been passed and covering the implementation of the was like living in a random managed and dangerous socially study being. young was no disadvantage. it was all hands on deck for break for breaking news

hurricane within months i was covering stories like the desegregation of the birmingham schools unhinged by george wallace and the death watch at a birmingham for the reverend james reeb, a unitarian minister morbidly club by klansman after the selma march as a gesture of civic responsibility, birmingham post herald raised money to offset the reeves family medical expenses. i gave $50 to the fund in my name was on the front page of the paper, along with those of other contributors. it was a clear breach of journalistic that i never repeated. but it also marked my coming out at a time when wallace slogan was stand up for alabama i had been too fearful to march with dr. king in 1963, but now ready to stand for a different alabama, i rationalized my activism as fulfilling the post herald's masthead give the people a light and they will

find a way. by 1967, i was still toying with the idea of becoming an english professor. so i enrolled in graduate school and took a full time job at the tuscaloosa news to support myself. i was proud to be working for buford boone, the most courageous any klan and any wallace editor in the state. my time in his newsroom enabled me to assemble for this book. an overview of klan connect tivity that i've never seen anywhere. it draws on linkages might have missed out. i might have missed. but for my obsession with alabama's ignored past and experiences on my native ground. great. let's move to the civil war aspect of your book. civil war story gets underway. chapter six. and the book is a kind corrective because it tells the story. the first alabama union cavalry,

a roster of 2000 who fought for the union and burned atlanta with william tecumseh sherman. tell us about christopher sheets and the first alabama. who was christopher sheets in a fairer world where history was not ignored or covered up? he would be one of the most famous figures in alabama history as as a patriot. christopher sheets was 21 year old mountain schoolteacher. he stunned north alabama when ran against the county's biggest plantation and owner and defeated him. 500 votes to 100 votes for a seat in secession convention in montgomery. he joined a group of 24 of the 100 delegates who refused to

sign the ordinance of secession, which unleashed a tirade from william lounge yancey, the great orator who did more than any other single speechmaker to cause civil war. he south carolina out of the union, even he brought alabama out. chris sheets is immediately singled as a dangerous personage. he back to north and starts working through the forest at night to urge young farm boys for the most part from alabama hills, that cluster of 20 plus counties to sneak north and join the union army. an estimated 3000 alabamians voluntarily leave white alabamians volunteer enlisted in the union army as a consequence of his antiwar activism.

you know, alabama was a majority black state at the time, correct? half a million enslaved people and that number and about the number whites. were any of the raines family or the best family slave and. not so far as i have this term discovered. but that is a subject and your own work explores from which no white southerner should ever say never. right. because it was such a pervasive impact, so far as i know. we were simply too poor and too politically committed against secession, too, to have have owned slaves. but i would not be surprised to find in the historic record. yeah, but the key point for my book was that i discovered, through through a document that

i called my rosetta stone. that i had several relatives who were in the union army. i had never nailed down until 1988. hmm. my uncle barack. my late uncle barack walker was an art professor at. memphis state university. he was a ucla trained artist, man of considerable sophistication. he called himself a winston county existentialist. in 1958. he said. my mother's parents down at their room table and drew a family tree and. in 1988, at my hundredth birthday, gave me a copy and it is the only extant copy. this very strange document.

it reflects kind of the oral history and also the artist's hand. i have it framed my wall at home. but from it i learned that at least three of my walker had served in the union army at around the time sherman was getting ready to march on atlanta. but not in this unit that we were talking. the first alabama cavalry. yes. yes. some so they joined this group. they joined the so-called march to the sea, the victory march of tecumseh sherman. that's from chattanooga through atlanta down to savannah and then up into carolina and and it

was the episode that won civil war for the south, more or less. did the first alabama, which was. 2000 men make any difference? sherman's army, which was 60,000, mostly ohio ones. and illinois. yeah. recruits. they made quite a difference. and that is the reason that the title of my book says how these alabamians got written out of history. they are mentioned only in any of alabama histories and always in negative tones. they were disgruntled hillbillies, jealous of the wealth of the plantation owners. they were opportunist robbing their neighbors. they were. the don't use the. the alabama historian did not use the term white trash.

