was born to wander and i was born to sit. to love home, with a sometimes almost unbearable affection. but to be lured out in into the world to see how it is doing as my beloved, larger home, and paradise. >> watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. next, helen gelso director of civil war era studies at gettysburg studies, recounts the battle of get at thisburg and which resulted in over 50,000 casualties. this year marks the 150th anniversary of the conflict. [applause]

>> thanks to sheffield and members of the at lant at this history and lecture fund and making it possible to for me to come visit again in atlanta, this beautiful jewel of a city. what is pleasure it is to be here especially at the atlanta history center, so devoted as it is to the study of the history of this city, of 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 webb, declared, that the battle of gettysburg was, and is now throughout the world, known to be the waterloo of the rebellion certainly alex webb earned 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 minuteman 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 their brutal, three-day hammering at gettysburg. and it fell to webb in particular to command the union brigade which absorbed the spear point of the battle's climax, the great charge, made by the rebel divisions commanded by george e. picket. webb would survive gettysburg and a nearly fatal wound to the head a year after and 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 days contest webb announced was a constant

recurrence of scenes of self-sacrifice, and especially on the part of all engaged 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 suffer being from a touch of memory my opie yaw? inflating the risk all experiences of his youth under the pressures of peacetime middle age. the name of gettysburg is still powerful enough to register in the recognition of even the most reluctant grade schooler as a 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 fate, or of a 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 war and their independence. in the first 10 months of the civil war from april 1861 to february 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. they elect ad president, jefferson davis, and there hastily assembled army defeated an equally hastily assembled united states army at bull run in virginia. but in the early spring of 1862 the current began to swerve. union armies and the union navy reconquered all but a few stretches of the mississippi river valley and reoccupied western tennessee.

in the east robert e. lee, led his ragtag confederate forces, the army of northern virginia, to one victory after another over their opposite number, the union army of the potomac but the victories were all won on virginia soil. and in feeble, the virginia economy even as they defended it. lee knew better than any southerner that the confederacy's resources were too limited to keep fending off the confederacies enemies indefinitely. only by carrying the war into the union states, and only by leveraging the war-weariness of the union voting public into peace negotiations could the confederacy hope to win. but this was by no means a farfetched hope. in the fall of 1862 dissension over president abraham lincoln's

emancipation proclamation caused unhappy voters in new york and new jersey to install democratic governors there. a new round of antiwar, democratic candidates, were due to run in the fall of 1863 governors elections in ohio and pennsylvania. if those states also turned against the war, they could force abraham lincoln either to begin peace talks or to resign. so lee's army, some 85,000 strong, struck northward in the first week of june, crossing the potomac river, and sweeping in a long arc up the cumberland valley, until his advance guard was perched on the susquehanna river overlooking the pennsylvania state capital of harrisburg. lee's real goal however was not harrisburg. what lee really hoped was to

lure the army of the potomac northwards after him, and as soon as the yankees had strung themselves out on the roads beyond their ability to help each effort, to turn and smash the straggling parts of the union army piece by piece. and even if all he did was to lead the union army of the potomac a merry chase around central pennsylvania, he could simply let the politics of disheartenment take their own course thereafter. it nearly worked. the morale of the army was never more favorable for offensive or defensive operations wrote one virginian. vick troy will inevitably attend our arms in nifco legs with the enemy. true to lee's expectation the 59,000 men of the army of the potomac, panting and uncertain,

set off after lee and soon as lee was satisfied that they had franticallyar disapray, lee ordd concentration of his own army at gebu ready to pounce upon on the first parts of the army of the potomac which obligely wandered within his reach but the lead elements of the army of potomac got to gettysburg first. when lee's own advance units arrived there on jewel 1st, they found union troops holding on to the ground there for dear life. true, there were not many of them, only three of the army of the potomac's seven infantry corps. and on jewel 1st, lee's army was able to clear them out 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. lee assumed that he could wait

for daylight to finish the job, but by the morning of july 2nd, three more infantry corps of the army of the potomac had raced to gettysburg and lee was forced to mount a bloody and ambitious assault on a series of union positions. the peach orchard, the wheat field, little round top, whose bland and harmless names belied the vicious character of the fighting that raged around them. lee's attack on july 2nd came with within an ace of succeeding. so on the next day, he launched what he assumed would be the knock-down blow for a union army already clearly on the ropes. lee sent three divisions of rebel infantry straight at the vital nape of the union army's neck just behind cemetery hill.

