constitution. i'm looking forward to doing some interdisciplinary work on just practical politics. unit, politics in the air of new media. >> and you teach at the law school there? >> absolutely. >> do you seek electoral politics in your future against? >> no, i don't. i have retired, but i have not retreated to the sideline of politics in a general sense. i still work for candidates. i still enjoy opining coming in, from a different perch. >> and ken blackwell is also the co-author of the book, "the blueprint: obama's plan to subvert the constitution and build an imperial presidency." lyons press is the publisher. this is book tv on c-span2.

>> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> and now more from liberty university and lynchburg, virginia. book tv interview professor brian melton about his new biography of confederate general robert e. lee. this interview was part of booktv's college series and is about half an hour. >> on your screen is brian melton's new book, "robert e. lee: a biography." professor melton, why have over 2000 books been written about robert e. lee speak what he such a fascinating man an integral part of american history. it's that simple. and then, of course, there's the fact that after the war was over with, when so many people, particularly south of the mason-dixon, were so desperate to revisit the war and try to

scare out where could they run, leaking sort of epitomizes that idea. that only if lee been in charge whole time, if only lee been able to leave them better. then perhaps the south could have won the civil war. that would be a bit of a change to u.s. history. >> was lee a successful military general? >> yes, he was. at the same time he wasn't. obviously. on the one hand, lee one some amazing battles. you can look at second bull run as an example. you could look at chancellorsville. second girona spain called his greatest victory. i personally view chancellorsville. at chancellorsville, lee have taken an army that was outnumbered almost two to one. he then splits the army in the face of the enemy, flights that army almost destroys joseph hooker's right flank, and then

at the height of his success, he loses jackson, it slows them down for a second, reinforcements are coming up into history. he splits his army a third time, beats off that attack and returns in time to chase took her back across the river. you look at that, you couldn't script that kind of thing. this is not the kind of story you make a. people would say it's unbelievable. others were sheer willpower, able to win what other people said it was impossible. outside richmond in 1862 when lee fights the campaign against mcclellan, he manages over the course of a week to chase mcclellan all the way back from the gates of richmond to the james river, fights a series of battle. he only wins one. he loses the others, sometimes pretty badly, and he still managed to win the campaign. at the same time i think lee as a human being had some notable

flaws, like we all do, and those flaws, plus the overall geopolitical situation that the south based men that really no matter what he did he was not in a situation to eventually win the war. >> what were some of his lost? >> one of his chief flaws as military commander was his inability to confront his men when he was having problems with them. lee was raised by his mother. he only saw his father a few times when he was a child. his father died when he was very young. his father was the famous general, light horse lee. and lee never national down a job. and administered successfully take care of his fellow. he was constantly, constantly entering into all these speculations and losing badly. and i think when robert lee saw that, he really learned from

that. so he got one half of his driving person i from kind of an idea that he wanted to succeed where his father had his. at the same time after his father passed away, he saw a much more gentle and responsible side of parenting from his mother likes so he really seems when he gets into command to exhibit sort of both sides of this almost split personality, on the one hand, like h. at chancellorsville which is mentioned he could have a driving, aggressive personality where he could enforce his will on a much greater foe and a merger tories. on other hand when he was dealing with his men, if one of them did something he didn't lie, lee would very rarely confront them directly. he would make suggestions. he would say that it would probably be better if they did

something else but if they fail to offer, rather than do with the situation, he simply exiled them to the western theater. and that did wonders for lee to a certain extent, because he would get rid of the people he wanted to get rid of, but it meant that the confederate western theater was a dumping ground for all of these eastern commanders who had shown they were not up to snuff. and over in the western theater dealing with grant, dealing with sherman, they are dealing with james birdseye mcpherson, so u.s. invented trachea of ulysses s. grant a lot of them have to do with lee's own personality. in the way he handled problems. >> you refer in your book, in your biography, to his savage moods. what did you mean? >> lee had a huge temper. and that he was like, and his idol, george washington, washington was an incredibly controlled individual.

