WEBVTT - President Barack Obama & Malcolm Gladwell: How Reconstruction Still Defines America 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:16.420 Pushkin. 0:00:23.759 --> 0:00:28.479 Was Reconstruction America's greatest missed opportunity or the beginning of 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.800 a story that's still being written? When we were making 0:00:31.860 --> 0:00:35.680 Reconstruction the Unfinished Promise, I sat down with President Barack 0:00:35.700 --> 0:00:39.220 Obama and we had a conversation about the period after 0:00:39.239 --> 0:00:43.699 the Civil War, exploring why Reconstruction remains one of the 0:00:43.740 --> 0:00:48.090 most misunderstood chapters in in American history, from Frederick Douglass 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:52.850 and the Compromise of 1877 to voting rights, public education, 0:00:53.390 --> 0:00:57.190 and today's debates over democracy. The series examines how the 0:00:57.250 --> 0:01:01.490 past continues to echo in the present. It's a conversation 0:01:01.950 --> 0:01:06.899 about history, progress, and why democracy is never a finished project. 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:10.220 I hope you enjoy it and find it as interesting 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:12.899 and as prescient as I did. You can find the 0:01:12.940 --> 0:01:18.200 full series, Reconstruction, The Unfinished Promise, on Audible or wherever 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:35.219 you get podcasts. Reconstruction is not a tentative step. It 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.919 is one step forward and then one like. 0:01:38.100 --> 0:01:39.640 A really big step back. 0:01:40.419 --> 0:01:43.740 A couple steps back. And it's the amount of violence 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.220 and it's like it's almost a second Civil War. 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:54.810 What you see in the backlash to Reconstruction is the 0:01:54.870 --> 0:02:01.930 degree to which you never changed hearts and minds. coming 0:02:02.010 --> 0:02:02.960 out of the Civil War. 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.100 One of the things that motivated this project was the 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.519 people don't talk about, Reconstruction is the great forgotten era 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.260 in American history, and I'm still puzzled as to why. 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:22.710 Well, I don't think it's that puzzling. The mythology of America, 0:02:22.730 --> 0:02:30.250 about us breaking away from the crown, declaring our independence, 0:02:30.870 --> 0:02:38.130 all men are created equal, the yeoman farmers, Walt Whitman, 0:02:39.150 --> 0:02:42.610 there's a whole narrative about who we are as Americans. 0:02:44.390 --> 0:02:51.300 And there's this inconvenient fact, which is that all this 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:57.200 happened at the same time as you had a economy 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:02.910 in the South based on slavery. chattel slavery. And a 0:03:03.090 --> 0:03:10.010 bloody war was fought to, in part, end slavery, maintain 0:03:10.050 --> 0:03:17.740 the Union. And then there was a reconciliation between North 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:25.240 and South that essentially reinstated or preserved a caste system 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.510 and a hierarchy that the country didn't want to acknowledge. 0:03:30.380 --> 0:03:35.860 until really the second civil rights movement and the upheavals 0:03:35.940 --> 0:03:39.000 of the 60s. And so it's not surprising that the 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:43.220 narratives that emerged in school books or in Hollywood movies 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:52.880 were not focused on this glaring contradiction to how America 0:03:53.820 --> 0:03:57.360 understood itself and how it wanted to present itself to 0:03:57.380 --> 0:03:58.700 the world and also to its kids. 0:03:59.410 --> 0:04:02.010 Is there a moment when real– when does real democracy 0:04:02.050 --> 0:04:05.490 begin in America? Is that a fair question? 