 Good afternoon. I'm Rod Ross. Prior to my 2016 retirement, I was an archivist here in this building. On a couple of occasions past from this stage, I've introduced speakers who have gone on to discuss their books. I'm privileged to once again do that today. With today's speaker, a distinguished psychiatrist, Stephen A. Goldman M.D., whom I first met when both of us served on the board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. Nearly two years ago, in a different venue, I introduced him when he presented, Wounded Warriors Come Home, The Union Soldier in Peace. Today, Dr. Goldman will speak on his new book, One More War to Fight, Union Veterans Battle for Equality through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Lost Cause. Dr. Goldman writes from two unique perspectives. As a scholar of civil war and reconstruction and civil rights history, and as a psychiatrist with more than 30 years experience in academic and clinical medicine and public health, and he has worked with and treated men and women who served in the military, many of whom have gone to war. Dr. Goldman is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a life fellow of the Academy of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry. He has served as an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and as an instructor at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Most recently, he became an adjunct faculty member at Shepherd University, where he teaches seminars in its honors program. A two-time past president of the North Jersey Civil War Roundtable, Dr. Goldman has spoken at National Museum of Civil War Medicine Annual Conferences, Psychiatry Grand Rounds, and to veterans in Civil War-related groups on C-SPAN-3 and NPR and at various National Park Service sites. Today marks his second appearance at this theater. In point of fact, the bookstore here has copies of his books, and after his presentation, he'll do a book signing. So with that, to those of you here, as well as our YouTube audience, I give you Stephen A. Goldman, MD. Thanks, Rod. I'm delighted to see folks here and out there on YouTube. I spoke here 13 years ago, and I always like to start off my talks with a couple of quotes as I remove Rob's water, here you go. This is the book, and it's kind of hard to pick quotes sometimes. I often use things from the greatest show ever aired on American television, The Wire, and Rock's greatest composer, Pete Townsend, but I'm not going to use those today. Since I spoke here 13 years ago, and I thought my books were going to come out earlier than that, nothing was more appropriate than Robert Hunter, the great lyricist for The Grateful Dead, because lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been. The second quote is inscribed on the front of this magnificent building. The heritage of the past is a seed that brings forth the harvest of the future, which is Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist. In my book, One More Water Fight, I tell two previously untold stories, both of them intertwined. The first is how Northern veterans, black and white, fought a second war, seeking equality for all Americans, and the process they created the model of civic responsibility and commitment that has been emulated by American citizen soldiers, sailors, Marines, and air personnel ever since the Civil War. Now my work utilizes a very specific, unique, lifetime study of a group of white Union soldiers and sailors who, in the immediate aftermath of the war, were asked to provide a handwriting sample, because they'd all lost use of their right arms. 98% enlisted men, a national sample, and all they were asked for was a handwriting sample. What they turned in were the most amazing essays you've ever read. That's the left arm corps. I spent over 10 years tracking down every one of those 268 men through both national archives material here, both their pension records, service records, which are medical records, things through Library of Congress, online newspapers, such as the Quantity America series, which is marvelous, that's done through Library of Congress. And what I found was that group, the left arm corps, was absolutely representative of white Northern soldiers. So that's one aspect. No less important are the two free men of color who were included in the collection, both of them from Ohio and both from the fifth United States color troops, the fifth USCT, and those are sergeants Robert Pinn and William Hannibal Thomas. Now I want to make clear that while I use the left arm corps as a representative sample of white Northern common soldiers, although they certainly were not common in any sense other than the fact that they were representative, I write about all Union veterans, black and white. So even though there was a focus in this book and others that I have written and republished and other work I'm doing, the left arm corps is by no means the only people I write about. I write about all Union veterans, white and black. Now, when the men of the Union returned home, there had never been a high proportion of veterans returning from any American war, bearing in mind that if the same number of soldiers had fought now, the veterans would have numbered over 6 million in today's population. So it was a high proportion at the time as to who had fought in the war in the North and South. These men had left to see the elephant, that marvelous expression about what it means to go to war. And they had seen the elephant. And they performed deeds they could never have imagined, positive and negative, and they had survived. Marine First Lieutenant, Vietnam veteran William Boyles Jr., the great screenwriter, you can come back from war broken in mind or body or not come back at all. But if you come back whole, you bring with you the knowledge that you've explored regions of your soul that most men will always remain uncharted. Eugene Sledge, who wrote two of the finest books ever about veterans, the Marine Corporal who survived the Pacific Theater in World War II. Close combat had changed those of us who endured it. We were just playing different from other people through no fault of our own. We saw life through a different lens and always would. Now, Union veterans tempered their delight in having survived. And let me talk about that for a second. You hear the term survivor guilt a lot. But what you don't hear is what survivor guilt generally morphs into very quickly. It's called survivor obligation. And one of the great examples of that in modern times is a man who's been in public service almost since he returned from war as a decorated naval officer and still serving for us at the age of 79, and that's John Kerry. And he talks about how every day is extra. And in his book, he talks about the obligation he