This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

The Civil War occupies a central place in the American imagination.

It is also a central issue in terms of historical

research and it has been ever since the hostilities ceased. One of the primary historians

of the Civil War in our generation is none other than my guest today, Alan Gilzo.

He is the Henry R. Luce the third, Professor of the Civil War era at Gettysburg College.

There he also directs the center of the Civil War era studies program.

Professor Guelzo was born in Yokohama, Japan.

He earned the MA and PhD degrees in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

He is one of the most respected voices in terms of the history of the Civil War.

His latest book is fateful lightning.

A new history of the Civil War and Reconstruction published by Oxford University Press.

Professor Gelso, welcome to thinking in public.

Thank you very much, Al.

It's very good to be talking with you.

Your book, fateful lightning, arrives just as many Americans, especially younger Americans,

are beginning to think through the huge momentous

reality of the Civil War. But you rightly take us back long before the Civil War

and you actually argue that when you think of the United States today, or even the United States in the 1830s,

...