0:04:05.810 --> 0:04:09.770 It is a fair question. I think it's important not 0:04:09.890 --> 0:04:18.360 to undersell the achievements of the American Revolution. The Declaration 0:04:18.380 --> 0:04:27.070 of Independence, a war against the crown, the establishment of principles– 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:32.120 embodied in the Bill of Rights. The notion of citizenship 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.680 as opposed to you are a subject. The notion of 0:04:36.740 --> 0:04:44.440 representative government as opposed to some hereditary monarchy or aristocracy. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.460 The breakup of a feudal understanding of how societies are organized. 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:56.400 That's a big deal. That's a seminal moment in human history. 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:02.900 And the American Revolution helps to accomplish that. And so 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:10.440 you have a pretty radical experiment from the start in 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:20.430 terms of is it possible for people to organize themselves 0:05:20.890 --> 0:05:28.000 and through some representative mechanism have a voice in their 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:35.380 collective lives. But what is absolutely true is that it 0:05:35.460 --> 0:05:41.339 is a partial democracy. And it's not just because black 0:05:41.380 --> 0:05:45.480 people are not recognized as we part of, we, the people, 0:05:46.790 --> 0:05:49.970 women are just sort of the people because they don't 0:05:50.010 --> 0:05:54.730 get a chance to vote. Initially men without property are 0:05:54.770 --> 0:06:02.130 not considered, uh, part of the decision-making process. You have 0:06:02.770 --> 0:06:08.410 a chamber, the Senate, in which there's no popular vote. 0:06:11.470 --> 0:06:15.620 And so there are a whole range of elements to 0:06:17.280 --> 0:06:21.260 what we would now consider to be a true democracy 0:06:21.280 --> 0:06:25.920 that are missing from that initial experiment. What makes Reconstruction 0:06:25.980 --> 0:06:34.170 so significant is out of the ashes of this horrific 0:06:35.490 --> 0:06:43.920 civil war. You amend the constitution and you begin to 0:06:44.060 --> 0:06:53.640 rebuild and reorganize how democracy is supposed to function in 0:06:53.700 --> 0:06:56.400 ways that fill some of those holes, fill some of 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:01.370 those gaps start resolving some of those contradictions that were 0:07:04.070 --> 0:07:08.130 there from the very beginning. The reason Reconstruction is such 0:07:08.180 --> 0:07:13.480 a fascinating story is here's a moment, the first real 0:07:13.540 --> 0:07:19.240 moment since the founding, in which this idea of perfecting 0:07:19.260 --> 0:07:26.230 the union is attempted in a fairly significant way. And 0:07:26.950 --> 0:07:30.380 it peters out. It doesn't get all the way there. 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:36.020 But what it does is it leaves all these embers. 0:07:36.820 --> 0:07:42.670 It leaves all these ideas and possibilities and points in 0:07:42.940 --> 0:07:50.130 certain directions that then allow future generations to draw on 0:07:50.290 --> 0:07:56.780 and inspires others. And it gives us a sense of 0:07:56.870 --> 0:08:00.720 how this process of perfecting the union, of creating a 0:08:00.860 --> 0:08:07.190 true democracy, is not this static project where, okay, we 0:08:07.210 --> 0:08:09.390 got the words on the page, now it's done, but 0:08:09.450 --> 0:08:12.090 is rather this continuous exercise. 0:08:12.130 --> 0:08:19.210 It makes me think sometimes that our expectations are too high. Like, 0:08:19.230 --> 0:08:22.840 I remember having a conversation with someone about segregation, about 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:27.530 how the first generation and second generation results from integrating 0:08:27.570 --> 0:08:33.489 schools are disappointing. And there's one answer, which is to 0:08:33.870 --> 0:08:35.540 sort of wring your hands. The other answer is, well, 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.020 why would you expect it to get better in 30 years? 