Full podcast episode: th-cam.com/video/GvX-heRWFfA/w-d-xo.html Lex Fridman podcast channel: th-cam.com/users/lexfridman Guest bio: Jeremi Suri is a historian at UT Austin.
@@randyfuentes4201 I mean yes and no. Almost apples and oranges. Formal interviewing? Yes. But Joe is a much more laid back host and he excels at making his guests just as laid back. I mean damn how many people have gotten in a little trouble for saying something on Rogan?
as a engineer why dont you or anyone else ever give credit to John Ericsson, a swedish inventor/enigeer ! I may be biased because he is from the same small town as me,but he ( USS Monitor) was a very important part of the north winning
Actually that wasn't real. It was a documentary by Werner Herzog. The real Vampirical, Historical standard is the reality TV show Abraham Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis starting as himself Abraham Lincoln.
Jeremi Suri was my history professor about 15 years ago. He was one of the best teachers I ever had in terms of making the learning experience engaging. I sometimes disagreed with his historical interpretations or biases, but I still couldn’t wait to go to his lectures everyday.
@@lauterbath22 yes indeed! I think I had him 2009 maybe? So almost but not quite 15 years ago. It was a fun semester because our small group discussion TA quit or had something come up, so professor Suri led our discussions too. He was a great guy. After that class I used to run into him around campus and he always made time to chat and catch up.
Grants alcoholism is widely misrepresented. He was at worst a binge drinker, but he only drank when there was nothing of importance going on. He was also one of if not the greatest president in terms of fighting for the civil rights of freed slaves. He created the justice department, which he used to crush the KKK. During reconstruction, the group was at its height in power and would not see a resurgence until the 20th century.
The Ku Klux Klan wasn’t crushed by any governmental department man. After they scared off or killed the politicians they wanted gone they just disbanded it themselves.
He also wanted to be a mathematics professor, and was disappointed when he arrived at West Point to find it still open. He then served with valour during the Mexican war, where that cool ass image of him you always see in movies where he side saddled his horse actually DID happen. He later underwent extreme poverty, and wrote his memoirs in the last few weeks of his life in order to leave his family money. The dude was extraordinary, and vastly more tolerant, intelligent, loyal, patriotic and mentally tough than Robert E. Lee ever was. He's constantly slandered by Neo-Confederates, who overrate Robert E. Lee massively. There were far more greater and interesting generals in the CSA than Lee, even if their views on slavery were abhorrent.
The Civil War didn’t officially end at Appomattox. Only the surrender of Lee’s army occurred then. It effectively ended then and there but fighting continued and there were more surrenders. The war legally ended August 20, 1866.
@@jasonweitzel4393 try actually picking up a history book and read it. It literally has absolutely nothing to do with Juneteenth. But to educate you Juneteenth is the day that news of the emancipation proclamation reached the farthest southern point of Texas and therefore all of the confederacy. That's literally all it is. Nothing more. Which the emancipation proclamation didn't guarantee anything and only applied to the south so even after the war the slaves in the North were still SOL. In fact northern.slave owners were exempt from both that and the 13th amendment and were allowed to keep their slaves until death of either the slave or the owner, though you weren't allowed to buy or sell slaves anymore. News flash this information is not only in history books, but also widely reported in the newspapers of the time.
As a former alcoholic, I find it fascinating that an alcoholic oversaw Reconstruction and the entire country didn't fall into total disrepair within weeks.
@@Trajan3 lol hey there are some famous potheads like Shakespeare. I think there is like a tolerance gene that passes down and makes for very efficient drug takers.
A couple of key points that I think were understated was how close the election was and the fact that Lincoln thought he would probably lose going into it. So choosing Andrew Johnson was a must have at the time. Also, Lincoln did want to take a reconciliation approach with the South so it is a bit questionable to say that Johnson went off the rails letting southerners who rebelled back into power. I'm not so sure Lincoln wouldn't have done the same. I think Lincoln would have been a lot more effective as the powerful winning president. One of the truly great ironies of the civil war was that Lincoln's assassination was awful for the South. It sent the South back a 100 years and set the tone for Jim Crow and all sorts of issues downstream.
@MudPig6110 Right. I think if Lincoln would’ve lived he would’ve been even better to the south than Johnson. Paraphrasing here but didn’t Lincoln say about Jefferson Davis “as long as I don’t know where he is, let him be” or something similar. This guy is acting like there would’ve been trials for war crimes and hangings of southern leaders and I just don’t see that happening from a guy who was still calling these men brothers. Maybe he wouldn’t have let them back into power but he would’ve still given the power to the southern people in general and the reconstruction wouldn’t have been nearly as harsh as it was IMO. I can get behind even great leaders having a contingency plan but Andrew Johnson was the plan. He was hard headed and a friend to the southern people. He wasn’t a good leader nor if this was any other time in history would he have been but Lincoln needed someone to help him win the election and make himself look like he wanted to reunite the union because he actually did want to reunite the union and most northerners wanted to see the south pay for the war and everything that happened while Lincoln understood that if that happened it would just sow the seeds of a future rebellion/secession. Lincoln understood that the war took so much from both sides already and it was already asking a lot of these men to admit defeat and agree to come back after all they had lost. He also understood that the union wasn’t totally blameless for the war either and for the country to be truly united again both sides would need to work together. No one else would’ve stood in the governments way when they tried to be even harsher to the south than Johnson which makes me think Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing lol
Yeaa okay that's why the whole south is free more so than any other north state right now and better living and cost less to live!! And can have our constitutional rights still in the south also So ur yup you are wrong and were taught wrong
@@chris-cy5ed The South is statistically still behind the whole country in education and median income. In otherwords, keeping people oppressed for long periods of time, as the Southern states did through slavery and then through Jim Crow limited their potential capacity for economic growth. Take it down to the level of your corner market, if only whites can use it then you limit the amount of customers you have, your profit, and the disposable income you generate. So you are less likely to be able to go into other ventures or to enrich your own family through being able to afford more things like better education, a nicer house, cars, etc... You also limit the amount of buying power in the community if only one class of people can have better paying jobs. Compound that decade over decade and that's why the South's economic growth trails much of the rest of the country.
@@chris-cy5ed cost of living being higher means there’s a higher demand to live in the north than the south. That’s not the burn you think it is. Also the south is home of dry counties and where you’ll be thrown away in a cage for holding onto a plant. Muh freedom
One of the most effective reasons Lincoln won the war, is because he utilized the telegraph which was technology ahead of its time to get rapid feedback from the battlefield to plan and adjust.
He also had a vastly more populated and wealthy country. The south was extremely poor and sparse by comparison. It's honestly a miracle they did as well as they did.
@@kevlive6434 The south was actually extremely poor when compared to the north. We're not talking about the world. It was a Civil War, and it was a war between the North and the South. How it compared to other regions of the world is irrelevant.
In your textbooks they were called the Union Army, but Confederates and Southerners referred to them as the Federals in their journals... 😉 History is written by the Victors!
@@kevlive6434 The South was rich compared to who? Certainly not the North. They lost because they did not have the economic might to sustain the war despite fighting like it was an existential contest.
The Southern States were an occupied nation long after Appomattox Court House. I grew up with many family stories of the damage done to our farms, and the land lost, during reconstruction. The tensions have subsided, but are still stirring under the surface. Also, don't kid yourselves, the Civil War was fought about money. To the Southern elite slaves were money first and people second. To the Northern elite, cheap raw materials and tariffs were money. These two groups used moral issues to send poor men off to fight for each group's money. Slavery was not supported for slavery's sake. It was supported because it made money. Had all slave owners lost money, slavery would have ended with slaves being told to walk away and never come back.
General Lee transferred his command to Boss Hogg and The Dukes were presented Lee's sword. Han Solo then made the Kessell Run to help the North. The rest is history.
Something happened in the last 20 years or so. Historians started using the present tense when talking about past events. I know it supposed to "bring the past alive," but it grates on me. We have a past tense in English for a reason.
I mean writers do that while telling a story. All the scripts are written in present tense. It's to make you feel involved I suppose. As if it's happening in real time.
Check out Harry Turtledove's "The Guns of the South". Probably isn't exactly what you're looking for but he technically lives haha. Its actually a really good story though (and no im not a confederate sympathizer).
@@brandonselitetv1436 Probably, it's ingrained in peoples sense of culture from a very young age, which creates a self replicating meme. But very very few people who raise that flag actually hold the values it originally represented. Your average Billy Bob doesn't really support Slavery and when I last lived in the South I saw alot of black folks waving it around as well. It's as much a counter culture based on a mythological version of history as it is a historical national shame. The same symbol can mean different things to different people.
