drug education in the country. i think the book is appropriate for teenagers. parents will learn a lot as well. >> so you think that as a parent in the home, parents are educated regarding telling their child about drugs, would you recommend them apart from reading the book where else can they go to get information so they can start telling their kids at a young age? or an appropriate? >> that is a difficult one. the country's education in terms of the drugs is that the adolescent level. "high price" is trying to have a more adult conversation so "high price" is the absolute requirement. >> another question. do you see yourself, i know you are incorporating this within your course, is that what you are doing? >> i don't use "high price" in my course because i have another

textbook which i use for my course. that book is more draw, more academic and it costs four times more than "high price". time for someone else. >> thank you. thank you all for coming. >> final question? >> em man has a question. >> i want to say how much i appreciate the book, i appreciate you, i appreciate your commitment to bring in your expertise to bear. there is a lot of anxiety, ambivalence about this to me as indicative of the deeply rooted myths that operate in our society. they have been destructive in society that have nothing to do with knowledge or facts and everything to do with prejudice and fear.

much of the continent of actor got -- africa are under painful misapprehensions about sex and the transmission of aids and millions of people die because they refuse to understand what is necessary to treat or prevent the transmission of hiv and i hate to think that in this day we want to not appreciate, at least information. everyone will respond accordingly as individuals, but to somehow suggest the transference of that information is not appropriate or because it makes us uncomfortable to me reminds us of much of the world around sex up until quite recently as a reproductive tool to gain pleasure from sex was to make a woman is immoral. we craft entire societies around binding women's ability to operate in the world because sex was not about pleasure. there's a lot in this space and i want to applaud you.

i also want to say someone asked a question about appropriate drug use. if we want to save lives like we want young people to use condoms properly, thank you very much.

>> no blow has been so telling against us. a soldier in the 11th georgia wrote his mother that, the army is broken hearted, and now don't care which way the war closes, for we have suffered very much.

across the south, reported the southern lea letter a messenger. there is great depression. and in many states, positive disaffection. and did not brighten the southern hopes that one day after the close of gettysburg, the last confederate outpost on the mississippi river, vicksburg, surrendered to ulysses s. grant, thus giving the union and abraham lincoln the happiest weekend they had yet enjoyed during the war. i have hit something. [laughter] that's what captain smith said on the titanic. [laughter] now i've hit something else. [laughter] do we have a technical person who is now at this moment

galloping to my rescue. i'm hoping c-span can edit this part out las. [laughter] well, i saw him galloping at one point. maybe he's going to come in the other door. or he's going to come in the height me. you see? of[laughter] that wasn't the question i wanted to him ask. [laughter] well, i'll go on and we will let the pictures catch up. in fact 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 that they could least afford. after gettysburg, the sun never shone for the south again. but there were other costs for the confederacy imposed by gettysburg beyond the simple fact that defeat and discouragement and disarmament. the army of northern virginia reported 2592 killed, 12,700 would, and 4150 captured or missing after gettysburg. 20,451 casualties in all based on the data that we have collected by the army of northern virginia is chief medical officer, lafayette deal.

i see alexander webb has come back. that's encouraging. but the mouse i was going to click has not. [laughter] [applause] >> powerful little thing, isn't it. there is our numbers. they look even worse in cold print. given the inadequacy of military record-keeping in the civil war, there were, for instance, no grace or registration years.

these 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 you some idea of the damage done to change of command in the army of northern virginia. of lee's 52 generals at gettysburg, a third of them became casualties of some sort. in the 18th virginia, 29 other regiments 31 officers were killed or wounded. in the eighth virginia, the colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major were all wounded, and three company captain skilled and two captured. john bell hood's decision lost the colonels of the second,

ninth, and 20 georgia, while the south carolina brigade to more regimental commanders were killed. jubal earliest division lost a brigade commander. isaac avery, was mortally wounded and died in a farmhouse that still stands on the battlefield. along with the colonels of the eighth louisiana and 38th georgia. robert roads division saw three colonels killed, and seven wounded, two of whom were also captured. hills core reeled from the worst hits to its senior officers. four of the five colonels in wilcox's alabama brigade were wounded, alongside do in the georgia brigade. and worst of all, every one of the colonels in james johnston pettigrew's north carolina brigade was killed, wounded or captured, as were all of those

