virginia civil war sesquicentennial commission. the theme of this year's gathering was leadership and generalship in the civil war. and the virginia military institute in lexington, virginia hosted the conference. university of virginia history professor gary gallagher gave this year's closing remarks in which he spoke about the significance of studying military history. this is about 40 minutes. >> it's a very great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to introduce to you gary gallagher. i want to say to you that the topic of his talk there about the importance of studying military history goes back to the beginning of our foundation for this conference. about three years ago jim mcpherson was in lexington and i chatted with him about how we should develop this whole thing. he proposed the idea of studying or advancing the theme, overarching theme of the principles of effective command. we seized on that. he later declined to

participate, but we have kind of kept that in our pocket, so to speak, as an overarching theme. gary gallagher, when we went to seduce him, so to speak, to come to this conference and give the wrap-up talk, he immediately seized on the topic of the importance of studying military history. and we have looked forward to this day for quite a long while, not only what's gone before, but this ultimate triumph that we think that gary is going to deliver to us today. you all, i'm sure, as serious scholars and buffs know exactly who he is. he's been advancing, by the way, to virginia from a long way off. he started in california, and he went to school in colorado and went to school in texas, and he taught in pennsylvania. but in 1998 he wound up at uva. and there he is the john nau professor of history of the american civil war.

he is the author of or editor of 30 published volumes and he's active not only in the publishing field, but active in the preservation field. and when people talk about the civil war and what's to be gone next, they often say what does gallagher say. it's a great pleasure for me to give you gary gallagher. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. i'm delighted to be here. the last time i was in lexington to give a talk at vmi, this building didn't exist and it wasn't that long ago. this is a very beautiful building. i looked at the program just yesterday again to remind myself what it was.

i really knew what it was. but it's on leadership. so i wore my winfield scott tie. i didn't see a lex tour on winfield scott and since he's one of the five greatest soldiers in united states history, i thought i would wear this. dick summers who works up at carlisle gave it to me and i treasure it. that's the end of that. i'm going to talk about why i think military history is important. i realize i'm preaching to the choir here. i suspect most of you probably think military history is important or you wouldn't be here this afternoon unless you are just lost and too embarrassed to admit it. that's going to be our theme. i'll star on march 4, 1865, when abraham lincoln delivered his second inaugural address to a crowd that gathered despite drenching rain earlier that day. the president and his audience understood that union victory almost certainly lay just ahead. the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of the war approached, two million men shouldered muskets in united states armies. casualties among those soldiers, dead, wounded and taken prisoner surpassed 800,000.

lincoln left no doubt about the important role united states armies had played. the progress of our arms upon which all else chiefly depends is as well known to the public as to myself, he said in language, revealing a direct link between military campaigns and the civilian side of the war and morale. and it is, i trust, he added, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. in a message to the confederate congress in may 1864 jefferson davis similarly referred to the ties between the military and the civilian spheres. the army which has born the trials and dangers of the war, which has been subjected to privations and disappointments, he stated has been the center of cheerfulness and hope. as the conflict ground toward its conclusion in the spring of 1865, perhaps as many as 900,000 confederate men had served, of

whom more than 650,000 had perished, been wounded or sent to united states prison camps. both presidents would have joined the overwhelming majority of fellow citizens of infirming the centrality during these four years of struggle. generals and their civilian superiors had planned and executed operations that not only included many of the most famous battles in american history, but operations that also profoundly affected the political and social dimensions of the conflict. study of those operations for us yields a two-fold return. most obviously, we as readers encounter a feast of dramatic incidents, memorable characters, striking contrasts of skill and ineptitude, of gallantry and perfidy, triumph and absolutely shattering defeat. study also, however, allows us