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:43.419 Why shouldn't we be asking these questions in 75 years? Like, 0:08:44.459 --> 0:08:47.099 these things take time, right? Maybe we should be interested 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:50.749 in how the children and grandchildren of the people who 0:08:51.530 --> 0:08:53.530 first went to integrated schools, how they fare. 0:08:53.890 --> 0:08:59.179 I think you are exactly right. That there's a way 0:08:59.260 --> 0:09:12.559 to look at Reconstruction that is shocked and despairing. And 0:09:12.579 --> 0:09:16.439 you say, oh, look what happens. You have this moment 0:09:16.979 --> 0:09:20.459 in which America might have gotten it all right, and 0:09:21.290 --> 0:09:30.530 then suddenly it all went to hell. And from our 0:09:30.589 --> 0:09:36.189 vantage point, that is the way I obviously see it. 0:09:36.209 --> 0:09:42.520 That's how you feel it, right? The incapacity for people 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.079 in the South, white people in the South, essentially, to 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:51.720 embrace this new possibility of a multiracial democracy. On the 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:56.020 other hand, what we know of humans everywhere, what we 0:09:56.059 --> 0:10:03.959 know of human history— is that this idea that a 0:10:04.670 --> 0:10:09.130 group of people have been utterly defeated in a savage, 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:17.089 bloody war and their entire lives have been upended and 0:10:17.569 --> 0:10:21.689 their conceptions of themselves and their status and their role 0:10:21.729 --> 0:10:26.809 in the world has been shattered. And the notion that 0:10:27.809 --> 0:10:32.449 they would suddenly go, oh, okay, and that this would 0:10:32.540 --> 0:10:37.359 be an easy process that you could complete in 10 0:10:37.359 --> 0:10:45.260 or 15 or 20 years, well, that defies everything we 0:10:45.319 --> 0:10:51.099 know about people. And so what is remarkable to some 0:10:51.140 --> 0:10:57.160 degree when I look at Reconstruction is how radical the 0:10:57.219 --> 0:11:02.279 experiment was. Mm-hmm. The fact that you had essentially a 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:10.319 Northern occupying army backed by radical Republicans in Congress who 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:22.630 are willing to consistently override the racist sentiments of Johnson, 0:11:22.670 --> 0:11:33.530 the president, and push through legislation and constitutional amendments that 0:11:35.370 --> 0:11:43.349 offer the promise of citizenship and equal rights to people 0:11:43.420 --> 0:11:48.780 who just three or four or five years earlier were slaves, 0:11:49.500 --> 0:11:52.760 or if they were freedmen, according to the Supreme Court 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:59.309 under Dred Scott, did not enjoy any rights that white 0:11:59.370 --> 0:12:03.920 people We're bound to respect. You have the highest court 0:12:03.939 --> 0:12:07.239 in the land just a few years earlier saying black 0:12:07.260 --> 0:12:13.500 people in America have no rights that the courts or 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:16.979 white people generally are bound to respect. And now suddenly 0:12:17.020 --> 0:12:25.989 you have a victorious union that is trying to impose 0:12:26.170 --> 0:12:33.650 on a big chunk of the population we're entirely rewriting 0:12:33.689 --> 0:12:40.449 the rules of your relationship between a group of people, which, 0:12:40.530 --> 0:12:47.589 by the way, we think of as a minority with 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:51.300 respect to the entire U.S. population, but in places like 0:12:51.959 --> 0:12:57.939 Mississippi and South Carolina, we're a majority. And throughout the South, 0:12:58.359 --> 0:13:04.119 constituted 35 40 of the population and and white folks 0:13:04.179 --> 0:13:08.339 are sitting there they're aware how badly these people have 0:13:08.359 --> 0:13:10.880 been treated they're aware of what they've done to them 0:13:11.620 --> 0:13:19.120 they're harboring uh memories of of the cruelties that have 0:13:20.939 --> 0:13:25.460 been perpetrated on these folks and now suddenly they're seeing 0:13:25.479 --> 0:13:28.380 them in congress and they're seeing them open up stores 0:13:28.439 --> 0:13:33.050 and they're on the streets and and and so in 0:13:33.109 --> 0:13:41.059 that sense what i'm i actually always think of reconstruction 0:13:41.449 --> 0:13:45.859 as yes a tragedy but also. 0:13:47.300 --> 0:13:52.019 A hopeful sign a necessary tragedy a necessary tragedy and 0:13:52.429 --> 0:13:54.969 one that Of course it wasn't finished. 