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next the director of civil war era studies at gettysburg college recounts the battle of gettysburg which took place between the union and confederate armies on july 1st to third, eighteen sixty-three and resulted in 50,000 casualties. this year marks the 150th anniversary of the conflict. [applause] >> thank you to all the members of the atlanta history center and to the trustees of the living selector fund for making this possible, making possible for me to visit again here in atlanta this beautiful joule of the city, what a pleasure it is to be here especially at the atlanta history center so devoted as it is to the study of the history of the city, the state of georgia and the united states. it is great to be back again.

i wonder if we could have the lights down a bit because we have some pictures to see. looking back over 20 years, alexander stewart web declared that the battle of gettysburg was and is now throughout the world known to be the waterloo of the rebellion. certainly alex webb had the right to speak with authority about gettysburg. he was 26 when the civil war broke out in 1861 and even though this grandson of a minute man at bunker hill was only six years out of west point he rocketed up the ladder of promotion to brigadier general just a week before the union and confederate armies collided in mid-air and room three day hammering at gettysburg. it fell to web in pretty and to

command the union brigade which absorb the spear point of the battle's climax, the great charge made by the rebel divisions commanded by george packet. webmac would survive gettysburg and a nearly fatal wound the year after and the eventually go on to become the president of the city college of new york but in his memory the fattest ring in the tree would always be gettysburg. this three day contests webb announced was a constant recurrence of themes of self sacrifice and especially on the part of all engage on the third and last day. still, for those of us 150 years later it might just be possible to wonder if alexander webb was suffering from a touch of memory myopia, inflating the risk all experiences of his views under

the pressures of peacetime middle age. the name of gettysburg is powerful enough to register the recognition of even the most reluctant grade schooler as of big box event in american history but really now, does it deserve to stand beside waterloo? except of course that it does. call gettysburg if you like the hinge of faint or high water mark of the confederacy or the beginning of the end but gettysburg really was the last solid chance, the breakaway southern states which made up the confederate states of america had of winning their work and their independence. in the first week ten months of the civil war from april of 1861 to february of 1862 nearly everything seemed to go the way of the confederacy. 11 southern states of the american union announced their secession from the union, they

wrote a constitution, elected a president, jefferson davis, and their hastily assembled army defeated and equally hastily assembled united states army at bull run in virginia. in the early spring of 1862 the current began to swerve, union armies and the union navy conquered all but a few stretches of the mississippi river valley and occupied western tennessee. in the east, robert e. lee led his ragtime confederate forces to one victory after another over their opposite number, the union army of the potomac but the victories were all won on virginia soil land in feeble the virginia economy even as they defended its. lee knew better than any

southerner that the confederacy's resources were too limited to keep fending off a confederacy's enemies in definitely. only by carrying the war into the union states and only by leveraging the war weariness of the union voting public into a peace negotiations could the confederacy hoped to win. it is not far-fetched hope. in fall of 1862 dissension over abraham lincoln's emancipation proclamation cost unhappy voters in new york and new jersey to install democratic governors there. a new round of anti-war democratic candidates were due to run in the fall of 1863 governor's elections in ohio and pennsylvania. of those states also turned against blow work they could force abraham lincoln to begin

peace talks or to resign so we's army, some 85,000 strong struck north in the first week of june crossing the potomac river and sweeping in a long arc of the cumberland valley until this advanced guard was perched on the susquehanna river overlooking the pennsylvania state capital of harrisburg but lee's real goal was not harrisburg. what lee really hoped was to laura the army of the potomac northwards after him and as soon as the yankees strung themselves in the roads beyond the ability to help each other to turn and smash the straggling parts of the union army piece by piece and even if all the did was to read the union army of the potomac a merry chase around central pennsylvania he could

simply let the politics of disarmament take their own course thereafter. it nearly worked. gil morales of the army was never more favorable for offensive or defensive operations, wrote one virginian. victory will inevitably attend our arms in any collision with the enemy. true to lee's expectation the 91,000 men of the army of the potomac panting and the answer and set off after lee and as soon as lee was satisfied march themselves into disarray. and ready to pounce on the first parts of the army of the potomac which obligingly wondered within his reach but the lead elements of the army of the potomac got to gettysburg first and when

lee's and advance units arrived on july 1st they found union troops holding on to the ground for dear life, true there were not many of them, only three of the army of the potomac seventh infantry corps and on july 3rd asked lee's are wants to great amount of the town of gettysburg but at the end of the day the union soldiers were still holding a strategic height south of the town, cemetery hill. ben mezrich assumed he could wait for daylight to finish the job but by the morning of his july 2nd three more infantry corps of the army of the potomac raced to gettysburg and lee was forced to mount a bloody and ambitious assault on a series of union positions, the wheat fields, little round top, whose bland and harmless names be lied

