vermont, ralph peters talks about his book "cain at gettysburg." this is about an hour and 15. >> welcome to the writers symposium. it is my pleasure this afternoon to introduce ralph peters. born in potsville, pennsylvania, ralph peters graduated from penn state and enlisted in the army in 1976. he earned commission after attending ocs in 1978. he spent years in germany in intelligence specializing in the soviet union. after commanding, he worked in the office of the deputy chief of staff nor intelligence. retired from active duty in 1998

at the rank of lieutenant colonel. after publishing an early spy novel, title of which was "bravo, romeo," in 1991, he turned to contemporary. this hero is a nonconformist with knowledge and courage to tackle the unsalable problem. his most recent book, "cain of gettysburg" despite what the program says, it's "cain of gettysburg," and it's at the bookstore. he's established himself as a well-respected writer of non-fiction. his best known work in this genera, "looking for trouble: adventures in an unbroken

world," establishes his vision of world affairs. he contributes to "usa today," the washington post," newsweek,," and the "wall street journal". as well as his given name, colonel peters has written under the name able jones. the able jones series of novels under the pseudonym of owen perry. his long experience celebrated graphs and assessed difficult situations established ralph peters as a leading voice on america's war on terror. we welcome colonel peters to norwich. [applause] >> i thank you very much. ladies and gentlemen, i only have to make one correction, i did not graduate from penn state. i started unregulated and timely

in the army, i did get something of an education. i'm going to be talking to you on the subject of myth of gettysburg, and it's the myths arise or that are addressed in the novel of "cain of gettysburg," but this is the [background background for this. i like that this is the most accurate civil war novel ever written whether or not it's the best or one of the best is up for you to decide, but i really wanted to do something that captured the feel of the times, and so before launching into the fiction history, the myth of gettysburg that mushroomed up over the decades and centuries, i'd like to speak briefly about historical fiction, the role of writing it. i often heard civil war buffs or other people, oh, i don't read historical fiction, or i don't

read fiction. well, if you don't read fiction in general, you're missing the world's great literature, of course, but historical fishings and straightforward history or his historical writings are not enemies. they complement each other. history, well-written history, on the first day when men marched in 88 degree heat, and they could hear the sounds of battle ahead. it's well written historical fiction tells you what it felt like to walk and march in uniforms in 80 degree heat and the humidity of july in pennsylvania where your canteen is em -- empty, barefoot, carriers riding back and forth, officers confused themselves, you're ordered into a field. you don't know where you are.

you are ordered to align face front, suddenly, you are marching forward, into the smoke, you can't see. ahead of you, you see fire. you march forward. broken, brambles, try to get through it. artillery opens up. people are literally blown to pieces around you. your friends fall beside you. your officers are crying, pushing you to extremes. you don't know where you are. suddenly, ahead up the hill, you see dark form, and they are not the uniforms of your side. what does it feel like? what was the noise level like? historical first captures the feelings and also the emotions. historical fiction can go where brave historians dare not tread in trying to understand what was inside of the men. history deals in externals, what we can document. well done historical fiction

goes into the souls of the men, into the terror, the horror, the fears, the jealousies, the inspirations, the impulses. we both have their role, and i think in a book like "cain of gettysburg," you get a feel for what it was like, and it's also factually accurate. this was the ultimate book to write for me, and literally wanted to write since childhood, and working at the craft of writing over the years, i have a clear background as a man who served, plus a lifelong pursuit of studies as an amateur historian. it all kale together for me. i won't do a long commercial for the book, but say the books i've written over the years, this is the one where the magic happened for me. sometimes that happens. sometimes you're the -- your

writing gods descend and things just happen. i hope you will read it, and if you are short on cash, i know no alummist is ever short onash, t you can get it from the library. the move on gettysburg, one of the many triggers for writing this book at this time was i had just been appalled over the last several years to hear pundits and citizens on the right and left, the political right and left, saying our country has never been so divided. oh, it's terrible. we're falling apart. in the american civil war, at least 624,000 americans died. scientifically, analyzed figures recently came out suggesting at least 750,000, perhaps 850,000 americans died, and the problem is a lot of confederates were not as good as recordkeeping, the medical care was not as

good, and the records were burned, and they burned much of the city. we'll never know exactly how many dieded, but even if you take the traditional figure of 624,000. 624,000, in terms of today's population, that's 5 to 6 million americans dead. imagine that. mechanicallism for many families and communities, the catastrophe of that. ladies and gentlemen, i submit to you we're somewhat more divided in the 1860s than we are today. democracy always has division. it seems of the jacksonian area, the struggle of elites. you have after the civil war, all the pop pewist movement, the

goal, speech, and movement. in the 1920s, you had polarization of ku klux klan marching in the north becoming the era of father cove lin, his time on the radio. you have an organization in the 30s between conservatives and outright communism. people all believing in their vision. you had polarization in the cold war. in my generation of the 1960s and early 70s, the vietnam era, we we are certainly polarized then. much more than today. democracy always has these tensions. fortunately, there's only one civil war. the american civil war was the war that forged the country in which we live today. it brings me to the myths of growing up for many reasons. some because of here say, some because of people espousing a

particular cause, some because of generals defending reputations decades after the war, but let's start with a relatively recent myth by revisionist historians. there's always something new to write about, and that's gettysburg was not really a decisive battle. well, the civil war went on for two years after gettysburg. why -- how could it be decisive? sometimes things are decisive because of what doesn't happen. let us suppose that the army on northern virginia had decisively defeated major general george gordon immediate at the battle of tonic in gettysburg. within one week, they would have been marching down the street in philadelphia, and the war may have well have ended in the summer of 1863.

