>> there's not likely to be much change, mike, as long as the monsoons last. the her have i rains are supposed to start this month and they'll last two or three months and during that period, it's unlikely that the marines can reopen the roads. marines say that they can refly themselves for defensive purposes with helicopters. but all that's very limited. marines won't be able to move out and enforce until the road dries out. whether the north vietnamese will use this period to continue to shell the marines or whether they'll try something more substantial is of course something that nobody on this side can hans. but during the monsoons, con thien is most isolated. air power is most limited. and the marines will be most vulnerable. >> the big question really seems to be when or not the north vietnamese intend to overrun con thien. the marines have tripled the number of troops guarding the outpost and they've moved up more battalions to be ready to reinforce. if the north vietnamese decide to attack con thien, they must know it will cost them between

5,000 and 10,000 casualties. they've only decided to do that once before. 1954. when they felted it be the final victory. and it was. but the united states could survive the loss of con thien, get more troop backs and retake it, so it would not seem to be in the best interests of the north vietnamese to attack con thien in the near future. they'll probably continue to shell it and the marines will continue to take it. two years ago when the first of 5,000 americans began settling in here with the fresh pentagon promises of a quick vehicle toerks the generals were promoting the new strategy of the air mobile defense. now in the light of con thien, the generals are explaining their successes with the words mobile defense. mobile defense seems to mean putting 3,000 men on the ground and lowering them to sit in the mud and wait for the shell with their name on it. the military can no longer

justify this war with a casualty count. it may be that more marines are dying along the dmz than enemy. anyway, no one doubts the general's strategy of sacrificing 10 of his own for one american. and few here believe our own exage ratesed guesses at enemy casualties. the marines have not run any operations in the dmz since this summer because there are not enough regiments to be sure of victory. they stay fairly close to their bases. to within a few hundred yards for most. it begins to sound like a conventional war with a conventional front. and in a new years, the marines who have come down off con thien will talk as proudly as though who came back from the reservoir. what it all seems to mean is that american marines have been emitted to protect a outpost along a barrier originally conceived in controversy and

cannot cannot be construct pd p what seems to be overlooked is the ability of the north vietnamese to case late this war 12e7 by step with washington. you begin to suspect that we've reached our limits when the generals are talking openly about an inflation of the north and the men around con thien are talking about the need for tack cal nuclear weapons. >> there seems little doubt that it is the administration's roof so to stay at con thien.>> thert it is the administration's roof so to stay at con thien. the president made that clear lastfully night when he pointed to the marines up at the dmz as the real peacekeepers. lyndon johnson understands that a defeat or even a wall now at con thien could be for him a political president's dilemma i thousand persuade the vietnamese to quit. it seems unlikely that he would order troops into north vietnam

to do the job. they would react sharply to such an escalation. meantime for the marines at con thien, the months ahead look grimmer than ever, the fall monsoon rains have just begun. they will go on until february. hammering american air power, depriving the men on the ground with at least some of the air support they desperately need.e depriving the men on the ground with at least some of the air support they desperately need.p depriving the men on the ground with at least some of the air support they desperately need. the dual will go on and on. this battle is different from any other action in the war in that there is no let up. day after unchanging day. and as long as the north vietnamese can refly their troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements,op troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements,ly troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements,ly troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements,lys and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements,ply th troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements, there is little the marines can do about it. mike wallace, cbs news, new york. cbs news film cameramen,

keith kay, engineer rad pea, john smith, karl sorenson, kurt volcker, and cbs news sound men. this has been a cbs news special report. the or de"the ordeal of con th." this brafts hoadcast has been b to you by western electric. as part of their continuing coverage of important news events. the preceding program was a cbs news special report, programs regularly scheduled at this time will return next sunday. this week on the civil war, a panel discussion from the lincoln forum symposium in gettysburg. the panel addressed the question why didn't the war end in 1861?

