the grant monument association's

mission includes education and commemoration more broadly. and in recent years, we revived a tradition of the old gma going back to the late 19th century of sponsoring annual dinners to observe grants, birthday. this has been just one manifest station of the grant renaissance that has been taking place in scholarly circles. u.s. grant was long, blind as a general and even more as a president, and this did a great injustice not only to the man, but also to the cause. he advanced throughout the civil war and reconstruct asian. that was the most formative period for this country since the american revolution, and it entailed the bloodiest war in our history and profound changes

to our constitution. the consequences of which story ends. and leaders were slow to appreciate. and grant's role was just as critical to achieving of that era as george washington was was to the earlier period. in fact, in addition to winning a war of existential magnitude for the nation, grant's work brought american aspirations to a point that the earlier revolutionary generation did not think possible in their own time. grant's 200th birthday, two years ago presented an occasion to fill the gaps in our collective memory. but the process did not end. then, in 2023, the state of ohio enacted a new law designating grant's birthday, april 27th, as ulysses s grant day. the state of ohio.

and this year legislation is pending in the missouri house of representative that would do the same designating april 27th as ulysses grant day in missouri. we're honored to have with us tonight robert amsler, a longtime member of the u.s. grant camp. number six. so eight of the sons of union veterans and command are of that organization's department of missouri. he has been a prime driver of that legislation. thank you. the gm has resolved to encourage all states to adopt similar measures, recognizing grant's birthday and we hope more events like these will take place across the country this time of year, as happens during the decades immediately following grant's death in 1885. many of you know that grant's tomb was referred during the 1990s after years of desecration and neglect.

but it is not the only site with a story arc that reflects the grant renaissance. during the 1980s, grant's home in saint louis, whitehaven, was threatened by private development and new york state had planned to close the cottage on mount mcgregor and the adirondacks, where grant died. concerned citizens saved both whitehaven and became a national park. the ulysses grant national historic site, pursuant to a law enacted in 1989, same year that the friends of the ulysses grant cottage was formed to operate grant's final home. the cottage was designated as a national historic landmark in 2021, yet another grant site, a house in detroit where ulysses and julia lived between 1849 and 1850, was relocated in 2020 from the michigan state fairgrounds, where it had been closed to the public for years, to detroit's

eastern market, where it is undergoing rehabilitation in preparation for reopening to the public during the 20 tens. the a grant presidential library was finally established. it now occupies part of a floor in a library at mississippi state university city. but the ulysses grant association, which operates it, has gotten a grant of $26 million to construct it. a separate standalone ulysses s grant presidential library. overseeing this is an air marshal. the executive director of the ulysses s grant association. and as it happens and is the newest trustee of the gma, we're honored to have an a join us

tonight. now, one historic building that did not make it to the grand renaissance is the president's summer. white house in long branch, new jersey, which was demolished in 1963. but there, 60 years after its demolition, the gma dedicated a historic marker at that location. last year. and all sites that have been preserved, including, of course, grant's tomb, ongoing maintenance is essential, and that translates into the need for eternal vigilance by concerned citizens. there are a number of deferred maintenance items at grant's to need attention. where to? the steps of the tomb. cracks in the outdoor plaza, discoloration from the intrusion of water in the tomb's upper levels, prominent among them. i understand that both the repair of the plaza and repairs to the roof of the mausoleum have become local. national park service administrator is highest

priority for the site and that these issues are now undergoing higher level review. in order for any of this to move along, though, a sufficient appropriation must be passed by congress. that has not happened yet, so i hope you will join me in calling for congress to appropriate sufficient funds to accomplish these repairs without delay while they're at it, congress should appropriate enough money to expand the open hours at grants 2 to 7 days a week, as used to be the case before budget cuts. reduce the schedule to five days and to reopen the doors from 9 to 5 instead of the current 10 to 4 hours. the gma remains committed to seeking government approval for higher cost items like statuary to complete the monument and a more spacious visitor center that does full justice to the rich life and legacy of the man who lies buried there. that will take more time. but issues like maintenance and

hours can should be taken care of in immediately. now, i would like to turn to tonight's program. general david petraeus has given very generously of his time and talents to conduct our colloquy every year. and, of course, he is a history maker in his own right. prior to his current work as chairman of the kkr global institute, he served over 37 years in the united states army. a graduate of the u.s. military academy with a ph.d. from princeton. he ultimately held numerous combat commands that included combat command of the surge in iraq. amanda, u.s. central command and command of the international security assistance force in afghanistan. after his retirement from the military, he served as director of the cia during a period of significant achievement in the global war on terror.

