with the family quite a bit. >> the book, "a game of character" the author, coach, craig robinson, coach of the oregon state beavers. basketball season begins in november. there's a month and a half of training to go. >> that's right. >> he's the brother few minutes with us at the book festival. >> thanks for having me on. >> civil war generals is the title of wesley clark. national archives in washington d.c. host to one and a half hours discussion. >> in honor of the 150th anniversary of the civil war, the national archives has been commemorating this milestone with an exciting events.

at the pentagon and while holding a commanding your appeal was involved in actions. he retired from the army in 2000 and was a democratic candidate for president in 2004. he's received a presidential medal of honor, the nation's highest civilian honor. as and author he's written waging modern war, winning modern war and in his latest

book, please welcome general wesley clark. [applause] >> david, thanks for a much for that introduction and the hospitality of the mosul archives and it's an honor and privilege for me to be here with these distinguished historians and authors and men who really know their subject matter. we are talking about the american civil war to might but we are also talking about leadership and generalship and just if i could start, of course the civil war is unique in american history. it's such a transfer of experience. it involves so much of our nation, and it was fault right here. people left their homes and went

out to see a battle for a day. newspaper correspondents participated on both sides. of course there was this the mosh back and forth, and the generals had known each other. they spoke the same language. they studied the same text. they started with about the same weapons although they didn't finish with the same weapons, and there was so much familiarity with this. the slaughter was intense and there was so transformative of a nation that today you still find memories and legacies of the civil war particularly in the self and the name of some of the biographies the generals these gentlemen have written about still evokes strong passion and parts of the country. you can go to battlefields and find could some families of a soldier who served there. it's such a personal experience

that even today, almost 150 years past its commencement, it's still the most discussed, the most understood and study and sometimes the most misunderstood of conflicts. there are people watching the show when sure who are experts. i'm not an expert on the civil war. i did serve our country in uniform. some of these gentlemen did, too. they are all noted authors, but none of us -- we've got to be a little humble here because the interested -- even though he might be surprised by looking at it, none of us were actually there. we were not in the civil war and so everything we've learned this from our study and we are studying it in english, and there are a lot of other people all. probably in the audience who have studied and know their own opinions, so we are conscious and want to get you involved in this discussion and make it real to you. there may be others who aren't

as familiar with the civil war, but it's pretty easy to explain the big picture. the country broke apart over a set of political issues, and one side decided that it would succeed coming and the other side decided that if it allowed it to happen it would destroy the harmony of the union, and on the basis armies were raised and families were sometimes split up and a great struggle in sued for four years, and when it was over modern america emerged with an industrialized north that became the leading power in the world shortly thereafter. but even economic power. so tonight we want to talk about that experience and particularly seen through the eyes of the leaders of the war and their

characters. general to boys held a special place in the united states. the army is older than -- we actually formed the united states army in 1775 before the declaration of independence, and george washington of course was our first commander in the american army. he was our commander in chief, and he was the first real national hero and the greatest national hero of america, and after that, the next national hero was general and rich axson who saved the war and kept the british out and brought to the completion of 1812 on our terms. in the civil war because of the enormous magnitude of the other leaders emerged, he rose, and we try to memorialize and understand these men in a series of books you see displayed here. these are biographies and we try to write them in a way that are crisp and meaningful and permanent with the light details to give you the insight, and

enough rich detail that it's not just a summary but moving quickly enough so that if you are not a scholar or lifelong expert you still get the gist of what this is all about. and so, that's the basis. what we've never done as a group is set about and rehashed these generals, and these gentlemen on the stage, they are not one trick ponies. i mean, they know the war, they've written about only the civil war but other wars and other generals. so we can have a pretty broad based discussion here. and i thought i might ask just really going down the line if i could just ask each of our authors to give a quick sketch for the audience, tell us about your background a little bit, how you got into this and how you think the essence of the general is done of the you've written the book on. how should the audience envision

this general? who was he? so maybe we can start with davis. could you. >> thank you for much of a general, and folks for being here. in this year of self disclosure was born in savannah, georgia, so i sort of grew up with the civil war, and i still have a few moments to kikwit general sherman. [laughter] but i was a journalist for 30 years and served some time here in washington in viet nam and around the world chasing conflicts, and i got to know the enlisted man as well as the officers and watching the decision making process of the commanders. eventually i got into writing books and i have written about 23 now that many of them have had a military context but i had a real understanding from the

enlisted brunt of the way to the men who wear the stars, and whenever it was suggested to me that i write a book on stonewall jackson, it was a real because for a boy from the south, the name of stonewall jackson just evokes magic, and i wanted to get to know more about him other than just he was a great general, so as i started to plunge into it and i thought i knew a lot about still more jackson to start off with i knew nothing. he turned out to be the most interesting man i've ever met and, you know i think we will go into some of those details later he was an amazing character in which he was stubborn, fanatical, he was a genius in some ways and 80 it in the others, but he always had a

notion of where he was going and what he was going to do even to the point of turning himself physically into the ground sometimes where he couldn't do it. but he would tell robert e. lee something could be done it could be done. it might, as a sacrifice to a number of soldiers that it would be done and that is the last point i took away from my studies about the civil war was the sheer magnitude of the killing fields involved. we are not talking about where a helicopter crew gets shot down and people die. we are talking hundreds of men like these battlefields. if you haven't been out, some of them we get a real sense of it and so i think we will go from there, general. >> now i want to turn to noah andre trudeau. he wrote the biography of so much axson's big boss, robert e. lee.

