joint chiefs, and eisenhower new all about faulty militaried a series and was able to speak with his supreme authority about the dangers as well as the advantages of military advice. so he was a very useful ally to president kennedy. >> tide ted widmer, on the secret recordings of john f. kennedy. tonight. >> booktv sat down with wayne hsieh. it's just under 20 minutes. >> u.s. naval academy, west pointers and the civil war, is your book. what do you mean by the old army? >> guest: the old army is a term commonly used by historians. actually it's a time from the

time period referring to the regular army. there's a joke that the old army is the army before every war. so there's a bunch of old army. so my book actually starts with the professionalization of the army and it's about how that process occurs and plays out in the civil war. >> host: give us a snapshot of what the old army, prior the war of 1812, was like. >> guest: before the war of 1812, and this is drawing on really historical literature by historians -- the army before the war of 1812 is a nonprofessional. it over corps obtained their positions through political influence, and as a consequence they're not -- because they're not professionals who went through a body of education and were promoted by some system of merit, they don't perform very well during the war of 1812 so

washington, dc burned. the early attempts to invade canada don't go very well. they're all catastrophes. my impression the canadians look at the war of 1812 victory, sort of a great victory of repelling the american invaders. after the war of 1812 you have a big movement that there needs to be a systemic way of selecting and preparing officers to be in the army, to be commanders, basically. >> host: who spearheaded the change after 1812? >> guest: the crucial figure is scott. a wonderful figure. his career begins before the war of 1812, and extended right until the opening of the civil war when he finally retires. but he -- jacob brown, a few other officers, but scott is the most important. they become very much -- their agenda very much is to build a proper professional institution

and take expertise, usually european, usually french, and bring it to the united states. so, another major figure of this would be astaire, who was sent on a mission to france, basically to collect information about military education. he collects huge numbers of books and material. comes back to west point, and with the support of people like scott -- scott becomes a permanent general during the war of 1812 -- he is able to systemize the west point curriculum and experience that been the had not been the case before. >> host: when was west point founded? >> guest: 1802. i think historians still argue about what thomas jefferson was really after when the school was founded. but no one disagrees the school is institutionally weak, unclear what the purpose of the institution is. there's not very systemized

instruction. cadets are older, some younger, and to this day he is called the father of west point because he puts it on sounder foundation and and that's the army that will produce the armies of the civil war and where all these -- most of the war generals get their initial professional experience. >> host: well, professor, the title is, west pointers and the civil war. who are some of the west pointer who we have heard of that were generals in the civil war, both sides. >> guest: generally most of the famous ones. sherman, grant, lee, hood, all -- about -- to give you a harder number, there are some -- there are few famous nonwest pointers, wade hampton, stonewall jackson is a west pointer, two-thirds of major

generals involved, are veterans at least of the regular army, and the regular army really is dominated by west point. west point is about -- it's not only that most officers in the regular army are graduated of west point. it's kind of the focal point of much of the armies professionalism. so when they do for example, review boards for things like new tactics they'll use the cadet as guinea pigs and have them march around and use thest point library. they have a -- the only historical library available where this stuff is at. but if we think of the big three, lee, grant, sherman, stonewall jackson, longstreet, all west pointers and all have gone through that experience. >> host: when it comes down to the civil war you have generals on the south, generals on the north who have been train in the same ways.

what does that do to some of the conflicts? >> guest: for me the most important thing that happens -- the most important end result of that is that the wars are fighting clones of each other because their leadership models, they're experiences are similar. what happens is that the armies are locked in what i call an equilibrium of competence. they're fighting mirror images of one another. the war done end in '61, first bull run, doesn't end in '62, '63. takes until 1865 and it's a long process, and it's partly because the army, since they start out with very similar institutional models, they learn at similar rates. so they both get much better. but they get better at about the same pace. so, you can still have a

battlefield decisions. obviously the north wins. but the -- a lot of times in military history, when you see the big spectacular victory, like napoleon where he destroys the entire army in one blow. during the civil war you have better generals and worst generals. the institutions are similar, and the advantages they can get at each occasion -- at chancellorville, lee can't quite truly destroy the entire federal army. partly because these armies are so similar at such a similar level of competence and proficiency. >> host: so, what one of the goals of every -- of the big battles we fought, was one of the goals an end-all? >> guest: yes -- >> host: type focus? we're going to win the war here?

>> guest: that is the hope. >> host: was that taught at west point? was that type of strategy taught? >> guest: one of the curious ironies busy this, west point is -- this is part of the problem. west point, because of thayers influence, west point doesn't teach much strategy. the teach cadets how to be junior officers, and the service academy to this day, we prepare our midshipmen not to be admirals but second lieutenantss and ensigns, and what point the basic grounding and the basic building blocks of military expertise, and gives them lot of engineering, probably more than they need in all honesty. so, the desire for a -- comes from more of a cultural affinity for napoleon. napoleon has -- mclelland is likened to napoleon. he sometimes strikes napoleonic

pose, and there are wars where, of course, the ironies is they lose it but there are these battles where he has these crushes decisive victories and that is in many ways the model of what most west point generals are hoping to achieve. later in the war this becomes problematic and you have sherman who comes up with interesting alternatives. but much of the public and the officer corps on both sides, you want to completely destroy your opponents in the field. not just make them retreat and not just inflict more characters -- casualties but to actually crush them. >> host: what about counterinsurgency, were those