general petraeus has earned numerous honors, numerous awards, numerous decorations, which is, of course, only fitting for someone rightly regarded by so many of his fellow citizens as america's living commander. on top of everything else, he is also, again a published author most recently of the book conflict, in which he examines the evolution of war. since 1945 with his coauthor, andrew roberts, the wall street journal called it the best one volume study of conventional warfare in the nuclear age. joining the general tonight is donald miller. he is the john henry mccracken, professor of history emeritus at lafayette college and author of ten new york times bestselling

books, including vicksburg grant's campaign that broke the confederacy. that book won the fletcher pratt award, the daniel m and mary marilyn laney prize, and the army historical foundation, distinguished writing award. professor miller is also widely acclaimed for his books on world war two, including masters of the air america's bomber boys who fought the air war against nazi germany, which some 17 or so years later is back on the bestseller list, something almost unheard of. new york times bestseller list. that's book was made. a dramatic mini series produced by steven spielberg and tom hanks and just released on apple tv. professor miller has hosted co-produced or served as historical consultant for more than 30 television documentary is spanning a wide range of topics, including grant and abraham lincoln. this includes the american

experience documentary about grant's in 2000 to 1 of the best documentaries on the subject. he is now working on a book exploring the partnership during the civil war between grant and president lincoln. in to his numerous book awards, professor miller has won six awards for excellence in teaching and five fellowships from the national endowment for the humanities. please everyone, join me in welcoming general petraeus and professor miller. thank you very much. thank you very much. and good evening to all of you. thanks for the warm welcome. thanks, frank, for the kind invitation. thanks. also leaving out the part about me being runner up four time person of the year in 2007 to 2. vladimir putin.

and thanks, frank for all that you and added all the other members of the great grant monument association team. all that you have done to further the great renaissance that you described and that has helped so much to put grant back on the pedestal where he always deserved to be a professor miller. don, thanks for being with us this evening. we've been looking forward to this for many years and have tried again. and again, we're finally bringing it together and we're delighted about that front and my congratulations on the tremendous recent success of masters of the air. it sure helps to have your book made into an extraordinary series by tom hanks and steven spielberg, which has propelled your book to number two on the new york times best seller list. as was noted decades after it was originally published.

and i know you've been back on the book circuit for a book again that's been in print for decades. but this evening, of course, will focus on ulysses, the man who literally saved the union ulysses grant. it was 202nd birthday. we celebrate this evening. we do so, professor, noting that, as frank mentioned, wrote a great book on grant's vicksburg campaign, which was rightly given many awards and you're now finishing the book on grant and lincoln, picking up where your vicksburg book left off. and that is tentatively titled the reckoning. we look forward to that. and so let's get started. i'd like to begin actually by asking about an aspect of grant's command, the west, which we haven't often covered here over the last decade. and that was, of course, how effectively he used. rivers and you highlighted this, of course, in your book on him, and i'd love to have you expand on that with the audience, if you would.

yeah, i'm one little personal story about grant and water first. my wife and i were driving through southern virginia and we came to the james river and it impressed me. i didn't think of it as that powerful a body of water and a little shelf of land across there. and there's a lovely cabin. it's a replica of the two room cabin. and we walk over there, get out of our car and read the placard. grant ran the whole war from that to broome cabin and the whole war with his wife there and his youngest son behind enemy territory. it had a former steamboat staff. that's what it was. 16 people. when grant first occupied the area. by the time he's finished.

this gets you to this idea of grant as a river warrior. it's the fourth largest port in the world, and that's a supply port. and that's what grant was all about. wherever he went, watering water, water supply, roads. but he first invaded vicksburg in the late fall of 1862. he made a terrible mistake. he built a supply line on the railroads and he thought he had the railroad well protected against raiders like nathan bedford forrest. and he plunged deep into mississippi with sherman and then the confederates, forrest, especially invaded and a gentleman named pandor got it. grant had to pull out, turn around, take the whole campaign back to tennessee and start all over again. he never did it again. he always depended on gunboats. mostly. david dickson, porters,

gunboats, unconquerable, all points of supply. and he saw from very early point as a great story that one of his friends named emerson, later served under him, tells where he was staying. with emerson just before he was going to take over command of this desolate, godforsaken place called cairo, illinois. if you've been there, i earnestly desire that you never go there again. but the he was out on a picnic table. head down, hat, brim down and a big red crayon. emerson said he was drawing red crayon marks across the mississippi. the cumberland the tennessee, the yazoo. we have to have these rivers. they built their forts you confederates on these rivers. we're going to turn them. he told emerson. and new avenues of invasion. and we're going to have to work with the navy to do it.