Lex. I'm a good bit older than you so I say this with complete honesty. I hope I never get to see your post death video. Live long my friend because you have so much love and thought to seed this world with.
On a side note it was Russia who saved The Union during the American Civil War as they sent their Navy to San Francisco and New York when England and France were just about to enter the war on the side of the Confederates since London created the Confederates. France was already in Mexico making a spear head movement to resupply the Confederates and to open up a Pacific Theatre and create a port in California. England already had 11,000 troops stationed at their Northern Confederacies border now called Canada ready to open a Northern Theatre then to attack The Unions naval blockade. The Union would have been completely destroyed and annexed by those two great powers leaving the Confederates to exist as a puppet state of London. Tsar Alexander wrote a letter to Queen Victoria saying “If you enter this war it will be a casus belli for all out war with the Russian Empire”. The stage was set for the 1st World War and Russia stopped it.
Also the assassination of Lincoln was orchestrated in Montreal and approved of by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis as Montreal was a giant hub for spys and their agencies for the British Empire and the Confederates, as many Confederates were stationed in the “Northern Confederacy”. London also had attempted many assassinations on Lincolns Cabinet members. Many of them successful. William Seward the secretary of state and the man who made the purchase of Alaska possible had 3-4 assassination attempts on him and 1 that nearly killed him. This is also why Russia sold Alaska so cheaply to the Union so England does not grab it. It is why we took Hawaii as we did because the English were close to annexing it. It is why we tried buying Greenland so many times and Iceland as it created a strong border cornering England but each time England made sure Denmark did not sell Greenland to us even back when we recently tried buying it for 1.1 Trillion.
He missed the main effect of Lincoln’s assassination. If Lincoln hadn’t been murdered the US wouldn’t have been so overbearing and punitive to the South. And the South wouldn’t have been as overbearing a punitive to former slaves. Similar to France and Germany and Jews.
Suri: "Lincoln used the Civil War to advance the country morally." Starting in 1861, Lincoln jailed many thousands of journalists critical of his administration's policies, and of Lincoln personally. 1862, Lincoln suspends Habeas Corpus with Presidential Proclamation 94, allowing people to be jailed indefinitely without charge. 1863, the removal of the Navajos and the Mescalero Apaches from the New Mexico Territory. 1864, The Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado killed hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho. This was Lincoln's morality. He killed the Republic, creating a default American Empire held together by force. Lincoln was an immoral infidel and tyrant. May he rot in hell.
@@Dante.- not when the US Constitution reserves the right to the Individual States to determine if they want to be part of the union. Lincoln violated the constitution. He was a tyrant.
It's always great to hear someone so well-educated retell us the same stories we had in our middle-school textbooks rather than go into interesting details about the things that went on. Like idk, how maybe it wasn't so much telling 'White America' as a whole as it was poor Irish-immigrants that were being sent to the Frontline.
Yeah they always love to overlook how many immigrant conscripts died in place of Boston brahmins' sons, and weren't too happy about it (resulting in draft riots all over the north).
Wouldn't want to upset the naacp or the woke machine. Whites are the bad guys remember. Except it was whites who freed the blacks not blacks but don't worry about that little inconvenient fact
Its always great to hear someone so well-educated use terms like "white america" when all white americans were immigrants just like the Irish and many poor all the same.
I thought the Emancipation Proclamation (1862) only freed the slaves in the South - which wasn't controlled by Federal troops till 1864 So it freed 0 slaves
@@JosephAdams93 Sorry, which were the rebellious territories? You are right about the year. Antietam was in Sept '62 and I confused the catalyst with the actual event.
I read a book as a teen by the Dalai Lama and he said once that if you do the right thing for the wrong reasons that it can be a good thing and often is a good thing. His arguments were really compelling and since then I've always felt it's a great idea to worry more about outcomes.
A positive outcome in and of itself is always, well, positive. But that doesn't negate negative motives. If I fail to murder someone and it results in a hospital visit where they catch cancer at an early enough stage to be treated, that doesn't make my actions good.
@@shrimuyopa8117 and you sound like you eat up mainstream Rockefeller narratives. Same narratives created by the people who run our country and world . All history books go through checks and balances owned by Rockefeller companies before being placed in educational system .
179,000 black men, slaves, fought in the civil war. Without that force, maybe the North doesn’t win. And why didnt they do it sooner? If thats not obvious to you I can’t help you.
@@shrimuyopa8117why are you so angry about slaves freeing themselves? Whether true or not, you sound annoyed & frustrated 😂 “Why didn’t they do it earlier” is the funniest thing i’ve heard all month
@@shrimuyopa8117 "What does that even mean?" Really? You never heard about things like Spartacus and the 3rd servile war? Or the peasants revolt? People get enslaved usually because their group is defeated and turned into PoW, or because they committed a crime, got caught and as punishment they have to become subordinate to someone else, there is a 3rd case regarding human incompetence but it's not relevant. Once a society has enough slaves and those events are in the distant past, or those slaves were born into slavery, it becomes not obvious why they are in that position. Given the right circumstances and the specific popular rethoric among the slave population, they will eventually revolt. Spartacus is such a case, he heard all these things being said by other older slaves, and made them his own, reshaped them into his own way of speaking, and eventually rallied 30.000 slaves with the promise that if they joined him and raised their swords, they would achieve freedom. He trained those slaves into their own legions and eventually fought the official roman republican legions. The end result was more than 15.000 slaves dead, and another 5000 crucified after the fact along the Appian way, every few docen feet for miles and miles, to send the message to all the new slaves coming into Rome that that's what happens when you rebel against Rome. It's quite the story, nothing compares to the historical telling but there are some old movies about it. Wikipedia should provide a basic introduction to Spartacus, Pompey and Crasus.
Suri seems to have a good understanding of Lincoln. If you read his letters and get an understanding of how the man thought, Lincoln was a master at persuading people to do the right thing by appealing to their self interest. But I disagree with him about Lincoln's so-called failure. You can't hold Lincoln responsible for his succession plan when he was assassinated before he was able to implement it. That's ridiculous.
The video was very well discussed and enjoyable. The criticism of Lincoln choosing Johnson and having no plan of succession after Lincoln is easy to make in hindsight (158 years) but at that moment in time in probably made sense to the politics of the day. John did not want liberality in the treatment of the south. Lincoln told Grant he wanted no reprisals and even spoke about healing the wounds of the nation in his speeches. Johnson did not have that perspective.
I think the criticism was a bad critique. It comes off as Lincoln had the choice and could have expressed someone other that his vice president. That simply is not true.
@@claytoncourtney1309 I think this historian is suggesting Johnson was a bad pick as VP to begin with not that Lincoln could have bypassed his veep in case something happened to him. Constitution makes succession pretty clear.
@1:45 he is talking about how one of the reasons Lincoln passed the emancipation proclamation was to bolster the number of troops in the north…but the emancipation proclamation exclusively applied to slaves in the south, NOT the slaves in the north that were still in existence at the time.
I think he was referring to USCT troops often drawn from occupied southern states or from escaped slaves. Many former slaves from Louisiana and North Carolina (parts of which were occupied early on in the war) joined the Union Army both as a means of self-protection and a way to strike back at a system that oppressed them. By freeing all the slaves in the rebellious states it clearly allowed southern escaped slaves to join the army and give greater impetus for escaping, thereby undermining Confederate power.
He essentially just said that a different set of arguments would satisfy different crowds. That is 100% true, not everyone values the same things, but finding what could be of value to certain groups and relaying that is just good diplomacy.
The point made that many leaders during war don’t walk away from power when the fighting is over is what makes George Washington such a great president.
@@sleazypolarjudgements can’t be facts dummy. Any opinion is normative, even if you think it’s true. Also don’t try to talk down to people when you are dumb as shit
@@sleazypolar I don’t think you know what an opinion is. Or what a fact is. Opinions are a personal preference. A fact is a claim about reality. You can state a wrong fact doesn’t make it an opinion.
7:10 agreed not a whole lot of posthumous planning. Most of the poverty level and many above are hustling. Don't have effort, time, or motivation to plan after death. Keeping shit working while alive is enough of a chore.
Let's just forget about the suspension of habeas corpus, the house arrest of the chief justice of scotus....what the man achieved was admirable, but came at a cost that still reverberates to this day
@@justsomedude77 the Indian wars of the 1870s and 80s and creation of the Reservation system,, guys like Custer all got their start in the Civil War. The creation of a permanent, standing Federal army and all the abuses there after. Vietnam, the failed War on Terror all go back to Lincoln.
I'm, like most people, a great fan of Lincoln, but legitimate criticisms are rarely talked about. One negative thing that he did during the war was the suspension of habeus corupus- going so far as imprisoning opposing politicians and journalists without a trial.
