>> live on american history tv all day at the library of virginia, which in conjunction with museum of confederacy is asking the question who would be the person of the year, 1862, following after what "time" magazine does with person of the year. we've heard from three historians so far including james mcpherson and we'll give you a chance to speak to the professor in just a moment. the nomination from robert krick was stonewall jackson. david blight choosing fed rick douglas and james mcpherson with david furrogate. the phone lines will be open in just a moment. make sure you mute your television when you call in. you can send us a tweet. our hash tag today if you want

to jot this down is poty1862. post your choice for person of the year on facebook. facebook.com/cspan is where you go. ben says that his choice would be greely and second choice would be robert e. lee. on facebook a look at our facebook page, james saying that it's george. let's go back to the library and james mcpherson who just nominated admiral david furagate. he would be the only admiral on that list. you talked in your speech about

the political implications of his victories in 1862. were they the main reason that france and britain looked at the confederacy that year. >> certainly the main reason why they delayed what looked like would be recognition in the spring of 1862. the capture of new orleans was the most important in a series of union victories that caused them to back off. then of course during the summer the confederate victories in the seven days and second manassas and invasion of kentucky especially of maryland by robert e. lee's army revived that prospect of european recognition. they were prepared to go ahead

but awaiting the outcome of lee's invasion of maryland and lee's defeat or at least being turned back after the battle caused them to back off again. i think there were two points in 1862. the first one was in the spring and faragate victory was a major factor in causing them to back off then and then six months or so later and that turned out to be the closest confederacy ever got to european recognition. >> do you think it was a mistake for faragte to press to vicksburg as soon as he did after the victories at new orleans? >> i think he thought it was a mistake but he was under orders to do so. after capturing new orleans he had sent a message to washington implying that he was going to go

after mobile next and immediately got a reply from washington to follow his initial orders that gaining control of the mississippi valley was far more important at that stage than mobile so he did it again his own wishes. >> we have plenty of phone callers waiting to ask you questions. let's go to california. hi there. >> caller: hello. >> you're on the air. >> caller: all right. unfortunately i did not get to see the scholar to nominated robert e. lee so i would like to briefly comment on that myself to at least get your response to that. >> robert e. lee in this forum has not been nominated today. >> caller: i would like to play devil's advocate. >> go ahead. >> caller: he simply was the most important figure in the war. let's not forget that he had --

i'll be brief. he had four very important battles. by not losing the battle which very nearly did happen, he saved the confederacy that could hardly live with destruction over northern virginia and had crushing victories. >> i'm going to let you go and let jim mcpherson replay on what do you think of his case on robert e. lee? >> well, tell him to stay tuned. there are two more nominations to come this afternoon. we may hear about robert e. lee yet. i would say that he certainly has a good case. in the end the war was won by the union and they played a crucial role in that victory and

admiral farragut was the naval officer so i would rest my case on the leader who ultimately helped win the war. >> another california caller. west lake village. this is john. >> caller: i look at your audience of old primarily southern faces and i see this spike in the interest in the civil war. and i would like to ask what this says about the country and old issues and phrases that motivated the civil war have become part of the current lexicon. my question is what does the legacy of the civil war say to us today in terms of where this

country is. >> well, there are many legacies of the civil war. the most important one is that the united states is still one nation and not divided into two or more nations, which would have been the case if the confederacy had succeeded. i think probably success by the confedera confederacy establishing an independent nation would have created a precedent whereby disinfected minority regions might in the future invoked that precedent. of course the other major result of the war as oblition of slavery and series of constitutional amendments and laws passed during and after the civil war that created constitutional equality for all people and that made it possible

140 some years later for an african-american to be elected president of the united states, which of course is another important legacy. it's quite true that many of the issues that divided country in the middle of the 19th century are still with us today either latent or active and that represents a kind of continuing struggle in this country to fulfill the ideas that were launched, i think, by northern victory in the war. >> our guest is professor james mcpherson, professor at princeon university and he's one of the five historians speaking today at the library of virginia making their nominations and their cases for person of the year, 1862, as the nation recognizes the 150th anniversary of the civil war. here's bob in washington d.c. go ahead. >> caller: professor mcpherson,

i want to thank you for your major contributions to american scholarship on the civil war. do i recall correctly that it was farragut who said full speed ahead or if it wasn't him or was that done at mobile bay? second question i have is after mobile bay, is -- do anything outside of the gulf switch his efforts to atlantic coast? >> you're right in your first assumption. it wasn't mobile bay when he said damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. that happened as the fleet that he commanded was in the process of passing the forts that protected the entrance to mobile bay and one of the union ships, an ironclad, a brand new ironclad, hit a torpedo which is what they called naval mines then. went to the bottom immediately with the lost of its whole crew and the whole union fleet came