the vicious character of the fighting that raged around them. lee's attack on in july 2nd came within an ace of succeeding so on the next day he launched what he assumed would be the knockdown blow for a union army already clearly on the ropes. lee send three divisions of rebel infantry straight at the vital nature of the union army's neck behind cemetery hill. the rebels in feed punched holes in the union defenses but couldn't hold them. amazed at the failure of his gambit and appalled at the cost in lives, lee ordered a retreat across the potomac. just on those terms alone,

gettysburg was an unmistakable sign of confederate disaster. the campaign is a failure and the worst failure the south has ever made, wrote one confederate survivor, no blow has been so telling against us. a soldier in the eleventh georgia, roads that the army is broken and now don't care which way the war closes, for we have suffered very much. across the south, reporter and the southern and literary messenger, there is great depression and in many states, positive disaffection, did not bright and southern hopes that one day after the close of gettysburg that last confederate outpost on the mississippi river, vicksburg's surrendered to ulysses s. grant giving the union and abraham lincoln

unhappiest weekend and they had enjoyed during the war. i have hit something. that is what captain smith said on the titanic. now said something else. we have a technical person who is at this moment galloping to my rescue. i am hoping c-span can edit this part out. i saw him galloping at one point. maybe he will come in the other door or come in behind me.

you see? that wasn't the question i wanted to hear him ask. i will go on and we will let the pictures catch up. robert e. lee would never again regain the military initiative in the war although fighting would go on for another 21 months the confederates were confined to the sort of defensive warfare they could least afford. after gettysburg the sun never shown for the south again but there were other costs the confederacy imposed by gettysburg beyond the simple fact of the feet and discouragement and department.

the army of northern virginia reported 2,592 kills, 12,700 wounded, thousand 1 fifty captured or missing after gettysburg. 20,451 casualties based on the data frustrated by the army of northern virginia's chief medical officer lafayette gills. alexander webb has come back. that is encouraging but the mouse i was going to click has not. [applause] powerful little

thing, isn't it. there are our numbers. they look even worse in cold print. given the inadequacy of military record keeping in the civil war there were 4 existence no graves registration units. losses suffered by the army of northern virginia may have been even higher than these official figures but even beyond the simple numerical shock of the casualty lists, lee's army suffered a body blow to its command infrastructure from which it never adequately recovered. this will give some idea of the damage done to chains of command in the army of northern virginia, 52 generals at gettysburg, a third of them

became casualties of some sort. in the eighteenth va twenty-nine of the regiment's 31 officers were killed or wounded. in the eighth virginia the colonel, lieutenant-colonel and major were all. did an three company capt. skills and two captured. john bell hood's division lost a colonels of the second, ninth and twentyth georgia, joseph kerr shot at south carolina brigade two more regimental commanders were killed, and there was a brigade commander lost, isaac avery who was mortally wounded and died in a farmhouse that still stands on the battlefield along with the colonels of the eighth louisiana and thirty-eight george of. robert roads's divisions of three colonels killed and seven wounded two of whom were

captured. ambrose hills's score reeled from the worst hit 2 senior officers, of the five colonels in willcox alabama brigade were wounded alongside two in the georgia brigade. worst of all, every one of the colonels in james johnston pedigree's north carolina brigade was killed, wounded or captured as were all of those in joe davis's mississippi and north carolina brigade. as individuals all the officer casualties won't be replaced but months of years of experience, familiarity, and could not. and if you look purely by the numbers than the battle imposed higher costs on the union army. george board need to commanded

the army of the potomac at gettysburg slated 2,834 of his own men killed, 13,713 wounded 6,643 missing. two months later he adjusted those numbers slightly and submitted final figures which said the totals at 3,155 killed, 14,529 wounded, 5,365 captured or missing. in his testimony before a congressional committee the following spring, meade simply rounded the figures up to 24,000 men killed, wounded and missing. in 1900, thomas littermore painstakingly recounted unit reports for the army of the

potomac and put the reckoning at 3,903 dead, 18,735 wounded, and 5,425 missing so that the entire butcher's bill edged up to 28,063. michael jacobson, a mathematics professor at pennsylvania college which was located on the northern outskirts of gettysburg estimated that there were 9,000 dead after the army's move on. if we grant jacobs his high end estimate, and he was a mathematics professor, and accept a ratio based on the officials statistics of five wounded for every man killed, then we have to reckon on each army at gettysburg suffering something like 4500 killed, and