0:13:56.209 --> 0:14:00.790 Of course it wasn't completed. It was inevitable that there 0:14:00.829 --> 0:14:06.120 was going to be this massive backlash and a violent one. 0:14:06.260 --> 0:14:14.239 And that in turn, you'd then see an ongoing struggle 0:14:14.300 --> 0:14:16.800 that would continue for decades. 0:14:17.140 --> 0:14:20.760 Is there a case to be made that the intensity 0:14:20.940 --> 0:14:25.029 and the regularity of the backlashes that we see in 0:14:25.070 --> 0:14:28.900 American politics is something distinctive to our political culture and 0:14:28.930 --> 0:14:29.499 social culture? 0:14:30.060 --> 0:14:37.080 I would say that there is, there's been a lack 0:14:37.300 --> 0:14:43.960 of a full reckoning in the United States that makes 0:14:44.100 --> 0:14:46.560 these issues come up again and again and again. And 0:14:46.580 --> 0:14:53.770 that Some societies, at least, have done a better job 0:14:55.930 --> 0:15:01.910 in looking at their past and saying, that did not work. 0:15:02.570 --> 0:15:06.550 And a national consensus is then built around, let's not 0:15:06.670 --> 0:15:18.739 do that again. As Du Bois said, the issue of 0:15:18.780 --> 0:15:21.080 the 20th century, he said at the time, was the 0:15:21.100 --> 0:15:23.359 color line turns out the issue of the 21st century 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.590 is also the color line. It probably 22nd century. It 0:15:28.630 --> 0:15:33.050 may be. Um, I don't know that it, I wouldn't 0:15:33.090 --> 0:15:36.810 say though, that it's unique to, to the United States. 0:15:36.870 --> 0:15:40.520 I mean, if you think about, um, the experience of 0:15:41.229 --> 0:15:47.660 Indian democracy and, and, you know, you have partition and 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:54.160 millions are killed and it, Muslims and Hindus in India 0:15:54.180 --> 0:15:56.220 are trying to figure out how to deal with this stuff. 0:15:56.580 --> 0:16:00.260 And now you have, you know, a rise of Hindu 0:16:00.300 --> 0:16:06.340 nationalism and struggles around that, uh, issues that once you 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:11.880 thought were resolved in India, you look at Northern Ireland, 0:16:12.260 --> 0:16:15.739 you know, the good Friday agreements have held, but anytime 0:16:15.780 --> 0:16:21.530 you visit there, it's always interesting as, as a, African-American 0:16:21.830 --> 0:16:25.190 to visit a place like Northern Ireland and you listen 0:16:25.250 --> 0:16:34.670 to the degree of segregation and continued bitterness, anger, suspicion 0:16:35.729 --> 0:16:39.610 between people that to our eyes look exactly the same. 0:16:41.229 --> 0:16:43.910 They're living in an area the size of tiny. 0:16:43.989 --> 0:16:51.550 Yes, but the now self-imposed segregation that remains is as 0:16:51.650 --> 0:16:55.610 powerful as anything we would see here. And it's hard 0:16:55.630 --> 0:16:58.850 to understand, right? Because it's not part of us. 0:16:59.380 --> 0:17:02.580 There's a difference between, in that case, what you have 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:07.320 are tentative steps. So you would say in Northern Ireland, 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:11.419 there's no question that the country is much better off 0:17:11.460 --> 0:17:13.580 today than it was in 1975. 0:17:13.580 --> 0:17:15.960 Well, as we would say about the United States, there's 0:17:15.980 --> 0:17:18.650 no question that you and I sitting here Yes. Having 0:17:18.670 --> 0:17:23.610 a conversation about Reconstruction would not have been happening in 1880. 0:17:23.610 --> 0:17:27.520 But Reconstruction is a slightly— it' s not a tentative step. It 0:17:27.620 --> 0:17:30.480 is one step forward and then one, like— A. 0:17:30.500 --> 0:17:33.020 Really big step back. A really— Several steps back. 