america. >> former warden takes you through missouri state penitentiary. and walk back through history in the halls of missouri state capital and governor's mansion. once a month, explore history and lit rather live of cities across america. next weekend from jefferson city, saturday noonan sunday at 5:00 eastern, cspan2 and 3. this week on the civil war, discussion about abraham lincoln and jefferson davis as opposing commanders in chief. the new york historical society hosted this event. it is a little over an hour.

>> good evening. the subjects tonight are abraham lincoln and jefferson davis. i think it is fair to say by any measure of military or government experience, by bearing and background, by any remotely reliable crystal ball, any american, northern or southern, asked let's say in the spring of 1861 who was more likely to be a superior commander in chief in a full scale war, would have given the same answer. jefferson davis. he graduated from west point, lincoln had emerged from let's say the school of hard knocks. davis served two stints in the army, led forces in the american mexican war and lincoln's only military experience came in a rag tag militia company raised

to battle an indian invasion in illinois where the only blood shed lincoln later admitted was lost to mosquitos. davis served as a secretary of war. and the united states senator, lincoln is a one term congressman who opposed the war with mexico and opponents whispered at the time and even voted against supplying the soldiers with food and blankets. by the time watt armies met for the first time, that summer at bull run, early reports davis arrived in bat battle. helped turn a confederate defeat into victory seemed totally credible, so much so that citizens began referring to him as our president general davis. and yet we know how it all

turned out four years later and what we're here to discuss tonight is i think in a nutshell whether the outcome was inevitable because of the north's numerical and economic advantages or whether the two commanders in chief made a difference, maybe the biggest difference of all. and as dale told us, we could not have two more accomplished civil war experts to explore this topic definitively because they are not only superb authorities on military history in general by also biographers, they tackled these men and their issues. and jack in his book and not to mention, we are lincoln men, which is about lincoln and his relationship to his soldiers. and jim mcpherson, who offered the battle cry of freedom but also as we heard "tried by war" lincoln as commander in chief.

right on the mark in both cases and what more appropriate and to talk about. you two can battle that out later. jack, let's start with you. you've said that davis would have actually preferred a confederate position to the presidency, was that a bit of reverse bravado? >> jefferson davis was not the most self-aware of men. he tended to be pretty blind to a lot of his personality failings and shortcomings, davis genuinely did inside understand that he didn't have the nature of an executive. i think that he genuinely would have preferred to be out in the field. he was comfortable with soldiers and comfortable with the rugged sort of life.

they at least seem to meet you head on, unlike the politicians, i know this will surprise many people. i think we can take him at his word in that instance, he says he would rather have been out in the field. in his later years, when asked what he would most likely do in his life, he said if i could have it to live all over again, i would be a ba boone breaking squares. >> jim, i dwelled at the outset on lincoln's inexperience on paper. so tell us how he prepared himself after his election to overcome the deficiencies in his resume. >> he consulted with general scott. library of congress, military history and military strategy and studying them by midnight oil.

he talks about lincoln staying up late, trying to master military strategy. he would listen to anybody and would absorb the information, turn it over in his mind, think about it, study it. he always tried to understand the depth of detail of anything that he was trying to learn about. and so he really underwent a crash course. he was a good observer of what was happening. and he would be able to figure

out from the experience of his armies in 1861 and 1862, what they were doing right, what they were doing wrong. he was a good judge of character. for example, over the objections of his own secretary of war, simon cameron in june of 1861, he chose montgomery might goes as quarter master general, a young officer who did not have very much experience in that category at that point but lincoln saw that he was kind of man who could organize the logistical requirements of a large army and so he chose montgomery migs, he also chose davis fox as the assistant secretary of navy because here's another person who he saw in judge was a live man, can-do man, at a time when a lot of

other advisors in the spring of summer of 1861 were telling lincoln, this can't be done. lincoln elected to find men who can say this can be done. and so he learned on the job. there's no question about that and made mistakes but learn from those mistakes as well. >> the remarkable thing, i could also military strategy, not sure i could come a great commander in chief, you probably could, jim. he was a remarkable learner but i still find it miraculous that he absorbed as much as he did and became an authority as you detailed on joint action and things like that. jack davis had a really terrific pool of talent from which to choose early in the war. tell us about some of the

decisions he made and of course, they -- the question that most people wonder about is why he did not turn immediately to robert e. lee, a man to whom lincoln turned without success in the early going. >> basically the story with lee, of course, is that davis could not turn to him until virginia seceded which doesn't happen until april and the confederacy has been in existence for going on three months and army is in the process of being raised and therefore davis already has to construct a command instruct tour. when virginia secedes and johnson in particular are now available, davis has to kind of shoe horn the man into the instruct tour he's already created. lee is widely regarded as the greatest soldier of the era, best soldier i ever saw called by scott. he's still largely regarded as a staff officer.