tell us about yourself and for those that don't know if robert e. lee in a way some of us from the south do, tell us about him. >> i find myself sitting here a new yorker who got to write about a half virginia and. i work for many years for national public radio and i think i learned a lot about taking an open mind to a subject in approaching it going where the evidence takes you and not to be at risk conclusions that mechem against the grain i encountered ely a lot in my books about the vehicle before because i had written a lot of the eastern feeder, so he would always sort of been a character on the stage and on the spotlight i was grateful for the format this house which is really compressed i had to decide quickly what were the

important things to say and how to get to them in an interesting manner and that was to be the challenge of writing this kind of book and i realized when i first got into the civil war it was still the age of where the douglas freeman books and the clifford books were the standard books in the field and they tended to glorify and even to deify lee to a large extent and i was fortunate going through that period i think there was a whole re-evaluation about lee and weidinger and to do in this book was walking through a remarkable career as much as possible seeing it through his eyes light to the battles almost entirely from what did lee know and how did he know it and where was he right and where was he wrong and i'm hoping of that process a picture emerges of him

that is i think both honest to his skills as a military professional and i hope fair to him as a human being, a citizen of this house, and that great conflict. >> thank you. that is the southern side, and we are going to try to come back to that in a minute. i want to asked stevan if you will talk about a name that inspires fear in the south and in the hearts of many others who grew up there and that is william sherman. >> again i am steven woodward, a professor at tcu in case you couldn't tell. [laughter] and like general sherman, was born in ohio, so i am an tecum as you can tell by my lack of an accent. so general sherman was an interesting character. i find him may be the most fascinating general of the war overall. he was a brilliant man. he fought incessantly and talked

incessantly one observer said, like shots from the repeating rifle just one after another after another. we tended to talk in extreme ways he said things that work rather extreme and i think that's been part of his reputation why he has that reputation is of the civil war or whatever you want to say, this man who spread fire and destruction because he talked more destructively and he added. he also would probably get the chance to discuss some shocking and deplorable ideas about race when he was talking but he behaved better than he talked most time. he was a brilliant general, not perhaps in the same way grant was. sherman found other ways to accomplish his purpose said he had a sort of different

brilliant but a fascinating man completely. >> and john mosier, you'd the story of the first american real supreme commander, ulysses grant. >> that's right. [laughter] >> tell us about yourself and how you see grant. >> i'm sort of like you. i was born in arkansas and how to move to louisiana or have my front teeth removed. laughter -- [laughter] i had ancestors on both sides of the war. my background basically is in european armies and so the first and second world war, and so when i came to write about grant, my original interest in grant was he was a greatly under appreciate classic american literature in war, which thanks to mark twain, got published. it's really some brilliant

writing. unfortunately, grand didn't talk much about himself, he talked about descriptions. but i brought to that a somewhat different perspective, and certainly very much the idea of grand as the first supreme commander, but also that grant was as sherman told the remarks, one of the truly great american generals. someone asked sherman did he think grant should be included with wellington and the altar as one of the great soldiers, generals of the 19th century, and sherman said yes, but i think history will bring him how your than that. [laughter] which may have been just sherman talking off, but i think that is true, and when i wrote this book, one of the things i really tried to bring out was the extent to which you could really compare grant with those three, in particular with wellington,

who, like grant, was never thought about all the key didn't win. and also managed to do something i think that was quite remarkable, which is he was able to command armies in the field, but he also became, finally, when lincoln had the good sanity, the supreme commander, the overall commander, and that's a difficult transition to make. i think we all recognize that the world is full of people who are burley and on one level, they don't do so well at the next level, so grand, to me, was fascinating because he was functioning effectively at every level including the highest, which is where he ended up, and then of course he became president, which to a certain extent i think was a step down. i mean, seriously. i was reading truman's letters to his wife that he wrote during

the first world war, and truman hadn't gone to college, said he was an artillery officer but he really hadn't studied to be able to see in the army once he was in france. and at one point he wrote to his fiancee and set off a -- i've never worked so hard in my life because i want to be part of this grand adventure, and if i am able to participate in it successfully, this will be the high point of my life, the part that i will remember forever as my great achievement, and i thought there is the man who became president of the united states. so i really do think to a certain extent the triumph of success for both men was probably greater to them than becoming president as great an honor as that is. >> war is a crucible of for the fifth experiences in which character is both wingfield and shaped, and we did these men as

great generals that we have written about year based on a couple of criteria. first, of course, they are known. i mean, you have generally on the one side is the most famous general although he never had a role comparable to that of grant. in the north to the grand as the overall ultimately the survivor in fl war between the generals in the north, and he made it up, he won lincoln's confidence and won the war for lincoln. you have stonewall jackson who is an incredible and free shuttle commander who led one of the most classic maneuver battles in history and still studied the valley campaign, the movement, the faint, his leadership in the troops coming and you have sherman who was an innovator and a tremendous team builder in his own right, but also had the courage and the good sense to learn from his experiences for about the

campaign's became greater and these men are all men never could place to achieve that, but beyond that, and the fact that they were newsworthy and written about and at my europe and the reunions of the grand army of the republican and so forth years later, what is it about them that makes them a great general? was it the way they were brought up, was it their judgment, their courage, their spirit, was it the figure they got on horseback and if you could just pick one quality of the by that he wrote about and let's throw it out there and to one a little bit. and let's start at the bottom and work out. stonewall jackson, he never committed a feeder exactly, but he did come in a valley. what was it about jackson? >> mostly the fact his men

believed. it wasn't necessarily the south as a whole you who he was at first, he was an obscure major from bmi, but the people he brought to the war had known this guy and if they would follow him, these young men and would follow him because he had the sense not of destiny, he didn't think in terms like that of tannin the roll, but i have to do to complete this job and whether it was just training the troops and taking carcieri, it was the same to him, methodical, grind out and it can be done. he never had a sense of defeat and that was passed on to his man. but they would basically follow him anywhere and as the legend grew, certainly the leadership of the south and robert eletes bought into that to get the job done, and he proved it over and over and over again.