this was, indeed, a crisis. more about general immediate later. it was true that people at the time recognized it. it's been said the south never shied. after the four days in july 1963, july 4th pittsburgh falls to grant. only can fight on. there's really no hope of winning the war. it's a question of whether the union maintained the fire in the belly to press the war to a decisive conclusion. you know, in the book, "cain at gettysburg," i was basing it on original records, letters, accounts, and the great work

done by historians over the decades and a century and a half. i used all of it. it really helped me to have a military background because often times even the finest, best researched histories, are not written by people with military experience. historians scratch their heads saying why did lee do this or that. if you have a corporal getting a squad up in peacetime to get them on the road in maneuver, you know it's just not as easy as moving around on a map. the human factor is there. gettysburg it was there. i'm going back to the facts what happened. one risk infuriated me for a long time is you have this myth, well, the imgrants couldn't really fight, and the germans ran away. on the first day of gettysburg, the first day is a mere disaster

for the union. starts off well, but ultimately folds. the failure really starts on the right plain. it was not the town of gettysburg. where a corp. commander of the 11th corp., an abolitionist, not a great commander, but he keeps one back on the other side of the town on cemetery hill to hold the high ground, but two divisions go forward. one division is almost all german speaking. commanded by germans. the other division on the right is split between german and english speakers. that's commanded by francis tanning marlow, a brave soldier with a great tactical record, but he was regimen from the day to division command, and he's not ready for it. as brave as he is, he sees

things the way a commander does, what's right in front of him. he's there with the division, and he looks out and sees higher ground ahead. good for artillery. you don't want to enemy to have it. he moved one division guard, and in doing so, doesn't understand how the human defense hangs together, he breaks the union line on the right, but he also breaks the 11th corp. internally leaving a gap of a half mile between the german speaking division and his division. just then, the worst of timing, the confederates arrive on the far right plain, and they just pour into the gaps on both sides. he's wounded. some think he will die. well, what happened was the division had virtually

surrounded on both sides. things get bad. panic happens, people run. lost control. some companies continue to fight, but they are pressed back. the german speaking division on one brigade, and anybody here heard of the hero of gettysburg? world figure. we'll get to that in a moment. he's ordered forward to try to help them out. as he's moving forward, suddenly, the con confederates pour in on both sides. he has the split brigade. regimen there trying to fill the gaps. far from running away, the german speakers on the field, primarily refugees from the political struggles in 1848 in

new york, and they came to the united states, and they volunteered -- still volunteers, they volunteered to fight for their new country. they are largely abolitionist. they are what we call socialists today. see themselves as freedom fighters. some of them have real military experience. the pressure overwhelms the last fortress of the rebels in germany. others served in various armies before german unification. they have real experience. well, they are getting hit now on all sides because the lines collapsed. one year, 26th wisconsin, a feature in the novel, they want to try to understand what it was like for them, and they make absolutely valiant stand, and confederates writing home talk about we've never seen yankees fight like this. they were just sticking to it.

well, it doesn't -- they can hold on for a time, and sometimes places hold on for a half hour or an hour, some collapsed, some are captured, surrounded, others fight all the way back. well, a polish freedom fighter, and he's a resident of the prussian side, and he's a brave man, comes to the united states, builds a life for himself, marries, has a family. want to go back to fight for poland independence. when the civil war comes, he raises a polish region, a polish speaking regimen from new york. it's very different times. the germans, left wing germans and poles. he's commander of the largely german speaker because he grew

up in the area, speaks german and english as well, and very brave man. the horse falls on it, crushes his limbs, carried off unconscious. when he wakes up, he's coughing blood, goes out to find his unit which is now fighting back in the town of gettysburg, and he rallied them, and what's left of them all the way back to the hill, and the back story of that is that at chancellorsville, the germans ran away, but the politically well-connected commander of the 11th corp., native born, did not listen to the german subordinates. they warned him they were hanging out, that they needed to do something to watch that flank. stone wall jackson was going to show up, they didn't know that, but they were professional

soldiers. you got to watch the plank. howard refused to listen. on their own initiative, a number of his so subordinates and other picket the flank. if they had not been waiting there, and the 11th corp. would have been far, far worse. the 26th wisconsin stood there, and they say they made a stand for at least an hour, maybe two full hours, and he's trying to get them back. say, you got to pull back or you'll be completely annihilated. he's a brave guy, but sees confederates around him. they don't want to leave their dead and wounded, and they are ordered back, and they do a fighting withdrawal, 50% casualties, and what does the newspaper headline say? all the germans ran.

can't trust those immigrants, they get no credit. at gettysburg, the germans, 11 corp. are determined to show that they can fight as well better than any native-born americans. frances chancing makes a mistake, but you can't blame him. he performed heroically in the position, he's wounded. most of all, he's incredibly well-connected. he's from ralph waldo emerson. he actually -- emerson, when frank, the number one in his harvard class of 1856, he decided to go be a lawyer in manhattan. emerson wrote him a letter pleading him to stay in new england. he spent at least two years on a farm, the famous 19th century commune. he grew up around people like

that -- nathanial hawthorne. have you seen the film "glory"? he's bob shaw to them. you can't blame barlow. who do you blame? you blame the germans. the german units fought perfectly, but the 26th wisconsin, save what was left of the 11th corp. by hanging on, and they were shot down after another until they are fighting back through the town. history doesn't credit it. we always talk about the germans rap away, but they did not. it gets better. july 2. at night, after the hard fought day of july 2, where some collapse, finally hold the line. attack, you know, the old word,

