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(CHEERING AND CLAPPING)
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I can thank God for Jesus
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because I know Jesus is three in one.
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(GOSPEL MUSIC)
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Thank the Lord!
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Thank the Lord!
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(INDISTINCT SINGING)
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(COOKE) For more than three centuries,
the negro in America has been, in turn,
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slave, lackey, hired help, licensed clown,
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who mostly gave to America his cheap labour
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and his powerful, melancholy music.
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His lowly status has mocked,
and only recently challenged,
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the old American declaration
that all men are created equal.
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In general, the negro
is at the bottom of the heap.
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He has less schooling, worse health,
more infant mortality,
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double or triple the unemployment rate
of the whites.
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He is a permanent invalid in American society.
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And the places he lives,
whether in the town or the country,
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are its casualty wards.
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Sometimes it does seem, in some places,
that he's not much better off
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than he was when Jefferson
feared that the condition of the negro
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might ring a firebell in the night.
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Let's go back to the beginning
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and listen to some words
that were written 190 years ago.
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They were put down by Jefferson
at the end of a day
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after he'd seen a planter abusing a slave
while the planter's son stood by.
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"The whole commerce
between master and slave
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"is a perpetual exercise
of the most boisterous passions -
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"the most unremitting despotism
on the one part,
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"and degrading submissions on the other.
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"Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
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"The parent storms, the child looks on, and puts
on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves,
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"and thus nursed, educated
and daily exercised in tyranny,
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"cannot but be stamped by it,
with odious peculiarities.
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"The man must be a prodigy
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"who can retain his manners and morals
undepraved by such circumstances."
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I suppose today the word "slave"
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calls up an image of a man wholly black.
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A man sold in Africa by black men
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to British or American shippers,
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and then put up on auction block somewhere
in the West Indies or the American South.
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When the slave arrived here,
in Protestant North America at any rate,
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he would have no hope,
as he had in Catholic Brazil,
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of working out his freedom.
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He would be set to work
on a rice or tobacco plantation
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and watched from dawn to dusk
by an overseer.
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His whole life would be spent
within the confines of his master's domain.
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He was usually not allowed to marry
or form lasting attachments.
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They would produce, in time, more hands
for work, but at once, more mouths to feed.
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But if his lot here below was miserable,
he was encouraged to hope for pie in the sky.
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And he was freely allowed then, as now,
the consolations of religion.
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It's up to you today to tap the treasure of good.
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If I can give you the right communication,
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then you will be a friend to me.
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You will be a just man.
A fountain of beauty.
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(ALL) Yeah!
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(GOSPEL MUSIC)
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(MUSIC DROWNS WORDS)
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...in the name of Jesus!
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Thank you, God.
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Yes, Lord.
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Stretch out thy arm of understanding.
Remember this child.
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We pray in the name of Jesus. Thank you, God.
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(COOKE) Yet, to the foreign visitor,
the hardships of this labouring society
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were cloaked with the facade
of great natural beauty and elegant living,
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but always behind the facade
was the force that maintained it.
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The labour force that the southerners
called the "Peculiar Institution".
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These are the slave cabins,
and rather more imposing than most.
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These were built in 1740
by the slaves themselves.
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These were reserved for the house servants.
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The labouring slaves had their smaller huts
in the woods and the fields.
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As you see, they're pretty solid,
and now in disrepair.
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In each cabin, one, two, possibly three families
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were born, lived, died.
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Whole generations lived their lives away in
these huts, and the fields in which they worked.
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# Go down, Moses
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# Way down in Egypt land
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# Tell ol' Pharaoh
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# To let my people go
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# Go down, Moses
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# Way down in Egypt land
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# Tell ol' Pharaoh
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# To let my people go #
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(COOKE) In many plantations, they ran away.
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And there was no place to hide.
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There were small, fierce insurrections,
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and they were put down.
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I suppose nothing is more permanent
in human nature
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than indignation by hindsight.
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There are people running around who say
Jefferson had slaves, so he was a hypocrite.
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I remember when I first came to this country,
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I was disturbed by the separate signs "Black"
and "White" that you saw in restaurants,
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and dividing off sections
in theatres and trains and so on,
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and it seemed to me then
that the negro was a sore thumb
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sticking up through
the Declaration of Independence.
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But I didn't shudder
as Americans did and do
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at the inhumanity of sending
eight-year-old boys away to boarding school.
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I think it all depends on the conventions
that you were brought up with.
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After all, Franklin Roosevelt was a humane man,
and so were my many southern friends.
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And I decided that it was their country
and perhaps they knew best.
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Now, this is scandalously insensitive today,
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and it's caught up with us.
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And the negro has a long way to go,
but he has come further in the last 30 years
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than in the previous 300.
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Well, by the time of the American Revolution,
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half the population of Virginia were black slaves,
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and in the Carolinas
it was two blacks to one white.
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Many southerners, as you must have gathered
from that anguished passage of Jefferson,
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felt ashamed, humiliated
by their ownership of slaves.
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George Washington, by the way,
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he performed his own act of emancipation
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by setting his slaves free in his will.
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But the slave trade was too profitable
to the northern shipper,
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and too vital to the economy of the south
to be abolished.
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It WAS abolished in 1808 - that's to say,
the legal importation of slaves from Africa.
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Indeed, long before then,
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the port of Savannah in Georgia
had hoped to prosper without them.
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Savannah was planned
by an English humanitarian -
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a greatly admired friend of Dr Johnson,
James Oglethorpe.
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It was his ambition to make of Georgia
a decorative, ideal colony
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that should be free from, as he put it,
"the stain of slavery".
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But white men had no taste
for stooped labour under a tropical sun.
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Then, around the turn of the 18th century,
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something happened that made slaves
more desirable than ever,
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and the bootleg trade in them
more lucrative than the legal trade.
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That something was the cotton kingdom.
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In the autumn of 1792,
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a young man, fresh from Yale College,
arrived in Savannah.
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His name was Eli Whitney.
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He took a boat up the Savannah River.
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He was a northerner,
the son of a Massachusetts farmer.
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He was at once impressed and moved
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by the strangeness of the landscape,
the bird sounds
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and the primal life on the bayous.
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He was going to his first job as a schoolteacher
on a plantation in Georgia.
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To a boy from a snowbound, New England farm,
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his first sight of the south must have seemed
as exotic as a journey to Siam.
