at first war? >> would the war have been different had the union crushed during manassas? >> i don't think so. i'm not the historian on this, and i'll turn it over to the panel who are, but i don't think so. i don't think so. >> jack? >> i'm inclined to agree because i don't think either side was prepared to win, regardless of how the fight of first manassas came out. i do think it's possible the war would have ended in 1862 had first manassas been a union victory because i heard craig herby say this a few days ago. they managed to get past this

humiliation because they had 80 years of shared history, pride, a sense of nationality that i think helped get it through, the humiliation and embarrassment of that defeat. but i've often wondered what would have happened if the confederacy had lost, being just four months old, having no tradition of anything, except still a fair degree of disagreement among disagreement. would the people of the is sece states have lost heart? would they continue to turn out the loans and contributions in the south to keep funding a military effort if their soldiers had turned and fled in shame at first manassas? i think it's a very fair question. nobody was prepared to win in '61, but it's quite possible the confederacy might have simply withered away had they not. >> especially with them occupied with troops on the ground.

>> no, i don't think it would have made any difference. >> i'm going to steal something that adam started talking a while ago, and i'll elaborate on that a little bit because i think he's absolutely right. you have to keep in mind what each side's objective was. the south is already a defacto separate society with 750 square miles of territory, and the laws of manassas, i don't think, would not have brought an end to that war that year or maybe even the following year. the union had much the harder shot. they had more tradition and three times the number of men and eight times the number of manufactured goods, because their job was to hold and occupy that territory forever. that was an enormous undertaking. i think it would have taken a number of years under any circumstances, so no, i don't think bull run is the moment in which they might have won. >> well, we all know how the south rallied around the confederate victory at bull run.

i think it might have easily rallied around the confederates' defeat at bull run. remember a lot of things that motivated a lot of southerners to join on the confederate cause about which there had been a great degree of skepticism all during the process was the fact that the south was being invaded. i think that might have reinforced that feeling. >> here's what i think might have happened. i agree with jack davis and craig simons that a union victory at manassas, and everyone, i believe, feels this way, would not have brought an end to the war in 1861, maybe not in 1862 because it would have had to require follow-up victories. and the north was ill prepared to do that after manassas, even if mcdowell had prevailed. i also think that there would

have been unintended -- what to us would have been unintended consequences of a prolonged war even with a union victory at manassas, and just think about what craig said. the objective of the union, of the federal government, was reunion. and it might have caused renegotiation or political dialogue with the confederate states which lincoln would not recognize, anyway, and it clearly would -- obviated emancipation, at least for the foreseeable future, if the goal was to bring back into the union those states that had seceded. so i think it would have even complicated the political protocol that developed, if you want to call it that, as it did during the conflict. >> i think we've broken some new ground here, actually.

yes, sir. >> canonsburg, pennsylvania. tom in his introductory remarks talked about buchanan possibly coming up with a compromise. my question would be, what kind of compromise would be acceptable to both sides? lincoln would never give up the idea of preventing slavery from expanding, and the slave states would never accept that. so what kind of compromise would be available that would be -- that would make both sides happy? >> let's do this very briefly so we can move on. get everybody included. >> that would be a good -- that's a good question. obviously, the extension of slavery issue would have to have been addressed. you're right, it's -- there would have been no guarantee that even if he brought those sides together, as i had said, that they could have come up with a compromise. but the thing was that there was really no effort on his behalf

to do so. as i said, he was dealing and communicating with a very small portion of the political players. just part of the democratic party, and of course, he would not at all think about trying to bring in republicans. so, you know, it's a good question. i don't know. lincoln was -- one issue he would not give up on, and that was allowing the extension of slavery. so whether or not you can compromise, measures could have brought him enough republicans remains to be seen and probably not, but i think at least he could have tried. >> i would just add, i agree entirely with what thomas said. after february 18, 1861, when jefferson davis arrives in

montgomery, alabama to be sworn in as president, there was no further possibility of compromise at all. because davis was committed to confederate independence. lincoln is committed to reuniting the union. there is no basis for compromise between the two. >> i would think that any compromise, as you can imagine, would really only be temporary, would only delay, i think, the issue. i think simply, and maybe again, it's simplistic, but simply because the slavery issue was such a moral issue to both sides, it wasn't simply political, it was moral. and sooner or later, it was going to have to be dealt with. so any compromise would be temporary. >> i'm going to take my turn down the line before i hand off to craig. just remember that lincoln, in a sense, does define the parameters of compromise that he's willing to live with, which is basically the language of this shadow amendment, which is that slavery be perpetuated. not extended, but perpetuated.