they referred to them as the mud school class, the lowest of the low. yeah. the reason that they got into an army is fascinating. and so when chris sheetz in 1862 starts this clandestine organi izing in april of 1862 the union army captured huntsville, alabama and that became a destination for these country boys looking through the forest at night on dirt and an old native american trails. they became numerous in huntsville that in july. of 1862, general don carlos samuel sent a message to lincoln's war department saying, i to organize the alabama volunteers. that's what he called them into their own regiment and to show that this was a serious undertaking. they assigned captain bank id

from the new york very important new york recruiting office office of the union army to come to alabama and take command. so this this was, again, the irony. these these people are missing from alabama history except in terms of being insulted for the most part, their military record was dismissed being of no distinction. and yet, within a matter months, they'd come to the attention. abraham lincoln, who was so engaged with them that reprimanded the first alabama commander executing a deserter. lincoln did not like these drumhead court martials. they came to grant's attention as very effective fighters in it, in fencing off nathan bedford forrest from natchez which was about to fall to union and and came to the attention of

sherman who recognized that they were very useful as spies and as fighters. so he handpicked them to accompany him on the on the march to the sea he picked 20 members of the first alabama, including a young lieutenant named david snelling, who was a georgia unionist, to travel as his personal bodyguard from chattanooga to atlanta to savannah. they carried his this is from own memoirs. they carried his cigar and his whiskey. they built his campfire every night. and yet they are absent from all of the big screen screen histories of the civil war. and more important, not take you all the way through the march from chattanooga to atlanta to savannah, which was brought the

war to an end. they were regarded with such distinction by. general frances p blair of the famous blair family in washington, d.c., that he awarded the place of honor at the front of the union victory parade through savannah in christmas week of 1865. and yet, as say, they were not only written out of alabama history as a consequence of that they're missing from the big screen histories by bruce catton and all the histories that we read. and to bring it up to more modern times they were omitted. ken burns civil war. and had it not been for that, i they would be as famous as the 54th massachusetts to the famous black infantry unit depicted in the movie glory.

mm hmm. so that's that's sort of a capps view. they were written up in the new york times when their their colonel came to new york on a vacation. he was he was lauded for bravery. the times they appeared in the cincinnati papers they appeared in the california papers. it makes it they not to put too fine point on it at center stage associated with the most famous generals on the union side in the final act of the civil war. if the civil war were was depicted the opera they would have been on stage in the chorus at every point. you mentioned ken burns, which brings to the third strand of the book, which is the complaint, if you like, the criticism of the cause myth anthology. there are two characters who play a big part in the book.

one is william archibald dunning, whom you call a lion of manhattan society. and another was walter fleming. can tell us about those two guys. i can. these are the architects of the lost mythology. and it's so fitting that we're here in new jersey. we'll turn to dunning first. william archibald dunning was born in plainfield, new jersey. he went to princeton, kicked out. he went to columbia, got his ph.d. by 1885. he a very odd upbringing. his father was a plainfield industrialist and arts who felt this, who identified with southern plantation owners as, his class peers. he felt had been unfairly, unfairly denigrated and attacked in reconstruction. he regarded them as aristocrats

in manners, cultivated in their private life, cultured people who, as businessmen and like himself, were trying to do the right thing but had a labor. so dunning was raised in this pro confederate atmosphere here in what was then probably the famous or most prosperous suburb in new jersey. plainfield, i'm told, had the first direct connection by train to wall. and he abandoned dunning then. but by eight, by 1900 and until his death in 1921, he was the most famous historian at university. and in the united states. his proconsul views prevailed in american historiography until to 1960, the start of the civil rights movement only did did did