i can't exactly explain why, because he has plenty of field experience. it may be he's regarded as so brilliant and so able that he needs to be in richmond in some capacity of direction rather than out in the field. this happily will change for the confederate viewpoint, the best yankee bullet ever fired. put him out of business in seven days and lee has his chance -- i guess i would a little bit with the point he has that tremendous pool of talent to choose from. otherwise, when you take a cold, hard look at the early leaders that davis is presented with, you find out there's only one standout and that's robert e. lee. for the others, joseph e. johnson and others like that, very quickly show themselves to

be contentious, unimpressed by the president himself, really not entirely in view with the notion of t proper relation of a general in a civil democracy, as being subordinate to the civil authority. davis will have trouble with a lot of other commanders throughout the war. this is one of the best known things about his presidency. >> it should be noted that robert e. lee's first field command was a failure in west virginia, which was in the process of becoming west virginia. in the summer and early fall of 1861. so much so that the richmond newspapers started calling him granny lee. it wouldn't be entirely clear to davis in 1861 that lee was going to emerge as the top field commander for the confederate army. >> he had been an engineer as well. he was sent to south carolina to

oversee the construction, he does exactly that and requires the nickname spades lee. >> getting back to the older veterans who have eventually to move on for the emergence of the younger folks let's talk to whom you alluded jim a moment ago, a veteran of not only mexico but i guess the war of 1812, been in the service for 18 years and barely could stand up and couldn't ride a horse. if he wore all of his dress swords, he tilted over i guess. lincoln relied on him in the beginning, did he not? and scott comes up, we know with the anaconda plan which may be the most brilliant strategic move and it happened early. >> scott was america's greatest living soldier in 1861 and second only to george washington in reputation. as an american soldier. he had been general in chief of the united states army for more than a decade. but as you say, he was old and

infirmed. he weighed 300 pounds and he was 75 years old and couldn't mount a house. he needed long naps every afternoon and he was taking a nap on the afternoon of july 21st, 1861 while the union army was fighting 25 miles away at man as sis junction in bull run. lincoln woke him up to ask information coming in and one was reporting that the sound of the firing was coming closer to fairfax, virginia and lincoln asked scott, does that mean our men are being pushed back, and scott said no, no, it's just the direction of the wind. doesn't matter, and he went back to sleep. >> he went back to sleep.

>> that gives you some idea of scott, and it is quite true scott came up with the anaconda plan which was basically an idea of trying to isolate the confederacy, so that it would just run out of gas, as it were, by imposing a blockade on its coasts, and sending a task force down the mississippi river to seal it off from the outside world, and then just sit and wait until the confederates cried uncle, and indeed, those two aspects of union strategy, the blockade and gaining control of the mississippi river were essential parts of union strategy during the course of the entire war, but that alone clearly was not going to be enough. scott likely, like george thomas, like joseph johnston and many others was a virginian but a virginian who decided to stay loyal to the united states, but he also looked upon the possibility of a war that would

ravage his native state of virginia with great distress and i think he wanted to have a war that would be so limited that it would not accomplish very much construction, that it would bring the south back into the union with very little bitterness and hatred and killing and suffering, but clearly the war was going to emerge into something quite different from scott's vision, and by the summer or by the fall of 1861, both because of his age and infirmities but also because of the nature of the war it was passing him by and he wanted to retire. he did retire in november, 1861, replaced by george b. mcclellan who at that moment was the great man on horseback to try to win this war for the union, and both

the press and president lincoln had a great deal of confidence in this young 34-year-old, less than half of scott's age to take over and infuse great energy, and aggression in the union army, and of course we all know how that came up. >> i mean i always think that lincoln had a sort of a sentimental attachment to scott, not only because of his declaration of loyalty to the country which some virginians did not manifest but also because he was really lincoln's only important military adviser during the interregnum between his election and his inauguration, even if he was also sharing his letters with william sue ward and the press, at least lincoln was hearing about the federal sports in the south and the federal garrisons and munitions places from scott and scott was the only one out there with a plan, so i think it was hard for him to cut him loose in a way. >> that's true. >> they say that when he met lincoln at the willard hotel he had to be propped up and helped sort of hoisted up the stairs of the willard. so he should have gotten an idea, he said maybe he should