in joe davis is mississippi and north carolina brigade. as individuals, all of these officer casualties could be replaced, but there months and years of experience, familiarity, networking and confidence could not. of course if we want to measure gettysburg purely by the numbers, then the battle imposed it on higher costs on the union army. george gordon meade who commanded the army of the potomac at gettysburg cited 2834 of his own men killed. 13,713 wounded, and 6643 missing. two months later he adjusted those numbers slightly, and then submitted final figures which set the totals at 3155 killed,

14,529 wounded, and 5365 captured or missing. in his testimony before congressional committee, the following spring, meade simply routed the figures up to 24,000 men killed, wounded and missing. in 1900, thomas livermore, painstakingly recalculated unit reports to the army of the potomac and put the reckoning at 3903 dead, 18,735 wounded, and 5425 missing. so that the entire butchers bill edged up to 28,063. michael jacobs, a mathematics professor at pennsylvania college, which is located on the northern outskirts of gettysburg

estimated that there were 9000 dead after the two armies moved on. if we grant jacobs his high-end estimate, and he was a mathematics professor, and except a ratio based on the official statistics of five wounded for every man killed, then we have to reckon on each army at gettysburg suffering something like 4500 killed and 22500 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 at waterloo, and like the confederates, the damage to the upper command

echelon was substantial. one major general commandant of core was killed, john reynolds of the first core, and another was mangled and put out of action, and sickles of the third corps. but even with those costs, gettysburg meant something entirely different for the union. want to the people of the north think now of the old army of the potomac, exalted a soldier in the 20th pennsylvania? john white who commanded a division and the 12 corps wrote to his wife that, the result of the war seems no longer doubtful, at the beginning of the end of years. the victory at gettysburg gave proof that our days of pupil edge in the art of war were over. exalted a contributor to the new englander and yale reade read at last we could develop and direct our forces. coming as gettysburg it hand in hand with the victory at

vicksburg, lincoln's chief of staff, john george nicollet noticed how public feeling had been wonderfully improved and buoyed up 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 7 by drawing a symbolic white 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, and nation by its representatives assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. the victories of gettysburg and vicksburg coming on the anniversary of that self-evident truth had now put the cohorts of those who opposed the

declaration that 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 indeed a decisive victory over the insurgents would follow. but perhaps a better way to measure the importance of gettysburg for granting the union a second wind would be to consider what the alternative might have been. richard henry day, the prominent boston lawyer and literary lion believed that gettysburg was the turning point in our history. not so much for winning a victory as for avoiding a defeat which would have proven the army of the potomac's, and the unions, last defeat.

had lee gains that battle, he wrote, the democrats would've risen and stopped the war. with the city of new york and governor horatio seymour and governor jewell parker in new jersey, and a majority in pennsylvania as they then would have had, he would have so crippled us as to end the contest. that they would have attempted if we at home now and. and that would've been only the best scenario. i do not hesitate to express the conviction wrote one observer of the battle, that had the army of the potomac and whipped at gettysburg, it would have dissolved. doubtless, some of the other volunteer regiments would have held together and make some sort of her teeth -- retreat, but the others would simply have deserted and mosque in much the same way that napoleon's army disintegrated after waterloo,

leaving the rebel chieftain at liberty to go where and do what he pleased. that in turn would 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 a succession establishing mob rule over the whole chain of the city's, tearing at the railroads, destroying supplies, cutting off reinforcements. as it was, new york city blew up and draft riots 10 days after the battle. if robert e. lee had been crossing with the army of northern virginia, the cisco on the river on that day instead 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 the victory at gettysburg. gettysburg did not end the war in one stroke, but it was decisive enough to restore the sinking morale of the union. decisive enough to keep at bay the forces which hopes that lincoln could be persuaded to revote a masturbation. decisive enough to make people look back and understand that the confederacy would never be able to mount a serious invasion again. lincoln, however, was not satisfied with a decisive enough result. why do i have this strange feeling that there may be some