scholars start apart this myth of the gone with the wind south and its glorification in cultured, educated who had been dealt with unfairly as villains in. history. hmm. his classes at columbia soon became one historian called a mecca for young southerners who to get their phds. this is in the period 1919 20, when doctorates had just come on to the scene in america and academia and he. produced seven young phds and dispatched them to southern campuses from carolinas to louisiana. and they set the tone of the lost cause worship in southern

universities that was very much still in full flower when i became a student. there in the early 1960s. walter linwood flame fleming, a plantation boy from alabama. his father owned the small plantation. it was not so successful that he was not spared picking cotton as a young man. he goes to auburn university and studies under a remarkable there, who was a ph.d. from johns hopkins through this man through thomas mcadoo very own the chief archivist in the state of alabama. he is sent to to columbia which was then in midtown manhattan and quickly becomes the star pupil and apple of william archibald downing's eye. long story short, dunning dispatched him to the south. he soon becomes the dean of graduate education.

that university and he was the the godfather of the southern agrarian movement. those southern writers and historians who established the myth of southern as the core doctrine of law school scholarship. and one or two more questions, and then one, have some questions from everybody else. has the lost cause not been retired the south now richmond is a city is stripped of its monuments and. where does the lost cause live now? has it been sublime? it into. a politics of color that is no longer recognizable as deriving

from the fight over enslavement? do you agree? first of all, that the lost cause myth has been retired? no. and i'll tell you why. historians know something that they seldom share with the general public. you have to dig into the scholarship to find it. history, not what happened. it's what gets written down and what gets written down is usually dictated by politicians and by the people in charge of the majority culture. professor chaney at the university of virginia is very active right now. scholarly writing, and says that, in fact a lost cause, doctrine is now at the centerpiece of trump policy. okay. and so in my own experience,

christine, i lived in alabama for winters for the past 15 years. there's been a big resurgence specifically or especially among well-educated, well-traveled, affluent republicans of the doctrines. obviously, the racist language is not as blatant it used to be, but the underlying culture of denigration, the poor and and the people of color, i think is stronger now than it's been at any time. in in my professional lifetime. and i should say, after passage of the 64 civil rights act and the 65 voting rights act, the south went through an interregnum, a political

process. you saw biracial governments in all major cities. you saw famous black in atlanta like andrew and maynard jackson. now that's all being out. there are some biracial governments in like birmingham and selma, but the progressive aura that prevailed after the civil rights victories of the 1960s has pretty much dissipated over the folds. my last question, you were 25 in the 1960s. the klan was resurgent in. alabama. and you describe a high tide of militant racial identity exemplified by the bombing career of. chambliss. what is chambliss first name? robert. robert stone, known to bull connor as dynamite. bob. the man who bombed the 16th street church in birmingham. yeah. now, suppose someone might say

there is a resurgence to white racism spilling out around country and that it may be encouraged by one of the leading presidential candidates. someone might say, are there any similarities between sixties alabama and 2020s america in that you probably just made declaration a moment ago. well, i want to elaborate to this degree, but by accident of the timing of my birth, i wound starting my career, covering the most gifted political demagogue in the south in the late 20th century. george wallace. right now, in my golden years, i'm watching the rise of the most sinisterly political demagogue of the new century. right. and to me, the case here is

commonality. the political demagogue is able get otherwise is smart, worthy people of good principles to believe and endorse practice, since they would not otherwise support. that's and to me right now, the obvious fact of the current landscape is we have a 5050 divide in this country who believe, in fact, based principle politics and people who believe in a kind of politics. that's a melange of. conspiracy theories and and and fake news to coin a term. so i think, you know, welling tan said the the the waterloo.

