robert e. lee found himself operating and stonewall jackson both when he was an independent army commander in the valley. direct leadership generally applied the tactical level. organizational is almost exclusively at the operational. so let's talk briefly about what the ends of both of the sides were in the civil war. i do this exercise so everyone can understand the context in which lee and jackson in his great part partnership operated. they did have a fundamental grant of these theoretical concepts even if they didn't call them by the thing nomenclature as we do today. obviously the national policy objective of the confederacy represented thereby jefferson davis and in robert e. lee, on the left, his independence and they wanted to achieve independence from the union. for the union of the federals, represented by abraham lincoln and initially winfield scott, who will later be replaced as general in chief by henry demille alec the primary fundamental policy objective was preserved the union

after chancellorville, robert e. lee is feeling good. these are the same guys that fought on the pens larks walked up to virginia, walked to cedar mountain, to second manassas, to antietam and now they're walking up here. there's going to be a terrible battle where lee is going to calculate that if he can win a major battle on northern soil. lee doesn't have to win but destroy the union will to fight. you'll have lee wanting to take the war away from virginia for a while. as lee moves north there's a battle at brandy station, largest cavalry battle of the war. another battle at win chester and they come to grips outside of town here right here where we are. we're probably right around here. on the first day, the union retreats back through town to cemetery him and the hill next to it. although day where they hope to defend the wheat field, the round tops that you see here. the union is going to bloody itself and the confederates on the rose farm. on the second day of gettysburg, symmetary east field. and on and on. there's still one terr

e lee. we probably knew what was in store when he returned. he was summoned to cross the river. first he went to blair house. it called that because it belonged to the blair family. abraham lincoln was asked to offer me the command of the army. robert now stood at a cusp where only washington stood in history. that would forge a nation's future, he never said what he would do for fame. he believed it was a constitutional right. he said he would reside as commissioner. orders. he went back to the arlington house and he wrote his letter of resignation. he left and never returned. a few weeks later, after much and returning and for those of you who have been to arlington or fort myers on the hills adjacent to arlington, he would know the army would never allow the land to fall into confederate hands. it occupies the high ground. it could have been arranged by artillery to place on the high ground. union army crossed and occupied arlington. for timber and food and other resources in the work. in

lee. - oh, we're learning about him now? okay. - robert e. lee was winning battle after battle, after battle. - [groans] [both groan] [gunfire] - and i'll tell you why. abraham lincoln came home. he said, "i can't beat robert e. lee." and he had all of his generals. they looked great. they were the top of their class at west point. they were the greatest people. there's only one problem. they didn't know how the hell to win. they didn't know how to fight. they didn't know how. and one day... [paper thuds] it was looking really bad. and lincoln just said, "you." hardly knew his name. and they said, "don't take him. he's got a drinking problem." and lincoln said, "i don't care what problem he has. you guys aren't winning." ♪ and his name was grant. general grant. [crowd cheering] it's unbelievable, isn't it? isn't it unbelievable? [crowd clapping, cheering] it's unbelievable. ♪ and he went in and he knocked the hell out of everyone. ♪ - [yelling] - and you know the story. they said to lincoln, "you can't use him anymore. he's an alcoholic

they didn't come about the robert e. lee statue. they didn't even know who the hell robert e. lee was. they came because it was o ortunity to show their allegiance to trump, their allegiance to cism, and i quote people in the book. "we're here for donald trump, to fulfill it." and what happened in el pasoen his killer, a manifesto whe he basically, you know, quotes donald trp's tweets, "white identity, we're going to make this a white country again." it's a dangeus time, so the benefit of the book, and i had no idea when i was writing it that we'd be in the place we're in today, it's a discussion that we need to have, and it needs to be up front.yo >> whelook back at the events of that day, do you think personally as govnor there is more or something different to preventould have done the sequence of events that led to the death of heather heyer? >> yeah. the big issue, and i talk about this in the book,s e location where the permit was granted at the emancipation park where the robert e. lee statue was. margaret, this was no bigger than a couple people's backyards if you put