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Young Whitney was a recluse.
An inquisitive, brooding type.
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What today we should call a loner.
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In his native north,
he had to do all the chores of a farm,
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but his mania was carpentry and mechanics.
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As a boy, he'd amazed his family by
disappearing to his work bench for days on end
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and reappearing with wheel rims, polished axles,
hat pins, finely ground knives,
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clocks, needles, metalwork, fiddles -
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all of his own construction.
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Well, one evening in Georgia,
he sat in silence at a dinner party
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and listened to some southern planters
in a bitter lamentation
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about the tedium
and the cost of cleaning cotton.
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It took 20 slaves a whole day
to pick and clean the cotton.
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This was an old and nagging problem.
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The precious part is the lint. What you had to
get rid of were these bothersome seeds.
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They're as hard as peas, and buried in there.
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They just had to be pulled out by hand.
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Separated like that.
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There was no machine,
no device ever contrived that could do it.
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Until they could separate their own Sea Island
and green-seed cottons, they could not compete.
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Until this visit to Georgia, Whitney, of course,
had never seen any species of cotton,
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but he was fascinated by the problem.
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In the next few days, he went off to a carpenter's
shop that the family had rigged up for him.
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He tried out all kinds of shapes of cylinders,
and he pulled drawknives over them
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and nothing worked.
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Then he tells us in a letter, one day he saw a cat
sitting by a fence that enclosed the poultry yard.
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The cat could just get one paw
through the fence,
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and held it there like a pointer, poised,
waiting for a strolling chicken.
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And then darted the paw forward, missed
the chicken, but retrieved a pawful of feathers.
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In this, he saw a principle of friction
and separation.
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He applied it, and he came up with this -
the cotton gin.
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This is an actual demonstration model
that was made by Whitney himself.
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It's preserved in the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington, which is where we now are.
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Like so many awesome discoveries,
like the propositions of Euclid,
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it was so simple that it seemed incredible
nobody had thought of it
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any day after the invention of the wheel.
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Well, here it is. A wooden cylinder implanted
with metal spikes divided by metal bars.
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You take a piece of raw cotton,
drop it in, turn the crank,
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you shed the seeds into the box,
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and up comes here... the pure lint.
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Whitney calculated that a hand machine like this
could do the work of ten slaves.
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Of 50 slaves if it was driven by water.
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It was so simple, so obvious
that every rude wheelwright could make it,
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and it was Whitney's misfortune
that most of them did.
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Trying to monopolise it
was like taking out a patent on a shoelace.
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But the thing itself, in all its forms,
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gave a gigantic lift to the fortunes
of the southern planters.
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# 0h, I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
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# Look away, look away,
look away Dixieland
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# In Dixieland where I was born
Early on one frosty morning
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# Look away, look away,
look away Dixieland
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# 0h, I wish I was in Dixie
Hurray, hurray
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# In Dixieland I'll make my stand
To live and die in Dixie
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# Away, away
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# Away down south in Dixie
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# Away, away, away down south in Dixie #
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And then, less than two years
after Whitney's invention,
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a Frenchman in New Orleans
made sugar granulate from boiling sugar cane.
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So now, also a sugar empire
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turned the hot, wet delta lands of Louisiana
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into more fortunes, and yet another
recruiting ground for black slaves.
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00:16:18,527 --> 00:16:21,246
How to get it to the north?
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00:16:21,887 --> 00:16:26,597
The Mississippi has a powerful downstream flow
and treacherous currents.
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They tried and failed to pull boats upstream
with teams of horses on the banks.
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Then, in 1811, New Orleans
built the first steamboat
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00:16:37,247 --> 00:16:40,762
and solved the problem of upstream navigation.
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They started shipping cargoes of raw sugar
up the Mississippi for refining
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00:16:45,927 --> 00:16:49,476
as far as St Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati.
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00:16:50,367 --> 00:16:53,279
20 years after the first steamboat
went up the river,
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00:16:53,247 --> 00:16:57,877
New Orleans boasted that it had
the largest sugar refinery in the world,
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and was the capital port of king cotton.
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(MUSIC: "DIXIE")
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So now the south settled into its golden age.
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The sugar went up the river,
and on the return journey,
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steamboats picked up the cotton
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00:17:50,807 --> 00:17:54,243
from plantations begun
on the banks of the Mississippi.
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00:17:54,647 --> 00:17:58,037
The first stop the steamboats made
was here at Natchez,
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00:17:58,007 --> 00:18:02,159
a town that had been ruled successively
by the Indians, the French,
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00:18:02,327 --> 00:18:05,956
the British, the Spanish,
and was only recently American.
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00:18:06,167 --> 00:18:11,560
Before the coming of the cotton gin,
it had been a frontier capital, and a rough one.
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00:18:11,967 --> 00:18:15,562
A loading place for the flatboatmen
taking aboard the rafts
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00:18:15,727 --> 00:18:20,642
skins and hams,
tobacco and grains and whisky.
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00:18:20,527 --> 00:18:24,406
It was a way station for pioneers
going west into the new lands,
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00:18:24,847 --> 00:18:30,046
and a boom town for land agents
and fly-by-night real estate men.
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00:18:30,127 --> 00:18:33,915
Land was cheap,
and money was easy to make and lose.
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00:18:34,647 --> 00:18:38,083
New farmers found that tobacco here didn't pay,
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00:18:38,487 --> 00:18:41,160
but with the cotton gin, the land bloomed,
224
00:18:41,367 --> 00:18:46,282
and in time, so did the new rich,
from the south but also from the north,
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00:18:46,167 --> 00:18:48,965
and even from Scotland and Ireland.
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00:18:49,247 --> 00:18:54,241
They built new houses on the models
that the French and Spanish had given them,
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00:18:54,527 --> 00:18:59,965
but the grandest mansions followed
the conservative fashion of the Greek revival.
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00:19:46,367 --> 00:19:50,724
The man who built this house
was an Irishman - Frederick Stanton -
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00:19:50,687 --> 00:19:56,239
and he was one who profited royally from
the mating of the cotton gin and the steamboat.
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00:19:57,407 --> 00:20:01,958
In 1852, he sold his first big house
to Natchez's first millionaire,
231
00:20:02,247 --> 00:20:06,160
and he decided to build something
bigger and better of his own.
232
00:20:06,087 --> 00:20:07,486
And this is it.