but she had his faults. there was no doubt he was a man who was to pious, said in his own ways. she didn't care for would anybody else thought, and that was all a part of the myth she was so sure of himself with the man behind him felt stone wall has it under control. i will do what stone wall says. so it was a leadership, a belief in the person, not mrs. lee the grand cause. stonewall jackson will send a part of the swords and roses bunch in the south. he was a good soldier, and as one of the people -- the identity between the men and their ranks and the supreme general as far as they could see really worked. there was a real chemistry between stonewall jackson and the troops. he wasn't one of the troops, but they respected him, he respected them and there was a bond that was beyond the subordination of ranked and privileges that

characterizes the forces, and maybe that is what one hamid the acclaim from his first action i guess in it manassas when he hailed the got the nickname of stonewall. but he had the bond with the troops. was it the same with sherman, would you say, is that what made him the fact the troops identified with him? what is the essence of the man in terms of military leadership? >> that is certainly one factor by the end of the war because the troops called him uncle billy and there were many reports he had with the troops and by the time he's marching north from savannah and north carolina his troops, his men had the supreme confidence that uncle uncle billy will get us through. we cannot be defeated with him leading us. if i were going down to sherman's great ms. i would say it comes down to the product of

a brilliant mind with also a tough mindedness that he was determined, he had things to get done. he suffered some setbacks. he looked at his career during the war, early in the war when he was thought to have been insane, yet some sort of a mental breakdown early on and overcame that. he had a severe setback about midway through the war. he overcame that, came back. so suffered setbacks. as you mentioned, he learned from his mistakes and developed new ways. he found out he didn't like making fun of the salt he didn't want to do that anymore. i found other ways to get the job done. so if i were one of the generals i would say that was it. >> he was a hard man. he was hard on his troops and hard on the civilians. he certainly got a reputation for not having much empathy or sympathy. he was there. he was mission oriented, wasn't

he? >> it's interesting, the deputy and is the best because early in the war keep up this reputation of being hard on the troops. it is the incident lincoln comes and visits the camp a few weeks after or maybe before the first summer of the war and lincoln comes and one of sherman's officers is unhappy and he has a complete and in fact he had been openly threatening. home, sherman couldn't keep him and said if you draw a heavy shot so lincoln is at the camp and says i have a complete, and he says i came to sherman with my issue and he threatened to shoot me and it is a famous line where lincoln looks of the officer, looks at sherman and then he leans over and says in a loud stage whispers of everyone around him could hear as well. if i were you and he threatened to shoot i wouldn't trust him because i believe he would do it. [laughter] sherman would be hard with his men early in the war but at the end of the war then sherman is

very -- the men feel this closeness. he is uncle billy. they call him that to his face to the lows generals of the civil war had nicknames behind their back. they would call him uncle billy marching by and how was your day, uncle billy? i guess we will be taking him before long, uncle billy, to his face. so great rapport with his soldiers by the end of the war. >> and if you look at at the haulier little myself, i mean, go to robert e. lee's. i mean, robert e. lee is like a high school trophy winner, the franchise quarterback. he was so good before the civil war they offered him of the command of the union army. his patron was in the white house as the military adviser to abraham lincoln, and yet he chose to go with the south. he was a loser. i mean, his army was defeated,

and at one point in the climactic battle let gettysburg, which his own generals disagreed with him on this judgment, so how do you come to grips with lee, what is it that made him what he was, this respected, and meijer, we celebrate his holiday in -- i know you don't in the south, -- new york. but he lost. what was it about lee? >> there's this moment of transformation for lee that i have to tell you why still don't understand. happens outside of richmond the 1962. the confederate army has been steadily retreating ahead of mcclellan's army pushing up the peninsula and then the commander of the southern army, joseph johnson is wounded, and the president of the confederacy

turns to his chief military advisor and puts him in charge. up to that point, lee had been on the sidelines. he had been an adviser, he had been sent to a few troublespots he hadn't performed very well as a professional military man. the most he had ever commanded were a few companies of calgary in texas in terms of military force. yet the day he took over he was the robert e. lee that all of you imagine him to be. there was a clarity of purpose for each circumstance that he was in that enabled him to throw away the battle. i'm sure you would know better than i that at any moment in the midst of a three complicated battle, the officer in charge is being pummeled with contradictory information.

and it takes a certain internal sense to sort of say this is important. i can ignore this, i can't believe that, and then to act on it. this is the lee copy, and he had a very bloody learning process in the campaigns on the seven days where he lost every battle just about and he meant to leave coterminous casualties but he gained amazingly both self-confidence and the confidence of his troops because they realized he was a fighter, and if the was an overall spirit of the southern soldier, and i think they came to respect him for that and it's interesting he is the patrician of this group. i think all the other three are all have dirt under their fingernails. the lee will imagine with dirt under his fingernails and the

nickname tells you that. it is mars robert, master robert, so it was his performance and ability throughout at various battles to really see through the clutter and figure out what i need to do to get done what i believe has to be done and i think the soldiers came to respect that and he had his walls as a commander but overall, we see him as that sort of figure who could take an impossible situation, sort it through and take the necessary steps such as the chancellor to turn what could have been a disaster into >> what turned him into chancellor? described the battles of the audience gets the feeling. >> for lee the challenge is basically he was the middle part of a sandwich. the union commander joseph hooker had come up with a very

good plan to leave a substantial force pinning him in place at fredericksburg what he took the bulk of the army on a very wide swing and came in behind him. and so basically lee has a commander's worst nightmare come superior forces underside. the expectation on the union decided he's going to throw his hands up and start figuring out how am i going to get out of here with as much as my army as i can save? and that is never lee's first, second or third fault. his first thought is how do i get at these people, he very quickly prioritizes, determines where the most important danger is that the moment, takes the risk, this is the other thing by the ability to focus on what needed to be done, he then accepted the risk of doing it. he realized the force of fredericksburg was faint and he needed to respond to the real

threat. he left a small covering force, took the bulk of his army out to meet the main union threat coming in against his rear, then it was the brilliant improvisation with stonewall jackson, that further split his army, sent jackson around to strike the union at the flank which completely turned the picture of around and resulted in the union army ultimately pulling back eyefold to the opinion that lee felt that chancellorsville was a failure for him. army coming into the end of that terrible, bloody series of battles he told more than one officer the norbeck across the river ready to deliver the want to do i have gained nothing. and this tells you a lot about the fact he was already looking at the end game here and still was able to deal with that and i

think it is with that focus and the fact his soldiers at that point were willing to do anything for him. >> it's clear that he was a brilliant man and as you say was a patrician and had great experience growing up. now he could hardly find a greater contrast with the supreme commander as he leader emerged on the other side with a grant. grant was a lot younger than robert e. lee. he didn't have the formative experience that he tried his hand at business he hadn't gone into well, right? he wasn't very successful and as a last row goes into the military and says what the heck, but he politics into the command of a force and what happened, what was it that made the grant what he was? he was having an obscure part of the war. the war is where lee was. grant was in the west and somehow he changed history.