e lee. they ruled that in fact the united government had taken that land without due process and without just compensation of law and the title reverted back to custis lee. this posed a dilemma because custis lee now had title to that land where thousands and thousands of union soldiers had been into it. that had already become seen as sacred ground by our fellow citizens. hundreds of troops remain there and custis had the right to evict them all but he said he had no intent to do so but simply wanted to vindicate his family's claim and to receive their just compensation for the splint. over a series of weeks and early 1883 there were negotiations between the u.s. government and his attorneys and ultimately they settled on the price of $150,000. transfer the title clear of any cloud from the lee family back to the united states government. so, custis lee signed on the dotted line and transmitted it to the department of war and the person who accepted that deed and in his official capacity fo

i thought, that is a small complement to robert e. lee. warink he said so after the that it wasn't much of a consummate to him that grant was drunk the entire time he was beating lee. the union superiority of numbers was not such as to allow someone who was an idiot or a poor general or drunk all the time to win. if the union had that kind of superiority in numbers, burnside in 1862.e won lso, grants superiority -- grant's superiority in numbers was only three to two, which is -- three toisive two at the front. decisiveenough to be realize that at the civil war, one soldier behind entrenchment is the equivalent of three attacking an open fields. that yes, bute the attacker has the advantage of choosing the time and place of combat. that is true only if you succeed aling the other guy. since the other guy's robert e lee, it won't be that easy. i think the odds are about even. the attacker always has more force, wherever you look, and the attacker does not always win. the point i make with this discussion is to say that although there are co

lee statue have that these people didn't even know who robert e. lee was. this was an opportunity, this is going to be the time we could come and this would be a time could all come together and sort of what trump has been talking about why this was many a nazism this is the time we could all come together and i tried to do the best they could to keep the lid on it. i continue to see on radio and tv tried to tell folks not to come and counter protests. let these folks walk down the street and get out of town and obviously people want to come out because they were horrified at what they were hearing from these things going on that day. the folks in the city of charlotte were set. i can remember when i finally gained one out and gave my speech i got text from folks from all over the globe, what's going on an american than when trump trump came out and said there were good people on both sides i mean that was the lowest point of his presidency. i had talked to him that day. the phone conversation and told him i was going on in charlotte. was that you thought y

that's where they were when robert e. lee surrendered in april of 1865. it brings us back to where i started today. the whitehurss may have envisioned this is the place they would stay for the long term since that's what many other refugees from slavery envisioned about the places where they had taken up residents during the war. despite the deprivation, illness and suffering, these were places where children were born. where families reunited after years apart. where the injured and the sick recovered or where they departed this life. space is where they picked up the pieces from slavery and began to envision the future. these settlements for all the problems were anchors in a tumultuous world of change. but there was now a big problem. a big one or really a big question. could they stay? in most places, the lands on which they had settled were precisely the same confiscated and abandoned lands in the union's possession that came under debate in washington. this is about over 800,000 acres of land were in the union's possession. not all of them settled b

e lee, freeman village, and the land of jefferson davis and his brothers. so two of the most conspicuous confederates or some believe, most treasonous confederates did not have their lands restored and so those settlements remained. by and large, the remnants of this history was erased from the landscape in 1865 and 1866 's and in the years, decades, and generations that would follow as american set out to remember the war, as a preserved mansion and flocked battlefield, seeing old fortifications and burial grounds, they arrested monuments, all sorts of visible manifestations of the war and its memory, there was basically nothing to see for about half 1 million people who have risked their lives to escape slavery and destroy the institutional together. no wonder the story of emancipation was forgotten. what happened to sinclair farm? it was subdivided eventually in the 1880s, although it was sold to white owners and became known as the neighborhood or the neighborhood was known as pastor point which some consider to be one of the more fashionable parts of t

e-lee was. this is it you could comment steal our hatred and we all come together and what trump had been talking about the white nationalism in neo-nazis this is the time to all come together and i did the best i could to keep a lid on it i was trying to tell folks do not come we would like to keep it just let them walk down the street and get out of town. the obviously people wanted to come out and they were horrified what they were hearing from these people that day and folks of charlottesville were spectacular and it is sad it sad for virginia but this was a sad day in america and i can remember when i gave my speech i got phone calls and text from those all over the globe because what is going on in america? and then the president said they are good people on both sides and i talked to him that day i had a phone conversation told him what was going on. >> you thought you persuaded him to say the right thing and that he understood there were no good people on the nazi side. >> foolish me i t