233
00:20:07,767 --> 00:20:09,485
Stanton Hall.
234
00:20:09,687 --> 00:20:13,521
It's characteristic
of the mid-century southern tycoons,
235
00:20:13,527 --> 00:20:17,759
that though they admired
and retained the classical forms outdoors,
236
00:20:18,047 --> 00:20:25,397
indoors, they packed their houses with
the gaudiest, the most funereal early Victoriana.
237
00:20:27,967 --> 00:20:29,958
He was a cotton broker.
238
00:20:29,887 --> 00:20:33,675
After the steamboat,
he shipped his cotton north to Memphis
239
00:20:34,207 --> 00:20:37,085
and all the northern ports of the Mississippi,
240
00:20:37,087 --> 00:20:42,081
down the river to New Orleans
and out to Europe, particularly to Manchester.
241
00:20:42,367 --> 00:20:49,159
He was a type that anticipated the more
lordly habits of the later financial barons.
242
00:20:49,087 --> 00:20:52,238
This house took five years to complete.
243
00:20:52,447 --> 00:20:54,438
Towards the end of the work,
244
00:20:54,847 --> 00:21:01,161
Stanton grew a little impatient with the regular
timetables of the transatlantic ships,
245
00:21:01,087 --> 00:21:05,842
so he charted his own liner
to fetch the furniture, the mirrors
246
00:21:05,887 --> 00:21:11,325
and the expensive baubles that he'd bought
or had made to order in Europe.
247
00:21:11,647 --> 00:21:17,358
They were reshipped to New Orleans, came up
the river, and were unloaded here in Natchez.
248
00:21:17,407 --> 00:21:22,765
And here they are. Mantels of Carrera marble.
249
00:21:23,207 --> 00:21:25,516
Bronze chandeliers, also from Italy.
250
00:21:25,647 --> 00:21:28,525
Two giant matching French mirrors.
251
00:21:28,727 --> 00:21:31,958
And mahogany doors made in England.
252
00:21:32,607 --> 00:21:36,759
It was a far cry from Natchez, Mississippi
to Savannah, Georgia,
253
00:21:36,927 --> 00:21:39,316
and from the new fortunes to the old,
254
00:21:39,807 --> 00:21:43,197
but to cross the thousand miles
that separated them,
255
00:21:43,167 --> 00:21:47,285
you would have seen the same crop,
the same lifeline,
256
00:21:47,487 --> 00:21:50,718
the same legions of the blacks.
257
00:21:52,287 --> 00:21:55,962
It's time to leave this graceful,
feudal cotton kingdom,
258
00:21:56,127 --> 00:21:58,118
and go back to the north,
259
00:21:58,047 --> 00:22:02,040
as Eli Whitney did,
to devise in these factories of his
260
00:22:02,367 --> 00:22:06,883
a method of making a uniform product
with interchangeable parts.
261
00:22:07,167 --> 00:22:12,082
It no longer required special skill
to make a gun, or later, a sewing machine.
262
00:22:11,967 --> 00:22:14,401
Moulds could produce identical parts
263
00:22:14,847 --> 00:22:19,398
that had always had to be made
by the hands of skilled craftsmen.
264
00:22:19,607 --> 00:22:24,158
It was the fateful turning point
between craftsmanship and industry,
265
00:22:24,407 --> 00:22:29,800
and it heralded all the benefits
and all the troubles of mass production.
266
00:22:29,847 --> 00:22:32,759
Whitney's ingenuity in two places
267
00:22:32,727 --> 00:22:38,279
had given a tragic guarantee that the north
would embrace the industrial revolution
268
00:22:38,487 --> 00:22:40,478
and the south would reject it.
269
00:22:40,887 --> 00:22:44,357
That the north would go one way
and the south another,
270
00:22:44,447 --> 00:22:47,644
and that sooner or later they would collide.
271
00:22:48,727 --> 00:22:53,847
The historical fact is that the south
was spreading cotton, tobacco and sugar
272
00:22:54,007 --> 00:22:58,922
into new land, and extending the empire
of slavery through the south and west,
273
00:22:59,087 --> 00:23:03,444
while into the north and west
were pouring men and machines
274
00:23:03,607 --> 00:23:06,041
and, most of all, independent farmers.
275
00:23:06,007 --> 00:23:09,397
They were against slavery -
not so much on principle.
276
00:23:09,847 --> 00:23:14,398
They'd expected to go west
and work free land for their own prosperity,
277
00:23:14,167 --> 00:23:17,796
and did not expect to compete with slave labour.
278
00:23:22,407 --> 00:23:25,479
So the very awkward question came up.
279
00:23:25,767 --> 00:23:31,285
What would happen when the two streams
of settlers flowed together on the same ground?
280
00:23:32,007 --> 00:23:35,602
Let's look at the map.
This is the actual map of the times.
281
00:23:36,847 --> 00:23:42,683
The first frightening omen - Thomas Jefferson
called it "A firebell in the night" -
282
00:23:42,607 --> 00:23:48,637
came so early as 1819,
when Missouri asked to come in as a state.
283
00:23:48,847 --> 00:23:51,998
Now, Missouri had been settled by slave holders,
284
00:23:52,207 --> 00:23:55,438
but it lies north of the tumbling, horizontal line
285
00:23:55,567 --> 00:24:00,402
that divided the free states of the north
from the slave states of the south.
286
00:24:00,847 --> 00:24:03,759
If Missouri were let in as a slave state,
287
00:24:03,727 --> 00:24:08,926
a northerner would look at this map
and see a precedent, an invasion,
288
00:24:09,007 --> 00:24:11,965
at best a buffer state.
289
00:24:12,767 --> 00:24:15,759
The Congress let Missouri in as a slave state,
290
00:24:16,127 --> 00:24:20,279
but to maintain its habit
of balancing one free, one slave,
291
00:24:20,327 --> 00:24:23,717
it also let Maine in as a free state.
292
00:24:23,687 --> 00:24:27,157
But in the same act, it prohibited from then on
293
00:24:27,527 --> 00:24:31,839
all slavery north of this line of latitude, 36-30.
294
00:24:32,007 --> 00:24:35,795
It is known as the "Missouri Compromise Line",
295
00:24:35,847 --> 00:24:37,405
and it drew a battle line.
296
00:24:37,687 --> 00:24:43,603
This geographical balance
lasted precariously for about 30 years.