22,500 wounded which translates into approximately a third of each army dead or maimed in some way. in other words three times the bloodletting suffered in percentages by the british and allied forces of waterloo and like the confederates, the damage to the upper command echelon was substantial, one major general commanded a corps was killed, john reynolds of the first corps and another was mangled and puts out of action, dan sickles of the third corps but even with those costs gettysburg meant something entirely different for the union. what do the people of the north think now of the army of the potomac, exalted soldier in the 20 eighth pennsylvania. the commander of the division in the 12 score rose to his wife that the result of the war seems

no longer doubtful and the beginning of the end appears. the victory at gettysburg gave proof that our days in tutelage in the art of war were over exulted a contributor to the new england and yale review and the last week could develop and direct our forces coming as gettysburg did hand in hand with the victory of vicksburg, lincoln's chief of staff, noticed how public feeling has been wonderfully improved and delete out by our recent successes at gettysburg and vicksburg. lincoln himself was exultant. he addressed the noisy demonstration of well-wishers at the white house on july 7th by drawing a symbolic bright line between independence day and the gettysburg victory. how long ago is it, he asked the

crowd? 80 odd years since on the fourth of july for the first time in the history of the world nation by representatives assembled and declared that all men are created equal. the victories of gettysburg and vicksburg on the anniversary of that self-evident truth have now put the cohorts of those who opposed the declaration of all men are created equal on the run. even the newspapers crowed that any escape from our army will be a matter of great difficulty and the newspapers predicted that if lee was pursued and brought to bay, a great if not decisive victory over revere insurgents would follow. perhaps a better way to measure the importance of gettysburg for granting the union second wind

would be to consider what the alternative might have been. richard henry dana, the prominent boston lawyer and literary lion believed gettysburg was the turning point in our history, not so much for winning a victory as for of voiding a defeat which would have proven the army of the potomac's and the union's last defeat. had lee not gained that battle the democrats would have stopped the war with the city of new york and governor horatio seymour and joel parker in new jersey and the majority in pennsylvania as they then would have added, they would have so crippled does as to end the contest, that they would have attempted it we at home know. and that would have been only the best scenario. i do not hesitate to express thf

the battle, that had the army of the potomac been whipped at gettysburg it would have dissolved. doubtless the volunteer regiments would have held together and made some sort of retreat toward the susquehanna but the others would simply have deserted in much the same way that napoleon's are me disintegrated after waterloo, leaving of the rebel chieftain at liberty to go where and do what he pleased. that would in turn have been the queue for mob rule over the whole chain of atlantic city's and thus paralyzed the whole machinery of our government. captain alfred lee who fought at gettysburg dreaded the prospect of the northern sympathizers with secession establishing mob rule over the whole chain of

cities tearing up the railroads, destroying supplies, cutting off reinforcements. as it was, new york city blew up in draft riots ten days after the battle. of robert e. lee had been crossing with the army of northern virginia the susquehanna river on that day instead commack as he was crossing the potomac in retreat, then it might well have been the army of northern virginia which was called in to restore order in new york city rather than union veterans fresh from their victory at gettysburg. gettysburg did not end the war in one stroke but it was decisive enough to restore the sinking more out of the union. decisive enough to keep at bay the forces which hoped that lincoln could be persuaded to revoke emancipation, decisive enough to keep people look back

and understand the confederacy would not be able to mount a serious invasion again. lincoln, however was not satisfied with a decisive enough result. why do i have a strange feeling that there may be some unreconstructed confederate veterans who are getting in a last word on this subject? lincoln was not satisfied with a decisive enough result. after a ten they pursued which ended than with the army of the potomac backing lee's army into a pocket with its back to the rain flooded potomac river, no

knockdown blow was struck at the rebels and the lee's damages army was able to slip across the potomac on improvised and bridges and through barely usable fords. we had in our grasp, lincoln whales. we had only to stretch forth our hands and they were hours. a great deal of the blame for lee's as kate was swayed by lincoln and others at the feet of george meade. i do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved, lincoln wrote to meet. the image of the enclosed hand came to him. he was within your grasp, and in connection with our other late successes have ended of the war. but deciding instead to be

grateful for what meade had won at gettysburg lincoln filed a literal way scribbling on the envelope to general meade, never sent or signed. but the failure to make gettysburg the complete victory that lincoln had been hoping for has always shunned like a cloud over the unhappy george meade. there is an element of injustice in this. general meade had been shoved into command of the army of the potomac three days before the battle and he was compelled by circumstances to pick up the army of the potomac where he found it using a staff he had no time to replace and under the an appreciative days of the other major generals in that army who saw no reason to yield general meet automatic deference, on those grounds there have been serious efforts from time to