a lot of people don't realize that washington had a horrible temper when he lost it he could -- with the best of them. lee was the same way. that's one of the reasons why he led such a tightly controlled self disciplined existence because he knew what his temper was capable of and he wanted to keep it in constant check. >> brian melton, walk us through lee's life april 1865. >> lee, by that point, had really been ready to give up as an army commander for quite some time. lee was suffering pretty seriously from various medical conditions. of course, at the time he just broke down to rheumatism but when a probably had to do with some of the heart conditions that eventually contributed to his death. and the fact earlier he had actually written to jefferson

davis and asked to be relieved of command. david snow was, he was sold only. lee already been was already robert e. lee. how do you replace robert e. lee as a confederate general? so he will back and said that he trusted lee, and that he knew that there was no one else who could do the jobs better than lee. so then on out lee fights the best he can all the way back to the overland campaign. he fights the best that he can, but at the same time he knows it's a losing battle. but it's not his job as a soldier to make that decision, as far as he is concerned. so during the last month, lee is just barely holding on to quetta been going on is grant is constantly getting reinforcements in the petersburg trenches. and every time grandkids reinforces he stretches his lead farther and farther towards the all important railroad lines

that are bleeding into richmond. when grant eventually gets to the point where he thinks he has lee overextended and he orders an attack. this is a process that repeats itself. lee retells the attack. grant extends, extends, extends. probes again. it gets to the point where lee realizes he doesn't have the ability to continue the war. so he sort of bets it all on one last attempt to break the union line. he sent his most trusted commander that he has left, one of his most trusted congrats, john d. gordon on attacks that successfully breaks the federal line but then fails miserably. when grant realizes that he launches counterattacks to break these lines in multiple places. lee is not able to fix. he ordered the evacuation of the confederate capital, and from

then on it is literally almost a dog chasing its game type of situation where lee especially trying to stay ahead of grant and grant is carving out huge chunks of what was left of his army. lee eventually -- >> did lee have a destination at that point? >> he was headed first to the courthouse to try to -- in virginia, to try to get, to try to get we supplied. but grant eventually catches up with him at appomattox. grant is able to get ahead of lee to and lee by this time only has about 25,000 men left. >> compared to? >> compared to grants well over 100,000 total. lee does not want to surrender,

still. he knows it's inevitable. some of his top commanders that are still left start talking about it. lee sack some of them rather than let them talk about. he wants to send a message that he is the one who will make this decision, no one else. at appomattox when he realizes what he is facing he orders one last assault. gordon initially makes some headway, but infantry reinforcement comes at the gordon says i can't do it without heavy reinforcement. lee says okay, that's it. we have had enough. and he sits down to negotiate with general grant. at the time they actually had an opportunity to escape to a new escape route did open up, but lee essentially comes back and says that no, it's over. he has fought as long as he recently came. by that point, lee's main goal

was to almost surrender with honor, to show that he had done everything that was in his power to continue to fight. until there was no more hope you can when there was no more hope he would not sacrifice his been further. >> april 9, 1865. >> lee meets with grant, not far from here. >> how did they exchange message is? >> grant initially sent lee a message, and asked that he considered giving up. >> and betty the a person riding a horse, white flag? >> yes. lee responds that he would be willing to hear grant's terms. grant since his terms, and lee said he would like to meet with him on -- sorry about that. that trendy would like to meet with them the next day. the next day on april 9, grant

attempts to block the lee. lee then attempt to escape when it becomes obvious he will not be able to escape, lee, who had earlier, had risen early and dress in his full dress uniform can see pretty much knew what was coming, said words to grant that he wishes to discuss surrender. at the time the union army was ashley considering, was referring for another massive assault on lee's line. they send workers to try to find green. they can't find grant to tell him that lee is ready to talk to them, so general meade we sense grant's order and stops a massive slaughter. grant sends word back that is coming to the front as fast as he can. they agree to meet at the mcqueen house which is in appomattox not far from where we are right now. when lee a rise, grant is

dressed in his infamous uniform. he hadn't taken time to prepare like lee had to bypass a few words back and forth. grant mentioned a few things about the mexican work where they have both served. lee basically responds politely, and then said let's get down to business. grant sits down at a table. he writes out the order, the terms of the surrender. lee looks over them and makes a few request, particularly a request that the southern soldiers be able to retain their sidearms and they be able to retain their horses. in the southern army, the horses were the personal property of the soldiers as opposed to the northern army where they were owned by the government. which meant that if the northern army should appropriate all the horses, the men going home would have no way to raise crops the next year. grant agree sticky also orders