the rebels indeed 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 back 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 that the south has ever made wrote one confederate survivor. 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 literary messenger,

there is great depression. and in many states, positive disaffection. it did not brighten 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've hit something. [laughter] that's what captain smith said on the titanic. [laughter] now i've hit something else. [laughter] do we, 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. [laughter] well, i saw him galloping at one point. maybe he will come in the other door. or he is going to come in behind me. you see? [laughing] that wasn't the question i wanted to hear him ask. [laughter] well, i'll go on and we'll 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 shown for the south again. but there were other costs for the confederacy imposed by gettysburg beyond the simple fact of defeat and discouragement and disheartenment. the army of northern virginia reported 2592 killed, 12,700 wounded and 4150 captured or missing after gettysburg. 20,450 casualties in all, based on the data that we have collected by the army of northern virginia's chief medical officer, lafayette guild. i clec's lex webb has come back.

that's encouraging. but the mouse i was going to click has not. [laughing] there you go. [laughter] [applause] powerful little thing, isn't it? there are the numbers. they look even worse in cold print. given the inadequacy of military record keeping in the civil war, there were for instance, no graves registration units, 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 list, 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 chains of command in the army of northern virginia. of lie's 52 generals at gettysburg, a third of them became casualties of some sort. in the 18th virginia, 29 of the regiments's 31 officers were killed or wounded. in the 8th virginia, the colonel, lieutenant colonel and major were all wounded and three company captains killed and two captured. john bell hood's division, lost the colonels of the is 2nd, 9th and 20th georgia while in joseph kershaw's

south carolina brigade, two more regimental commanders were killed. jubal early's division lost a brigade commander, isaac avery, who was mortally wounded and died in a farmhouse that still stands on the battlefield along with the colonels of the 8th louisiana, and 38th georgia. robert rhodes's division saw three colonels killed and seven wounded, two of them were also captured. ambrose powell hill's corps reeled from the worst hits to senior officers. four of the five colonels in wilcox's alabama brigade were wounded alongside two in ambrose wright's georgia brigade. worst of all, everyone of the colonels in james johnston pedigruew north carolina brigade was killed, oned or captured as well as all those of joe davis's

mississippi and north carolina brigade. as individuals, all of these officer casualties could be replaced but their 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 even higher costs on the union army. george gordon mead 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, 143,529 wounded, and

5365 captured or missing. in his testimony before a congressional commit the following spring, meade simply rounded 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 buchers bill edged up to 28,063. michael jacobs, a mathematics professor at pennsylvania college, which was located on the northern outskirts of gettysburg estimated that there

were 9,000 dead after the two armies moved on. if we grant jacobs his high-end estimate, and he was a mathematics professor, and accept a ratio based on the official statistics of 5 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 at waterloo. and like the confederates, the damage to the upper command echelon was substantial. one major general commanding a corps was killed, john reynolds of the first corps and another

was mangled and put out of action, dan sickels, of the third corps. even with those costs, gettysburg meant something entirely different for the union. what do the people of the north think now of the old army of the potomac, exalted a soldier in the 28th pennsylvania? john white geary who command ad division in the 12th corps wrote 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 of pupilage in the art of war were over, exalted a contributor to the new englander and yale review. then at last we could develop and direct our forces, coming as gettysburg, hand in hand with the victory at vicksburg, lincoln's chief of staff, john george nicolay noticed, how

public feeling has been wonderfully improved and buoyed up by our recent successes at gettysburg and vicksburg. lincoln himself was exaltant. he address ad 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 4th of july for the first time in the history of the world a 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-eviden truth had now put cohorts that opposed declaration that all men are created equal on the run.