how? >> to questions, basically and good ones. i think the first thing is that when we deal -- we get into certain categories of genius and i like the transformative experience with lee. to get to a certain category of genius in you don't know, and particularly when you have people i think being in general and the situation that these men were generals where there was no way to predict how they would succeed. grant simply had this instinct ability to see the situation and act on it and in that sense he's like marlboro hadn't done much until he becomes england's greatest general. it is -- and there is nothing in wellington's by ground to suggest that he would be the

success that he was. you just don't know. but i think one of the things he had that comes through quickly the minute he takes command is absolute self-confidence in what he's doing, and he communicates that to everyone under his command. he sees as lee did the situation quite clearly, and i would say going back to the second part grant realized the war was going to be one in the west. the civil war i found the interesting thing about the civil war is that first of all all the people engaged in directing it are professional -- have had professional officer training and at that point him in the 19th century it was one of the best universities in the world.

>> west point was ranked number one in 2000 mind. >> could to the british officers they were extraordinarily well trained. so this was a war that they have erected on the 60 engagement in the civil war the west point graduates were in charge of both sides and when i mentioned that to somebody italy's copps and says bmi which is the other one. these people were well trained and when you're talking about maneuver the strategy is just fascinating. but the war was basically going to be one in the last, and a grant received that. he was fixed on the best way to accomplish that, and like all

the other generals he had grave difficulties. i think one of the problems he had that he shared with lee is that in key instances he was never given the resources that were necessary to do the job. if you remember lincoln was a great leader and a great president, but he was not all that great militarily strategy. he became obsessed with each tennessee for some reason he gave he became fearful that the french were going to invade texas and there is a big diversion and the remark 100 days when he looked at the french plan said this would be a great plan to stop smugglers, and the prix war army has basically been treated like a police force and scattered all over the country. and to a certain extent

institutionally even when the civil war mike started they kept on doing that. but yes, the focus and the absolute column that grant had that he saw the situation, he knew how to deal with it and was going to deal with it and he believed that his -- he had the manpower to do it. he put a lot of faith in his soldiers very realistically like wellington's famous remark when some of his men fleeing, running said they are running, they will come back. okay. they will be back. there are times in combat when everyone becomes a trade. and rightly so. and grant understood that and he planned and built with it accordingly, but the fixed clarity of purpose and the sons of koln, the image of grant sitting on a tree stump riding

of orders with artillery shells and cannonballs isn't made up. he had absolute columnist when other people didn't and i think that is a major factor but basically when you're talking about certain category of genius, there is no accounting for it. the famous remark when he was asked what you look for in your general and he said success. the person says what makes a successful general he says look. [laughter] and that's the problem. >> one of the things that you have all said receive commented in terms of character on the mental acuity. they got the job done. they were intelligent. soviets and the armies they always look to develop leadership, and so in the united states army we have our own list of treats that he steal the officer efficiency report in the old days it was the quality you

have to be enthusiastic and forceful and have initiative and enthusiasm and integrity and the whole list of things as a lieutenant you get graded one to five on how you exemplify the traits. the soviets have gone through their own studies from the civil war, the war against the poles and to finish that off in the early twenties and there are studies before world war ii and the have their own list of trades. the traits they have we didn't quite fit of the same way is called for site. they looked for people with foresight. your mentioning john grant and his strategic judgment. you think foresight was his strength? was it lee's strength or was it the difference between the two men and foresight or a difference and foresight or was it just a difference and material where resources? could lee have done what grant

did? what to grant and lee's case with those resources would be the same essential intelligence but placed in different circumstances? give me some thoughts on that. >> i think the problem basically from the strategic point of view is the north had one way to win the war mike and that is the had to physically invade the south and conquer its territory. nothing else would work. there's this widespread idea of the south was doomed from the start which became a great myth at one point. i don't think there is much foundation for that. the problem to me is the south had three or four strategies each one of which would have been successful and probably would have worked and each strategy had a very skillful intelligent proponent, and the result was the didn't hit upon

either one of them. taking the idea into the north and just frightening them and terrorizing them and bringing them would have worked if he had been given the resources. joseph johnson who is greatly underrated -- i mean, the the best confected general was of course they weren't british but -- [laughter] by that thought that hamilton was by all accounts the top british general, he thought he was the great person and when you read his writings, he wrote well, he was intelligent, educated, he really stood out. he was the general. so there you go. but the southern generals never

hit on a strategy. at the point in which lincoln basically surrendered command to grant and let him of like the strategy grant salles, the war was basically going to come to an end, so in that sense, to that point, lee had a losing hand. by the way, someone asked lee you know, grant was basically just an accident, and we said that is no compliment to me, sir. [laughter] he said i have studied the records of military history ancient and modern and i have never found a general to be grant's equals pittard i do not believe there is any general in history to be his equal. i don't think he was rationalizing and because he lost. it's been a lot of us in the

south felt that it was the other way around. >> that's right. >> and i want to ask noah euskadi lee. lee did more with less with guys like stonewall jackson working with him. grant had this overwhelming numerical superiority and the technology and he had the power of the united states of america. >> the north wasn't able to put this point the great population enlistment, the north didn't have this great overwhelming advantage. the same problem as the russians had, and they kept sending people on wild goose chases and to louisiana and all sorts of other places, so that grant didn't really have this overwhelming advantage which i certainly absolutely agree with you and brandt dinsmoor -- dan lee did with the genius of doing more with less.

