#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil War, Slavery, Lincoln, Grant & Lee

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If you take slavery out of the picture, there is no Civil War, period. That's not a long conversation you need. You ask the question, that's the answer.

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

Lex Fridman

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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Almost nobody continues to go up in my estimation as I get older and older, but Lincoln is one of the people who does. Lincoln is, quite frankly, a mystery to me.

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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He was upset that I referred to the Confederacy as a slaveholding republic, and he said that he hoped I would develop virulent pancreatic cancer and die a horrible death. Not just regular pancreatic cancer. He wanted virulent pancreatic cancer.

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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Why don't we start not worrying about what General Lee is going to do and let General Lee worry about what we're going to do?

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.

Lex Fridman

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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When most people read that, the very last part of it, they emphasize the prepositions, of the people. By the people, for the people. Lincoln, it's not about the prepositions. It's about the people.

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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However complicated I thought something was when I really started to explore it, it's more complicated than I thought it was. People aren't simple, they're complicated.

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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In a perverse way, Lee furthers the cause of emancipation because he extends the war long enough that the United States says, we have to do this. We've got to get rid of slavery to defeat the rebels.

Gary Gallagher

#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil W…

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