unreconstructed confederate veterans? [laughter] who are getting in a last word on this subject. lincoln was not satisfied with a decisive enough result. after a 10 day pursuit which ended 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 lee's damaged army was able to slip across the potomac on improvised bridges and through barely usable forward. we had them in our grasp, lincoln wailed. we had only to stretch with her hands and they were ours. a great deal of the blame for

lee's escape was laid by lincoln and by others at the feet of george meade. i do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in lee as kid, lincoln road to meade. and again the image of the unclosed and came to them. he was within your easy grasp and took closed upon employed in connection with the other late successes have ended the war. but deciding instead to be grateful for what meade had actually won at gettysburg, lincoln filed a letter of way, scrolling on the envelope, to general need, never sent or signed. but the failure to make gettysburg the complete victory that lincoln had been hoping for has always hung like a cloud over the unhappy george meade. there is an element of injustice

in this. meade had only 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 founded, using a staff he had no time to replace, and under the unappreciative gaze of other major generals in that army who saw no reason to yield these automatic deference. on those grounds there have been serious efforts from time to time to refashion meade in more glowing colors, as the unsung genius who bettered robert e. lee. meade's most recent biographer has portrayed them as the rodney dangerfield of civil war generals. [laughter] he gets no respect. but the major cost to that lack of respect lies primarily with meade himself.

at first meeting the nearsighted philadelphia aristocrat, might've been taken for a presbyterian clergyman. that is, unless one approached him when he was mad. for meade possessed a volcanic temper, which did not require much to trigger. behind his back men in the ranks called try to a damned old goggle eyed snapping turtle. no one questioned meade's personal courage or confidence, but he was not a lovable or dashing commander. and his disciplinary behavior would have made george s. patton look like a wuss. meade chase down a private with a great bundle of coolies on his back, which the soldier had pilfered from a nearby farm. meade demanded to know where the court had come from, and talked

himself into such a rage that he struck him aside the dead and almost knocked him over. unabashed, the private pick himself up and nearly returned the favor. but stopped and said, if it weren't for them shoulder straps of yours, i would give you the darndest thrashing you ever had in your life. meade is just as hard on his subordinates and his superiors. i am tired of this pulling war without risks, meade declared angrily. we must encounter risk if we fight, and we cannot carry on war without fighting. yet, 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.

shadow lee's army as it moved in its great swept off into pennsylvania, but keep between the rebels and washington and the river. i can only say now that it appears to me i must move toward the river, meade road, keeping washington and baltimore well covered. only if the enemy is checked in his attempt to cross for our deterrence towards baltimore would meade try to give them battle. once lee's army turned away from the trannineteen concentrate on gettysburg care to consider his work done and his first impulse thereafter was to pull his own army back, dig it in behind pipe creek 25 miles to the southeast, and thus keep a shield in place between the confederates and the capital. he was not inclined to go

hunting for a high noon encounter with robert e. lee. having thus relieve harrisburg at philadelphia, meade concluded, it was now time to look to his own army and assume positions for offenses or defenses as occasion required, or rest to the troops. and that meant the collecting of our troops behind pipe creek. it was not meade, but john reynolds, whose picture alas i don't have up your. [laughter] unless my faithful assistant wants to click for me. yes, he did. yes, that's george meade. click samore -- click samore. there've ago, john fulton

reynolds. john reynolds was drifting to three armored car which made up the army of the potomac's left wing. and it was he who really precipitated an encounter at gettysburg. reynoldreynolds complained to at doubled to recommend one of roses divisions that if meade gave the rebels time by dilatory measures or by taking up defensive positions, they would strip pennsylvania of everything. reynolds was eager to attack the enemy at once, to prevent is pondering the whole state. in his last message to meade on july 1, last because in a few minutes the reynolds would be shot dead by a confederate skirmisher as the battle opened west of gettysburg, reynolds said while i am aware that 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. even after reynolds f., meade still tried to recall his prematurely committed troops from gettysburg. reynolds successor in command of the left wing, howard, was rumored to have received five distinct orders from general meade to withdraw his forces and not attempt to hold the position he had chosen on cemetery hill. not until meade it sent off his own eyes and ears, in the form of major general winfield scott hancock did meade finally relent and order the concentration at gettysburg even than after the battering given the army of the potomac on july 2, which rivaled antietam as the single bloodiest day of the civil war, meade was still debating whether to fall