>> if you take us through, noah and don, you're working the same battlefield. the way they handled the mastery of the art of war to grant. >> it's important to point out first that on the one hand, lee was very advanced and understanding the relationship with the military and civilian. he was one of the few generals to treated jefferson davis has approach in respect. most of the other generals and others i think just always put up with him. what this didn't mask is the fact that lee was able to undertake a strategic approach that ran counter to what davis believed. jefferson davis believed a defensive strategy, we draw the

line around the south and wherever they come in we throw them out. and so he would shift resources around he would chase after small corners to do that. lee believed you have to defeat the army in the field that represents the greatest threat and then they will talk peace. so, this early per go through gettysburg is aimed at pushing against the enemy to force that fight even if it meant getting out of the south, which was a really psychological moment for the south because in fact on his first campaign, northen to maryland, the number of soldiers who hesitated and dropped out was really amazing. but lee had to deal with it and pushed that strategic vision

forward through gettysburg, where i believed then he felt again if you look at it from his point of view from gettysburg he believed he had the superior army in a spirit and ability, he had many important advantages which we now know some of which were imaginary and still believed in them at that time and couldn't deliver the victory. if he couldn't do it then he came to realize he couldn't do we. he changed his focus and have a moment of crisis and missed the resignation and it's a serious not a gesture, not chongging to say i'm going to show how important i am by quit because i know you want for your me, if he seriously for the moment doggett he could do anything he couldn't to change the situation. is the worst possible feeling he could have to feel it had one

out of your hand and that your whole approach is no longer valid. he found a new purpose which was to buy time, either hoping something in the west might change, or that the south and the north was weary enough the would come to the peace table, and so he adapted to that situation, and then in the spring of 1865 and think comes the last big shock where it is clear jefferson davis is not prepared to accept any compromise. opportunities were there. lincoln made it clear if you agree to talk about coming back into the union everything is on the table. davis believed it's a little like the allies problem in world war ii. we only accept surrender. but i saw the moderates.

the people who might have moved a country towards a peace negotiation are disenfranchised instantaneously because at that time its surrender or death and that is what the fuss was pushing for. he truly believed in 65, but the south would rise literally and come back to get there because of this and lee realized from the mechanics and the members it wasn't going to happen. >> even after lee surrendered. that is when he told jefferson davis mauney dysart whipped, they are paying the horses and going home and leaving the guns, and he i guess had the satisfaction of setting jefferson davis strait. >> he was in the american character and it is the american wing of the war basically when the war doesn't and decisively

we don't like it, and we envision that they will end that we like world war ii with unconditional surrender it touched a strong serve in the american body of public. going to the strategy of this and you look at it don jackson had an amazing fuel for with the enemy would do and how to position forces and how to react and how far he could push his men. if you have given jackson an army like grant had -- >> that is the great game of stonewall jackson is that if he had lived, fill in your own theory. unfortunately stonewall jackson didn't live, and because of that, lee did indeed lose his right arm on the battlefield. it had nothing to do with his brain that his operatives in the field was stonewall being able to follow up.

we have to remember the battlefield was such a confusing place, the same kind of role was played by stuart, and if jeb report to the building around the union was doing this or that, that dave lee a lot more information sometimes jeb didn't make it and that left the great general as we would find out at gettysburg until it was much too late. the tactics worth one thing, as stone will's the ability to foresee down the road was amplified by many of the officers who salles each other and worked together in the war with mexico. they knew each other at west point. this was a family reunion in a very strange sort of way to a point where lee said they are

going to give me a general i don't know that i don't know how to defeat because he was running through them at that point and a little elephant that isn't in this room right now was general mcclelland come he was the main problem with lincoln as first because the man had everything the union could give him and kept them on the parade ground basically. he just wouldn't fight. but he also wouldn't be give up. >> his job. >> and lincoln always had this pesky gnats that had part of the population behind him because he looked so good and talked so well. but stonewall i think in the fall we showed that knowledge was being forewarned. early in the morning he

appointed a man to be his personal mapmaker, and that was one of his secrets. he knew how those hills and valleys and him roads because his man walked over them and the north did not have that advantage, so he knew where the cuts were and how deep the valleys were and that was just wonderful knowledge that the enemy didn't have. everybody couldn't do that. the hills of the battle were too big and then have to disagree about whether the south -- i think it was doomed from the start and things like new orleans fell. i think that was important. it was just malling away at this being a southern lawyer he brought up the heritage our backs were against the wall from the start. you had to leave everything on the battle because the yankees were only half the work in our

household. [laughter] there are going to do a terrible thing to the women folks. it was great for morale and jefferson davis and all the generals understood that it was a glorious losing call. i don't know how glorious was looking back years and then gone with the wind finally explained it all. [laughter] what we've been talking about with the quality, intelligence, great strategic insight, what you said early on something that ring a bell with me is you take a look at like sherman and he came back with adversities. john, you're talking would grant sitting their writing off the cannon balls crashing around and so forth and noah, you mentioned with lee and don, you mentioned

with jackson. i want to get to something people don't associate with generalship and the discouraged. when you about courage and modern life and a guy like murphy in world war ii, congressional medal of honor winner and he was there in the thick of battle and firing machine guns in the face of the enemy he was a soldier. you think about battles like okinawa where the forces came face-to-face with a terrible and a tough enemy, but we have been maybe given short shrift to the general, haven't we? i mean, was that an important quality that makes these men great generals? start with sherman. >> we have been talking about several of these having transformed moment and really for sherman his moment in the war relates to the battlefield courage it really was the point at which things turned around

for sherman and he was able to start applying his genius in a way that was helpful. you could talk about forsyth, too and part of the problem is his foresight would work against him. he was smart and would assume or think in his mind that his enemy knew everything about his situation, and then he would assume his enemy would make the best possible move and that scared the daylights out of him and he says so. grant doesn't mind with the enemy does, but it scares me. so he had this problem early in the war and then he gets a second chance. for those of you that aren't very familiar with this, grant is in command of the army of tennessee but sherman has the immediate command of the divisions in the camps around shiloh and they are getting information from their scouts come from the picket line, steady information that the confederates are approaching. the army was the tennessee