had to use the fact he survived war and for those who did not to make something of value in his life. That is exactly what the men I'm going to talk about today, black and white, the Union veterans did. They not only had survived. They learned things about themselves that are remarkable. And it has been my privilege during my career to work with men and women who have been to war and serving the military. And this is just an example of that. This is Private William McLeod, 104th New York. The mental discipline, the expanded liberal views, now held of life in its surroundings, but above all the self-knowledge acquired in large intellects and the influence they exert on society are ample reparations for the inconvenience suffered from the loss of an arm or leg. I think I speak knowingly because I left an arm on Virginia's soil. Having been instrumental to the restoration of the Union and slavery's destruction, ideological resoluteness tightly bound northern veterans, white and black. More than the average civilian, they realized just what lay ahead and that the unfinished work that Abraham Lincoln had talked about in the Gettysburg Address promised to be as bitter, divisive, and perilous as the war itself if not more so. That's what my book is all about. Irrevocably changed by what they had undergone. It is not surprising the sizable proportion of Union citizen servicemen have been politically radicalized. But would white and black northern veterans maintain that dedication to the causes for which they had fought? Would the special barrier that shatters divisions, race, religion, creed, or other, would they remain among the men who had risked everything together based on my research over frankly decades and the work I've done with veterans and my research on reconstruction and the ensuing decades? My answer is emphatically yes. We ask no favors on our own behalf. We do ask if such devotion is not a test of loyalty and since the evidence is so conclusive, we have shared a like in the dangers and vicissitudes of the war or we not partake of all the immunities pertaining to the rights of the citizens, even as our white brother, what say you? Sergeant William H. Thomas, Fifth USET. That was the question. The African American soldier had gone to war. There were two categories of African American soldiers, those who had been previously enslaved and those who were free men of color. Although the free men of color would decidedly second class citizens, including the states in the north. They were asking whether they would get the support from their white comrades in arms. The answer was yes. Now W.B. Du Bois, the great sociologist whom I admire, once he said about that, that he couldn't believe that it took men to kill other men for them first to be considered as men. I don't think Du Bois was accurate when it came to the men of the Union because when it came, at least to their fellow veterans, what made white northern soldiers accept African American men as men for the first time was not the fact they had killed, it was the fact they had persevered as soldiers because only another soldier knows what they had done to the gun. And as the war went on, they bitterly resented the fact that their fellow African American soldiers could not be promoted to commissions and in some cases not allowed to fight, literally serve in combat. These are remarkable transitions. This is one of the things that's remarkable about the Union soldier is what happened during the war and after. Where is the justice of accepting the strong arm and steady value of the Negro at a time when his help was solely needed, then denying him the hard-earned fruits of the fidelity and courage when his service in the field are no longer required. We must have freedom at the ballot box. We cannot be true to the principles of republicanism when we say to the colored man, you have no rights at the ballot box that we are bound to respect for we have said to him, take the musket and gain your freedom. Exactly the point that I was making. And be in no doubt, there was racism north and south. And yet, it was very clear in the writings, the statements, and the lives of the men I've studied, such as Private Michael J. Fitz-James of the 121st New York. We soldiers know this is a cause we have hazarded our lives and spilled our blood for. The cause our beloved president was assassinated for, we shall maintain and never desist from this cause as long as we live. And that cause is equality for all Americans. That's the unfinished work. And as we know, that work remains unfinished. I have lost the use of my right arm in this bloody war, and I would freely have sacrificed my life for home, for war, for right, for constitution, for freedom, for government, for humanity, and in the hope that the batter of my country may advance in that grand old flag I see the liberties of the people and the hopes of the world. Private Aura de Warbridge, 104th, Illinois. Everything I've just read to you came when they asked for a handwriting sample. But they were given an opportunity that's unique and very therapeutic. They were given the chance to write about a war they had just fought. And they took that opportunity to tell the American people what they had fought for and what they had done. So the obligation of the men who served in the armies and navies of the Union certainly did not stop when the war ended in 1865. They embodied a powerful warrior identity which is sustaining during the war and even more sustaining after the war. And again, I point to my experience in working with veterans during my career. That warrior identity ensures to a great degree success in civilian life, in personal life, in business, and in politics, which we've seen throughout history. Yet the image of the veteran that is portrayed in many aspects does not really make it clear that this is what most veterans do when they return. They are very successful, including one generation of veterans that people don't seem to grasp have been among the most successful generation of veterans and those of the Vietnam veterans. What did the Psalm responsibility that the Union veterans have result in? Outstanding service in the Freedmen's Bureau, which was a vital organization during reconstruction, which was a military operation. And one example of that was First Lieutenant William Augustus McNulty, who was in the Veteran Reserve Corps and part of the Left Arm Corps. Bitter opposition to Andrew Johnson's racial policies and associated grand-scale political activism, such as support for the vital 14th and 15th Amendments. Battling the Klan, the first version of the Klan, and one great example of that was Joseph Waller Gallery, Brevet Colonel of the 45th United States Infantry, who was the foremost investigator of the Klan, fighting