"gleaming dust," and the louisiana tigers storm up on the union guns, and troops are the battered regimens, and they take two of them, lined up, six bayon nets ready to be used. fired from howard, somebody's got to do something, move forward, and these guys charge forward, and you're fighting by fire light, by the light of muskets, by cannons going off, by little fires springing up. he can barely walk, coughing blood, refusing order after order to leave the field, ribs collapsed, barely can lift the sword, and leads them forward, swiping buckets at the rebels, and he just manages to get them

at the right time, pushes the tigers down the hill, leads the charge down to the base of the hill so the guns fire over his guys. most historians credit the decision on that hill to the indiana regimen of largely native born americans who arrived after his troops. there's confusion in the credit of the foreign born with anything. once the germmans got the reputation of flying dutchman, nobody trusts them. they were up for brigadier general before gettysburg, and a congressman killed it. he said i will not promote anyone whose name i cannot pronounce. he steamed in, despite his injuries, fights on, fights at

chatanooga and wind up in alabama helping with the ops of alabama after the war. finally becomes general. a patriot until the end for his adopted country, and we don't know his name today. a drive to the more famous site. now, a spend a lot of time on the immigrants because it's so important, so important to recognize that it was without the volunteers and pickets, soldiers, shredded by artillery, and get to the bloody angle, the wall, a clip of trees, other units pulled back, but one unit hangs on. it's the 69th pennsylvania.

two of the companies fold back. one is nearly over one, but they stay at the wall, and they fight with sense. you're biting ears off, shoving knives into people, muskets, anything, broken rifles. every man in that regimen was innative of ireland. none were born in the united states. they were dock workers on the delaware river in philadelphia. you know, you see movies or series not about the civil war. it seems about the irish, a help con in a blue suit with iconic relief. the irish who fought in the union army and the confederates as well, the guys in the 69th pennsylvania, they were hard, hard, hard, hard men. they survived the father and famine --

famine. they fought their way up in a new country for which they volunteered to fight. the 69th pennsylvania marched off to war in 1861, rocks were thrown at them. they held on at the wall, and, of course, numbers would have told anyway, but they suffered 50% casualties. the colonel's killed, others badly hit. they stood there, and it made an enormous difference. i try very hard in the book to give immigrants fair due. also, the native born as well. on the southern side, i track the 26th north carolina. i was not trying to make a symbolic point with the 26th wipes and 26th north carolina, but it was the regimens i wanted to track. the 26th north carolina, attacking on the first day of gettysburg, they were the guys

that broke through the gate. in doing so, they suffered horrendous casualty. tore through the gates july 2, but they are part of what should be the picket charge on july 3rd, and it appears at least two of their men made it further than anybody else in the charge. two young guys. one carrying the fighter ridge min, and the union soldiers saw two young guys charging up, and they didn't shoot them, just surrounded them, pulled them over the wall and captured them. the courage so much, just couldn't shoot them down. at gettysburg, the 26th north carolina suffered 85% casualties . every ten soldiers engaged, eight and a half killed, wounded, or captured. today, if we suffered ten

casualties, we'd tick it offline immediately if we could. we lost a sense of the figures of that horrible -- i mean, think of that. a former soldier, a concerned american, i value every american life. i have value every loss of limb in our wars. three days in gettysburg, 360,000 men engaged. i could be off by 10,000. we'll never know. records are different in the north and south, some are lost, but almost 50,000 are casualties plus one in three men engaged in three days, 50,000 casualties killed, wounded, or captured. of the -- just under 30,000 wounded, many will die after the battle. medical care is not what it is today. they dieded from infections. the captured, many die in prison

camps, north and south. the valor, the blood, the bloody valor of the force of the country is phenomenal. there's other sides too. you know, when you write historical fiction, you want to, you know, i'm allergic to books that glorify war. i respect the value lar and he -- valor and heroism, but gettysburg, imperfect men fought an imperfect battle to preserve a more perfect union. you know, what's missing from those movies or series or novels, when you put 160,000 men in a few square miles, you have real wood stock issues, folks. there's sanitation issues. what you drink, the streams, these guys usually drink -- the streams are polluted with the dead or human waste. there are units on both sides that have not eaten in days.

the 69th peps was not issued rations for three days. there's a human cause. you know, i respect the valor. the valor is indicated at gettysburg, but you also read about the soldiers who had the bodies of the dead, incoming -- including their own dead because not everyone with a blue or gray uniform was a saint. human beings are human beings, no better or worse thn us today. human beings have the same impulses. social values are different, certainly religion. religion, oftentimes soldiers could quote chapter and verse and debate each other in chapter and verse. we really can't do that today, but certainly, there's faith in life after death helps them stand up to the terror they go through, but nonetheless, they have basic human emotions that don't change.