surprise shiloh and the answer is to army wasn't surprised at all. the army of the tennessee troops were probing for word and initiated the combat, but sherman was surprised and he went so far the day before the battle of men were coming to headquarters reporting of the approaching enemy and he was ordered to be put under arrest for bringing false reports to headquarters. and even that morning he accused the officer who reported -- he is he doesn't know is a battlefield to get to consider its are literally within a couple hundred yards closing an undercover and sherman is riding along and his troops telling him the rebels are out there and he is looking to one plank they think they found the confederates and at that moment the confederates emerge about 100 yards away and rival their rifles and someone shouts in general sherman will be shot he said look to your right, look,

and at that moment the talk of transformative moments. at the moment my god, we are attacked. and that valley somehow almost mrs. sherman and kills the orderly and this is like the low point of the war for sherman. he has done everything wrong. he is really messed up. and here is there really brilliant man who somehow has made every decision wrong and he is taken by surprise. but he makes this transformation at shiloh under fire. he is amazing under fire. it's almost as if the pressure of the battle and the adrenalin rush, i don't know what it is and i haven't been there so i wouldn't know but somehow this studied his mind which raises too fast and generates ideas too fast the adrenaline rush steadies sherman indy 500 becomes more, qtr ta with and able to function in battle and

his soldiers write extensively about what an inspiration he had and he had three horses shot out from under him, he suffered another wounded, but grant so i never had to worry about the part of the mind of sherman is holding. i knew he would hold and recent studies of the bottle sherman had a much bigger part of the battle than we had previously thought. most of the confederate army was asked in front of sherman, and he had a good ground eventually but he held them for a long time. and so not only does he do a great performance and through tremendous personal courage, but he also seems to get this transformed for him he realizes he can to this, and the war is different from now on. so personal courage, physical courage, being able to stand there and take it with a big part of the leadership for a generals as i think everybody has acknowledged, but what about the moral courage. we talk about not only physical

courage but moral courage. take the case of wesley -- mengh come here is a man who must have looked -- he must have felt a certain degree of hopelessness as you indicated and you know a lot of generals lose it. look at rommel, a guy this year was and bold when he is pushing the the brits across north africa but when the tables were turned he got sick, he lost his grip on the forces and a lot of things went wrong and yet lee licht with this. what the role of moral courage in this? did he have it, lee? ..

as intelligently and as purposefully as possible. and i think lee about quality. he understood -- i mean, grant was notoriously unhappy seeing wounded soldiers. lee found a way to accept it, i think, turned it into a sympathy , a sympathetic expression. he couldn't do much. a general can't do much to stop the bleeding man from dying. but i think lee balanced that

professionalism was kind of the moral sense of the business he was in and came to find that the balance that was necessary -- because otherwise i think it would destroy an officer in command if he began to focus exclusively on what his decisions were doing to human beings that respected -- the trusted in. i think we found that balance. and even at the very end, clearly -- i mean, clearly and away the respective manhunt for leave grew as things got worse. >> lee has the courage to make this a vision where there were no good alternatives and take responsibility. >> with the decision to surrender. >> at dawn, there is a fine line between when the same moral courage in standing up for what you believe in taking on the doubters and so forth.

there's a fine line between doing it the right way and maybe going too far at times. you were saying something about stonewall jackson earlier at tina little bit of righteous in the way you approach things. and he was certainly a man with strong convictions and didn't hesitate to voice them. and what is your sense of where that took him and whether it was a good trade or maybe they are in excess. >> it was probably a central trait. he didn't care what anybody else thought about him. he was enough to fame and he wasn't after corey. he was who he was. and he was late coming to religion. boy, was he founded, he decided to become a christian. god was right there in the saddle with him. a general once told me that he wouldn't give a glass of warm spit for an officer who was afraid of getting shot. well, stonewall used that same

kind of analogy for same kind of feeling with every man under his command. you're all expendable. because throughout here for a purpose. throughout her to do a job. and you run out of bullets come you go to the bayonet. you are not fan at scummy coach of rocks. you run out of rocks, use your fist. that is what i will do. and he did not tolerate wavering in his beliefs. so his moral courage -- i mean, he was very self-righteous. there's no doubt in addition to being an acute hypochondriac, he was a religious nut. there's no other way to put it. and so therefore, he was always rate and his men responded to that. but for some strange reason, stonewall stands there like a stonewall. in stonewall is always right and one of the greatest points of pride after the war was for a southern man to say that he felt

stoppable. a lot of them fall because they kept getting killed. last night he extended life in pursuit of physical. but as the general says, he showed the north crazy up and down the valley because he recognized what was going to happen and he was willing to spend not force because he felt it was the right thing to do. it was the proper thing to do and it was a militarily sound thing to do. >> of course sometimes he totally crazy. he was pretty persnickety. when he felt something is due, he demanded it. he's a pretty demanding subordinate. >> yes, the stonewall has driven a lot of people crazy, including me. [laughter] so back to moral courage on grant, how could he -- how could they not be sensitive to the slaughter that resulted from once he started the wilderness campaign, without really a clear tactic in their.

any know what those losses were. how did he do it? >> first of all, one of the things we tend to forget his lincoln thought he was going to lose the election, the presidential election coming up. but the only -- and grant and lincoln were both at the onset lincoln lost the election center democratic party platform had basically been quick, that that would be the end of the war. grant felt he had no choice but to hang onto a and keep the war going. and he did. he also did not have the resources that he should have had to have really made some of the moves that he originally had planned. but he did have a strategy. i think the interesting thing to expand this a little bit about

the moral courage is the fascinating thing about this. in warfare, roughly from 161-92-1865 is it's really good. -- the only. we have one generals who are commanding in the field in charge of large armies, not just divisions or small groups, but we'll -- the armies on the scale of the civil war. okay are still have to exhibit personal courage because they have to stand up and leave and be shot at if they are to do their jobs. there's an abrupt change that happens in warfare and the space of about five years, you know, in which senior officers -- senior commander, someone in grant orly's position is now much removed from the battle. he's depending humbly on staff. and those are people who were not only out there getting shot for him, but to a great extent they can cover for his inadequacies or his programs.