back to pipe creek and called a war counsel of his corps commanders to consider. they refused, but not without expressing an element of surprise that meade even wanted to talk about withdrawal. good god, exclaimed the division commander in the second corps. general meade is not going to retreat, easy? know he was not, but the credit may not belong to meade as much as it does to a hefty list of line officers who time and again during the three days of the battle seize 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 to screen, samuel sprague carol, alexander webb, france's key, patrick o

rourke, strong vincent, governor warren, norman hall, george standoff, and one of you probably have heard all too much about, joshua chamberlain, these names introduced union and who over and over again with a righteous spontaneity stepped out of themselves for a moment and turned the corner or a dime as i'm inexpressibly right moment and saved the day. a self starting performances became almost routine for union officers at gettysburg. by comparison, meade's command behavior at gettysburg was almost entirely reactive. in other words, the confederates acted and he responded. but not the other way around. and above all, meade failed to run the army of northern virginia to ground at that moment when it was at the

weakest ebb 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 remained for abraham lincoln to aluminum the ultimate significance of gettysburg, and if i could have been assist from the booth, one more, and another. [laughter] in fact, let's give it the last click and we will get everything up there. do 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 limit the ultimate significance of gettysburg come in the words that he spoke at the dedication of the national cemetery laid out on cemetery hill in the months after the battle. the words of his gettysburg address have been warned so for me with usage that it may be hard now to realize the depth of meaning in lincoln's few brief remarks, all of 272 words at that dedication on november 1863. but in lincoln's mind, the fundamental significance and importance of gettysburg and the civil war led in the survival of democracy itself. and whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. remember that in 1863, democracy was by no means a given.

by no means would francis fukuyama call it into history. every experiment in democracy launched in the heyday of popular revolutions had gone up in smoke with the most smoke emerging from the french revolution. everywhere in 1863, monarchy and privilege seemed to be on the march. while the last out spokes of democracy was shooting itself through the head in a civil war. and thereby demonstrating that democracies are inherently unstable. and, argued the aristocrats, how could democracies help but be unstable? democracies are run by the consent of the governed, by the ordinary people of a nation 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 tall red and 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 others in the same way that one might own a horse or a big? lincoln, however, saw in gettysburg a rainbow in their dreariness. the war was testing as the great allen evans once put it, whether it democracy of continental dimensions and idealistic commitments could triumphantly survive for most 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 the nation and the right to self-government and the propositions around which it was built. lincoln could not look out across the semicircular avenues of the dead in that cemetery, where fully a 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 the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. and thus 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 tackling that numbers can do, but even more, gettysburg still seems for us because of the 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's waterloo? thank you very much. [applause] >> professor will take some questions and try as we might to frustrate your ability to compose a decent theater like you did at the be all and -- maybe someone can ask a question and we can frustrate them better than we were able to, thank you. >> thank you, doctor. excellent, excellent speech. my great grandfather was jasper

green of the 13th alabama, the roanoke invincible's. and was one of the 70 odd cast with archer on the day marching into allegedly -- >> according to harry keith. >> according to harry keith. i've been to your hometown. it's actually breathtaking, and, unfortunately, couldn't see where my great grandfather was captured because they're playing golf over there right now. but anyway, my point, my question is that one of the things i learned through my family history studying this is that the second wisconsin, the iron brigade, which is the unit that face the 13th alabama that they won had previously faced the 13th alabama at the stonewall inn fredericksburg,

where doubleday had been thrown off, and then they also faced, if not mistaken, at antietam in the cornfield. and it strikes me that it's highly unusual for one little regiment 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 like somebody else. [laughter] 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. but the 13th alabama, along with archer's brigade, of course marches as one of the lee units coming in to gettysburg, believing that it best what they're going to be up against is just yank the cavalry, and maybe at worst some pennsylvania

