north is attacked, he will be there in minutes. he's flamboyant. and the problem is nobody likes guy. -- likes the guy. and grant doesn't want to work with him. albert sidney johnson is rushing over to the hornet's nest, lou wallace is raring to go. he's ready to bring the 7,000 at the critical time. grant doesn't get up to shilo until 8:30 and passes him on a boat going up river and says we'll get to you. nothing happens. lou wallace is waiting. not until 11:30 in the morning does he get the word. what does he do? he gets the word, go to the right side and reinforce where sherman is. but it's not written down. grant, not even knowing about this alternate universe that exists in the mind of lou

wallace thinks that he's going to take the river route. lou wallace thinks that he means the pike, his favorite road that he worked at. so lou wallace takes off. he gets -- the order was never written down, so this is a big moment in the history of the civil war for the next 40 years because there is no written record of directive. but lou wallace takes off and he makes wonderus progress an he's within a few thousand yards of the right side. as we know now sherman is pushed back two miles and wallace is going to come around to the rear of the confederate army. you might think that is suicidal, but if you're wallace, you think that could save the union cause on the first day by having a movement to the rear move to the unknown of the confederates, people said that the confederates would have known or he would have been wiped out.

maybe not. right when he got crossing the bridge, frantic messengers came and said, what are you doing, he said i'm going to the right to reinforce sherman, and they said sherman is all through. , they made him reverse and go all the way back, about ale roundtrip. refused to turn the army and have the rear become a front, he made a cartwheel, took an hour to do. he insisted that all of his cannons and proper order be maintained and the result he did not get to the battlefield until 7:00 in the evening. by that time the union army was not 40,000 men, it was 20,000. it was about to be pushed into the river. all afternoon grant is tearing out his hair, where is my 7,000 men. the next morning lou wallace did come, and the union army was up

to 50,000, the southerners were exhausted. they pushed the south back and won. after the battle was over, all of this recrimination was directed at grant because people could come down on the tennessee river, it was easy and they could see this horrendous scene of the 24,000 people, almost like insects crawling around the battlefield destroyed, disfigured dead everywhere. there was an outcry of how did the south surprise us? and one of the proper scapegoats was lou wallace. we wouldn't have had this happen if lou wallace had paid attention. what happened then is, of course, lou wallace being lou wallace went on a counterattack, he went to the press. henry hallock was the new chander and bad mouthed wallace. the three most powerful people in the union army hated lou wallace or in the case of

sherman was not going to do anything go. he was demoated. lost command. he ended up at the -- demoated. lost command. he ended up with his military career being over with, for the next 40 years, he died in 1905. he was known as this what if person, this man at 35 ruined his career because he couldn't find the battlefield. he went to the battlefield, he offered to draw maps and guides for the battlefield showing that his road was superior, he was given no written orders, he asked that grant change his memoirs, grant put a little footnote. one thing that lou wallace did do, was he spoke and he wrote, and he turned out to be quite a writer. some ohi good. he wrote -- in 1880 he hit on something called "ben hur," and

he wrote this will novel. if you look at the novel, the novel is a thinly illustrated metaphor for who else, lou wallace. ben hur is this energetic, young nobleman, who it is not grant who ruins his career, it is someone who lou wallace is on -- lou wallace yast misses the road, but -- lou wallace misses the road, and then others tried to destroy lou wallace, ben hur, other through perseverence and religion lou wallace becomes rich and power, and the funny thing about "ben hur" was the

zeal about shilo not only made him write the novel to get even, but it gave him the idea that he needed to promote it. lou wallace spoke everywhere, there were 20,000 productions of "ben hur" on the stage. later there would be four movies after his death. lou wallace sold 750 a week, 1,000 a week, in two years it was selling a million copies a year. it outpaced "uncle tom's cabin," it was the best-selling fiction book in american history until "gone with the wind," it create add nextus between the drama, -- nexus between the drama, novel and the movie. there were towns called ben hur, there were mugs, books with advertisements for ben hur. if you followed what loudoindur