time to refashion general meade in more glowing colors as the unsung geniuses who bettered robert e. lee. his most recent biographer portrayed him as the rodney dangerfield of civil war generals. he gets no respect. but the major cause for the lack of respect lies primarily with general meade himself. at first reading the nearsighted philadelphia aristocrat might have been taken for presbyterian clergyman. that is unless one approached him when he was mad. general meade possessed of volcanic temper which it did not require much to trigger. behind his back men in the ranks called general meet a dog allied snapping turtle. no one questions general meade's personal courage or confidence

but he was not a lovable or dashing commander and his disciplinary behavior would have made george patton look like a worse. in october of 1862 general meade chased down a private with a great bundle of corn leaves on his back which the soldier pilfered from a nearby farm. general meet demand did know where the court had come from and talked himself into such a rage that he struck him a side of the head and almost knocked him over. unabashed the private picked himself up and merely returned the favor but stopped and said if it wasn't for the shoulder straps i would give you the darndest thrashing you ever had in your life. general meade was just as hard on his subordinates and his superiors. i am tired of this playing war without risks he declared a

girl. we must encounter risks if we fight and we cannot carry on war without fighting. but the real flaw in george meade was not his fiery temper, but ironically the same aversion to taking risks that he complained about in other generals. once in command of the army of the potomac he saw his task as purely defensive, chateau lee's army as it moved in its great swift arc into pennsylvania but keep between the rebels and washington and the susquehanna river. i can only say it appears to me i must move toward the susquehanna, keeping washington and baltimore covered, only if the enemy is checked in his attempt to cross the susquehanna or turns toward baltimore would

general meade try to give him battle. once lee's are we turned away from the susquehanna to concentrate near gettysburg, general meet continued the image considered his work done and his first impulse thereafter was to pull his own army back, dig it in behind tight creek, 25 miles to the southeast and keep the shield in place between the confederates and the capital. he was not inclined to go hunting for a high noon in counter with robert e. lee. having thus relieve harrisburg and philadelphia general meade concluded it was time to look to his own army and assume positions for offensive or defensive as occasion requires or arrest to the troops and that meant the collecting of our troops behind beit creek. was not general meade but john

reynolds whose picture i don't have up here. unless my faithful assistant wants to click for me. yes, he did. that is george meade. click some more. there we go. john fulton reynolds. john reynolds was directing the three army corps which made up the army of the potomac's left wing and it was he who really precipitated an encounter at gettysburg. reynolds complained to abner doubleday who commanded one of reynolds's divisions that if general meade gave the rebels time by dilatory measures 4 by taking up defensive positions they would strip pennsylvania of everything.

reynolds was eager to attack the enemy at once, to prevent his plundering the whole state. in his last message to general meet on july 1st, last because in a few minutes reynolds would be shot dead by a confederate skirmish as the battle opened west of gettysburg reynolds said while i am aware it is not your desire to force an engagement at that point still i feel at liberty to advance and develop the strength of the enemy off. even after reynolds's death general meade tried to recall his prematurely committed troops from gettysburg. reynolds's successor in command of the left wing, oliver otis howard was rumored to have received five distinct orders from general meade to withdraw his forces and not attempt to hold the decision he had chosen on cemetery hill.

not until general meade had sent off his own eyes and years to gettysburg in the form of major-general winfield scott hancock did general meade finally relent and order a concentration at gettysburg. even then, after the battering given the army of the potomac on july 2nd which rivals antietam as the single bloodiest day of the civil war general meade was still debating whether to fall back to pipe creek and called a war council of his score commanders to consider it. they refused but not without expressing an element of surprise that general meet even wanted to talk about withdrawal. good god, explained the division commander in the second corps, general meade is not going to retreat, is he? no, he was not but the credit may not belong to general meade as much as it does to a hefty

list of line officers who time and again during the three days of the battle seized the initiative on their own and kept the army of the potomac from falling apart. names that most of us have never heard before, george years green, samuel sprig carol, alexander webb, francis heath, patrick of work, from vincent, governor warren, norman hall, george stanlard and when you have heard too much about, joshua chamberlain. these names introduced union men who over and over again with miraculous spontaneity stepped out of themselves for a moment and turn the corner for a dime at some right moment and saved the day in. these self starting performances

became almost routine for union officers and gettysburg. by comparison general meade's command behavior at gettysburg was almost entirely reactive. the confederates acted and he responded but not the other way around. and above all, general meade failed to run the army of northern virginia to ground at that moment when it weakest "the billionaire's apprentice: the fuse of the indian-american elite and the tje fall of the galleon hedge fund" it would ever see before appomattox. taking a little of his own advice about risks might have made george meade the most famous general in american history. it remains for abraham lincoln to illumine the ultimate significance of gettysburg and if i could have an assist from the booth, one more, and