militia. and as they move down the regime into willoughby run tended to move up to the woods on the other side of the ravine, what do they see coming at them but the second wisconsin. and you hear the voices running through the alabamians, that ain't no militia. it's them black cat fellows. that's the army of the potomac. so it was a big and unpleasant surprise once again to find out not only were they facing the iron brigade again, but what was more that the army of the potomac, the infantry of the army of the potomac was there when they have 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. spent also point out one other thing. i was reviewing your book, which have already bought and wait for your autograph, is that in my

study of my own family history, my great grandfather was sent off to the island to be interred for the rest of the war at fort delaware it and when i went to fort delaware to see that area, the reenactors there from delaware historical society point out that archer was actually a prisoner at fort delaware and tried to lead a rebellion. and i noticed on your page 150, your page you don't mention the. you mention it went to ohio. so you might want to look at a revision in your paperback version. [laughter] spent he went to fort delaware along with most of the confederate prisoners after gettysburg, but since he was an officer and general officer, he was then segregated out and sent

to sandusky, ohio, where, in fact, he came down with a disease that even after he was exchange in 1864, killed him. so we are both right. [laughter] alas, unless you like me to deliver a book twice the size of the one you have, i have, there are some details i can't quite put in there. but it does give you, incidentally, somewhat of an idea of the intensity at which the battle of gettysburg has been studied. it's a tribute to the importance that gettysburg assumes in american memory that unlike almost all other civil war battles, we can get together and start talking about what individual regiments and individual companies were doing at gettysburg. almost where you can ask people, what kind of the tour would you like what you want is on the corps level, regiment level or company level? depending on how detailed you want to get, but that's 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 nerds. [laughter] and really have a fun time but by the way, that golf course, be at ease, it's 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 sort of a victory. but only in a place like gettysburg work civil war memory plays such a big role could it put a golf course out of business. >> thank you, doctor. enjoyed your talk very much. three of my ancestors had a front row seat to all of those events spent they didn't have anything to do with this, did they? >> hard to say. you place a lot of importance on the ballot and i now see in a new light as a pivotal point

would you entertain the idea that had the british not seized -- of the south still had a fighting chance to win the war and could very well have won the day? >> people sometimes ask me what i think the turning point of the civil war was. i answer, appomattox. that's the safest, because it is true, there are any number of factors even in 1864 which might appointed to a different result. suppose, for instance, that george mcclellan was elected president in the november 1864 elections rather than lincoln. at that point the confederacy militarily is bleeding from every pore, but it's still there, and with mcclellan in place the election of the club would have led almost to the opening of some kind of negotiations. once negotiations began, no one

was going to start shooting again. not after what people have gone through for the previous three years. and even as late as that point, the confederacy might still have pulled the chestnuts from the fire and achieve some kind of independence. but this is a state of extraordinary situations. it's to speak of extraordinary details that could derail a locomotive. what gettysburg i think established is that the rails and the locomotive themselves are pointed towards the station at appomattox. and barring some extraordinary intervention of some sort, then the real result is already in the cards after gettysburg. in fact, it might've come quicker and george meade been quicker. he was not, but still after that the confederacy is really fighting a series of defensive campaigns, defensive campaigns which bit by bit drained the

last of its strength the way, and make the end, if not outright inevitable, and 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 ride, because i wanted to see how you handle that and i thought it was fascinating. you quote a statement by mosby that no one could define an act that lee be -- that lee did or didn't do because of the stewart's activity. at that prospect question, really a two-part question. i'd like to analysis of mosby's comment. is that, in fact, true? has someone been able to come up with something that lee did or did not do because of stuart? been i would like to follow up on that. >> all right.