now, i am going to mortify some of you. a beautifully written book, michael shaw was a terrific writer. he was not a soldier or historian, and that beautifully written book promulgated myths with the best intentions in the world. i'll deflate the bubble. joshua did in maine did not win the battle. he was incredibly brave, skillful, and inspired. his men for phenomenally brave. you know, the 15th alabama commanded by lieutenant williams had marched between 22 and 26 miles in the heat of the day to get to that battlefield, right into battle, canteens were empty for hours, no water, collapsing from heatstroke and exhaustion, but got around, tried to figure out where they are, and launch a

fixed assault. the 20th maine performs, no question about it. leadership is inspired. the 15th alabama, and the commanders with the brother, john, to be killed, mortally wounded. if they turned it, they would have ran into the arriving u.s. 6th corp. and created bad moments for the folks on that hill and might have burned some wagons. this is not to take away from the valor, but you have to be careful when you glorify anybody saying this regimen or man won the battle. if any one man was decisive was gordon mead. armies are teams. they made an incredible contribution, so did the 26th wisconsin, the 69th pennsylvania. there's so many players, and i'm weary of anyone saying, when you

say this ridge min was -- regimen was decisive, others were incredible. without the valor of the brigade coming on, if they department charge, they would have been defeated. they all contributed. in fact, one of the reasons, one of the many reasons is because the union generals other than dan sickles, the union generals are team players. they support and follow orders. he was given command, ordered by lincoln to take command of the army three days before the battle, nobody wants it. you know, none of the generals, hancock, he's brave, a he doesn't like it. i don't like sports am -- analogies mixed with military affairs, but i'll use one. imagine a coach. told to take over an nfl team

three days before the team plays in the super bowl against the team that beat it every time. three days, he turns that team around, and he wins one of the biggest wins of the super bowl history. now, again, an analogy that you don't have death on the field, but what we did was astonishing. they were leading us and taking the lead. mead takes command three days before the battle. sunday morning, waking up at two a.m., assumes command from hooker, and hooker doesn't even -- he's such a poor leader, he doesn't even bother in one single detailed map of southern pennsylvania. he leads the command, leads in pennsylvania, and he doesn't have a map. you can't just go to the gas station and get a road map in

those days. imagine that. i'm going to get right to mead because there's never been a greater disservice to any american general than that done to him in philadelphia. he's been eclipsed. his contemporaries knew what he achieved. he died in 1871. his health is what he gave in the war. his funeral was attended by the president and sherman and others and the governor. it was a big event. he dies early. dan sickles, who merely loses the battle for the union on the second day, the mistake barlow made, sickles makes it at the corp. level. without permission, he moves his entire corp. a mile forward, breaks the integrity of the

union line. he's a full mile in the right flank, and hancock's second corp. on military ridge, just goes out when he's going to get whacked by the attack in the afternoon. sickles made the same mistake, saw what he thought was great ground, and he didn't think about the army and how it all tied in. he essentially abandoned the top to go to the beach orchard which is no man's land. neither side can really contain it. at any rate, sickles moves into the 20th century, spends decade after decade giving speeches about how he won the battle of gettysburg. george mead was a coward who wanted to retreat. he's, of the senior generals, he's the last surviving big gun. of course, it wears him down. you have two other factors. the lost cause crowd in the

american south cannot ever forgive george mead for beating robert e. lee on an open field with roughly open numbers. nobody's ever done it. mead is the only general who beats lee until the closing weeks of the war when the army is decomposing around lee. think of this. you know, mead is the only commander of who is never fired or relieved. when grant comes east to assume overall command of the armies, he keeps mead on. he keeps mead on until the end of the war until the disbandment of the army. grant did not suffer as badly, but the other problem he has is he had the jealousy of hooker who mead replaces, of butterfield, the crowd of sickles. the lost cause people in the

south saying somehow mead lost the battle by magic. couldn't have been mead. betrayed him, another myth. a much better sense of how warfare was changing, and leaving at that point. his finest hours in 1864 when mead gets the killing power of rifled weapons, the importance. the last great battle where a commander can stand on the front stand and see just about everything that's going on until the smoke rolls in, covers the field, but by 1864, less than a year later, when mead, the army, and grant, and by the time they are fighting, the front stretches to four, to five, to

six or seven and eight miles. pennsylvania is 15 to 20 miles at various times. but the time he gets to petersburg, it goes for miles. it's modern war. you have this gap commanders can no longer see the field, they can't control it. once they move, they can't move forward. you have a problem. you have modern weapons, modern sized armies moving over vast distances, and commanders can't control them. until the end, over half a century later of radios, you have no way of getting information back what's happening up front from the corp. commander to the army commander. you see historians attack why didn't they coordinate this better? why didn't they reenforce that breakthrough? well, one basic reason is they

didn't have a command and control means. they didn't have the communication means to do so. back to mead. some give him criticism that sickles raised. well, when we first face, he doesn't want to fight at gettysburg, just the pipe creek line in maryland. okay. he didn't fight at gettysburg or anywhere. nobody did. it was a meaningless engagement. that's what happened when they gripe at each other. when mead takes over command early sunday morning, and throughout the week, he gets no nights with more than two hours of sleep. by the charge, he is walking dead, and he still manages to make the right decisions, and it's just an amazing performance, but mead, an engineer by background, before the war, he built lighthouses. the lighthouses in delaware and elsewhere. at the beginning of the war, he thinks he'll be remembered for