another. in fact, let's give it the last click and get everything up there. you see what a wonderful place the atlanta history center is? i just say something and it appears. marvelous. if only my students in class could deliver like that. it remained for lincoln to illumine the ultimate significance of gettysburg in the words that he spoke at the dedication of the national cemetery laid out on cemetery hill in the months after the battle. words of his gettysburg address have been worn so familiar with usage that it may be hard now to realize the depth of meaning in clinton's few brief remarks call all of 272 words at that dedication in november of 1863

but in lincoln's mind the fundamental significance and importance of gettysburg and the civil war lay in the survival of democracy itself and whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. remembered that in 1863 democracy was by no means a given. by no means what france through the obama called the end of history. far from it. every experiment in democracy launched in the heyday of popular revolutions had gone up in smoke, with the most smoky emerging from the french revolution. everywhere in 1863, monarchy and privilege seems to be on the march. the last outpost of democracy

was obligingly shooting itself in the head in a civil war and thereby demonstrating that democracies are inherently unstable and argue the aristocrats how could democracy help but be unstable? democracies are run by the consent of the governed, by the ordinary people of the nations themselves and as aristocrats well know, ordinary people can be ordinary in very mean, very selfish, very cowardly and very dull ways. the american democracy had been exhibiting signs of dysfunction ever since its founding by tolerating the abomination of slavery. how could anyone speak realistically of all men being created equal when some of those equal men were allowed to own and others in the same way that one might own a horse for a pig?

lincoln, however, saw in gettysburg rainbow in the dreariness. the war was testing as the great alan evans once put it whether a democracy of continental dimensions and idealistic commitments could triumphantly survive or must ignoble the parish. gettysburg with its dead was proof that there were a great many of those otherwise dull and ordinary people who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to preserve the solidarity of their nation and the right to self-government and the propositions around which it was built. lincoln could not look out across the semicircle other avenues of the dead in that cemetery where full week of

quarter of the 3900 men buried there were unknowns and not feel confirmed in the longevity of democracy and in calling on living americans to dedicate themselves to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion and ensure all the monarchies and aristocracies to the contrary, that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. that, i think, brings us the real answer to the question of gettysburg's importance. yes, it had military significance as the victory that cracked the image and the power of robert e. lee and his army and gave the union armies their second wind and the sheer scale of the carnage and death which

the battle visited not only on the soldiers but on every family and household linked to those soldiers. that impact and importance is passed any calculating that numbers can do but even more, a gettysburg still sings for us because of how abraham lincoln translated the raw experience of the black hole of battle into an anthem of democracy. so was alex webb right after all? was gettysburg really the waterloo of the rebellion? waterloo? what is waterloo? thank you very much. [applause]

>> we will take some questions and try as we might to frustrate your ability to promote the eastern feeder like you did, the be all end all of the civil war maybe somebody can ask a question that will frustrate him better than we were able to, thank you. >> thank you, excellent speech. my great grandfather was jasper grain, thirteenth alabama, the roanoke invincibles and he was one of the 70 odd captured with archer on the dates marching into allegedly -- >> according to gordon harry keefe. >> i have been to your home town. it is absolutely breathtaking and i couldn't see where my great-grandfather was captured because they are playing golf over there right now.

my point, my question is one of the things i learned through my family history studying this is the second wisconsin, the iron brigade which is the unit that face the thirteenth alabama that they won had previously faced the thirteenth alabama at the stonewall in fredericksburg where double they had been thrown off and then they also faced them if not mistaken-antietam in the corn field and it strikes me that it is highly unusual for won the 0 regiments from alabama and another little regiment from wisconsin to face-off in three of the most important battles of the area. what do you suppose was the reason for that? >> somebody didn't unlike

somebody else. is there a particular reason? probably not. probably not. unless you know something that your ancestors have revealed that the rest of us have not been privy to. the thirteenth alabama along with archer's brigade, marches as one of the lead units coming in the gettysburg believing that at best what they're going to be up against is just yankee cavalry and at worst some pennsylvania militia and as they move down the ravine into will be running tending to move up to the other side of the ravine what do they see coming get them but the second wisconsin and you hear the voices running through the alabama, that ain't no militia, it is the black hat fellows, the army of the potomac. it was a big and unpleasant surprise to find out not formally words a facing the iron