297
00:24:43,447 --> 00:24:47,042
Then the United States fought a war
with Mexico and won,
298
00:24:47,287 --> 00:24:53,044
and acquired vast lands, most of them
south of the Missouri Compromise Line.
299
00:24:53,127 --> 00:24:56,199
Texas, the territory of New Mexico, California,
300
00:24:56,487 --> 00:24:59,524
and Utah well to the north.
301
00:24:59,847 --> 00:25:04,284
This presented a massive challenge
to the Missouri Compromise,
302
00:25:04,447 --> 00:25:07,200
and it inspired massive enmity
303
00:25:07,327 --> 00:25:10,000
which festered for a couple of years or so,
304
00:25:10,207 --> 00:25:13,085
and came to a head, as all great issues do,
305
00:25:13,087 --> 00:25:16,636
in the United States Senate,
which is where we are now.
306
00:25:16,927 --> 00:25:21,443
We're in the Senate reception room,
and on the opposite wall there,
307
00:25:21,727 --> 00:25:26,005
I see a portrait of the last man,
the last great political figure
308
00:25:26,047 --> 00:25:28,766
to try and reconcile the north and the south.
309
00:25:29,007 --> 00:25:34,206
His name was Henry Clay,
and he was from Kentucky.
310
00:25:34,807 --> 00:25:39,278
He gave 60 years of his life
to a failing campaign to abolish slavery,
311
00:25:39,607 --> 00:25:41,598
beginning in his own state.
312
00:25:42,007 --> 00:25:44,202
But in spite of his ardent feelings,
313
00:25:43,927 --> 00:25:46,885
he was known as the "Great Compromiser".
314
00:25:47,287 --> 00:25:50,279
He looks a whole lot younger and healthier here
315
00:25:50,647 --> 00:25:55,641
than he did when he stood on the Senate floor
to give the last speech of his life.
316
00:25:55,447 --> 00:26:01,158
He was 83, haggard, racked with asthma,
and he talked for two days.
317
00:26:01,687 --> 00:26:05,885
And this was his solution.
Let the north return all fugitive slaves.
318
00:26:05,927 --> 00:26:09,317
Let California be admitted as a free state.
319
00:26:09,287 --> 00:26:14,281
Give to the territories of Utah and New Mexico
the time and the freedom
320
00:26:14,567 --> 00:26:17,843
to decide when, if ever, they want slavery.
321
00:26:17,927 --> 00:26:22,478
And let the new state of Texas
keep the slave system it had always had.
322
00:26:23,287 --> 00:26:28,759
The compromise was voted
and grudgingly accepted by both sides,
323
00:26:29,047 --> 00:26:33,677
but then came one of those frightening decades
in American history
324
00:26:33,927 --> 00:26:37,966
when fear on the one hand
and self-righteousness on the other
325
00:26:38,047 --> 00:26:40,845
combine to seize a public issue.
326
00:26:41,087 --> 00:26:45,717
Of course, there were fair, high-minded men
in every part of the country,
327
00:26:46,207 --> 00:26:49,802
but they were drowned in a boiling sea
of rhetoric and propaganda.
328
00:26:52,567 --> 00:26:57,766
There was a secret highway worked out
by abolitionists in defiance of the federal law
329
00:26:57,847 --> 00:27:00,839
to help fugitive slaves escape from the south.
330
00:27:01,207 --> 00:27:05,962
At least 50,000 of them
got away through this underground.
331
00:27:06,487 --> 00:27:11,197
And there was a maniacal egotist
from Connecticut, John Brown,
332
00:27:11,687 --> 00:27:16,602
who raided a federal arsenal
with the intention of arming slaves in the south.
333
00:27:16,767 --> 00:27:19,998
He was caught, tried and hanged,
334
00:27:20,127 --> 00:27:24,279
but, oddly, his name
goes marching on in a song.
335
00:27:24,447 --> 00:27:29,441
(MUSIC: "JOHN BROWN'S BODY")
336
00:27:40,287 --> 00:27:43,836
All these things
taunted and enraged the southerners.
337
00:27:44,127 --> 00:27:47,642
They retreated
into an equally self-righteous defiance,
338
00:27:47,807 --> 00:27:52,198
and soon the word "Secession"
became a badge of southern pride.
339
00:27:52,367 --> 00:27:56,883
The last fatal blow was struck by,
of all healing institutions,
340
00:27:57,167 --> 00:27:59,727
the Supreme Court of the United States.
341
00:27:59,767 --> 00:28:03,680
A negro slave, Dred Scott,
from a slave state, Missouri,
342
00:28:03,607 --> 00:28:09,000
had lived for some time in a free state, Illinois,
with his old master's permission.
343
00:28:09,367 --> 00:28:13,997
When he went home again, he sued in court
to have himself declared a free man.
344
00:28:14,167 --> 00:28:16,806
In a fatal decision, the Supreme Court ruled
345
00:28:17,007 --> 00:28:21,876
that whether or not you could argue
that a negro was a citizen, a slave was not.
346
00:28:21,807 --> 00:28:24,196
The laws of Missouri were binding.
347
00:28:24,607 --> 00:28:31,126
In a word, the court said that Congress was
powerless to exclude slavery from a free state.
348
00:28:31,127 --> 00:28:36,406
From then on, the two nations,
for that was what, in fact, they had become,
349
00:28:36,447 --> 00:28:39,564
almost resolutely fell apart.
350
00:28:41,127 --> 00:28:43,595
On 12th April, 1861,
351
00:28:44,007 --> 00:28:49,286
the southerners unloosed their fire
on a federal fort, Fort Sumpter,
352
00:28:49,287 --> 00:28:53,405
built on a sand bar
in the mouth of Charleston Harbour.
353
00:28:55,487 --> 00:28:59,526
"A house divided against itself,"
said Lincoln, "cannot stand."
354
00:28:59,687 --> 00:29:05,637
A casual sentence that immediately had
a piercing relevance to the army regulars.
355
00:29:05,927 --> 00:29:10,557
If they came from the south,
they had to choose which side to be on.
356
00:29:10,607 --> 00:29:14,122
Two brothers were major generals
with the opposing armies.
357
00:29:14,287 --> 00:29:20,044
The commander of the Confederate navy
had a son killed in the Union navy.
358
00:29:20,207 --> 00:29:26,316
And Mrs Abraham Lincoln's three brothers
died for the south.