bigotry and racism in two particular areas, the right to quality public education and social quality on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. And particularly through the Grand Army of the Republic, which I'm going to talk about in depth today, Union veterans formed a stalwart block in support of landmark legislation, Republican initiatives on behalf of African Americans. Let me explain that Republicans during this era were the progressives in the United States, the party of Lincoln, and they remained so during the rest of the 19th century. Now the Left Arm Corps mirrored what happened within the Grand Army. I think you'd be struck by this. Ninety-five percent of the Left Arm Corps were lifelong Republicans, reflective of their political views. And of the 106 GAR members, all but five were Republicans. That was replicated on the grand scale for the Grand Army. Now, what did it mean to be Republican after the failure of Reconstruction? And by the way, let me discuss the failure of Reconstruction in a minute. Reconstruction ultimately failed. That does not mean that Reconstruction did not produce tremendous changes in this country. That is not to imply in any way that the laws that were passed, most of them federal during Reconstruction, are not applied now. And one of the things that I do several talks about as my book is out and I do a lot of these events, which is marvelous, is pointing out the changes north of the Mason-Dixon line and in the border states because what happened during Reconstruction, even though Reconstruction technically only affected the former Confederate states. So Eric Foner, the Reconstruction scholar, said 1877, the year after Reconstruction was ended, it confirmed the growing conservatism of the Republican Party and pretended a new role for the national state in the post-Reconstruction years. However, neither the humanitarian impulse that helped create the Republican Party, nor the commitment to equal citizenship that evolved during the war on Reconstruction entirely disappeared. Eric is saying exactly what I'm saying, that the results that continue and still resonate. Now for the warrior identity, that's my thing. And the seminal paper came out in 1991 with psychiatrist Sam Bradshaw, psychologist Carol Odie, and psychiatrist James Horn of the Kansas VA where they described the warrior identity entailing the positive impact on post-war lives due to such attributes as discipline, rivalry, and ability to tolerate considerable distress in achieving a name. These have major implications for how battle veterans view themselves and the reintegrated into society as I mentioned. These union veterans, white and black, exemplify this along with resilience, post-traumatic growth. Post-traumatic growth was exactly what McLeod was talking about, a sustained and sustaining power and a keen awareness that their work was hardly finished. That's why the title of my book is One More Water Fight. Now the Grand Army of the Republic, the largest, most influential and longest-lived Northern Soldiers Association began in April 1866, and they defined its mission to maintain in civilian life those great principles for which it stood in arms under the national flag, to vindicate everywhere and at all times the full and complete rights of every loyal American citizen against all combinations of force or fraud that may attempt to deny or deprive them of such rights. This was reconstruction. This was the radical Republican Congress that faced off against Andrew Johnson. Now, the GAR was concerned about being considered partisan, so they declared themselves nonpartisan, but everybody knew what they were supporting and they were supporting congressional reconstruction. So technically nonpartisan, most of them were dedicated Republicans and remained a tremendous force, a force of moral persuasion in the decades after the Civil War. And what would that mean? The quality for African Americans and not just for African Americans who had served in the armies and navies of the Union, all African Americans. Now, what did the GAR offer for African American veterans? And that's an interesting point. This has been controversial. Where early scholars of the GAR said that they were treated second class within their own organization, there was some evidence of that. Examples of people not being allowed to join the GAR, there were examples of that. However, my scholarship and the scholarship of Barbara Gannon really found something different, that African American veterans were welcome into the GAR, like no other organization in the United States at the time. There were active participants, and I'll show you exactly what happened when the GAR was forced to nationally proclaim whether or not they would accept a color line within the organization itself. Barbara reported that approximately one-third of all Union veterans became members of the Grand Army Republic during its time. Within the left arm corps, almost three-fifths of them became members of the Grand Army, which is quite interesting. And that organization not only had tremendous political power, it also had tremendous therapeutic power. Because as we tell veterans now, one of the most unifying aspects that we have in the United States for veterans is the VA, which is unique, by the way, in the world, a dedicated system just for veterans. I am proud of the fact that I worked for the VA for many years. And there is no organization in the United States that has the collective knowledge about treating war-related stress. Working with veterans who have lost limbs, rehab is, frankly, an amazing program that we have in the United States. And you can see that when you actually read about what goes on in the VA and what they use there. But there's also something else. It's a place for veterans to go and be welcomed and be among other veterans. And as Jonathan Shea points out in his marvelous books about returning veterans, one looking at the Iliad, one looking at the Odyssey, Dr. Shea points out that there's nothing more therapeutic than a society composed of veterans themselves into which they can feel comfortable. And I certainly echo what Jonathan says with that. Now, the fight for equal opportunity intensified during the 80s and 90s when Jim Crow became more and more the Lord of the Land both North and South. So that the Grand Army became the focus of the question is if the Grand Army did not treat African Americans equally as white veterans, then how could they expect anybody else to treat African Americans equally in the rest of the United States? So people were looking at this. One man who was deeply involved with this was Robert Penn. Robert Penn, another member of the left-arm corps, was one of two African Americans among the large Heart Post membership in