brigade again but the army of the potomac was there when they had been assured that no elements of the army of the potomac were anything closer than a day's march away. that was the ultimate big surprise at gettysburg. the second wisconsin simply was the means of delivering it. >> i was reviewing your book here which i already bought and waiting for your autograph, the study of my own family history, my great-grandfather was sent off to be injured for the rest of the war at fort delaware and when i went to for delaware to see that area the reactors from the delaware historical society pointed out that archer was actually a prisoner at fort delaware and tried to leave a

rebellion and i notice on your page 150 of your page you don't mention that, you mention he went to ohio some might look at revision in your paperback version. >> he went to for delaware with most of the confederate prisoners after gettysburg but since he was an officer and a general officer he was segregated out and sent to sandusky, ohio where in fact he came down with the disease that after he was exchanged in 1864 killed him so we are both right. a last, unless you would like me to deliver a book twice the size of the one you have, there are some details i can't quite put in there but it does give you incidentally something of an idea of the intensity with which the battle of gettysburg has been studies, it is a tribute to the importance gettysburg

assumes in american memory-unlike almost all other civil war battles we can get together and start talking about what individual regiments and companies were doing at gettysburg almost where you can ask people what kind of war would you like? on a core level, division of a, began the book, president of lord company level? depending on how detailed you want to get but that is the detail that is on offer for anyone who wants to begin the study of the battle. you can get together with some good gettysburg meredith kercher -- gettysburg nerds. that golf course is gone. the gettysburg country club went bankrupt and the property was bought up by the national park service to be added to the battlefield which i regard as a sort of victory but only in a place like gettysburg where

civil war memory plays such a big role could it puts the golf course out of business. >> three of my ancestors had a front row seat. >> just checking. >> please lot of importance on the battle and i see it in a new light as a pivotal point. you entertain the idea that had the british not seized -- that the south had a fighting chance to win the war and could well have won the day. >> people sometimes ask me what i think the turning point of the civil war was. i answer appomattox. that is the safest. because it is true. there are any number of factors even in 1864 which might have pointed to a different result.

suppose for instance that george mcclellan was elected president in the 1864 elections rather than lincoln. at that point the confederacy militarily is bleeding from every pore but it is still there and with mcclellan in place the election of mcclellan would have let almost at once to the opening of some kind of negotiations. once the negotiations began no one was going to start shooting again, not after what people have gone through 4 the previous three years and even as late as that point of the confederacy might have proved the chesnutt's from the fire and achieve some kind of independence. this is to speak of extraordinary situations, extraordinary details that could derail the locomotive. what gettysburg established is that the rails and the locomotive themselves are pointing for the station at

appomattox and barring some extraordinary intervention of some sort, the real result was already in the cards after gettysburg. it might have come quicker had george meade been quicker. he was not but still, after that, the confederacy is fighting a series of defensive campaigns, defensive campaigns which bit by bit drained the last of its strength away and make the end with not outright inevitable than about as predictable as we can make historical events be. >> i have to admit that as soon as i got the book i did not start at the beginning, i turned to the part about stewart's rides. i wanted to see how you could handle that and it was

fascinating. you quote a statement that no one could be fine what lee did or didn't do because of stewart's activities and that brings me to my two part question, i would like your analysis of mosby's comment. is that true? has someone been able to come up with something lee did or did not do because of stewart's absence and i would like to follow up on that. >> the story of jeb stuart and his absence from the army of northern virginia became important after the battle because after the battle people in the confederacy were looking for a scapegoat, looking for blame, looking at someone to whom they could point of a finger. there were a number of nominees and stewart was only one of them but over time stewart becomes one of the real goats of the game and the argument runs like this. stuart sets off on this joyride

that he is supposed to be covering the far right flank of the army of northern virginia. he managed by his ineptitude and vanity to get diverted around the other side of the army of the potomac and rides and so for all practical purposes right out of the campaign thus leaving robbery lee to fumble around blindfolded in pennsylvania and later bump into the army of the potomac by accident and the result is that he loses the battle and the south loses the war ended is all jeb stewart's fault. there are a couple problems with this. one is that lee was not rendered blindfolded by the absence of stewart simply because cavalry in the american civil war does not function as an intelligence arm. cavalry in the american civil war as distinct from the function of cavalry in the

european armies of the nineteenth century cavalry in the american civil war is entirely light cavalry. in fact its proportions are much smaller in the american civil war armies than they were in the european armies. the chief functions of light cavalry are twofold. screening and rating. stuart was not responsible, never had been responsible for gathering intelligence for robert e. lee. that function was performed by first , spies, secondly, individuals doubts, and in the case of robert e. lee was the third source, northern newspapers. lee loved to read northern newspapers not because he loved northern newspapers but the northern newspapers so obligingly printed the same movements of the army of the potomac in their columns. so intelligence gathering was something that came from other sources, not from jeb stuart.