to study the myriad connections between battlefront and home front that makes attention to military history absolutely essential to any serious attempt to comprehend the broader contours of the war. great captains and their soldiers as all of you know have dominated popular understanding of the war. i'd venture up to ways that almost everybody in this room came to an interest in the civil war that way. i certainly did, beginning with those americans who read the century company's landmark battles and leaders series in the 1880s, generation offense americans have enjoyed narratives about huge armies maneuvering against one other, trying to place that opponent at risk. once engaged in combat, the officers and rank and file members of those arms ensured

the lasting fame or notoriety of mundane places on the american landscape. they fought for control of the ghastly entrenchments in spotsylvania. they shed their blood profligately in miller's corn field. they introduced their societies to a new scale of slaughter near a backwards methodist church called shiloh and waged a desperate struggle along an unfinished railroad bed not far from a sluggish stream called bull run. celebrated commanders be troed the military landscape crafting moments of almost impossibly high drama. ulysses s. grant carried out a brilliant campaign of aggression against vicksburg reducing that great rebel stronghold overlooking the mississippi river on july 4th, 1863, despite reservations among many subordinates and his command in chief regarding his strategy.

it at almost exactly the same moment, robert e. lee watched his confidant army of northern virginia sustain a wrenching setback in the suburban countryside near gettysburg. 14 months after those events, william tecumseh sherman who owed his success almost entirely on grant's presence, delivered a powerful body blow to the confederacy when he captured atlanta. told and retold by memoirs, historians and other writers since the confederate surrender, in the spring of 1865, this dimension of the war comes closer to serving as an american iliad than any other part of our history. although no equivalent of homer emerged from the host of authors who wrote about the military history of the civil war, a number of superb historians combined descriptive and analytical gifts in a way to influence huge audiences. again, i suspect they influenced everybody in this room. i'm going to mention two of the best. bruce catton and douglas

southall freeman who between them authored a number of classic titles beginning in the mid 1930s and going to the mid 1960s, titles that still are pertinent to anyone interested in the civil war. i'm going to quote a pair of passages that illustrate why catton and freeman and others who wrote well in a traditional narrative style have had such an impact on so many people who were drawn to the american civil war. in glory road published in 1952, the second of his three volume trilogy on the army of the potomac, catton memorably brought the iron brigade, the brigade made up of five western regiments as they said then. we would say midwestern now. brought them on to the field at gettysburg where it would lose roughly two-thirds of its 1,800 men in just two hours on july 1st. the westerners fell into swept and came swinging up the road,

wrote catton in setting the stage for a bloody day's work. their black hats tilted down over their eyes, rifle barrels sparkling in the morning sun. on the ridge to the west there was a crackle of small arms and a steady crashing of cannon with a long soiled cloud of smoke drifting up in the still morning air. at the head of the column, the drums and the fifes were loud playing "the girl i left behind me" probably, that perennial theme song of the army of the potomac, playing the iron brigade into its last great fight. freeman combined battle narratives in lee's lieutenants, a study in command, a trilogy about officers in the confederacy's most important army that appeared between 1942 and 1944 and served as an impressive supplement to the author's pulitzer prize winning four volume biography of r.e. lee. the son of a confederate veteran, freeman embraced an

number of lost cause interpretive dimensions, of his books we should keep in mind when we read them, his did he say crip active prose and character sketches remain engaging and very illuminating. i want to quote from his passage dealing with artillery fighting on may 3rd, 1863 at chancellorsville. at hazel grove in short the finest artillery of the army in northern virginia were having their greatest day. they had improved guns, better ammunition and superior organization. officers and men were conscious of this and the destruction they were working, for once they were fighting on equal terms against an adversary who on fields unnumbered enjoyed indisputable superiority in weapons and ammunition. with the fire of battles shining through his spectacles, william p. graham rejoiced. a glorious day, colonel, he said to porter alexander, a glorious day.

