Richard Samuelson, Ph.S., is an associate professor of government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C., campus. Samuelson is a historian of the American founding and of American politics and constitutional thought. He graduated from Bates College and received his master’s and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia. Samuelson has taught at California State University San Bernardino and as a Garwood Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s James Madison Program. His work has appeared in The Review of Politics, The William and Mary Quarterly, Commentary, The Claremont Review of Books, The Public Interest, National Review, and other publications.
What is your background as a historian and your expertise on Civil War history?
I'm an American historian, and my focus in terms of research and writing is primarily on the founding period. I've been teaching founding period through Civil War for quite some time, particularly in Constitution and constitutional political history. And my dissertation work actually carried all the way through the end of 19th century, so I think I’ve familiarized myself with the whole storyline. I wrote about Adamses, John Adams, his son, grandson, great-grandson, all the way down to the early 20th century.
What makes Gettysburg an interesting battle for you as a historian?
There's a bias among professional historians nowadays not to take military history seriously. By military history, I mean the history of actual battles and their consequences. Nowadays, someone who studies the history of military discipline or uniforms or military technology might try to apply for job in military history. For me, the purpose of a professorship military history is studying how wars are won or lost. Those other subjects are interesting and important in so far as they help us understand that. But there's a movement away from an old-fashioned political and military history with a focus on why wars are won or lost.
Politics at the highest level is statesmanship. Tocqueville in Democracy in America says in democratic ages, we tend to be uncomfortable with the notion of inequality, and therefore uncomfortable with the idea of statesmanship and generalship — that is, certain people are more important than others in making history go the direction it does. And he notes, in aristocratic ages, the bias is excessive in the other direction; we focus too much on great individuals and not enough on overall currents. And so a balance is necessary.
Gettysburg is the turning point of the war.
Why is Gettysburg the turning point of the Civil War?
It really could have gone either way, and we sometimes forget that the war was won on the battlefield. We want to say a lot of factors contributed the North winning. People say, well, they had the industrial base, etc. But that isn't necessarily true. Sometimes historians would say, ‘Well, it had to happen this way because of these factors when the events happened.’
Professor Guelzo, probably our greatest living Lincoln historian and Civil War historian, he said, most people compare it to Waterloo. I think, if I understand correctly, what he's hitting at is Waterloo is the end of Napoleon's career. Gettysburg is, in some ways, the key turning point. They could have lost the next year in ’64 things look pretty bad until Sherman successfully took Atlanta. But Gettysburg, in some ways, was for the perspective of the American Revolution, like Saratoga, was the key turning point in the middle of the war. The big battle where, in terms of Saratoga, we pushed kept the British from dividing the union into two, straight down the Hudson River into Canada. And right after that, France officially recognized us and started officially backing us. Similarly, the French had been pushing the English to recognize confederacy all along. The English a little bit of the bubble. I mean, the Emancipation Proclamation made that very difficult for the English because they were anti-slavery. And Gettysburg made it look like the Union had a very good shot of winning. Therefore, it would be very imprudent to recognize the Confederacy in addition. You have to remember before Gettysburg, in the summer before, the Union did not look so great in the battlefield. They get pushed into Maryland, and finally had a victory in Antietam. Lincoln had had the Emancipation Proclamation his pocket. He waited for something that looked like a victory. Antietam was in some ways very, very close to a draw, except the union was left on the battlefield at the end, and the South retreated back towards Maryland afterwards.
The Emancipation proclamation changed things, and now it's a war over slavery. But a lot of Americans didn't like that, and they're tired of losing so many brothers and fathers and friends and so much devastation. And the South was in some ways having trouble providing food, etc., for the troops. So Lee thought this was both economic and political. He would go into the North in ’63 and forage—so save the South all that food and other things. He tried to restrain them somewhat, because the battle was partly for the hearts and minds of people. But in response to Union foraging, the troops often get a little bit out of hand. Politically, in the elections — state elections used to be staggered throughout the year, not just in November — elections in places like Illinois and Indiana, Pennsylvania were not looking so good for the Lincoln side of the Union. There were people pointing towards some kind of negotiated deal with the South, to the point where some rather extreme measures were taken by the strongly pro-Union faction in Indiana and Illinois after the elections to ensure that not too much was done to weaken the war effort.