the fact that jeb stuart wrote himself as foolishly as he did, as recklessly as he did out of contact with lee's are needed not me robert e. lee had no idea what he was doing, where he was going or what he was likely to meet. lee knew very wellt he was doing. he even knew where jeb stuart was. he complained to george campbell brown, the stepson of richard s. you and one of his staffers that he had been reading from the newspapers that stewart was riding around baltimore and washington so he knew where storage was. what he was irritated with about stewart was not that he was not providing him with intelligence but that stewart was violating the principle of concentration of forces. it was not intelligence that lee wanted, it was too rich and his cavalry that he wanted and that was what was irritating robert e. lee. was stewart responsible for the battle of gettysburg? in that respect no.

robert e. lee knew exactly what he was doing when he ordered the concentration of the army of northern virginia after gettysburg. stuart disappointed him by mishandling the role he was supposed to have in providing screening for the right flank of the army of northern virginia but it was not a case where robert e. lee blundered into gettysburg because jet stewart somehow left him blind and groping around the countryside. that became a convenient excuse for hanging the result of the gettysburg campaign on jet stewart. that in turn is what informed john mosby's comments, who defended stewart and was bitterly critical of charles marshall who was lee's military secretary and principal finger pointer at the jet steward. after the war mosby and marshall

go back and forth over stewart who is dead. he was killed -- mortally wounded at yellow tavern in may of 1864 but mosby kept pointing out as much to the point that stewart's absence was not a critical factor in lee's decision to fight at gettysburg. lee knew what he was doing. he was not being led by strings, and the decision to fight at gettysburg was robert e. lee's, not because of jet stewart. >> let me explore something with you. the book makes up wonderful description of the geography of the battlefield. i never had it explained to me so well, the significance of cemetery hill and cemetery ridge and the thing that amazes me is on the 26 of june, my question is that lee known as early as the 26 or twenty-seventh that the army of the potomac was where it was could he have

concentrated beginning then and been in better shape than he was on the first of july? >> he certainly could have that lee does not order his concentration on the 20th evening of the 20th of june. not until that point he finally has sufficient intelligence that confirms to him the army of the potomac is strong out and vulnerable, that it has been lord far enough north that he can turn richard your's score and bring up how will hill and james longstreet from chambersburg where they had been positioned and bring the mall to get it to concentrate at gettysburg and bite off the head of the army of the potomac as it wanders on into range. lee might have done that earlier but he didn't have ohrid need to do that until the twenty-seventh, and lee orders the concentration and does not

in fact she cemetery hill because john reynolds pushes inland seas is the first. was a missed opportunity in that respect. >> 12 or 18 hours earlier the army of the potomac was where it was. not like he could have ordered that concentration over 18 hours might have changed history. >> more so even in 12 or 18 hours, through the battle of gettysburg, you get intervals of 15 minutes in which the entire outcome of events hangs all of which illustrates the timing is everything. >> one more question please. >> this is not a question but a real quick story about gettysburg. weaver northers and before--during the battle or right before the battle the word came out that we were to get troops down there and my ancestors had broken his leg and

was about to recover from it but he was called to go down there and fight and so he started going down there and ran into a blind man who had been called to fight. so they got together and the blind man says i will help you and you tell me where to go. whether it is true or not i don't know but it has come down through generations of the family. >> one more question. >> that wasn't a question. >> i don't know if i can top that but the question i have is the question that had general meet pursued and hit lee on the retreat, one thing striking to me looking at civil war history compared to napoleonic wars carries you don't have -- even though gettysburg is the decisive battle you don't have annihilation like you said it doesn't dissolve, none of the army's really does all, they keep calling back and the closest is after nashville you see the army scatter.

what do you think causes the cohesiveness of the army in the civil war? was it the land? what do you think the drive that? >> it is something a good deal more simple and that is ineptitude. remember the american civil war armies as much as we bade them in the romantic queue of remembrance, brave and as they were, honorable as they were in many respects, never the less fees were civilians. the pre-war army consists of approximately 16,000 men. it was not much better than the frontier constabulary. there was no existing structure, no cadres of existing formations, noncoms or anything for newly recruited volunteers to move into. everything had to be made up on the spot.