several lincoln and civil war scholars participated and lincoln forum vice chairman moderated. this is a little under 90 minutes. good morning, everyone. i'm harold holtzer, vice chairman of the lincoln forum. i want to welcome you to this year's historians' panel and the topic, why didn't the civil war end in 1861. in a sense, that may seem like a strange question to anchor our discussion today. think about it. in the spring of 1861 the north held tremendous advantages over the south. its manufacturing base was infinitely greater and far more sophisticated. railroad and telegraph structure were far more superior. its financial institutions were sounder. its population was larger. its economic system based on

free labor and growth through opportunity was more modern and more progressive. and its political system, anchored on the subject of freedom, and forescore years of tradition had just produced a president born in hard scrabble poverty whose ascent to the white house did nothing less than confirm the viability of the american dream. moreover, u.n. represented the established order. a fully mature nation, recognized by the international community, while the newly formed confederate states of america represented nothing more than a rebellious insurgency whose institution, not incidentally, enshrined the idea of slavery. with all of these odds in its favor, it's not unreasonable to think that the union should have ended the war in 1861 and not 1865.

clearly all of its advantages notwithstanding, it did not. today we're going to mark the 150th anniversary of what should in a way have been the end, not the beginning, of the civil war, by probing this largely unanswered question of why. what went so wrong for the north and at first what went so right for the south? we have a distinguished panel of expert historians to explore this mystery. of course, after we do some questions from the front, we will encourage you all to step to the microphone and ask your questions. this is a nice, long session and i think we'll have time for lots of participation by the audience, which of course we encourage. so from my left across this panel, we have tom harks, associate librarian for collection for the hoeten library at harvard university and author of a forthcoming

biography of president james buchanan. >> give it up, ladies and gentlemen. >> james buchanan, after all of these years, represents one of the punch and laugh lines of the era. tom is going to correct that, we know. william c. jack davis of virginia tech is the author of more books than we can count, among them on the presidency of jefferson davis and the creation of the confederate nation. john marzalek, director of grant association and professor of at mississippi state university is an expert on generals grant and sherman and the military culture of the u.s. military academy.

craig symmonds of the u.s. naval academy, recently retired, recently unretired, taught for decades at annapolis and is the country's leading expert on the civil war at sea. civil war at sea. adam goodheart is author of the acclaimed book "1861: the civil war awakening" and i know a stranger to all of you, frank williams, our beloved chairman, also one of the country's leading experts on the law of war. he pronounces it somewhat differently. and the constitutionality during rebellion. gentlemen, all welcome. >> let's start with tom and i think i'll pitch certain questions to one or another of you and then just give me an indication that you'd like to respond or disagree or attack or whatever.

tom, you obviously get failure number one. and i mean your subject, president james buchanan. he thought succession was illegal. what might he have done between january and march of 1861 to make sure the rebellion died maybe in 1860 but perhaps in the first two months and one week of the new year? >> i must preface my remarks by saying, whenever i tell people at social events, cocktail parties that i'm working on a biography of james buchanan i get sort of a blank stare. inevitably the question arises, what would james buchanan do? it's a very simple answer. nothing. but, seriously, he could have done something. obviously, we all know that he like his predecessor franklin pierce and pierce's predecessor were doe faces, northerners who

had great sympathy for the south. buchanan was greatly conflicted with this whole crisis. he was a devoted to the union at the same time he had great emotional attachment to the south. he was a man with few friends. those friends were southerners. what he could have done differently, i think, is that he could have reached out to those faxes who he despisecxes who h .

republicans, he couldn't tell the difference between those who were against the extension of slavery and those who were for the abolition of slavery. to him, all republicans were radical crazies. and then there were the douglas democrats. he never had a close relationship with douglas. and, of course, they broke over the la compton constitution that buchanan supported and douglas, of course, considering it against his concept and democratic party's concept of popular sovereignty, they split. and then as a result, buchanan basically tried to purge the democratic party of douglas supporters. so, in a sense what he does, he paints himself into a corner. and in a sense has very few of those he's really in contact with. as a result, he's not -- while he's calling for compromise, he's not reaching out to part of the democratic party, followers of douglas and not reaching out

to republicans to try to come up with a compromise that would, i think, be acceptable to all parties. now, he may have -- very well may have failed in this. i don't think he was a traitor. i don't think that he could have prevented the war. i don't think that -- i think, though, that he could have acted differently. and i think that if he had attempted to reach out to all of the factions, both democrats and republicans, i think, though he may have failed, i think at least he could have tried. and i think history would have -- he would have been thought differently in terms of the historical record that he is now, which is he's considered one of the worst presidents if not the worst president that we've ever had. >> not to pile on, but does anyone want to add anything about uncle jimmy or should we move on? all right.