which you just didn't do that. still don't. and and grant is one of the only commanders in the civil war to have an active, close relationship with the naval commander. first, farragut. yes. yeah. very and porter, actually related david foster brothers. and they worked together in the vicksburg camp. both tried to take vicksburg in 62 and failed because the army wouldn't kick in under halleck. all we had to do is send 2000 troops there. grant and sherman were ready to go. this is in the summer of 62. we had the largest inland fleet, brown water fleet in the history of the world, blockading vicksburg and pounding it and all. we need more troops to and take the place. it was very likely defended. there would have been no gigantic battle in vicksburg had the army said grant and sherman down there in the summer 62. halleck instead them to outposts

in tennessee that he wanted to hold the starvation and disease. they did the fleet. the gunboats headed back north to cairo and the saltwater fleet under farragut headed out to coastal duty and grant had to start all over again. but wherever he went, wherever he went, he's using water to move troops fast, fast. he was like napoleon. napoleon said, i might lose a battle, but i'll never lose a second. it was celerity and all the time movement, movement, movement. and the idea these passenger boats were very fast, were converted to military use and you could really get troops where he wanted to get them. and in every point that the commander of vicksburg, every every move he made grant counter checked it with a naval

expedition. he's operating along the mississippi river. i mean, i'll end with this. he starts his second campaign against mississippi by going down there. i have to sherman failed to take the place and in december a january of 42 he goes down there and establishes his base where you him to. there's no place for it in mississippi. it's in louisiana. there is a mile long river right there. how was he going to get across it? go into 17, done batteries in it and head on suicidal volition to the north. was it delta swamps, serpentine rivers that extended all the way 300 miles to the north of memphis. he couldn't get down river. he thought of going down river. but louisiana was like, take an army down there. maybe take some gunboats and cross. that was lincoln's idea. couldn't do it. louisiana was flooding. so he had to wait and operate in those swampy waters north of

vicksburg endlessly. and that's where he almost got fired because he was making he gets there in january. he doesn't have a single victory, actually, since shiloh. and there's a lot of criticism of grant at this. and miraculously, those waters porter said to him all we have to do is wait. like noah for the water. go down and we can march the army down. and i'll take the gunboats down, pick you up and take you below vicksburg. and that's how it would work. and it did. and you write also about him being such a master of siege operations. tell us about that. well, you know, he won a couple of big sieges. he petersburg, richmond, vicksburg. chattanooga. he lifted a siege. he was besieged. and again, i think it really was

prior planning ability to not just work with the navy, but work with other armies in chattanooga, he worked with three other armies, george thomas, his army, the cumberland. he had booker out there. he brought in sherman from vicksburg, and he managed to meld them into a cohesive outfit. and i think lincoln really had his eye on grant and he had already won vicksburg. but don't forget, they exchanged one letter during the vicksburg campaign, and that was when it was over. it was the congratulatory letter from lincoln to grant. they had no communication except through garlic in the war department and grant was unsure that lincoln trusted it. and i think it took that one extra victory. yeah. when he was called up. what do you think? so, yeah, i do. and as you noted, he broke the siege that others were not at the cracker line. cracker line. and that's an entire army. it's exactly right. i mean, again, his skill in

logistics was i mean, his skill overall is i've mentioned this audience in the past. there's been no other army general in our history who was brilliant at the tactical level. the operational level, vicksburg, and then the strategic level, overall command. he is it is because he had an ability to see a battle in space, time, to envision a campaign and then to figure out all the details. this is a day when you didn't have the thousands of members of a headquarters that i was privileged to have in iraq and afghanistan. he did wrote his own orders and he had it all in his mind. and that's a unique to see in space and time how you want it to unfold. now, he had a propensity not to share his plans with others. were you like that? no, no. nowadays that's a little bit difficult. there's something called the military decision making process in which you have a lot of interaction with the staff and you seldom surprise people by what you put out. yeah, because his relationship

with lincoln, i think, has been vastly over. yes. yeah, yeah. vastly and over and not only lack of communication, lincoln kept telling halleck what is he doing in these swamps above vicksburg, taking an army of 30,000 men in and into the heart of darkness. i think of conrad's novel. at the time, i said, the only thing i could imagine that was quite like that. sticking his head in the wolves mouth and gorillas all over the place. he took in there. he had porter taken. he talked porter to take in five of his best gunboats. he couldn't have conquered vicksburg without those guns. they were surrounded. they were being attacked. porter two of the men that were standing with porter on the deck, you know, on the. of the flagship. yeah. they had put mud on the side. so the confederates, you know, when they started to climb over, would slide off. they were beginning to get to the get to the top of the ship.