Maslow, Ohio. He was its commander in 1886, which a major African American newspaper, Cleveland Gazette, proudly reported that it was not only a tribute to him personally, but a just recognition of the colored soldiers, all who helped to fight the battles of the war, the rebellion. A cutely way of racism. Robert Penn had attended Oberlin. After my alma mater, the Ohio University, the first public university to admit African American males, Oberlin was one of the first private universities to do so. He was a Medal of Honor recipient, one of the first African Americans from the Civil War, an attorney, the first attorney admitted to the bar in Stark County, Ohio, and he had close friends and clients who were white. This was very unusual for a man of color at that time. Penn reads in the Cleveland Gazette that there's a plan to have separate units for African Americans that are all black. He objects to this vociferously. And he insists that African Americans who are qualified are brought into Grand Army posts. He says, why do we set up a sideshow? How long will my people persist in drawing a color line for themselves? I am ashamed of them. As soldiers, we are all working for the same great object, then why not work together? We fought side by side with our white comrades. Our blood mingled and drenched the southern soil. Our united efforts to save our common country for the abode of free men, now in the sublime time of peace, we should not be the first to say there will be no part with our white veterans. Penn adamantly opposed separate units for white and black comrades in the Grand Army of the Republic. That this was not an idealistic pipe dream is strongly supported by Dr. Ganna's research and my own. Despite instances of black veterans being rejected for admission by white comrades, just as Penn had noted, she reported hundreds of GR posts that actively sought members of both race, quote, although white veterans made up the majority and dominated these organizations, African-Americans, while the minority fully participated in post-life. I found exactly the same thing. Let me point out that only 10% approximately of all Union veterans were men of color. So you would not expect them to be in a higher proportion in the Grand Army, but they did actively join the GR. They were topped out as to their highest level of leadership, as I'll explain in a few minutes. Now, among the left arm corps, one-fifth of them belong to posts known to be integrated. And when African-American veterans found it necessary to take public positions, reiterating their soldiers' pride and claims to manhood, the GR generally had their back. A great example arose in 1885. And I understand there was lecture about grant this morning. When New York's all-black posts were offended by someone outside the GR asking they serve as grooms at the feudal parade for Ulysses S. Grant, they were outraged. They said that we were comrades of the dead general, not servants. And as a group, they made it clear they would, quote, appear in the procession as a post of the Grand Army, which has never blushed for the conduct of its colored troops, unquote. That's exactly what happened. They're white comrades in New York said they're absolutely right. They're going to march with us. As a matter of fact, there were three companies of veteran guards that marched in the procession for Grant, who, by the way, would have welcomed that. Grant finally is getting recognition for the tremendous job he did with the assault, frankly, on the Klan during his first administration and his very progressive views on race. So you've got an organization that is unique in American society at the time, composed of a national organization that is fully integrated, composed of union veterans, of valiantly Republican, even though the organization was nonpartisan. That's tremendous power. So what happened? Robert Pinn rises to the highest level. Any African American was able to rise into the Grand Army in several of the states. He became the junior vice commander of the State Department, which was, again, they topped out. There was a ceiling. But he did get that. He had spent five years as the commander of the state encampment, where they met every year. And he served one term. I've got the notes of what he did with his usual diligence. And then in 1889, which I get a kick out of, he was appointed a national aide-de-camp to the national commander and take a guess who his one colleague went with him, former president, Rutherford B. Hayes. So Pinn rose to tremendous heights within an organization that was integrated. So what happened? What brought the Grand Army to a crisis point? What was going on in Louisiana and Mississippi, the Department of Louisiana and Mississippi? And, quite frankly, African-Americans could not join. And that's deep south. Of all things that brought this to a head was Jefferson Davis' funeral, where the commander of the department decided that Jefferson Davis was, quote, an illustrious patriot soldier and statesman, unquote, and that he would be proud to march in the funeral procession for Jefferson Davis wearing his GAR badges. You can imagine how this went over with GAR members throughout the country. By the way, Confederate veterans were thrilled at the validation of Jefferson Davis. Union veterans were not thrilled. So the compromise that he decided was he would march along with 50 of his comrades and they would not wear GAR badges, which is what they did. How do you think that went over? Not well. So because he was not supported by the other members of the department and because he felt put upon by this, he decides to do something he had refused to do for years. He starts to admit African-Americans to the department and posts. The details are in the book. In terms of time, I'm not going to go into all the details. I'll simply point out that this created havoc. With two departments, it split in half between an all-white group and a group that was integrated. They went to the national meeting of the Grand Army where no decision was made as to which one was the correct department. But there was a proposal that came out in October of that year in the National Tribune, which incorrectly has been called the House Organ for the Grand Army. It was not the House Organ for the Grand Army. It was an independent newspaper that covered union veteran activities and raids. By the way, a superb newspaper. It's one of my pleasures going to the Library of Congress, Chronically America, and reading all the articles in the National Tribune. They're marvelous. But they were not the organ of the GAR. They announced what turned out to be a balloon concept that all African-American members of the GAR should be in one national department. In Florida, Fred Goodrich was absolutely dumbfounded to