it was the precursor to "star wars," "terminator," this idea of movie or novel or play, lou wallace was reliving shilo agai. and he said -- just to give you an example of what a strange man he was, this is in 1885 where he's the best-selling author -- by the way oliver wendall holmes don't want anything to do with this guy, it's not high-breaux literature, but to -- high-brow literature, but to american people, it was the first time it was acceptable to readas sot re created the idea average family reading literature. sort of the popular account

literature. ending by finding solace in ben hur i can bear later in 1900, 38 years after the battle when he's a worldwide celebrity, he says the awful mystery known as pittsburgh landing comes home more directly than to most of those engaged in it. oh, the lies, the lies told about me to make me the scapegoat to bear off the criminal mistakes of others, think of what i suffered. all of his letters are filled with that. shilo is responsible for ben hur, not just the plot, but the zeal to promote it. ben hur is the first example of a phenomenon that we know and recognize today of the popular novel, popular movie, popular icon of popular culture.

i would like to give you one more example. there was a fourth person there and he was a very different man than lou wallace. as the union army was being pushed into the tennessee river and it was getting late, one man in the southern side and only one man realized what was happening. lou wallace was pullinging in but he hadn't -- pulling in, but he hadn't quite gotten there yet. there was a lowly colonel. probably the most brilliant military commander in the war. he was a colonel, and he was -- he made a fortune in slave trading. he was from the lower classes of the south. people associated slave trading with the lack of breeding. he was functionly -- i don't think he was literate. he could barely write or read. he was supposed to guard a small river.

just as shilo turned a suicide into a hero or turned into a majestic man into the south's excuse for losing or turned a general into the best-selling novelist in the 19th century. shilo turned this lowly colonel into one of the most important figures in american history. first thing he did, he didn't do what he was supposed to. he left where he was guarding horses on the plank of the southern army and went in on the hornet's nest. his men road right into the fire and everybody saw it and they survived and they were partly instrumental for finally cracking the hornet's nest. at 6:00 in the evening he had this mind, it was amazing, he sized up the battle and said there is only 10,000 or 15,000 of these union soldiers left. we still have the nukeluss of

the army of 35 -- nucleus of the army 35,000 men, buehl was on the other side of the river, he said, it's now or never. the reinforcements will never come. he stalked the battlefield all hours, he went to general polling, he tried to get the southern -- polk, he tried to get the southern coma convinced that they had won, and the next morning all they would have to do is push these few remnants, this lowly colonel who had terrible grammar, couldn't read, trying to get the ariss to crats and the -- aristocrats and the successors to johnson do something.

and he realized the pattle was over when the -- battle was over, when the new troops came, they plowed into the south. there was a third incident that changed his life and changed our own lives here tonight and one was that in the final rear guard action as the southern army was leaving the battlefield on the third day, the battle was over beings they were leaving the battlefield, nathan forest took itn earp was not pursued. if the north pursued this army, they would have destroyed it. they were so sh was so much mixup and grant was so unsure what happened, that ed up and hepursue it.ff was the only man pursuing, as he had a whole brigade and forest was the only person between him

and the southern army, and he charged into sherman with 300 men. sherman had three times that number. first line fled, second line fled, forest kept charging and all of his fellow tennesseans were gone and he was in the middle of several dozen union soldiers, they were yelling kill him and one ran up and shot him numb, his horse was hit and bleeding to death. we don't know if thisi i doubt it could be trs an eyewitness at the battle said that it was true. he picked 140-pound union soldier with one man, put him back out as a shield, and he threw him down and rode off to his destiny and northerners and

southerners said who is this man that we can't kill with weapons like guns? after the battle was over, just think if there was dissension on the northern side, there was outcry in the south. the battle had been s for them to get this army undetected, to fight the first day, almost wained they messengers -- am win and they sent messengers back and to lose this battle and close down the western theater, somebody had to pay and there was a mutual recrimination, it was beuragrds fault there was one man, 1/8 around forest who not only -- nathan forest who showed him to be the bravest man. he was made brigadier and given