there might be much more of hard fighting and costly assaults concluded freeman. if those gray batteries could continue to sweep the field, the federals must yield. many of you have stood at hazel grove and looked at the vista from there down to fairview, and you know exactly what freeman is writing about there. and you know he's exactly correct, it turned the tide of the fighting on may 3rd. the extensive retrospective literature by participants also holds enormous value for us today. though we always should keep in mind with this genre that we must be alert for special pleading and efforts to settle old scores. i gather that john gordon's memoirs have been mentioned at least a couple times today. i'll mention some others. the postwar writings of john bell hood. joseph eggleston johnson, george b. mcclellan, abner doubleday. a book such as these, put gordon in that collection as well, though not without merit, they often tell us much more about

what these men were up to in their post appomattox frame of mind than about the events they're actually describing. tell us more about senator john gordon in 1900, perhaps than the battle of cedar creek, for example. other memoirs are at the other end of this spectrum of how useful they are. i'll put euless sis s. grant and alexander at that end, they define the very best of reminiscences, beautifully ask sometimes movingly written, deeply analytical, and often more perceptive than almost all modern historians. the union's greatest military hero filled his two-volume memoirs with a number of remarkable passages, few more instructive than his peer into the citizen soldiers who saved the republic and killed the institution of slavery. the armies of europe are machines. the men are brave and the

officers capable, but the majority of the soldiers in most of the nations of europe are taken from a class of people who have very little interest in the contest in which they are called upon to take part, wrote grant. our armies were composed of men who were able to read. men who knew what they were fighting for and could not be induced to serve as soldiers except in an emergency when the safety of the nation was involved and so necessarily must have been more than equal to men who fought merely because they were brave and because they were thoroughly drilled and inerred to hardships. without an appreciation of the fundamental importance of the idea of the citizen soldier, it is impossible to understand the american civil war, absolutely impossible. if you don't grasp that concept, both in its union context and its confederate context, then don't kid yourselves. you're not going to understand what's going on during the american civil war. grant's memoirs in this passage

and others help us across the century and a quarter since they were written to grasp that essential fact. alexander included a section in his recollections that captured the feeling of community and attachment to nation among officers and soldiers that helped make the army of northern virginia the most important national institution in the confederacy. on the morning of april 3, 1865 he sat as stride his horse on the bank of the james river opposite downtown richmond. lee's army was evacuating the capital and alexander who commanded the artillery of james longstreet's first corps had just watched the last of his batteries cross the bridge. we turn to take a last look at the old city for which we fought so long and so hard. remembered alexander. of the it was a sad, a terrible and a solemn sight. i don't know any moment in the whole war impressed me more deeply with all its stern realities than this.

the whole riverfront seemed to be in flames amid which occasional heavy explosions were heard and the black smoke spreading and hanging over the city seemed to be full of dreadful portents. i rode on with a distinctly heavy heart and with a peculiar sort of feeling of orphanage. i don't know of any passage written by anyone who served in the army in northern virginia that captures the essence of the connection between the men and that institution and their commander better than that passage from porter alexander. critics of military history often question the need to dismiss what they deem as drums and bugle topics. people in noon academic world likely would be surprised to learn that students with emerge from programs in american history at many good universities without any knowledge of the civil war. they can take courses devoted to the conflict that include almost no attention to generals or to campaigns or to battles.

such courses focus on the ohm home fronts, on the ways in which the conflict affected or did not affect the daily rhythms of life on farms and cities, and hotly contested political issues also stand out sharply. for example, how and when would emancipation be accomplished and who should get credit for removing the stain of slavery that had mocked the founding generation's noble language. would republicans enact their legislative program and did their agenda anticipate the a emergence later in the century of a capital's behemoth en route to a great power status in the 20th century. in this civil war yoman farmers in the confederacy grow disenchanted with a government that seems to favor the wealthy as do anthracite coal miners in pennsylvania. women on both side struggle to find their roles amid changing conceptions of what it means to be a patriotic mother and sometimes battling economic hardship, women in the