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:33.980 A couple steps back. 0:17:34.020 --> 0:17:34.260 Yeah. 0:17:34.300 --> 0:17:37.859 Like, the intensity of that is what's so— and it's the 0:17:37.900 --> 0:17:42.430 amount of violence and it's like— it' s almost a second Civil War. 0:17:42.450 --> 0:17:50.610 Well, it is the— What you see in the backlash 0:17:50.630 --> 0:18:01.690 to Reconstruction is the degree to which you never changed 0:18:01.750 --> 0:18:06.660 hearts and minds coming out of the Civil War. There 0:18:06.740 --> 0:18:16.320 wasn't the sort of not just defeat militarily, but also 0:18:16.340 --> 0:18:24.530 a a restructuring of the understanding that Southern whites had 0:18:25.150 --> 0:18:29.150 about what their privileges and rights were and how their 0:18:29.190 --> 0:18:37.330 society should be organized. And so they effectively retreated for 0:18:37.390 --> 0:18:44.510 a while and then they waited out the federal government 0:18:44.870 --> 0:18:48.400 and waited until the occupation ended, essentially, and then they 0:18:48.530 --> 0:18:57.470 reconstituted a version of their society that they preferred. And 0:18:59.250 --> 0:19:05.460 this is where the role of history comes in, how 0:19:06.140 --> 0:19:12.380 Reconstruction was depicted, the stories that were told in school 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:17.200 books and in Birth of a Nation books, about how 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:25.230 terrible these ignorant Black people suddenly taking over government and 0:19:26.870 --> 0:19:36.790 assaulting our women and running down our economies and how 0:19:36.830 --> 0:19:41.870 we wrested it back. The whole lost cause mythology, which 0:19:41.930 --> 0:19:45.850 we're even now still reckoning with because... You have all 0:19:45.870 --> 0:19:54.860 these monuments to the valor of the Confederate soldiers, the 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.330 romance of Gone with the Wind. These are all things 0:19:58.370 --> 0:20:00.580 that we grew up in. but it had to do 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:10.850 with a very specific cultural project, which was to justify, solidify, 0:20:11.850 --> 0:20:16.550 rationalize the maintenance of a caste system. And that never 0:20:16.650 --> 0:20:17.450 fully went away. 0:20:17.470 --> 0:20:20.540 Yeah. I wonder... This is going to seem like a 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:25.000 trivial suggestion, but I feel there's great importance to these 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:29.260 symbolic things. Part of the problem is we say that 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:35.250 the Civil War ended with... We mark the end of 0:20:35.270 --> 0:20:39.750 the Civil War with the end of the initial military phase. Really, 0:20:39.770 --> 0:20:42.670 the Civil War ends in 1877 with the collapse of Reconstruction. 0:20:43.890 --> 0:20:46.149 If we thought about the war that way, then we 0:20:46.170 --> 0:20:47.190 understand it very differently. 0:20:47.270 --> 0:20:53.659 Because essentially what you have is... An armistice. Essentially what 0:20:53.680 --> 0:21:01.580 you have is in 1877 with the compromise that year, 0:21:03.510 --> 0:21:08.710 that's the real peace treaty between North and South. And 0:21:08.750 --> 0:21:15.780 the North essentially says, okay, you guys are readmitted and 0:21:15.900 --> 0:21:20.700 fully redeemed. The union's been saved. the initial project that 0:21:20.740 --> 0:21:27.270 Lincoln called for when he initiated the Civil War in 0:21:27.290 --> 0:21:34.630 the face of succession. That problem's been solved. Technically, slavery 0:21:34.710 --> 0:21:42.350 no longer exists. The 13th Amendment survives. And otherwise, we're 0:21:42.390 --> 0:21:46.330 back to you guys running things how you want down there, 0:21:46.370 --> 0:21:49.570 and we'll run things how we want up here. And 0:21:49.610 --> 0:21:58.100 that was the true peace treaty. And it obviously left 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:05.960 Black folks in the South extraordinarily vulnerable and in part 0:22:06.020 --> 0:22:14.370 prompted the Great Migration and it shaped our history. But 0:22:14.650 --> 0:22:18.680 you're absolutely right that what had what it did was 0:22:18.860 --> 0:22:29.000 to allow for this obfuscation, this, this, this erasure of, um, 0:22:29.340 --> 0:22:32.580 what the stakes were and what the possibilities were. But, 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:42.930 but that's what, um, that that's how our culture was structured. 