i'll take that as a noninstantaneous reactions as a sign we have exhausted 1860 and we're in 1861. just talk for a minute each about the officers army and navy who in a sense some of them betrayed their public educations and headed south in defense of their states. there's no question that lincoln regarded them as traitors. he called them treacherous. how did these defections contribute to this longer rebellion than 1861. why don't we start with west point. >> the fact some people who went to west point, by the way, i don't have figures handy, but most west point graduates actually stayed with the union. we think of robert e. lee and some others who went with the confederacy but most west pointers went with the union. unfortunately, a lot of them were not well known.

so it didn't make that much of a difference. but consider the fact that the greatest military man in the united states at this time, west pointer or not a west pointer, actually, winfield scott, winfield scott, when he stayed with the great military mind. look what he did in previous wars. but the difficulty was, those people who all went to west point got to know each other. and when the war began and someone -- some went one way, some went the other way, the problem is that they did know each other. they were all the same training. they had the same ideas, many, many of them. so as a result, when the war began, they all fought in terms

of fighting about the same way. consequently, when you fight the same way, and you know what the guy is going to do, it's very difficult not to react -- pardon me. it's very difficult to react in an appropriate way. the west pointers were all prepared in the same particular sort of way. and what happened at west point, of course, end this fact that some people left meant that west point bore of stigma of traitorism, before and after the war for a long time and that had an enormous impacts on the development of military policy. >> that's an interesting concept. everybody fighting the same kind of war. inspires sort of a draw or -- >> that's exactly -- that's it exactly. >> craig, on the naval side. >> there are two differences in the way annapolis graduates and west point graduates reacted to this war.

john is correct in saying most west point graduates stayed with the union. remember, all of the northern west point graduates stayed with the union and some, a few, of the southern did. but most of the southern born west point graduates ended up going with their states. another obvious exception, george henry thomas is famous among virginian who stayed with the union. but to contrast that to annapolis, most of the annapolis southern born annapolis graduates stayed with the union. of course, i can make comparisons about how loyalty is perceived, with the two institutions. >> right, right. >> i won't do that. i'll merely suggest i think service in overseas united states navy serving under national flag on foreign shores created a concept they were serving a national government rather than serving a particular state. that may have something to do with it. if you're cynical, another

explanation may be that the southern navy was so small, there were very few jobs for senior naval officers in the -- >> very few ships, i think, too. >> very few ships. the other is the age of institution. west point in 1802 had been around a long time. many graduates had reached senior ranks, senior for 19th century, whereas the naval academy found only in 1845 its graduates were still relatively junior so that those who were in senior command positions when the war broke out were not annapolis graduates. i'll contrast the particular example i like to mention is david glasgow fairragut, who learned on the job. virginia southern born, tennessee born, raised in louisiana, living in virginia, married to a virginia woman. when virginia succeeded from the union said i will not stay in the state one more day. i'm leaving now for new york. dear wife, you may come with me or not as you choose.

no pacing around the upstairs floor for him. he knew right away what he was going to do. >> jack, you're next up here. you've written extensively about confederate nationalism and the formation of the new government and confederate government in montgomery. was it so brilliantly organized around its constitution and around its constitution and its leadership so infused with patriotic spirit, did it emerge as a genuine force and political force that perhaps the north underestimated it from the beginning? and talk about that formation. >> sure. >> when people ask me what i'm working on currently, i'll tell

them this or i'll tell them that. the response i get is thank god you're not doing a biography of buchanan. it was a very difficult thing to bring off the confederacy that at the same time there was no other choice. i think still it's generally appreciated that there was virtually no preorganization. there was no replanning. these states really did act independently of themselves. when south carolina talked about succession as it did 40 years prior to the time it finally did it, south carolinians became very agitated if somebody from georgia or mississippi set foot in south carolina to try to promote secession. this is our business.

