Civil War Talk Radio: February 20, 2009

Air Date: 022009
Subject: The Age of Lincoln
Book:  The Age of Lincoln
Guest: Professor Orville Vernon Burton

Summary: Vernon Burton talks about the Age of Lincoln, including his book on the subject, with host Gerry Prokopowicz.

Brett’s Summary: Gerry noted this was the first episode since the 200^th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth was celebrated on February 12, 2009.  He went on to mention the tough economic times and some of the restrictions placed on academic funding.

Professor Burton was a Professor of History and Sociology at my alma mater, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), since retired.  He now lives in his home town of Ninety Six, South Carolina and is a Professor at Coastal Carolina University.  Dr. Burton got his Ph.D. at Princeton University.  In the course of his studies, he came to admire Abraham Lincoln.

Talk moved to Burton’s book The Age of Lincoln.  Gerry commented that Burton’s book essentially covers the entire 19^th Century.  Discussion turned to the year 1619 and its significance with regards to the introduction of slavery to North America.

Burton has never accepted the separation of the Civil War and Reconstruction and comments on the tendency to do in class offerings at the university level.  He also argues against the year 1877 as the end of Reconstruction, preferring a date closer to 1900.

Dr. Burton said he uses Lincoln’s life to set up a framework to discuss the antebellum sectional conflict, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and to talk about themes in American history such as the characteristics of America and the fate of African-Americans.

As the second third of the program started, Burton further went into why he believes the current set year for the end of Reconstruction is wrong.  He said he believes that the general public forms their impression of Reconstruction from films such as Gone With the Wind.

The idea for Age of Lincoln came about partly because of the Ken Burns PBS series on the Civil War.  Organizations in South Carolina had boycotted the film.  Dr. Burton spoke in South Carolina and responded to comments saying that South Carolina had lost the Civil War.  He pointed out that the majority of people in South Carolina (i.e. enslaved African-Americans) wanted the South to lose, and in a way South Carolina won the war.

Burton went on to discuss the migration of Southerners into southern Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois plus Missouri, including Lincoln’s family.  He said believes it is important to look at this area and realize there was an ingrained dislike of African-Americans and support of slavery.  This led to Lincoln having to be careful about exactly what he said and where he said it during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1858.  Burton argued that Lincoln did know the South, and that he did not initially make the Civil War about slavery because the North wouldn’t fight to end slavery, but they WOULD fight to save the Union.

In the third and last portion of the episode, Gerry started with mention of a NEW web site for Civil War Talk Radio.

Burton and Gerry discussed Lincoln’s economic views and how the country may have turned out differently postwar had Lincoln lived.  Talk also turned to the importance of religion and Lincoln’s view that no one knew God’s will.  Burton also said he believes religion lost some of its stature during Reconstruction.

At the end of the hour, Dr. Burton mentioned interested readers could go to the book’s web site, http://www.ageoflincoln.com/.  Interestingly, the footnotes for the book are online.

Civil War Talk Radio airs most Fridays at 12 PM Pacific on World Talk Radio Studio A. Host Gerry Prokopowicz, the History Chair at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, interviews a guest each week and discusses their interest in the Civil War. Most interviews center around a book or books if the guest is an author. Other guests over the years have included public historians such as park rangers and museum curators, wargamers, bloggers, and even a member of an American Civil War Round Table located in London, England.

In this series of blog entries, I will be posting air dates, subjects, and guests, and if I have time, I’ll provide a brief summary of the program. You can find all of the past episodes I’ve entered into the blog by clicking on the Civil War Talk Radio category. Each program should appear either on or near the date it was first broadcast.

Check out more summaries of Civil War Talk Radio at TOCWOC.

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