it was a close run thing as to whether napoleon could be turned back. and i think this election is going to be a very close run thing. and i think if if this almost. terrifyingly gifted demagogue trump is elected i think we're will see some very harsh times and to tell you have can happen in a otherwise society after wallace made his segregation forever speech in january of 1961, there were within the next two years 12 roadside murders in alabama persons of color or of white people were supporting the civil rights movement. so this so i won't dilate more on the scenarios, but i'm i'm very worried and with that

cheerful observation. i would like to ask you all to ask a question of mr. raines or make an observation. he's just working working. up a button on. yeah, i mean, he's just one. how about now? okay seems like we're ready to go. as a newspaperman. if you were still executive editor of the new york times, what would you do differently as a journalistic response to the times that we're in with a demagogue currently running for president? i don't have a facile answer to that, because i thought

establishment, including the times and the washington post, went through a very important barrier during the trump presidency when they started labeling untruths, statements as lies. right. i remember that that was a significant development in traditional value system of journalistic language. and i do not think that the trump half, the trump tribe, the half of the american people who represent the trump tribe are within reach of based race and argument. so i don't have a critique really launch. i don't know exactly. i would do that's as honest as i can be about it. i thank you so much from a

historian. ed ball. ask the i was going to ask your last questions were that so let me ask a question that has to do i'm following up on what kate just asked about now. i'm a recovering southern historian and and for much of that time, i kind of felt that white southerners were the outspoken nature of a lot white americans. nowadays, we hear all this hand-wringing of how how do we that biden is not catching on. why do so many americans dislike. biden we don't understand it. and speaking as a southerner to the both of you actually. do you think that he's association with black people he's appointing black people has infected him for many americans

americans. that's an interesting take and i that probably. has has an element of truth in it and i go to the obama administration when there was a hard core of white people who were surprisingly biased against obama because of his skin. jimmy carter was the first major politician to them out. i trump's use of racist symbols and the of lost cause imagery has fed into this. the my concern about biden not to tell you things that that you

already know. the erosive effect in journalism of fox news cannot be underestimated. it's now two decades old rupert murdoch brought to journalism the germ of partizanship that he learned in london papers. this is the first time in our post-world war one history when we've a major continuing entity devoted to welfare of one party. so i think the debilitating effect of that we're seeing in the in the the attacks on biden and the doubts about biden fed by people who think would otherwise be analytically capable of seeing through the

the fog of demagoguery. the other thing i really worry about i i covered the carter and reagan campaigns for the new york times on assignment from friend david jones. and one of the things that i remember about as different as they were they were both very good political. carter at his peak, reagan in his campaigns both could deliver in the moment on the stage, in the spotlight and the age issue that we hear so much about worries me because i worry about biden's performative capabilities over the next six months and so so i must say i

thought the state of the union was was a needed spark and should also say that britt's rebuttal reminds us that alabama will not willingly give up its tradition. having the most clownish members of congress congress. come back to the u.s., back to the civil war was curious. the first alabama that you mentioned moved over the line to join the union at the same, how did the union accept them in terms of spies mean i'm wondering your couple of thousand southerners coming and saying we want to fight for you this is like spy heaven. it was and this i'll touch

briefly on this it brings us to grenville dodge who was lincoln's favorite political general. lincoln him so much the arranged for the government to build a union pacific railroad with government funds and dodge of course built that built that railroad. the dodge was natural born spymaster. he came in by a political appointment, didn't go to west point, but he had a natural he had a natural understanding that was superior to reconnaissance and force. that is, men on horseback galloping into the enemy camps to count the the alabamians. he dodge together grant secret service which stretched in several hundred members stretching from virginia to new orleans and the core of that was 20 members of the first alabama

who died, gave travel money to sent them through the lines in civilian clothes. so it was it was a fortuitous happenstance and to day dodge is known in military families. the father of military intelligence. and it was just a flash of brilliant intuition intuition. yeah how i just wanted to ask, is it really more a matter of the toxic partizanship that rupert murdoch brought over to the u.s. when he purchased the you know, the company said he owns. right. or is it something that i sort of worked for the company for a while and i i had more of the that it was just the fact that he was serving a niche he saw niche that could make money and he just mined it you know, to the depths. so i'm not so sure he had that