his, the way he learned to calculate latitude and for his lighthouses. he winds up being a commander that literally saved the union. what he does is send trusted staff members out, engineers, to find the best local defensive ground. he doesn't have a map. the pipe creek line is the best defensive ground. he's not passive. he knows. he pushes the calvary out there. that's how you gather intention. he pushes them forward. he pushes about. he has marching hard so there's two corp. in support distance. gettysburg is really a race, and the union guys get there just in time again and again. you don't -- that doesn't happen by magic. he cracks the whip on the staff,

makes them start producing, so, you know -- and gettysburg, he's a really good leader. he knows he's an army commander now. when he gets word that the fighting has started, gets word back from the calvary that there's a fight coming up, and reynolds is approaching. decisions, had he made it, he's now the army commander. his role is not to control the tactical fight. his role is to make sure the army gets where it's supposed to be to make sure runs are cleared of supply wagons for this corp. to march, make sure the arian tillly is up. he has the overview. they write back, 12 miles, and there's a briefing, and he decides they can fight there. he writes forward at that point to speak for himself after

giving orders, and the orders are slow. the pipe creek line order is late. there's a staff, hooker has not built a good staff, and mead will build a good staff. he's a true, the first true modern staff by 1864. very impressive work, but at any rate, he writes forward, yes, fight. pull them up. surveys the ground, tries to get sleep, surveys in the morning, and he takes control. the only major mistake mead made is he doesn't provide adult supervision to dan sickles, and that's the crisis on the left and the 20th maine stint. pennsylvania to the writer, every bit of brave and important and valiant, but at that point, it's a new thing. sickles, his core has folded. it's collapsed. he has no choice.

he's down on the ground riding around directing brigades to go here, a traffic cop, and he gets hancock, the best commander, to go forward and take command of the third corp. and reenforcements. it's a great team. hancock is in the direct fire fight as we say today. mead is right there within, you know, rifle range of getting killed, but he's steering people, go here, get there, how long can artillery hold here? he saves the day. he buys the union with life, and all these people are forgotten. it's such a close run thing on july 2. they fight late afternoon into the evening, and at dusk, mead has been moving forces all around. it's a brilliant performance, the best in u.s. military history the way he plugs gap

after gap, pulls units here, from the right, sends them to the left. as soon as guys come up, he directs them. it's a bloody, bloody afternoon. he holds the line, and finally, he's out of units, ordered up the last guys, he's in the middle of the field, george mead on horse back with four other riders, five men, and there's no infantry in sight. they sent to fight here, there, and beyond. several hundred yards, the smoky battle comes a brigade headed right for them. now, if you and four other guys were on horses and being attackedded by a brigade, what might you do? well, what mead does, he's the only guy who broke the line. ..

>> five men against a brigade, that's the kind of leader george mead is. and he's got a terrible temper. he's called old snapping turtle. the guy blows up and blows over. he's actually good to his subordinates, but he has his temper. so one of the staffmen cries, here they come, general. and the clean version is, i can

damn well see they're coming, he's looking at the confederates. and the staffman says, no, look behind you, and just as mead is ready to ride into the confederates, john newton gallops over the ridge, and they tear past mead and shatter the confederate attack. it just doesn't get closer than that. and then he has to deal with the third day. but before that, one of the criticisms is, well, george mead held a council of war, only a coward would do that. well, napoleon had plenty. but that's not the point. mead actually didn't like councils of war. he was a very decisive guy. he -- very rarely does he have trouble making up his mind, and that's only when he's waiting for more information. but he calls all his generals together, he wants their views. there are three reasons why he does that. one, this is a major general, relatively junior, promoted over

the other major generals. he doesn't have three stars now, a major general. he's promoted over guys senior to him, some very jealous men, three days before this battle. so the last thing you want to do is act like you're the king. so he knows he's got to bring the guys in. also, the army of generals have a reputation for back biting. after the battle it's always, well, if hooker or pulp or mcclellan, if they'd listened to me and my recommendation, we would have won. mead's smart. he gets written record of everything. he gets everybody on the record. he gets buy-in from all the guys who are now his subordinates. and the third thing he does is he makes sure everybody understands the plan for the next day. there's not going to be another gaffe. unfortunately, all the commanders are much better than sickles was. sickles is, by the way, brave, but a rogue and self-centered and a politician to the core.

he's been carried off, he'll lose his leg from his wound at gettysburg which is what really saves the career he has left. but mead is very wisely, he's also trying, you know, willing to listen to good views, and that council of war -- we have the minutes of them, pretty close -- it's apaizing the timidity that some guys bring to bear. hancock's a little wary. he doesn't want to be -- hancock didn't want to command the army of the to toe mack. he's a brave fighter, but he doesn't want to be on the line. he has them vote, and they get consensus. and he gets them all solidly on the team. the next day they know what the chain of command is, they know who has which responsibility and where. it's just a phenomenal performance. and you get the other method, well, it wasn't really mead, it was hancock who won the battle. again, hancock didn't want to command an army. mead is the guy who gave hancock

the orders. hancock fulfilled those orders, carried them out brilliantly, but ultimately, it is a team effort. whereas on the other side robert e. lee, it's this little point of the whole war really. he's drunk his own kool-aid, he really believes his army can't be defeated. he's come off a string of incredible victories over the army of the potomac, and george mead respects him, but he doesn't think mead's going to be his equal. he's wary of him, he knows he's a professional soldier, but he's a new army commander, and lee makes one wrong call after another. he has diarrhea through much of the battle. and that, of course, takes some of your judgment away. a.p. hill, one of his corps commanders, is suffering from the effects of gonorrhea. he contracted it at west point. it recurs, and you couldn't heal it in those days. these things don't make it into most of the movies. i've got great reviews at cain