everything was improv. with the result of large parts of these armies, officers and generals as much as men in their ranks had never commanded a large formations before in their lives. many of them have only the dimmest idea of what they are doing. some of them are drilling their food to while holding tactics books in their hands. and that sounds at first slightly amusing, it is no joke when you are under fire when shells are screaming overhead. the great prussian general who was supposed to have said the american civil war was like two armed mobs chasing each other around the countryside, that is not very complimentary, we don't like that but it is close to the truth. these were not well disciplined,

well organized armies. one thing which concerns robert e. lee moving up into pennsylvania is that his army is going to turn so happily towards the looting that the riches of pennsylvania will accomplish what the army of the potomac has been unable to do and that is dissolved his army into an undisciplined mob of bandits and these armies are constantly on the brink of that. they are amateurs, inexperienced, commanded by inexperienced people. even those who were professional soldiers at the top of the armies, many of them like dick y yule confessed he spent 15 years for getting everything he had learned except how to command a company of 50 dragoons. what was more the education you got at west point was not an education in combat, in tactics, in strategy, west point was an

engineering school. still is. still is maintained under the corps of engineers. though the education you got at west point was about building things, for, bridges, not about combat, not about how to function, not about training. in these parties they didn't even hold target practice for the most part. something which comes to the fore so dramatically as you recall from one part of the book where i am talking about you calculate how many shots are fired versus how many actually hit a target and the average is it takes 125 fired shots before you win somebody. that is not a compliment to marksmanship. that is about how well i do shooting trap. it is all a function of the lack of discipline, lack of training,

these are not professionals and so that ineptitude means they never quite get things together for the knockdown blow. is like watching amateur boxing where two people who might be good at slugging each other but don't know how to bring it all to a conclusion. that said, these were still armies that fought with the most extraordinary kind of raw courage. it odd ulysses grant at shiloh to see perfectly green volunteers on the line and an old non, or two behind them showing them how to load and fire their guns and the extraordinary part is not that they were there in the middle of combat getting right construction but in awe of them breaking and run for their lives, they didn't and they don't at gettysburg either. that is the remarkable thing.

and all of the ineptitude and inexperience, what is sublime about these soldiers is the stubbornness and consistency with which they did their duty. they were not some kind of pretoria and guard which got a thrill out of killing. anything but. time and again on this battlefield what you see is people shooting at each other one moment and ten minutes later lifting up the window on the other side and giving them a canteen of water. a few many of these soldiers is so manifest because they were not professionals but they were doing a job, performing the duties they felt they had been called to do. it was not a duty they wanted to do. they did not want to kill each other. they wanted the war to be over and peace to come but they also wanted to come hon.. that sense of duty and honor is what kept them at their bloody task and in its own way looking back on it after 150 years still

ennobles what they did. [applause] >> please join us in the atrium, buy a book can even buy a drink, see me next time. >> visible tv.org for any of the programs use the online. tied the author or book title in the search warrant the upper left of the page and click search. you can share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left of the page and selecting the foremast. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> it is a very sad story of our you discover the famine and how it affected your family. [speaking in native tongue]

>> translator: i was in the second year of my senior high school, spring of 1959. so my high school, which was the only school in the county, was ten kilometers from my village. a childhood friend came to my school and told me that my father was dying. and asked me to come back home to visit my father.

so i went to the student cafeteria asking to stop rationing of food for three days to pay 125 of rice back to my dad. so for students, those schools, public schools were guaranteed some food. so after i gave my father the rice he urged me to leave. so i went out to the field and took some wild to vegetables and gave him those wild vegetables from that list. [speaking in native tongue]

>> translator: i did not realize my father was in serious condition. he did not eat the rice at all and he knew he was dying so he heard me to leave and he told his neighbors don't tell me the news of his death until he passes away. [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: i didn't return home until a few days later when my childhood friend came with the bad news and came back and my father was doing that. >> you did not realize at the time that this was a wider

problem. [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: i thought my father's death was an individual case and i thought it was because i was away from home and i was not allowed to dig out while the vegetables to feed. >> host: when did you realize this was a big problem and not just a problem in your village? [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: took me a long time. not until the middle of the cultural revolution. [speaking in native tongue]

[speaking in native tongue] >> translator: in the middle of the cultural revolution the governor of my province was criticizing the province, blaming him at a time when he disclosed that. disclosed the figure that 300,000 people died of starvation. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> new york daily news columnist stanley crouch, what is on your summer reading list?

>> i am working on a screenplay of my novel, i have to be read it to figure out how to make the screenplay work because the very complex story of an interracial romance and the protagonist is a blond woman from south dakota. my greatest achievement in my entire life included when i was in the bar. and he did know who i was. >> i heard about it. i read it and said why did i do that?

really? and did it and in fact i know every person in that woman's family. .. next on "book tv." marsha coyle examines the supreme court under chief justice john