i can't say that i love robert e. lee. one could say it was treason but he led the south in a war to maintain my people being slaves. did he accomplish great things for the south? i have to acknowledge that. there are many monuments nobody on the side of history is a winner when it comes to slavery or civil rights. the people we named things after dirt have those things. hopefully, they deserve the names they got because they worked hard to make those happen. more often the names came because people were moment business people. we have an opportunity to name something for a person who worked hard to make this happen. she didn't want the freeway torn down. when she realized it was coming down she said i don't want to see chinatown taken down like chinatowns all over the country. did people like it? no. every year we have the process two people that face-off at presidential election depending on what side you are on you hate that other person. that means we all can disagree but we have to be able to acknowledge when people d

this made him a target for those picking a scapegoat, to insulate robert e. lee for responsibility for confederate performance during the battle. the get his birth heritage center in pennsylvania posted -- the gettysburg heritage center in pennsylvania hosted the talk. tammy: our next speaker is cory pfarr. -- cory works in the department of defense and is in american history author. his works on john quincy adams, john quincy adams's republicanism, and obstacles that stand before us was published by the massachusetts historical society in 2014. his book-length study on the tenant general james longstreet's -- lieutenant general james longstreet's performance at the battle of gettysburg was published this year by mcfarland press. currently, he lives in maryland with his wife and two children. without any further introduction, i would like to present to you mr. cory pfarr. [applause] cory: thank you. all right. good afternoon, everyone. thanks for coming. thanks to the gettysburg heritage center for having me here. we will get right into it. f,t after james lo

this made him a target for those picking a scapegoat, to insulate robert e. lee for responsibility for confederate performance during the battle. the get his birth heritage center in pennsylvania posted -- the gettysburg heritage center in pennsylvania hosted the talk. tammy: our next speaker is cory pfarr. -- cory works in the department of defense and is in american history author. his works on john quincy adams, john quincy adams's republicanism, and obstacles that stand before us was

they filed right after to do another event in richmond, at a -- the robert e. lee statue in richmond which is one of the few that the state controls so this came to the state, and i issued executive order, i cancelled the permit for it because once again this permit for this round-about in downtown richmond, the permit would have allowed for 5,000 people. you can get 5,000 there if you stacked people 50 on top of each other. so i mean, i had control of that one so i stopped the permit and i got a nasty letter from the aclu, but my job is to keep people safe, and we redid that permitting process and then because they couldn't come to the state, because i wouldn't give them a permit because i wanted to review of how many people could be there safely, they then said we'll have the rally in richmond outside on the sidewalk and five, six people came but one of the reasons was working with the city, richmond city police, the mayor, and the chief of police they banned all sticks, all poles, they limited the time, they banned all masks. see, masks are important, and on

and he tried to check out the biography of the confederate general robert e lee. it shows an amazing amount of cheek and wit. and for trying to use the whites only section of the library, wyatt t walker had the police called. he was arrested. his first of 17 arrests over the course of his career as a civil rights activists. that's one of the items we have on view in the exhibition. wyatt t walker became very close friends with dr. martin luther king jr. they first met at an inter-seminary conference in the early 1950's. walker became king's right-hand man. they found the christian southern leadership conference. and organize many of them nonviolent mass protest activities that mark the civil rights movements of the 1960's. martin luther king referred to walker as the cleanest mind. including the birmingham campaign of 1963 and the march on washington. we have an early letter from martin luther king to white t walker. it is dated december 3, 1968. march against segregated schools it is referencing a that walker march was organizing here in richmond. it's signed mik

e. lee violence or rocked it in more than 30 injured in a counter protester dead. but you also had people that were. very fine people on both sides he wasn't talking about there being good people among the white supremacy and clay and there were a lot of other people who were there that were defending that monument who were the good people that were there defending the monument i'm sure that there were some people who were just history buffs i mean not everybody who thinks a monument should say he should stay where they are is a racist one doesn't need to be racist in order to. still be ok with a system that systematically oppresses nonwhite groups. and that's what's affiliated with the republican party it's not that everyone in the party is a racist it's that the party is not interested in addressing any type of systemic racism white voters without a college degree flock to trump in the 2016 election partisan tensions are heightened by the fact that white americans are expected to becom