@@lifeonleo1074 He took away people's constitutional rights and incarcerated them without trials- merely for dissenting and criticizing the war. The war was coming one way or another and it wasn't necessary to imprison people illegally. Its quote the slippery slope that you are pretending to know which constitutional rights can be broke when. Nope, I don't buy that you have this type of clairvoyance.
Just another reason I hate when people say “get over it,slavery was so long ago”…slavery isn’t the problem. It’s all the shit that happened after and currently happening
@@paulheydarian1281 Don't try to twist their words. but tell me anybody with knowledge on the subject that doesn't have a certain bias regarding the civil war, I'm sure you could not.
He didn't mention Lincoln only emancipated the slaves in the the "states in rebellion" to cripple the South economically. Border states that had slaves, that did not secede did not have to free anyone. It's bothersome when historians always try to worm abolitionist sentiment into Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
I’m a northerner. My ancestors fought for the Union, but I’ve got to say Lincoln unleashed a federal police force on the populace that resulted in 600,000 deaths and his main objective was that the Union wasn’t going to dissolve on his watch, not to free the slaves, and he stated that in a letter Horace Greeley. The Emancipation proclamation came almost two years into the War. It meant nothing because according to the “South” they were not under his jurisdiction. The British offered the same thing to slaves during the Revolutionary War. Like most Wars, the Civil War was a war of attrition and the “South” was doomed from the start. At the time of the Civil War, just about everyone was a racist except for a handful of Northern intellectuals. I would compare it to the way we feel about Cuba. Yeah there life sucks, they’re only 90 miles away, but I’m not getting into a shooting war over it. Emancipation gained steam with the trial of John Brown who defended himself for murder. At that trial the horrific mistreatment of slaves was front and center and covered in depth by the Northern press for the first time. Slavery was exposed for what it really was, the tide turned against Western expansion of slavery and slavery in general. But it still wasn’t the reason the war started. The north wasted no time ending it after their victory.
Wait, at Appomattox, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia only. The War continued on for a while after that. I would think an expert on the Civil War would know that.
It’s actually mentioned at the beginning of this clip that aspects of the civil war still linger to this day. Did you even listen to the clip or just dive right into the comments 😂
@@jrippinger that is true, but at that time he was the Confederates overall military leader, his surrender essentially was him telling other confederate leaders beneath him to surrender, even if they didn’t as is the case in the Western theater
@@scottlaux6934 Afghanistan literally holds the opposite ideology to that of the old enlightenment liberal idea of freedom. Your comment is completely asinine. They are also almost the opposite of what libertarians see as an ideal society, income tax being the only thing they might have in common.
Biden is the same way. Harris for political reasons although she is terribly inept to take his place if he was to die or be able to do the job. But whatever it takes to win and get that power/job.
She was selected as a deterrent to the idea of removing Brandon on charges of mental incompetence. Whatever disaster could happen with the puppetmasters behind the Bradon puppet, it does not compare with whatever she might do of her own accord when presented with the same choices. It wasn't only because of political pandering to get votes, there was a internal strategic advantage to putting someone so incompetent as the potential replacement.
“Political science.” From Plato- the Republic- to tomorrow utter disaster. “No Treason: the Constitution of no Authority, 1,2 and 6”, Lysander Spooner.
@@LgtTurtlez should we give corrupt politicians villas for dragging europe into war and trying to start a fkin world war that could wipe out half of the planet? btw.. if you have an issue with anything what I said, just tell me which part and I'll give you proof for it.
@@Defort-jd8xe Europe's not "in war." Russia is waging a war against Ukraine and Ukraine is being supported by Europe in order to stand up for itself and set a major precedent in international affairs. If Russia was just enabled to take whatever the hell it wanted, destroying democracies in its wake, Europe not doing anything, then Russia could do whatever it wanted. He's not trying to start WWIII. You're essentially getting mad at someone for trying to defend their home and hyperbolizing the situation.
@@LgtTurtlez Nearly all of europe is sending heavy military equipment into Ukraine and most of eastern europe has thousands of people fighting in Ukraine. Its a war between the two biggest military powers in europe. You can argue what "in war" means, thats my definition. If you dont like it, well, sucks for you. I dont care. "He's not trying to start WWIII." He LITERALLY lied to the world about Russia killing civilians on the area of a NATO member while KNOWING it was an Ukraine rocket that did that. "You're essentially getting mad at someone for trying to defend their home and hyperbolizing the situation." Zelenskiy is trying to defend the russian people in the Donbass? Is this your statement?
Yeah except Lincoln was not an abolitionist he was only anti-slavery…meaning he wasn’t against slavery he was against the spread of slavery. He used slavery as a political lever. It was not a moral stance. He would have left slavery in place if he thought it was necessary to keep the union together. The civil war was a senseless slaughter and only led to a huge increase in federal power. Slavery would have ended either way. Lincoln is hugely overrated
He isn't even a real 'Historian' he teaches Global Politics and all his research specializes in only the past 50 years. His books consist of one saying how Obama saved America and another saying how Trump ruined it lol.
That's a leap. Washington and the other signers of the Constitution allowed sucession under the Constitution and intended the individual States to have power of self determination. They would have viewed Lincoln as a tyrant.
That's a leap. Washington and the other signers of the Constitution allowed sucession under the Constitution and intended the individual States to have power of self determination. They would have viewed Lincoln as a tyrant.
@@willyjimmy8881 The rebellion was the cause of big govt. Not the other way around. The rebellion started bc of slavery and the economics orbiting it. A monopoly on self replicating assets that were low maintenance and brought the value of manual labor down and thus skilled workers. So what do you do when youre a parent and your kids start beating on the other kid and make the one kid do chores for them or make the other sibling money? As a parent you step in and enforce a rule of law and equality through tyranny amongst little tyrants.
Russia saved the union we owe them so much for helping our country..The UK was in fact planning an attack to help the confederates..Russia sent two huge navy fleets to protect new york and san francisco..The UK sent out patrol boats and saw that russian troops were in new york and it prevented them from getting involved.. Russia helped save our country we should always be great full.. There’s a famous journal of a British general where he states the presence of russian ships in new york was the deciding factor not to get involved in the war..The british knew they couldn’t defeat Russia and the union.. Russia is the only country that stood with abe Lincoln and helped the union.. We need to treat russia better.. Screw ukraine..🇷🇺🇷🇺🫶🏽
Fun fact .. if you ask most people, let’s say out in public on a sidewalk about Lincoln . Most people will say he was a great president bc he freed the slaves and that he was a Democrat. Yes most people believe Lincoln was a democrat. Let that sink in !!
Check this out - the family McClain resided on land that the first battle of Bull Run was fought - moved his family for safety and where Grant and Lee met to end the war was again in not only Mclains property but home !
I don't like Jeremi's take on Robert E. Lee. Jeremi thinks that Robert E. Lee did not sufficiently grovel enough when surrendering at Appomattox. I think Lee handled it correctly. He insisted on his men leaving the battlefield with some of their dignity in tact. Afterwards, Lee melted into the background and encouraged the peaceful reunification of our country. Lee was ordered by Jefferson Davis and others in the Confederate cause to continue the fight in backwoods of Virginia and elsewhere. Had Lee elected to do this, the Civil War could have continued for many years as an insurgency or guerrilla movement. Lee saw that as a futile and destructive continuation of the war. Therefore, he rejected those orders. His conduct after the war was exemplary and the example he set encouraged our nation to come together again over time.
Suri, like many historians, are no better at attributing motives, faults, strengths, etc….to historical figures than a gypsy psychic. Johnson was not acting unconstrained for any period of time. To,say that Lincoln had no plan for transition is simply mistaken. Not enough room here but Lincoln and Johnson were not strangers and certainly spent much time in counsel with one another. Johnson was constrained by the rule of law in the constitution and statutes and treaties of the US. Suri may not like what Johnson did or failed to do or whatever, but to say Johnson was acting ultra fires is simply incorrect. There are also so many other influences and personalities at play in our lives every day that escape historical scrutiny and cloud our ability to truly understand a political decision that long ago. This is an interview that, to me, illustrates the dark side of a history degree. Just the facts please.
Johnson.. not to take away any of the mentioned points... but, Andrew Johnson also did things opposite of his predecessor because he did not want to get shot in the head like his predecessor.
If lincoln had lived, he would have had his term cut short like Winston's was, but still regarded like Cincinnatus was in Roman times. Jim Crow would have not have happened, as a Democrat would have had a free hand as Johnson did. By the mid 20th century, blacks would have been senators and representatives in large contingents of the south, along with many mayoral positions.