the boarding party. and that, though, at that moment, sherman, who sense that he was in trouble, came, was one of the great rescue operations of all time. and the stream that they was on, they were on was too narrow. it was straight out they had a backup out and they just got him out there and incredible. and he comes out and he's losing the mississippi a great kept saying to halleck in the stand why is he in those who he the word eccentrics what we should be fighting on the big river on the big money. this is where it's going to happen. this is how he envisioned this thing. but grant said, we have to hammer. he just couldn't sit still anywhere. he had to be moving, moving, moving. pretty good. train. now, in the book on vicksburg, you note contrary to conventional wisdom, grant did not cut his supply lines during the march on vicksburg. rather, he developed one of the longest and most elaborate

supply lines of the war. in his march on jackson. can you elaborate a bit? this is grant. the quarterback's. yeah, yeah, yeah. and which, of course, is what he was as a captain. yeah. and it was thrilling to me to read grant's papers and how fast he rode. well, he rode the at one order after the other. 16, 17, in an hour back to his home base at milligan's bend, back in mississippi, putting together this supply line which ran by that's his base was. okay. it ran by wagon. 200 mile long wagon, serpentine wagon down to a river port he built on the mississippi. put them on boats, gunboats, troop ships and anything else. 200 boats a day went across the mississippi with supplies and arrived at a place called grand gulf, which porter had captured. and they made that as their

field headquarters. it also the major forward supply base. so he was supply pretty rigidly until he got to jackson, mississippi. you see, he's he surprised, pemberton, by not going straight. i blew right by not going straight at i get that from my italian wife. she's always going like this. but anyway, instead of going across the river and going straight north, which pemberton expected he went east along the rail line. he said, i'm going to cut off jackson. cut the rail line and come out in like that because he gets most of the supplies from jackson and but when he gets to jackson, he's moving too fast to keep up with the supply. the supply line can't keep up with it. and at that point, it's hidden. it's hidden in grant's memoirs. but there is a sentence in there where he actually says, i cut my supply line near jackson.

yeah, i don't why? nobody's noticed that i almost fell off my chair when i read that. but yeah, absolutely and i ran into a guy named warren grable who wrote a geographic history of vicksburg. and he knows he knew army corps engineer guy, and he knew it like the back of his hand. in the third day i was in vicksburg, he took me across and showed me that supply line and i spent a week in his kitchen. as he explained it, he had manifest for every single wagon went across the river. it was incredible. and he published a thousand page book on red wine. i was like 11 people. but that's it. in the motherlode for you, though, in another load. yeah. now, you also noted that grant pushed the envelope pretty far in moving on vicksburg without waiting to coordinate with his boss, general banks. then he informed lincoln only after he had already set out into the interior of mississippi, and that he then did not communicate with

washington until he reached vicksburg. this is my kind of commander. you know, minimal. don't don't ask for permission. you know, it's for if he had his druthers, he'd had no communication with the war department, halleck, stanton or lincoln. he wanted to run the war on his own. when he got across the river, mississippi. and there's that famous scene in the autobiography, i'm happy to be here, you know, dry land, etc.. he was supposed to halt and send a corps maclaren's corps down to a little place called port hudson about 4 hours south, vicksburg. and take care of port hudson first because those were the two remain. he fresh water ports that the confederacy possessed and then the two armies. okay. would unite the operation from port hudson and the vicksburg

operation. they would unite in march on vicksburg, together only problem is grant. so a couple of things really quickly. one, the commander that would come up from the south outranked grant and he would ever get bad. often they would add in the vicksburg operation. and secondly, he said, i am now between two armies. one in vicksburg and a relief army that's arriving at jackson. yes. and i'm in the pincers and i've got to move against one of the other inmates. really? yes. and i can't wait for orders because if you were at vicksburg, they'd have direct telegraphic communication with washington. they had to send a message all the way upriver, 400 miles to cairo. and that's what the closest telegraphic station was. so it would have been inordinate explodes, you know, the holdup. but he did this. what he would do when he crossed the james, for example, no one wanted him to cross the james