read this because the rationale was it would help the African-American veterans in the South. Fred Goodrich was the commander of the Department of Florida. He had no idea that this was going to be proposed. He was outraged that this was proposed. And in a state with active Jim Crow, let me point out, Goodrich said that they've never refused someone who deserved to be in the Grand Army, that they have black comrades at all their meetings. He has no idea what they're talking about. He echoes exactly what Robert Pinnott said, that there's no way that he's going to accept a separate department for African-Americans. So what happens? The issue comes to the head in August 1891 in Detroit when the organization is going to meet together. And that's where the Grand Army had to decide whether or not they were going to draw a color line. It was clear that the rank and file was absolutely opposed to drawing a color line within the Grand Army. But the decision was going to be made by the highest-ranking members of the Grand Army like most organizations. And what would happen was there was a committee of five high-ranking members, three of them being former commanders and chiefs themselves, another one who was a commander in one of the states. And everybody in the United States was waiting for this decision. Everybody throughout the country, north and south, wanted to know what the leading organization of Union veterans was going to do because if they drew a color line, the implications would have been tremendous as you can imagine. So they put together this five-man committee, three former commanders and chief and a past commander of the Department of Connecticut with one dissenting opinion. They adamantly refused to draw a color line. And this is what they say. During the fierce struggle for the life of the nation, we should shoulder to shoulder with comrades tried. It is too late to divide now on the color line. A man who was good enough to stand between the flag and those who would destroy it when the fate of the nation was trembling in the balance is good enough to be a comrade in any department of the Grand Army of the Republic. No different rule has been or ever will be recognized by the survivors of the Union Army and Navy. No department should be established for any color or nationality. There was one dissenting vote, W.S. Decker of Colorado, who interestingly enough had actually served as an officer in the U.S. C.T. He did not support, he said, separate departments, but he felt that the problems in the South were impossible to overcome because they were different than the conditions in the North. Namely, that the posts in the North, African-American members such as Robert Penn, were often members of the community that, like other members of the community, and that the social morease and frankly Jim Crow of the South would make it impossible for the white members there. Well, the Grand Army rejected that out of hand, but that was his rationale. Two of the African-Americans who spoke during the debate about the report were critical to the discussion. Robert Johnson, the Department of Potomac, right here in Maryland, he wanted to know, quote, why is that you want to shove us off now into a separate department when we will always have been in one department and all the institutions that we belong to, no other institution has brought us so near together as the Grand Army of the Republic, unquote. So you can see how important this was. As white and black soldiers have been, quote, friends and brothers together in the field, Johnson insisted in staying one department was imperative, even if separate posts were needed in the South. Pointing out the nation's worsening racial problems, he asked, quote, if you turn your back upon us, whom shall we look to, where shall we go? Seeing honesty, principle, charity and loyalty amongst comrades, he didn't think such a thing was remotely possible. Edward A. Richie of Kentucky spoke proudly of the successful incorporation of 15% of overall posts being African-American posts in his department that was initially hostile to the incorporation of black members. Emphatically stating that African-American veterans wanted no part of a separate department, he conveyed their belief that such a move would result in exclusion from state encampments, ostracism, and eventual removal from the JAR together. He said, we African-American soldiers know something of hard times and we know just what it is to be Grand Army men. Seeing the proposal to separate out African-Americans would have them turn their backs on us in a time of trouble. He expressed his hope that he would, quote, be able to return to Kentucky and say to my comrades that the national encampment will stand by the color of comrades all over this land. Then something remarkable happened during this debate. The one member, Decker, who had dissented, interrupted Richie as he was speaking and Richie turned to him and said, you're one of the ducks that hide their JAR badges while you're flirting with the Democrats. The response to this was hilarity and applause. The very idea that in 1891 America, an African-American man would openly display hostility to a distinguished white man and be applauded for it is almost unthinkable in any other organization. It's as simple as that. When the members of the Department of Louisiana and Michigan tried to defend themselves, they met with tremendous antipathy and then it got nasty. They accused African-American soldiers of being ungrateful and they said, if you do this, then we will leave en masse. It was put to a vote and the vote was essentially unanimous. The Grand Army was not going to agree to a color line. Why is this so important? Because everybody in the country was watching, hearts and minds. The response in both the general communities and the African-American communities were remarkable. When you take a look at the newspaper reports, several newspapers made comparisons to the churches that remained segregated. And they wanted to know, as in one memorable sentence, why are the relics of an army composed of all men of faith and no faith, men of the world, gamblers and profane, irreligious and infidels, why would they be moral enough not to draw a color line when churches in the United States insist on continuing to draw a color line? Several of the newspapers pointed this out. By the way, not every paper was supportive of this. In Stark County, Stark County Democrat, where Robert Penn lived, the Iron County Register in the home state of Missouri, William Warner, who had been one of the members who voted against this, and in New York City, where the world accused the GRR of hypocrisy, they all said that the GRR would never have done the same thing, and they asked them, would they really agree to join an