at gettysburg, but the army wouldn't have known back then that hill had gonorrhea because it only comes out in the 1980s. trust me, i've been a soldier. everybody knows who's got what, you know? they knew. you didn't talk about it in letters home to mom. and by the way, soldiers and letters home, you'd always see the ones written to their sweethearts, and they're noble and flowing. look at the ones they wrote to their brothers. that's when they're talking about the best bordello in memphis or the four-letter words, often misspelled. it's amazing how you can misspell a four-letter word. [laughter] they're humans with human emotions. some of them are just christian to the core, others are human beings with human urges. at any rate, the south, at that point the army of northern virginia doesn't have any staff to speak of. it's not, it's not a loose,

moppy collection of dill taxes. and lee's -- dilettantes. >> lee's fighting a nascent, modern army. lee has knights in armor, except they're gray coats, not armor. and mead is fighting an organized military formation. lee's people really see themselves as medieval barons, and lee compounds the problem when he gives orders. they're often couched politety, southern gentleman, as if they were suggestions. in a pinch, suggestions don't get the job done. and he ultimately gives a pretty explicit order to dick uhl, the corps commander on the confederate left that's already broken the 11th corps and can pushed them back. you can tell he's encouraging them, suggesting and ordering uhl to take cemetery hill, it's

a key position. you've got to get it. uhl had the men, they could have done it. and he doesn't. he just blows you have the order. and then it's too late. and that's probably where the south lost. when they failed to take cemetery hill. but mead's so well organized, the rest of the battle would have taken place elsewhere. but last point about mead, and mead -- this was a criticism from president lincoln whose military service was limited. but what happens, dan sickles who almost loses the battle for the union, his leg is amputated, but he's conscious, and he has himself carried by soldiers in a litter to the nearest rail head and taken by train to washington and put to bed in lafayette square by the white house. because he knows lincoln, and he's been really chummy with mary lincoln, he's a flatterer. he's a politician. his wife -- he shot his wife's

lover and got off in the first insanity defense in federal court history. one of his lawyers was stanton who's now the secretary of war. so sickles gets carried, and lincoln knows sickles is a bit of a bser, but he makes such a case that he was the hero of gettysburg, and lincoln buys into it partly. and then lincoln is furious that after this three-day battle that mead doesn't immediately pursue and destroy the army of northern virginia. well, first of all, robert e. lee hoped that on july 4th -- the armies face each other on july 4th. lee hopes even on late july 3rd, he hopes mead will attack him. the army of northern virginia is badly defeated, but they are not advantage wished. they're still fighting those guys. but more importantly, three days of battle and all the marching

beforehand has disorganized the union army, the army of the potomac almost as badly as disorganized the confederates. now, mead owns the battlefield. that means he owns tens of thousands of wounded. his units are involved in the fighting and out of ammunition. some haven't been fed for three days. there's no water. the dead are everywhere. it's, you know, regiments, casualties are interesting. the union army loses casualties, by and large, where an army they should lose take casualties after the company, regimental and brigade level. the union generals pay a price. but by and large, it's the junior guys who are supposed to be out on the fighting line who are killed or wounded. and as a result, you know, mead has to start moving guys around. captains are temporarily commanding regiments. you've got to sort all this out.

and men are exhausted. now, on the confederate side instead of the army of northern virginia, they're so into that chivalry and leading from the front even by generals, gettysburg loses 15 general officers killed or wounded. and they can't afford it. they can't afford it. it's just absolutely tragic for them and a great loss. but anyway, mead gets underway in a pursuit gingerly as soon as he can, but he's got -- if he's going to follow robert e. lee, he's got to follow him with an army capable of actually fighting. now, is given command of the army of the potomac by lincoln. everybody in washington easterfyed. his -- terrified. his mission is to defeat lee and push him south again. he accomplishes that mission. and then everybody in washington who doesn't, people who don't carry any weapons get all kinds of angry because he didn't destroy the army of northern virginia on the spot.

mead did the best he could. he did a fantastic job. and george mead at gettysburg saved that more perfect union for the rest of us. so, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know all the details, you read "cain at gettysburg." [laughter] it's by far my best book, and i'm very proud of it. you don't want to buy it, get it at the library. i want you to read it. even if you don't, if you're not interested in that, try to take two things with you. one, that the truth, the truth in quotes we inherit isn't always the whole truth and nothing but the truth. historians spin things, politicians spin things for their own reasons. but the other thing and why these myths have been able to grow up, and that myth i spoke about at the beginning that we've never been so divided as a nation, we've done a terrible thing to our children. we have taken serious history teaching out of k-12 education. we have a little bit of politically-correct history

teaching, but it's not objective. and you can't spin history if you want to create good citizens. you can't be spinning it to the right, you can't be spinning it to the left. it's got to be joe friday, just the facts, ma'am, history. history as best you can ascertain it. because history's not like home ec, it's not nice to have. it's vital to building good citizens. when you don't understand where you came from, when you don't know about the dred scott case, when you don't know about gettysburg, when you don't know about william jennings bryan, when you don't know about father coughlin, when you don't know about the casualty levels in our warses, when you don't know about the sacrifices, the peacetime struggles, how do you make an informed decision? you're prey to the demagogues who just make it up, who tell you the country's never been so divided. you know, you're a 24/7 volunteer victim. but it's not just the voters who

make uninformed decisions because they don't know history. journalists who don't know history, don't know what they're seeing. we've had a succession of presidents who don't know history. and they lack strategic context for their actions. history is -- factual history, knowing where we come from, the good, the bad and the ugly, that's, frankly, mostly good in this blessed country of ours, that forges good citizens. and when we do not teach history k-12, we betray the sacrifices of our forefathers, and we weaken this greatest of all republics. ladies and gentlemen, i thank you very much for your time. if you have any questions, i'd be glad to make it up. [applause] yes, sir. we have a microphone coming right to you.