every foot and horrible overland campaign after, you know, culminating in cold harbor. and he writes to halleck that i, i have the army in motion. we're crossing the james. that's his idea. the way to do it. well, of course. but now he's the general in chief. the commander in chief. and halleck is just supporting him now. but he's walking throughout the lincoln, of course. what could lincoln do to fire him if i had a few of those moments as well. what are you going to do? send me back to iraq? in fact, in the cavalry, like in the camera, i love grant and the counterinsurgency guidance that i published for the surge in iraq. there was a line in it that said, promote initiative in the absence of orders, figure out what they should have been and execute aggressively. grant exemplify that in many, many ways. so when grant was brought east and he's made the general in chief, he develops the overall strategy for the war that

accomplished the most important task at that moment, which was to generate victories that would ensure lincoln's reelection in november 1864, which was by no means assured, at least until sherman took atlanta and marched to the sea. and then sheridan took the valley. and then, of course, with that election assured, he brought the war to an end. five months later. now, i've always thought that the overall strategy and, its execution were absolutely brilliant. but there are those that claim that it was merely the anaconda plan put forward by general in chief winfield scott at the outset of the war. how do you see it? both his excellent. i was hoping. that c-span will capture that. they'll believe that that was the anaconda plan. did not envision laying combat. it was entirely the plan calls for a coastal blockade, which we

did put in place to clear plan called for sending a gunboat fleet down the mississippi and getting them the south into suffolk. hate the south like an anaconda through a blockade. but you had to put troops on the ground. you had to go in and defeat the confederacy. and even generals like mcdowall understood that. so there's no comparison in those two plans. grant not only put together a new plan when he became general in chief, and i think it's probably the most innovative plan i've seen i've ever seen. brilliant. and yeah, yeah, he covered everything. i mean, some of his. some his generals let him down, but he covered every contingency plan. like, for example, he came out of the swamps. that miserable experience that i described, he learned that we were getting hammered along the mississippi. what does he do? he sends farragut and porter down to the red river.

now the red river flows into the mississippi. and if you follow it westward, you're into some really rich cotton, corn country. and vicksburg got its supplies from the red river. they set up farragut and put a blockade there. vicksburg was done march 29th when that blockade went into place. and he controlled. now the river between that point and vicksburg. so if he's going to cross, there's no confederate navy available to intercept him. he has its now a yankee river, but that's how he's thinking. he just didn't slip. i don't know. grant is the most unknowable human being ever researched. sherman called him unknowable. he said, i don't even know if he knows himself, but so hard to figure out. so it's it's difficult. i mean, the hardest battle he ever fought was against our war. and he never wrote a word about it.

so he's a hard guy to get inside. if you're trying to do him and i'm not writing a cycle biography, but i want to understand my characters and i want to understand motivation. but i do understand that he had this is keen sense of the next. he's like a good chess player. he's four moves ahead. yeah. yeah. as i said, he may be a to of jeopardy and and frankly, of leave for what it's worth as well. he didn't need all those to think that robert e lee was the great general. there are some people that still think that lee won the war, you know, and that grant just sort of stumbled along and, well, tried to stay sober. lincoln did not want to fight those battles in virginia. yeah. he had written to grant eloquently three or four months before he'd gotten turned down twice. he wanted to go. he wanted the casualty averse operation. that's why he likes it. because there is unrest in the north. and he was there. you know, it was an election year and it's election you write and you don't. lincoln was at what's at stake

in this election. lincoln's answer was everything. yeah. everything is exactly right. yep. emancipation, freedom union, union, the country. yeah. this is why the war got so. sherman was right. wars get rougher at the end. they don't wind down. yeah, they wind up. you saw that? and. and he wanted to get it over quickly. and so you had to act. you had to act first. you had to be decisive. above all, make decisions. move. yeah. you know, and i've always puzzled about this. again, grant crafted the strategy that again, saved the union because its victories assure the reelection of lincoln and noting that, of course, the other opponent, mcclellan, who had failed twice, is that the commander would have sued for peace. you literally would not have the union that we have now. and of course, had schisms. i mean, the union league club out of an argument at the union club where they would refuse to expel robert e lee, even though

he's leading confederate forces against the union. yeah. so. but whether grant actually in mind said know, okay, what? i got to i got to produce a handful of victories here that gets the old man reelected and then then it's over because then we're just going to press what you say in your new book. you have to get the big ideas first. you do indeed. and the big ideas for lincoln were, you know, reunification. okay. union. yep. and the abolition of slavery. those are the big ideas. and like a couple of his associates said, he was like a like a wire, like like iron rope. you know, and those issues just give a little bit, but never, you know, we're never going to get him off this. know. but he made that famous line, his inaugural address. how will we win the war? how will you win the election? and he said, we'll win it by the progress of our arms. and too often, i think american historians split political and