even the newspapers credit that, any escape from our army will be a matter of great difficulty. and the newspapers predicted that if lee was pursued. a great and incisive victory over the ininsurge ants would follow. at better way for importance of gettysburg for granting the union a second wind could would be to consider what the alternative might have been. richard henry dana, the prominent boston lawyer and literary lion, believed that gettysburg was the 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 union's last defeat. had lee gained that battle, dana wrote, the democrats would have

risen and stopped the war, with a city of new york and governor horatio seymour and governor joel parker in new jersey and a majority in pennsylvania as they then would have had, they would have so crippled us as to end the contest. that they would have attempted it we at home know. that would have 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 been whipped at gettysburg, it would have dissolved. doubtless some of the other volunteer rim held together and made some sort of retreat toward the susquehanna but the others would simply have desertedden mass in much the same way that napoleon's army disintegrated after waterloo, leaving the rebel chief taken at liberty to

go where and do what he pleased that in turn would have been the cue for mob rule over the whole chain of atlantic cities 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 10 days after the battle. if robert e. lee had been crossing with the army of northern virginia, the susquehanna 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 their 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 hoped that lincoln could be persuaded to revoke emancipation. 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 conderate 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, knock-down blow was struck at the rebels. and lee's damaged army, which was able to slip across the potomac on improvised bridges and through barely usable fords. we had them in our grasp, lincoln wailed. we had only to stretch forth our hand and they were our. a great deal of the blame for lee's escape was laid by lincoln at by others at the feet of

george meade. i do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in lee's escape. lincoln wrote to meade. the image of the unclosed hand came to him. he was within your easy grasp and to have closed upon him would in connection with our other late successes have ended the war. but deciding instead to be grateful for what meade had actually won at gettysburg, lincoln filed the letter away, scribbling on the envelope, to general meade, never sent or signed. but the failure to make get tisburg the complete victory lincoln had been hoping for always hung like a cloud over the unhappy george mead. 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 found it, 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 meade automatic deference. on those ground there had 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 portrayed him as the rodney dangerfield of civil war generals. he gets no respect. but the major cause for that lack of respect lies primarily with meade himself. at first meeting, the near-sighted philadelphia

aristocrat might have been taken for a presbyterian clergyman. that is, unless one approached him when he was mad, for meade possess ad volume cantic temper which it did not require much to trigger. behind his back, men in the ranks called meade, a damned old, goggle eyed snapping turtle. no one questioned meade's personal courage or competence but he was not a loveable or dashing commander. and his disciplinary behavior? would have made george s. patton look like a wuss. in october of 1862 meade chased down a private with a great bundle of corn leaves on his back, which the soldier had pilfered from a nearby farm. meade demanded to know where the corn 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 nearly returned the favor. but stopped and said, if it weren't for them shoulder stripes of yorn i would give you the darnedested thrashing you ever had in your life. meade was just as hard on his subordinates and his superiors. i am tired of this playing war without risks meade declared angrily. we must encorner risks if we fight and we can not win the war without fighting. the fiery temper but ironically the same aivers to taking risks that he complained about in other generals. once in command of the army of potomac, he saw his task as purely defensive. shadow, 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, now that it appears to me i must move toward the susquehanna, meade wrote. keeping washington and baltimore well-covered. only if the enemy is checked in his advance towards the susquehanna, or turn towards baltimore, would meade try to give him battle. once lee's army turned away from the susquehanna, to concentrate near gettysburg, meade considered his work done and first impulse was to pull his own army back or behind pipe creek, 25 miles to the southeast and thus keep a shield in place between the confederates and the capital. .