one of the fascinating things about these generals i think that we see as that we really see how they react under pressure and how they responded because it was fun. there wasn't anybody covering for them. and in every case, when you talked about lee been sometimes force, sometimes the stewards didn't show up like he was supposed to. grant had some appallingly bad generals that an foisted on him for political reasons that he couldn't get rid of until, you know -- i mean, to a certain extent they'll have those problems and they'll triumphed over them. but it's the rare combination, i think, that draws us to these men, that they risk personal danger. they have the moral courage to stick to their beliefs. they really believed.

and at the same time, they were willing -- they tried not to take unnecessary risks. they were all aware as professionals said, the first principle and military art is getting your objective with the men and women -- minimum number of casualties. as greer put in a nutshell, sometimes you have to go out with them. the art of genius can watch all these men a thing possessed is knowing when that moment is and that you are convinced if you go out there you can with them, like grant was at shiloh the first day on grant said well, what with them tomorrow. okay. and he was absolutely right. >> and that's a good point at which we've -- to turn to the audience. because i know you've been wanting to jump in on some of these questions. some of you probably have personal favorites here that in the general sense is that the titles you want to talk about. i want to open it up to the

audience and let's take some questions about generalship in the civil war. this gentleman right here. yes, sir, you've got your handout. [inaudible] >> okay. let's go to mike. i'm going to stand -- we've got mike from both sides. sir, your eye. >> i have a question for mr. trudeau about robert e. lee. when he was in the appomattox campaign, he was looking ultimately facing the defeat. why did he retract the option of of -- of guerrilla warfare. could you explain that in military terms and also in moral terms? >> actually, you have to explain it i think in class terms. lee was part of the leadership class of the south. and when you think about the cauldron that was southern society, with the slave population and the poor whites, the biggest nightmare for social chaos.

and they saw the break down of an organized army, were at least there were rules, mostly followed to turn into a guerrilla situation, where there were no rules as be a worse option for a southern leader. i mean, when you look at various commanders, joe johnston specifically ignored a presidential daviess border to expand for that purpose. richard taylor fight any effort to break down his area of control into those kinds of billions. these were men for whom, while surrender was a terrible thing, social chaos was worth. and i think it was made on that basis rather than any military bases. thank you. >> we have another question up here. >> well, i just had a quick question. at the risk of being thrown out,

did you ever run across admirals in your studies? lincoln had this wonderful fellow named peter ward and who wasn't while in a secret weapon. should you ever run across any research on him or know anything about the admirals during the civil war? >> actually, i just did a couple articles on the red river campaign so i got to know admiral border pretty well. what i liked about him if he had a way of evaluating the army commanders. and he had absolutely no interest in political generals with which there were a large number. but if a general history within and delivered on its promise, it was his friend for life. that was sherman and grant became his two beds for that reason. he rochon said notes to the secretary of the navy. he says things are going terrible here. if only sherman was here we get it already.

>> thank you. >> thank you. next question. to general you will do earlier that i think is kind of interesting about what she talked about tonight, which is the familiarity with that these folks had in serving in the military before the war. i'm wondering, has been well known that patented a letter setting, but was from a distance. i wondered how the familiarity in your mind played out and how these generals -- all the generals use their intuition, maybe their knowledge of who is on neither side and how that might change the course of the war. >> maybe i can ask it this way. and take an incident. if one sounds out in your mind were knowledge of the opponent in a specific handler instance guided results. >> he knew him. i would say basically that the answer to name is that lee and grant really knew their opponents very well. because lee's remark about maybe

i'll run into one i don't know. but in fact, is sort of backfired in the sense that the union generals by the time -- by 1860 -- 1863 or 64, the mere mention of lee's name made them nervous. at one point, granting come you guys act like borges going to jump out at you from the north. but it certainly on the one hand it made things easier for those people who had studied the psychology of the other side. and grant certainly had vastly of course was older. i think the thing about the age -- we always need to think about the age differentials here, that lee and grant had not once during the mexican war is the thing they brought up. but lee -- lee was really a in the sense i think of age. he and joe johnson were really

looking down because they were older guys. so i don't think it worked quite the same way with them as they did with someone like grant to his much younger and who was really seen that sort of from a distance. >> i guess just to put a footnote on that, one thing that is common among these guys as they all studied about the same thing. you know, they studied napoleon. this was about war of maneuver. and there wasn't a good war for them to study between a timely graduated in the time that grant and even custer graduated. it all went back to sort of the military theory and the people who are formulating it. and so, a common mindset was a big fat or on it. i want to ask this lady she's got a question. >> first i want to me to comment the knife to questions. verse 20 thank you very much for supporting hillary in 2008.

>> one of the things we were talking about a purist politics and generals. and i'd like to keep this on the generals. >> thank you. the other comment i want to make is that they wanted to find out if you do any of this kind of stuff that public schools. i have a fifth grader and a seventh grader and they are not studying the civil war, which we find very upsetting in our public school. we are in california. and we just want to know if you have been going to public schools and what kind of response you are getting if you are going and if you have met any of the descendents of these brave men. >> well, i want to turn to the panel and discuss those questions. are you a presenting in schools? are you doing with high school audience at all on this? >> outcome actually might come right connie asked me out and they went out there and talk to an advanced history honors class.

but i have to say i made a mental -- you know, part of what happens when you talk to a group, at least for me, her first step is the size of the group. is this a want to hear a lot of good stories? so i took the school group and said a lot of good stories. and bless them, they surprised me with a few questions about tax dixon things. so it was a good experience, but was clearly like a one-off kind of thing. i think any of us who have given talks, if ashley the civil war roundtables. at some point, someone is going to come up in this great, great granddad was in this regiment at this battle. and sometimes they have a personal piece of memorabilia, which is very touching. often there's letters that they can talk about.