they could regard fellow successioners as agitators. there is no coordinators. there is this meeting in january 1861 when several southern senators meet -- i mentioned this in my talk for those of you who were awake, about -- it's time for us to success. but no unanimity were charged with doing. for instance the delegation from florida, which is only three people, was specifically instructed by its convention not to enter into any new confederation. the delegation for south carolina led primarily by the fire eaters, they believe their mandate was simply to go and to talk and then to come back and report to the south carolina convention on what had been discussed and then perhaps debate some more to see what should we do. no one's going there except, perhaps, a few georgians led by

alexander h. stevens committed to the idea of we cannot wait around. we have to do something now. indeed, the fact that there was a confederation states of america formed in february 1861 is due to stevens more than anyone else. he's the real little giant of american politics at the time. he was only about 4'8", weighs 80 pounds, calls himself a half finished man. but his intellect is towering. and he realizing, we have what bedford forest called the bulge on lincoln. lincoln doesn't take office until march 4th. we're meeting february 4th. we're meeting february 4th. we can preemptively act, we can take the high ground, we can't wait around, discuss, debate, we have to form a new government. and stevens, robert toomes a few others from georgia that pushed through the georgia plan, that is, we must take power. that is to say we must conduct a revolution within a revolution

because we have no power to do what we're going to do. to frame a new government, form a congress, elect a new president, choose departments, go to war and take this back to our home states and say, here it is, take it or leave it. that is how it came together. it left a lot of people stunned. the south carolinians were not very happy with it. they thought, we just got out of a union and now we're getting into another one. they thought what kind of surrender of sovereignty is this new union going to require. and the people of their states, of course, had no referendum in this. whatever. other than being allowed to vote to elect delegates to state conventions who had sent these fellows to montgomery. when they framed a permanent constitution and adjourned in march 1861, they went back to their respective states to try to sell the constitution and the new government. the georgians, for one, were --

said, this cannot be put to a public referendum because it will be voted down. that's how teen ten ewe wous it was. there's no tradition of unanimity and togetherness except on the defensive, except on response to what they perceive as attacks on their institutions from the north. a long way around to getting to your question, it was a very precarious thing all along. i think the big thing that's going to face confederacy from 1861, can they keep that inertia going to stay alive? >> one more background question and then we'll get deeply into '61. adam, talk for a minute about how the events of these first months of 1861 struck the people that you've been researching so heavily. not necessarily the iconic figures or the known heroes or

villains of the period. but ordinary americans from california to ohio back to new york state who are suddenly given these choices and make them generally. well, first of all, i think the answer is obvious. the reason the war didn't end in 1861 is to keep so many historians in business today. so, thank you to the civil war for not ending in 1861. i do think that this was -- this was a moment of incredible crisis and decision for so many people. i'll share one story with you of relatively obscure, as you say, person. my book actually began when my students and i from washington college on the eastern shore of maryland were exploring an old plantation house near our

campus, near chestertown, maryland. i always take my students exploring for my history classes. well, there's one particular plantation that we always go to. it's been in the same family since 1669, which is a long time even by the standard of the eastern shore of maryland. the house was built in the 1720s. anyway, i was there with my students a few years ago. we were digging through some papers in the attic. there were all these peach baskets and bushels and boxes stuffed with family papers, about 30,000 pages of family papers it would eventually turn out. one of my students became very interested in a particular member of this family.

we've been told by decedents through the oral history that there was a man in the family who in 1861 had to face a very difficult choice over which side he was going to go with, as many marylanders did. this student of mine, a guy named jim, became very interested in this story. jim is a marine interested in military history and said he wanted to get to the bottom of this dilemma faced in early 1861. he said he wanted to write his term paper using the papers up in the attic of this house. and i said, gosh, jim, you know, there are 13 generations of papers. there is no guarantee you're going to find anything from 1861 about this guy, but he persisted. we went back. we started looking for the papers. one of the first things i pulled out of a box was a bundle of documents tied up in a ribbon that clearly hadn't been undone since the 1800s. and it said on the outside, william h. emery's letters regarding his resignation from

the army in spring of 1861. i blinked a few times, i handed it to my student. i said, jim, one thing you should know, it's not always this easy. to get back to your question was the story of one of thigh ordinary americans trying to grapple with what was going on around him. you know, what struck me, this is something that doesn't often get covered, i think, in a lot of the history books, is the way that it wasn't just an ideological decision, a moral decision, a discussion about slavery, but emery was out in indian territory. many of you are probably familiar with his name. he became a rather successful calvary commander in the war. but what emery was wrestling with, clear in the letters back to his wife in maryland, was not just these big questions, but questions of individual loyalties. he was close friends with jefferson davis, his son was actually living with the davis family at the time while he attended medical school. and he was thinking about family ties.