[laughter] >> unless my faithful assistant wants to click for me -- [laughter] yes, he did. yes, but that's george mead. [laughter] 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 admiral doubleday that if mead 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 his plundering the whole state. in his last message to mead on july 1st -- last because in a few minutes 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' death, mead still tried to recall his prematurely-committed troops from gettysburg. reynolds' successor, oliver otis howard, was rumored to have received five distinct orders from general mead to withdraw his forces and not attempt to hold the position he had chosen on cemetery hill. not until mead had sent off his own eyes and ears to gettysburg in the form of major genuinefield scott hancock did mead finally relent and order a concentration at gettysburg. even then after the battering given the army of the potomac on july 2nd which rivaled antitam as the single bloodiest day of the war, mead was still debating whether to fall back to pipe creek and called a war council

of his core commanders to consider it. they refused. but not without expressing an element of surprise that mead even wanted to talk about withdrawal. good god, exclaimed the division commander in the second corps, general mead is not going to retreat, is he? no, he was not. but the credit may not belong to mead 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 sears green, samuel carroll, alexander webb, francis heath, patrick o'rourke, strom vincent, governor warren, norman hall,

george standhart and one whom you probably have heard all too much about, joshua chamberlain. these names introduce union men who over and over again with miraculous spontaneity stepped out of themselves for a moment and turned a corner or a dime at some inexpress my right moment and saved the day. these self-starting performances became almost routine for union officers at gettysburg. by comparison, mead's command behavior at gettysburg was almost entirely reactive. in other words, the confederates acted, and he responded. but not the other way round. and above all, mead failed to run the army of northern virginia to ground. at that moment when it was at the weakest ebb it would ever

see. taking a little of his own advice about risks might have made george mead the most famous general in american history. it remained, for abraham lincoln, to illumine the ultimate significance of gettysburg. and here if i could have an assist from the booth. [laughter] one more. and another. [laughter] in fact, let's give it the last click, and we'll get everything up there. you see what a wonderful place the atlanta history center is? [laughter] i just say something, and it, it appears. marvelous. if only my students and class could deliver like that. [laughter] 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, the words of his gettysburg address have been worn so familiar with usage that it may be hard now to realize the depths of meaning in lincoln's few brief remarks. all of 272 words. at that dedication in november, 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. remember that in 1863 democracy was by no means a given, by no means what francis fukuyama

called the end of history. far from it. every experiment in democracy launched in the hayof popular revolutions had gone up in smoke with smoke emerging from the french revolution. everywhere in 1863. monarchy and privilege seemed to be on the march. while the last outpost of democracy was obligingly 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 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 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 others in the same way that one might own a horse or a pig? lincoln, however, saw in gettysburg a rainbow in the dreariness. the war was testing, as the great alan neverrens once put it, whether a democracy of continental dimensions and idealistic commitments could triumphantly survive or midwest ignobly perish -- or must ignobly perish. 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 semi-circular 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 that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. and thus insure 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. be 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 past any calculating that numbers can do. but even more, gettysburg still sings for us because of how abraham lincoln translated the war 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] >> the professor will take some questions, and try as we might to frustrate your ability to promote the eastern theater like you did as the be all and end all of the civil war, maybe somebody can ask a question, and we'll be able to frustrate him better than we were able to. thank you. >> thank you, doctor. that was an excellent, excellent speech. my great grandfather was jasper green, the 13th alabama, the

roanoke invincibles. and he was one of the 70 odd that was captured with archer on the day marching many to allegedly pick up shoes. i -- >> according to harry heath. >> according to harry heath. i've been, i've been to your hometown. it's absolutely breathtaking and unfortunately, i couldn't see where my great grandfather was captured because they're playing golf over there right now. [laughter] so anyway, my point -- my question is that one of the things i learned through my family history studying this is that the 2nd wisconsin, the iron brigade which is the unit that faced the 13th alabama on that day one had previously faced the 13th alabama at the stone wall in fredericksburg where doubleday had been thrown off, and then they'd also faced them,