0:22:43.610 --> 0:22:48.530 As I said, to justify, to reconcile, um, this glaring 0:22:48.790 --> 0:22:57.330 contradiction at the heart of our self-conception. And the degree 0:22:57.350 --> 0:23:05.580 to which these really hard questions were never fully processed, 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:10.400 I think accounts for the reason why you can still 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:19.800 get these fierce episodes of backlash. Because They've never really 0:23:19.860 --> 0:23:28.620 been talked about, surfaced, resolved. There hasn't been both acknowledgement 0:23:31.450 --> 0:23:36.850 and accountability, which means there also hasn't been the possibilities 0:23:36.890 --> 0:23:43.290 of forgiveness and reconciliation. It all just washes around. 0:23:48.800 --> 0:23:51.850 The Compromise of 1877, I mean, it's such a Pontius 0:23:51.930 --> 0:23:58.210 Pilate moment. And it makes me wonder about the kind 0:23:58.250 --> 0:24:02.870 of psychology of the compromisers. I mean, it's weird because 0:24:03.370 --> 0:24:07.670 you just went through, a dozen years ago, this unbelievably 0:24:07.750 --> 0:24:12.390 bloody conflict. I mean, you sacrificed hundreds of thousands of 0:24:12.430 --> 0:24:18.240 your countrymen's lives. You devastated the entire country. And then 0:24:18.310 --> 0:24:23.370 after 12 years past and you're like, well, kind of shrug, 0:24:23.410 --> 0:24:23.750 let's just. 0:24:24.590 --> 0:24:25.050 Never mind? 0:24:25.390 --> 0:24:28.200 Never mind. It's like a never mind moment. It's like 0:24:28.320 --> 0:24:31.760 they wash their hands and they say, you know, what 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:36.200 does Pontius Pilate say? Take this from me? I've forgotten that. But, like, 0:24:37.780 --> 0:24:40.760 I struggle to kind of understand what's going through the 0:24:41.320 --> 0:24:43.250 minds of those when they shrug. 0:24:43.860 --> 0:24:45.109 I think one of the things is. 0:24:47.950 --> 0:24:53.920 Important to understand, we tend to look at all these 0:24:54.000 --> 0:25:06.220 issues through the lens of race entirely. And the truth is, 0:25:06.660 --> 0:25:12.030 is that there are all these other factors that in 0:25:12.090 --> 0:25:16.859 the minds of these politicians at the time. Mm-hmm. are 0:25:16.940 --> 0:25:23.070 just as important and as relevant and their notions of states' rights. 0:25:23.930 --> 0:25:29.629 And there are notions of the limits and constraints on 0:25:29.850 --> 0:25:37.060 federal government power. And there are notions of commerce and money. 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:42.060 And all these things are happening in the midst of 0:25:42.220 --> 0:25:54.940 a really wildly unregulated, fluctuating, wild west economic atmosphere. You're 0:25:54.960 --> 0:26:04.760 getting these huge depressions and massive unemployment. And there are 0:26:05.260 --> 0:26:09.080 debates about labor rights in the north as people are 0:26:09.120 --> 0:26:14.010 getting into factories. And there's agitation among workers for better 0:26:14.060 --> 0:26:19.750 working conditions and better wages. And And so you have 0:26:20.250 --> 0:26:30.340 elites who have a whole host of interests. And some 0:26:30.400 --> 0:26:36.740 of them think how black people are being treated and 0:26:36.800 --> 0:26:41.900 how we restructure our democracy is of the highest priority. 0:26:43.170 --> 0:26:47.680 And other people are thinking, you know what? We need 0:26:47.700 --> 0:26:52.760 to stabilize the economy. And some are thinking, you know, 0:26:54.400 --> 0:26:56.280 I'm trying to build a railroad here and I need 0:26:56.700 --> 0:27:01.619 a deal with this other legislator. And some of them 0:27:01.660 --> 0:27:06.900 are thinking we can't maintain taxes that are required in 0:27:06.970 --> 0:27:12.990 order for us to keep federal troops occupying these Confederate 0:27:13.030 --> 0:27:18.800 states in perpetuity because we have other expenses. And so 0:27:20.640 --> 0:27:26.020 for us, looking back, we're saying to ourselves, what other 0:27:26.100 --> 0:27:32.180 issue was relevant? But for them at the time, it 0:27:33.680 --> 0:27:37.770 was one of the issues that was relevant. And I 0:27:37.840 --> 0:27:42.950 think that part of what also makes the Compromise of 0:27:42.950 --> 0:27:52.490 1877 so relevant bitter in some cases, certainly for African 0:27:52.510 --> 0:27:56.480 Americans when you know that history, is there is an 0:27:56.740 --> 0:28:08.400 echo across American history of at some point even whites 0:28:08.440 --> 0:28:14.340 who are sympathetic to the cause of equality and human 0:28:14.400 --> 0:28:23.910 rights only being willing to carry out that principle so far. Yeah. Right? 