>> oh. my question is i've always herd that custer did a tremendous job and saved with his cavalry north of -- [inaudible] is this myth? did custer really do great things, or what did he do? >> no, glad you raised it. you could have a dozen more novels about gettysburg, and they could all talk about different parts of the battle, and they'd complement each other. custer, the day before george mead takes command, george armstrong custer is a cavalry captain. one of the first things mead does is promote custer and fans worth to bigger deer general -- brigadier general on the spot. that's quite a promotion. and mead is a fighter, he wants fighters, and he knows custer is a fighter. and custer is a fighter. another guy who later on will drink his own kool-aid. but custer has a tremendous record as a cavalryman not just

at gettysburg, but throughout the war. there's another story, the cavalry nighting on the flank that save -- fighting on the flank, the rear of the cavalry and attack from behind. actually, the confederate cavalry were different. they didn't fight dismounted as a rule. the union cavalry at this point had breach-loading carbines, and they're starting to get, you know, the sharps carbine, and they're starting to get -- i'm sorry, i'm blanking out. what's the other carbine, the seven-shot -- sorry. well anyway, they can turn out a much more -- i'm sorry, i was just writing about in this week, but at my age, the names go. the unions are fighting like dragoons. they get right up, dismount, and the guys are fighting with their breach loaders and their repeaters. and by 1864 the union cavalry are what the soviets would later call an omg, riding through

alabama or sheridan or doing their raid down towards richmond, and can they still fight mounted with sabers at times. sabers or pistols. but they're at their best dismounting and fighting as light infantry with these repeating carbines. and it's just devastating firepower. and custer is, he instinctively gets all of it. he's a guy who's always looking for a fight and ultimately, as we all know, he went looking for one fight too many in the wrong place. but, yeah, absolute performer. now, he's also a jerk. he's micing pose by down in the pose by confederacy. custer always wants to hang people. and, oh, by the way, another person who often wanted to hang people and was not shy about executing deserters was robert e. lee. the union is much less apt to, and lincoln pardons any number of guys.

channing bar low, who recovers from his wounds in 1864, he throws a tantrum because he can't shoot this one guy. he thinks, god, he really needs shooting. but these men, again, they were hard men. they were not compromising men. barlow, his guys at the back of his columns, marched with six bayonets behind his own men, and they used them if guys tried to fall out. a little bit different from the miniseries. questions? sir, just a moment, mic's m cooing to you. >> you said you thought gettysburg was the last napoleonic field. was picket's charge the first modern -- >> well, it was if you're european. i would argue -- that's the attack of the old guard at waterloo. but it's interesting, it's something i sort of, there's a little ride piece at the end of this book, i won't tell you much about it, but it's a visitor, a foreigner who was really there, and he's observing it and

reporting back to the british army. and his conclusion -- and this was the conclusion of european observers. there were austrians, german, british, french on both sides as well, and they were snobs, and their idea was, well, these americans don't really know what they're doing. they can't really fight. and right until the end of the war they said these americans are an army of amateurs, they don't know what they're doing. and they failed to learn the lessons. because they failed to learn the lessons of picket's charge or coal harbor or the attacks at perters burg, in 1914 you had the europeans, the sophisticated europeans jumping out of fences, charging across open fields, and there's now machine guns and barbed wire and a lot of high explosives. and they're slaughtered. i mean, the british on the opening day of the song had 60,000 casualties. that's a little worse than afghanistan the last time i

checked. not to make light of afghanistan, of which we will speak tomorrow. but human beings don't like learning lessons for other people. we don't, none of us do. we sometimes are smart enough to ultimately learn, but the hard way usually. but the europeans refused to learn from the american expeebs appearance. the union army especially, it's a war that uses railroads, incredible strategic movements of union forces. back and forth across -- and from my hometown of pennsylvania, company c, the 50th of pennsylvania, they managed to fight in klein ya, virginia, vicksburg, knoxville, get back in time for the overland campaign in virginia in 1864. and a lot of it is rail movements. and the photographers which also enable early, preemptive and often false reporting by

journalists. i say, one of the things with mead, one of the reasons mead isn't better remembered now is, um, he was a patrician, an upper crust philadelphian. he had no time for journalists. and in 1864 at coal harbor a journalist files a patently false report about the army of the potomac and mead and his leadership. and mead has this journalist ridden out of camp, backwards, facing backwards on a mule. and the soldiers all mocking him, laughing at him. well, journalists are herd animals, and they rally around their own. and the journalists make a compact they will not mention mead in any reports back to their newspapers unless it's an unfavorable case. and so he's written out. so he's the only native that journalists, the lost causers hate him for defeating robert e.