have been dropped. sort of one television film he was played by john hausman. do you remember john hausman? >> oh, yes. >> from "the paper chase." they obviously did not cast young actors but let's talk about both of their nose for talent. you talked about beauregard, and you mentioned mcclellan as the successor and the great hope. how did each grow? start with davis in this and by the way you can talk about lincoln in this endless search for talent, with i had so many permutations. >> i'm not sure that davis really did grow in the search for talent, and it's i think the answer to that lies in the personality of the man, however much confidence he might have put in his generals in the field. he always had greater confidence in himself i think in his own approach to what needed to be

done strategically or tactically and which ever theater of the war he was concerned with at the moment. and he was pretty severely limited by the organization he created. i'll get back to that again, in which unlike the union, which the highest rank is major general, until the third year of the war, davis early on creates a structure in which there are three and four-star generals, and people like lee and joe johnston and beauregard and samuel cooper pronounced coopah -- he's from new jersey of all things. [ laughter ] he's the senior ranking general in the confederate army and he's from new jersey. it's going to be a strange war, you have to understand that. davis is really stuck with these people. they've got so much rank that if, like johnston or like beauregard, they proved themselves to be inadequate or unsatisfactory, it's very difficult to move them aside. to lincoln's credit, he was much better at shelving inadequate or

unsuccessful generals and i think taking more chances on elevating people from the ranks. davis will really only try it once when he jumps john bell hood from major general to the rank of lieutenant general, then temporary general in 1864, with disastrous results but he jumps them over several senior officers, and the result is a, it was very unsuccessful in command and b, davis contributes to an already poisoned command army culture in tennessee because of the miffed feelings of the generals who have been overlooked. lincoln, and i won't speak for jim, lincoln, i think, handled this much better perhaps as a rule because he was not hide bound by any pre-war associations or friendships. >> or military experience. >> or military experience, exactly right. lincoln could learn while he learned, as jim said, whereas davis came into this with a whole set of constraints he was not aware of due to his background. >> also lincoln is president for four years, davis for longer,

with not any real promise of an election campaign to follow and lincoln has congressional elections. he's got to start looking at almost as soon as he takes office. jim could you certainly weigh in. >> well, could you look at lincoln's choice of talent in two ways, one way of looking at it is that if he was so good at choosing talent, why did he have to keep firing generals and appointing somebody else. [ laughter ] my answer to that has been at the time when we pointed mcclellan as commander of the army of the potomac and then his general in chief, at the time when he chose burnside to succeed mcclellan and chose john pope in the summer of 1862 to command another army in virginia, which was supposed to cooperate with mcclellan's army of the potomac, and then when he chose joe hooker to replace burnside, and then george g. meade to replace hooker, when he

made these choices, every one of them seemed to be of the best possible man based on their record, at the time to that stage in the war, and on their promise and their potential as commanders, but each one of them obviously turns out to be a great disappointment to lincoln. i have always thought that that was not so much because of lincoln's poor choice, but because these men turned out not to have the character, the abilities, the capacity for decision, the right kinds of decision that all of the previous, of their previous records would have suggested they had, but that's something that could continue to be debated.

the one key thing about lincoln and his choice of commanders is that he early on recognized grant. he personally made a decision to promote grant to, from brigadier to major general after ft. donaldson, giving him precedence over don carlos buehl, also henrik howlick, the superior of both of them, wanted to rank grant but lincoln recognized grant, and then he stuck with grant through thick and thin, over the next two years, when he came under a great deal of pressure, both political and military, on more than one occasion, to get rid of grant, but he saw something in grant, he stuck with him, he promoted him, and of course, i think that in the end turns out to be one of the most decisive factors in the ultimate outcome of the war. >> and saw something in grant without meeting him, which is extra ordinary. >> yes, didn't meet him until -- >> -- promoted him to lieutenant general. >> that's right. >> the other thing about