e. lee violence erupted in more than 30 injured when a counter protester dead. but you also had people that were. very fine people on both sides he wasn't talking about there being good people among the white supremacy and clay and there were a lot of other people who were there that were defending that monument who were the good people that were there defending the monument i'm sure that there were some people who were just history buffs i mean not everybody who thinks the monument should should stay where they are is a racist one doesn't need to be racist in order to. still be ok with a system that systematically oppresses non white groups. and that's what's affiliated with the republican party it's not that everyone in the party is a racist it's that the party is not interested in addressing any type of systemic racism white voters without a college degree flock to trump in the 2016 election partisan tensions are heightened by the fact that white americans are expected to become a min

e. lee violence or rocked it in more than 30 injured when a counter protester dead. but you also had people that were. very fine people on both sides he wasn't talking about there being good people among the white supremacy and client there were a lot of other people who were there that were defending that monument who were the good people that were there defending the monument i'm sure that there were some people who were just history buffs i mean not everybody who thinks a monument should should stay where they are is a racist one doesn't need to be racist in order to. still be ok with a system that systematically oppresses nonwhite groups. and that's what's affiliated with the republican party it's not that everyone in the party is a racist it's that the party is not interested in addressing any type of systemic racism white voters without a college degree flock to trump in the 2016 election partisan tensions are heightened by the fact that white americans are expected to become a min

e-lee. >> but what inspired me from sacred duty is the job that has many elements can you tell us about what began? >> dover air force base in delaware is the mortuary for several decades now the only one we have left where the remains of soldiers killed overseas returned to the united states. there has always been something like a dignified transfer for the commander of operations experience one - - explained it to me showing pictures of the fifties through the seventies going by different names and customs but always a small recognition when they were returned to their home. but early 2008 and went to the old guard to perform the mission actually the former captain commander at the time and got the first dover mission and by the time i got there in 2007 those were very common in fact we use a standard duty officer so all those captains at the old guard typically has of these a month and in the spring or summer of 2007 at the height of the surge if you had duty at dover that meant you certainly were going i don't remember not having a mission. and the six man casket team and the black

and he approached robert e. lee several times throughout 1864 as the population of prisoners are growing and growing and growing, and he approaches him about the reinstatement of the exchange. let's reinstate the prisoner exchange. will you exchange black prisoners and lee responds i do not have the authority to exchange black prisoners because the confederate government will refuse to exchange them. and grant and lincoln both agree that as long as the confederacy refuses to exchange black prisoners, they can't in good faith participate in the exchange at all. now, a lot of the men who, of course, are sitting in these putrid conditions in andersonville don't care, right? they want the exchange to get moving again. they want to go home. they're dying there, of course. but both grant and lincoln agree that they have, you know, asked african-american men to fight and to die on behalf of a country take up until auto point had not given them much to do so. by this point several hundred, 000 african thousand americans

states congress made arlington the robert e. lee national memorial process. and the same to a time the united states government put leeann jackson on a 50 cent piece, a real 50 cent piece not a collector one pch the reverse of which paid tribute to confederate soldiers. the lee statue gave me a chance to talk about this much broader movement in the united states. as you move toward the third decade of 20th century where robert e. lee achieves full fruition as national icon, a few years later, fdr of course gave the deadic torrey speech to the stat yu in dallas that dallas took down a few months ago. these are valuable teaching tools. they're complicated in my view. and that's what i tried to get at with in essay, trying to think about the memorial landscapes in ways that make them complicated as the past always is. if there is one thing you think you understand about the past i promise you if you learn more about it it's more complicated than you think it was. but we love hues of black and white now. there are more shades of gra

e lee, william tecumseh sherman, stonewall jackson, george mcclellan and james long street. >>the mexican war was america's first war of invasion, it was thought on multiple fronts across thousands of miles from the texas border to mexico city san francisco bay, in snowy mountains and deserts in summer heat and winter cold on tropical beaches and in densely populated cities. >>general zachary taylor's army fought on the rio grande river and in northern mixico. i have a map here. this is where the war started and taylor is in northern mixico following this redline. >> the second front that opened after about a year was at veracruz by general winfield scott. he landed here in march 260 miles to mexico city. there were other fronts to john c fremont led fighting in california. general stephen kearney marched from kansas to santa fe to san diego and fought two nature battles outside of los angeles. a brigade of mormons that followed kearney's path nearly starved when they were fought. alexander donelson had missouri volunteers from santa fe to to allah mixico. the missourians ma