military history, and they don't get that point yet. yeah, that. yeah, that's how was taught civil war history. just a bunch of battles and things like that. and then lincoln freed the slaves. yes. but there's a there's a there's a nice convergence here. lincoln knows he has to have wins. he's counting on shared ballot. as you said, he's counting on sherman and georgia. yep. and he's counting on grant to pin down lee. if all that doesn't happen. mcclellan is president. yep. and we don't have the union. we have. we don't have the union we have now. you mentioned a bit. grant's relationship with lincoln, noting that grant liked deeply respected lincoln. but his idea of cooperating with lincoln was to communicate as little as possible to try to run his campaigns without white house or war department interference. and he's on that march in mississippi from grant golf to

vicksburg. the couple detours. and he's run out of his supply line. he he does write a telegram. he said the telegraphic message got there eight days later, he sends a telegraphic message through halleck to lincoln. and he says, i have just begun the final move on vicksburg. now, think about what they're thinking. department stanton halleck, lincoln's getting around the telegraph route. here's a who was alleged to be a drunk. here's a general that had lost everything, every battle since shiloh. here's a general that had failed repeatedly. here's a general that didn't obey orders. here's a general that didn't communicate. and then he ends the letter saying, you won't hear from me for long time. those are exact works. it's a lot harder. these days, i can assure you. it's lovely.

you've also described it as the war's outstanding liberator. yeah. this is a part of the book i really wanted to do. well. how were slaves freed? you know, i mean, i never really understood that there was an emancipation proclamation. it's frankly a piece of it's an empty exercise. it's a piece of paper. and it can be enforced. and so who's going to enforce it? congress passes this law, that law. that law. the armies have to do it. most slaves are freed by military occupation. well, how did that happen? what was the scene like on the planter ation when the federal army moved in and tried to, in the confederate language, steal their slaves? well, there are wonderful accounts of that in unexpected places. where i found them is in the diaries of plantation mistresses who were home alone with their their sons were at war. their husbands are at war. granpop sit at home and they're

there. and they have to negotiate with their slaves. she comes in the slave who cooks for his man. it's up grants a mile down the road. i can join him. can you pay me a salary? if you can. i'm to the union. and there are all these kinds of negotiations going on. and the letters, rich sources, you know, don't forget, they're uncensored. unlike world war two, history the story in world war two has to deal with a lot of sensitivity. these letters retire lien censored and i found one of the most pregnant moments of the war was when grant first went into mississippi. he really did pillage in plunder. i say in the book that he was the real iron man, not sherman. sherman kept saying, we ought to cool it. we can't go after women, children and grant it kill women and children, take them into prison, things like that. but he was light. he lightly enforced orders not

to go inside the of confederates, not to pillage. and frankly, he lost control of his army. it wasn't that big. an army was spread out over the mississippi. and you read those letters. i'm not a confederate. but their hair raising. those guys are raising hell in mississippi. and it's rough on the women. i don't know how many rapes there were. there's there's been studies of that. no one's been able to determine or ascertain. but you find young girls, 14 and 15 and this southern girls, well-educated, who had a good private schools and they can write letters and they're writing the in other portions of the south, people who had left their plantations and went to places like alabama and texas about union troops just pulling their earrings out of their ears and things like that and desecrating their bedrooms and dressing up in their not negligees and in you can just see the southern households

reaching the boiling point. but what do yankee invasion means? i'm not for it. what they were doing. i, i i think the war had reached a point where it became hard, necessary. hard war. but as long as it's brushed over and you can't understand the anger of the south unless you get inside those letters and see what was going on inside. because these boys had had it. they were on most of them were on occupation duty in tennessee for almost year under alec. and were told not to disrupt federal. and they had southern women cursing in their face spitting on their shoes, you know, nagging them on, guerrillas being fed, local families who claimed they were, you know, just local farmers and things that bushwhack, etc., etc. so there's a lot of nasty stuff happening on both sides.

and karl marx wrote an article to the new york tribune. he said, at that point, the war in two. he said, the americans have just reached the political the end of the political point of their of the revolt and now they're about to reach the point where. it becomes a people's war. so get ready with your questions. i have one more follow up really on this point about grant more than sherman, the man of iron in the war. he determined, along with lincoln really to make war harder on the confederacy in order to shorten it. he did. he did. he did. and and concomitantly. sheridan is probably rougher even in the valley at the same time. and grant. well, grant, tell them. what is it? destroy so that even a crow can't find a crumb or something.