359
00:29:27,447 --> 00:29:31,599
I doubt that any war is more wounding
to the young than a civil war,
360
00:29:31,767 --> 00:29:34,918
which turns the homeland into alien country
361
00:29:35,127 --> 00:29:38,915
and a map of bloody family feuds.
362
00:29:42,967 --> 00:29:47,119
In the beginning, the northerners thought,
as one side always does,
363
00:29:47,287 --> 00:29:49,801
that the war would be over by Christmas.
364
00:29:50,167 --> 00:29:55,366
The north had 22 million people
against nine million in the south.
365
00:29:55,487 --> 00:29:58,479
It had the steel to make its guns and materiel.
366
00:29:58,487 --> 00:30:01,877
The south had to buy them
from France and Britain.
367
00:30:01,847 --> 00:30:05,522
New York alone produced
twice as many manufactured goods
368
00:30:05,687 --> 00:30:07,279
as the whole of the south.
369
00:30:07,607 --> 00:30:11,236
The north had 22,000 miles of unified railroads,
370
00:30:11,287 --> 00:30:16,919
and the south only 9,000 miles of track
of various gauges.
371
00:30:17,047 --> 00:30:23,395
For all these disparities, camp life
on both sides was about equally primitive.
372
00:30:23,927 --> 00:30:28,876
Country boys, until they were
talked into a little elementary hygiene,
373
00:30:29,047 --> 00:30:31,083
into the magic of carbolic soap,
374
00:30:31,167 --> 00:30:33,840
dropped like swatted flies.
375
00:30:34,767 --> 00:30:38,999
Amputation was the regular cure
for a badly wounded limb,
376
00:30:39,087 --> 00:30:44,684
and if you survived, you had
one chance in four of dying from infection.
377
00:30:45,527 --> 00:30:48,758
But gradually, the huge experience
of gunshot wounds
378
00:30:48,887 --> 00:30:52,846
brought new knowledge to medicine,
to neurology in particular,
379
00:30:53,047 --> 00:30:58,326
and after two years, the battlefield use
of anaesthetics became routine.
380
00:30:59,327 --> 00:31:01,045
For the northern armies,
381
00:31:01,247 --> 00:31:05,684
high-minded men and women formed
the National Sanitary Commission,
382
00:31:05,607 --> 00:31:10,123
which started veterans' pensions,
organised nursing wards at the front
383
00:31:10,407 --> 00:31:15,003
and faced the human problems
of the men who went home again.
384
00:31:15,647 --> 00:31:20,482
For the southerners, there was only
the compassion of scattered families,
385
00:31:20,447 --> 00:31:25,282
and the hope that the next raid
would seize some of the drugs and chloroform
386
00:31:25,727 --> 00:31:30,118
which Abraham Lincoln barred
from shipment to the southern armies.
387
00:31:31,087 --> 00:31:35,126
Why, then, did it go on for four years?
388
00:31:35,407 --> 00:31:41,118
The south had the resources of a vast granary,
but its human resources were its strength.
389
00:31:41,167 --> 00:31:44,000
It had more adroit and disciplined generals
390
00:31:44,047 --> 00:31:47,084
who became skilled
at fighting along interior lines.
391
00:31:47,367 --> 00:31:49,358
It had the southern people,
392
00:31:49,327 --> 00:31:55,641
and all they wanted was to prove
that their homeland was unconquerable.
393
00:32:00,367 --> 00:32:05,441
To this day, the moment you leave Washington
and cross the Potomac into Virginia,
394
00:32:05,567 --> 00:32:09,879
the highways throughout the whole arc
of the south for 1,000 miles
395
00:32:09,887 --> 00:32:16,884
are posted with historical markers that tick off
placid fields as the scene of ghastly encounters.
396
00:32:19,447 --> 00:32:22,519
We're in one of them now,
in Southern Tennessee.
397
00:32:22,327 --> 00:32:28,038
It is called Shiloh, and it's only one
of a whole poem of remembered place names.
398
00:32:28,567 --> 00:32:31,923
They toll through the American memory
like an elegy.
399
00:32:31,927 --> 00:32:35,715
Antietam and Vicksburg.
Manassas and Bull Run.
400
00:32:35,767 --> 00:32:39,999
Chattanooga and Chancellorsville
and Gettysburg.
401
00:32:40,087 --> 00:32:43,636
They were unforgettable
even down to our own time.
402
00:32:45,007 --> 00:32:46,998
I once knew a very old man
403
00:32:46,927 --> 00:32:53,275
with a huge chiselled face and
a great snowy moustache and a blazing eye.
404
00:32:54,127 --> 00:32:58,837
And he was a New England aristocrat
of immense reserve,
405
00:32:58,927 --> 00:33:03,159
but he couldn't help beginning his entry
in "Who's Who" with this -
406
00:33:03,727 --> 00:33:06,480
"Born March 8th 1841.
407
00:33:06,567 --> 00:33:10,799
"Captain, 20th Massachusetts Volunteers.
408
00:33:10,887 --> 00:33:13,799
"Wounded in the breast at Ball's Bluff.
409
00:33:13,767 --> 00:33:16,361
"In the heel at Fredericksburg.
410
00:33:16,647 --> 00:33:19,684
"In the neck at Antietam."
411
00:33:20,007 --> 00:33:24,398
Nevertheless, he survived
to become the most distinguished jurist
412
00:33:24,327 --> 00:33:26,397
in the English-speaking world.
413
00:33:26,727 --> 00:33:29,878
His name was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
414
00:33:31,047 --> 00:33:36,599
I still find it hard to believe that I met a man
who was wounded in the American Civil War,
415
00:33:36,807 --> 00:33:40,356
when his comrades
have been dead for over 100 years.
416
00:33:40,527 --> 00:33:45,123
Their only lasting memorial
is the photographs they had taken
417
00:33:45,327 --> 00:33:48,125
when they first put on their uniform.