political motive in mind. but i think somehow was already there. that part of the country either was uneducated, they don't want to think independently they don't give a -- about what the facts they just want, like you said, performance performance. i could go on for a long time about rupert, but let me just say this. his birthplace newspaper in australia were militantly anti-monarchist he goes to london, buys papers that become royalist papers promoting. queen elizabeth. he sees the sat satellite communications industry arising. he makes a bargain with margaret thatcher that his newspapers will support her, if you will. she will give him the license to that star set, forgotten the term of art. but i think it was star system.

so at point he his principles are fungible and his idea is always on the main channels. you know, ed koch told me that he would never have been elected, uh, mayor of york if if the new york post supported him. murdoch's behest. so this someone who uses journalists power recklessly, but now a new thing on the american scene, the thing that none of us could have predicted in my generation of journalism was that the most powerful community creations instrument invented since, the printing press would turn out be morally neutral and factual. only neutral. it carries everything in an unfiltered basis. and i think that's the core problem that we have in a largely undiscriminating public

i. can't predict what is going to happen in communications. i mean, i'm amazed that the new york times has managed to bridge its way to economic success without sacrificing its core principles. but and i'm pleased that we've got some beneficent millionaires supporting papers like the washington post, but the future of market based journals in this country is very much up in the air. i just wanted to ask what happened to the the thousand people who fought during the reformation? did they become, you know, during reformation as well? the 3000 alabamians in the union army reconstruction. reconstruction, yeah. okay. reformation is another topic.

it's not not sure we have time for that. here's edward's great book about his slave owning plantation ancestors singles out i think it was a group of 850 to preach who, according to your calculation had something like 75,000 descendants descendants right well i've christian to use mathematics and came up with this the 3000 white alabamians who enlisted now have a 100 an estimated 186,000 direct descendants. that means thousands of white alabamians are defended descended from union soldiers don't know it and this is what the real sinister part of falsified history history ignored history political side

plot clues assist brings us to it robs of their identities. high good evening so i'm actually history teacher in a public high school nearby here in new jersey. and i wanted to ask you, i guess, a little bit of a controversial question to the civil war, but in civil memory. so i'm actually having a discussion about this in about a week or two. so here's the question what should states and perhaps the federal government do about confederate flags hung in public? should all confederate statues be placed somewhere else, perhaps museums? where should they go? and i guess my only comparison to this is in germany nazi flags have been banned in eastern european countries. the flags of the soviet union are banned. and so on so anyway thank you.

the. mellon foundation and is that right christo. has just started i think it's a $400 million program to examine these questions i think uh outright bans i think outside our tradition and probably unsupportable and my own preference is that these monuments should be treated as historical artifacts and museum housing and so forth, being an option and not the mellon foundation is also doing is studying those manner the groups based on color, on religion. uh, or based on women being discriminated against in the telling of history to restore a new generation of monumental

ism, as it were. so i think that mellon initiative is the most promising thing that i see on the horizon. um. how was your vote doing in florida? but i. you don't have to answer that on a quick point lehigh way is a major highway in virginia and, leads right up practically to washington d.c. but following up the gentleman's question in the back after the civil war, there a period of reconstruction where there was great progress and then including the supreme court, things started to slide backwards. you know, and if you can kind of maybe, you know, draw everything together from your book and well, the the the end of

reconstruction was was marked by the democratic party, uh, saying we will let the south run its own, uh, race relations if they will support us. and that's the bargain that continued through franklin d roosevelt and into the, to the modern era, so that the sin, uh, was saying race is a local option. the thing i would analogize to that without going on too long mitch mcconnell 20 years ago figured out if took over the judiciary committee senate he could produce a supreme that was thoroughly politicized. uh, and i think, you know, the shelf life of political sin not to put too fine a point on it is