to a halt under the guns of the fort and farragut taking the risk of going through the mine field said damned the torpedoes, full steam ahead. fortunately for them none of the other mines exploded. many of them had been rendered harmless by the powder soaking or broken loose from strong currents. he didn't know that. he was willing to take the risk. he was a risk taker. he was then asked after capturing mobile bay and shutting that down as one of the last of the blockade running ports for the confederacy, was asked to take command of the fleet that was going to attack in north carolina which guarded the entrance to wilmington which was now the last blockade running port. his health had broken down over his hard service for the

previous 2 1/2, 3 years. so he asked to take a leave of absence and instead secretary of the navy wells put david dixon porter in command of the fleet that attacked ft. fisher. his first choice for that was farragut and if his health hadn't broken down, he would have been in command of that attack too. >> a couple more calls for james mcpherson. go ahead. >> caller: if the city of new orleans was so important to the confedera confederacy, why wasn't there an attempt to recapture it? >> the confederates did plan several times to attack and recapture new orleans but the union had a fairly large army there. it was called the army of the gulf. first under benjamin butler but then from december 1862 onward

who took command in the army in the campaign that captured port hudson north of baton rouge. while the confederates planned a couple of different campaigns to recapture new orleans, they were never strong enough or to put it alternatively, the union force there is were always too strong for that effort to succeed. the attack on baton rouge in august of 162, i alluded to in my talk, when the arkansas moved down there to try to help the confederate army to recapture baton rouge, that was to be a first step toward an effort to recapture new orleans but when the confederate attack at baton rouge was repulsed and unsuccessf unsuccessful, it ended that chance and later on the confederates undertook a couple

efforts but they were never able to organize a strong enough army to carry it through. >> the program there at the library is about to get back under way. we'll take one more quick call from glen in downey, california. hi, there. >> caller: yes. dr. mcpherson, i would like to ask you a question. this question is about gettysburg in 1863. i hope it's appropriate. when stonewall jackson had died, had he not died, who do you think he would have sided with at gettysburg, general lee or longstreet? >> i think he would have sided with lee. like lee, jackson always wanted to seize and hold the initiative and take the offensive. he was more of an offensive commander than a defensive commander in contrast to

longstreet. so i'm fairly confident he would have sided with lee on those decisions. >> james mcpherson, we appreciate you joining us this afternoon. we'll wait with all of the rest of our viewers to see if your choice, admiral david farragut is picked as person of the year 1862 and remind our viewers that we have covered a number of events with james mcpherson in the past of his many books and you can find many of those in our video library. thank you for joining us this afternoon. >> thank you for having me. >> we are going to stay live. we'll go back live momentarily to richmond. we'll hear from john mountcastle. he is a former chief of military history for the army. he'll be the fourth out of five historians speaking at the library of virginia in richmond. we'll take you back there live now here on american history tv on c-span3.

>> ladies and gentlemen, if you could return to your seats and we'll get started in just a moment. sam, why don't we go ahead and close the doors and get started. okay. our next speaker, those of us in

the richmond civil war round table have grown accustomed to hearing john mountcastle introduce speakers. it's an honor for me to introduce jack to you. you should know that jack mountcastle is a product of the class of 1965. [ applause ] jack is another of those retirees who is working at hard at retirement as he did when he was working. he teaches classes for the university of richmond and the virginia historical society. like bob krick, he's becoming known as the father of another civil war historian, dr. clay mountcastle, a product of class of '94. clay is the author of "punitive war." i had pleasure of reading that book early and plugging it for the book seller.

it's a fabulous read. i recommend it to all of you. but a lot of local folks know that jack mountcastle retired from the u.s. army as a brigadier general. fewer people know that he also earned his ph.d. in history so i never have known whether to call him dr. general or general doctor. but ladies and gentlemen, here's jack mountcastle and did i remember to tell you that he's a product of vmi? [ applause ] >> i agree with the applause. i think he did a superb job. we just keep training him year and year out. he's getting better and better at these all-important introductions. goodness. mid afternoon and you're all still here. i think that's great.

john, great job. excellent. [ applause ] like everyone else who has had the privilege of nominating a person of the year for 1862, i'm very, very pleased to be here with you and like all of our candidates, those we've already heard about and those yet to hear about, my man had major impact on the events in this very, very crucial year in the war, yes, certainly, but also in america's history. in america's story. what about this fellow that i'm nominating? born of a good family in comfortable surroundings. raised politically as a wig. and so in his case, just from childhood, he developed the respect for order and

discipline, for hierarchy, value of hierarchy, enlightened reason of course and o and moderation in all things. these principles will not only support his growth through his youth and into adulthood, well educated man, but later happily married man as well. he was successful in his every endeavor prior to 1862. he was a natural choice for the position to which he was appointed in 1862. not only was he a good-looking young man, not only was he well off and he was popular. but he had a way with words. i would guess that you may have identified my nominee by now.