So things were turning, people were frustrated, and they were tired of the people called copperheads — opposed to the war effort. Remember, Republicans were entirely new party in the mid-1850s; they didn't have deep roots. But the war was going slowly, neither side seems to be gaining territory, people are paying taxes, there's a draft that's very unpopular.
So Lee is going for a knockout blow—to hit the Union hard in the North and break the will of the North. Just after the Battle of Gettysburg in New York, you have the famous draft riots. Guelzo goes so far as to suggest that had the victory gone the other way, it may have been Robert E Lee, who was leading troops into New York City to end the draft riots because the Union army may have started to disappear if there had been a great loss at Gettysburg. And that didn't happen,
The other thing about the Battle of Gettysburg is the Gettysburg Address.
At the center of that: We can't concentrate this battlefield. They have with their bodies. They gave their lives for this cause of ‘the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish’ — that we can sustain free government and of course, the cause of ending slavery.
Back to the founding, as Federalist 1 puts it, we can have government by reflection and choice, not accident and force. They had to prove it on battlefield, but they were fighting for that cause.
What makes Lincoln's speech at that moment so fitting?
Well, it's interesting to read Lincoln's trajectory. Early in the war, he speaks more of the Union. As the war progresses, he speaks more of the nation. The other thing is that the language grows more biblical.
“Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers set forth on this continent” — it echoes the Old Testament. Where else you speak of scores of years in common language? And even more so in the Second Inaugural.
In a sense the people are like a blood sacrifice, that we are dedicating ourselves as a nation to this cause, and we're observing it. Lincoln is giving recognition of that reality: Let's rededicate ourselves to this cause, to make sure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, does not perish. You're dedicating a cemetery that these hallowed dead shall not die and died in vain. So that's the point: to honor them, honor their memory, don't let them to have died in vain, sustain the cause of free government in the world.
What’s the attitude of Europe toward the war?
The Europeans did not like the American Revolution at the start. When the French Revolution happened, it washed out. And then in 1848, the revolutions washed out again. The European version of republics and the American version are not quite the same, but they aligned them for obvious reasons. And so the Europeans might not mind if free government America washes out, especially one that is egalitarian and democratic. And so there is no necessarily arc of history. You have to make it happen. And the war was a challenge. Lincoln says his first inaugural we've survived several kinds of challenges, various disputes, but we've not yet survived a civil war. Among the things that happen sometimes in the ‘catalog of events under the sun,’ to use a phrase Lincoln uses, civil wars happen. Can a republic that's this free survive it? It's a challenge. So we want to prove the republican government can work because the prevailing view in Europe is ‘those Americans are dangerous for us. They weaken our government by making us look look bad.’ And of course, slavery was talking point number one, ‘look at those hypocrites.’
So it was important to sustain the the Union cause, the anti-slavery cause as well to sustain the notion that this is a matter of going from the founding in ’76 through all 13 states, all 13 had slavery, getting that down to zero via a democratic process was the challenge. And of course, when the Civil War, that was done. The amendment was ratified, although the South would not ultimately vote for it, but it was done under the constitutional rules.
Emancipation was done under the laws of war. The South started the Civil War by rejecting an election. Lincoln had not even taken office when they seceded, so they were rejecting the whole process of deciding arguments by election. Ballots, replacing bullets is the theme — we resolve things peacefully in the democratic republic. As John Adams wrote Jefferson, ‘no weapons other than goose quills.’ That is, we write nasty things about each other, as opposed to shooting. That's that's an improvement.
When you take students to Gettysburg, what do you most enjoy showing them on the battlefield?
With Hillsdale students, we go to see the monument of the Michigan fourth. The fourth regiment from Michigan — which meant they were very early, they signed right up and had a long distinguished career throughout the war. Hillsdale students were very dedicated to the cause, understood the importance of the war.
We were founded in ’44 so 19 years before Gettysburg by Freewill Baptists to secure civil and religious liberty. And they knew that was on the line. So the students go there.
That monument was a way of honoring those — not only from Hillsdale — who gave their lives.