lee in a fair fight, and the generals who were jealous of him outlive him. it's not a good deal. and so i've been interested in mead -- when i was a kid, kids are sometimes smart. i went to gettysburg probably for the first time when i was 6, and i knew lee and mead, and the yankees won, and mead commanded the blue guys. so it made sense to me that george mead won. only later was i told by people, all these historians who'd never serve inside the military all the reasons why george mead didn't win, that pluto and mars and your uranus were in some wed configuration. look, george mead won. he had a lot of end. but this man, again, he saved the union, and we've all but forgotten him. other questions, ladies and gentlemen? sir. wait, the mic is coming. don't launch a preemptive attack. >> in the book you talked about the fact that there were 160,000 people on the field --

>> [inaudible] >> knew where each other was. you also spent a little time talking about stewart. where's stewart, and where's the confederate cavalry? what was stewart, and when did lee find out where his opponent was? >> well, stewart is, i think, at that point 26 years old, might be 27 or 8 at gettysburg, but he's brilliant at certain things as a cavalryman. but stewart loves the press. he loves being in the richmond papers. he wears a black-plumed hat. he's brave, brilliant, he'll be killed at the fighting in coal harbor in 1864, but he got great press for his ride around mcclellan's army back in 1862. and when lee turns him loose. stewart take off deep into pennsylvania, and he at one point captures over a hundred union wagons but lee is blind.

he has to have some cavalry. mead uses his calvary much more effectively, doing reconnaissance. and mead throughout the -- he doesn't have perfect intelligence by any means, but colonel sharp, what we call his g2 today, is really pretty good. and always a somewhat better handle on lee than lee ever has -- so stewart's in this big joyride loop. he's out in pennsylvania and riding through, and the confederate corps are also all over the place. stewart's going one way, confederate infantry are going another way. they're crossing, and lee has really lost control. and stewart, well, it's not quite as bad as it's sometimes, really he doesn't have his cavalry back under control until late afternoon. afternoon of july 2nd. and it costs him dearly because he's going into battle blind. now, again, they don't have

satellites, obviously, or planes or even balloons, so they're fighting relatively blind. but mead is always a little bit better informed. and stewart really did let lee down. but ultimately, the rule in the military, as you know, a commander is responsible for everything his men do or fail to do. and so stewart, this young buck who's incredibly brave, he needed adult supervision just like dan sickles needed more on the union side. he didn't get it in time. so napoleon knew that. napoleon said he wanted lucky generals. he didn't want princeton-educated generals, he wants lucky generals. and luck does matter. you can't count on it, but some people have better luck than others. it's just the way it breaks. and lee had a run of really bad luck that compounded the mistakes he made as a commander. now, robert e. lee is a brilliant commander. in 1864 in the overland campaign of virginia, his fighting

usually outnumbered two to one. his most brilliant fighting is, actually, then against mead with grant breathing down his neck, and he performs miracles. but it's ugly. it's modern trench warfare. it's brutal, it's savage fighting. it doesn't have the picturesque nature of picket's charge. so lee, i think, doesn't get full credit for that incredible performance, his fine finest performance in may and june of 1864. just as mead, mead's finest hour after gettysburg comes in the autumn of 863. 1863. now, the telegraph is a play -- mead's so close to washington, he's getting orders from until grant comes east, hallett's the big military guy, and he's getting orders from lincoln, suggestions from stanton. he's getting committee inquiries spurred on by dan sickles, he's henpecked by washington that in the mind run campaign which is

fought just south of the river in virginia in the autumn he comes up against lee. and lee had gotten it at this point. he knows the value of entrenchments s. mead's getting ready for a big attack on lee. he's been ordered to destroy the army of northern virginia. and governor k. warren, commander at that point, said, look, i don't want to make this attack. it's going to be a slaughter. and mead looks at him. now, the mood in washington is this: if mead in autumn of 1863, if mead had ordered an attack and it had failed at the cost of five or six thousand casualties, he would have been forgiven. he wouldn't to that to his men. he ordered a withdrawal. he knew the position couldn't be taken. and for saving his men's lives, he's damned as a coward. but he's still not fired because even lincoln, who's disappointed

that, you know, mead doesn't make magic happen, still, nobody fires mead because they know there's nobody better, and he's the victor of gettysburg. and that crucial test, as i mentioned, is when grant comes east. grant's staff are westerners, they've got their hackles up, we won in the west, we won in pittsburgh, we just won in chattanooga, we'll show them eastern mamby-pambies how to fight. and mead's considering replacing -- everybody in washington seems to want to replace mead. mead comes down to brandy station in march, rainy day, 1864. miserable winter weather, kind of like summer in vermont as near as i can tell. someday i'll be here when it's green, i know. [laughter] but seriously, grant interviews mead. and this is an era of very vain generals. and the first thing mead does is say, general grant -- and i'm paraphrasing -- general grant, i know you'll probably want to replace your own commander. winning the war is more

important than anyone's vanity. i will not argue against you, i will support you in every way i can, and i'm ready to turn over command. at that point grant decides, that's the man he wants in command of the army of the potomac because he's just been dealing with mcclaren and all these -- even george thomas, a great soldier -- these huge egos. and mead doesn't lack for ego, but at the end of the day he's a patriot. he's not a self-publicizing guy thumping his chest. and they have not a perfect relationship, but they're really a good team because grant's impulse is always just attack, attack head on which results in massive casualties that, ultimately, does break the army of northern virginia, it just takes a while. whereas mead is a little more calculating. he's wary about some of those frontal attacks. but suddenly, you know, they could argue back and forth. it works out about right although there are terrible