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 to look at some of them they could point a finger. they are and number of nominees, and stewart was only one of them. but over time he becomes one of the real goats of the king to end the argument runs like this. jeb stuart sets off on this joyride that he is supposed to be covering the far right flank of the army of northern virginia that he manages by his own ineptitude and vanity to get diverted around the other side of the army of the potomac, and writes himself for all practical purposes right after the campaign, thus leaving robert e. lee to fumble around blindfolded in pennsylvania and ultimately to bump into the army of northern virginia -- the army of

the potomac by accident, and the result is that he loses the battle and the south loses the war and it is all jeb stuart's fault. there are a couple problems with this. one is that lee was not rendered blindfolded by the absence of stuart. simply because cavalry in the american civil war does not function as an intelligence army. calvary in the american civil war as distinct from calvary, the function of calvary and the european army, calvary in the american civil is entirely light cavalry. in fact, its proportions are much smaller in the emergence of a were armies than they were in the european armies. and 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, individual scouts. and in the case of robert e. lee there was a third choice, northern newspapers. lee love to read northern newspapers. not because he loved northern newspapers but because the northern newspapers so obligingly printed the exact movements of the army of the potomac. so intelligence gathering with 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 army cannot mean for robert e. lee had no idea what he's doing, where he was going or what he was likely to me. lee knew very well what he was doing. even knew where jeb stuart was. in fact, he complained to georgia brown, the stepson of

richard as you'll that he'd been reading from the newspaper that stuart was writing around baltimore and washington. so anywhere stuart was. what he was irritated with about stuart was not that stuart was not providing them with intelligence but that stuart was violating the principle of concentration of forces. it was not intelligence that lee wanted to do with stuart and his calvary that he wanted, and that was what was irritating to robert e. lee. so with stuart responsible for the battles of -- the battle of gettysburg? in that respect, no. robert e. lee new exact what he's doing when he ordered the concentration of the army of northern virginia at gettysburg. rather, jeb stuart disappointed him i miss handling the role that he was supposed to have in providing screening for the right flank of the army. but it was not a case where robert e. lee lumbered into gettysburg because jeb stuart

had somehow left him blind and groping around the countryside. that became a convenient excuse for hanging the results of the gettysburg campaign on jeb stuart. that in turn is what informed john mosby's comments. mosby defended stuart and was bitterly critical of charles marshall who was lee's military secretary and the principal finger pointer at jeb stuart. after the war, marshall go back and forth back and forth and back and forth over star. stuart of course is dead. he was killed at yellow tavern in may of 1864. but mosby kept pointing out, and i think 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 i strings by j.e.b. stuart. and the decision to fight gettysburg was robert e. lee's, not by default because -- not by

the fall of j.e.b. stuart. >> the book makes a wonderful description of geography about the. i've never had it explained to me so well, the significance of cemetery hill and cemetery ridge. and the thing that amazes me is that early was there on the 26th of june, and so my question is, have lee known as early as the 26th, 27th that the army of the potomac is where it was, could he have concentrated beginning then a much better shape than he was on the first of july? >> he certainly could have, but lee does not order his concentration until the evening of the 27th of june. it's not until that point that he finally has sufficient intelligence that confirms to them that the army of the potomac is, in fact, strung out and vulnerable, that it has been lowered far enough north that he can now turn the corps from

where it was at carlisle and bring up how and long string from chambersburg where they had been decision. and bring them all together to concentrate at gettysburg and then bite off the head of the army of the potomac as it wanders on world into range. lee might've done it earlier but he didn't have a need to do that earlier. it's not until the 27th, once jewell early has moved on that lee orders of the concentration and does not, in fact, see cemetery hill because john reynolds pushes in there and seizes it first but it was a missed opportunity. >> i have heard 12, 18 hours earlier that the army of the potomac was where it was. sounds like he could have ordered that concentration of those 1 over 18 hours may have changed history spare well, more so even than 12 or 18 hours. throughout the battle of gettysburg we get intervals of

16 minutes in which the entire outcome of events things. all of which illustrates that timing is everything. >> one more question, please. >> this is not a question but a real quick story about the battle of gettysburg. we were northerners and during the battle or right before the battle, the word came that we had to get troops down there. and my answers have broken his leg, i guess who's about to recover from it, and he was called up to go down there to fight. so he started going down the, he ran into a blind man but also been called up to fight. so they got together, the blind man says i'll help you and you tell me where to go. whether it's two or not i don't know but it's come down from generations in the family. [laughter] >> one more question.