enforcement of the fugitive slave act which he declares at the first inaugural. you can say that lincoln is politically very clever because he knows it's not enough. but he's also, in a sense, tinkering politically with some very, as john says, moral issues. and he makes some statements and some concessions in that period that actually detract from some of his union saving and pro-liberty reputation. craig? >> i can't add anything to what you've said. i agree. you're right. >> i think there was already so much momentum for -- an enthusiasm for southern nationhood among the southern political elite, perhaps not the southern commonfolk, but the political elite, that it would have been very, very difficult to get them to stand down from this enterprise that they were very excited about. >> frank? >> well, i'm going to throw something out here that i've

been thinking about, and i think this inability to compromise really began with the inherent conflict in our constitution in 1787 following a declaration of independence which says that all men are created equal. which lincoln loved more or as much and more than the constitution, and that it was only a matter of time for that to break despite the compromises of 1820 with the missouri compromi compromise. in the compromise of 1850, it was over. >> as much as lincoln used that cumbersome metaphor that you could have both the declaration and the constitution as an apple of gold in a frame of silver, not a good metaphor in the bible and doesn't work here.

>> what psychological importance did lincoln attach to the firing of the first shot? we know what he said in his first inaugural. and if he did attach importance to that, did you perceive any maneuvering on his part to bring about the -- what finally did happen in sumter? >> let's start with craig on that one because he's written about it recently. >> that's a great -- what was the joke this morning? that's a great question. do you want to repeat it? >> the two issues we're dealing with, the extent of lincoln with this macamilian vein, planned for what happened to happen.

they argued that it's a heads you win, tails i lose option. lincoln said they had to either go by who fired the first shot or by allowing supplies and so forth to be put back into fort sumter. so lincoln crafted this careful, well-plotted strategy to throw the ball into the court of jefferson davis and compel him to make the first move. i think there is a lot to be said for that, but i want to also harken back to what some of us have said earlier about how lincoln was picking his way through a political mine field in his first several months in the presidency, and that is that lincoln wasn't sure how any of this was going to turn out yet. he was still harboring a hope there was latent nationalism somewhere in the south, certainly not south carolina, but elsewhere in the south, bring about tempers to cool so that if you could postpone and delay the confrontation, you might, in fact, convince some of

those states to recant and come back into the union peacefully. if that didn't happen and confrontation was necessary, then yes, i'll create the circumstances where you bear the responsibility. but i kind of suspect that he hoped that the relief expedition would be allowed to go into fort sumter, that that would prolong the period of uncertainty, keep eight instead of only four border states in the union, undermine the sovereignty and the pre tensions of the confederate government. if that didn't work, if instead they opened fire, well, then, we know where they are, you have started the war and we will react to it. so i think to a certain extent, he had two possible outcomes in mind, either one of which he would be willing to deal with and wasn't sure, really, until that shot was fired which of those would eventuate. >> adam, you wanted to add something? >> yeah, i think craig has it absolutely right, but i also want to add that i don't think lincoln at all welcomed war, but

i do think that he thought that if there was going to be a war, he didn't want to fire the first shot. and, you know, that also played itself out in how the reaction to sumter happened. one of the brilliant things about lincoln, i think, is that as eloquent as he was, he was never a demigod. he was never someone who tried to whip up popular sentiment with what he said. and when those shots are fired on fort sumter, there is an incredible description by hey and nikolai of what was going on in the white house that day, and they said it was a completely routine day. lincoln sat there signing various federal appointments and meeting with the office speakers who came in, and some virginia congressman came -- i'm sorry, northern congressman came in to ask the president, well, what do you think of this incredible s dastardly deed that the con if he had -- confederates have