adapted during the civil war? who were some of the more -- those that maybe broke out of the mold of their training at west point. >> guest: there are definitely guerrillas, and they are especially vexatious for union military logistics. but the problem for guerrillas -- this has interest comes from recent american issues over seas for lack of a better way of putting it. i would say, though, it would be a mistake to overstate the influence of guerrillas, because guerrillas deny conventional military, harass logistics but can't physically control the terrain. the confederacy doesn't want the entire american south to be a teaming -- something like syria. that's not the goal that the

confederates are after. they want to control the territory the way a proper nation state government can. and there are variety of reasons for that. social, cultural, slavery, a form of property that requires a basic level of social stability. as you see in the civil war, because slaves are property in this regime but the reality is they're always human beings and people and they can run away and do things of evading restriction in a way that physical property normally can't. so, the confederacy is always going to be unable really to really reliablily on guerrillas as the main effort because the point of that is to have an environment of social chaos. you also have -- i use this anecdote at the beginning of the book. the officers of the regular army have a lot of experience at irregular warfare. they haven't it from fighting indians. part of the cop sequence of the

experience, people like lee have to chase indians in texas -- they actually have a powerful distaste for it. it's politically and often controversial. indians refuse to stand and fight like proper soldiers. it becomes frustrating. a lot of times the army's methods of dealing with is are finding indian villages and attacking, and the army finds this very distasteful but this is what it usually does. so when they get the big war they're looking for in many ways, they're going to want to stick to a big war of the classic civil war battle. so at the end of the civil war, i have a story where one of lee's most talented officers, alexander, when at it clear -- its clear the army in northern virginia will no longer be able to continue the wear, alexander

proposes to disburse the mens and go into the bush and fight as guerrillas, and lee basically rebukes him in the way lee does, politely but everyone knows what he is saying, and alexander says if we do that the countryside will be filled with chaos, all these troops will loose their discipline, start preying on the civilian occupation. i'm going to surrender and see what happen, and alex describes himself as sheepishly never mentioning the idea again. so, that means you do have guerrilla in federal occupied areas. missouri is the most famous example. that becomes a promise of federal logistics and we would now call the counterinsurgency methods. block houses to protect railroads. the army becomes proficient in occupation duties dealing with maintaining severely order. -- civil order, but the civil war is still a war of these

large battles. >> host: professor, between 1812, the war of 1812, civil war, 1861, by 1861, did the u.s. -- the north or the south -- have a professional army? they did. the problem with -- the united states had one and it's very small and very successful in the mexican war. that's a crucial time. but the big problem is in 1861 the army is all 16,000 -- a little over 16,000 officers and men, and then the officer corps was split. so there is a professional army but it's core cadre is small, and it has to be disbursed again, and for that reason the early american armies during the civil war are actually quite poor, really, this their proficiency. they learn quickly but they -- they learn the hard way, really. and that's one of the reason

west pointers are powerful in their prominence because they're the only people with any kind of expertise and they're immediately relied on quickly and they're given a disproportionate amount of influence. the irony again is most of these -- the only -- scott con conquers mexico city with an army that range 10 or 11,000. this is a third of a size of mcdowell's army at first bull run and much smaller than the armies at places like gettysburg, and scott this only person with experience but he is too old to take the field. all the future civil war generals are officers who -- their only experience with what we would call major combat operations is the mexican war, and after that all they did was fight indian s on the front -- frontier so their expertise is also terribly deficient but it's better than what everyone else harks which is nothing.

so, there is a small professional army, but the army of the union and the confederacy produce cannot be described as professional, i would say, until probably 1862. >> host: , if you teach this book here at the naval academy, if you teach your own book here at the naval academy, what do you want students to leave with? >> guest: for me, i don't teach the book because of fears of -- you never want to be that professor who is so obviously trying to sell books with a captive audience. i think for me the biggest theme i try to get across is the civil war -- the big picture theme, especially -- this is -- especially for midshipmen, there's at times a collision between the way a country wants to fight a war and how it ended up actually having to do so. in the case in my book in 1861 the belief in the united states

and the union confederacy is you don't really need professional military expertise. that's why the armis kept so small in time office crisis, good citizen soldiers will step forward and through their native virtue and courage, will find a way -- they actually defeat military forces because they have freedom and courage on their side. what happens is very quickly the shortcomings of this become increasingly clear, that in fact war and military affairs actually retire the body of systemic expertise, involving issues of competence or bravery. and west pointers are there -- they're the only people with the concrete military expertise, and they, therefore, have to build it on the fly, and in the north it causes problems because these west pointers are a lot of times politically less enthusiastic

about emancipation. and then political leadership, especially in the north, becomes increasingly suspicious of them, partly because they know their politics are different, they're also wedded to this idea we don't really need professionals because we just rely on the native virtue of americans, and a lot of the story of the war is how the volunteers do step forward, they take tremendous losses but that is insufficient. and you have to have the professional expertise but there becomes a degree of social conflict over this, and it sort of -- at least in the case of the north, it works out, but leads to a lot of friction, and it's because war is not just a war phenomenon. it also involves expertise, and these are the types of things that are relevant to people who are going to become professional officers.

>> wayne hsieh, the author of this book, "west pointers and the civil war: the old army in war and peace." booktv is on location in annapolis, maryland. >> tell us what you think about our programming this weekend: booktv, nonfiction books, every weekend. on c-span2. >> here's a look at some books being published this week: a scholar whose work focus 0 probability and uncertainty, provides a followup to his best selling back, i "the black swain" titleed "antifragile pie "historian james c. patterson talks about 1965