confederacy take to the streets to demand more food. this war offers a cacophonous jumble of advocates and victims all of whom act out parts in a drama largely devoid of the boom of cannons or the rattle of musketry. the historical literature on the civil war has evolved in a way that often conspires against anyone who would engage both the military and the nonmilitary dimensions of the conflict and who would more especially strive to know how the two interacted and affected one another. too many nonacademic historians care for little beyond generals and battles and soldiers in the ranks, while most academic historians nourish a resolutely dismissive attitude toward military history in general and again civil war campaign history in particular. if i had little more time, i'd tell you some stories, but i don't, so i'll keep going. i hasten to concede there are

exceptions to this generalization about academics. i don't want to be too hard on people in my world, just very hard. anyone who has read jim mcpherson's "battle cry of freedom" or george rable's "fredricksburg! fredricksburg!" to name but two examples, knows well that some historians do try -- dissecting strategy the old military history, put in quotation markets dealt largely with leaders, dissecting strategy tactics carefully, sometimes brilliantly. but he added, although some academic scholars would talk about common soldiers and social theme, quote, gaining a full understanding of a battle requires looking at both sides of the equation and mixing the elements. acrimonious debates about filmmaker ken burns's documentary "the civil war" which i'm sure you all watched at least in part and how best to interpret national park service civil war sites battlefields

exemplify the continuing divide between these two civil wars, the one that's mainly military, the one that has almost no military aspects to it. in his contribution to a book of essays devoted to burns' much lauded series, leon wit lack, a prize winning scholar of the black experience in 19th and early 20th century, i'll quote voiced concerns i've heard many times among academic historianh. i'll quote him. two major warfronts co-existed during the civil war, the clash of armies on the battlefields and the social convulsions at home. the civil war stays mostly on the battlefield, being the name of the series, virtually ignore the other war, the conflict fought out on farms and plantations in towns and cities throughout the south, even where no union or confederate soldiers appeared. none of the great battles, in quotation marks, not even antietam, shiloh or gettysburg

compares in sheer drama with the much way in which the civil war came to be transformed into a social revolution of such far reaching proportions and consequences. jeffrey c. war, the nonacademic historian who served a the principle writer for burns's series responded with passion, insisting burns tried to insinuate as much nonmilitary material as possible into the, quote, complicated, headlong military story we found ourselves trying to tell. clearly stung by what he saw as an unfair attack from litwack and others, ward commented that, quote, some of the criticism in this volume, the volume devoted to the series seems needlessly shrill. the wrangling over park service battlefield sites involved interpretation for potentially millions of visitors and received attention from the national press. in the 1990s the park service began moving toward interpretive plans that would try to include more context within which each

of these battles unfolded. congressman jesse jackson, junior of illinois, presided over a conference that looked at that question in 2000 in washington, d.c., a conference that made the argument very strongly that the park service needed to do a lot more with the nonmilitary, the nontactical especially dimensions of what was going on in the battlefields. he said they do a good job in talking about generals and movements. they don't do a similarly good job of documenting describing the historical, social, economic, legal and social events that led to the war and which manifested themselves in specific battles. he said that slavery's role in the coming of the war was especially left out. defenders of more purely military interpretation on battlefields mounted a strong counterattack. a cover story in "u.s. news & world report" quoted jerry

russell, an opponent of changing traditional interpretive emphases, he wrote, quote, people go to the battlefields to learn about the battle. they're not there to learn about the economy or women or about slavery. very pithy, from jerry russell. many of you probably knew jerry and knew he could be pithy when he wanted to. i think because most americans receive their first introduction to the conflict through battles and generals, that military history affords the best way to bring these two wars together in a fashion likely to attract the broadest audience. a certain kind of military history framed to explain how battles influence the home fronts and how in turn politics and public opinion shape union and confederate war efforts. i think that will be necessary to accomplish the task of trying to give people a better sense of just why military history is so important and why you can't understand the war unless it's part of your attempt. i think success will depend on