exactly exactly. exactly. and lincoln went in for it. yeah, but by this point in the war, lincoln has reached a point where the kind of war he wanted to fight. with mcclellan in 62, 61, 62. that's gone. yeah it's gone. he had reached a point where these people can't be defeated, will conquer them. in the end. but are we going to be able to control them? are we going to be able to change? grant and sherman have a correspondence on this after the vicksburg campaign, when they would have jackson and grant said, pacify they're ready for it. and sherman, i believe they're ready for peace, too. we've showed down and we're offering generals terms to them in rebuilding vicksburg. and sherman comes back and said, i think we've pacified a reporter who went with him. i wrote a piece, a letter to it to his wife, and he said, no

way. he said, i must have run into 300 confederates and not one baby, one was ready for reconciliation. it just was there was hell. your questions, please. we have a few minutes. four further questions right there that the other general kind of i hope you get the microphone to him. well, he said there's another general involved and it was pemberton. right. who was the commander at vicksburg? bloody civil war. board. i went to vicksburg and put myself in his place. he didn't vicksburg. keep the microphone up by lips and it works better. he knows where no of in general. and if you could see on the plate. good. i should have believed that he would play, that he could not get. gunboats predestined to do another. lord, what is studying

vicksburg? have you done any study of what he said when he did? he couldn't tell the it was going to be the the recoil. it is his. it's hard for me to believe that a general would not see. it was hard for me to believe to there was a kind of a false euphoria in the city that now the yankees had made the biggest mistake. they're going through 17 miles of batteries, all their cold water batteries aimed of the river and grant not only ran the batteries once he ran them twice. and the second time he runs them with wooden boats and just supply ships. but they hardly lose any ships at all. one of these are absolutely the power of the gunboat.

guns are unbelief. yeah, the confederate alfred sidney johnson talked about that after donaldson. he said, jesus, my god. he said, my troops are afraid of those big guns and time they fired the and the cliffs in vicksburg. it's built, you know, in a terrorist fashion would go to their huts wait for the smoke to clear and go to their guns. the aiming was absolutely awful. it's it's. the confederates did put up turpentine by big barrels of turpentine and the flour was along the river, lit it up with light it up. but even as slow as it took. porter said later that most of our injuries on the boats were from muskets just confederate soldiers fundraising on the river. he said, we just take many direct hits.

it's hard, you. it's a lot better than i do. of course. but plunging fire is really it's hard. and it's if you have a moving target, it's even harder. what makes moving the. well, the geometry again you're trying and you're trying to anticipate where it's going, you know, what's the line? how long does it take to get there? where's the boat going to be at that time? how do you sight on that, all of this and then plunging fire? it's accelerated and and so trying to calculate all of that is the real challenge in an era when you didn't have a grant knew that because he his fleet got. cary donaldson yeah. because they were firing plunging fire the confederate wood in real close. yep. and blew them out. yeah. yeah. we had another one. right, right in there. i think it was. yeah. please. and, and then just get ready. will have right over here after that. so right. right here after that. can't hear you. you you have to.

i can hear you and i can do know it. first of all, i wondered if you could call into the a bit of of grant's relationship with how you could pretty import a man. that got it that takes volumes. yeah. but halleck was a disagreeable human being who was ironically very close to sherman, because when sherman said he went crazy, a helicopter about a lot. but halleck was jealous. sorry, grant, of course. yes, exactly. and and of course, he also famously said, grant stood by me while i was crazy and i stood by him while he was drunk. it was the great lives of, the civil war, and it was, you know, the only better line in that was when they told lincoln that grant drank. and he said, of course, find out what he drinks, give it to the other generals. least, at least fights. yeah. grant's humorous. he had that dry humor very much. right? yeah, but halleck and halleck

was jealous of of of grant of his success in taking for million dollars and capturing an entire army. the only commander civil war to capture three armies. okay. and grant went ahead of orders and went down to nashville. right. and to find out what the situation was, don carl lewis buell down there, another commander and he wanted to know how many gunboats in need, etc., etc., to take nashville, an important industrial site. so halleck, accused of, you know, of not desertion but being away from the war and the battle at the time of danger. and then he wrote to george mcclellan and he said, he's a drinker he's a drinker. and i don't know if he can be trusted. but later in the war, the one thing halleck did later in the war, when lincoln made a huge

mistake with stanton and sent guy mcclellan and john mcclellan in a bombastic politician from illinois, but a democrat in lincoln needed democrats who supported the war he was a racist, but he was a democrat and he opposed the confederacy. and lincoln needed those people. and so lincoln and stanton secretly a pact with clarendon to give him an army, he had to raise it himself. he was a midwesterner. he went back to indiana, illinois, and he the army, and they started to bleed it down to vicksburg. but grant was already near vicksburg. he was near memphis. he knew nothing about this, not the word you imagine if he had both shown at the same time. it was reverend, this mistake on lincoln's part, but i rarely see it emphasized in lincoln biographies and sherman wrote the order we have the order and lincoln appended on the back.