long and not easily corrected. thank you both very thoughtful and enlightening discussion. i am not a historian. i don't even play one on tv, but i am an immigrant who brings probably a different eye to this. and i go back to where i came from and i for example, germany. i'm from germany, but i see germany voting right now based the east there. the west germans were taught that nazism was bad and the east germans were taught we socialist and we always did good. and east germans are voting super right wing right now because. they have been duped like you say, the south has been duped into. some thinking that they they are superior and they were good and

i was. glenda rouse, you know and so sorry about this little soliloquy but i to ask you you seem to think journalism can be neutral. so if i went to germany, i could a newspaper in its test de i read a newspaper that said i knew what i was reading when i came to america, didn't know what i was reading. there was undertone of this or undertone of that and their pretension that this was neutral. and can you really have neutral and true journalism or are you should you have opinion? well, clearly opinion journalism is the marketplace of, the news industry. now, the and the debate over objectivity, as it was called in my day has raging and journalistic and academic of just dodge your question with this anecdote when i moved to

london as the new york times bureau chief i subscribed to seven newspapers and. i would read them every and try to form a theory of what really happened happened. and i never really succeeded in breaking down the partizanship. and that's why i single murdoch as a as a villain in in my lifetime in journalism the professionalization of journalism that we took for granted for many years really was a product of post-world war two era when american journalists decided they would not be the political instruments of their publishers. and that produced what we came to mainstream journalism, which is to say it's a new thing.

it didn't always exist. and i think we're seeing the end game. and i don't know what replace is that. that's why i'm will write books from now on you should. i'm i'm carla baron anarchist and i had the pleasure of working your newsroom of the new york times. one of the things i wonder about is how much your research of your involved looking at archival newspapers in various places. and do you think the way the is going now, do you think historians in the future are going to have a much harder time? yeah, i think they are i think citizens of the are going to have a much harder time to. carla good to see you. i am not a historian and one of the things i'm at pains to say in this book is the historical

here is not mine. i use techniques of investing, great journalism as i learned it at the six newspapers, i for including the new york times, which is to get as diverse, uh, a set of inputs. so i, you know, use dozens of history books. i used unknown master's thesis, i used dissertation and for a variety and i use news cable newspapers and newspapers in the civil war era were very valuable even, though they were highly partizan. my predecessor editorial page editor, the new york times, john raymond, was lincoln's campaign manager in 1864. so the so, so for objectivity, right?

i don't want to sound pessimistic about the future. uh, it's not in my nature, but here's the thing that troubles when we try to sort through these questions. tradition only in a democracy landslide is 60% of the world that four out of ten people, even in the times of greatest political accord, disagree with the majority opinion. so a majority in democracy is a very fragile thing right now. as best i can tell, we're at 5050 and and way it's going to fall if if if we can get back to 6040. i think the country would be much more much more stable. let me return to george wallace and donald trump, the for just a minute, there was a key between these two men and i knew both of

them. i covered wallace a lot back before he cleaned up his act. and and i had exposure to trump in new york through the times. the difference them is demagogues is that george wallace had a moral center he knew he was defying his and democratic principles. he did it for the most way. reverend joseph lowery. well, dr.. associates told him after the selma march, he said they met in his office. he said, governor, i'm not talking to you as a elected official and i'm not talking to you a civil rights leader. i'm talking to you as a method. this minister, to a methodist layman, god has given you oratorical talents and. he's going to call you to account for how you, use them

and think after wallace was shot, he came view what happened to him as a moral judgment. hence his later attempts to reach out to the black community as evil calculating as he was, george was operating with a moral compass, even though he was ignoring. i don't think trump has a moral center, a moral compass, a core set of ethics. and that's why? i think we are in such extremely times. thank you so much. don't want to impose on your time and i want to thank edward ball for thank you for joining us. thank you so much.