that wasn't a question. spent i don't know if i can top that, but the question i have is one of the things that you mentioned that had meade pursued and gotten in lee on the retreat, the one thing that is striking to me, compared to the napoleonic warfare is you don't have, even though gettysburg is 30 the main battle, it doesn't dissolve the none of the army's ever really dissolved. they keep falling back and make us the closest is -- [inaudible]. do you think the cohesiveness of the armies in the civil war, or is it the land or is it, what do you think caused that? >> is actually a big deal more civil and that is the ineptitude. remember that the american civil war, as much as we gaze them in the romantic you of resemblance,

as brave as they were, as honorable as they were in many respects, nevertheless these were civilians. the prewar army consisted of approximate 16,000 men. it was not much better than a frontier -- 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 involved. with the result that large parts of these armies, officers and generals fully as much as men in the ranks had never commanded 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 men while holding a tactic books in their hands.

and while that sounds at first slightly amusing, it's no joke when you're under fire. when shells are screaming overhead. the great prussian general is once supposed it said the american civil war was like to armed mobs chasing each other around the countryside. that's not very complementary. we don't like that. but it's unfortunately close to the truth. these were not well disciplined from well organized armies. one thing of course which concerned robert e. lee moving up into pennsylvania is that his army is going to turn so happily towards looting that the riches of pennsylvania will accomplish what the army of the potomac has been thus far unable to do, and that is dissolve his army into an undisciplined mob of bandits. and these armies are constantly,

they are amateurs, they are in experience, they are committed by inexperienced people. even those who are professional soldiers at the top of the armies, many of them confess that once you graduate from west point and spent the next 15 years of his life forgetting everything he had learned except how to command a company of 50 dragoons. and what was more the education he got at west point was not an education in combat and tactics, and strategy. west point was an engineering school. still lives. still is maintained under the aegis of the corps of engineers. so the education he got it was but was about building things. forts, bridges. not about combat. not about how to function. not about training. these armies, they didn't even hold target practice for the most part. something which comes to the

floor so dramatic as you remember from one part of the book where i'm talking about, you sit down and to calculate how many shots are fired versus how many actually hit the target, and the average is something would come it takes the 125 fired shots before you when somebody. well, that's not a compliment to marksmanship. that's about how well i did shooting trap. and it's all a function of the lack of discipline, lack of training. these are just not professionals. and so that ineptitude means they never quite get things together for the knockdown blow. it's kind of like watching amateur boxing. where two people who might be good at slugging each other but they just don't know quite how to bring it all to the conclusion. now, that said, these are still armies that fought the most extraordinary kind of raw

courage. it odd ulysses s. grant at shiloh, to see perfectly green volunteers, an old non, argued walking up behind and showing them how to load and fire their guns. and the extraordinary part is not that, they were there in the middle of combat and getting rifle instruction to choose all of them didn't run and break for their lives. they don't at gettysburg either. that's the remarkable thing, that in all of the ineptitude and all of the in experience, what is sublime about these soldiers is that the stubbornness and consistency with which they did their duty. not because they love the. they were not some -- got a thrill out of killing to anything but. anything but. time and again on this battlefield what you see is people are shooting at each other one moment and 10 minutes

later they're lifting of the with the other side and giving them a chance. the humanity of these soldiers is so manifest because really they are not professionals. but they were doing a job. they were performing a duty they felt they had been called to do. it was not a duty to do not want to do. they did not want to kill each other. they wanted the war to be over. they wanted peace to come, but they also wanted it to, honorably. and that sense of duty and honor is what kept them at their bloody task. and in its own way, looking back on it after these 150 years, still ennobles what they did. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> please join us in the atrium, buy a book and even buy a drink. thank you for coming. >> we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback,

twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week.

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>> here's a look at what's ahead. next, "the communicators" with robert mcchesney on the state of the internet. then secretary of state john kerry on the conflict in the african great lakes region. after that, a look at how states and the federal government are handling the approaching deadline for open enrollment of health insurance exchanges. and later we're live from the center for american progress for a discussion on the fiscal debate in washington and the role of debt and deficit reduction in economic strategy. >> on capitol hill this week, the house returns tomorrow