if i'm 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? [laughter] >> somebody didn't like somebody else. [laughter] is there a particular reason? probably not. probably not. millions you know something -- 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, one of the lead units coming into gettysburg believing at best what they're going to be up against is just yankee cavalry and maybe at worst some pennsylvania militia. and as they move down the ravine

into will loby run intending to move up into the woods on the other side of the ravine, what do they see coming at them but the 2nd wisconsin. and you hear the voices running through the alabamians: that ain't no militia, it's them black hat fellers. 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 to toe mack, the infantry of the army of the potomac was there when they had been assured that no elements of the army of the potomac were anything closer that a cay's -- than a day's march away. that was the ultimate, big surprise at gettysburg. the 2nd wisconsin was simply the means of delivering it. >> may i also point out one other thing. i was reviewing your book here, which i've already bought and waiting for your autograph -- [laughter] is that in my study of my own

family history my great grandfather was sent off to pea patch island to be interred for the rest of the war at fort delaware. and when i went to fort delaware to see that area, the reenactors there from the delaware historical society pointed 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 that. you mention he went to ohio. so you might want to look at a recession in -- revision in your, a revision in your paperback version. [laughter] >> he went to fort delaware along with most of the confederate prisoners after gettysburg. but since he was an officer and a general officer, he was then segregated out and sent to san san -- sandusky, ohio, where, in fact, he came down with a disease that even after he was

exchanged in 1864 killed him. so we're both right. [laughter] alas, unless you would like me to deliver a book twice the size of the one you have -- [laughter] i have, there's 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 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, well, what kind of a tour would you like? do you want this on the corps level, brigade level, regiment level or company level? depending on how details -- detailed you want to get. but that's 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, by the way, that golf course -- be at ease, it's gone. the gettysburg country club went bankrupt. [laughter] 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. of but only in a place like gettysburg where civil war memory plays such a big role could it put a golf course out of business. [laughter] >> thank you, dr. guelzo, enjoyed your talk very much. three of my ancestors had a front row seat to all those events. >> they didn't have anything to do with this, did they? [laughter] just checking. >> you mace a lot of importance on the -- place a lot of importance on the battle, and i now see it in a new light as a pivotal point, but would you entertain the idea that had the

british not seized the rams that the south had a chance to win the war is and could well have won the day? >> people sometimes can ask me what i think the turning point of the civil war was. i answer: apmatics. [laughter] that's the safest. because it is true. there are any number of factors even in 1864 which might have pointed to a different result. suppose be, for instance, that george mcclelland 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 mcclelland in place, the election of mcclelland would have led 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 had 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 achieved some kind of independence. but this is to speak of extraordinary situations, it's to speak of extraordinary details that could derail the locomotive. what gettysburg, i think, established is that the rails and the locomotive themselves are pointing toward the station at ap maddux. and barring some extraordinary intervention of some sort, then the real result was already in the cards after gettysburg. in fact, it might have congresswoman quicker had george mead been quicker. he was not, but still. after that the confederacy is really fighting a series of defensive campaigns, defense you have campaigns -- defensive campaigns which bit by bit drain the last of its strength away

and make the end if not outright inevitable, then about as predictable as we can make historical events be. >> okay, thank you. >> 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 would handle that, and i thought it was fascinating. you quote a statement by moseby that no one could define and act that lee did or didn't do because of stewart's activities. and that prompts my question which is really a two-part question. i'd like your analysis of moseby'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 stewart's absence? and then i'd like to follow up on that. >> all right. the story of jeb stewart 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. they were looking for blame. they were looking at someone to whom they could point the finger. now, actually, 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: jeb stewart sets off on this joyride that he is supposed to be covering the far right flank of the army of northern virginia, but he manages by his own ineptitude and vanity to get diverted around the other side of the army of the potomac and rides himself, for all practical purposes, right out of the campaign. thus leaving robert e. lee to fumble around blindfolded in pennsylvania and ultimately to bump into the army of northern virginia -- rather, the army of the potomac by schedule, and the result is that he loses the battle, and the south loses the