0:28:24.370 --> 0:28:28.190 You know, going back to this question of how inadequately 0:28:28.650 --> 0:28:32.250 we have accounted for this period, if we're doing American 0:28:32.290 --> 0:28:35.290 history over again, not only do we say the Civil 0:28:35.310 --> 0:28:38.770 War ends in 1877, but Frederick Douglass is a founding father. 0:28:39.590 --> 0:28:40.170 He really is. 0:28:40.270 --> 0:28:40.770 He really is. 0:28:42.370 --> 0:28:47.960 You know, I... There is... And that's why it's so 0:28:48.020 --> 0:28:57.080 interesting to see today, this contest over what is the 0:28:57.140 --> 0:29:01.480 dominant narrative of America. And, you know, you have an 0:29:01.560 --> 0:29:07.560 administration that is trying to change, you know, the plaques 0:29:07.710 --> 0:29:09.990 at national monuments. 0:29:10.150 --> 0:29:14.610 Like they don't have enough on their hands. Yeah, right. 0:29:15.890 --> 0:29:20.890 But it does speak to the power of stories. There 0:29:21.070 --> 0:29:30.860 are figures that um because they hold political office because 0:29:30.900 --> 0:29:34.640 they are men because they are white because they are 0:29:34.700 --> 0:29:40.080 titans of industry because they hold traditional stations that we 0:29:40.140 --> 0:29:46.390 understand uh have power um we think of them as 0:29:46.950 --> 0:29:50.200 the history makers right and you have all these people 0:29:51.480 --> 0:29:57.940 who may not have occupied formal positions of power who 0:29:59.820 --> 0:30:09.030 entirely shape or bend the course of our narrative. 0:30:09.170 --> 0:30:11.820 And this is why I think he belongs in that 0:30:11.880 --> 0:30:15.180 kind of pantheon of founding father, that he sees the best. 0:30:15.540 --> 0:30:15.700 Yes. 0:30:16.040 --> 0:30:19.360 And he also is clear eyed about who we are 0:30:19.400 --> 0:30:21.860 and what we're capable of. And that's, if you read 0:30:21.900 --> 0:30:24.780 the Federalist Papers, that's what they are. They are, Madison 0:30:24.840 --> 0:30:28.040 is both, has a vision and he's also incredibly. 0:30:28.180 --> 0:30:28.500 Correct. 0:30:28.920 --> 0:30:30.770 He's aware of like, this thing could follow, you know, 0:30:30.790 --> 0:30:35.210 what's the favorite, what's the famous Ben Franklin? Uh, if, uh, 0:30:35.970 --> 0:30:38.170 We have a republic if we can keep it. 0:30:38.230 --> 0:30:39.230 If we can keep it. Exactly. 0:30:39.290 --> 0:30:41.170 Same thing. This is a grand thing, but it's going 0:30:41.210 --> 0:30:41.690 to be hard. 0:30:41.730 --> 0:30:53.790 And that's what Douglass understands. And that sensibility is what 0:30:54.710 --> 0:30:59.310 we want in our leaders. And it is a sensibility 0:30:59.430 --> 0:31:07.250 that we want our kids to learn from history. at 0:31:07.290 --> 0:31:11.710 least I do, right? And that is not some rosy-eyed, 0:31:11.730 --> 0:31:20.890 you know, sanitized version of American history, but a clear-eyed 0:31:20.950 --> 0:31:27.560 understanding of, yes, we stole land, we took land from 0:31:28.120 --> 0:31:35.800 previous occupants. America was built on violence and subjugation. And 0:31:36.940 --> 0:31:44.750 and chicanery, and confidence men, and shenanigans, and corruption. But 0:31:44.820 --> 0:31:56.410 it is also this amazing expression of human possibility. Thomas Jefferson, yes, 0:31:56.470 --> 0:32:04.650 he had slaves. And, not but, and he penned some 0:32:04.690 --> 0:32:09.030 of the most important words that were ever written in 0:32:09.070 --> 0:32:15.670 the annals of humanity. And being able to maintain those 0:32:15.750 --> 0:32:22.120 two ideas at the same time is what both can 0:32:22.180 --> 0:32:28.840 inspire you to keep going and make the world and 0:32:28.880 --> 0:32:32.660 the country better and not sink in despair, but also 0:32:33.080 --> 0:32:41.530 to understand the challenges, and the persistence that will be 0:32:41.590 --> 0:32:45.230 required to overcome those challenges if you want to get 0:32:45.250 --> 0:32:46.450 to where we want to go. 0:32:46.470 --> 0:32:49.970 I want to go back to something that we skipped 0:32:50.030 --> 0:32:52.390 over that I've been thinking about as you were talking about. 