All entirely hypothetical, but an interesting description of a possible outcome. Personally, I believe that it's more likely that another civil war would have kicked off within a decade if Lincoln had lived. The most popular falsehood told about Lincoln is that he believed in racial equality, but according to his own writings he was not. The greatest irony in American history is that Lincoln's death laid the foundation for postwar cultural reunification. The race grifting industry was birthed in 1866 by people seeking to build a narrative that the war was about freeing slaves and not about state's rights, and that Lincoln was effectively a martyr for the cause of abolition. If Lincoln had finished his term, the cultural landscape would have looked very different and I would postulate that slavery would have continued in the south, and that the north would eventually intervene when the CSA began to crop up again.
Andrew Johnson was a Democrat, not a republican (look it up before you respond, this is the reason it was politically expedient to appoint Johnson VP) so no, democrats weren't going to magically wave a wand and cause a dramatic disappearance of racism.
Lincoln also said if he could end the civil war without freeing slaves he would and he would rather giving them land and putting them by themselves than giving them freedom
Lincoln was more concerned with keeping the union together than he was ending slavery. Emancipation was given halfway through the war so no it was never about slavery. The war was fought over and would decide if it was in fact the states that governed themselves or a thousand kings in Washington that answer to no one but demand full control. We see what side won and yes the subject was slavery I don't think anyone agrees with that so no one wants to admit to the bigger picture of the war. Not to mention the first US fiat currency was printed during the Civil War...
War of northern aggression,was what it was plain and simple. Lincoln was a tyrant; JW Booth shouted” sic semper tyrannis “ then shot the gay prez 😁😉🫢😮😂🤣😆🤯
For a lot of people it was about money. From slaveholders down to rank and file. Ohio went from the main copperhead state (southern sympathizers) to the number one provider of troops when union recruiters introduced huge conscription bonuses. They were against the war at first cuz it was going to destroy their economy which was basically being the most eastern point for sending stuff down the Mississippi river system. Then they got paid off and became the biggest supporters of the war
The Civil war wasn't about ending slavery, the point was to make the entire population slaves of the federal government. What else would you call a political union that if you try to leave it you will be killed? The declaration of independence says that the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed. The point of the civil war was to remove consent as a requirement for being governed.
I would think Lincoln's violations of civil liberties, jailing of critics, and dramatic reinterpretation of the constitution so as to set the precedent for the usurpation of powers to the executive that were supposed to be reserved for the states and the people might be a bigger failure than taking Andrew Johnson on the ticket. I also think said things are much worse than anything Johnson himself did as president.
Lincoln suspended Habeas corpus, imprisoned publishers and reporters who wrote things he didn't like, threatened and sometimes jailed political opponents he didn't like. Knew about and did nothing about prisoner of war camps that rivaled Nazi Germany for their starvation and depravity. And, yes, the CSA camps were about the same. Knew and approved of Shermans "March to the Sea" through GA & SC where war crimes were committed daily against the civilian population. They stripped the land bare, burned the crops they couldn't take, burned every city and home and condemned the civilians to starvation. In that campaign freed black slaves who came off the plantations would follow the Union army begging for food because they were starving. They were driven away with massed gunfire. But we are told non-stop Lincoln was a saint. As the old joke goes "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
The Confederacy wouldn’t stand a chance in a war today, they’d be screwed fighting the North then have to deal with Cartels at the Southern Border trying to get in the U.S because of all the chaos. All the North would have to do is control the Atlantic regions and cut off the Confederacy’s ability to re-supply its army. Only way Confederacy could win is if California secedes but I’m pretty sure Californians would take the streets to protest If that happened
Full podcast episode: th-cam.com/video/GvX-heRWFfA/w-d-xo.html
Lex Fridman podcast channel: th-cam.com/users/lexfridman
Guest bio: Jeremi Suri is a historian at UT Austin.
This makes Joe Rogan interviews look like an amateur
Peace, Islam is the truth. Read the Qur'an
@@randyfuentes4201 I mean yes and no. Almost apples and oranges. Formal interviewing? Yes. But Joe is a much more laid back host and he excels at making his guests just as laid back. I mean damn how many people have gotten in a little trouble for saying something on Rogan?
as a engineer why dont you or anyone else ever give credit to John Ericsson, a swedish inventor/enigeer ! I may be biased because he is from the same small town as me,but he ( USS Monitor) was a very important part of the north winning
Wonder what Razorfist thinks of this?
@TheRageaholic
Lincoln was also a great vampire slayer. Quite the multifaceted politician.
😏
This is a fact I was surprised to learn a few years ago. He really was the greatest president the US has ever had.
Honestly the way this guys was using revisionism , Lincoln might as well been
😂
Actually that wasn't real. It was a documentary by Werner Herzog. The real Vampirical, Historical standard is the reality TV show Abraham Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis starting as himself Abraham Lincoln.
Jeremi Suri was my history professor about 15 years ago. He was one of the best teachers I ever had in terms of making the learning experience engaging. I sometimes disagreed with his historical interpretations or biases, but I still couldn’t wait to go to his lectures everyday.
Those are the best conversations when you don’t agree but have a compromise
No offense but it seems to me like this guy has some problematic biases. In my opinion anyway.
I had him as a professor too. Are you a badger alum?
@@lauterbath22 yes indeed! I think I had him 2009 maybe? So almost but not quite 15 years ago. It was a fun semester because our small group discussion TA quit or had something come up, so professor Suri led our discussions too. He was a great guy. After that class I used to run into him around campus and he always made time to chat and catch up.
Were you in his class to pursue a BA in History?
Grants alcoholism is widely misrepresented. He was at worst a binge drinker, but he only drank when there was nothing of importance going on. He was also one of if not the greatest president in terms of fighting for the civil rights of freed slaves. He created the justice department, which he used to crush the KKK. During reconstruction, the group was at its height in power and would not see a resurgence until the 20th century.
Grant is among the greatest Americans, period. Great comment Spooky.
The Ku Klux Klan wasn’t crushed by any governmental department man. After they scared off or killed the politicians they wanted gone they just disbanded it themselves.
@martybaggenmusic maybe, wasn't his administration horribly corrupt though?
Alcoholism = self medicating undiagnosed trauma. No doubt Grant had a bit.
He also wanted to be a mathematics professor, and was disappointed when he arrived at West Point to find it still open. He then served with valour during the Mexican war, where that cool ass image of him you always see in movies where he side saddled his horse actually DID happen. He later underwent extreme poverty, and wrote his memoirs in the last few weeks of his life in order to leave his family money. The dude was extraordinary, and vastly more tolerant, intelligent, loyal, patriotic and mentally tough than Robert E. Lee ever was. He's constantly slandered by Neo-Confederates, who overrate Robert E. Lee massively. There were far more greater and interesting generals in the CSA than Lee, even if their views on slavery were abhorrent.
The Civil War didn’t officially end at Appomattox. Only the surrender of Lee’s army occurred then. It effectively ended then and there but fighting continued and there were more surrenders. The war legally ended August 20, 1866.
Hence Juneteenth.
@@alejandrinahs that has nothing to do with Juneteenth. Most people who celebrate Juneteenth don't even know what it means.
@@Ozark-nq9uu it has everything to do with it
Ended in North Carolina I think when Joe Johnston surrendered
@@jasonweitzel4393 try actually picking up a history book and read it. It literally has absolutely nothing to do with Juneteenth. But to educate you Juneteenth is the day that news of the emancipation proclamation reached the farthest southern point of Texas and therefore all of the confederacy. That's literally all it is. Nothing more. Which the emancipation proclamation didn't guarantee anything and only applied to the south so even after the war the slaves in the North were still SOL. In fact northern.slave owners were exempt from both that and the 13th amendment and were allowed to keep their slaves until death of either the slave or the owner, though you weren't allowed to buy or sell slaves anymore. News flash this information is not only in history books, but also widely reported in the newspapers of the time.
As a former alcoholic, I find it fascinating that an alcoholic oversaw Reconstruction and the entire country didn't fall into total disrepair within weeks.
Apparently, he was a functional alcoholic.
right? surprised it only took a couple years
Also think about Winston Churchill he led a major country through WW2. One of the most effective drunks of all time.
Alcoholics > potheads
@@Trajan3 lol hey there are some famous potheads like Shakespeare. I think there is like a tolerance gene that passes down and makes for very efficient drug takers.
A couple of key points that I think were understated was how close the election was and the fact that Lincoln thought he would probably lose going into it. So choosing Andrew Johnson was a must have at the time. Also, Lincoln did want to take a reconciliation approach with the South so it is a bit questionable to say that Johnson went off the rails letting southerners who rebelled back into power. I'm not so sure Lincoln wouldn't have done the same. I think Lincoln would have been a lot more effective as the powerful winning president. One of the truly great ironies of the civil war was that Lincoln's assassination was awful for the South. It sent the South back a 100 years and set the tone for Jim Crow and all sorts of issues downstream.