lincoln, i think the one thing worth adding is that lincoln's responsibilities were further complicated by the fact that he was living within a political culture, not just a military culture. he had to appoint democrats, let them raise regiments, and had the issue of creating ethnic units as well, and commissioning german officers like the great alexander schimmelfennig. >> savior of gettysburg. >> savior of gettysburg, right. he has a political coalition to keep together which davis i think doesn't -- >> that, in fact, is the one area in which i think you could credit davis perhaps for showing bet judgment or perhaps being under pressure from lincoln. you don't find the great cadre of political generals in the army. only two career politicians rise to the rank of major general,

howell cobb, almost as fat as winfield scott, he has permanent shadows on his shoes, he can't get out of them, so he never commands in the field. [ laughter ] and the other is, so he winds up commanding things like conscription of the draft in georgia and the other is john c. breckenridge who turns out to be a decent division commander but not given too much responsibility until he's already demonstrated himself. the confederacy doesn't have as many of these enclaves to please, though there are still plenty of them and virtually every tole politician in the confederacy thought he ought to be a general. lincoln is in this culture to hold this coalition together has no choice but to make generals out of people who have no business being generals. >> before we go back to the generals i want to spend a few minutes talking about the common soldier, because you've both written so many important things about each of these commanders'

relationships with the common soldier, which was important, and i'd like you each to address how they related to the troops and specifically the culture of visiting the front, which jack, you've written about, both presidents doing, and ironically i guess davis visited the front more often, lincoln is more famous for visiting the front. >> the front kept getting closer to davis all the time. [ laughter ] that's the problem. >> but to be fair, he went out west, right? >> he did. davis, davis would have disdained any notion of public relations or trying to curry favor for popularity, one of his great failings as a leader. he simply didn't understand the value, the morale building impact a leader can have upon the left so when he did go to the armies and he visited the army of virginia frequently and the army in the west, i think

only twice, mostly he closeted himself with the generals. there are a few reviews, but nothing -- lincoln was visiting the army of the potomac repeatedly to see the soldiers and when davis did go west in 1863 to see the army he went to jackson and made a speech for the mississippi legislature, and then closeted himself with the generals. he never was reviewed by the soldiers until i think it's the winter of 1863-'64, at which time the soldiers are so jaded that when davis rides past in this review they don't cheer him the way lincoln would be cheered at this time. i think the soldiers and the western confederacy by that time were already identifying themselves with robert e. lee as the symbol of the confederacy rather than davis whereas lincoln has and i'll let jim speak to that, has the exact opposite impact. >> just as one example, i think,

davis was a very fine horseman, a very fine rider, and when he did appear before the troops, they, some of them remarked on what a fine rider he was. when lincoln reviewed the troops and rode a horse to do this, the soldiers were amused because his long legs almost touched the ground. >> long underwear show. >> his pants, very awkward rider, but interestingly enough, that really endeared him to the common soldiers. they saw him at one of them, who would come out of the same kind of background that many of them had come out of, he could identify with him, they saw, jack has written about this, they saw a real empathy, a real rapport with lincoln, whereas they may have admired davis' horsemanship but they don't really identify with that because most of them were not fine horsemen. maybe the cavalry offices are.

>> sort of has a reverse impact, doesn't it? lincoln gets sustenance and renewal from seeing the common soldiers and in turn hearing their approbation directed at him. >> that's right, although i think davis did probably spend more time at the front than lincoln did i think lincoln got a lot more mileage out of that in terms of rapport with the common soldiers. >> i often think that nicknames are a good gauge of the affection of one person or a group of people for another. i just say that because i have a lot of nicknames. [ laughter ] you'll have uncle abe, old abe, father abraham, there's never a father jefferson. they feel that -- they might call him old jeff, but even that is often said without affection, and if i can stretch the point with one other thing that to me is always the most eloquent, i found, i don't know how many soldier letters, written home immediately after lincoln had visited the army to review the troops and the first thing the

soldier also do is write about it in their diary or write a letter home and they'll say the president cast his gaze over all the mass troops and he smiled, and i think he smiled at me. there's no way lincoln's picking out faces in the crowd, but the soldier wanted to have that moment's connection with father abraham. >> changing direction abruptly, i want to spend a few minutes on some quick issues, because we already are approaching the time where we want to turn to our audience questions, but technology, new weaponry, i think lincoln gets a great deal of credit for it, monitor the most obvious thing. i don't know if davis gets as much credit as he actually deserves. he