0:32:53.760 --> 0:32:56.960 Is it useful at all to wonder about what the 0:32:57.000 --> 0:33:02.840 country looks like if Reconstruction had not been defeated? Is 0:33:02.880 --> 0:33:03.780 that even a possibility? 0:33:04.460 --> 0:33:11.490 I think you can imagine scenarios in which somebody other 0:33:11.530 --> 0:33:19.260 than Andrew Johnson is Lincoln's vice president. Either Lincoln doesn't 0:33:19.300 --> 0:33:25.000 get shot, Booth misses, or his vice president is somebody 0:33:25.060 --> 0:33:28.630 who is a wiser, more thoughtful leader. 0:33:29.050 --> 0:33:33.090 We should briefly pause on What a disaster, Andrew Johnson. 0:33:33.150 --> 0:33:37.270 I mean, Andrew Johnson is like— He's terrible. He's like— it' s 0:33:36.090 --> 0:33:37.850 really hard to find somebody as bad as that. And 0:33:37.870 --> 0:33:40.250 there is some stiff competition of late. 0:33:40.410 --> 0:33:45.890 There is, just generally. But he's terrible, right? He just— he' s petty. 0:33:45.930 --> 0:33:50.710 He's small-minded. He's a drunk. He is not particularly deft 0:33:51.390 --> 0:33:58.560 in handling his own party, the other party. And so 0:33:58.660 --> 0:34:03.270 he's a disaster. You can imagine a situation in which 0:34:03.590 --> 0:34:08.170 a better leader, a better statesman, is working with a 0:34:08.250 --> 0:34:14.520 Republican Congress, being more strategic about how are we going 0:34:14.590 --> 0:34:25.799 to institutionalize both the Reconstruction legislation that's been passed? How 0:34:25.839 --> 0:34:28.900 do we make sure that the Freedmen Bureau efforts stick? 0:34:31.819 --> 0:34:37.120 The 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments are carried out effectively. What 0:34:37.600 --> 0:34:40.919 can we compromise? Because we know there's going to be 0:34:40.960 --> 0:34:45.239 resistance down there. What can't we compromise? You can imagine 0:34:45.359 --> 0:34:49.700 somebody working that through in a way that you did 0:34:49.779 --> 0:35:03.930 not end up with a violent, brutal reinstitution of cast 0:35:04.430 --> 0:35:10.329 and the restrictions on Black people's ability to just live 0:35:10.350 --> 0:35:17.920 their lives and the lynchings and the horrors of that era. 0:35:21.219 --> 0:35:27.350 And had that process been less violent, even if it 0:35:28.250 --> 0:35:32.100 wasn't as quick as from modern standards we would now judge. 0:35:33.000 --> 0:35:39.840 Let's say that there was enforcement, but there were still 0:35:40.919 --> 0:35:44.330 social codes about no racial mixing or we're not going 0:35:44.350 --> 0:35:49.829 to take on anti-miscegenation laws. You can picture something that 0:35:50.129 --> 0:35:58.339 ends up being more gradual, gentler, not perfect, but ushering 0:35:58.419 --> 0:36:01.910 in maybe quicker the kinds of changes that we would 0:36:01.950 --> 0:36:06.820 end up seeing come about in the 60s and the 70s. 0:36:06.810 --> 0:36:10.060 It would be less wrenching. But, you know, I mean, 0:36:10.089 --> 0:36:13.209 that's speculation. That's true about all of human history, right? 0:36:13.980 --> 0:36:18.860 I mean, there are all kinds of junctures and moments 0:36:18.919 --> 0:36:23.459 that we look at and say, if humans weren't so 0:36:23.540 --> 0:36:28.979 stupid or so venal or so greedy or so cowardly 0:36:29.100 --> 0:36:32.030 or ignorant... Things could have been better. 0:36:32.390 --> 0:36:34.549 There is this thing that like, it is so often 0:36:34.569 --> 0:36:38.400 the case that at pivotal moments in history, we're blessed 0:36:38.460 --> 0:36:42.560 with extraordinary leaders, right? We have FDR during the Depression. 0:36:42.600 --> 0:36:47.440 England gets Churchill, you know, and we're like, in this era, 0:36:47.480 --> 0:36:50.339 we're two thirds of the way there. We have Douglas, 0:36:50.819 --> 0:36:54.620 we have Lincoln. And then, you know, the third leg 0:36:54.680 --> 0:36:56.819 of the stool is this. 0:36:57.419 --> 0:37:01.660 Yeah, I mean, it is always... It is a classic 0:37:01.719 --> 0:37:08.830 example of this debate about history and how much of 0:37:08.910 --> 0:37:14.009 it is determined by amazing individuals and how much of 0:37:14.149 --> 0:37:19.110