@MudPig6110 Right. I think if Lincoln would’ve lived he would’ve been even better to the south than Johnson. Paraphrasing here but didn’t Lincoln say about Jefferson Davis “as long as I don’t know where he is, let him be” or something similar. This guy is acting like there would’ve been trials for war crimes and hangings of southern leaders and I just don’t see that happening from a guy who was still calling these men brothers. Maybe he wouldn’t have let them back into power but he would’ve still given the power to the southern people in general and the reconstruction wouldn’t have been nearly as harsh as it was IMO.
I can get behind even great leaders having a contingency plan but Andrew Johnson was the plan. He was hard headed and a friend to the southern people. He wasn’t a good leader nor if this was any other time in history would he have been but Lincoln needed someone to help him win the election and make himself look like he wanted to reunite the union because he actually did want to reunite the union and most northerners wanted to see the south pay for the war and everything that happened while Lincoln understood that if that happened it would just sow the seeds of a future rebellion/secession. Lincoln understood that the war took so much from both sides already and it was already asking a lot of these men to admit defeat and agree to come back after all they had lost. He also understood that the union wasn’t totally blameless for the war either and for the country to be truly united again both sides would need to work together. No one else would’ve stood in the governments way when they tried to be even harsher to the south than Johnson which makes me think Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing lol
Yeaa okay that's why the whole south is free more so than any other north state right now and better living and cost less to live!! And can have our constitutional rights still in the south also
So ur yup you are wrong and were taught wrong
@@chris-cy5ed The South is statistically still behind the whole country in education and median income. In otherwords, keeping people oppressed for long periods of time, as the Southern states did through slavery and then through Jim Crow limited their potential capacity for economic growth. Take it down to the level of your corner market, if only whites can use it then you limit the amount of customers you have, your profit, and the disposable income you generate. So you are less likely to be able to go into other ventures or to enrich your own family through being able to afford more things like better education, a nicer house, cars, etc... You also limit the amount of buying power in the community if only one class of people can have better paying jobs. Compound that decade over decade and that's why the South's economic growth trails much of the rest of the country.
@@chris-cy5ed cost of living being higher means there’s a higher demand to live in the north than the south. That’s not the burn you think it is. Also the south is home of dry counties and where you’ll be thrown away in a cage for holding onto a plant. Muh freedom
@@chris-cy5ed Get triggered snowflake.
One of the most effective reasons Lincoln won the war, is because he utilized the telegraph which was technology ahead of its time to get rapid feedback from the battlefield to plan and adjust.
He also had a vastly more populated and wealthy country. The south was extremely poor and sparse by comparison. It's honestly a miracle they did as well as they did.
@@TheBerylknight the south was actually one of the richest regions in the world
@@kevlive6434 The south was actually extremely poor when compared to the north. We're not talking about the world. It was a Civil War, and it was a war between the North and the South. How it compared to other regions of the world is irrelevant.
In your textbooks they were called the Union Army, but Confederates and Southerners referred to them as the Federals in their journals... 😉
History is written by the Victors!
@@kevlive6434 The South was rich compared to who? Certainly not the North. They lost because they did not have the economic might to sustain the war despite fighting like it was an existential contest.
Great conversation
The Southern States were an occupied nation long after Appomattox Court House. I grew up with many family stories of the damage done to our farms, and the land lost, during reconstruction. The tensions have subsided, but are still stirring under the surface.
Also, don't kid yourselves, the Civil War was fought about money. To the Southern elite slaves were money first and people second. To the Northern elite, cheap raw materials and tariffs were money. These two groups used moral issues to send poor men off to fight for each group's money.
Slavery was not supported for slavery's sake. It was supported because it made money. Had all slave owners lost money, slavery would have ended with slaves being told to walk away and never come back.
General Lee transferred his command to Boss Hogg and The Dukes were presented Lee's sword. Han Solo then made the Kessell Run to help the North. The rest is history.
Something happened in the last 20 years or so. Historians started using the present tense when talking about past events. I know it supposed to "bring the past alive," but it grates on me. We have a past tense in English for a reason.
Read up on the “historical present”. English took it from histories written in Latin many centuries ago.
I mean writers do that while telling a story. All the scripts are written in present tense. It's to make you feel involved I suppose. As if it's happening in real time.
Imagine a multiverse where Lincoln was never assassinated, now that's a story I would like to explore.
Check out Harry Turtledove's "The Guns of the South". Probably isn't exactly what you're looking for but he technically lives haha. Its actually a really good story though (and no im not a confederate sympathizer).
The Rebel Flag would've still been flying in the south despite them losing
Along the same lines...same could be asked about Kennedy.
@@brandonselitetv1436
Probably, it's ingrained in peoples sense of culture from a very young age, which creates a self replicating meme.
But very very few people who raise that flag actually hold the values it originally represented. Your average Billy Bob doesn't really support Slavery and when I last lived in the South I saw alot of black folks waving it around as well.
It's as much a counter culture based on a mythological version of history as it is a historical national shame. The same symbol can mean different things to different people.
@@academision
Thanks for the recommendation :)
Lex. I'm a good bit older than you so I say this with complete honesty. I hope I never get to see your post death video. Live long my friend because you have so much love and thought to seed this world with.
On a side note it was Russia who saved The Union during the American Civil War as they sent their Navy to San Francisco and New York when England and France were just about to enter the war on the side of the Confederates since London created the Confederates. France was already in Mexico making a spear head movement to resupply the Confederates and to open up a Pacific Theatre and create a port in California. England already had 11,000 troops stationed at their Northern Confederacies border now called Canada ready to open a Northern Theatre then to attack The Unions naval blockade. The Union would have been completely destroyed and annexed by those two great powers leaving the Confederates to exist as a puppet state of London.
Tsar Alexander wrote a letter to Queen Victoria saying “If you enter this war it will be a casus belli for all out war with the Russian Empire”. The stage was set for the 1st World War and Russia stopped it.
Also the assassination of Lincoln was orchestrated in Montreal and approved of by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis as Montreal was a giant hub for spys and their agencies for the British Empire and the Confederates, as many Confederates were stationed in the “Northern Confederacy”. London also had attempted many assassinations on Lincolns Cabinet members. Many of them successful. William Seward the secretary of state and the man who made the purchase of Alaska possible had 3-4 assassination attempts on him and 1 that nearly killed him.
This is also why Russia sold Alaska so cheaply to the Union so England does not grab it. It is why we took Hawaii as we did because the English were close to annexing it. It is why we tried buying Greenland so many times and Iceland as it created a strong border cornering England but each time England made sure Denmark did not sell Greenland to us even back when we recently tried buying it for 1.1 Trillion.
Well it wouldn’t have been a world war if only the US got annexed. It would have been a world war if Russia did get involved
Lex is a beautiful AI.
He missed the main effect of Lincoln’s assassination.
If Lincoln hadn’t been murdered the US wouldn’t have been so overbearing and punitive to the South. And the South wouldn’t have been as overbearing a punitive to former slaves.
Similar to France and Germany and Jews.
Suri: "Lincoln used the Civil War to advance the country morally."
Starting in 1861, Lincoln jailed many thousands of journalists critical of his administration's policies, and of Lincoln personally.
1862, Lincoln suspends Habeas Corpus with Presidential Proclamation 94, allowing people to be jailed indefinitely without charge.
1863, the removal of the Navajos and the Mescalero Apaches from the New Mexico Territory.
1864, The Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado killed hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho.
This was Lincoln's morality. He killed the Republic, creating a default American Empire held together by force. Lincoln was an immoral infidel and tyrant. May he rot in hell.
We were fighting a war to preserve the nation itself
It’s quite literally legal for his actions to be taken during a crisis like that
@@Dante.- not when the US Constitution reserves the right to the Individual States to determine if they want to be part of the union. Lincoln violated the constitution. He was a tyrant.
All these moments.... lost.. like tears..in the rain
It's always great to hear someone so well-educated retell us the same stories we had in our middle-school textbooks rather than go into interesting details about the things that went on. Like idk, how maybe it wasn't so much telling 'White America' as a whole as it was poor Irish-immigrants that were being sent to the Frontline.
Yeah they always love to overlook how many immigrant conscripts died in place of Boston brahmins' sons, and weren't too happy about it (resulting in draft riots all over the north).
Wouldn't want to upset the naacp or the woke machine. Whites are the bad guys remember. Except it was whites who freed the blacks not blacks but don't worry about that little inconvenient fact
Somethings never change. It’s always the poor people generally going to the front lines.