organization in the north where the majority of its members were African-American? A fair point. I don't think it's a fair point with the GRR per se, but they rightly pointed out that the armies were made segregated despite the tremendous valor and strength of African-American veterans in the Civil War. And as you know, what went on during the 1880s and 1890s was the worsening of race relations in the United States, culminating with the second worst decision the Supreme Court arguably has made, the Plessy versus Ferguson decision in 1896 that essentially established Jim Crow as a national policy. Now, what does this all mean? It means, I think, a couple of things. And this is why I link the two aspects in my talk as I draw to a close, and then Rod and I are going to take questions. What the men of the Union, white and black did, has not really been acknowledged to the extent that I do in my book, and I have it in detail. It is clearly linked to what we see in modern veterans, that when you come back from war, your work is not done. When you're members of a republic, you return to a republic. You are always a citizen of that republic. And the United States has always relied on its citizen soldiers, Marines, sailors, and Air Force personnel. They have every right to express their opinions politically or otherwise, and they have a responsibility to do so. The men of the Union took their survival and took what they had fought for as an obligation to continue and to further the work that had begun. And the work wasn't just a destruction of slavery. The work was not just a restoration of the republic. It was a quality for all Americans. And the galvanizing change in the attitude of white Union veterans stemmed from their tremendous respect for the men who had served alongside them of color starting in 1863. That cannot be in any way diminished or looking at the influence of that. Now, this was not some of the perception of other historians, particularly Stuart McConnell, who wrote the first really good book about the GAR. And he felt that it was essentially informal discrimination. He did not feel this was that compelling. Donald Shaffer felt differently that the willingness of the GAR to sacrifice a large number of white veterans in order to integrate the black post in the department was extraordinary, as was the fortitude of the army rank and file at the Detroit encampment. That the GAR accepted black members was unusual even in the gilded age. However, the fact that many white members, even in the Upper South, opposed separate departments for white and black Union veterans in the Lower South was even more remarkable. Nonetheless, there still was discrimination within the GAR. However, Barbara Gansley, the scholarship, and my own, it was a different conclusion about how African Americans were treated within the GAR and I think there's good cause for that. I'm going to stop here with one last point to bring it to modern times. This transformative phenomenon I've described of what happens when one goes to war, particularly for wars that are fought, and there was no war ever fought for ideological reasons more so than the Civil War, was what Carl Milantes, the Vietnam veteran writer who wrote in 2017 that he served in Vietnam with an amalgamation of men of various races and ethnicities who needed to rely on one another to survive. The former Marine Lieutenant saw this experience as, quote, a racial crucible that played an enormous, if often unappreciated role in moving America towards real integration. I will stop here. Thank you for your attention, and Rod and I will take any of your questions. So we have a first question. Go ahead, sir. Thank you so much for being here today. My name is Nathan Weisler, and I graduated a few years ago from Montgomery College here in the Washington, D.C. area, and my question is, in reading the book, one aspect of the book that I found particularly moving was reading about the courageous act of the daughter of John Palmer, Betty Palmer, in defending and protecting Martin Taylor, and I was wondering if you could speak some about that and what did you find to be particularly striking about that story? I'm so glad you brought that up. And of course, that's Banty Tim. That's the real story of Banty Tim. It's all true. I mean, I found great evidence of it. What the questionnaire was referring to is Palmer had... He rose up to the Major General. He actually became the first commander of the GAR. And when he brought... I think it was his man... His man actually became a soldier later in the USCT. When the members of the community came to oust him from being there, she met them at the house with a gun and told them that there was no way that they were going to take him away from there. It's just another example of the kind of things that need to be told that amongst tremendous racism, white supremacy, north and south, there were people of faith and belief who believed that there was something different in the United States and if the country was going to be a land where all were free, they would take the responsibility for themselves. That's what I found very striking about that. Would you agree with that? Yes, I would. Absolutely. Thank you. Oh, sure. So I see a question up there. So as... Hi, I'm Blake Lindsay. I'm actually with Ford's Theater just up the road. I saw this was going literally ran down here. And we're actually going to be running a teacher institute next week on the subject of Confederate monuments. So considering the time in which you spoke about, I'm curious about the GAR's reactions to sort of the south claiming victory through the memorial landscape, the erection of monuments and statues during the time you describe here. You can only imagine. I have an entire chapter about that. So hopefully maybe I'll have a chance to discuss that. Yeah, I'm picking up the book. So, all right, no spoilers. Okay. Okay. I did talk earlier this week particularly about the Lee statue that up until two years ago was in the national capital itself. It wasn't just the GAR, although they were the most prominent. Union veterans were outraged at the placing of statues of Confederate generals and soldiers in places of honor. In some cases in greater proportion than Union monuments. And that was one of the biggest things that the Grand Army actually looked at. And it spread to Memorial Day celebrations. And tragically what happened over time was that it became segregated celebrations where African American Union veterans began to be segregated by joint Union and Confederate celebrations, frankly to the shame of the Union veterans who became involved in that. So I want to make the point that things did evolve over time. But I do have an entire chapter on that. I'd be delighted to talk to you about