wooing readers who begin with popular treatments of battles and campaigns, piquing their interest in the other war and providing a bridge that will carry them across the chasm between academic and nonacademic history. there's no doubt work on both these civil wars is going to continue. publishers will allocate significant attention to campaigns and battle studies. people actually buy those books which makes them different than almost all the books that academics write. most of them have just about as much impact as a tree falling in siberia, affect just about as many people. gettysburg, of course, dwarfs all other campaigns in this regard. there's a sense there simply cannot be too many books on gettysburg. there can't be enough attention to the first 20 minutes of the fight for the railroad cut on july the 1st. we've only written 400 pages. by god, we need 600 pages. there was a bibliography of gettysburg published in 2004.

it includes more than 6,000 titles, 6,000 titles so get busy if you really want to read it all. i think there will also be a continuing interest on the part of both university presses and commercial presses on biographies. again, people like to read biographies. another reason most academics don't write them. bill cooper today went against that stream. he wrote a really brilliant biography of jefferson davis. he wouldn't have done that for his first book now because he wouldn't get a job or tenure. but anyway, that's another story. people actually like to read biographies. so they will continue to be published. between 1991 and 2003 ten biographies of william tecumseh sherman and ulysses s. grant, appeared. ten in that period. not counting the ones since then. should he should readers consult the more

than 4,750 pages in those volumes or readers who happen to read the two men's memoirs missed the point that grant and sherman developed an effective partnership? i guess you could read them in a trance or something and trying not to get that, but just in case they missed that, from that effusion of writing in the '90s, they could turn to a book published in 2005, 480 payables long titled "grant and sherman: the friendship that won the civil war." that friendship i think was known even before, but i don't want to be precipted in my thinking there. my point is that authors drawn to either of the civil wars should be alert to these connections. i'm not sure every book on gettysburg should include 80 pages of the missouri controversy of the 1820s to get us down to gettysburg. that's not what i'm saying. i'm saying there should be some sense of what gettysburg meant beyond the movements of the 20th

main laid on the afternoon of july the 2nd, some sense of what more was at stake. any examination of civilian morale, for example, should take into account military chronology because events on the battlefield heavily influenced how people on the home fronts viewed the conflict and its likely outcome. those calculations, in turn, affected how the civilian populations reacted to governmental efforts to keep this massive war going. are people going to accept con description, impressive in the confederacy? how far are they willing to go to maintain this struggle? the main way they decided how far they were willing to go was by following military events and trying to gauge the likelihood that they would have a favorable result, absolutely critical. it's also important to remember that the contending sides were

democratic republics after all. wars are not fought in a military vacuum in a democratic republic. everybody in this room, at least everybody i can see is old enough to know that. sometimes students aren't old enough to know that, but you are. wars end in the united states when the civilian population decides they're not going to fight the war anymore. it doesn't necessarily reflect what's actually going on in the war. what it reflects is what the people have decided. that's when the civil war would end, when one or other of the civilian population decided that's it. that's it. after lee surrendered the vast majority of confederates decided, that's it. in the summer of 1864 there was a very good chance the majority of people in united states were going to say that's it. which is why that was the most fraught moment of the war for the united states. forget gettysburg as the great turning point. of course it wasn't.

the summer of '64 is as close as the confederates came. a long time after the supposed great turning point in the summer of 1863. there are tremendous links between politics and military affairs. i'll give you one example -- no, i'm going to give you two. we have a digital clock here. i know exactly how many minutes, seconds and hundredths of seconds i have left. nothing left to chance in this conference. there's a trap door right underneath me, too. so you'll be out of here by 5:00, maybe even a little bit before. i want to give you two examples of these linkages. the first is the bloody stalemate -- the apparent stalemate in virginia and georgia during the summer of 1864, the incredibly bloody summer of 1864. grant and sherman seemingly bogged down, threatened republican prospects in the