Its always great to hear someone so well-educated use terms like "white america" when all white americans were immigrants just like the Irish and many poor all the same.
@@johnnyripple8972McDonalds and Uber Eats are the new US front lines.
Don't know who these guys are but amazing conversation!
I thought the Emancipation Proclamation (1862) only freed the slaves in the South - which wasn't controlled by Federal troops till 1864
So it freed 0 slaves
Basically. It was a purely political stunt
No it freed run away slaves in the north from the bounty hunters, but many bounty hunters ignored it & continued hunting slaves
@@JosephAdams93 Sorry, which were the rebellious territories?
You are right about the year. Antietam was in Sept '62 and I confused the catalyst with the actual event.
Beyond freeing the slaves in "the south", the EP allowed them to serve in the Federal Army. So the two things can be true.
@@JosephAdams93 Which southern states didn't rebel?
I think great leaders have great instincts. I don’t think most are great planners. Planning is a different and uncorrelated skill
I read a book as a teen by the Dalai Lama and he said once that if you do the right thing for the wrong reasons that it can be a good thing and often is a good thing. His arguments were really compelling and since then I've always felt it's a great idea to worry more about outcomes.
What was the book called?
@@TheTurbanatore I found it, it's called How to Practice.
@@jaythompson5102 thanks
Great concept!
A positive outcome in and of itself is always, well, positive. But that doesn't negate negative motives.
If I fail to murder someone and it results in a hospital visit where they catch cancer at an early enough stage to be treated, that doesn't make my actions good.
I really appreciate this dude for saying the people enslaved freed themselves, usually people leave that out
Oh really? What does that even mean? And if so, why didn't they just do it earlier?
Sounds like revisionist history to me.
@@shrimuyopa8117 and you sound like you eat up mainstream Rockefeller narratives. Same narratives created by the people who run our country and world . All history books go through checks and balances owned by Rockefeller companies before being placed in educational system .
179,000 black men, slaves, fought in the civil war. Without that force, maybe the North doesn’t win. And why didnt they do it sooner? If thats not obvious to you I can’t help you.
@@shrimuyopa8117why are you so angry about slaves freeing themselves? Whether true or not, you sound annoyed & frustrated 😂 “Why didn’t they do it earlier” is the funniest thing i’ve heard all month
@@shrimuyopa8117 "What does that even mean?"
Really? You never heard about things like Spartacus and the 3rd servile war? Or the peasants revolt? People get enslaved usually because their group is defeated and turned into PoW, or because they committed a crime, got caught and as punishment they have to become subordinate to someone else, there is a 3rd case regarding human incompetence but it's not relevant.
Once a society has enough slaves and those events are in the distant past, or those slaves were born into slavery, it becomes not obvious why they are in that position. Given the right circumstances and the specific popular rethoric among the slave population, they will eventually revolt.
Spartacus is such a case, he heard all these things being said by other older slaves, and made them his own, reshaped them into his own way of speaking, and eventually rallied 30.000 slaves with the promise that if they joined him and raised their swords, they would achieve freedom. He trained those slaves into their own legions and eventually fought the official roman republican legions. The end result was more than 15.000 slaves dead, and another 5000 crucified after the fact along the Appian way, every few docen feet for miles and miles, to send the message to all the new slaves coming into Rome that that's what happens when you rebel against Rome. It's quite the story, nothing compares to the historical telling but there are some old movies about it. Wikipedia should provide a basic introduction to Spartacus, Pompey and Crasus.
great conversation gentleman
Shame nobody talks about cassius clay.
I thought he was a little misplaced when he said america being a republic is a myth. Has he read the federalist?
“And to the republic, for which it stands. One Nation under God”
No the guy who graduated from Yale with a PHD and also Stanford probably never read the federalist. 🙄 you guys are clowns
@tmc1415 that was Ronald Regan. Not Washington.
He’s not wrong. The Republic died once the 14th Amendment was passed.
@@andrewpierce1588 How so? Are we no longer ruled by representatives? I don't think the general population directly votes on every law.
Andrew Johnson WAS the worst president we ever had…until now 😂
Yup once you sell NFTs you’re def the worst
@@jeremys6747 capitalism at its finest
Suri seems to have a good understanding of Lincoln. If you read his letters and get an understanding of how the man thought, Lincoln was a master at persuading people to do the right thing by appealing to their self interest. But I disagree with him about Lincoln's so-called failure. You can't hold Lincoln responsible for his succession plan when he was assassinated before he was able to implement it. That's ridiculous.
The video was very well discussed and enjoyable. The criticism of Lincoln choosing Johnson and having no plan of succession after Lincoln is easy to make in hindsight (158 years) but at that moment in time in probably made sense to the politics of the day. John did not want liberality in the treatment of the south. Lincoln told Grant he wanted no reprisals and even spoke about healing the wounds of the nation in his speeches. Johnson did not have that perspective.
Healing a wound one causes isn't noble.
@@cult_of_odin if you say so?
I think the criticism was a bad critique. It comes off as Lincoln had the choice and could have expressed someone other that his vice president. That simply is not true.
@@claytoncourtney1309 I think this historian is suggesting Johnson was a bad pick as VP to begin with not that Lincoln could have bypassed his veep in case something happened to him. Constitution makes succession pretty clear.
@@claytoncourtney1309 I agree. Politics often limits what you can and cannot choose. In that day the VP was not chosen as it is now.
History is the fables we all agree upon....Napoleon
Religion is what keeps poor people from killing rich people - Napoleon
Well as an African American
I got what I thought I'd see in the comments.
😒
?
Vague and conspiratorial.
I find this extremely fascinating they all got the message with no cellphones or anything
@1:45 he is talking about how one of the reasons Lincoln passed the emancipation proclamation was to bolster the number of troops in the north…but the emancipation proclamation exclusively applied to slaves in the south, NOT the slaves in the north that were still in existence at the time.
The guy is a hack with an agenda.
I think he was referring to USCT troops often drawn from occupied southern states or from escaped slaves. Many former slaves from Louisiana and North Carolina (parts of which were occupied early on in the war) joined the Union Army both as a means of self-protection and a way to strike back at a system that oppressed them. By freeing all the slaves in the rebellious states it clearly allowed southern escaped slaves to join the army and give greater impetus for escaping, thereby undermining Confederate power.
We found a new phrase for lying “ tell different stories “ 😂😂
That's not how I interpreted what he meant, more like providing different angles.
Persuasion of audience is not lying
He essentially just said that a different set of arguments would satisfy different crowds. That is 100% true, not everyone values the same things, but finding what could be of value to certain groups and relaying that is just good diplomacy.
Writing a will leaves nothing to question. It only makes sense. Great clip.
The two greatest catastrophes in American history were the election of Abraham Lincoln and the death of Abraham Lincoln.
No mention of how He vigorously expanded the railroad systems to make the transportation of supplies, weapons, and troops? Which was no easy task.
So Andrew Johnson could be considered the Kamala Harris of his day?
She is the worst possible candidate. Knowing the Dems she will one day be the Dem candidate for president.
They did a good job with lex , he really sounds like pat
Why would a historian intentionally leave out important details and context and misrepresent situations?
He’s a horrible shill.
@@Hawkvol1he’s a doctor, what do you have ?
Imagine the stress Lincoln must have been under day to day. He had to have thought someone was coming for him at some point.
In the beginning of the USA, didn’t the 2nd place candidate become VP?
The point made that many leaders during war don’t walk away from power when the fighting is over is what makes George Washington such a great president.
I like how he seems to not have any opinion about this.
Well he said Andrew Johnson was our worst president ever. It's probably true as hell, but it's technically an opinion.
@@kashifsingh791 If it's true that makes it a fact. How would that be an opinion? Do you even understand the difference?
@@sleazypolarjudgements can’t be facts dummy. Any opinion is normative, even if you think it’s true. Also don’t try to talk down to people when you are dumb as shit
@@YOUGOTMOONED77 Who are you?
@@sleazypolar I don’t think you know what an opinion is. Or what a fact is. Opinions are a personal preference. A fact is a claim about reality. You can state a wrong fact doesn’t make it an opinion.
7:10 agreed not a whole lot of posthumous planning. Most of the poverty level and many above are hustling. Don't have effort, time, or motivation to plan after death.
Keeping shit working while alive is enough of a chore.
🇬🇧 I want to see this guy go head to head with Hillary Fordwich I think you'll find he'll fall flat on his face with that BS.
I love this conversation, thanks.
And to this day even all these years later, The south has never gotten over it... old southern moms still preach the lost cause to their kids...
Give me a break.
I get his point, but there’s just something about saying ‘poor planning’ about someone who was assassinated that feels wrong.