418
00:33:55,567 --> 00:34:01,915
#Just before a battle, Mother
419
00:34:01,807 --> 00:34:08,155
# I am thinking most of you
420
00:34:09,487 --> 00:34:15,437
# While upon the fields we're watching
421
00:34:16,687 --> 00:34:21,920
# With the enemy in view
422
00:34:23,407 --> 00:34:29,437
# Comrades brave are round me lying
423
00:34:30,607 --> 00:34:36,477
# Filled with thoughts of home and God
424
00:34:37,327 --> 00:34:43,960
# For well they know that on the morrow
425
00:34:44,047 --> 00:34:50,202
# Some will sleep beneath the sod
426
00:34:51,247 --> 00:34:58,323
# But, oh, you'll not forget me, Mother
427
00:34:59,887 --> 00:35:06,963
# If I'm numbered with the slain #
428
00:35:10,927 --> 00:35:15,762
(COOKE) The north had the reserves,
but the southerners had the audacity.
429
00:35:16,007 --> 00:35:19,602
And the best of them fought
with a single-minded passion
430
00:35:19,847 --> 00:35:23,635
behind the last gentle knight of modern warfare -
431
00:35:23,687 --> 00:35:26,155
General Robert E Lee.
432
00:35:26,087 --> 00:35:31,639
A man so deeply humane
that it's incredible to us, to me at any rate,
433
00:35:32,087 --> 00:35:36,319
that he should have chosen
the profession of soldiering.
434
00:35:36,967 --> 00:35:39,561
When the slavery issue came to a boil,
435
00:35:39,847 --> 00:35:42,156
Lee made quite clear where he stood.
436
00:35:42,247 --> 00:35:47,241
He wrote, "Slavery is a moral and political evil
in any society.
437
00:35:47,527 --> 00:35:50,724
"A greater evil to the white man
than the black."
438
00:35:50,887 --> 00:35:53,082
And he freed his slaves.
439
00:35:53,287 --> 00:35:55,198
We are in his study.
440
00:35:55,207 --> 00:35:59,598
A very simple Victorian study, as you see.
This is the little chess set
441
00:35:59,887 --> 00:36:02,799
that he carried with him on all his campaigns.
442
00:36:02,767 --> 00:36:07,238
And he even took this desk
on campaign with him, too.
443
00:36:07,607 --> 00:36:11,964
When the war started,
he faced an acute moral conflict.
444
00:36:11,927 --> 00:36:17,718
It's always a shock to recall that Lincoln
offered him the command of the northern forces.
445
00:36:17,687 --> 00:36:20,076
He could have taken it on principle,
446
00:36:20,567 --> 00:36:25,960
because he believed very strongly
that secession was unconstitutional.
447
00:36:25,847 --> 00:36:33,276
But through five generations, all his loyalties
and his affections were with Virginia.
448
00:36:33,527 --> 00:36:38,760
He spent a day and a night padding around
upstairs, trying to resolve this ordeal,
449
00:36:38,807 --> 00:36:41,196
and at the end of it he wrote to his son.
450
00:36:41,687 --> 00:36:44,121
He said that he believed in the Union...
451
00:36:44,087 --> 00:36:47,966
"But a Union that can only be maintained
by swords and bayonets
452
00:36:48,407 --> 00:36:50,045
"has no charm for me."
453
00:36:49,847 --> 00:36:53,522
So he went back to Virginia,
offered his services,
454
00:36:53,687 --> 00:36:56,963
and was put in command of the southern forces.
455
00:36:57,527 --> 00:37:01,566
And by a tragic irony,
he came to believe in a principle
456
00:37:01,367 --> 00:37:05,599
that Lincoln later was to attribute solely
to the northern cause,
457
00:37:05,687 --> 00:37:11,205
which was the right of a people - how about
the people of Virginia - to govern themselves,
458
00:37:11,447 --> 00:37:16,043
so that government of the people
by the people for the people
459
00:37:16,247 --> 00:37:19,080
shall not perish from the earth.
460
00:37:21,367 --> 00:37:26,680
I doubt that Alexander the Great or Napoleon
461
00:37:26,647 --> 00:37:32,358
commanded such respect, you might even say
reverence, from his troops as Robert E Lee.
462
00:37:32,407 --> 00:37:39,438
There's an incident when, one time, 15,000
soldiers were marching along a road at night,
463
00:37:39,607 --> 00:37:43,316
and they heard that nearby Lee was asleep.
464
00:37:43,447 --> 00:37:46,996
And without any orders, they broke their march
465
00:37:47,287 --> 00:37:50,597
and they all tiptoed by.
466
00:37:57,287 --> 00:37:59,437
A few days after Fort Sumter,
467
00:37:59,687 --> 00:38:03,282
he left this house
and he never came back again.
468
00:38:03,527 --> 00:38:08,078
And within a few more days, it was
a northern camp, and then a graveyard.
469
00:38:08,327 --> 00:38:12,957
The Secretary of War saw to it
that no one would want to live there again
470
00:38:13,127 --> 00:38:18,599
by ordering that solders' graves should be
planted as close to the house as possible.
471
00:38:18,407 --> 00:38:21,558
Later, the place was confiscated
by the government
472
00:38:21,767 --> 00:38:25,282
and is now THE national military cemetery.
473
00:38:25,607 --> 00:38:27,040
Not only for soldiers.
474
00:38:27,247 --> 00:38:30,284
This light on the grave of John F Kennedy
475
00:38:30,447 --> 00:38:35,396
is a perpetual reminder of the bad day
in Dallas in 1963.
476
00:38:35,567 --> 00:38:39,924
And this cross on the grave
of Robert F Kennedy
477
00:38:39,887 --> 00:38:44,483
a reminder of the bad night
in Los Angeles five years later.
478
00:39:01,167 --> 00:39:06,764
I don't suppose there's a more beautiful,
bleak view in all America than this,
479
00:39:07,167 --> 00:39:12,287
from the porch of a saintly man who might
have commanded the Union but lost the south,
480
00:39:12,527 --> 00:39:15,758
looking over the graves
of two murdered brothers
481
00:39:15,887 --> 00:39:19,277
across the river
to yet another murdered president.
482
00:39:19,247 --> 00:39:24,640
The man who, more than any northern soldier,
was Lee's opposing figure.
483
00:39:25,007 --> 00:39:30,718
We're talking, of course, about that bemused
country boy, frontier farmer, carpenter,
484
00:39:30,767 --> 00:39:34,680
drifter, rail splitter, lawyer,
tough and wily politician
485
00:39:35,087 --> 00:39:38,238
whose rude boyhood we looked at last time.
486
00:39:38,447 --> 00:39:42,076
Abraham Lincoln.