a handwritten note that he fully supported it. he never met with grant, never talked it over with grant. grant found out about it from halleck and reason. halleck disclosed this was he hated anybody. it wasn't west point. and mcclellan it wasn't west virginia. you know, another question right here. right there. just go ahead, stand up and show. you can you describe the challenge of operating in the war in new york, where the demands on proclamation was not the university universally popular, nor was lincoln, nor the war and to operate a war for grant and for lincoln at that point where public sentiment and general portrays i'm sure you know what this is like, where we never went public is kind of

against you and your and you're trying to accomplish this impossible task and you have a lot of sentiment in the north it's against it that in november of 62 when it reached its height in a very important congressional election and there was talk in the confederate in the north of forming a northwestern confederacy, a separate country, and it wasn't hive off from the united states and unite with the south. that's how deep some of this feeling was. slavery and i think it it's one of grits greatest sherman should be lincoln's greatest accomplishments that he was able to negotiate this sort of thing. it's one of the reasons rosecrans was in a lot of trouble because he was just blowing up the psychological league when he started to lose

chattanooga and there was tremendous pressure to remove him. but grant did not remove him. and because he was extremely popular in ohio and he had to win ohio. so lincoln's having to make all these kinds of decisions to calm this kind of sentiment, calm it and i'll tell you what really helped. letters. letters from boys from that part of the country back to their parents. they would get a letter from passing. i want you to come home. you didn't sign up to free blacks. they used another word. you signed up for the union and there's no reason. a lot of sentiment against the so-called copperhead sentiment. and then the letter would come back. i have hundreds of these letters now. you don't understand is i was against at first, but every time take a black man from them, they have to bring a kid a kid out of the war to the farmlands.

and we're when we take these slaves from them, we're really hurting. and and lincoln kept emphasizing everything that he did, including the emancipation proclamation, which wasn't a war measure, you know, and only enforced in states that were at war. okay. with the united states, not in states border states like missouri in delaware or in the paraphrasing to use force for this. thank you. even if you don't want all these freed slaves coming north, there's a usefulness for this. it's going to bring boys home. and the thing is that we were sending. yeah. and he had a real tough issue with what do you do with freed slaves? well, a lot of the so-called abolitionists wanted to send them to the north and the north

didn't want them. and that was an issue. that was an issue. and that he had i mean. this amateur wrestler from illinois, i think. he's an amazing amazing human being. i mean, i feel so blessed to be able to go to my writing desk and write about human beings like this and i turn on the television. last question right over there. if the microphone can go over to him. and hold it up by your lips up, general professor, thank you for presenting this evening. professor, my question is, did grant operationally ever venture farther west than or does vicksburg? mark the edge of his western campaign? yeah, shallowest of the west?

i guess so, yeah. so he actually went across the mississippi. he went into louisiana and louisiana was seedbed for guerrilla movements and not major army, major fights. but there are an awful lot of guerillas, confederate guerrillas. i don't know if you remember the famous where blacks first participated in great numbers. it milligan's ban and when a group of guerillas from taylor's army a group of regular troops from army tried to wipe out a federal supply depot called milligan's ban, there were operations along the red river, for example. there were operations in texas as well. so there was a war in the west of missouri, across the mississippi, early conflicts in that part of the country arkansas, the big battles of arkansas, little rock places like that. it's just that they don't get

into the consciousness. we're so one of the things that started me in my vicksburg was i was so angry with ken burns, a good friend. ken, i think a magnificent series on the civil war. but he passed vicksburg like a nanosecond. and i thought that's a pretty big battle, you know, and i understand why he didn't have photography and few documentary filmmaker you don't have images. you can't do the battle. that was a magnificent series, although must confess that relying shelby foote to the extent that he did, didn't exactly provide the most balanced perspective, including you know, i wish allan nevins were alive or. yes, yes, bruce catton would have been mcpherson. i was reading the bruce catton grant takes command. someone gave it to me right before i went to the shoot. yeah, it was really great. well, ladies and gentlemen, i hope that you now see why we

kept trying year, year after year, to get this great emeritus on this stage in this great location here, which is so tied again to the movement that helped to win the civil war in the end. and to add to this. 262nd birthday celebration of america's ulysses. thank you very much. i appreciate appreciate.

we are honored to have you join us here for this important commemoration. we gather tod