taken of charleston? and lincoln said, i do not like it, and he went back to work. he let things rile up around him without doing anything perceived to whip it up himself. i think that was brilliant. >> john? >> i may be a little ornery, but i'm not so sure that there was a situation here where the confederates were damned if they did, damned if they didn't. let's just say for argument's sake that the confederacy said, okay, you're there at fort sumter, we're not going to fire on it. so you can stay there if you want to, and by the way, you know, fort sumter is really not that important. we can get stuff into charleston, anyway. maybe i'm being influenced by modern politics, but you can spin anything. and i think it's possible, more than possible, the confederacy could have spun it this way, not fired at fort sumter and certainly gone on maybe even more successfully in organizing

themselves. >> i hope we can get all three of you in. i'm watching the clock, so you're next. >> howard sears, hackensack, new jersey. this is primarily directed at john. i just wanted to talk about west point at the time, which is really a military school massacre aiding as a military academy. you had hardy writing on tactics, but outside of that, there wasn't much in the art of war going on at west point, and these men that left west point in command of the armies north and south, nobody had ever maneuvered armies of this size. it was really on-the-job training as lincoln had to learn the job of commander in chief. and that's basically what i'd like to comment. >> i think in all fairness to west point, and i'll let craig disagree with me, i think the

one thing that everybody agreed that west point did teach is they did teach organization and administration. and so the one thing that a cadet came out of west point with was the ability to administer a group of people. it's true, they really didn't get much tactics, they didn't get much strategy and all, but they did get that. and that wasn't such a bad bit of knowledge and ability to do. >> well, john, if i can ask john a question, remember, lincoln, who had very little military experience except for three months in the black hawk war in 1832, initially trusted, with great credibility, the west point educated generals until he learned that they were as inept

as some of the political generals, or many were as inept. don't you think, though, john, that if their education was deficient, including their own experience in the mexican war when it came to fighting this civil war, at least in a general sense? >> yeah, there's no question about the fact that they could not officially move an army on the battlefield. but if you think of the one thing that they were able to do, if you look at mcclellan and you look at hooker, just to mention two, they knew how to deal with feeding people, they knew how to deal with working on morale, taking care of their soldiers, so you're right. the problem was they had no experience, had no experience with actually leading people on the battlefield.

and consequently, when they were forced to deal with an army -- imagine, an army of 60,000 men. where don't we throw that off. it's only an army of 20,000 men. my town of sparkle, mississippi is only about 24,000 people. that would mean we would have to organize everybody in town to get an army of less than 30,000. and i'm going to be the general, with my four years of west point experience, a little bit of experience in the mexican war, and i'm going to organize this force to lead an assault on mississippi state university just two miles down the road? i don't think so. and i think what it does come down to is nobody is ready for this war. nobody is prepared, and i think what frank says is right. lincoln came to understand this. these guys really don't know as much as they think they know, and in reading the book of my

hero, henry halak, came to understand, hey, i can figure this out just as well as they can, maybe better. how come they haven't considered this and this and this? >> maybe this lawyer's mind in this one instance, at least, played an important part, frank. >> you mean lincoln. >> i'm from baltimore, maryland. this is something i've been thinking about for two days since i heard jack davis' presentation, and it's been reiterated today. so lee, the reluctant traitor, as you call him, agonizes about his loyalty to virginia versus his loyalty to the united states. i imagine that was true for a lot of officers and the like. during the course of the war, this is foreshadowing, the south always had trouble coming up

with a viable national strategy, where they always came up with a viable national strategy with the north. lee was focused on virginia, on saving virginia, on defending virginia and was less concerned about what happened in pittsburgh and the far west and chattanooga and all these other places -- >> okay, we've got it. >> anybody can answer it. >> very quickly, because lee is often charged with being virginia-centric in his view, and i think that's true. if you put yourself in lee's position, he'll spend year after year watching the confederate command west of the appalachians essentially disintegrate and shoot itself in the foot. a great army miserably led most of the time during the war. and lee has to ask himself, what good could he do if he acceded to the general's wishes and went out there in that poison command system? could he have done any better?