command in the tennessee theater and for the next three years he was quickly -- quickly came to be known as that devil forest and he embody the lightning mobile raids, he tied down over 10,000 union troops that could not stop him. he almost crippled the assault on atlanta. he never surrendered. he never surrendered to a union army. he said, men i'm going home and broke up and went back to the south. in the reconstruction, the myth making of the lost opportunity fed into nathan forest, where the slave owni much of it had been disseminated there was one man who embodied the average working who never lost and wascame a po. and uring the difficult period

of c it in 1866 and 1867 there was a suspension of habeas corpus in tenne,peple rousing out republicans an freed blacks and nobody embodied this better than forest, the undefeated man almost single handily on a horse kept the southern cause alive. look what he said. this is in 1867 with the foundation of the clue clucks clan. -- clue clucks clan. there were a bunch of southern groups trying to recapture southern -- ku klux klan. there were a bunch of southern groups trying to recapture

southern pride. but there was one, people rumored they offered it to robert e. l sub stain ated. -- sub stain there was one man the southern poor, this particular group were poor who they couldn't survive with the up ity blacks and southerners and this white supremist group was different than the other one. it did have pretensions of a plantation class and it had this new image that people were ghosts and who better to show this than the man who was at

shilo. look at what he said. there is no habeas corpus and there are thousands of troops in the south. he said i can assure you fellow citizens and he wrote this to a newspaper, i, for one, do not want anymore war. i don't want to see anymore bloodshed nor do i want to see anyone armed to shoot down white men. if there is a war upon us, i will tell you, that i shall not shoot any blacks unless i see a white radical. if they send the black men to hunt the ku klux, shoot the radicals. so he was absolutely defined, turned out that was trying to work with northern to create a

business, he was poor but to southerners he galvanized what would have been another white supremist group that wouldn't have had much success, there was something about the ku klux klan that appealed to the south and this man and this man alone had the history and the energy and the anger and the venom to make it into something that would playing american life for the next century because the secret of the ku klux klan wasn't that it was racist, there were a lot of other racist organizations, and it wasn't that it was violent, there were a lot of other violent organizations, but it had this myth that it appealed not to the wealthy but to the people who were victims and poor and the victims of northern capitalists and northern industrialists and nathan forest saw that and he played on that and he was the -- the creator in some sense of the

ku klux klan. that career started at shilo. let me try to conclude what i was trying to do in this book and that was to look at battle and to say, yes, they -- yes, wars have strategic consequences, there warfare that is tactics, but there is something different. there is something about time that is compressed. there is something about lives on the line that create impressions, mentalities, i'dologies, experiences that -- ideologies, experiences that galvanize people for the rest of their lives. i finished with an example of something that i know that we viewers have seen as quite controversial. although the book had little on 9-11, i did have five pages on it and i suggested that just as delium and okinawa and shilo had ripples, so would 9-11, whatever

your feelings are on it, i think that many of our ideas about war and peace and culture were changed on 9-11. if -- i don't know quite -- there's a hierarchy of battle. i don't know why one battle is more important than another, i know that strategy plays a role. i understand that normandy beach is important because of that. i understand that the number of people who are killed, but there's other strange factors as well. one of them perhaps you take teddy roosevelt away from san juan hill, nobody knows about it. nobody -- 215 people were killed at little big horn. one million were killed in the siege of lenangraph. so there is an unfairness that gives weight to particular battles and not others, so 9-is 1 as we in fresno, i -- 4-11, as

we in fresso --1, as we in fresno, and we have sky scrappers, had those two skyscrapers had been it would not have the same repurr indication. this was -- have the same results. this was in the nation's literary capital. people who write our books, our poems, people who dictate what our portfolios will look like, people who craft the federal reserve. all of these people were involved or could see this happen. and this will have ripples and the same thing with the pentagon. i think that it will change something about art. i'm not sure that anybody takes a piece of metal and twist it anymore and say that it is art. it will make a seriousness about literature that we may have