487
00:39:43,567 --> 00:39:47,958
This is the room in the White House
where he sat down with his Cabinet,
488
00:39:47,887 --> 00:39:51,880
and he used to rest when he was overcome,
as he often was,
489
00:39:52,207 --> 00:39:55,961
with what he called "a profound melancholia".
490
00:39:56,287 --> 00:39:59,199
He was never wildly popular
when he was alive,
491
00:39:59,167 --> 00:40:01,681
especially at the beginning of the war.
492
00:40:02,047 --> 00:40:05,676
Like all strong characters,
he was well hated,
493
00:40:05,887 --> 00:40:09,277
and many newspapers,
including the London "Times",
494
00:40:09,087 --> 00:40:11,317
called him the Baboon.
495
00:40:11,487 --> 00:40:14,445
Now, I think this was a very snobby thing.
496
00:40:14,927 --> 00:40:19,318
It was mainly because of his country manners
and his gangling gait,
497
00:40:19,247 --> 00:40:21,715
and his fondness for rough stories.
498
00:40:22,127 --> 00:40:27,565
And his maddening habit of being,
in a kind of tooth-sucking way,
499
00:40:27,407 --> 00:40:29,796
wiser and sharper than you.
500
00:40:30,287 --> 00:40:33,518
To make it worse, he was.
501
00:40:33,647 --> 00:40:35,877
He did lead the winning side.
502
00:40:36,047 --> 00:40:38,038
He did, in this room,
503
00:40:37,967 --> 00:40:43,758
sign the proclamation emancipating
the negro slaves in the slave states.
504
00:40:44,207 --> 00:40:46,277
And then he was assassinated.
505
00:40:46,127 --> 00:40:48,118
And so he was canonised,
506
00:40:48,527 --> 00:40:55,877
because a halo encircles all the murdered
presidents, and Lincoln most of all.
507
00:40:57,167 --> 00:41:00,239
Now, this room is now a guest bedroom.
508
00:41:00,047 --> 00:41:05,075
But some people who come here
are just overpowered by it.
509
00:41:05,287 --> 00:41:11,362
It has accommodated all kinds of dignitaries,
heads of state - Prince Philip, Bob Hope -
510
00:41:11,527 --> 00:41:15,520
but there are some people
who have this worship of Lincoln
511
00:41:15,847 --> 00:41:21,763
who feel when they enter this room that
they're coming into a crypt or a private chapel.
512
00:41:22,087 --> 00:41:26,126
I remember when Adlai Stevenson
was summoned here by Harry Truman
513
00:41:25,927 --> 00:41:29,237
to be told that he was
the Democrats' heir apparent.
514
00:41:29,767 --> 00:41:32,281
He was put to stay the night in this room.
515
00:41:32,167 --> 00:41:34,556
Stevenson worshipped Lincoln.
516
00:41:34,567 --> 00:41:38,162
He padded around the room for many hours
517
00:41:38,407 --> 00:41:40,398
and he kept looking at this bed
518
00:41:40,807 --> 00:41:43,241
and, in the end, he just couldn't do it.
519
00:41:43,207 --> 00:41:45,960
He just could not bed down in Lincoln's bed.
520
00:41:46,087 --> 00:41:50,080
So he bedded down on that sofa.
521
00:41:50,487 --> 00:41:56,596
The joke is that in Lincoln's day,
the bed wasn't here. The sofa was.
522
00:41:58,207 --> 00:42:03,839
So, you see, it's difficult, almost tasteless,
to talk sense about such a man.
523
00:42:03,967 --> 00:42:05,764
But we must try.
524
00:42:05,887 --> 00:42:11,917
First, he dignified the trade of politician
perhaps more than any man before or since.
525
00:42:12,127 --> 00:42:18,441
He had an extraordinary sense
of the humanity of quite inhuman people,
526
00:42:18,367 --> 00:42:21,359
and tolerated them long enough
to win them over.
527
00:42:21,727 --> 00:42:24,605
Powerful men who were
the scum of the Republic.
528
00:42:24,607 --> 00:42:28,759
Gun contractors, war profiteers.
Wheeler-dealers of every stripe.
529
00:42:30,087 --> 00:42:32,476
He learned pretty quickly about war.
530
00:42:32,487 --> 00:42:37,356
Having started by firing every general in sight
if he spotted a character flaw,
531
00:42:37,767 --> 00:42:39,564
in the end, he chose the best.
532
00:42:39,687 --> 00:42:41,678
He had so little egomania
533
00:42:41,607 --> 00:42:45,805
that he said to them, "When you are
in the field, you are the Union."
534
00:42:46,767 --> 00:42:50,806
And then, by some brain chemistry
that's never been explained,
535
00:42:51,087 --> 00:42:54,682
he transformed his whole style
of speaking and writing.
536
00:42:55,887 --> 00:43:00,802
His early speeches are full
of the usual fustian of the time,
537
00:43:01,167 --> 00:43:04,079
then he steeped himself in three books.
538
00:43:04,047 --> 00:43:07,835
In the subtleties of Shakespeare,
the cadencies of the Bible,
539
00:43:07,887 --> 00:43:10,321
and the tough humanity of Robert Burns.
540
00:43:10,767 --> 00:43:15,363
And he became what he was - a shrewd,
honourable frontiersman of very great gifts.
541
00:43:16,367 --> 00:43:19,006
Never did he use these gifts more movingly
542
00:43:19,247 --> 00:43:22,637
than in a small town in Pennsylvania -
Gettysburg.
543
00:43:23,087 --> 00:43:26,557
In three sweltering days in July 1863,
544
00:43:26,447 --> 00:43:31,965
it had seen over 150,000 men fight
for every hill and creek and pasture,
545
00:43:32,327 --> 00:43:34,318
and a cemetery gate.
546
00:43:35,207 --> 00:43:40,201
Only three months after the battle,
this cemetery was dedicated as a memorial
547
00:43:40,487 --> 00:43:44,002
before a restless crowd
milling in the stinking air
548
00:43:44,327 --> 00:43:47,842
of shallow graves and rotting bodies.
549
00:43:47,687 --> 00:43:50,599
It was here that Lincoln made the short speech
550
00:43:51,047 --> 00:43:55,677
which alone has immortalised him
among the English-speaking peoples.
551
00:43:55,847 --> 00:43:58,998
At the time, the speech
was not only disregarded,
552
00:43:59,207 --> 00:44:04,600
it was thought to be either a bore
or a discredit to a solemn occasion.