Lincoln’s plate was full with 4 years of a horrible war. Thinking far ahead would’ve difficult.
Not a well known fact, but people believe they often saw Abe Lincoln running around with Buffy slaying soldiers turned vamps. 🤫
Let's just forget about the suspension of habeas corpus, the house arrest of the chief justice of scotus....what the man achieved was admirable, but came at a cost that still reverberates to this day
What cost? The cost of getting rid of one of the worst institutions in our nations history?
@@justsomedude77 that's what was bought. There is still a cost even if it was a good deal.
@@gravytruck what was the cost that’s still felt to this day that bought it?
@@justsomedude77 the Indian wars of the 1870s and 80s and creation of the Reservation system,, guys like Custer all got their start in the Civil War.
The creation of a permanent, standing Federal army and all the abuses there after. Vietnam, the failed War on Terror all go back to Lincoln.
And we'd do it all over again if necessary
The first time I seen some one highlight the fact that black people fought to free ourselves from oppression long before Lincoln true historian 💯‼️
Andrew Johnson sounds like Biden but instead of being a drunk he has dementia..😂
This guy looks like the personification of Reddit.
Not young enough
Great conversation thank you
I'm, like most people, a great fan of Lincoln, but legitimate criticisms are rarely talked about. One negative thing that he did during the war was the suspension of habeus corupus- going so far as imprisoning opposing politicians and journalists without a trial.
@Lovebombs Its in a famous book called American Bastille. Read a book for once and try to increase your IQ to triple digits.
Sounds like the Patriot act
An American Dictator and a Whig Federalist.
He was trying to win a war that would determine if the United States got to continue or not. Desperate times call for desperate measures
@@lifeonleo1074 He took away people's constitutional rights and incarcerated them without trials- merely for dissenting and criticizing the war. The war was coming one way or another and it wasn't necessary to imprison people illegally. Its quote the slippery slope that you are pretending to know which constitutional rights can be broke when. Nope, I don't buy that you have this type of clairvoyance.
Just another reason I hate when people say “get over it,slavery was so long ago”…slavery isn’t the problem. It’s all the shit that happened after and currently happening
This guy holds on to history the same way he holds on to his hair
ChatGP and Cenk Uyger discuss white supremacy.
🤠🤠😂
Suri is a great historian. Sure everyone has biases but he shoots it pretty straight
So, he shoots his bias pretty straightforward...???
@@paulheydarian1281 Don't try to twist their words. but tell me anybody with knowledge on the subject that doesn't have a certain bias regarding the civil war, I'm sure you could not.
@@paulheydarian1281 like they said everyone has bias... that includes you
He didn't mention Lincoln only emancipated the slaves in the the "states in rebellion" to cripple the South economically. Border states that had slaves, that did not secede did not have to free anyone. It's bothersome when historians always try to worm abolitionist sentiment into Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Problem is hes not aware of his own biases and seemingly believe he's right about everything he believes
I’m a northerner. My ancestors fought for the Union, but I’ve got to say Lincoln unleashed a federal police force on the populace that resulted in 600,000 deaths and his main objective was that the Union wasn’t going to dissolve on his watch, not to free the slaves, and he stated that in a letter Horace Greeley. The Emancipation proclamation came almost two years into the War. It meant nothing because according to the “South” they were not under his jurisdiction. The British offered the same thing to slaves during the Revolutionary War. Like most Wars, the Civil War was a war of attrition and the “South” was doomed from the start. At the time of the Civil War, just about everyone was a racist except for a handful of Northern intellectuals. I would compare it to the way we feel about Cuba. Yeah there life sucks, they’re only 90 miles away, but I’m not getting into a shooting war over it. Emancipation gained steam with the trial of John Brown who defended himself for murder. At that trial the horrific mistreatment of slaves was front and center and covered in depth by the Northern press for the first time. Slavery was exposed for what it really was, the tide turned against Western expansion of slavery and slavery in general. But it still wasn’t the reason the war started. The north wasted no time ending it after their victory.
Wait, at Appomattox, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia only. The War continued on for a while after that. I would think an expert on the Civil War would know that.
It’s actually mentioned at the beginning of this clip that aspects of the civil war still linger to this day. Did you even listen to the clip or just dive right into the comments 😂
@Man00ks No, I meant that the fighting didn't stop with Lee's surrender. There were other armies that continued to fight.
@@jrippinger that is true, but at that time he was the Confederates overall military leader, his surrender essentially was him telling other confederate leaders beneath him to surrender, even if they didn’t as is the case in the Western theater
No disrespect, just a disagreement*
The war continued only because it took longer to reach everyone. The war was effectively over.
Can Lex run for President? Always a cool, intellectual, and curious guy 👏
Lincoln gave us income taxes you’ll never convince me he was a good guy
Go to Afghanistan. It's a libertarian dream. No income tax.
@@scottlaux6934 Afghanistan literally holds the opposite ideology to that of the old enlightenment liberal idea of freedom. Your comment is completely asinine. They are also almost the opposite of what libertarians see as an ideal society, income tax being the only thing they might have in common.
Reconstruction needs to be revisited!
Lol...why
Biden is the same way. Harris for political reasons although she is terribly inept to take his place if he was to die or be able to do the job. But whatever it takes to win and get that power/job.
Trump was president, which means anyone can be president.
Exactly.
She was selected as a deterrent to the idea of removing Brandon on charges of mental incompetence. Whatever disaster could happen with the puppetmasters behind the Bradon puppet, it does not compare with whatever she might do of her own accord when presented with the same choices. It wasn't only because of political pandering to get votes, there was a internal strategic advantage to putting someone so incompetent as the potential replacement.
Biden was actually Lincoln's junior advisor
“Political science.” From Plato- the Republic- to tomorrow utter disaster. “No Treason: the Constitution of no Authority, 1,2 and 6”, Lysander Spooner.
As one who has done a will and trust....its absolutely correct that it's not fun when you have to keep discussing your own demise....
"lets hope Zelenskiy wins and give him a villa"
this dude really said that.
Theyre jewish
And?
@@LgtTurtlez should we give corrupt politicians villas for dragging europe into war and trying to start a fkin world war that could wipe out half of the planet?
btw.. if you have an issue with anything what I said, just tell me which part and I'll give you proof for it.
@@Defort-jd8xe Europe's not "in war." Russia is waging a war against Ukraine and Ukraine is being supported by Europe in order to stand up for itself and set a major precedent in international affairs. If Russia was just enabled to take whatever the hell it wanted, destroying democracies in its wake, Europe not doing anything, then Russia could do whatever it wanted. He's not trying to start WWIII. You're essentially getting mad at someone for trying to defend their home and hyperbolizing the situation.
@@LgtTurtlez Nearly all of europe is sending heavy military equipment into Ukraine and most of eastern europe has thousands of people fighting in Ukraine. Its a war between the two biggest military powers in europe.
You can argue what "in war" means, thats my definition. If you dont like it, well, sucks for you. I dont care.
"He's not trying to start WWIII." He LITERALLY lied to the world about Russia killing civilians on the area of a NATO member while KNOWING it was an Ukraine rocket that did that.
"You're essentially getting mad at someone for trying to defend their home and hyperbolizing the situation." Zelenskiy is trying to defend the russian people in the Donbass? Is this your statement?
Yeah except Lincoln was not an abolitionist he was only anti-slavery…meaning he wasn’t against slavery he was against the spread of slavery. He used slavery as a political lever. It was not a moral stance. He would have left slavery in place if he thought it was necessary to keep the union together. The civil war was a senseless slaughter and only led to a huge increase in federal power. Slavery would have ended either way. Lincoln is hugely overrated
Cool story bro. So I wonder what really happened. Behind the scenes. Everything.
Read William C. Davis
An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government
Yes, we need to force people out of power. I.e. term limits on senators.
"Leftist Historian with clear political agenda explains"
And?
He isn't even a real 'Historian' he teaches Global Politics and all his research specializes in only the past 50 years. His books consist of one saying how Obama saved America and another saying how Trump ruined it lol.
“Some guy on TH-cam makes claim without evidence” huh no wonder
Still coping all these years later
Triggered!
Hes seems to be stating opinion as fact, as if he were some muse, at points in this discussion. Fascinating conversation none the less
Abraham Lincoln was greatest president... George Washington would agree. Bc without him George Washington's effort would of been in vain.
And without Washington (and some friends), there would be no country, set of States, or economic system to lead.
🤮
That's a leap. Washington and the other signers of the Constitution allowed sucession under the Constitution and intended the individual States to have power of self determination. They would have viewed Lincoln as a tyrant.