war, and it 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 cavalry, the function of cavalry in the european armies of the 19th 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. and the chief functions of light cavalry are twofold; screening and raiding. stewart 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 source, northern newspapers. lee loved to read northern newspapers not because he loved northern newspapers, but because the northern newspapers so bligeingly printed the exact movements of the army of the potomac in their columns. so intelligence gathering was something that came from other sources, not from jeb stewart. the fact that jeb stewart rode himself as foolishly as he did, as recklessly as he did out of contact with lee's army did not mean that robert e. lee had no idea what he was doing, where he was going. lee knew very well what he was doing. he even knew where jeb stewart was. in fact, he complained to george campbell brown, the stepson of richard s.uhl and one of uhl's staffers that he had been

reading from the newspapers that stewart was riding around baltimore and washington. so he knew where stewart was. what he was irritated with about stewart was not that stewart 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 stewart and his cavalry that he wanted, and that was what was irritating robert e. lee so was stewart responsible for the battle of gettysburg? in that respect, no. no. robert e. lee knew exactly what he was doing when he ordered the concentration of the army of northern virginia at gettysburg. rather, jeb stewart disappointed him by mishandling the role that 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 jeb stewart somehow had left him blind and groping around the countryside. that became a convenient excuse

for hanging the results of the gettysburg campaign on jeb stewart. that, in turn, is what informed john mos eby's comments. moseby defended stewart and was bitterly critical of charles marshall who was lee's military secretary and the principal finger pointer at jeb stewart. after the war moseby and marshall go back and fort, back and forth over stewart: stewart, of course, is dead. he was mortally wounded in may of 1864. but mosing eby kept pointing out, and i think much to the point, that stewart's absence was not a critical factor in rhee's decision to -- lee's decision to fight at gettysburg. lee knew what he was doing. he was not being led on strings by jeb stewart, and the decision to fight at gettysburg was robert e. lee's, not by default because of jeb stewart. >> let me explore with you something.

the book makes a wonderful description of the geography of the battlefield. 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, had lee known as early as the 26th, the 27th that the army of the potomac was where it was, could he have concentrated beginning then and been in much better shape than he was on the 1st of july? >> oh, 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 him that the army of the potomac is, in fact, strung out and vulnerable, that it has been lured far enough north that he can now turn richard uhl's corps from where it was at carlyle and bring up powell hill and james

longstreet from chambersburg where they had been positioned and bring them all together to copse trait at getties -- concentrate at gettysburg and then 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 a need to do that earlier. it's not until the 27th, once early has moved on, that lee orders the concentration and does not, in fact, seize cemetery hill because john reynolds pushes in there and seizes it first. it was a missed opportunity in that respect. >> he had heard 12-18 hours earlier that the army of the potomac was where it was. it sounded like he could have ordered that concentration in those 12 or 18 hours might have changed. >> well, more so even than 12 or 18 hours, throughout the battle of gettysburg you get intervals of 15 minutes in which the

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

that, but the question is i have is one of the things that had me kind of hit lee on the retreat, the one thing that's striking to me in looking at the civil war history compared to no pole ontic warfare is you don't have -- even though gettysburg is clearly the site of the battle, you don't have annihilation -- like you said, none of the armies ever really dissolve, they keep falling back, and i think the closest is nashville where you see the army scatter apart. >> yeah, yeah. >> what do you think causes the bigger cohesiveness of the armies in the civil war? was it the land or what, what do you think drives that is? >> it's actually something a good deal more simple, and that is ineptitude. [laughter] remember that the american civil war armies as much as we bathe them in the romantic hue of remembrance, brave as they were, honorable as they were in