lost. a lot of ideology and here i think i would probably admit that most of you wouldn't agree with me, but i think that there was a slumber in american life and we had certain comparable beliefs about all cultures might be equal after 9-11, we saw that the taliban was shifted, they killed homosexuals, they killed women. they were a completely different culture, not just a different culture, but a subordinate culture. if there is an objective standard, it allows us to make a judgment. they were not the same as americans, it also, i think, shattered ideas of pathism that the great promise of the enlightenment that we could all be educated and extend education and the opportunities of education and there are reasonable people that we can agree and there is not necessarily evil in the world and we saw that osama bin laden was wealthy and that the united states had worked with muslims in kosovo in bosnia and kuwait.

the question what do we do to deserve that? is it the same to go after people in a time of war than to suffer cash uletgliss a time of peace? -- casualties in a time of peace? all of these things were brought to the table. most of us pretty much had an idea of prosperity, the economy as with clinton, inarticulate with bush, we wrl all upset, but whatever we think about, there will be -- 9-11 will be a dividing line. for those critical of bush, you will think that under clinton we were lateral, and now we're unilateral. you could think that, no, there was a series of bombings of

embassies, bombings in lebanon, bombings in yemen, and it created a dangerous complacency and that we had lost the classical idea of what the greeks would call deterrent and we're slowly regaining. whatever your political views, . whatever your political views, i think 9-11 will turn out to be just as important as shiloh. but if history demonstrates at lexington and concord, fort sumter and pearl harbor all turned america into a different nation in a matter of minutes, then why should we be less immune from 9-11. understanding of greek tragedy, art, philosophy, were changed by relatively obscure battle, why

would not the destruction of the world trade center and bombing of the pentagon not similarly alter american culture? the 5th century was ushered in by defeat, but only after the destruction. the desolation of athens itself, the effort to destroy civilization, and miraculously greek counter response. millions have had lives alter in ways we cannot grasp for centuries, as a single battle, with all its confined spaces and dreadful killing warps members of friends and family of the fallen, twisters aspirations of the veterans, and abruptly ends accomplishments of the dead. in that sense, the ripples of battle are also immune from and care little for what people like us write and read. in or outside the dominant west, they simply wash up on us all as

we speak and in ways that cannot fully be known until centuries after we are gone. thank you. [applause] be happy to entertain a couple of questions. yes. >> thank you, thank you very much for your insightful comments. i have some questions on, you see throughout history there's any common thread that can see through battles anda things, throughout history that kind of galvanizes today, and what do o how do we as people go farther beyond that to try to eliminate these things in the annuity? what do we study, in the future?

>> maybe running the risk of being run out by all of you into the parking lot, i believe that human nature is constant. it's like water. it doesn't change. the pump changes. the delivery system changes, but there's always going to be evil in the world, and what creates and lous innocent people not to end up like the people in the balkans, rowanda, is not the utopia idea you can eliminate war, but the realistic and pragmatic idea that you have to have military force to prevent killers from killing the innocent. i know that's unpopular today, so most of what i saw after 9-11 if i look back through history, it's mythological. wars are ubiquitous. more common than peace, the father of us all. we are not at a war against terror, we are at war against a method. and throughout history, people

have employed terror, and there's time honored methods to counter act it that involve the people who fund it, the people who allow sanctuary and the people who benefit by it. i wish i could say the war is the worst of all human experiences, but unfortunately, the 20th century, combined, stalin, hitler, killed more people away from the battlefield than lost in the century. more people killed in iraq and after than three weeks of so-called war. war is amoral. it has no morality unless you look at the moral landscape that surrounds it. what is it waged for, how many people are lost, how was it conducted, what are the ultimate ramifications, so there are such things as we say in latin, just war. but i am afraid that everybody time somebody talks about ending a war or turning to a world peace keeper or policeman,