e. war on yemen has led to thousands of deaths and left millions hungry what role has the u.s. played in the world's worst humanitarian crisis on this is the entity that has the right to begin and end wars robert malley a top advisor on the middle east to president obama told to al-jazeera. america seems more disunited going to any point in recent history its politics undermined by partisan divisions consensus on almost anything impossible to achieve so what's with the bonds that once held this huge democracy together where could the disbelief in the 1st of 2 special reports that has been to investigate. america today is a house divided now by slavery which abraham lincoln warned would lead to the u.s. civil war between sixty's but by toxic partisanship between democrats and republicans the nation's 2 main parties i'm angry at democrats because of what they do to our country right now we have people in congress that hate our country. we have a president who intentionally purposely is try

e. lee violence or rocked it in more than 30 injured in a counter protester dead. but you also had people that were. very fine people on both sides he wasn't talking about there being good people among the white supremacy and clay and there were a lot of other people who were there that were defending that monument who were the good people that were there defending the monument i'm sure that there were some people who were just history buffs i mean not everybody who thinks a monument should should stay where they are is a racist one doesn't need to be racist in order to. still be ok with a system that systematically oppresses non white groups. and that's what's affiliated with the republican party it's not that everyone in the.

and tremendous expense of getting here and so on robert e lee and the statues coming down. my civil war ancestor in south carolina he died mike morris civil war soldiers of dysentery. he did his part. but the confederates you have to try to understand it on their terms. the first loyalty was to the states there are statutes first of all i tell people beware of terry down other people's statutes. some day to be back and they will tear down years. there are exceptions a brilliant tactical problem we don't need statutes. what about stonewall jackson. should we judge him sorely in the 1850s when he was thomas johnson jackson the professor he defied his neighbors with the three -- free blacks and slaves. he broke virginia law to teach blacks to read. he was regarded as the champion friend of blacks. they begged him to buy them. where conditions were much more brutal. he brought one immediately turned him loose as out waiter at the local hotel. the other one was a woman with two kids jackson often -- offered to just free her. this is the 1850s they take care of blacks. jackson fo

e. this is one hour and 15 minutes . >> this is a panel on the book civil war places, we have a couple copies appear that people will be thumbing through and we will have something very unusual, we will have a screen behind this he is smiling because he knows i don't do usually things this venture some and use actual images so this is something of a departure for me. here is how the structure is gonna work, i'm gonna give very brief introductions for the people sitting here at the table with me and i do all of them at once i will have each panel member talk about why they decided to be part of the project and why they selected the image they selected and they will talk a little about the image. then we will see where the conversation goes after that so very briefly, let me introduce everybody i will start with carol reardon who was the professor of american history at penn state university, one of the important books on the military side of history, with a sword in one hand and germany a

to me, there is a huge difference between a monument, say a robert e. lee sculpture with him charging on his horse, waving the confederate flag placed prominently in a town square, and the murals at george washington high school. monuments are intended to inspire and celebrate the exploits of a person, typically a man, almost always a man, and how he vanquished an enemy or conquered a new land that turned out not to be uninhabited, and monuments, that is their goal, that is their purpose. by contrast, murals like this provide a narrative, a much more complete story that often contains the good and the bad of a particular period to remind and critically inform us of this period, or in this case, the imperfect life of our first president. so while i can understand how aspects of murals are really offensive to some people, on a whole, they provide context to the people and times shown, and serve as a reminder of our greatly flawed history in a different way than a celebratory monument does. i also want to quickly address the federal art project and the adm