respects, nevertheless, these were civilians. the pre-war army consisted of approximately 16,000 men. it was not much better than a frontier constabulary. there was no existing structure, no cadres of existing non-coms or anything for newly-recruited volunteers to move into. everything had to be made up on the spot. everything was improv. with the result that large parts of these armies, officers and generals fully as much as men in the ranks, never commanded large formations before in their lives. many of them have only the dimmest idea of what her doing. what they are doing. some of them are drilling their men while holding the tactics books in their hands. and while that sounds at first slightly amusing, it's no joke

when you're under fire, when the shells are screaming overhead. the great prussian general is once supposed to have said that the american civil war was like two armed mobs chasing each other around the countryside. that's not very complimentary. we don't like that. but it's unfortunately close to the truth. these were not well-disciplined, well-organized armies. one thing, of course, which concerns 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 undies palined mob of bandits. and these armies are constantly teetering on the brink of that. they are amateurs, they are

commanded by inexperienced people. even those who were professional soldiers at the top of the armies, many of them -- like dick uhl, for instance, confessed that once he graduated from west point, he 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 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. so the education you got at west point was about building things; forts, bridges. not about combat. not about how to function. not about training. in this, in these armies they didn't even hold target practice for the post part -- for the most part, something which comes to the fore so dramatically as you'll remember one part of the

book where i'm talking about you sit there and you calculate how many shots are fired versus how many actually hit a target, and the average is something like it takes about 125 fired shots before you wing somebody. boy, that's not a compliment to -- [laughter] to marksmanship. that's about, that's about how well i do shooting trap. [laughter] 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. two people who might be good at slugging each other, but they just don't know quite how to bring it all to a conclusion. now that said, these were still armies that fought with the most extraordinary kind of raw courage. it awed ulysses grant at shiloh

to see perfectly green volunteers in the line and an old non-com or two walking up and down behind them showing them how to load and fire their guns. and the extraordinary part is not that they had, that they were there in the middle of combat getting rifle instruction, it was just all of them didn't break and run for their lives. they didn't. and they don't at gettysburg either. that's the remarkable thing, that in all of the ineptitude, in all of the inexperience what is sublime about these soldiers is the stubbornness and consistency with which they did their duty. not because they loved it. they were not some kind of pray torian guard which got a thrill out of killing. anything but. anything but. time and again on this battlefield what you see is people are shooting at each other one moment, and ten minutes later they're lifting up the wounded on the other side and giving them a canteen of

water. the humanity of these soldiers so manifest because, really, they were 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 they wanted 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 come 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 -- [applause] >> please join us in the atrium, buy a book and even buy a drink. look forward to seeing you in there. >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> has written her first book?

"knocking on heaven's door, is the name. who was jeffrey butler? >> guest: well, jeffrey butler was my father, and you're holding up a picture of him and me in a very loving position. he was a world war ii veteran. he lost his arm in the war. he had amazing guts. he built floor to ceiling bookcases for our living room with only one arm which was just amazing, and he was a professor of history -- >> host: where'd he teach? >> guest: he taught at wesleyan university in connecticut, and he lived a very long, full, happy and vigorous life. >> host: what were the last couple years of his life like? >> guest: when he was 79, e had a devastating stroke. but he didn't die until he was 85 at a time when actually his death would have been a mercy and a blessing. because he was given a pacemaker a year after this devastating stroke, and the result was, frankly, that his heart kept

going while he descended into dementia and near blindness and misery. and actually said to my mother, i'm living too long. so those last five years of his life were, frankly, terrible. >> host: when the pacemaker was put in at age 80, what was the family's thought about that? >> guest: i think it was a combination of ignorance and denial. there was no real conversation with the doctor about whether or not to do it or what the long-term implications of doing this would be or the moral implications or what my father's choices were. essentially, the doctors just said he has a slow heartbeat, so we're putting in a pacemaker. and the result was that my mother, i talked to her about it quite a bit later, and she said i was still in denial, i still had hope that somehow he could recover from the stroke. and i was the daughter on the far can coast and quite ignorant