over 25,000 rations sent to lee's army. they signed the agreement, and lee calls for traveler who writes out. he ends up in an apple orchard, because he is in a strange situation for a man who is so used to being in total control. he has surrendered to he is not in command anymore, but he can't just leave. he is the army commander and so he has to stay nearby to be available for various a sundry issues related to surrender. and there's an amazing scene where lee is off by himself in the apple orchard, and his staff is sort of around the edge of the apple orchard trying to fend off the people you're here just where to look at lee, to see. they would let the most distinguished of the men famous people and, like george meade, through the court and.

and lee would meet them with sort of a savage cordial round. he was in no mood to be talking that lee would never be brewed. when it was all over with and all the orders had been signed, all of the men had been sent their separate ways, he issued his famous farewell order where he told his men to be as good as citizens as they were soldiers. and then almost rather anti-climatic way he mounts his horse and he rides off to richmond where his family was waiting. >> how long was he in richmond? by the way, i want to show this photo from your book. where was this taken and who took at? >> that was taken by matthew brady at the house that lee was staying in with his family in richmond. lee had been in a very strange situation as far as it probably went to he had never actually owned a home, and when the federal troops to arlington,

which was his wife's property, he was left essentially homeless. during the course of the war his family was moved from house to house to house in chile finally ended up in a house in richmond, virginia. basically when lee gets there, he goes inside and there is a string of visitors begin to come by. because by this i'm lee is no longer just a person that he is no longer even the distinguished virginia gentleman. he is one of the leading generals of the now defeated confederacy. and fans and historians, matthew brady, the photographer, they can buy day after day after day, one after another, trying to get in to see lee, trying to get into talk to him. thankfully, matthew brady was one of the ones he was able to get into talk to lee. >> was that the only meeting? >> i believe so. they took several photographs,

which for us provides one of the few opportunities to see what lee was like. to see what the war had really done to him over the course of the last four years. >> where was robert e. lee went abraham lincoln was assassinated? >> lee was in his house in richmond, i believe. >> do we know what his reaction was? >> i don't personally but i hate to have to say that right now, but i don't. >> when did robert e. lee dai? >> lee died in 1870. he was president of the university of washington, or washington university, washington college, sorry. washington college in lexington virginia. it later becomes washington and lee come in his honor. he had been working to try to bring the college back and make a difference in the lives of the

young men of the south. lee had not been allowed to become a citizen. he was never allowed to take part of it the political processes. lee's big response to the end of the war was to attempt to try to bring the south back by making it a successful part of the union picking. he thought further, when opportunity to become the president of washington college you would have a chance to change people's lives, build them back up where the war had destroyed them. lee, that evening, had walked to the local church to the church that he was a member of, was talking about expanding the building. and they had a long three or four hour meeting in which lee sat quietly in the back, didn't really contribute much. finally, at the end of the meeting he said that he would put in the money that was needed to make the expansion. when he walked home through pouring rain, he got home and

marry and the children were sitting down to dinner, and this is lee had begin to chide him for being late. as he began to sit down he seemed to have lost his ability to speak. he didn't know what had happened. when he sat down and tried to say, he couldn't speak, he couldn't argument. they described him as suddenly sitting very straight. it was like he knew that his time had come, so they hustled him off to his bedroom where he slept for a very long period of time. and then, they tried to nurse them back to health. unfortunately, through the haste of history, the best stories have tried to work out, they said lee probably suffered a series of strokes that eliminate his ability to speak, to expectorate, cough, and, therefore, over the course of the next two weeks he couldn't tell them what they were doing.