553
00:44:04,487 --> 00:44:09,515
43,000 men were killed or missing or wounded
at Gettysburg.
554
00:44:09,767 --> 00:44:14,557
A single slaughter not matched again
until the second battle of the Somme.
555
00:44:15,527 --> 00:44:19,361
Lee's men never again penetrated so far north.
556
00:44:24,327 --> 00:44:29,560
When Gettysburg was over, there were
many more battles and almost two years to go,
557
00:44:29,607 --> 00:44:32,360
but it was the flood tide of southern hopes.
558
00:44:32,527 --> 00:44:35,360
From then on, Britain and France backed away
559
00:44:35,407 --> 00:44:39,116
from the seductive appeals
to come in on the southern side.
560
00:44:40,047 --> 00:44:42,766
And at the end of it, what?
561
00:44:42,927 --> 00:44:47,557
The south was beaten,
and much worse, it was devastated.
562
00:44:47,727 --> 00:44:49,957
The cotton kingdom was destroyed,
563
00:44:50,127 --> 00:44:55,406
the plantation system with all its evils
and its virtues was debauched.
564
00:44:55,767 --> 00:45:01,603
Four million slaves were freed,
but there was nowhere for them to go.
565
00:45:02,287 --> 00:45:07,441
The land, simply the natural richness of the land
and the man-made culture of the south
566
00:45:07,567 --> 00:45:09,364
were defiled.
567
00:45:09,487 --> 00:45:14,038
In a single long march of 60,000 men
from Atlanta to the sea,
568
00:45:14,287 --> 00:45:18,803
General Sherman destroyed
every town, railyard, mansion, crop
569
00:45:19,087 --> 00:45:22,523
across a swathe of 60 miles.
570
00:45:23,167 --> 00:45:26,477
# So we made a thoroughfare
for freedom and her train
571
00:45:27,007 --> 00:45:30,158
# 60 miles in latitude, 300 to the main
572
00:45:30,367 --> 00:45:33,643
# Treason fled before us,
resistance was in vain
573
00:45:33,727 --> 00:45:37,003
# While we were marching through Georgia
574
00:45:37,087 --> 00:45:40,397
# Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee
575
00:45:40,647 --> 00:45:44,037
# Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free
576
00:45:43,927 --> 00:45:47,283
# So we sang the chorus
from Atlanta to the sea
577
00:45:47,567 --> 00:45:51,003
# While we were marching
through Georgia #
578
00:45:52,127 --> 00:45:54,482
So, the Union held.
579
00:45:55,967 --> 00:45:57,958
At what a price?
580
00:45:57,887 --> 00:46:03,359
Germany after the second war was hardly
so badly off as the conquered south.
581
00:46:03,647 --> 00:46:07,879
And it was not only conquered,
it was now to be punished.
582
00:46:07,967 --> 00:46:11,277
It took the most strenuous efforts
of General Grant
583
00:46:11,327 --> 00:46:14,558
to prevent Lee
and the other Confederate generals
584
00:46:14,687 --> 00:46:17,281
from being brought to a Nuremberg trial.
585
00:46:17,567 --> 00:46:20,718
They were seen as traitors
by northern politicians.
586
00:46:20,927 --> 00:46:25,842
They said, "If the southerners get
their rights back, they'll run the country."
587
00:46:26,087 --> 00:46:30,080
So several southern states
were put under military control,
588
00:46:29,927 --> 00:46:31,565
and in these and others,
589
00:46:31,847 --> 00:46:34,600
the whites were totally disenfranchised
590
00:46:34,727 --> 00:46:40,245
and the state governments were run
by negroes who could barely read or write.
591
00:46:40,447 --> 00:46:43,883
They were controlled by northern idealists,
to be sure,
592
00:46:44,207 --> 00:46:46,926
but also by southern renegades,
593
00:46:47,127 --> 00:46:52,201
and by northern businessmen and salesmen
who descended on the south like locusts.
594
00:46:53,287 --> 00:46:56,324
It planted a trauma in the southern whites,
595
00:46:56,807 --> 00:47:00,561
and when the reaction came,
which it did very swiftly,
596
00:47:00,647 --> 00:47:04,401
the negroes were swept from power
and from the voting booths,
597
00:47:04,487 --> 00:47:07,797
and they never entered them again
for many decades.
598
00:47:07,847 --> 00:47:12,318
The negro was, once again, a hireling,
never to be trusted as an equal.
599
00:47:12,647 --> 00:47:16,959
He'd been pitied and despised - indulged, even.
600
00:47:17,167 --> 00:47:19,158
Now he was feared.
601
00:47:19,087 --> 00:47:24,002
And I think that is the root of the trauma
from which, after a century,
602
00:47:24,367 --> 00:47:26,961
we're only now beginning to recover.
603
00:47:28,127 --> 00:47:29,958
Meanwhile, every spring,
604
00:47:30,047 --> 00:47:35,599
docile tourists troop through the old battlefields
in the southern gardens,
605
00:47:35,807 --> 00:47:39,163
and the mansions, either surviving or restored,
606
00:47:39,167 --> 00:47:44,799
and occasionally they come on
these reminders of the power and the glory
607
00:47:44,927 --> 00:47:49,045
that will never be restored.
608
00:47:50,447 --> 00:47:59,037
(CH0IR) # In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea
609
00:47:59,567 --> 00:48:05,836
# With a glory in his bosom
610
00:48:06,287 --> 00:48:13,967
# That transfigures you and me
611
00:48:14,927 --> 00:48:23,403
# As he died to make men holy
612
00:48:23,607 --> 00:48:26,644
# Let us live to make men free
613
00:48:26,487 --> 00:48:32,005
# While God is marching on
614
00:48:32,487 --> 00:48:37,561
# Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
615
00:48:37,767 --> 00:48:42,124
# Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
616
00:48:42,087 --> 00:48:46,444
# Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
617
00:48:46,887 --> 00:48:51,881
# His truth is marching on
618
00:48:51,687 --> 00:48:56,124
# Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
619
00:48:56,487 --> 00:49:01,356
# Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
620
00:49:01,287 --> 00:49:05,519
# Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
621
00:49:06,087 --> 00:49:11,366
# His truth is marching on!
622
00:49:11,367 --> 00:49:14,996
# Amen
623
00:49:15,207 --> 00:49:24,286
# Amen #