that. Great. Thank you so much. Sure. So are there other questions? If not, let me ask you. So the core collection that you used at the manuscript division of the Library of Congress was a penmanship collection for 268 individuals, two of them white. No, no, all white except for two African American color. Thank you. You were a psychiatrist looking at that collection. How do you think that your credentials and your viewing of the material would have been different than someone like me who is not a psychiatrist? Very fair question. And let me give a shout out to someone who's not with us today, but certainly with me today. And that's our friend Dr. John Sellers. John asked me to look at the collection. They were going to retire that collection. And John thought that someone with psychiatric training, he used to continually call me his psychiatrist. I took a look at the collection for 10 minutes. And I went to the John's office. I said, you can't retire this collection. This is gold. I think there were a couple of things that I think was advantageous for me. I've done work with veterans throughout my career. That's number one. Number two, being a physician, I not only used the essay that's themselves, I then decided to find every one of those 268 men and what happened to them for the rest of their lives. That's where the National Archives came in. Where Mike Musick, who was then the specialist here in the Civil War, Mike taught me how to use the pension records and the military records. And those are medical records. So I had a tremendous advantage over a historian without any medical training because that's what they are. I got tremendous information from all the individual files, which then led me to more information, the newspaper archives, books they had written, other material I found. That's why it took me so long to do this. And so I think I had those advantages. The third thing is that most historians, including military historians, don't have any experience working with veterans. Most of them have never been to war themselves. The ones who have been have an advantage, obviously, in terms of that. But I think having been privileged to have worked with veterans and having worked for the VA, it gave me a leg up so that when I saw these essays, and they are essays, and they're magnificent, they so resonated with the work I was doing with veterans, to continue to do with veterans, that I knew that, first of all, I had to work on them. And I've lost track of the number of lectures I've done on this, and inevitably there are veterans and or active duty personnel in the audiences. When they hear about the left arm corps, they can't believe how it resonates with their own experience. And the fact that I immediately recognized what Jonathan Shea had talked about, that giving these men an opportunity to write about their experiences, was therapeutic. This is something we do ask veterans to do. They had no idea. It was only to get them to use their left arms. And when I found an incredibly low percentage of psychiatric difficulties in the left arm corps, I think one of the major reasons, frankly, is having entered the contest. Because that was therapeutic in itself, and we have found over time that such interventions do have long-term effects. So I didn't know that going in. Okay. So of those 268, you said that the great majority were Republicans. Did any become candidates, any become office holders? Could you speak a bit about that? I think two-thirds of them entered some kind of public service, whether elective, volunteer, or otherwise. Many of them went to work for the government. One man served five terms in Congress from the state of Michigan. Robert Penn and others served as pension attorneys. Now, I want to say this did not make them unique. Again, they were quite representative. What made them unique, in a sense, was they could not return to their professions for the most part because they could not do them physically. They turned to intellectual pursuits, as some of them pointed out, from mechanical power to brain power. Again, no GI bill. That didn't happen until after World War II. No VA, which didn't happen until 1930 when they took over the National Homes for Disabled Veterans. They did it on their own. They were from volunteer groups and their communities. So what I did find was that they served at all different levels, which was very much the case of Union veterans black and white. For the African-American veterans, particularly those who had been educated before the war. Again, the vast majority of men who had been enslaved could not read or write, but those who served in the armies learned how to read and write. In this episode, I think Edward Renke talks about, in his great book, A Grand Dome of Black Men, where he talks about African-American soldiers in the USCT walking sentry duty with one arm on the musket and the other hand with a reader, learning how to read. I mean, it gives you chills when you read this. Those are the kinds of stories that you do find. I will point out that one of the men whose essay hooked me was not surprisingly Robert Pinn, because Robert Pinn said that he wanted to fight for a black man's rights to untrammeled manhood. I read that, and I said, I've got to track these men down. And Robert Pinn is a remarkable individual, but representative, quite frankly, of so many of the men of color and what they did after the war. Thank you. So do I see almost a question there? I find it interesting that recently there was another book featuring the left arm core collection at LOC by Ali Johnson. And so having not yet read either of the books, I'm kind of curious if you can tell us a little bit about how you two have perhaps different approaches to the collection and what we would learn from hers that would be different from yours. I really can't address that. I'll be honest. I've been working on this collection since Dr. Sells asked me to look at it as he points out in the introduction to the book. Those who have worked on the collection have either been or started... I believe she's a professor of English, am I correct? Mm-hmm. Okay. You can't compare what I've been using with the collections as Rod asked me about in relation to what a historian might use or a professor of English might use. I believe her focus was on, again, the tremendous ability of them to write, which I absolutely agree with. But I've developed a lifetime cohort that I utilize. None of the other researchers have done that and utilized that. This is not the only book that I'll be using for the left arm core. This is just one of them. And so my approach is different. And the amount of information I have on the left arm core is different than the other research. I'm not in any way naysaying or saying their work. I'm not comparing