george clinton mcclellan of philadelphia. i see we have some philadelphia fans in the audience. if you go over here to the virginia bookstore, you can buy the little napkins, you know, that says to be born in virginia is really something special. philadelphia, you can't buy them. your money's not good enough, you know? you have to have a pedigree. graduated number two in his class, west point, class of 1846. he was commissioned in the corps of engineers. not like people like george picket, vovshoveled into the in tray, the smartest guys typically went into the corps of engineers. in the decade following that war he was one of a group of young proteges of the very, very active, engaged secretary of war

jefferson davis. because geoff davis hjeff davis bit of confidence in young captain mcclellan in the 1850s he was part of a handpicked group that he sent to the crimea in the siege of sebastopol. mcclellan established a reputation then as being very, very intelligent in his approach to dealing with british and french engineers and sent some excellent reports back to the united states war department. picked up a lot of life experiences while he was over there in some bad neighborhoods. when he got back, though, he looked at what the army had to offer him. kind of a stultified period in our history. unless you were particularly fond of chasing comanches along the rio grande. that didn't really offer quite

so much to a young man on the way up as did an offer from the illinois central railroad. as you know, railroad construction and expansion was a dot-com boom. he submitted his resignation to the army to begin his engineering career and within a year he was moved up to the position of vice president within the illinois central railroad. he soon, as i said, became very, very successful and well known. he was also going through a little bit of a crisis in confidence. i said that his family was of the whig-ish variety. and he had always admired people like conservative politician daniel webster. he found himself the more he heard about this radical group,

these abolitionists within the new republican party actually repelled boy their pushiness and demands for this and demands for that, so in 1856 he made the decision he would no longer identify himself as a whig and certainly not a republican and he became what was typically referred to as a very conservative democrat and in 1858 as a conservative democrat and a board member, officer, rather, of the illinois central, he supported the democratic candidate for a senate seat in the u.s. senate from illinois, the man, of course, steven a. douglas. interestingly enough for young mcclellan who was just in his 30s at this point, he actually knew the republican candidate for the senate seat who ran unsuccessfully in 1858, a lawyer, a fellow by the name of abraham lincoln.

he'd done some legal work for the illinois central and had worked for mcclellan in that capacity. with the outbreak of war in april, 1861, mcclellan's name popped up again and again among midwestern states and even pennsylvania, state of his birth, with the governors of each of those states vying for his services, who could capture this young man mcclellan with his war record and his record of success in business to lead their volunteer forces. it would be governor denison of ohio that would get mcclellan to sign on the dotted line, and he became commander major general of ohio volunteers, all the ohio forces being raised at a feverish pitch in 1861. so, on the 3rd of may he took charge of these forces from ohio. in 11 days on the 14th of april, here comes a different commission, major general united

states army. oh, my gosh. now he's second in command only to his wartime commander from mexico, old general winfield scott in washington. as someone who moved at a considerably more sedate pace up the scales, i can tell you moving from captain to major general in that short of time's really moving at warp speed. and it was major general u.s. army and the commander of the department of ohio that mcclellan would lead union forces across the ohio river into there around clarksburg, virginia. today if you look for it on the map you'll have to look over in west virginia. clarksburg, virginia, on the 27th of june, 1861, so the summer of '61 sees him moving into action assisted by his old antebellum army friend william

rosecrans. they would bump into forces from john peagrum and they would defeat the confederates in july of 1861. although it was rosecrans that did the heavy lifting in this campaign it was mcclellan's name that had access to all the reporters. it was mcclellan's name that got into all the newspapers, and immediately after the union defeat at manassas junction, first bull run as they called it in the northern papers or bull run, the battle at bull run, he got an order from washington to report immediately to washington. he was needed there right away. so, he boarded a train that took him up through ohio, over to pennsylvania. made a quick stop to visit with his wife, ellen marcie mcclellan, maryellen, there in philadelphia, his hometown, where he was loudly hailed as a

hero, one and all. and then arrived in washington on the 26th of july. very, very exciting for someone in his mid-30s. this gentleman right here. i think that probably his letter described best what it was like in washington in july, 1861. because at the meeting with the president, the commanding general of the army about that time quite elderly and infirm winfield scott and a number of influential members of congress he sat down to write as he did almost every night to his wife at home who was waiting for him in pennsylvania. and here's what he said to ellen, i find myself in a new and strange position here, president, cabinet, general scott and all deferring to me. by some strange operation of magic, i seem to have become the

power of the land. mcclellan then set to work right away to try and bring some order out of the chaos that represented the u.s. army in and around washington. you had people whose three-month enlistments was running out. militia units like the hoity-toity infantry of new york were going home and others just arriving. the great mass of enthusiastic volunteers who were arriving in the washington area. by the fall you had over 80,000 federal troops around there. mcclellan actively pursued a campaign to get regular army officers assigned to his department there, the defense of washington which was called at that point the military division of the potomac. and he used all those engineering skills that he had honed at west point and mexico and he had observed in the