and that to me is a wonderful connection that just reminds you -- i think part of why this is still a part of the american psyche. so many people among us in the blood could be traced back to these events. >> is elementary school too young for civil war historians? for the interest of the history of the civil war? >> i'm now going back to my education courses. it's a question of perception. >> i think he should be taught personally. >> i think that's the kind of issue local school boards do with all the time. someplace in the south i promise you it's todd. [laughter] >> well, we need you out in california. >> thank you. let me turn to the gentleman over here. >> yeah, thank you. lee was such a complex, interesting character and most prominent among those traits with this idea of him being a

gentleman. but there was an interesting moment and i'm sure i have the facts wrong, but i believe it was at fredericksburg when the union troops were lining up on the bottom and he was on the top with his troops lined up. and if i wasn't so terrible, what a magnificent moment, just the majesty of all the troops lined up. i don't know if you recall the moment. but what does that reveal about tim and his character and just the idea of war can be, you know, terrible and magnificent and just as itching to get into battle and really do some serious damage. >> let me say first of all, the quote is a little different. i think he says it's good that were so terrible otherwise would grow too fond of it i think was the quote. but it points out that the civil

war was probably because of the weaponry transition, which required the deployment of troops en masse was the last war with the pageantry of war was still an element of the experience. at gettysburg, the moment when the southern forces of virginia and north carolina emerged from the woods on july 3rd and began to form on for that again senator hill, read the union accounts about the hawk, the momentary all of that experience of the sharply formed lines, the flags flying, marking up the various regiments and brigades and divisions. it was still a part of warmaking of bad faith. it was obviously on the way out. but there were times when it was

an element and it was something to behold with all. and i think -- >> by pageantry aside, i think there is still some in about going to war that excites the imagination and the psyche. it's the challenge, it's the comradeship, the intensification of emotions. and if you read the accounts of men and women who come back from the most recent experience, they'll tell you that they missed the comradeship that they were with. there's something about it and a lot of them were enlisted to go back again. so i'm sure that it's not robert e. lee's terror. he is expressing something that's more universal. it was a "new york times" reporter named chris hedges i think his name was, who brought a book called for is the -- if i've got the title right, war is the act that gives meaning to our lives. he was talking about how it is the sense of war sweeps through societies.

and he was in central america during the 80s in the balkans during the 90s and talked about this incredible intensification of emotion associated with conflict. it's a suspension of all my life. it's the constancy of danger and the threat of death, which gives life is extraordinary lucidity, that when it's over, then life goes back to his normal shades of gray. and so, it may be that lee's statement was as much data was more about his pageantry, but there's something and everybody who's experienced this, that it brings people back to reunions and it holds people in the grip of their emotional experiences. and worth of the most formative times of their lives. so this gentleman here has a question. >> yes, i'd like to ask this question. i'm pleading with you, not just asking. can you mention two things that

granted, that members of the general said, not only did he capture and destroy three different armies at fort donaldson, vicksburg and mathematics, but as general president, he cared more for the black man than these other three generals did you befriend one of the areas greatest to writers. daniel clemens, clemens had come out here before grant's memoirs were published. and grant made it clear, even in his memoirs, debt-free in the black man and making them a full participant in american society was the main reason why the war was thought or should have been fought. you haven't really touched on those two matters, if ashley the second one is both general and president, he knocked himself out for the black man. the only president to push an anti-lynching bill in 1822 does. >> is that a question? [laughter] >> is a plea for you to expand on it.

>> is an opportunity to talk about moral or. >> i think the very brief chapter i wrote i try to do with that because grant was the only general in the series so far who have actually been president. and i tried -- my argument was he was a greatly underappreciated president whose reputation had been mangled a lot of presidential historians. and moral courage, doing what he thought was right was very much a part of that. so, you know, but i would not go so far as to say -- that to single him out as though -- i think of the situation been reversed, i think robert e. lee might very well have done some of the same things. i really would go back to the fact that these men all knew each other at some level. i think that their behavior -- i mean, if you lead long straight

combinations of grant, for example, whatever the problems were for this group of people were talking about, the court, they were gentleman. and the real best sense of the word. and they all had their -- they all have their faults. no you didn't bring it up, but i didn't get into grants drinking either. mainly because in my view, sobriety is a greatly overrated virtue. [laughter] it just didn't come out. but the other problems. when you're talking about lee's resignation, lee was shafted so badly that he told them he had to resign as well. and if washburn had not intervened and made follicle that it was political suicide for him in his quest to become leading general on the union side today screen, you would've cheerfully today. he tried to do everything he

could to knife grants. and so -- >> user man of enormous character, all of them. i think that's what the author would tell you. i think were out of time, unfortunately. we've got a lot of other issues we could cover. i want to thank the members of the panel for the great job they did in writing these books. and let's give them a round of applause. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. well, now let's continue the discussion. who was the greatest general after all? [laughter] thank you all very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> wesley clark was nato supreme allied commander europe, from 1997 to 2000. know what andre trudeau wrote

gettysburg, a testing of courage and southern storm, sherman's march to defeat. stephen woodworth is a history professor at texas christian university. john mosier writes on military history. donald davis is the author of lightning strike, the secret mission to kill admiral yamamoto and avenge pearl harbor. for more information, visit archive.gov. >> up next, but to be attended a reception for arianna puffing 10 for her recently published book, "third world america: how our politicians are abandoning the middle class and destroying the american dream" the party is hosted at a private residence in washington d.c. on the program runs just over 30 minutes. [inaudible conversations]

>> how are you? >> time dylan ratigan. >> i have to warn everybody. >> she was doing all this stuff. >> is a lifestyle. >> but i think you almost have to warn people. >> you could wear a sign around your neck. because i'm wired and be careful because i'll put it on the front of the "huffington post." >> you are greek. >> yeah. >> thank you very much.

>> i've been around the country and the "huffington post" has third world a fax. i've been telling those stories of struggle and stories of obstacles. and that encourages them to share their own stories. >> i want to talk to you just for a second and get your thoughts on the elections. for less than a month away. there's a lot of talk. what are your thoughts about going to happen, do you see it happening? >> well, anything can play and that's the amazing thing. it was now two years ago, right? so, right now we try and have a devote of the