they were pouring liquid soup, medicines, down his throat, and without the ability to expectorate, some of it was going straight into his lungs, and lee slowly succumbed to pneumonia over the course of the next, over the course of the next few weeks. it is a famous story of his last words being strike the tent. a number of historians don't believe that is actually accurate. they believe that lee by that point didn't have the ability to speak. and, in fact, a number of the family made comments about that time said that the most, the most intimidating part of waiting with her father was the absolute silence. he didn't speak him he didn't move, just the silence waiting for the end. >> when did robert e. lee become a citizen? and why wasn't he allowed to

become assistant? >> he wasn't allowed to become a citizen because, well, he was the commanding general of one of the most effective armies that the north head face in a war that almost destroyed the country. in fact, from the perspective of history, lee is lucky he wasn't on for end up on trial. there has been some talk of that incidentally, but lee when it was at its loudest, lee applied to grin and said under the terms of your surrender, any soldier surrenders and abides by the surrender agreement cannot be harassed by the government. so grant used his authority and his power to intervene on lee's behalf and put down all talk of lee been tried. lee was trying to set the best example he could for all of the men in the south. and every time anytime someone would write him to try to asking what should we do, how should we respond, his responses were consistently you need to be strong, you need to be honest,

you need to be good citizens, you need to be a part of a political process, you need to work within the system. so they won, get used to. so lee was trying to set the best example. early on he wrote to the president asking for a pardon. it never made it to the present to you didn't have been answered secretary of state william seward, and seward took one look at it and he said he wasn't going to pass it along. suet in fact give it to a friend as a keepsake. so what president johnson would've done with that is not really clear. but he never had the opportunity. lee's request for citizenship was lost for over 100 years. and eventually it was found during a gerald ford presidency and was brought back out. ford formally offered lee a pardon and restored him full citizenship. >> you open your book and you close your book by saying it's important to remember that robert e. lee was human.

>> yes. i think a lot of people, especially if you pay any attention to the civil war history circuit, the civil war reenactment circuit, people who are very interested in it, they tend to look at lee as thomas connelly said, as the marble man. lee was the man who is perfect if you never did anything wrong. data transformation begin to take place in which a certain extent during the war itself, and he became more and more famous. but even after the war, even after the war ended, he still shared the stage in terms of fame even here in virginia with people like stonewall jackson, joseph johnston, albert sidney johnston. to a certain extent. and the question was, who was going to sort of be the face of the south after the civil war. well, lee at a group of very

dedicated adherents, people like jubal early. jubal early was one of his corps commanders who action is buried here. and through the actions of early and other members of the southern historical society you begin to see the construction of lee as something that was much bigger than just a normal human being. lee, for instance, never lost a battle. he wore himself out weeping the yankees. with all these reasons why lee was perfect and there were other things, there were other things that always dragged him down. it was a tragic situation. gettysburg is another good example of that. for a lot of people who talk about gettysburg, want to know why to lee lose. get lee make a mistake here, get lee make a mistake there? someone once asked george pickett of pickett's charge of what he thought happened. did longstreet make a mistake?

was over, was it over there? there? did pick it respond that he always thought the yankees have something to do with it. which i think it hits the nail right on it, what did you think of picket. lee did make some mistakes, but george me did some things right, too. lee becomes first a regional hero, been a sexual here and eventually got in the 20 century he is being treated by people like woodrow wilson as a national hero, being the very best of a defeated section, the best update lost way of life, and conveniently forget to mention that this way of life was pushing slavery. until you get to the point where people really don't even, they don't even no lee as a human being. and no lee as the legend they know him as the indefensible commend. they no lee as the perfect christian gentleman. whereas the actual human being, robert e. lee, standing in those boots making those mistakes,

making those good choices, tends to get lost. i don't think lee himself would recognize himself with some of the legends that have been built up in built up around him. so the job of a lot of lee thesaurus has been to cut through that and get back to the basic person that is robert e. lee. that's what i tried to do in my book. >> we have been talking at liberty university with history professor brian melton about his new book, "robert e. lee: a biography." professor melton, thank you for your time. >> thank you very much. >> you are watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's tv. >> april 15, 1912, nearly 1500 perished on the ship called unsinkable. >> wants to look at bells were sounded, to look outside of an iceberg ahead, they struck the

bells up in the crows nest three times, ding, ding, ding, which is a warning saying that there is some object ahead. not dead ahead. it means ahead. it doesn't say what kind of object. what to look out then did after they struck the bill, they went to the telephone nest and call down to the officer or the bridge to tell them what it is that they saw. and the phone was finally answered, the entire conversation was what do you see? the response was iceberg right ahead. and the response from the officer was thank you. >> on the truths and myths of that night, today at 4 p.m. eastern part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals that are happening across the country.