when neo nazis and other alt-right followers protested of robert e. lee statue. heather heyer lost her life. she was skilled by a white supremacist. he was given life sentence for her death and injuries inflicted with others he ran down. joining us now is our executive director of civil rights advocacy organization, integrity first for america. amy, thank you for joining me. you planned an interesting opt-ed for nbc news. talk to us about this. >> a mean to combat the violence that ku klux clan members were bringing to the south after recently freed slaves were not given new that nearly 150 years later we need to use it to take on the white supremacists and hate groups responsible for orchestrating the charlottesville violence. what happened in charlottesville was not spontaneous. the violence was planned in months in advance on a chat platform these white supremacists, neo-nazis and hate groups had planned what to wear, which weapons to bring and whether they could run over protesters with cars and claim self-defense. those chats are the basis for our suit becau

but i made the point to file the permit that half of these people did not even know who robert e-lee was. this is the time we could come where we could all come together for what trump was talking about with nationalism and come together and to do the best we could to keep a lid on it trying to tell folks not to come just let them walk down the street and get out of town but obviously people wanted to come out because they were here on - - hearing from them that sad for charlottesville and virginia but it is a sad day for america and then when i gave my speech from those all over the globe what is going on in america? and then trump said there is good people on both sides that was a lowest point of his presidency i talk to him that day and told him what was going on. >>host: you thought you persuaded him to say the right thing thinking he understood there were people on the nazi side. >> we talked about bill clinton had issues where he went down to heal the nation when barack obama went down to heal the nation in george bush with 9/11. with these types of issues happen in the country

shell by foote and they cite a dramatic scene involving robert e. lee in the battle of gettysburg, and the mississippi unit as decimated and had lee cantorring around on his horse like -- beating his chest and saying, my fault, my fault, all my fault, my men are lost. and the historians insist there's in other reference of that anywhere, and charged to put with making it up. and then we talked briefly about this. we were talking about another book that hadn't occurred to me but that's midnight in the garden of good and evil, which was wonderful book but came in for a lot of criticism because -- >> not really nonfiction. >> it's strong suspicion a lot of it is made up. it's interesting -- >> he massaged the time frame, too. so that was the big criticism. >> yeah. >> in our case, i referenced earlier that ness had a ghost-writer write an autobiography and became the basis of the tv show and the film and that's a book the -- be published vs. of the book "the unup toables" that came out after ness died in set 57 has been dismissed in a lot of the nonfic

just read robert e lee's letter to the secretary of war in january of 1863. lee is considered a moderate on these things. he is beside himself writing about the emancipation proclamation. he has an apocalyptic view of what the confederacy would mean because of the emancipation announced a few days earlier. peter: i would say the presence of class to censure, that it has been so diminished of late in our understanding of the confederacy. and the racial explanation -- it is obscured, some of those tensions. so again, just a move toward confederate history started back in colorado. gary: and the seeds of that book came out of the other book. he deployed that language all the time. and it seemed to me this dichotomy, you're either loyal to your state or loyal to your nation. that's how lee is often presented. our loyalty is much more complicated than that. there's also loyalty to the slaveholding south from this class, and it's that loyalty, i believe, that easily turned into loyalty to the confederacy. it's a seamless transition there, i think. peter: so, when y

not only did thomas work closely with robert e lee but they served in the army together and unfortunately, one of their routines that was very common, especially out on the plains, were courts-martial and both thomas and lee would go from post to post in texas prior to the war and they will be involved in a number of courts-martial throughout the state of texas. a lot of movement and activity state of texas. that put them in close proximity, both virginians, both west pointers. one chooses one path and the other chooses the other. thomas was born near a town near jerusalem. george thomas and his family are there. he is not there. ultimately, he is buried in troy, new york at his wife's families plot. one of the questions about his choice for the south or the north would be what influences he might have and the question of how much his wife might influence him, francis thomas, apparently with a strong personality. he would always know what he should do. whenever your wife knows you should know what you should do, you know what she wants you to do. he made the choice. he really was comforta

eventually, the union's largest army, grant will travel with it, and they will go on to the robert e. lee army. the first two main moves in 2864 of consequence and start and early may 1864. an incredible picture of troops marching. that will result in the battle of the wilderness. a terrible thicket that would reduce the viability of grant's numbers. . they don't really matter when you cannot use cannons. the terrible place catches on fire. wounded men cannot get away. you heard the stories. after this 30,000 soldier bloodletting, the union does not do what they usually get. grant does not go back towards washington. troops are cheering him because grant will fight with his army. they are marching south. they are still continuing on even after a bloodletting like that and didn't achieve victory. >> learn about the entire civil war in 56 minutes today at 6 p.m. eastern on our weekly series on the civil war. you're watching american history tv. >> each week, american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn about american history. next, we visit the american museum of