about medicine then. and i really figured it was their decision, it was up to them. if i had it to do over again, though, i think i would have more proactive at that early stage. i would have done a lot more research, i would have understood better what we were up against. yeah. >> host: well, if you had chosen to take out the pacemaker after two years, could you do that? >> well, it's an interesting question. first of all, it wouldn't have had to have been taken out. it could actually be disabled with just a little remote radio device that would deactivate it, so it was actually a painless procedure x. the cardiologist associations have now put out a statement saying that it is not euthanasia, it's not assisted suicide, it's perfectly porl and legal to have a pacemaker disabled. unfortunately, that statement came very, very late in the process for us. so i think it's an area where medicine is still kind of

groping for answers and doesn't really know how to each discuss these questions. and maybe we as a culture, we're just not -- we don't, we don't really know how to do it yet, you know? >> host: katy butler, what did your parents, both your mom and your dad died, what did the end of their life care cost? >> guest: it's a very interesting question. neither of them had highly expensive deaths. if you look at my father's last five or six years of life, you get to probably about $80,000 worth. a pacemaker, that kind of stuff. my mother, on the other hand, very close to the end of her life refused open heart surgery, and then she had a heart attack, and the doctors again said let's do open heart surgery -- >> host: how old was she? >> guest: she was 84 at that point. and if we had done the surgeries they recommended, it would have cost medicare $80-$100,000, but

she declined all that. so her death i would say was probably a $10 or $20,000 death because she was in hospice, she declined most extraordinary intervention. so we got a roth of social work, a lot of reassurance from a medical team, but we didn't get high-tech, expensive interventions. >> host: are there people who choose all meds possible to sustain life? >> guest: yes. >> host: why? >> guest: i think there's a couple reasons. one is that we just have to allow everyone their choice and their range of autonomy as hay approach their own death -- as they approach their own death. but i think the other reason is we have a terror and ignorance of death now. people died randomly throughout the life span, and they actually read books with titles like "the art of dying." they actually considered it part of a spiritual obligation to

prepare themselves for their own death. so they were very good on acceptance, bravery and courage that it takes to die, to face your death head on. and we really lost all that in the 1950s and '60s when we became so adept at life saving and life prolonging. >> host: has death become an industry? >> guest: wow, what a question. it's -- medicine has become an industry. and high-tech fixes, however expensive they are, can be very, very appropriate especially in early stages of life. we really can face people who would have died a hundred years ago. but towards the end of life it's actually, unfortunately, we've structured our medical system so it's actually profitable for a hospital or a device manufacturer to put a device in someone that is totally inappropriate, to prolong a death in an icu that's totally inappropriate for that particular person.

>> host: as medical techniques advance and advance and advance, at what point do the heart, lungs, at what point does that constitute life? >> guest: well, i think that's a really good question. and, again, before the 1950s you couldn't preserve one organ. you couldn't make a heart keep going without the rest of the body functioning. and now we can keep any single organ functioning or several of them at once when the person has no brain, perhaps no seven sense of self, perhaps the soul has already fled the body, and yet we're so fixated on the idea that pink skin made a heart beating is, in fact, life. and i think, unfortunately, we don't have language to discuss this, and we have put simple maximum longevity on an altar instead of worshiping true love, true relationships, the importance of bravery and spiritual acceptance towards the

end of life. so that people can have meaningful deaths but don't leave their families traumatized. >> host: in "knocking on heaven's door," you write: doctors are often insulted by the suggestion that financial strictures help shape their medical treatment. economic incentives and disincentives along with discomfort with dying, the fear of being sued or accused of conducting a death panel and feelings of professional failure encourage specialists to refer patients to hospice care only days before death. >> it's sad but true. half of the people who enter hospice be are there for only the last 14 days of their life or less. and, for example, an oncologist who suggests yet another round of futile chemotherapy will get 6% of the price t o