whereas he knew what he could have achieved with the army of virginia. i think lee is certainly aware of what was going on west of the appalachians and the general in chief, he'll exert minor influence in affairs outside virginia. but he knew where he was best used, and jefferson davis had enough wisdom to know not to disagree with lee. >> our final question. >> the panel pretty much dealt with the question i came up to ask while i was standing here, which was the role of the outcome of bull run and its impact on them in '61. i thought in closing, though, tom, if you're having trouble coming up with good material on buchanan, i took the tour of buchanan's home, even though lincoln didn't raise his head to look at it, and if you listen to the guides and dosients that take you around over there, i

walked outgoing, wow, did we have it all wrong? >> if you see me afterwards, i'm starting a james buchanan forum. [ laughter ] >> with only two people. >> volunteers could meet in the closet in the back. >> well, at the end of 1861, what turned out to be but the first year of the civil war, abraham lincoln sent his first annual message to congress. he ended it by saying, the struggle for today is not altogether for today, but it is for a vast future also. he meant, of course, that american democracy preserve could yet, as he put it earlier, like the world. but he also knew a vast future of death and destruction might be necessary to achieve that

goal. to do less than defend the country, he believed, would guarantee, as he put it, that all of liberty shall be lost. to lincoln and to jefferson davis and the populations they led, it was a war worth extending for years to come. all dreaded it. lincoln remembered of the day he began his presidency. all sought to avert it, by which he meant war. both parties deppricated war, ad others would make war rather than let it perish. and the war came. and as we learned today in our panel about 1861, and the war continued. thanks to tom and jack and john and craig and adam and mr. chairman. thank you all, too.

[ applause ] you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of people and events that helped document the american story. all weekend, every weekend on cspan-3. next is a film produced in 1974 by the u.s. army. portions of the film was reported in the pentagon in the hall of heroes. the hall of heroes was dedicated in 1968 by president lyndon

johnson and canskand contains t of the recipients of the medal of honor. the series focuses on historic battles, figures and traditions in u.s. military history. the long years stretched behind us into the past, forming corridors of time which echoed

to the bugle's sound of valor. those years and that valor have been given tangible focus here in this quiet shrine of tribute, the hall of heroes. here in a ring of the pentagon, this space is dedicated to a nation's remembrance. not of events, but of deeds. deeds of americans in uniform who gave more than was asked, more than could be asked of them. not always their lives but always themselves without pause and without reservation. each man whose name appears on these walls and those whose names will appear here are members of a unique fraternity of courage. they are all recipients of our

nation's highest award, the medal of honor. it is given to those whose actions meet the standards spelled out in these few words: gallantry and intripidity, the risk of life above the call of duty. the hall of heroes was dedicated on a sunny spring day, may 1968. >> today we confer the medal of honor on four more gallant americans. this is the first time that four men from each of the military services have been so honored together. charles e. hagermaster, james e. williams, gerald o. young, richard a. pittman. they will place their names now in a new hall of heroes, created here in the pentagon as a

memorial to all who have earned their country's highest award or courage in combat. seeing two of his comrades seriously wounded in the initial action, specialist hagermaster unhesitatingly and with disregard for his own safety, rushed through enemy fire to provide them medical aid. sergeant pittman quickly exchanged his rifle for a machine gun and several belts of ammunition, left the relative safety of his position and unhesitatingly rushed forward to aid his comrade. petty officer williams was serving as patrol officer of two river patrol boats when the patrol was taken under fire by two sampans.

he bravely led the patrol through the fire and led 50 sampans. disregarding serious burns, captain young aided one of the wounded men and then attempted to lead the hostile forces away from his position. for 17 hours, he evaded the enemy until rescue aircraft could be brought into the area. >> with the addition of those four names, the roll call of valor totaled 3,210. each name a reminder which illuminates for every man who reads it a higher vision of his kind. originally, there was only one version of the medal of honor. today there are three. this one specifically for the army, and there