the united states congress made arlington the robert e. lee national memorial. and the same time that united states government put lee and jackson on a 50 cent piece. a real 50 cent piece, not a collector 50 cent piece. but a 50 cent piece, the reverse of which paid tribute to confederate soldiers. the lee statue gave me a chance to talk about this much broader movement in the united states. he gave the speech to the lae statue in dallas that dallas took down a few months ago. these are valuable teaching tools. they're complicated in my view. and that's why i tried to get at with this essay is to try to think about the memorial landscapes in ways that make them complicated. it's the past always is, if there is one thing that you think you understand about the past, i promise you if you learn more about it, it's more complicated than you think it was. but we love hughes of bhak and white now. there are a lot more shades of gray in many of the questions. it ended up in charlottesville. i thought i had to. not because that was my first inclin

e.g. to disarm and withdraw from the border area it wants control of the zone that's at least 30 kilometers deep and would stretch from the syrian town of girard loss to the iraq border that would include why p.t. controlled cities and towns like co bonnie tell commission. as well as members. turkey says the u.s. needs to end its support to the y. p.g. which it considers an offshoot of the outlawed kurdistan workers' party or the p.k. cape it is also not satisfied with the buffer zone solutions proposed by the united states those proposals reportedly involve a zone with a depth of 10 kilometers that excludes the main population centers along the border . right e.g. supporters have held protests against a possible turkish takeover saying they'll only accept an internationally enforced zone in turkey and the syrian opposition say areas under y p g control are historically ours and the proposed zone means millions of refugees can return to syria. in turkey dependent to. the u. s. or russia

e lee at the battle of gettysburg, pickett's charge, it failed and the mississippi unit was decimated and he had the cantering around on his horse and almost like saying he's beating his chest and he saying my men are lost and the historians insist there is no other reference anywhere and charged to put with making it up and then we talked briefly about this but we were talking about another book that hadn't occurred to but that's midnight in the garden of good and evil, a wonderful book that came in for a lot of criticism because -- >> it's not nonfiction. >> there's strongsuspicion that a lot of it's made up . >> they massaged the timeframe to so that was a bigcriticism of that . >> in our case i referenced that nest cowrote or had a ghostwriter write an autobiography that became the basis of the tv show in the book that the published version of the book the untouchable which came out after nest died in 1957 has been sort of disparaged and dismissed and a lot of the nonfiction writing about alcohol and and one of the things my co-author and i set up to do initially was to say let's

the letters of a man to his wife as the new yorker schoolteacher turned map maker to robert e. lee, the letters were never transskrieped. and hundreds of other letters and diaries on both sides that found in people's attics -- we didn't find them. they knew they were in the attics and they brought them down for us to scan and contribute, and two newspapers in both places arguing with each other every day. now, it's hard to imagine, but as we go back to the civil war era, both back them argued about politics a lot. and said really hard things about each other. i just don't want anybody to be shocked when they understand that's what politics in america used to be like. as i was working through all of this, and really, it's millions of pieces of evidence. i could see that a story was not merely a convenient and compelling way to explain things, but that a story explains things that just analysis as we call it cannot. stories embody the central traits of historical understanding, change. conflict. complexity. contingency in ways that simply saying hey, that's complicated doesn't do

when robert e. lee marches into pennsylvania, even as he is scampering back to virginia having had half his army destroyed, he takes time to capture free blacks in pennsylvania and drag them back to the south and sell them as slaves. when he invaded maryland, he did the same for free blacks in maryland. maryland is a slave state but half the black people in maryland are free by the time of the war. the south is committing war crimes but we don't prosecute anybody except captain wartz for andersonville. i want to give you a very quick supreme court history. i don't want to go into the details of cases. if anybody wants i'm happy to give you suggestions. i suppose i would say the first place to start is a book called "the march of liberty," a two volume constitutional history of the united states. but i'm the co-author of that book and that would be shameless self-promotion and i would not want anybody to accuse me of that. i will add that my books are out with harvard university press, again, i'm sha