the value of it, but the work is not the same. Yeah, no, it definitely... We have a lot to look forward to because it definitely speaks to the fact that you could probably write 10 more books based on what you've uncovered. So we've only just begun this adventure. Yeah, it's... And it is an adventure. As you know, with Civil War, you never reached the end because material always comes up. And that's what's so exciting about it. And there's also something else I do want to point out. And it was very clear in my...in appreciation in the book. I have an obligation myself. I have an obligation to the men and women past and present who have served in the American military and fought in wars. My obligation is to tell their story straight and to tell their story with as much of their words as possible. I predominantly use primary material. I use other historians' work, but that is not the majority of my work. I try and use my own interpretation and my own primary material. I think that's also in some cases a different approach from standard historiography and others. Yeah, no, thank you for your bottom-up history. So certainly those of us who work in the building know that better than anybody, and we just need more storytellers. So thanks for sharing your stories. I do one quick anecdote about the National Archives, which you'll get a kick out of. We had moved to New Jersey, and I kept coming back to do the research. And I would wait till the doors opened for nine o'clock for the researchers. And the security personnel got to know me. And one day one of the security people came to me and said, I've got to ask you this question. I said, shoot. He said, why are you the only one here with a huge smile on your face? When all the others, I said, because I'm going to go upstairs and I'm going to read a file on nine or 10 Union veterans that no one's opened, maybe since they died. And I can't imagine how exciting that is. I've never lost that excitement about this. I remember John Sellers. No, John never lost that excitement. He was always at the Library of Congress. John was so thrilled to show these things. And again, I have to say, being here, the work done in this building, and of course in the other archives, and the work that is done, the treasures that are here, I hope people know that and recognize the importance of that and the fact it's open, the fact it's available to us that we own it. Same thing in the Library of Congress. That's such a marvelous thing. So my shout-out is back to the folks of you who work here because the work is so important. Well, thank you for that comment. We certainly agree. Like I said, every box has got 10 more stories in it, so we just need more storytellers. So we appreciate your visit today. My pleasure. So, other questions or do we have time for one more? Well, I do have a question for you. Sure. There were two African-Americans that you were in that 268. One was William Hannibal Thomas. The way you write about Thomas at the end of the book is not the way you write about him at the beginning of the book? You're absolutely right. Because what he wrote about in the beginning was not he wrote about in the end. William Hannibal Thomas became known as Black Judas. He wrote a book in the book that came out the same year as Up From Slavery and one of W.B. The Boys' book. It is one of the most scathing denunciations of African-Americans written by an African-American. That's why he was called Black Judas. He wasn't writing that stuff in 1865 and 1866. He was actually in the seminary. And he's the one who posed the question to his fellow veterans, don't we deserve to be citizens? And what happened to William Hannibal Thomas over time, and by the way, there's a very good book that John David Smith wrote about him, and it did evolve. It was almost the antithesis of what happened with Robert Pinn. By the way, there were two more African-Americans in the Born Collection in the autograph books. Two men who had previously been enslaved, both of them from Maryland, so the four. And of course I've added other material I have on the USCT and of course from Black veterans from the JAR. So I have a question about the JAR. I would have thought that its main emphasis was working for pensions, working for assistance for widows. Can you speak about the proportion of their concentration, the quest for equality, the battle for equality versus veteran rights? Let's call it enlightened self-interest, which it was, and certainly Brian Matthew Jordan writes about mostly the pension activism in his book. But the other story I think is even more compelling, and frankly even more important, that they're looking to protect their own, which they did. The JAR was unique because it was a rank-and-file organization. Men rose to tremendous prestige within the JAR. For example, Robert Pinn was a sergeant. Others were privates who became national commanders. You don't have to be an officer, unlike the Loyal Legion, which they were all officers. They looked out for their own, and of course pensions would be part of that, widows would be part of that, but they became the most stalwart opposition to the lost cause, belief and mentality that started to take hold, and by the way still exists in looking at civil war history and interpretation. So one did not negate the other, but certainly what I have found is their adamant objection, all the way through including their adamant objection to the lease stature being placed in the capital, had nothing to do with pensions. It had to do with the legacy of what they had fought for, that they felt was being lost as the years went on and as their numbers dwindled. So clearly you had to end your book somewhere, and you end your book with the dispute in the 1890s about Virginia sending to the U.S. capital the statue of Lee in his uniform. Were there other things into the 20th century that you would have liked? Well actually that was 1910. So the lease stature was 1910. And I ended in 1913 just before World War I with three speeches given by three members of the left-on corps. So I cover essentially almost 50 years. But I also point out, because I'm telling the whole story, that there were members of the left-on corps and other Union veterans who forgot, who became members who stopped working for African American comrades, who agreed to participate in segregated reunions and commemorations. It's all in the book. And I see, Susan Clifton, are you fielding a question from the audience? Are YouTube books available for purchase? And signing. So after today's presentation, Steve has said that yes, he will be available to sign books. And all is well. So do we have additional time or is now a good time to end the program? We will end the program. We're ending the program. Thank you. So long. Take care.