That's a leap. Washington and the other signers of the Constitution allowed sucession under the Constitution and intended the individual States to have power of self determination. They would have viewed Lincoln as a tyrant.
@@willyjimmy8881 The rebellion was the cause of big govt. Not the other way around. The rebellion started bc of slavery and the economics orbiting it. A monopoly on self replicating assets that were low maintenance and brought the value of manual labor down and thus skilled workers. So what do you do when youre a parent and your kids start beating on the other kid and make the one kid do chores for them or make the other sibling money? As a parent you step in and enforce a rule of law and equality through tyranny amongst little tyrants.
Russia saved the union we owe them so much for helping our country..The UK was in fact planning an attack to help the confederates..Russia sent two huge navy fleets to protect new york and san francisco..The UK sent out patrol boats and saw that russian troops were in new york and it prevented them from getting involved.. Russia helped save our country we should always be great full.. There’s a famous journal of a British general where he states the presence of russian ships in new york was the deciding factor not to get involved in the war..The british knew they couldn’t defeat Russia and the union.. Russia is the only country that stood with abe Lincoln and helped the union.. We need to treat russia better.. Screw ukraine..🇷🇺🇷🇺🫶🏽
Fun fact .. if you ask most people, let’s say out in public on a sidewalk about Lincoln . Most people will say he was a great president bc he freed the slaves and that he was a Democrat. Yes most people believe Lincoln was a democrat. Let that sink in !!
Lincoln didn’t even have a bodyguard let alone a security detail.
Yes He did
Check this out - the family McClain resided on land that the first battle of Bull Run was fought - moved his family for safety and where Grant and Lee met to end the war was again in not only Mclains property but home !
I don't like Jeremi's take on Robert E. Lee. Jeremi thinks that Robert E. Lee did not sufficiently grovel enough when surrendering at Appomattox. I think Lee handled it correctly. He insisted on his men leaving the battlefield with some of their dignity in tact. Afterwards, Lee melted into the background and encouraged the peaceful reunification of our country. Lee was ordered by Jefferson Davis and others in the Confederate cause to continue the fight in backwoods of Virginia and elsewhere. Had Lee elected to do this, the Civil War could have continued for many years as an insurgency or guerrilla movement. Lee saw that as a futile and destructive continuation of the war. Therefore, he rejected those orders. His conduct after the war was exemplary and the example he set encouraged our nation to come together again over time.
My ancestor was one of the soldiers in Sherman March that helped end the Civil War, his name was Robert Walker. Very proud to have learned that.
Very cool but quit boasting already.
I wouldn't romanticize the Sherman March.
@@aureate It ended slavery. duh! yes Ill scream it!
@@lealamb9713 The Sherman March was totally superfluous. Countless civilians were raped and murdered, including slaves.
@@aureate Sherman should've kept going until the entire south was purged of the racist, slave-holding traitors.
Suri, like many historians, are no better at attributing motives, faults, strengths, etc….to historical figures than a gypsy psychic. Johnson was not acting unconstrained for any period of time. To,say that Lincoln had no plan for transition is simply mistaken. Not enough room here but Lincoln and Johnson were not strangers and certainly spent much time in counsel with one another. Johnson was constrained by the rule of law in the constitution and statutes and treaties of the US. Suri may not like what Johnson did or failed to do or whatever, but to say Johnson was acting ultra fires is simply incorrect. There are also so many other influences and personalities at play in our lives every day that escape historical scrutiny and cloud our ability to truly understand a political decision that long ago. This is an interview that, to me, illustrates the dark side of a history degree. Just the facts please.
Thank God for our well prepared Vice-President haha
You mean the cackling, word salad spewing, hyena???🤔
😂
Johnson.. not to take away any of the mentioned points... but, Andrew Johnson also did things opposite of his predecessor because he did not want to get shot in the head like his predecessor.
If lincoln had lived, he would have had his term cut short like Winston's was, but still regarded like Cincinnatus was in Roman times. Jim Crow would have not have happened, as a Democrat would have had a free hand as Johnson did. By the mid 20th century, blacks would have been senators and representatives in large contingents of the south, along with many mayoral positions.
You can't just cut a term short wtf you talking about?
All entirely hypothetical, but an interesting description of a possible outcome. Personally, I believe that it's more likely that another civil war would have kicked off within a decade if Lincoln had lived. The most popular falsehood told about Lincoln is that he believed in racial equality, but according to his own writings he was not. The greatest irony in American history is that Lincoln's death laid the foundation for postwar cultural reunification. The race grifting industry was birthed in 1866 by people seeking to build a narrative that the war was about freeing slaves and not about state's rights, and that Lincoln was effectively a martyr for the cause of abolition. If Lincoln had finished his term, the cultural landscape would have looked very different and I would postulate that slavery would have continued in the south, and that the north would eventually intervene when the CSA began to crop up again.
Andrew Johnson was a Democrat, not a republican (look it up before you respond, this is the reason it was politically expedient to appoint Johnson VP) so no, democrats weren't going to magically wave a wand and cause a dramatic disappearance of racism.
We have plenty black mayors, only a few representatives but prolly no senators cuz there’s no majority black state not even Mississippi
@@voiceofreason2674 We have like three Black US Senators. Cory Booker, Tim Scott and Raphael Warnock!
Lincoln also said if he could end the civil war without freeing slaves he would and he would rather giving them land and putting them by themselves than giving them freedom
Dude has no one in his life to tell him he’s bald and to just buzz it all off?
I dont think Putin or Trump care too much about the future of their nations after their deaths
Lincoln was more concerned with keeping the union together than he was ending slavery. Emancipation was given halfway through the war so no it was never about slavery. The war was fought over and would decide if it was in fact the states that governed themselves or a thousand kings in Washington that answer to no one but demand full control. We see what side won and yes the subject was slavery I don't think anyone agrees with that so no one wants to admit to the bigger picture of the war. Not to mention the first US fiat currency was printed during the Civil War...
For a lot of people it was about slavery, but for others it was about free labor vs paid labor, for others it was about states rights
The cope
War of northern aggression,was what it was plain and simple. Lincoln was a tyrant; JW Booth shouted” sic semper tyrannis “ then shot the gay prez 😁😉🫢😮😂🤣😆🤯
For a lot of people it was about money. From slaveholders down to rank and file. Ohio went from the main copperhead state (southern sympathizers) to the number one provider of troops when union recruiters introduced huge conscription bonuses. They were against the war at first cuz it was going to destroy their economy which was basically being the most eastern point for sending stuff down the Mississippi river system. Then they got paid off and became the biggest supporters of the war
The Civil war wasn't about ending slavery, the point was to make the entire population slaves of the federal government. What else would you call a political union that if you try to leave it you will be killed? The declaration of independence says that the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed. The point of the civil war was to remove consent as a requirement for being governed.
Best succession plan goes to Emperor Hadrian. Not only did he pick is successor but his successors’. Both of which were total grand slams.
Lee’s army was surrounded and forced to surrender
That’s it….
I would think Lincoln's violations of civil liberties, jailing of critics, and dramatic reinterpretation of the constitution so as to set the precedent for the usurpation of powers to the executive that were supposed to be reserved for the states and the people might be a bigger failure than taking Andrew Johnson on the ticket. I also think said things are much worse than anything Johnson himself did as president.
The face that they are not speaking about the Governers that sign the letters of secession, tells me all I need to hear.
Can you explain what that means for the uneducated like me
What face
Northerners see only facet of the CW. The rest is conveniently ignored.
Lincoln suspended Habeas corpus, imprisoned publishers and reporters who wrote things he didn't like, threatened and sometimes jailed political opponents he didn't like. Knew about and did nothing about prisoner of war camps that rivaled Nazi Germany for their starvation and depravity. And, yes, the CSA camps were about the same. Knew and approved of Shermans "March to the Sea" through GA & SC where war crimes were committed daily against the civilian population. They stripped the land bare, burned the crops they couldn't take, burned every city and home and condemned the civilians to starvation. In that campaign freed black slaves who came off the plantations would follow the Union army begging for food because they were starving. They were driven away with massed gunfire. But we are told non-stop Lincoln was a saint. As the old joke goes "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
They just re-buried a confederate general in Virginia, so maybe it still hasn’t ended
Should have thrown him in trash. Traitors get no homor5
This one
The Confederacy wouldn’t stand a chance in a war today, they’d be screwed fighting the North then have to deal with Cartels at the Southern Border trying to get in the U.S because of all the chaos. All the North would have to do is control the Atlantic regions and cut off the Confederacy’s ability to re-supply its army. Only way Confederacy could win is if California secedes but I’m pretty sure Californians would take the streets to protest If that happened
Sherman's march should have started in west Texas, turned around in northern Virginia & gone back again.